Category Archives: bad day

Confluence of events

The thing about PTSD is cumulative stress is a greater than normal problem. A bunch of “little stressors” combine to make big ones. If I have one piece of support fall down the whole structure is going down. Which is to say, I’ve had a bad week and some. It’s my problem. I’m carefully staying away from the idea of asking for help. When I am already in this state and I start asking for help I don’t react rationally when people appropriately tell me “no”. So I can’t ask at all.

I’m not dealing well with people emailing me to tell me how awesome my rapist is. I find myself crying at random points in the day because all I can hear in my head is what a worthless whore I am. At least he is funny. He even won an award for being so funny.

Uhm. Bully for him?

I am struggling with the fact that the homeschool group is not full of my friends. They are the parents of the kids my kids play with. Leaning on them for emotional support is inappropriate and potentially a hostile environment. They sure as fuck aren’t going to take my side. They want to remain neutral and hear all the points of view. In their world it is totally ok to go to the rapists’ show. He hasn’t done anything to them, after all.

I feel attacked. I don’t think anyone is actually attacking me. I’m pretty sure no one gives enough shits about me to attack me right now. But I feel fully activated for a big fight. I feel scared. I feel unsafe.

I feel like no one is going to like me any way so I might as well be as aggressive as humanly possible just to make sure I don’t end up with the short stick as usual. Which is a privileged, asshole way to respond to problems.

I don’t see much in me worthy of liking lately.

It is hard trying to be “rational” about other people handling their own needs and priorities. I feel abandoned and unimportant.

I am not responding to emails because I have nothing positive to say and I want to unload a big fat self absorbed whine on everyone so I’m just… saying nothing.

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all. Which is a lot of why I haven’t been blogging.

I feel like shit. Physically and emotionally I feel awful. I feel sad. I feel unwanted and stupid and like I should stop bothering people. I should go the fuck away already.

I suppose the upside is I don’t especially feel suicidal or like I want to cut. I just want to hide and avoid everyone.

Who the fuck could like a stupid bitch like me? I’m not funny. I’m not especially worthy of anything.

Just a waste of fucking resources.

Easter morning

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Kids will start arriving in five hours. I feel pretty ready. I counted the eggs. I do, technically, have 300 but 15 of them are out of general circulation because I turned them into games. I can live with that.

I’m putting 100 in the front, 100 in the back, and 85 in the house.

Big kids will be told they musn’t look lower than their waists. There are plenty of high up eggs and then some. You can only pick low lying fruit after the little kids give up. There is plenty of candy. If you get zero candy from eggs, go take some off the table. I have enough to cause comas in at least ten kids. Hopefully spread out among 20 kids and 20 + adults it will just lead to stomach aches. Or people will be smart and take most of their share home to savor over multiple days. We’ll see.

Other people are bringing most of the real food. Thank you all. I’m so glad someone is a responsible adult around here. Yay!

It should be a lot of fun. The house is ready. I have ~30 minutes of decorating to do once the sun is up. You can’t put crepe paper outside before the day you want it. I learned that the hard way.

I’m sending Noah and the kids to the farmers market so that I can stay home and hide eggs and finish the clean up. I will assemble the fruit and vegetables we have in the house while they are gone and Noah will finish the food set up when he gets back. By that point I will be on the driveway trying to corral a growing horde of children. It will be fun. I’m going to put the giant chess set out there and chalk. I can keep them entertained for at least 15 minutes. I will probably also get the kids to chant the guidelines in a group. That way they won’t break things. “The top shelf of EVERY BOOK CASE is off limits to kids.” “Big kids look for eggs above their waist.” “No eggs in the bedrooms or pantry or bathroom.”

As of this moment I have had 45 people say they are coming. Want to make bets on it being closer to 20 people? People like to change their minds at the last minute.

Either way it will be fun.

The preparation for parties is hard. Yesterday I was grumpy. I yelled three times. Four? Maybe a fourth. Once when Shanna was hitting me with a balloon and accidentally knocked over something breakable. I yelled to get out of the kitchen. Not great.

I wasn’t even that *mad*. I just screamed it. I had been in the process of asking her nicely to take the balloon out of the kitchen and then there was a loud noise then broken glass then… I screamed. Get Out Of The Kitchen.

When I was cleaning up their stuff and sorting things into piles to be put away properly Shanna came over and spread all the piles out and started recombining them because she was making an “art gallery”. When I noticed I yelled at her to get away from my piles. That’s not nice. I could have asked.

I don’t feel like I had a lot of “ask nicely” left. The kids have fought me really hard on every step of party prep this time. When I say, “Please pick up x” instead they go dump the whole box that x goes in and leave that in the middle of the floor.

I don’t think I’m up for more parties this year if this is how they are going. I’m not going to fight the kids tooth and nail so they can have birthday parties. That sounds hellish.

Lately we are having a hard time with them believing they should not ever have to do anything. I understand this is a common belief and all but I don’t share it and I kind of don’t like people who have it. I know lots of grown ups who think it is fine to not do anything. I am not nice to them.

Entitlement is a real issue for me. I am not here to serve you.

I am being strict but I don’t think I’m being completely unreasonable. I’m not making them clean up stuff that is my mess. I want them to pick up their toys and empty the dishwasher and set the table. If that is too much to ask then I think that I am all of a sudden out of energy to cart you around to do every fucking thing you want.

I just…

I don’t know if I am being a petty asshole or if I am setting appropriate boundaries. I don’t make them pick up every single toy every single day. I do ask that they keep the main walkways clear because I don’t appreciate hurting myself just because they wanted to dump out a tub of Lego’s and walk away. Not cool.

I’ve screamed a lot this week. Way up from average. But I feel more pressure to clean up the house. And when I feel more pressure to clean up the house and the kids consciously go on a destruction binge…

I don’t know how this should be handled. But maybe Step A is that if I am going to be fought every step of the way for parties we won’t have them. I’m not up for battles like this. It’s shitty and no fun and stressful and it does a lot of damage to our relationships.

I can’t do all the work with a smile on my face while I am also tripping over the stuff I have asked you 1,362 times to clean up because it is hurting me and you haven’t played with it in three days anyway.

I get mad. Very mad. I hate you and don’t want to be in a room with you because I am afraid I will lose control and do something I will regret.

I regret yelling. I don’t want it to escalate. I can live with some regrettable yelling. That’s not going to convince me I’m a shitty parent who should die.

I don’t call them names. I don’t say things that attack their character. No matter how angry I am I stop to clarify. “I love *you* but right now I am very angry about the way you are behaving. Your behavior is not working for me.”

And when we are not stressed we talk about the whole “sometimes your behavior won’t work for people and you will have to decide how much you care. Sometimes it is expedient (yes I defined it for her) to conform and do what people want and sometimes you have to harden your heart and do what you know is right.”

Life is complicated.

Mostly we get along so well I feel like the fact that we usually get along so well handicaps me for handling it when we are in discord.

Last night as we were going to sleep Calli stroked my face and said, “Mommy, sometimes when you get mad you are SO FIERCE. I like it. It makes me feel safe.”

That kind of statement both comforts me and scares the shit out of me. Am I training them to be attracted to intense, violent, angry people? Oh that’ll go well.

Sometimes it is really hard to know if I am doing right. I don’t want them to believe that it is ok for people to scream at them. We talk a lot about how it ISN’T OK EVER for someone to scream at you. Sometimes it happens anyway because bad things happen to everyone. You can either internalize it as a sign that you deserve such treatment or you can think, “Wow they are having a bad day.”

You can’t do anything to deserve people treating you badly. Them treating you badly is about them.

Sometimes that is hard. Sometimes the only thing you can do is get away from the person. That is so very hard.

But that’s not true. There are things you can do. You can ask for boundaries. You can ask for concessions. You can state what you need and you can leave if you don’t get it.

You have lots of options.

When I’m getting too nasty my kids stop me and say, “Mom I think your tone of voice is way more fierce than you mean it to be. I feel scared.”

I stop and hug them and apologize for scaring them.

I am a very fierce person.

Is it ok to be fierce and a mother? I’m not sure I have a point at this time. I will never be one of the gentle ones. I will always be one of the loud, scary, aggressive ones. I will always be one of the ones who startles you and challenges you and makes you think about why you are doing what you are doing. I don’t take excuses well.

You did what you did and now take the consequences. I’m not going to make this easier on you. Sometimes consequences suck ass. I’ve received a lot of them. I know very well how much it can suck to be held accountable for your behavior. But that’s the way the world works.

Shalyndra–you are right that people in a social setting penalize women for displays of aggression more than men. We are silenced. We are told that it is unseemly for us to be so angry or difficult or nasty. The men are encouraged to be manly. (insert grunting noise)

But when it comes to things that sound like *threats* women are given a pass. People do not believe they are capable of “true” violence. Men are told that their random jokes are threatening and that they must now be punished.

It occurred to me while I was running yesterday–this situation is kind of like the BMI.

Individual women want to punish individual men for the reality that statistics say men commit more crime. Whether or not that man is a criminal.

Women are given a pass on being believed as violent–we are shushed and told just to calm down now, we know we couldn’t do anything violent anyway. Women aren’t that way.

The BMI is applied to individuals without regard to individual factors. Many people in the obese category are far more healthy than people in the thin category and yet… stigma.

Us/them. The enemy.

Noah told me he doesn’t know how things will ever change as long as us loud yelling women on the internet think of him as the enemy.

I went running with another angry woman. (I hope that description doesn’t bother you. You aren’t “always” angry. But you can do the angry woman stuff.) I told her what Noah said. She said, “He engages in behavior that reinforces the status quo. He doesn’t want to give up what he has so that someone else can have a more fair share. That means he is the enemy.”

Wars start over resources. At this point the United States is going through one of the harshest equality differences we’ve seen.

Is Noah is the enemy? Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I understand that he is just a symbol and *he* is not at all my enemy. But he’s done bad things.

He hasn’t done anything that is worse than things I’ve done. Not even close. So if he is the enemy… am I?

Monsters, monsters everywhere and not a one to beat.

Grumpy day.

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I’ve screamed more than once. I am really tired of being asked for candy 3,523 times a day starting ten minutes after they loudly and rudely refuse to eat breakfast. My screaming has mostly consisted of “IF YOU WILL NOT EAT REAL FOOD YOU WILL NOT EAT CANDY. STOP ASKING ME.”

Next year I will buy all candy for the event the day before. I will not have candy in my house for a week again if I can avoid it.

Deep breath. Today will end. Yup, today is kind of rocky. All three of us have cried and said we feel really sad because of how we are interacting. We hugged and said we would try harder.

That’s all you can do, right? Some days are hard. No one actually did anything all that bad. Stealing candy isn’t the end of the world. Yelling about stolen candy isn’t the end of the world.

But we are all kind of sad. Some days are like that.

All honey badger like.

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I was thinking about what triggers the suicidal urges. Because I need to control them. There are lots of triggers but some are more predictable than others. Gaslighting is a pretty sure fire way to cause me to psychologically recoil and believe that the only option is checking out.

Gaslighting is, more or less, when you try to make people mistrust their own perception of reality. When you tell someone to depend on you while avoiding emails for months. “I’m there for you” while flipping someone off. That’s very minor gaslighting.

“People tell you what they think you want to hear because they don’t want to disappoint you.”

When it comes to the potential safety of my children I need to deal with the absolute cold, hard reality of life. I can’t just pray that “everything will work out”. Lots of people try to tell me that my life worked out just fine because I’m not dead yet. Fuck you.

I have to believe actions. I have to. I have to watch what people do and extrapolate from that.

I “know” I am not actually “alone”. I have friends. What I don’t have is a safe haven for my children. That attacks all of my core sense of self, all of my core sense of safety.

I get what people have leftover after they take care of the things that actually matter to their lives. I bloody well know that.

That’s not good enough for my kids.

I think it is weird that I’m willing to throw down that as a boundary for my children and not for myself. I think I get more than I deserve from most of my friends. I think my friends are patient and generous with a crazy bitch they owe nothing to in this world.

My children are not crazy bitches and they do not god damn deserve to go through their lives learning that they get what other people have leftover and they had better smile and be sweet or people will decide they don’t even deserve that.

I know I shoot myself in the foot a lot with this whole “lack of gratitude” thing. I don’t just say “thank you”. I say, “Uhm… you showed up with $1 when you promised $6,203. Where is the rest?”

My kids deserve that. I don’t know why but they do. Because everyone should deserve that. I sure as fuck wish I did.

I’m scared. I feel really bad that until my children are adults I will live in terror that they will get shunted off to a bunch of rapists or a crazy lady who has beaten every other child she’s had.

I’m scared. I am not omniscient. I cannot make sure my children will be safe. That makes me feel very bad about myself. That is the most important task I have ever or will ever have. I can keep them safe as long as I’m alive and that’s it.

I “understand” that many parents are in similar positions. They didn’t have a childhood like mine to look back on.

Everyone seems to want their children to have “better” than them–whatever that means to the individual parent. I want my children to actually be wanted. I want my children to never feel like they are an unpleasant burden. But unfortunately when your mother is a crazy bitch you aren’t very wanted by other people.

I’m so sorry.

Disclaimer: No one in my life has called me a crazy bitch in a long time. I haven’t been called crazy or a bitch by anyone other than myself (to my face at least) in at least ten years. This is simply how I live with the shame and guilt of so many friends breaking off contact. If you have the same problem over and over again… it probably isn’t someone else’s fault. It is probably your fault.

It’s my fault.

Attention seeking.

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I read a lot of really nasty things on the internet about how mentally ill people are just “attention seeking”. Every single time I read something like that what I get out of the experience is, “No one gives a shit about my experience of life and I should never ask for help.” Luckily I live with someone who demonstrably thinks that attitude is bullshit and he *does* want me to ask for attention when I need it.

Yesterday started off rocky but improved. Noah was very nice to me in those ways that Noah is very nice. I really like living with him. My issues with my body predate him and aren’t because of him and nevertheless he tries hard to make my life better. When I communicate that I am doing especially badly he takes a deep breathe and finds a way to be more giving.

Sometimes that means making all the food instead of just most of the food when he is home. Sometimes that means a lot of massage (yesterday was a fantastic rubbing day). Sometimes it means reading me books as a way of paying attention to me but not focusing on me. It’s a subtle distinction but very important.

When Noah is nicer to me in these ways I tend to feel a lot more inner push to make sure I’m finishing “my share” of the work around the house. Things get much tidier after he has paid attention to me because he likes the house tidy. I try to streamline things so he doesn’t have any more stress than usual. If he spends the whole day rubbing me there is basically a 0% chance I will turn down sex. You’ve totally done the prerequisite touching. Ok.

The folks on the PTSD forum spend a lot of time talking about how “not safe” it is to talk about having this disorder and what it means. They believe you should only tell people if you HAVE to. If there is no way to avoid mentioning it. Like, if you are going to marry someone you have to tell them in advance but they can usually justify not talking about it for years of dating.

I have the opposite approach. I tell everyone. I document the ups and the downs. Not because I expect lots of people to react or to treat me particularly differently. Partially so people can (hopefully) understand that my extremes are not their fault. Clearly I have extreme reactions all the time to seemingly inconsequential stimuli. It is not someone else’s fault when I suddenly have intense feelings of shame and worthlessness and suicidal ideation. It just happens sometimes.

I can usually pull together a basket of “Ohhh…. this happened and that happened and that thing over there and that’s when I lost control” but the fact that I lost control isn’t the fault of cause A, cause B or cause C. I lost control because maintaining control is very hard and I struggle with it all the time and sometimes I slip.

I am outbursty, loud, and over-sharing pretty much all the time. So it’s not because of you. Nothing YOU did caused this.

Well, unless you are one of the many people who abused me. But I doubt it. They are pretty much gone from my life. And I don’t even think that my issues are anyone in particular’s fault. My issues are the result of a tremendous number of small and large failures on the part of people who were responsible for the safety of a child.

Now that I have the responsibility for the safety of children I can see that. It’s not my mom’s fault. It’s not my dad’s fault. It is my mom and dad and sister and aunt and uncle and brother and school principals and school teachers and neighbors and therapists and….

My brain wouldn’t have gotten so fucked up if I hadn’t been severely neglected and abused. That was a joint effort to create.

But here I am. What do I do now? Do I expect people to dance like monkeys for my entertainment to try and make up for all the shit that happened before? God I hope not. I visit with friends when I have the self control to make our visit mostly about their feelings of comfort and safety and I avoid people when I can’t manage to behave well enough. I invite people to parties mostly because I know a tremendous number of really cool people and I think their lives would be better if they cross pollinated. I don’t expect to be the center of attention and if that starts to happen I will leave the room.

So man I have feelings about this whole “attention getting” thing. It sure sounds like people shouldn’t be seen. It sure sounds like no one should allow the truth of their life to be visible to other people and I don’t like that one bit.

I’m sorry that my truth is so melodramatic and sad. I really am. Lying about it in order to make other people feel better would drastically increase the likelihood that I will die from suicide. It’s always there for me at the corner. I don’t do it because enough people have convinced me that *they personally* would be hurt that I can’t do it. I love them a lot more than I love me and I can avoid causing them pain. If the trade is pain for me or pain for someone I love I will always volunteer to be the one in pain. I’m used to it. I have a lot of experience with pain. Most of the people I love are much less experienced and I want to keep it that way.

It’s a dance. This attention seeking bullshit. I need enough attention that I can talk myself into not dying and not so much attention that I need to leave the room because I can’t handle people looking at me.

I was asked (on the forum) how I could learn to see myself with compassion. How could I work towards seeing the value I add to the world that my friends can clearly see. How do you move past feeling like a worthless piece of shit?

I don’t really know. I am an over-achiever to compensate for my feelings of low self-worth.

This means that when I go to random parties and I don’t care about whether people like me or not (like Noah’s work Christmas party) I have a rather ridiculous number of cool stories to tell. I usually feel surprised by how many neat things I have done. Wow. I’ve had an interesting life. I don’t notice except when I am telling someone new. When I’m just sitting around being me I feel lame, boring, whiny, and obnoxious.

Don’t forget! I whine every day!

Over-sensitive, whiny baby. Things like the comments my friend made about the Christmas presents I bought. I will never bring it up with him because I’m not fucking interested in being told he was just joking and I should lighten up.

Have you noticed how I’m not a “lighten up” person?

Yes, this is manifestly all my fault and a problem I have. I know. I fucking know. I know that many people have teasing as a love language. I get that. It doesn’t change the fact that I leave and go home to cry and cry because that teasing doesn’t feel like love to me.

Am I allowed to have my reactions and feelings or do I have to conform to what makes other people feel comfortable?

I’m sorry I am so sensitive. I really fucking wish I wasn’t. But I am. I could deal with it by not talking to people any more so that I don’t get upset with them. I could deal with it by allowing people to say whatever they want and I’ll just do my crying in private. I could deal with it by asking people to stop (boy does that have a shitty track record–usually letting people know that it intensely bothers you is a cue for them to intensify how much of it they do). I could try to weed out the people who are teasers–but that doesn’t work.

Some days I can handle more of it than other days. Some days some teasing is genuinely ok and I don’t leave to go cry. Some days when I hang out with people I can pull off happy and cheerful while they are with me and I am crying before they are to their car. Or before I am to my car if I am at their house.

“Oh they didn’t mean anything by it” does not help me feel better. I don’t feel better at all that people casually say nasty things to me. They don’t mean to be nasty. It isn’t nasty from their point of view.

This is the walking on egg shells shit.

I feel dismissed and like it doesn’t matter that I have a whole frame around why I have the reactions and feelings I have. I don’t matter. What matters is that I maintain the structure and shape of what makes other people feel comfortable. Obviously I am over-sensitive and thus it is just my problem.

I’m looking forward to the grief ritual in February. There are parts of it I won’t enjoy. I get very angry when people meet for these kinds of things and declare that we have “created a community together and now we can support one another.” Bullshit. You are people I will see at a weekend conference and then probably never again. Maybe we will wave at a coffee shop. We are not a fucking community. God I get so angry when people say things like that to me.

I get why they say it. Most of the people in the room are students at a particular university and they have lots of classes together. They *could* form a community. I am not interested in joining your school (I’m not going to do the commute nor the cost) so I am not part of your community. I get it. I am not part of the community for reasons of my own choosing. I get it. It’s my fault. I get it.

I am enjoying having many days in a row where we aren’t seeing anyone. It is no one else’s fault I am so touchy and difficult and I wouldn’t be able to calibrate to someone else right now. Better to not be near people if I can’t be nice enough. I don’t like dealing with the long-term damage of people knowing just how difficult I can be.

Because seriously, when people complain about me being difficult that is on the day where I saved up all my easy. I’m fucked no matter what I do.

I feel sad and angry and trapped. I’m not trapped. These feelings will fade. My life is good. I am not upset because of anyone who is standing near me and I’m very sorry I have these feelings.

They will pass.

Marital Discord

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(Not looking for advice.)

You know how I don’t complain much about Noah? Mostly this is because I don’t have a lot to complain about. I’m a complainer. I like getting things off my chest. I feel better afterwards. So the lack of complaining is noteworthy.

Things are hard lately. My parasympathetic nervous system is shot. Which makes things like sex really hard. I don’t orgasm much at all. We can count how many times I have gotten off (other than masturbating) in the last year on one hand. That sucks. I can masturbate. But partner sex isn’t really doing a lot for me. Partner sex is about gritting my teeth while Noah uses my cunt to masturbate. I’m not feeling very good about myself. I have to grit my teeth because frequently it just flat hurts and I’m trying to bear it. I’m not even really lubricating very much.

Noah periodically says, “We could stop having sex for a while” and that makes me feel worse. I have been very aware from early childhood that marriage meant having sex. That’s why you get married. So you have someone around to fuck whenever you want.

I feel like the biggest asshole ever. Noah married me largely because of my hypersexuality. It’s gone. Well, I bet I could go pick up a casual sex partner and be fine but man I can’t get it up at home. This is hard.

I’m not really sure how to create more space for feeling like sex is a good thing in my life. Right now there just isn’t space. I spend all day being whacked as people whine “Mooooooommmmmmmmmmmy”. No, I don’t feel fucking sexy.

Pretty much every time anyone touches me I flinch. I’m having a hard time. I don’t really know what to do about this other than wait it out and hope it gets better as the kids get older.

At some point I’m going to be able to sit my kids down and beg them to stop hurting me all the time but they still aren’t to a point where they are even capable of understanding what that means. I’m struggling. I feel like the physical experience of the world my body has is the least important priority for everyone in my house. I’m having a hard time.

It doesn’t help that my ambient pain is really high even on pot. Most of my joints hurt a fair bit of the time. My muscles hurt. Pick a random place on my body and poke it and you have like an 80% chance I will say, “Yup that hurts.” Everything hurts. My fucking eyes hurt. I’ve had a headache for months. My arms, legs, and torso fucking hurt. No, I don’t feel very sexy.

In my head I keep praying that maybe if I work with a doctor and change my diet it will help. Maybe. January.

None of this is Noah’s fault and I feel like a ridiculous asshole for withholding sex. I feel like a really bad person.

The part that is bothering me the most is that when I think about sex I think about cutting. But not my normal leg-grid-pattern. When I think about sex and how little it matters how it feels to me I want to cut on my arms. I want to start right at the elbow and pull down to the wrist. Which is more of a suicidal gesture/attempt than just stress relief. I feel very upset with myself for that happening.

Noah is not pressuring me. This is not Noah’s fault. This is just happening. This is just how my brain works.

Sex is one of the primary ways that Noah gets his “cup filled” if you know that whole metaphor. That’s how he feels loved. That’s how he feels wanted. That’s how he gets energy to go out and do the death march that is his life.

We aren’t doing very well right now. We are both tired in this existential way that goes far beyond the sleep deprivation we have had in the past six years (I didn’t sleep much while pregnant).

I think that part of our problem is we keep coming to arguments that center around the fact that we are on very opposite ideological grounds about a great many things.

Noah was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he deeply identifies with the plight of rich people trying to run companies. When you speak badly about rich people/people with privilege… you’re talking shit about him. I’m the kind of person who has a lot bad to say about rich people and people with privilege.

This gets complicated and hard. We both acknowledge that we are better about this strife than we used to be. But it is wearying and hard. These arguments are extremely depressing for me, I think they are for him too.

It is very hard knowing that I have the life of comfort and privilege I have because of someone who falls into a category I talk a lot of shit about. That doesn’t say nice things about me.

I just can’t get into the mindset of arguing from the point of view of the rich and privileged. Whether I currently have money or not. I will pretty much always take the side of the less advantaged in any fight. No, I can’t get into arguing that corporations are doing great things. And I totally understand the impulse to go burn down the houses of the people who own Wal Mart.

(I’m not advocating arson.)

It means that sometimes I have the active feeling of “sleeping with the enemy”. I’m a fucking sell out.

This isn’t helping our sex life.

I would be less grumpy if my entire body didn’t hurt every minute of the day. Err, I hope.

It is very hard for Noah that I actually hate whole categories he belongs to. That makes him feel pretty bad–which makes sense. I don’t hate him. I love Noah very much. Noah is the only person in my entire life who has ever really wanted to know me. I love Noah. I even like Noah. But man we struggle sometimes.

I feel guilty. I feel like if I could just get the fuck over myself everything would be fine. I really have the ideal set up for me. Just relax. Stop being so fucking hateful. I’m not sure how to let go of this resentment I have. This hatred of everyone everywhere who “has” what I don’t have.

It’s not about the money, not really. I think money is the strawman. Security. Safety. Feelings of belonging.

We had a great party last weekend. Those people were here to see me and Noah. They like both of us. I spent a lot of the party feeling like *I* should leave because I am such an unpleasant stupid bitch.

All of my internal dialogue lately is about how stupid, worthless, and unlovable I am. I keep trying to interrupt it. “If you wouldn’t tell your best friend these things don’t say them to yourself.” It doesn’t help that I totally don’t believe that these things are true of anyone else in my life, just me. Of course I wouldn’t say them to my best friend. Just me.

Christmas will be a lot smaller next year. I’m having waves of feeling really upset that almost everything I got under the tree were things I either sent Noah a specific web link “buy this” or I dragged him to the mall and put things in a bag and told him to pay for them. I’m done. I can’t do this again. I feel so bad. (In his defense he did pick which books off my wish list. I am happy about his choices.)

Noah has too many things to think about. Gift shopping for me doesn’t make it to the top of the priority list unless I force it. So I think I am done receiving gifts. I can’t do this again. I feel like a worthless piece of shit.

I’m going to medicate to get through today. I’ve had several unmedicated days lately. I can’t do today without. I don’t think I would be able to stop crying.

Tell the truth. For the last day or so I have felt very suicidal. Lots of images in my head. I don’t want to admit it out loud because I feel like a pathetic attention whore.

It doesn’t help that someone came on the PTSD forum complaining about how her partner talks about her trauma a lot and this supporter says, “She’s just doing it for attention.”

Why the fuck doesn’t she just shut up. Why the fuck don’t I just shut up. All it would take is a little while with a razor blade. I’d shut the fuck up.

I feel so very worthless and stupid and bad. Why can’t I do anything right? Even when people are very nice to me I turn it into a reason to feel bad. I am so fucking pathetic. I hate myself so much.

None of this is Noah’s fault. But he lives with it. That makes me feel very bad about myself. He deserves better.

Sometimes I think there is no such thing as pleasing me. That I am just an asshole. I could come up with a whole long list of other disparaging things to say. I should probably stop though. I’ve made that point. I suck. Moving on.

I want to cut really badly. I want it so much. But today I wouldn’t actually trust myself to just stay on my leg and that is bad juju. I think that when I can confine myself to my leg and fairly shallow cuts as stress relief it’s not the worst coping method in the world. Today I don’t think I could. Today I want to die. No cutting today. My kids still need me.

It is hard feeling like I only exist as a support unit for other people. I take care of my kids. I’m a hole for Noah to fuck. I don’t feel like there is any me that matters in that equation. It’s not a fair characterization of my relationship with Noah. I “know” that. I just don’t know that.

I feel so sad. I want my mommy. It is all my fault I can never have a relationship with her. I walked away. I have no one to blame but me.

I felt pretty hurt by the 1 star review on Amazon saying that I don’t take responsibility for any of the shit in my life. Oh man. I feel responsible.

It is my fault that I have such negative experiences. If I knew how to act proper things would work out better. If I could stop flinching and freaking out all day long then I could probably enjoy sex. It is my fault I can’t control my body. I feel very guilty for every argument I have where I refuse to concede that all we need is another fucking honky to solve the problem.

I don’t feel like I am fighting the good fight. I’m fighting the stupid, irrelevant, no-one-cares-anyway fights. I’m mostly just fighting myself. I’m losing.

This is post-period so I can’t blame it on PMS. I just feel this way. I just feel like a worthless whore.

I’m sorry Noah. I know you deserve better than this. It seems like telling the truth is still a good policy. I don’t think I can just pretend to be what you want.

Managing spoon deficit.

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The biggest difference between level twos and level threes is whether or not I can respond to advice with “Fuck you” and think the person will still come back again. I have to be careful with the level twos as well, but less careful. They are more aware of the constant simmering issues. I’m sorry for yesterday.

I’m in serious spoon deficit and there isn’t a lot I can do about it. Right now my plan A is to change how I treat my body with my kids. So far I have spent their entire lives acting like nudity isn’t a big deal. I am not really a sit-around-nekkid kind of person. Usually I am too cold and on the rare days when it isn’t too cold I am too hot and I don’t want sticky bare skin on sticky bare skin. So I usually wear clothes. But I don’t hesitate to strip if I have a reason. I don’t think naked bodies are a problem. My kids have been to nudist resorts and we will go again. Bodies are just bodies.

But I need to start consciously preparing for the fact that cutting isn’t very far away. I need to start developing the habit of dressing and using the bathroom in a way that preserves the privacy of my legs.

I’m very out of spoons. And I really am not in a place where I can ask for any more help. Too many people have done the “Yeah, sure” but now I don’t see them any more. I need to depend on just me. And the sad fact is that I don’t really have enough control.

Cutting significantly increases my ability to act in a controlled manner. Given that I do not have the support network to deal with my stress in other ways I need to do what I can do while alone in a room. That is all I can depend on.

I will put a better lock on the bathroom door.

I am not in a psychological space where I can ask for anything else from anyone. I feel too lied to and too abandoned. I feel like it is all my fault that people flake on me–it’s because I am bad. I am too mean. I am too hard to deal with. People can’t handle me. So I have to cope as if I have no support.

That’s just the way it goes for some people.

No, enrolling Shanna in school would not be the way to solve this problem. Then I would have Calli alone expecting me to be the sole entertainment during that time period. It would not be a break. It would also cause daily stress around: get up, get dressed, eat breakfast faster, pack your lunch, when you are home now do your homework. All for bullshit I don’t believe in and actively think is destructive. No, that would not lower my stress.

I am taking my fucking vitamins. I’m exercising. I’m doing the swinging shit. I’ve asked for help. I don’t have much consistent help. The only consistent help I get is so that I can see my therapist.

In January we will go to the park with the home schoolers once a week. I will see my therapist. Otherwise I’m not scheduling anything.

I was taught that shit should roll down hill. I refuse to participate in that dynamic. My children will not bear the brunt of my issues. I’m really ok with my legs bearing the brunt. That is better in every way.

Noah is worried that it will increase my suicidal ideation. He wants us to start scheduling babysitting more often before I start cutting. There is the neighbor girl. I agreed to that. I can understand him being afraid of me killing myself. He understands that it is the most likely way I will die in this lifetime.

But I need to start practicing with my clothes. I need to install a lock on the bathroom. I can’t just start cutting out of the blue and expect it to function as a coping method the way I need it to. I need to create the structural support in my life for it working the way I need it to work.

It’s time to start preparing for the actual amount of spoons I have in my hand. I’m crying too much. I’m not yelling that much but I have been pulling away from the kids. I’m very emotionally disengaged because I am afraid of yelling.

I need some kind of something I’m not getting. I’ve done everything else I can think of. It is time to return to my trusty friend. It is always there when I need it. No one else is.

My people.

2 Replies

Yesterday I got to spend time with two thoroughly excellent ladies. It is kind of funny that I am referring to them that way because one of them is dealing with a situation at work where she has to tell someone else in her department, “Uhhh stop sending group emails to “Dear Ladies”.”

Two women who inspire me came out of hiding yesterday. One is a preschool special ed teacher (talk about a special breed of saint) and the other has a background like mine and she now has a masters in social work. After dropping out of high school in 9th grade and never completing high school.

One of my friends is not a parent and the other has one kid. I am on a very different life path than either of them. I am really glad that my kids get to know a lot of women who have entirely different interests. My children mostly know women who work. My children mostly know people who have nothing in common with us other than being breathing monkeys and all.

You don’t have to be like me. I am doing what I must do. I know it is kind of weird.

I am so grateful to talk to other people who are fascinated by the vagaries of humanity. It is nice to get to talk to people and say, “Yeah we share ____ bad habit and ______ good habits. Whoo hoo!”

Noah got to ask the social worker friend and I why we care so much about the opinion of people we don’t like and don’t respect. Why don’t we just get over it already? He’s been pestering me on this one for a bit now and I haven’t given him a useful answer. It was kind of nice for him to get to ask another person who is as angry and difficult as I am. I am NOT ALONE. muahahaha

Yes, Noah you are right. Our lives would be better in every way at this point if we didn’t care.

When you are a white trash kid who depends on a lot of charity… you have to care what people think or they don’t give you any help.

I got out of poverty because of a lot of white privilege. People who would help me just an inch here and there. If I didn’t give a shit what they thought I would have behaved even worse than I did and I wouldn’t have gotten the help.

Historically in my life not caring was more dangerous than it is now. At this point it is a legacy bad habit that I do need to change. It is a coping method that *used* to be necessary and it is still around when I don’t need it any more.

I kind of have a long list of personality problems I am already working on. I haven’t really had time to deal with this one yet. I’m too busy figuring out how to not scream at my kids all the fucking time. It’s really hard. Now I understand why my mom beat the shit out of me.

But I will not pass it on. And that requires a lot of truly active thinking on my part.

If I go on “auto pilot” then I am nasty, shrieking, and violent. I hurt people with great joy. If I want to behave differently then I need to really think hard about it all the fucking time. That doesn’t leave a lot of spare brain cycles for fixing the stuff Noah thinks I should get around to.

Uhh, sorry.

I know you are right. I know that is on the list of things I need to change. I get it. But there isn’t a neat little switch attached to my body some where. I don’t get to just decide, “I am going to stop being angry and afraid; all of a sudden I am going to just massively increase my apathy.” Sorry, my nipples aren’t that kind of dial or anything.

I know it “would be better for me” if I could stop having intense emotional reactions to the fact that there will always be people in this world who hate me and wish I would die. Yup, my life would improve in every way if I stopped feeling so bad about that. I know. I know. I KNOW.

I just…

I’m trying.

It has been nice over the past few days to see people I have known for so long. They have been commenting on how different I am. I don’t hit people any more. I don’t even mean like in a bdsm sense. I hit people fucking constantly for most of my life. It has taken years for Jenny to stop flinching when I come near her. I have had to work really hard at not being scary any more.

I understand that this isn’t an “everyone has it” problem. Please can it be ok that I am working on this problem first instead of the “caring too much” problem?

Seriously. I need to care what people think of me. Fewer people, sure. I agree. I do need to care. Not as much as I do. Yes yes yes the strangers who hate me can fuck off. I get it.

The caring runs on a background tape I never take out of the deck and examine. It’s just kind of there. It is an unfortunate feature of my personality that just exists. I don’t consciously go turn it on. I don’t try to increase my anxiety. It’s just there.

Sometimes people have unconscious reactions. It happens.

So it was nice for Noah to get to talk to both of my friends yesterday. They are very different and share very different sides of my interests. Good grief am I grateful that he got to meet someone as angry as I am who is out doing stuff in the world. She has as many anger problems as I do and she has to just fucking master them, like yesterday.

She is very inspirational to me. I confess that I have a hard time taking advice from people who are not inherently angry. If you aren’t like me then you won’t understand what advice I need or why I need it. She gets it. She gets it better than almost anyone I have ever met.

Why are my very closest friends all former child prostitutes? They can understand me. They don’t flinch. They don’t judge me. They understand why I am angry and they think I need to keep the anger but figure out how to manage it. They are the only fucking people not telling me to just “get over it.”

Dad lectured my friend and I last night about how we need to stop getting so angry. We should learn how to deflect rude/awful/whatever things with humor so that people will like us more.

I did not light up like a roman candle and I feel proud of myself for this. I did leave the room soon after.

Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you.

I love Dad with great intensity but man he is hard for me to deal with sometimes. I view it as practice for dealing with all the people I hate. I don’t know why Dad has managed to cross the line into being so strongly in my affection. He has all the markers of someone I would like to set on fire. But he gets a pass. He has earned it from me.

My friend and I discussed our sixth sense, “I can spot a rape/incest/severe abuse survivor at thirty paces.” I can see it on peoples faces even when it happened decades ago. I just know.

I’m sure I miss people. I’m sure there are people who are better liars than I think. I doubt I miss many because I find them all the fucking time and statistically they aren’t the majority of the population.

It was nice being able to talk to someone who really gets what I want to do with an incest database in the future. Most people feel confused as to why I want to go talk to a bunch of incest survivors. Won’t that be depressing?

I am somewhat unlikely to ever “stop being an angry person”. I think that short of being so stoned I cannot form a coherent thought process I will always be someone who has intense emotions. I feel a lot of anger. A lot of sadness. A lot of fear. Basically all the time.

I don’t understand people who just kind of drift through life apathetically. That is not my way and I don’t have a lot of desire to be like that.

I want to get shit done. Anger is very motivating. Fear is very motivating. Sadness isn’t. I try to lessen how sad I feel. I don’t have as good of a reason for being sad any more. I’m really grateful for how nice to me Noah and my kids are. My sadness is bigger than them and outside of them and mostly they block it out kind of like an eclipse.

Letmetellyou having kids doesn’t block out my anger. Holy shit they piss me off sometimes.

I want to have grown up children who have lived in a low stress environment. I can’t get visibly freaking-out-angry any more. I just can’t. It is not on the list of permissible actions.

I can’t cut myself to maintain control. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

I’m getting rid of my broken habits as fast as I can. I am sorry I can’t go faster but I can’t.

I feel like such a disappointment. So what about what I have done. I am measured by how far I still have to go before I qualify as a good person. I’m not sure I will ever make the jump. The gorge seems so wide.

I am so grateful to the two women who took a break from their normal lives to come talk to me today. They inspire me in very different, complimentary ways. I want to be more like them even if they are polar opposite in some important ways. I like conflict.

It is harder hanging out with Dad than the other friends as the trip goes on. I am having a hard time with my expectations and entitlement. I have some picture in my head of what a “dad is like” and I’m just wrong. I can’t take it out on someone else that they aren’t living up to the pictures in my head. I’m pretty sure I have succeeded at being nice to Dad the whole time we have been here.

Man I’m having a hard time with the constant “teasing” that feels like taunting to me. I want to fight. I want to fight so fucking bad that sometimes sitting very still and not reacting makes me sweat.

No, I can’t just “deflect it with humor”. That path is closed to me. What I could do instead is break your nose. How about if we try it my way and we will see whether your way or my way is more fun for me?

I really struggle with dealing with people sometimes, “Yes–you think everything is funny. You want to make everyone standing near you the butt of whatever joke is floating through your mind this second. I get it. When you do that I am going to react with rage, violence, and perhaps I will inflict a lot of pain when you try using me that way. Please just leave me alone.”

I say more or less that. It doesn’t slow down how often I feel mocked and taunted. “Why can’t you take a joke?” I just can’t. I’ve been god damn telling you so for almost a decade and a half. ARE YOU FUCKING DEAF?

At what point is it bullying instead of playing? If I ask for twenty years for someone to stop making fun of me and they won’t am I entitled to break their kneecaps? I think I should get to start escalating at some point.

This is why I used to hit people all the time. Dad made fun of me less often when I punched him as hard as I could each time I was the butt of the joke. Now that I don’t hit him any more he makes fun of me a lot more.

Why in the fuck is it a good idea for me to stop hitting people? I am having trouble remembering right this second.

Recently Shanna had a situation where a playmate was hitting her a lot. We have talked about it a few times afterwards. We’ve talked about all the things she can do when someone is hitting her. I made it very clear that if she tries two or three things to get someone to stop and they don’t it is ok to hit back.

I don’t think it is ok for me to hit people just because they have said something I don’t like. If someone hits me first I have every right in the world to start breaking bones.

Man. Why doesn’t anyone hit me any more? I’d really like to get in a fight. I’ve had a lot of adrenaline for a while now.

I talked to Shanna a lot about how when you end up in a fight with a friend it is important to not hit in the face. You can damage people easily, accidentally and they don’t tend to forgive you for that. If your friend punches you in the arm and you punch them in the arm back… that’s probably something you will be able to get past in your relationship. Once you break someones nose they don’t forgive you.

Why is caring about what other people tied into this? Because for me not hitting Dad really hard when he pisses me off is part and parcel of the anxiety about other people disliking me.

I want a relationship with someone who will hand me the crumbs of affection Dad is willing to give me. Even though it doesn’t come anywhere close to a real parental relationship. Even though it is always very crystal clear that he has “real children” and then those play partners he tolerates calling him Dad.

I feel so pathetic that this is the best I can share with my children. It is the pinnacle of what I have to offer. No, he will never treat you like his “real family”. I hope you never notice.

He is nice to the kids. He is nice to me. But he’s also an asshole. I’ve known that since the first fucking time I met him. I love a lot of assholes. Just go through my list of friends. I don’t hold the fact that someone is an emotionally unavailable asshole as a reason to not be friends with them. Sometimes that is all I can get.

Noah likes being alone in a way I just don’t. Noah spent his childhood trying to get alone time and failing. I spent my childhood desperately wishing that someone would like me and that people would stop hitting me and raping me and that I wasn’t always alone in a room listening to people laugh. If I came in the room the laughing stopped and the yelling started.

We will always react to stress differently. I need that to be ok. I can’t change it.

Dad would like it if I found his humor funny. I don’t. I’m not sure what to do about that either.

I’m never all that keen on the social solution that involves me just having to shut the fuck up about feeling hurt by someone using me as the butt of the joke over and over. For some strange reason.

You can’t change other people. You can’t decide that their personality should be different so you will just bully them until they conform. You can make them learn how to avoid problems with you but you can’t make them change.

I am learning a lot of this with my kids. I can’t make them be different people than they are. I have to help them learn how to manage their own particular quirks but I can’t just decide to make them different.

It is honestly kind of hilarious having to help Calli learn how to not hit people when she is angry. She really struggles with how intensely mad she gets. She wants to make people bleed when she is pissed. I get it, kid.

Sometimes when she is ramping herself up I will pick her up and carry her away from whatever is making her mad. She will fight me at first. She wants to get right back to the fight she was in the middle of so she squirms really hard to try and get away. I carry her into a calm, dark room.

I say, “I think I can see that you are very mad. Am I right?” Scream/sob answer, “YES!!!!!” “That’s really hard. I’m sorry you are having to struggle with that feeling right now. Are you sure you want to hit when you feel that way though? Do you want someone to hit you when they feel mad?” “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” “Ok. Then we need to find a different way of managing this. If you hit then other people will hit you back.”

I think that is one of the parts that gets me. I don’t like being hit back very much. That’s a lot of the reason I actually stopped hitting people. Noah hits really hard if you hit him first.

I want to show my children how to be a functional adult. Functional adults don’t beat up their friends. (Well… only at special parties with pre-arranged negotiation. That’s different.)

Dad is giving me all he has available to give me. I could be mad that what he has to give is so inadequate compared to the scope of my need or I can be grateful that he bothers at all. No one else has.

Sometimes it is really hard talking myself into consciously being nice and grateful for things that are so inadequate compared to my needs. Why in the fuck should I act nice when someone hands me an ice cube but I needed a glacier to do what I need to do.

You act nice or people go away. You act nice or people don’t give you the time of day. You act nice or you end up alone and hated. You act nice or you might as well already be dead because the whole long shitty life will be so painful that it really has no upside to enduring it.

Dad asked me if I thought I had kids because I was trying to relive my childhood and make it better. He said it in that “Do you understand you are broken and bad and you shouldn’t be doing that” sort of way. My response was, “Oh heck yes I know I am doing that. I write about it extensively. I am very consciously and deliberately trying to find out what a healthy childhood looks like.”

He said, “Oh. I don’t read anything you write. I’m not into that kind of thing.”

I said, “Yeah. I didn’t have any suspicion that you might actually give a shit about what is going on with me.”

He looked a bit taken aback but didn’t respond.

Sometimes it is kind of weird for me that I put so much of myself out into the ether and I just pray that people care. I pray that someone will read it. Someone will give a shit. I know that the vast majority of everyone doesn’t care and never will.

I have to be ok with that. I can’t tone down so that I attract a wider audience. I can’t stop talking about uncomfortable things so that emotionally stunted men will feel entertained by me. Yeah, that’s not my niche. Go watch Chris Rock.

It is hard dealing with the fact that people “caring about me” will rarely intersect with my needs getting met. The caring doesn’t actually do anything for me. I need actions. I don’t get them much. Sometimes I do. Noah is working himself into an early grave much to my shame.

I am not fair to Noah. It is not fair to anyone to have to live with someone as needy and pathetic as I am.

I am sorry that I have so many needs and no way to fill them.

I wish I had a dad who thought I was good for something other than fucking or hitting.

I wish.

In this lifetime it seems like those are the main early things that people liked about me. I am stupid enough to let people hit me really hard. Hell, I even like it. It seems an appropriate thing to do to me.

I slept more last night than the previous two nights but Noah and I went to bed bickering so I had trouble sleeping again. That probably factors into my right-this-minute emotional instability.

Instead I’ll just come out here to the couch and cry.

I wish I could stop caring what people think of me. I wish I could not care about Dad making all these comments. I wish I could.

I don’t know where the dial is. Can someone please show me?

I’m afraid that the first step in ignoring people not liking me is for me to like myself enough to make up for them.

I’m not sure I will ever be able to do that.

Dad was asking me, “Well why don’t you just _____?” I said, “Are you familiar with PTSD?” “No.” “Have you ever heard of hypervigilance?” “I’ve heard the word and I could guess what it means.” “I am not physically capable of just doing what you want me to do.” “Well try harder.”

I want to hit him in the head with a baseball bat sometimes.

“I don’t know anything about your medically verifiable long list of problems but I still think you need to just get over it and act how I want you to act because then I will get to have more fun.”

Let me jump right the fuck on that for you. Since you are so god damn important and all.

I feel like a petty, whining baby.

If I try to be kind to me I can see that I’m not just whining. I’m processing. Maybe life shouldn’t be as hard for me as it is… but it is. I have to get through each day. I can’t just ignore my physiological response to my life. I have to deal with it. I have to acknowledge that it is real. I have to treat it like it matters.

Yeah, I know I don’t have to be important to anyone else. I get it.

If I want to get through each day while smiling and being nice to my children then I need to have some space somewhere in the fucking world where I am allowed to have all of these feelings.

So I write. That doesn’t mean I am whining. I don’t make people fucking listen to my fucking feelings in person. I’m god damn aware that no one cares.

If I stopped caring what people thought of me then my ability to self-censor would evaporate.

It is genuinely hard for me to censor the stuff that goes through my brain. I think about self harm and suicide and incest and rape about as often as other people think about food. I can’t talk about it almost at all because most of the world will react with violence if I am stupid enough to bring up these topics. These are things I am supposed to pretend don’t exist. I’m breaking the veil by talking about them and I should be punished.

I have to care what people think if I am going to make sure I don’t say anything “inappropriate”. If I just cared about what I thought I would not have so many friends. I really like my friends. I don’t want them to leave me.

Even though I am a petty, pathetic, ungrateful bastard. I try as hard as I can to be grateful for what people have to offer.

I’m really sorry that I have so many needs and that I am so aware of them. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that I wish I had a parent who would love me. I will do my best to not take it out on all of the people who just can’t love me that way. I understand that this is my problem and I need to shut up.

Sometimes it is really hard. 4,000 words in. Sometimes writing it is all I can do. I’m sure as fuck not allowed to talk about it. That would be rude or something.

No one can give me what I want. I know. It isn’t anyone else’s fault I feel this way. I know. It is my fault.

I should just stop caring.

Not helpful

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I often worry about writing about people. It alienates people when I write about my experience of their behavior. I often have to weigh “How many hours of crying should I be silent about” in favor of keeping the illusion of a friendship going.

Yesterday wasn’t a great day. It was fine after the one short scream. That’s kind of how it goes. I put up a lot more boundaries and then all of a sudden we stop fighting.

When I’m having a shitty day it isn’t very helpful for me to have people write to me and tell me that they thought about helping me but they decided not to because they have other things to do.

You know, I make that assumption. All day every day. People don’t help me because they have better things to do.

I don’t really need to be reminded. I don’t need a specific and conscious reminder. I don’t understand why people feel the need to write to me and say that they thought about helping me but decided not to.

What in the fuck is that supposed to do for me? Why did you tell me that? It isn’t just one person doing this.

If fairly particular people set up a time to help and then back out again I’m not sure I can handle scheduling with them in the future. How many times of being cancelled on in a row should I allow? I mean… how stupid am I?

Yeah, I know that people aren’t going to help me. That’s my basic assumption every fucking morning of my life. That has been true pretty consistently no matter what has fucking happened to me for my whole life.

You can stop telling me that you aren’t going to help me. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

You don’t need to send me emails “I’m so busy. Sorry.”

What am I supposed to get from that?

Did I god damn ask you for help? No. I mother fucking didn’t. Well, some of you I asked you for help a long time ago. You agreed or you didn’t. I haven’t asked since.

I wait and see what you do. Yeah, I can see what you do. I really don’t need to hear about your thought process as you decide to not help me. That just makes me cry for days. I know I’m not that important. Thanks for fucking writing in to remind me.

I spend a lot of time feeling like a piece of shit because I need as much help as I do. I need help. I’m not getting it. But I need it. Oh well. You don’t always get what you need in life if it is dependent on other people. Sometimes if what you need is other people then you just have to accept that you aren’t going to get what you need.

Noah gives me all the support he can. K lets me go to therapy. If I need more support than that I can go fuck myself.

start of a bad cycle?

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I have so much anxiety right now that I am shaking and not sleeping. I got less than five hours tonight and I am so full of adrenaline there is no chance I will sleep again.

I deleted everything off my fetlife profile. Most of my experience there involves me having an unusual opinion and then a bunch of people jump on me and talk about how icki I am. I participate in casual sex conversations. Apparently women like me, who will have sex with strangers (err, at least I used to) are disgusting, stupid, and we are obviously not worth keeping around. We have no self-esteem and we denigrate the women around us just by existing.

I get less shit for my promiscuity from Christians than I do from “perverts”. At least the Christians act like, “Well duh you like sex.” The perverts talk about how there is something wrong with me for not wanting a deep emotional connection with everyone I fuck.

Does anyone else see this as odd?

I don’t think that is why I am up though. I feel horrible guilt for canceling on the mural. I’m really not functional enough. I have a job. I’m supposed to be homeschooling my kids. I haven’t paid much attention to them recently. I mean, I pay attention to them… but not to the degree I *should* as a home schooling parent. Right now I expect them to just entertain themselves all day while I do work. I’ve been doing this for months. This isn’t a long-term solution.

I feel like I am trying to do so many things that I’m not getting anything done.

And I feel left out because I don’t have the spoons to go do the fun social things my friends do. I really can’t handle it on a lot of levels. I will probably never work Dickens Fair again because I don’t want to run into my rapists.

I’m not sure why I feel so isolated, unimportant, and worthless right now. I have wanted to cut for a few days. It has been really hard to not do it. I haven’t which is supposed to be all that counts. But I want to. I trace designs on my flesh with a non-threatening finger.

I miss people but I am so tired and worn out that I really can’t handle being around anyone. I feel brittle, tired, and snappish. I’m not saying it is anyone else’s fault. It just is.

I hate when I do this. I want to be around people so much it physically hurts. But I know I can’t behave well enough to pull it off. If I spend time around people when I feel like this then I do stuff I know I shouldn’t do and I lose relationships.

Better to hide until I am less of a cunt.

I hate when I get into this place of feeling desperately lonely while seeing people. I am overscheduled with people I have to “behave” very carefully around.

I feel guilty because the easiest things to cancel on are things for the kids. I can skip their friends more easily than I can skip my long list of chores.

I feel lonely and mean at the same time. This isn’t a good combination. I feel angry in a way that is hard to pretend isn’t there. I’m not even sure what I’m angry about. I just feel really angry. So angry that I could probably punch dozens of holes in a wall without noticing the knuckle damage.

I’m sitting very still and not doing anything terrible.

I wonder how long this will go on this time. I hate this feeling. Tonight I could beat my head on concrete for a long time.

I think a lot about impulses. I think a lot about compulsive behavior. I think a lot about choices and emotions.

I don’t seem to be able to control my emotions. I am controlling my behavior by being quiet and still. But that is of limited duration. I’m sure I will come up with more work to do.

Noah is writing another book. And going back and forth on what he wants to do after some work issues. I have feelings about both set of circumstances but it is what it is. I don’t think that is why I’m freaking out. I may be feeling some increased anxiety because job stuff is kind of uncertain but he always lands on his feet. And I have almost five months of income in cash in the bank. We will be ok. (Which blows my mind considering how much money he makes.)

I know I’m worried about money in the “I feel existential angst for being a terrible person and spending money on anything other than rent, rice and beans” sort of way. I’m not actually worried.

I opened an IRA in my name and fully funded it for the year. (The limit is only $5500.00… so not that extreme.) I’m going to start having this as an auto-deposit thing.

No one will help when I am old. I will have what Noah and I have managed to save. I should take that more seriously and pay myself first. Making sure I don’t end up homeless when I’m old should be a serious priority. I’ve already been homeless. I don’t really want to be ever again.

I feel scared and dirty and bad.

I feel like I can’t do anything right. I can’t do anything worth doing. I can’t…

I don’t even know. I have been feeling a weird balance between feeling happy and feeling scared that it is all going away soon.

I am really upset with myself for saying yes to the mural and then saying no. That feels like a really horrible thing to do. I am bad. I should have said no from the beginning or I am stuck with having said yes.

It’s kind of like how I never thought I had the right to say ‘no’ to sex once I had a meal with someone.

Buy me a grilled cheese sandwich and a milkshake and that gets you a blowjob. I don’t even have the self-esteem to be high priced.

Which makes things complicated with Noah. A friend told me I should consider paying myself as a housewife.

I don’t deserve to be paid. These days I’m not even a good whore. I haven’t had sex ten times in the past two months and some put together let alone hitting quota each month.

I feel tired and sad and I hurt. I keep moving in and out of feeling sick. I’ve had terrible nausea for days. My throat hurts, well not my throat. My neck. The corded muscles that are kind of on the sides of the front.

Just over 2,000 words and I will hit 30,000 words on the book. I’m honestly running out of things I would want to say to twelve year olds. I’m also feeling like, “No one will let their kids read this thing anyway. Why am I wasting my time?”

I feel so bad that I needed this book terribly when I was twelve years old and I’m not sure it will be of any worth to anyone else. I don’t think other people need the same lessons I need. Not everyone is a worthless whore.

I feel so broken and disgusting. People like me shouldn’t be allowed to spread their disgusting point of view.

I’m not quite to suicidal but if this continues I will get there. That is where this is heading. I can more or less see the pattern.

Being suicidal is just a thought process. It is how a brain deals with feeling over loaded and unable to function through pain. Suicidal isn’t a “feeling”. I’m feeling sad and lonely and unimportant and expendable. Those are feelings. Suicidal isn’t a feeling. It’s a thought process. It is how my brain has learned to handle feeling all these feelings.

I don’t want to kill myself. I have these kids to raise. I really like them. I’m not at a dangerous spot.

I’m just struggling with how my brain works.

I need to not schedule anything until after the end of the year. Hell, it’s the holiday season. Maybe I’m just going bananas in that typical end of year SAD hell that so many people live with. Maybe I’m just missing my mom. I really miss my mom. Every year that goes by hurts more.

Why didn’t my mommy love me?

I can see my kids through my pain. I can make their needs more important than mine. My mother couldn’t do the same thing. She couldn’t do anything more than survive. She had no spoons left to give to helping me.

I have no spoons left to help other people right now. Do I have any right to throw stones?

I watched some really heavy TED talks ~~today~~ yesterday. Specifically Indian women talking about rape. Stories about three year old children raped until their intestine fall out of their bodies.

Ok, I don’t win the oppression olympics.

The woman who told that story was gang raped by eight men and used that as a reason to devote her entire life to helping victims of trafficking.

I am not that cool. I haven’t used my personal tragedies to help other people in a large and measurable way. I am small, selfish, and not very useful.

I wanted children too much. I think that engaging in that kind of work means you give up on a family of your own. You can’t take care of your own kids and devote your life to helping people. In the process you neglect your own kids.

I don’t want to neglect my kids.

I know a number of people who have devoted their lives to helping professions. I know therapists and emergency responders and… lots of professions. Lots of people. I know a lot of people.

I don’t feel like I deserve to know the good people I know. I am not as good as them. Sure, I taught high school for three years. It wasn’t even three years. It was 2.5 years because of my copious vomiting all day long. Because I was too incompetent to do anything while I gestated.

I hope that this round of self-pity doesn’t last long. I’m really tired of this shit.

After canceling on painting I have a couple of days where I can stay home. I am just about to the point where I don’t have house chores left. I need to clean off the tops of the bookshelves in the living room and shift things so the plumbing can be fixed on Thursday. I am thinking about asking Noah and Uncle C to help me Wednesday night.

My back hurts all the time. I have periodic spasms where I lie on the floor and breathe until I can move around again.

I’m just not being nice to my body. I’m acting like working a manual labor job is necessary for basic survival and that’s just not true at this stage of my life. It is self-hating.

I don’t know how to feel less pain. I add stress until I crack. I’m not good at doing anything else. This isn’t a healthy balance.

No painting this month or next. The paint will get put away. Maybe in the spring. Maybe in the summer.

Maybe more West Wing. Hiding from life sounds great.

defensive

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I need to climb out of this cycle. I’m having a hard time. Generally the more I focus on a cycle, the more I feel the desperate need to control my emotions the harder it is. I can only walk out of the main room into a different room to get control over my face and tone of voice so many times before I’m not actually in the main room I’m just hiding in my bedroom so I can cry.

We had a milestone this week. Someone described Shanna as a bitch. It was inevitable and all. She is female and she has strong opinions. I still feel sad. It wasn’t said in an attacking way. Calli keeps biting Shanna. The proposed reason is that it is because Shanna is a bitch to Calli. I…

I compare Shanna to my big sister and I have a hard time with using the word for her. Shanna *is* pushy. She *is* bossy. But when Calli turns around and yells, “You are not the boss of me” Shanna backs off and says, “Oh, you’re right.” Given the interactions I had with my sister I can’t think of Shanna as a bitch. She will have to get a lot more malicious before I will think that fits.

That is like 3% of my fuss today. Maybe only 2%. But it’s there. And it’s a milestone. I like to write those down.

Mostly my fuss isn’t about anything happening. That’s the point. I haven’t had anything really bad happen in a while. Which means that every part of my body is starting to vibrate with anxiety because surely something terrible is going to happen any fucking second.

Who is going to decide that I am too much trouble?

I am looking at the calendar and thinking that I should hibernate through most of November and December. Maybe if I hibernate then people will forget how unpleasant I am and when I come back in the spring people will be bored and lonely and less likely to reject me just because they are tired of my shit.

Sometimes it is very hard knowing that I have to consciously parcel out really small doses of me or people don’t set their own boundaries well until they tell me they don’t want to know me any more.

I tried to explain this to some of the homeschooling moms and I think I upset them. Shit.

I have to keep people on the third tier at a distance or they decide they don’t like me any more. If I try to get too close to people then they don’t want to know me anymore. I have to monitor how annoying or difficult or over-sharing I am being. I have to make sure I don’t overwhelm people because it is all my fault don’t you know. If only I would shut my stupid mouth people wouldn’t have to be so mad at me.

I’m sorry that I’m bad. I’m sorry I hurt people just by talking.

I am really fucking antagonistic when I feel this way. I was at someones house and she said that the kids couldn’t go outside because they were sick. I uhhh challenged that.

I didn’t challenge it because I think she isn’t allowed to set those boundaries. I asked because I have been working really hard on telling my kids the difference between, “I don’t want you to do this for health reasons” and “I don’t want you to do this for various grown up reasons that you don’t care about and I do.” Which is to say that I’m trying to not lie.

I have read a lot that the sick/cold connection is a myth. She clarified that once you are already sick being cold lowers your immune system and makes it harder to get well. Oh. Ok. I don’t think I have read about that part but it seems more or less logical.

People don’t like it when you question what they are saying to their kids like that. But I don’t like feeling lied to. I didn’t like it as a kid and I hate it with the fury of a thousand suns now that I am an adult and I am not subject to the random fucking whims of an adult.

Which isn’t to say that I thought this other mom was lying. But what she said contradicted what I had in my head. I know I am not always right so I asked. My tone of voice was shitty though. I think there must be a nicer way of asking for more information.

I don’t think it helps when I say, “I’m totally ok with telling my kids that I have made an arbitrary decision that them doing ________ would be a lot of work for me so no you are not allowed to do it right now.” Because then it sounds like I think that what other people are saying isn’t acceptable or correct and that isn’t what I mean at all.

Other people are allowed to parent however they see fit. Lots of parents lie to their kids all the fucking time. Sometimes they are just passing on their own inaccurate beliefs so the parent doesn’t feel like they are “lying”. Sometimes the parent knows and doesn’t give a shit.

I don’t think I will ever be good at just shutting up and letting other adults say things without asking questions. I am just that fucking annoying.

So I should stay home, right? I think other people are allowed to do whatever it is that they do. But I ask questions. And I have a really annoying tone of voice. It is way sharper and more confrontational that usual lately. All the self-hatred and denigration I hear in my head all day wears off the closest I have to soft edges. I should be able to ask my questions in polite and neutral ways. I often can’t. I can either sit there silently or I will sound like a fucking bitch.

I’m sorry. It isn’t your fault. It isn’t because I actually think you are a liar. If I were having a more socially suave day I could ask and not piss anyone off. But I’m not socially suave right now. Right now I feel like a mean and hateful monster.

Today we go to a camping wedding. Oh god.

Clearly a lot of people like me. In order to hibernate I have to turn down invitations. I turn down invitations nearly every week because I am fully booked. I can’t go to ____ because someone is coming over in the mid-morning and someone else is coming over in the evening.

But I don’t like me. That kind of trumps everything. I don’t like me much at all. I don’t think I am kind enough. I think I am a hateful, nasty person. I think that even when I haven’t said anything other than “Good morning” and “Good to see you.” I think that someone as unpleasant as me should not be allowed to freely inflict such fucking misery on every one in the world. I should die and make the world a better place.

But clearly other people do not agree with my assessment. Thus the invitations to weddings and birthday parties and other such festivities.

At some point this cycle will shift. I will stop hating myself with such vigor. I will stop hearing a cacophony of screaming voices telling me that I am a stupid bitch and no one likes me and why don’t I just go play with the cars on the freeway already because no one wants me to stay. I hear my mom and my sister and my brothers and my uncle and I don’t know how to make the voices stop.

I don’t have multiple personalities. I have overly strong memory abilities. I am too smart for my own good. I don’t forget things. I remember things so strongly and so clearly that other people are shocked. I can sit down and concentrate hard and tell you about the sequence of events on days that happened when I was two, three, four… I can’t remember every single day of my life with perfect recall but I can remember most of it. Almost all of it. It is all stored somewhere in my database and if I rattle it back and forth I can find what I need.

The problem is when I don’t get to control what is actively replaying. I have all those screens in my head. Luckily when I get into the place of hearing all the screaming this is sans-video. This is just an audio track. Thank goodness for small mercies.

I go back and forth between ringing my hands with “I don’t know what triggers these cycles” and “I’m just like this”. When I feel this way it is hard to understand or believe that I ever feel differently. I have lots of good days though–I objectively know it is true that I go through many days of my life without all the noise and hatred. I know it happens because I can pull out a reel of tape of some other day and replay it and know that the day was fine.

But I can’t find the mute button. I can’t find a volume control. I can’t just decide I want this to stop today. It has to stop on its own.

I used to ask my Owner to beat me when I felt like this. Noah and I have a different relationship. He does give me the occasional spanking (only when I ask very nicely and then wiggle my ass just right) but it isn’t extreme. I think that at this phase of my life I have completely moved the “edge” that I am willing to play at. I no longer need to be the most psychotic bottom in the room. I’m good. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I feel this way because of chemicals in my brain. I could take more drugs. Ha. I could do other things to disrupt the chemical levels in my brain. I have found few things in life that are more system-wide influential on my hormones than pain.

I believe I am supposed to be in pain. I believe it is the natural result of existing when you are such a piece of shit.

For the record, not all masochists feel like me. Most don’t. I have only met a couple of other people who talk about using bdsm the same way I do to deal with a pervasive sense of low self-esteem. People are masochists for a lot of reasons usually totally unrelated to being abused. The mean voices in your head thing is very non-standard.

Cutting would quiet the voices in my head. It would start other rounds of self-shaming but it would get rid of these voices. These voices want me to be punished. They don’t really care how. They just know that I am bad and should be hurting.

There is a very large part of me that wants to violently fight back. Fuck you. No more hurting me.

I think that is part of the reason that this is so hard to ignore. It makes me so angry that I feel this way about myself all the time. I feel so mad that the people who were supposed to love me and teach me to love myself were instead nasty, hateful people who taught me that I deserve suffering and death.

I don’t feel capable of being a nice person. I feel like that is a ship that has sailed. I am just a mean, nasty bitch. That is just how it works. But I want to be a nice person. I want to be someone who deserves relationships. But I don’t know how to earn them. I don’t know how to be good enough.

I need to just understand that if I am stupid enough to spend a lot of time with someone that there will be problems and eventually the person will want to go away and never talk to me again because I am terrible and mean and bad and annoying. It is appropriate for people to have these boundaries with me. It wouldn’t keep happening if I didn’t deserve it.

I have to keep people at a distance because people have relationships with me to meet needs of their own. I need to not think that relationships are about meeting my needs. My needs are cavernous and beyond the scope of anyone. I need to shut up. Shut up. Shut up you stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid bitch.

I’m not very good at that part.

I really liked that my Owner liked to keep me in a muzzle and hit me a lot. That just seemed appropriate. It was pretty hard for me to be bad in that circumstance. Near as I can tell that was the only period of my life where I didn’t feel like I was on the verge of being punished for being bad.

I was good. I was doing the right things. I was silent when and how he wanted me to be silent. He kept gags in my mouth a lot of the time. He thought it was “hot”. I still have jaw pain. I can’t do it any more. I feel like a failure.

I liked feeling like even if the inner core of my personhood was rotten and disgusting my outer shell could still please someone. Even though I deserve to die I was still amusing and worth keeping around for a bit longer.

No wonder my Owner didn’t want to talk to me about my mental health at all. That was Not His Problem.

Really my mental health isn’t any ones problem but mine. Shut the fuck up already you self-absorbed twat.

I’m afraid that if I stop paying attention and I stop arguing with the voices and I stop trying to figure out how this works that everything will get worse. I’m afraid that if I stop trying to track this that I will lose the ability to tell what is real and what isn’t. I’m afraid that if I stop trying to keep track of the fact that these are irrational voices–unrelated memories just jumping out–that I will believe that this is all that is true in the world. I’m not sure how long I will live if I give in and allow these thoughts to just be “true”.

That antagonistic, “Why did you say that?” That’s why I’m still alive. I know my tone of voice is shitty. I know I “should be” more gentle in my tone. I know. There is no excuse for me treating people badly just because I have mean things in my head. I know. I know. I know.

Do you tell someone with diabetes that everyone else wants donuts for breakfast and if they can’t eat it that is their own fucking problem?

My tone of voice is antagonistic because I am always speaking over hateful voices in my head. I sound so difficult not because I think you are doing something wrong but because I think I am bad. I am so very sorry that there is collateral damage.

Just hide. Don’t talk to any one. But I can’t. There is a wedding to go to. Life just keeps happening whether I am ready or not. And people tell me they want me there. I want to believe them. I want to believe them so much I shake with longing.

I want to not be hated. I want to believe that I am worthy of something other than being hated. But I’m such a bitch. Bitches deserve hatred, right?

Post-therapy

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Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. I’m hearing that in my head a lot. It makes my tone of voice sharper and nastier.

In therapy we talked about me yelling at the kids. She pointed out that there have been two incidences in the past month. That means I have to start putting stop-measures in place earlier. That is not an acceptable pattern. I’m probably still not in the “abuse” range but I’m sure not being a nice person. I’m not being a good parent. I’m not modeling the behavior I want to teach. I am teaching my kids to be assholes like me.

I have a lot of internal conflict around “walking away” during a fight. I had a lot of severe neglect issues so being screamed at was 300% better than being ignored. My kids are not me. My kids do not need what I needed.

My therapist wants me to start getting up and walking away as soon as my kids start yelling at me. Put the lid on the paint can and go in my room for a while. She said it probably isn’t a good thing to even try to talk about it right now. *I* am too emotionally volatile.

I’ve been riding the “Krissy is evil and should die” train for a while and that makes it a lot harder to be patient. It makes it a lot harder to be nice. It makes it a lot harder to respond in a loving way when someone screams at me.

But kids scream. Kids don’t have self control. Adults have self control for them.

I was asked how I know that I am mentally ill. Well, a wide variety of sources tell me that it isn’t normal to spend a large portion of the day fighting off tears because you know you are bad and you should be punished. Half the time I have no idea what I could have done wrong recently but I still feel like I should be in trouble right now.

It’s irrational and not anyone else’s problem. Only it is my childrens’ problem because they have to live with me. I’m so sorry.

I have to stop raising my voice at all. I have to start walking away. I think that my terror about walking away (it’s not a very rational sort of reaction–I am completely freaked out about just walking away from them when they are having feelings) makes it so that I am not capable of reacting appropriately.

When they start yelling at me that I am mean I feel like it is right. I feel like I am mean. It’s all true. I am terrible. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.

But that’s not any more useful. And I know I don’t want to teach that either. So in my head I start going through these panicked defenses, “No I’m not mean. I did _____ and ____ and ______. That means I’m not mean.”

But those things actually have nothing to do with being mean. They are tangential at best.

I don’t think I am actually “mean” to my kids in the scheme of things. But I don’t want to compare my parenting to my mother’s parenting and declare anything I do a win. That’s not high enough standards.

I did EMDR this week. Focusing on the panic and the screaming. When I start screaming at my kids it is usually because I feel scared and trapped and like I am being unfairly punished again only I know I deserve to be punished for other things so I have a huge guilt complex and I think the punishment is right and then I just want to crumble. When I feel that way I get really really mean.

This is all a bad cycle.

EMDR, for me, involves a lot of free association. When I did the EMDR this and I was focusing on the somatic (physical) experience of being scared right before I started screaming and then what it felt like to scream at the kids.

The thing that kept surfacing in my head was, “If you do this you will lose Calli.” I think that Shanna would be able to jump right on the destructive merry-go-round with me. I think she would learn to tolerate a honeymoon cycle-scream-forgiveness cycle. I don’t think Calli would. Calli is different. She has a sense of self and a sense of self-worth where that kind of shit just won’t fly. If you yell at her when she doesn’t deserve to be yelled at she will yell right back. Right fucking on.

But it means that yelling at her is the opposite of an effective punishment/behavioral correction device. I have to find a different way of dealing with her. She won’t be cowed. That’s good. It means I have less leeway to be a bully.

Sometimes I feel like I am drowning in guilt because I do not feel bonded with Calli the way I do with Shanna. I love her. I like her. But it’s different. I dreamed about the Shanna who would more or less be my reason for living from when I was twelve. I dreamed about my son for many years. Calli is a wonderful surprise in every way. She wasn’t part of my original picture of my life but man I like her.

I feel like Calli is going to make me actually earn a relationship. Shanna likes me enough to put up with inappropriate shit. Calli doesn’t. Calli thinks I had better fucking be nice to her. She has really strong boundaries around how she wants to be treated and she doesn’t hesitate to hurt people who are bothering her. (She’s three. It’s not awesome that she is this aggressive but it is age appropriate.)

I will not be held responsible for how I feel. I will be held responsible for how I act. I can’t yell at the kids any more. I just can’t. I am not doing it in a reasonable or appropriate way. I’m being a nasty bitch. They don’t know or care about the cacophony of noise in my head. It isn’t their problem.

It is their problem when I start screaming. I have to stop. It doesn’t matter that I’m feeling thin. That is not the point. That is irrelevant. That is not important. How I feel really doesn’t fucking matter.

How I act matters a lot. Ok, irrational fear of rejecting children must be over ruled in face of less irrational fear of irreparably damaging children with anger.

Well, it’s the only plan I’ve got. Probably time to start working on it.

Not proud.

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In my continual efforts to not have secrets about which I feel shame, yesterday we had kind of an incident.

I had to dismantle the slide. An adult friend who was far above the weight limit decided to take a ride. It broke. No fucking shit. It ripped some of the bolts through the plastic and fucked up the wooden support under the slide. So it had to be taken apart. I could fix it with much larger washers, but it was a pain in my ass.

The entire time I was working on the slide, ok that isn’t fair–the first half of the time, the kids were not very happy with me. I tried to patiently explain what I was doing and why. I explained every tool and piece of equipment I was using. I showed them the damage and told them why I had to dismantle it in order to fix it.

The kids stood there and YELLED at me that I was mean for breaking their slide as I took it apart. Even though I had explained why and showed them how I would put it back together.

I fucking lost it. They have been yelling at me that I am mean a lot lately. Basically every time I do not instantly comply with their demands.

I turned around and started screaming at them that if I am so fucking mean go in the fucking house and leave me the fuck alone while I do this fucking work for your fucking play structure.

I don’t feel proud of myself.

I am not sure what the right thing to do there would be but I wasn’t capable of turning around and being nice. I just couldn’t. I am so fucking tired of being yelled at that I am mean while I am in the middle of doing demanding physical labor for someone else’s benefit. I just can’t sit there and tolerate that. I fucking can’t.

But I should figure out how to handle it without yelling “fuck” at children. On one hand I feel bad. On the other hand, wow have I never yelled fuck at my kids like that before. That was special. I’ve been remarkably good for me about swearing over the past few years.

I called K to calm me down. These days it feels like she is the only stress relief I have. The Godmamas are overwhelmed by familial need (that happens) and Noah is working a lot. A lot. A really really lot. He works his primary job, comes home for an hour or so then goes in the garage to do different work. This weekend he’s at a conference.

I used to get 3-5 hours of not-parenting every day. These days I’m under two hours. I do all of my work while managing the kids. Which isn’t something I deserve pity for. I wanted this and all. But it is hard to have enough patience for everything.

We did another hour or so of painting on the play structure. Calli has painted most of the stairs by herself. I was very impressed. I “helped” by doing a last few smoothing strokes on each board but she put the paint down and mostly spread it around by herself. Her paint clothes are now solidly covered in paint because she sat in it while she was painting. It was totally adorable.

Shanna painted the kid-side hand rail mostly on her own. I came along and did a little edging of the parts she had trouble seeing. That’s ok. There were a lot of little corners. Those are easy to miss.

I’m working on the rainbow. It’s a pain in my ass. But it’s coming along. I have used three fucking ladders in order to reach everything. I could have gotten away with two ladders if the thing was about three inches shorter. But it isn’t. So I needed a third ladder. C’est la vie.

I’m starting to have trouble sleeping again. Once I get six or so hours of sleep I feel like my sleep gets lighter–I come up to a lighter sleep cycle and then I just can’t really rest more. I get up to use the bathroom and then I fret. And fret. And fret.

Do you know what makes me feel worst about yelling at Shanna like I did? She came back to me and apologized for yelling at me about an hour after I yelled at them. I apologized to her too. I told her that I was sorry for yelling “fuck” at her because that isn’t very nice or respectful or loving. She said, “Well, we weren’t being very nice to you.”

I said, “No you weren’t. But you are kids. Kids push grown ups. It is my job to be the grown up and hold boundaries. It isn’t very cool of me to scream at you for being a kid.”

She told me she forgives me.

I don’t know how to be a better mother than I am. But I feel she deserves better. She is such a wonderful kid. It is kind of funny that I feel like I am mean to them. But never for the things they yell at me about. Those things are never the mean things. They yell at me that I am mean when I am doing nice things. If they yelled at me while I was actually being mean I think I would just nod and agree.

I think that when they start yelling at me I need to immediately separate us whenever possible. Not because they are “getting in trouble”. If you have feelings like that go express them somewhere else. You are allowed to have them. You aren’t allowed to yell at me like that. Hell, I barely yell at them the way they feel free to yell at me.

My kids are so fucking not abused. The cocky little… oh man. Clearly not abused. Abused children aren’t this god damned demanding.

I haven’t made progress on the book this week. I am thinking about it a lot. I know what I want to say. I just haven’t sat down to write. The minute I sit down the kids jump on top of me and demand that I do _________. (The list is long.)

I feel like we have phases where I can do independent work (like the mural on the fence) and then I just can’t for a while because they feel clingy and upset about being ignored and they won’t allow me to focus on anything. Right now I can’t do the dishes without them bugging the shit out of me to entertain them in some way.

I spend a lot of time saying, “It is not my job to entertain you. Go entertain yourself.” Sometimes it works. Sometimes not so much. That’s the process.

This is hard. I absolutely understand the impulse to just “put them in school”. I feel like there is stuff here to learn. There are lessons in this learning-to-put-up-with-people that I have to learn. I need it. NEED.

When I am an old woman I hope I will be proud of myself for doing the things that I knew were things *I* needed to do. I don’t in any way think that other people should mirror my path. I need to figure out how to be with kids.

When I lose it, which doesn’t happen very often–I do record pretty much all of them–I feel like I am proving that my children deserve to be removed from my care and given to someone who could treat them better. Only when I talk to so-called-“normal” (not diagnosed as crazy from a young age) mothers most of them spend a lot more time screaming at and/or punishing their kids. There is no way in hell I could treat my kids the way I hear/see other mothers doing it. I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror.

But I don’t think they are abusive. I don’t think their kids are damaged or fucked up in any way. So why do I feel so strongly that if *I* behaved that way I would be an abusive monster?

Is it the slippery slope argument? I can’t scream at my kids frequently because screaming just makes me more and more angry (being the one to scream means I am the one to escalate) and I have a really hard time controlling my urge to hit when I get too angry. And when I start screaming I am more or less incapable of screaming without cursing every other word. That is just part of the whole dynamic for me. I see other mothers who are able to scream or discipline and they don’t have to chant fuck fuck fuck over and over.

Right now my kids are sleeping in the cutest way possible. Shanna is “normal” direction but curled up in child’s pose. (Now I get why that is named that way.) Her nightgown is rucked up around her waist and she didn’t wear panties to bed. So she’s mooning the hallway. Calli is also in child’s pose but her head is firmly up against Shanna’s side so they are at a 90 degree angle to one another. They make a T.

I love how connected they are. They fight more now. But holy tomato they are attached to one another. They want to be near one another. Even when they are mad they don’t like separating. They do play in different rooms sometimes (Calli is very willing to run her own games when Shanna is being too bossy) but mostly they don’t like being away from one another.

Shanna keeps telling me that when she is a grown up she is going to go find my big sister and teach her how a big sister should act.

I tell my kids a lot, “How you treat your sister teaches her how to treat you. If you hit, pinch, kick, or shove you are saying that it is ok to do to you. I will not intervene until you get to the point of serious injury. You need to learn how to be nice.”

It is really interesting how Shanna is starting to take responsibility for “I am older and have more self control so I have to teach my sister how to act.” She frequently tells Calli, “Oh Calli! Please stop pinching me. It is hard to not pinch you back when you do that.” Once in a while she does pinch back. Then Calli wants to cry foul. I play at being deaf.

Today is a weeding day. The front yard is really bothering me. I haven’t weeded all summer. My pansies are getting choked out and fuck that noise.

The asparagus are growing like mad. I had no idea they looked like that. They kind of look like fennel as they grow up. It’s really neat. No one believes me that they are asparagus.

Tomato season is (thank goodness) nearly over. I will probably get another 5-10 lbs this year. One more batch of sauce. I’m ready to stop processing.

I am learning a lot about how I feel about food preservation and eating from my yard. I don’t know where I am going to put more raised beds in the future (maybe my roof?) but I think that long-term I will mostly want to figure out how to eat what is in season and do staggered planting. Like putting lettuce out to start every three weeks. Eat it as it comes ripe. We tend to not preserve a whole lot of fruit from the yard so far. Partially this is just current production size but partially it is that we gorge when things are in season. It feels nice. Then we have a break and that feels nice too. Preserving and eating the same things all the time causes me to get really bored and not want to eat at home.

I am sorta keeping to the schedule I drew up. That makes me feel good. I haven’t worked on Outrunning this week but that is the most serious deviation.

I’m having a hard time writing. I think that I’m actually feeling writers block about the book. I’m scared. I’m scared of really and truly committing to what I think a 12 year old should know. That feels like a heavy responsibility. I don’t want to do it wrong. I don’t want to give too much information and push kids towards making bad decisions.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is that no one wants to seriously think about how much power they have. People don’t like acknowledging to themselves who and what they really are in the scope of things. People either under or over rate themselves. It’s hard to be accurate.

I don’t know how much influence I might potentially have and that is really scary. If Torque (the guy who publicly apologized to me and who gave me specific permission to use his handle whenever I talk about him) had understood how much it meant that he publicly say, “I screwed up and I am sorry” he would have done it ten years ago. If he had been willing to actually deal with me, what difference might that have made in my life?

Sure, he was a softball sized trauma. He violated my consent in a painful way. But he didn’t have sex with me. He didn’t rape me. He did beat me… but I had asked him to so it is a really weird thing to figure out how upset I am allowed to get about the whole situation.

I asked him to do a scene. Scenes are potentially fraught. Everyone has to be responsible for themselves or they SHOULD NOT ENGAGE IN BDSM. If you need to be taken care of then you are not someone who should engage in bdsm. Period.

But he did stuff I told him not to do. And when I screamed “no” and “stop” he ignored me until I said “red” even though I had negotiated not using safewords. But I did have a safeword. I did make it stop.

Recently I was thinking about the last rape. What I really really really hope will be the last rape.

I gave permission in advance for a rape scene. I didn’t understand the difference between compliant rape and a rape I would actually fight against. I never fought before that. I was trained to not fight from when I was a toddler. I was literally physically taught to not fight against being raped from when I was a toddler. When I was twenty-five I finally fought back.

I still lost.

I still got raped. Even though that time I didn’t want it and I was upset enough to fight and I fought as fucking hard as I was physically capable of fighting.

I haven’t ever done that before. I always give. I always know that it is right that I lose. I know I deserve to be raped. I know I deserve to service the needs of people around me because I am a whore and that is what whores are for.

But that last rape was different from all the others. That is the only time I can look at and really believe in my heart, “I was not able to stop that.”

Every other time I acted like it was like the scene with Torque. If I knew the safeword I could stop it but I don’t play with safewords so mostly I will eventually go limp and try to not die.

I don’t say “no” to sex. Well, I do now. Rarely. Barely. I started in pregnancy. I made Noah promise in advance that if I decided to not have sex from the date of conception to three months after delivery that he wouldn’t divorce me. I knew there was the non-zero possibility. I know that happens for some people. I was really scared. I made him promise because clearly he picked me because I am sexually compulsive and at that point we were still non-monogamous and I was pretty scared that he would wander off and not come back if I cut him off.

He didn’t.

I went and did a lot of bdsm because I wanted to find out what it felt like to believe you were allowed to say “stop” and have it work. When that mechanism failed me…

I don’t say “no” much. I learned how to say “stop”. Barely. It took a lot of effort and work. It took really consciously trying to do it. My Owner worked with me. He did a lot of very dangerous things where I HAD to say stop or he might end up in jail for manslaughter and we don’t want that now, do we?

It is kind of funny because outside of sex I say “no” more easily than almost anyone I’ve ever met. I’m pretty happy to add a “and go fuck yourself while you are at it!” But that sex button thing is old.

Lately I’ve been waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror and saying repeatedly, “You will not be held accountable for your feelings; you will only be held accountable for your actions.”

I have big feelings. I have mean feelings. I have sad feelings. I have hateful feelings. I have painful feelings.

I’m not hurting anyone else by having these things inside of me. If I control my temper and manage to not lash out (screaming that I am not fucking mean for fixing the fucking slide aside) then I am not hurting people. If I am not hitting anyone I am not hurting anyone. If I control my tone of voice such that I do not sound mean or hateful then I am doing fine. It’s ok that I am playing a game.

That’s the point. It is all a game.

No one is against you. They are for themselves. Don’t take it personally.

You will only be held accountable for how you act. I don’t know how you feel. I can’t know. That is forever a shut door. I just know how you act. I care about how you act.

That is comforting and very disturbing.

Just another whinging Friday

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It isn’t that I think my kids are bad or anything. They are just excellent boundary pushers. I want them to push boundaries. I flat encourage them in that direction. I want children who are tenacious, stubborn, and sure that their idea is A Good One. But. But sometimes I wish I could say, “I know I’m willing to argue/negotiate with you all day every day but can I please have a friggin break on my birthday.” They just aren’t old enough to understand.

We did have good moments. I feel really bad that it seems like all I do is complain. Doesn’t anything make me happy? Am I ever satisfied? Is there any point in reaching for satisfied or is that just not something I can feel? I feel really guilty for not being able to turn this into a fun trip. It should have been a fun trip. I hate that I am such a downer all the fucking time.

But it felt really bad getting yelled at for what I wanted to order for lunch. I fucking told them four days in advance, “On my birthday I want us to have gumbo and papas fritas and beignets for lunch. That’s what I want.” They were enthusiastic and supportive until we got to the park. Then I was a mean and terrible person for not letting them have popcorn for lunch. Or ice cream. Or a Dole Whip. Or…

My kids rarely have extreme cases of the gimme’s. I don’t buy them things all that often on our outings and I’m kind of nasty about being pestered to buy stuff. Holy.Fucking.Shit. This trip was the most gimme-gimme-gimme I think Shanna has ever been. She actually sat on her ass in the middle of the store and started yelling at me because I wouldn’t buy her a FUCKING SECOND MUSIC BOX. SHE HAS ONE AT HOME THAT SHE BOUGHT WITH HER ALLOWANCE ON OUR LAST TRIP.

I almost lost my shit. If we had been within an hour of home I would have left the park fifteen minutes into the day.

The really funny thing is the DMV portion of the trip was the best natured and happiest all three of us were on the whole trip. We played games and met people and it was a really enjoyable 3.5 hours. Hell, I’m talking to a lady via email after that. She’s nice.

I think it is that whole kicked puppy thing. I was acting like a kicked puppy. I was begging them to please let me have a turn. When you act like a low status person you get kicked like a low status person. So my kids kicked me (only literally a few times figuratively much more often) all day.

It all feels like my fault. If things go badly it is because I planned wrong or anticipated wrong or… something.

Having them both scream at the top of their lungs that I was mean and nasty multiple times before 10am felt really hard. I know this is a current tick. I know that the best way to handle it is to not engage. At this point in time I am having trouble not bursting into hysterical tears or hitting them. I have strong impulses to do both. I’m not doing either but I want to.

Just breathe. This moment will pass.

I have spent ~15 hours over the past week and some working on scheduling. I’m getting close to knowing the shape of my days all the way through the end of the year. If I stick with my schedule. Ha.

In order to make it so that I can potentially accomplish what I want to accomplish I need a schedule with a lot of rest time scheduled. I need to not be booked all day every day. I have to have multiple days in a week where what I do is hang around the house and putter. I need to have scheduled “sit on the couch and read books and snuggle” time with the kids just about every day.

I have to run more. I just have to. Not running is feeling a lot worse than running. Which is hella funny. We have gone out all four of us a couple of mornings in a row. We hope to get the kids used to going for a morning jog. Noah and I take turns doing sprints up the block and back to the family because the kids are a lot slower.

Outrunning Suicide is starting to take shape. I have mostly written several chapters. I have a skeleton. This one is very different than No Secrets. The entire writing process feels different. This will feel more like a collection of essays than a story, but there needs to be some sense of story in it as well. I am trying as hard as I can to be conscious of the fact that I want this book to be appropriate for twelve year olds. Even though the mothers of twelve year olds will say that it is too mature. The mothers are wrong.

I need to start working on painting in the back yard. All of the stuff that was built this year needs to be painted so it doesn’t rot quickly. Oh man.

I don’t want to go out very much over the next few months. I want to get work done. I want to home school my kids. I need to stop looking outward for a while. We will go to park days. I will continue to try to make time for Noah’s friends who have all had kids and the few people I have hanging on who had kids.

I need to stop looking for new people. I don’t have the bandwidth. My monkey spheres are full.

I like having a lot of… I’ll call them third tier friendships. People generally don’t want to think of themselves as third tier, but oh well. At this point the only person I have near daily contact with who I don’t live with is K. Thank goodness for her. That is the first tier. Second tier are all of the people who have kept contact with me for long-stretches of time and they know real things about me and I know real things about them. These are people who very consciously schedule with me and make sure that I know that they think about me. The third tier are the people I don’t see a lot of and they know very little that is real about me but I want to feel acceptance and love so I try very hard to maintain Appropriate Behavior around them and I know there are consequences if I slip up.

The third tier is where you get into the idea of Community. These are people I want to know. They add value to the world and to my life in particular but I don’t think they actually like very much about me so I have to carefully construct what they see or I will be shunned again.

I can’t overload my second tier. When I overload my second tier then I see the ending of nearly-decade-long relationships and the backlash hurts me for years.

The third tier is where I spend most of my time. I carefully dole out just small bits of my personality to people. It all tends to feel very artificial. I know I need to be careful not to be too real. I need to not saying things that will upset people. Good fucking luck guessing who is sensitive to what.

Why is the third tier so important? Because I have absolutely stressed the first and second tiers to the limits of their ability to support me and if I have free-floating miasma of need and I get it met in bursts of random kindness from the universe. I depend on a lot of Pay It Forward. Mostly this has worked out fairly well. Humans in general are loving, kind, and they want connection.

But then we get to this punishment thing. I think that most people have trouble understanding that they are punishing people. I know that I struggle with understanding how and where I punish people. I do it but it is hard for me to understand the mechanism of it. It is hard for me to understand that I have the power to punish people. I don’t feel like I have such power. I feel weak and powerless.

My second tier has worked very hard to step up since I had kids. As much as I am still in a place of great hostility towards the idea of “chosen family” (given that most of the people who have emphatically told me that I am their family no matter what no longer speak to me I think I get to be hostile to this concept) I… feel conflicted. Clearly I have friends who have moved into family roles.

I feel like I am understanding how other peoples limitations work better as the years go on. Like, I’m not inviting people on trips. It isn’t that anyone wants to hurt me (I don’t think that the desire to hurt me played any part in people not being able to go on the trip–major health concerns came up for everyone) but I am still here hurting. How do I move towards hurting less?

I have been asking for help with things where I can’t handle the answer “no”. That is always where I get into trouble. This is consistent for me. I wait until the lack of support will be crippling then I ask for support then I get told no because other people don’t have the bandwidth and I crumble.

I need my life to require fewer spoons. I need to not need help.

Having children has been humbling and humiliating. The amount of help I have needed has been really hard. Things like going to the doctor for an ultrasound of my abdomen. That turned into a huge long lecture at Kaiser about how I need child care or I can’t get health care. I understand why my dentist pushed me to get the dental implant I needed while I was pregnant even though the pain meds aren’t optimal because “Mothers don’t take care of their teeth when they have children under ten.”

It is kind of weird and hard to talk about but since having children I am more house bound than I was before simply because of how my bathroom habits changed. I have always had a small and urgent bladder (common problem with early childhood sexual abuse) but after the kids my life-long diarrhea problem became urgent and explosive too. And then there is how my periods have changed. Having a body sucks.

Having kids is hard but I did not anticipate the specific ways this would be so hard. I anticipated getting sick of laundry and wiping up poop and being screamed at. I didn’t understand that after having children it would be a rare thing for me to be able to handle three hours between bathroom trips–I get a few freak days once in a while. I normally go to the bathroom every half hour or so. I don’t think I would physically be able to teach right now. I used to have 110 minute class periods. I can’t hold my bladder that long any more. And it is illegal to leave in the middle of a class to use the restroom. I did it anyway but you aren’t supposed to and there are severe potential punishments.

You want to know why I have so much anxiety about neglecting my children when they are playing in another room and I can’t see them but I can hear them? Because I went through teacher training and discovered just how much trouble I can get in if I don’t “properly supervise” other peoples kids. Apparently properly supervise means sit on top of the child and physically prevent them from ever breaking the rules. Good luck.

I swear this all ties together in my head.

I have historically depended heavily on the third tier. Why do I consider them third tier? What I can ask of them is much smaller and more limited and I have to be careful of watching how often I ask. The tiering is how much of my need they have demonstrated an ability to handle. It isn’t about me judging them negatively or thinking they are bad people. I’m intense. I hurt people without trying. I need to be careful to notice when I am hitting stress points for people and withdraw so there can be a next time. If I push third tier people too hard they eject me from their lives.

With children this is different and difficult. At this point I feel like a user if I ask people for anything. I try hard to bully K to let me come do work at her house because I feel like such a user all of the time given how much support she gives me. It isn’t actually a better dynamic.

I have a hard time knowing that at this point in my life I need more support than I give. It has been true for years. Maybe for all of my life. This totally plays into being financially dependent. I feel ashamed of myself. I look at the women in my life who are not dependent and I feel pathetic. This is part of that defining myself by being not-like other people. It isn’t good for me or anyone else.

I don’t feel like the things I do are good or worthy. And yet I really really really want to do the things I am doing. With fervor and intensity I want these things in the world and I don’t think anyone but me will do them. I take that as a sign they probably aren’t worth doing and I am just a waste of resources.

Part of the problem with an extensive third tier is someone always needs help. People are always struggling and I wish I could help more. I wish I had more to offer. I wish I had more energy. I wish I had more time to give them.

But instead I will stay home and weed my garden and write a book and paint. I am selfish and small. My life is limited and unimportant. I totally struggle with that Gen Y thing of, “But I am SPECIAL”. No. I’m really not. I don’t have anything unique and special to offer the world.

But sometimes I feel like I do. Sometimes I feel like I am good at helping people see their own value. Because I think so little of myself I view basically everyone in the world as higher status as me. When I explain to people all that I see about them that is good and wonderful they tend to be surprised. They are not able to see themselves that way. Isn’t that ability good and useful? Is that enough? What is enough? Enough of what? Enough for what?

I don’t know.

But I need to pull back into my little shell. I need to count my spoons and carefully lay them next to tasks. I want to read more books this year. I want to look out my back window on New Years Eve and see a rainbow castle. I want to finish writing the book that I really needed to read when I was twelve. I want to teach my children the daily habits of picking up after themselves. Even though it is hard. Even though you would rather do it later. If you do it now then you are free to go do anything you want on a whim. It takes practice to learn these habits.

I want my children to think that physical activity is just part of life. So I have to model it every day.

I want to not be fucking screamed at. I have already made a lot of progress on my own screaming. I will figure this out. It is going to be hard and it will take patience. We will figure this out. Without anyone getting beaten. There may be a fair bit of time out in our future.

I don’t think that anyone did anything wrong per se on my birthday. But I think that at this point my birthday is such a thing that I’m not sure anyone can do right. I don’t think it is anyone else’s fault at this point.

Rope bridges last a long time but eventually decay. You aren’t doing anything wrong by jumping up and down as you go across a rope bridge. Sometimes a log may break and you could plummet to your death. No one actually did anything “wrong” but there are still end results that suck.

I don’t know how to feel special. I want that feeling so bad. I want to feel loved and appreciated and like people are really really glad I am alive. I don’t feel that way. I feel like people tolerate me so long as I can fill their needs and not be too annoying. I know that people don’t actually feel that way about me. I don’t think I offer enough trade to actually justify that belief.

It isn’t that I believe that Noah and Shanna and Calli secretly hate me. It is clear that they all love me with great intensity. But something inside me is broken. It is like pouring boiling water into a tank of liquid nitrogen so that you can warm it up. That just isn’t going to work how you hope.

I feel raw. I know I am “over sensitive”. I know I “shouldn’t take things so personally”. But I am. I just am. Maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe I shouldn’t exist. But I do. And this is how I feel. And I can’t make it go away just because it is inconvenient for me or for other people. The only thing I can do is try to stop being in a room with anyone else on my birthday so that it is very very clear that this problem is in me and not because of anyone else.

My birthday is really hard for me. I’m afraid it always will be. I desperately desperately want a kind of feeling loved and cared for and appreciated that I’m not getting. I don’t know what it is or how to get it. Everything I have tried so far has failed miserably. I really and truly have tried to change this pattern.

I wish I could stop feeling like it would be better if I was dead. Then I wouldn’t be so fucking inconvenient.

I know it isn’t “true”. I had kids so that I would know beyond the shadow of a doubt that my labor is necessary for a few decades. Nothing would be better right now if I was dead.

But I don’t know how to feel loved. I feel despised. I feel unappreciated.

Which is ridiculous. Noah couldn’t work harder than he does. And he clearly is doing it for me–he didn’t work like this before me. My Owner was a workaholic. Noah was kinda lazy when I met him. He was certainly unfocused–that is probably a better word than lazy. He works like a dog, largely because he is doing it for me. He wants to make all of my dreams come true.

And I reward him by crying and crying and crying and feeling like a worthless piece of shit. He is very confused. If I knew what to ask him to do he would do it. I don’t know. I don’t know how to stop feeling this way.

I mean, in the abstract I know how to deal with this feeling. Feel it. Cry while you have it. Wait. It will end.

That’s the awesome thing about feelings. They change.

Sometimes I do feel that Noah loves me. Sometimes I do feel that my kids love me. But somehow when it comes to my birthday that is broken. There is this big brick wall. I don’t feel attached. I don’t feel love or loved. I feel worthless and stupid and pathetic and bad and mean and unwanted and like I should just die.

And god I miss my mother. I miss my mother so much I want to curl up into a ball and never eat again. I am not worthy. I dishonor the woman who bore me. I am a piece of shit. I am not protecting her and taking care of her. I know she needs it. She has always needed it. She has always needed to be taken care of more than I need it.

And I think my kids need more taking care of than I need. Except for one day a year. Where I think I am going to need to have different boundaries.

I have started grieving really hard for the apology I was told I would get and I didn’t get. That guy in the scene I went and talked to who said he would write an apology. I’m sorry I made myself vulnerable to that.

I’m even more grateful for talking to the guy who made me uncomfortable at the wedding.

I know that I have to keep trying with people. Every relationship is unique. Every dynamic changes over time. I need people to jump over hoops for me. I need it. I’m pretty clear and direct about how and where I need it. I try not to be too demanding of any one person. But I do ask people to jump through hoops for me.

I want people to show me with their actions that I am actually as important as they verbally claim I am. I want my body to matter. This is a really dangerous kind of validation to want. Because I am not going to get it. People will say they will do ______ and not do it.

Do you know what makes people happy? Giving help to other people. Do you know what makes people feel shitty? Needing help. I hate my neediness as much as other people resent me inflicting it on them.

The kids are slightly sick. Runny nose on elder child, both are coughing. Younger child keeps telling us she needs a bucket but she isn’t vomiting. I’ve been crying so much I don’t know if I am sick or not. I scheduled a potentially light weekend because I am S-M-R-T.

I am looking forward to fall and winter. It will feel really nice after the frantic work pace of spring and summer. It is a puttering kind of day. I will go grocery shopping. I should wash the windows. Then they can color on them again. Ha. Right now they are too full to be fun.

I should stop typing. Annnnnnnny minute here……

Well, I’m older.

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I learned a few things on this trip. I will never again plan a trip around someone coming with me. I need to assume that I will be alone and I need to make my spoons cover the whole time I will be there. If I plan around not being the only adult and then I am stuck being the only adult things don’t go very well.

We were gone for 60 hours. I drove for 14 hours (traffic was heinous). Slept for 16 hours. ~6 hours of the kids yelling at me at the top of their @#$#%@#% lungs that they want to go into Disneyland NOW when they wake up 3 hours before the park opens (times two days–see how that works?)

3.5 hours in the DMV. That was entirely my fault for not doing better planning.

So that leaves ~20 hours to be in our hotel or in the parks. We made dinner in the room each day. The kids were very angry with me that I would not take them swimming at the exact same time as I was cooking dinner. It turned into two hours of Shanna yelling at me about how it wasn’t ok to bring bathing suits and not use them.

I think this is the worst set of behaviors I have ever dealt with during a short period of time from my kids. By the end of the trip I felt no love at all. I cried for five hours on the last day including about three hours of the drive home.

My kids were not nice to me. They both screamed a lot. I got hit multiple times when I said no to buying things. I don’t know what the mother fuck happened.

Well, I asked them to please let me pick what we did for one day. Please, just one day. Apparently that wasn’t reasonable to ask for. (The developmental books talk about all of their shit being right on target. Calli is right in the middle of the stage where my FAVORITE AUTHOR EVER says, “Put them in daycare and get a lot of babysitting because no one likes their kid at this age.” It is a rough stage. I remember it with Shanna. She outgrew it. She is currently in a different annoying phase but it is very very different. Give them credit and all.

But it was a rather shitty trip. A long ass time ago when I thought I was going alone I planned for five days in a studio. (Not a lot of points and I would get three days in the park without driving.) Because I asked people to go with me I ended up booking a one bedroom for three days because other people have obligations. Then I got cancelled on. Then I hunted hard for another person and got cancelled on. Then I asked dozens of people and was told, “How about the week after?”

I don’t think I will schedule with other people any more. I keep hoping that I will have the kinds of friendships where I can do that kind of thing. I don’t have them. Wanting them is hurting me very badly and I need to stop wanting that. I need to stop thinking I will ever be someone who is part of a group.

I feel pathetic for how jealous I feel of the big families at Disneyland. I’m not that jealous. I understand that a family that size comes with a dogmatic religion I don’t want to follow. But it looks so nice to have a bunch of people who love you and want to do things with you.

I need to assume my travel is alone and just for myself. This is a tree I have to stop beating my head against because I just flat don’t handle it well when people back out. Then I’m stuck with a reservation that I can’t handle very well. I didn’t plan around my spoons. I planned around someone else’s spoons. I shouldn’t have. That was stupid.

Most of the drive home pretty much all I heard in my head was how stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid I was for thinking that the trip would work out and be fun. Instead I spent the whole time being yelled at and feeling like I was about to burst into tears because no matter how much I do for my kids they yell at me and scream at me and tell me I am mean and nasty for not doing EVERYTHING they want RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND. I know it is developmental and all. I think I deal with it ok most of the time.

It sucked golf balls through a tennis ball to have that happen on my birthday at Disneyland. At one point in the day when Shanna was being really snotty I started crying. Then she backed off. She said, “Oh, is this a big deal? I guess I don’t need it.”

I didn’t do very well with having to be the heavy mean person. I just wanted to be allowed to decide what we did on one day. My kids steer the vast majority of our days.

Next year I have every intention of waking up alone on my birthday and spending the entire day alone. Preferably hundreds of miles away from anyone I know so that I have no expectation of anyone being nice to me so that I won’t be disappointed.

Every year after my birthday I feel sad. It always feels like this sadness is all my fault. If I just chose to be happy everything would be fine. It is all my fault I am sad. Shut the fuck up you self-involved, pretentious, selfish bitch.

It really doesn’t help that driving down I-5 is a trip through my hellish past. “I was raped in that town. I was sexually assaulted but not raped in that town. I was beaten up every day by a group of six kids in that town. I was raped in that town. That is the town where my father held a gun to my head after raping me. That is where I was born and where my father started raping me.”

I don’t especially enjoy driving that freeway. It is very innately stressful for me. I have so much bad history there. And it all feels like my fault. If I hadn’t been so stupid…

I really don’t have a lot of respect for my intelligence right now. Right now it feels like there are lots of nice people in the world who like me and things don’t work out better for relationships because I am stupid and I want inappropriate things and I don’t know how to be nice enough so I just flat don’t deserve to have better relationships with all those nice people.

I want to cut so much. Still haven’t. Still not modeling it as a coping method.

People said happy birthday to me and I appreciated it. Thank you. I don’t actually think that “no one likes me”. I think my friends share what they have to give. Unfortunately sometimes I try to cobble what they have to give into what I need and it falls short. It isn’t my friends fault. I’m a black hole. I’m not sure there is “enough” anywhere in the world. So I have no right to complain about any of my friends.

But I’m still a black hole. And it hurts. It hurts.

I don’t know how to stop feeling like I should die because then the world would be better for everyone else. They wouldn’t have to hear about me and my stupid whining. I would finally shut the fuck up.

Assuming I will ever be anything but alone is stupidity. It is hubris. Stop being stupid, Kristine.

I’m not alone. I have Noah and the kids. But you know what… for the life of me they don’t seem to have much collective interest in being nice to me on my birthday.

I think that next year being literally alone is the right call. Less disappointment. Less being reminded that no, I’m not remotely special and people have absolutely no need to be nice to me on my birthday. It’s just another fucking day.

hiding commences

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I don’t have it in me to pretend I have social skills. I’m bad. I’m stupid. Everything is all my fault. I will just stay home.

It was bound to happen.

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I told Shanna that we are going to Portland for Thanksgiving to stay with my Dad. (An adopted parent–not the man who raped me.) Her response was, “But I want to go see my Grandmother.” Meaning Noah’s mom.

So now it seems that Noah and the girls are probably going to go to Texas for a weekend in December.

I can’t stop crying. I will probably now spend the day trying to hide because I don’t want to be asked why I am crying.

Because I hate that I am not part of your family. I’m not. I never will be. They don’t want me. I have no family. And near as I can tell the only person I have to blame is myself.

I am part of a family inside this house. Outside of this house I am nothing.

I don’t want to be asked why I am crying because I don’t want to lie and I don’t want to make my kids feel like me. I want my kids to want to know their grandparents. I want my kids to believe they have family.

I can’t fuck that up.

high anxiety

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It is interesting to try and track the progress of anxiety. It starts out as irritation, just knowing that something is making me feel nervous. I don’t have to know what. It doesn’t have to be major. At that point I have butterflies in my stomach all of the time and my throat is tight and I have a mild headache.

If things get more intense–if I feel I have New and Exciting reasons to feel anxious the first thing that happens is I feel like someone shot me in the stomach with a water cannon. My stomach acid production goes into over drive. My entire torso feels like it is on flames. And I know that this moment, awful as it is, isn’t going to last so I try to hold on to it and pretend that nothing else is going to happen.

But inevitably, sure as rain, after the water cannon to the stomach the diarrhea starts. I have made jokes for many years that constipation would be a nice change. Ok, they aren’t actually jokes. I think constipation would be really novel. I’m really tired of the diarrhea. It burns. It burns so much that sometimes I sit in the bathroom and cry for upwards of an hour because it just keeps coming and it hurts so much and there is nothing I can do to stop it. The poison has to leave my body some how.

After a couple of days of that then I usually progress into some kind of other illness. Right now I am coughing (very productively. Very very very productively–ew.) and my eyes hurt and my head hurts. My neck muscles are on fire and feel locked down so tight I do not quite have 180 degrees of motion.

My legs hurt. My legs hurt like I have been practicing sprinting up a hill. It’s a combination of throbbing and burning.

Luckily the water cannon to the stomach phase does end. Eventually I do poop out all the extra stomach acid. (OMFG it hurts)

Then I am left feeling numb and shaky. I feel stupid and thick and slow. I feel like I am unable to think clearly. I feel unable to be productive. I feel empty. I feel worthless. I feel like I wouldn’t have so many problems if I could keep my stupid, piece of shit mouth shut. My problems are all my fault for being such a complete bitch. If only I could SHUT UP maybe people wouldn’t be so mad at me all of the time.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt people. I’m not trying to. I swear to a god I don’t believe in. I talk because otherwise I cut. I have to let it out somehow. I am so sorry I offend you. I’m sorry.

I don’t want to be bad. I just don’t think it is possible to stop being bad once you are as bad as I am. There is no longer any redemption for someone like me. It is too late.

People really should get away from me as fast as they can. I am not in control. I am not a nice person. You should protect yourself. Goodness knows I can’t do it.

Then I want to die so much. I don’t know why I was born bad. People have been reacting to me in the same way for my whole life. “Everything is fine. Everything is fine. I’m not mad. I just never want to see you again.”

I get that a lot. If you have the same problem over and over with lots of people… it probably isn’t about them. It’s me. I am bad and people need to stay away from me to protect themselves. It is perfectly logical.

I’m still freaking out about Iain dying. He was good. He was worthy. He was beloved by many hundreds, probably thousands of people. Why did he die and a worthless piece of shit like me lives on? There is truly no justice in the universe.

I’ve been thinking about my mom like crazy. Calli looks more and more like her as she ages. Sometimes when I catch her giving me an expression of my mother’s I have to leave the room and cry. I miss my mommy. It is all my fault I can’t have a relationship with my mother. I’m a stupid pathetic whiny bitch. I made my own bed. No cause to blame anyone else for the results.

On the days when the pain in my body hits over 7 I start thinking about why am I doing this? Why do I continue to inhabit this body, this loathed object. Because I don’t have a choice. Because there is no other option if I want to remain conscious.

Pam asked me why I believe the bad things about myself so much more than the good things when she tells me good things all the time. Honey, my reading has shown me that you need ~10 positive or neutral statements about yourself to balance out one negative statement. That is more or less how it works in creation of self.

I was told I was a worthless, stupid, annoying whore for almost twenty years. In the almost fourteen years since I got out I have had some positive messages mixed in with a lot of people yelling at me and dumping me as a friend and sending me nasty letters through the mail explaining everything I am doing wrong.

I don’t have enough reason to believe positive things about myself. I would have to significantly fly in the face of public opinion in order to believe I have much worth at all. I’m not really confident enough for that.

The best I can do is hide in my house so I don’t bother people. I’m sad that looking out my back window will remind me for the rest of my life that I can fuck absolutely anything up. It is all my fault. I should have shut my stupid, piece of shit mouth.

I am so sorry.

Today is a Godmama weekend. That is probably for the best. I anticipate a lot of hiding and crying. I will make sure no one else has to see it. It is no ones problem but mine. I am not guilting anyone. This is not “because of you”. This is because of me. This is just my life. This is just what it has always been. I have never known different. Not for longer than two-three months at a time.

It is hard being this bad. I don’t really know how it happened to start wtih. But once it is there you can’t lose it.

Coughing up big wads of nasty while you are crying and dealing with a nose running down the back of your throat is truly disgusting. This kind of idiocy usually leads to vomiting. The chunks coming up and the slime mix right at the back of my throat and good grief my gag reflex is sensitive.

I don’t blame other people for my problems. I know that if I were not such a problem I would not have so many problems. If I knew what part of me to cut off: my tongue? My fingers? Maybe I could figure out a way to not make people mad all the time. Maybe I could find a way to not alienate people.

As is, I don’t have a lot of hope.

I feel bad for Noah. I’m sorry he has to live with someone like me. It isn’t his fault I am like this. I am so sorry.

When I talk about being too pathetic to hold down a job this is what I mean. I lose days when my body completely shuts down from stress. I don’t get up much. I just sit and cry because everything hurts so much.

Piercing the veil.

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I do not write as a passive aggressive way of controlling the people around me. I write because otherwise I have trouble noticing patterns of behavior in myself. If what I write makes you think hard about your life and consider some issue, great.

If you ever feel that I am saying too much about you or your family or your pet you are free to ask me to stop.

Otherwise I’m getting kind of tired of the fact that I’ve spent the last fucking month bouncing between people who are upset with me for things I write. They feel attacked.

Uhm, no one is forcing you to read. If you feel upset by what I am writing feel free to take a break. I am not feeling ok with the pressure to stop writing. I am feeling more angry by the day about how many people have gotten really angry with me in the last month as I try to deal with my anxiety.

My anxiety is not your problem. No matter who you are. I am not writing this post to one person. I have had intense exchanges of one sort or another with at least seven people in the last month.

I have to stop being responsible for other people having feelings. If my writing triggers big feelings in you that bother you and make you unhappy, stop reading it. This is an opt-in space. I do not think it is appropriate that I should have to stop and feel anxious every fucking day about the fact that me processing my shit is going to make someone else feel attacked.

I’m not attacking you. I’m sitting in my fucking garage trying to figure out how to not blow up when I am with people in person. I do this because I know in my gut that no one deserves me blowing up. I do it for environmental reasons–not usually for actual provocation. If you don’t like knowing how I go through that process, opt-out. We can have a cordial in person relationship where I can tailor what I say to your personal preferences. I can not fucking handle the stress of trying to please everyone when I write.

I am not responsible for your feelings. No matter who you are.

I have to say this.

end of the day

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I think I am getting sick. All day long I have been alternating between feeling feverish and shaking with chills. My neck and head ache unbearably. I did not paint.

I did some minor housework but mostly I’ve been trying to rest. I don’t think I’ve had a rest day in a few weeks. I really should be trying to schedule these more. My body doesn’t keep up.

I have plans tomorrow to meet up with the guy who made the inappropriate comment at the wedding. I don’t know how this will go. After my experience with talking to the guy in the scene and him promising an apology and then never following through… I don’t have high hopes.

I dislike the fact that when I am going into a situation where a man has the potential to say, “I didn’t mean to hurt you” I assume that he doesn’t give a shit. I think that men in general don’t give a flying fuck about me unless they are desperate for sex and I am the only hole around.

Well, not you Tay.

Ok, I could probably pull a few other names off the top of my head. But I’m pretty sure I would not get past my fingers. I don’t think men give a shit about me. I really don’t.

But I have to keep hoping I’m wrong. That’s why I talk to these bozos. That’s why I try to explain what it is that they are doing in the full context of my life. But they don’t give a shit.

No one gives a shit about the stupid white trash whores.

I’ve been saying “stupid” over and over in my head since last night. Apparently the last 24 hours has been a complete removal of my respect for my intelligence.

I wouldn’t get kicked so often if I didn’t bring it on myself.

I wouldn’t get raped so often if I didn’t bring it on myself.

I wouldn’t get the inappropriate comments so often if I didn’t bring it on myself.

How come I am so powerful that I can “make” all these men do these things but I can’t make them apologize? Why can’t I make them treat me approximately as they would a fellow heterosexual man.

Why do they have to comment on my cunt? Why do they have to presuppose that they have access to it? That it is a topic for casual conversation.

My body hurts. I feel worthless and empty. I feel like the only thing that is within my control as a means of influencing how people treat me is dying. Otherwise I have to shut the fuck up and take what they feel like dishing out. Or just stay home you stupid cunt.

I haven’t felt safe recently. I hate these cycles. Is anyone doing anything terrible to me? No. Am I being victimized or persecuted? No. I’m just a stupid whiny bitch. I just watch patterns. I have seen these patterns go so very badly before. Am I stupid for seeing patterns after those patterns have existed so strongly for me before?

Am I stupid for being afraid of being raped when someone says something like that?

So I had a friend pull me off to a different room during a party and no one could hear me over the music. I didn’t think anyone would believe me afterwards that it was non-consensual. Stupid whores aren’t allowed to say no. Anything is allowable with them.

Am I stupid for being afraid when men talk to me like this? Or am I an animal trying not to die? I can’t tell. I don’t want to ever be raped again.

Sometimes, on the internet, I read these articles by women who say they were raped and it really wasn’t so bad and that they think other rape victims need to stop whining.

Yup. I need to stop whining. I think the only way to stop it is to cut off my fingers and my tongue or I could die. I don’t think I can be stoic. I’m sorry I’m so weak. I’m sorry I’m such a selfish person that I cannot keep my pain inside my head all of the time where it is no one else’s problem. I am sorry I am so self-absorbed that I need to talk about myself.

I’m sorry I exist.

And then I look at my kids. Can I really be that bad? Am I beyond redemption? I see myself in them. I think they are so wonderful. They are kind and compassionate and thoughtful. But I don’t think I am kind or compassionate or thoughtful. I think I am selfish and spiteful.

I decide that people don’t like me very much and then I put up a brick wall. I don’t want them to be able to hurt me more. So I need to pretend this person is a non-entity. Otherwise I know they will hurt me. I *know* it.

And the whole time I am avoiding someone I know in the marrow of my bones that it is my responsibility to be silent so I do not offend them. So that I don’t bother people. It is my responsibility to keep my stupid piece of shit mouth shut. No one wants to fucking hear it.

Sometimes Noah manages to say something in a way that lands wrong. He pointed out yesterday how much better he is at remembering all the things I do wrong. I don’t know why he wants to be with someone who is so wrong. Why didn’t he pick someone better?

Because he wanted an elite private tutor for his kids who is compulsively sexual and doesn’t believe she has the right to say no.

I’m sure that is uncharitable. I get the distinct impression I am nicer to Noah than anyone ever has been. I don’t think many people respect him the way I do. That respect is a double edged sword. I think he is better than me. I think he married down. Sometimes I hate him a lot for that.

I don’t really see a way that someone could want someone like me without it being a bad thing. Sometimes I wonder if I make him feel comfortable because almost no one else in his current world understands hard scrabble white trash culture. That is what he grew up with. Not many people in his current world look up to the guys in his position. He was never poor. But the people he knew during his childhood mostly were.

Noah makes me feel better about myself than anyone else. He doesn’t make me feel very good about myself. I know that says a lot more about me than anyone else. I wish I could stop thinking about my father. “Do you deserve to live?” No. I don’t think I do. But I’m alive anyway. And you are dead.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how convenient Christianity must be. What would it be like if there was some magic invisible sky friend who loved you and protected you and cared about you? I don’t have one. There is no one protecting or loving or caring about me. I am alone. If I want to not be beaten and raped it is my responsibility to protect me because no one else will.

When it happens over and over, like it did with me, how can it not be my fault? How can I just randomly find that many bad people? Is it just that I draw the evil out of otherwise neutral people?

Let me tell you, most people who knew me and my rapists greatly preferred the company of my rapists. They don’t want to “take sides” so that means they pick the rapist.

Tonight I am glad I don’t have a scalpel in the house. I would find a way to hide the marks. I don’t have an endless amount of self control.

My next door neighbor had to call an ambulance tonight. A three week old baby stopped breathing.

Given how fragile life is, what business do I have wishing for death? What hubris? What idiocy? What masochism?

It isn’t masochism. I am sorry that I hurt this much. I don’t want to hurt any more. I don’t know how to make it stop. I don’t know how to stop being a bad person that people want to avoid out of self-preservation. I know they are right to avoid me. I am not criticizing.

My head hurts so much.

Probably time for a sleeping pill. I don’t think I will sleep much without it. I think this would be an all night hysteria sort of night. I haven’t hit my head on the floor! I am exercising self control. I want to treat my body how everyone else thinks my body should be treated. I want to feel that. I know it is right. I am not supposed to be whole.

I am just a hole.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: bad day

Confluence of events

Easter morning

Grumpy day.

All honey badger like.

Attention seeking.

Marital Discord

Managing spoon deficit.

My people.

Not helpful

start of a bad cycle?

defensive

Post-therapy

Just another whinging Friday

Well, I’m older.

hiding commences

It was bound to happen.

high anxiety

Piercing the veil.

end of the day