Category Archives: bad day

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I got back fifty-two drawings from kids at the school. I’m excited about the mural. There were some duplicate drawings of the same place (most of the duplicates are of Mission Peak which I find kind of funny. Maybe they all just thought a mountain would be easy to draw?) but a lot of them are just little kids generically drawing a flower and writing, “Me gusta las flores.” I can totally work with that.

I think what I will do is map out how far apart I want to make the big monuments (I need to think of scale) then I will add in all the more abstract art and commentary as a sort of border. I have some interesting ideas I’m not sure if I am physically capable of following through on. No way to figure it out except to try!

When that is done I’m supposed to put together sample pieces for the local swim center. That space would like a mural too.

And the Hindu Temple on the corner has asked me to teach English classes this summer. The woman who runs their education stuff is fierce and dedicated in terms of getting her kids knowledge. As soon as she figured out that I used to teach her face lit up. “Oh I haven’t been able to find anyone to teach high school English! You will do it.” Oh. Well. That was kind of like “asking” I guess. Ha. She did ask me to narrow down when I was available so she could “let people know the time”. Ha.

I think I am nearly moved to tears. It is so usurping and kind of high handed but she has seen me take over and lead the Hindi level 1 class even though I don’t speak the language. I still know how to teach. (Our teacher went to India for a month. Good for her! Less good for us who still can barely count to ten without help. Ha. We are muddling through.)

It felt like being recognized as having a super power. “Oh man. You can DO THINGS!” Besides the whole English class thing will be twenty hours of teaching over the next two and a half months. It isn’t a lot of time. *phew* And they are thrilled to have my kids run around while I am teaching. Pretty much every one there has been gracious, welcoming, and kind to my children. I feel very grateful that we have such a kind Temple on the corner to become involved with.

Someone asked me today why we don’t join a church. I said we don’t fit in. She gave me a weird look then kind of said, “Ok.” I smiled. Big. Big big cheesy grin. I didn’t explain.

A good friend called yesterday. A good friend who was a forced child prostitute. We have very enlightening conversations about triggers. I told him that I am really struggling with being hit on because I am thinner now. I don’t know how to deal with it very well. All of my training on this topic is uhhh currently not-useful. He gave me some very good advice. I haven’t met very many people in my entire life who can talk frankly about their own compulsive sexual behavior due to childhood assault. He and I can sit around trade stories back and forth about why we are into things.

The hardest part of monogamy is that I can’t do what I have done my entire life. If you pay attention to me you’ll see that the sex is only the leading edge of my attention span. It isn’t a very big part of my overall attention span. I use sex as a way of sniffing people out and occasionally building social bonds. I rarely continue having sex with people. Only with people who have something I feel I want access to and I can’t get it any other way.

This good friend is one that I have done a fair bit of sleeping with because I want access to him. He has things to say that I really want to hear. It is hard getting him to talk in the same ways as “just a friend”. And I find it ridiculously flattering that he can travel around the world and be celibate because he didn’t find anyone he wanted to sleep with but he reminds me frequently that any time I’m sick of my husband he’s waiting.

I don’t want to cheat on my husband and I consider such comments to be really far in the “not a friend of my marriage” direction. Yet he can talk to me about things that other people literally can’t. So I mostly talk to him on the phone and remind him not to touch when we are in person. He does actually respectfully follow boundaries with his hands. Just not with his mouth.

Then again his patterns in life involve being absolutely unable to be long-term monogamous and every relationship blows up over cheating after a while. I don’t really want his pattern, thankyouverymuch.

Because it isn’t about the sex. It’s the attention. When I take sex outside my relationship I take my attention out of the relationship too. If I think back to my relationship with my owner I was pretty clearly side stepping out from the minute I started sleeping with other people. There was no chance of that lasting. “Oh wait, you don’t want to meet my needs but any of a variety of other people will? Why am I here again?”

I can’t go through that process with Noah. This is different. This is different from anything I have ever done. The majority of people I know who have been married have been divorced. I don’t want to divorce. I want to be married to Noah. I want the life we are dreaming up together. I like the way he makes me feel as a person. I like the way he makes me feel as a mother. I like the way he makes me feel as a wife. I do not want to replace him. Anyone else would be a major step down. I am used to how Noah treats me. Sometimes that is even a high bar for Noah.

Pulling in emotionally is hard but I have to do it. I’m running out of time for my crazy. I don’t have the support I need. Yay suppression. Yay denial. Handy-dandy tools in my tool box.

Reading the letter from my therapist hit me really hard. Yes, I abreact nearly every day. Sometimes to the point where I am immobilized. Yup. That’s my life. How do I shove that reaction into a smaller and small box? I was told to put it in a briefcase and carry it around with me so I can check that it is still there but it is contained. A little distance is good.

It does matter if my body physiologically feels like I am dying or like catastrophic things are happening. I don’t get to express that. It bothers people.

I have to be more calm. Stop reacting. Stop being such a fucking dick. Good luck. I’m trying to go in for lip suturing but so far Kaiser is cock-blocking me. Maybe I should go ask some of my friends. I do know people who specialize in that. That would ensure that my problems were my problems and no one else’s.

Sometimes it feels like I am in a huge hole drowning in water. People seem to think that the best way to help me is to throw dirt on my head. Surely the hole will fill in eventually and I can crawl out–right? Only if I’m not buried alive first.

Well… time to do something else. I need to start a book. Ha. With all that copious spare time.

I have been internally resisting something hard. Noah and I had an agreement that I was basically off-leash until September. I was supposed to have a lot of time off and be able to go Get Things Done. Unfortunately he burned out a while ago. He doesn’t talk about it and he won’t. But if I tried to delude myself into thinking I was still off-leash things would dramatically go down hill.

My time is over. *shrug* I get to try to not be bitter about this. He gave me more than a year. He’s tired. He’s worn out. I get it. Work loads never truly balance.

I only get to do things if I can do it with the kids. If I can’t do it with the kids while I am responsible for them then I don’t need to do it in the next fifteen years. I feel kind of sad about that. I mean, I still have a friend who is happy to babysit while I see my therapist and Noah works from home on Tuesdays so I am allowed to have doctors appointments. But that’s going to be the limit.

I feel a lot of feelings. He isn’t enjoying his life. He doesn’t get to do anything he wants. (I’m not sure how that many hours/week of video gaming counts as not getting to do anything but I am not the one with a math degree. We can feel free to minimize my opinion.)

Sometimes it feels really uncomfortable in the pit of my stomach because I agree with Noah that he should take a long view of his life. He needs to ensure he doesn’t burn out too badly. He’s likely to live for a very long time. I agreed to fifteen more years. What does it matter if my body burns out?

I have begged Noah to never let another woman live in this house as part of *this* family. If he wants to replace me he has to sell this house and do it somewhere else. Those of you who read this will be the only ones who can hold him to that.

I feel tired and anxious. I feel pointless and weary. I feel stupid and incompetent. Why does it feel like the world would be so much happier without me to drag everything down? I feel like downer girl on delivery. I can make any good thing bad.

A friend asked me why I tell doctors I have PTSD when their reaction is so bad. I tell because I cry through most doctor visits. Depending on how they react and physically present sometimes I cry a lot. They want to know why. It is very disconcerting for them to have a sobbing woman on the table. They figure they can’t talk to me until I am emotionally under control–so go to psychiatry.

When I was a child the worst thing a doctor could say was, “I can’t find anything wrong” because then I was punished and punished and punished. Obviously I was a lying hypochondriac. Err, stress is hard on a body. But I wasn’t allowed to manifest that in any way. I was supposed to pretend I wasn’t under stress. Everything was Great! After a couple of decades of pressure and bad experiences in my early twenties… I cry in doctors offices. Which is apparently a golden ticket to never be taken seriously.

I am sorry I am so broken. I keep thinking that I shouldn’t have had kids. If I were childless I think there is very little chance I would still be breathing.

It’s Fathers Day. Fuck you father. I hope you are rotting in hell.

I suppose it is a good thing Noah doesn’t care about the holiday. The kids and I will be going out. He doesn’t want to go with us. Shocking.

I need to stop asking him at all. I know what the answer will be and it is a rather dick move on my part to keep asking so that I get mad at him.

The last couple of weeks have been a reminder to me. Only ask for things if you are ok with the answer being no. If someone saying no will be a problem, don’t ask. Figure it the fuck out. It isn’t worth asking. I just get told no over and over and then I feel angry and hateful and I’m not supposed to. It is supposed to be ok for everyone to tell me no. That’s fine. They can have their boundaries.

I need to stop asking. It hurts too much. I can’t pretend I’m fine and pretend I am part of a community that will support me. I can do one or the other. For a few years now I have been leaning on people. I’m getting told no more and more. That makes sense. The needy period of my life has to end. People are out of the energy they will give to strangers.

If you can’t do it for yourself then you don’t deserve to have it. Isn’t that the American Way? Boot strap yourself up or fuck you. That’s how we do it here. Ok.

Not good at being quiet.

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I feel like I am back to one of those phases where the only appropriate behavior from me is to suture my mouth closed. My emotions are my problem. They aren’t real. They should not effect anyone but me. Just shut up you stupid bitch.

It is so hard to be quiet without cutting.

I’m thinking about it a lot. It is becoming one of my more pervasive thought processes. I could shut myself up. I could stop this diarrhea of the mouth. I could be less pathetic and needy seeming. I will keep my fucking needs to myself. It is not anyone else’s problem that I feel this way.

Just shut up shut up shut up shut up.

No right answer.

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I don’t know the right thing to do right now. It’s 8:40 in the morning. It is nearly late enough that it is civilized enough to go knock on doors. Back up. You don’t know what is going on.

Last week the kids played “driver”. They drained the battery in the van. Again. I have had a vague awareness of it but no need to go anywhere so I didn’t get around to dealing with it. Today we have a birthday party at 11 for one of the kids in the homeschool group. But it is, of course, a long drive from our house. So. All of a sudden it matters that I have a non-functional vehicle.

The kids arrived back from the Godmamas at 7:30. The screaming began almost instantly.

Noah and I tried to jump the van using the Prius. It didn’t work. We spent a lot of energy trying because we both got frustrated and were irritated and keeping the kids from sparking themselves took work and ugh.

All through this my youngest has been intermittently screaming at me I WANT TO GO TO THE BIRTHDAY PARTY. Yes, well you bloody well drained the battery. It isn’t my bloody fault. Only you can’t say that.

At one point I sent Calli to her room for screaming at me then I went in my room and shut the door and just slid to the floor and cried.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been crying since 5am.

I am not having a great self esteem day. At this point getting the car in functional order will require some jumping through of hoops. No, I don’t have AAA. I could knock on doors until I find someone who is home who will come jump start me. (Not as bad of an option as it sounds–I like my neighbors and a lot of them are home during the day.) I could take the wagon to the auto parts store and get my own damn charger. I could just punt on deciding and figure that I will see my next door neighbor some time soon and then I will grab him. Until then my kids just have to suck it the fuck up that they broke the car. (This isn’t the first time and I keep asking them to leave that switch alone.)

Is this where natural consequences come in? Am I punishing them overly by not wanting to jump through a bunch of hoops to fix a problem they created?

I feel very tired and sad. Today is my brother’s birthday. The one who is still alive. He is turning 39, I believe. I hope he has a good day. I hope that he has found some joy in life.

I feel thin and weak and lethargic. I feel ghostly and ghastly. I feel stupid and irrational.

So. Fucking. Irrational.

Stop feeling you stupid bitch. Just get up and work. There are things to do. You should be arranging for other people to get what they want.

I want to hide in my room between the bed and the wall and cry. I don’t want to move very much. I just want to hide. I want to cut. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. My angry mouth is hard to live with. Noah is finally showing some wear on dealing with my ambient anger. I really need to be more quiet.

The best way I know to be quiet is to cut. Because then all day when I feel tempted to speak I just put my thumb on the wound and push. Then my brain is flooded with chemicals and I don’t want to talk any more. Cutting allows me to feel cocooned in a world of my own little chemicals. The idea of connecting with another person is so foreign and alien and distant. Why would I do that? I need to stay over here. See, I have blood. Don’t touch me. Blood is a contaminent. No one should touch me.

It is weird thinking that being a cutter is a perfectly reasonable choice. I just don’t want to be the one who models it for my kids. Maybe if I knew how to have more body privacy I would just start again, but I’m naked in front of my kids too much. We aren’t really a modest house.

I feel obligated to show up at the party. People would like us there. My kids would like to be there. But my kids keep doing things to make my life much harder. Sometimes the energy of making it over an extra hump just isn’t worth it. Could I fix this problem? Oh sure. But it takes work. And right now I don’t feel like I want to do that work.

I need to make ricotta cheese and lasagna and cheese enchiladas. I *have* a bunch of work to do today. If going to the birthday party just took the number of hours it takes for the birthday party (roughly four hours with driving) it would already be a lot of work for one day. I have already put an hour of the day into trying to jump start the car. If I spend another one to two hours on that and then spend four hours at the party and then have to take Shanna to ballet and then have to make dinner (I suppose I could put off the ricotta and lasagna making but the milk will go bad if I don’t use it and we are scheduled to be out of the house for the next several days in a row and…)

Are my needs important or not? Does it matter or not that this could become a 6-8 hour affair in order to go to this party? I’m not up for that right now. I feel bad. I feel like I “Just don’t care” about people but that isn’t it. I have actual work to do. The alternative is paying money to other people so they can do my work for me. So that I can go to a party. At some point that circular privilege logic has to have an end.

I’m staying home. We’ll miss people but at this point in time I wouldn’t have fun at the party. I would be angry with my children and I’d be nasty the whole time. I’m already tired and sad.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my feelings about groups. If a group existed before me and will exist after me with no change whether or not I am there… I don’t want to be part of the group. There is no space for me. I am not needed. Noah says it is a very non-Chinese thought. I don’t want to be just the second daughter. I don’t want to be just the person who is currently doing some thing but it doesn’t matter because someone else will be there soon.

Apparently I would rather stay home and cry. Ok, that isn’t what I will actually do all day. It’s just what I did all morning. I will work. I will get things done.

I like house work. It is real work and it is in my home and only I care or don’t care if it is done so I am not really trying for anyone else’s approval. I want to make fucking cheese. Yes, I could buy it in a store. In fact, yesterday in the store Noah asked me if I wanted to buy it. I said no. I want to fucking make it. I’ve never made cheese before. I want to make it. I want to understand how. I want to have done it. If I don’t do it today, then when? Why do I have to wait? Because you would rather be idly amused by my presence?

But I’m not very amusing. I’m sad and withdrawn. I feel like anything I might say will be wrong.

Noah does a lot of playing devil’s advocate. I understand why he does it. Some times I even concede that he is right. (The new New York law that raises annoying police officers to a felony includes that someone must *know* that the person is a police officer and *touch* the officer. Ok, that’s more reasonable than my original hysteria indicated. He made me read the text instead of the spin.) Sometimes it hits wrong. Sometimes it feels like the only thing he ever does is pick every side but mine. Because I have to always be wrong. Because I am stupid and irrational. I don’t think Noah believes I am stupid. I do think he believes I am irrational and he is sometimes not very nice about expressing it.

I think I have spent my entire life praying for someone who would be on my side. Noah seems to think that it means mindlessly agreeing with me no matter what I say. I don’t think that is true. I wouldn’t pick the friends I pick if I just wanted people to yes ma’am me. Noah rarely feels on my side. Most of the time he feels like an apathetic observer who isn’t interested in being on a side but he is sure going to tell me how stupid my side is even though the other side isn’t better.

I miss cutting. I was much better at keeping my stupid mouth shut when I was cutting. Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I was told that a lot as a kid.

I’ve been thinking about how often through my life I have been told to be quiet. When I was little my cousins had friends who would trade off who had to pay me to be quiet. They couldn’t stand me talking and couldn’t find another way of shutting me up. There has always been the canonical “Go to your room.” When we had twelve people sharing a five bedroom house I had my own room because no one was interested in hearing me speak.

My Owner went to work to avoid me. Puppy screamed at me to shut up because I sound just like his bitch mother. My ex-fiance would just mutter under his breath.

Sometimes I feel so uncomfortable I want to use a potato peeler to take my skin off. Surely things would be better without this shell. It doesn’t fit.

I try hard to not talk around the kids about “inappropriate” things. Basically anything I care about or that causes me strong emotion. Like prostitutes being shot in Texas. That’s ok there. I don’t talk to my children about that. I shouldn’t talk to Noah either. He doesn’t really want to hear about it.

There is a lot of bad in the world. People filter out however much of it they have to in order to keep moving. The only way I know to filter it out is to get off the internet and be away from pretty much any grown ups.

I don’t filter out the same things as Noah. He feels untouched by a lot of bad that feels very personal to me. He wants it filtered out. He’s not interested. It isn’t his problem. This is why I feel like I could have wandered off to do the lesbian separatist thing. I know there are women who are unwilling to discuss womens issues. They don’t go off and join lesbian separatist groups. He feels like not-my-culture, not-my-tribe in ways that are very hard and scary sometimes. I feel so very alone. I am not his tribe. I’m not a geek. Not really. I don’t ascribe to their values.

I think he has the right to live in an environment that does not include ambient anger that makes him uncomfortable. I just don’t know how to deal with the fact that it seems like the answer is either making sure I am not in the environment or I am not speaking.

I haven’t cried in the last twenty minutes. Maybe I can handle going into the kitchen and getting started on work. The day is a wasting. I can’t tell if I should water the yard or not. We had just a smattering of rain.

Missing

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I write Noah’s mother long letters about my kids because I wish I could tell my mother these things. It isn’t the same. She doesn’t even like me.

I sent a follow up message about the cat scan that should be ordered. Let’s see what happens. I feel so sad.

This morning during our morning snuggle Calli said, “Everyone needs love!” and hugged me tight. Shanna said, “You weren’t loved when you were a little girl, were you?” I said no. I wasn’t. She said she would love me enough to make up for it.

I hope so. I’m not sure how this works. I try so hard to hide my need. It isn’t anyones problem but mine.

One of the random moms I don’t know well from the home schooling group happened to be in the lobby when I walked out of the surgeons office crying. She wanted to comfort me. I couldn’t even talk to her. I’m not sure I was civil.

I want people to like me and be nice to me and care about me but I don’t seem to be able to behave in a way that will let me deserve it. Noah likes me. Shanna likes me. Calli likes me. That has to be enough.

I hate talking to doctors. I hate them so much for, “Why don’t you go see psychiatry? You don’t have to feel this way.” Fuck you and your fucking magic pills. They don’t work. They won’t make me “feel better”. They never have before. I have fucking tried.

It doesn’t matter. Just shut up and get used to hurting. That’s just life. Sometimes it works that way.

I’m not going to stop feeling disposable until people stop disposing of me. Trying to convince me that I should change this is flat stupid. If I started expecting people to stick around then I would experience much more extreme grief when they leave me. I can’t believe that people will stay. They never do.

It feels very bizarre every day that Noah isn’t gone yet. What is he waiting for?

I lay in bed half the night thinking about cutting. I couldn’t sleep. It was too late for a sleeping pill. I traced with my fingers the lines I wanted to make. I wish this wasn’t the resting place for my brain too. I wish there were more tracks.

This morning I commented to Noah how intense it is that the kids like to cuddle with me for literally hours a day. I wonder how children handle not being able to cuddle as much as they need to? I learned to offer sex or cut myself. Those are the kinds of touch I know how to go get for myself when I feel bad. I couldn’t wake Noah up. I wasn’t interested in sex and he hadn’t slept enough. He can’t be up all night with my stupid hysterics.

I don’t know how to be someone different. Someone better. Someone who isn’t bad.

My therapist keeps telling me that I need to work on letting people touch me. This cuddling with the kids is a good mid-level step but they sit on me. It is kind of different. I don’t seem to be able to let adults touch me in a comforting, non-sexual way. I can’t allow it. If I allow it I might find out I like it and then I may never get it again. I don’t want to find out how good something is that only other people get.

Stop whining Kristine. Go work. The only value any human has is what they do for other people. It really doesn’t matter what happens to you. It isn’t like bad things are happening any more. Other people have genuinely bad experiences happening to them today. Shut the fuck up already you whining, pathetic, stupid loser.

No, I wouldn’t talk to anyone else this way.

I’m scared. My body hurts. I tried to ask for help. That rarely goes well. See, this is why I think I am better off just staying home and hoping it kills me. Then I won’t waste anyones time with them having to tell me that pain just happens when you are crazy. If I weren’t so crazy my problems would go away. See, just stop being crazy and it will all be fine. It is my fault things happen. If I weren’t so damn crazy…

I hate the way I react.

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I wish that failing didn’t feel like clear indication I am unworthy to be alive. I wish I didn’t wake up with the intense desire to die so that I can’t hurt anyone any more.

On my PTSD support site someone asked how our faith in God has survived the trauma. Mine hasn’t. I don’t think “God has a plan for me” I think that we are mean son of a bitches who want to hurt pretty much everyone we can. We are in the least violent period of human history right now. This is the absolute pinnacle of non-violent behavior our species can manage. I wonder where the next bombing will be.

With the exception of spurring on my brother and my father committing suicide I haven’t killed anyone. I’m just a mean spirited self-involved bitch. I’m more petty than that.

Today I have to act like I am not watching movies in my head that all feature very useful and easily attainable ways for me to die. I need to not act like I am empty and worthless even though that is how I feel.

I have to be a “good mother”. I have to be loving and attentive. I feel afraid to speak. What other mean nasty thing is going to come out. How else will I be hurtful and horrible? If I stay alive I will hurt people again. Probably over and over again. I’m not supposed to hurt people. I don’t think I will be able to stop as long as I am breathing. It isn’t really in my animal nature.

My stomach hurts and I want to bang my head. I won’t. I was told that every time I hit my head on concrete I up my stroke risk and given what I have already done to my body that’s not an ok risk. But it would be so convenient to die of a stroke. Then it would look like an accident. Not my fault. Not something that needs to scar everyone for life.

I feel so selfish. I don’t really like being me. I don’t find me very pleasant. I would like to be able to opt out of dealing with me the way other people can. I only really have one option for that.

Everything I read says that at this point I am supposed to stop chanting in my head that I am just a stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid mean bitch. Worthless. Mean. Stupid bitch.

But I don’t believe anything else. How can I change the narrative?

It doesn’t matter how I feel it matters how I act. I have to stop crying before the kids wake up so I have two more hours. Then it really doesn’t matter how I feel. I have to act like it is going to be a good day. I have to play. I have to do morning snuggles. I have to tell my children I love them and that I can’t imagine a world without them in it.

In my head I will be in my bathtub cutting. I will be watching the water change colors.

I will be beating my head.

I will be stepping off freeway overpasses right in front of semi-trucks.

I will be swimming out into the ocean until my arms can no longer pull me. I hope it is over fast.

But I can’t indicate any of that on my face or in my words. I have to act like I am happy. Like I am where I want to be.

I don’t want to be here. I poison the well. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t see any road to stop hurting people while I am here. I am bad.

I am really sorry that I forced anyone to have to deal with me for twenty years. That was not a kindness. I shouldn’t have had children. I am not worthy of them. Mean fucking bastards like me should probably be forcibly sterilized before they can damage other people.

I’m glad I canceled the home school events at my house for the next few days. I don’t really think I can pretend with adults. I don’t know what my kids see but luckily they are still mostly in their own worlds. I’m just a support person. Mostly they don’t know or give a shit what is going on in my head. I don’t slip as often into inappropriate topics with them.

I know just to shut my mouth. I am stupid with adults.

Yup, I’m a dick. And not just to my kids. I really want to cancel everything on my calendar and stop talking to people. There could be no possible value in knowing me. It is inevitable I will hurt people. The only way I can protect them is to stop speaking.

I try to remember that I won’t always feel this way. As overwhelming as this is, surely I have days when I am happy to still be alive.

Today, if I were still doing that sort of thing, I would go find someone who identifies as a sadist and I would tell them I want to bleed and be unable to stop the violence. Maybe that would make me feel better. At least then I would feel like something in me had value to someone else. There are very few people in the world who will let sadists go off-leash. It makes them so happy. I really hate that I feel like that is most of what I have to offer. Maybe if I let people who are really pretty terrible hurt me they won’t hurt anyone else. Maybe if I deflect that amount of pain from the world it somehow makes up for all of the hurt I cause.

Probably not. There probably isn’t expiation for me hurting people. I’m just a fucking mean asshole.

“Recovery” and a brain dump about being an asshole.

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Resurrection After Rape puts forward this explanation for how one will recognize “Recovery” when it happens:

  1. When you can face the thoughts of rape rather than having to avoid them;
  2. When you understand the connection between your current self-concept and your rape, so that when you feel down on yourself you won’t accept that as a “permanent truth” of who you are;
  3. When you no longer engage in self-harming behaviors (including substance abuse) to manage emotions and memories;
  4. When flashbacks have diminished to the point they either no longer happen, or no longer interfere with your life and emotions;
  5. When you can appropriately respond to people’s ignorant attitudes about rape, rather than withdrawing from them and wilting in lonely shame;
  6. When you have begun to offer support to other survivors;
  7. When you have begun to view your body as a valuable thing and not as a betrayer or curse, and you take care of its needs;
  8. When you learn to recognize the warning signs of dangerous men and avoid them, no matter how charming they appear to be;
  9. When men no longer have control over your opinions of yourself;
  10. When you are able to confront, challenge, and speak proudly to men;
  11. When you make your own choices whether to disclose your rape to someone because of something you need to say, not something you need to hear for you to make progress;
  12. When you no longer feel guilty for asking for help, or for having rough days, or for taking the length of time needed for growth.

This organization does not recognize the medical studies showing marijuana to be the most effective drug for PTSD apparently. They exist. If you can’t find them then you are too ignorant to be allowed on the internet.

I think I’m fairly solid on 1, 5 (I have some inappropriate mixed in with my appropriate responses but I think I’m in “recovery” territory on this one.), 6, 7 (I thank the marathon for this. I was not capable of properly taking care of my body when I was pregnant–I didn’t know how. I learned during the marathon. It was a weird change.), 8, 11.

I’m working on 2, 3 (I have prescriptions from doctors for all of my drugs. I do use as minimally as I can get away with but I absolutely need these meds at this point. Is that abuse?), 4 (I have the ability to not react to them in front of anyone else. I can’t make them stop. They increase my overall stress levels slowly. I have to periodically go allow myself to consciously think about them or I start having ranty inappropriate outbursts in random settings.), 9 (onman don’t get me started), 10 (Often I am shitty at talking to men.), 12.

Mixed bag as usual. I’m just like that. And this guy doesn’t have a monopoly on definitions.

I will say that I appreciate the section on managing panic attacks. Education + replacement of negative self-talk with positive self-talk has been my approach. Glad to get my little gold star there. I read everything looking for confirmation bias to prove I am “right” like every other human. I like to blame it on public education but that’s a straw man argument.

A question from the book. If rape is a form of theft, what did it steal?

I am afraid of men. I do still stand near them–but I do so uneasily and with great anger. I feel that rape stole my faith in men. People can rant at me all day and all night about how women rape too and that won’t change the fact that I was raped by twelve men not twelve women.

Are twelve men a representative sample of all men? Can I judge all men based on them? Of course not. I don’t actually judge all men. I just avoid the ones who are not already through the barriers of trust. They have to come in sideways. Usually they have to fit in a nice, neat little box so that I can trust how they will behave. I really like men who are emphatically not interested in me even though they like me. When they feel the need to mention that I am completely not their type I feel a little relaxation of tension.

I am not a nice person. I yell. I say mean things. I say hurtful things. I am a dick. I am an asshole. I am a bitch. Pick a word. White trash whore. Sure. I say mean, nasty things. Sometimes there is a very small grain of truth in what I say and I use that as justification for my hurtfulness.

I’m not a sociopath. I don’t deny my actions or the results of my actions. I don’t deny my blame. I just don’t seem to be able to adequately shut my mouth. I think it would take suturing. Luckily I have friends who are into that sort of thing because they agree with me that women should just shut the fuck up. I would be a much nicer person if I just shut the fuck up.

Today I yelled what my mother yelled at me. I feel pretty ashamed of myself.

I have no excuse. I do not get to deflect blame. I could give a laundry list of reasons why I was out of patience. Doesn’t matter. Being mean isn’t ok.

I will never be good enough. Ever. I’m literally not capable of it. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have had kids. I don’t deserve them. I am not capable of being nice enough. I pray that the damage I cause is slight in the scope of their lives. I cross my fingers that I am a net positive for them. I’m scared.

I feel very ashamed of myself for not being good enough. I’m just not. Just work harder is the only message I have on this score. I weigh, eternally, in my mind if my children would be better off if I got a job and let them go to school. Would they be better off if they didn’t have to deal with me so much of the time?

I don’t know. Every decision is so layered, so complicated I’m not sure I can know what the right decision is. I know what I am doing. I know why. Today was a rocky day. I think I have been over extending myself and I ran out of spoons. I was mean and nasty.

It’s not ok. It’s not justified. I’m not claiming any expiation. My choices and my behavior are my god damn fault. I don’t get to say, “Well I was just acting like my mother” like that excuses anything.

It’s really stupid but I think my next therapy session will be a whole long conversation about hair. About my mother screaming at me and hitting me and cutting my hair into ugly hair cuts on purpose as punishment so people would mock me and the nasty shaming that happened for months when I shaved my bangs off in fourth grade. My mom was so fucking pissed when I shaved my head when I was seventeen. She liked my hair about an inch long so she didn’t have to take care of it. I wanted to be pretty. When my hair was long it wasn’t pretty it was matted.

My long hair was the long unkept hair of a neglected child. I can’t figure out how to care for my children’s hair. And I can’t keep everything in the house under lock and key. My kid has some interesting impulse issues.

And I have a bad temper.

I need to get my temper under control. I need to not say the things my mother said to me. It’s hard having to stop and think carefully about everything you say because what comes out of your mouth naturally is poison. I know how to say what I was taught to say. Do you know why I cuss so much? My entire childhood was full of being told what a fucking rude ass bitch I was.

I’m struggling with the me-not-me boundaries. I know what I was taught to say in these scripts. The scripts I have are bad. I am not ad-libbing well. I am not trying to excuse or justify myself. I certainly don’t think I can continue.

Feeling guilty isn’t good enough. Crying for hours after I am nasty really isn’t good enough. It isn’t even remotely helpful.

This is broken. I don’t know how to fix it. I feel really stupid and pathetic and useless and bad.

You can’t just stop being something. You have to pick what you want to be and move towards that. I don’t want to say what I said today again. I don’t know what I’m going to say instead. That will take thinking. I don’t know what to do.

I have been told that people pity my children for having to live with me. Why do I feel free to say whatever comes into my head? Because people tell me things like that. I feel like I have listened to enough diarrhea of the mouth that I get to have it too. No I’m not taking the fucking high road. Instead I am the crazy ass old lady with the big knife who makes the punks run away in fear.

When it comes right down to it… I don’t actually want to be a nice person. I’m a dick. But I don’t want to be one with my kids. I want to treat them like they have earned better treatment than that from me. They have. They have a variety of character flaws, most of them age related, which I can’t exactly hold against them. That’s the revenge of grandmothers every where. “Ha ha. You used to do that.” And now my daughters do to me what I did to my mother.

Of course my daughter pushes every boundary to the point of breaking at all times. She’s related to me. And I want her to be that kind of adult. Yup, she’ll be somewhat sociopathic. But I hope she understands that I have earned consideration other people haven’t earned and she will be nice to me.

I want to be nice to my kids because I am a selfish son of a bitch and I want to have good relationships with independent adults. I don’t want them to be like me and I don’t want to decide what they should be.

I can’t insult their choices even though I find them frustrating. But what does that mean?

I don’t know. I fucked up today. I’m reading a book on rape recovery that harps up one side and down the other how one must be completely sober forever and ever amen or you are not “healed” and it makes me want to drink a bottle of wine. I don’t actually drink much–alcohol gives me terrible stomach aches. But I was told not to. So I want to.

How in the fuck can I get mad at my kids for being exactly like me? Punishing them for being something I will encourage in adulthood is kind of ass backwards. I am not actually working towards my long-term goals.

I think I need to do some work on my attachment to how my kids look.

I didn’t yell “You are a reflection of me and I’m fucking tired of walking around with an ugly little brat.” I just said that it was ugly hair cut and she looked funny and people were going to laugh at her.

I got mad because we are going to be in a wedding in two weeks. I said, “Now you will look ugly in the pictures forever.” That was what my mother said to me when I gave myself a haircut two days before school picture day. You know what? I don’t look any worse than I do in any other awkward school photo. It really hasn’t wrecked my life.

I shouldn’t have said that to my daughter. I have already apologized. But you can’t actually take it back. You can’t unsay things.

I’m not a monster. I’m self aware enough to really understand that on a primal level. I have not done monstrous damage to my children. But sometimes I take a little spike and a mallet and I insert those mean things she will hear in the back of her head forever. I hate myself for that. I don’t want to be her mean inner voice. I want to be the voice inside her head that makes her feel good about being alive.

I don’t want my daughter to hear what I heard. I don’t want her to have these tapes. Mostly she won’t–I get that. I’m already through a lot of important hurdles and I understand it looks like relatively smooth sailing through the next few years of non-anniversaries.

I’m going to freak out. She is going to do things just like me and I will react blindly. I will play the tape that is instantly related to the behavior. I don’t know how to completely circumvent this. Do I just stop speaking at all?

I need more of a plan than I currently have. That’s kind of a horrifying and overwhelming thought.

I need to schedule less. I’ve gotten schedule-happy again. I schedule things because I feel guilty about isolating my children. I know a lot of home schoolers who are out all day every day. I feel kind of uncomfortable about how much socialization my kids get.

I feel like what I am doing is not good. I don’t know why. It’s kind of a creeping fungus feeling. I’m not giving my children what is “normal” for their peers.

I don’t want to in some strong idealogical ways. But I think I drank the Kool-Aid on “Home schoolers aren’t at home”. I feel like I should be more active in the communities that exist. I should present a large peer group to my kids and then consistently expose them many times a week.

I’m struggling. I feel existentially not-ok. I have a really high level of self-loathing. My self-talk is all mean and nasty. It’s been on an uptick for a bit.

I want relationships but I can’t handle them and I don’t deserve them. Life isn’t really about deserve though.

The future isn’t written yet. Maybe my children will remember me as an abusive bully. Maybe not. They are certainly clear on the point that Mommy is not always nice. Sometimes Mommy is mean.

If I ever get dragged in front of a judge in a CPS court all they will have to do is print my blog. I don’t want secrets. I didn’t hit. I didn’t go on an extended tirade. Noah did step into the room and signal me that it was time to stop. Good for him. I’m glad he was home.

It feels very bad sometimes knowing that I am simply not a nice person. I would have died if I had been “nice”. If I had been more passive my life would have been so much worse. Being defiant and nasty has truly been useful.

It is still useful sometimes. Not all the time. It’s a hard character trait to keep under control.

People alternate between telling me I’m a bitch/dick/asshole/whatever and telling me that they like that they always know where they stand with me.

When I get up from this keyboard I need to be mostly done processing this. I need to talk to my therapist about it but I can’t keep going on and on with my daughter. That would be dragging her into my emotional quagmire. She doesn’t have the attention span to still be upset about a random one off comment she will probably never hear again. If I don’t turn it into a thing.

If I drop it and never say it again then I will have succeeded in not passing this tape on. If she wants to cut her own fucking hair she can cut her own fucking hair. I do. I have since I was a very young child. For me to get angry about it is so over the top ridiculous that there aren’t words.

But my tape for mothers is rabid anger because now people will think my child is unsupervised and ugly. She is neither. She does have access to scissors. She is out of my line of sight during the day. We have a small house and they wander at will. I work wherever I am working. I don’t pen them right with me–it seems silly.

If I want children who are autonomous and independent in their actions I need to give them more direct supervision (which would drive me ape shit) or farm it out or be ok with what they do.

Those really are the only options. It is not ok to expect micromanaged results from a free range kid. I honestly don’t want kids who require direct supervision at all times. My kids entertain themselves while I work. I can clean/cook/garden and they run around and play.

Short of putting padlocks on everything in the house, which I am morally opposed to doing, there is no “putting things up” at this point. Kid is too big. Yes, there will be consequences and occasionally fury over her decisions.

You can’t learn without making mistakes.

I tell other people that the way to get good at something is to make as many mistakes as possible as fast as they can–they will learn the most the fastest that way. Somehow that approach doesn’t seem suitable in parenting.

I’m off to feel awkward and uncomfortable and like I’m the biggest asshole in the room. Cheers.

GAD sucks.

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I need to leave in forty-five minutes. Book club. We read Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Woo! One of my favorites. I’m excited.

Then I will come home and get the girls and go to a fantasy faire. So like a Renaissance Faire (has anyone ever told these people that the Renaissance mostly took place in Italy?) but even more obviously based on people just liking the clothes. Fairy tales and princesses and pirates. It’ll be fun.

I ran. 5.85 miles in 80 minutes. I will be more enthusiastic at the race because I will be trying not to hold my friend back so I think it will be fine. *cross fingers*

My inadequacy is trying to drown me lately. Every playful jab feels like a slap in the face and a refresher of the idea that people don’t like me. People aren’t trying to hurt my feelings. I’m just over sensitive don’tyouknow? I don’t feel likable. I feel like the cracks about, “Wow. You’ve got some issues to work out” just don’t really seem necessary. I want to turn around and snap, “What’s your fucking point? Just because you don’t want to work hard that doesn’t mean you should fucking mock me for doing so.” (Err, we were weeding at an apple tree orchard. It was an off-hand comment. No one meant any harm. I shut my mouth and put my head down. I didn’t say a word.)

No one ever seems to mean their harm. So if you are harmed shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up.

I can see myself hiding in a lot of corners. I am worried about people being behind me. I feel unsafe. I feel like people are going to talk badly about me. I hate feeling like walking into a room is going to result in a rush of whispering as people talk shit about me. I understand that at this stage of life a lot of this is paranoia. But it isn’t all paranoia. I piss people off.

And they don’t ever have the fucking balls to talk to me about it. I hear about it through back channels and gossip. It insults the fucking shit out of me. It makes me feel much less happy about seeing people at all.

If everyone expects me to yell at them all the time I feel like there isn’t really a point in showing up. Obviously my company can’t be much of a pleasure. I’ll stay home and not inflict my unpleasant nature on anyone.

I’m sorry I exist.

I know I’m too loud. I know I’m too harsh. Why do you think I consciously identify as white trash? I’m explaining to you that I do not share your middle class values. I do not think I should be quiet. I do not think my household should be quiet as people tiptoe around trying to “not bother” anyone.

If someone is fucking bothered they either need to god damn deal with it or not snidely fucking imply that I should fucking share their culture. I don’t. I don’t know your fucking culture and I couldn’t fucking conform to it if I wanted to. I don’t have the instincts. I will never have the instincts. I don’t want them.

I don’t want to be like you.

It’s not because I think there is something in particular wrong with you. You are fine and all. But I can’t be you. If I tried to be like you I would have to sit down and consciously think all the time about how I had to behave. I would have to work really hard for months or years on learning to modulate my voice–all activities you did in your culture in the first five years or so of your life.

I learned that I had to yell or I would be hurt really badly. I learned that I had to make some fucking noise. I have to be obnoxious and pushy and difficult and demanding. I have to or I will die. That is what I learned.

It’s interesting as I study child development and as I watch my kids and as I think about my own life.

I won’t ever be like you–whoever you are. I can’t. I don’t have your culture. That has to be ok. It has to be. I can’t change it.

I want to start a fight.

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I’m in a mood. I want to be aggressive and nasty and mean. I hate asking for something and being told no. And I’ve had multiple people (who have all been pestering me for social engagements) all cancel/say no already today. (The events weren’t all for today.) They have lives. Things come up. I’m not supposed to have feelings about them canceling. It’s like rude or something.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the people who actually show up. Where. When. Why? Oh god why. I don’t think I could properly evaluate them if I sat down and said: “This person has a 75% flake rate. This person has a 95% flake rate. This person has a 15% flake rate.” I’d be wrong. I misjudge people all the time.

I’m really surprised by who shows up. I’m a flaky bastard so I’m not throwing stones. Flaking is a way of saying, “My needs are the only ones I need to consider and your experience/feelings/whatever are your problem.” Yup, I’m flaky. Sometimes I can’t give a shit about someone else wanting to see me.

I’m feeling defensive. And like I need to work harder on building my citadel. This is my space. People will rarely be invited into it unless I know I can trust you and you won’t treat me like I don’t matter. We have to find a way of bonding before I will make plans with you. If I’m not at least somewhat bonded I will ensure I never become bonded if you flake on me.

I think my last big experience with that was enough for this lifetime. If you can’t make agreements and keep them then I can’t need you. I have to ensure that my needs (emotional safety and predictability are high on this list) are met and I just can’t be someone who meets your needs. Reciprocation is weird. I don’t have a reciprocal relationship with my kids. It isn’t supposed to be reciprocal. Friendships are. Often all that is reciprocated is time spent and respect. I don’t need money, help cleaning my house, or even babysitting. I’ll make it through. Would my life be easier if I had more support? Maybe.

Near as I can tell “support” isn’t worth the cost. In order to get thirty minutes of support I need to trade four hours of effort. That’s a losing situation.

You aren’t supposed to think about your friends like this. It makes you an asshole.

The best thing about having moved over and over in my life is I don’t really have much of a sense of responsibility towards anyone. If you are upset it isn’t my problem. You have to deal with it. Can I feel empathy and sometimes want to help? Sure. But it’s on my schedule and as my energy allows. I’m not on fucking tap.

I need to stop bitching about specific social situations in my life. It’s not perfect but I choose it. Venting isn’t going to make anything better and I have no better options available. So I need to suck it and just deal. It’s ok that people don’t do what I do. Really.

Man I have judgment. As long as it stays in my head no one needs to be hurt or give a shit.

I really and truly don’t think other people “should” be like me. I don’t think it would be especially healthy for most people. I still struggle with watching people make decisions that have AN OBVIOUS FUCKING END POINT. They have to walk that road alone.

I’m not always right. My predictions work out a large percentage of the time, but not always. Free will and that shit.

Be alone. Be content with being alone. That’s a lot of where I am right now. Wanting to be with other people means having to conform to all of their little petty wants and needs and I’m busy with my own petty wants and needs.

I think I’m partially feeling emotionally volatile because I’ve read a lot of incest stuff this week. Two memoirs in book form(I need to record), a clinical book, and a bunch of websites and online abstracts from studies.

It feels really hard emotionally to sit still with how unbiased I will have to be in order to gather the data I want to gather about incest. I will have to be able to be compassionate towards perpetrators. I will have to be nonjudgmental. I will have to be neutral. I will have to act like my story is just one story and this picture is bigger than me and I can’t judge people through my lens.

It is a kind of being invisible again. Not mattering. The plural of anecdote is not data.

Only it is if you are serious enough. I need to start deciding the form and shape of the data I want to gather. I think those notes will have to be long-hand. What questions do I want answers to?

I’m feeling insecure and like I don’t have the right to talk about this subject because I am not “officially/formally trained”. No one with Actual Authority is giving me their Stamp of Approval. I’m going to have to just do it because I want it. That’s scary.

I’m feeling massively overwhelmed by how much I want to get done in this lifetime. I feel like I am instead spending time on things and people that don’t matter. I’m wasting what time I have.

What value does “being entertained” have? Everyone needs to rest–sure. And I’m primarily homeschooling for the next decade or so. How should time be spent?

Priorities. Time to look at ye olde priority list again. I’m not finding self-discipline. I’m not finding drive. I just feel scared and paralyzed.

I got into a nasty argument on my ptsd forum. The rabid AA-sobriety-is-the-only-path people are telling me that if I hold anything other than an abstinence-only policy it will be my fault people die from alcohol/drug problems. I had no idea I was so powerful. I CONTROL ALLLLLLL THE PEOPLE.

Or something.

Are there addicts who must be 100% sober in order to not die young and miserable and weighing 74 pounds after subsisting on only rot-gut whiskey? Probably. Is that absolutely standard and true for every person who can fall under the label of “addict”? No. Absolutely unequivocally no. Give me a fucking break.

I really hate all humans some days. Not in a personal way. Like, I won’t be nasty to Noah or the kids. But I don’t like humanity some days. I’m frustrated.

Get over it, Krissy. You don’t actually want to be alone. People will frustrate you. People will do things you don’t like. Staple your fucking mouth shut and keep walking. You don’t hate everything they do. Heck, you don’t even hate a large percentage of what they do. You are just in a bad mood. Don’t fuck anything up today.

Tomorrow will be a different day. Tomorrow you will miss people and think, “Oh well… even if they have a 95% flake rate… I still get them 5% of the time! That’s better than being alone 100% of the time!”

My tolerance depends on how needy I feel. Today I don’t feel needy. I will again. Don’t blow anything up. Damnit.

When I really think about it the fact that multiple friends have already been sexually assaulted this year isn’t helping my mood either. I’m glad they can talk to me about it. There is so much pain in this world. Sometimes I feel buried.

Emotional dysregulation for the lose.

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Today I am angry. I am so angry I want to punch holes in walls. I am sad. I am so sad that I want to crawl under my bed and stay there for days sobbing until I am completely dehydrated.

I can’t do either.

I feel bad. I feel bad about myself for being someone who has these emotions. I feel angry with myself for being so petty and pathetic and stupid and hateful. God I feel hateful. I don’t even know who I hate. But I hate someone–anyone–everyone.

I want to cut. I want to cut so much it hurts already.

Yesterday we had a really great party. The weather cooperated. Everyone had a good time. I feel like a fucking asshole because I made comments to people about things that are none of my fucking business.

Hell, last night friends called me wanting advice on labor/delivery stuff. That’s flattering. Obviously other people don’t think I am a piece of shit. I do.

Today it feels like there could be no possible reason that I should stay alive. I am obviously inadequate and pathetic and bad. I kind of understand that this is fleeting. That I don’t always feel this way. I feel like I have nothing to give. And I feel like that means there is no reason for me to be here.

When I was reading the book about survivors it struck me that part of the difference between female survivors and male survivors is they often (not always–of course) women have to put their heads down and shut up and accept an evil overlord sort of presence because that is the only way they can raise their children.

I absolutely believe that the usefulness of my life at this point rests in my ability to turn out progeny who will be better, faster, stronger, and smarter than me. I could have decided to turn my prodigious educational gifts on other peoples children but I am selfish. I know that in the fullness of time I will feel more satisfaction from being able to see the tangible result of my efforts in the form of adult children who are able to go out into life and be successful. I will take it personally if I teach them something else.

Does that mean that I think that all people need to be motivated in the ways I am motivated? No. This is my personal problem. This is my journey. I do not believe that anyone else needs to be on my journey.

I think I am alone. And I feel angry about it. I don’t want to be but I am. I can’t handle what it would take to have people more actively in my life. I can’t handle getting up every day and having to deal with other people. I can’t handle a co-op preschool. I can’t handle doing outings every day with the homeschool group.

I feel brittle and broken and stupid and mean. I feel impatient and nasty. I feel bad.

I know it’s not ok that I place such importance on my children. I’m supposed to care about other things. I don’t know what I should build on. I feel kind of ridiculously angry with myself for fucking up the tomato starts. Stupid stupid stupid mistake. Well, I won’t make it again. Fuck. I can’t particularly base any self esteem on that project this year. Shit. Shit. Shit.

I need to go weed. I’m supposed to let that be enough for today. I’m supposed to let/make the children play outside. I’m too angry to be patient. I’m not angry with them. I can’t stand real close to them right this minute. I radiate anger. It makes them feel upset. It’s not about them.

I’m supposed to be loving. I don’t feel loving. I feel like I am bad. I feel like I have nothing to give. I feel like a defective person who is incapable of loving anyone. I used up a lot of spoons yesterday and I still fucked up repeatedly. I’m really not good at saying the right things. I feel mean-spirited. I don’t mean to be.

This is where the Generalized Anxiety Disorder part kicks in.

I am not being mean to the kids but I am not up for cuddling today. They are feeling pretty upset about that. I have to live with them being upset sometimes. And they have to live with me being upset sometimes. I’m sorry for that. I know this is the downside of this home schooling business. I know that this is the reason folks thinks folks with mental illness shouldn’t be parents. These mood swings are ridiculous.

I told the kids I needed to go sit in the garage and watch a grown up movie. I need to have my break early in the day. I’m watching Double Jeopardy with Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones. Why do people act the way they do? How do people develop their own different obsessions and needs?

I will take my kids out to play and I will make jokes and interact with them. I will snuggle on demand. I will weed and I will be thrilled if they join me and provide a bunch of alternatives so they don’t have to.

It doesn’t matter how I feel. It matters how I act.

It’s ok for me to say, “I’m tired. I put out a lot of energy yesterday and I’m being grumpy with you because of that. I’m sorry I’m snapping. I’m going to go watch a movie and try to relax. After that we will go play.” I put out a plate of snacks. I refilled the water bottles. They are just having the ipad in the morning instead of in the afternoon today. That’s fine.

It doesn’t matter how I feel. It matters how I act. I want to have a relationship with these people. That means I have to be the fucking grown up. I don’t really want to be. But I signed on for this gig. Only fifteen more years until I am off duty. fuuuuuuck.

I will figure out what I want to live for at the end of the term of duty. Until then–time to go be a good example. Or some shit like that.

Today is bad.

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All I can think about is getting a razor blade and driving to the beach. Several big deal cuts from wrist to elbow and then I would swim out until I couldn’t swim any more. I promised myself I would raise my kids so I’m not going to do it today. I want to. I want to stop hurting.

I have been sobbing and wailing and whining that I miss my mother for almost thirty years. Yesterday during EMDR the thought loop that kept getting stuck was, “Honor thy mother and father” and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I am bad. I do not honor my mother or father. I am bad. I can’t even follow G-d’s rules.

During Calli’s nine day labor from hell my doula and midwife were both very irritated with me. They both had children who were under a year old whom they didn’t want to leave. I was inconvenient as a client. So they were snippy and would come and go and didn’t want to be with me more than they “HAD” to. And I almost died. And I lay in bed for weeks because I couldn’t stand. I crawled to the bathroom because I could not walk the four feet. Thankfully Kira brought us food or we would have been in a difficult spot.

I am going to die alone. I am going to die feeling unwanted and unloved and unappreciated. I don’t really see any other ending for my story. Some days I am more sanguine about this than others. Everyone is alone in the end–right?

I have no interest in being alive at the end of today. But I promised I would raise my kids. So I will be anyway. It doesn’t seem to matter what I want in this lifetime. You get what you get. It isn’t about “right”. It isn’t about “fair”. It isn’t about “deserve”.

Noah told me that he is trying to give me freedom. I’ve been free since I was five years old. No one has known what I have done unless I have chosen to tell them. I have done whatever I want. I traveled. I met people. If I didn’t have the money I found a way. I have had more freedom than pretty much anyone I know.

Someone has to care about you before they have expectations of you. No one knew what I was doing.

I want to slit my wrists so bad. I have no interest in completing today. I don’t want this pain. I’m so fucking done. The last few days have actually been pretty good. I was in a great mood this weekend.

Honor thy mother and thy father. Sometimes it comforts/haunts me that because I am an American I am allowed to exist. In other places my disobedience against my parents would probably end my life.

Honor thy rapist. Keep him holy. Do as he says. Keep your mouth shut you stupid whore.

If I could get these things out of my head I would. I just don’t know how. I don’t know how to stop feeling like I should die because I am bad. I am poison. I am going to infect other people with my badness.

In my adult life I’ve had big celebrations for my birthday for 21, 23, and 30. Tom did the 23 birthday party technically after I broke up with him. He loved me but he didn’t know how to show it and a lot of things that I asked him for–a lot of kinds of attention that I needed–came in the month or two after I broke up with him.

I hosted my 30th. I spent the morning before the party beating my head on the concrete floor in the garage. I spent the day feeling like, “Why don’t these people want to see me unless I am offering food and drink and lots of other people to talk to?” I’m not actually sure I should try again.

What I want, the way I want to be seen does happen for some people. It’s not my lot in this life. Somehow I have to stop caring.

Instead I want to die. Then no one will even be bothered by a cursory glance in my direction.

I hate me so much right now. Fucking loser. Really the best thing my body could be used as is fish food.

Do something different

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I want to cut. I want to cut really a lot. I visualize it. It’s like I have a movie projector running in the background. It overlays everything I see. My thigh. Preferably my right. I think this would be a really long section of horizontal slashes. I like making them all the same length and then trying to make a straight row. Deviation from the uniform length is reason to gauge myself harder as I try to straighten the line.

Yes, I know I am bad. I should not have said a word to my niece. I should have shut my worthless whore mouth. I know. I fucking know. I am mean. I am selfish. How dare I share things with people that are not their problem. I’m bad. I know. It’s all my fault. I know.

Pot really isn’t cutting my anxiety today. Sometimes that happens. It isn’t that I am feeling paranoid–I’m fairly careful about my strains. I want to die. That is the only way to not be bad for not being part of my family. I want to bleed and bleed and bleed.

I know I am not good enough to defend or protect. My niece is. I know. I need to shut the fuck up because I don’t matter and I never have. I know. I know I fucking know.

I’m past my normal coping methods today. I sent an email to a friend who is a therapist. My therapist is on vacation. Merry Fucking Christmas.

I’m not worried about actually cutting. I’ve made that a lot harder to do. The tools are not as readily to hand. I don’t have privacy and I’m not going to fucking do it where my kids could see. I don’t have the body integrity to get away with hiding a large wound. Shanna is absolutely old enough to notice and question.

I’m not worried about going off and killing myself today. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction. Fuck them.

But I am going to have a hard time being calm all day. I am going to have a hard time not crying all day. I am going to have a hard time keeping to appropriate topics all day. I know it is because I am bad. Because I don’t know how to act right. I’m afraid of teaching my children to be bad like me.

I don’t know how to find enough silence to hide in without that magic button on my leg. The other random chronic pain stuff (holy shit my head hurts) is not the same. I have to block that out all the time in order to function. I just do it without thinking about it.

I don’t know how to distract myself today. I need to be able to emotionally connect with my children. But I hurt so much. I don’t know how to keep being good. I’m not. I’m bad. I’m disgusting. I know.

I should never have told anyone anything. I should have just killed myself and spared everyone the discomfort of knowing anything about my life. Why don’t I shut the fuck up.

Because I can’t.

It is my fault my dad and my brother are dead. It should have been me instead of them. All of the problems are my fault anyway. Everything was just fine until I showed up. Right? Isn’t that the story?

I should probably go run. But I’m worried about my balance. I’m very dizzy. Maybe I’ll stretch on the floor.

I don’t know how I am going to stop crying.

just mean

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I am having a lot of nasty self-hating thoughts. Those are primarily manifesting externally as me snapping at Noah when he asks me how I am doing.

I hadn’t cried in over a week. Yesterday there was a lot of uncontrollable crying and today is pretty rocky too.

I don’t know how to stop wanting. But the wanting is a fresh wound over and over. Wanting is so foolish. Wanting is just the first step in being let down.

I wish I had more positive feelings towards humankind. I understand that there are people who have never let me down. I also have never asked them for anything serious and the people I have asked for serious things have all faded away.

It feels like it is all my fault. I would be able to have more people in my life if only I weren’t so bad. So terrible. Mean. Unforgiving.

I can’t forgive anyone else for anything anymore. I can’t forgive myself for anything and I have the unhappy premonition that has to come first.

I wish I hated me less. I wish that I didn’t want to cut. I wish that I didn’t want to hurt myself at all. I wish that I could stop crying. I wish that my stomach didn’t hurt. I wish my neck and head didn’t hurt. I wish I didn’t spend so much time alone. I wish that my kids “counted” as more company. It feels horribly unfair to them that they don’t.

I feel like everything in my life is draining me and nothing feeds me. I am a riverbed gone dry. I don’t know what else I have to give.

I was told not to isolate myself in giving up on Facebook. I think I am going to do that in fact. It looks like a lot of staying home in December, obviously other than Disneyland. Because in the midst of my pity party I have to feel kind of weird about the fact that I have such a ridiculous amount of privilege.

I am well past the point where money buys more happiness. At this point more money, more things to do don’t make me happier. Going to Disneyland is a nice distraction and it fills several days and it breaks our routine and I will do far less work than usual which is nice. We are staying in a studio this time. That means there is no stove so I can’t cook. This trip will involve a lot of dried cereal. We never eat dry cereal. Gosh it sounds fun.

I am looking forward to taking the kids to see the fancy decorations. I don’t do a lot of them. I am looking forward to being able to do everything on foot. I am looking forward to being able to walk around for distraction all day long. I bet we will spend a lot of the day playing in Downtown Disney on the sidewalk. That’s just as much fun for them.

I don’t like that I keep hurting Noah. I feel like a nasty bitch. I probably am. I’m sure he deserves better. I wish I was better. I wish that I was as good as he deserves. But I’m not.

Today it feels so mean to force people to tolerate my company. I don’t feel like I am capable of being silent enough to not be offensive and mean and bad.

 In other news I am due to start my period anytime in the next 72 hours. Could be any second. There is a non-zero possibility that this weekends freak out is entirely related to hormones.

Maybe if I leave the monsters here I can sleep.

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I can’t sleep. I don’t feel good about keeping Noah awake with my crying. Ok internet, you can keep me company. I have done the best that I can with my ergonomic set up. I hope I don’t regret tonight. My arms hurt.

I can’t sleep because when I lie in bed I acutely notice this spot deep in my belly that has hurt since Calli was born. It hurts when I twist at all from a prone position. I’m kind of worried something is wrong.

I tried seeing a doctor a little over a year ago. I was told by the general doctor that she wouldn’t do anything for me until I dealt with psychiatry. Psychiatry told me they wouldn’t work with me until I stopped nursing and stopped smoking pot and start taking pills that will make my life a living hell.

I need a new doctor.

The problem is that finding a new doctor is kind of a nightmare of humiliation and expense. Doctors like to give me transvaginal ultrasounds despite knowing I am paying out of pocket and don’t want the procedure–I asked to just have a blood test. “Oh I just want to check.”

And I shut down. And I do what I am told. And I have to listen to a nasty lecture about how my previous miscarriage was my fault because I am still nursing Shanna and I will lose the baby I am carrying right now if I don’t stop nursing her immediately.

I didn’t stop nursing Shanna. She didn’t stop nursing until she was three. A full nine months after her sister was born.

Doctors are just people. But they think they are Smarter and Wiser than stupid little me. Even though this is my body.

I was told that my grandmother (father’s mother) died of cancer. It wasn’t found until it was too late for treatment. She was a stubborn woman and even though she was told she would die immediately she held out long enough to gather all of her grandchildren together one last time and then sit down with all of her sisters and do a crossword puzzle. It took a few months to arrange, apparently. Then she died.

I can’t help but wonder if she felt the pain inside her and thought, like me, I hope this kills me. Then at least my kids won’t have to deal with my suicide.

This is not a good approach to health care management. I really hate dealing with doctors. I find the entire process degrading and insulting. I never get adequate treatment and I always end up shutting my stupid mouth and consenting to procedures I initially protest. Not because I am convinced they are necessary–because when a sociopath tells me to shut up I do. I know I am at the bottom of the caste system. I shut up when I am scared. When I get to the point of going to see a doctor I am scared.

I don’t feel I can ask my midwife about it. She badly handled my labor. Really badly. She was burnt out on driving to Fremont. She shouldn’t have taken me on as a client. She didn’t really have the patience for dealing with me. She kept me from dying as I hemorrhaged in my bed so I feel like she fully earned her fee and all. But I don’t trust her any more. I will never ask her for help of any kind again.

I don’t want to keep Noah up as I cry because when you have mental illness you have to be aware of the cost on the people around you. I have to be careful not to overburden him. I can’t be too dependent on him. It’s not his fault that I don’t really have anyone else.

Noah and I are having a lot of hard conversations. And I’m not going to give details about them on the internet. He doesn’t get a lot of privacy in this lifetime but he gets a little.

Hard shit is hard. And tonight I’m having quite a pity party. I want to say that it feels like my whole fucking life has been hard. On one hand I want to berate myself for my hyperbole. On the other hand… can’t I justifiably say that? I mean, I do have easier periods. I’m drowning. And it’s my fucking problem.

And the lady who actually likes me in the home schooling group is telling me she might stop coming. (btw Lisa–don’t bloody tell anyone about the shit I write here.) That makes my throat close with fear. I wish the universe would stop fucking kicking me.

I feel like I must not be fit for human companionship. Otherwise I wouldn’t manage to drive people away so effectively. No one seems to be able to bear very much of me. They only want small pieces.

I had a hard time at the convention for a variety of reasons. I couldn’t be the performative whore. I am not hunting. I am trying to actively discourage people. I had to turn down multiple requests to play (which shocked the fuck out of me–that is not usual) which is kind of awkward. “Sorry but you don’t get to beat me in pay back for me beating on your (wasn’t then) wife many years ago.” Awww. Sad face. But but… I would look so cute bruised.

Yeah. A lot of people have thought that. A lot of people have wanted me to be in pain.

I feel like I am drowning. A nice bus to the head sounds really good right now. And close by. I think the best part of suicide is you don’t have to deal with the consequences of your actions.

I know someone who jumped in front of a train and survived. He lost the bottom part of a leg. He went on to become a minister. I fucked him in the dorm building of his seminary school. He was one of the most brutal people I have ever had sex with. He had an incredibly strong upper body (duh–he had to walk with crutches most of the time and he was a big man) and he really wanted to bruise me.

I was lying on the bed on my side. I was trying to look tempting. He mocked me and asked if I was playing my whore game. I kind of sputtered. Then he slapped his hands down on my side just below my armpit and my upper thigh really hard and picked me up and threw me against the wall.

I lay there and convulsed until he started hitting me again. He really liked slapping my face.

I chanted in my head, “I’m supposed to like this. I’m supposed to like this.”

After a few minutes of alternating between slapping my face and my breasts and my thighs and my belly he spread my legs open. He started hitting my cunt.

I didn’t really keep track of how long that went on but I just about levitated off the bed. It fucking hurt.

Then he put a condom on. Then he picked me up by the hips and flipped me over to my front. He yanked me up onto my knees and he entered me from behind.

It hurt. I wasn’t particularly well lubricated and condoms tear me internally during the best of times. Legacy of a network of scars that line my vagina. I was raped a little too much a little too early. I’ve seen the scars. A gynecologist used a clear speculum and a light and a mirror to show me why sex hurt me so much when I was 22.

I always thought it was just supposed to feel that way.

Being at the con this weekend was hard in a variety of ways. When I think about the things I have done I feel a wide variety of emotions. I don’t know what my core values are. I don’t know what I am most proud of beyond my children. I feel dead inside. I feel like I am nothing. I have nothing to give. I am a bottomless pit of need and that will always be just my problem. I don’t live in West Africa. We don’t consider stupid bitches like me community problems. (Errr–note to new readers: I participated in a grief ritual facilitated by a West African woman who talked about her tribe. It was a life changing experience. Sobonfu Somé is the name of the woman who presented and if you ever get a chance to work with her do it.)

My community is only interested in me if I want to dress like a whore and be beaten so they can watch and beat off. Or at the very least pawn off my kids on babysitters multiple nights of the week so I can “go out and have fun”. No.

I’m not interesting as myself. I have to play their games. I’m busy. I think my children deserve this span of time. They won’t be with me forever. In the long run, this is absolutely worth the sacrifices.

I hope. I pray to a God I would like to spit on. I think I am kind of officially “agnostic” at this point. I am trying to hope that science is right. Otherwise there is some all knowing “benevolent” person who wants me to suffer a really lot.

See Noah–I’m not just crying because of you.

I keep trying to tell myself that mental illness is a liar. This will pass. I will not always feel this way. I objectively know that I have non-depressed periods. It has been a bad three years.

I’m tired of being lied to. I’m tired of feeling abandoned and unwanted. I’m tired of people telling me how bad I am. I’m tired of being afraid of the next lie. How am I going to be hurt next? I HAVE GOOD FUCKING REASONS FOR BEING PARANOID. GIVE ME A GOD DAMN BREAK. But I hear I need to get over it anyway.

I think the stress is going to eat me alive. There isn’t much of my body that doesn’t hurt.

Noah is about to go through open enrollment at work. Our insurance is probably going to change again. I will probably not see a doctor before that happens.

I don’t think it is serious. But it feels like something pulsing. Like a piece of intestine got stuck between the abdominal muscles when they healed after the pregnancy. It’s a very dull ache. If it was sharp and piercing I would go see a doctor immediately. I tell myself that it could be referred pain. It’s nothing. I’m fine. I’m just a hypochondriac–just like my mama always (and I mean fucking always) said.

I have all the old goodies playing tonight. I hate my mother and I miss my mom so bad I feel like the top of my head is going to explode with pain. I have a blinding headache. I’ve been crying for a long time really hard. I’m probably getting dehydrated. And it’s not like I’m sleeping when I should be sleeping. And I’ve been sleep deprived for years.

Did I mention that the kids are going through a boundary testing phase and it is hard to not scream at them all day every day? I am not doing so. I’m not entirely sure that letting them watch the ipad for many hours a day is a great solution either. I don’t have a better one.

It was really weird being at the con. It’s really weird thinking about the things I have done. I don’t think I regret any of it. I learned from it. I learned what I specifically needed to learn from it.
Today I saw people I have beaten and tied up. People (male, female, other) I have had sex with.

It is so completely removed from my life now. I have done stage performances of bdsm with some of the people I saw this weekend. I didn’t see many classes. I have had contact with the presenters of all of the ones I did see for a decade or so.

In the class on erotic humiliation the presenter asked the audience to insult her core values (her Japanese-Americaness, her worthiness of being loved, her desirability, and her intelligence) in a sentence. After I listened to the audience fumble and lamely half-ass it for a few minutes I yelled, “Who would ever want an ugly, stupid, worthless Chink like you.” Her head whipped over. She told me to stand up and yell it louder. I made my voice get mean. I said it again.

Then I sat down really fast and my face was read and my heart was pounding and I was out of breath. She and I communicated about how much saying that affected me. She talked about how it effected the other people in the audience. Fucking awkward. (She was thrilled. That was exactly what she was fishing for.)

Do I still want to be this person?

this is all the typing my wrists can manage today

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I was asked if I wasn’t writing to punish Noah. No, you pita I am not punishing Noah. My arms hurt and I haven’t figured out typing with the braces yet (I’m not sure I will be able to type at speed on this keyboard–it’s really slow and hard) and I haven’t had much time alone in a room. Using edibles instead of smoking means that all of my alone time is running. I can’t type while running.

I miss my mom really hard.When I think about her lately I remember the things she got right. My mom was very good at Christmas and birthdays. She was good at them because she was raised Mennonite (so no Christmas) and her father’s birthday was the same day as hers and he was more important during her childhood. So she paid a lot of attention to her kids on special days. She was absolutely in the the gift love language camp.

I gave my mom her first Christmas stocking when I was sixteen. She cried. No one had ever thought of her. I don’t want to become her.

Noah isn’t big on birthdays. Not his own or anyone else’s. I feel like that makes me a worthless piece of shit. I work how hard all year long on our life and I prioritize other people above me all the god damn time. I treat me like I’m not very important pretty much every day. I look forward to my birthday as the day when I’m special. Only I’m not. I’m stupid to think I am.

It’s not that I’ve had good birthdays ever–I’m not saying my mom managed that. But she gave me a lot of presents. Well, when I was going into middle school my birthday presents were a trapper keeper, lined notebook paper, and pencils. My birthday is the second week of school in a lot of districts. I didn’t even get fucking erasers. I got in a lot of trouble for crying and making my mother feel bad. It was rude of me.

I’m in a bad spot. The suicidal ideation is really pervasive, dominant, and overwhelming. I keep showing up to work every day hoping that if I ignore it then it will go away. I’m angry and sad. I feel worthless. I feel like outside of Calli and Shanna no I don’t actually care if it would hurt people for me to die. I don’t care if you people get to hurt more than me one day. Fuck you for thinking you should be more important than me forever.

But I really don’t want to do that to my children. So I don’t. Today I feel very certain that if I didn’t have kids I wouldn’t be here any more. Nothing else is worth this.

Noah and I have talked about his worry about what happens when the kids are grown ups. Will they still be enough? Will he be enough? I don’t know. Given that I just got told fuck you for the fourth year out of six years of marriage on my birthday probably not. Probably not. I feel like a selfish piece of shit but no I don’t think I have another thirty years of this in me. I’m tired of feeling worthless and unimportant. I’m not sure how much longer I can handle this.

I feel humiliated and embarrassed. I shouldn’t care. It should be no big deal. I shouldn’t even blink at this point. I know I’m not important. I don’t know why I keep being stupid enough to be disappointed by reality over and over.

not good

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Terrible running day. I didn’t finish. Noah has to leave. I have to smoke first. I can’t take care of my kids when I am crying as hard as I have been crying for two hours. I can’t take care of my kids when the only thing going through my mind is wondering what would actually kill me if I jumped off an overpass in front of a semi. Head trauma? Crushing my lungs? Blood loss slowly on the side of the road?

I feel petty and stupid and immature and like an asshole. I am so selfish. So stupid. And pretty much everything in my head is stuff I have said before with no effect. So I can’t say it again.

I found an extra scalpel blade a while ago. I didn’t throw it away. It is in new packaging and I found it going through stuff. That’s the kind of life I have. “I was going through a box and I found a spare scalpel blade.” I want to cut. I want to cut more than I want to breathe. Significantly more. So much that I am shaking with how much I want it. I want it. I fucking want it. I want to bleed. I want to see it.

I have to take the kids to the park so I can run fourteen laps around the soccer field. I need to be more stoned first. Maybe I don’t actually have to do fourteen laps. Technically the walk to and from the park will be far enough to make up the miles. Maybe we’ll just go to the park and I’ll push Calli on the swing. I’m not sure I can be responsible for anything else today.