Category Archives: boundaries

Continuing on a theme

When I say I worry about too frequent contact there are a couple of folks I am thinking about.

There’s this really nice lady in my life. She used to be my next door neighbor. She’s going through a traumatic divorce (her ex is a real shit weasel) and she’s now dealing with his bullshit from India. So when we talk we spend a lot of time with her asking me questions about the legal system. In the past I have had to explain a lot of stuff about the DMV. She’s not super big on answering her own questions with internet searches because she doesn’t even know where to begin. (Frankly, now that I am searching from outside the US I see how much harder it is from a distance. My ignorance is vast.)

It’s not that I get nothing from the friendship. I get a lot. I like her quite a bit and she teaches me about things and I really like being a helper.

But she keeps asking if we can talk every day because she could really use the support. I… call every three months. That’s what I can handle. I feel like a shit weasel because she needs more support and she wants to get it from me but… I would flip out if I tried to talk to her for over an hour every day. I just can’t. It’s a lot of thinking and work on my end to solve her problems for her and she only occasionally does anything to follow the advice she spends a lot of time asking me for. That’s hard. It drains me. I feel exhausted by the end and then I am a less good mother. That’s not fair to my kids every day.

Another friend is an oldie-but-goodie. He was my boss from 16-19 and we’ve stayed in touch over the years. He’s often told me that I’m one of the few people on the planet who is allowed to tell him what he should do because I’m the only one who a)knows him well enough and b)gives good enough advice. He is currently living with his folks because he is retired and his parents require hospice care. He doesn’t know how much longer this will go on because their bodies are failing fast.

He’s super depressed. He’s isolated. He has had a whole career focused on culture and the arts and he is absolutely despondent to be back in this one horse small Texas town. There’s barely a movie theater and absolutely no real theatre. There isn’t a good bookstore or library and frankly he doesn’t have the money to buy stuff online. He’s not doing well. I talk to him every couple of weeks for a few minutes at a time. If he wanted longer chats… I couldn’t do it so often. He wants to talk for half an hour or less, but he needs contact. He needs to feel like he was not forgotten. He needs to process how hard and sad and traumatizing the work he is doing is for him and there is no such thing as a support group or available therapists where he is.

I love these people. My old boss with great intensity–he was an important mentor to me at a crucial time in my life. He taught me everything I know about carpentry, electrical work, rigging, and painting. I love this man. I don’t mind offering him support.

But I only have so much to give.

As a dear man has said to me, I’m more of a foul weather friend. It is hard for me to be present for the best times of peoples lives. I am someone that people depend on when everything is going wrong. That’s not all bad, but it is hard. It means I feel less like setting boundaries is a good thing because my friends are hurting. I know I can help alleviate pain.

Because of posts I make on public forum I have a whole bunch of folks who are sending me private messages essentially asking for therapy.

This is complicated! I’m good at it. I do help people feel better. I tend to have a few month cycles where a given person messages almost every day then they move through their crisis and I don’t hear from them much anymore.

I often feel like these dynamics are my fault. I feel like I create a crisis if none exists. I feel like people not wanting to share good times with me is my fault. When Sarah wanted me to be there for her good time (at my expense so she could focus on other people) I kind of made that not go well. I didn’t want to just help her have a good time while I saw her for a few minutes a day. Not given how hard it was for me.

I will put that much effort into helping people through trauma without expecting anything back but I can’t put that much effort into helping someone else have a good time without me. I just fucking can’t.

I feel… broken. I feel selfish. I feel cruel and mean. I don’t know if I actually am or not. I don’t expect people going through trauma to focus on me. I deeply resent when someone wants me to be furniture in the room while they have a good time without me.

I don’t know how to perceive this in myself beyond my default that I am wrong and of course these people I love are better/more right than me.

My old boss could go six months at a time without talking to me when his life was going well. I was never invited to the parties or events. I could have invited myself to some of them… if I found out about them in advance, which was rare.

I don’t know if I have the right to feel used.

I don’t know what to do about always putting myself in these kinds of positions. I am trying to have more boundaries around it all.

Why do people only want to talk to me when their lives are going to shit?

I suspect it is because I emote for people. I also expect people to be working on shit all the time. Most people, when things are going well, don’t want to change at all. They want to hold their breath and stand very still and hope things continue. I can’t do that. To me change is as inevitable as breathing and if you try to crystalize in the “good part” of your life you will cause yourself great pain in the future when you need to know things you don’t already know. You have to keep changing and growing or learning or you are going to create a problem at some point coming up.

What don’t you already know? Hurry up and learn it. Or you will experience pain because of that lack.

My kids and I have been watching documentaries all during their school break. We have a lot to talk about. Netflix has some great ones out at this point! We don’t watch casual, fun things. We try to learn more about what we need to do in the future. How are humans creating problems and what do we need to do about them? What can we do about them?

Don’t stand in one place assuming everything is fine or the ship will sink while you are on the dance floor.

Incidentally my kids want break to be over so bad. They want to go back to school. Ha. They want kiiiiiiiiiiiids.

People don’t often reach out to me to say “Things are going great for me! I’m happy!” I feel like this is because I am such an asshole and I might rain on their parade. I am quite an Eeyore. I feel like this is appropriate. And it makes me feel rather sad about myself. I don’t know exactly what I need to change in myself to be someone that people want to talk to about good things too.

Ugh. I’m up early catching up on the only vlog I follow. I’m making tea to go with it. Time to stop typing.

PS- after watching the vlog for a while I have to smack myself in the forehead. Yes. Sometimes people do put a bunch of effort into sitting around and telling me about the good in their lives.

It’s complicated.

What I’ve been looking for

I have spent a lot of time reading forums about abusive families over the past few years. Reading back over my old journal entries from 13 years ago reminds me… I basically coaxed myself through the process that many people need help with. Reading the emails between my siblings about my father’s will (oh that was gross and scary), reading about how my mother treated me as I was becoming a mother myself (hello complete lack of healthy boundaries), and all of the ways I tried to create family out of friendships…

I am so very textbook. I know that. I have known that for a long time. But skimming the oldest entries I have as I lock things down behind a new password… phew.

Picking friendships with people who try to control me by telling me I need to behave how they want me to behave or I have a personality disorder? That is utterly, perfectly textbook for someone with my background. I will abase myself and beg and hurt myself doing labor if someone reminds me of my family because that was my role.

Seeing this in the context of moving on from the bay is so illuminating. Mostly because Jenny is providing a level of support for us moving that I never would have asked for, never would believe I deserve, and frankly it makes me feel uncomfortable. But in that good healthy growth sort of way. I have put 25 years into chasing Jenny and mostly she let me chase her and she didn’t chase back all that much. Now she is returning the full force and whoa. Is this how I make her feel?

I wouldn’t expect this from Jenny because she is very reserved and she doesn’t make big promises.

Frankly, this is what Sarah promised and never delivered.

It’s not fair to say Jenny hasn’t done things for me in the past. When I overextended myself taking care of Sarah (driving to a different state to help her with packing and unpacking because she couldn’t/wouldn’t do it for herself due to mental and physical health reasons) Jenny is the person who flew out to drive my van home. Because she loves me and she didn’t want me to get hurt.

When I needed a place to go when I moved out of my ex’s house, Jenny figured out how we could live together. That didn’t work out because I am a ridiculous control freak and Jenny is not going to adapt how she lives for anyone. She knows her limits in a way that I deeply admire.

I feel like I am heading for a rebirth. I am no longer going to be chasing people who will watch me drain my life blood for them while giving me a flippant thanks and not living up to the promises they make. Jenny under promises and over delivers.

I need to not create any of the same patterns with Scottish folk. I will make friends slowly, gradually, with a lot of boundaries. Jenny and I will be able to have civil, adult conversations about boundaries and needs and what is ok to ask for. Jenny has never had a hard time (from my point of view) with telling me “No that doesn’t work for me.”

I know that I don’t have to show up and start performing a bunch of labor in exchange for the help I have gotten in the past few months. Jenny knows better than almost anyone that I need to slow down and not take on new big tasks for a while. She will sit and wait, like she is coaxing a cat to like her. She knows I am drawn to her like a magnet. I will absolutely find ways to spend time with her and share love that work for both of us. And maybe for the first time in my recorded history…

I can slow down enough to let my body heal from everything that has happened to it. I am going through old blog entries. My body has endured so much. My soul has endured so much. As my dear friend said to me, most people are broken down by what happened to me and my soul broke open. I have had a hard time not flooding people with love and affection hoping they would return it. I have provided acts of service and labor long past when it was healthy for me because I wanted to be worthy of love.

Jenny loves me even when I am not doing labor for her. If I go back through my blog I can see just how much labor I have put forth trying to buy love. Having kids has changed this dynamic so much. Children need that kind of labor from their parents. It is a requirement for building healthy attachment and safety. Children need a flood of labor and attention and affection.

Healthy adult friendships do not. I do not need to flood Jenny for her to know I love her. She tells me to back off.

I feel like I am tarnishing everyone with this brush and it isn’t fair. I have friends who love me and support me without me having to do tons of labor for them. The friendships that have endured for decades and I feel like they still support me… honestly they aren’t the people I flooded. J in Portland did so much to support us landing there that I was stunned. I have not done labor for J since I braided her daughter’s hair for her wedding nearly 20 years ago. A in Portland helped even though the only labor I have provided was helping her load a truck 12 years ago one time. A has flown to another state to support me in large endeavors.

I was accused of scanning for signs of betrayal. Well, sort of? I am scanning to see what are the results of my behavior. I am scanning to see if people respond to me how they say they will. I am scanning to see if people are treating me like my family or not. I am scanning to see if people are safe for me to pour my love into. I am scanning to see if people are healthy to introduce to my children.

Many of the people who have volunteered the hardest to be in the lives of my children are some of the least appropriate people I have had relationships with. I only see this in the rear view mirror.

Maybe you think I should be able to figure this out without looking at these people and matching up their words and their actions over and over and over again but I am not smart enough. I do not have enough self love to move towards safety instinctively. I have to work at it. I have to put time and effort and mental work towards trying to evaluate if I am making good choices or not.

Given what I have reread in the past couple of days… my choices are improving but I am far from perfect. I need to exercise a lot of caution as I integrate into a new community. Instant family feelings really… yeah. I can’t do that again. When I think of the number of people in the bay who told me I was “chosen family” within a year of us meeting…. well, that’s a red flag I will never miss again. I will never say that to someone again.

Jenny is chosen family because for 25 years when I have had a crisis and I appear on her doorstep she lets me come in and cry until I am done. When she needs help or support I will do what I can to provide it. I will shower her with attention because she fascinates me and she has for most of my life.

Jenny is who I went to when my father and brother suicided. Jenny helped me get back safely when I was stupid enough to strand myself. Jenny is helping me move continents.

I believe her when she says she will do something. I can count on one hand my adult friendships who I trust to the degree I trust her.

In the bay I had a vast shallow network. I could ask the whole network and someone would probably show up on a given day but I could never predict who and many of the people would show up once and never again. That’s not evil. That doesn’t mean any of those people were doing anything wrong. But it isn’t what I was looking for.

There were people who promised me the moon and didn’t come close to delivering and that hurt. There were people who would have been more stable and consistent support in exchange for me letting their other, more important to them, friends treat me like dirt.

Is it scanning for betrayal if I am willing to examine the truth of someone’s behavior in comparison to their words? I can live with that. I must live with that. I will live with that.

I am trying to figure out what living with integrity means for me. I am trying to figure out how much I have to give while maintaining enough energy for me to give to myself so that I can be healthy.

It’s kind of funny thinking about it in terms of the threads on these forums. I can see my growth curve the way I can see the growth in people who come back to their own threads for years and years.

Even a stunted tree reaches for the light.

We fly out of Bangkok in 39 hours. Nearly time to go find what I have been looking for.

Housekeeping and illness

I am sick. I am producing buckets of green snot and I get dizzy whenever I walk down into the heat. That means the remaining 57 hours of being in Bangkok are not going to be much more festive than the last few days. That’s a huge bummer because Thailand was the only Asian country I was dying to see. My body is just not that fun.

To keep myself busy in the apartment I have gone back and changed the password on all of the posts that had a password. I am going to slowly go through everything “private” and put it behind a password. Only 3600 posts to go… In the future I will probably put a variety of topics behind a password because my children deserve more privacy than I have shown over the last few years. As we are establishing ourselves in a new country it is better for their classmates to not be able to find my more extreme topics. Not to mention the parents….

That means that if you want to read all the juicy stuff you need to out yourself. No more silent stalkers.

Every single one of those posts requires a minimum of 5 clicks so it may take me a few days to get all the archives updated. It’s hard on my arms. Minimum of 18,000 clicks, y’all. Hundreds of my early blog entries were one or two sentences long. That many stupid clicks to update that shit. LJ was such a mess. I have been on and off Twitter since September 2008. Staying off seems smart for my mental health.

I really don’t have much to report about Bangkok to my sadness. We are mostly eating from stuff we can get from 7-11.

I haven’t reread everything I have updated but I am skimming a lot. So many years of begging for attention, for love, for validation. I am really glad that I have stopped most of that. I am a lot more stable emotionally. I am much more appropriate in my behavior. I am a lot closer to who I want to be.

I am only going to share me with people who deserve me going forward. I feel like moving to Scotland is time for a rebirth. I have a family who adores me, friends who love me and respect me and put effort into maintaining their end of relationships, and enough projects to last the rest of my life.

I’m excited.

Happy birthday!

Today my Middle Child turns 9! The last single digit age. Kiddo is absolutely ecstatic to be no longer 8. Apparently 8 has been a really hard year and we are glad to be rid of it. Today kiddo gets to dictate what we eat all day and we allow birthday people to have a reprieve from school and chores. It’s going to be a fun day.

We literally came to Portland for today because kiddo wanted to spend today with Dad. We will be spending hours with Dad in a neutral location.

I have stopped using “Dad” or “Grandpa” with my kids. He’s a friend of the family. Not because I hate him or because I want to end the relationship… because it has been made clear to me that I don’t count as a daughter when it comes to giving support, only when it comes to asking for money. I don’t need to show my children that I agree that I deserve such a relationship with a “father”. But my friends sometimes need to be reminded of boundaries.

I am feeling some guilt because ECs birthday was a time of such limbo that she got very few physical presents. MC has… several physical presents. EC is also in that in-between time when she has given away her toys but she isn’t quite at the level for adult stuff yet. MC still solidly wants toys.

A while back MC’s therapist told me that my expectation for behavior should be based on thinking that MC is about one year younger than chronologically expected. Given that they are still in the 98% of height, this is still kind of hard to balance in terms of shifting ones mental process. People are guessing kiddo to be 11/12 years old because of physical development and in terms of emotional development it is more like they are turning 8. That’s hard. They do their absolute best to live up to expectations, but life is hard.

We leave for Bangkok in two days. Our thirteenth wedding anniversary and the day we officially own the house is in five days. We arrive in Inverness on my 38th birthday in thirteen days. (Because of dateline stuff we leave Bangkok in twelve days.)

We mostly packed last night. Like 80%? I think we won’t have a suitcase over 45 lbs and most of them will be under 30 lbs. That’s a far cry from everything being 50 lbs on the nose.

One foot in front of another. Keep going.

I sent the letter to the head teacher. Eeep.

You need to get the chip off of your shoulder

 

I have gotten this same advice periodically throughout my life. I need to not be hostile. I always have mixed feelings when someone tells me this. It feels like “I don’t like this personality trait so you shouldn’t have it.” Because it sure isn’t true that having this chip on my shoulder will prevent me from having a happy life or friends or a very positive set of relationships. It may absolutely true that I will not be capable of having a positive relationship with you while I have a chip on my shoulder but that’s the price of doing business. Or being alive. You can’t please everyone.

But I am going to have to change. I have absolutely no idea how my personality will need to change to fit in where we are going. I mean, I know that. I know I can’t say “I am who I am and you have to just put up with me.” I also don’t activate the chip on my shoulder quite as readily as I used to for all kinds of good reasons.

But I feel absolutely sick at the idea that I should give up all of my sharpness because I have a partner and that’s going to protect me. First: I don’t wear a ring (my god damn hands hurt) so when I am not with my children and obviously part of a family unit I lose the Mantle of White Motherhood that protects me most of the time now. I know it’s a thing. I know that it is a privilege rarely afforded to mothers who are not white. Second: I don’t want to be dependent on someone thinking a man is going to come after them if they hurt me. Noah has long been clear that we are not in that kind of relationship. If I am going to be protected I need to do it for myself.

Why the hell do you think I went and took classes to learn how to beat the hell out of people? It wasn’t because I thought it was fun. It was because next time I am going to ensure someone crawls away from trying to hurt me.

But if no one starts nothing won’t be nothing and that’s what I hope for. I don’t initiate violence. I really don’t. Sometimes I am quite shocked by how gentle I am in most of my life. I expected to have a more violent life. If I had stayed living with my family or in the communities I grew up in… there would be more violence. Money is my escape path.

No one wants to hit someone who can afford a lawyer. Honestly that is more protection at this point than being married.

But I don’t want to depend on either factor for being safe. Frankly I rely on Glamour. Not in the sense of being pretty or beautiful and dressed up. More in the sense of being able to go from seeming very inviting and non-threatening to being overwhelmingly intimidating and terrifying with just a switch of my emotional state. I haven’t had problems in a long time. I believe this is part of why. The Mantle of White Motherhood has been the rest of it.

Also, I stay home a lot.

We spent this morning talking about how we are going to approach independence for the kids in Scotland. We talked about schema and navigation and trust and mental maps and exploration and time management and money and safety and strengths and gradually increasing competency.

Middle Child asked if the kids will have to buy their own bikes. I said that I believe that transportation should be a parent’s responsibility when possible until a child is grown. However, if they want a new bike because they want a new style instead of needing a new size that’s on you. I think that is fair. So far kids are in agreement.

It was neat trying to explain schema. Noah tried to talk about it in terms of video games and I could tell that it was going over MCs head. I switched to makeup. Kiddo perked right up. What you need to know to put on eye makeup is different from what you need to know for putting on lipstick. Those are both little subtopics, little schemas inside the big schema of putting on makeup. That clicked. Of course we had to have a detour to get a mini-lesson on the differences between eye makeup and lipstick and why it matters (I did not give the lecture). Just to prove concept and all.

I had an interesting night the other night. I tried to wait until late enough that the kids wouldn’t really hear me but Eldest Child is really enjoying Twilight right now so she was up till like 11:30 reading. I was ranting at Noah about my feelings about a whole bunch of things. I don’t have a therapist right now. I haven’t been writing. I haven’t had a Skype call with a friend in a while where I could talk/process/organize my thoughts… I needed to talk.

EC heard me. She of course thought that when I said “fucking brat” I was talking about her. She said she went to sleep with her stomach hurting. We talked about it at breakfast the next morning. I explained very very loose outlines of about 19 different situations that I am coping with and why I am upset with some people and why I need to be able to talk about it sometimes. It is not healthy to shove all of your emotions into a box and put it in a closet and never deal with them. I waited until late at night and I was in my bedroom with my partner. It has to be ok for me to have feelings and to talk about them without hurting anyone.

She relaxed and said she understands. I asked if she has ever heard me talk about her like that. She said not like that, no. I told her that if I ever feel that strongly about her she will hear about it. She relaxed a bit more.

It’s nice being trusted.

We are all talking a lot about how hard it is going through this many transitions at once. We are all struggling through our feelings about relationships changing and our lives being different and what it will mean.

We keep coming back to why we are doing this: we want to be there. We felt better there. We think we have more potential to be healthy and happy there. We want to feel safe. We want to feel like there are not people with guns potentially all over the place.

We want to be in a place where people think that the best way to protect children is not to inflict PTSD on a generation.

Also, we are really over heat. We want water. So much water. I’m sure I’ll get waterlogged at some point but it is going to take years.

I want to live in a city that was designed to be at scale for walking, not a car. We believe that we can create absolutely no end of stuff to do without having to have it provided by other people. We don’t need to pay for entertainment. We like to make and we like to do. We like to walk.

We are so excited.

I am having mixed feelings about all the doors that are closing. They need to close for a million good reasons. But good things can hurt.

Growth hurts. I tell my children that we go through periods of disequilibrium where everything hurts because that is how we brace ourselves for how hard it is to change. It has to become more painful to stay the same before you really want to change.

I’m turning 38 in two weeks and one day. I am a grown ass woman, but I am still becoming who I want to be. I am still turning all of the different skills and traits I have into the person I wish I was instead of being a reaction to things that have happened to me. I’m a lot farther along the path than I thought I would be.

I am reacting to things more in line with my values. I like that. It’s not that I never mess up an interaction, I do. But it’s more rare and the infractions tend to be smaller.

I am happy about that.

I really appreciate the advice that goes “What I would do is….” then I can decide how much I want to be like this person and how much I like how their life is going so I want to try to emulate it. There is so much respect in such a suggestion. It in no way places any sort of assumption that the logistics of one person’s life applies to anyone else.

I told my kids that we should not expect to feel like we have *friends* in the first year. (Outside of Jenny’s family and my kids have been clear with me that they do not yet feel like they know Jenny’s family… it’s still a growing connection for them.)

I am friends with Jenny. That connection is solid. Everything else is still growing. We know that. If you are honest about your starting place it is a lot easier to figure out what to do to change it. We will put our roots into place slowly and carefully.

Some of my roots will have big chips. That’s ok.

I get to go home in fifteen days. Even though it is a very Christian city I am literally moving into a place where my address includes the word Druidh. I feel like we will grow more witchy.

Do no harm but take no shit. Give all respect and show no fear. Find a way or make one. Only boring people stay bored. We are workers, not shirkers.

We will be fine.

Homework (what do I need to work on)

This morning I am waking up feeling gooey, schmoopy, overwhelming love for my family. Ok. Time to think about the stuff I need to work on about myself.

What are the whack a mole problems that come up? Many of them are problems in me and related to my thinking as much or more as they are rooted in anyone else’s behavior. Like: I really struggle with feeling like I want/need my kids to be more self motivated than they are. Then I get these reminders that they are actually really doing exceptionally well for their ages and developmental levels and my expectations are almost certainly out of whack. My kids have different things they struggle with: my son tends towards passive aggression and my daughter tends towards executive function failures. Ok. That’s not out of line with fairly normal stuff for kids. What I need to work on in myself is feeling more patience with the fact that they struggle in these areas and I have chosen to not put them into school where there would be teams of other adults teaching them how to manage these issues. I choose to be the one who must solve these problems or it is my fault they still exist. Sometimes I struggle with feeling overwhelmed about the magnitude of difficulty of work I have assigned myself. But it isn’t my children’s fault that I assigned myself this role.

The thing is, even though I struggle with some of their behaviors sometimes… I truly like my children and I feel like I have done well turning them into little people to be proud of. It has been the result of massive, overwhelming work on my part. I watch my children night and day and give them little course corrections, assistance, reminders, and help. NO FUCKING WONDER THEY TREAT ME LIKE THEIR EXTERNALIZED BRAIN. I can look at my Eldest Child and tell what she is thinking about with a greater than 90% accuracy rate. “You are having x feeling about y thing. Do you think maybe you should do z?” Her response is always “HOW CAN YOU DO THAT?!?!?! That’s a good suggestion…..”

I only guess my Middle Child’s thoughts and feelings with a more like 40% accuracy rate and he and I both feel a sting because of that. He consciously and deliberately shields his thoughts more. He works on having a blank facial expression. He works on projecting feelings he is not having. He got that from me. I feel like I am letting him down by not being able to read him better. He feels misunderstood and less appreciated. But he works on making it hard. He wants me to find a way to work harder and still read him so that he can feel as understood as EC. That’s complicated.

He got in trouble this week. He set his assignments on Monday. I didn’t add extra shit. He picked what he wanted to do for the week. He needed to get his work done on Thursday so we could go have a visit with the cousins. He didn’t get his work done. I was pissy and impatient because he really didn’t come close and he spent the whole day dawdling and I lost out on a visit too. (I can’t just leave him home and go without him for a list of reasons.) So I told him that since he wanted to just sit around and not get his work done during work time that he could just sit around and do nothing during play time and he could do it in his room without toys. He didn’t have a fun day.

The next morning when he woke up he had a fire in his belly because he didn’t want to miss out on any of his plans or on EC’s birthday fun. He got up super motivated. He got a bunch of his chores done before I even saw him in the morning. The first time I saw him in the morning was when I was waking up and still sitting in bed. He came in timidly and I smiled at him and invited him into the bed for morning snuggle. (We have much better days as a family when we start out with everyone snuggling for at least a few minutes.) He talked about his plan for getting everything done early so that he had a buffer in case he planned poorly and it took longer than he intended.

He got everything done with time to spare.

We walked over to Jenny’s instead of going on a family walk and taking a taxi. On the way we had an hour to talk to each other. The conversation was wide ranging and interesting. I asked him what he thought about the day before when he was in trouble. He said he spent most of the time trying not to think. I said, “So kind of an extended meditation practice?” He said yeah. He didn’t use the word, but he was trying to not catastrophize. He said (barely paraphrased), “I was so grateful that the first thing you did when you saw me this morning was smile at me. It showed me for sure that I was right to try not to think all the super bad thoughts. I made a mistake and I’m going to be able to get over it and you will get over it and we will move on.” I told him that yeah we will move on. He’s a great kid and I love him very much and I need him to trust me. So when I say “Do x so you can have y” if he doesn’t do x he can’t have y.

He said, “I know. It’s part of why I respect you a lot. I know you work really hard at being someone who is honest with me every day.”

I have a lot of fear that part of his passive aggression is an attempt to get back some control from just how controlling I am. It’s not a healthy way to try to get back some of that control. He has a lot more control over his schooling now, but I think he needs to have just a little bit more. I think that when we get a house again he and EC are going to be allowed to shut me out of their rooms for a full year so they can figure out their own tidying habits without me needing to be so fucking controlling because we are packing over and over.

I truly literally have to be this controlling right now or we won’t be able to get packing done with the travel. It’s rough.

When this is no longer necessary I need to give them a bunch of space to try things for themselves and fail.

I really struggle with the fact that they don’t have much in the way of long-term planning skills… but that’s my problem because they are age appropriate or a bit above. I need to control *myself* more, not them in this area.

We have done a lot of work on getting them to see me as an independent person. Frankly, having Her Sweetness has helped. They can see when I need to not take care of them because I have other obligations and both of the big kids are super mature about understanding that they got to be the whole center of my universe for many years and it is wildly uncool for them to not let Her Sweetness have a similar amount of time and energy. We are still struggling on getting them to let me rest without interruption, but they are better than they used to be and if I were willing to set more boundaries I think they would fall into line.

The struggle is I hate setting boundaries with them because that feels like I am doing a mean/punishing thing. I’m not. I’m valuing myself.

I really struggle with valuing myself. I really struggle with saying, “I need to not do anything for anyone because I have to take care of myself.” I think I went to so many doctor visits because every time I walked into an office the medical practitioner would freak out about how badly my body was doing and give me a tiny little bit of support so I could go back and do more work than I am truly physically capable of doing. I’m not going to have that medical team keeping me on life support here.

I have to value myself enough to say no way more and that’s hard. I get so much of my self esteem from doing things for people. From doing work and supporting people I gain the sense that it’s ok for me to keep taking resources for myself because I am sharing as much as I get or more. But this isn’t sustainable.

I don’t actually think the problem is with my kids behaving badly. They are really amazing children. I think the problem is me valuing myself and my need for rest. I absolutely literally require more down time than I give myself. I have to exercise in a fairly regimented way and I haven’t been doing it because I am exhausting myself providing emotional care for other people. That’s not healthy or a good way to be a role model.

I don’t want to teach my kids to be how I am. Which means I need to change.

I need to spend more time resting. I need to spend more time with just adults not taking care of children. I need to turn down opportunities to do labor (emotional and physical) for people. Not because I hate anybody. Not because I am angry and throwing a tantrum. Because I need rest. Because I need to love on me the way I love on my children. Because I need to spend as much time paying attention to my needs as I do to my children’s needs.

I learn a lot from my kids. They work to set boundaries for themselves. They understand that limits exist in their lives for their benefit. They do better and feel better if they exercise and eat healthy food and turn off the screens at night and get good rest.

I need to learn from my children.

Maybe less hysterical, we’ll see.

This year… the kids don’t want to do academics. But they have lofty goals. If my kids told me they wanted to grow up and be a hair dresser and a mechanic I would not be so obnoxious with them about academics. They want to be engineers and politicians according to their stated goals and that means you fucking have to do academics.

Why am I freaked out all of the time? Because I’m never doing one thing. I’m taking care of a nursing baby (which is a lot of fucking work), cleaning up, helping with homework, being a travel agent, and I’m supposedly disabled and I should be doing many hours a day of body maintenance. Do you know what I haven’t done in a week? Any of my fucking exercises because there is fucking always three things more important. Dealing with rental cars and shopping. More baby care. Big kids refusing to do academics unless I stand over them and scream. I am back up to 121 emails (like half of them are requests for me to review every stupid company I touch. They don’t want my reviews. Y’all suck.)

I feel like I am always a day late and a dollar short.

Like a month ago we negotiated with the kids to slash their workload massively. Much lower daily goals for work. What happened when we negotiated that? They stopped doing absolutely anything and are now three weeks behind again and I want to put my head through a window.

So they don’t get to see their babysitter until they get their shit together. They have already blown 7 possible days with her and they may not bother to work today and miss more days. We are here for 27 days.

I can’t make them care. If they don’t get it in gear by the time we are in Japan, we will have to shorten the trip to Scotland and come back to the US. Our traveling adventures can’t happen if they refuse to make any forward progress. I’m not asking for up to grade level. I’m not asking for a normal “school” work load. But you must do something. If you refuse to do anything productive at all, we are not fucking doing this. We will move somewhere cheap because I am not going to enjoy anywhere we move and it might as well not cost a lot of money. Which means the schools are going to be rough. I’m sure my kids will get the crap beat out of them for being weirdos as is the standard American experience.

Oh well. I can’t save you from you getting consequences and I am tired of trying.

I’ve been talking to a buddy who is a horse trainer. She tells me their lives are too comfortable and I need to start making it very uncomfortable to not comply. Don’t hit them. Don’t abuse them. But… they have a lot of comforts and they don’t need any of them.

She’s not wrong.

I don’t think they need to get so much choice and freedom for a while. They currently think they are the bosses of me and I don’t fucking think so.

If this shit continues I am absolutely going to kick them out at 18 and say “I don’t talk to people who treat me like shit.” And that would suck all the way around. Maybe some soap in the mouth so they realize that dressing me down all day long isn’t ok is the lesser evil.

So yesterday we talked to the kids about how things are going. The kids know they aren’t doing what they say they will do. Like EC didn’t do 1 day of work out of the 10 days we were on the boat despite spending 6+ hours a day “working on homework”. I am infuriated because this shit fucking sucks. Being stuck in the room doesn’t bother her. She has a lot of fun. My buddy suggested kneeling on rice for 15 minutes to keep her from doodling and having fun the whole time.

Today her math is done by 9:45am because I told her at 10 we would start 15 minutes of rice to help her not be distracted.

I don’t want to enact negative consequences. I want them to just want to do the thing. But they don’t. They set up long term goals, and they ask me to help them reach those goals. Then I have to be the heavy being a butthead to drag them kicking and screaming towards their stated goals. This is not fun for me.

I think we should figure out an online math tutor. Maybe if she had outside accountability and someone else saying they are disappointed in her…. she would care more?

MC has been treating me really badly. When the old babysitter arrived for dinner (I barely let the kids talk to her, she was here to visit me not you) she commented on how shocked she is that their behavior has gone down hill so much. They are incredibly rude to me and it’s not ok. The other day I was eating lunch and grading MCs homework and he sat in a chair in front of me and just started kicking me. For entertainment. This shit is his norm right now and I am about to explode and beat him.

Maybe soap in the mouth isn’t so bad.

He says he wants to be respectful, but currently he is not managing that at all. He is too comfortable in his established routines. Something needs to change.

I desperately hope these negative consequences are not going to be long term strategies. I desperately hope we can do this for a few weeks or months and change our patterns of interacting.

We’ll see. If things aren’t different in 6 weeks I’m picking some town in Oregon or Idaho or Washington and we are just moving there. Not into a fun forever home. Into somewhere cheap so they can attend public school for a year and we’ll spend that year figuring out what to do next.

We wanted to spend 2 years traveling so we could find a forever home that feels good. Maybe we can’t get our poop in a group and we don’t get to do that.

Life is complicated.

I can’t help but feel like part of this is fall out from the fact that if I had tried to hold boundaries with Sarah I would have lost her years earlier. I had to accept whatever shitty treatment she felt like giving me or I would have lost what minimal support she gave and that was too painful.

I don’t feel good about myself. But. Time to do more work.

Maybe if I write it down I can put it down.

I heard the end. I kind of recognized it as it happened and I kind of recognize it in the rear view mirror.

I like doing things for people. I like feeling useful and valuable and like I am of service. It’s a pretty overly core part of my identity. Many of my relationships involve a lot of me doing work for benefit of other peoples lives. I like being a supporting character in your story. I love you and I want you to have a glorious story arc that has nothing to do with me. So I’ll show up and clean your house.

I’ll drive across state lines to unpack and repack you while you are too depressed and in pain to do it for yourself.

I’ll take you with me on major vacations, even to other countries.

I’ll buy a fucking time share so you can have the vacations you want that you can’t afford.

But when you spend a week ignoring me on the week that was supposed to make up for you ignoring me for a year and you turn to me and casually say, “Oh by the way I need to talk to you about using next years points for a trip with my family” that I am clearly not invited on….

I just because an ATM to you.

No. Done. Stop. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Nobody gets to treat me like an ATM. Especially not a rich white person. I don’t think so.

That right there is my line. I can see it very clearly. You stopped seeing this as a relationship where you have to give back. I’m supposed to keep giving to you no matter how shittily you treat me. No matter how much you cancel plans with me because everyone and everything else is more important.

It was a solid year of you canceling 80%. You wanted me holding time open for you so that you could cancel at the last minute. That makes you feel wanted and loved and connected. You could show up if you felt like it. I feel like you very rarely fucking prioritize me while expecting me to prioritize you greatly physically, spiritually, and financially.

Never make someone your priority when you are their option.

I wanted to be as important to you as you are to me. I was an important source of labor and money. You didn’t show up to be support for me.

You promised me that you would have strong relationships with my kids. I can count how many times you’ve seriously spent time with them in the last three years on my fingers.

Stop acting like I can’t track things and notice patterns. I’m not stupid. You make promises you won’t deliver on and you broke my fucking heart.

And you told me that you dropping me was all my fault because I got too angry. A lot of why I was angry is because you make promises and don’t keep them. So this cycle is all my fault.

Ok. I will step out of it. I don’t need to be in it. Then it won’t continue. Then it won’t be my fault. That is the power I have.

I know. It is never your fault you cancel. You are disabled. Hi. According to the very expensive team of people I pay I am disabled. And I am hurting myself by trying to show up for people who have no regard for me or my limits.

When will I decide that I am worth treating like a person of value? Because as long as I keep getting myself into situations where I believe I must stay in the relationship because I have known them for X time and I need them to stay in my life or it means I am bad and unworthy of having relationships…. that’s not a good dynamic. I should keep people in my life if I feel better about myself with the relationship instead of worse.

I turned hard to her when the cheating debacle went sideways. I was not allowed to pour myself into romantic relationships. I tried to have a major non romantic relationship.

It was never as major on the other end. I am very optional. That’s healthy! I need to… understand that this is very optional.

And stop picking the option that makes me cry. Cause hey dumbass, if you keep doing the same thing over and over hoping that someday someone will finally treat you well… fuck it. Move on with your life. There are 7 billion people. Don’t chase people who are going to treat you like an ATM. That’s not psychologically healthy.

anti-climactic

I didn’t blow up. There was never a private moment to talk to her so I just didn’t say a word to her at all. Not hello and not goodbye.

I watched the kids and how they interacted with folks. That was minimally awkward.

I won’t see her again any year soon. Maybe never. I didn’t want to make a dying man’s life harder. So I didn’t.

I’m not sure if I was right or not. But my kids won’t be around her again any year soon.

I spoke too soon.

Well dinner sucked. Fucking grandmother. So grandmother didn’t order enough food. And then grandfather was encouraging everyone to take as much as they wanted! Eat more! And then I realized that everyone who was supposed to eat… was arriving staggered. So I ate the last fucking burrito approximately 3 minutes before the last person arrived.

So I looked like a huge selfish asshole. It was my second burrito. I really would have preferred to eat three because they were small. I’m fucking nursing a baby and the only lunch they had around during the day was cheese, bread, and greens. Oh, and cookies. So by dinner I was fucking hungry.

Then the room mate was helping to clean up after dinner and he and the grandmother stood around and loudly talked about how rude and disrespectful my children were because they didn’t offer to clean up the kitchen and do everyone’s dishes.

Oh, side note: I did everyone’s fucking dishes after lunch.

So I was expected to clean up after lunch and my children were expected to clean up after dinner.

Other fucking note: we had intended to come into town and see the one brother. It turned into a fucking family reunion with alllll the siblings and their entire families expected to show up. Oh. So it was a lot of people in a small space and everyone is super touchy about shit being messed with. But they also encourage the kids to touch things. But then they get mad at the kids.

This is such a head fuck and I am so god damn angry.

My kids do a fuck ton of house work. But no, they don’t show up at other peoples houses for a meal and offer to do all the cleaning. That has not been part of their home training.

That’s not something that most of the people we visit would allow or want. BUT HOW FUCKING DARE MY KIDS NOT SHOW UP AND WAIT ON THEIR FUCKING GRANDMOTHER. DON’T I KNOW THAT THEY NEED TO BE TRAINED TO BE A WOMAN IN THE KITCHEN GETTING ALL THE GOSSIP. THAT’S HOW FAMILIES ARE FORMED. THAT’S HOW CHILDREN LEARN HISTORY. CLEARLY I DON’T CARE ABOUT THEM BEING PART OF A FAMILY.

Fucking woman just pissed me all the way off. I am so tempted to ask her to step outside with me before breakfast and tell her, “If you can’t keep your viper’s tongue quiet for the few hours you see my children you will never see them again. Do you understand me?”

But we are here for someone else’s tragedy.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I fucking hate this woman and I fucking hate Texas and I am so fucking pissed that I am fucking here.

Oh, and my cousin called me this week. I returned the call yesterday. She asked if she could travel with us to be our au pair. Uhhhhhhh that would blow up. That would explode and go poorly and then I would lose the only tenuous relationship I have with an adult relative. No. No. No. I can’t do that. I’m too fucking old to pretend that something like that has a chance at success.

I can’t see a way for us to recover from that mistake. I couldn’t live with Sarah or Jenny. If I couldn’t get my asshole into check to live with either of them…. I don’t see a way of it working with my cousin. Not with a bunch of international travel. Not when she is flakey and undependable and couldn’t get on a fucking plane to see me for Christmas. No.

So I feel like an asshole for understanding these limits. But holy shit they exist.

I feel so full of rage and hate I want to explode. I want to punch that fucking bitch in the face. We came out here to be nice. And this is your response. Why in the fuck are we nice to you?

I am going to have to say something to her. I am going to have to say, “We will not be back for many years. Because of your mouth. If you open it again, it’ll be forever.”

I don’t know if I was right.

My daughter very consciously and deliberately misled me for months. Like, took active steps to pretend she was doing something mandatory… while not doing it.

Because she’s a completely normal kid.

When I discovered this my response was to giggle. Because she’s screwed. She is going to be sitting in our hotel room in Mexico making up what she lied about. Cause that’s how life goes sometimes.

She didn’t appreciate my giggling. She screamed that she was going to punish me. She got in my face and loomed and told me she was going to humiliate me in front of every person I know.

Uhhhh. Well. I put my hand on the back of her head, pushed her to her knees and growled, “I. Don’t. Think. So. Go. Out. Side.”

Was that the right thing to do? God I don’t know. That was so minor compared to everything that happened to me. I didn’t hit. I didn’t yank her hair out. I didn’t spend a lot of time screaming at her.

I remember once I told my mom I was going to make her sorry. She grabbed me by the hair, yanked me through the house to my bedroom, and threw me against a wall.

I pushed my daughter to her knees. Then made her go outside for a little while.

These are dominance challenges. I can’t imagine that letting her win every single one is going to be good for our relationship or her character. But is that too harsh? It’s not abuse according to any statute in my state. But is it wrong? There are so many things that are legal and still wrong.

My friends hit their kids.

I feel despicable for putting my hand on her head and pushing her to her knees.

Perspective, yo.

I went outside to talk to her after I calmed down. I asked her what response would she like from me? Would she like me to scream and rage about her lying? Would she like me to spank her like my friends do their kids? Would she like me to cry and feel guilty because it is all my fault I haven’t taught her to be an honest person?

I giggled. I giggled at your sheer audacity. (She then asked me to define audacity. I said, “Your balls. Your nerve. Your stupid bravery.”)

She apologized for threatening to punish me. I apologized for putting my hand on her. But good grief I don’t know another way to handle someone getting in my face like that.

No. You don’t get to do that to me. Just….. NO.

My kids correct me a lot. They call me on my bullshit. They feel free to criticize me. But there are limits. You don’t shout that you are going to punish me because you got caught doing something wrong. That’s not ok.

I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO DESERVE BEING PUNISHED AND THAT IS NOT OK.

The thing is… if I had put my hand on her to begin with and she had told me that she was going to punish me for putting my hand on her? I don’t think I would be so angry. I would feel I deserved it. But I giggled. No. You don’t get to punish me for giggling. That’s not ok.

It is so hard to figure out scale. Everything in my life was so much more violent than that.

According to every statute, it isn’t abuse. No bruises were left. No hairs were removed. She was not harmed at all.

But it was a dominance challenge and I won.

I don’t feel good about that.

I am writing this down because I am not proud of it. If my daughter ever says, “Remember when you…” I need to be able to say, “Yes I remember. And I documented that I was not happy with myself for doing it. But it happened.”

I can’t rewrite this shit. I owe her honesty. Even if she isn’t honest with me. That’s not important. This is a one way road of obligation.

I will never run out of what I owe her.

I wish that I didn’t feel like part of what I owe her is teaching her not to scream at people when she is in trouble.

Something needs to change.

Ok. I’m in a cafe with music I like playing. I have my braces on. I need to be home in 90 minutes. Let’s see if I can defrag my brain.

I had a great therapy session today. We talked about the difference between PTSD and autism and how my various issues are compounding on one another. We went through which of my choices they were responding to last week (yes they were in fact biting their tongue to not say WHY ARE YOU MAKING BAD CHOICES) and why I am making them.

They are worried about Malaysia because a melt down there could have bigger consequences than in many other locations. That is a valid fear. But I have pretty good reason to think that I’m at risk if I melt down in a lot of places and I don’t honestly think Malaysia will be harder than a lot of other places. I believe that I will keep a lot more to myself. I will have to go rest faster because the consequences are extreme for a fuck up.

Why am I going? Because Noah was invited! How often is he going to be invited to a Muslim country? Probably not that often and I want to find out what it feels like in my bones. I want to taste the air and meet all the wonderful people who are living full and complete lives that don’t resemble lives I already know about.

The lack of medication is going to be hard. Sarah says I should get Prilosec and she’s not wrong.

But bigger than that trip is how we live our lives over the next few years. Sarah points out that I’m doing this thing where I completely deprioritize myself and I have done so while breastfeeding before. My shrink was adamant that my experience of decentering myself and my needs is absolutely board standard for breastfeeding parents. This hormonal soup is hard. But this is going to stay true for another few years and I need to manage my big kids. I can’t treat them like they are as important as an infant. Well… importance doesn’t feel like the right word. Their wants aren’t urgent. Their needs can be somewhat delayed without a problem. They are old enough that we should start having times when they come second or third and that’s healthy and appropriate.

It’s not healthy nor appropriate for me to always come in fourth or fifth place.

I am proposing a basic change to our schedule. I want to request that we all have one hour off in the afternoon without screens or the right to ask anyone for anything. No snuggling. No questions. Unless you are bleeding, figure it out for yourself for one hour. My big kids are 8 & 10. This is absolutely appropriate.

Also, we are talking about mixing up the order of our day a bit. Noah is not getting enough uninterrupted time to be creative. That’s a problem. I absolutely understand how hard it is to be creative when you are interrupted every 15 minutes for bullshit. His job requires near constant creativity. It’s not ok that we are acting like we don’t get to set boundaries with the kids. This is an extreme over correction.

I am proposing that I take over breakfast again and Noah work in the evenings after dinner and he gets to sleep in. That after dinner time is a great window for the kids getting predictable screen time (if they get their chores done) in a way that allows me to rest when I’m most tired. Noah is more of a night person and he likes those evening hours for creativity. My best creative hours are 4-8am. We are very different people.

I feel like we have been flailing and failing to create the structure that allows the kids to know what to do and when. I’m tired of having to be a jerk to get them off of the screen in the middle of the day. If they get the screen at 2pm, I am usually getting nasty to get them off for dinner around 6. Sometimes they tell me they don’t need to eat. That’s not good.

I am really struggling with how much my kids blow me off unless I get nasty and throw a tantrum. Everything short of that is worth ignoring.

I am not ok with this dynamic. It means I get to be an abusive bully or I get to be abused. Both suck.

I don’t want to abuse anyone. I need to learn ways to defend myself without being nasty and the last two weeks I have *sucked*

I am having a hard time setting boundaries all over the place and part of it is how worn out I feel. I feel like I’ve been massaged with a cheese grater. That’s not a great feeling. I’m exhausted. Taking care of a baby is draining as fuck. The whole first year is hard. I could seriously use a night of sleep and I am not going to get one for months. That’s hard to contemplate. My body has needs and those needs are not going to be met for months.

How do I find space for that? How do I find space to be gentle with myself as I cope with being pushed well past bearing? How do I find space to be nice to the most important people in my life?

How do I stop feeling hatred because I am so far past capacity I have nothing but hate left. That is the worst feeling.

I never want to hate my loves. But frankly, when I feel like I’m losing my mind… I do. I hate the whole world. I hate every person who wants me to think or interact or work. I get so tired and empty.

And filling my bucket feels so hard these days. I don’t even know what I need. I need time. I need to feel interesting. I need to feel like I have potential and worth and value. Not from working.

That’s so hard.

What kind of worth do I want?

I know I spend so much time on advice forums because I want my shitty ass life to help someone else have a better life. Not that my life is currently shitty. Past tense. I want to feel like the experiences and wisdom I have are valuable. Not because I serve you. Because it is wonderful that people exist who share what they know with the world.

I want to feel like I am more than a mommy/wife appliance. I want to be something that impacts other people. That is a big part of filling my bucket. I adore my family–don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to stop home schooling. I don’t want more space from Noah. I want to have a self outside of them the way Noah gets to but my available hours for such an existence is so small.

I need to take my writing more seriously and I feel like I have danced around that for years. I am so afraid of trying to be an authority about anything. I actively hide from being allowed to be authority.

Sometimes I wonder if my kids are disrespectful in the ways they are because they are learning from me that I’m not really worthy of respect. I sure act like that. But I don’t know. They are their own people and sometimes their behavior really sucks. Because they are people. Because they are kids. I don’t think they suck extra hard or anything. They are very normal. And I need to teach them how to treat me and I’m sucking at that.

This is tied into appearance stuff. I have to care more about how I look because I have to show people how to treat me. That’s so hard. I have been asked to leave businesses because I didn’t look good enough to be a customer. I’ve had the police called on me because I looked like a vagrant on the road trip. I am not imagining it that I ping a lot of “icki person” buttons for people and quite a lot of people are innately programmed to be mean to people they perceive as lower than them. It’s absolutely normal. And hateful. And cruel.

I remember when D told me years ago that if I don’t want people to be mean to me for looking bad then I had better do the work to look better.

The unstated implication there is I deserve the mistreatment if I don’t jump through hoops to be “pretty enough”. That feels degrading. I feel angry about this situation. But my anger doesn’t do me any good and it doesn’t change the fact that the world is full of abusive monsters.

This weekend someone told me that she thinks that something isn’t abuse if it is common/normal. I accept that she has this perspective. I wildly disagree. I used to know a woman who is part of a very specific culture. In her culture people with mental illness are to be entirely shunned so they don’t hurt the rest of the tribe. Guess what? That’s abuse.

If your community thinks it is ok for you to die because you aren’t good enough that’s abuse. Ableism is pretty standard in this country. It’s abusive. It’s normal for doctors to provide shittier health care to black women in this country. It’s abuse.

A great many traditional parenting practices are completely fucked up. I’m not going to get into them. Because shit I don’t want to argue. This is my opinion. You are allowed to have yours.

I need to create more space between me and my family so that I get to exist. Or I am not going to be able to be a healthy member of this family and that will mean that I have to go.

Ok. Time to create space.

The video game stuff. Ugh. Ok. So. When I say that video games are triggering what I mean is that when the topic comes up I am instantly full body flooded with adrenaline. I want to fight. I want to hit. I want to scream. I want you to get the fuck away from me before I hurt you. My early experiences with video games often revolved around people hurting me if I wanted to play. My body learned that this experience, this hobby, are not safe for me. Could I unlearn this reaction? Probably. With time, effort, and a lot of EMDR therapy.

Do you know what I don’t fucking care to pay for a bunch of therapy to fix?

My issues with video games. Therapy is expensive as shit. I can’t manage to fix everything.

When people are sitting around discussing their video games in a completely chill way I spend my time fantasizing about head butting them so that I can break their nose.

It’s not fun to be in my head through this process. Feeling this nasty, this angry, this much need to FIGHT hurts me. I feel sick.

It’s not fair for me to have to go up and down this roller coaster just because someone else wants to have fun. That’s not ok. So I finally said that I need that to be a boundary entirely. The kids are trying. EC asked me if she has done ok in the last few days and I told her yes.

My kids do want to be considerate. They just don’t always succeed. They are kids.

I need to teach them. And being a nasty bully isn’t the way.

And it also isn’t ok for me to have to beat myself in the head in order to accept what is happening me. That is also not ok.

This could be fun. Or terrifying.

Hey, know how I have that habit of throwing myself into situations with strangers? Ha. Uhhhh yeah. So I’ve been throwing most of my hand spoons into forums for a while here. I’m at a sort of pause point in therapy and there’s some stuff I’m working through that I don’t feel comfortable writing about here. So I’ve been writing in a private forum there and getting to know folks.

We are going on an adventure together. Looks like in the first weekend of November I’ll be running off to Colorado.

So Malaysia Oct 15-30. Dad is visiting Nov 1-2. I’m flying out on the 2nd to go to Colorado to see these fascinating folks.

I’m just kind of flabbergasted at my life right now. I’m trying to be nice in the limbo period leading up to the excitement.

My life is an awesome life. I am blessed beyond on all possibility of deserving it. But I get it anyway. Nyah.

Do you know what else sucks?

If I am honest and I talk about the fact that I feel like I am out of healthy coping methods and I want to hurt myself…

someone is going to reach out to tell me that they can’t read my blog anymore because they just can’t with that bullshit.

It’s someone different every year.

Dude. You never have to read this. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. eVar.

You also don’t have to tell me that you are out of patience with me not having the spoons to cope in ways you want to read about.

Touching the fence

There’s this way I get. I think of it as feeling like I touched an electric fence.

My boundaries are being questioned. It always happens in multiple places at once. It always causes me to be reactive and hostile.

Art. Value. Time. Attention. Respect. Video Games.

I’m about to explode.

Everyone has a price.

I’m pretty sure that everyone who reads this knows I have issues with control. Selling the house is hard on a number of levels. I have put so much physical and emotional labor into this space. It’s complicated because I never wanted to live here… but I grew where I was planted.

I was willing to accept half a million dollars below market value so that I could visit my art in the future and I could feel appreciated for having made these cool things.

My friend came over yesterday and told me that their intention is to paint over the whole house. I think they will keep the tile in the bathroom, but I got the impression that even the trees might be painted over.

I felt like I was punched in the gut.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

I can’t devalue how much of my body and life went into this house. I can’t fuck my family financially so you can erase me.

They are going to paint over it with a nice cream.

A nice cream.

I mean, that’s a lovely thing to want. But you can pay market value for wanting that. Market value in my neighborhood starts at $1.2 million, not $750,000. Shitty condos in my area are selling for more than $750,000.

I am cannot subsidize your dreams at the expense of all of my own. Accepting that much less money means Noah will have to wait longer to retire and one of our biggest stated reasons for selling the house is so that Noah can retire earlier.

No.

I can’t accept that offer. I will hate myself until the day I die for accepting that my work here was worth so little money in the scheme of what things are worth in this valley.

The house was a nice cream when I moved in. (Not really. It was a crappy white. But what-fucking-ever.)

No.

I can’t subsidize that. I can’t. It would be violent erasure of myself for me to accept that. It would be accepting that I only deserve to get the actual money I’ve already paid back and my improvements are worthless.

No.

That’s… no.

Apparently my price to be erased is higher than that.

I’m proud of us

We had a conversation at breakfast about the ice cream. I was clear that I don’t know what to do. I asked kids what they think. Noah had thoughts.

It was nice to talk through things like, “I could over react and say that we can’t buy ice cream anymore or we can only buy vanilla but I feel like neither would solve this problem.”

Eventually we came up with the idea that since we usually buy multiple containers at once we just aren’t allowed to have more than one kind that I won’t eat at a time. Since the kids will freely admit that they eat ice cream that they don’t like very much before the stuff they bought for themselves that I won’t eat at all.

I like a few kinds. Vanilla, cherry vanilla, butter brickle, chocolate chip, cookies and cream, butter pecan…

I just don’t like everything. And it’s annoying that we will go for a month or two with many kinds of ice cream in the freezer I won’t eat. So Noah buys me a container and it’s gone a week later because the kids gorged on the one for me and then go back to slowly picking at their containers.

I don’t know how to have this boundary in a loving way. I’m not even sure I know what it means.

I don’t feel even remotely ok with needing to have all my stuff be separate and labeled with my name. That just feels awful.

I know this is petty as fuck. It’s about the ice cream but it’s not about the ice cream. It’s about consideration and sharing and perceiving other people as worthy of notice.

My codependent shit.

I am becoming aware that I need to watch my boundaries with one of my friendships. One of my neighborhood friends had her life go to hell in a hand basket not long before I went on the road trip. Before the trip and since I have helped her out in a variety of ways and we hang out and talk. Her kid is the same age as one of my kids.

People… are complicated. She’s doing absolutely the best she can. She’s a wonderfully kind person. But she’s not what I’d call scrappy. She doesn’t jump up to fix problems. She panics and flails.

She’d like to spend a lot more time together this summer.

I know me. I’ve already spent a lot of time googling solutions to her problems and helping her fill out paperwork and taking things to the post office and…

Am I doing that thing again? No I am god damn not going to do that thing I do. I’m too tired. I’m fucking busy. There are other things going on in my life.

It would be fun for my child to see her child more often over the summer. But I kinda think that should be in the range of 2-4 hours every other week or so. I don’t think we should leap into more enmeshment. It’s just….

I do that. And I can’t.

boundaries are hard.

Processing speed

Sunday was rough for me. Something came up that requires me to set boundaries in ways that make me feel wildly uncomfortable. It maxed out my bandwidth for all boundaries and the day turned into a sobfest as I tried to borrow future spoons to cope.

I’m having this weird feeling of pride because I’m connecting the links in the chain rather quickly for me. There was a thing that genuinely deserves upset and a boundary response like dropping the portcullis. A thing big enough that I’m arranging for adult supervision of the boundary discussion. I need help.

Ok I had to walk around weeping for a day before I could cope with it… but that’s not a long time for me. I’m happy with myself.

On a completely different lighter more hilarious topic. I had a conversation with the kids yesterday about masturbation.

It started out with the word mastication, which I love. I explained how much I love using the word masticate when I talk to teenagers because it is close to the word masturbation and they always twitch in funny ways. My kids laughed as if they got why it was funny… then said “Uhhh what is masturbation?”

I’VE TOLD YOU BEFORE.

I said, “It’s sex with yourself. It’s when you touch your private parts in a private setting.”

“Ohhhhhhhh, that. Oh of course I do that.”

Then my children proceeded to tell me about when they (separately) take the opportunity to go in a room with a locked door for a while. I tried so hard not to blush or look awkward or bug out my eyes. I said, “It sounds like you have figured out how you want to handle this.” The kids nodded and smiled peacefully.

We did not get into any other specifics. I’m good with knowing that you know how to arrange privacy and you know to wash your hands afterwards.

My work here is done. For now.

Boundaries. Confidentiality. Fail.

Goodness gracious my life has a theme lately. What is privacy? Who deserves it? Under what circumstances? When are you allowed to keep secrets from people?

I fucked up. Or more appropriately, EC’s therapist fucked up and I was the recipient of the fuck up. We (me, Noah, and FMC’s therapist) have done a great job of teaching FMC that they don’t need to share a single word that is told in therapy if they don’t want to. Apparently we have not delivered that message with sufficient force to EC. I feel super bad. EC’s therapist asked me to check in at the end of the last appointment so we could discuss appointment regularity over the next few months.

She turned to EC a few times and said, “Is it ok for me to share with your mom what you said today?” barely paused for EC to say “Uhhhh I guess” then told me stuff EC had said. EC told me she felt like she had no choice but to say yes.

Fuck. That’s not ok. We fucked up. That’s a really big fail. Oh no.

I clarified on the way home, “So when you got silly and distracting… was that your way of trying to say no?” She said, “I do that when I’m trying to block out the conversation because I don’t like it and I don’t want to hear it.”

I said, “Baby… it would work better if you said “I’m very uncomfortable with this topic and don’t want you to talk about it. We would both stop.”

“You would?”

“Yes. We are there to support you and if what we are doing is a problem instead of support then we need to change what we are doing. You are allowed to say no or stop at any point and we have to respect it.”

“But she asked in a way that didn’t feel like I could say no.”

Oh we screwed up. The whole conversation home was about how EC is not my doll she’s my child. I don’t get to know all of her thoughts or feelings or experiences. I get to know what she chooses to share with me. I am not entitled to know more than she wants to share.

I immediately wrote her shrink an email when we got home and explained that we screwed up and we need to never do that to EC again. Next time when there is a check in about appointment regularity the conversation should go a lot more like, “EC is getting a lot out of therapy. She feels it is important to continue every two weeks.”

I don’t need to know the words she is sharing. That’s not my business.

I hope we haven’t damaged EC’s trust in her therapist with this fuck up.

I reminded both of my kids that therapists are legally obligated to break confidentiality for three reasons: sexual abuse, self harm, or harming others. Outside of that… it’s not my business if you want to spend all of your therapy talking about pickles or friends or me or books. You use your time to get support how you need support. I don’t need to know about it. It’s not my business.

I feel really bad. That’s such a big fail.

To be fair, the stuff the therapist repeated was softball stuff explaining problems I already knew existed but that doesn’t make it ok.

Then as we were coming home yesterday EC was reflecting on how some people like her more than others. She’s getting old enough that being in the same room as other kids doesn’t mean it will work out for play or feel like friendship. Sometimes she clicks with people and sometimes she doesn’t. She didn’t click yesterday and she was feeling bad about it. So on the ride home she was thinking about the people she has clicked with. Her face was crumbling in the back seat.

Me being me, I was all, “Hey wait. You are having feelings. You are thinking about something. I think you are thinking about a person… maybe more than one… and you are sad…. do you want to talk about it?”

She proceeded to tell me that I wouldn’t understand because I’ve never had to deal with losing someone who was important to me.

PEOPLE. I HAVE SUCCEEDED AT KEEPING MY WHINING OFF STAGE. THIS IS A FUCKING MIRACLE. I ALMOST FELL OUT OF MY SEAT LAUGHING.

I told her that in fact I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about how much it hurts to lose people who are important to you so maybe I might understand a bit better than she thinks.

We talked for a while. When we got home she asked if we could cuddle on the couch and she could cry about the kids she won’t see again who liked her so much.

When she was feeling a bit better I said, “Hey. You know how you are scared that I’m going to have Lightning and never pay attention to you again? Did you notice how you can’t even have a sad facial expression for a few minutes without me pouncing on it to ask what is wrong? Do you really think I’m going to stop paying attention to you?”

She smiled in this blissed out way. She said, “I love how you love me” and she melted into me with perfect trust.

I may not own you. But I care about you. That isn’t going to stop.

I tell her that my goal is to earn a friendship with her when she’s a grown up. I don’t deserve it just by existing. She will get to decide if she enjoys my company and she wants to be my friend. She doesn’t have to take care of me, ever. She doesn’t owe me information she doesn’t want to share. She doesn’t have to tell me about herself.

It’s only if she wants to.

And I fail to earn it… that’s my problem.