Category Archives: community

I swear I am trying.

But sleep deprivation is a bitch to catch up on. I went back through my activity tracker (I know it is not perfectly accurate for stuff like sleep) but between travel and anxiety and overworking I am down about 8 full nights of sleep over the past month. This is why I am currently struggling with paranoia, negative thoughts about myself, irritability, and frustration. I also hurt really badly.

But I am trying to reverse the flow. The past three nights I’ve gotten nine hours of sleep. Yesterday while walking home from the community center I just about fell down from exhaustion and dizziness. Trying to catch up is showing me just how deep the reservoir of sleep deprivation goes. I need to try to spend all of this school holiday sleeping as much as I possibly can; my health requires it.

A full night of sleep for me is ~7.5 hours. I’m down over 64 hours of sleep over the past month. That’s a lot.

This move is the hardest of my life and I have moved waaaaaay more than average. Folks in the military are usually dumbfounded by how much I have moved because they feel a lack of stability in their lives and I’ve moved many multiples of times more than them. Not so much recently, but over the long run. This is my first international move and I can’t understand people who do this repeatedly. This is so hard.

We moved into a house that was more than twice the size of our old house with no furniture coming with us. We have had to acquire everything from scratch and mostly build it because we can’t really afford to buy nice stuff, we are buying flat pack. Which means I have spent multiple full days just on building furniture. Noah has helped with this way more than he usually does with building furniture and for this I am deeply grateful. Noah has spent at least six, maybe up to eight solid days building furniture if you add up all the hours. I’ve done at least as much maybe more. It’s all getting fuzzy.

We finally have consistent, good wifi thanks to Noah’s continual efforts at handling the bureaucratic mess. It is still a mess with regards to electricity. All of the advice “Just do A, B, C” has failed entirely. I think Noah is handling the stress of people lying and being deceitful far better than I could. (The main electricity company keeps saying they have done what they need to do for us to move on with the process. When the other company we want to work with checks… nope hasn’t happened. It takes eight weeks before we are allowed to complain. We seriously suspect the first company is going to drag their feet for seven weeks and five days.) Noah has been on the phone and filling out paperwork just about daily trying to handle the electricity/internet/bank/credit card situation. Now that we have internet and we found out we literally can’t get a credit card until we’ve been here six months and we have a (JOINT) checking account and three savings accounts (grown ups + kids who are redepositing their stuff from the states) we can chill on figuring out financial stuff for a few months.

Oh, also we had an appointment with a couple of truly lovely accountants and that’s going to be a whole messy process that will take many hours of labor over many weeks. The UK tax year doesn’t run their cycle from January-December, they run April-March so we will be trying to sort out tax stuff for like six months straight. Hopefully after the first year it will get a little more clear? At least our California accountant used to work at the IRS handling international taxes?

Trying to acquire stuff for the house has been endless frustration. Between not having a car, not having reliable internet, and our US credit cards getting constantly denied for fraud… everything is taking two, three, four, five times as long to get done and the hand strain is absolutely unbelievable.

And I keep hearing my fucking mother’s voice in my head saying that you don’t go out and socialize until your house is company ready. Thus long working days and not sleeping.

Last night I made a list on the whiteboard of the chores the kids hadn’t gotten to this week. I told them they need to finish by bed time. They got it done. I supervised and didn’t help. I’m trying to reduce my arm strain.

They did a great job and they are currently playing with Her Sweetness so Noah and I can each have some quiet down time in our separate rooms.

We have a house phone number and an actual physical phone will be delivered in a few days. I have a sim card in the house for a UK phone number for my mobile and I will be setting it up once I can put the UK house phone number down on forms. I will be going through and replacing my US phone number on all of my accounts. I will be shutting down my US phone number in December after 19 years of service.

I am having so many feelings about that.

The plan with the accountants is to start moving our money out of the US. I don’t feel super ethical investing in a country that moved its slavery from the cotton fields to the prison industrial complex and is currently running concentration camps. Where freedom means the freedom to get shot at school. Where freedom means that thousands of people can be homeless so the uberwealthy can hoard a little more. Where freedom means ruining your entire future if you get sick. Where freedom means eternal debt if you want an education.

I know getting out isn’t an option for everyone. I know it is cowardly to run instead of fighting to change the system. I know.

My children are already walking to school and home from school alone sometimes. It’s so safe here. I spoke to a mom who is terrified of her kids being alone and that’s why she pays for them to have cell phones from really young so they have to text her all the time to prove where they are and she tracks them on her phone.

We will have a house phone. I’m giving up full service internet on my phone and downgrading to a pay as you go plan that I don’t want to use much. I will be deleting most apps so I’m not tempted to be idle on my phone out in the world.

My kids will be fine here. I am not worried about their safety. We have an agreement: you ask before you take off and you are given a time to be home. You have a watch (without the ability to receive phone calls on) and if you are late, for every minute you are late you owe me a push up.

That’s as much enforcement as I want. That’s as much control as I want. They are big kids. They are responsible. I trust them. The neighbors aren’t going to call the police if they are out walking to the park. I have anxiety about stuff. I am overly controlling in some ways, but I’m trying hard to back off. They will be ok. And frankly the push ups won’t hurt them.

EC forgot her school computer at home one day this week. Noah asked if we should bring it to her at school. Nope. She can accept the consequences for her behavior like a big girl.

It will be good for her.

I went to a couple of activities with Her Sweetness this week aimed at her peer group; these are the kids she will know in school. These are the kids in our neighborhood. It’s good to start getting to know them. She will make friends over time and I will get to know the mothers.

This move is the hardest of my life. Let me write down just how painful this is so that hopefully I remember and never want to do this again. Some day as an empty nester I might want to move to the downstairs apartment with Noah and rent out the big house, but that’s different.

Solstice is going to be interesting. EC has a bunch of needs still. MC has a bunch of wants. YC (I should shift to this at some point soon here because goodness Youngest Child is more fair than just always referring to her as the sweet one–not to mention that she is sassier by the day) has few needs and can’t speak any wants. I am going to start wrapping presents soon just because we don’t have many good stash spots in the house where unwrapped presents won’t be seen.

Oh, and to put the cherry on top of the moving process, we are all learning how to ride bikes as our mode of transportation. This has resulted in at least one, often three or more major crashes per person. We are all sore and wincing and moving slowly. My knee still hasn’t healed from my crash and every time I get up or down to help YC with something I hiss because it forking hurts.

At least MCs lip has healed and they no longer look like an abused child.

It’s a process…

Hardest fucking move of my life. But the house is basically company ready. I want another couch for the down stairs apartment before guests come. I want a real kitchen table for the main dining room with actual chairs we don’t fall off of on a regular basis. EC still needs a bed frame. Then we are done acquiring stuff.

Mostly because I found a tutorial on Pinterest for making bookshelves out of uniform moving boxes and that’s what I’m doing with the books that arrive. I’m not buying bookshelves any time soon. I want artistic fancy-pants book shelves and I don’t want to pay for them now. So I won’t really get all of the boxes out of the house by the end of November, but the stuff in boxes will be out and in use and the boxes will be semi-permanent (until they give out) furniture.

I am struggling with the fact that I need to give myself approval for how hard this move has been because I won’t get it from anyone else. No one but Noah can see what I’m doing and I’m an asshole about not accepting his approval as much as I should. He will give me approval whether it takes me a month or five years. He isn’t judging me based on what I care about. His priorities are different. (He wishes I would slow the fuck down and rest more.)

I have a ridiculous drive to get this done. This is important to me. I need to see this progress so I can sit in the mostly finished house and dream about the art I want to add. I can’t start painting until after my next birthday, but I can make sketches. I can figure out what kind of mosaic backsplash I’d like to make for the kitchen wall where we keep splattering the shit out of it with food. (Did the previous owners cook?! How in the fuck did they keep the wall so white?!) What would I like to do in the upstairs bathtub bathroom?

Art will come, but not until all of the other pieces are in place and I can dream around them.

We still have a few entirely empty cupboards in the laundry room and main kitchen and the downstairs kitchen is basically empty. But we have the stuff we need finally. Those bits will fill in over time as we figure out what other things we want or need.

Realistically it is going to take me many years to finish this house. But I feel moved in now. The art will come. The guest kitchen will come. It’s ok that it isn’t all instant.

I needed to feel settled. Those bits are extra. And I have my name on a bank account so that I can build my own credit. That’s a big deal. Being dependent is hard enough without also being vulnerable.

And proper locks are on the way for every door in the house.

Like Ursula I am wasting away

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I have lost a solid 10 lbs since I left California. I am eating cake when I want it, candy bars, daily massive quantities of tea with 3 teaspoons of sugar in every cup. I am not on a diet. But even with days that I barely move from exhaustion I am up to averaging 4.5 miles/day. As my tolerance builds that average will go up and I will have fewer collapsed from exhaustion days. I am working on meeting the neighbors. I have now met a few houses down the road (no one up the hill yet) and I have chatted with several of the folks who walk past our house for exercise or to commute.

I got to the school super early yesterday and talked to several parents/grandparents. “Hi I’m Krissy and I’m new here.” It’s like old times. Only now I follow up with, “What should a new person know about this community?” I am getting some fascinating answers I won’t write down because if people find my blog and see themselves quoted it could go sideways. But the answers are great.

The general consensus is that yes I should get a dog if I want to do a lot of exercise on my own because no it would not go well if I defended myself like I would in California. But a dog is allowed to attack someone on my behalf. Social mores, yo. I am happy that I was reading that right. I am a bit freaked out that it is true. I will be getting a dog. But first: cats. I want the dog to come into a house with cats so that the dog adjusts to this being the norm. Which means we should get cats soon. Our house is going to be pretty insane for a while as all of the humans and felines and canines adjust to one another. I am going to need to spend a fair bit of time at home helping everyone learn appropriate behavior. Everyone involved will need to understand that I am the alpha. Mama sure wears the pants in this family. I wear them under my skirts. (Noah gets to wear pants too. Trousers as well!)

Noah is working on meeting people for his purposes as well. He is less focused on neighbors and more focused on computer nerds far flung around the country. The kids are having a great time meeting kids at school. One of ECs new buddies suggested that if we (ECs parents) are willing to pay for the airline tickets that EC could go to Spain with them for school holidays. I declined that gracious offer. But I think the kids are sliding into place at school just fine. My kids are really unhappy that there will be two weeks off of school after this Friday. They want to be in school. It’s hilarious and wonderful.

I am diligently working on getting the recycling out of the house now that I know where I can walk it to. I would like the back log of recycling to dwindle before the boat stuff arrives because then I am going to be swimming in a sea of cardboard. I will be advertising that lot on freecycle because they are all lovely standard sizes and super sturdy.

I think we will use the school holidays to start seeing about getting cats. And to practice bike riding. And to rest and read books. Excellent. For once I am not sad at all about the Christmas creep. Given that we want to go slowly with our budget we bought four pieces of garland and two strings of lights yesterday. We have a huge house and no decorations. It will be fun to have stuff trickle in. Time to eat.

What I’ve been looking for

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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.

Well this sucks; ok not everything sucks

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We were just about over jet lag. Then illness strikes. Her Sweetness has a fever and she is super cranky; I assume she is in pain too. Eldest Child is having intestinal problems. I have full body pain (as someone with chronic pain this is enough pain to make me want to sit very still in a chair and cry–I am medicating for pain with tylenol and ibuprofen alternated), a low grade fever, and I am producing a river of snot with the associated coughing, sneezing, and sore throat. If you have followed me for long you know it has to get BAD before I medicate with these drugs because I am so afraid of my tolerance level going up.

I don’t think we will see much of Bangkok and I am very disappointed.

The food has tasted great. The garbage is omnipresent and overwhelming. The traffic patterns are reminding me of Kuala Lumpur only they are very different? It’s closer to KL than Japanese traffic patterns. The gridlock is massive. I can understand why the advice around driving here is don’t.

We are right next to RCA (Royal City Avenue) which is the designated clubbing/entertainment/tourist area. It’s a short walk down a relatively safe stretch of sidewalk. Relatively safe because the motorcycle taxi service has a stand in front of our building so they have to go back and forth on that stretch of sidewalk. If you pay attention and get out of their way it’s ok. And all the motorcycle drivers love Her Sweetness. They want to cuddle and hang out with her.

Her Sweetness is my most reserved child. I used to think Middle Child was incredibly reserved because I compared them to Eldest Child. Holy sauce buckets was I underestimating the amount of reserve a child of my blood can display. When people try to touch HS she cries. She wants her people and that’s it.

I am going to have to stagger downstairs and do laundry today because I am about out of hankies. Dude. I travel with more than a dozen hankies. Hankies are life. (We also have a full laundry basket. But the hankies will be the motivation.)

I was a serious bitch yesterday and I feel kind of embarrassed. I am sick and the kids were pushing me for attention and to do work for them. I blew up about how unfair it is that when they are sick I let them lie still and do nothing until they feel like doing things and I am not allowed any rest. I sort of feel like I “should” have found a nicer way to express this. But I tried a variety of “I’m not feeling well” and “I can’t do that” before I started getting harsh. There is this complicated balancing act where I try to be as nice as I can be to them until they just refuse to recognize that I have boundaries too and then I’m really not so nice. Because fuck that. I get to have rest when I am fucking sick and you can go in your room and play and stop bothering me. No I don’t have to pay attention to you today. You can bloody well cope with me taking care of myself today.

It’s weird. I feel guilty and proud of myself? I need to set these boundaries. I set them as softly as I could. I escalated ,when they completely refused to allow me boundaries, to being more forceful in my language. I did use the word fuck a lot. “I am fucking sick and I need to fucking rest. You don’t fucking need me to play with you. You can fucking play by yourself.” That was after a couple of hours of using soft language and having MC continue to head butt me and be rude and demanding and aggressive about wanting to play.

MC has asked me to use the word fuck less and I’ve been doing pretty well so this flood of fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck was definitely a sign of degrading ability to communicate. But I feel like my head is in a vice and if you don’t leave me alone and stop talking to me I am going to literally melt down and start screaming which would really suck in this tiny apartment. I have limits. I don’t talk to you like this even once a year. But I am sick and I need to be left alone to take care of me.

My kids genuinely think I am a river of love and support and work and they can’t understand when I can’t do that. It’s a weird dynamic. I feel both good and bad about it. I am not sure I am presenting them with a healthy, balanced view of what parents should be like. My mother under-responded and neglected me. So I half kill myself doing the martyr schtick so they never know a minute of boredom or want. I am hurting myself so they never have to be bored. That’s not healthy either.

I really can’t wait to have my own bedroom and for them to go to school. We need to start separating. I feel like a mother bird who is exerting more and more pressure to get the baby birds to get the fork out of the nest. I need some space, kiddos. I love you. I need some space for me too. I matter too. I am not the most important person in our family but I am not the least important person either. We need balance. If we sacrifice my health on the altar of “Happy Family” then this family is going to fall apart soon. I have to be healthy enough to carry my side of things.

I suspect this is related to just how hard I pushed my body over the past few months culminating in the last week. I have done a lot of work. We leave Bangkok on the 9th and we arrive on the 10th because it is another 30 hour travel day with getting to and from airports. Today is the 5th. So close yet so far.

The former owner of the house and Jenny’s Super Spiffy Husband (JSSH) both sent us long explanations of how to set up utilities and services. We are so incredibly lucky that we are following Jenny. She has helped in ways big and small that blow my mind. I feel like we are sliding into Scotland on greased rails. This could have been a nightmare. Instead it is a series of steps. Yes, we feel tension and stress as we go through the steps because lots of things are out of our control… but things are actually going as fast as they possibly could. We made the decision to move to Scotland, got absolutely everything done, and now we are returning in less than three months. That is miraculous in terms of government bureaucracy. Greased. Forkin. Rails.

And once we arrive… we have no deadlines to hurry up and get anything done. There are no foreseeable sprints in my future. We don’t need to hurry up and get anything done. We need to get things done as quickly as we get them done. I mean, utilities getting set up might be the most “Uhhh do that now” step. But furniture and cookware and all that stuff can trickle in. We will probably go shopping on the 11th to get some things, but not a lot. Realistically we will go to the store every day for a while and we will get what we get. Sometime in the first week we will probably hire a van and clean out the charity shop of anything we can use and do a massive grocery shop but it’s not a big rush. If it happens on our second day or our fourth day or the seventh day… whatever. We are right between three stores that are all dandy for supplying us with food we can eat without stress. I’m just not worried. It’s a lovely feeling. I will slowly acquire the things we need to keep house. Drips and drabs. It will be easier to do most of this shopping after the shipment of our belongings arrive so I have the big double stroller.

I got a double bike trailer that can be used as a stroller so that I can pull the baby AND groceries. This is my compromise on not having a car. I am already aware of how awesome Tesco’s delivery service is (THANK YOU JSSH!) but I really like going to the store. And I want to experiment between Tesco and Aldi and Asda. I will get a little notebook for comparing prices. We are going to be trying to be that tight with our budget.

I’m not sure if I told y’all this. Noah’s current obscene California salary is going to last till January. Then he’s going to work on books, teaching, and maybe a wee bit of contracting on the side. We have enough money in petty cash for 2-3 years of run time if we are very conservative and we hope we can figure out him working for himself. This is part of why we decided Taipei is not wise at the moment. If we are trying to live on £40,000/year all of a sudden spending $6000 on a trip to Taipei seems… uhhh not in the budget.

I have lived on much less. While snowballing our debt we lived on a similar amount of money at the beginning of our marriage. We will see!

On the money front: I was watching a session of Scottish Parliament yesterday and there was a lot of hand wringing over how they can’t get enough people to work with mental health care for children. The waiting lists are long and they are incredibly stressed out about it. Do you know what I have a unique background on? Helping kids with mental health problems. Sure, I’ll have to hit up the local university for some specific training and degree hoop jumping but that doesn’t scare me. Maybe when Her Sweetness starts nursery in a year and a half we will have four people in school in the house. That would be kind of cool.

I would like to have a job. I would like to have a job specifically because I dream of a conservatory added to the house and if I don’t figure out how to earn the money for it myself Noah will feel like he needs to get a remote job from California for ridiculous money and then he will work 60 hours a week and I will be very sad.

I don’t need to earn the money in the first couple of years. In my head I wouldn’t be ready to start that kind of project for at least 3-5 years. That gives me time to go to school and get started in the field. I will be 100% hiring out the work and the former owner gave me the name of the person who could probably build it for me because he did all the other remodeling in the house.

This is not abandoning the idea of IDB (Incest Database) but it is helping to keep me busy until then and helps me gain qualifications that will help with the research and it helps pay for retirement stuff so Noah doesn’t have to supply 100% of our retirement safety on his own. I still think I couldn’t really get going on IDB for almost 20 years. Not the way I want to. 20 years is a long time and I could do a lot of valuable work between now and then.

I want to be part of the community. This would be a really great way for me to meet people and find a place for myself.

I don’t have a plan yet. I am not rushing. I am waiting to see how things shake out. I am coming up with ideas, potentials, hopes, and dreams.

And nothing is in a big rush. No sprints. Settle in slowly. Exercise. Establish house. Help the kids adjust to school. Wait for HS to be old enough for nursery. Enjoy the next year and a half of extra alone time with my precious last baby. I feel lucky and blessed.

I won’t be doing much today. Noah has a speakers dinner tonight. We have instant noodles in the apartment that will probably be most of our food while he is doing his conference. I should go down to the 7-11 (holy shit these things are ubiquitous internationally) and get some yogurt and juice and maybe other snacky foods. Maybe I’ll do that run while I’m dealing with laundry.

I feel so bad. I did more yesterday than I probably should have. Today I can’t. As I plan to go to the laundromat and do grocery shopping. I am such a twit.

These things have to get done. It’s not optional. Being the mom is not always fun. But it is always worth it. I did not have children because I wanted convenience. I am so very loved. It’s worth it.

Even if sometimes I have to say fuck fuck fuck fuck to be allowed to rest.

I think it is kind of useful that EC is reading these Warriors books because the mama cats take no shit and that is causing her to change how she views me. It’s hilarious.

I have been dizzy on and off for days. My body is so unhappy. Her Sweetness is waking up every two hours to nurse and I don’t feel like it is fair to complain given how sick she is.

Miss Jenny picked up our keys. The solicitor has been paid off. We have a home to go back to. A home that pretty closely matches drawings I’ve been making about my dream home for years. I am so lucky.

We are going to be highlanders! We start this next phase of our lives on the day I turn 38. Seems like a good time for a rebirth.

Traveling is eventful.

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First: it was an a small adventure figuring out how to dispose of the expired car seat I was borrowing. Portland does not make it easy. They wanted us to drive over half an hour to a transfer station to pay like $28 to throw it in the garbage because they don’t recycle them. Instead we found a dumpster behind a hotel.

Then when we got to the airport I learned that Her Sweetness and I were not able to have our boarding passes printed for the whole trip. We got boarding passes to Hong Kong and then we got to cross our fingers everything would work out from there. That’s an anxiety producing situation for me. Holy cheese toast. But I tried to stay cool and calm and in the end it just meant an extra 15 minutes of processing in the airport. No big deal. China just has slightly different rules about traveling with a lap infant.

American Airlines website said they would only give us 1 meal on the flight. Instead they served 3 and we got to throw away a lot of food. That could be worse. But the AA flight was… not amazing. It felt budget and unfriendly and not very helpful. I have dreams about the kindness of Philippine Airlines. Such a lovely airline. I mean: AA expects you to go back and self serve on snacks and drinks instead of them coming by and offering them to you. But they also don’t want you out of your seats unless you MUST. So that’s not a fun situation for a 14 hour flight.

No more 14 hour flights in our future!

I liked the Hong Kong airport. The shops were top notch and folks were very patient and low key. That’s a relief after the US. It felt a little bit like the DMV only nicer? Like, people were just doing the thing and it’ll get done and you can wait… it’ll be fine…

The Bangkok airport was fine. Getting the taxi was fine. Then we got to our apartment. I looked 9,837 at the confirmation information I had and… no information about how I was to get into the apartment. So I started calling the host and sending her messages. This continued for an hour in the blistering heat. I had been awake for most of the previous 48 hours (If I got 6 hours of sleep added up in cat naps I’d be surprised) and I was not really feeling patient.

Eventually she woke up and asked why we didn’t call the guy who was waiting in the apartment. THE GUY YOU NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT AND YOU NEVER GAVE ME HIS NUMBER? THAT GUY?!?!?!

Then it turns out that the guy DIDN’T GIVE US A FUCKING FRONT DOOR KEY, JUST THE ELEVATOR PASS.

So that sucked. Noah was dispatched a few times to acquire food since we couldn’t all go. We ate. We rested. We bitched.

Eventually the lady had someone bring us a key and she gave me phone numbers for local people who can help with problems. I told her, “May I suggest that in the future you send an email 24 hours before check in with the name and phone number of the person a guest is supposed to meet?” She thought that was a good idea. Oy.

The apartment came stocked with 1/4 of a roll of toilet paper. Good thing there is a convenience store down stairs. But we are back in the land of bidets so my hemorrhoids are feeling better than they have in months.

Apparently my time in Kuala Lumpur was not real indicative of Malaysia in general because I didn’t see almost any garbage. Here in Bangkok I feel like garbage is raining down on us and flooding the pathways. So. Much. Trash.

Folks in Fukuoka would have a heart attack. Then get up from their hospital bed to start cleaning.

God damn different Asian countries are different. I am such an ignorant fucker. I didn’t realize it would be quite this dramatic.

When you drive into the city from the airport there are large signs telling you that speaking ill of the king will result in jail time. Also: being disrespectful of the Buddha or getting a tattoo of his image will result in jail time. They don’t fuck around.

Fair enough.

I come from a crazy ass country where every man, woman, and child in Texas owns 6+ guns and that’s not including the rest of the fucked up states. We never get to judge another country negatively for having…. views.

The food. *Fall over drooling* the fooooooooooooooooooooooooood. We are a 5 minute walk from a night market that serves absolutely amazing food. I could live happily forever on the variety of offerings they have. Middle Child and I had different types of tasty noodles in soup. Noah and Eldest Child had rice dishes from a different stall. Her Sweetness ate off of everyone’s plate until she realized how spicy Noah’s food was. Ha. We had fun drinks. They weren’t as sugary as we are used to from home but they were intensely fatty in a way the US doesn’t favor and frankly it tasted way better. MC had a “unicorn” which was sugar, condensed milk, two kinds of coloring, and flavors of I don’t know exactly what sort. Then there were a bunch of candies shoved into the top with sprinkles. I had a more plain caramel drink. It wasn’t a lot of caramel. But it was super good? Noah and EC had Thai iced teas with boba. Mmmmm.

Our lunch at a perfectly decent restaurant was around 900 baht. Our fabulous, wonderful, over the top good dinner at the night market was about 350 baht. Then this morning our breakfast at the grocery store cost around 600 baht just for the food (we got other staples and paid more like 1400 baht overall). 1 baht = .033 US So the lunch was around $30, the dinner was around $11 and breakfast + staples was around $45.

The night market is just so gosh darn cheap.

The traffic pattern is a bit intimidating to us: it is reminiscent of Kuala Lumpur but slightly less terrifying? Fewer motorcycles running up on sidewalks to go around cars. Here the motorcycles mostly only go up on the sidewalk if they are parking or dropping off passengers?

I am finding it fascinating that Her Sweetness is Not. Fucking. Interested. in being popular with all the local folks who would love to pick her up and chatter at her about how cute she is. She is getting a very effective “Fuck off” face. Good for her.

Sleep. Oy sleep. It’s all over the place. None of us are sleeping well. The AC helps, but it is still uncomfortable and jet lag is a bitch. Resetting a babies sleep pattern is not the same as an adult just “toughing it out”. You can’t do that to her. She melts down. She starts wandering back and forth screaming about all the things she wants but she doesn’t really want because the second she has it she is screaming about something else she wants. Sleep is the only remedy. She was super upset when Noah decided to stay downstairs and work in the common area so we don’t all have to be quiet. She wants her Bigs with her all. the. time.

Once we got through the fuss, I quite like this apartment. It is small but well laid out. The couch is awesome (it is pretty rad that I wanted to buy this couch from Ikea for our new house, I made everyone go on a pilgrimage to Ikea to sit on it in Portland. Now that we have used it for a few days everyone is fully on board with this being an awesome couch for us. This one.) and we are glad to have it here. The bed is pretty comfy. I am not sure when I became such an intense devotee of firm mattresses, but I am. Firm is great.

I am tapping my fingers waiting until Noah is done with work for the day. There are 5 or 6 Thai massage places within a 10 minute walk. Hell yeah. They all cost 300 baht or less. So… less than $10/hour. Can I have like 11 hours straight?

I had my last dose of pot on the plane. My intention (If I put this in writing, maybe I will stick with it) is to not buy alcohol at all until I genuinely feel like I have a small surplus of money in the food budget and that could not happen until October or November. I’m almost out of Ativan and I don’t intend to get more.

I’m about to be cold turkey on all of my drug dependencies.

Did I mention I plan to run a lot in Scotland? Like, when I am having feelings and I want to reach for a chemical crutch… go run instead.

I am going to learn how to be a healthy role model if it fucking kills me. I have made a tremendous amount of progress but I am not where I am going to get. Tea is going to be my big vice and I need to reduce how much sugar I put in it. (Jenny’s eyes got So Big when she watched me sugar my tea… yeah… I use a lot.) I should probably buy cubes and I get one per cup.

I am not going to buy soda again to have in the house until I also buy whiskey because I like drinking them together. Or maybe I will learn to drink my whiskey neat. We’ll see. One way or another I don’t plan to have the money to buy whiskey often enough to be a big influence on my life. Luckily I live with someone who thinks that alcohol should be served in roughly 1/2 a shot glass portions.

Yesterday was our anniversary. 13 years of marriage. I am glad we have had these adventures together. I am even more glad we are about to settle down for the foreseeable future. I want to be chilly. I want to exercise. I want to stop fucking packing.

Had a chat with EC about how much it costs to maintain cats. She wants to have two. She started panicking when she heard how much Puff used to cost me. And she wants two. We negotiated that she can do 5 hours a week of babysitting to pay for her cats. Seems like a good trade to me. We are starting with mothers helper work (she is NOT responsible for MC) and we will go from there.

It is neat hearing her strategize how she wants to do her room. She is highly cognizant of how expensive her plans are (she wants a custom built loft bed that looks like a treehouse) and she is trying to figure out which parts she can do, which parts she wants to ask me to help with, and which parts she will need to have the £ to pay someone else to help her. I feel so proud of her. Her planning skills are still nascent but she’s going to be fucking bad ass as an adult. She thinks things through. I mean, she’s still impulsive as fuck because she has ADHD like whoa but she can also plan. It’s amazing.

MC is more focused on the school part of moving. Setting up a room is not really on the radar yet. School supplies, uniforms, how to make friends, how to write in cursive… kiddo really can’t move past those details and that’s totally ok.

Her Sweetness is learning words at a blistering rate. She is going to be closer th ECs curve with talking than MCs. Doesn’t matter, they are all fine and normal and doing what they ought to be doing. But holy cheese she says a lot. People keep asking me if she is 3 or 4 based on her size and talking. Nope. 18 months. And she’s my smallest baby. Cue the bug eyes.

Folks have asked me if I am pregnant more than once. I laugh it off and tell them I am just fat. If I got upset I think the interaction would be tense but instead we all have a good laugh and move on about our day without strife. I am trying so hard not to let other peoples judgments of me impact how I view myself.

I am pretty fat at this point. I’m riding the 200 lb line and on my frame… that’s not small. The lightweight pants I have that zip off into shorts are so tight they are really uncomfortable. No bueno. My dresses barely fit. I am not going to fit into my flannel lined jeans unless I lose some weight.

It’ll be ok. My body does this. I bounce between the 150’s and the low 200’s. I have done this over and over and over since I was 16. This is my range. It is all normal for me.

I hope I can go to bed early tonight and I hope I actually sleep through. I sure could use it.

We go home in six days.

Our house is paid for and legally ours. Miss Jenny will be picking the keys up this week for us. I am elated. I feel really glad that she gets to be the first one to take possession of our house for us. I feel so welcomed. I feel so wanted. She is being super awesome about telling us to go ahead and start ordering things to her house and we will get it over to my place lickity split once we are there. She wants us to feel comfortable and happy.

I know there will be days we struggle and feel home sick because that is part of the journey of change. But I want this change with my whole being. My entire family wants to be there for a wide variety of reasons. I have great faith we will figure this out.

We figure a lot of things out. We are pretty cool like that.

Happy birthday!

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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.

4 hours of sleep feels awful

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I didn’t sleep last night and as a result I feel awful today. I feel sick. I mean, I did also puke night before last. I feel bad. I feel like I want to freak out and scream and rage and throw things and break things and…

Ugh. I’m not doing that. I’m carping to Noah about how cranky I feel. I’m not taking it out on the kids. I just feel bad and I feel like I can’t get away from it because it is my whole body. I can’t tell how much of it is related to leaving California and all of my feelings there. I did not see any family members. I didn’t even see many friends. Just a couple. We saw a whole bunch of neighbors and people in the community we know–that part was nice. We know a lot of business owners and they will miss us. We are good customers.

But my mother. My nephew. My niece. Auntie. I don’t even know how to wrap my mind around the feelings I’m having.

I just know that in 18 days I will arrive at my home far far far away and I will never have to worry about seeing them again. It’s over. My anxiety can plummet, I hope.

I love my extended family. But I brought my children into the world and it is my responsibility to protect them from being abused.

I will run away. I will take my children with me. We will go somewhere new. Somewhere my children can go to school without fear of being shot in school.

The gun stuff is really getting to me. I have come to realize that several of the people I associate with probably have guns in their homes and I feel completely freaked out that I let my children go to their homes. I wish I hadn’t.

I don’t think I believe in “good people” with guns anymore. And that’s so dogmatic and absolute and a complete 180 from what I used to feel. I know people who have good reasons for guns. They have been stalked. Someone threatens their life.

But I don’t know. People deal with stuff like that in other places without having to have loosey goosey gun laws that result in more than 3,000 children dying from gun violence every year. Almost twice as many children die from being shot than die from cancer.

We choose this. We want to live in this system. We want these results. If we didn’t want this we would change our actions and we are absolutely unwilling to… which means we as a nation are totally ok with thousands of children dying every year so adults can play with their violent toys.

I feel sick. You want to feel super powerful. You want to feel like the “good guy/gal with the gun”. Only you are more likely to kill yourself or a kid than to ever effectively use the gun for protection.

Oh well.

I need to leave. I really do. This didn’t use to bother me the way it does now. But when I look at my children…

I can’t subject them to this.

Well, therapy isn’t an option. Try to talk it out.

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Why am I so depressed? Well. I built a lot of my sense of self worth around my value to people. Quite some time ago Sarah said that she was tired of having me publicly humiliate her when she made mistakes so I didn’t write as much about how she was treating me. I gave too much. I hate feeling like I am one of those assholes who justifies treating people badly or stalking by saying “I just love too much”.

But I went and did physical labor for her when it was literally causing me physical damage. I spent thousands of dollars helping her. Because I was trying to give her the kind of support I wish someone wanted to give me. She had me block out lots of time for her on my calendar and she showed up when she had nothing better to do.

Dad only offers help (that I have to pay hundreds of dollars for because I have to buy the plane tickets and send food money for my kid and send money for activities…. why aren’t I just sending her to sleep away camp–that costs less money?) when he also wants to ask me if he can borrow $25,000. But he doesn’t invite me to Thanksgiving or Christmas unless it is an Orphan/Leather Friends event. When he has holidays with his family I am not invited. I might be able to crash it… but he doesn’t invite me. Years ago when I asked him if he was willing to have a relationship with my kids he told me that I needed to know that all of his investment properties, all of his ability to help in this life is going to his kids. But I should loan him $25,000? Uhm. No. That kind of loan is for family. And you are letting me know that I am a Leather Family member… not a family member.

The folks we came to Hawaii to see talked about how much they missed us and how much they wanted to spend time with us. They have been begging us to visit for two years. And the daughter has totally flaked (she’s 20 and going through some shit… I get it) while the mother is manipulative, whiny, and cruel to my children all while asking me to fund her lifestyle. “I want to throw you a vegan feast to show you how much I care about you… but you have to pay for it.” Well a vegan feast is only welcome if it comes from t&T because their household is the only vegan household I fucking trust to make me food that will taste good. Your offering sounds like I am going to leave hangry and mean. And I get to pay for it. You will hang out with my kids and tell them that if they are not demonstrating enough gratitude that they don’t deserve to have as much food or money from their mother for play. WHAT THE FUCK? She mocked the size of my daughter’s ass because it didn’t fit in a climbing unit designed for fucking 5 year olds.

But I feel this terrible, overwhelming shame about cutting off people who treat me this way? They are willing to be my friends so how dare I judge what they have on offer?

Being really upset about these bigger boundary violations mean that smaller things feel more threatening. I *know* the CPS comment wasn’t intended as a threat. I *know* she didn’t mean to hurt me. But CPS is a deeply triggering topic and I am already wild with upset and I don’t have the ability to process that kind of thing without flipping out on top of everything else.

I don’t feel entitled to demand better treatment. I feel like these “friends” are treating me this way because this is what I deserve. Because I deserve to be treated like an ATM. If I don’t buy love I don’t deserve to receive any.

I deeply believe that my children don’t owe me anything. It is supposed to be a one way trip of support but that means I feel used all of the time by a lot of people and that’s hard.

I am still grieving Marcie. Her wife would not allow me to visit when Marcie was injured. Marcie felt abandoned. Marcie broke up with me because she couldn’t cope with feeling abandoned. I get that. I hope her wife is treating her better now. I will never know.

I am not blameless in any of this. I wanted too much from Sarah. I could watch her patterns and guess that she wouldn’t keep her promises and she would continue to want/take money and never think about how she was impacting other people. She is consistent with lots of people. I kept making stupid choices.

But I hurt. I feel like my hurt is stupid and I should just get over it and how dare I act like I have problems when I am not poor any more.

How dare I act like I ever deserve any support at all now that I have so much fucking money. I *should* have to pay for all help I get. And if people treat me badly as they take my money… isn’t that what I have always believed rich people deserve? Isn’t that justice?

I never meant to get this rich. I really didn’t. And now I don’t know how to view myself.

I don’t feel bad about the financial help I give to a lot of people. I bought Y a car and I don’t feel bad. I gave M a car and I don’t feel used. I have paid for people’s schooling. I have helped people start businesses. I loaned a friend money so she could get an apartment when she got her first corporate job and she couldn’t afford a place in the city she got the job in.

I don’t feel used by any of those situations at all.

I feel used by Sarah. I feel used by Dad. I feel used by the lady here in Hawaii.

Feeling bad about these people does not entitle me to treat other people badly. But I’m not coping well. I feel like I have to pretend I am not hurting and I am not capable right now. I don’t feel entitled to be sad about how these people treat me.

I abandoned my mother and my aunt when they needed help. I left them with a bunch of users, abusers, and takers. I feel like that means I deserve all the bad in the whole world. That means that Sarah treating me like shit feels like justice. And I hate myself for being someone who deserves this.

When I got my accident settlement when I turned 18, my sister told me that I had to use it to buy her a house and she would let me live with her.

How can I teach my children how to be in relationships without being users if that is all I understand?

It isn’t that all of my friends are users. Not even close. And it isn’t that I think I deserve endless support or financial help or…

I babysat for a lot of people hoping for trades. I was told that it was “easier” for me. They couldn’t handle having more than their own children in the house. But me providing free child care was so nice. It worked with the Bonus Family until it didn’t. Then my kids told me that a lot of her discipline was threatening to hit them and putting them in time outs for hours. I already knew that she expected my kids to come clean up after her kids because my kids are “more mature”.

I feel like almost every child care situation I have found has turned out to be shitty and abusive. I fear that it is happening because only shitty and abusive people want to be around me.

Only that isn’t true. I have friends who aren’t shitty and abusive. Well. I have people who want to talk to me for a few minutes or hours a year who aren’t shitty and abusive.

I feel like I should have known that my children would be treated badly by caregivers, as if it is a generational curse.

I don’t want to be bitter or angry or pissy with new people because I hate how this has all gone down.

But that means I have to lie about how I feel all the god damn time because I don’t trust people and I assume people are going to use me or treat me or my kids like crap.

M came through for my last birth. I need to never ever do anything again that puts me in such a vulnerable position. Because I can’t ever again need that much help. I can’t guarantee it. I am sure that people will help me in the future but they will help me randomly and when and how they feel like it and it won’t be based on my needs or issues. It will be about what makes them feel good that day.

That has to be ok. That has to be enough.

Which means I need to not try to be bigger. I need to not try to accomplish things. I need to just sit around and do nothing and wait for my kids to have needs because they will have needs and I am the only one who will be available to help them. I can’t ever believe anyone who tells me they will help again. If someone offers to be a penpal I need to to not believe them. If someone tells me they want us to come visit because they want to spend time with us I need to assume they are a liar.

I am so fucking grateful that Jenny said she has maybe a spare hour one day a week. Maybe. That is not consistent and I cannot count on it.

Thank you.

I hate that I need to assume that people are lying to me all the time. I need to assume that people are telling me what they wish was true, not what is true.

And I wonder why I feel depressed?

I really don’t want to live near the ocean. I don’t like it at all. I learned that, at least.

Trying to find the right mirrors.

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I have a lot of people in my life who will tell me what is wrong with me and why I am fucking up. There aren’t very many people who spend enough time with me to be able to give me serious feedback on what I do right.

The mom of our former babysitter is an evangelical Christian. She’s seriously interested in converting people to her version of love and light and all that. She tries really hard to be positive even though she has a lot of anxiety and depression issues too. We’ve seen her a bunch of times already. Every single time we see her she comments on things she sees that are positive. “Wow y’all are really good at compromising and negotiating.” “It’s so nice to see siblings getting along so well and trying to be kind to each other.” “You are all trying so hard to get through work even as you are distracted and tired; that’s not easy and you are doing really well.”

I feel like a plant getting water. And I feel like I am a terrible energy vampire because I want more. More. MORE.

I feel my shoulders coming down. I feel less defensive and sad.

It’s not instant. I’m not going to get over this in a week. It’s been a bad two years for me since they left. I miss this family like an open, bleeding wound. And I feel like I’m starting to get a transfusion.

I love them so much. I am so grateful that they embrace us even though we are not like them and we do not share their values and we do not have the same life goals.

I feel accepted.

This is how all fucking Christians should fucking act.

I feel like I’m going to stop breathing

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If you tell me where this post is linked (and I get to go verify it) I will send you $20. Who in the hell is causing me to get so many damn hits on this post?

Holy. Shit. This is the month. 18 days. 13 days till my baby turns 1. We aren’t having a party. I am definitely depressed. I don’t feel able to reach out to anyone if my life depends on it. I am leaving. I never get to ask for anything again.

I get these people and the folks who voluntarily ask to be part of our life. I don’t have the right to keep begging people to be in my life.

I think back to Eldest Child’s huge first birthday ten years ago. I thought we were going to be part of a big community. Well, when I stopped doing all the driving those people dropped me. Ok.

I feel so incredibly hurt by all of the people in the Bay Area who drove past me to help other people but fuck me I should do everything alone.

I am leaving partially because if you asked me for help I would show up. Even though you treat me like shit and I know it. Because that’s who I am. Thus I am moving to get the fuck away from your using ass.

“Aunties”. Fuck it.

I am so bitter.

There are a lot of days I wish that having kids wouldn’t have worked out so I could be dead already. I am so tired of feeling abandoned and unimportant. When I ask you for help and you tell me no but you drive even farther to help someone else you remind me of my mother. Anyone but me deserves help.

Fuck me. Why am I still here? Why haven’t I died already.

Things like: when I used to try hard to be part of the home school group I would find out that all of the major decisions for when and where to schedule big events were made at private “just a couple of friends” off shoots of the main group so that my schedule was never taken into consideration. “Well this is what works for us. You can either come or not come.” *hair flip*

Yeah. I see you there. Why don’t you go do all of your own work from now on.

You have no idea how much satisfaction I get from having over a dozen people tell me that the group sucked after I left. No shit mother fucker. That’s because you all suck and I tried to rescue you from how shitty you are but it was too much work. Go to hell.

I am not willing to invest in the new group at all. It’s too late. Not even in terms of time. I am angry and bitter and I owe none of you a god damn kind word let alone labor.

I feel sick to my stomach thinking about how much damage I have done to my body helping people. I drove to fucking Arizona and caused pre-term labor problems doing manual labor for someone who didn’t really appreciate me.

Because I’m stupid.

Because I don’t value myself.

Because I treat people allowing me to work for them as the same thing as love.

I mean, she did kind of appreciate me. But not enough to talk to me on a vacation I’m paying for when her more interesting boyfriend is present. Not enough to keep her promises. Hell, not enough for her to bother remembering that she made promises! Fuck me.

I really don’t want to feel bitter like this. It really doesn’t help that a lot of this is so old.

It dates back to when all of my siblings were good enough to stay with our parents and I couldn’t. Because I was too much trouble. I needed too much help. So go stay with people who hate you and talk all day long about how much you are shit.

We will never go camping again because how dare I act like able bodied adults showing up and expecting a disabled adult to do everything for them is rude.

How dare I act like I am anything other than a menial serf here to do your labor for you. You are the good one. The one who grew up with a family and parents. You deserve good things. I should wait on you because that is the natural order of things.

Waste people don’t matter. They should serve the people who matter.

Fuck you. And fuck you. And fuck YOU with a chainsaw.

Fuck you and fuck you and fuck you. I am so mad. I am so bitter. I am so angry.

Fuck Marcie. Fuck Chris. Fuck Laura. Fuck Kira. Fuck Deborah. Fuck Alex. Fuck Desiree. Fuck Jen. Fuck fucking Tamy. Even though it hurts so bad I feel like my chest will implode: fuck Sarah.

You treated me badly and I did not deserve that. I can come up with excuses for all of you. Your feelings are so much more important than mine. I can justify you dropping me or ignoring me or lying to me or not keeping your promises or you thinking that everyone else is more important…

BUT FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.

I get to be mad. I shouldn’t take it out on everyone else in my life but frankly talking about it helps me not do that. It helps me compartmentalize it.

I am angry with these people because they actually did things to hurt me. Maybe if I name them I will stop feeling like I am a monster who is blasting everyone in the world equally even though most people don’t deserve it.

I wanted some people more than others. It wasn’t returned. I feel like the problem came partially from me being stupid and allowing myself to like them so much. I shouldn’t have. They truly weren’t worth it.

That’s the trouble. These people make me feel like I am unworthy of being alive and none of them deserve that power. They aren’t worth me feeling this bad for this many years. I have cried for literal years over every person on that list of names. Because they didn’t love me like I loved them. Maybe the trouble is I pick selfish assholes. Maybe part of the trouble is I know that I have to get very angry with those people; I have to move; I have to create distance or I will be pathetic and crawl back and continue to beg these fuckers to love me.

And they aren’t worth it.

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

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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.

Well that fucking sucks.

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I’ve been hanging out on a private forum dealing with my emotions in a way that won’t blow up my life. But someone keeps hurting the woman who was hosting it because people are spiteful, disgusting assholes. So the forum is gone.

I feel really upset. I was getting a lot of good out of talking to those women.

I don’t know what to do now. There’s a lot I need to write out/think out and writing it here…

Yeah. I’m not ready to blow up bridges yet.

Something needs to change.

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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.

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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.

Anyone pregnant?

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I am such a homebody right now that I am less aware of other peoples news than usual. Do I know anyone who is pregnant? Do you have another friend who is pregnant who lives vaguely near me? We are starting to outgrow baby clothes and given how expensive these suckers are for how short a time they are worn…

Do any of your friends need stuff? I might do freecycle for that.

Third time’s the charm.

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I have said for ten years that any amount of labor time under 24 hours would be easy. I was right! 21 hours were fine.

First: this could not possibly have gone so well without our wonderfully kind friend who moved in for a week so that when I had a full day of contractions and they petered out I had no extra stress about feeling guilty about prodromal labor. I got to ride the waves and take whatever experience. It was a gift. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

My official labor got going around 8:30am on Monday. My contractions built in intensity and regularity all day. I went in around 7pm because my contractions were about 5 minutes apart and a minute long and consistently more than 10/hour. Mostly I was fretful because she had slowed her moving down and I was worried. It’s so hard not being able to see if the baby inside of you is ok.

I got to the hospital 3cm dilated (which isn’t that much and they could have sent me home) and 90% effaced with a bulging water sack. They wanted me to stay. Around 10:30ish they started Pitocin. The epidural was started around 11. Then I went to sleep. I was checked at some point. I was woken up/checked again around 4. During the 4am check the doctor accidentally broke my water bag because whoops it was in the way. At first she said 8cm. Then a minute later she declared me complete and instantly there were six extra people, lots of lights, and a whole bunch of beeping machines.

When my water was broken my blood pressure and her heart rate dropped dramatically. I was put on oxygen instantly. They started IV meds to support the baby.

Between 4:30ish and 5 I was in position and they started encouraging me towards pushing. Another moment of intense gratitude: my friend’s mom came to the hospital with us around 10pm. She was there talking and being supportive whenever I needed her. Her voice did sound above the crowd to give encouragement and feedback.

I might actually send out thank you cards. I’m really in awe of how people showed up for me.

The nurses also did a good job of giving feedback and support. But Ma’s voice was louder and more insistent.

Noah did a wonderful job of supporting me this time. He kept his face soft and loving the whole time. No grimacing at my pain. Well done, fantastic husband.

Ze baby emerged at 5:28am. I didn’t tear or get a skid mark or nothing. I am shocked by how relatively comfortable my external genitalia feel. I’m sore but it’s not bad. Internally the continued contractions to get my uterus back to size suuuuuuuuuuck. And why don’t I take 400mg of Ibuprofen three times a day and I wont have pain, right?! Oh man.

Several folks, including the lactation consultant, asked me about my THC usage. We clarified that I don’t smoke it basically at all (inhaling it is one of the most dangerous steps–we know there are problems from breathing smoke) and I went into details about why I use it and what I have replaced with it and why my medical team thinks this is the best choice for me. I was rather stunned by the extent of support I received. Most folks were like, “You are clearly very educated on this topic and you are making the best choice for your body. Alright. Excellent.” My pain management doctor telling me that my next line is Oxycontin and Ativan really helps. No one wants me on those meds. Definitely not when I’m breeding/feeding a kid.

I didn’t find out till we got home that one pediatrician had a judgy conversation with Noah about my THC when I was out of the room. I’m tempted to follow up on that because it might be a HIPAA violation for her to discuss my medication without me present and that kind of bugs me. What if I had been using birth control behind my husband’s back and she just wanted to mention that it might impact my baby and I am going to go home and get in trouble? You don’t report on other peoples medical care when they are not present. That shit’s not cool.

What if my husband didn’t approve but it was still the best mediation option and now he is going to make my life a living hell? That’s very realistic.

Anyway.

The baby feels slightly more fragile to me than my previous kids. Specifically: she’s having trouble with reflux. Her first whole night of life I barely slept because she would spit up, fill her mouth with fluid, and be unable to do anything about it. She couldn’t move her head to let it fall out and she couldn’t swallow it. So I spent a lot of time flipping her over and clearing her mouth. The lactation consultant agreed that putting her in the bassinet would be stupid. She needed to be up against my body with me paranoid and watching her. It was a festive/non-restful/wonderful night. Oh, I sent Noah home so he could sleep because otherwise we would both be exhausted and useless.

8:30am-5:30am. 21 hours. It was great. The first day of hospital recovery was lovely.

She was 20.5″ long (so .5″ shorter than the two older kids) and 8lbs 9oz. So heavier than both siblings, who were 8lbs and 8lbs 4 oz. I am steadily gaining 4ish oz per kid and that’s a great time to stop. Ha.

It took us till 1pm to secure check out because the hospital kind of wanted me to stay an extra night. But I got shifted from the maternity section to the pediatrics section and I kind of fell out of the “we will pay a lot of attention to you” rotation and that was difficult for me. I didn’t feel good about calling my nurse all the time to get the same care I had previously gotten for existing. So I didn’t drink or eat almost at all the second day in the hospital because she wasn’t offering anymore.

That was suboptimal. I came home and scarfed a big bag of salami because I needed protein before I killed someone.

Our friend went home last night. Her dog was experiencing a lot of stress from the new rules with a baby. My house had already been hard because there were more rules than usual and it was just not fair to keep cracking down on her. I am so so so so so so grateful my friend stayed as long as she did. The dog’s behavior was great. She never did anything inappropriate. She was just done with the restrictions. I would have flipped out long before she did. Such a good girl.

I tried to tell Noah to watch the baby and let me sleep in between nursing last night. Ha. That uhhh… didn’t work very well. He did a 7.5 hour shift and I probably got 1.5-2 hours of sleep. Sigh. It’ll be ok. I will sleep today.

It is fascinating to me how excited and complete I feel. I am so happy I get to learn about this wonderful daughter. She gets cold! Like me! She shivers a lot. She needs a fair bit of bundling in our frigid California weather. Ha. I really can’t tell who she looks like yet. She looks like a whole new person and it is so neato. She’s beautiful and I feel completely overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to keep her and take care of her. She is my responsibility. I am allowed to love her with my whole heart.

I can’t express what that means to me.

I don’t feel sad about wanting more children. I feel like I am at my limit emotionally and physically. This is my family. This is what I want/wanted. In the future I will have the spoons to foster, but I don’t think I will ever take on a baby again. This is my journey.

I feel so lucky.

Big kids are ecstatic. They are snuggling her and talking to her and trying to learn how to be helpful. It will be a process and I’m glad to be on it with them.

I get to have two daughters and a non-binary kid. I get to have a husband who thinks I am the best thing since sliced bread. I get to have friends who show up to help me and support me through complications and challenges. I get to have a home I am allowed to alter and be safe in however I want. I get to have healthy meat and vegetables every day so that my body achieves a level of functioning I didn’t believe possible for me.

I can’t believe this is my life. I am one of the luckiest people ever born. I have so much. I am so grateful.

I am glad I am still alive for this feeling.

Ze baby has already had 8, maybe 9 poopy diapers and 2 or 3 wet diapers. I’m getting confused already. This is a great sign though. Her digestion is working. Her kidneys are starting to function as we hoped. We have a pediatrician check up in about 6 hours.

This is going as well as something can go. I am eternally grateful.

Random note: to the best of my knowledge my child is the only person in the entire world with her legal first/last name combo. I will do my best to never put it on the internet for her. That will happen when she chooses.

Judgment and internal compass

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I feel like a flaming asshole for comparing the two dudes I saw at the party. I’m doing it less to make any kind of point about them and more to see for myself where my earliest judgments about people are proven true later.

My family is talking about moving constantly. It’s a huge focus of conversation and thought in our house. What is it going to mean to us? How is it going to work? No one thinks this house is long-term appropriate so moving is in the cards…

I am going to move somewhere and not have an entire back story with people. I will go to parties and not have a minimum of two former lovers in each room. It’s going to be… different. I depend a lot on the experiences I’ve had to decide if a person is safe or not. I’m going to throw out all of my hard earned experience and go start over.

Only I’m not really throwing it all away.

I’m thinking about the differences between the two men because I’m thinking about how to look for signals of appropriateness and compatibility in the future. Not for sex necessarily, but for friendship.

I like how God talks to me. Even though I was a very fucked up teenager who totally wanted to go there again after he realized that he didn’t want that kind of relationship with me he proceeded to enact healthy boundaries and stay my friend. He has never spoken to me disrespectfully in over 20 years of knowing one another. He’s not a braggart. He’s humble and giving and compassionate. His wife is a nice lady who has never boundary stomped with me and instead she is excruciatingly polite to me.

How do I look for people more like that in the future?

Well… for one thing when someone wants to sit me down to tell me how life is going and mostly I hear brags about how important they are at work… probably not going to be my kind of person.

It’s not that people are wrong for taking pride in their work. That’s totally ok. But if I’ve known you for a decade and we haven’t really talked in 3+ years and most of what I hear is that you are the only competent person at your job…

Mostly I’m going to hear that you don’t have a lot of respect for the people around you. Because in my experience most people who brag that they are the head of a department because no one else is competent… uhm… Hey… Dunning-Kruger…

I mean. I’m not saying that other dude is actually crappy at his job. I am not evaluating that in any way shape or form. But a complete lack of humility is a sign I probably won’t like someone.

And the fact that other dudes wife walked into the room and yelled, “AGAIN?! Don’t you know what causes that?!!”

Yeah. I know we had to go to the nice doctor who did the original vasectomy and get a reversal and then there was a whole process after that. Yup. I’m totally fucking aware of what causes my current condition.

And go fuck yourself.

Yes yes, you morally superior one and done people. I don’t give a flying fuck.

(I think it is fine for people to have one child. I think that it is obnoxious as fuck for someone to act like their choice is THE moral choice.)

When I had an issue with God’s parents… he stood up for me and did not allow them to verbally be rude to me. When I have issues with other dude’s family/wife… he just kind of looks down. Because he knows better than to sass the Head Bitch In Charge of his family… even as he snarks her and low level disrespects her constantly.

I want more people in my life who are consistent, respectful, and compassionate.

I don’t always pick poorly. Sometimes I manage to stumble across people who give me hope for my species.

It’s like my friend Y. A gal I’ve known since middle school. I visited her in Tennessee and I bought her the car. She’s generous, compassionate, and kind. Absolutely consistently across the board even when it isn’t easy for her.

I do have a good picker. Even though I doubt almost everything about myself and my ability to evaluate if people are good or not.

But then we get into serious asshole territory. I’m not actually evaluating if people are GOOD or BAD. I’m evaluating if they are compatible with me. I’m evaluating if they model the kinds of behavior patterns I want my children watching and emulating. I’m evaluating if they are people who will help me feel like there are people who want me alive and who care about me.

Not that my life should depend on the evaluation of anyone else. I know that’s fucked up.

But can I go find people who will treat me in a way I want to be treated? I’m a picky and demanding bitch. I’m also generous and compassionate and I’m quick to step up if someone needs help.

I like people who want to be the helpers instead of people who want to be told how cool they are.

And that doesn’t really make someone good or bad. But it does decide a lot about how compatible I will be with a given person.

There is a big piece of me that is fairly terrified of trying to build a new community. That sounds hard. But I think back to the people who joined the various communities after me. The people who bravely asserted themselves and created spaces that were uniquely *them* shaped.

I can do that. And if I can do it without feeling constantly haunted by all the rapists from my past… maybe it will even go better. It’s not that I will find a community free of rapists… such a place doesn’t exist… but maybe my avoidance won’t kick in for a while.

I don’t know.

I want to believe that I can go find new good people. I want to believe that I am capable of attracting people who will be good to and for me. Not attracting in the sex sense. Just in the friendship sense. Because in the long run, my friendship with God is what has made him so wonderful in my life. The hour we had sex…. well, it was fun… but that’s not what defines our relationship.

I am so grateful for the lessons I have been able to learn with the people I have been privileged to know.

But maybe it is time for some new lessons.

Bitchy bitchy bitchy observation.

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Today at the party there were two men I’ve had *cough* relations with. One of them was super attentive to his child and helping with food and just generally being an awesome community member and upstanding person. I have nothing but positive memories of our brief interlude.

The other dad kept telling his kid to go ask her mother for help. He sat around and didn’t help. I remember things not being much fun when we tried to get it on.

This is amusing to me.

God, you are still one of the nicest people I ever slept with. I’m so glad there are men like you in the world. You give me hope.

Yay! A grown up party!

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The folks who used to live with Noah when I met him had a party today. It was kind of like old home week. I saw lots of folks I haven’t talked to much in the past ten years but I saw them a lot before then.

It was nice. It was lovely having history and understanding. A woman and I were talking about who our respective spouses dated before us. In her case she was stating that her husband can handle her crazy because the person who came before her set the bar sooooooooo low. In contrast, I don’t have such an excuse because the gal Noah was dating when he asked me to marry him was so fucking sane. Everyone in the room nodded with understanding. Noah needed someone crazier than her. So he came back to me.

It was… weird and validating? These are people who knew Noah and I before we knew each other. I’ve known one of these people since I was in high school. Noah went to college with a bunch of the crowd.

And they still want to know us. They were happy to see us.

I got the impression there were one or two people at the party who would have been just as happy/more happy with us not being there… but that was it. And I just got the impression. Meh.

That was a great event. I’m glad we went.

I will miss this community

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I went into the bank by myself. The tellers wanted to know where my kids were. But they didn’t even ask in idle curiosity. They were a little mad at me because they wanted to talk to the kids.

It’s going to be hard leaving somewhere that we are so well known that people act entitled to a chat with my kids.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: community

I swear I am trying.

Like Ursula I am wasting away

What I’ve been looking for

Well this sucks; ok not everything sucks

Traveling is eventful.

Happy birthday!

4 hours of sleep feels awful

Well, therapy isn’t an option. Try to talk it out.

Trying to find the right mirrors.

I feel like I’m going to stop breathing

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

Well that fucking sucks.

Something needs to change.

This could be fun. Or terrifying.

Anyone pregnant?

Third time’s the charm.

Judgment and internal compass

Bitchy bitchy bitchy observation.

Yay! A grown up party!

I will miss this community