I haven’t been “fully medicated” on pot since the 13th. I have had somewhere between 1/2 of my “normal” dosage to none. Many days have been entirely unmedicated. I think I’ve had…7? days entirely unmedicated out of the last two weeks.
I’m not sure if my mood swings are more extreme or not. I feel more nervous all the time. I shake more. I’m crying around the kids more because I can’t hold it in. I’m trying to up the “stress reduction” things I do but it really isn’t balancing.
I read a lot of really nasty things on the internet about how mentally ill people are just “attention seeking”. Every single time I read something like that what I get out of the experience is, “No one gives a shit about my experience of life and I should never ask for help.” Luckily I live with someone who demonstrably thinks that attitude is bullshit and he *does* want me to ask for attention when I need it.
Yesterday started off rocky but improved. Noah was very nice to me in those ways that Noah is very nice. I really like living with him. My issues with my body predate him and aren’t because of him and nevertheless he tries hard to make my life better. When I communicate that I am doing especially badly he takes a deep breathe and finds a way to be more giving.
Sometimes that means making all the food instead of just most of the food when he is home. Sometimes that means a lot of massage (yesterday was a fantastic rubbing day). Sometimes it means reading me books as a way of paying attention to me but not focusing on me. It’s a subtle distinction but very important.
When Noah is nicer to me in these ways I tend to feel a lot more inner push to make sure I’m finishing “my share” of the work around the house. Things get much tidier after he has paid attention to me because he likes the house tidy. I try to streamline things so he doesn’t have any more stress than usual. If he spends the whole day rubbing me there is basically a 0% chance I will turn down sex. You’ve totally done the prerequisite touching. Ok.
The folks on the PTSD forum spend a lot of time talking about how “not safe” it is to talk about having this disorder and what it means. They believe you should only tell people if you HAVE to. If there is no way to avoid mentioning it. Like, if you are going to marry someone you have to tell them in advance but they can usually justify not talking about it for years of dating.
I have the opposite approach. I tell everyone. I document the ups and the downs. Not because I expect lots of people to react or to treat me particularly differently. Partially so people can (hopefully) understand that my extremes are not their fault. Clearly I have extreme reactions all the time to seemingly inconsequential stimuli. It is not someone else’s fault when I suddenly have intense feelings of shame and worthlessness and suicidal ideation. It just happens sometimes.
I can usually pull together a basket of “Ohhh…. this happened and that happened and that thing over there and that’s when I lost control” but the fact that I lost control isn’t the fault of cause A, cause B or cause C. I lost control because maintaining control is very hard and I struggle with it all the time and sometimes I slip.
I am outbursty, loud, and over-sharing pretty much all the time. So it’s not because of you. Nothing YOU did caused this.
Well, unless you are one of the many people who abused me. But I doubt it. They are pretty much gone from my life. And I don’t even think that my issues are anyone in particular’s fault. My issues are the result of a tremendous number of small and large failures on the part of people who were responsible for the safety of a child.
Now that I have the responsibility for the safety of children I can see that. It’s not my mom’s fault. It’s not my dad’s fault. It is my mom and dad and sister and aunt and uncle and brother and school principals and school teachers and neighbors and therapists and….
My brain wouldn’t have gotten so fucked up if I hadn’t been severely neglected and abused. That was a joint effort to create.
But here I am. What do I do now? Do I expect people to dance like monkeys for my entertainment to try and make up for all the shit that happened before? God I hope not. I visit with friends when I have the self control to make our visit mostly about their feelings of comfort and safety and I avoid people when I can’t manage to behave well enough. I invite people to parties mostly because I know a tremendous number of really cool people and I think their lives would be better if they cross pollinated. I don’t expect to be the center of attention and if that starts to happen I will leave the room.
So man I have feelings about this whole “attention getting” thing. It sure sounds like people shouldn’t be seen. It sure sounds like no one should allow the truth of their life to be visible to other people and I don’t like that one bit.
I’m sorry that my truth is so melodramatic and sad. I really am. Lying about it in order to make other people feel better would drastically increase the likelihood that I will die from suicide. It’s always there for me at the corner. I don’t do it because enough people have convinced me that *they personally* would be hurt that I can’t do it. I love them a lot more than I love me and I can avoid causing them pain. If the trade is pain for me or pain for someone I love I will always volunteer to be the one in pain. I’m used to it. I have a lot of experience with pain. Most of the people I love are much less experienced and I want to keep it that way.
It’s a dance. This attention seeking bullshit. I need enough attention that I can talk myself into not dying and not so much attention that I need to leave the room because I can’t handle people looking at me.
I was asked (on the forum) how I could learn to see myself with compassion. How could I work towards seeing the value I add to the world that my friends can clearly see. How do you move past feeling like a worthless piece of shit?
I don’t really know. I am an over-achiever to compensate for my feelings of low self-worth.
This means that when I go to random parties and I don’t care about whether people like me or not (like Noah’s work Christmas party) I have a rather ridiculous number of cool stories to tell. I usually feel surprised by how many neat things I have done. Wow. I’ve had an interesting life. I don’t notice except when I am telling someone new. When I’m just sitting around being me I feel lame, boring, whiny, and obnoxious.
Don’t forget! I whine every day!
Over-sensitive, whiny baby. Things like the comments my friend made about the Christmas presents I bought. I will never bring it up with him because I’m not fucking interested in being told he was just joking and I should lighten up.
Have you noticed how I’m not a “lighten up” person?
Yes, this is manifestly all my fault and a problem I have. I know. I fucking know. I know that many people have teasing as a love language. I get that. It doesn’t change the fact that I leave and go home to cry and cry because that teasing doesn’t feel like love to me.
Am I allowed to have my reactions and feelings or do I have to conform to what makes other people feel comfortable?
I’m sorry I am so sensitive. I really fucking wish I wasn’t. But I am. I could deal with it by not talking to people any more so that I don’t get upset with them. I could deal with it by allowing people to say whatever they want and I’ll just do my crying in private. I could deal with it by asking people to stop (boy does that have a shitty track record–usually letting people know that it intensely bothers you is a cue for them to intensify how much of it they do). I could try to weed out the people who are teasers–but that doesn’t work.
Some days I can handle more of it than other days. Some days some teasing is genuinely ok and I don’t leave to go cry. Some days when I hang out with people I can pull off happy and cheerful while they are with me and I am crying before they are to their car. Or before I am to my car if I am at their house.
“Oh they didn’t mean anything by it” does not help me feel better. I don’t feel better at all that people casually say nasty things to me. They don’t mean to be nasty. It isn’t nasty from their point of view.
This is the walking on egg shells shit.
I feel dismissed and like it doesn’t matter that I have a whole frame around why I have the reactions and feelings I have. I don’t matter. What matters is that I maintain the structure and shape of what makes other people feel comfortable. Obviously I am over-sensitive and thus it is just my problem.
I’m looking forward to the grief ritual in February. There are parts of it I won’t enjoy. I get very angry when people meet for these kinds of things and declare that we have “created a community together and now we can support one another.” Bullshit. You are people I will see at a weekend conference and then probably never again. Maybe we will wave at a coffee shop. We are not a fucking community. God I get so angry when people say things like that to me.
I get why they say it. Most of the people in the room are students at a particular university and they have lots of classes together. They *could* form a community. I am not interested in joining your school (I’m not going to do the commute nor the cost) so I am not part of your community. I get it. I am not part of the community for reasons of my own choosing. I get it. It’s my fault. I get it.
I am enjoying having many days in a row where we aren’t seeing anyone. It is no one else’s fault I am so touchy and difficult and I wouldn’t be able to calibrate to someone else right now. Better to not be near people if I can’t be nice enough. I don’t like dealing with the long-term damage of people knowing just how difficult I can be.
Because seriously, when people complain about me being difficult that is on the day where I saved up all my easy. I’m fucked no matter what I do.
I feel sad and angry and trapped. I’m not trapped. These feelings will fade. My life is good. I am not upset because of anyone who is standing near me and I’m very sorry I have these feelings.
They will pass.
(Not looking for advice.)
You know how I don’t complain much about Noah? Mostly this is because I don’t have a lot to complain about. I’m a complainer. I like getting things off my chest. I feel better afterwards. So the lack of complaining is noteworthy.
Things are hard lately. My parasympathetic nervous system is shot. Which makes things like sex really hard. I don’t orgasm much at all. We can count how many times I have gotten off (other than masturbating) in the last year on one hand. That sucks. I can masturbate. But partner sex isn’t really doing a lot for me. Partner sex is about gritting my teeth while Noah uses my cunt to masturbate. I’m not feeling very good about myself. I have to grit my teeth because frequently it just flat hurts and I’m trying to bear it. I’m not even really lubricating very much.
Noah periodically says, “We could stop having sex for a while” and that makes me feel worse. I have been very aware from early childhood that marriage meant having sex. That’s why you get married. So you have someone around to fuck whenever you want.
I feel like the biggest asshole ever. Noah married me largely because of my hypersexuality. It’s gone. Well, I bet I could go pick up a casual sex partner and be fine but man I can’t get it up at home. This is hard.
I’m not really sure how to create more space for feeling like sex is a good thing in my life. Right now there just isn’t space. I spend all day being whacked as people whine “Mooooooommmmmmmmmmmy”. No, I don’t feel fucking sexy.
Pretty much every time anyone touches me I flinch. I’m having a hard time. I don’t really know what to do about this other than wait it out and hope it gets better as the kids get older.
At some point I’m going to be able to sit my kids down and beg them to stop hurting me all the time but they still aren’t to a point where they are even capable of understanding what that means. I’m struggling. I feel like the physical experience of the world my body has is the least important priority for everyone in my house. I’m having a hard time.
It doesn’t help that my ambient pain is really high even on pot. Most of my joints hurt a fair bit of the time. My muscles hurt. Pick a random place on my body and poke it and you have like an 80% chance I will say, “Yup that hurts.” Everything hurts. My fucking eyes hurt. I’ve had a headache for months. My arms, legs, and torso fucking hurt. No, I don’t feel very sexy.
In my head I keep praying that maybe if I work with a doctor and change my diet it will help. Maybe. January.
None of this is Noah’s fault and I feel like a ridiculous asshole for withholding sex. I feel like a really bad person.
The part that is bothering me the most is that when I think about sex I think about cutting. But not my normal leg-grid-pattern. When I think about sex and how little it matters how it feels to me I want to cut on my arms. I want to start right at the elbow and pull down to the wrist. Which is more of a suicidal gesture/attempt than just stress relief. I feel very upset with myself for that happening.
Noah is not pressuring me. This is not Noah’s fault. This is just happening. This is just how my brain works.
Sex is one of the primary ways that Noah gets his “cup filled” if you know that whole metaphor. That’s how he feels loved. That’s how he feels wanted. That’s how he gets energy to go out and do the death march that is his life.
We aren’t doing very well right now. We are both tired in this existential way that goes far beyond the sleep deprivation we have had in the past six years (I didn’t sleep much while pregnant).
I think that part of our problem is we keep coming to arguments that center around the fact that we are on very opposite ideological grounds about a great many things.
Noah was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he deeply identifies with the plight of rich people trying to run companies. When you speak badly about rich people/people with privilege… you’re talking shit about him. I’m the kind of person who has a lot bad to say about rich people and people with privilege.
This gets complicated and hard. We both acknowledge that we are better about this strife than we used to be. But it is wearying and hard. These arguments are extremely depressing for me, I think they are for him too.
It is very hard knowing that I have the life of comfort and privilege I have because of someone who falls into a category I talk a lot of shit about. That doesn’t say nice things about me.
I just can’t get into the mindset of arguing from the point of view of the rich and privileged. Whether I currently have money or not. I will pretty much always take the side of the less advantaged in any fight. No, I can’t get into arguing that corporations are doing great things. And I totally understand the impulse to go burn down the houses of the people who own Wal Mart.
(I’m not advocating arson.)
It means that sometimes I have the active feeling of “sleeping with the enemy”. I’m a fucking sell out.
This isn’t helping our sex life.
I would be less grumpy if my entire body didn’t hurt every minute of the day. Err, I hope.
It is very hard for Noah that I actually hate whole categories he belongs to. That makes him feel pretty bad–which makes sense. I don’t hate him. I love Noah very much. Noah is the only person in my entire life who has ever really wanted to know me. I love Noah. I even like Noah. But man we struggle sometimes.
I feel guilty. I feel like if I could just get the fuck over myself everything would be fine. I really have the ideal set up for me. Just relax. Stop being so fucking hateful. I’m not sure how to let go of this resentment I have. This hatred of everyone everywhere who “has” what I don’t have.
It’s not about the money, not really. I think money is the strawman. Security. Safety. Feelings of belonging.
We had a great party last weekend. Those people were here to see me and Noah. They like both of us. I spent a lot of the party feeling like *I* should leave because I am such an unpleasant stupid bitch.
All of my internal dialogue lately is about how stupid, worthless, and unlovable I am. I keep trying to interrupt it. “If you wouldn’t tell your best friend these things don’t say them to yourself.” It doesn’t help that I totally don’t believe that these things are true of anyone else in my life, just me. Of course I wouldn’t say them to my best friend. Just me.
Christmas will be a lot smaller next year. I’m having waves of feeling really upset that almost everything I got under the tree were things I either sent Noah a specific web link “buy this” or I dragged him to the mall and put things in a bag and told him to pay for them. I’m done. I can’t do this again. I feel so bad. (In his defense he did pick which books off my wish list. I am happy about his choices.)
Noah has too many things to think about. Gift shopping for me doesn’t make it to the top of the priority list unless I force it. So I think I am done receiving gifts. I can’t do this again. I feel like a worthless piece of shit.
I’m going to medicate to get through today. I’ve had several unmedicated days lately. I can’t do today without. I don’t think I would be able to stop crying.
Tell the truth. For the last day or so I have felt very suicidal. Lots of images in my head. I don’t want to admit it out loud because I feel like a pathetic attention whore.
It doesn’t help that someone came on the PTSD forum complaining about how her partner talks about her trauma a lot and this supporter says, “She’s just doing it for attention.”
Why the fuck doesn’t she just shut up. Why the fuck don’t I just shut up. All it would take is a little while with a razor blade. I’d shut the fuck up.
I feel so very worthless and stupid and bad. Why can’t I do anything right? Even when people are very nice to me I turn it into a reason to feel bad. I am so fucking pathetic. I hate myself so much.
None of this is Noah’s fault. But he lives with it. That makes me feel very bad about myself. He deserves better.
Sometimes I think there is no such thing as pleasing me. That I am just an asshole. I could come up with a whole long list of other disparaging things to say. I should probably stop though. I’ve made that point. I suck. Moving on.
I want to cut really badly. I want it so much. But today I wouldn’t actually trust myself to just stay on my leg and that is bad juju. I think that when I can confine myself to my leg and fairly shallow cuts as stress relief it’s not the worst coping method in the world. Today I don’t think I could. Today I want to die. No cutting today. My kids still need me.
It is hard feeling like I only exist as a support unit for other people. I take care of my kids. I’m a hole for Noah to fuck. I don’t feel like there is any me that matters in that equation. It’s not a fair characterization of my relationship with Noah. I “know” that. I just don’t know that.
I feel so sad. I want my mommy. It is all my fault I can never have a relationship with her. I walked away. I have no one to blame but me.
I felt pretty hurt by the 1 star review on Amazon saying that I don’t take responsibility for any of the shit in my life. Oh man. I feel responsible.
It is my fault that I have such negative experiences. If I knew how to act proper things would work out better. If I could stop flinching and freaking out all day long then I could probably enjoy sex. It is my fault I can’t control my body. I feel very guilty for every argument I have where I refuse to concede that all we need is another fucking honky to solve the problem.
I don’t feel like I am fighting the good fight. I’m fighting the stupid, irrelevant, no-one-cares-anyway fights. I’m mostly just fighting myself. I’m losing.
This is post-period so I can’t blame it on PMS. I just feel this way. I just feel like a worthless whore.
I’m sorry Noah. I know you deserve better than this. It seems like telling the truth is still a good policy. I don’t think I can just pretend to be what you want.
I don’t think that I am “responsible” for how other people feel. I don’t think I can “make” them feel comfortable or uncomfortable all by myself. This is a collaborative sort of dance.
That said, I take it very seriously when friends point out areas where I am making them feel uncomfortable. “I was just joking” brush offs are an easy way for conflict-avoidant people to state their issues without having to get into a full scale conflict. I get that people don’t want conflict with me. I’m annoying as fuck. Not only do I fight like the devil but I am incredibly defensive and prone to act like people are attacking me when they aren’t. Not an awesome situation.
So I try hard to pay attention to the fact that people who love me a lot are generally people who have worked hard at avoiding conflict with me. I only have one or two pro-conflict close friends. Mostly my closest friends are people who are willing to learn how to deal with what a special-fucking-snowflake I am. Noah says I take an unusual amount of energy to get to know. I believe him.
I worry. If you’ve read more than 100 words I’ve written you already know that. I worry about just about everything. I *really* worry about whether or not I am behaving in a way that is sensitive and respectful of the people around me. It may not seem that way to other people, because when I fail I fail big-time, but I swear I am working hard at tact and being kind to people who have different boundaries.
I wish that I just got to declare that my behavior was awesome and that everyone who interacts with me should feel comfortable and safe.
I don’t get to decide that. As a white person for me to *ever* declare that someone who is not white must accept my behavior… yeah no. That’s just not on. If I were a male I would think that was an additional strike against me. It may not be fair but life rarely is.
Do I get to decide that white people must accept my behavior? Oh heck no. But I think I have slightly more familiarity with the ways in which a white person is likely to take offense. I guess correctly slightly more often. Not usually and not most of the time but slightly more.
The older I get the more I appreciate that religion plays a big part in how people perceive my behavior. I didn’t understand that as a kid. Some religions are ok with people being obnoxious and questioning. Some religions not so much.
I can’t control what other people believe or think or feel. But I try really hard to examine what I am doing when they give me clues into what they are feeling or thinking. I’m trying to detect patterns that I can influence. Influence is very different from control.
I live in a time and a place in history where being sensitive to the needs of people who are not-your-race is important for everyone. I believe with all of my soul that it is most important for people who have privilege to struggle with understanding people who have less privilege. I think it is not always the responsibility of people on the bottom to be sensitive to those poor rich people. Or white people. Or whatever.
Privilege is a multi-faceted and complicated beast. I think that privilege comes in a kaliedoscope of colors. There is racial privilege, socio-econommic privilege, the privilege of having social connections, being neurotypical or not, ableism, sex privilege (which both genders have their own kinds of privilege) and I think the intersection matters a lot.
I can sit there and draw out diagrams for where I think I have privilege and where my friends have privilege. I’ve thought about it obsessively for years. Partially I’ve been trying to figure out why some things are easier for me and some things are easier for them. Partially I’ve been trying to figure out which behaviors are linked to which life experiences so that I can better plan out how to treat my kids and my friends.
I’m trying to fake how to be someone who has always had privileges I’ve never had. That’s really complicated sometimes.
For me, paying attention to how I make people of other races feel is absolutely vital and part of my learning-to-not-be-a-schmuck process. But talking about it makes people feel uncomfortable. Welcome to my catch 22. (Which I’ve never read.)
I’m deeply grateful that my friend felt comfortable enough to tell me that discomfort was experienced. That’s brave and hard. Then I go and write about it and make it all difficult and uncomfortable. Because I’m awesome.
If I want my house to be safe I need to figure out what that means. For one thing some people are ok being written about and some people not so much. I am crossing my fingers that this one doesn’t blow up in my face.
I don’t think I want to try to have a party in December again. I think that in the future I will shoot for January after people have caught up on sleep.
Part of that is honestly so I can shape the guest list more carefully. Lots of people were traveling.
There is this careful balance to walk. I can’t pressure POC to come to my parties because that is creepy, weird, and not so cool. But I feel like it would be smart to try and plan in advance around the schedules of people I want to have at the parties. And if I want my non-white friends to feel comfortable that means asking some point blank scheduling questions of only my POC friends. Which makes me feel weird and racist and like I am courting them as exotic pets.
I would not consciously schedule a party so I could have more white people present so it feels rather uncomfortable to schedule a party so I can have more POC present. But that may be the only way to tip the attendance balance so that people don’t feel like tokens.
I’m not sure what the right answer is. I’m afraid that when it comes to dealing with issues around race I am going to lose no matter what I do. “Hey can you make sure you come to my party so my friends can see that I know more than one person who looks like you.” Wow. That’s an asshole move on every level.
But just inviting people and hoping for the best is questionable too. Sometimes that will mean that my events are more than 90% white.
I suppose it matters what my goals really are. Is my goal to be able to show off once a year that I know a diverse group of people? Not really. Who am I showing off to? The other people at the party? My white friends aren’t impressed and if that was my goal my friends who aren’t white aren’t impressed with me either. Because man that’s a shitty goal to have.
On a specific level I have the goal that my children will grow up having long-term intimate relationships with people of widely divergent cultures and races. That is a goal I feel more comfortable having. That’s less about impressing anyone and more about teaching my kids that people have more similarities than differences so look to anyone standing near you for relationships. Just love people. That I feel very much like I am accomplishing. My kids spend a large percentage of their time with other people around people who don’t look just like them. They see a lot of adults of various races on a regular basis. They interact with a lot of families of various religions and creeds. I feel good about teaching them to respect a lot of kinds of people.
I feel like I am walking my talk with my children. I am not doing a perfect job of teaching them about people of diverse lineage but I’m doing ok and they walk up to every kid at the playground and ask to play. They reach out to people whenever they get the chance no matter how that person looks. Ok. That’s a specific parenting goal met.
It is hard to figure out what being sensitive to my friends means. I am literally not capable of making everyone comfortable at the same time because people have conflicting needs.
But you pick your priority list and you go with it. You do the best you can. If I am making this particular person feel anything other than welcome and like (s)he belongs then I need to change something.
And at the same time I don’t want to start inviting people to my parties or not based on race. But what if inviting more people who are not white and *not* inviting so many white people is the only way to make some people comfortable.
It’s true and valid. Just like some women will never be comfortable interacting with some of my male friends and I have to decide who to invite because I can have one person or the other.
First I will eventually stop pontificating and I will ask my friend for feedback after these blog entries have been read. I’m sure this person will come up with something to say. That’s usually something I can count on. Lots of opinions from that one.
I think that as a white person it is never ok for me to just default to “I’m ok and you have the problem”. That is just not an acceptable starting position. Beyond that I really struggle with knowing what the next right step is.
I have a limited amount of control over who shows up at my parties and I have even less control over the feelings of the people who come.
But I want to be sensitive to the idea that I could do something better. I could make people feel more comfortable if I tweaked ______.
Yes, my dear blacksheep, part of it is learning to care less and be more like a honey badger. I’m not sure that I am that kind of girl, you know? I’ve been taking apathy enhancement drugs for years now. I still care too much. I still care so much I can barely breathe sometimes.
I want the people I love to feel loved and supported and like I think the world (and this room) is a better place when they are in it. If I am communicating something else then I need to work on that.
It is hard to nudge people in the direction of feeling loved when you are as basically hostile as I am. I cause people to feel unsafe and nervous. I get it.
It’s kind of like my continued fondness for a man who has been blacklisted from all of the local events. He’s a predator. I still like him. I understand him and have compassion for him and I know how to play his game like a pro. The other women I know just want to pretend he doesn’t exist because his game doesn’t work for them. He means well.
It doesn’t matter what you feel it matters how you make other people feel. The best predators know how to induce feelings of calm and safety in their prey. Sometimes I feel tremendous guilt for the attitude that just about everyone in the world is prey and I’m a mean and nasty predator.
Only there isn’t much I want from people these days. I’m not hunting for anything other than positive regard. I don’t want to be anyone’s favorite (well, other than Noah) but I want people to think I am basically a net positive for the world.
I want people to think that talking to me makes them feel good about themselves. I want to help people to feel brave about making choices. I want to help people feel like they can stand up for themselves.
If I’m making you feel like a token, tell me so. If I make you feel like you are just something on a checklist “Make a friend who is brown” then I am not making you feel like you are important. I’m failing to do the stuff that is so important to me.
I need that feedback. Without being told that my current approach is failing it is hard for me to know.
It is hard hearing criticism. I won’t lie. I’m obviously very defensive.
(I still had a wonderful party and I don’t feel like this is a depressing/bad train of thoughts. I’m nervous and a little sad but I still have a lot of happy endorphins from seeing so many people. I talked to a lot of people and didn’t freak out so I’m proud of myself.)
But if you want to be consciously anti-racist you have to look at what that means. If you are not part of the solution you are part of the precipitate.
Don’t quit. Don’t decide you are obviously a worthless bad person because someone had enough feelings to make a joke. But think about what you will do differently next time to encourage more people to feel more comfortable.
Progress. Not perfection. Keep trying. That’s the whole point of life.
It’s the day! Almost our last social obligation of the year. I’m excited. We aren’t leaving the house between Christmas and New Years.
It is weird how anxiety works. I’m looking forward to seeing people but man my stomach hurts.
At the home school holiday party I said, “Man I’m whiny today. I’m sorry.” Another mother countered with, “How is that different from any other day?” I don’t think I will speak when that person is standing within 10′ of me any more.
This is the kind of thing I over react to. Ok, if I’m that unpleasant then I will work hard to make sure you don’t have to acknowledge that I exist any more.
But she didn’t say I was awful. She said I was whiny. This is a true statement. I am.
Sometimes Noah asks why I don’t punish the kids for whining. Because I don’t punish for things I model. That’s just how it rolls in this house.
There was also a noticeable amount of discussion as to how sad it was that a certain blog reader and 3/5 of her kids weren’t there. (We never get the other 2/5.) I told people that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a rejection of the group for being sucky. Spoons can only stretch to cover so many activities.
Part of what I like about hosting events is I get to introduce my friends to one another. I know really neat people.
2013 has been one of the best, most stable years of my entire life. If I can’t get my anxiety under control under these circumstances I’m fucked.
I often go back and forth in my head, “My friends deserve to know me sober. Because being sober is always superior to being a loser drug addict. But wait! You are talking like a schizophrenic about to stop taking their meds. Maybe this is a bad plan.”
Don’t worry. I won’t try to do this sober. I haven’t been practicing enough to do an event of this size alone yet. I would spend the party in my bedroom crying and shaking if I tried.
That feels really pathetic. God I’m a loser. Bravery isn’t about feeling no fear. It is about performing to spec no matter how terrified you are. Having a holiday party shouldn’t be terrifying but it is.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter what “should” be true. It matters what is.
I’m going to have to spend pretty much all of next year working on being able to do this sober. I’m going to have to be able to handle any size of crowd unassisted before 2015 or I can’t take the kids on the road trip. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.
Tomorrow. I’ll work on that tomorrow. Next year. All of next year. Not today.
Sometimes I feel guilty when I say “not today–I’ll do that later.” My only consolation is I do usually get around to doing it… or it wasn’t important to begin with.
It is nice to see that I do the things I say I will. Not every single thing–I don’t make that many promises on purpose. I have to figure out sober again.
I used to be sober. I managed my PTSD without meds for most of my life. It has meant a lot of isolating in order to calm my ambient stress. I don’t get that now that I have kids.
I have to teach them to be part of my lower stress or I’m fucked. This sounds hard and scary.
Bravery doesn’t mean never feeling scared. It means you keep your ass moving even when you are scared. I can do that. I can keep moving.
I think today will be fun. I think I will be glad I did it even though it creates stress too.
I thanked Noah and the kids for helping me clean the house. I told them that it is important to me to once in a while have a clean house and a party and I appreciate that they did work towards that even if it isn’t important to them.
I was only an asshole about the cleaning for maybe 10 hours total and it wasn’t all yesterday it was over a week. That’s not great but it isn’t as bad as it could be.
In my head I have this tally sheet. I know how harsh I have seen some mothers be. I’m not on the harsh end of what I have seen. I have seen some seriously brutal people though. I like being on the nicer end of the scale. I don’t even know why I want it so bad but I do.
If I can’t get my kids to cooperate by being nice to them then I think the cooperation I get through being an asshole is suboptimal. Sometimes I’m a fucking self absorbed asshole and I do it. I try really hard to avoid it though.
Life involves work. I need my kids to not be the kind of people who sit back and watch while work is being done. I need for them to be the kind of people who say, “There is work to be done? Where do I start?”
I very consciously don’t give them much bullshit work day-in/day-out through the year. I really don’t have a lot of make work. I don’t make them live in a perfectly clean house all the time (ha!). I enforce daily teeth cleaning, underwear changing, and they have to set the table for meals. That’s what I really enforce on a daily basis.
I need for them to grow up in an atmosphere where it is fine to not do much most of the time and sometimes you have to chip in. You just do.
I don’t know how to inspire this very well though. I always resort to bullying and crying at some point. It’s pretty fucking lame. I try to recognize when I am bullying, retract the statement and walk away. “I should not have said that. I’m sorry I was such a jerk.” Usually that comes in the form of a threat to throw away anything that isn’t picked up. It’s not a cool threat. I’m an asshole for saying it. Just because I feel it that doesn’t excuse me saying it.
I tried really hard to not fuss at the kids. I wasn’t fully successful but I tried. I need to try harder. It isn’t their fault I want things. I try to let them know, “There isn’t a good reason I want this. I just want it. Will you please help me?” Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It is hard to manage my emotional reaction to being turned down.
Right now it is part of that whole, “If I do not know the answer will be ‘yes’ then I don’t have the spoons to ask for help” problem. I get into these cycles. As the people I live with the kids have to deal with the results of what happens when I can’t handle a no and I get one any way. Mostly I go in my room and shut the door and cry.
Which makes me feel like a manipulative piece of shit.
I try to not-react as much as possible. I know that I’m supposed to maintain a neutral state over here on my own but I’m shite at that. I’m trying.
Like the woman letting me know that I whine every day. Oh. Shit. Ok I guess the solution is to just stop talking. I don’t know what else to do.
I don’t think I can stop talking entirely. That would kill me. But I can make sure I don’t bother you any more. I’m sorry my existence is such a trial to you. I’m not even being sarcastic. I am annoying. I’m sorry. I don’t really know how to change that I am this difficult.
Some people are easier than others. I don’t even just mean the sex. Not that I’ve been easy to have sex with lately. Poor Noah. Our sleep cycles are totally out of alignment and we’re tired and over-committed and having kids is an impediment. Life happens.
This phase isn’t permanent–right?
Just keep moving. If you are still alive there is always a chance that things will change. If you want things to be different, just keep moving. Just because I can’t do something today that means nothing about ten years from now.
Right now I can’t play any musical instrument. That could change. I don’t sew. Some day I might. Right now Noah thinks there is no chance he will ever be a distance runner. It’s not his favorite. But if he wants to keep eating cookies with me at the rate we are going through them… I think it could happen.
If he wants to have a long, sex-filled life with me we will have to do some more exercise. I’m told it is good for you. We have no physical disabilities so we don’t have good excuses. (There are good reasons some people can’t run. I’m not acting like this is universally applicable…)
I have a lot of time ahead of me. I can figure out how to do a lot of things. I read something cool this morning about how great artists often go through big revivals in their 80’s.
I have spent most of my life believing I would die fairly young. But if I want to find out what Shanna is like on her 60th birthday I have to not die until well into my 80’s. I should plan for that. I should consciously try to get there. I should work at it. And then Calli is even two years behind that.
I want to see what their lives will be like. I don’t want to just witness their childhood and feel sad all the time that no one loved me as a child.
What will they do with their adulthoods? How will they inspire me? I’m sure they will.
Just keep moving. Keep introducing them to interesting people. I know so many neat people. I know people who do the fucking coolest stuff. I like basking in their glow. I like getting to be an audience. I should stay alive and keep doing that.
Today I will manage my anxiety and see friends. My kids will get to see a lot of different kinds of people. It is rare that I cross the streams like this. Home schoolers, perverts, geeks, and dancers. Who knows what the results will be like. I think everyone will be child-appropriate. I think people will be polite and wonderful. I think that sometimes questions will be answered in surprising ways. That’s for the best.
It takes all kinds in this world. My friends are Christians, Jews, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, and pagans. I don’t have any friends who are practicing Muslims but it’s not on purpose. At least no one has chosen to share with me that they follow that religion.
I thought about name tags. “Hi my name is ________. I know Krissy/Noah through ___________.” That would be awesome for me. I would enjoy how people self-identify. Ha. “Burning Man. Uhhhh…. that’s it…. I know them through Burning Man.” Not that I (Krissy) have gone. But I know a lot of Burners. And many people that I think of in other categories would probably self-identify our friendship that way because it sounds more child safe.
I’m not going to put anyone more on the spot than I have to. Not today. I don’t have the spoons to manage.
It will be a good day. Time to stop typing.
Naltrexone. That’s the name of the drug my shrink wants me to research. My first few searches make it sound like I will be in the bathroom all day with diarrhea and it would probably increase my depression.
All just to make cutting an ineffective coping method. Uhm, probably not.
My therapist, predictably, doesn’t want me putting a lock on the bathroom door. She is asking me to wait a few weeks. She has a list of things I just need to try before that step is a good idea. She was quite insistent in that way shrinks are which is why we pay them, no?
She mentioned a medication and I didn’t write it down immediately and now I am waiting on a response to an email. Research. She said there is an unusual drug that is not an anti-depressent/anti-psychotic/anti-anxiety that is sometimes used with addicts including severe cutters who can’t get past the “tension release” stage. Supposedly it acts on the mechanism in the brain that requires the brief releases from tension.
I mentioned that I pretty much always freak out like this right before a party and I feel really self-conscious and bad because it seems like inappropriate attention seeking behavior. Her response was, “Your parasympathetic nervous system is trying to get your attention and that’s not a bad thing.” Right before I have lots of people over my body prepares for the fight/flight/freeze thing and I get over loaded. In her opinion I need to figure out some larger structure around stress release particularly right before events–she says cutting isn’t a good option.
Psh. What does she know.
(That was my “I’m funny” voice.)
She says if I’m going off pot this medication may be an appropriate next step. It makes me want to cry. Western meds have completely wrecked my body every time I’ve tried. Name a side effect–I have gotten pretty much every non-fatal one.
I also talked to the home schooled teenager on our street yesterday. We are going to start weekly babysitting. I need more of a break than I’m getting. It is just fucking mandatory. People go insane in circumstances like mine even if they started out basically healthy. I don’t think I have been basically healthy… oh uhm, ever?
I pick my therapists very carefully so she asked me, “How did you and Noah use bdsm to manage these cycles in the past?” Bless her heart. If you have the wrong therapist for you they can be the most worthless excuse for a human being but if you have the right match you can make lots of behavioral progress. (That’s not really fair. They aren’t “worthless” just because they are a bad fit but when you are really upset and hurting it feels that way.)
So the topic of weekly canings came up. Not canning. Not putting food in jars. Being hit with sticks. This time the reference is more on the fun side, kind of like the swinging only this time she meant the other meaning.
I’m not opposed to giving it a shot. I pointed out that Noah and I have never done behavior management this way. I did that with my Owner. We had a very different dynamic.
I continue to have mixed feelings about the idea that it is better for someone else to hit me than for me to cut myself. I understand that a lot of people who generally support the idea of bdsm agree. If you believe that bdsm can be a healthy activity then you probably would side with it being superior to cutting. Probably. I can’t speak for everyone but I’ve been told that a lot.
I watch The West Wing too much so I am starting to explain things to myself in terms of the story arc. Cutting is about dealing with the pressure caused by a nuclear reaction. First the reaction goes into a series of containment devices (my previous/earlier coping methods) then eventually it gets to the point where the containment devices are full and there is more steam coming and either you vent to the atmosphere (causing possible massive damage) or you risk a full scale explosion which will absolutely for certain cause way the fuck more damage. Better to vent a little.
That’s what cutting is. Cutting brings all of my physical stress down to a level where I stop swearing and yelling and freaking out. I’m nice and calm. It’s better than a Valium.
It is hard being told “I know you have this awesome coping method that works better than everything else I am recommending put together… but don’t use it.”
That doesn’t feel like a supportive act. I’m trying to look at the big picture. One of the dominant symptoms of my various forms of mental illness is difficulty with tunnel thinking. When you are in the tunnel you don’t think you will ever be out again. You can only think in the panic of the Right Now. There is no larger picture.
My shrink confidently and manipulatively brings up phrases like “Harm Reduction.” Psh. Like I give a shit about that theory. Psh.
(Once again with the funny… If I didn’t tell you then you wouldn’t know that you are supposed to chuckle. I learn from television shows which tell their audience when to laugh.)
At this stage cutting would dramatically increase the harm I am doing in the process of coping. If there are any less harmful methods left to try I just can’t get to the last method yet.
I’m not really at a point where I’m thrilled about being told “Just be more patient” because that’s what it sounds like.
I’m trying to think about water flowing over obstructions. Sure, it could destroy one path by trying to send all the water one way in a jet or it could try to find another way around. Water is good at getting around whatever you try to block it with. Resourceful.
Last night was Noah’s company holiday party. I did better than I’ve done the last two years. Improvement is good, right? Once again it feels kind of pathetic that I have to struggle so much in order to not be inappropriate.
Last night I swore more than is probably strictly speaking ideal but I didn’t worry about it. I was at an adult party. Noah didn’t care or think I was too extreme. I can live with the other teacher/parent people looking a little shocked when I say “What the fuck?”
I think this party felt lower stress because I didn’t know anyone. For the last few years I had to manage the line between hanging out with people I actually knew and dealing with the amorphous boundaries of “work people”. That’s harder. This time I just go to try to censor appropriately and that’s easier.
When people tried to shock and titillate me by referring to going to a conference that had a leather track I got to cross examine and figure out that it must have been some kind of more general alternative lifestyle convention because I’ve never heard of a 10,000-15,000 person leather conventions in LA in the past few years and I’d be shocked if I missed that. When he tried to allude vaguely to other factors as proof I rattled off the names of all the big cons with their rough head count of attendees and expressed lots of support for my position. That’s always fun. No, I know this stuff. I don’t think you are talking about a just leather con.
In the conversational flow it would have made sense to bring up Debaucherama and I totally didn’t talk about winning Slut of the Year. I was very tactful and appropriate for work people. Ahem.
I turned to Noah and said, “You know which story they just lead me to the door of and here I am not walking through it.” He patted me on the back and all. The coworkers raised their eyebrows and said, “Maybe we can come visit on a different night.” Ha. Like I’ll tell them then.
That was a great party. Sigh.
Also, DA–because of you I get to tell the best stories at parties. I feel like a dumbass but people always bring up travel at these kinds of parties and getting to talk about going to Alaska in my friend’s private plane is rad. I feel officially cool when I tell those stories. Yup, I’ve done bad ass things. That’s right. Including hiking in the Alaskan wilderness. My life is awesome.
It is interesting trying to figure out how to “spin” stories so I can be appropriate for work parties. I’m not so good at this. I did manage to avoid bringing up sex last night. *pat self on back* The leather con attendance thing doesn’t count.
In preparation for the party I went shopping for a dress. Mostly because it kept me out of the house so I wouldn’t cry. I over-ruled the shop lady. She didn’t think the one I bought was the best idea. I’m a bit too lumpy for it in her opinion. She’s a skinny lady and thinks that style of dress is for more stick-shaped women. Psh. Whatever. It was a skin-tight little number with lots of boob attention. In a size medium. No wonder my clothes don’t fit if I can walk into some boutique shop and come out with a size medium. I haven’t been a size medium much in my life. This is weird. I’ve been a large/extra large (or bigger) for most of my adult life.
Noah was quite happy with my selection. That was the whole point.
Sometimes I feel weird about my mixed feelings around dressing frumpy versus wearing clothes that are sexy. When I’m feeling sad and anxious dressing up either feels soothing or stimulating depending on the context. Some days I do consciously think of the trophy wife thing. In general I’m not such a good trophy. But I try to clean up good once in a great while. In general I look frumpy and boring and that is for the best. Lately I’ve been wearing the skirts from my Renaissance Faire outfit over pants because I just want to be covered that much.
So going out in a dress that accentuated a figure I’m not used to having was kind of weird. Several coworkers stared a lot all night. That is always a little awkward. But if you go out dressed like that while wearing bright red lipstick you invite looking. It is a weird line.
I know that Noah gets a status bump from the Neanderthals he works with if they think his wife is hot. I have mixed feelings about this. But once a year I can dress up. Hell it isn’t even once a year that I dress that way now. But man the dress is hot.
I should take a picture. I look really good. If I had looked like this many years ago I probably would have gotten closer to a four digit number instead of a three digit number. Maybe it is for the best that I was chunky and had to win people over with my awesome personality. Snort.
I think the dress would not look out of place on the show Mad Men. Not that I’ve watched it. But I’ve seen a few references on magazine covers in grocery stores so I know the show exists and a brief google image search supports with my assumption.
Now I have fancy party dresses in size 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 sitting in my closet. Because who the fuck knows what size I will be next year. I no longer get rid of the fancy party dresses. My body changes dramatically over time.
I’m struggling with the fact that I “know” I am small but when I look in the mirror I don’t think I “look” small only I know I do to other people. I look like me and in my head I’m a fat girl (I have justifiably been for a lot of my adult life) so I still kind of see that. I have always been content and happy with being fat. Now I’m not fat and I miss it. On one hand I know that it is easier for me to find flattering clothing (based on the number of times I saw people do double takes when I walked by my dress was flattering) but I’m not sure if I like that. I am not good at guessing which dresses will be flattering. I have to try fifteen on.
My body is different and in ways that are somewhat more societally “approved” and that bothers me.
I don’t really want more approval in that area. Being thinner sure doesn’t get me more sex with Noah.
And yes, all of this is tied up with the whole parasympathetic nervous system and cutting. It is.
Does dressing up and wearing lipstick change how much I want to cut? I certainly feel less like I am about to blow my stack this morning, but how much is it related? How much is it about just getting five hours off of my kids yesterday between the party and therapy?
Those little thrills of recognition when a man checks me out function in similar soothing ways to the cutting. I feel kind of ashamed admitting it, but in for a penny in for a pound. It is the kid-version of what I used to do with finding promiscuous sex. “Whoo hoo people looked at me.” Less of a lift but a lot safer and lower effort.
(I spotted one last night who totally looked like my prey. It’s about the kind of smile. I miss hunting.)
I feel very conflicted about the whole “attention getting” behavior bit. I console myself with the idea that despite writing about what I am feeling/doing in the moment I don’t actually bring it up with people. When I am cutting I do it in a place on my body I can conceal and the vast majority of people don’t know. I write it down because I want proof that I’m not lying to myself about what I’m doing. I don’t think I get additional attention around self-harming behavior. Other than when I was institutionalized as a teenager because I wouldn’t promise to stop cutting I haven’t gotten a lot of “attention” based on self-harming.
Talking about it alienates people and ends friendships. I don’t think I talk about it for attention. I think I talk about it because the more silent and ashamed I act about my behavior the harder it is to control.
If I talk about wanting to cut sometimes that is enough to get me through that feeling of wanting to cut and maybe tomorrow I won’t feel that way any more. It does work for me. Today I feel less desire to rush to Home Depot and buy a lock. That’s enough of a pause to ensure that I probably won’t be cutting this week and probably not this month.
Is that enough?
It is a lot like how I manage my suicidal ideation. “This is how I feel right now and if I honor it maybe I don’t have to do it.” I don’t live well with secrets. Believing that I have to lie about what is in my head intensifies and strengthens all of my negative self-beliefs. Nice people are allowed to talk about how they exist in the world. Stupid, worthless pieces of shit like me should shut up and stop polluting the airways. Just stop fucking breathing so you don’t contaminate anyone.
I don’t know if everyone’s lives are careful balancing acts. For me I have to manage stimulus and soothing pretty carefully. Lack of either one is dangerous to my ability to function.
I schedule parties once in a while because I know so many people that slowly cycling through them all one on one is kind of impossible. I would have a date every day of the year if anyone at all was on a repeating weekly or monthly cycle. I know a lot of people. I like them all. I want to continue knowing them. Heck, I want my awesome friends to meet one another because networking is very important for a successful life. Everyone needs access to resources.
I told my shrink that I missed a flight to Oakland Airport and got rerouted to SFO and I managed to arrange a pickup at midnight through Twitter. Because I just have friends who can do that. She was surprised. I am beginning to think that her other clients live in caves because she spends a lot of time being surprised that I know so many people and that they do the things they do with me.
I get that my life is a weird and extreme place. It has extreme bad and extreme good. I am very lucky and I am very unlucky. I have a ridiculous amount of privilege and yet I don’t. It all depends on what you are looking at and judging right this minute.
As a child I learned that one of the main things I needed to do to keep myself safe was make sure I know as many people as possible. If one person is mad at me/doesn’t like me/doesn’t want to help me/doesn’t want to spend time with me… find someone else. There are always more fish in the sea. There are billions of god damn people on this planet. Surely I haven’t alienated all of them yet.
I think that moving more than fifty times made it so that I never got to sink in and decide “This is just the way life is.” There is no set way my life is. The circumstances vary so much that they are nearly unrecognizable from day to day or period to period. Folks who knew me primarily as a slave to my Owner are rather shocked by me these days.
Walt Whitman may have thought he contained multitudes. I think I may have lived more lives than him. Sometimes I feel like a cat only I’ve had far more than just nine lives.
Do you know where the cats have nine lives thing comes from? When cats experience injury or illness they hide somewhere while they heal–it is an anti-predator sort of behavior. Then they come out and are fine again. So people used to speculate that they could regenerate.
I hide to lick my wounds then I appear again. Often in very different circumstances with fairly different behavior. Going from theatre to bdsm to teaching to parenting has been pretty dramatic. From stage to stage there is almost no overlap in terms of behavior or activities.
I think that is part of the reason Noah and I don’t do bdsm better together. I compartmentalize and Noah is the partner who has been nice to me and that’s hard to change. Even if bdsm might have other benefits.
tl;dr: I’m mad at my therapist for trying to talk me out of cutting. But that’s pretty much what I pay her to do so it’s a wash. Stupid parasympathetic nervous system. Why the fuck can’t you just act nice?
Oh, and after completely freaking out yesterday morning and feeling like the best thing to do would be to see as much blood as possible… I started bleeding.
Any suggestions on how to manage the monthly depression crash I’m getting? Yay impending blood loss. It is becoming really predictable. Which is strangely comforting. Just because I haven’t hacked the system yet I appreciate that patterns are emerging.
My worst depression days are followed immediately by me bleeding. I feel comforted by the hormonal link. Less like I am just at the mercy of the waves of my insanity.
The biggest difference between level twos and level threes is whether or not I can respond to advice with “Fuck you” and think the person will still come back again. I have to be careful with the level twos as well, but less careful. They are more aware of the constant simmering issues. I’m sorry for yesterday.
I’m in serious spoon deficit and there isn’t a lot I can do about it. Right now my plan A is to change how I treat my body with my kids. So far I have spent their entire lives acting like nudity isn’t a big deal. I am not really a sit-around-nekkid kind of person. Usually I am too cold and on the rare days when it isn’t too cold I am too hot and I don’t want sticky bare skin on sticky bare skin. So I usually wear clothes. But I don’t hesitate to strip if I have a reason. I don’t think naked bodies are a problem. My kids have been to nudist resorts and we will go again. Bodies are just bodies.
But I need to start consciously preparing for the fact that cutting isn’t very far away. I need to start developing the habit of dressing and using the bathroom in a way that preserves the privacy of my legs.
I’m very out of spoons. And I really am not in a place where I can ask for any more help. Too many people have done the “Yeah, sure” but now I don’t see them any more. I need to depend on just me. And the sad fact is that I don’t really have enough control.
Cutting significantly increases my ability to act in a controlled manner. Given that I do not have the support network to deal with my stress in other ways I need to do what I can do while alone in a room. That is all I can depend on.
I will put a better lock on the bathroom door.
I am not in a psychological space where I can ask for anything else from anyone. I feel too lied to and too abandoned. I feel like it is all my fault that people flake on me–it’s because I am bad. I am too mean. I am too hard to deal with. People can’t handle me. So I have to cope as if I have no support.
That’s just the way it goes for some people.
No, enrolling Shanna in school would not be the way to solve this problem. Then I would have Calli alone expecting me to be the sole entertainment during that time period. It would not be a break. It would also cause daily stress around: get up, get dressed, eat breakfast faster, pack your lunch, when you are home now do your homework. All for bullshit I don’t believe in and actively think is destructive. No, that would not lower my stress.
I am taking my fucking vitamins. I’m exercising. I’m doing the swinging shit. I’ve asked for help. I don’t have much consistent help. The only consistent help I get is so that I can see my therapist.
In January we will go to the park with the home schoolers once a week. I will see my therapist. Otherwise I’m not scheduling anything.
I was taught that shit should roll down hill. I refuse to participate in that dynamic. My children will not bear the brunt of my issues. I’m really ok with my legs bearing the brunt. That is better in every way.
Noah is worried that it will increase my suicidal ideation. He wants us to start scheduling babysitting more often before I start cutting. There is the neighbor girl. I agreed to that. I can understand him being afraid of me killing myself. He understands that it is the most likely way I will die in this lifetime.
But I need to start practicing with my clothes. I need to install a lock on the bathroom. I can’t just start cutting out of the blue and expect it to function as a coping method the way I need it to. I need to create the structural support in my life for it working the way I need it to work.
It’s time to start preparing for the actual amount of spoons I have in my hand. I’m crying too much. I’m not yelling that much but I have been pulling away from the kids. I’m very emotionally disengaged because I am afraid of yelling.
I need some kind of something I’m not getting. I’ve done everything else I can think of. It is time to return to my trusty friend. It is always there when I need it. No one else is.
Yesterday running was a sob fest. Going to Texas makes me feel guilty. I do not honor my family, but I go honor his? I felt like the nanny because they didn’t ask me any questions about me. They only asked me questions about the kids. They don’t want to know me. They want to know my children and I am a chaperone.
I used the time that I was running yesterday to apologize for not thinking more often of my dead. As long as I am alive, as long as I remember what they taught me–they aren’t really dead, right?
I remember you Francesca Bennet. I remember you Traci Williams. I remember you Frances Mae Carr Schmidt. I remember you Lenora Bried Archer. I remember you James Arthur Archer. I remember you Orlando Archer. I remember you Vernon Schmidt. I remember you Thomas Wayne Archer. I remember you Robert Lee Abbott.
I do not remember Frances and Lenora because I knew them. I was told lots and lots. They are my grandmothers. I didn’t get to meet either of them. Lenora died of cancer. Frances just didn’t want to live any more. It hurt too much. I understand.
I do not remember Orlando either. Ory. That’s what he was called. He died before I was dreamed up. He was my grandfather. I remember Vernon though. He was not a loving man. But I remember him. I remember him scornfully looking at my hair and my niece’s skin tone and saying, “There’s a nigger in the woodpile.” That’s what he gave me.
I remember the friends who have passed out of my life. Usually because I did something I really shouldn’t have done. It isn’t as nice to name them online. They still want their privacy and all.
But sometimes I chant your names. I love you. I miss you. You are part of me. I am sorry I hurt you.
Amanda Palmer has a new song she released. The Thing About Things. It is a pay what you can/want download. I paid $5 for the song. If you need to download it for free she won’t be mad at you. I promise. I met Amanda. She’s really neat.
23 years ago Thomas Wayne Archer gave me a gold chain. The same Christmas Sissy gave me a gold pendant that says “Special Someone”. Here’s a picture.
Despite my general policy of not wearing gold (I think it looks bad on my skin) I put it on yesterday after the run.
I don’t know what it means to be special to my sister. It didn’t mean that she would be kind to me. It did mean that I am the singular sibling she never had sex with. I was too young then I was too nasty and uninterested. She missed her window.
I don’t feel the family ties. I was told and told and told that pride in your family would carry you through. Your family are the people you can call in the middle of the night and they have to come get you no matter what.
When I called my sister in the middle of the night she hung up on me and told me it was my problem.
Very special.
Going to Texas was weird because my children have a lot of traits from Noah’s side. Shanna spends a fair bit of time just sitting around strumming an ukelele and making up songs. That’s not something that anyone does in my family. All of Noah’s family is very musical.
“If you’re not allowed to love people alive, then you learn how to love people dead.”
“The thing about things is that they can start to have meaning that nobody actually said.”
In the traditions of Burkina Faso your dead more or less follow you around forever. They are tied to you. You can ask them for favors. You can berate them. You can cajole them into helping you understand things.
Daddy, why? What happened? Why did you need to turn around and hurt us like that? Frances, what hurt so bad?
I wish you had wanted to meet me. I’m told I’m pretty special. You were alive until I was thought of. I was inside your daughter and you knew it. But you just didn’t want to keep going. Was Vernon so bad? Why was Nicey enough and you didn’t want to meet me? Did you know what was happening to Sissy and you just couldn’t stop it and you couldn’t watch any more?
Lenora, did you take pride in your children?
Ory, maybe if you had stopped drinking… maybe James wouldn’t have been so broken. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. What else happened anyway?
I will never know. The dead keep their secrets.
But I’m sorry. I love you. As complicated as this is, as much as this hurts, I remember you.
Francesca, Traci, James, Tommy, Lee, Frances, Vernon, Ory, Iain Turner, Uncle Bob, I remember you. You aren’t gone. I promise I will keep remembering.
Even if it hurts I will remember you. I won’t let those memories slip away. I won’t let you die. This is all I can do for you now. I can make sure I remember you. I will rehearse your stories in my mind as long as I live.
I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything I did and didn’t do that I was supposed to do.
I feel like it is smart to name my living family members less online. They don’t really want to be tied with me. I’m sorry to you all as well. I’m sorry Mommy and Auntie and Big Brother and Niece and Nephews and Cousins.
I didn’t mean to hurt you so much. I was just trying to stay alive in the only way I saw forward for me. I don’t want to be like Frances.
I don’t want to be like you James. I don’t want to be a monster. I don’t want to have shit roll down hill in my house. I want my house to be safe.
I want to take pride in my family. Mostly what I take pride in is having the strength to walk away and not be like them. But I’m so sorry it has to be this way. I am so so so so so sorry.
I missed my first chance to be special in a family. It’s over. I can build something different. I can try to not break my children. That is all I can do.
I can take pride in them. I can teach them that being “special” to someone does not involve being hit or raped or told you are worthless.
Noah’s family seems to take a lot of pride in my kids. My children reflect well on them. Bah. My children reflect well on me.
Children learn what they are taught. My children are taught that they should be spoken to in civil ways. My children are taught that it isn’t ok for anyone to scream at them. Not me, not someone else. When someone starts screaming at you *that person has a problem* and you should walk away if humanly possible.
Be nice to people if you want them to be nice to you. Figure out what being nice to them means because it is very different in different places. No matter what your Great Aunt thinks. People are not “all alike” and being kind to them means treating them how they need to be treated. Is that hard? Yes. So are lots of other things. It gets easier with practice. So start practicing.
I’m still working on it. Yes, it is hard. It is the work of a lifetime. Learning how to really see different people.
“Things can start meaning things nobody actually said.”
I will not forget where I came from. I will choose to remember. It isn’t the same thing as pride, but there is resignation in it. I think this is part of that “forgiveness” I am supposed to work on. Less for those people and more for me.
I forgive me for wanting to remember. I forgive me for wanting a story when other people are ok with just forgetting. “Just don’t think about the bad things” is the most common advice I have ever gotten.
I will not forget. I will remember. This is the only honoring I can give.
I love you. I love you Mommy. I love you Tommy. I love you Daddy. I love you Sissy. I love you Jimmy.
I don’t think I will ever stop. I wish I could. It would make my life easier.
I think there will be exactly two people who share blood with me at my funeral. I have to make peace with that.
My family will not be there for me. Ever. In any way. Noah is my family. He will be there.
I wake up every day and feel grateful for Noah. I am a very expensive, very high maintenance pet. I’m grateful he took on responsibility for me. I don’t feel very deserving.
I am special to Noah.
The folks in Texas didn’t ask that much more about Noah than they did about me. I see why he doesn’t go back more.
Sometimes I feel very sad when I think about how much Noah and I cling together because we don’t really have anyone else. Neither of us have ever been all that loved. Noah wasn’t treated like me, but he wasn’t loved much. That’s a big void.
I’m really glad he is here. I like him. I love him. When I was a kid people would tell me that I didn’t understand what love meant.
Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I still don’t. But I’m glad for what I have. For now love means believing that this person makes me better than I am alone and I make him better. Together we are capable of a lot of things that neither of us can do alone. I think he is competent and wonderful.
He makes me breakfast and Christmas cookies because I don’t actually like the process of cooking that much. He’s awesome. Then I give the cookies away and he doesn’t get mad. The perfect symbiotic relationship.
He made enough cookies for us to share with all of our buddy-neighbors and the home school group cookie exchange. That’s effort.
Thank you. I see your labor. I appreciate it. (I’ve already thanked him several times in person. I’m not just passive aggressive or anything.)
But sometimes I have trouble remembering that Noah really does work hard to make my load lighter. He isn’t just doing his stuff. He does stuff for an us even when it isn’t his first choice of how to spend time.
But he makes my mother’s cookie recipes so my children can grow up with them. Because I wish it were so.
I am special to someone. When I was a child I would react with such anger and hatred if anyone in my family tried to tell me I was special or that they loved me.
If I was special you wouldn’t turn a blind eye to how much horror I experienced. But they did. And I was expected to as well and I couldn’t. I couldn’t be nice until I stopped being hurt all the time.
I’m sorry I’m not a big enough person to be nice to people who aren’t hurting me when I’m being hurt that bad. I just can’t. Other people can, I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I am so small. I am sorry I am so unworthy of pride. No one ever took pride in me. My behavior was disgusting. I was berated and told that I wasn’t welcome to be seen in public. No one wanted to be seen as being part of a unit with me because then they would have to admit they knew the horrible child.
I remember all of you. I will never forget. Even though you didn’t and don’t love me very much. I have to love me enough to make up for that.
Sometimes that is very hard.
Good news! I had ten days of pot left in the stash I brought to Dad’s house. I had two more weeks in the freezer. Christmas will not be as stressful as I thought. YAY!!!!
I thought making gingerbread houses would take me more like 1/2 an hour per batch with a little extra wiggle room. Instead it is taking over an hour per batch. I had to make 14 sets. I wish my kids had fewer friends. And some people are kind of grumpy with me for not being invited. My finger is numb from pressing on the knife to cut out the pieces.
Ok, have to start making icing. People arrive in 2.5 hours. I slept for about four hours because I so dramatically underestimated how long this would take. Today had better be fun.
Yesterday I bought more than $100 of vitamins. I have ~ 7 days of pot left. I think that will be when I stop. I’m not going to get more to make it through the end of the year. With the break for the Texas trip (I’m not flying to Texas with pot even if I *do* have a medical prescription) That will get me to the 20th or 21st. So Christmas will be interesting. But you have to just go at some point.
I took my vitamins yesterday. I rested yesterday. I didn’t run because for some reason my hip decided yesterday that it hates my guts. My plan for today is yoga, baking gingerbread for tomorrow, and swinging. I may or may not pick up the garage. I haven’t decided.
We went Christmas caroling with the home school group yesterday. I was nominated as choir director at the last minute because the person who had volunteered let us know that she only meant she would run the rehearsal. Uhm, ok then. Pretty much what that meant is I counted off the beginning of the songs. We were not good singers. But we had fun.
Being in a senior assisted living place was kind of hard. Some of the people in the locked dementia ward cried when we sang. I can only imagine what was going on in their heads. I don’t think we cheered them up. One woman was mostly muttering under her breath with occasional louder shouts about how we were all liars and bastards. I don’t blame her for that opinion when we are singing Christian songs about hope and how everything will be awesome for Christmas.
I got bitchslapped on the ptsd forum. I talked about my uncanny ability to figure out that people have been sexually assaulted. Some woman spent way too much time telling me how inappropriate and terrible I am for being able to tell that about people. I should certainly never let on that I have such suspicions or I am violating their privacy. You know… I can see why you are over sensitive. My most frequent experience is that people cry and hug me and are grateful to be seen. I’m not going to stop because someone on the internet objects to my behavior. It is working for me.
Yesterday I was sitting on the floor and my mind was wandering and Shanna wanted my attention. She walked up and flicked me in the face. It was a very near thing for me hitting her. At this stage of my life the flicking in the head leading to violent reaction thing is a reflex. I don’t think about it. That came from many years of abuse.
I talked to her about it then and again at dinner. Noah had the brilliant idea of comparing it to accidentally kicking someone when they tickle you. It’s a reflex. You aren’t consciously deciding that you want to kick someone. It just kind of happens. When someone flicks me in the face I just react. Please don’t do that to me any more. Please. Please. Please. I don’t want to ever hit you and I’m terrified that if you do that to me it will happen before I have the ability to stop myself.
I am really sorry I live in the body I have. At this stage of my life, just don’t fucking flick my face, ok?
Shanna said I scared her when I talked about it. I was trying hard to not be scary. I’m so sorry. But I’m very serious. Don’t flick my face. Truly. Don’t.
I woke up thinking about how after reading eight books on codependence I don’t think I know the difference between codependence and interdependence. I’m still scared I am “inappropriate” all the time. I grew up being told that “we” were just codependent–like it or not. That’s what my mom and sister said.
I feel so guilty for needing things from Noah. I feel like I am suffocating him. He tells me he is fine but when you lie the way I do all the time about being fine you tend to not believe other people either.
I don’t want to hurt my children the way I have hurt other people. I think my kids deserve better. I feel guilty for the fact that I didn’t think my friends deserved better. I shouldn’t have cracked ribs. I shouldn’t have hit people so much. I shouldn’t have tried so hard to make people bleed.
I’m not even talking about the bdsm. Those people consented. I don’t feel guilty about beating someone until they lie sobbing on the floor in front of me if they asked me very nicely to do that to them. I feel very guilty, still, for all the fights as a kid. I was so god damn mean.
I’ve only cracked one set of ribs since reaching my majority. Uhm, progress? That time the person even went to the doctor and had x-rays to confirm it. Yup. I cracked their ribs. When I was younger people just dealt with months of pain instead of going to the doctor.
I regularly talk to men who are very dismissive of whatever “power” I ascribe to them. They don’t see themselves the way that I see them. They think they are powerless. Naw, you’ve just never really learned that you aren’t ten years old any more. I understand that no one likes young men. I get that. When you are a young guy you have the opposite of power, no matter what color you are. But things change.
I haven’t cracked any ribs in ten years. I should stop feeling bad. I did stop. I haven’t made anyone bleed in… about the same length of time if memory serves correctly. I’m getting close to being out of the scene (mostly) for almost ten years. I still bottom to Noah but I’m not in the scene and I don’t top any more.
I am somewhat unlikely to ever viciously beat someone again. That is weird. I have done it so many times over my life that I don’t know what to do with all those feelings. I really am a vicious, nasty person.
But you wouldn’t know it to look at my kids. I’m nice to them. But today I scared Shanna. She kind of melted out of her chair to hide under the kitchen table.
I’m so sorry Shanna. I wasn’t trying to scare you. I don’t want to hit you. Please don’t flick my face. I don’t have time to think to stop myself from reacting. I’m trying. I have worked so hard on my reflexes. I no longer hit instinctively when someone startles me. For many years there if someone thought it was “funny” to jump out and startle me they were as likely as not to walk away bleeding.
I *have* learned a lot of control.
My biological father used to flick me in the head. It usually came along with some deprecation about my intelligence. I learned to fight as hard as I could when I was flicked. You are not going to treat me that way any more.
The last time I hit someone was up in Portland. (She’s a friend. She liked it.) It’ll be two years in February. That was when Noah and I agreed to stop that part of our relationship.
I think a lot about what it means to stop being violent. I have a lot of compassion for military veterans. I can only imagine how dangerous I would have become if I had entered the military. (When I was 17 a number of “official” sort of school people tried to talk me into the military. I was seen as very suitable. That would have destroyed me.)
Life is about a series of choices. Sometimes some people pick violence. Does that mean you are stuck being violent forever? Malcolm X managed to (relatively) calm down.
Maybe I will get to the point where I can say that I haven’t hit anyone in twenty years. Maybe my guilt will reduce over time.
I still feel bad for fracturing Jason’s ribs in high school. He was on the wrestling team and was bragging about how if he took me on he would win. No, he really didn’t. And he paid for months.
That was more than half my life ago. He didn’t hate me forever. He did try to act inappropriately the one time I have run into him as an adult. But that was a different issue. That was sex and alcohol and bad boundaries.
I’m glad I’m off facebook. I’m harder to find. I am less likely to run into random people I hope I won’t run into again.
Sometimes there are downsides to knowing so many people. Sometimes there are downsides to having such a history of hurting people. They find me years later and I get this new rush of shame. Yup, I’m that kind of person. Or I was. Do you ever actually change?
I don’t hit my kids. The worst I have done is smack feet that were viciously kicking the car seat. I was going to drive off the road if I didn’t stop the kicking.
I don’t want to hit my kids. But inside me there is always the potential. I don’t really know how to live with that.
Do you know that the US refuses entry to people from other countries who have documented issues of depression? A Canadian woman was going through the US to get to a cruise. She was blocked from her vacation. Because she was stupid enough to think that a crazy person gets to have normal life experiences.
I don’t imagine the biases against “people like me”. They are well documented. That doesn’t mean I personally experience that much discrimination at this stage.
It’s a lot like white men thinking they have no power.
All of these things are so complicated. Power. Safety. Violence. They all entwine.
I don’t feel good about the progress I’ve made. I don’t feel like I have come far enough. Really I don’t think I will ever give myself much slack because I have already done what I’ve done. I can never undo it.
Are monsters ever redeemable?
I was asked why I won’t consider working Dickens. I can’t deal with my rapists. Sorry. I know that nothing will ever happen to them. They will continue to be Fine Upstanding Members Of Their Community. They have a lot to offer. They are important. They are worthy.
I just…
It made me very happy to tell my therapist “My friends and I are in a fierce and loving argument/discussion about hobbies and how I should learn to manage time better.” She thinks it is great that you all interact with me. Heh.
Then when I explained the “I can’t do fiddly shit” she said, “Oh of course not. Your flavor of PTSD should be kept as far away from those kinds of actions as possible. If someone has dissociation issues then often things like knitting can help them be more present. You are so hyperaroused that it will drive you crazy. Don’t do that. Try martial arts.”
See, the knitting is very good and healthy for lots of my friends and not for me. I appreciate my pats on the back. Validation is my friend.
I talked to her a lot about wanting to come off of pot. I’m past the baby stage. I told myself I was using pot to give me the self control I needed to get past the baby stage when the kids really couldn’t help how much they triggered me. I don’t have babies any more. Shit.
I think there is the non-zero possibility that I will stop using pot until my kids are adults and then start again. Being stoned is awesome but I want to teach my kids a different lifestyle.
My shrink says she has known people who have had good luck taking some melatonin during the day while getting off pot. You have to be careful to never take it for more than ten days in a row (I should research why) but it can be useful. I also have to up my B vitamins. I should be taking 1,000-1,500 units per day. Ew. Ew. Ew. I should double the fish oil dose. I should start 5-htp.
The idea is that this will probably take a full year. Not to get off pot. That will take less than a month. I have to get my bodily stress more under control. It is going to be a process and it is going to be hard. I will have to really retrain my body with new habits. New habits can be formed in as little as thirty days. I don’t think my lifelong habits will be undone in a month. Ok, I’ve already worked on a lot of the other big problem areas, but more to handle.
Yesterday Shanna kind of complained about me watching The West Wing. I told her I was watching it because I was frustrated and annoyed and I was trying not to yell at her. She said, “Turn it off and let’s talk about it. You won’t solve anything this way.”
I feel so lucky. I feel like I have so much reason to work on my issues. I finally have iron clad reasons to think that my emotional state matters. It impacts my kids hugely and massively all day every day. I matter.
My therapist continues her stream of being shocked by how many people I know. She has been sorta trying to talk me into working with a writing teacher she knows. He could edit my books. I told her I was saving money to work with my friend Janet. She has a lot of experience with writing and running a publishing company and she told me she wanted to work with me. I really want to try that avenue first.
My shrink said, “Oh, what publishing company?”
“Greenery Press.”
Her jaw dropped and her eyes bugged. “You know her?”
“Oh yeah. I’ve known her for more than ten years.”
“Uhm, yeah. Work with her. That’s amazing. Wow. You know a lot of people.”
I really do. I know some ridiculously cool people. I get out and talk to people a lot. I am constantly out trying to pull more people into my tenuous web of connections. I like people. The more people I know the safer I am.
By contrast she (my shrink) told me it was pretty chicken shit to have relationships with people where I invite them over a lot and then I stop and expect them to invite themselves over. She said that’s not cool and I should stop it. I said, “But I’m scared.” She said, “So are they.”
Damnit.
She wants me to consider working with kinky survivors as one of the hats I put on some day when I’m a grown up. She thinks I would be uniquely well suited to being able to help people in that category. I’m flattered. This comes up because I spend a lot of time on the PTSD forum fielding questions about bdsm. It is hilarious to me that I hand out this long list of book recommendations and I am friends/former play partners with almost all of the authors. Yeah, I vouch for the information in the book and the integrity of the people giving the information.
I told my therapist about Noah’s reaction to me wanting to go to Islamic countries as an old woman as part of my work with incest. (Noah’s response was, “Ok we need to start martial arts. Now.) Her eyes teared up and she said, “You are so lucky to have a partner who is that supportive of you. Do you understand how rare that is?”
I do understand. I’m grateful every single day.
No, Noah doesn’t try to talk me out of things. I say, “I’m thinking about doing _____” and he says, “How can I help!?” (As a bonus he also makes cookies. So far this year: snickerdoodles (three batches [err… I ate a whole one alone…]), chocolate chip, haystacks, and he has made dough for refrigerator cookies, sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, and molasses crinkles. He’s serious about liking my ass slightly more when it is bigger. Ha.)
I have friends who put up with me being rude, offensive, and foul mouthed.
I am ridiculously lucky in this lifetime. Not very many people receive as much non-family support as I get. It’s all about perspective, right?
Apparently I need to start a structured routine for a (long) while. I need to have “sitting on a swing for an hour” as part of every day. (Rocking motions are soothing to your brain. If you are upset, hug yourself and rock. You may feel lame but it does help.) I need to find a martial arts gym that will let us come in 2-3 days every week. I need to be running almost every day. (Rest days are important too.) I need to start teaching Shanna how to ride a bike and practice with her. (She has one… but she’s a wuss. She won’t try it unless I’m really bugging her. She likes going as fast as she can with her feet thankyouverymuch.)
I tend to have structure for a short period and then go off the rails when I add a big project. I can’t have any big projects for a year. This feels crushing and unfair. Waaa waaa waaa. Should I call the waaaaaaambulance?
I have to train my body to relax. I’m not sure I have ever been relaxed. Yeah, it will probably take a year. If I am fully relaxed at the end of a year it will be a G-d damn miracle. But I have to try. And this is the year. Go.
If I want to be able to do the serious international travel later I have no choice but to do this now. I can’t put it off any more. I don’t want to end up beating my head on concrete again the next time I leave the country. It is really unpleasant. In 2015 I want to travel with my kids for almost six months just to see if I can. I have to do this work in 2014. I’m feeling very annoyed with myself.
Why don’t I just give up on these hard things and have an easier life? What is wrong with me? Well, I don’t think that what I’m doing right now is actually easier. It is a different hard thing that I have slowly juggled towards as being the best I can get with my current coping skills.
I need different coping skills.
I feel like now it is finally safe enough to try. I have two kids who love me to the moon and back and who want to be nice to me. They just need me to teach them how. I need to teach without yelling or being nasty because then I will actually teach yelling and being nasty.
I feel so blessed that I have this time and this space. I don’t feel I have earned it. I don’t deserve it. But here it is. I have time. I have safety. I have money to fill in the gaps for when I can’t do everything for myself.
I have so much privilege that there is no longer any justifiable excuse for me not doing this work. Shit.
(I do believe it was justified earlier in my life. I was not physically or emotionally capable of doing the work before. I was never safe enough.) If you have to spend all day running to stay in one place someone who criticizes you for not finishing a marathon is a fucking asshole. You are doing what you can do.
I am seven years post rape. I have lived in this house for more than twice as long as I have ever lived anywhere else in my life. I have three people I get to live with who all think I am really nice and wonderful.
It’s time to stop being afraid all the time.
Being afraid makes me nasty. Being afraid makes me inclined to fight anyone and anything at any time because I perceive everyone as a threat. I am really sorry that I am so scared.
I’m going to work with a doctor on my body pain. Pam has offered to either go and hold my hand or babysit. I think I would prefer the hand holding. I’ll arrange the appointment on a day when Noah can stay with the kids.
I am very lucky. I am sorry I act so ungrateful so much of the time.
So the thing about meditation is that it is learning to sit in the still space.
My whole life requires me to move around and constantly respond to stimuli. I’m used to taking in fantastic amounts of information and consciously thinking about it. (If you are ever curious, ask me what I’m thinking about randomly some day. The firehose may drown you. I can talk faster than I can type. Muahahahaha.) That’s what hypervigilence means in a broad sense.
Meditation means turning off my awareness of ALL THE THINGS.
I think I am struggling with finding space where I really feel safe enough to not pay attention.
I pay a lot of attention to my kids. They still create messes and destroy things at a rate that blows my mind. I don’t clean the house every day. I would lose my mind.
My kids are extremely hands-on and creative with their environment. What that means is a shit-ton of work for me.
I have to maintain a certain level of clean so I don’t freak out. I have to vacuum a few times a month or we get bugs. Noah worries more about clutter than I do.
I think I have more anxiety around trying to please Noah than about keeping the house picked up. If he gets house and their shit is everywhere he sighs deeply and starts stomping around to pick it up. So I try to do that most days. But not every day.
But I set boundaries around “You have to have your stuff picked up before you can move on to some other large structured activity”. I’m inconsistent around this though. Like, the house is a mess but we went to Dickens anyway. I had Monday as a scheduled “cleaning day” so I was ok with that. The kids do help when I clean. They are getting really good at that.
The balance on that kind of stuff has improved dramatically. The training is working. Ha. But they need a tremendous amount of energy and direction from me to learn still. I don’t have time to go sit in a quiet space. They bug me every two fucking minutes.
“Quiet time in the garage” doesn’t really exist lately. They come in every fucking two minutes. If I get to the point of yelling at them then sometimes I can get up to ten minutes. (Still differentiating yelling from screaming as about volume/intensity/level of rage. Not sure if it feels that much different to them. They don’t cringe when I yell but they do back off. I’m usually yelling from the far corner of the garage to say “NOT RIGHT NOW.” I’m not feeling guilty but it isn’t effective either.)
I’m doing something wrong or they are testing boundaries or this is a phase or something. Holy fucking shit. Parenting is not usually as hard as it has been for a while.
We were traveling. It’s the holidays. I am probably pretty short compared to normal.
December 6th is my leather mom’s birthday. She’s going through a hard time and I can’t really support her. I feel shitty about that. It is also my biological mother’s birthday. She turned 64. Today is my biological father’s birthday. He would also have been 64. Instead he sat in his garage when he was 49. Stopping time on his maturation process.
I’m flying to Texas but Noah’s mom refuses to meet at a restaurant for a meal. I guess I won’t see them. That’s probably for the best. No I won’t be going to your house for you to yell at me. No thank you. I did not abandon one abusive mother in order to turn around and submit to another one.
I’m sad. I feel like I’m “doing everything wrong” again.
I read these annoying fucking checklists of “habits of mentally healthy people” and I think well no shit I’m not mentally healthy. I know people who don’t remember their lives very well. That would be the only way for me to lose awareness of the anniversary shit in my life. I may love those people but I do not choose to pursue that coping method.
I like my memory very much.
I need to feel safe enough to sit in my quiet space. I resist meditation because it is about sitting around and practicing self control for the fuck of it.
That sounds like hell on earth.
I would much rather multi-task to the point where I will have a stroke. It’s more comfortable.
What does that say about me?
Fuck you still place. Fuck you with a big stick.
“Why don’t you just stop dwelling on the past?”
Why don’t I just stop being sad that I don’t get to have a dad I haven’t had sex with in this lifetime? Really?
Uhm bugger off. I get to have my feelings.
If you haven’t had to buy love with your cunt for most of your life you really can’t understand.
It’s kind of weird now. Now I feel like there really won’t be any reason for people to want to know me. I don’t know how to talk to people. I don’t have anything to offer. I don’t know what to say. Being in public is weird.
What role in society can I fill? I spent most of my life looking for sex partners. I only grudgingly tolerated no’s when people made them explicit (and then they sometimes told me later “I was kinda hoping you would ask again later” WTF!).
Healthy? No. But it’s what I did.
Now what.
I don’t know.
I really did spend my childhood believing I was preparing for a career in sex work. Now that it didn’t work out my back up career is turning out to be way the fuck more work than I thought it would be. Good grief.
But it’s good. I want to be doing what I’m doing. I really do. I want to learn what it is like to be this kind of person. Even if I will never “really” understand because I will always have a brain that is paralyzed with terror because I’m prepared for the next problem.
Yeah yeah, fucking still space. Exercise the self control muscles you have more of them. Have more of the self control muscles have more ability to calm down central nervous system. Fuck you still place. Fuck you you fucking fuck.
My inside voice isn’t so inside today. Apparently.
Sometimes the process isn’t so pretty.
I think I struggle with completely letting go of the white trash stuff as part of my language evolution in general.
I have been yelled at not to curse for nearly three decades. I promise you that someone will yell at me again soon. “How dare you speak that way in front of children.” I get it every so often.
I no longer turn around and say, “Fuck you you ignorant fuck” but I did before I had kids. Ok I only actually did that once. She deserved it. I hadn’t been “cursing” so much as I was being literal and explicitly educational. Then I switched to cursing. Uhm, you had to be there?
There are people who can kill ’em with kindness. There are people who can disarm with humor. Then there’s me. May I introduce you to this trout I am going to smack you in the head with?
But most people who have been in a room with me have no idea. FUCK YOU PEOPLE WHO SAY I DON’T HAVE TACT.
You just say that because my tact falls on a different line than yours.
Why am I so interested in saying fuck you lately? Fuck you universe. Fuck you fucking everything in the fucking everywhere in the whole fucktastic piece of fuck world.
Good day for therapy.
But my kids don’t act like people who live with someone who talks that way. It would show. I am doing the routine. I’m just not good at being nice when I’m challenged. I’m sure this means I’m not nice. As if there was doubt.
Naw, lately the problem is that I’m taking shit personally. They are kids. They aren’t doing much because of me. (Well other than breathing and not being covered in filth all day.)
If they are bothering me I need to respectfully ask for the space I need.
I’ve listened to a god damn lot of victim blaming shit in my lifetime. I can tell you 57 reasons it is all my fault I was raped. O course I can figure out how my over reaction to my kids not being very thoughtful is all my fault. As if it were not completely developmentally normal (I HAVE BOOKS FOR THIS SHIT) and all that.
I can’t take it personally.
But I am. Because I’m like that. I need to stop.
Fuck you still place. Fuck you with a fucking chainsaw.
“You fight, fuck and garden… of course you have hobbies.”
First: I love you. Second: I love you.
Maybe if I argue then I can go back to sleep tonight. Ha. Tonight has been rough.
I have a lot of highly physical tasks I engage in. The current argument about hobby activities started from the premise that I needed more rest and not more physical activities. I think the word hobby is maybe not the point.
I have a lot of activities that I engage in that fall under the label “hobby” but they are universally depleting.
I don’t have a lot that “fills my cup” and I have a lot of things that empty my cup.
For most of my life I suppose I have used hobbies to burn off stress but I don’t know how to do the corollary of increasing relaxation. Burning off stress and relaxing are not exactly the same. I recharged by spending a lot of time alone. I don’t have alone time now unless I give up sleep. That’s a rough trade.
At the end of a long day of gardening I don’t feel relaxed. I feel tired and sore and frequently I feel really pissed off at my kids. I usually stop working because I am too angry to continue because the kids want my attention span to be as long as theirs and they will dive bomb me like fucking blue jays defending a bird feeder.
This process is the point for me. How to do things with them without the hate.
I’m struggling because my kids want fifteen minutes of work on a dozen different projects in a day. That involves so much set up and clean up that I don’t do anything but set up and clean up. I act like a god damn public school employee where my life is about putting other people through their paces.
Not what we are doing here, bucko.
I think that if Shanna and Calli want to set up and tear down a dozen projects in a day they are welcome to the work. I choose to work for many hours each on two or three projects in a day.
The problem wasn’t ever that I can’t find enough to do to keep busy. If the idea behind “find a hobby” was “find something to do” then I don’t need to worry about it. I’m busy. The point was “find a way to relax”. That I am not going so good at doing.
Does that make sense? It isn’t actually that I need to “go find a hobby” rather that I need to “find something that relaxes me so I can use fewer drugs”. Different argument.
I did take a bath yesterday when I was feeling pissy. It helped.
I’m not sure that I am “not creative” K and I’ve been fighting that word battle my whole life.
So if what we are looking for is to add more and more activities until I die of a heart attack we are on the right track.
The problem with hobbies-with-people is that whole panic disorder problem.
We went to Dickens Fair yesterday. The kids are on a streak of being the opposite of considerate (it happens occasionally) so it was not a fun outing. I shouldn’t get pissy about some of the stuff that happened (like them throwing a fit insisting on peanut butter sandwiches for the tea party and then not eating any of the pbjs and instead stealing my whole lunch) because it isn’t a big deal. Unfortunately if my whole day goes that way I am pissy by the end. Fuck you. I ask you what you want, I give it to you, then you take mine? Oh this isn’t god damn on.
But it’s all trivial stuff. And the whole point of being a parent is that kids behave badly and you are supposed to still act right and show them how it is done.
By the last half hour I was standing in a corner of every room and shaking. If someone wanted to talk to me I plastered a fake-as-shit smile on my face and tried to be pleasant. I ran into a lot of people I know. People I don’t see much. It isn’t ok in any way shape or form for me to start exploding or being snippy or pissy with them. So instead I shake. After the second time of Calli throwing herself to the floor in the middle of a dance at Fezziwig’s I just picked her up and carried her out before I lost it.
Then the whole walk out to the car was Calli screaming at the top of her lungs about what a terrible time she had and I’m so mean because she didn’t get to see any friends. I asked a lot of people about going with us. No one wanted to. So I guess I should be screamed at for hours because I deserve it.
By the time we got to the car it was all I could do to not break something or someone.
But I didn’t! I didn’t even yell at them beyond, “I said SIT DOWN IN YOUR CAR SEAT.” I listened to loud music on the way home to drown out the bitching then I took a bath. Calgon take me away or some shit.
Ok. I think the argument has gotten past “get a hobby” to “but I have TOO MANY hobbies”. Originally this argument started because I needed to do less work and find something relaxing. None of my hobbies are relaxing. They are all baskets of stress to go.
So maybe the point isn’t to find a hobby but to learn how to just sit still staring at a wall? I’m feeling pissy and nasty about the fact that I think the next step is meditation.
Can I tell you how not open to this idea I am? Yeah, I get that it is the next step. Fuck you too.
Sometimes that is just how I am with the next step. I’m fairly sure that if I look at a calendar of my hour by hour activities (I’m so god damn anal that I do that with my life even though I don’t have a job or anything) the problem isn’t that I need to find something to do. The problem is that I need to replace two to four of my “things I do” with rest. Or meditation or some shit.
But I’m not good at rest. I sit for a few seconds and then I get up and find some shit to do. Because I have tons of hobbies.
And kiss off I’m not creative. You ask me to show up at your house and clean up a huge mess that overwhelms you? That’s creative.
I’m a different kind of creative. I’m trying to learn to appreciate the gift I was given instead of feeling sad that I’m not the kind of creative other people are. If you showed up at my house and said, “Build me a set! I want to perform Hamlet!” I could do that. Sure. No problem. Literally that wouldn’t be a problem for me.
That’s creative.
I just can’t fucking sit still and stare at something fiddly. Does that mean I’m not creative?
No. I refuse to concede.
Wendy does have good points (as usual) about how some people find hobbies with other people to be relaxing. I’m not one of them. Hobbies with other people are a nightmare of anxiety about how at any second I will say the wrong thing and I’ll be told to leave and never come back.
My life would be a lot easier if I believed that people liked me. Even though you nice people leave me comments on my blog I think that if I spent enough time with you in person you would not be able to handle the firehose. I get that you have been patient with text. Text is less invasive–I promise.
Noah is the one and only person in my life who has spent a lot of time with me and kept coming back. Every other friendship when it escalates in time spent blows up. Yeah, I know this is my fault.
If you have the same problem over and over it isn’t other peoples fault. It is your fault.
I stress people the fuck out. Doing hobbies with me isn’t relaxing for other people any more than they are relaxing for me. I’m really sorry.
So I have hobbies. What I don’t have is relaxation. What I don’t have is a way to come down from the anxiety load that is destroying my body.
Go read up on what chronic stress does to your internal organs. It’s not pretty. That’s what I’m trying to combat with the idea of “hobbies” that I’m arguing with up one side and down the other.
The point isn’t “hobbies” the point is stress reduction.
I run, I do yoga, I take baths, I take a lot of anti-anxiety medication, I read, I write, I garden… these are all the “should calm you down” color wheel. I’M NOT CALMED DOWN YET SO I WANT MY FUCKING MONEY BACK.
If I could learn to function just as well while shaking with anxiety my life would be fine.
At some point in the past couple of years of research I hit this point where I realized fairly point blank that if I want to see my kids reach a lot of adult milestones I will have to be alive. I’m not existing in this body in a way that will allow that to happen. That’s why I am nattering about “must find hobby” only the problem is I have too many hobbies not too few. I must find a way to stop destroying my body.
January is coming. I’ll see a doctor again. Last time allowed me to figure out that I don’t have a hernia (good step) which prompted research into IBS which caused me to drop carbonated water. That eliminated a lot of pain. That’s a good first step. I still have periodic throbbing in the same spot which could indicate an aneurism. Hopefully it won’t rupture or anything. I’m going to move forward with the “Hope it is just IBS and food allergies” assumption and pray.
It’s kind of like how I have gotten way nicer to my cat in the past two or so years. I finally realized oh shit you are getting old and you will die. She’s been with me since I was sixteen. It is going to be really hard when she goes. I am the only mother she remembers. I had her before her eyes were open. I bottle fed her and kept her alive when her mother abandoned her. I’m going to miss her a lot.
No, I’m not just going to replace her with some of the many foster kittens I hear about. Over the next eight years I want to be traveling for almost two years worth of time. That’s not cool to do to an animal. Maybe after the WWOOF year we can consider taking responsibility for another animal. Not before then.
I’m going to miss my cat.
It is 3am. I went to bed by 6:30 because I was exhausted and angry. I woke up 1:30 for poop thirty and haven’t been very sleepy or tired feeling since. I laid in bed for almost an hour. Sleep doctors say to not stay in bed forever if you aren’t sleepy. (They also say to not use screens. Piss off.)
I miss having weekends off from the kids. I’m not doing very well without them. I don’t have down time. I have “quick let me juggle a way to entertain you and you will come and interrupt me 75 billion times” experiences instead.
No, it is not normal, natural, or healthy to raise children without a village of support. There isn’t a lot I can do about the circumstances I am in. I “could” go pay someone to watch my kids. I suppose I should get a job to do that. Or stop overpaying my mortgage. Or stop buying books. Or clothes. Or buy cheaper food so I can pay a daycare.
How about if we start living on ramen again so I can pay someone else to hang out with my kids while I have time off. Sounds awesome.
Oh wait. Other physical issues. See, there is always a down side. Not to mention that when the babysitter comes over I get a break only I have to come back and do a shit ton of work to make up for having stepped out for a few minutes. I always feel like I should have “sucker” tattooed on my forehead. Time off that means much more work overall isn’t “time off”. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I don’t think my life circumstances are more difficult than other people. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I don’t think my life circumstances are all that unusual or challenging. I just think I am shitty at dealing with it. Different.
A problem is only as big as your inability to handle it.
I watch The West Wing or Firefly when I want to zone out. Mostly I watch them while I fold laundry or clean the kitchen. It occupies a lot of my brain.
I like rewatching things. When I was a kid we didn’t own many movies. I never watched broadcast tv much. I’m not interested in moving with the wave of culture. I think that watching a new show means submitting to not being sure if I will feel like I wasted my time by the end. I don’t have a lot of time I like to waste.
So I watch my friends. I think about what it means to be a kind of person. I think about what it means to have to interact with the people around you. I think about what it means to lead and inspire people.
Not that I think I will become a mighty leader. But people tell me I am inspirational. What does that mean?
Inspiring means making people think things are possible.
Is it possible for me to learn to relax? We’ll see.
I wish that hanging out with K or Blacksheep or Wendy or or… was just “relaxing”. It’s not. I love you. I am completely freaked out every single second I am in the room with you. When are you going to get sick of my shit? It’s inevitable. People do.
I get to be sure that people get sick of me and move on. My life is littered with such events. Often combined with nasty letters telling me that they are done with me because I’m doing bad things. So… don’t say I’m paranoid.
Does everyone react that way with me? Of course not. Usually I leave first.
I don’t know how to change these patterns and beliefs. They are self created and self reinforced. I’m not denying any of that. Just because that is true that doesn’t make it easy for me to change. I created these systems unconsciously a long time ago. The fact that I can explain it now it doesn’t mean I have exact control over it.
I want to stop typing. Blah. Hungry. Tired but not sleepy. Therapy in nine hours. This is probably good timing.
My interpretation of “find pleasure in” involves doing things that do not make me scream, cuss, break things, and hate everyone who is stupid enough to talk to me. That means all hobbies are out.
It also doesn’t help that when people start listing off possible hobbies my first thought is “What is the arm load like? Nope.” I am at mass capacity on arm load. I truly can’t pick up hobbies like knitting or crochet at this point. I would fully cripple myself in a year.
My arms burn. Right now. All the time. Sometimes the pain a lot worse. I was dumb in November again. I still don’t have a workable ergonomic set up. I had one that kind of sort of worked only it didn’t. So yeah. That will take money to fix. I just… this whole year sucks for money.
When I paint it is better if no one is in the room with me. If someone is near me while I paint it isn’t going to be very pleasant for both of us. The motherfucking piece of shit might breathe at the wrong time and then I will turn around and scream and scream and scream because how fucking dare they distract me.
Painting my house has been an adventure. I can’t scream at the kids like that. But painting is horrible and stressful so I try to only paint while they are able to be distracted doing something else. I curse under my breath. I sound really bad.
Why do I work all the time? Because I get a sense of satisfaction from it. I do have “hobbies” given that I don’t do anything for pay. Everything I do is a hobby. I work all day long. None of my hobbies are “relaxing”.
When I sit down to read a book as often as not it is dense, difficult to read, and kind of uncomfortable. I read a lot of things that cause me psychological distress because I need the information contained within.
The primary thing I have ever done in my life that consistently reduces my stress is go pick up sex with strangers. Yeah, not doing that any more. So I’m hosed.
I do gardening. That counts as a hobby. It is horribly arm intensive and expensive so I have to carefully dole out my pleasures. Yes, I can always weed for free. Ask me how happy gardening would make me if all I got to do was weed. (Technically gardening isn’t usually that expensive. I’ve had a few larger issues in my yard to correct. At this point I think I am past most of the big expenses. I like seeds. Seeds are cheaper than plants. But I wasn’t going to plant trees from seeds. It’s too hard.)
I clean as stress relief. But I live with people who do the opposite of cleaning all day and that raises my stress. It is an interesting balance.
Running is kind of a good thing. Only finding time that isn’t pre-6am is hard. And frankly, this is the only time I get to sit in silence. I’m not fucking giving it up for running. I will be too angry all day. I need to sit in silence. I need it.
I dearly wish that all these little hand craft hobbies didn’t make me angry but they do. They make me so angry and hateful that I really don’t want to be near anyone for days. I can’t have more of that feeling in my life right now. I don’t get the space to process my frustration. I have to just sit on it. No, that doesn’t make my life better.
I wish that I didn’t get so angry. But I do. I can’t unmake that fact by wishing it away. I have to live with the body I have.
I hear that my friends have hobbies that relax them and make their lives better. I’m glad that works for you. It will make me beat my children.
Yesterday the kids decided to play with one of my tea sets. One I was given as a birthday present. They soaked the tax paperwork we just received and broke a porcelain spoon.
I’m having a hard time controlling my mouth. I have to be alone in a room because I’m cussing a lot. I feel really frustrated and angry. I’m saying things I don’t mean and I need to make sure they don’t hear me.
Relaxation from a hobby comes from being in the flow state. The learning process isn’t relaxing it is torture. Flow comes after a lot of practice. So I walk up to every hobby and think, “Great. One more thing it would have been nice for me to learn years ago so I could enjoy it today. Oh fucking well.”
I like woodworking. That takes tools and money I don’t want to spend right now. Woodworking is satisfying. Knitting a fucking scarf makes me think, “Wow. I could have spent $5 and bought something more attractive. What a fucking waste of my life.”
I honestly dislike drawing. If I have to sit down and do it my stress amps. I start cussing more. I get mean really fast. No, I don’t do a lot of drawing with the kids.
I think I hate everything that is meant to be done alone. Intrinsically. That is the opposite of what I want in my life and giving in to it means admitting that I will always be alone. I don’t want to. I don’t want that to be my fate.
People tell me to find a hobby so I can relax and have fun alone. I don’t like being alone. Being alone means a walk through my shitty brain. Things that require intense concentration and learning just make me feel like I am not paying attention to my surroundings and soon I will be eaten.
I listen to music sometimes. When I’m not feeling obsessed with silence. I like music.
I do like to dance alone. As soon as someone else is there the stress amps. My kids expect me to carry them the whole time. Which makes my arms hurt. Which makes dancing not fun. Which makes me resent them. Which… it’s a bad cycle.
I feel like everything I do just convinces me how incompetent, pathetic, weak, and stupid I am.
Why don’t I go find a hobby? Because I’m a fucking loser. Leave me alone.
It’s not a bad suggestion. I get how it comes from a loving place. Being in my body full time is really unpleasant.
When people try to talk me into their hobbies I really want to launch into a full detailed explanation about how their life would be much better if they embraced promiscuous sex. Let me tell you why!
I could sell it as a hobby. I’m serious.
Why don’t I learn to make music? Because I feel stupid, wrong, bad about myself, and like I should walk in front of a bus because I am so stupid and pathetic. No really.
Have you noticed the “not rational” bit about my brain?
If I could trade my brain in for one that works how other peoples brains work I would. But I can’t.
I did rest yesterday. I read to the kids until my throat gave out. Because that’s “resting”, right? The singing practice with the home schoolers didn’t help my throat. I’m not a singer. And the kids didn’t know the words so the grown ups had to sing loudly and enunciate because a lot of the kids can’t read yet.
Because we came home early from Portland we get to go caroling with the home schoolers at an old folks home. We were going to miss the rehearsal so we couldn’t go. That was a slight factor in coming home early once my friend told me she had strep (maybe she doesn’t and it was just a flu because she feels better–much bummer all around). The kids wanted to do this.
Everything the kids want to do involves me having to teach them shit. Mostly shit I don’t know how to do and I’m not good at. I really do not have the bandwidth to go learn more than I’m learning.
This is where I run into that time as a limiting option. What balls should I drop from my life so I can “go learn a relaxing hobby” that will make me feel angry, pissed off, stressed out, and like I hate every fucking person in the whole fucking world.
I am really angry this morning. I woke up angry. I’m not angry about the comments I’ve been getting despite this rant. (Actually the comments are useful. I appreciate my friends. They cause me to think about the shape of why I am doing things and that is really fucking useful.)
Like I do need to rest more. Whether I can pick up a hobby or not is debatable. I HAVE to rest more. That’s not negotiable. Maybe I will have to find something other than a hobby because I do not find the same physical anxiety relief in it that my friends do (I am really glad it works for you–no sarcasm.) but that doesn’t mean that I get to opt out of rest.
Rest is mandatory. Knitting is not. (I use knitting as a strawman in this argument. You could substitute “do calligraphy” or “learn to make beer”, really anything.)
When I have the kids come over and do painting stuff I watch. I can explain the process. But I can’t get involved and do it myself with them. I will get too control oriented and bitchy.
I throw a lot of temper tantrums. Now that I am all big and stuff I work hard to only do them in private. So I can’t engage in group hobby stuff because my experience of doing them involves sitting and cussing full stream ahead.
I actually limit the cussing in my writing a lot. If you were in the room with me you would hear less than 20% of my words are non-curse words while I’m painting. I can make whole paragraphs and ditties using just curse words. I do slip in conjunctions and prepositions. No nouns.
Studies show that swearing lowers stress. Maybe this is my hobby.
I do care about the results of painting. So I’ve worked through my anger and hostility and I’ve learned a lot. I do enjoy it more now than I used to. I made everyone in the scene shop miserable when I was in college. After a while they only let me prime sets because they needed it done and no one wanted to listen to my mouth when it came to the harder kinds of painting.
Painting is the opposite of relaxing.
But I do still like it. I like the results. I just don’t like doing it. It is stressful.
Do you know what I used to do for stress relief? I beat the shit out of people. It is incredibly relaxing. And fun! If I had more spare time and childcare I might take up boxing. Noah and I are talking about enrolling the whole family in martial arts in January.
I do seated work. I write. I read. Isn’t that enough sitting? I cuddle with the kids for at least half an hour often more than an hour every day. Isn’t that enough? I’m sure my ass is in a chair for at least four hours a day. Surely no one needs to sit more than that…
I actually kind of think that is the role the pot plays in my life. It physically relaxes me. I sit down while I smoke. It’s awesome.
More baths? I could start taking daily baths. Those help to physically relax me.
I need to run almost every day. I just need to. I need to stop cussing at everyone. Although it is hard to not use it as stress relief. I mean good grief. I’m trying to not do things like cutting–is cursing really a big deal? I mean really? In the scheme of things?!
But it is actually more important than the cutting. It really bothers me that it is true but it is. Cursing in front of people will cause me far more problems than cutting. It is better for me to cut to deal with my stress instead of cussing all the time.
That feels really sad.
This is what I mean when I say that I live in a time and a place where my problems are mine. I can’t share them with my community. I’m not allowed to telegraph stress.
Learning is hard for me. It is stressful. I cuss while I do it. I always have. I have been getting in trouble for this since I was five years old. I’m unlikely to develop more control over it than I have right now. I can’t wait until my kids are adults and I can start swearing in front of them more. That’ll be awesome. I will have given them a childhood where they got to experience not being around a nasty angry person. They will be able to handle my stress not being about them. That’s the long-run goal. Fifteen years to go.
You can’t get better at things unless you deal with the frustration of learning. But I already have an ambient really high level of frustration. Adding more makes me defenses crack and then I’m not really fit to be near.
It’s about balance.
And yet what I’m trying to do is teach my kids to do stuff. Teach them how to be an adult.
I do learn in front of them. But I’m really fully stocked on what I’m trying to learn. I’m doing stuff I planned in advance. I’m slowly acquiring more skills in a conscious way because I am teaching them. I’m learning cooking and gardening and how to maintain a house. These are things that people do need to know. My kids won’t have to work on these skills as adults; it can be run as a background thing in their lives. The goal is competence.
I think that maybe I should think about co-working during writing time. With the kids I mean. They can do their own table work at the same time. They can always find something to do.
I feel kind of insecure about not directing my kids. I don’t tell them to do art. I don’t tell them to draw or practice writing or whatever.
They just do these things. I give them a certain amount of money every so often and we go to craft stores and they pick what they want.
I really enjoy watching them enjoy these things. But I’m shit at making the kinds of things they like to make. I don’t have the physical coordination. The irony is staggering.
Fiddly work makes me crazy. Is that a character flaw? I like sudoku. I play that a lot. Maybe a book of them in my Christmas stocking? That would get me to close the computer and sit with the kids…
That’s all I’ve got right now. I’m trying.
I like my home. We are home. Ms. Blacksheep got sick. Much sadness is had by all. So we came home a day early. Yay home.
I was told that I am perhaps more hypervigilant than necessary and I could be more honey badger like.
Thing is, hypervigilance isn’t something where you can say, “I’ve been hanging out at a 9 for years now so how about if I turn it down to a 7 in your house because you’re cool and all.”
Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.
For most of the past week I have had the really intense, invasive thought, “I will never have a dad who hasn’t fucked me.” I can’t get it out of my head. I keep repeating it over and over to myself.
Do you really think that would be an ok thing to bust out at your house? Really? If not then I can’t turn my hypervigilance down. At all. Not a notch.
When I am feeling stressed and kind of anxious I have a bad habit of talking about my many sexual exploits. That is my “relax and feel comfortable” line of conversation. If I can’t start extensively going off on the many people I’ve fucked then I am on Best Behavior and no I can’t relax.
Noah asked me what the penalty would be for people not liking me now. I said that the problem is that I only leave my house with the hope of finding people who like me.
I’m not interested in most hobbies–have you noticed? I don’t hang out with people so that they can also do what I am doing at the same time. I just don’t give a shit.
I leave my house because I want affiliation and I want people to like me. I only interact with people from a sense of “Please affirm that I shouldn’t die because you like me.” No, I’m not calling this “healthy”. I am just accurately labeling how it works for me.
I go visit you, Blacksheep, Bladerunner, Pam, S, K, T, P, etc because I want you to love me. That’s it. That’s all. When I stop inviting you over it is because I am scared that you don’t actually love me very much and I am just bothering you by asking you to come over.
I can’t see inside you. All I know is my very broken perception of how you treat me. I want people to love me so bad that sometimes I feel like the only reason I get out of bed *ever* is with the desperate hope that someone will love me.
I don’t feel very lovable. I don’t feel worthy of Dad’s love. I feel like an ungrateful piece of shit who should be lit on fire.
Even though I was very nice to him the whole time I was in his house and I cleaned the house before I left so he wasn’t negatively impacted and I left enough money on the counter to cover our food. I still feel like a disgusting user. I still feel like there is no reason for him to love me.
This is why I appreciate so much that people insert themselves into my life. Dad tells me to come visit. Blacksheep arranges plans. Etc on down the list.
I’m scared. Basically all the time that I am not worthy of being loved so I should die. Yeah, it is hyperbolic and annoying. Try living in my head for a week if you want to bitch about how annoying it is. It sucks.
I have better weeks and worse weeks. Clearly when traveling it escalates in pitch for me. They are all people I rarely see but upon whom I base a lot of self worth. If these wonderful people see something in me worthy of loving then maybe I’m not as bad as I think.
If I were to not care what people thought of me I would stop leaving my house. If I didn’t want love so bad I feel like I will drown I wouldn’t deal with people. The stress isn’t worth it.
Let me tell you I would not be nice to your random friends if I didn’t want you to love me so fucking much.
I wish I were just nice. I’m not. I’m only nice with a lot of conscious effort.
Noah asked me “what I want from life”. I want people to love me. I mean, I will do a lot of other stuff while I’m praying for that to happen. I’ll build shit and paint shit and garden and hang out with people doing random other things.
All of it is a structure around my fervent prayer, “Please love me.” Sometimes this need feels so big it will drown me. This is the need that nearly killed me because for a long time… people didn’t love me much. I went through most of the formative period of my life having everyone tell me how much they hated me and resented my presence. I was an unwanted burden.
Yesterday I was talking to Ms. Blacksheep as her illness kind of unfolded. I erroneously made a comment about her being overscheduled. She set me straight. Apparently the move to Portland has involved a more reasonable work schedule and shit.
Man. I work at least 75 hours a week. If you include kid care (which is myriad and complicated), reading (I don’t just sit down to read for pleasure I sit down for 3 hours to read this book and then I move on fast), other house repair, home school events (which count as hard work for my body system let-me-tell-you), and cleaning. I think it is very rare that I do less than 11 hours of work in a day. I don’t just sit around and rest. I don’t really know how.
I therefore followed up with, “How does that work?!” I should figure out this “being healthy” thing. Working 11+ hours every day is not really “healthy”.
I work because I have no value sitting still. I’m a piece of shit who should be earning my keep but I’m not really. I think I am lazy, and not very effective. Don’t ask me who isn’t lazy or who is effective. I can’t answer that. Anyone but me? Regardless of how our to-do lists match up?
Ok, not rational. I get it.
I am so scared I won’t be prepared for something I work hard all the time because I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel like I will be allowed to stay if I become any more of a horrible burden than I am. Is Noah doing or saying anything to cause me to think he is on the verge of kicking me out? No. Of course not. Noah makes undying promises of support all the time. And he backs them up with converting his inheritance into community property so that no matter what I have to take half of his assets whether I like it or not. He won’t let me walk away penniless and pathetic. Even if I’m the one running away.
I’m not saying I’m rational. I’m saying I am where I am. In many ways this does represent positive progress from where I was. Seriously, I’m much healthier than I was fifteen years ago. Life is about progress, right?
I try to not hate myself for being this broken and annoying. I wish my brain just worked. I wish I didn’t hate me so much. I wish I wasn’t so convinced that I am doing everything wrong and at any second people are going to be fucking sick of me and they will tell me to go away and not come back.
I wish I believed that people would actually be there for me. I don’t. I have no faith at all.
I have a long list of people who have told me I “could” call in the middle of the night. I don’t. I don’t feel comfortable or safe. I will use up my welcome and then I will not even have the bits I have now. Don’t overtax your support system. Just don’t.
I’m really glad to be back in my home. The longer I live here the more I like it.
I would not belong in a bigger house. I would have so much imposteur syndrome. The shoddy little tract house is about as high as white trash like me should climb. If you get too high then people want to knock you down because they don’t like seeing a loser with more prestige than them.
Also: these big houses are expensive. This trip I got to visit the House That Porn built. (When I defend pornography as a lifestyle it is because I happen to know a lot of pornographers. Some of them are excellent people and some of them are scum, pretty much like every other career choice.)
This house was four stories tall and beautiful. All through the house was interesting art. The couple who lives there has an incredible eye for beauty. They know how to make you really stop and think about the things around you. But it was all funded by porn. Well, as long as you have savings just in case I think it is awesome.
I couldn’t live there. I just couldn’t. I tried asking them how it felt to live in such a big fancy house (when I first met them they lived in Santa Cruz in a place more like the house I am in now) and I was told, “Enh this is small and shack-like.” You just can’t get a straight answer out of him.
Thing is, I’m pretty sure he was entirely sincere and he just lives in a world I don’t live in.
(They’ve moved through four houses since moving up to the Portland area. This house is not the biggest they have owned but it is the fanciest. Like, whoa.)
I really like a variety of people. I think they are all doing the right things for them. The Christian home schoolers and the pornographers are each doing what makes them happy. Awesomesauce.
I want to live in a world where you all exist. I want to live in a world of stay at home moms and stay at home dads and working moms and working dads. I want the variety. I want it so much. I am not more validated by people being like me. People being like me usually makes me sad because it probably means they are not as happy as they could be.
I’ve been reading about group cooperation among humans and animals. I don’t have an “in” group. I haven’t for a long time. I seem to have some weird ability to grab on to the whole of humanity and say, “Ok, you’re mine.” I don’t need them to be related to me by blood or to have grown up in the same place or even for them to read the same books.
You’re mine. I love you. I want you in this world. I think you are good. I want you to still move about in the world doing things. I really do. Even if they work in opposition to what I’m doing. What is life without a little opposition?
I want it so bad.
I want them all to love me and think it is ok for me to live. I don’t need them to do much for me. I just want the love.
Something you discover when you read a lot of rape narratives is there is this horrible phrase that comes up a lot. “Please love me.”
Rapists like to make people say it so they can justify what they are doing. If you are forced to say something it doesn’t count no matter what you are saying. It is easy to force people to say things. Really easy. Like, whoa easy. I can do it. No problem.
Please love me. The phrase turns my stomach and makes the hair on my neck stand up.
But I mean it. I’m obsessed with it. I want to be worthy of love. I don’t think I am. I’m very sad about that.
I got nine hours of sleep last night. I only manage such a feat a few times a year so I’m excited. I medicated for sleep last night. I don’t do that much. Mostly I just medicate the day-time anxiety so I’m not a mean, nasty bitch. Once in a while I help myself sleep. My body feels pretty happy right this minute.
We sat around yesterday. I did a couple loads of laundry and made dinner. That was my productivity. Noah caught up on the internet and the kids played. Today will be a going-out day again. Tomorrow too. We got an SMS from Ms. Blacksheep and I told Shanna and Calli that we were offered the ability to sleep near their new friends A and M. Shanna declared loudly that she was ready to leave Grandpa’s house in favor of being near A because A IS MY BEST FRIEND. WE SHOULD BE AT HER HOUSE! Oh. Well, ok then.
It is interesting watching the vagaries of children. What does “best friend” mean to a five year old? I’m not going to say she is right or wrong. I’m glad y’all are getting along. Sure, we can camp at their house after school the last day/night so you can see them again. That sounds great.
I think the kids are getting pretty bored of watching Dad play video games (his way of playing with the kids) or now he has switched to watching football. He has exhausted his repertoire trying to entertain them.
I think I maintain a relationship with Dad because we live very far apart and I don’t have a lot of expectations of someone who lives this far away from me. If I lived close to him I would resent the fuck out of coming to his house and making dinner for him only to have him walk away from the table with barely a nod to watch football. Yeah. I don’t work this way.
People are so different. Being in this house is reminding me of why I’m glad I don’t have a television set and I will probably never have one again in my life. I feel so much anger when someone ignores me to watch tv. I don’t know what it is but football makes me feel hate.
Really. Watching other people run back and forth on a screen is more interesting than talking to me. Well fuck you very much too. I’ll just fucking leave.
When I was a kid the tv was on 24/7 and I was constantly screamed at to shut up so I didn’t distract people from watching tv. But they were never not watching tv. So basically I was just supposed to be silent.
I hate the tv. I hate the fucking surround sound that means I can be on the far side of the fucking house and I can’t get the fuck away from the fucking football.
I’m having issues. Time to leave. I love Dad with great intensity but it is such a good thing I’ve never actually lived with him. I don’t think we would get along. I don’t say that because I think that he is a bad person. I don’t think he is a bad person. I think he is a very good person. I really do. My feeling “triggered” is not about him. It is not his fault. I don’t think he is bad for liking football. I just don’t like it.
This trip I have been busting out terminology. He says he didn’t know I had PTSD. He knew that some things happened to me a long time ago but he has carefully avoided knowing what or that it might have current effects on me. I’m getting clinical. He kind of looks shell shocked. I should probably shut up.
Only if you want to know me and you have known me for almost fifteen years… you probably should have some idea about what my life is like. You should know some real things about me.
If the only thing you know about me is that I like single tails and canes why are you calling me your friend? We aren’t friends. If that is the only thing you think is worth putting in your memory banks about me then we aren’t fucking friends.
I’m just another girl in your line up.
I took a break there for an hour or so to talk to Dad because he woke up and came down. He is trying so hard. I feel really guilty for being impatient with him.
Dad is doing his best to have a relationship with me. He is fully bringing all he has to offer and that is all that any human being can do. It isn’t his fault I am so needy and damaged. He didn’t do any of it. He has been intensely respectful of my consent for the entire time I have known him. He’s a big consent advocate in general.
Dad can be an asshole, yes. Mostly though he is a very good person. I feel so glad that I get to know him.
We had a good talk this morning. I sort of opened the flood gates. He asked why I write the way I do. I told him that I have this burning internal need to exist in front of people and mostly my life is very isolated. I either write about myself or I feel like I don’t exist. I want to exist so fucking bad.
I love Dad a lot. He has been very good to me. I feel very guilty for feeling irritated with the things he does. He isn’t hurting me.
He’s really nice to the kids, too. He’s been patient with them destroying stuff. He hasn’t yelled at all. If I think back I can’t think of him ever yelling at me once. He just doesn’t do that. He tends towards apathy not inappropriate control.
No person is without challenging parts of their personality. I have more than most. I need to be patient with people being where they are.
He confirmed that I am way easier to be around now than I used to be. I’m a lot nicer now. He said that Francesca really saw my potential. She made sure I kept coming around. And now she is gone. I miss her so much. I saw her potential too.
Every time Shanna is kind to animals I tell her about Francesca. That was kind of Francesca’s thing. She was an animal rescuer. My kids have played Diego and Francesca the Animal Rescuers!
It makes me cry. I wish Francesca had gotten to be a grandmother. She would have been a very good one. She didn’t get to have kids. Life is like that sometimes. I miss her so much.
I have this feeling and I try to believe that other people would miss me like this if I died. So don’t die.
Yeah, I feel more patient after the sleep. I get so nasty when I’m exhausted. I feel really bad about it but I don’t know how to control it better. Sometimes I don’t sleep and that is that. Sleep hygiene. Or something.
Sometimes it is hard knowing that almost every relationship in my life is opt-in. People can choose to show up occasionally or not as they see fit. There is no assumption that we will be together and you have to opt-out. That’s the difference between friends and family. You have to guiltily tell your mom you aren’t coming “home” for the holidays. You don’t have to tell me shit. The assumption is I am on my own.
But Dad keeps opting in. Maybe I should work on being less of a cunt. I have already made a lot of progress. He tells me so.
PS- my arms burn like fire.
PPS- Dad asked for the link to my blog again. Good thing I don’t say anything behind anyone’s back that I won’t say to their face.
Yesterday I got to spend time with two thoroughly excellent ladies. It is kind of funny that I am referring to them that way because one of them is dealing with a situation at work where she has to tell someone else in her department, “Uhhh stop sending group emails to “Dear Ladies”.”
Two women who inspire me came out of hiding yesterday. One is a preschool special ed teacher (talk about a special breed of saint) and the other has a background like mine and she now has a masters in social work. After dropping out of high school in 9th grade and never completing high school.
One of my friends is not a parent and the other has one kid. I am on a very different life path than either of them. I am really glad that my kids get to know a lot of women who have entirely different interests. My children mostly know women who work. My children mostly know people who have nothing in common with us other than being breathing monkeys and all.
You don’t have to be like me. I am doing what I must do. I know it is kind of weird.
I am so grateful to talk to other people who are fascinated by the vagaries of humanity. It is nice to get to talk to people and say, “Yeah we share ____ bad habit and ______ good habits. Whoo hoo!”
Noah got to ask the social worker friend and I why we care so much about the opinion of people we don’t like and don’t respect. Why don’t we just get over it already? He’s been pestering me on this one for a bit now and I haven’t given him a useful answer. It was kind of nice for him to get to ask another person who is as angry and difficult as I am. I am NOT ALONE. muahahaha
Yes, Noah you are right. Our lives would be better in every way at this point if we didn’t care.
When you are a white trash kid who depends on a lot of charity… you have to care what people think or they don’t give you any help.
I got out of poverty because of a lot of white privilege. People who would help me just an inch here and there. If I didn’t give a shit what they thought I would have behaved even worse than I did and I wouldn’t have gotten the help.
Historically in my life not caring was more dangerous than it is now. At this point it is a legacy bad habit that I do need to change. It is a coping method that *used* to be necessary and it is still around when I don’t need it any more.
I kind of have a long list of personality problems I am already working on. I haven’t really had time to deal with this one yet. I’m too busy figuring out how to not scream at my kids all the fucking time. It’s really hard. Now I understand why my mom beat the shit out of me.
But I will not pass it on. And that requires a lot of truly active thinking on my part.
If I go on “auto pilot” then I am nasty, shrieking, and violent. I hurt people with great joy. If I want to behave differently then I need to really think hard about it all the fucking time. That doesn’t leave a lot of spare brain cycles for fixing the stuff Noah thinks I should get around to.
Uhh, sorry.
I know you are right. I know that is on the list of things I need to change. I get it. But there isn’t a neat little switch attached to my body some where. I don’t get to just decide, “I am going to stop being angry and afraid; all of a sudden I am going to just massively increase my apathy.” Sorry, my nipples aren’t that kind of dial or anything.
I know it “would be better for me” if I could stop having intense emotional reactions to the fact that there will always be people in this world who hate me and wish I would die. Yup, my life would improve in every way if I stopped feeling so bad about that. I know. I know. I KNOW.
I just…
I’m trying.
It has been nice over the past few days to see people I have known for so long. They have been commenting on how different I am. I don’t hit people any more. I don’t even mean like in a bdsm sense. I hit people fucking constantly for most of my life. It has taken years for Jenny to stop flinching when I come near her. I have had to work really hard at not being scary any more.
I understand that this isn’t an “everyone has it” problem. Please can it be ok that I am working on this problem first instead of the “caring too much” problem?
Seriously. I need to care what people think of me. Fewer people, sure. I agree. I do need to care. Not as much as I do. Yes yes yes the strangers who hate me can fuck off. I get it.
The caring runs on a background tape I never take out of the deck and examine. It’s just kind of there. It is an unfortunate feature of my personality that just exists. I don’t consciously go turn it on. I don’t try to increase my anxiety. It’s just there.
Sometimes people have unconscious reactions. It happens.
So it was nice for Noah to get to talk to both of my friends yesterday. They are very different and share very different sides of my interests. Good grief am I grateful that he got to meet someone as angry as I am who is out doing stuff in the world. She has as many anger problems as I do and she has to just fucking master them, like yesterday.
She is very inspirational to me. I confess that I have a hard time taking advice from people who are not inherently angry. If you aren’t like me then you won’t understand what advice I need or why I need it. She gets it. She gets it better than almost anyone I have ever met.
Why are my very closest friends all former child prostitutes? They can understand me. They don’t flinch. They don’t judge me. They understand why I am angry and they think I need to keep the anger but figure out how to manage it. They are the only fucking people not telling me to just “get over it.”
Dad lectured my friend and I last night about how we need to stop getting so angry. We should learn how to deflect rude/awful/whatever things with humor so that people will like us more.
I did not light up like a roman candle and I feel proud of myself for this. I did leave the room soon after.
Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you.
I love Dad with great intensity but man he is hard for me to deal with sometimes. I view it as practice for dealing with all the people I hate. I don’t know why Dad has managed to cross the line into being so strongly in my affection. He has all the markers of someone I would like to set on fire. But he gets a pass. He has earned it from me.
My friend and I discussed our sixth sense, “I can spot a rape/incest/severe abuse survivor at thirty paces.” I can see it on peoples faces even when it happened decades ago. I just know.
I’m sure I miss people. I’m sure there are people who are better liars than I think. I doubt I miss many because I find them all the fucking time and statistically they aren’t the majority of the population.
It was nice being able to talk to someone who really gets what I want to do with an incest database in the future. Most people feel confused as to why I want to go talk to a bunch of incest survivors. Won’t that be depressing?
I am somewhat unlikely to ever “stop being an angry person”. I think that short of being so stoned I cannot form a coherent thought process I will always be someone who has intense emotions. I feel a lot of anger. A lot of sadness. A lot of fear. Basically all the time.
I don’t understand people who just kind of drift through life apathetically. That is not my way and I don’t have a lot of desire to be like that.
I want to get shit done. Anger is very motivating. Fear is very motivating. Sadness isn’t. I try to lessen how sad I feel. I don’t have as good of a reason for being sad any more. I’m really grateful for how nice to me Noah and my kids are. My sadness is bigger than them and outside of them and mostly they block it out kind of like an eclipse.
Letmetellyou having kids doesn’t block out my anger. Holy shit they piss me off sometimes.
I want to have grown up children who have lived in a low stress environment. I can’t get visibly freaking-out-angry any more. I just can’t. It is not on the list of permissible actions.
I can’t cut myself to maintain control. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
I’m getting rid of my broken habits as fast as I can. I am sorry I can’t go faster but I can’t.
I feel like such a disappointment. So what about what I have done. I am measured by how far I still have to go before I qualify as a good person. I’m not sure I will ever make the jump. The gorge seems so wide.
I am so grateful to the two women who took a break from their normal lives to come talk to me today. They inspire me in very different, complimentary ways. I want to be more like them even if they are polar opposite in some important ways. I like conflict.
It is harder hanging out with Dad than the other friends as the trip goes on. I am having a hard time with my expectations and entitlement. I have some picture in my head of what a “dad is like” and I’m just wrong. I can’t take it out on someone else that they aren’t living up to the pictures in my head. I’m pretty sure I have succeeded at being nice to Dad the whole time we have been here.
Man I’m having a hard time with the constant “teasing” that feels like taunting to me. I want to fight. I want to fight so fucking bad that sometimes sitting very still and not reacting makes me sweat.
No, I can’t just “deflect it with humor”. That path is closed to me. What I could do instead is break your nose. How about if we try it my way and we will see whether your way or my way is more fun for me?
I really struggle with dealing with people sometimes, “Yes–you think everything is funny. You want to make everyone standing near you the butt of whatever joke is floating through your mind this second. I get it. When you do that I am going to react with rage, violence, and perhaps I will inflict a lot of pain when you try using me that way. Please just leave me alone.”
I say more or less that. It doesn’t slow down how often I feel mocked and taunted. “Why can’t you take a joke?” I just can’t. I’ve been god damn telling you so for almost a decade and a half. ARE YOU FUCKING DEAF?
At what point is it bullying instead of playing? If I ask for twenty years for someone to stop making fun of me and they won’t am I entitled to break their kneecaps? I think I should get to start escalating at some point.
This is why I used to hit people all the time. Dad made fun of me less often when I punched him as hard as I could each time I was the butt of the joke. Now that I don’t hit him any more he makes fun of me a lot more.
Why in the fuck is it a good idea for me to stop hitting people? I am having trouble remembering right this second.
Recently Shanna had a situation where a playmate was hitting her a lot. We have talked about it a few times afterwards. We’ve talked about all the things she can do when someone is hitting her. I made it very clear that if she tries two or three things to get someone to stop and they don’t it is ok to hit back.
I don’t think it is ok for me to hit people just because they have said something I don’t like. If someone hits me first I have every right in the world to start breaking bones.
Man. Why doesn’t anyone hit me any more? I’d really like to get in a fight. I’ve had a lot of adrenaline for a while now.
I talked to Shanna a lot about how when you end up in a fight with a friend it is important to not hit in the face. You can damage people easily, accidentally and they don’t tend to forgive you for that. If your friend punches you in the arm and you punch them in the arm back… that’s probably something you will be able to get past in your relationship. Once you break someones nose they don’t forgive you.
Why is caring about what other people tied into this? Because for me not hitting Dad really hard when he pisses me off is part and parcel of the anxiety about other people disliking me.
I want a relationship with someone who will hand me the crumbs of affection Dad is willing to give me. Even though it doesn’t come anywhere close to a real parental relationship. Even though it is always very crystal clear that he has “real children” and then those play partners he tolerates calling him Dad.
I feel so pathetic that this is the best I can share with my children. It is the pinnacle of what I have to offer. No, he will never treat you like his “real family”. I hope you never notice.
He is nice to the kids. He is nice to me. But he’s also an asshole. I’ve known that since the first fucking time I met him. I love a lot of assholes. Just go through my list of friends. I don’t hold the fact that someone is an emotionally unavailable asshole as a reason to not be friends with them. Sometimes that is all I can get.
Noah likes being alone in a way I just don’t. Noah spent his childhood trying to get alone time and failing. I spent my childhood desperately wishing that someone would like me and that people would stop hitting me and raping me and that I wasn’t always alone in a room listening to people laugh. If I came in the room the laughing stopped and the yelling started.
We will always react to stress differently. I need that to be ok. I can’t change it.
Dad would like it if I found his humor funny. I don’t. I’m not sure what to do about that either.
I’m never all that keen on the social solution that involves me just having to shut the fuck up about feeling hurt by someone using me as the butt of the joke over and over. For some strange reason.
You can’t change other people. You can’t decide that their personality should be different so you will just bully them until they conform. You can make them learn how to avoid problems with you but you can’t make them change.
I am learning a lot of this with my kids. I can’t make them be different people than they are. I have to help them learn how to manage their own particular quirks but I can’t just decide to make them different.
It is honestly kind of hilarious having to help Calli learn how to not hit people when she is angry. She really struggles with how intensely mad she gets. She wants to make people bleed when she is pissed. I get it, kid.
Sometimes when she is ramping herself up I will pick her up and carry her away from whatever is making her mad. She will fight me at first. She wants to get right back to the fight she was in the middle of so she squirms really hard to try and get away. I carry her into a calm, dark room.
I say, “I think I can see that you are very mad. Am I right?” Scream/sob answer, “YES!!!!!” “That’s really hard. I’m sorry you are having to struggle with that feeling right now. Are you sure you want to hit when you feel that way though? Do you want someone to hit you when they feel mad?” “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” “Ok. Then we need to find a different way of managing this. If you hit then other people will hit you back.”
I think that is one of the parts that gets me. I don’t like being hit back very much. That’s a lot of the reason I actually stopped hitting people. Noah hits really hard if you hit him first.
I want to show my children how to be a functional adult. Functional adults don’t beat up their friends. (Well… only at special parties with pre-arranged negotiation. That’s different.)
Dad is giving me all he has available to give me. I could be mad that what he has to give is so inadequate compared to the scope of my need or I can be grateful that he bothers at all. No one else has.
Sometimes it is really hard talking myself into consciously being nice and grateful for things that are so inadequate compared to my needs. Why in the fuck should I act nice when someone hands me an ice cube but I needed a glacier to do what I need to do.
You act nice or people go away. You act nice or people don’t give you the time of day. You act nice or you end up alone and hated. You act nice or you might as well already be dead because the whole long shitty life will be so painful that it really has no upside to enduring it.
Dad asked me if I thought I had kids because I was trying to relive my childhood and make it better. He said it in that “Do you understand you are broken and bad and you shouldn’t be doing that” sort of way. My response was, “Oh heck yes I know I am doing that. I write about it extensively. I am very consciously and deliberately trying to find out what a healthy childhood looks like.”
He said, “Oh. I don’t read anything you write. I’m not into that kind of thing.”
I said, “Yeah. I didn’t have any suspicion that you might actually give a shit about what is going on with me.”
He looked a bit taken aback but didn’t respond.
Sometimes it is kind of weird for me that I put so much of myself out into the ether and I just pray that people care. I pray that someone will read it. Someone will give a shit. I know that the vast majority of everyone doesn’t care and never will.
I have to be ok with that. I can’t tone down so that I attract a wider audience. I can’t stop talking about uncomfortable things so that emotionally stunted men will feel entertained by me. Yeah, that’s not my niche. Go watch Chris Rock.
It is hard dealing with the fact that people “caring about me” will rarely intersect with my needs getting met. The caring doesn’t actually do anything for me. I need actions. I don’t get them much. Sometimes I do. Noah is working himself into an early grave much to my shame.
I am not fair to Noah. It is not fair to anyone to have to live with someone as needy and pathetic as I am.
I am sorry that I have so many needs and no way to fill them.
I wish I had a dad who thought I was good for something other than fucking or hitting.
I wish.
In this lifetime it seems like those are the main early things that people liked about me. I am stupid enough to let people hit me really hard. Hell, I even like it. It seems an appropriate thing to do to me.
I slept more last night than the previous two nights but Noah and I went to bed bickering so I had trouble sleeping again. That probably factors into my right-this-minute emotional instability.
Instead I’ll just come out here to the couch and cry.
I wish I could stop caring what people think of me. I wish I could not care about Dad making all these comments. I wish I could.
I don’t know where the dial is. Can someone please show me?
I’m afraid that the first step in ignoring people not liking me is for me to like myself enough to make up for them.
I’m not sure I will ever be able to do that.
Dad was asking me, “Well why don’t you just _____?” I said, “Are you familiar with PTSD?” “No.” “Have you ever heard of hypervigilance?” “I’ve heard the word and I could guess what it means.” “I am not physically capable of just doing what you want me to do.” “Well try harder.”
I want to hit him in the head with a baseball bat sometimes.
“I don’t know anything about your medically verifiable long list of problems but I still think you need to just get over it and act how I want you to act because then I will get to have more fun.”
Let me jump right the fuck on that for you. Since you are so god damn important and all.
I feel like a petty, whining baby.
If I try to be kind to me I can see that I’m not just whining. I’m processing. Maybe life shouldn’t be as hard for me as it is… but it is. I have to get through each day. I can’t just ignore my physiological response to my life. I have to deal with it. I have to acknowledge that it is real. I have to treat it like it matters.
Yeah, I know I don’t have to be important to anyone else. I get it.
If I want to get through each day while smiling and being nice to my children then I need to have some space somewhere in the fucking world where I am allowed to have all of these feelings.
So I write. That doesn’t mean I am whining. I don’t make people fucking listen to my fucking feelings in person. I’m god damn aware that no one cares.
If I stopped caring what people thought of me then my ability to self-censor would evaporate.
It is genuinely hard for me to censor the stuff that goes through my brain. I think about self harm and suicide and incest and rape about as often as other people think about food. I can’t talk about it almost at all because most of the world will react with violence if I am stupid enough to bring up these topics. These are things I am supposed to pretend don’t exist. I’m breaking the veil by talking about them and I should be punished.
I have to care what people think if I am going to make sure I don’t say anything “inappropriate”. If I just cared about what I thought I would not have so many friends. I really like my friends. I don’t want them to leave me.
Even though I am a petty, pathetic, ungrateful bastard. I try as hard as I can to be grateful for what people have to offer.
I’m really sorry that I have so many needs and that I am so aware of them. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry that I wish I had a parent who would love me. I will do my best to not take it out on all of the people who just can’t love me that way. I understand that this is my problem and I need to shut up.
Sometimes it is really hard. 4,000 words in. Sometimes writing it is all I can do. I’m sure as fuck not allowed to talk about it. That would be rude or something.
No one can give me what I want. I know. It isn’t anyone else’s fault I feel this way. I know. It is my fault.
I should just stop caring.
Do you know what would be totally fucking awesome? If my kids would let me sleep a full night through without climbing into the bed and shoving me off. I would think that was SO GOD DAMN AWESOME. As it is I haven’t had a full night of sleep in a while and I’m starting to feel punchy and sick to my stomach. Cheers.
I’m really enjoying reading historical stuff recently. Human beings are so complex and fascinating. There is no choice that a human can make that hasn’t been made already. Ok, there is technology left to invent, but that isn’t the same thing as a human choice.
At the core of every human being there is this attachment to the whole history of humanity. Whatever color you wear on the outside of you, genetically we are all very mixed at this point. There has been so much global moving around that we are not very different any more.
Why do we fight the same battles over and over? Throughout history sometimes homosexuality is ok and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes group marriage is ok and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes there is massive wealth disparity and sometimes there isn’t.
The differences seem to come within each individual society as the people pick their group-think for what they want to do with their time.
This gives me great hope. If we want a more global society we just have to figure out how to market it. What does the propaganda look like?
If African countries can willingly give up their guns because they want to move towards peace, why the fuck can’t Americans? Let me tell you, Africa has more recent reasons to be gosh darn sure they are armed. It is increasingly obvious that there can be no peace as long as people have the ability to go out and commit mass killings.
What will it take for humans to decide, “Wow. We made a bad call with this whole “weapons of mass destruction shit”. We should roll this back.”
What will it take for people to understand that it isn’t materially different for someone to love a man or a woman. Either way the vast majority of the relationship isn’t about what a penis or a vagina is doing. The vast majority of relationships are about finding food together and hanging out. Why do you care what people do during the ten minutes a week they have sex? (Ok, maybe I’m under rating the time spent…)
How do we decide what a given human is “worth” for their labor? How do we find people to run the bureaucracy of government so that we can help one another without dealing with megalomaniacs who want to subjugate everyone? Where is the happy medium? How do we value our ditch diggers and our CEOs.
Through all of history will the majority of humanity be good for nothing but cannon fodder? We think more than a million people died making the great pyramids. Did they think they were sacrificing their lives for a good cause? How many died in the name of any empire?
What is your life worth? What will you do with it? I am probably cannon fodder in the scheme of history. I doubt I will be important. I’m just one more idiot choosing to breed. Whoopie. So I’m part of the gene pool now. Uhh, congratulations?
I’m not special because I had children. I did not “do something” for the world. I contributed more mouths to feed. More drains of resources. I don’t think I did something great or noble. I just did what I did.
I did what I did due to biological and psychological compulsions. *I* want to have children. *I* want to have relationships with people of my blood in thirty years and I believe that without having children there is no chance that it will be true.
That doesn’t mean I had kids to be my bosom companion throughout their lives. That’s not what I mean. I didn’t have my kids for friendship or company *now*. They are not my friends. I can’t depend on them. They don’t meet my needs for anything other than hugging. That I don’t feel too guilty about.
I have to demonstrate for thirty years that I am capable of being nice and having boundaries if I want to have relationships with blood relatives when I am sixty. Pretty much everything before I was thirty is irrelevant. This is the time I will be judged on.
How many people get a do-over?
Even though my kids haven’t let me sleep in a few nights I have to be nice to them today. I don’t get to take my ill temper out on them. That’s not on.
It is hard waking up every day and having to tell myself, “It doesn’t matter how you feel. It matters how you act.”
My feelings should matter, shouldn’t they?
We went to a bdsm party last night. As usual I had sex. We were either the only couple to do it all night (pretty common) or just the first (I’m almost never the last one to have sex). I have found it pretty odd for my entire adult life that so many perverts like to have their bdsm without sex. I’m not wired that way.
The public bdsm community varies from region to region throughout the world. I’ve had the good luck to see how people vary across the country and the globe. I hear more details from my friends who travel more than I do these days.
In some places spanking is pretty much the thing. In some places it is bondage. In some places, and for fairly brief periods of time, some communities become obsessed with blood play; they like whatever method of drawing blood is currently chic.
I have very rarely come across a bdsm community that has a lot of sex. Bdsm is often treated as “other” than sex. Maybe part of sexual foreplay in the abstract but a very high number of bdsm players don’t have sex with the people they play with.
Many people are what you call “play poly” which means they can do bdsm with any of their friends but they can only have intercourse with their partner. This kind of creates the atmosphere where sex is kind of weird.
Lots of people aren’t sure if you can have sex and still keep the “power” lines clear. I don’t care. I do bdsm to get off the same way I have sex to get off. I came into the bdsm community at eighteen looking for kinky sex. I am the kind of player who is sometimes referred to with derision by the stone (no-sex-having) hard core Leather identified people.
If Leather is your sexual orientation or identity then frequently a lot of the normal expectations around sex are radically different. That’s ok. Every human body likes different things and we are all allowed to be different. It’s ok. Truly.
But man I am not wired to understand asexual people. I love many of them (err, platonically). But my brain is different.
So going to bdsm parties is increasingly weird for me. Noah is much further on the “the point of bdsm is foreplay before we have intercourse” spectrum than I am. I am capable of doing a nice sadomasochism scene with friends while fully dressed. I was trained.
I spent years listening to the constant denigration of those people who were sex focused. I “grew up” in a pocket of perverts who really didn’t like sex much. Their sexuality was about the fetish items in their lives. Penis-in-vagina intercourse is really kind of off-the-path of their sexual interests. That’s cool and all. But given that I am totally obsessed with sex this resulted in some serious self-hatred.
I must not be a real pervert. I’m not Leather the way they are. I’m just some chick who likes to fuck and get hit once in a while. The hitting isn’t my whole life. I don’t want to spend my Saturday night going from fully dressed scene to fully dressed scene to fully dressed scene with a series of friends who either want to experience some pain or give me some pain.
It’s ok that other people want to do that. At a different point in my life I thought that was pretty fun. At this point I am exhausted all the time and my feelings about my own masochism have changed dramatically. I no longer have a lot of inner desire to prove that I can take more and more pain. I no longer think I’m doing something impressive. I understand that some people like the ever increasing highs that come with intense pain. I get it. I don’t denigrate being on that journey. I’m just doing something else.
It is always weird coming up here. Dad and a few specific members of the leather community here started out in the bay area. I met them all when I was eighteen/nineteen and we spent a lot of time on IRC together. I have known these people my entire adult life. I seem to be changing at a much more rapid rate than most of them. Maybe this is because they were all in their late thirties to late forties when I met them.
That’s not all of it though. Most people decide what they like and more or less do that forever. I’m not like that. There isn’t a lot that I like so much I can keep doing it year after year. I read. I dance by myself in an empty room. That’s pretty much the only continuity in my life.
Everything else changes really fast.
I feel broken because I can’t pick a mold and then learn how to fill it. I can’t pick a community and create a role for myself and stay there. I can’t be a dancer or a historical reenactment actor or a leather community member. I can’t be a high school teacher or a theatre rigger or a fast food employee forever.
It has been more two years since Occupy happened. Two years since the last fun fling with my Muse. There is the distinct probability that Noah will be the last person I ever fuck. It’s a good thing I like how he does it.
I like visiting Portland because I get to briefly witness a lot of different kinds of relationships. There is a couple in the leather scene here, I met them before they got married. Now they have been married for thirteen years. They are some of the most brutal people I have ever met in my life. Heavy players. Like whoa.
But they match. They are so right for each other that they glow at a distance. They are very happy together. They have a kindness and tenderness for one another that encompasses and highlights the extreme bdsm they do.
I see brutality and kindness as being opposite sides of the same coin. It is about learning how to be with another person. Some people are more brutal than others. Do they get to exist and grow and be the same way that other people do? Are predators allowed to be loved? Are they worthy?
Yeah, I think they are. Maybe they don’t deserve to have their prey love them and forgive them–I’m ok with different rules for different people.
I love watching how other parents talk to their kids. The first thing I get out of this experience is, “Ok I’m not the only one who sounds frustrated a lot when I’m talking to my kids. Phew. I’m probably not the worst mother in the world.” (Not that I’m implying I think I am better at mothering than the other mothers I know. I do not think I am better.) We all have different strengths and weaknesses. I feel slightly less pathetic when I see other people have weaknesses too. I feel less like *I* am just a big stupid failure.
I need to see other people failing too. Mostly I just see how other people succeed more often and bigger and better than I do. It is very hard that other people don’t share their constant fuck ups on the internet the way I do. Well, at least not anyone I read at this point.
I go through phases where I trim back and trim back and trim back on what I am reading. I am almost entirely out of every forum site at this point. I think that 2014 needs to be a year of not looking to the internet for support. I’m sure as fuck not getting what I need from it.
I think that I need to look forward to a year of pulling back. I want to figure out some of my health issues. I want to stop paying for pot. I have many other uses for that money. I want Noah to feel less pressured to go out and earn more money. I feel like a ridiculously expensive pet lately. I feel entirely unworthy of how much money I spend to keep my body and mood moving along in a way that is easy for other people.
I want to spend less money. I want to spend less time on the internet looking for support that is never going to come. I want to spend more time with real life people in my neighborhood building relationships. I want to exercise more. I want to stop using so many of the crutches I use as stress reduction. Which means I need to reduce my stress. By a lot.
Man. This sounds like work.
But I will do it without having a bunch of parallel “must work harder and faster” goals.
If I want to do the road trip in 2015 and the cruise in 2016 and the around the world trip in 2020 I need to save money. Period. These things will all cost a ridiculous amount of money. How serious am I about wanting these things? Very. Very serious. I want them.
Why? I don’t know. I really don’t. My life is ruled by a lot of strange compulsions.
I want to meet more people. I want to find out more about humans. I want the connections. I want the experience with different kinds of humans. I want to find out more about patterns of behavior. I want to know how other people deal with their pain.
I want it. I want it so bad.
Sometimes I think that if I can know that I have reduced the amount of pain someone else has to experience in life then my life has been worth something. I am not just a waste of resources. Pain and suffering are so entwined in the human condition. The alleviation of pain is good and worthy.
I pay too much attention to history. I am too aware that the span of a human life is a blink in the cosmos. I want to matter. I want to be remembered. I want to help.
I think yesterday is going to be a shining memory for me. That was one of the least stressful and least anxious holidays I’ve ever had. My kids got to watch cartoons on grandpa’s giant tv screen which seemed like a ridiculous luxury to them. My lovely men cooked me dinner. (I did a little prep work but they did all the cooking.) I cleaned up because it seems all nice and such.
Dad and I are still working out our little I-have-anxiety-so-I’m-a-control-freak issues. It is a more relaxed process than it sounds like. “Oh. You have strong opinions about how this soup gets microwaved. Ok. Show me how you want it done then. No, I’m not cranky–I just don’t know what you want and you have a specific process in mind because you complain when I deviate. Just show me the process.”
We don’t actually know one another that well. If you add up all the hours we’ve spent together in all the years it is a lot less than a month of time. Getting to know someone is effort.
I went on a run. This place is fucking cold and I hate the hills. I love Fremont more with every passing year. Lovely perfectly flat Fremont. Ahhhhh. But I could feel my ass muscles going, “Oh YES! THIS IS WHAT WE NEED” so it was kind of weird.
Dad is trying so hard to make me feel comfortable. He flat asked why I was reacting so anxiously. I think I managed to explain sufficiently that he understands that I vibrate with anxiety when I’m alone in a room. He doesn’t have to do anything for me to react anxiously. When I’m kind of freaking about my kids playing with the random glass “art” shit you have sitting around? That’s not because you have been a stress monkey. I just do that.
It was a really peaceful, nice day. The three grown ups were mellow. The kids played and seemed pretty happy all day. We had extremely tasty food. Most of it made by Dad.
I somehow managed to escape feeling like I did everything wrong. I’m nervous about our plans for today. I am afraid of a misstep around this family. I like them so much. I don’t want to become uninvited because I screw up around a member of the extended family.
I can usually manage to not horrify people who like me. I’m not so suave at meeting the extended families of my friends. I often manage to say something horrifically inappropriate and then I’m not invited back again. Woo anxiety.
The stakes seem so much higher now. I don’t want to uninvite my kids. Every person I offend and run off from here on out is an injury I am doing to my children.
Dad and I were talking about how perception of risk changes over time. He made a comment about how I’m feeling my mortality. Oh, we were talking about seeing a doctor and doing the elimination diet stuff. He said that of course I care more about my body now because I recognize that I’m mortal.
I said, that’s not it. Before now I wanted to die so much that being in pain was just part of the process. I didn’t care about maintaining my body because I hoped I would die. It isn’t that I thought I was immortal. It is that I wanted to die. Right now. Today. So why fix things?
Now I want to see my kids grow up. Now I know that I have to stop feeling this much pain in my body so that I can be a nice person with them. I don’t have enough reserves of patience to deal with chronic pain and be nice. Some people can. I can’t. You have to know your limits. I need to feel less pain.
In general I feel that 2013 has been one of the kindest years I have lived through. Fewer big blow ups than usual. Less drama. More effective planning and work. I don’t think I have done anything to earn additional opprobrium this year. It hasn’t been my highest sex-having-year ever but it would be hard to top the first year of my marriage. Really hard. We would have to consciously work for a whole year in order to beat that year. It was a really good year. That will probably be a project one year. Just for fun. When the kids are older.
Life is always about moving towards new things, right? You can’t spend your life focusing on what is behind you.
But what is behind you shaped who you are. If you never figure out why you behave the way you do then it is harder to adapt to your current circumstances.
I’m trying. I’m trying as hard as I can.
Next year I need to figure out how to manage my shit without pot. The money I save on pot can be spent on a big fancy Disney cruise for my 10th anniversary.
I have things to look forward to. I want to figure out how to hurt less. I don’t want to need a crutch.
My life is really good. I need to walk unassisted now. Even though it is scary.
When I am feeling kind towards myself I acknowledge that for me to want the degree of control over my anxiety that I want will be not that different from people who are severely disabled working towards the Paralympics. My brain was severely damaged by my childhood. What I want it to turn around and do is hard for people like me.
I’m going to do it anyway.