Category Archives: fighting demons

Can’t argue with a spreadsheet.

I have been taking a good long look at my budget for the upcoming roadtrip. That’s way more fun than thinking about how to manage conflict.

An RV would be $15,000-$25,000 depending on what I was able to find. There are occasional “steals” at $15k. Plus a massive amount of ongoing maintenance I can’t predict now. Plus twice as much gas as I originally planned. Plus learning to manage a longer, taller vehicle that will be hellishly difficult to park.

A pop up tent would be $6,000-$11,000. Plus ongoing expenses I can’t predict. Plus learning to drive a 30′-40′ vehicle. Plus much more gas than originally hoped for.

Did I mention that my original budget for this trip is $12,000?

Shit.

Whereas I can get a roof storage container, portable toilet, tent that kind of telescopes onto the back of the van for privacy and space to stand up, nice camp kitchen set up, and the odds and ends I want for over $2k. I could probably get much cheaper if I was willing to troll Craigslist patiently.

Sold.

It’s going to be much much physically harder. I’m not “looking forward” to how physically hard this will be. All of my other plans will have to scope down until I can handle things.

On the upside I can’t find any advice on tent traveling with kids for extended periods more recent than say… settling the US. People don’t do it. I bet I will find some interesting writing material off of this trip. Ha.

The kids have some super rad tumbling mats from Ikea ($10 a pop) that fit sideways in the van if you leave some of the sections folded. If I take out the middle row seats and have the car seats come in and out (The Britax Frontier is not that hard to install–it’s just getting a tight seatbelt connection instead of those FROM HELL clips on the True Fit I have.) from the back row… we could sleep in the van and use the exterior space more optionally for other purposes.

We don’t *have* to set the tent up every night. I am going to have a fabulous roof container to store shit so I can have a versatile potential set up.

Ok, part of me thinks it is kind of hilarious that I am going to attach a tent to my van that has a main room and a vestibule so the vestibule can be my bathroom.

As this morning demonstrates to me once again… I can’t be without toilet access in the middle of the night. Just can’t. Must have access. Luckily these days there are some darn nifty little numbers that will be easy to bring with us. And from the pictures it looks an awful lot like you can unscrew the storage tank and walk to a public toilet and slowly dump it in with two or three flushes and you are good to go.

That seems like a level of septic management I can handle. I was frankly a little terrified of the whole RV hook up thing.

I’m scared. This seems like… a fuck ton of work. It’s going to be hard. But I want this experience and I really don’t want to spend my entire budget before I hit the road, know what I mean?

I was asked, “But couldn’t you resell the RV or trailer when you get home?” The answer being, “I hope but such things are hard to predict and I would have to just be prepared to eat the money. Plus lots of other money in the future if I want the vehicle to be in good enough shape to sell.”

I want to pay off my mortgage. Buying an RV would seriously derail me. It would derail the international trip.

Ok fine. I can suck it. Yes, it will be hard. We will also be staying at friends’ houses pretty frequently. It will work out.

I’m more worried about Noah joining us than just the three of us. It will make sleeping harder. I’m not sure if the four of us can sleep in the van together. We may need to have options for sleeping on the ground those nights anyway. In general my plan is to sleep in the van. I really prefer the idea of sleeping behind metal and glass and locks. Is the van totally secure? Of course not. But I like my illusions.

I have woken up from sleeping in a tent to find a grizzly bear foot print less than three feet from where my head was. That scared the crap out of me. Of course I took a picture. (And DA remembers–see, that proves it.)

Do you know what part of it is? If I let the budget for this trip explode… Noah will sigh, put his head down, and “try to earn more money”. Naw, the original budget will be more than adequate. I am already fleecing him in ways that give me the vapors. I feel like I am taking advantage of him. But he is agreeing and such. He wants his kids educated by me. In whatever way I see fit. He sees it as an investment the same as a private school.

Life is complicated.

There is exactly one bike rack on the market that will allow us to take three independent bikes plus the recumbent trailer we are endeavoring to learn how to use. We haven’t fallen yet! I’m proud of us. *phew*

Shanna says she is looking forward to this trip. I told her that our screen time will be severely limited. I won’t be able to be online either. She clapped her hands and said, “So you will be forced to play with us ALL DAY EVERY DAY. That sounds wonderful.”

Oh man.

I told her that every single day I would need to take private time and the way that is going to work is I will sit in a chair outside where I can see them and I will put head phones on. I don’t want to talk the whole time I have the head phones on. I need time to be private inside my brain. She said she can agree to that because they will be able to see me so it’s all good.

She jumped up and down and squeed. She is so fucking excited that I won’t be able to hide in the garage. Sigh.

Sometimes it is hard for me to understand how much my kids like me. I’m not sure I have ever in my life had as unmixed of emotions as my kids have. They love me and adore me and nearly worship me. There isn’t a lot of hesitation.

I have never seriously hurt them and the minor injuries I cause tend to involve lots of apologies and noticeable change in my behavior so I don’t duplicate the fuck up.

Some days, some moments I am able to see that I am doing what I want to do as a mother. Even though it is hard and I am very scared. I am doing it.

The only thing Calli understands about the trip at this point is, “I get to go to Disney World, right?”

Since everyone decided they didn’t want my points for Hawaii, you can be at Disney World for a really long time, kiddo. I’m sorry that my friends had life events come up that caused them to not go on their trips. I’m ok with getting more time to luxuriate around a pool at Disney World. I won’t have to set up a tent for a month. Sounds fucking awesome.

Although if I wanted to conserve points… Disney World has a camp grounds. Ha.

I don’t want to stay longer than four weeks so the point conservation is less mandatory than it could be. There are too many things to do in the country to spend all of our time at fucking Disney World. But I think a month in the middle of this trip will be decadent.

I want to save budget money for going to the fancy princess tea party at Disney World, no I don’t want a fancy RV or pop up trailer that bad. I’d rather get to do all the things I want to do than have a posh sleeping place.

Because now my budget is down to being about $10,000 because I’ve spent the first $2,000.

(I had to decide. I had to just do it. We have a camping trip in two weeks and… I don’t have a plan as to how to provide for it. Erf. I told Noah that I want to put the tent up and down four times during the weekend while I have a grown up there to help me. The last time or two I want to put it up alone. Shanna says that I will never put it up alone. She will always help. We’ll see.)

The funny thing is, I bet Shanna will be able to be all the help I need. By the time we leave on this trip she will be seven. I have felt shocked her entire fifth year by how competent and capable she has become. I expect seven to knock my socks off.

She says she is looking forward to “all that nice lazy time for me to practice my cooking–we won’t have anything else to do.” She says that by the end of the trip she intends to be an expert at preparing camping meals.

And Calli says she is looking forward to me having to read to them for hours every day. She says that will be her favorite part. I have been a slacker asshole on reading for a while. I have been overwhelmed by life and my emotions.

We won’t drive every day. On driving days we will go three or four hours then set up camp. Camp set up needs to be perfected in under an hour. Take down needs to be perfected in half an hour. I will have to practice until I can get it. If I include food prep that will put me up to about six hours a day of “work”.

I won’t be able to garden or socialize much. I won’t have to clean the house. I won’t have my whole library with me so I can read a book or two a day. I won’t be reading on the screen because that’s just fucking rude after a while. Plus, I don’t want to spend the whole time obsessing over charging my fucking phone.

With sleep that will account for 14-16 hours of the day/night. That leaves me with a solid 8-10 hours every day of leisure time. I should probably schedule an hour in the morning of writing time and an hour after dinner of “mommy-quiet” time. That gives me 6-8 hours a day of paying attention to them.

I’m looking forward to sleeping with them more. If it didn’t seem so mean to Noah I would probably do it all the time. I love waking up to see them. I can’t believe I made you.

I feel so lucky. Even when we fight or have disagreements, I still feel so passionately in love with my kids. Not sexual passion. It’s not like that at all. I feel pretty grateful that I missed the pedophile gene in my family. I experience no arousal at the sight of a child.

But I have intense surges of emotion. Sometimes they feel so strong I almost can’t keep standing.

This is the best thing I have ever done. This is the best me I have ever shared with anyone.

A few months ago in February it marked ten years since I met Noah. In August (actually on my nephew’s birthday) it will be ten years since I broke up with my Owner-turned boyfriend. He wasn’t my Owner by the time I left. That had been over for a year because it was “too much work”. In September it will be eight years of marriage. Next month marks eight years of living in this house.

Time keeps passing. It isn’t like it used to be. I used to mark the seasons of my life by which trauma occurred and where I was living. “Well I was raped when I was going to x school so I must have been y age because that is the correlation to the grade I know I was in at that school. So-and so died or had a violent accident while I was at that other school.”

The most terrible break ups of the past ten years have involved Puppy (not that horrible and I’m happy to be rid of him) and my family (terrible, but necessary and contained in scope of harm) and Sarah. And she’s not completely gone. That we may be able to grow past some day. We ain’t dead yet.

Uncle Bob’s death and divorcing my family is probably the biggest trauma in the past eight years. Ok, that last rape is hanging on to the curve. Kind of sucky that it will always overlap the marriage timing.

But we had lots of therapy over that shit.

Now I’m marking the years by “the year I hired an awesome guy to build up my backyard” or “the year I added trees” or “when we went on that trip”.

Is this what “normal” life is like?

I’m trying to psyche myself up for the conversation I will need to have soon. I’m leaning towards:

“Hi. May I talk to you kind of privately? We don’t know very much about one another. Sometimes when you don’t know someone very well, humor is especially tricky. Humor either creates a feeling of shared experience or alienation and it’s a difficult line to walk. At this moment in time I am giving you all the benefit of the doubt in the world. I believe you are trying hard to create camaraderie within the group. Unfortunately I’m not really someone who has a “typical” sense of humor.

Which is a long-handed way of saying that sometimes your “jokes” are kind of personal and they feel denigrating to me. I don’t like feeling denigrated. I need to avoid people who evoke those feelings in me and I’m hoping I don’t have to start avoiding you. Outside of a few specific jokes we have otherwise had positive interactions and I would really prefer to continue down the positive path.

My kid is kind of in love with your kid. It would be super rad if we could all get along. I’m really struggling with your humor. I need you to lighten up on me. I’m on the sensitive side and that has to be ok.”

I have been thinking about it a lot. It is a lot less aggressive. A lot more from the point of view of getting along. Less threatening sounding. Less attacking sounding… but I make it clear I will avoid her if I have to.

It is ok for her to have the sense of humor that she has and it is ok that I am a sensitive fucking snowflake. Surely we can find a way to get along. Not that my issues are online. But that Wired article is pretty cool.

And hey Lisa–it’s funny that you tell me that it’s not an option for me to leave the group but you are ALWAYS talking about how much you want to move. If I did smileys on my blog I would stick my tongue out at you. But I have more dignity than that. So neiner.

Today I feel less like every one hates me and I should go eat worms. That is nice.

Money, money, money by the pound.

8 Replies

I’m scared and insecure. Let’s talk about money. I won’t feel as bad about myself. That can’t be healthy, can it? I feel insecure about some parts of my life. Let me wander over and assure myself that my social problems are not going to derail me getting to do whatever the fuck I want to do. Maybe that isn’t unhealthy.

I have decided that I can’t buy an RV for the road trip until I have maxed out on saving for the road trip and I have maxed our emergency fund. That seems S-M-R-T.

This month’s salary + bonus (the bonus Noah is whiny enough to say isn’t high enough) will almost entirely go off for credit cards, mortgage, etc. Luckily I can now say that the second business I helped fund has been so successful I have been bought out. The check is on its way to me. I’m a god damn entrepreneur. Go me.

With that bump I will have $21,000 (rounded, obviously) out of the $25,000 I want in the checking account before I travel and $25,000 out of $40,000 in an emergency fund. That means I want to save an additional $19,000 before I buy an RV. And it means that I will be blowing a huge hole in my emergency fund that I will have to recoup. So uhm. Erf. But I think I can do that in the next few years. Seriously, he makes obscene amounts of money. If I can’t do that then I’m a fucking loser. Technically I have been saving at a rate to make the goal on the emergency fund in four years and some. I want that as back up before we go over seas.

Yeah yeah yeah I have an IRA, 401k, two 529s, and additional investment stuff going on. Don’t tell me, “Oh gosh if you have that much cash you should invest!”

I like having a cushion. I invest, but I like my cushion. Shit happens. I like having many options. I like knowing that I will be able to do what I want to do.

Noah has already earned $15,000 out of the $60,000 I think we will need for the around the world trip. His ability to earn money continues to blow my mind. That is kept in a third account.

My real “back up” in case Noah loses his job is the fact that we have $60,000 in cash distributed between accounts nominally in the name of other more shallow goals. Of course all such frippery could be tossed to the side in case of a catastrophe. I’ve got back up plans for my back up plans.

I… don’t earn money. But I manage it very well. He wouldn’t have this much if he had to manage it himself. That isn’t his strength. That’s my strength. I’m not so good at earning.

A friend was mentioning how her partner needs to hire a professional organizer and I said, “I’m close to putting out my shingle. I’d charge $30/hour.” She yelled at me for a while. She thinks my starting rate should be $50/hour with the possibility of a sliding scale if I’m feeling fucking generous.

I am going to potentially have four whole hours tomorrow to edit the book. Maybe someday it will earn money. Probably when I’m dead. That’s usually how it works for writers. Luckily I have children who will get the income. It won’t just go to a publishing house. Ha.

I feel pretty weird about having this much money. But looking at it does help calm me down.

My mom spent my whole childhood crying over money. All the time. Almost every day. My mom has experienced poverty in a way I will never really understand. Children don’t get it. Kids don’t understand being poor vs. rich. It is too complex. Now I feel like all I can do is try to imagine my mother’s experience.

I’m so grateful I don’t have to endure what she went through. She has no money sense. Even when she has enough in her pocket to cover all her expenses this month she can’t do it. I don’t know what broke her or when.

Even if things in my life were to go badly they can never ever ever go as badly as they have gone for my mom. I have a college education and a history of helping to start businesses. I have a rich and varied work history and a lot of people who would vouch for me. I could find work at a reasonable salary. My mom never could.

The head of my union told me that if I ever want to go back into teaching it doesn’t matter if they are hiring or not they will hire me. I can teach gang kids. I can form personal relationships and help them understand the benefits to them of literacy.

That’s a god damn marketable skill.

I feel really bad for my mom. She is becoming a Dickensian character in my mind. She never had my options. She never had the same privileges I had.

I went to Los Gatos High School. Maybe only for my sophomore year but I got to learn about the standards of college and a rigorous set of expectations as a teenager. My mom graduated from Bakersfield High School pregnant with absolutely no expectation that she would need to learn anything more complicated than cooking, baking, and sewing.

For the record, she’s great at all three. Better than me.

It is harder and harder for me to be angry with her as the years pass. I feel really sorry for her. But I can’t let her hurt my kids.

My children have absolutely no exposure to toxic, bitter people. None. The last few years have been the nicest of my life. I have felt suicidal less often then ever before. Pretty frequently I find myself consciously making choices that work to extend my life because I’m not ready to die yet.

I never felt this good about myself when I knew my mother. Having pity for her is fine. I can pity rabid animals too. I shouldn’t pick them up.

It’s all mixed up. My mom. Money. Feeling scared. Feeling attacked. That asshole “funny” unschooling dad. The mom who keeps making cracks about me. Scheduling difficulties and feeling unimportant. Other people have their own shit and aren’t just my support units. It all feels the same. The same unworthy, stupid, bad. Talking about it feels manipulative, but I don’t want anyone to change what they are doing.

I feel this way right now. I don’t always feel this way. I write it down partially so I can prove to myself, “See–it changes. It goes up. It goes down. You have weak boundaries right now. That isn’t anyone else’s fault. It’s ok. They will come back up again soon.”

Soon I won’t feel like everyone hates me and I should go eat worms.

I wonder how much it is tied to Shanna’s current defiance. She’s getting very close to being the age I was when I caused the fight with Tommy that involved Uncle Bob burning Tommy with the hot coffee.

The punishment for that was moving to Texas and my brother got hit by a car. I will have a hard time handling this defiance streak. “Abreact.” That’s my therapists favorite word. Reliving trauma. Supposed to be in a therapeutic session but welcome to my life. Flashbacks?

I’m not having flashbacks. But I am reliving some of the terror I felt when I was disobedient. When she turns around and flips out at me I feel like it is all my fault and I am about to be punished and then I over react.

It’s going to be a rocky few months. Holy shit on Crisco. But we will get through it and we will develop new coping methods for handling triggering situations without abuse. Like you do. If you want to know your kids in thirty years.

I tell my kids that I’m sorry for my mistakes a lot. I hurt Calli yesterday. We were playing and dancing and I twisted her arm a little wrong. I’ve done exactly that dance move with her hundreds of times. But she gained weight recently and it pushed her past a threshold. Oops. I’m really sorry. We spent a while cuddling with an ice pack. She’s fine now. But she was really freaked out and she kept yelling that I hurt her.

Yes. I did. I’m really sorry. It didn’t hurt the last time I did it. I won’t do it any more. You are too big now and I didn’t notice because I wish you were going to be my tiny baby forever. As you grow up I will sometimes hurt you because I misunderstand how your boundaries are shifting. I’m so sorry. I can’t be perfect. There is no such thing. I will make many more mistakes. I’m so sorry.

By the end we were petting the cat and each others faces and she told me she forgives me and we went on with the day.

It doesn’t really matter if some woman who will never be my friend makes jokes about my lack of value. But I miss my mama. And I wish that my mama had thought I was valuable. My mama didn’t miss me when I was gone for a month either. No one really misses me if I’m gone. I know.

Some days it hurts more than others.

I’m not “funny”. Instead people “can’t tell the difference between my whining and my talking”.

I am a whiny baby and I don’t like being picked on.

It’s really not fair that I have to continue having involvement with this group for the sake of my children when I would rather just not go back. That’s how I handle these things. I can’t have a fight. I can’t make drama. If I don’t like how I’m treated, I leave. But I can’t leave.

I can make sure I stop talking to this woman. She thinks she is “funny”. I think it’s not funny to tell someone who has been suicidal for most of their life that no one would miss them.

Happy fucking Mothers Day

I’m almost done with the third quartet from Tamora Pierce. I’ll go back to reading about people who are allowed to start fist fights with bullies. Sometimes I wish my life were that simple still. I am going to read every book she has ever written. I even have the add-odd short story collections. I’m really glad she is out there writing.

Rape, rape culture, and home school dynamics. (What a fun title.)

2 Replies

If I sat down and delineated all of the relationships that are bumpy right now… I wouldn’t have many people willing to talk to me next week. I feel like if I am having this many problems all at once it must be me. I’m doing something. I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing wrong.

Is it oversharing? I haven’t even done that much of it lately. Not for me. Not in the scope of my level of over sharing.

I don’t know.

Passive aggression today. (Err, obviously not with the person who might read this.) There is one mom in particular who likes to make cracks about me. In the past it was a comment about how it isn’t possible to tell the difference between when I whine and when I talk. Today it was how no one will miss me if I disappear for a month. “Oh I’m kidding.”

I would cheerfully like to lock my front door, set up grocery delivery service, and maybe come out next year.

At least someone else, who I consider more friendly to me, looked kind of shocked when she said no one would miss me. I don’t think I was the only one who thought the “joke” wasn’t funny.

I’m sorry I’m not the quality of person you wish you got to associate with. What would you like me to do about that?

I’m feeling really really sad about some scheduling things. I don’t think anyone did anything wrong. Sometimes scheduling is hard and makes me sad.

I am happy that I got to speak with someone else on the unschooling list who felt very upset about the whole exchange. She felt that his “I’m not defending what he did to Krissy… but this show is great! He won an award!” was pretty disgusting. I’m so grateful to hear that I’m not the only one. I’ve been feeling really bad about the fact that I live in a world that prioritizes the funny rapists. I don’t feel like I want to live in a world like that. She said she wouldn’t care if I was the only victim this guy had–the fact that he has many such stories from many women isn’t more problematic. The fact that people will cover for him even for one rape is seriously a disgusting thing. She said she doesn’t want her kids in a room with someone like that and she’s grateful I spoke up.

Mostly I get crickets back. So I never know how much of what I say harms people or helps them. The people who do speak up are usually men telling me to shut up because I might hurt one of the poor men folk. I have less sympathy for this point of view than many might hope.

I don’t go out of my way to hurt any individual men. Well, or at least it has been a great many years since I have. (And all of those guys had to ask VERY NICELY.)

If I hurt my rapists by talking about them… sorry dudes. You made this bed, not me. I didn’t tell you to do what you did. So I get to talk about it. You get no privacy from me.

The vast majority of men in the whole wide world haven’t done a negative thing to me. So mostly I think guys are ok. I wish they would yell at one another for inappropriate sexist behavior more often but no one is perfect. I’m a yeller. I understand it isn’t everyones thing.

I feel scared. Unimportant. Stupid. I feel like if I got raped so many times it must be all my fucking fault and there is nothing I can do to take away me deserving it. I feel like maybe I wasn’t clear enough with Paul. Or with Dan. I told them so many times that I didn’t do bareback sex. Over and over I said, “This is a cover required portal. Thanks.” I thought I was funny. I said that I only have sex when two forms of birth control are used. (I sure as shit knew I didn’t want to coparent with either loser. Having protected sex is one thing. Having a baby with a loser is different.)

Am I allowed such fine tuned boundaries? Or is that breaking some rule such that it’s ok when guys want to stick it in any way?

“He won an award! He’s so funny!”

I hate you. I’m glad I don’t even know who you are, funny unschooling asshole dad, but you can jump right off a cliff.

Wait. Isn’t that me wishing harm on an individual man? Didn’t I just try to claim I don’t do this?!?!?!

Well, ok I’m a fucking liar. It’s unusual for me to wish harm on someone. And I don’t wish to go harm him. And I don’t wish to have someone else go harm him for me. But I’d be cool with him jumping off a cliff. Ok, no I wouldn’t. He’s a parent. That would be horrible and I would be a horrible person for being cool with him committing suicide.

Ok… uhm… don’t jump off a cliff. But shut the fuck up, okay? Stop endorsing rapists. It makes you look like a Very Bad Person with Questionable Judgement. Now that I know that you will send your kids to Paul I think I need to make sure my kids are never alone in a room with you.

And yet I live with someone who has committed rape. What kind of fucking hypocrite piece of shit am I? I really wonder sometimes.

Why can I forgive one rapist and not another? Well. I don’t have a good answer to that question but it fucking keeps me up at night.

Noah is not the only rapist I have forgiven. Life is very complicated. Why in the hell do I carry around a grudge bigger than Alaska for some of the dudes who raped me? Why do I pick and choose?

I want to believe that part of it is, I don’t forgive the ones who have a long list of victims. I don’t forgive the real predators.

So Noah isn’t a real predator? Enh, not really. Noah learned boundaries slow and hard but he has shown continual progress across the board in his life. He hasn’t sat in one place doing the same thing with chick after chick after chick. I have seen no sign of my kids having anything like inappropriate sexual knowledge and I bloody well look for signs. I believe that he has been as honorable within our family as one can be.

This unschooling dad who is defending Paul probably has many years of positive experiences. Lots of trust. Why shouldn’t he defend his friend?

Do I really believe that rapists deserve to be shunned for all time and banned from all gatherings?

I can’t say yes with a straight face, now can I?

I think this is where I sit in the hamster wheel. I can’t say that all rapists should be banned. This is what is keeping me up at night. Then what do I think should happen?

I’m not shy about outing Noah. Which means that I am inviting other people to shun him if I say that rapists should be shunned. Is that what I want? Do I believe that secretly it would be better for them if they just got the fuck away from Noah? Err, no. I think he’s a really interesting person with a lot to offer.

Why don’t I want to see Paul in such a light? Why do I want him to be cast in the role of villain so I can rant and rail and hate him so much? Is this misdirected shit at my dad?

I think that part of it is–I can forgive someone for raping me. I know that my behavior “invited” such response. When there is a whole string of other women… you know… no. You are hurting people. I know of three other specific women who have been extremely fucked up by you. You are a bad person. You are a liar and a cheat and a fraud as your profession. You say hateful nasty things that you really believe with a smile on your face and people laugh because they think you are “joking.”

If you make a big chunk of your living from being a jerk… I don’t think that is funny. Clearly lots of other people do because you have made a career out of this. People are fucking weird.

But given the things I like to do… I can’t say that much.

Only clearly I can say a lot.

I sat a friend’s sister down before Burning Man last year and gave her an intense conversation about always having a sober trip sitter if you do drugs so you can be safe.

You never know when there will be someone around who just wants to “stick it in a few times. It’s no big deal.”

Because too many people, me included, don’t think all rapists should be banned from all spaces. So they are everywhere.

I know there is a large demographic who believes that it is my fault or the woman Paul raped before me’s fault or the woman before that’s fault. We didn’t report. We haven’t put Paul in jail. It is our collective fault that he is out there raping a whole string of women.

Cause uhm, yeah. That makes sense. It is his dick and it is our fault we have cunts he can put it in. Like, duh.

Something like that.

My heart hurts. I feel so sad. But at least when I can write about it Noah knows why I’m so tetchy. It’s easier to accommodate my anxiety du jour if he knows what it is shaped like.

Sometimes I feel very sad and very scared that at the end of the day I belong with the rapist camp. I know so many rapists because, well duh. I just would. That’s just the shape in the world I belong in.

Why do I only forgive some of them? Noah’s not the only one. But the others in my life have more right to privacy. Noah’s a sucker for marrying me. Marrying was like the opposite of an NDA. “I agree to having my life discussed in detail on the internet. Even the embarrassing shit. Ok, maybe mostly only those bits.”

Is it just because I like Noah’s jokes more? He doesn’t make jokes that make other people look small or pathetic. His jokes are about bicycles. And smart ass parrots. He doesn’t want to denigrate people.

Is that enough of a difference? Does that justify my attitude?

“Get over it.”

I’m trying. It’s complicated.

Paul and I had sex several times. It wasn’t a stranger rape. He was a sometimes-partner at sex parties. He is less than 1% of my sexual partners. Why do I care so much that one time he did something that was against my boundaries? Why is it such a big deal that I want to keep my children and the children of my friends away from him?

Because he bloody well groomed me into inappropriate displays of trust followed by an action that could have resulted in an STD or a baby. He’s a big whore. He has no right having bareback sex.

Paul feels like a legitimate threat. Not to me–never again. I’m no longer in a vulnerable demographic as far as he is concerned. But there are a lot of nice young girls out there. Waiting to be groomed.

That scares me silly.

I feel attacked even though I am not the one at risk. Even though no one is attacking me. Even though instead of attacking my character or criticism instead only support was voiced. I en’t saying my feelings are logical so don’t nitpick.

How do I get over feeling attacked? Anxiety is energy stored in the body that needs to be used somehow. Well, I have a 10k race tomorrow. That should help.

It is hard to stop feeling attacked when I continually run into people who make little “jokes” about me. Oh I’m sure she doesn’t mean it. (See–it’s totally not just men I have trouble with. I have troubles with all possible gender configurations. I’m flexible like that.)

Deep breath. In. Out. Not here to make friends. Here to provide children with opportunity to make friends. I don’t have to be friends with the parents. It is not a requirement.

Would it really be that tacky if I started bringing a book and sitting off to the side? I feel like speaking in the group is resulting in people disliking me and I would prefer to just opt out.

I’m tired of feeling scared of every word out of my mouth. I’m tired of feeling like I’m doing something wrong.

This is why I loudly say I’m poor white trash. Or I used to. I’m not any more. Now I don’t get to say that and my lack of cultural mesh is just my fault. I’m just… wrong.

I’d rather be wrong because I said I’m poor white trash than because you’ve just decided to despise me despite my best efforts at being sociable. I’m not as good at the social slams and I don’t really like being around it.

I need to make some different choices. What the fuck.

I feel sad. I feel bad. I feel like I’m doing everything wrong. Define “everything”. I can’t.

I could come up with complaints about my parenting, but they are all fairly minor complaints. In the scheme of things I’m doing ok.

I don’t think I’m doing everything wrong with Noah. He keeps telling me he likes me. When I crawl back into bed after one of my many trips to the bathroom he snuggles me like a teddy bear. Clearly this is a man who has jumped over hoop after hoop after hoop to demonstrate his love for me. Clearly.

Do I think everyone should put as much effort into me as Noah does? Nah. That would be hella annoying. I don’t have anything to exchange on that level and the exchange is most of why it is important.

I want my belly to stop hurting. It’s not food. It’s anxiety. I want my teeth to stop chattering like I am on the verge of crying. I want to stop crying. I want to be less testy.

Where’s my god damn zen state?

Up your butt and around the corner. That’s where it fucking went.

I am so mature.

In other evasive news, I have started making more editing progress. I’m not making it shorter. That will be why I pay a real editor. But I am doing a lot of editing and clarifying points. And this coming week I have three separate days where I have babysitting so I will have more space from the kids. One of those days is just an hour for therapy. Two of the days I will use the time for editing. I have a local teenage baby-sitter and I found a local stay at home mom who wants to do trades. Awesome. She has work she needs to get done too.

I’m not actually doing everything wrong. I just feel like it. I just feel like I’m walking with a black cloud over my head.

I’m not doing everything wrong. When I am less able to be stimulating to my kids, I make sure they have lots of contact with other adults and children. They aren’t being isolated. Yeah, some weeks they get more screen time than they “should”. But they are still well under national average so whatever.

My kid is going to go run a 1.5 mile race tomorrow because she really wants to. I know she can do this distance because I have run much farther with her. I’m not worried about them getting some screen time. Balance, grasshopper.

I’m not eating a balanced diet. I haven’t done meal planning in a while. I’m not sleeping adequately or evenly. I’m not exercising consistently enough. Basically I’m not doing anything to keep my body on an even keel.

See, we all fall down sometimes. It’s not about how many times you fall down. It’s about how many times you get up.

Why do I think Paul should be shunned and not Noah? That question keeps me up at night. How can I justify my own nitpicky hypocrisy? Why are some people beyond redemption and other people aren’t? I don’t know. Why the fuck are they?

“I’ll just stick it in a little.”

Because I still want to beat my head when I think about how stupid stupid stupid stupid I was for being near a piece of shit like you in the first place. Wanting to be near a dirt bag like you sure seems to be indication enough that I deserve whatever I get.

Now I’m picturing Agatha Heterodyne chasing my brain hamsters screaming, “DIE!!!!” (Noah will probably provide a link to an appropriate web page tomorrow. He’s cute like that.)

Why does my cunt matter so much? Because I god damn say it does. Because it does. Because it is part of me. Because I get to decide what is and isn’t important as it goes in and out of there. No one else.

If you don’t understand that basic ownership violation I just… maybe I’m finally out of words.

Confluence of events

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

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

Uhm. Bully for him?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just a waste of fucking resources.

Easter morning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Either way it will be fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is complicated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You have lots of options.

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

I stop and hug them and apologize for scaring them.

I am a very fierce person.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Us/them. The enemy.

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

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

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

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

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

Monsters, monsters everywhere and not a one to beat.

Violence

4 Replies

Last night we had a hard conversation. I think we were both basically polite to one another but it was a hard conversation. It was about threatening behavior, violence, and gender. I get the distinct impression that Noah is tired of the idea that women are allowed to publicly threaten and be violent and men have to be under more control than that. I’m sorry you (dear husband) are upset about this situation. I don’t see it changing on a societal level soon.

Specifically we were walking through a parking lot and I saw a bumper sticker: “I still miss my ex but my aim is improving.” I don’t remember what I said but Noah described it as full of bravado. I’m not going to dicker with that characterization. I said something to the effect of those kinds of stickers being more acceptable from a woman than from a man. Not that they are great. Not that you are a nice person if you have one on your car.

If you put a bumper sticker on your car that implies you would like to shoot people you are, by definition, not a nice person.

But those kinds of being a not-nice person is inherently more threatening from men because the vast majority of actual violence is perpetrated by men. I didn’t make up the world. This is the reality we live in. Women can get away with saying things like this “as a joke” and men can’t.

Is that fair? No. But I think that it is a very common attitude. I have heard it a lot.

In particular I got the impression Noah wanted me to be contrite for essentially threatening my ex.

This was right after I left my high school sweetie/fiancé Steve. He was incredibly upset by the bumper sticker for very good reasons. Steve had every right in the world to take that as a threat. I was physically abusive to him during our relationship.

Noah pointed out that a statement like that from me should be considered as threatening or more threatening than it is from the average man because I am an extremely violent person with fire arms training. I pointed out that ALL of the fire arm training happened after the bumper sticker came off so that point is… a little mixed.

I wouldn’t put the sticker on my car now. I am not in a social position for that kind of asshole move. I would suffer consequences I don’t want to suffer. I’m not stupid.

When I was 18 and I was just discovering the bdsm community there were a long list of reasons I was doing my best to become as intimidating as possible as fast as possible. Yes, I absolutely consciously cultivated being scary.

By the time I put this sticker on my car and consciously tried to become scarier I had been raped by nine people. I wanted it to stop.

I had men who were 20+ years older than me harassing me at munches. Ms. L.Q.–most of the problematic people had moved away by the time you showed up at the Wednesday munch. It was two-to-four guys who were buddies and dirt bags. They did things like try to take my clothes off in public (at the fucking munch!). They hit me in ways that were clearly non-negotiated and then laughed at my indignation. They were “just trying to teach me what subs were for.”

So I got increasingly violent until they backed off. No, I don’t feel a single fucking ounce of regret.

Was putting the bumper sticker on my car nice? No. It wasn’t intended to be. It was a raging asshole move. Like I’m a raging asshole. Haven’t I said this enough times? Why don’t people believe me?

It took a long time and a lot of beatings and humiliation and degradation before I turned into what I am. Should I apologize for the process?

This is sounding a lot like how I should apologize for vomiting. Fuck off.

Is it defensible as an action? (Putting a bumper sticker on a car in order to broadcast being scary.)

Well… I don’t know. If a man did it there might be more social punishment. Yup, that’s just true. Is it “fair” that I got away with it? Probably not.

Life isn’t fair. Haven’t you noticed? I get away with anything and everything I can and feel like I want to get away with… just like everyone else. It just so happens that what I can get away with isn’t exactly the same as other people. Life is complicated.

I don’t feel bad for doing it. I felt bad at the time for threatening Steve. He and I had a long conversation (at the time) and I apologized up one side and down the other. I only took the sticker off my car when I had to before my public teaching career started. I took all the nasty, graphic, swearing, violent bumper stickers then. I had dozens. Apparently a hair dryer is *awesome* for removing bumper stickers. Didn’t even fuck up the paint.

I’m not trying to make excuses. I know it is a shitty thing to do. I have done a lot of shitty things. But sometimes a shitty thing is the best option in front of me. What should I do then?

Be careful to not be aggressive? Would you like me to rattle off my history for you?

From 18-23 I had freedom from being raped. That was the period of my life when I was the most openly hostile and aggressive and intimidating of my entire life. I was dealing with a lot of people who would very happily beat me until I lay on the floor sobbing and begging for mercy. I don’t think I over stepped. I really don’t. I don’t feel bad.

At 23 I had enough people screaming at me that I was too aggressive, too nasty, too bitchy (public humiliation for being too firm in rejecting sexual advances from random men) so I tried to mellow out.

I was raped by two “friends” within a short period of time.

I don’t feel bad about how nasty I was in between or since. Maybe other people know how to avoid being raped without being nasty. I don’t. The way I avoid it these days is I am never alone with men.

This isn’t actually better. It feels really depressing and scary and pathetic. What am I going to do when my kids get older? Am I going to cut all my male friends out of my life because my children will no longer be present as chaperones? There is a non-zero possibility.

I really hope I get much more ugly really soon. Age faster, damnit. Be an ugly, mean, nasty old crone so everyone leaves you the fuck alone.

I’m really scared.

People tell me that I should just not be alone with men who aren’t trustworthy.

I’m going to kill myself now. That’s the end of that line of conversation for me.

Not true! I’m alone with Noah all the time. Even though he’s no saint. He has a history that should make a girl like me run. But I don’t. Because mostly he is so nice to me that I can’t believe it.

But how am I supposed to judge who is safe and who isn’t? My whole life is full of rapists. I’ve read all the victim blamey-everything. I know it is my fault I was raped because I picked bad people to be near. Yup, I know.

But…

How do you people who aren’t raped repeatedly find people to talk to? I seem to have a very narrow and specific type of man who wants to know me. I don’t know what to do about it.

Other than be really scary and convince them it’s a bad idea to fuck with me. That is relatively successful compared to everything else I’ve tried.

But then I’m a raging asshole who pisses off all the poor men who think it is unfair that I can be ragingly threatening without arrest and they can’t.

You know… if we could trade privilege loads we could talk. Yes, there are advantages to being a woman. I think I am more frank about that than the majority of people who talk about privilege. I think there is some specific tremendous freedom in being a woman compared to being a man.

And yet…

There is no “win” here. No one has it all good and no one has it all bad.

I have been told and told and told and told that I should learn how to reject people nicely. So they don’t get mad at me.

Twelve rapists later I’m kind out of out the ability to assume that people mean me no harm so I should do them no harm. Fuck you. I assume you could hurt me if you wanted to and it is my responsibility to defend myself or just me will have to live with the consequences.

Am I an asshole? Absolutely. I am what I was made to be through careful shaping in life. Could I choose to react differently? Probably.

I don’t think I fucking owe anyone a reaction to trauma that they like more. I acknowledge the pitfalls of my approach. I seem violent and scary. Yup. That isn’t nice. True that. It isn’t fair that women can do it and men can’t. So true I have no more words for you.

Only I have more words for you.

We are all doing our best. Maybe my best isn’t good enough for you. Maybe my best is something you find disgusting and inappropriate. Would you really like for me to sit in judgment of how you handle everything in your life? Have you really got it all together?

I’m a mixed bag. I do some things well and everything else not very well. I am violent and intimidating because the lack of both of those qualities caused me many problems throughout my lifetime. If you don’t like that I developed the ability to be psychotically evil, well, you can join the line of people who don’t want to know me. It’s ok. That is how they need things to work. I can’t argue.

I am not as actively violent any more. Instead I hide. Instead I just refrain from “risky” situations. My life is smaller and more limited and I am genuinely afraid of what will happen when my children get older. Maybe I will just give up on doing anything.

I’m told over and over how bad I am for being violent. When being violent is the only thing that has ever had a modicum of success in keeping me safe.

It really feels like I should just die. That is the only thing I can do to satisfy the conflicting demands. I don’t have a way of protecting myself that is nicey-nice to everyone around me.

Why does that always have to be the priority? Oh yeah. Because I don’t matter. Got it.

It is not hyperbole for me to say that when I am experiencing severe difficulty no one wants to help me.

Is it uniformly always completely true? No, of course not. At this stage I have more help than I’ve ever had. I attribute a lot of that to the writing. Without the writing people just didn’t get to know me. I am not good at just making friends and allies. I am, but I’m not. I alienate people. Without the violence. Without trying.

Things are common speech for me that are completely taboo for other people. I freak people out without understanding why or trying to do it. I trigger the fuck out of people and that is hard for them. Totally reasonable.

Really, once a dozen people have raped you shouldn’t you be given a free pass to defend your body? Isn’t it ok for me to do? Oh. Only if I can do it in a way that doesn’t bother anyone or make any men feel like I am doing something they aren’t allowed to do.

Right. I forgot.

If you can’t have it as a tool then it “isn’t fair” that anyone else gets it and we have to stop. Because obviously the status quo is fair. We musn’t give anyone the ability to use tactics and tools unavailable to white men. That Wouldn’t Be Fair.

Sometimes it blows my mind that I live in a world where it is totally acceptable to tell someone who has been on the receiving end of as much violence as I have that they shouldn’t do things that are aggressive or defensive.

Just die already.

Turn it around.

Leave a reply

That doesn’t happen very often. We had a fantastically grumpy early day. Then from dinner on the day was gleeful and awesome. A friend came over to dinner. He is a balloon twisting artist. I don’t know when the girls and I have laughed so hard or so much. It was ridiculously fun.

He made mermaids and aliens and a heart scepter and a whole bunch of swords so we could have a (non-ouchy) battle and a bow and arrows and a spear and a few other things.

It was so fun. We laughed hysterically for just about an hour straight. He’s really funny and good at the performance aspect. He’s been practicing for ten years so he’s got it down.

I feel so lucky to know the people I know. They will come over to my house and talk to me and tell me stories. They have fantastic stories. I love stories.

Sometimes I feel kind of weird that so many of the people I introduce my children to are people I met through “Alternative Lifestyle Communities”. They are big perverts.

But they are big perverts who are completely uninterested in children and who only do things with consenting adults. I watch them intently and their behavior with my children is rigorously correct. They are probably more worried about slipping up and seeming inappropriate than I am.

I watch my kids. If they hear something inappropriately verbally I can help them process it. But nothing will physically happen to them. I don’t worry that much about keeping their pristine little ears protected.

If the most racy comment of the night is “Who is the size queen here?” (He made a sword for himself out of the much bigger style of balloon. It was kind of funny, really. We would trade off who was fighting with it and tease just a hair.) I can live with that.

My kids are going to grow up in America. If they don’t learn that some people are obsessed with size… then they’ve missed a vital part of the culture. Give me a break. Helllllloo Texas.

(Hey all you Texans. Neiner neiner neiner Alaska is bigger and I’ve been there too.)

I think it is hilarious that in preparing for Easter some of the moms have offered to bring food potluck style. Some dads are coming on their own. They haven’t offered to bring anything.

I see this pattern and try to convince myself that I’m not a failure as a mother because I’m shitty at brining stuff for potlucks. I’m the asshole who shows up with a bag of chips.

Like you do.

I feel unusually upbeat this morning. I’ve been kind of whiny and sad in my head lately.

Oh man. I was talking about some tv character being annoying because he/she/it was annoying and freakin Shanna turned to me and said, “Well you should like her/him/it because you are whiny too and you should like people who are like you.”

Oh man. Kid. Oh man.

I squinched my nose at her then realized… She’s being sincere and literal. No teasing is happening.

Then I burst out laughing.

I like that my kids don’t really tease me. They haven’t learned teasing. We do very little of it in this house. Once in a while we will tease in a tiny way and then will follow that with a clarification that we mean it with love. Noah and I are both on the paranoid side. I get the impression that he is a lot more ok with teasing than I am but he has worked to talk to me how I want to be talked to.

Teasing is really hard for me. It feels like lying. If I feel like someone is lying to me then I get really really angry and hateful almost instantly. People tease trying to be friendly and share affectionate feelings. It will make me turn on you like a viper. Don’t fucking tease me. I’ve been fucking taunted enough for one fucking lifetime.

I think that ones overall response to these things largely depends on how you grew up with teasing. My family teased me constantly. They may even have meant it lovingly sometimes. I don’t think my family hated me as much as I kinda think they did. But they did show me contempt constantly. And no one was willing to believe me that I was being horribly abused. So their teasing felt more like turning the knife than making a joke.

I hate teasing. I try to do very little of it. Once in a while I tease because I know that other people bond through teasing. I can generally force out a sentence before I start apologizing and making it clear that I wasn’t serious.

Sometimes my kids say things to me… and it sounds like a tease… and I can feel my body start activating the threat response system. Then I realize that they aren’t teasing. They are saying what they literally perceive. They aren’t mocking me. They are making the connections that they see out loud because I have modeled not having an inside voice. I think tactless things out loud all day long. My kids live with that.

It is really interesting to have to work so hard on calming down with them.

I talked to my shrink about my current hypervigilance about my hypervigilance (I’m a cluster fuck of fun) and she agreed that it might be a worthy process but yeah I’m going to be so exhausted I can barely breathe for a while.

Trying this hard to be aware of unconscious processes and change them is really exhausting. I’m just living on the prayer that it will be worth it in the end.

I have stopped going to most of the forums I used to frequent. I’m feeling like I have nothing to spare but frustration and snottiness so I’m shutting up. If I am impatient with where someone else is on their journey… that’s my problem and I don’t need to be a cunt. Just shut up for a while.

I go up and down the spiral. Sometimes I am way more functional than I am at other points. I really have no room to judge anyone else. It may feel like Uncle Bob’s death was a long time ago but it wasn’t. I was not competent at all to do the basics of caretaking for a good solid week.

I don’t have any right to judge where other people are. I know that my seasons of pain come and go. Sometimes I can function and be out in the world and sometimes I can’t.

But sometimes where I am has nothing left over for other people. I don’t need to be mean about it. I just need to take care of myself. Less typing is good anyway.

I feel like I’m being avoidant with the kids. Not terribly so. They still aren’t spending much time alone. They still ask me questions every ten minutes all day long. But I am mentally checked out more. I’m creating more walled rooms in my head that I can step into when I can’t handle focusing on them.

I get so tired. It isn’t their fault. They are probably what you might call “spirited children”. Which is a nicey nice way of saying that they have a lot of energy and willingness to just do shit in frequently destructive ways.

Kids do that. You have to be patient. But I’ve been reading a lot. I just reread the Stieg Larson Millenium trilogy that was originally intended to be a ten book series but the author died. Damn him. I can see the foreshadowing. I can see him laying tracks in the first book for stuff that won’t happen till the seventh or eighth book. Lisbeth’s sister was going to be a big deal.

I’m avoiding editing. After Easter I don’t really have a choice. I have less than six weeks until I send it to my editor. Get crackin’.

Noah is making more progress on my shit than I am. I feel pretty guilty about that.

In general I feel the need to point out how much I appreciate Noah. Not many people in the world are willing to consciously adapt to me. Noah showed me what that could look like and I don’t think I will ever be ok with losing this now. Noah makes me feel like I am ok. There is nothing terrible about me. I have some annoying preferences, but who the hell doesn’t? Whatever. No big deal. Easy to accommodate.

It is only in seeing how he fails to live up to what I expect that I see how contemptuously I expect people to treat me. I’m pretty sure I project a lot of contempt. To be more clear: I think that I assume people feel contempt for me when they don’t. I have contempt for myself and that’s enough for me to assume other people share the sentiment.

It is incredibly hard to learn how to accurately perceive the world around you. You see the world through your particular little lens. Maybe you think the world is essentially good because you have had mostly positive experiences. Maybe you think the world is terrible because you have had mostly terrible experiences.

The world is neither. The world is mostly indifferent. I struggle with seeing that and understanding it. I struggle hard with being able to believe that the world doesn’t actually care that much one way or another about me. At least not until I have gone out and done things that the world can judge.

Then some people will like it and some people won’t and mostly people won’t care. Move on.

You can’t be doing it for them. You have to just do it for yourself. Because you have to manifest in the world what you want the world to be.

Despite the ever changing sea that is my emotional experience of the world, other people perceive me differently.

The nice 90 year old lady at the Post Office thinks I’m just great because I helped her cross the street when she was scared.

I think the world is a place where all the people around you would be potential allies and help if you just could figure out how to ask for your needs. Does everyone care? No. Frequently you can’t find the right way to appeal to people. Sometimes your basic position in the world bothers people and they will avoid you if you make clear your needs.

I think this is what is keeping me away from the PTSD forum right now. Everyone else is in the bunker-down-nobody-loves-me-everyone-hates-me-guess-I’ll-eat-worms stage. Or at least those are the threads being posted.

No, your PTSD is not some terrible secret you have to keep or everyone in the world will reject you for being terrible and disgusting. Yes, you will have to do a lot of self advocating and specifically requesting the kind of contact you want with people. Yes, it’s hard.

Ok, I try not to talk about neighbors. Here’s a thing that is coming up. I go to other peoples houses and more or less invite myself in. If I don’t do so for a while then people feel like I am rejecting them and I don’t like them anymore.

I go home and think WHY THE FUCK DO I HAVE TO INVITE MYSELF OVER?! YOU NEITHER WANT TO COME TO MY HOUSE NOR INVITE ME. WHY THE HELL SHOULD I DO THIS?!?!?!

But I get passive aggressive emails telling me they miss me when I don’t invite myself over.

I think everyone is shitty at relationships and when people know you have PTSD they are frequently more timid because the risk of social discord is high. They don’t want to hurt you again. So they don’t know what to do. So they do nothing. And that feels like rejection.

But they are sitting in their house feeling sad about me not being there. It’s a whole cluster fuck.

People. Oh man.

“I wish this person loved me enough to chase me for a relationship. Since they don’t love me that much I won’t bother them.” And thus the world goes ’round.

I think that the main reason my thinking on this has shifted to the current location is because of all the writing I do. People feel brave enough to tell me that they want me to keep writing for many decades. Until they die or longer. They want me in their lives. But time and distance and complications of life mean I don’t see these people much. But they want me to continue.

I don’t think that the average person with PTSD has people reaching out to tell them that they need to keep on keepin’ on. And that is sad. I am very lucky to have the people in my life I have.

I feel sad that most people seem to have the experience that telling people they have PTSD results in really negative relationship shifts. I find I experience more positive shifts. Yes, I have to do a lot of work because people are timid. But they do try hard with me. People give me space for some of my weird reactions that I can’t help that much. I have not been uninvited to all the parties just because I cry from stress at the parties. I go do my thing and calm down and come back when I can and people are cool with that. I take care of me and I’m still welcome to be part of the space when I’m ready.

At some point I will have spoons to share and I will try to be more motivational like with them. Not right now. I’m tired. I’m trying to figure out what I need to do. I can’t talk about my process while I’m figuring it out. Big shifts are hard.

Changing the hypervigilant behavior is really really hard. I’ve been working on it for a bit. I don’t know how long I will last in this phase. I suppose it would help if I articulated a goal to work towards. And metrics for success. That way it won’t become just a way to grind myself down.

Specifically, what have I been working on?

I am trying to stop counting how many people are in rooms. I’m trying to stop reorienting myself towards exits every few minutes. I suppose I’m trying to stop the behaviors that seem the most irrational to me. They aren’t helpful and they aren’t even all that related to my trauma. They are just things I started doing to cope with the anxious feelings. But they use a lot of tracks of my brain and contribute to my feelings of always being in danger.

I’m not sure I am specifically addressing other behaviors right now. Trying to be conscious of when I start to engage in those actions without thinking is really draining and hard.

So I started them to cope with anxiety but they create a different anxiety of their own. Kind of like pot. Harm Reduction. Less harm. That doesn’t mean that the next choice is a good choice… just a slightly less bad one. If I had “good” options I might take them. I don’t. I’m doing the best I can. Just like everyone else.

Or maybe they aren’t. I can’t really judge.

Today is entirely unscheduled. We will probably do the inside decorating. I’ll clean up the garage. Again. It always needs to happen. Oy.

Maybe I will spend a big chunk of the day sitting on the couch with the kids. We can read. That seems like a really good day right now.

post-therapy

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Yesterday was a moderately challenging therapy session. I didn’t cry or anything so it doesn’t get to the level of “hard” per se. My therapist was uhhh “kind” enough to tell me about another support group in Oakland. No, actually, having to drive to Oakland more often would not lower my stress. Sorry.

My shrink and I talked about the difficulty driving. When I am alone in the car I distract myself from my irrational desire to drive the car into dangerous situations by playing music very loudly and I sing along at the very top of my lungs. Frequently when I arrive places I’m hoarse from all the screeching. My kids get kind of pissy with me when I play loud music or scream along with the radio so I don’t do it when they are in the car. Which actually makes driving with them harder than driving alone.

I wish that I didn’t have suicidal ideation so often. I wish that I could make the decisions about my life without factoring in, “Well, how many hours of self-harm thoughts can I entertain today without slipping?” I’m a lot better than I used to be. There is definite improvement. I’m not “all better”. Driving is still really hard. Most of my slipping these days comes in the form of massive dissociation so I have no idea what is going on with my body so I am constantly covered in bruises I have no idea how I received. It’s pretty minor compared to the cutting so this is a big step up. But man all the bruises have been hurting more lately. I’m getting old. Ha.

We did EMDR on the driving ideation issues. The phrase that kept coming up (sometimes I get word phrases sometimes I get picture associations) was “terrible trouble”. As I’m driving places my stomach shreds itself because I am afraid of the trouble I am going to get into on the other side of the drive. I get it going to the grocery store so it’s not all social anxiety I can kinda sorta justify. It’s just associated with driving,

I was really in trouble all the fucking time as a kid. I’m not over it. Sometimes that feels pretty pathetic.

We talked about the whole “getting in trouble for vomiting” thing in the form of the demanded apology. (I heard back from the woman who wanted one. I think she accepted my apology. I still have some mixed feelings about needing to give one for… vomiting. Not like I picked the activity of the night on purpose to fuck over her life.)

I am so delighted that when I get in trouble these days… it’s really not a big deal. If the two women who were mad at me continue being mad at me till the day I die…. that’s really not that big of a deal. Ok, one seems to be over it, the other has already hated me since I was 19. If she keeps hating me it isn’t a loss. Really if she hates me that may be a badge of honor proving that I am making correct choices in life.

That happens you know. People disliking you is sometimes a really good sign.

Depends on whether you want people like that to like you. If you don’t particularly respect someone it can be a particularly good thing for them to dislike you. I’m just sayin’.

When I walked into my therapists office she said, “Wow. You look exhausted.” That can’t be a good sign. Yes, I am. Notice how I haven’t been writing? I’ve been sleeping in lately. Even with getting several hours of extra sleep each night for a while… I still look like shit. I’m not sure if I’m sick or what. My stomach was really off yesterday. Eating at all was awful. But no food no fuel so I have to eat even when it hurts.

I don’t have “cold or flu” symptoms. Just stomach pain, exhaustion, and general pain. Maybe that is a flu like symptom. But I still don’t know that I have the flu. and I am officially not allowed to get sick for at least five days. Damnit.

I’m struggling with my outsiders view on another persons marriage. I’m experiencing a lot of anxiety about situations I can’t control. Terrible Trouble. It’s coming. Always. Always. Always coming.

I feel scared, helpless, worthless, and stupid. I don’t know the right thing to say or do. So it must be because I am defective.

I feel weary.

In therapy we talked about my latest efforts to be hypervigilant about my hypervigilance. Maybe this is why I am so fucking tired. I am trying to stop counting people in a room. I’m trying to only check for exits when I arrive in a new place instead of checking every few minutes like an OCD routine. I am not made more safe by checking that the exit door is still there every three minutes. I am probably made more unsafe by obsessing over whether the door is still fucking there. Really, genius? The fucking door is going to move? No. I’m afraid I will get disoriented and lose the direction. It’s not that the door will move. It is that I spent a very high percentage of my life dizzy. I’m always afraid I will lose my inner compass and not be able to make it out. Yay vertigo.

I do wonder if that is a lot of what is wearing me down. Being that conscious of my nearly sub-conscious obsessive checking is really hard. Restraining myself from counting the people in the room over and over and over is a lot harder on me than just doing the fucking counting. I’m trying to extinguish this behavior on the slim hope that some day I won’t have to obsessively concentrate on my nearly sub-conscious behavior. Hopefully some day I will have the energy back from the obsessive counting and the monitoring of the counting and I will be back in the net positive. Hopefully this is saving long-term effort.

But those gambles only sometimes work out. The deficit of exhaustion in the meantime is really rough.

I wrote to Noah’s family yesterday. That always increases the shitty I feel. I miss my mom. Why do I only get to talk about my kids with these people who don’t like me anyway? It’s really hard to keep trying when I know his mother doesn’t actually have any affection for me at all.

But she loves my kids. And my kids deserve all the love they can get. And Noah isn’t going to facilitate a relationship because he doesn’t care or understand what a complete lack of family can do to you. So it is up to me. I understand the scope of the problem and I’m not as personally repelled by the situation. I get why he ran away and didn’t come back. But that attitude will hurt my kids and I can’t let that be their entire experience of life.

Noah’s mom may not win prizes for being perfect but she is being a great mail order grandmother. I should not denigrate that. The kids appreciate that she thinks about them and makes effort. I need to respond. I wish it weren’t so fucking hard.

I’m doing one of those cycles where I don’t understand why I try so hard for relationships when people don’t really like me anyway they tolerate me as an alternative to being completely alone.

I can find ways to minimize the amount I believe anyone might like me. It’s a super power. Or something. Even though people come over. Even though I can tell you that it is irrational.

Irrational feelings happen anyway and they are very tiring. Exhausting. Trying to argue with your brain all day that people don’t actually hate you is really hard.

My arms hurt. I’m so tired I keep randomly crying because I can’t force myself to not cry. It’s too hard to not-cry.

Ain’t we always looking for a silver lining?

What am I grateful for? Noah. Always Noah. Shanna. Calli.

How come my “what” I’m grateful for always comes down to a “who”? Because outside of having access to a non-shitty keyboard I can live without pretty much every what. Ok, I need food/shelter/booze like they tell you in Yakitat. But really what do I feel grateful for? My garden. That’s a what.

It’s not about what. It’s who. I get to spend all day figuring out how to be nice. We talk about how sometimes folks put their meanie-pants on. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily ALWAYS mean. Everyone has bad days. Bullying is quite the discussion here. Just because someone has done something you dislike that doesn’t automatically make them a bully. Pleasing you is not a mandatory part of life. Being mean to you is different than doing things you don’t like. And even your best friends will have days when they put their meanie-pants on. The meanest of people will have good days.

What makes someone a monster?

If I’m not qualified to judge who the fuck is?

Calli and I went to sleep talking about how my teddy bear, Ted. T. Bear, is very good at scaring off creepy crawly night monsters. He’s nice to his humans and super fierce with night monsters. Sometimes the best of creatures have to be scary sometimes. Sometimes being scary is part of being able to survive.

For the whole rest of my life I am going to treasure the memories I have of my children. There will be no more relationships in my life that represent such perfect trust.

I am so sorry, mommy.

I wonder how long my kids will like me. My therapist wants me to believe that the people I know are all aberrations. I think I can count on my fingers the number of people I know who like their parents and who actively want relationships with their families. My shrink tells me this is because I broadcast a wavelength that scares the shit out of people who like their families and they don’t really want to hang out with me. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It is possible that I will come out the far side with children who like me.

If I make it to a natural death that is a win on my life. Sometimes I feel so sad that it is true. When I drive I feel scared that I don’t want to be alive bad enough. Some day my lack of burning desire to be alive is going to be a problem. It’s not just that I have to deal with the “want to die” urge. I need to find some way to actively want to live. I don’t think I do. I don’t want to hurt people. Is that a good enough reason to stay alive? If that is all I have it has to be good enough for today.

Calli and Shanna and Noah. That has to be enough. I don’t want to hurt them. I’ll just cry. That doesn’t hurt anyone.

I don’t even know for sure why I’m crying. I don’t know if this is just exhaustion. I can’t even tell if I’m sad. I’m just crying and crying.

I feel bitter right this minute that smoking pot is the most effective means of getting it into my system if it weren’t for my pre-fucked up lungs. Thanks for all the chain smoking, mom. Chronic bronchitis. If that kills me it will be kind of ironic. It can, you know. Stupid pills aren’t very effective. Well, they are kind of effective. They make me tired as fuck. Which does slow down the anxiety. But in a less useful way.

I’m clearly trying to avoid smoking. Otherwise I would just write about how awesome it is a medication. Instead I will grumble.

Hey, that’s a ‘what’ I’m grateful for. Pot. Pot provides more than 60% of my ability to stop feeling scared and instead feel calm and happy with what I’m doing. How sad is that? Well it would be way the fuck more sad if my state still had this medication banned. *phew* So I’m glad that this medication exists. I’m grateful for all the lovely official dispensaries that will give me medication IN THE FORM OF CANDY. Oh man. The candy is awesome but a bit more expensive than the pills. Everything is a trade off.

Not to mention that I try to avoid eating a lot of medicated candy in front of my kids. That spells trouble.

They are very clear on the appearance of medicated candy and that they must not eat it. We have looked at the medication specifically and talked about how it looks like candy but it is really medicine and it will make you feel terrible if you take it when you don’t need it.

We talk a lot about appropriate doses of things. I eat more food than them. I drink more water in a day. I take more medication. These things are body-weight dependent activities and I am bigger. Trying to take in more than you need is really bad for you and lets go over the list of why until you can rattle it off as fast or faster than I can.

Don’t eat food, drink water, or take medication above what you actually need or it is bad for you. Just seems kind of logical.

Uhm, I base the “don’t eat too much food” on my childhood where I went through periods of forcing myself to eat long past the point of hunger… sometimes cause I had nothing else to do. When I was in eighth grade I hit this stage where one package of ramen just didn’t quite fill me up. (Now as an adult I would say “add an egg for protein then” as a kid… I would neither have thought of that nor been willing to actually consider it if I did think of it. Eggs come one way: scrambled hard.) So I forced myself to learn to eat two because I didn’t want to throw away some noodles.

I’ve got some issues around food and money and stuff. Like you do.

As much as I love Pam I’m kinda glad she’s busy tonight. I’m annoyed with myself for adding an extra dinner guest to the week on Thursday. Friday night Noah and I have a babysitter scheduled so we can go on a date. If I can fucking stay awake. Pathetic. But the extra dinner guest is a friend going through a really hard break up. I could be selfish and say I’m tired. He’s so sad though. Really all I’m going to give him is 2-3 hours of attention. I’m not so tired I can’t get it up for that.

At the end of your life you will not be remembered for how you felt. You will be remembered for how you make other people feel. I can cough up 2-3 hours of talking to a grieving person. It lightens the load. It really and truly does. If I thought it “did nothing” I wouldn’t bother but it does a lot.

I’ve read too many cases of near-suicide. “Someone surprised me by paying attention to me and convincing me that I still had worth.”

I can see worth in just about anybody. I can sit down and explain the worth I see in you if you want. If it will make you feel better I’d be thrilled to help you see how you fit into the kaleidoscope of life. You have worth. You matter? Want me to point out the spokes in your life? I can show you who you touch and how. You matter. You do.

Why is it so much easier to see for other people than myself? Don’t know but it is. Well, I can see my worth. I just don’t always feel like I have the strength to keep on keepin on. My worth is mostly in my ability to lighten the load for other people. I’m really good at it. It is a particular talent.

I used to think that my only “talent” was speed reading. You can’t go to a talent competition and win a prize for it so of course I thought I was a loser as a child. Now I think I have always underestimated the value of my brain.

Now I think my strongest talent is empathy. It’s a super power. At least occasionally.

But I’m tired. So very tired.

Drips, drabs, ups, and downs.

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We went up to San Pablo yesterday to see some friends. This is after that specific friend coming to my house monthly for ohhh four years now? I am starting to try and do some trips up there in exchange for all the trips to my house. The distance between us is not shorter just because he is a guy with no kids. I can do effort too.

And when I drive up there I get to spend time with his lovely wife. I find the visits to be highly educational in diverse arenas. For one thing: she knows way the fuck more about gardening than I do and she’s happy to talk about plants. Lately getting near someone with lots of plant knowledge who does not eschew my children is somewhat tricky. I’ve tried to sign up for gardening classes THAT ARE BEING ADVERTISED ON AN UNSCHOOLING MAILING LIST and I was told I would have to get babysitting. Stop fucking advertising in this space if my fucking kids aren’t welcome you fucking fuckers. I didn’t say fuck to the people in question. I just dropped it.

Beyond the gardening stuff, I am having a bit of trouble with Callidora. Well, phrasing it that way sounds more extreme than it is. Many of my parenting approaches work really well for Shanna and don’t work at all with Calli. Luckily my friends’ wife seems to identify really strongly with Calli. They are very similar temperamentally and she is giving me a lot of feedback for how to tweak our interactions so they work better.

I feel so much gratitude I don’t have words. Someone is willing to look at me and look at my daughter and look at our relationship and say, “You are doing ok, but you both might be happier if you did……”

Err, in defense of my hubris more than once I have said, “I’m afraid I am going to have to do ____” and her response was “Yes. That is exactly what you have to do.” So she isn’t entirely telling me new information. But she is very good at skimming out the bullshit and getting to the heart of the matter. “This is failing because of x.”

I don’t trust many people to give me feedback. I’m not sure why I trust her feedback as much as I do. For one thing she doesn’t use the word “should” and I’m not sure if that has become a specific trigger. Maybe I explode at people for that word rather than because I am completely unwilling to accept advice? It’s hard to tease out.

Also, she tends to say “Calli seems to be a lot like me. When I was a kid I had x and y and z experiences and this is how it went well and this is how it went badly. If Calli is as much like me as she seems right now, you are going to have to deal with a and b and c. It’s not a good idea to do d.”

I guess there is an implied “should” in that but she doesn’t say it.

It also occurs to me that I push Calli in a way I have never pushed Shanna. When Shanna was three I had a one year old. We did not spend a lot of time pushing the absolute physical limits of what she could accomplish until she collapsed in frustrated tears.

I’m having a hard time understanding fully that Calli wants to be able to do things she isn’t ready to do yet and I need to find a tactful way of bailing her out even as I push Shanna to try. Differentiated instruction is a bitch.

(Err, the bicycle riding project is coming along. We’ve hit a few hiccups. As my wise new running mate commented, “Dude. You’ve been out with them four times? Relax and do more low pressured practice.”

Yeah yeah. You may have a point. But we bought the bikes because we want to ride to the park. I need to decide in my adult brain that even if that is the eventual goal… we sure as shit can’t start by doing that. I should probably not try to leave our housing development again until June. We need more low-stakes practice than we have had. Hours and hours and hours and hours.

It is not just a form of transportation. It is about entertainment. It has to be about entertainment at first or they won’t gain enough proficiency to use it as transportation later. The transportation part doesn’t have to be worked out at three, instantly. Relax you bitch.

Medication has been spotty this week. I (re?)noticed a pattern. Whenever I get to the point of using sufficient medication that I actually feel good instead of having just the edge of the pain taken away I punish myself for days with under medicating so I feel a lot more pain. I’m not supposed to be using pot like a pot head. I’m not supposed to be trying to get high. I’m supposed to be just managing the pain.

I think I am too much of a Puritan. My sister told me I had ancestors on the Mayflower (Not her–different fathers.). Maybe it is too deeply buried within my DNA? I can’t stop believing that I must suffer. Anything that feels good MUST BE BAD.

I have been very consistent lately about giving up my morning “off time” to wake up with the kids. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. On one hand I’m more frazzled and I’m not taking a compensatory amount of time later. On the other hand… we are getting along better. When the kids open their eyes in the morning to me in their bed smiling at them… the whole day is easier. The first thing they hear every day is, “Good morning. I’m so glad to see you again. I’m looking forward to our wonderful day together.”

They smile back and say, “Me too!” then grab my neck and pull me close. Then I get a sleepy “Good morning.”

Sometimes it feels weird knowing that I do this as a parenting gesture in large part to make up for the hole in my heart. No one was ever happy to see me during my childhood. I was a terrible, unwanted burden.

I completely support mothers who need to abort children born of rape. I wish my mother hadn’t allowed her religion to force her to keep me. I was not wanted. And they made my life hell.

Now I have something different. It is so very nice. But it’s a lot of emotional and mental and physical work. And I get really tired.

When I’m tired it is harder to be consistent. When I’m scared I start screaming. That’s consistent.

Calli has asked me to stop raising my voice at her when I’m repeating orders/requests/whatever you want to call them. Demands? She told me (while making eye contact so this is serious as a fucking heart attack) “I will be able to listen to you better if you get close to me and whisper in my ear that it is important.”

If a three year old can so clearly ask for the kind of interaction she needs then I am a fucking asshole if I ignore the request. This is how I teach them ownership of their body and consent and boundaries.

I’ve been working on it. I kind of feel that I should create some accountability tool for myself. Maybe another sheet of paper on the wall. I can ask Calli to help me decide whether I approached her correctly or not and we can decide if I get a mark in the “right behavior” column or the “not so right” column. It will also help her clarify which aspects of the raised voice stuff are a problem for her.

My kids are not going to grow up thinking adults are perfect and kids need to bend to the adults around them. Ha. Ha. Ha. No. We want to live together. We need to adapt to one another.

I’m happy about the upcoming social stuff. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed that people are agreeing so delightedly to come to my events. My RSVPs fill up fast. (Err, RSVP for Easter if you are coming… not many spaces left.)

I have had something like six people in the last two weeks get really excited when I confirm that I’m hosting Easter again. “OH! You throw the best parties!”

I do?

Oh.

Well that’s awesome. How do I do that? What makes them “the best” for you? Because I spend my parties in kind of an anxious hell hoping I don’t offend everyone and run them off such that they never want to come back.

And yet I keep hosting. Irony.

I don’t seem to be running people off. I mean… I do… but I don’t. I run some people off.

I feel very guilty when I admit to myself that I run off people who need things from me that I can’t give. My anxiety and shame around not being able to meet their needs makes me angry and cruel. It isn’t my fault I can’t meet their needs. It isn’t their fault I can’t meet their needs. It isn’t their fault they have needs. I have needs they can’t meet either. But I get mean. This is a major character flaw of mine.

I don’t do this with people who have small needs I can easily meet. If people need something from me that is going to be an up to five hour commitment one time… I love doing that. That helps me feel like I am part of a community and I’m useful and all kinds of good feelings. When someone starts to need 3-10 hours of work from me every fucking week in order to have a relationship with them…

I get mean. I am awful. I am not a nice person. I don’t know how to have healthy limits without being an asshole. I’m not making excuses or justifying my behavior. It’s wrong.

I have been talking to a friend a lot about how different it is in America versus other more crowded countries. Americans apologize for bumping into someone. In China you would never say any word other than “sorry”. So they don’t bother.

I spend a lot of time apologizing for taking up space. I spend a lot of time apologizing for being inconvenient. I spend a lot of time apologizing for not being able to do/be what someone else wants/needs.

I am sorry I am so inadequate. I clearly see that I am.

Right now I’m having anxiety attacks because some folks are mad at me. Folks I don’t really need to “care” about per se. They aren’t my friends. They are the close friends of one of my friends. They are mad at me because my vomiting on Friday caused them some inconvenience. I have apologized profusely for inconveniencing them. I’m sorry they were brought into the situation by our mutual friend. But yeah. I’m the bitch.

And I feel consumed with shame and I have for days. I inconvenienced them. I stole hours of their life and made them about me when they already kind of hate me. I’m really sorry. I did apologize. I have not been acknowledged and that is what I assumed would happen.

I get into these situations. I’m sorry I inconvenienced you. I have very little control over when I vomit. I’m just glad I didn’t make a mess on my floor.

But it impacted your life. And you wish I didn’t impact your life. So you are angry with me because I popped up and existed in a way you couldn’t tune out.

I’m really sorry.

This is more or less why I avoid that whole segment of the “community”. I don’t really like feeling like I am doing something wrong by breathing in a way they can hear.

So yeah. I don’t think I will teach with my friend again. There is a bunch of stress in the lead up and if I get sick there is lots of acrimony, blame, and anger. Not from my friend. He was mellow about the situation. But he didn’t feel qualified to handle the class alone and those are the other people he has in his life to turn to for support.

Yeah well, me hanging around near them feels like an abusive family reunion where they all wish I would drop dead. The sooner the better.

More one of them than the other but… well that’s not a story I’ll write down yet. Maybe a few more decades. It being thirteen years ago still isn’t long enough. Some day.

It’s not all her fault. I was a bitch. But man. Oh man. Ok. Shiny change of topic.

I’ve been having a lot of feelings all week over that. I was doing great last week until I started vomiting on Friday.

I associate vomiting with letting people down and being a bad and weak person. When I get sick my association is that I will also be in trouble for some reason. I am inconvenient when I’m sick.

Noah is working hard to change some of these patterns. He’s nice when I’m sick. He does a lot of telling me that it isn’t my fault and I didn’t do anything bad. I feel really pathetic for needing it. But I do. And he does it. I am so grateful for him as a partner.

I like teaching though. I will look for more opportunities to teach. Just no co-teaching in a situation potentially wrapped in shame-inducing trauma. When I had to cancel a class as a professional teacher… no one made me write a formal apology. I’d like to go back to that kind of treatment. Thanks.

My running mate wants me to stop thinking of writing as a hobby and start thinking of it as a business. I’ve sold enough forking copies of my book that I can stop pretending I’m not a real writer. I shouldn’t have to pay for my book editing and publishing stuff out of my “fun money”. It’s not my hobby. Noah doesn’t take his business expenses out of his fun money. It’s a separate category in the budget. It’s not very healthy for me to demean myself in this fashion.

I will severely limit my career as a writer if I can’t employ an editor until I save up enough fun money by denying myself everything. Denial as a full-time lifestyle in a household that otherwise has a lot of privilege… that’s kinda self-hating. It’s being weird. It’s unhealthy.

Why do women do this to themselves? My writing “doesn’t count”. It’s just… something I do. Like the laundry. And when there are expenses for it, well, they are “mine”, right?

I developed a lot of habits over the years of having the annuities and living with men. What I could have was very strictly limited to what I had in that $1200 every month. I didn’t over extend. And now I have no real personal income and… I’m flailing. The $100/month of fun money is… not enough. Not for me to feel like I can track all of “my” spending separately from household stuff.

We just have a clothes budget. It is for all four of us. If someone gets something then the other three have to wait a while. *shrug* But it changes how I think of things. Although… when I bought the pretty clothes in Portland I took a big chunk out of my personal money. I spent more than $500 on two items of clothing. It didn’t seem fair to make my family give up that large a share of the clothes budget on me getting two items. So more than $300 came out of my fun money. That seemed fair to me.

When the kids really get a big clothes splurge… it goes in the “kid” section even though mostly they come out of the main category.

The kids have a big section of the budget that is amorphously used for classes, home school supplies. books, toys, gear of whatever kind (was baby carriers and diapers now it has moved on to bikes), and rarely clothes.

A long time ago I consciously went out and started spending time with older men. They could talk to me about money. How they got it. What they did with it. I made my own judgments about who lived in which kind of house and who had how much money. I’ve always been tactless as fuck. I would point blank ask them how much cash they had in the bank and whether or not they had investments.

I didn’t understand most of what they told me. But I remembered it. It’s kind of funny to have little memories float up now and again as I’m trying new things with investing.

Be sure you are right, then go ahead. I will, Davey. I will research and research and research and I’ll figure out what I think is right. Of course I know I could always be wrong. Some minute change in my life might make all of my careful risk calculations moot and irrelevant.

I have no way of predicting that. So I have to just act and hope for the best.

Save.

Debt is evil.

Make your money work for you.

Pay yourself first.

Sometimes I think I turn to these mantras as the only way I have of blocking out all the voices in my head who want me to think I am stupid and a bitch and I should just stop inconveniencing them by breathing.

I’ve been really stunned by the intensity of my suicidal ideation this week.

I also haven’t been doing my daily check in calls with my friend. She’s really busy on a project. She’ll be back in a week or so. I support and respect her participation in this event and that means she has no time to think about me. I am a big girl and I’ll keep my big girl panties on.

It is interesting how suicidal ideation is not always about depression. I don’t feel like I am feeling depression symptoms. This is more on the anxious/overwhelmed side. Manic is a word people like. But I’m not… doing anything manic.

Just out of the blue driving on the freeway I see a weird opening where it would be possible to turn and be hit by a semi-truck and I want to do it more than I want anything in the world. I want in that moment to feel a lot of pain and then die. I want it as much as my heart wants to beat. It is immediate and visceral and all encompassing.

I have to breathe very lightly and lift my hands so I have a very light guiding pressure on the steering wheel. Sometimes I get off the freeway to breathe and stretch my neck and remind myself, “Not today.”

The reasons I don’t like driving are varied and complicated and… I’m willing to bet that someday I will not be able to drive any more. It is part of the reason I am as strongly motivated to make friends near my house as I am. Walking will always be a good idea. Forever. For my health.

Thanks, Pam, for letting me write this morning.

My head feels better. I feel a lot less shame. Writing it down helps.

I don’t need to feel shame because other people would prefer that their world didn’t overlap with mine. I could reject our mutual friend so that they never have to hear about me again, but given that he values his relationship with me that seems kind of awful.

But I think I should have different boundaries. Still working on where those need to be. Boundaries are tricky things. You only find out you have them when they are transgressed. Ha. THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE CLASS. And what I got out of it is: I need to make sure I never have to deal with your extended friends again. Awesome.

That’s a lesson I can learn.

They aren’t going to like me. No matter what. Ever. I need to not care about that. They are allowed to have their experience of the world where I am… something. I don’t know what. I shouldn’t speculate. I would surely overstate my importance. I certainly don’t suspect that either of them while away hours just hating me. I’m not that important.

So I don’t need to feel shame because they are feeling irritation. That’s not something I need to take on. I gave an apology. I offered restitution to the best of my ability. That’s what I’ve got. Move on. I didn’t vomit on purpose.

And when I feel shame for my social behavior I rush home to assure myself that I am managing my money properly. No one is going to be able to force me to move. I’m allowed to stay here. I’m jumping through all the hoops that actually matter for my life. I don’t have to care that they dislike me. There won’t be any consequences.

And then I can stop thinking about it.

Thank you internet. That’s the end of my confession for today. I have some dirt to play with and a fence to sand. Tomorrow a bunch of little kids are going to come paint a few sections. We are adding more year by year. Drips and drabs. It’s really fun.

Saturday is the Girl Genius Volume 1 read aloud. Email me for details if you want to come hear Noah do all the hilarious voices.

Every day love

3 Replies

My kids like to go to sleep curled up against me. It always takes us a while to stop talking about how much we love each other. We say “I love you” many many—maybe more than dozens of times a day.

Sometimes I feel like it is weirdly excessive. Sometimes I feel like I am managing to finally experience what I’ve wanted my whole life. People actually like me here.

I haven’t been able to handle being on the PTSD forum lately. I can’t handle the way people talk about coping. Yes, these emotions are scary. No I don’t think that I should hide my scary life experiences. No, I don’t believe that the only appropriate place to talk about trauma is in a therapy office.

People who want to “get better” talk. People who want to “get better” have to take the risk of being hurt again. You have to trust with your whole heart even though it is terrifying and awful.

I am so grateful for Noah. These people talk about being married for decades and never telling anyone about their history. They have severe troubles in their marriage because their spouse doesn’t have enough information to be helpful even if they want to..

I am so grateful that I get to be with people every day who like me. Who don’t need me to just shut up and play a role for them. My kids know I cry. They don’t need me to go away and stop bothering them when I’m feeling sad. They give me a hug and say they are sorry I’m feeling sad. It’s not a huge deal. It’s not part of our daily or even weekly routine but it happens.

They validate that I’m allowed to have my feelings. They offer the comfort they can provide (a hug) and then we move on with our days. You can’t have this kind of support without admitting that you need it.

Noah is so nice to me. SOOO nice to me. He actually wants to see me every single day. He actually enjoys talking with me day after day. It is overwhelming.

My mama couldn’t stand me. I don’t understand why anyone else has an easier time. Only now that I’ve been a mom for a while I think I can understand why my mom had such a hard time with me. I was a truly difficult child. If they had used the phrase Oppositional Defiance Disorder when I was a child I’m sure I would have been diagnosed.

I’m not saying I am awesome and everyone is bad for not wanting me. I’m not saying that. I was awful. I was really hard. I was mean and spiteful and vicious. I still am if you catch me in the right mood. I was a complete fucking asshole.

But I wish my mama had loved me any way.

Every day when my kids tell me they love me I want to deflect it. I want to say, “No you don’t.” or “You wouldn’t love me if you really knew me.”

But yesterday Shanna asked me to read a book about development with her. (It’s So Amazing! It’s a book about conception/pregnancy/sex but it’s not exactly graphic. It’s a kids book.) We got to the part where every girl is born with all the eggs in her ovaries she will ever have.

Shanna told me, “So I was part of you when you were born. No wonder I love you so much.”

I almost lost it and it was hard to continue reading in a calm voice. No wonder I love my mommy so much. I’m part of her. I was part of her through all the suffering of her early life. I didn’t go off and separate until after most of the worst trauma. I am intrinsically and basically on her side.

But I have to protect my kids whether I want my mama or not. Because they are part of me. And it’s my job to keep them safe. That is my only fucking job. I wish that keeping my children safe did not mean shunning my mama.

I don’t feel I deserve the love of the people I live with because I can’t love my mama right. If you can’t do that surely you deserve eternal punishment. Chain me up right next to Prometheus. We both suck.

But the thing is, talking about my PTSD allowed me to develop the relationships I have. I could not have this supportive of a relationship with Noah if I did not talk about my life experiences. It is literally impossible.

So feelings. Talking about the feelings is hard. Talking about the feelings is the only way to build the intimacy that creates trust that alleviates the symptoms. The whole cycle is shitty and awful because talking is so hard because I don’t have that basic trust to start with.

Today is Lego Club day. Whatever my feelings are, they are mine. They stay here in Wonderland. Only Noah has to really hear about them. A little bit leaks out with other friends but not a lot. And I’m going to a home school event. I am there so my children can make friends not so I can get support. And I don’t fucking forget it.

I am grateful that I have three people who love me. That’s more than a lot of people get. I am so glad I get to have the life I have. I feel so safe. I feel like it is ok for me to take risks.

I made the event mailing lists yesterday. If you were not invited that is probably because I could only invite ten people at a time so I picked the first names who came up in my address book. I am having a crises of confidence. If I didn’t send you invitations and you like being invited to things at our house, email me. I am in the invitation list formation stage.

I think I made Google Groups so people can join or not and I no longer have to be afraid that I shouldn’t be bothering people with invitations. I have terrible anxiety about inviting people over. I don’t want to be told no. But I understand that everyone is very busy. If I have people who opt-in to “Sure invite me as often as you like and I’ll come when I can” maybe that will filter some of the anxiety. Maybe. (Seriously–please ask to join the list if you have any inclination. I’m not rejecting you. I’m being paralyzed with anxiety that you might reject me.)

I also finished the petition and printed it out. The kids and I should start walking the neighborhood to collect signatures today. Oh goodness.

I was very careful in my wording. I want everyone in our neighborhood to be happy, healthy, and included. Let’s find a way to work together. No one should be pushed out. But sometimes in order to cohabitate peacefully you have to talk about boundaries. Healthy relationships have boundaries.

Cross your fingers. Davey Crockett says: “Be sure you’re right. Then go ahead.”

I believe I am right to try and intercede. I believe that there is positive to gain for the people in our neighborhood if we can negotiate for the limits we physically need for health.

Despite waking up and feeling like I should spend the day under my desk rocking and crying (some mornings are just like that) I will do a lot of community building. It doesn’t matter that I feel like I “can’t”. The plain and simple truth is that I can. I just have to get up and do it.

Never just one thing

5 Replies

Overall I am in a good place. I’ve been pretty consistent in my emotional state and behavior over the past few days. But then there are those crashing waves of missing my mother. Having my life be overall wonderful makes those bits harder.

Why can’t I bring my mom along on this awesome-family-ride. Because my mom would wreck it. Because she would come to my house and tell me softly and sweetly how every terrible thing that goes wrong with anyone is my fault because I am so terrible. She would tell my kids that people suffer for them. She would tell my kids that it is all their fault that bad things happen to their parents.

You can’t control other people. My mom is who she is. She has had a viciously awful life and she has coped as best she may. I don’t really blame her for coping the way she has. Deflecting blame is a lot of how she keeps the worst of the misery from drowning her. I get it. I don’t even feel angry any more. But I won’t let my kids be the bottom of the shit hill.

I was asked why I didn’t just back off on time with my friend I’m having conflict with. Because he is autistic and that is EVERYONES first go to. If I put strict boundaries on the conversations he doesn’t bother me and we don’t have the conflict. We have extreme conflict because he’s a large white man who believes he has been persecuted as badly as any human ever. I can see why he thinks that. He certainly is treated badly. And to all evidence he is literally incapable of seeing anything but his point of view. He’s not just being stubborn.

I can see more points of view. I’m not sure if it is an advantage or disadvantage. I can see that he truly has suffered a great deal in his life.

Being a large white male doesn’t save you from being beaten up and raped and shunned and loathed just for existence. If you are weird you should die. I get it.

I’ve just lived in enough non-white areas that I see what my white privilege has granted me. I don’t think he has had similar experiences and I’m not sure he could internalize the lessons at this point anyway. At some point you are who you are.

I’m not who I will be yet. I’m still changing really fast. Some people don’t change very much. Some people are almost exactly the same at 60 as they are at 19. I admire that and despise it at the same time. I think I despise it because it is so far outside the realm of my capabilities and that makes me feel pathetic.

Today is a don’t-go-anywhere-don’t-socialize day. Tomorrow is a small amount of socializing for me. Sunday is a half marathon. I’m not feeling all that ready. I’m not eating right and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong exactly. My belly has felt really heavy and lump-like lately. Like most of my food is just sitting in my stomach undigested as a big rock. My legs are tight and sore. I think this might be a rough race. I need to back off on my hopes to be fast and just finish. It’ll be ok. My knee has been twinging. My ankle keeps giving me trouble. Not like OH MY GOD I CAN’T RUN but I have to slow down and be careful and deliberate in my foot placement.

When my kids snuggle up and tell me I am the best mama in the world I tell them that I am glad they like me because I am not everyones cup of tea. Shanna smiles at me and says, “Well they can have any wrong opinion they want to have.” I love my daughter with the power of a thousand suns. I feel so lucky that I get to spend all day with someone who likes me so much.

I’m still excessively grooving on this stay at home parent thing. No, I don’t want to send them off to school so I can have “me time”. I get me time. Maybe not as much as my friends who work but Noah and the kids and I have figured it out. It took a while. It took the kids getting old enough to entertain themselves and meet a lot of their own needs. I no longer have to assist with every pee or poop in the house. It is glorious to be freed from such a time consuming obligation. And I do less laundry. HALLELUJAH! You don’t appreciate the lack of something until you do it for years.

I can’t have the mama I want. But the nice lady who let me paint on her fence last summer is giving me lots of seeds. She saves from her garden. And she wants to sit around and exchange Chinese words for English words about plants. Peepaw (spelling is completely fucked) is the sound for the word that mean loquat. And that is the one I can sound out well enough to kind of write down. She told me at least fifteen more and that’s the one I remember the next day. I’m kinda slow and stupid sometimes.

I should learn the words for things I like to eat instead of for things I’m not that into. Duh.

I would like to be able to passably get food in about six languages. That would make me very happy before we take off on our year-long international adventure. Donde esta el bano (yes I know I am missing accent marks but it would take me multiple minutes of staring at the keyboard to get accent marks because I haven’t used them in a few years and I’m a lazy fucker and I can’t remember and… pretend I know that the e and the a and the n all have accents–ok?) is a phrase I need to be able to translate into Mandarin (more common than Cantonese), Thai (we are thinking about Thailand), French (much of Africa speaks French), and I already know it in English and Spanish. Only three languages to go.

Beat head against wall.

I feel very happy that language acquisition is one of the main tasks of my life for the next few years. I like the way it is self evident. Either I study and can talk to people or I stand there mute and feel awkward. I like those kinds of situation. “This is on you. Get it done or it will be hella obvious you were too fucking lazy.”

I haven’t edited in a while. I’ll get it done. Maybe I’ll do table work in the kitchen today with the kids. They like that. Clearly I’m not doing it during my pre-dawn time. I’m enjoying the lack of serious thinking. I’m mentally tired.

I’m keeping a lot in my head. Not that it’s important or anything. But I rehearse a lot of things in my head. I feel tired. My head feels sore. I feel like I try to think too many hours of the day. These purges help a lot. Thank you internet, you are there for me. I appreciate that.

I’m being a chicken shit about a number of things for no good reason. I’m just scared. Any time you act you risk people rejecting you. I’d rather sit at home alone by choice than be rejected and find out that I’m at home alone because no one wants me.

Let’s be clear that I’m not delusional enough to believe that no one likes me. That’s not the point. But there will always be people who have feelings in my direction that are hard for me to handle. And I have to deal with that without being an asshole. That takes work. I’m not always good at that work. Sometimes I’m really bad. Sometimes I fuck up relationships because how dare those people have big feelings. I am such an asshole.

I don’t think I’ve done anything awful recently. Always hard to tell.

Ok, I’m ready to stop typing. Have a day.

my life is good when I’m not chemically out of whack

3 Replies

The new ergonomic keyboard doesn’t have all the parts necessary to work. This is annoying. That is going to be the low point of my day. Which is really cool. I can exchange my biggest problem of the day.

Every single day I wake up grateful for Noah. He is so nice to me. He is so kind. I have received more love and caring in the past seven years than in the previous twenty-five years put together. I am so lucky.

Many people have childhoods as bad as mine. Most of them don’t go on to have happy adult lives. At this point in time my strife feels like stuff I’m opting into or it is so structurally vast that it isn’t really a day-to-day problem for me. I have conflicts with my friends because I pick intelligent, opinionated, fierce people for my life. I go out and hand select them out of the bunch of quieter and more complaisant people. I can’t bitch that we have conflict. I can learn how to manage it without having a heart attack–damnit. Or I’m fighting things like rape culture and whereas it is a problem every day it isn’t a Daily Problem if you know what I mean.

If I was hungry that would be a Daily Problem. If I didn’t know how I was going to pay rent that would be a Daily Problem. I don’t have those kinds of problems anymore. My big problems are that sometimes my kids scream more than I like or I am inconvenienced by a major electronics retailer.

I just can’t bitch too loud, you know?

My garden is so beautiful lately that it takes my breath away. I MADE THAT MOTHERFUCKER!!! WHOO HOO!!!!!!!!! *happy dance*

I no longer feel like everything I touch turns to shit. Some stuff doesn’t work out. It isn’t all my fault and I am not poison. I can do things. My corn is popping up. Clearly I can do something.

I see so much green. I have more plans. It’s going to take years and every day of work will be a joy. I get to stay here long enough to make long-term plans. I get to dream about the future. Shanna likes to talk about building one of the houses next door so we can tear down the fence between the yards and build a second story walkway between the houses. (Technically she just wanted to fully connect the houses. I voted for the second floor walkway so we could still have the side yards in between for plants. She decided that I am smarter than I look. She is my kid.)

I think that sounds pretty magical and wonderful. When I remodel my house I am getting a sound proof room so my husband can beat me and no one will hear. I want to have that privacy in the future (I’m kind of sick of not being able to play at home) but I also want to have the connection with my kids. I like them as people. It’s not about having control over them forever. I enjoy their company. If they enjoy mine I’d be thrilled to keep hanging out with them. I genuinely like them.

I feel so lucky.

When you decide at seventeen that what you want is to be a home schooling parent there is a lot of room for things to not work out. I feel blessed that not only did I find a partner who is supportive but my children and I happen to have compatible temperaments. They have a lot of freedom to do things that bug me without penalty. Frequently I will acknowledge, “This is not my favorite thing. But I don’t get to control everything you do. I hope it goes well. I can’t watch.”

I feel incredibly lucky that my dreams are coming true and it’s actually a pleasant process. That is a rare dichotomy. Usually if you get what you want you find out it isn’t that great.

Noah is that great. The joy I feel spending all day with my kids is that great.

This weekend was basically perfect. I ran 12 miles. Socialized with a very old friend (16 years and counting–more than half my life now) for three hours; rocky stuff happening in her life but I’m glad she has the fortitude to take the steps she needs to take. It is kind of amazing the way her life is 100% different than it was three years ago. She has a new job in an entirely new field (she left theatre) she has a kid and she’s about to be single for the first time in a very long time. That’s a lot of big changes. Got an ergonomic keyboard and new running shoes. Otherwise we hid in the house. That’s a very slow weekend for us. Eight hours of bustle for me and no one else.

Of course because I was in the house and only busy for eight hours out of forty-eight I did a bunch of yardwork. Grow wildflowers, grow. Damn you. I hung up the hanging pots! I’ve had them for over a year and I haven’t gotten around to it. I’m getting all my residual chores done that I’ve been procrastinating on now that I’m procrastinating on editing. Doo de doo. I’ll get it done.

And the petition. I’m going for upbeat, friendly, everyone should get to live here without pain.

I’m really grateful that my neighbors are becoming so much more friendly over time. I will know everyone on the block some day. We have a new family! With kids! They are visibly Islamic so I will cross my fingers that I can behave in a socially appropriate enough way to manage to not offend the parents so our kids can be friends. My lifestyle is different. I won’t corrupt your young children.

I will wait until they are teenagers.

Ahem.

I will corrupt them with ideas like, “No one gets to touch any part of your body unless you actively want it to happen. If someone does so, find other adults who can help you deal with the situation.”

And, “Sex is awesome and if you want to have it then that is between you and your conscious. If you are going to have heterosexual sex, use two forms of birth control every single time you have sex. Always a condom no matter what. Always another form of birth control for the woman. If you are going to have homosexual sex then one barrier is fine. Use barriers. Every time. Even for oral.”

When you are young you don’t know what is going to happen to you 50 years from now. You won’t know you want to do until you get there. Leave as many options open as possible. Protect your body and your sexual health. There are no take backs once you contract a disease and you can’t tell by looking at people who has what. Even medical testing is iffy for a lot of diseases. Protect yourself until you are ready to have children. Or you get married and are on permanent birth control because you have ruled out kids. I don’t care what married people do. When you are a kid and you can’t take care of a kid, USE BIRTH CONTROL.

I support you having one kid, two kids, twelve kids, twenty kids (though I will instinctively wince just because oh man I can’t imagine that) or no kids at all because oh man kids are icki.

Maybe I will corrupt your kids. I want to introduce them to the concept of plurality. There can be more than one right answer. Your way isn’t the only way. My way isn’t the only way.

I admire many of the tenants of faith from all of the major religions. I think religion is mostly a set of written down rules on how to be good. Every one has their own idea of what “good” means. I think there need to be many sets of rules because we need many kinds of people.

All progress depends on the unreasonable (wo)man. If no one has a belief that is unreasonable to you then progress won’t be made. We have to stretch the borders of acceptable parameters.

Yes, autistic ways of being should be better understood and supported from earlier in life so that folks have an easier adulthood. I struggle with how to deal the bitterness from the current adults who didn’t get any help.

I understand what it feels like to desperately need help during your childhood and to not get it. I have more options for help now that I’m an adult. Autistic adults… not so much. The vast majority of all people with mental illness do not have the resources I have.

I am one of the lucky ones. How much of that is privilege granted to me by the color of my skin? How much of that has been my ability to meet the right people so I can get help? How much of that is that I first had access to state funded therapy and then I had good health insurance and then I had a rich husband?

If you prosecute your rapist then you get state funded therapy. You will be part of the victim-witness support network. That shit is worth its weight in gold. My PTSD has been classified as severe for more than half my life. The state has a vested interest in keeping me off of a bell tower with an Uzi. The state also wants me to not kill myself. The state put a lot of money into educating me and the state wants a productive citizen out of the deal, damnit.

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” JFK was a guilt trippin’ motherfucker. But he’s right.

My autistic friends teach me over and over and over and over that it really doesn’t matter what you “mean” when you say something. It matters what other people see, hear, and feel as a result of you saying something. If you play it right then you get the reaction and relationship you want. If you play it wrong then you alienate people and they hate you and blame their feelings of discomfort on you.

I’m such an asshole. I totally treat other people the way I am treated. Them’s just the rules of the jungle.

But if you consciously believe with your whole heart that it takes all kinds and there is value to every life then you ought not to be that kind of asshole. This is troubling. This is where my ethics and morals and behavior don’t line up. This is not so cool. Ok. When your behavior doesn’t match your ethics you have a few choices.

A) Ignore the mismatch and be a flaming hypocrite.

B) Acknowledge the mismatch and say, “But I have REASONS” and be a flaming hypocrite.

C) Acknowledge the mismatch and decide whether to change your ethics/morals or your behavior. This has mandatory follow up steps if the goal is to change your behavior. If you have no later checks then you will resort to “easier” instead of doing what is right.

Well, as much as I believe that it takes all kinds and everyone is valuable and shit I think that people have the right to reject me. I believe that people have the right to not want to know me. I believe that people have the right to not invite me to their parties and not invite me to their homes because I am rude and offensive. They don’t even need a reason. They can just be not that interested in me.

They have the right to not want to be my friend. I don’t get to take that away from them just because I long for community.

Like my neighbors. Some engage with me more than others. Even the ones who are clearly uninterested in a relationship they have gotten to the point of obvious recognition and acknowledgment of humanity.

My monkey sphere is pretty fucking full. It’s ok that not everyone in the whole world wants to be my best friend. I am incredibly overwhelmingly lucky to have the diverse relationships I have.

Not all of my friends are “nice people”. Some of them are canonical “nice people”. I like variety. I have something to learn from everyone. I am imperfect but striving. That is all I can do.

I’m glad when the anger passes. When the sudden rage dissipates. I don’t really “know” what causes it. It’s about a lot of different factors all exploding at once. It’s different every time.

In the wake of it I feel gratitude for the absence. I’m glad I didn’t fuck up a relationship. I didn’t scream. (One yell. But it was of the “I WOULD LIKE TO FINISH A SENTENCE WITHOUT BEING INTERRUPTED” variety and there are much worse things I could have done. Not great but I call it a win anyway.)

Children are supposed to test boundaries. That is the whole point of childhood. You learn what happens when you do things.

Shanna tries to be a joker. She likes to lighten the mood. She wants to make a face and make me laugh and have everything be all better now. It’s honestly kind of weird to me. Some of her “joking” faces have all the markers of “I want to start a fist fight”. I have taken to asking, “Is that a silly face or an angry face?” The answer is almost always, “Silly!” (She does get mad too–but that’s usually more clear and related to a situation I can understand.)

When my kids ask me to lighten up I either do so or leave the room until I can calm down because I’m flooding. They have a right to not be around a stress-tastic person. I want them to learn how to have boundaries too.

The thing about our relationship is that we always come back and snuggle after tense moments. We are incredibly physically affectionate. If my kids rejected my affection I would stop but they beg for more. I hug, cuddle, and kiss them hundreds or thousands of times a day. Maybe we have the odd day when I only kiss the top of their heads like ten times.

We check in and then we run off to do our thing again.

Are you still there? I still love you and want to be around you. Ok, I’m going to do my thing again.

I have wanted this my whole life.

I feel horrible guilt but at this point I can have two to three hours by myself on many days. My kids can be told to go in the back yard with snacks and they don’t come back for hours. I feel like I shouldn’t be abandoning them for those periods. But it’s good for all of us so I do it. Other parents don’t force their kids to be alone so they can get alone time. They put their kids in daycare so they can play with other kids instead of being forced into solitude. I don’t feel like a nice mom.

I would feel differently if Shanna were less social. I think Calli loves it. She checks in when she needs to for her hug and kiss and then she goes back to playing.

I spend my days making up songs about how much and why I love my kids. My children will not be the type to grow up and wonder if their parents loved them. My kids are more on the smothered end. Only I take them to the park and classes and parties and turn them loose. They are very engaged with the world and they do not allow me to mediate any more. Shanna flat tells me to leave her alone at parties. She knows that my anxiety cramps her style. It’s… a little weird. But she seems to be working with what she has so we’ll see where it takes her.

I’m not the boss of her life. I mean, I sort of am for a little while. But not for forever. It is my job to teach her the rote body memory necessary for caring for yourself with ease an adult. You will just be used to “This is what we do all day to take care of our bodies.” It won’t be this weird thing that involves transactions with other people all day long to get your basic needs met.

The thing I hate the most about all the American bastards who wrote about “self sufficiency” and “self reliance” and living out in the woods by themselves WOULD HAVE STARVED if not for the generosity of women in their communities.

Fuck your self reliance.

And yet! There is a basic level of self care that I believe that every human being should have. I feel rather disturbed by the number of adults I know who say, “I can barely boil water”. What the hell. That shows a dramatic and disturbing hole in your education. Your parents failed you. I’m sorry for that.

See, I’m a judgmental bastard all over the place.

And if you catch me on the wrong day I may rant at you about how debt (in particular consumer debt and school loans) is the boogeyman. It will eat your soul. It will force you into a crappy and terrible life where you have no ability to change the system. Debt will make you a slave.

Ugh and ick. I’m looking forward to the days of not having a mortgage. I feel grateful for this fact. I’m scared I won’t manage it in the five years I was hoping to do it. I’m afraid it may take six or seven because then we will have to come up with mortgage payments during the WWOOF year and that will be kind of annoying.

But it wouldn’t be the end of the year. And maybe if we rented out our house for pretty much the mortgage we could make it work.

“I will find a way or make one.” ~~Roman~~ Carthaginian general Hannibal didn’t fuck around.

The number of opportunities in your life increase as you build skills. I feel increasingly confident that I can meet the challenges that come my way. I may not get rich–but I think I will manage our resources well enough to not eat cat food in my old age. At that point my supposed food ethics may go to hell. I will eat what I can afford. I had better never develop actual gluten issues or I’m fucked. Giving up ramen would be traumatic.

I don’t have a lot of answers. I think I am ready to set some boundaries in a nice voice without being an asshole. I feel more relaxed after the weekend. I feel grateful that my problems are this small.

Six days till my next race. I’m ready but I may be slow. That will be ok too. I hope to best three hours. We’ll see.

My life is pretty cool.

Wired for sound.

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That’s the expression I use for vibrating with anxiety. I woke up because a kid turned the bathroom light on. I need more sleep. But I’m AWAKE.

Yesterday we went to the kid dentist. Both kids got A+ from the dentist. I feel weird about them getting graded. After telling Shanna with great enthusiasm that her teeth were perfect the dentist looked like he was sucking a lemon when I said that Shanna has been brushing and flossing herself for a bit over a month now. “That’s not ok. She’s not able to get her teeth clean yet.” …. did you or did you not just tell me that her teeth were perfect?

He’s also concerned about the size of Calli’s tonsils. Especially given that I do the gasping for air thing that probably means I have sleep apnea. The dentist also bitched me out for that. I should go do a sleep study and seek treatment because apparently sleep apnea can take up to six years off your life.

“You don’t understand. That gasping for breath sends your body into fight or flight mode. That can shorten your entire life span.”

“Uhm, with all due respect I have PTSD and live in a hypervigilant hell of fight or flight every day. I don’t think the sleep apnea is what is going to kill me. But thanks for your concern.”

He looked taken aback at that return.

I spent two hours reading about autistic adults yesterday. I have some ideas about how to manage my current boundary problems with a friend. I’m going to need to solve them and not expect a fix from my friend. Some things can’t be fixed by other people. Some things you have to do yourself. He can’t guess where my boundaries are.

I don’t want to stop weekly visits. But I do want to stop having to spend seven days processing each visit before another one happens to rocket me into feeling angry, used, and like I want to beat the shit out of someone non-consensually.

I think step one is going to be, “I would like to stop discussing the bdsm community with you at all. I can’t be free to say what I want to say in front of my kids and you say more than I think is appropriate and then I can’t respond and then I’m just fucking pissed. I need to not do this.”

That needs to be step one. If you can’t spend a two hour visit talking about something other than the bdsm community then I need to make the visits less frequent. Too much is leaking out around my kids. Not to mention that I’m only tangentially involved in the scene at this point and I really don’t need to be spending my time freaking out about what other people are or aren’t doing. I don’t need this shit.

That is step one. That is as close as I can get to not black and white thinking on this. Move the goal post. I don’t need to end the visits immediately because I’m experiencing too much emotion. I need to figure out how to have less emotion. It’s not “all his fault” I am having these feelings. But having theoretical conversations about what other people should or shouldn’t do causes me more distress than happiness and I would like to stop doing it.

That doesn’t mean my friendship has to go away. Let’s just have a bright shiny change of topic. All the autistic forums recommend going for as blunt and straightforward as possible. “I’m experiencing a full week of activation after our visits and I need that to change. One idea I have is that we could take the topic of the bdsm community off the table for a while and I can see if that is the problem. If that isn’t the way to solve the problem I may ask for further modifications in the future but for now I’d like to start by talking about other things. It’s only two hours. Surely we can find something else to talk about.”

I love you. I value you. I want you to exist not only in the abstract world but in my world. Right now I’m spending seven days a week being pissed off at you and that isn’t working for me. Let’s try something else.

People don’t trigger me because they are wrong or bad or pick a negative adjective. People trigger me because I have a long personal history of crap. My emotions reside inside my body and aren’t the fault of anyone. If I need to manage myself differently that doesn’t mean that someone else is wrong.

I wish I found my boundaries without feeling this much destructive rage. That would be useful. Future Goal And All.

I asked a friend how she handles her autistic son when he’s on a topic she doesn’t want to talk about. She said she tunes him out.

Tuning someone out is hard for me. I do kind of the antithesis of tuning my kids out. I’m nosy, probably borderline invasive (if I listen to my kids this much when they are 12/14 it will probably be an invasion of their privacy–I tell myself that small children have different boundaries) and I believe that the only way I can know my kids are getting what they need is if I provide it. I don’t trust that things will run smoothly unless I micromanage the fuck out of it. (I understand that other people go through life without micromanaging and things turn out fine. Bully for you. I have issues I’m managing.)

We’re always solving yesterday’s problems.

I think it’s funny how people say things to me and it becomes a major touch-stone theme in my writing for years. These little phrases. I am made up of thousands of people. I steal their words and ideas and sometimes their boundaries.

Sometimes loving someone means deciding, “I would rather not talk about _________ with you.”

It has been very rare in my life that someone has been able to provide me with such clear boundaries. I am slaveringly grateful when people can state clear boundaries around conversation. Otherwise I tend towards the “inappropriate”.

It is hard for me to guess which parts of my normal day to day life might traumatize other people. Ok, maybe not my current day to day life, but my past. I can talk about some things with some people and it’s bloody hard to guess what with whom. If I slip then I am a terrible person for traumatizing someone. So I hear. It’s hard to get over having therapists tell me that I should never discuss my history with lay people or I am being abusive.

“Group therapy isn’t appropriate for people with your level of trauma. You will just be abusive with the group members.”

Ouch.

I’m supposed to shut the fuck up. No, I’m not supposed to shut the fuck up. I’m really not. I’m not going to no matter how much some people wish I would. Noah likes reading it. He’s my ideal reader. Stephen King tells me I only need one and then I’m golden.

To abruptly change the topic: Calli is in a phase. I ask what she wants. I say ok, sure thing and move towards doing the thing. She changes her mind. I say, “I’m already 75% done with foo”. She explodes and starts screaming at me about how she wants the opposite of foo. I am terrible. I don’t love her. Hysterical crying. Flailing of arms and legs. It is the end of the world. If we are out in public I pick her up and carry her back to the car and drive home. If we are home I ask her not to scream in the living room and carry her to a screaming room if necessary. Then I need some time alone.

I’m too highly activated all the time. I’m worried about my reflexes right now. I’m punchy and twitchy.

I’m trying to just roll with it. I know from books (thank you child development books. You are the best things in the whole fucking world) that this is normal and standard and the best way to handle it is to teach emotional self regulation slowly and patiently. Validate the emotions and help them learn to calm down. Yup, you really are that disappointed all of a sudden. That sounds hard. Sometimes when you make a choice you have to live with it or get nothing. That’s how life goes. Yup, it’s terribly hard sometimes. Sometimes it is so hard you cry. I can see you understand that step already.

But it takes so much patience and calm. My well runneth dry.

A while ago I told a friend that her husband required the same kind of patience from me as her children. She looked kind of startled. A fair number of my friends (I almost defaulted to the sexist “male friends” but then I stopped and thought–nope it’s not gender related I just have issues with people.) require the same kind of “must stop and patiently explain what I’m thinking to someone belligerent and unfamiliar with my vocabulary” kind of behavior from me. I totally don’t mind doing it with kids. That has always been easy. Explaining “down” doesn’t bother me. It feels just and I don’t get nearly as frustrated.

I’m kind of a raging asshole when it comes to adults. I didn’t try to go for being a college professor for reasons. I don’t have fucking patience for them. Shut the fuck up and get your shit done you stupid fucking piece of shit.

Yeah, 8th period social club was way more effective as a teaching method.

(I don’t really believe that people are stupid pieces of shit for not knowing things I know. But I’m really not a very nice person in my head.)

No one has commented on my lack of tact in years. I wonder what that means about my social skills. It isn’t that I spend less time with people. I spend time with very different kinds of people. And I’m not hunting for sex. That probably is the biggest mellowing feature.

These days hunting for sex is more like shooting fish in a barrel. It changes the vibe. Hunting for sex is one of the least activating activities in my life. *nudge* “Wanna?” “Yes!”

It’s flattering but not exciting in the same way. It’s nice. I’m not complaining. Ok, moving on.

Hi, non-neurotypical brain let’s try to figure out how to make you interact with my trauma damaged brain without an explosion from adrenaline. Your tics and my tics have got to combine. We can find a way. Damnit. Fourteen years. I don’t want to lose more long time friends. Sure you piss me off. Everyone else does too if I spend enough time with them.

If I avoided people because they pissed me off I would never leave my house. Which would suck.

People delight me more than they bother me. It’s hard to hold that focus sometimes. That’s the extremist black and white thinking. “I love you. I hate you.” Me and Taylor Swift.

Our babysitter keeps asking for modifications based on how tired she is. “I know we said going until x’o’clock but can it be x-2’o’clock because I haven’t been sleeping well.”

On one hand I have thoughts of “unprofessional” and on the other hand I feel so delighted by her confidence in caring for her body. She’s a growing kid. I’m glad she is smart enough to prioritize sleep. I am unflaggingly sympathetic and willing to be flexible. I need her more than she needs me. I’d better fucking be nice.

In every loving relationship there is a power imbalance. Whoever loves the most has the least power. That’s what my mama taught me.

Is it mercenary to take stock of whether I need someone more than they need me and plan my behavior accordingly? It means I am much more of an asshole with people who need me more than I need them. That’s not exactly cool. I’m not talking raging asshole, but I’m less flexible.

Are those enough words so that I can sleep? Maybe. I have improved the ergonomic set up but it isn’t perfect yet. I need a better keyboard. The neck angle isn’t perfect but it has improved. At least I’m using the tray and a better mouse already. I do need a better keyboard. This one is way too narrow for me. I’ll save it for kidlets.

Just breathe.

I should post pictures of my garden. It’s beautiful. I have tulips and narcissus and sage and rosemary and the Japanese lantern all in bloom. The rose leaves are beautifully red. The Joseph’s Coat roses in the back are starting to bloom. The strawberries and blueberries have lots of flowers and starting fruit. The blackberry isn’t going to give me fruit this year. The hacking stunted it. I get it. Sorry, dude. I needed to change your trellis. The plum tree is covered in flowers. Yesterday I saw the buds on the cherry tree finally start opening.

Spring is here. We have peas, beans, and squash left to plant. The corn has appeared but I need to let it get a bit higher before I plant the peas and beans that will climb up the stalks. Then a few weeks after that the pumpkins.

The artichoke is huge but I don’t see signs of fruiting yet. I have no idea what it will look like. The asparagus is coming right along. I don’t eat them this year. Next year.

Patience, grasshopper. You have a lifetime.

My neighbor dropped off a few more strawberry plants. I’m thrilled to have them. I have a whole bed of strawberries and one of those strawberry pots. I was given it. I use pots that I’m given. We spend so much money on strawberries every year. At least $200/year on strawberries. I’d like to grow a whole bunch. I understand that Noah and I will eat fewer than when we have no small fructivores in the house. Still.

When I am old I hope my intestine will allow me to largely live on raw fruit from my back yard and meat. That would be rad. Way less cooking. I’ll get me a George Forman grill and I’ll be golden. Rice in a rice cooker. Fuck vegetables. That sounds like the amount of cooking I like doing.

I eat vegetables now because I’ve been brainwashed into thinking my kids must eat them and I must model eating them.

I’m going to take six years off my life due to sleep apnea. Heh. If I manage to live long enough to die of natural causes That’s a win.

It’s interesting how different people have different goal posts.

Not getting a lot shorter.

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I am really bad at “editing to make shorter”. I’m all “What do you mean you want to delete some of my PRECIOUS WORDS”. The book may be longer than 30,000 words. Ahem.

The suicide book is hard to read. When I go through sections I stop to reflect on my grandmother, my father, my brother and myself and I put all the theories through the different forced perspectives.

I don’t know why my grandmother killed herself. I know she was the only illegitimate daughter of a prostitute. I know she was married to a Mennonite who was controlling. I know she had five kids and lost one. I know she was very over weight. I know she over dosed when my mom was pregnant with me. There is some possibility that it was an accident. My mom said she saw multiple doctors and had prescriptions for fucking everything. Maybe in the days pre-medication-databases people didn’t cross check her medications. Who knows.

My father killed himself the morning his trial was supposed to start. He didn’t want to go through being prosecuted for raping me. Even though he confessed to the police he wrote suicide notes denying his guilt and blaming me for being a liar who destroyed my family. He sat in his garage with the motor running. Everyone thought he would put a gun to his head but I suppose he was too much of a chicken shit.

My brother covered himself on gasoline and lit himself on fire. There is no accident there. There is no going gently into the good night. Tommy was fucking sure he wanted to die that day in a very painful way. Tommy probably didn’t want to find out what would happen when my dad went on trial. Tommy was very dependent on our father because of his brain injury. And if Tommy was put on the stand it might come out that our father was raping Tommy too. I doubt Tommy wanted to face that.

Suicide happens when someones pain is too big for them to contain any more. I don’t know what pain my grandmother was in. I don’t know what happened to my father in his life to cause him to become a monster. I don’t fault my brother for being done with his shitty life. It was really bad.

But I look at these different perspectives and then I think about me. I don’t know how my grandmother was treated in her life. I know that I went from being treated pretty badly to being treated extraordinarily well. Thank you, Noah.

Noah is sure he wants to keep me for as long as he can have me. This baffles me. I’m not easy to be around. I argue a lot. I can be fairly nasty. I am inherently biased against many of Noah’s points of view–which makes me an asshole on a regular basis. Well, sorta.

I’m careful not to attack Noah. I’m careful not to be mean to him. He has carved out an exception. If he was more sensitive to comments about groups he is sort of part of then we would have more trouble. Luckily being “sensitive” is not one of his strong suits. Phew. He ignores my sniping. Well until he doesn’t and then he argues and argues and argues until I back off. But boy howdy we are civil about it.

It’s kind of weird. Even when I think we are all set for an argument to clear the air… we have a civilized discussion where maybe we don’t like the topic but we can get through it without insulting one another or being a jerk. It’s weird.

I like Noah. He is worth modifying a lot of my behavior. He is very good at challenging me and not discounting me at the same time. We are very good at kicking one another in the ass.

So I don’t have good reasons to die any more. I have a really good life. I spend my days with people who are delighted to be in my presence. I spend my days with people who will cheerfully retry on word choice and tone of voice with a simple “Try again”. We all will. This is an even-steven job. We want to be nice to one another and we all recognize that sometimes that is hard. Sometimes things come out wrong and you need to try again.

No big deal.

It is really nice being able to assume the best of intentions. I think this is what my family resented so much. I never gave them the benefit of the doubt. Not once. Every nasty thing was taken at full face value with extra venom assumed. But they hit me a lot. And told me I was worthless a lot. They called me cunt and bitch and whore and stupid and told me they wished I had never been born.

I don’t think giving them the benefit of the doubt would have been wise. I still feel sad and miss them. That missing is the dangerous and scary part. I feel very bad for hurting my family. If there is a pain that will drown me still in my life that is probably it. Luckily I have three people who are very clear that I am not hurting them and they want me to stay very badly.

I try to remember that. I am important now. I am no longer just that stupid bitch at the bottom of the shit hill. I am not worthless.

It is hard to really believe and see myself as what I am. It would be easier to ignore the real self and try to build a grandiose persona.

But the simple realities of who I am are ok. I’m not as lame as I like to think. I am a teacher. I am a doer and a maker. I help start businesses. Some continue and some fold. I haven’t lost all my money on a business venture yet. I think I always believed I was not someone who “could” do things. I travel the world and my country. I am really good at talking to people. I’m not the best friend over time but I am good at meeting people. I’m a decent mother. I feel proud of the self control I have had in my relationship with my kids. Only fourteen and a half years to go.

Countries: Australia, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Scotland, France. I am looking forward to finding out what it feels like to be in a place where white people are not the norm. I have been reading some interesting things about volunteering and the great white savior thing.

I feel some shame about what I want from the WWOOF year. Am I going to be exploiting people? I don’t know. I am not going with the assumption that I am there to save anyone. I am going as a student hoping to learn. I do not think I have the answers or that I will be the best helper they have ever had. I hope I don’t do something so badly that they have to fix it after I leave. That would be embarrassing and pathetic. I do have carpentry skills. I have helped build things.

I don’t know. No motives are above suspicion.

I don’t want to travel the world from tourist spot to tourist spot. That isn’t my way. I want to take my kids to where the poor people live and just meet people. Not because I think I will save anyone. Not because I think that their lives will be better if they meet me. I don’t think I will have a lot of impact on their lives. Not really. Maybe I might be a pleasant afternoon or few months of conversation but I am not going with the idea that I am so awesome that I will make everything better for the people around me.

I think that the people I meet will change me more than I will change them. I am selfish and selfish and selfish and I want to have that experience. I am privileged and I get to do it. Even though I have a lot of mixed emotions about the carbon footprint and economic impact and social implications and blah.

I’m not a hero. I just want to listen.

Ok, I hope I will know one or two small tricks that will be useful for people along the way. But I’m talking minor shit. I don’t think I will be what makes or breaks people. I don’t over rate my importance like that.

Sometimes my friends are very kind to me and they reach out to let me know that I have work to do when my fourteen and a half years of parenting are up. They need me to keep writing.

My not-so-secret wish (I am putting it on the internet and all) is that I want to help people deal with incest and suicidality. Some day I hope I can make a difference in some lives. I hope I can make it easier for people to live. I hope I can ease the burden of their pain.

I hope that some day I can help people feel less alone. And that the feeling of being not-alone will be helpful for them.

I hope.

I can’t solve your problems. But I can listen.

I go in waves of feeling surprised by how I feel about having my childhood story out there for people to read. People bring it up. I need to get it back out for sale very soon. Yeah, I’m just going to self-publish. Maybe by the end of this year I will have the nerve to do a Kickstarter to get it in print. Then I get to hawk it to book stores. Terrifying.

“Hey, want to read about my shitty life? I hope it will inspire you.”

Sometimes people tell me I’m inspirational. My heart soars. But I don’t want to go the televangelist route or anything like that. I don’t really want to be a life coach. I do fantasize about a part time job putting together displays at Ikea. That would be so much fun for me.

Today is long and busy. Woof. We start the day in San Pablo at 9:00. That means leaving my house by 7:30. We have to leave San Pablo by 1:45 because we have to be back at swim lessons at 2:10. Then we come home and a friend comes over for dinner and spending the night.

Someone commented that socializing is my job. I said that wasn’t far from the truth. I spend as many hours socializing as many people spend at their jobs. That is the only way I have ongoing relationships. I don’t know who will stay for longer stretches and who is temporary. If I’m overly selective then attrition means I spend a lot of time alone feeling very bad about myself. So I say yes. And sometimes lots of people are only available on the same damn day of the week so I have marathon days in order to not pick and choose between which relationships I want more.

I want them all.

I’m in a lucky phase. I don’t have to chase in order to be so busy I can barely manage. I have managed to talk people into inviting themselves over. I have managed to get enough reoccurring dates with people that I don’t have to ask much. Thank you all for consenting to the way I like to do things. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

There is, as always, a long list of people I wish I had the courage to approach right now. I miss them. So I passive aggressively hint about it in writing and put my head down and barrel through my day. Like I do. Of course I wish they would invite themselves over. And they wish I were less of a passive aggressive twat. It’s good to want things.

My shrink tells me that given how demanding my kids are I need to be ok with more of my friendships being on a long timer. Don’t think of them as “over” just because you aren’t being very active in them right now. Life is long.

But that is how I didn’t see Jill for almost two years and then she died and… I miss her. I miss Anna. I miss Brittney. And they are done with me.

Other situations seem a lot less like I should put a lid on the coffin and start nailing. Who fucking knows what the future might bring. Maybe we will get our heads out of our asses.

We all want community. When you start rejecting people for not being perfect you quickly find that you are all alone. It isn’t better. Sometimes we have to accept people warts and all and just find a way to get along. I don’t really like that idea very much. But I have several very close friends who have a +/- window on arrival time that would have caused me to jettison them from my life years ago. Punctuality was a bigger deal pre-kids.

I come to realize that part of my softening on punctuality is because I now have a place to wait where I don’t feel awkward, stupid, abandoned, and like I am on public display as unwanted goods. I like my house.

Stop typing, Krissy. You need to edit then start the day. Go.

The best things in life are free.

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Noah and I were talking about my feeling that I don’t contribute enough. He disagrees, of course. He was fine with rattling off all the things I do to “contribute”. Yes my dear Mrs. Lincoln but how was the play?

If I can make our investments grow by even 5% a year I will eventually outpace Noah at earning money. Even though I feel he is so much “smarter” than me. I think he is more marketable. He has a much better memory. My memory comes and goes and surprises me. I can’t just memorize long blocks of text the way he does.

I know things he doesn’t, though. Things that do have value in the world even if they do not directly translate into me receiving a salary.

I should pay more attention to the investments because a)I have time b)I have motivation and c)having access to this kind of money is a gift, luxury, and privilege. With great privilege comes great responsibility.

The thing is, there is this balance I’m dealing with. The earlier I put money into investing the faster it will grow and the larger it will get. I could significantly out earn the benefit I get from over paying my mortgage. But having the house paid off is such a psychological thing for me that.. No. I’m not going to reduce my mortgage so I can “play” with investing faster. That’s not for me.

But I keep seeing the phrase “Even $100 a month can multiply to…”. I’m investing more than $100/month. Maxing out Noah’s 401k, maxing out an IRA in my name, $100/month to Shanna’s 529 and $350 to Calli’s account, and now $100 into a brokerage account that I’m picking. Gulp. We’ll see, right?

It is hard having this series of revelations, is that what being an adult means? You realize in layers oh shit–I’m also responsible for this other stuff that I never even knew existed.

I think that the plants help. Responsibility is seeming different now that I perceive it in terms of other living things will die if I don’t pay attention. It changes the perspective. My cat is also much more loving now that I take better care of her. Now that I am less neglectful.

I don’t think my self worth should come from what I do. But I believe that a lot of my life long safety will depend on my ability to create that safety for myself. I don’t have a fall back. I have the security that Noah and I build together.

It is no better or worse than anyone else has in the end. Families have problems. “Support” comes and goes. Your parents die. Medical problems come up.

What does taking care of yourself mean? What does providing for the future mean? Holy shit. How am I going to make sure I have a place to hang out when I’m old and not up for doing a lot of work? How will I eat?

Will I get old? Will I get cancer? Will I kill myself?

I’d really like to see what this house will look like when I’m sixty. It’s a deeply selfish wish. I have to not die even if I have no use to anyone else if I want to see it.

I noticed yesterday that I haven’t made progress on any of the suicide books since I was last experiencing ideation. It’s been a nice break.

I want to relate the change to being more fully medicated but that isn’t it. I have periods where I am suicidal even with medicating. The cycles are different. I think obsessing about money is a better distraction from feeling suicidal than most other tactics I’ve tried.

Tommy’s birthday didn’t trigger me this year. It was a decent day. I kind of talked to him all day long. I told him about my kids. I felt a little sad but ok.

Sissy’s birthday in January was harder but I still didn’t feel worthless.

This is such a deep puddle. Splash splash. Go eat breakfast.

post-therapy: medication

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My shrink gave me a very firm talking to this morning. I’m not sure she has ever been this directive before. Maybe she feels she is growing into the role now that I’ve been going for a year? In her opinion if I’m still having one-two panic attacks in a week then I need to medicate more heavily and stop fucking around with it. If I won’t consistently use pot then she wants me on an anti-depressant and an anti-anxiety med. I’m not sure yet how I feel about this upsurge of bossy from her.

Panic attacks, for those who may not know, can include several of the following symptoms:

“Racing” heart
Feeling weak, faint, or dizzy
Tingling or numbness in the hands and fingers
Sense of terror, or impending doom or death
Feeling sweaty or having chills
Chest pains
Breathing difficulties
Feeling a loss of control

(Thank you Webmd.com.)

For me I tend to have racing heart, dizziness, tingling in my hands and fingers (but that could be just that I type too much), sweaty, chest pain, breathing difficulty, and the horrible overwhelming feeling that I’m about to be punished because I am bad. It sounds kind of mild when I write it down. Most people who have them say they feel rather like a heart attack. They physically hurt your body and wear you down over time.

At this point I’m down to having that happen 1-2 times a week. Most of my panic attacks are in the 5-8 minute time duration window.

My shrink asked me if I liked being this way. In that, “are you keeping yourself sick because you like the attention” sort of way. I told her that I don’t deny that I like a lot of the effects of being hypervigilant. I like how many things I’m able to track at once.

I think there are reasons I need to stop doing it though. I need less multi-tasking. Interesting project opportunities continue to arrive. Hrrrmph. Tired.

And yet there are things I’ve gotta do. I could choose to not do them. It is true. But I would not like the consequences.

She told me to medicate more consistently and figure out how to increase the number of minutes I spend per day on active stress reduction. Yes, ma’am. One more forking thing to track. Goody.

It’s weird dealing with having these urges come up. I’m trying hard to learn that these things aren’t a normal part of life. I mean, I’m not alone in having panic attacks or anything. I’m not claiming I’m a completely unique snowflake or anything. This is just the road I’m on. It is well documented. I read lots of books about it. I am pathetically textbook. Feck.

What does being something different even mean? Do you know what my email handle came from? I wanted to stop using the internet handle that my Owner gave me. It was time to be something different.

So yeah. My therapist has opinions about how my PTSD symptoms are being handled. She agrees with me that I should pat myself on the back for the progress I have made and yet… I’m not where I want to be.

In a timeline: the last seven years has been the longest period of my life where I have lived in one place. Nearly twice as long as the runner up. I’m seven years post-rape. That’s after twenty-three years of being intermittently raped by a total of twelve people.

Why do I keep listing it? Because I want attention for it? *snicker* I don’t get attention for it. I make people not talk to me anymore by talking about it. Talking about it is the main way I make sure people don’t want to know me any more. It’s rather effective.

It is just true. It just is. Everyone else gets to tell me for the twenty-fifth time about their life pattern. I listen. I forking listen until I can recite the stories as well as my friends tell them about themselves.

I can clearly see all the victim blamey reasons I’m less likely to get raped from here on out. I no longer dress slutty in public unless I’m out with Noah and standing next to him the whole time. (I was only rarely dressed inappropriately in the contexts in which I was raped.) I don’t drink in public unless Noah is there. (Only three? of my rape experiences involved alcohol. I think it is awesome that I am so tired I can’t think through the roster and figure out if it is actually three. Writing No Secrets helped me lose a lot of the strings on the memories in mind. My flashbacks have dropped to basically nothing. Haven’t had one in a long time.)

Long story short: I haven’t had anything resembling a “normal life” for very long. It’s ok that I’m not very good at it. I probably deserve a lot more slack than I give myself. Only maybe I deserve a lot less. I’m never sure about these things.

More consistently medicate and spend more minutes every day on stress reduction. Ok. (Not medicate *more* or *more heavily* but more consistently. That means things like paying attention to dosage and timing and blah blah blah.)

I don’t think that I “like being able to say I’m mentally ill”. That’s more about me not being willing to hide it. I write as part of managing it.

I partially track ups and downs here because Noah has a better sense of time than I do. He can see how often I’m posting about what and help me a sense of how long different stages last. He doesn’t see most of the panic attacks.

Close friends know I have a thing about punctuality. It’s important to me. Folks probably don’t know that if I’m late somewhere I frequently have panic attacks. My uhh parenting style results in a *lot* of running late. If my kids don’t want to be at the park when the event is supposed to start, I let it happen. I try to let them set a lot of their schedule. If they dally on the way to a class it is their own darn problem. I’m at the front door ready on time and I give lots of reminders.

But I don’t nag. And I don’t force them out the door on time.

So I sometimes have to go in my room and have a panic attack. I’m down to about once a week. I swear, this is not that high for me in terms of frequency.

I’m feeling very defensive about being told to medicate more. Obviously. I want to think I’ve come a long way and I’m still making progress and isn’t that good enough and… apparently not.

The random outbursts of hyperventilating and crying etc kind of bother my kids.

Calli’s kind of in an important developmental stage. Modeling anger regulation is kinda important. This is really hard.

I feel like I have taken on a role playing gig slated to run for twenty years. I’m still figuring out my role.

Reflections

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Today I took the girls to visit an old friend of mine. I haven’t seen her much since I had kids. She’s older than me and she has a grown daughter. Talking to her is different now than it used to be.

Now she actively tries to tell me not to use her as an example. I don’t know if she was simply unaware of how I tried to pattern match off of her in the past or if it seemed more harmless.

Now she adamantly tells me that I should not make similar choices to her. She is not all that happy with the far side of the parenting road and she thinks that she made a lot of wrong choices.

Given that she is a specialist who works with developmentally delayed children (wow I know a lot of them) I did my normal poke, “Several friends think I should have Calli evaluated as potentially somewhere on the spectrum or possibly a speech delay. What do you think?”

She snickered. She said, “I have a 3.5 year old client who can point and say “unh” when he wants something. She’s really not delayed.”

This was kind of weird because I realized how much I want to brush off the encouraging and/or positive comments I receive about my children. Instead I worry and worry about the outliers who tell me, “I think you should ____”.

I never know how to feel about that. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about it, but lots of strangers stop me to grab my shoulders and stare at me in a really intense way and say, “Do you know how exceptional your child is?”

It happens every few months. I uhhh don’t know how to react. This is usually after ten or so minutes talking to Shanna. Talking about that sounds like bragging but honestly it makes me uncomfortable.

It’s not like it only comes from the sweet old grandmothers. It comes from a wide variety of people in a wide variety of circumstances. They are a lot easier to brush off and not think about much. I worry about the criticisms.

I want to believe that people are seeing the real experience of my life when they see potential areas I’m fucking up and not when it’s going right. The going right must be a fluke, right? I don’t believe compliments or positive statements. Although I’m not looney–I know my oldest child is advanced in speaking. But yeah. Whatever. How’s that going to effect the price of tea in China?

When I first knew a lot of my friends as mothers they were still young-ish mothers. I knew them through the periods they talk of with regret. It’s weird to now hear that side of it because I didn’t know anything at the time. I thought they were so great. Now they tell me not so much.

I’m worried, like I am. What am I fucking up? What am I missing? What am I not catching that a competent professional would catch?

Then I went on to read a thread on a homeschool email list about the idea of seeing a speech pathologist/therapist/getting kids evaluated for autism/etc other labels. The point was made that many, most issues (like speech stuff) would naturally resolve around six but we put kids into therapy earlier than that “so they don’t get used to the stigma of being deficient”. (Not my phrasing–emphasis is mine.)

It was a long thread and I’m quoting a very small part and the person I’m quoting had many interesting ideas so I’m not trying to paint it badly. But it was one of those “howdy there, juxtaposition” moments. (I’m working my way through a book on how people reach insights. It’s fascinating how connections layer.)

Anyway. The point was I think it is kind of interesting that I’m dithering about getting Calli evaluated. I have not been able to make up my mind if I want to pursue it or not. If she has speech delay it is extremely minor and most kids resolve minor issues on their own by six. She doesn’t have a severe speech issue. That is clear. She seems to have some difficulty with some sounds, but we do exercises. I’m not sure speech therapy would have much to offer her. The pediatrician does the basic autism screening and has at every appointment. The pediatrician says Calli is fine. But I worry.

And I hesitate to put my sticky little feet near the waters of the system. Do I really want my local school system building a dossier on my kids so that they can pester me about what I’m doing and whether I’m doing it right?

I go back and forth about how I feel about working with charter schools and it comes down to, ultimately, the fact that if I got the wrong “supervising teacher” to work with I would explode with rage.

That’s not so healthy or functional, I know.

I don’t do well with people who have a small amount of arbitrary power and then are petty. It’s a super common trait though and not a situation I really want to deal with.

But I worry about the idea that I am flying blind with no one to supervise me. The trouble is finding someone I respect who would be in an appropriate position to work with me. Mostly I just ask different people who have different specialties for informal evaluations.

Yeah. I feel mixed about the “methodology” I’m following. It’s uhm. Well. It’s unschooling. I don’t have a rubric of right or wrong. I’m just… doing.

What I’m trying to do is teach me and Shanna and Calli how to be polite to people. We have very good manners together. We can go to a grown-up only house and behave exactly how we should because there are Rules and we gosh darn spend the whole car ride there going over them. There are different rules for different places

I consciously and deliberately always specify why a rule exists.

You know that obnoxious “why” phase parents bitch about? We don’t have much of that here. I explain why before they can ever stop to consider how to react to an arbitrary rule. We don’t have many arbitrary rules.

Even “no food on the carpet” is “except on party days or very rarely with something that has NO CRUMBS”.

I need my children to be able to pick up on subtle behavior clues. I need it like I need water. It is not normal or natural to be as obsessed with it as I am. That means that it is not acceptable for me to expect my children to just be able to do it.

It means I have to explicitly teach my children how to evaluate how to talk to people. It means I have to go through and explain detailed body language stuff. We work on it a lot.

It’s controlling and wacky and crazy. But I tell them a lot, “I’m teaching you what I have learned. I don’t know everything. Sometimes I’m just flat wrong. As you grow up you will have different experiences than I’ve had and you will decide that I’m very wrong about some things. That happens to the best of us. For now, try to get some idea of what I’m looking at. It will take time and practice and you are going to make some mistakes and feel embarrassed. Brush it off and try again. You have to fail a million times before you can be an expert at anything.”

I want my kids to have the self confidence that comes from being allowed to try 30 things that fail before you find something that works.

And that means I frustrate the shit out of them.

I sorta think of myself as aspiring to be a cross of Mary Poppins, Mr. Miyagi, and Professor McGonagall. But more cuddly than that list implies.

I’m very demanding and exacting and I expect that is going to suck to live with long-term. We’ll see.

I don’t like curriculum but we talk about history a lot. I believe that studying history is important because many of the mistakes that we might make were already made by other people–go see how it worked out for them and then decide if you want that kind of result. We talk about historical people and periods and events and we read biographies.

When Shanna makes a grammar error and I correct her she does actually say, “Why was that wrong?” so I guess I get some “Why” questions. Mostly she says “What does ____ mean?”

I set the framework in their heads. We talk about space and biology and evolution and chemistry and physics and botany.

We haven’t been seriously working on language stuff but our play sometimes includes bouncing between using all the words in our collective vocabulary in every language we know to name objects in a space. It’s fun. They teach me words. (I verify things on the internet…) That will only get bigger as they get older. It’s a great way of getting them to sit still and be patient. I start by pointing at something and I will say it’s name/color/some descriptive term and someone will respond with a variation or move to a new object.

Unschooling means we spend our lives learning. The kids have spontaneous jam sessions where they sit down and make up song lyrics for a half hour to an hour. I uhhh look askance from a distance as someone who has always felt excluded from the cliqueish world of playing music. Shanna really likes making music and making up lyrics to go with what she is playing. It is a lot of fun to watch. It’s not “serious learning” but I would argue that it’s also important. She’s only five. Yes, some disciplines believe you can force children to learn even younger than she is. There is also some reason to believe it is better to start at more like seven or eight when the kid will really understand the range of options.

For now I’m comfortable with dithering. Or maybe I just think eight because that is when public schools start music. Who knows.

Shanna’s learning enough right now. She really does have a lot she’s trying to do.

We play math games. I don’t start them. I would probably avoid math much more if I could. Ugh. Shanna is very focused on math to my jaundiced view. She probably sits down to spontaneously do math work every week or two. She’s not a prodigy or anything but she’s interested and she feels like she is successful at it and she knows that understanding math is important for many careers. She doesn’t have any opening for bias that might imply she might be potentially bad at math.

We spend our days moving back and forth between subjects all day long. Cooking is chemistry and math. We talk about how much food costs. We talk about why we make the choices we make with the money we spend on food. There are a lot of shoot-off topics from there. Sometimes I do sit down and draw out how something would visually look if I think it would be hard for them to imagine.

But it’s all organic. (I don’t mean the hippy dippy shit.) I mean it just kind of happens. I respond to their questions all day long. I alternate filling their heads with so much information they sometimes look like they might explode with telling them, “I don’t know how to do it. You figure it out.”

We are loud people. We want to be heard. That is the last trait I want to extinguish in my kids. Same with not punishing them for whining. *I* whine. I’m not going to forking punish my kids for doing what I model. That would make me a despicable hypocrite.

I do not punish my kids for doing things I have taught them to do. Iron clad rule.

Does everyone live with rules? This many rules. So many rules. I feel like I am drowning in all the rules, rules, rules. Be this here. Be that there. Be something else someplace else.

I like the Biblical phrase “a house divided”.

Fall. Fall. Fall.

Only I’m not divided. I promised me I’d never do that. I would never split off my memories so that only certain parts of me existed at a time. Apparently that is one of the main ways folks like me get out of childhood. That’s what the specialists tell me.

I’m not splitting. But I’m learning how to be polite in a wide variety of different cultures and it’s hard. I think I only get to like 70% correct anywhere I try.

I always say too much. I’m too forward. I’m too loud. I’m too inappropriate (although this one has faded now that I only over-share sexually with some of Noah’s random co-workers at Christmas parties. Surely that’s uhm not as bad as I’ve ever been before. That’s been it for the last several years running.

This is big.

And yet I shouldn’t talk about it because it is indiscreet. But controlling hypersexuality doesn’t go away when you are married and monogamous and having moderately good sex with your husband. (I post about bad spells and he goes, “Ahh. An opportunity. So if I put in more effort I get more sex? H’okay then!”) We’re too tired for the earth shattering kind of sex. Some day we’ll get back there. *cross fingers*

I feel like that is the main overwhelming fact of parenthood. Exhaustion. I actually sleep pretty well these days. What, I only miss 2-7 hours in the average week lately? I’ve been sleeping pretty well. I wake up when I want to and not because I have to. That’s doing ok. But I’m still exhausted.

Yes, it’s a running day and I’m tired after eight miles. But it’s not that. I think the running makes me feel better about being this tired because I am whether I run or not. At least when I run I get to have this macho swagger for a while as I feel my rock hard thighs. Holy crap. I didn’t know my legs did that. (They stopped being rock hard when I defrosted and relaxed after the run… but they had like an hour there.. Maybe I need more mid-run stretching breaks… hm.)

I think that the schedule I should keep is either run or edit seven days a week. I only predictably have till 6:30am to work. The whole rest of the day is too overwhelming with kid-need-to-communicate. I love them so much but sometimes I feel like a wrung out sponge.

When I look kind of deflated Noah says, “Well we didn’t pick the low intensity kind of parenting.”

Nope. Not so much.

If I get through this twenty year period and I end up with adult children who want to be my friends and who can go off into the world and have happy lives…

I don’t want a codependent relationship forever. I don’t want two dependents. I want to engage in loud, wild, crazy sex in the middle of my living room. You can move out some day, kiddos. I have plans.

But I hope and pray every day that they will want to be my friend. I want to hear about their lives. I want to know what happens to them. Sure, I hope that they will tell me sometimes that I am a good mom. Mostly I hope that I will look at what they do with their life and think quietly to myself “That was a good choice.” I should keep my mouth shut. It is not my job to judge who they become as adults. Not one way or another.

I don’t judge them much now. I evaluate them. But I describe everything in terms of progress and development. There is no “good” or “bad”. I’m just making sure you are doing what a three year old should be able to do.

I worry that if I decide to have her evaluated she will have a very small delay and I will be told that I “really should pay for therapy so she won’t be more delayed later” (when that is only a faint possibility).

Yeah, I over think things.

If she has a 10% or 20% delay then she is still in the range of normal. She’s just not right at the center line or above it. I don’t believe there is a chance that she is more delayed than that. And her expressive language is advanced. I think she just has to grow into her mouth.

I want to give her time. I think that is all I have to give her. I don’t want to think of her as “behind”. She’s Calli. She’s not the most advanced in every single part of human development but she is certainly not struggling to be understood.

If she starts having problems having conversations with strangers because they can’t understand her then I will take her in for an evaluation. That seems like a good bar. As long as strangers can understand her and have a pick up conversation she is doing well enough for three.

Ok. I think I can stop worrying about that now. (I can dream, can’t I? Actually I can’t because I’ve started having pot at night again. Thank you blissful slumber. Yes, my tolerance is lower.)

I feel like I am so tired I will go fall in my bowl of soup. Maybe time to start getting ready for dinner. I’m so glad it is a leftovers night.

I planned out dinners for February and March. I’m pretty good about sticking to my schedule if I make it. I’m hoping to uhm bring down my food budget a little. It’s hard given some of my food priority stuff. I do my best to buy my meat from actual farmers. I make a big exception for sausage. I’m going to hell for the sausage. I have some very strong feelings about the unsustainability of factory farmed meat. But man I know how expensive it is to be all prissy about “food ethics”. Maybe this year I should be better about tracking food spending. I wonder what I’m putting where. I could look at vendors. on Mint… Hmmm. Now I’m procrastinating. Put down the darn keyboard, Krissy.

Running is so different now.

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That first year I was running I felt like I was being hounded by demons on every step. I spent most runs sobbing and crying and spitting big gobs of mucous out of my mouth so I could breathe. It was a regular occurrence for me to fall to my knees and cry for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes and sob as hard as I could in the middle of a run. I spent a great portion of every run planning how I could kill myself with the handy materials (jump off an over pass, eat poisonous plants, deliberately step in front of a Mac truck among other ideas).

I think that happened because I was training so I could run with my brother. I know my brother hates me and blames me for a lot of things that couldn’t possibly be my fault. So training to run with him was really hard. I’m kind of glad he flaked.

Instead of having a gut wrenching awful experience I had a very hard experience with someone who loves me an awful lot. She must or she wouldn’t have flown from out of state to run an awful marathon with me. It was not convenient for her to do. She went through a lot of trouble.

And all through that difficult race (it was a very hard race for experienced marathoners–the conditions were just awful) she was there with me coaxing and playing and keeping my spirits up. She sang to me. She told me funny jokes. She would gently and lovingly coax me into a minute of running… just a minute… to speed up our pace from the crawling walk I mostly managed. I would not have been an official finisher of that race without her. It was too hard for me alone.

So now when I run I notice that my internal dialogue is different. Instead of hearing what a lazy, fat, stupid, disgusting, waste-of-time bitch I am the whole way I have Blacksheeps gentle voice instead. “You can do it! I have so much faith in you. Small steps, just move ’em quick. Just a minute of running then we can walk again. You can do it. I believe in you.”

I don’t cry when I run any more. Sometimes I’m still pokey and slow and that’s ok. I get a little more of a questioning eyebrow response back now. I don’t get told I’m fucking pathetic for going so slow. I get more of a, “Are you sure you can only move that fast?”

Right now I’m training for my training half marathon. I’m going to do another half marathon later in the year with Blacksheep. I’m doing this one with the mindset of getting into better shape so I can go closer to her pace. I know she will be patient with me no matter how fast I will go–she will not shame me. She will not degrade me or act disappointed. She will be encouraging and enthusiastic about me trying so hard because she knows how long the journey has been.

When I think about reparenting stuff this kind of thing is kind of what I mean. Blacksheep talks to me the way I talk to my kids. Like they will mistakes and get back up and try again because that is what you do.

Making mistakes does not define you. Refusing to correct your mistakes does define you. There are choices in life.

I’m looking forward to both 1/2 marathons this year. And…. I’m thinking that I might go right from the second 1/2 marathon into training for a full marathon again. I like how my body feels when I’m doing the long-distance running. I’d like more of that with tapes of Blacksheep playing in my head. I need that in my life.

It’s not like she’s with me on every run. But I can remember and draw strength from the love that is there.

I do that with cooking and Sarah. When I’m feeling scared and I can feel myself wanting to curl up in a ball and cry because I feel stupid and like I can’t I can’t I can’t. Sarah comes and whispers in my ear, “Yes you can. It’s easy. Here let’s read the recipe together.”

This is how I piece together my reparenting. I’m going to go have my glass of tea now.

Thank you so much for loving me.

Daily ritual stuff

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Sometimes I read on the internet about how it is beneficial to have a daily routine. My problem is there aren’t enough hours in the day for all I would “like” to do.

One thing that is becoming a set part of every day is drinking tea. I like to think of it as my morning bonding moment with the women in my life. Even though I know that men drink tea too I think of women. I think of Jenny and Paula and the other formerly Miss so-and-so friends (all of whom are now married and thus no longer Miss anything) and Patti and Sarah and I remember gleeful moments we have shared over tea.

I drink every morning and I say a prayer for all of their good health and continued strength. Whether I see them or not I think about them. I have spent most of my life believing that if I just want something bad enough it’s like magic. I can make it true.

I want these women to be happy, healthy, and fulfilled. With or without me. So I drink a cup of tea and think about them and pray for their benefit. If anyone is listening I hope my karmic experiences weight my begging. Clearly I’m owed some favors for dealing with shitty stuff.

Judith. Kerry. Debbie. Stacey. Kira. Anna. Brittney. Marina. Elora. Erin. Michelle. Andy.

I sit down and cycle through women in my head. I’m not going to get through the full list in this entry and I won’t try. I’d leave someone out and they’d feel butt hurt and that isn’t the point. The point isn’t who I think about *today* because the list changes so much over time.

Remy. Rose. Marcie. Mo. Wendy. Ali. Deborah. Lauren. Denise. Chris. Amy. Talia. Angela.

I think and think and remind myself that even if these people are mad at me, they probably haven’t stopped loving me. They may not express it in ways I see or in ways that “feel” like love to me but that doesn’t mean anything about their feelings. I can’t judge what they feel. I remind myself of that over and over.

I can’t judge what other people feel.

But I enjoy sitting down to my tea and thinking about the women who have shaped me. Some of them did so on purpose. Some of them probably never realized the degree to which I have consciously patterned off of them. Many of them probably have no idea just how much time I spend sitting around thinking about them. What choices do they make? Why do they make them? What can I learn? How would I do it differently? What would it take to make me behave the way they behave? What differences would have to come up in my life to change me?

Not because I think they are wrong and I am right. Anything but.

I tend to be able to see other people as more grown up than me in a wide variety of ways. I want to grow up. I am envious of how other people manage. I need more tricks.

So whereas there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to put my life on a routine (painting, writing, editing, playing with the kids, reading, cooking, cleaning, seeing people–all of these things combine to need a 57 hour day if you want to do all of them every day) I try to start the day thinking about the many women I know who inspire me.

I try harder because I can tap into, “How would ______ handle this problem?” How would someone who was more patient solve this? How would someone who was kinder model this? How would someone with an inherently higher level of lovability manage?

It’s like having the pictures on my walls. I have lots and lots of pictures on my walls. I tell myself that these are the people who would be sad if I killed myself. (There are guys in the pictures too. The tea ritual is about my ladies. My life is not just an all-girls event.)

I’m not very good at feeling connected to people. I’m trying to learn to feel bonds. Mostly I have spent my life thinking that I am a worthless piece of shit who could only improve the planet by no longer being a waste of resources. Changing is hard.

Shanna is making my mothers day present already because there is a Berenstein’s Bears book about the topic. A scrap book of pictures about the experience of being a mom. She picks pictures off the wall and then has me pre-screen them.

We can never get another copy of Talia’s senior picture from high school so we can’t use that one in the scrap book. I can never get another copy of the picture from my junior high school dance where my friends Iris, Jenny, Kira, Yvette, and Nikki are posing.

Anything we have taken on a digital camera–go ahead. I can have more prints made if I miss a specific one on the wall.

I am increasingly sentimental as I get older. I’m trying to believe that things continue on. It’s all part of a longer story. I’m not over yet. It has been weird to grow up and realize how much my ability to organize and my lack-of-attachment to “stuff” has been about my constant feeling that I will die soon. Or that I should die soon. It’s not nice to leave a mess for someone else so get your shit together.

I have too many books to read. I can’t die yet.

Every morning I sit down and think about the women who guide me whether they know it or not. I don’t feel like a “church” would work well for me. I’m not willing to follow dogma of any kind. My karma ran over your dogma and other such “intelligent” *cough* humor.

A wise woman told me I would have to build my own community. I really have. They are spread out. They show up sporadically–more like a rural community. But they are there.

I see them. I see them in my mind and in my heart and sometimes I get to see them in person. That has to be enough. It is all there is.

Sometimes I feel bad about the way attachment works in my brain. I wish that I could turn it on or turn it off and stop futzing with it. But I think the only way I could do that is to just turn it off. And I don’t want to. I want to be able to love and be loved. I think it matters that I have relationships with people who don’t live in my house so I can model what that looks like for my children. How do I teach them to feel loved?

Part of it is just not breaking them. Humans normally have the ability to feel loved. But it feels like more than that. Noah and I *both* struggle with attachment issues. We both have family issues and we both feel intermittently loved by our friends. (No slam on anyone in our life.) But we have similar issues. If we want to have kids who have a larger emotional range than us then we need to figure out how to facilitate that whether we join them there or not.

No pressure.

I feel fairly confused by how it works in other cultures. Attachment, that is. On one hand Buddhism talks about detachment, but I think I’m missing a lot of the point. Pam’s mother expects her to call all the damn time and that’s not very detached, you know? More research. Talk to real people instead of reading white-people versions on the internet. What the hell do white people know about Buddhism? (Not that I’m converting. But I’m interested in how they solve this problem.)

Yesterday was kind of rough. I expect the kids to get all of their stuff off the floor every other week so I can vacuum. I didn’t finish till 7:30 last night because they totally didn’t want to cooperate. I’m glad that their “uncle” showed up to help them because if I had to do it… oh man. I was running out of not-screaming-strength. *phew* This is why they need a tribe.

Sometimes someone other than mom needs to patiently show them something. Sometimes mom is about to flip out and she needs to go in a dark room alone. Yay quiet.

I feel shocked that one of my former lovers is the most consistent person in my childrens’ lives so far. He has consistently shown up for longer than anyone else at this point. He’s here to see me and see my kids. If I’m being bitchy he doesn’t talk to me much and he just spends time with the kids–which is a wonderful thing.

I don’t trust anyone. I carefully weigh and measure if people are doing as they say they will. Most people don’t. I’m so grateful he is consistent. He’s very careful to promise less than he thinks he might be able to deliver on. That’s a lot of why it works. I’ve known him for more than thirteen years. And he has been coming every week–sometimes more than once a week for over a year, I think over a year and a half at this point. He hung out with the kids more sporadically before that. (He wasn’t great at the baby phase.) But he has been in their lives pretty consistently for their entire lives. He took all of the pregnancy pictures when I was pregnant with Shanna. He showed up in the first five days of life for both kids. He wanted to imprint on them. He has continually made time and space to just show up.

I honestly didn’t expect it and that’s a lot of why I didn’t have kids with him. He asked me to co-parent and I didn’t think he had it in him to show up consistently. I was wrong about him. I think I was right that we wouldn’t be the best co-parents (I’m too much of a cunt) but I dramatically underestimated his intentions and consistency. I’m sorry I so undercut him. He’s been really great. If I had turned out to want more like the single-parent thing he would have been a good ally for that.

He’s acting like a big brother. He had a kid brother and he tells me that he’s doing what he saw done in his family when he was young. You just show up. Yeah, sometimes people are assholes–you tune them out that day.

I’m not very good at that. I’m grateful to be near it sometimes. (I am learning to tune out a lot of what he says in similar ways. We have Very Different Opinions About Life.) I want him to be allowed to live. I want to be allowed to live.

It’s working for now. See, I’m not just focused on the ladiez. I’m willing to take whoever shows up. If you are willing to love me we can find a way.

I worry about these bounces.

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We’ve had a very good weekend. I medicated so my mood was better. I worry a lot about how I fuck with medication and go up and down in mood. My shrink confirms for me that the unpredictability of mood swings are some of the most damaging parts of having a parent with mental illness. A parent who is just *depressed* is one thing. A parent who goes up and down with little apparent cause is much harder on a child.

But we’ve had one of those “just another day in paradise” weekends. I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with Noah and the kids. When we get to just be together and we don’t have to get a lot done I am completely and totally sure that my life could not be better. This is what I’ve always wanted. I belong here. I am loved here. I am wanted here. These three people are just about as obsessed with me as I am with them. It’s a mutual admiration society.

We’ve been doing a lot more with neighbors. I am consciously not writing about those experiences despite the fact that I like record keeping. Writing about people is… mixed. Sometimes people don’t mind and are positive or neutral about me writing about them. Sometimes I upset people and I really don’t mean to. I don’t feel like it is safe to talk about people right now. It would hurt too much if my current connections blew up. I can’t absorb another big loss right now.

The biggest pull back going on in my life right now has been honestly discussed and a frame work has been put around it. I respect and support all of the reasons for the pull back so I have to just live with my feelings of terror. No one can take those away from me.

I’m scared of the future. I have so little control.

But what I know for sure is that I had a really great weekend with my family. I feel loved and wanted and supported by the three people in this house. My kids are getting big enough that sometimes they will say, “What could I do to make your day a little easier?” If I tell them a chore they go do it in order to bask in the glow of my gratitude. They do it because I ask them similar questions and do similar sorts of work for them.

I’m hoping that the fact that I usually can talk about my mood swings in advance before I snap will mitigate the damage I do.

All parents damage their children. I am told this over and over by people who are much wiser than me.

I apologize for my moodiness. I acknowledge that it isn’t their fault. If I say something in a nasty way I will apologize and try again. “I am sorry that came out really hostile and you haven’t done anything at all to provoke hostility. I’ll try again.”

Today I believe that I am doing ok. I’m never going to nominate myself for mother-of-the-year. My kids are happy, healthy, able to adapt to a wide variety of situations and people, and they are learning about as fast as I can put material in front of them.

We’re doing ok. Even if it isn’t the same path as everyone else. There isn’t actually a monolithic path any way. We are all doing our own thing.

I talked to a new-to-homeschooling mom recently. She said she was researching and she felt very unsure about which direction to head in terms of unschooling vs. curriculum. I said, “Don’t worry about picking a label. Do what works for your family and be prepared to try something different every year if you have to and let your labels come after the fact. Labels should be descriptive and not prescriptive. Don’t pick a label and then force yourself to make those choices.”

I say that even though I’m pretty married to unschooling. Not radical unschooling. Not Unschooling. We are unschoolers. I don’t believe that learning fits in a nice pre-ordered box. We learn all the time and we take our sources from sometimes unorthodox locations and I think that is more or less the right way to go through life. But I understand that sometimes you have to jump through hoops and I’ve been able to do enough of it for myself that I’m satisfied I understand the process.

I’m going to spend February editing. I hope to ship it off to a friend to edit by June. I should probably negotiate with her. Ha. She told me to my face she was interested in working with me and given that I plan to pay her I don’t think it will be a hard sell. She’s a professional and all. This time I’m picking an editor who has written and edited a lot of books and run a publishing company. I hope that I do better with the next round of editing process.

It has been a good weekend. I ordered a toddler back carrier. Shanna and I want to walk farther than Calli can manage and my arms go numb holding her. I found a spiffy one more appropriate to her very large size. I only had little baby carriers before. This has a very high back. More supportive and safe and all. It’ll be good to wear her again.

It’s interesting how regressing stuff works. Sometimes they are so clingy. And I soothe them and hold them and talk to them and then eventually they want to run away again. I’m home base.

I have wanted this feeling for my whole life.

Please love me.

It’s hard that the intensity of their love sometimes feels like it is drowning me. People are not meant to raise children alone in nuclear families. It is not right or normal for our species. Children should have a tribe. They should have a wide variety of adults they spend time with so they can find out more about the world-that-is-not-their-parents. I’m doing the best I can. I’m trying like fuck not to drive away the people who know my children.

I can’t always invite. I’m sorry. I think it is pretty ridiculous how often I cry because I miss people I could call and invite over. They would probably say yes. But I can’t invite them because they might say no and that would hurt so very badly. I can’t handle a no. So I can’t ask for a yes.

I think that is part of why I throw parties. If someone tells me no for that at least I can tell myself that they didn’t want the crowd. I can take the no. It is less of a personal rejection.

I feel so scared. How long can I manage to be good enough for my kids? Am I good enough? Who is going to even notice if I start fucking up? Will my kids be left to the mercy of me self-reporting on the internet to get intervention on their behalf? (I’m paranoid so I ask professionals and I’m told I haven’t done anything that merits a CPS call. I ask, “Are you sure? I’m not very nice.” Sometimes they snicker and then tell me about their problem cases. Ok. I’m pretty nice.)

I don’t know if I am teaching codependence or healthy interdependence. I’ve not had a lot of healthy interdependence. But I believe in it as a concept. I’m fucking trying.

Sometimes I wonder what I will be like when I grow up. I’m very much using this time as my incubation period. I’m not grown up yet. Maybe by 60? Heh.

Sometimes I think it is confusing when people talk with horror about aging as if it were a bad thing. Childhood was terrible. I want as far away from it as possible. I was 29 once. I want to move on. I want something different.

My early teens and 20’s were spent in a masochistic/self harming/promiscuous blur. I’m ready for something different.

But when I see girls like me who get up and out of all that they stop talking about their perspective. They learn to pass and I’m not trying for that. Not really. I don’t want to pass. Or I’d stop telling people that my culture of origin is poor white trash.

It’s time for dinner.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: fighting demons

Can’t argue with a spreadsheet.

Money, money, money by the pound.

Confluence of events

Easter morning

Violence

Turn it around.

post-therapy

Every day love

Never just one thing

my life is good when I’m not chemically out of whack

Wired for sound.

Not getting a lot shorter.

The best things in life are free.

post-therapy: medication

Reflections

Running is so different now.

Daily ritual stuff

I worry about these bounces.