Days when I wake up from sleep crying because I hate myself and I think the world would be a better place if I was dead are not good mornings.

I woke Noah up with my crying. He’s all “What happened?” I’m all “I woke up.”

That’s enough to justify sobbing. What?

I’m feeling intense shame because I feel like I don’t do anything for the world that justifies the resources necessary to keep me alive. It may not help that I saw some medical bills this morning. We are at almost $50,000 spent this year. Because I’m a fuck up with a piece of shit body.

I don’t feel that anything I have to offer in this life is worth what it takes to keep me alive. I am so fucking worthless.

I know I keep having children because that way I am not allowed to die because it would hurt them. But that’s a game. There are 7 billion fucking people on this planet. I’m worth approximately nothing to 100% of them give or take 4.

There is nothing I have to offer, there is nothing I have to give, there is nothing I do that balances out the load of my life.

I hear it is bad for a baby to spend the whole pregnancy crying but I don’t seem to be able to stop and don’t fucking suggest a god damn ssri.

I’m torn between really hoping I have a girl because I came up with the absolutely fucking best girl name and hoping I have a boy because I have wanted a boy for almost two decades.

Depression isn’t the same thing as sadness. It includes a lot of feelings. I feel intense self hatred as one of the dominant features of my depression. I hear that it may spring from internalized perfectionism. I don’t have enough to give; thus I do not deserve life.

For some reason I have internalized that if I am not carrying a relationship and supporting someone then I am nothing.

My baby just woke up. I guess it is time to stop thinking about how much I hate me and instead I need to convince them how much I love them. That’s my job.

My brain feels so fuzzy. I feel muddled and confused and only sorta mentally aware. I feel like I haven’t slept properly in quite a while. I wonder if any of it has to do with using Sativa during the day for the past two days? I don’t recall this happening in the past but I’ve been off Sativa for a few months. I doubt it is related. But I’m feeling so spacey.

The sleep study was interesting. I had a lot of lucid dreaming. I kept thinking I was the Diva from The Fifth Element because as I flopped back and forth in the bed I had to manage the weird bundle of cords coming off of my head. It felt like her hair or something. I felt like I was awake/aware all night and I also felt like it only lasted about 5 minutes.

The other person who was there for a sleep study arrived after me and left before me. I think he had fewer connections on during the process because if not I don’t understand how the employee had a chance to finish taking all his stuff off before I woke up. Also, his face didn’t have massive weird white blotches. I kept waking up pawing my face because the cords and wires felt awful.

I have a low amount of hope for my ability to get used to a CPAP. But I’ll try!

I don’t get the results for a week.

If I don’t feel better in a few hours I may wuss out and ask Noah to drive FMC to therapy because I’m not sure it’s a great thing for me to drive today. I feel… numb and cobwebby and confused.

The second trimester is kicking my ass up one side and down the other. I think I kind of remember this happening in previous pregnancies too? The first trimester is rough and the second trimester is worse. I’m nauseous all the god damn time. I can barely eat. I’m still not up to pre-pregnancy weight. It amuses me to think that all of the early baby growth comes from the baby and placenta eating me. Any day now every ounce the baby gains is an ounce directly stolen from me because I’m not gaining weight as a system. Really… it’s already true. But it gets way more pronounced as the baby grows faster.

I have rarely had the chance to talk to other pregnant people who lose a bunch of weight. I am curious if other people have weird feelings about their bodies being eaten. Like, it feels weird in my body as it happens. Like I can feel the parasite sucking me away.

I wish I could eat more. I’m not hungry. Food is horrible and I can barely choke it down without feeling ill. I feel really sick.

And the more sick I feel the more anti-social and unworthy of ever having a friendship again I feel. Which is why I’m grateful for the lovely friends who check in with me even as I do a crappy job of reaching out.

Most of my relationships rely on a lot of effort from me. I am ok with this balance in the main. I just have nothing to give right now and instead I am a bottomless pit of need. It feels different this time though, easier. I feel less like a bottomless pit and more like I’m just needier than usual. It helps that in this pregnancy the kids are being so damn nice.

I read on the internet that mothers who need/want help from their children are terrible lazy people. Ok. Sure. I’m terrible and lazy. But I want the fucking help. My daughter made her own damn bed this morning and I am not sorry. (FMC can’t make the top bunk alone yet and that’s ok…)

My kids can clean up their own stuff. I don’t need to do it for them. They can get food for themselves most of the time; they don’t have to but they are capable and I feel good about this. To be fair… food mostly comes from Noah so that’s not my trip anymore.

Noah and I had a really good conversation yesterday. We locked ourselves in my room while the kids played (loudly–we knew they were fine at every moment) for two hours and we talked and had sex because frankly… we need to. We talked more about M/s and bdsm and my cheating. We talked more about my fuck ups and mistakes and Noah’s projections and assumptions. I feel it was a slightly better conversation than we’ve had for most of the last year.

I completely blew up for a few reasons. The biggest one was really that I couldn’t absorb more painful sex “for the team” and I have complicated feelings about that. I feel like I made a mountain out of a molehill. I feel like I tried so hard to ask for that to stop and it didn’t stop. I feel like I have had so many decades of pain in my cunt that there is no way it can be a small thing ever again. I feel like if I am not allowed to cope with that in any of the ways I have usually coped with that… I need god damn something.

Traditionally I coped with being a hole for usage by cutting myself or burning myself or hitting my head on concrete. I am not allowed to do any of those things anymore and I can’t convinced myself that I am small and bad and I should be in pain without them. And that means I can’t deal with my cunt hurting like that.

Casual sex was… really the most gentle potential self harm I could come up with. And I picked people who genuinely care about me and who were united as a front in telling me to go home and get my shit together when they realized I was… not interacting with them in healthy or appropriate ways.

I feel like as far as going off the rails goes…

I made sure I didn’t damage my body in a way that was going to have long-term consequences because I’m supposed to not do that anymore. So I’m upset with myself and I feel like I coped as well as I fucking could.

Which doesn’t mean it is a way of coping Noah can bear.

Which also doesn’t mean that it proves that at my core I don’t want Noah and I’m not excited by Noah.

And that’s a lot of how Noah took it and continues to take it. Which is a real problem for my marriage. I made that bed and now I get to lie in it.

It’s all so complicated. Sometimes it is very hard that I have come so far that people expect me to be able to function like a healthy, whole person and I’m still not. I’m better than I ever was… but I still struggle with all these ways I’m just not ok. I’ve come a long way but that doesn’t mean I have the background other people have to lean on.

When I panic or feel scared… I still want to revert to programming. Even though I know that programming is going to kill me or wreck my life.

Do you know how hard it is that panic or fear has to be the trigger for the most intense lock-down control of my behavior? So I don’t blow up my life.

That’s not normal. That’s not how humans are designed to function. Fear and panic mean you lose control not that you have to be under way more control.

How come black belts still get mugged and raped? Because fear shuts you down. Fear makes it impossible to function in your normal manner.

But for me fear has to mean that I have much finer control than average. Fear means I have to consciously and deliberately slow down how I am thinking and think through the behavioral options much more carefully than normal and I have to triple check every thought I have to see if it is appropriate or if it is fucked up by the programming I experienced.

We are all programmed by our childhoods.

My programming tends to put me in danger over and over.

Realistically… I’m super happy with myself that when I went hunting when I was freaking out because I couldn’t figure out how to change a dynamic in my life… I picked people who weren’t all that likely to hurt me. In terms of the scale of my life… that was actually well done. I didn’t go hunting Craigslist. I met people from okcupid but in a coffee shop and that was it. I didn’t go looking for danger. I stuck with people who would hurt me in very safe ways. I picked people who have demonstrated for a long time that they want me to be happy. That’s… a huge step up for me.

Even when I’m doing something for mixed, probably bad reasons… I’m making better choices. That has to be progress.

I picked people who were kind to me instead of treating me badly. That’s still a sign of improving life choices.

My nods to self harm are less destructive over time. That’s something.

I still did a lot of harm to my life and to my marriage… but I didn’t shorten my life.

But now we are back to the point where I have to figure out how to get Noah to believe that I like him and I’m excited by him. That’s kinda hard when I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I have poured out my lifeblood for him and that’s fucking exhausting. How do you exhaust yourself utterly and still have room for excitement?

I think we do have exciting moments. But they are mixed in with a lot of not very exciting moments because I’m fucking tired. Yes, I seemed more excited by dates in a minute by minute way… and I also spent very little time with those people.

Scale matters.

I’m so tired I feel like breathing is an effort. I want to spend weeks lying in a bed doing nothing.

How in the fuck am I going to make someone believe I am excited by anything?

Tonight is my LONG AWAITED sleep study. We are playing in an RPG today so we are going to drop the second vehicle at the clinic on our way to game so I can go straight to the evaluation at the end of the game play and still get home in the morning.

Since no one felt overwhelmed with desire to babysit tomorrow we will have a restful day post-sleep study. That’s probably wiser anyway. We collapsed on each other on Thursday when Noah got home. Another day of doing that would be lovely.

EC and I processed almost everything they want to sell at the consignment sale last night. The sale isn’t till next month but I told her if she waits till the last minute I’m not helping and she has to do all the frantic rushed work alone. She elected to ask for help early. Clever girl. We had a lovely date together doing the work. Noah and FMC had a date of their own.

Our kids are hilarious about the way they talk about how there are DIFFERENT KINDS OF DATES. They are really emphatic that they do not go on ROMANTIC dates with us, just friendly ones. It makes me giggle. As if I need them to let me know not to have romantic feelings towards them when we are out. Ok darling. I promise to put my romantic feelings in a box when I’m with you. *cough*

FMC got more forking dolls for their birthday. Grandma’s box arrived. A boy and a girl. FMC has decided they are brother and sister so “No kissing or nothing because that’s not ok between siblings.”

This life they are living… it doesn’t resemble the world I grew up in.

I’m so glad.

We are having a lot more sibling rivalry and I need to read up on how the fuck to manage it. I have done a good job of teaching EC to be patient with younger kids and generous with her stuff. FMC is a tyrant and spends most of their time talking about how much better they are than the people around them. I’m feeling some feelings about this.

I hope FMC turns out to be a better big sibling than they are a younger sibling. They still hit a lot. They still call names whenever they are thwarted. This is all directed at their sister and no one else.

EC is not a god damn punching bag. The only thing that slows FMC down is when EC punches back.

I’m at the point where I say, “FMC isn’t a baby. If they hit you… don’t take it.”

I have no desire to encourage fighting. I have less desire to teach EC they need to accept being hit without response. Oh fuck that. We start with our words. But if someone won’t stop fucking hitting you… flatten them.

You do not owe anyone the acceptance and tolerance of pain. Fuck. That. Noise.

We are talking about it in family therapy. This has been a consistent pattern for a while but I feel like it’s escalating and I’m frustrated. I need more books.

I was the shithead baby. I don’t know what to do about this. I never hit my siblings (they were 5, 8, & 13 years older than me… if I tried I was flattened) much but I did spend a lot of time talking about how much smarter I was. Because I was.

I’m a judgey piece of shit and I’ll say it is less clear that FMC is head and shoulders smarter than EC. They might be. But it’s close. My siblings uhhhh…. well maybe they might have been smarter than me if they hadn’t all started abusing drugs and alcohol in junior high. I didn’t. I ended up with a better working brain.

*shrug*

But yeah. The competitive spirit is real. Real fucking frustrating.

Sigh.

For the second pregnancy in my life a cherished friend came over and asked me Why? It came up in context of telling me how surprised they were that two of their friends share their values so little that they are willing to have a third child. Don’t we think that is a terrible thing to do?!

I understand population growth issues. I do. I understand that having fewer children in general is wise. I get it.

I also have a desperate need for family that just isn’t going away and there isn’t another way to manage this problem. I’ve tried the chosen family thing. Guess what? At crunch time… folks go back to their “real” families and I’m left on my own. Except now I’ve created my own real family and they really like me and want me with them on every single instance of those days when everyone else leaves me to go back to their families.

I know I am selfish. I want a family. I want a big family. I can’t tell you what it means to a dirty little unwanted street brat that I have this growing, extremely loving family. I have a home. I have a place. I am wanted here.

I mean… someday my children will grow up and create more boundaries. But all signs point to my children wanting to still know their parents some day. They won’t live in our back pockets forever… but we will talk.

I get the strong impression that my children are the sort who will enjoy coming home for holidays at least sometimes. And I’m the sort who would say, “If coming home sounds boring is there any way I can sweeten the deal for a visit?”

Bribery is awesome.

There are lessons about parenting, about being a mother that I desperately still need to learn. Like, so far I have two children with wildly compatible personalities. What are the chances of that continuing as a trend? Ha. Ha. … ha. Oh shit. At some point I’m going to get a child for whom I am going to have to drastically change and grow.

I look forward to that.

My children are a spur to my behavior changes unlike any other in the entire world. I brought them into this world and I believe I fucking owe them a relationship that accommodates where *they* start out. It’s not all about me. I love that mothering has no patience for self absorption, well… not the way I do it. This is why I lock myself into rooms sometimes so I can be as self absorbed as possible for a bit. When my kids are present… I’m basically not allowed. I have too much I have to focus on outside myself. I have to worry about their hunger as much or more than my own. I have to worry about their energy level as much or more than my own. I have to consider about their emotional state.

I require myself to see my children as autonomous people I don’t understand yet. It’s why I ask so god damn many questions. Because I don’t actually know you even though I’ve spent thousands of hours staring at you. You are still a mystery. A glorious, beautiful mystery I will spend my entire life figuring out. Thank you for being here with me.

I want more children because I walked into this relationship saying three…. maybe two children.

I’m terrified of the fourth. Fuck. I’m terrified of giving birth to any more. I’m not so talented at labor. It is really hard to contain my rude feelings when my dearest friends talk to me about labor. I want to be kind of all JUST DON’T TALK ABOUT YOUR SHINY LESS THAN 24 HOUR LABORS. I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR SUCH STORIES UNLESS AND UNTIL I HAVE ONE OF MY OWN, CAPICHE!?

I don’t really mean it. But I’m feeling really scared of labor. My last labor almost fucking killed me after 9 fucking days. I’m allowed to have some big feelings, here. Can we talk about y’alls short labors after I am on the far side of this terrifying labor that may take who knows how many days because my body just doesn’t want to work harder.

I’m seriously ok with a c-section this time. I now believe that a c-section probably wouldn’t be much worse than my last god damn vaginal delivery. And I’d have good drugs. C-sections have a 6 week recovery period but you are supposed to be up and walking around as quickly as you can manage. I will probably be able to manage in less than the 2 weeks it took me to walk after my last god damn delivery.

I take it pretty seriously that labor used to kill half of all women. That woulda been me not many decades ago without question.

So I’m terrified of giving birth. But I want the people on the other side of this travail so bad I shake.

But whyyyyyyy don’t you adopt?

I hear this question so fucking frequently.

Do you not understand that I have a mother-wounding bigger than Alaska? In adoption… the baby has lost their birth mother for some reason. That’s a wounding. With the wounding I already have I truly believe I would be bad at centering the needs of a child with a similar wounding. I believe it would be hard for me to comfort someone for decades about the fact that I am not the person they want to have comforting them.

Which isn’t to say that all adoptions go badly. I know some families who have adopted and done very well together. The mothers are wonderful. I admire them deeply. But I believe they have a well of something inside them that I lack.

I am pointing out my failures. Not failures in the entire system.

I really need to be someone’s person. Not someone’s tolerated replacement. I can’t do that. The way my children love me? That’s a balm to my soul. That calms me down and gives me focus for changing and growing that nothing else has ever done. I’m supposed to be here with them. I’m supposed to take care of them. It’s not that I’m supposed to suffocate them forever with attention and smothering… but I’m supposed to be part of their constellation of support.

I’m also supposed to make sure they have friends and other adult support because let’s find a healthy balance here. This isn’t all about me.

But I belong here. I am an integral part of this dance.

No one in this house will tell me I’m not their real mother so fuck me. They will tell me they hate me. Some day a child will probably tell me they wish they had another mother.

But even that has less sting. I wish you weren’t what you are. But you are it.

Ok!

I’m allowed to take care of these people and it isn’t creepy and codependent. It’s necessary and appropriate! The overwhelming instinct I have is ok here. I’m not wrong.

Do you know how it feels to me to not be wrong sometimes? It’s kind of fucking rare. I assume I’m wrong in the vast majority of circumstances. I’m too loud. I’m too intense. I’m too needy and no one fucking cares. But however I show up to the role of “mother” is ok.

I’ve been reading stuff about Carrie Fisher as a mother. I’m not nearly so wacky. And that’s ok. Mothers have to be different. We have different kids and different lives and different capabilities.

I’m super interested in this third child. Noah and the kids who are here keep talking about a fourth. That’s where I get into my hemming and hawing.

I’m scared I won’t have enough to give. I’ll be 38 or 39 when a fourth child is born. That’s fucking old in my shitty body that didn’t like giving birth at 29. I know it isn’t old in the scope of women giving birth these days. But my body is shitty. These little factors matter. Not to mention that my pregnancies suck ass.

I believe with all my heart that I will do well parenting three. I’m nervous that four will actually hit my limits and I’ll fail. I’m scared that I will let my fourth child feel even a little bit the way I did as a fourth.

I do not want to create a child who will feel like a burden.

I keep saying we’ll see when folks bring it up. Because I don’t know yet and I’m afraid to guesstimate the capacity I will have in three more years. What will be going on medically? Not a fun thing to think about.

I’m 19 weeks pregnant. One more week till I’m halfway. I’m definitely feeling movement already and have been for a bit now during quiet moments. And given that I have IBS and constant abdominal pain from gas and shit moving around I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FEELING OF GAS BUBBLES AND THE FUCKING BABY MOVING AROUND–STOP ARGUING WITH ME.

Near as I can tell, I have more Come to Jesus talks while pregnant than anyone I know. More people feel free to tell me while I’m pregnant that I shouldn’t be pregnant than any of my friends. I guess that’s what being a train wreck in motion will do.

It is hard that it is always close friends I love and respect a lot. At least this time I wasn’t told I would be a failure because of my mental health. Just that I’m not considering everyone on the planet’s well being as I’m being selfish.

Ok that isn’t how it was phrased. But communication is a mixture of what you say and what I hear. I’m always going to turn your mild criticism/off-hand comment into a reason why I’m a disgusting monster who should die. Because communication is about what I expect to hear too.

My friends tell me that no one says things to them while pregnant. Even if they are having the child under very different circumstances.

I mean good fucking grief. I’m married to the same person I’ve always been married to and we get along really well and co-parent together like whoa. I’ve lived in the same house for 11 years. I’m financially stable and secure and my children all have substantial nest eggs for their future. My existing children are really happy and secure and well adjusted.

But I should still totally be talked to about how terrible it is to be pregnant. Because I’m me.

No, because my friend was marveling at the fact that they can’t understand how their friends have such different values about “living green”. (I’m not the only one in their  inner circle to have a third child and they just don’t understand us.)

Selfish twats. There’s your answer for why.

(Ok, I shouldn’t speak for this other mother. That’s rude.)

There has been one week of my children’s life when I was not coherent or capable of parenting because of grief/mental breakdown. I called in the cavalry of my extended community and my children weren’t alone for a minute.

I handle my shit.

I’m not perfect. I’m not the best mother in the world by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m not shitty. I’m not in competition for being in the worst 10% of mothers either. I’m doing ok. Why do I want more children?

Because I want there to be another child in the world who is wildly wanted and who is looked at from birth like they are a person of their own who deserves to be considered and I have exactly one way I can make that true.

Really I have very little power in this life to effect the lives of other people. But I can do this.

I believe that someday, when I learn the lessons I’m working on with my own children, I will be an excellent foster mother. But I sincerely believe I haven’t learned all I need to learn yet and I don’t want to make those mistakes with foster children who have already been hurt enough. My precious bubble wrapped babies can absorb a few fuck ups without losing resiliency. Their lives are pretty awesome. Mistakes that won’t make them flinch will derail someone else’s bonding ability. Perspective matters.

Why is fostering so different from adopting to me? I don’t know. In fostering there is way less implication that you are “getting your own kid”. You are helping to raise someone else’s kid. It’s just full fledged acknowledged. And that I can do. I’m good at that. As long as I know my place and I know it isn’t “mother”. But I am not ready.

I need to learn more about sibling rivalry and in-house fighting with people who more or less get along and love each other. What I know about sibling interactions is so fucking toxic and I’m trying to replace the information in my head. It takes time.

I never learn as fast as I wish I did.

I’ve read a lot of books about being in healthy families. I need to have these feelings in my body because otherwise it’ll be like me teaching that kid trig when I was a teacher. I can teach a thing I don’t understand and can’t duplicate myself… but it’s really hard and I leave feeling drained and worthless and stupid.

Even though Noah thinks I should feel proud and capable… I leave knowing I still don’t understand. I’m just reading it out of a book. I don’t understand in my heart and in my mind and I really want to.

A hollow parroting of what feels safe and healthy to someone else doesn’t feel good to me. I need to understand.

Something I have been noticing, that is a slight left turn. I’ve been noticing that I want more tactile interactions with friends. I’m not using my words and asking for them. But I feel the impulse to ask for snuggling during visits. This is a kind of weird impulse because I’ve spent a lot of time in the past two decades making sure everyone knew to keep their god damn distance except sex and brief greeting/departing hugs. But I’m feeling different. It’s weird. It feels like an interesting shift.

I don’t want to jump everyone. I just want to lean my head on their shoulders. I just want to snuggle the way I get to with my kids. I want to feel that more with adult bodies.

I’m pretty sure this is the strongest this urge has been in my life. I want non-sexual contact. That’s weird for me. For so long it was threatening. I had to turn it into sex or else.

But I’ve been doing this different thing for a while now.

I get to pick up Noah in about six hours. I’m looking forward to that a lot.

Pam suggested that I don’t need to pity people for not having white friends. Oh boy. I sucked air on that one. Shit, I sound that stupid? I don’t think I *pity* people for not having white friends. White people really kind of suck.

It’s more that I have an innate terror of being treated like I am invisible. I don’t need to be someone’s best friend but I need to have people act like I am present.

So like the neighbor on the corner. People referring to her as “That Chinese lady” is erasing and rude. I mean… yes she is both Chinese and a lady… but she has a damn name. She has a personality that is much more interesting and important than her ethnicity. She’s one of the neat gardeners. She has funny stories. She’s super generous and kind.

If all you are willing to acknowledge about her for decades is that she is…. Chinese…. that’s fucking shitty to me. It is her neighbors being fucking self absorbed assholes. Why in the fuck would you not get to know the people who live near you?

I’m not “friends” with everyone in my neighborhood. I don’t have time. But I’m cheerful and outgoing and I introduce myself and I act like people are here. Lots of folks don’t reciprocate much and that’s ok. Even the people who don’t want to be my friends…. I can tell you something about them other than their ethnicity. So and so is incredibly meticulous about their car–they clean it at least once and often two or three times a week; eventually I will be rude enough to ask them if they use their car for work and appearance is completely important. I can tell you who cooks food of such delightful aroma that walking past their house is hard because I waaaaaaant to stoooooooooop.

I know which houses have children even if we don’t speak. I know which houses have elderly people who don’t get out much.

It is weird to me that people would want to live around others for decades and not know these things. I didn’t know all these things in the first 5 years I lived here but after 11 years… why in the hell would you not get to know your neighbors?

My neighbors knock on my door and ask for help reading documents, they borrow tools and ladders, they give me food, they ask me if they can borrow one egg because they ran short for a recipe.

I live in a god damn neighborhood. I live in a community and a lot of it I have created by force of will. I’m not ok with people referring to “The Chinese Lady On The Corner” as if it is a title. She has a name. She is a person. Don’t do that. And people tell me all the time they are glad I’m here doing this. Folks are enjoying knowing people more.

WHY DID Y’ALL WAIT UNTIL SOME PUSHY BITCH MOVED IN TO ENACT THIS SHIT!? Most of these people were here for 20 or more years before me. But they didn’t meet anyone. They didn’t feel…. I don’t know… permission?

It isn’t that I think that everyone must have white friends. It is that I think it is horrible to be alienated in your neighborhood. I think it is horrible to not be able to have people who pass you every day treat you like a real person.

A lot of my neighbors barely speak English. They speak a myriad of languages. They teach me small phrases or greetings because clearly I want to reach out. Most of the older people who walk past my house for health purposes seem to find me pretty funny.

I wish more people wanted to create community connections across different cultural lines. Not because it is a pity to not have white friends. If this were a Hispanic neighborhood and the Indian/Asian immigrants felt they couldn’t talk to anyone I would think that was sad too. Even if you basically took white people out of the equation.

It isn’t that everyone should want white bastards in their life.

I’m not color blind. I see race. I see differences. I think differences are what make us interesting. I think that having friends who do not have your specific background is educational, fun, and a good idea for future security.

In my life I have been shocked by who has given me help during the worst of crunch times. Near strangers.

I know my neighbors and I give my help freely and unstintingly. I don’t keep score of favors. There are some people I help a bunch and some I don’t help at all. We share food with a lot of houses and we discuss gardening with far more people.

I can find stuff in common. For one thing, it’s really fun to talk gardening with folks for whom English is not their native language because we talk about the names of what we are growing and then it gets into neat etymology conversations about the similarity in sounds.

I don’t think anyone should be pitied for not having white friends. But I think it is wonderful to have friends who can help you think about the world in different ways.

I think this springs from not really having a culture I strongly identify with in a positive way. I don’t want to be reaffirmed in my identity. I imagine it would be very different for folks like Pam’s family who like their culture and their language and don’t really see benefit to branching out.

But that is really fucking hard for me to imagine. It kind of breaks my brain. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be inside a brain that felt like that. I can’t imagine only wanting to know people who are like me.

Fuck. What would that even mean?

Which doesn’t mean people are wrong or bad or to be pitied for having a mindset I can’t understand. But it does mean I’m obnoxious about inserting myself into peoples lives because I can’t imagine that they don’t want me.

That’s not true. I know lots of people don’t want me. It is more accurate to say that I can’t imagine people not wanting more connection. Which is seriously limited in my thinking.

But what does “I know enough people” feel like?

I sure as fuck don’t know.

I have this existential hole inside me. I don’t know what bad things are coming just that more bad will come and my ability to survive will depend on the kind of net I have created for myself. I can’t imagine feeling secure with a net made up of only one kind of person.

I was sent to too many strangers of various backgrounds to ever believe my safety can be guaranteed by white people.

Which doesn’t mean my perceptions are right, just that they are mine.

I’m certainly used to many neighbors being kind of direct in how they let me know that they aren’t interested in getting to know me. Yeah, that happens too. Most often by folks who moved here and brought their WHOLE family with them. They have no time or mental bandwidth and I try not to be obnoxious. I’m friendly and courteous without pushing too hard (I hope).

Part of the reason I think it is sad that folks don’t cross racial lines is because some of the folks I talk to tell me flat out that they are much happier living here now that they talk to people who live near them. They had been sad. But for some reason it never occurred to them to try and talk to people until I initiated?

WHY IS THE WHOLE PLANET FULL OF LESBIAN SHEEP.

I’m a ram. Ma’am. Because sometimes cis-chicks just have to step up.

I’ll walk right up to you and say, “Hey. How you doin?”

If somebody has to open the door well, I’m used to burning my hand. Won’t matter if the door handle is hot and uncomfortable.

Which is part of how I fuck up so much. If you constantly put yourself in uncomfortable situations where you have to be brave and communicate in ways that are outside your norm… you fuck up a lot.

I even kind of think I don’t fuck up that much given how often I step outside my bubble.

But maybe I’m lying to myself.

I hope to goodness I don’t pity people for not having white friends. But I do feel irritated as fuck with white people not taking the initiative and saying, “I have lived here for a while and you are new. Hi! My name is: ________. I hope you like living here.”

Not because we are the gatekeepers… we aren’t. Because I wish people of every race would do that to new comers in their community and I try not to yell at people of other races. I yell at white people. It’s my lane.

So I think it is more that I am upset with white people for not trying harder than it is that I pity people of other races for not having white friends.

For a long time this was a white majority country. I think whatever group is in the majority is an asshole if they don’t reach out to under represented groups.

I hope that isn’t the same thing as pity.

What will people remember? That I made them uncomfortable? That I was so mean? That I was kind? That I am, to steal a phrase from a friend, a good foul weather friend?

I am not good at the calm day to day. That is not what I am oriented towards. But I have these people, a growing number, who absolutely require the day to day from me. I change for them in ways I have been absolutely unable to adapt for anyone else in the world.

Because they are the absolute only people I truly believe might still be around in fifty years.

Otherwise I will mostly know new people. I have no idea where I will live. I have no idea if I will be the meanest old bitch you’ve ever seen or if I will be kind and generous and patient.

Time will tell.

People’s opinion of me depends on a lot of factors. It depends on when in my life they met me (I’ve had some less than stellar stages). It depends on when in their lives they met me. It depends on how much authority over one another we had. It depends on how much we actually knew about one another.

I know I am intense. A kind of intensity that wears people out even if they love me. People move on because they just can’t. I’m too much. And that’s ok.

Some people absolutely hate my intensity and me for having it. That’s ok too.

What is not ok is if they expect me to change for them. I am what I am. I am intense. I think about intense topics. I talk about things other people really don’t want to hear about. That’s ok too.

I am trying to get better about figuring out when and under what circumstances these conversations are ok… because sometimes they are. But I can see how much I have hurt people in the past.

When I was a child I waved the trauma I was experiencing like a scythe to get people to leave me alone. Fine. You want to call me names? Well your taunts are stupid and immature. Why don’t I fucking tell you what my fucking father says to me.

Folks just… ignored me after that.

And it was never worthless whore. Somehow with all my lack of tact and my constant diarrhea of the mouth… I didn’t really admit that till adulthood.

Worthless, sure. Witch. Evil. That I was a demon who was sent here to hurt people.

It’s easy as shit to scare little kids.

What will people remember about me in the end? A whole lotta shit good and bad. Because I am both. Because I am a wonderful and terrible monster. Will I cause harm? Probably. Will I help people? Most likely.

And I’ll fuck up all the time as I’m trying to learn. I will continue to stumble and fall. Because I always want to go just a bit faster than I can really bear and so… it happens.

I’ll try to admit it. I’ll try to be honest about why I was in the wrong. I will try to make new mistakes.

Yes Shakira. I will try. New mistakes. Every day.

I understand more and more about what my mother meant when she said that my Sissy and I had completely different mothers.

When Lightning is born I will have been out for 18 years. When EC was born I had only been in a forever home for less than 2 years. Now it’s been 11 years.

I don’t scream like I did. I don’t have the impulse towards being physically rough with people I had. I am still louder than other people might prefer. I am still a fairly prone to darting around and moving quickly. But I know more about where I end and you begin.

Some people focus their lives around their friends or their jobs. I feel pathetic… but for me it is my kids. I don’t think that is mandatory for being a good parent; I think it is probably fairly unhealthy. I’m trying to do it in a way that doesn’t fuck them up.

I’m trying to be a good example. A good example isn’t inappropriately enmeshed with their children so I’m trying to maintain boundaries around that. My kids know I need adult friends to talk to because many topics are Not For Them. My kids know I pay a therapist to help me deal with all the big feelings I won’t tell them about and instead all I say is “I’m having big feelings and I don’t want them to impact you more than absolutely necessary. So if my tone of voice is weird or if I’m quiet… don’t feel bad. I’m in my thoughts.”

I loved teaching for this. When I was outed all over the place at Camp Everytown is was amazing to me that all of my students expressed shock and horror because the entire revelation was shocking and seemed impossible based on what they thought they knew about me.

I am capable of good boundaries. People know what I want them to know.

Does that mean I’m a liar? I do write down a public record for anyone who wants to check. I just don’t… admit it in the moment.

It would be bad for me to try and place my emotions at the center of every interaction.

I’m trying to figure out when bringing them up is appropriate. Because mostly I’ve learned that people don’t care and I should shut up or they are too young and it isn’t appropriate.

I do have friends who ask about me. I love you so much.

It’s part of why I learned to drop whatever I was doing and talk to Pam. Here is this wonderful person who is calling because she wants to hear about me.

I don’t… have a lot of people who do that. I get a lot of calls from telemarketers.

So in the end people will mostly judge me based on a carefully curated set of interactions. Or on a meltdown. Or both!

Phew, Lightning is getting active. I’m getting a lot more decisive bumps. A lot more hey. notice me.

I feel you. I know you are not me. I know you will be a whole separate person and I thank you for sharing this time with me. It is wonderful to feel you grow under my heart.

I do not promise you that I will do anything you need. Sometimes… I will fail. That will happen. I promise you that I will always think of you as a separate person who deserves to be considered.

Sometimes in life you can make everyone happy or you can be effective. There will be times when I kind of stomp on what you want or need. I’m sorry. But yeah, that’s going to happen. I truly don’t know a way around that. At some point I will hit a limit in myself and I will have nothing more to give in a day.

So then why do I think I should have another kid?

Hey (whisper whisper) do you ever do that self evaluation bullshit you claim you do?

I do. I won’t be going on another six month road trip without Noah.

I have limits, of the physical and emotional and cognitive variety. Yup. This is a fact. Mostly I’m capable of planning around them. The trouble comes when I don’t respect my limits and I try to get through a set of work that is too much for me.

I’m better at managing this. It’s still in progress.

I’m better at recognizing that there is no value in chasing most people for friendship. If they don’t say yes to something within a few months… stop throwing good energy after bad.

And now it’s time to climb in the bath tub and watch Signing Time.

The only time we have to leave the house today is for martial arts. The school refers to this class as “BBC” meaning Black Belt Club. But I don’t feel like I should talk about my kids needing to get to BBC much. It has too many interpretations. Ahem.

This is good. The past few days have felt slammed. Saturday was busy alllllll day. Sunday we had a guest until dinner time so it wasn’t restful. Monday we had stuff going all day. Today… we get to do academics and chill and then go to one class. It’s like having a rest day.

I think I have screwed up on something. My kids don’t talk that much to my adult friends when they come over and I think part of this is my impatience with them interrupting me. So they just aren’t trying very much in front of me and I need to figure this out. I know the kids like my adult friends but I fear I have been a jerk and made that tricky.

They do interrupt to the point where I feel like I’m going to lose my mind because I can’t finish a fucking sentence some days.

This is going to be a tough issue for us to figure out. I love that they volunteer their voice and opinion. I wish they could let other people finish a sentence first. I need to find a way to access some tools around this problem. I can manage this in a classroom of 32. Why can’t I manage it in my house? I suspect partially because in my classroom I just ride roughshod over every one and say, “This is how it’s gunna be. Play along or sit outside.” My kids… I don’t actually ride roughshod over them much. It’s a point of policy. So they are kind of entitled twits sometimes.

I still have an ongoing struggle with just how fucking entitled my kids are even as I recognize that it’s my fault. How can anyone believe with a straight face that they just deserve life as good as my kids get it?

It blows my mind.

My kids are trying as hard as they can to understand lives that aren’t like theirs… but they are so sheltered. Years ago Pam told me that my kids were So Not Sheltered. Sweetie… as someone who grew up in abject poverty surrounded by violence… let me tell you… my kids are fucking sheltered. They aren’t ignorant but they are sheltered.

I did this. I sheltered them. I have kept them from dealing with the brutality and selfishness and indifference that waits just outside our door. Life is shitty and hard. My kids… sort of know that from books, movies, and stories.

Sometimes it feels really alienating that my children have no scope of reference for almost anything about me. Sometimes it feels like I have arrived at success in life. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

My kids will never truly have the reflexes of little ninny white kids. But they won’t have the instincts of folks who have been abused. I really wonder how they are going to be as adults.

Last night EC was snuggling up to me… I don’t remember what she asked exactly but I said, “I love you so much. Not because you are perfect, sometimes you are quite the little punk. I love you because you are real and interesting and HERE.” She smiled and grabbed my hand and drew it to her face and she said, “I love how you say that.”

My kids don’t aspire to being perfect. They know that life is a balance of being thoughtful and being a selfish asshole. I mean… other people frame it differently… but I feel this is an important lesson. We aren’t striving for perfection. We are striving to be thoughtful as we deal with our own selfish needs. I don’t really know a “better” than that to shoot for in terms of behavior.

Oh the first day of me being irritating to verbal rebuffs… uhhh…went. I saw so much cat butt face it was hilarious. FMC insisted that if I was going to work on that with EC I had to work on it with them too. Suuuuuuuuure. I’m not being mean (I’m not doing anything that my Uncle Bob did to me on a near daily basis) but I am poking and being obnoxious. We are definitely improving the speed of verbal response instead of just flinching. And several of the times I kept going once I hit the first no. I said, “Ok. If that first soft, quiet no doesn’t stop someone… how will you step it up? If the person says ‘What? What did you say?’ how will you enforce your boundary?” We are talking a lot about gradual escalation.

If you move immediately to hitting lets talk about the consequences. EC is *thrilled* to be gaining weight but I point out that I still have over 90 lbs on her. If she escalated to hitting and I was less of a nice person…. how would that go for her?

She kind of flinches and contorts her face and says, “Probably……. not so well.”

“Ok. What will you SAY next so that you aren’t the person escalating things to blows?”

Both children are coming up with much better scripts with pushing.

I want my children to be ready and able to use physical force to defend themselves. I want them to understand that 999/1000 it is better if you deescalate verbally. I use the lesson of my cousin (the one I talk to on the phone in Kentucky) being a physically aggressive person to talk about this. She was always a fighter. That was her go-to solution for most things. She was the biggest, tallest, heaviest person in her grade until high school so it worked. At 19 she tried to use this way of solving problems with a large adult man. He beat her so badly she was in the hospital for weeks.

Don’t pick fights unless you have no god damn choice. Because it will end poorly for you most of the time.

I’m still proud of myself for the verbal deescalations I’ve managed over the last few years. I have come a long way. I don’t escalate things any more. I don’t want to. I don’t want explosions that hurt people. It’s not my goal. I’ve come a long way.

One of my buddies in the bdsm community told me that I’m a topic of conversation. People bring up how terrible it is that I have children because clearly I’ll be an awful mother.

Ok. Well near as I can tell that’s a common opinion for folks in the scene. Ok. You can have that opinion.

I’ll sit here with my joyous, independent, funny, vibrant children and be awful. Sounds dandy.

It’s hard for us to go to bed when Noah isn’t around. He gets way more impatient about the giggling and the silly conversations at night so he shuts us down so we will Go To Sleep Damnit. When it’s just the three of us… it’s so lovely I can’t shut it down well. FMC has been up till 9 or 9:30 the last two nights because we are so damn happy to be able to chat until we pass out. It’s so weird to me how giggly and happy they are.

I can’t remember being like that as a child. I mean, I can remember laughing…. but I wasn’t like them.

I feel so grateful that I get to be around them.

Even if I am a train wreck in motion… my sparks are pretty glittery.

We trade food a lot with one of our elderly neighbors. She’s really sweet. Sometimes when I interact with her I get the impression that we are the first white family she has ever befriended and I feel sad about that because she has been in this country a long time. She’s so nice. She should have had friends for all the decades of her life here. I mean, she does have friends. She knows the other elderly Chinese immigrants in our neighborhood and they lunch together a lot. But if she has been here and no white people have stepped up to introduce themselves and be friendly…

Well I always knew my race sucked.

Our new next door neighbors are really nice. They are very recently come from India and the local wildlife is scaring them to death. We get opossums. We had a lovely chat about how not scary these animals are. They were so relieved to hear that this animal is not aggressive like a raccoon. They had heard horror stories about raccoons.

Hey Noah! I asked around! Rattlesnakes *are* considered normal around here. I feel so ignorant and wrong. I will have to go apologize for my ignorance. I’m not sure how I’ve lived in the bay for 30 years and I didn’t know that rattlesnakes are normal in this region.

See, my ignorance is vast and hard to encompass.

This is why I tell my kids not to cite me as an authority. I’m wrong all the time. Look up a credible source if you want to say for a fact that something is true. I misremember. I am misinformed. I just plain understand things wrong. It’s life.

I tried to sleep without my pillow fort last night because both kids wanted to sleep with me. Ugh. I’m glad Noah is coming home soon so I can go back to using 2/3 of the bed with impunity. He’s so tolerant of me bed stealing the entire fucking bed. The kids… no. They just climb right fucking on top of me.

It’s a good thing I love them so much I feel like I am drowning in feelings.

Both of my dear friends couldn’t make Skype yesterday. It was a good day to have extra down time. I’m not mad. I am really enjoying having the space reserved to talk to my friends every week, it feels psychologically reassuring and it also feels nice that sometimes it doesn’t happen and I get an unexpected hour to rest my brain. I schedule my brain for too damn many hours a day.

I feel bad about flaking on a friend who was going to come over and help me this weekend. I just had no brain left and I would have stood there and cried if she had tried to help me be productive. Brain power is a resource and I run out.

I feel like I am trying to figure out where my actual limits are and retreat to them more than at most other points in my life. I’m trying hard to take it seriously that Noah put it in my contract that I have to take care of my mental and physical wellbeing. Which means I need to stop working until I am numb and I have damaged myself more. That’s hard for me… I’m a tool and it’s hard to let a tool stop and rest just out of the kindness of your heart. The tool isn’t broken completely? Keep fucking working.

But if I’m trying to stick around for decades I can’t anymore.

Once upon a time my first Owner used our M/s relationship to force me to learn a lot of executive function skills. We didn’t talk about it like that, but with the perfection of hindsight… that’s a lot of what we did. I had to learn how to manage a household so that someone else didn’t have to think about solving problems. That was the most clockwork I have ever been about household chores. ( had a fuckton of free time.)

It is very complicated at this point. Homeschooling uses my brain for 10-30 hours a week. Managing my children in general requires…. as many hours as I don’t forcefully dragoon into other service.

That leaves me with less for everything else and that’s complicated.

How do you juggle? Which balls do you drop?

I am struggling with this phase where we are introducing ourselves to therapists we will eventually not see very often but for now we are still in the getting-to-know-you phase. The current plan with all therapists is that we will see them intensely for 3-6 months then start tapering frequency. We want to maintain a relationship but the therapists are all clearly stating that as long as we have no crisis… they are somewhat superfluous. But the single factor I consider most significant in life is the fact that…. there will be another crisis. It’s just a matter of time.

So I persevere. They will have therapists they can go to when things melt down. It will be in place for them. They will just have support there when they can’t carry their own troubles.

I wish I got to be the boss of the world and being a therapist was a much more plum assignment so that every child could have this kind of relationship. Not constantly in your life but there in the background as a tool.

I think it is kind of funny that the thought of people sitting around and discussing what a shitty mother I am makes me kind of giggle. I am so much better at this than I expected that you can’t even imagine. It’s a fucking miracle.

The kids are well set up in their academics and don’t need much from me this moment. This is… not the norm for how things have been going so I’m grateful. Lately they have both needed a lot of intense interaction and so I’ve been doing it. I’m feeling worn out but it’s kind of in a good way. I like the intense teaching.

It’s funny to me that Noah knows I would have a harder life without him but I don’t think he understands how much it isn’t about the day to day stuff he does. It is the listening. We talk about what we do for one another. We both think we are consciously giving so the other doesn’t get sick of us. It’s a system that kind of works for us.

But I get the kids fed without him. I get the house picked up without him. The laundry gets done without him. Sure his help is lovely and awesome and makes my life easier… but I can cope without those kinds of support.

I don’t cope without his feedback on my thinking processes very well. He builds up my self confidence. That’s so much more important.He’s harsh with me about my thinking too. He’s not real big on letting me keep my delusions. The fucker.

It is hilarious to me how many times a day I want to check in on social media. I’m hitting the IMs harder. It’s tricky though because there are only a few people I don’t feel like I’m irritating with IMs. Mostly I worry about bothering people and disrupting their lives so I don’t initiate. I talk to the handful of people who initiate with me at least occasionally. I’m ok with doing like 90% of initiating. If I never get an initial poke… I just hit a point after a few months where I will stop. And maybe never do it again. So I don’t IM with that many people. Thank y’all for your patience with me. I know that I get super wordy sometimes.

I keep having waves of terror about money and I know it’s ridiculous and it’s ok to kind of hate me. We are more in debt than I want to be and I have an existential fear about that. I know that it doesn’t matter because the debt isn’t at a high interest rate and we have far more assets than we have liabilities and… I don’t care. I didn’t want to be this far in the hole at this point. The bathroom remodel… that was such a clusterfuck. The expense…. good grief. I mean… we paid an extra $15,000 for the right to say that we hated working with Future Vision Remodeling Company. That kind of hurts. But it was worth it! And we otherwise went more than $60,000 over what I wanted to spend. That hurts a lot. So I’m way behind on where I wanted to be in debt reduction and I feel like I am letting Noah and my family down. That was my project and I didn’t manage it properly to keep it in budget and I picked bad companies and wasted money and…

I feel guilty. I made us a great bathroom, sure, but I wasted a lot of money in the process and that will put us a year to two years behind where we wanted to be in terms of future security and that adds up over time. That’s a lot of extra money that won’t get invested because I… I was foolish.

I let Noah down. I’m supposed to be responsible for the money and I wasn’t very responsible. I make a lot of mistakes with our finances… usually they don’t hurt this bad.

It feels so bad to be fucking up at this level. That money could have finished funding a college savings account. That could have…

It could have been a lot of kinds of security. It could have paid off my mortgage faster. I fucked up bad.

That’s weighing on my shoulders. I feel irresponsible and like I have proven that I should not be given the responsibility I have to manage money on this scale. My Mint review at the end of the year is going to be fucking embarrassing. This year… Last year… The more money comes in the shittier I am at stemming the flow out.

This year the problem is medical. My medical bills are high. We spend $3,000+ per month on medical and I feel really ashamed of that. I should not be taking so much from my family. But I’m doing this with the hope that I can fix some problems and some year I won’t be so expensive and I won’t be in so much pain so I won’t want to die so much.

I feel really guilty about my ongoing pain. I am getting impatient with myself and my body and I feel like it is really fucking annoying that I can’t just get over it already so that I can stop being such a fucking irritating waste of resources.

I’m doing the best I can. It never feels like good enough. I hurt so fucking much. I really really really should stop typing.

Noah is ok. He made it to Hiroshima and their current weather forecast is clear and mild. So he missed the worst of the storm. Phew.

The kids and I are doing fine. We miss him. I think it is funny that having Noah out of the house means I do a lot of random anxiety cleaning. The house is just about to the point where I don’t feel anxious about piles still sitting around waiting for management. Stuff is cleaned up from the remodel and life and… we are ready to move on to the next stage. (Except for the piles that will require the most cognitive load to put away. I did procrastination cleaning where I do the easy stuff that I do to avoid the stuff that Needs Done.)

I’m even getting close to figuring out where all the baby schtuff goes. A few things are shoved into corners but mostly items are just finding homes.

I forgot about the massage party my massage therapist REALLY wants me to host. Is there much interest? She would bring a colleague she has trained and they would both come to my house and do chair massages on folks for 30 or so minutes for a pretty darn cheap rate. Is there much interest in such an event? Cause I’m not up for planning a failure right now.

I checked and I’m about half a pound down from my pre-pregnancy weight at this point. At 18.5 weeks. BUT DON’T EAT MORE THAN 300 EXTRA CALORIES A DAY. Even though at this point I’m rapidly getting to the point where I’m going to need to need to gain a little over a pound a week to be in the “recommended range” so shuddup.

I just need to fecking eat, m’kay?

I haven’t taken my vitamins in two days. Partially because I’m feeling hella nauseous and when I try to swallow handfuls of pills when I feel this way I’m much more likely to upchuck them. Partially because I was an idiot and when we were coming home from LA I left a weeks worth of pills to melt in the car on accident. See, I take some gummy vitamins to minimize how much hard swallowing I have to do. Gummies melted… all over the other pills… creating a solid block of nasty about the size of a walnut shell. I can’t swallow that and I can’t take it apart without shattering the nasty tasting pills. So yeah. A week’s worth of medication down the drain. That costs… a lot of money.

I’m getting to the point of feeling sick to my stomach when I think about how much money I’ve spend on nutritional supplements over the past few years only to end up with no detectable load of these fucking nutrients in my body.

That’s just… ugh.

I feel like I am draining my family’s coffers to try and build up my body and it’s failing so I’m wasting these resources that could be better spent…

Ugh.

It’s hard that I have doctors telling me that the only way I can prove that I’m trying to get better is to come to every appointment and take every supplement and jump through every hoop and then other doctors tell me I’m a horrible person if I drive to the appointments because I’m so dangerous I shouldn’t get behind the wheel of a car.

But who the fuck can afford hundreds of dollars a day or 5+ hours a day of time? I can’t do what I need to do and not drive.

So I’m evil if I do and I’m bad and not trying if I don’t.

Sigh.

I’m so fucking tired.

Kid conflicts are interesting. Today I noticed that I have probably done a bad thing with my children. I have trained them that to believe that people will apologize and take responsibility for what they do unintentionally. In the vein of: “I stepped on your foot and I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry.” Most people aren’t going to apologize. And my kids are really struggling with that. I feel like it is my fault they don’t already know that the world is going to batter them and not care.

I didn’t prepare them for this. That feels like a failure on my part.

This week will be spent on roleplaying opportunities to use our words to say no instead of depending on nonverbal communication. Ok it works in this house with your family because we know your signals and we love you and we WANT to be hearing this information. That won’t be true out in the world. I need to help you get ready for the fact that folks are going to insist long and loud that they had “no way to know you didn’t want it to happen”.

No. No. No. No.

I’m going to be an asshole and bedevil her. We are going to negotiate in advance that I am going to specifically push past her non-verbal signals so she HAS to say no.

In a way that kind of creeps me out… this reminds me of a scene I did with a lovely friend many years ago. She couldn’t safeword. Not to save her own life. Literally. She did not have the verbal ability to protect her body because she didn’t believe she deserved it. So I beat her and talked to her and begged her to tell me no until she did.

I will not be punching my child the way I hurt my friend. Oh boy that would result in losing her forever.

But I can be irritating as shit. I can pester. I can be annoying and intrusive with my energy until she just HAS to SAY NO.

It’s funny how there are shadows of life experiences that come back. You have to be able to say no my darling. You have to believe that your body is worthy of defense and you can do it.

You have to. I won’t be there during the most important moments. It’ll be you and the bad thing happening.

You have to protect you.

Even though I did a piss poor job of it most of the time and I really don’t have the right to judge. I’m not good at self defense. Not when it counted the most. I crumbled like a mud sculpture in the rain.

But you, you my baby. You must be stronger than me. You must have the belief that you are worthy of defense.

You are not a worthless whore and you never fucking will be.

And so we practice. How do you say no. And NO. And I SAID NO ARE YOU DEAF?!

Ok… I just negotiated with her. She says she is going to be very unhappy about this exercise but she sees why it is important. Ok fine. FOR ONE WEEK. That seems reasonable. Boundaries are awesome.

I wish I had a better idea of how I’m fucking my kids up in the long term….

Self care for mental health would be taught all the way through high school with a full year being focused on how to deal with parenting since most of the population ends up parenting. I wish there were classes that taught about different parenting styles and why they are valid. Some people make authoritarian parenting work pretty well. I can’t. That doesn’t make it invalid nor my parenting style invalid.

I wish that kids spent high school learning about how complex the body really is. Having frank discussions about how confusing sexuality is. Learning that no one is “normal” and it’s ok to be into what you are into. How do you negotiate in a way that treats the person you are negotiating with like an autonomous human being instead of a piece of meat? How do you learn how to even tell what you are into vs what you are willing to tolerate because you want to be near this person so much?

I wish that there were long frank discussions about how shitty parenting is. Kids are assholes. Kids don’t give a shit about your boundaries and needs and how in the fuck are you going to manage that? There are lots of ways to approach this topic. There are lots of methods that work in the world that wouldn’t work for me.

I wish most people had to read Montessori and Holt and Maslow and Frankl and Piaget among many others. I wish that school taught the ability to evaluate yourself. The ability to evaluate yourself is one of the most important abilities you will need in life.

I think people should evaluate if they are doing well at parenting before deciding to have more children. If you aren’t handling the kid(s) you have, don’t have more. That’s a harsh opinion.

Yeah I think that kids deserve harsh evaluation. I think every child is that important. I pick quality over quantity.

I’m NOT SAYING that all people of a certain group, whether defined by disability, race, sexual orientation, wealth, or whatever…. shouldn’t have children. I’m not saying that at all. I am not saying that the government should be empowered to evaluate if people are good enough and sterilize them.

I’m not advocating for eugenics.

I’m saying that people should evaluate themselves and decide if this shitty job is one they really want to keep doing.

I love it. I love it more than the other shitty jobs I’ve had. I don’t believe I’ll ever have a non-shitty job. I know it’s a shitty job. But it’s one I want really badly.

I don’t think you should do things that are this hard unless you really really want to and you are able to do a good job at it.

Why? Because of how many traumatized people there are in this world. That doesn’t have to be true. There could be far fewer.

Yeah. That’s harsh.

But what does it mean to do a good job at parenting? Christ I don’t know. People evaluate on different levels. How physically competent someone is. How good a child is at adapting and conforming and learning. How much money someone grows up to make. How many years of therapy are necessary to keep from going postal…

There are a lot of metrics!

The metric I am shooting for is that I hope when my children are 30 they will want to be friends with me. That’s rather a low bar in the scheme of things.

My kids aren’t universally advanced and I would probably feel uncomfortable if they are. They are uncommonly verbal… but that’s because they have more opportunity to talk than average. *shrug* My kids aren’t smarter or more physically skilled than other kids.

They just glow with knowing that they are ok and they are where they are supposed to be today on their path.

That’s like, the thing I have really been able to teach. It’s confusing to me.

Let me tell you I’m not going to be the parent to teach physical prowess. We went to the park to play catch this week. That was fucking hilarious. I think we collectively caught approximately 10% of the balls.

And who fucking cares? We laughed the whole time. We had a lot of fun. It was funny. It wasn’t like when I was a kid and people would get angry at me and shout at me that I was pathetic because I wasn’t coordinated.

It was just… relaxed.

We aren’t playing catch because our future worth depends on our baseball star status. We were playing catch because it is a way to work on hand eye coordination and fill some time not sitting on our butts. Being bad at it is ok.

I seek out so much outside opinion on my parenting because I don’t even trust myself to evaluate that I’m doing well. Surely I’m the worst parent ever. I’m such a shitty person no other truth is possible. But I am also aware that I’m not so good at perceiving positives about myself. So I ask for outside opinions.

I get negative commentary on my parenting. When it is from people close to our lives who know me and my kids… I try to understand where the criticism is coming from and incorporate the lessons from it into my parenting. I’m better at talking to my kids now than I was because friends have commented on how awful some phrasings were.

Don’t worry… I’m fucking my kids up even as I’m doing some things right. It’s god damn inevitable.

But I think my kids are going to be fucked up in ways they will figure out how to cope with. I think they are going to be moderately fucked up and only inconvenienced by their degree of fucked up instead of needing 30+ years of intensive therapy with periodic skills classes and periods of intense study to try and deal with problems.

As my daughter likes to say… Generationally we are improving… she might not fuck her kids up at all!

Or maybe our line will die out and that’s cool too.

I love you. You are fucked up. I could list the ways and a lot of the reasons but it would feel unfriendly. I don’t mean it in an unfriendly way though. I mean that I see you. I see you as this complex messy person and I love you very much for your flaws and for the ways you are cool. I hope you see me. I hope you see that I am a flaming fucking asshole and a really caring person. I hope you see that I am a good parent and a shitty parent and I don’t deserve to be crucified or praised.

I hope you can love me anyway. I hope you can see that there is worth and value in me even on days when I don’t see it in me.

I see it in you even on the days you don’t see it.

I don’t see this judgment as being different from love. And yeah, I guess that is harsh.

I felt less self-hating yesterday than I did the day before and I feel much more calm today. It helped that yesterday was snuggle-tastic and I had lots of fantastically good interactions with the kids.

I love the days when “school” is done with me snuggling one kid at a time reading through their stuff for the day. It’s multiple extra hours of snuggling on top of how much we normally snuggle. I had an interesting chat with my somatic therapist about regulating off the kids. The therapist agreed with my assessment that as long as I am cheerfully accepting the regulating energy that the kids are freely offering… I’m not really being a vampire. If I tried to demand that they regulate me or if I pushed for more physical contact than felt good to the kids… that would be inappropriate.

But if someone is handing you a free gift, it’s ok to say yes.

I absolutely understand that having children touch you can be a PTSD trigger. For most of my life I couldn’t bear to be touched because anyone touching me was so dysregulating. Other than bdsm or sex, of course. I had enough control under those auspices to tolerate touch. My children have forced me to learn body regulation in order to tolerate their presence.

I understand that children, especially the grabby way that babies are, can overload the adult system like whoa.

Managing babies is what I do instead of meditating. Writing is what I do instead of meditating. Both require me to learn how to be in the moment and parse the differences between my needs and your needs in this exact moment and I have to get real precise “I am doing x for you even though this is hard and it hurts me.” The gift of being present for a baby is terrible to bear. Being a mother is a shit job. I don’t glorify this crap.

But it gives me purpose. It gives me a reason to get out of bed and care about someone other than myself. Go read A Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl.

Do you know why I don’t want a job? Because if I had a job I would have to forcefully create a lot more space in my life for me to have my unique processes outside of my family. I would need a huge amount of buffer time to transition from the boundaries I need for interacting with the world as a woman on my own and the boundaries I need in the world as a mother with children. They are incredibly different for me. I understand that I am physically capable of managing one set of behaviors most of the time without lots of screaming. I know where my failures are.

Lots of people have no choice but to be parents who work. So my white knuckling technique of getting through parenting is literally not an option because their energy has to go to other places. I get that. Don’t have more kids.

My experience of working in schools, my experience of being a fucked up person in the world tells me that no one perfectly gets their needs met but almost anything can be overcome if you have a hard core support network. My experience is that very few people genuinely have a hard core support network in modern America.

Most mothers don’t have someone to step up and fill the gap of what they can’t give. It isn’t their fault. They aren’t bad people. Life is shitty and unfair and it hurts all over. I don’t think these women are bad people for coping the way they must with a whole load of traumatic experiences. But children still need what they need if you don’t have it to offer. Don’t have *more* children if you find out with your first that you cannot bear to comfort a one year old.

I’m the fourth child. No one wanted to fucking comfort me. I was hit for crying because no one wanted to hear it.

I’m not saying, “You are a shitty parent so you should lose your children.” I don’t believe that. I think that most kids are better off with their parents even when it isn’t perfect. That bond is fucking real.

I’m saying that if you wanted to find out what motherhood is and then you found out that it is so overwhelming you can’t handle meeting the needs of your kid… don’t have more kids. Not because you are bad. Not because you shouldn’t have the kid you have. Because yet more load isn’t going to make you a better parent to the child who is here.

There are a lot of things I don’t do in this life because *I* have limits that preclude me from doing them.

One of the very few things I’m tremendously good at in this life is helping kids feel supported. I was fantastic at it as a teacher and I’m better as a mother.

Which doesn’t mean this impulse towards centering children is easy or something that everybody should be able to do. It’s about a very specific shift in thinking that most people don’t experience and that’s not bad or wrong. I absolutely understand that the way I center children in my thinking is not that common. I talk to teachers all the time. I talk to parents all the time. Not many people constantly think about the child in front of them like a social worker trying to manage what services a vulnerable person needs.

It’s based on the life I’ve lead. It is freaky to me when I come across children who are… just ok. They don’t need more support. They are getting everything they need from their life. It absolutely happens and I’m always a bit shook. It’s wonderful! I wish I had more time to grill their parents and find out how that happened.

There was this one family I worked with as a teacher. I knew the older and younger son. Both were diagnosed with Asperger’s and the family had a one to one therapist they had been working with since the oldest son was 4. I learned so many behavioral tricks from that family. The kids taught me. The mother taught me. Heck, the therapist (who came to every academic meeting) was incredibly informative. This is the hard downside of homeschooling and being so isolated. I don’t have families like that drifting through my life to teach me tricks.

I think of parenting children kind of like I think of staying up late to work in theatre. You have to evaluate if it is something you can handle. I can’t stay up late at night for love or money. I wanted a career in theatre so bad but I’m not physically capable of doing what I wanted to do. I had to find a different path.

One and done is ok. I think it is going to become more the norm than not. Only children branch out in their communities in a way that is super important. They look for the connections and the support they need.

My not-based-on-anything-real-so-I’m-probably-wrong opinion on having siblings is that it makes it harder to go out into the world seeking what you need if you believe you should have support at home. I know that it was a real handicap for me that I had three older siblings who all “talked” about “taking care of me” when the reality was I did hard physical labor to take care of my siblings as they taunted and abused me. I don’t believe that having siblings is always a good thing.

*I* didn’t want an only child because I think with my weird ass intensity I would fuck a kid up entirely if they had just me to interact with all day as we homeschool. EC definitely benefits from having FMC around. But it doesn’t always work out. It was a crap shoot. We got lucky.

It’s kind of hard knowing that if I had one kid in my house with me… I would screw them up with my intensity and my emotional ups and downs. With multiple children in the house it is easier for the house to carry on while I drift on my little emotional eddy and I’ll catch up when I’m ready. If it was just me and a single kid trying to manage my emotional shit… I sincerely believe it would get bad.

But other people have other limits. Other people have other things to offer.

Hell, I think that the parents who refuse to comfort their one year old children will often go on to be much better at inculcating what it means to be “normal” and to try and conform to being a cog in a machine. The machine doesn’t give a shit if you cry either.

Such parenting isn’t “wrong”. But shit dude only produce one cog.

Which isn’t a fact. Which isn’t a pronouncement from on high. I’m not on high looking down on anyone.

It’s my shitty opinion that no one has to care about even a little bit.

Which is why I banned myself from the forums. Because I can keep my shitty opinion to myself and stop arguing with people who have to live in the world very differently than I am able to live in the world. My life is so overflowing with privilege I don’t have the fucking right to judge anyone at this point.

I have a stack of parenting *choices* that almost no one gets. That makes me a self righteous bastard if I judge. People are coping with what they have in front of them with what tools they have in their bag. If I say they are bad for that… well… it’s already well established that I’m a shitty person so what the hell.

I’m a shitty person and a really good parent.

We went for a walk after dinner. Of course this turned into the “neighborhood tour” as it usually does. Our neighborhood is going to audibly keen when we leave. Last night was a lot of talking to the older ladies about how they can get in on the produce trading that is happening right under their noses. “Oh we do it! Let me introduce you to _______ so that you can talk about what you have to trade…”

My neighbor said that having me around makes the neighborhood feel warmer and cozier than it did without me and she’s been here 30 years. She also said that she can tell I must be a wonderful person in general because of the way my kids glow. “That has to come from you.”

I live in this permanent state of confusion. How did I produce happy children? How did I produce children who glow with so much happiness that people comment on it about once a week? Fucking strangers come up to me in stores and comment on it. Professionals who are used to finding the cracks and flaws in seemingly “happy” families tell me that they can’t figure out what they might have to offer us because we are doing so well.

It is very hard to reconcile in my head that I’m a shitty person who should die… only I’m better at this parenting gig than anyone has a right to be.

It is mostly privilege. It is mostly that I have the luxury of time without financial strain. I don’t think I would be such a good parent under almost any other circumstances and I try to be humble about that.

i wouldn’t be having another kid if I had more need to earn money. No chance. I would have nothing left to give another kid if I were in that position. I know it like I know my name. I only have as much to give as I have because of the amount of support I get from my husband.

It’s part of why I don’t feel comfortable asking other people for support. I get more than I deserve from my husband so for me to ask for support from anyone else is bad. There are a lot of people in this world who need and deserve that help so much more than me. I’m a fucking bitch. My life is already cozier than I deserve. Of course I should find ways to increase my share of suffering in this world.

There is no real way for me to pay back all the support that kept me alive. Not functional or healthy…. alive. I don’t deserve any more.

I paid back the therapy. I paid them. That’s a fair trade.

Communities kept me alive when my mother couldn’t. When my mother couldn’t comfort me when my immediate family members were killing themselves I went to my Jenny. I understand that mothers can’t always comfort their children and their children need to find that support in the world.

I also understand how hard that is. How painful the search is for people who will accept you. It’s rough.

I spend so much time wishing I hadn’t been born because then my existence wouldn’t require the support I’ve gotten and people could have “been there” for someone who was more deserving than I will ever be.

But if I had never been born my children wouldn’t be in the world. I may be a miserable son of a bitch, but my children… aren’t. My children are pretty much the only reason I am capable of looking at myself and seeing that I am fucking overwhelmingly filled with love.

I want to love people so badly. I want to be support for people so badly. I want to be worthy of being loved and supported. But I’m tremendously fucking limited in how I can offer that support. I’m really bad at being able to perceive adults the way I perceive children. I am impatient and intolerant of their needs in a way that I basically never am with children. It’s not nice and it’s not appropriate and I’m not defending it. It’s a shitty thing I do. It is a sharp block in my brain.

I have a slightly easier time with adults I knew as children so they get a halo effect. But it’s still hard.

I’m trying to work through what it means to be a good parent and a shitty person. Because I’m absolutely convinced that I am both. I’m honestly kind of hoping that as my children grow up I will have an easier time perceiving adults as people. These kids are going to be the first people I have known from infancy to adulthood. I didn’t know my siblings or cousins or niblings well enough to track them from youth to adulthood.

I was always off somewhere in a foster home because no one wanted to take care of me.

I think so much about what is owed for care that was grudgingly, barely given.

But it was given. I’m not dead. It’s kind of like mothers not wanting to comfort their kids but wanting them to exist in the world for… some… reason…

I can’t perceive this objectively because my mother never wanted me and it permeated my whole fucking life. I can only view this topic from the point of view of a baby who isn’t wanted. I know after 9 years of parenting I’m supposed to have way more compassion for how hard it is to mother…

I’m still the baby no one wanted.

I’m still the baby who was told to shut up or they will give me something to cry about. The pain I felt about knowing that everyone in that house wished I had died at birth… that had absolutely no merit or need for comfort.

I know I’m supposed to identify more with the parent who has anxiety or PTSD or depression. But I can’t. In my brain I’m still fully present with the hysterical need for a mother to comfort me. I will break my body in service to meeting my children’s needs because there will not be another child in this world who feels that way because of me.

This is something I can give if I have nothing else of value to give in this life. My children will never feel like they don’t deserve comfort because of me. I can promise them very little else in life. I promise this.

I really wish I could stop crying about this some year.

I can’t fix the pain I feel. Lord knows I’ve tried. But I can choose to not inflict it. That’s all I’ve got.

I really really really and truly do not believe that the way I parent is the one true way. I’ve seen people get equally as good or better results without having to be a neurotic freak. I envy them. But this is the only path I perceive as being available to me that will allow me to escape abusing my kids like fuck.

Isn’t that what we are all trying to do? Avoid abusing the kids like fuck?

I don’t. I was talking to my shrink yesterday about when I intervene in peoples lives and the consequences that come from doing so. They asked me how do I know that I am right, how do I decide when to intervene? Well… I never know for sure that I’m right. No one does.

I go by a combination of intellectual knowledge and gut feeling. I wait for patterns of children freaking out before I get all up in someone’s face. I don’t get bossy about children I only know for a few weeks. I don’t know them well enough to know what they need and I’m super aware of that. But when I hang out with folks for half a year or many years… I get to know the kids. I watch behavior patterns.

I’m like your friendly neighborhood weirdo watching your kids for signs of distress. Hi.

I watch for consistent distress. That’s when I get pushy. How do I know I’m right? I think that certainty is a lie people tell themselves. I do a fantastic amount of research, I look for patterns, then I pray.

I’m right a lot of the time though.

I need to get off the forums. Forums are largely gatherings of mean girls. I learn some interesting things and mostly I watch a bunch of fucking bullies. And holy criminey the advice is often terrible.

“My kid uses me as a lovey and I hate it so how do I make them stop.” Well, if your kid is trying to comfort themselves as a baby with knowing you are present… you can convince them that you won’t actually be there for them and they are abandoned… Good luck with coming back here in a few years and saying, “I don’t understand why my kid has anxiety issues.” Because i swear to cheese these threads are back to back.

I’m not saying that attachment parenting is the only way. I’m saying that refusing attachment has consequences.

“Just make the kid cry. They’ll get over it.”

That makes me cringe. Kids sorta get over it. They shut down the desire to ask for contact.

I mean, there’s a certain level at which the relationship is a dyad and it has to work for both parties. But not wanting your kids to take comfort from you… that’s too much.

No more forums. They are depressing as shit.

If they were complaining about 6 or 7 year olds being too grabby I’d totally have advice about negotiating. These are almost always people with one year olds. That’s just sad.

If you are seriously anti snuggling a one year old STOP HAVING CHILDREN. Oh my god.

You are their entire world at one year old. Trying to convince them to not depend on you… that leaves scars. I understand that daycare is a fact of life for many families. I’m not arguing with parents needing their children to tolerate other caregivers. But if when your child is around you… it makes you angry that your kids need physical contact… that’s really sad.

Kids need hugs. It’s not optional.

Why do I speak up even when I don’t know for sure that I’m right? Because folks waited for absolute certainty with me and ended up doing nothing. That was the wrong choice.

I’m hitting that stage of pregnancy where I’m crying because I don’t have anyone to ask for help. Noah is already doing way more than he can really sustain so I can’t ask for anything else. And I don’t have anyone else I feel comfortable asking for anything.

It isn’t that I need help with anything big at this point. It’s stupid shit. I have a huge pile of stuff on my dresser. It’s not a big deal but I’m feeling very overwhelmed by the cognitive load of sorting it out. This is the kind of thing I go over to peoples houses and do for them. But I’m feeling too stupid to manage it for myself. I need to do some gardening and I just… can’t bring myself to go do it.

The second trimester is unsurprisingly harder than my first. People claim that the second trimester is easier and it might be for them but it sucks for me. I threw up once in the first trimester. I’m up to four pukes (including last night) in the second trimester. Heartburn is going insane. I’m feeling physically really bad.

It was hard having the sleep doctor yesterday lecture me extensively about how I shouldn’t be driving because it isn’t safe. Yeah, I know lady. I have had to pay to rebuild the front of my car. I’m aware. I could kill someone.

She told me to take public transit to my appointments. That would make most of my appointments take 4-5 hours. I’m already seriously struggling to get through all of the stuff I’m supposed to do with the appointments taking 2-3 hours with driving. And Uber would be fucktastically expensive because all of my appointments are 20-40 miles away. Uber says it would have been somewhere between $25-$60 for each way of yesterday’s appointment. I can’t do that 5 days a week. That’s $50-$120/day for getting me to appointments. I’m not that fucking rich.

It’s kind of funny that I feel like a worthless sack of shit who should die because I am not capable of being productive or useful right now but meeting EC’s shrink yesterday was… uhhh… different. Let’s add one more highly trained professional to the list of people telling me that my children are the most emotionally healthy, well supported children they have met and they have basically nothing to offer our family because I’m doing so great.

It’s weird living in my head.

I’m really sad that my neighbor moved to Hawaii. If she were here I would be collapsing on her couch and letting her pet me. She’d be thrilled to do so. It would make her feel good. But she followed her dream to move to Hawaii. I’m glad she is following her dream. We still text a fair bit. She’s having a hard time adjusting and I’m coaxing her through trying out ALL the churches on the island before she declares that she’s just too weird to have a faith community there. She tells me I’m a fantastic motivational speaker.

But I can’t motivate me to think I’m anything other than a selfish piece of shit who should die. I hurt so many people so much. I don’t deserve any help or good feelings from anyone because I am bad.

Except my kids. Apparently those fuckers should feel I’m doing ok by them. Professionals keep telling me so.

I don’t really think they are fuckers. That’s my pathetic attempt at levity this morning.

I don’t feel like I want to kill myself. But I do want to hurt myself a lot for being so bad.

I would really like to crawl into my magical bathtub and fill it to the brim so I can submerge myself and open my arms from wrist to elbow so I can never hurt anyone again.

I was responding to a comment the Quiet One left and it occurred to me that this is something I should put here to remind myself later. And then I expanded it like whoa.

I still know a lovely gal I met in kindergarten. I know most of the folks I was tight with in junior high and I’ve spoken to most of them within the last month. I rarely see pieces of my high school crowd but we stay in touch. I know a bunch of folks from junior college. I didn’t make friends during my bachelor’s degree outside of the bdsm scene but I still know many of those folks. I still know folks I met in graduate school. I have friends from the home schooling group we left. I even still know people irl that I met on forums years ago.

I keep people.

In communities spread far and wide. With personalities so diverse I’m sometimes shocked these folks have a crossover person at all.

I don’t have to think I am worthy. They do. I am not the one who has to decide if I am good enough for them. That’s not my choice.

I keep the people who treat me the way I want to be treated.

The gal I met in kindergarten? She was the only school friend in elementary school who ever sent me a letter after I moved away. I carefully hoarded that letter for years. It was a talisman. Which was a little weird when we had some less friendly interactions in sixth grade and I barely masked my desire to weep and rend my clothing and cover myself in ashes.

I’ve always been kind of melodramatic.

Later in high school there were two girls in Bakersfield who wrote to me when I left. They were harder to keep in touch with. Went off to missionary work.

People who write me or call me or reach out to me or ask for a date…

It feels like it pulls to a magnet buried deep in my belly. “Yes? You wanted me?”

I’m kind of over feeling numb to the Bonus Mama divorcing me. It hurts so much. I get why she did it. I don’t even think she was wrong to have the feelings she had. I had to speak up and advocate for the kids. I just had to. Yes it was over stepping. Yes I’m a pushy bitch.

But I had very serious clinical reasons for my recommendations.

It doesn’t matter. I wrecked the friendship pushing an issue I didn’t have the right to get in the middle of.

Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right?

I need to know I advocated properly for the kids. On my dying day that is the part I will be held responsible for.

It doesn’t matter if I made someone angry. I had to speak for the children in front of me who couldn’t speak for themselves.

They were signaling distress. You just had to read the cues.

And that means I’m an asshole.

Parents don’t want to hear, “I love you and I know you have tried your best. Your child’s needs aren’t being met. They need the opposite of what you are doing.”

No one wants to be told that. Well, except for me I guess? I go pay money looking to be told that.

I need help seeing where I’m fucking up. I can’t help my kids if I don’t deal with the ways I’m fucking up. Everybody fucks up. Where you draw your boundaries around that varies based on your needs and tolerances.

I am not you and you are not me. We fuck up differently. Or maybe we fuck up the same and it lands differently because our kids aren’t the same. I don’t know.

I didn’t understand, when I was 17 and I decided I wanted to home school, that I was trying to commit myself to a rigorous system that was closer to individualized therapy than what most people consider “raising children”. At least… that is what the people who spend time around me and my kids tell me. “Your explanations sound exactly like the therapist who comes to our house.”

I provide a variety of different kinds of therapies. I do it seamlessly and in the flow of just living.

Because Stanford was pretty sure and I’m pretty sure that EC is dyslexic this year will involve a very different type of spelling practice. Pre-tests will use a pencil and paper then we won’t write again. We’ll use physical materials so EC gets the kinesthetic experience of building the sounds of language with something less symbolic than a line on a paper. I’m going to look for as many weird ways to practice as I can. Sticks on a walk through the park. Clay. Sticking together those weird puff beads. Making words on the perl bead boards. It’s going to be different from time to time to keep her interested. It is hard for her to visualize how letters work. That makes a lot of sense to me. I learned how to see words like constant text on a computer screen but EC isn’t there. That’s ok.

She needs something different.

I’m trying to believe that I’m not as bad as I feel I am. I really want to believe that there is some hope that I can be a good enough mother. I really want to believe that I will be able to raise people who will grow up to like themselves and have lives they enjoy.

I don’t need them to be so rich. I don’t need them to be so educated. I don’t need them to be high status.

I don’t care if my kids pick up garbage for a living. My cousin did that for years. His girlfriend worked at the waste disposal company until ill health forced retirement.

I would take pride in my child having a work ethic.

And yet I know I’m “supposed” to be priming my kids to believe they Are Not Successful unless they Go To College and Get A Good Job and Get Married and Have Children.

I tell my kids that I don’t care if they go to college. There is money sitting there waiting to help them if they want to go… but they don’t have to go to college. It’s not required. I tell them that if they want to have any kind of work life or home life that’s not my business. I want them to be happy with their life and I don’t care if it involves a romantic partner or a legal ceremony or children.

You owe yourself a life you want to live. You don’t owe your parents shit.

And if your parents yell at you about your choices when you are an adult? They are abusive assholes.

Am I an abusive asshole to my friends? To be fair I haven’t yelled at someone about a choice that didn’t impact me that I didn’t agree with in ten years. In recent years when I’ve had a concern I’ve had a speaking voice conversation. I think.

Christ. I’m probably forgetting something.

I’ve yelled at Noah about completely stupid shit. I do think our relationship has abusive elements. I think it isn’t that I’m the “victim”. I think that given where we both came from… we have learned a lot about healthy boundaries but we still aren’t where we need to get.

I. am not where I need to get.

Ok, I am not diagnosing myself with this at all but this was interesting to read. That was the second link that came up when I googled “autistic difficulty controlling voice volume”. It’s really interesting how having a new shrink say they think I am autistic makes me think of weird little tics that go back to childhood. I have a lot of weird vocal variation. I work on it. I try to control it. I vary in ability.

I seem so normal.

Do you know how fucking hard it is? Over time I’m starting to understand why it has been so hard for me. I feel less bad about not being better at it earlier.

It’s hard that I won’t take more medication to try and help lift my mood because I’m pregnant but it’s not actually great for the pregnancy to be crying all the time.

Bodies are shitty.

I’m struggling with all the stuff around identity and self. I’m feeling really ashamed of myself for not having made more progress. I have not managed to turn every person I poured tons of energy into a lifelong friend. Some faded away and some told me to go fuck myself.

I’ve had a fair number of people break up with me after I give them an opinion they don’t want to hear. Whether I am objectively right or not is… meaningless. Sometimes I have been proven right in the long run. Sometimes I don’t find out.

Either way… I have lost my friend.

And it’s my fault. Because I can’t keep my fucking mouth shut.

Because I have to share my stupid piece of shit opinion.

Where the fuck do I get off? Why in the fuck do I try so god damn hard to control everyone?

Because I want people to look at me the way I look at other people and give their opinions. I don’t expect people to act on my opinion. But yeah… I do let people know when I have judgments. Because I’m an asshole.

My closest friends tell me I’m fucking up. They tell me when my actions are out of line. They do it privately and tactfully. I get called to the carpet. And I listen. I don’t always agree. Sometimes I respond with a long, spirited argument where I explain why their advice sucks because of these dozen factors they didn’t consider…

But I really like that dynamic. That dynamic can’t exist until I know someone well and they know me well.

And you know what? My experience of life is that most people get horribly upset if you tell them they are fucking up. People want to be told “You Are Awesome” without earning it, without working for it, without deserving it.

I ain’t got time for that game.

So I’ve burned through some relationships. And I’m feeling incredibly, intensely shitty about it. Because clearly it is all my fault because I am such a shitty person. Who is the common denominator in all these failures: me.

And it becomes more clear with every passing month just how badly I damaged my marriage last year.

I’m feeling like a failure at pretty much everything.

Our ES (Education Specialist) with the charter school homeschools her kids independently because she doesn’t want to mess with the charter rules. She was kindly and gently curious why I’m using a charter this year as clearly I have more her personality type. I felt really ashamed of the fact that I want the oversight so I know I can’t fall into a rut and stop doing any schooling for months around the end of the pregnancy and after the birth. We will have to keep working. We have deadlines for turning in materials. We can’t fuck with that. I can get in actual legal trouble if I slack.

And I need that insistence this year and I feel really dirty and bad because I know I need that.

I’m feeling really weird and guilty and ashamed of falling really far behind on gardening. I haven’t touched my yards in 4-5 months. They look like it. I have a collapsing hazard right in my front yard and I just…haven’t dealt with it.

I’ve been sitting on my ass in between driving to fucking doctor visits. I walk some, yes, but Jenny can vouch for not much in the past couple weeks. Not before I went to Alaska and not since I got back. I just…

I’m so tired.

But the tired is partially that walking up a hill through a river of molasses in January feeling. I’m weary. I’m feeling the depletion. I’m feeling Lightning suck the life out of me. At 15 weeks pregnant I’m not back up to pre-pregnancy weight. Barely down, only 4 lbs to go till I’m back to where I started. And the doctor I met yesterday was lecturing me on how I need to make sure I’m only eating the extra 300 calories a day I’m supposed to eat. Oh fuck you motherfucker. I’m lucky if I can eat an adequate number of calories for a non-pregnant day. So shove your fucking condescension where the sun don’t shine.

And the midwife in the practice, who spent a lot of time looking at my records, had in my previous visit told me, “EAT. Eat. Eat as much as you want. Eat anything. Eat constantly.”

Everything is feeling like nails on a chalkboard.

Folks are clearly trying to be nice to me. I can see the gestures. I can see the thoughts. But like… I’m running from mentions of my birthday and I’m crying and wanting to freak out. I don’t really want a birthday this year. It’s not about turning 36, whatever.

I miss my mother. It has now been half my lifetime since I spent a birthday with her.

Maybe that’s part of why I’m tanking. This is a huge milestone and I haven’t been thinking about it as I’ve been rapidly multiplying my tasks.

I’ve almost been out for as long as I was in. Just a couple more weeks.

Do I feel proud of what I’ve done in those 18 years? Yes and no.

Do I feel proud of me? Yes and no.

I wonder if my mother would feel any pride if she knew what I’ve done.

Many of the people who have sworn up and down that they were my family… that bond turned out to be incredibly severable. 

I know Noah is proud of me.

I am a selfish piece of shit and I wish that my mama thought I was her most successful child. I am the only one of my siblings to graduate from high school or college. I’m the only one who hasn’t been divorced before 21. I am a fucking better parent than my siblings because I have neither raped my children nor used corporal punishment as my primary means of discipline.

But how fucking shallow.

Being the scapegoat means that no matter how far above expectations you come in… you’re still out.

But I divorced her. What the fuck.

Yeah… but I divorced her because folks were fairly actively covering up for ongoing child abuse. I had just cause. It went past our generation. That’s so heart breaking.

And the fact that no one in my family thinks they should “get involved in other peoples business” it just keeps happening. Generation after generation.

Thus I share my opinion whether you want to fucking hear it or not. Because I’m not going to act like your actions happen behind a fucking wall. I see what you’re doing.

Most of my opinions are positive. Folks get done with me when I get to the point of voicing a serious criticism. Given that I know how poorly most folks take such efforts I don’t really do this sort of thing until someone has been in my life a long time.

I wrote that B’s dad cheating had an impact on me. I told A that given that she just had back surgery she really ought to prioritize a real mattress over getting a new iPod given that she was sleeping on an RV mattress laid directly on cinder blocks. Among many other similarly none of my damn business opinions. Like what I thought of everyone in her family just glossing over the fact that her father had completely financially ruined his family by maintaining a series of pre-teen Peruvian sex worker companions. He would fly down several times a year. He bought a house and would let them live there.

People don’t want my opinion.

I get that.

Don’t worry, I know that my diarrhea of the mouth makes me a piece of shit. But not being this flavor of piece of shit would mean that I had to be a different flavored piece of shit and I’m just not up for the effort of that kind of change. I mean who has time for that.

That would be a lateral and perhaps a slightly downward move by my moral code.

So I’m a bitch.

Don’t worry. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

I really should go to bed. I can hate myself tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day…

Future Middle Child turns seven on Monday. They asked for a party this weekend. They haven’t been able to have a party at home in years because we travel on their birthday so often. It seems more than fair to let the kid have a party sometimes.

But I’m seriously exhausted. So I told kiddo they could send out 10 invitations because that limits the crowd size we have to accommodate. We know waaaaay more people than that and I just can’t handle inviting “Everyone” to every thing. I have limits.

FMC split the invitations approximately half and half between non-breeder adult friends and kid friends. When kiddo made this decision it seemed a little interesting to me. Why not more kids?

Ah. Now I understand why. We’ve gotten a positive RSVP from one kid and all the adults. Kiddo understands the people in our lives. That’s why kiddo asked a bunch of adults… who are willing to show up.

I just wish that the parents of kids could say “no” instead of saying, “We were invited to a different birthday party on that day and we are WAY closer to that family so we are going to their party instead.”

And people like to harp on how I lack tact? Oh for fuck’s sake.

No is a complete sentence. You don’t need to tell me that other people are more important to you and that’s why you are saying no.

I’m actually getting to the point where sending shit out to our Google Group is similarly challenging for me. I feel like I should cull the list of people who are rude in how they decline invitations so I don’t feel so freaked out about sending out a big group invite.

Every time I extend an invitation you don’t have to use that as an opportunity to tell me I’m not important to you. It’s just not fucking necessary. You can say no. You can say you are busy. You don’t have to say, “We were invited to something else by folks we care more about.” That’s shitty.

But folks who don’t have mental health diagnosis are generally not open to feedback about their behavior being rude as fuck in my experience. I think I should just cull the list.

If I haven’t had a pleasant conversation with you in over a year or if you have never responded whatsoever to a single invitation… you are now off the list. Cull, done. If I’m using this group to manage my social anxiety and having some people in the group means I can’t use the group anymore because of increased social anxiety… I get to change the terms. I’m permitted. And I get to do it by fiat.

I feel like there are so many different tracks of thought in my brain that the trains are going to collide soon and it will be all bad.

But typing is hurting.

Marriage and being a whore.

Being a good enough mother.

Separation and unity.

Am I really a piece of shit who deserves to lose my kids because I couldn’t get my suicidal thoughts under control before my kids were born? What if my kids don’t know I have those thoughts because I have successfully hidden it with them for nine years and counting? Am I really not allowed to have thoughts I don’t share?

It occurs to me that the contradictions the pain doctor is talking about “You have low markers and high markers at the same time and that’s bad” is part of why most doctors my entire life have had no idea what to do for me. I have the problems that come from being on the low and high end of issues at the same time. How the hell do you treat that?

The vitamin shots make me feel like shit. I hear they are supposed to “fill you with energy” but they fucking fill me with nausea.

I feel like the pain doctor is echoing what the mental health people have been saying to me for decades. “You shouldn’t be alive. Your existence is improbable.” Ok. Fine. But I’m still fucking here.

But why don’t I stop thinking about myself as weird. Wouldn’t it make my life so much better? Yeah. Whatever. I’m sure it would make everything just shiny if I stopped advocating for my weird as fuck body that has unusual reactions to almost everything. Sure yeah. Start treating me like I’m just like the 50%. That’ll solve my problems.

I’m tired of feeling this tired. I feel like I’m sleeping better than normal for me. I was in bed for ten hours last night and I think I woke up three times. That’s not horrible. But I’m soooooooo tired.

I threw up again. Second time this pregnancy. Once per trimester so far. Both times I threw up when a pill hit my gag reflex, it wasn’t nausea.

I cancelled with the woo doctor for this month. If I’ve been taking huge handfuls of vitamin pills for over a year now and my body has no detectable load of vitamins I don’t think it’s worth continuing to pay for the treatment. Especially since the vitamins she has me buy are hella expensive. I’ve been paying $600-$800/month for vitamins. And tests show that my body has no detectable load of vitamins whatsoever. That’s… frustrating.

I’m trying and I’m trying and I’m trying and so many things fail anyway. But if only I’d tryyyyyy.

I think of myself as a really successful failure. I fail all over the damn place in so many ways. But I get up and I keep trying so some of the crazy shit I try works out.

I think it is funny that I’m feeling awash with calm since I fired my therapist. I spent a lot of spoons gearing up for arguments with her about my life choices she didn’t agree with. Towards the end she was on an absolute campaign to get me to stop using pot and get on other medication because her psychiatrist friend believed that was the One Twue Way. I’m glad I fired that psychiatrist. I feel… less pissed off about being judged.

My shrink believed that you could have a “totally close relationship” with someone you talk to once or twice a year and it’s messed up that I want to talk to anyone more often than that. She really didn’t understand my desire to have closer relationships than that and she actively discouraged me. She really wants people to spend most of their time alone. That’s a lifestyle choice that’s fine if you want it. It’s not the One Twue Way to be though.

I don’t think I should be allowed to hold people hostage. I don’t believe I should shove my way into most of my friend’s lives more often than I do. But if I have friends who also want to talk to me as much as  want to talk to them and we prioritize doing so frequently… that’s not wrong. Even if she thought it was. Even if she believes that people should be more “independent” than that.

White Americans are so weird with their “independence”.

When I said that I model my family dynamics on what I have learned from my immigrant friends from other countries my shrink told me that white people can’t do that.

White. People. Can’t. Do. That.

We aren’t allowed to be close and enmeshed. We are required to be isolated islands doing our own thing. I mean, I’m big on creating room for separation within my enmeshments. My kids have individuality and their own stuff to do and their own friends… they aren’t required to be my shadow or exist for my sake. But we spend a lot more time together than is common for folks of our ethnic background. We like it. My nine year old is still actively resisting lots more separation.

I keep offering it…

I ask her all the time if she wants more space from the family. More space for herself. She’s gotten from “NO” to “I can tell I will want that in a few years… but not yet.”

But I’m doing everything wrong by not forcing separation. Right.

Sigh. What is right? What is wrong? Doesn’t it all depend on where you are standing and what your values are and what your goals are?

How could there possibly be One Twue Way?

How to write about this. For documentary reasons I try really hard to write down what’s going on for me. For reasons of tact I try to figure out how to do so without blowing things up in my life.

I’m having feelings over how some interactions have gone.

It is interesting to me to note that as I am feeling some objection about some interaction the way I am phrasing this in my head is: even my children don’t get to talk to me like that.

It’s funny how we develop standards and boundaries. Teaching my children how to treat me has been one of the best experiences of my life. In large part because it has worked. My kids are hella polite. They can code switch between many different behavioral expectations. At this point… EC can even handle sitting quietly through a class-like setting.

I thought this day would never come. And yet! With patience and tolerance she has eventually gotten here.

But it’s bigger than that. My children respect me. My children listen to what I have to say and they don’t cut me off to talk about unrelated subjects very often. When I go out into the world I am reminded that other people do not respect me and they do not listen to what I have to say. They are very happy to talk over me and bring up an entirely unrelated point.

You know what? I don’t need to engage with this much. I can… just opt out. I’m not dependent on anyone’s help anymore. I love this feeling so much. It’s like what I learned on the road trip: no amount of “help” is worth putting up with someone who will degrade me in even the smallest of ways. Like the dude who called me stupid. Like E’s parents who wanted to rant at me about domestic violence and home schooling. Like the woman who told me I was wrong for asking to sleep in the same room as my children.

Bye.

I can keep moving. I don’t need this shit.

IT’S THE BEST FUCKING FEELING IN THE UNIVERSE.

I don’t need you. Bye.

It’s all shivery and glowy and powerful. Muahahahahahaha

I asked Noah if being unwilling to take shitty treatment is the same as having self worth and he agreed that it’s kind of different. I may not think that I’m that awesome, but I’m not going to take no shit off of no one.

Why not? Because I have already taken the limit of shit I’m willing to take in this lifetime. I’m full up. My childhood was enough for ten lifetimes. When I needed help in order to not die, I took shit with the help.

I don’t need help from anyone. Err, except for Noah. And you know what?!?!?! He gives me less shit than anyone else alive.

For the life of me I don’t understand his way of measuring cost/benefit because Noah deserves way better than I give him. How do I learn to give him better to be more appropriate? It’s complicated because often I’m giving at the limit of what I know how to give and feeling like I must come up with more is very frustrating. When I get frustrated at my limitations… I take it out on the people around me. Which is the height of shitty and unfair.

One more day to get through. Then a day of travel. Then I get to go home and crawl into a snuggle pile with the people who love me best in the whole world.

I can barely wait.

Lately the pile includes me leaning my head on Noah’s chest while FMC lies more or less on top of me and EC lies on my legs to be also on dad. It’s glorious.

I lean on Noah. The kids mostly lean on me. They lean on him more with the passing of years and that feels really awesome too. Developmentally it is normal for children to bond most with their mothers early on. Branching out to heavily include dad before puberty is also very appropriate.

Sometimes I feel this feeling of elation. My children are developing normally. My children are hitting normal stages. My children are demonstrating appropriate change over time.

HOW DID I NOT BREAK THEM ALREADY?!??!?! I DO NOT TRUST THIS MAGIC.

The reason I hurt peoples heads is because these times when I suddenly use caps… I do more or less shout those sentences. I’m so irritating.

I’m passionate.

Which is part of why I’m way more palatable via text.

So I was the recipient of some behavior I have a problem with. I’m going to put my big girl panties on and figure out how to handle this without being nasty.

Is it nasty to say, “If there is ongoing punishment for having opinions that are not what you want me to have… how about if I just leave today and stay in a hotel. That’s totally ok with me.”

I think I’m going to pack and be ready to walk out. That was a beautiful prescient moment I had in E’s parents’ house. I was 95% packed before we walked down to that fateful breakfast where his father pissed me off for the last time.

Yeah… I’ll be packed before they wake up.

Maybe I’m throwing a temper tantrum too. Maybe I’m demonstrating that if you throw a temper tantrum in my direction because you don’t like my opinions there are consequences. I. Do. Not. Reward. Tantrums.

It’s a parenting standpoint I’m quite firm about and I sure as shit am not going to indulge a grown person in such bullshit. But I’m afraid I’m a hypocrite who indulges myself in temper tantrums. Shit.

This is part of the problem of demanding better treatment. If you don’t also hand it out… you are a piece of shit. I’m not sure I always deliver on the behavior I expect to receive and that’s shitty of me.

That’s something I need to work on. A lot.