I used to schedule two week trips and decide at the ten day mark that I was ready to go home. This time I scheduled a nine day trip and after six days… I’m ready to go home. Deep sigh.

I want to snuggle my family. I want to not feel wrong. No one is doing anything bad… this just isn’t an environment set up for me. From almost everything in the house being breakable to the fact that they are both very quiet and when I can’t hear people I tend to talk louder. Then I hurt their heads. Then I feel ashamed of myself for being too gross and loud and too much and…

I want to go home to my fucktastically loud family where I’m not bad for the volume of my voice.

Everyone is COMPLETELY ENTITLED to have their own preferences for sound volume. I just… can’t hear very well. I’m still passing hearing tests. I think partially because fucking hearing tests are always “can you hear this isolated sound in an otherwise silent environment” and my problem is that if there is any background noise at all I have trouble picking out the morphemes of language. It all becomes a blur. And if you mumble at the same time? Well… let’s just say it probably isn’t a fucking mystery why my children E.N.U.N.C.I.A.T.E. They really want me to hear them.

My house is set up to be safe for me. Not other people. And the thing is… it isn’t about the physical building. It’s about the home and the people. Home is different than a space. Home is the feeling that you are allowed to be somewhere; that you are where you are supposed to be.

I wonder if my home is as safe for the other people who live there. I should probably do some checking on that.

Noah and my kids shine with love for me. They are basically incandescent. And sometimes I get too loud for them, too. Just like they get too loud for me sometimes. And we signal each other in a way that doesn’t trigger this shame spiral.

At home I can feel sheepish and not ashamed. Yeah. I get too excited.

My friend pointed it out in a super polite way. I’m not complaining about his method of asserting that his physical boundaries were being crossed. I’m struggling with my internal set of feelings about being almost 36 fucking years old and I still don’t have that great of control over the volume of my voice.

Noah asked: “Which behavioral/emotional modification are you currently thinking of and trying for?”

I don’t know for sure what I had in mind the exact day I typed the original post. My memory isn’t that good.

But I’m always trying to work on more constructive expressions of anger. Anger is not wrong and anger is not bad but acting inappropriately while angry is a serious problem. By the time my children are adults I hope that they will be proud of how I manage my anger. I have already come a long way in their lifetimes. I hope that I keep getting better. I don’t know if my children will be proud of me. I can’t ask them to be. Not ever. I have to just try and earn it and hope for the best.

I’m still trying to swim through the grief I feel about my mother. I would like that to feel less like dropping a plugged in hair dryer in the bath tub. I would like to get to the point where I am not crying about missing her so often. If I stop and feel sad for a few minutes once or twice a year I think that’ll be reasonable. It’s still way way way way way more often than that. It interferes with time I’d rather be spending in other ways.

I am trying to figure out what I need to do to get my shit together and stop taking so much out on you (Noah).  You are my “safe” person and that’s mixed and complicated. I don’t need to dump so much on you just because you won’t abandon me the way anyone else would.

I was doing great on sleep regulation till this damn trip. Now… my sleep is shit. It’s almost 1 in the fucking morning here. It’s almost god damn 2 in my time zone. They haven’t gone to bed yet. So I’m up like a hypervigilant freak.

awake awake awake awake

I need my children because I regulate off of them. I regulate myself by force of will for them. When they are not with me… I spend too much time in my head. I spend too much time feeling like everything I’m doing is wrong.

I’m too sensitive. I’m too needy. I’m too particular.

Let me god damn tell you: it’s fun reading stuff about autistic folks at this moment in my life. Something I hadn’t really expected… I’m finding the diagnosis funny. Like, it makes me feel more amused with myself. But only in certain ways and that doesn’t mean I want anyone else to laugh at me. There are an awful lot of behaviors that I’ve spent years in therapy trying to eradicate and I suspect I would have been better served by being taught how to cope with who I am instead of being told to change who I am.

The fact that I taught myself facial expressions in the mirror… there are so many funny little things like that. I have done a lot of self therapy and I use a lot of techniques that overlap with recommended autistic therapies.

I’ve been doing them for a long time. I practice in the mirror. I make up scripts for how to have conversations. I have spent years documenting my attempt to train myself through writing to be able to see ambiguities in life and not treat everything as a black/white. I mean shit, I’m fucking doing it now. Keeping it on topic. That’s one I really fucking struggle with. It’s complicated.

Another thing I’m trying to figure out is what having self worth means. I can rattle off a list of accomplishments, sure whatever. But I don’t value most of what I can list off much. Whoopdie fucking shit. I mostly walked a marathon.

I’m way more impressed that someone I loved was willing to come help me get through that experience with grace and humor and compassion.

I don’t take pride in my writing, not really. I don’t… see much to take pride in? Ok, so I have the typing equivalent of verbal diarrhea. I don’t write “seriously” or about a real “topic”. I just fucking blather because it helps me not be physically violent in the rest of my life. I organize my feelings. This is my meditation.

Now I lay my thoughts to rest

Each and every day puts them to the test;

If I should die before I wake

My thoughts are here for you to take.

They went in their room. I should probably try to sleep now. Maybe I’ll tell you later about the Anchorage bdsm play space I went to. I only have comments on the building because… uhh… only one person was there and she was kinda busy.

My buddy said an interesting thing to me yesterday. We were talking about my obsession with being unique. He said, “There’s a big difference between acknowledging that something is true about yourself and using something as your identity.” He used examples from his life that I’m not going to repeat for privacy reasons.

I said, “Ah. But there are reasons I lead with my weirdness. It’s not random. When I try to lead with ‘Oh we all have lots in common, see we have so much in common’ I start talking to folks and then I get to little details about my life and folks often will literally physically put their hands in front of them to energetically shove me away and they’ll say something almost exactly like ‘No. I’m not like you. My experiences are NOT LIKE THAT.’ If I lead with ‘I’m completely weird’ then other people try hard to find connections and they don’t get mad at me when it turns out that… their experiences are not like mine. It’s a protective measure.”

My friend stopped and thought real hard about that.

I love when people actually stop and think during a conversation. That shit is hawt.

He kind of nodded and admitted that it makes a lot of sense that people react differently in those cases.

Then the topic shifted.

*I* think I have things in common with everyone on the planet. But I also think that if I try to get people to think they are like me they get upset. If I tell people that I’m really weird… they have more patience with me. They are more capable of looking at me as a weird alien culture who might have an inch of crossover with them and hunh isn’t that interesting.

When I was a kid I used to cry because I didn’t want to be weird. I hated that people constantly told me how weird I am.

Oh, here’s a thing my friend said: he said that often we self identify with a negative because we want to eliminate the sting when someone else uses the negative.

It is kind of like that only I don’t think that being weird is a negative anymore. I think it is a fact and people will acknowledge it whether I bring it up or not. If I bring it up then people can’t bludgeon me with it. So… exactly what he said only I don’t think it’s bad/negative and other people might.

It is interesting reading stuff about autism lately. One of the key phrases I see people use to describe themselves repeatedly “I feel like I come from another planet.”

I feel like I came from this planet and then I had a completely weird set of experiences that other people can’t understand.

So many opposite extremes in my life. Poverty and wealth. Health and dysfunction. Fitness and physical degradation. Violence and the conscious choice to be gentle.

I talk a lot about being a violent person. But I’m a violent person who doesn’t hit people. I’m a violent person who doesn’t use physical intimidation. I’m a violent person who doesn’t verbally threaten people.

Violence is such a complicated topic.

Being in Alaska frames some of the violence differently. Most people here hunt. You know what? I don’t think hunting is violent. It involves killing… for survival. Is that violence or is that life?

When people are fighting other people in a civil war… is that violence or life?

I watched a video in the museum yesterday. A woman was talking about her grandmother who taught her indigenous survival skills, “I quickly learned that my grandmother didn’t take no crap. She was a tough woman who was only going to allow people to treat her with respect.”

Can you be that and not be violent? I sure hope so. Because I’d love to have people think of me in a similar way.

You teach people how to treat you. And I am not interested in taking crap from anyone.

There’s this dude in my extended community. He dates several people I adore. I feel that he has really useful, awesome relationships with them. He does wonderful things for their lives and self esteem. I can’t fucking stand to be in a room with him. He does nothing but give me crap. Or ignore me. There isn’t an in between.

It’s ok that other people are motivated by teasing and taunting and I am not. It is ok that someone can be wonderful for many people and completely a problem for someone else. We don’t all have to need the same kinds of support or the same kinds of relationships.

That’s been a lovely thing to feel deep in my belly as I get older. He’s a fantastic influence in their lives. I would not say words or make gestures that might fuck up their relationships. It would be cruel and evil if I did. But that doesn’t mean I have to like him or be near him.

That’s such a wonderful, freeing thing to feel.

When I was younger I had trouble with the geek social fallacies. “The friends of my friends have to be my friends.”

Naw dude. Make your own damn friends.

A woman I love very much is having a hard time with someone she loves very much. The person she loves is struggling with big life problems. My friend wants me to get involved and be supportive of her friend. She keeps asking me to reach out and indicate love and support and offer myself as a sounding board because I give such good advice and I’m so good at helping people.

Err… no.

I love you. I’m sorry your friend is suffering. No. I am not in a profession where such a reaching out would be appropriate and it would be codependent as fuck for me to add more drama into my life right now. I can’t reach out to a person in crisis and invite them to lean on me right now. It would be wildly inappropriate given what I’m trying to do with my life in this moment. I’m trying to calm my body down. I’m trying to heal a lifetime of physical damage from my life experiences.

I can’t take on a project meth-head right now. That would be highly dysfunctional.

Even though your friend deserves all the support in the world… it can’t come from me.

Boundaries are complicated and hard and have to be looked after. It’s ok for people to ask for things I don’t want to give. But I need to be on my toes about saying “No”.

I think this is a positive step for me?

And that’s the end of my attention span.

I love this city (Anchorage). I love that walking from my friend’s house to the grocery store means walking along a heavily wooded path next to a bountiful river. Everything is so lush and beautiful.

The people are so kind. People are talking to me every day. I don’t have to initiate every pick up conversation!!!

I want to bring my family here to meet the city. My kids point out “We’d have to spend a winter there before we even thought about moving there.” I love my kids. They are brilliant. They are forward thinking and wise.

The food here is shockingly good. My previous Alaska experience (in Yakutat and Ketchikan) involved a lot of… not so good food. The pho place is delicious! The fruit quality is way higher than I expected. The salad greens aren’t nasty. I’m doing pretty well for food. Still pooping pretty. ha

I miss the woods. I’ve lived in dry or desert for so long. I miss water.

BTW- I decided not to ask my friend for permission to use his name. He’s famous and I don’t choose to name drop. That’s a level of star-fuckery I don’t need to mess with. He’s my wonderful friend and I’m blessed to know him. I don’t need to try and link my name to his on google.

He’s famous because he puts himself out there and he shares his experiences and he’s willing to grow in public. He’s a fantastic teacher. I learn so much in conversations with him. I feel deeply blessed that so many of the most fascinating people of my generation are willing to talk to me.

I had a funny thought yesterday. I have felt for years that my children are pretty much the reason I have stuck around and really dug into life. I have felt like there wasn’t ever really a place for me until I was EC & FMC’s mom.

My friends remind me that I have a lot of gifts to offer the world. The world doesn’t have a precarved out position for me… like being EC & FMC’s mom… but I have a lot to offer. The world doesn’t have much to give anyone; the world wants to know what you have to give to others. The world doesn’t care what you need.

I could have made a life. I could have carved out a Krissy shaped hole in the world that would have been impossible to fill when I die because people can’t duplicate one another. There is enough need in this world that I can fill… I could have made a place.

But I’m so much happier getting to be a mom. I take pride in my children being stubborn and challenging and inconvenient. I take joy from seeing them move out into the world while needing me less and less. I’m grateful that they still are very sad to go eight whole days without snuggling me.

I do matter to them. Their day is actively worse when I’m not present. There is a Krissy shaped hole in my house right now.

And yeah… it’s still centered around what I have to give. That’s true. But on days when I’m at empty and I have almost nothing to give? There is still a Krissy shaped spot where they want me.

When random strangers judge how “functional” they perceive me to be… I am getting better at taking a deep breathe and recognizing that they have no scope for my life.

I think of Jenny telling me that she knows how far I’ve come.

Am I perfect? Oh fuck no. I’m a train wreck in motion. But I’m causing less damage over time. I’m making healthier choices. I’m better aware of how my actions impact people and I consider that more seriously.

I’m more honest about the fact that I am chronically mentally and physically ill. There are days when I can’t do/be/give much. The world wouldn’t take much pity on me for this. Some… but not a lot. My family thinks that giving me extra support sometimes on bad days is balanced out by the good days. There is still space for me to be appreciated even when I’m a loser who can’t work.

How much work do you have to be able to do in order to deserve life? How much do you have to give before you count as “doing well”? What does “functional” mean anyway?

We had a delightful chat tonight about polyamory pitfalls. I was very blunt about how badly I fucked up last year. My phrasing was very close to, “I started as a cheating piece of shit and I ended feeling like an abusive monster. I had a banner year! And then he wanted to get me pregnant. Because I’m not the only masochist in my house.”

My friend is such a good listener and he is one of the least judgy people on the planet. We all make fucked up choices sometimes. Look at why you broke down and make changes to ensure that won’t happen again. Life is about getting back up when you fall down. We all fall down…

I think that some people believe that in order to be “doing well” you have to not fall down anymore.

We all start from different places and with different potential and different talents and different problems and…

I think I’m going to periodically fuck up royally until the day I die. Even if I live to be 95. I don’t think I’ll ever figure out how to be perfect. I’m going to keep fucking up. (Partially because I have every intention of continuing to meet new people at a blistering pace as long as I can. It keeps you young.)

Oh man, speaking of fresh opportunities to fuck up… The kind folks I’m visiting listened to the end of my explanation of my fucking up and I got to the part where I talked about the unicorn hunting we may do some year in the distant future. Their response was, “Oh! You want _______! I’ll ship him to you!”

Very kind offer darling. Not this decade.

I’m not saying I’m opposed permanently… just… not the now.

He does sound right up Noah’s alley. And that’s going to be a big part of unicorn hunting for us. Why do I call it unicorn hunting? Because asshole couples (like us) want to go find hot bisexual people for no strings attached sex. And there are a lot of asshole couples like us and very very very few humans who enjoy being a third. Thus: unicorns. They can be of any gender. Cause life is awesome!

I told my friends that I think we’ve shot ourselves in the foot when it comes to hunting in the pool of our local friends. They saw the drama explosion and got to read a play by play of the screaming matches at home that lasted for months. Who the fuck wants to step in that mess?

Hey. I’m totally up front about the level of crazy you are getting with me.

Honesty, dudes.

Yeah. I should be asleep. It’s 11pm here so it’s 12 pm at home. BUT I DO NOT ENJOY SLEEPING ALONE IN A ROOM WITH NO ONE TOUCHING ME. THIS IS HORRIBLE AND A HALF. I shoulda brought a kid. Maybe just one kid would have been enough of a vacation….

Sigh

I mean… I did bring a kid… but the current one is only the size of a lemon and just starting to play bumper cars with my internal organs. It’s different. I think this is going to be the longest I have gone without snuggles……. since I got married? Probably when I lived alone before I moved in with Noah. The last solo trip to NY before I got married even involved pick up sex with the swinger who showed up at the bdsm con. And I snuggled my ex-girlfriend then. And a whole bunch of cuddle friends.

Yeah it must be when I lived alone after Puppy dumped me. 2006.

Wow… my life is different. I had… forgotten what skin hunger felt like. Oh Noah honey. The road trip must have been so shitty for you. What an incredible gift you gave us. We’ll never leave you behind like that again. This is hard.

I feel so lucky that I get to have a family so that I can deal with this aching need to not only be touched to meet today’s need… but be touched a lot to start filling in the damage of years of lack of healthy touch.

“Baby’s aren’t Prozac.” Err… uhm… that’s uhm. Ok. No they aren’t a little pill. They are people. People create the opportunity for relationships. Relationships release brain chemicals that improve peoples moods. Babies are a blank slate to teach someone how you want to be in a relationship. If you do it in a healthy way… it’s fantastic for both of you. If you are narcissistic or so traumatized/disabled/(fill in the blank reason) you cannot teach someone how to be in a healthy relationship… it’s catastrophic.

I consult an awful lot of professionals about my children because I’m fucking terrified of doing it wrong. Does that mean I’m doing it right? No. It means I’m probably not going to go off the rails too badly and damage my children in similar patterns to my family history. Because professionals are good at watching for patterns like that. It’s their job. They ain’t emotionally invested in me. They ain’t my friends. They want what is best for my family because that is how they service their community. Which means *I’m* not always the important consideration. I think that is healthy.

I am not a victim in my life. I am a privileged participant. You can have a traumatic history and not be a victim. I still have impairments that I’m trying to deal with as a result of my history. I’m still not a victim any more.

With every year I discover more about what it means to be in my story. I have come a long way.

I had another of those experiences where I ask someone, “Did you have x kind of experience?” and they go “Oh yeah” and I go “So how do you deal with a, b, and c backlash from d and e happening?”

WHAT IS THE CONSISTENT RESPONSE TO THIS?! “Oh wow. Not like that. No.”

I keep trying to find folks who can help me map some of the next stages of where I want to go in terms of behavioral/emotional modification. I really don’t think anyone has done what I want to do. Not exactly. Not with my background. Not who got as far as I’ve already gotten with the deficits I think I will be able to figure out how to overcome.

I don’t think anyone exists.

“You’re obsessed with being unique.” I actually broke up with my shrink without ever discussing this. I just… let it go.

The more I recognize that I’m not much like anyone else the more free I feel. I really get to just decide whoever the fuck I want to be because there aren’t models out there. Most people like me just die. But I haven’t. And I don’t think I will any time soon bar a freak accident.

Do you know how weird that feels deep in the pit of my belly? I believe I’m not going anywhere. I’m here for the long-haul. I have children to raise. I have a database to help build. I have people to learn from. I have things I want to do. I’m going to do a lot of things. I mean… that’s not in question. It’s not an idle boast. It’s a simple statement of fact.

Holy shit. I believe that.

“Babies aren’t Prozac” but the first year of my daughter’s life was the most euphoric I have ever been and I’ve done some damn good drugs.

I need my children partially because they need me to be an autonomous human being with drives and interests of my own. I may not act on that in the same way as other mothers… but that doesn’t make my way wrong. It is ok to be culturally out of step. I live in a place where diverse cultures are supposed to be expected.

I’m finally starting to get sleepy. I miss my Noah.

I wanted a chance to miss them. Well, I’m getting it. Sigh.

I feel like a rabbit that is going to dart back into its burrow where it feels safe. But first it’s going to eat some clover and roll over on the grass and enjoy some sun and…

Tomorrow I am going to go to the museum and discover what the locals mean when they say “drinking chocolate”. Err, that’ll be at a separate location… not in the museum. Apparently B was invited to come to an event at the local Hard Rock Cafe tomorrow night so uhhh that’ll be my second time ever at a HRC.

I wanna try the fried chicken. But I guess not tomorrow. Maybe Friday. Saturday I get to see one of Jenny’s aunts. I look forward to that. It’ll be a chance to hear a side of the family lore that I’ve never heard before. Given how much I love Jenny’s mom… that’s a super big treat for me. I’ll be so good.

Pam partially inspires such devotion from me because she includes me in her family. She shares the beautiful words her parents say. She shares her fun, sweet sister. She believes there is a Krissy shaped hole in her family and she is happy to pull me right into it.

See, I don’t just use my relationships with my babies as my Prozac. I know I need to diversify my sources and shit.

I’ve got some really good people. I’m a ridiculously lucky person.

I wouldn’t bring my kids to this house… but I feel like I’d probably be welcome back after some reasonable interval. I don’t burn every bridge to the ground. I may have yelled at R’s dad… but he totally earned it. Not everyone does! Even I can get along with reasonable people.

I have no patience for old jack asses who expect me to be impressed by who they are banging.

I’m still pissy with SM for telling me that he invited me to speak at an event because Noah is cool and Noah married me so he guesses I must be cool. Oh and can you please not talk about any of the things you spend all of your time talking about? M’kay?

Naw. I’m out.

My schtick is complicated as fuck, yo. Layers. Like an onion. I’ll make you cry. But only occasionally. I hope.

Or maybe instead of crying you spend time laughing. I don’t know what.

I can’t control what other people hear. I can control what I type out. But I can’t control the distortions and perceptions and past experiences people bring to reading. No matter how poetically I scream into the void… the void does whatever the fuck it wants to do.

I spend too much time reading forums. I get a lot of ideas of how I don’t want to behave when I grow up. Good gracious. Boundaries are awesome! My kids and I talk about future planning when they are adults. The conversation goes something like:

Me: “Of course I would love to spend time with you as a grown up. I will ask for visits. BUT IT’S OK TO TELL ME THAT IT’S NOT A GOOD TIME OR JUST PLAIN NO.”

EC: “Oh don’t worry mom, I’ll tell you no when it doesn’t work for me. I will have stuff of my own to do.”

IS IT REALLY THAT HARD TO HAVE FUCKING BOUNDARIES WITH ADULT CHILDREN?! I DON’T GET IT.

I feel like one of the wonderful things I’ve gotten from being a parent is the strong NEED to work on boundaries. My boundaries with my kids are not real muddy. There are topics we don’t discuss. There are kinds of support they are not allowed to give me. (Now if you want to support me by sweeping and washing the dishes… I’m down.)

My kids are fan-fucking-tastic house mates. They want to be helpful. They want to live in a house that works like clockwork because then they get to do more of their spontaneous desires without being told “No. You must do the pre-reqs before you move on to the fun part.” If you just keep up with the pre-reqs of picking up after yourself most of the time… it’s not that hard.

Sarah and I speculate about what my kids will be like as adults. Right now they are boss-cleaners. They handle their shit and they contribute to household shit as they feel generous. Will this continue? Will my children want to grow up and live in an orderly house or will they grow up to live in abject chaos JUST TO PROVE THEY CAN. I expect at least some phases of chaos. Hopefully I will invest in some duct tape and keep my fat mouth shut.

Random thing I was thinking about: I talk about Jenny a lot as my oldest friend. But I have multiple other people in my life I met at the same time or really a few months/a year before I got to know her as well. I feel like Jenny and I got closer as I was rounding the bend towards 13. Y & G were both intensely close friends before her. I don’t talk to G very often because he’s out in Utah, but I do talk to him. (He’s going to start fostering children with his wife! I’m excited. I think they will be fabulous foster parents.) I talk to Y a few times a month. We had many years where we didn’t really talk because life was busy, but we’ve never really fallen completely out of touch.

But Jenny is the one in my mind. She is the bright shining star at the top of my Christmas tree and that’s an interesting thing.

Something that occurred to me… Y & G never put up harsh boundaries with my abusive behavior. They both grew up in shitty families and just kind of put their heads down to take it. Neither of them ever told me to stop hitting them or being nasty.

Jenny did. When I’m an asshole to Jenny… she’ll cheerfully go months without talking to me till I get my shit together. Jenny has fucking boundaries.

I wonder how much that plays into Jenny being the shining star. I have had to work on myself in order to deserve this relationship and I think that matters. I think that Jenny feels like more of an accomplishment because she wasn’t willing to put up with me being shitty. The fact that she’s still my friend is a reflection that I have gotten better.

Y & G? Yeah… I think they would have known me forever no matter how much of a bully I was. That kind of makes me sad. They both deserve better.

Why do Y & G get initials? Because I haven’t asked their permission to use their names. I do care about that kind of thing.

Y & G carried me through middle school. They are two of the biggest reasons that middle school was the happiest time of my childhood. But they aren’t the bright shining stars on the top of my Christmas tree.

I feel bad about that. I love them. They are wonderful people. I deeply look up to both of them in different ways. But Jenny’s different.

Y & G feel like beloved friends.

Jenny feels like my family. Which is complicated with my abhorrence for chosen family. But there she is.

Jenny and Sarah and Pam remind me that family isn’t about blood. Because they stay in my life and demand better from me year after year. They don’t accept my shittiness. They say, “Yeah… that’s not ok. Stop that.” Because they love me

I don’t think they feel like they are setting boundaries as firmly as they are. I feel it though. I feel the cocoon of “I am this way and you must accept me and respect my limits.”

It’s so wonderful. Them having this cocoon around them makes me feel safe. I can see what will and won’t be tolerated and I can adapt. They will all explain their limits to me, patiently. “Yeah that won’t work for me because ______.” “OOOOOHHHH! That’s why! Yes! That makes sense! Thank you for explaining that to me!”

I feel so lucky.

I know that justifying/arguing/defending/explaining is frowned upon by lots of people. I know. I don’t think I deserve an explanation. But I try very hard to respond respectfully when someone does something they don’t have to do.

I don’t listen to the explanation because I’m trying to figure out how to manipulate them into doing what I want anyway. I listen to the explanation so I can have a better mental model in my head about why they want what they want. Then maybe I won’t need that same explanation again.

Yeah… sometimes I fuck this up big. But I’m trying.

I think part of what I value so deeply about Pam, Sarah, and Jenny is that they are pretty fucking good at understanding themselves and why they have their boundaries. It’s a rare talent.

Decades of relationships. I haven’t failed at every relationship. Almost 24 years. Almost 21 years. Almost 14 years. I’ve been married 11 years.

I haven’t failed at every relationship.

But it’s complicated. So complicated.

I feel ashamed of how much some people in my network have so much more influence over me than anyone else.

Like, if Pam ever seriously read me the riot act and told me she was ashamed of me because my behavior was completely over the line… I’d crumble like a cracker. It would be a BIG FUCKING DEAL because she just doesn’t do that sort of thing. I would deserve it. She’s not manipulative. She’s not hostile. She’s not controlling. She’s not judgmental. If she came down on me like a ton of bricks…. I would deserve it. I caused it.

So I work very hard to not cause it. Because I need her good esteem.

This all contributes to thoughts I’ve been having about “safe” people getting the majority of abuse. Y & G are safe people to abuse. They won’t resist. Jenny is not safe. She will walk away because she has that integrity.

I want to learn how to appreciate the safe people without hurting them so much.

Today I get to drive to my chiropractors, then go to the bank, then drive to San Jose for intravenous vitamins, then come back home. Do chores and help get the house set up for my absence next week. Double check my packing. Then drive back to Santa Clara for family therapy. Wheeee.

We have some stuff to discuss that is very important. My children are expressing that they need help talking about some big feelings. Yes, beloved. We will cheerfully and lovingly support you in that. It’s ok to have feelings that you worry might hurt me. I will cope. Let’s talk about you.

Tomorrow I get my first massage in months. I’m so excited. My shoulders hurt so much.

Sunday I will be dropped off at SFO at about 5am.

I don’t plan to answer my phone or email much while I’m gone. I need to kind of evaporate for a bit. I’ll talk to my kids as much as they need… but I’m not going to be very friend-available. I love you all.

I am looking forward to this trip so much I can barely sit still. I need time to just… be. I’m bringing two big fat books I don’t have to carry home with me so the weight will go away when I’m done reading them. (Pop fiction I’m not attached to rereading.) My friend in AK is a reader so if I run out of stuff to read he’ll have stuff around.

I intend to walk around his neighborhood a fair bit.

I intend to not cause trouble. We’ll see if I manage for a week.

Getting all the medical test results… is both disheartening and really interesting. I feel a lot less bad about the way I feel weak and inadequate in my body. My body does not really have everything it is supposed to have to feel strong and adequate. I’m not imagining things. It’s just true.

Calcium and amino acids. Those were the two things he checked that were “Strangely in normal range.” I drink/eat dairy like it is going out of style. I wonder if the SHEER AMOUNT of milk and cheese I consume is enough to balance things out. I will probably never know for sure. (God I love milk.)

Who knows. I sure don’t.

I’m tired of being in pain. I’m tired of feeling so tired that moving around feels like going uphill through a river of molasses. I’m tired of feeling listless and apathetic.

I miss feeling excitable and full of anticipation. I want to meet this baby, but I’m so fucking tired.

I keep having what I’m thinking of as “anti-nesting” feeling. I want to run away from the bay area so badly. I know I leave on a trip in a few days. It’s not soon enough. It’s not long enough. It’s not even far enough. I want to run and keep running and running and running.

I’m scared of my codependency. I’m scared of the choices I’ve made and who I’ve brought into my life. Running away sounds easier than being a grown up and evolving in place.

But leaving this house sounds traumatic and terrible. This is my only forever home.

I’m looking at real estate and rental properties all over the world. Nothing is as cool as the house I made. *sniff*

I am so conflicted about this house. I didn’t pick it. I didn’t want it. But I made it mine.

I feel like the Disneyland website is my Methadone.  Less than 23 weeks to go. It happens before giving birth so it is a milestone of excitement in the middle of a pregnancy where I am striving to have as little excitement as possible.

Renting a car in Alaska would have cost $700. Oh fuck no. So I’m going to download Lyft and mostly stay in my friend’s house not doing much. I need the rest anyway. There’s a Fred Meyer’s (oh bless Fred Meyer’s!) 1.5 miles from the house and multiple restaurants within a similar distance in the other direction. No trouble. I can walk. I am sturdy. Even if I feel like shit. I ain’t fast but I fucking get there.

It was interesting to have the pain doctor bring up Epstein Barr. I’m not sure what to make of him bringing that up. If it was a periodic recurring thing for me… that would explain these periods when I absolutely sag with being out of energy. I don’t know though. Like right now. My neighbor wants to visit today. I feel so deflated of energy I feel like I could sink through my chair into the sub-flooring.

But I want to travel? I want to go to Disneyland?

I do. It’s weird.

I think I’m going to move slowly and carefully. I think I will only go on a few rides. I will mostly enjoy being around the explosive joy. The last time I was at Disney while pregnant I was kind of resentful. This time I don’t think I will be. I’m ok skipping coasters right now. I just want to watch.

It’s kind of awesome that I know we are quite possibly moving. I won’t buy much.

Methadone. I’m telling you.

My kid is trying to figure out how they want to talk about a problem they are having. I am impressed with their willingness to see many sides of this issue. “Ok, you are upset about X person doing Y. How often do you do Y? How do you want people to react when you do the thing that is upsetting you right now?”

They are taking it in and thinking seriously about what boundaries and consequences mean. Setting a boundary and having a consequence for a behavior doesn’t have to be done out of anger or spite. It doesn’t have to be done out of hate or vindictiveness. It can be part of loving the other person AND loving yourself.

“Hey, we are friends and I like you but I don’t like when you Y. I need that to change.”

That’s… such a healthy thing. People are going to be challenging to your boundaries FOREVER. That’s never going to stop. The only part that you can control is how you react to people impacting your boundaries. You can say, “When Y happens I’m going to need to go home for the day. We can try again on another day.”

It doesn’t mean you hate the person because they are doing something you have a problem with. How you feel about a person can be separate from how you feel about a behavior. How do we talk about the problem without making it sound like the PERSON is the PROBLEM? Because that’s not true. People aren’t problems. People sometimes have behavior that is a problem.

How do we train each other? How do we teach one another what we can handle and respect? It’s a process. It’s a long, complicated process. It happens one interaction at a time. How do you structure these interactions so that you make progress towards your goal of preserving a friendship plus adding boundaries?

It’s hella complicated. I’m the first person to admit I’m kind of shit at this process.

But I remember the Dear Jane lady from years ago. I “used up all of my chances” without ever knowing that I was using chances.

I don’t want to do that to other people.

It’s a complicated world. People come from a lot of cultures and backgrounds. Folks expect different behavior. The way to ensure that your boundaries are respected is to be willing to walk away if they aren’t. You have no other real recourse. Which is tricky if you need the relationship for some reason.

I am so lucky that I don’t need many people past my nuclear family at this point. It makes it a lot easier to just set boundaries.

It has really bothered me how much my recently-fired-psychiatrist was convinced that I was using a horrifically high dosage of pot and she was freaked out about what an addict I was. I hear that and think, “But I’m currently using somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of what I’ve been using for years…. Oh.”

You would have really judged me then. Oh.

The pain doctor waves his hand and says he doesn’t care how much I use. I need it. Use it. Yes, even while pregnant. Being in a lot of pain and in severe emotional distress is worse for my baby than pot in his well educated opinion. I appreciate that before he got his DO degree he was a pharmacist for years. He has strong opinions about medications. He thinks pot is the single safest option available to me.

I met with a genetic counselor. I really wish this dude was somehow a bigger part of my medical team. I thought he was so fucking nice. He asked a ton of questions and I went along with it. He started to give me the “We don’t recommend marijuana usage” spiel and I cut him off. “Let me explain why I use marijuana. Let me explain the ways I’ve tried to find a different route and let’s talk about the result of those tries.” When I was done he asked how much I take. I told him I’ve been consistent around 100mg/day for a while (although I have used more yesterday and today because my pain levels are up to 6/7 and I’m trying to not freak the fuck out about how my body feels). He scoffed and said, “Oh that’s a low dose. That’s nothing. No one should say anything to you about that.” He asked me if I used “any other recreational drugs” and I said–“I don’t use any recreational drugs while I’m pregnant” and I smiled. He visibly flinched and said, “You are right. I said that wrong.”

The differences in opinion are just…

Perspective.

I have been honest more than once and said that I’ve used recreational drugs when not pregnant but I plan my pregnancies carefully and I don’t use drugs when I’m trying to get pregnant. Err, which is accurate.

I wonder if part of why I feel like I “need” children is because these clean and sober periods are healthy for me and I don’t completely maintain them other than breeding/breast feeding. When my body is for me I treat it differently. When my body is a host… I’m a lot more careful. I care very much about making this a friendly place for my little parasites. I fucking adore my parasites. I live and breathe for them. Sometimes literally.

I don’t like me very much. But I like them a whole lot. And I like the way they look at me a whole lot. I can put up with not liking me in order to have that experience.

And I will show them a face that has been carefully schooled to show the emotion I want them to reflect instead of a face that reveals what I’m feeling. Because that is the deal. Children learn what you fucking model. If you want to see it back from your kids you have to do it and do it and do it and do it and do it even when you don’t want to.

When I was younger and a lot more ok with being a blatant bully I actively wanted my children to be afraid of me.

My kids are a little afraid of me. Not a lot. But they do see me as a person who… could lose control and they need to be prepared to back way off. I don’t feel proud of this. I feel like with helping Jenny to stop flinching around me… I have to earn that trust. I am not yet as controlled as I want to be. I’m getting way better but it’s still a work in progress.

I ask my kids if they think I will hit them when I’m angry. Their response has been some variation of, “I don’t think you will but I feel like you could.”

And that’s… you know… consistent with reality. I could. I’m bigger. I’m stronger. I’m a mean mother fucker. I was brought up in a world where shit rolls down hill. I was brought up to believe that children should be seen and not heard. I was brought up with the belief that if you cried from emotional pain you deserved to have people hit you until you were crying from real pain.

I could.

But I won’t.

Yeah. I have a raging volcano of anger and violence inside of me.

I don’t take it out on my kids.

I walk away. I take breaks. I segregate myself until I’ve got my shit together. I mean, I say some louder-than-necessary hostile sentences sometimes. Then I slap my hands over my mouth and walk away.

I don’t rant for long periods. I don’t denigrate my children. But yeah. There are times when I start absolutely screaming, “WHAT DID YOU DO? OH MY GOD!!! WHY DO YOU THINK THIS IS OK??!?!?! I AM SO ANGRY WITH YOU.” That’s usually around when I slap my hands over my mouth and walk away.

It’s not perfect. But I’ve come a long way.

I’m not perfect. I am not the best mother. I’m not sure if I’m a good mother in the abstract. I think I am overall a good mother to my children.

I defend their 4th trimester with a bloody sword. My children need to learn how to regulate their bodies in an environment with practically no stress. My children need to have their needs met as close to instantly as possible in the first few months. I will wear my back all the fucking way out wearing my babies.

We don’t come from a family of people who have healthy bodies or healthy minds. We have to put effort into building habits from birth to overcome the damage done to their genetic line through trauma and abuse.

My methods are not what everyone needs to follow. I sure as shit don’t think my methods are “general parenting”. I’m doing long-term therapy. Intergenerational trauma is a real god damn thing. It leaves serious marks on people. I believe that our government should be willing to just give big fat stipends to every parent who wants to spend a year bonding with their child. That should be a financially healthy choice for every parent. Because the fate of the nation would improve. Mental health, school performance…. all of these things are impacted by attachment.

I’m not saying that kids who go to daycare at 6 weeks cannot attach or have a healthy life. That’s not my point.

Ugh.

I’m saying that there are children who do well with a village approach. There are children who do better with having a very protective primary caregiver. I’m saying that some children need a lot of scaffolding to figure out how they fit into the wider world.

Every kid is different and every kid needs different things from their parents.

I have been offering my children school for years. “Do you want to go make more friends?” They have said every time, “No. I want to be with you.”

I have to just pray I’m not wrecking their lives, right?

Because how do you know? How do you “know” that your methods will work? How do you evaluate if your traditions/culture mesh with what will be expected of your children?

I think we all just kind of pray in our own way. Or we try not to think about it at all.

My daughter keeps saying that she “knows something is true if mom tells her”. I twitch and cringe. “Oh child. My facts get out of date. I sometimes misunderstand things I hear and then tell you the wrong thing. You need to double check the stuff I say. I’m not a perfectly reliable source.”

She… can’t deal with this yet. But I’m trying to plant the seeds.

I’m trying to get better about “here’s why I think this is true.”

I can certainly cite my sources and shit. I keep thinking that I should do a master list of the educational theorists I have relied on the most and talk about what I’ve gotten from different theories. To consolidate my thinking. What the fuck is my approach?

Oh a little of this and a little of that… err, I have to get my notes to remember which name goes with which theory. I am hilariously bad with names. But I could start writing paragraphs about the theories right now. But not tonight.

Hands hurt. Too many thoughts for organized scholarship. But clearly I miss academic study. I wonder how I should focus that with the writing that I do. I read and have read a gnarly cross section of books. I could try to put together a more formal paper. Just for myself. Because I am having a hard time with how little my brain is engaged in my life lately. I mean, I’m engaging my brain. That sounds worse than I mean it. But listening to my kids tell me allllllll about their (whatever) of the moment doesn’t use that big of a chunk of my processing.

And my house spends a lot of time talking about food. That doesn’t take much thought either.

I need to have a part of my brain that is working at a much faster rate so I don’t feel cranky and impatient. I’ve been really struggling to fill this gap lately. I’m so fucking tired. I hurt so much.

I’ve used sexual/romantic relationships to fill that sort of gap in the past. It certainly makes me feel more energetic. That’s not on the table. Ok. Masturbatory writing out of shit I’ve studied. Sure. Why not. What can it hurt (beyond my arms).

I think I’m trying to convince myself that I’m allowed to be my own authority.

I consult outside myself when I need active feedback on something I can’t see from my perspective… but I’m really fucking competent at deciding what is good or bad for me. It takes me a while. *cough*

But yet I reach for these opinions in my head. I had ended my relationship with former-psychiatrist thinking, “Maybe I’ll try again some day but for fuck’s sake not while breeding.”

Noah told me he doesn’t want me to try more psych drugs. He has to clean up the mess. He’s not up for more trials. He thinks I’m going to kill myself on a med trial.

Voices in my head.

I’ve had more than one medical provider say in a smirking way, “Wow. You really know how to advocate for yourself, don’t you?” I didn’t go back to see either of them.

You think you’re cute, don’t you?

Bye.

I’m afraid of moving away from the first doctor who has been willing to talk to me. I’m scared of how expensive this shit is going to be. Oh god.

But the tests are finding a lot of low numbers that concern him. In areas that are normally elevated for pregnancy.

That’s interesting.

It’s kind of funny watching the doctor turn his head to the side and say, “You are in really great shape for someone who is… really not in good shape.” It’s such an amusing thing to try and parse in different ways. Oh the field trips my imagination goes on. La di da.

He doesn’t want to talk about exercise recommendations until after the testing is done. Because otherwise he’s pulling it out of his ass. It is… weirdly cool that a doctor can admit the polite version of “Shit I don’t know. But I’ll know after a whole bunch of work.”

Why am I awake tonight? I know why.

I am not G-d. I am not G-d. I am not G-d.

I can not save anyone. I can not help anyone other than my children, not really. And even my children I can only help to a point and then I’ll be hurting them. I’m on a timer. I can’t guarantee my children a good life. I can just promise that I will try and teach you physical skills and mannerisms that will help you to figure out being an adult. Even if being a kid is harder.

But good golly I have a hard time viewing my kids as having a harder life than average. Life isn’t an easy experience. If I tried to give them an easier experience than they are getting I’d probably be harming them in the long term.

Which isn’t to excuse bullying or anything like that. I just mean…

Oh a thing happened and that child is getting old enough to not want to be talked about in the same way and that means that when I have feelings about things I need to be vague and annoying. Hi. A child didn’t get what they wanted in a situation. Repeatedly.

Ok. Yeah. Welcome to life.

Child expected coddling. I uhhhh failed to deliver. I said, “Yup. That happens. Welcome to dealing with schools/camps/institutions. They will say what they need to say to move the herd along but they aren’t serious and they don’t care about you as an individual.”

I feel like an asshole. But that is what my experience has been as a professional educator, as a patient, as a student.

If I have 30 students in a class, I can’t hand hold through a lesson. Catch the fuck up.

It’s mean but true.You are always failing someone. Maybe you’d even be willing to handhold but the person can’t say they need it. Or can’t say how they need it and what you offer is useless.

That’s such a fantastically shitty feeling. Knowing that what you offer is… useless.

But here I go. Centering myself again. Well, this is my whine space.

I get to have my feelings here. They are ok.

I’m having a hard time with a thing I’m instinctively doing. I’m a gendering piece of shit. So in my head I keep thinking, “If I have an AMAB child… will I put him in a dress?” Because allll the baby clothes I’m getting are from little girls. I put my daughter in boy clothes when that was all the hand me downs I got for years.

I’m an asshole.

I don’t practice what I preach.

Dresses are convenient on diaper wearing babies. Why the hell not?!

You know, Franklin Roosevelt even grew up wearing dresses. I’m not declaring shit about anything about my child’s gender if they wear a dress. They are just following precedent. Or I’m weak sauce. I’m already weak sauce. This is internalized misogyny. Boy stuff is “good enough” for a girl but boys can’t have “girl” stuff? Which is also enforcing a binary opinion and haven’t I learned my fucking lesson yet?

No matter what I do I’m pushing an agenda.

Ready to flop.

I am mature enough to not get in a shouting match on a forum site when I feel like someone is being a bitch face. When someone tells me that I’m a shit mother and my kids are going to grow up to feel smothered by me… I can think that the person is a bitch face. I’m not going to call them such on the forum, I have some boundaries.

But here in the place where I put all my defensive posturing, why the hell not get into it.

Yes, I had children because I felt like I needed to. You think that means my baby was born with a job and my children will hate me for that. Well, that’s an opinion. Your opinion is worth exactly how much I paid for it.

I was not capable of treating my body like it mattered before I had children. I have learned how to eat, how to exercise in more healthy ways, I’ve done things to manage my pain, and I’ve made fantastic strides on my mental health. Because I owe it to my children. I brought them into the world and I owe them this labor.

In preparation for my need to have children I spent ten years pre-children researching child development and working with children at many levels. That never scratched the itch. I was still never part of a family. I never got to work through my issues of always feeling like I don’t belong and I should go because they were always someone else’s kids.

I need to be a parent because I have to work on boundaries. I talk to my kids about establishing boundaries towards me all the fucking time. “You don’t exist for me. You exist for yourself. You need to please yourself, not me. You are the only face you will see in the mirror every day of your life. I don’t need to approve of what you do. You need to approve of yourself.”

I’ve been offering my kids chances for more space from me for years. So far they adamantly refuse. I don’t think I’m just smothering them. I give them as much opportunity for distance and space as they will permit. But I don’t force distance. I don’t force them to go to full time care. I don’t force them to go to school. It would take forcing.

I think that as long as I have Stanford behavioral health, a pediatrician who specializes in intergenerational patterns of abuse, and a list of mental health care providers who interact with my family all saying that I’m doing well and my kids are fantastically lucky… I think bitch faces on the internet can go suck on a battery.

Do you know when I tell people that they need to change how they are parenting because their kids are having problems? WHEN I INTERACT WITH THE CHILDREN FREQUENTLY AND THE CHILDREN HAVE MAJOR PROBLEMS. What the fuck. Someone saying that they needed to have children is not the same thing as “I do not provide my children with the care they need.” It is in fact… orthogonal.

I needed to be in a role of responsibility that didn’t go away. Where I can’t fake being “ok” for 8 hours a day and go home and mutilate myself to deal with my emotions.

I needed a family. I needed a family where I can say, “We don’t hit in this family” and I can leave the room if someone gets rough with me and that’s ok. I needed to live in a family where violence is not the solution.

Lately when Future Middle Child does something less than stellar we have these chats, “Is this the kind of behavior you want to remember? Is this the kind of person you want to be?”

I tell my kids all the time that my evaluation of their behavior isn’t that important. They need to care about their evaluation of their behavior. If FMC says, “Have I been doing good at _____?” I say, “What do you think? Your evaluation is the important one.”

BUT SURE. I’M SMOTHERING THE SHIT OUT OF MY KIDS.

Maybe people optimally have all their shit together before having kids. But I had my financial shit, my relationship shit, and my housing shit pretty fucking together. No I didn’t have all my self care figured out.

ALMOST NO ONE ACTUALLY GETS ALL OF THEIR SHIT TOGETHER BEFORE HAVING KIDS. GET OFF YOUR FUCKING HIGH HORSE.

Some of us won’t have all of our shit together until decades past the breeding period. So you’re saying that unless people have their shit together in a way that you approve of they don’t deserve to have kids. Good thing your opinion isn’t worth the pixels it takes to display. You don’t get to decide if other people have kids or not.

I don’t get to decide when other people should or shouldn’t have kids and neither do you. That’d be eugenics.

I feel like my kids are glowing examples of good health. I think this partially because a whole bunch of people who spend their entire lives evaluating children tell me that they think so too.

Fuck bitch faces on the internet.

Hey, better to rant here than on a stupid forum. That just goes so bad.

I’m in a weird head space. On one hand, I feel remarkably zen. I feel peaceful and calm and even happy. But I also feel really really overwhelmed.

I feel like I can’t focus on what I’m doing or I’ll feel bad. But if I put my head down and just do it I’m fine.

Today will be kind of rough. We were invited to a party this evening. That means my kids are going to want to stay out later than I should be out. I’m not sure how I want to handle this. I see a midwife today for a check up. 11 weeks.

My therapist seemed to expect me to put her on hiatus. She was just set and explained her trailing off procedure. She’d like me to check in quarterly for a while. She specifically said she is comfortable doing this because I found a closer/more convenient therapist.

I delivered a mild smack down to the pain doctor yesterday. He tried to tell me that if only I exercised more often I would feel less pain. I said, “Yeah I don’t believe you and here’s why. I’ve already gone through the process of training for a marathon, which took me a year. It would not be healthy in any way to exercise more often. Yet I never stopped feeling pain.” He looked back at the screen and just started typing.

I’m at this point where I feel violently angry with doctors who assume they know how much you exercise by looking at you. I exercise a lot! God damnit! Just because I’m not skinny!

I’m really looking forward to book club this weekend. I can’t wait to hear what other people are getting from this book.

Of course I am also looking forward to celebrating a wonderful newly-minted-five-year-old in our life. But oh man book club. Because I’m boring.

I’m ollllllllllllld.

I think I have mentally packed for the Alaska trip approximately 30 times. I’ve memorized my packing list. Maybe if I wrote it down I would stop rehearsing it. I still haven’t tried on a pair of pants to see if they work. They are normally my extra extra fat pants. I have to wear a belt with them 95% of the time. The magic of these pants is pockets. I haven’t tried them on recently because they are heavy and it is too hot here! Why didn’t I think of this immediately! Sometimes, I’m kinda slow. But I’ll probably do it today. I don’t leave for 9 days and I might just start mother fucking packing today just because it feels like my happy place.

I emailed my friend and asked for specifics about their house. He said that they are food mellow and any type of food is welcome in the house. Phew. I can and am willing to adapt to my friends preferences in their homes out of love… but it makes my life easier if I just have to worry about my wonkiness. I’m hard to feed. I am capable of adapting to short term stints in gluten free/vegan environments… but I feel weird the whole time. My body is… out of sorts. I keep looking around for AND WHERE IS THE FOOD I WANT TO BE PUTTING IN MY MOUTH. WANT WANT WANT.

Yeah, it’s totally an addiction. I don’t think that’s a big problem.

My daughter asked me to please bring my computer so I can leave my Skype account open and she can video call me when she wants to. I… I feel like my heart wants to explode with joy. My babies do love me.

I haven’t fucked it all up yet.

I was a jerkface to Future Middle Child yesterday. Lately they have been requesting braids in the morning. No trouble. Happy to help. But then by like 11 kiddo starts unraveling the braids. Then by the time they get to their physical activity skill class in the afternoon I have to do something to get their hair back again. My hands have not been doing so hot. Re-braiding hair is pinchy work. Know how for years and years and years I’ve been ranting about pinchy work and how much I hate it? I do it once a day with a smile on my face. I can do that. I believe I owe you that. I will do it for as many years as you need help. Sure, I could braid my own damn hair by your age… but they just have no desire to learn braiding. And they want fantastically long hair. Ok, I can deal with braiding once a day.

But I’m not always nice about doing it a second time. Yesterday I was complaining and ranting about how irritating I find it that they undo the work in the middle of the day because THEN I HAVE TO REDO IT AND IT HURTS AND THAT JUST REALLY SUCKS, DUDE. I don’t feel bad about the grousing. I wasn’t picking on them and I wasn’t being mean. What I feel bad about is that at the end of the ranting, I tugged on a braid. I didn’t do it like super hard or anything… but I did it too hard. I was mean.

I have apologized. But when will I outgrow shit like this? When will I stop being mean? The ways I’m mean get smaller and more petty by the year… but that’s still shitty. That’s still mean. I don’t like it.

I’m way better with my words. And most of the time when I’m being pissy verbally I’m super duper careful to just not have my hands on someone because I do get rough.

I epically failed at the pinchy hair braiding plus rant combo. Well, epic may be the wrong word. I was a petty bitch. That’s not exactly an epic achievement.

And that’s the most physically mean I’ve been in a long time. The intervals in between fuck ups is growing. But I’m still not where I want to be.

I’m feeling calm and happy and I’m also feeling this weird piece of dissociation because I keep thinking about my mother and having this crushing feeling that I shouldn’t exist. That is what I want to work on in somatic therapy. This weight has been on me for most of my life. I can’t ever remember really feeling like I should exist.

I was born of trauma and it feels like that is all I will ever be. I will just be a source of pain for everyone who touches me.

Don’t start arguing with me. That’s not the point. This lives in my body. This isn’t a rational belief. This isn’t a “fact” I think I’ve arrived at based on a list of factors. It is how I feel. I mean, I can list the factors that contribute… but whoopie? None of those factors HAVE to cause this feeling. They just happen to be what I hang my hat on to describe pieces of the feeling I have anyway.

My mother and my mother’s mother and my mother’s mother’s mother all didn’t do a very good job of loving their children and their children all grew up damaged and broken and went on to seek out abuse in romantic relationships and within their family.

My children alone out of my entire extended family have a working vocabulary for their emotions. My children alone out of my entire extended family have a working vocabulary for how to express physical and sexual and emotional boundaries. My children alone out of my entire extended family have the glow that comes from believing you should be in the world. I know lots of other people who have it. But no one from my family other than my children.

Instead my white trash family are all mean and violent in the ways that people are when they believe that they are disposable.

My daughter says, “Generationally our family is improving a lot! I probably won’t have to fuck my kids up at all since you are barely doing it.”

My children do know when a well timed f-bomb fits.

But they do it so rarely and never when they are around other people. Their control is a marvel to me. They code switch better than me.

They like themselves.

I would like to do somatic work on how much it hurts that I don’t like myself and I don’t believe I deserve any of the good things I have. It really kind of sucks to go through life believing you deserve violence and so provoking it regularly.

Lots of cycles.

What is violence?

It occurs to me that I should look through the consignment sale and see if I can find one of those ugly huge Barbie heads where you can brush and style their hair. This kid needs to learn how to braid. I’ll do it once a day for you. But dat’s it.

When you’ve woken up 6/7 times by 1:30 in the morning… It’s not a good night. (I’m losing track of how often in my sleepless haze.) I’m in a lot of pain. Hips/back. I miiiiiiiiiiiiss massage but neither of my massage therapists will work on me during the first trimester because I’ve had two miscarriages within two weeks of massages. I’VE ALREADY BEEN PREGNANT THIS TIME LONGER THAN BOTH OF THOSE TIMES, ISN’T IT OK YET?!?!?!

Being a host for a parasite is a shitty job.

Noah and I had a really great conversation yesterday afternoon. We’ve been having a lot of good conversations lately. I feel like that’s on a noticeably good uptick after a long time of being too busy/tired to really talk. But yesterday we talked about group identity/membership. He pointed out that we’ve talked about this before. I have this longing for a group.

But I’ve walked away from every group. That was me. I haven’t been rejected from a group… not really… in longer than I can remember.

Do you know why I’ve walked away from almost every group? Rapists.

Merrie Pryanksters, Dickens Fair, Burning Man (which is a much bigger community and I probably could have found a sub-group without any rapists in it but then I’d have to avoid them all on the playa), the Leather Community, the casual sex communities I’ve been part of….

I could name 1-5 rapists who were active in each community. I just… can’t.

Which seems kind of hypocritical, don’t you think? Given that I’m a rapist married to someone who has committed rape?

Both Noah and I have talked to the people we have hurt. We admitted culpability. We asked if there was any kind of taking responsibility the people involved wanted. Ok, Noah did this partially because I told him it was not optional because the girl in question came to me. I was going to have her back no matter what.

There are ways in which I do not believe in “The Sisterhood” and there are ways I do. If a human being (man/woman/nonbinary person) comes to me and tells me that they were raped and they need my support I’m going to fucking give it. Because I wish to hell it had happened to me and I can’t change my past all I can do is make sure I behave the way I believe is honorable.

So when I feel bad about not being part of a group because each of the groups I’ve tested had more tolerance than me for people who are actively harming folks without accepting consequences….

Most of the rapists I can name are serial rapists. For most of them I know 2-5 victims. For a couple of the rapists I know just one victim and I’m willing to bet if they sat down with a mediator to talk the rapist would be genuinely horrified to hear what they were really doing. But for a lot of them… naw. They fucking know and communities protect them because “They are such fun people.”

You know what? I don’t need to be part of a group.

Naw.

I can vacation alone and not have to worry about defending my boundaries from someone who habitually disrespects boundaries.

I’m honestly not that good at keeping rapists from raping me. I have a really bad track record. I keep myself safe by keeping a lot of distance.

It’s why I have kid-centric parties these days. The boundaries are so much more clear and easy to enforce. If you are sexual in any way, get the fuck out.

It’s not that I object to sex or sexuality. It’s that policing my boundaries is haaaaaaaaaard and I suck at it. I suck in a variety of ways on a whole bunch of levels.

It isn’t just that I have a hard time getting people to hear “no”. It is that I have a hard time saying it. I don’t have a strong self protection mechanism. Not in the moment. Not when I feel pressured to “behave” and “be polite”.

This is why I surround myself with people who are ok with me kind of losing my shit. People who need me to be civilized and polite don’t want me to protect myself and I need to stay the fuck away from them. I’m not good at protecting myself in a civilized and polite way.

I can go fucking insane or I close my eyes and wait for it to be over.

I am so grateful that Noah is fairly supportive of the fact that there are boundaries I have to express in really over the top ways. He doesn’t take it personally that I have to get almost out of my mind with anger before I can say some limits. He just steps back and protects himself from the blast radius and tries to listen to the truth behind the fury. He doesn’t engage exactly when I’m angry (it isn’t that wise) but he listens. When I’m crying and empty of anger he tries to phrase back what nuggets of truth he got out of the ranting.

I know I don’t deserve a partner who is this kind and generous with me about getting to the core of what is wrong with me in any given situation.

It isn’t that he lets me rage at him all the time… we have explicit rules in our relationship about me not being allowed to do that. But there are boundaries I can’t express until I melt down and he deals with that. I can’t tell if I’m abusing him by sucking so much in this way.

I feel really pathetic knowing I’m a lot better than I used to be. That just seems… sad and kind of horrible. I honestly don’t know how I’ve managed to have any friends or relationships at all. It isn’t because I deserve them.

Does anyone get anything “because they deserve it”?

One of my lovely friends brought me piles of baby clothes. I am probably 50% or more of the way towards what I need for the first year. This is exciting. Without spending a dime. Even better.

This kid is going to be wearing a lot of dresses regardless of perceived gender. Ha. I find this funny because I only got butch/boy clothes for Eldest Child and she’s a femme little thing. All of her early dresses were either: hand-me-downs from me when I was an infant or from a grandmother.

I don’t think Noah’s mom is going to be so prolific this time. I think I’ve gotten what I’m going to get on that front. That relationship is so layered and complicated. I’ve dropped Noah’s family since the road trip. I feel like I tried for years and got such a mixed bag back and through the remodel I stopped contact most people. I’m having trouble restarting even though I feel I owe Great Grandma a letter the most. She doesn’t even know we are expecting. And I really like her.

We were going to have a lovely weekend of seeing friends. Instead we stayed home and cleaned. As in: my house is just about put back from the remodel now. Yippeeee! The next time a group of kids come over no one will have to sneer, “Your house sure is messy.”

Because after all, not being judged by ten year olds is totally what my life is about.

Future Middle Child has been trying out language to explain their experience of being in their body lately. “I was a girl then I was a boy then I realized I was neither.” I asked them if they ever actually felt like a girl or rather if they were assigned female while not having a choice about how people refer to them. They are thinking about that one. It’s really fascinating watching them internalize these questions and try to figure out what is true for them.

Both of my kids constantly hear me say, “I need to ask you a lot of questions because I’m not inside you and I don’t know who you are or what you need. Sorry if it gets annoying but this is how I can treat you appropriately.”

I have this belief that there are people in the world who can intuit these things and get it right without constant obnoxious questioning but I can’t. I don’t understand people well enough. I don’t understand my people as individuals enough to just assume. I need to ask and ask and ask and ask.

The older I get. The more I understand how little I understand people. It’s almost a charming experience.

It isn’t that I need the people in my life to be perfect or to never fuck up. Not even when it comes to rape. It is that I need to see people honestly acknowledging their fuck ups and trying to fix their fuck ups. I need to see people consciously trying to grow.

Or I’m better off hanging out by myself.

And that is why I have come so far in this life. Loneliness can hurt sometimes. But it is also a spur to keep trying to grow and improve myself. If I’m going to spend a lot of time in my company it would be nice to hate myself less.

I’ve never understood the way other people just seem to “forget” or not pay attention to their flaws. I feel choked by my flaws. I have to fix them. Or at least as much as I can.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll wind up being someone you’ll like. It’s complicated.

Oh man. I just watched To The Bone on Netflix. Keanu Reeves acts. It’s an intense movie about eating disorders. But it’s really about life and pain and finding a reason to keep trying.

Maybe I can sleep again.

I know how ridiculous it is that I spend so much time feeling sad that I don’t know how to make the friends-vacation thing work on a regular basis.

A while back a friend said something to me that has stuck with me. She was commenting on difficulties I have with my therapists. She said, “Your therapist seems to think you should treat your friends as friends but your friends are your family.”

I know too many people who vacation every year with a group of friends. It’s a thing I hear about constantly. There was a group in high school that I was almost a part of, I was invited to their group thing once, but it got really fucking awkward because my ex wasn’t very polite about me being there.

I can make it work to visit people. That often goes well. I can go see a person at their house and have that go well.

I even think that the trip to Hawaii with my girlfriends went well.

The cruise was… really challenging. Since the Bonus Family divorced me I can say that traveling with them was kind of a nightmare. The fact that they have never traveled on an airplane nor dealt with so many changes for a trip in their familial life wasn’t the problem. The fact that the adults got really angry with the children for having stress reactions was a real problem. Don’t fucking yell at and shame your kid for vomiting when they are exposed to an excess of food like they’ve never seen before. That’s not ok. I don’t give a shit that it is your birthday and you want to feel like the center of attention and everything is perfect. Kids get sick. You’re a parent. You put your big kid panties on and you cheerfully help your kid. What the fuck.

Kids are dragged along on trips. They need to be accommodated. When you know your kid has a bunch of special needs to start with… You need to pack extra patience. Period.

The Scotland trip was… mostly hard because I couldn’t sleep to save my life. That made me so fucking crazy. And Uncle Bob died the month before the trip and I was out of my mind anyway from divorcing my family. I’m surprised Scotland went as well as it did. And I’m still wearing the underwear that some friends kindly purchased for me. I think of y’all when I wear them. (All of my underwear was actively falling off because I was losing weight from stress.)

I was invited to Scotland. That was a HUGE DEAL.

Pam invited me up to Clear Lake and taught me how to water ski with her boyfriend’s family when I was 18. That was awkward but fun.

But I’m not someone who gets invited back. I wear people out. I know it is my fault.

I wish it didn’t bother me so much to hear my friend talk about the annual vacation her family takes with this large group of friends every year. They’ve been going for over ten years I think? I don’t begrudge her the trip. I’m really glad she has such a tight group of friends. I think it is fantastic that her children get to grow up with a community like that.

I will never have that. Just like I’ll never have parents. I will never be part of traditions with anyone outside of my nuclear family. I won’t have “This is what I do every year in X month” with a bunch of other people. That is not my story.

I spend so much time thanking a God I don’t believe in for the gift of my nuclear family. They are the reason I get up and face each day.

Noah is the reason I have a family. Because he decided to take a chance on me. Because Noah looked at broken, shitty me and decided that I was his best chance in this life for a happy family.

I think I’ve been doing better lately at being nice to Noah. I’m working real hard on it. Even as I feel whiny and mean.

It was hard when I started inviting people to the cruise multiple years in advance and something like six people told me no… and then went on a cruise within 3-6 months after ours.

I would have smaller feelings if I felt like an asshole inviting people to things that were simply beyond their reach. But that wasn’t it. Other friends and other timing was better.

Ok.

I don’t fit. My timing is wrong. I want the wrong things on the wrong days and other people have better timing. Ok.

I feel like I would be a happier person if I stopped looking to do things with people. I feel like my life would improve if I didn’t want to spend time with people. But I’ve failed entirely in my devious plan to be an isolated loner.

I know too many people who are wonderful. And I wish I got to do more things with them. Both locally and travel-wise. Because I think it would be fun.

I have a lot of good in my life. I have a husband who would learn how to do backflips through a fiery hoop if that was what I needed to find him entertaining. I have children who adore me and still tell their friends that they’d rather be with me all day than anyone else. I have a fucktastically cool house that is cool because *I* made it that way. I have financial security. I have a growing team of competent medical providers after years of struggle. I have a library that would make my child-self fall down and weep with envy. I have a garden I find delightful and healing. I have lots of people who love me and who give me everything they have to spare.

I don’t have a lot of genuine reason to feel sad and whiny. That sure as shit doesn’t slow me down.

I don’t even think I need the expensive shit. It isn’t just the travel.

If A had followed through on his promises to be family “no matter what” and he had shown up and down real work for Sunday Family Dinners instead of being a giant man baby who expected to be taken care of forever…

But depending on people sucks.

I could pay to go to leather events and be part of that. If I could find consistent, safe childcare. But no.

Just… no.

I can’t.

And that makes it my fault that I don’t have a group. I guess. Ok.

Most of the things I’ve ever done with people have been at my initiation. “Hey, we could do _____”. My suggestions are rarely good for other people. But people don’t counter with, “We could do ______ at this other time though.”

Ok.

Shrug.

I’ve deleted three social things off the calendar over the next few weeks. All of them involved a bunch of driving. Nope. Can’t do it.

A while ago I felt like a horrible asshole because I was visiting a buddy and I got a glimpse of her life. I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack the whole time I was there because their life is intense. Her family gets a lot of shit done. They go a lot of places. They have a lot of commitments and responsibilities. I… I can’t do what they do. I’m just not that good.

My life is too much like their life right now and I’m melting.

I have four or five changes of tone/activity today including 2 hours of driving and it feels like hell.

Tomorrow only two changes of activity. But one of them interrupts my fucking bed time because the fucking martial arts belt test is now later at night because my fucking kid is now an advanced belt so we’re the last fucking test of the night.

I mean, I’m glad she’s made progress–that’s cool. BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE AT THE MARTIAL ARTS STUDIO TILL 8PM.

I’m a whiny wussy baby.

I cancelled Saturday’s fun plans. I can’t be fun right now.

The charter school told us they expect the kids to be doing a minimum of five hours a day of academics. Oh this is going to be a fun switch.

Not.

And given that Future Middle Child is decidedly not reading yet… That’s five hours a day of direct instruction. This right here… this is why I wasn’t interested in a charter before this. Fuck.

I think Eldest Child is ready. I feel this is going to be appropriate. FMC is going to flail and spend a lot of time resisting and screaming. I can’t wait.

I’ve been talking to EC. I don’t think we are going to keep looking hard for her to have a one on one therapist. There are no pressing issues in her life. There is nothing she feels she wants to work on/through. I can’t handle adding the driving plus one more thing just so she feels like she gets a captive audience. FMC needs a therapist because we are establishing a paper trail on gender identity stuff. That’s different. If EC had a reason I’d make it happen. But she’s not in distress. She’s not struggling. Nothing is bothering her.

I just can’t.

The whole family therapist is going to fall into an every 3-4 week schedule. That’s kinda sustainable. I’m going to put my main therapist on hiatus indefinitely and see the somatic person every two weeks. FMC currently sees their person every week and I think that is important as they get established but after a couple of months I’m going to ask to move to every 2-3 weeks. FMC is not in major emotional distress. They don’t have big problems that Must Be Fixed. They need someone to help them in court someday and they are going to benefit from having Enby role models who help them figure out how to grow up. That’s important but it doesn’t have to be weekly.

The pain doctor is going to be a pain in my ass as far as driving goes for a while but not forever. Long term I think he’ll be more like once a month.

I’m just in crunch “get established” times with several people at once and that’s breaking my schedule.

I am looking forward to running away from home more than I can express. I need a break. I need to only think about myself and my physical needs for a while. Over a week! I’m SO EXCITED.

Oh wait, break time. I went to pick up the big girls from the park. They wanted to come home because kids were harassing them. Including commenting on their butts. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE THAT THEY WILL COMMENT ON THE ASSES OF 9 AND 10 YEAR OLD CHILDREN.

I hate the whole world.

I’m going nutty. I’m driving out of my city almost five days a week. This is not ok for me. I’m losing my mind. I’m cancelling friend meet-ups because I cannot fucking drive. Modesto today sucked.

I mean, the trip was fine. But driving to Modesto and back sucked.

This week I have to drive to Mountain View, San Jose, Modesto, Sunnyvale, and I was going to drive down to the Santa Cruz Mountains. I just can’t. I’m about to lose my shit.

I’m having 4-6 medical appointments a week. This is not sustainable. Not when so many require lots of driving.

I’m pretty sure I’m putting my main shrink on time out indefinitely. I may not fire her in messy fashion, but I need a break from driving to Oakland.

New/Somatic shrink says they really appreciate me telling them to read my book slowly because whoa. Yeah, I know. I can’t read more than a chapter at a time because it is so distressing.

I feel like I want to be having 3-6 appointments in a week. Instead I have 14 depending on how you squint. (4 appointments are kid exercise classes so… getting 3 a week just isn’t happening.)

In random news: I’ve felt much better after puking last night. My body felt almost human today. Even in the car. It’s not like a euphoric DXM puke, but that was a good puke.

Ok, random confession: I’ve been having weird urges towards using harder drugs. I’m not going to in any way shape or form but it is interesting to me that I’m having this compulsion. I don’t remember feeling like it would be fun during previous pregnancies.

Let me reiterate that I’m a fully cognizant adult who thinks the pot I use is bad enough… but I had the impulse and I want to be honest with myself.

Like, DXM sounds fun. Because for a few hours I wouldn’t feel any pain at all and being in my body wouldn’t feel like hell. I’m not going to do it because holy tomato Batman that’s not ok. But I’m thinking it.

In this moment I don’t even hate myself for my horrible compulsions. I’m not doing anything about it. I’m just thinking about it.

I’ve been thinking about our M/s contract. The first line I stole from my friend’s contract. The first duty of the slave is to protect their mental and physical health.

I’m in a different place with that sort of thing right now than I ever have been in my whole life. I hurt myself less now. I damage myself less. I put myself in fewer toxic/abusive situations. I actively eject people who are showing red flags.

This has been a slow, gradual process. I was not ready to be told I had to put my mental and physical health first at any other point in my life. I may have pretended so with my former Owner but goodness that relationship was fucked up. It was fucked up with strangely healthy boundaries but it was still fucked up. I made a lot of choices that hurt me because I wanted to make him happy.

I’ve made a lot of choices in my marriage to Noah that hurt me because I thought it would make him happy. Changing those dynamics is hard.

This was the point of my marriage though, right? I wanted to learn how to be healthy. I wanted to learn what supportive and loving looked like. It’s still weird and different for me than it is for other people.

Other people can handle “teasing” that I can’t handle. I am too sensitive. I will flip out. Many of my friends are in marriages that… well… I’m glad it works for them because it wouldn’t work for me for five minutes.

Noah doesn’t taunt me. Noah doesn’t tease me. Noah doesn’t put me down in “jokes”.

I don’t think I am as respectful of him and that makes me feel small and ashamed. I need to stop denigrating Noah. Even in my thoughts.

He says I’m doing much better than I did for a few years. There was a peak period of me being shitty to him and this isn’t it. Even the cheating period was different.

It is hard feeling a mixture of feelings for him. I feel like he has earned love and adoration and respect. I STILL WANT TO BE FUCKING NASTY TO WHITE DUDES. This is a problem. Is it because all white men deserve it? No. Because I’m a petty fucking asshole. Because there have been just enough white men who suck that it is really hard to let my defenses down, even with someone who has been as kind as Noah has.

I told Noah that part of my asshole-shit is based around the fact that when I was a kid the only valid stories were about white boys/men. The only music that was supposed to exist was either men singing or women singing about men. Movies are supposed to tell the white male story because that’s all that matters. I am so completely oversaturated in stories about white men.

But diversifying is complicated and messy.

How do you appreciate the stories of people from other demographics without appropriating and being evil?

I don’t fucking know.

I just know that I’m bad and bad and bad and I don’t know a way to not be bad.

Somehow telling myself “But I’m getting better!” just doesn’t make me feel good about myself.

Most of the way through The Body Keeps Score I started thinking that maybe I had never finished the book before because it is upsetting. But I remember the last chapter so I think that I have finished it before. But there are sections that I almost completely forgot because they hurt so much.

The most interesting therapy for people like me is neurofeedback and I have no idea how to get access to it.

One section of the book talked about Internal Family System (IFS) therapy. In very rough terms I’ll describe it as recognizing people as being like a fully integrated multiple personality system. You know, how shrinks have described me in the past. The goal of this type of therapy is to encourage people to see themselves as a grouping of “parts”. Good parts and bad parts. There are Manager parts that keep you as functional as you are going to be. There are the Exiled parts that you squash and don’t manage in healthy ways. The parts of you that were traumatized and you don’t want to feel weak ever again so you deny that you were that part, ever. Then there are the Firefighters. The Firefighter parts show up when your Manager parts can’t handle situation and you need to Deal With A Problem. Think of a firefighter completely destroying a house in order to put out a fire.

Think about how I like to blow up the boat I’m standing on when I don’t know how to handle a problem.

Like that.

I feel like a lot of the purpose of my marriage is for Noah and I to figure out how to be healthy people while standing next to each other. How do I deal with problems without needing to blow up the boat? How does he manage to have emotions within the marriage? These are things we are working on.

Yoga, meditation, art, and gardening continue to be the activities that are recommended for helping me deal with my shit.

Not socializing.

Bouncing off of other people is complicated.

Everything is complicated.

But being with my children continues to be, in my opinion, the single best thing I do for myself. My children ground me. My children attach me to the present. My children make me want to grow and change in healthy ways.

I’m really grateful for my children.

I just finished reading White Trash by Nancy Isenberg. I feel like this woman gave me my whole life. It is very challenging to track down an email address for the author so I don’t know that I’ll be sending her fan mail. There is a phone number for a representative for media requests. I doubt I’ll trouble them.

This book is wonderful and talks about so much that people deny. We are waste people. Large swaths of society wishes the poor white trash would just… disappear.

And oh god. So much truth was dropped. Poor whites will empty their own pockets to fill the pockets of a charlatan who tells them they are better than someone else. SO. FUCKING. TRUE.

Enlightened self interest is… complicated.

I’m going to stop and say that I am so excited that I finally signed up for 23 & me. I don’t know who the fuck I am or where the fuck I came from. I have stories I was told that I can’t verify. Did one branch of my family come over on the god damn Mayflower? How the fuck do I know? (Yeah, I could dig around on ancestry.com…) What happened to the women who were supposedly in California for so many generations? Who did they have kids with? Where were they from to start with? I don’t know.

Are the Mennonites as German as they claim or is there a bunch of Russian mixed in as I’ve always wondered?

Who are you. Who am I?

What will these results teach me? Will they give me permission to be something other than what I have perceived myself to be? Rootless.

What does it mean to be authentic? What does it mean to exist? How many “Italian Americans” are actually staying true to the roots of Italian heritage? How many people who are proud of being… whatever they are… really know what they are?

There are so many lies we tell. So many convenient half truths.

I see the hostility thrown at American Blacks for mixing African cultures. That shit’s complicated and not my battle. But I see that authenticity is a fight that many people have to engage in. I’ve heard Asian Americans complain about dilution and mixing of cultures. It’s not just a white thing.

When Mexicans are *shocked* to find out that big chunks of their genetics come from Africa and Europe. Yup.

What is “realness”?

I read about First Nations people. Some groups are very worried about blood purity. Most of what I see is worry about cultural purity rather than blood purity. Who cares if white men polluted the blood line with their rape. Did you grow up like us? Are you like us? Ok. You count. But it varies so much and I don’t understand a lot of the nuance.

What will I do if my grandfather was right and there is a distinct African strain? Will I claim being biracial? Probably not. I completely lack the authenticity even if I have the blood line. What will I do if I find a streak of Indigenous blood? I will read more. Maybe I will ask permission to learn more from real people if I can do so in a way that isn’t exploitive.

But I won’t start decorating my house as if it is my culture. It may or may not be my blood line. My culture is white trash.

Smokey and the Bandit was serious fucking shit in my family. That stupidity is where I come from.

Waste people. Rednecks. My grandfather died with a red neck from working outside. He had a heart attack walking back to work from lunch. Like you do.

Breeding. My father told me that the only problem with incest is you shouldn’t make babies with family members because it enhances negative genetic traits.

That’s.The.Drawback.

What is authenticity? What does it mean to be real? What does it mean to have an identity?

Fuck if I know.

My kids are now old enough for us to have family meetings about important topics. This sorta blows my mind. I never participated in this kind of thing as a kid. I was told what was happening to me, not asked what I wanted. Or I would be given a shitty non-choice. “Do you want to go to abusive home A or probably abusive home B with folks you’ve never met before?”

My kids are pretty sure we should move. We really want a bigger house. Not a fantastically huge house, but bigger. The kids want to have rooms they can leave messy without it being common space. I don’t blame them.

We are looking at house porn around the country. I’d like to spend less than $300,000. That means… not one of the biggest places.

Southern Oregon, Louisville Kentucky, Cincinnati Ohio (Have you seen the houses there?!?!?!?!), Knoxville Tennessee, and maybe Boulder Colorado. Depends on how much I don’t like other places. I’m not sure which other cities we’ll try.

We still want to spend a season in Washington DC going to museums and the transition year out of CA and into where ever we land is a great time to do that.

Overseas is interesting but… pot is illegal most of the places we would be interested in moving. Including some of the states we are looking at. That’s not a great thing.

Pot is legal (at least medically) in Ohio, Oregon, and Colorado. Oregon is allowing third gender IDs. That’s a big draw. But Oregon is so white. Like, did you know that between 2010 and 2016 Oregon went from being 83% white to being 87% white? That’s… yeah.

Oh fuck. Kentucky is 88% white. California is 72% white. Whoa. That’s… interesting. Hm. White/non-Hispanic is only 37%. For Kentucky the white/non-Hispanic is… 85%.

For Tennessee the numbers are 78%/74%. (white/white+ non-Hispanic). Ohio: 82%/79%.

Hm. So these are all fucktastically white places. I’m kidding myself. Hm. California has a lot of white Hispanics and that’s a huge chunk of the white population.

White. What does being white mean? I live in a country that is mostly white. For the whole country the numbers are 76%/61% for white or white/non-Hispanic.

That makes it sound like leaving California means leaving for Whitelandia.

Florida is 77%/54%. But I can’t handle the weather. Full stop.

Arizona is 83%/55%.

I am noticing some weather patterns here.

Ok. So unless I want to start baking my sorry ass I need to accept that I’m moving to a massively white place. Portland isn’t more so. 76%/72% for the city of Portland. You know what? I need to stop being an asshole. Portland is doing better than many of the places we are considering. I apologize to my Portlandians for the slander I have ignorantly displayed.

BUT THEY WERE FOUNDED AS A FUCKING WHITE SUPREMACIST UTOPIA.

It’s changing though. I need to stop being a dick.

I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO GO.

I don’t want to move to Portland in large part because I deeply value the relationships I have there and I’m completely convinced that if I leaned on any of them more heavily they would evaporate. My strong impression is that a visit a year is about the max load I can put on those people. And skipping some years makes the next visit go better.

I don’t want to fuck up the welcome I have. I love these people so much.

OH MY GOD THIS HOUSE HAS AN INDOOR POOL WITH A FUCKING DISCO BALL. It’s $250,000. Clearly Oregon has something to recommend it.

But yeah. This will be huge.

I scared.

I’ve been in the bay solidly for 20 years. Intermittently for 30 years. That’s a long time.

I find it funny how when I am pregnant I am aware of cognitive load in a way I’m not really at other times. It’s similar to how marathon training taught me what hungry felt like. Before that I didn’t have much connection with the signals in my body. I eat because it is time to eat or because I’m being a vicious nasty person.

In general I don’t think about how much interacting with people is a cognitive load to carry. I think about math being a cognitive load. I think about art as being cognitive load. Reading varies depending on material but it can be draining to the point of doom. I read intense, complicated subjects. My brain has to dance backwards wearing ballet boots to keep up with that shit.

But I don’t think about conversations as being cognitive load most of the time. Mostly conversations are the wind beneath my skipping feet. They give me lift and energy and movement. I love conversations.

Fuck. Right now thinking is sooooooooooooo haaaaaaaaaard. I feel like I’m being even more gauche than usual. I’m definitely not listening as well as usual. My brain gets over loaded and I can feel a flinch reflex and then I start blurting out something that is easier for my brain to process so I don’t have to hear more. I know it is an asshole move. I’m trying to keep it under control. I’m only sorta succeeding.

I am feeling incredibly blessed by all the conversations I’m having lately. But I feel like I have a permanent hangover. Thinking is harder by the day.

We have two days with nothing scheduled during the next 22 days. I’m a little nervous. Mostly that’s medical appointments and exercise classes. But shit, dude.

Moving to the woods where this shit isn’t possible sounds sooo awesome.

But I’ll Skype like a mofo. Just you watch me.

Skype is making talking to the people I like so much better. I’m typing less to IM. I get to have the joy of seeing facial expressions. Video chat is magic.

I talk a lot of shit about technology. I talk a lot of shit about expensive toys. I understand that we have the good, positive, life changing things we have because of the bullshit. But I still want to bitch about bullshit.

I’m an asshole like that.

Noah pointed something out, about how I’m an asshole. It’s an important thing for me to think about more than once and the public humiliation of writing it here will help sear it on my brain so I don’t slide on this issue again.

Noah points out that I’ve spent a lot of our marriage talking harshly about how I really don’t care about the emotions of white men. So if I feel like I don’t know how he has felt for the last few years… how much of that was him protecting himself from my nastiness?

I am such a fucking bitch.

(He didn’t say the bitch part. He doesn’t talk to me like that. Ever. Even when I was a cheating fucking hag.)

I need to work on giving Noah space for his feelings in our relationship. I have made an unsafe container for him and that’s not ok. I didn’t do it on purpose, but I did it. Maybe part of the reason he feels so boring to me is because I have made it unsafe for him to share the parts of himself that I find most interesting. What a way to set us up to fail.

Yeah. I did that. And I need to fix it.

I have done that bullshit thing in myself where “I’m not as bad as ______ so I’m fine.”

No. It’s not fine to make it unsafe for my husband to express feelings. That’s not fine.

I don’t ever get to decide in my head that I’m not a bully or I’m a good person. I will keep uncovering these fuck ups until I die.

I pray that my children will be better people than me.

I cannot make it unsafe for my son to have feelings.

I don’t know that Lightening is a boy. I was just given a bunch of cute femme baby clothes to go with the cute femme toddler clothes I still have. So whatever genitalia this kid comes out with… they may end up in a lot of dresses because that’s how the cookie crumbles.

But I’m kinda poisonous in how I talk about white men. I’ve got some big nasty feelings. And my kids haven’t done anything to me. They don’t deserve that. The vast majority of white men haven’t done anything to me. But you mighta done something to someone else and I don’t fucking trust you.

That’s complicated.

Noah has done something to someone else. I know because she told me and he corroborated. They have different points of view, of course. But yeah. That happened.

Noah picked some horribly bad timing for a scene I stupidly agreed to have no safeword and to allow it to be sprung on me at any time. Yeah. That was…. a big deal.

And I think I hold a grudge. I think I use these things in my head as reason to be on my guard and kinda mean and to make sure I don’t look like a good victim ever again.

I plan to live with this man until he or I die. I begin to understand my aunt and uncle’s marriage. Things got bad. For better or worse. Who says you get better, bitch.

But Noah…

Noah has earned forgiveness. He has earned the right for a genuine fresh try. Knowing that he will hurt me again some day in some way.

Noah has memorized me like I am his favorite poem. He has twisted himself around the gnarls of the tree that is my soul. And he has done some damage as he spread and as he learned… but he has healed me in so many ways. I was ready to fall down in the wind. And he gave me something to lean on and keep growing.

We will both fuck up again. We are monsters. Monsters do that. They hurt people. They don’t have to mean it.

Sometimes.

Things.

Just.

Happen.

Cognitive load. Who is most important to me. How do I allot the time and energy my brain has to give? I’m tired.

There are a whole lot of people where I pray they will be willing to forgive me for the months and years I drop away. The remodel ate my brain. I didn’t contact many people. Now my brain is being sucked into a biological process. Hi. I may love you, but time I barely have. Brain power is in shorter supply. God I can’t drive to social more than I do. I hate doctors. I have hope for my current doctors. I have a whole bunch. I see soooo many doctors. uuuuuuuuuggggggghhhhhh

Don’t traumatize your fucking kids, yo. This shit is expensive.

It is fun talking to other parents about where they set their lines and why. We are all so different and all the reasons are valid in context.

I don’t think I would be physically capable of getting over my hatred of white men if I had to do so as a childless woman working in an office. I hear enough about office politics that I’d be a political lesbian under those circumstances because men just…. no thanks.

But that isn’t the life I chose. For reasons. There’s shit I need to learn. There’s shit I need to be physically able to care about and the only way I know to learn how is to develop those relationships within a family.

I don’t have another way to get a family that will actually stick around. Ok adoption. But then I won’t work through the things that are connected to me and my issues and my stuff that I specifically need to reparent.

I’ll work through their issues instead. And I will have to be put to the side.

But I really need more family feeling. I can’t call my brothers and learn to get over them torturing me when I was a child. I can’t call my sister and try to forgive her for refusing to keep me out of dangerous situations when I begged her to take me home. I can’t call my mom and forgive her for telling me that I made my bed and I needed to go sleep in it when my father was raping me.

I have children to protect.

We go on the best date nights with our kids. Our kids associate dates with intense one on one conversations where you educate one another about all sorts of topics.

Before I was five years old I knew that a date was supposed to end with a dick in my mouth.

It’s intense for me to talk to people who have long term poly relationships with no sex. I treat a lot of my female friends like they are long term romantic partners. Without sex. I have a few male friends who are kind of like that but everyone got more distant after last year and the rubble. Makes sense. They are trying to be my friends and respect my marriage.

It’s kind of intense having honorable, decent people in my life with boundaries. I didn’t grow up with folks like this. Boundaries are expressed so you know where to step first.

What is this life thing going to turn into. I don’t fucking know.

I never really aspired to being a monster, you know.

But when I was Eldest Child’s age committing breaking and entering. Because it was better to hang out in empty houses than stand around on the street alone.

My kids will never have my burglary skills. I’m not sure if this is good or bad.

It’s… different… hanging out with kids who are so safe.

I start to understand interactions from my childhood in a whole new light. And my kids are coached on consent forking daily. Most kids aren’t. Most kids have squidgy boundaries. My kids say NO. No squidge.

It is safe for them to do that and for them to have feelings.

This needs to be true for Noah too.

I have not been fair.

This needs to change.

I keep having these fragments of interesting posts wander through my brain. I don’t write them down. I forget. That’s kinda my brain right now.

Things of note for tracking reasons: everyone in the house is noticing a big change in Future Middle Child’s behavior. Things kinda hit a fever pitch of rough there and then things changed. They aren’t hitting so much. They are doing a much better job of verbally advocating for themself. They are sleeping better. They are globally acting like, “I know who I want to be and how I want to act” and they are following through. It’s wonderful to see.

Eldest Child is reaching out for friendships in a way that feels striking and new. She’s changing.

Eldest Child is starting to advocate strongly for moving. Her words: “I feel like by the time I’m 11 or 12 it won’t be ok that my only private space is my bed.” That’s completely legit. There are not enough rooms in this house for everyone to have a room of their own and still have common space. Noah and I talked about shooting for when Next Kid is about 18 months old. That’s pretty fucking terrifying.

Aptos/Salinas is currently the only place in California we’d really consider. And those are… not honestly strong contenders because we want to go somewhere cheaper. That means away from cities.

We are looking all over the country. Portland is not a consideration. Eugene is a maaaaaaaybe. But Oregon doesn’t want more Californians. We won’t move to the East Coast. We won’t move to Texas or the deep south. I’m terrified of serious snow.

I don’t know what that means. Colorado is interesting but I don’t know any close friends there. (I know a handful of friends of friends, but I don’t know them and they are from communities where I’m pretty closed mouthed about myself.) Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico are all so hot I’d melt.

Wyoming was so unfriendly I couldn’t fucking bear it. I would not be able to handle living in a place where folks are that monosyllabic.

I don’t think Nebraska or Kansas would be… as bad as other places but I’m not sure I’d be popular in either state.

Ohio? Indiana? Pennsylvania? Tennessee? Kentucky?

No to Missouri. Can’t.

Oklahoma seems…. too close to Noah’s family.

Over seas sounds great. But complicated. I don’t know. I am fairly certain that Noah would be able to get a job over seas. He’s well regarded in the international community in his field. He could go to most countries. But where?

I’m terrified of leaving for a million reasons. But my daughter is right when she says this house is not going to work forever. We don’t want to spend the $300,000+ to add a second story. That puts Noah in debt bondage for a lot of extra years. Even though he makes obscene money.

Noah is 41. In my personal opinion it would be lovely if he didn’t have to have a full time job by 50. He says that what he would like is if he could do seasonal contract work remotely for a few months a year for vacations and extra shit but otherwise we’d like to be living off investments.

We are at $750,000 (approximately, obv) in investments. At 2 million (if I do this right) it’s possible to take about 3% out in dividends and get $60,000. That’s a huge salary for most of the country or the world. In 10 years of marriage I have tripled our assets. If I’m as good as I hope I am, having a 9 year runway to get to 2 million isn’t impossible. If we sold this house we could be well over a million invested after we pay off debts. We might even get as high as 1.2 or 1.3 million.

That makes retiring look… way more attainable. We will probably buy another house somewhere, but I’d love to move somewhere that we are looking at under $300,000.

The goal is retiring so we can teach people stuff without needing a job. Because we are wacky like that.

I don’t know what we are going to do. I don’t know where we are going to go. But I’m sure glad I will get to figure this out with my family.

We keep talking about spending a year or two nomadic so that we can try out different areas for a while before committing. We’ll see.

AND AFTER I PUT IN THAT GOD DAMN BATHROOM.

But if someone else loves this bathroom as much as me… maybe I will effectively be paid for my labor. Maybe. There’s a lot I need to do to the house and yard to make it someplace that someone else will want to buy. There’s a lot to fix and change and stuff. I hate caring about other peoples opinions.

My belly hurts. I’m hungry and eating hurts. This is not fair.