There are a lot of people who have never betrayed me in any way. They have been consistent, reliable, and trustworthy. Do you know what they don’t do? Make promises about who they will be to my children. They don’t tell me that they will be my family. They tell me “I like you and I have about 3 hours a month/year/whatever I can devote to talking to you in the overall scheme of my life.”

The number of letters and postcards I write is testimony to the people who have always been honest and wonderful to me.

I address those people one on one and express my gratitude for their behavior directly. I don’t write about them on my blog as much. Writing about people is complicated. I tend to feel like people need to opt-in to being discussed and I don’t ask a lot of my friends for such permission. So I tell them privately how much I appreciate them and I talk shit about the people who upset me in my blog because if you fuck with me… I don’t care that much about your privacy.

And many of the people I am trying to work through my feelings about… haven’t betrayed me. But they have hurt me. I need to figure out how I want to change myself because of those injuries: some small and some large.

Like: Dad hasn’t actually betrayed me. He has been a bit of a user and he’s kinda selfish… but that’s not a betrayal. I am trying to figure out how I can set my expectations of him as a friend so that I am not hurt by him being kind of selfish. When I meet his new girlfriends I always warn them that he is a truly wonderful person who will always take care of himself first. Many of those girlfriends have come back and thanked me years later because…. I was right. That isn’t the same thing as betrayal. I still spend time with him. I love him very much. I really enjoy his company and the time we spend together. But I need to not act like he is my father and I do not owe him what a father is owed.

Sometimes as I try to figure out how to correct my behavior I am rather melodramatic. It’s my fucking journal.

The thing is… the friends I had in the bay were mostly moving away or they lived far enough away that seeing them was literally hurting my body.

I can move somewhere that is more concentrated and build another community for myself. I am infinitely capable of doing so. I need to get through this shitty depression and find my verve again.

The older I get the more that I know these things cycle through. I won’t always feel how I have been feeling.

I feel that grieving my relationship with Sarah hard is appropriate and respectful given the length and intensity. I don’t wish her ill. I don’t want her to suffer. I just need to stop being in a relationship with her because I am codependent as fuck and I am damaging myself for her.

That’s not even her fault.

I am trying to get better at boundaries.

And part of that means trying to feel like this family is enough. If you think that is an approach you judge…

Why do you need to come to my journal and tell me that? Am I coming to your house and shoving my decisions in your face?

I am trying to figure out what my future is going to mean. Noah and I don’t have a lot of time to talk. I mean, we are together discussing minutiae all day long, but the heady conversations… occasionally we steal an hour or so from sleep but I feel so lonely a lot of the time. It’s hard to keep up appropriate boundaries with the kids when I don’t have adults to talk to.

And writing is so fraught. I am constantly worried that if I am honest about how I am feeling I am going to destroy what friendships I have left because my feelings are inappropriate. How dare I feel disappointed in people. How dare I get angry when people say things that hurt me. I should understand that they are trying and they are good people.

How dare I misunderstand or over react or not have the set of emotions they think I should have. I am such a bitch.

My reactions are based on my life experiences. How dare I not act like your life experiences are the Real True Appropriate life experiences.

And it doesn’t matter which “you” I’m talking about. It’s everyone.

I am just wrong. I shouldn’t have lived through the shit I lived through so that I can go on making other peoples lives difficult.

I am aware that most of the places I am going… the way I trauma bond will be a problem. Most cultures are private with their pain in a way that Californians… aren’t. I mean, even for a Californian I am extreme…. but I’m extreme not from another planet. I’m on the spectrum, just way out at the edge of the bell curve.

I am grieving so many people and events and situations. And there isn’t a way to have space for me to really feel all the full intensity of my feelings. I am in constant suppression mode. I am not allowed to have big feelings in front of my kids. But all I am is big feelings. So I feel like I am bad in just about every minute of every day.

How dare I react to my life experiences.

I feel so very sad.

Yes, I know that my problems are my fault. If only I had conformed more. If only I had been more like other people.

When would that have been possible? Where? How?

I’m in a pit. Anything vaguely positive I am spinning into justification for why I should die. What have I done in the past?

I tried to let the love of my friends carry me through. Holy shit is that the pit of despair at this point. I don’t feel loved. I feel judged. I feel found wanting. I feel deficient and pathetic and stupid and oh my poor children.

I don’t want to feel better about myself because some shitty person thinks I’m great. I want to be so fucking nasty and cutting about many of the people I have depended on for my self worth. I want to rake them over the coals and absolutely eviscerate them based on their flaws.

Only I don’t. That won’t make me feel better.

I want to feel like I have worth and value in the world. And I don’t. I mean, I’m a milk supplier. I am still mandatory childcare. Does that mean I am counting the days? 16 years, 10 months and 3 weeks till I am fully expendable?

It’s tied in with my mother and Brittney and my sister and Anna and Marcie and Sarah and Kira and Angela and Deborah. If it were grief about one person I could cope. It isn’t.

I think that part of what I liked about Malaysia was knowing no one. I didn’t have to feel disappointment when no one would keep their promises.

Because mostly… people don’t keep their promises. And I internalize that. I can still remember my step father picking me up and shaking me: “If you didn’t make it happen it was because you DIDN’T TRY HARD ENOUGH.”

If I can’t get someone to do something it is because I failed. Because I am bad. Because I didn’t work hard enough.

I can’t do enough work to be lovable. It is very hard to keep working as I incrementally give up on any chance of being loved.

I grow increasingly paranoid that my children will leave the day they turn 18. Why would they want to stay in a relationship with me? Only Noah does.

I want to mutilate my body so very much.

I miss pot.

I was looking at our passports last night, and the expiration dates, and what countries we are going into soon… oh. We need to have two passports renewed. ASAP. Or… Thailand and Taiwan will complain because they want your passport to be still valid for a long time after you enter, not a short time.

Ok, we will be in the Portland/southern Washington region longer than I hoped. More like two months. I think I am going to attempt to extend the AirBnB in Inverness and just extend that portion to meet up with when we have to get to Washington. That’s less moving for the kids. It’s only another couple of weeks. Noah will be going to Rotterdam and Brighton without us. I need to handle passports and we have a hard deadline of going to Bangkok the first week in September so… gotta get shit taken care of.

At least I can have pot.

I haven’t bought all the airline tickets and middle stops for Noah yet. But I have a line item to do list in our travel compilation doc. It’ll all get done over the next few days.

I think we stayed too long in Hawaii. Our local friends are getting flakey. “I will call you on Friday to tell you when I want to hang out” has turned into not hearing from her on Friday or Saturday and my kids are starting to twitch with anticipation. We leave in 14 days. The kids blew the first week. They got to see friends once the second week. Now we are entering the penultimate week and they have no plans made. I am doing my best to rest and not care. I need to not care what anyone else is doing.

I shared food with the homeless folk at the beach so they gave me a hit of pot. I was surprised I felt is since my tolerance is normally so high. My belly went, “Oh that. Yes please, more.” Alas, I am not going to ask them for tons.

Things are improving, but we still have stuff to work on. Because we are human.

But I am: not on the medication that many doctors think is the last resort for me to get my shit together, my sleep is interrupted constantly and I’ve been functioning on 4-5 hours of sleep for years. This mattress sucks and my back is starting to hurt. Babysitter’s mama has asked about taking my kids one at a time for a special outing. This sounds nice for them and like I won’t get any kind of fucking break because the two kids who are left will be like “Hey that kid is getting extra attention I WANT EXTRA ATTENTION TOO” and I am going to melt down. Taking one kid at a time does not give me a break, unfortunately.

I did some, but not all of my PT yesterday. I’m having so much trouble yelling at everyone to leave me alone long enough for me to do them. If I start and the demands start… I stop and just give up. I am so tired of trying to force enough space for me to get to have anything. I read books 1-2 pages at a time in between interruptions and it is so frustrating.

I simultaneously feel like I am losing my mind and like I am just becoming more and more numb. I am so weary. I am not exploding as much. Maybe they aren’t hitting my electrified boundaries in the same way? I’m still snippy and impatient. But I’m impatient because I have to ask them 6-10 times for things to get done.

I am so fucking tired and frustrated.

But I’m not yelling.

We don’t have a list of house chores the kids have to do before screen time. So that’s going poorly. I need to have a way to tie it to some kind of behavior and I haven’t figured that out yet. I am really annoyed I have been telling Shanna to take a shower for three days and she hasn’t done it because she keeps saying “After this game” on her fucking computer. She just got it back and she’s about to lose it again. Fuck your fucking games. They are not requirements for life. And you’ve been nasty to your brother since you got it back.

But when her brother watches screen, he spends EVERY OTHER MINUTE OF THE DAY pestering everyone to play with him. He thinks it is everyone in the houses’ job to entertain him and buddy I don’t think so.

When I am recuperating my body from taking you to the beach ALL DAY the day before it’s not fair for you to whine at me that I’m not playing enough. And the day before the beach I took you to the fucking mall to replace the things that you outgrew and you had a fun day and I spent all day handling heavy shit.

I am really tired of my children thinking I have an inhuman reserve of strength for being their pack mule.

I am sad that my back finally hurts. Time to look for a massage.

I was feeling a might bit cranky over the last few days because I realized… oh no. I have to take the kids shopping. Middle Child’s shoes were falling apart and Eldest Child’s shoes are now too small and both of them outgrew their underwear (MC desperately needs pants but we are about to move to colder climates and they don’t have appropriate pants here so we are waiting anyway) and they are both at tricky in between sizes where sometimes kids stuff and sometimes adult stuff fits better.

Ack!

So I spent a while searching on the internet, like a good modern person. Pearlridge Center (the largest mall in Hawaii) had the biggest selection of both kid and adult clothing and shoes. It was an hour and 45 minutes away on the bus. So that meant planning a full dang day around getting underwear and shoes.

We got to ride past an awful lot of Oahu though and that was neat. I feel increasing concern as I travel and I see the same US brands everywhere. I thought Kuala Lumpur would feel more foreign and it didn’t because of US brands. Hawaii holds on to its local character in a few ways (only Hawaiian banks!) but there is a lot of creep in stuff.

It was neat being in a place where buildings taller than two stories are very rare again. We have been going back and forth between MASSIVE cities and tiny little towns. I do feel more comfortable in smaller towns, even with the added travel time for getting around.

The bus does not allow any large items–I saw folks with suitcases get told no they can’t get on. This is slightly alarming because I need to do laundry soon at a laundromat. I may need to finally investigate something like Lyft.

Our first stop was Macy’s because that was the first entrance from the parking lot. The kids tried on a lot of shoes and none of them fit well and were comfortable. The sales folks were fairly aggressive about trying to find us something to work. I am pretty sure they get commissions, but the shoes were fucking expensive and very uncomfortable. That’s a bad combination.

Guess where we found shoes they liked and that felt good? Payless. And because Payless is apparently going out of business, we got both pairs for $39. Can’t beat that.

We looked in 6 stores for underwear. Only one place (The Children’s Place) had underwear that would work for MC and EC could only find appropriate black underwear at Victoria’s Secret. Eep. (She has multiple black skirts and only white underwear. This… doesn’t look that great. She glows through her skirts.)

The kids wanted US chains for lunch. Ugh. I had delicious Korean BBQ. They finished their lunches and ate part of mine. Everyone agreed my food tasted the best. Well… I tried to tell you in advance…. We were starting to get just a bit cranky when I declared the food break. Afterwards we all did quite well with our patience and behavior. (There was some melodrama in Macy’s as if these were the only shoes in existence and you had to pick which of these hurt least. Nooooo. I never said that. Erf.)

Probably the roughest part of the day was Her Sweetness refusing to take a nap. She got very cranky.

While we were there the kids got haircuts because they have both been complaining about their hair.

I found a neat purse, made by a local mother and daughter that is the best purse I have ever seen in years of searching for a bag I would like. I bought it. I won’t ever get the chance again and I have never in my life seen a bag and instantly coveted it and longed for it. That was nice.

I also bought my friend who lives here a Hawaiian dictionary because she keeps saying she doesn’t understand any of the local stuff. I don’t think that’s ok. So here, let me buy you learning materials. We expect people moving to the mainland have to learn English. You can learn the language for where you are standing too. It’s part of why I want to feel more confident in my Spanish. Why I tried picking up Malay words. Why I will try to learn words everywhere I go. Meet people where they are. If we fully move to another country I will expect myself to develop fluency in whatever language.

It’s respectful, yo.

I had a lovely chat on the bus home with a Filipino woman. (It was relevant, we were talking about Manila.) I have now had a full dozen Filipino ladies lecture me on how Manila is better than Kuala Lumpur and I find it delightful. I need to go. I am told Halloween is one of the best times of year to visit. Sounds great. We talked a lot about working with teenagers and helping them be their best selves. Another guy on the bus joined in our chat when we got to the teenager part because he had a lot of questions about helping his niece. Her answer: aloha (love). My answer: respect. Teenagers are doing the very best they can with the tools they have. Show them respect and they will bloom like a flower. He appreciated that. He grinned and said we were both basically saying the same thing.

We all want to be loved and respected.

I uhhh messed up getting off the bus. I got off three bus stops too early. Dangit. Oh well.

Her Sweetness is about to be shifted to Youngest Child. Picture my grumpy face. She has now picked up that “charming” habit of biting my toes if they are near the edge of the bed. Every child I have ever taken care of has done the same trick. It’s not weird. It’s not bad. But it fucking hurts and I’m back in that “Toddlers are Triggering” stage and oh fuck. You can’t retaliate. You can’t hurt them back. A mad face and refusing to pick them up for a few minutes is absolutely the limit that you can do with a one year old. That hurts them. So I spent a few minutes tenderly cradling my foot after each bite. SHE FUCKING BIT ME TWICE.

Then she bit her sister!

UGH!

Toddlers!

This is my not so thrilled face.

But, it’s a stage. She will move through it. I have confidence. Her sister and brother haven’t bitten my toes in years.

Ha.

I gotta say, Noah’s cooking here has been *great*. I like it when he has this set of restrictions and food choices. Two thumbs up.

I need to investigate a massage from one of the over a dozen Thai massage places today. I’m not in pain, but I’m not feeling great either. I’m getting very stiff and sore. Maybe if I treat this quick it won’t get to pain.

Bless you, Dr. Meng. You are incredible.

And breakfast is ready.

PS, we see rainbows almost every day. It’s really cool.

I was homeless and poor throughout my childhood. Foster parents, my mother, and schools all told me that if I didn’t act right CPS would be called. I was supposed to be pattern matching my behavior off of all of the untraumatized (also, neurotypical) people around me and if I failed I would be put in kid jail because I wasn’t fit for society. I cannot remember a time before that fear was deliberately implanted in my psyche.

When I was 3 my mom was working nights and she left my 16 year old sister in charge of me. My sister was as good at meeting her promises as Sarah so she left me home alone and went to a party with her friends. I was bored. I decided to go get some Barbie stickers from Safeway. I had three pennies. I thought I was rich. I walked to Safeway.

On the way someone who happened to work for CPS drove by and saw me. She picked me up and took me to the business office. I remember playing with the manual type writers and having a great time. They gave me cookies and juice.

When my mom picked me up she looked exhausted, but she tried to look happy. She laughed as she explained the “mix up”. “You know how hard it is to keep some kids contained!”

In the car she hit me over and over. She told me that those were the special kid-police. If I was ever bad again they would pick me up again and she wouldn’t be allowed to get me because I would be in kid-jail forever. She said no one likes bad kids and I will be punished for years by them. She listed all the bad things that would happen to me in kid jail and she was very clear that I would deserve all of it. She practically frothed at the mouth as she told me how embarrassed she was to have such a stupid, bad kid.

For the next 13 years any time I would say or do anything she didn’t like she would tell me that CPS was going to come and get me if I disobeyed her. “If you are too much for me to handle you are going to kid-jail. Keep back talking, Kristine.” In between slapping me across the face.

Then I grew up. I watched other families go through nightmare situations with CPS and I saw people go through months or years of painful separation. In all of the cases I knew… I was totally aware that what was happening to me was worse than what was happening in the families I knew who were separated. None of those kids were raped by their dads how I was. My mom barely fed me and those kids got meals on the regular. Those kids lived with parents who weren’t perfect… mostly they pissed off a neighbor and then their lives got really hard.

My family was monstrous. And no one cared.

Then I started ODing because I needed the fuck out. So I got put in a lock down psych ward where people strapped me to tables and injected me with drugs (that gave me negative side effects!) because I was so bad. Then I was put in a group home where I was never allowed to be in a bathroom without a staff member staring at me to prevent me from harming myself. I wasn’t allowed to go to school because I couldn’t be trusted. My mom was right. When I was going in and out of consciousness in the hospital my mom leaned in and whispered, “I tried to warn you this would happen if you were bad. You shouldn’t have been so bad.”

Then I became a teacher and mandated reporter. I tried to change my view of CPS. I called a few times on kids were clearly being abused and I prayed the system would be more gentle with them than me.

CPS didn’t do anything to help any of the students that were coming to me with huge bruises. Nothing.

CPS didn’t do anything to help when I called because my sister was handing out illegal drugs and alcohol to a bunch of middle and high school students. My sister lied and laughed it off as a family squabble with no grain of truth. They believed her because my family is mostly made up of excellent liars.

Then I became a parent and started hanging out on parenting forums. Holy shit the stories I have read. Oh. My. God.

Then my kids did something I truly wish they hadn’t done. It came out of fucking no where. They have not seen such behavior EVER in their lives. They have never been exposed to the idea of that being acceptable I HAVE STOOD THERE AND MADE FUCKING SURE THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN INFLUENCED BY ADULTS WHO SAY SUCH BEHAVIOR IS ACCEPTABLE. But kids do shit. They have since the dawn of time. I put my kids in therapy. ALL the therapy. They each had individual counselors and we worked with a family therapist for quite a while. *I* called CPS and said “A thing happened and I don’t know what to do.”

That phone call was the best CPS contact of my whole life. The lady told me that since I was a concerned parent she was turning the recorder off. She did NOT want to know my name. She said I deserve complete privacy for this call and no one will ever be able to track me. She listened to what happened. She asked me what I was doing about it. She told me that they offer people access to resources I already have in my house: my library sounds better than hers. She told me that I was a good mother because I had already responded with such enthusiasm to them needing outside help and there was nothing more she could suggest. She told me she was sorry I had 100% normal kids who had to try something because it’s hard. I am so grateful for that woman.

Then, after we had been in therapy as a family someone fucking called CPS on me. They had no details. They just believed there had been hand wavey some kind of sexual abuse.

Someone fucking turned me into CPS with absolutely no idea of what had happened. It wasn’t a report from the therapists WHO COULD HAVE GIVEN EVERY FACT AND EVENT IN EXCRUCIATING DETAIL.

So yeah. I know that people can call CPS on me.

CPS cleared us. Clearly we (the parents) hadn’t done anything wrong and kids make mistakes sometimes and we were working as hard as we could on helping them learn how to do better. There literally isn’t more we can do. We are doing absolutely the limit of what parents can do to try and help their kids learn how to do better.

I asked a bunch of teachers for advice on how to help my kids focus. Kneeling on rice was tossed out there as something to try.

But hey someone could call CPS on me. Like I had no idea that was a possibility no matter what I do or don’t do.

My stomach hurts. Getting to rewrite this stuff to try and explain why I am upset so that maybe people won’t be angry with me forever for not taking their off hand comment as neutral…

That hurts too.

How dare I have had my life experiences. How dare I get upset when things that have been used as a torment since I was 3 years old are casually mentioned as punishment again.

Other people don’t see it that way. Clearly, I should just get over it.

CPS has been the boogeyman for me since I was a little kid. My mom constantly told me that if I didn’t act right CPS would take me away for being bad. I never internalized that CPS would protect me or that CPS existed for my benefit. CPS was the authority that would ensure I was never allowed to have a family again.

Then I had kids.

If you read parenting forums (which I do, because I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing and feedback and learning what other people consider “normal” is very useful) CPS is DEFINITELY the boogeyman. If you don’t do well enough, your children will be stolen. If you do the wrong thing you will lose your kids and the nightmare of getting them back…. oh god.

I have known a bunch of people who had their kids taken by CPS. I grew up poor. That shit isn’t that rare. Some of them deserved it. Not all of them. The most abusive people…. never seem to fall into CPS’s net. They get ignored and glossed over.

CPS following up with our family when they did over the incident we had a few years ago… that was simultaneously FUCKING TERRIFYING and relieving. Because someone fucking turned us in. That means people are reporting me behind my back. (Relieving because the CPS investigator commented that I did not do anything wrong and kids make mistakes and we were trying as hard as possible to do the right thing.)

So when you say “someone will call CPS” that’s not hand wavey possible warning. That’s something that has literally already happened to us.

I don’t have to do anything wrong for people to call CPS on us. That already fucking happened. I did nothing wrong.

If you don’t understand why “people will call CPS on you” might sound threatening…. well ok. But in my brain telling me that my mistakes are things that will get me turned in feels existentially threatening. Is it also a possible reality? Of course. People might turn me in for everything and nothing. I don’t have to do anything wrong for CPS to be called.

That makes it really hard for me to evaluate how to alter my behavior to be correct. Because I’m not trying to do the right thing because it is the thing that solves our problems I am trying to avoid being punished.

Maybe instead of finding the right thing to do I will just stop admitting in writing how I fuck up. Oh that’ll help everyone.

Thank you so much my dear friend. You know who you are.

Yesterday a friend who was homeschooled and who went on to work in K-8 education… who is also autistic and understands some of how my brain works… gave me a bunch of book recommendations and blog suggestions to help me reorient how I am looking at education. That’s a bunch of highly actionable work for me.

I have often cited the statistic that in the average elementary classroom there is approximately 45 minutes of real learning per school day… then I proceeded to flip out about my kids doing less than two hours because… because perspective is hard. Because I get lost in soup in my brain. Because I feel like if I don’t I will fail them. Because I fail to have the friendships I want and I fail to find the support I need so I need to work them harder so they are prepared to have a future by themselves with no one to help them.

Because I am exhausted and I am not making good choices. Because the way I am melting down is not surprising or unusual in context. Because if they wanted to transfer into school tomorrow and it wasn’t easy for them to be A/B students I would feel like a failure.

So much ego. So much bullshit.

It isn’t that I fail at all friendships. That’s not it at all. I really wanted enmeshed-pseudo-family friendships. But only reallllllllly unhealthy people are interested in that at all. And when you try and enmesh with reallllllllly unhealthy people there are fireworks.

He suggested that Step Zero of working towards Big Goals should be spending a while researching whether that goal is even worth attaining (what does that job actually entail) and research for the kids into what other people have done to reach the goal. Long before I start holding them to a path because holy shit they are little kids and they really don’t get it.

This is so much more effective than “Stop doing that or people will call CPS on you.”

Do you know how fucking angry it makes me that people threaten me with the authorities left and right and I was left in my psycho family to be raped and beaten for decades? Rage. Blind fucking rage. I must be perfect or I deserve to lose everything but I don’t deserve protection myself because I am not worthy. That dynamic does not help me be kinder and more gentle with my kids.

My mistakes are too big to be forgiven. No matter what those mistakes are. Because I am a piece of shit who shouldn’t be here anyway.

That doesn’t help me act better. It makes it harder to ever do better and it makes me feel more frantic and sick in my belly all of the time.

It’s not that I want people blowing sunshine up my skirt and telling me I’m perfect. I’m not. But threats are threatening, not educational.

I don’t know about you but I operate less well when I feel threatened than when I feel safe and supported.

I haven’t felt very supported in a while. I had to flip out extra bad to figure out how to go find different people to talk to because the people I have been leaning on the most in the past few years either… treated me like shit or they just don’t have relevant information to share. It’s not that they are bad, but this isn’t their area of expertise.

I have always had long stretches of time where I put my head down and I just barrel through. I just have to pray I set my course correctly when I got started. I am not sure doing the charter school was actually the right decision when I was pregnant. It started us on a whole downhill sprint towards standards I don’t even believe in.

I feel ashamed of that. But the terror of CPS taking my children away for neglect, or because I am doing too little educating, or because I am educating them wrong, or because I am too harsh one day…

That’s fucking real. That’s held over my head in big ways, even by people who profess to care about me.

I feel like at some point in my brain it became less about “What is best for my kids” and instead became “What do I have to do to avoid being punished” and that does not provoke healthy behavior from anyone.

My fucking ES (Educational Specialist–basically the teacher who coordinates stuff for the charter school) telling me constantly that this MASSIVE stack of work was mandatory fucked me up. When we got to the end of the school year and she said, “Wow you are the only family I work with who actually did any of this….” that fucked me up.

I have a hard time with black and white thinking. I struggle to perceive gray areas and the middle path.

Let me tell you, when I’m convinced I’m bad and I can’t do anything right… I make that true over and over and over.

And then I feel like I am bad because the people who were effectively threatening me were doing it because they mean well and how dare I not respond to that as if it were the same thing as positive feedback. That’s a poisonous dynamic. I turn around and do the same bullshit to my kids and… negative feedback and threats don’t work very well.

fuck.

It’s kinda like how dare I get upset about Sarah promising real support with the kids and then never showing up.

If I get angry about how people talk to me or treat me that is a defect in my character. I should just be grateful they acknowledge me at all.

That does not give me the energy to do better.

One of the things about tracking my body obsessively…. I was looking at my Fitbit data last night. I get 4-5 hours of sleep in broken chunks most nights. I can count how many times I’ve gotten 8 hours of sleep (not consecutively…. hahahahaha) in the past 6 months on my fingers. I don’t have more data than that because I switched watch types and the old one was too bulky to wear to sleep in because it KEPT ME AWAKE. But let me tell you, the first six months of a baby and pregnancy…. not much sleep.

Why don’t I have more to give.

I track when I get my PT exercises done so that I can talk to my medical providers about my issues. I miss them more than I don’t because if I spend hours freaking out about stupid academics…. I don’t get to PT. Because I’m sitting very still trying not to be a bitch and that takes all the energy I have left.

Why don’t I have more to give.

I can look back over my calendar and track literally every phone call I’ve had with friends over the past few years or when I see people in person. Due to planning around fucking Sarah most months I spent less than 12 hours having conversations with friends that are not done through my fucked up hands on the internet. It’s part of why M & B coming for visits was so fucking euphoric for me. I got to try to relax into someone being around and try to get over the awkward as fuck hurdle. My social skills atrophy. (I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the internet conversations. I would break completely without them. But it’s different.)

Why don’t I have more to give.

I can track on Mint all the money I spent trying to get help with my kids. All the money spent to services trying to locate help. It’s harder to exactly quantify how many hours I spent writing and responding to ads only to get… nothing. My time off is almost entirely for medical care so I don’t collapse under the weight of working *literally* 19 hours every day/7 days a week.

Why don’t I have more to give.

Working that much is my fault. I get it. I chose to have another baby and the first year is a nightmare. I knew that. I chose to do a whole bunch of big projects (have older children, travel, sell our house) while having an infant.

I chose to sell our house to get away from the bay because it was killing me.

Do you know that when almost anyone says they will write to my kids or talk to my kids or spend time with my kids I now place that person in the category of “Fucking Liar” in my head? Because I have so much hostility and anger and rage about this topic. I can count the people who can say “I will talk to the kids” and I actually believe them on one hand.

Why don’t I have more to give.

A lot of my energy over the past few years was spent on looking for connection and it failed. It failed and failed and failed and failed.

Geeeeeeeez, why don’t I try harder to be niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.

I wasted my nice on believing that you would do what you say. You don’t. So here I am.

Fucking Sarah.

“When you get angry at me because of my behavior you are acting just like my mother and that’s why I don’t come around. You have Borderline Personality Disorder.” A bunch of people who are actually fucking qualified to judge that have said definitely not. I am not borderline. But they think you sure sound like a bitch and they understand why I’m mad, so ok.

I am angry with myself for trusting you. I am angry with myself for believing that anyone would want to keep such promises to me. I am angry with myself for not cutting you out of my life 15 red flags ago. I am angry with myself that I wasted a week of vacation time on you treating me like shit again. I am angry that I may never go back to Disneyland because it feels like fucking poison on my tongue.

Disneyland is about my mom and Sarah. Pretty much the two women I have loved the most and they both treat me like shit.

Why don’t I have more to give.

Noah is an amazing partner. He tries hard to give as much as he can. But he’s one person and I’m a black hole. That’s not fair. Not to him and not to me because one person will never be able to fill my bucket. My kids take from me. They don’t give much and that’s appropriate for now. Some day them taking and giving nothing back is going to be a real issue. That day is dawning over the horizon but it is not here yet. It’s still years away but I can start to see that it is coming, just barely for my oldest child. And she will never be able to be my adult friend the way that people outside the family can be. It will just be less of a one way street all the time. It’ll be like here where they set up three lanes of traffic going in the primary direction of traffic with one lane coming back the other way. They reverse this mid-day. Unless I get old enough for her to be my care taker (which I kind of doubt given my body) I don’t think it’ll ever switch to being three lanes back to me.

I am supposed to give my children all the love and support I never got as a child. Stuff I never even witnessed up close happening to other people. But I’m supposed to know how to do it because I’ve read some books.

Why don’t I have more to give.

I am doing my best. The fact that I’ve come as far as I have means that people basically expect me to be a non-traumatized person now. I’m supposed to have gotten over it. But I am having to teach myself a lot of interpersonal shit without help. Yeah I’ve paid for a lot of therapy. I’ve gotten pretty much what I am going to get from that setting. I can write scripts with the best of them.

The actual pressure of having to give like this day after day after day after day after day after day…. therapy doesn’t really prepare you for that. Therapy is an hour a week. How can you learn how to regulate this much intensity in an hour a week? I can’t. If anyone has fucking tried I have fucking tried and you can’t say I haven’t.

Why don’t I have more to give.

I give everything I have to give. But my bucket was filled with poison a long time ago. I’ve tried adding healthy shit since then, but when I get down to the bottom…

Sometimes all I have left in the bucket is the poison. And I should not be giving anymore. That is so very complicated.

The kids are almost to the end of a couple of their workbooks. When we leave Hawaii, they will each have math and one workbook left. For the love of cheesetoast, can we please get the fucking math done some year? (This is because I culled their workload before we left Fremont.)

We’ve spent the last few days talking about negative attention and positive attention and how I really want to be giving them positive attention but they are wearing me out and I don’t have any left because I am spending 3 or 4 x’s as much time on academics as we should be spending and I am wrung out by the end. I feel as bad about what is happening as they do. But, yesterday they got it done and they got to go with a friend. They even made enough extra progress that today is pretty certain too. The three people we know in Hawaii would be happy to see them daily until we leave. We allllllllllllllll need this support. Please, do your work so we can all have this. It’s not much work. It’s not too advanced. It’s not too hard. You just have to… do it.

There are good reasons I don’t have more to give. But that doesn’t stop me from giving all day every day. Even though I’m exhausted. Even though I’m tapped out. Even though my bucket was filled with poison and lies.

Is what I give always perfect or ideal? No. But I give my best every day. I have variation. Like a human being.

And yes, people do expect that I will always be good or they have the right to criticize and demand more. Even though they are not helping. Only hurting.

Yesterday when I checked in with the kids about kneeling on rice they were positive and said that they thought it was effective and they wanted to continue. When I checked in with them this morning… they had a different opinion. And Dana is saying I am basically spanking them.

Fuck me.

It’s awesome how easy it is to tell me I am wrong and what I am doing is bad but there aren’t concrete positive solutions suggested.

And this is why I spend so much time feeling like I should just kill myself because I will never be able to do anything right. Because this doesn’t just work this way with school shit. This feels like all of my fucking life since I was a little fucking kid. Just do it right, Krissy. Why are you so stupid and you keep doing it wrong?

No one wants to help. No one wants to tell me what to do. They just want to tell me I am wrong.

I didn’t pick this curriculum for the kids, they picked it for themselves. We discussed what goals they wanted to reach, we talked about what that path would look like and then they picked the books they wanted to do to reach it.

But they are kids. And they picked incredibly lofty goals that not many people actually end up wanting to reach. Thus I get to be the fucking bully all day trying to force them to do shit they don’t actually care about.

I mean, it’s not true that no one wants to tell me what to do. I get completely opposing advice: “Stop schooling them at all! Let them play all day or you are a monster who is crushing their spirit!” (CPS defines that as abuse.) “Put them in school!” (I have received medical advice that it would be detrimental to my daughter’s mental health. My son would probably do better except for that whole trans thing where schools tend to beat on trans kids and many of them end up suicidal and he has a strong family history of suicide so that’s a serious worry for us.)

Great.

So the end result is: “Why don’t you sit next to them 24 hours a day gently and kindly guiding them through every single detail of everything so they never have to have an uncomfortable feeling or struggle.”

Ok. But I am disabled and my body is going to fail if I do that. Great. That will serve everyone well.

I have to stop screaming. To me, that is the most important goal right now. I am hurting them and myself and I don’t want to be this person.

Moving isn’t what caused this. It has been happening since last August, before we decided to move.

I am having ongoing conversations with multiple teachers (they have specialties ranging from preschool to college), I’m talking to a horse trainer. I’m trying to listen to the guidance we got from their therapists.

And no matter what I try I am still wrong and bad.

You had no interest in helping when that was something you could have done. You just want to tell me I am wrong.

Ok.

You told me you would reach out and be a source of support. But that turned out to not be convenient for you.

Ok.

Yeah. That’s life.

Yes, I want people to help me with course corrections. I do. But that isn’t what is happening. If you have nothing to offer beyond criticism, that’s not the same thing as helping me. If you tell me that you will interact with my children to be helpful and then you never bother…

I am so fucking angry.

I feel like part of the reason I am leaving is because I want to stop feeling angry at my friends. It isn’t their fault that I wanted them to be more like family and that isn’t what they want or need. It makes sense that they already have families and they are not auditioning new crazy members.

I think it’s going to be really interesting to find out what it feels like to only deal with my family for a long time. I won’t be able to look to my friends.

I think that is how I have killed my ability to stay here. I needed my friends to be family and they aren’t up for that and I can’t cope with the reality. Will I do the same thing in a different place? I don’t think so. I won’t establish myself in communities there in the same way.

If I try hard to be reasonable with myself, I know that I would be welcome in a lot of different communities. If I showed up week after week, they would be happy to put me to work. I wouldn’t be expunged. I have not been driven out.

But it’s more complicated than that. An awful lot of the communities I left I did so because of health problems or trauma reasons and I can’t really figure out how to not be bitter about no one noticing or caring.

I have a fair number of friends who are more disabled than me. I make sure I do the work to carry the friendship because that’s fair. But fucking everyone thinks of me as more able bodied and resourced than them. I’m not.

Fully able bodied people expect me to drive 40 minutes to visit them in their completely child-unfriendly houses.

I am really struggling with my feelings around this. Because I don’t get to act entitled to people’s time or attention. They don’t want a child friendly house. But they want me to come visit and somehow keep my children from touching anything?

Seriously, if you ask me over and over how to make your house a better place for my kids and you never take a single suggestion and you berate my children for touching your stuff? Uhhh I need to stop coming over.

THEN PEOPLE GET MAD AT ME. THEY SAY I AM BEING MEAN AND SELFISH BECAUSE I DO NOT WANT DRIVE 40 MINUTES FOR MY CHILD TO STAND STILL IN A ROOM AND NOT TOUCH ANYTHING.

Get the fuck out of here. My kids are far more important to me than you are.

My kids are there. You are not. You expect me to give to you endlessly as you bitch about how I didn’t give you more.

My fucking children are more grateful than you bastards.

My children understand that the time and energy I spend on them has a cost and I have to pay it. My friends seem to think that I am a bottomless well of attention and energy for them. It’s really kind of odd.

It’s kind of funny how much people let me know that I exhaust them by driving really far to see them and showing up to do work in their house. Ok fine. I can stop. I won’t exhaust you anymore.

A buddy today told me I should change so I can have more friends.

No. No. No. NO. NOOOOOOO

If I made my personality less abrasive I wouldn’t have more good friends I’d have more people happy to use me.

If you knew I was cracking under too much stress and you made promises to be there for my kids… how dare you cancel every visit then tell me you think I’m doing a bad job. You made sure my calendar was limited to you. That was all the spoons and time I had for planning. Then you rarely showed up. So mostly I just stayed home and cried.

And I couldn’t talk about the year of this shittiness while it was happening OR I WOULD BE FUCKING DISLOYAL.

I feel like everything is all my fault. How dare I get so angry. How dare I act so frustrated. How dare I run out of the ability to take care of every one every minute of the day while getting nothing back…

You try taking care of people 24/7 for ten years and see if you can manage to never get frustrated.

I am glad that for most of the next 9 months I won’t feel like I need to reach out to people to help. Jenny’s life is well in hand. She doesn’t need me and she has very little free time. We have been talking about how busy she is in advance of me coming. This is wise. That way if I see her for 2 hours in a week a handful of times I won’t feel rejected. I know that is squeezing me in.

I struggle with the fact that other than these four people, no one’s life really has a Krissy shaped hole. It doesn’t matter when I am gone. I am not integral.

That makes me wish I were dead.

That makes me feel like a complete fucking failure at life. I truly wish I didn’t hold these relationships as the deciding factor in whether I have failed at life.

Look around, bitch, you’ve done other cool shit.

But it never feels like enough. I love you so much. But love is not enough. Fuck you John Lennon.

All the feelings. I am having all the feelings. I don’t remember if I logged here that the rheumatologist says I definitely have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (after years of doctors telling me that there is no point in screening me) and I have arthritis. Osteoarthritis, not rheumatoid arthritis. Not that I’m super hip to the difference.

The house is so empty. The kitchen is empty. This is nothing like going on a trip. Our cupboards aren’t bereft of food… they are empty. The plates are gone. The cooking items are gone. Today we will do another thrift run on our way to drop off a car with a friend.

One of our cars goes away forever, today. The other one will technically remain in our possession for 15 more days because we need it between now and then but we are filling out paperwork today. We are just borrowing it for the next 15 days.

Tired. Can’t sleep. So many feelings. So overwhelmed. It is feeling terrifyingly real. We are going any minute here. I’m glad the kids can sleep. We are all anxious.

Holy tomato sauce on cheese toast… my kids are caught up on academics. I was starting to feel like that was an impossibility. But Eldest Child did a heroic push and she’s caught up. Now I need to catch up on grading. No problem.

Oh, we need to take the car seat out of the Prius and put it in storage. Eeeeeeep. Today is the day. We maybe should have/could have done that yesterday. I didn’t think of it. Oh well. I’m sure we would have wanted another run to storage today anyway so I can put paperwork in there for the house. We aren’t going to drag stuff pillar and post.

I’m going to do my best to have a media blackout for a while. I need to get off the internet. The internet hurts my mental health so much. It is hard to see a point in getting up in the morning and trying at life while reading the internet. Everything feels so hopeless. So I’m going to go talk to real people instead.

I wonder if Her Sweetness will use this car seat again while she is rear facing. I don’t think we would bother to come get it for August. We will try to borrow one for a month. It would be cheaper to buy a new one than to come get it. So we definitely won’t see this car seat again before she is about to turn 2 unless it takes a fair bit longer than that. We’ll see.

Where are we going to land? I don’t know. It is haunting me. Where can we be happy? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But it isn’t here. It’s not just me who is struggling here.

Let’s go see what’s out there. Oh goodness.

My left shift key is broke. Sometimes some letter keys are sticking. I can’t download Firefox, Hangouts, Skype…. all of this is broken since Apple “fixed” my screen. Sigh. I didn’t want to pay $1300 for a new computer right now. It’s not convenient.

Oh my cheese on toast.

$1,000 expenses are convenient or inconvenient not possible or impossible. How in the fuck is this my life?

We are so ready to go. I know I am going back and forth listing things here and on Twitter. I’m trying to not let details slip through the cracks so I’m repeating stuff a lot.

Today we take care of switching our addresses with banks. We bank in three places right now. We have one account attached to the safe deposit box and that will have to stay active or we lose the right to the box. But they are a shitty bank to use for anything overseas so we will probably have all of our US auto payment stuff go through that bank and we will just send a set amount there every month.

The credit union where our five main accounts are we will be keeping the kid saving accounts there and moving everything on to banks we can use overseas more easily. But the kid savings might as well stay there for now. So we will only have two bank accounts with them after today, I think.

And then there is the fancy international bank account. I have mixed feelings about this one. I am not a fancy international person. I’m a slobby international person.

Taxes are coming along. I think I gave Noah the last of stuff from my share of record keeping. I hope. He is so nice to handle taxes. They make my stomach hurt.

That list of address changes I needed to do? Last three places bam bam bam today.

I think we’ve notified utilities. We have to tell garbage on our last day in the house, but whatever.

Kid classes have ended.

Noah has one more Japanese lesson.

We have one more dinner with a friend scheduled.

We are going to a party on Saturday! A neighbor is going to babysit the kids so that Noah can hit me before we give away our hitting toys at the party.

I have 6 more medical appointments. Noah has 2 massages scheduled before we go and leave our favorite people. We are both lucky.

Our wonderful M and B will be staying with us for two days next week so we can have a slow paced visit before we go. I’m looking forward to that. I don’t get to see them enough.

12 days. Plugging right along.

I am not sure we will be able to eat all of the food we have in the house in 12 days. Ha. We really love grocery shopping. It’s a hobby.

That is 36 meals for 5 people and 7 or 8 meals for an extra body…. maybe we’ll get through it all. *cross fingers*

Today I will put a bunch of stuff on the driveway because the rain is over.

We have flights booked to Japan. I was anxious about that step. Now we have planes to Hawaii and Japan booked and lodging in both Hawaii and Japan booked. I don’t have ground transportation yet, but that’s feeling so much less scary. Worst case scenario in Hawaii is we take the city bus that will take 1.5 hours to get to where we are staying. In Japan I am almost certain looking for public transit anyway and I have four weeks of sitting in Hawaii to figure it out.

This is just not much stress at this point. I will get it all done with time to spare. I am relaxing a little more. I’m nervous, but it’s not at a fever pitch.

I wish I was spending less time ranting in my head about what a horrible person I am for expressing my anger and disappointment that people didn’t give me what I wanted from them. I didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t entitled to it. I’m just a selfish asshole who will throw tantrums when I’m not given things I don’t deserve. Fuck me.

I tried not to throw a tantrum. I tried to walk away. But that parting fuck you over my shoulder was uncalled for.

Why do I hate myself for expressions of anger? I’m setting these boundaries because without setting them in this way I walk into you hurting me over and over and over again because I want you so much more than you want me.

I want you and I love you and I spent years pouring energy into you. I walk away with an empty bucket and a lot of pain. But I really don’t think I deserve to be angry about that. It’s just life. Shut up, buttercup. You didn’t do anything bad to me. You didn’t do anything wrong by not wanting the relationship I wanted.

I think that is a lot of what hurts so much. I’m the only one doing anything wrong. I want things I shouldn’t want and then I hurt myself in the process and I take it out on you.

I am such a shitty person. I’m going to go cry now.

We leave this house in 14 days. That’s feeling… whoa. I have nothing scheduled for the next 5 days. I am trying to ramp down. Then next week is somewhat busy then we go.

Bye.

I don’t say fuck you because I hate you. Or because you are a terrible person. I say it because I am trying to cut this cord in myself. I want you so fucking bad and I can’t have you. Not how I want you. I tried for years. I can’t make it work.

This goes back to when my step father used to yell at me that if I couldn’t get someone to do something I just hadn’t tried hard enough.

I am trying to not see this as just a failure on my part. To some extent this is about you too, so fuck you. But not really. Oh god. I hate that I feel bad about hurting your feelings after mine have been hurting so much for so many years.

This week I am going to read. I am going to read all of the books that are sitting here in the “I should read this once then pass it on” pile.

Yes Pam, several are about Ida B. Wells.

I need to stop wanting y’all so damn much. Just move on.

14 days.

Oh golly gee wiz. We don’t have a lot left in our house. We moved back into the kitchen because the staging is over. It’s weird seeing the cupboards. We have more food than we will be able to eat in 19 days because it’s a slightly weird hodge podge.

Corn chips, rice, oatmeal, flour, nuts, and condiments. We have too much. But the kids and I want to go to the park for a picnic today (weather permitting) and that will be a good opportunity to eat a bunch of the random stuff. I have these lime and sea salt pistachios that are outrageously good. I will cheerfully burn holes in my gums eating these because they are so tart.

I should make scones today. We have three more mixes.

Whatever. Time to go hang out with kids.

It’s really weird how much stuff is breaking. My laptop is being repaired right now. A replacement watch is on the way, because my Christmas present already broke. Most of my socks are wearing out. They aren’t getting one hole, they are getting 4-8 holes all of a sudden. There has been a little bit of anxiety around Eldest Child going to see grandpa. As of this moment she is going. We leave for the airport in 12 hours. No pressure.

She has a prepaid gift card and $260 in cash. I hope that is enough money to buy her food in the airports and groceries and the admission she will need to pay for when she does stuff with grandpa. He does not intend to pay for anything. He can’t right now. His girlfriend just got laid off. He would like to borrow $25,000 from me. I’m having really big feelings about that right now. I’m pretty sure I need to say no just because I am not feeling stable in friendships right now and I feel used. This is a really bad time for me to do a loan like that. This break up is hurting.

I have done my PT exercises at least three days in a row. Some of them are getting easier. I can do a wall sit for a full minute. I am struggling with that mindset problem where I want to get ahead. I want to give myself some kind of slack. So I want to do tomorrow’s homework today. But doing two rounds of PT exercises in one day does not actually work like that. I’m feeling deep frustration.

I’m having a lot of trouble sleeping. I’m so anxious. My thumbs hurt. I’m tired of feeling sad.

I want my computer back. My phone is not really an acceptable substitute. Although I will say that the talk to text function of the phone is way better than I ever gave it credit for. It’s better than dragon on every level.

I’m staring at this new layer of growth in my hair. I have these curls going straight up around my face. They look really funny. It’s almost like I had to Santa Cruz wave logo coming out around my face.

I am thinking about my body in ways that I have mixed feelings about. I have been binging on sugar for the last few months to deal with my feelings. I don’t have a lot of vices left; the sugar is awesome.But I’ve gained a couple of pounds. We have also not been walking as much as we really should be. We are working too much. As a result I’m getting softer and thicker around the middle. I am feeling very unhappy with myself for noticing. I don’t want to care about gaining weight. I want that to be OK. But my clothes are starting to not fit and I’m not really at a good place to go replace my wardrobe. I feel positively allergic to the idea of going on a diet. I don’t wanna ever diet again in my life and I feel angry at myself for thinking about losing weight. I don’t really want to lose weight. Maybe three or 4 pounds? I want my clothes to fit. I don’t really want to be smaller.

I saw my massage therapist today. Actually, I’ve seen her three times in the last four days. My body feels better than it has in months. My jaw feels so much better, even though it is swollen from all of the digging. My massage therapist has come along way. When I started seeing her the level of bigotry that she would casually display while talking was really hard for me. I have spent a lot of hours arguing with her. Today it was kind of funny listening to her talk about how most terrorists in this country are American citizens and they’re white men. Most of them are even Christian! That was a huge jump for her. When we first started working together she believed that most terrorists were Islamic and I’ve spent years bringing in statistics to argue with her. It was really wonderful seeing evidence that she has actually listened and take in the information in and she is spontaneously volunteering the information when it is relevant in other settings. That’s good. I feel like I did something with my time. I’m going to take her out to lunch soon because it is coming up on the anniversary of her mother’s death and she’s not coping all that well. She’s not allowing herself to reach out for connection in anyway and I’m worried about her. I will be kind of bummed when I lose out on that relationship. I have been very lucky in my medical providers over the last few years. There’s gonna be a lot that will be hard when I’m gone.

I’m thinking about my friends all day every day. I feel like I’m flipping through a Rolodex in my head of people. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I don’t have the ability to reach out to you right now. I’m really glad you’re in the world though. I really hope that things will work out such that we will be able to hang out again. I hope I will get my poop in a group and I won’t be annoying on the visit. I’m trying to get better about only visiting people for really short periods of time so that I don’t bother people. I don’t know how to change this absolute paranoia in my chest that if I overstayed my welcome I’m going to be finished permanently. I wish I felt more secure in my relationships. I don’t.

I am trudging through all of my adulting tasks.And both feel overwhelmed and like things are getting better. The end is in sight. We really are to the point where we are almost down to the possessions that fit in suitcases. I think we will bring four or five boxes to storage? Maybe? It depends on how much space the blanket fills up. We only want to keep a couple of blankets but they are bulky.

I feel like I am a different person than I used to be. I feel quieter. I know that part of it is how tired I am, but it’s bigger than that too. I feel like I am a growing mix of confidence and insecurity that’s really hard to pin down. Like, the fact that I’m taking off on this trip at all it’s kind of amazing. But I don’t feel worthy of love or relationship still. Even though on many stages of this journey we’re going to be seeing friends who really want to see us I still feel insecure. I still feel like people don’t actually like me. I really thought that by this point in my life I would feel more secure in myself but I don’t. I think that the fact that I am always working on things that I need to change contributes to why I always feel like I’m bad. There’s always stuff that feels not good enough. Like working with the vaginal dilators. I’m clearly doing stuff. This is necessary and important work that might improve my relationship with my pussy. But it’s hard. It feels overwhelming and scary. It’s weird hitting a tiny little bump inside my vagina and all of a sudden I have triggered feelings of existential terror. Then I have to calm down and try to make it boring so that the muscles relax so that I stop tearing and ripping and bleeding.

I am feeling really crowded inside of my head. I feel like I don’t have very much opportunity to talk. I am engaging in the least therapy of my life. This is the longest stretch of not consistently seeing somebody. I’m coming up on years of not having really consistent therapy at this point. I have somebody I see occasionally but they are not really a talk therapist. They work more on somatic stuff. So I haven’t had a talk therapist since I fired the lady who lives in Oakland. And that was three years ago? I don’t remember. I feel like it would be good for me to be processing with someone but I’m not at a good place for finding a therapist and I’m not feeling very confident about reaching out to my friends. What I want is so specific and structured and hard but it’s not fair to ask of anyone. And that hurts. Because I just can’t ask anybody for help right now because I am too hard.

I feel like we are coming out of the disequilibrium period with the kids. The last few days have gone better than things have gone in a long time. It helps that the kids are more or less caught up with school. It helps that I have less work on my plate so I am less overwhelmed and irritable. It helps that we’ve had some intense non-yelling conversations with Middle Child lately about what kind of relationships he wants to have with people and what kind of person he wants to manifest in the world. He’s doing a lot of really interesting work on himself. Like, he’s really interested in being a person that he wants to be friends with. That’s kind of fascinating for me to watch because I have never liked myself very much. I have never believed that I would want to be friends with me. If I could get away from me and never talk to me again that would probably be my first choice. But he really likes him self and that’s so neat to watch. He worries a lot, he is my son. He’s really cool. And my big girl is making me really happy lately. It’s weird feeling happy about my children. I feel bad about it like I am doing something I shouldn’t do. But they are so much of my life and my time. It’s hard feeling like I am being bad just by enjoying them as much as I do. It is hard feeling like my feelings about them are just about me and just about them and are not about all of these other people and situations in the world. It’s hard feeling centered in my own narrative.

I am struggling with the great influx of overt racism around the globe. I feel like the problems with white supremacy and patriarchy and white men are coming to some kind of feverish pitch. Where will it go? What horrible event is going to change this flow of hatred? I don’t know but it’s really scary. Also, Cardi B can tell me who to vote for in the next election.

My stomach hurts. I feel like my anxiety is on turbo again. I don’t feel like I am making choices that lift enough people. I don’t feel like I am doing enough for my species and I also feel like I do too much for people and I’m hurting myself in the process. I don’t understand balance.

I am really tired. I should probably try to sleep now. It’s feeling really hard.

The last couple of days have gone just a tiny bit better. I’m trying so hard to get some more pause in my brain so I’m not getting upset at the kids. I have been wearing the airbuds and telling my family that I can’t hear them sometimes. It helps.

I need space inside my head where I am not on duty. I need to have time where I am not required to be listening to and responding to my children. I need it or I’m going to fail. I need space to just be me and not a mommy-unit.

It’s hard not having childcare. I have mixed feelings about asking the big kids to play with the baby. I feel like I am… cheating somehow. I won’t leave them alone in the house but sometimes I get to go to the bathroom alone. Tonight I went and did the vaginal dilation with the big kids watching her. That goes really well.

Sometimes I feel like the big kids feeling competent enough to take care of her is the best thing that could have happened to our dynamic. They both love feeling mature and responsible. I feel like this is so good for all of us. I hope I’m not screwing it all up.

I’m trying a new thing with the kids and school work. I have not managed the last academic term well. I was….overly influenced by my pedagogy training. I forgot all of the unschooling perspectives I have worked so hard for. That year with the charter school messed up my priorities like whoa. “This is mandatory.” “Yeah you are the only family who complied.” WHAT IS THE POINT OF PUBLIC  SCHOOL. What is the point of learning? What is education?

So the kids are being given more freedom with the screen and I am saying, “Have you gotten everything done you want to get done?” at intervals and the kids are doing more playing than they have done in a very long time. More than six months I’d say. And they are making forward progress at a better clip than they have managed in a long time. They need to play. I have been so dogmatically focused  on work that I am creating problems.

What I love about home schooling is this is my fault. My responsibility. If it goes well, go me! If it goes poorly: Krissy… get it together….

Sigh. We all need to play more and I feel like I am having such a hard time making play the priority again. I feel like the kids hit academic age and I practically want to shove them in the equivalent of an academic sweat shop. WORK HARDER. WHY DO YOU PAUSE. YOU MUST LEARN MORE. Uhhhh that’s not going to work very well. But it’s what I’ve been doing for over a year. Shit.

It helps that we have just a little bit of time left. 32 days till we are out of the house. It’s sold. That stress is over. The amount of stuff we have left is just not a big deal. We got two postcards in the mail today announcing thrift pickups on our street. Two of them in the next two weeks. What excellent timing. I think that’ll be most of what is left.

We have seven pieces of furniture left to get rid of: metal shelves, coffee table, armoire, standing desk, and the last three Ikea pieces (the glass cabinet holding our dishes, the dresser, and the last cube bookcase). The mattresses will go in the bulk garbage pickup that’s happening the day after we leave. We don’t have much kitchen stuff left. It’s going in waves.

I did practice packing today. All of our clothes, toiletries, school supplies, art supplies, kitchen stuff, and games. 208 pounds split between 7 bags. Not too awful because they’d be willing to let us have 400 pounds of stuff in 8 bags. I will be packing two big sturdy maximum-carry-on-size-that-can-still-be-checked so that if we want an 8th bag we have it. (And an extra carry on option for the future.) It’s a lot of shit and a fair bit of it will be used up and not replenished any time soon. I think we literally have about 20 pounds of art gear. And that’s a winter and a summer wardrobe for all of us. Including big jackets so that we don’t die in Scotland.

Carry ons are not packed yet. We each have a backpack. Eldest Child has a small purse that she tucks into her backpack. Middle Child has a rolling backpack (his school books are way too  heavy for him to carry) and a cute satchel we can’t bear to give away. Her Sweetness just gets a diaper bag. I carry my backpack and purse. Noah gets his backpack. I’m debating if we want to bring the stroller. We do use it a fair bit and it saves my back. There are other bags we bring empty just in case.

That’s 14 bags when we are permitted 17. I will have the extra 3 with us. Two big totes and a backup back pack that packs down like a grocery bag.

Of course I travel with reusable grocery bags as well.

I carry so much shit. But I can fix so many situations. My medicine cabinet is fierce. I can handle a lot of problems on no notice.

Still a daunting list of tasks in front of me. But the only thing I have scheduled for this weekend is massage so I should be able to knock a lot of it out. Work work work.

Ok. It’s past 8. I need to get my butt in bed.

There are two sides to every story. I don’t want to make it sound like I think I was endlessly giving and perfect and she sucked. That’s not true. I was not healthy with my boundaries and I gave more than I should have hoping that it would cause her to get crappier with her boundaries so she would give me more.

That’s complicated.

Was I really hoping that she would get crappier with her boundaries? I don’t know. I wanted to be more of a priority.

Like the precipitating event that caused us to stop living together. We negotiated extensively that she would have dinner on the table at 5:30. I worked my whole day around getting home for dinner. She was in bed and had done nothing because she didn’t feel good.

When do I get to start the part of my life where I don’t have to do anything for anybody unless I feel good enough? Because let me tell you if I am supposed to wait until I feel good to do things for people…. y’all are fucked. I never feel good. Maybe a handful of days in a year I feel good. Mostly my body is a nightmare. Headaches, back pain, hand and arm pain. My neck hurts all the time. My feet are struggling with the adjustment to hiking boots (I’m probably lacing too tight) but it’s clearly helping my ankles and knees.

I need to learn some lessons here. I want to handle my shit better in the future. I want to have healthier relationships. So how do I need to change in order to make situations like this go better in the future? It’s going to be subtly different but I will be the consistent element. How do I not encourage people to treat me badly because it is what I expect?

I need to find a way to convince my brain that “You should do _____” is not actually an order and I don’t have to start complying. That’s hard. I do that. It’s worse with women than men. Things like, “You should teach sex ed to the kids in the group” so I went home and wrote up a full lesson plan. Then she said she was kidding. Why did I waste my time?

Because I’m waiting for other people to tell me what kind of tool I am. I’m waiting for other people to tell me how I am valuable to them so I can double down on those behaviors in order to be more pleasing.

I want to please you. I want to be loved. I want to be important.

But you put me on your calendar only to drop me anytime you don’t feel very well.

You hardly ever feel well, too.

This sucks.

I don’t feel entitled to anything so I don’t like to ask for support. So when I do ask and you let me down it feels like an absolute betrayal instead of like a person just not getting everything done. It feels like you are telling me that I never deserved the support I asked for.

You were really happy to be the person who did X for me. So I told you I needed X by Thursday. Then you forgot. Then you yelled at me that I didn’t tell you when I needed it. Ok sure, you went back and checked records and apologized later because I DID TELL YOU but that doesn’t save me on Thursday when you didn’t do the thing and you are yelling at me that it is my fault it didn’t get done because I wasn’t clear enough. When I was clear enough.

But you were effectively my free therapist holding the thread of me together for over ten years. You gave me purposed. You allowed me to love you. What is that worth in trade?

A lot. But I don’t know how much.

What is the part I need to not do again?

I need to stop putting myself into caretaker positions for disabled people. I am not well enough. I damage myself because you are more important than me. That will result in me not making it into old age for my kids. I have to stop.

I made these kids. I owe them; not you.

I am enjoying this baby so much. She’s feeling like such an important member of our little crew already. We all pivot to her. We all have to check our behavior with her. We all have to stop and decide if the way we have been unconsciously behaving is good enough for her. That’s feeling lovely. I can’t have another kid in ten years to restart this pattern, but this is feeling good.

Ok. Have to run.