Category Archives: identity

My life is so full of awesome.

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Yesterday was awesome with a side of awesome-sauce. When the only down part of the day is me bawlling out the kids for “pruning” (aka HACKING ALMOST TO DEATH) most of the food plants in the front yard. Shanna decided that it would be awesome to clean up the house to make it up to me.  I’m not sure some of the asparagus can recover. Luckily it is a spreading plant and even if those bits are dead, more will grow eventually. It’s going to take a good three years to get back to where the blueberry bushes were. My tomatoes are not going to be robust this year. (I’m ok with that. I didn’t want to grow any.) She pruned the apple tree that was just starting to do well. This is my sad face.

And that was my only bad. If that is the only bad in my day, well, I can get ten minutes of yelling out of it and then a little pout and move on. Ok, I’m done now. I really like problems that will fix themselves with time.

Otherwise the kids and I had a really nice day. We spent some time walking around Los Gatos. I talked to them about stuff I did as a kid. They were really interested in all the stories. I find myself perpetually in a state of confusion that they actually give a shit about me. They really do. They want to know about me. They want to know more than anyone other than Noah. It’s crazy. If anyone other than my kids followed me around asking for stories about my life it would probably be a little creepy. But my kids hunger for them.

I feel seen and valued. I tell them all the time that I am so glad that now I get to walk these places with them. Every memory that involves them is sweeter than what came before. I’m glad I get to show them things I like and places I have existed. I’m glad that they are happy I am with them.

It feels like it goes beyond the whole “If my mom hadn’t been alive I wouldn’t be alive.” They like me. They want to know me. I don’t feel I deserve it.

I’m probably going to apologize for yelling when they get home. I lost my temper. It’s ok to tell them why what they did was a bad idea. I probably didn’t need to shout it though. That wasn’t very nice of me. Sometimes, I’m not very nice. Which is a mixed thing.

My kids believe that it is ok for them to fuck up. They take it in stride, apologize, and then move on full stream ahead. “Oh shit. Mom is really mad at me because I did something I shouldn’t have. Hey! I’ll clean up all my stuff! Mom likes that!”

Repair attempts. I hear that acknowledgment of repair attempts are the strongest indicators of healthy and happy relationships. (Ok, mostly I’ve seen this with reference to marriage. If your spouse is TRYING to repair a fuck up, ALWAYS at least acknowledge that you see that they are trying–even if you kind of don’t want to let them make the repair yet. “I can see that you are trying really hard to help me stop feeling mad right now. I’m going to need to be mad for a few minutes. I appreciate that you are trying. I will be back to reciprocate in a few minutes when I calm down.”)

My kids try to repair. I try to repair. None of our fuck ups are that big. And our forgiveness is brobdingnagian. (That’s one of my FAVORITE WORDS EVER.)

Last year, when the awesome dad from the home school group was working in my yard, their teenage son came with him. At one point I told the boy to do something for his mom so she would get really excited. I did my kind of squeak and bounce thing. He his eyes got kind of wide and his head leaned back and he said, “Uhhh. My mom doesn’t get excited like that.”

I told him he obviously isn’t trying hard enough. He seemed skeptical. But I think about exchanges like that when I have my ALL CAPS LOCK ALL THE TIME days. I am that excitable in person. I understand why my kids are loud.

(Jenny–the town is so different. Next time you come to California we need to take Little Djinn there. It’s wacky how different it feels now. The Safeway has been totally remodeled. Now there is underground parking and the store is like twice the size. The Walgreens moved. That was kind of weird for me. Auntie shopped there a lot so the idea that it moved… No! Stop ignoring my sentimentality when you make business decisions!)

This year is fifteen years since I graduated from high school. Twenty years for Noah. Whoa. Time flies. Not that he graduated. And I graduated despite not going to high school. Life is confusing.

Clearly a high school education is not the make-it-or-break-it part of education. The pair of us argue with that idea pretty firmly. “Oh really? People can’t be successful or functional unless they can adapt to a toxic high school environment. Who was it that said it is no measure of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society?” (For the record it was: Jiddu Krishnamurti. I LOVE the internet. I never have to say I don’t know something again.)

Success is such a funny thing. The goal posts just move.

Recently Noah and I were discussing my lust for order. I wish I were someone who could be regimented and predictable. He commented that someone highly regimented can’t be successful in his profession. The point of his job is to imagine things. You can’t do that if you are predictable–not really. You can go down a checklist of possibilities, but you can’t imagine something different.

I suppose this is like the Imagineer vs. the Engineer. Ha.

These days when I set goal posts for the future I understand that they are mutable. My original goals of “save $250,000 and own my own house” were supposed to take me till I was sixty or so.  Sometimes it is hard holding in the impulse to just cash out stock and pay the house off tomorrow. I could. And I’d still meet that minimum barrier for safety.

But my goals changed. Yes, I want the house paid off. But holy crap I’ve learned what investing money can do to your overall security. Shanna’s college tuition is almost 1/3 there. She just turned six. I didn’t actually contribute that much. It grows. Like fucking magic.

I feel… less fanaticism about paying the house off Right Now. I’ll get it paid off soon enough. It’ll be fine.

For someone who doesn’t believe in God I spend a lot of time praying. Every month when I pay my bills I sit still and I close my eyes and thank whatever is listening that I can pay every bill without robbing Peter to pay Paul.

My mom got to have that feeling once a year. When she got her income tax return. It was spent the day it arrived catching up on things that had to be paid. Every year of my childhood. The eleven months in between were anxiety filled cry fests. What was she going to do wrong this month. She started out every month short. And she didn’t really have a way to get more money.

Today I went out to a lovely breakfast with Noah. I couldn’t eat very much of it because my stomach hurt. We put it in a to-go container for me to eat after I medicate. It’ll be awesome then.

I see every thread of privilege that runs through my life. I feel like the threads are interwoven with gratitude and sorrow and shame. I’m grateful I get to have the things I have. I appreciate them. I’ve seen the lack. I understand how good I have it. I feel really sad that most people never get to feel this easing of worry. When they say that money can’t buy happiness… it can buy you ways to not worry. I feel ashamed that I have all this and other people have so little. That feels disgusting and inappropriate and wrong.

I feel good that my kids know that when you walk buy a homeless person begging, you find something to give them. Food, money, some conversation if you really have nothing to give. You treat them like a person. We have so much extra. If we don’t share then we are shitty people.

I don’t think I will get my grocery bill under control. But I have relationships with a fair number of homeless people and I don’t feel bad about handing them bags of food. My kids see that a lot. That’s just part of their experience of the world.

We are very lucky. We have extra. If you have extra and you don’t share, then you are an asshole.

Yes, we need to have conversations about systemic solutions. But I am not a hive creature. I am an individual. I can’t solve whole systemic problems. Often, I don’t know what the answer is. But I can help the person standing in front of me.

Are they currently suffering as the “result of bad decisions”? Maybe. But I’ve seen an awful lot of people make the best god damn decisions they had available and they still didn’t work out so well. I’m not in a position to judge. If Noah didn’t like fucking me so much… I wouldn’t have so much extra.

I don’t really feel I have a lot of moral high ground. And I feel a great deal of dismay that I am supposed to feel superior to people who earn their living the same way I do only they don’t also have to do all the fucking laundry. Sex work really doesn’t seem that different to me.

“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.” Sometimes attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt though no one knows for sure.

I have a small mind. Sometimes I think I glory in that. I like to discuss people. I try to do it as more than just gossip–I like looking for patterns and figuring out how people work and why they do the things they do.

I have a strong natural dislike of population studies. I like individual case studies, one after another. I think that in the generalizations you lose the truth. This comes of being an outlier on most scales. Not as many any more… I’m trending towards average as I age. At least on some metrics.

But if you can never undo what you have done, then there are scales on which I will be an outlier until I die. I’m not sure I will ever get over distrusting population studies. But I want to go do a study on a population. I want to do it one person at a time.

Noah just asked me, “Have you ever considered what a system would look like if it was set up to manage people like you?” (Meaning contrary and difficult people who are prone to do the opposite of what you tell them to do even when they are shooting themselves in the foot.) (We’ve been talking about systematic solutions Like You Do On A Sunday Morning.)

More choices. More money. I consider every child born to be an investment in the future of this country. Each individual person has the potential to do Great Things if they are encouraged appropriately. Maybe their Great Things will be in their neighborhood. Maybe in their state capitol. Maybe on tv. I don’t care. Whatever. Do what makes you feel like you are doing the thing that you are good at doing. It is different for different people.

Getting training in your life path is hard and costs money. I really believe in the basic income. I think that children as young as four and five should be allowed to petition the courts to be adopted by a guardian of their choice. Even if the court is a little worried. Kids who are adopted out should retain a child advocate who will work with them throughout their lifetime. Kids who need to leave their nuclear family will probably need a wide net of different kinds of support people.

Kids should be born with the ability to pay for their own day care and food, should such assistance be necessary. These kids will pay my social security. I need them to be as healthy and functional as possible.

Instead our system tries to tell people that they have as few choices as possible. We constrain learning and say that if you don’t learn well by listening to lectures and doing worksheets obviously you are pretty stupid.

Not everyone has that experience of the school system. Some people experience a bewildering array of options and learning possibilities. Guess how much money the parents of those kids usually have?

Maybe money does buy happiness. Or at least it can buy the ease of worry to the point where you are able to feel happy.

But people can learn with almost no money spent. Money isn’t the point. Having a truly engaged teacher is one of the main building blocks of education. The people who help you discover things on your own are the people who increase your options for the future. People who give you a checklist of what to do and what not to do are limiting you.

I think this is beyond me today. And I’m getting stabbing pain in my elbow. I’m going to stop now.

Drifting

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This medication is kind of weird. The strains vary a great deal. One experience is not like the next. Dosage is kind of complicated.

All of my life I have had periods where I feel kind of dreamy and disconnected. I imagine it like floating on top of a still pool. I can kind of hear what is going on around me, but I’m not part of it and it can’t touch me. Maybe I’m swimming in a pool encased in glass? Other people can see me. I can see them going on about their daily labors.

I drift.

It only comes on during moments of repose. I suppose this is dissociation. Disorientation. I feel dizzy.

When I’m having one of those days before I ever touch the medication I know I’m in for a ride.

It’s been kind of weird over the last few years to go from getting the traditional sit-on-your-ass-couchlocked-stoned to being very functional while high. At this point it doesn’t slow me down. But I had to learn how to focus intensely through the pot.

I like it because it derails all of the “side conversations” my brain normally comes up with. My inside voice isn’t very nice to me.

With pot I can forget about the nastiness or stop listening. Something like that. It doesn’t hurt in the same way. I feel less paralyzed in some ways, yet I feel like my legs are jello. Moving is hard.

My kids are off playing by themselves. I told my shrink that I get a good 2-3 hours every morning where they go play hard after breakfast and they don’t talk to me much. Her jaw dropped and she said, “How did you manage that?!” “Consistency.”

I’m starting to feel guilty about how much time I am building into their lives away from me. I feel this nagging guilt that I should be more present. While they are happily playing with Lego’s I should be in there playing with them or I am not properly appreciating the time I have with them.

Oh fuck that noise. People have to learn how to do shit on their own without turning and saying, “Here do this for me.” When I’m there, that’s how it goes.

After the fifteenth time of saying, “No I don’t want to play for you I want to build my own” I am really whiny and annoying and I’m ready to huff out of the room. Better to just let them play.

Normally this is when I bustle around and do my chores. Today… I sit. I slept in. I didn’t medicate or have my silent time before everyone got up.

Getting up in the morning and setting up my little “space” and sitting down for a smoke and some time to write makes me feel centered in a way little else can. Smoking alone isn’t nearly as good. Writing alone isn’t nearly as good.

I know that folks like Steven King exhort me to stop thinking I need the drugs in order to write well. I don’t think I need the drugs to write well. I think I need the drugs in order to have patience, not scream, and not cry throughout the day. But the ease it gives writing is pretty convenient too.

Most people, as part of the normal maturation process, learn how to have a pause in between experiencing things and reacting. I’m kind of broken there. I don’t have the “pause to process”. I have instant extreme reactions. Medication helps with that.

It’s kind of weird yelling so much less. When I do raise my voice I feel horribly self conscious. I feel like I have broken a rule. It is not as normal for me to be screaming across a building at someone. So I feel like I’m bad for doing it in other spaces.

I used to yell all the time. I’m loud. I have been for a long time. That was the ricochet after mumbling my way through childhood. Am I learning voice modulation or am I just feeling more shame about new topics?

Oh, when I say they will “play by themselves” I mean that I will have to go in and moderate several squabbles, help them find something, help them get dressed, sometimes wipe a butt, and say in an irritated voice “If you are hungry you can finish eating the breakfast that is still sitting on your plate.”

So when I say I get 2-3 hours of them being busy… Sigh. That’s what this life means. That’s what I mostly want. I feel bad that I force them into so much independence but I would lose my mind if I tried to be “more present”. I would have to just listlessly go through the day not moving much or thinking. I can’t play their games with them at the speed they go while also cleaning up after them, preparing for them, and being dispatched to the kitchen every 5-10 minutes for more snacks.

Demanding doesn’t begin to explain what this is. Dictators. I’m the fucking lackey. (Actually… no… that’s different. I’m just the lackey.)

For the last few days I haven’t been sure if I was getting sick or just running too hot.

It honestly makes sense that I’m canceling as many things as I am this week. All of my time with Jenny was added after the schedule was made. Much of my additional babysitting was added after the schedule was made. So I made a schedule I could keep for the month, then I added in 60-70 hours of socializing/baby-sitting/driving. No wonder I’m so tired.

It was worth it. I don’t feel bad about missing the county fair this year. I don’t feel bad about missing a park day. I don’t feel bad about skipping Aqua Adventure for a week if my kids outright refuse to do their chores.

If I have to do three peoples worth of work, I am not going to have the energy to go drag you around a water park, sorry. My body has limits.

So instead of leaving the house at 10 am for the fair then going to Aqua for a few hours after that then going to San Francisco for a concert… I’m just doing the concert. Oh man I’m so glad I am smart. I may even take a nap.

I’ll finish painting the door I currently have on saw horses. The kids and I are going to do another toy cull. Their grandmother has sent them six or seven large boxes and we’ve had a birthday since our last cull. It is getting really hard to clean again. Toooooooooo much stuff.

If I can’t get the house clean on Monday because it is more than a day of work to get the house clean… that’s not ok. I start working at 7:30 in the morning. If I can’t get it done by 5 pm, we have too much shit. Some of it has to go. And y’all have to fucking help me because this is fucking ridiculous. I didn’t make the fucking mess.

We clean once a week to vacuum and sweep/mop because otherwise we get swarms of ants. I’m not hysterical. I’m not fussy. I’m not particular about everything being fancy. But we do have to clean. It isn’t an optional thing.

Every house, every family has different circumstances. Not everyone has ant problems. Some people have the luxury of being more relaxed. I’m sorry your dad bought a house directly on top of the entrance to ant heaven and all of them traipse through our property on their way out into the wide world. We get so many fucking ants.

I’m not nearly as phobic any more. I suppose exposure therapy is uhm useful. I no longer scream and claw and fight to get away from them. Wheeee. Now I sigh and clean them up.

Getting older is weird. There are so many things I thought I “couldn’t” do when I was younger. Now… I recognize my limits. But they are much broader than I ever imagined as a kid. I do have limits. I have finite access to money. I have finite strength. I have finite time.

But with proper training, my abilities are many and varied. All I have to do is find a teacher and devote the time to practice. I could do so many things. I’m not afraid of programming or rock climbing or advanced math or learning languages or performing physical feats. I’ve already completed one marathon. A friend is talking pretty hard about getting good enough for Big Sur. 26.2 miles of frightening hills. You HAVE to finish in less than six hours. That’s serious training. (J- I think we should try to get to the point where we can do a half marathon in two hours before we switch to training for the marathon. We will need some speed to go with our endurance for the hills. And oh man we are going to need to find horrible hills for training.)

You know what? I could do that. It would take training. Cross training. Conscious development of my body. But I could do that. Sure.

Give me a calendar, a list of tasks, and I’ll give you a schedule to get it done. Sure.

It is weird having this space in my mind where I know I can do things right next to this place of feeling like I can’t reach out and touch reality.

It doesn’t matter how I feel. It matters how I can make other people feel. That’s what they remember. They remember what I accomplish and my ability to encourage them to feel good about themselves.

I don’t blow your skirt up over nothing. I will tell you the bad right along with the good. Everyone has both.

I was asked yesterday why staying with Noah is worth it if he not the type of partner who would be “defensive” of me if someone got aggressive or hostile in conversation.

I think that if someone tried to hit me Noah would attempt to intervene. I think if Noah say Joe Blow preparing to hit Josephine Blow he would probably intervene.

But the verbal shit? Naw. He comes from a world where that sort of … “conversation” is normal. That’s just how they talk. No, he doesn’t defend me from assholes. I’ve made my peace with that. If I say, “So and so is not welcome in my home ever again.” He doesn’t balk or argue or try to persuade me. I get to have boundaries.

If your partner won’t let you have those kinds of boundaries… well… yeah. I need to feel safe in my home. That includes being able to decide who is and isn’t welcome. It’s a deal breaker.

I don’t have to know everyone. If you want to maintain relationships with people I don’t like, whatever. Do it on your time and away from me.

I have friendships that aren’t during shared time.

I’m still (barely) active in the bdsm community. I go to be social. Mostly I sit around and talk to old play partners and we remember how fun things were. We get cheesy grins. Sometimes there is some fond hugging. There are always the reminders “If you change your mind on this monogamy bullshit… let me know.”

I know. And I love you.

For all that I’m a fucking asshole when I talk about the idea of “chosen family” I have a friends circle that blows my mind. I have so many embedded layers of people who love me. When I think about it at all, I feel really happy.

I haven’t driven everyone away. Not everyone can handle the intensity frequently. And I can’t handle the intensity of everyone frequently. Ow tired.

But they come when I need them or ask them. And I come when they need me or ask me. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Sometimes I think it is kind of a miracle that I have managed to find so many wonderful people to love me. That… doesn’t always happen for girls like me.

It is humbling to think about how lucky I am. All of the accidents and choices that had to happen to get me where I am.

Never new that it was so far from 6 Flags Magic Mountain (the one near Disneyland–I was born biking distance from this amusement park so that is where my siblings talked about “being from”) to Fremont.

Sometimes I feel part of the flow of my life. Sometimes I feel like I float above it. Outside it. Watching it. When I’m not busy telling myself how terrible I am for every mistake I think, “Hm. Not bad.”

It’s a start.

Anger and feelings

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Now my ergonomic keyboard isn’t working. Because there is a conspiracy to destroy my arms.

Today was a therapy day. We talked about my feelings. Cause I have them. And I pay someone to listen to me fucking talk about them.

Something that happened before with running: after a while I can’t tell the difference between the different kinds of stomach pain. Anxiety, hunger, and illness all feel the same. They can all involve vomiting (or not) and tons of nausea. There isn’t much difference. So as my exercise increases and I’m using more calories my belly hurts a lot of the time. And I can’t tell the difference between hunger and anxiety. Which freaks me out chemically.

We talked a lot about my feeling angry earlier this week. And how my reaction to feeling anger is days of self-recrimination and punishment. I don’t feel like it is ok to be angry.

Even though these days the extremity of my anger is expressed through slamming a cabinet shut. And not that hard. Because I’ve already had to repair cabinets I’ve ripped off the wall and I uhhh don’t want to do that again. I’ve got enough shit to do.

I have punched a hole in a wall in years. I haven’t cut myself in years. I haven’t hit anyone in years. I haven’t inappropriately screamed and screamed at someone in a long time. I have screamed at my kids, but not recently.

I’ve been holding it together. I haven’t flipped out on anyone beyond a quavering voice in a long time.

I realized today that I haven’t had a panic attack in months. (I think that this is helped by how much pot I use.) That is a big deal. Through my teen years and my twenties I didn’t have very many months without panic attacks. Heck, for much of that time I didn’t have many weeks without panic attacks. They tend to go in waves. They get really bad for a while then they subside a little for a while. I’ll take whatever reprieve I can get.

I’m doing better. I really am. People who have known me since I was a teenager tell me I am much more calm. That’s a good sign.

But when I feel angry I treat that as deserving as much punishment as if I went to the park and started slapping kids. My standards for myself really aren’t within a range I can accomplish. I can’t stop feeling angry sometimes.

I haven’t raged at anyone in a long time. This is about as much control as someone like me gets. I spend a lot of time feeling like I am pathetic and disgusting if this is the best I can do. I’m not actually a nice person. I can just play one on tv.

My shrink asked me why on earth have I been babysitting so much for other people lately. I told her it is because I want those kids to know me. I want to have real relationships with them. I have known some of them since birth. I desperately hope they will see me as more than just an occasional party host. I want them to think of me as a caregiver.

That requires giving some care. With a smile on my face. When I feel frustration I need to ACKNOWLEDGE it and talk about how I will deal with it. That conscious modeling teaches the kids so much. My kids and other kids.

“Gosh. I’m feeling really frustrated because this isn’t going how I want it to go. I suppose I have a few choices. I could scream and jump up and down. Will that make things better? (Kids chorus: “No.”) Err, I could get mad and break it because then I won’t have to deal with this again. Will that make things better? (Kids chorus: “No.”) Oh. Am I going to have to take a deep breath, calm down, and try again? (Kids chorus: “Yes.”) Ah crum. That sounds like work. Alllllllllllll riiiiiiiiiiiight.”

Whine is intentional. It makes them giggle.

I’m not sure when I will feel like what I am doing is “good enough”. Part of my problem is, I deeply admire people who are making radically different choices. I want to emulate them. I want to pattern after them because I like them and respect them and look up to them.

But if I do I will wreck the good thing I’ve got going here. Some things aren’t compatible.

I told my shrink that I’ve been having a lot more sexual fantasy/visualization stuff again. She asked like what. I said I miss going to grocery stores looking for a trick. My favorite game is going to a vanilla place (not just grocery stores–but man I love them) and looking for someone. I win if I can get someone home and naked in under two hours. I’ve won the game. Not every time, of course. That wouldn’t be a very fun game.

I think my shrink hasn’t quite fully picked up on the “queer” thing. Multiple times she used very heterosexually focused language to describe who I would pick up and what I would do with them. I corrected her.

Girls who like casual sex are much harder to find than boys who like casual sex. That doesn’t mean I like boys more. Just that when it comes to going hunting, sometimes I like shooting fish in a barrel. Ahem.

She told me that the fantasy shit is “very empowering”. Which is a phrase that triggers my gag reflex. I’ve uhhh heard a bit too much about how victims should empower themselves. It always sounds squicky to me. (Squick, for those who don’t know, is the visceral, physical sensation you get when someone does something you really don’t like. Like someone sucking your toes if you hate that sort of thing. When you get that instinctive shiver of “yuck“. I kind of want to go on to a long list of things that squick some people but I’ll be kind.)

The scared, shameful, dirty feeling after I get angry is probably the most pressing “PTSD symptom” I have right now. That anxiety eats me for days. It means I can’t sleep. It makes me shorter and shorter.

If I feel intense anger it is really hard to calm down. It is really hard to stop feeling attacked and threatened.

I’d like to be clear that I’m rationally aware that no one is attacking me or threatening me at this stage of my life. Not no one. It’s been a long fucking time. I am not saying that I’m getting threats and so of course I’m scared.

No. If I go through the experience of getting angry (my baby-sitter being kind of flakey is annoying but not really that catastrophic–I get other kid care right now) even if I don’t do anything inappropriate I have days of fierce, mean, nasty self-recrimination. I eat irregularly until my stomach is a mass of pain. I don’t sleep enough–not nearly enough. The last few days have involved a lot of staying up late and still waking up early to grind on what a disgusting piece of shit I am.

I’m better than I was. I can distract myself if I’m awake and in front of a screen and smoking pot. Then I can stop the inside-voice-ranting. If I try to lay in bed and go back to sleep… Forget it. The brain weasels will eat me. I’ll end up crying and retreating to the garage to let Noah sleep anyway.

I suppose I use writing about the way I would use a sponsor if I were the AA type. Instead I smoke my pot. With the blessing of no less than two doctors and a therapist.

My shrink told me that I should probably move my blog to being behind some kind of wall. Folks under 18 shouldn’t be allowed to get access to my main writing.

I have feels about that. But if I’m going to be publishing books for the under 18 market I might now also want to have a public blog where I talk about the super hot stripper who was happy to uhhh come to the bathroom with me at a strip club one night. Or the other really hot girl I fucked in an elevator at a club. We really weren’t supposed to be doing that there.

My life has been pretty good.

Yeah. I like girls.

 

Put your own oxygen mask on first.

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I used to think it was useful for me to think of people as “family”. Tonight I got to have dinner then go to the Diana Gabaldon speaking engagement with a woman I used to think of as a big sister. I talked to her a lot when I was younger. She did a lot to guide me in the bdsm community. She helped me learn how to keep myself safe.

It’s been a while now that I have consciously eschewed the chosen family dynamic. I have friends. I have really wonderful, excellent friends. I am truly blessed in my friends.

So it’s weird sometimes when I spend time with people I used to think of as “family”. I can feel how my inner walls and boundaries have shifted. In the main I feel like it is a positive thing because I have a lot less hostility towards the idea that my friends are giving me every speck they have to give me than I do towards the idea that they are my “family” and they uhhhh… don’t meet a lot of my needs.

Do I have entitlement issues? Rage issues? Oh yes. I have a firm idea of what “being family” means. I experience it with Noah. I am teaching my daughters how to do this, but it’s different with “chosen family”. I drive people away. Or I walk away.

I have expectations and that screws me every time. The secret to happiness is low expectations.

But you can only keep your expectations low if you get your needs met some other way or if you are so beat down you have stopped hoping.

Sometimes I’m afraid of the bottomless pit of need I feel inside me. The desperate need for attention, affection, love, permission to live, approval.

Yeah, I take any relationship that is offered. They all have things to teach me. They all have things I want. Every person I walk by on the street is a missed opportunity. Sometimes I feel like I spend a lot of time grieving every single one of them.

I want you to love me. I want you to love me. I want you to love me.

I’m selfish. It’s not like I’m really walking around feeling like, “Oh man! Let me love you!” That shit sounds like work.

I really enjoyed getting to hear Diana Gabaldon speak tonight. She was very blatant in her enjoyment of the ego stroking she gets. It was hilarious to watch. She glowed. She’s 62 but from where I was sitting I would have guessed she was in her mid 30’s. She has a kid my age. And one older, I think–I may have misheard because it was loud.

She’s still happily and lustily married. I approve.

She talked a lot about her life and her career arc. She’s a good story teller and she’s obviously said that whole thing hundreds of times. Very smooth and entertaining.

I’m… too twitchy. I’m always afraid I’m on the verge of offending people.

I offend people. And then I feel very sad. Because that offended feeling is what they will walk away with. In their head, that feeling is me.

Oh man I hate that. It’s better to err on the side of being quiet. Only I don’t do that. Because I’m an asshole. But I’m a sad asshole.

Cause I embrace contradictory emotional states. I’m told by experts that such an ability is part of the reason I’m not dead.

Sometimes it feels weird understanding that historically, women like me rarely do as well as I have. I’m not talking about Noah’s money. I did get a bachelors degree and a teaching credential. I did successfully teach. I worked in theatre for several years and did just fine. I worked in libraries for years.

I go out and find ways to be part of things that work for me. I usually take small and/or support roles because I know I won’t be around long. I try my hardest to leave a good impression. I want people to think well of me. So I look for ways to work.

Often that work is social. I like seeing people. I feel validated by people in a way that is surely unhealthy. I do have crowd management skills. You can’t stage manage dance shows for small children without developing them. I like to believe that I’m charming. I like to believe I can turn out a descent conversation for a wide variety of people.

I’m not just a one trick pony. I’m Downer Debbie and I Deliver but I do also have other modes. I am not interested in online dick contests about academic theory (fuck you, grad school) so I don’t get into nuanced responses to the educational theory I read about but I’m happy to talk about it if asked. I travel and have neat stories that conveniently leave out the bits about hysterical crying and beating my head on the ground. These days I talk plants. That’s SO SAFE! It’s an awesome topic. Gardening! Running is safe to talk about.

I’m not just that skanky ho who talks about depressing shit any more.

More tracks. I still have great sex stories. But I need to be asked for them. Or I default to assuming people would retreat with their fingers in their ears screaming, “EWWWW TMI!” So I don’t write about sex much lately. Obviously sometimes I don’t give a shit and I tell stories, but only as they feel like a need to discuss topic.

I’m still obsessed with sex. But now it is legally and “morally” permissible because that just means Noah’s life is good. I do owe it to a man, don’t I?

Ugh and ick and weird. Sex is so fucking weird. It gets weirder every year. More complex. More complicated. Can’t I just go back to tracing the outline of a knot in a piece of wood on dicks and be done with processing this crap?

Even when sex was “simple” (ha!) it was never simple for me.

Sex is tied up in money and rage and entitlement and perversion and pain and love and tenderness and fear.

You don’t pick what you have the talent to write about. Or for fuck’s sake I would pick another talent.

Distraction

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If you do much research on mental illness, or really any undesirable behavior you want to eliminate, distraction is key.

This week in therapy my shrink spent a lot of time harping on the idea that I need to start being a lot more choosy about who I allow into my life. I always wonder how much my shrinks judge me. No, actually I don’t wonder very often or I would be very paranoid. Occasionally I wonder. When therapists very rarely encourage me towards squeezing people out of my life (it is rare but it happens) I always wonder how long they have sat on that impulse.

When did my description of my friend start bothering you? They never tell me, of course.

Therapy is such a weird beast. It is a relationship but not a a real one. It is unidirectional and unbalanced. There is honesty but not full honesty. Truth but not the whole truth. The whole truth involves someones opinions which I shouldn’t be taking into consideration.

I shouldn’t change to make my therapist happy. She otherwise isn’t part of my life. I should not alter the support I get to make her happy.

But sometimes you do have to follow their advice because they are right. She doesn’t say “so and so is icki” she says “what do you get from this relationship and what do you give to it? If the balance doesn’t work for you then you need to move on”. She says to me, “I know that for most of your life you have had to accept relationships with anyone who wanted to have a relationship with you. That is no longer true. You need to keep your children safe.”

I was raped over and over because I made a lot of stupid choices. Because I accept any relationship that is offered. Because I don’t say “no” when I should.

Yeah yeah yeah people think of me as being overly firm with my “no” delivery. You only know what my life is like after more than half a dozen rapes or more. The people who have known me the longest met me when I had been raped at least half a dozen times.

The things that happen to you change you. I did not know how to say “no”. I have learned to say it loudly and firmly. Loudly and firmly enough that I often bother people who wish I was “softer” about the process. Oh fucking well.

“Most people have no more than five people in their true inner circle.” (Quoting my shrink again.)

Jenny. Noah. K. My kids. Pam. That’s six. I have absolute trust in their love for me. Do I feel that way about anyone else? Not really. Jenny bought her way in by being the only person who comforted me during a horrible childhood. K has been the single most helpful person by a humongous margin during the parenting journey. I talk to her more often than anyone I don’t live with. I think she is the most motherly friend I have ever had. She has actually shown up when the rubber meets the road for the past few years. Pam has been with me for more than half of my life. To the best of my recollection I have gotten really pissed off at her, but never for actual boundary violations. I can’t remember one.

Other people were in the inner circle at other points. When they were able to show up. Life changes. I don’t stop loving them. Not a jot. But I don’t have trust any more. If I search my body this moment I’m not angry about the fact that I have seen the waxing and waning of so many friendships. They were with me when it made sense. It doesn’t make as much sense any more.

I can’t explain what it was like in my childhood. I was not allowed to cry. My crying irritated people and it was beaten out of me. That’s a lot of why I cry so much now. I was horribly brutalized and then punished if I grieved.

I want to write in excruciating detail about my current emotional outpouring towards people. But I don’t want it as part of the record. There are names I don’t write about. Lots of them. There are lots of specific details I don’t want to announce in public. Mostly because I’m aware that my perceptions are highly biased and I’m a much bigger judgmental asshole than people understand and I need to keep it that way.

I don’t want the fall out. I’m that lame. So I’m having trouble working through the emotions. Writing things out is a lot of how I get rid of things. It has become very useful for me over the years. (Yes, people who like people journals get these things out without the public fall out. Clearly I don’t write that way. You don’t get to pick the writing talent you get. You just get it.)

So I’ve been looking for distraction. Painting went so breathtakingly well. The only time I raised my voice was when Shanna was backing into an open paint can. (It was a good save. She wasn’t cranky.) *phew* I did it.

I’m reorganizing toys again. Because I like playing house. Because it makes me happy. I refine how I organize as I watch them use things. I try to figure out where how to have things “live” where they are played with. I want to make their set up convenient for them so it is easy for them to clean up.

It is hard to find a system when you are a kid. You literally don’t have the schema to do it. Kids need to be shown how to find systems. Some people are naturally very gifted, but usually there is the overall framework of systemization within their life and that is why they are so accustomed.

I’m not very good at providing constant systemic living. I will never run a prison. I believe that needs and wants change dramatically over time and it is good to be constantly tweaking your system to be more appropriate for where you are today.

Sustainability is hard to find. What can you keep up? Deciding to be rigid in your system means you exclude millions of awesome options. I like trying lots of things. I need more flexibility.

It is hard reading my shrinks’ evaluation of me. I don’t think it is accurate that I can’t work because of relational issues. Although I had a lot of job volatility throughout my work life. Ha.

Today will be fun. I have babysitting time this morning. I am going to sit here and do all the work for the home school yearbook. (I’m a slacker. I should have done this a month ago.) I need to go to REI. That will be festive. I’m glad I can do it without the kids. I would like to work on the reading list for the book, but I only get three hours. I will need to get it done soon. Blah.

I need to do scheduling today. I need to plan out my running and exercise. I’m doing a half marathon with a friend in October and I’m really not doing appropriate exercise to support that. I have to start. It takes planning or I just don’t get it done. Deep sigh.

I don’t understand how other people naturally just do exercise. I have to plan how I will force myself. I have to have a reason to exercise–an upcoming obligation that will require my body to have something it doesn’t have right now. Long-term planning is too hard.

Distraction. What is distraction? What is focus? What am I doing with my life? Are the people who come and go the focus or a distraction? Is the painting a distraction or a focus? Is reorganizing the toys so they are easier for the kids to clean up a distraction or a focus?

Isn’t it all about your priorities? Isn’t it different for every person you ask?

Is writing a distraction from my life or one of the focuses in my life? Gardening? House maintenance (both of the repair and of the cleaning variety)?

What is life?

What does it mean to have a focus in your life? I read a lot about what other people do with their time. You can tell what people care about by looking at how they spend their time.

It’s ok that we are all different. If we were all the same that would be boring. We need symbiotic relationships.

The inner circle doesn’t mean that you only have relationships with people you trust that much. There are lots of other kinds of relationships. It is ok to share smaller pieces of yourself with people.

And it’s ok to walk away when it no longer works for you.

It doesn’t make me a bad person. People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Not everyone will be there forever.

There are some perverts who probably shouldn’t be around my kids. I recognize that in a larger sense–my kids are not exposed to the broader bdsm community.

Things that are ok for me aren’t necessarily ok for my kids. My kids are impressionable.

Boundaries are complicated.

What makes someone an asshole? Caring about their own needs to the point where they are ok with other people getting hurt sometimes as they take care of themselves.

What makes someone a bitch? Saying or doing things to hurt other people on purpose to be spiteful.

Notice how the gendered one is a lot nastier? I notice that in my language.

I’m an asshole. I try hard to not be a bitch.

I don’t have time to explain why this dude is wrong. There are so many ways he is wrong that I would permanently damage my arms. Ain’t worth it.

I get to walk away. Yeah, it might hurt you but I am not obligated to sit around and tend your feelings. Notice how you have never tended mine? Fuck right off.

But spite isn’t necessary. What’s the difference? When you are writing, what’s the damn difference?

Well, I say fuck you to the universe but I don’t say it to people. I don’t publicly (or privately) slam people when I end a relationship. In general I maintain a policy of being very positive when I talk about former friends/partners/acquaintances. I’m well-fucking-aware that you are judged by how you judge other people

So I’m an asshole, but I try to limit the scope.

I always have the right to walk away. It is the most American attitude one can have. Well, or the other American attitude “I have the right to own a gun so I can shoot people who seem scary“.

I seem scary to a lot of people. To the point where strangers will comment on it in public. I worry a lot about guns.

I kind of hope that the next revolution in this country is a call to disarmament. Citizens give up their guns so that police can de-militarize.

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Wouldn’t it be nice to stop hearing about mass shootings at schools?

And wouldn’t it be nice if white people were called terrorists when they instill terror just like people of other races? Parity in discussion would help us figure out the common solutions.

I need to answer a whole bunch of emails. I haven’t forgotten you. I just… haven’t scheduled yet. Scheduling goes in batches. I can’t handle adding things in between scheduling-fests. Then I get “over scheduled” and I’m shaking by the end of the month. It sucks.

Tonight I get to have dinner with an old friend before we go to the Diana Gabaldon reading. I’m excited. There’s a new book in a series I love.

This will be the very first time I’ve ever been to a reading for an author I know. I have heard random people at college but I had no previous knowledge of them. A step towards fandom I guess?

What is the focus of your life? How do your actions support that? How does your time spent support that? How does your energy spent support that?

When you are old, what will you appreciate more? That you spent time working in your garden or that you spent time with people you will definitely not know by then? Depends on the person. Depends on how the time with them is spent.

Sometimes you need to pick the garden.

Boundaries are hard. Being an asshole is hard.

Who needs a title.

5 Replies

Even though I rarely split my random thoughts into multiple posts, today seems like the day. Scheduling can stand alone.

I am so excited about seeing Jenny that I can barely sit still. I haven’t seen her since her wedding and that was literally years ago. Scotland is pretty far and I don’t have the money to travel with two kids as often as I would like. Too many other trips I’m saving for. Damn priorities. I will make it back to Scotland. Just not that soon. This way I get to meet my niece! She is coming to my house! I am so excited. I am going to take many pictures. She won’t remember Wonderland but hopefully the pictures will inspire her to feel more comfortable visiting again when she gets older.

I fantasize about trading kids for a year when they are older. We’ll see. Not because I want to be away from my kids for even five minutes. Just because it’s an opportunity to live in a different place with someone who would be good at taking care of you. That’s not an opportunity every kid has. My kids are so lucky. They will never have any way to wrap their tiny entitled little brains around how lucky they are.

I struggle with that. I talk to my therapist about my jealousy. She says it is a good thing I can admit it because lots of people feel jealous of their kids and can’t admit it–that creates other problems. I know I’m jealous. I know I wish I could have had a life that was 20% as nice as their life is. But I can’t change the past. My life is pretty rad now.

I don’t have complaints about my life. I’m in one of those magical windows of time when even my fucked up brain can look around and register, “Yup I’m safe. And my life is fucking awesome. I get to do exactly what I want when I want. No one yells at me. People like me enough to let me get away with shit. I have totally nailed this ‘life’ thing.”

Ok, I’m still sad about not having a mom who cares about me. But that isn’t something that *I* can do anything about. Everything that I can influence is going well. It isn’t my fault that I have the problems I have. I’m doing very well with what I was served this lifetime. Most people who get the hand I’m dealt burn out long before now. Most people who grow up thinking they are a worthless piece of shit who should die never get past that.

I’m grateful for every moment when I don’t feel like that. It feels like a gift. It feels like a surprise. I don’t hate myself right now. I don’t feel like I should die so that I stop poisoning everyone around me. The absence of feeling is amazing. I don’t feel like I should die.

Dealing with being suicidal is very hard. It hurts physically and emotionally. The days when I don’t have the evil voices whispering that everyone would be better off without me are by definition Good Days.

Today I baby-sit and I clean. Because I’m a dork. Jenny and little djinn won’t give a shit if my house is cleaner than it is right now. Jenny won’t complain about the fact that my annual dusting day is months away. (Ha. I wish I were kidding.)

But I love them. I love them so much and I don’t get to see them very often. It feels like an honor thing. I want to welcome them into a nice-ish home. Ok, my house will never be a Nice House (imagine I know how to do the little raised TM thing like a trademark sign). I have a weird house. It’s small. I repair things and they kinda look like shit. It wasn’t a Nice House when I arrived. But it is a lot of fun. There is a lot to look at. There is a lot to do. If you are bored in my house it is because you are of a weak and inferior mind. And don’t fucking say out loud to me that you are bored because there is always cleaning or dusting. I don’t care if you live here or not I’ll make you work if you complain .

I feel weird pride in my house. It isn’t a Nice House but it is a really lovely home. I think that I was a big asshole to Brittney because I always felt insecure about the fact that she has lived in a Nice House her whole life other than her college co-housing experience. Her family just does that. Last I heard she was putting off kids kind of indefinitely because it was more important to be able to afford a huge house. She didn’t want kids until she could give them what she had. But when we were kids the Nice House didn’t require two parents working 50+ hours a week. So she isn’t giving her proto-children what she had. She had a mother who stayed home and took care of her.

I am insecure and petty. I am not very supportive when people talk about such goals. I shoot holes in the reasoning. I think this contributes to Brittney ending the relationship. I was not even vaguely supportive of her lifestyle. Really she didn’t dump me until I talked honestly about her dad–she has to pick him over me. He’s still a constant source of money and support. I don’t think he would tolerate divided loyalties.

I’m not even sure why I’m ruminating on her this morning. Because I contrast her in my head with the people who haven’t decided to ditch me? She had the right. Any one and every one has the right to not want to know me. I can be a serious asshole. No denial here.

Losing Brittney was as hard or harder than losing my family. And I lost all of them permanently when I wrote the first book. No one wants me to reflect on how they impacted me. Ok.

I developed the desire to NOT have a Nice House when I visited Brittney as a child. We weren’t allowed to touch anything. Her mom was very house proud and made sure that everyone knew that the house was HERS and we were there on sufferance so DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.

I don’t want a Nice House. I want a nice home. I don’t want expensive things that can’t be touched. I want shit I can touch and break without having to scream and cry over how terrible it is.

So my house is full of shit from Ikea. And I’m pretty happy about that. When my kids draw on things I shrug. When things break my kids know to say, “Oh thank goodness that came from Ikea so it is easy to replace!”

I was exposed to Nice Houses as a kid. What I learned from that experience is that I don’t belong there because I’m not good enough.

So why do I care so much about cleaning my house just because someone is coming over?

Well, the traditional meaning of the word “slut” more meant “woman who is bad at house keeping”. I may be a slut (retired) but I’m not a slut. I know that women are judged very harshly on their ability to keep a reasonably tidy house. Yes, my house meets “reasonably tidy” in spades but I spend a lot of time feeling guilty about my annual dusting. I just can’t give a shit to do it more often.

But I might feel panic and do it before my lovely international visitors show up. Because neurosis is like that.

Jenny lived in a Nice House when we were kids. (Yes, I know that the pre-earthquake house was far less Nice but I only knew the post-Loma Prieta Earthquake rebuilt house. It was Nice.) Jenny had a mama who could cook, clean, garden, and work.

I felt so jealous of Jenny when we were younger. Now not so much. Not because her adult life has been bad (not even close) but because we have such different personalities that we want very different things. I don’t feel jealous towards her any more. I just like her. I just feel glad when I get to be around her. I know more of the cost of her life. I no longer begrudge her the way I did when we were in middle school. I didn’t understand then.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever could have gotten over feeling jealous of Brittney. I don’t want what she has. Not even slightly. I don’t want the asshole-liar-cheating father even if he is rich. I don’t want the narcissistic mother who cares about very little other than her looks. I don’t want the job that is soul crushing and terrible… but earns a lot of money.

I don’t feel jealous any more. Instead I moved on to being a critical asshole. Cause that’s so much healthier and shit.

Brittney was my first friend. I was born across the street from her five months after her. I’m very sorry I only had her for thirty years. Even if I am a fucking asshole who doesn’t appreciate her the way she deserves to be appreciated. I miss her like I miss my abusive-as-fuck sister. It doesn’t matter that our relationship was totally fucked up. You are what I had and I miss you. Even though I’m an asshole, you are such a huge part of me. So much of who and what I am came to being because of reacting to them. For better or worse.

I have been so blessed in my friendships. Brittney did love me. She just can’t deal with someone who is as much of an asshole as I am. Somehow I think that is a very healthy choice.

Maybe in another few decades she will forgive me and look me up. I doubt I will look her up. Just like I will never chase Anna again.

Some doors are slammed closed for good reason. People protect themselves for good reasons. I know I hurt people. I have to be supportive of them protecting themselves from me or I am just another monster.

But it makes me appreciate Jenny so much more. Twenty years of friendship now. And we started on such rocky footing. I haven’t always been as nice as she deserves. (To be fair I’m not sure she has always been as nice as I deserve…)

At some point you have to forgive people for their fuck ups or you don’t get to have relationships. Every one fucks up. Every one. There isn’t a person on this planet who is perfect.

I’m really excited about seeing Jenny. I may even splurge on energy and dust. Just because she is So Special. Not many people merit me dusting LetMeTellYou.

My house may not be Nice but I like it. When I look out the garage window I get to see a lovely garden. I get to look at the marigolds that started as volunteers in my friend’s yard. She told me to take some home. Now every time I see the flowers I think of my friend and feel happy and loved. My tomatoes are protected by love, motherfuckers. (Companion planting. Marigolds help chase off pests from tomatoes.)

I’ve spent a lot more energy than average on being sad that I am not “good enough” for people to love. I am not the kind of person that so-and-so wants. That was part of moving all the time and constantly dealing with the fact that I disappointed people everywhere for not being… something enough. It varied from place to place.

I’m never right. Not for any where.

But I’m right here. In this house I’m the right kind of me. I don’t have to be like anyone else. I don’t have to know how to maintain a Nice House. I’m not inferior and bad just because I don’t know how. I’m not bad here because my seed using skills are… limited. It’s ok that I need starts.

I spend so much time and energy being ashamed of my mistakes and inadequacies that sometimes I wonder if I could single handedly run a power supply plant with all my wasted energy. If I could take back that wasted energy and put it on the power grid I could probably power Fresno.

Lame.

Today will be good. Babysitting and cleaning and resting. That’s enough for a day. The next few days I will have to be on my best behavior. No crying. No slamming things. No shouting. The little one who is visiting isn’t used to someone as volatile as me. I don’t want to scare her. That means I have to reign in. I don’t as much for kids who get to know me over time.

In general I think it is good for little kids to know a variety of kinds of people–including volatile people like me. Life involves a lot of different coping skills–I’m a useful person to learn to deal with. But for short periods of time sheltered kids just hide from me if I don’t tone it down. If I know this in advance it is my fault if I don’t solve the problem. I can’t expect a freakin one year old to adapt to me. Let’s be reasonable here.

One of the moms in the home school group keeps saying that she thinks I’m meditating in secret and lying to her about it. This kind of confuses me. She perceives that over the time she has known me I have gotten a lot better at keeping a reign on the energy I put out into the world.

K-I think these fucking kid-lit books by Tamora Pierce are useful. And I feel lame for that.

I still don’t meditate (though it is on my checklist of things to start doing. Yes, I know I freakin should) but I do consciously think about reaching out and metaphorically grabbing my extra energy and putting it in a box. Not the same as meditation. But I am trying to conserve my energy more. I’m trying to scare people less.

I know that my frantic-self disrupts lots of people. Just by standing near me. I’m trying to be better about that. Being near autistic folk has made this…. more important. Sometimes I walk into an autistic house and get immediate comments about how I need to pull in my anger because it negatively effects the people present. I’ve heard this from more than one person in more than one place. So I’m trying. I think it is funny how it is mostly the moms of autistic boys who tell me this. “Don’t set him off.”

My existing too loudly in a room (while standing still and not saying a word) sets people off. It gets kind of annoying.

But you get the body and life you get. You can deal with it or you can be an asshole and expect the whole world to bend to you. I want to keep being invited back. That means I have to figure out how to stop radiating anger when I’m in those houses. It is hard. Sometimes I can barely even tell that I’m doing it. Nevertheless I have to gain control.

Just do it already.

The lucky one

1 Reply

I woke up feeling positive affect. (That means I’m in a good mood.) Since I spend so much time feeling shitty (and writing about it) sometimes I like to make sure I show some balance. I feel some balance. My feelings aren’t *balanced* but there are representative samples from many points on the spectrum.

If you know what I mean.

Anyway, really it started yesterday. Yesterday was a fairly mellow day. I did gardening and some house cleaning and the kids and I read and played. Nice day.

At one point I was getting angry with the kids for outright refusing to clean up so we could go do something I wanted to do I started getting loud. At one point I started shrieking, “Am I going to have to scream? Is that the..” I cut myself off. I stood very still and took several deep breaths.

“No one ever has to scream. That is a false choice. No, I can ask this without screaming. That would be a failure on my part. Baby, please just pick stuff up.”

Shanna smiled huge, gave me a big thumbs up, winked and said, “Good job mom! You totally calmed yourself down there and I’m really proud of you for recognizing that you never need to scream.”

We only got like 70% of the picking up done. I let it go. I felt a little embarrassed by Shanna’s commentary. And happy at the same time.

I like and appreciate and value people watching me enough to make positive comments on my behavior progress. It’s a little weird having my kids give me those sorts of compliments. But I take positive opinions where I can get them.

At bed time Shanna asked me something about the time before kids. I said, “Know how I get grumpy sometimes” “Yeah” “Well… I was way more grumpy and mean and I used to hit people pretty frequently when I was mad.”

She looked at me with as much shock and horror as if I said I like to sit around dumping salt on snails all day long.

Then I said, “You know how I am sad sometimes and I cry pretty often?” “Yeah” “Well before you were born I cried a lot more. I was very sad about most of the things in my life.”

She looked kind of troubled.

Then I said, “Know how I am mostly happy and cheerful these days?” “Yeah!” “That’s because of you. That started when you were born. Your dad helps a lot because he is the nicest person to me I’ve ever met. Your sister helps. All three of you give me so much love that it feels like maybe some day I will be able to stop crying.”

She hugged me fiercely.

I am deeply aware that people who are as broken as me usually don’t get to “pass” into happy families. That’s not usually a life path that opens up in front of us. Some days I understand in the depths of my soul that I am one of the lucky ones.

For every bad thing that has happened to me I have had some other corollary thing that was positive. I have had an unusual amount of privilege. Not just white privilege, not just female privilege (which exists in my entirely judgmental opinion) … it’s more than that.

Sometimes I feel like a cuckoo. I can be dropped in any nest and I will manage to survive. I have had access to some ridiculously prestigious spaces. I was trailer trash for a long time. I’ve been homeless. I’ve been in a wide variety of $5million + homes. I’ve been in $20 million homes. That is a kind of access that isn’t available to everyone.

I’ve seen enough things to continually inspire me. I can walk into any situation and find the perks and downsides. There are always perks. There are always downsides.

They say that people who deal with depression perceive the world far more accurately than average. In reality, the world sucks.

I go back and forth between feeling flattened by the limits I perceive and knowing that if I can’t find a way I will make a way. All of the limits you perceive are just obstacles. No matter how big or frustrating.

We sent someone to the moon. What the fuck else can our species do?!

I have thirteen chapters left to edit for the book. Many of them are only two or three pages long so that’s not so bad.

Then I need to do the pull out sections. Definition pages. Resources lists. Bibliography. Ew. Ew. Ew. Writing sucks.

But! I’m thinking about doing one of those fancy-ass annotated bibliographies. Where I not only give them a list of resources (internet, book, phone) but give short descriptions of how and when they are useful and where they fail. That saves other people a lot of time trying things out that won’t be a good fit.

It is hard to talk about this book. If I get a few more readers who tell me that they like it and think it is full of useful information I hope it will be less hard to talk about. Yesterday I tried to explain it to our teenage babysitter. She’s a religiously home schooled sixteen year old. Ok fine, my kids aren’t sheltered in the scheme of things.

But she asked me what the book is about. I said it is a book about harm reduction aimed at middle school kids. I asked her if she is sort of familiar with the Alcoholics Anonymous method where you must be 100% abstinent forever and convince yourself that you are powerless. She said yes. I said, “Well… not many people do well with AA. It doesn’t have the highest success rate. Most people do negative things: drugs, alcohol, cutting themselves, other bad coping methods because they have things going in their lives that are genuinely causing them pain. Telling them to stop the coping method without solving the pain is really stupid. It’s not that you need to just learn to bear this pain forever all day with the grace of god. It’s that you need to lessen how much pain you are in so you don’t need to be doing the bad things.”

She said, “That sounds like a really good book. I hope I get to read it soon.”

If I can help other people feel less pain, that’s a mitzvah. That’s a life’s work. That is worthy.

Even if there isn’t a lot of money in it. I have Noah. I have the privilege to not care.

I cannot begin to express the gratitude I feel because I get to live my life any fucking way I want. The limits I run into are more self-imposed then exterior.

I could go buy a fancy RV. But I’d rather put that extra $20k into my mortgage so I can stop paying fucking interest. Maybe after the house is paid off and my kids are teenagers the four of us will have an interest in a bigger RV as a way of longer term traveling. If I want to waste money on it then it will be ok. It will be after the WWOOF year. So if I am on track for college savings and retirement savings… why not?

After I remodel my house. I don’t want to spend $25,000 on a vehicle before I spend $25,000 upgrading my bathroom.

If these are the limits of my life… I really have no room to bitch. First World Problems as they like to say.

I look at all the books in my house and I feel lucky. I get to read… almost as much as I want. The kids complain if I read too much.

Today, if the kids are willing to clean up, we are going to the water park. (Last night I only asked for the living room to be cleaned up so that their poor gimp-tastic father could walk around without injury. If you want me to take you to a kids play place… pick up ALL of your stuff. Or no.)

Then this afternoon our beloved Taylor is coming. My back is looking forward to this. I should probably get dressed and go run right now before breakfast. Then it will be done for the day.

I am so grateful that I’ve found a sometimes-running buddy. I’m looking forward to a half marathon with her in October. I am looking forward to training again. My body feels a lot better under those conditions.

Ok, go run.

Can’t argue with a spreadsheet.

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

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

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

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

Shit.

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

Sold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is complicated.

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

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

Oh man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But we had lots of therapy over that shit.

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

Is this what “normal” life is like?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Identity stuff

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I had the night off. So I went for a run (about 3.5 miles), took a shower, then headed off to see one of my Daddy’s. We went to a gay bar for kinky queers night. I spent a lot of the night reminiscing about the good old days.

On the drive down I rolled all the windows down in the car and I played my sluttiest collection of songs and I took a trip down memory lane.

Sometimes, when I stop to go through the mental rolodex, I feel very grateful for the life I have lived. I have touched (metaphorically and literally) an awfully high number of really interesting people. First love songs are kind of funny because I get to pick and choose between which early partner I kind of miss.

My life is so different than it was. That was a lot of the theme of conversation. “Wow. Things are different now.”

In August of this year it will be ten years since I left my Owner. Lots of changes. Basically every single individual piece of my life is different.

I think hard about why I’m making the choices I’m making in contrast with the other choices available. I am doing with my life exactly what I set out to do. But I didn’t know it would work out the way it has. I didn’t go into parenting expecting mostly vanilla monogamy. But it is what is working for us right now.

I have feels about that. About how I have changed. I don’t know if it good or not so good. It just is. This is just another thing I’m doing for a while. I don’t know how long it will last.

Slutty songs in my world are always interspersed with sad songs because I listen to a lot of sad music. That means I alternate thinking about those who are no longer in my life with Those Who Are No Longer With Us. I usually spend a while in such moments crying about the fact that Noah will die some day. I ponder how I would handle it.

It’s funny how my mood changes. On some days I ponder celibacy as a widow because man, no one can measure up to Noah. On other days I think about a fuck-buddy relationship with the dear friend who is kinda in the #2 slot as far as the Top 5 go. Then I think, “Nahh. I’d go to a queer leather con and find 5-10 women. Oh hell yes.” I miss girls in a way I just don’t miss boys given that I fuck one quite regularly.

It was very nice last night to be in a space at an event where ogling the hot women was not only ok it would have been a little rude to completely not observe how much effort they put into their hotness.

Oh man. The nice girl in the legging pants with the flirty ruffled short tunic that completely didn’t cover her loverly ass? She had nice shoes and nice legs and an ass that can make a grown woman cry for joy. It was so nice of her to stand so near my line of sight for extended periods of time.

I kinda miss fucking women. It’s just different. I am different when it happens.

I’m feeling stress, so I took a trip down memory lane. Dylan Thomas says you can never go home. I feel like I can visit home, but I can’t live there any more. And that’s ok too.

Mostly it was just lovely having a night where I could bounce from topic to topic to topic and I didn’t have to worry about offending or scaring anyone. These are some of my wonderful old friends and play partners. They’ve known me for more than 1/3 of my life. (They are older than me so the percentage is lower in the other direction.) They are blog readers (at least occasionally) and have been for most of a decade or longer.

It is so nice to sometimes be able to jump around talking about widely disparate parts of my life and identity. I could talk about the stuff that I’m feeling weird about and why I’m choosing it even though it feels weird. They could listen and understand why I would make the choices I’m making. Oh how I live for validation.

Sometimes you can’t go to the home school mommys and ask for validation. They don’t have any idea (not really) of what I gave up to become a parent. They have no idea what the contrast is like between me now and what I was like before. Their evaluation of me is… kinda limited. They can judge what they see today, not progress.

I feel so lucky for my old friends. I feel so lucky that these hot, fascinating people say “You ever decide to break the Big M give me a call.”

Hawt.

Not that I’m breaking my monogamy. I was a good girl and all. But I got to talk about why I am doing this.

Of course it would be lovely fun to have you beat the shit out of my while I scream “Monkey Fucker” again. That was a really good time.

When I’m talking to people who had reasonably good childhoods who went into Leather later in life… it’s weird talking about how I am doing this partially so I can step back and understand why other people react to me the way they do. This is as close as I can get to experiencing “childhood” as other people know it.

Sometimes I sort of think of my approach to parenting as being similar to people who go into monasteries and take vows of silence to really test themselves. My life is hard. It requires a tremendous amount of focus, concentration, and effort to do what I am trying to do. Because my standards are so high with regards to my behavior… it’s a fully time job just managing my emotions. This is my boot camp. These are the only judges I will ever fucking care about and the way I judge is to watch our interactions. A high percentage of our negative interactions are clearly my fault and I work on minimizing the damage I do in presenting negative behaviors.

I never punish my kids for doing something I model. No punishments for swearing. You learned those words from my mouth. Why would I hurt you for listening to me?

The hitting is a thing though. “I’ve never hit you?! Where in the world do you come up with the idea that it is acceptable to solve your problems with your fists? I never taught you that!” That sort of indignation. Sometimes, if they are in the back yard alone… I let them fight it out. I feel guilty but I know that kids who go to school have so many more fights than my kids that I’m maybe doing them a disservice if I never let them practice and learn… I feel deeply conflicted.

And last night I could talk about it and not feel scared that I was going to offend the shit out of people till they will no longer talk to me. I feel scared in the home school group. Best behavior, Krissy!

Relaxing is so nice. It’s nice knowing that I have already changed dramatically on every access and these people still like me and respect me and are glad they know me.

I can’t be doing everything wrong.

Oh, and because I was too chicken shit to say anything about this last night with a stranger: yes, some white people do occasionally get confused for one another. True, that happens. But when that happens it is usually two white people who have some major overall similarities.

When two Asian women who look nothing alike and who are widely diverse in age are treated as interchangeable in a community because all of the six Asian people in the bdsm community are treated like they are interchangeable… maybe white people don’t need to talk about how it’s no big deal. It is alienating and othering. Sorry, white people don’t get put into a little pod and treated like they are all interchangeable. The #knowyournegro and #knowyourasian campaigns were started by small very specific groups of people who are widely treated like they are more or less the same person by a HUGE NUMBER of clueless white people. It’s just kind of different.

If people who are not white are complaining about the fact that they are not recognized as an individual person with their own personality… if you are white… just shut up. Seriously. Don’t try to one up this. It makes you look like an asshat.

Post-therapy

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I was a bitch to my therapist today. I have already apologized. I walked in looking for a fight. I started out the day freaking out.

I’m going to have to deal with this “handwriting makes me feel like an abused child” trigger at some point. I can’t keep freaking out at my kids over it. I will fuck them up.

My therapist voluntarily offered to lower her rate of pay so I can have more babysitting. I really feel bad for being such a bitch today.

We kept having minor misunderstandings about definitions and word choices and I… couldn’t rationally parse them out. I just got defensive and snippy.

I feel hella guilty. And yet if my shrink never sees my bitch-tastic side then… why would she believe me that it exists?

Then I went to a fabulous acupuncture + cupping appointment. First day results are I feel a lot less pain in my neck. I can’t tell much about some of the other stuff. I also went to the gym tonight and did weight training. Like forking everyone has been telling me to do.

I did my forking weight training–ok?!

Looks like I may not make it to Portland this year due to scheduling constraints. That feels like a bummer. But I know extremely busy people. Can’t bitch about people being busy. That’s life.

I guess I’ll just have to run locally. So I don’t forget how. Luckily I’ve picked up an occasional running buddy who lives six miles from my house. And the peasants rejoice: Huzzah.

I got a nasty comment this morning on an older post. I’m not going to look it up again. Something about how my true happiness will be attained through being raped in the butt for days. No, it’s not the first of its kind. I’ve had others. Not a lot. I assume I will get more as the years go by.

Isn’t that how it goes?

Talk about rape: have people tell you that you should be raped. At least I have some snappy come backs: “Already been done! Ha! You are late to the game you slacker!” Err, or maybe not so snappy come backs.

Sigh.

I’m up to 38 books so far this year. I love reading. I think I’m going to try and push myself to hit 52 by June 1st. Only 14 books to go. That is fewer than I read in January. But May is a busier month than January. We’ll see. This year I get to reread. I’m visiting old friends. It is delightful to share their company again.

I think I’ll spend more of that babysitting time reading without disruption. It’s practically a vacation.

My attitude sucks donkey dick and I need to turn it around. I can’t be a cunt all day tomorrow. My free pass expired a while ago. I can’t do this. Be fucking nice, Krissy.

I don’t wanna be nice. I want to hurt people or scream or cry. Something like that. All of those things. Excuse me sir, but may I crack your ribs? I miss hearing that last horrified gasp of pain.

I feel so nasty. My shrink asked if I was up near an anniversary… not really.

I’m just… a bitch. Fuck.

Not a nice person.

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Periodically I see references to the idea that every is a good person from their own point of view. Everyone views themselves as the misunderstood protagonist of their own story. Not me. I think of myself as more like an anti-hero. I am not morally superior. If anything I am inferior.

A long time ago it started to seem to me that being a hero was something that just wasn’t available to people like me. I am certainly a protagonist in my story though I am probably mainly an antagonist in other peoples stories.

As Agatha likes to say, “I can work with that.”

I don’t see a lot of point in working hard to be nice.

If I felt physically threatened I probably wouldn’t call the police I probably would beat the shit out of the person threatening me. I’m not so much with the “lawful good” personality trope.

Ok, the first thing I would do is verbally clear up the fact that this person knows it is a really stupid idea to threaten me. That clears up like 99% of issues without violence.

But it is backed up with the real and serious threat of violence. That means I’m not a nice person. I can work with that.

I’m not going around beating people up for casual insults or for doing things I don’t like. I am too apathetic for such shenanigans.  I will only hurt someone if I believe I must do so for self defense. I have experienced an unusually broad range of conflict from mild verbal to physical fights.

Calli turns four in August. Then we all get to enroll in martial arts. Whee! It will be good for us. Maybe they can teach me more control over my abysmal temper.

The goal isn’t now or ever to be a nice person. I want more control over how and when I am not-nice but that doesn’t mean I want to be a nice person.

What makes someone a “good” person or a “bad” person. Are all soldiers automatically bad because they have the potential to kill? Some of them even have. The ones who do kill people tend to come home totally fucked up.

I’ve never killed anyone. Does that make me a good person? But if someone hurt my babies and I thought the police were going to do nothing… Well I don’t feel real bound by the 10 Commandments anyway.

I’d take that person to the desert. My babies are off limits. The penalty for fucking with them is your life.

Does the fact that I will defend my children make me a good person? If I don’t defend my children am I a good person or a bad person? I would be a non-aggressive person. A passive person.

Mostly I just make sure they aren’t alone with people. Not even for a few minutes. And they know ALL the technical names for their body parts and explicitly that anything covered with panties is *private* and people who touch you there mean you harm when you are a kid.

My kids will not be victims.

And I’m very ok with that meaning that I can’t be a nice person. Ok. No problem. I lost that potential long, long ago anyway. I will be fierce instead.

If I were still trying to be a nice person I think I would be paralyzed with fear. I have too much bad in me that might leak out if I say the wrong thing. I might have to stop talking altogether if I wanted to be “nice”.

The little slice of the world I inhabit isn’t very nice. I think it is funny that so many of these writers know only people who think they are nice. Really? I know a lot of people who would laugh at the idea that they are “nice people”.

My shrink says that people who have had easy lives don’t feel comfortable standing near me and that is a lot of why I know so many people with ridiculous trauma histories. She tries to get me to understand that my view of the world is perhaps a bit skewed.

I know a lot of former childhood prostitutes, male and female. I know a lot of people who have been arrested for violence. I know a lot of rapists. I know a lot of people who beat the shit out of people for fun or money. Not like, mafia beat people up or anything.

I didn’t manage to end up friends with the nice fluffy spank-o-philes who just like a nice spanking. I know the people who want to be cut up with razor blades and long whips and turned completely black and blue from all the terrible bruising.

I broke a bone in a scene and didn’t stop the scene for health care. I stayed tied up for hours. We stayed at the party for a while after the scene before we bothered going to the hospital.

Pain is part of my life in a way it isn’t for most people.

I’ve had two hard pregnancies followed by two hellish labors (One unmedicated for 40 hours the other unmedicated for nine days) and neither was anywhere near as painful as when a large man picked me up by my pectoral muscles and shook me like a dog with a toy.

I thought that feeling was so overwhelming I would completely and totally combust from pain. That is still my personal 11. Nothing has been as painful as that.

And I have pictures from a long and storied relationship before that showing how I worked up to it.

Then the week after the hardest scene ever Noah asked me to marry him. Then things changed.

Let me tell you, there is no way to tell the story of me and Noah without it sounding like a rescue mission. All of these pieces fit together and layer.

My Owner was pretty happy with Noah as a partner for me. He gave me Daddy’s permission to date that nice boy. Even Puppy (a not-nice person I dated in between the times I dated Noah) gave me his blessing when I married Noah.

Pretty much all of my ex’s came to my wedding reception. They were all jolly and happy and very glad to see me with someone who wanted to jump through the hoops they were not fucking interested in jumping through.

I feel lucky. Despite the fact that I am not very nice people still love me. As much as I talk about being a raging asshole… that doesn’t actually come out much any more. It did when I was much younger. It did when I was a kid, a teenager. I had it mostly under control by my twenties and I’m doing really well in my thirties.

I think mean thoughts but I mostly keep them to myself. To people I say the nice things I think. I’ve learned better how to filter them at full speed. Like all skills it has taken a lot of practice.

But I’m still not nice. Because if I need to say mean things in order to create the effect I want to create I will fucking well do that and probably not feel bad for more than a few seconds.

I have no problem with being nasty to racists but I’m working on doing it with slightly lower volume because I dislike having my throat hurt from screaming. See, still not nice.

My children are the best mirrors in the world. Children learn to treat you by watching how you treat the world around you. They don’t do what you say they do what you do. I don’t really want my kids to have to deal with the punishments that come with being a screamer. And clearly we are all screamers. So I have to figure out how to change myself.

I can’t get through this by telling them what they must do without changing me first. That really blows.

A friend commented with dismay when his childling heard the definition of rules-lawyering and was happy. “No! Don’t do that!” I encourage my kids to do it. Without yelling. Without pestering.

The pestering rule is kinda my favorite thing. Persistence is awesome! Pestering is annoying. Asking for something more than three times is pestering and then you don’t get to have whatever it is that day.

Bam.

When my kids ask for something a second time all I have to say is, “That is your second request.”

And they zip up their lips faster than you can say, “Bob’s y’er uncle.”

I get the impression they react pretty much how I react when someone says their version of “You are getting close to a boundary.”

React with glee! They are defining themselves for you! This is a good thing!

When people used to ask me to leave the morning after a pick up I took that as a sign of healthy boundaries and I left happy to know that I hadn’t over stayed my welcome.

I like my house. I like that I am not going to be kicked out. I can make it as weird as I want to. It’s ok. I have permission. I don’t need no fucking permission. Something. Anything. I can do it to my house.

Kind of crazy.

I look at the houses around me and think, “Man we have different aesthetics.” My neighborhood is full of people doing shit to their houses. Some are gentrifying. Some are just doing general maintenance and repairs to the facades they created decades ago. They like the look of it.

My house right now is just one of the shittier ones (from the outside) in the neighborhood. Not quite derelict, but man do we need to do some repainting. Shabby. Not improved upon since the 1950’s.

Meh. I don’t want to spend the money so I ignore it.

We all channel our frustrations in different ways. I have lots of control issues and I’m not a very nice person. Only I can be very nice and very polite and great to talk to.

Isn’t that why sociopaths are so dangerous (not that I’m a sociopath–too much empathy)? They are so charming. I don’t have to be nasty just because I’m not a nice person.

So many layers.

Noah says I’m consistent. I think I have so many special cases that it is weird that he can find consistency.

I think it is much healthier that I now side track onto thinking about home improvement projects rather than sex or being hurt. I know that I will have to make my own status in this life. I inherit nothing positive. People think of me only as a sum of what they can see.

I can get away with whatever I try hard enough to get away with. If I want to have a community I have to go out and fucking meet the people around me and introduce myself and consistently say “Hi” and smile for years.

Having a distinctive yard is helping. “Oh! You did that!” Yup.

Small pond. A very small pond. I want to be a big fish in a very small pond. That’s all I have the spoons for. I know all those other lakes and rivers and oceans exist but they are kinda scary for me. I like my very small pond.

Here everyone walks to the table completely neutral to one another. We have no preconceived associations other than the most gross (meaning large–not necessarily yucky) and general racial and sexual assumptions.

It was just dumb luck. We happened to move to the same neighborhood during the same span of time. Let’s talk.

I have lived here longer than anywhere else in my whole life. I want to know my neighbors the way other people got to get to know their elementary school peers. I want it.

My kids need community. Communities happen when people create them. Just keep doing things.

I’m not a nice person. But I can be quite charming and fun when I put my mind to it. When I try.

This is why I try to limit my time with people to the amount of control I have to give.

I am an angry girl. But I’m not angry with you. And I try hard to differentiate my behavior better than that. You are not a representative sample of your group to be punished for the whole. No one is. No scapegoats here.

We are not a collective. We are a bunch of individuals. That is why change is so hard. It can’t be mass taught or enforced. It has to be lead.

People aren’t willing to dramatically change their opinion in public. That would mean losing face.

Grow the fuck up.

Drips, drabs, ups, and downs.

6 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do?

Oh.

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

And yet I keep hosting. Irony.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m really sorry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Save.

Debt is evil.

Make your money work for you.

Pay yourself first.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks, Pam, for letting me write this morning.

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

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

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

That’s a lesson I can learn.

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

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

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

And then I can stop thinking about it.

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

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

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

3 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I feel so lucky.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will wait until they are teenagers.

Ahem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A) Ignore the mismatch and be a flaming hypocrite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have wanted this my whole life.

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

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

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

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

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

Fuck your self reliance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My life is pretty cool.

Not getting a lot shorter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No big deal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I want them all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

post-therapy: medication

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

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

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

(Thank you Webmd.com.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I consciously and deliberately always specify why a rule exists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that means I frustrate the shit out of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like the Biblical phrase “a house divided”.

Fall. Fall. Fall.

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

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

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

This is big.

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

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

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

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

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

Nope. Not so much.

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, I over think things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Running is so different now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you so much for loving me.

I worry about these bounces.

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We’ve had a very good weekend. I medicated so my mood was better. I worry a lot about how I fuck with medication and go up and down in mood. My shrink confirms for me that the unpredictability of mood swings are some of the most damaging parts of having a parent with mental illness. A parent who is just *depressed* is one thing. A parent who goes up and down with little apparent cause is much harder on a child.

But we’ve had one of those “just another day in paradise” weekends. I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with Noah and the kids. When we get to just be together and we don’t have to get a lot done I am completely and totally sure that my life could not be better. This is what I’ve always wanted. I belong here. I am loved here. I am wanted here. These three people are just about as obsessed with me as I am with them. It’s a mutual admiration society.

We’ve been doing a lot more with neighbors. I am consciously not writing about those experiences despite the fact that I like record keeping. Writing about people is… mixed. Sometimes people don’t mind and are positive or neutral about me writing about them. Sometimes I upset people and I really don’t mean to. I don’t feel like it is safe to talk about people right now. It would hurt too much if my current connections blew up. I can’t absorb another big loss right now.

The biggest pull back going on in my life right now has been honestly discussed and a frame work has been put around it. I respect and support all of the reasons for the pull back so I have to just live with my feelings of terror. No one can take those away from me.

I’m scared of the future. I have so little control.

But what I know for sure is that I had a really great weekend with my family. I feel loved and wanted and supported by the three people in this house. My kids are getting big enough that sometimes they will say, “What could I do to make your day a little easier?” If I tell them a chore they go do it in order to bask in the glow of my gratitude. They do it because I ask them similar questions and do similar sorts of work for them.

I’m hoping that the fact that I usually can talk about my mood swings in advance before I snap will mitigate the damage I do.

All parents damage their children. I am told this over and over by people who are much wiser than me.

I apologize for my moodiness. I acknowledge that it isn’t their fault. If I say something in a nasty way I will apologize and try again. “I am sorry that came out really hostile and you haven’t done anything at all to provoke hostility. I’ll try again.”

Today I believe that I am doing ok. I’m never going to nominate myself for mother-of-the-year. My kids are happy, healthy, able to adapt to a wide variety of situations and people, and they are learning about as fast as I can put material in front of them.

We’re doing ok. Even if it isn’t the same path as everyone else. There isn’t actually a monolithic path any way. We are all doing our own thing.

I talked to a new-to-homeschooling mom recently. She said she was researching and she felt very unsure about which direction to head in terms of unschooling vs. curriculum. I said, “Don’t worry about picking a label. Do what works for your family and be prepared to try something different every year if you have to and let your labels come after the fact. Labels should be descriptive and not prescriptive. Don’t pick a label and then force yourself to make those choices.”

I say that even though I’m pretty married to unschooling. Not radical unschooling. Not Unschooling. We are unschoolers. I don’t believe that learning fits in a nice pre-ordered box. We learn all the time and we take our sources from sometimes unorthodox locations and I think that is more or less the right way to go through life. But I understand that sometimes you have to jump through hoops and I’ve been able to do enough of it for myself that I’m satisfied I understand the process.

I’m going to spend February editing. I hope to ship it off to a friend to edit by June. I should probably negotiate with her. Ha. She told me to my face she was interested in working with me and given that I plan to pay her I don’t think it will be a hard sell. She’s a professional and all. This time I’m picking an editor who has written and edited a lot of books and run a publishing company. I hope that I do better with the next round of editing process.

It has been a good weekend. I ordered a toddler back carrier. Shanna and I want to walk farther than Calli can manage and my arms go numb holding her. I found a spiffy one more appropriate to her very large size. I only had little baby carriers before. This has a very high back. More supportive and safe and all. It’ll be good to wear her again.

It’s interesting how regressing stuff works. Sometimes they are so clingy. And I soothe them and hold them and talk to them and then eventually they want to run away again. I’m home base.

I have wanted this feeling for my whole life.

Please love me.

It’s hard that the intensity of their love sometimes feels like it is drowning me. People are not meant to raise children alone in nuclear families. It is not right or normal for our species. Children should have a tribe. They should have a wide variety of adults they spend time with so they can find out more about the world-that-is-not-their-parents. I’m doing the best I can. I’m trying like fuck not to drive away the people who know my children.

I can’t always invite. I’m sorry. I think it is pretty ridiculous how often I cry because I miss people I could call and invite over. They would probably say yes. But I can’t invite them because they might say no and that would hurt so very badly. I can’t handle a no. So I can’t ask for a yes.

I think that is part of why I throw parties. If someone tells me no for that at least I can tell myself that they didn’t want the crowd. I can take the no. It is less of a personal rejection.

I feel so scared. How long can I manage to be good enough for my kids? Am I good enough? Who is going to even notice if I start fucking up? Will my kids be left to the mercy of me self-reporting on the internet to get intervention on their behalf? (I’m paranoid so I ask professionals and I’m told I haven’t done anything that merits a CPS call. I ask, “Are you sure? I’m not very nice.” Sometimes they snicker and then tell me about their problem cases. Ok. I’m pretty nice.)

I don’t know if I am teaching codependence or healthy interdependence. I’ve not had a lot of healthy interdependence. But I believe in it as a concept. I’m fucking trying.

Sometimes I wonder what I will be like when I grow up. I’m very much using this time as my incubation period. I’m not grown up yet. Maybe by 60? Heh.

Sometimes I think it is confusing when people talk with horror about aging as if it were a bad thing. Childhood was terrible. I want as far away from it as possible. I was 29 once. I want to move on. I want something different.

My early teens and 20’s were spent in a masochistic/self harming/promiscuous blur. I’m ready for something different.

But when I see girls like me who get up and out of all that they stop talking about their perspective. They learn to pass and I’m not trying for that. Not really. I don’t want to pass. Or I’d stop telling people that my culture of origin is poor white trash.

It’s time for dinner.

Under promise; over deliver.

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About six years ago I started seeing a guy for massages. A few months into knowing one another I said, “We are more ‘friendly acquaintances’ than ‘friends'” and he took that as a challenge. He’s been showing up at my house once or twice a month ever since. He helped me remodel my garage back when he had two days a week off instead of one. Now that he works six days a week he can only handle shorter visits and I wouldn’t dream of imposing physical labor on him. That’s what friendship means. Seeing one another’s limits.

Yesterday he said that he and his wife have been talking about what they have to offer me in terms of support because clearly I could use some. He said that he was not sure that he could make any type of permanent commitment, the most they could consider was maybe five years or until the WWOOF year since that’s six years away. I countered with the fact that I probably would not be able to trust a longer than three months at a time commitment. We will keep talking. We’ll see.

So I have been pretty sober lately (I took medication this morning because if I wake up at 3am sobbing it’s going to be a day) and that means the return of dreaming. I’m really sorry I’m dreaming again.

My mom used to forget to pick me up from school. In her defense I didn’t always live with her so it’s not like I was a day-in-day-out responsibility for 18 years and she oops forgot in the middle of that. It was pretty common for me to sit in front of school until dinnertime because that was when she thought of me. One memorable day involved sitting there till bedtime. Sometimes, in some places, a principal would come and sit with me and wait. I always knew we would move soon after that happened because my mom didn’t appreciate the principal’s nasty look.

I woke up thinking about my sister. She would shove me or hit me or knock me down. By the time I was eight or nine I would tell her, “If you hit me I will call 1-800-4-a-child and report you for abusing me.” This would result in hours of her screaming at me. There were lots of variations but the basic thread was that I was a stupid bitch and a cunt and she would show me what real fucking abuse was if I didn’t fucking watch myself.

For a while I asked some friends if we could have dinner once a month. I was slightly pestering. I asked repeatedly over a many month time frame. I was told “Oh yes oh yes”. Then my emails didn’t get returned. I started asking more than six months ago and it hasn’t happened yet. I don’t think I will ask again.

My bestie keeps talking about wanting to move out of the area. I’m having trouble containing my feelings when she does this. I understand that my role as her friend is one of support and it isn’t ok for me to tell her she can’t move if that is what is right for her. My job will be to help her pack and wish her well and keep in touch. If I lose out on most of the support I have in the process that is my problem and not hers. That is how life works.

I feel really pathetic for needing help and support. This is why I’m trying to get to know the neighborhood teenagers. They are more likely to still be around in a few years and I won’t take it personally when they want to move on in life.

I think I overly internalized the friend who dumped me for being a drug addict because of the pot. I mean, he was just building on my lifelong hatred of all of my family members. The only drug I ever saw them do was pot. So I attributed all of the behavior issues and problems to pot and I hated it with a passion until well into my mid 20’s. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I kind of “figured out” that the behavior problems were because of the meth and coke and crack and crank and whatever other names you want to use. I don’t even know which of those things are “the same” but I know that they are all words I heard in my home as a child. I just didn’t understand what they meant.

I tried pot because a friend told me to. Pot is the only thing that has ever broken through the repetitive negative thoughts. Pot seems to be the only way I don’t go through my day whispering “worthless whore” to myself over and over. I wish I could end the repetitive negative self-talk.

When people tell me “I want to come over, how about x day” and then they don’t come… it just builds on my sense that I am worthless. For my own self-protection I need to not try with those people any more. Even if that makes me feel bad and like I am abandoning people.

I feel horrible guilt that my spoon level requires that I only know people right now who are capable of under promising and over delivering. That is the only way I can know that I am not going to have to suddenly compensate for what feels like people lying to me.

I understand that people “didn’t mean to”.

I have to be nice to my kids all day every day. It doesn’t matter what other people mean. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Which results in an awful lot of my friends feeling like they can’t reach out or offer anything to me at all. Because they can’t PROMISE and so they feel that what they have to offer is worthless.

Man it seems like all we are going to do is fuck each other up.

This is part of that “I am toxic waste and will hurt everyone around me” thing.

I appreciate the people who are telling me not to go off my meds. I appreciate that people who show up at my house and actually watch me interact with my children over prolonged periods of time tell me that I should be medicated. Honestly not as much the other kind of people. Sharing that you think you are better because you medicate and you suspect it is true of me is different than telling me what to do. (K–you totally nailed it.) Splitting hairs is what I do.

If what you mean to say isn’t being heard how you mean it then you need to be willing to adapt your message for a different audience. That is what communication is about.

I’m kind of good at that and kind of shitty. Embrace the dichotomy. Resiliency is based on opposing traits. I hear. From “experts”. Psh. Who gives a shit. I am not actually all that impressed with science. Go look at meta-science about research. It’s all crap. But it’s all we have.

There’s a Carsie Blanton song about that: All We Got.

(Did it work?)

I spend a lot of time every day being grateful for Noah. He grew up with a level of mental illness I will hopefully never reach. It taught him a lot about not looking to other people for his reality. It taught him that he might have to actually defend himself from people who want to hurt him. And yet his dad is still there. Fully committed until one of them dies.

When you say “for better or worse” no one promises that there will be more better than worse.

Living with Noah isn’t always perfect. He pisses me off sometimes. But he is consistently kind and generous with me. He meets his commitments. He’s sure not to commit to something he can’t do.

I think I will get mad at every person who is ever in my life. Anger is how I find my boundaries. It isn’t the most ideal reaction–yeah I fucking know. But Noah has earned a lot of trust from me.

He pisses me off, but when I figure out that I’m angry I can walk away and defuse my anger and come back and negotiate calmly (ok my tone may not be perfect) and there can be a resolution. And he won’t agree to something he can’t do. We find a way to reach something we can both live with. Then he fucking does what he says.

It’s…

When he does fuck up it usually makes him feel worse than me. And at this point the fuck ups are at the level of “I thought we had the ingredients for _____ meal but we don’t.” Uhhh, I can live with that. It’s my fault we ran out anyway because I didn’t bother going to the grocery store.

Oh man. I can feel the medication now. Thank g-d. Arms hurt.

It just occurred to me that I have a ‘brother’ tag and a ‘daddy’ tag and a ‘mother’ tag… but nothing for my sister. I think I’m still afraid of her. She doesn’t live that far away from me. She knows where I live (err, if she is capable of remembering). She uhh consorts with undesirable folks. To be an uppity piece of shit about it.

Kids are up.

Sensitivity

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I don’t think that I am “responsible” for how other people feel. I don’t think I can “make” them feel comfortable or uncomfortable all by myself. This is a collaborative sort of dance.

That said, I take it very seriously when friends point out areas where I am making them feel uncomfortable. “I was just joking” brush offs are an easy way for conflict-avoidant people to state their issues without having to get into a full scale conflict. I get that people don’t want conflict with me. I’m annoying as fuck. Not only do I fight like the devil but I am incredibly defensive and prone to act like people are attacking me when they aren’t. Not an awesome situation.

So I try hard to pay attention to the fact that people who love me a lot are generally people who have worked hard at avoiding conflict with me. I only have one or two pro-conflict close friends. Mostly my closest friends are people who are willing to learn how to deal with what a special-fucking-snowflake I am. Noah says I take an unusual amount of energy to get to know. I believe him.

I worry. If you’ve read more than 100 words I’ve written you already know that. I worry about just about everything. I *really* worry about whether or not I am behaving in a way that is sensitive and respectful of the people around me. It may not seem that way to other people, because when I fail I fail big-time, but I swear I am working hard at tact and being kind to people who have different boundaries.

I wish that I just got to declare that my behavior was awesome and that everyone who interacts with me should feel comfortable and safe.

I don’t get to decide that. As a white person for me to *ever* declare that someone who is not white must accept my behavior… yeah no. That’s just not on. If I were a male I would think that was an additional strike against me. It may not be fair but life rarely is.

Do I get to decide that white people must accept my behavior? Oh heck no. But I think I have slightly more familiarity with the ways in which a white person is likely to take offense. I guess correctly slightly more often. Not usually and not most of the time but slightly more.

The older I get the more I appreciate that religion plays a big part in how people perceive my behavior. I didn’t understand that as a kid. Some religions are ok with people being obnoxious and questioning. Some religions not so much.

I can’t control what other people believe or think or feel. But I try really hard to examine what I am doing when they give me clues into what they are feeling or thinking. I’m trying to detect patterns that I can influence. Influence is very different from control.

I live in a time and a place in history where being sensitive to the needs of people who are not-your-race is important for everyone. I believe with all of my soul that it is most important for people who have privilege to struggle with understanding people who have less privilege. I think it is not always the responsibility of people on the bottom to be sensitive to those poor rich people. Or white people. Or whatever.

Privilege is a multi-faceted and complicated beast. I think that privilege comes in a kaliedoscope of colors. There is racial privilege, socio-econommic privilege, the privilege of having social connections, being neurotypical or not, ableism, sex privilege (which both genders have their own kinds of privilege) and I think the intersection matters a lot.

I can sit there and draw out diagrams for where I think I have privilege and where my friends have privilege. I’ve thought about it obsessively for years. Partially I’ve been trying to figure out why some things are easier for me and some things are easier for them. Partially I’ve been trying to figure out which behaviors are linked to which life experiences so that I can better plan out how to treat my kids and my friends.

I’m trying to fake how to be someone who has always had privileges I’ve never had. That’s really complicated sometimes.

For me, paying attention to how I make people of other races feel is absolutely vital and part of my learning-to-not-be-a-schmuck process. But talking about it makes people feel uncomfortable. Welcome to my catch 22. (Which I’ve never read.)

I’m deeply grateful that my friend felt comfortable enough to tell me that discomfort was experienced. That’s brave and hard. Then I go and write about it and make it all difficult and uncomfortable. Because I’m awesome.

If I want my house to be safe I need to figure out what that means. For one thing some people are ok being written about and some people not so much. I am crossing my fingers that this one doesn’t blow up in my face.

I don’t think I want to try to have a party in December again. I think that in the future I will shoot for January after people have caught up on sleep.

Part of that is honestly so I can shape the guest list more carefully. Lots of people were traveling.

There is this careful balance to walk. I can’t pressure POC to come to my parties because that is creepy, weird, and not so cool. But I feel like it would be smart to try and plan in advance around the schedules of people I want to have at the parties. And if I want my non-white friends to feel comfortable that means asking some point blank scheduling questions of only my POC friends. Which makes me feel weird and racist and like I am courting them as exotic pets.

I would not consciously schedule a party so I could have more white people present so it feels rather uncomfortable to schedule a party so I can have more POC present. But that may be the only way to tip the attendance balance so that people don’t feel like tokens.

I’m not sure what the right answer is. I’m afraid that when it comes to dealing with issues around race I am going to lose no matter what I do. “Hey can you make sure you come to my party so my friends can see that I know more than one person who looks like you.” Wow. That’s an asshole move on every level.

But just inviting people and hoping for the best is questionable too. Sometimes that will mean that my events are more than 90% white.

I suppose it matters what my goals really are. Is my goal to be able to show off once a year that I know a diverse group of people? Not really. Who am I showing off to? The other people at the party? My white friends aren’t impressed and if that was my goal my friends who aren’t white aren’t impressed with me either. Because man that’s a shitty goal to have.

On a specific level I have the goal that my children will grow up having long-term intimate relationships with people of widely divergent cultures and races. That is a goal I feel more comfortable having. That’s less about impressing anyone and more about teaching my kids that people have more similarities than differences so look to anyone standing near you for relationships. Just love people. That I feel very much like I am accomplishing. My kids spend a large percentage of their time with other people around people who don’t look just like them. They see a lot of adults of various races on a regular basis. They interact with a lot of families of various religions and creeds. I feel good about teaching them to respect a lot of kinds of people.

I feel like I am walking my talk with my children. I am not doing a perfect job of teaching them about people of diverse lineage but I’m doing ok and they walk up to every kid at the playground and ask to play. They reach out to people whenever they get the chance no matter how that person looks. Ok. That’s a specific parenting goal met.

It is hard to figure out what being sensitive to my friends means. I am literally not capable of making everyone comfortable at the same time because people have conflicting needs.

But you pick your priority list and you go with it. You do the best you can. If I am making this particular person feel anything other than welcome and like (s)he belongs then I need to change something.

And at the same time I don’t want to start inviting people to my parties or not based on race. But what if inviting more people who are not white and *not* inviting so many white people is the only way to make some people comfortable.

It’s true and valid. Just like some women will never be comfortable interacting with some of my male friends and I have to decide who to invite because I can have one person or the other.

First I will eventually stop pontificating and I will ask my friend for feedback after these blog entries have been read. I’m sure this person will come up with something to say. That’s usually something I can count on. Lots of opinions from that one.

I think that as a white person it is never ok for me to just default to “I’m ok and you have the problem”. That is just not an acceptable starting position. Beyond that I really struggle with knowing what the next right step is.

I have a limited amount of control over who shows up at my parties and I have even less control over the feelings of the people who come.

But I want to be sensitive to the idea that I could do something better. I could make people feel more comfortable if I tweaked ______.

Yes, my dear blacksheep, part of it is learning to care less and be more like a honey badger. I’m not sure that I am that kind of girl, you know? I’ve been taking apathy enhancement drugs for years now. I still care too much. I still care so much I can barely breathe sometimes.

I want the people I love to feel loved and supported and like I think the world (and this room) is a better place when they are in it. If I am communicating something else then I need to work on that.

It is hard to nudge people in the direction of feeling loved when you are as basically hostile as I am. I cause people to feel unsafe and nervous. I get it.

It’s kind of like my continued fondness for a man who has been blacklisted from all of the local events. He’s a predator. I still like him. I understand him and have compassion for him and I know how to play his game like a pro. The other women I know just want to pretend he doesn’t exist because his game doesn’t work for them. He means well.

It doesn’t matter what you feel it matters how you make other people feel. The best predators know how to induce feelings of calm and safety in their prey. Sometimes I feel tremendous guilt for the attitude that just about everyone in the world is prey and I’m a mean and nasty predator.

Only there isn’t much I want from people these days. I’m not hunting for anything other than positive regard. I don’t want to be anyone’s favorite (well, other than Noah) but I want people to think I am basically a net positive for the world.

I want people to think that talking to me makes them feel good about themselves. I want to help people to feel brave about making choices. I want to help people feel like they can stand up for themselves.

If I’m making you feel like a token, tell me so. If I make you feel like you are just something on a checklist “Make a friend who is brown” then I am not making you feel like you are important. I’m failing to do the stuff that is so important to me.

I need that feedback. Without being told that my current approach is failing it is hard for me to know.

It is hard hearing criticism. I won’t lie. I’m obviously very defensive.

(I still had a wonderful party and I don’t feel like this is a depressing/bad train of thoughts. I’m nervous and a little sad but I still have a lot of happy endorphins from seeing so many people. I talked to a lot of people and didn’t freak out so I’m proud of myself.)

But if you want to be consciously anti-racist you have to look at what that means. If you are not part of the solution you are part of the precipitate.

Don’t quit. Don’t decide you are obviously a worthless bad person because someone had enough feelings to make a joke. But think about what you will do differently next time to encourage more people to feel more comfortable.

Progress. Not perfection. Keep trying. That’s the whole point of life.