Category Archives: love

Wonderful Christmas

This was a great holiday. The kids did a little bit of fighting and I responded with “Be nice or be silent” and the day went fine. I don’t pull that card very often. But once in a while I’m willing to do so. I have to follow that rule most of the time so I don’t see a reason to not-share it.

We went for a walk and passed out Christmas presents to our friend-neighbors. We sang Christmas carols while we walked.

Noah made lots of wonderful food, including snickerdoodles. Because I’m eating wheat and dairy.

At this point I’m off-leash and my poop is varying but pretty acceptable. I wonder how long I will keep tracking. I still have the book going. Well, I am avoiding the high FODMAP fruits and vegetables still, but I’m on wheat and dairy and eggs and I’m pooping well.

I’m really wondering about the fasting. There is interesting science around the body needing breaks once in a while. Dinno.

Something that I should pay more attention to: the best days of my life are days when I’m with Noah and the kids alone. I can handle those expectations. I feel the least anxiety. I feel tired sometimes, but I feel like I’m ok.

My kids show no signs that they are being hurt by growing up with me. They are happy and healthy individuals. I can’t be all bad.

But when I deal with other people I never know when all of a sudden I will be bad and scary and a problem.

My lawyer wants me to work on feeling indignant that I am being forced to go to court for the “crime” of writing a date on a piece of paper forcefully. I’m really good at indignance in defense of other people and not so much in defense of myself.

My next therapy session will be interesting. I latched onto a few phrases from the last session and I am going to have to bring them up in a very soft tone of voice or she will get huffy. Even though I’m supposed to use the word “scoffed” in court instead of huffy I don’t think my shrink will scoff. I think she gets a little impatient and huffy. The implication of “You like being this way” and “You refuse to change” really bother me from a therapist.

I may not be changing at the rate you would like to see but it is absolute horse pucky to say I’m not changing.

The reversion to suicidal impulse is fucking annoying. I get it. I don’t know how to stop feeling like I am bad and I am going to hurt people so I should die for the good of the herd. It’s a pervasive problem. (Santa brought me a cool book Crazy Like Us about how America is exporting its mental health problems onto the rest of the world. The information on PTSD and depression was fascinating.)

It was interesting reading about how American big Pharma companies consciously tries to change national character through marketing. The Japanese, (apparently, according to this book) don’t have a hugely negative attitude towards suicide, well at least traditionally. It was seen as something that people sometimes feel they need to do.

Man that would be a different culture. I live with the feeling that the best thing I could do for my community would be to stop being a waste of resources AND the feeling that anyone who would kill themselves is a lame, weak, disgusting piece of shit. I love my country. Or something.

I read a lot of nasty, hysterical, awfulness written about people who commit suicide. I’m curious. Whoa. People really hate that others sometimes get out of being in pain before they think it should be allowed.

But, I didn’t have suicidal impulses yesterday. I had a great day. I was with my family. Calli asked once if we were “really done” opening presents and I said,”Given that you have been opening them all month, yes–that’s enough.” She looked sad for about a minute then she moved on to playing and having fun.

Truly this was a mellow and happy Christmas. It wasn’t a screaming, crying, sobbing kind of holiday. It almost didn’t feel like a holiday because there was so little misery.

I think I should remember this lesson in the future. Even though I wish I had a larger family, constructing one is a complicated process at which I do not excel. Other people can build large chosen families and feel ok. I don’t seem to be capable. But I do ok with my husband and kids. I can handle that level of building a family. It seems to be all I have to give.

Man I spent some time being mad at Noah last night for having a vasectomy though. My hormone cycle is wicked. I want a baby so bad. I didn’t yell or act mean. But I had feelings. I think it is utterly bizarre that I went from being basically a sex addict to being pissed that more of my sex life isn’t procreational.

Hormones are weird. Weird. Weird.

It isn’t like I actually want to get pregnant right now. I want to leave on a trip in six months. Not a great time to get pregnant. And trying to talk Noah into a kid after the trip wouldn’t work. The age gap would be way too big. I don’t want a 6/8 year gap. That went so badly for me as a kid. My window of having babies is over.

I’m a little bitter. Ok, a lot bitter. But if that is the only upset I feel on Christmas it is still a good day. That is a wacky unconscious hormonal thing. That’s evolution being a pain in the ass.

I love you Noah. You make such wonderful children. I wish I got to meet a whole bunch more of them. Sometimes some of my two-children friends want me to share criticism of large family sizes. I can’t even bash the Duggars. If I could bear the children I would love them. I just understand I can’t take care of them. And physically I would die. Not everyone is capable of having lots of children. We are doing great that so many women stay alive through childbearing these days. I’d be a statistic. And then poor Noah would be hosed.

So it’s going to be a small Christmas forever. But it was so nice. I had a lot of fun. I felt a lot of joy. I was very very glad to be there. I have a family. They like me and love me. I am so very blessed.

Tone is absent

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For the record, I thought “Ha, ha, ha, no” was hilarious. Pam said it was really sad. Oh. Whoops. This is why I have no future as a funny writer. I think it is pretty funny how out of commission I am for sex. (For the record, my ankle only hurts when I’m sitting cross-legged and my foot is pushed sideways. It no longer hurts when I’m sitting in a chair or when I’m walking. Some improvement!)

I went to the grocery store with a FODMAPS shopping list and sauntered through Whole Paycheck practically kicking my heels together. I have so many new options!!! Nothing like extreme deprivation to make you think mild deprivation is awesome. (That’s a for-real-studied-phenomena. If you really get to thinking your life sucks. Take a deprivation vacation and you’ll think your life is awesome when you go back to it.) FODMAPS allows many types of cheeses and low-lactose yogurt and raw milk is probably fine so it barely feels like dairy restriction. No cream cheese or sour cream. Big whoop.

It also helps that Whole Paycheck can accommodate any weird food limitation/need so I was reminded that if you are rich you can eat no matter how annoying your body is. I constantly have feelings about that. I’ve been talking to a lot of the moms in the home school group about body-issues. Many have issues in the same league as mine even if they aren’t exactly the same and… they just can’t afford to follow what they know is “appropriate” for their body. They literally cannot buy the food.

I am so lucky at this stage of my life. My privilege comes from Noah. And I didn’t earn it. And I’m not better than anyone else. And I don’t deserve it more than anyone. I just have it.

I don’t know how to live with it. I mean, I’m living with it. But I don’t know how to be… sensitive? Appropriate? Not an asshole? I don’t know. I don’t have rich people skills.

Rich people and poor people talk about money differently. Not long ago I was talking to one of the wealthier moms and she mentioned that she was interested in buying a set of camping dishes like the set we had. I told her, “How funny because I think I’m getting rid of the set we have because it is too hard to pack due to size–want it?” She offered to pay me.

When poor people hand stuff to their friends, it is rare to expect payment (unless someone starts out saying “I want to sell ____” the expectation is that when you hand stuff off… you hand it off) but with wealthier people I notice that they often offer to pay for things. They want to feel less beholden.

I give things to friends a lot. I donate a lot of things. I don’t do a lot of reselling my stuff any more. Partially because I feel like a leech. I could extract money from the women around me when I have extra stuff, but most of the stuff came to me for free. I have plenty of money and extra. Why should I sell things under those circumstances? It seems… like the reason people hate rich white people. I have extra. I don’t need to wring pennies from people for my cast-off stuff.

But if I needed the money more I’d have no shame about selling stuff. I did it when Noah made a lot less money and there was more of a gap in the budget.

I just… I’m in a weird position and I don’t know how to handle it. I feel awkward when people give me a break financially. Last night the server didn’t charge me extra for the gluten free bread even though she was supposed to. I pointed it out to her. The guy on the Christmas tree lot undercharged me and I pointed it out to him. People are always shocked when I say, “Hey. You undercharged me. This is supposed to be +$10 and you didn’t get what you are supposed to get. Here.” Often they try hard to talk me out of giving them the additional money.

I don’t want to take from people. I don’t need the charity any more. Save your charitable impulses for someone who needs it, they will be along soon. I’m glad you want to be nice and all. If you don’t want me to pay for mine, can I pay for the next persons so you can let them have the benefit?

I owe the world something. I leapfrogged up the ladder so hard and so far that I need to not be selfish about landing where I land. I don’t need to act “deserving”. I need to be humble. Pride means it all goes away. I am so influenced by all the time I spent reading the Bible. (I’ve read that bastard cover to cover. Many parts of it I read many times.)

I spend time talking about the people in my life. I talk to my shrink, my other friends, Noah… I talk about the people in my life. I talk about my feelings and what my behavior should be. I’m not a huge fan of the golden rule (treat others as you want to be treated) I like the platinum rule (treat others as they want to be treated) but that takes a lot of thinking and work and making mistakes and trying other tactics. It takes processing.

One of my friends said something interesting to me about a situation I’m struggling with. She said, “Maybe she needs to not think about the road not taken. Maybe she needs to forget that they exist.” That was kind of startling for me. I… I’m not capable of not thinking about the road not taken. I’m completely fucking obsessed. I’m always in the mode of preparing for additional options. Other people… they don’t work that way.

Lots of people get through their days by putting their heads down and not acknowledging that there are other options possible. That’s how they endure.

I’m sort of vaguely aware of this. I have book learnin’ that tells me this is so. I think it is so fucking weird. But I try to understand people. I try to understand why this works so well for people. I don’t get it. I really don’t. But whether I get it or not, I can clearly see that it is the coping method of choice for many people. Oh. Yeah, that’s probably part of what is going on in that situation over there. Yeah, I would be quite distressing under those circumstances. Whoops. Crap.

I had a different conversation with a different friend about how we can manage our interesting overlapping PTSD triggers. I like treating these things like they matter and will take work. That way I don’t just hurt someone and then tell them to go away when we have overlapping issues.

Today I have lots of babysitting time and no ability to do outside work. I think today is a day for me to work on getting my book out to publishers. I have eight hours of babysitting today (in split shifts with more than one person) so I should be able to get some work done. That will be exciting. I haven’t made book progress in many months. I completely stalled.

Other than book stuff I can’t think of much I have to do today. The storm cancels out the majority of the tasks sitting here waiting for me. (There are many things I need to do… most of them are outside. Like putting together the travel trailer. I bought it then got really sick and haven’t had the physical strength to go move around the huge pieces of metal alone. I’ll get back to it. Damnit.)

I have made contact with a nutritionist who was recommended by a friend. She’s in Chico. She gave me contact information for people in Oakland and Berkeley. Someday some interesting people will move to Fremont. That day hasn’t come yet. Well… I’m here…

Another friend passed along contact information for a doctor who could help me out with fecal transplant, I just have to get to Portland, Oregon. (I do that pretty regularly.)

Being rich changes things. “Just suffer” isn’t really the same sort of situation. I have options that exist in the world. There are more things to try… if you have time and money. It feels crazy to me.

I want to talk to a nutritionist because I don’t really understand what the symptoms of having specific food problems look like. I was told yesterday that if dairy doesn’t give me horrible smelling gas I almost certainly don’t have dairy problems and I should reintroduce it to give myself more variety. (The person who said this has been to college for a medical degree so I’m less snotty about her telling me her opinion on this sort of thing than I could be.)

Why do I go back and forth between believing people with medical degrees more and hating them so much? Because it feels like they have the knowledge to help me it is just whether or not they think I am actually worth thinking about. I’m a hard puzzle. I’m work to figure out. They went to school to help them learn how to figure out puzzles like me. Most of them have decided that I’m too much trouble and I should be silenced. “Just eat more cereal” is a silencing sort of answer.

When someone tries everything they can think of and it all fails… I don’t get mad in the same way. I’m sad, but grateful they tried. I understand that different methods work for different people. I’m ok with the knowledge that some of the things I try will fail. I’m not ok with the feeling that the doctors don’t care very much and aren’t willing to try very hard. When someone isn’t willing to try very hard I hate them and hate them and hate them and hate them. I hate them with all the fury I normally reserve for my mother and father.

Because they don’t love me enough to try. Big theme.

My needs are too big. So they just aren’t worth trying to meet. Ok.

I have several tabs open on my Chrome screen for doctors I will call in January. That’s when I get my new insurance information. My neighbor has had a nightmarish journey over the past few years on her journey to a diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis. Her husband said she found a great gastroenterologist in town and I’m going to try talking to the woman. Worth a try. I’ll talk to the nutritionist in Chico (and hell, maybe the one in San Diego my other friend recommended). I’ll talk to the poop-transplant-doctor in Portland.

Because that is what privilege gives you. The ability to pay for the time of professionals. Sometimes it feels crazy.

I am very grateful that I get to keep trying things. That is such an unbelievable gift. That is hope all wrapped up in a shiny wrapping with a string.

I got to wake up and eat a cheese stick this morning. There is still hope.

Find gratitude

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I have 70,282 thoughts that are kind of whiny.

Today I am grateful for my friends. A former student came over today and visited for a while. She taught Shanna how to play some video games. We talked for hours. She is reading Outrunning Suicide slowly. She says she desperately wishes she could have read it at 12.

My husband continues to jump through a series of flaming hoops so I can eat despite all kind of ridiculous changing metrics. There are not enough words of gratitude in existence.

Lately Shanna has developed a habit that pleases me so much I shiver when she does it. When I manage to choke off yelling at her and take a deep breath and explain why I’m upset about something in a reasonable voice she says, “Oh. I didn’t know that. Thank you for telling me.” She has this clear, piping little voice. It makes me feel like any amount of work for that child is worth it.

Callidora says, “Can I tell you something?” Then she asks a question and I giggle every time.

I am very glad for my life.

Also: gluten/dairy free apple pie is totally low fiber so I had it for lunch. See, I’m totally “healthy”.

The lucky ones, Miss Piggy, and taking turns.

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I drove to therapy this morning alone. Alone time in the car is pretty fun these days. One of the songs was Taylor Swift’s The Lucky Ones and I spent a bunch of time thinking about it. In order to be one of “the lucky ones” you have to be compared to other people, who are less lucky by comparison. Noah spends a lot of time telling me that people aren’t happy or sad on an absolute scale they are happy or sad compared to the people near them.

I’m kind of a miserable son of a bitch. I spend a lot of time feeling shitty and miserable and like my life is shit. Which is demonstrably not true. I know a fair number of single people (of both genders or no particular gender at all) who haven’t found anyone in the world who validates them the way that Noah and my kids validate me.

I *am* one of the lucky ones. I have two children who are perfectly suited to my desires from children. They are plucky, ambitious, cheerful, talkative, and very affectionate. Pretty much what I would have designed if I had been able to sit down with paper and decide what kind of kids I would have.

And then there is Noah. I feel like a serious schmuck sometimes because of how unworthy I feel about Noah. Noah is a good partner. Like, whoa good. He is cheerful and encouraging and loving and so ridiculously sweet to me. I feel so much gratitude that there is someone on this planet who loves me so much. I don’t see many people with a similar level of unconditional love and support. I truly am one of the lucky ones.

It is hard changing my self perception. It was accurate that the first 25 years of my life weren’t great. I didn’t have the worst early life in history. I didn’t have anything near one of the best early lives. It was a life. It was hard. So when I think of my life being shitty, it is entirely past tense. My life isn’t shitty any more.

That leads me to this idea of finding hope. My life isn’t shitty any more and it probably will never reach the point of being that shitty again. I am going to have bad days. I am going to have bad experience. I may even experience more trauma (the world is like that) but forever and ever amen I am not in the position I was in. I am always going to be one of the lucky ones. That is weird.

I feel really weird because so much of it feels like a gift Noah bestowed on me. I’m his rescue project. Ew, ick, yuck. (For the record he doesn’t seem to appear to think of me this way. You can tell who thinks of you as being “lower” socially or in need of “rescue”. Noah doesn’t talk to me like that.)

Even when I’m being incredibly irrational, Noah treats it like one state of being. It is one way I act. It isn’t the only way I act. Sometimes I am even highly rational. He treats those times as being more important.

I was thinking recently how unfair it is that Noah has to be supportive of me so much of the time in comparison to how much support I give him. It occurred to me, while watching The Muppet Christmas Carol, that I am uhm, kind of Miss Piggy like with my affection for Noah. It has to be all ME ME ME ME ME ME until I notice that he has an issue and then I flatten him with my desire to be “supportive”. This was not a flattering self-understanding.

Noah has told me that I want him to be obsessed with me. I’m willing to bet that is true. I do. I want him to care and care and care and be interested and fascinated and I want him to not get bored with me even though I’m repetitive.

A long time ago we agreed that we would take turns having bad days. We each believe that it is our responsibility to carry 100% of the relationship. That way when someone falls down it doesn’t feel like they aren’t doing their share. I like to believe I provide a little of this experience for Noah. I know it is a fucking lie–I don’t support him like he supports me. I’m really sensitive to this whole “being a dependent” thing. But he doesn’t expect me to do much and I treat him doing things around the house like a gift.

The secret to happiness is low expectations. If Noah expects me to do just about nothing and instead I do more like 45% of the work–I don’t seem as bad! In comparison, on weeks when Noah does no cooking nor any cleaning… I can’t find it in my heart to be mad at him. He does so much work that I have to smile and say, “That’s ok. I’ll do it this time.”

I believe in setting people up for being successful. We have carefully created a life where we are each likely to seem successful to the person we are standing nearest–partially because we carefully set up what it means to be “successful”. We are both big on giving direction, “I would really love it if you _______”. I appreciate that he has worked really hard on being able to say things to me–even when it is hard and he knows I won’t like it. He prefaces with, “I’ve been trying hard to think of a good way to say this and I haven’t come up with one. I hope that I can say it in a bad way and you can hear what I really mean without getting upset about my bad phrasing.”

I love this man so much I feel like I will explode some days. He acts like me reacting to bad phrasing is a reasonable thing to have happen. He hopes I won’t get mad this time because he really means well. But if I do get mad, well it will make sense and that’s ok.

I don’t get a lot of that kind of accommodation in the world. Mostly people act like it isn’t ok to ever react badly to their words. If you do then you are the meanie. But! BUT! BUT!

Noah acts like I am a person with a long and convoluted history and he wants to be kind to me. That means handling my little points of prickliness without treating me like an imposition. I feel so loved in my house. I feel like I matter.

I have a lot of friends. My friends love me very much. I am very grateful for their presence in my life. Noah is in a whole different category. Noah validates me.

Noah tells me frankly that he lived before he met me and he would carry on without me if I died but he would be forever less. Noah makes me feel like if I died, the world would be less bright. There would be less reason to keep trying hard things.

I’ve got some feelings about this boy of mine. I feel very lucky. I hope I never take him for granted. I hope I always appreciate him this much. When I struggle to see what I’ve got going for me, and I feel like I should die…

I don’t want to miss out on one day of Noah’s company. I don’t believe in an afterlife. I think this life is all I’ve got. Take it and make with it what you will. I want more time with Noah. I want more time with Shanna and Calli. Surely feeling like you have good reason to get up every day is enough reason to consider yourself one of the lucky ones?

Am I ever going to stop feeling like I was put in a movie of someone else’s life?

Alone.

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Sometimes I am reminded that people with mental illness are not always good for people to be around. Sometimes it seems like being alone is really the only option if we want to stop the pain. Our pain, the pain we cause other people just by existing.

I have spent a lot of my life literally alone. I have spent years sitting alone in rooms. Yet I contrast that with the wonderful people in my life. I have friends. I am unusually blessed.

But I feel alone. Because it isn’t ok to make anyone else’s life all about my pain and I don’t know how to get past my pain to focus on connection with people. Some days I can kind of get there, I haven’t been doing so well lately.

I absolutely understand the feeling I do everything wrong anyway–the world would be better if I was dead. But I’m not supposed to say that out loud. It is manipulative. It is hurtful. It damages people if you scream at them that you want to die. It isn’t ok to take ones pain out on the people around one.

But there is so much pain. I saw a sign today, advertising a suicide prevention walk. I stood and stared at the sign for a while. I thought about a conversation I had this weekend with two women who expressed how hard it is to deal with suicidal people. Those who want to be supportive of the suicidal person can be absolutely wrung dry. That isn’t fair either.

We (the mentally ill or “crazy” as I think of myself) are told over and over that we should ask for help. Those of us with extreme trauma in our background are also told over and over and over and over again in therapy that it isn’t appropriate for us to talk about our experiences in front of “normal” people because we will hurt them just by admitting that people like us exist.

Shut up. And it is your own fault that you are crazy. And it is your fault if the pain is too much and you die. Why didn’t you get help? And while I’m at it, shut up.

I’m having a hard time with the kids. My shrink is encouraging me to consider getting a job so I can pay for private school because I need a break from my kids. I’m not entirely sure how adding a job to all of my current work would make my life easier. It isn’t like work stress is less impactful than kid stress. And the main job I have prepared to do is teach children. If I went back to doing that all day long I would not be a very nice person to my children. All of my patience would go to my job and by the time I got home I would be screaming and nearly psychotic.

It was funny how at first my shrink tried to talk me into just putting them in public school. She works with the school across the street from my house. It took me staring her down for a while before she admitted that the school is entirely substandard academically and it probably wouldn’t all “work out just fine”.

If my interactions with my kids all of a sudden had to go from just me enforcing about an hour a day of chores to me having to enforce an hour of chores AND force them to do homework that I know to be ineffective and damaging during the 3-4 hours a day I see them… I don’t see how we would get along better. Yes, I may feel less stress. Maybe. I haven’t at any other point in my life when my work situation has been different, but what the hell.

I don’t think sending my kids to a shitty school for babysitting is a good option. I don’t think that is in anyone’s best long-term interests. Would I do it if I HAD TO, yes. No one would die. It isn’t the end of the world. But no, it is not ideal. That is not for the best.

Is home schooling? Mostly we get along. We’ve had a hard few weeks. That happens every so often. I’m not sure we would get along better if our relationship involved me having to force them to get ready for school every day. I am not good at that.

I feel like a failure. I feel like I should die. But I don’t want to leave my kids. I don’t want to hurt them like that. I don’t know how to stop feeling like I am poison to everyone around me. I hurt people so much.

Maybe it would be better if I …… I don’t know.

Being alone is a weird thing. I don’t spend that much physical alone time these days. But I feel very alone emotionally. Is it because I can’t physically talk about almost any of what goes on in my head? I don’t know. I know that when I get together with other people there is usually a very clear dynamic that I am there to listen to them and be supportive of their issues. I need to not overwhelm people or bother them. I need to not be boring with this constant I want to die I want to die I want to die.

My throat hurts. My head hurts. My belly hurts. I want to puke. I want to beat my head so bad that I have to sit very still to not do it. I’ve been thinking about cutting all day. I want to bleed and bleed and bleed and bleed.

I don’t like me very much and it feels very much like I haven’t been punished adequately lately for being a piece of shit.

I can’t burden people with these thoughts. That’s not fair.

In the store, Calli was having a hard time. Calli said something–I forget what–and Shanna responded with some nonsense syllables and Noah, Shanna and I laughed. Calli sobbed. It felt like we were laughing at her and being mean. I pulled her into my arms and I carried her for the next half hour and I talked to her quietly. I apologized over and over. We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. We were laughing at the silly sounds. I’m so sorry we hurt you. Clearly we did.

Then Calli asked me if it was right that she hurt herself. I felt utterly crushed. Did I teach you this? I try so hard not to talk about it. I don’t know if I have slipped or not. I may have. I told her that it was not right for her to hurt herself on purpose. I told her that her body is her constant companion–her body will be the only thing with her every minute of her life. She needs to be kind and loving to her body so that it can be strong and do all the things she wants to do in this life. We talked about how being kind to your body means eating healthy foods (we had a long chat about why Ho-Ho’s don’t count as “healthy food”) and drinking good water and exercising and sleeping and relaxing. We talked about balance. I told her that if she hurts herself, she won’t be as strong. I told her that if she hurts herself, she is hurting something that has only done kindness to her–her body has carried her through everything that has happened to her.

By the end she said it made sense and she said she would be careful and loving with her body.

Why can’t I talk me into feeling compassion for my body? I barely ate today. I just… couldn’t. Even though I rode 8 miles on my bike and ran just under 5 miles. I ate one piece of bread pudding and about 1/3 of a package of ramen. I don’t feel physically able to eat more. I feel sick and weak and nauseous and disgusting.

And yet I feel like there are pieces of my life pulling at me from every direction telling me that I have failed. I am not managing to make time for my friends in the ways they want me to. It’s very annoying that I get up so fucking early and I am not available to suit their needs. I am having trouble with home school social stuff. Not because anyone is doing anything. Because I feel like a feral animal in a trap and my stomach hurts all the time and I feel like I just can’t be around good, kind people. I will hurt them.

The world would be a better place if people like me didn’t exist.

More than once this weekend I felt crushing guilt. Some of the kids in the group are *gasp* normal kids and they push boundaries. Any time I enforced a boundary I felt like I should die. (To be fair, none of their parents objected and the kids aren’t upset with me to the best of my knowledge.) I’m not saying this is rational. I am more saying the opposite. None of this is rational.

I don’t know if that “alone” feeling can go away.

I feel a lot of guilt for not doing the 10k this week. But things just kind of fell apart. My running partner and I are both having feelings. We are both having stuff happen in our life and the race just didn’t quite happen for us. I feel like I let her down. I feel like I am a shitty piece of shit who should be run over by a Mac truck.

I can’t do everything. I can’t be every where. I can’t …. I just can’t. Yes, my failures suck. I know.

Yesterday I commented to Noah that I am feeling the lack of Godmama break. My shrink today commented, “It sounds like you really need a break.” Finding other options just isn’t happening. I don’t have the spoons to deal with trying to find babysitting. It is fucking hard. And people lie to me. And people steal money. And people don’t answer their phones. And… Yes, I need some kind of break from my kids. My time off is mostly the 8 hours/week I pay the neighbor but I work like a dog the whole time she is here. It is not rest time. It is “do things that I can’t do with my kids jumping on top of me” time.

I feel weary. I don’t think getting a job is actually the answer. For a hundred reasons. Yes, there would be good aspects. Right now, all I can think is, “What would I start failing on?” I have absolutely no extra spoons. I’m really far into spoon deficit.

Mostly I just pray that I don’t fuck up my kids too badly and I hope we can all make it through the next decade while still liking one another.

You know, me having a “really hard time” with my kids is about on par with the most stable, best parts of my childhood. That’s hard to wrap my head around. I feel so much guilt and so much shame for being a yeller. I don’t call my kids names.

I would have given anything to have my mom say that she was mad at what I did. Instead she told me that she was mad because I was a stupid bitch.

I yell things like, “I am not your fucking maid. Pick up your own shit.” That is what I say when I *lose it*. When I am really harsh. When I am so mean.

I wish my mama was that nice to me. I wish. I wish. I wish. I wish. That doesn’t excuse me being this way with my kids. I want to do better. Because I believe they deserve better.

I don’t scream all day long. I don’t scream every day. I scream too much. And I am really struggling with how to stop. I don’t think that adding the stress of a job would somehow magically make it easier for me to have patience. Maybe if I got to be a rural librarian who dealt with very few patrons on a day and who got to sit in a calm, orderly environment all day long. But I don’t actually have that option. I trained to do something high stress.

The idea that I would be less stressed if I went back to dealing with 150 teenagers a day is hilarious. At this point, with how teachers are getting screwed, I’d probably be up to 170 teenagers.

I told my shrink point blank that I want my next career to be in incest research and I cannot start on that path while I have little children. She countered with telling me about women who are public about intense issues getting killed. She had to agree that I should wait at least ten years before seriously starting the incest research for the safety of my children.

Yeah, I’m overly invested in the idea of home schooling. I have wanted to home school my kids since I was 17. I’m pretty devoted to this idea and I’m willing to try pretty hard to make it work out. Yes, putting my kids in school would be a failure. I have been preparing for home schooling for almost 16 years now. Yes, putting my kids in school would be a failure.

I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I really don’t. I don’t know what the future will bring. I’m very afraid that none of it will work out and I will end up alone and bitter and hateful.

I would much, much rather die. Life is such a risk. I feel like such a failure each and every day. Ok, there are days I don’t feel like a complete loser. It hasn’t been a good month so far.

I barely talked to the kids today. I was gone five hours for therapy. I can’t do that again. Two hours of exercise/transportation between bart and destinations. One hour of therapy. Two hours of train. I really need to find an incest specialist closer to my city. Why aren’t there tons of psychologists who specialize in incest sitting in my city?! Geez. Very inconvenient. Then I came home and went in my room and cried. Because it is that kind of day.

Noah is home. I did snuggle the kids before and after. We have talked. We have interacted, but not that much more than if they were in school all day.

I can’t talk without saying things I shouldn’t. So I’m not talking. Some days are like that.

And right there, right that minute, that is when the medication hit. Now I’m hungry. Now the pain in my head is mostly muddy noise I can ignore except for the throbbing spot. I still feel sick. But I feel like maybe I will be able to eat dinner.

Calli came into my room this afternoon and asked why I was crying. I said that in my head I was hearing mean things about me and they make me feel very sad. She said, “Like what?” I smiled and told her that she doesn’t need to hear those words come out of my mouth. I don’t need to be the one who teaches her to apply those words to me, or to herself.

I worry about both of my kids, but I worry more about Calli. On one hand I feel like the worst possible mother for her. She clearly has tendencies that I could uhh encourage. In bad ways. On the other hand, how many other people can talk to her about the problems of hurting yourself?

Baby I can’t make you like you any more than I can make me like me. But know that I like you. I love you all the time even when I don’t like something you have done. I am glad for you every minute of the day. I am grateful I get to see you again. You are a good girl who is trying to learn about a complicated world and no one can learn without making mistakes.

I don’t think I am good enough to be their mom. Unfortunately I don’t know who else to nominate for the role.

Also: my kids and I had a long chat about swear words because they are both becoming quite proficient at using shit, fuck, damn, hell, and crap. We talked about the penalties they might experience for using these words. I told them about all the ways I have been punished for talking this way. Shanna asked why I still use the words if so many people have hurt me to try and make me stop. I told her that when people try to force me to do things that is a guarantee I will do the opposite–even if I’m kind of hurting myself in the process. It isn’t smart, but it is how I operate.

Now my kids have decided that since language is all about modeling I have to stop swearing because I am teaching them the words too often. I am not happy about having my kids police my language this much. I’m really not happy about it. But I’m trying to go with it. I think Shanna is being proactive in an overall healthy way.

For the first time in my life I feel like the person who is telling me to stop swearing is doing so because she loves me and she wants more people to be nice to me.

It is very hard being aware that much of what my mother did was not out of love for me, was not out of desire to make me a better person, was not in the service of my best-self.

I look at my kids and I think of the awesome, overwhelming obligation they represent.

I am not sure I’m up for this, but there’s no way out but through.

Playing favorites

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When I talk to other mothers I frequently hear that one or more of their children strongly prefers daddy. Often to the point where mom is refused–sometimes with venom. I listen to these stories and think, “Huh. How did that happen?”

My kids have had individual minutes where they want their dad more than me. They are thrilled when they get to spend a day with him. But they want me there. Always me. Mommy mommy mommy. We are the all-mommy-all-the-time channel. Sometimes I feel a weird mixture of pride and pain. Am I fucking my kids up? Am I too naked in my desperation for their love so they can’t feel safe stating a preference for their father? Do I not allow him enough time with them? And yet there is a part of me that feels so very relieved that at least for a few years of my life I get to find out what it feels like to be cherished and adored. I am the favorite. I am Noah’s favorite. I am Shanna’s favorite. I am Calli’s favorite. And my heart explodes with joy.

I adamantly refuse to pick a favorite. I say Noah is my favorite boy and I can’t pick a favorite girl because they are each wonderful in different ways and I couldn’t do without either of them. I need the whole set. NEED NEED the whole set. All of them. I don’t have a single favorite.

I need to be part of this team. I need to have a group where I actually feel wanted and included and like I am important. I need this so much.

Sometimes I feel a little sad that maybe my kids know that I need them and I am going to damage them because that is too much pressure.

I counter my fierce need with telling them that they have to live their own lives and have adventures without me–just come back and tell me stories. I will probably always be the most appreciative audience you ever have.

You really and truly know how I feel about you. I don’t hold back. I tell you how I really feel. When I have a problem with my children’s behavior I am very specific “I love you but right now I’m really upset that you are doing _____. I don’t think it is a good idea because ______.” Sometimes the because is “I am on my last nerve and I’m about to start screaming and not be able to stop–seriously you need to stop making that noise.”

I tell my kids a lot that dealing with people is weird. Everyone has a long list of little ways they need to be accommodated and depending on how good of support they have from people in their life, they may not even know they are getting the accommodation. They might have no idea that they are really weird and the way they want to be treated is downright odd. The people who know them are used to it and don’t question it so for them it is normal.

I can be hard to live with. I have a lot of rules. I have a lot of preferences and nit picky crap I care about way too much. The best I can say is I’m sorry, but at least I can tell you the details about what I want instead of just exploding with inarticulate rage. I’ve lived with that and it sucks.

More than 70% of parents think it is ok to spank. I think that if I have to hit my kids I have failed to teach them. Hitting is a mark of *my* failure–not theirs. First I failed to teach in the first place. Then I went on to fail in modeling how to fix mistakes. When you hit your child you teach them that the right thing to happen when they make a mistake is the person they love most in the world should hurt them.

Nope. Not in my house. No matter how nutty they drive me. I worry about the screaming though. I haven’t been documenting it lately because I haven’t been typing. My arms hurt quite a bit. The screaming hasn’t been daily or even weekly. Not super nasty, either. But I’ve threatened too much in the last few weeks.

I don’t want to be that kind of person. I think it is chicken shit to do it and then apologize and act like that makes it all ok. It doesn’t.

I’m kind of glad that I get to go through a famine period of not spending money. Staying home sounds like a smart idea. We need to get used to each other again. We’ve been spending a lot of time out in the world bouncing off other people and their boundaries. It makes it harder for the kids and I to really see one another. We are all constantly changing. If we stop staring we miss important stuff.

I always thought I would change less quickly once I became an adult. Not so much.

I go through periods of screaming when I’ve been running (metaphorically) too hard and too long and I have no more patience left. I’m not being proactive enough about limiting my activities. I have such a hard time telling people no. If someone wants a relationship with me the answer is yes. But I don’t actually have time.

This is why we aren’t poly. I don’t have any energy going spare. Sure, I have needs like crazy. I don’t have any energy to give. And every outside relationship requires energy. I would have to steal it away from other parts of my life: Noah, the kids, writing, gardening, etc.

I don’t want to waste all of the energy of my life pursuing people to fuck. I’ve done that. Lots of it. I’ve fucked orders of magnitude more people than most ever do in a lifetime. Meh. It was alright. It was fun while I was doing it. I don’t regret it. I can foresee futures where such behavior could be appealing again. But right now it would be theft and it would be destructive to the three relationships I care the most about.

It is pragmatic and self-serving. But man any time I go somewhere alone I manage to find a likely target. Hunting is so innate. And I know which smiles are likely to be followed up on. It took being told no a few hundred times to learn which smile means, “Ask.” I’m feeling antsy. I miss feeling exciting.

I feel like a work horse and I miss being a race horse. I used to pull chariots; sometimes literally while doing pony play.

I get random flashes of memories of things I’ve done sometimes. Like when I’m out running I will notice that I’m moving through my *ahem* paces. I usually laugh at myself and try to consciously get back to more of a “running” gate. I’m not entering any pony competitions any year soon here. Doesn’t matter if my trot is fine.

Sometimes it feels very weird to look at this vanilla, monogamous life and think “What in the hell made me think I want this?!”

I’m having trouble sleeping. I’ve had a lot of time to think and I haven’t been typing lately. Lots of thoughts churning.

I do want this, though. I want this so much that I stop every day to specifically be grateful for what I have. I have Noah and Shanna and Calli. And they all love me. I get to be their favorite, at least for now. I understand that someday Shanna and Calli will go find somebody to snuggle who is uhm more snuggly with them than I am. (I have boundaries around snuggling with them. Whoo boy.) I get this precious time.

The home school tea party for today was cancelled due to low attendance. I’m not up for putting together a big party for three kids who aren’t mine. We will try again on another date/time to see if we can make it actually work. I will figure something out for the Friday Funhouse tonight. It’ll work out..

The girls are watching Harry Potter 2. I won’t let them watch 3 yet. Honestly I don’t think I will let them watch more movies in the series until they have read the books. Incentive. I sorta wonder sometime when Shanna will decide to read. I try not to harp on it but she probably notices that I have feelings. She’s like that. She notices me.

Today on the bike ride she yelled at me not to hover. So I rode on side streets and added loops to give her time to do each block before I watched her carefully check both ways before crossing the street. I didn’t stand near her though. She wanted space and she was being careful.

This growing apart business is hard. But learning how to do this is what we are doing right now. Gotta just do it.

Great birthday

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I am pretty sure this officially qualifies as the best birthday of my life. At the very least it was the lowest stress. I’ll take it. No, I will not be repeating the experiment next year. Next year I will be traveling alone with the kids and it won’t be an option.

I drove up to Guerneville on Tuesday afternoon. I decided to make as little camp as possible. I set up my privacy pop up (it is just big enough to stand up inside and change your clothes if you have what some people might refer to as “modesty”–obviously I got dressed out in the open because that wasn’t my purpose) for my little travel toilet. I’m telling you, as lame as I feel that travel potty opens up a whole new world for me. (I have bladder issues. Being too far from a toilet is an issue for me.)

So outside the van I had the little toilet area, my chair and an ice chest. Everything else stayed in the van and I played with where things might live. I have some ideas for long-term living in the van.

First: I need an air mattress that will fit appropriately in the van. Sleeping on just the tumbling mats is very uncomfortable. Not going to work for months. Shanna says just bring more pillows and my thought is: but what do we do with them when we aren’t sleeping?

Tuesday I stayed near camp and didn’t do much but read. It was lovely.

On my birthday I woke up and sang happy birthday to me. I didn’t manage that day of silence thing. Ha. I am constitutionally incapable of silence, apparently. I talk to myself a lot.

I walked for a few hours. I walked past a spa place on my way out of town (I was just walking wherever) and I had the thought, “hmmm… do I want to waste money?” Short answer: yes.

On the way back into town I stopped and asked if it was possible to get any last minute spa services. Turns out that the person working the desk called around and one nice lady could come in.

Once I met her it felt very serendipitous. Turns out it was also her daughter’s birthday. She told me very specifically that she was so happy to be able to share her mother-love for another daughter on her birthday. I didn’t respond, exactly.

During the massage she asked about my tattoo, like body workers do. I gave very vague hints, like I do when I’m trying to not overwhelm people. She was very nice to me. She was very encouraging. She told me she was proud of me for picking my kids over grown ups who need to be able to take care of themselves. I cried on the table. Later I nearly fell asleep because I was so relaxed.

She totally undercharged me so I left a bigger tip to make up for what she was supposed to charge me. Because that’s how a rich person should roll. I honestly believe that. I hugged her when I left and thanked her for being part of the best birthday of my life.

I walked around for a while longer and got a single scoop vanilla ice cream cone (of *course* vanilla) and walked around town singing happy birthday to myself.

I bought a postcard and wrote on it and sent it to Shanna and Calli and Noah. It has already arrived at the house. The kids… really didn’t care. Oh well. So much for that effort.

I also bought a couple bumper stickers. Now I have reason to clean my disgustingly filthy vehicle. Once upon a time I had a car covered in bumper stickers. I took them all off when I started teaching. I have no one who can fire me now. Maybe time to be obnoxious again. Goodness knows I will drive this vehicle until it completely dies just like I did my last one.

I went back to camp and emptied my potty and got things ready for an easy pack-up-and-go experience.

I went to sleep around dinner time and woke up at 11pm. I drove home. I talked to Pam from 1-3, then went in and seduced Noah. I didn’t get nearly enough sleep during the night so Thursday I was a zombie.

All in all an entirely satisfactory birthday. Two thumbs up. Would do again.

I look forward to taking my kids up to the Russian River now that I understand a little bit more about what that means. We are going to have a lot of fun together.

So now I’m 33. I have weird feelings about 33. My parents were 32 when I was born. It feels like now I have lived through all the prerequisite time they had before me. Now I’m seeing the part of life that they lived through too. Now I’m comparing their direct actions to mine.

Someone on the PTSD forum asked if people are more successful than their abusers. Of course mostly people exploded at him because they feel they aren’t and they have deep shame around that. A few of us said, yes–we are more successful. And it’s ok to ask that question.

Why do some people experience trauma and curl up in a ball without ever being able to function again and some people bounce higher? I don’t know. I wish I did.

Yes, I think I am more successful than anyone else in my family. It’s not about my bank account balance. I am better at managing my impulses. I have managed to stop abusing people. (Yes, I freely acknowledge that I have abused people and I have the potential to do so in the future. I stomp on that like fuck.)

Dwayne. That was the name of the student I talked out of committing murder. I will never forget him. I don’t know if he went on to do it later or not. I hope not. I know that I talked him into a reprieve.

I may feel like a success for the rest of my life because of that moment. On that day I said the right thing. On that day I was able to share the enormity of pain he was in and show him that there were other options.

I wonder what happened to him. I have looked his name up on the internet and so far no murder convictions appear.

I feel successful because even though I *feel* alone sometimes I know that throughout my adult life there have been times when I have whispered “help” and closed my eyes and fallen backwards into a tightly woven web of love. I have the most amazing friends a person can have. I may not be blessed in the blood-relative department (though Shanna and Calli are pretty rad) but I have amazing friends. I have friends who will walk through fire for me.

It was sorta funny when I got to the camp ground. The guy who worked there gave me shit at first and sorta indicated I may not be welcome. Then I said, “Daddy James said I could come.” “James who….?” “James _______” “Oh! Of course you can stay! Tell him to come up here soon and visit me!”

It isn’t what you know, it is who you know. And I know some really wonderful people.

I got many wonderful emails and SMSs that I haven’t responded to yet. I’m still just kinda floating in the sleep deprived haze.

Today, we paint. Some friends are coming over to paint the planter boxes with us. It will be a lot of fun.

Life keeps plugging along.

Like it goes.

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Yesterday was a banner day. One friend said she isn’t going to be able to see me for a while. That whole I’m too intense thing. It’s appropriate, fair, and the right thing to do if someone needs space. Other friends stood us up for dinner.

Mostly it wasn’t a bad day. I spent time with home schoolers. (I managed to spend a lot of the time discussing house organizing strategies–that was fun.) Sometimes I think it is very important that I not spend too much time around the home schoolers. I don’t want them to have to tell me to go away too. That would hurt my kids. So I have to very carefully divvy out how much time I spend there so my kids don’t get told to go away too.

One mom is not real happy because apparently Shanna and the boy she has had a crush on for over a year ran out to the field and kissed. There’s a milestone for you. The other mother expressed displeasure and said that wasn’t to be happening.

My point of view is so skewed. Someone else is really upset because a six year old and an eight year old had a chaste peck. I know that by that age I had given blowjobs to…..at least five or six boys and girls (That I have strong memory of and I get the impression more was happening in my first neighborhood than I remember because we moved when I was three). Perspective is important. Not that I’m saying it would be ok for Shanna to upgrade her sexual activity because I did. That is NOT my point. My point is that a chaste peck is… not alarming to me.

I told Shanna that it is very sweet that she loves him so much, but for a few more years she should limit herself to hugs because kisses are for grown ups. She looked at me like I was a big fat liar. Fair enough. She was more willing to admit that if the boy’s mother is upset about it then it shouldn’t happen again. She doesn’t want to get him in trouble. I feel kind of sad that I am already teaching my daughters to be careful with their sexuality because people around them will punish either them or their partners if they do it in a way that isn’t “approved”.

I feel sad and empty. I feel like I am stupid for reorganizing my life because I want to facilitate relationships with people only to have them tell me that they can’t.

I want to beat my head right now. I feel so stupid.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been thinking that I should finish the letter to Noah’s parents. And I’ve been thinking about the letter I wrote to my mother that I haven’t had the guts to send. The feelings about those two letters could fill thousands of words by themselves.

So I feel shitty with a pile of crap on top. Thinking about how much I wish my mommy loved me will pretty inevitably make me want to hurt myself.

At 3am Calli came and found me. She said, “I’m alone in my bed.”

“…..ok.”

“Shanna is in her bed.”

“….. ok.”

“I don’t want to be alone in my bed.”

“Ahh, now we come to the crux of the matter. You want me to come to bed with you.”

“Yes. And I want you to cuddle me and I want you to sleep with me all night long.”

“Well, I can’t promise all night long. But I will snuggle you back to sleep.”

I had to leave the room when I couldn’t control my crying any more and I didn’t want to wake her up.

Mama mama mama. Every time my kids say it I think of how many millions of times I said it only to not get my mother. I’m torn between feeling like I am “healing my inner child” by facilitating this for my kids and feeling so jealous of them I can barely breathe.

I remind myself over and over that I have three people who love me. That is three more people than a lot of people get. Don’t be greedy.

But today I’d like to beat my head. I think it is kind of interesting how head beating wasn’t much of a thing for me as a kid. When I was a kid I was more focused on cutting, burning myself, biting myself (to the point of blood), and hitting myself with large blunt objects.

Now those activities are less appealing. Now I just want to kneel on concrete and beat until I am not capable of thinking any more. I don’t know if this is a step up or down.

I don’t think the birth control pills are helping very much so far. I can technically understand that I have this dip monthly. These feelings aren’t “real”. But they are.

I am struggling with how to deal with the people who ask me for space. This is not just one person. There are a lot of people in this camp. More than a dozen. I overwhelm people. This is a known issue.

Once people ask for space I try to turn and walk away. They will ask me to come back if they want me to. Only people don’t really. So usually I wait a year or so and I ask again. Then I’m told I’m too intense again. Then I wait a year.

Am I ever going to get to the point where I just walk away? I don’t know. It is so hard for me to walk away from people. I don’t want to feel more alone and unloved than I already do. So I maintain tenuous contact with people who may or may not actually like me but who definitely can’t really handle me. Is that fair to me or them? I don’t know.

I feel tremendous guilt when I ask any of these people to spend time with me a year later. Like I am inflicting an unwanted burden on someone who has already told me they don’t want it. There are always mixed signals. I’m always told that they just need a little break. And then they wait for me to initiate contact and I get kind of passive aggressive comments in public later if I don’t keep pursuing them for a relationship even though they told me to go away.

I don’t feel like I am capable of doing much right. I feel like I hurt people just by existing and that isn’t very nice of me. I should shut my stupid piece of shit mouth because no one wants to fucking hear it.

I told the home schoolers I wouldn’t stay for the whole camping trip. So I can go running with someone who doesn’t really want to see me any more. Yup. That’s how things go for me. This is the second time I have planned far in advance for a race with someone only to have them need space from me. I have had successful races with friends if we decide to do it together at the last minute. Planning to do things with me enforces more time spent and then I become a problem.

I’ll run the six mile loop today again. I still want to run a marathon in March. I’m pretty sure I will plan to do it alone. That seems like the best idea even if someone says, “Oh I will do it with you.” It’s just not a good idea. I’m too hard to deal with.

I feel so guilty for wanting people to be my friend. I am toxic waste and I should stop hurting people.

I am looking forward to my birthday this year probably more than I ever have in my life. I am going to be alone. I am leaving my house the day before. I am not bringing my phone or any other screen. I am going to spend the day of my birthday alone. I am not going to speak to anyone.

That way I will feel no disappointment about anything all day. I can have a day with no expectations from anyone else in the world. It doesn’t matter if no one else wants to talk to me or be nice to me.

Last year on my birthday I spent a week in advance telling the kids, “I want to do x, y, and z. Because it’s my birthday.” They yelled and screamed the whole time and made x, y, and z entirely unpleasant and terrible. I cried through the afternoon and evening because I wasn’t even allowed to eat the french fries I wanted to eat without getting berated.

I want to beat my head on concrete. I wonder how much this change in impulse has to do with a chance in circumstance. I only have privacy in the garage. There is no way in hell I would cut in the garage. Too messy. I only cut in the bath tub. I no longer have private access to a bath tub. I am old enough and wise enough that I am not going to burn myself in the house again (fire damage is real, yo). And frankly, after my brother burning himself alive… burning myself is less appealing. That habit mostly went away after Tommy died. It wasn’t a game any more.

Just like I don’t understand the appeal of video games where you shoot people and kill people. I’ve had a gun held to my head. It’s not a fucking game.

If you hit yourself with hammers or the like you get marks you can’t hide. Beating my head on concrete doesn’t leave appreciable external bruising. Perfect!

Because I haven’t beat my head on concrete in a while, instead I have developed a habit of sometimes sneaking out to the garage and eating a handful of chocolate chips. Mmm secret binge eating. That’s the ticket.

I am having huge feelings about the fact that I have concluded that I have to stop drinking alcohol. I can’t have the occasional glass of something. It makes me sick. Literally, physically sick. I am not physically well for days. That means I have to stop drinking. I am having huge feelings around this. I am anti-12 step programs. Yes, they work for some people. Ok, saying I am “anti” them is too strong. I have never wanted to participate. I think that is ok. I am not going to turn my authority over to a higher power. Nope. Not this lifetime.

So I’m having weird feelings around not drinking. It feels like the end of fun. Which is weird because… I’ve never been much of a drinker. I have always enjoyed feeling like I had it as an option even if I frequently didn’t take it. Now that I’m telling myself I “can’t” have it I feel rebellious and angry and like I want to sit down and drink a bottle of wine by myself.

My contrariness is a real problem. Well, and my self-harm urges are strong, If I truly crystalize that drinking is self-harm then of course it is suddenly more appealing. These fucking fuckers keep telling me I shouldn’t beat my head because I already have enough brain damage. Drinking it is!

Only I can’t beat my head and I can’t drink. I can’t keep increasing my stroke risk just because I want to. I can’t keep doing massive damage to my internal organs just because I don’t like myself very much.

Sometimes I wish that it was socially acceptable for me to sew my mouth shut and just go through life that way. People would like me so much more.

Shanna and Calli and Noah like me. That is three more people than a lot of people have. I shouldn’t be so greedy.

Transition stuff.

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H’okay. I’m going to need to stop posting for a bit because I need to force myself to get some work done. I’m making checklists. I only have so many hours a day on the computer and I’m going to do shit that intimidates me for a while. Work on the web page.

I can work on a web page. I have a web page. Whoa. I still find this daunting. It’s not like it is hard. Only it seemed so hard for so many years.

I’m going to be splitting my blog stuff. There needs to be a kid-friendly space here. One that can be accessed from the front page or from a direct link. Once you go to the kid-friendly page it should be somewhat challenging to go to the rest of the website. Not sure how I’m going to set that up yet, I’ll be talking to Noah about my options. It is frightfully convenient living with him.

I do want to be able to talk about homeschool stuff more explicitly. I want to be able to talk about traveling with kids. I don’t want to toss it into the middle of my verbal diarrhea of self-hate.

It kind of weirds people out.

Boundaries, right?

And I have found the resolve within myself to take a good long hard look at our life and schedule. The road trip is ten months away. I am going to need to have a huge drawer full of spoons when I leave. I can’t be running a deficit before I even leave. Or I am going to end up calling Pam hysterically halfway through the trip and begging her to fly out to wherever the fuck I am to help me drive home. Like I did with Jenny in Arizona.

Thank you Jenny. I’ll be grateful for the rest of my life. If you ever need me I know for a fact I can be there in 72 hours. I’ve checked lots of options. There aren’t that many people I would drop everything and fly halfway around the world for but you are the top of the list.

(Err, when I was pregnant with Calli I went to Arizona to help a friend. I started having lots of contractions and they wouldn’t stop and it was mid-way through my pregnancy. I had two miscarriages in between having my children so early contractions were a serious concern. I couldn’t drive Shanna and myself home while contracting like that. So Jenny flew out and drove us home. I am so blessed in my relationships it isn’t funny.)

You know what? I know I have at least half a dozen people I could call at any time of the night or day. If I were truly desperate I could put the net out wider and probably come up with dozens of people who were willing and able to help me. Because I am truly blessed. (And because I could buy the plane ticket for someone. Having my own money means that the amount of help I need from someone else is very tractable. Thank you, Noah.)

It is weird living in this space where I feel like a lodestone for both victimization and for amazingly giving people. I have good friends. I am so lucky. I understand that not everyone is so lucky.

I’m going to start enforcing the rule that I don’t drive outside of Fremont more than two days a week. And we are going to stay home until at least 11am four weekday mornings. I have to stop having days where we are out of the house socializing/driving for eleven hours. This is killing me. We are out of the house for 8+ hours at least twice a week sometimes four times a week right now.

I want to know people so much that it is hurting me. Boundaries are good, right?

I need to save up my spoons. And I need to get work done. And I need to have lots of patient-at-home-time when I have the energy to help the kids with their projects. They can’t read. I can’t tell them they have to just do all the stuff by themselves. They needs help with directions. And uhm, I’m home schooling them not leaving them to school themselves. So I need to be more patient. And at home at least occasionally.

I’m not thrilled about this stupid insomnia tonight.

I should probably figure out how/when I am going to transition to travel screen time limits. I think I need to do it in advance so I don’t go through withdrawal during the first weeks of the trip. I’m going to be difficult to deal with as I go off my drugs. (Picture me tapping my arm like a heroin addict.) The internet is my friend. I am sad when I don’t have CONSTANT ACCESS. Not just sad… anxious. I use the internet to hide from real life and I know it.

I need to alter our schedule such that I am truly spending the amount of focused alone time I will have with the kids. I won’t have a garage to hide in for peace on the trip. I need to figure out how to transition towards creating the boundaries I need in different ways.

Although I am not canceling baby-sitting. That would be stupid.

I have to set myself up to succeed or I am going to fail. That is just how it works. It’s not personal.

Oh, and I started bleeding two days ago. How much of my shaking with need to self-harm was PMS? I really hate my body and my body hates meeeeeeee.

Maybe it is time to talk to a gynecologist about the mood swings around my period? Joint pain sometimes. Googling makes it sound like I incline in the direction of PMDD (Premenstrual dysphoric disorder). Here’s what Google tells me:

“The symptoms of PMDD are similar to those of PMS. However, they are generally more severe and debilitating and include a least one mood-related symptom. Symptoms occur during the week just before menstrual bleeding and usually improve within a few days after the period starts.

Five or more of the following symptoms must be present to diagnose PMDD, including one mood-related symptom:

No interest in daily activities and relationships
Fatigue or low energy
Feeling of sadness or hopelessness, possible suicidal thoughts
Feelings of tension or anxiety
Feeling out of control
Food cravings or binge eating
Mood swings with periods of crying
Panic attacks
Irritability or anger that affects other people
Physical symptoms, such as bloating, breast tenderness, headaches, and joint or muscle pain
Problems sleeping
Trouble concentrating”

I hate my body and my body hates meeeeeeeeeeeee! I feel very mixed about all the advice to treat things with nutritional supplements. The other big option is an SSRI, which… I don’t want for Reasons Of Misery. (btdt got the t-shirt and I want my $ back.)

Here’s an article on PTSD and PMDD. Maybe I should talk to a groino about Propranolol. Or Prozac. Would I be willing to try it again? Probably not given this line from the article “The fact that data have shown a 40% nonresponse rate to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in PMDD”…means I should take the fact that I’ve already had no luck with Prozac as a sign. But Propranolol seems to be slightly more effective on the population with PTSD. Would I take a beta-blocker? Could it be used sporadically as needed or is it a daily pill? If I was going to take a daily pill–should I just go on birth control? That’s hilarious given that my husband has had a vasectomy.

I should go talk to my groino. I feel that I have been really clear about this massive spike in horrible symptoms right before my period for a long time now. My suicidal thoughts and self-harm urges go through the roof. There have to be options I haven’t tried yet. I have an appointment. Monday the 25th during babysitting time. I gave myself a nice window so I can ride my bike there and back. The internet is magic.

Lots of transitions. Lots to do. So little time. I need more spoons. The only way to get them is to cut things out. Just because you don’t like the choices sitting in front of you doesn’t mean you don’t have choices. You are always making a choice. Even if it is to follow the status quo.

I can’t be super close friends with everyone in the world. I don’t have the spoons. I’m not slamming doors, but I’m going to stay home more. I need to. We have stuff to do.

Progress

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The kids have blasted through a few different milestones this week. I should record this so I don’t forget. Both kids are now swimming without a life vest. This is huge. Both kids got off the bucket support in ice skating (Calli is doing better than Shanna). Last, but not least, both kids have suddenly decided they are interested in long bike rides.

I find it fascinating how neck and neck they are for physical skills. In a few years Calli will probably be far more advanced than Shanna at the rate she picks things up. They aren’t equally skilled in all areas of knowledge, but Calli has a great relationship with her body. Shanna reminds me of me. Ha.

I feel guilty anytime I say that they can be assholes, but when it comes to dealing with people who might take care of them it seems like fair warning. They can be sweet as pie and they can be serious assholes. You have to be prepared to hold boundaries and really fucking mean your “no” or they will make you sorry. They are tenacious and pushy in a way rarely tolerated in children.

I’m crossing my fingers it will work out in the long run. For now there are days when they are pretty hard to handle.

It isn’t about you (whoever you are) because they do it with me, Noah, K, and everyone else who has ever baby-sat. Children are supposed to test limits. I also believe that children are supposed to run smack into the brick wall of limits and be told NO. Because that is part of life. You don’t always get what you want and learning to manage that frustration is easier when you are under ten than it is over thirty.

I feel scared that I am doing them a disservice by allowing them to push as hard as they do. Most children are “broken” of that habit. I try to break my kids of the habit of shitting in the back yard. Backtalk is ok with me.

Pick your battles.

I want my daughters to be able to grow up and speak as assertively as any man. I don’t know many women who can. I know a few, because I hunt for such Amazonian Goddesses.

They bug me and delight me. They frustrate me and fill me with so much hope I feel like I will explode. Every day. I am grateful every day that I get to be with them. I stop and make time even when I’m being a pissy bitch.

“Today is kind of hard. But it is the best kind of hard I can imagine. I am grateful I get to be here doing what I’m doing.”

Shanna and I had a fight about something…can’t remember what about. It wasn’t a big one. She went to her room to cry. When I checked on her after a few minutes she said, “It feels like no one loves me today.”

I said, “Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you get mad at me sometimes?”

“Yes. You deserve it.”

“I’m not quibbling. But you can get mad at me without it taking away from how much you love me. Why do you think it works differently for me? You are the best thing that has ever happened to me and I love you to the moon and back. And sometimes you piss me off. Life is like that.”

She kinda laughed and hugged me.

When I really think about it… I feel bad for my mom. She probably does still love me. Even though she didn’t want me to start with. Even though she wasn’t very good at taking care of me. Even though I have pissed her off, maybe more than all her other children combined. She probably loves me.

I really hope my kids never need to pull away from me for their own safety.

This week has been tumultuous emotionally. But we’ve had internet connectivity stuff that prevented me from boring anyone with it. Huzzah?

Apparently today we are going dancing. Because someone finally responded with a yes. I was getting emotionally ready to back out on going. We don’t really have appropriate costuming. And Noah is not interested in dancing. And managing the kids while dealing with Noah’s unhappiness about being dragged to something he hates is always fun.

I was hoping that everyone would tell me no they weren’t going so I could skip it too.

I like to dance. I love dancing. Sometimes dragging a whole crew of people who need care of coaxing isn’t very fun. It is sounding really hard today. But a posse was formed so now I can’t back out. Even though it sounded like way more fun when I first heard of it months ago it doesn’t sound real fun today.

Noah didn’t go to bed last night. He’s probably going to be cranky. There is always the double whammy that being sleep deprived makes him cranky and then he’s extra cranky because I woke up in the middle of the night and yelled at him about not sleeping. Because when he doesn’t sleep at night he sleeps through the weekend. And we don’t have children who wake up at night anymore so I’m really sick to death of a partner who is cranky because of sleep dep. There is no excuse.

Only there are dozens of excuses and I’m an asshole for wanting to control his sleep so much.

Well, there are weeks when he naps enough during the days to make up a whole extra work day of time gone. Given that his time off amounts to a day of work amount of time off… he is effectively not available 7-9 hours of the day 7 days a week. And it’s not like he hangs out with them for all of the 4-6 hours he overlaps awake with them. Not even close.

The mothers helper kid stopped showing up. That’s a write off.

Getting actual, consistent support is hard. I’m tired.

I’m having a hard time with some communication stuff too. I don’t feel heard very much. When other people act like “they’ve heard all my shit because they’ve read the blog so when we get together it is their turn to talk” I feel… really shitty.

Writing on the blog doesn’t increase my sense of being seen all that much. I think it is important. I think it is helpful with a lot of my relationships. But I never blog about everything going through my head. I have so many layers of filters. If I mentioned x on the blog there is usually about fourteen layers of shit associated with x that I didn’t dare write about.

And people don’t really want to hear about it. I’ve already used my word count up for the day. Without ever once opening my mouth.

I’ve been wanting to bang my head a lot lately as a reminder to shut up. Shut up. Just shut up you stupid bitch.

I’m supposed to stand there and smile and be supportive about someone else’s issues and not say anything that might make anyone feel uncomfortable. Just shut up shut up shut up.

I don’t think it is “personal”. If I asked people about why communication stuff is wonky I would be dismissed or told I was imagining it or it was just my perception.

Ok fine. Maybe I should just stay home with my perception then. In my home with just my kids it doesn’t feel nearly as bad that I’m not allowed to talk about my shit. I knew that was the deal before I got into this situation. It doesn’t bother me very much with kids. I don’t want to hurt them and I know that knowing too much about people like me will hurt kids.

It is harder with adults. So much harder.

Today I run 4.5 miles before the dance event. Thank goodness today is a massage day.

For all that I seem to live at my pity party table I know I have a pretty fucking good life.

I’m going to go cry out my misery at Disney next year. Hilarious.

If I could stop wanting people and if I could start being happier with just being alone as I do things my life would probably be perfect. I really like what I get to do with my time in the main. Yeah, I won’t fill my hours exactly the same way when the kids are grown but I’m content with where I am for now.

If I could just stop feeling sad. If I could stop missing my mommy so much.

Shanna and Calli call one another “Sissy”. I’m not entirely sure how/where they picked it up but now I’m copying it with both of them.

That was what my sister wanted to be called. She would hit me if I used her real first name when I was little. She was Sissy. End of story.

Sometimes when I hear Shanna and Calli say ever so sweetly, “Sissy will you please help me?” “Oh Sissy I’d love to” I walk away and cry.

I feel like an asshole. Why am I crying? Because I’m so fucking jealous. My Sissy hated me so much. Get over it. I’m trying. Thus the crying in the early morning hours. Because crying is how you get over it.

I feel really sad. I did sleep well last night. A good 7.5 hours. That has been my sleep cycle for most of my life. I’ve been trying to eat those shitty vegetable things everyone tells me are “good for me”. I’m mostly eating them cooked, so I don’t get massive diarrhea but sometimes people put them in front of me raw and I try to be all GGG and eat them anyway. And I burn with punishment.

It is funny how suicidal thinking works. There is a difference (for me) between suicidal ideation where I feel like I am working on A Plan and the sad anxious feeling of wanting to give up. The wanting to give up feels like a dog whining in the corner. Small, helpless, not able to get up and do much for itself. Pitiful and pathetic and not worthy of notice. It isn’t threatening. It isn’t real.

There is a difference between the days when I have to more or less crawl across freeway overpasses because I want to jump so fucking badly and the days when I want to just hide under the desk rocking and crying and beating my head.

Hiding this from my children for 7-9 hours a day 7 days a week is really hard.

I need to just be grateful that I don’t have to do much cooking. That is the most frequent point at which I fail to keep my shit together. Thank you, Noah. I really appreciate it.

I need to give my arms a break. Is it bright enough outside to run yet? This time I need to eat something before I leave. That last weekend run where I took off having eaten nothing felt really bad. You require fuel in your tank.

Good thing I pack little squeeze packets of peanut butter and chocolate just in case. I’m smarter than I look. Or, more accurately, I’ve been stupid a lot of times and eventually I learned. So I’m probably not smarter than I look.

I need to give Noah a chance with today. No, he doesn’t like dancing. He tries to be nice about it. He will help with the kids. He will in general be reasonable company.

My expectations of him are really unfair and ridiculous. I’m sorry. I expect Noah to be cheerful and upbeat about pretty much everything and it isn’t very nice of me.

When I’m around someone who is in a shitty mood I tend to sink to their level and keep on sinking. When I’m around people who are upbeat and perky I can ride the wave with them. I feel like a jerk for needing other people to lead my emotional experience.

Sometimes it is hard for me to feel happiness at all without someone modeling how it is supposed to work. That’s a lot of what I like about my kids. They are so happy. Yes, they can be abrasive assholes and they will scream when they don’t like something. (working on that) But mostly minute by minute they are just…. happy. Life is really good. They get their needs met.

That’s a lot of why I like hanging out with them so much. I will fake happiness in order to buy the relationships I want. It is part of why I have such trouble at jobs. I don’t care that much about money. Beyond subsistence and minimal safety I was never real motivated to work hard for money. Enough was good enough.

At every job I’ve ever had there is far less impetus to be in a good mood. Why, so I can make a customer happy? What fucking ever.

But if my attitude is the difference between Shanna and Calli having a good day or a bad day, then I need to work on my attitude. As one of the moms in our group says, “You’ve got to have a good attitude…”

I can’t control the fact that I have mental illness and it has impact on my kids. What I can do is work to mitigate the damage. What I can do is behave in such a way that they will grow up and be able to understand how hard I worked at being good to them. I hope. Who knows. Maybe they will never give a shit. Most kids don’t seem to care about their parents much.

Doesn’t everyone want to feel appreciated?

One of my neighbors is talking about home schooling her kids next year. She talked about wanting to do it from the first day we met. I asked her what was stopping her and it came down to fear that she couldn’t do a good enough job.

Then last year she had a bunch of problems with the school. Her children are really not being appropriately served. So she’s considering home schooling a lot harder.

She asked a lot of questions. I feel I was pretty balanced. I started with my normal, “Of course there is a whole spectrum of opinions from radical in the direction of no direct teaching to school-at-home with every minute scheduled. I’ll talk about what I do first and then I will move on to different points in the spectrum and talk about the pros and cons. The important thing is to figure out what works for you and your child because there is no universal right answer.”

I’m a good advocate.

I really hope she will consider it because she REALLY WANTS TO and she is incredibly organized and focused. She would be good at home schooling. She’s big on answering questions with, “I don’t know the answer to that yet, let’s find out.” Perfect. That is the attitude you need. And she’s super happy to hang with her kids all the time.

I told her the only think she is potentially going to lose out on for her kids is the time they get to spend with her. If you miss a year of public school you can catch up in summer school if you are bright and motivated. Whoopie. Her kids are quite smart (fully literate in two language before third grade is amazing–she mostly taught them) and I don’t see a down side. The only thing holding her back is fear. (That’s what she said. I’m not projecting.)

But it is her life. Who knows. It would be cool though. Even though we probably wouldn’t be live-in-your-pocket besties (even though she lives ONE BLOCK AWAY) it would be nice to have another home schooler in Fremont.

We are going to have to join or create a Fremont home school group or something. Yes, we will still love all the Castro Valley and San Leandro and Oakland people…. but the road is equidistant in both directions. I can only do so much driving.

I wish I felt less desperate. I know that desperation is one of the fastest way to drive people away from you. The depth and intensity are scary. I don’t have a good reason. I’m sorry. Just breathe. Go get some food. Read a few chapters. In about 40 minutes it will be time to run.

Now I will nom a muffin that is poison for Jenny.

Comorbidity

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That word is awesome. Comorbidity. It means the simultaneous presence of multiple conditions. Such a fabulous word. Like juxtaposition only in one spot.

My shrink and I were discussing my hypomania yesterday. Hypomania isn’t true mania. It means that you have an elevated activation of your nervous system but you aren’t necessarily doing anything rash or dangerous. I just flip between feeling happy and pissed off with a gentle breeze. I may be spending a “lot” of money but given that all of my big purchases in the last few months are things like “items I will use on cross-country trip” and “shed to prevent bicycles from disintegrating” I don’t really count as manic. I’m not blowing thousands of dollars on the lottery.

I have a lot going on. I have a lot of people in my life and I have dramatically different feelings about different people. Keeping all those feelings inside me and more or less cogent is really hard. It is very disruptive. If I knew fewer people maybe this would be easier… ha. Never happen.

The kids have been pretty explosive too. They are feeding off of me and I take responsibility. It’s like when Jenny copied my tone of voice and we had a bad first 24 hours. It sucks knowing that you are the one triggering the bad interactions in the whole house.

My attitude needs to change, and fast. I have about 18 people coming over in five hours. I haven’t made the food yet. I haven’t moved the tables yet. No biggie. That’s all there is left to do. It’ll get done. But I need to have a good attitude.

There is a family in our home school group who says that a lot when we are doing stuff like hiking and camping, “It’s important to have a good attitude.” I try really hard to listen to them. They have a good point.

So of course I woke up and at 5am I am standing at the freezer saying, “How should I medicate today?” Modern science is wonderful. The variety the dispensary has… it takes my breath away. I am thrilled. Cupcakes and rice crispy bars and brownies and cookies and about 10 different kinds of candy and chocolate bars and pills and oil and wax and ice cream and…

Whoa. All so I don’t have to give myself lung damage. Well done legalization industry.

I’m not a mellow person. I never have been. I am more calm and reflective than I used to be by a large measure. I no longer feel like someone not-paying-attention-to-me-right-now means death.

My shrink and I did several body-calming-exercises. Trying to help my central nervous system calm down. Sometimes I don’t think I could be more activated if I were hit by lightning. I’m already vibrating with energy. (Ok I know that actual lightning would be more… but you understand the metaphor.)

One of the things she had me do was visualize kicking someone. The thing is, that brings up my mental Rolodex of so-and-so and him and her and them and… Memory lane is a funny thing for me.

I will probably never do that again. I will probably never kick anyone in the nuts again. I will probably not kick someone in the chest hard enough to fracture ribs again.

Although I could do martial arts or kick boxing. Maybe that is a work around so that I can still beat the crap out of people but I’m being “monogamous”. As long as I claim I don’t get off on it–it’s fine, right?

Once my Owner watched a Famous Fetish Model/Educator (I’m capitalizing it because she’s a big deal in his little world and he nearly genuflects when he talks about her–whatever.) and her partner do a scene in which she only used her feet. Given how obsessed with feet my Owner was… well, nothing would do but that I do something similar to him. I learned that I liked it. I’ve done a lot of scenes where I didn’t touch someone with my hands.

Not to mention that I have literally had my ass kicked by many people. It feels awesome.

Bdsm gives me a fully consensual and appropriate space to work through my feelings of aggression. Not having it is hard. Cause seriously, if someone sidled up to me and begged me pretty please to knee them in the balls and slap them around right now… Oh I would have trouble saying no. That would be so much fun.

Ahem. Tea Party. Get your head on straight. Sweetness. Light. Gentle hands for the love of toast.

I’m irritated. That’s the only word I can come up with. My shrink wants to stick with activated. Wired for sound.

But these ups and downs, this is why there is so much conflicting opinion about my diagnosis. I’ve heard just PTSD. I’ve heard PTSD and GAD. I’ve heard bipolar. I’ve heard borderline personality disorder (but never from a qualified professional so I’m more doubtful of this one). While on a terrible psych medication I was told borderline schizophrenic but never while not on the evil psych med so that one I get to say isn’t mine.

I swing from depression and suicidal ideation to anxiety and hypomania. This is more tiresome for me than for you. I promise. I can’t get away.

I’m a weird balance between extrovert and introvert. Finding the right balance is hard. I need people something fierce. But they are draining and tiring.

I am so very driven by my attachment needs. I am driven towards and away from people at the same time. It feels like a war inside my brain. I am afraid to attach too much to any one person. I’m afraid to not try with everyone because you never know who will fit.

But I have a full time job plus overtime of socializing and it is not actually good for me. But culling people feels brutal. Even just putting people on a longer rotation feels hard.

And now that my kids are bonding with my friends… kicking them out of my life is a whole different story. Just like I’m not real approving of polyfuckery in front of children I’m not that thrilled about the idea of a revolving character cast of friends. Kids need to know who is in their lives. Kids needs to have relationships that are not just instant-friends.

So I’m trying to be ok with some people being on a longer leash but not out of my life. It is a really hard transition in thinking.

I think Pam hit level 2 because I completely discounted her as a friend many times over the years and she kept reappearing. We would have intense conversations and I would assume that she never wanted to speak to me again after what I said and… there she was calling me again.

From across the world she kept calling me. So I developed the habit of dropping whatever I was doing because Pam wanted to talk to me.

It was like how Air Force Michael managed to call me from Turkey spontaneously several times while I was institutionalized as a teenager. Only I didn’t get to talk to AF Michael because… I wasn’t at home to take the calls. And he stopped calling after that.

So I fucking answer the phone for Pam. Because I can say whatever crack-brained shit that comes to mind and she keeps calling.

I don’t remember if I wrote what was so amazing about Shanna’s second birthday yesterday. I think I kind of hinted but didn’t get to the meat.

I emailed my friends and said: “My kid needs a party and I don’t want to do it. You do it.”

So they did. And I sat in a chair. And it felt like magic. I felt loved. I did feel supported in that net feeling.

I don’t know why I have such a violent need to hurt myself if I try to get that feeling from a party that is actually literally about me. But I have some suspicions.

I don’t want this feeling for the rest of my life. But you can’t decide to “just stop feeling something”.

You have to decide what you want and move towards it.

Time to go set up for the Tea Party.

That was an informative dinner.

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Last night we got to have dinner with Noah’s baby sister. Oh man. She’s happy to tell All The Stories about the family. And she has a night and day different impression of Noah’s parents than Noah has.

Apparently mom has been going to therapy and making great strides. Dad has uhm gotten crazier. I’m not sure it is healthy for people to live off in the woods not talking to people much because they have enough money to shun society.

I am going to be picking up the baby sister and she is coming back to the house with me to tell me stories later in the week. I’m looking forward to this so much.

She sat there and said, “And I can tell you everything. I’m a bastard so they all hate me and treat me like a non-entity so I have some interesting perspectives.” I’m going to fucking love this girl.

Apparently my mother in law feels very guilty for how things went when I visited Texas. (Ya know, how she refused to leave the house to have dinner with us once and when I went to the property she nodded then left the room.) Apparently she makes as many clothes as she does for the kids because she feels guilty for how she treated me and I respond so positively about the clothes in letters.

Not a dynamic I pictured coming up with my mother in law, I’ll tell you. This really makes the trip next year seem like it could be different than I previously expected. Some of the things she described Noah’s dad doing…

I have had a number of people respond about seeing us on the road trip. The respondents have been on a spectrum from, “PLEASE come sleep in my house” to “I would like to see you but you can’t sleep here.” I’m sorta thinking it will be better for the kids and I if we just know we are sleeping in the van. We will need to have our routine.

And it will give me a great reason to say, “Traveling this long is pretty hard, we need to have some consistent routines so thank you for dinner but we need to head outside now.” I won’t have to deal with anything in the middle of the night. If someone did to me what he is doing to them in the middle of the night I would get in a fist fight.

Oh man. Trading one crazy family for another. At least this crazy isn’t sexual abuse. *phew* I can handle just about anything else. Boundaries are my friends. I may get in a fist fight over crazy, but I won’t feel like I am too unsafe to live. I just can’t be around the sexual predators anymore. Just can’t.

My poor children. They stand such a high chance of being bat shit crazy. I sure hope that environment matters as much as genetics and my kids have a pretty nice life.

I don’t mean that they are financially secure. I mean that no one is allowed to hit them. They can clearly tell you WHY their body belongs to them alone and no one has the right to touch them without permission. They believe that someone who calls them a mean name is clearly having a bad day and they need to go deal with their feelings somewhere else.

They do not internalize negative messages. They have been so inundated with positive messages that they do not feel that negative statements apply to them.

Yet they will tell you in detail that everyone makes mistakes–if you don’t make mistakes you won’t learn. They will tell you (while sighing and rolling their eyes) that everyone is frustrating and obnoxious sometimes.

It’s ok. We love you anyway.

When I am grumpy they think *I* am grumpy. They don’t think they made me grumpy. My kids have a really nice life.

Noah said that I was teaching them noblesse oblige. I told him that I sort of am but mostly I’m not. I don’t think they are “better” than anyone around them. I think they were born lucky. I think they are one of the fortunate ones who was born having more than you need.

It is closer to “be your brother’s keeper”. If your brother needs something, you probably don’t make him go work a shitty ass job for years before you help him. He’s your brother. He’ll help you later. If you have extra, you share. Heck, even when you don’t have extra–share. Your needs are met. Over and over. Emotional, physical, maybe even spiritual. If for this one meal you aren’t full to complete satiation–don’t worry you will at the next one. Share with your brother.

Or sister, we are pretty equal opportunity here. And we have no brothers in the house. So I don’t actually call it brother’s keeper in the house. But that’s the traditional phrasing.

It is closer to the Christian belief that you cannot be saved through faith alone–you must do good works. (I know that most Protestants hate the idea of having to work for heaven. Whatever. Christian sects vary dramatically. It is all still under the umbrella.)

My children have such blessings in their lives. For all my insecurity and emotional volatility… I have a lot of consistent people in my life. Despite the fact that I hysterically move in and out of feeling attachment to people… I don’t actually cut most of the apron strings. I worry about any separations.

If I don’t talk to someone for a month I can grieve for them as hard as if I haven’t seen them in ten years. My hormonal cycle is really a bitch to live with. I have these periods of tunnel vision when I’m not capable of perceiving that people like me. I’m scared that some day in the midst of one of those days I’ll kill myself because I can’t see a way out.

So far there has always been a way out. And things have improved steadily over the last ten years. So I try to have patience with myself on those days. I’m still frantic-feeling. But my conscious self-talk has changed.

“These are feelings. I know you are scared. This will pass. It will be ok soon. Not everyone hates you. You don’t have to die today.”

That’s a lot of improvement. I’m pretty proud of getting to that point. When I am rocking and crying and I feel like a steaming pile of dog shit at least I don’t chant about what a worthless whore I am any more. I’ll take progress wherever I can.

It is very hard to have perspective on your own story. My shrink spends a lot of time being amazed at how many people have been in my life consistently for long periods of time.

Dude, my best friend from middle school made a big point of stopping at my house when he visited the state. Apparently I don’t make everyone run away in terror. Jenny is another middle school friend. I have plans with a friend from high school next week. I spent the 4th of July at a party that was a combination high school reunion for me and college reunion for Noah.

Clearly I *am* connected to people.

Dude, Sarah and I are tentatively trying to figure out what we can have as a relationship. That’s fucking huge. We learned some valuable lessons about not living together. But we had a seven year relationship before that. Not living together is a reasonable boundary. What else can exist there?

I don’t know. But I love her a lot. I have for ten years now.

Life is very complicated. I don’t lose everyone. Sometimes they move away. That doesn’t mean I really lose them. I may hurt and grieve and have terrible luck feeling attached. But then they show up again. And it’s bumpy for the first few hours (I have adjustment periods with almost everyone) but then I pull my head out of my ass and things are wonderful again. I remember what I love so very much about you. I remember how very glad I am that you are in this world.

I remember that you love me.

(Err, I don’t only like people who love me. But it is nice when it is a circle.)

Sometimes I feel like I must be very very stupid. I am not capable of maintaining the learning process. I have to have the same fucking epiphany millions of times. Wait–you like me?

I continue to struggle with the dichotomy between having a “friends group” and having friends. I have friends. I have many individual people I have pulled out of diverse communities. They don’t meld though. They are strangers to one another.

That seems to be a big problem for me and I’m not exactly sure why. It’s like I want to have the individual members of my extended web be connected to one another because that is a better net for me to fall into.

If all of my friendships are straight lines going out, that’s not exactly a net.

It isn’t like I don’t do group events. The home school group is becoming quite the hub of group events. Why doesn’t that “count”? Why am I discounting that? Why do I brush off what I have and decide it is valueless?

Well, I hope I don’t do that. There is some magic percentage of knowing people in a group I have never hit.

I have never had the experience of being surrounded by people and feeling very sure that they all knew me and liked me. Even when I did fucking MDMA at MY birthday party. I sat on the couch and had anxiety attack after anxiety attack about how I didn’t know how to perform for such a wide audience of people I didn’t know all that well.

That’s pretty fucking annoying. Let me tell you.

It isn’t anyone else’s fault that I am searching for this feeling I don’t know how to get.

There is something about a depth of relationship combined with a certain mass of people. I don’t know what it feels like to be known and actually liked by a group of people. And that’s a problem for me.

But at least if I am narrowing down the problem it looks more tractable.

I do group events. I am “part of” groups. I was part of the theatre community in high school. The problem was that a large percentage of the people there spent a lot of time talking very loudly about how much they disliked me and wanted me to go away. It wasn’t even half the group who did that, but the people were loud enough that I never felt safe or wanted.

When I go to parties at my friends houses I rarely know many people. Usually the host plus one or two people.

When I invite people to my house I do a lot of drag net fishing (as Noah describes it). I invite a lot of people I want to get to know. I don’t only invite people I already know well. So there is this feeling of tension. They like me enough to show up. Is that because of the free food and loneliness or is that because they want to develop a relationship?

As an adult it is hard to know what a relationship means.

Oh shit. I still haven’t emailed Tay about 2015 planning. And our next visit up north. *bang head*

H’okay. Took a half hour break to schedule with him through all of 2015. My life is kind of insane. If I don’t book him in the next couple of weeks… we won’t get him at all. He is so busy.

Anyway. Back to what I was bitching about. I don’t feel like a nice person for looking at the lovely friendships and relationships I am offered and saying, “But there aren’t enough of you standing in one place at one time so it doesn’t count.”

I think, in my head, that is kind of the ‘wedding’ thing. I think that is tied together. Most of my parties contain a low percentage of old-friends. Mostly my events have one or two long-term friends and a large number of people I am just getting to know. For some reason I think I have the belief that your wedding (or these group trips I imagine in my head) are full of a kind of depth of knowing that I don’t experience at events.

I can have this feeling one on one. I can occasionally have it two-on-one. I don’t know what it is like to feel known and seen by lots of people at once.

I babble about this because if I can figure out the shape of the problem, maybe I can design a solution. Because if the problem is that I haven’t had enough density… that’s tractable. That is a problem that can be solved. As the years go by I have fewer newbie friends. I don’t have much space for them. But I have deepened and extended a lot of older shallow relationships.

If the problem is that I have always moved too often so I never hit the density of knowing people in one location…. that’s a problem I can fix.

I love my neighborhood.

It’s not like I think that having the experience for one glorious day would wipe out my panic disorder, but it might be a novel change.

Some days are like that.

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I’m in a bad mood. So I’m out here to medicate and write and hope I can cheer myself up.

My arms hurt. That doesn’t help. It also means that writing is questionable.

Noah and I have been bickering. We don’t get all the way to fighting. Neither of us allow that. We walk away before it escalates. But there is a lot of tension right now. Noah looks at almost any problem as if you have to have a problem-proof solution before you can change things. I think that favors the people already in power (like him) and I think sometimes you blow shit up without knowing how things will work out. Might get better, might get worse.

Given how well his life is going for him I see why he doesn’t appreciate assholes like me. For the life of me I don’t understand why he wants to be married to me.

I’m feeling my feelings. I told him this morning that sometimes I wonder how long we will be married. It isn’t Noah’s fault that sometimes I look at him and see the enemy. I’m not the most rational person on my best days. I wonder if I will be able to get over myself. It isn’t that I think Noah is actually doing anything so bad. But he has a lot of opinions I’m openly contemptuous towards. That’s really hard on a marriage. He tries to be patient with me, but it is very hard to be nice to someone who is contemptuous.

Would I respect him more if he built houses or fixed cars instead of building video games? I clearly didn’t go marry someone in one of those professions. There isn’t a lot of ambition in most construction workers or mechanics. They solve the problem in front of them and that is good enough for today. I really like and admire ambition. How come it had to come packaged with video games? Because that is how it works for my generation. I like Noah. I like how his brain works. I do kind of wish that someone as smart and talented and basically competent did… I don’t know.

He wants to work with computers. I married someone who has been obsessed with computers since he was seven. He doesn’t want to work for the government and he does want to make money. That means you go to the highest bidding company and frequently those are places like… video games.

Just because I don’t play them doesn’t mean they have no financial value to someone.

I feel existentially bothered by video games and I don’t know how much of that is tied to my brothers beating me up when I asked to use their consoles.

I really am a fucking asshole.

This is compounded and escalated by feelings I’m having about friendships. I thought of someone it would be nice to see. I added her to a Google group. Well, I sent her an invite. She told me since she would never come to my events she wouldn’t bother to join the group. But I could come visit her some time if I wanted.

I know a lot about her life and surrounding circumstances. I get it. She has experienced rapid physical decline over the last few years. She is barely getting her job done and her social life has evaporated. It’s not about me. It is not personal at all.

But I have a lot of disabled recluses in my life. If I went from friend to friend every day I would only see a couple of people twice in a month. People who have their own disabilities tend to have more patience with my deficiencies. I have periods where I don’t go anywhere or see anyone for a long time and my friends wait them out.

But I know a lot of people. I can’t carry the weight of going from house to house visiting my friends. Even if I want to. Even if I put them on a rotation and only see 1-3 in a month it is hard.

I wish I had more spoons but I don’t. I have just over fourteen more years where parenting needs to get basically all of my patience and “give” to anyone other than myself.

I don’t feel like a very good friend. This person in particular has been very frank with me that the hourglass is running out on her life. She will not live with the kind of pain she has right now for much longer. I have a lot of respect for that. I think people get to decide for themselves when they hurt too much and they need it to stop. Even if that means suicide.

So I feel like a giant asshole for not wanting to prioritize a lot of visits to her house. I will only have the privilege of her presence for a few more years, at most. How dare I waste even one minute of that time?

But if I prioritize her pain over my own and over making sure I have a network of people who are good for my kids I will be doing the most important job I will ever have badly.

Some people in the Leather community are shitty about boundaries with children. I don’t take my kids around them much even if I love them a lot and think they offer great value to the world.

My kids don’t need to grow up in Leather. No thanks. They don’t need to know it is a culture. They don’t need to talk about being from a multi-generational kink family. (I met a cousin at a national bdsm conference. He says his father and grandfather are openly involved. Seriously. My brother and I have had conversations. My family is so fucked up.)

It is kind of hard to make mercenary choices about who I let my kids spend their time with. I feel really guilty and mean. But I’m going to do it anyway and live with the guilt.

It is hard to make real conscious choices about how my kids are spending their time. It is hard to step back and objectively evaluate “What kinds of relationships do they have and how are these relationships serving them?” My kids are treated very much like clients if I were a case manager. “What kind of care are they getting?”

It is hard to evaluate myself. Much harder than evaluating other people. I can’t see me objectively and my evaluations match my overall self-esteem which means I have more days where I think I am doing badly than days I feel like a good parent. But I persevere because I have a lot of external validators in place telling me to keep on keeping on because I’m doing ok.

I can’t evaluate myself. So I try to make sure my evaluators are people whose opinion is worth listening to. They need to have enough experience in doing what I’m doing that I will listen to them. I like older women a lot. I am a serious asshole about discounting the opinions of people who have never done what I am doing.

Meh. How can you judge. How do you know? When it’s not like everyone who has done stay at home parenting (or even home schooling) is really fit to judge anyway. I’m inconsistent. And an asshole.

I tried to get a bunch of yard work projects done this week. I entirely failed and I feel bad about myself. Part of the problem is lack of upper body strength. Part of the problem is that many of these projects are two person projects because you require three or four hands at times and…

I can’t ask the kids yet. I get too impatient and grumpy and it isn’t fair. I can’t ask.

So my lack of productivity (even though I kept up with house chores and nearly a full time job of socializing) means I feel really shitty about myself. Cause I’m like that.

“If you didn’t let blame take up so much space in your mind….”

Oh fuck you. Did you sit down with a catalogue and pick how your brain works? No? Then shut the fuck up.

I only hear such commentary from people who are highly successful in repressive regimes. By those standards the most success I have had under such a system was marrying well. I really think it’s kind of idiotic to think I am otherwise going to be like people who grew up to be successful in such a regime. I haven’t done so hot on my own.

I’m not financially secure because I’m good at the system. I had some lucky horrible luck. That’s uhh, not the same thing as being good in the system.

I had an extended runway in the form of an accident settlement. It’s not that I’m that good. How would anyone else do if they were given $250,000 slowly between 18 and 32?

I’m not that special. I’m not someone who has risen in this system. Expecting me to be supportive of the system and expecting me to think well of the system is… kind of dubious.

I’m aware that the rug can be yanked out from under me at any point. I’m not secure. My status is not my own. It’s borrowed at best. I’m not going to be real loyal to borrowed status. I don’t care that much if it is lost.

I wonder how long my marriage will last. I’m afraid I’m not going to be capable of being as nice as Noah deserves. I won’t stay and abuse him. If I get too bad I will just go. No one deserves to be punished for all the broken in me. And I’m not sure I can be nice forever to someone who is so supportive of the status quo.

Today I feel very scared and very sad.

Today I feel very sure that I can ruin any good thing and make it bad. It’s just a talent. I can drive anyone away. Just give me some time. And if I can’t drive them away I’ll run away. One way or another I am going to find a way to prove that I don’t deserve to be loved. I am too bad.

I should probably stop writing and stop crying. We need to leave for Hindi class in 15 minutes.

And then you stop crying and go hang out with a kid.

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Calli only had two hours of iPad time. Then we went to the park. I walked around Lake Elizabeth pushing the stroller. My shoulders forking hurt. I covered about three miles all told. We didn’t make it to the water park because it took too long to walk from summer camp and change clothes.

It’s been a really nice four days alone with Calli. She spent a lot of today telling me over and over, “It would be ok for Shanna to go to more summer camp. You’re my favorite and I like being with only you.”

I laughed and pushed her higher on the swing. I said, “Are you sure? I don’t play princes and princesses with you.” I sighed deeply and said, “Well sister isn’t ready for school full time yet so you have to share me still.” I asked her if she would get lonely with how often I like to go in the garage if she was alone more.

She really said it over and over.

I feel like Calli has blossomed dramatically lately. She is all of a sudden way more charming. She broods less. She inserts herself and absolutely fucking insists on having her turn to talk. Sometimes I feel like she just doesn’t close her mouth for more than ten minutes in a day. She started talking a lot later than Shanna so this flood is sometimes surprising. Shanna was a chatterbox by fifteen months old. I feel kind of inured to her volume and pitch. Calli’s voice is a different pitch and I struggle sometimes with her max volume. But I think I remember struggling with Shanna.

It’s developmental. They literally can’t control their volume easily when they are small. It is a process. She’s doing fine.

Calli spent most of today smiling. We played a lot. Lots of tag and cuddling and talking. I even pushed her on the damn swing. I don’t do that every day. I probably don’t do it every week. There are swings. Go sit on them and figure out how to push yourself. So this was a kind gesture.

I got in the miles I needed to do. I’m staying on track for the exercise I need to be doing. I went slow today but I was pushing forty pounds. I am allowed to go slower.

Not too long ago a friend mocked me when I said that I had done a given day’s exercise at an 18 minutes/mile pace. He laughed and said, “That isn’t even walking speed. Are you crawling?” I managed to not turn around and nastily ask when was the last time he has gone further than a block so how would he know average traveling speeds.

It’s ok that I’m slow sometimes. I get there. Lots of people can’t. Sneering at me for not being faster is not going to actually motivate me to move faster.

Being really nice to myself when I average 21 minutes a mile because I completed the distance and I probably didn’t want to is more important than worrying about being a fast runner.

I’m not fucking trying out for a competitive event. That has nothing to do with what I’m doing. I’m trying to have enough energy to play with my kids. I’m trying to maintain some level of strength and health so that my life doesn’t turn into unending pain long before I die.

I know that not everyone can avoid the amount of physical pain they are in. When I am stronger my back hurts less. It is dramatic. It is one of the clearest connections to my back pain I can find. The more exercise I do the stronger my core is the less I hurt.

Every body has different needs.

I’m glad I let myself cry. I felt a lot better afterwards. Stress. Feelings. They impact a body. I can relax enough to go exercise and play with Calli after I cry. Before I got out the excess emotion I couldn’t play nice. I was snippy and over sensitive.

I’m feeling really rejected lately. Which is partially a delusional creation of my mind and partially an accurate reflection of some circumstances I’m standing near. I’ve had a lot of plans cancel in the last few weeks.

I back out of group events. I don’t back out on one-on-one dates unless there is an emergency. I’ve had three one-on-one things cancel in the last week. And a different set of complications with a different situation.

So I have some justification for feeling rejected. (One of them was even a total no-show in a public place. That sucked.)

But man I blow things out of proportion. And I always manage to find patterns in things happening close together in time. I personalize things I shouldn’t personalize.

The mom no-showed because she had issues with her kids. I haven’t talked to her yet but I can tell you that it is the reason. I can’t get mad.

Oh watch me.

But then I feel like a schmuck. Because I should be supportive. I do understand how challenging children can be.

In this garage, and by extension on this blog, I get to have some feelings. Writing means I take things out less on my kids. I vent my spleen here. Then I can stop thinking about me and focus on them in the moment.

Kinda like venting some steam before the nuclear reactor explodes. There is possibility for damage because writing about intense feelings is a mixed bag socially. It definitely limits ones scope in life. And it limits which people want to be in your life. I can live with the limits I have.

It’s not like I have a choice, right?

I’m looking forward to the upcoming schedule for the later summer/fall. It has already dramatically shifted from what I posted a few weeks ago. This makes me want to beat my head against the wall.

And we want to figure out how to schedule another day with the really fun traditional school friends who came over recently. Both of my kids have already asked.

Oh man. Things are just moving along at a blistering pace.

I feel excited about doing the Hindi class alone with Calli. She’s ready to have some things be just for her. She needs some skills Shanna doesn’t have. She told me that soon she wants to start a dance class. Shanna got to do a dance class and she wants to. Dangit.

She has done a summer rec kind of dance class. She longs for a more serious class. She fantasizes about it in front of me. I’m trying to wait out the lag time until we have some buffer in the kid budget because the bikes weren’t cheap. I’m not behind any more but I don’t have much buffer. I like buffer.

I feel a little weird about the fact that Shanna’s two weeks of summer camp was more than $700 but Calli’s sixteen weeks of language is only $100. Well, it’s 54 hours vs 16 hours.

How do we differently value time spent?

How do we differently value people?

I do think it is nice that the Mad Science summer camps are all run by women. Every teacher is a spunky lady.

I would pay more for the Hindi classes, just for the record. I think their time is worth something. I recognize that I’m kind of a pain in the ass add-on student and if they want me to pay a registration I will.

When I stop and take stock of how many skills my kids are working on right now: responsibility (chores), physical skills, emotional skills, and mental skills..

I’m kind of shocked they aren’t more neurotic. We grow in a lot of directions all at once. But we balance that with a lot of free play and time to be as silly as you need to be.

My kids are teaching me how to be silly. I have always been painfully literal. I don’t joke all that well. It is part of why I’m not really funny.

Sometimes I stop and ask Shanna, “Wait. Why are you making that face? How is it supposed to make me feel?”

She almost always says, “It is a silly face. You should laugh.”

And I do. I laugh because I’m so glad she wants me to laugh. She’s not being disrespectful. She’s trying to lighten the mood. She doesn’t want me to feel small or bad or stupid or…

She just loves me.

I can piss and whine and moan about the fact that people outside my home have the audacity to have priorities other than me but inside this house I’m pretty special.

I sure like being here. I’m a security blanket. I’m a soother. I’m comforting. I’m the one they like the best. (Except when they like someone else more. And that’s ok too. Someday I will be firmly supplanted.)

I feel so lucky that I like my kids as much as I do. A few times a mom has confessed to me that she just doesn’t like one of her kids. I always feel so sad. It happens. It is life.

I’m so grateful that I like my kids. I’m glad we have very compatible personalities. And all of us seem happy to jump through some behavior hoops to be loved so we are working out the difficult bits.

I sure hope I deserve them in the long run. I pray that I am good enough.

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.

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.

Feelings

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This week I read an essay by a female writer in which she mentions that she “never writes personal essays because she doesn’t want them to take away from her reputation”. She writes about “real stuff” don’tchaknow?

Well, I write personal essays. And bugger off if you have a problem with that.

So, that said, lots of feelings lately. Jenny and her wonderful baby visited us over the weekend. (Another mom friend came with her baby on Friday. It was baby central. Having the three of us together with our kids felt like a dream come true. I’ve been hanging out with those ladies (all of us have birthdays within four months of one another) for over ten years. Watching us grow up has been so neat.

Jenny (but mostly her baby) is used to a quieter life than we lead. My kids are *very* overwhelming for people who are used to quiet. My kids are shitty at respecting personal space. We are working on it, but this isn’t a skill that will come naturally to them. They want to be close to people. Like, on top of them close ALL THE TIME.

It is always an adjustment for us to try to tone down for other people. It is good for us but it is hard. If you throw in the whole fact that Jenny is one of the most important people in the world to me and losing her friendship would be devastating it makes for some tension.

I was too worried about the kids. So I started out sounding pretty nasty. Jenny heard my way of speaking and copied some phrasing and then my kids freaked out. That is not Jenny’s fault. But it made for a rocky first day. Jenny asked if they should leave early. I felt so sad that we are so hard to put up with.

So Jenny and I had a talk and then I had a long talk with the kids. Things went way better after that.

Shanna was inclined to get her back up. “This is my house and I shouldn’t have to change.” I said, “But Jenny is my best friend and I only get to see her every few years and I miss her so much it hurts and can we please try hard to make everyone feel comfortable?” Shanna agreed after that.

And the rest of the visit was great. But I had lots of leftover anxiety/stomach pain.

I feel pretty proud of all of us that we managed to have a good rest of the visit. It was really wonderful to see Jenny mother. I have known her for about twenty years now. It was like seeing, “Ohhhhhh this is what you have been building towards all these years. This is who you wanted to be.” It was really beautiful. She’s a very good mother. My friends inspire me to try harder for my kids. Jenny’s daughter is very shy. Jenny makes sure the world is appropriate for her kid and she does not back down. I have so much respect for that.

I have twinges of sad because, why didn’t anyone love me like that? but mostly I stomp on them and I’m just really glad to see that my friends are such good people.

I am so blessed in my friendships. I don’t know how I managed to meet such good people. I feel honored and unworthy at the same time.

I think that if Jenny lived closer we would adjust better and my kids would get used to the different rules. They have adjusted to K’s house (my friend who baby-sits while I have therapy) even though they really didn’t want to do so. (Shanna in particular is really stubborn about not wanting to adapt. It takes me explaining the consequences for not adapting before she is willing to try.)

Then yesterday after Jenny and her wonderful daughter left a different mom and kids came over. And we had a different friend planned for dinner last night.

Jenny was the last person added to the schedule and I was going to shoehorn her in no matter what. But if I had known Jenny’s schedule further in advance I wouldn’t have booked two social engagements the day she left. Holy crap I am tired.

The dinner was easy-peasy. He’s non-stressful.

The mom and kids… whoa. All the anxiety of the weekend multiplied by ten shoved into a 2.5 hour period.

When I get to the point of snapping, “I’m kind of tired of being wrong in my own house so can we just change the topic?” it’s not going well. (She apologized later for jumping all over me, but holy shit it was a stress monkey visit.) I feel like things must be kind of rocky for her, because she had a lot of anxious energy (shoot me now before I go all woo woo on you) and she probably wasn’t so much reacting to me as just in a room with me.

But the weekend with Jenny used up a lot of my ability to sit still even though I felt anxious. And there is the little fact that fucking up my relationship with Jenny would do a lot to ruin my life and fucking up almost any other friendship I have would have lower impact. Yeah, even though I don’t see Jenny very often.

The older I get the more I look at the pillars of self. The things that make someone “Them”.

Brittney was my oldest friend. But Brittney never did a god damn thing to help me. She wasn’t there after trauma. She didn’t want to know about my life. She wanted me to visit her upper middle class valley lifestyle and act like I fit in. I don’t.

Jenny, at this point in time, is the person standing the longest. Twenty years of friendship is an accomplishment for someone as unstable as I am. Especially because Jenny and I have never been the most obvious of friends. We have very different personalities.

But when I can’t function and I need help Jenny has shown up. The emotional support is as important (or more so) than other kinds of support. Jenny held me when my brother killed himself and when my father killed himself. Jenny has been there through boyfriends and friends groups and hobbies.

I am so glad the rest of the visit went well. I felt really happy about seeing her. I probably won’t see her again for two years. I feel like I already want to count the days.

They are going on a Disney Cruise with us in 2016. Because Jenny loves me.

I really don’t understand why. I don’t feel like I deserve her friendship and loyalty. I recognize that I have it, but I don’t understand. I hope I was as nice to her as I was trying to be. It’s always a bummer when I am an asshole on accident.

When I’m an asshole on purpose I don’t feel so bad.

I remain grateful that I get to have the lifestyle I want. I am so grateful that I get to home school my kids. I am so grateful that I can stay home and play and learn with my kids in a non-stressful environment for me most of the time.

The occasional stressy weekend reminds me that my life is so blessed. All of the Jenny stress was worthwhile. I feel anxiety about being nice enough. That is something I have to work on and be aware of. I understand it to be a legitimate issue for me.

It’s not like having to be in a stressful environment for no good reason. It’s not like dealing with school. It’s not like dealing with jobs. It’s not like dealing with extended social groups.

Jenny is one of the few people on the planet whose judgment I actually care about. I mean, yeah, I have issues around wanting people to like me but in general… I don’t actually feel it matters enough for me to change myself for other people.

Jenny is worth any amount of adapting I have to do no matter how hard it is for me. That feels hard. Over longer periods of time I can adjust and change more slowly and that feels easier and more manageable. Just having a weekend feels like “Be good or lose friends” and that is so hard.

I fuck up so much. I feel so ashamed of how bad I am at controlling my behavior. I’m too loud. I’m too aggressive. I say things people really don’t want to hear.

I feel ashamed that I live on the sufferance of people being willing to tolerate someone who is not very nice. I wish I were more worthy.

My stomach hurts so much.

I’m tired of feeling afraid all the time.

Hey, today is a therapy day. Maybe EMDR will help. Ha.

Who needs a title.

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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

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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.

3 Replies

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.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: love

Wonderful Christmas

Tone is absent

Find gratitude

The lucky ones, Miss Piggy, and taking turns.

Alone.

Playing favorites

Great birthday

Like it goes.

Transition stuff.

Progress

Comorbidity

That was an informative dinner.

Some days are like that.

And then you stop crying and go hang out with a kid.

Anger and feelings

Distraction

Feelings

Who needs a title.

The lucky one

Can’t argue with a spreadsheet.