Category Archives: mirrors

more thinking. less err, tmi

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I’ve been sitting here listening to The Coup more. It is nice that youtube has these automatic playlists so you can listen to a whole album. And have a screen open next to it with the lyrics at the same time. A lot easier to understand. Ok, Violet isn’t actually one of the best ones. But it made me think about relationship stuff.

(I’m trying to not think about my bits. Bear with me.)

Well, more accurately it made me think of when and how I have done drugs. I usually have done so because I saw no other way of making that person like me. I want people to like me. Not many people like me. When people talk very nastily about young kids who use drugs… I think education is the path. Not hostility.

I have tried a pretty fair variety of drugs. A lot of them I tried because I was in a situation where I was dependent on a man (I thought) and he said, “Here. Do this.” I’ve only gone after a few drugs for my own reasons.

I was thinking about that because I tried a different intake of medication today and apparently the cheeba chews do a lot more to deal with the stomach pain than smoking, vaporizing, or pills. I’ve tried all in the last two or three days. I tried a different kind this morning and I’m probably down from a 6 or so to maybe 3. But I also wrote at the same time and writing often relaxes me. Column A and Column B?

Anyway. I have been horribly uncomfortable in social situations my entire life. I am very aware that I am bad and that sooner or later people will figure it out and I will be punished/reprimanded. This is just how I go through life. Usually I slink away like a pathetic puppy never to be seen from again. It’s my cycle. I own that.

Is this actually me letting people have boundaries though? When someone puts up boundaries I take that as a sign to just leave. Obviously I am not wanted here.

Well, I don’t know that I always manage to avoid people forever. I don’t. I travel through a variety of communities. I have land-mine people in all of them. So this is about me and my issues.

Only if I try to go through all of the situations in my head… no. It isn’t always my fault. But I am often someone who triggers people to have strong feelings. They will then tell me those feelings are all my fault. They want to alleviate it. So I am told things like I must dedicate my life to a 12 step program (it is permissible for me to pick my own of course–obviously I have a wide variety of different options I could be eligible for–I am pretty crazy and all) or I am bad.

I don’t think that is about me. That is about someone else deciding “A Good (Mother/Person/I don’t fucking know) acts like _____________.” I never signed on for that role. I like to negotiate my own roles. I like to be able to say, “Am I allowed to ask for this, this, and this–it is ok to say no.” I don’t ask unless I am ok with no.

I am not trying to make other peoples lives harder. I do not write about my anxiety in order to create anxiety in other people. I write so that when I am done writing I can have a 2-6 sentence pitch that is calculated to make it sound appealing to my specific audience that I am talking to in person.

Have you ever noticed that I don’t talk nearly as much as I write? I am rehearsing. I am refining. If that process bothers you, well, don’t watch. I need to do this. And I have learned through long experience that I won’t write just for me. I stop. I get depressed. And then I spend a lot of time cutting. I don’t want to cut any more. I really can’t take the risk of not blogging at this stage of my life. This is rather important to my mental health.

I have to be selfish about this. I have to be selfish about my right to process my feelings in a public way. Blah blah me talking about my trauma will traumatize other people blah blah blah. Have you ever learned the variety of tricks for closing a computer screen? Bam. Problem solved.

Don’t silence me to make you feel better.

Yes, I’m making different choices than you. I go through a different thought process than you.

That doesn’t mean yours is bad. It just means that it belongs to you.

Recently someone told me I was weirdly permissive and authoritarian at the same time with my kids. I explained the permissive part by saying, “I am saving up my “no’s” for when they have boyfriends. If I can say yes I do.” But I am very authoritarian too. Mostly I effect this through modeling.

We spend a ridiculous amount of time practicing our “manners” and “nice talk”. “How do you introduce yourself?”

“How do you look for clues about a person that are a good introduction to conversation? What things must you not mention or people feel sensitive?” We look for examples in books and movies and games and take them apart. “How does this make you feel?”

Even when I am depressed and pathetic and lying on the couch my children get a lot of attention. They bring me books and we read endlessly. Well, or until my throat goes out. Then Shanna starts explaining/reading the books to me. Then Calli takes a turn. We talk about all of them.

Because I know that it doesn’t matter what is going on in my mind or my body I need to keep working on educating them. That is my job. That is what I am here to do. I am responsible. There is no one to whom I can pass the buck.

It keeps me honest.

I grew up in a house of people who rarely got up and did anything. They were all massively depressed. I didn’t learn how to do things until I was an adult. I know this is common in my generation. Latch key kids with a microwave don’t know how to actually survive.

My body actively rebels at eating “normal” food. I should not have any vegetables or fresh fruit while I am otherwise dealing with a terrible multi-day diarrhea outbreak but that’s all I have in the fucking house. (Well, I do have rice. But I think we are almost out of white rice. We do have a 50 lb bag of brown rice! Uhm.)

I don’t know what the happy medium will be for “healthy” in my body. I know that following the advice of “eat lots of vegetables and fruit!” is not actually going well for me. This hurts. This hurts. This hurts. It is distracting all the time.

I kind of wonder if ecstasy stopped working for me because I took too much of it (I didn’t have that much I know people who have had twenty or fifty times as much as I had in my whole life.) or because the trips became about pleasing other people. I was supposed to be entertaining. I wasn’t there because I wanted to be having an experience alone in my body. I was there to please someone else. It stopped having the ability to raise my serotonin. I just felt anxious and sad and like I knew I was going to be disappointing no matter what I did.

My birthday party was described by many people as “The weirdeest e trip ever.” Well, I knew going in to it that I was evil and bad for doing it. I had been told so quite explicitly by someone I loved.

I don’t know many people who can take a hit of ecstasy and still feel suicidal. But I’m special. At this point in my life there aren’t really drugs powerful enough to over ride my basic belief that people do not like me and I am bad.

Pot lets me not care. I feel more relaxed about it. It doesn’t take it away. I still know that I am bad. I still know that I am someone who does not deserve to be alive. But I’m apathetic and kind of tired and happy that I get to play with the two kindest and most wonderful people in the whole fucking world all day. Pot lets me stop and appreciate what I am doing this moment.

Even if no one else in the world values me, these two people do. I religiously keep my promises. I am fierce about my boundaries. I am loving and kind and gentle the vast majority of the time and I apologize when I am too rough. My kids are allowed to say, “Don’t glare at me. It makes me feel sad.”

I don’t like how tired edible pot makes me. It is much more extreme than smoking. I feel weak sometimes. I feel like I am swimming instead of walking. I am tense and fluid at the same time. I don’t like that I often don’t feel anything from a pill for over three hours. That means I have to wake up in the middle of the night and take a pill if I want my stomach to not hurt by breakfast time so that I can eat.

An old man in our neighborhood recently commented, “You’ve lived an awful lot of lives for someone so young.” I laughed.

I feel tired sometimes. I feel like I am not worthy. I feel like there is too much here.

I was talking to a mom at the park. She has many more kids than me. I asked if it was rude to ask her questions about how she manages. She laughed and told me it was ok. I asked a few generic ones. Then I said, “Based on what I’ve read it seems that a lot of what it is that you have to just do your best and trust to the grace of God to make up for the rest.” She laughed. Yeah. That. “This is my problem though–as an atheist I’m pretty much screwed.” She laughed at me some more. Yup. That must suck.

I don’t think there is a chance in this lifetime that i could forgive a so called “benevolent” god for what I have experienced.

It is kind of funny. I understand age of consent laws so much more now than I did when I was a child. I used to sit on men’s laps and say, “I know that you really aren’t supposed to fuck someone my age. But I promise I will never tell. No one cares what I do. My mother won’t even know.”

I did it a lot. To their credit most of them told me no. They understood that it was a crime for them to commit. I was lectured quite a bit sometimes. But then the ones who lectured me or yelled at me proceeded to ensure that there was a larger scale public shaming. Everyone should know that I am contemptible.

I can’t say I enjoyed most of the sex I had as a child. It hurt. But I knew I was “supposed” to do it. I thought it was supposed to hurt like that. I didn’t think sex could be comfortable or fun or nice. Well, maybe for someone else. Girls like me don’t work that way. I grew up just a little more and moved into a sub culture that taught me that “vanilla” girls enjoy being touched gently. Girls like me were masochists and that was way cooler anyway and the goal was always supposed to be to learn how to take more and more and more pain. More degradation. Give up more control of yourself. Become less of a self. Be just a servant. Be no more important than a piece of furniture, hell, sometimes you are the furniture.

I can’t isolate to deal with my social anxiety any more. Instead I have to pretend that I know how to be normal and have friends. I don’t know how I will deal with the fact that my life is a rotating cast of characters. People come and go and the only people you can depend on seeing are me and your dad and each other. The Godmamas have been very consistent for years. That is your next best shot. K has been in our lives for three years. Of course this means I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Same with Tay.

Pam comes and goes. I think that is good. I think she would find that she disagreed with more and more if she spent more time with me. I think she likes me more from far away.

I don’t have enough that is predictable for the kids. We do go to home school stuff. They will know those kids. But I will never be one of the people at every event. I can’t handle the driving. I feel bad about it, but it is what it is. Well, and I’m less willing to pay for things than some people. That’s ok too.

There is a rock climbing place walking distance from our house. I honestly think my kids are too young. But in a few years I bet we will start hanging out there a lot. If you have a kids membership you get a free adult in (one per kid) and I bet we will spend some time there. That would be fun.

I can’t predict the future. I doubt most of the people I know now will be in my life in twenty years. If I look at twenty years ago, when I was eleven, I think the last person standing is K from Lakeside. She occasionally reads my blog and we chat on IM sometimes. She is very busy. That is the only person left. I would not have predicted that she would be the one, let me tell you.

I don’t trust that people will want to know me that long.

Shanna talks about how we will need to add an upstairs apartment some day because she will need the down stairs for her family. I tell her, “We’ll see.” It is funny that when I first thought of having children I knew I would be the kind to boot them out the door at eighteen.

Now Shanna talks about wanting to be a firefighter two days a week and a doctor two days a week and I will be here to home school her kids. She will stay home two days a week because of course her kids need their mom too.

A permanent fucking dependent.

Once upon a time that was not a disgraceful thing. That was not a sign of being worthless. That was life for some people. Why are only some kinds of lives “worthy”?

I am not someone who could survive Wall Street. I couldn’t work there. I would scream and hysterically cry and have a panic attack when someone snapped at me because it would be just one god damn thing too many and it would be bad.

I am not saying that everyone there is bad or that having that kind of life is bad. I am saying I am not suited for it.

I’m also unlikely to ever really understand what it means to be Chinese. Or black. Or a man. I have to imagine. If I am imagining instead of experiencing I don’t get to treat them like they are equivalent experiences. My imagination is just a comfy place inside my mind. I access it in my garage. I’m safe.

I will never understand the feeling of walking down the street and having white women cower and clutch their purses. That would piss me right the fuck off. That would make me want to start a fight. I’m an angry person with a long list of done-me-wrongs.

I always only need one more thing.

This isn’t about anyone else. People cannot walk on egg shells. They have to hold their boundaries. They can step back. They can say, “In this piece of language _______ it sounds like you are kind of attacking. Can I ask for clarification on that?” I will of course say, “Ah. Poor choice of words. Let me attempt to reword. Is this better?”

Ok, maybe not of course. But I’ll try.

I like questions. I like people wanting to understand. I am not dealing well with people saying that I make them feel bad. I’m not trying to. Is there something very specific that you can ask about? No? Yes?

I am not ranting because I am mad at you. I’m ranting because very soon I have to put the mask on and act very polite and very normal and very controlled. For the love of all that is holy I have to stop crying. I need to clean up the four napkins full of snot and go get started on the day.

It doesn’t really matter how I feel. Shit will get done. That is how life works. I do not want to miss life. So I show up for the work.

high anxiety

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It is interesting to try and track the progress of anxiety. It starts out as irritation, just knowing that something is making me feel nervous. I don’t have to know what. It doesn’t have to be major. At that point I have butterflies in my stomach all of the time and my throat is tight and I have a mild headache.

If things get more intense–if I feel I have New and Exciting reasons to feel anxious the first thing that happens is I feel like someone shot me in the stomach with a water cannon. My stomach acid production goes into over drive. My entire torso feels like it is on flames. And I know that this moment, awful as it is, isn’t going to last so I try to hold on to it and pretend that nothing else is going to happen.

But inevitably, sure as rain, after the water cannon to the stomach the diarrhea starts. I have made jokes for many years that constipation would be a nice change. Ok, they aren’t actually jokes. I think constipation would be really novel. I’m really tired of the diarrhea. It burns. It burns so much that sometimes I sit in the bathroom and cry for upwards of an hour because it just keeps coming and it hurts so much and there is nothing I can do to stop it. The poison has to leave my body some how.

After a couple of days of that then I usually progress into some kind of other illness. Right now I am coughing (very productively. Very very very productively–ew.) and my eyes hurt and my head hurts. My neck muscles are on fire and feel locked down so tight I do not quite have 180 degrees of motion.

My legs hurt. My legs hurt like I have been practicing sprinting up a hill. It’s a combination of throbbing and burning.

Luckily the water cannon to the stomach phase does end. Eventually I do poop out all the extra stomach acid. (OMFG it hurts)

Then I am left feeling numb and shaky. I feel stupid and thick and slow. I feel like I am unable to think clearly. I feel unable to be productive. I feel empty. I feel worthless. I feel like I wouldn’t have so many problems if I could keep my stupid, piece of shit mouth shut. My problems are all my fault for being such a complete bitch. If only I could SHUT UP maybe people wouldn’t be so mad at me all of the time.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt people. I’m not trying to. I swear to a god I don’t believe in. I talk because otherwise I cut. I have to let it out somehow. I am so sorry I offend you. I’m sorry.

I don’t want to be bad. I just don’t think it is possible to stop being bad once you are as bad as I am. There is no longer any redemption for someone like me. It is too late.

People really should get away from me as fast as they can. I am not in control. I am not a nice person. You should protect yourself. Goodness knows I can’t do it.

Then I want to die so much. I don’t know why I was born bad. People have been reacting to me in the same way for my whole life. “Everything is fine. Everything is fine. I’m not mad. I just never want to see you again.”

I get that a lot. If you have the same problem over and over with lots of people… it probably isn’t about them. It’s me. I am bad and people need to stay away from me to protect themselves. It is perfectly logical.

I’m still freaking out about Iain dying. He was good. He was worthy. He was beloved by many hundreds, probably thousands of people. Why did he die and a worthless piece of shit like me lives on? There is truly no justice in the universe.

I’ve been thinking about my mom like crazy. Calli looks more and more like her as she ages. Sometimes when I catch her giving me an expression of my mother’s I have to leave the room and cry. I miss my mommy. It is all my fault I can’t have a relationship with my mother. I’m a stupid pathetic whiny bitch. I made my own bed. No cause to blame anyone else for the results.

On the days when the pain in my body hits over 7 I start thinking about why am I doing this? Why do I continue to inhabit this body, this loathed object. Because I don’t have a choice. Because there is no other option if I want to remain conscious.

Pam asked me why I believe the bad things about myself so much more than the good things when she tells me good things all the time. Honey, my reading has shown me that you need ~10 positive or neutral statements about yourself to balance out one negative statement. That is more or less how it works in creation of self.

I was told I was a worthless, stupid, annoying whore for almost twenty years. In the almost fourteen years since I got out I have had some positive messages mixed in with a lot of people yelling at me and dumping me as a friend and sending me nasty letters through the mail explaining everything I am doing wrong.

I don’t have enough reason to believe positive things about myself. I would have to significantly fly in the face of public opinion in order to believe I have much worth at all. I’m not really confident enough for that.

The best I can do is hide in my house so I don’t bother people. I’m sad that looking out my back window will remind me for the rest of my life that I can fuck absolutely anything up. It is all my fault. I should have shut my stupid, piece of shit mouth.

I am so sorry.

Today is a Godmama weekend. That is probably for the best. I anticipate a lot of hiding and crying. I will make sure no one else has to see it. It is no ones problem but mine. I am not guilting anyone. This is not “because of you”. This is because of me. This is just my life. This is just what it has always been. I have never known different. Not for longer than two-three months at a time.

It is hard being this bad. I don’t really know how it happened to start wtih. But once it is there you can’t lose it.

Coughing up big wads of nasty while you are crying and dealing with a nose running down the back of your throat is truly disgusting. This kind of idiocy usually leads to vomiting. The chunks coming up and the slime mix right at the back of my throat and good grief my gag reflex is sensitive.

I don’t blame other people for my problems. I know that if I were not such a problem I would not have so many problems. If I knew what part of me to cut off: my tongue? My fingers? Maybe I could figure out a way to not make people mad all the time. Maybe I could find a way to not alienate people.

As is, I don’t have a lot of hope.

I feel bad for Noah. I’m sorry he has to live with someone like me. It isn’t his fault I am like this. I am so sorry.

When I talk about being too pathetic to hold down a job this is what I mean. I lose days when my body completely shuts down from stress. I don’t get up much. I just sit and cry because everything hurts so much.

Piercing the veil.

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I do not write as a passive aggressive way of controlling the people around me. I write because otherwise I have trouble noticing patterns of behavior in myself. If what I write makes you think hard about your life and consider some issue, great.

If you ever feel that I am saying too much about you or your family or your pet you are free to ask me to stop.

Otherwise I’m getting kind of tired of the fact that I’ve spent the last fucking month bouncing between people who are upset with me for things I write. They feel attacked.

Uhm, no one is forcing you to read. If you feel upset by what I am writing feel free to take a break. I am not feeling ok with the pressure to stop writing. I am feeling more angry by the day about how many people have gotten really angry with me in the last month as I try to deal with my anxiety.

My anxiety is not your problem. No matter who you are. I am not writing this post to one person. I have had intense exchanges of one sort or another with at least seven people in the last month.

I have to stop being responsible for other people having feelings. If my writing triggers big feelings in you that bother you and make you unhappy, stop reading it. This is an opt-in space. I do not think it is appropriate that I should have to stop and feel anxious every fucking day about the fact that me processing my shit is going to make someone else feel attacked.

I’m not attacking you. I’m sitting in my fucking garage trying to figure out how to not blow up when I am with people in person. I do this because I know in my gut that no one deserves me blowing up. I do it for environmental reasons–not usually for actual provocation.  If you don’t like knowing how I go through that process, opt-out. We can have a cordial in person relationship where I can tailor what I say to your personal preferences. I can not fucking handle the stress of trying to please everyone when I write.

I am not responsible for your feelings. No matter who you are.

I have to say this.

Perspective is everything.

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Yesterday I spent a while talking to a woman who has been fighting/is slowly dying of cancer. When she got the diagnosis her plan was to not fight and just go when it was her time. Then her grandson got engaged and she wanted to be at the wedding. Then her grandson knocked up his long-term partner just before the wedding so even though the wedding already happened she just doesn’t quite want to go yet… even though she is very tired.

Let me fucking tell you I did not burden this woman with my problems. It was fascinating to listen to her though. Why does she decide that suffering is worth it? She is at a point where she isn’t sure she has fight left in her. Does that mean anything bad about her will to live? How much will to live should anyone have? She is already in her 70’s. She has had a good life.

I got married and had children because I wanted to believe there was a way I could have those things and have it be different than what I have known. I have managed to have a very different relationship. It requires me to be isolated most of the time because I can’t handle more stress. But I’m doing what I wanted.

When I’m done with this isolated early-childhood experience my children will be socialized the way I want and they will have a very secure attachment from which to go out into the world. I don’t think they are mine to control forever. I just think I am not capable of keeping them safe if there are too many factors in our lives. I lose track of what the left hand is doing if my right hand has to multi-task eight things.

She asked me a lot of questions about what I am doing with the kids. Why am I home schooling? Why do I believe the things I believe about early childhood development. I had answers. Lots of answers. Non-depressing answers! I was proud of myself. I told her at one point, “I’m usually Debbie Downer but I’ve been chipper this whole conversation so I’m pretty proud of that.” She laughed. Overall talking to her was a delightful experience.

The older I get the less people hate me for being weird. I don’t need anyone else to accommodate me any more. When children are weird it creates random and unpredictable work for adults. That is very annoying.

Yesterday I was told that having a big garden is one of the best things I can do as a parent. When my kids misbehave–make them weed. It is productive, non-painful, but always has to be done. Excellent advice. Ha.

I find that older women listen to why I home school and think for a bit then they say, “I wish I had had the courage to keep my children with me. Go you.” I’ve heard that a lot. I’m not sure it is about courage, exactly. I am this selfish. It has taken a long time for me to realize that a certain level of being selfish is utterly required for a human being to have a happy life. Some people are “altruistic” to such a degree that it is actually quite selfish.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would take for me to make the jump to seriously not wanting to die in a permanent way. I mean, I don’t have a choice about dying some day. It is the universal equalizer. How do I stop wanting to be done?

I haven’t had suicidal ideation in a few days. More than a week? It’s kind of hard to track because the closer attention I pay to tracking it the more present it is.

What would have to change in me, what feeling of security would I need to have in order to really want to live? Noah feels sad that he isn’t enough. He isn’t. Noah represents too much potential pain. I trust him more as the years go by. I didn’t think that a man would ever be able to spend time around me without requiring degrading sex. He doesn’t. I don’t really know what to make of him.

I’ve been writing more letters to Noah’s family. Doing so always makes me feel sad. I tell them things because I wish I could tell my mom. I’ve been thinking about my mom every day. Lots of grieving left to do there. I am so sorry, Mommy. I know I have hurt you so much. Maybe in the end I have hurt you more than my Dad did. I feel so bad about that. I’m sorry.

The only way I know how to move the pain away from you is to take it on or move it to my children. The only way you know how to deal with pain is to blame children and say everything bad is all their fault. Even though the bad started before they were born. I can’t let you do that to my daughters. I just can’t.

My children believe that everyone makes mistakes and we have to forgive one another but you are not to blame for actions that are not yours. Not ever. If you are not the one who did something then you should not be punished. Period.

That’s on the long list of reasons I can’t send my kids to public schools. Teachers have to punish whole groups or whole classrooms because they can’t single kids out every time there is a problem. No. Just no. I don’t think they would be destroyed. Yes many generations of Americans have lived through it and “everyone is fine”. I don’t want it for my kids. I’m not fine.

Solving yesterday’s problems. That is what I am doing. It isn’t right. It isn’t fair. It is what everyone does.

I like talking to older people. I more or less beg them to tell me that there are stages of life with less pain coming. Near as I can tell the pain shifts. I will have less emotional pain and more physical pain. I can handle that trade. That won’t be worth dying over. I feel like a loser but I will take physical pain over emotional pain every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Why do you think I cut for so many years?

I was brave yesterday. The person who is building stuff in my yard has a lot going on. I completely respect that. I get that he has five thousand things pulling at him. But every time he comes he gets slightly less done than he hoped to do and he rarely stays for more than two hours at a go. (I track everything.) He originally told me my list of projects would take ~5 days. He is about halfway through those hours. I asked him if he could come more days over the next week because I would really like the yard uhm, neat enough to clean up before the birthday party. Right now I keep hurting myself tripping on lumber in the back yard.

Why is this brave? Because I feel like a fucking asshole for asking him for more times of showing up but once he is done then I won’t have to pester him any more. It is hard to say that I want him to treat me like a priority so he can get this over with and move on. But he’s been coming since February for five days of work and it is August. Time to finish up. I’m not mad. I just want it to be done.

It is hard to ask for things. It is hard to not feel like an overly-demanding harpy. I don’t know if I have been or not. I think I am going to stop hiring people I know for work. I can’t be demanding with them if I otherwise know the circumstances of their lives yet I feel like I really want to be able to be demanding when I am paying someone to do something. Conundrum. (The work he is doing is beautiful. I really appreciate all of his labor. I am not slamming this man in any way shape or form. I’m sorry I am so impatient. Please don’t be mad at me, L.)

Today I need to clean. I’m pretty sure I never cleaned the house in July. I don’t think I vacuumed once. (To be honest now I mostly vacuum before a crawling baby comes over. I only did the once a day thing while my kids were eating floor candy.) I haven’t swept or mopped in a long time. (Thank goodness for a good exterminator getting rid of the ants. Ha.) I have kept up with dishes and laundry because those things getting out of control is just too hard for me. I took pictures at the worst of the mess because K feels so insecure about my ability to keep my house clean all the time. Ha. No, it isn’t clean all the time. I just make sure that I keep little enough stuff in my house that everything has a home and everything can be picked up and put away in under three hours. Or I would want to beat the shit out of someone.

If it took eight hours to clean my house I would be homicidal. It would not be ok with me. No one has the fucking right to expect that much labor from me on a given day. I don’t know where my entitlement comes from. But man I don’t want a bigger house.

The longer I stay in one place the more I like it. The more I feel like I am picking out behavior traits from a menu that was not previously available to me. “Feel content–check.” It isn’t that I am “happy” all of the time. I’m not sure I am physiologically capable of being “happy” all of the time. I spend too much time scared or angry. But I feel secure. I feel safe. I feel content. I feel like I have done such work as deserves pride. I’m not Rembrandt but my house is neat. My yard is fun. It is small and packed with interesting things to do. I make it more interesting by the year.

(Seriously, I spend a lot of time hiding in the blue potato vine secret club house. I pull a chair in there and read during the heat of the day. It is perfectly cool and shaded and surrounded by pretty flowers. I feel so lucky to have the life I have.)

It is kind of funny to notice that I feel anxiety about “not having a job” because I feel like I am letting the sisterhood down. But uhm, the sisterhood has by and large not been great to me as an individual. I’m loudly feminist. I am supporting the Cause and all. Isn’t it ok for each of us to choose what makes us happy? What load we can bear?

I keep thinking that I want to start observing the Sabbath. Not in a believing in anything kind of way. More from a “no technology and no work from sundown to sundown” sort of thing. Human beings need rest. We are bad at observing that. Keeping the Sabbath is actually a very physiologically healthy thing. Then follow that by walking to the farmers market on Sunday morning? That feels like a recipe for increased health compared to what I have always known.

Reduce the harm you inflict on yourself. Step by step, bit by bit. I’m trying. (Every single time I stop and notice that the pain in my abdomen is gone since I stopped drinking carbonated water I feel a bit more stupid. Wow. We really do cause our own misery; we usually don’t understand how we are doing so but we do.)

Ok, people with lifelong disabilities will hate me for that. No, not everything that happens to someones body is their own fault. As a culture Americans are spectacularly bad about causing physical problems through our choices. Walking away from that line of thinking now.

The woman I spoke with yesterday asked me what I get out of thinking through past mistakes. I said it is very important to me to make 10,000 mistakes instead of 10 mistakes 1,000 times each. She laughed. I told her I have the kind of family that makes 10 mistakes. I don’t know how to change that pattern without being very aware of it. I’m not making the same mistakes I used to make–not at all.

Well, there is that whole existentially an asshole thing. But come on, who is paying attention to that as a mistake? That’s mostly considered a personality bug at this point. A very useful one that I don’t trot out much any more. I don’t think I will ever be willing to give up on it. I just try not to inflict it on non-deserving people.

I think I will always be prone to shouting at people who have the audacity to say racist and sexist things to me. I don’t think I have the desire to stop reacting. I don’t want to be one more silent person. Silence is consent. I’d rather be an asshole.

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The older I get the more I learn about my own introvert nature. I always thought I was an extrovert. I needed people. I had to take what I could get in terms of company. I need time where I get to write. I have to empty my head.

Notice those days where I bop around from social media tool to social media tool? I feel lonely. I want to feel like I am seen and part of the world.

I don’t use social media more because I am afraid. I am afraid of being yelled at. I am afraid of being told I am bad and stupid. I am afraid that if I actually said more of what is in my head that people would not want to know me any more. As lonely as I feel at this stage of my life I know this is the absolute best I have ever had it. I try very hard to understand what this might mean in the scope of my life. If I blow this… I know how that goes.

I am ok with someone getting to know me and disliking something that I do. That’s fine with me. No matter who you are you do things that I don’t like. I’m fine with you feeling the same way about me.

But I desperately want people to believe that I am allowed to exist. Without having to offer sex. I want to have some kind of value in the world. I want to be needed. I want who and what I am to be useful. And without having to change so that I can be more like other people.

It is kind of funny to me when people tell me that me making the choices I make reflects negatively on them.  Well, funny in a horrified kind of way. I can tell you in great detail exactly why I am bad for every single choice that I make. I know all of the arguments down the last specific. I don’t think that my choices are “good”. I don’t think that other people are bad for not being like me. I think I am bad for not being like other people.

I think I am rather pathetic for not being able to work while having children. I know a lot of women who do it and everything is working out great. I would be an abusive monster. I cannot handle that stress. I feel very ashamed of my limits.

I think it is rather pathetic that I can’t deal with hiring childcare on a daily basis so I can go get work done. I think it is extremely pathetic that I would use that time to hide and cry. But I would.

I worry a lot about isolating my children. I think there are HUGE benefits to public school. I am not sure I am doing them favors by encouraging non-conformity and inability to follow institutional rules. I’m not sure I am doing them favors by showing them that they should be very angry with any one who tries to tell them when and where they can use a bathroom. My kids think they have the god damn right to decide when and where. If you pester them to “just try” so that you don’t have to be inconvenienced later they will lash out at you. I’m ok with this. I feel the same fucking way. I don’t act like accidents are that big of a deal. I’ve had too many because of problems I have in my body due to a lifetime of malnutrition and control issues in institutional settings.

I worry a lot about being a parent with mental illness. What am I teaching my children about “normal”?

No. I don’t look down on people for making different choices.

I believe with everything I am that no one can judge what is the right choice for another person. I don’t believe I ever have enough information to judge what a different person is capable of accomplishing. For good or for ill. I under estimate and over estimate. I just can not judge. I don’t feel that other people judge me very well.

I’m going to be semi-egotistical and say that I am an extremely competent person. I know how to do a wide variety of skills at a better than average level. I have had to learn how to do things for myself and by myself. I am a ridiculously hard task master.

But I don’t think I am capable of much. Notice how I actively avoid anything in life that might lead me to having power? I don’t want to have a powerful job. I don’t want to associate with “powerful” people. I don’t especially want to have a rich lifestyle regardless of how much money I ever have. I would feel wildly uncomfortable.

When I picture my old age I would be just fine with living on a trailer on a piece of property in Oregon where I am legally allowed to decide when I die. Sure. That would be fine.

I don’t think that most people uhhh set their aspirations at such a level. I want to have enough money to never need to work again. I’m trying to use this ridiculous income of my husband’s to ensure that it happens without him having to work for many more years. I don’t want him working himself to the bone for decades to support my sloth. That’s not the deal.

I want both of us to be able to do things we want with the hours of our days. Luckily for him, the shit he likes to do for fun will probably generate a modest income. Eventually I will do something for some pay. I don’t want much. I really fucking don’t. I already have more than I need.

I feel like I have grown up in a weird space of intersection. Boy howdy have I seen the American Dream up close and personal. I see the stress. I see the trade offs. I see the A/B decisions that started with your parents decisions and I know that I will never be able to be competitive. It was done before my birth.

Oh man does that make me want to opt out of the system. I want to have my private, isolated life where I don’t have to try to step on anyone else’s neck in order to inch my way up.

I don’t have that in me. That fight was lost too long ago.

So what am I teaching my children? I worry. I worry all the fucking time.

What kind of adults will my children be? They will never experience deprivation of any kind. They will grow up with a mother who responds to any and all signs of entitlement with the nastiness of a viper. You are not fucking entitled to the labor of my body. Do for yourself. (I try to tone things down because they are kids and all but I am getting less patient by the year and by the time they are adults I won’t feel any desire to tone it down.)

You have to care about how the actions of your body effect the people around you. You have to. Period. If you are not willing to care about that, well you can bloody well stay in a room by yourself. (For an age appropriate number of minutes on a timer. Then you come out to kisses and hugs and talk about how much you are loved.)

I don’t know that I am doing anything right.  I don’t really feel like I am in a position to look down on what anyone else is doing.

My life is such a bizarre mix of trauma and privilege that it is hard to tease out what is positive and what is negative. What parts of my behavior and character are positive or negative depends entirely on your point of view.

Recently (this year) a lot of my reading has been about what personality traits enable people to thrive despite adversity. I may be a whiny bitch because most of my current adversity is all in my head but other people in the world deal with real adversity. It is still relevant reading and all. (See that denigration about the mental illness bit. IT’S ALL IN MY HEAD! Well, what isn’t?)

Apparently one of the most important aspects of character is the ability to live with having conflicting traits in yourself. Be ok with the fact that you are patient AND impatient. Be ok with the fact that you are trusting and suspicious. I really am quick to judge people. I give people a lot of fucking rope. Then I hang them hard and fast and walk away.

I don’t like being alone. I find being alone significantly preferable to being in social environments where I have to try very hard to be “good” or I might be expelled. I think of basically every social space that way. I’m not invited to that many parties any more. Part of it is the kid thing. Part of it is that I make people feel fucking uncomfortable. C’est la vie.

I feel intense guilt for not being able to unschool the way I see some people doing it. I can’t have my kids involved in activities six days a week to meet social needs. I just can’t. I am not capable.

When I was a kid it was a joke in most of the schools I was enrolled in that I shouldn’t bother enrolling because I missed so much school. I have never been a consistent part of anything. I can manage a few months, maybe. I taught for 2.5 years at S.T. That is the longest I have ever consistently done anything in my life. I was technically in the graduate program at SJSU for seven years… but I attended one class a week for most of that and I had years off in the middle.

I lived with my Owner for three years and dated him for four. Outside of my mother he is the person I have lived with the longest consecutively by far. I’m not sure my mother beats him by much and after I was four years old I never lived with her for four years in a row again.

I have lived with Noah and Shanna longer than I have ever lived with my mother in a go. When I write it down it becomes a thing I can look at. Holy shit. That’s really pretty sad. When I just feel anxiety and frustration because I am having a horrible time with the pressure that comes from trying to provide stability for children I don’t think of it in such terms. Of course this is hard for me. Of course I am struggling. I’m swinging without a net. So I pursue relentless competence at a wide variety of skills. Most of which are utterly without value to anyone beyond me. I can’t care about that. People like me die if they worry too much about which skills to pick up because they will invariably make the wrong decisions.

I’m trying really hard to make my 10,000 mistakes. I’m not sure what I will be a “master” of but I think I will be much more calm. What is another mistake at that point? I can do anything and it doesn’t matter.

I want neither the path of complete disconnection from other people of Zen nor the immersion in community behavioral norms I have always known. I don’t know what my path will be.

I can neither lead nor follow. If I am making other people feel like they are wrong then I need to work on my communication skills.

I haven’t figured anything out. I just keep walking because I don’t know what else to do. I try new things because I don’t know how to do the same thing for a long time.

I want to raise children the way I am doing this because my children are going to be the only people I ever have this kind of intensity with. I have absolutely no other window into such an experience. I am a selfish piece of shit and I want it. I want it. I want it. I want to find out what it means to live with someone 24/7 for 18 years. I understand that other people get enough out of that experience with their kids being gone for school and I’m totally cool with that and I think it represents a healthy approach to life.

I can’t. I can’t miss this. I have no other way to find out what a normal childhood looks like. I want to watch this so fucking much. I am so scared that I will miss part of it and I won’t be able to understand why something later is happening. I need to fucking know what is happening to them. I NEED to know. I can’t just trust a daycare provider. I can’t. This is a failure in me.

I need to know in my bones that when they are eighteen I have kept them safe. I can’t pass the buck on responsibility. I don’t trust anyone enough. I am not saying that you don’t love your children. I am saying that I am broken.

I worry so much about what I am doing to my children. They have never had a daily relationship with anyone but me and their dad. Even when we had a housemate she did not appear during their awake hours every day. They have literally never had a relationship with anyone else where they saw them every day for two months. Not even five days a week. And I take them on trips away from their dad, sometimes for weeks.

I worry a lot. Is this ok? Is this basically broken? It makes me feel hellza better that Laura Ingalls Wilder was way more isolated than my kids. I mean… isn’t that part of the American story? We are all alone. Even when we live in suburbs shoved cheek and jowl. Most of my friends talk about a loneliness of the soul they felt because even though they went to school… they never had friends. I collect self-identified “rejects”.

This is a lot of why I am trying so hard to get to know the people who live in our neighborhood. We actually see people and have conversations with them pretty consistently.

But I’m not providing little friends. I’m not sure school would anyway. And man it would waste their time. And teach lessons I don’t like.

It all comes down to control. Do I think the American government is doing a good job in how it is raising kids? No. Ok. I’m super glad I have the privilege to opt-out then. Not everyone does. Everyone has different privileges.

My choices are about what I can bear. I know that what I am capable of is pretty pathetic in some core ways. If you go spend some time studying brain developmental stuff you might cut me a little more slack. Not a lot. I don’t need a lot. I do very well all things considered. But there is a cost to all things considered. My kids have to bear that. I can’t understand what that cost will be in advance. I am fucking worried.

Did you know that rape is down 58% since the 1970’s? (http://prospect.org/article/should-rape-porn-be-banned)

Complicated stuff, yo.

Back in my day (*cough* choke*cough) I wanted to “play act” things that are much more extreme than average.  I have had the last several years of being a parent where I have done the “trapped under a baby” thing and I was alone all the time. I’ve had a lot of time to think about why I have done the things I have done. How many of them are things I will ever do again?

I will never again allow someone to put a noose around my neck and lift me off the ground because he wants to be able to look at the picture later and masturbate. The risk/reward ratio will never be tipped in that direction again. I’m really willing to go pretty far to be “good enough” for someone who wants to hurt me.

My daughters will not believe that anyone has the right to hurt them. What they go do in their sex lives will not be my problem. My children will not believe it is ok for an adult to grab them by the arm and drag them along. It is fucking assault. You see it in schools all the time.

I am not strong enough to teach my daughters how to be strong in that world. I don’t have any appropriate coping skills. My coping skills got me raped and beaten over and over again.

I worry so much. What do I have to give? Is anything about me worthy of learning about? Should I just shut the fuck up so there is never any reason for them to have to know how very self absorbed and bad and stupid I am.

I’m teaching my kids that adulthood is very free form. No one is your boss. You get to decide what to do with your time. If you need money (and everyone does in one way or another) then you need to figure out how to get it. All career paths involve training of some kind even if you are working retail or cutting hair (holy moly the training for hair dressing is intense). Lots of careers involve college. If you think you are heading down that route we will have some serious conversations in five, seven, and nine years from now about what you want to do to prepare for that experience because it will be up to you to pull it off. I won’t be part of that.

I don’t know what you will be when you grow up. Do you have ideas? What do you want to prepare for being able to do?

I’m trying to learn what I will do when I grow up too. I’m not ready. I’m sorry. I know that is a sign of my basic immaturity. I get it. But I am where I am. I am sorry that my development is so retarded. It isn’t my fault. I’m trying. I’m trying so hard. I can’t be anything other than what I am.

Life is in medias res. We are all part of the continuing story of humanity. We are part of the story of our individual families. We are bearing the body load of their deprivations, excesses, tendencies, and flat bad choices. Or you can be one of those people who is happy and healthy and your family has been for…. Well as long as any one can remember. Great. Thanks. I’m happy for you. Sigh.

Ok, well so what does this all mean for my kids? In order for me to change the narrative of my family I need to change the narrative of my family. Which I have done in some major ways of  which I am proud. I continue to examine my behavior and attempt to make progress on doing course corrections.

I can’t do anything but what I am doing.  Oh, that’s bullshit. If Noah died I would cope. Well, I still wouldn’t work. He made sure of that before I quit. But shit happens. I could still have to get a job. I reiterate that I would cope. I think I would not be a very nice mother any more. I think my children would effectively lose both parents and it would be horrible. I would not be able to be present for even 1/10 of what they expect.  Good grief they are entitled little things.

They think they are entitled to my love and attention at absolutely every fucking hour of the day and night. Whoa. It is over whelming. After five years I have pulled back my boundaries like mad. When Shanna was born I did it twenty-ish hours a day (Noah had the other four). Calli has never had quite what Shanna had. It just isn’t possible. But they sleep together.

The three of us are a little self contained unit of affirmation and approval. We love each other and only sort of need anyone else. I feel bad about the ways in which we leave Noah out. He’s just not around enough to make as much impact on them. (I say as I hide in the garage away from them. But geez I’ve been low on personal time lately.)

I have to militantly believe that it takes all kinds or there is no chance that it is ok for me to exist. Sometimes that is hard to live with.

We all live in the middle. I come from hard core religious zealots and prostitutes–and that’s just on my mom’s side. How about you?

Three more days in the month, paint faster.

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I am going to do 13-23 more hours on the fence. I want to finish this week. I suppose that means that I will be painting all day today and tomorrow and maybe Wednesday. The kids will *love* that. Not. They are very very done with me doing a task that requires intense concentration and that they not walk up and touch me. But it’s coming along!

Yesterday I started the work of unwinding the blackberry bramble from the trellis it has been on for the past year and a half. Hard to believe that the bush has been in my yard for only a year and a half. That’s one massive sucker. I have probably another five hours of work before it is transferred over to the new trellis structure (which mostly consists of retired Twisted Monk rope. Ha. My yard is visually full of it. My stuff is far too old for safe suspensions and I don’t do enough floor bondage to care. Not that I suspend anyone lately. Sigh.).

Ice skating was wicked fun and I didn’t fall *once*. I feel so proud of myself. I went off and did some speed laps on my own when the rest of my family was worn out from falling. I find it strange that my thirties are the decade of physical independence and strength. I have the courage to try things now. I am not so afraid of failing that I stay home and cry instead of showing up. I have always been afraid. It is weird to not let fear run very much of my life.

“Falling is part of the learning process. If you are afraid of falling you will never be good. You can’t get real mad either. You just have to accept it and try to do better.”

I learn these things as I teach them.

I went and talked to an old acquaintance who is a Contra dance leader person last night. I am curious about bringing the home school kids to a Contra dance because I think it is potentially interesting to them. It sounds like I should wait until more kids are closer to ten. That makes sense. That’s ok, I don’t need to do everything this year. I will start trying to teach some things in the park though as pre-prep.

It is kind of weird constantly thinking about scaffolding. What do I want them to be able to do when they are thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, fifty that requires preparation at this point. There are more things than anyone wants to think about.

Life is about a series of A/B choices. As you go on your list narrows. Do you want children–yes or no. Did you actually have children–yes or no. Do you want to work or stay at home–pick one. When you make choices you close a lot of doors. I get this. I don’t think that one road is morally superior than other roads. I don’t think that picking home schooling proves I love my kids more than anyone else. It is just the A/B choice I wanted.

Recently I wrote a fairly defensive six page letter to my grandmother-in-law. She has been expressing clearly that she has never seen home schooling go well and she does not approve. Ok. Well, I know a lot of people for whom it has gone well so if we are doing the anecdote thing I win. If we are looking at actual fucking data then I win and win and win and win. So fuck you. Home schooling has been around since the dawn of time so can we not act like the American public school system has a lock on education? Give me a break.

But I don’t say “fuck” in letters to the grandmother. Even I recognize some limits.

What I have been doing instead is writing long philosophical letters where I mention all the educational theorists and I talk about the strengths and advantages of different systems and I talk about schema and scaffolding and all the shit I’m doing.

I knew I wanted to home school my children when I was seventeen years old. I went to college, graduate school, and I got a teaching credential because I wanted to home school my kids and I believed it required preparation. No, I really and truly don’t believe that everyone should home school their kids. However I think I am fully fucking qualified and I’m not going to be nice to people who imply otherwise.

I prepared for this for more than ten years before having children. I did that knowing that there is the very real possibility that I will home school my kids till they are seven or so and then they will say, “Screw you mom, I’m going to school.” I did that knowing that if I had a child who was blind, deaf, autistic, fill in the blank special needs, I probably wouldn’t be able to home school. I prepared anyway and hoped for the best. My children appear to be very “normal” in terms of development. Shanna is advanced verbally but not emotionally or in terms of education. She just can talk. Calli is very on track to be average.

I can handle average kids. I really can. I understand that lots of people worry about home schooling as an educational choice–I worry too. But I have yet to meet someone who comes out of the public education without major gaps in their education… I can’t believe that home schooling would magically be worse. Not if I seriously undertake it as my profession.

I’ve tried to figure out how to use a word other than vocation. Now that I know I am using vocation wrong (it has way less emphasis than I want) I’m not even sure how to talk about it. Some children know very young they want to grow up and be a nun. It’s a calling. I knew I wanted to home school.

I want this intensity of relationship. I understand that not everyone wants it. I am not trying to claim that this intensity is the healthiest or the best or superior for everyone. Noah sure as shit couldn’t do what I am doing with the kids. He would go bananas. He gets very short with them by the end of a weekend. I would not leave Noah alone with the kids for more than a week by himself. I mean, no one would die or anything. They wouldn’t have much fun though.

I have been alone for most of my life in a way that other people can’t understand. Moving around all the time such that you literally don’t have friendships that last longer than three months is quite traumatic in and of itself without mentioning all the other shit in my life. I really am a freak. It is pretty verifiable if you go talk to medical professionals.

I want to be with people all the time. I want to be able to hug and touch people safely without them expecting me to offer blowjobs. I haven’t had a lot of that. I have spent most of my life believing that if I am not actively offering sex I should leave because no one is interested in my presence.

I don’t believe I “love my children more” because of the choices I make. I believe that I am using my children to meet my needs in some ways that could be massively unhealthy if I am not careful.

Shanna asks me why I see a therapist almost every time we go. She doesn’t want to be away from me for the hour of the appointment. She complains loudly. “You know how I cry all the time? Well, I cry because I’m thinking about things I need to talk about. No, I can’t talk to you about these things. It would be totally inappropriate. It is wrong for grown ups to bring their problems to children. I need someone to talk to. She helps me be a better mother.”

I am very careful that neither child becomes my “little mother”. That’s not what I want. I think that is very wrong. That is what my mother did to me. That is what my grandmother did to my mother. I am not passing on that generational wound. I believe that I (I’m not fucking talking about anyone else so don’t take this as a projection) would not be capable of taking care of my own shit and holding down a job. I think that if I had a job I would expect my kids to pick up a ton more slack than I do right now. I would expect them to “help me” because you have kids to help you–right? Isn’t that how the tradition goes?

I didn’t have kids to help me. I had kids because I want a life long relationship so bad it makes me shake with need. I had kids because I want a reason to not die and I don’t think I have very many good reasons. I don’t think other people are worth staying alive for. Other people don’t do much of anything to make my life a demonstrably better place to be. They can’t. It isn’t that they don’t care. It’s that they are living their lives and they can’t stop to take care of me. That’s not healthy in any way–there is even a word: codependence. I don’t expect people to do that. Hell, I don’t want anyone to stop their life to try and take care of me.

But being a parent means that I have to think about how relationships work all day every day. I have to do measurable work on myself to deserve this relationship. I have to change.

I was talking to a new person last night at a party. I don’t know how we got on this topic but we were discussing parental guidance with regard to reading. When I was eight my aunt (who was basically a foster mother) told me I wasn’t allowed to read Sweet Valley High books because they were too mature and graphic. (The kids made out in the sand at the beach or something.) I left her house and went back to my mother’s house where I read Bertrice Small books. Small is very into incest, pony play, harems, sodomy, raping, kidnapping, dildos, bestiality, LOTS of group sex.

That is, in a nutshell, the conundrum of my life. Those kind of hard-core pornography books were the only books my mom had in the house. I went between being punished for thinking about kissing a boy to being given a detailed instruction manual on how to have really graphic sex that I bloody well followed over and over.

I was eight when I started trying to memorize these books. What was I supposed to do in order to make people want me? I thought it was very important. I thought that was the only way people might let me be around. When the characters were taught how to behave in the harem I god damn took notes.

My children will not be reading Bertrice Small pre-puberty. The books are in my room up on a very high shelf. I still have them. I still wank to them. Oh man formative literature.

I no longer think I deserve to be beaten and raped. That is a fairly big step for me. That is how I found the bdsm community. I thought that was what I deserved and I went on the internet looking for men to do that to me. I was told to buy SM 101 and that was it. I found what I was supposed to be doing.

Let me tell you I have some cognitive dissonance sometimes. What am I supposed to be doing now? Well, painting a fence. Winding some blackberry bushes. Preserving tomatoes. Loving children. Teaching reading and writing and arithmetic.

I am supposed to figure out how to be stable and happy and a “good influence” whatever that means. Am I a good influence? I don’t know. I think that you, whoever you are, are someone who has unique gifts and talents and things to offer the world. I don’t know what they are so I can’t tell you what you “should” be doing. You have to figure it out for yourself.

When I was young I believed that my only talent/skill thing was being able to read fast. I didn’t see how that could possibly be a big deal later in life. I thought I was pathetic. Now I think that being able to read as fast I can has been an unbelievable gift in this lifetime. I can learn anything I want to know.

I am teaching myself gardening. It is complicated and there is a lot to understand. I’m learning it. I am teaching myself cooking. It’s fucking chemistry. I understand that these are things that humans have been teaching themselves without books for thousands, maybe a million years. But I am really progressing at these skills at a pace my forbearers could not imagine. That’s kind of cool.

It is hard believing in the pit of your stomach that you are stupid, worthless, and unworthy of breathing while also knowing that you are an unusual specimen of the species. It doesn’t fit in my brain. I am more competent at being able to learn things than average. Why do I feel so weak and pathetic? Because these things are impossible to measure in any useful way. Because the measurement of these qualities has nothing to do with feelings. Because I just think I suck. (Yes, but what do you suck? Suck is a transitive verb.)

I know a lot of people who make choices without thinking a lot about them. I’m not saying that is a terrible decision. If you are following the pattern you know and it works for you there isn’t a strong need to question the normal M.O. That’s fine. I can’t do that though.

I don’t think I am making the UNIVERSAL BEST CHOICES. I don’t think there is any such thing. I think I am making the choices that make the most sense for me given my set of issues and life circumstances.

I worry a lot about whether or not I am making the best choices for my children. I look at studies that say that children, in general, do “best” when they have a stay at home mother. I look at studies that verify that home schooled children, on average, do very well. But those things tell me literally nothing about whether or not I am meeting the needs of my children. I’m not sure if I am capable of knowing at this point.

My children are clean, well fed, and loved. That’s what I know. But that is pretty much exactly what the neighbor said about me to justify why she didn’t tell anyone I was being raped as a small child. How in the fuck do I know if what I am doing is right given that set of knowledge? Am I actually taking care of my kids? My mom thought she was and she wasn’t.

I tell my children that they don’t need to be like me even though I apparently have a desperate need to be like my mother. I am doing her job and I am doing it god damn better than she did. My children are safe in a way my mothers children were never safe. My children don’t need to grow up and do what I am doing any more than they have to grow up and do what Noah is doing. There is a whole wide world out there. There are so many people living in so many different ways. If you don’t like my approach, well let’s go study some other approaches. I can’t explain them like an insider so we will have to find people so you can ask your questions.

If I do anything right in this lifetime it will be to teach my children that being like me is not necessarily part of being an adult. I’m a special fucking snowflake. Don’t try to be like me.

It feels so sad that it always comes back to, “Don’t be like me. I am bad.” If you want people to like you, don’t be like me. If you want people to think you are a good person, don’t be like me. If you want people to let their children play with you, don’t be like me. Throughout my whole life people have been keeping their children away from me because I am a bad influence. From when I was three years old people have said to my face that they don’t want me around their children because I am a bad influence.

No, don’t be like me. There is no good to come of that road.

Am I really that bad? I don’t even know. I don’t know how these things are measured. I don’t know how they are decided. That process is invisible to me.

It’s kind of funny that I rarely decide that a person is “bad”. I frequently think that someone made a bad decision. I don’t conflate anyone else’s personhood with whether or not they make bad decisions sometimes. I do for me though. There is no redemption out of this pit.

Yesterday I worked on the fence for two hours. One of the old white guys who walks around my neighborhood chatted with me, as they all do, about the painting. He said that he recognized the Hindu Temple but “wished they would just go away.”

I went off. “Uhm, my family doesn’t share that opinion even slightly. I teach English classes there. My family has been taking Hindi classes there. We are glad it is on our street as a valuable resource to our community.” He looked gobsmacked.

I recently read a neat blog entry (I can’t find the link) about a white woman talking about her feelings of discomfort when people make racist comments to her and why she doesn’t say anything. Basically she wants to feel safe.

I don’t feel, as a white person, like it is ok for me to choose to feel “safe” rather than speak against racism. I think that is white privilege at its most insidious and disgusting. If another white person says something racist to me I do not keep my mouth shut. Silence is consent. When my neighbor told me his Hispanic gardeners trimmed his tree wrong and he threatened to kill them over it I told him that what he did was a criminal act and he should be ashamed of himself. He later told he apologized profusely to the gardner. You had god damn better. What the fuck were you thinking in the first place?

To me all of this consent-for-sex, racism, feminism stuff is all entwined. It’s not ok to have a better life at the expense of stepping on someone else’s neck.

Breathe in. Breathe out. It will be a long day of hard work. That will be ok. It will end. Tomorrow will be a long day of hard work. That will be ok too. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow I will finish the fence. *cross fingers* I want to be done in July. One month. I want to give this project one month of my life.

And my beloved husband has finished making me breakfast. This isn’t a eat-in-the-garage-alone-because-I-can’t-stop-crying morning. Time to go in and tell my children that I missed them while I was sleeping. I have hugs and kisses to give. I hear that they need them.

brain dump

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I am on my second night of not sleeping because I am angry about the PTSD forum. Third night? I can’t even remember. This is why I backed away from facebook. Maybe my therapist is right and I shouldn’t be on this website either.

I have a chip on my shoulder the size of Wyoming when it comes to people nastily lecturing me about my behavior. You do not have the ability to foretell the future. Shut the fuck up.

But it’s all my fault if someone chooses to yell at me about how stupid I am… right? I chose to talk in public about something I did. I did not write a 20 page dissertation justifying my decision thus I am just being self-hating. If a man ever says anything sexual to a woman and she continues talking to him it will be all her fault if he later beats her and rapes her. So I’m fucking stupid for talking to this guy and asking for a boundary. Like, duh.

That sounds like a crazy person with PTSD trying to make me act even crazier than I do. Please forgive for being dismissive and nasty after you have derided me multiple times. At least I’m not doing it where she can see and I have not yet typed any of the swirling nasty names for her running about in my head.

I did go back to the thread this morning. *hang head in shame* I said that in the future I would like her to know that I am not interested in her opinion and please never comment on anything I write again. I believe her crystal ball to be out of service and I wish she would quit sharing the hysteria it is stuck on with me.

You notice how I almost never comment on other peoples writing? I probably comment on substantially less than 1% of what I read. I understand that my hysterical opinion is not usually welcome.

P, I do notice that it is a big deal that you are able to get to our house. I just think that at this point you continue to do so because you are being nice to my kids. I’m grateful that you are willing to be nice to my kids. They love and adore you and think you are smart and funny and capable. I want them to look up to women like you. I *do* understand that it is hard. I *do* appreciate it.

I just don’t know how to be unoffensive. And I don’t particularly want to offend you. So I don’t know what to say now.

I spend so much time worrying about how to not offend people. What can I possibly say or do to not offend and piss people off. I seem to piss people off by existing and breathing. (I’m not trying to dismiss the valid complaints of people who get upset with me. Sometimes I do know why people don’t like me any more. Sometimes it is very confusing though.)

I know I am a selfish asshole. I don’t know a different way of staying alive. I am not capable of living for unselfish reasons. All of my forbearance is gone. The closest I have to that left is taking care of my kids and having kids was the single most selfish thing I have ever done. So I’m not sure I can do the unselfish thing. I don’t think I would want to try. Near as I can tell the reason to live unselfishly is because your invisible sky friend told you to. Have fun with that.

I am up to twenty hours on the mural. I am somewhere between 40%-50% done. My neighbor bitched that there weren’t any people on it. My comment was I JUST FINISHED THE BACKGROUND COLORS GIVE ME A BLOODY BREAK. But he also very helpfully went and fetched a flashlight as I worked at dusk yesterday so I screeched that in a more or less pleasant way. Or at least he just laughed at me.

Yesterday he was trying to get a rise out of me (that’s basically all he does) and he was asking me if I knew anything about racing cars. After stating that I don’t watch Nascar it was kind of awesome to be able to say that I went to track school for racing Porsche’s so please don’t lecture me about how racing works. (To be clear I never actually *drove* on a track. My Owner got into that part after I left with the girl after me. Oh well. I still did the track school with him.)

So today, after the cheerful argument about racing cars yesterday, he showed up and asked me a bunch of questions. He said as he was walking up, “So now that I now I have a resident expert….”

I of course made it clear that I don’t consider myself an expert at much of anything. I am at best a dilettante. But we had a lengthy conversation and yeah I can answer a lot of questions.

Yesterday I was blessed with two (ok really four throughout the day–two adults) people coming over. One just stopped long enough to show off her HOLY SHIT DRAMATIC hair cut (she looks great) and the other friend walked around our neighborhood and looked at the fence and shared ice cream with us. The ice cream sharer brought little girls so my kids thought the day was a win.

Every day during dinner we try to go around the table sharing our favorite part of the day. My kids always say that seeing their friends is their favorite part of a day. They are really grateful when they get to see the kids they know. I am too. It is nice to still know people.

I feel really weird about trying to provide my kids steady access to people. I want them to have actual long-term relationships. I didn’t during childhood. I rarely knew people for any consistent period of time.

At this point Jenny is the person who has known me the longest and best. Everyone else comes post-bdsm period.

I went to a party recently and watched two beautiful women top a third beautiful woman. I have known the two tops for more than a third of my life.

A woman I used to date is moving back to the area. I’m having feelings about this. I’m having really intense feelings around the idea that I will never have sex with her again. It is really bothering me. I want to fuck her so bad my hands shake.

When I met my friend at the coffee shop to talk about the boundary incursion one of the things we talked about was inappropriate sexual acting out on the part of parents. That has dramatically played into his and his wife’s emotional issues–their parents not being appropriate.

I don’t think that promiscuity is always wrong. I don’t think that polyamory is wrong. I just think that I am not going to be able to model healthy versions of these. I think that *I* would be incredibly unhealthy. I am obsessive. I tend to forget everyone else in the world when I am thinking about a new (or returning after a long absence) sex partner. I think my children fucking deserve twenty years of my attention.

But good golly Miss Molly I want to fuck her. I want to. I want to. I want to. And I get the distinct impression she would really like me to. Mostly she is stone because she doesn’t trust people. (For the non-queers in the reading audience “stone” means that she does sexual things to people but she doesn’t tend to allow people to touch her genitals.) Given my long history of fucking her six ways from Sunday I’m pretty sure I would still be an exception–I always was.

I think it is that ability to side step peoples normal boundaries that drives a lot of my sex. I solicit people to actively reconsider their boundaries for me. I push them. I ask them to change the rules for me. It’s that whole selfish asshole thing.

I am having a hard time with the idea that I will never again validate someones sexuality and identity. I want to make her feel like she is beautiful and desirous and yet there isn’t a long list of people wanting to date her so she doesn’t believe me. If I’m not there to apply ego stroking… there is no ego stroking. So maybe she is only those things to me. And now I don’t want her either.

It is all very tied up in knots of shame and wanting people to feel loved and important. A lot of the reason I have always picked the partners I have picked is because I go hunting for people who are used to being told “no” and then I undo some of that damage. “Ok, maybe you aren’t a good fit with everyone but let me show you HOW AWESOME it can be to find someone compatible. You aren’t wrong or broken–you just need to find people who mesh.”

And perverts really have a hard time finding people to validate them. I’m just sayin’.

On my last trip to the dispensary I only bought edibles (not any of the sugar enhanced kinds–the variety is breath-taking these days). So I’m trying to eek them out for more than a month. So I’m under dosing for the first potion of time. Given that it is coinciding with doing EMDR again I sort of expected to hit a suicidal ideation period again. I haven’t. That is good. *happy dance* Any month without living in a multi-plex of suicidal horror is a good month. Happiness is about low expectations.

Last night putting the kids to bed was one of those magical experiences. I lay down with them for a few minutes when I got back from painting. I like hearing what they want to say as they empty their heads in preparation for sleep.

“I share my things with my family because I love my family. I share with my mama. I share with my big sister. I share with my daddy. My mommy shares with me. My big sister shares with me. My daddy shares with me. My family loves me!”

Is sharing of stuff how love is decided? I don’t know.

“I am happy! Sometimes I am sad. Sometimes I am mad. Right now I am happy!”

Yes, my beloved, feelings happen. I’m glad you are happy right now. I am too. I almost always feel happy when I get to snuggle between my two favorite girls in the whole wide world. I feel so deeply grateful that I get to have many hours a day every single day of cuddling my children. That is filling my decades old touch deficit.

I get that because Noah wants me to have it. Because I want it. He’s ok with me being selfish. I am very lucky. Not everyone wants what I have (which is more than ok–it’s kind of necessary). I feel lucky.

Ok, now I’m feeling less angry about the hysterical woman on the ptsd forum. I’m sure in her head everything is stuck on hysterical. I have totally had that feeling. I just choose to not take on someone else’s hysteria. I have enough of my own.

I think I can look at patterns and determine what will happen. I get the feeling that you absolutely MUST listen to your own impulses on this topic. Ignoring nigling feelings of worry is part of my problem. It is part of how I have ended up sexually assaulted so many times. I don’t know when to run. I absolutely get why people would want to lecture me “for my own good”.

I just honestly don’t want to hear it. You don’t know much about me. You don’t care to find out. How in the fuck do you presume to know what is good for me?

Not so good at the whole “boundaries” thing.

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Intense EMDR therapy session today. My therapist commented, “It sounds like you are having a hard time keeping your boundaries up when other people are having feelings.” Why yes, that is a very accurate description. I feel that other people having feelings automatically trumps anything I might say or do. That’s part of the whole worthless thing. So of course when people start telling me that I am making them feel bad I agree that it is because I am a terrible person who should be driven out of all society. Not really a helpful response.

I think I should back off of the ptsd forum. I’m kind of tired of having people yell at me that they know “all about trauma” and “obviously I am making bad choices” and my problem is that I can’t “stop re-enacting trauma with untrustworthy people”. That whole set of rants in relationship to meeting someone in a coffee shop. Because obviously meeting up with a guy to say, “Hey something you said bothered me” is the same as putting myself in a position to be raped again. Same damn thing. I’m too stupid to be able to evaluate which situations are safe. I should just stay home or only talk to people who never make mistakes.

Oh, and of course anyone who is part of the bdsm community should just be shunned. They are all Bad People.

You know what, lady? I think I am going to take my experiences of the bdsm community over yours. There are decent people who happen to get off on bdsm. There are assholes and predators and rapists who are not in the bdsm community. I don’t really feel that deciding that a demographic of people is terrible is the way to have a happy life.

Of course she wants me to start with all men and move on from there. All men are dogs, don’t you know. (Ok, technically it was a man in the thread who said, “I hate to say this because I am a man… but all men are dogs.”) No, they aren’t. And fuck you while we are at it.

I don’t want to pretend all men are terrible. I don’t want to believe that all _______ whatever are terrible. The reality is that some percentage sucks and a large percentage is neutral and another percentage is great.

Why would I want to talk to men like him? Why in the hell would I want to talk to men who have experiences in the same ball park as me? Oh… maybe because when I talk to men who have known me for more than 1/3 of my life and I tell them some things about my childhood they can say, “That explains so much of your behavior for the entire time I have known you. I wish I had known earlier. Our entire relationship would have been different.”

I want to be seen. I want to matter. I want to be a full person to the people who know me. I want my story to be in the heads of people who look at me.

I don’t want to just be some chick at a party with a lot of secrets. That isn’t what I want.

I don’t think my life is well served by staying home and crying about how terrible all men are. If I do that I will miss out on a lot of joy. Many of my closest and dearest friends are men. I have no plans to abandon them–even if they say things I don’t like sometimes. I look for patterns of behavior and I have no problem with walking away from relationships that don’t work for me. I have done so over and over and over.

No one has a crystal ball. No one knows how things will play out.

My willingness to share my story has meant that I have gotten to find out the life stories of some incredibly complex and amazing people. I sincerely doubt they would have started sharing if I hadn’t brought things up. I have a list of people I can call in the middle of the night. I have a list of people who say, “If you are freaking out call and babble on my voicemail and I will call you back the second I can.” Many of them are men. Some of them are survivors of some really horrifying things.

Why do I trust them? Do I trust them? Well I will be honest and say that there are some of them I don’t plan to be alone in a room with. But I will sure as fuck call them. We have a great phone relationship. Do I actually think anything bad would happen if I was alone in a room with them? No. But I still don’t think I could do it. I don’t trust all men enough for that. I don’t even trust the men I trust enough for that. Well, maybe alone in a room if people were just on the other side of a door and I was able to scream.

I don’t want to give up on the men I have in my life. Even if other women with ptsd are absolutely certain that my talking to men is self-destructive and stupid. I disagree. And my opinion is the only one that matters about my behavior and life.

I went and talked to this guy and that other guy in the scene after fairly carefully weighing the downsides.

When that asshole Paul who raped me offered to meet to talk with me “even though he didn’t remember” I didn’t take him up on it. There was no upside for me. That would have been straight masochism. So I didn’t go.

I *do* actually try to weigh risk. My life will never be risk-free. I’m not that kind of girl. Harm Reduction not Elimination. Life involves both the risk and the certainty of harm.

I read an interesting article on misogyny in activist spaces. I cannot count how many groups I have left because of men who were extremely aggressive. I just assume they are more interesting to know than I am. That’s why they are kept around.

I feel torn between wanting to isolate myself because I don’t seem to be very good at having relationships and wanting to go out a lot and make a bunch of new connections. I offend people. I make them feel like I think they are bad. I’m not trying to but it happens anyway. Maybe they are better off not knowing me. Maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to speak any more. If I went out and made new connections (new connections are easy) then I could just walk away from my current problems.

Only my problems follow me. I am the cause of my problems, not someone else. It’s really hard to get away from being me.

I left therapy feeling pretty positive. I had a nice visit with a friend afterwards. Now I’m starting to crash emotionally again. I know that I have people who say I can call. But I don’t call much. I rarely call anyone. I assume they don’t actually want to hear from me and they are just telling me I can call because it is an empty gesture. I don’t trust that people actually like me, ever. I think I have fairly good reasons to think that people don’t like me.

But some people do. They come here and visit. Maybe I should do more of that hermit-only-talk-to-people-who-will-jump-my-hurdles thing. At least when people get sick of me and stop coming it isn’t as jarring as no longer being welcome in some space.

I like people. I like being around people. I like socializing. I just don’t feel very comfortable going almost anywhere. Some guy will say some thing and I will be “too sensitive”. Some woman won’t like me and I will spend my time there crying because I am so sorry that I am such a bad person and she doesn’t like me.

Gosh I like my house.

Since I’m pissing people off.

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The past few days have been an extreme emotional roller coaster, even for me. Fear, anxiety, anger, rage, sadness, grief, self-hatred, exhaustion, nausea and horrible body aches and pains. So I’m feeling sensitive and pissy.

I wrote about going to see the guy yesterday on the PTSD forum. Some people decided to chew me out because meeting up with him was stupid and there was “no possible potential for any healing I’m just trying to re-abuse myself.” Excuse me? And then one guy said that as a married woman I have no business meeting a married man alone for a conversation.

And my friends think that if I parent differently than them and if I judge the system in our country then I think they don’t love their children as much as I do.

Oh fuck it.

I don’t think I have implied that anyone who puts their kids in public school doesn’t love their kids.

I have wanted to home school my kids since I was seventeen and they weren’t yet a twinkle in my eye. Maybe me wanting something isn’t a reflection on whether or not you love your family.

Why do people need me to conform so bad in order to feel validated? I don’t want to try to blend in just so you feel more comfortable. That isn’t my job. I’m not putting you down for making the choices you are making. I’m saying I don’t want to make them.

Before Noah showed up and asked me to marry him Plan A was that I would continue being a part time high school teacher and have a kid by myself. Said child (my proto-Shanna) was going to have no choice but to go to public school. There wasn’t a different option. I don’t think I would have loved little proto-Shanna less than I love the actual Shanna I get to home school.

Not everyone is temperamentally suited to home schooling. I have flat met people who should not be doing it. I don’t think home schooling is universally appropriate.

I just think America is doing a very shitty job of educating its kids. If you have an actual argument with me, go ahead and try that. If you think that me saying that America is doing a shitty job of educating its kids means that you don’t love your kids…

Well good fucking grief. Can we or can we not have a conversation about large scale problems? Can we acknowledge that maybe I am aware that there are some good schools and of course there are some good teachers and of course there are districts with shit-loads of money and there are parents who are actively involved in their kids lives and…

I believe we need some sort of public education system. I believe that what we have is broken. It is still all we have right now. I don’t think that everyone can opt-out. I’m not trying to talk people into that.

If I’m going to be flat honest I don’t believe that every parent with a high school diploma is qualified to home school. There. I said it. I don’t think you have to go to get a teaching credential or graduate school, necessarily, but I think there is a blending of education, experience, and temperament which is far from universal.

I really don’t believe that everyone should home school. If I were having a harder time managing my temper–for example if I could not control myself and I resorted to hitting my kids I would stop home schooling. I would be aware that my kids need other people watching them and checking in on them and it is no longer at all appropriate for them to be isolated with me all day. Then they have no contrasting opinions on them being hit.

I think that home schooling involves a lot of specific sacrifices that I don’t think most people are prepared to make and without those sacrifices I think it is educational neglect. So there you go.

And I think it is highly likely that Shanna will not home school beyond second or third grade because she keeps asking to go to public school. I won’t send her for kindergarten or first because of philosophical reasons. I’m not willing to let a five or six year old over rule what I know about education just because recess sounds fun. Sorry. By second or third grade I will let her pick. I just want that base line.

Do I think that people are going to be failures if they are in the system in kindergarten and first grade? Of course not. Give me a fucking break.

I don’t think someone is going to be a failure at life if they live on hamburgers, mac’n’cheese, and hot dogs either. But I’m not going to feed my family that way. I don’t think that people who do hate their families. I just don’t want to do it.

I don’t think that public education is the devil. I think it is a waste of time. I don’t want my five year old dealing with someone else wasting her time. Other people believe that is just part of life and you need to get used to it. Still other people believe that it is what they need their kids to do and they need someone else to do most of the heavy lifting on teaching their kids how to behave. Actually, the public school system is usually better at teaching this than parents are. Patience.

These are valid approaches to life. Many people are well served by their conformity. I don’t think my kids would be.

My kids would come home to me. My kids would bring my phrasing and attitude to school. I’ve already gone through school with my phrasing and attitude. It doesn’t go well.

I know it wouldn’t be the same for my kids. For one thing they will never be enrolled in school in Texas–they won’t have long stories about all the teachers beating them. I had a smart mouth. The best way to cure someone with a smart mouth is to hit them, don’t you know? That way they will shut the fuck up when they are told. Or not. Maybe hitting them will make them twice as defiant. But that just means that they should be hit more!

I don’t think my kids are me. But I have seen kids of parents like me.

I know parents who have raised very successful people in the public education system. I don’t think I am capable of doing what they have done to make their children successful. Does that mean I love my children less because I cannot do what is required to make them comfortable moving alone with the herd?

That is the only reasonable corollary to people not loving their children if they don’t home school. Obviously I don’t love my children because I can’t help them through the public system. I can’t help them be “normal” so I’m not trying hard enough.

How about if different people make different choices based on ten thousand factors you may know nothing about and whether or not people love their children is just not something that can be judged from the outside?

I don’t think I am a better parent than most. I honestly don’t. I think that putting your kids in a good daycare and being present and happy with them for the available number of hours you have is just fine parenting. You are meeting their needs.

I want the things I want partially because I am being a selfish piece of shit and I am using my children as objects in the story of my life. *I* want to be a home schooling mom. Fuck you if you want to go to public school. (Ok, I have not said fuck you to my kids. At all. Ever. But I did tell Shanna that she didn’t get to pick kindergarten.) I worry about that. I worry about whether I am making the right decision or not.

I do not have a crystal ball. Just because I believe the public education system to be broken that does not mean I am going to do a better job. That’s hubris.

I don’t know if I will do a good job or not. I don’t know if I will do better or worse than if my kids were just enrolled in school. I really don’t know. I might completely fuck up. I accept that possible future. I like that if things turn out badly it will be all my fault.

A lot of the reason I am choosing to home school is because I can live with the knowledge that I have to be very careful and I have to take measured steps to do my job right. I can’t live with the knowledge that my kids are out in the world having to defend themselves at these tender ages.

Is that rational? No, not really. Is that a sound reason for home educating? Enh….. Good thing I don’t need a sound reason. I’m allowed to just do what I think is right. Yee haw. I love my state and country.

I swear to a god I don’t believe in that I am not sitting here thinking that only people who make decisions like me love their kids. I don’t believe that. I just think that other people take care of their kids in ways I don’t. That doesn’t make it wrong. It just makes it something I can’t do.

Maybe my inadequacy is a poor judge of whether or not someone else is loving.

I’m glad I went and talked to the man yesterday. When I told him I cried for three days after the wedding he looked like I kicked his puppy. He was very upset. He did not mean to hurt me.

I am not good at judging which things people do in a loving way and which things people do in a consciously hurtful way. I understand this about myself. I know this is a large blindspot.

I don’t judge whether or not people love their kids. Sometimes I do sit over here in my head and judge whether or not someones choices are working out for their kid as they hope… but it’s not about love. I don’t think that I can judge that. I try not to write down those judgments much.

Who the fuck am I to judge whether someone else is doing a good job? I see small snippets of their lives. I don’t know what is happening.

I can judge if something would work for me or not and then I have to just move on. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know what will happen in thirty years. We will all find out.

I want to still know most of the people I know now. I don’t think I will be overall very successful at pre-judging who is going to have a happy life and who won’t.

That kind of means I need to not alienate people. Well shit.

I can’t influence what other people do very much. My friend Pam says I am inspirational but then she writes me long emails about wanting to hand out a bunch of work sheets when she’s subbing in a kindergarten class. I may be inspirational but people are still going to do what they are going to do. (I think it doesn’t actually matter what you do darling. You will have the kids for ~10 hours of their educational life. They are used to work sheets. It doesn’t matter if you hand them out or not. Love you.)

I can understand and believe that the system is broken and deficient and still understand that people have to conform to it en masse.

The punishments for not conforming are huge. I don’t wish a generational amount of punishment on people. I really don’t.

But my kids have to live with me. I am not a conformist. I teach my kids very consciously how to evaluate which rules to ignore and break. I will teach my children to be far more interested in their own will than in the will of someone else. Will this blow up in my face? Well… it might. I don’t have a crystal ball. I don’t know for sure that I am doing them any favors.

Does that mean I love my children less than the people who are teaching their children arguably more socially healthy coping methods?

I would feel sad if someone thought that. But I wouldn’t change my actions based on their evaluation. I love my kids. I believe I am adapting to their needs as they have them. I could easily be lying to myself.

I was talking to one of my neighborhood moms about the kids recently. She’s also a home schooler. But my kids are very different from her kid. Her kid is not allowed to scream, basically at all from what I can tell. (She’s a lot older so this is apples to oranges.) I noticed the moms reaction more than anything. We were talking about how I’m trying to manage the screaming lately.

My kids have strong opinions and I’m ok with them expressing their wants and desires. I just don’t want to be screamed at. My kids have a tendency to get loud. I have not trained loudness out of them. Does this mean I don’t love them? I’m not training them properly for society.

If you go through life worrying about whether or not your parenting choices make random other people think you love your kids you are going to spit into the wind and get your whole face covered in saliva. Not a fun feeling.

I can’t make my choices based on the appearance from the outside. I can’t make my choices based on trying to not offend people. I offend people. Moving on.

I think it is funny the way I ricochet between feeling like people disapproving of me and disliking me is a good reason to kill myself and thinking it is a good reason to believe I am doing the right thing.

Historically speaking, outliers are put to death for the good of the herd. I get this.

I also know that outliers are a lot of who drive progress. They are necessary and important parts of the system.

I don’t know what my kids will be like as grown ups. But I’m sure looking forward to finding out. I am not saying that people who make different choices than me dislike or don’t love their kids.

Give me a fucking break. If I’m not exactly like you does that mean I don’t love my kids?

Maybe it just means I know how to show my love in a very different way. I hope that doesn’t mean anything bad about me or about you. I hope that us being different is something that makes the world better.

It takes all kinds of kinds.

I think that no parenting decision, really no decision of any kind but I’m talking about parenting, can be judged in a vacuum. I have strong views about education. I know what I want to do with my kids. I know that I am able to make the set of choices I want to make due to a very specific and long list of privileges.

That doesn’t make me better than anyone else. It just means I am able to do what I want. Other people are able to do what they want.

There is not going to be a one-size-fits-all approach to parenting. There just isn’t. I kind of hope that means we can all be making right decisions instead of meaning that we are all making the wrong decisions.

Sometimes people surprise me.

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This afternoon I went to have a chat with someone I have known for a long time but I have never known well. I was scared. I wanted to talk to him about not making sexualized comments in my direction.

I started out by asking him if he knew much about me. He knew about my public bdsm play and persona. That’s it. I asked him if he knew much about PTSD. He laughed in that dry “Yes, I have lots of experience” kind of way.

We talked for about an hour. As it so happens he and his wife both have PTSD from unfortunate life experiences. We talked about the difficulty in living with hormonal ups and downs and triggers. We talked about all the god damn crying.

I did not expect to have this go well. Instead I feel like I have someone I can call if I am freaking out.

He was absolutely horrified that I spent three days crying because of something he said. He was trying to be nice. I was very clear that I am not angry with him. I was scared. I didn’t know what would happen to me. I didn’t know if I would be safe.

Women often tell me “not to bother” talking to men like this. Sometimes it blows up in my face. I’m disappointed sometimes. And sometimes I’m not disappointed. Sometimes people far exceed my basic expectations. Sometimes people are down right awesome.

I have survived by skating from one kindness from a stranger to another. It is why I keep asking.

I don’t want to say very much about the conversation because he revealed a lot of very personal details. We traded trauma stories for an hour. He has had a hard life.

I am surprised sometimes because I have low expectations. I keep asking because at heart I am an optimist. I have to believe that the main thing that has kept this race going is that we *do* love one another. We *do* form bonds.

He has known me for more than 1/3 of my life. He didn’t know any of the bad. He was trying as hard as he could to be appropriate and friendly given what he knew. If I want him to change his behavior towards me I have to explain why. So I did.

I think this will go better. *cross fingers*

Unschooling

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I have a lot of volatile things in my head I can’t talk about. So I’m going to write about unschooling instead.

I was hanging out on Pinterest trying to distract myself from my current feelings so that I can get some kind of grip on myself for a day of painting. It isn’t happening fast.

I was looking through a lot of unschooling articles and I was pinning them, as you do, and I thought, “Holy crap I hope that none of my traditionally schooling friends see this and think I am saying mean things about their choices.”

I think our education model in this country is broken. I understand that there are a wide variety of reasons to opt-in to it despite it being fundamentally broken. But I think of it like opting-in to a relationship with an abusive parent because you can’t handle the pain of breaking things off. I get it. But I hope I don’t ever do it.

There are a wide variety of reasons I would put my kids in school and then undermine that shit as best I could at night. I don’t think my kids are too good for school. I think I have the luxury and privilege of being able to make a different decision and I really really want to.

I very consciously educated myself with the goal of being able to be… more or less an elite private tutor. I grew up in a place where I could see that people were being taught lessons by their families that I had no access to. I sometimes lived in extremely wealthy areas. Those kids just knew things about life I had no way of learning.

I wanted kids. It isn’t that I want my kids to grow up to be the smartest people ever. It isn’t that I want my kids to grow up and make lots of money. It isn’t that I want my kids to be perfect in any definable way. I have a very loose schema of criteria.

I want my children to believe that the bodily integrity of people matters. Yes, yes yes… many children come out of the public education system with this intact… blah blah blah. Lots don’t. My kids are already in the advantaged sect because they have parents who believe it regardless of the messages they would hear at a school blah blah blah.

I want my children to really grow up with that message being presented as de facto and it is not in most schools–public or private. If you have to raise your hand and ask permission to use the toilet and a teacher can tell you that you have to wait until the bell rings you do not have bodily integrity. Sorry.

I want my children to believe that information about stuff that interests you comes from a million different places. I don’t want them to think you sit down and do your lessons. I don’t want “school” to be something that bores you and wastes your time. I want my children to appreciate the inherent usefulness of mathematics so I talk about it allllllllllll day in a lot of different contexts. My daughters will not hear the message that girls are bad at math until that concept will make them laugh out loud with surprise. They will know they are good at maths. The person saying that is just kind of silly.

I want my kids to believe that boredom is a sign that you need to get up and start cleaning something. If you really don’t want to clean then you will find something better to do and all of a sudden you aren’t bored.

I understand the need for large scale child care. That is more or less how I view the public education system. We are a society based on parents being out-of-the-home. I want to live in my home. I want to do most of my work here.

If I were able to buy a property out in the middle of some rural place my habits would be totally logical. My proximity to cities does not change the basic nature of how I like living. I choose to not feel shame for feeling soothed by living in a way that is more like how my ancestors lived. Ok, they lived in family groups that were larger than mine but people lived in fairly closed communities. They didn’t have to deal with many people. Oh of course this is partially about my anxiety but I don’t see how kowtowing to a system I don’t believe in just so I can’t pretend that I don’t have anxiety will improve anything.

Lately Noah has been talking about trying to figure out how to actually break down what he has experienced in life and explain it so that kids who don’t have role models can have some idea of what people with privilege see. Ok, that wasn’t precisely how he phrased it. That conversation was a few days ago.

We don’t just stay *in the house*. We are outside a lot. We know our neighbors. We talk to people often. We have relationships. The relationships are getting deeper and more influential as the years go by. My children spend a lot of time with elderly people hearing stories about the Old Days. It’s really fun. I supervise but don’t intervene much in them figuring out how to talk to people.

Well, that’s not true. I help them prepare for conversations in advance. “When you meet someone, what do you say?” After conversations I talk about how it went. I talk to them about facial expressions and body language. I help them understand more about what just happened. “Do you understand why he laughed when I said _____?” I fill in the blanks and help the stories make more sense. I break it down. Stories about WWII become large and convoluted follow up conversations with millions of questions. I don’t direct much. I just answer anything. I look up what I don’t know.

I am a guide and a facilitator.

Will this go on forever? I don’t know. I don’t know how our needs will change. I know that at this moment in time I can’t imagine sending Shanna to a place where they would expect her to sit still (even with breaks) for four or five hours a day let alone six or seven. Some kindergardeners are in school for eight hours. They do have play periods but they do a *lot* of table work.

We complain constantly about an obesity epidemic and we chain children to chairs. What in the hell is going on? I will never put my children on a diet. The very idea makes me sick to my stomach. I will, however, ensure that they learn how to be very physically comfortable with walking at least ten miles a week. I’m becoming increasingly sure that Santa will be bringing bicycles. With bicycles we can get to all of our extra-curricular activities in town.

I pick swimming, martial arts, dance, language, gymnastics and rock climbing classes based on the ability to walk to them. I *have* walked my kids to every location they have taken classes at. We don’t always walk because we often have somewhere else to go before or afterwards but I prefer to walk. If we had bicycles I think I would just figure out how to not schedule things close to classes.

I do not want my children to be used to an air conditioned world. I want them to be used to using their own bodies to go places. I expect them to go do manual labor on farms in third world countries in a few years. They can’t be too soft.

I want them to actually see how it works in other parts of the world. I don’t want to show them pictures of the objectified third world. “Oh those poor oppressed people. All They Need Is A Honky.” Err, not so much. I want my children to meet people when they are young and have no belief that they have the key to life. I want them to just meet people who live differently and learn to love them.

Can you imagine Shanna and Calli living with someone for two and a half months without falling in love? If someone is remotely kind to them they will be hook line and sinker. Those kids like people. All people. They aren’t “color-blind”. They think all colors are beautiful. They want to meet everyone and talk to them. Ok, that’s Shanna’s deal. Calli is dubious.

I think Calli and I will hang back and watch. That will be ok too. That will also be a positive experience. Sometimes I feel like I am watching Shanna work a room. She wants to know everyone. I don’t even understand why. I didn’t implant that.

If she went to a school across the street from her house she would get to know the kids in this neighborhood better. The kids in this neighborhood come and go a lot because we have a lot of rentals. There are only a few owners with kids. She wouldn’t see much diversity. She would see a revolving door of poor brown children who come and go because their parents move. That is the neighborhood we live in.

You know… we play with the kids in the afternoons. I think we get enough of the “people don’t stay in your life” phenomena. My kids are improving their Spanish faster than any other language because a lot of the neighbor kids don’t speak English. We have an increasing segment that doesn’t speak English because they speak some variety of Asian language. Those kids aren’t usually allowed to play with us in the yard.

We play with anyone. If you are here, let’s play. It’s really fun.

I don’t want to spend my life driving to see pre-selected and approved people of appropriate IQ and education level and life philosophy of whatever. I also don’t want to spend my money on lots of being entertained for a few hours. I like most of my hobbies to be cheap or free.

I don’t want to opt-in to the system as I understand it. Given that I have attended twenty-five public schools across three states in a variety of socio-economic settings and then I went on to be a credentialed teacher… I think it is kind of idiotic to try and say that I am not understanding the system. I think I have enough experience that on this matter I get to just trust my gut.

It isn’t an evil place. I’m not trying to say that it is evil. But it is a waste of time. That is what it is designed to do. Waste time. I don’t want that. I don’t want my children to be taught that.

I have the privilege and luxury to make a different choice. I recognize that my choices are not open to everyone. I recognize that there are very good reasons for making different choices. I recognize that I would make different choices based on different life circumstances. I am not trying to put people down who put their kids in school.

I am saying I don’t want to and I don’t have to so I am not going to. Not until they are old enough to pick a course of study and go pursue what they want to be doing on their own. I am fully qualified to ensure they get the basics of life.

I think that I am actively choosing the term Unschooling because I don’t think that the Radical Unschoolers should get to hog the term. We do life learning. I don’t see that changing any year soon. I do not do permissive parenting. I think that refusing to set limits is abdicating your responsibilities as a parent. I think it is unfairly expecting a child to know an adult’s role. Children don’t know the limits yet. That’s kind of how childhood works.

Davy Crockett says, “Be sure you are right; then go ahead.”

I feel intense anxiety about most of my behavior in life. I don’t know how to be good or appropriate or worthy for the vast majority of life experiences.

But I god damn know how to be an elite personal tutor. I trained for that shit. The slow paced isolated life is really good for kids I read. Even if it makes grown ups think I should go get a job.

I think I’m under enough stress already. I don’t have to measure up. There isn’t actually a grading curve in life. But I went to public school. I keep expecting my bad report card. I keep expecting to be expelled or suspended. I absolutely expect to be punished for being an unpleasant person. How dare I exist in public space in a way that others find displeasing.

My kids don’t get punished for being children. My children don’t get yelled at for getting the hiccups. My children don’t get yelled at if their attention wanders and they want to switch activities.

I won’t have to deal with a teacher suggesting medication to calm my unruly child. I will instead just have to figure out how to get all of us enough exercise that we can manage inside behavior when we are inside. Or go outside again. It’s all good.

I want this life so much. I want to find out what someone is like when they are actually treated like a person for their whole life. I don’t know very many people who felt valued through school. I know some. It does happen sometimes. It doesn’t seem to happen in the majority of cases.

Shanna would probably get it. Calli would probably not. Shanna is loud and assertive and charming. Calli is loud and prone to feeling provoked so she attacks with great vigor and ends up looking like the aggressor.

I don’t have a crystal ball or anything. But I’ve seen an awful lot of patterns.

I don’t want my children to spend many hours a day with children who have been socialized to fat shame. No thanks.

I don’t want my eight year old believing she should be trying to be sexy.

Yeah, I’ll shelter them. And I’ll take them to dangerous parts of the world. And shelter them there too. They will always have a modified experience of the world. They won’t even understand it.

I will understand it. No one sheltered me. I don’t think that unsupervised long exposure to random men is something that will happen basically at all. Probably not with women either. My children will develop safe, appropriate relationships.

Is it overly protective of me? Fuck you.

I am not a helicopter parent. My children climb trees and talk to strangers and move around in the world doing shit I dislike all day long. But I am aware of what they are doing. I pay attention. I want to know what they are doing as they take up space in the world. I want knowing them to be my job.

It is a luxury and a privilege that I understand is not available to everyone. I also understand that not everyone would have the desire for this kind of relationship. I also understand that not everyone would have the capacity to be running this kind of constant background schema building exercises. I scaffold their life very carefully and appropriately. Silently. They live in a “yes” environment.

But I am not permissive. And I have really strict boundaries. I just acknowledge that things outside my boundaries are not mine to control.

I want the experience of learning healthy boundaries with people. I want the experience of long term relationships.

Maybe I am a selfish piece of shit for not trying harder to form adult relationships and instead having children. I can live with that. I want to have someone who actually cares about seeing me on Christmas. I want someone who wants to call me on their birthday and say, “Thanks for having me, mom.” (I have a friend who has to do that. I envy her mom. So I’m hoping this friend tells this story over and over as my kids grow up. That lesson can’t come from me.)

I wanted children. I know it is selfish. But I wanted them. Even though I am a crazy bitch. Far meaner crazy bitches than me have managed to not completely fuck up their kids.

Maybe with enough privilege and luxury anyone can be a good parent. Maybe.

I have the luxury and privilege of filling all of my time with things I want to do. I want to educate my kids. I do not want to school them.

I feel lucky

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It’s kind of weird, but with the letter writing I find that I am enjoying Noah’s family quite a bit. I had expected to spend most of my life quaking with terror when I saw his mom’s handwriting on a box. These days I take an intake of breath and prepare to manage the arguments (she sends a mish mash of stuff to “the girls” but often she doesn’t label what goes to whom or there isn’t something obvious in one kid’s size and there are a lot of tears) but I’m grateful to get the boxes. The letters from his grandmother are really nice too. (I got one yesterday. Thus I am thinking about it.)

I have a really good time describing the kids to them. They will never really know my children. They live too far away and don’t have any interest in visiting. *shrug* I have offered. After how many times I have been rebuffed, well, I’m planning a driving trip through there in 2015 and that’s all I’m promising in the next ten years.

Turns out I *totally* didn’t need to move the concrete this week. The dude who is picking up my hot tub came over to scout but he won’t be back for it for two weeks. I feel semi-stupid but really buff and I’m still riding that endorphin high. It was not necessary but I feel like it did measurable good for my body. Which is a little weird. Maybe I should take up weight lifting? I had no idea what a high I could get from that. (Way cheaper than pot–lemme tell you. Since weight lifting I’ve used about 1/2 of what I usually do in that time period. Ok, part of the reason for that is also because I have to go to the dispensary today. But I don’t feel undermedicated. This is nice.)

Yesterday the girls and I had a really great day. Most of our days are perfectly tolerable with some highs and lows. Yesterday was just freakin wonderful. I am so happy that I get to do this with my life.

I went and taught an English class at the Hindi temple. I get the impression that if I want a job teaching English there I can have it for as long as I want. I get the impression I could even negotiate for pay and everyone would be thrilled. (This first class was a test-run of a program that a woman is putting together. I knew it was a volunteer gig and I was cool with that.) Random people came in and asked me if I would provide tutoring. I refrained from committing.

The kids are fun. They are young. The kind of young I DELIBERATELY WENT INTO HIGH SCHOOL TO AVOID. Ahem. I’m forcing them to read Sherlock Holmes. And Grimm Fairy Tales. It’s fun. I’m forcing them to find connections in their lives and write a lot. I feel drunk from the power. 🙂 But apparently the kids are having fun and parents are already asking if I can continue this series during the school year.

My kids are remarkably good while I’m teaching. Shanna sets up “her classroom” on the other side of the room. Next time I am bringing stuffed animals for students. She goes back and forth between her different kinds of toys and “teaches” the “students” how to make things. It’s really fun. Sometimes she has to come and ask me a question about how to teach something and it is more fun than disruptive.

Then we came home for lunch and we waited around while lumber was delivered and the hot tub guy came scouting. Then we went to the water park! I am having so much fun with the girls at the water park. That season pass was the right choice. Both girls went around the lazy river once without a life vest! That’s huge. Then we went and got life vests and things were easier.

Calli begged for macaroni and cheese for dinner. I thought that might make me sick (hilariously I ate a three cheese pasta instead–I just couldn’t handle Kraft then) so we went to Applebee’s. Which is, in Calli’s opinion, the Mac’n’cheese Restaurant! Sure, why not.

I have been a lot more consistent lately with, “You must fulfill your responsibilities before you get your privileges.” I feel that is making the whole house run more smoothly. I’m not an arbitrary asshole deciding if you get stuff on a given day or not. There is a WRITTEN CONTRACT! WITH PICTURES! Things are just easier. Both kids are pitching in more with less fuss. We are still a house of screamers. Sigh. We are working on it.

I’m almost done with Little House in the Big Woods with the kids. Shanna loves it and Calli seems to only pay moderate attention. That’s on target. I haven’t done any personal new reading in weeks. I’m so tired. I can’t wait for July to end. This month is just brutal. My plan for the weekend is to spend as much time painting my neighbor’s fence as I can. Once I get that off my plate, and my friend’s husband is done at my house (I feel zero crankiness at his rate of progress–I think he is a small step down from Godhood for the rate at which he works. I don’t often feel impressed by peoples work ethics. I’m a really judgmental asshole on that front. This man impresses me a lot.) things will calm down again.

I still have more stuff I want to do in the yards but I think once he’s done with his current list I should be done for the year on yard stuff. (Monetarily–not in manual labor.) I need to talk to him about his company doing the bathroom upgrade (that wouldn’t be just him) and then that is all I can do to the house this year. (The bathroom damage from water leaking is obviously spreading now. Ah shit. It is becoming a very bad idea to put off longer. Crap crap crap. Well, good thing I have a well padded savings account.)

I feel so lucky. I have things go wrong. I have things I need to fix. I have things I’m making progress on. I can fix things. I have the money to hire people to fix things. I have the luxury to sit around just making progress on my own lists of things to do. This is not a life path every one gets. I get to decide how my time is used. I feel happy in a way I didn’t expect to feel. I feel so much gratitude for my life.

I think the PTSD support forum helps me keep this in perspective. For someone who has the symptoms I have I have a blessed life. Given how “crazy” I am–I’m doing so very well. I *am* nice to my kids. I *am* nice to my husband. Ok, I get grumpy too. On balance my grumpy days are infrequent, usually not too intense, and I apologize profusely for every word out of my mouth when I can feel that my tone of voice sucks. I know that the problem is inside me and not with anyone else. I am good at separating that.

I feel so incredibly lucky that I get to have a marriage where I can’t blame any of my mood shit on my partner. My husband is so nice to me. He is patient and kind. He is affectionate and loving without being demanding or pushy. Ok, sometimes he’s pushy. But he doesn’t push me for sex. He doesn’t push me to do things I don’t want to do. He pushes me to set higher goals. He pushes me to rest. He pushes me towards believing that I am competent and talented. He only hits me if we negotiate a lot and I ask very very nicely and then he only hits me in ways that I like. (I’m telling you, endorphins are your friend.)

Girls like me don’t end up like this. I am stable. I do my god damn meal planning a month at a time because my life is so stable. Every month when I put a new month on the white board I meal plan for the whole month and I try to invite people for dinner at the rate I like and I set up events for a whole month at a time. We have like a 75% success rate of following these plans. (Ok, I often reverse which order a given set of meals happen in but I don’t feel bad about that. We follow my plan on a month level, not on a day-by-day level.)

I’m going to travel this year to Portland to see friends. It is getting closer. This on top of having a Portland friend come down TWICE this year. That was rad. And a different Portland friend may be down here in about two weeks. I will travel to see the rest of the extended clan.  I feel very lucky that I have people who want to see me so much.

And I managed to get in some solid work on Outrunning Suicide this morning. I seem to be alternating between which book I’m writing. OS  is very different in tone, feel, and mostly in content from Part 2.

By the end of this year I hope to have another book finished.

Sometimes I feel mighty. I know I can’t do “anything” because I have limits. But I feel like my limits are so far out there that it is almost impossible for me to reach them. I don’t hit the wall very often. I just slow down and keep working.

I have these two amazing daughters. I have to be a mighty example. I have to show them that women are powerful and smart and competent. I have to show them that even if someone is financially a “dependent” that doesn’t make the person weak, ineffectual, lazy or stupid. It just means you have a contract with another person.

I want to be a positive influence so much I feel like I am choking on it. I want to be a person worthy of respect. That means I have to behave in ways that earn respect. I have to be consistent. I don’t have to be perfect.

Where are the lines? What is “good enough”?

I keep looking backwards over my shoulder at the pergola in the back yard. (Apparently that is the most accurate name for what this structure is.) I feel kind of shocked that I wanted something there and… now there is something there. It’s like magic.

In the past week I have given two mini-lectures on the topic of grafting trees. I had no idea I knew so much. But apparently I do. I read a lot. I’m very curious about how things work. I want to be able to do a lot of things. I want to be so competent that it is incredibly hard to kill me–even for me.

Martial arts are coming. Not this month. This month I can barely hold my head above water. Soon.

When I was a child there is no chance I would have believed that I could be a bad ass. According to my wonderful Shanna there is no doubt–I AM a bad ass.

I don’t know everything. I don’t know the right path for other people. I do have a lot of useful skills though. I do know a lot about human development. I do know a lot about the limitations of safety and strength. I do know how to teach. I do know how to break things down into pieces other people can grok. I’m not always good at taking things apart the first time–I need coaxing to keep taking things into smaller and smaller pieces. I can explain almost any topic to almost anyone. But it may take me a few rounds of getting deeper and deeper into the explanation in order to find the correct scaffolding for a given person.

You have to understand schema. It’s the fucking coolest concept.

I am not perfect. I am not ideal. I am not unreservedly good. I am an asshole. I am selfish. I am self-absorbed. I also stop to genuinely look at people and evaluate them–for good or for ill. I like to believe I can see people pretty well. (Not in the needs glasses sense.)

I’m good at guessing that people are underrating themselves. I’m sure I can encourage people towards being their better selves. But only if they can handle my extremely rough form of affection. I’m not sure the trade is actually worth it.

Text has no tone.

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No really, I worry about making my friends feel attacked. I don’t really need to alienate people I care about at this stage.

I need you to work and put your daughters in day care because I think my daughters will do that. They will need to ask you questions. They will need to ask you how you did with the mixed emotions you had–because they are really common and I can’t speak to them.

I need you to work and put your daughters in day care because without doing so YOU wouldn’t feel happy or fulfilled. I need you to be who you are. I need to see you in contrast to me so that I can understand where my edges are.

I don’t think you are doing it wrong. I don’t think you are making bad choices. I’m trying to get better about saying that you are doing something that wouldn’t work for me. That’s not because it is problematic.

Have you noticed this whole, “Krissy is crazy” thing? Maybe me not being able to do something isn’t a negative statement about the thing?

I know there is an Attachment Parenting movement and if you read about the Continuum Concept people—whoo boy. There are some extremely “attached”people.

I’m pretty honest with myself that I want this much time and intensity because I am making up for the deficit of being loved and touched that exists inside of me. Every child naturally wants to hug and cuddle and kiss. That is just normal. I wasn’t allowed to do those things as a child without being hurt for the impulse.

I want to stay home with my children because I want hundreds of hours of sitting on the couch with them sleeping on me. I want to be able to stroke their face and watch them exist. I need that time. I need to be able to sit very still and very quiet and just watch them exist and think about the fact that they like me.

When I made the crack about the mothers at the wedding wanting to stick forks in their eyes, that was their words–not mine. I can sort of grok how it would work. I don’t like doing all the physical work for my kids all the time. I get how it can feel annoying, demeaning, mind-numbing, etc.

I have something to prove to me, here. I have to prove that I can stay in one place and take care of someone without neglecting or abusing them. It is very hard sometimes. I feel like a jack ass for saying that.

I got a book on parents who have PTSD for kids. It sounds like it was written to be used by a therapist talking to kids who have parents who manage their symptoms less than I do.

Stopping and being actually aware of the fact that my children have needs is hard for me. I naturally dissociate. I am very depressed a lot of the time. Having to get up and care for my children is difficult for me. But I have to prove to myself that I can do that.

I do not have the self-discipline to schedule a two hour block in the middle of the day to do specific work. I just don’t. I have to have a full day of going from thing to thing or I never get the rhythm. I often miss afternoon engagements because if something starts after I’ve gone mid-way through my day then I can’t handle breaking my flow to go do something else.

I am limited. Everyone is–I’m not acting like I’m the only one with limits. Other people have different limits though.

I don’t think that mothers should have this freakish need to earn their childrens love. I don’t think it is psychologically healthy or anything. I’m just willing to be honest that it is where I am. I think people who are secure enough in being loved to share the care of their children have nothing to be ashamed about. I think that is probably what people should be shooting for in terms of mental health.

When Shanna asks me questions about her mothering in the future I don’t in any way shape or form tell her that she should expect to take care of her kids. I have told her that when you have kids you need to make sure that your kids will be safe and loved. If that means their mom stays home, ok. (Shanna pretty regularly says she would rather have a wife over a husband–she’d rather earn the money and have her wife stay home, ok.) If that means their dad stays home, ok. If that means both parents work and the children need alternative day care, ok. They are perfectly valid paths through life. But you will need to ask working moms for advice because I won’t be able to tell you how to manage that. Good thing we know lots of them!

I can’t teach my kids how to be everything. They have to know people who are different from me. That means people need to make choices that have no resemblance to mine.

I know that when I talk about myself I do not always use qualifiers. I don’t always say “This would be bad FOR ME” sometimes I just say, “This would be a bad choice.” I know that I sound rabid and hateful.

It is hard sometimes to make choices that seem very different from my friends. It feels like I am doing something bad and wrong. So when I talk to myself about it I am very emphatic about why it is not a good choice for me. I don’t mean to hurt anyone else. I don’t really know how else to talk to me. I can’t always evaluate whether something is in abstract a good and worthy thing I can only evaluate whether it is appropriate for me. And I sound harsh as I do so.

There is a big difference between how I evaluate things for me and how I evaluate things for other people. For me I am quick, decisive, snotty and harsh. I have to have a really firm grasp on my limits. Or I will be unable to function. If I try things that work for other people just because it works so well for them I will fuck myself over. Because I do not have that persons situation and resources.

That doesn’t mean that other people need to care or change based on my limits.

I have a husband who is able to go out and make obscene amounts of money. He is very cheerful about supporting me. That is a rather unusual privilege. Not that many people are capable of earning as much money as Noah does. That changes my whole buffet of choices right there.

But I am not an income earning person. I may never be. That means when my working women friends tell me that I deserve time off every day… well… I might agree in the abstract…

There is no right. There is no deserve. There is no should. There just is.

I know I am all melodramatic in writing and such. I know that I have bad days and I have gotten much more explicit in writing about them as the years have gone by. That isn’t because they have gotten worse–it is because I have developed the language.

I like my life. I like the choices I am making. I feel like I will be proud of myself as an old woman. I will feel like I did good things with my life. I did not waste very much of the time I had all things considered.

When you have chronic, severe mental illness you waste a lot of time. You spend a lot of time staring at the wall feeling bad and being unable to do… anything.

I work in weird spurts and starts all day with the kids. We get a lot done but not in a predictable way. We work then sit down to snuggle. Then work then break to play. Then work then go to the water park. Then work then read. What kind of work we do and how much time it takes varies a lot. I am not good at saying, “From 12-2 we will do ______”.

I have constant anxiety about the long list of projects I’m not making enough forward progress on. But getting me out of my anxiety is not as simple as providing childcare. That just means I don’t have to pull myself up by my bootstraps and look functional in front of my kids.

I think I am afraid that if no one is watching I am a clock that winds to a stop.

I wouldn’t have offered to paint the fence if I didn’t have little kids who need to meet everyone in the neighborhood. So the fucking kids need to figure out how to behave so I can finish painting. Ahem. (They aren’t actually being a problem. That was a random hyperbole sort of expletive.)

I know that a body needs rest. I understand that people who tell me that it would be ok if I paid someone for two hours a day of watching reruns mean to be supportive of the health of my body.

That doesn’t mean I am in a space psychologically to make the same priority list. Does that mean I am wrong and I should change to be more like other people? Maybe. I don’t know. But I know that what I am doing right now is putting my head down and just getting through. And it is working.

I have never met a mother who is without hard days. They happen. They are part of life. I don’t think I should be trying to get out of having them. I need to learn how to manage them. I manage them differently than other people for a lot of reasons. Is what I am doing ok? I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I just know that it is what I am doing.

Please continue telling me when you feel I am attacking you. I am not trying to. I want to know if I do so in my ridiculous self-obsessed rambling. You are not my enemy. I have no reason to attack you. I do not want to do so blindly.

I don’t want you to feel bad about what you are doing. You are making the choices that are right for you. Even if I individually might second guess some choices I wouldn’t overall presume to think that I know what is right for your life. I don’t actually have that much hubris.

I get too much wrong for me.

That was so nice.

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We went to a wedding yesterday. It was a gathering of people I have known through the bdsm community for most of my adult life. Many of the people there I met when I was eighteen or nineteen.

These were the people who were the honored elders when I arrived in the first place. These were my Old Guard people in the leather community. These are the people who set the parameters of my world. These are the people who taught me about communication and negotiation and doing what you WANT to do.

These are the people who taught me how to manage life as a masochist–how do you find people to beat the shit out of you without sending you to a hospital? These are the people who taught me how to be ethical in my sluttery. I stopped sleeping with people who were cheating because of people in the room yesterday.

It wasn’t the entire Who’s Who of my cultural indoctrination but it was a lot of the main people. A lot of the biggest influences were there.

Do you know how they responded to me changing so much? I was told over and over what a good mother I am.

I nearly cried. I care so much about their opinion. I shouldn’t–I know I am not supposed to care about what anyone thinks of me. But these are the people who taught me my first lessons towards being a grown up. And they think I am doing well.

These kind of random moments are the closest I will have to having the feeling that parents or authority or whatever else feels like I am good.

I want so badly to feel like I am a good mother. I’m kind of banking on it this lifetime. That is my only path to the kind of relationship intensity I want.

I talked to a variety of mothers yesterday all of whom said, “Oh my God I couldn’t wait to get back to work. I love my kids but spending all day with them made me want to stick forks in my eyes.”

I don’t feel that. When I think of how many days I am going to be able to just be with my kids I feel this intense joy. This feeling of thank goodness I won’t have to be alone.

Having a job is different. Being a teacher was lonely. I had horrible loneliness as a teacher. I always know how much of myself I had to hide as a teacher.

I don’t tell my kids details about myself as a child because at this stage they don’t care and wouldn’t be able to process those details and it wouldn’t do good things for their lives. But I feel in me a sense of waiting. Someday they will be adults. They will be allowed to read books about my life. They will be able to know me for good or for ill.

My children will have the experience of me they have and then they will get to find out the back story. I have to wait for an appropriate time–which is hard–but I don’t feel invisible. I don’t feel unimportant. I don’t feel like what happened to me didn’t matter I feel like this isn’t the time to talk about it. With teaching it would never have been appropriate. That was much harder.

I don’t do very well with handling the fact that a large segment of the population likes to just pretend that “people like me” don’t exist.

Validation is one of the most potent drugs in the world. I have spent my entire life feeling unredeemably bad. I was bad so early that there is no way to change. All of the kids were told all of my life that they couldn’t play with me because I wasn’t a good influence. I wasn’t good to be around.

I was beaten and raped if I didn’t have sex willingly whenever I was told to. When I did have sex willingly there was a huge backlash and many people would shun me and punish me.

I really like this monogamy business. I feel like it is my armor against those expectations.

One guy yesterday rained on my parade. Really he is one of the people who makes me feel unsafe a lot at those parties. I don’t think he would rape me. But I do think he would do things before I could react and say no. Things like hold a knife to my throat because he thinks it is hot.

Yesterday he leaned over my chair and whispered into my ear, “You are so hot I should drag you off to the coat closet.”

I completely froze. I stared at the floor and did not respond again until he walked away. I didn’t want to make a scene. I didn’t want to be a problem.

I am so fucking tired of this shit. I have kind-of-sorta played with that man in the past. When I was younger and I believed that a bottom has to bottom to all the tops in the room and I practiced a puppy-pile approach towards bdsm he and I played. It has been many many many years. A minimum of eight years. I think longer than that.

Ok, I just emailed the bride and asked about dude’s email address. I need to talk to him. I need to tell him to back the fuck off. I don’t seem to be able to do it in the moment.

Did I think he was actually going to drag me off and do things I didn’t want him to do? No. The consequences are too high. He’s not stupid. He is a former police officer. He knows how to only do things when he won’t get caught.

That doesn’t actually make me feel safer. It makes me feel sick to my stomach. I’m aware “he meant it as a compliment.”

A FUCKING COMPLIMENT IS “THAT’S A NICE DRESS” NOT “YOU LOOK HOT ENOUGH TO DRAG OFF.”

The fact that he is a former police officer actually makes me feel significantly less safe. I don’t see how police officers usually follow the rules. And LAPD has a serious rape problem. Being a police officer doesn’t imply that someone has a higher set of moral values. It may just mean you are a fucking bully who likes to pick on people.

He said that less than half an hour before I left. I didn’t really want to stay after that.

If wearing the dress I had made for Jenny’s wedding and red lipstick makes me someone who all of a sudden should be dragged off to a coat closet and raped maybe I should never dress that way again. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it would be all my fault if something bad had happened. See–I was dressed in a way that encouraged it.

(I had a very modest dress made. Give me a break.) I may be done with wearing red lipstick outside the house.

Sometimes I think it is very funny that I study Muslim guidelines for women and I try to somewhat follow them. Maybe if I were more hidden I would be left alone. Don’t attract attention in public. It’s dangerous. If I didn’t think it would confuse the shit out of people I would just start covering my hair full time. I don’t want to have to talk about why I want to do it.

I am tired of men looking at me and evaluating whether or not they want to fuck me right now and then TELLING ME AS IF I SHOULD FUCKING CARE.

So most of the wedding was lovely. And then there was this asshole. Story of my fucking life.

I’m happy that people have sex drives. I’m ok with talking with them in the abstract about stuff they like (I’ve been in sex communities for a long time) but I’m really past the point of feeling personally responsible for other peoples sex drives and I want to be left out of it.

Why is that so much to ask?

Feeling useful

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I spend a lot of my life feeling useless and worthless. I have nothing of any value to contribute. I have no skills worth having. I tend to assume that if something is a skill *I* am capable of picking up it can’t be that hard or interesting.

Then I go out into the world and I find out that the reality is that I just have no self-esteem. Different. My whole neighborhood is excited about the fence. People are thanking me profusely. Everyone is so glad that they get to look at the painting. They don’t care if it looks like a “professional artist” did the work. They care that someone had an idea to spruce up the place and just started in on working.

It really is a relief to be copying drawings from children. It gives me a tremendous amount of wiggle room in terms of artistic technique.

I helped my friend with her graduate school paper last night. We have time scheduled for a month. She *has* to finish. And I understand the writing process and I can push her through it. If she manages to write a good paper and get her degree I’m going to be patting myself on the back for years. I can’t get my own graduate degree but I can help other people get theirs.

I am prepared for the English classes I will be teaching. I don’t know how many students. I don’t know what grade levels or reading/writing levels the kids will be at. I have enough work to keep a slow 5th grader busy or six months or a smart high school student for a solid two weeks. Let’s see how much work I need to do after this. Today is mostly diagnostic.

When I say that I don’t want to do something unless it is a vocation I mean that I’m not willing to go do something for pay that I won’t do for free. I’m not willing to take care of someone else’s kids right now. I would not be able to do so in a loving way–not full time. I would be a monster. I am not willing to teach full time for pay–I don’t have that to give. I am not willing to work for a company that will earn money from my hard work. I want to remodel my house and put in a garden that will feed me for decades.

I have luxury and privilege because of Noah. I get to make “choices” that aren’t available to other people.

When I was younger I did a tremendous amount of volunteering my time. I have always become uncomfortable the minute I am paid for something. If I’m not willing to just go do it because it is fun then it feels like a serious problem. If you have to pay me to do this then I don’t want to do it.

Apparently our belief that women don’t ask for the money they are worth isn’t as firmly based on research as one might assume. I like the whole idea, “Maybe the problem isn’t that women don’t ask for enough maybe the problem is that men ask for too much.” How’s that for spin?

Noah walks in and asks for outrageous salaries these days. I stand back and feel utter horror that someone could be such a presumptuous schmuck. Then they give him how much money he asks for.

Many of the neighbors have expressed shock that I would paint the fence for free. That seems utterly bizarre. I get to look at it every time I walk through my neighborhood for the next goodness knows how many years. That is a reward. That is something I lacked before painting it.

I feel like a complete asshole sometimes. I have the luxury of donating my time and materials (paint ain’t cheap) because I have a husband who can ask for a lot of money. Doesn’t that make me a using piece of shit? Noah doesn’t hate me.

After looking up the word vocation it just means a strong feeling of suitability. Well that explains why I am using it differently and wrong. I don’t mean just that it feels suitable. I mean that I must do it. I suppose I should pick a different word.

One man said, “How did you get permission to do this?” “I asked.” He looked floored. Really? All I did was ask? Ok, so I asked a friend who is fluent in Chinese to help me write a letter and her whole family ensured that I was sucking up properly and that’s how I got permission. Let’s be clear here.

I’m not making the whole world better. But I’m making my neighborhood better. I’m not a big fish in a big pond. I never will be. Does that mean I have less value? Is the good I bring into the world of no merit just because it will only be felt by a few people? I don’t know.

How much good do you have to produce in the world in order to not be a waste of oxygen? I don’t know. I know that I consciously consider this question. I know that I look around at a lot of people I know and consider them a waste of resources. (Yes, I *am* that big of an asshole.) I’m not going to go tell them to commit suicide or anything. I assume they provide some value that I just don’t see.

Every person on this planet is valued for what they can do. Sometimes all they can “do” is look pretty and that causes other people to feel good. I uhhhh don’t want to be in that cohort. I understand that it is what some people have to offer–I just don’t prize it much. Good thing I am unusual and everyone else thinks those people are AWESOME or maybe I would cause people to have low self esteem.

When I’m having my existential crises about whether there is any point in continuing to live (It sounds really lame and whiny when I’m not feeling suicidal.)  I very consciously evaluate whether I make more good in the world or bad. I know I make bad in the world. Do I do enough good to make up for it?

I am increasingly more ok and less ok with judging people as I get older. On one hand I understand the scope of someone else’s life better as I get older–it makes me more patient and sympathetic. On the other hand I think most people don’t do half of what they are capable of and I’m kind of sick of this shit.

I’m processing some stuff with friendships that have ended. I still feel like shit. I feel like it is all my fault even though I can make lists of things that went wrong and my column isn’t the only one with entries. I’m not saying that it is all someone else’s fault. I’m saying we are all human and we all fuck up.

How do you learn how to talk about “triggers”? When I read on the internet about people feeling “triggered” I think it doesn’t mean what I think it means.

In retrospect I can see how my ability to be “ok” with someone will unravel if they repeatedly promise to be responsible for giving me food and they don’t. I have a problem with that going back to early childhood. I’m not worth people bothering to feed. I should just die. After a fairly brief period of time if someone jerks me around over the topic of food I am not going to be able to treat that person like a neutral party. I am going to treat them like someone who wants me to die and I am going to get violent and angry. If I think really hard it has happened more than once.

I have watched this as my relationship with my kids has changed over the past five years. I am like a dog who cannot be approached while eating. I have a lot of food issues and I get angry and violent when people say they will give me food and don’t.

Sometimes I feel like a petty piece of shit. My mom used to eat at Orange Julius a lot. For most of my life just thinking of the name or seeing the logo is enough to make my body go haywire. I am instantly full of adrenaline and I’m ready to attack someone.

I ate fucking ramen every fucking meal and she went out to eat.

I ate leftovers that weren’t that good and she went out to get a smoothie because “she didn’t feel that well”. I don’t feel that well either. And I don’t like this food. But I have to eat it even though you won’t even fucking eat it. Fuck you you fucking fuck.

None of this is rational. At this point in time I just make sure that there aren’t many people responsible for providing me with food. When I went camping with my friend and her family I freaked out about a lot of the same stuff.

Wait, my end of this bargain is something I don’t like and I will have to do whether it is shitty or not and you get to just sit there and watch me do this shitty thing? You get to opt-out though? Oh wait. You are *special*.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I want to break your nose. I want to punch you in the kidneys until you pee blood for a month you piece of shit.

Entitlement. I have too much entitlement. I think that if I am suffering someone else better fucking be suffering too. Or I will make them suffer.

No, I’m not nice.

Do I do this to my kids? I don’t think I have so far–they don’t feel like responsible parties. I think I get mad at responsible parties–people who can and should be held accountable for their own actions.

That makes me feel nervous about them growing up. Am I just waiting until they hit some magic age to blow up at them? I hope I get this under control before then.

If I manage to find a way to not depend on my kids then it will work out. That sounds like a terrible set-up. One of my many problems is that when someone promises that they will take care of me but they are lying…. I can’t reconcile that in my head.

You want to take care of me. But you don’t take care of me. You lie to me. You lie to me over and over. You think it would be nice if the universe somehow magically took care of me but you are going to fuck me over. You are selfish and self-absorbed and you only care about yourself. You are not capable of evaluating what you are actually capable of. You over promise and under deliver over and over and over.

This is why I am so afraid of promising anything. I don’t want to be like you.

If I promise something I am going to kill myself getting it done. Why do you think I have given up just about everything else in my life to parent? I said I would do this. I decided at the beginning what standard of behavior was ok from me and I have a ridiculous success rate on hitting my prescribed metrics.

I am doing what I said I would do.

It means that I can’t have a lot of other things. It means that many other dreams must be deferred or abandoned. Life is about choices.

I can choose to think that “my” stuff is more important or I can choose to think that my commitments are more important.

Do I have this hubris because I am able bodied? Mostly able bodied? I have times in my life where I end up laying on the floor sobbing for hours because my back is spasming. When I am alone with my children it doesn’t matter that I feel unable to function. I crawl to the kitchen and they get their fucking food.

Ok, so this abdominal pain thing isn’t a hernia. Other possible suspects include IBS. Guess what? I started drinking carbonated water after my kids were born. Carbonation is a known irritant to IBS. (I switched to carbonated water because I was trying to get off juice because sugar is bad for you–right? This was a big step down from my early life of living on soda. I have never drunk still water by habit. Ever.) I haven’t had carbonation in over a week (pretty amazing for me) and probably 75% of the pain is gone. That horrible throbbing thing right in that one spot just isn’t hurting.

However, in researching what this is I found out that it probably isn’t normal that I have had diarrhea for most of my life and I live my whole life around knowing where bathrooms are because I need to pee and/or poop so frequently. Apparently eight loose stools a day is probably a sign that I am not healthy. Well, shit. (pun intended.)

It is probably time for allergy testing.

I don’t take care of my body very well. I don’t know how. Looking around at my culture I can see why. People reap what they sow. I don’t think I will use the family recipes that my mother so laboriously hand copied for me almost ever in my life. I don’t cook with canned food. I don’t depend on bottles of “sauce” for my calories. I don’t put Crisco in everything.

There were reasons they did. But I don’t want to be like them.

Kids are waking up. It’s going to be a very busy day. Time to stop whining.

Progress report.

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So.Forking.Off.Schedule.

I did five hours of unexpected painting today. Now I think this will be a forty to fifty hour project. Oh man. I don’t think I booked enough time over the next month. I don’t know how this is going to work.

Well, no way to get through it but to just up and do it. This too shall pass.

I am always much happier about the idea of being done with a project than I am about the work. I was bitchy for over an hour of painting. Then I finally relaxed.

I had a lovely chat with the lady who lives there. She thanked me repeatedly for painting her fence and gave me three little tomato sprouts. I thanked her. I’m shocked she is letting me do this. So far she likes it. That’s good.

The old guy down the road wasn’t avoiding me. My paranoia can end. *Phew* He was just super busy and then out of town. I got to hear all about his travels to I-de-ho recently. He is getting bawdier and bawdier and he swears more and more as he talks to me. He is starting to think of me as One Of The Guys. I can tell. It is always a funny shift when older men realize they can’t shock me.

Today I feel so glad that I get to have this life. My therapist wants me to walk around my house with a video camera looking at the pictures on the wall. She wants me to tell a story with them. She thinks it will be good for me.

I told her that I put the pictures up because I have a hard time reminding myself that anyone would care if I died. I largely put the pictures up so I can’t walk through my house and pretend I don’t matter. There are a lot of pictures on the wall of people who would be very upset and hurt if I died. I need to remember that.

I tell my kids that I put them up so that the kids will learn who their family is. That’s a much better story for them.

I appreciate that my therapist validates me as a parent so much. I mean, I think I am doing a good job of meeting the goals I am setting for myself as a parent and as a person. I really and truly have gotten my temper under control. I don’t rant and scream. I don’t hit. I don’t terrorize my children. I just don’t. I have a very mellow relationship with them. We are all working hard on life together.

We have one more Hindi class before two 1.5 hour oral exams. Oof. I need to study more.

I start teaching English on Thursday. I need to copy the short story. I need to pick the short story. And put together questions. And decide what I’m going to teach. And, err, basically every other aspect of teaching. No big deal, right? It’s only in 36 hours. No rush or anything.

Enh, ten kids for two hours. No big deal.

I’m really grateful for my friends. I know some good people.

I had a raunchy good time at a sex party this weekend. My husband puts out very well. Yay! I continue to have mixed feelings about how much better sex is when someone is watching. That would be exhibitionism, ma’am. I feel quite grateful that I found a partner who is so sexually compatible. *swoon* I no longer need to find many men for a night. Ha. He’s enough.

I’m not actually that off-schedule. Just a bit. But I’m going to need to up how much I plan to paint this week. Oy. It will all work out. The work, it will get done. I will it so.

I feel weird about how much I feel like most of the effort of my hands “doesn’t matter” and “isn’t important” and “has no value”.  How much of that perception is tied to my internalized misogyny and devaluation of womens work?

Today I told a (female) friend that I am glad that my daughters are growing up in a little bubble where most movies/tv/books pass the Bechdel test (1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it. 2. Who talk to each other. 3. About something besides a man)

My friend said that sounded exhausting after we talked about the three movies she recently watched in one weekend all of which fail the Bechdel test. I kind of blinked. Exhausting? I think that my world is wonderful and comfy and carefully constructed over many years. I feel like I finally get to relax for the first time in my life. No one here is going to tell me that I can’t do _____ because I’m a girl. Noah assumes I am more generally competent at most of the butch tasks in our house… because I am.

I don’t live in a world of female side kicks. I’m not going to fucking be one. I don’t need women to be the only characters but it is very rare for me to watch an all male movie. (Big exception for Shawshank Redemption.)

I look at the world created in mainstream media and don’t see a place for me. So it isn’t part of my life. I don’t miss it. I don’t feel sad about not participating. I don’t see why that would be exhausting. It’s a good thing everyone gets to be different.

I want to learn about the wisdom of women. I have no grandmother to learn from. I read books and watch movies. What lessons have women learned before me? Which wheels do I not bloody need to reinvent? I don’t find those same lessons in male-oriented movies.

Given that I am not allowed to punch people randomly in the face when I’m in a bad mood I don’t find action flicks enjoyable. It raises that “want to punch people” feeling. It isn’t that fun to suppress.

August needs to be slower. Ugh. We have another wedding coming up. (I’m not the officiant but it will be great!) Lots to look forward to. Lots to do. I can’t die yet.

Day one of painting

 

Not sleeping well.

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I don’t sleep much while it is hot. My err internals are unhappy. I worked on a book for a while this morning. *pat self on back* Now if I can just keep this up I might be more than a one hit wonder. Not that my book was a hit. You know what I mean.

I’m kind of tired and mellow feeling. It is actually nice. Noah is going to take Shanna to camp today (she said please and all) so I will be at the nursery at 8:30 when it opens. A friend asked to come over and garden with me today. I can barely contain my squee. We will be weeding and mulching and such. (Yes, Pam I saw your note about “just use cardboard.” All of the cardboard on my property is still in good shape and the kids play with the boxes.)

I absolutely HAVE to work on the fence today. No excuses! I was productive all of yesterday… just not on the fence. This is going to be difficult to force myself to do. I can tell. I’m terrified of fucking up and having people make fun of me or hate me. Oh well. Keep working.

This morning I was foolish and I read some of that nasty anti-home schooling stuff. Oh boy are some people pissed off about even the *idea* of home schooling. Has someone tried to force you into something? Is there a reason you are SO ANGRY with people who make this choice? No? Ok then.

I get the logic that putting my kids in school would be better for the other kids in the school because then I would be forced to be involved with the school and I would make it better for not just my kids. I absolutely agree with every step in that process.

I just can’t get onboard with the part where I am supposed to throw my kids under a bus because it would be better for someone else. My experiences of public school have been bad. Not just for me as a student, but as a teacher and as a person in the credential program.

I won’t force my kids to be part of that system. I don’t believe it is healthy for our species to be forced to sit in chairs for 6+ hours/day while quietly listening to someone else. Nope. Not what we are meant to do this lifetime.

I understand that this is a privileged position. I believe that I am stinking with privilege. I have choices that many people can’t even dream of. I think that is positive and I am not going to give up my choices just because they aren’t available to everyone.

I don’t see 5 star restaurants going to a McDonald’s level of pricing (and food quality) just so that it is faaaaaaiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrr to everyone involved.

Life isn’t fair. At all. Ever. There is no fair.

That said, I am pretty happy that Noah’s obscene raise came with a much lower than expected amount of money. Ahhh skipping tax brackets. That’s ok. We don’t actually need all of the money. It’s ok that it is being used for services for people who need them. I feel pretty good about that.

I can give some things in some ways. I can’t necessarily give what someone wants or needs. I don’t want to be responsible. I am too selfish. I will donate money and food. I will assist with my labor when I have extra spoons and not when I don’t. I am not going to be forced to sign up for working all the god damn time for someone else’s benefit. I don’t care enough about other people.

I can say that out loud. I don’t care enough about other people to give them the time and energy I want to use on my own selfish pursuits.

Could I donate more time so that I am making other peoples lives at least slightly less awful if not better? Probably. Almost certainly. There is no shortage of suffering in the world.

Some people feel motivated to help a lot a lot of the time. That’s awesome. I’m glad you have so much to give. I don’t have it. If I try to do that I end up spending a lot of time cutting my body to remind me that I don’t matter so I don’t forget who I am supposed to be focusing on.

Cutting really is a useful tool. I think about it a lot. I think about what it does and why it is useful in the ways it is useful. Self-control is both under rated and under valued by most people. Very few people have the self-control to abruptly shift large chunks of their behavior. It is the same thing as not that many people are truly good actors. Same mechanism.

Cutting influences a lot of brain chemicals. Cutting is a dramatic shift to the body chemistry makeup. It induces calmness and a feeling of focus–tunnel vision, really. When your body is in shock it tends to shut down a lot of your nerve endings. You stop getting a lot of distracting messages from your body.

Cutting allows me to borrow spoons of self-control. I don’t really have that kind of calmness in my body without something to trigger a much-larger-than-usual grab of chemicals. Yay drugs! Due to experimentation I have learned a lot more about what my base level is vs. what is my elevated mood vs. what is my depressed mood. It’s a process.

Sometimes it is very powerful to stop and really concentrate on how powerful my brain is (your brain too; just sayin’). The brain scans they are doing these days feel like magic to me. You can see what is happening. The most magical part is you can see how people have the sheer willpower to change things.

I believe that my brain was altered by trauma. What I mean by that is I believe my brain adapted to living in an environment with a freakishly high level of stress. That is the level of stress my brain believes is necessary/appropriate to common life.

If my brain adapted to stress, how can I consciously choose to change the adaptation again? Studies show that mostly people don’t change much. It is hard. It takes will and effort and work and misery.

Being inside my brain sucks bowling balls through a hose. It isn’t fun. The difficulty of changing things is really hard to notice when stacked up to how shitty it is to live here.

I believe in magic. I believe that people make things happen when everyone else believes that it can’t. It happens all the time.

I have had the good/bad privilege of spending a lot of time with people who have experienced severe traumatic brain injuries. I have seen people survive the most horrifying accidents with terrible injuries. Their lives are forever altered. They can’t get back to being who they were.

I have no before picture I am struggling towards. That isn’t part of my story. I don’t have a base line to return to. All I have is the absolute all encompassing belief that I can change the story. I can learn how to be a good parent and I can be present through a healthy and happy childhood. This is not about a return to anything. This is about consciously choosing something different from my life.

Last night we read the part in the Little House in the Big Woods where Pa teases Laura about the kids getting only a switch in their Christmas stocking if they are bad. Shanna’s eyes went wide.

“Those parents hit those kids?”

“Yup. A long time ago people believed that if a kid did something bad the parents were required to hit the kid to teach the kid a lesson. It never worked very well.”

“Gosh I’m glad that no one has to be hit in this house.”

Me too. She cuddled up really close after that and told me that she would never hit me because I have been hit enough. I didn’t really know how to respond. I kept reading.

I’m reading my friend’s book. It is a rather fun read so far. I’m about 20% into it. He combines irreverence and history in his fabulous manner. (He intersperses national/international news events on the time lines to let people get a scope on what is happening. He said which year (I’ve already forgotten–1800’s, I think the last number is a 4 or a 6 but the decade escapes me and that is pretty important.) that Beethoven began de-composing. Similar gems are liberally sprinkled. I’ve always liked his writing. That’s why I know him in the first place. Yay for internet friends.

Why is it that I feel like I am standing still and free falling at the same time? I feel like I am not doing enough and I am terribly bored and I feel like I am doing too much and I am so overwhelmed I cannot possibly keep functioning at this rate.

I’m not balancing the marathon vs. sprint timing thing very well. I’m not actually talking about running–it’s one of those metaphor things.

Gardening has a rhythm and I am struggling to learn it. Some months of the year I need to spend 40 hours/week in the garden. Some months I spend more like 1-2 hours/week. I don’t yet feel this rhythm in my bones but it is coming. Spring is like a drug for me these days. Must move. Must plant. It is weird and primitive.

Summer is feeling different. I am a delicate and trembling flower and I wilt in the heat. More accurately I have attacks of horrifying bowel pain. I HATE SUMMER. I spend hours a day not sure if I am on the verge of spontaneously vomiting or shitting my pants because I won’t make it to the bathroom in time. It is hard to keep a schedule when I feel like this. (For the record I have only had one bathroom accident since childhood. The first day Noah went back to work after Shanna was born I had not yet learned that post-children the urgent signals are uhhh less timely and more actually urgent. Eww. Eww. Eww.)

But I have managed to go to the water park at least one day a week since it opened for week days. *pat self on back* That is a summer routine that I want to start. We only stay for an hour to an hour and a half. We might stay longer if the kids could do more swimming on their own and I had to do less work. As is I don’t have the physical ability to manage entertaining them in water for four hours. I take this as a sign that I am out of shape.

I feel like what I should do is make up a variety of different schedules–the way I did when I was teaching. Year planning was my favorite step. <3 It is like a puzzle! What do you want to do and when? How does it all fit together to make a cohesive picture of education? How do I fit in all of the standards and methods of teaching I want to hit?

I used to list: poetry, grammar, writing, reading boring analytical non-fiction, reading novels, reading short stories all as separate units. How many weeks to spend on each? How many hours in those weeks? How do I pre-test to figure out what people already know so I don’t bore the shit out of people? How do I evaluate people accurately to find out what they really learned?

If I had a dick this process would give me a hard on. It is a control thing. I like feeling like I am dotting all of my i’s and crossing all of my t’s. (I understand that in that case the apostrophe isn’t strictly appropriate but it looks bad any other way of writing it. See, this is what many years of obsessively worrying about grammar gives you. You know the rules and don’t follow them any way because the rules suck. Go English?)

I probably should get out some paper. It is easier without typing.

What are my categories now? Gardening, schooling, social activities, making food, cleaning house, money (there are a lot of once a year payments, for example, so budgeting is kind of weird), kid-separate-from-adult-time (my kids are *not* actually attached to me at the hip very consciously), reading, writing, running, hygiene (this takes time! Every Damn Day!), and I could come up with more if I tried.

They are all on slightly different schedules. Some things are scheduled and balanced on a month to month basis, some things are scheduled and balanced weekly or even daily. How do you balance all of the daily obligations against the weekly and monthly and annual?

Near as I can tell most people do more or less what their parents did because that is what they know of life. Thus I do a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul because that is what I learned. I do it while squirreling away a lot of money which is, strangely, also what I learned.

I don’t usually mention that my father was rather well off throughout my childhood. I lived in poverty. I ate nothing but ramen and free lunch. I moved every three months because we were couch surfing and my mom couldn’t pay rent. He would tell my mom he was too poor to pay for things but he had a lot of savings. My mom just flat never had enough money to live.

Shanna sees me play with Mint a lot. She asks what it is. I talk to her about the balance of wants and needs and future savings. I tell her, “If you save money and you have a buffer then you don’t have to feel afraid when unexpected things happen. You can just shrug and move on with your life. Not having savings is one of the scariest things in life. It means you can not go out and solve the problems that come up and that is really hard.”

When I lived on $1200/month I had $3,000 in the bank at (almost) all times in a savings account I otherwise didn’t touch. My theory was that I might have to leave suddenly at some point in time and I needed a buffer. I burned through the buffer when I left my Owner. I got down to the point of my bank account only having four digits.

My friend offered me $100. He said that was his friends-need-help emergency fund. I wouldn’t let him give me money. I told him that I would make it come out ok in the end. I was right.

It is harder to deny yourself things you can afford to buy than it is to not buy things when you have no money. That has been my experience. It is harder and harder for me to save money. (In my defense the largest chunk of my spending is going to paying the mortgage off faster. I shouldn’t feel so upset with myself for not “saving” when I am spending the money on debt pay off instead of consumer spending but there you go.)

A while back I read a book, Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation and whereas I am not up for adopting most of her methods or practices (I’m not taking up Catholicism nor sports) I really latched on to a few important points in the book. If you are really nice to your kids and you are interested in them and you share things with them then they will want you to like them. If they want you to like them then they will make choices that are in line with your values.

Oh man.

What are my values then? I want my kids to be interested in life and in people. Most people are good. Most people are pretty kind when given the opportunity. If someone is not kind to you, pull back first but be able to attack to defend yourself. You are worth defending. Read as much as you can–as many different kinds of things as you can. I believe that there are more things to learn than there is time in the day to learn it. I want my children to believe that their body is theirs to do with as they please–not as someone else pleases (unless it is fun and then I just don’t want details–m’kay?). I want my children to believe that work is necessary and fun. I want them to understand that different people are good at different kinds of work and that is no judgment one way or another on the people or the work. Do what you like.

I want my children to understand that they have privilege. That their ancestors have been privileged for quite some time. What does that mean about our place in the world and in history?

I check a lot of books out of the library that deal with African American issues. Seeing my little Aryan baby read, “A long time ago before you or I were born our people were enslaved” makes me wince. I told her that actually her ancestors were the slave owners. She asked if my ancestors owned slaves and I got to say no. (Yankees, more-recent-immigrants, and prostitutes for the win.) There goes white guilt in full form! But it’s true. Noah’s family owned slaves.

I find that as I get older and as I read more feminist writing I realize that if I were to fall into the most obvious trope presented to me I should hate Noah. I should hate everything he stands for and everything about him.

That is really hard to live with. I’m sure that is as hard to live with as the trope that women are just meant to be props for a man’s life.

I don’t hate Noah. I like Noah. Having the life of privilege he has had has made him one of the kindest and most considerate people I have ever had in my life. But maybe he just treats me that way because I put out. I’m only sort of kidding.

I am nice to Noah and he is nice to me and we have a whole virtuous cycle thing going on. Different people care about different kinds of “being nice”. Different people want different kinds of support.

In the past three days I have talked to four different women who have all been extremely upset with their (male) partners because of a lack of support. In most of these cases the woman can’t even put her finger on what more support would look like but they know they aren’t getting it. (Mothers of many children can come up with a list of what they want without having to pause for breath.)

When I think about how upset these women are I stop and think about how tired Noah is. Then I cycle through my male friends who are working as hard as they physically can to support their partners.

Yes, yes I know that the “love languages” crap plays in with it but it feels bigger than that. I think that evolution wants us to feel like what this person is giving us isn’t enough so that we will go shopping for someone who provides us with more. I think that it is just a good bet in terms of producing prosperous off-spring.

Only it doesn’t work. Because splitting up families is hella complicated. I think about the interweaving needs that exist in a family. I think about how children learn to care for themselves and for one another earlier when there are more of them around.

Then I come back to the fact that Noah started off in this world no bigger or stronger than me but he is now in some ways. He may or may not have a higher IQ. I definitely have a higher EQ. He has a higher earning potential at this stage. I can run farther. We are different. We are not equal.

How does one measure worth? I can hate him as a symbol of oppression or I can recognize that he personally isn’t oppressing anyone and he hasn’t spent a lot of time actively doing any oppressing. Living with me has dramatically changed how feminist he is at work. (I feel damn proud of that.)

He is moving in the direction of having power and influence. And I stand behind him filling his ear with my opinions. Does that make me a prop? Is he a prop? Is he just a paycheque to support my lavish lifestyle?

We are good at very different things. We like very different things. We complement one another. And because we are white that means that we have what is sometimes presented as the widest array of options in life.

My demographic is mocked up one side and down the other in the media. I am an upper middle class rich white liberal. I am a stay at home mom and I home school my kids. I am a punch line and a punching bag. Waa waa poor me.

Do I want to be a caricature? Do I want to treat Noah like he is a caricature? Noah is an upper middle class rich white liberal gamer geek. Doesn’t that make him kind of icki by definition? And don’t let that sicko watch My Little Ponies!! Ahem. Sorry.

What does being anything mean? I never identified as trailer trash despite living in trailers off and on and despite white trash being so much less “ok”. I am not defined by the box in which I sleep. Or in which I fuck random men I just picked up.

What am I?

I told Noah the other day that most of the people in my family would describe themselves as good people who sometimes do bad things. They are rapists and pedophiles. Ok, most of them aren’t rapists. But even the non-rapists adamantly defend the rapists.

I think of myself as a bad person who doesn’t really do bad things very often. I believe I am inherently unworthy of any relationship. It is inevitable that I will kick the cabinet off the wall. Duh. Being the kind of person who can, has, and may do so again means that I am just bad.

Do I rape people? Well, I’m pretty confident that I have not raped anyone since I was eighteen. I am pretty sure that I did commit rape before then. I am so sorry. I didn’t understand what I was doing. I didn’t understand power differentials. I didn’t understand that I was ever capable of having power.

Sometimes I look at Noah and I understand on a gut level that he doesn’t see himself as someone who has or has ever had power. He is still in that timeless place with the little boy who wasn’t treated all that well.

I mean, not that he’s immature or anything–that’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m saying that ones internal perspective doesn’t much resemble other peoples view of one. See how that non-gendering thing is awkward?

I do not believe I am a good person. It is, frankly, freeing. I get to make selfish and self-interested choices without caring that much about the effect. I generally do take the effect into consideration because I will have to live with it and all. That is one of the best parts of getting older. You have had a chance to learn from more mistakes.

Every time someone tells me not to dwell on the past I wonder what they mean by that. The people I know who tell me, “I don’t think about the past” are people who have the same little cycle of life over and over with people who are practically paper dolls. People who are roles.

I don’t hate Noah. I don’t feel I can. The longer I know him the older and more grizzled he becomes. (He’s got quite the beard these days.) But I see him as younger and softer as time goes by. I see more of his innocence and his desire for simple connection. I see more of him wanting to be liked and feeling sad because he knows most of the world doesn’t like him very much. (I mean, he’s charismatic and has friends and all–but he’s a symbol to be hated.)

What does any of it mean? Nothing? Everything? Who knows. I like him. I like the life I get to share with him more than I have ever liked anything in my whole life. I feel grateful for the peace and joy in my life. I have stability, safety, and privilege. I can write for six hours straight (in various places on differing projects) when I have insomnia (or intestinal pain–let’s be clear here) after getting almost six hours of sleep because my husband helps so much.

I can invite two kids over for the weekend and trust that my husband will just be around making food and cleaning up messes and playing with kids as much or more than I do.

Sex. That is the thing to schedule that didn’t make the list. I’m sorta interested in my cycles around that as well. Obviously I am more interested in sex around ovulation. We often have most of our ten times a month sex in a four day period. It’s awesome. But he would prefer other spacing. I struggle internally with treating sex like a chore to cross off the list like brushing my teeth.

And yet.

Why am I having sex ten times a month? (Ok, I’ve actually had at least two months in the past year where I didn’t put out ten times and I’ve had paroxysms of guilt. I try to compensate by some months getting up to more like fifteen. Noah agrees that it balances and all is copacetic.) Because sex is a lot of where Noah gets positive energy. He is drained and tired all of the time. If I put out more he would have more energy. This is a pretty trackable situation in our life.

But it is different for me. Sex is different than it has ever been. HA! I’ve been trying to think for days what base lines I have in my life. People revert to base line when they are under stress. I finally came up with one: picking up strangers for sex. That is probably the primary base line behavior I have had in life. I did it for 27 years.

Monogamy is weird. I’m not even going to call it boring because it isn’t that it is boring. It is consistent, but not boring. It feels different in a lot of ways I don’t feel up to putting into words right now. I hear breakfast finishing up and my arms hurt.

And then I’ll just abruptly stop. Because I can’t end for shit.

Lack of consistency

2 Replies

One of the things that I prioritize with the kids is being consistent. Even if it makes me kind of a dick. I think that children need predictable responses from adults. But I make exceptions.

Last night Calli had a hard time going to bed. She had a hard day in general. Big Sister got to go on a play date alone for the first time. Calli was very jealous and upset. We had a pretty good date by ourselves (yay library) but there were a lot of feelings throughout the day. Then she slept from 3-5:30. So she wasn’t sleepy at bed time.

Noah was kind of done after a bit. His voice started escalating a bit. I decided that I needed to handle everything from her.

I walked her back to bed or spoke gently with her each time. When she came back after a decisive “No really I’m done” Noah got upset and I laughed. Persistent little thing.

I keep thinking that Shanna was still nursing constantly and sleeping with us full time at this age. Why do we expect things of Calli that we in no way expected from Shanna? I can comfort my two year old to sleep without being an impatient bitch. I have that still in me. (I’m thoroughly convinced it is best for all concerned that we are not having a third child. I don’t have anything left. But I can bloody well be nice to Calli.)

I couldn’t be mean to her. She would come to the door and say, “Please snuggle me.” I wasn’t a lot older than her when my parents divorced. My memories of rocking myself to sleep while crying for my mother are so intense and vivid that they haunt me waking and sleeping. I can’t be cruel to my children and deny them the comfort of my presence when they are little and scared and need me. Is it annoying sometimes? Oh golly gee yes. But this phase will be short in the over all scheme of things. I can comfort my two year old.

I have been told that I am an angry person since I was a little kid. That is one of the things people feel free to comment on the most–how angry I seem. I want my kids to remember me as someone who was always always always there when they needed me. I want them to remember me as loving and compassionate. That means I must behave in such a way over and over even when I’m not in the mood.

More than anything in the world I want my children to remember their childhoods well. I want them to remember that it was ok for them to be. If you are scared that is ok; we can handle that. If you are hungry that is ok; we can handle that. If you are hurt that is ok; we can handle that.

My children believe in the marrow of their bones that most things that go wrong in life can be handled by saying, “Well that didn’t go as planned. That’s ok, it’s easy to fix.” They both say it immediately when something starts going off the rails. They believe that problems and mistakes are just learning opportunities.

I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking lately about how adamantly I used to deny that I was beaten as a child. Up until about twenty-four I would hotly deny that I was beaten as a child. That was because throughout my entire childhood people would hit me and then sneer that I didn’t know what a beating was and I needed to shut up and stop crying or they would give me a real reason to cry.

Now that I have children and I have to have the self-control to not hit them I believe I was beaten all the god damn time. I believe that the adults in my life had no self-control and they used me as a relief valve for their general life frustrations. I had to become a parent before I could see that.

My children will not have memories like mine. My children will remember that when they needed their mom she was there. My children will remember being safe and happy and secure. My children will remember being loved and protected no matter what.

Even when they are annoying in the middle of the night. Even when they push all of my buttons. Even when I am so sick of them I could just fucking scream. I still can’t take that out on them. Period.

Sometimes I wonder about consistency. With children you need to consciously be aware that you have a limited amount of power and control over them. You have eighteen years to be their boss and then you need to shut the fuck up and let them do their thing. Really it is a lot less than eighteen years. You only get to really be the boss for like ten years. Then you need to pray you taught them well and just keep moving.

I am not consistent in pushing them away from me. When opportunities come up where I could hold a boundary and keep them away from me… I suck at that. If they tell me they need me I weigh my opposing needs and more than 80% of the time I decide their needs are more important right now. (My bladder waits for no one.) But even that has been a process. I learned how to hold my bladder after having kids. I do it better now than I ever have.

The most important consistency in my life is being loving towards my children. I am ok with bailing on absolutely every other requirement. I can’t keep too many things in my brain.

When people are under stress they revert to their earliest training. Over coming that is ridiculously hard and takes a lot of very conscious effort. I am not intellectually or physically capable at this moment in time in just writing a whole new pattern of reactions. That would be very hard. I can’t make me into a different person. But I can choose a behavior to move towards. I can’t pick too many at once or I will be overwhelmed and fail.

I can choose to prioritize being loving over any other form of consistency. That is something I can find a way to do. I mean, I told Calli last night, “You understand that my patience tonight will have a cost tomorrow–right? If you don’t let me go to sleep soon I will be kind of cranky and tired tomorrow.” She said she didn’t want me to be grumpy but she really needed cuddles. I believe her. I believe that she needed them right then.

My children are certain of their own worth. They are sure that they are worth extra effort. They understand that taking care of them is work and that I am very happy to do it because I am so glad to know them. But it is work and you have to be patient with me while I do it.

When I feel really bad about myself one of the things I focus on is how easily I make everyone around me feel bad about themselves. I am critical and sharp and mean. I take things apart that needn’t have the scrutiny.

I’m busy enough lately that I don’t need to look at the fact that I have stopped inviting people to do things. I’ve gotten enough “no’s” lately that I just don’t have it in me to invite anyone for a while. I’m going to coast on ballet recital rehearsal and painting probably until the end of the month. We aren’t doing much socializing outside the home school group. It is wonderfully convenient to be able to just sit down and look at their calendar and decide yes/no without having to weigh any emotional friendship factors. Do I want to drive to that event and do we have time/money? It’s very low-stress. I’m very grateful for all the work our Meet-up group organizer does. She makes my life better. She lets me kind of hide from a lot of life. I’m not sure she is aware she is doing that but I appreciate it any way.

I’m not consistent with adults. I don’t feel like I am kind enough to deserve consistency from any other adults so I’ve been avoiding them for a while. I’m not good enough at giving it so I don’t expect to receive it.

When I read stuff about introverts it almost justifies my existence. Being alone is so much easier–but I’m not really alone. I have these two excellent people keeping me company all the damn time. I do appreciate quiet in a way I didn’t used to.

I feel like Noah and I are having trouble connecting lately and I’m not sure how much of it is all a manufacturing of my fucked up brain. He’s tired and being less overly-sensitive of my ridiculous over-sensitivity. Of course that means I feel like he is picking on me. Because that’s how I roll. I don’t really think he is picking on me. But I do feel like he is saying small things that are kind of dismissive and that remind me that I’m just generally not very nice or very worth liking. I don’t really want to argue with the things because I mostly agree with him. I’m not very nice and I’m not really worth liking.

I’m not sure that I’m not just creating this whole cycle basically on my own. I doubt his feelings for me have shifted. He’s just too tired to be neurotically careful about his speech. He’s not being mean.

He used to tell me that I looked nice. Now he says I obviously dress for comfort and not to look good. Unfortunately he said that on a day when I had consciously tried to look good. I had picked out an outfit and had fun with it and everything. (Let’s be honest–I usually don’t try.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the validation I got in the relationship with my Owner. I’m trying to figure out how to write about it–what to say.

Both Noah and my former Owner strike me frequently as very young in affect. They are both feel to me like enthusiastic teenage boys who are getting what they want when a girl pays attention to them. I know that men continue to be enthusiastic about women throughout life and all, but there is a difference in exuberance. You know the kind of excitement that is way more piqued for toys in young people than in older people? Like that.

I can still tell that Noah likes me and all. I’m not quite that blind. I feel less shiny. I feel like one of the responsibilities of girls is to be comely and I’m not so much any more. I feel like Noah has gotten a remarkably raw deal in terms of actual attention. I don’t pay much attention to him. Well, it depends on how you mean. Over the past seven years I have developed the ability to talk about computer shit on a level I previously resisted with extreme hostility. I pay attention to Noah. I have learned so much stuff from him that frequently I feel like my head will explode. But I don’t look at him and act like I want to jump him.

How much does being attractive matter? How much does feeling exciting matter? I feel faint worry that if I ignore this problem it will bite me in the ass at a later point.

With my Owner cleaning the house was directly paying attention to him. For the first long while I didn’t live there, I just came over to clean. Even once I lived there I lived there the way a cat lives there. Nothing was mine. I was very clearly being permitted to be a live-in servant. That’s not a life sharing partnership sort of thing.

I clean my house now mostly for me. I’m not doing it as service to Noah. He’s not here much and he isn’t all that impacted by how much I clean. Some of it effects him. He certainly appreciates it when I am on top of my chores because then he doesn’t have to pitch in.

With Noah the work is mine because I choose to do it. He would share in it if I demanded that he do so. I do it because I have more time and energy going spare. It doesn’t feel as much like something I am doing for him. I feel kind of weird about that. It often feels like I don’t do much of anything for Noah even though I do far more for him than I have consistently done for any other partner. In the past I felt like I was doing it because someone else wanted me to. Now I’m doing it for me and it doesn’t feel like a magnanimous act. Now it is just life. I’m not doing it to be nice to Noah. I’m doing it so I don’t lose my shit and beat my children bloody. (kidding. kinda. I know that cleaning helps me stay calm.)

Now cleaning is a way of having CONTROL over a small part of my life and that makes me feel more secure. Once upon a time I cleaned what I was told to clean how I was told to clean it. It wasn’t about me except that I felt secure because I was meeting his needs. He had a direct reason to keep me around.

Sometimes it blows my tiny little brain that Noah hangs out with me just because he wants to. He could be a much bigger asshole to his family. He could pull away more. He could isolate more. He could want more space. He could take off to hang out with buddies. He could go in the bedroom a lot and lock the door. He could be like most of the people I have ever known.

Instead he chooses to be near us even though it is obvious that he doesn’t always feel comfortable. I’m hard for him sometimes. He still comes home. He plays with the kids. He does a lot of work in the house and outside of it. I don’t feel terribly justified in complaining about Noah.

Can I feel sad and have trouble feeling connected without him having to do anything wrong? I feel sad and I miss my mother. When I really feel in the feelings of missing my mother I tend to feel like I miss everyone. Like no one is really there. No one really loves me. I know that global thinking isn’t very accurate and all but it’s there any way.

I feel scared and unworthy. Noah is going to leave as soon as he understands what a loser I am–right? I’m not sure how I have kept it a secret for so long. I’m not sure why my kids still like me.

Only I do know why my kids like me. It is a biological defense mechanism. Their tiny little brains are trying to ensure that they will be properly cared for as they grow up. I’m their shot at that.

Noah and I periodically remind one another that we are both very serious about this family business. We get one shot at forever. I am increasingly sure as the years go by that I will never bear another child. I get one baby-daddy. He is already fixed. He gets one baby-mama. I am pretty fucking sure I would never marry again no matter what. I wouldn’t fuck with my kids’ inheritance. Marriage is about property rights and all of my property comes from Noah and goes to our kids. I don’t really want to get that muddy.

What does it mean to pick someone for better or worse? I know a lot of people who were very ok getting married even though they knew before the wedding that it probably wasn’t permanent. That blows my mind. Why get married then? What is the benefit?

If I can make this work then I have a permanent relationship. If I can’t make this work, well then I can’t make relationships work. I couldn’t figure out how to have a sister or brothers or parents. I can’t figure out how to have aunts or uncles or cousins. If I can’t figure out being a mom or a wife then I am pretty screwed. This is my shot. No pressure.

Yesterday after Hindi class I got to be an object lesson in What Not To Do. I was talking to the other teachers (one of whom was a mom of a tween-aged boy we were talking about) about how important practice in when learning new skills. The other teachers were complaining about how smart this boy is and how he manages to coast without studying. He smirked. I told him about failing out of the Masters program after seven years of work because I couldn’t hand write fast enough to get the degree. I was told, “It is obvious that you know the material you just didn’t quite… write enough“. The kid looked god damn terrified. He has never met anyone who had serious consequences for not studying enough. Ha.

Now Calli is starting to talk about going to school when she is a big girl. I’m not sure how this is all going to be handled. So far neither of my kids are enthusiastic about home schooling. Everyone I know who home school says, “Ha! Stick them in school for a while. They will change their minds.” That seems like a lot of hubris. I don’t think I will be able to convince my kids of something in a short period of time just because. They may well love school–many people do.

I am very aware that I want to home school for selfish reasons. Am I allowed to be that selfish with my kids? I will over ride their preferences and keep them home for kindergarten. Will I argue with Shanna over first grade if she decides to really get fierce? I don’t know. I will have to cross that bridge when I get there.

I don’t actually think my kids would have a hard time adjusting to the timing of school. I think they would hate being told to sit still. Other than that they would have fun.

Why do I care so much about a school wasting their time when I certainly waste their time every day?

It’s all a conundrum. Luckily it is one I don’t have to solve today.

Keep walking.

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I woke up this morning and decided that i wasn’t going to act sad. I had a good day planned and I wasn’t going to waste it with crying. Not today.

We had a nice breakfast out. Then we went to Hindi class. Noah and I spent at least 45 minutes on youtube trying to understand the homework assignment. This is the best video we found for explaining the Gayatri Mantra. In case you were curious. There are some really weird and random non-explanations out there, letmetellyou.

The teacher gave a fourth grade girl the homework assignment of going home and learning what the Gayatri Mantra means and she has to come back and teach our group. Brutal. Noah has been laughing for a while as he repeats (again) “And on week four you must attain Enlightenment.” He thinks he is funny. I do too.

I don’t have a picture book story book life. But my life is good. And there are people who want me.

And I have Godiva chocolate (well, white chocolate truffle and red velvet truffles) for Mother’s Day.

It is really pretty weird that he does nothing for my birthday because he does every other holiday. Relationships are weird, yo. Today is a good day. My husband and I spent time together. We should probably brush our teeth and go to bed. Goodnight internet.

It doesn’t seem real.

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Today was the rehearsal for the wedding I officiate tomorrow. The bride, groom, and both sets of parents took specific trouble to tell me how grateful they are that I am participating in the wedding. They all told me how important I am in the lives of the bride and groom. The bride went off on how I was the only teacher she has ever felt connected to and I have changed her whole life.

I cried.

Sometimes I stop and think about the fact that most of the “great” men and women in history were serious assholes. For example, Paul Revere was a thief. I doubt they taught you that in elementary school.

Maybe I don’t need to die quite yet. I do some good in the world even if I am a complete dick.

I’m nervous and excited and happy. It will be over fast. I just need to show up and do my part and pretend confidence I don’t have. At the end of the day they will be married. I’m so grateful that they want me to be part of this.