Friday was rough. One of the most rage filled days I’ve had in a long time. It felt awful and I was not nice. But I’m glad that my raging took the form of not sounding nice when I said things like “Stop kicking me” and “Stop doing this thing we already told you not to do.” I didn’t attack peoples character or call names. I was just…. so angry.
Yesterday, by contrast, was nice.
I want a new brain.
My kids are approaching puberty. They are both SO EXCITED. Last night at bed time my daughter (9 years old) was really sad and she couldn’t figure out why. We spent a while talking and snuggling and being close because it’s ok to have any feeling you have.
This morning she woke up to brag to their sibling that she is so excited that mood swings are happening and now they are randomly sad sometimes… and it’s great because mom was there. Mom hugged her and helped her feel better and that was so nice.
I love you so much. I really want to help you learn that your feelings are ok. They are just waves that come and if you are patient with yourself… they won’t overwhelm you. Your feelings are ok. Even if you don’t know what they are and even if you don’t know why you are having them. That’s ok too.
Mood swings are part of life. I love you.
Hours of crying, that is. It’s a bad night. I feel like it would be very wise for me to avoid talking to anyone indefinitely because I’m taking everything anyone says, no matter how neutral or positive they mean it, as more sign that I am a disgusting piece of shit who should die. Everything is my fault and I can’t fix anything.
I blocked the forum site and Twitter and Facebook from my computer. I have been reading folks Twitter without logging in and I shoulder surf Noah’s FB account.
I need to stop.
It exacerbates my feeling that I don’t belong anywhere and I am not important to anyone’s life.
I’ll see who is still in my life, I guess. Oh! I’m going to go see one of my buddies from junior high this weekend. She’s moving and I’m going to haul my trailer down to her place so she can move all her schtuff in one load. That’ll be fun. I’ll be glad to see her. Things are looking up in her life. She says that being able to buy the car opened the door to super wonderful things.
I feel so grateful I was able to help my dear old friend.
I’m not bouncing back. I’m tired and listless and drained. All I want to do is sit and stare off into space.
I’m still helping the kids with academics and doing some chores. But I feel like I’m mentally not here.
I slept through almost half the party. As in I sat on the couch and then I was not awake. It wasn’t even an avoidance technique (consciously). I just… am so god damn tired.
Well that’s a way to not be an obnoxious bitch.
I was talking to my massage therapist today and she commented that I sound depressed. I’m not taking much pleasure in anything. I feel sad. I feel irritable as fuck. I feel like I am a mean terrible person who won’t ever be worth spitting on if I’m on fire.
I want to quit everything and hide under a rock until I die.
I think I’m grieving for a bunch of relationships I thought would last longer than they would. It is resulting in me feeling very prickly about people in general.
I trust that people will stay in my life, out at arm’s length. There are friends where I don’t feel pent up pissiness or bitterness about the fact that we see each other every five years or so. It feels ok.
Then there are the people where it feels like a betrayal.
It depends on how much I felt bonded to someone before they distanced themselves or walked away. I gain too much of my self esteem from people liking me. Having these people change their minds…
It feels like an erasure of any value I might have had.
I know that isn’t “how it works” but it is how it feels.
I’m doing one of those things where I feel drifty and distant and wrong.
This morning started out a little rough for me. I asked EC a couple of weeks ago to cull the multiple boxes of school stuff from last year and pick out which items she wants to put in her portfolio. I guess she didn’t understand what I meant. She threw away all of her previous work from grades K-3 and she threw away her sibling’s portfolio work (only kindergarten) and she filled the portfolio’s with random memorabilia and knick knacks. I didn’t discover this till today, so there’s no chance of climbing through the recycling and getting stuff back.
I about blew a gasket.
I didn’t call names. I didn’t scream about how terrible they were. But I did scream that I was very angry. When I calmed down I said (perhaps inappropriately) that a lot of the reason I am so meticulous about keeping this documentation is because I need to make sure no one can ever say I’m not educating my kids and take them away. EC internalized this as “I threw away the portfolio documentation and that means I’m going to be taken away.” We’ve since talked about how there aren’t actually legal requirements to keep this documentation and my fear of CPS is very irrational given that we are unlikely to be looked at as a family at risk. We talked about the difference between a rational fear and an irrational fear.
I think we’ve all calmed down. But I’ve been the opposite of productive since then. Because I need to put most of my mental and emotional energy into calming down. I uhhh also neglected to take any pot till 1pm, which doesn’t help.
Noah says I didn’t cross a line but the line was getting reeeeeal close and I was teetering.
It’s weird having another adult in the house to walk around following me as I rant. It makes me think I’m glad he missed the first three years of my parenting because I was a much bigger bitch.
My poor children.
I sent out another email looking for a therapist for EC. She has fallen through the cracks in the past few months because the folks who looked possible for her didn’t pan out. I need to get that in line though. It’s not ok that she justifies me screaming at her. That’s fucked up and not ok and she needs to have her own therapist who can help her feel like no one should be screaming at her. Not even her mother.
She isn’t always ok with me screaming at her. I don’t get a free pass. But if I’m yelling at her about something she really did she will often say, “Oh I deserve this one.”
NO. YOU MAY DESERVE TO HAVE SOMEONE TALK TO YOU SHARPLY BUT NO ONE DESERVES TO BE SCREAMED AT UNLESS THEY ARE COMMITTING ASSAULT. SCREAMING IS A SIGN THAT SOMEONE HAS LOST CONTROL AND THAT’S BULLSHIT.
She needs a therapist. I say it to her all the damn time. I phrase it as, “I lost control and I was wrong.”
She doesn’t want me to feel bad.
That’s broken and we need to fix it. I get to feel bad for my shitty actions, too.
We all hung out for a few hours yesterday. I think four hours total in the day. They had other stuff to go do. I rested because that’s seriously what I need to be doing with my life right now.
The time we spent together was… a little awkward sometimes but ok. I think the conversations were all positive if occasionally stiff and the specific behaviors that had been bothering me previously were not repeated.
Phew.
I understand that they had a very stressful week aside from me being here. Recovering from surgery while doing two weeks worth of work in a week… that’s stressful. It is very important for me to keep in mind that these people are 99.99999% not reacting to me. They are reacting to what is going on in their lives.
It was a good trip. I’m glad I came. There were a few hours with a few tense interactions because we don’t actually know one another. I think that’s pretty damn good if that is as negative as it got. There was no open hostility. There was no fighting or bickering. I had moments of feeling triggered.
That’s really not the end of the world. I kept my feelings and behavior in check.
Well done on being a grown up, everyone. That was nice.
Because I’m a narcissistic asswipe I feel good about the fact that part of the tension in the trip was about me emphatically stating a point of view that had not been previously been considered because it necessitates life experiences they haven’t had. By the end of the trip the conversation evolved to the point where they figured out a way to include my point of view while maintaining their own standards and beliefs about something that is coming up in their life. I don’t want to give specifics about the situation so cryptic shit is cryptic. But my take away is that I did not necessarily share my point of view in a tactful way (I vary in presentation) but they did really hear me. And they listened because I was talking about a type of interaction with vulnerable populations that they care about getting right.
You really can’t ask for anything more than being heard.
So a lot of my preparation for walking away was bitchy and totally unnecessary. I’m glad I didn’t manifest those feelings more loudly. I think I managed to keep those feelings like 98%-99% under wraps. I’m glad.
These folks were nice to me. I hope I didn’t communicate my distress more than I meant to. Y’all know. But my IP tracker says these folks haven’t checked out my blog. Given how overwhelming their life is just the now that makes sense. I’m kinda hoping it stays that way. But if they do come reading, hi. You are lovely people and I appreciated the time with you. I learned more about controlling myself and being a grown up. Thank you for the opportunity.
I see my family in 11 hours. I can barely wait.
The fibro burning pain is still gone. Now I have this horrible bone deep ache from sleep deprivation. My whole body aches.
I feel worthless and like I should die. I don’t anticipate a good day.
I feel like shit. I’m bloated as fuck. I’m cranky as fuck. I hate every one and every thing in the world.
I was reading through journal entries from five years ago. The best thing I can say is I think I scream less.
Holy tomatoes on toast I hurt. So this’ll be brief.
I had an interesting interaction with a dude today. So I found a guy through my massage therapist who specializes in personal training to help people with injuries/problems. I figure that if I can’t get a doctor to prescribe honest to fucking god physical therapy for me so that I can heal some of my injuries… I can hunt on the outskirts of the system. I can find someone who doesn’t really mesh with the gate kept, abusive system.
Sure, I can try this out.
Thing is, he’s a white guy. You know how I am about getting my hackles up with white guys. Especially athletic white guys. I am hostile until I have a reason not to be.
But I desperately need someone who can do what this guy advertises. So I gotta put my personal shit in a box and shove it in a closet and see if I can handle dealing with him.
Sigh. Fuck being a grown up.
So I gotta say, he has an aura. He’s pretty clearly an orphan. The loss of all family came up several times in the conversation. He’s got that… edge of “I have to be cheerfully polite in order to earn money to survive because there’s not a person in the world who values me enough to support me but I’m so sad.”
I mean, he seemed genuinely sweet and caring. I’m not denigrating that at all. He seems incredibly sincere. He wants to help. And he wears grief like a mantle. He advertises his loss openly on his skin. He is reminded all day every day. Grief, even if you smile, leaves tracks on your face.
But he did something that crossed a boundary and it was interesting. I didn’t call it out. I didn’t assert the boundary so in one sense… he didn’t cross a boundary he nonverbally negotiated a boundary change and I didn’t rebuff it to indicate where my boundary actually was.
To be more clear: he asked me about my arm tattoo. I explained it and started tearing up, like I do sometimes. Suicide is sad, yo. And… he leaned in and gave me an incredibly respectful, incredibly gentle, incredibly touching hug. It was the hug of someone who works with bodies and knows how to make touch 100% NON SEXUAL, OKAY?!?!?!
He reminds me just a tad of Taylor. One of the few men I trust almost as much as Noah.
It was absolutely incredible to realize that in a moment of indecision of “should I panic and fight or should I accept this as connection?” in my head my brain wrapped around a man who has loved me as a friend for a long time.
I didn’t feel scared.
I felt uncertain. I felt like I needed to make a decision. I felt like I had a chance to… figure out how this is going to go. Is he allowed to touch me?
I desperately want this man to help me learn how to hold my body in ways that will hurt me less. I need to trust him. I need to trust that he is going to touch me in appropriate ways or this just isn’t going to work.
This, now that I think about it, is scary as shit.
I wasn’t scared in that moment. I just felt it as a moment of choice, “Am I going to surrender to this process or not?”
I used to lash out at dance teachers who wanted to correct my form. I wasn’t there to look perfect I was there to have a chance to talk to people for 2-4 minutes while I did something more healthy than be a slug staring at my god damn computer.
This is different. I know what my goals are here. I need this process.
I need to figure out how to be in less pain.
So maybe he didn’t cross a boundary. But maybe he and I will have a funny conversation about how I normally react to people in a few weeks and we will laugh. He will probably apologize and feel embarrassed. He strikes me as that sort.
It felt like Joey. The 7th Day Adventist boy who was best friends with my brother Tommy and with whom I later lived. (We were both boarders in a house owned by someone at the church–it wasn’t like we were romantic or anything. I was 13.) He was the one who took me to church and taught me to sing about Jesus loving me no matter what.
I know I have a lot of issues with hating white men because some of them have been complete motherfucking pieces of shit.
But some of them genuinely don’t suck. #Notallmen and all that.
I really hope I’m not making a mistake. But here I am documenting it so that in the future I will have to remember: I made a choice.
I’m trying to surrender to a process.
Please, if any deity exists, let this not be an awful thing.
I’ve stacked the deck in my favor by receiving this personal training with my kids in the room and my husband in the house.
I know how the patriarchy works.
Fuck.
Do you understand how much of my childhood people denied? Something huge and dramatic would happen and folks flat denied it. I need to make sure I can never rewrite history.
I did what I did. Here, I wrote it down.
I’m in that place where reaching out to talk to people seems like a bad idea. All the things I want to say sound like whining and complaining and I don’t have the right.
I’ve had some interesting thoughts in the last week about how I do not have the right to complain any more. I’m not destitute. I’m not trading abuse for survival. I have it good.
Just shut up already.
It’s one of those times when my anxiety is on hyperdrive. I’m doing everything wrong, right? Every interaction I have with people seems to be fraught.
One problem is that I’m struggling with how much control and influence and power I have. There are times and places when I don’t agree with how something is being handled and I shut up because there’s nothing I can do. Then there are times and places where I feel like I am a bad person if I shut up because someone is being harmed and if I ignore that… I’m part of the problem.
I’m part of the problem. If I see people being harmed by others in their life and I do nothing… I’m saying I basically agree.
What if I don’t agree that something is being handled right?
Good luck with those feelings.
Because I don’t get to decide. And I’m afraid that by talking about what I see I am going to become the problem and then I won’t be able to help in any way because I was stupid enough to talk about the problem.
Not everyone can do everything. We all have limits. We all have things we can’t do. I can’t teach fussy, fiddly little activities that involve a high amount of fine motor control. Even if I can do it (under protest) I can’t teach it because I get frustrated and angry and explosive. So I outsource that shit. I can’t teach everything. My kids take classes because I can’t teach everything. I am not that cool. That’s why as they get older they will spend more and more time away from me. Because they will have mostly learned what I have to teach.
I don’t think there is one Twue Way that parenting or schooling should happen. Some people like home schooling and it works well for their family. Some people need to have their kids in school. Some people need to have their kids in school and after school care every day for any one of millions of potential reasons.
None of these choices are wrong if they work well for the child and the family. It’s when the solution is clearly not working for either the parent or the child that you need to look at making changes.
It is easy for me to sit on my high horse and see the problems in other peoples systems. I’m afraid I am failing to see the problems in mine. I was honestly hoping for more criticism from Stanford because other than “Do more academics” which was the plan anyway and which we have already caught up on…. What do I change now?
I have no feedback to help direct me. Just… do something. What you are doing seems to work ok.
THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Everyone fucks up. Everyone has things they don’t do well and things they do very well. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?!
I shout more than I should. But professional evaluators tell me I don’t shout as much as other people and it isn’t that big of a deal.
So what does should mean anyway?
I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.
So anxious. So worried that I’m going to hurt everyone and wreck their lives and make it so they are not ok later.
This is eating me alive. It has been for a couple of days now? Turbo anxiety. How am I hurting everyone?
I want to run away. I want to disappear. I want to go somewhere that no one knows me. (Good luck, motherfucker. Name a continent (other than Antarctica) and I will name countries I need to avoid if I want to make sure I don’t see anyone I know. I run into people I know most times I travel internationally. I know too many fucking people.)
I love you all. It’s just hard to run away from you.
I want to run away from my own self perception. Because I’m afraid I’m doing everything wrong. I’m afraid I’m hurting people. I’m afraid I’m a giant let down. I’m afraid that by trying to help I am going to make things worse. I’m afraid that by trying to help I am going to be hated so much that hating me becomes the problem instead of fixing the problem.
Fuck.
I think I’m going to take a week or so off from reaching out. I feel like I am hurting people by existing. Maybe if I hide in my house and keep my crazy to myself that will feel less true. Don’t interfere with other peoples lives. Even if there are problems.
It isn’t my place.
I love my cat, but senility is rough. She wanders around crying a lot. She won’t allow me to give her attention, she just cries like the most unloved thing ever. This noise is contributing to why I am losing my mind. (Yes, she is now medicated for pain.)
The bathroom tiles that I carefully tried to reorder came in wrong. So… now we don’t have a consistent kind of tile for the flooring. And the place I bought the tile from posts EVERYWHERE that any mistakes are not their fault and they do not do exchanges or refunds. So now I’m kind of pissed. The bathroom floor was not meant to be a hodge podge. Oh fucking well I guess.
Everything about this remodel is frustrating and making me crazy. I’m so exhausted.
I’m back to the point of passing out unconscious before 8pm and I’m waking up between 2 and 4am. This is not good. I feel like I desperately need naps in the middle of the day and I just don’t let myself rest when there are workers in the house. So I’m feeling shittier by the day.
Sometimes I feel very cranky about waking up in the middle of the night and going to the bathroom and seeing emails about how I’m not living up to what people want from me.
I’ve been thinking about what I want to accomplish in 2017. Because I’m neurotic like that. I think that it doesn’t matter how much I would like to branch out socially… I’m going to need to cut my expectations.
I’m so tired and cranky and the kids need to be less of an after thought.
Shit.
I’m not good at boredom. That may be an understatement of magnificent proportions. I’m not good at sitting around and waiting on, well, anything.
But in the long run of my life I need a down year. I need to not travel (even though my family keeps saying they want to go somewhere next year–I don’t. Go without me) and I need to rest. Or I’m going to get much worse physically and then old age is… not going to be so much of a possibility.
I’m feeling very resentful about the changing metrics in my head. For most of my life I have focused on what work I could do and what connections I could make. Self care hasn’t ever hit my priority list. Sleeping, eating, resting… those are all things that other people do. But if you skip those steps you don’t live very long. For most of my life speeding up how soon I will die has been a goal. These days… I’d like to see what my kids do with their futures. That requires staying alive. Oh shit. NOT FAIR, MOTHERFUCKERS.
I’m awake and hurting really bad and I have to drive to fucking Berkeley today. I drove to Alameda over the weekend and that took a toll. I’m so grateful I got to bail on a trip to Oakland this week. So only three times of driving north in two weeks instead of four. I feel like such a baby. It hurts so much. My low back, my neck, and my arms are all in revolt.
Was the driving worth it? I wish I hadn’t bothered trying the Kickstarter launch party. I felt so stupid and awkward and inappropriate that I didn’t actually talk to anyone and it was a lot of driving just to feel more of how stupid I feel in the bay area. I’ve lived around tech culture since middle school. Put me in a hacker space and I feel the “Oh, you’re one of the dumb kids” aura permeate. I’m an idiot who has completely internalized that computer people are smarter than me and I kind of hate them for it.
I don’t actually think they are smarter than me. But I have decades of hostility built up from so many of them treating me like I am stupid. “Oh, you can’t talk the specifics of a motherboard. You must be stupid.”
I shouldn’t have bothered to try that party. It was a waste of spoons. I’m really frustrated with myself.
I thought I might feel brave. I was so wrong. I didn’t understand that the cafe was in a hackerspace.
I’m tired and sad. Christmas is this coming weekend and I just want to cry. I’m getting the tasks I’m supposed to do done. Mostly. Sorta. It’s a shitty, truncated year. I am skipping a bunch of steps and trying to feel ok about it and mostly failing. I’m not feeling a lot of Christmas magic. I’m feeling frustrated and angry that my house is still ripped apart.
I am so god damn tired of not being able to walk through my house without hurting myself because there is no god damn space to get the kids stuff out of the way. They dump everything in the walkway every day because that is the only clear space to play. I am losing my fucking mind. I feel angry all the time.
They have internalized that toys aren’t really supposed to be spread out in their sleeping room. God help me. I WANT THE FUCKING PLAY ROOM BACK.
I want the playroom back. I want the playroom back. I want the playroom back. Toys stay in the play room. Mostly. Like 85% and THAT’S PRETTY FUCKING AWESOME COMPARED TO HOW THINGS ARE GOING RIGHT NOW.
My laptop is a brick. If the cord unplugs it shuts off.
I’m feeling distinctly whiny right about now.
My dishwasher is still god damn broken. It’s been broken since before Thanksgiving. Merry Fucking Christmas. Wash dishes till your hands bleed from dryness, motherfucker.
My hands hurt so much.
I understand my mother so much more now.
Doesn’t help that I gauged my pinkie cuticle on the blade of a blender so moving my pinkie at all sucks. Whine. Whine. Whine.
I’m feeling really sad and overwhelmed and angry. I’m so tired. Nothing I do is good enough.
I want to stop showing up for anyone and anything. I feel so frustrated and angry and incompetent and unworthy and stupid and worthless.
I can’t do anything right so why do I keep fucking trying so hard. What is the point? I just want to put my head down and cry for a few weeks.
My kids are getting to the point where they aren’t coping well anymore. I’m not handling having my kid cry and scream at me for extended periods. First it was that they wanted to buy more candy. (No. We’ve had an obscene amount of sugar this week. No. We don’t need to buy yet more damn candy.) Then it was a huge tantrum over the car seat. Because apparently it is now a baby seat. Motherfucker your sibling sat in that fucking seat till she was 8. It isn’t a baby seat. (I didn’t actually call my kid motherfucker in person. BUT IT IS MY BLOG AND I GET TO VENT MY FUCKING SPLEEN SOMEWHERE.) Then it was that I was a horrible person because I was repeating something over and over so I didn’t forget it. I was invading their air space. (Their favorite god damn hobby is repeating an obnoxious word hundreds of times in a row. But if I repeat something so I don’t forget it in the next three minutes, I’m evil.) Then it was that I am cruel and terrible because I turned the radio on because I was TIRED OF BEING BITCHED AT NON STOP.
Kiddo spent a lot of time fussing and crying yesterday. So by bedtime when the kid was a melty puddle of fuss and they asked to please sleep in my room… I said yes. This is a kid who is struggling like fuck right now. They are trying to reach out for connection.
When we got back from the car trip that involved me screaming, “FINE. EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE AND YOUR LIFE SUCKS. I KNOW. CAN YOU PLEASE JUST SHUT UP ABOUT IT FOR A WHILE” kiddo really wanted to go hide in their room and reject me because I told them to shut up so I am the devil. I sat in kiddo’s doorway and asked if they were ready for a hug. They said, “Why should I hug someone who tells me to shut up?” I said, “You don’t have to hug me. That’s never required. But I’m the only mama you are going to have. I know I suck sometimes. But do you feel better when I hug you?” Kiddo skittered across the room and launched into my arms.
I wasn’t going to tell kiddo to get out of my room last night. They needed the closeness, even if I wanted space.
That’s a lot of the dance in my life. I either need more or less space than other people so I just… never really feel comfortable. I spend a lot of time consciously ignoring what I need in favor of what other people need because they are more important.
And thus my back hurts like a mother fucker.
I can’t have pot because I’m driving to Berkeley. I’m bringing my Bonus Kids home. Because I’m loaded with patience, right?
I have our lovely baby sitter scheduled this afternoon. I’m honest with myself that I need some god damn help right now. Thank you, oh kind baby sitter. You are my only hope of being a nice mother.
I’m tired of feeling like an incompetent, stupid, loser all day long. I feel like I’m not getting anything right. I feel like I fuck everything up because I’m impatient and stupid stupid stupid.
Why is stupid such a thing right now? I’m not sure. But it’s hitting me over the head hard. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
I keep making mistakes in the remodel processing stuff. I’m told to go to the store and get “all the stuff” for a given part of a project. I go to the store and ask for help. They always neglect to tell me about some stuff I need. Then the contractors act pissy and inconvenienced because I have most but not all of a thing. Or I have the wrong number or I have something that the previous company told me to buy but this company says is wrong and can’t be used so I bought a bunch of shit I can’t use and now what the fuck do I do with it.
I’m so frustrated and tired. I have asked for a shopping list of parts over and over and over and over and over. Instead I’m constantly told, “Hey we need ____ part tomorrow.” Then I go to the store and it’s a 3 day window before it can arrive. Then I’m the fuck up.
I’m so frustrated and upset.
We have an upcoming visit with Noah’s parents. I feel like I’d rather shove my head through a window than drive to fucking San Francisco (which hurts) for these assholes who will only come through town on their way to a three month cruise. After they couldn’t be bothered going on a one week cruise with us because they couldn’t be “away from the farm”. Only they went on a two week cruise later in the same month we went.
I’m a petty bitch. I know it. But I’m vindictive and petty and god damnit sometimes I just fucking am. Fuck these people.
I’m utterly exhausted. I’m not seeing people I like because I’m too fucking tired. Why spend spoons on people who make me hate being alive? Oh yeah. Because they are family.
The entire concept of family needs to be set on fire.
Because my kids deserve to be supported in having a relationship with 2/3 of their living grandparents if that is in any way feasible. It really doesn’t matter how I feel about them. My feelings are really not the most important set here.
I’ll do my crying about it off stage. Then put my big girl panties on and get through it. Because my kids need it.
Something that bugs me is: I encourage other people to not do things that hurt or bug them. I tell them that their feelings matter. But I act very much like my feelings don’t matter. So many things hurt me that it isn’t fair to the people around me to avoid all of them. I have to suck it up so I’m not mean and selfish.
I’m pissy that I had to miss Winter Bash because my kids didn’t feel good. I don’t get to see those people much at all. I was looking forward to it for months.
Oh well.
I feel sad and ungrateful that the visits I have had this month aren’t enough to buoy me up into cheerfulness. I feel like I’m letting my friends down.
I’m so tired. I feel like such a complete failure. Everything is feeling like a horrible burden. I don’t even like or enjoy eating. It’s another fucking chore I have to do or I will have big problems. I feel resentful of everything right now.
I feel resentful of the god damn traffic I have to sit in today. Fuck you, Berkeley. Arriving at 8:30 really sucks. I get all the school and work traffic. Shit. Shit. shit.
I’m driving up there solely because it is the only way I can find out the results of the genetic testing that should help me figure out why I metabolize medications so weird. Cheers. Then I get to wait hours and hours before having lunch with a friend. I’m grateful to see the friend. I don’t want to bring my shitty attitude. But I’m feeling super stressed about the day.
I feel like a raging asshole because my wonderful friend asked to meet at a vegan restaurant. I feel really guilty that I am going to need to pre-eat meat right before arriving and just kind of pretend to eat with them. I’m not having a day where I can eat fucking vegan food and be ok. I’ll fucking kill someone.
Meat. Meat. Meat.
It has been interesting to learn things like that about my behavior. No really, being vegan is not an option if I want to keep the violence in my life to a minimum. I spend so much time feeling ravenously, painfully hungry that I’m just god damn evil. I can’t do it.
But many of my friends are vegan. So I try to shut the fuck up and not complain. I’ll tell you the truth though, internet. I fee like shit when I try to eat vegan meals. I can have some meat free meals sometimes (I seriously eat meat every fucking day and usually multiple times a day in order to feel ok) but I balance them by eating almost entirely meat other meals that day.
Meat is kinda a multivitamin if you have deficiency issues. It makes sense that my shitty body doesn’t do well without it.
Why do I feel so guilty, why do I feel like it makes me a raging asshole that I am not constitutionally suited to eating a vegan diet? Why do I treat this like a moral failing? Why do I treat this as an affront to my friends?
Because I do have more of an impulse towards conformity than I want to admit. God fucking damn it all to hell.
I feel I should be more flexible and it is a major personality failing that I am so god damn rigid in my needs. Geez, why don’t I just work harder at adapting. Because I’m a raging bitch in constant pain when I don’t eat meat.
I don’t take the validation of doctors who have been life long vegetarians telling me that I genuinely need meat as sufficient. Nope. I’m a failure. “Some people adapt well to a vegetarian or vegan diet. Not all people. You need meat.” No, I’m a moral failure because I can’t figure out how to be ok on just plants. Come on dude, don’t try to justify my tasty tasty murder.
I keep thinking about this video and getting pissy because I am not noticing an uptick in energy in this post-period few days. Fuck everything. I’m on day god damn 8. Where is my fucking rebound.
There’s something that Noah asked me to do. I’m supposed to do it daily. I’ve missed two days this week and I am so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so pissy about it. I’m feeling super angry. I get to stuff that in a box.
I’m feeling angry and tired of taking care of things or people. I have to constantly be worrying about what the people around me want and need. I want to punch holes in every wall and break every window in the house.
But I won’t. Because that would be scary for other people and one musn’t cause other people to feel fear or you are evil and should die.
I’m not enjoying being in my head very much right now.
In this minute I cannot comprehend that I have ever felt calm or ok. I feel flooded with bad feelings. Today would have been a therapy day if my darn therapist didn’t think she gets to have a personal life and friends of her own. Geez. what the fuck. Obviously I’m kidding. I wished her well and sent her a Christmas card and I’ll see her when she gets back.
I don’t know how to deal with the fact that mostly in life I’m trying to sit on what I think. A friend came over recently and I had way more “Oh god here are the things I’m fussing about but I can’t write about” shit stored up than was really polite. Thanks, P. You were super patient. I assume it was boring and obnoxious.
I feel frustrated, sad, and stupid.
So very stupid.
This is a very edited version of something I wrote for a particular person. I took the shell of that message and expanded it here for my own record keeping.
This year has been kind of a horrible and traumatizing adventure.
My Jenny (she ain’t Jenny to you: she’s Jennifer) has been trying to convince me that the story of me isn’t about my family or my parents or what happened to me. She wants me to think of my story as being about what I have done with agency.
I see what you’re doing there.
What have I done with agency? How far back in my life does this go?
I’m going to try and talk positively about myself. So this is going to sound like bragging and I need to not give a fuck.
I am generous. I have spent my life trying to help people as much as I can. From when I was quite young I was always the person who jumped up to help if I noticed someone struggling with something, no matter what it is. I remember when I was 7 or 8 I noticed some women in a grocery store struggling to open the stupid plastic vegetable bags. (Now that I’m all old and I wash dishes and I have dry skin I get it.) I talked my mom into staying in the grocery store for extra time so I could stand there and open plastic bags for people. I mean, it’s kind of a stupid example and it isn’t one of my biggest helping people moments in my life but that’s the point. I don’t just help people in big ways.
I have helped a lot of people in big ways. I have given away a fairly extreme amount of money at this point and I’m going to give a lot more. I give of my physical service. I show up and help people who are struggling. I’ve had friends who needed to move house, but they were disabled and they literally could not do the work for themselves. So I showed up and did it all. Because I was not going to let them suffer. When my friend was in her absolute lowest place of dealing with her alcoholism I went to her house and cleaned up years of nasty filth because I knew that if she was in a nice clean house it would help her stop feeling like a disgusting loser who deserved every bad thing. (It worked. She’s in a fantastic place in her life now. It isn’t because of me but I’m absolutely part of what helped her.)
I provide emotional support to a lot of people. I have personally been the recipient of many incest stories that were never previously spoken aloud and that number is only going to increase with time. This matters. I help people who are highly traumatized feel normalized and acceptable in their struggles. That’s a god damn big deal.
I was a really good teacher. Even though I tend to not feel safe or comfortable almost ever I am extremely good at creating environments where other people feel safe and comfortable. I can’t count how many children I’ve helped cope with huge life problems and this number will only go up.
I am patient. Not universally. Not in every situation with every person. But I am very patient. This has been a big deal in a variety of job settings and personal relationships. I can sit and listen through things that bore the crap out of other people or traumatize other people and I can be patient and present with where someone needs me to be.
I am capable of imagining how things “should be” despite never experiencing it myself and I can hand a good experience to other people. I’m not perfect. Sometimes I absolutely fail at this because other people have a very different picture in their head of how things “should be” and I hurt them. I am so very sorry.
I am a loyal friend. I keep people. I reach out over and over and over again to people. I come back despite problems and fights and disagreements. I don’t let feelings of discomfort be the reason I abandon people once I feel bonded. I don’t end relationships until there is a Very Good Reason. Instead I write letters, emails, Christmas cards, and I drive all the fuck over the place to maintain contact with people.
I spend a lot of time explaining to people why they need to understand the points of view of people who are different than them. I’m very good at this. I’m good at helping people see the connections that exist between different groups. I can find compassion for almost anyone and I’m good at helping other people understand that they need to find more compassion than they might be otherwise inclined to feel.
I am a good mother. Not because of anything in particular that I do, mothering isn’t like that, but for very similar reasons to why I was a good teacher. I excel at really looking at people and adapting to why their needs are unique. I don’t really treat my kids the same because they have different personalities and needs. I try to give them what they need individually.
I am better and better at not blaming other people for my emotions and problems. I see how my ups and downs are because of things inside me and not because of exterior stimuli. I can explain this in detail at speed in most cases. It’s been an incredibly hard skill to learn and I’m not done improving it.
When I screw up I apologize without deflecting responsibility. Yup, I did that. I hurt you. Yup. I’m sorry. That was wrong. Is there anything I can do to help repair the damage that I caused?
I do not hit my children as a matter of course. Which is apparently shocking to a large segment of the population because people comment regularly on how they expect me to do so. I slapped my daughter once. It was a grievous error. I have put tremendous effort into making sure I don’t let myself get that angry since and I will put more effort in that direction with every passing year. I do not justify my lack of control by saying it is her fault and I do not justify my lack of control by saying that I was trying to teach her a lesson. I think that acknowledging that I completely fucked up and lost control is a big deal. I cannot count how many parents have justified hitting their children in front of me. No, it’s not ok.
I am a hard worker. Every boss I have ever had has commented on how they have never had an employee who works as diligently as me. Didn’t matter whether I was working in a library, theatre, fast food restaurant, retail store, cleaning houses, or teaching school. I work and work and work. I’m really proud of this.
I am good at organizing things. I see patterns very quickly and I can manage space unusually well. It’s a visual perceptive ability that I am grateful for every day.
I have dealt with a pretty wide array of physical and mental health problems. I haven’t been able to “cure” myself but I put tremendous effort into improving.
I prosecuted my father, putting an end to his ability to rape children. I feel proud of this.
I have protected my children from my violent, rapist family.
I create beauty in the world. My house and yard were frankly ugly as shit when I moved in. Now my house is pretty magical. My yard is so beautiful that people who were driving by stopped and asked to buy my house. I said no.
I managed to travel extensively even when I was living on $14,400/year. I save money fantastically well and as a result I manage to make every penny count. I have managed to significantly increase Noah’s wealth during our marriage. Sure, this year I exploded our debt profile but I’ll have it paid off in five years (including my entire mortgage). Watch and see.
When a person told me to my face that they were going to threaten me whenever they felt like (and they offered to physically attack Noah) I managed to still deescalate the situation such that no violence occurred. Sure, I got called an evil racist because I described their behavior as inappropriate and said they should apologize, but you can’t win every fight. I feel good that despite the fact that I wanted to fly off the handle and beat the ever loving shit out of this person they confirmed that they never felt threatened by me. They felt traumatized, but maybe I can’t save you from feeling traumatized by situations you create.
I feel good about telling a child that when you feel scared and upset it is ok to cry. That is healthy. It is appropriate. When someone hits you and tells you not to cry that is abuse. I feel very good about being a voice expressing that sentiment to a child.
I’m proud of the road trip. I learned a lot. My children learned a lot. I did a fantastic amount of work to make that happen.
I feel weirdly proud of the library I’ve managed to acquire. Which is a shitty thing to feel proud of because it means I’m proud of spending money and that’s weird. But my library is incredibly diverse. My library normalizes a lot of human experiences. My library encourages thinking about a lot of different parts of life. I have created the home schooling environment of my dreams. I really have arrived at where I wanted to get. I picked this goal at 17 and I have diligently worked towards it ever since. I feel proud of how many skills I managed to pick up and consciously work towards so that I can be good at this.
I feel proud of the progress I have made in harming myself less over time. It isn’t that I have high self esteem and it isn’t that I am psychologically healthy but I do less damage to myself over time. That has taken enormous effort on my part.
I feel proud of myself for reaching out to someone who sexually harmed me and asking them to make it right. I couldn’t do it in every case with every person who hurt me, but I feel very proud of doing it once.
I believe that even if I do not think of myself as “a good person who sometimes does bad things” there is benefit to thinking of myself as an asshole who often does the right thing. I believe this has value because I am not justifying my fuck ups and sweeping them under the rug in the name of “but I’m good”. Instead I take full responsibility for all the harm I cause and I continue to fight like hell to do positive things. To me that is a healthier balance than believing I’m good and kind of ignoring the harm I cause. I like that balance.
I like how strong I am. I like that despite horrible pain I work fiercely and intensely and with dedication on whatever task is put in front of me. I’m not saying that I think all people with chronic pain should act like this… I think there is still some self harm going on in my behavior. But never the less I have to find ways to like myself and I like that I am capable of putting “But this is important” over “I hurt and I don’t want to”.
I am proud that I didn’t let a horrifying childhood break me entirely.
Since I’m trying to list shit: I feel like I have had a rather good track record on picking people to date. It isn’t that every person I’ve ever dated has been perfect, but I have been good at picking people who are loving, supportive, and usually good with boundaries. Given the relationships I saw modeled as a child… I’ve really picked fantastic people to date. Go me. (And my marriage was even smarter. Damn I picked a good spouse.)
I have not allowed my overwhelming longing for my mother trap me in abusive cycles. That’s a big deal.
That’s enough for now. I’m supposed to write some affirmations. I have the pushiest damn friends ever. (I love you. Thank you for caring about me and giving me homework.)
I am patient and generous.
I am a good mother for my children. (Which is to say, I don’t think I’d be as good for every kid… these things are complicated. Ok, you aren’t supposed to justify affirmations or minimize them but I’m still me.)
I am loved.
I create beauty and connection.
I am strong emotionally and physically.
I am good at loving people.
I am an outstanding teacher.
I fight the good fight.
I have a lot to give.
I’m going to sit down with the birthday book my friends gave me and remind myself of why other people love me. Thank you for loving me so much that you will go through so much effort to help me stay alive. I am grateful beyond the scope of expression.
I’m trying to figure out how to get things to improve in my marriage. I’m tired. I’m sad. I’m scared. At this point we are most of the way through arguing about all of our done-me-wrongs over the last ten years. There’s been an absolute fuck ton of arguing this year.
I don’t know about you, but I have let a lot of things slide over ten years because I didn’t want to argue. Then when things kinda hit a boil… everything comes out. We’ve had little and big problems that I’ve bit my tongue and la-la-la ignored. I’m not so sure it was useful.
At some point last night I realized that we have fairly equivalent lists of “you did _____” for one another. So we have hit the point where we have fairly well hashed out the problems and we are getting to… we have to forgive to move on.
Fuck.
I both am and am not a forgiving person. There are lots of things that I don’t really forgive. Lots. Shit dude, I cut off my family. There are things I won’t forgive. But I don’t think Noah has done anything that heinous. Everything that has been hurtful has individually not been over my threshold, but collectively… oh that’s harder.
But I want him to forgive me. Damnit.
I did something, well said, something horribly awful this year. I screamed at Noah that I wished he would die. I didn’t mean it and in less than five minutes I was crying and apologizing and saying I wanted to take it back.
I don’t have a high horse for sitting on here. I don’t think I have been less hurtful than Noah. I have been differently hurtful at different times… but I have been a horrible person. I’m really not denying that.
If we are going to move forward we have to forgive.
Oh fuck.
One of the biggest problems we are dealing with isn’t really Noah’s fault but he’s done some awful things because of it. Me saying no. I don’t really speak up when things make me uncomfortable all that well. My early life taught me that life is uncomfortable. Full stop. Speaking up about it just means people punish you for not complying faster because my comfort is irrelevant.
This is creating problems. I have done a lot of things while feeling wildly uncomfortable because I don’t react to that feeling as if I have any right to be defended. So I put myself in situations where I don’t believe I can say no and I do it over and over.
Sex. Oh sex is a fucking mess. Well, our sex life has been better between us lately than it has been in years. Which is fascinating given how much we are fighting. I feel like everything is my fault. I’m not sure it is but I feel like it.
How are we going to learn to have boundaries around “us” as a collective instead of maintaining individual boundaries and I’m supposed to learn to speak up more, and earlier, when I’m uncomfortable? I really don’t know. Yes, unicorn hunting is hard but both of us completely flip out when the other goes off to play alone.
It is both of us.
I feel really ashamed of how strongly I react to Noah playing separately, which is kind of funny because his reaction isn’t… that much less intense. Not really. It feels like imminent death for both of us. So why do I need to feel ashamed of that feeling?
Because I feel like I’ve been exposed to poly for my entire adult life WHY HAVEN’T I MATURED PAST BEING AN INSECURE TWAT WAFFLE? It isn’t lack of effort or time. I just… I’m just so insecure that it’s ridiculous. It isn’t Noah’s fault, not even a little bit. If anything were going to make me feel secure it is Noah’s behavior in aggregate.
Yet here I am. Feeling like I really should jump off a bridge so that Noah has more space in his life to replace me with someone who is less of a colossal loser. He doesn’t want that. Not even a little. But it is very much how I feel. He… doesn’t feel that differently about me dating.
Why do I feel so ashamed of having the same feelings he has?
Because I believe I am supposed to feel supportive. I believe I am supposed to be willing to support him finding every scrap of happiness he can in this life. That’s what a good wife/partner would do.
I am not a good wife. I am small, selfish, insecure, and so very sad.
Do you know what is incredibly fucking complicated? The fact that… we don’t really have many platonic friends. If we are going to be controlling as fuck about one another, how do we handle the fact that we are mostly only friends with old lovers/play partners? It is hard. We both have a habit of acting like people on our side aren’t as threatening as people on the other persons side.
I was listing off the people I feel closest to… all of them I’ve been intimate with. I haven’t had SEX with all of them. But I’ve been intimate. I like crossing boundaries with people. I like bonding.
After this year I wouldn’t be surprised if none of our friends ever want to play or have sex with us again. Oh the drama.
Noah is right that I can’t ever have sexual contact with someone again without his consent. I ignored his no this year. I can’t do that again.
That’s a mistake I get to make once this lifetime.
Last night’s conversation hurt a lot. But I feel like we got closer to understanding, “I did x because y.”
We really are getting to the point where the only step left is forgiveness. If we want to move forward, and shit we are talking about another god damn kid, we have to forgive. What does that look like? What does that mean?
It means tearing up the tally marks for who has done what wrong to whom. That’s pretty scary.
I know I have behaved abusively in the last ten years. I believe there have been times when Noah has too. Should we be carefully keeping lists of documentation so that we can hurt each other as much as possible with these actions? Is this how abuse is normalized and tolerated and excused on a wide spread basis?
There are lots of kinds and types of abuse. Our marriage has not included the deal breakers I experienced early in my life. We both abuse in the ways we do rarely and only after a lot of pressure builds up that we haven’t figured out healthier ways to manage. Does that excuse it? No. I don’t know what to do.
Noah is right that in order to know what is going on with me, sometimes he has to listen to venom and sort through it for the truth. That really sucks. But there are a lot of things I just can’t talk about until I am so angry I am almost frothing at the mouth.
In arguments Noah keeps saying, “You knew it was hurting me and you wouldn’t stop.” But I have stopped. I stopped months ago. I have not continued leading people on in conversation. I’m not making promises I can’t keep with other people. I certainly haven’t been on a date recently. I did stop. I just didn’t stop on a dime the way he wanted me to. Something is going on currently that I feel will do a lot to decide how we move forward. If boundaries can be expressed in a way that actually supports our marriage going forward… that’s going to be a big deal. If I feel that it isn’t managed well…
I’m scared. I’m bitter. I’m frustrated and angry.
I work all the god damn time and I really don’t have much in my life that is about letting off steam. Most of my work demands that I project happiness and cheer whether I feel it or not. I don’t show my emotional range to my kids much because I don’t think it would be very fair. I’m a god damn roller coaster and they don’t need to be on the trip with me. So I shove my feelings in a box and I smile and I keep my voice pretty calm and level. Are there cracks in my armor? Sure. I’m not perfect. But my kids seem to genuinely not understand how upset I get and how often.
I am a very good liar.
I spend a lot of time hugging and snuggling when I would like to be shoving my head through a window. When I would like to be raging and crying and cutting myself up. I pretend that I enjoy being a loving mother instead.
How in the fuck am I supposed to learn to care about being uncomfortable when pretty much my whole life is set up around, “It doesn’t matter how you feel it matters how you support the people around you.”
I honestly don’t want as much physical contact with my kids as they want with me. It feels alienating and hurtful. Partly because I am so jealous I didn’t get it that I feel like I am going to burst into flames. My needs didn’t matter. Why in the mother fuck are yours so god damn important?
Why is everyone more important than me?
I’m supposed to make other people feel comfortable. It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting there thinking about the various pitfalls of ways to kill myself.
I don’t matter.
But Noah has built a life around how much I matter to him. I am seriously impressed with the amount of work he has put in to being a good partner. It’s a lot of why I feel he deserves someone better. Someone who can meet him halfway honestly instead of with a forced smile.
It isn’t that I don’t love Noah. It is that I spend so much time shoving down how uncomfortable I feel that there is often not room for authentic emotions near the surface. I have to have a layer of pretense over everything in order to cope.
This is how I have survived. This is how I have accomplished as much as I have. I pretend that how I feel doesn’t matter even a little bit, I put my head down, and I work.
A lot of my work is consciously projecting emotions I don’t feel: happiness, comfort, feeling secure. Because I am so good at pretending I feel these things I’m very good at helping other people feel this way. From what I understand from the people I weirdly interrogate: their feelings seem to be more authentic than mine.
Uhm I guess that’s good. I can pretend to be ok and help other people feel actually ok.
It all comes down to how I actually feel is irrelevant.
As a result I hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt.
It’s been a bad year in pretty much every way. Well, the cruise was lovely. We made promises for the next decade of our life that we need to figure out how to keep.
Otherwise 2016 has been overwhelmingly shitty. I’m so god damn over this remodel I could scream and never stop. Today they finish the initial drywall installation in the bathroom. They have finished the stucco outside. They will be here till January at least. We have a hearing in January and doing work communicating with the lawyer saps my will to live. It feels so mentally taxing and draining.
In retrospect… I’ve done an amount of work this year that I probably shouldn’t have been able to get done. I’m so tired.
I’m on the verge of collapse.
And I don’t really know what feeds me at this point. From where am I drawing energy? From the clear blue sky and I don’t god damn know how much longer I can continue.
I miss socializing. I miss my friends. I miss community. I don’t in any way shape or form have the ability to do more of it right now. Because as much as I get something back from that there is also a cost associated and right now I can’t pay.
We haven’t even been inviting people over to dinner much. I just can’t.
I have felt existentially lonely for a long time. The road trip was really hard in this way.
Noah desperately wants to be enough all by himself for me. But Noah has a lot on his plate. I can’t ask for any more of Noah. It isn’t fair or appropriate or ok. So I feel like I have spent a lot of time trying to make myself smaller. So that what Noah has to spare is enough.
I’m hurting so much.
I feel like a real schmuck in our conversations sometimes. I know he has made enormous leaps of progress in the past year since we’ve been back from the road trip. He is organized and efficient and he’s trying so god damn hard. The trouble is I have a back log of hurt and frustration and need and sadness and I don’t know how to deal with it. If I weren’t dealing with years of hurt… would this be enough? I don’t know. It is closer to enough than it ever has been before. But I don’t know how to evaluate it given how much I’m flailing.
I feel like I’m reaching the part where I’m genuinely in a family and I genuinely need to figure out the coping skills for forgiving and staying that other people have. I’ve never developed these skills. They have never been relevant to my life.
I need to stop making Noah cry. I don’t place it as a goal that I will feel happy. But I need to stop making Noah cry. Because Noah having a minimum bar of ok is more important than me being happy.
And this is how things fuck up. This is how I build up backlogs of things that hurt me until I explode. Because I don’t think I am important enough to deserve support on the smaller stuff. There is just so much that makes me uncomfortable that I really don’t believe I have the right to ask for consideration. It would be a job and not a fun one.
I’m not sure how forgiveness ties in to being able to respect or like myself. Can I forgive if I think I deserve the bad treatment? If I think it will never stop because it is just that I receive it?
My heart and my head and my stomach hurt. I feel physically sick and I don’t think it is illness. I think it is sadness. I think it is the feeling that I matter so fucking little. I feel worthless and pointless and stupid. I feel like I should die.
I feel like death is the only route to stop hurting. Life is pain.
Forgive. I have carved forgive on my body in more than one place because I feel like if there is a lesson I am supposed to learn in this lifetime it is how to forgive. But am I forgiving Noah or am I forgiving myself? I sorta feel like I will not ever be able to forgive anyone else, not really, until I forgive myself.
Forgive myself for being petty and weak and insecure and so very damaged by the experiences I’ve had. How do I forgive myself for not being whole when I have never been whole and I don’t really even understand what that might be like?
I feel so very sad. And my arms hurt like a motherfucker. I need to stop.
I had a great chat yesterday. It made me think about a lot of how I’ve screwed up this year.
Sex is complicated. We have sex for so many reasons. For connection, intimacy, orgasms, bonding, feeling-not-alone-in-this-minute.
The thing is, that’s complicated. Why didn’t I pick Noah for every time I wanted sex this year? Because that’s complicated. Sometimes sex with a particular person is loaded with implications across your whole life you can’t handle and you want the ease of sex with someone else. Sometimes I wanted to feel like I still had the ability to connect with new people.
New people have been very instrumental to my survival. I get that it isn’t something that is a big deal to everyone. I know that lots of people have been safer in the known communities of their lives. I have survived by over and over again throwing myself backwards into the arms of strangers and just praying they would catch me. At this point it is no longer a survival mechanism but it is an ingrained habit. That’s complicated.
I don’t think I chased sex as self harm this round but I have certainly done so in the past. Sometimes the choice is, “Do I hurt myself in a known and predictable way because I don’t like myself very much or do I take the risk that this person will be nicer to me than I am able to be to myself or maybe they will hurt me more than I would hurt myself. Roll the dice.”
That’s a choice I’ve made many times in my life. If you haven’t had to deal with the cognitive load of poverty plus severe traumatization… you probably won’t understand. It will seem baffling to you that someone would make such a choice.
I’m glad you’ve never been there. That’s awesome for you.
I’ve been there a lot. I’m not there lately, but I have zero judgment for someone else finding themself in that position. It happens.
There have absolutely been nights when I’ve picked up a stranger and fucked them instead of hurting myself because I didn’t think I could stop until I put me in a hospital.
Was that a bad choice? I really don’t think so. I think I made the best choice I could given all the circumstances of my life in that moment.
It is hard to keep the larger picture in mind when you are judging one particular choice. Choices that were completely reasonable for me at different points in my life shouldn’t be judged the exact same way at this point in my life. I’m in different circumstances. I have different options.
To put it bluntly: I can have an emergency “weekend trip to relax” at this stage of my life. If I feel like I’m going to freak out and do something drastic… I can make it a very safe kind of drastic. Because I’m rich.
But that was literally not available to me before marriage.
Money. Money. Money.
If you have enough money, time, support, fill in the blank to have better options… who the fuck are you to judge someone doing the best they can!?
Get off your high horse.
But I’m really not in the same position as I once was.
How in the hell is any of my behavior this year justifiable? Hunh, hunh?
I’m not sure I can “justify” my behavior. I think I can explain it. I don’t think my explanations are “good enough” from many points of view and there’s not much I can do about that.
I learned things I needed to learn. I was able to find words for problems I wasn’t able to find words for until I processed all the way through some extreme emotions. I was able to change boundaries that were a big problem for me.
Could I have found a way to do it without freaking out and breaking a lot of rules?
Maybe. I tried. I failed.
I succeeded when I blew the boat up.
Things are going a lot better in a variety of ways. Was it worth the cost? Yes. To me. Was it to Noah? He’s still deciding. He’s still raw. That’s fair.
Sometimes we don’t do things to people and they hurt anyway. I didn’t go out and fuck people to hurt Noah. That’s not why it happened. We are all autonomous beings running our own stories and our behavior is not always about our partners. We have our own narrative running. It isn’t about you.
Even if we love you. Even if there could be negative consequences for you. We can’t make every single choice only about you. That’s not a way to be a person.
Would it be nice if our choices didn’t hurt you? Yes.
Yes.
I played a very careful line this year. I didn’t actually do stuff that was that risky to my life. I mostly went out and spent extra time with my friends. People who have been good to me for a long time. I had a tremendous amount of fun. It will help keep me warm for years to come. Was it worth the price I paid?
Probably. Does that mean I can do it like that again? No. I really can’t. It would break Noah.
What does that mean? Our relationship functions based on a lot of trust and mutual worship. If I kill that then I’m kinda destroying both of our reason to live. Whether or not I’m doing something at Noah… I need to pay attention to the impact. My life is completely intwined with him.
If I rock the boat he feels every wave. There is not a lot of separation there.
I’m not sure we will ever get to the point of being “polyamorous” even if we are allowed to discuss it in ten years. But it is ok to have sex with our friends sometimes if we do it together. Is that my ideal? I don’t know. I don’t think my ideal is more fair so I guess it will have to be ok.
There is no fair.
I get why we are both so possessive. I see the holes in both of us that we use one another to fill.
Sex with friends is different than the anonymous sex I also like. They scratch different itches. Sex with friends is safer and more predictable (not in a bad way). Anonymous sex allows me to feel like I am touching the core of connection between strangers. It is both intimate and distant in a way that feels like a spiritual practice to me. The trust and risk are intense rushes.
But my life is wrapped around Noah. So whether or not I’m doing something at him… he will feel it.
Noah doesn’t feel so awesome about my having sex with other people. He wants me to keep my worship at home. When we are having sex with other people together, that’s ok. That’s not scary or hard. Well, sometimes it is logistically hard or a position is hard or… but it’s not threatening in the same way. We are having an adventure together. No one is left to sit with their imagination and fear.
Noah really doesn’t want me to go off alone any more than I want him to. Seems fair. Annoying, but closer to fair than most things ever get.
Why annoying? Because I am selfish selfish selfish selfish selfish. A lot of the reason I have sex is for the orgasm and changing partners increases that like a motherfucker. Sigh.
No life is perfect.
(For the record: Noah has been working hard on this and has had a pretty fucking outstanding success recently. There’s an A for effort and result.)
I know he’s trying. I can see it. I don’t think it would be possible to look at Noah and not see that he is trying as hard as he possibly can for me.
I’m so annoying and hard.
He works far harder than anyone can ask for; that kind of effort is a freely given gift. I know how lucky I am. My physical and mental health issues have not been easy. But Noah considers my companionship worth the cost.
How in the hell did I end up here?
I auditioned hundreds of people and Noah won the part.
I think we are much better and more interesting together than we ever were apart.
I’m looking forward to pregnancy. I get so exhausted that our pace of life will utterly collapse. Yeah, yeah, pregnancy isn’t a disability yeah yeah pregnant women should carry on as if nothing was happening…
I can’t. Gestating is fucking hard in my body. Remodeling and resettling the house has to be complete by January. Next year I’m going to work on academics with my big kids, sit around, sleep, exercise, eat and go grocery shopping.
I’m probably not going to get much else done, to be honest. And that’ll continue for at least 3-6 months after the baby is born.
I’m toast. Breeding is hard.
I’ve completed the cycle and come out the far side more than once so I’m very aware of what it looks like for me.
I’m really excited about the possibility of a pregnancy where I am in much better physical shape to start with (hello marathon and half marathons, you have halo effect I still feel) and I have my IBS mostly under control and I can breathe through my nose. This will be a different experience. I’m also older. This will also be a medicalized experience (hiya bleed out problems) which is kinda terrifying for me.
All the feelings. And my back is giving me trouble. I need to finish this damn remodel. But bending over really kinda sucks.
I’ll get through it. Put a corset on and get your work done, woman.
It’s kinda funny how we all adapt to the tasks life puts in front of us. This art shit weighs on my soul. I really am more calm in my home because of the art work. It is so easy to ground in my house. When you are here you are really in a particular, individual place. That’s a big deal for me. In other peoples homes, in most of the homes I’ve ever lived in… they all kinda blend together. Sure the knick knacks and furniture are sorta different… but the white walls meet the white ceilings and I want to crawl under a table and cry.
No, it’s not rational.
I do not want a fancy “nice” bathroom that looks like it could be in a hotel somewhere. And I’m willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for the experience I want to have. Every doctor I have wants me to take baths as often as I can. I spend time in my bathroom. I recycle the water too. To deal with my hippy guilt. (The internet tells me that epsom salts, baking soda, vinegar, and sugar are all fine for plants on a small scale so my bath water is fine for my plants. Woo hoo.)
We’ve had a broken toilet for a long time. We’ve been using the grey water to flush the toilet. I’m thrilled that with the increased bath capacity of water I will also be able to use the water for more plants. I’ve always used some of it sometimes… but never for plants if someone has used shampoo or soap.
Why am I so tolerant of my friends having quirks or needing accommodation for their mental health needs? Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Uhm, err, just because I’m a nice person?
*cough*
Because I fucking obsess over what to do with my bath water. I got no stones to throw on people needing to do their thing.
Oh man. I’m going to go through a pregnancy in a bathtub big enough to roll over in. Oh the glory.
Spoiled rotten motherfucker.
I really like my house.
Did I mention I’m having candle holders permanently installed on the walls of the bathroom? And there are skylights above it?
The walls are going to be glittering scenes of autumn and winter. I’m working on them.
My house is a very particular place. I like it so much.
I need to clean it. But that’s a problem for a different day. It won’t be really cleaned until the remodel is done. Too much dust and dirt is being generated every day. Not worth a deep clean. I’ll probably splurge on professionals in January at the start of the pregnancy.
Then I’ll spend a year basking in my family. In 2016 I was supposed to learn how to love myself. I don’t know that I managed, exactly. But I’ll spend 2017 hanging out and letting my family love me. That’s… almost the same thing?
Today will be a Zen sorta day. Noah has a dentist appointment. I’m watching a neighbor’s child in the morning and walking them to school. It’s kinda funny. Then I get to come home and get the kids onto chores and academics while I work. I will have to find a way to do work that is right next to them so we can talk while they do their stuff. They always have questions, which is very appropriate.
Tonight we are going to trick or treat with friends we haven’t seen much in the year since we’ve been back from the road trip. We’ve been really bad friends this year. I’ve dropped everyone and everything on the floor for this remodel. And I do it when I’m doing the breeding thing too.
Uhm, I’m sorry. I will crawl out of a hole again in the future. I hope you still like me then.
But yes. Touching base with old friends. Longevity is a big deal for me. A dear woman I know is deeply associated with a phrase: “Friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”
I’m really curious which threads are deep enough in the weave that I will know them for most of my life. I am made up of the people who know me. The people who carry my story with them when they go. I am made up of the people who sometimes ruefully think, “What would Krissy do?”
I am a creation in your mind as much as I am anything at all. And the fact that you think about me. That fact is enough to mean that even when I fuck up, I am maybe not beyond forgiveness.