Category Archives: parenting

Find gratitude

1. I’m grateful that I get to spend every day of my 30’s finding out what a happy childhood looks like. I may never get to know what it feels like, but I will never know what it feels like to be a black man either and I’m not crying over that every day. (Not because I think that there is a thing in the world wrong with being a black man… I just haven’t cried about it on a daily basis. I do tend to cry when I read auto-biographies by black men. But I tend to read auto-biographies of people who have had rather shitty lives, so yeah.)

2. I am grateful that despite my dithering and worry and anxiety I have access to a medication that can make me feel better. Having the possibility of feeling good in my body is promising even if I choose to sit in feeling bad for a time for whatever reason I do.

3. I am grateful that I live in a time and a place where people like me are not stoned to death.

4. I am grateful for my patient, kind, giving husband.

5. I am grateful that (so far at least) my children seem to love me so much. I can’t be all bad because they don’t have a lot of mixed feelings about me. They love me and think I’m wonderful. They rarely get irritated with me. They don’t seem to hate me, ever.

6. I am grateful that I have the privilege to parent in the way I want to parent. I am grateful that I live when and where I do because not everyone in the world is able to make the choices I am making.

7. I am grateful for every scrap of food in my kitchen. I have had times in my life where the kitchen was bare. I am so grateful that it is not true any more.

8. I am grateful that I get to “play” with gardening instead of having to learn how to grow food or starve.

9. I am grateful that when my arms hurt I can take a break from typing and my livelihood is not in danger.

10. I am grateful that my children feel entitled to snuggle every single morning of their lives. It has been such a continual ritual that they are really demanding and pushy about it happening. If I seem unavailable they will come get me and say, “Mom. It’s time for a morning snuggle. Go to the couch.” Yes ma’am. I’m coming.

That’s why my kids are so polite with me. Because I say “yes ma’am. I’m coming.” They see it modeled. They want to be like me. I am very polite to them. I do not expect deference. I do not model top-down respect. I think that I am their temporary boss and hopefully eventually their friend. I don’t own them. I need to be nice to them if I want them to want a relationship with me when they get older.

It will be a good day. A friend said, “Hey! How about if I babysit for you on Friday night so you can have a date.” Hell yes. Thankyouthankyouthankyou.

Mostly it will be a good day because I’m fucking medicating today. I’m not up for another day of crying because I am a piece of shit for rejecting my mother. I don’t have the desire to do that today. Luckily I have a handy dandy way to ensure that I don’t have to spend my day that way.

God Bless America.

Dreaming of privilege

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I miss being really stoned. I hate my dreams. I’m edgy and tense and on the verge of being really snotty.

So recently a friend was talking about food stuff. When he was a kid he was forced to sit at the table until his food was all consumed. He could sit there for hours. Sometimes, if his mom was feeling really nice, she would rewarm things. If after multiple hours of sitting there while getting yelled at didn’t get him to eat his food she would wrap it up, put it in the fridge, then serve it for breakfast.

He describes his early life of being a time when the fear of hunger haunted everyone. Sometimes grocery stores did not have enough of what you wanted so you had to eat the gross stuff.

I contrast this with my own childhood. I wasn’t told to clean my plate. Well, that’s not true. I would occasionally bop through a house that had that rule but I was never there for more than a few weeks. I don’t feel like I have lived with a “clean your plate” rule.

Instead I made my own ramen every meal. I started when I was too young to even use measuring cups. I had a particular pan and I knew the water level was supposed to get close to the screws for the handle. I usually ate out of the pan so that I didn’t have to wash two dishes.

Then I sit down to breakfast with my kids. A breakfast *I* requested because I didn’t yell at all yesterday. I wanted Brussels sprouts because I haven’t been eating enough vegetables in the past few days and I feel kind of off. The meal was rounded out with mozzarella, prosciutto, and scones. Cause I’m nice about the scone bit. Mostly, I ate the Brussels sprouts. (I wonder if I ever would have grown to like them if I hadn’t first eaten them at blacksheeps.)

When I say I “made my own ramen every meal” that is kind of misleading. I made it when we had it. Sometimes I had to walk to the store alone and steal some if I wanted to eat. We rarely lived within a mile of a store so I was walking alone when I was 5, 6, 7.

I look at my daughter and I think, “There is no fucking way in hell I would allow you to walk the 1.4 miles to Safeway alone to steal your own food.”

But my friend doesn’t believe in privilege and I beat my head against a wall trying to find a way to explain to him that I don’t care if he “gets it” I need my daughters to get it. I need for my kids to understand that not everyone has someone to take care of them. I won’t always be here to take care of you.

You have to be prepared for life. It is a privilege to have someone around who teaches you what you need to know.

My friend can cook and prepare a wide variety of vegetables even though he usually won’t eat them on principle because now he is an “adult” and he “doesn’t have to”.

But his lifestyle choices have resulted in diabetes and he isn’t treating it very well. And he refuses to change how he eats. So I’m sad but I don’t expect him to be in my life for that many more years. I’m not going to bother arguing with him about privilege. I’m going to lose that battle and turn my sights on younger people. The people who have a chance of making things substantially different.

I talk to my kids about privilege. I’m very aware of it because I’m handing them a whole train load of privilege I never had and I notice all the time.

My kids expect to be fed good, nutritious, healthy food 3-5 times a day. If you don’t present such food on demand they are incredulous. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN’T HAVE A SNACK AND I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL LUNCH?! I think my kids have more indignation over being denied a snack than I have over large scale social problems. They have a lot of indignation left to spread around.

Food security is a huge privilege. When someone grows up with always having a sufficient quantity of food but it isn’t always of high quality or good tasting it is a very specific kind of privilege.

I’m aware that I ate a lot more consistently than many children in third world countries. That is terrifying to me. Between the ages of 3 and 12 I probably only missed 3-5 meals a week. That’s not starvation hunger. Sure, I also had a lot of malnutrition because I ate *no* vegetables and very little meat, but I ate.

Privilege is not a binary scale where you have it or you don’t. Privilege is about understanding the good you have gotten from your unique set of life circumstances and knowing that other people may not have that advantage.

I ate enough that I was still able to learn. I was still able to go to stupid schools where they taught me very little and get straight A’s. That’s not true. I never had straight A’s. I always had a D in homework because I refused to do extra work at home. If I can pass your fucking tests leave me alone. Err, and I usually had a bad grade in PE. My body has hurt all the time throughout my life. I was an incredibly unfit child. Now I understand what that means.

I don’t have to care if some of my rich white male friends “believe” in privilege. Their “belief” or not is going to have no impact on my behavior or my beliefs.

It is really easy to deny the existence of privilege when you’ve had so much of it. I’ve been up and down the ladder so many times that I can’t unsee what I have seen. It stays with me.

I grew up with people for whom it was a major life goal to be able to eat out every meal because “cooking is lame”. So they eat at McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and 7-11 because that is what they can afford. They then have severe health problems (it doesn’t help that they are completely sedentary) and can’t figure out why.

At this stage of my life I believe that understanding nutrition is a privilege. It’s about education and not everyone has access to early enough education that can shape their lives. It is not *necessarily* tied to wealth because a great many poor people can tell you to eat your greens. Privilege is not *only* about wealth. Privilege is about access to education and teachers and I don’t just mean Teachers Who Are Paid.

If you had a grandmother who taught you how to cook your collard greens you have access to one kind of privilege.

If you had a grandfather who yelled at you to get off your ass and move your body around so you can be healthy you have access to one kind of privilege.

If you had an aunt who would whisper to you about sex and how to keep yourself safe then you have access to one kind of privilege.

If you had an uncle who would teach you sports then you have access to one kind of privilege.

Community, family, education all of these things are tied up together to make privilege. Have you ever noticed how of the top Ivy League schools in the country (which have the potential to be pretty homogenous) instead have extremely different sets of skills they turn out? Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and MIT don’t turn out identical programmers. They each have different styles and flavors. Because people are shaped by their environment and in turn they shape the environment around them.

My old technical director told me that my college had a “golden period” of about six years where there were an unusual number of students who were all passionately involved in the theatre department. We did bigger shows than usual. We had more community than usual. We had a lot of outside adventures together. We grew up together.

Where you are in the country decides a lot about what kinds of bdsm you can learn to do. You learn from the teachers who are near you. Sure, if you have boatloads of money you can travel and learn from all the big names all over the country, but most people have to just learn within their local communities. Which means that some jackasses who have no business teaching become teachers anyway. To fill the void.

Right now West Virginia is having to deal with some crazy pollution in their water. It means that some people in the United States are finally dealing with some of the insanity our country usually pushes over seas. Go do some research on what Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola do to local watersheds in their overseas plants. It’s horrifying.

Access to clean water shouldn’t be a privilege. But it is if you don’t have enough money to keep the polluters the hell out of your water.

California’s governor has declared us officially in a state of drought and he asks everyone to cut water usage by 20%. So–am I still “gross” for not flushing the toilet every single time I pee? Give me a break.

I have these conversations in my head even while I’m asleep.

What is privilege. How do you talk about it. I get that a great many people use “check your privilege” as a short hand for “shut up white man” but just because people use a worthy phrase in ways I don’t like that doesn’t mean I’m going to get rid of it. I’m not giving up feminism for the same reason. Just because some people who share my label are icki that doesn’t mean I will let them have it.

How do I teach my children to be aware of the fact that their life experiences are unusual and exceptional and they need to think hard about leveling the playing field.

Just because you are a special fucking snow flake getting lots of privilege that does not make you better than anyone else. It’s an accident. You got lucky. What can you do to make your “luck” more of a right for other people? Every child should get to be educated and safe. That isn’t happening right now.

Being able to go through your childhood without being sexually assaulted is a privilege denied to a great many children, regardless of gender.

Being able to go through your life without being the victim of violent crime is another. It’s a privilege and it god damn shouldn’t be. Transsexual women of color are the single most targeted population for violent crime. That makes me cry.

I don’t want to just move the target. I don’t want to say, “Ok, how about if we just talk people into hating the white men instead. Or the brown men. Or the white women. Or the red women or the…”

No. The violence needs to stop. How do we do that?

How do we teach people that violence isn’t the answer? How do we teach awareness of privilege without playing the Oppression Olympics?

Yes, into every life a bit of hardship has to come. If your hardship was getting beaten up in grade school maybe it’s time to stop hating everyone in the world because your life was sooooooooo hard. Yes. It was hard. I don’t deny that. Have you been beaten up in the last twenty years? No? Then can we maybe focus on getting the people out of danger who were beaten up yesterday and who are probably going to be beaten up tomorrow instead of sitting around talking about poor you?

I am not the center of every conversation I have. Sure I’m the center of most of my blog posts (that is the nature of writing and all) but I am not the most important person in almost any conversation. I understand that my life was weird and on the fringe and in many ways privileged beyond my comprehension regardless of the ways I was not privileged.

Now that they hate me I can be more frank about the fact that I probably wouldn’t have gotten my dog bite settlement if I hadn’t been white. The neighbor who defended me didn’t let his pwecious widdle baby girl hang out with the brown kids in the neighborhood.

I am more in favor of a guaranteed income as I get older. I had one. I had $14,400 to live on for the first twelve years of my adult life. It changed everything for me. It’s not a lot of money but it was enough for me to squeak by and more importantly it was GUARANTEED. I didn’t have to feel fear every month about how I would get things paid for. I didn’t have to try to work extra shifts or cry when my shifts were cut. I had my money.

I feel like that was one of the most important things that has happened to me in the whole story of my life. I’m so glad that pit bull attacked me. (I swear I didn’t antagonize the dog so I could get a settlement. It wouldn’t have entered into my mind.)

Having two parents in your home who love you and are kind to you every day is a privilege. It gives the gift of a settled nervous system. It gives you the ability to be calm. It gives you the ability to work out problems without being hurt unduly by mistakes.

Having parents who “force” you to learn to clean up after yourself is a privilege. It allows you to be more able to care for yourself as you become an adult. You won’t thrash and fail because you are unprepared. Having parents who educate you about how food works and how your body works is a privilege. Having parents who insist on you being physically strong is a privilege.

Having people look at you and say, “You are incredible. You could do just about anything you want to do. You are going to have to have to work really hard for all of it because all the worthy things are hard work” is a privilege.

Having access to toys that shape your learning is a privilege.

Having….

No, these aren’t just “differences”. These are about advantages. These are about the fact that humans don’t learn in a vacuum. Humans can learn as much and as fast as we can because we aren’t all starting from scratch with a bunch of sticks. We build on the collective knowledge of those who are around us and those who have come before us. The more access to that collective bunch of knowledge a person has the more they can do. Period. Yes, it’s a privilege.

Today should be quiet. Good. I want away from my dreams for a bit. I hate sleeping.

I need you.

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Those three words make my heart start racing like I just completed a sprint. You need me? OK! What do you need?! I CAN DO IT! This morning my baby woke up scared and needed to cuddle me. Easy peasy. I have a firm policy of waking up with a smile if my kids wake me up saying “I need you”. Ok. It’s my job to be there when you need me, so yes ma’am.

Do you know why my kids have good manners? Because I say yes ma’am and no ma’am to them for just about everything. If my kids scream at me I raise an eyebrow and say, “Try again” in a calm voice. If they scream a second time I say, “Do I respond well to screaming?” Then they visibly shake themselves off and calm down enough to ask for what they want.

Based on the dozens and dozens of books I’ve read about early childhood development the first 5-7 years of life should be spent on socialization, attachment formation, and learning to manage your emotions. I have gone through my life crippled by my inability to manage my emotions in times of stress and that is largely because I was not taught how to deal with my body. If I grew distressed I was punished.

I don’t let my kids have a lot of screen time because screen time is shown to increase emotional dysregulation. I feel it would be counter productive to hand them a bunch of emotional dysregulation during the period of their life when they are poorly regulated and struggling for basic control. I mean, they are pretty good and all… but they are 3 and 5. They are good for their ages and that means they have a lot of work left to do.

I think about this because when I babysit for other kids I learn that the short cuts I’ve worked on with my kids don’t work as well. My kids respond to “Try again”. “Will that work?” is enough to stop the vast majority of tantrums. “So what is your goal here?” is another favorite I lean on extensively. I talk them through how to get what they want without using methods that will result in escalation of conflict. That’s what I spend my days doing. I hang out with them and help them manage their emotions as they are doing what they want to do.

Other peoples children kind of look at me blankly if I just say “Try again” and that’s hard at this phase. I have to turn around and manage my own frustration and emotional dysregulation because my short hand didn’t communicate what I wanted it to communicate and so I am left struggling to find phrasing that will work which means a bunch of quick thinking. I shouldn’t complain. But man I am grateful I have been able to train my kids the way I have.

Yup, I’ve trained my kids. And it’s awesome.

I feel a lot of guilt for not actually having the control I wish I had. I feel a lot of shame for the fact that if my children were less well trained I would have a much harder time being nice. It is hard for me to be nice to other peoples kids who don’t respond to the training cues.

I *do not* yell or scream or shame or respond badly to children not understanding my cues. Instead I take a deep breathe and smile and out comes a whole flood of words that explains why I’m asking what I’m asking and I give them a whole bunch of suggestions for how to solve whatever problem is coming up.

But it’s hard. It wears my body out to emotionally flood that many times in a short period of time. I believe that the children deserve the respect so I’m going to deliver it even if it means I cry the whole way home because my body feels like shit and I’m tired and worn out. My stomach hurts so bad.

Sometimes my physical comfort is not the highest priority in my life. That’s hard. Sometimes my friends need help and I’m the one who could show up and supply the necessary help and I believe in Pay It Forward like I believe It Takes All Kinds. I HAVE to step up when friends have nowhere else to look for support. If I don’t then the ship will go down and it will be partially my fault.

No, not really. Other people having problems in their lives isn’t my fault. But if the reason I choose not to help is because it is hard and it makes me feel bad and I cry for an hour or two afterwards because of stress… that’s not a good enough reason to choose not to help in a crisis. That’s a good enough reason to not sign up for four home school outings in a week. That’s a good enough reason to not sign up for helping once a week indefinitely. But it’s not a good enough reason to refuse help in a crisis.

Which leads back to spoon management with my kids in my life.

I have to leave enough slack all the time to absorb occasional bursts of spoon excess in one area or another. This is part of why I’ve been reading so much lately. I’m trying to build slack into my spoon usage. There are times when all of a sudden I use extra spoons on a project or on driving or on helping other people and I have to be able to continue delivering the same quality and quantity of care to my kids.

Taking care of my kids is hard but worthwhile. I’ve been doing really well post-Christmas. I am staying more level. I’m responding in the right tone of voice and I’m responding in a timely fashion instead of sometimes choosing to let them fight it out because I can’t intervene in a timely fashion in the right way. (I don’t let them physically fight things out but sometimes if they want to have a screaming match over something I will tell them that they can scream at each other in the back yard.) Mostly I try to help them work things out. It’s exhausting to be a referee all day.

So given that my focus is on socialization, attachment formation, and emotional regulation it’s kind of funny when a friend says, “So how about their academics? When do you do that?”

Err… I don’t. Not really. I mean, I read to them a lot. I read to my kids for 5-15 hours a week depending on the week. Noah reads to the kids for an additional 5-10 hours a week. As often as possible I sucker my friends into reading to the kids.

I get workbooks when Shanna is given her “school allotment” and she goes shopping and says, “I think I should practice shaping letters so let’s get a workbook”. I never indicate that she should get out a workbook and practice. But the suckers are being used steadily. I feel kind of confused by her choosing to do worksheets, but whatever makes you happy kiddo.

That said: if you go through the kindergarten standards (Which I do–quite regularly) you would find that Shanna was more or less competent on the full curriculum before the start of her “kindergarden” year. Given that the state now believes children should be fluent readers in first grade she is *not* through the first grade curriculum but I think the state is on crack for expecting that anyway.

(I mean for science: one of the many things kids should know why different kinds of plants grow in different environments. Shanna can give you long lectures on the evolution of plants and animals. We watch a lot of documentaries and I feel pretty surprised by what she knows. She designs structures so she can talk about what things work better and why. Sure a lot of her structures are meant to be froofy princess shit, but whatever. I don’t care if you are building a castle or a space station–you are building. It works.)

I will confess that I need to get my hands on a globe so we can play with a flashlight and talk about the seasons more. We’ve talked about it representationally on flat maps… but that’s not the same. I need to get off my butt.

We work on the PE skills in malls all the time. How do you learn to be aware of your body? How do you move through crowds without bumping people? How do you decide which objects you can go under or over in a public place? Or must you go around them on the side? This is what kindergarden PE teaches. We play catch and kick ball. They do yoga and go on three mile walks a few times a week. (I’ve been better lately.) Sure, Calli gets piggy back rides for over a mile of the walk… but she’s hella short. She’ll get there.

I will confess that my kids are not fully versed on the “triumphs of American history” but they do know a lot about racial issues through the history of this country. Shanna call tell you about segregation and Jim Crow laws and why Rosa Parks was important. I’m going to keep doing things my way instead of talking about how awesome Paul Revere was. (I mean… really he was a patent thief and an asshole and there was a girl riding the alarm the same night as him but HISTORY IGNORES HER. Ahem.)

Given that all of the kindergarden reading/language arts standards are “With prompting and support” yes, Shanna can do all that is expected of a five year old. She can tell you about myths from different cultures. She can tell you that a poem rhymes and a narrative tells a story in plain English. She can identify the narrator and she understands “what’s the point” as “tell me about the plot”. She can count to 100 (and beyond, I think) and add and do basic subtraction. She understands the beginnings of numeral placement. She knows her shape and can talk about what is necessary for each kind of shape.

And no, I don’t spend time on academics. I’m not going to waste her time. But what I mean when I say “I don’t spend time on academics” is I don’t ever sit down with a curriculum written by someone else and say, “Ok now it is time for school.”

We talk about cylinders as we are putting dishes away. We talk about the difference between a square and a rectangle when we build raised beds in the back yard. We do addition practice in the car because she starts it.

I do not direct her learning much. I don’t pick the whack job documentaries she watches, though I try to watch with her. She can talk to you about generations of animals dying out–whole species! She’s fascinated by the way animals change over time. She’s pissed off that evolution doesn’t happen fast enough for her to really watch it in her lifetime.

I talk to my kids all day long about everything I see. “Why do you think they made this bench out of wood and this other one out of metal?” “What is this made out of?” My kid can tell you the merits of using different kinds of spatulas to cook different foods.

We do science by cooking and gardening. We talk about history all the time. I’m fond of saying, “We study history because humans have been alive a long time. Almost every mistake that you will want to make has already been made by someone else. You can learn a lot if you just read about people and their choices.”

My kids are growing up in a house where “hacking” DOES NOT MEAN following directions on a kit that some forking grown up made for you. No. That’s not how life works. You are not going to spend your life just following directions that someone else makes up. You are going to have to make your own directions. How do you do that?

If you want to learn to sew (which Shanna does) I can show you the basics and I can provide you with materials, but no I’m not going to do it while you watch and I’m not going to stand next to you and micromanage you doing it perfectly. You are going to mess up and feel frustration. You are going to have to learn how to rip out your own seams and try again.

I can’t make things easy for you. I wouldn’t even if I could. Life isn’t going to be easy.

My job is to help you learn emotional regulation and help you feel like you matter in the world so that you won’t spend your life wanting to kill yourself because you believe you are a worthless piece of shit.

Everything else you can learn as you go. I promise.

At the end of kindergarden they wanted to hold me back because I wasn’t mature enough. I’d been to five fucking kindergardens, no I wasn’t as “advanced” compared to the kids in the tiny school I was in last that year. The teacher thought I was stupid because I couldn’t read yet. I picked up reading in first grade and by second grade I was testing at the 10th grade level.

I’m not worried about early asymmetrical growth. Don’t you understand that the standards were created by bureaucrats and *not* educational specialists? (Go ask education specialists. You will find a few who endorse the standards but mostly they don’t like the idea of a national curriculum–people don’t work that way.)

“The things that are the hardest to learn are often the most rewarding once you master them. You have to keep trying even when something makes you mad.”

That’s what my kids hear over and over. A far cry from “I guess I can’t do math because I’m a girl.” That’s what I believed as a child. Because I was told that math was hard for me because I was just a stupid girl. Word for word. Over and over.

When my kids try to do something that is way too hard for them they say, “Whoa. I think I need to learn a bit more before I understand this.” I almost fell out of my chair laughing when Calli said that. She was confused but delighted that she made me laugh.

I think my saving grace with children is I don’t expect them to do much or support me. I understand that the support is a one way street. I do the supporting. That means I never get disappointed and lash out at them for not helping me when I want/need help. I have internalized so thoroughly that it isn’t their job.

That said they have more and more chores. Shanna unloads the dishwasher, clears the table, and keeps her stuff tidy. When she has to clean up her toys she often says, “What am I, your maid!?” I tell her that until I start forcing her to do laundry for the whole family and do the sweeping and mopping and vacuuming she doesn’t get to claim maid status. I’m teaching her to clean up after herself which means she is being her own maid… not mine. She generally doesn’t argue much.

And now I have a wonderful girl on my lap. She says she wants to watch The West Wing with me. heh.

Suicidal ideation

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Suicidal ideation is what happens when your brain experiences too much pain and doesn’t know how to cope any more. In many ways it is the “lazy” way out. The more suicides happen close to a given individual the more likely that person is to see suicide as a reasonable response to a given set of circumstances.

My grandmother, father, and brother all committed suicide. Overdose on prescription meds, carbon monoxide poisoning, and self-immolation being their respective choices.

When I was going through my laundry list of traumas on top of the fairly severe neglect I experienced during crucial developmental stages I was not allowed to cry about what happened to me. I was required to be stoic. If I cried or exhibited obvious signs of sadness I was beaten. “To give me something to cry about” because clearly what had already happened to me wasn’t enough to deserve tears.

I regret that this set of life experiences led me to the point where as an adult it is very hard for me to cope with psychological distress without suicidal ideation.

I know it “isn’t an option” at this stage of my life. But luckily I have a husband who understands that there is a very high likelihood that when this phase is over that ban will not be in effect any more. It means a lot to me that there is at least one person who understands and says he won’t be mad at me. He will be sad, of course. But if some day I do that at least I won’t have the karmic debt of betraying him.

Fifteen more years.

Yesterday while we were walking Shanna made a comment about how it was her fault that I was mean sometimes. That led to a long and intense conversation where I said over and over again that *I* am the only one responsible for my behavior. Not anyone else. It is never EVER a kid’s fault if a grown up does things that a grown up shouldn’t do. She said, “But the chemicals in your brain make it harder for you and then I’m not nice so it is my fault.” NO NO NO. Yes, the chemicals in my brain do make it harder for me. That’s true. But it is still my responsibility to work as hard as I need to work in order to be nice to my kids. If I slip and do something mean it is ALL MY FAULT. It is never a child’s fault when an adult does something mean. Never. Never. Never.

I told her it is like when Calli bites her and she doesn’t bite back because she wants to show Calli how to be a good sister. Sometimes Calli makes a mistake. Being a good big sister means that you tell her it was a mistake and you try to show her how she should be acting, not that you turn around and do the same mean thing.

I told Shanna that it goes double and more for grown ups. Grown ups don’t get to blame bad behavior on children. If a grown up blames a kid for their behavior the grown up is doing something wrong and immature and inappropriate. We can all only be responsible for our own behavior.

Just like if Shanna or Calli do something I don’t like it isn’t all my fault. They made a choice. I don’t have to like it.

I was raised in a world where shit rolls downhill and it is always the fault of the youngest person in the room when something happens. My children will not grow up in such a world.

I’ve been having a pill a day for a few days now. That is smoothing out a lot of the rough edges, but I’m not stoned and controlling my behavior and ideation is really hard. In order to just get rid of the pervasive negative thoughts I have to be pretty stoned.

I don’t know how I am going to find balance on this. I think there is the non-zero possibility that I will find a way to earn money of my own over the next few years and eventually just be ok with being extremely stoned for most of the rest of my life. That may be the way I avoid killing myself. I’m trying to feel ok about that but I’m not there yet. I still feel disgusting and like I should be shunned and punished for being so dirty.

A woman I don’t know posts a lot of porn on her tumblr page. I’m cool with that. A lot of it is really hot. Yesterday she posted a picture that was one of those animated gif things. (I find them kind of creepy.) When I looked at the picture I could tell that other people would be fixated on what was happening with the genitals. I looked at the woman’s face, like I do. Her lips appear to be saying, “Please stop” over and over and over with that frenetic animation that gif’s have.

I am extremely supportive of adults wanting to do consensual rape play. Many healthy and whole human beings have the desire to role play rape and I think that is normal and acceptable.

But rape play done as pornography where people can end up with a singular shot from the scene that looks… entirely like rape instead of like rape play makes me feel very sad.

I feel very sad about how rape is normalized in the world. It’s just a valid way for guys to get off. But thanks to not being very stoned in weeks I get to wake up to horrible dreams of being raped. Now in my dreams I like to cut the throats of rapists. It doesn’t actually improve my mood when I wake up that I am now just as much of a monster as any of them in my head.

I feel small, selfish, and bad.

Suicidal ideation is very selfish. It is about looking for a way to stop hurting.

I used to do bdsm as a way of looking for catharsis. When someone is beating me I’m allowed to scream and cry and process some of what I store in my body. (I’m a big fan of Babette Rothchild’s work on trauma–The Body Remembers.) I have a lot of physical and emotional pain stored in my body that I have never been allowed to cry about. I have never been allowed to deal with the physical reality of all the things that happened to me.

After a while I stopped thinking that bdsm was a valid way of attaining the catharsis I need. Too many DMs stop my scenes because they don’t like the screaming. Public play spaces are for people who are doing light, fluffy sexy things. Not for people who want to genuinely experience awful things and scream about their pain.

I mean, I have been crying for years but I haven’t been crying for decades yet. I didn’t start really crying about these things until Uncle Bob died. Before that I would have bursts of crying randomly that weren’t very soothing or cathartic. They were the smallest increments of blowing off steam I could manage in order to not kill myself that day. I have always cried from stress. My sister spent my entire childhood being nasty to me for crying out of frustration. It wasn’t very cathartic.

After Uncle Bob died I finally had a time and a space where I was *allowed* to cry and cry and cry and cry for hours upon hours for days. Thanks to my friends showing up to take care of my kids for a week. Even when I went to Jenny after my father and brother died I cried a little, but not like I’ve been crying for the past few years. Not in a looking for catharsis way.

Suicide is about being overwhelmed with pain that you can’t handle. I’m scared about how much pain I carry around. I put a brave face on it, mostly. Most of the people who know me will see anger more than they will see sadness or pain. I do that on purpose.

Being vulnerable is scary. Most of the people I have ever tried to be vulnerable with are… gone. It’s my fault and I know it. If only I hadn’t been so intense maybe they might have wanted to keep knowing me. But I’m too much of an asshole. I have no one to blame but myself.

That doesn’t really leave me feeling like there is a lot I can do other than die if I want to stop hurting people. No one else is to blame for my reactions or emotions or behavior. It’s my fault. If I am scary or violent it is my fault.

It doesn’t matter how much people lie to me. They are “doing their best” and it isn’t ok for me to react with anger. I am allowed to withdraw and that’s it. And if I withdraw it is my fault I don’t get to have relationships with people. I chose to back out because I couldn’t handle the trade. That is about my failure, not anyone else’s.

I would rather be disappointed by the truth than lied to. The truth is that no one other than Noah is ever going to show up and want to be supportive of me with all my conflicting, complicated, layered issues. I’m a lot of work to know. It isn’t worth the trade for anyone else. Even Noah has distinct limits about what he can and can’t do or handle. I have to respect those limits. If I have more needs than he can handle that is my problem and not his.

People who get support are people who were born into a support network I don’t have. It’s not their fault they get it. It’s just luck. Do you know who “gets over” PTSD? People who have a large support network to help them process their grief and trauma and pain. People who validate them and tell them that it is absolutely right for them to have the feelings they have. Do you know who doesn’t get over it? People who are told to get over it.

Life is pain, Highness. But the way you process it and move on is by acknowledging it and thinking that it is pain and you need to process it.

Maybe if I had more support to give I would be able to find people who would be able to give me more support. But I’m empty.

I will raise my kids. They will hopefully internalize my many lectures about how other peoples behavior is not their fault. They are not my support units even though they are starting to do more chores. That’s pretty cool.

I need to find a way to be enough for myself. That may mean giving absolutely nothing to anyone outside of my house. I have a lot of need. It isn’t anyone’s fault any more it just is. I have to bear that whether I like it or not. It just is.

Less than six hours to a doctor appointment. I hope this will result in less pain in my body. I hope that less pain in my body will result in less suicidal ideation.

Hope springs eternal.

I apparently have strong priorities.

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I have some really bad habits. To start with: I like working out what I will do by talking to other people. Then in the process I discover my boundaries/priorities because I get explosively angry at the nice people who I am talking to when they suggest something that isn’t what I want to do. I hope I didn’t bite anyone’s head off yesterday. I tried to end conversations when I felt myself wanting to scream. Thank you so much for talking to me.

I wish I could figure out what I think without feeling the need to scream. I didn’t scream. Not once. But there were many hours of crying and feeling upset.

I cancelled the grief ritual registration. I’m trying to build community with the home school group and I don’t go out with them much. The group in general spends a lot more time with one another than my kids spend with them. If I weren’t going with the group I wouldn’t bother to go to Cirque right now anyway. I wouldn’t have bothered paying for tickets. And it was bought in a group package so I don’t think it would be easy to exchange.

I agreed to the Cirque trip months before I thought of the grief ritual for this year. Apparently I don’t like the idea of flaking on my original plans just because a better offer showed up.

I keep flaking on the nice lady who is point on the group trip. Canceling would be a lot like flipping her off and saying her effort wasn’t important because I found something better to do. People do that to me a lot. I don’t want to turn around and hand that down.

I’m sad about missing the grief ritual for a variety of reasons. I don’t have a whole lot of catharsis in my life. A nice lady said, “Do you even have grief left?” and I didn’t yell. *pat self on back* Yes. I have a lot of grief. I feel like I’m drowning in it.

I used to process by doing bdsm until I could scream/cry it out. A long time ago. Then play spaces changed and these days it isn’t ok to play in public the way I used to. These days you have to be careful to “not scare the newbies” so really brutal/loud beatings are considered inappropriate. I’ve had a lot of Dungeon Monitors (I kind of hate DMs) interrupt my scenes to tell me to be quiet. I just won’t try for heavy scenes in public any more. And I don’t have a sound proof house and I know all my neighbors.

I used to get kind of impatient with people who said they couldn’t scream in their home because they didn’t want to bother the neighbors. Ha. Things change.

I miss Castlebar. No one cared how much you screamed because we were in an industrial neighborhood at night near a freeway. No one could hear it or care. It was great. Ok, only having three walls so you froze all winter kind of sucked… but I still miss it. I liked it better than the fancier spaces where you have to be quiet to play. I’m not quiet.

Many people suggested exchanging the Cirque tickets and just going at a different time as a family. It’s not a bad suggestion. But it’s kind of like if your family was all going to Disney World and I said, “Well you don’t need to be there with them. Just go a different time.”

Of course you could, but then you would be missing the family trip.

I want to go see S and O and A as they experience Cirque. I’m trying to be a grown up who is consistently in their lives. My kids are growing up with them. I’m trying to find experiences my kids get to share with other kids. Mostly they are just stuck doing things with me when I can handle doing them. They don’t get to do a lot with other kids. They don’t have five days a week where they are with other kids.

I really do appreciate that people helped me figure out my priority list. It isn’t anyone’s fault that I do that by getting angry about suggestions that won’t work for me. I’m sorry.

I don’t think I actually yelled at anyone. I just had surges of emotion. I think I squashed them. I think I was appropriate. I am never sure though. I’m always afraid that my nice friends will talk to me then I’ll be a cunt then they won’t be my nice friends any more.

I lose a lot of sleep worrying about this. I’m sorry I get so angry over things I shouldn’t get mad about.

In other news I continue to not use much of my apathy enhancing drug. Holy shit does that mean that every emotional reaction feels like it is turned up to 11. I’m doing well at not screaming at the kids. I’m barely even yelling. I seem to be getting a point almost every day and I try to comfort myself with the idea that I’m barely raising my voice and I tend to cut it off mid-sentence… I still get a point for the AHHHP. The check mark thing on the wall is helping me. I feel humiliated when I have to give myself a point so it is getting easier to remember.

I can’t just “not yell” but I can avoid shame. It’s weird.

I really appreciate that people talked to me through my annoying hand wringing and crying. I’m sorry that my process works this way. I wish I were “calm and rational” but I’m not always.

What is more important to me–catharsis with mostly strangers, or bonding with kids I want to know through their childhoods?

Not a decision anyone else can make for me. People don’t understand what it means to me that I didn’t get to do the group activities as a kid. I did things alone. I never had a group because I moved all the time. Even when I did things ostensibly as part of a group I didn’t know anyone so people wouldn’t talk to me. They wanted to hang out with their friends. I want my kids to get to be friends with S and O and A. It’s a big fucking deal to me. I feel incredible guilt that I only get off my lazy ass and join the group for one activity a week.

I just can’t handle the driving most of the time. The home school group goes pretty far afield and just about all of their activities are a minimum of a 30 minute drive each way for us. I can’t do that every day. I freak out and have no spoons left for getting anything else done.

I have strongly internalized that home schoolers don’t stay home. They are out in the world. But our world is largely bound by the limits of our ability to walk. My kids are buff. I need them to be able to do heavy manual labor in less than seven years. I don’t think that the standard American kid raised in a car can turn around and just do that without a lot of pain and awful.

My kids will always be pulled out of the group a lot. Next year we will be gone for 4-6 months. I haven’t decided yet. The bare minimum will be 4 months but there is so much I want to see (so many people) that it may stretch out. That’s a long time to just be gone from their friends.

I need to provide them with time with kids. I just have to. That is more important to me than me getting a weekend of catharsis. It is inconvenient that there isn’t a convenient other ritual coming up. (There is one in Sacramento in a few months. On Shanna’s birthday. Sigh.)

I don’t think I can explain what being in a supportive environment while I cry feels like. I have spent my entire life knowing that it isn’t actually “ok” that I cry all the time. It is shameful and annoying and I need to shut the fuck up because I bother people.

I know.

My problems are my personal problems and they don’t belong to anyone else. I know. That’s an awful lot of why it feels like I need to just die when I feel overwhelmed. It isn’t ok to let my issues spill out and contaminate other people.

So going and meeting a woman who believes deep in her belly “all problems are problems for the community” is… intense.

The thing is, this kind lady isn’t available to be anything to me at any point after the ritual. She can tell me how it is in her village in Africa for people who grew up there. She’s busy and travels a lot and doesn’t live near me and she has no bandwidth to spare for random ritual attendees.

So my problems are still mine. Even though some people don’t have to bear their problems alone forever.

I struggle so much with bitterness.

The whole “Bank of Mom and Dad” isn’t really about the money. It is about having people who are deeply committed to helping you and supporting you through your life. They are invested in you being ok.

I don’t have that. I didn’t ever have grandparents. My aunts/uncles mostly abandoned me when my parents divorced because I went with my mother and no one liked her. My mom grew up in my position in her family. The unwanted child everyone hated. I don’t think she was the product of rape but no one ever liked her. I feel so sad for my mom. Then she grows up and her kids hate her too.

I fear that I’m on that road.

I have friends who have genuinely lost their mothers. How dare I feel so bad about choosing to cut off ties.

I had to. There is no other way to ensure that my kids don’t grow up in the same cycles I did. From when my niece was very young my mother told her that things were “all her fault”. So by 17 my niece was working at In-N-Out and supporting her sibling and mother out of guilt. She felt overwhelming pain at the idea of Auntie having to work in her 70’s because she (my niece) was the reason my Auntie spent her retirement money and now she (Auntie) doesn’t have any left.

What bullshit. Auntie had to work because Uncle Bob was a sonofabitch who spent money like it grew on trees to deal with his bitterness at having his wife’s family around. That is not my niece’s fault.

It’s just not and my kids will not grow up in that kind of fucking environment where kids are programmed to think that being born was a terrible burden on everyone around them and they should spend their life apologizing.

Just no.

I am experienced enough to know that people who think they can maintain their connection with family and “shield” their kids from the worst of it usually end up finding out twenty years later about horrible abuse that happened just behind the corner of a room. I know too many cases where children were raped in the few minutes it took to go get a toy from a room.

My children will not be spending their lives around recidivist rapists. I don’t fucking think so.

So I get to live with this grief. Doing the right thing doesn’t usually mean doing the easiest or the most comfortable thing. It means doing the right thing.

I chose to bring little people into this world. It is my responsibility to keep them safe during their childhood. I don’t think many people know better than me how fast things can happen when you are near evil people.

I have two wanted children. They are loved and a blessing. That is all they will fucking hear in their childhoods.

And they won’t have to miss out on doing things with their friends because their mom is selfish. They’ve been hearing about Cirque for months. Telling them they don’t get to do it with their friends would make me a selfish asshole.

I’d like to believe I am better than that. Maybe I’m lying to myself but I’ll keep trying anyway.

My friends gave me the advice they gave me largely because they believe I have the right to be the main character in my life. They believe I have the right to place my needs as the most important.

And I get mad at them for that. What does that say about me?

I’m not really “mad” at them. But my body does angrily reject the notion that I should be the only important person in my story. I don’t think I am more important than my kids. I don’t think that my preferences matter more than theirs. I don’t think I get to just selfishly usurp their life all the time. I do too much of that as is.

I’m not sure I’m right. I’m not sure there was a ‘right’ decision here. Ultimately I kind of decided “I’m going with the commitment I made first.” That may be faulty logic.

Thank you for talking to me. I wish I were less of an asshole.

no time.

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I haven’t been waking up early enough to blog. I feel cranky about my kids being in my face from 15-30 minutes after I wake up until I fall asleep. This is challenging.

I have writing work I want to do. I am not sure when I will do it. I’m feeling some feelings about the life I choose.

back to “normal”

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By which I mean that Noah returned to work and I returned to days alone with the kids. We’ve had a couple good days in a row. On Thursday I made the kids go for a mile run with me in the morning (we did laps around the elementary school parking lot across the street so that everyone could go at their own pace). Then there was a lot of playing with art stuff. I moved the coffee table into the living room after years of banishment to the garage and they are dramatically increasing their random art play.

Then a neighbor kid came over for a play date. Then she left. Later a different (much older) neighbor kid came over to babysit while I went out and exercised more. I ran/walked three miles then came home and got my bike and rode that for another five miles. The day in total covered about nine miles. (Yesterday I rested.)

I was in a much better mood after the exercise.

Friday we didn’t get up and do lots of exercise. I spent the day cleaning house, reading, and chit chatting. I didn’t do much playing with them. I talk to them about their games while they are playing but I don’t really do the imaginative games with them very often. I will be random “outside the game” funny commentary.

Both days involved the kids barely yelling. There was a singular argument where they had trouble resolving a toy sharing issue per day. “Try again” worked just fine.

“Try again” “Asked and Answered” “What do you think should happen here?” Those are my stock phrases these days to avoid fighting. Very helpful.

The tally marks for yelling is helping a lot. The kids really want to pick breakfast. Today I’m going to make breakfast and I think the kids are going to get to decide. No, they haven’t had a day completely free of screaming yet but they’ve managed several days in a row of just one brief exclamation of emotion. I can fudge a teeny bit. They are three and five. They are doing well for them. They are trying really hard.

I struggle with dividing my attention between Noah and the kids when he is home all day for a while. He wants me to be a very different kind of person than they do. It is hard to meet all of the expectations at once. The kids are so much easier to spend time with when I can focus on them.

And we get along better when I’ve caught up cleaning the house (I have–I’m pretty happy with myself) so that it only takes the kids 5-15 minutes to clean up their stuff before they can move on to another big, messy activity. If there is one hard to clean project out at a time I’m usually nice enough to help clean up. If there are six I’m kind of an asshole. “No. I told you to clean it up as you went because that makes it easy. You ignored me so you get to untangle this. I’m reading.”

When we go through toys for donations I usually put them in the back of the van and drive them around for a month or so before I get to the donation center. I’m glad for this policy because sometimes the kids decide to get rid of stuff they aren’t really done with. I thought Calli was kind of crazy for wanting to get rid of the My Little Pony characters. Given that the only fighting we have done in the last two days has been over Shanna’s MLP we are getting the others out of the donation bag. I think that even if Calli has decided that Rainbow Dash is a butthead (Calli is very judgmental about how RD acted in a particular episode and she’s carrying a big grudge) she needs to keep the doll. She needs to have more than one that is hers so she doesn’t steal Shanna’s. Ok fine, Rarity is better. I hear you. You asked for Rainbow Dash so don’t steal your sister’s.

Sometimes I feel kind of baffled that this is what I really really want from life.

Shanna and I have been spending a lot of time talking about how much it sucks to try to learn self control. I agree that it is sucky to try and learn. I agree up one side and down the other. We still have to do it. I love you, baby. You can do it even though it is hard. It may take a while and anyone who expects you to be perfect at five is a big jerk and you don’t need to listen to them. By the time you are twenty I won’t be very patient with these things though. Just so you know.

Unconditional love and very conditional approval. “I will get mad sometimes about your behavior. You get to decide how you feel about that. Sometimes you will care and sometimes you won’t. Sometimes it is a good idea to ignore me and sometimes that’s a really bad idea. You won’t learn which is which until you try and you don’t like the results.”

Since I stopped tracking the books I was reading I’ve kind of exploded in reading. I think I’ve read twelve books. Only a few were blessed rereads. These Tamora Pierce books are popcorn. They are fun and really sweet. I’m looking forward to when my kids can read them. I’m going to have to buy my own copies because my friend wants her copies back for her own daughter. Sheesh. How unreasonable. (That’s my “kidding” voice.)

I haven’t read the new Dorothy Allison book yet. I may read that before I start the Immortals 4-some. I’ve been alternating between books I borrowed from K, books I borrowed from L, and really depressing psychology books. Well, suicide stuff. Is it depressing? I’m not sure. I’m looking for hope.

There has to be a way to get my brain to stop telling me I’m a worthless whore other than being stoned all the time. I’m the first one to admit that pot stops most of the repetitive negative thinking. Not 100% of it but I think it cuts out at least 80%. That is probably the most striking difference. (I medicated some for the past two days compared to having a week off. I didn’t medicate “fully” but I had a little. Fully medicating is 4-5 pills in a day. I’ve been having one.)

And I even managed to hit quota in December. I think it had been almost six months since I hit quota. When I get around to writing about sex being problematic then Noah feels the need to up his game. To both of our benefit. I think I’ll keep writing about it. I know that back in the old days when I was having sex with different people just about every day of the week I didn’t need a lot of foreplay. I agree that those were wonderful days. These days I don’t spend much time thinking about sex and I need more transition time and attention. Life is annoying like that. If you want to fuck me for the next fifty years you may have to change what you do over time. I am not that sprightly 23 year old just out of a sexless relationship where I felt teased but not satisfied all the time anymore.

Next month, February, marks the ten year mark since I met Noah. Time flies when you are having fun.

Today Noah is home and our routine is “disrupted” again. It’ll be ok. Maybe we will visit a martial arts studio near our home today. I’ll look at schedules. I want us, as a family, to go watch all of the studios within 4 miles of our house over the next few weeks. Then we can discuss which style looks best for us. By the end of this month I think we need to be enrolled.

Just keep swimming, right? (Swim lessons restart on Wednesday.) Park days don’t restart for another week because the home school group has a neat activity in Berkeley next week and I’m lame and won’t drive north for activities twice a week. Don’t have the spoons.

No plans for this weekend. It seem smart.

Just another morning whine.

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I don’t think I know “the right answer” for other people. For one thing, I am not very capable of understanding the limitations of other peoples lives. They are simply not visible to me.

I have been basically alone my whole life. Until seven years ago. Up to that point I did not spend enough time with anyone to calibrate to their needs. It is a particular blind spot for me. And Noah is… different from other people. The things he needs me to consider and dance around are few and far between and way far away from other peoples boundaries.

When people ask me for advice I often wonder why they want to hear my opinion anyway. Everything I think is going to be irrelevant to your life for one reason or another. What I say will be “wrong” for you.

I feel sad.

Apparently we misunderstood some pieces of what we heard this weekend. We do that, individually and collectively. Things are changing but I don’t know how.

I was talking to the only person I talk to every day (other than Noah and the kids) about feelings of intimacy and friendships. I think that people sometimes feel closer to me than they otherwise might because they have been reading my blog for a while (maybe a long while.)

But that’s like staring at someone through a one way mirror and calling it a relationship.

I don’t know very many people. Not well. Not many people are willing to spend enough time with me for me to calibrate. They can’t handle the adjustment process. They need more space. But I’m still supposed to be the one pursuing the friendship even though I’m periodically told to back off. I’m just supposed to take it as a pause and then restart the onslaught of trying to beg someone to be my friend.

I don’t know very many people. I don’t know what you like or want or think. I don’t know what is right for you or your family. I have no earthly idea. I don’t understand why you do anything at all.

The person I talk to every day told me, “People who don’t show up much are not people you need to think of as “friends”. They are part of your community and you may love them but you don’t need to think of them as friends. Your friends show up without you having to ask and ask.”

Are you sure? Then I haven’t had a lot of friends… ever. All of my relationships are about me asking and asking and asking for time. I don’t get asked much. I never have. The main people who have ever asked me for time have been men. That’s part of why I have been raped so many times. Those were the only people who wanted to spend time with me. And that was the cost of admission.

These days I do get specifically invited to a lot of home school events. But that doesn’t exactly feel like *I* am being invited. I am welcome to bring my kids to be friends with their kids as long as I can keep my mouth appropriate enough to not get kicked out.

Coming off an anxiety medication I have been on for years is hurting physically and emotionally. I feel so sad and so worthless.

Shanna was mad at me last night and she told me she wanted to throw me in the trash. Kids do that kind of thing. She doesn’t “mean it” and I’m “not supposed to react”.

Story of my fucking life

Maybe if there hadn’t been so many people who said that to me maybe it would feel more like a joke and instead of like my place in the world.

And I can’t react to that today. I can’t cry or freak out in front of her. I have to more or less treat it like it didn’t happen. Kids say stupid shit and parents can’t hound them for it. That’s not developmentally appropriate.

I’m hoping that some year of my life I won’t have to swallow these things and then be nice to the people who say them to me.

I want to cut. But I was told that I couldn’t do it until next year. Not during the holiday season. I agreed. And no, I’m not willing to go on a medication that would take the “high” our of cutting. The drug would cause me pain basically ALL the time to prevent me having a positive feeling from an action I do rarely and only with great need. Doesn’t that sound self-hating to anyone else?

Hurt yourself all day every day so that you can never feel relief from pain no matter what you do.

I’d rather kill myself and I’m using fucking hyperbole. If someone forced me on to a medication that was as awful as this one sounds I don’t think I could bear that.

I already hurt too much. I don’t need things that add to my daily ambient constant pain. I can’t bear it. I am pretty much at capacity.

I feel so worthless.

My sister’s birthday is coming up. A little less than three weeks. She will be turning 44. I wonder if I will ever see her again.

I think it’s time for me to stop trying to make friends. I think I need to stop inviting people. I can’t. I hurt so much. Sure, I’m a selfish piece of shit. Tell me something new.

It is going to be very hard over the next few years to manage my kids. That is going to take my spoons. All of them. And more. And I do not have reserves. And I don’t have a good back up plan. I don’t have the spoons to keep trying to make them when other people change what they are up for.

I get what people have left over. I am not a priority to be arranged around. If they have nothing better to do I’m what is left. That isn’t because anyone is doing anything mean to me–they aren’t. That’s life. Everyone has to put on their own oxygen mask. I understand. I don’t even think I’m bitter. Just sad.

These are the holes where my mom and my sister should be. But they aren’t. Because just like I used to pay the price of being raped for the illusion of “friends” I had to pay the price of being abused to have the illusion of “family”.

I can’t expose my children to that kind of reality.

We sat down yesterday and talking about screaming and yelling in the house. Collectively all of us need to just stop. We agreed that we will have a tally sheet on the door to the garage (we see that space a lot). Every time you get too loud you get a point. The person with the fewest number of points gets to pick breakfast the next day. (Noah is kinda getting a cheat because he goes to work most days…)

That’s proactive, non punishing, and gives the kids something to strive for that they want. They like deciding breakfast. They pick very different things than Noah or I. Eventually, if they make progress we may eat a lot more cereal and pie for breakfast. I can live with that.

Being able to just say “point” in response to raised voices is deescalating by itself. “I’m acknowledging what you are doing and asking for it to stop.” All with one word. Fabulous.

I am scared that I am going to pour everything I have into being nice to my kids and I still won’t be nice enough. I will still hurt them badly just because I am bad.

I should stay off the internet today. I’m in one of those compulsively checking every website stage. I’m looking for connection I’m not going to find.

Being sheltered, ignorance, and safety.

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I asked a friend, “Do you think my kids are sheltered” and she kind of snorted a little and said, “No.”

*blink*

My kids have had a very carefully crafted and shaped introduction to the world. Nothing happens to them by accident other than having adults stop showing up. Ok, I yell/scream more than I should but I’m fairly aware that in the larger scheme of things… I’m really not that scary of a parent. I’ve seen the spectrum. We are far on the gentle end. I have non-gentle moments that scare some of the truly gentle people, but the scary people know I don’t rate.

My kids have heard the word sex a fair number of times. It comes up in books like It’s So Amazing! about becoming a big sister and all. We watch nature documentaries and the BBC is obsessed with showing what it might have looked like for prehistoric animals to mate. And they get even more excited when it isn’t “animal style”: “This is the first species that mated face to face…. oooooh.”

So my kids understand that sex/mating is how you get babies. They understand that having sex when you are too small can seriously harm your body and they have been told that there are jerks in the world who don’t care how they hurt people. You need to tell people not to touch any of your genitals until you are grown and ready to handle that.

That is what they know about sex. I’m not entirely sure they understand that a penis goes in a vagina. I’m not sure that is uhhh part of their consciousness. But mating = babies is well established for Shanna; Calli seems to be able to understand as well because she sees animals humping and she says, “Babies!”

Are they sheltered? They’ve never seen humans have sex (err, unless you count pre-homo sapiens on BBC documentaries…) and I don’t discuss my sex life.

I talk to my kids about general health and how for every activity you engage in there is potential risk. When you touch other humans there are a wide variety of illnesses or diseases that can be past around. That’s why we wash our hands a lot. Mostly you would just pass colds or flus but there are other diseases to worry about.

Calli has gotten a cold sore. (We share cups and I have herpes. I’m struggling with my guilt.) We talk about herpes. We talk about what having a virus permanently in your body means. We talk about how things like herpes can live on other parts of your body (I didn’t actually mention genitals… yet) so once you have it you have to be a bit more careful with your mouth.

I’m talking more and more about personal space bubbles in general. How do we act appropriately towards other peoples’ bodies. I’ve been talking about hitting stuff since they were a few months old (I had no expectation it would stick).

Apparently for other people “being sheltered” means “being ignorant”. To me that seems very dangerous and counter productive. Do you want your kids to be able to keep themselves safe or not? Unless you plan to follow them for the rest of their lives and control everything they do… uhm… I can’t see how ignorance is a good plan.

It isn’t about “bad things could happen”. It is more about having the ability to understand that decisions happen in a larger context. I understand that my kids are pre-rational and they are literally not capable of considering these things on their own at this point. I don’t expect them to do so. Instead, I shelter them and I share my inside voice so they can hear what decision making processes look like.

I watch my kids intensely when we are around other people. I stare less when we are at home. That’s on purpose. I want my kids to be able to exist without requiring attention 24/7. That takes practice. I say, “Right now you need to meet your own needs because I am not able to do what you want.”

I believe with all my heart and soul that it will be my fault if my children reach adulthood unprepared for the things that they will find. Sex, drugs, education, finding a job, making money–these are all things that I believe I have to prepare them for doing.

My approach to sex education largely revolves around the idea that sex is an awesome activity that pretty much all humans are interested in to at least some degree (I have explicitly stated a few times “Sometimes some people are never interested in sex and that is ok too.”) and unfortunately there is a lot to know before you can make safe choices. You have to know how to keep your body and your heart safe. Then go have fun.

I’m not getting into nitty gritty. I don’t intend to talk to my kids about oral or anal sex in the next decade or so. Eventually I will probably say something to the effect of “Sex counts no matter which part of your body it involves–your vagina is not the be-all-end-all” and then I don’t think I will say much more. I don’t want to get into it with my kids. That feels like my line. And I’m not bringing those things up pre-puberty. Pre-puberty all I need to talk about is “sex makes babies so if you aren’t ready to devote your life to another human being you aren’t ready for sex. And when you are too small you can cause permanent physical damage–just wait till your body is ready.”

I do not believe that keeping children in ignorance prepares them for the world. I think it is extremely dangerous. I think that ignorance leads to the inability to keep yourself safe. I’ve seen that a lot.

Most of the people I know who have been the most extreme victims of abuse and rape were very ignorant. They had no ability to detect signs that danger was coming.

That will not be happening to my children.

There will not be any chance on this whole fucking planet for people to groom my unknowing children. Just no. I will g-d damn shelter them while that is appropriate and I will consciously teach them what to look for after that.

I cannot behave any other way in good conscious. I don’t believe we live in an easy or safe world. I believe the world isn’t much more dangerous than it used to be–I think the dangers are shifting more than becoming greater or smaller.

I also know a lot of people who were taught how to be safe. Their parents didn’t use my techniques (totally cool and all–I am not using the One True Way) but they did teach them enough.

If I knew what that enough was I might do that instead of my path but I don’t. I think that part of that path is having parents who instinctively keep themselves safe and they unconsciously pass on those instincts/preferences. I lack the instincts. I have to do all of this consciously. So that’s all I can teach.

I think that what I’m trying to do is pass on as few taboos as I can. There are a few taboos I pass on whole-heartedly (incest, animals, adult/child sex) and beyond that I’m trying to avoid telling my kids that people are bad for being into whatever they are into. I spend a lot of time saying, “It’s not my thing but it’s cool that other people like it.” That applies to food, music, clothes, movies, and eventually… sex. People are allowed to like what they like.

People arrive at wherever they get to because of a complex mix of physiological, psychological, and environmental factors. Who the fuck am I to judge what their life created?

I’m no one. That’s who.

I get to judge for me. I get to shelter my kids for a little while. I get to carefully present the world to them for a few years because I am blessed with enormous privilege. I am able to keep my kids safe. That is not a privilege that everyone has.

It is interesting when I run across the idea that being sheltered means being ignorant. That makes me shiver with fear. Oh god oh god oh god.

It isn’t just that “bad things could happen”. It is “you will not be equipped to make decisions you will have to make.” Everyone has to make mistakes. Everyone has to try things out that aren’t going to work. I’m not trying to prevent my kids from ever having a bad experience–that’s not my goal. I couldn’t and wouldn’t strive for that as a life experience.

If what I am doing works (cross your fingers) then my children will be able to pick their risks with their eyes wide open. I don’t know which risks they should take. They will have to take risks. I don’t want them taking stupid risks out of ignorance. I want them taking smart risks out of deliberate decision making.

But it’s a process. They won’t be like that at 17 and I can’t feel like a failure. No one can at 17. Your brain isn’t there yet. I’ll have to keep my fucking mouth shut as they make a whole series of stupid mistakes.

My goal is that my children will not understand that they are working within a frame until they are adults and then they will probably at some point notice that other people lack the frame. Hopefully they will be glad it is just there for them.

That’s my goal. I don’t know if it will work or not. I have no crystal ball and sometimes that really pisses me off.

Oh man breaks are awesome.

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I am enjoying the fuck out of this time off. I am relishing it. If it were a pile of money I would take all my clothes off and rub it all over my body. It’s awesome. Being not-in-charge is intoxicating.

I spent a while today talking to a friend who is Not Having Children. (Go her.) She talked about appreciating the spontaneity of her life. I felt some envy. But not for one minute do I wish my children away. I just like breaks.

I appreciate that despite my flailing and being generally obnoxious I have really good friends. Even the people who “disappoint me” aren’t doing much wrong. They are doing what they have to do to take care of themselves. I respect that. I can still be hurting even while I’m glad you are taking care of you.

Somehow things will work out.

When I talk to other people with PTSD it is very common to hear that none of them want to plan anything for the future. They don’t believe they will have a future. There will be no lessoning of symptoms. No peace.

It’s kind of funny, even in the midst of my hand-wringing ohgodohgodohgod anxiety I am (at least occasionally) able to stop and take a deep breath and recognize that this moment sucks but they won’t all suck.

When my therapist works on EMDR stuff and she has me think very consciously about my children as they wake up in the morning. I am very lucky and more mornings than not I get to climb into bed with my kids and look at their beautiful faces as they wake up. They both light up the minute they see me. They are so excited to see me.

Not every moment sucks. Some moments take my breath away with joy.

I like breaks because I have a chance to process my anxiety and stop and think “I miss my babies.” When they are ALWAYS here I never miss them and that’s hard. Absence makes the heart grow fonder… or some shit.

I’m think think thinking about how I am going to get through next year. I will have to get a handle on my anxiety. Good luck. I will have to stop screaming. No really. All four of us need to sit down and have a “family meeting” about this. We need to figure out what kind of loss of privilege is appropriate for all four of us because each and every one of us has to do this.

We love each other too much to keep treating one another this way. We can do better.

I probably won’t socialize very much with grown ups. Luckily grown ups are able to sustain relationships through large gaps. Kids can’t really do that. I need to save all my spoons for managing my body and my family. Even if that bothers me. Even if I feel boring or bored or whatever.

I know that despite this existential loneliness I feel I am not alone. I know that I am loved. I know that many of the people who love me are not able to see me very often and that doesn’t change the fact that they love me.

Do you know that I sit here and go through name rosters in my head and love you? That is what I have learned to do to combat the attachment issues. If I don’t do this… I forget. When I run into someone I haven’t thought about in a long time I feel no emotion towards them at all. I have to rehearse and remind myself of my love. Even when I’m mad at you. Even when I’d like to chew you out for something. You are still on the list and I consciously think about how much I love you. I have to or I would forget. That’s part of how it works for me. I have to try hard to keep loving you. I think you are worth it. I am willing to spend time nearly every day whispering all the names of the people I love.

Thank you so much for loving me. I don’t feel worthy but I will do my best. I am so sorry for all the difficulty I cause. I’m sorry for all the distress I cause.

I don’t want to be invisible. And this is just the ride I’m on.

bitterness and “family”

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I have an unusual amount of hostility towards the concept of family. I understand very well that family is not just made up of blood and dna. Family is about showing up consistently and keeping commitments.

I have a lot of expectations about family.That’s my problem.

When people occasionally say things like, “I could stay with you for a holiday because I don’t have to visit my family this year” I know I am not family. Even though they might extensively (when it is convenient) talk about how I am chosen family. No I’m not family. You leave me behind when you go back to your family.

I suppose most people are used to having a “mothers side” and the “fathers side” and they don’t cross pollinate much so it makes sense that people think they can have me as “family” even though I am not integrated in any way with anyone else in their family. Noah has a great aunt who doesn’t talk to any of the relatives who live within walking distance of her house.

I grew up with my Auntie living in a house full of my family. They were my family. They were there. They didn’t take care of me much and mostly they hated me but they were actually there. I don’t even know how to describe what makes it so different. My “cousins” were related neither by blood nor marriage (though my cousin and their mom finally got married a couple years ago after more than twenty years together so now we are related by marriage).

They were around. I ate my meals with them. I talked to them. I dealt with problems with them. I didn’t like them and they didn’t like me but that is life. It doesn’t matter if you like your family you show up and do things to help them anyway. When I had spare weekends it was expected by my entire family that I would spend them at my sister’s house cleaning because she needed help. Family just shows up to make sure you don’t fail because you are too weak to handle everything alone. Family doesn’t need to be invited. They are just there.

Outside of registering for a school at some point I am pretty sure I will never again ask anyone for any kind of long term commitment to my kids. That hasn’t gone so well. It goes well until people are out of spoons and then my kids get dropped. Their needs aren’t truly “mandatory” for these other people, just me. I’m the only family my kids have. I’m the only one who will just show up and make sure they have what they are supposed to have.

I feel very sad about that.

It feels like it is all my fault. If I hadn’t been such a needy piece of shit…

Dude, my needs are nothing compared to the needs my sister had as a parent. She had aunts, uncles, her mother, and her siblings all show up constantly because she needed help. My sister didn’t spend a lot of time dealing with the problems in her life because there were always people there trying to help.

I’m not saying I’m looking for codependence. I think I have alienated enough people by not wanting their help that the door couldn’t even be opened for me at this point.

But I notice that when people are having a hard time with meeting their life obligations they are absolutely ok with just dropping the commitment to my kids. They weren’t the idiots stupid enough to get knocked up. This is my problem.

People have to put their own oxygen mask on first. I get it. But I’m sitting in a row where I’m the only one available to help my kids. So maybe I’ll get mine on first and maybe I’ll make sure my kids are ok first. Because if I don’t take care of them no one will. I am thoroughly ok with the idea of them surviving and having to navigate the world without me over the idea of me living and them dying. Oh fuck no. I won’t save me first. I wouldn’t be able to live with the loss.

I’m very scared because we need to update the custody paperwork stuff with our lawyer. One person who was supposed to be a point person for our estate up and moved to the East Coast and we don’t really speak any more. One person no longer speaks to me because she didn’t like what I had to say about her family in the first book. (Fair enough.) And the other folks are just getting… busy. They aren’t available any more. Sorry.

But if I want to call and chat that would be ok.

Wait… you gave me a lifelong commitment that you are now backing out on and you think I could call you to chat for emotional support?!

I’m sorry, have we met? I’m Krissy Gibbs. I have severe trust issues and if you don’t jump my hurdles then no we will never be having intimate chats about my personal problems. I can write them on the internet for anyone at all to see–that’s different.

I only sit down for intense one on one conversations when the person has shown a pattern of showing up for commitments and prioritizing me in their personal life. Prioritizing my kids is awesome and I’m grateful but it is different from prioritizing me. There aren’t many people in this whole world I have sat down and actually talked about my issues with.

People can’t handle it and I’m not going to open myself up for more rejection from someone who is already in the process of rejecting me. I’m not stupid.

I have to keep this train running. Whether any one else wants to help or not. That means that I can’t lean outside my comfort zone for something that for someone else would be support and for me just creates more stress.

I support other people managing their boundaries with me. By all means push me away when I get intense. (But do people really have to keep telling me, “I stopped reading your blog. It’s too intense.” Do you not understand that my assumption is that people don’t want to read it and I am shocked by the people who continue to keep up? You don’t need to tell me. That was already what I assumed.)

“Here confide your sadness and lack of coping skills while I flip you off with both hands the whole time.”

Err, I’ll pass. Thanks. I don’t exactly feel like I have a warm and fuzzy welcome.

I’m scared of the future. I feel it was inappropriate for me to have children because I have no where for them to go where they are actually wanted and safe if something happened to me. They have their choice of abusive biological families or my friends who don’t really want them. Some of my friends would do it if it meant keeping them from being abused but they don’t want them. And the joint custody stage is just over.

I’ll adapt. I always do.

Sometimes I draw great comfort from the fact that whatever things happen to me at this point–no matter how unfortunate they might be–I have been through worse and I ended up on top. I will continue to reinvent myself to be whatever I need to be.

Yeah, I will always have rocky periods. I will always struggle with general self-worth, I’m afraid. But I will keep going and I will keep changing whatever I need to change about myself in order to meet the carefully very small list of things I have agreed to do.

Under promise and over deliver. That’s my motto.

I have a great network though. And talking about my issues with the word “family” is probably pretty alienating. There have been a fair number of people who have told me they consider me “family”. My response, “Really? And just how many of your “family” functions have I been at? None. Yeah. We aren’t family.”

We are friends. We can be tribe. I love the word tribe. We can be contacts. We can be a network. We can be part of a community together.

I love and respect you and think you are doing as well by me as you should be to some random friend. But you don’t treat me like family and don’t demean me and your family by conflating the two.

Friends share what they have left over. Family keeps giving whether they have “extra” or not.

My aunt didn’t take me in to live with her because she had extra spoons. That was not a woman who had a spare *anything* in her life. She took me in any way. Even though I was violent and reactive and difficult and I acted out sexually all over the place. She let me live with her until *I* left. She never asked me to leave. Auntie never withdrew her support. That was all me.

When Auntie was sick she fucking got out of bed and took care of everyone anyway. That’s what you do. (As I got older I sent her back to bed and I did her chores. Because that is also what you do.)

It is hard feeling simultaneous gratitude for what people have given me and sadness that they are done. It is hard dealing with the bitterness of being told I’m family and watching as I’m dropped. That’s what you do with friends when you want to do the slow fade because you don’t have the ovaries to say, “I want to end this relationship because I can’t handle how crazy you are.”

Fair point. No one needs to handle how crazy I am. I get it. I’m sorry I have impacted you so negatively. Please take care of yourself.

I need to stop looking around me for the help that will not come. I’m it. Whatever will be rests on my shoulders.

I don’t feel bitter about that. I feel kind of sad. I had quite a group of people I used to spend a lot of time with. I was told adamantly how they would all “be there for me” when I had kids.

Don’t listen to what people say. Look at what they do. Many of my friends are faaaaaabulous occasional babysitters and they’ve made very careful sure that they never even hinted at being available for more than that. They are under promising. I could probably ask for more help in an emergency but they haven’t promised me a god damn thing because they are smart.

I think that my fascist attachment to “but you promised!” probably makes people feel bad. They meant it when they promised it but they didn’t understand what they were actually promising. They meant it for a while and then life circumstances changed and they can’t handle it any more. There is probably at least some piece of shame or inadequacy or disappointment or sadness or something in there. When folks have those kinds of feelings the standard response is to look around and see who you can blame for them. I kind of assume that’ll be me. I shouldn’t remember and hold people to promises. They didn’t really mean it and I’m being a control freak asshole by bringing it up.

Geez. Don’t I understand that they are just available when they have nothing better to do? Geez.

Raising kids is hard. It doesn’t wait until you have nothing better to do. It is the better thing you have to do.

I can no longer plan my life around the idea of having breaks provided by other people. Well, I can hire the neighborhood kid for babysitting. I’m going to be doing more of that. That is one of the only options that is close to within my control. But I won’t think of it as a big break either. It’s an hour or two off at a time so I don’t lose my fucking mind.

“I can see you are struggling and I don’t want to watch.”

Story of my fucking life.

You know what? For all of my struggling I’m still here. I’m not dead yet. I may swear a lot but I don’t hit people any more. I have completed life phases successfully. I have set a lot of goals and met them. I have done what I have said I would do.

The next thing I need to do is get a handle on the yelling in this house. I’ll do it. I’ll find a way. I can’t handle that as a trigger any more, not without anxiety medication.

I sat Shanna down and started talking to her about what coming off the medication means and that I am doing it right now.

“A long time ago–way before you were born–stuff happened to me that kind of changed the chemicals in my brain. I get TOO angry. I get TOO sad and I have a hard time calming down. This is not your fault at all in any way. It is just how my brain works. It is really hard for me to have patience. You know the medicine I take? That medicine gives me more patience and helps me not feel so angry or so sad. It has helped me to be patient while you were a baby and you just flat needed my patience. But every medication is good and bad at the same time. This medicine is hard on my body in some ways that aren’t good for me in the long run. I can’t take it for the rest of my life. I have to come off it. It’s going to be hard to adjust as I have less patience and I feel more angry and more sad but we will have to find a way. Step one: no really you can’t scream in my face any more. I’m afraid I will hit you out of reflex because I am no longer taking a medication that gives me extra pause. Hitting is wrong and I don’t believe it will ever be ok to hit you. We can’t do this screaming any more. Stuff has to change.”

So I’m reading up on screaming in children and adults. I will make plans upon plans. I have to eliminate the screaming. I’m going to break every wall in the house if we don’t.

It will all be ok in the end. If it’s not ok, it’s not the end.

This book hurts my heart.

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Reading about predators makes me feel scared. I’m that good at lying. I could get away with so much.

But the main take away is: if your children ever in any way shape or form come to you with complaints about an adult touching them in a way that makes them feel vaguely uncomfortable take your kid’s side. Fuck every other person in the whole world. Believe your kid.

The rate of false reports is somewhere between 1-3%. The rate of successfully prosecuted rapists is below 3%.

I’m having a lot of feelings about my father as I read this. I have no way of guessing his total number of victims. I wish he was alive and in prison so I could ask. I know about half a dozen or so. Two of my siblings (three including me), his two sisters, the two daughters of that girlfriend he had, and he spent years raping my mom.

Always err on the side of believing a victim. Please. Please. Please. Most people who molest children molest dozens or hundreds of people. Don’t ignore little warning signs or inconsistencies from adults. Don’t think that someone looks trustworthy. People thought my father was an upstanding citizens. He coached fucking Little League. I wonder what he did to those kids.

Apparently religious parents who think the world is a good place are way easier to fool than any other kind of parent. Don’t trust people too much. Please. Sure, you can be a mostly positive person–you have to have the deep seated understanding that even if more than 80% of people are good there are bad people. In this country people have a 69% chance of having some major trauma effect their life. Please don’t believe everything is fine and bad things only happen to other families.

The main thing that differentiates me from true predators is my compulsive desire to come to the internet and confess every wrong thing I do or think. No DA would have trouble making a case against me if I actually did illegal shit. I would write stories about all of it.

This is how I stay honest with myself. If I can’t admit it on the internet I can’t do it.

On that note, given that I’m trying not to have pot I may have a drink today. Later folks. My arms hurt. I’m having waves of anxiety. I feel scared, helpless, and like the world is truly terrifying.

Luckily I don’t always feel this way.

Why do I record these things? Because sometimes my friends tell me, “There was this suspicious thing in my life and because of you I took it seriously and dealt with it.” Or “Someone in my life was raped and I helped her find resources because of the things I learned from you.”

The effects of early childhood sexual assault don’t go away. Why do I still write about it? Because I still have waves of anxiety attacks when nothing in my whole life is going wrong. Because writing is better than cutting. Because writing is better than doing a lot more drugs. Because writing is better than compulsively saying these things in front of my children.

Because I still deal with it almost every day.

Clear your head.

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I think it is a good thing that Noah and I are planning to hibernate for about a week. Both of us are getting tetchy and short-tempered even about things that don’t usually bother us. Not optimal.

I think that next Christmas I will buy fewer gifts for my kids. I have a hard time with being buried under the avalanche of kind gifts from friends. It is a double edged sword. Other people show my children love through gift giving–it is a fine old tradition. My kids don’t notice what comes from me as a result. Nothing I do feels special to them because it is eclipsed by the nice things from other people.

I don’t think I should continue this gift-giving-love-language thing. I feel sad that nothing I do seems special to them. They have an embarrassment of riches. I don’t want to encourage anyone else to stop (often the gift giving is a large part of the relationship and my kids NEED relationships with other people) but I need to handle my feelings.

The friend who was over sat here and criticized me for not getting enough presents and he was very critical that I didn’t give the kids clothes for Christmas. “But that is part of the process!”

Uhm, my kids are sent boxes of hand made clothes from their grandmother. Nothing I do is going to make a dent next to that. So I don’t waste my time and money trying. He spent a bunch of time telling me how that wasn’t really good enough because I’m not giving the kids what they want. I just… I don’t even know how to respond. Fine. I’m not doing it right. How dare I not give my kids clothes when they have no room in their closet or drawers. I am such a bad parent.

The more presents the kids unwrap on Christmas the more screaming happens. There are never “enough” and yet the kids struggle with feeling overwhelmed. “That’s MY toy.” Dude. There were two identical ones. You don’t even know for sure that the one in your hand came with your name on it. Truly this does not require screaming.

Overall it was a nice day. I think the kids were very normal and fine. I just…

Sometimes I think that “happiness” is the awareness of non-suffering. If you aren’t aware of your lack of suffering you don’t feel happiness.

I am not suffering right now. Is that the same thing as happiness? I’m not sure. I feel tense. My hands are shaking and my belly is cramping. I still know that I will have a good day.

Partially the hand shaking bit is that I have been slowly coming off the pot. Less and less each day. Yesterday was nearly non-medicated. I am growing more afraid of the pain I feel in my body. I’ve been masking it for a long time. Dealing with it as a full-effect-affront is really hard. It steals my spoons away from every other emotional use.

But I will continue. Maybe happiness isn’t about the lack of suffering. Maybe happiness has to be orthogonal to the suffering. Maybe you have to figure out how to be happy *while* suffering.

I am grateful right now, this minute that I get to have the life I have. Today I will get to see my wonderful daughters and my very kind husband. Today I will get to relax and slowly putter on housework (The house is actually quite tidy) and play with the kids.

I notice that part of my shiver–part of the constant feeling of wrongness is the feeling that I’m doing it wrong if no one is there watching me to tell me I’m doing it right. I am not good at giving myself approval for what I do. My approval is worthless. Really less than worthless. If I think I am doing right then I shake with terror that I must be lying to myself.

But I *am* doing what I want to do. Is it “right”? Who decides? Is there a universal standard? First: pick a country, religion, race, and socio-economic setting. Then maybe you can decide what is right or not. But then you get into things like “Some people are temperamentally suited to being a stay at home parent and some people aren’t–regardless of gender.”

So there is no right. There is just what you do.

I love people so much. I love my kids. I love my husband. I love my friends. Some times I feel like I will drown in the waves of emotion. I feel so overwhelmed. I don’t know how to handle these feelings. I feel… unfamiliar with this process. I should get mean and drive people away because at least then I will feel more comfortable. I will be alone, which is what I’m used to anyway.

But I love them so much. I don’t want to hurt them. These feelings are confusing and hard and overwhelming but so what? They just are. Just go with it.

Love people. Do your best. Try to be kind. I’m reading about predators and I’m reminded over and over “Nice is not a personality trait–it is a behavioral choice. The most terrible of people are often extremely nice.”

If what I want from my life is to have impact on people in a positive way it has nothing to do with how I feel. That has to be pretty much irrelevant.

I think part of the emotional fraught-ness right this minute is this continual feeling of having people be missing. I miss my family. I miss my mother. I miss my sister. I miss my Auntie. I miss my niece and nephew. I try to replace them with other people who love me and it just isn’t the same. I feel guilty for the fact that the love of my friends does not obliterate this ache. I feel ungrateful and bad.

But I won’t scream today. I will be kind. I will be gentle and loving. I will make sure that other people don’t have the same holes inside of them. That’s all I can do with this day.

Sensitivity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But you pick your priority list and you go with it. You do the best you can. If I am making this particular person feel anything other than welcome and like (s)he belongs then I need to change something.

And at the same time I don’t want to start inviting people to my parties or not based on race. But what if inviting more people who are not white and *not* inviting so many white people is the only way to make some people comfortable.

It’s true and valid. Just like some women will never be comfortable interacting with some of my male friends and I have to decide who to invite because I can have one person or the other.

First I will eventually stop pontificating and I will ask my friend for feedback after these blog entries have been read. I’m sure this person will come up with something to say. That’s usually something I can count on. Lots of opinions from that one.

I think that as a white person it is never ok for me to just default to “I’m ok and you have the problem”. That is just not an acceptable starting position. Beyond that I really struggle with knowing what the next right step is.

I have a limited amount of control over who shows up at my parties and I have even less control over the feelings of the people who come.

But I want to be sensitive to the idea that I could do something better. I could make people feel more comfortable if I tweaked ______.

Yes, my dear blacksheep, part of it is learning to care less and be more like a honey badger. I’m not sure that I am that kind of girl, you know? I’ve been taking apathy enhancement drugs for years now. I still care too much. I still care so much I can barely breathe sometimes.

I want the people I love to feel loved and supported and like I think the world (and this room) is a better place when they are in it. If I am communicating something else then I need to work on that.

It is hard to nudge people in the direction of feeling loved when you are as basically hostile as I am. I cause people to feel unsafe and nervous. I get it.

It’s kind of like my continued fondness for a man who has been blacklisted from all of the local events. He’s a predator. I still like him. I understand him and have compassion for him and I know how to play his game like a pro. The other women I know just want to pretend he doesn’t exist because his game doesn’t work for them. He means well.

It doesn’t matter what you feel it matters how you make other people feel. The best predators know how to induce feelings of calm and safety in their prey. Sometimes I feel tremendous guilt for the attitude that just about everyone in the world is prey and I’m a mean and nasty predator.

Only there isn’t much I want from people these days. I’m not hunting for anything other than positive regard. I don’t want to be anyone’s favorite (well, other than Noah) but I want people to think I am basically a net positive for the world.

I want people to think that talking to me makes them feel good about themselves. I want to help people to feel brave about making choices. I want to help people feel like they can stand up for themselves.

If I’m making you feel like a token, tell me so. If I make you feel like you are just something on a checklist “Make a friend who is brown” then I am not making you feel like you are important. I’m failing to do the stuff that is so important to me.

I need that feedback. Without being told that my current approach is failing it is hard for me to know.

It is hard hearing criticism. I won’t lie. I’m obviously very defensive.

(I still had a wonderful party and I don’t feel like this is a depressing/bad train of thoughts. I’m nervous and a little sad but I still have a lot of happy endorphins from seeing so many people. I talked to a lot of people and didn’t freak out so I’m proud of myself.)

But if you want to be consciously anti-racist you have to look at what that means. If you are not part of the solution you are part of the precipitate.

Don’t quit. Don’t decide you are obviously a worthless bad person because someone had enough feelings to make a joke. But think about what you will do differently next time to encourage more people to feel more comfortable.

Progress. Not perfection. Keep trying. That’s the whole point of life.

Ok, stomach… get ready.

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It’s the day! Almost our last social obligation of the year. I’m excited. We aren’t leaving the house between Christmas and New Years.

It is weird how anxiety works. I’m looking forward to seeing people but man my stomach hurts.

At the home school holiday party I said, “Man I’m whiny today. I’m sorry.” Another mother countered with, “How is that different from any other day?” I don’t think I will speak when that person is standing within 10′ of me any more.

This is the kind of thing I over react to. Ok, if I’m that unpleasant then I will work hard to make sure you don’t have to acknowledge that I exist any more.

But she didn’t say I was awful. She said I was whiny. This is a true statement. I am.

Sometimes Noah asks why I don’t punish the kids for whining. Because I don’t punish for things I model. That’s just how it rolls in this house.

There was also a noticeable amount of discussion as to how sad it was that a certain blog reader and 3/5 of her kids weren’t there. (We never get the other 2/5.) I told people that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a rejection of the group for being sucky. Spoons can only stretch to cover so many activities.

Part of what I like about hosting events is I get to introduce my friends to one another. I know really neat people.

2013 has been one of the best, most stable years of my entire life. If I can’t get my anxiety under control under these circumstances I’m fucked.

I often go back and forth in my head, “My friends deserve to know me sober. Because being sober is always superior to being a loser drug addict. But wait! You are talking like a schizophrenic about to stop taking their meds. Maybe this is a bad plan.”

Don’t worry. I won’t try to do this sober. I haven’t been practicing enough to do an event of this size alone yet. I would spend the party in my bedroom crying and shaking if I tried.

That feels really pathetic. God I’m a loser. Bravery isn’t about feeling no fear. It is about performing to spec no matter how terrified you are. Having a holiday party shouldn’t be terrifying but it is.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter what “should” be true. It matters what is.

I’m going to have to spend pretty much all of next year working on being able to do this sober. I’m going to have to be able to handle any size of crowd unassisted before 2015 or I can’t take the kids on the road trip. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.

Tomorrow. I’ll work on that tomorrow. Next year. All of next year. Not today.

Sometimes I feel guilty when I say “not today–I’ll do that later.” My only consolation is I do usually get around to doing it… or it wasn’t important to begin with.

It is nice to see that I do the things I say I will. Not every single thing–I don’t make that many promises on purpose. I have to figure out sober again.

I used to be sober. I managed my PTSD without meds for most of my life. It has meant a lot of isolating in order to calm my ambient stress. I don’t get that now that I have kids.

I have to teach them to be part of my lower stress or I’m fucked. This sounds hard and scary.

Bravery doesn’t mean never feeling scared. It means you keep your ass moving even when you are scared. I can do that. I can keep moving.

I think today will be fun. I think I will be glad I did it even though it creates stress too.

I thanked Noah and the kids for helping me clean the house. I told them that it is important to me to once in a while have a clean house and a party and I appreciate that they did work towards that even if it isn’t important to them.

I was only an asshole about the cleaning for maybe 10 hours total and it wasn’t all yesterday it was over a week. That’s not great but it isn’t as bad as it could be.

In my head I have this tally sheet. I know how harsh I have seen some mothers be. I’m not on the harsh end of what I have seen. I have seen some seriously brutal people though. I like being on the nicer end of the scale. I don’t even know why I want it so bad but I do.

If I can’t get my kids to cooperate by being nice to them then I think the cooperation I get through being an asshole is suboptimal. Sometimes I’m a fucking self absorbed asshole and I do it. I try really hard to avoid it though.

Life involves work. I need my kids to not be the kind of people who sit back and watch while work is being done. I need for them to be the kind of people who say, “There is work to be done? Where do I start?”

I very consciously don’t give them much bullshit work day-in/day-out through the year. I really don’t have a lot of make work. I don’t make them live in a perfectly clean house all the time (ha!). I enforce daily teeth cleaning, underwear changing, and they have to set the table for meals. That’s what I really enforce on a daily basis.

I need for them to grow up in an atmosphere where it is fine to not do much most of the time and sometimes you have to chip in. You just do.

I don’t know how to inspire this very well though. I always resort to bullying and crying at some point. It’s pretty fucking lame. I try to recognize when I am bullying, retract the statement and walk away. “I should not have said that. I’m sorry I was such a jerk.” Usually that comes in the form of a threat to throw away anything that isn’t picked up. It’s not a cool threat. I’m an asshole for saying it. Just because I feel it that doesn’t excuse me saying it.

I tried really hard to not fuss at the kids. I wasn’t fully successful but I tried. I need to try harder. It isn’t their fault I want things. I try to let them know, “There isn’t a good reason I want this. I just want it. Will you please help me?” Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It is hard to manage my emotional reaction to being turned down.

Right now it is part of that whole, “If I do not know the answer will be ‘yes’ then I don’t have the spoons to ask for help” problem. I get into these cycles. As the people I live with the kids have to deal with the results of what happens when I can’t handle a no and I get one any way. Mostly I go in my room and shut the door and cry.

Which makes me feel like a manipulative piece of shit.

I try to not-react as much as possible. I know that I’m supposed to maintain a neutral state over here on my own but I’m shite at that. I’m trying.

Like the woman letting me know that I whine every day. Oh. Shit. Ok I guess the solution is to just stop talking. I don’t know what else to do.

I don’t think I can stop talking entirely. That would kill me. But I can make sure I don’t bother you any more. I’m sorry my existence is such a trial to you. I’m not even being sarcastic. I am annoying. I’m sorry. I don’t really know how to change that I am this difficult.

Some people are easier than others. I don’t even just mean the sex. Not that I’ve been easy to have sex with lately. Poor Noah. Our sleep cycles are totally out of alignment and we’re tired and over-committed and having kids is an impediment. Life happens.

This phase isn’t permanent–right?

Just keep moving. If you are still alive there is always a chance that things will change. If you want things to be different, just keep moving. Just because I can’t do something today that means nothing about ten years from now.

Right now I can’t play any musical instrument. That could change. I don’t sew. Some day I might. Right now Noah thinks there is no chance he will ever be a distance runner. It’s not his favorite. But if he wants to keep eating cookies with me at the rate we are going through them… I think it could happen.

If he wants to have a long, sex-filled life with me we will have to do some more exercise. I’m told it is good for you. We have no physical disabilities so we don’t have good excuses. (There are good reasons some people can’t run. I’m not acting like this is universally applicable…)

I have a lot of time ahead of me. I can figure out how to do a lot of things. I read something cool this morning about how great artists often go through big revivals in their 80’s.

I have spent most of my life believing I would die fairly young. But if I want to find out what Shanna is like on her 60th birthday I have to not die until well into my 80’s. I should plan for that. I should consciously try to get there. I should work at it. And then Calli is even two years behind that.

I want to see what their lives will be like. I don’t want to just witness their childhood and feel sad all the time that no one loved me as a child.

What will they do with their adulthoods? How will they inspire me? I’m sure they will.

Just keep moving. Keep introducing them to interesting people. I know so many neat people. I know people who do the fucking coolest stuff. I like basking in their glow. I like getting to be an audience. I should stay alive and keep doing that.

Today I will manage my anxiety and see friends. My kids will get to see a lot of different kinds of people. It is rare that I cross the streams like this. Home schoolers, perverts, geeks, and dancers. Who knows what the results will be like. I think everyone will be child-appropriate. I think people will be polite and wonderful. I think that sometimes questions will be answered in surprising ways. That’s for the best.

It takes all kinds in this world. My friends are Christians, Jews, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, and pagans. I don’t have any friends who are practicing Muslims but it’s not on purpose. At least no one has chosen to share with me that they follow that religion.

I thought about name tags. “Hi my name is ________. I know Krissy/Noah through ___________.” That would be awesome for me. I would enjoy how people self-identify. Ha. “Burning Man. Uhhhh…. that’s it…. I know them through Burning Man.” Not that I (Krissy) have gone. But I know a lot of Burners. And many people that I think of in other categories would probably self-identify our friendship that way because it sounds more child safe.

I’m not going to put anyone more on the spot than I have to. Not today. I don’t have the spoons to manage.

It will be a good day. Time to stop typing.

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I didn’t write yesterday because I could have written the word “fuck once” and then just copy-n-pasted it two thousand times and called it good. I’m still catching up on sleep and being very underslept seems to exacerbate the swearing to the point where I literally have no control over it. It’s very socially awkward.

By the time we got on the final plane flight I was in a foul mood. We missed our last connection. We didn’t go to Oakland like planned. We got mercifully placed on a flight to SFO instead of getting stuck in Utah. THANK ALL THE GODS IN THE WORLD. I’ve been in Utah for extended periods before. When I am that underslept and grumpy I just don’t have it in me to be the kind of nice they need from people. Oh man.

I had an angelic friend pick us from the airport and we got the car the next day. All’s well that ends well.

I woke up yesterday in a foul mood. I did get a bit of extra sleep but not close to enough (I got a bit extra last night too but in the previous 7 day period I was down almost two full nights of sleep). I told the kids they had three choices for the day: play in the back yard, play in the play room, or help me clean. I do not have the patience or the kind voice to allow you to play in the living room while I am trying to get the front part of the house cleaned up after the gingerbread house event.

Sometimes I genuinely don’t mind them making the mess bigger AS I clean. Sometimes I will scream like an evil harpy and we will all be sorry. After I cleaned up the bonus mess they made in the kitchen while I was stupid enough to be in my room for a while (whipped cream, granulated sugar, and milk all over the floor–Shanna will be a great cook someday) the day went better. That was their last bonus mess of the day. [For the record, making a huge mess in the play room doesn’t count as making the mess worse. That is their space. I defend my right to walk through the main areas of my house without breaking my ankle.)

A girl has to have standards. I enforced them with only moderate raising of voice and a lot of raising of eyebrows as I calmly repeated the three options and pointed at the back door. All in all I call it a success. I didn’t get very far outside the kitchen, much to my sadness.

Apparently making that much gingerbread is… kind of stupid. I had to clean all the fronts of the cabinets and the walls because there was a sheen of sugar everywhere (most of it brown) and periodic chunks of cookie just hanging out on cabinet doors. I’m so glad the ants didn’t show up while I was in Texas. *phew* Usually they don’t give me this long of a grace period. Maybe they hate the cold too.

But my kitchen is clean and organized. Well, like 80% of the way there. Sometimes I am horrified by how much mess can occur in such a small space.

I also mopped the bathroom floor because, hey mop is out and the floor is nasty. W00t.

I should talk more about the Texas trip. A few pieces of my explanation confused people.

Noah has a mom and a dad, (duh) and one side has historical money (dad) and one side is a bunch of poor farmers and teachers (mom).

The rich great aunt with the many museum quality houses she owns is Noah’s dad’s sister. She’s never been married, never had kids. She has hobbies instead. She won’t send us any kind of letters, she flat told me she doesn’t bother to do those things. If we want to see her we have to come to her town. She won’t visit us. But she’s delightful when we show up.

I have some feelings about that kind of relationship. “You only want to know me if I spend many thousands of dollars to get to your house. Well I can just decide that doesn’t matter to me much.” But she is nice and funny and clever and neat to talk to. But she’s just so busy you know. She has quilts to make. Not useful quilts that go on beds. Small arty ones that go on walls. Because expressing herself is all that matters. Her community service is buying the historic houses and restoring them so rich people have a place to have tea parties. Hopefully a lot of my known class bias makes this paragraph have multiple readings for everyone who reads it. Ahem.

Whereas Noah’s mom’s family is… not so well off. Great Grandmother is a pistol. Hoo boy. No wonder she survived teaching all boys continuation school science for so many years. She’s got balls of solid rock. I would bet on her in a fight with a honey badger even if her eyesight is going.

GG (I’m not going to write out great grandmother every time) is the person we spent the most time with and I feel really good about that. She is the one working the hardest to have a relationship with the kids. We spent time with her on both days. She served us a wonderful breakfast the second day. She and the kids got along like a house on fire. That was such a beautiful love fest. These days she works with pre-k kids (she doesn’t have a large retirement so she is still working even though she is half blind) and she shared a whole bunch of the teaching material she has made. I was impressed by the sheer artistic value involved.

When she wants to teach the kids about the life cycle of plants she draws/paints pictures of the plant/seasons/people tending them that in the school. Every picture would be immediately recognizable to her students. It was beautifully tailored curriculum. She sends us stuff when she’s done with it and I go over it with the kids pretty carefully. She puts her soul into these things.

And now she is the *second* quilter. She makes useful blankets. She’s already made two small quilts for my kids. One for Shanna and one for Calli. Calli *loves* her orange blanket. Hardly anyone gives her orange/yellow and she prefers that to pink so this felt really special. Calli sleeps with it all the time. The new quilt GG is working on is so beautiful it deserves to be on a wall. It is a great grandmother’s fanciful interpretation of her two beautiful Cupcake Girls at play.

She let the girls paint the second day. The girls set up a huge “Enchanted forest” in her living room and she was so happy. She lives alone and not many people visit her because she doesn’t get along well with a lot of the family.

We also met GG’s son who is Noah’s mom’s brother. (I’m trying to be less confusing but I’m not sure I’m managing.) His whole family took us to the fried pickle place. They were polite but stranger polite. No one was even a hair rude. I have nothing negative to say. I felt like the visiting nanny but that is probably about as much about me as anything else.

It was a lovely dinner with lively conversation. GG was quiet–I think the ambient noise was too loud.

Noah’s brother came with his son. Watching the three kids play warmed my heart. They are all so happy to know that the others exist. There were a few arguments between my girls about whether the little boy was ONLY the cousin of one of them. I assured Calli that Shanna doesn’t get to decide that he only belongs to Shanna.

Noah and the girls went out to the compound on Sunday. Apparently the three kids mostly spent the time playing. Perfect. They swam in the (indoor, heated) pool and looked at the horses and played with the 5′ high dollhouse together.

I think that when we come through in 2015 we will spend most of the time with GG and the little cousin. Both of them promised lots of letters between now and then and I believe them. They have been happening so far.

I need to sit down and write some thank you’s very soon. Folks earned them from me. It was a good trip despite my anxiety.

I spent five hours sitting in a bar drinking mai tais and writing about sex. I actually had a great time. I don’t write that kind of stuff as much. It made me happy. I took some time to do some deep stretching because the bar was pretty empty before 12pm on a Sunday. Ha. I felt a lot better physically after that. I had some fun conversations with folks online–it was really nice, actually.

The ending of the trip was hard because I was out of spoons. It wasn’t anyone fault. Going more than 48 hours unmedicated at this point means that I am in a pretty ridiculous amount of pain and it is hard to be patient and keep my tone of voice under control in that state.

I didn’t do great but I didn’t do so badly I feel ashamed. I sat myself down next to Noah and he calmly listened to me list off how much I hate every passenger on an airplane who puts their tiny little laptop bag and coat in the upper compartment AS THE FUCKING FLIGHT ATTENDANT IS ANNOUNCING IT IS A FULL FLIGHT AND SUCH ITEMS MUST GO AT YOUR FEET BECAUSE WE WON’T HAVE ENOUGH ROOM YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.

But that was as close as I got to a blow up so I’m happy. Thank you for listening, Noah.

I don’t think Noah would have done as well without me there to just invisibly do a lot of work. I’m glad I went so the three of them could have a lower stress trip. I think it would have been a lot harder on the girls to not have me, even though I didn’t *do* that much directly with them.

It all worked out. Even though I arrived in Houston to realize, “Oh shit. I never made a rental car reservation and I didn’t make a hotel reservation.”

Thank goodness we are rich people who can throw money at problems. I am dreading my end of year mint breakdown. I did not stay within budget.

Uhm, we did spend less than he made. That’s what I’m holding on to to assuage my guilt. (And like, I’m putting all of the travel expense in the mental category of ‘Every few years Noah’s parents send us $10k or so… this was covered by one of those gifts’.)

I think this was the most positive experience I’ve ever had in Texas.

You know, this is why I had kids. They make everything better. My kids make me happy to be wherever I am because they are there and we can have fun no matter what else is going on. I am so grateful for Shanna and Calli.

I appreciated that everyone in his family told me over and over that they were impressed by how delightful my children are.

Children become what you tell them they are. If you tell them they are wonderful (while enforcing boundaries around inappropriate behavior) they will be wonderful. If you tell them they are monsters… you get what you deserve.

I model being considerate of them all day every day. As they get older I am being more demanding that they notice me in similar ways. (Age appropriate ways! I have books telling me what is ok! Lots and lots of cross referenced books because there are varying opinions and I wanted to know the range!)

Maybe my only complaint is that the family gave them a bunch of Christmas presents that are all for 8+ year old kids. I’m kind of annoyed by that. If I let the kids open them now, the family might as well have given the kids a baggie with sticks in it. It would be used the same way. I don’t want to open all the science kits while they are incapable of reading or having some idea what is going on with it. Right now it would just be towers and grain spills in a town as they dump all the chemicals on my table. Not really my idea of a good time. I’m good with letting them dump sand in the back yard.

So I will put them in storage for a bit. It’ll be fine.

Maybe when some of our fabulous big-kid friends come visit I can get a box out and the kids can work together. If I were more willing to micromanage I could show them how it works… but we don’t roll like that. We don’t have the kind of dynamic where I set up work that is way over their head and they “go through the motions”. We just don’t do that.

That’s busy work. I don’t do busy work. I’ve got enough work. So do you. Get hopping.

I think that for small children most of their “work” should be creative play with the items they are allowed access to all the time. Shanna comes up with cool shit. I’m not going to sit her down and force her step by step through something that is too mature for her to really understand anyway.

She’ll get to the point where she is drawn to doing it herself. With the stuff in the house she always has so far.

It is weird trusting her like this. Right now our science is life science and cooking. (Cooking is serious chemistry, yo.) I let her make big messes with spices learning about them. She’s allowed to create lots of things in the kitchen. (She’s rather talented. She can make scones, cookies, and cakes with only very minimal direction but no hands-on help from me.)

If you want to do something, do it. Don’t freaking sit there and yell at me to do it for you. I don’t play that way. I will leave the room and you can yell all by yourself.

Today is park day. I asked permission from the other families to come even though I am sick. The kids need to run so bad. One person sent me an SMS saying, “Yes, come!” No one else responded. I’ll take that as a yes.

Sore throat, coughing, sneezing, fever, runny nose… it’s like I was on a plane or something.

Today I will clean in the morning then go to the park. When we come home I will make dinner then hopefully get a bit more cleaning done.

Tomorrow is a clean/social/clean/social day. We have this holiday party coming up this weekend. I should probably finish putting away all of the in-progress crap I have sitting every where. UGH!

If I am a big douchebag and I didn’t send you an invitation to an open house this Sunday it was an oversight and not a slight. Poke me if you want to come over.

leaving on a jet plane

1 Reply

We leave our house for Texas in nine hours. I should probably go to Kaiser and refill my Ativan prescription today. That I can fly with. I’m very happy that I made 30 Ativan pills last six months. That’s about the correct rate of sleep assistance for me. (Last refill was the beginning of June.)

I slept for seven hours. That’s not enough after getting three hours the night before. I am SO VERY AWAKE.

The gingerbread house party deal was really awesome. Everyone had a lot of fun. The other moms were really proactive about jumping in and helping my kids during the actual construction of houses while I drifted around all spacey from lack of sleep. I really like the women I am spending time with in this home school group. I am progressively more “out” with all of them about a wide variety of topics. It is kind of weird how being out with them is making me feel more and less safe with them.

I feel more safe because so far I have gotten the opposite of rejection from all of them. They go out of their way to make sure I feel included and like my presence is a good thing in their lives. I could not possibly begin to express how impactful this is. They are not all “like me”. They are not tribe. They like me anyway. They think I have value. And they go out of their way to keep telling me that they want me around. That their kids FUCKING LOVE coming to my house. That feels so good. I’m not chasing everyone away. I’m not being bad.

I feel less safe because I’ve poured a lot of myself into them already. I am not as big a part of their lives as they are part of my life just because they have other people who take up space. They have families and churches and communities they have been part of for most of their lives.

I have a lot of level 3’s.

I love my level 3’s with all my heart and soul and I say prayers of thanks for them just about every day. I do not denigrate my level 3’s.

But it is very hard knowing that I have to be very careful all the time or I risk alienating people who are a huge part of my network. They don’t have to know they are a huge part of my network. I know.

I know that when I do things in my house I do it because I hope ____ will tell me I did the right thing. I know that when I respond to my kids I am actively channeling _____ because she is just plain better than me.

So the more I give of myself to this homeschooling group the more pain I am potentially opening myself up to in the future. That’s hard.

But I’m doing it anyway because this life thing goes better for most people than it has for me and I am responsible for providing this kind of environment for my children. It’s my job to work through my anxiety and provide them a community.

It is hard to once again feel like my experiences don’t matter. It does help that I know that my terror is irrational. My experience of being afraid when I am with home schoolers is not predicated on their behavior or attitudes. It is instead from my previous history with other people. I am trying hard not to project. I am trying to not believe that one personality quirk in common with someone who rejected me means that I will be rejected again. I don’t have a crystal ball.

Luckily home schoolers, regardless of the whole “pervy tribe” thing, are at heart people who want to do things their own way. This seems to transfer to a higher tolerance for people being very different. Pinterest has allowed me to see other sides of these ladies. Ha. (They may not swear around their kids but they are ok with swear words existing and being used and all.)

I’m glad I did the gingerbread house experience. Next year I will be making gingerbread boys and girls for the kids to decorate. Much less baking involved. My forefinger is still completely numb. Stupid knife.

I did not try to restrict the sugar intake because that would have been a losing battle. As a result Shanna went to sleep with a nasty stomach ache. She commented, “You know… I think that maybe next time I won’t eat so much sugar. This doesn’t feel very good.” I didn’t laugh. I’m proud of myself. Instead I cuddled her to sleep and said, “Yeah. We’ve all been there. You have to figure out what your body can handle. I’m sorry you hurt now.”

I need to back off on my cleaning expectations. They are 3 and 5. I have been turning into kind of an asshole for a few weeks and I don’t even know why. I’ve been refusing to engage in any play unless they clean up first. They aren’t ready for this. I apologized for my attitude. I’m not treating them like little kids and they are little kids. I need to be more patient.

I also need to reread my 3 and 5 year old books. Maybe I’ll take them to Texas with a highlighter. Then I can pass them on to K’s husband who told me he promised that he would read them if I highlighted the important and non-repetitive passages. They are kind of annoyingly repetitive. (He has a full time job, is in full time college, and he has two kids. I think it is reasonable to say “I can only handle the highlighted sections.”)

We would all be better parents if we really took into consideration the current physical development of our kids. They change so fast but still not as fast as we might hope on some days. It’s important to let them be kids. They will never ever get another chance. (Being an Adult Baby or interested in Age Play doesn’t count.)

The thing I like the most about my kids is that they really are always trying their best. Sometimes their best is not what I, as an asshole adult, want but it is their best. I can tell them it isn’t good enough and create that dynamic in their mind or I can say, “That is exactly what a five year old should be able to do. Excellent. You’ll get bigger and things will change.”

Shanna is starting to have serious interest in reading. Last night she complained to me that she’s really frustrated because the only words she knows how to spell are “Shanna, zoo, Calli, and love.” She wants to know more. I told her that it is ok that she doesn’t already know everything. She’s five. Her brain probably hasn’t quite switched yet so that learning reading is super easy–don’t get impatient. Soon it will get much easier and then you will be shocked by how fast it comes. I told her that if she wants to start really practicing, she can at any point. Whenever she is ready.

Unschooling is really emotionally complex. I have all these assumptions and desires and preferences. My kids meet and totally don’t meet them. I still believe that if I sat down on paper and explained my ideal child Shanna is it to a T. That makes me feel guilty and like I don’t love Calli enough.

I don’t think I love Shanna more. But she is what I would have designed on paper before having children. We are so deeply compatible that I worry that we aren’t and I’m making it up in my head and I will fuck her up by assuming we are.

Calli is more directly challenging to me on a minute by minute basis. She surprises me all day every day. I like it. She’s neat. She is starting to really come into her own. I love the way she will absolutely defend her own boundaries and then be nice once you have allowed her all the space she feels she needs.

Keep that up, wonderful girl. I am so proud of you. You clearly know that you get to take up space and exist. Watching you is so exciting. She likes being a benevolent tyrant. If you defer to her being in charge then she will be generous and kind and ridiculously sweet. If you try to insist that she isn’t in charge then she explodes. Luckily she is starting to be mollified by the idea that she is always her own boss. No, you aren’t the boss of Shanna. Sorry, kid. But you are your boss. I’m a temporary assistant manager.

Calli’s favorite game is “Mamas and babies” and I have to be the baby. I’m a thoroughly obnoxious and demanding baby. She loves it.

Calli keeps telling me she doesn’t want to grow up. She wants to be my tiny baby forever. Sometimes I feel like I’m not as important to Calli as I am to Shanna. Then I get my head out of my ass and I see that Calli is maybe more attached to me than Shanna.

Shanna likes me and I hope we will be friends when she grows up, but she is outward focused. She is going to be someone who wants a lot of friends in her life. I will not be the center of her world forever. I get the impression that Calli will seek out fewer people. I may always be more central in her life. Who knows. The future is a long way off. I’m enjoying these little flashes of how wrong I am about my assumptions. Calli is very attached. Calli is somewhat needy and I am struggling to really enthusiastically meet all those needs. I think I was more giving with Shanna.

I like them both so much. I feel so lucky that I get to hang out with them all day. I think it is funny how often Shanna talks about wanting to go to school “Some day when I am big!” but when I tell her that school involves being away from me all day she says, “Not yet. I don’t want to do that yet. In a few years. Then I will be ready.” She debates the merits of starting at 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. She says she thinks that she will definitely no matter what be ready by 14. I told her I suspected that was true. By 14 she will be old enough and big enough that she will certainly want to go learn things I can’t teach her.

I mention that we want to spend the year she is 12 traveling, so maybe going for a year or two before then would be fun to find out what it is like before she travels? Maybe she just wants to wait till after that to start? I don’t know. It isn’t my decision.

Sometimes it is weird noticing how many parenting things I think aren’t my decision. Other people make these decisions for their kids. I don’t feel qualified. I don’t think I know what is inside their heads and inside their bodies. I don’t know what the best decision will be in the long run.

I maintain this feeling of being conflicted about home schooling. I love it as much as I believed I would when I was 17. I feel scared that I am doing this for my needs instead of theirs.

I continue to do research about education styles because I want to be as eclectic as possible. Every single theory of education has benefits and deficits. Some can be combined in useful ways to get the benefits of multiple disciplines and some are inherently contradictory. I’m trying to figure out how I can get out of my head enough to be objective about what they need instead of just doing what I feel comfortable with.

Home schooling isn’t about making my life easier. That’s not the point. It might coincidentally do so… but that’s not the point. If I start making decisions based on my convenience I will fuck up my kids and that’s not cool.

K, I’m almost done with the book you gave me. I think I have a lot of the earlier part of the series. I may take one or two on this trip. Wow these are easy to read. It’s another Tamora Pierce book for those who don’t know K’s taste. She is going to get me through the entire collection of stuff that author has written.

I’m not worried about my children learning to read. They want to read. As soon as their brains are ready it will come. If they have learning disabilities and it doesn’t come automatically that is something I will watch for and address. Dyslexia runs in my family. My kids want to read. That’s the important step. They know that books contain whole universes of awesome and they want to benefit. I’m not worried.

I feel so weird knowing that whatever problems emerge (they will happen–that’s how life works) I have a lot of ability to handle them. I don’t feel very helpless any more. Sometimes I feel paralyzed with fear but I know that if I can get my stupid body moving I will be able to do something that is acceptable even if it isn’t the absolute best solution ever in the history of ever.

It is weird feeling confident and unconfident at the same time. Is unconfident a word? (internet says it is a word.) Insecure?

Of course there are problems outside my scope. If my kid gets cancer there isn’t a lot I can do. I mean, we have insurance and I would take them to every doctor. I would beggar myself in the process with no worry about the future. Take care of my baby.

Let’s stick with educational worry, ok? That I can do something about.

It is weird knowing that if my kid came down with a major medical malady Noah’s family would probably pony up. I am not someone who has had that as a resource in this lifetime. From when I was very young I have consciously thought that if I get diagnosed with a terrible disease the right choice for me is to die as fast as possible because no one who has ever been responsible for me had the money to pay for much treatment. I don’t want my family to suffer after I’m dead because dying was expensive. But things are so different now.

I feel very weird about the way suicide keeps being pushed further and further back for me. It is feeling less and less like an option. I could not do that to Shanna and Calli. Even if I did have cancer. They deserve the fullness of every minute I can give them. Killing myself is actively hurting them, forever. I don’t want to do that to them. Suicide has become my constant feeling of “out”. I don’t have to take this (no matter what “this” I’m talking about). I can die.

Now I can’t. It is… weird. I want to see what my children are like in their 30’s and 40’s and 50’s. I want to find out what the repercussions of my parenting style are. They will exist. I’m going to do things wrong if I haven’t already. (I have.)

I believe with all my soul in what I am doing. I think the American school system is broken and I don’t want my kids to be part of it. I don’t want to work long and hard enough to pay for private schools when I’m not sure they are enough better to justify how much less I would see my kids. We have great upper division education. We don’t do so well with the littles.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. There are amazing teachers within the system who do a great job. I think that some people luck into having positive public school experiences but it is a crap shoot. I don’t think I am the right parent to navigate my kid having a positive experience. I don’t think I can do it. I feel like a failure.

I do and I don’t. I feel like a failure for not being able to manage the public school system as a parent like I feel like a failure for not sewing. I feel like I “should” be able to but I can’t. Yet I don’t actually consider those skills mandatory for life.

Do I think I “could” learn how to manage the public school system? Sure. It’s a system. I could figure out how to hack it. It would be really hard and it would take a lot of time and energy and work and I don’t think it is worth it. Just like I could learn to sew but I don’t think it is worth upping my frustration level. The level of positive I would gain doesn’t outweigh the cost right now.

I believe there are different circumstances that would change my mind.

Everything is situational.

violence

6 Replies

Yesterday I bought more than $100 of vitamins. I have ~ 7 days of pot left. I think that will be when I stop. I’m not going to get more to make it through the end of the year. With the break for the Texas trip (I’m not flying to Texas with pot even if I *do* have a medical prescription) That will get me to the 20th or 21st. So Christmas will be interesting. But you have to just go at some point.

I took my vitamins yesterday. I rested yesterday. I didn’t run because for some reason my hip decided yesterday that it hates my guts. My plan for today is yoga, baking gingerbread for tomorrow, and swinging. I may or may not pick up the garage. I haven’t decided.

We went Christmas caroling with the home school group yesterday. I was nominated as choir director at the last minute because the person who had volunteered let us know that she only meant she would run the rehearsal. Uhm, ok then. Pretty much what that meant is I counted off the beginning of the songs. We were not good singers. But we had fun.

Being in a senior assisted living place was kind of hard. Some of the people in the locked dementia ward cried when we sang. I can only imagine what was going on in their heads. I don’t think we cheered them up. One woman was mostly muttering under her breath with occasional louder shouts about how we were all liars and bastards. I don’t blame her for that opinion when we are singing Christian songs about hope and how everything will be awesome for Christmas.

I got bitchslapped on the ptsd forum. I talked about my uncanny ability to figure out that people have been sexually assaulted. Some woman spent way too much time telling me how inappropriate and terrible I am for being able to tell that about people. I should certainly never let on that I have such suspicions or I am violating their privacy. You know… I can see why you are over sensitive. My most frequent experience is that people cry and hug me and are grateful to be seen. I’m not going to stop because someone on the internet objects to my behavior. It is working for me.

Yesterday I was sitting on the floor and my mind was wandering and Shanna wanted my attention. She walked up and flicked me in the face. It was a very near thing for me hitting her. At this stage of my life the flicking in the head leading to violent reaction thing is a reflex. I don’t think about it. That came from many years of abuse.

I talked to her about it then and again at dinner. Noah had the brilliant idea of comparing it to accidentally kicking someone when they tickle you. It’s a reflex. You aren’t consciously deciding that you want to kick someone. It just kind of happens. When someone flicks me in the face I just react. Please don’t do that to me any more. Please. Please. Please. I don’t want to ever hit you and I’m terrified that if you do that to me it will happen before I have the ability to stop myself.

I am really sorry I live in the body I have. At this stage of my life, just don’t fucking flick my face, ok?

Shanna said I scared her when I talked about it. I was trying hard to not be scary. I’m so sorry. But I’m very serious. Don’t flick my face. Truly. Don’t.

I woke up thinking about how after reading eight books on codependence I don’t think I know the difference between codependence and interdependence. I’m still scared I am “inappropriate” all the time. I grew up being told that “we” were just codependent–like it or not. That’s what my mom and sister said.

I feel so guilty for needing things from Noah. I feel like I am suffocating him. He tells me he is fine but when you lie the way I do all the time about being fine you tend to not believe other people either.

I don’t want to hurt my children the way I have hurt other people. I think my kids deserve better. I feel guilty for the fact that I didn’t think my friends deserved better. I shouldn’t have cracked ribs. I shouldn’t have hit people so much. I shouldn’t have tried so hard to make people bleed.

I’m not even talking about the bdsm. Those people consented. I don’t feel guilty about beating someone until they lie sobbing on the floor in front of me if they asked me very nicely to do that to them. I feel very guilty, still, for all the fights as a kid. I was so god damn mean.

I’ve only cracked one set of ribs since reaching my majority. Uhm, progress? That time the person even went to the doctor and had x-rays to confirm it. Yup. I cracked their ribs. When I was younger people just dealt with months of pain instead of going to the doctor.

I regularly talk to men who are very dismissive of whatever “power” I ascribe to them. They don’t see themselves the way that I see them. They think they are powerless. Naw, you’ve just never really learned that you aren’t ten years old any more. I understand that no one likes young men. I get that. When you are a young guy you have the opposite of power, no matter what color you are. But things change.

I haven’t cracked any ribs in ten years. I should stop feeling bad. I did stop. I haven’t made anyone bleed in… about the same length of time if memory serves correctly. I’m getting close to being out of the scene (mostly) for almost ten years. I still bottom to Noah but I’m not in the scene and I don’t top any more.

I am somewhat unlikely to ever viciously beat someone again. That is weird. I have done it so many times over my life that I don’t know what to do with all those feelings. I really am a vicious, nasty person.

But you wouldn’t know it to look at my kids. I’m nice to them. But today I scared Shanna. She kind of melted out of her chair to hide under the kitchen table.

I’m so sorry Shanna. I wasn’t trying to scare you. I don’t want to hit you. Please don’t flick my face. I don’t have time to think to stop myself from reacting. I’m trying. I have worked so hard on my reflexes. I no longer hit instinctively when someone startles me. For many years there if someone thought it was “funny” to jump out and startle me they were as likely as not to walk away bleeding.

I *have* learned a lot of control.

My biological father used to flick me in the head. It usually came along with some deprecation about my intelligence. I learned to fight as hard as I could when I was flicked. You are not going to treat me that way any more.

The last time I hit someone was up in Portland. (She’s a friend. She liked it.) It’ll be two years in February. That was when Noah and I agreed to stop that part of our relationship.

I think a lot about what it means to stop being violent. I have a lot of compassion for military veterans. I can only imagine how dangerous I would have become if I had entered the military. (When I was 17 a number of “official” sort of school people tried to talk me into the military. I was seen as very suitable. That would have destroyed me.)

Life is about a series of choices. Sometimes some people pick violence. Does that mean you are stuck being violent forever? Malcolm X managed to (relatively) calm down.

Maybe I will get to the point where I can say that I haven’t hit anyone in twenty years. Maybe my guilt will reduce over time.

I still feel bad for fracturing Jason’s ribs in high school. He was on the wrestling team and was bragging about how if he took me on he would win. No, he really didn’t. And he paid for months.

That was more than half my life ago. He didn’t hate me forever. He did try to act inappropriately the one time I have run into him as an adult. But that was a different issue. That was sex and alcohol and bad boundaries.

I’m glad I’m off facebook. I’m harder to find. I am less likely to run into random people I hope I won’t run into again.

Sometimes there are downsides to knowing so many people. Sometimes there are downsides to having such a history of hurting people. They find me years later and I get this new rush of shame. Yup, I’m that kind of person. Or I was. Do you ever actually change?

I don’t hit my kids. The worst I have done is smack feet that were viciously kicking the car seat. I was going to drive off the road if I didn’t stop the kicking.

I don’t want to hit my kids. But inside me there is always the potential. I don’t really know how to live with that.

Do you know that the US refuses entry to people from other countries who have documented issues of depression? A Canadian woman was going through the US to get to a cruise. She was blocked from her vacation. Because she was stupid enough to think that a crazy person gets to have normal life experiences.

I don’t imagine the biases against “people like me”. They are well documented. That doesn’t mean I personally experience that much discrimination at this stage.

It’s a lot like white men thinking they have no power.

All of these things are so complicated. Power. Safety. Violence. They all entwine.

I don’t feel good about the progress I’ve made. I don’t feel like I have come far enough. Really I don’t think I will ever give myself much slack because I have already done what I’ve done. I can never undo it.

Are monsters ever redeemable?

I was asked why I won’t consider working Dickens. I can’t deal with my rapists. Sorry. I know that nothing will ever happen to them. They will continue to be Fine Upstanding Members Of Their Community. They have a lot to offer. They are important. They are worthy.

I just…

post-therapy (more) hobbies and yay friends.

2 Replies

It made me very happy to tell my therapist “My friends and I are in a fierce and loving argument/discussion about hobbies and how I should learn to manage time better.” She thinks it is great that you all interact with me. Heh.

Then when I explained the “I can’t do fiddly shit” she said, “Oh of course not. Your flavor of PTSD should be kept as far away from those kinds of actions as possible. If someone has dissociation issues then often things like knitting can help them be more present. You are so hyperaroused that it will drive you crazy. Don’t do that. Try martial arts.”

See, the knitting is very good and healthy for lots of my friends and not for me. I appreciate my pats on the back. Validation is my friend.

I talked to her a lot about wanting to come off of pot. I’m past the baby stage. I told myself I was using pot to give me the self control I needed to get past the baby stage when the kids really couldn’t help how much they triggered me. I don’t have babies any more. Shit.

I think there is the non-zero possibility that I will stop using pot until my kids are adults and then start again. Being stoned is awesome but I want to teach my kids a different lifestyle.

My shrink says she has known people who have had good luck taking some melatonin during the day while getting off pot. You have to be careful to never take it for more than ten days in a row (I should research why) but it can be useful. I also have to up my B vitamins. I should be taking 1,000-1,500 units per day. Ew. Ew. Ew. I should double the fish oil dose. I should start 5-htp.

The idea is that this will probably take a full year. Not to get off pot. That will take less than a month. I have to get my bodily stress more under control. It is going to be a process and it is going to be hard. I will have to really retrain my body with new habits. New habits can be formed in as little as thirty days. I don’t think my lifelong habits will be undone in a month. Ok, I’ve already worked on a lot of the other big problem areas, but more to handle.

Yesterday Shanna kind of complained about me watching The West Wing. I told her I was watching it because I was frustrated and annoyed and I was trying not to yell at her. She said, “Turn it off and let’s talk about it. You won’t solve anything this way.”

I feel so lucky. I feel like I have so much reason to work on my issues. I finally have iron clad reasons to think that my emotional state matters. It impacts my kids hugely and massively all day every day. I matter.

My therapist continues her stream of being shocked by how many people I know. She has been sorta trying to talk me into working with a writing teacher she knows. He could edit my books. I told her I was saving money to work with my friend Janet. She has a lot of experience with writing and running a publishing company and she told me she wanted to work with me. I really want to try that avenue first.

My shrink said, “Oh, what publishing company?”

“Greenery Press.”

Her jaw dropped and her eyes bugged. “You know her?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve known her for more than ten years.”

“Uhm, yeah. Work with her. That’s amazing. Wow. You know a lot of people.”

I really do. I know some ridiculously cool people. I get out and talk to people a lot. I am constantly out trying to pull more people into my tenuous web of connections. I like people. The more people I know the safer I am.

By contrast she (my shrink) told me it was pretty chicken shit to have relationships with people where I invite them over a lot and then I stop and expect them to invite themselves over. She said that’s not cool and I should stop it. I said, “But I’m scared.” She said, “So are they.”

Damnit.

She wants me to consider working with kinky survivors as one of the hats I put on some day when I’m a grown up. She thinks I would be uniquely well suited to being able to help people in that category. I’m flattered. This comes up because I spend a lot of time on the PTSD forum fielding questions about bdsm. It is hilarious to me that I hand out this long list of book recommendations and I am friends/former play partners with almost all of the authors. Yeah, I vouch for the information in the book and the integrity of the people giving the information.

I told my therapist about Noah’s reaction to me wanting to go to Islamic countries as an old woman as part of my work with incest. (Noah’s response was, “Ok we need to start martial arts. Now.) Her eyes teared up and she said, “You are so lucky to have a partner who is that supportive of you. Do you understand how rare that is?”

I do understand. I’m grateful every single day.

No, Noah doesn’t try to talk me out of things. I say, “I’m thinking about doing _____” and he says, “How can I help!?” (As a bonus he also makes cookies. So far this year: snickerdoodles (three batches [err… I ate a whole one alone…]), chocolate chip, haystacks, and he has made dough for refrigerator cookies, sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, and molasses crinkles. He’s serious about liking my ass slightly more when it is bigger. Ha.)

I have friends who put up with me being rude, offensive, and foul mouthed.

I am ridiculously lucky in this lifetime. Not very many people receive as much non-family support as I get. It’s all about perspective, right?

Apparently I need to start a structured routine for a (long) while. I need to have “sitting on a swing for an hour” as part of every day. (Rocking motions are soothing to your brain. If you are upset, hug yourself and rock. You may feel lame but it does help.) I need to find a martial arts gym that will let us come in 2-3 days every week. I need to be running almost every day. (Rest days are important too.) I need to start teaching Shanna how to ride a bike and practice with her. (She has one… but she’s a wuss. She won’t try it unless I’m really bugging her. She likes going as fast as she can with her feet thankyouverymuch.)

I tend to have structure for a short period and then go off the rails when I add a big project. I can’t have any big projects for a year. This feels crushing and unfair. Waaa waaa waaa. Should I call the waaaaaaambulance?

I have to train my body to relax. I’m not sure I have ever been relaxed. Yeah, it will probably take a year. If I am fully relaxed at the end of a year it will be a G-d damn miracle. But I have to try. And this is the year. Go.

If I want to be able to do the serious international travel later I have no choice but to do this now. I can’t put it off any more. I don’t want to end up beating my head on concrete again the next time I leave the country. It is really unpleasant. In 2015 I want to travel with my kids for almost six months just to see if I can. I have to do this work in 2014. I’m feeling very annoyed with myself.

Why don’t I just give up on these hard things and have an easier life? What is wrong with me? Well, I don’t think that what I’m doing right now is actually easier. It is a different hard thing that I have slowly juggled towards as being the best I can get with my current coping skills.

I need different coping skills.

I feel like now it is finally safe enough to try. I have two kids who love me to the moon and back and who want to be nice to me. They just need me to teach them how. I need to teach without yelling or being nasty because then I will actually teach yelling and being nasty.

I feel so blessed that I have this time and this space. I don’t feel I have earned it. I don’t deserve it. But here it is. I have time. I have safety. I have money to fill in the gaps for when I can’t do everything for myself.

I have so much privilege that there is no longer any justifiable excuse for me not doing this work. Shit.

(I do believe it was justified earlier in my life. I was not physically or emotionally capable of doing the work before. I was never safe enough.) If you have to spend all day running to stay in one place someone who criticizes you for not finishing a marathon is a fucking asshole. You are doing what you can do.

I am seven years post rape. I have lived in this house for more than twice as long as I have ever lived anywhere else in my life. I have three people I get to live with who all think I am really nice and wonderful.

It’s time to stop being afraid all the time.

Being afraid makes me nasty. Being afraid makes me inclined to fight anyone and anything at any time because I perceive everyone as a threat. I am really sorry that I am so scared.

I’m going to work with a doctor on my body pain. Pam has offered to either go and hold my hand or babysit. I think I would prefer the hand holding. I’ll arrange the appointment on a day when Noah can stay with the kids.

I am very lucky. I am sorry I act so ungrateful so much of the time.

Terrible thought

4 Replies

So the thing about meditation is that it is learning to sit in the still space.

My whole life requires me to move around and constantly respond to stimuli. I’m used to taking in fantastic amounts of information and consciously thinking about it. (If you are ever curious, ask me what I’m thinking about randomly some day. The firehose may drown you. I can talk faster than I can type. Muahahahaha.) That’s what hypervigilence means in a broad sense.

Meditation means turning off my awareness of ALL THE THINGS.

I think I am struggling with finding space where I really feel safe enough to not pay attention.

I pay a lot of attention to my kids. They still create messes and destroy things at a rate that blows my mind. I don’t clean the house every day. I would lose my mind.

My kids are extremely hands-on and creative with their environment. What that means is a shit-ton of work for me.

I have to maintain a certain level of clean so I don’t freak out. I have to vacuum a few times a month or we get bugs. Noah worries more about clutter than I do.

I think I have more anxiety around trying to please Noah than about keeping the house picked up. If he gets house and their shit is everywhere he sighs deeply and starts stomping around to pick it up. So I try to do that most days. But not every day.

But I set boundaries around “You have to have your stuff picked up before you can move on to some other large structured activity”. I’m inconsistent around this though. Like, the house is a mess but we went to Dickens anyway. I had Monday as a scheduled “cleaning day” so I was ok with that. The kids do help when I clean. They are getting really good at that.

The balance on that kind of stuff has improved dramatically. The training is working. Ha. But they need a tremendous amount of energy and direction from me to learn still. I don’t have time to go sit in a quiet space. They bug me every two fucking minutes.

“Quiet time in the garage” doesn’t really exist lately. They come in every fucking two minutes. If I get to the point of yelling at them then sometimes I can get up to ten minutes. (Still differentiating yelling from screaming as about volume/intensity/level of rage. Not sure if it feels that much different to them. They don’t cringe when I yell but they do back off. I’m usually yelling from the far corner of the garage to say “NOT RIGHT NOW.” I’m not feeling guilty but it isn’t effective either.)

I’m doing something wrong or they are testing boundaries or this is a phase or something. Holy fucking shit. Parenting is not usually as hard as it has been for a while.

We were traveling. It’s the holidays. I am probably pretty short compared to normal.

December 6th is my leather mom’s birthday. She’s going through a hard time and I can’t really support her. I feel shitty about that. It is also my biological mother’s birthday. She turned 64. Today is my biological father’s birthday. He would also have been 64. Instead he sat in his garage when he was 49. Stopping time on his maturation process.

I’m flying to Texas but Noah’s mom refuses to meet at a restaurant for a meal. I guess I won’t see them. That’s probably for the best. No I won’t be going to your house for you to yell at me. No thank you. I did not abandon one abusive mother in order to turn around and submit to another one.

I’m sad. I feel like I’m “doing everything wrong” again.

I read these annoying fucking checklists of “habits of mentally healthy people” and I think well no shit I’m not mentally healthy. I know people who don’t remember their lives very well. That would be the only way for me to lose awareness of the anniversary shit in my life. I may love those people but I do not choose to pursue that coping method.

I like my memory very much.

I need to feel safe enough to sit in my quiet space. I resist meditation because it is about sitting around and practicing self control for the fuck of it.

That sounds like hell on earth.

I would much rather multi-task to the point where I will have a stroke. It’s more comfortable.

What does that say about me?

Fuck you still place. Fuck you with a big stick.

“Why don’t you just stop dwelling on the past?”

Why don’t I just stop being sad that I don’t get to have a dad I haven’t had sex with in this lifetime? Really?

Uhm bugger off. I get to have my feelings.

If you haven’t had to buy love with your cunt for most of your life you really can’t understand.

It’s kind of weird now. Now I feel like there really won’t be any reason for people to want to know me. I don’t know how to talk to people. I don’t have anything to offer. I don’t know what to say. Being in public is weird.

What role in society can I fill? I spent most of my life looking for sex partners. I only grudgingly tolerated no’s when people made them explicit (and then they sometimes told me later “I was kinda hoping you would ask again later” WTF!).

Healthy? No. But it’s what I did.

Now what.

I don’t know.

I really did spend my childhood believing I was preparing for a career in sex work. Now that it didn’t work out my back up career is turning out to be way the fuck more work than I thought it would be. Good grief.

But it’s good. I want to be doing what I’m doing. I really do. I want to learn what it is like to be this kind of person. Even if I will never “really” understand because I will always have a brain that is paralyzed with terror because I’m prepared for the next problem.

Yeah yeah, fucking still space. Exercise the self control muscles you have more of them. Have more of the self control muscles have more ability to calm down central nervous system. Fuck you still place. Fuck you you fucking fuck.

My inside voice isn’t so inside today. Apparently.

Sometimes the process isn’t so pretty.

I think I struggle with completely letting go of the white trash stuff as part of my language evolution in general.

I have been yelled at not to curse for nearly three decades. I promise you that someone will yell at me again soon. “How dare you speak that way in front of children.” I get it every so often.

I no longer turn around and say, “Fuck you you ignorant fuck” but I did before I had kids. Ok I only actually did that once. She deserved it. I hadn’t been “cursing” so much as I was being literal and explicitly educational. Then I switched to cursing. Uhm, you had to be there?

There are people who can kill ’em with kindness. There are people who can disarm with humor. Then there’s me. May I introduce you to this trout I am going to smack you in the head with?

But most people who have been in a room with me have no idea. FUCK YOU PEOPLE WHO SAY I DON’T HAVE TACT.

You just say that because my tact falls on a different line than yours.

Why am I so interested in saying fuck you lately? Fuck you universe. Fuck you fucking everything in the fucking everywhere in the whole fucktastic piece of fuck world.

Good day for therapy.

But my kids don’t act like people who live with someone who talks that way. It would show. I am doing the routine. I’m just not good at being nice when I’m challenged. I’m sure this means I’m not nice. As if there was doubt.

Naw, lately the problem is that I’m taking shit personally. They are kids. They aren’t doing much because of me. (Well other than breathing and not being covered in filth all day.)

If they are bothering me I need to respectfully ask for the space I need.

I’ve listened to a god damn lot of victim blaming shit in my lifetime. I can tell you 57 reasons it is all my fault I was raped. O course I can figure out how my over reaction to my kids not being very thoughtful is all my fault. As if it were not completely developmentally normal (I HAVE BOOKS FOR THIS SHIT) and all that.

I can’t take it personally.

But I am. Because I’m like that. I need to stop.

Fuck you still place. Fuck you with a fucking chainsaw.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: parenting

Find gratitude

Dreaming of privilege

I need you.

Suicidal ideation

I apparently have strong priorities.

no time.

back to “normal”

Just another morning whine.

Being sheltered, ignorance, and safety.

Oh man breaks are awesome.

bitterness and “family”

This book hurts my heart.

Clear your head.

Sensitivity

Ok, stomach… get ready.

leaving on a jet plane

violence

post-therapy (more) hobbies and yay friends.

Terrible thought