Category Archives: parenting

Hi, I’m Krissy and I’m a libtard?

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I spent a while this morning falling down the rabbit-hole of TERFness. Ok. That’s a thing. (If you’ve never heard of it, TERF= Trans Erasing Radical Feminist. Basically radical feminists who are angry about trans folk wanting to be treated like their gender instead of their assigned sex at birth.) I had previously avoided that segment of the internet. My friends have been trans since I was a teenager so folks who were extremely upset about my friends existing… I just avoid.

But this was in connection to reading about an out nonbinary kid.

Apparently mothers of trans children are more likely to have Borderline Personality Disorder? (I don’t, as verified by a whole truckload of professionals.) There is also a lot of speculation that mother of trans kids mostly have Munchausen by Proxy?

I will confess that recently I have been telling my kid that having surgery or not doesn’t make him more or less trans. Insisting on surgery in order to count as trans is a very privileged point of view and it sucks. You are trans because you know you are. Having medical confirmation is not the point. If you can afford it as an adult and you feel like it will make you happier… that’s your business.

I know cis-women who have plastic surgery to make themselves happier so why would I object to trans folk who do the same?

I read a bunch about trans widows. All I can say to that is: well… my child’s romantic partners won’t be surprised that they are trans? It’s a known fact from jump?

There are other trans and non-binary and queer and gay folk in my child’s family. They are not unique. They are not an aberration. They are like a bunch of their family in ways big and small. I support their transition because folks who are not supported are more likely to suicide and given our overall family history of suicide… I’m doing whatever the fuck I have to do to help my kid feel like their life has value and is worth continuing.

Which is complicated given my own mental health.

Apparently me being willing to support my kid come what may makes me a libtard. Ok. I want him alive. I want to see where his journey takes him. Whatever label other people think I need to wear in order for that to happen is not very important to me.

The world is cruel.

I worry a lot about the future because everyone suffers and my child won’t be exempt from that. I can’t put my kids in a bubble where they never have bad feelings or struggle. I won’t be preparing them for being an adult if I do. Life is going to hurt. Life is going to knock you down. The only measure you need to worry about is how many times you get up again.

And now I don’t need to read more about the struggles of TERFs. They get to have their space to be supportive of one another and I get to go on with my life not being part of their space. It’s ok for them to have their feelings. And I don’t have to share them or validate them.

I need to support my kid and my friends. That’s who and what I pick in this life. Trans folk have always existed, long before hormones and surgery. Maybe hormones and surgery make it a bit easier, but maybe they don’t. That part isn’t up to me. What is up to me is loving folk with my whole heart and knowing that everyone walks a hard path.

No matter what if you need me to hold your hand while you go to sleep I’ll do that, my wonderful kid. I accept you. I love you. I am glad you are here. I want to watch you grow up and see who you become just because it gives me butterflies of joy in my belly. I am allowed to mother you. I am so lucky.

Happy Easter

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In a completely secular way Easter has always been big for us. In California I hid hundreds of eggs. Way too much candy. I only buy my kids toys for their birthdays, Christmas, and Easter… so they usually get a pretty noticeable basket.

I told the kids yesterday that they need to not expect much from me for this holiday. We don’t have the ability to carry much crap; we leave this country tomorrow and we don’t need much candy. There isn’t enough space to hide a bunch of eggs if I wanted to. Also: I did not find one plastic fill-able egg in this country. So.

They each got a present bag with some stuff. A pair of earrings (pierced or screw on, depending), a headband (they have both declared that they are growing their hair out and they are complaining about the intermediate length), a tin of chips (an interesting Japanese flavor), a packet of candy I don’t recognize for variety, one Kinder egg (I ate the third one for fairness–ha), two little Lindt chocolates (exactly like we always had at home for memories sake), and a LOL little sister doll (they are about 1.5″ tall). I found tiny little eggs that hang from string and I put 6 of them up in their room.

I also got a lovely strawberry cake for us to have with tea.

My mom would lie and say she would do things that she wouldn’t do. I will strongly imply that I can’t do anything when I have already done something so you don’t expect me to do 10x’s as much.

The secret to happiness is low expectations, yo.

Her Sweetness didn’t get anything and she won’t be sad about that. She got one toy in this country, an activity book I plan to lean on heavily on the plane. She will share the cake, of course. Next year I can’t leave her out. And next year I will try harder to hide eggs. I don’t yet know where we will be, but I’m a resourceful bugger.

My children will have magical memories of me ensuring that they feel special. Because they are special to me. I don’t forget about their need for ceremony and tradition. It’s important. They need to feel like they can predict that things will happen and that they can know what is coming even though our lives have a lot of chaos.

I owe them all the stability my chaotic brain and body are capable of delivering. They are largely flexible and adaptable and capable of accepting dysregulation, but every child needs touchstones.

This is one for us.

So I sit here and watch my beautiful husband and baby sleep and I wait to hear the gasps through the paper thin walls.

Happy Easter.

Don’t wanna.

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I don’t want to fanatically police behavior. If you know the rule (you get 1 hour of screen time) and you ask to go on a device that won’t shut off automatically… it’s not polite to knowingly stay on until I yell at you.

So fine. You can write lines. “When my one hour of screen time is up it is my responsibility to put the screen down.” (One kid was on a device that shut off automatically. There was zero ambiguity about the passage of time. They both knew. They both stayed on the device that they should have put down.)

When you lie about finishing all of your lines so that you can move on to what you want to be doing…

You can write twice as many lines the next day.

Cheers.

I won’t scream at you. I won’t hit you. But you can rehearse for yourself how you should be acting. This is *literally* what we have been talking about for a week. But you don’t care. Ok fine. Write lines.

And you don’t get screen time again in this country. You can gain access to the iPad again when I bloody well feel like it, not when you ask. It will be used for my convenience not yours. And not having screen access means you can’t read your library books.

Stop. Fucking. With. Me.

Not dreaming, chores, screens and friends

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Apparently the way my brain decided to handle “I am sick of fucking nightmares” is “I am not going to let you get into REM sleep because I am going to wake up every half hour.” It was a rough night for me.

Yesterday was mixed. It was mostly good with some frustration in the middle around fucking screen time. I hate computers. (Yes, I recognize the irony that I am typing on one and typing is basically my inside voice.) Yesterday Middle Child and I got up early and got on a bus to go downtown to rent a car. On the bus we worked on homework and snuggled and it was fun. It was frustrating on the way back because Google Fi has decided that I get phone service everywhere…. and data when I am on a wifi network and that’s it. Noah’s phone has data all over the island. Urgh. So I had to call Noah and have him talk me through getting on the freeway. Luckily he is a patient man.

Middle Child and I stopped on the way home and had a snack. Eating together on dates is like a thing.

I dropped him off, picked up the baby and the laundry and headed to the laundromat for two hours. Woo. It took so long because only one washer was available while I was there. That’s ok.

When I got back… it got frustrating. With the recent introduction of Parental Controls… a lot of websites aren’t working anymore. Netflix isn’t working because it is tracked in so many ways that Parental Controls blocks it. (I am sorta unhappy about Google and Facebook tracking my Netflix usage anyway now that I know it is happening. Fuck Google. Fuck Facebook. Evil motherfuckers.) I started getting loud and Noah told me this wasn’t worth yelling about. He was right.

I decided it was better to make the kids go outside for a while. Noah and I looked at the controls again, decided that because the kids get 4 hours and that’s long enough to whine about not getting everything I will let them have 1 hour a day on weekdays (it will mostly be used for school time) and 2 hours on weekends, which will let them play a game or two but not long enough they will demand movies.

Because I am god damn sick of fighting over their computers.

I waited until I chilled out. Then I went outside and talked to each kid separately about why they lost unfettered access. At the end of these conversations they both hung their heads and said they agreed with the restriction because they have not been polite at all about their computers. (They were supposed to set their own timers and limit their screen time. Never happened. They were supposed to do school stuff…. that was mixed.) They both agree that they have not been responsible and I need to take that responsibility away from them. They also understand that me standing over them to monitor them while they are on adult accounts isn’t fair either. So here we are.

I mixed in talking about things I was frustrated about in other areas (each kid got very different feedback because they are frustrating in such different ways) and how I am off my medication and I will be for the foreseeable future and let’s talk about how that is going to impact my body and my mood. Phrased that way they both said, “I’d rather be limited and deal with that frustration myself than keep making you track my screen time. That will go poorly.” Yup. It will.

After that Noah was done with work for the day and we drove up to explore the western edge of the end of the highway on Oahu. We played there for about an hour then drove down to Pokai Bay so Noah and the three kids could play in the water while I talked on the phone to one of my friends. (No data= no video chat. Dangit.)

I don’t have consent to talk about her in detail so I won’t. I will say that we have been friends since the 7th grade. When I talk about how Noah’s friends are rich and mine are poor…. she’s on my mind. She is someone who I think about a lot. I don’t write about her for lots of reasons around her privacy and people being judgmental pieces of shit. But it’s really nice talking to her. She asked why I don’t call more often. I said, “well… I do this thing where I find people who are really crazy like me and I try to enmesh with them and then I get really anxious about bothering my less crazy friends and I withdraw.” She said, “Well I’m a little bit crazy so you should call a little bit more often.” Then she laughed. It was nice. She has a tremendous amount of experience with kids and I learn a lot from her. She’s one of the most giving people I’ve ever known. Her kid has had some interesting life experiences and she has told me she was really glad she’s always known me because she learned about a lot of things from me and when it came up with her kid she felt calm and collected about going with the flow.

I am grateful for her perspective and time. I will try to call more often.

I need to schedule a call with my other buddy in Salt Lake. He completes the trio of my middle school friends I’m still in touch with. His mother in law hates me and he finds that delightful. Ha.

And I get to see Jenny soon. I am trying as hard as I can to put my intensity in a box because I can’t explode all over Jenny and her family. They are all very reserved people. It is overwhelmingly important to me that I create a healthy connection with her kids and they are sensitive souls. I have to meet them where they are. I am the adult. That feels like a lot of pressure. It’s self imposed! Mostly? I want this meeting with my namesake to go better than the first one. I feel pathetic about it, but I want her to like me. I was too assertive the first time and she was like “Fuck you stranger lady” and that was fair… (She was under 2. The fuck you was entirely body language.)

I earn people pushing me away when I am too intense. But I am really fucking intense. That’s just a fact. How much can I put that intensity in a box and still be an authentic piece of me? I struggle with that balance.

You know, like how can I diplomatically talk about my feelings so I order my brain versus how much do I get to the point of screaming “Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you. Who’s next?”

Sigh. Balance. I continue to lurch towards it.

Last night I had a chat with Middle Child about his allowance savings. He said he feels like he doesn’t deserve to have it because we are walking past so many people who have nothing. I talked about how sometimes he uses his allowance to pay for things he breaks, sometimes for things he wants and I will not buy, sometimes just for splurges and if he gives all the money away he won’t be able to meet any of those needs he has for autonomy.

I talked about trying to find the middle way. (Thank you Buddhism. I am not a true follower, but every faith/religion/cultural path has some value for me to learn from. That’s what California Woo means to me.) I talked to him about trying to find the balance between saving up for yourself so you can meet your needs versus sharing what you have extra. I asked him what would happen to our family if I gave away 80% of his father’s income every month because I don’t feel like I deserve it. His eyes got big as he processed what that would mean in terms of housing, food, medical care, everything changes. So instead I share 10%.

We can meet our needs with 90% and we don’t have to stockpile the last 10%. We can share it and help other people have lighter loads. I can’t really give away more because I have a lot of medical expenses that are going to go up as I age. I have to prepare for that or I am deciding that I need to die early.

But it’s not about giving it away because you don’t deserve it. It’s about recognizing that our life is really good and we have the ability to share…. so we should.

He’s working on writing up his feelings about the values in a book called Islamic Values for Children. (DUDE! It’s online! Oh that’s awesome!) It’s neat helping him process what he agrees with and disagrees with in this book. Like, he said that we need to pursue (I’m paraphrasing slightly) understanding creation because if we don’t we make bad decisions and we hurt ourselves and the people around us: like killing off 80% of bugs in the world. Humans have used pesticides for a long time and now we face the possible extinction of our species because food is going to have a hard time growing.

I love hearing where his values differ from mine. But he has been raised hardcore in an environment where “Enlightened Self Interest” is a big deal. Being selfish isn’t wrong, but you need to be selfish in the concept of helping yourself be ok loooooooooong in the future.

It’s neat seeing how that plays out for him.

One of the hard things about Noah’s job is that he always feels like he isn’t quite doing enough to earn all those buckets of cash and all the conference invites so he works… constantly. Today and tomorrow he is taking off work! We get to go play on the island. I’m happy about that. I don’t have a plan for what we will do. I want to take the kids all the way around the island because then the kids get into these intense chats about how the plant life and rocks change. They are observant in ways I never was as a kid. Yesterday Eldest Child was talking about what the rock formations mean in terms of lava because she learned about it in one of her books. That’s so awesome.

“Hey, the plants aren’t so brown. That means this side gets more rain. Hm, I wonder why this is the line where that changes?”

This kind of thing didn’t occur to me as a kid and I love standing near this. I like them so much.

But first… we should pack 90% of our stuff this morning. In 48 hours we go to the airport.

I need to spend most of my time focusing on my family because I need to feel what that means. But I won’t forget my friends.

Oh, by the way: the place in Longview fell through. The AirBnB host said that we couldn’t have the independent apartment that long but we could rent two bedrooms in her house and share her kitchen and living room for the same price! Uhhh… no. That’s not a good deal for us. My kids are essentially nudists. They need to be able to have their own space where they can unwind without having to perform certain behaviors for a host. So I found a place closer to downtown Portland that is actually about $600 cheaper for the whole stay. It is in a much more crowded neighborhood, which will be mixed. Less ability to just “GO OUTSIDE” and more ability to walk to grocery stores. That’s a balance I will cope with. The house is sparsely decorated and one floor. That was shockingly hard to find in the region. The houses on AirBnB available for a long stay are mostly multi-story or decorated to within an inch of their lives. Yeah, I’m not dealing with that shit with a nearly-walking-baby.

Last night we had pho for the third time since reaching the island. We are really on a kick. I ordered the spiciest one on the menu then added three heaping spoonfuls of chili because it just wasn’t spicy enough. I wanted my lips and tongue to burn. It was awesome. Afterwards we had our first dessert since reaching the island: shaved ice with ice cream on the bottom. I added mochi balls to mine. We all had very different flavor profiles and it was funny how much the differences really are indicative of our personalities. EC had caramel ice cream with mango shaved ice, MC had coffee ice cream with cherry shaved ice, Noah had gosh I can’t remember his ice cream but he had guava and passion fruit shaved ice (with coconut sauce). I had cookies and cream ice cream with vanilla/pineapple/pina colada. The other three of us had mochi balls instead of sauce.

The baby went nuts trying everyone’s. She thought it was the best thing that’s happened to her in a long time. She is starting to understand “We look at a menu, then people go away and bring us good things to eat.” It’s fun to watch. She does a lot of intently looking at the menu then pointing at pictures. We often order what she points at. She is certain that the world is working as it should. Ha.

D–you didn’t do something terrible when you left that comment. The timing and the phrasing were not my ideal. But that happens in relationships. I am almost done being an exploding asshole. I am so sorry you got swept into all the upset about other things and other people.

Some of my grief is legitimate and real and totally deserved. That doesn’t mean I should lash out at everyone. Sometimes I do though and that is really fucking shitty. I try as hard as I can to limit my explosions to being here. I love you and I appreciate that you have tried to share what you have spare over the years. That wasn’t a lot and that’s ok. I don’t get to demand more from anyone who doesn’t have it going spare. Really I don’t get to demand more from anyone.

My black hole is not your job to fill. It really isn’t. I know that. It’s why I try to retreat when I am being inappropriate. Sometimes that retreat involves inappropriate yelling in my space. I imagine that is not easy. You don’t want to feel like you are hurting me. You don’t want to feel like you did something wrong.

I try to withdraw when all you have to do to be wrong is be near enough to hear me as I am screaming about being in pain.

Well, therapy isn’t an option. Try to talk it out.

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Why am I so depressed? Well. I built a lot of my sense of self worth around my value to people. Quite some time ago Sarah said that she was tired of having me publicly humiliate her when she made mistakes so I didn’t write as much about how she was treating me. I gave too much. I hate feeling like I am one of those assholes who justifies treating people badly or stalking by saying “I just love too much”.

But I went and did physical labor for her when it was literally causing me physical damage. I spent thousands of dollars helping her. Because I was trying to give her the kind of support I wish someone wanted to give me. She had me block out lots of time for her on my calendar and she showed up when she had nothing better to do.

Dad only offers help (that I have to pay hundreds of dollars for because I have to buy the plane tickets and send food money for my kid and send money for activities…. why aren’t I just sending her to sleep away camp–that costs less money?) when he also wants to ask me if he can borrow $25,000. But he doesn’t invite me to Thanksgiving or Christmas unless it is an Orphan/Leather Friends event. When he has holidays with his family I am not invited. I might be able to crash it… but he doesn’t invite me. Years ago when I asked him if he was willing to have a relationship with my kids he told me that I needed to know that all of his investment properties, all of his ability to help in this life is going to his kids. But I should loan him $25,000? Uhm. No. That kind of loan is for family. And you are letting me know that I am a Leather Family member… not a family member.

The folks we came to Hawaii to see talked about how much they missed us and how much they wanted to spend time with us. They have been begging us to visit for two years. And the daughter has totally flaked (she’s 20 and going through some shit… I get it) while the mother is manipulative, whiny, and cruel to my children all while asking me to fund her lifestyle. “I want to throw you a vegan feast to show you how much I care about you… but you have to pay for it.” Well a vegan feast is only welcome if it comes from t&T because their household is the only vegan household I fucking trust to make me food that will taste good. Your offering sounds like I am going to leave hangry and mean. And I get to pay for it. You will hang out with my kids and tell them that if they are not demonstrating enough gratitude that they don’t deserve to have as much food or money from their mother for play. WHAT THE FUCK? She mocked the size of my daughter’s ass because it didn’t fit in a climbing unit designed for fucking 5 year olds.

But I feel this terrible, overwhelming shame about cutting off people who treat me this way? They are willing to be my friends so how dare I judge what they have on offer?

Being really upset about these bigger boundary violations mean that smaller things feel more threatening. I *know* the CPS comment wasn’t intended as a threat. I *know* she didn’t mean to hurt me. But CPS is a deeply triggering topic and I am already wild with upset and I don’t have the ability to process that kind of thing without flipping out on top of everything else.

I don’t feel entitled to demand better treatment. I feel like these “friends” are treating me this way because this is what I deserve. Because I deserve to be treated like an ATM. If I don’t buy love I don’t deserve to receive any.

I deeply believe that my children don’t owe me anything. It is supposed to be a one way trip of support but that means I feel used all of the time by a lot of people and that’s hard.

I am still grieving Marcie. Her wife would not allow me to visit when Marcie was injured. Marcie felt abandoned. Marcie broke up with me because she couldn’t cope with feeling abandoned. I get that. I hope her wife is treating her better now. I will never know.

I am not blameless in any of this. I wanted too much from Sarah. I could watch her patterns and guess that she wouldn’t keep her promises and she would continue to want/take money and never think about how she was impacting other people. She is consistent with lots of people. I kept making stupid choices.

But I hurt. I feel like my hurt is stupid and I should just get over it and how dare I act like I have problems when I am not poor any more.

How dare I act like I ever deserve any support at all now that I have so much fucking money. I *should* have to pay for all help I get. And if people treat me badly as they take my money… isn’t that what I have always believed rich people deserve? Isn’t that justice?

I never meant to get this rich. I really didn’t. And now I don’t know how to view myself.

I don’t feel bad about the financial help I give to a lot of people. I bought Y a car and I don’t feel bad. I gave M a car and I don’t feel used. I have paid for people’s schooling. I have helped people start businesses. I loaned a friend money so she could get an apartment when she got her first corporate job and she couldn’t afford a place in the city she got the job in.

I don’t feel used by any of those situations at all.

I feel used by Sarah. I feel used by Dad. I feel used by the lady here in Hawaii.

Feeling bad about these people does not entitle me to treat other people badly. But I’m not coping well. I feel like I have to pretend I am not hurting and I am not capable right now. I don’t feel entitled to be sad about how these people treat me.

I abandoned my mother and my aunt when they needed help. I left them with a bunch of users, abusers, and takers. I feel like that means I deserve all the bad in the whole world. That means that Sarah treating me like shit feels like justice. And I hate myself for being someone who deserves this.

When I got my accident settlement when I turned 18, my sister told me that I had to use it to buy her a house and she would let me live with her.

How can I teach my children how to be in relationships without being users if that is all I understand?

It isn’t that all of my friends are users. Not even close. And it isn’t that I think I deserve endless support or financial help or…

I babysat for a lot of people hoping for trades. I was told that it was “easier” for me. They couldn’t handle having more than their own children in the house. But me providing free child care was so nice. It worked with the Bonus Family until it didn’t. Then my kids told me that a lot of her discipline was threatening to hit them and putting them in time outs for hours. I already knew that she expected my kids to come clean up after her kids because my kids are “more mature”.

I feel like almost every child care situation I have found has turned out to be shitty and abusive. I fear that it is happening because only shitty and abusive people want to be around me.

Only that isn’t true. I have friends who aren’t shitty and abusive. Well. I have people who want to talk to me for a few minutes or hours a year who aren’t shitty and abusive.

I feel like I should have known that my children would be treated badly by caregivers, as if it is a generational curse.

I don’t want to be bitter or angry or pissy with new people because I hate how this has all gone down.

But that means I have to lie about how I feel all the god damn time because I don’t trust people and I assume people are going to use me or treat me or my kids like crap.

M came through for my last birth. I need to never ever do anything again that puts me in such a vulnerable position. Because I can’t ever again need that much help. I can’t guarantee it. I am sure that people will help me in the future but they will help me randomly and when and how they feel like it and it won’t be based on my needs or issues. It will be about what makes them feel good that day.

That has to be ok. That has to be enough.

Which means I need to not try to be bigger. I need to not try to accomplish things. I need to just sit around and do nothing and wait for my kids to have needs because they will have needs and I am the only one who will be available to help them. I can’t ever believe anyone who tells me they will help again. If someone offers to be a penpal I need to to not believe them. If someone tells me they want us to come visit because they want to spend time with us I need to assume they are a liar.

I am so fucking grateful that Jenny said she has maybe a spare hour one day a week. Maybe. That is not consistent and I cannot count on it.

Thank you.

I hate that I need to assume that people are lying to me all the time. I need to assume that people are telling me what they wish was true, not what is true.

And I wonder why I feel depressed?

I really don’t want to live near the ocean. I don’t like it at all. I learned that, at least.

I can change how this story ends.

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Yesterday my children got a tiny taste of what I dealt with as a kid. The babysitters mother told me she would take the kids… but only if it was for pay because they are so hard. Ok, that part was fine with me. We agreed on $20/hour. I suggested three hours, she pushed for four. Hm. Ok. She sent me a long list of stuff she wanted me to pack and have ready for the kids (snacks, water bottles, clothing for the baby, all the stuff). It would have been a great list for a trip to the park. (She didn’t use any of the things she asked me to pack. The kids came back hungry and the baby was absolutely filthy. So why insist on having the supplies if you won’t use them?)

When she got here she said she was so excited. She was going to take the kids to Chuck E Cheese!! Isn’t that great! That way the kids will each have a hand stamp so they can’t get out of the building and she doesn’t have to stress herself out watching them! I was a bit dubious about that. The last CEC birthday party we went to a few years ago didn’t go that well because my kids have aged out already. But uhm… she didn’t really want to hear that when I tried mentioning it gently.

(She has told me over and over on this trip that she is not interested in hearing blunt truths. Either sugar coat it or don’t tell her at all. Uhm. That’s a point of view.)

When the kids came home they had stories. All of the stories are in line with behavior I have witnessed in milder form or they match up with stories that the babysitter has told so I believe my kids.

I sent the kids with $20 each to use for food or tokens. The food ended up being comped because the babysitters mother threw a tantrum about them not having gluten free pizza. She wouldn’t let the kids have that money for tokens. She made them spend their own money and she was very proud of herself when she handed me the money when they got back.

Apparently Eldest Child’s shoe broke in the first few minutes of them being there. She walked around on it for the whole time at CEC but as they were leaving the woman decided that it wasn’t acceptable and she made EC buy a new pair of shoes with her allowance. (The lady did contribute some, but… EC hated the shoes and they are physically uncomfortable and now she’s out her allowance money on shoes she will never wear again.)

But that’s the petty shit.

I don’t know what the fucking phrasing was, but she told Middle Child that he got more tokens than Eldest Child because EC wasn’t demonstrating enough gratitude. When there were an uneven number of pieces of pizza she told my kids that the child who behaved the best got the extra piece.

OH FUCK YOU AND THE FUCKING HORSE YOU RODE IN ON YOU GOD DAMN BITCH.

That’s the kind of shit she used to do to the foster kid she tried to adopt; he ended up punching holes in her walls because he couldn’t handle how controlling and manipulative she was. He was rehoused for his own safety. You have to be pretty fucking bad to have your foster kid taken away.

But my kids have never had stories like this before.

No wonder her daughter won’t talk to her anymore! She was telling me that she is very disappointed because her daughter won’t share any real feelings with her, she only presents a facade and she (the mother) wants to know the truth. I said, “Maybe telling you the truth isn’t safe.” “How dare you say that. Now you have upset me. You have to tell me something nice about myself now.”

I feel like letting her babysit was a desperation move. It was like letting fucking Kira watch my kids.

But I canceled dinner. And we aren’t seeing them again.

Before the CEC shit went down, we had been negotiating dinner tonight. She wanted to tell us to come over at 5 and swim and play for a few hours and then cook and then her husband would drive us home when he felt like it. Uhhhh no. If we come over at 5 we will be ready to eat, not play. We will be going home at 7 on the bus, not in your husband’s car because we will not have a car seat and we will not be breaking the law. “Well, you can try to assert your will with him, but people have died walking on that street so he may insist because he wants to protect you.”

Bitch I have taken my family all over the world without your fucking control. You don’t get to decide how or when I go anywhere.

So ok! I learned a lot on this stop in Hawaii.

I sat my kids down and explained that this kind of thing is why I come down on them so hard about lying. If they make a habit of lying to me, when bad things like this happen… I have to hear the other side of the story and try to find the truth that I can act on. If they are reliable narrators about what happens to them, when someone acts like this… ok we aren’t seeing them again and no I don’t need to hear her gaslighting bullshit.

This lady talks about how proud she is of herself because she was a single mother but she NEVER ASKED HER DAUGHTER TO TAKE CARE OF HER. Her daughter (the old babysitter) has stories like, “My mom entered her first depression when I was 5. I have spent my entire life making sure my mom eats, has her medicine, has she taken a shower…. I’m tired.”

I believe the babysitter and I believe my kids. I am not giving this woman a chance to tell her side of the story because I don’t fucking care.

You told my son that if his sister doesn’t demonstrate enough gratitude to adults that he should punish her by withholding the shared resources.

FUCK YOU WITH A FUCKING CHAIN SAW. THAT SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE YOU.

I had so many foster families treat me like that.

My kids don’t have to go back to that.

I told my kids that I can’t save them from bad things ever happening to them. There are going to be bad situations in the future where we can’t walk away and we will have to learn to cope. But this bitch? We don’t need to learn to cope with her lying and control and bullshit.

And the babysitter dropped off the map after making promises to my kids. Ok. We learned that our perception of these people was clouded by circumstances. If you change circumstances, people change. We don’t need to keep in touch any more.

This woman is constantly complaining to me that she can’t make any friends here because Hawaiians are racist.

You know what, lady? I think the problem is you.

It’s kind of nice to occasionally have clarity that my wrong decision was trusting someone I shouldn’t because they are the bad actor, not me.

I think she doesn’t like how I parent. My kids are free to share when they are bored or unhappy or when a gift was a flop.

I like that. I like that they tell me “Mom I really don’t want to be at Chuck E Cheese’s. The creepy figures bother me and the games aren’t fun.”

Oh, oh… but the pièce de résistance…. Eldest Child kinda got stuck in one of the climbing tubes. Because they are designed for little children and my 10 year old is bigger than most adult Asian women at this point. She’s 100% shopping in the adult department. She’s not over weight, she is going to be a very large person. Her body is perfectly proportioned and she’s fucking fine.

THAT FUCKING BITCH MADE FUN OF HER. “wow. You are so big. Even I could fit in there. hahahaha”

The bitch in question wears about a size 4. Her daughter is a 0 or a 2. My daughter is pretty pear shaped and size small pants are already getting tight–she’ll be in mediums (so probably a size 6 at the moment) in the next year. She is height/weight proportional.

YOU DON’T FUCKING MAKE FUN OF A KID BECAUSE THEY ARE GROWING UP YOU STUPID CUNT. I am so angry that if I saw her I might hit her. She fucking fat shamed my daughter.

You know what… fuck people.

Our plans for the weekend sound pretty fun to me. We are picking up a rental car in 5 days and we will explore the other side of the island and deal with all of our crap on our own.

I am more than capable.

I. do. not. need. you.

Comfort and creatures

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The worst part about the house we are staying in is the mattress quality. My back is very sore. I would say that I still haven’t crossed the pain threshold which feels magical to me. I have not been doing my PT exercises and that’s a problem. My body is degrading again. I am having a hard time doing them in the main room of the house with everybody present (I don’t know why, no one cares) and there literally isn’t floor space to do it in a bedroom. I have less floor space in this bedroom than I had on the cruise ship. I said I would investigate a massage yesterday and instead I took the kids (the younger two) to the beach. This was good for my relationships with them (I have not been having enough fun with my kids) but it means I am, as usual, prioritizing my kids over myself. I really struggle with this balance.

I told Noah that if one of us was going to have their “alone time” this week be doing the laundry at the laundromat it should be him since all of my other “alone time” is medical care and his “alone time” is usually drawing or playing games. I did have three whole video chats with friends this week. That was tremendously helpful for my mental health. I feel less like a fuck up who can’t ever get anything right.

There is a balance and it is hard. If you look up advice for parenting with most of my medical conditions the first or second piece of advice is to have a trusted support team so that other adults can take care of my children and I can have a lot of alone time to rest and recharge. Ha. Haha. Hahahahahahahahahaha. Fuck you. I completely and fucking totally failed to find support. So that piece of advice is basically worthless to me. Which means that in the eyes of what authorities I can find… my basic existence is too much stress for anyone to handle well. That does not excuse my failures or make it ok that I am a bully who dabbles in abusive behavior.

I tried to go get my nails done because it is one of the very few activities within walking distance of where we are renting. A pregnant mama was ignoring her 4 year old so she could get some me-time and I ended up entertaining the kid because she was talking to me. Sigh.

I want to be able to keep writing about my fuck ups. Not because I am bragging: so my children have the ability to go back and check their memories against what I was writing at the time. If they grow up and tell me that I hurt them… I won’t be able to deny it. I will have to say that yes, I did those shitty things. I wrote it down so that I could never minimize your pain. I hurt you and that is terrible.

My mother and sister rewriting history and telling me that they supported me when I prosecuted my father was really damaging. I want that to be literally impossible for me to do.

I will say, “Yeah. I was a complete fuck up for about a year there. I failed in a bunch of ways for a bunch of reasons. Maybe we can talk about those mistakes so you don’t have to repeat them.” Like my friend did for me recently. She told me “When my kid was (age) I did x because y and z were going on and it damaged them.” My friend was trying to warn me.

It is hard the way the needle is moving generationally. Many of my older-than-me friends made mistakes around hitting their kids. I am not allowed to let my kids have the option of kneeling on rice twice in their life to find out what being uncomfortable feels like. The path to being correct grows narrower over time and I am not allowed to leave my kids alone the way I was nor can I find anyone to help me so that I can have stress relief. I am not asking for pity. I am trying to find a way to give myself enough grace so that I am capable of doing better.

If all I do is hammer on what a failure I am… I will do worse and worse because I will freak out. My comfort matters. I can’t excuse bullshit. That’s not ok. But I am doing a hard thing under hard circumstances (they were hard standing in one place so please don’t tell me this is all because of travel–I feel better here than I did in California) and whereas sometimes I will do well… sometimes I will fail.

Perfection can’t be the only option or I need to kill myself because I will never be perfect.

Sometimes we need to fail so that we can learn a lesson. That means I need to be imperfect.

I think the way we have been handling school for the past two years was a necessary failure for us. I tried to live up to what my kids asked from me when they didn’t understand what they were asking. We all regret this. Maybe this regret is a necessary part of the process of learning about learning for us. They don’t truly want what they think they want. They are kids who have never been in school. They don’t even know what they are asking for me to do.

Her Sweetness is 13 months old. Over the next 5 months I will be able to pull away for longer and longer spans of time as she eats more food. Noah and I will have to find a way to each get more alone time. It may be that we trade weekend days off. Frankly we could each use a 6-8 hour stretch once a week where we are not responsible for working or doing anything to interact with our kids. No shopping for the family or doing laundry or medical care with that time. But we aren’t there yet. #goals

One of the things I am enjoying the most about travel is seeing the animals. The different birds (I have traditionally felt very confused by people who traveled to look at birds, but they are actually quite interesting? I baffle myself.) and reptiles and mammals are so cool! I could not fucking tell that was a real crocodile. I thought it was a statue. Which is why my stupid ass does NOT APPROACH WILDLIFE. Seals came up on the beach right by where we were swimming. I have had sea turtles bump into me in the ocean–the babies seemed super curious. I have seen crabs that range in size from about 2″ tall to about the size of Middle Child’s head. It is so cool that there are so many kinds and sizes. Cockroaches as big as my thumb (oh I’ve seen those before). Today MC and I watched a couple of birds have a knock-down-drag-out fight and I said, “Doesn’t that remind you of you and your sister?” He grinned sheepishly.

Lizards crawl on our walls (I think they get in through the hole where a fire detector is supposed to be… and isn’t… The ants are both super tiny, way smaller than we saw in California in our house and much much larger.

And yeah yeah, fish. Duh. Nothing brilliant or exciting looking. We haven’t been snorkeling or anything.

I just read an NPR article about Inuit parenting. It had some excellent points about anger. I feel that when I am on my game I am in this direction. I try. But I have a lot to learn.

It is hard learning how to give the exact opposite of what you got.

But… that’s necessary. Hard is not impossible. It is just hard.

Perspective is hard.

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I struggle with receiving advice from people who have kids in the same age range as my kids. It’s kind of like how I don’t think anyone should write a parenting advice book while their kids are under 18: you don’t know how your methods work out in the long run.

Today a friend who has an adult daughter just a bit younger than me wrote to me about her concern. She didn’t phrase it at all as if she was criticizing me. She said, “This is what I did wrong and these are the long term consequences for me and my child.” I really appreciate that.

I need to have course corrections from outside sources. It’s important. It’s mandatory so that I don’t fuck up entirely.

Some days I am making the best bad decision I can because I do not have the ability to make a good decision.

That is absolutely shitty. My children will pay for that.

“All that I wanted from you was to gimme
Something that I never had
Something that you’ve never seen
Something that you’ve never been
But I wake up and everything’s wrong” – “Work”, Rihanna

My friend says she is afraid I am regressing (because she does) and I’m lashing out at my children (like she did).

I cannot imagine a kinder way to criticize me.

I live in abject terror of ignoring my kids, because my mother was severely depressed and she paid almost no attention to me, positive or negative, for months or years at a time. So I give my children negative attention when it might be healthier to take space from them. Because of my wounding.

There is no fair here.

And most of the people who told me they would help my kids by showing up…. they didn’t. And I don’t feel like it is ok to demonstrate my disappointment to them. I have to assure them that they are fine. Even though I am not fine partially because people keep fucking lying to me. Then I flip the fuck out and my kids bear the brunt of that.

It is not fair.

Today the plan is to do two hours of academics then the kids are going outside to play, whether they are done or not. I need down time. I need to rest. They don’t NEED me to pay attention to them all day. If they get their stuff done they can go spend time with their friend. If they don’t, they can choose being alone.

That is the best bad decision I can make today.

And I feel like this is so much crueler than soap in the mouth or kneeling on rice. Because that is my perspective. But folks are arguing with me. Folks I respect.

I don’t know the right thing to do. I went from one form of abuse to another to another. But I’m supposed to know the right thing to do. Even as people tell me that the right thing is boundless energy and give… and they will support me so I can do that…. then they don’t and I have to keep giving no matter what I am or am not receiving.

Ok.

Growing pains and mistakes

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Many of my friends are traumatized people. When they respond to me or give me feedback… they are not taking careful stock of what I am doing and reacting to my actions. They are responding from a place of wounding. That’s not wrong and it’s not bad and it’s not always irrelevant… but it’s important for me to keep in mind so I don’t flagellate myself to death because they are upset at what I am doing. Their reaction is more about them than me. But I take it hard.

I try hard to ask a lot of different kinds of people about my behavior for that reason. I try to ask people with a wide range of backgrounds and experience. I try hard to regulate myself more strongly off of people who have actual relevant experience in whatever issue I am trying to deal with at the moment.

Sometimes I really fail at that and I spend days raging at myself and feeling like there is absolutely no hope of me ever being better because I have triggered a traumatized person. That’s not very useful for me, my husband, my kids, or even my friends.

I’ve been reading more psych books. Because I’m trying to find the middle path.

No, offering my children a variety of not-so-comfortable inducements that they can try and reject at will is not the same thing as spanking them for being bad. It just isn’t. We are trying things because I am out of cope and some of the things we try are going to be less than optimal and they will fail.

That’s fucking life and it isn’t the same thing as child abuse.

We tried it. The first day they thought it was very useful to them and they wanted to try again. The second day they didn’t like it and they felt kind of bad about it and they said they didn’t want to do that again.

Ok. We won’t do that again. My goal was not to inflict pain or punishment on them. It was to create a less comfortable environment.

The fact that folks would be totally ok with me drugging the shit out of my kids to have a similar kind of behavioral impact is utterly bizarre to me.

I am trying to figure out what lines need to be held. I am going to mess that up sometimes. We renegotiated academic goals about a month ago. We halved the work load. I tried to hold the kids to what they agreed to because that is my job. But it may be that once again the goals we set are not the right ones and we will have to adapt.

I am freaking out partially because I have not stood next to people who did this well. I am faking it. I don’t know what the hell I am doing. All my classroom experience did not prepare me for this part. In a classroom, the standards are arbitrarily set by the state and the students measure up or they fail. I am not setting arbitrary standards for my kids. I don’t have “You must be x proficient” goals for them and thus we are flailing really hard as we figure out what our goals should be and how hard I should insist on meeting the goals the kids claim they want to reach.

This is a process.

But I need to stop screaming.

I don’t have rest. I don’t get much support. Almost everyone who says, “I will help you by doing x” has turned out to be fucking lying and I need to stop allowing anyone to claim they will help me with my kids. It just results in me hating my friends with the fire of a thousand suns because almost no one follows up on what they say they will do.

The people who have absolutely rigorously met the standards they set for me are rare. I can pretty much count them on my fingers. I think that the fact that they go off of one hand is something that I should be celebrating instead of being so upset that the number of people doesn’t reach my toes.

But people keep making promises and not keeping them and that hurts me.

I don’t feel entitled to that hurt and that’s part of the problem. I don’t let myself admit to myself just how much these people are hurting me until I am exploding with rage all over the place because I can’t suppress my feelings anymore. I try hard not to get angry about people saying “I will do x with the kids” and then never doing it because I want to honor that people mean well. They want to be helping me. But the reality is that most of the time they want to feel helpful not be helpful and I need to stop looking to those people. Really almost any people.

We need to find a way to balance this so we can be self sufficient. That is not what I have been trying for…. ever.

The psych book I’m reading right now Born To Be Good talks about how in the US people define themselves as individuals (I’m an artist, a runner, a dancer, a writer) and people in other countries tend to define themselves through their relationships (I’m a daughter, a mother, a wife, a friend, a cousin) and a lot of my problem has been that I have been trying as hard as I can all of my life to define myself through my friendships because the daughter/sister/niece roles failed so abjectly for me.

But my friends have not been able to turn and be stable for me the way that family relationships do for other people and that’s been really destructive to my entire mental health.

Leaning this hard on my friendships for my identity and my self worth has resulted in decades of feeling worthless and like I should kill myself because no one is ever going to prioritize me like I do them. I hurt myself showing up for friendships when I should be selfish and care for myself and that’s stupid.

For the last couple of days I have been trying to process for myself that 50% of all people who hit grade 12 in school are below proficiency. My 5th grader is already writing essays that rival many of the 17 year olds I taught.

Maybe I don’t need to be so worried about them being “at grade level” and doing all the busy work of going through school. My kids have a very solid grasp of grammar and math. They are approximately at grade level. They would probably be B students if they went straight into school right now for the last few months of this school year.

Why am I so freaked out every moment of every day about failing them as a teacher and not preparing them for what they need to know? Because nothing I did was ever good enough to make my friends show up for me in the ways they constantly claimed they would so how can I know if what I am giving my kids will be enough for their future so they can show up and do what they want to do?

Maybe that isn’t entirely my battle to fight.

My kids have been digging in their heels and doing less and less. They were told weeks ago when we reset the metrics that they had to be current in order to go hang out with the babysitter. They then messed around on the boat and did nothing and got a week behind. They have not been interested in catching up since they got here.

Why am I wearing myself out trying to force them through the work necessary to earn the free time they want to have? This is so stupid.

I know that they can get all of their work done in 2 hours a day with time to spare. Maybe I need to give them two hours to do it then kick them out to play outside by themselves while I have down time. If you don’t get your stuff done so you can go with your friend, sucks to be you. Play by yourself and get out of my face. I act like I owe them constant stimulation and entertainment and so do they. And it is turning me into a psycho harpy. This is not working. I can’t be 24/7 stimulation for 3 kids and have anything left for my own health.

I don’t think we should lower the standards to nothing and completely unschool. But I also think that if they want to fail and not earn rewards…. I should let them. I have not been letting them. I have been hurting myself dragging them to their rewards.

Why. What am I teaching them?

That I care way more about their happiness than they have to. I care more about their happiness than my happiness or Noah’s happiness or my health.

Why.

Because I am afraid that if I don’t they will treat me like my friends.

You know what? I am leaving the fucking country because I am so angry about how my friends treat me. I have chased people for years begging for their love. I’m doing the same thing with my kids.

This is stupid.

Mixed feelings

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It may have been the best school day of this school year. Apparently kneeling on rice is a fabulous inducement?

I have so many mixed feelings.

By “best” I mean that we worked together without fussing or yelling or being nasty about anything. Nobody had to be glared at. “Ok, it’s x’o’clock and you haven’t finished, time for 15 minutes of work on rice.” Then all of a sudden they finished SUPER FAST and they weren’t upset and I wasn’t upset and the work got done…

Being mean is being nice. Being nice is being mean.

Parenting is so confusing.

I feel physically better than I have in a while. I didn’t yell today. My body is very happy about that. I am really embarrassed and ashamed of how much I have been yelling. I have been very out of control.

If I tell the truth and set boundaries people will leave me.

Maybe only the people who need to be gone from my life anyway. Even if that hurts. Maybe hurting and setting boundaries is good. How many times do I have to learn this fucking lesson.

Maybe less hysterical, we’ll see.

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This year… the kids don’t want to do academics. But they have lofty goals. If my kids told me they wanted to grow up and be a hair dresser and a mechanic I would not be so obnoxious with them about academics. They want to be engineers and politicians according to their stated goals and that means you fucking have to do academics.

Why am I freaked out all of the time? Because I’m never doing one thing. I’m taking care of a nursing baby (which is a lot of fucking work), cleaning up, helping with homework, being a travel agent, and I’m supposedly disabled and I should be doing many hours a day of body maintenance. Do you know what I haven’t done in a week? Any of my fucking exercises because there is fucking always three things more important. Dealing with rental cars and shopping. More baby care. Big kids refusing to do academics unless I stand over them and scream. I am back up to 121 emails (like half of them are requests for me to review every stupid company I touch. They don’t want my reviews. Y’all suck.)

I feel like I am always a day late and a dollar short.

Like a month ago we negotiated with the kids to slash their workload massively. Much lower daily goals for work. What happened when we negotiated that? They stopped doing absolutely anything and are now three weeks behind again and I want to put my head through a window.

So they don’t get to see their babysitter until they get their shit together. They have already blown 7 possible days with her and they may not bother to work today and miss more days. We are here for 27 days.

I can’t make them care. If they don’t get it in gear by the time we are in Japan, we will have to shorten the trip to Scotland and come back to the US. Our traveling adventures can’t happen if they refuse to make any forward progress. I’m not asking for up to grade level. I’m not asking for a normal “school” work load. But you must do something. If you refuse to do anything productive at all, we are not fucking doing this. We will move somewhere cheap because I am not going to enjoy anywhere we move and it might as well not cost a lot of money. Which means the schools are going to be rough. I’m sure my kids will get the crap beat out of them for being weirdos as is the standard American experience.

Oh well. I can’t save you from you getting consequences and I am tired of trying.

I’ve been talking to a buddy who is a horse trainer. She tells me their lives are too comfortable and I need to start making it very uncomfortable to not comply. Don’t hit them. Don’t abuse them. But… they have a lot of comforts and they don’t need any of them.

She’s not wrong.

I don’t think they need to get so much choice and freedom for a while. They currently think they are the bosses of me and I don’t fucking think so.

If this shit continues I am absolutely going to kick them out at 18 and say “I don’t talk to people who treat me like shit.” And that would suck all the way around. Maybe some soap in the mouth so they realize that dressing me down all day long isn’t ok is the lesser evil.

So yesterday we talked to the kids about how things are going. The kids know they aren’t doing what they say they will do. Like EC didn’t do 1 day of work out of the 10 days we were on the boat despite spending 6+ hours a day “working on homework”. I am infuriated because this shit fucking sucks. Being stuck in the room doesn’t bother her. She has a lot of fun. My buddy suggested kneeling on rice for 15 minutes to keep her from doodling and having fun the whole time.

Today her math is done by 9:45am because I told her at 10 we would start 15 minutes of rice to help her not be distracted.

I don’t want to enact negative consequences. I want them to just want to do the thing. But they don’t. They set up long term goals, and they ask me to help them reach those goals. Then I have to be the heavy being a butthead to drag them kicking and screaming towards their stated goals. This is not fun for me.

I think we should figure out an online math tutor. Maybe if she had outside accountability and someone else saying they are disappointed in her…. she would care more?

MC has been treating me really badly. When the old babysitter arrived for dinner (I barely let the kids talk to her, she was here to visit me not you) she commented on how shocked she is that their behavior has gone down hill so much. They are incredibly rude to me and it’s not ok. The other day I was eating lunch and grading MCs homework and he sat in a chair in front of me and just started kicking me. For entertainment. This shit is his norm right now and I am about to explode and beat him.

Maybe soap in the mouth isn’t so bad.

He says he wants to be respectful, but currently he is not managing that at all. He is too comfortable in his established routines. Something needs to change.

I desperately hope these negative consequences are not going to be long term strategies. I desperately hope we can do this for a few weeks or months and change our patterns of interacting.

We’ll see. If things aren’t different in 6 weeks I’m picking some town in Oregon or Idaho or Washington and we are just moving there. Not into a fun forever home. Into somewhere cheap so they can attend public school for a year and we’ll spend that year figuring out what to do next.

We wanted to spend 2 years traveling so we could find a forever home that feels good. Maybe we can’t get our poop in a group and we don’t get to do that.

Life is complicated.

I can’t help but feel like part of this is fall out from the fact that if I had tried to hold boundaries with Sarah I would have lost her years earlier. I had to accept whatever shitty treatment she felt like giving me or I would have lost what minimal support she gave and that was too painful.

I don’t feel good about myself. But. Time to do more work.

Before 11 months is over….

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She is standing for short periods by herself without holding anything. She consistently says “mama” for me and “dada” for Noah. Nigh-nigh is solidly for sleep. Nom nom is I’m hungry. She signs milk.

When Noah is holding her and I come close up she lurches towards me to have me hold her then she wants both of us to lean on Noah’s chest. It’s really sweet and cute and oh goodness I am so glad she is here.

She plays a lot. She’s super into her toys and she’s starting to kiss on her dolls.

She wants to practice walking up and down the hallway for long stretches of time.

She sleeps easily. Night weaning is going fairly well. She rarely fusses at night any more and it only takes a few minutes to convince her to go back to sleep.

She eats so much food. She eats and eats and eats until I feel like certainly she will pop. But then at other meals it is two bites and she’s done. She is learning her needs.

We are solidly on disposable diapers and her skin is now clear and healthy looking. She needs them.

She has her 1 year check up next week for more vaccinations.

I continue feeling like this family is really awesome for me.

Eldest Child continues to lurch towards finding balance. This is hard! Middle Child is struggling with feeling too big and too small for everything. Being in between is hard too.

Life is hard.

Nobody likes it when I cry all the time. It’s been a rough few weeks. But we keep moving. And we hug each other. We talk about our feelings and try to make space for people to be less than perfect.

 

I hope.

If it stops working for us we will do something different

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Well. That’s the end of cloth diapers. Our poor baby had a bad diaper rash for over a month. Getting rid of it was terrible. We switched to disposables because we were using big gobs of Aquafor and Hydrocortisone on her with every change (doctor’s advice). When it finally cleared up we switched back to cloth. Less than a week later she’s looking very red but it’s not quite a rash.

Oh fuck it.

This is not such a big deal that I need to stick with it no matter what. Yes, I will hate buying disposables. But on the up side: way easier to pack and deal with laundry.

So I’m going to be passing along my stash. This baby has sensitive skin. She’s sunny and good natured and easy in many ways but her skin is really sensitive. She has to be covered in creams and lotions constantly or her skin gets upset. It’s ok. We all need what we need.

She needs disposable diapers.

The bad part.

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My kids forgot where we were tonight. They had to be dragged out of traffic more than once. More than 20 pedestrians per day are killed here.

I flipped.

I told them that I don’t hit them. But there isn’t a CPS worker or judge or cop in the world who would punish me for spanking them after they walked in front of cars that many times in one night. I literally pulled EC out of the traffic lane seconds before a motorcycle whizzed by where she had been standing on the way to dinner.

We watched a fucking cement truck blow a red light and not even slow down just a minute before you walked in front of a car coming out of a driveway and you didn’t even look.

What. Are. You. Doing.

Spanking is not an effective teaching method in general.

This…. is different. It’s ok for me to instill terror in you of cars. That’s my fucking job. If I have to hit you to prevent you from killing yourself… ok. I don’t want to, but ok.

I did not hit my kids.

I told them, instead, that if they are careless with traffic in any way again we will turn around and walk back to the apartment and they will not leave it again until we go to the airport. Their dad and I will get groceries and they will stay inside.

That seems completely fucking fair.

I will have three children when I leave this country. I don’t care if you have a good time.

The place where they ran out into traffic? I watched a man die there yesterday. Kuala Lumpur plays for keeps.

THIS IS WHY IT IS SO HARD

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I went in my room for a little packing reshuffling (looked at temperatures expected for the trips… errr… maybe the pants need to move around a little) and zoning out…

GUESS WHO FOLLOWS ME IN HERE BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO DO HER MATH NEXT TO ME BECAUSE BEING WITH ME IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN NOT BEING WITH ME.

The desire for enmeshment doesn’t just come from me, yo.

I love her so much. I think she is wonderful and kind and thoughtful and sometimes lazy and obnoxious as shit and absolutely perfect. I like knowing that she is alive. Even though she gets on my nerves. I have to keep trying to be a better person so I can deserve her.

I wanted these people so much that I feel like I am going to explode.

I get to have three children.

I’m going to go cry with joy now.

Even as I’m also irritated. Because that is life.

This is a trip, not a vacation.

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I am pissed. This has not involved rest for me. I needed rest really badly. But my kids decided that instead I get to spend all day on academics. If I don’t spend all this time on academics they will fall further behind and EC is already in “catch up” mode so falling further behind isn’t ok.

Catching up was the plan. But they lied about their progress for a quarter of a year and that was a time period where they should have been busting ass. They will be caught up soon. But I am going to be on duty until they are caught up. That sucks. I really needed rest. Oh well.

And we are in one of those developmental “disequilibrium” times. Which pretty much means my kids are squirrely as fuck, arguing over everything, and not being good about being responsible for their bodies in general. It is normal, appropriate, and developmental. Honestly it is probably part of why they tried lying like this.

But I told EC that she is now on her third chance. If she ever lies to me about academics again we are done home schooling. This is a privilege, not a right. If I permit her to lie to me and slack off like this… I am harming her. I am neglecting her. I will not neglect my children. If you need to be in school so someone else can ride your ass… fine. We can do that.

But I think Stanford is right that she is going to develop emotional problems. And that’s going to be her burden to bear in life and not mine. I can’t make this easy enough for you that you never have to try and do work. Just…. no.

The food is good. I feel upset and alienated so I can’t tell if people are being work-nice or actually nice so mostly I’m just not talking to anyone. Because I feel bad in myself about myself.

I feel so incredibly disappointed and angry. I feel absolutely devastated that the only way I can have any kind of vacation is if I schedule it without my kids.

That feels so bad.

Because if my kids are included they will find ways to wreck my day.

EC is absolutely capable of doing 6 pages of math in 4 hours. Most of this trip it has been more like 1 page in 3 hours because she is pissy she is being forced to work.

This sucks so much. I am so upset.

And nooooooooooooooooooo medication.

What a great vacation.

It is not helping in any way shape or form that the first flight to get here was full of verbal abuse from strangers. I was called all manner of awful names. A bitch told me I was a moo cow who should be back in my pen. There was this asshole who spent the entire flight going through offensive stereotypes trying to get a reaction. He didn’t shut the fuck up. Noah and the kids slept through it. I had to stay awake to be able to react to the baby stirring instantly. That sucked.

So I’m kinda hating people and feeling hostile and angry.

I have some really big feelings about appearance stuff right now.

And that’s not getting into the group of hispanic men in the airport who spent a lot of time ranting about how people like my family are ruining the world. I can’t say they are wrong.

I feel like dog shit.

I don’t know if I was right.

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My daughter very consciously and deliberately misled me for months. Like, took active steps to pretend she was doing something mandatory… while not doing it.

Because she’s a completely normal kid.

When I discovered this my response was to giggle. Because she’s screwed. She is going to be sitting in our hotel room in Mexico making up what she lied about. Cause that’s how life goes sometimes.

She didn’t appreciate my giggling. She screamed that she was going to punish me. She got in my face and loomed and told me she was going to humiliate me in front of every person I know.

Uhhhh. Well. I put my hand on the back of her head, pushed her to her knees and growled, “I. Don’t. Think. So. Go. Out. Side.”

Was that the right thing to do? God I don’t know. That was so minor compared to everything that happened to me. I didn’t hit. I didn’t yank her hair out. I didn’t spend a lot of time screaming at her.

I remember once I told my mom I was going to make her sorry. She grabbed me by the hair, yanked me through the house to my bedroom, and threw me against a wall.

I pushed my daughter to her knees. Then made her go outside for a little while.

These are dominance challenges. I can’t imagine that letting her win every single one is going to be good for our relationship or her character. But is that too harsh? It’s not abuse according to any statute in my state. But is it wrong? There are so many things that are legal and still wrong.

My friends hit their kids.

I feel despicable for putting my hand on her head and pushing her to her knees.

Perspective, yo.

I went outside to talk to her after I calmed down. I asked her what response would she like from me? Would she like me to scream and rage about her lying? Would she like me to spank her like my friends do their kids? Would she like me to cry and feel guilty because it is all my fault I haven’t taught her to be an honest person?

I giggled. I giggled at your sheer audacity. (She then asked me to define audacity. I said, “Your balls. Your nerve. Your stupid bravery.”)

She apologized for threatening to punish me. I apologized for putting my hand on her. But good grief I don’t know another way to handle someone getting in my face like that.

No. You don’t get to do that to me. Just….. NO.

My kids correct me a lot. They call me on my bullshit. They feel free to criticize me. But there are limits. You don’t shout that you are going to punish me because you got caught doing something wrong. That’s not ok.

I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING TO DESERVE BEING PUNISHED AND THAT IS NOT OK.

The thing is… if I had put my hand on her to begin with and she had told me that she was going to punish me for putting my hand on her? I don’t think I would be so angry. I would feel I deserved it. But I giggled. No. You don’t get to punish me for giggling. That’s not ok.

It is so hard to figure out scale. Everything in my life was so much more violent than that.

According to every statute, it isn’t abuse. No bruises were left. No hairs were removed. She was not harmed at all.

But it was a dominance challenge and I won.

I don’t feel good about that.

I am writing this down because I am not proud of it. If my daughter ever says, “Remember when you…” I need to be able to say, “Yes I remember. And I documented that I was not happy with myself for doing it. But it happened.”

I can’t rewrite this shit. I owe her honesty. Even if she isn’t honest with me. That’s not important. This is a one way road of obligation.

I will never run out of what I owe her.

I wish that I didn’t feel like part of what I owe her is teaching her not to scream at people when she is in trouble.

Something needs to change.

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Ok. I’m in a cafe with music I like playing. I have my braces on. I need to be home in 90 minutes. Let’s see if I can defrag my brain.

I had a great therapy session today. We talked about the difference between PTSD and autism and how my various issues are compounding on one another. We went through which of my choices they were responding to last week (yes they were in fact biting their tongue to not say WHY ARE YOU MAKING BAD CHOICES) and why I am making them.

They are worried about Malaysia because a melt down there could have bigger consequences than in many other locations. That is a valid fear. But I have pretty good reason to think that I’m at risk if I melt down in a lot of places and I don’t honestly think Malaysia will be harder than a lot of other places. I believe that I will keep a lot more to myself. I will have to go rest faster because the consequences are extreme for a fuck up.

Why am I going? Because Noah was invited! How often is he going to be invited to a Muslim country? Probably not that often and I want to find out what it feels like in my bones. I want to taste the air and meet all the wonderful people who are living full and complete lives that don’t resemble lives I already know about.

The lack of medication is going to be hard. Sarah says I should get Prilosec and she’s not wrong.

But bigger than that trip is how we live our lives over the next few years. Sarah points out that I’m doing this thing where I completely deprioritize myself and I have done so while breastfeeding before. My shrink was adamant that my experience of decentering myself and my needs is absolutely board standard for breastfeeding parents. This hormonal soup is hard. But this is going to stay true for another few years and I need to manage my big kids. I can’t treat them like they are as important as an infant. Well… importance doesn’t feel like the right word. Their wants aren’t urgent. Their needs can be somewhat delayed without a problem. They are old enough that we should start having times when they come second or third and that’s healthy and appropriate.

It’s not healthy nor appropriate for me to always come in fourth or fifth place.

I am proposing a basic change to our schedule. I want to request that we all have one hour off in the afternoon without screens or the right to ask anyone for anything. No snuggling. No questions. Unless you are bleeding, figure it out for yourself for one hour. My big kids are 8 & 10. This is absolutely appropriate.

Also, we are talking about mixing up the order of our day a bit. Noah is not getting enough uninterrupted time to be creative. That’s a problem. I absolutely understand how hard it is to be creative when you are interrupted every 15 minutes for bullshit. His job requires near constant creativity. It’s not ok that we are acting like we don’t get to set boundaries with the kids. This is an extreme over correction.

I am proposing that I take over breakfast again and Noah work in the evenings after dinner and he gets to sleep in. That after dinner time is a great window for the kids getting predictable screen time (if they get their chores done) in a way that allows me to rest when I’m most tired. Noah is more of a night person and he likes those evening hours for creativity. My best creative hours are 4-8am. We are very different people.

I feel like we have been flailing and failing to create the structure that allows the kids to know what to do and when. I’m tired of having to be a jerk to get them off of the screen in the middle of the day. If they get the screen at 2pm, I am usually getting nasty to get them off for dinner around 6. Sometimes they tell me they don’t need to eat. That’s not good.

I am really struggling with how much my kids blow me off unless I get nasty and throw a tantrum. Everything short of that is worth ignoring.

I am not ok with this dynamic. It means I get to be an abusive bully or I get to be abused. Both suck.

I don’t want to abuse anyone. I need to learn ways to defend myself without being nasty and the last two weeks I have *sucked*

I am having a hard time setting boundaries all over the place and part of it is how worn out I feel. I feel like I’ve been massaged with a cheese grater. That’s not a great feeling. I’m exhausted. Taking care of a baby is draining as fuck. The whole first year is hard. I could seriously use a night of sleep and I am not going to get one for months. That’s hard to contemplate. My body has needs and those needs are not going to be met for months.

How do I find space for that? How do I find space to be gentle with myself as I cope with being pushed well past bearing? How do I find space to be nice to the most important people in my life?

How do I stop feeling hatred because I am so far past capacity I have nothing but hate left. That is the worst feeling.

I never want to hate my loves. But frankly, when I feel like I’m losing my mind… I do. I hate the whole world. I hate every person who wants me to think or interact or work. I get so tired and empty.

And filling my bucket feels so hard these days. I don’t even know what I need. I need time. I need to feel interesting. I need to feel like I have potential and worth and value. Not from working.

That’s so hard.

What kind of worth do I want?

I know I spend so much time on advice forums because I want my shitty ass life to help someone else have a better life. Not that my life is currently shitty. Past tense. I want to feel like the experiences and wisdom I have are valuable. Not because I serve you. Because it is wonderful that people exist who share what they know with the world.

I want to feel like I am more than a mommy/wife appliance. I want to be something that impacts other people. That is a big part of filling my bucket. I adore my family–don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to stop home schooling. I don’t want more space from Noah. I want to have a self outside of them the way Noah gets to but my available hours for such an existence is so small.

I need to take my writing more seriously and I feel like I have danced around that for years. I am so afraid of trying to be an authority about anything. I actively hide from being allowed to be authority.

Sometimes I wonder if my kids are disrespectful in the ways they are because they are learning from me that I’m not really worthy of respect. I sure act like that. But I don’t know. They are their own people and sometimes their behavior really sucks. Because they are people. Because they are kids. I don’t think they suck extra hard or anything. They are very normal. And I need to teach them how to treat me and I’m sucking at that.

This is tied into appearance stuff. I have to care more about how I look because I have to show people how to treat me. That’s so hard. I have been asked to leave businesses because I didn’t look good enough to be a customer. I’ve had the police called on me because I looked like a vagrant on the road trip. I am not imagining it that I ping a lot of “icki person” buttons for people and quite a lot of people are innately programmed to be mean to people they perceive as lower than them. It’s absolutely normal. And hateful. And cruel.

I remember when D told me years ago that if I don’t want people to be mean to me for looking bad then I had better do the work to look better.

The unstated implication there is I deserve the mistreatment if I don’t jump through hoops to be “pretty enough”. That feels degrading. I feel angry about this situation. But my anger doesn’t do me any good and it doesn’t change the fact that the world is full of abusive monsters.

This weekend someone told me that she thinks that something isn’t abuse if it is common/normal. I accept that she has this perspective. I wildly disagree. I used to know a woman who is part of a very specific culture. In her culture people with mental illness are to be entirely shunned so they don’t hurt the rest of the tribe. Guess what? That’s abuse.

If your community thinks it is ok for you to die because you aren’t good enough that’s abuse. Ableism is pretty standard in this country. It’s abusive. It’s normal for doctors to provide shittier health care to black women in this country. It’s abuse.

A great many traditional parenting practices are completely fucked up. I’m not going to get into them. Because shit I don’t want to argue. This is my opinion. You are allowed to have yours.

I need to create more space between me and my family so that I get to exist. Or I am not going to be able to be a healthy member of this family and that will mean that I have to go.

Ok. Time to create space.

The video game stuff. Ugh. Ok. So. When I say that video games are triggering what I mean is that when the topic comes up I am instantly full body flooded with adrenaline. I want to fight. I want to hit. I want to scream. I want you to get the fuck away from me before I hurt you. My early experiences with video games often revolved around people hurting me if I wanted to play. My body learned that this experience, this hobby, are not safe for me. Could I unlearn this reaction? Probably. With time, effort, and a lot of EMDR therapy.

Do you know what I don’t fucking care to pay for a bunch of therapy to fix?

My issues with video games. Therapy is expensive as shit. I can’t manage to fix everything.

When people are sitting around discussing their video games in a completely chill way I spend my time fantasizing about head butting them so that I can break their nose.

It’s not fun to be in my head through this process. Feeling this nasty, this angry, this much need to FIGHT hurts me. I feel sick.

It’s not fair for me to have to go up and down this roller coaster just because someone else wants to have fun. That’s not ok. So I finally said that I need that to be a boundary entirely. The kids are trying. EC asked me if she has done ok in the last few days and I told her yes.

My kids do want to be considerate. They just don’t always succeed. They are kids.

I need to teach them. And being a nasty bully isn’t the way.

And it also isn’t ok for me to have to beat myself in the head in order to accept what is happening me. That is also not ok.