Category Archives: semi-cryptic whinging

Progress

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pick your battles.

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

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

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

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

I said, “Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you get mad at me sometimes?”

“Yes. You deserve it.”

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

She kinda laughed and hugged me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is harder with adults. So much harder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doesn’t everyone want to feel appreciated?

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

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

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

I’m a good advocate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some days are like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I really am a fucking asshole.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today I feel very scared and very sad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She really said it over and over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every body has different needs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh watch me.

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

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

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

It’s not like I have a choice, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do we differently value time spent?

How do we differently value people?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She just loves me.

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

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

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

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

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

Distraction

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If you do much research on mental illness, or really any undesirable behavior you want to eliminate, distraction is key.

This week in therapy my shrink spent a lot of time harping on the idea that I need to start being a lot more choosy about who I allow into my life. I always wonder how much my shrinks judge me. No, actually I don’t wonder very often or I would be very paranoid. Occasionally I wonder. When therapists very rarely encourage me towards squeezing people out of my life (it is rare but it happens) I always wonder how long they have sat on that impulse.

When did my description of my friend start bothering you? They never tell me, of course.

Therapy is such a weird beast. It is a relationship but not a a real one. It is unidirectional and unbalanced. There is honesty but not full honesty. Truth but not the whole truth. The whole truth involves someones opinions which I shouldn’t be taking into consideration.

I shouldn’t change to make my therapist happy. She otherwise isn’t part of my life. I should not alter the support I get to make her happy.

But sometimes you do have to follow their advice because they are right. She doesn’t say “so and so is icki” she says “what do you get from this relationship and what do you give to it? If the balance doesn’t work for you then you need to move on”. She says to me, “I know that for most of your life you have had to accept relationships with anyone who wanted to have a relationship with you. That is no longer true. You need to keep your children safe.”

I was raped over and over because I made a lot of stupid choices. Because I accept any relationship that is offered. Because I don’t say “no” when I should.

Yeah yeah yeah people think of me as being overly firm with my “no” delivery. You only know what my life is like after more than half a dozen rapes or more. The people who have known me the longest met me when I had been raped at least half a dozen times.

The things that happen to you change you. I did not know how to say “no”. I have learned to say it loudly and firmly. Loudly and firmly enough that I often bother people who wish I was “softer” about the process. Oh fucking well.

“Most people have no more than five people in their true inner circle.” (Quoting my shrink again.)

Jenny. Noah. K. My kids. Pam. That’s six. I have absolute trust in their love for me. Do I feel that way about anyone else? Not really. Jenny bought her way in by being the only person who comforted me during a horrible childhood. K has been the single most helpful person by a humongous margin during the parenting journey. I talk to her more often than anyone I don’t live with. I think she is the most motherly friend I have ever had. She has actually shown up when the rubber meets the road for the past few years. Pam has been with me for more than half of my life. To the best of my recollection I have gotten really pissed off at her, but never for actual boundary violations. I can’t remember one.

Other people were in the inner circle at other points. When they were able to show up. Life changes. I don’t stop loving them. Not a jot. But I don’t have trust any more. If I search my body this moment I’m not angry about the fact that I have seen the waxing and waning of so many friendships. They were with me when it made sense. It doesn’t make as much sense any more.

I can’t explain what it was like in my childhood. I was not allowed to cry. My crying irritated people and it was beaten out of me. That’s a lot of why I cry so much now. I was horribly brutalized and then punished if I grieved.

I want to write in excruciating detail about my current emotional outpouring towards people. But I don’t want it as part of the record. There are names I don’t write about. Lots of them. There are lots of specific details I don’t want to announce in public. Mostly because I’m aware that my perceptions are highly biased and I’m a much bigger judgmental asshole than people understand and I need to keep it that way.

I don’t want the fall out. I’m that lame. So I’m having trouble working through the emotions. Writing things out is a lot of how I get rid of things. It has become very useful for me over the years. (Yes, people who like people journals get these things out without the public fall out. Clearly I don’t write that way. You don’t get to pick the writing talent you get. You just get it.)

So I’ve been looking for distraction. Painting went so breathtakingly well. The only time I raised my voice was when Shanna was backing into an open paint can. (It was a good save. She wasn’t cranky.) *phew* I did it.

I’m reorganizing toys again. Because I like playing house. Because it makes me happy. I refine how I organize as I watch them use things. I try to figure out where how to have things “live” where they are played with. I want to make their set up convenient for them so it is easy for them to clean up.

It is hard to find a system when you are a kid. You literally don’t have the schema to do it. Kids need to be shown how to find systems. Some people are naturally very gifted, but usually there is the overall framework of systemization within their life and that is why they are so accustomed.

I’m not very good at providing constant systemic living. I will never run a prison. I believe that needs and wants change dramatically over time and it is good to be constantly tweaking your system to be more appropriate for where you are today.

Sustainability is hard to find. What can you keep up? Deciding to be rigid in your system means you exclude millions of awesome options. I like trying lots of things. I need more flexibility.

It is hard reading my shrinks’ evaluation of me. I don’t think it is accurate that I can’t work because of relational issues. Although I had a lot of job volatility throughout my work life. Ha.

Today will be fun. I have babysitting time this morning. I am going to sit here and do all the work for the home school yearbook. (I’m a slacker. I should have done this a month ago.) I need to go to REI. That will be festive. I’m glad I can do it without the kids. I would like to work on the reading list for the book, but I only get three hours. I will need to get it done soon. Blah.

I need to do scheduling today. I need to plan out my running and exercise. I’m doing a half marathon with a friend in October and I’m really not doing appropriate exercise to support that. I have to start. It takes planning or I just don’t get it done. Deep sigh.

I don’t understand how other people naturally just do exercise. I have to plan how I will force myself. I have to have a reason to exercise–an upcoming obligation that will require my body to have something it doesn’t have right now. Long-term planning is too hard.

Distraction. What is distraction? What is focus? What am I doing with my life? Are the people who come and go the focus or a distraction? Is the painting a distraction or a focus? Is reorganizing the toys so they are easier for the kids to clean up a distraction or a focus?

Isn’t it all about your priorities? Isn’t it different for every person you ask?

Is writing a distraction from my life or one of the focuses in my life? Gardening? House maintenance (both of the repair and of the cleaning variety)?

What is life?

What does it mean to have a focus in your life? I read a lot about what other people do with their time. You can tell what people care about by looking at how they spend their time.

It’s ok that we are all different. If we were all the same that would be boring. We need symbiotic relationships.

The inner circle doesn’t mean that you only have relationships with people you trust that much. There are lots of other kinds of relationships. It is ok to share smaller pieces of yourself with people.

And it’s ok to walk away when it no longer works for you.

It doesn’t make me a bad person. People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Not everyone will be there forever.

There are some perverts who probably shouldn’t be around my kids. I recognize that in a larger sense–my kids are not exposed to the broader bdsm community.

Things that are ok for me aren’t necessarily ok for my kids. My kids are impressionable.

Boundaries are complicated.

What makes someone an asshole? Caring about their own needs to the point where they are ok with other people getting hurt sometimes as they take care of themselves.

What makes someone a bitch? Saying or doing things to hurt other people on purpose to be spiteful.

Notice how the gendered one is a lot nastier? I notice that in my language.

I’m an asshole. I try hard to not be a bitch.

I don’t have time to explain why this dude is wrong. There are so many ways he is wrong that I would permanently damage my arms. Ain’t worth it.

I get to walk away. Yeah, it might hurt you but I am not obligated to sit around and tend your feelings. Notice how you have never tended mine? Fuck right off.

But spite isn’t necessary. What’s the difference? When you are writing, what’s the damn difference?

Well, I say fuck you to the universe but I don’t say it to people. I don’t publicly (or privately) slam people when I end a relationship. In general I maintain a policy of being very positive when I talk about former friends/partners/acquaintances. I’m well-fucking-aware that you are judged by how you judge other people

So I’m an asshole, but I try to limit the scope.

I always have the right to walk away. It is the most American attitude one can have. Well, or the other American attitude “I have the right to own a gun so I can shoot people who seem scary“.

I seem scary to a lot of people. To the point where strangers will comment on it in public. I worry a lot about guns.

I kind of hope that the next revolution in this country is a call to disarmament. Citizens give up their guns so that police can de-militarize.

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Wouldn’t it be nice to stop hearing about mass shootings at schools?

And wouldn’t it be nice if white people were called terrorists when they instill terror just like people of other races? Parity in discussion would help us figure out the common solutions.

I need to answer a whole bunch of emails. I haven’t forgotten you. I just… haven’t scheduled yet. Scheduling goes in batches. I can’t handle adding things in between scheduling-fests. Then I get “over scheduled” and I’m shaking by the end of the month. It sucks.

Tonight I get to have dinner with an old friend before we go to the Diana Gabaldon reading. I’m excited. There’s a new book in a series I love.

This will be the very first time I’ve ever been to a reading for an author I know. I have heard random people at college but I had no previous knowledge of them. A step towards fandom I guess?

What is the focus of your life? How do your actions support that? How does your time spent support that? How does your energy spent support that?

When you are old, what will you appreciate more? That you spent time working in your garden or that you spent time with people you will definitely not know by then? Depends on the person. Depends on how the time with them is spent.

Sometimes you need to pick the garden.

Boundaries are hard. Being an asshole is hard.

Editing continues

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I have finished section one. It is 13,908 words. It is exactly 1/3 of the chapters I wrote for the book. (The middle section has more chapters than either other section.)

Roughly the sections are: Introduction/history/definitions, General life skills/sex/friends/social media/etc, Scary Shit.

Now that I’ve finished the easy section I’m feeling nervous.

If you are an early reader be aware that the Google Doc folder now has updated chapters that are titled as chapters and everything. All fancy and official like.

I’m still open to all feedback. (Pam, I haven’t integrated the feedback you gave me on the Google Doc folder, but I have it in physical writing. It will be up in the next day or two.)

My editor is out of town a fair bit in early June. I may fudge a bit and do the bibliography then and not stress about doing it before June.

Coming along.

I did something brave about a boundary. But I feel like I did it in the most chicken shit way possible. I’m trying to decide if tomorrow I want to go deal with another hard thing that is hanging over my head. Just get it the fuck over with. I don’t like limbo.

I think that the other hard situations are things that can only be solved with time. I don’t think there is another resolution available.

In other news, I was told this weekend that I may not get a chance to go to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival next year. This year, the 40th, may be the last given the push-back the organization is getting on their transphobic policies.

I… I have mixed feelings. I would really love to be in an all woman environment for a week with the kids. But I don’t need them to be women-born-women. I just need them to be people who identify with the more female end of the spectrum. I’m even cool with the event involving people who are androgynous/non-gendered.

I’m sorry I want so badly to get away from men. But I really do. Not forever. I like you all an awful lot and I’m not actually ready for my radical lesbian separatist commune.

Other than my mother, my aunt, my sister, and my niece I haven’t ever spent a lot of time in an all-female environment. My uncle was often blessedly absent. He did show up every day though.

I never did summer camp. I didn’t go to a private school. Hell, when I do go to events I usually ensure I’m plastered to someone with a dick because it’s safer.

“I have a boyfriend” is the only line that has ever kept me safe. Fuck everyone. I have never been raped while in a serious relationship.

So I feel a little weird about wanting to go to a transphobic event. I don’t feel good about that aspect of my desire to participate in the event.

I don’t feel threatened by the transwomen in my life. They are some of the most supportive people.

Yeah, I do feel threatened by the men. More than I “should” feel threatened. Whatever.

Deep breaths. No one is attacking me. None of this is personal. People aren’t reacting to me, they are reacting to things in their own lives. They aren’t talking to me. I’m observing things. I’m… over reacting. I’m sure.

I’m making progress on the book. I feel proud of that. My entire body hurts. I’m not sure why. I’m not sleeping well. Too much anxiety.

Deep breaths.

Anxiety is energy you want to spend that doesn’t have anywhere to go.

Nothing to do but sit and wait for time to pass. I fucking hate this. Things to do, but at a later time, simmer in my brain. I can’t stop thinking about them. They use up so many cycles.

I think I am going to go to sleep early. I’ll wake up and finish the second section before therapy.

Boy do I have a lot to talk to my shrink about. Shit I’m not telling the internet. Yeah, I do have some gosh-darned tact.

SEE!

And this weekend I demonstrated that tact when I discovered that the help my friend wanted from me was different than the help I envisioned in my head. I didn’t ever offer up advice. I was good. Be supportive how people want you to be supportive, damnit.

Otherwise you aren’t helping you are being a jack ass.

It’s probably actually a good thing it went the way it did. It was rather restful in terms of helping-friends-clean days go. That was awesome given that I feel like ass.

Deep breaths. Whatever will be will be. The future is not ours to see.

No, I’m not a monster. Not everyone hates me. I don’t need to go eat worms. I am not hurting anyone by writing the book I’m writing. It isn’t terrible. I’m not bad. I’m just saying the things I wish I had known.

I’m not telling them what to do. I’m giving them information and I’m tying it in with morality and ethics and long-term planning. I’m talking about diversity and privilege money and shame.

I’m not doing something bad.

I wish it didn’t hurt my heart to write these things down.

I’m sorry boys–no one likes young men. It’s true. I talk about why. I talk about how unfair it is.

I don’t think that men have it all good and women have it all bad.

It’s not that kind of book.

I talk about how to find adult allies in different living environments. How do you figure out who is a predator? How do you learn to ask the right questions to get the help you need?

I’m talking about food, bodies, exercise, and dealing with people who have mental illness.

I don’t think I’m being scary. These are things that exist in the world. Here is some matter-of-fact information about how to interact with increased safety. But I feel a lot of anxiety. I’m going to have to be brave to get the book published. This will be hard.

Criticism sucks. Have I mentioned that my editor is apparently notorious for fairly harsh criticism. I look forward to bathing in the stormy glow.

It’ll be rad. Yeah. Sure. Oh man.

I’m scared. But move forward or shut the fuck up, right?

I’m trying. Shrink down. Maybe that’s easier. Maybe I can carry that. Drop some balls. Move on. Just keep swimmin’.

Drips, drabs, ups, and downs.

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We went up to San Pablo yesterday to see some friends. This is after that specific friend coming to my house monthly for ohhh four years now? I am starting to try and do some trips up there in exchange for all the trips to my house. The distance between us is not shorter just because he is a guy with no kids. I can do effort too.

And when I drive up there I get to spend time with his lovely wife. I find the visits to be highly educational in diverse arenas. For one thing: she knows way the fuck more about gardening than I do and she’s happy to talk about plants. Lately getting near someone with lots of plant knowledge who does not eschew my children is somewhat tricky. I’ve tried to sign up for gardening classes THAT ARE BEING ADVERTISED ON AN UNSCHOOLING MAILING LIST and I was told I would have to get babysitting. Stop fucking advertising in this space if my fucking kids aren’t welcome you fucking fuckers. I didn’t say fuck to the people in question. I just dropped it.

Beyond the gardening stuff, I am having a bit of trouble with Callidora. Well, phrasing it that way sounds more extreme than it is. Many of my parenting approaches work really well for Shanna and don’t work at all with Calli. Luckily my friends’ wife seems to identify really strongly with Calli. They are very similar temperamentally and she is giving me a lot of feedback for how to tweak our interactions so they work better.

I feel so much gratitude I don’t have words. Someone is willing to look at me and look at my daughter and look at our relationship and say, “You are doing ok, but you both might be happier if you did……”

Err, in defense of my hubris more than once I have said, “I’m afraid I am going to have to do ____” and her response was “Yes. That is exactly what you have to do.” So she isn’t entirely telling me new information. But she is very good at skimming out the bullshit and getting to the heart of the matter. “This is failing because of x.”

I don’t trust many people to give me feedback. I’m not sure why I trust her feedback as much as I do. For one thing she doesn’t use the word “should” and I’m not sure if that has become a specific trigger. Maybe I explode at people for that word rather than because I am completely unwilling to accept advice? It’s hard to tease out.

Also, she tends to say “Calli seems to be a lot like me. When I was a kid I had x and y and z experiences and this is how it went well and this is how it went badly. If Calli is as much like me as she seems right now, you are going to have to deal with a and b and c. It’s not a good idea to do d.”

I guess there is an implied “should” in that but she doesn’t say it.

It also occurs to me that I push Calli in a way I have never pushed Shanna. When Shanna was three I had a one year old. We did not spend a lot of time pushing the absolute physical limits of what she could accomplish until she collapsed in frustrated tears.

I’m having a hard time understanding fully that Calli wants to be able to do things she isn’t ready to do yet and I need to find a tactful way of bailing her out even as I push Shanna to try. Differentiated instruction is a bitch.

(Err, the bicycle riding project is coming along. We’ve hit a few hiccups. As my wise new running mate commented, “Dude. You’ve been out with them four times? Relax and do more low pressured practice.”

Yeah yeah. You may have a point. But we bought the bikes because we want to ride to the park. I need to decide in my adult brain that even if that is the eventual goal… we sure as shit can’t start by doing that. I should probably not try to leave our housing development again until June. We need more low-stakes practice than we have had. Hours and hours and hours and hours.

It is not just a form of transportation. It is about entertainment. It has to be about entertainment at first or they won’t gain enough proficiency to use it as transportation later. The transportation part doesn’t have to be worked out at three, instantly. Relax you bitch.

Medication has been spotty this week. I (re?)noticed a pattern. Whenever I get to the point of using sufficient medication that I actually feel good instead of having just the edge of the pain taken away I punish myself for days with under medicating so I feel a lot more pain. I’m not supposed to be using pot like a pot head. I’m not supposed to be trying to get high. I’m supposed to be just managing the pain.

I think I am too much of a Puritan. My sister told me I had ancestors on the Mayflower (Not her–different fathers.). Maybe it is too deeply buried within my DNA? I can’t stop believing that I must suffer. Anything that feels good MUST BE BAD.

I have been very consistent lately about giving up my morning “off time” to wake up with the kids. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. On one hand I’m more frazzled and I’m not taking a compensatory amount of time later. On the other hand… we are getting along better. When the kids open their eyes in the morning to me in their bed smiling at them… the whole day is easier. The first thing they hear every day is, “Good morning. I’m so glad to see you again. I’m looking forward to our wonderful day together.”

They smile back and say, “Me too!” then grab my neck and pull me close. Then I get a sleepy “Good morning.”

Sometimes it feels weird knowing that I do this as a parenting gesture in large part to make up for the hole in my heart. No one was ever happy to see me during my childhood. I was a terrible, unwanted burden.

I completely support mothers who need to abort children born of rape. I wish my mother hadn’t allowed her religion to force her to keep me. I was not wanted. And they made my life hell.

Now I have something different. It is so very nice. But it’s a lot of emotional and mental and physical work. And I get really tired.

When I’m tired it is harder to be consistent. When I’m scared I start screaming. That’s consistent.

Calli has asked me to stop raising my voice at her when I’m repeating orders/requests/whatever you want to call them. Demands? She told me (while making eye contact so this is serious as a fucking heart attack) “I will be able to listen to you better if you get close to me and whisper in my ear that it is important.”

If a three year old can so clearly ask for the kind of interaction she needs then I am a fucking asshole if I ignore the request. This is how I teach them ownership of their body and consent and boundaries.

I’ve been working on it. I kind of feel that I should create some accountability tool for myself. Maybe another sheet of paper on the wall. I can ask Calli to help me decide whether I approached her correctly or not and we can decide if I get a mark in the “right behavior” column or the “not so right” column. It will also help her clarify which aspects of the raised voice stuff are a problem for her.

My kids are not going to grow up thinking adults are perfect and kids need to bend to the adults around them. Ha. Ha. Ha. No. We want to live together. We need to adapt to one another.

I’m happy about the upcoming social stuff. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed that people are agreeing so delightedly to come to my events. My RSVPs fill up fast. (Err, RSVP for Easter if you are coming… not many spaces left.)

I have had something like six people in the last two weeks get really excited when I confirm that I’m hosting Easter again. “OH! You throw the best parties!”

I do?

Oh.

Well that’s awesome. How do I do that? What makes them “the best” for you? Because I spend my parties in kind of an anxious hell hoping I don’t offend everyone and run them off such that they never want to come back.

And yet I keep hosting. Irony.

I don’t seem to be running people off. I mean… I do… but I don’t. I run some people off.

I feel very guilty when I admit to myself that I run off people who need things from me that I can’t give. My anxiety and shame around not being able to meet their needs makes me angry and cruel. It isn’t my fault I can’t meet their needs. It isn’t their fault I can’t meet their needs. It isn’t their fault they have needs. I have needs they can’t meet either. But I get mean. This is a major character flaw of mine.

I don’t do this with people who have small needs I can easily meet. If people need something from me that is going to be an up to five hour commitment one time… I love doing that. That helps me feel like I am part of a community and I’m useful and all kinds of good feelings. When someone starts to need 3-10 hours of work from me every fucking week in order to have a relationship with them…

I get mean. I am awful. I am not a nice person. I don’t know how to have healthy limits without being an asshole. I’m not making excuses or justifying my behavior. It’s wrong.

I have been talking to a friend a lot about how different it is in America versus other more crowded countries. Americans apologize for bumping into someone. In China you would never say any word other than “sorry”. So they don’t bother.

I spend a lot of time apologizing for taking up space. I spend a lot of time apologizing for being inconvenient. I spend a lot of time apologizing for not being able to do/be what someone else wants/needs.

I am sorry I am so inadequate. I clearly see that I am.

Right now I’m having anxiety attacks because some folks are mad at me. Folks I don’t really need to “care” about per se. They aren’t my friends. They are the close friends of one of my friends. They are mad at me because my vomiting on Friday caused them some inconvenience. I have apologized profusely for inconveniencing them. I’m sorry they were brought into the situation by our mutual friend. But yeah. I’m the bitch.

And I feel consumed with shame and I have for days. I inconvenienced them. I stole hours of their life and made them about me when they already kind of hate me. I’m really sorry. I did apologize. I have not been acknowledged and that is what I assumed would happen.

I get into these situations. I’m sorry I inconvenienced you. I have very little control over when I vomit. I’m just glad I didn’t make a mess on my floor.

But it impacted your life. And you wish I didn’t impact your life. So you are angry with me because I popped up and existed in a way you couldn’t tune out.

I’m really sorry.

This is more or less why I avoid that whole segment of the “community”. I don’t really like feeling like I am doing something wrong by breathing in a way they can hear.

So yeah. I don’t think I will teach with my friend again. There is a bunch of stress in the lead up and if I get sick there is lots of acrimony, blame, and anger. Not from my friend. He was mellow about the situation. But he didn’t feel qualified to handle the class alone and those are the other people he has in his life to turn to for support.

Yeah well, me hanging around near them feels like an abusive family reunion where they all wish I would drop dead. The sooner the better.

More one of them than the other but… well that’s not a story I’ll write down yet. Maybe a few more decades. It being thirteen years ago still isn’t long enough. Some day.

It’s not all her fault. I was a bitch. But man. Oh man. Ok. Shiny change of topic.

I’ve been having a lot of feelings all week over that. I was doing great last week until I started vomiting on Friday.

I associate vomiting with letting people down and being a bad and weak person. When I get sick my association is that I will also be in trouble for some reason. I am inconvenient when I’m sick.

Noah is working hard to change some of these patterns. He’s nice when I’m sick. He does a lot of telling me that it isn’t my fault and I didn’t do anything bad. I feel really pathetic for needing it. But I do. And he does it. I am so grateful for him as a partner.

I like teaching though. I will look for more opportunities to teach. Just no co-teaching in a situation potentially wrapped in shame-inducing trauma. When I had to cancel a class as a professional teacher… no one made me write a formal apology. I’d like to go back to that kind of treatment. Thanks.

My running mate wants me to stop thinking of writing as a hobby and start thinking of it as a business. I’ve sold enough forking copies of my book that I can stop pretending I’m not a real writer. I shouldn’t have to pay for my book editing and publishing stuff out of my “fun money”. It’s not my hobby. Noah doesn’t take his business expenses out of his fun money. It’s a separate category in the budget. It’s not very healthy for me to demean myself in this fashion.

I will severely limit my career as a writer if I can’t employ an editor until I save up enough fun money by denying myself everything. Denial as a full-time lifestyle in a household that otherwise has a lot of privilege… that’s kinda self-hating. It’s being weird. It’s unhealthy.

Why do women do this to themselves? My writing “doesn’t count”. It’s just… something I do. Like the laundry. And when there are expenses for it, well, they are “mine”, right?

I developed a lot of habits over the years of having the annuities and living with men. What I could have was very strictly limited to what I had in that $1200 every month. I didn’t over extend. And now I have no real personal income and… I’m flailing. The $100/month of fun money is… not enough. Not for me to feel like I can track all of “my” spending separately from household stuff.

We just have a clothes budget. It is for all four of us. If someone gets something then the other three have to wait a while. *shrug* But it changes how I think of things. Although… when I bought the pretty clothes in Portland I took a big chunk out of my personal money. I spent more than $500 on two items of clothing. It didn’t seem fair to make my family give up that large a share of the clothes budget on me getting two items. So more than $300 came out of my fun money. That seemed fair to me.

When the kids really get a big clothes splurge… it goes in the “kid” section even though mostly they come out of the main category.

The kids have a big section of the budget that is amorphously used for classes, home school supplies. books, toys, gear of whatever kind (was baby carriers and diapers now it has moved on to bikes), and rarely clothes.

A long time ago I consciously went out and started spending time with older men. They could talk to me about money. How they got it. What they did with it. I made my own judgments about who lived in which kind of house and who had how much money. I’ve always been tactless as fuck. I would point blank ask them how much cash they had in the bank and whether or not they had investments.

I didn’t understand most of what they told me. But I remembered it. It’s kind of funny to have little memories float up now and again as I’m trying new things with investing.

Be sure you are right, then go ahead. I will, Davey. I will research and research and research and I’ll figure out what I think is right. Of course I know I could always be wrong. Some minute change in my life might make all of my careful risk calculations moot and irrelevant.

I have no way of predicting that. So I have to just act and hope for the best.

Save.

Debt is evil.

Make your money work for you.

Pay yourself first.

Sometimes I think I turn to these mantras as the only way I have of blocking out all the voices in my head who want me to think I am stupid and a bitch and I should just stop inconveniencing them by breathing.

I’ve been really stunned by the intensity of my suicidal ideation this week.

I also haven’t been doing my daily check in calls with my friend. She’s really busy on a project. She’ll be back in a week or so. I support and respect her participation in this event and that means she has no time to think about me. I am a big girl and I’ll keep my big girl panties on.

It is interesting how suicidal ideation is not always about depression. I don’t feel like I am feeling depression symptoms. This is more on the anxious/overwhelmed side. Manic is a word people like. But I’m not… doing anything manic.

Just out of the blue driving on the freeway I see a weird opening where it would be possible to turn and be hit by a semi-truck and I want to do it more than I want anything in the world. I want in that moment to feel a lot of pain and then die. I want it as much as my heart wants to beat. It is immediate and visceral and all encompassing.

I have to breathe very lightly and lift my hands so I have a very light guiding pressure on the steering wheel. Sometimes I get off the freeway to breathe and stretch my neck and remind myself, “Not today.”

The reasons I don’t like driving are varied and complicated and… I’m willing to bet that someday I will not be able to drive any more. It is part of the reason I am as strongly motivated to make friends near my house as I am. Walking will always be a good idea. Forever. For my health.

Thanks, Pam, for letting me write this morning.

My head feels better. I feel a lot less shame. Writing it down helps.

I don’t need to feel shame because other people would prefer that their world didn’t overlap with mine. I could reject our mutual friend so that they never have to hear about me again, but given that he values his relationship with me that seems kind of awful.

But I think I should have different boundaries. Still working on where those need to be. Boundaries are tricky things. You only find out you have them when they are transgressed. Ha. THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE CLASS. And what I got out of it is: I need to make sure I never have to deal with your extended friends again. Awesome.

That’s a lesson I can learn.

They aren’t going to like me. No matter what. Ever. I need to not care about that. They are allowed to have their experience of the world where I am… something. I don’t know what. I shouldn’t speculate. I would surely overstate my importance. I certainly don’t suspect that either of them while away hours just hating me. I’m not that important.

So I don’t need to feel shame because they are feeling irritation. That’s not something I need to take on. I gave an apology. I offered restitution to the best of my ability. That’s what I’ve got. Move on. I didn’t vomit on purpose.

And when I feel shame for my social behavior I rush home to assure myself that I am managing my money properly. No one is going to be able to force me to move. I’m allowed to stay here. I’m jumping through all the hoops that actually matter for my life. I don’t have to care that they dislike me. There won’t be any consequences.

And then I can stop thinking about it.

Thank you internet. That’s the end of my confession for today. I have some dirt to play with and a fence to sand. Tomorrow a bunch of little kids are going to come paint a few sections. We are adding more year by year. Drips and drabs. It’s really fun.

Saturday is the Girl Genius Volume 1 read aloud. Email me for details if you want to come hear Noah do all the hilarious voices.

Thinking about stuff else-net.

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Sometimes I look at the way people “ask for help” and I think “you don’t actually want help. You want to be pissed at people for failing to help you.”

It is easier to see it when someone else is doing it in front of me. I’m pretty sure I do that sometimes.

I’m struggling with the line between “I want to help EVERYBODY” and “Well, I don’t want to help you because you annoy me.”

It’s a good thing I don’t have a lot of spoons left to hand out any way. This person is clearly more interested in being pissed off about the stuff that happened a long time ago than in doing actual healing.

Healing from trauma is messy, painful, and inconvenient. If you expect therapy to “make you feel all better” without any messy or painful bits then you can keep dreaming. And keep firing therapists. You can say that it is all the fault of all 50 of those therapists that you aren’t better.

But you know what? You are responsible for you. Not anyone else.

I’m responsible for me. If I want to be “better” I have to first define what “better” means and then I have to do every single step of walking to get there. No one can do it for me. It’s hard. It’s life. I can’t make someone else have an easy journey. I can’t make me have an early journey.

Sometimes life is just hard. And on that note I am going to stop beating my head against the wall with this person. I can’t fix him. I will never even know who he is. He can’t be a project of mine.

I have too many projects going already.

Just another whinging Friday

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It isn’t that I think my kids are bad or anything. They are just excellent boundary pushers. I want them to push boundaries. I flat encourage them in that direction. I want children who are tenacious, stubborn, and sure that their idea is A Good One. But. But sometimes I wish I could say, “I know I’m willing to argue/negotiate with you all day every day but can I please have a friggin break on my birthday.” They just aren’t old enough to understand.

We did have good moments. I feel really bad that it seems like all I do is complain. Doesn’t anything make me happy? Am I ever satisfied? Is there any point in reaching for satisfied or is that just not something I can feel? I feel really guilty for not being able to turn this into a fun trip. It should have been a fun trip. I hate that I am such a downer all the fucking time.

But it felt really bad getting yelled at for what I wanted to order for lunch. I fucking told them four days in advance, “On my birthday I want us to have gumbo and papas fritas and beignets for lunch. That’s what I want.” They were enthusiastic and supportive until we got to the park. Then I was a mean and terrible person for not letting them have popcorn for lunch. Or ice cream. Or a Dole Whip. Or…

My kids rarely have extreme cases of the gimme’s. I don’t buy them things all that often on our outings and I’m kind of nasty about being pestered to buy stuff. Holy.Fucking.Shit. This trip was the most gimme-gimme-gimme I think Shanna has ever been. She actually sat on her ass in the middle of the store and started yelling at me because I wouldn’t buy her a FUCKING SECOND MUSIC BOX. SHE HAS ONE AT HOME THAT SHE BOUGHT WITH HER ALLOWANCE ON OUR LAST TRIP.

I almost lost my shit. If we had been within an hour of home I would have left the park fifteen minutes into the day.

The really funny thing is the DMV portion of the trip was the best natured and happiest all three of us were on the whole trip. We played games and met people and it was a really enjoyable 3.5 hours. Hell, I’m talking to a lady via email after that. She’s nice.

I think it is that whole kicked puppy thing. I was acting like a kicked puppy. I was begging them to please let me have a turn. When you act like a low status person you get kicked like a low status person. So my kids kicked me (only literally a few times figuratively much more often) all day.

It all feels like my fault. If things go badly it is because I planned wrong or anticipated wrong or… something.

Having them both scream at the top of their lungs that I was mean and nasty multiple times before 10am felt really hard. I know this is a current tick. I know that the best way to handle it is to not engage. At this point in time I am having trouble not bursting into hysterical tears or hitting them. I have strong impulses to do both. I’m not doing either but I want to.

Just breathe. This moment will pass.

I have spent ~15 hours over the past week and some working on scheduling. I’m getting close to knowing the shape of my days all the way through the end of the year. If I stick with my schedule. Ha.

In order to make it so that I can potentially accomplish what I want to accomplish I need a schedule with a lot of rest time scheduled. I need to not be booked all day every day. I have to have multiple days in a week where what I do is hang around the house and putter. I need to have scheduled “sit on the couch and read books and snuggle” time with the kids just about every day.

I have to run more. I just have to. Not running is feeling a lot worse than running. Which is hella funny. We have gone out all four of us a couple of mornings in a row. We hope to get the kids used to going for a morning jog. Noah and I take turns doing sprints up the block and back to the family because the kids are a lot slower.

Outrunning Suicide is starting to take shape. I have mostly written several chapters. I have a skeleton. This one is very different than No Secrets. The entire writing process feels different. This will feel more like a collection of essays than a story, but there needs to be some sense of story in it as well. I am trying as hard as I can to be conscious of the fact that I want this book to be appropriate for twelve year olds. Even though the mothers of twelve year olds will say that it is too mature. The mothers are wrong.

I need to start working on painting in the back yard. All of the stuff that was built this year needs to be painted so it doesn’t rot quickly. Oh man.

I don’t want to go out very much over the next few months. I want to get work done. I want to home school my kids. I need to stop looking outward for a while. We will go to park days. I will continue to try to make time for Noah’s friends who have all had kids and the few people I have hanging on who had kids.

I need to stop looking for new people. I don’t have the bandwidth. My monkey spheres are full.

I like having a lot of… I’ll call them third tier friendships. People generally don’t want to think of themselves as third tier, but oh well. At this point the only person I have near daily contact with who I don’t live with is K. Thank goodness for her. That is the first tier. Second tier are all of the people who have kept contact with me for long-stretches of time and they know real things about me and I know real things about them. These are people who very consciously schedule with me and make sure that I know that they think about me. The third tier are the people I don’t see a lot of and they know very little that is real about me but I want to feel acceptance and love so I try very hard to maintain Appropriate Behavior around them and I know there are consequences if I slip up.

The third tier is where you get into the idea of Community. These are people I want to know. They add value to the world and to my life in particular but I don’t think they actually like very much about me so I have to carefully construct what they see or I will be shunned again.

I can’t overload my second tier. When I overload my second tier then I see the ending of nearly-decade-long relationships and the backlash hurts me for years.

The third tier is where I spend most of my time. I carefully dole out just small bits of my personality to people. It all tends to feel very artificial. I know I need to be careful not to be too real. I need to not saying things that will upset people. Good fucking luck guessing who is sensitive to what.

Why is the third tier so important? Because I have absolutely stressed the first and second tiers to the limits of their ability to support me and if I have free-floating miasma of need and I get it met in bursts of random kindness from the universe. I depend on a lot of Pay It Forward. Mostly this has worked out fairly well. Humans in general are loving, kind, and they want connection.

But then we get to this punishment thing. I think that most people have trouble understanding that they are punishing people. I know that I struggle with understanding how and where I punish people. I do it but it is hard for me to understand the mechanism of it. It is hard for me to understand that I have the power to punish people. I don’t feel like I have such power. I feel weak and powerless.

My second tier has worked very hard to step up since I had kids. As much as I am still in a place of great hostility towards the idea of “chosen family” (given that most of the people who have emphatically told me that I am their family no matter what no longer speak to me I think I get to be hostile to this concept) I… feel conflicted. Clearly I have friends who have moved into family roles.

I feel like I am understanding how other peoples limitations work better as the years go on. Like, I’m not inviting people on trips. It isn’t that anyone wants to hurt me (I don’t think that the desire to hurt me played any part in people not being able to go on the trip–major health concerns came up for everyone) but I am still here hurting. How do I move towards hurting less?

I have been asking for help with things where I can’t handle the answer “no”. That is always where I get into trouble. This is consistent for me. I wait until the lack of support will be crippling then I ask for support then I get told no because other people don’t have the bandwidth and I crumble.

I need my life to require fewer spoons. I need to not need help.

Having children has been humbling and humiliating. The amount of help I have needed has been really hard. Things like going to the doctor for an ultrasound of my abdomen. That turned into a huge long lecture at Kaiser about how I need child care or I can’t get health care. I understand why my dentist pushed me to get the dental implant I needed while I was pregnant even though the pain meds aren’t optimal because “Mothers don’t take care of their teeth when they have children under ten.”

It is kind of weird and hard to talk about but since having children I am more house bound than I was before simply because of how my bathroom habits changed. I have always had a small and urgent bladder (common problem with early childhood sexual abuse) but after the kids my life-long diarrhea problem became urgent and explosive too. And then there is how my periods have changed. Having a body sucks.

Having kids is hard but I did not anticipate the specific ways this would be so hard. I anticipated getting sick of laundry and wiping up poop and being screamed at. I didn’t understand that after having children it would be a rare thing for me to be able to handle three hours between bathroom trips–I get a few freak days once in a while. I normally go to the bathroom every half hour or so. I don’t think I would physically be able to teach right now. I used to have 110 minute class periods. I can’t hold my bladder that long any more. And it is illegal to leave in the middle of a class to use the restroom. I did it anyway but you aren’t supposed to and there are severe potential punishments.

You want to know why I have so much anxiety about neglecting my children when they are playing in another room and I can’t see them but I can hear them? Because I went through teacher training and discovered just how much trouble I can get in if I don’t “properly supervise” other peoples kids. Apparently properly supervise means sit on top of the child and physically prevent them from ever breaking the rules. Good luck.

I swear this all ties together in my head.

I have historically depended heavily on the third tier. Why do I consider them third tier? What I can ask of them is much smaller and more limited and I have to be careful of watching how often I ask. The tiering is how much of my need they have demonstrated an ability to handle. It isn’t about me judging them negatively or thinking they are bad people. I’m intense. I hurt people without trying. I need to be careful to notice when I am hitting stress points for people and withdraw so there can be a next time. If I push third tier people too hard they eject me from their lives.

With children this is different and difficult. At this point I feel like a user if I ask people for anything. I try hard to bully K to let me come do work at her house because I feel like such a user all of the time given how much support she gives me. It isn’t actually a better dynamic.

I have a hard time knowing that at this point in my life I need more support than I give. It has been true for years. Maybe for all of my life. This totally plays into being financially dependent. I feel ashamed of myself. I look at the women in my life who are not dependent and I feel pathetic. This is part of that defining myself by being not-like other people. It isn’t good for me or anyone else.

I don’t feel like the things I do are good or worthy. And yet I really really really want to do the things I am doing. With fervor and intensity I want these things in the world and I don’t think anyone but me will do them. I take that as a sign they probably aren’t worth doing and I am just a waste of resources.

Part of the problem with an extensive third tier is someone always needs help. People are always struggling and I wish I could help more. I wish I had more to offer. I wish I had more energy. I wish I had more time to give them.

But instead I will stay home and weed my garden and write a book and paint. I am selfish and small. My life is limited and unimportant. I totally struggle with that Gen Y thing of, “But I am SPECIAL”. No. I’m really not. I don’t have anything unique and special to offer the world.

But sometimes I feel like I do. Sometimes I feel like I am good at helping people see their own value. Because I think so little of myself I view basically everyone in the world as higher status as me. When I explain to people all that I see about them that is good and wonderful they tend to be surprised. They are not able to see themselves that way. Isn’t that ability good and useful? Is that enough? What is enough? Enough of what? Enough for what?

I don’t know.

But I need to pull back into my little shell. I need to count my spoons and carefully lay them next to tasks. I want to read more books this year. I want to look out my back window on New Years Eve and see a rainbow castle. I want to finish writing the book that I really needed to read when I was twelve. I want to teach my children the daily habits of picking up after themselves. Even though it is hard. Even though you would rather do it later. If you do it now then you are free to go do anything you want on a whim. It takes practice to learn these habits.

I want my children to think that physical activity is just part of life. So I have to model it every day.

I want to not be fucking screamed at. I have already made a lot of progress on my own screaming. I will figure this out. It is going to be hard and it will take patience. We will figure this out. Without anyone getting beaten. There may be a fair bit of time out in our future.

I don’t think that anyone did anything wrong per se on my birthday. But I think that at this point my birthday is such a thing that I’m not sure anyone can do right. I don’t think it is anyone else’s fault at this point.

Rope bridges last a long time but eventually decay. You aren’t doing anything wrong by jumping up and down as you go across a rope bridge. Sometimes a log may break and you could plummet to your death. No one actually did anything “wrong” but there are still end results that suck.

I don’t know how to feel special. I want that feeling so bad. I want to feel loved and appreciated and like people are really really glad I am alive. I don’t feel that way. I feel like people tolerate me so long as I can fill their needs and not be too annoying. I know that people don’t actually feel that way about me. I don’t think I offer enough trade to actually justify that belief.

It isn’t that I believe that Noah and Shanna and Calli secretly hate me. It is clear that they all love me with great intensity. But something inside me is broken. It is like pouring boiling water into a tank of liquid nitrogen so that you can warm it up. That just isn’t going to work how you hope.

I feel raw. I know I am “over sensitive”. I know I “shouldn’t take things so personally”. But I am. I just am. Maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe I shouldn’t exist. But I do. And this is how I feel. And I can’t make it go away just because it is inconvenient for me or for other people. The only thing I can do is try to stop being in a room with anyone else on my birthday so that it is very very clear that this problem is in me and not because of anyone else.

My birthday is really hard for me. I’m afraid it always will be. I desperately desperately want a kind of feeling loved and cared for and appreciated that I’m not getting. I don’t know what it is or how to get it. Everything I have tried so far has failed miserably. I really and truly have tried to change this pattern.

I wish I could stop feeling like it would be better if I was dead. Then I wouldn’t be so fucking inconvenient.

I know it isn’t “true”. I had kids so that I would know beyond the shadow of a doubt that my labor is necessary for a few decades. Nothing would be better right now if I was dead.

But I don’t know how to feel loved. I feel despised. I feel unappreciated.

Which is ridiculous. Noah couldn’t work harder than he does. And he clearly is doing it for me–he didn’t work like this before me. My Owner was a workaholic. Noah was kinda lazy when I met him. He was certainly unfocused–that is probably a better word than lazy. He works like a dog, largely because he is doing it for me. He wants to make all of my dreams come true.

And I reward him by crying and crying and crying and feeling like a worthless piece of shit. He is very confused. If I knew what to ask him to do he would do it. I don’t know. I don’t know how to stop feeling this way.

I mean, in the abstract I know how to deal with this feeling. Feel it. Cry while you have it. Wait. It will end.

That’s the awesome thing about feelings. They change.

Sometimes I do feel that Noah loves me. Sometimes I do feel that my kids love me. But somehow when it comes to my birthday that is broken. There is this big brick wall. I don’t feel attached. I don’t feel love or loved. I feel worthless and stupid and pathetic and bad and mean and unwanted and like I should just die.

And god I miss my mother. I miss my mother so much I want to curl up into a ball and never eat again. I am not worthy. I dishonor the woman who bore me. I am a piece of shit. I am not protecting her and taking care of her. I know she needs it. She has always needed it. She has always needed to be taken care of more than I need it.

And I think my kids need more taking care of than I need. Except for one day a year. Where I think I am going to need to have different boundaries.

I have started grieving really hard for the apology I was told I would get and I didn’t get. That guy in the scene I went and talked to who said he would write an apology. I’m sorry I made myself vulnerable to that.

I’m even more grateful for talking to the guy who made me uncomfortable at the wedding.

I know that I have to keep trying with people. Every relationship is unique. Every dynamic changes over time. I need people to jump over hoops for me. I need it. I’m pretty clear and direct about how and where I need it. I try not to be too demanding of any one person. But I do ask people to jump through hoops for me.

I want people to show me with their actions that I am actually as important as they verbally claim I am. I want my body to matter. This is a really dangerous kind of validation to want. Because I am not going to get it. People will say they will do ______ and not do it.

Do you know what makes people happy? Giving help to other people. Do you know what makes people feel shitty? Needing help. I hate my neediness as much as other people resent me inflicting it on them.

The kids are slightly sick. Runny nose on elder child, both are coughing. Younger child keeps telling us she needs a bucket but she isn’t vomiting. I’ve been crying so much I don’t know if I am sick or not. I scheduled a potentially light weekend because I am S-M-R-T.

I am looking forward to fall and winter. It will feel really nice after the frantic work pace of spring and summer. It is a puttering kind of day. I will go grocery shopping. I should wash the windows. Then they can color on them again. Ha. Right now they are too full to be fun.

I should stop typing. Annnnnnnny minute here……

Feeling useful

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, I’m not nice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am doing what I said I would do.

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

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

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

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

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

It is probably time for allergy testing.

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

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

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

More about privilege

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I’ve been reading about privilege all day. Mostly because a friend posted that he thinks the word “privilege” should be added to Godwin’s law. If you mention privilege in an argument you automatically lose. Of course my friend who thinks this is a white male.

I have specifically spent a bunch of time reading rants from (self-identified) straight white men and their anger about the word. It is uhm educational. Near as I can tell most of the anger about the term comes from, “But I’ve had hard things happen in my life so how dare you act like I have had things easy.” I see a lot of people saying that privilege may or may not be relevant in population discussions but it is entirely irrelevant on a personal level. Everyone has so many factors involved that they cancel each other out.

I am white. I have benefited from white privilege. I got to leave my ghetto ass school in the projects in LA and come up to Los Gatos to benefit from a really quality education. There were about six black kids in Los Gatos High School. They all had to be exemplary examples of their race. They were all athletes and had high GPAs and *still* when one walked into the Togo’s where I worked the people behind the counter would say, “Oh shit. Lock the cash register.”

When I was five years old I was attacked by a pit bull and had half my face ripped off. I had excellent legal coverage because my best friend’s father was a lawyer. Because my best friend at the time has rejected me since I wrote the book I no longer feel bad about saying it was Brittney’s dad who sent me the cease and desist letter. The lawyer who protected me when I was five? He was quite happy to threaten me legally now. And given what I know about him I would bet you thousands of dollars that he wouldn’t have allowed Brittney to be my friend if I hadn’t been white. I wouldn’t have had that expert legal counsel. I wouldn’t have had the settlement that set me up for life.

I could go on and on. I could list the things that have been better for me because I am a woman. There have been many times when I was basically spared because I was a girl.

Like when I was fifteen and I stole my mom’s car? I didn’t have a drivers license (or an appropriate licensed driver in the car). I sobbed that I was on the honor roll at Los Gatos High School and had never been in trouble so he called my mom and let her pick me up. You want to guess how likely that would have been if I was a black fifteen year old boy? Or a Mexican boy?

I feel ashamed of the ways in which I have been accommodated yet other people are harmed. There is nothing I can do about it. It just happens.

I can list off ways in which I am privileged. I could keep going for as long as the kids will let me type but that seems kind of pointless.

I don’t actually think that my privilege makes me a good or a bad person. It is pretty value neutral. Whether I am good or bad is not about whether or not I have this privilege. You can be a good person and have privilege. You can be a good person and have very little privilege. They are completely irrelevant scales.

For me the reason that privilege is an important concept to talk about is because we are all locked into our own personal experience of the world. Can we all agree that mine was unusually hell-ish? Yes? Ok, good. Is it right that I get to go out and make decisions about how white men are treated? No. It’s a good thing I can’t. Because I am ridiculously biased. I am very prejudiced. I would not be a good person if I was put in the position of having to treat large groups of adults fairly. For some reason I don’t have a problem with kids. I had a few Mexican kids try to tell me that I was racist when I was teaching but when I made it clear that I hated everyone they backed off.

I don’t think I am perfect. I often doubt if I am even good. What I want is a world where people who have benefited from a lot of privilege (like me) go through their lives actively working to counter the effects of privilege on other people. Does that mean you should work every minute of every day on making your own life shittier (if you are white) because you believe it somehow evens the score?

Why did this become a race to the bottom? Why is this an argument about “You have this tiny advantage I don’t have so I am going to hate you.”

I have a hard time with the concept of white men (something that some of my white male friends express anger with me because I mention) but when you look at my life I am continually learning from white men. They hold most of the keys to the kingdom. When I want to learn about things I usually end up visiting a white guy and having to bite holes in my tongue to deal with their condescension as I try to gain the information I am there for. It’s really fucking annoying. (Ok, not every white guy. I’m mad at two people.)

I don’t feel that privilege conversations should be about shoving white men away from privilege. But I do think that more computer geeks should find ways of volunteering their time.

If you genuinely believe that you do not benefit from “privilege” but you are a white collar professional–why couldn’t you help tutor underprivileged kids? Why can’t you help them in the ways their parents literally can’t? It’s too many hoops? It’s not convenient enough? What’s in it for you?

I feel like post-marathon I have crashed into one of the worst depressions of my adult life. I’m having a very hard time moving from the position on the floor where I have been sitting for a while. I am not sleeping much at all because I cry all night long.

I know that at this point in my life I have almost nothing to give anyone. I am technically taking care of my kids–they are fed, supervised, read to, bathed, taken to educational opportunities… but I’m flailing. A lot of what is crushing me is the lack of community in my life. It isn’t that I have no one who is ready or able to help me–that isn’t true. I have pinch hitters. What I don’t have is community.

A good friend started up a canning group. A whole bunch of people I know through various other communities (people I’ve known for more than a decade longer than I’ve known her) are all joining. Apparently there has been this underground group of people doing this and I had no idea. I think it is wonderful that it exists. I don’t go to their meetings because no one ever showed me how to do canning. I’ve basically figured it out from the internet (I hope) but I don’t do a lot of it and I definitely don’t do so much of it that I have a bunch to give away.

There is this wonderful community forming. Of women I like and know and enjoy their company. I have spent hours and hours crying because it feels like one more group that is only for people who had functional lives and learned skills in the normal ways.

I learned how to be a whore. It’s not very useful these days.

I have unimaginable privilege compared to what I experienced as a child. Other people still have privileges I don’t have. Does that make them bad? No. But I bloody hope they recognize that they have different skills and opportunities. I hope they don’t dismiss me and talk about me being unwilling to work just because I have not succeeded in the same ways they have. I have worked very hard at the things I have accomplished.

Unfortunately not-dying isn’t something for which they give you medals.

When I talk to my male friends about privilege I am trying to beg for the right to be as important as they are. “See, look at all these things that happened in your life to make you have a much safer and in many ways better life than me. Is your life always better? No. But let’s look at the handouts you have and the handouts I have.”

I suppose that the important part is–what do you do about privilege? Well… when I told my friend that many of my female friends were no longer willing to be in a room with him because they find him so offensive his response was, “What is their problem? I’m not sexist.” He can even find one woman to back him up so he’s golden. He’s not sexist. That’s the end of the conversation. The fact that he treats women like servants… irrelevant. The fact that he is rude and domineering in conversations… not relevant. I have watched (the two friends in particular I am mad at) basically shout down a room full of women who were trying to have a private conversation. They thought the women were wrong and they had to tell them so. Over and over. Loudly.

If you are walking into a legacy professorship because of ties you have from when you were a teenager through your parents (who are also professors) you benefit from privilege. Stop telling me about how you work harder than anyone else. You will let your house become so disgusting that if I turned you into county health you would be sanctioned. Because you don’t believe you should ever have to do “work” when you aren’t being paid for it. That’s for losers like those chicks you bang.

But there’s no privilege here.

What do I think white men can do to deal with the fact that they have privilege? Well, for one thing you being offended is not actually a capitol case. I’m offended all the god damn time. Welcome to the internet. Something being less favorable to white men above all others is not reverse racism.

Individuals can suffer while the larger system favors their class. It happens all the time. Just because an individual isn’t getting the absolute limit of benefit from his/her privilege that doesn’t mean that they have none. I wish that people would stop denying that they have had advantages in life. Seriously. Be honest with yourself. What things have you had handed to you that you shouldn’t have been? Where were you lucky?

And then next time you want to pass judgment on someone for not doing the same things as you or for not being in the same place as you–maybe wait a bit.

Technically right now “I” qualify as being in the top 5% of the country based on tax returns. My husband provides well. That is a privilege I god damn didn’t earn. Am I a better person than anyone else? Hell no. I vote constantly for higher taxes and more entitlement programs despite the fact that I think Welfare is inherently broken and should be entirely redesigned. I’m aware that my intellectual issues with it are not very important in the face of all the real-live-people who would suffer and maybe die if I was more selfish.

I tell Shanna (and I suppose Calli though I lecture her less at this point) constantly that with great privilege comes great responsibility. I suppose I feel White Man’s Burden. I have had things handed to me. I have had things easier than other people–what do I do with that? If I spend the rest of my life hiding in my house because my life has been so terrible–oh poor me–then I have failed. I have failed at being a good person. I have ridiculous privilege. What am I going to do with it?

I wish that my male friends felt more of the challenge to be better than spurred to be worse when they think about their lives in comparison to other people. I wish it wasn’t, “I’m going to step on their head so they can’t compete with me.” We will rise or fall as a society together.

I want to rise. So when I notice my privilege I try like fuck to share. Because I didn’t earn it. It’s just there. And I bear a lot of responsibility because it is there. I wish I knew what that meant.

chaperones and resiliency

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This morning I read another article by Rebecca Watson. She is active in the atheist/skeptic community and the guys are trying hard to run her out of town on a rail because she is talking about sexual harassment. Let me contain my shock.

She is really defensive about it being her community too. That is a hubris I lack. I don’t have a community. I’m aware that if I go out into any community alone I am fairly likely to have someone say something impolite at best. At worst guys rape me. This is my real life experience. I was telling Noah the other night that one of the things that is hardest for me about our marriage is he doesn’t have any interest in going places with me. Either I go alone or I don’t go. I don’t want to be raped any more. So I don’t go.

I feel angry and betrayed by all of the cultures that tell me the way to be safe is to have a chaperone. Only girls who matter have chaperones. You only have people to protect you when your pussy is special. Mine isn’t. I am the one who is supposed to accept that bad shit so it doesn’t happen to nice girls. That is why whores like me exist.

I don’t go out a lot. I hide a lot. I go to a lot of therapy and have people bring up this word “resiliency” a lot. re·sil·ience

[ri-zil-yuhns, –zil-ee-uhns] Show IPA

noun

the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.

ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

So, what is my original shape? I think it is more that I don’t have an original shape I am trying to get back to. I adapt freely to wherever I find myself. I do not return to normal. I just act like the new normal is all I have ever had.

I hear: “We don’t really understand resilience but it is clear that it is necessary for recovery from trauma. It is clear you have it in spades.” Usually said with eyes wide. How can someone survive what I have survived? You put your head down and keep walking.

I get the impression I am unusually willing to accept fault for the things that happen in my life. I can fairly clearly see how and where people react to me differently than they react to other people. People are influenced by my presence in the room–often in ways that seem to be negative.

I have one F on my transcript for my entire life. It was graduate school. A professor was so unpleasant to me that I withdrew from the class and let it turn into an F rather than deal with her. She is infamous in the department for being a problem. Other students in the class took me aside and gave me pep talks about how I should let her obvious hate bring me down–she’s not the best judge of character in the world. It was really funny seeing the other students react to her picking me as the person to pick on. I got a lot of advice on how to be quieter and avoid her attention so she would stop being so mean. I’d rather have a fucking F.

I was thinking about parenting and teaching this morning. I was a really good teacher. My kids worked themselves like dogs for me. They came in voluntarily on the weekend when I gave them an upper division college level assignment. We had to use multiple classrooms to seat everyone who came in for extra help. Their test scores all went up. I had an unusually low absence rate. I had the problem kids who hardly ever go to school. They would come to my period and no other.

When a “problem kid” started acting out I would semi-make a scene in class kicking them out. I was very clear that my “authority” must be respected. Once we got outside I would sit next to them and only barely look at them. Then I would start fishing. “You aren’t freaking out because of what that idiot said to you. I know you better than that. What is happening? Why are you upset?”

I carry with me the belief that I am not very important and my behavior has a fairly limited effect on the world. People are not upset because of me. They are upset because the things I say make them think of things. They are upset by what is in their head–not me.

I called the parents of gang-bangers into class and gave reports about how awesome their kids were. My students tried. One time I gave a test and the highest grade was a C-. I stood in front of every period and cried. I apologized for wasting their time. I apologized for being such a bad teacher that I failed to usefully present the information. I explained what I had done and why. I explained various ways we could try to represent the material and I asked them to vote on approach. Everyone passed the next test–and it wasn’t because it was easy.

I think I write that I stay home because I am afraid of being raped because that is the part that I can really understand. No duh. I don’t go to dance events because I can’t deal with how inconsequential I am. That makes me sound like a whiny baby. It’s hard for everyone to be new. No one gives much respect to people they don’t know and I’ve worked hard at making sure not many people know me.

I have spent my life as a girl and then as a woman. Outside of sexual attractiveness it has been made quite clear to me that my duties are to be: pleasant, charming, gracious, and complimentary towards men. If you don’t play this game then men don’t have time to talk to you. Or dance with you. They snub you openly. I used to get around this because some of the horniest men like feisty women. If I am not looking for sex I find that I don’t get a lot of tolerance. My brand of being annoying isn’t worth putting up with if I’m not going to put out.

The last time I went to a dance event alone it was awful. (When I went with DSH and blacksheep it was wonderful.) I love to dance. I love the feeling of ballroom dancing. It makes me giddy and happy in a way that few activities can. But it’s partner dancing. When I go and ask men to dance they pull back just a hair, I see the corner of their lip pull up in a sneer, then they tell me no. Then I see them proposition a younger and prettier woman. I do dance with women, but I’m not a good lead. I don’t have enough experience. I try but it’s obvious that the experience lacks the crucial elements that makes dance fun.

Noah hates to dance. Years ago he dated this woman. She brought him to dance events and told him that people would be thrilled to have him there and they would welcome him. She uhhh was lying through her teeth (with the best of intentions) and he had a much less warm experience. Instead he found out that he was a bad lead and not that good looking so women spurned him.

I’ve been noticing a lot lately that Noah and I are both funny looking in very complimentary ways. We are similarly awkward. I suspect that is why we make one another feel good. I’m really glad he likes looking at me. I like looking at him. Soon we have to decide if we are going to doom our kids to being funny looking like us or if we are going to cough up for orthodontics. I feel fairly angry by the current meme that you can’t be attractive if you have less than perfect teeth. I have funny looking teeth. If you don’t like them, fine. I won’t fucking smile at you.

Lately I spend a lot of time feeling like I am drifting with the days. I haven’t had a car in a week. That changes our life. I actually like it–I feel less harried. We should be picking it up this afternoon. Weeee.

I want to feel like we get to have a break from the cramming-for-a-test phase of our life. We need to settle in and relax. What does that mean? How is that sustainable? I don’t know. But I need to expect less of myself for a while. I’m very good at being more and more and more productive. But I cry a lot.

What does resiliency mean? It means that no matter how hard someone hits me or how brutally someone rapes me or if someone up and moves me hundreds of miles away where I don’t know anyone I insure that I can return to being calm if needed. I am careful about what things actually need to be in my day and which things can go. I refuse to be a “modern woman” and use makeup and style my hair. It’s a waste of time and it depends on time and equipment I don’t always want to carry around. Just no. I don’t care that other people do. But having that kind of affect requires time and energy and money. I don’t have any to spare on such activities. Not to mention that I cry every fucking day. Hell no I’m not wearing eye make up. Are you insane?

Resiliency means that I know what is important to me and I know that most of the time other people don’t share my priorities. I can’t let that matter. I have to be functional. I have to be able to deal with food for myself and other people. I can do x number of things in a day. Doing my hair rarely makes the list. Hell I rarely shower. No I don’t brush my teeth three times a day and floss twice a day. I am too busy devoting cycles of my brain to not becoming hysterical in public.

I get the impression that I think about my face about as much and as often as a highly-functioning person on the ASD. I’m aware that if my face looks hostile I will have problems. I have worked very hard on having a calm, neutral facial expression that isn’t intimidating. It’s easier for me than for guys. I have more problem with not being intimidating enough when I want to be.

The first supervisor I had as a student teacher was a wonderful old Sicilian guy. He was a bit taller than me and about two hundred pounds heavier than me. (I’m not skinny and never have been.) He told me that I would have problems with discipline because I was such a tiny little thing. I never had discipline problems. I am quite effective at becoming a force of nature when I want to. The problem is limiting that energy. Limiting that hostility and anger is a constant effort. At any moment of the day you could say one or two sentences to me that will cause me to want to jump up and start punching holes in the wall. I am always on the verge of rage.

Resiliency is being able to mask what I am feeling so well that people don’t have any idea who I am or what I am like. When they find out they recoil. A lot of the point of going out in public with a chaperone is so that you always have someone to moderate for you. Someone who kind of keeps an ear out for how you are talking and how you are being talked to–someone who wants to keep you safe. I do it for my kids. No one has ever done this for me.

I have always been dropped into new social groups where I am unknown and I have to carefully suss out who is ok with talking to me. I’m not good at the generic social warm up. It is both why I am attracted to facial piercings and why I don’t have any. They would advertise for me in ways that would make it easier to find tribe and harder to pass when I am feeling unsafe.

I have resiliency because I always know that I will find a quiet dark room to hide in. I will always manage to find somewhere to hide and lick my wounds. I’m competent at that. I will always find a way to have a space that is mine and I will defend it with vigor. I will limit who is invited to come over. I’m quite fussy about people in my space.

As more and more years go by I know enough people that I could probably find de facto wingmen for events. It’s not the same. I don’t have a bestie. I don’t have someone who knows me intensely well and kind of runs interference. I hear that is “unhealthy” yet when I look around it is an awful lot of how people adapt the world to them. They carry a reality distortion field around with them because they travel in groups and therefore wherever they are there is a substantial representation of their world view. Near as I can tell no one shares my world view. I am always the dissenting opinion.

I’d rather stay home than not speak. I’m not always up for being shouted down. Gosh my house is nice.

I am apparently feeling shy about pictures of my house. I can’t seem to bring myself to take them. My house is pretty shabby and I don’t feel open to criticism. I choose to do silly things rather than standard things. I am ok with lots of big chips in my paint because the kids draw on the walls anyway so I’m not going to try and fix anything right now. My baseboards are coming off the wall. All of the screens were ripped off by lovely destructive daughter. I could go on and on. I see all the “wrong”.

But I really like the lights. And I like the things I paint. I like looking at them. I feel happy when I do so. I like my yard more by the year. I’m kind of glad I don’t have more land to work. God that sounds like work. I think I would be a lot more angry about Noah’s complete lack of interest in helping if I had more land. This is the right amount for me to work alone. I’m trying to figure out how I am going to put in a hundred (or two hundred) strawberry plants this spring. A friend is looking for people to go in on an order. I may not buy a massage package from her husband for a while in order to fund this. But we go through strawberries like nobodies business. I’m thinking about it. I want to decide by tomorrow.

I have been feeling very whiny about the winter this year. I haven’t turned the heaters on yet. I’m trying to be stubborn and get to November. I think I am really trying to be stubborn because I want to see Shanna wear some of the damn clothes I buy her. She runs very warm. I am wearing knee socks and a long sleeved shirt under my footed fleece jammies. She has on a light sundress. I’m not sure I have the fortitude to out wait her. Goodness knows our heating bill could use it. We’ll see.

I should go start breakfast. Noah went in early so we can pick up the car this afternoon.

I feel like I can only describe this by saying that I feel like I am trudging uphill through a molasses swamp. With every few steps a new load drops on my head from a new tree. I don’t want to get up. I want to sit here on the floor and cry. I’m not going to. I’m going to work on that half smile. I will sigh deeply. I will stand up. I will go in the kitchen. Shanna asked for pancakes. We’ll see.

If there is a predator in the room I’ll find him.

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I just had an important realization. If someone sends me a message out of the blue saying, “Hey I was talking to _____ about you! It was great hearing how highly they think of you! It made me miss you. I hope you are well.” and my response is to go talk to _________ and say, “Stay the fuck away from him he is a predator” then I should probably not be “friends” with this person on social networks.

That’s a boundary. I like finding boundaries.

I told him no more than once. I don’t call it rape because tongues and fingers don’t count, right? But I said no. But I kept going back. I was lonely. I didn’t really have other options. I kept saying no.

I don’t want to have to keep saying no over and over. Once really should be enough.

Random judgey thought.

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When people I am ostensibly “close” with tell me emphatically that they don’t read my blog and they didn’t read the book and they aren’t going to I feel a sudden and distinct cessation of closeness. This person only wants to know about the parts of me that are “nice”.

I don’t think that everyone has to keep up with the blog in order to like me. But I do feel kind of intensely about people not wanting to know about my life. I’d like to turn around and start walking so we can keep it that way. I’m not going to fucking censor so you so that you can avoid being uncomfortable. If you don’t want to know things like that about a person maybe you just shouldn’t know me at all. I will be better off if I avoid people who want me to think that parts of my life are unmentionable.

It isn’t that I think everyone has to read it. It’s that when people feel the need to emphatically tell me they won’t I want to leave. That feels like a door slammed in my face. They won’t allow themselves to find out things that are painful so they don’t want to know about me.

Ok. I’ll take that at face value and leave. There are people in this world who do not flinch when they look at me. I live with them. Maybe I should just stay home.

I’m tired of having to be supportive of people who want to avoid trauma by never knowing that people like me exist. I don’t have energy for this.

Today is fired.

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I have been vibrating with anger all day and that isn’t fair to my kids. Part of my anger level is I don’t feel like it is ok for me to talk about the things that are making me angry. It cycles from there. I feel like I owe people respect and privacy. I’m not sure why I feel like I owe people this. I guess that once people get to a certain level of inner-circle-of-friends I feel like they get dispensation from the normal rules I have with other people? I don’t hash out much of my friendships in writing. Not until long after things happen at least.

I’m allowed to talk about me and my experience of things but I don’t get to out people. That is what my “upbringing” in the scene taught me. It’s a harder line to walk than it appears on first glance. How can you talk about things and still obfuscate?

I’ve had two friends no-show in the last week. The second one just finally popped up at the end of the day to explain what happen. I’m frustrated but it’s a situation I understand given that I have done similar sorts of things myself. I’m not happy with her because it is the second god damn no-show in a week so now it feels like a big statement about my general self-worth.

I still haven’t heard from the first no show. It’s been six days. I sent her an email at forty minutes past the meeting time saying that I was going to head out and go to a La Leche League meeting so she probably shouldn’t come by at that point. I haven’t heard from her. I’m sure she’s busy.

I had to explain to my kids what was happening. She told them she was coming. Shanna was looking forward to it. I had to fucking explain to my kid why someone was god damn letting her down. Because she forgot. That happens. Because we aren’t fucking important enough to remember, I guess. I didn’t say any of that. What I said was, “Well, people make mistakes. I guess she didn’t write it down and it slipped her mind.”

I’m seething. And I’m ignored. It’s hard being reminded how little I matter. I hate being lied to. “I’ll be there.” Yeah. Right.

I feel guilty for not being more forgiving. I fuck up too. I expect people to tolerate so much, don’t I owe people an eternity of putting up with in exchange? That’s what this feels like. I’m being tested. Do I love her enough? Do I want a relationship enough? She wants to see what I will put up with before I prove her self-fulfilling prophesy that everyone leaves her. At least that is the story in my head right now. I don’t know another story to put in its place. I could reach out and try harder. If this was the first time I had ever had similar experiences I might. But this isn’t the first or second or third or twentieth. After a while it seems kind of stupid, don’t you think? Obviously I’m not wanted here.

Sometimes life is like that.

Chemical states and relationship transitions

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Something that probably isn’t obvious is: the frequency I write is largely dictated by how much shame I feel about what is swirling around in my head. I haven’t been writing as much. I feel too much shame. I feel ashamed of who I am and how I experience the world. I shouldn’t talk about how I am experiencing things because that is drama. Which means I am running in little hamster circles in my head. It’s almost fun only it isn’t.

I think I am depressed. If I look at my physical activity lately and my attitude I have (for me) almost stopped moving. For normal people this means I am still fairly productive. I do this by sitting down in the morning and drawing up a schedule for the whole day and marking by the half hour what I should be doing. I put in a lot of reading on days when I have to do this. I can follow a schedule and “do what I am supposed to do” if I am just following a set of instructions. I no longer have to think during the day. I check the posted schedule at least five times an hour because I can’t remember what I should be doing.

I feel very sad and disconnected. On one hand I am seeing friends and trying to deepen relationships. On the other hand I spend all of my time with people experiencing a lot of physical distress because I believe in the core of my being that people actually think I am a piece of shit and they are just tolerating me because that is what you do in life. It’s what I do with the pieces of shit in my life. I don’t tell them I think that about them. But I think it. So I firmly believe I am not the only one in the world.

I’m trying. I’m trying to ignore the irrationality in my head but it comes at a fairly high cost. My stomach hurts right now. It has been hurting for quite a while. My throat hurts. My arms even hurt from clenching. My jaw hurts. I can taste the bitter metal of fear and adrenaline a lot of the time. I can’t help but feel like living with this much stress will kill me whether I commit suicide or not. My body is simply working too hard. And I won’t give myself much of a break on the other activities in my life.

It is my job to show my kids how to be productive, sensible, functional adults. That means I can’t really model getting depressed and sitting around with my books and movies for months. Even though I know I used to do exactly that for long stretches. I’d go to roost and avoid people. I can’t any more. My kids can’t deal with that kind of isolation. They actually need people.

I suspect that part of my issue is around money. I use money to fill in the cracks on what I have to do versus what I want to do–I expect that is standard. Right now and for a while I can’t do that. I have to stay home and not spend money. That’s hard because it means I am making today and yesterday and tomorrow a lot harder than they “have” to be so that some day off in the distant future we can do as ok as we are right now while we have a dip in income. Self discipline is hard. It wears through my willpower. I get physically tired. And knowing that I can’t do much of anything with money to make my life better triggers a lot of feeling hopeless about situations in my life. Either I can figure out how to do everything by magic with no money or I can deal with them just not happening. Things won’t get fixed. It makes me feel bad.

I don’t like feeling thwarted. It makes me want to stop trying. But I can’t. It’s not fair for me to stop trying. It’s not fair for me to stop hoping. I provide the structure of everything for my kids. They need to understand that frugality is not a death sentence. They shouldn’t view it with abject horror as making their lives terrible. You need to live within your means. It’s not a harsh sentence. It’s life.

My tomato harvest will once again be epic. I anticipate begging access to a pressure canner this year. I have frozen enough fruit to get us through the winter. I feel good about that. We will need more meat before the end of the year. Ok, I just set up a beef pickup in September. I believe the internet is Magic. This means I can save up the $600 for the meat over more than one month. Woo. I am starting to build my stockpile again. I cleaned out all the food in the house for Sarah so we could build a stockpile of foods we both like to cook with together. That didn’t really happen and I haven’t had a full larder in a year. I have a fair bit of stuff in the freezer I will probably never use because it’s not stuff I like and I have otherwise been just trying to make up the deficit in the food budget for a long time. We’ve been buying week to week until last month. I would like to spend the summer/fall stocking up so that over the winter I can lower the food budget and eat out of stores. We’ll see. Temporarily I raised the food budget by taking it out of other places. Money is not infinite.

I think it is kind of weird that I feel bad for feeling frustrated about money. I have access to far more money than anyone in my family. By far. My mother broke $30k/year for the first time the year she turned fifty. My sister I think got up above $60k/year. Noah makes more than twice that by himself.

When people tell me that they don’t see any relevance for feminism in the current era I think: “Why is everything that women do esteemed so little and why is the stuff men do esteemed so highly?” If you think it is because the men stuff is more important I might kick you in the shins. If the poorly-esteemed work that women do stopped happening then all of a sudden you would have MUCH BIGGER PROBLEMS than if your god damn magical phone stopped working. Or if you didn’t have a computer oh no what would you do?! What your fucking ancestors did for millenium. Stop whining.

We have an interesting way of deciding what is important and what is worth money here. I’m grateful that I get to be on the receiving end of that money but I feel pretty ashamed of the fact that I would never have had a life this comfortable without Noah. No chance. Comparatively I am worthless. That feels bad to me. If I didn’t have Noah I would probably have to go on welfare for a while. I can’t just go get a teaching job. I would have to go back to school because my credential lapsed.

I know that all of my status is worthless if I stop having this man stand next to me. I feel thin. I feel unimportant. I feel permeable and insignificant. So of course I’m binge eating and I’ve gained weight.

I am only worthy of low status occupations and activities. It’s certainly all I do with my time. I garden and clean. I play with my kids. Shouldn’t I pay a gardner and a housekeeper and a nanny so I don’t have to sully my hands with those activities? Ugh. Yet more evidence of my class issues; I suppose. I feel strongly pressured to be idle. That should be the point of all this status I inherited from Noah. Only I physically cannot handle idleness. It makes me feel terrible emotionally and physically.

If I am not working to make my home nicer then I sit here and stare dejectedly at all the things I can’t fix right now and I cry. It’s not better.

I feel really bad because I can’t handle dealing with new people right now. I am slowly moving around the people I’ve known for many many years deepening relationships but I’m terrified of new people. I don’t know how to act around them. I feel so physically bad that the experience is really unpleasant. I feel guilty about this. I don’t believe I am done finding the people I will be close to this lifetime. I’m just really scared right now and I can’t do it.

Well I know one thing I’m doing today. I’m getting rid of the spider web right above where I write that is currently home to a spider the size of the tip of my pinky finger up to the joint. That’s rather disturbing. Awesome.

I feel bad because Noah takes my fussing over money as sign that he is not providing well enough. I’m having trouble convincing him that I believe he is a good provider. I think that is kind of funny. He is supporting me with a degree of luxury I have never consistently experienced in my entire life. Yes, it’s adequate. Really. When my petty cash runs in the tens of thousands no one should feel guilty. Holy fucking shit. We have a high burn rate. In order to ensure that we will actually be ok in case of a temporary set-back we need a very large cushion. It’s simple mathematics. Why does it feel so emotionally complicated?

But he grew up with parents who didn’t work at all and dealt with family investments. It’s a whole different world. He grew up with parents who didn’t have jobs and still paid people to clean their house and work on their property. It’s a whole different world.

I think I don’t want to have an outside job partially because I don’t want my kids to believe that cleaning up after themselves is beneath them and should be done by a menial laborer who cannot aspire to better for complex reasons of race, class, shame, and bigotry. I don’t want to get a job so I can have enough money to pay someone to be beneath me. I never get what I want from those relationships and then I hate people. It’s not a good system. You can’t pay someone enough to care about doing their job. People are either interested in their work or they aren’t. I’m interested in the work of maintaining my house. No one else is. I have to live here. I don’t want to live in a piece of shit house that is falling down around my ears. Maintenance is god damn mandatory.

Part of what I am struggling with right now is the fact that I want my kids to have relationships with people. That means they are going to have to deal with the fact that people are not reliable. They can’t be trusted to tell the truth. You have to be very careful how you partition out trust. Look at what people do and not what they say if you want to know the truth of a person.

This is what I tell myself because I try so hard to do the right thing even though I feel my speech is often offensive and wrong. I say inappropriate things. But at least I am physically doing all the right things at the right times of the day. Sometimes it feels like all that I have to prop up my self worth. Of course I value it highly.

I have been thinking about storyboarding for the book but I haven’t picked up a pen. I’m afraid. I have ideas and I’m afraid I’m not good enough to complete them. I think the best thing about NaNoWriMo is the structured pressure of it. Produce, motherfucker. I am really looking forward to being post-marathon and in a writing phase again. I need a better ergonomic system before November or I am going to damage myself. My arms are tingling as I type. Shit.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the structure and nature of my compulsive sexuality. When do I do it? Why do I do it? What are the lead-up events? It’s a group coping activity. I don’t do it one on one in the same way–even with prey. I do it as a way of finding a position in a group of people. I know how to be the slut. It’s pretty much the only group role I feel comfortable in. As an aging woman it is one I need to get out of before I look more desperate and pathetic than I already do.

I slept. I swear I did. I still feel tired. I feel exhausted in the marrow of my bones. I’m going out tonight. Sigh. Like, after bed time tonight. I leave at dinner time. Lately I have been finding it very important to financially prioritize supporting the endeavors of long time friends. I’ve paid to attend several shows/events recently just because I wanted to be in the same physical space as specific people. I don’t care much about the activity. I never really have. I want the people. I want to stand in close physical proximity to people who know a lot about me and like me. I ache for it. Being an audience is a fairly comfortable role right now. Little is expected of me but I get to make someone else feel good by being present. Nearly half of the fun money I have had for the whole year has been spent on going out to see two people in particular. I like them. I need them. If you add in this one other friend you get to more than half of the money I have spent other than the book. That’s been my money for the year. I don’t go to Starbuck’s. I don’t treat myself to books or music. I did take Shanna to see Brave. That is our movie for the year. We go to the park and to the kid places we have memberships to. We pack lunch. I severely limit my driving. Yesterday we drove to Oakland then Oakley then Vacaville to see people and I don’t think I can drive much the rest of the month. I’ve used more than half of my monthly gas allotment on one day. Well, ok. It was worth it. I only see them two or three times a year. I only drive up once. It’s worth it. That is how I am setting my priorities.

I like relationships that have a lot of hurdles to existence. If they continue then I feel like someone truly loves me. It is hard for someone to prove they love me. I get into trouble with expectations. I try to keep them low but once in a while I am foolish and I expect more from people than they are going to do. I recover from that with ill grace. I’m never thrilled when someone shows themselves to be not worthy of trust I have given them. It causes me to feel a lot of self-doubt about my general worth. I thought I could trust this person to do what they say and I can’t. It must be because I am not worth telling the truth to. It must be because I am not worthy of even thinking about long enough to follow through on commitments. That must be it. I am so fucking pathetic.

At this point I can’t talk about my anger and frustrations about these situations because I can’t express it in front of my kids. My kids get to have their own reactions. They don’t need to learn my anger. So I am doing a lot of stuffing. That means it creeps out in little insidious ways. I’m snippier and shorter of temper. It feels so unfair to my kids. I’m not mad at them. I’m just out of patience because I wasted it on adults.

I feel like I should hide in my house with my kids and not deal with people because that is the only way I can ensure I am just reacting to my kids and not the other people in the world. Only it only kind of works. Because then I bring the trouble home. The kids need relationships too.

This too shall pass. One of the greatest gifts of getting older is I trust that this phase will end. I won’t always feel this way. It’s a cycle. I still don’t think I have bipolar disorder. This is why I put myself on a schedule when I feel like this. If I haven’t gotten anything done by nine in the morning I have to write up a schedule or it will be a couch day. I know it. I have occasional couch days when I believe that physically the rest is probably a good idea. I try to keep those to once or twice a month. I don’t want to teach my kids that a great big part of life is just sitting around not being productive in any way. You need rest, sure. But find a way to get your rest in while still doing something. Reading does count as an activity. It’s a great excuse to rest. Watching movies… well, sometimes. When you are sick, sure why not. Otherwise you need to move your body more than that. We don’t stay in one position while we read.

I love seeing my kids develop my physical mannerisms. I feel affirmed and loved and seen. They read like me. We like to change positions a lot. Sitting still is quite hard. We squirm and wiggle and roll over and over. We stretch at the same time. They get books and do yoga with me. I get to set normal for them. They will grow up believing that what I do is right and good. It makes me cry. I have always been different from everyone around me and I was viewed as bad and a threat to be stomped down. I was supposed to be more like them. My kids think I am great. They don’t know that I have never fit in any of the molds I have been shoved towards. They don’t care. We fit.

I strongly encourage my kids to be different from me. I support them having different opinions. I talk to them (mostly Shanna still) about how I have control over them for a very short period and then they get to make all of their own decisions. I talk about how I don’t want to have control over them because they will have different ideas and opinions than me and they should do what will make them happy. I also talk about how to coexist peacefully. I talk about having respect for people around you. I model what that means. I really love my kids. I get to be good and kind and respectful towards people who absolutely deserve it and have no ability to let me down. My expectations of them are that they are helpless little amoebas at this point who will flail and be random. I’m pretty much right. But they will become adults who understand in the marrow of their bones what it means that Mom does what she says.

That freaks me the fuck out. That pressure. That is what gets me out of bed every morning. That is why I make schedules and get shit done no matter how I feel physically. I god damn need to have more people in the world who believe that I am trustworthy and good and kind. I say some very harsh things and as a result a fair number of people think I am an asshole. I can’t really say they are wrong. But that is such a small part of me. I feel defined by the negativity in me. With my kids I have a perfect chance to have a different experience.

I must say it is going well. This is one of the hard phases. I can objectively understand that my emotional cycles and their behavior cycles are being wonky and I’m being patient with all of us. That is what a good mother does. Well, I’m not patient with the screaming. I will put my hand over a screaming mouth because otherwise I get horrible headaches to the point where I can’t really see straight. If I have to drive I cannot allow them to hurt me in that way. I just can’t. Why do I feel so guilty about covering their mouths? I don’t make it hard to breathe. I am not cruel. I don’t do it for an extended period of time. I don’t shake them. I don’t hurt them. I don’t yell at them. I try to calmly say, “That’s an outside voice. Inside you have to be more quiet.” “No really, that hurts me so you cannot scream in my ear.” I have to teach them boundaries, right?

I don’t feel worthy of defending and my kids are pushing boundaries all over the place. It’s a hard combination. I’m trying to live up to my end of the bargain. I have to teach them how to be respectful of other people. It’s my fucking job. One for which I have managed to trade having a very cushy life. I have an easy job. I shouldn’t bitch about it.

It’s weird to think about how I would handle these emotional cycles if I had a job. I think I never would have found time and space to really write. I think that would be one of the things I had to drop. I would be more volatile. When Noah showed up and asked me to marry him I was trying to work up the courage to ask him to raise a child with me but I thought I had no right to ask him for what I have now. I planned to work and raise one kid by myself. That would have been a very different life. I’m really glad Noah actually wanted me.

It’s really odd to me when I think about how to write about the journey from eighteen to now. My different phases seem extreme. When I was eighteen I was engaged to Stephen and supporting myself by working in the library and the theatre. I planned to make theatre my life. I really wanted to run a spotlight for Cirque du Soleil someday. I knew I wanted kids but I had things to do first. I thought college was a good idea but I was nervous. I really wanted to go to CMU for technical theatre.

Then I left Stephen and found Tom and the bdsm community. I transferred to the English department. I went to college but I did not have the immersive college experience; I was a commuter student on campus two days a week and I took classes straight through from ten in the morning till ten at night. When I finished my BA I had a choice to make. If I wanted to be active in the bdsm community and be an Adult all the time then I should probably go through graduate school and try to work at the college level. Then I don’t have to be as paranoid about being outed. Or I could decide that I wanted children and go for a degree that will give me a schedule more potentially compatible with theirs. Tom was not open to me being a stay at home mom. I went through some graduate school. I decided that kids were more important than Tom. I broke up with him and started the credential program. In order to transition out of that relationship and emotionally distance myself from him I started having sex with a lot of people. It worked.

I dated Noah for the last six months of my relationship with Tom. I think that Noah was probably a lot of the reason I finally had the nerve to end things with Tom. Noah doesn’t permit me to be unaware of why I am doing what I am doing. He’s kind of annoying. I broke up with him for a lot of reasons. I can’t sum that up.

I went through the credential hunting hard for someone to have kids with. I wanted to start soon and I knew it. I was very frank about it when I talked to people I was having sex with. There are some men who ping hard for the idea of having kids and there are some who are repulsed. I needed to know who was potential prey. I was hunting.

Puppy was a mistake. I thought he was like Tom only younger and wanted kids. I was quite wrong. I should have never tried to date someone who thought it was funny that I was an actual Californian and would mock me and my vapidness for living here. And he thought I was fat even though I was at my lowest adult weight. He was very harsh about my body. He was very bitter because of his ex-wife and has a lot of mommy-issues. That relationship didn’t stand a chance.

After that I had a few months where I stopped hunting. Then I met Spot. I knew he wasn’t The One to have kids with. I made up my mind to ask Noah about having kids with me even though I didn’t think he was interested in the kind of relationship I wanted. He wanted the kind of relationship he wanted and I was not going to fucking be the Other Significant Other. Hell Fucking No. I’m not going to make someone my priority as long as I am their option.

But out of the blue he asked me to marry him. Just like that. Five months later we eloped. I moved into this house more than six years ago. Our sixth wedding anniversary is in September. I have to say that it is going well. I have the wonderful four year old and two year old of my dreams. My two year old is currently yelling “baby! high!” because she wants to be pushed on the swing. I should go before she slams the laptop screen on my fingers.

But I’ll come back to edit and tag and add that it is because my life is so good that I feel so bad about feeling bad. I need to stop feeling like someone who has had my life. It’s really hard.

No social skills

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Today I went and talked to a man who does things. I feel like a lazy slacker when I hear about what he gets done. He’s running a little farm. He works a computer job 80 miles away from his farm and deals with that commute. He is high up in management for a variety of different annual events like historical re-enactment events and Burning Man. He has an intense life. I’m not going to bother to talk about his 15 active hobbies.

Just the thought of having to deal with that many people gives me the shivers. I can do a fairly heroic amount alone but having to work with people is hard. I don’t trust people. I never believe that any one else will deliver on what they promise so I can only plan for what I can accomplish alone. It’s rather limiting.

I will never have a family the way I picture in my head. I have Noah and Shanna and Calli and that’s it. And I’m god damn lucky to have them. There are people who love me. There are people who care about me a great deal. There are people who will try hard to help me. But they all go back to their families. I am not part of their families. I am a spoke person they can have a one on one relationship with occasionally but I’m not a big part of any one’s life. Except for Noah and Shanna and Calli.

I’ve been calling K every day because otherwise I can’t get through the afternoon without crying. I’m glad she lets me do that. I miss days occasionally because I don’t hear the alarm on my phone. I go through periods of talking to people daily or nearly daily on IM. They never seem to last very long.

I don’t really have people to share my life with outside of this house. I have people who want to see me once a year and get an update on how I am living my life. I’m impressed by the people who slog through this blog. I write because I am shouting into the void. I don’t know who or if anyone other than Noah is actually going to read any of it. The fact that people catch what I say bewilders me. I say so much because I have to see the words outside of my head but I know so little about the people who read. Even the people I “know” I don’t really understand. I rarely spend enough time with people to see past my projections onto them. I am not good at meeting people and treating them like a blank slate. I am always looking for patterns.

Patterns are important for my survival. At least they have been in the past. Patterns are causing me problems now because Noah doesn’t follow many patterns. He’s kind of weird. But he understands when I talk about the people in my life like characters in a story. He understands why I look for clues for how to react. Many of my assumptions are wrong. Why do I assume that people who come over to my house dislike me? Why do I physically react to them as if they were threatening? I can like someone and enjoy their company and still not know how to have a positive conversation with them. I always feel like I am being mean and they must think I am bad. (If you are thinking, even me? Yeah, probably.) I feel like I talk too much. I am rude. I dominate conversations. I take up too much space and I should shut up and sit in the back. My turn is over.

Ok you know how people talk about how homeschoolers “won’t be socialized”? Well. I went to public school so I got my socialization there. I think I had five or six teachers over my educational career tell me point blank in class to stop raising my hand because other people needed to have a turn. Teachers and people who are older than me and people in “authority” trigger me heavily. I have very strong internal meters that tell me that pretty much any talking is disrespectful. And I always say weird or wrong things.

I was at a party this weekend and two women were talking. They were doing that “build you up” sort of thing. Life is hard and we must be brave. You can never be too brave. You can never be too balanced. You can never be too strong.

I interrupted there and said, “Actually you have to be careful how you get stronger. Like right now I’m running and I’m learning a lot about how the muscles around the knee work and…” I went on for a while. I felt like a party pooper. “Oh hey, you know how you are trying to build her up and convince her to reach for the stars? Well here’s a cup of ice water in your face. You’re welcome.” I don’t mean to do it. I feel like such an asshole.

I don’t think it was actually that bad. I’m really not good at the art of conversation. It’s a skill and I’m sorely lacking in practice. The real problem is, Noah doesn’t mind if I’m an asshole and I point out things about him that sound rude as long as they are true. I think I grow more unfit for human companionship by the day.

I’m not sure why I have had such an upsurge of pervasive negative thought for the past few days. Is this my brain’s horrible reaction to Noah saying that I was out of the emergency phase?

Anxiety is energy that wants to be put to use but is instead being held in. What energy do I want to expend? Why do I feel so bad? I feel like talking about Sarah would be horribly disrespectful and rude. I’m having a lot of big feelings. I’m not sure why I think it would be disrespectful and rude, but I do. I’m not processing my emotions and it’s not working for me.

It’s not about a list of done-me-wrongs. We tipped the bucket. Lots of water came out. The drip isn’t starting back up again. I’m scared. I don’t get to control what happens in life. That’s hard. I feel sad. I miss my Sarah. Am I emailing her? No. Does that make me a passive aggressive bitch? Maybe. Things were said. Not all by me.

I’m scared and I’m sad. I hurt people.

I have had so many people tell me they were my “family” until I said or did something they didn’t like. I don’t see those people any more. They broke off contact. That’s just how life works. Some, many, of them resurface every few years for a phone call or dinner.

I got really good at lying to myself that I would have what I see in my head as how a family works. I’m too mean and I drive people away. I sit here and wonder why I am so broken. Why don’t I deserve what I see other people having? I missed that life path. It’s just not really an option for me. Pity party: table of one.

In my head I hear this rough amalgamation voice saying, “Don’t you realize that no one gives a shit that your mother didn’t love you? Get over yourself.” I should forget my shit and go out and join something. Subsume my identity into a group identity and stop thinking about my shit. Because my shit isn’t important. But when I get to the meeting or social event or class or or or or or or or I don’t know how to talk to people. I don’t know how to form relationships that go beyond a surface level. Because NOT BEING TAUGHT THOSE SKILLS IS PART OF MY SHIT.

It isn’t any one else’s problem. Well, that’s not true. What am I going to teach my children? Fuck. Who knows. We’ll see. I should go in. I should stop crying again.

Broken promises

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My mom likes to make promises she can’t keep. Oh she always intends to do it when she says it. She just isn’t very good at taking stock of what things are realistic and possible in life. And she rarely has the willpower to deny herself something in favor of a later pay off. It’s all stupid shit, right? She promised she would take me to Magic Mountain every year from when I was eight on. My siblings grew up with season passes and I heard the stories and I felt envious. I went by myself when I was twenty-one.

One of the talents my mom has is sewing. She’s a fairly talented seamstress. I still have things she made from me and I wear them when I get the chance. I have a Snow White costume and an Ariel (from The Little Mermaid) dress–you know the one when she comes down to dinner and brushes her hair with a fork? That one. My dress is awesome. And my mommy made it for me which makes it extra special. She made my Dickens costume. I wish she hadn’t told me to buy the pattern and material for three separate Dickens costumes because then in the long run I feel bitter that (as usual) she doesn’t follow through completely on what she says. I should just be grateful she did one. Usually she doesn’t get through one.

I focus on the fact that in everything she said to me there was always a lie. I always had to be careful not to get my hopes up when she said anything. I would say I had less than a 50/50 chance of her following through. That wears on you decade after decade. I wish she had promised less.

“I’ll pick you up from school” was one of those ones I wish she had promised less of. I would not be able to add up all the hours I sat around waiting to be picked up. I understand. She always had a reason. It’s not her fault. Ever. It is always someone or something else’s fault. Always. Always. Always.

I hold the people in my life to a higher standard of truth telling because of this. Approximations are not good things. Over-promising is the worst thing you can possibly do. I try very hard to keep my expectations and hopes very low. Too many people are fucking liars who are too self absorbed to even admit to themselves that what they are doing is lying.

There are sins I forgive easily and barely notice; there are sins that cause me to feel like I have to smite someone from the earth because they are hurting me. The real solution isn’t to smite anyone. I’m terrified that the solution is simply to never trust a word that people say unless they prove over years that they aren’t a liar. Unfortunately I tend to trust more than I should. I get lied to a lot. Oh of course it is never a lie it’s just that people don’t think they need to have a lot of integrity in what they say. They feel no need to be impeccable with their words. Close enough is good enough. And I die of a thousand paper cuts.

I don’t want my children to have this hostility and rigidness around promises. I know it isn’t healthy. It is isolating. I certainly can’t hang out with people much. I’m trying to figure out how much I can handle really having steadily in my life. I want there to be a predictable pattern. I want to have a pattern, damnit. I’m really struggling because nothing else in the world wants me to. Stupid life just keeps happening. I really do want to see people and so far that has to be a flexible thing.

It is hard to be this lonely and angry at the same time. I know that I have to be careful not to get too angry when other people are around. I manage this with the kids by not talking at all. It’s hard to do that with adult visitors. Then they become discomfited and I have to try to knock it off. I can see the visible discomfort spread over people and I feel a wash of shame. Yup. That’s me. The angry one. Then I feel so much self loathing that I am always the angry one that I just feel more anger. I’ve been told a lot of times that feeling that angry around people is basically abusive. I’m a monster no matter what. I just am. It doesn’t matter what I do.

Ok, I kicked the cabinet door off the wall. I suppose that is something terrible and horrible. Because more shame really makes everything better.

I have had trouble running since the grief ritual. I feel so overwhelmed with anger that I can barely see straight and it makes me stumble so I am running more slowly and carefully. I don’t want to injure myself; I truly don’t. I don’t want running to become my latest method of self-injury. I want to find joy in my body. It’s hard to do in the dark and cold. I miss the afternoons.

I feel stuck in this anger. I am so frustrated and anxious. I need to go proofread six more chapters back from my editor and that’s scaring the crap out of me. I am so tired of reading this story. I want to avoid it and I want to get this done and over with.

When I say I follow the scorched earth path I mean that I will forever say anything I want about someone and shun that person from my life. I will be as harsh as I feel the need to be. I can be a very harsh person. It is obvious when I am truly done.

I am struggling with some things in my close personal relationships. I don’t want to regret the things I write, ever. I want to always know that I am writing a truth I feel comfortable standing behind. Right now I am having a lot of very strong irrational emotions. I don’t know how to deal with them. I am already saying things that are impossible to take back. Dear sweet Jesus at least I will keep them off of my blog. I’m struggling.

How can I talk about what I am experiencing without giving any information or judgment. hm.

I feel unappreciated and used. I feel like I am getting the realistic version of an impossible situation. I feel tightness in my throat. My neck aches. My shoulders ache. My lower back aches and I can feel how bad my posture is right now. All right, I made a few chair adjustments and that is slightly better. I feel empty and drained. I feel abandoned and untrusting. I feel exhausted in a way that isn’t going away with more sleep.

Recently I heard someone describe it as being “pregnant” with her book and I kind of feel like that. I’m getting a lot of harsh physical symptoms and emotionally I feel like I am living on the memory of fumes because I ran out of gas long ago. I am at a time and place in my life where I feel like I need an endless stream of support but I am too ashamed to ask for it. I don’t have a family and people like me have to just figure it the fuck out because we are too unpleasant to be around. I feel so pathetic and needy. I feel so very lonely. But I don’t feel like I get to talk about that because it is my own damn fault that I am so fucking unpleasant to be around and that’s why I am alone.

Sometimes I wonder what it is like to be part of an extended family. Thinking about it makes me cry. What would it be like to have people who know me and want to spend time with me? I have friends, yes. But my friends go see their families on holidays. I notice. I tend to feel like it isn’t possible for me to stop being angry so I should stop attempting to spend time with people at all because no one should have to deal with my fucking mouth.

It’s probably a good thing I see my therapist tonight.

One of the problems with polyamory

3 Replies

I don’t know if other people sit around in their off-time listening to songs and trying to place them onto various relationships. Particularly, today I am listening to Adele’s Someone Like You. The way she talks about the song in this video is striking. It has dramatically altered my hearing of the song.

I miss Steve and Tom. I think I would be able to be the kind of person Steve could be friends now. I think I have changed my reactions to some of our patterns. I didn’t like how I treated Steve, but I liked Steve. I would have broken him if I had stayed with him. Instead I ran away. I didn’t just break off dating him. I stopped going any place he might be. I avoided his friends like the plague. Anyone who knew us both lost me after the break up.

I walked away from my life. I broke all ties. I changed my major in college. I dropped out of college. I broke up with Steve just a few months before our wedding and then I evaporated like a drop of water. But there were a lot of reasons I wanted to marry him, you know? He was a really amazing person. I miss him. I miss the things he brought into my life. I don’t want to have sex with him, that part didn’t work well for me. But I miss him being my close friend. I dated him before I had ever told anyone the full story of my abuse. Before I was out publicly as a rape survivor. I could still name every single person I had ever had sexual contact with. I had two lists. One of girls, which was very long. I didn’t tell people about that list. And the boys, which was long but not frightening because I don’t count my rapists. Oh wait, there was a third list in my head–the rapists. I could still count my positive boy-sex experiences on my fingers with Steve. Steve was the first boy who ever gave me an actual orgasm. I faked it before that. Uhm, sorry people from high school.

I miss Steve a lot. He was passionate about things the way Noah is. I love basking in that kind of joy in the simple act of attaining knowledge. Steve liked to learn. He was inspiring to be around. He isn’t book smart, and it was by choice. He came from a highly educated family. He was a self-didact though. He knew how to do an amazing array of things. And if he didn’t know how to do something he would figure out how to learn. Nothing daunted him. I miss that. I didn’t know how to deal with it when I was 18. I didn’t know how to explain to him that things were harder for me than him because I didn’t have this loving background telling me I could accomplish things, I had to move slower than him sometimes.

Enh, I don’t remember the particulars well enough to analyze it. Whatever. That’s not the point. I would really like to know what kind of man he has become. I’m pretty sure I was right back then when I knew that I wouldn’t enjoy living with him long-term. But I think I could be his friend now. I think I would know how to listen to his interests without bashing him over the head with my issues.

I ran from Steve to Tom. In a straight line. Jumping on a few nice people along the way. I was 18 and living with a lonely old lady who wanted company and I wanted to be surfing the internet looking for sex. As soon as I became involved with him I started using his house as a base. I was there a lot when he was at work because I didn’t have anywhere else to be. His internet was paid for, he didn’t seem to care.

I’m not sure he understood how much time I was there. How much time I spent auditioning a life in that house before our relationship got all that serious. I picked him. I wanted him. I didn’t have to look around the local community for more than three months before I was damn sure he was the only person in that lot I wanted to seriously pursue. And I did. And on our first date he told me that he was looking for the One. The One he would marry and have children with.

I am not going to get into it much right now. That’s too big of a story. I can’t do that today. I can’t write it down today. But I can sit here and listen to Adele sing. And I cry. Because I can’t write that story yet. I am in the middle of another one.

I date Puppy because I was trying to replace Tom. Puppy was the most abusive relationship I have had as an adult. If he had not ended it when he did I think he would have hit me. He was escalating in his violent displays when I didn’t react how he wanted. I wasn’t good enough for him. His family hated me and picking me would have meant ostracizing his family. Or having to have relationships with them that involved no discussion of his life with me. He didn’t think I was worth it. He was a nasty piece of shit to me trying to get me to break up with him. When my response was to cry for a while then try to problem solve he freaked out. He wanted me to do something nasty so he had justification for his behavior. I feel like my relationship with Puppy absolves me of my guilt for treating Steve so badly. I learned how to control that anger. I’m really sorry I fucked up like that at 18. But I learned. I changed. Some people never do. I’m proud of myself.

I am too angry with Noah. Almost none of it is directed at him. I’m not angry because of anything related to Noah. I’m just angry. At so many stupid things I remember and can’t let go of. So many things that I’m trying to write down and be done with. Puppy left me with a nasty email about how I will end up bitter and alone. Just. Like. His. Mother. Yeah, that’s about me? I think not.

I don’t need to feel bad for my part in that any more. That was a shitty relationship. I don’t think it escalated to abuse but it wanted to. It didn’t partially because I learned to control my temper. That’s pretty cool. I needed to do that. It was essential in helping me be a good teacher. And oh boy is it more important as a mother. I’m sorry I hurt Steve. But I forgive myself. I had good reasons to be angry. The more of this book I write the more I understand why people in authority positions widen their eyes when I tell my stories. I should be exploding with anger. I should be standing on top of a tall building with a machine gun taking my rage out on all of humanity. That’s what a wounded animal as smart as me would do.

For all that people tell me I’m an angry person, I’m not. Not really. I was. I’m sad. I’m afraid. Writing my story down all in one block and thinking about how many years of my life I have spent alone in a room is hard. I don’t know how to have a real live actual family. I’m scared.

I dated Tom for more years than I lived with my brother Jimmy after the age of three. I lived with Tom for almost as many years as I lived with Tommy. We were very close. But he could never decide if I was really worth so much effort. He wasn’t interested in getting married and having kids with me. I think that given his life priorities, he made the right decision. I’m not the right kind of girl for him. And that still hurts. I wanted to be. I tried so hard to be what I thought he wanted. Oh so many things I want to say. They come over me in waves, these memories.

But I don’t think I can be friends with Tom. We were too much. I want too much. I miss too much. I want too much of him still. I don’t know if anything could ever actually work. I’m not going to let myself think about it. I can’t. I ran away. I slammed the door on that part of my life pretty hard. It has taken many years for me to figure out that some people in that community can be my friends because they aren’t actually interested in being his friend. I didn’t have to ask them to pick a side! They came pre-picked! I’m a shallow piece of shit.

No, I have problems with boundaries. I don’t think I would be able to have any if I spent extended time with Tom. Once again, I don’t know that it is even sex I want. I want to crawl back into his head. I want to once again hear him tell me about the most intense parts of himself. I want to watch him enjoy driving. I want to be tied up. I wouldn’t mind it being non-sexual. I miss being enjoyed for just being there to look at. That’s something that’s hard to communicate about objectification. It means that someone doesn’t have to know all of my dirty stupid little secrets, they can enjoy looking at me. Maybe I am beautiful.

Maybe if I write about what I really miss in enough detail I can find a way to get those specific needs met in other ways. It’s worth a try. But not today. Maybe someday I will find someone like Tom. Maybe I will be able to figure it out.

Daydreaming is weird. Because I have these thoughts. I have them a lot when I’m driving. Polyamory means that I can have my Bridges of Madison County track in the back of my brain and know that I am not being disloyal to the people in front of me.

I feel sad that Noah does the same thing. I don’t know that he does it exactly the same way I do. But he has similar yearnings to not feel like doors are closed. There is one girl he is kind of bitter about. I handled it badly. He really was falling in love. It felt like watching my chance at stable happiness leave every time he went on a date. I don’t trust that anyone else can love more than one person at a time. My family couldn’t do that. One kid at a time was “special” and whoever wasn’t in the center… well… when my brothers weren’t at the center it was because they weren’t there. Sometimes when my mother and I lived alone somewhere I was the center. That was wonderful. Anytime there was anyone else around I was ignored. She had missed those kids the whole time she had me. She had talked about that endlessly. She didn’t talk about me in glowing terms the way she did them. She didn’t idealize me. She lived with me.

I don’t want to be that for Noah. I’m scared. It is so hard to trust him. It is so hard to trust anyone. There is no one else in the world I would even bother to try to trust like I trust Noah. I can’t. I’m not capable. And that hurts. Once people have been close to me like that, if they fuck up even slightly then I have to completely and totally evaporate from their lives. I can’t handle being demoted. When Noah starts paying attention to someone else I feel demoted. I go from being the wife to being part of the harem. Now I’m “one of Noah’s girls”. I feel disposable. It’s not true. I know Noah doesn’t feel that way. Not even slightly. But that’s what I feel.

You know. Once I get the problem nailed down this specifically it’s time to talk to the California Mindfucker. I like NLP. It’s a convenient tool. I keep hitting this same wall. And it’s not rational. I can explain it 50 more times and they will all come down to the same thing. I want to change my irrational feelings and I’m not managing on my own. There are tricks for that.

Trying to steel myself for a let down

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I think that the okcupid boy is going to decide I’m not worth the fuss. Which is fair, I don’t think I am either. Uhm, yay for confirmation? I am asking for a ridiculously specific thing that isn’t very fair. I feel weird saying it, but I’m kind of sad. I think I added him to my mental script of November a bit fast. It would have been a very exciting month. It was a nice dream.

Instead I will work a lot harder on getting ready for the 5k and I’ll write the book and I’ll try to settle into more peacefulness in the house instead of trying so hard to get out of it. Apparently right now I’m not meant to be getting out. That’s ok.

That means that some of my friends will say, “Hey come to Friday Night Waltz!” or (insert event here). You guys don’t understand the energetic cost to me of getting out of my house right now. Large group events suck. They aren’t worth the price of admission. When I went dancing with my friend, ok that was worth it. He was a good friend-date. That was nice. Those still don’t give me that big jolt of energy that I want. They make me tired. Those are work. They aren’t building me up in the same way. They are a much more pleasant diversion than most of my life, I’ll say that. But they are a physical cost. I can’t do very much of that. I can’t get consistent enough child care and I don’t want to be away from the kids every night.

I am really sad that I don’t get to have an affair. I honestly think it would cause a few unfun conversations with Noah because I would neglect him. Only I wouldn’t. Because I would come home every night and he would wake up with my mouth on his cock. He would miss me a lot. Heck, I think the fucker could stand with a little missing me. It might increase his enthusiasm during the time he has me. We are so tired. Uhm, I say “the fucker” with great love and affection. Just so it’s clear.

Noah has made great strides in his career during our marriage. I have given him a lot of time and space for that. That is something that builds him up and makes him cocky. I like that in him. He likes me to be built up and cocky. I haven’t felt that way in a very long time. I feel beat down and exhausted. I feel worn out. I feel fucking boring. I feel awkward. I feel unpleasant. I feel like no one will ever want to pay a lot of attention to me again. It’s existential angst. I know. It’s pathetic.

That’s the problem. That dismissal right there. I have a lot of this because of the repercussions of trauma. And when a doctor prescribes a drug intended to cure mania, what that means for me is the medical profession thinks I need to stop working so hard. Because I don’t think there is a reasonable way to describe me as truly manic. In times of crisis I work a lot harder than most people have any interest in working. I’m not manic. I don’t fit the diagnostic criteria. Unless of course, you count my promiscuity. Which uhm, yeah. Or the fact that I did have that lovely drug experimentation period. Uhm, only I’ve never done anything that has harmed my life.

That’s the crux. I like my life. I think I have made mistakes, yes. But I wouldn’t take any of them back. In my opinion mania is reserved for when you impetuously do a whole bunch of things that are really bad for you. When I was a small child I engaged in a lot of sex play because I was surrounded by sex and I was acting out what I had been programmed to act out. It wasn’t mania. As I got older it got more complex and emotional, but I don’t allow my sex to negatively impact my life. I’m not riddled with disease or unwanted children. I have *also* had a lot of really fun sex with some interesting people. I’m glad I’ve done that. I’ve gotten the affair thing right a couple of times and it’s been life changing. I have fucked up in looking for what I want and I’ve had a lot of bad days dealing with feeling bad about how I didn’t negotiate properly.

This is why the doctor says I have an omniscience problem. Because I believe it is possible for me to negotiate well enough to get exactly what I want. And I’m ok with fucking up along the way as I learn how to do it. She seems to think this isn’t a good plan and she was constantly trying to figure out how my “sexual acting out”, seriously–she brought this up at least three different times during the hour we were together, “And did you act out sexually during that time too?” whenever I talked about other major symptoms of anxiety. She’s trying to figure out if I go fuck people every time I get upset. No, I really don’t. Bitch. That kind of judgment pisses me right the fuck off. I’m friends with the vast majority of people I have had sexual contact with. Of the people I no longer know, only one is actively acrimonious and that’s a joint issue. I have been very safe in terms of disease risk and pregnancy… what’s the problem? Oh wait, I forgot. I’m just not supposed to do those things because they are amorphously bad. Well fuck you too.

Err, anyway. This is my long rant about why I’m not interested in an affair because I’m manic. I’m interested in an affair because I’m really bored and I don’t know another way to get that really intense bonding and attention I want. I’m doing it in a way that is entirely on the up and up with everyone in my life. Why is this a problem? Who will be harmed? Why do I need to be medicated away from this? No. This is not the approach I want. I learned a lot about what I need to say on the next visit. That’s good.

But what I really want is a month of sneaking out after hours to be the crazy super hot girlfriend. I want it so bad. I want someone to be obsessed with me. I do I do I do. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH He’s not going to want me. *beat head on floor* (I’m kidding Ali! I won’t do it. I’ll just shake my fists in fury. It’s… not the same.)

Luckiest girl in the whole world

2 Replies

We kind of ignored our fifth wedding anniversary. We were busy. I’m not actually sad about that because the party was fun. Last night I was told extensively how much I have changed since marrying Noah. I agree. For the first time in my life I know what it is like to have someone unreservedly like me. It’s a novelty. And Noah doesn’t just like me. Noah is kind of obsessed with me. We have spent hundreds of hours talking about my life and history and psychological health. There are not enough hours in a day for me to tell him more about the inner workings of my brain. I was informed that is not normal. Ok.

It’s weird to live with someone who likes me but has no compunction pointing out where I am doing something badly. It’s refreshing. After five years together, I even prefer his voice in delivering criticism. When he’s consciously trying he’s good at being gentle with me. We have a lot of verbal conversation short cuts that help with my layers of emotional baggage. That was hard to build. It is amazing that at this point we can have these massively intense conversations because we can reference this long history of conversations. I’ve never really had that before.

It’s weird how this relationship is really my “college” education in the sense that most people have them. Noah has encouraged me to learn about things I actively shunned. He has read books to me and articles and blog posts and comics and we have watched movies together. We have built this weird unique little subculture just for us. I imagine this is what growing up in a family is like, because we include the kids whenever we can. This will be their weird little subculture. I think about that. My children will never have normal. My children will be in the 5%. Probably. Maybe. I hope. I hope they know that the 5% exists and that they have the courage and fortitude to do anything they want to do. I want children who are so courageous that there really isn’t much chance they will meld into the crowd. I have that already.

Noah encourages me to feel really happy about being me. He thinks I should grin when I think of something clever I said. It’s kind of an odd feeling. He likes it when I am cocky and arrogant. But then I later collapse in private and have to breathe through my panic attack. Noah is definitely a mixed bag for my personal development. Sometimes I wonder if part of what makes me so uncomfortable when I go out into the world is the fact that I know that no one has ever liked me how Noah likes me. I feel like other people dislike me in contrast. It’s not true. But it is true that I am starting to run into conflict with friends because Noah has influenced my behavior.

I have Noah at home telling me that conflict is an ok thing. It’s hard to believe him. It’s hard to believe that getting better at arguing is really going to earn me more friends. Noah is trying to convince me that it will absolutely chase off some of my current friends but it will earn me friends who actually like me more rather than what they are projecting on to me. I think that is what he is trying to convince me of. I could be wrong. There is no way for me to remember everything we talk about with super concrete details. I am out of tapes.

Why is being avaricious in a woman so threatening? I’ll tell you flat out that if Noah gets to the point where he is offered $250k/year in salary, hell yes I’ll do anything he wants. That kind of power and influence is highly erotic to a dirty little street kid like me, what can I say? He can have a weekend where I do anything he wants. And the current potential ideas are the kinds of things nice normal housewives should be degraded by. I should feel devalued and lessened. Cheapened. Instead my response is: hawt. It gets me off to think about it now and it will really get me off to do it.

My marriage wouldn’t work for everyone, but we’re having fun. I can’t really see another way for me to deal with my class issues, really. I could pretend they don’t exist… but they do. We like looking at things head on. I don’t see the value in pussyfooting around my stupid little landmines. If I’m going to set them off, let’s go kablooie. Why not do it in a way that maximizes the fun. Seriously. I don’t consider that a real question. This is work I need to do in my life. I need to deal with my class issues. Mostly I talk about them in therapy, on the internet, with friends, with Noah, and I think constantly about them. Ok, not constantly. But they come up and I address them. And every so often I go and play some dramatic game about sex exploitation. So what? I think that giving my husband a weekend for sex that we will both find really hot is a pretty reasonable reward for him being a fan-fuck-ing-tastic provider. I don’t really care if anyone disagrees. (Then why am I writing about it on the internet. *sigh*)

I want to try to explain how I see Noah. I really do. I don’t have the words this morning though. He’s such a big concept in my mind. I watched this bad bad movie recently about 20’s relationship angst and the big whore butch dyke finally settles down into a monogamous relationship because “You hold my interest.” I like the fact that sleeping with other people reminds me that I married the right person. I enjoy it. I want to do it again. But I married the right person. Never before in my life has anyone cared enough about me and my happiness to change their behavior for me. That’s the part that other people don’t get. That’s why I keep them at a distance. They think I have to just “learn to accept them”, which means that I have to change to suit them. Noah looked at me and thought that keeping me and making me happy was worth making dramatic bone deep change.

I am the luckiest girl in the whole world. He has absolutely changed for me. Yes, I’m going to change for him too. Because I want to validate the important parts of him that much. Because I think he is worth it.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: semi-cryptic whinging

Progress

Some days are like that.

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

Distraction

Editing continues

Thinking about stuff else-net.

Just another whinging Friday

Feeling useful

More about privilege

chaperones and resiliency

If there is a predator in the room I’ll find him.

Random judgey thought.

Today is fired.

Chemical states and relationship transitions

No social skills

Broken promises

One of the problems with polyamory

Trying to steel myself for a let down

Luckiest girl in the whole world