Category Archives: sleep

I swear I am trying.

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But sleep deprivation is a bitch to catch up on. I went back through my activity tracker (I know it is not perfectly accurate for stuff like sleep) but between travel and anxiety and overworking I am down about 8 full nights of sleep over the past month. This is why I am currently struggling with paranoia, negative thoughts about myself, irritability, and frustration. I also hurt really badly.

But I am trying to reverse the flow. The past three nights I’ve gotten nine hours of sleep. Yesterday while walking home from the community center I just about fell down from exhaustion and dizziness. Trying to catch up is showing me just how deep the reservoir of sleep deprivation goes. I need to try to spend all of this school holiday sleeping as much as I possibly can; my health requires it.

A full night of sleep for me is ~7.5 hours. I’m down over 64 hours of sleep over the past month. That’s a lot.

This move is the hardest of my life and I have moved waaaaaay more than average. Folks in the military are usually dumbfounded by how much I have moved because they feel a lack of stability in their lives and I’ve moved many multiples of times more than them. Not so much recently, but over the long run. This is my first international move and I can’t understand people who do this repeatedly. This is so hard.

We moved into a house that was more than twice the size of our old house with no furniture coming with us. We have had to acquire everything from scratch and mostly build it because we can’t really afford to buy nice stuff, we are buying flat pack. Which means I have spent multiple full days just on building furniture. Noah has helped with this way more than he usually does with building furniture and for this I am deeply grateful. Noah has spent at least six, maybe up to eight solid days building furniture if you add up all the hours. I’ve done at least as much maybe more. It’s all getting fuzzy.

We finally have consistent, good wifi thanks to Noah’s continual efforts at handling the bureaucratic mess. It is still a mess with regards to electricity. All of the advice “Just do A, B, C” has failed entirely. I think Noah is handling the stress of people lying and being deceitful far better than I could. (The main electricity company keeps saying they have done what they need to do for us to move on with the process. When the other company we want to work with checks… nope hasn’t happened. It takes eight weeks before we are allowed to complain. We seriously suspect the first company is going to drag their feet for seven weeks and five days.)  Noah has been on the phone and filling out paperwork just about daily trying to handle the electricity/internet/bank/credit card situation. Now that we have internet and we found out we literally can’t get a credit card until we’ve been here six months and we have a (JOINT) checking account and three savings accounts (grown ups + kids who are redepositing their stuff from the states) we can chill on figuring out financial stuff for a few months.

Oh, also we had an appointment with a couple of truly lovely accountants and that’s going to be a whole messy process that will take many hours of labor over many weeks. The UK tax year doesn’t run their cycle from January-December, they run April-March so we will be trying to sort out tax stuff for like six months straight. Hopefully after the first year it will get a little more clear? At least our California accountant used to work at the IRS handling international taxes?

Trying to acquire stuff for the house has been endless frustration. Between not having a car, not having reliable internet, and our US credit cards getting constantly denied for fraud… everything is taking two, three, four, five times as long to get done and the hand strain is absolutely unbelievable.

And I keep hearing my fucking mother’s voice in my head saying that you don’t go out and socialize until your house is company ready. Thus long working days and not sleeping.

Last night I made a list on the whiteboard of the chores the kids hadn’t gotten to this week. I told them they need to finish by bed time. They got it done. I supervised and didn’t help. I’m trying to reduce my arm strain.

They did a great job and they are currently playing with Her Sweetness so Noah and I can each have some quiet down time in our separate rooms.

We have a house phone number and an actual physical phone will be delivered in a few days. I have a sim card in the house for a UK phone number for my mobile and I will be setting it up once I can put the UK house phone number down on forms. I will be going through and replacing my US phone number on all of my accounts. I will be shutting down my US phone number in December after 19 years of service.

I am having so many feelings about that.

The plan with the accountants is to start moving our money out of the US. I don’t feel super ethical investing in a country that moved its slavery from the cotton fields to the prison industrial complex and is currently running concentration camps. Where freedom means the freedom to get shot at school. Where freedom means that thousands of people can be homeless so the uberwealthy can hoard a little more. Where freedom means ruining your entire future if you get sick. Where freedom means eternal debt if you want an education.

I know getting out isn’t an option for everyone. I know it is cowardly to run instead of fighting to change the system. I know.

My children are already walking to school and home from school alone sometimes. It’s so safe here. I spoke to a mom who is terrified of her kids being alone and that’s why she pays for them to have cell phones from really young so they have to text her all the time to prove where they are and she tracks them on her phone.

We will have a house phone. I’m giving up full service internet on my phone and downgrading to a pay as you go plan that I don’t want to use much. I will be deleting most apps so I’m not tempted to be idle on my phone out in the world.

My kids will be fine here. I am not worried about their safety. We have an agreement: you ask before you take off and you are given a time to be home. You have a watch (without the ability to receive phone calls on) and if you are late, for every minute you are late you owe me a push up.

That’s as much enforcement as I want. That’s as much control as I want. They are big kids. They are responsible. I trust them. The neighbors aren’t going to call the police if they are out walking to the park. I have anxiety about stuff. I am overly controlling in some ways, but I’m trying hard to back off. They will be ok. And frankly the push ups won’t hurt them.

EC forgot her school computer at home one day this week. Noah asked if we should bring it to her at school. Nope. She can accept the consequences for her behavior like a big girl.

It will be good for her.

I went to a couple of activities with Her Sweetness this week aimed at her peer group; these are the kids she will know in school. These are the kids in our neighborhood. It’s good to start getting to know them. She will make friends over time and I will get to know the mothers.

This move is the hardest of my life. Let me write down just how painful this is so that hopefully I remember and never want to do this again. Some day as an empty nester I might want to move to the downstairs apartment with Noah and rent out the big house, but that’s different.

Solstice is going to be interesting. EC has a bunch of needs still. MC has a bunch of wants. YC (I should shift to this at some point soon here because goodness Youngest Child is more fair than just always referring to her as the sweet one–not to mention that she is sassier by the day) has few needs and can’t speak any wants. I am going to start wrapping presents soon just because we don’t have many good stash spots in the house where unwrapped presents won’t be seen.

Oh, and to put the cherry on top of the moving process, we are all learning how to ride bikes as our mode of transportation. This has resulted in at least one, often three or more major crashes per person. We are all sore and wincing and moving slowly. My knee still hasn’t healed from my crash and every time I get up or down to help YC with something I hiss because it forking hurts.

At least MCs lip has healed and they no longer look like an abused child.

It’s a process…

Hardest fucking move of my life. But the house is basically company ready. I want another couch for the down stairs apartment before guests come. I want a real kitchen table for the main dining room with actual chairs we don’t fall off of on a regular basis. EC still needs a bed frame. Then we are done acquiring stuff.

Mostly because I found a tutorial on Pinterest for making bookshelves out of uniform moving boxes and that’s what I’m doing with the books that arrive. I’m not buying bookshelves any time soon. I want artistic fancy-pants book shelves and I don’t want to pay for them now. So I won’t really get all of the boxes out of the house by the end of November, but the stuff in boxes will be out and in use and the boxes will be semi-permanent (until they give out) furniture.

I am struggling with the fact that I need to give myself approval for how hard this move has been because I won’t get it from anyone else. No one but Noah can see what I’m doing and I’m an asshole about not accepting his approval as much as I should. He will give me approval whether it takes me a month or five years. He isn’t judging me based on what I care about. His priorities are different. (He wishes I would slow the fuck down and rest more.)

I have a ridiculous drive to get this done. This is important to me. I need to see this progress so I can sit in the mostly finished house and dream about the art I want to add. I can’t start painting until after my next birthday, but I can make sketches. I can figure out what kind of mosaic backsplash I’d like to make for the kitchen wall where we keep splattering the shit out of it with food. (Did the previous owners cook?! How in the fuck did they keep the wall so white?!) What would I like to do in the upstairs bathtub bathroom?

Art will come, but not until all of the other pieces are in place and I can dream around them.

We still have a few entirely empty cupboards in the laundry room and main kitchen and the downstairs kitchen is basically empty. But we have the stuff we need finally. Those bits will fill in over time as we figure out what other things we want or need.

Realistically it is going to take me many years to finish this house. But I feel moved in now. The art will come. The guest kitchen will come. It’s ok that it isn’t all instant.

I needed to feel settled. Those bits are extra. And I have my name on a bank account so that I can build my own credit. That’s a big deal. Being dependent is hard enough without also being vulnerable.

And proper locks are on the way for every door in the house.

My brain hates me

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One of the best parts of using medical marijuana, for me, is that I don’t dream. Which means I don’t have nightmares. I went about ten years without nightmares because of pot and those were some of the happiest years of my life because I didn’t wake up panicked and distressed all the time.

My brain was really awful last night. The baby kept waking up to nurse. I need to nightwean again. I usually give her a week or so of adjusting to a new time zone before I cut her off at night again. Today is our 7th day here.

So I was drifting in and out of sleep into this horrible nightmare that just wouldn’t stop. I notice that over the past couple of years most of my nightmares involve Noah being horrible to me. Noah isn’t horrible to me in real life. I often wonder if these nightmares are my brain playing through what I think I actually deserve from him. He should abase me. He should lie to me and risk my life through disease exposure. He should treat me like I am nothing.

Well, “should” is a funny word. But that’s what I fear I deserve. My brain likes to torture me with what could be if other people hated me the way I hate myself. If other people held my inadequacies against me the way I hold them against myself.

Today is our seventh day in Scotland. I am not feeling as panicked and overwhelmed as I did for the first four or five days. I had an entirely irrational reaction upon arrival. I didn’t sleep for two nights in a row as we traveled (maybe two hours total in little pieces) and I showed up feeling like I was “already behind” on a bunch of work and I just… kind of freaked out. I did that thing where I feel like I am not allowed to stop working until I am caught up. So I worked from 4am till 9pm for many days in a row with broken sleep in between.

I have a hard time with feeling like I am going to be punished if things aren’t “caught up” to a certain level. Clearly my dreams think Noah will punish me if I am not good enough. I am not sure who else I am afraid of.

Someone in one of my online support groups is dealing with a family member being institutionalized because the family member is completely delusional and hurting their children. I feel abject fear when I hear about them sassing members of staff and refusing to cooperate. They do not understand what can be done to them.

I think I have this abject fear that if I do not have a “nice enough” environment for my kids to live in then I will have them taken away and I will be put in a psych ward again. So I spend a few days not able to control the volume of my voice and being really irrational about working until I hurt myself.

Also: trying to get established here has been kind of rough. I can’t order things through most websites because my credit cards are not registered to a UK address. Mostly they can’t be. US and UK credit systems don’t overlap. Well, American Express cheerfully updated our address and they will just move seamlessly into a UK credit card but a lot of places won’t accept them.

I have had a really rough time with trying to use credit cards only to get them shut off for fraud. I have been on the phone with my credit cards almost every day since we got here because I am getting so many denied purchases. I have put flags on all of my cards that we are making enormous purchases in the UK because we have moved here and we are trying to set up house… but fraud protection. I mean, it’s good–right? But it’s also really frustrating. I am just starting to get to the point where I am catching up on sleep from having such a deeply inadequate amount. My running 7 day total went from about 4 hours a night to 6.5 hours of sleep a night. That’s a massive improvement, but sleep deprivation is torture and it makes the brain do a lot of really nasty things to you.

I still haven’t gotten an amount of sleep that counts as restorative. The air mattress I am sleeping on (that I am deeply grateful to have) is really hard on my back and shoulders. And the baby is waking up a lot so my sleep is still massively disrupted. This will end, but it won’t end for a while longer and I feel brittle and bitchy and short tempered. Which means I feel like I am a bad person. Being cranky makes me feel like I don’t deserve to have anyone love me or do anything nice for me.

I am not being nice enough to any of the kids in my life. I feel really bad about myself because I don’t have more patience. But I have no slack to give myself this minute so I don’t know how to find it for other people.

I know things are coming together. I know this sprint cycle is heading for completion. We have a fair bit of furniture in the house (most of it from charity shops so we didn’t spend a lot of money–awesome) and most of what we still need has finally been ordered. (If I walk to a store my credit card goes through pretty easily; I just can’t order online for delivery.) The two really big things I still need to purchase are a full sized washer and dryer. Everything else we must have has been either ordered for delivery or is already in the house. I would like a few other pieces of furniture (like a bigger kitchen table with real chairs instead of folding chairs that Her Sweetness is going to hurt herself on) but what we have could be good enough for quite a long time.

Unfortunately all of the stuff won’t finish being delivered until October 4th. But it’s ordered and on its way. We get a rental van tomorrow for 48 hours and I will be able to zip around town and order the washer/dryer and get the last bits of stuff I want to buy for the kitchen and we can finish filling in the gaps in our wardrobes. I am a bit cranky with myself for putting almost 100% of my warm things on the boat so that I am wearing Jenny’s generously provided hand-me-downs 24/7 because I don’t have much of my own to keep me warm. I have one pair of warm bottoms and one warm top and one sweater. I am stealing Eldest Child’s warm socks with absolutely no shame because she thinks they pinch her toes anyway.

The kids need to have a lot of shoes for school. They will need to have more shoes for school than they have ever owned at once before. 1) Indoor PE shoes 2) Indoor class shoes 3) Outdoor PE shoes 4) Rain boots and possibly 5) Nice shoes for walking to school so they make a good impression? I am not certain about the fifth pair.

Usually they have sandals, a pair of shoes adequate for running, and rarely one pair of nice shoes if we have a wedding to go to in a given size.

I am just grateful that shoes are super cheap here.

They also need more jackets/layers than they have ever owned in their entire lives. It’s feeling like a lot. Noah has almost no weather appropriate clothing because he has been able to dress down exclusively in a hot climate for decades. I don’t think it will be considered as acceptable to dress badly here. Silicon Valley is just… special. You can dress like shit and people still have to be nice to you because you might be a tech CEO worth millions of dollars.

This is an adjustment. I am feeling incredibly self conscious about how all of our hair looks as we are growing it out. We look messy. And I don’t think I can do much about it.

I would need more hand spoons and time to be braiding my hair nicely right now. I am working too hard to manage. Buns it is.

Today Noah and Middle Child are heading out to try and acquire necessary clothing. This is the last good day for them to try for a few days and we are all chilly enough that we don’t want to keep putting it off. I am not letting the children turn the heat up in the house so they can just wear underwear. For one thing, it’s hella expensive. For a second thing, we would have to have lights on in every room with the blinds closed because our house is not private. People have a clear view into most rooms of our house and folks go by frequently. Wear clothes. You are not in California with a huge privacy hedge and most windows facing the backyard anymore, Toto. Adapt.

For the next two and a half weeks someone has to be home at all times because we have a delivery scheduled for every day between now and October 4th. This is good.

I am really tired. But this cycle of work will end. I think that starting on October 5th I am “going on vacation” where I do the absolute minimum for several weeks and binge watch movies and don’t type and just rest. I need it quite badly. That feels really far away right now. Just keep plodding along.

We are also walking 4-9 miles a day. I wish that were helping me sleep more. It’s not. It just increases how sore I am. Pushing the stroller makes my elbows pop out of socket in a really heinous way. Wearing the baby makes my shoulders and back hurt.

I can’t wait for the boat stuff to arrive. I have a different (much larger for carrying groceries) stroller in there. The new stroller is so easy to push. It feels like sliding a knife through warm butter. With 50 lbs of gear in it I feel like I am pushing a feather. I want that stroller. (It’s also a bike trailer.) We have up to six more weeks of waiting for the boat stuff. Then I get to figure out what to do with all of that. At this point I feel like I barely remember what we own that we put in storage. I know there is no furniture… Clothes. Books. Christmas decorations. My giant fuzzy blanket that T made years ago. The set of silverware that my ex gave me for a birthday present after I broke up with him. (He ordered it long before we broke up and it was back ordered. Awkward.) I don’t even know what else.

Breakfast is almost ready. I feel like I can stop crying now. I need true sleep. I need rest so bad. But there is no rest for the wicked.

Homework (what do I need to work on)

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This morning I am waking up feeling gooey, schmoopy, overwhelming love for my family. Ok. Time to think about the stuff I need to work on about myself.

What are the whack a mole problems that come up? Many of them are problems in me and related to my thinking as much or more as they are rooted in anyone else’s behavior. Like: I really struggle with feeling like I want/need my kids to be more self motivated than they are. Then I get these reminders that they are actually really doing exceptionally well for their ages and developmental levels and my expectations are almost certainly out of whack. My kids have different things they struggle with: my son tends towards passive aggression and my daughter tends towards executive function failures. Ok. That’s not out of line with fairly normal stuff for kids. What I need to work on in myself is feeling more patience with the fact that they struggle in these areas and I have chosen to not put them into school where there would be teams of other adults teaching them how to manage these issues. I choose to be the one who must solve these problems or it is my fault they still exist. Sometimes I struggle with feeling overwhelmed about the magnitude of difficulty of work I have assigned myself. But it isn’t my children’s fault that I assigned myself this role.

The thing is, even though I struggle with some of their behaviors sometimes… I truly like my children and I feel like I have done well turning them into little people to be proud of. It has been the result of massive, overwhelming work on my part. I watch my children night and day and give them little course corrections, assistance, reminders, and help. NO FUCKING WONDER THEY TREAT ME LIKE THEIR EXTERNALIZED BRAIN. I can look at my Eldest Child and tell what she is thinking about with a greater than 90% accuracy rate. “You are having x feeling about y thing. Do you think maybe you should do z?” Her response is always “HOW CAN YOU DO THAT?!?!?! That’s a good suggestion…..”

I only guess my Middle Child’s thoughts and feelings with a more like 40% accuracy rate and he and I both feel a sting because of that. He consciously and deliberately shields his thoughts more. He works on having a blank facial expression. He works on projecting feelings he is not having. He got that from me. I feel like I am letting him down by not being able to read him better. He feels misunderstood and less appreciated. But he works on making it hard. He wants me to find a way to work harder and still read him so that he can feel as understood as EC. That’s complicated.

He got in trouble this week. He set his assignments on Monday. I didn’t add extra shit. He picked what he wanted to do for the week. He needed to get his work done on Thursday so we could go have a visit with the cousins. He didn’t get his work done. I was pissy and impatient because he really didn’t come close and he spent the whole day dawdling and I lost out on a visit too. (I can’t just leave him home and go without him for a list of reasons.) So I told him that since he wanted to just sit around and not get his work done during work time that he could just sit around and do nothing during play time and he could do it in his room without toys. He didn’t have a fun day.

The next morning when he woke up he had a fire in his belly because he didn’t want to miss out on any of his plans or on EC’s birthday fun. He got up super motivated. He got a bunch of his chores done before I even saw him in the morning. The first time I saw him in the morning was when I was waking up and still sitting in bed. He came in timidly and I smiled at him and invited him into the bed for morning snuggle. (We have much better days as a family when we start out with everyone snuggling for at least a few minutes.) He talked about his plan for getting everything done early so that he had a buffer in case he planned poorly and it took longer than he intended.

He got everything done with time to spare.

We walked over to Jenny’s instead of going on a family walk and taking a taxi. On the way we had an hour to talk to each other. The conversation was wide ranging and interesting. I asked him what he thought about the day before when he was in trouble. He said he spent most of the time trying not to think. I said, “So kind of an extended meditation practice?” He said yeah. He didn’t use the word, but he was trying to not catastrophize. He said (barely paraphrased), “I was so grateful that the first thing you did when you saw me this morning was smile at me. It showed me for sure that I was right to try not to think all the super bad thoughts. I made a mistake and I’m going to be able to get over it and you will get over it and we will move on.” I told him that yeah we will move on. He’s a great kid and I love him very much and I need him to trust me. So when I say “Do x so you can have y” if he doesn’t do x he can’t have y.

He said, “I know. It’s part of why I respect you a lot. I know you work really hard at being someone who is honest with me every day.”

I have a lot of fear that part of his passive aggression is an attempt to get back some control from just how controlling I am. It’s not a healthy way to try to get back some of that control. He has a lot more control over his schooling now, but I think he needs to have just a little bit more. I think that when we get a house again he and EC are going to be allowed to shut me out of their rooms for a full year so they can figure out their own tidying habits without me needing to be so fucking controlling because we are packing over and over.

I truly literally have to be this controlling right now or we won’t be able to get packing done with the travel. It’s rough.

When this is no longer necessary I need to give them a bunch of space to try things for themselves and fail.

I really struggle with the fact that they don’t have much in the way of long-term planning skills… but that’s my problem because they are age appropriate or a bit above. I need to control *myself* more, not them in this area.

We have done a lot of work on getting them to see me as an independent person. Frankly, having Her Sweetness has helped. They can see when I need to not take care of them because I have other obligations and both of the big kids are super mature about understanding that they got to be the whole center of my universe for many years and it is wildly uncool for them to not let Her Sweetness have a similar amount of time and energy. We are still struggling on getting them to let me rest without interruption, but they are better than they used to be and if I were willing to set more boundaries I think they would fall into line.

The struggle is I hate setting boundaries with them because that feels like I am doing a mean/punishing thing. I’m not. I’m valuing myself.

I really struggle with valuing myself. I really struggle with saying, “I need to not do anything for anyone because I have to take care of myself.” I think I went to so many doctor visits because every time I walked into an office the medical practitioner would freak out about how badly my body was doing and give me a tiny little bit of support so I could go back and do more work than I am truly physically capable of doing. I’m not going to have that medical team keeping me on life support here.

I have to value myself enough to say no way more and that’s hard. I get so much of my self esteem from doing things for people. From doing work and supporting people I gain the sense that it’s ok for me to keep taking resources for myself because I am sharing as much as I get or more. But this isn’t sustainable.

I don’t actually think the problem is with my kids behaving badly. They are really amazing children. I think the problem is me valuing myself and my need for rest. I absolutely literally require more down time than I give myself. I have to exercise in a fairly regimented way and I haven’t been doing it because I am exhausting myself providing emotional care for other people. That’s not healthy or a good way to be a role model.

I don’t want to teach my kids to be how I am. Which means I need to change.

I need to spend more time resting. I need to spend more time with just adults not taking care of children. I need to turn down opportunities to do labor (emotional and physical) for people. Not because I hate anybody. Not because I am angry and throwing a tantrum. Because I need rest. Because I need to love on me the way I love on my children. Because I need to spend as much time paying attention to my needs as I do to my children’s needs.

I learn a lot from my kids. They work to set boundaries for themselves. They understand that limits exist in their lives for their benefit. They do better and feel better if they exercise and eat healthy food and turn off the screens at night and get good rest.

I need to learn from my children.

Normal

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On one hand, I worry about how much sleep I’m getting. On the other hand… I’m actually getting a fairly normal amount of sleep for me when I am unmedicated at night. This is what my body… does.

There is this belief that you must get a “reasonable” amount of sleep or you can’t be healthy. I believe it is true… to a point. Do you know how grateful I have been to have doctors start telling me that my sleep stuff is probably related to a combination of ADHD (I burn more energy with less need for rest than average) and PTSD hypervigilance. I probably don’t NEED as much sleep as other people. Seven hours is pretty average for me with heavy sleep meds.

So getting 3-5 hours is low but… not scary low for me?

One of my favorite parts of giving birth is my horrifying anxiety just… lifts. I have a little anxiety about my babies but not a lot. Mostly I feel competent in a way I rarely feel in life. I can’t sit around like a queen giving orders when I’m pregnant but I don’t hesitate postpartum. Bring me that. Fetch the other thing. Go do this chore. No problem!

I will sit here and hold my baby and somehow manage to still be wildly productive because my mind feels so thrilled to be doing what it is doing.

I love my baby. She is perfect. If she weren’t canonically perfect she would be perfect to me. I’m not scared of my children having problems. I have problems. We cope.

Like, we get to take her to Stanford for an ultrasound for her kidney because stuff wasn’t perfect at birth. I don’t care. Whatever I have to do for her will get done. She is my baby.

If I have to blow things up to take care of her I will. If I have to mow someone down because they are blocking something I need for her… I won’t flinch.

My children motivate me in a way nothing else on this earth ever has or ever will. I will find a way to change for my children. I will become whatever they need from me. It doesn’t matter if it is hard or if it hurts. I brought you into this world. I owe you. I owe you everything.

I don’t mean “everything” like every class or toy or treat you want. Boundaries make healthy people. But I owe you my life. I owe you my sanity. I owe you my need to get up in the morning and try again.

Apparently in our house we now have a Sissy and a Sibby. (Sister/Sibling) This is… making me cry in a nice way. My big kids are so happy about the baby they are about to burst.

After the next diaper change I’m starting a load of diaper laundry. This makes me weirdly very happy. Let the next cycle begin. I am so ready. I am ready to take care of you and do what you need. You are worth all the work I could possibly put into you and more. I will give you what I have. It will fall short of your needs because life is like that. Luckily you have a daddy who loves you to distraction. And you have a Sissy and a Sibby who want to take care of you when I can’t do everything.

You, my lovely daughter, are going to be ok. We will make sure of it.

My milk hasn’t fully come in yet, but my boobs are sweeeeeelling. It’s hilarious and painful because my boobs are already getting to that point where my nipples are hard for a newborn to manage. Overwhelmed by boob is a hilarious facial expression. By later today my boobs will dwarf her head. Ha.

Last night I swaddled the baby super well and gave her to Noah. I went to bed a few minutes before 8. I got up for the day at 2:30 for the second feeding (the first feeding was around 11, I think?). Amusingly… that’s barely short of sleep for me. I hope Noah will sleep in. If I get up and get breakfast for the kids, this may be a fairly good pattern for a couple of weeks. I get a solid chunk of sleep for the first shift then Noah gets to sleep.

We’ll see what normal we find.

Apparently it depends on how you phrase things.

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The sleep doctor wrote a long impassioned plea to the insurance company about why she believes I REALLY NEED to try a CPAP machine given my constellation of problems and she explained in great detail how trying this is cheaper than all of the other tests and follow up stuff she is going to ask for if they turn down paying for a CPAP.

They are paying for me to try a machine.

I feel stunned by the medical system not being the biggest douchebag possible.

I go in for that fitting next week. I’ll try just about anything to see if it helps. It’s not that I’m unwilling to look for solutions. It is that so many of them fail.

Sleep study

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I went in and got the results of the sleep study. I’m so pissed that it took years to get a fucking sleep study. I HAVE BEGGED. I don’t have sleep apnea. Well, technically I’m barely clinically in the range because I have slightly more apnea incidents close to REM sleep than is “standard” but pregnancy increases apnea incidences. The apnea scale goes from 0-30 and 0-5 is considered normal. I’m at 5.6. Given that pregnancy increases apnea incidences… I don’t have apnea.

The more important metric is blood oxygen level and I never got below 96% which is great.

So the last several years when doctor after doctor has told me they wouldn’t give me sleeping pills because I might have apnea but they weren’t willing to test me… that was a big fat fuck you.

I need to go through all the medical results I’ve gotten in the past year or two and put into a binder like Sarah has. I’m tired of having debates with doctors about whether I have this condition or that and whether or not I should just get back on Prozac. UGH!!!!

Oh, and my apnea score only qualifies if you look at this amalgam number. If you look at the base apnea number I’m at like a 2.3. (I’m not bothering to look it up this second because Jesus I don’t give a shit.)

So my insurance company will not fund a cpap machine. I’m not clinically impacted. The sleep study place said I still might have some improvement in sleep if I tried a cpap, so why don’t I spend $800 (that I can’t get back) to try out the machine! Sure I have no signs that it would help and I’m ridiculously sensitive to things on my body interrupting my sleep, but WHY NOT spend a whole bunch of money on something that probably won’t help?! DON’T I WANT TO LOOK LIKE I’M TRYING TO GET BETTER?!?!?!?!?!

I fucking hate every doctor.

The sleep doctor said that looking at all the readouts from my study she would guess that I am waking up from a combination of pain (probably fibromyalgia based) and hypervigilance/anxiety. I would probably be helped by a simple sleeping pill or anti-anxiety pill but she hesitates to prescribe anything like that while I’m pregnant because extra sedation on top of the pot is mixed.

So you know how I’ve been BEGGING for lorazepam for YEARS?!?!?! That’s a simple sleep/anti-anxiety pill. I take 10 a month when I get to decide my dosing. BUT OH MY GOD IT’S HORRIBLE FOR ME TO DECIDE THAT I NEED A MEDICATION CLEARLY I MUST BE ON A DAILY PILL THAT RUINS MY LIFE OR I’M NOT TRYING.

I feel rather like I have improved my life and my body against the direct efforts of medical providers for a long time now and that’s confusing and mixed.

I still haven’t gotten my records transferred from the OB practice so I can be permitted in a new practice. That’s 3 weeks now. I should go throw a temper tantrum today because I’m 22 fucking weeks pregnant and going a month without care isn’t acceptable because they don’t fucking feel like sending some god damn paperwork. Walk down stairs. Make a copy. Hand it to me. That’s the end of this discussion.

Pain

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I’ve been awake for two hours because my back hurts so much I can’t sleep. People I barely know keep asking me stupid questions like “Why don’t you sleep more?”

Because I hate sleep. Sleep is so rude.

?!?!?!?!

IF I COULD FUCKING SLEEP MORE I FUCKING WOULD. OH MY GOOD CHRIST.

My kids told me they think it is a little weird that linguistically I act like there is a God/Jesus but I don’t believe in such a dynamic so they think I should stop talking like I do believe.

I told them I’m a product of my culture whether I believe all of it or not.

I keep finding myself saying Gorblimey. Because who doesn’t want God to blind them? Am I right? (Google it if you don’t believe me.)

I’ve slept 2.5 hours. God I feel so shitty.

After a fuck ton of stretching I’m going to try again. Back into the breech.

 

So sleepy

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Nine hours of sleep after skipping a night helps… but I’m in that dream place. Sometimes this is a hard, sad, scary place to be. Not today.

Today I feel open to love. Today I feel loved. Today I am thinking about the comets who touch my orbit. I’m thinking about how very blessed I have been in this life to be loved by so many truly fantastic people.

I am blessed beyond any expectation or presumption of deserving. I could not have expected the treasures that have poured into my lap.

Thank you. I love you so very much. Thank you for being in the world so that I can see you and learn from you and love you. You don’t have to do anything for me. Just be. I love just the way you are doing your thing.

Don’t change for me.

Or maybe, if you change for me, change because you see you better having seen a reflection from me. Don’t change because you want to be more what I like. I like you as you are.

Lovin Is Easy. I do it all day. You make it so easy. It’s the way that you play. I want you to be free. I want you to soar. I want you to chase adventure and so much more.

I love you.

Bossy friends, sleep, and the big D

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Do you know what I hate about blacksheep telling me to do stuff? I pretty much always listen. I stopped using the Afrin. (@#$#$@$#$ bossy friends)

I am happy to report that with Zyrtec and saline nasal spray (to irrigate and moisturize, naturally) nightly I’m still getting 8-10 hours of sleep. Like fucking magic. I haven’t slept this well… ever.

(I wouldn’t listen to blacksheep so much if she weren’t usually fucking right.)

I find it funny how my initial response is always I’M NOT LISTENING TO YOU then two days later I’m doing what she told me to do. I’m so mature.

Things with Noah are… rocking back and forth in a gradual upswing. God damn that was some unfun conversating we did this weekend. (Yes I know that isn’t a word.) But it was important and useful and we said stuff we needed to say. There were moments when I asked questions about divorce, but suicide wasn’t the answer. This still needs to be considered progress.

No we aren’t getting a divorce. But I’m scared that I’m so bad for him that he really should get away from me. He doesn’t want to. We are both… crazy attached. Is this good? I don’t know. But I know I like Noah more than I like anyone else.

This is so complicated.

Shitty.

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The best thing I can say about this week is that I’ve gotten more sleep than I have in any week in any recent year. That makes me wonder if the pot is seriously interfering with my sleep.

The other good thing I can say is my attempt at functional alcoholism using very high grade whiskey has not resulted in burning, heinous diarrhea but I’m well aware this is not a long term solution.

I can’t say much else is good.

I feel very depressed. That may be contributing to the sleep too.

Oh god, no

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Last night I had the most vivid nightmare I’ve had in years. I have mostly managed to get rid of my nightmares. My sleep problems are usually more related to digestion than nightmares. But last night… last night was horrifying.

In my dream Noah leaned over and told me that he was going to kill me. I told a few people but mostly blew it off. Later in the dream… he killed me. Slowly. By inches. Laughing the whole time.

And I feel very much like I don’t deserve comfort. Like I would deserve it if it happened.

I don’t think this is my magic pill.

Drug report: Gabapentin

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I took 2 pills at 8pm. I was in bed and asleep before 9. I woke up at least two times but I think three. Noah says I was not very asleep past 1:30. But I feel like the fact that I was able to get back to sleep at all past 1:30 was pretty good.

I had severe pain in my chest. I don’t know how to describe it. Words are hard. It was in the top left hand side of my ribs. It felt like several muscles around my ribs started throbbing and burning and I don’t know what. Where you can grab the ribs and put your hand around them on the top part, right under my boob.

Chest pain is a worrisome side effect. But I’m not 100% sure this isn’t part of Cupid bruising the shit out of my ribs. (Yes, you bruised the shit out my ribs.)

I’m not sure how I feel about this med. I’m not sure I should take a daytime dose today because I have to drive. But I don’t have to drive for many hours afterwards. I’m worried because it is my first day. I maybe will wait till tomorrow when I don’t have to drive. I have literally no idea what daytime impact this will have on me.

I really don’t want to die on accident because a med made me not-alert. So yeah. I’ll wait till tomorrow to find out how this feels during the day.

I’m happy with the sleep. It isn’t my best ever but it is definitely in the better half.

Still integrating.

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I got over 10 hours of sleep. That’s freakishly rare for me. I must have needed it.

I feel peaceful, happy and calm. I feel ok.

I feel like I have a whole day of work ahead of me. A whole day of snuggling and talking and sharing joy. We like productive days. We are workers, not shirkers. We got good hard play in this weekend.

Time to put the work in. We can do that.

This week is not that busy. Folks are coming over most days this week. At least Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday. Monday is quieter. Noah has two first dates. Good luck with that. Many of these visits will be only a few hours long. Two days have overnight guests. Pam isn’t quite ready to run away from us yet so we get a little bit of extra time with her. I’m not crying. I didn’t feel ready to let her go anyway. She should come annoy me some more so I’m ready to push her towards her next adventure.

I so rarely have this feeling. I feel like my soul is a placid lake. If you toss a rock on it there will be ripples for a few minutes before it comes to stillness again.

I’m not just allowed to be kind of awful sometimes… I’m encouraged.

This part is… a little embarrassing… but who the fuck am I kidding? Much of my writing is… Noah likes to talk to me about being Krissysexual. He talks about it as being very close to his religion. I really like being the center of cult worship. On Saturday night I was standing and Noah was kneeling in front of me and my submissive uhhh behind me.

Oh the worship.

(This was after I sliced him up.    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I’m feeling very ok about being me right now. Sated. Pleased.

And I still have all the bruises all over the place to make sitting kind of uncomfortable. Every time I hit a sore spot I grin in a goofy way. I think, “Thank you Daddy” and I think “Thank you Cupid” and I think “Thank you Professor”.

I have time coming up with Deity. There’s news on that front I’m not writing about yet cause it is the only hint of wistfulness in the whole set up. But frankly it’s the kind of wistfulness that will churn my butter so let’s go with it.

Main character. Yeah. I can do this. Complicated story. Lots of subplots.

Excellent. Let’s finish this rodeo.

Hunting lessons

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Exhaustion is a real thing. When I’m over tired I can’t read tone to save my life. I’m whiny, over-sensitive and I’m going to spend a lot of time crying. It’s not about a person saying something… it’s about being tired. I didn’t respect that yesterday. Given how much… pushing it I’ve done on sleep stuff lately I need to build better boundaries around this. Don’t respond to messages when I’m that tired.

I wrote about 7 pages in a word document yesterday. Notice how I’m not posting it? I don’t think I was even a little coherent. I was tired and scared.

I live with a kind of existential dread most people can’t understand. On one hand I’m one of the asking-ist people you’ll ever meet. I ask and ask and ask for things. On the other hand I live in mortal terror that I will rape someone again. That I will ask for something and someone won’t feel comfortable/safe saying no and I will be an evil monster as usual.

This is complicated for me. Because if you can’t say, “Hey do you want to do x?” and get a yes/no answer…how the fuck is life supposed to work?

I don’t know.

Folks tell me that I’m doing a good thing by giving people opportunities to refine their boundaries and decide what they do and don’t want.

I feel scared all the time that I’m on the verge of hurting people. I feel like I should withdraw a lot because I’m pushing too hard. Noah says this may be a bad time to assume that my bad reading of one persons tone means I should stop asking other people for things.

For some reason he seems to think that individual humans should be judged on their own behavior.

Whatever.

So it isn’t going to be a rule (because how the fuck well do I follow rules?!?!) but I think it should be a guideline to not respond to ambiguous messages at all when I’m tired. Once I’m not tired I can say, “Hey I’m not sure I’m getting your tone of voice here. Can you clarify?” Cause wouldn’t that be useful.

I don’t feel like I did yesterday. Glorious 8 hours of sleep. I hate sleep deprivation.

Many folks in the scene have been asking me, “Oh do you remember Mistress ___? She’s coming around more again.”

Goody. She likes to tell me that I’m a bigger bitch than her because I don’t handle sleep deprivation well. Can’t wait to run into her. weeeeeeeeeeee

I’ve gotten off overly lucky this hunting phase. Things have been going too smoothly. I’ve been getting too many ‘yes’ answers. Too many people telling me I’m doing it right. When I hit a bump it feels… big.

It isn’t. I’m going to get over it. But yesterday I couldn’t read tone and I spent a lot of time crying. Like I do.

Sleep. Dear goodness, sleep.

When I was a kid my sister used to tell me, repeatedly, that if I have the same problem over and over it is my fault and not other peoples fault.

I push boundaries. I do it globally. That makes it seem to me like it is all my fault and I’m a bad person. It means that when I feel spooked that I came too near a boundary with one person I want to globalize it and use it as a reason I should stay home and stop hurting people.

I want to use that experience as evidence that I am a monster who is unable to stop hurting people. I want to use the hint of possibility that I pushed too hard as evidence that I should stop asking for anything from anyone because I am not deserving.

I want to tell everyone that I know they don’t really want me and I should stay home.

I kinda got yelled at for that yesterday. Not “YELLED AT” but forcefully reminded that it isn’t my place to tell people what they think or want.

Yeah.

I’m sorry.

I feel bad for wanting you. I feel like I am placing a burden on you that I shouldn’t be placing. It isn’t fair. It isn’t appropriate. Just because I want you that means nothing about what you want and I don’t know what you want.

I don’t know and I’m not sure I’m good at reading people.

Noah makes sure to do over the top physical gestures to highlight how delighted he is by me constantly. Because otherwise I walk through my life feeling like an anvil of disappointment is about to drop on my head because I am not good enough to please anyone.

It isn’t fair to need people to be so demonstrative of their approval. I should just believe.

But I don’t. I’ve had too many years of wanting to die because I am not enough. I do need to feel like people really want me to be there.

Or I should go home and snuggle my kids. Because my kids really want me to be there.

I’m not saying I want to die right now. I don’t. I’m doing alright. I feel… whiny not suicidal. That’s fantastic progress for me. I feel sad and anxious and like I really want to figure out how to do this right some fucking year.

I want to stop messing up negotiating. I feel like there is no valid excuse for fucking up this way at this stage. I’m not a kid messing up out of ignorance. I’m a grown up who fucks up because I’m sloppy and I don’t dot all my i’s and cross all my t’s.

I feel ashamed of that.

But I don’t know how to find a happy medium on the herpes shit. It is… complicated. So many people have it but the few people who don’t know/haven’t been specifically told they are positive… it’s a thing. Should I tattoo “I have herpes” on my forehead so I don’t ever fuck up that bit of negotiating again?

Kissing is a big deal. My Owner didn’t kiss me. I’ve dated other guys who wouldn’t kiss me but who would allow me to provide some kind of service (sometimes sexual and sometimes not) for them.  I can’t do that any more. I just can’t. Maybe that section of the users guide should be rewritten.

I like kissing and I know I’m diseased. I’m sorry. I feel bad about existing in this dichotomy but here I am.

Thank you for not caring, Noah.

Kissing feels connecting and bonding. Kissing feels like the difference between just being an object and being a person having an intense shared experience. I need kissing at this point or I really shouldn’t be playing with someone at all.

I’m not negotiating this well and I need to change that.

Lessons hurt. I hate learning lessons. Fuck opportunities for growth. FUCK THEM WITH A POGO STICK.

Do you know what would make all of this easier? If I were less fucking hypersensitive. But if that were true in one area I’d be a lot less sensitive in other areas.

I don’t actually want to stop being who and what I am. I like being sensitive. I like that I react strongly to my perceptions of peoples feelings. That often goes well. But sometimes I’m tired and I read something wrong.

Yeah. That happens.

Uhh… I do better in person. Where I can look at facial expressions and eventually feel comfortable asking millions of questions. I do have to warm up to the questions though. I am actually kind of shy at first.

I don’t want to scare you off. I want you to volunteer stuff. No one ever tells me enough about themselves.

Oh they tell me more than enough about their hobbies. I want to hear about you.

I know it is kind of weird how much I actually like people. But I’m not playing. I do.

I don’t want you to be in a room with me so you can act out my fantasy. I want to be in a room with you so I can see you more fully developed as a character of your own. If you talk fast the whole time I get more of a picture of who you are. (I like turns to talk too. Don’t worry. I know how to talk fast.)

I’m high maintenance. I want understanding and that mandates intense communication. I’m not comfortable. I don’t exist near people to feel comfortable in their presence. That is not how life goes for me. I am not comfortable.

I am with you because I want to understand you. Because I find you compelling. Because I want to know you. Because I want you.

I may not understand what that means. I probably don’t. I will ask for things. I wish you would ask more so that every step of verbal negotiation didn’t come from me.

That is true so much and it scares me because when I am always always always the leader how do I know I am doing what people want instead of dragging them through things they may not be completely on board for doing?

Trust people to be grown ups?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Sorry, gotta catch my breath.

Phew. Laughing that hard is dangerous. I’m going to bust a rib.

People laugh at me when I say “when I grow up” in reference to my future research. They ask me if I’m grown now. No. I’m not.

I don’t know many grown ups. And I don’t know many people my age or younger. I chase an older crowd and I always have. Guess what. Most of them are not grown up. I mean, they are grown. They are “adults”.

We are all fucking up and growing.

We aren’t done growing up.

I know… a few. They are inspiring and intimidating as fuck to me.

Hands hurt too much to go into that.

Hunting lessons…

Wanting is hard. Wanting is scary. The rejection isn’t the scary part. The scary part is the terror that I will hurt people. I will hurt people. Not because I will hit them (though I will) but because I will say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or ask for something in a way they don’t feel comfortable refusing and they will feel regret and I will feel shame.

That’s gonna happen.

That is part of hunting.

That fuck up. It is inherent. Other people minimize their risk by looking for one lifetime target and calling it good.

I… like to learn lessons. I have so much to learn. There is so much I want to know. There are so many situations I need to be able to have absolute control over my reaction no matter what physical or emotional stress is going on that I have to perfect this.

I have to. This is going to be necessary for me as a grown up. I am going to need to have 100% control over my reactions. I will need to know “I don’t open my email until I’ve had at least 20 hours of sleep out of 72.”

I need to know myself.

Noah didn’t think the messages sounded the way I read them. It took a lot of explaining and whining and telling back story before he went, “Oooooohhhh… ok. I can see how you read it that way.”

So it was a stretch that was only possible because I’m so awesome.

God I’m ridiculous.

No. I just have a long and complex story and I’m reacting as if all if it is true in every moment of every day and those filters are better and worse based on factors like sleep. Ahem.

Other people can handle sleep deprivation. Great for them.

I can’t.

But there is so much fun to be had in the middle of the night.

I have five solid nights in a row where I’m staying home and getting sleep before our next night out.

But then a different party is the next day.

Fuck. Ok. I need a break after that. I iz at capacity. Ow. I found it. Noah told me he thought I would.

I wanted to see where it was now. I found it. Ow. I’m old.

Why didn’t I want to go to a dark place? I don’t know. It wasn’t that the pain level was beyond my capacity. I never got near an 8. I just…

I don’t know.

It didn’t feel that way. It didn’t feel like that was what was appropriate in the setting? I don’t know.

I need help going on a journey. If I’m going to stand somewhere and just… do what I do… that…. uhhhh… varies.

It is wildly unpredictable.

I also have a really hard time with feeling like I am topping from the bottom. Noah and I have had a hard time figuring this out. I… don’t know how to gracefully lead as a bottom. I suck. So either I shut my fucking mouth and smile as the top decides what is going to happen next or… things get kind of awkward and tense and I spend the rest of the scene feeling bad.

So yes. Sometimes I don’t know what to say.

Even me. I get tongue tied. It is true. I feel like a jukebox waiting for someone to pick a song to play. I don’t know what to say. I don’t have any idea of what would be pleasing. I have such a short window of time in which to try to be pleasing…

I’m afraid of picking wrong.

It isn’t that I’m trying to make up a story to tell. It is that I don’t know which version of myself to start with. There are so many. The order in which I present them matters. It can lead to increased intimacy or it can lead to things like, “I need you to stop telling me about your background. I don’t really want to know.”

This is why Noah and I spend so much time during sex talking about previous sex we have had either with one another or with other people.

I know that I will only learn how to read these things better by running into these walls at full speed so I see all the signals all the way up to long past when I “should” have stopped so that in the future I will understand that danger signals much earlier and have a stronger need to distance myself fast. I know this is “safe” practice.

But I’m so tired of being disappointing. I’m so tired of having people forcefully shove me away because I am wrong.

Asking, wanting, desiring always means risk. It always means possible rejection or unmatched interest or pain.

Always.

Is it worth it?

Even though I’m still tired and even though I still have turbulent feelings…

Yes.

All of it. All of them. Every lesson. Every experience. I’m not sorry I asked. I’m sorry if me asking was done badly. I’m sorry if I asked in a way that did not support people telling me no when they should have or if they really wanted to in the fullness of time. I’m sorry that I will keep making mistakes.

But I’m not sorry enough to stop.

I want to learn this.

I will make mistakes. So will other people. I will get up. I will try again if they are game.

I want.

But first I want more sleep.

 

Sleep. That’s the ticket.

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In the past 49 hours I’ve slept 11 hours. I also wrote a four page whiny screed today about my feeeeeeeelings. I’m not posting it. I’m tired.

Thanks to the folks who were patient with me today. I uhhh will be over this soon. I’m sorry. I… should have just not talked at all on a day when I got this little sleep.

I am medicating and going to bed. That seems wise. Tomorrow will be another day fresh with patience.

2 high points

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I slept for TEN HOURS last night. That’s practically a miracle. And I did it on less than half the amount of pot I have been taken at night for the past few months. Yes!

I’m going to Portland for the first weekend in February. It’s Dad’s birthday and I need to chat with Blacksheep about some stuff for later in the year. w00t.

Lucky. Lucky Lucky.

Stupid hormones.

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Well, I’m feeling better than I did when I woke up yesterday. Instead of taking a whole handful of sleeping pills last night I took barely any sleeping pills and melatonin. It was an experiment and I slept for 8 hours and I feel a bit better. Sleeping for eight hours is vitally important to my health and continued ability to travel. I will literally go crazy with sleep deprivation. I just can’t fuck around with it. Even though I’m scared to death of how many sleeping pills I’m taking.

When my friend saw me pop the handful she looked a wee bit alarmed. Maybe because I almost threw them back up all over her floor. My gag reflex is mighty. “Yeah I overdosed on sleeping pills once. My body is afraid I’m doing it again with every pill I swallow. Let alone a handful.”

I had a wonderful time in Georgia despite being incredibly emotionally volatile. I felt like I was flipping out, but seeing my friend was really nice. I finally got a little pushy and asked if I could weed her beds on the last day because I knew I was so full of nervous energy I was about to explode. Weeding calms me down.

Georgia red clay is a motherfucker. I see why she imported bought dirt for her beds. That clay is tough. I’ve read about it in hundreds of books, how punishing it is. I’m grateful I got to get down on my hands and knees and rip plants out of it. That gave me a perspective I can’t get any other way. That was wonderful.

Since many of you know Mitrian I’m going to talk about her directly just a little bit. I’m probably not the only one who misses her a lot since she has had a reduction in spoons and she isn’t blogging much.

She has a wonderful set up for her life. She has a beautiful three bedroom two bathroom house she can afford without roommates. That is such a blessing after the whack jobs she lived with in California. She had some scary housemates.

She has 2/3 of an acre? I may be remembering that wrong. But she has enough land for a small orchard (we helped her plant the first fig tree!), many raised beds of vegetables (as a vegetarian she can go most of the way to producing her own food with this much land), and a great chicken coup for her five birds. She will end up with more birds in the future. She has Lots Of Plans.

Her house is just about big enough for all of her spinning wheels, heh. She has tons of room to do her work. She thinks she isn’t well organized, but compared to many of the houses I see I would say she is about at a B-. She doesn’t have the money to go to Ikea and just buy a place for everything, but she does really really well with what she has. I think she’s doing wonderfully. I was really impressed.

Not in a condescending “I think of course you must suck” sorta way. More in a “Life is hard and you have eleventybillion demands on your time and arms and you have limited spoons so you are doing GREAT” sorta way.

Mitty was less depressed acting than I’ve seen her in many years. Her chickens are obviously wonderful for her.

And she gets to spend a lot of time with her niece, which is very valuable and healing. From what I can see, Mitty gets to feel like a good role model and that is a powerful spur to grown ups getting their shit together. It worked like magic on me. Not that Mitty “didn’t have her shit together” before… but I sense extra motivation now. Before she left California she really didn’t know what direction her life was going to take and limbo is hard.

Now she has a place. She’s creating an amazing extended network of people to barter with. I feel like I learned a lot just listening to how she is constructing a life. She has thought of possibilities that would completely miss me. I’m so grateful I got to visit. She said we are the first visitors she’s had in her guest room in the two years since she bought the house.

Gosh I want an RV. I want to be able to visit Duluth and Covington more often. Luckily the other people I really want to see are moving back to California and they will be more convenient soon. Excellent.

I’m super happy we made it to Georgia. Even though we are home sick and getting punchy.

Tennessee was a different kind of nice. I’ve known that friend since I was 10/11 years old. (We can’t remember exactly but she’s a year older than me and I was at her 12th birthday.) It was more of a “Let’s see if we are anything like we remember” tentative visit. No, we aren’t like we were and that is a special kind of nice.

It’s wonderful seeing people go from fucked up kids to functional, awesome adults. My friend in Tennessee had a few reasons her life could have gone off the rails. She had her first child at 15. She wasn’t very savvy about keeping herself safe when we were young. (Nor was I so I’m not throwing stones. But I was on birth control from the age of 12.) She had a kid and grew up fast. I would say that hands down she is one of the best mothers I know. She’s super close with her kid but she isn’t controlling and neurotic. She guided her kid through life in a way no one helped her. I learned so much.

Most of my friends have little quirks. I am so grateful when my friends point out, “I have this quirk…” Instead of getting annoyed with me for not understanding. My friend in Tennessee is a hippy like me. She uses cloth stuff instead of disposable-almost-anything. I *loved* her set up. She’s really thought through her cloth usage. She has different piles of cloth all over the house with different textures for different purposes.

I feel inspired. Sorry Noah.

So the last two visits have gone very well. I’ve been irritable. Luckily my friends seem to believe me when I say, “I haven’t been able to fully medicate in months and as a result I’m kind of irritable and tense and cranky and it isn’t you and I’m really happy to be here. I’m sorry I’m not mellow but I literally can’t be right now.” My friends are saying that it sounds hard and otherwise we are having a wonderful time together.

I feel so lucky to know the people I know.

I got to have a fangirl dinner with someone I know through Twitter in Georgia too. That was nice. She really isn’t hopeful that things can change so that black women are abused less. I want to believe she is wrong. I’m afraid she is right.

Today we drive to Disney World. I wish I had more energy for excitement. Instead the main thing I’m excited about is that I won’t have to drive for almost three weeks so I can medicate more.

I talked to my friend in New York who is getting married this month. I told her I can’t do anything to help at the wedding because I’m too pressed for time, I have too many responsibilities, and generally I’m just fucking tired. I can’t do any favors right now. I hate myself but it’s accurate.

I’m going to get me and my two kids from Florida to New York for your wedding. That is what I can do right now. That’s all. I can show up.

I wish I could do more but I really can’t. I cannot have responsibilities for helping adults right now. I feel so guilty and ashamed of myself.

I’m sure that feeling of shame is part of why I felt so bad yesterday.

It’s not all of it, this is normal freaking out for me. It is cyclical. And yet. Yesterday was really intense. I don’t get the inside-a-round-room-with-videos-narrating-self-harm thing as often any more. I don’t even see that every month lately. (Thank you brain. I want to stop and notice that you’ve been pretty nice to me for a while. Most of this trip has gone super well from that point of view. Thanks!) I really hate having those kinds of thoughts when I’m driving.

I seriously have to fight my urge to jerk the wheel sideways so we get hurt. It has to be a conscious decision to keep us safe.

We are still here and we are fine. So I made that choice. But I had to choose. I had to decide, “Not today. I still have shit to do.”

I want to research incest so much I can barely breathe. That means I can’t die yet. I want to see what my children are like as adults. We can’t die yet. I have to choose life. Even when it hurts. Even when I don’t want to.

Sometimes I feel bad that what I’m doing with home schooling at this point is working on emotional self regulation. Only I can’t regulate myself. Sad face.

You know what? I actually do regulate myself at this point. I no longer follow my impulses and self harm. I no longer walk along the outside of bridge railings for shits and giggles on days like yesterday hoping I fall. Regulation doesn’t mean avoiding having big feelings. It means dealing with them in a healthy way when they come up. If you avoid having big feelings that isn’t regulation–that’s suppression or denial. Neither is all that useful for life.

My kids have a very different load of emotions compared to me. I am completely confident that if Younger Child were abused in this period it would lead to all kinds of problematic personality formation issues later. That kid is volatile and extreme in a way Eldest Child never was. EC is placid and hard to disrupt most of the time. YC is a powder keg. Look at the child wrong and the child might explode into sobs. It can be hard to be supportive and caring as much as that kid requires. But I’m doing it. That’s the job. Ok, I’m not perfect every day. But I think I get it right more than 75% of the time. Sometimes I have to say, “I love you and I can see that you need __________ but right this minute I can’t give it to you. I’m sorry I’m failing you right now.”

I think it is very important that I not tell my kids that they are asking for too much. It isn’t that you are asking too much. It is that you are asking for something that I am not capable of giving. I’m sorry that I am failing you.

To me there is a huge difference between mean and abuse. I think about this constantly. Abuse makes you feel small. Abuse makes you feel unworthy. Abuse is about taking someone else’s inability to meet your needs and saying it is your fault for having unreasonable needs. Being mean is different. Being mean involves sometimes saying asshole things and admitting, “I’m being an asshole right now because I have x, y, and z going on with my body and I’m sorry I’m taking it out on you. You deserve better I just don’t have it to give.”

Sometimes I think I confuse having boundaries at all with being an asshole. I can’t tell how much they are the same thing and how much they are completely different things. I didn’t grow up with boundaries. Any and all application of boundaries feels like an asshole move to me. But a very healthy and appropriate kind of asshole.

Every postcard I wrote yesterday involved some variation of “I want to go home.” Which I find kind of hilarious. I hope my friends don’t get bored of my whining.

I love you all. The kids are waking up.