I have a problem. I’m an extrovert. I feed off of my relationships. I have spent a lot of the last six months reaching for moments when I would get to be with friends and fill my bucket up for how much I give my kids.

But other people have their own needs and limitations and preferences.

We are supposed to try to spend a bunch of time near Jenny’s family. I fucking ruin everything. If I try to live near her I am going to want to be a priority and I can’t be. She’s not doing anything wrong.

Wanting to feel included and like I am a priority fucks me over and over.

Nobody owes me anything so when I spend my energy in a dead sprint trying to get to that point where my bucket will get filled… it is my fault when I leave feeling depleted, unwanted, and stupid.

It’s not ok to expect anything from anyone.

It really isn’t helpful that I don’t know how to talk about what I need until something is over and I know “that’s not what I needed.”

This is part of why I try to build up a history of doing stuff. That fails too because people change what they want, need, and have to offer.

I am scared of going to Jenny because I can’t expect a god damn thing or I will be a problem again.

I am sad. I worked hard here. It didn’t build what I wanted. I don’t know what would. But I failed.

How am I going to stop wanting connection? That seems like an important thing for me to learn.

I need to something. But for now what I do is cry. Because the last month has not gone how I wanted it to. Oh well.

Life continues.

I am hoping that I have shitty internet.

I have a problem. I’m an extrovert. I feed off of my relationships. I have spent a lot of the last six months reaching for moments when I would get to be with friends and fill my bucket up for how much I give my kids.

But other people have their own needs and limitations and preferences.

We are supposed to try to spend a bunch of time near Jenny’s family. I fucking ruin everything. If I try to live near her I am going to want to be a priority and I can’t be. She’s not doing anything wrong.

Wanting to feel included and like I am a priority fucks me over and over.

Nobody owes me anything so when I spend my energy in a dead sprint trying to get to that point where my bucket will get filled… it is my fault when I leave feeling depleted, unwanted, and stupid.

It’s not ok to expect anything from anyone.

It really isn’t helpful that I don’t know how to talk about what I need until something is over and I know “that’s not what I needed.”

This is part of why I try to build up a history of doing stuff. That fails too because people change what they want, need, and have to offer.

I am scared of going to Jenny because I can’t expect a god damn thing or I will be a problem again.

I am sad. I worked hard here. It didn’t build what I wanted. I don’t know what would. But I failed.

How am I going to stop wanting connection? That seems like an important thing for me to learn.

I need to something. But for now what I do is cry. Because the last month has not gone how I wanted it to. Oh well.

Life continues.

I am hoping that I have shitty internet.

I keep looking to other people and it’s not going well. I want to have fun with other people. I want to feel seen. I want to feel important.

I only have control over myself. I only get to control my behavior and to a limited degree my own emotions. How do I stop feeling so tossed and turned by other peoples experiences? Part of it is narrowing my scope and part of it is unavoidable. Like, when my kids have a meltdown I’m going to have to deal with my plans not working out. That’s life. But I need to have things that I control in my day that are for myself that other people can’t take away from me. I need to stop having everything that is emotionally important to me require other people because I literally can’t get other people to show up in the ways I need.

Someone on the internet told me to start enjoying my life or give away my money and go live in a hut and shut up.

She has a point.

When the Bonus Mama broke up with me I worked hard at not looking for another person to fill the void she left in my life. I spent more time with myself. If I am not going to try again with Sarah I have to do the same.

That’s complicated.

We want to put our house on the market four weeks from today. That’s feeling soon and terrifying and awesome. I have another run to the storage unit: bow/arrow sets and computers. Apparently two of our computers will be going into storage indefinitely. Because sometimes that happens.

I feel like I should start researching DC and yet I feel like I don’t have a date and that scares me. Maybe in two more weeks.

I’m having mixed/good success with the PT exercises. I’m stressed from trying to arrange the timing but I’m mostly getting them done and I feel like I am noticing progress. That’s useful.

The garage is slowly working its way down to being less and less and less stuff. I bet we will get rid of a mattress in a week. We aren’t using it and it reduces our floor space. The kitchen stuff is slowly going outside.

We can’t cook for a week or two so keeping all of our kitchen stuff feels a little extra silly.

I didn’t suggest or follow through with the rice as a punishment for being bad. My daughter asked me for help with learning to focus and I listed all the things I know exist in the world and that was something we decided to try.

People are alternating between “Well she has to learn structure” with “You are abusing her”.

And I’m sitting here thinkin

That was a really interesting experience. I haven’t had that many people sneer at me when I smile at them in a very long time. I got a few white people head nods.

I didn’t know what to expect when it came to eldest child receiving this much hostility. Groups of people at the mall, where we went to get a warm baby outfit, we’re really hostile. I mean, no one approached us or anything. But there was a lot of pointing and laughing.

Ok. This is feeling harder. The complete lack of space. The requirement to be cleaning every few minutes or we can’t move because of mess. The lack of space to have any privacy or time off. This is not an ideal set up but it was the best I could do in this location. I’m glad my kid was smart and requested only 3 weeks here.

I am not sure which gift that you want me to explain. I assume I am still mostly in the pre-programmed answer stage. 🙂

My family consists of: Me, (I’m 37), my husband Noah (42), my daughter Shanna (10), my son Orion (8), and my daughter Jennabeth (1). Orion is trans and has been asserting his gender since he was 2. I am grateful that he has always known himself so well so that we don’t have to go through the stress of harming him through misgendering him for a long time.

My husband has what is essentially an academic fellowship studying the Ruby programming language. He is paid to sit at home in his underwear doing deep math to help save corporations millions and sometimes billions of dollars in processing time Because he can do this anywhere and living in the SF bay area is so expensive we are on the search for a place that will fit our family better. Noah is probably autistic with ADHD too but he really doesn’t want to be diagnosed at this point in his life. He grew up in a small Texas town the son of generational wealth. His area had no services to offer and he was smart enough that he got out at 17 to go to Carnegie Mellon University and he has rarely gone back since. He is just queer enough that he can’t donate blood ever again but it isn’t a big part of his identity. He’s supportive, silly, hard working, and thoroughly convinced that both of us get one chance in this life at a happy family (his parents were what I consider low key abusive–they were emotionally cruel but there wasn’t name calling or hitting or any sexual assault) and if we mess this up we are doomed to shitty surface relationships forever. We are both very committed to helping one another be better people.

If you want to know more about my background the absolute fastest way to learn about me is to read about my childhood (https://gumroad.com/l/no_secrets). I would very cheerfully send you a free copy if you were interested. I also blog *extensively* at www.krissygibbs.com. My childhood was off the charts bad with many physical traumas and tons of emotional abuse along with tons of sexual abuse. When I have to tell clinicians about my background most of the time their mouths drop and I cannot count how many people have blurted out “You should be dead.”

But I got out of poverty and abuse. I’m not always the nicest person on the planet. I can definitely be a bully. I try very hard to squash that impulse but I phrase it as “I am nice as long as I can be–then I will be effective.” I have had many different jobs: retail, food service, house cleaning, theatre tech, library tech, nanny, and I worked at every education level from preschool to college. My sweet spot was working with gang involved teenagers. Give me an emotionally disturbed teenager and I’m a truly gifted teacher. I understand that they are reacting to things that have happened to them and I am both highly empathetic and very educated about trauma. I am good at helping kids feel better about themselves. I am still in contact with many of my former students and they tell me that I help them love themselves. I sure wish I could do the same for myself. Ha.

My daughter Shanna is arty and a reader. She has ADHD too and the executive function issues that got me beaten as a child. She is also dyslexic which we treat as a super power. When she was evaluated at Stanford they said that she is absolutely in the best learning environment and if she were to be put in school anytime soon she would probably develop emotional issues. She is hitting puberty now and just starting to deal with big mood fluctuations. Most of her childhood she has been absolutely beamingly happy. I spend a lot of time wondering how such a happy person came out of me. She is joy personified most of the time. This is starting to change and develop complexity and that’s ok too.

My son is prickly and unsure of himself. He is somewhat dysphoric about not having a penis and he spends a lot of time complaining that he wants to be 5 again because being 8 is too hard. There are too many expectations. People don’t let him scream and be wild anymore and he’s really not happy about it. Being in Japan is exacerbating this for him because he is in the 98% for height and here he is as tall as most adult women. People do not look at him and perceive a still-young child. He gets frowns when he acts like the little kids and that bothers him. I struggle with Orion because he has this personality trait where if everyone gets 1 scoop of ice cream he will tantrum because *he* should have gotten 2. I don’t understand where it comes from and it really bothers me. I don’t think I am always as kind with him as I should be because this trait hits so many emotional buttons for me. He has been in therapy the longest of my kids because I wanted to make sure that he had as much support as possible through his transition experience. We have been up to UCSF periodically since he was 6 to track his development. His therapist told me that I should always expect him to be at least a year young on emotional development and that is helpful for me. It doesn’t help his overall stability to be so developmentally slow combined with being so large.

Jennabeth is a delightful baby-turning into a toddler. She’s still nursing and not quite walking. She’s by far the easiest of my babies and we are thrilled she is here. The four of us decided as a family that we wanted one more family member before we conceived. We had to do a vasectomy reversal to get her, she was definitely not an accident nor a surprise.

We are traveling partially because we are following my husband to his work conferences. In 9 days he presents at Ruby Kaigi here in Fukuoka. This is his 5th trip to Japan and the rest of our 1st. Next is Scotland because my childhood best friend is there and we will be staying near her family for a couple of months so I can get to know my “nieces” and I can see my friend. Noah will be bopping back to Minneapolis alone for a week before joining us in Scotland. Then me and the kids will be heading to Portland for a few months to renew passports while Noah does a conference in England the week after we need to come back to the US.

After Portland there is a conference in Bangkok in September and I’m over the moon. Thai massage is the best for my physical issues and it only costs ~$4/hour in Thailand. We will be there for my birthday and that feels glorious. We stay in Thailand until going to Taiwan in December to visit another long-time friend.

Jennabeth Debonnaire is named after Jenny (in Scotland) and Debbie (in Taiwan).
2020 is still entirely unplanned. We want to try New Zealand and some country (still deciding which) in South America porque yo hablo español. I actually feel like an idiot in most countries because as soon as I leave the US and I encounter other languages I start speaking Spanish. heh. I have studied Hindi though I am not proficient enough to shop in a grocery store. I can effectively use Spanish to work with customers in a store. I spent most of my first 12 years bopping around southern California in hispanic neighborhoods.

From kindergarten through grad school I attended 32 schools. I feel like a professional new kid. My children have never been to school. I knew I wanted to homeschool 10 years before I had kids; that’s why I pursued teaching and worked at so many different levels. When I was dating I would explain on the first or second date that I had a few mandatory criterion for a partner: they had to support home schooling, they had to be non-religious but very tolerant of religion, and they had to be anti-circumcision. I found the right partner. heh. He also cooks. But that was a bonus.

We are a very enmeshed family and that has good and bad points. Some of the bad points are that I work myself utterly to exhaustion and I struggle to have boundaries with my kids. I prioritize their wants over my needs to the point of hurting myself frequently and then I am bitchy because I am in severe pain and I’m exhausted. It’s not good. I could use help trying to set boundaries without getting to the point of freaking out.

Our plan is to travel this year and next. We want to settle somewhere by the time Shanna is turning 13 because she wants to go to high school and I think it is wise to enter a community before that happens. She turns 11 in May so we definitely want to settle somewhere early 2021.

I think that having a time of staying in a place where all elevated voices and rough behavior is Not OK has been good for us. We are learning new skills. Whispering our disagreements instead of shouting them probably does positive things for all of our body systems.

So yesterday when I wasn’t happy with how the kids were treating me I asked them to write out scripts about our interactions. Both things that have already happened that they feel especially good or not proud of and then try to write some scripts about how you think things should go.

They produced quite good scripts at an age appropriate level. (Meaning there was a lot of poop poop poop and “I said lol” in the script. Ok.) They are trying to think about their behavior. We are having lots of conversations about things like, “It’s ok that not everything you do pleases me. That’s healthy! But where is the difference between you getting to be your own person having your own preferences and needs and where are you being kind of mean to me?” Because more than one thing can be true. It can be important for you to have opinions and values I don’t share while also sometimes you still need to be nice to me.

It’s kind of like how I need to set boundaries with them more. Not because I am mean and hate them, because I need to have space to take care of me too. It is not mean if I deny you ice cream on a given day and endless trips to the expensive play place because I need to help your body be healthy and I can’t pour out money on entertaining you all day.

There has to be a balance here and I am really struggling to find it. I feel so guilty about any boundaries.

That guilt is a big problem.

I felt guilty setting boundaries with Sarah and that’s part of how things blew up so badly. I should have told her that I needed to stop having her on my calendar a year ago, well more than a year ago at this point. I knew the situation was hurting me but I didn’t want to hurt her by taking away the “Yes I will reserve time to see you” good feelings. And so I hurt myself and I hurt her way more. I fucked that up.

Boundaries exist to help people be able to be healthy with each other. When I neglect to set them I create a situation where people *can’t* be kind to me. I knew Sarah was making promises she couldn’t keep. Letting her keep doing that became partially my fault too. Because telling her to stop felt like a much bigger mean thing than just absorbing the pain. And here we are.

I often feel like setting boundaries is cruel. I am telling people they can’t meet my needs and they need to stop claiming they can. Because when they offer support then I get mad at them because the support isn’t supportive or helpful.

Like someone saying she wanted to spend time with my kids. Then asking me to pay her for her time. Then she took them to Chuck E Cheese and didn’t talk to them while they were there and she made them pay for their games with their allowance. So I paid for her time then she made them pay for their own entertainment while she ignored them.

That’s…. not useful support. Not really. Because we end up feeling really bad about ourselves.

You know that thing where you start catching up on sleep deficit and the magnitude hits you like a brick? Yeah. I’m there. I am so tired I feel half dead. I feel pain in every part of my body. My kids fought all day yesterday and today they woke up fighting. So I arranged for both of them to talk to a friend on video chat. Let’s get those positive hormones going. They both need to be reminded that people like them too. They aren’t just a problem or anxious or fussy. They have people who feel joy at the sight of them. They feel joy when they see their friends.

I am not the center of everything. I am not capable of being your only source of joy.

Today I must get to the post office. Then the grocery store. Also the kid store because we are about out of diapers. I don’t want to but I must. Luckily I woke up to talk to one of my friends too. She says that if we find a place to land where they are capable of following us, she is on the next plane with her brood. They want out of California and they just don’t know where to go. I don’t know if they will be able to follow us out of the country, they aren’t tech workers. But it would be cool. She is someone I’ve kept from the home schooling group. She writes to me often. She asks questions about me; she tells me about her life. She volunteers her love so freely. I feel lucky to know her. Is she a mess in a dress? Sometimes. But she is also loving, giving, accepting, and fun. She cares about me and she shows it in a variety of ways. I feel special to her.

But in the bay I had to drive an hour to see her so we rarely got to spend time together.

I talk to her as much from other countries as I did in the same state. Because distance is funny.

Once I figure out mail stuff a little bit better I am ordering a damn bonnet. Not the historical white person kind–the kind that African American folk use to preserve their braids. I did cool braids yesterday and today I look like a fucking frizz ball and that annoys the crap out of me. I feel bad about the amount of stealing hair advice I get from Black folk, and I feel like white hair advice makes my hair look like shit.

We spent Sunday with Jenny and her kids again. It went really well again

I have spent years kvetching about how much I hate white walls. Do you know what our new house has? White on white on white. With a little bit of pink accenting in the hall and one bathroom is very dark colored.

Hm.