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Letters to Fet: Understanding masculinity

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Crossposted for longevity

I have been thinking about social dynamics I’m seeing as I manage to be around real-live people in Scotland more often and as a weirdo autistic person a lot of how I figure out what I know and make it coherent in my brain is by writing it out. But that gets super socially tricky! So how can I check if my assumptions/understandings are even vaguely close to reality? Can’t ask people directly because they will lie ~75%* of the time. So I like a long ramble about stuff that is associated in my brain. Is it kink related? Sometimes and often in a challenging to perceive way without a great deal of context. It’s part of why I am so long-winded. In order to understand A you have to hear about B and C and in order to understand B you have to know about D and E and F and… I’m like a Star Trek language.

I moved a lot of times as a child and young person but I often reference the aunt and uncle who raised me. It gives the shape of the relationship a casual reference frame that other people will understand but it’s also misleading. They didn’t get to raise me, not really. Sometimes my mother and I lived with them and sometimes I lived there alone in between other housing. I rarely was in their house for longer than a few months and when I was my mom was there.

I think of them as the people who raised me in large part because they both had incredibly strong personalities and they were the most frequent cultural touchstones of my early life. Until I was in high school they were the people I had spent the most time with including school peers because I changed schools so often. I didn’t watch people go through phases and change and grow and develop.

I watched my auntie and my uncle. And the two of them are very interesting models for me as I go on through my life and I deal with other people. Before I describe them in more detail I am going to say that I love them very deeply. I know that they were often the only reason I was not in a violent or dangerous situation. When I describe them I will use words that are very blunt and will be read as denigrating and negatively judging them. I’m not trying to be hateful. I am talking about my people and where I come from. I am honest about what it was. I am reporting what I was told. I am repeating what I was told to believe. I am just not using the same words they used because people lie all the fucking time.

My uncle was basically a walking stereotype. He was a redneck with a bad temper and a giant entitlement complex. He never got enough to feel satisfied with his life. Not in his work life, not in his children, not in his marriage, not in his house, not in his hobbies, not in his electronics, not in the travel he did, not in the vehicles he bought.

Fuck, this is the best place for my favorite uncle story. So, he really liked camper vans and RVs. He is why I will never buy one. So, once he had a medium-sized camper van so I guess it was around 30′? He decided to buy… something I was unclear on what but he wanted to drive to go buy something and it wouldn’t fit in any of his current vehicles. It couldn’t be attached to the top/back and it wouldn’t fit inside.

So he used a fucking chainsaw to take off the top, sides, and back down to a level where it looked like a child’s crayon drawing of a “truck”.

I wish I had pictures.

Guess what he learned REALLY FUCKING QUICKLY? The right angles at the top angle of the RV are kinda important for the structural integrity of the entire awkward rolling box. Yeah. He held it together with rope. Rope. He tied the fucking thing closed. He managed to get whatever it was home. That RV sat off on a corner of the property until his next open heart surgery when his sons kidnapped it and took it to the dump. I can’t remember if that was the same time when it was a total of 16 giant dumpster truck loads to take away most of his hoard. There was still a lot of shit.

He had a whole bunch of heart surgeries. He tried every kind of heart implant. Single, double, triple, quadruple bypass surgeries. I think he went under the knife six times? They started taking loads away during the second surgery. This war went on for almost 40 years. I think the 16 truck load surgery was number four or five? He retaliated every time and acquired more stuff. He financed his shopping by repeatedly refinancing the house and taking out equity. They bought a $40,000 house in the 1960’s and the last time I spoke with them about their financial life auntie was working full time in her late 70’s because someone has to pay the mortgage and all three of her kids live with her and are disabled.

There was no such thing as enough for him. No one ever respected him enough. No one deferred to him the way he wanted. No one stopped what they were doing to give his words weight when he spoke. He wanted to be deeply respected and obeyed because his edicts were simply right. Because tradition says so. Because the Bible says so. He stopped using the Bible against me when I read the entire fucking thing when I was 13 so I could debate every.single.reference and explain to him why he was fucking wrong.

I was his favorite kid until my niece moved in with them because my sister is a fucking loser. My niece was three and much more susceptible to bribery and being bought so he put all his positive energy into her after that. He had a hierarchy of how he treated people.

1: Princess
2: Himself
3: Women he was flirting with and he wanted the positive attention
4: Men he thought of as high status and he was sucking up to them
5: Men he had no particular use for
6: His wife
7: Most girls
8: Women he had no particular use for
9: Men he actively disliked
10: Women he actively disliked
11: Girls he actively disliked
12: Boys

Let me tell you it was interesting gathering data for that set of understanding as a child. This is all I know of calculus.

That is to say once I was demoted from Princess we had a very different relationship and we showed one another a lot more sharp edges. He wasn’t mean to me most of the time and in terms of how he treated boys he was incredibly gentle and affectionate with me most of the time–definitely while I was Princess. I will absolutely admit that my draw to barrel chested men with a slightly Elvis twist in the front of their hair and strong side burns comes with the equally strong understanding that it is going to be an interaction stuffed full of conflict.

Is this where I am going to be called a man hater? Hey you can’t say I hate men… I married a man! Enh, see what I did there? Yeah. Uncle was absolutely full of ways to weasel out of labels. He wasn’t a racist! There is (name) down the road and he has never called him a (bad word). He really wished I would stop reading so damn many books.

I feel some regret that I didn’t get to thank him one last time for raising me right at the end, but I told him many times before that. He is one more brick in the wall of why I have intense feelings around displays of gratitude.

Relationships are not always simple. They are not “good” or “bad”. People are not “good” or “bad”. I think people do good things and shitty things and striking the balance is hard. I think that there are ways that men have a tough time in the world and I’ve watched some pieces of that pain right up close. I also have a carefully cultivated and culled group of men I am close with–people who have all done their therapy homework before I got there. People who understand their own damage and can figure out how to not be shitty at other people because of their own pain.

Yeah, that pain matters. That pain needs attention and care and support and you need to understand that the focus of attention has to move around a group and it won’t always be you. Not because of a statement about you being less worthy than other people. That’s not the point.

Life is hard all over. Sometimes I am not going to preen and serve the man in the room. Put your big kid panties on and deal with your problem for yourself.

I say this with more flow and force at this point in my life because I have bounced off this dynamic with an awful lot of men who I don’t happen to love deeply and feel enormous gratitude to them for saving my life. Yeah. Conflict. Because even with that deep well of gratitude and love I also said, “You have legs. Why are you asking a woman to go get you a drink? Have you become paralysed since I last stayed in the house?”

Yeah. I didn’t stay the Princess. I was thirteen when my niece moved in. I was not an easy person for a deeply ignorant, bigoted, racist, misogynistic, lazy hoarder person to love.

But holy shit can you see a whole string of hoarders in my friends circle for the rest of my life. I keep some of the traits and challenges. I just can’t handle the whole package anymore.

Cause it’s not about any of these one things. Cause any one of those labels diminishes the person he was very much. He showed up in emergencies and helped neighbors. He was giving and loving in his way. He was often fun. He got me to memorise the lyrics of every song he had on 8-track tapes. We had us some times. He snuck me treats and he cuddled me. He is the only man I have had a completely non-sexual highly tactile relationship with.

Like, that’s a weird thing for me every time I think of it. I have never had another non-sexual highly tactile relationship with a man. Outside of uncle men have fallen into four categories for me: sexual or just some serious flirting relationship of some sort, someone I am assuming is not interested in sex with me so I am tentative and awkward in my interactions and I almost never feel comfortable because I don’t even know what to say, someone I have to actively reject because they are assertive with their interest and I do not feel we are compatible, and rapists.

This is why I have traditionally slept with most of my friends. Now we are in a whole new life phase and I can’t do what worked in the past. I need to learn how to have a different set of categories because the primary way to be in a positive relationship with me historically is no longer available and that is going to be difficult. I know that Scottish men have a whole lot of major differences with the American men I have historically had big conflicts with but that’s ok we will just find slightly refined versions anyway. It’ll be close enough that a hand wave will explain the differences.

Sometimes there are platonic friendships with heavy flirting and there is a “dang can’t because x” exchange every so often and that much engagement lets me feel like I am in the “Ok I am not being problematic in this relationship.”

Uncle was the only person I ever brought my whole ass difficult personality to at the most extreme points in my development through a highly traumatic childhood who was a man who never sexualised me in any way.

Please do not come at me for how clearly I don’t love this man because I am so intolerant. Love is a complicated emotion. Feeling it does not mean that you agree with or share the same views as another person. Loving someone does not mean you have to act like them or justify their behavior. I mean, I could tell you about uncle’s hurts but frankly that’s not the point.

The point is the pattern. The point is the template. The point is the broad strokes. The point is caricature.

I feel like this might turn into a series because it is not as if uncle is the only man who lives larger than life in my brain. Understanding these people is how I have understood masculinity in my life. I am not saying that any one of them represent that whole of mankind or that they have had life trajectories like every other man. I am saying I knew this man. This is what I knew about him. This is how I saw him. This is what I heard from him. This is what I took away from the culmination of our conversations over multiple decades. I put in the time. I did listen.

I don’t even remember which bullshit thing he told me I had to do “because the Bible” that overlapped with my one brief overture into the 7th Day Adventist Church that happened not long after I was demoted from Princess. I took it hard. I tried to find a rule book that would agree with some of his weird extremist views and this was the option I had to immediate hand.

I really did not come out of that year and a half in the church with the set of beliefs that they all wanted me to have. And that was when I completely lost my shit and I tried to kill myself. Uncle did not come when the family visited me in the hospital. He didn’t even look at me for several months after it happened.

He was my one good man I didn’t have to have sex with. And to him I was now a ghost. Yeah. That was tied in with why we moved down to Bakersfield then my dad propositioned me again and I prosecuted and we ended up back in uncle’s house.

He barely spoke to me for the rest of my life. I mean, let’s be clear there were a few little girls and all boys that he was actively more hostile and nasty towards than he was with me because he was a petty, pathetic, loser. I scared him more. I would argue him down about absolutely every stupid thing he said to me so he just stopped talking.

I did love him. I tried to talk to him about neutral things. I would bring up songs. He would derail into his conspiracy theory. I would refuse to listen to the topic and ask him to talk about something else. It would turn into a racist rant. I would opt out of that one too. It went into a misogynistic screed about how I act like this because the feminists ruined me.

Yeah. It was awkward.

I mean, he was never my primary financial provider. My aunt earned more money the whole time I lived there. That’s how she got to over rule him and say that when someone needed a place to go she would always take them in. Because she was the one paying the mortgage. She bought the food.

So he refinanced the house and the hoard grew.

I am not saying I have a definitive view of masculinity but when I think of toxic masculinity I think of uncle. I think of the rage and frustration that was twisted into really toxic places because he didn’t get what he felt entitled to get in life. He was promised more. Who promised? This was not a conversation that ended well any time I pushed. I suspect I would do better now at getting him to admit out loud that he is sad because it turns out life was a trick and he never got rich. He was Willy Fucking Loman. And I lived in his house. And he always snuck me ice cream and treats even when he wasn’t speaking to me.

That’s the thing about the last few years. Our relationship changed. We were no longer able to have conversations but we did spend time in the same room. There would be this eye contact interactions that felt intensely emotional and bonding. One time around when I got married but before I had kids when I was over at the house for a visit. We had one of these moments where I was sitting on the couch as far away from him as I could get because we both didn’t know what to say. Sitting in that spot means you get blasted at top volume because you are right next to the tv. It means we can’t hear each other very well so we can pretend that is the reason we aren’t speaking. We looked at each other for 10-15 minutes while some stupid show played loudly in my ear. He crooked his finger at me like he has done since I was a very little girl. I came over and sat across the arms of his lazy boy like I have done since I was a teenager and I got heavy enough that he couldn’t really handle the pressure on his legs.

He pulled me in and he leaned his head on my shoulder and he put a hand on my back and he gave me a pat. I had this intense full body sob rock through me. I didn’t keep crying. Then he patted me on the back more intensely and nodded his head a few times. He said, “Yeah. I know.” I’m not sure we said more than hello or goodbye after that.

Moving is super fucking weird. When you move around an area you shift your web of people but you don’t entirely destroy it and rebuild from scratch. Changing countries has been a complete rebuild. Under different constraints and with different rules for the whole experience from start to finish.

Lately I have been noticing how hard it is to actively interact some days because my understanding of people and patterns and behaviour expectations are all based on a life lived under circumstances that would seem pretty alien to folks here in many ways. I don’t know the scripts. Learning is a slow and laborious process and it’s intimidating knowing that I have as many mistakes ahead of me as I have behind me and I have absolutely mere remnents and shadows of my history in my head as I try to figure out how I should be acting now.

Sometimes when someone says a thing or makes a hand movement like uncle with the same physical build it feels like I’m looking at a grainy 1980’s Polaroid. But that’s not what is happening. This is a different person and a different time. This person has completely different experiences and views of the world. Maybe? I don’t know. It always feels so difficult to find out. I don’t get the upside anymore. It’s harder to put in the work.

On I trudge. One more day. One more navel gazing.

*Number made up out of thin air. I have no fucking idea what the percentage is but it’s a very tricky dynamic and will often create massive problems.

Never enough time

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I spend a lot of time feeling overwhelmed by how lucky I am. I recognize the gift that is my life. I get to decide how I want to use my time. The vast majority of humans I know get few choices about their time. Most of it is spent on earning money, the rest of their (too little) awake time is a juggling act of mandatory tasks that never get properly finished: cleaning, cooking, laundry, commuting, child care…

I never run out of tasks but I get to pick a lot of them and if I skip others… well my kids and Noah do more with every passing ear. It’s pretty rad. I hope I get to live with competent adult children roommates because they make managing this big house so much easier. They are increasingly capable of just doing a share. Even Shorty is on the road; it took me a while to figure out which chores were best for her at this stage in this house–the Fremont tasks just weren’t right. This house is set up differently.

Shorty told me that on her next birthday (turning 5) we are going to pass along the baby plates/cups/silverware/bowls because she isn’t a baby anymore. It makes me sniffle a bit. I will miss having a baby around. She is already so independent and sassy. We have been letting her do basically anything she wants to do for herself and pushing her towards independence in ways that piss her off. She would strongly prefer to still have us dress her every day; we don’t. She would prefer never to clean and set the table; we insist. It’s a delicate dance. I wonder how I am going to start teaching her that sometimes it doesn’t matter how you feel you have to get it done.

The important thing is to not teach it at home with house chores because that teaches you that rest is not important and that isn’t the goal. But sometimes you are going through airport security and you need to hold your shit together so you don’t draw scrutiny. Sometimes you have to get home even when you are tired and you want to quit. Sometimes you have to shut your mouth and not say what you think and deal with something.

Both of my older children have that in their bones. I am not sure when and how I taught it. I am already noticing that it’s a real problem that Shorty doesn’t have DisneySchool. Did you know that an annual pass to Disney*(whichever) is more effective than a paid for preschool at teaching children how to wait in line patiently so everyone gets a turn? Did you know that Disneyland (the one and only) is the most amazing place in the world for a small child to practice asking for help with meeting their needs? The entire staff is trained to do backflips if necessary to meet any possible request. It teaches an extreme amount of confidence in trying and it’s hard to get that out in the world where most people are mercurial and challenging and hard to predict. As an autistic person Disneyland is the only place on the planet where I believe that I know the price of people being nice to me. I ritualize my understanding of what I have to do to make it more likely people will be nice to me. There is only one place I trust that I know how to do enough. Shorty won’t learn any of this.

Small town life is different. We don’t live in a neighborhood of retirees (we wouldn’t by this point even if we had stayed in California–those folks were selling out and moving really quickly in the couple of years before we left) so Shorty doesn’t get to spend all day practicing conversation skills with all the bored retired people in the neighborhood. She doesn’t have a dozen substitute grandparents. They wouldn’t have been there anyway but it still feels like a way I am letting her down.

There is no such thing as enough time to do all of the things I would like to do with the amount of obligation I have to the kids. They are at such dramatically different stages. It’s interesting to me how much the older kids have shifted such that they do not have similar interests or needs. I used to be able to treat them as more of a block–maybe I was understanding them wrong? I don’t think so. At this point I cannot assume that something is appropriate for both of them it almost never is. Neither of them are adult but they feel like kids who are a lot more than two years apart. EC is squarely teenager and is hilariously low key in terms of what that manifestation means. He occasionally tries to be edgy but I’m his mom so that is a bit weird for all of us. MC is physically heading for puberty but emotionally and mentally they are going to be a late bloomer. I am glad that MC has not been an earlier bloomer because they are not going to handle being hit on by adult men very well.

In a way I feel that Noah and I have done a serious disservice to MC in getting them to stop attacking people verbally or physically. They really struggle with defending themself with folks outside the family and that feels very much my fault. It was hard when the main person MC was physically and verbally aggressive with was EC. We have stopped that. We didn’t mean to stop the ability for all people. Sometimes you have to be able to defend yourself if a stranger is going to perceive you as a woman.

I am having an interesting time trying to figure out how to talk about some things with the kids around gendered language. Until the organs in the body have been surgically altered it is important to pay attention to their health. Having an organ does not mean that you are a gender. Your experienced gender is not always the same thing as your perceived gender by other people and sometimes that matters.

I’ve watched Boys Don’t Cry; I know that my son is going to have to assess safety in environments differently than other boys and men. I have to talk to him about what dietary supplements he needs as a person with the body he has in a way that includes both his EDS and other needs. I have to figure out where and when it is a better choice to hand-make a cocktail of pills because a single multi-vitamin with the wrong word on it feels like an erasing choice. I am grateful that my son remembered his martial arts classes enough to win every fight with every person who came after him in secondary school. I feel incredibly anxious and worried about what we should do to help him maintain his fitness and strength because he may well need it.

My kid is very strongly motivated towards being cute and eye catching. They don’t get more adult attention yet because they still read as so young even though they are just about exactly my height. This trip to London may well be the first time they really catch eyes and that’s going to be a real challenge for them. I worry about how intensely they freeze when they feel intimidated. I feel like I taught this and now I need to unteach it. I am anything but a perfect parent.

I wish there were more hours in the day so I could spend more time with the kids and have more time alone because my hobbies are fun too. Ah well. Be grateful for what you have: I have freedom to choose. I am lucky in a way few people get to be lucky. Sometimes it is challenging trying to figure out how to have a well regulated body. I have to put so much thought into all of my choices. No, my body doesn’t just “do the right thing” automatically no matter what some people want me to think. Unfortunately living on bread/noodle products alone makes me sick. Damnit. That’s what my body wants. Life isn’t fair.

Life isn’t fair and no one gets what they deserve. You get what you get. It isn’t about justice because almost no one gets “justice”, not really. There is chance. There is circumstance of birth. There are a million factors at play and there is no way to get “fair” for everyone like that.

My life is so good. This level of safety and security should be the bare minimum for every human being. Governments could make this happen if they chose to view the planet as a collaborative place that is non-renewable. A safe place to live. Enough food. I can afford to heat my home. I am only called names when I ask very very very nicely. We work together as a family to divide tasks and chores and we work together to maintain the building because there is the serious possibility that my children are maintaining the building they will inherit and you want it to be in good shape so…

This is enlightened self interest, baby.

I think the roads are clear enough for us to walk outside. I am really happy about that. I think Shorty should come with MC and me this time. I am looking forward to the day. Let’s go look at plants.

Why are you so tired?

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I always feel kind of stunned by this question and I get asked it a lot. It’s weird living in a place where basically no one is familiar with my back catalogue of writing. I do not direct anyone here at all anymore and I won’t start. I no longer believe that reading my blog is a way for people to know me. It is a way that some people have learned some things about me and then they fill in the blanks with assumptions and projections and in the end I feel like maybe they know me even less than if they hadn’t read the blog at all. It’s complicated.

I don’t do all the cleaning in this house, thank goodness. But it’s a big house. What I don’t do myself I have to manage and parcel out and track. In some ways that is better and in other ways it is just as stressful and challenging. The kids alternate between calmly going along and doing what I ask and screaming at me that I am a horrible person who makes them hate their life so that’s fun. Apparently when I spend two weeks saying, “Look at the current chore list and figure out what/how you would like to renegotiate the things on that list” and they say “Oh the current system is fine and I want it to continue” so I continue to remind them to do the exact same thing they have been doing for 4+ months all of a sudden “YOU KEEP INTERRUPTING ME TO TELL ME TO DO RANDOM STUPID SHIT.” Uhm, excuse me?

I write down chores in a daily planner book. I do it months in advance according to a system that I sat down with the kids and worked out. “About how many days can/should you go between doing your laundry? How often should we clean bathrooms and who should do which one? What is fair for doing dishes? How often should we sweep and how do we want to rotate the chore?” The negotiation is long and detailed. It’s not just “Mom Made Me.” The kids talked about at what point they find using something gross and it needs to be cleaned. Professional house cleaners come in every other week and do a basic upkeep so we are not required to do all of it ourselves.

But when I say, “Hey x, y, and z have been assigned over the past three days and you haven’t done them–can you please take care of that?” I am a complete and total asshole who must be raged at. Awesome. That’s not fucking draining or anything.

I ask my kids if they want to do classes and if so what kind. They tell me they want me to hunt around for them and find classes like a, b, or c. I do that. It takes time. The classes cost money. I find what they say they want and show it to them. “Are you sure you want to do this? It is x-distance from the house and will take you at least y-time to get there? It will take z-money out of the budget so I won’t have money for this other thing.” Yes they want it. Then they get 3 days into the class and all of a sudden I am a horrible person who forces them to do stupid things they hate and it is all my fault that they don’t have any spare time because instead of actually fucking riding their bike they choose to push the bike both ways at a speed of approximately .5 miles an hour. Not draining or frustrating at all.

The older kids have locks on their doors. They usually won’t use them. Youngest child is constantly in their room stealing stuff because obviously big kid stuff is cooler and I have to spend a lot of time trying to keep large, towering people from screaming at a small child until my ears ring. It’s shitty and not cool all the way around. You getting louder doesn’t solve the problem. You locking your door solves the problem. But you won’t take responsibility for what you can do you just want to scream about how you feel violated. Cool. That’s not fucking exhausting.

The amount of hoarding and screaming and fighting in this house over food is making me hate my life and everyone I live with. So fine. We are going to buy more shitty food and I am going to stop arguing because they need to learn how to live with their bodies. When you transition out of limiting food it is always rough. (There are actually principles behind this transition and I am too tired and my hands hurt too much to explain them all. I did a fair bit of research on the topic and I am not going to justify it here. If you are legitimately curious let’s schedule a video call and I’d be happy to talk about food scarcity mindset, neurodiversity, nutrition research, and parenting choices.)

Gardening is a lot. This space is so much bigger than what I had in California and I feel like I am working myself to the bone. The kids are supposed to help and every minute of help is difficult to get and involves a big fight. I am so tired. I do most of it myself because I just don’t have it in me to fight. Sometimes I am out in the yard well past dark crying just doing it all because I cannot fight for more help.

My buddy is here and that is complicated. He has lived alone for a long time. He has never lived with a child in his life–his older siblings were much older than him and he has no memory of dealing with kids beyond hour or so visits sporadically with friends or family. There are a bunch of challenges around that. He’s here for a while. He is being *very* helpful in re-teaching me how to use power tools and helping me build some projects I want done. He is also used to working in a defined way always on a dead line to very technical specs that must be met because (reasons). My compost bins and chicken coop are not similar sorts of things. The amount and kind of project meetings he wants to bicker out every single last detail are hard. The frequency with which he wants me to stop what I am doing and focus on his questions is hard because I am keeping a lot of balls in the air and I don’t change focus that well. I can’t get back on track and half an hour of talking (it’s always “I only have a few questions and it will only take a minute” but really it’s many questions and it’s 30-45 minutes) set me back 1-3 hours because I have lost focus and flow and maybe I can’t even get back to what I was doing because now I have lost that window of time and I have another thing that has to happen Right Now. He has a lot of time to rest and chill out in between work times. I don’t.

I started typing this 45 minutes ago. Then I was interrupted to go fix a computer problem for a child (that has to forking start with a multi-hour download of updates because oh boy nothing will work when you are that far out of date) paused to brush the cat because folks noticed some fleas and the brushing needs to happen before the medication. I still haven’t finished my tea from breakfast, done the budgeting updates I’m supposed to do, or emptied the dishwasher and reloaded it from breakfast.

Why am I tired? Oh my god are you kidding? Do you actually not understand? Really?

I also need to finish taking the labels off the little jam jars so I can put the spices in them because the random bags of spices piled on an open shelf that fall down every single time you do anything cause daily frustration and frequent messes and I just can’t.

Oh, and I should paint today, do some weeding, some carpentry work, hang out the laundry that is in the washer and start another load. I also need to put the food in the fridge that arrived from the farm share box because apparently unloading the boxes means “put it all on the counter” to my kids. (One of them was cooking and me putting it all away would have meant getting in their way and they would have gotten annoyed.)

Did I mention that all of my chronic pain is through the roof and I am just about out of Ibuprofen gel and I don’t really have time to go get more? Also I need to go across town because we are about out of a few things that I get from the co-op and that’s about 6 miles round trip. I will probably wait until next week and go when I am on my way to or from the Youngest Child’s swimming class.

I told someone that I was falling behind on responding to emails/texts/messages on various platforms and she said, “Yeah I’m a procrastinator too.” ……. Does being so busy that you rarely have time to think a full thought outside of “What task do I need to be accomplishing full speed in the next 10 minutes” count as procrastinating?

Oh, and I need to respond to text messages from Middle Child’s best friend’s dad because otherwise the kids won’t see each other before the school year starts in 10 days and the bestie has been out of the country almost all summer. Woo. Haha. Got that done. Excellent. It will be great to see her again.

And really I have to close because ALL OF THE THINGS.

There is always a cost

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I am so worn out and I am trying to both rest and catch up and it strikes me that they are diametrically opposed. My growing zone has an annual last frost date somewhere between the last 4 days of April and the first 5 days of May. There was snow on the ground last week. Because of the world-wide problems with insect die off it is widely considered wise to wait until the average temperature is 10C or above. This is slightly hilarious to me because only July and August have night time averages above 10C… the average is 11C. Does that mean we shouldn’t ever disturb gardens here? It’s a thought to ponder. (Waiting until the temperature rises is because bugs hibernate when it is cold and if you go out and tidy up your garden you may well kill off a generation of wee beasties unintentionally.)

Tasks I need to perform:

  • install bike pulleys
  • install trailer pulleys
  • build a better compost unit (my pallets are all rotting and sagging)
  • sift my compost pile and distribute the lovely material around my garden
  • get some fertilizer on my hydrangeas and all the food plants
  • finish taking apart the old shed for boards
  • build the potting benches for my poly tunnel and the raised beds I want to have in there
  • weed, always weeding around the fence borders because the ground elder is fierce
  • get more wood chips and cover more grass with it because by golly in about 4 years I will have subdued it enough to make a serious start on alternative ground covering plants
  • get more seeds because I only had like 5 packets of veg seeds left, and they were mostly gone in any case, and I need to get cracking on starting this year’s plants
  • figure out storage for the mountain of costumes I brought home from Texas
  • respond to cafe owner about holding meet ups for the youth group
  • schedule a walking munch and the 101 workshops
  • clean my dang bathroom
  • tidy up my room because right now it is a royal mess
  • restart the subscription orders from the grocery service
  • do a bit more pushing with the mum bike group to get some activities scheduled
  • figure out when the group camping trip is happening and get myself organized for that
  • install the trailer hitch on the new bike so that I can have towing capacity when I have extra passengers
  • get YC more time out on the balance bike because she has nearly outgrown it and I don’t really want to buy a bigger one I want her to progress to pedals, dangit
  • schedule with a freakin roofer
  • schedule with a plumber for the apartment bathroom (the sink is leaking)
  • schedule getting the retaining walls repaired around the property because it is past time
  • I really should be reading books because, dude
  • don’t forget the damn skin care routine
  • oh yeah I should eventually have sex with my husband
  • all of my kids could do with some one on one time because they are all feeling super needy and emotional
  • I really need to organize group bicycle skill training for my family because my instructions are not adequate to help all of them know what they need to know
  • I need to organize specific training in bike maintenance because this is causing a lot of fighting and fussing and it is driving me insane
  • I should submit data to the national database about when my fucking fruit trees are in flower because tracking this stuff is important
  • the XR people would really appreciate it if I took on more duties, as would the allotment people
  • oh yeah, I also need to schedule some physics experiments because my kids really don’t understand some basic elements that would make cycling go better
  • I need to sit on my kids more industriously about working on their school work because that is literally one of my main jobs
  • I haven’t touched up the sloppy paint areas in my room I was going to come back to
  • I want to move the white board from the kitchen into my bedroom so I can use it to track forking lists like this
  • I also want to change a bunch of how I store things in the kitchen/dining room/laundry room because the current set up is inefficient, sloppy, and difficult to keep tidy
  • I should also be more industrious about exercising and eating vegetables and going to fucking sleep at a reasonable time

Yeah. Fuck me. I still have almost constant headaches and neck aches from the concussion. The sensitivity to light is really bothering me but I have to push through it anyway. I am still feeling stupid and like I am not retaining new information. I feel unmotivated and weary and frustrated at basically every moment of every day.

Visiting Noah’s family was intense. I feel like I understand the dynamics a bit better. I have much stronger opinions about what I would guess for various folks’ diagnostic labels but I try not to say those out loud too much because I am not an expert and I am not seeing any of these people in any kind of professional capacity so it’s a dick thing for me to call out. However, it helps me decide how I should respond in terms of my own behavior and as long as it is my opinion and judgment and it exists in my head and I’m not trying to influence other people I think it is ok. It’s funny to me how much I can now go, “Oh yeah. I’m trying to place a rules system around this topic because that helps me understand it.” I don’t want to make other people agree with me or change… heck I don’t plan to see any of those people again for 3-5 years. I will barely communicate with them through rare letters.

I believe it is important for me to think about things in this way because I have to think in a long term way if I am going to manage the historical trauma my children have inherited. I happen to be a big believer in the epigenetic nature of trauma. The things that happened to their parents impact them. The things that happened to their grandparents impact them. The things that happened to their great grandparents impact them. That said, neuroplasticity and resilience count for so very much. And let’s not discount the benefit of various levels of privilege.

I don’t need to try hard to control other people. I need to know what I need to think about when it comes to my own behavior and what I am modeling for my children. That’s what I am doing here.

I mean, I can worry about the gardening and the social life and the academics and the house maintenance… but what I am actually fucking doing here is figuring out how to raise people who can come from a fairly intense amount of ancestral trauma and thrive. Their mental health, their resilience, their ability to grow and change and find a better path is what I am fucking doing with my life.

I lose sight of that. I get mired in the weeds (literal and figurative) because it is easier to put my head down and just do whatever is in front of me. When I do that I invite inconsistency and acting out unconscious patterns. I invite the repetition of behaviors that have already damaged their bodies through their inherited genetics and what the fuck am I doing; I know better. I don’t need to shove them through survival. I don’t need to create lists of tasks so long that no lifetime can contain them all and then convince my children that they are inadequate if they aren’t working their bodies into dust.

Life is not about grinding yourself in a mortar and pestle. It’s just not. There are costs to those behaviors and attitudes: impatience, lack of understanding, lack of dignity, unkindness, addictive behaviors, unhealthy bodies and minds.

Noah’s grandmother survived, but the costs her children paid were so severe that they cannot bear her presence. There is duty there, some of them still serve that duty, but there is no love. Her grandchildren can barely tolerate her. Her great grandchildren are split on despising her or on not knowing her. She accomplished fairly impressive things. What was the cost? She lies on a bed alone in a room day after day. Most of the people who have ever known her have no interest in her company. Was what she accomplished worth the cost?

Noah’s mother mostly has good relationships with her children. Noah fleeing the nest as early as he did and with such intensity seems to have made a lasting impression. She worked on her behavior. She came to therapy late in life but she did get there. That’s something. Is she perfect or healed or a person I would want to spend much time with? Oh goodness no. But the difference between how she acts now and how she acted when I met her over 15 years ago is dramatic. Not different enough for me to leave my children alone with her, even though she did ask politely.

I have stopped looking at the long run. I no longer weigh and measure how I behave based on the relationships I want to have with my 30 and 40 year old children. I am sloppy. I am messy. I am inconsistent. I am pursuing short term goals at long term cost. That is stupid. I am not modeling what I think should be modeled. I am not showing how to make better choices with a joyful heart. I am dragging myself through a series of tasks and I am short tempered and impatient. I don’t think I am being vicious but that should not be the bar. Frankly I am not happy with how I have behaved for a while. I’m distracted. I’m snippy. I am not performing the behaviors I believe are necessary because I am wearing myself to the bone on things that matter so much less.

This is not what I want my children to remember. Do I think they need to have some challenges and some difficulties in life in order to build resiliency? Of course. That doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to be outward focused. I want to be focused in on the people I made commitments to.

Krissy, you know who you are supposed to be. Go fucking act like it. Or you will pay the cost.

I would do anything for love, but I just won’t do that

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I feel like I am trapped in a Meatloaf song. I want to do things to be pleasing. I want to show my love. But I don’t want to do that. What is that? I don’t know. What do I want? I don’t know. I want to not feel how I feel right now.

I keep thinking I didn’t have kids because I wanted a convenient life. If I insist on my kids staying in school it means I am ok with their classmates hitting them, spitting on them, elbowing them, telling them that they are fucking morons–shits–stupid–pathetic. It means I am ok with little girls telling my little girls that when they gain weight in preparation for puberty they should really go on a diet. It means I am ok with the authorities having a bigger problem with my children standing up to bullies than with the bullying behavior. It means I believe that my children should have to put up with low level harassment a lot of the time because it doesn’t rise to the level that a teacher considers worth paying attention to so stop complaining.

“It is preparation for the real world.” Bitch, if someone did that to me in the real motherfucking world I would either punch them or press charges. I wouldn’t shut up, put my head down, and take it.

You aren’t preparing them for a healthy adult life. You are preparing them to be victims and you feel quite sanctimonious about how it needs to happen.

I’m not yanking them out immediately. I am going to start emailing the fucking head every day with a report of what bullshit happens. Then when I deregister the kids I will have a paper trail of allllllllll the shit the school doesn’t think is important enough to deal with.

If I had a full time job and I had to work I would tell my kids to start punching people. But I don’t and I don’t and I don’t really want my children to have to toughen up in that manner. I have not put this much time and effort into helping them verbalize problems instead of hitting to give it up now. Sure, they are annoying to authority figures in a school who don’t want to hear it. But fuck the fucking school authorities. Their priorities are shit.

And really, there are a lot of things I miss. I miss not wasting so many hours on “Get up. Do your chores. Eat faster. Get ready to go. Pack your bag. Go. Hurry up and unpack. Do your chores. Eat faster. Go to bed because we have to wake up early and do this all again.”

We can get a lot done home schooling. But we do it at odd hours and when we feel like it. Is it a lot of stress? Absofuckinglutely. I feel less like I need to ride the kids super hard though. They are doing more than fine compared to their peers (Except for hand writing and fuck hand writing. Ok, we will work on it…. but seriously. Fuck hand writing.) and that was what kept me up at night worrying. Yeah, I hate having to push them through work.

But I love having hours a day to read together. I love having time to sit around and draw together. I love watching the neat projects they build with all of the time they have. I love knowing that they get to play with dolls and be imaginative when kids their age in school have already given it up because they are trying so hard to be “big”.

I am making contact with the home education community. I’m finding kids their age who are into Minecraft and Scratch and art and reading. Do you know what they aren’t finding at school? Kids who play Minecraft or who use Scratch or kids who are as obsessed with art and reading as they are. At school kids call them names because they don’t play Fortnight. At school kids mock them for not having an expensive brand new phone. At school the kids make fun of them for not being on social media.

Fuck school.

A mother told me the other day that she is getting her 7 year old an iPhone 6 for Christmas because the kid is getting mocked at school for not having one. What the absolute fuck? She said that she doesn’t want to waste money on toys because her daughter is only interested in perfecting her selfies anyway. Uhhh my 9 year old is getting a doll house and the thing will be played with constantly.

Yeah. Different strokes.

We are working on some fairly big changes in our marriage. It’s complicated. I don’t want to bitch about it here. I just want to write down for myself that this is when the contract ended.

I don’t know how to properly advocate for myself without throwing tantrums. I don’t know how to feel like I am being treated how I want to be treated. I don’t fucking know how I want to be treated.

I keep thinking about that doctor who told me that I just need to focus on keeping the bus on the road. (It’s a long metaphor.) He said Noah knew what he was getting into with marrying me because I was honest about my trauma history so he doesn’t get to bitch about it being hard. I don’t agree. I think Noah gets to bitch.

But sometimes keeping the bus on the road is hard even when I don’t have a good reason to point at. Sometimes just being me is hard. I feel like a whiner. I feel annoying and high maintenance and a whole lot of other rude descriptors. I definitely definitely definitely don’t think I am worth the effort.

But I throw tantrums if the effort isn’t put in because I am a fucking bitch. Apparently I have an incredibly high sense of what I deserve.

I think I am depressed. Noah thinks he is depressed. We aren’t the sorts of depressives who stop working. We put our heads down and plough on feeling little to no joy in anything. I don’t think it is SAD. I think we have been working so hard for so long without resting that our bodies are collapsing. Our spirits are collapsing.

Both of us feel like the other isn’t doing very much for us even as we can rattle off the ridiculously long chore list that we know our partner is doing… it just… feels inadequate. We are productive, just not content or happy or satisfied. We keep waiting for a long enough break to breathe.

I now have definite confirmation that our stuff is in the UK. It’s going to sit in a warehouse till December 30th when a company will go pick it up and a few days after that they will call me to arrange delivery. Our stuff will be in transit for 19 or so weeks. The estimate was 4-12 weeks. I feel glad that I can stop worrying that our stuff is lost. That’s been really bothering me.

I want my socks. And my long johns. And my books. And and and and and. I WANT THE GOD DAMN BIKE TRAILER.

This is my third night in a row of not really sleeping until absurdly late. It’s almost 1. This isn’t helping my mental health. Tomorrow I need to take a sleeping pill.

Fork.

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This morning I woke up thinking about what I will say at a book reading.  It lead to me thinking a lot about Noah and my mom.  What would I do if Noah were more of a mixed bag?  It's not hyperbole to say that at this point in time Noah has given me the vast majority of good that is in my life.  He supports me.  He gives me endless freedom to amuse and entertain myself and the kids.  How could I be ungrateful?

My mom didn't see the abuse and I strongly suspect she felt similarly about my dad.  It's interesting to think about.

I'm supposed to be resting my wrists so that's all.  I'm lonely without typing.

Blast radius

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Right now I am exploding. I am doing so all over the internet. I have now sent extensive messages to everyone I know in my extended biological family telling them I was horribly molested and raped for 10 years and none of them did anything to help me. I have mixed feelings about this.

Checking in

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Thank you for the phone calls. I really appreciate my friends. I’m trying to keep a more firm line in how much I talk about my shit with Shanna standing nearby. The last couple of times I have really unloaded about what was in my head repeatedly in a day she woke up with night terrors. Today I had the one outburst at my mom on the phone outside in the yard. Then I had one ~15 crying thing immediately following. Then I was calm the whole rest of the day. And Shanna didn’t have a night terror. That, to me, means I erred on the correct side of freaking out. I did a lot in the midst of my mom actively treating me like shit, but I did it outside and away from the kids. I did a little bit in the house with the kids nearby. Then I stopped. I was probably slower than average for the rest of the day, but I kept it together.

Mostly I did this because my friend, K, was due to come over in the morning anyway because she was coming over to babysit my kids while I went to therapy. Handy. Mostly at Jenny’s suggestion (Ack! Two Jennys! My brain is overloading and I will figure out that situation later.) I asked K to drive me down to therapy and they hung out in the park right across from the office. By the way, I’ve realized I’m going to have to do some work on my feelings around unsolicited advice. If I’m going to really do the blogging thing then I’m going to have to just deal with it. Oh man. That will make me twitchy.

And I’m up in the middle of the night trying to figure out what to think and feel about this latest development. I’m trying to decide how many cycles in my brain it gets to have. It doesn’t get as many as it wants right now. I have already decided I need a break from processing this kind of stuff right now and my mother does not have the right to override my decision making process. She doesn’t get to ruin my life anymore. I am on a semi-manic upswing right now. I am trying like hell to get upward momentum started. I can’t stop to obsess about this. Today I need to just get into my head that my mother is doing this to me because she is acting out the story in her head. She is not interested in doing the hard shitty work to break the cycles she has established. That’s not my problem. I am interested in doing that hard work. I am doing that work. Part of doing that work is stopping and telling the quiet, scared little girl inside me that she can’t actually hurt me anymore. Never again will she be allowed to send us to a monster. Tyra’s childhood was ruined too, but Shanna and Calli are escaping. My brother’s kids are escaping. One of my siblings absolutely continued the cycle but I have hope for Tyra. The way forward can’t be me staying up all night obsessing and it can’t be me feeling distracted and apathetic all day with the kids. That’s not acceptable. My life is good, wonderful, and I have all the possibilities in the world. I am not yet 30 years old. My life isn’t over yet. I get to grow up and be anyone I want to be.

Ok. I think I’m going to follow a few random paths for a while as I try to figure out which direction I want to grow in. But that’s ok. I have time.

Oh my fucking god.

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Tyra told my mom everything I said. My mom called me to tell me she wants to go see a mediator because I am lying about her and she wants to get the story straight. She swears up and down I was not molested when I was little.

I feel like I am losing my mind. I’m crying. I screamed at her on the phone that she has no fucking right to tell me I wasn’t sexually assaulted. This is my body. These are my memories. How fucking dare she lie to my face. I am shaking and so upset I can barely breathe. But I have to drive in 40 minutes to see my therapist so I can’t do anything to help me calm down.

I want her out of my head. I called Tyra and said that if she ever does anything again to cause my mother to call me and harass me that I am done and she will never hear from me again.

Called my brother

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So really what happened is I called my brother days ago and we’ve played phone tag since then. Anyway. Tonight we really talked. We talked for 45 minutes and there were so many little subtopics. He said he believes me absolutely 100% without question on all of it. I spent a while sobbing and spilling out my memories of our father and what he did to me. I kept apologizing to him because I know he doesn’t want to hear it but he told me that he is willing to listen to whatever I need to say. He considers my mental health more important than his momentary discomfort at hearing these stories. That’s huge. That’s monumental. I mean, it’s not like we are suddenly going to be close and spend time together. But I was just told by a person in my immediate family that the fucked up version of reality I knew growing up was indeed happening. I am not crazy. I am not imagining any of it. I am not lying. My mother and sister can go fuck themselves.

He believes me. He heard what actually happened and he believes me. He told me that yes, I am used as the scapegoat by everyone. My brother believes me.

Sentry

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Right now I am sitting sentry duty next to my elder daughter’s bed. Her beloved bed. You see, it is a Big Girl Bed! She even climbs a ladder to get into it. Picture an overly intense cherubic blond haired blue eyed german ploughhorse. She’s stocky and perky and deliciously incongruous. She wants people to love her so much. We shower her with love constantly. I carry her until my arms give out and then I put her in a carrier and keep going even now that she’s my big 30 lb going-on-three-year-old. Even while her baby sister is on my back. I do this because I remember that agony of need of assurance of love. I remember feeling no one in the world would ever love me enough and desperately clinging to my mother. I was so very attached to my mother. On MDC they think that is a good thing but I’m not so sure it was good for us.

I think of my beautiful child. And I think of my mother. And I think of the power she had over me. The power I have over my beloved, adored, forever wanted Shanna. I begged God for her. I named her and wanted her when I was 13 years old. To think that my mother most likely received the exact same blind absolute trust and love. My mother saw that in her child’s face and let a monster violate her. I can feel my whole body quake with hate and fear and rage. Most of the muscles in my body alternately cramp and flex. This hurts so bad. I hate her. I think if I drove to her house right now I would honk the horn until she came outside and run her over. Oh god. I’m trying to calm the panic attack closing my throat. You fucking bitch. I hate you so much. You did this to me. At the end of the day you stupid bitch. This is all on your head. I hate you. I hate you so much.

Why didn’t you love me?

And that question will never be answered. And no matter how much terror I feel. No matter the nightmare I face sitting next to her bed, my baby needs me to be happy. My baby needs me to take in her love and return it to her as joy. It is so hard to appreciate her like she deserves. I wish that my sweet girl didn’t have to show me her remarkable empathy so often. I wish my baby didn’t offer me hugs and kisses to feel better.

And every time one more person tells me more reasons that who I am or what I am doing is bad or wrong it just makes it one little bit harder. Like what I am doing is not hard enough.

About my niece…

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I had her come over for a bit yesterday to chat. There were some shudder inducing moments for me. She didn’t even know how she did in the classes because she never bothered to check. REALLY?! She had to ask me to define words a few times (the most memorable being dilettante). And she expressed extreme surprise that you don’t need a Business degree in order to open a small business doing event planning. *smack forehead* Essentially I talked her out of college for now. She’s really not ready. I told her that after some time has passed and she is actually interested in buckling down and doing the work she can try again but I’m not paying for her to fuck around. She seems oddly relieved.

It was overall a positive conversation. She really needs some life experience before she will see any value in college. I’m the only adult in her life with a college degree, of course she doesn’t really see much value in school. (Although I was smart enough to be in the position where I had *no* adults in my life who had been to college and recognize it as the problem…) So she’s going to go do her thing. I’m… I’m hoping that she does something with her life that is better than what my sister has done but I’m not holding my breath at this juncture. It could go either way. (Yes, I get to judge the fuck out of my sister.)

Families kinda suck. How hard is it going to be to ensure my kids don’t end up like my family?

On yet other family stuff

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Noah’s mother has sent me some of the very best kids clothes we own. Really awesome stuff. I’ve been thrilled. This time… she sent jeggings. For those of you lucky enough to avoid this phenomenon: http://styletips101.com/fashion/how-to-wear-jeggings.html

I hope we ditch this ‘fashionable’ trend. I’m so not fashionable. 🙂 More smocked little girl dresses! (Uhm, in all reality I’ll randomly babble about this on lj but I certainly won’t complain because I am overall really surprised by how pleasantly things are going with Noah’s parents. This is me not rocking the boat!)

But really. Jeggings?

Paying for college

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This is f-locked in case someone in my family is paying attention. I doubt it, but there is a slight possibility. So we are paying for my niece to go to college. This is something that I have always said I was happy to do for my niece and nephew to help them get the fuck out of the shitty life our family has. My nephew wanted to do this intensive program on learning how to install solar panels… sure! I’ll pay for that! That would be a great career! After doing alright in the program he decided he didn’t want to do it as a career. His skin is too sensitive to be outside that much. . . . Maybe you could have thought about this a bit earlier sensitive boy? (Oh, he works at Shoreline every summer as a parking attendant because it is ‘cool’. At least he has done it for two years in a row. So much for the sensitive skin.)

Now my niece is taking classes at the local JC. Though she wants to transfer because the one she is going to has “too many Asians”. I’m not entirely sure what that means as a criticism, but ok. She gave me her login information to the webportal program the school uses so I can pay her fees. She thinks I am not able to check her grades. I’m not sure why she is stupid enough to think that, but ok. Last term she withdrew from the PE class she insisted that she wanted to take (I told her it was a bad idea) and she got a C in the Intro to Business class (she wants to be a Business major) and a D in the basic level accounting class. So her GPA is a 1.5. No one is perfect, I get that. But uhm… a free ride to college is not exactly a god given right.

Right now I’m feeling pretty fussy. If I sit her down and explain, “These D’s won’t even transfer. So I’m paying for you to *say* you are in college but this isn’t actually making any progress towards your supposed future goals.” I will be the bitch. I will be the bad person who is pressuring her. In paying for her college we are directly taking money we would be investing on Shanna and Calli’s education and using it on my niece instead. I’m not sure how willing I am to do that while my niece is much more interested in partying than in going to school. But if I cut her off I am probably cutting off my last real tie to my family. I will have proven that I am a terrible person.

I love how no matter what *I* am the bad guy.

EDIT: Noah points out that this post doesn’t convey a lot of why I am pissy. She posts constantly on facebook about partying. She will only take night classes because she is completely unwilling to get up at a reasonable hour (I mean getting up before noon, not 6 am). I would have more sympathy if I thought she was trying and just not getting it right. She skips classes to go to parties. Yeah… it’s not just that she is trying and not figuring things out.

Edited again:
I just went and looked. She hasn’t bothered to submit any financial aid paperwork whatsoever. Given that her mother hasn’t worked in the past couple of years (I’m not sure how Denise is going to increase her drug dealing enough to stay afloat once she stops getting unemployment) I bet that I shouldn’t have to pay almost anything at all for my niece’s education. But she can’t be bothered. Oh I’m getting pissier by the minute.

Pictures

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Here a couple so people can stop bugging me! 😀 Oh, and I also don’t particularly want to put them on facebook because then my niece will show them to my mom and sister and I’m currently feeling twitchy about that. Erf.

Ze baby:

Semi recent… like two weeks ago

About a month ago

On my birthday, so when Calli was ~2 weeks old. Shanna is a bit over 2 years. 🙂

Anniversary

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Today my father has been dead for 12 years. He committed suicide to avoid going to prison for molesting me. It sounds so… dramatic. I wish I could stop having mixed feelings about it. I wish I could just get over it or hate him or feel at peace. I’m sad that I never really got to have a father. I’m sad that he made the choices he made. I’m sad that so many people were hurt because of him.

I’m not sad I broke the cycle.