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Waking up for the 12th day of Noah being gone. It’s a weekend; the last weekend before I have to sign the kids up for school. Middle Child is very confident they are going to ride through the rest of secondary school because getting qualifications will simplify later life. Shortie isn’t sure about school. She is scared. I told her that we are going to try through the end of the next school year and if she has not settled, then we will discuss a return to home education. Eldest Child has plans and he is figuring out his forward facing routine. He is scared but ready to figure out his future.

The older kids are scared I will sell the house. They are really overwhelmed by this idea. That means I need to be careful with that option. It has to be only at absolute last resort. I think I am going to need to work very hard to keep this house. I think the kids are going to need that stability for a long time to come. This was our final home with Noah. Leaving here is choosing to leave him behind. I’m not sure we will ever be ready for that. We will make the decision in two years but the kids are acting like it would be a problem if we left. I need to consider that.

I love him so much. I am going to have a rough road. Missing him is going to be a blessing and a curse for the rest of my life. I’m going to know how much I was loved and I am going to know how much I lost. Even if it isn’t my fault it is my loss to deal with. It is a loss for my children to deal with. I am going to have to push my babies forward alone with no one adding to my bucket.

I feel bad because there are so many thoughts in my head that will never be spoken again. I won’t ever believe anyone cares. It makes me feel lonely in my soul. Sure, yeah, I will talk out loud to Noah but it’s not the same. It’s going to make me feel very disconnected from life that I am only safe talking to myself alone in a room.

Tomorrow is when we were supposed to wake up to go on our holiday alone after the aborted negotiation with TB. I don’t even know if TB is in the country. I don’t care. He poisoned that well this year when he told me he didn’t need to be upset about me being raped because I wasn’t his wife. That’s disgusting and nauseating.

I really do wonder if I am going to turn into my mother and just give up sex. Either that or I will cause problems. I struggle with believing I will find a healthy medium. I’m used to having sex every day, often two or three times a day. I can feel in my body that it is not happening and my body is not pleased. I would be literally pawing at Noah by now if for some reason I hadn’t jumped him already this morning.

It is hard going back to bed after my early morning trip to the bathroom. That’s when I would get excited every single morning because I could wake Noah up for sex. He would warm me back up from the chill of the bathroom and the process would lead into melting together.

Yeah. Last night was the last night a person who snores can be in my bed. I love you with my whole soul Pam but I need to be able to go back to sleep at 1am. I can’t lay awake for hours listening to snoring and thinking about how much I am scared. It’s not healthy. I need to be able to go back to sleep.

I had someone who wanted to know about every weird gurgle and blip in my body. Someone who wanted to know every discomfort because maybe he could help. He could help in so many ways. I am overwhelmed with sadness. I want to take care of him. He was so delighted with the ways I am confident. He made me feel special. Pam and Dad are trying hard to get me to feel special.

It’s not working very well. I feel like I failed the boss level at life. I didn’t protect Noah. I hurt inside my soul. Noah, I am so sorry. Noah I am sorry for every time I didn’t do what you deserved.

The only way I can continue in his service is to give our kids a good life. That starts with the building block of sleep.

Shortie and I were talking about that last night. She was annoyed because all the grown ups are harping on her to go to sleep. She was complaining about how it is stupid because sleep doesn’t do anything anyway. I told her she was so wrong and I started explaining what sleep does for your brain and body. It’s necessary for learning, growing, and healing. She asked a lot of follow up questions. She is so clever that it is really uncanny at times.

I am scared that she is going to end up being the kid who is most like me. Middle Child is firmly in the PDA camp with me and I’m absolutely certain beyond all measure that Shortie is too. When she is asked to do something she responds with snarls and a vicious physical retaliation if you physically try to push her into something. I’m going to have to talk to the school. She always comes back and apologises for these rapid bursts of emoting. That’s not how she wants to act it is just instinctive and utterly compulsive. If you have compassion for her and deescalate without taking it as a challenge then things can smooth right out. She is not mean or vindictive or unwilling to help. She has a really strong automatic anxiety reaction to being ordered about. I can’t judge.

She has also taught herself to read at 6. My other kids did not do that. She’s far further into maths than her siblings were at her age because she finds it fun and engaging. She is more than halfway through the elementary curriculum set I have. I’m a little worried that she is going to be advanced enough to really struggle in school. Or maybe they will let her read like I did?

I’m scared on so many levels. I’m scared of so many things. I’m sad. I feel this horrifyingly swelling well of sadness and depression. I want Noah and I will never have him again. Noah was my life, my happiness, my home. This house is just a building for me. My home was him being inside of me. It was the only way I ever felt fully secure. That is gone. I never get to feel like that again. I miss him.

I will keep going though. I have to. The older kids are processing in waves what it means that their dad is gone. My baby is flailing and uncertain and having all the feelings. I can’t be mean to her about the way she is feeling. I love the bones of her. That’s a thing I’m worried about–she is losing weight and that’s not ok. She’s already extremely slender. I can’t give on the candy front because she is super compulsive but I need to massively bend on controlling her food. She is so much like me and she struggles with digestion stuff because her diet isn’t varied enough. Right now I need to give her a lot of leeway around picking stuff that can give her what she needs. Mostly I need to stock my kitchen with stuff she is welcome to have at any minute and encourage grazing. She’s not great at meals.

It was worth arguing over when it was our biggest issue. It isn’t anymore. Survival is. I’m not giving up on the process of helping her learn to eat more food but I am going to push less.

I have to go limp in a lot of ways. A lot of things I would normally correct or criticise I can’t for the next 6+ months. I am waking the kids up every day and having chats with each of them or singing a cheerful song. Everyone gets a private moment with me to start the day. We are also touching base later in the day for directed attention outside of group stuff.

I have to take care of them. I am who they get to have. I think that sucks for them and is really unfair but it’s true.

I’m struggling with my shame around having chosen to have kids when I struggle so much with mental illness. When I had Noah to cover my fuck ups it felt more justifiable. Now I have to regulate myself more than I ever have in my entire life. That’s really hard. I have to do it while struggling with the worst things that have happened to me in decades. I believe they are worth the effort and I need to put my money where my mouth is.

I know that it isn’t healthy for me to spend the rest of my life living for my children. I’m pretty sure it is healthy for the next year. Maybe that’s all I can handle thinking about right now. Maybe I am not able to think past that to what will come in the next chapter of my life. I don’t actually want another chapter. I liked the one I was in. Noah. I miss you, Noah.

But it’s over. Life isn’t fair. There is no such thing as fair. No one gets what they deserve.

For a time I had Noah. It was really wonderful.

Frozen hell

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I’m going to have a hard time crawling out of the hole in which I believe his death is all my fault. Noah being gone feels like the end of hope, joy, love, and being cared for in this life. I lost it because I didn’t protect him enough. I let his fragile body be damaged. I loathe every aspect of myself. I pushed him too hard. I am a monster.

Is it actually all my fault that his body gave out? No. I am not in charge of the cells in other peoples bodies. However, if it’s all my fault then I deserve to be punished and that feels like the only justice possible given what happened to Noah. I deserve to be punished for the rest of my life because I didn’t keep him alive. My life will be a punishment of its own. I will not have Noah.

11 days without Noah. The longest we have gone without seeing each other since we got married was 6 weeks. I think that happened one time on the road trip. Usually we didn’t go longer than 3 weeks on that trip and never longer than a week and a half since. We don’t like being apart. We have never liked being apart.

I miss Noah so much. I have no idea how I will ever recover from this.

There is only pain, there is no hope.

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Today is the 9th day I am waking up without Noah. It hurts so much and I feel like I will explode with pain. I am grateful that Pam and Shortie are still sleeping with me but someday very soon that is going to probably change. I need to start getting up and getting moving in the morning absurdly early in order to have breakfast on the table before the kids go to school. Breakfast and dinner are big events in our house. We all have intense dietary needs and we take care of one another by sharing meals of good food.

Good here is going to get increasingly neurotic because I can’t get sick and my kids need to be able to be physically well enough to withstand school and we have to cook for ourselves because very few places around here put vegetables forward in the ways we require. We are all losing weight; it’s clear as the nose on my face.

All of us improved our relationships with Noah over the past year. The older two got a lot closer to him in 2024 because he had so much time for us. He played with Shortie every single day. He and I alternated between having uncomfortable conversations and having the best sex of our lives. I really felt like we were growing together in a way that would have paid off for decades.

Noah, how could you leave me? I am freaking out. I keep walking in circles flapping my hands and beating on my chest. Noah, how could you go? You said you wouldn’t leave me. Noah I need you. You are right. I will never be ok without you. There is no one but you for me. Yeah, I wanted to fuck other people for momentary distraction but no one ever crawled into my heart and mind and soul the way you did. Now they aren’t a distraction they are a reminder that I can’t have you and I don’t want anyone else. Not really.

I mostly wanted to think about other people because the end result every time was being grateful for you and feeling extra lucky because you are so much better than everyone else. Smarter, kinder, more diligent, more devoted–Noah you were the best of everything and my body cries out for you night and day. My hand moves under the covers to find the body next to me then recoils because it is not you.

I no longer think the phantom pain in my vagina is a bad thing. I hope it lasts forever as my payment for not being a good enough wife, for not taking care of Noah well enough. I want to be in pain every single moment I am alive. It is all I deserve for not making sure Noah survived longer than me.

I don’t believe I deserve to feel good ever again. I lost Noah. He was my reason for everything. He is why I worked so hard to be better; because Noah believed I could. Noah spent a lot of time doing hypnosis on me trying to change my brain. How am I ever supposed to feel good again when the thing that made me feel like I was good was putting my mouth on Noah’s body. I could kiss his hand or his foot and I felt like I was good. It was even better when I put my mouth in other places. His joy was my joy. His happiness was my happiness. I am so glad that I pushed for all the sex we had towards the end.

I am freaking out about my future now. It’s been hazy and cloudy and unclear for me for a long time–I had nothing to work towards. Now that feeling is magnified times a billion.

I actually had a lot I was looking forward to. Noah was growing ever closer to me and we were spending so much time together. We fit like perfect pieces in a puzzle with our kids. We created a world together. We traveled the world together. We had so many adventures yet to come. We were such a happy family. I’m really scared that it all came from Noah and that time is over.

Noah was an avid photographer; I am not. I am going through 20 years of photos and only finding a few hundred of him while there are many many thousands of everyone else. That made me feel really bad for a few minutes but then I realised: the reason we were always smiling so big was because we were looking at Noah. He was the one who wanted the shrine of pictures as motivation; we just needed him. Him being part of the family was enough to keep us working and pushing forward.

In perfect love and perfect trust I tried to take care of him. I failed. If I had not been so depressed lately he would have opted out of ice skating. He would have said it would be no fun for him. But he wanted to be there to support me. I feel so ashamed of the way I only focused on our daughter and not on the pain and distress he was feeling. I feel so guilty that I wasn’t with him to help him not fall on the ice. I should have been. I knew he wasn’t comfortable and that the boot was already hurting his foot. There was too much pressure. I should have told him to sit out the activity. Jenny’s husband did. Why didn’t I fucking tell him to go sit with the other dad and not participate?

Because I am selfish and stupid and I thought I knew best. “Exercise is good for you.” Maybe it isn’t always. Noah wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t gone ice skating. I’m not in any way upset with the friend who invited me. He came because of me. He wouldn’t have gone on that generic family outing if I wasn’t such a pathetic crybaby that he came so he could take care of me.

I’m having a hard time being around people. I’m not comfortable around people. I believe I have no value to anyone outside my family so being out in public is a rude thing to do. People don’t want me here.

I know it is actually a very small percentage of the population that is anti-immigrant and anti-American but they are pretty fucking loud. I got asked to leave the bike group over the summer. I’m now freaked out about any other community stuff I’ve been doing.

2024 was a fucking brutally hard, nightmare of a year. And it’s going to be the last good year of my life because I had Noah.

I’m going back through stuff Noah has been writing lately, Jesus we are both obsessed with our death being imminent. His actually was though and it is horrifying looking at date stamps and seeing how much it feels like we fucking knew it was coming. It is making me shake to the core of me. I felt like I didn’t deserve to have him. And I lost him.

It’s an accident. It’s fate. It is the only inevitable outcome of life.

It is not fair.

There is no fair.

Ted never predicted that I’d have a long happy marriage. He said I would win in court; he said I would never be poor again. Maybe it was not in my destiny to deserve Noah for more of my life. I wasn’t good enough at cherishing him when I had him.

I am scared of the ways I have hurt myself in the past that were blocked by Noah’s presence in my life. Without Noah the chance that I will go do stupid stuff is really high. The chance that I will put myself in a dangerous position is stupidly high. This is absolutely terrifying. Noah has been taking care of me in a lot of ways. He has done a lot to keep me safe in the past 18 years. I am deeply afraid of what I will do without him in my life.

I am expecting to be celibate until my youngest is close to legal age here. It would be deeply unwise for me to get into any kind of NRE situation before then. It would not be great for my parenting. I would act like my sister and that’s not ok. I need to reiterate this to myself a few thousand times. I never get to act like my sister.

I am so scared. Noah, I have only been ok because of you.

I wish we had put the Santa Barbara painting in your room instead of down here in the apartment. You should have been looking at this. I am sorry.

I am sorry for a trillion reasons. I was never as good to you as you deserved. You earned so much more. I am sorry. I am sorry for my pettiness and selfishness. I am sorry for my neurosis and depression. I am sorry I spent any minutes thinking about anyone but you. I was really enjoying the way you were specifically crawling into my head to try to change that part of me at the end. You finally felt like you had the right.

Noah you are right, I will not be ok. I will be a husk. I will be an empty shell, all that is left of a cockroach.

I miss you. You were everything to me. I will get the kids launched into the world. I will do that. I will help them build the kinds of networks we built, the relationships and friendships that carried us through. I will feel empty the whole time. I wanted what we had. I loved how much time we spent together. I loved being ever more enmeshed with every passing year. I loved that we were stunted trees that leaned until we found each other and then together we reached for the light.

Noah, I don’t want to feel better. I want to be feeling shitty but be doing it next to you. Noah don’t leave me.

How can you be gone?

I’m really scared.

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Noah and I have been writing intense long things to each other for most of this year. We did it in a walled garden. I’m rereading big chunks of it and feeling like absolute garbage. I was not as good as he deserved. I did not serve him in the ways he was owed and I feel so much shame. I feel self indulgent and pathetic and weak and unworthy of the glory that is sharing Noah’s life.

I lost it. There are nine million “what if’s” that could have changed this and every single one is beating in my head. I am so sorry, Noah. I don’t know how I will ever feel joy again. You were my joy. You were the center of my heart. You were my partner and my companion and the only one I had to care about pleasing in any way. You were so easily pleased. I loved pleasing you.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life gardening while you played the piano with the window open. We hit the fucking lottery. We were there. Our time was starting. And a perfect storm of stupid things mean you are dead. I am alone. I do hear your voice in my head but I sincerely doubt I will ever find a way to be ok with another human. I can’t. I lost the best one because I was stupid and I didn’t bubble wrap him enough. I shouldn’t have asked him to go ice skating. I shouldn’t have ignored him and left it to be his problem when he told me the boot was too tight and it was hurting the top of his foot. He didn’t have fun. He went for me and I was a jerk and I didn’t help him. I focused on making our daughter have a good time instead because I didn’t feel I could handle them both.

I am a selfish piece of shit and I hate me so much.

I am making sure your babies eat. Yes, including vegetables. Today I said I needed some time alone. Noah I am so sorry for everything. I’m sorry I invited that man to have dinner with our family so that he wrecked this part of our year. Hell, maybe you wouldn’t have died because all the rest of it wouldn’t have happened.

I feel like I have done everything wrong for a very long time. I did not make the choices that guaranteed me all the time with Noah. I fucked up the calculus.

The fact is that he died and it was a ridiculous odds loss and he was a grown up that picked all of the things that happened to him. But I am the daughter of alcoholics and that means that everything is always my fault.

I loved him so much. I loved his too muchness and his brashness and his silliness and his cruelty and his selfishness. I loved his relentlessness. He was so much. He could suck all the oxygen out of a room before replacing it an instant later. He made everyone sparkle and shine. He was good at making people feel interesting.

My chest is burning because it feels wrong for me to breathe if Noah can’t share the oxygen. I want to give to him so much it is ripping me apart.

I don’t need to keep designing my garden so there are hiding places for us to have sex. Well, that simplifies my needs. There are a million things on my list of “do for Noah” and now they are all coming to a stop. I don’t need to have a fucking subscription order for foot shaving tools. We will spend almost no money on alcohol and our food budget is going to go down a lot.

I have started cancelling your monthly recurring stuff. I’m so freaked out. I feel like I am editing you out of the world and it feels morally wrong. Hell, rebuilding rails just came up for renewal. I’m paying that one and letting it work until it stops working. Maybe one of the kids can figure out how to operate it.

I don’t want to.

It was hard shoving myself into the size of box that fit you but it was a good kind of hard. It wasn’t easy and sometimes it chafed but I knew so much happiness with you. Yes, I still suffered from all my shit, but I wasn’t alone. I trusted you enough for you to be the person who got to see me behind closed doors. All of me. You are the only person I trust to really love and want me. You looked for me like water in the desert. I did the same.

Then I lost you.

Noah, how could you leave me?

It’s been a hellish week.

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I can’t believe that a week has passed already. It feels like a day. It feels like 10 years. I feel like there is no sense of time at all. I am in a fog. I am dizzy all the time and I feel like I’m going to hurt myself terribly pretty much any minute. My life is going to get so small. I am going to stay home where I can butt scoot up and down stairs because I don’t feel stable.

I am so scared. Noah has been my bulwark in this life. I don’t want to face the world without him. It sounds horrible and awful and unfair in ways I don’t even know how to wrap my brain around. There are so many tiny what if’s. If he hadn’t broken his ankle. If he hadn’t had surgery. If he hadn’t taken medication. If If If If If If.

There is no fair when it comes to death. Even if someone lives a long time, that doesn’t mean their death is just. Maybe it should have come 50 years earlier and it is no fair that it waited so long.

I have never before noticed how well suited to keening the name “Noah” is.

I have no hope for my future. It will get smaller and more painful with every passing year. I will struggle on to raise my babies. I don’t think I can promise them companionship in their old age. I hope they will forgive me when I need to join their father. I miss Noah. I don’t want to live without him. I will. I have to. I don’t have a choice. I will raise our babies and I will ensure they are as stable and resilient as possible when they become adults but I am broken. This was my chance at a happy family.

I will always know that once I was loved. Once I was loved to distraction and beyond. Once I was everything to one person. He walked through fire for me over and over. In contrast I’m just going to have to keep moving in a frozen hell of pretended normal life. I will never be like everyone else and it doesn’t matter. I will go through the motions of a life but I will be watching through a screen.

I no longer have Noah justifying my existence and writing me permission slips to be in rooms. I no longer have the fact that Noah loves me more than everyone else in the whole world combined to make me feel like I am ok; maybe I am even good. If someone as wonderful as Noah would pick me maybe I am not all bad? If someone like Noah would decide that I was worth working like a demon for to ensure my safety? Maybe I’m not worthless?

Now Noah is gone. The vast majority of our money is tied in up accounts I can’t touch till I’m 67. Once I hit 67, I am set. That’s 24 years in between. I have 11 years, a month, and 14 days until I am done having a minor child. I don’t know yet, but I think we will get child support money from social security in the US. There’s the bank shares money that comes in every year. There is life insurance money. There are Noah’s parents. I’ll bridge the gap; I think.

I never fucking wanted to be a rich widow. This is not why I invested money. I invested money so I could take care of Noah. I was making sure Noah would be safe as he rode out his old age. That’s what I was doing. I am going to keep it and use it to take care of his babies.

We will have fun in the future. We will have adventures. We will explore. We will learn and grow. We aren’t going to stop. Noah would never forgive me if I stopped or if I didn’t push his kids to keep going. We will fucking go. I will be the motor for a long time until they are launched.

Do I want to live that long? 24 years without Noah? Oh my god that makes me shake so hard. Noah. Noah I need you. How could you go? How could you let your body stop? How could something so small stop you?

How could a cockroach like me be the last one standing? I may wobble and look like shit when I walk but I’m mother fucking cruising on like I can’t be stopped.

I wished I believed in Gods so that I could believe that the suffering in my life was because they chose me for punishment for some reason. That I think I could honestly wrap my head around and respect.

Why in the fuck was I so driven to have children? Why wasn’t I happy with just Noah? I am feeling absolutely overwhelmed with grief and I am very upset that suicide is not something I can consider. Every time the thought tries to start “I want to” there is a glitch. No. That is no longer something that is available to me in this life. My children have suffered enough. I can’t want that. Not even in the privacy of my mind, never again. I have to honor Noah.

I have so many regrets right now. I am drowning in them. Did I really serve him as well as he deserved? He never got to be the complete sole focus of my attention and I regret that so much. If I had known that I would have such a short time with him, what choices would I have made?

He died for stupid reasons. He died because everyone has to die. He died because when you read statistics about what could happen if you have surgery or take medication or or or or or or or you never think that one in a million death will be you today. Noah got a higher than average number of lottery ticket wins in this life. His luck ran out.

I don’t particularly want to keep breathing if I won’t have Noah to hold me. I will though. I will keep breathing and eating and sleeping and moving. I will raise my children well. I will earn them sitting by my bedside someday with smiles when I am sick enough that I am allowed to go see their dad. I miss you, Noah.

I know exactly which hangdog expression he would make when I cry, “You weren’t supposed to leave me.” He hangs his head and says, “I know.”

We don’t get to choose what happens to us. There is no deserve. There is no fair in this fuckhole I call life.

I am so angry that a fucking rapist wrecked the last 5 months of my marriage. I have been so fucked up. Noah has been doing work all day almost every day taking care of me and trying to help me calm down. I feel like I let him down by being so weak. I should have been giving to him.

I am trying to think of all the accommodations I am going to need to ask for: like I need Shortie’s teachers to see me write down the things they need me to know in the notebook I am carrying around. If I don’t write it down I cannot be trusted to remember it. Assume I am incapable of forming new memories for the next while. I am going to be in a deeply dissociated state most of the time.

There is a reason I am asking visitors to be spaced out over time. I am worried about my ability to fully stay in the present tense and an outside adult forces me back into reality. This is not a constant problem, but it has been a problem over the last five months and I expect it to get much worse. I am actually literally afraid of being alone right now. I am afraid I will take myself outside in 0 degree weather and stay for hours. Not smoking, just sitting outside until I hurt myself.

I don’t think I’d push it all the way to damage.

I know I won’t if someone is here with me. I am grateful to the friends who are volunteering. I hope this actually works out. I’m scared. The future looks so terribly bleak. For a time I was the most important person in the world to the best man I’ve ever met.

Now I am just a cockroach who won’t fucking die.

I’m not ok

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I miss you, Noah. I am trying to get things done. I am in motion basically every minute because I am afraid that if I stop I will crumble and be unable to get up.

I am so sad. I wish I had died instead of you. I wish I could take your place. If one of us needs to die now, why wasn’t it me? I do not have the purity of soul that you have. The world loves you more than it does me.

I feel sad that the Ruby community around the world is shocked with grief. Your impact is so big. They don’t care that you aren’t there to do the work. You made people feel seen, loved, and important. Like you did for me.

There is no fair in this life. You were the best of us and you are gone. My soul is screaming in agony. I want to want to die. I want to feel so suicidal I don’t care about the pain I will cause my children.

I can’t though. Every time I try to think “I want to die” the thought short circuits in my brain. I can’t ever want that again. I am going to live forever. There is no one to help my kids if I go. Yeah, I have friends who would take them in and not leave them on the streets and they’d have enough money to be ok starting out in life. If our net worth was divided between the kids they would all get close to a million and my in-laws would round that up very soon.

They don’t need money. They need someone who can say every day, “I love you and you still have a future ahead of you full of love, happiness, fun, and belonging. You will find friends and romantic partners and you will have a whole life. I will help you get there.”

I just no longer believe that I have a happy future. My happiness died with Noah. I feel so bad. Noah, how could you leave me?

He’s gone and I will never be ok again.

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What I am doing is making sure my kids are ok. That’s it. I got them out of the house into time with supportive folks so I could strip Christmas from the house. The older two have already told me that they are not ok with us decorating next year.

I’m deep in the regret stage I can list 9 million what ifs that don’t result in me losing the only person who has ever consistently shown up and cared for me. There are a lot of people who have shown up at times. I am deeply lucky like that. Pam will be here in 13 hours. It’s a good thing.

Do you know what isn’t going to be the same cost/reward ratio going forward? Writing. For about 20 years I’ve been writing for Noah. He was my ideal reader. He was the person I most wanted to share my thoughts with.

My smallest one is telling me about how she is going to grow up to be like her dad: happy and joyful the vast amount of the time. This is a big change from the grumpy butt she often is. I told her that she is going to have all the feelings as often as she needs to happen and that is a good thing. She conceded that she will have other feelings, just like her dad did, but he chose to be happy and joyful because that is who he wanted to be and so does she.

When I cried just a little as I climbed into bed she told me, “You are safe. I am here with you.”

I sucked back that sob and said the same back to her. She relaxed into me and went to sleep.

It is remarkable that all of my children have embraced, “This hurts but we will keep walking and we will be ok.” We are roleplaying how to handle different situations that will come up at school. We are talking about how to not piss people off all the time and get hit. For the first time in my fucking parenthood I am saying with my whole heart, “If you know all the answers for the love of Cheese don’t raise your hand every time. Wait until no one else raises their hand, then you do it.” Don’t draw too much attention to yourself. When someone uses a word you don’t know, calmly and with curiosity ask them what it means. You are going to actually learn how to speak Scottish now! This is exciting! When they tell you a funny/clever one compliment them on their fun usage of language.

Don’t go looking for fights.

I went and saw a doctor yesterday. She told me that I could have benzodiazepine or melatonin for sleep because nothing else exists. Yeah. Neither is an appropriate choice for me to lean on as heavily as I would need to lean on something to sleep right now. I’m not going to sleep well at night. Frankly as long as this continues I should use as much time that the kids are in school to nap as I can.

I’m shaking all of the time. I’m being hooked up with bereavement support. I wish I thought it would help me. I think this is going to turn into another time where I am a bad person if I share any details about my past. I think it is going to end in me feeling more isolated and alone.

One of my ex’s is hitting on me and it makes me feel sick.

He got what he wanted. After the kerfluffle in 2016 he had permanent monogamy with me. I wish I could have given him a lot more years.

We touched each other all the time. We were both in the house most of the time and we’d walk past each other and trail a finger, or lean, or kiss, or wipe a cheek on one another hundreds of times a day. Even with how much contact the kids need I feel completely touch starved because I only need one person’s touch and I will never get it again.

It is so clear in my mind that I am not allowed to blame myself because then I would be a bad mother. It’s not my fault. There were a series of places where Noah made choices that should have been fine only they weren’t and if I try to take responsibility I will drive myself mad. This was a terrible accident. People die. I miss him so much.

Noah made a lot of choices in this life. Some of them worked out and some didn’t. That is the summation of a human life.

Soon I think I will need to pull back hard from social media. I can no longer sustain the level of typing I do since I don’t live with an in-house massage therapist.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life worshiping his body and telling him how grateful I was that picked me. He had gotten fucking fit over the past two years of us exercising together more. It was a wonderful body to worship. Every part of us fit so well. I liked where my head hit his shoulder. I liked how we lined up when we were in bed. I miss grabbing him and saying, “Mine.”

Combined with the rape abreactions that are still happening I feel deeply scared and out of control in my body. It doesn’t matter how I feel; it matters how I act.

One of my friends is setting up weekly knife/axe throwing with my son as a specific way to get him out of the house and into a relationship with an adult man. I have told him that he has to start doing things out of the house every week many days a week. Without Noah in this house we aren’t a full and complete ecosystem. We have to go meet other people and make more connections.

It’s remarkable how little I needed other people when I had Noah. He was everything.

Middle child is both looking forward to and dreading school. I think it will be ok. They really want to go do drama with people every day. I think that is a wonderful idea. Noah and I both loved theatre in high school.

I am going to start implementing a move towards school timing immediately because it will be an adjustment. My life is going to become very small and very routine and very rigid because it has to be. When they are at school I will exercise and garden. My mother in law is insisting I get weekly house cleaners; given that she is supporting me for the rest of my life, fine.

I did not cultivate a relationship with my in laws because I was preparing for this. It makes the kids feel better. I think it even made Noah feel better. I gave him a way to have a relationship with his parents that made him feel connected but not smothered. I am proud of that.

I wanted to see what would happen if Noah and I made children together. They are amazing and wondrous. This is going to be a big painful loss but we will walk on. He taught us to be strong. He showed us endless resiliency. He really was joyful and happy most of the time. And we were all such surly bastards so much of the time. I don’t think we will keep falling into that trap.

I told my Shortie that when someone does something and she has to think of how to respond she can think, “What would Daddy do?” Because he would tell a joke or be silly or lighten the mood–he wouldn’t pick a fight. That was not his way. He wasn’t a fighter. He was someone who wanted people to feel special and loved.

I would know better than anyone else.

Another Day In I Am Too Tired For This Shit

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My bed is 7’x7′. How in the hell does a child turn sideways then fall off the bottom?

Yesterday MC had their first visit for assessment to see what sort of neurological testing will help find the correct diagnostic labels so that I can narrow down my research on how to support them better.

It was a good visit but, I think, not what the lady had planned. She had a sheet of questions to ask. Instead of going through those questions MC went through a prepared list of the things they have a hard time with. She flipped her paper over and scribbled like her life depended on it. She scheduled an appointment for me to come back alone and fill out those questions about developmental history. 😂

I had talked MC through how I handle appointments as an adult who does not have anyone to report on childhood milestones/attainment. I forgot that MC is not having my life. Whoops. It’ll be fine.

MC is automatically getting 3 separate assessments based on clinical presentation in this appointment and the intake lady hinted about others that might be relevant after we can actually go through developmental history with a fine toothed comb.

This is how seriously Stanford took EC. I was deeply worried I would not find a way to access similar granularity of help for MC/YC. Stanford did *not* take MC seriously. Stanford asked MC 20 yes/no questions and told me I had a perfect little boy I didn’t need to fix. That was really frustrating. This time the lady watched MC almost vibrate off the chair and noticed “Do you find that you are ever able to sit still?” Only if the kid is in a severe dissociated state because they are imploding under the weight of their own anxiety and it is combined with mutism. No. They can’t just hold their body still like a “normal person”. It is not possible for them.

I am feeling a lot less nervous about this process now. The lady also took it very seriously when I said I have two other children who are also clearly neurodivergent. I don’t know what will come of her making notes about my other kids as well. YC isn’t even on a waiting list at this point.

YC’s flavour of neurodiversity is pretty easy to accommodate within our already heavily modified for neurodiversity lifestyle. EC is doing really well with the structure we maintain. MC needs… something I’m not doing and I don’t know what. I am grateful that the NHS is trying so hard to help me figure out what I should do.

The lady looked really pained when I talked about my own history of being beaten up in school after school and how I was not even a tiny bit surprised when people beat up my children in school. Autistic people are magnets for bullying behaviour.

Human beings often want to hurt people who are different. It’s a thing. A really sucky and terrible thing. I was glad that she showed absolutely no sign of believing that it would be best for my children to be in school. *phew*

Stanford Child and Adolescent Development was quite adamant that there is not a better learning environment for EC than what I provide. They had tiny tweaks to suggest, but nothing major. I hope that the NHS can help me find the tweaks that will give MC also the best learning environment for them. Right now there are a couple of areas that concern me and I don’t know how to fix them. I do need outside guidance.

It’s kind of funny that EC doesn’t mostly overlap with my learning difficulties. His troubles are out in front of me and I can study them without feeling emotionally connected. I just need to support. MC and I share some of the same struggles. The ways in which I have never managed to overcome some of my own challenges inhibit my ability to figure out how to help them make progress. I need a more objective view.

But first I need to go run 4 miles. I’d rather eat glue.

I hit the wall this week. I think I was lowkey sick over the weekend when the kids were all very sick. I kept exercising and working the whole time. I don’t feel like I’m still dealing with a fever but my body wants to tell me to go take a long walk off a short pier. I can’t even tell how much this overreach is about physical load and how much is emotional load.

I feel like my soul is hurting. I miss the physicality of all of my California friendships.

It is already getting much colder and I am not feeling great about the change. My body is hurting a lot. I felt like the tiny increase of warmth of spring was a huge massive welcome change and I was going around outside in skimpy clothing because I was overheating. Now the same temperature range is making my bones ache.

I am not sleeping enough. I am rarely laughing and that can’t be good for me. I feel somber and like I have a flat affect. I feel numb. How can you feel numb and pain at the same time?

I really need to go run. I feel like that is an absolutely outrageous ask just now. Oh well. What I want is not important. What matters is what I do.

I’m about to fucking explode, y’all.

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I am not ok and it is perseverating in my head and if I don’t set it down somewhere I am going to continue to freak out in my house with my kids and that’s not cool. So let’s start there, shall we?

My kids are acting appropriate for their varying ages. All of these stages are hard at this moment in that awesome way that sometimes cycles pop up. My oldest is a fucking teenager with a fucking rude teenager mouth. I feel like he just has to tell me I’m wrong or express exasperation at my stupidity over and over all day long. Often at times when I am not actually wrong or being stupid. I mean… when I am wrong I tolerate a fair bit of sass but it drives me insane when I’m not wrong. Middle child is not wanting to accept responsibility for some areas of forward progress and I’m struggling with that. Youngest is pushing every button and boundary like it is her job… because it is.

So that’s all fun and the background noise of every single day.

I went back and checked my logs (hi, yes I am incredibly obsessive about tracking all kinds of stupid details) and starting in June I went from sleeping 8 hours a night on average over the course of the month to sleeping 6 hours a night on average. The months since then have hovered around 7 hours a night on average. That’s pretty certainly part of why I have been doing much worse. Why did I start sleeping so much less?

Ah, fucking lockdowns are over and I feel incredibly pressured (mostly internally) to get out and Meet People and Volunteer and Be Part of the Community. Also this summer has been quite energetic with gardening tasks as I’m moving towards the permaculture/low key food forest direction. I’m super tired. Also eldest said, “Let’s go ahead and finish the lounge” and I said, “Oh uhhh ok.” I was kinda hoping to procrastinate the work long enough for the paint to go bad. Then I found out my old buddy was coming and I have some projects I said he could help me with. So I started sprinting to get stuff done before he arrived.

Reader, I fucking failed.

I’ve been very much working beyond what I should be. Oh, and late May was my first trip down to England to see A & P then in June I went back down to England to bring Noah and the kids to see A & P. That is seeming like the best decision I made all year.

Oh, and I averaged 6 hours a sleep a night the month I had fucking covid and I slept through 4 days entirely. THAT’S REALLY FUCKING BAD.

I’m not ok, y’all.

July was a sprint of work I was not physically prepared for. I have never taken time to really fully recover from covid, not really. I certainly haven’t carefully increased exercise over time to get back to the fitness I had.

August was a super sprint of work and it was exhausting. September was a lot of work sprinting plus my birthday which was absolutely fucking exhausting to the extreme and I probably made some foolish choices. I was not physically fit enough to do what I did comfortably and I have paid for it. October has been more and more work and then Noah and EC went off to Helsinki then the morning after they got home I ran off to San Francisco in a last ditch effort to say goodbye to A.

In a way there are shadows of my uncle passing. I was too late. I feel like I failed and I am upset with myself. I did get to help P with one of the thornier parts of handling A’s belongings and I am deeply grateful I could perform this service.

Being in San Francisco involved a ton of driving (ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow) and many hours of work and many different social interactions one right after another and very little sleep. I just couldn’t except for a few times when I passed out in awkward scenarios. Three people said they wanted to make plans then cancelled at the very last minute. Woo. That’s always fantastic.

My buddy is a challenge in many ways. I don’t want to say too much about that but I will say that he is very emotionally needy and he wants me to help him process and understand his entire life and that’s a fucking tall order. I am not a therapist. I feel like I am drowning in his feelings. He also can’t remember a lot of our conversations because of how much he drinks so each conversation has to be repeated a few times and that is really frustrating. I don’t begrudge him the needs but my bucket is so fucking empty.

I feel empty. I feel like I can’t take more shit being dumped on me. I feel like I want to scream and scream and scream until I have destroyed my voice from screaming. I want to sleep for several weeks in a row. I want to stop speaking to people at all and I want to go back to lockdown. I am so far into burn out I feel like a pile of ash.

I know that I am a good person to help people process grief but right now I can’t handle the flood of it. It’s not just the one buddy. I feel absolutely surrounded by loss this year. Grandmother in law, A, my buddy’s parents, other friends have lost family members, a different buddy is dealing with her kid self-harming, a somewhat surprising number of pets have passed recently and folks want to talk to me because I give them comfort. Right now it feels so hard.

Oh, yeah, and it’s been an incredibly stressful year on the money front. I think things have settled down now and while we are not fully “on track” we are in a very reasonable place and I’m no longer worried about bouncing payments. But it’s been a fucking lot.

Err, also my roof just got replaced and the scaffolding and construction fuss have been irritating and challenging because to a large degree it has meant that YC has not been able to play outside unsupervised for over a month. That’s not a great situation.

I’m not exercising enough. I stopped my yoga classes because we need to be contributing more to savings. I’m not eating well enough–I am actually not enjoying the kids cooking 4 nights a week because rarely do they put more than 1 vegetable serving in a meal and it’s not doing great things to my body. I’m sleeping for shit.

It goes on and on and on. I’m sure I’m not remembering all the fuss. My head hurts. I am tired of being tired.

I just came to say: goodbye, love.

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The dawn is less bright today. You might think that is because I saw the sun come up over soggy England but, no. This is the first sunrise without Andrew in it.

I first encountered Andrew through Frenzi, a mailing list centred around a group of folks in the bay area who all share a hobby. I met a lot of brilliant, witty, argumentative, wise, and patient people through there. Of course there were a lot of dipshits too.

Andrew was the first person to flame me on the internet. To be fair I had told him that I was surprised that I was never attacked because I felt like I often expressed contrary/unpopular opinions. So he taught me what it felt like to be flamed. Ouch. I learned an important lesson: Andrew was as painfully literal as I am. If you say/imply you want something he will make it happen if he possibly can.

I think I first actually spoke to Andrew and Paula at a birthday party for a friend. I am pretty sure that was my first time ever going to a Thai restaurant and I completely fell in love with the food and the company of the people I was lucky enough to sit next to. Specifically: Paula. She was so kind and gentle. It surprised me that someone as gentle and carefully considered was suited to be married to someone as prickly as Andrew. Later I came to understand how they complemented each other.

When I first moved out of living with Tom things were scary for a while. I was not sure how I was going to pay my bills and still have money for food. Andrew told me that he would absolutely not accept me going without food and if I was that skint I needed to let him know and he would make sure I ate.

With my background of poverty and periodic starving because my mother could not afford food at all he seemed absolutely unbelievable. Why would he care?

I feel like that was one of the overarching story arcs of our relationship. I have never really understood why he cared so much about me. He frequently made offers of support and love and affection and I didn’t know how to accept them. He was also very free with his opinion and he was often insightful and hilarious. One memorable time he found out who I had started dating and he said, “Oh Krissy, dump him. He’s not smart enough for you and you are going to get so bored.” He was right on the money. He loved Noah for me.

Paula helped finish the walls in my garage in Fremont. Andrew helped paint the ceiling. It made me so happy looking at that ceiling for years knowing that Andrew helped. I could feel his (and Paula’s and Taylor’s because T did soooooo much on that project with me) love surrounding me. Co-working has always been my strongest love language.

Andrew introduced me to books and told me about movies I should watch. He was very annoyed he could never get me to juggle.

We had a big falling out around my 30th birthday. We both did things that hurt the other quite badly. One of the things that I am most grateful for in this life was the chance to try once then a second time to repair the damage from that situation.

Andrew forgave me for being selfish and stupid and cruel. That was a gift he did not owe me. I am lucky that I got to have him in my life for decades. I got to have closure on talking through a situation that hurt me deeply and he felt truly contrite and loving and apologetic. He showed me how to repair a deep wound. Not very many people have been able to manifest that complete journey with me in my life. Andrew was *special*.

I am grateful to the marrow of my bones that I went and saw him twice this year. I loved helping him drive the boat and operate the locks on the canal. He told me that I learned how to drive the boat unusually quickly–he felt confident enough to just leave me alone with it after just a couple of hours of supervision. I felt elated through and through. Like me he wasn’t the sort to hand out unwarranted compliments. I had to have a stern chat with him about why I set the boundaries with my neurodiverse children where I do and he took that on and manifestly started following my rules. I felt respected.

I feel like that is the core. That is the core of what Andrew gave me: he saw me and treated me like someone he respected deeply. I met him at a time in my life when I had not experienced very much of that.

No one is perfect. But Andrew was perfectly wonderful and I am so grateful that I got to have him for so long. Here in the end he is even leaving me an extra gift. I may not be able to say goodbye to him, but he asked me to come to the bay and as a result I will get a lot of love and support from other people who have known him and loved him for as long or longer than me.

It is very hard carrying grief alone. Being able to share grief lightens the burden and helps everyone remember that no one fully dies until everyone who knows and loves them is gone. Andrew’s spirit is going to live on for a long, long, long time.

That’s what I mean

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I used to ask my mom strange questions. I remember that I had a few in particular that I’d ask over and over and she’d kind of freak out. One was: “What would be the most important thing for you to keep if we become homeless and we lose our car?” That question really bothered her and I asked it over and over and over all through my youth.

My oldest asks me what I would do if she died. I don’t think she is suicidal–it’s not that sort of question.

When I’m doing work I often like to have a show I have basically memorized in the background. I haven’t ripped the DVDs yet so West Wing hasn’t been my show of choice since I left the US. Here it is Call the Midwife. There’s an episode where a one-show character is introduced. Mrs. Jenkins is an old woman who spent 30 years in a workhouse and all of her children died there. This character exists in the show to show the rich and privileged main character, Jenny Lee, what it is like for people who have really suffered in poverty. Mrs. Jenkins cries loudly “The workhouse howl” as she keens her grief when she is alone.

That episode came on last time when I was painting and my oldest was sitting close to me working on her drawing while I painted. I said, “That’s what I mean. You always ask what I would do if you died. I tell you I would go on living but I would never be ok again. That’s what I mean.”

She looked utterly shattered.

Life is painful. Sometimes there are people you cry over forever. The smallest, stupidest reference to my mother can lead to me crying. That grief is so close to the surface that if a gentle wind blows away the leaves covering it then it goes off like a bomb. Am I still alive? Of course? Am I ok? In a manner of speaking. I smile. I project happiness. But I ache every day because there is a piece of me missing. A piece that I tried so hard to replace with friendships only it never worked out.

I’m almost 40. When will I stop crying over my mother? I’ll let you know if it ever happens.It is absolutely terrifying to consider how much it would break me if I lost a child. Some days I feel like I am held together with paperclips and string. How could I replace that much loss?

I need them to out live me. So eat your fucking vegetables and get regular exercise, damnit.

Loss

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I support your right to make this choice.
I understand that you did not have a choice.
I don't truly respect your choice.

The cessation of pain is what matters though, right?
I am so glad you are not hurting anymore.
Now I hurt more; there's nothing I will do to ease this burden.

I miss your voice.
I miss your smell.
I miss the possibility that things could change and we could love each other without hurting each other.

I miss you.
And I miss you.
And I even miss you. Though only the Gods know why.

You only caused me pain when I asked very nicely.
You never caused me pain in any single way.
I don't know what you did except hurt me. 

It doesn't seem to matter how much I love you or miss you.
Your story was really and truly never about me; I was a witness.
Even though your life could have been about me and it wasn't.

I grieve so hard for you.
Any piece of fresh grief touches the memory of you and reignites the pain afresh and the waves feel like they will swamp me.
"Have you ever lost anyone close to you?" Dripping with scorn and implication that I am not allowed to grieve for anything to do with you.

It's all tied up. 
I can't separate one grief from another today.
What I know is that there are no more chances to fix anything.

There is no way to find you more help.
There is no way to find you new treatments.
There is no way to find our way to a new way of being.

You are gone. 
You and
You and

Time has run out.

Thinking about Alex

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The child I lost is named Alex. I’m not sure why, I doubt I would have given the child that name if he/she had actually been born but in all of my thoughts about him/her that’s the name the baby has. I would be 18/19 weeks pregnant right now, so not quite halfway through the pregnancy. I would be feeling movement. The early fluttering is some of the most powerful magic I have ever experienced. Feeling the creation of a Being, a Person inside me made me feel connected to the source of all life in a way I have never felt before. I’m sorry I am not experiencing that magic with Alex right now.

In some way I kind of wish that we would just hurry up and try to get pregnant so that I can bury my feelings of loss in the joy of another life but that feels wrong. In addition to Shanna deserving a full two years of milk I think that Alex kind of deserves the space in my heart and body that he/she would have had for nine months. I don’t feel critical of other people who get pregnant quickly–anything but. This grief is such that I don’t think I could possibly judge other people for how they handle it.

I’m bleeding again. I think that is why it hit me tonight. Once upon a time I greeted each monthly flow with relief, “Whoo hoo! Dodged the bullet again!” Not anymore. Now every time my body empties of blood I cry and see the loss of a person. I see the child who will never be. I can’t believe how much this hurts. I say this and know that I speak from the unbelievable privilege of having a living child. I feel desperately ashamed at my hubris and greed. I am so selfish. There are so many women in the world who would give anything to have a child–just one–and I’m crying because I had a normal menstrual cycle while using birth control. I’m sorry for being so selfish.

I miss my Alex. So I grieve. Even though I feel like I don’t really have the right I cry anyway.

When discussing blame for losing Alex my therapist said, “I knew it was your fault–I just didn’t know how.” It was really funny at the time. Every woman who loses a child feels like they are to blame. Sometimes I feel like I lost Alex because I am just not a good enough person. I didn’t deserve that child. I don’t know how to reconcile that with what I see when I look at Shanna. She is so beautiful and so perfect. How can I be a good enough person to deserve her and not a good enough person to deserve another child? But there is no deserving or not deserving in this. There is only luck of the draw and there is no such thing as fair.

Tonight I rail at fate. I want my child back.