Tag Archives: boundaries

Where is the balance?

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I am having a whole lot of feelings. I am feeling out of sorts and off balance. I feel like I usually struggle with the intensity of spring–that’s a whole thing. But I have additional things weighing in. I am still in my feelings about my mother in law. I need to figure out how to word a deeply emotional appeal to her that is about shaping our relationship going forward. We have been in a much better spot for a while and I want to continue that but I also need some boundaries. The past couple of months have involved a flurry of advice. I’m not great at advice. This is going to be hard. I have to describe myself in a way that has weight and intensity without sounding overly controlling or fierce because this is all stuff I need her to want to do and it is a departure from her normal wants and that’s a big sell.

I am struggling with some friend dynamics. I have put a ton of energy into out of town stuff that has since fallen through and that is causing a major crash emotionally. I have different energy for starting, middling, or ending projects. I used a lot of start energy only to have it fizzle out, which is deeply demoralising. It makes it really hard to push forward on starting energy in other parts of my life. I have so much that I need to be starting that it is creating a really terrible loop in my head. I just don’t want to. It feels pointless and stupid and demoralising and like I can’t force myself–it’s too hard. Hell, I don’t know how much is going to turn into middling energy projects and I don’t know how big the load is going to be.

It makes me feel really timid about agreeing to anything in the medium term. Even more timid about the long term. My energy level for long term projects is very close to capacity. Yet I can’t help but feel like I am missing a really big important track of thought if I don’t think about the long term because most of my long term at this point is less long term than I have truly internalised.

Pam, I just finished watching the entirety of Fresh Off the Boat; I had only watched one and two before this. It appealed to me so deeply I cannot even give it justice. I feel like I had to immigrate because that way I get to have an opportunity to live up to the standards of my parenting role model: Jessica Huang. When white parents think that I am intense/odd/overly forceful I have a whole montage of parenting. To be fair, before the last few weeks it was mostly a combination of the Hispanic and Black mothers I knew as a young child but man I want Jessica’s vanity. I do. I want to love myself with that bone deep conviction. And I am now an immigrant mom so I am allowed a lot of leeway. I win.

But, as Jessica wisely says, you retire when you die so you should master a set of skills then move on to your next big focus. I may have 13 more years of active parenting ahead of me but that’s… not the long term. That’s a lot marathon of endurance but I’ll be 55. It doesn’t give me the lead time on a next thing that finishing at 47 would have given me, but life choices have consequences. I’m really glad to have her.

Five really is my favorite age. I am coming down like a hammer on some behaviors I have problems with. I am having intense internal conflict around the fact that I need to be honest with myself that it is not the same thing as formal ABA therapy… but it’s a similar dynamic. I have some substantial needs around behavior interactions. This is where it gets really fucking tricky living in a house with a bunch of neurodiverse people. It would be really easy for us to have a negative set of interactions a lot of the time because we are all kinda jerks. Five is a magnificent opportunity to work on code switching behaviors. Five year olds think mommy is the most magical, god-like figure on the planet and they are simultaneously food avoidant, intensely individuating, and really fucking sure they are the boss of the universe.

It’s a lot of goddamn work.

In many ways it is much easier this time around because I am living with the product of my hard work. Like Jessica, I feel validated. Sure, my measure of success is very different and I have different goals for my kids but that’s ok! I’m a Californian mother moving to Scotland not a Chinese mother moving to the US; there are going to be differences.

I relish this challenge. It is time to introduce code switching. I did it earlier with the other kids and it was a more gentle on-ramp but the pandemic has changed my timetable. I now get to do in a year what I usually do in four years. Well hey, part of the point of home educating is you get to do things on your own schedule and adapt to life as it happens.

We need a baseline of “this is what it feels like to live and move in a body that is being given what it needs.” We have been in survival mode for a very long time. It’s time to slow that all the way down and teach this five year old what it needs to be like.

And now I am out of time after being interrupted three times. Sigh. I did not complete the thought.

Almost here

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My birthday is coming up. Going to Texas and England this year means I am not running away by myself. (Important note: the woman we went back to Texas to see has now passed away. I have no regrets over prioritising that goodbye trip over other more fun activities for this year.) Noah wants to be thoughtful and asked me what I want. I want to not want anything so I can’t feel let down. I want to have patience for the 973,383 times I will have to remind my children to do basic chores (like brushing teeth). I want to not miss my mother. I want to go back and rewrite my back story so that my impending birthday doesn’t feel like a hand grenade about to land on my head. A buddy suggested that I go camp somewhere for cheap, but I have been working too hard. I couldn’t right now. My hands are trashed.

I have an old friend staying with me. It is complicated in the way that integrating a new person with deep grief, and addiction issues, and learned helplessness will be. To be fair, every time I feel like I am going to freak out about an issue I have to address he is responsive and polite and most of my requests have been acknowledged and respected. But negotiating and setting boundaries is hard. It’s One More Thing on my emotional chore list and I’m tired.

It has been a fucktastically busy year. Busy on so many levels and my exhaustion is, once again, bone deep and completely saturating my soul. I feel numb and on fire and empty and aching. I deeply miss the comfort of tracking things that happen in my blog because I benefit from the space to process but mostly I do not feel I can anymore. I have reached a certain age where I now have to be realistic about the fact that I am not really going to make more very close friendships. Sure I can find new activity partners, but it isn’t the same thing. The people I have met in the last few years I am deeply conscious of this careful distance I keep. They are not allowed to know me. And I cannot talk about my deep relationships anymore because when I do I ruin them and it is absolutely all my fault.

So I do small bits of processing with people but very little in my historical record. I do almost none publicly. I mostly stuff my feelings and feel disconnected. I do not expect or hope for any kind of improvement.

I worry that the adhd medication was effective and useful for a time and it has gotten to the point where it is causing as many problems as it helps and I am starting the process of weaning off (with medical supervision do not fucking criticise me).

I watch the incoming terrifying blend of natural, political, social, and financial disasters hitting the UK with a sense of grim apprehension. I have been waiting all my life for a moment like this. I feel horrible about the fact that a lot of people are going to suffer terribly, some are going to die, but it won’t be my family. I continue my grim plod towards being able to provide a variety of supplemental food because I think famine is coming. I am installing solar panels with a battery system. I am installing rain butts, many and as large as I can manage. A chicken coop is finally being built. Hell, I’m even building a firewood pile because I worry that there will be a cold snap before the solar panels are installed. By the end of fall I will finally have my polytunnel set up for next year’s food growth.

I am working as hard and as fast as I can.

Noah’s job has managed to go most of the way towards fixing the issues that were happening with his salary. This is good. It would be a terrible time to go do a job hunt. I think we only lost a year’s worth of progress towards retirement. I am deeply aware that the fact that he is so insulated from the current global difficulties with regards to fair pay that he is still going to be able to retire before 60 means that I will never really understand the rest of my generation. Marrying him was hitting the lottery. I did not expect this. There is no fair. There is no deserve.

Even in company I feel lonely. I know I am not meeting anyone else’s emotional needs and they are not meeting mine. I do not know what could be done to change this. What I do know is that I am not suicidal and I am financially and physically prepared for more hardship than 90% of the planet. Maybe my expectation that things are going to fucking suck is almost a good thing. I am going to persevere. I will endure. I don’t need to be happy. I need to get the fucking work done.

And right now the next task on my list is to go make Middle Child a birthday cake. They are turning 12. Puberty is arriving and it’s going to be a wild fucking ride.