Monthly Archives: April 2023

I never have to worry again about looking for that.

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One of the things that I have always found myself doing is latching onto a certain song and repeating it in my head for weeks. Sometimes it is surprising that I casually catch just a phrase from a song and then I am completely obsessed. Right now it is Taylor Swift’s [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KpKc3C9V3w](The Archer). My maiden name was Archer so that adds a layer to me, but I only started listening to this song in the past couple of weeks even though the album came out a few years ago.

I’ve been thinking about jaye saying he doesn’t like the capitalist association with “success” when it comes to evaluating the value of a life. It has really lodged in my mind. My story arc is sometimes hard for me to keep perspective on. So like, when I was a kid I played with household budgeting as a hobby. I knew I was going to get an accident settlement monthly starting when I turned 18 and I’d have it till I was 30 to get done what I could. I wanted to go to college. I wanted to not live with my family. I wanted to not need to have anyone say that I owed them for the support they gave me.

I wrote out millions of possible life plans. How I was going to get a teaching degree and buy a house and by the time I hit 65 I would have a paid off house and $250,000 in investments outside my teaching pension. That was my plan. That was what “success” was going to look like for me financially. Well, that and I had to have kids by the time I was 30 or I wasn’t going to bother with the rest of the story arc. My life was rather unpleasant by any measure and if I didn’t find a way to completely change the focus and mandate that I have no choice but to stay so I’d better learn how to be a stable provider.

I know that a lot of people who deal with wanting to die do not manage to make deals with themselves that allow them to stay. I’m not judging that. Everyone writes their own deals with themselves. I could not live up to the deals that other people make–I don’t have their internal resources. I’m different.

I knew what I wanted my arc to look like very young. It was find a way to be part of a family or quit.

Noah and I were talking the other day in our morbid way about the various signs of our mortality that pop up. We’ve had this conversation in an ongoing way for the last 18 years. Oh, and he has this browser extension that shows him the current expected lifespan left for a man who has lived to his current age in a countdown. So every fucking time he opens a new tab he sees that number. We really focus on time.

We have spoken for years about what we would do if we lost one another sometime soon, meaning in five-ish years or less. Obviously it changes as time goes by, as we have different experiences and levels of development together. Do you know why he got his first vasectomy? Because he decided that he was done creating children and I said flat out that if he died in the next five years I would probably see if I could find a different partner and have one more child.

The funny thing is, by the time he had the vasectomy reversal I would not have been willing to add a third child with a different partner at that point. I was too old. I wouldn’t have wanted that kind of gap with a half-sibling. The reality of dating as a single parent is step-kids would probably have been part of the story and I didn’t want yours-mine-ours. I would not want to make anyone feel “left” for a “new family”.

And one of my very deepest core kinks is forced impregnation. So him changing his mind and deciding to have a third kid once I had already accepted it as an impossibility and I’d mostly moved my life onward… he put a choke chain on me. And that’s fucking hot. I could be five years away from being an independent adult instead of taking care of children. Instead it’s thirteen years.

It changes a lot of my story arc going forward. I am grateful for his decision. It deepened our bond in a way I can’t fully express. Combine that with the fact that he has put in thousands of hours asking me deep, probing questions about every facet of my life mean that he has seen me go through deep and massive changes. He has pushed me to grow and change and he has not accepted half-hearted attempts. We are fairly brutal with each other in our gentle way.

So this week we were talking about a mutual friend and how things are going in their life. They are going through a breakup and they are sad about feeling like they have to start over again trying to find someone to be their person. Noah nodded when I was telling him. He said that given that neither of us are likely to die anytime soon and there is absolutely no sign of us wanting to split… and even if we did split up… we have that person. If one of us dies that will not change the fact that in this story of our lives we found that person already. It’s not that we would be celibate for the rest of our lives but they would be temporary companions. We would be kind to them. We would probably love them. But it would be different.

I get to be part of a family. I get to live in a house I own. I have more than $250,000 in the bank. I earned my credential and I taught. I live two miles from my best friend from childhood. I regularly speak to dozens of other friends who have known me for well over 20 years.

Where to go for future success?

Oh, there we come back to all that insecurity and the knowledge that good friendships come out of missteps and corrections and second and third and fourth and fifth chances. But I’m so old and tired and I am really out of fucks. I’m listening to this fucking song over and over and I’m thinking about how many relationships have to have tension and sideways nudges as you figure out how to settle in next to each other on the friend-bench.

Something I’ve learned is that people really like it when they get to do you a favor. But I’ve reached such a place in life where accepting favors feels mixed and complicated and bad. I don’t feel like I deserve help. I have money to hire somebody and I should just be fine with that being good enough. But that’s not how you make friends.

Making friends with new people as an adult with children is hard. Mostly it means leaving the kids at home and going out alone. That feels so exhausting and pointless because 80-90% of the effort won’t lead to a friend. That’s just how the numbers work for me. I’ve played this game a long time. Although the pool is smaller here. I might get a much different percentage since I can’t fuck anyone. It’s a very low percentage of my old friend group that I haven’t fucked. Mostly the straight women and gay men.

It’s not that easy learning how to make friends without using sex. I’ve been doing it since I was a small child. Yes, I realize that it was unhealthy and problematic. I’ve had all the therapy on that topic, thanks for your concern. I’ve had a few years to practice making friends without sex through parenting but that’s a mixed bag. I don’t want all of my friends to be the parents of people my kids hang out with.

So when I say that I know that 80-90% of the effort that goes into making friends is waste its because I have always been someone who earns a fair bit of negative feedback. I don’t always agree with the group consensus and I put forth my view and I am more willing to walk away than compromise a whole lot of the time. I know how I create my own problems. But the thing is: I have limited spoons in my drawer. The biggest thing I can’t get back is time. Time I could have been putting into the projects that are closer to my own heart and my own self-actualisation efforts. I’m a vain asshole. I don’t have to earn money so I build the space that I want to live in. Before I die there won’t be a thing on the house that will need replacing in the next 30 years. I listen Sam Vines and I’m careful about what boots I buy.

I don’t remember if I mentioned this here. But I’m planning to have a 60th birthday party. It will be my first party since 30. Some of my friends will be in their 90’s. I hope that there will be a sizeable number of people from around town who want to come. But I have to earn that. I have to figure out how to create relationships with people such that they are interested in coming and meeting the wonderful cast and characters from all of the stories I’ve told. They will be able to say, “So what happened after that?” I want to have relationships with people that are deep enough for them to care about backstory for one another. I want to meet their families and friends too. I will go first!

Because when I introduce the two of you at the party I want to be able to say, “You two are going to get along like a house on fire. Person A you need to tell how ‘x’ happened and Person B you need to tell how ‘y’ happened. You’ll figure it out from there.” In order to get to know people you have to spend time. Knowing that the vast majority of it will turn into a loose, distant tie, or even an enemy–not a friend.

It’s not all bad. Studies say that we get the best referrals from our loose tie network.

It matters to put the time and energy in. It matters to create the opportunities and follow through. That is the absolute bedrock of friendship.

Dude, I slept 11 hours last night. Then this morning I burst into tears because I could not figure out what I could eat fast enough because my brain was moving so slowly. So today I am recognising that I restarted exercise a little fast after the last two weeks of illness. I am resting because otherwise I’ll just bloody hurt myself again and then I’ll fuck up the trip.

Getting older has helped me see these kinds of consequences coming before they punch me in the face.

Life likes to remind me that the countdown is always happening. I don’t know anyone else with my full constellation of physical problems who can be as active as I can. It is a very delicate dance of pushing myself very consistently but with a lot of respect paid to rest.

I have far more than 10 days of reasonable working hours for chores to get done in 5 days. Where do I get this chore list?

Part of it comes from seeing in my mind what I want to look out my windows and doors and see in exactly 18 years, 5 months, and 1 day. I know how long it will take to get a lot of those pieces to look how I want them to look. It is better if I get the manure and compost and munch spread now so I can get back and immediately put out all the seeds right as we hit the average last frost date.

I am not interested in spending a ton of money to have a shiny penny new “thing I bought” to show off. Is it stupid? Sure. Is it not what other people care about? Oh absolutely. I have a whole bunch of other goals tied up with it. Including finding ways to make my not very private garden into a place where kinky motherfuckers can go do fun things outside so long as they are quiet. I will have extra gags if you forgot to bring one.

I live along a public walking path and I am not supposed to build a taller fence but I can grow whatever the fork I want. My neighbors said they wouldn’t mind bamboo (I asked because apparently a lot of lawsuits come up when people plant bamboo and I am a scaredy cat) and I have a bunch of trees already starting that are going to be the perfect height to block view into the garden. I really enjoy playing outside in a bower of flowers. My kids had better fucking move out someday.

I want to have a good spot for 1st of May outdoor fucking even if there is snow on the ground. I want to have completely deniable furniture that can be used for restraining people and times of year when they cannot be seen unless someone comes quite close inside the garden. I have plans.

But it will also be set up so someone can just sit there and find actual quiet away from the steady noise. I want enough of a noise buffer in the physical environment to make it feel actually secluded. This kind of thing takes planning. I will have even more neighbors by then. If I want quiet I have to create it.

If I want relationships I have to create them. I have to spend time. And that’s when I hear FUCKING TAYLOR SWIFT SING “WHO COULD STAY? I’M READY FOR COMBAT” AND JUST UGHGHEW;HADSFK;HSADF;KJSDF;HLDFSjkln;

Kids for 13 years, only 18 years till the party. If I want friends, like people I have an actual deep and complex relationship with, realistically I should be putting in the most effort in the next 8 years. Because to really get to friends it takes 2-5 years of doing things with someone frequently. In my experience.

Time is ticking away. If I don’t need someone to be My Person that is a very specific freeing point. I want to know people. I want to be able to see through them. I want them to be able to see through me. I want shenanigans. I want silliness and doing things.

Did I mention that I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open? Walking around feels like I am wearing a weighted body suit. I usually spend 3 days of my period hanging out horizontally as much as possible because I’m wiped out. I skipped what should have been day one of that. So today on day two I am drowsy and weary and I want to talk to myself. Because I should not try hard to work on reading right now. I love to learn, but if I want to see right through me and do what I want to do in this life it takes having the strength to do it. If I fuck up my body worse I won’t hit my goals and I will hate myself.

Success is walking the tightrope that is my ability to be a fit and active human. If I were willing to spend 40% of my waking hours resting doctors would be happy with me. They have been telling me to for years. Instead I push and I work when I can barely open my eyes. Sometimes I crawl when I’m doing chores because I do not have the ability to walk.

Does it even fucking matter? Probably not most of it. But some of it does and almost all of it is related to me being able to say what I have done in and with my life and I know I did it to my absolute limit as long as I could. Is it petty and stupid? I don’t know. I hear “Who could stay” and she means who could stay in her life because she is always fighting with everyone.

I need to be able to hold my head up high and say that no matter where I started or what has happened to me, this is what I have done. I did it no matter how many people told me I couldn’t or I shouldn’t or they didn’t agree or they thought I was stupid. I did it because I said I would and I keep my word. It doesn’t matter how I feel while I do it, it matters what I do.

When you are trying to make friends you don’t tell all the stories right up front. You need to leave just a smattering, leaving bread crumbs for the next one but not telling it this time. You can’t do all the talking or you don’t get to know them and it’s not a friendship, it’s a performance. There are all these fucking rules. I’ll figure them out. But probably not today. I think it is time to go to bed. Even though I’ve only been up for eight hours. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.

I need to fertilise the soil so the trees can grow up so I can have privacy fucking out there. It’s a need to activity.

Deck

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This property is a mixed bag. I keep telling myself that once I get everything repaired to a better standard that it can finally stop being so expensive to live here. 😢

Also known as, time to replace the deck before the 2 year old in the apartment gets hurt playing outside her door. I am consciously choosing the most expensive/longest lasting materials at every stage of repair. I know about Sam Vines’ boots.

Being challenged is good.

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I’m trying to convince myself so please forgive me for protesting a bit too much right now.

I don’t know how people balance all the roles they play in life. I really struggle with the constant triage of priorities. There is no way for me to have a set list of what order I handle tasks in. My life is too complex.

This week became more complicated because we found out that Noah’s surgery wasn’t just to get the weird screw thing out of his arm it turned out that he had almost completely severed his tendon. Whoops. He can’t use his dominant hand at all for weeks. He is also having a gout outbreak in his left foot and he can barely walk and he can’t stand for long at all. So he literally must be in bed for a lot of the day or in a chair with his foot elevated. The last time he didn’t rest enough the attack went on for four months.

I mean, his job is having to just deal with him going on temporary leave but he also does a fuck ton in the house. Most of it he can’t do… indefinitely. Most of the time he does a lot of covering for my disabled ass. He does a solid half of the cooking. He cleans. He helps with kid-things.

Oh, and I had already scheduled going on a trip with one of my kids through some of the biggest art galleries in Western Europe starting nine days from now. We’ll be gone two weeks. At the end of the trip Noah has to bring our 5 year old to London to meet me because we could not get a passport appointment in Edinburgh in the last 5 months of trying. Yeah. That’s gonna be a fun trip.

My sexy life is really not in my top 10 list of priorities right now. I am tracking so many lists in my brain I feel like I am about to go mad.

I’m also trying to help my friend set up a retreat. She’s had a bunch of health complications and other life frustrations so the process is going slowly and I have to keep circling back around. It is taking up a lot of room in my brain.

The garden work I need to do right now is such a long list that my hands couldn’t sustain the typing. IT’S SPRING, DAMNIT. I can fill absolutely as many hours out there as I am willing to spend. (And all of them make me SO HAPPY.) I think about it so many hours of the day that it is definitely more than a 40 hour/week gig. I have learned so much more about soil biology and now I want to spend all my time figuring out companion groupings for plants. Thinking about other things feels like a serious imposition.

I’m just starting to feel enough better after being sick twice in two weeks that I can re-start running. I haven’t done it yet though. Today has really been the first day when it might have been at all reasonable and I’ve been working since my eyes opened.

The more things I have to do the more I want to type at myself to list it all so I can try to figure out what to do first. But not just a to do list. I need to reflect all the way down on why something is more or less important.

I have been maintaining excellent self discipline about continuing to plow through books. I’m really happy about that. I’m managing about two a week and that feels like a good thing right now since I’m mostly reading books about permaculture and I need to finalise my design layout for this year like yesterday. I’m also working on a couple of other non-fiction topics that I’m happy about. And I have a couple of kink books I have never read that I picked up recently cause they sound neat.

Cause I have a lot of time to think about sex. I drift pass this space mostly so I can be happy that at least someone is out there doing the fun stuff.

In the next week I need to do some batch cooking for the time when I am gone since they are going to be on pure survival mode. I need to write down organised lists of all the stuff that needs to happen. Once I write the list I need to put them in the specific order of most important to least important and I need to just hope that the top 3 things happen without being allowed to be cranky about stuff that is missed. I need to leave everyone with a full drawer of clean pants. It’s fine if their other clothes get gross but everyone needs clean pants for the whole two weeks. Hell, I bought Noah a whole extra week worth today because he will not be up for dealing with the laundry.

Triage, triage, triage.

As much as I like to do celebration cooking I absolutely loathe day-to-day home cooking. It’s boring as shit. I feel stabby. I have to just STFU and do it. So much of it.

I also need to finish the tax paperwork he was supposed to finish because that’s due when I’m leaving anyway. Fun. Paying taxes in two countries is kinda annoying but I’m happy to be here so I’ll keep it up.

Oh yeah–do I have friends? I think I have friends. I suppose I should see people sometimes? Luckily T talks to me every week by video call so it helps me feel less isolated. Which is mixed–I might have to work a lot harder at cultivating local relationships if I couldn’t still cling like a limpet to my Californians.

New people are scary. I’m a lot. I am definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. I am neurotically particular about a great many things. I get RSD like whoa. I was a professional new kid (was a student in 33 schools preschool-grad school) so I’ve met a lot of new people. Most of them just don’t have enough bandwidth in their brain for new people. Some will throw rocks. A few will like me. And then every very very small percentage of the time… I make a friend. I am a lucky woman because I have more than two close friends. That is not promised to anyone in this life. I should not be greedy. Maybe my luck is running out. Who knows. New people are scary. But you can’t get to yes without risking no.

It is hard absorbing the opportunity cost in terms of time and energy lost through connections that are briefly explored before I move on.

Even though I don’t live out in the countryside I act like I do. I live and work on my property most of the time. We are homebodies in a way I never expected. My life has not worked like this in the past. In California there were always so many strong ties, higher ranked priorities, and the fact that getting places in a car is just less effort than riding around so we didn’t stay home much.

I was really enjoying the constant fucking we were doing a few weeks ago. Now it seems like just a dream. Ah well. I’m old enough to know that whatever is happening now will not always happen.

This is a little weird

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Ok, so I think I am starting to have a better relationship with my mother in law. Apparently she finally decided that she couldn’t get rid of me and she now has affection for me? She said it in a really awkward sort of way. She said that her sons don’t think she will love the people they have sex with–it’s their modesty. That’s why we had such a rough introduction to one another on the phone when he had his motorcycle accident back in the day. Or something? It was confusing.

But the last visit was frankly pretty dang positive. I get the impression that my understanding and supportive words and manner for how difficult her mother was to deal was taken well. I did my judgy thing and this time it didn’t blow up. Woo. I told her that I completely understand why she has simply thrown away her mother’s hoard and it was incredibly kind and giving of her to do so much for the woman who abused her so badly. I do not have it in me to do such a thing. That takes an intense level of character to fucking do your duty as a daughter. She didn’t let her mom shit all over her–she had boundaries. But she made sure the taxes got filed. She made sure the bills got paid. She cleaned up the disgusting, nasty, health hazard hoards that her mother accumulated many times in her life. Holy shit I can understand what that means.

I’ve cleaned up a lot of hoards. Including some that required gloves and masks because the air was not fit to breathe.

I saw her mother’s house. I know that I saw the house not long after she moved in and the hoard had been entirely disposed of for the last place she lived. The woman did not deal with rubbish. Including food that was completely and totally inedible and it might hurt someone.

I had a shockingly polite relationship with Great Grandma. We spoke as judgy bitch teachers about methodology and pedagogy. We got along. She was effusively in favor of me homeschooling the kids–but I had to win her over first. When we first met she did that attacking thing she does with fucking everyone and I was able to throw off the names of most of the important academic theorists of the last 100 years and explain exactly which pieces of what research I lean on for the decisions I make. She talked to my kids. Then she went back to the nursery school where she was volunteering to teach gardening to the children. She later told me I should definitely not send my kids to school because I had far more to give them that was of value than all of the teachers in her school put together.

Great Grandma was not a nice person. She was a bitch. She was severely abusive to her children to a degree I have never even nodded at. But she was a single mother to four children in the 1950’s. She parentified the shit out of her kids. She beat them when they didn’t take care of themselves. She beat them whenever she didn’t like a decision they made. She threw them out of the house in night clothes when they tried to take independent action as 18 year olds.

She was also incredibly intelligent and super well educated. She did a graduate degree in geology I think in the 1960’s. She babysat at night so she could help younger single mothers get higher education. She worked in very hard schools. After half a century of teaching she retired… to volunteer in preschools teaching underprivileged children how to garden.

No one is one thing or another. No one is black or white. People are complicated. People have a lot going on and mostly they don’t even know what all it is. It is hard for people to learn how to introspect. It doesn’t absolutely require professional help but it does require time. Time to sit and think and figure out why you are doing stuff. It’s not easy.

Great Grandma put a lot of good into the world. She did a lot of things that were really unusual for someone of her generation and poverty level.

I can look at her and see how I would make similar choices in a similar situation. She had no room for a personal self in her life. She was a tool and she was ground to a bloody fucking nub and shit rolls down hill. I mean tool in my personal usage. The way I see myself. Not like in the P!nk song.

I think I have it in me to be horrible and I am very very lucky that I have been able to construct a life in which I no longer vibrate with so much rage that I scream at my kids.

I understand that she was a bitch. She was a bad ass motherfucker and she was nice when she could be until she had to be effective. There I go but for the grace of the g-d I don’t believe in.

But yeah, I can see how being her daughter was a nightmare. I have a lot of empathy for how much pain my mother in law went through. She was abused and it was wrong and there is no justification for how much pain her mother put her through.

I see both sides of this so very clearly. Given everything I know about both of their lives I do not know how either of them could have done much better than they did. They did the best they could under very hard circumstances. It is so awful when our best results in that much pain for the people we love. I have absolutely no doubt that there was love on both sides–love and pain and misery and duty. I have very different feelings about to whom I owe duty and that’s appropriate given the very different life I have led.

But yeah. Things with my mother in law have improved dramatically and I feel sorta bewildered about that. She is being friendly and encouraging and telling me she loves all of us–which isn’t a direct “I love you” but is so strongly implied I would have to willfully knock it to the side.

Noah’s mom was very rough on him as a little kid. She was still deep in the throes of her own trauma. She did not have more or better to give. She did not have experience with therapy yet. She has come a very long way in Noah’s life. She has done a tremendous amount of work on herself. Heck, in the approaching 20 years that I’ve had experience with her she has come a very long way. She’s not an easy woman and I doubt she ever will be. She doesn’t owe anyone ease and I can appreciate that on a great many levels.

I suspect she has noticed that I talk about how I cannot have a relationship with my mother because the trauma is too great and I have deep respect for how she has managed to do what she did. That took great strength and fortitude. Whether or not we ever get to the point of feeling comfortable with one another in a casual way there is a level of mutual respect.

She tells me often that she appreciates how I care for her son and our children. She sends my son cards addressed to “grandson”. She is usually really careful with my kid about how to be respectful of whatever name or pronoun is working at the current point. (She’s a little muddled on transition stuff and not perfect about pronouns 100% of the time but she also has sewn beautiful skirts for her daughter’s transgender girlfriends. She does the work to be supportive even while being a little sloppy in speech sometimes. I can live with that. It seems like it is good enough to the kids.)

There is a part of me that believes that we had to have over a decade of bristling and holding our own separate castles lined with booby traps. We are both extremely wounded people.

But even stunted trees reach for the light.

The Reckoning

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I knew it would come. The time when my children no longer believe that I am God and whatever I happen to do is Right and Just and Appropriate. It was honestly really weird being in that zone with them and this discomfort and tension is preferable. What I mean to say is last night my big kids and I cried together and talked about how hard it was when they were really small and I would scream at them for hours for stupid things that little kids do. They talked about how much I hurt them and why it wasn’t ok.

I said that it is true that I did these things. And I did hurt them. And I am sorry. I do not excuse my behavior. There isn’t a justification that makes it “ok”. We both just have to live with it being true. You get to decide how many more years of knowing me you can handle given how I treated you.

EC said he remembers one time when MC was screaming at him and I interrupted and told MC off and said it was entirely inappropriate for them to talk to him like that. He said he remembers asking me why it was ok for me to do that when it wasn’t ok for MC to do. I didn’t say anything. I walked away. He could hear that I went in another room and cried. He was confused and he couldn’t figure out what he had done wrong.

Last night I told him I was embarrassed. It’s pathetic for a grown ass woman to need to get called out by a child that small for her inappropriate behavior. I knew I was I was fucking up. I knew that my behavior was wrong. I also didn’t have much of a support network and I had very high needs children and I was still deep in the mess of my own trauma. I told him, “That’s why I went to therapy even though you told me you didn’t want me to go. Because you were showing me every single day how I did not have the skills to be the mother you deserved.” Last night I told him a little bit more about what I was going through at the time and why I was fucking up the ways I was. I told him that I could not talk to him about it way back then or I would have made him my confidant and I would have leaned on him for emotional support. He would have completely believed that it was his job to do whatever he had to do to “fix” me.

He said I was probably right and he was very glad I hadn’t told him any of it at the time. But it was hard.

I know.

I mean, I’m still not telling them everything about what I went through. But like: when the older kids talk about remembering me completely fucking freaking out about food waste… when I married their dad I was 2 years out from being food insecure. By the time EC remembers my earliest paranoia and panic and overly extreme reactions I was something like 5 years out from food insecurity? I am more calm about food now. It’s also been over 18 years. I feel in my bones that it’s ok now if we don’t eat every piece of food because there will definitely be more.

I told him that what he remembers and the ways that I hurt him are part of what I mean when I say that he has an ACE point because having a mentally ill parent is a heavy burden. It is hard on your body and I deeply regret the ways I have hurt my kids.

I know that there were people at the time who expressed concern about the level of screaming that I wrote about. I didn’t respond in the moment in the ways that you might have preferred, but I have done the work to change. I don’t do that anymore. It was very hard. I have hope that my third child will not have the need for such intense conversations about my fuck ups. I certainly don’t think I have been as hard on her.

EC told me he hates how in stories there is always this big deal made of the person in his position forgiving the person who hurt them. I told him that it’s partly because people in my position have nothing to forgive. We only have regret and guilt and shame and self recrimination and that doesn’t make for as interesting of a story. I told him that in the stories the character isn’t forgiving for the sake of the person who hurt them–they are forgiving so they can set this experience down and stop carrying it around in their head and in their heart. I told him that I cycle in and out of forgiving my mother and I expect he will have a similar experience.

I told him that I am not asking for his forgiveness. That is not something I deserve and it isn’t something he should feel compelled to give. I told him that if he wants to talk about this more over the years I will and I will explain more so that he can see a fuller picture of what was going on and I do not offer that as a justification. It’s not a justification.

There is a part of me that struggles with trying to figure out the intensity of my own self recrimination here. I didn’t call him names. I wasn’t hitting him. I wasn’t using inappropriate language. I was using inappropriate volume. I ranted for hours and at least a few times for days about stupid fucking shit because I did not have better coping tools for my emotions.

These days when I can feel that starting I walk away until I am calm enough to come back and say, “I am not ok with this for x, y, and z reasons. I need you to do a, b, or c to make amends because that was not acceptable.” I’m still really freaking not ok with active lying. You can tell me to my face that you are not going to obey some restriction I have put in place and have far fewer issues than you will if you tell me “Ok I won’t do it” and then you do.

In the birthday book that Noah and Pam put together years ago there is a quote from Jenny: “When you look at yourself you see how far you have to go. I see how far you have come.” Ok, I’m paraphrasing. I haven’t looked it up in a bit. I think I’m right +/-3ish words. I am a lot closer to being who I want to be in this world. I have dealt with a lot of my shit.

Hell, I wonder how much Andrew telling me off and telling me that I was addicted to my rage spurred me on. There have been a lot of things and a lot of pushes from people who love me.

I am not the parent I was and mostly I think that is good. If you can’t look back on yourself 18 months ago and think “Wow, I really sucked” you aren’t trying hard enough. I’m looking back 10 years ago. I really really really sucked. It is hard to feel that I deserve to have a relationship with my children as adults. And that’s one of those tricky self-fulfilling prophecies. If I feel that way I will act shitty and I will push them away.

I mean, even with telling me that sometimes the way I handled shit wasn’t ok he still comes into my room for snuggles on a regular basis. He still radiates confidence and self-assurance and happiness most of the time. He now says that he can foresee a future when he will probably want to move out but he’ll be surprised if it happens much before 30.

He looks back on the arc of his life and thinks I want to double this amount of time with my parents.

I agree that when I screamed like that it was abusive. Maybe it is kind of an ordinary level of abusive where if you knock it off people won’t reject you permanently. I don’t know. I don’t get to decide. I just need to keep on walking and keep on trying to be less of a prick.