Yesterday I was asked if my life has gotten easier because I don’t have to route around Noah anymore. She meant well. She is struggling with stuff in her own life and she’s not sure if an ending would be a good thing for her or not. I can understand why she asked. It doesn’t feel like a callous question.

No, my life is not easier. If anything it is so much harder that I feel like I can barely stand up under the load. I spent my marriage trying desperately to live up to Noah’s standards with him as scaffolding and support teaching me how. Now I’m left trying to keep this going and it feels like far too much for me. I was not brought up to be someone who knows how to handle most of the things I now have to do. I’m making it up as I go along and I am terribly out of my depth.

Same pal said a couple of years ago, “I can’t fathom dealing with the amounts of money you go through.” Yeah. It breaks my head too. When I married Noah I had just barely gotten to the point where I could afford a studio apartment instead of living in my car. Now I have to maintain this house. This house that my children desperately want to keep because it is the last place their father lived.

Gentleman asked me some questions recently, basically how I earn a living to support the lifestyle I have. I felt like a fraud. What do I do? It feels like not much. How did I earn this lifestyle? Well, I’m really good at sucking dick. Also, I’m great at self denial. I turned down a lot of fun for a lot of years because I was saving money. Also Noah earned an obscene amount of money. Combine my impulses towards saving with Noah’s ability to earn and here we are. 28 more months on the mortgage then I reduce what I have to spend every month. I’m paying off the roof I had to replace.

I also have doors that are no longer functional that need to be replaced. Windows that are rotting. And a sink in the upstairs bathroom that doesn’t drain at all. The cold water tap in the bath tub has completely stopped working at all. It makes my stomach curdle thinking about all the repairs and work I need to do. I know my in laws will cover it but it makes me feel really bad.

What do I do to deserve this? Nothing. I don’t deserve it. I just have it because life isn’t fair and there is no such thing as deserve. I will have this going forward because I am still not raising my children at the lifestyle level my in laws would prefer. We have not accepted their help much before Noah’s death. We were about to. He was in the process of retiring to be my full time carer because of how fast my body is crumbling.

Gentleman told me to be careful because people are going to want to use me for my money. I giggled. Like I don’t hand money to people constantly as a way of life. Only now that’s trickier. I’m keeping up with budget tracking slightly better. I run out of Social Security money approximately on the 18th of the month because of all the standing bills. Past that, the investment money fills in until the 23rd, roughly. That last week is going to have to be covered by my in laws every month.

How can I hand a lot of money away now? I don’t have enough of my own to cover the month. It’s weird having money locked in limbo that I still can’t touch thanks to probate/confirmation. (Finalising a death is probate in the US and England and it is called confirmation in Scotland. As I was told with many supporting details by my Scottish solicitor.) I have enough to cover the difference in income and need over the next two-ish years by myself once I get access to that one damn bank account again. That was the savings account where I saved for travel. If I can’t afford a trip in advance I don’t take it. Right now I’m trying to get up my nerve to tell my inlaws that I need more to cover the rest of the year. This sucks so hard.

I feel like the practical thing is selling this house and buying one in slightly better repair that costs half as much. It isn’t that hard. I’ve looked. Thing is, all of those options are ones where we will not enjoy living together in an ongoing way. We won’t have enough space to do all the stuff we normally do at home. I won’t be able to grow much of any food and I’d be in neighbourhoods where people would not appreciate me trying to let a wild jungle grow in my garden. Right now I’m far enough out from town that my quirkiness isn’t a big deal.

I don’t know that I will ever have the hand spoons to do giant murals in my house again. I suspect that if I moved I would not have the spirit to try. I feel broken. I don’t have a fantastic Wonderland to share anymore. The magic maker is gone. The person who made me feel like it was ok for me to do anything I wanted is gone.

Up-side: I could buy a house in an area where the schools would be less likely to beat my daughter and maybe she could figure out the transition to school. Would that help her feel more Scottish? There’s no guarantee though. I got beat in almost every single one of the 25 schools I went to. I’m pretty sure my daughter is going to have the same kind of big mouth I have. Uprooting our whole life so she can maybe only get beaten a little is a big gamble.

No, nothing is easier now.

I’m not that worried about someone wanting to use me for money. I will continue to pay for dinners for friends because even with things as tight as they are for me… I am still walking an easier road than many. My in laws are happy to make sure my lifestyle doesn’t slip that far because they don’t want my kids to know want. I am already seeing the ways that once I stop paying for all the costs associated with Noah’s death, my spending will decrease quite a bit. His death is costing between 2 and 3 months of run money. It’s an expensive year again.

My social security income will be stable until 2034. It covers almost half of my normal expenses for the life I had with Noah. Paying for his death has put this year up in the realm of normal expense. Solicitors, lawyers, and accountants are all more expensive than usual this year. I don’t like the idea of needing my in laws to intervene constantly for the next 20 years. I mean, at some point the will sell the ranch. Either they will decide to split it 4 ways or 8 ways. That means my household will either get 1/4 or 1/2 of the profit. That ranch is kinda ridiculous. It blows my mind that some time in the next 5 or so years that money is going to show up.

I don’t need to think about how I’m going to earn enough money to make it to 2048 when I can use age limited accounts. It’s too scary to contemplate right now. An awful lot of that time I will be able to work and so will the kids. We’ll be fine. We won’t have the same kind of life that Noah provided but we will be ok.

It’s weird knowing that. It’s not in doubt. I may have to do things I don’t love. I may not be able to assure my children as much permanent security as I would prefer but I will leave my disabled kids in a pretty damn good position. They will be safe. They won’t have lavish wealth to throw away but they can survive and be safe. They will be able to pay for their own medical care. They probably won’t have nice cars.

I’ve not been writing about this much. Eldest Child is sick all the fucking time. He’s going to have a challenging life.

I am highly conscious of the fact that I am in a bridge period. It doesn’t exactly feel like limbo this time. Limbo is painful in a different way. This feels like a much more self aware and dramatic methodical process. Sometimes crossing a bridge is hard in times of difficult weather. That is part of crossing a bridge. It may not be easy but there is a clear starting point and a clear end. I am moving from being Noah’s wife to being Noah’s widow. My aunt-in-law still writes my letters to Mrs. Noah Gibbs. She can’t spell my name at all. Yeah.

Realistically I am trying to close the gap until they sell the ranch. That is the difficult part. I should assume 5 years even though she would like to do it faster. With the collapse of the US government this could be an interesting ride. The UK government isn’t far behind. Thanks, Russia. You couldn’t be satisfied with taking Livejournal.

As Noah’s wife I felt I had the safety to be completely out about my queer, kinky antics. I’ve kept my mouth shut about most of that since I moved to Scotland. This is a more conservative community. The way I write about myself is many degrees more outlandish here than it is in the States. The political climate is such that wisdom would indicate that I should climb back in the closet. That seems silly to me. The WayBack Machine is no longer to be trusted. We can’t say that the internet is forever. The US government is trying to wipe mentions of all thinks queer and kinky.

A long time ago, when I was a young kinkster, I got to sit at the feet of intense and beautiful women who had been living as sexual outlaws for their entire lives. As I watch the governments doing their best to implode on both sides of the pond I can’t help but wonder what I have done to myself. I have never been able to be secretive in the ways they do. I am not able to hide the things I do without shame. I think sex is good for people and kink that is done with self awareness around harm reduction is a great hobby.

It is both easier and harder now. I do not have the threat of Noah standing behind me anymore. I will probably never have a significant protector again in this life. I am unlikely to ever have a relationship with someone who has more resources and force to provide than I have. I am the force in my life. I am the head of my household. I will be for the rest of my life. My children will never see anyone I date as being the boss of the family. That could not possibly happen. They didn’t think their fucking father was the boss. When someone asked us who is the boss all four of their heads pointed at me. Noah believed that he was serving me. That was what Owning me meant. It was a very complicated relationship. Before things go south with the governments I really need to cross post everything from other social media sites. I’m feeling really worried about spamming the fuck out of the email people. I’ve been prolific over the last couple of years. It’s easily several novels worth of reading. That feels rude.

Why are you people so crazy? Isn’t the real question why am I so crazy? Why do I want all of this in a consistent archive? Now it isn’t about helping Noah understand me anymore. Now it is about letting people come find me if I am the kind of person they need to find. Sobonfu told me I would have to build the community I want to inhabit. That’s a really scary thought. Matisse says that if you write about yourself you run out of things to say. I have never hit this wall. I’m 25 years in.

I am going to transfer everything. I’m having mixed feelings about what to do with Noah’s entries. I feel like I should go reread all of his long writings about life and about me. I won’t read his whole professional history of writing. That’s too vast and I won’t understand a lot of it without intense study. I’m not Alexander Hamilton’s widow. I’m Skye O’Malley. My life will not be spent memorialising him. I will cry when I think about him. He will be one of the many men I have loved. He will be the one I loved the most, my only mate. He was the father to my motherhood.

I don’t think I will ever allow anyone to take care of me or be my protector. I’m on my own now. I have to manage with small bits of help. I’m not built for celibacy. It is what it is.

No, my life is not easier now. And I’m not so flush with cash that I am worried about being taken advantage of. I am very good at saying no when I don’t feel flush. Right now I am looking at long term security over short term fun. Like I have for most of my life. Sure, I splash out sometimes but only after I’ve paid Future Me and made sure the futures of my dependents are secured. As long as I’m looking at calendar days and figuring out when I have to ask for help I am not independently secure. I need to close that gap on my own. I don’t like asking for their help. It doesn’t make me feel great. I am grateful. I am going to take it because I’m not that self hating. I’m not going to suffer for pride. Fuck it.

I’m ok saying that my life has been hard enough. I don’t need to hurry up and leave the place where I planted all these trees.

2034 is when my income will change and then it will change again in 2036. I have that long to figure out how to ride it out till 2048 when my life will get easier. Do you know what is crazy? If I am even a little bit careful I will make sure all three of my kids are ok permanently. They will have their basic income covered. It’s not enough to easily move out and be independent. That would require a full time normal job. They will have enough to collectively maintain this house and buy food and pay for utilities. If they split it, it won’t be very impressive. It may be enough to keep them unable to get benefits but not able to get by comfortably.

They are going to have to work but it won’t have to be full time. I come back over and over in my life to the idea that the dog bite was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I had a basic poverty level income to build on. It was something reliable and I needed to fill the gaps above that. It supported me living in my car. At least I could afford the car.

Thank you, Larry. I know you are mad about how I wrote about you in the book. I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. I’m really grateful for you. You were a complicated force in my life. Thank you for sharing your culture, your family, your home, your love, and your legal services. Thank you for teaching me about the long run.

Speaking of which, time to go make breakfast and kiss people awake. I am so glad to see you again.

With every passing day I settle into this new shell to a different depth. It’s hard. I am so anxious it is unreal. I feel like I don’t know how to move forward without Noah to support me. I learn more with every passing day.

For the vast majority of my time the kids are the only people I talk to. They are going to be the people I live with for the longest in life. In two years I will have lived with my son longer than I lived with his father. I never wanted to be away from Noah. This hurts so much.

I’m really sad about the ways that my daughter is manifesting her grief. Every day she talks to me about how I need to find someone to marry because she needs a dad. I can see this massive wound forming in her and it scares me so much. The hole of needing a father drove a lot of my life. It shaped my romantic relationships in dramatic ways. I am worried about her. I am not able to fill all of her needs. My attempts to form more intense relationships on her behalf are not going great. I send messages and I don’t get responses.

I feel like I am failing her. It’s a very different kind of support for the big kids and we are all more or less doing ok with taking care of each other. Shortie has a good 4 hours a day of attention-need that is above and beyond what the big kids and I can provide. It is the hole Noah filled. We can’t expand enough to plug the hole. We are all at reduced capacity.

I have been talking very frankly with the kids about how I know I am not fully meeting their emotional needs. I’m trying but I don’t have enough capacity to be the sole sustaining parent carrying both sides of the load that existed with two parents. This is hard on all sides. I really appreciate that we are all being patient with each other around our reduced capacity in most ways. Well, sorta. Seven is always a challenging age. This time I am going through a rough stage while dealing with overwhelming life trauma. It’s extra spicy.

Every morning I wake them up and I tell them that I am glad to see them again. I watch them breathe that in. Their chest expands and their faces lighten. All of them. They feel this ritual. They believe it. Noah and I did that. We made people who feel loved all the way to the marrow of their bones. They breathe it in like air.

When we have conflict or they do something they shouldn’t I remind them that I made a promise on the day they were born. I will forgive their mistakes. I hope I can in return earn their forgiveness. I talk early and often about restitution and repairing mistakes. They all tell me that I am good at letting go of things that upset me. I don’t seethe or rage in an ongoing way. I may have a sharp outburst of anger when something happens but it passes quickly. I am so glad they experience me that way.

A long time ago a therapist told me that when it comes to evaluating what kind of person someone is one should speak to the children not the coworkers or friends.

I’ve had to have some uncomfortable conversations with my son. He got the worst brunt of my anger. Sometimes it is hard for him to see his sister getting an “easier” deal than he got. He remembers when I screamed for long periods of time when I was overwhelmed. He remembers a handful of overzealous punishments as “all the time” in the way of time dilation for trauma memories. It’s about being in the always/never place. He asks bitterly why I don’t treat her the way I treated him.

Baby, no part of her life is like yours. I don’t have the emotional and physical energy I did. I don’t have the money to support the same kinds of shenanigans going forward. My son had traveled more by 3 than my daughter has by 7. That’s going to continue to be an ever widening gap because I won’t be traveling like that going forward. I can’t. He asks why she isn’t “losing her Disneyland trip” because of a stupid petty prank she pulled. Dude. This is going to be the only one of her early childhood memory. Literally one. You used to spend two weeks a year there. There was one year where you had five weeks spread between Disney World and Disneyland. You lost one long weekend trip at her age because you managed to hide a scheme you were pulling for three months.

There will never be parity between you. Do not demand that she get all the shit when she can get very little of the good. That is not justice. She is going to have less grandiose good. Yeah, a lot of her punishments are going to seem less severe. She is already dealing with an entire life that is radiating pain.

Do you really want her to remember you as a bully during this horrible time in her life? I sure as fuck don’t. I’m being patient when I don’t want to be. I’m letting her wake me up by kicking me in the fucking head every night. I did the same thing to my mother. I remember her complaints. It feels like justice.

I am a single mother. Like my mother. Like my sister. Like my brother’s ex-wife. I am the only widow. Well, auntie lost her husband in her late 70’s. She is a widow too. Somehow it seems different. I am not speaking with any of them. I just think of them and feel sad.

I think of the ways I don’t want to raise my children. I think a lot about the patterns I will not pass down. I think of exploitation and shaming and weaponised incompetence and codependency.

I choose to believe that conscious interdependence where people have the right to opt out of pieces whenever they need to is different. Maybe I am lying to myself but I doubt it. Interdependence is the norm for humanity. Ok, mostly folks aren’t allowed to choose all of their roles.

There is, quite obviously, no actual metric mothers are held to. We are unobserved by outsiders for the majority of our best and worst moments. They are private. I believe this is why my therapist said that the only people whose opinion matters are the children. So far the primary complaint my children have of me is the same one their father had: they wish they could have even more of me.

That seems less damning in a parent/child dynamic. I give a lot. I give for a lot of hours in a day. They are so great my kids wish they could have more. The older they get, the more tired they get, and the more forgiveness they have for me running out of give. They can see that I am giving at my limit.

It is weird how much the success of my days is measured in the amount of time I spend absorbing the emotional experience of other people. I take all of it that I can.

I am seeing the differences emerge. This third child is going to be the reader. She is reading almost two years ahead of either big kid. She doesn’t have Noah. I can’t replace how much he read. I literally can’t. She has been taking a lot of initiative lately. This is mixed.

It is really hard not having Noah around for family meetings. We’ve now had our second. The first for conflict mediation since he died. We have mostly been getting along shockingly well. Chore negotiation is a flat fail. None of us can keep to a schedule. We are still navigating stuff day by day. I feel weary to my soul. I can’t plan for what I will accomplish in three days let alone every week for the next month. Speaking of which, oh shit. I forgot the bins again. Time to go start the day. I’m a day late and a dollar short, as usual.