Author Archives: Krissy Gibbs

About Krissy Gibbs

Just your average hippy white trash incest survivor stay at home mom. Is there an average for us? No? Oh well.

Day three

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Brekkie: more of the forking rice cereal with banana, sliced almonds, and almond milk. I had some peppermint tea. (Peppermint tea seems to be the only kind I “should” be drinking right now.)

Lunch #1: BIG bowl of soup I made yesterday. Mmm veggies.

Lunch #2: cucumbers and carrots raw (I know raw isn’t ideal–I had a lot of belly distention yesterday and I suspect the raw food. I am trying to have mostly cooked stuff but I’m still working on having enough variety sitting around), peanut butter on a gluten free English muffin, some diced up chicken, and another banana. (Bananas are starting to taste SO Sweet when normally I’m kind of meh on them.)

Snack: two gluten free waffles with a big handful of raspberries on top and some maple syrup. Mmmmmmm. Syrup. Maple is one of the few sweeteners I’m supposed to have, and I need to go easy on it.

Dinner: white rice and a huge vegetable stir fry. Cabbage, bok choy, carrots, green beans and broccoli with venison. (Less fatty meat than beef. Apparently fatty cuts of meat can irritate your intestine if you already have diarrhea problems.)

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Moody as hell.

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The last three days have been quite a roller coaster. I have minutes or even hours where I feel great. I feel happy. I feel like I can overcome any difficulty because I have people who love me who help me and history has proven that all you need is a small group of dedicated people to change everything.

Then I’m raging and so angry that I feel like I want to break many bones. I want to make people bleed. I haven’t screamed even once, but the surges of emotion are so intense I feel like I am choking.

Then I’m sad and depressed and I feel like of course I’m not going to figure out anything with this stupid diet. I’m torturing myself and Noah for nothing because it won’t work. Nothing has ever worked. I’m a fucking failure and I should die.

Then all of a sudden I am pumped and anxious and I want people to PROVE THEY LOVE ME GOD DAMNIT. HERE ARE SOME HOOPS. PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEEEEE.

And then the cycle starts all over again. It’s not really a cycle. It’s jumping around very unpredictably. The triggers are small and stupid and really not worth the degree of emotion I experience afterwards.

I’m not talking much. I am reading a lot and trying not to express my range of emotions where other people have to live with them while I’m living with them.

My feelings are real. They are happening. But everyone doesn’t have to be on the roller coaster with me.

Yesterday a brace of birds came and sat on my neighbors roof and looked at me through the window. I hadn’t filled the bird seed container in a few days. So I gave them more food. Then all of the trees within a block of my house exploded in song once they could see my head over the roof.

These small moments feel like magic.

I have the most patient husband. My kids are so kind to me. I’m sorry that my emotions are all over the place. I can’t control them. I’m doing everything I know to do. I’m doing my best.

I’m sorry.

Day 2

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I am thrilled and delighted to say that day 2 was better than day 1 despite the internet warning me it would be much worse. Less body pain (though still hanging out in the 4-5 range) and I am super excited about less nausea. We went on a nice long walk for my ‘cross-training’ and I didn’t feel dizzy or sick. Woo!

Food:

Breakfast continues to be the puffed rice cereal. I am conscious of the fact that it “may” be sweetened with apple juice which means I’m not 100% off apples yet. But I need to eat the damn box of cereal. Almond milk and pecans and bananas to make it feel like more of a meal.

Snack: another banana and a few pieces of raw cucumber. I don’t know a way to cook cucumber and it is on my “safe” food list.

Lunch: GF English muffin (it’s kind of… weird…) and peanut butter

2nd lunch: soup! (I made it!) chicken, chicken stock (home made!), carrots, cabbage, brown rice, potatoes.

Dinner: more soup

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Day 1

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I am having feelings. Noah and I aren’t communicating very well about what I should or shouldn’t be eating so dinner wasn’t “clean” and right this second I am flipping out that I had a day that shitty so that it doesn’t “really” count as day one. I want to beat my head on concrete so fucking bad.

I didn’t feel good for most of yesterday.

For breakfast I ate: puffed rice cereal (which possibly has apple juice in it so it probably doesn’t count as “clean” anyway. I want to jump off a cliff) with almond milk, banana, and pecans.

I had lots of turkey bacon as snack.

Lunch: more turkey bacon, brown rice, raw carrot. I probably shouldn’t be eating raw vegetables at all during this, but I don’t have a lot of food options right now.

Dinner was pad see ewe. I very carefully ensured that the noodles were gluten free and the soy sauce was gluten free (soy is a tricky thing–I’m not supposed to have tofu but a little soy sauce is on the IBS approved list though it isn’t on normal elimination diet lists) he added corn starch, which is borderline but I approved it. This morning he told me he added egg. I’m not supposed to have egg. Which means that all the leftovers, which I was counting on, I shouldn’t eat.

I am not happy at all this second. My body hurts so much. I don’t know how I am going to do this.

I feel like shit and trying to do better is pointless because well meaning people are helpful. I want to die. It will not be possible to stop hurting until I am dead.

I think I am going to have to be responsible for 100% of my food. I can’t do this. I can’t try this hard and sit very still all day because I feel so sick and have Noah come home and helpfully make dinner that means all the feeling shitty was stupid and pointless anyway.

I feel stupid and I want to die. I want to hurt myself so much. I am so upset.

See, this is why I just live with permanent terrible diarrhea.

 

Towards the end of day 1

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Holy moly this is likely to be rough. I feel so bad. I feel dizzy and I feel like I will puke. The internet tells me that days 2-7 are the worst. That sounds pretty heinous right this minute. I *know* that part of the problem is inadequate calories. I’ve dropped ten pounds in the last month. It’s that time of year. I *did* eat. I ate as much as I could force myself to eat of those foods. Not sure they were calorie dense enough. This is an ongoing problem I try to manage. Density of calories vs. bulk of food.

Luckily Noah and Pam made me dinner so I’m going to eat more food any second. I feel so grateful for Pam today. She came over and did all the dinner prep. Noah did the actual cooking.

I have a good life and I am grateful for the people I have in my life. I have such good friends.

I’m scared because this weekend is the Impact class with Sarah. I’m also deep into half marathon training. And I feel *shitty*. Power through, motherfucker.

I would say that dropping the elimination diet is smart only I felt like shit before I started. I have felt like shit for almost a week because I ate something that set me off. (Judging by the FODMAP list probably the cauliflower… but it doesn’t always make me sick! And never ever this sick before!)

Dinner is ready.

Food history

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Every one has their own journey with food. It differs from culture to culture and between socio-economic groups. If I had to pick one word for my food journey it would be: disrupted. Or maybe inconsistent.

My parents didn’t divorce until I was three. I assume that the first three years of my life involved fairly normal eating. When I was a kid I would look at my mother’s recipe book and look at the menu plans she had in the back. Pot roast, lamb chops, roast chicken. I assume I ate just fine for the first few years. The main thing my mother and my sister had to say was that I was very picky about my eggs. I would ONLY eat them if they were scrambled and cooked hard–basically to the point of being burnt. Both of them would tell me stories about that throughout my childhood in that way that made it sound like they accommodated me endlessly.

Then the divorce happened. We stayed in the house for a while. My mom started working and my sister was supposed to be my caretaker. My sister was a teenager dealing with extreme trauma so she wasn’t a very good caregiver. I knew how to cook my own ramen before I was four.

Then we moved out of the house and into our car. I don’t know what I ate. My mom worked at Denny’s and I remember long hours sitting in the car during her shift. I had nowhere else to be. Eventually I was sent to Auntie’s house for the first time. While I was gone my mom got married.

With Auntie we ate either rice or potatoes and beef every night. That is what Uncle Bob wanted. There would generally be a side of canned vegetables: corn, green beans, or peas.

So the malnutrition didn’t start that early.

I think things got bad when we moved to Oklahoma. We were very poor. We moved there to get away from my mom’s abusive second husband. My mom worked at Jack in the Box and we lived in a double wide in the middle of the woods. We ate a lot of game. I’ve eaten squirrel, chipmunk, fox, venison and I don’t know what all else. Her boyfriend was a pretty good hunter. Other than that I’m not sure what we were eating.

Then we moved to Texas and lost the game meals and my mom got another job (I don’t know doing what) and we lived in a trailer park. My sister moved in with us. We ate junk food, period. My sister was pregnant and mean as a snake. (Drug withdrawals combined with the ick of pregnancy wouldn’t be fun.) I ate food from bags: chips, etc.

Things didn’t get really bad until Tommy was hit by the car. That’s when my mom stopped feeding me. Realizing that right now, I feel very sad for her. I’m not sure I would be a better mother under such conditions.

My mom came back to California while Tommy was in a coma. Things were tumultuous during the five months he was in a coma. I was bounced around all over the place. My mom wasn’t capable of seeing me or taking care of me. I stole a lot of food to eat. I lived with people I didn’t know and I got very rigid about my food preferences. I would eat ramen or nothing in many of the houses I lived in. Food became very traumatic because I was dropped on these random mothers and they had different food culture. I wasn’t familiar with anything they served and I was punished if I didn’t dig in with gusto. I learned to be very difficult about food in order to ensure that I ate food that felt familiar to me. My pickiness was actually very self-destructive, but I didn’t understand that.

I didn’t eat green things, except for pickles and I ate pickles like a banana–I left the skin. I told my mom “green means mold–I’m not eating that”.

I also found weevils in the Nissin ramen packets guaranteeing that I have never been able to eat this brand again. You’ve never experienced horror until ramen is the only food in the house and every package is full of bugs. I ate them. I had to or starve. I cried while I did it.

I was seven when Tommy’s accident happened. I turned eight while he was in the coma. When I was eight or nine we moved to Whittier, in a house my father paid for so my mom could be close to Tommy during his recovery. We were there eighteen months.

Whittier was bad. When I think about the height of my hunger, that’s the period of time I’m thinking about. I was with my mom full time and my sister lived with us. My nephew was born while Tommy was in the coma. After he woke up from the coma he moved in with us and things got worse.

My mom and my sister and Tommy ate food. I ate ramen. They ate out a lot. I remember my mom coming home from work with Orange Julius cups. To this day I experience irrational hatred and anger when I even see the brand name. To be fair they were happy with “food” like liver and onions. No I didn’t fucking eat it with them. There wasn’t much food in the house. They didn’t cook very much. Grocery shopping was a nightmare–we had to go a long way and we had to walk or take the bus. I remember pushing an empty stroller to the store so we didn’t have to carry our things home.

I remember my mom crying as she counted out my packets of ramen. She got things like Lunchables. She told me they were too expensive for me. She wasn’t willing to eat ramen–she thought it was disgusting. Lunchables were palatable to her and about the cheapest food she would eat.

Fruits and vegetables didn’t exist.

We moved to Apple Valley after that. I stole a lot of food in Apple Valley. We moved there to be close to a group home facility Tommy could live in–the only one in the state that would allow adolescents. There are surprisingly few facilities for treating long-term brain injury issues.

My mom worked in City of Industry. Her commute was 90 miles each way. I was alone. I ate ramen.

We moved back to the bay area after that when things became untenable in Apple Valley. My dad was harassing my mom and I was getting beat up in school so much that even my mom couldn’t ignore it any more. We came back to Auntie.

I had diarrhea through most of my childhood. I missed so much school because my belly hurt. My mom read some stupid astrology book that told her that Virgos are prone to stomach complaints and she decided that my whining about my belly had to be that. She didn’t take me to see a doctor. She didn’t talk to me about my food or health. We did not have conversations about nutrition in my family of origin. I’m not sure my mom knew anything. She thought Pepsi and Snickers was a dandy breakfast.

My mom ate other foods. I ate ramen. When I was a kid I rebelled by not having a sweet tooth. I didn’t want to be like my mom.

I got to middle school and for some reason my mom didn’t apply for free lunch at school. I had eaten nachos every day for lunch through most of my childhood. Almost every school across the nation offers shitty nachos as a free lunch option. Mmmmm shitty free nachos. That was my primary school lunch. So in middle school I mixed it up. Every day I took one baggie to school and in it I placed a piece of string cheese, two pickle spears, and beef jerky. That was lunch for a few years. The scary part is that is a more balanced lunch than I had ever eaten previously. (Ok, I’m sure I had individual meals that were more healthy, but not often.)

High school I switched to instant noodles at school. It was a $1/day. Nachos were $2.50/day. I had $20/week for food. Oh, in Bakersfield I spent one semester at a school that had pastrami sandwiches for $2/day. Those were so good.

I started buying baguettes and blocks of cheese. That would be my food for the day.

For some reason, I feel like my mom rarely had food stamps. I think she just didn’t do the paper work. My sister had food stamps on and off throughout my childhood. I ate government cheese at her house. She was the asshole who insisted on fucking Nissin ramen “for variety”.

I don’t like peanut butter nor hot dogs because fucking everyone was always trying to get me to eat one or the other. No fucking thank you.

So I got to adulthood having eaten very little vegetables and even less fruit. My boyfriend at seventeen is the one who forced me to start eating vegetables. It wasn’t acceptable to him that I eat ramen at every meal. He made me eat broccoli. Really, he was a good guy to me.

We moved in together and I started trying to cook because I wanted him to like me and stay with me. If you want a guy to stay with you, you have to be good at cooking–right?

Eventually I decided I didn’t want to stay with him because he was too uhm conservative for me. So I left. I had broadened my food palate enormously. I ate Thai food for the first time. I tried Indian. I ate dim sum for the first time. (My previous entire Chinese experience was Mr. Chau’s fried rice, chow mein, and sweet and sour pork.) I ate Ethiopian food. I started eating vegetables of all kinds.

Then I moved in with my Owner. (He wasn’t my Owner to start with and really there was over a year of moving around and couch surfing and staying with friends in between the fiance and the Owner.) When I was couch surfing I ate out several times a week (it felt like magic–I had the settlement money so all of a sudden I felt like I wasn’t poor any more! I had over $200/month I could spend on food! *swoon*) and I still ate a lot of bread and cheese.

Now I think it is hilarious that $200/month felt like being rich. I spend more than $1200 every month on food now. That was how much money I lived on every month for years.

I got to know more vegetarians and vegans and pescetarians. I learned to feel enormous guilt and shame over my lack of “healthy” diet. When I spend time in a raw vegans house I walk out feeling like a monster who doesn’t care about animals. I tried really hard to add vegetables in my diet. The result was even more diarrhea.

Having kids has been the real kicker though. I eat vegetables now. Daily. We eat 3-5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day. My kids often eat more than that by choice. We go through so much fruit it is kind of bizarre to me.

I live with a lot of pain. It doesn’t make being nice easier.

I have done food diaries at various points. I was a champ at Weight Watchers. I have done them for the purpose of bringing them to doctors. What I was told was, “Wow you have a healthy diet! Maybe a little less sausage.” (That happened to be a slightly sausage heavy week… but the sausage isn’t why I have chronic diarrhea you asshole.) A different doctor said, “You need to eat more Fiber 1 cereal.”

So a casual food diary with notation of symptoms isn’t going to be real effective at this stage. I’ve done that. Repeatedly with no resulting help. I can’t narrow down what is causing the problems that way.

My mom spent my childhood mocking me because I knew where every public toilet in town was. I had chronic diarrhea. Why in the hell do you need to make fun of me for needing to shit fire every day? Ok, and I have a small and urgent bladder. I am lead to believe that is exceedingly common amongst people who experience early childhood sexual assault. I suppose that’s another great reason to make fun of me.

Yesterday I went to the store and spent a bunch of money on foods that fall under the auspice of “clean foods”. I feel like such an asshole. Then a friend pointed me to FODMAPS and I feel that is a slightly better focus for my upcoming journey. Let me tell you, elimination diets look like a big fat pain in my ass. The recommended lists of foods contradict one another. I suspect I should stay on the end of the IBS recommendations, regardless of the fact that I don’t have a diagnosis.

I can’t get a doctor to give me a diagnosis. Decades of diarrhea. I hate doctors. I don’t know how to work with them. I don’t know how to get help. And apparently this is a big failure on my part.

I’m not entirely sure what my next steps will be. I know that I go to Hawaii in 24 days. I know that Halloween and its candy bacchanalia is coming up. Thanksgiving is coming. Christmas. I would like to have a better idea what is hurting me. If I wait until a convenient time then I will never do it. I have gotten to 33 years old without ever doing an elimination diet because it is never convenient.

Several people have told me to switch to Soylent. The thing is… at some point I will have to eat again. And if I just switch to Soylent without trying to figure out the problem… it will still be there waiting for me. Even if Soylent did cure my diarrhea… what do I do when I need to eat food? Just suffer the whole time because I don’t know how to treat my body right?

I need more information before I can make different choices. If I could have the option of deciding that diarrhea is worth it for a specific event… that would be different than dreading every meal with friends who are vegetarian or vegan because I will be sick for a week afterwards. We had a vegan meal last Thursday? Wednesday? I’m still shitting fire. Did so this morning.

I’m not saying my diarrhea is anyone else’s fault. I picked the menu for the meal. I don’t know what is hurting me so I don’t know what to avoid.

I get so much conflicting information about “health”. I am at the point where I believe that any and all population wide beliefs about health are not that applicable to me. I need to figure out what health is *for me*. That is going to take data mining. Good thing I’m a control freak.

A thought.

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I’m pretty sure that my rage around food issues is just my abandonment issues writ large. This is my continued fury and sorrow and rage that my mother didn’t take care of me. It is a lot easier to blame people who are in my life now than it is to look at the fact that I am still mourning that I did not have anyone to care for me when I was a child.

I’ve had chronic diarrhea all my life. Why didn’t my mom ever say anything to me? Did she just not know? I don’t know.

But this anger isn’t about the people in my life right now. I really hope it doesn’t sound like I’m actually saying that people who know me now are to blame for my issues.

So.fun.Not.

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Today I get to spend my afternoon reading about poop. Seems prudent given that I’ve had to go to the bathroom 10+ times so far today. I hurt. And I feel like I will vomit any second.

Shouldn’t do an elimination diet without a doctors supervision. Oh fuck off and die.

Next day, still on food.

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I’m not mad today. That feels better. I’m not sure I could carry mad with how much excitement I feel about Hawaii.

More on food stuff: I find it funny that I get more comments about poop than anything else.

I don’t think a single solitary person has ever tried to hurt me with food. I do not believe that in following their preferences/needs/restrictions a single person has had malice in my direction. I hope I didn’t actually make it sound like I thought people were cackling with glee as they deliberately inflict diarrhea on me. That’s not it.

I suspect that part of my feelings of rage is how helpless I feel to fix this problem. I have tried. I’ve tried lots of things over many years and things are a lot better than they used to be but they still aren’t great.

I suspect that part of my feelings of rage is how much I consciously try to accommodate other people and I don’t feel like other people do the same to me. (I ask people over and over about food restrictions/allergies/etc. Things change.) It is important to note that people DO ask me if I have any allergies and I tell them no. So people are trying. I don’t know what to tell them to make the question useful and that is really hard for me. It is NOT someone else’s fault I don’t know what to tell them. It isn’t anyone else’s fault that people ask if I have allergies and I say no. No one is to blame. I’m not mad AT anyone.

I think that part of me feels like… maybe other people had help figuring out what was broken in their body and I don’t have help and I don’t know how to figure it out. I know that isn’t accurate. I know that I perceive other people as getting more help and love than they actually do. I know this is jealousy talking as much as anything else. I’m jealous of having people who take care of you who help you figure out what is going on with you.

I want a mommy who will handle the food diary and elimination diet and tell me what I can and can’t have. I would meekly go along. But doing it for myself is so hard. I know it is way harder than it should be.

In order to do an elimination diet I will have to cut back on what we do. We will have to stay home basically every day because I depend a lot on eating out to bridge the gap between my spoons and our requirements for food. If I’m doing an elimination diet I can’t eat out.

And I have a lot of food issues. So many issues. If I eat the same thing day after day I feel rage and I feel violent and I feel like I deeply need to go do physical damage to other people to punish them for having this horrible taste in my mouth. Eating repetitively is really hard for me. I feel like a petty bitch, but I have finally managed to figure this out enough to work around it and not make other people miserable.

But if I want to figure out what is making me sick I have to drop my coping methods.

I feel like my whole life right now is “All of your coping methods are shit. Stop it. Do something else.” With no ramp up, no support, no idea of what else to do other than things that are super hard and require education, time, and support I don’t have.

If I live on white rice and plain meat for weeks I am not going to be a very nice person. It’s just a fact. And I won’t be able to go out much and I won’t be able to do many projects because I will have zero patience and I will lose my temper and scream at the slightest provocation. I will spend a lot of time thinking that cutting myself is way the fuck more interesting as a means of controlling my behavior than punishing myself with terrible food for months.

Ok, it is in service of the goal of having my body hurt less. I’ve tried a lot of things in the name of that goal. Not much works out. Instead I get to the end of months of horrible trying to help myself and utterly fail. So I’ve tortured myself for nothing. And then people turn around and say, “Well I guess you just aren’t trying hard enough.”

I would like to die. I would like to stop trying. I can’t try hard enough to get my body to stop hurting and I don’t really want to live like this for more and more and more decades.

I would like to have my asshole not hurt for a whole week straight.

I’m scared. I feel helpless to help myself. I feel like no one else cares. (I’m not saying that is true or accurate or part of reality.) I know it is bullshit that no one else cares. There are lots of people in my life who have offered advice, support, they would make me food within the restrictions that tasted better than stuff I am capable of cooking for myself…

I feel so bad that I can’t see that. I “know” it. But it doesn’t feel real. It feels like a lie. It feels like taking the risk of trying so I can be let down again is so so so so so stupid.

The thing about trying a lot of things and trying really hard to have relationships with lots of people is… it doesn’t always work out. That has to be ok when you are using the shotgun approach to everything. (Do you know the shotgun approach? Shotguns don’t use the same kind of bullet as a hand gun. There are lots of tiny little pieces in a larger cartridge. When you shoot something some parts of the bullet may hit the target and some may miss but you figure it is close enough because it did get hit. But you know going in that lots of your effort is going to fail.)

It’s like how I used to hunt for sexual partners. If you ask enough people… someone will say yes. You just have to learn how to not let the “no’s” bother you.

I am really struggling to over come the failures on trying to eliminate the pain my body feels. Every new try requires more and more and more energy to get over the opening hurdles.

I know that the next step is a food diary and elimination diet. I am not looking forward to this. Just the idea makes me cry and feel helpless and angry.

I sure as shit won’t be going over to dinner at anyone’s house for months. I don’t want to talk about the fucking steps. It will be shitty and horrible and I will hate just about every fucking thing I eat the whole fucking time even if I normally am ok with eating something. Just the fact that it is part of this process will breed so much resentment.

I’m afraid that my hatred and rage for this process will make it less than effective.

Balance?

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I’ve got to tell you… adding a surprise trip to Hawaii when we are going to do the bathroom remodel and go on a big trip next year and and and…

It feels like a manic cycle. It feels dangerous and stupid. But I’m looking at Mint and jumping up and down and yelling “But I have saved up my god damn fun money!!!!!!!!! I have not been having fun! Clearly! There are MANY hundreds of dollars sitting there waiting in that part of the budget!!!  Why is it god damn mental illness to want to go have fun with my fucking friends without being  MOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY?”

I sure don’t want to be nice to me. But this trip is going to be fun. Even though I don’t like being nice to me D and A do. (Being nice to them is easy.) They are both very bossy-plan-having women. If I want to be passive and let someone take care of me I picked a rather good duo. Not that I’m planning a codependent weekend. But if I said, “I’m getting to the point of being hungry where I can’t think and I’ll get angry if I have to make decisions. Can you arrange for us to magically arrive in an eating establishment. I’ll find something on any menu” they would drag me off. They wouldn’t turn and ask me fifty fucking questions or expect me to make a long series of nuanced decisions. They wouldn’t need me to be the boss.

I was a 24/7 slave for years. I am deeply ok with not being the boss in a way that makes my current life very difficult at times. And Noah and I do not have an M/s dynamic. We have agreed that regardless of what we will do in the future, while we have young children we will have an egalitarian relationship. That is what we want to model and teach.

I’m not saying people who make different choices are bad. I’m saying this is what we decided. Ok?

I am the boss around here. We have an egalitarian relationship except for the part where I’m a bossy pain in the ass and Noah follows my orders. Ahem. I love my husband.

My friends want very badly to be respectful of me. I make it clear that I have a huge long list of picky ways I need to be in control and they tactfully make room for that. Which leaves me feeling like the boss a lot of the time. I miss being a slave sometimes.

I don’t think that A or D are going to be my short-term owners or anything but it is going to be really awesome to follow other people who have a plan. I like being a follower. I really do sometimes. I rarely let myself get into it. Normally I resist for reasons I don’t even understand. When I can really do it I love it.

Three bossy, controlling women. It’ll be awesome (and I have zero sarcasm in my voice there–I’m vibrating with excitement). Yeah, the plans are flowing now (they are SMSing me while I type). I pinned them down and booked everything. They are off like rockets. Oh this is so wonderful to watch.

I’m scared I’m going to fuck everything up. Luckily, when I do stupid shit A has this death glare that is followed with, “You need to stop” and then … all of a sudden I haven’t fucked everything up because there is a brick wall in front of my face and we are back on neutral territory.

I admire people with strong boundaries so much.

Noah has been commenting that this down cycle has been longer than almost any I’ve had during our marriage. I’m partially doing this trip because I need something to change the way my hormones are working. Long term stuff is not feeling satisfying. Small petty stuff doesn’t help. I saved up the money.

Is it really ok to be selfish?

This is one of those times when I feel like I have a split life. I have this self-perception that I have nothing and no one and I’m worthless and I should die. Then I notice that I’m incredibly well off financially, I have amazing friends and I have a husband who says go have fun.

I’m not very good at living in the now when the now isn’t very exciting. When the now is a fuck-ton of work… I get worn down. My bucket is empty. There’s a hole in the bottom. It’s a metal bucket and they spent a lot of time dragging it back and forth across concrete and now… not so water tight. That’s just how it works sometimes. They didn’t mean to do it. They were just trying to reach the dipper and couldn’t quite get there and the bucket slid. It was an accident.

But here I am.

I’m ridiculously excited that I get to run away with two wonderfully fun women. They will even do part of the long run with me on Saturday. My life is pretty ridiculously blessed.

Food accommodation

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I know a lot of people with rigorous food preferences/allergies/intolerances/religious restrictions/etc. I am starting to think that I should paint a grid inside my cabinet so I can track who is gluten free/dairy free/vegetarian/allergic to tomatoes and potatoes/ allergic to corn/allergic to soy…. It would be a complicated grid.

I was thinking about this as I talked to a friend yesterday who is vegetarian, gluten free, and dairy free. He always causes me to think about my food choices in more detail. I try hard to do it from a consciously evaluating point of view and not from a defensive point of view.

This week he said something I found very interesting, “I’m not sure if I am actually allergic to gluten but when I eat it I have urgent, painful diarrhea that causes me to need to run to the toilet eight times a day. So I don’t eat it. I don’t care if I’m actually allergic.”

That… That made me think very hard. Huh. It isn’t normal to run to the bathroom with diarrhea eight times a day? I try very hard to accommodate my friends who have different dietary needs. It’s a big deal to me that people should be loved and fed in the ways that are appropriate for THEM.

We had some completely different friends over earlier in the week and that meant accommodating a vegan and a vegetarian with diabetes. H’okay. Guess what? The dinner we prepared for them had me dealing with violent, burning, painful diarrhea for over a day.

So uhm… Hm.

This morning I lay in bed and I got really really angry for (what I believe to be) the very first time about my food needs not seeming as important as the vegetarian/vegan/allergies in my social circle. I don’t know very many people with anaphylactic allergies. I know people who get sore butts, mostly.

I try very hard to ensure that I’m not damaging anyone else’s body. But when I go over to the home of a vegetarian or a vegan there is little consideration for how their food will effect me. It’s my problem.

All of a sudden this morning I felt lots of rage about that. I don’t think I’ve ever felt angry about this before. I don’t think I have ever seen it as an injustice before. This morning, as I lay in bed unable to sleep all of a sudden I felt violently full of rage. Why in the hell does everyone else’s ass matter and mine doesn’t!?

I have no idea what to do with this sudden burst of new-thing-to-be-pissy-about. Probably I won’t do anything. I’m not going to start demanding that vegans supply meat for me at their parties.

But I’m wondering if maybe I should stop going to dinner at their houses. Because I’m kind of tired of it not mattering that my body does not process vegetables well. It causes me terrible pain for days. Yes yes yes, they are “healthy” and EVERYONE should GO VEG!! Or obviously you are a piece of shit who doesn’t care about anyone but yourself and certainly not the POOR LITTLE ANIMALS. WHAT KIND OF MONSTER ARE YOU!?

Uhm, I’m the kind who lived with terrible malnutrition for decades and now I can’t digest vegetables. And fuck you.

I don’t think that people who are gluten free need to buy “regular” pasta when I come over. I don’t think dairy free people need to buy me cow milk. I don’t think that vegans are required to cook me meat. But when we are ordering pizzas?…. Then I feel kind of shit on. Because the pizza you will order means I either get to have horrible diarrhea for days or I don’t eat.

I haven’t felt pissy or defensive about this in the past. I’m not sure if this will last longer than today.

Having relationships is really hard. How do we all manage to be respectful of one another and the varying needs that their bodies have? I don’t know.

That said, the friend who came over yesterday has a wife who can cook the best vegan food in the world. If I could finally narrow it down to a handful of vegetables that are the “trigger” foods (I think a food diary is coming at some point) she would be able to feed me vegan food that didn’t hurt me.

I have done a lot to narrow the range of triggers for my terrible diarrhea. I get way less of it than I used to. But apparently eating cauliflower soup, pasta with tomato/garlic/basil/carrots, and salad is not ok. I knew the salad would be pushing my luck. I ate very little of the raw veggies. I ate like two pieces of lettuce and three cucumber slices. Mostly I ate cooked stuff. Supposedly cooking the vegetables should make me better able to process them. These are all food we eat on a regular basis and I don’t always have the terrible burning diarrhea.

A lot of the reason I haven’t tried harder on food diary stuff is it is very discouraging. My “triggers” clearly move around. It is much more important how much stress I am under generally. Clearly tomatoes aren’t always a problem. Clearly potatoes aren’t even usually a problem. (I have weeks where I eat potatoes daily and don’t have a diarrhea problem.) Alcohol is fine if I am under basically no stress and horrifying if I feel even a little bit of anxiety to start with.

Fuck all food forever.

It doesn’t help that I’m in a phase where basically all food is revolting and nasty and I feel sick all the time. Running is fun. I hate weather changes. My poor intestine.

I do my best (I’ve been slipping) to eat humanely sourced meat. I can afford it and I think that is the ethical choice given my financial resources and my physical dietary needs. I slip when I’m buried with every other part of life and I don’t have the spoons to deal with sourcing “better raised” meat.

I know that it is sad that animals have to die so I can live. I agree that it is not “fun”. I agree that it isn’t “nice”. But my alternative is to live with horrifying pain or kill myself. If you don’t know what it is like to have diarrhea for months in a row then you can’t really talk to me about my food choices. Also: no doctor has been useful in this process. I’ve tried going in to talk about it and I’ve tried asking for advice. I wasn’t told much useful. I was told to do my own food diary and figure out what to eliminate. When I asked about bringing in the diary to talk to them I was told that there wasn’t much they could do. Maybe I should have insisted on talking to a nutritionist? An intestine specialist? I don’t know how to advocate for myself on this issue. Doctors are not out checking on patients to find out how they can be most useful. You have to walk in knowing what to tell them to do. I don’t know what to do.

I’m feeling overwhelmed. And this one little piece jumped out at me this morning. Interesting to think about.

Hindi study

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Last year we somehow stumbled across an advertisement for Hindi lessons at the local temple. (It is on the end of our block.) All four of us went to the first round of classes and it was pretty fun. This year Shanna said she didn’t want to sit still every week and only Calli asked to enroll.

I find the study of Hindi to be stimulating in a way that few things have been. Having to memorize different letters and connect them to sounds that don’t exist in my language feels an order of magnitude different from studying languages with a similar alphabet (like Spanish). I’m not saying harder–I’m not sure if it is harder. But it feels different.

I studied Spanish in school–both high school and college. I am nothing near fluent. But the study of Hindi is teaching me that I have a significant vocabulary–my problem is verb conjugation. When the teacher asks us to create a sentence in Hindi to answer a question I always have a complete sentence in Spanish pop into my head and I have to consciously not say it. Wrong language. But having these little epiphanies over and over that I could probably actually go to South America and communicate fine after a month is pretty huge for me. I have lots of impostor syndrome. I think I am stupid and incapable of learning many things. Then I find out that I ALREADY KNOW THINGS!!!

It is hard to explain how exciting this feels. On one hand, people regularly tell me I am intimidating because I am smart/educated. On the other hand, I feel like I’m not talented nor smart nor educated because I know people who have gone way deeper into almost any topic than I have. I’m good at viewing things in the way that makes me look bad.

Hindi is causing me to feel pride in my ability to learn in a way that few things have. For one thing: I’m turning around and teaching Shanna once we get home. She is making progress as fast or faster than Calli and Calli is actually attending the class. It is like ASL only better. ASL was harder for me to feel pride in because Shanna picked it up at two or three times the rate I did and I always felt stupid and like I am too slow to be able to say what is happening in my mind. I just can’t make my hands go fast enough.

Hindi isn’t like this. I shouldn’t feel so much pride that I am picking up concepts faster than many of the 6-7-8 year old kids in the class.. but they are growing up in houses where this language is a daily occurrence. I do feel pride that I am managing to study on my own well enough that I am picking things up faster than people who are learning more about their native language. (They all speak English in most of their lives and Hindi almost exclusively at home based on what they say in class.)

I’m not competing with the kids. That’s not the point. But I have fairly clear proof that I am learning and I am not stupid. I’m progressing quickly. Having it be so crystal clear that I am learning is… it feels really good. I feel proud of myself.

Today we had kind of a weird class. Some of the teachers were ill so they combined levels 1, 2, 3, and 4. This meant that the class was too slow for half the people and way too fast for the other half. Ahhh group teaching. The teacher who teaching level 4 was disappointed in me that I couldn’t come up with a Hindi sentence describing what I will do on Halloween. Uhm, the only verb I know is “is”. I know colors. I can count. I’m on my way to knowing the alphabet. No… I don’t yet know how to say, “On October 31st we will dress up and go trick or treating.” Nope, don’t have that vocabulary yet. But I may work on it this week and write down the phonetic sentence and say it next week. Because she’d be thrilled I looked it up.

I find it strange that I feel so good about the positive affirmations from the teachers. Why do I care? They are strangers and it’s not like this is going on my permanent record. But I care.

Hindi requires a similar kind of discipline as training for the marathon. I have to show up consistently and do the study. Every single day. I have to train. I have to live my life as if attaining mastery of the language is a goal. Just like training for the marathon. I have to not skip runs because I feel whiny. I have to do it anyway or my body will not be ready on the crucial day. If I don’t study Hindi I won’t ever be able to go to India and study farming with people who have questionable English. I want it so bad I feel an ache in my bones.

I want to be able to talk to people in other countries about farming and incest. I’m kind of weird. I want to go meet people when I learn farming and build relationships and come back years later after they know me and trust me and then get their communities to talk to me about incest. I have a plan.

I feel grateful that some days I wake up and it doesn’t feel like I’m trapped in limbo. I’m on a journey. I’m not waiting for the future to happen to me. I’m living my future. I am doing what I always wanted to do. I am home schooling my children in security and love. I am learning languages so I can go learn from people who have entirely different life experiences than me. I am getting to enjoy the companionship and growth of my children such that I am truly getting to see a happy, healthy childhood up close. I am ridiculously blessed.

When I have conflicts with my kids and I feel very anxious about them it is important to keep in mind that I get along with them better than I’ve ever gotten along with anyone. That doesn’t mean it is always smooth sailing. I am pretty sure I will never have a relationship that is all smooth sailing. That doesn’t mean I should opt-out of relationships and it doesn’t mean I should try hard to keep people away from me.

Life is complicated. I’m grateful that this portion of my journey involves getting to engage in study that improves my sense of self esteem while also significantly furthering my life goals. Often those two aspects do not move in tandem. I am lucky.

Ok, now that I’ve done my Hindi for the day time to run. It’s a wonderfully easy Saturday. This is my shortest Saturday run until April. I should find joy in that. From here on out it gets harder.

Luckily, I can do it. I already have so I have no fear. The half marathon Thanksgiving weekend (my race is on Saturday) will be easy. My informalish goal is to manage a 11:50 or better pace. I was super close last time until mile 11 when my ankles seized. More stretching this training schedule. I’m also doing more weight lifting. Being stronger seems mandatory for more speed at this stage. And 26.2 miles just doesn’t sound that far any more. March will be here soon and I’ll run that far and be fine. It blows my mind.

I am more than I ever thought I could be.

Pressure

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I’m going to try and explain this better. We’ll see how spectacularly I fail.

I appreciate that people call/text to check on me. I do genuinely appreciate it. I appreciate that people notice me enough to care about my presence. That doesn’t change the fact that it can feel like pressure. Pressure is not always a bad thing. I have pretty severe mental illness. I have to work very consciously on not staying home and hiding from life. Knowing that people like me enough to reach out to me when I am bailing on social events is a positive thing.

That doesn’t change the fact that self-care is very hard for me. I tend to think that just about anyone else’s needs are more important than mine. If people want to see me it is incredibly rare for me to say no. I need to have people need me. I need to have people like me. That is part of being part of a community and I want that so badly.

But when four people message me in an hour saying, “Why aren’t you coming?” it can feel like pressure. Pressure isn’t always bad. Noticing that it feels like pressure is important for me in particular.

Subtle small pressures build on me and I end up screaming and freaking out. I have to manage my emotional/physical load and that’s complicated.

For example, my ladies and I are negotiating for a trip (sounds like Hawaii is the current front runner on places to go) and we were giggling about the possibility of a bikini clad babes on the beach picture. I said I might be willing to buy a bikini and wear it for the picture and then I was putting my Islamic bathing suit back on. My friend… more or less tactfully expressed confusion as to why I feel the need to wear a modest suit.

I explained that it really isn’t about the modesty. I don’t like sun block. Putting sun block on my skin causes me emotional problems. I can feel it the whole time and I feel angry and frustrated. If irritation is on a scale of 1-10 and I start out the day feeling a 2 if I put sun block on I will instantly be at an 8. I will feel violent and angry and hostile. Nail polish makes me feel the same way. Having my pores feel clogged is just….. I’m not ok. I have sensory issues and I just cannot cope with having things on my skin. So I dress like a nice Islamic lady when I’m going to the pool.

She could understand that perspective. But it has to be explained or it really isn’t obvious why I care so much about the modest swimsuit thing. I’m not actually what you might call “modest”. If I’m going to places with hot springs I’m cranky if I must wear a bathing suit. I prefer being in water nekkid. But I don’t stay in hot springs that long and when I get out I get fully dressed so I don’t have to put sun block on. I’m kind of weird.

I’m perfectly happy to wear a skimpy bathing suit in front of people. I’m not ashamed. I like my body. (I actually do. My body has been very good to me.) But I have sensitivity issues and I’m trying my best to learn to cope with them in a way that makes me more socially appropriate.

It is a little odd socially that I wear modest swimsuits. People ask me questions about it a lot. It is clearly “weird”. (I don’t cover my hair so I am obviously not doing it for religious reasons so… why?) If I wanted to “fit in” better I should wear a more “normal” swim suit. Then people wouldn’t look at me funny and ask me “why do you want to do that?” But I am capable of being a nice person if I just accommodate my weird sensory issues. So you have to pick some kinds of weird in order to fit in with other metrics.

I need to be part of a community. I feel deeply grateful that the home schoolers have so cheerfully embraced me. Other communities have tried and I was more resistant. The pressure I feel from the home schoolers feels positive and life affirming. They want me to be part of their lives. They want my kids to be friends with their kids. They want me to not feel invisible. They want me to know that I am a noticeable part of their life–my absence is notable. That’s good. I’m not writing about it because I want to make people feel bad.

But I need to figure out how to balance the fact that sometimes I need to stay home with the fact that people like me and want to see me. That doesn’t mean anyone is doing anything wrong. It means I’m still working on my social skills and boundaries.

I consciously put similar pressure on people in my life. Especially those who suffer from mental illness. I try to make sure I reach out every so often and remind them that they still matter to me. I think it is important. I think it is positive. I don’t think people should withdraw such pressure. I think that loving people involves some pressure sometimes. Having relationships involves feeling the weight of the presence of the people in your life. That’s not bad.

But I am not particularly tactful in my process of learning to be. Having relationships is complicated and hard. Skills learned with a particular person may or may not be transferable to the next person. That is hard. You have to just keep trying things.

Checking in

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I’m sorry that I sound like I’m complaining about people caring about me. I don’t mean to do so. I appreciate that people like me and check on what is happening. The fact that I have feelings about that isn’t anyone else’s fault. I don’t actually think that people check on me because they don’t care about me.

Communicating is so complicated.

Limits

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Or maybe we aren’t going to the pumpkin patch. My darling youngest daughter thought that it was a good idea to start off the day refusing to do any chores and yelling at me. Well, that’s fine. I’ll do the work. But then I’m not taking you to play with your friends.

I have trouble with this because I feel like I am letting down the other home schoolers who would like to see us. The thing is: I’m really tired of the back talk. I have a limited number of ways I can respond. The thing that feels least punitive is I just don’t go through extra labor for people who are refusing to do their share. I didn’t scream, threaten, or yell. I just said (very calmly for me) “If you refuse to do your work that is fine. I will do it. But then I will not be interested in taking you out to play with your friends for most of the day.” She screeched in response. Ok. That’s fine. You can stay home today.

If I felt more confident about doing this more often I think it would be a solid technique that dealt with a fair bit of *my* issues. But I frequently feel like it isn’t ok to flake on the people who saw our name on the RSVP list. So I go and feel bitter and angry and hateful. Today I’m not really in the mood to suck it up so that other people can have what they want regardless of how I feel.

We will leave the house because we have to go grocery shopping. But I don’t need to entertain people who are screaming at me. Nope, nope, nope.

In other news: Shanna spent the morning copying Eloise books because she wants the reading/writing practice. She asked me what she would be doing in school to learn more about writing. I said “practice”. As much time as you can spend looking at written words is best. Lots of time. Practice practice practice. If it turns out you aren’t picking it up in a year or so we will do an evaluation for dyslexia just because boy she reverses a lot of letters. But it is totally normal at this age so I’m not panicking yet. (Dyslexia is very common in my family.)

No matter what kind of facilitation she needs to help her make progress, I believe I am capable of giving it. That’s why I trained all those years. It’s just up to her to want it. I can’t make you want something.

And I can’t make you do your chores. But I can say, “If I do more than my share I will be tired and I will want to rest.”

This is what I mean. People are already sending me text messages to let me know they are upset we aren’t coming today. They mean well. They want me to feel loved.

I … I feel pressured. I feel like my exhaustion doesn’t matter. I feel like I don’t matter.

Why unschooling?

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I can’t sleep so I might as well pontificate. I wanted to unschool before I had a word for it. I knew in the pit of my stomach that the best way to learn is to be given access to materials that can help you learn and minimal instruction. I believed it was true and I felt overwhelming disdain and anger for the curriculum I was forced to follow in schools. I don’t think I can adequately describe the years of anger, frustration, and rage I felt about school.

Public school was an interesting journey for me. On one hand clearly I was exposed to concepts and I learned. On the other hand I was beaten, shamed, taunted, and bullied constantly by students and teachers alike. Ok, the California teachers couldn’t hit me. Just the teachers in Oklahoma and Texas.

I understand that my children would have different experiences. I also understand that public education has gone down hill in the intervening years between when I was in school and now. That’s not a good thing. It wasn’t great then.

Learning happens in so many ways I can’t begin to address them all in this blog entry. Suffice it to say that learning can be horizontal or vertical. You can go deep or you can go broad. You can find out everything about one species of dog or you can become obsessed with the organization of biological organisms and their relationships. Personally I’m a generalist. I don’t go deep on many subjects: the primary ones being education, incest, and suicide. Otherwise I tend to stick to having a better than average grasp of a subject then I move on. I don’t need to be an expert on everything. In schools they require you to do everything on a level before you move up. Rarely they will allow someone to bump up in math or reading if they are “very advanced” but mostly you have to “cover everything in the 3rd grade textbook before you can go on to 4th grade” and that just seems silly to me.

Shanna (my six year old) told me recently that she thinks maybe it would be easier to learn to read in school. I asked why she thought that would be easier. Her response was, “Well in school I would have to do it or get punished so I wouldn’t keep putting it off.”

You know what? I’d rather she learn to read for a reason other than avoiding punishment. I’d rather she learn to read because reading is wonderful and engrossing and a fabulous way to spend time. Could she learn to read at a faster pace than she is currently using? Yes. I could force her to learn reading faster. I don’t see a point. I think that as long as she is learning and progressing in many areas at a good speed it doesn’t matter when she learns that skill. She sits down with books every single day. We read to her. She has memorized a large percentage of our library and she “reads” to herself. She’ll get there. It’s ok that she isn’t an early reader. It doesn’t make her stupid and it doesn’t mean unschooling is failing.

I am deeply bitter that coloring is emotionally stressful and painful for me. I had too many teachers who told me “No no no. You are doing it all wrong.” So I’m afraid to try. I don’t want my children having such an experience.

I don’t think that home schooling is necessary for all children. I do not believe that unschooling is the One Twue Way. I think it is what will work best for my family. This is part of why I don’t want to be part of public policy decisions. What is best for me may not be best for you and I’d be a serious jerk to try and change the tone of education in a country based on my personal preferences. But I believe it is very important that people be allowed to participate in whatever educational path is most fitting for them.

I believe that other people have mothers who managed the public education system without trauma and those mothers are capable of dealing with the conflicts inherent within the system. I am not those mothers. I would be printing out whole trees worth of research and I would wall-paper the school with data about why homework is deeply harmful to children. I would not be popular. My kids would suffer for my behavior.

You have to make life choices based on a deep understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses. I am not suitable for meekly going along with the public system. That doesn’t mean the public system should be burned down. The simple truth is that it is a necessary part of life for most of our society. I do not believe that every parent is constitutionally, nor financially able to home school. It’s a super hard job.

If I think back over my life by far the easiest job I’ve ever had was being a library “tech”. I don’t understand why I was called that. I fixed the copy machines and organized the magazines. I had lots of time to sit around and read and do my homework. Other than that I wouldn’t say I’ve had an “easy” job. Some of my jobs have been physically hard, some mentally hard, some emotionally hard, some have been a combination of different kinds of hard.

I don’t think I will ever pick an “easy” path. If I’m going to pick a hard path I might as well pick the one that has the most to offer me personally. I really should pick the path that opens up the most doors to the future. I should pick the path that will present the fewest obstacles for me.

It doesn’t really matter what someone else would prefer. No one else has to spend every day in my life. Just me. I have hard days, but I like what I’m doing. I feel very happy about unschooling my kids. I have self-doubt. I have periods where I am afraid I am not making the best choice. I genuinely do not see a better for my family option. There are other arrangements that could be made to work. But I don’t think they would be better and they would involve an enormous amount of stressful change and emotional separation.

I’m a selfish person. I don’t really want to allow anyone else to get most of Shanna and Calli’s time. I want it. I want to be the person who sees them all day every day. I want to be the one who knows exactly where every bump and scratch came from. I want to be the one who is available for hugs and kisses whenever they are needed.

Being present for that heals something in me. I can’t get this pit of need met any other way. I’ve tried.

Sometimes I feel a little weird about the idea that I am making the parenting choices I’m making partially because this feels like the road to my Zen. What I want from life is the ability to feel connection to people. Shanna and Calli are my best chances hands down. It is hard sometimes in the way that any spiritual path involves hardship and strife. It wouldn’t be worth very much if it was always easy.

Unschooling gives me time I can’t get any other way. I feel deeply grateful that Noah (my husband) is able to make this lifestyle easy and comfortable. It would not be possible for me to have this life without him.

Even on days when I’m not very good at interacting with my kids I feel good about the fact that they have freedom to explore and make mistakes without being told constantly how bad they are.

When Shanna breaks things, mostly I laugh it off and say, “Yup. You are my kid.” I’m a huge klutz. I break things frequently. I have no soap box to stand on for preaching about “be careful”. I break things so often. It is hard to handle sometimes but it feels like a journey we have to go on together.

I tell them sometimes, “I don’t know what to do in response to this situation. This is outside my entire realm of experience and I don’t know what the right answer is. Do you have any ideas?”

Whatever self-doubt I feel about whether or not I am making the right choice would be magnified if I gave up on home schooling. I would consider moving to an online charter with more interactive teachers long before I just up and put my kids in public school.

Can we try problem solving that doesn’t involve “Get a new life”?

Today these little unschoolers are going to spend the day at a pumpkin patch. There’s a maze and a huge corn kernel pit that the kids can play in. We’ve been before. We will be there with dozens of friends. It will be a long, hot, fun day.

Circle of Women

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I haven’t had many times in my life where I felt close to a group of women. I feel I am overwhelmingly blessed by the one to one connections I have with women in my life, but group stuff is really challenging for me. I don’t adapt well to different expectations existing at once.

One of the most shining examples of this working in my life was Jenny’s wedding in Scotland. That is a bright, shiny memory that inspires me on bad days. (Jenny sent me a bunch of wedding pictures for my birthday, because she loves me.) The wedding was a few years ago, but I still feel so much joy when I see the pictures. That wedding was one of the brightest days of my life. I had so much fun. I felt like I belonged. It was one of the nicest social engagements of my whole life.

Part of it was the feeling of connection to the women in the bridal party. The three bridesmaids plus bride have all been at least aware of one another for more than ten years. Many years ago I had social conflict with one of the women. Thankfully time healed that wound. I spent a lot of time in the group during the whole wedding weekend. I felt like I mattered. I felt listened to. I felt like I was an actual integral part of their lives. I don’t manage that feeling very often.

I’m not blaming anyone else for my lack of bonding abilities. I’m just talking about the shape of them.

So my shrink is harping on me to take some kind of real break. So she says I should get a job. I think she is… well, I don’t have nice words to say so I’ll just say I disagree with her assumptions about my levels of stress with regard to work. I am not other people. I do not show up at my job for the number of hours and walk away with little stress. Doesn’t matter if I work retail or teach or work in theatre, I work myself ragged. I don’t know how else to work. I’m not good at pacing. So I think the “get a job” angle is kind of the opposite of “take a break”.

But she’s right that I need a break.

So I emailed two of my closest girlfriends. Two of the ones who know one another and we have enough of a previous group identity that I am very confident we can make a weekend together really fun.

I’m not that good at putting together groups. I’m not always good at predicting who will get along with whom or why. But I know these ladies have had a lot of previous time spent with one another. I’m not creating a group connection out of thin air.

Often I find that I know two women (or more), and I know they are close but I don’t know how to be part of a group with them. I’m really shitty at group identity. I feel alienated. It doesn’t mean anyone is doing anything, but I really have a hard time feeling like I belong and I am allowed to be present in a group. It is hard to not believe that I am being allowed to come along because of geek social fallacies that say no one should be uninvited.

I almost never feel actually wanted.

But I’ve had lots of years with these two. They want me. They have gone through great effort to show up year after year. Sometimes some years aren’t as visit-tastic because of distance but life is like that.

Now we are negotiating. Just the fact that they both responded, “Yes, yes, YES!” is already kind of euphoric.

Part of how I convince myself to not die today is by always having lots of things to look forward to. It is part of why I schedule so many things so far in advance. I can’t die yet. I want to go on a Disney Cruise with my kids and friends in 2016. Can’t die yet.

It’s shallow. Only it isn’t. I use the resources available to me to make me feel like I have incentive to keep trying even when things are hard for me. That isn’t shallow, it is smart.

But sometimes I have trouble with only having awesome things be years (or even many months) away. That slog can feel very oppressive. So next month I will slip away for a weekend. I will get to go visit with two women who make me feel powerful, competent, and like I have a lot to offer the world. They really want me here.

I love you all very much and the pictures on the walls help a lot. It’s a big deal to feel like people I respect and love a lot are paying attention to me. I feel like an asshole because people reading my blog is paying attention to me but it doesn’t feel like it. It has basically no effect on my mood or feelings of safety. But seeing people does matter.

I also scheduled the cookie exchange and holiday open house. Because when I’ve been feeling suicidal that’s a good time to make sure I have reasons to feel like I can’t kill myself this festive holiday season. If you did not receive invitations to those events and you feel like you should, let me know. This whole “using a google group” thing is a work in progress.

I feel like I was reminded recently that people will only put up with a mentally ill person if that person is seen as “doing enough” to help themselves. It makes it really hard to figure out which portions are ok to reach out to other people. I could really use a weekend of feeling like a grown up and having adventures (especially adventures that aren’t tied up in sex). But I feel like if I am not “managing” well enough I don’t deserve to ask anyone to spend time with me. I should stay home and keep my stupidity locked behind my teeth.

I also feel like this is part of the reason why I consciously try not to get that attached to people any more. I’m too hard on my closest friends. So I shouldn’t have any. I can have friends who are held out a bit. People I don’t see very often. I should ensure that I watch my fucking mouth and I don’t say anything inappropriate.

I’m scared. I want this and I feel guilty and ashamed at the same time. Hell, I feel guilty that I didn’t invite some other women I know. But I don’t have any kind of group established elsewhere. These two are the main ones with whom I have managed cohesive group stuff repeatedly for years. It’s nearly miraculous.

I think it is a little funny that my kids are going to be really bitter that they don’t get to go hang out with the daughters of the ladies I asked to run away with me. Well, funny may not be the word. I find it delightful that my children love their children so much. I’m kind of an asshole about enjoying the feeling of, “Ha ha. Sometimes my preferences matter over yours.” I am not a very top-down parent. My will does prevail on a regular basis, but usually to such a degree that I get to decide that it is time to leave the park after five hours. I am not allowed to decide such a thing after three hours.

Not sure yet if we are camping or going to a big city. I think it is going to be fun either way. I’m more interested in a city. I’m going to camp a lot next year. We’ll see.

Don’t like my mood? Hold your breath.

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So Wednesday and today (Thursday) have been smooth sailing, easy days. The kids and I are getting along. Everyone is cooperating (even me) with the requests of the people around them. (Sometimes I’m kind of an asshole–let’s be clear.)

I wouldn’t say I “feel better” but I haven’t had a suicidal impulse in more than 24 hours. I’ll take it. (If you want to feel good about yourself, Pam, go ahead. You really are a great friend.)

Days like today are why I want to home school so badly. We’ve had a really great day. And we wouldn’t have these if they went to school. Not like this.

This is exactly what I’ve always wanted. Yes, there are hard days. I don’t think I’ll get away from that part of life no matter what I’m doing.

Alone.

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Sometimes I am reminded that people with mental illness are not always good for people to be around. Sometimes it seems like being alone is really the only option if we want to stop the pain. Our pain, the pain we cause other people just by existing.

I have spent a lot of my life literally alone. I have spent years sitting alone in rooms. Yet I contrast that with the wonderful people in my life. I have friends. I am unusually blessed.

But I feel alone. Because it isn’t ok to make anyone else’s life all about my pain and I don’t know how to get past my pain to focus on connection with people. Some days I can kind of get there, I haven’t been doing so well lately.

I absolutely understand the feeling I do everything wrong anyway–the world would be better if I was dead. But I’m not supposed to say that out loud. It is manipulative. It is hurtful. It damages people if you scream at them that you want to die. It isn’t ok to take ones pain out on the people around one.

But there is so much pain. I saw a sign today, advertising a suicide prevention walk. I stood and stared at the sign for a while. I thought about a conversation I had this weekend with two women who expressed how hard it is to deal with suicidal people. Those who want to be supportive of the suicidal person can be absolutely wrung dry. That isn’t fair either.

We (the mentally ill or “crazy” as I think of myself) are told over and over that we should ask for help. Those of us with extreme trauma in our background are also told over and over and over and over again in therapy that it isn’t appropriate for us to talk about our experiences in front of “normal” people because we will hurt them just by admitting that people like us exist.

Shut up. And it is your own fault that you are crazy. And it is your fault if the pain is too much and you die. Why didn’t you get help? And while I’m at it, shut up.

I’m having a hard time with the kids. My shrink is encouraging me to consider getting a job so I can pay for private school because I need a break from my kids. I’m not entirely sure how adding a job to all of my current work would make my life easier. It isn’t like work stress is less impactful than kid stress. And the main job I have prepared to do is teach children. If I went back to doing that all day long I would not be a very nice person to my children. All of my patience would go to my job and by the time I got home I would be screaming and nearly psychotic.

It was funny how at first my shrink tried to talk me into just putting them in public school. She works with the school across the street from my house. It took me staring her down for a while before she admitted that the school is entirely substandard academically and it probably wouldn’t all “work out just fine”.

If my interactions with my kids all of a sudden had to go from just me enforcing about an hour a day of chores to me having to enforce an hour of chores AND force them to do homework that I know to be ineffective and damaging during the 3-4 hours a day I see them… I don’t see how we would get along better. Yes, I may feel less stress. Maybe. I haven’t at any other point in my life when my work situation has been different, but what the hell.

I don’t think sending my kids to a shitty school for babysitting is a good option. I don’t think that is in anyone’s best long-term interests. Would I do it if I HAD TO, yes. No one would die. It isn’t the end of the world. But no, it is not ideal. That is not for the best.

Is home schooling? Mostly we get along. We’ve had a hard few weeks. That happens every so often. I’m not sure we would get along better if our relationship involved me having to force them to get ready for school every day. I am not good at that.

I feel like a failure. I feel like I should die. But I don’t want to leave my kids. I don’t want to hurt them like that. I don’t know how to stop feeling like I am poison to everyone around me. I hurt people so much.

Maybe it would be better if I …… I don’t know.

Being alone is a weird thing. I don’t spend that much physical alone time these days. But I feel very alone emotionally. Is it because I can’t physically talk about almost any of what goes on in my head? I don’t know. I know that when I get together with other people there is usually a very clear dynamic that I am there to listen to them and be supportive of their issues. I need to not overwhelm people or bother them. I need to not be boring with this constant I want to die I want to die I want to die.

My throat hurts. My head hurts. My belly hurts. I want to puke. I want to beat my head so bad that I have to sit very still to not do it. I’ve been thinking about cutting all day. I want to bleed and bleed and bleed and bleed.

I don’t like me very much and it feels very much like I haven’t been punished adequately lately for being a piece of shit.

I can’t burden people with these thoughts. That’s not fair.

In the store, Calli was having a hard time. Calli said something–I forget what–and Shanna responded with some nonsense syllables and Noah, Shanna and I laughed. Calli sobbed. It felt like we were laughing at her and being mean. I pulled her into my arms and I carried her for the next half hour and I talked to her quietly. I apologized over and over. We didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. We were laughing at the silly sounds. I’m so sorry we hurt you. Clearly we did.

Then Calli asked me if it was right that she hurt herself. I felt utterly crushed. Did I teach you this? I try so hard not to talk about it. I don’t know if I have slipped or not. I may have. I told her that it was not right for her to hurt herself on purpose. I told her that her body is her constant companion–her body will be the only thing with her every minute of her life. She needs to be kind and loving to her body so that it can be strong and do all the things she wants to do in this life. We talked about how being kind to your body means eating healthy foods (we had a long chat about why Ho-Ho’s don’t count as “healthy food”) and drinking good water and exercising and sleeping and relaxing. We talked about balance. I told her that if she hurts herself, she won’t be as strong. I told her that if she hurts herself, she is hurting something that has only done kindness to her–her body has carried her through everything that has happened to her.

By the end she said it made sense and she said she would be careful and loving with her body.

Why can’t I talk me into feeling compassion for my body? I barely ate today. I just… couldn’t. Even though I rode 8 miles on my bike and ran just under 5 miles. I ate one piece of bread pudding and about 1/3 of a package of ramen. I don’t feel physically able to eat more. I feel sick and weak and nauseous and disgusting.

And yet I feel like there are pieces of my life pulling at me from every direction telling me that I have failed. I am not managing to make time for my friends in the ways they want me to. It’s very annoying that I get up so fucking early and I am not available to suit their needs. I am having trouble with home school social stuff. Not because anyone is doing anything. Because I feel like a feral animal in a trap and my stomach hurts all the time and I feel like I just can’t be around good, kind people. I will hurt them.

The world would be a better place if people like me didn’t exist.

More than once this weekend I felt crushing guilt. Some of the kids in the group are *gasp* normal kids and they push boundaries. Any time I enforced a boundary I felt like I should die. (To be fair, none of their parents objected and the kids aren’t upset with me to the best of my knowledge.) I’m not saying this is rational. I am more saying the opposite. None of this is rational.

I don’t know if that “alone” feeling can go away.

I feel a lot of guilt for not doing the 10k this week. But things just kind of fell apart. My running partner and I are both having feelings. We are both having stuff happen in our life and the race just didn’t quite happen for us. I feel like I let her down. I feel like I am a shitty piece of shit who should be run over by a Mac truck.

I can’t do everything. I can’t be every where. I can’t …. I just can’t. Yes, my failures suck. I know.

Yesterday I commented to Noah that I am feeling the lack of Godmama break. My shrink today commented, “It sounds like you really need a break.” Finding other options just isn’t happening. I don’t have the spoons to deal with trying to find babysitting. It is fucking hard. And people lie to me. And people steal money. And people don’t answer their phones. And… Yes, I need some kind of break from my kids. My time off is mostly the 8 hours/week I pay the neighbor but I work like a dog the whole time she is here. It is not rest time. It is “do things that I can’t do with my kids jumping on top of me” time.

I feel weary. I don’t think getting a job is actually the answer. For a hundred reasons. Yes, there would be good aspects. Right now, all I can think is, “What would I start failing on?” I have absolutely no extra spoons. I’m really far into spoon deficit.

Mostly I just pray that I don’t fuck up my kids too badly and I hope we can all make it through the next decade while still liking one another.

You know, me having a “really hard time” with my kids is about on par with the most stable, best parts of my childhood. That’s hard to wrap my head around. I feel so much guilt and so much shame for being a yeller. I don’t call my kids names.

I would have given anything to have my mom say that she was mad at what I did. Instead she told me that she was mad because I was a stupid bitch.

I yell things like, “I am not your fucking maid. Pick up your own shit.” That is what I say when I *lose it*. When I am really harsh. When I am so mean.

I wish my mama was that nice to me. I wish. I wish. I wish. I wish. That doesn’t excuse me being this way with my kids. I want to do better. Because I believe they deserve better.

I don’t scream all day long. I don’t scream every day. I scream too much. And I am really struggling with how to stop. I don’t think that adding the stress of a job would somehow magically make it easier for me to have patience. Maybe if I got to be a rural librarian who dealt with very few patrons on a day and who got to sit in a calm, orderly environment all day long. But I don’t actually have that option. I trained to do something high stress.

The idea that I would be less stressed if I went back to dealing with 150 teenagers a day is hilarious. At this point, with how teachers are getting screwed, I’d probably be up to 170 teenagers.

I told my shrink point blank that I want my next career to be in incest research and I cannot start on that path while I have little children. She countered with telling me about women who are public about intense issues getting killed. She had to agree that I should wait at least ten years before seriously starting the incest research for the safety of my children.

Yeah, I’m overly invested in the idea of home schooling. I have wanted to home school my kids since I was 17. I’m pretty devoted to this idea and I’m willing to try pretty hard to make it work out. Yes, putting my kids in school would be a failure. I have been preparing for home schooling for almost 16 years now. Yes, putting my kids in school would be a failure.

I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing. I really don’t. I don’t know what the future will bring. I’m very afraid that none of it will work out and I will end up alone and bitter and hateful.

I would much, much rather die. Life is such a risk. I feel like such a failure each and every day. Ok, there are days I don’t feel like a complete loser. It hasn’t been a good month so far.

I barely talked to the kids today. I was gone five hours for therapy. I can’t do that again. Two hours of exercise/transportation between bart and destinations. One hour of therapy. Two hours of train. I really need to find an incest specialist closer to my city. Why aren’t there tons of psychologists who specialize in incest sitting in my city?! Geez. Very inconvenient. Then I came home and went in my room and cried. Because it is that kind of day.

Noah is home. I did snuggle the kids before and after. We have talked. We have interacted, but not that much more than if they were in school all day.

I can’t talk without saying things I shouldn’t. So I’m not talking. Some days are like that.

And right there, right that minute, that is when the medication hit. Now I’m hungry. Now the pain in my head is mostly muddy noise I can ignore except for the throbbing spot. I still feel sick. But I feel like maybe I will be able to eat dinner.

Calli came into my room this afternoon and asked why I was crying. I said that in my head I was hearing mean things about me and they make me feel very sad. She said, “Like what?” I smiled and told her that she doesn’t need to hear those words come out of my mouth. I don’t need to be the one who teaches her to apply those words to me, or to herself.

I worry about both of my kids, but I worry more about Calli. On one hand I feel like the worst possible mother for her. She clearly has tendencies that I could uhh encourage. In bad ways. On the other hand, how many other people can talk to her about the problems of hurting yourself?

Baby I can’t make you like you any more than I can make me like me. But know that I like you. I love you all the time even when I don’t like something you have done. I am glad for you every minute of the day. I am grateful I get to see you again. You are a good girl who is trying to learn about a complicated world and no one can learn without making mistakes.

I don’t think I am good enough to be their mom. Unfortunately I don’t know who else to nominate for the role.

Also: my kids and I had a long chat about swear words because they are both becoming quite proficient at using shit, fuck, damn, hell, and crap. We talked about the penalties they might experience for using these words. I told them about all the ways I have been punished for talking this way. Shanna asked why I still use the words if so many people have hurt me to try and make me stop. I told her that when people try to force me to do things that is a guarantee I will do the opposite–even if I’m kind of hurting myself in the process. It isn’t smart, but it is how I operate.

Now my kids have decided that since language is all about modeling I have to stop swearing because I am teaching them the words too often. I am not happy about having my kids police my language this much. I’m really not happy about it. But I’m trying to go with it. I think Shanna is being proactive in an overall healthy way.

For the first time in my life I feel like the person who is telling me to stop swearing is doing so because she loves me and she wants more people to be nice to me.

It is very hard being aware that much of what my mother did was not out of love for me, was not out of desire to make me a better person, was not in the service of my best-self.

I look at my kids and I think of the awesome, overwhelming obligation they represent.

I am not sure I’m up for this, but there’s no way out but through.