I feel like part of the reason I am leaving is because I want to stop feeling angry at my friends. It isn’t their fault that I wanted them to be more like family and that isn’t what they want or need. It makes sense that they already have families and they are not auditioning new crazy members.

I think it’s going to be really interesting to find out what it feels like to only deal with my family for a long time. I won’t be able to look to my friends.

I think that is how I have killed my ability to stay here. I needed my friends to be family and they aren’t up for that and I can’t cope with the reality. Will I do the same thing in a different place? I don’t think so. I won’t establish myself in communities there in the same way.

If I try hard to be reasonable with myself, I know that I would be welcome in a lot of different communities. If I showed up week after week, they would be happy to put me to work. I wouldn’t be expunged. I have not been driven out.

But it’s more complicated than that. An awful lot of the communities I left I did so because of health problems or trauma reasons and I can’t really figure out how to not be bitter about no one noticing or caring.

I have a fair number of friends who are more disabled than me. I make sure I do the work to carry the friendship because that’s fair. But fucking everyone thinks of me as more able bodied and resourced than them. I’m not.

Fully able bodied people expect me to drive 40 minutes to visit them in their completely child-unfriendly houses.

I am really struggling with my feelings around this. Because I don’t get to act entitled to people’s time or attention. They don’t want a child friendly house. But they want me to come visit and somehow keep my children from touching anything?

Seriously, if you ask me over and over how to make your house a better place for my kids and you never take a single suggestion and you berate my children for touching your stuff? Uhhh I need to stop coming over.

THEN PEOPLE GET MAD AT ME. THEY SAY I AM BEING MEAN AND SELFISH BECAUSE I DO NOT WANT DRIVE 40 MINUTES FOR MY CHILD TO STAND STILL IN A ROOM AND NOT TOUCH ANYTHING.

Get the fuck out of here. My kids are far more important to me than you are.

My kids are there. You are not. You expect me to give to you endlessly as you bitch about how I didn’t give you more.

My fucking children are more grateful than you bastards.

My children understand that the time and energy I spend on them has a cost and I have to pay it. My friends seem to think that I am a bottomless well of attention and energy for them. It’s really kind of odd.

It’s kind of funny how much people let me know that I exhaust them by driving really far to see them and showing up to do work in their house. Ok fine. I can stop. I won’t exhaust you anymore.

A buddy today told me I should change so I can have more friends.

No. No. No. NO. NOOOOOOO

If I made my personality less abrasive I wouldn’t have more good friends I’d have more people happy to use me.

If you knew I was cracking under too much stress and you made promises to be there for my kids… how dare you cancel every visit then tell me you think I’m doing a bad job. You made sure my calendar was limited to you. That was all the spoons and time I had for planning. Then you rarely showed up. So mostly I just stayed home and cried.

And I couldn’t talk about the year of this shittiness while it was happening OR I WOULD BE FUCKING DISLOYAL.

I feel like everything is all my fault. How dare I get so angry. How dare I act so frustrated. How dare I run out of the ability to take care of every one every minute of the day while getting nothing back…

You try taking care of people 24/7 for ten years and see if you can manage to never get frustrated.

I am glad that for most of the next 9 months I won’t feel like I need to reach out to people to help. Jenny’s life is well in hand. She doesn’t need me and she has very little free time. We have been talking about how busy she is in advance of me coming. This is wise. That way if I see her for 2 hours in a week a handful of times I won’t feel rejected. I know that is squeezing me in.

I struggle with the fact that other than these four people, no one’s life really has a Krissy shaped hole. It doesn’t matter when I am gone. I am not integral.

That makes me wish I were dead.

That makes me feel like a complete fucking failure at life. I truly wish I didn’t hold these relationships as the deciding factor in whether I have failed at life.

Look around, bitch, you’ve done other cool shit.

But it never feels like enough. I love you so much. But love is not enough. Fuck you John Lennon.

All the feelings. I am having all the feelings. I don’t remember if I logged here that the rheumatologist says I definitely have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (after years of doctors telling me that there is no point in screening me) and I have arthritis. Osteoarthritis, not rheumatoid arthritis. Not that I’m super hip to the difference.

The house is so empty. The kitchen is empty. This is nothing like going on a trip. Our cupboards aren’t bereft of food… they are empty. The plates are gone. The cooking items are gone. Today we will do another thrift run on our way to drop off a car with a friend.

One of our cars goes away forever, today. The other one will technically remain in our possession for 15 more days because we need it between now and then but we are filling out paperwork today. We are just borrowing it for the next 15 days.

Tired. Can’t sleep. So many feelings. So overwhelmed. It is feeling terrifyingly real. We are going any minute here. I’m glad the kids can sleep. We are all anxious.

Holy tomato sauce on cheese toast… my kids are caught up on academics. I was starting to feel like that was an impossibility. But Eldest Child did a heroic push and she’s caught up. Now I need to catch up on grading. No problem.

Oh, we need to take the car seat out of the Prius and put it in storage. Eeeeeeep. Today is the day. We maybe should have/could have done that yesterday. I didn’t think of it. Oh well. I’m sure we would have wanted another run to storage today anyway so I can put paperwork in there for the house. We aren’t going to drag stuff pillar and post.

I’m going to do my best to have a media blackout for a while. I need to get off the internet. The internet hurts my mental health so much. It is hard to see a point in getting up in the morning and trying at life while reading the internet. Everything feels so hopeless. So I’m going to go talk to real people instead.

I wonder if Her Sweetness will use this car seat again while she is rear facing. I don’t think we would bother to come get it for August. We will try to borrow one for a month. It would be cheaper to buy a new one than to come get it. So we definitely won’t see this car seat again before she is about to turn 2 unless it takes a fair bit longer than that. We’ll see.

Where are we going to land? I don’t know. It is haunting me. Where can we be happy? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But it isn’t here. It’s not just me who is struggling here.

Let’s go see what’s out there. Oh goodness.

My left shift key is broke. Sometimes some letter keys are sticking. I can’t download Firefox, Hangouts, Skype…. all of this is broken since Apple “fixed” my screen. Sigh. I didn’t want to pay $1300 for a new computer right now. It’s not convenient.

Oh my cheese on toast.

$1,000 expenses are convenient or inconvenient not possible or impossible. How in the fuck is this my life?

We are so ready to go. I know I am going back and forth listing things here and on Twitter. I’m trying to not let details slip through the cracks so I’m repeating stuff a lot.

Today we take care of switching our addresses with banks. We bank in three places right now. We have one account attached to the safe deposit box and that will have to stay active or we lose the right to the box. But they are a shitty bank to use for anything overseas so we will probably have all of our US auto payment stuff go through that bank and we will just send a set amount there every month.

The credit union where our five main accounts are we will be keeping the kid saving accounts there and moving everything on to banks we can use overseas more easily. But the kid savings might as well stay there for now. So we will only have two bank accounts with them after today, I think.

And then there is the fancy international bank account. I have mixed feelings about this one. I am not a fancy international person. I’m a slobby international person.

Taxes are coming along. I think I gave Noah the last of stuff from my share of record keeping. I hope. He is so nice to handle taxes. They make my stomach hurt.

That list of address changes I needed to do? Last three places bam bam bam today.

I think we’ve notified utilities. We have to tell garbage on our last day in the house, but whatever.

Kid classes have ended.

Noah has one more Japanese lesson.

We have one more dinner with a friend scheduled.

We are going to a party on Saturday! A neighbor is going to babysit the kids so that Noah can hit me before we give away our hitting toys at the party.

I have 6 more medical appointments. Noah has 2 massages scheduled before we go and leave our favorite people. We are both lucky.

Our wonderful M and B will be staying with us for two days next week so we can have a slow paced visit before we go. I’m looking forward to that. I don’t get to see them enough.

12 days. Plugging right along.

I am not sure we will be able to eat all of the food we have in the house in 12 days. Ha. We really love grocery shopping. It’s a hobby.

That is 36 meals for 5 people and 7 or 8 meals for an extra body…. maybe we’ll get through it all. *cross fingers*

Today I will put a bunch of stuff on the driveway because the rain is over.

We have flights booked to Japan. I was anxious about that step. Now we have planes to Hawaii and Japan booked and lodging in both Hawaii and Japan booked. I don’t have ground transportation yet, but that’s feeling so much less scary. Worst case scenario in Hawaii is we take the city bus that will take 1.5 hours to get to where we are staying. In Japan I am almost certain looking for public transit anyway and I have four weeks of sitting in Hawaii to figure it out.

This is just not much stress at this point. I will get it all done with time to spare. I am relaxing a little more. I’m nervous, but it’s not at a fever pitch.

I wish I was spending less time ranting in my head about what a horrible person I am for expressing my anger and disappointment that people didn’t give me what I wanted from them. I didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t entitled to it. I’m just a selfish asshole who will throw tantrums when I’m not given things I don’t deserve. Fuck me.

I tried not to throw a tantrum. I tried to walk away. But that parting fuck you over my shoulder was uncalled for.

Why do I hate myself for expressions of anger? I’m setting these boundaries because without setting them in this way I walk into you hurting me over and over and over again because I want you so much more than you want me.

I want you and I love you and I spent years pouring energy into you. I walk away with an empty bucket and a lot of pain. But I really don’t think I deserve to be angry about that. It’s just life. Shut up, buttercup. You didn’t do anything bad to me. You didn’t do anything wrong by not wanting the relationship I wanted.

I think that is a lot of what hurts so much. I’m the only one doing anything wrong. I want things I shouldn’t want and then I hurt myself in the process and I take it out on you.

I am such a shitty person. I’m going to go cry now.

We leave this house in 14 days. That’s feeling… whoa. I have nothing scheduled for the next 5 days. I am trying to ramp down. Then next week is somewhat busy then we go.

Bye.

I don’t say fuck you because I hate you. Or because you are a terrible person. I say it because I am trying to cut this cord in myself. I want you so fucking bad and I can’t have you. Not how I want you. I tried for years. I can’t make it work.

This goes back to when my step father used to yell at me that if I couldn’t get someone to do something I just hadn’t tried hard enough.

I am trying to not see this as just a failure on my part. To some extent this is about you too, so fuck you. But not really. Oh god. I hate that I feel bad about hurting your feelings after mine have been hurting so much for so many years.

This week I am going to read. I am going to read all of the books that are sitting here in the “I should read this once then pass it on” pile.

Yes Pam, several are about Ida B. Wells.

I need to stop wanting y’all so damn much. Just move on.

14 days.

Oh golly gee wiz. We don’t have a lot left in our house. We moved back into the kitchen because the staging is over. It’s weird seeing the cupboards. We have more food than we will be able to eat in 19 days because it’s a slightly weird hodge podge.

Corn chips, rice, oatmeal, flour, nuts, and condiments. We have too much. But the kids and I want to go to the park for a picnic today (weather permitting) and that will be a good opportunity to eat a bunch of the random stuff. I have these lime and sea salt pistachios that are outrageously good. I will cheerfully burn holes in my gums eating these because they are so tart.

I should make scones today. We have three more mixes.

Whatever. Time to go hang out with kids.