Cheerful.

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I just spent more than two months of personal money on books about suicide. I haven’t read these ones yet. At this point I am fairly sure I have read more than thirty books about suicide. Thirteen more will be arriving in a week. I have never been good at writing down how many books I read (I’m trying a thing this year!) so I read books and then can’t remember if I have read them or not until I get ten pages in. Then I can tell you most of what happens in the book.

What is the book about? (My book–the next.) It is a book for twelve year olds that is mostly about social engagement and harm reduction but it looks like it is a book about dealing with suicide and mental health issues. I specifically and in great detail go into different problems that come up for people. I talk about how to handle them. I talk about how to get adult support when you need it.

I talk about which kinds of adults are good for asking different kinds of questions. I tell kids to go spend a lot of time sitting alone in a room so they can figure out what *they* believe. Then go out into the world and act like it is true.

It is a book that is a twelve year old level introduction to the fact that every person occupies a very individual sized hole in the world. What you can do is not an option for other people. You have a unique ability to be helpful and loving.

And if you aren’t feeling helped or loved there are people in your world who would like to help. Sometimes finding them is really hard. You have to be persistent. You have to believe that your needs matter.

I talk about sex enough to say that wanting it is good and natural and nothing to be ashamed of but you need to realize that there are adult consequences. I talk a little about STDs and pregnancy and tell people that they are going to have to live with the results of their actions. There are ways to “experiment” and have fun that do not have permanent risks. Make conscious decisions. Don’t let things “just happen” to you.

As medical science advances suicide is becoming one of the most common ways people die. It is the only form of death we can’t seem to reduce the rate of in our population.

That’s really sad. That’s a whole lot of people who feel worthless and unwanted.

The Golden Gate Bridge is being retrofitted with dividers between the traffic lanes. I read somewhere that this will prevent an average of seventeen deaths in a year. (Maybe in a two year period?) But they have more like two thousand suicide deaths a year and they don’t want to put a suicide net up even though it is much cheaper than the traffic divider.

It’s not pretty.

No, suicide isn’t pretty. It’s not pretty how many people feel like they have nothing of real value in themselves. It’s not pretty that people go off to die alone because they are so convinced that it is the only way out of hurting.

It’s not pretty.

I tell my children every single day that I love them and I am glad they are here with me. I somehow suspect that this will continue for the rest of their lives. I’ll send emails when it becomes creepy to call. Maybe letters.

My kids are not going to be afraid that no one will care if they die.

Medicating

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When I am having a lot of generalized anxiety but little specific anxiety (I am currently blissfully conflict-free with regards to other people so far as I know) I always cycle back to feeling very upset with myself for medicating. I have a really bad attitude about people who use medication to deal with their feelings. Addicts are bad. I don’t really care if they are addicted to alcohol, pot, or Prozac. Addicts are bad, right?

But I don’t really believe that. I just feel scared. I feel that other people, those unimportant people I don’t know or care about, think that I’m bad because I’m an addict. Is a diabetic an addict when they use insulin?

The transition between smoking and edibles is kind of weird. Smoking takes a lot more time. I won’t be around the kids when I do it. (Recently I was talking to a mom who smoked a lot of pot with her kids in the room when they were little and she talked about how she started sharing as soon as they hit double digits in age. Uhm. I wouldn’t give my kids my Prozac so I’m not going to hand them my pipe.) I have a lot of anxiety around the amount of time that I spend away from the kids smoking. I feel like it is neglectful.

I don’t actually think it is neglectful. I’m within 50′ of them but I’m through walls. They can come and talk to me and ask questions and I take breaks to come in and help them with things if they need help. They aren’t actually being neglected. I can sort of intellectually understand that my kids aren’t being neglected.

But I’m afraid that someone like me will neglect her kids because of inattention or being so self-absorbed. What is neglect anyway? No one can give me an amount of time. “If your kids have no adults willing to jump up and help them for x time then it qualifies as neglect.” No one will tell me the answer. I can’t find the answer. I’ve read a lot of “experts” and lay people. No one knows.

They know that children who are not cuddled in the first three years have severe problems for the rest of their lives. I would not have been able to cuddle my kids without the pot. I feel really bad for that but it is simple fact.

Without pot I shake a lot of the time. I have severe hypervigilance. You can put me in the room with ten other people who are all diagnosed hypervigilance and I can rattle off tons of things those people didn’t notice because hypervigilance means different things in different bodies. (What do you fucking mean you DIDN’T NOTICE THEY HAD SECURITY CAMERAS?!)

A long time ago I learned that I had to stare really hard at any person who came near me. I had to try to figure out their mood and how I should react to them. If someone touches me by surprise I inflict violence. It was a very consciously learned skill.

When I’m smoking the come down is a lot faster and harder than with edibles. Edibles provide this languor that goes on and on. But the effect is much more dramatic initially and you can only use as much as you need with smoking. With edibles you get how much your body decides to give you from that batch. It is hard to titrate.

Yesterday was a very low use day because I had a dentist appointment in Cupertino in the afternoon. That’s a bunch of driving in heavy traffic. I don’t smoke before such a day.

I had a little bit before bed but not much because I was too eager to just go to bed. So I woke up with a stomach ache so terrible I really want to go in the bathroom and make myself vomit so I can just get it over with. I’m not going to do it. I understand that my body is looking for another bad coping method. I’ve always been very lured by vomiting. I have a quick gag reflex. A lot of things make me puke. At some point I did learn how to make myself vomit because there are times when I really just need to vomit because that will end the pain.

When I’m unmedicated first thing in the morning my stomach hurts and I have a terrible time not clenching my teeth so hard my whole lower jaw aches. My hands  shake. All of the random body pain I always have feels tightened and sharpened.

If I go smoke pot… it’s not exactly miraculous but it’s pretty extreme. All of a sudden I can decide to relax my jaw and it will do it. I notice my body pain in a different way. All of a sudden it feels like, “Ah! I need to stretch!” and I do and I feel better. Well, my back always hurts. My back has hurt since my age was in single digits.

My stomach relaxes and all of a sudden I recognize that I am hungry. It doesn’t feel like nausea any more. Now I can eat. If I try to eat without smoking I can eat about a piece of string cheese and that’s it. I can’t have a meal. It will cause me too much pain and if I really force myself to eat I will end up vomiting.

This has gotten a lot worse since I had kids. I used to be able to eat a little bit of food at a time all day long and keep the pain sort of handled. I can’t do that now. A lot of the food we eat now are vegetables and fruit. I’m used to wheat products as what I eat. I’ve always eaten bread or noodles or something like that. Vegetables and fruit cause me a lot of pain. Malnutrition is like that.

I am trying to talk myself into working with a specialist. I know I need to do something about how my body handles food.

But if I smoke pot in the morning I can eat a normal breakfast and then snack of vegetables and fruit with my kids. I don’t experience the same pain.

Am I an “addict”?

I worry most about the startle reflex. I worked so hard on becoming more instinctively and quickly violent. In the scheme of my life the period of time during which it has been rational and safe to respond to random, painful touch with kindness has been very short.

I want to repeat that rational word a few more times. At this point in my life it is not rational to respond to sudden, painful touch with violence. My children aren’t hurting me on purpose they just haven’t learned how to be gentle yet. It is a process. If I want them to learn something I have to slowly and carefully and deliberately model it to them. That is how children learn. You act in front of them how you want them to act.

Reacting with violence was a rational response before I had children. It just was. I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks. At this point it is completely unacceptable. That’s tough.

Sometimes you develop ways of coping with really bad situations that are necessary at the time. Those skills may not translate well into later parts of your life. It is important to periodically assess how your skills are in relationship to your current life.

November is coming up. I’m going to do NaNoWriMo. I need to get disciplined again about getting up at 4:30 and I need to write until 6:30. I have to if I want to work on Outrunning and I do. I want to finish writing Outrunning in November and I want to spend December working on the resource section. I want a complete first draft by the end of the year.

I have decided that next year I am going to find a better editor for No Secrets and then I am going to take the New & Improved version shopping for a real publisher. I expect at least fifty rejections. Maybe I should be prepared for more like two hundred rejections. The kid who discovered a way to work with pancreatic cancer had to get 199 rejections.  I don’t think I should feel like I deserve an easier road.

I feel that is one of the most damaging messages I received as a child. If something is hard it isn’t worth doing. Not true. Sometimes the most important things are things you have to fight tooth and nail to even be allowed to do.

I’m scared to commit. I’m scared to admit to the grown ups what I say to their children. I’m afraid the grown ups are going to yell at me. I’m afraid the grown ups won’t let their kids read the book.

I have spent a lot of years researching a lot of topics around mental and physical health through adolescence. I’m by no means a PhD style “expert” but I know how to find the expert opinions when I need them. I know a lot about the problems that emerge during adolescence and I pray with all my might that the things I have in my head are things that would be useful if other people knew them.

I feel scared of admitting to myself that this is as close as I have to religion. Let me be enough. Let me be able to help people. I want to help. I want to help so bad. Sometimes it feels like the only way I can make me feel better is if I make other people feel better. I don’t feel less anxiety until I see that I can make them feel less anxiety.

When I am too much for people, when I am too intense, when they have to back away for their own preservation… I feel like I should die. I don’t want anyone to feel guilty about this. It isn’t someone else’s fault that I am so ridiculous. When I feel like I have nothing to give and instead I am a burden I feel like that means I should be culled from the herd.

Does that mean I look at every disabled person and think, “They should be culled”? Err.. no.

I am able to see the value in other people in a way I am not able to see my own value. When I look at other people I can see how dependence is part of creating bonds. Needing help and accepting it from someone is a way of creating a social bond. Giving help feels good. You can only give help if someone needs it. It’s a cycle thing.

I have been told that in Burkina Faso there is no such thing as a personal problem. Every problem is a problem for the community. Depression basically doesn’t exist. People keep you tied to life because they honest to goodness need you. If you are feeling sad you can find a funeral within walking distance and go grieve as much as you want to. No one will think there is anything wrong with crying because you feel bad and there will be people near you who know you and love you and see your value to comfort you when you need it. They know why you are crying. They understand.

I’m sure there are flaws in the system.

It is hard for me that I still need to cry so much and I don’t have space in my life where that is really considered “ok”. I can’t model walking around crying all the time. It will fuck up my kids. I can’t be a miserable son of a bitch. It’s just not ok. But I am a miserable son of a bitch.

I feel sad. I feel scared. I feel like no one has ever liked me or will ever like me. I understand that these are not “rational” things. They just are. I don’t know how to interpret signals of people liking me. I know this is broken. I know that people demonstrate that they like me by continuing to talk to me year after year. I know that I can’t ask anyone to jump through hoops “proving” anything to me. I don’t think I test people much any more.

I just stay home. And people either visit or they don’t.

Well, I go out to home school events because I owe that to my children. They will be exposed to lots of people. And not just people who are willing to jump through the hoop of coming to my house. That is a very different sort of bubble.

This is part of why we are getting to know our neighbors. There are a lot of people around here who just kind of hang out all day. We are not the only home schoolers (though the kids are high school aged so not really friend material). There are a lot of retired people in our neighborhood. They hang out near their garages. We talk to them. I’m not limiting my kids to people who are weird enough to like me. Ha.

So I’ve been thinking about my policy of screaming at the neighbors (only when they are racist!). I don’t really want to cause them to stop talking to my kids. This is going to be hard.

When I use edibles I stay a lot more consistently stoned a lot more often. There aren’t as many spikes and dips in pain and emotion. But edibles are $400-$500/month. (Depends on what I am able to buy because the prices can vary.) Smoking is more like $100-$150/month. I have a lot of anxiety about that price difference. I feel like I can’t really justify spending as much money on my body every month as I do.

I spend $300 every month (occasionally $450 but rarely) on therapy. I buy pot. I buy massages, though we’ve been fairly stingy with those this year. We’ve spent less than $200/month on massages. I can tell that my ambient pain is a lot higher. I wish I was also paying for acupuncture but man can I just not bring myself to cough it up. Hell, I wish I was regularly seeing a chiropractor and a nutritionist. Let me feel the explosion of stomach acid. Wheeeee.

My body does not function very well. I’m trying to figure out how to make it run better so that I can “just be a nicer person” but I didn’t get enough of this shit taken care of before I had kids. I didn’t feel the damage so much then. Learning how to take care of an animal is a process. Human beings are animals. We need particular kinds of foods in differing quantities. You have to figure out each animal. It’s a process.

No one ever really looked at me or tried to maintain proper care of me. Learning how to do so now is hard. I am only figuring out how to do it because I am reading in books what I should be doing with my children. It feels daunting.

I read that human beings are usually naturally opposed to “going to exercise”. Humans stay fit if they do work in the course of their life. Sitting on your ass doesn’t count as “work” in this sense.

I have struggled all of my life with my visceral disconnect that anything I do while sitting on my ass doesn’t count as “work” but that is the only kind of work people want to pay you to do. Physical work is what counts in my subconscious but it is not socially valued. Look at how class hierarchies work.

I think I should resign my membership in the Libertarian party. I have changed my mind about wealth distribution. Three hundred Americans have as much wealth as eighty-five million Americans. Yeah. That sounds like time for redistribution.

We live in a time when there is no excuse for people not helping others survive at a reasonable level. Food should not be so hard to find. We waste so much food. It is stupid.

But man can I not devise a system that would solve the problem for the whole country. Would I be able to design one that would work for my town? My town is trying really hard to gentrify. How could I figure something out that would help my community? I don’t know yet. That isn’t a problem I’m ready to try to solve. I think I will try some day though. Not while the kids are little.

I have a hard time with the fact that I have ended up being “the woman in the home”. I have chosen it consciously and deliberately every step of the way. Does that mean I am choosing to be silent and inconsequential for the rest of my life?

Luckily Noah plans to keep me steadily in laptops and internet connection. (I have three laptops and an iPad in the house. I have a voice.)

When I look around at feminist dialogue I feel sad because I don’t want to speak because I am a white woman. Does the world really need the opinions of one more white whiny bitch?

Do I spent my life just thinking “poor me”? No. Not really. I understand that whereas my life has contained a lot of specific trauma I have benefited from an enormous amount of help as well. I’m alive and well because of the charity of a lot of people. Many of them are very angry that I am not happy and doing well because of the help they gave. I am very sorry that the help they gave was so inadequate towards meeting my needs. It is very hard on both sides.

I have to deal with the physical damage caused by trauma though. I feel very lucky that I live in a time and a place where if I want to I can spend ten minutes on the proper search engine and come up with lots of documentation of why I have the physical reactions I have to life. I feel validated.

But once I have that validation I need to keep reading and look at the consequences of being someone with those physical reactions. It’s not good socially or physically.

I bless my inordinate ability to go make friends. There is a very large part of me that is still a charming three year old trying to make people love me. But now I understand that I have to do it without sitting on their laps and grinding.

The whole “fake it” thing is accessing part of me. It’s not like I am trying to act like someone else as my model of being happy. I have never found anyone who is the way I want to be. I’m ok with that. I don’t think it means anything bad about anyone else.

No one else has had my life. No one else can understand the dissertation associated with every coping method. Just like I can’t understand theirs. Because everyone else has their own story.

I’m getting better at seeing people in the context of their own story. I’m getting better at seeing my role in their lives. I’m trying to understand what it means to play a supporting role while still getting to be the main character in my story. What does it mean to be part of an ensemble piece? What is my role in the quirky sitcom of life? But my life has really been more of a Greek tragedy, you know?

I no longer have the energy for peppy. I’m just too damn tired. I see the need for other people more. I see the sadness of other people better. I see why they react the way they do and why they must react the way they do. I don’t take it so personally when people can’t handle me. I still feel sad.

I don’t feel as suicidal any more. That’s why I had kids. Never again in my life will it be a good thing that I die. I am required to put it off as long as possible because it will hurt my children terribly. We are very close. I am nice to them. I am gentle with them.

Because I medicate. That gives me the ability to be gentle with them even when they are loud and boisterous and very physical. It allows me to have a pause.

Why do I feel so bad about medicating? I know a wide variety of people who are a wide variety of functioning while using a lot of pot. These are all people who would be more and less functional without the pot. So what?

I feel grateful that I live in a time and in a place where this is a legal medication for me to use. If I lived somewhere else I would not be able to use this medication. If I lived in a different part of my country I would not be able to use this medication. I’m only quasi-legal on a federal level. They rarely persecute users. They prosecute dispensaries instead just so they can steal a lot of money. It is state sanctioned piracy.

In medias res. I think about it all the time. What does it mean to truly live in the time and place where you live? What does it mean to be limited by the culture you were born into? What am I capable of doing? I don’t know yet.

I tell myself that if I learn how to be nicer to my body I could have a good forty years of work left after my children are grown. I think of what I want to do while they are children. I think of what I want to do after they are grown. I need to take better care of my body.

I don’t think that all women should stay home with their kids. I really don’t. Really. I think it would be really traumatic and awful for some families, quite frankly. But I wish that more kids got to be with a parent for the first few years. I wish there were more ways of figuring out how to make that work. Sometimes neither parent is the right one to stay home and be all nurturing. I wish that a grand parent lived nearby who was thrilled to take on the early care-taking role or an aunt who was happy to take a few years off from working. Or an uncle. Or a cousin. Someone who was deeply tied to the long-term well being of the child who would devote lots of love and attention. Preferably this person would live with the family.

That’s what I wish. But I understand that it isn’t the reality for every family. I don’t think that families who do something different are doing something bad. I think they are living within their resources. I get to have a fantasy life. I get to pretend that somewhere out there maybe it could be true that it worked out that way.

It doesn’t mean I think bad things about people who are living in the world they live in. I mean Jimminy Christmas haven’t I demonstrated that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and I’ve got my own list of sins?

I don’t like Christianity but I grew up entirely within that narrative. It is most of how I view the world whether I like it or not. It is my background culture. It won’t be for my kids and that is really weird.

I feel scared of really putting out what I believe in the form of a book. I will flat encourage people I know to buy it and give it to their kids. What do I feel comfortable saying to my little niece in Scotland when she is twelve? What do I want to say to my little nephew over in Mountain view when he is twelve? What do I really want them to know about the world? What do I want my kids to know?

What do I wish I had known?

What do I think I can get past the censorship of the wonderful sweet Christian ladies in my home school group?

Holy moly.

Talk about a tight rope.

And I want to produce this document within the next two months. No pressure. Luckily I have done a lot of writing already. It will be ok. It has to be a length a twelve year old can handle without feeling freaked out. Even ones who are not the most fluent readers in the world.

Why that age? Why that focus? Mostly because that is when I picked up a string of twenty-five year old men. What do I wish I had known?

Hormones change around then and it is a very scary process. What do I wish I had known?

I feel like this is what I have to give the world. I’m not sure what it is worth. I’m not sure that other people will agree that twelve year olds need to know all this. I do. I believe it with all my might.

And I will have to be ok with the fact that lots of people will disagree.

Ok.

Christmas gifting. (I’m just skipping Halloween entirely.)

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Noah declared that with a large raise should come a raise in our gift giving budget. Then we bought tickets to Texas. Ha. I’m already starting to near the end of shopping so I thought I would figure out what I’ve done. We have a lot of travel near the end of the year and I want to not think about gifts in November and December if I can help it.

Noah:

something to wear: check

something to read: nope

something you want: nope

something you need: nope

stocking: nada

Santa: yeah no.

Uhm. on to less depressing people.

Shanna:

something to wear: yes (nightgown)

something to read: yes

something you want: doll she picked out at Disneyland

something you need: backpack with self-entertainment kit

stocking: mostly done. still need tights and maybe one toy.

Santa: no clue

Calli:

something to wear: yes (nightgown)

something to read: yes

something you want: doll she picked out at Disneyland

something you need: bed spread

stocking: mostly done. still need panties and socks (she asked for Strawberry Shortcake socks and I haven’t found them yet)

Santa: no clue

 

Coming along though. Some stuff needs to get shipped soon. I should wrap it first.

Searching for a helpful babysitter

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But not for me! A good friend lives in Oakland, near Lake Merritt. She fairly desperately needs someone she can call occasionally for help with one or both of her kids.

This coming Monday she needs help from 8:30-12:30 with her one year old. She is the sweetest little girl and I wish I could do it. But that is my window for getting my washing machine repaired.

Is anyone else available?

head hurts.

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On days when I don’t feel well I dream of Disney vacations. I have read research saying that planning for trips generally gives you most of the joy that the trip would give you.

I’m pretty sure I’m not going to let Noah talk me into anything huge for the ten year anniversary. But if anyone wanted to go on a Disney Cruise with us… maybe? I’m going to make my plans with the assumption that it will be just the four of us.

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#39: Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha (there should be an accent on the last a.)

When I finished reading it I burst into tears. Maybe I broke my marriage by not being able to handle more small “lies”.

Victory, pain, and Zen.

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I finished painting! I’m afraid some areas will require a second coat because Glidden is shitty paint. It’ll be ok.

My fingers, hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, back, and legs hurt. I won’t type much today. Rest is my friend. Pictures soon.

Last night we woke up in the middle of the night and had sex, like we do. When we were done and cuddling I had one of those wonderful, sadly rare, moments of complete calm. I am where I want to be. I am doing what I want to do. I am loved. It will all work out ok. Not everyone is so blessed. Feeling ok is so nice. I want more of that.

empty brain, go work.

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I am not sure I will 100% finish the play structure today but I will finish painting. Damnit. I’m not painting the base boards because they are already nasty filthy. Oh well. The rest of it is Colorful. Pictures soon. Holy moly colorful. Structure of many colors. At least fifteen colors so far and I think I may use a couple more. Today I paint the rock wall. Woo! I will also make sure I get the roof on. Maybe I will do that before I start painting. Not many boards left!

After I finish the play structure I need to take a break from outside work and come inside and dismantle my laundry room. This is my sad face. Luckily I construct my projects with the idea that if I make 3,028 trips then everything is easy for me to carry by myself without destroying my back. Yay! So it will be annoying and time consuming but not painful. Cause I’m S_M_R_T.

Once that is done I need to paint the arbor. Then I can move on to other, currently more appealing, work. Like spreading mulch! I have so much wonderful mulch. *happy dance* My whole forking yard will be covered which is awesome sauce because I have this terrible clay.

I still haven’t moved the rocks. I should probably ask Noah to help me do that today. I’m more than a little afraid that if I get all macho and try to do it alone I *will* throw out my back. My back and I are not on the best of terms right this minute. Gentle work.

I opened negotiations with my two favorite running buddies for a half marathon next year out of state. Ten years of running deserves a celebration. And who doesn’t like a trip to Portland? We’ll get to see lots of fabulous people. Always a win.

I haven’t worked on the book in a week. I’m tired. My brain hurts. I need to finish the bloomin’ painting outside so I can come inside and start nice gentle inside winter work and let my forking back heal. But I need to be running. I think it is weird how much I crave the running now.

Something else I’ve been thinking about like crazy. One of the moms of many in our home school group made a comment this week to the effect that when her fifth child is born she is going to get rid of all hand-me-downs because she is done having kids. I almost burst into tears. She’s allowed to have as many kids as she wants and I’m only allowed to have two so why is she stopping?!!?!?!?!?!? Ahem. Obviously I didn’t say a word to her. But I had this explosion of feelings I’ve been processing since. I started bleeding yesterday which was welcomed by my now-standard sobbing because it feels like I just lost a wanted baby. Noah’s shooting blanks so I will never miscarry again. But every month feels like it.

On the upside I didn’t have an explosion of joint pain in the 24 hours before I started bleeding. Phew. That means it only happened two months in a row and I can ignore it and not see a doctor. My favorite kind of random pain.

On the downside my right arm hurts like a son-of-a-bitch. I woke up in the middle of the night with my elbow hurting. Painting is hard on my arm. I’ll be done soon. I’ll take a few months off at least. Then I’ll start painting the inside of my house. Mostly I want to be able to get rid of all the paint so I need to finish the projects I have in my head. I’d like to use the storage space for other things.

So far I have only learned a few minor points of argumentation from Sex at Dawn. I remain convinced that I went out and got a graduate level education on sex. I just know shit. It’s nice to feel that confirmed so strongly occasionally. “Oh look, a groundbreaking book that teaches me nothing new. Guess I’m already doing the groundbreaking.” Ha! Not that I have a big ego or anything. *cough*

I’m trying to not fret about money. I haven’t overspent our income. I have saved. I have paid down debt. I just also bought things I wanted. I bought things my family and friends will use and appreciate for many years. I wish I didn’t feel so much guilt. My shrink wants me to work on that guilt because it is specifically non-useful to me. Noah doesn’t feel I am extravagant in my spending and his opinion is the only one that matters, except for mine, when it comes to my spending. So stop feeling guilty. But so many Mint categories are red! (They will even out by the end of the year.) Clearly I am a bad person! Err, maybe I have some issues.

I keep busy because it is better than sitting still all day and crying. I’m trying to feel cheerful about the work instead of cranky. This is all self-imposed and self-created work. I do it just because I want to do it. That means I should be pleasant to be around. I am the cock crowing at the top of the dung heap of self-important work. Seriously. I should be in a good mood. But my body hurts.

Balance. I need more of this balance stuff. How do I use my body without causing it intense pain all the time? No clue. But I’m pretty sure it involves more yoga.

Some day when we don’t have a mortgage to pay for… if we are still so rich… I want to take weekly yoga classes and get massages twice a month. That would be so freakin rad. It could theoretically start in 2021 when we come back from travel. *cross fingers* I can hold out that long. Really it isn’t so long in the scheme of things. It is such a dreamy future. I can work for that.

When I am older and my kids don’t need as much from me I look forward to a much more selfish life. I will eventually do some kind of work with other people out of loneliness but I look forward to being able to care about my body a lot more than I do now. Maybe future self will be convinced to be nice to me? It’s a dream. Arms hurt. Stop typing, you fool.

food journey.

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Shanna walked outside eating a sandwich. I said, “Is it a good pbj?”

“It’s not a pbj. It is peanut butter and caramel because I couldn’t find the jam. It’s that awesome caramel P gave us for Christmas.”

“Oh. Well I’m glad we are using it up.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

 

What else was I going to say?! I think it is rad that she makes her own lunch while I work…

it will be a busy weekend.

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Yesterday was the second of five kid social events that I have scheduled in two weeks. Because I was having feelings this was the first time I have deliberately sat away from the group and declined interaction. Normally I hang out and do the clucking chicken thing with the other ladies. (English sounds like clucking hens from a distance. It’s hilarious.) I have had no hint of interpersonal difficulties. So far this seems to be a freakishly kind group of people. We are coming up on three years in this group. Very soon this will be the school group I have spent the most time with in my life. I was at SJSU for seven years pursuing my masters but I wasn’t enrolled straight through. I missed at least two years in the center. But when I have feelings so sometimes I walk away from the group. Even though they are so kind.

I have actually felt rather overwhelmed by how nice they all are. I feel a lot of pressure to be similarly nice. Ha. The woman who runs the group causes me to feel like I am unlikely to be thrown out. When there is group drama people aren’t asked to leave unless they start name calling. I can live with those kinds of boundaries. I think that’s fair. You don’t call names. Totally cool. I agree with that as a limit.

The kids had a blast though. That pumpkin patch is definitely going to become part of our yearly rotation.

I would like to finish the play structure this weekend. Cross your fingers. I get to the point of feeling like I have too many ongoing projects. Then I feel so overwhelmed I can’t make progress on anything because I feel guilty for not making progress on anything else while I am working on one thing.

What is life about if not work? I know there are people who think life is more about having fun or experiencing pleasure or happiness. I get most of my serious joy from working. Sometimes this feels kind of broken and sometimes it seems like a good thing. It sure makes it fun to hang out with the kids doing work. The harder I work the more fun we have because my spirits come up. If I’m just sitting around resting all day then I don’t want to be talked to or asked to do anything. I am less patient with their constant interruptions. When I’m working I handle the detours for food with far more grace.

Today I saw something on Pinterest that made me happy. “Motherhood is not a battle against other mothers. Motherhood is your journey you are on with your children.”

I feel a lot like that. I’m not trying to talk anyone into anything. I don’t think I know how someone else’s journey should look. I’m just walking the path I see in front of me. Isn’t that what we all can do?

Yesterday I was talking with a lovely woman about what it means to be valued versus being valuable and how you feel those things. She is struggling in her life with not feeling either. She asked me how I manage to feel valuable or valued. A lot of my journey is not available to her. So I’m not trying to say that what I do is what she should do.

I became a teacher. I wanted to feel like I had things in my head that other people could benefit from knowing. I tirelessly research so that when someone asks a fairly mild question I can follow it with a dissertation. I know that people can benefit from having access to the knowledge I have in my brain. That helps me. I’ve had enough people effusively thank me for what I can tell them that I know it is true. Even when I haven’t been a good edu-tainment recently. It’ll happen again.

I became a mother. I am the most valued person in the world for my two kids. I kinda wish I had more kids… but life works how it does. I’m not sure I would do better if I had more but I want them. I think I would do worse. But man I sit there and look enviously at all the five children families in our group. I want more children so bad it hurts. I’m about to start bleeding any day. Every month this turns into a weep fest about the children I will not get to meet. I’m glad that Noah limited his child-bearing opportunities because I’m too stupid to do so.

I went and found a partner who is very codependently attached to me. Yay us! We have a kind of inter-dependence that most American couples seem to shun. We very consciously and deliberately trade a lot of “for myself” work because we like having the other do it. Noah treats me like I am valuable. Like I provide him support no one else ever has and he really needs it. It isn’t about cleaning the house. It is about needing him. I do need him. It feels nice to both of us. I’m not sure that it is healthy. We certainly aren’t two independent people shacking up any more.

I appreciate that Noah acts like the way I talk to him is as necessary for a happy life as food. How I talk to him is more important than how I fuck him and I think that my willingness to fuck him is high on the list of my overall value. So if the talking is better that says something.

Noah has no particular reason to feel the need for most of what I do during the day. But he’s glad I do it because he thinks the kids need what I do. He thinks that my labor has a serious purpose. He thinks the raising of our kids is a worthy life-task.

Today I paint and put the roof on the play structure.

It isn’t that I think that people are mean to me or hate me. Not really. I’m 32. I have been “out” for fourteen years. In general I think that people treat me the way I want to be treated or I get up and leave the room. I don’t listen to assholes any more. If someone is genuinely beyond my acceptability standards they don’t have a doubt in their mind. I scream at people and/or sometimes break things. I’m not subtle when someone crosses a line. So if you have never seen any kind of behavior like that… obviously you’ve always been on my good side.

No one likes living under the threat of having someone scream and break things though. That is abusive.

I try to avoid people when I have a problem with them. If I have ever come and sat next to you and talked to you then you aren’t someone I have a problem with. But that isn’t a guarantee that you will never be someone I have a problem with. And it isn’t all that fair that doing something I don’t like may result in that kind of treatment.

I don’t want to teach my children to be bullies. Screaming and breaking things when you don’t get your way is… not ok.

Most of how I manage this is I make sure I don’t need anything from someone and space. If I am starting to have too many emotional issues around a person I will just not see them for a bit. My feelings have expiration dates. I calm down. Sometimes it takes a while. A lot of people cause me to have strong feelings. I don’t think that is something they need to lose sleep over.

But why in the fuck do I feel like I have to be non-triggering but I don’t think other people have to be non-triggering towards me? Because I know I can’t control people or their behavior. I know that if I trigger people the way they can deal with that is to punish me or walk away from me, which ends up feeling the same.

Social dynamics are really hard.

I can like someone a great deal and still judge them. I try my hardest to treat people as I believe they should be treated. I consciously decide what sort of behavior someone has earned from me.

I will still scream at racists. I don’t care if it is an asshole thing to do. I will. I will not scream first. I will escalate gradually and if they keep arguing I sure as fuck am going to be the one still standing there while they walk away. That’s a line. Really I react that way in defense of a wide variety of persecuted groups. Ok, I’m fine being an asshole.

But I do that as a conscious choice in reaction to increasing and perseverating arguments from another person. It is not ok to just do that.

I’m also ok with punching someone as hard as I can if they grab my crotch. I don’t treat that as a behavior I should get rid of even if it does make some people uncomfortable. I don’t care.

I don’t think I should lose the desire and ability to fight hard.

But I want to be better at completely turning it off and knowing when I don’t need to be prepared to fight. What does relaxing look like?

People keep telling me I look calm and happy. Does calm and happy really feel like this though? I don’t feel calm or happy. But I am projecting it. (Ok, people only tell me that if they catch me on “on” days. I’ve been withdrawing a lot.)

When you die you leave behind you the way you made people feel. No one ever really knows what you are feeling yourself. No matter how much you tell them they never really know. They only know how you made them feel.

I want to make other people feel better. I want to make other people feel calm and happy. It is really immaterial how I feel.

And yet I really really REALLY also want to be able to scare the shit out of people with little more than a change of facial expression. It’s a cool talent. I’ve had it for a long time. I can’t scare everyone of course. But in general I win dominance challenges.

It seems crazy. But this is how I learned how to stop being prey. I had to go learn how to be one of the most intense predators in the room.

My therapist wants me to research Eastern religions. She thinks there is some useful stuff for me in learning about wrathful Gods/Daemons/Demons however the heck this will be phrased. Oh man. New lexicon.

Maybe it is useful and good that I can be evil but I choose not to be. I choose not to because I see so clearly the long-term hurt. I fight the fights that need fighting. I’m trying to learn how to actually wage a war. Mostly it isn’t about screaming or hitting. Mostly it is about changing minds.

I really and truly want to change how a lot of people think about things. I’d better stop writing blog entries and write something real.

Every book that has ever changed people started out as just words in someones head.

fake it.

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I worry about how much I worry about how I affect other people. I don’t work nearly as hard on being nice to my body. I pay a lot of attention to how my behavior impacts my kids. For a while now Shanna has had an occasional eye tic. It is a stress response. I feel that this is a sign that I am not behaving how I should.

It is hard having to pretend that I experience less stress than I do just because it hurts other people that I run so hot. Hot in the sense of high stress load.

I feel very guilty that I had kids because I wanted to have a relationship that was intense and all day every day. I wanted to have the company. I wanted to have to learn how to be nice. I wanted to learn what it means to teach people without shame and resentment. I want it still.

It feels like I created people just so I could perform a science experiment. That doesn’t seem like a nice thing to do. But I’m not sure that the reasons that other people have kids are “better”. I know that I feel guilty that I am not better. I am not fully arrived at behaving how I should for my kids. I don’t deserve them.

I tell myself that my kids are having a good childhood in the scheme of their species. I am nice to them. I do take care of them. They have a wide variety of healthy, good tasting food. They don’t get yelled at much. They have appropriate clothing for the weather. They are allowed to play all day almost every day. (By “allowed” I really mean “forced”.) They are given all the kisses and hugs they want every day. They are allowed to tell me to stop doing anything except for cleaning their bodies. And I don’t even do that much. Usually I default to “fine if you want to be dirty it is your body.” Once in a while the filth gets to be a bit much. And I’m fanatical about teeth care.

I’m doing “better” than I used to be able to do. But it really doesn’t matter. I need to be enough better to stop scaring my kids. If I am producing stress in my kids then my behavior is a problem. I am not behaving good enough. It’s not ok.

My kids should not have to watch me like a weather vane hoping to determine how difficult I will be to put up with that day. That’s not ok. That is a level of crazy I don’t get to inflict on them. I actually really appreciate that Shanna has such “tells”. She is not nearly old enough to talk to me about the stress she is feeling. But I can just look at her face and know whether I am “soft” enough. When she looks nervous I have to visibly calm down and retract the energy I am sending out into the room. It is hard to do. It is a very conscious decision to “look” like I am not angry or upset or anxious.

I can’t just decide to not feel angry or upset or anxious. I feel that way most of the time. I feel scared. I feel like everyone is going to be angry with me soon because I am going to break a rule and then they won’t want to know me any more. I am scared shitless my kids will grow up and not want to know me because I am such an asshole.

But I can’t act like I am having the feelings I am having. I have to fake it.

I saw a friend yesterday I don’t see much. Usually I contain my shit better. This time she saw me right after therapy. She got to see all the messy shame and crying because I don’t know to be “better” already. I feel pretty pathetic that I have been in therapy for almost three decades and I’m still crazy. I still spend a lot of my time shaking in fear. I still spend a lot of time hiding in dark rooms so I can sob uncontrollably. I hide it better. I keep it in a box better.

I fake it better.

Not well enough. My kids see the stress. It isn’t ok for my stress to impact them.

My shrink wants me to look for a meditation class to attend with my kids. I wish that such a thing would not involve a drive to Berkeley. I will look though. It is a good suggestion.

Shanna has been asking more questions about my mom. “Did your mom love you?” “What good things happened to you when you were a kid?” “What did your mom do that was so bad?”

I told her that I don’t actually know if my mom loved me or not. I think she did. I hope she did. I believe she loved me as well as she could and it is really hard when that isn’t enough. I wrack my brain trying to come up with positive stories. Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m just a whiny bitch and someone else would have been able to find a lot more joy in my childhood or if it was really bad enough that I should have trouble remembering anything positive. I tell her flat out that she isn’t going to know about the really bad stuff until she is an adult. I told her she doesn’t need to think of me that way.

I’m not always very rational about food so I talk about the food insecurity issues a lot. I feel relatively unashamed of them. The more I read about foster children the more I feel “ok” about having the food issues I have. They make sense in context.

I talk to Shanna about control. Like I ask her how she feels about being directed and forced to do what other people want during a specific period of time. I ask her how she would feel if she never got to pick what she was doing. I ask her how she would feel if she came home and ALL of her toys were gone. Stuff like that. I talk about how when I was a kid I felt very out of control so I controlled what I would put in my mouth.

I talk to her about how sad it is for me that I didn’t get to have any of these good foods when I was a kid. She pities me. I talk about the ways my body has problems because of the food I have eaten. My kids are very aware of nutrition and the things they need to eat. “You have to eat green stuff because it helps you poop!” We do talk about other aspects of nutrition but that is their favorite. Neither of my children have my constant-diarrhea problem (I am hoping this is because of lower stress). They instead are mildly prone to heading in the other direction so I repeat things I have learned from friends with constipation issues.

My shrink says I should answer every question and not dance around things. Well, she doesn’t think I should say I was raped until they are more like puberty age but she is less convinced I need to wait for the magic number of 18. We’ll see.

I cancelled park day for next week. Half of playgroup for next week cancelled. I won’t be sad if the other half cancels. Having five kid-social events in a two week period is too many for me.

I am doing too much. I can’t keep doing these 12+ hour work days. Social time counts as work time whether I like it or not.

I’m having a hard time with the balance of life thing. I have a lot of things I want done. I am having trouble with the fact that it takes a while to get all the things done. In order to put it in perspective I asked Noah about how many man-hours it takes to produce an iPhone for people to bitch about not working magically enough. He said probably in the neighborhood of 500 man-years not including factory work. That’s software/hardware design.

Stuff takes time. Not everything that can be done by a group of humans can be done by a singular human. No matter how much you want it. There just aren’t enough hours in a life. Figure out what you want to build and how you want to spend your time.

Sometimes Shanna asks me about my crying. I tell her that every body is different. When I feel too much emotion inside my body I cry no matter what the emotion is. Sometimes I’m happy; sometimes I’m sad; sometimes I’m angry; sometimes I’m frustrated. My body has just decided that all of these things come out as tears. Sometimes I am crying because bad things happened a long time ago and I was not allowed to cry then and my body needs to let go of that piece of being sad or scared so I’m doing it now. I’m safe now. It’s ok in my life now to just have feelings, so I do.

She gives me a lot of hugs. I am trying so hard not to turn her into a major source of emotional support. I don’t talk about specifics. I talk about how to be an adult and deal with the body you have. I’m very afraid of emotional incest. I know that it is a common “next generation” away from incest mistake.

I am an intensely overly sexualized person. More than that, I tend to not know how to be friends without sexualized touching. I have a lot of big needs that have gone unfilled for my entire life. I feel kind of desperately needy sometimes.

I can’t treat my kids like they are here for my support. I created these relationships because I need to learn how to give support, not because I think I can or should get much back. I’m here for the satisfaction of giving. I have to have the quiet glow that comes from a job well done. I am not going to get a lot else. Not from my kids. Well…. years of kisses and hugs. That’s nice. But at some point they will pull back and that has to be ok.

It is hard learning to be this kind of self-contained. It means I am talking to Noah a lot less about what is going on with me. I can’t breach the defenses at all. We don’t have time. What time we are together we mostly talk about his work and the basics of project stuff or kid stuff. I am very much hiding in the roles I created for myself. I don’t have room for my crazy there. I have to mostly take the crazy off-stage.

I can’t just make the crazy go away this way. But I can damn it up until I have a better space to deal with it. I had better let steam off once in a while or I will be sorry. Very sorry.

I woke up this morning dreaming about cutting. I don’t dream much any more. I rarely remember them at least. Not since I started pot. But this morning I woke up with my hand already moving along my other arm. I’m not sure where that came from. I stopped cutting my arms by early high school. I moved on to my legs because that was easier to hide.

My therapist wants me to go find more things to do as “self care” and I wake up wanting to cut. I do need more stress relief. That has always been my tool of serious self care. That is how I let the steam off. I go off in private and I make sure I am not anyone else’s problem. And I let myself feel how much I hurt all the time. But I have to hide it because it makes other people feel uncomfortable.

Fake it till you make it.

I’m not making it.

If I knew what I “needed” I would do whatever I had to go get it. I would do it. Even if it sucked. Really if you could arrange extra suck just for me that would make me feel better.

Sometimes it is hard knowing that the journey is the point. I am making it. I am nice to my kids and random people in restaurants and my neighbors when they aren’t being racist assholes. I only yell about things that need to be yelled about. Silence is consent. I am not going to leave people ambiguous about how I feel on some topics. Even if that means I’m not nice. If you have never upset anyone then you have never stood for anything.

I have nothing to lose at this stage.

Sometimes it is kind of weird knowing that Noah is the linchpin. All of the luxury and privilege of my life is based on his ability to earn money. I groom him like a friggin race horse. He has more than doubled, nearly tripled, his salary since we met. Because I’m pushy and I give him feedback on what he should or shouldn’t be doing. That’s kind of weird. We really are good for one another.

I’m having a lot of anxiety about spending all of the money Noah earns. I’m not looking forward to my end of year reckoning on Mint. I mean, in terms of petty cash we are higher than we were at the end of last year. We retired a lot of extra mortgage. But I did not save all that I wanted to save.

I kind of went nuts in the back yard instead. And this Texas trip isn’t cheap. I’m going to have to deal with my anxiety. I am fucking thrilled with my yard. Not a single dollar was wasted. I am ecstatic. The only thing between me and what I see in my head is a lot more work on my end. I’ll get there. It will be really pretty. But it is man-years ahead of me and that is sitting hard. It feels like I wasted the money because I didn’t finish the project and now it’s just kind of half-way and limbo sucks.

I do this. Don’t mind me.

At the end of the year I always feel like I am a bad person for spending money on things I wanted. I don’t deserve all the money I spend. I feel really bad that I am not more frugal with Noah’s money. I should make it spread farther. I should be saving more for the kids. I shouldn’t be so selfish.

But really… is building a playground in my back yard purely selfish? My anxiety yells at me that I shouldn’t be doing the work. I’m stupid for adding all the work.

But I want a pretty yard. I didn’t inherit one. I have to make it. Yeah, it will be back breaking work for a decade or so. Stop bitching and do the work. Don’t feel bitter you twit. This is a choice. Beauty doesn’t just happen automatically for most people. And most of what I want is stuff that wouldn’t have been in place anyway.

I’m just being a whiny bitch.

I’m thinking that there will be the Friday Funhouse version of Wonderland. I close my eyes and see kids running around in packs. I hear the laughter and shouting. I turn around and see grown ups playing games and talking and laughing.

I want the laughing so much. I want it so much I ache inside. Crying isn’t really the way to get people to feel good. Laughter doesn’t come from the places I dwell.

It is a little weird to me sometimes that my therapist knows so little about me. Ha. She continues to be shocked by how many people I know. People with as much trauma as me usually hide in their houses for the rest of their lives. They don’t go out and meet social group after social group. People like me usually can’t fake it well enough.

Am I faking it or am I “learning social skills”? I’m not sure they ever really feel natural for anyone.

One of the things I like the most about Noah is that he doesn’t flinch around me. I don’t scare him. I don’t intimidate him. I go back and forth between wanting my kids to have a similar level of toughness and knowing that it usually comes from trauma. And I just can’t traumatize them. I can’t.

Stop clenching your jaw, Krissy. Deep breaths. Whatever you are feeling is just a feeling. It will pass. This moment isn’t forever. You aren’t faking it. This is the process. The frustration is part of the process.

Time to stop typing.

post-therapy

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Today my therapist didn’t make me happy. I told her about being awake all night long because I am crying for my mom. She said, “You know that will never stop, right?” Today my therapist is a big meanie-head.

I have managed to not scream or even really yell much in a month. Instead my jaw is permanently clenched. I hurt.

Sometimes I wonder what the future will bring.

House stuff and people who are still here.

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Well I broke my washing machine but good. I have to replace a belt and the whole damn inner basket. In order to facilitate this I have to move all the “walls” that form my pantry because they have to take the dryer off the washer in order to fix it. And I will be without a washing machine for more than fourteen days total. Guess I’m off to the laundry mat. Crap.

We had a good day any way. Four hours of painting followed by an hour of clean up and then another four hours of socializing with Sarah then another three hours of socializing with my shaman. I’m hella tired. This whole navigating relationships thing is very complicated. But nearly ten years and more than thirteen years later they are still here. Even though I have fucked up badly and hurt both of them.

This weekend I hope to finish the play structure. I want to finish painting. I want to put the roof on. I want to install the ropes for the climbing wall. I want to move the rocks so I stop injuring small children when they come down the slide. I want to install the pulley system. Put up the glow-in-the-dark stars. Then the play structure is “done”.

I want to put the paint cans put away. I want my house clean. I don’t want to be in the middle of a project. Yet I am already assessing the painting projects I want to do next year. Maybe someone should take my paint cans away… (I want to repaint my kitchen for a variety of reasons. I would like to cover some dry-wall patching. I’d like to put stars in the living room. I keep thinking about the outside of the house…)

One season at a time.

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Shanna was in the grocery store. She wanted to know why the Christmas trees were being put up with the Halloween stuff. I told her to talk to an employee and not me because I am not responsible.

But of course I’m already thinking about Christmas a lot. Thanksgiving is handled. We are going to Dad’s. Christmas we are staying home.

This year the only presents under our tree on Christmas morning will be to and from people who are in the room. I’m not having another over whelming Christmas with stuff from Noah’s parents. I am deeply grateful for the stuff they send. I even send freakin thank-you letters.

But I don’t know these people and they don’t need to dominate my day on Christmas.

We will get up and make cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning instead of pre-making them and making a bunch. That was my mom’s thing. It doesn’t need to be my thing. I can have part of the tradition with a lot less work.

I’m looking forward to the lights. I’m already having an interesting time adjusting to the dark. (My kids are sleeping way more! It’s awesome.)

I just don’t care about Halloween this year. Usually I do. This year I just… don’t.

Because my husband likes lists:

I of course want a stocking and Santa present. Soap, underwear, socks, food, and maybe something shiny like a lip gloss? You know those colorful stacking blocks I was looking at? Great Santa present. (Look around for best price. They vary by more than $70 depending on website.)

A book (something to read)

I shoved a jammie shirt in your underwear drawer. You could pick out a pair of bloomers to go with them and I would be happy. (something to wear)

A compost bucket. Shiny and metal and with a lid to keep in the nasty smell. Please. 🙂 (something you need)

Err… something from my gift list? It would be nice to have one more present. 🙂 (something you want)

Noah, I appreciate that you try so hard. I see it.

It is all part of the learning process.

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Yesterday Calli was playing with the paint cans. Apparently I failed to put a lid on tightly. When she was playing she knocked one over and about half a can of white paint spilled on the floor in the garage.

I probably reacted just a tiny bit louder than I should have when I asked her to back away from the mess. I didn’t yell or scream but she kind of jumped in a startled way.

I cleaned it up and didn’t fuss. Clearly the onus was on me to properly seal my paint cans and this wouldn’t have happened. But it took me a bit to clean up because oh man it was a mess. I have a permanent mark on my floor. (This is part of the reason I didn’t want to do a bigger fancier job of putting in flooring in the garage.)

When I was about done Calli came in and had her head hanging down. She said, “I’m sorry. It was an accident. Will you forgive me?”

Every time my kids say something like that I feel like I abruptly start choking because my throat closes.

“Baby it was an accident. Of course I forgive you.”

Her eyes light up. Her eyebrows go up and her whole body wriggles with excitement. “You forgive me? You aren’t mad?”

“No baby, I’m not mad.”

Then she launches herself at my neck.

It feels like these are the most important moments of my life. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. Of course I forgive you. There is no other option for us.

I’m going to make progress on the play structure again today. I kind of hope to be done painting by this weekend. Right now I’m letting the paint cure before I put the roof on. It is very bright and colorful. Like whoa.

long night

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I’ve been really busy for the past few days and feeling fairly up emotionally. Now I am awake and crying and I am having trouble stopping because… Noah will die some day. Shocking, right?

Sometimes it is really hard knowing that I am probably already 1/4 of the way through the best years of my life. I feel very guilty for being so unstable and sad during what is going to be the easiest and happiest portion of my life. Well, maybe empty-nesting will be “easier” in terms of less work. I don’t think it will be happier.

I feel really weird about the fact that Noah has bought so much life insurance. I wouldn’t need to work for a few decades and possibly never if I scrimped the whole time.

I feel weird and ungrateful because I really hope I die first. I don’t want to find out what it is like to go back to wishing that somebody liked me enough to hang out with me on a day-to-day basis.

I am so afraid of being an old woman like my mother. She hides in her room. She comes out to do her crappy job. She doesn’t have friends. She hasn’t dated in decades because she knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the only kind of man who would want her is someone with bad intentions. It has been true over and over and over.

I think about my mother’s life. I think about the permanent damage she has incurred because of domestic violence. She did “get out”. She left. She did what people tell women they “should do” when they are being abused. And her life got worse. And she has never been allowed to have a scrap of dignity since.

And then she gets her kids all grown up and they violently reject her for not being a good enough mother. For not being able to protect them. The only one that still wants contact with her is the one who bought hook line and sinker into the perversion and degeneracy.

It is hard feeling like I am trapped somewhere in between two stories. I wish I could stop feeling afraid. I wish I could stop feeling like I am just waiting for the next terrible experience. Of course it will come. How could it not?

Noah dying is something that there is just one way to avoid. I have to die first. But he and my kids don’t want me to decide to do it on purpose just to make sure. Which means just sitting with that discomfort.

Sometimes I feel like it is ridiculous that I can’t just “enjoy life”. I have a good life. I have a lot of things happening that I do genuinely enjoy.

And I’m still sitting on the couch at 3 am crying.

Sunday walked three miles to the farmers market. Monday ran three miles while the girls had dance class. Tuesday walk three miles to the park. (The home schoolers are coming to our neck of the woods! Woo! We win!) I haven’t had a ten mile week in a while and right now my hips hate my ever-loving guts.

And I’m going to finish painting the second story of the play structure this week. It is ~30 minutes of painting away from being ready for the roof. Woo. I probably have another ten or so hours to go? I think I will finish painting the play structure before Halloween even. Which would be nice. I really should paint the arbor in a big hurry. It will be both easier and harder than painting the play structure. Easier because it is just thin coats of stain and I have to do the work and the kids can’t help. Harder because I will have to work on a very tall ladder and that is never my favorite. Work must be done. Ain’t nobody but me here to do it. No whining. Just work.

Washing machine repairperson scheduled. Good thing because now it won’t fill or spin. Weeeeee.

I feel guilty for liking that my daughter is so bossy with me. She is repeating my language exactly back to me. “It’s food. Eat it.” is a common refrain. Shanna won’t let me skip trying foods. She thinks I need to widen my food palate. Well, she isn’t pushy with sushi any more. We went to the buffet again. I like taking them there.

I like going to the buffet restaurant because I like being able to practice negotiating with my kids in a low-stress environment. If they genuinely have a melt down then… dude… it’s the buffet restaurant. There are already ten kids making a lot of noise.

Shanna can serve her own salad at this point. We walk around together and discuss the options. You must eat a reasonable amount of vegetable matter before moving on to the carbs and sugar. And only take as much as you want to eat. And you need to eat what you have before you go take more. No, you don’t get to serve a salad then not eat it in favor of chocolate cake. Idon’tthinksokid.

For the second course, Shanna still needs help. The hot foods are just a bit more intimidating. So I hold both hands and we walk around and look at the options and they tell me what they want. Then I walk them back to the table and they sit quietly and color while I assemble their plates. This time I had the brilliant idea to say, “Why don’t you draw me a picture of your favorite part of the day.” Shanna drew her gymnastics class. I could see the uneven bars very clearly. Calli drew rainbows because her favorite part of the day was painting rainbows on the play structure.

Then I get drinks. Then I get my plate. They have to sit patiently and wait for me to finish eating before we get dessert.

Always when we are there I notice some minor way that someone needs help. Often it is a mom struggling with holding too much. If you stand nearby and say, “Is there any assistance that might be helpful?” something will be shoved at you post-haste. Last night I noticed that a big man sat right behind an older woman. His chair was slamming into her and she had no where to go because she couldn’t push her table forward. I got up and asked her if she would feel more comfortable if her table was scooted over. She lit up. “Oh yes. That would be so very helpful. Thank you so much for noticing.” It took me under a minute. And she was more comfortable for the rest of her meal.

I am shit-tastic about being steady support for people. I don’t have the spoons to sign up for being weekly babysitting for a friend. I can’t just show up and help my friends with their problems any more. I take care of the kids and the house and that is all I can be responsible for on an ongoing basis.

When I find out my neighbors have had surgery I show up with food. If I see something right in front of me where someone could use minor help I don’t treat it like an invisible problem.

I want to feel seen and supported and like I matter. So I look at other people and I try to support them and I try to treat them like they matter.

I wish I were less limited in the kinds of support I can provide. But it is what it is.

I’m not very good at supporting other people though. In order to really support someone you have to understand them. I don’t really understand other people.

The older I get the more I feel sad that most of my memories of my mother involve her sitting on her bed (we usually didn’t have any other furniture) reading a book with an intense look on her face. I wasn’t allowed to touch her. She wanted to be left alone. She read a couple of different romance authors voraciously. She read nothing non-fiction. She didn’t want complicated books and she felt annoyed with me when I suggested she might like something I had read. She wanted to read Amanda Quick, Bertrice Small, Jude Deveraux, Johanna Lindsey, and J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts.

She would not talk to me about the books she read. She didn’t want to get into the sex details and she had no interest in dissecting plot.

I remember playing cards with her. I wasn’t very good. When she won (which was ~90% of the time) she would cackle and do this little “ha-ha-ha-ha-ha” thing. I used to beg her to play cards with me because it was the only thing we had to do together. Then she would gloat and I would lose and lose and lose and lose. By the time I was a teenager I would get so angry at the gloating that I threw the deck of cards in her face a few times. She wouldn’t play with me after that because I was such a sore loser.

Why do I miss my mother so much?

When we lived in Apple Valley I was on break from school during December. It was a year-round school and we got a month off every three months. My mother’s birthday is in December. The same day as my adopted leather mom. I made my mom a cake as a surprise for her birthday. I didn’t know the difference between wax paper and cling wrap. Err, oops. She tried hard to be nice to me about it. But she felt disappointed and annoyed. I had wasted a box of cake mix and ruined it because I was stupid. The fact that she told me that I wasted a box of cake mix because I was stupid means that her “nice” wasn’t all that nice.

But I miss her.

My mom regularly, starting from when I was a teenager and had my own pocket money because I worked, promised to sew me things. She would bring it up. “Would you like to have a _____?” Yes! We would trudge off to the fabric store and pick out a pattern and fabric and thread and notions and go home. Then she was tired. Then she wouldn’t want to do it that day. She would do it next weekend. Only next weekend she was always too tired. That’s why I had so much sewing stuff to give away a few years ago when I cleaned out the garage. Years of my mom telling me to buy stuff so we could make things together. Only she never actually wanted to do it.

“Get over it. Move on.”

If I could point to a place where the ache for my mother lives and cut it out of me I would.

Sometimes Shanna wants me to do something or give her something and I respond however I respond. Then she keeps pestering because she wants something different. I have started asking her, “Do you want me to be a mother who does what she says so that you can believe me when I tell you things or do you want me to be a mother who flip flops so you never know if you can trust what I say?”

Of course sometimes I do have to change my mind. I try to follow that with, “I made a mistake when I responded quickly with that answer. I didn’t think the situation through fully when the answer popped out of my mouth. I really apologize for misleading you.” I try to do this flip-flop fairly immediately. It sucks to wait all day for something and then not get it.

I don’t remember my mom smiling much outside of work. I expect she didn’t have a lot to smile about. She only smiled at work because they required it of her. After all, if you are a woman living in poverty who is being worked hellish hours as you do physical labor that is often really too demanding for your body of course you should be smiling. You wouldn’t want anyone to think your job was anything other than a pleasure.

No one wants to deal with your bed temper. It isn’t their problem that you are in a bad mood. That is a personal problem. Take care of it.

Sometimes when I am up crying in the middle of the night worrying about Noah dying I think about the fact that his death would not be financially destructive. I think about my mother’s life and what the simple lack of money has done to it. I think what a selfish piece of shit I am that I have no interest in helping my mother at this point. Isn’t aging hard enough without your children turning on you? Aren’t children supposed to be a comfort to their parents?

Aren’t parents supposed to provide some level of protection for their children?

With every day that passes I close my eyes and say a prayer of thanks that my children are still whole and safe. No one has hurt my daughters.

The older I get the more compassion I have for my mother. When I think of the story of her life I feel really bad for her. She has truly never had a break. I don’t think it is her fault she is so damaged. But she is. She is really messed up and she has never tried to fix any of it.

My shrink had me watch the movie The Brave One. It’s about vigilante justice after trauma. (My shrink is not trying to prompt me to start killing people despite the movies she keeps encouraging me to watch.) The reviews are pretty harsh.

I got into an argument recently about Moll Flanders (the book) and how the person I was arguing with (a modern American of course…) thought it was reprehensible that someone would act that way. Moll doesn’t raise any of the children she bears. She leaves them with people who can provide a stable life.

The reviews of The Brave One sound similarly like either you get why someone will do something or you don’t. Sometimes there are no good choices. Sometimes being told, “Well the police will handle it” isn’t good enough because the police won’t fucking handle it. So either suck up your trauma and shitty life and smile or … something. Something else.

You can kill yourself. You can decide to start defending yourself. When you get the urge to get into fights on your own behalf that tends to lead to wanting to wander around places where fights are more likely to happen. Then you get to fight more. It becomes chicken and egg. Do you fight because you have to or because you want to?

Just be nice. Just be forgiving. Turn the other cheek or some shit. I don’t have any cheeks left. They have all been hit already.

If someone murdered one of my children I’m pretty sure I would not be interested in waiting for what passes for “justice” and I wouldn’t worry in the slightest about going to jail. That would be fine with me. I would be quite happy to take the consequences for actually fucking doing something. Would it be terrible and hard for Noah and the remaining kid? Probably.

I still think I would lose my shit. And I think I’m pretty violent. See! I don’t own a gun! I don’t plan to ever own a gun!

I will be ok with going to prison if I hunt someone down and beat their brains in with a baseball bat. I will know it is an appropriate reaction from society and I won’t feel angry about it.

Sometimes there are no right choices. Only the choice you can live with. I don’t think I could live with doing nothing. I could kill them or I could kill me. I don’t want to die yet. Going to prison would be fine though. Plenty of alone time for writing and reading.

I don’t believe I am working in this life for a reward later. I think this is all I have. I can make of it what I will. I don’t go out looking for violence any more. I try to avoid it. I do my best to have it no longer come in to my life.

I have to just stop.

 

I have at least five chapters partially done…

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I need to start writing more seriously on Outrunning. So I did. I have done most of my original composing on paper and now I’m going to copy stuff onto Google Docs. I am going to create a folder there and the various chapters will be inside.

I am very interested in feedback. I am aiming for the middle school market which means I am uhm… not used to the level of censorship that must be inherent. I don’t know where I will be “too much”. I don’t know where I will be not-enough either.

So if anyone is willing to be a pre-reader let me know. I will give you access to the folder.

This book must be short. I understand that this is not my forte. To this end I bought a small paper bound notebook with 100 pages. The goal is to have the whole book fit in that spiral bound notebook so that the first few kid-pre-readers (once I have parental approval) get a book about the size and shape it will be when it is really printed. This will take some experimentation on my part to get it right.

I’m not sure how many chapters there are. A lot of my “chapters” so far kind of switch topic mid-way and I’m going to have to split them up and re-work them some how.

Like, how do you keep rape and dealing with the police as completely separate chapters? Kind of muddy there.

It is coming along. I’ll finish. I have too many people asking me nearly weekly “So how is the book coming?” I couldn’t bear to let them down and have to say, “Uhhh… I stalled.” I told people I will be done by 12/31. Get busy, wench.