I don’t have it in me to pretend I have social skills. I’m bad. I’m stupid. Everything is all my fault. I will just stay home.
hiding commences
Leave a reply
feelings exploding.
I’m having a lot of intense feelings. Oh well.
Today I will go order cakes. (Multiple birthday girls = multiple cakes. I think people who ask kids to “share a birthday party” and who then make them share a cake aren’t very nice. I mean, I get it from a financial point of view… but I have birthday issues.)
I feel intense anxiety about letting Calli pick the guest lists. She kept stuff very small. She doesn’t like lots of people around. When I asked her do you want to invite ____ she said, “But we have too many people! We can’t play when there are too many people!” Standing her next to my oldest child it is hard to understand that they have the same DNA. Calli likes to interact with about five people at a time and she defends that boundary with very sharp sticks. Shanna wants to invite half the western hemisphere over to hang out.
Part of adapting to them is letting Shanna have big parties and then I have to get over my guilt at not inviting everyone we know to Calli’s parties. She started listing kids to invite on her finger and when I asked about additional grown up names she said no. I have to not feel like I am slighting people. It’s hard.
We will also pick up more lumber. Looks like the playhouse will have all but the final shade covering and paint by the end of today. That is thoroughly exciting. 🙂
Today wonderful people are coming to my house to make the big pile of concrete and debris go away! My yard will be dramatically less dangerous in only 24 hours! YAY! I worry a lot about inviting children to construction zones. My kids get hurt a lot. We’ve had many bloody feet from stepping on screws and nails. Luckily this experience has taught them that when mom says, “This is an important place to wear shoes” they have stopped arguing. The cuts were worth it. Ha. (I am normally very tolerant of being barefoot. I only break out shoes for a reason.) But I don’t need all of our friends-who-are-children going through the same right of passage at my house. 🙂
I wanted to go visit my friend’s baby today. Instead I will fill buckets with tiny little chunks of concrete and carry them from the back yard to the front yard to the big pile. The more I get out of here today the less I have to deal with later.
Today I will hang up the swings for the kids in the back yard. I am unlikely to hang the adult swing today. I am told it involves blocking the original structure and whereas I’m not an idiot and I could cut wood and do the blocking I have only hand saws so I kind of wait for the dude with the power saw to cut all the wood. Lazy woman.
Every year or two I decide to do home improvement projects. I basically always have a party scheduled as a deadline or I just..never…quite… finish… It is effective but stressful. In the future I need to remember that I should be the only one racing a time clock. No one else wants that stress.
I have September and October on the board. Neither are all that scheduled. I think I am going to deliberately not schedule more. I need to regroup. I need to think hard about who is likely to still be in my life in twenty years. Who should I be handing my energy resources to? Where will it have long-term pay off? It is mercenary, selfish, and the only way I will make it to the end of my life without hating everyone in the whole world.
For most of my life I have indiscriminately helped anyone who needed help. If someone I barely knew needed help moving I was there. Things like that. I’m not saying I have a lot of help to offer. I’m saying I have specific resources. When I hand them to people I will not have an ongoing relationship with I get a little boost but mostly a big drain of energy.
Mostly I like doing a lot of anonymous paying-forward of good things. I think that is what makes the world go round.
I’ll get back to it. It is important to me to help people I don’t know. It is a spiritual thing. But I have limited ability to just do that. Right now what I am trying to do is build community. Most people join a mostly-existent community and then try to fit in. I can’t. I am wholesale constructing my own. It is slightly different. It is a more conscious thing. It’s more work.
Taylor asked why I don’t write about him more. Because he is so deeply entrenched in my life at this point that if I accidentally hurt him by processing something in front of him then the repercussions are bigger than I can handle. I have had evolving opinions of his wife. (Never bad–I have certainly not thought DTMFA or anything.) I recognized her as disabled years before he was willing to say so out loud. That means I need to keep my fucking mouth shut because it isn’t my body or my life being impacted. My view of her is irrelevant and may make her or her husband angry.
The lines around who I can talk about and when and why shift dramatically. Mostly I find out the boundaries by no longer having friends. I get fired a lot. I’m used to it. Other people tell me that I should stop writing then if I am so rude and offensive and I want to have friends.
When I stop writing I substitute cutting and other forms of self-mutilation. I write because this is the closest I can come to convincing myself that I am important enough to not be in pain. I can see patterns and understand things when I write. I can also drive off all the people who don’t actually like me any way. It’s a double win?
I am not smart enough, clever enough, fast enough, whatever enough to deal with my emotions without writing. Well… I can. I can force myself to be silent. I can not, however, at this point, actually keep all of my pain to myself. Maybe that makes me whiny, self-absorbed, and stupid. I have to live with that. I have to live with the fact that the only people whose opinion I give a shit about would rather be offended by my writing than count my scars. They don’t need to see the growing evidence of my stoicism.
If I could cope in a different way I would try that. I have tried lots of things over the decades. Cutting and writing are the last bad coping methods still standing. I try to tell myself that my writing isn’t that bad. I worry about the future. I worry about getting to a place where I know that my writing just upsets everyone and it is all my fault for being such a bad stupid bitch. I will stop writing then. At that point I don’t think anyone will ever be allowed to see me naked again. I want to move on from cutting my thighs so much. That was how I hid it as a teenager. Now when I am upset and I think about cutting I flirt with hurting my breasts and my belly over my ribs and my calves and… I’m pretty sure that if I go down that path there is only one way for it to end.
What would it take for me to stop believing that I should die in order to make everyone else’s life better? I don’t know. But I’m not there yet.
(Still not typing… just a PSA)
My phone is on the fritz. SMS rarely goes through but sometimes does. I no longer get alerts from email or IM. I have restarted it and such but it has been dropped a lot. A really lot. And at this point the factory-standard cover is broken in many places so I’m not shocked or anything.
If I ignore you it isn’t personal.
PS- I already replaced the arm braces. Ahhhh. That feels better.
arms hurt
I should take a break from typing. I’ve been doing a lot of work over the past few days that is wearing my arms out. I’ll be back. Don’t know when. It should be more than a few days. I need to get new braces. I lost one at Disneyland. In May. I haven’t replaced it yet. I’m awesome.
It was bound to happen.
I told Shanna that we are going to Portland for Thanksgiving to stay with my Dad. (An adopted parent–not the man who raped me.) Her response was, “But I want to go see my Grandmother.” Meaning Noah’s mom.
So now it seems that Noah and the girls are probably going to go to Texas for a weekend in December.
I can’t stop crying. I will probably now spend the day trying to hide because I don’t want to be asked why I am crying.
Because I hate that I am not part of your family. I’m not. I never will be. They don’t want me. I have no family. And near as I can tell the only person I have to blame is myself.
I am part of a family inside this house. Outside of this house I am nothing.
I don’t want to be asked why I am crying because I don’t want to lie and I don’t want to make my kids feel like me. I want my kids to want to know their grandparents. I want my kids to believe they have family.
I can’t fuck that up.
From Twitter
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn”
Noah, Shanna, Calli, Kira, Taylor. I must be made entirely of awesome. And why aren’t I better at giving massage? It does explain why I am much better at cooking than I used to be.
do what you can do
Looks like I won’t be putting together sex ed. *phew* When people ask me to do things I have a hard time saying no. Much like some other people I know. Do IÂ want to be on the hook for teaching other peoples kids sex ed? Maybe? Not sure. I’m glad I don’t need to think about it any year soon. I’m glad I have less work to do.
I’m still coughing but the fever is over. Progress.
Today will be gardening and cleaning. I’m actually really looking forward to it. I get to talk to the kids a lot on this kind of day. I have been flat shocked by how much Shanna has developed the ability to be actual help recently. I know some people start chores at three or four, I didn’t. I started at five. So she’s catching up on progress that could have been made more slowly, I suppose? I just know that I didn’t think she would actually clean up her toys yesterday (she had like six different sets all dumped on the floor at once) and it took her half an hour.
I feel scared a lot of the time that I am doing everything wrong. I am going to ruin their entire lives. I am going to make it so they can’t have normal lives. It will be all my fault.
But I enjoy them so much. I enjoy spending time with them. I want to hang out with them all day talking about why different plants do different things. Huh, what is similar about these kinds of flowers? What is different? Why do you think they are different like that?
I have never had a time in my life where I haven’t been afraid and completely sure that I am bad and wrong. I have learned to kind of ignore that feeling. But sometimes IÂ am bad and wrong. It is hard to figure out where the difference. How can I tell when I am legitimately doing something wrong and when I just feel self-hating? I don’t know very well.
My kids seem happy and like they are making progress. I’m pretty sure if I was doing it “all wrong” that they wouldn’t be blooming quite so well. Which isn’t to say that anyone else’s way is wrong. But if my kids are happy and growing and learning maybe I don’t need to feel like a steaming pile of shit.
No one is perfect. There is no platonic ideal. Not everyone would like my kids as much as I do. I have a number of friends who would probably feel like my children were a curse instead of a blessing because those folks are sensitive to noise and my kids bring as much volume impact as a ten piece brass band.
The volume bugs me and yet I want little girls who think the world needs their voice. The social consideration is an older persons game. I want them to just feel in their bones that they have a right to take up space and make noise with it. I know that isn’t a trait universally preferred among parents. That’s ok with me.
In many ways I let my children cross a lot of “rudeness” boundaries because I have never understood them. I have never agreed with them. So I don’t enforce them.
Pam told me that I was a weird mix of permissive and authoritarian. Yup. I set the boundaries. Within the boundaries I stay out of most things. They have to make mistakes. They have to do things that annoy me. For the love of Crisco I am not trying to raise little people who will “not annoy me”. Ha. If you don’t annoy me you aren’t being enough of a kid. Keep trying.
But they are going to hit the wall of other people. I can’t soften it and I can’t make it easier. The world is what it is. I can prepare them and then I have to just let them bear their own consequences. Other people have different opinions and if you want to deal with other people you have to deal with their opinions.
I don’t want to teach my kids to put people in boxes the way I do. I went to a funeral this weekend. He was a remarkable man. Partially remarkable for the sheer variety of different skill-sets he mastered in different communities. And he compartmentalized everything and very few people knew almost anything about his extensive connections. Everyone there was surprised by how he touched so many other communities. He seemed busy enough in the community I knew him in!
I have levels of trust and like and tolerance. They are all different. I wish that I trusted men more, but I don’t. I trust some men in particular ways. Even a large number of men who totally believe they have already “jumped through hoops” to prove they are safe are people I won’t be in a room alone with.
I don’t care if it hurts your feelings. I can’t. I have my own feelings to worry about. Find someone else to validate you. Someone with a lower rape count.
Women aren’t easier. Women want to nurture. So they bury their own feelings until they can’t any more. Women look trustworthy until they really really really aren’t. Whereas men tend to start out looking untrustworthy and slowly work their way up.
But my past experiences with specific people should not be a good enough reason to damn the other people I meet. Only that is how I ended up having so many problems. I kept trying to trust.
I believe I would be able to trust people more if I weren’t someone who bothered people so much. I believe that a big part of the reason people break trust with me is because I make people feel so wildly uncomfortable.
People won’t remember what you said or what you did. People remember how you made them feel. (Isn’t that Fitzgerald?) If I make people feel uncomfortable every where I go… that is what there is to remember. I am uncomfortable to be near.
Noah doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Shanna doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Calli doesn’t feel uncomfortable. They like me. They have to be enough.
I mean, what am I complaining about anyway? Everyone makes me feel massively uncomfortable. Such is life.
There is a part of me that would like to hide away from all people, basically forever. There is a part of me that wants to start opening my house once a week. But I don’t think people would come. I live in an inconvenient place. It really isn’t worth the effort.
I don’t know how to build community. I am not able to maintain the effort of showing up at a hobby to produce community. I just don’t have it. I feel pathetic, but there it is. I’m not going to get my community through any of the fair(e)s. I am not going to get my community through something I show up at once a week and pay my entrance fee.
I don’t think I am psychologically capable at this point. I get to the door, look around, note that no one here needs me and I turn around and go home.
I’m not a joiner. If I’m going to sit by myself watching other people have fun I can do that in my front yard for free without having to go any where. My neighbors are outside a lot. I don’t need to pay for dance events so that I can go cry in the bathroom.
And yet it isn’t anyone else’s responsibility to show me a good time. It is my responsibility to have a good time or not. So I don’t go. I’m not very good at “having fun”.
So I make progress on my house. It doesn’t effect anyone but me. No one else cares. But I do. I may not feel like I have community, I have friends, but it seems different. I don’t know.
I have at least two people I can call in an emergency. Depending on the emergency I could potentially go down a list of other people who could help. The last time I asked anyone but K for help it didn’t go well.
I worry about asking anyone for help too often. K saves my ass a lot. She has been the reason I can see a therapist, or do other major health stuff if I can’t work around Noah’s schedule. The kids still visit their Godmamas once a month. I hire people to do some work sometimes.
But the last time I called someone who told me “Call if you need anything” I was told no. I won’t call again.
If you can’t handle hearing the answer “no” then you shouldn’t ask. Most of the time I can’t handle being told no. So I don’t ask people for things. Hell, I’m starting to feel like I shouldn’t be inviting people over so much.
I’m afraid of letting my kids get used to having friends in their lives when I know that no one stays in my life very long. I’m afraid that if I invite families over for my kids to get to know that my kids are just going to have to get used to the disappointment that the moms are going to decide they don’t like me after a while and there go their friends.
It is hard believing that if there is a social problem it is probably all my fault. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it maybe isn’t all my fault but man isn’t that the most convenient scapegoat. I’m a great scapegoat. Everything is my fault. If I weren’t such a fucking asshole I wouldn’t have so many problems.
That thought is one that makes me want to swim out into the ocean as far as I can go.
If I weren’t so fucking bad I wouldn’t have all these problems. But it is too late to change that now. So now what?
More gardening. More cleaning. I’m pretty sure I know how to do those bits without fucking up my whole life. No promises on any other topic.
stuff and stuff
What is community any way? Are they the people you see when you randomly show up somewhere? Do they spend time with you? How much time is needed before you qualify as “community”? I’m not sure.
I think there are allowed to be weird solitary people who are not the linchpin but they still matter.
Look on the bright side. Even if I don’t feel loved it is not anyone’s fault (I’m certainly not saying that I’m not loved–just that I don’t feel it). It is a broken switch. I know that people act in ways that demonstrate affection. I try to ignore the switch.
I think that part of the reason that my writing has been hostile lately is I feel scared all the time. I am about to get in trouble. I am trying to defend myself. But no one is attacking me.
I am sick, so we didn’t go hang out with the home schoolers today. My fever broke around dinner time so I’m not going to the park tomorrow. You should be clear for 24 hours before you go in public. (It is polite!)
Instead I did house work and yard work. I tried to not work too hard or too fast. But I transplanted the pumpkins, (maybe they will forking grow now) and added lettuce and flower seeds. I took out all the dead corn stalks. I weeded. I folded laundry (three loads!). I cleaned the kitchen and destroyed it again. I finished sorting through my neighbors hand-me-downs and got them put away.
I chose having two parties for Calli because she said she couldn’t handle having very many kids over at once and I figure divide up the people who will only go on the weekends with the people who will only go during the week. That way the crowd never gets too loud. She’s sensitive.
I’m feeling stupid for it. I picked the weekend before her birthday because I didn’t want Labor Day weekend (this will be a thing forever) but that means… oh man. Just stuff. I kind of wish I had bumped it back. Oh well. 🙂 It will all work out. Somehow. Like magic. Noah will be outside working this weekend even though that is Not His Thing.
The blackberry bramble is dealt with. Tomorrow I will deal with transplanting the broccoli and watermelon. I need to clear out the 4 o’clocks. I need to go pick up those damn stumps from my neighbor’s yard. I don’t even know where I should put them yet. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Probably back yard. I shouldn’t tempt all the random neighbor kids to crack their skulls. You should have to know us before you get that invitation. I also mailed the invitations for the second birthday party.
Finish party planning. What to eat or drink. Make scavenger’s/treasure hunt. I won’t be able to do that till I get the yard more settled because I will have to figure out where to put the clues and such.
I have only three more weeks of English teaching. Only two more weeks of swimming. 47 days till a time traveling camping wedding. 53 days till the home school camping trip. If I don’t get sick again.
I’m trying to make my schedule look less crowded. I’m tired. I need a slower pace. I need to not feel bad about that. I’ll be nicer.
random tmi
I am pleased to report that the evil gunk I am coughing up from my lungs is a nice pale green with no black at all. The more I read about chronic bronchitis the more I think I am just screwed. My mom was a really heavy smoker. I have had coughing problems all winter from the first sign of cold for as long as I can remember and I didn’t smoke pot for that long. (roughly four years of consistent smoking in my late twenties into thirties) I’ve been off smoking for a while and the black stuff in my lungs has cleared out. But I am probably never going to stop coughing all winter.
Did you know that chronic bronchitis can kill you? I am curious what I will die of some day. Suicide has its down sides, but it also assigns a certain dignity compared to dying because my airways just close. Enh. We’ll see.
I’ve been thinking a lot about suicidal ideation as a concept as opposed to having suicidal ideation. What function does that hold for me? Is it relief? Is it company? Is it safety?
If I believe that at the end of the day *I* get to decide if I have to face tomorrow… that’s some power. It is most of the power I have ever felt a had.
At this point, whereas it is hard to control, I can manage to switch some of the tracks of my brain to other things so I can still “function” even while the imagery is happening. Earlier in my life that wasn’t true. On days when the multi-plex went live I just had to hide in a closet to avoid getting in trouble because I would inevitably get in a lot of trouble those days. I don’t value myself or my body so I pick fights. I’m just looking for the next person who will hurt me. I assume that is the only reason I am here anyway. Someone has to be at the bottom of the shit hill.
A friend asked me how I was doing yesterday. Other than hacking up a lung I don’t have a lot of room for complaint. I mean, could I talk about things that are bothering me? Sure. Could I list all my stress and anxiety? Sure.
I am exactly where I want to be doing exactly what I want to do. I have so much privilege it blows my fucking mind. I get to be independent and secure because I have a provider. It’s… kind of weird.
Most people developed their early sense of security from their parents. Mine couldn’t take care of me. Not in any way. My mom sent me off to live with other people who could take care of me and my father said that providing support for me wasn’t a worthy enough thing to do–he needed trade in the form of sex with my mother or I didn’t deserve support. Even after the divorce.
I haven’t had sex with Noah in a while. I’m not sure what all is going on. July we went slightly over quota. But for the last week I have felt numb. I just can’t have sex right now. I can’t open my legs and provide the trade that keeps a roof over my head. I can’t. I can’t believe that is the only reason I am allowed to stay.
Noah didn’t really know what he was getting into. To be fair, neither did I.
I don’t know how to tell Part 2. I don’t want it to be a continuation of the first book, exactly. I’m doing plot outlining and thinking about the evolution of my relationship with my Owner. Am I telling a story about being trained as a slave? About becoming an adult? About the bdsm community? About the psychopathology of sadists? I’m not really sure. Figuring that out will determine a lot about the book. And how graphic should it be? It’s not like I actually had all that much sex with my Owner. He wasn’t interested. I will need to describe the bdsm and that is graphic enough. “Then he placed the noose around my neck. He said, ‘Well I hope you don’t die’ then he walked over to the pulley system and tugged on the rope that lifted me off my feet while I tried to relax and go limp so it would hurt less. Then I waited to find out if he would kill me or not.”
I mean, is that x rated? It is uhm… festive? I don’t know.
The suicide book also wants more work. Sigh.
I spent an hour and a half working on curriculum for sex ed for home schoolers. Yes yes, I’m “unschooling” my kids and all. Sorta? Maybe? Am I even physically capable of thinking about things as an unschooler? So what I’m doing is putting together what I think they should know and why. Then I’m trying to figure out how to present the information.
I won’t provide them with a one-size-fits-all curriculum. I know all the kids I have been approached about teaching. (Moms have asked at the park. Ok, some moms have also explicitly said “You won’t be teaching MY kids.” Ok, not a problem. It isn’t as if I am so desperate for things to do that I need to chase down other peoples kids for more work.)
I feel weird about putting this together. I was asked to. By multiple people. Other people emphatically don’t want me near their kids. Uhm, ok? That’s fine?
I hear Davy Crockett. Be sure you are right and go ahead. I believe that sex education is important. I believe that all human beings should have access to sex education. I also believe that parents have the right to set culture for their own children. That means that “sex education” will be done in a variety of ways by a variety of people. For example, I will not a teach a sex ed that says, “Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.” I will say, “People are usually born with genitals. Most of the time people grow up believing that they have the right set of genitals for them and they are happy with who they are. Sometimes people feel like they do not feel comfortable with what they were born with in some way. Some people grow up and reject being called a man or a woman and choose no gender. All while having a penis or a vagina. So it isn’t as simple as it might appear.”
It is ok with me that some people do not want their children hearing this message. I believe that parents have a right to shelter their children. I just do. I believe that whether or not a parent wants to shelter his/her child is ok in as far as that parent does not try to pretend that the outside world and the different opinions in it are ALL BAD. I like “They are fine like that, we just aren’t like that.”
-It will probably take me a week or two to put together the sex ed curriculum with materials. (Estimate 15-30 hours [I’m not shitting you. Being a teacher is work.]) Not sure I will get to this before the birthday parties.
-Must grade and set syllabus for remaining English classes at Hindi temple. (Estimate three hours of work)
-Must clean house and yards for upcoming birthday parties. (Estimated 40 hours. Let’s be real here. It may go up from there. I will cap it at 50 hours because then I will just be crying.)
-Decorate for parties (including figuring out treasure hunt. I was told there MUST be a treasure hunt. Sigh.) I should AT LEAST put the invitations in the mail tomorrow. (Estimated 15 hours)
-Must get over being sick, thus should consciously choose reduced work load. Shit. Really should limit body to six hours of WORK per day. (No pretending that “writing isn’t work” or “taking care of kids isn’t work”.)
-There are more Home Depot trips in my future. Sand. Glorious sand. (2 hours at least.)
-Not to mention reading to the kids, taking them to the water park, taking them to home school outings, not to mention swim classes, and not to mention cooking. Because I can’t wrap my head around the timing of all of this.
For the record, I do not judge when other parents have messy homes because keeping my home clean is a full time job and I don’t expect people with other full time jobs to be able to also do the same full time job I do. And acting like it should be easy for someone to do what I do in addition to a job is highly insulting to me. I work my fucking ass off and my house is nothing resembling spotless. Cleaning is work.
I think I spend too much of my life preparing for parties. They occupy a huge space in my brain. They are my way of trying to build community. They are pretty much the only way I get into a group of people without being convinced that more than half the people would merely step over my corpse if I dropped dead. So I like hosting. When I host I know the people are there because they like ME ME ME. It’s a good thing.
I wrote this yesterday and didn’t finish. I can’t reread it with helpful folk around. The end.
more thinking. less err, tmi
I’ve been sitting here listening to The Coup more. It is nice that youtube has these automatic playlists so you can listen to a whole album. And have a screen open next to it with the lyrics at the same time. A lot easier to understand. Ok, Violet isn’t actually one of the best ones. But it made me think about relationship stuff.
(I’m trying to not think about my bits. Bear with me.)
Well, more accurately it made me think of when and how I have done drugs. I usually have done so because I saw no other way of making that person like me. I want people to like me. Not many people like me. When people talk very nastily about young kids who use drugs… I think education is the path. Not hostility.
I have tried a pretty fair variety of drugs. A lot of them I tried because I was in a situation where I was dependent on a man (I thought) and he said, “Here. Do this.” I’ve only gone after a few drugs for my own reasons.
I was thinking about that because I tried a different intake of medication today and apparently the cheeba chews do a lot more to deal with the stomach pain than smoking, vaporizing, or pills. I’ve tried all in the last two or three days. I tried a different kind this morning and I’m probably down from a 6 or so to maybe 3. But I also wrote at the same time and writing often relaxes me. Column A and Column B?
Anyway. I have been horribly uncomfortable in social situations my entire life. I am very aware that I am bad and that sooner or later people will figure it out and I will be punished/reprimanded. This is just how I go through life. Usually I slink away like a pathetic puppy never to be seen from again. It’s my cycle. I own that.
Is this actually me letting people have boundaries though? When someone puts up boundaries I take that as a sign to just leave. Obviously I am not wanted here.
Well, I don’t know that I always manage to avoid people forever. I don’t. I travel through a variety of communities. I have land-mine people in all of them. So this is about me and my issues.
Only if I try to go through all of the situations in my head… no. It isn’t always my fault. But I am often someone who triggers people to have strong feelings. They will then tell me those feelings are all my fault. They want to alleviate it. So I am told things like I must dedicate my life to a 12 step program (it is permissible for me to pick my own of course–obviously I have a wide variety of different options I could be eligible for–I am pretty crazy and all) or I am bad.
I don’t think that is about me. That is about someone else deciding “A Good (Mother/Person/I don’t fucking know) acts like _____________.” I never signed on for that role. I like to negotiate my own roles. I like to be able to say, “Am I allowed to ask for this, this, and this–it is ok to say no.” I don’t ask unless I am ok with no.
I am not trying to make other peoples lives harder. I do not write about my anxiety in order to create anxiety in other people. I write so that when I am done writing I can have a 2-6 sentence pitch that is calculated to make it sound appealing to my specific audience that I am talking to in person.
Have you ever noticed that I don’t talk nearly as much as I write? I am rehearsing. I am refining. If that process bothers you, well, don’t watch. I need to do this. And I have learned through long experience that I won’t write just for me. I stop. I get depressed. And then I spend a lot of time cutting. I don’t want to cut any more. I really can’t take the risk of not blogging at this stage of my life. This is rather important to my mental health.
I have to be selfish about this. I have to be selfish about my right to process my feelings in a public way. Blah blah me talking about my trauma will traumatize other people blah blah blah. Have you ever learned the variety of tricks for closing a computer screen? Bam. Problem solved.
Don’t silence me to make you feel better.
Yes, I’m making different choices than you. I go through a different thought process than you.
That doesn’t mean yours is bad. It just means that it belongs to you.
Recently someone told me I was weirdly permissive and authoritarian at the same time with my kids. I explained the permissive part by saying, “I am saving up my “no’s” for when they have boyfriends. If I can say yes I do.” But I am very authoritarian too. Mostly I effect this through modeling.
We spend a ridiculous amount of time practicing our “manners” and “nice talk”. “How do you introduce yourself?”
“How do you look for clues about a person that are a good introduction to conversation? What things must you not mention or people feel sensitive?” We look for examples in books and movies and games and take them apart. “How does this make you feel?”
Even when I am depressed and pathetic and lying on the couch my children get a lot of attention. They bring me books and we read endlessly. Well, or until my throat goes out. Then Shanna starts explaining/reading the books to me. Then Calli takes a turn. We talk about all of them.
Because I know that it doesn’t matter what is going on in my mind or my body I need to keep working on educating them. That is my job. That is what I am here to do. I am responsible. There is no one to whom I can pass the buck.
It keeps me honest.
I grew up in a house of people who rarely got up and did anything. They were all massively depressed. I didn’t learn how to do things until I was an adult. I know this is common in my generation. Latch key kids with a microwave don’t know how to actually survive.
My body actively rebels at eating “normal” food. I should not have any vegetables or fresh fruit while I am otherwise dealing with a terrible multi-day diarrhea outbreak but that’s all I have in the fucking house. (Well, I do have rice. But I think we are almost out of white rice. We do have a 50 lb bag of brown rice! Uhm.)
I don’t know what the happy medium will be for “healthy” in my body. I know that following the advice of “eat lots of vegetables and fruit!” is not actually going well for me. This hurts. This hurts. This hurts. It is distracting all the time.
I kind of wonder if ecstasy stopped working for me because I took too much of it (I didn’t have that much I know people who have had twenty or fifty times as much as I had in my whole life.) or because the trips became about pleasing other people. I was supposed to be entertaining. I wasn’t there because I wanted to be having an experience alone in my body. I was there to please someone else. It stopped having the ability to raise my serotonin. I just felt anxious and sad and like I knew I was going to be disappointing no matter what I did.
My birthday party was described by many people as “The weirdeest e trip ever.” Well, I knew going in to it that I was evil and bad for doing it. I had been told so quite explicitly by someone I loved.
I don’t know many people who can take a hit of ecstasy and still feel suicidal. But I’m special. At this point in my life there aren’t really drugs powerful enough to over ride my basic belief that people do not like me and I am bad.
Pot lets me not care. I feel more relaxed about it. It doesn’t take it away. I still know that I am bad. I still know that I am someone who does not deserve to be alive. But I’m apathetic and kind of tired and happy that I get to play with the two kindest and most wonderful people in the whole fucking world all day. Pot lets me stop and appreciate what I am doing this moment.
Even if no one else in the world values me, these two people do. I religiously keep my promises. I am fierce about my boundaries. I am loving and kind and gentle the vast majority of the time and I apologize when I am too rough. My kids are allowed to say, “Don’t glare at me. It makes me feel sad.”
I don’t like how tired edible pot makes me. It is much more extreme than smoking. I feel weak sometimes. I feel like I am swimming instead of walking. I am tense and fluid at the same time. I don’t like that I often don’t feel anything from a pill for over three hours. That means I have to wake up in the middle of the night and take a pill if I want my stomach to not hurt by breakfast time so that I can eat.
An old man in our neighborhood recently commented, “You’ve lived an awful lot of lives for someone so young.” I laughed.
I feel tired sometimes. I feel like I am not worthy. I feel like there is too much here.
I was talking to a mom at the park. She has many more kids than me. I asked if it was rude to ask her questions about how she manages. She laughed and told me it was ok. I asked a few generic ones. Then I said, “Based on what I’ve read it seems that a lot of what it is that you have to just do your best and trust to the grace of God to make up for the rest.” She laughed. Yeah. That. “This is my problem though–as an atheist I’m pretty much screwed.” She laughed at me some more. Yup. That must suck.
I don’t think there is a chance in this lifetime that i could forgive a so called “benevolent” god for what I have experienced.
It is kind of funny. I understand age of consent laws so much more now than I did when I was a child. I used to sit on men’s laps and say, “I know that you really aren’t supposed to fuck someone my age. But I promise I will never tell. No one cares what I do. My mother won’t even know.”
I did it a lot. To their credit most of them told me no. They understood that it was a crime for them to commit. I was lectured quite a bit sometimes. But then the ones who lectured me or yelled at me proceeded to ensure that there was a larger scale public shaming. Everyone should know that I am contemptible.
I can’t say I enjoyed most of the sex I had as a child. It hurt. But I knew I was “supposed” to do it. I thought it was supposed to hurt like that. I didn’t think sex could be comfortable or fun or nice. Well, maybe for someone else. Girls like me don’t work that way. I grew up just a little more and moved into a sub culture that taught me that “vanilla” girls enjoy being touched gently. Girls like me were masochists and that was way cooler anyway and the goal was always supposed to be to learn how to take more and more and more pain. More degradation. Give up more control of yourself. Become less of a self. Be just a servant. Be no more important than a piece of furniture, hell, sometimes you are the furniture.
I can’t isolate to deal with my social anxiety any more. Instead I have to pretend that I know how to be normal and have friends. I don’t know how I will deal with the fact that my life is a rotating cast of characters. People come and go and the only people you can depend on seeing are me and your dad and each other. The Godmamas have been very consistent for years. That is your next best shot. K has been in our lives for three years. Of course this means I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Same with Tay.
Pam comes and goes. I think that is good. I think she would find that she disagreed with more and more if she spent more time with me. I think she likes me more from far away.
I don’t have enough that is predictable for the kids. We do go to home school stuff. They will know those kids. But I will never be one of the people at every event. I can’t handle the driving. I feel bad about it, but it is what it is. Well, and I’m less willing to pay for things than some people. That’s ok too.
There is a rock climbing place walking distance from our house. I honestly think my kids are too young. But in a few years I bet we will start hanging out there a lot. If you have a kids membership you get a free adult in (one per kid) and I bet we will spend some time there. That would be fun.
I can’t predict the future. I doubt most of the people I know now will be in my life in twenty years. If I look at twenty years ago, when I was eleven, I think the last person standing is K from Lakeside. She occasionally reads my blog and we chat on IM sometimes. She is very busy. That is the only person left. I would not have predicted that she would be the one, let me tell you.
I don’t trust that people will want to know me that long.
Shanna talks about how we will need to add an upstairs apartment some day because she will need the down stairs for her family. I tell her, “We’ll see.” It is funny that when I first thought of having children I knew I would be the kind to boot them out the door at eighteen.
Now Shanna talks about wanting to be a firefighter two days a week and a doctor two days a week and I will be here to home school her kids. She will stay home two days a week because of course her kids need their mom too.
A permanent fucking dependent.
Once upon a time that was not a disgraceful thing. That was not a sign of being worthless. That was life for some people. Why are only some kinds of lives “worthy”?
I am not someone who could survive Wall Street. I couldn’t work there. I would scream and hysterically cry and have a panic attack when someone snapped at me because it would be just one god damn thing too many and it would be bad.
I am not saying that everyone there is bad or that having that kind of life is bad. I am saying I am not suited for it.
I’m also unlikely to ever really understand what it means to be Chinese. Or black. Or a man. I have to imagine. If I am imagining instead of experiencing I don’t get to treat them like they are equivalent experiences. My imagination is just a comfy place inside my mind. I access it in my garage. I’m safe.
I will never understand the feeling of walking down the street and having white women cower and clutch their purses. That would piss me right the fuck off. That would make me want to start a fight. I’m an angry person with a long list of done-me-wrongs.
I always only need one more thing.
This isn’t about anyone else. People cannot walk on egg shells. They have to hold their boundaries. They can step back. They can say, “In this piece of language _______ it sounds like you are kind of attacking. Can I ask for clarification on that?” I will of course say, “Ah. Poor choice of words. Let me attempt to reword. Is this better?”
Ok, maybe not of course. But I’ll try.
I like questions. I like people wanting to understand. I am not dealing well with people saying that I make them feel bad. I’m not trying to. Is there something very specific that you can ask about? No? Yes?
I am not ranting because I am mad at you. I’m ranting because very soon I have to put the mask on and act very polite and very normal and very controlled. For the love of all that is holy I have to stop crying. I need to clean up the four napkins full of snot and go get started on the day.
It doesn’t really matter how I feel. Shit will get done. That is how life works. I do not want to miss life. So I show up for the work.
high anxiety
It is interesting to try and track the progress of anxiety. It starts out as irritation, just knowing that something is making me feel nervous. I don’t have to know what. It doesn’t have to be major. At that point I have butterflies in my stomach all of the time and my throat is tight and I have a mild headache.
If things get more intense–if I feel I have New and Exciting reasons to feel anxious the first thing that happens is I feel like someone shot me in the stomach with a water cannon. My stomach acid production goes into over drive. My entire torso feels like it is on flames. And I know that this moment, awful as it is, isn’t going to last so I try to hold on to it and pretend that nothing else is going to happen.
But inevitably, sure as rain, after the water cannon to the stomach the diarrhea starts. I have made jokes for many years that constipation would be a nice change. Ok, they aren’t actually jokes. I think constipation would be really novel. I’m really tired of the diarrhea. It burns. It burns so much that sometimes I sit in the bathroom and cry for upwards of an hour because it just keeps coming and it hurts so much and there is nothing I can do to stop it. The poison has to leave my body some how.
After a couple of days of that then I usually progress into some kind of other illness. Right now I am coughing (very productively. Very very very productively–ew.) and my eyes hurt and my head hurts. My neck muscles are on fire and feel locked down so tight I do not quite have 180 degrees of motion.
My legs hurt. My legs hurt like I have been practicing sprinting up a hill. It’s a combination of throbbing and burning.
Luckily the water cannon to the stomach phase does end. Eventually I do poop out all the extra stomach acid. (OMFG it hurts)
Then I am left feeling numb and shaky. I feel stupid and thick and slow. I feel like I am unable to think clearly. I feel unable to be productive. I feel empty. I feel worthless. I feel like I wouldn’t have so many problems if I could keep my stupid, piece of shit mouth shut. My problems are all my fault for being such a complete bitch. If only I could SHUT UP maybe people wouldn’t be so mad at me all of the time.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt people. I’m not trying to. I swear to a god I don’t believe in. I talk because otherwise I cut. I have to let it out somehow. I am so sorry I offend you. I’m sorry.
I don’t want to be bad. I just don’t think it is possible to stop being bad once you are as bad as I am. There is no longer any redemption for someone like me. It is too late.
People really should get away from me as fast as they can. I am not in control. I am not a nice person. You should protect yourself. Goodness knows I can’t do it.
Then I want to die so much. I don’t know why I was born bad. People have been reacting to me in the same way for my whole life. “Everything is fine. Everything is fine. I’m not mad. I just never want to see you again.”
I get that a lot. If you have the same problem over and over with lots of people… it probably isn’t about them. It’s me. I am bad and people need to stay away from me to protect themselves. It is perfectly logical.
I’m still freaking out about Iain dying. He was good. He was worthy. He was beloved by many hundreds, probably thousands of people. Why did he die and a worthless piece of shit like me lives on? There is truly no justice in the universe.
I’ve been thinking about my mom like crazy. Calli looks more and more like her as she ages. Sometimes when I catch her giving me an expression of my mother’s I have to leave the room and cry. I miss my mommy. It is all my fault I can’t have a relationship with my mother. I’m a stupid pathetic whiny bitch. I made my own bed. No cause to blame anyone else for the results.
On the days when the pain in my body hits over 7 I start thinking about why am I doing this? Why do I continue to inhabit this body, this loathed object. Because I don’t have a choice. Because there is no other option if I want to remain conscious.
Pam asked me why I believe the bad things about myself so much more than the good things when she tells me good things all the time. Honey, my reading has shown me that you need ~10 positive or neutral statements about yourself to balance out one negative statement. That is more or less how it works in creation of self.
I was told I was a worthless, stupid, annoying whore for almost twenty years. In the almost fourteen years since I got out I have had some positive messages mixed in with a lot of people yelling at me and dumping me as a friend and sending me nasty letters through the mail explaining everything I am doing wrong.
I don’t have enough reason to believe positive things about myself. I would have to significantly fly in the face of public opinion in order to believe I have much worth at all. I’m not really confident enough for that.
The best I can do is hide in my house so I don’t bother people. I’m sad that looking out my back window will remind me for the rest of my life that I can fuck absolutely anything up. It is all my fault. I should have shut my stupid, piece of shit mouth.
I am so sorry.
Today is a Godmama weekend. That is probably for the best. I anticipate a lot of hiding and crying. I will make sure no one else has to see it. It is no ones problem but mine. I am not guilting anyone. This is not “because of you”. This is because of me. This is just my life. This is just what it has always been. I have never known different. Not for longer than two-three months at a time.
It is hard being this bad. I don’t really know how it happened to start wtih. But once it is there you can’t lose it.
Coughing up big wads of nasty while you are crying and dealing with a nose running down the back of your throat is truly disgusting. This kind of idiocy usually leads to vomiting. The chunks coming up and the slime mix right at the back of my throat and good grief my gag reflex is sensitive.
I don’t blame other people for my problems. I know that if I were not such a problem I would not have so many problems. If I knew what part of me to cut off: my tongue? My fingers? Maybe I could figure out a way to not make people mad all the time. Maybe I could find a way to not alienate people.
As is, I don’t have a lot of hope.
I feel bad for Noah. I’m sorry he has to live with someone like me. It isn’t his fault I am like this. I am so sorry.
When I talk about being too pathetic to hold down a job this is what I mean. I lose days when my body completely shuts down from stress. I don’t get up much. I just sit and cry because everything hurts so much.
just trying to figure out why I should get out of bed today
I am not good. I am not kind. I am selfish. I am mean. I am sometimes cruel. I am self-centered and self-absorbed.
Becoming these things has been a process. It has become a process because without these traits my life was extremely problematic. When I spend more time worrying about other peoples needs instead of my own then I tend to develop health problems. My psychological issues get worse. I become far less functional.
Animals require care. Dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, fish… whatever kind of animal you want to have around requires care. You have to feed it, keep it clean, give it water, love it, sometimes clip nails, sometimes clean out the cage… etc.
I require a lot of care in order to not be a screaming harpy. I am very sorry for this. In no way shape or form do I think this care should come from outside myself. I do not write because I want people to jump up and care for me. I would react with extreme hostility if you tried. You are not my keeper. You won’t be here tomorrow. I don’t want your half-assed-sorta-guilty help. I just don’t. It won’t actually make my life better.
If you have starving cats wandering around your neighborhood feeding them one time is not going to improve their life. It will make you have warm fuzzy feelings of being a good person for an act that is mostly meaningless in the lives of the affected target. That is how I feel about people helping me.
If I come to you and say, “Can you help with _____” that is absolutely all I am asking for help with. If you start trying to manage my anxiety while helping with _______ I am going to freak out at you. That’s not your job. My anxiety is not your problem. You can’t fix it. It is a very old problem. When you act like your bubble gum as bonding agent solution should be good enough for me you are being incredibly fucking rude. And you don’t even know it. And you really don’t give a shit. You have your warm fuzzies. If I don’t react appropriately obviously I am just an ungrateful bitch.
I have learned how to live with being an ungrateful bitch. Other peoples scraps of attention are how I piece together a life. I don’t have a big piece of anyone. I get small pieces. I get what they have to spare.
I don’t ask for more. I don’t want more. I am not trying to become a big part of your life. I don’t think I am capable of having that with anyone but the three people I live with. I don’t have enough to give.
I don’t have the ability to form really bonded relationships at this point. I am broken. I do not trust people. I assume that if I am stupid enough to continue to exist that every few weeks or months someone is going to scream at me for being so mean. Yup, I’m mean. I have learned to live with it.
I can’t avoid people getting upset with me and still exist in public. The only way I can see to avoid having people be upset with me is for me to entirely fade out of any sort of publicly accessible space. Otherwise I *will* offend people. Period.
I have to act like I am entitled to exist even though I offend you. Even though you think my behavior sucks. Even though you think I am not a nice person. Even though you think you can’t manage my anxiety. I didn’t bloody ask you to. My anxiety is mine. Stop acting like my problems are your problems. There is this great concept called “Boundaries”.
If I do not come to you with particular requests for behavior modification assume that I have no interest in you modifying your behavior on my behalf. I think that people act how they act because of a long history that I am pretty much not ever going to know about. I don’t think they need to change because of me.
Let’s be clear that I assume that most people I see in real life are going to fade out of my life after one-to-five years. I am not invested. I am sorry for that. I’m sure it makes people feel bad. I’m sure it makes people feel like I don’t care about them.
Well, I care about me more. I want to be alive when I am no longer a temporarily amusing person for you to talk to. I have to not care very much about your priorities. You won’t be in my life long enough for me to care what you think.
I don’t feel like a very good person for this. But it is realistic.
I am having a very hard time with the fact that I don’t constantly move any more. All of my behavior patterns are slash and burn. I find friends quickly and easily and I lose them even more easily.
Yeah, I know it is my fault. Blah blah blah. All my fault. Yup, I know. I realize that people don’t stay in my life because I am so unpleasant. Yup, I know. Thing is, it doesn’t matter how pleasant I try to make myself appear… if you stand near me for a few more minutes you will notice it is an act. Then you won’t like me any more. Then you will leave.
Forgive me for not crying over all of you. I would never stop crying.
I am not important to people. Well, they will give me the hand wavey “Oh I care about you!” but I’m not in peoples lives in a consistent way. I am someone they like to see when they can. I am not an essential part of life for more than three people.
I can’t build my self worth around people who only pay attention to me when they have nothing better to do. I have to be self-absorbed. I have to think my story is interesting. I have to think it is worth telling. I have to think it is ok to make the choices I make. The alternative is to kill myself.
I can’t please everyone. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I have tried and I have busted my head against that wall so often that there is a permanent dent in the wall and my head. I am not something that is pleasing to people. I can’t change that any more than I can change what race I was born.
My isolation is my fault. I’m not blaming anyone else. I’m not saying that those people are bad for not wanting to put up with me. I think they need to have boundaries. Good for them.
I need to have boundaries too. Boundaries like, “I am not like you. If me being different makes you feel attacked then STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME BECAUSE IT ISN’T MY PROBLEM THAT YOU HAVE FEELINGS.”
In no way shape or form do I want to say that I “understand the black experience” because I don’t but when I hear black men talk about what it is like to have white women fear them as they walk down the street I see a glimmer. I can understand a slice of that.
For the record, black men do not intimidate me. My problems are with white men.
I remember a conversation amongst a bunch of perverts years ago. (I use “perverts” with great affection.) Man A was talking about how easy/hard it is to find the scene. He said something to the effect of, “I tried finding the bdsm community when I was 19. When I came to a party and saw people beating the shit out of people it scared me and I left. I didn’t come back until I was 35. It wasn’t up to the people in that room to make me comfortable. I had to just be comfortable or I had to leave.”
He said that in response to like four other people saying that heavy or edge play was not appropriate in a public play space because it might scare newbies.
I’m an edge player. Ok, I haven’t done much bdsm in years and things are going to be interesting to figure out with Noah once I actually get up the nerve to go there again. I am an extreme player. If you ask a random group of perverts about their preferences mine are often some of the most intense.
I am not mild and unoffensive. I will never be. That is not a goal.
If I bother you, that’s totally ok. I do that. I bother people. I am an irritant. I am annoying and difficult and offensive.
But if you pay attention you will notice that I rein in like 95% of this when you are talking to me in public. My self absorption is not something I shove in peoples’ faces all day. I go out and I ask questions about other peoples lives. I listen to their stories. I want to hear about what other people think and feel and do. I just don’t want to emulate any of it.
I understand that people don’t want to hear about people like me. You know that difficulty in putting up with me? That’s the “extreme mental illness” that has been diagnosed over and over since I was a small child. No, I don’t think I am fucking normal.
But is it ok for me to exist? I am not anything near the most self absorbed person in the world even though I am extremely self absorbed. I am no where near the meanest person in the world even though I am mean. I am not ever going to be the most violent person even though I have tendencies.
I’m not the most extreme everything. I am just annoying. I’m not dangerous just irritating. Is it ok for me to exist?
I have had a friend volunteer a friend to finish the projects in my yard. Things will work out.
I’m ok with people needing to put up boundaries to keep me out of their life. I would think there was something wrong with the world if people didn’t put up big boundaries keeping me out of their life. That is just the natural order of things.
I had children so that I would have little people who understood my culture. I don’t know if they will share it when they are done growing up–I doubt they will be as crazy as I am. But someone will have a chance of predicting my behavior accurately.
I can’t invest in anyone else. I have two children into whom I must pour everything I have to give.
That’s a big fat lie. I pour pieces of myself into other things all the time. I have friends. I have a friend sleeping in the garage right now who has loved me since I was 17. (Technically we met when I was 15. The boy I wanted liked her more than me. That’s typically the story of my life. Except for Noah.)
I can’t be upset or take it personally when people walk away. Not everyone does. I have to take what people can hand off comfortably and not feel entitled to any more. I can be self absorbed and selfish but I may not be entitled. I’m not entitled to any-fucking-thing. Especially not relationships. Holy shit am I not entitled to relationships.
I try to be nice to people. I try to be considerate. I try to be a good and supportive friend. I give what I have to give. If the fact that I also write about a lot of anxiety is a problem, well… then I can’t do anything more than what I am doing. I have to believe that I have shot my wad and that’s what I have to give.
Then keep walking. Or die. I choose to keep walking. I choose to not attach. I love people but I am always prepared to let them go. “If you love them set them free” and all that shit.
I am shocked that I still know K. I didn’t think that any of my mommy-friends would last for more than a year or two. I was at her sons first birthday and next month I will be at his fourth birthday party. Three years is pretty long for me in a close friendship. Seven years is really the kicker though. We’ll see.
Pam, I do expect you to get sick of me one of these days. I know you say you won’t. But I’ve heard that a lot. I have been told by hundreds of people that they love me and will never leave me. I don’t bother to listen to the end of that sentence any more. It is such a fucking lie.
I’m self absorbed because I’m the only one who has to do the work to keep me alive. It is a lot of work. If I don’t take it seriously I will not continue to be functional or alive.
Sometimes when I am told that I think I love my kids more than other people do (well my first thought is “Really? I think that? When did I think that, precisely?”) I think that it isn’t that I love my kids more. It is that I have no one else in the world to safely pour my love into. So it seems more obvious and noticeable by contrast. I’m not all that nice to random people so it seems all the more startling that I am so gentle and affectionate and loving with my kids.
Based on my writing I don’t seem like the sit and cuddle gently sort.
My kids are the only people in the whole fucking world who get to touch my body for many hours a day. My husband isn’t allowed to touch me like my kids are. My kids act like we have one body and they occasionally orbit off but then they are coming back to reattach.
We went to a birthday party recently and Calli fell down. A bunch of mothers leaped up to help her. They got there before me. I kind of hung back. I don’t push to the front. I don’t assume I am the important one. But Calli pushed them away from her and said, “I want my mommy.”
That is why I had kids. That moment of affirmation. Someone thinks I am the best. Even if it is only two people and even if it is only for a few years before they grow up and hate my guts like everyone else.
For now, I am the best. And they love me so much. And I love them. This is all I have.
Piercing the veil.
I do not write as a passive aggressive way of controlling the people around me. I write because otherwise I have trouble noticing patterns of behavior in myself. If what I write makes you think hard about your life and consider some issue, great.
If you ever feel that I am saying too much about you or your family or your pet you are free to ask me to stop.
Otherwise I’m getting kind of tired of the fact that I’ve spent the last fucking month bouncing between people who are upset with me for things I write. They feel attacked.
Uhm, no one is forcing you to read. If you feel upset by what I am writing feel free to take a break. I am not feeling ok with the pressure to stop writing. I am feeling more angry by the day about how many people have gotten really angry with me in the last month as I try to deal with my anxiety.
My anxiety is not your problem. No matter who you are. I am not writing this post to one person. I have had intense exchanges of one sort or another with at least seven people in the last month.
I have to stop being responsible for other people having feelings. If my writing triggers big feelings in you that bother you and make you unhappy, stop reading it. This is an opt-in space. I do not think it is appropriate that I should have to stop and feel anxious every fucking day about the fact that me processing my shit is going to make someone else feel attacked.
I’m not attacking you. I’m sitting in my fucking garage trying to figure out how to not blow up when I am with people in person. I do this because I know in my gut that no one deserves me blowing up. I do it for environmental reasons–not usually for actual provocation. Â If you don’t like knowing how I go through that process, opt-out. We can have a cordial in person relationship where I can tailor what I say to your personal preferences. I can not fucking handle the stress of trying to please everyone when I write.
I am not responsible for your feelings. No matter who you are.
I have to say this.
Oh no.
If you are familiar with EduKink then you should know that Iain, one half of that team, passed away yesterday.
Today will be a day for tears. He was kind, giving, and loving. He provided education, mentorship, and wisdom to hundreds of people embarking on their path through life. I feel like a big piece of the puzzle of life just fell out. There is a big hole. Oh no.
My leather mom is now bereft of her partner. I am so sorry.
Everything will be fine.
Make careful choices in life. Only take on what you can bear. Assume that you will not have help.
Don’t think. For the love of fucking Christ on a pogo stick do not process. That shit will ruin your life.
Go back to working. Shut your mouth.
Perspective is everything.
Yesterday I spent a while talking to a woman who has been fighting/is slowly dying of cancer. When she got the diagnosis her plan was to not fight and just go when it was her time. Then her grandson got engaged and she wanted to be at the wedding. Then her grandson knocked up his long-term partner just before the wedding so even though the wedding already happened she just doesn’t quite want to go yet… even though she is very tired.
Let me fucking tell you I did not burden this woman with my problems. It was fascinating to listen to her though. Why does she decide that suffering is worth it? She is at a point where she isn’t sure she has fight left in her. Does that mean anything bad about her will to live? How much will to live should anyone have? She is already in her 70’s. She has had a good life.
I got married and had children because I wanted to believe there was a way I could have those things and have it be different than what I have known. I have managed to have a very different relationship. It requires me to be isolated most of the time because I can’t handle more stress. But I’m doing what I wanted.
When I’m done with this isolated early-childhood experience my children will be socialized the way I want and they will have a very secure attachment from which to go out into the world. I don’t think they are mine to control forever. I just think I am not capable of keeping them safe if there are too many factors in our lives. I lose track of what the left hand is doing if my right hand has to multi-task eight things.
She asked me a lot of questions about what I am doing with the kids. Why am I home schooling? Why do I believe the things I believe about early childhood development. I had answers. Lots of answers. Non-depressing answers! I was proud of myself. I told her at one point, “I’m usually Debbie Downer but I’ve been chipper this whole conversation so I’m pretty proud of that.” She laughed. Overall talking to her was a delightful experience.
The older I get the less people hate me for being weird. I don’t need anyone else to accommodate me any more. When children are weird it creates random and unpredictable work for adults. That is very annoying.
Yesterday I was told that having a big garden is one of the best things I can do as a parent. When my kids misbehave–make them weed. It is productive, non-painful, but always has to be done. Excellent advice. Ha.
I find that older women listen to why I home school and think for a bit then they say, “I wish I had had the courage to keep my children with me. Go you.” I’ve heard that a lot. I’m not sure it is about courage, exactly. I am this selfish. It has taken a long time for me to realize that a certain level of being selfish is utterly required for a human being to have a happy life. Some people are “altruistic” to such a degree that it is actually quite selfish.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would take for me to make the jump to seriously not wanting to die in a permanent way. I mean, I don’t have a choice about dying some day. It is the universal equalizer. How do I stop wanting to be done?
I haven’t had suicidal ideation in a few days. More than a week? It’s kind of hard to track because the closer attention I pay to tracking it the more present it is.
What would have to change in me, what feeling of security would I need to have in order to really want to live? Noah feels sad that he isn’t enough. He isn’t. Noah represents too much potential pain. I trust him more as the years go by. I didn’t think that a man would ever be able to spend time around me without requiring degrading sex. He doesn’t. I don’t really know what to make of him.
I’ve been writing more letters to Noah’s family. Doing so always makes me feel sad. I tell them things because I wish I could tell my mom. I’ve been thinking about my mom every day. Lots of grieving left to do there. I am so sorry, Mommy. I know I have hurt you so much. Maybe in the end I have hurt you more than my Dad did. I feel so bad about that. I’m sorry.
The only way I know how to move the pain away from you is to take it on or move it to my children. The only way you know how to deal with pain is to blame children and say everything bad is all their fault. Even though the bad started before they were born. I can’t let you do that to my daughters. I just can’t.
My children believe that everyone makes mistakes and we have to forgive one another but you are not to blame for actions that are not yours. Not ever. If you are not the one who did something then you should not be punished. Period.
That’s on the long list of reasons I can’t send my kids to public schools. Teachers have to punish whole groups or whole classrooms because they can’t single kids out every time there is a problem. No. Just no. I don’t think they would be destroyed. Yes many generations of Americans have lived through it and “everyone is fine”. I don’t want it for my kids. I’m not fine.
Solving yesterday’s problems. That is what I am doing. It isn’t right. It isn’t fair. It is what everyone does.
I like talking to older people. I more or less beg them to tell me that there are stages of life with less pain coming. Near as I can tell the pain shifts. I will have less emotional pain and more physical pain. I can handle that trade. That won’t be worth dying over. I feel like a loser but I will take physical pain over emotional pain every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Why do you think I cut for so many years?
I was brave yesterday. The person who is building stuff in my yard has a lot going on. I completely respect that. I get that he has five thousand things pulling at him. But every time he comes he gets slightly less done than he hoped to do and he rarely stays for more than two hours at a go. (I track everything.) He originally told me my list of projects would take ~5 days. He is about halfway through those hours. I asked him if he could come more days over the next week because I would really like the yard uhm, neat enough to clean up before the birthday party. Right now I keep hurting myself tripping on lumber in the back yard.
Why is this brave? Because I feel like a fucking asshole for asking him for more times of showing up but once he is done then I won’t have to pester him any more. It is hard to say that I want him to treat me like a priority so he can get this over with and move on. But he’s been coming since February for five days of work and it is August. Time to finish up. I’m not mad. I just want it to be done.
It is hard to ask for things. It is hard to not feel like an overly-demanding harpy. I don’t know if I have been or not. I think I am going to stop hiring people I know for work. I can’t be demanding with them if I otherwise know the circumstances of their lives yet I feel like I really want to be able to be demanding when I am paying someone to do something. Conundrum. (The work he is doing is beautiful. I really appreciate all of his labor. I am not slamming this man in any way shape or form. I’m sorry I am so impatient. Please don’t be mad at me, L.)
Today I need to clean. I’m pretty sure I never cleaned the house in July. I don’t think I vacuumed once. (To be honest now I mostly vacuum before a crawling baby comes over. I only did the once a day thing while my kids were eating floor candy.) I haven’t swept or mopped in a long time. (Thank goodness for a good exterminator getting rid of the ants. Ha.) I have kept up with dishes and laundry because those things getting out of control is just too hard for me. I took pictures at the worst of the mess because K feels so insecure about my ability to keep my house clean all the time. Ha. No, it isn’t clean all the time. I just make sure that I keep little enough stuff in my house that everything has a home and everything can be picked up and put away in under three hours. Or I would want to beat the shit out of someone.
If it took eight hours to clean my house I would be homicidal. It would not be ok with me. No one has the fucking right to expect that much labor from me on a given day. I don’t know where my entitlement comes from. But man I don’t want a bigger house.
The longer I stay in one place the more I like it. The more I feel like I am picking out behavior traits from a menu that was not previously available to me. “Feel content–check.” It isn’t that I am “happy” all of the time. I’m not sure I am physiologically capable of being “happy” all of the time. I spend too much time scared or angry. But I feel secure. I feel safe. I feel content. I feel like I have done such work as deserves pride. I’m not Rembrandt but my house is neat. My yard is fun. It is small and packed with interesting things to do. I make it more interesting by the year.
(Seriously, I spend a lot of time hiding in the blue potato vine secret club house. I pull a chair in there and read during the heat of the day. It is perfectly cool and shaded and surrounded by pretty flowers. I feel so lucky to have the life I have.)
It is kind of funny to notice that I feel anxiety about “not having a job” because I feel like I am letting the sisterhood down. But uhm, the sisterhood has by and large not been great to me as an individual. I’m loudly feminist. I am supporting the Cause and all. Isn’t it ok for each of us to choose what makes us happy? What load we can bear?
I keep thinking that I want to start observing the Sabbath. Not in a believing in anything kind of way. More from a “no technology and no work from sundown to sundown” sort of thing. Human beings need rest. We are bad at observing that. Keeping the Sabbath is actually a very physiologically healthy thing. Then follow that by walking to the farmers market on Sunday morning? That feels like a recipe for increased health compared to what I have always known.
Reduce the harm you inflict on yourself. Step by step, bit by bit. I’m trying. (Every single time I stop and notice that the pain in my abdomen is gone since I stopped drinking carbonated water I feel a bit more stupid. Wow. We really do cause our own misery; we usually don’t understand how we are doing so but we do.)
Ok, people with lifelong disabilities will hate me for that. No, not everything that happens to someones body is their own fault. As a culture Americans are spectacularly bad about causing physical problems through our choices. Walking away from that line of thinking now.
The woman I spoke with yesterday asked me what I get out of thinking through past mistakes. I said it is very important to me to make 10,000 mistakes instead of 10 mistakes 1,000 times each. She laughed. I told her I have the kind of family that makes 10 mistakes. I don’t know how to change that pattern without being very aware of it. I’m not making the same mistakes I used to make–not at all.
Well, there is that whole existentially an asshole thing. But come on, who is paying attention to that as a mistake? That’s mostly considered a personality bug at this point. A very useful one that I don’t trot out much any more. I don’t think I will ever be willing to give up on it. I just try not to inflict it on non-deserving people.
I think I will always be prone to shouting at people who have the audacity to say racist and sexist things to me. I don’t think I have the desire to stop reacting. I don’t want to be one more silent person. Silence is consent. I’d rather be an asshole.
Why bother?
Some stranger on the internet found my blog and is leaving comments on entries from years ago. “If you feel so broken why did you get married and have kids?”
Well it was that or kill myself. I took a chance on life. I took a chance that I could manage to not break other people the way I was broken. Maybe it was hubris.
The older I get the more I learn about my own introvert nature. I always thought I was an extrovert. I needed people. I had to take what I could get in terms of company. I need time where I get to write. I have to empty my head.
Notice those days where I bop around from social media tool to social media tool? I feel lonely. I want to feel like I am seen and part of the world.
I don’t use social media more because I am afraid. I am afraid of being yelled at. I am afraid of being told I am bad and stupid. I am afraid that if I actually said more of what is in my head that people would not want to know me any more. As lonely as I feel at this stage of my life I know this is the absolute best I have ever had it. I try very hard to understand what this might mean in the scope of my life. If I blow this… I know how that goes.
I am ok with someone getting to know me and disliking something that I do. That’s fine with me. No matter who you are you do things that I don’t like. I’m fine with you feeling the same way about me.
But I desperately want people to believe that I am allowed to exist. Without having to offer sex. I want to have some kind of value in the world. I want to be needed. I want who and what I am to be useful. And without having to change so that I can be more like other people.
It is kind of funny to me when people tell me that me making the choices I make reflects negatively on them. Well, funny in a horrified kind of way. I can tell you in great detail exactly why I am bad for every single choice that I make. I know all of the arguments down the last specific. I don’t think that my choices are “good”. I don’t think that other people are bad for not being like me. I think I am bad for not being like other people.
I think I am rather pathetic for not being able to work while having children. I know a lot of women who do it and everything is working out great. I would be an abusive monster. I cannot handle that stress. I feel very ashamed of my limits.
I think it is rather pathetic that I can’t deal with hiring childcare on a daily basis so I can go get work done. I think it is extremely pathetic that I would use that time to hide and cry. But I would.
I worry a lot about isolating my children. I think there are HUGE benefits to public school. I am not sure I am doing them favors by encouraging non-conformity and inability to follow institutional rules. I’m not sure I am doing them favors by showing them that they should be very angry with any one who tries to tell them when and where they can use a bathroom. My kids think they have the god damn right to decide when and where. If you pester them to “just try” so that you don’t have to be inconvenienced later they will lash out at you. I’m ok with this. I feel the same fucking way. I don’t act like accidents are that big of a deal. I’ve had too many because of problems I have in my body due to a lifetime of malnutrition and control issues in institutional settings.
I worry a lot about being a parent with mental illness. What am I teaching my children about “normal”?
No. I don’t look down on people for making different choices.
I believe with everything I am that no one can judge what is the right choice for another person. I don’t believe I ever have enough information to judge what a different person is capable of accomplishing. For good or for ill. I under estimate and over estimate. I just can not judge. I don’t feel that other people judge me very well.
I’m going to be semi-egotistical and say that I am an extremely competent person. I know how to do a wide variety of skills at a better than average level. I have had to learn how to do things for myself and by myself. I am a ridiculously hard task master.
But I don’t think I am capable of much. Notice how I actively avoid anything in life that might lead me to having power? I don’t want to have a powerful job. I don’t want to associate with “powerful” people. I don’t especially want to have a rich lifestyle regardless of how much money I ever have. I would feel wildly uncomfortable.
When I picture my old age I would be just fine with living on a trailer on a piece of property in Oregon where I am legally allowed to decide when I die. Sure. That would be fine.
I don’t think that most people uhhh set their aspirations at such a level. I want to have enough money to never need to work again. I’m trying to use this ridiculous income of my husband’s to ensure that it happens without him having to work for many more years. I don’t want him working himself to the bone for decades to support my sloth. That’s not the deal.
I want both of us to be able to do things we want with the hours of our days. Luckily for him, the shit he likes to do for fun will probably generate a modest income. Eventually I will do something for some pay. I don’t want much. I really fucking don’t. I already have more than I need.
I feel like I have grown up in a weird space of intersection. Boy howdy have I seen the American Dream up close and personal. I see the stress. I see the trade offs. I see the A/B decisions that started with your parents decisions and I know that I will never be able to be competitive. It was done before my birth.
Oh man does that make me want to opt out of the system. I want to have my private, isolated life where I don’t have to try to step on anyone else’s neck in order to inch my way up.
I don’t have that in me. That fight was lost too long ago.
So what am I teaching my children? I worry. I worry all the fucking time.
What kind of adults will my children be? They will never experience deprivation of any kind. They will grow up with a mother who responds to any and all signs of entitlement with the nastiness of a viper. You are not fucking entitled to the labor of my body. Do for yourself. (I try to tone things down because they are kids and all but I am getting less patient by the year and by the time they are adults I won’t feel any desire to tone it down.)
You have to care about how the actions of your body effect the people around you. You have to. Period. If you are not willing to care about that, well you can bloody well stay in a room by yourself. (For an age appropriate number of minutes on a timer. Then you come out to kisses and hugs and talk about how much you are loved.)
I don’t know that I am doing anything right. I don’t really feel like I am in a position to look down on what anyone else is doing.
My life is such a bizarre mix of trauma and privilege that it is hard to tease out what is positive and what is negative. What parts of my behavior and character are positive or negative depends entirely on your point of view.
Recently (this year) a lot of my reading has been about what personality traits enable people to thrive despite adversity. I may be a whiny bitch because most of my current adversity is all in my head but other people in the world deal with real adversity. It is still relevant reading and all. (See that denigration about the mental illness bit. IT’S ALL IN MY HEAD! Well, what isn’t?)
Apparently one of the most important aspects of character is the ability to live with having conflicting traits in yourself. Be ok with the fact that you are patient AND impatient. Be ok with the fact that you are trusting and suspicious. I really am quick to judge people. I give people a lot of fucking rope. Then I hang them hard and fast and walk away.
I don’t like being alone. I find being alone significantly preferable to being in social environments where I have to try very hard to be “good” or I might be expelled. I think of basically every social space that way. I’m not invited to that many parties any more. Part of it is the kid thing. Part of it is that I make people feel fucking uncomfortable. C’est la vie.
I feel intense guilt for not being able to unschool the way I see some people doing it. I can’t have my kids involved in activities six days a week to meet social needs. I just can’t. I am not capable.
When I was a kid it was a joke in most of the schools I was enrolled in that I shouldn’t bother enrolling because I missed so much school. I have never been a consistent part of anything. I can manage a few months, maybe. I taught for 2.5 years at S.T. That is the longest I have ever consistently done anything in my life. I was technically in the graduate program at SJSU for seven years… but I attended one class a week for most of that and I had years off in the middle.
I lived with my Owner for three years and dated him for four. Outside of my mother he is the person I have lived with the longest consecutively by far. I’m not sure my mother beats him by much and after I was four years old I never lived with her for four years in a row again.
I have lived with Noah and Shanna longer than I have ever lived with my mother in a go. When I write it down it becomes a thing I can look at. Holy shit. That’s really pretty sad. When I just feel anxiety and frustration because I am having a horrible time with the pressure that comes from trying to provide stability for children I don’t think of it in such terms. Of course this is hard for me. Of course I am struggling. I’m swinging without a net. So I pursue relentless competence at a wide variety of skills. Most of which are utterly without value to anyone beyond me. I can’t care about that. People like me die if they worry too much about which skills to pick up because they will invariably make the wrong decisions.
I’m trying really hard to make my 10,000 mistakes. I’m not sure what I will be a “master” of but I think I will be much more calm. What is another mistake at that point? I can do anything and it doesn’t matter.
I want neither the path of complete disconnection from other people of Zen nor the immersion in community behavioral norms I have always known. I don’t know what my path will be.
I can neither lead nor follow. If I am making other people feel like they are wrong then I need to work on my communication skills.
I haven’t figured anything out. I just keep walking because I don’t know what else to do. I try new things because I don’t know how to do the same thing for a long time.
I want to raise children the way I am doing this because my children are going to be the only people I ever have this kind of intensity with. I have absolutely no other window into such an experience. I am a selfish piece of shit and I want it. I want it. I want it. I want to find out what it means to live with someone 24/7 for 18 years. I understand that other people get enough out of that experience with their kids being gone for school and I’m totally cool with that and I think it represents a healthy approach to life.
I can’t. I can’t miss this. I have no other way to find out what a normal childhood looks like. I want to watch this so fucking much. I am so scared that I will miss part of it and I won’t be able to understand why something later is happening. I need to fucking know what is happening to them. I NEED to know. I can’t just trust a daycare provider. I can’t. This is a failure in me.
I need to know in my bones that when they are eighteen I have kept them safe. I can’t pass the buck on responsibility. I don’t trust anyone enough. I am not saying that you don’t love your children. I am saying that I am broken.
I worry so much about what I am doing to my children. They have never had a daily relationship with anyone but me and their dad. Even when we had a housemate she did not appear during their awake hours every day. They have literally never had a relationship with anyone else where they saw them every day for two months. Not even five days a week. And I take them on trips away from their dad, sometimes for weeks.
I worry a lot. Is this ok? Is this basically broken? It makes me feel hellza better that Laura Ingalls Wilder was way more isolated than my kids. I mean… isn’t that part of the American story? We are all alone. Even when we live in suburbs shoved cheek and jowl. Most of my friends talk about a loneliness of the soul they felt because even though they went to school… they never had friends. I collect self-identified “rejects”.
This is a lot of why I am trying so hard to get to know the people who live in our neighborhood. We actually see people and have conversations with them pretty consistently.
But I’m not providing little friends. I’m not sure school would anyway. And man it would waste their time. And teach lessons I don’t like.
It all comes down to control. Do I think the American government is doing a good job in how it is raising kids? No. Ok. I’m super glad I have the privilege to opt-out then. Not everyone does. Everyone has different privileges.
My choices are about what I can bear. I know that what I am capable of is pretty pathetic in some core ways. If you go spend some time studying brain developmental stuff you might cut me a little more slack. Not a lot. I don’t need a lot. I do very well all things considered. But there is a cost to all things considered. My kids have to bear that. I can’t understand what that cost will be in advance. I am fucking worried.
Did you know that rape is down 58% since the 1970’s? (http://prospect.org/article/should-rape-porn-be-banned)
Complicated stuff, yo.
Back in my day (*cough* choke*cough) I wanted to “play act” things that are much more extreme than average. I have had the last several years of being a parent where I have done the “trapped under a baby” thing and I was alone all the time. I’ve had a lot of time to think about why I have done the things I have done. How many of them are things I will ever do again?
I will never again allow someone to put a noose around my neck and lift me off the ground because he wants to be able to look at the picture later and masturbate. The risk/reward ratio will never be tipped in that direction again. I’m really willing to go pretty far to be “good enough” for someone who wants to hurt me.
My daughters will not believe that anyone has the right to hurt them. What they go do in their sex lives will not be my problem. My children will not believe it is ok for an adult to grab them by the arm and drag them along. It is fucking assault. You see it in schools all the time.
I am not strong enough to teach my daughters how to be strong in that world. I don’t have any appropriate coping skills. My coping skills got me raped and beaten over and over again.
I worry so much. What do I have to give? Is anything about me worthy of learning about? Should I just shut the fuck up so there is never any reason for them to have to know how very self absorbed and bad and stupid I am.
I’m teaching my kids that adulthood is very free form. No one is your boss. You get to decide what to do with your time. If you need money (and everyone does in one way or another) then you need to figure out how to get it. All career paths involve training of some kind even if you are working retail or cutting hair (holy moly the training for hair dressing is intense). Lots of careers involve college. If you think you are heading down that route we will have some serious conversations in five, seven, and nine years from now about what you want to do to prepare for that experience because it will be up to you to pull it off. I won’t be part of that.
I don’t know what you will be when you grow up. Do you have ideas? What do you want to prepare for being able to do?
I’m trying to learn what I will do when I grow up too. I’m not ready. I’m sorry. I know that is a sign of my basic immaturity. I get it. But I am where I am. I am sorry that my development is so retarded. It isn’t my fault. I’m trying. I’m trying so hard. I can’t be anything other than what I am.
Life is in medias res. We are all part of the continuing story of humanity. We are part of the story of our individual families. We are bearing the body load of their deprivations, excesses, tendencies, and flat bad choices. Or you can be one of those people who is happy and healthy and your family has been for…. Well as long as any one can remember. Great. Thanks. I’m happy for you. Sigh.
Ok, well so what does this all mean for my kids? In order for me to change the narrative of my family I need to change the narrative of my family. Which I have done in some major ways of which I am proud. I continue to examine my behavior and attempt to make progress on doing course corrections.
I can’t do anything but what I am doing. Oh, that’s bullshit. If Noah died I would cope. Well, I still wouldn’t work. He made sure of that before I quit. But shit happens. I could still have to get a job. I reiterate that I would cope. I think I would not be a very nice mother any more. I think my children would effectively lose both parents and it would be horrible. I would not be able to be present for even 1/10 of what they expect. Good grief they are entitled little things.
They think they are entitled to my love and attention at absolutely every fucking hour of the day and night. Whoa. It is over whelming. After five years I have pulled back my boundaries like mad. When Shanna was born I did it twenty-ish hours a day (Noah had the other four). Calli has never had quite what Shanna had. It just isn’t possible. But they sleep together.
The three of us are a little self contained unit of affirmation and approval. We love each other and only sort of need anyone else. I feel bad about the ways in which we leave Noah out. He’s just not around enough to make as much impact on them. (I say as I hide in the garage away from them. But geez I’ve been low on personal time lately.)
I have to militantly believe that it takes all kinds or there is no chance that it is ok for me to exist. Sometimes that is hard to live with.
We all live in the middle. I come from hard core religious zealots and prostitutes–and that’s just on my mom’s side. How about you?
Parental control
I LOVE teaching. I just do. We are reading a bunch of fairy tales by the brothers Grimm. Of course the topic of arranged marriages came up. I asked the kids why they think arranged marriages were so common. The response, “Because the fathers were controlling assholes.” Ha.
Property. If you let your daughter marry someone who does not have enough property to take care of her, or if you let your daughter marry someone who can not manage YOUR property for her… she will probably die.
Control is not always about being an asshole.
The fence project
I want to blog about this more later. Â http://www.flickr.com/photos/rightkindofme/sets/72157634785800521/