If you build it; they will come?

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My favorite thing about being married to Noah is that all of my dreams seem… so very attainable. We talk a fair bit about what will happen after the house is paid off, after the WWOOF year, after Noah feels he will no longer be likely to be a full time professional coder. We won’t be this kind of rich forever. We will be a different kind of rich. What will we do with it?

We have been talking for a while now–years–about wanting to open a school. At this point our language is solidifying around wanting to start the year that would be Calli’s freshman year of high school. This wouldn’t be the right kind of school for Shanna, anyway.

We would like to run a boarding school for nerds. The curriculum will not look a lot like most schools. Kind of a cross between a free democratic school and a vo-tech program. How do you teach entrepreneurship? Luckily we are getting to know the people who are important in those worlds. We are learning what people need to know.

How do you teach responsibility? How do you teach compassion? How do you teach teenagers to believe that their agency actually matters?

I really like being married to Noah. I feel like I could not have a better partner. I feel so very lucky.

Intersection of privilege, feminism, and being “retro” as we head into the future.

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I went and read the NY Magazine article on Feminist Housewives. I understand that some people feel insulted by the piece. I thought it was hilarious. Holy tomato do I fall into the demographic she is lampooning. Upper middle class and white. We started into this demographic when I was 27 (right in the middle of the 25-30 age group that is the fastest growing segment) when our combined household income was between $75,000 and $100,000. Over the last six years Noah has nearly made it to $200,000. We are absolutely the “kind of people” this article is trying to insult.

Wait, you didn’t think the author was trying to be insulting? Oh. I read it as if she was trying but failed because I really don’t care about her evaluation. Yes, I am a feminist who does not have an out-of-the-home job. What does being a feminist mean in my position? It means I lobby the shit out of my friends-in-similar-dynamics for them to have the autonomy and freedom I have.

On some levels my marriage is quite “retro” and in other ways it is anything but. Folks wouldn’t look at Noah and I and confirm that the patriarchy is in full force. I have agency. I make decisions.

If I were to work out of the house we would be in a worse place financially than we are right now. My salary would not cover how much we would end up spending on daycare, better clothes, eating out, a house cleaner, or a more active gardner. Let me tell you–if I had a job I would quite certainly do less cooking for the house than Noah does while having a job. My job was more hours in the week than Noah’s… for a lot less money. Really about like the social worker that was lampooned in the article.

I went into teaching for the express purpose of learning how to teach my own kids. I became a teacher because I knew I wanted to homeschool my kids someday and I wanted to be able to do so well. I did not go into a helping profession because I wanted to make the world better. I went into teaching to fulfill my own selfish desires and my own plans for the future.

I didn’t really live with my mother full time when I was a child. I grew up in extreme poverty and that means I often had to go live with virtual or literal strangers because she couldn’t care for me. This has created an ache inside me that time doesn’t seem to dull. I did not learn how to be a person from my mother. I learned how to be a person from books while I was alone in a room. I feel a physical need to have specific one-on-one relationships that facilitate personal growth. I need to see what it looks like when people go through the normal changes. I don’t need to spend the rest of my life looking at one cross section of life and only adapting to that. I was great with teenagers–I need to learn how to deal with all ages. I need to be exposed to all ages.

My life journey will never look anything like the typical journey. Even though I fall into specific demographics of high privilege now I will never be able to change who I am or where I come from. I am not like the other women in my demographic. Often I freak them out.

I can say without reservation that I have an uncommonly feminist marriage. My husband has permitted, encouraged, shoved me towards a degree of autonomy that I just don’t see in other marriages. It isn’t that he makes me do things by myself, though he does. It is that he has taught me about his own journey of aloneness. It is that he has made me understand why he has the limitations he has and he understands why I have the limitations I have and we seamlessly step in and rescue one another. He cares about my individual issues and he never assumes that I am a certain way “because I am a woman”.

I do not believe in biological determinism. I know men who are wonderful stay-at-home-dads (my brother has actually been a SAHD for the entire lives of his children) and I know women who are so non-maternal that I don’t understand why they had children. Because that biological clock thing is No Joke. These women wisely find very nurturing caregivers to provide most of the care for their kids and their kids grow up feeling loved and cared for. That’s what life is about, right?

There is no one path. I want to be near my children because it satisfies deep emotional needs for me. I was deeply neglected and abused as a child. I have baggage I am learning how to work through.

I have to stay home and take care of my children myself because otherwise I will never have the impetus to work on my hatred and rage towards working in groups. Without doing this I am unlikely to value the input of other people. Let me tell you I will never change my opinion if I just take a job where I have to work with people. I hate working with people. That’s my idea of hell on earth. I can be the boss and steer the ship in a group–but that’s different. I’m a harsh taskmaster.

I don’t want to be a harsh taskmaster with my children. I want them to learn how to be functional people. That means I have to model being a functional person. One of my biggest gripes about the American educational system is that we are turning out people who know how to be cogs in the machine–not people who can deconstruct the machine and build a new one.

I don’t know about you, but I think we need a new one.

I went on to read The Retro Husband and thought ouch. He’s talking about Noah. Only he isn’t.

Noah and I met during a period in our lives when we could lovingly be called fuck ups. We had a lot of relationship instability and we both treated people like they wouldn’t be in our lives very long. Mostly we were right. When we got married we both had to abruptly change a lot of things in our behavior. We went from not dating/just friends to engaged to married in five months. Our lives changed fast.

I picked a mate who has a profession that is best served by a combination of locking himself in a room to work alone and going out and teaching what he has learned while being locked in a room. Strip clubs don’t feature heavily. I’m pretty sure he has only been in a strip club once in his life. We went together on the first anniversary of our marriage. We had a lot of fun. (I’ve been to a lot of strip clubs and I love them.) We came home and conceived our first child. Amen.

I picked someone who has a dad who has never left his crazy mother. He understands what “for better or worse” means. I looked at the guys in my generation (and two generations above me) and found such understanding to be thin on the ground. I picked someone from inherited wealth who has a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. He was taught how to make money. That is a set of skills you either have or don’t have. I quizzed a lot of men. Let me tell you: financial acumen is thin on the ground. He wasn’t taught how to budget money. That’s one of the big downfalls of growing up with more money than you know what to do with. However he doesn’t track our money; I do. I budget well. We are very good partners.

I am self-aware enough to admit out loud that I would probably not be as happy if my partner made very little money. I would have different expectations. I think that  when you look at the demographic of “men who do very little housework have more sex” you have a combination of: women who are lavishly provided for feel grateful and men who philander. That’s my experience.

When I was eighteen I was engaged to my high school sweetheart. That was the price of shacking up and we both wanted away from our parents. I didn’t marry him because even though he made more money than me I paid more of our expenses and I did all the housework. He was really lazy at home. I went from that to a D/s or M/s relationship. (That’s Dominant/submissive or technically Owner/property in our case.) I have always fucking cleaned house for people. I’ve been doing it all my life. I even pick fucking friends who want me to come over and clean for them. (I offer. I am really good at organizing people’s stuff.)

I clean because I am an order Muppet. I have to see order in the world around me or I can’t focus and I can’t relax. I think I clean for other people because I am trying to bond with them. I am trying to offer what I have in terms of “benefits” so people will put up with being my friend. I believe I am intrinsically unpleasant. I must offer something in trade or being around me isn’t worth the cost.

I don’t want my children to feel this way. If I had to put my head down and work a full time job and take care of my kids and take care of my house and provide food… I would certainly never ever have reason to believe that people wanted me around for any reason other than I had work to do for them. “The worst burden for a woman is no burden.” She’s talking about privilege and idleness. She can’t shame and say it bluntly. I should be serving other people, not myself. I shouldn’t just exist for the pleasure of my company. Ha. I appreciate how much she believes women should be out working in the world–but I notice that in order to do it herself she had to give up on the marriage/kids thing. I wanted kids.

I don’t think the author of the NY Magazine piece means that I should be working for other people in order to help support the world. I just don’t.

What is the point and purpose of feminism if I am not allowed to say, “I have the financial privilege to stay home and be the primary caregiver for my children and more than anything in the world I want to do it” and have that be acceptable. I don’t want to have 18, 19, and counting so I am a perpetual breeding machine who never has to do anything else but be mommy.

I will engage in the world again. I will do it as a very different person. I am not allowed to fuck my way through the rest of my life. I spent my childhood assuming I would be a sex worker for most of my life. That was my actual plan. I decided to do something else because I didn’t want my children to believe they had to do it. I changed my behavior in large and dramatic ways because I wanted to be able to look my children in the face and say that acting like me is appropriate. Does that mean I think promiscuity is terrible or bad? No. But they should not expect it of themselves because it is not mandatory. It is not common. It is not standard.

I used two forms of birth control very consistently after I was eighteen (I was on hormonal birth control and ALWAYS used condoms for casual sex and used a diaphragm with longer term fluid bonded partners who refused to wear condoms any more because let’s be honest that is how that shit happens) until I was sure I wanted to have kids. I was not going to get caught with some kid I would resent and a lifetime association with a loser ex-partner. I was smart enough to fucking recognize that at twelve years old. That’s when I went on the pill for the first time. I sometimes used depo provera (to my detriment–that shit is bad for you) then I went back to the pill.

No one sat me down and taught me the facts of life. I found things out piece-meal. A little bit at school (I will say that Los Gatos had adequate public health education–that is a huge advantage not everyone has) but mostly through talking to people. I found out most of it by making mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes before I was eighteen. I had a lot of very risky sex. I made a number of stupid choices.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this rape/not rape thing. How do I differentiate between bad sex and rape? I don’t think it crosses the line unless I was saying “no”. I believe that I have to say “no” or it is my fault that something happened. I ascribe the responsibility and agency for such acts to myself.

When I was twelve I asked a twenty-five year old man to fuck me. That wasn’t rape. But it was still a crime. It was still illegal. It was his legal responsibility to tell me no. I was still a child and he is responsible for his actions. That other twenty five year old I dated when I was twelve. He was at least nice enough to not pressure me when I said I wasn’t ready to have sex yet, but he asked me to at least give him a blow job. I felt kind of guilty because he had taken me out to a meal (Johnny Rockets. I had a grilled cheese sandwich, fries, and a milkshake) and he bought me a Christmas present so… didn’t I owe him? So I gave him the blowjob he asked for. It wasn’t rape. But it was a crime.

This is where rape culture blows my mind because of how pervasive it is. It’s all my fault those poor men committed a crime. I asked them to do it–literally in the first case and by inference in the second when I said I wasn’t ready for sex yet.

I brought it up, you see. I was out on a date–of course there were expectations, duh. How stupid am I to not have stayed home. My mother had given me permission for the date. She met him. She saw us off. I was home by curfew.

I know the difference between rape and not rape. If I said no and lay there crying while someone fucked me that is rape. Even if we are both adults now and I would have consented to the sex if he had just put a condom on. That’s not a mistake on my part. That is not something I invited. Unprotected sex is not a right that a man has. He does not have the right to risk inflicting a child on a woman. Period.

I think in my little corner of the world a rapist is somehow less of a piece of shit if he at least keeps his future-children to himself.

I stay home to take care of my children. They are my whole world for this brief window of time. I don’t think I would be able to handle raising the child of my rapist. My mother had a hard time raising me. She did not bond with me as much as she did other children. She had her tubes tied when I was born. You know how “some women rape easy”? That’s my family. We rape easy. I’m trying to do something different with my children. I am escaping into a different kind of social dynamic.

I really have a feminist marriage. Why do I say that? Because I started off in a marriage where it was ok to beat and rape me and then I decided those things weren’t ok and I put a stop to them. (Let’s be clear that I was ok with it to start with–I gave active consent. Well, ok I gave consent in advance for the rape and then changed my mind because I didn’t really think it would turn into a violent rape because I didn’t know I had been dealing with mostly wussy-assed-pansies trying to “play rape” in the past. Hoo boy.)

Folks have called my husband “whipped” and his response was, “damn right”. Only he is a very autonomous being. I don’t have a lot of control over him in general. I have a ridiculous amount of influence on how he treats me. And other men/boys feel the need to let us know that I shouldn’t have so much influence on how he treats me. He should instead align his preferences with those of other men/boys and treat me how those men/boys feel I should be treated.

I really like my husband. He is self-interested in a way I can work with. I can predict how he will react because he is consistent. He has stated goals. When he starts wandering off from them a brisk reminder gets him back on track. He isn’t particularly pulled towards any boys club. He has been alone too much. He has no faith that the boys club will really be there for him.

I have been with him more for more of his life than anyone else. I like him more than anyone else ever has. I really appreciate him. My life has gone from being a nightmare to being the punchline because I am so vapid and privileged. It is… interesting.

When people mockingly say that I am trying to live how my grandmother lived I would laugh and say that I picked an atheist–not a Mennonite or a Catholic. One grandmother was a printer in Pasadena after WWII (she was enlisted) and the other was the wife of a boxer turned dairy farmer. No, I don’t live like them. I neither have to work as hard nor am I oppressed as much. The Christmas before I divorced my family my mom made me a wonderful book. She hand wrote, in her beautiful hand writing–my mother has the most beautiful writing in the world–all of our family recipes into a recipe book. She gave me what she has to give.

I am a much better cook than any of them. They used shitty ingredients and too much sugar in freaking everything to cover up the bad quality of all the canned produce. I have had to learn how to cook from The Joy of Cooking and the internet. I live in an era where there is no fucking excuse for saying “I don’t know how to do _______.”

Yes, I choose to be a stay at home mom. I choose to homeschool my children with the financial support of my husband. I don’t want to have it all. I don’t want the pressure of more people having expectations of me right now. I only have so much energy to give. I know that makes me fairly pathetic but that’s just how the cookie crumbles. I am privileged. I am lucky that I get to make this choice. I wouldn’t have been able to do this in this way with someone who made a lot less money.

Only I probably would. I would live in a cheap rented apartment and I would probably never own a house. But I would still want to take care of my kids. I don’t live in a nice house now. I will never live in an expensive neighborhood. I would feel unwanted and like I didn’t know how to behave in that kind of environment. Here the kids play on the streets and we hear lots of loud music and lots of people. I feel comfortable. I see signs of people living and laughing and putting down roots.

Yes, I want to be a stay at home mom so I can get to know the seventy-six year old man down the street. I wouldn’t have time to stand around and pass the time of day hearing his stories if I had a job. My life would be less full if I had never heard his stories. I would understand people a little less. He is helping me hate men less. He feels pretty safe to stand around and talk with. He has no designs upon me and he would probably freak the fuck out if I made a pass at him. It is a very comforting exchange. I really value having him around. I think I am shoving him in the role of my Uncle Bob. I’m going to freak out when he dies some day. I’m glad my kids are getting to hear from him. They are learning a lot of history.

Speaking of Uncle Bob. Not mine. Uncle Bob Martin is a technical guy who absolutely means well but has a humorous opinion of women. I’m not a fucking lady. Ladies are expected to act in very proscribed ways I will never agree to behave. Men should not treat me like I am a lady. I want them to treat me like a person-who-is-not-like-them. Like a human from another culture. I am a person who has had a very particular set of lifetime experiences. I am not like other people. I am not like other women. I am not like men. I am also not working in the technology industry so obviously I don’t matter–right?

Only I’ve been coding some in secret (not a secret any more) because I didn’t want to tell Noah at first. I’m still not sharing. I am who should be courted into such an industry but they treat me like an insect. They treat me like my brain is rotting inside my skull because I am so mentally deficient as to want to be near children all day. Oh go fuck yourself. Mostly women are treated like they have no value after they have stayed home to take care of children. Only Uncle Bob wants us to be the ladies and spiffy up the place and nurture our cwute widdle pwojects along to help them actually happen. The boys club has noticed that when you get too many boys in one place you need a den mother.

Well he is asking women to come work in a hostile work environment. He isn’t really acknowledging how or why. At the edges of that hostile work environment (the gaming community is kind of the bastard son of the technology community) we have Anita Sarkeesian speaking about what happens to women who have the audacity to look at how women are treated in the gaming community.

I could stay in an underpaid, unappreciated profession where I get to care for other peoples children all day but not really form bonds because the kids are leaving at the end of the year–so I don’t have to grow as a person. I can remain static as I stand there doing the same thing year after year. Like I’m perfect already. ha.

Or I could stay home and raise children and figure out how to grow fruit and vegetables so that when I am old my property will be fairly self-sufficient. I am contributing to my long-term future. Could it all be yanked away from me? Anything could. You don’t have to tell me that. I don’t think many people understand having an uncertain future more than me. But things really and truly have improved. I have changed. I have learned from my mistakes.

Yes, I’m a feminist and a house wife. Being in this position allows me to acquire skills that I want to have. Having a career would not allow me to develop these skills. I want them. I want them with every fiber of my being. I want to have survival skills that are not taught in an office or a school. Those environments are artifacts of a culture that is dying. I want my children to be able to do something else.

We are at a turning point. We have to change. If that makes me “retro” then I’m ok with that. This essay from Michael O. Church is fifteenth in a series (now of sixteen and counting…) about how corporations need to shift from being part of an industrial model to being part of the technology era. He’s talking about getting rich. He’s not talking about my life any more than Sebastian Marshall is talking about my life. I am not part of the technological revolution these men are portending. Yet I am. I am raising the children who will carry it out.

I believe that women have as much of a place in the world as men. I believe that women are as intrinsically valuable as men–not “because we nurture” but rather because if the human race is to continue it requires men and women. We have not found a way to get around that yet. It’s not because we are both awesome “in our own ways” it’s because we simply cannot continue as a race without both genders. And subjugating women isn’t going so well. We live in an era where silencing us is harder than it has ever been before. We fight back now. And bear the consequences of that too. It’s still better than it was. There have always been consequences for standing up for yourself–that is not a man or a woman thing. Unfortunately the consequences for women tend to involve threats that involve her gender, especially rape.

I have never met anyone who has been actually raped more times than I have. Either that or no one has been willing to say it to me. Some day I will meet someone. I have very real reason to fear reprisals for speaking out–the threatened torture has already happened to me. What makes me think I will avoid it in the future?

Because I have learned more about privilege. I was silenced previously in my life because I was young, ignorant, and too weak to protect myself. I am no longer in such a position. Most women and girls do not understand what the process of learning how to protect themselves means. Unfortunately “protecting yourself” often means staying home and not getting to be part of communities and hobbies you would like to join because if you have a bad experience you are on your own. If you defend yourself people may threaten to kill and/or rape you.

In many ways I feel very consciously like I am choosing a life more like a religious life–I am mostly cloistered and I mostly have contact with women and children. I’m doing it as an increasingly zealous atheist which is kind of awkward.

There are many studies that say that men/women in highly defined relationships do better and are happier. So far in history those relationships have followed a pattern of men work- women raise children. It was a biologically unavoidable task. We no longer live in that world. Now men are no more suited to the weird ass work people do in offices than women are–often men are not as well suited. A great deal of technological work involves a kind of multi-tasking that women are shown to be better at. And as my husband shows me week after week after week in our marriage–he is a better cook than I am and he is quite capable of bathing children and changing diapers and cleaning the house. He doesn’t do as much of it as I do, no, and that’s ok with me. Doing those tasks requires time. I have more time to kill than he does. He is genuinely working his ass off for more structured hours of the day than me. I can pick up slack and increase our mutual leisure time because it makes my life better.

I don’t see how these choices are unfeminist. I am being cold, calculating, and I am serving my interests and the interests of my progeny. I am, however, not serving the interests of an Industrial Age leftover feminism. I am not trying to stamp out home life in service of people living in dormitories and working in factories. I don’t want my children to imprint on a group of people exactly their age so they have no perspective on how dramatic the changes in life are. I want my children to grow up understanding that people change constantly. They don’t settle in and “be the same” for decades. You have to grow.

I don’t see a structure for that in the current set-up. So I’m going to go make it up as I go. I understand that has been the normal human path since the beginning of time. I’m ok with being on The Road Not Taken by other people. I will always be weird. That’s unavoidable.

I wish you knew that you were actually on that road too. You are not actually on the same road as other people and you shouldn’t try to be. What do you want to do with your life? That’s what feminism is about.

At the end of that rant the kind of logical next question is: so what about all the people who don’t have my privilege? Fuck if I know. That’s a really hard question.

Always look on the bright side.

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Given the behavior of everyone in my household yesterday and how I feel today I’m glad I don’t have to drive to Portland tomorrow. That would suck. However I am fully confident that I will be better by say Tuesday or Wednesday which gives me an unexpected few days to prepare for the Easter party.

I uhm think I will be going overboard as compensation. It’ll be fun. Pinterest oh how you eat my brain.

I am pretty confident that we will have at least twelve fifteen kids. I’ve had that many “yes we are coming” actual confirmations. (re-checked email) A whole bunch of other people just haven’t responded at all. Thank you to my wonderful blog readers. You all responded. When I fuss I am not fussing about you. (My blog readers said “no” if they can’t make it. See how polite people are when they read about your inner process?)

YA books are so easy to read.

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#10: Alanna book 2: In the Hands of the Goddess

#11: Alanna book 3: The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

#12: Alanna book 4: Lioness Rampant

All by Tamora Pierce. All excellent. Yes, I will keep reading books in this universe. But I’ve bought myself a week of slower reading time so I should probably get around to reading Native Son. I’ve only owned it for nine years. Maybe I should read it one of these days.

I’m going to read this whole series in a week. I can tell.

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Book #10: Alanna The First Adventure: Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce.

I freakin love this book. I am so glad my friend handed me the first four books in the series. I like the plot exposition. I like the language. I like the characters. Just plain win. Excellent. Now that I have children comatose on the couch maybe I can catch up on reading.

The book starts out with the main character as a 10 year old and it only lasts till she is 13. This is going to be wonderful to read aloud in another two or three years.

#11: In the Hand of the Goddess by Tamora Pierce

#12: The Woman Who Rides Like a Man by Tamora Pierce

#13: Lioness Rampant by Tamora Pierce

Slowly reading.

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Book #9: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.

Oops. I didn’t mention that I really enjoyed this book. I highly recommend it. I found a lot to think about.

I am officially four books behind already. Maybe I’ll go read some of those candy-coated YA books a friend loaned me.

Offensive

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I’m having Feelings. Of the variety I can’t really talk about because it turns into Dwama. Sometimes it is hard to predict why people won’t like me. I think I should take this moment to appreciate people self-selecting out of my web. It means I don’t have to feel spread as thin.

I do wish I had more control over what people find offensive. Sometimes when I bother people I feel like it is just a manifestation of how not-ok I am in the universe. Sometimes when I bother people I know it is about shit in their life and it isn’t really about me.

I like the second case better.

PTSD varies dramatically

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I read a very good post about PTSD a few minutes ago. Me being me, I have to respond.

My PTSD does not look like his. It has very little in common with his. Mine is different for a lot of reasons connected to longevity of trauma.

When your brain is under stress it reverts to the most basic training you have had in your life. For me the most significant, impactful early training of my life involved seeking out painful sexual contact and learning to be silent through it. I was moved rapidly through a series of homes, cities, and states. I was put in a variety of incredibly unsafe circumstances and left alone with pedophiles and rapists.

My PTSD is different. My PTSD isn’t about bombs. My PTSD is about believing that if someone near me can make their life better by causing me pain they will do so in a heart beat. My PTSD is about not knowing how to feel not afraid. My body does not know how to calm down. I have been afraid for too long.

For me PTSD is about knowing that when other children were loved and cared for I was spat on and called names. I believe that is what I deserve in life. I was taught to expect that. I was taught that when I expected or asked for anything else I would be punished, severely.

I have almost no memory of being in a room with my father without sexual abuse happening. It was constant before my parents split up. My mom just didn’t notice. After the divorce she just wasn’t there. I was always alone.

For me, PTSD manifests as the physical toll of years and years of adrenaline and malnutrition. I have terrible vertigo and tinnitus frequently. I have stomach pain from anxiety that I can’t make go away. If I try to go unmedicated I experience horrible pain when I try to eat. If I don’t eat often enough I vomit. I have the standard terrible headaches and back pain that go along with being an early childhood sexual assault survivor. Apparently almost all of us have that.

For me, PTSD is about believing that there is something that is lovable in other people that I simply lack. I do not deserve, stimulate, engender love. I am simply a black hole into which pain should be thrown.

I truly wish this was whiny hyperbole. I’ve had a bad life. I even wrote a book about it.

For me PTSD means that cutting myself produces enough pain for my psyche to calm down–now I know that reality is as it should be. I am supposed to be in pain. If I am not in pain I need to hurry up and cause pain before I do something stupid like believe it is ok for me to speak in front of people. No one wants to fucking hear what I have to fucking say.

I know that I am a stupid, worthless whore. That is what PTSD has given me. Well, that and living amongst the kyriarchy.

I agree with him that PTSD is about a world view. I will never be able to see the world as a safe place. It has never been for me. Security is a lie. There will always be monsters in the closets.

 

Dreaming of the Mouse

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I have been talking to people about my travel plans. That means people have been indicating interest. This pleases me. I have a friend going to Disneyland with me and the girls this year. I don’t have 2014 in Disneyland locked in yet. Someone said that she and her family might be willing to meet me at Disney World for part of our time there in 2015; I know that a friend in Georgia wants to meet us there for part of that time too.

In either 2016 or 2017 I will spend two weeks in Hawaii in a really nice resort for my birthday.

This is why I bought the time share. If I only have to come up with air fare and food it’s not nearly so hard. I like running away from home. And it’s really nice running to places where I know the price I have to pay in order to have people be nice to me.

I don’t bring up the idea of traveling with people more because I’m really difficult and particular. I figure I’ll spend a lot of time with my mouth sutured shut for the rest of my life. That’s the price of having friends, right?

I know people with a wide variety of destressing activities. I plan Disney vacations. Yay prepaid vacations for fifty years. That’s a lot of destressing.

If you have too many projects going then you can’t die.

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I spoke with my therapist on the phone. She’s thrilled that I sent her such an email. She said, “When a client can get mad at you and articulate it–that is often a good sign. It means you actually trust me.” We’ll see. We are going to continue working together. We are going to change the structure of our sessions and the content of what we are processing. I’m willing to keep trying.

I feel bad when I write about being suicidal because I know I worry people. I know it sounds a lot like the boy who cried wolf. The big reason I want my own domain is so I can talk about feeling intensely suicidal without violating a TOA or getting a smack down from a moderator.

I know it is hard to know someone as specifically unpredictable as I am. Bonding to me is foolish. Goodness knows when I will blow up and hurt you again. I’m just like that. And I’m selfish–so very selfish. If I weren’t selfish I would be dead.

When I am not feeling suicidal I know that I am a rule breaker. I know that there are taboos around talking about suicide for a reason. Why do I think I am so god damn special that I should get to break that taboo? I literally believe I will die if I try to follow the taboo. I can’t.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to a beautiful girl saying, “I need you.” Then there is cuddling and kissing and stroking as we go back to sleep. I need you, too. I need you so much I feel like my heart will explode.

I used to not talk about being suicidal. Instead I cut myself and burned myself and overdosed on pills and took whatever drugs people handed me and fucked anyone who was even vaguely interested. Anything to not have to think or talk about how very suicidal I was.

I don’t do any of those things any more. I’m just left with the fleeting feeling of being completely overwhelmed by pain and wanting to escape.

Today is starting off ok. My neighbor told me I can paint her fence. The school is happy to go along with the contest idea after STAR testing in May. Frankly I’m glad of the delay. It gives me time to get organized.

My therapist asked me if I feel I got value from the group therapy experience. I told her, “I already knew the outlines of my tribe. I already understood the commonalities of our experience–even if I don’t understand each specific member of my tribe. I won’t keep these women in my life due to geographic constraints–it’s no insult towards them. I didn’t learn anything particularly new and I didn’t form relationships that will change my life. It was a neutral experience.

I was watching an interview with Amanda Fucking Palmer (Supposedly I will be going to a backyard concert with 49 other rad people sometime this year. I am trying to learn more about her. She commented that she believes the human brain is not meant to know 50,000 people and care about them and their problems and their sister’s problems. Our brains were meant to care about a few hundred people. It’s an interesting problem on the modern scale.

How do you pick who to care about? Most people just get who they get. They grow up around a set of people and they never move that far away. You know who was born near you. My life isn’t like that. The people who are keeping threads in my life have scattered to the winds. They are not day-in-day-out dependable. They are all busy and spread out geographically. How is the human brain meant to adapt to this? I’m not sure but I’m trying.

I’m reading more about resilience and getting pissed off. I’m tired of statistical everything acting like I shouldn’t exist. Statistical anomaly. That’s me. I just shouldn’t happen. People can’t do what I can.

Aut viam inveniam aut faciam. I shall either find a way or make one.

I’m just about done with Collapse by Jared Diamond–author of Guns, Germs, and Steal (which I haven’t read). I’m having a bitch of a time keeping up with reading new books. I don’t like reading new books. I like rereading old books and visiting my friends. I finished Outlander again for my book club and I have to sit on my hands so I don’t read the whole damn series again before book club. (I have like three weeks. I could totally read the next six books that each are over 1,000 pages long in that time but I wouldn’t read anything new and if I want to read 52 new books this year… oh man. Get crackin.)

Today we are going to learn about local weeds with the homeschool group. And have dance class. And swim class. And our back door will be sealed against the coming rain (it’s a process). I need to wash one load of laundry and fold three. I need to start thinking about packing. Ugh.

It’s just another day in paradise, right?

therapist and motherhood

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I sent my therapist an email and she predictably responded with horror. “Oh shit, I made you feel how?! Oh no!” (To be clear I said, “I am not saying it is ‘all your fault’ I am saying this approach isn’t working for me.”) We will talk on the phone this afternoon. EMDR is just going to be stopped indefinitely.

Yesterday I had one of those weird days where I understand that becoming a mother is the first time in my life I genuinely feel “in the club” and no one can kick me out. Even if someone else doesn’t think I’m doing it “good enough” I’m a mother. I’m not a dancer because whenever I go to dance events I have to listen to assholes tell me how not-good I am. Fine. I’m just not a dancer then.

Motherhood is different. It’s better. There isn’t a set yard stick. It was kind of fun to get into the debates that rage so fiercely in that world. I tried hard to say that all choices are fine. Do what makes sense to your life circumstances.

The path I am choosing through parenthood involves as few extra steps on my part as possible. No, I am not going to puree your food. It’s food. Eat it. No I am not going to go buy you a special “kid proof” cup. Here is a cup. Use it. No I am not going to deal with having to come help you five times during the night while you are somewhere else–I’ll just sleep with you. I’m lazy. Let’s be clear that I don’t think these are moral choices. This is about parental choices and personalities. We’re all different. That’s cool. I can see the advantages of other choices–but they come with work/expense I don’t want. *shrug*

Someone with a harsh background said she was about to start therapy for the first time. I gave her a rather long lecture on how she needs to prepare herself for working on issues. If you don’t show up in therapy with a specific agenda it will probably be a waste of your time. The therapist doesn’t know you or what you need to work on. You need to decide. I talked about EMDR and CBT and more general talk therapy models. What will help you?

Meds aren’t the answer. You need to change your life. Meds can be a crutch to get you through a hard transition– but if you want to make lasting happiness happen in your life you need to go through a pretty major transition. Obviously what you are doing isn’t working.

I say that with no judgment. It’s hard to make the changes one needs. I do understand that.

I’m glad I told my therapist how bad EMDR is making my life. That was the right choice. It’s hard for me to confront people who feel like they are “in charge” and tell them they are wrong. I have a very fearful approach to hierarchy. I am evasive then belligerent. I’m working on it.

I know that I don’t have “good reasons” to be suicidal at this point. I get to wake up every day surrounded by an intensity of love many people never get to experience. I am one of the luckiest bitches on the planet. This is “mental illness”. It’s not about what is logically happening to me right now. My brain is broken. My brain believes that I should always be afraid. That I should always expect people to be nice to me at first so that I will trust them so they can hurt me much much much more very soon. For me to stop believing this would be for me to stop believing that my life experience has any validity at all. I’m in kind of a bind.

I have genuinely had a life where most people are unsafe and dangerous to me. Their apathy towards what is going on in my life has caused me to endure outrageous trauma. Because no one wanted to get involved. Because no one wanted to look. Because it wasn’t their problem. For me to actually believe that I am safe and people will help protect me or that my life will be better would be the same as me deciding that there is a whole human race on Mars and we just haven’t met them yet.

I will have to make up that belief despite having no solid reason to believe in it. Shit, I’d rather believe in an omnipotent G-d and I don’t see that happening.

But motherhood is this weird club. They aren’t my “friends” but they clearly respect me and listen to me in a way I’ve never experienced before. It’s fucking weird.

This isn’t working

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I had a really bad dream last night about the guy who tazored me and said he would apologize and hasn’t. This morning I woke up to a message from him saying he hasn’t forgotten he just hasn’t done it. This is kind of weird because I haven’t dreamed almost at all since I started smoking pot. I think my consumption is way down–I know that I am way less high than I used to be. If that means I can start having nightmares again I may want to find a way to up how much I am using again. I don’t know how I will find the time in the day to do that.

I haven’t slept much at all this week. I’m really not doing well. I need to send my therapist an email. I need therapy to make me feel better about myself not make me suicidal and non-functioning because I am hysterically crying for days. This isn’t working. This is making my life really bad. I have always gotten some therapy-hangover but not like this. And it’s getting worse over time not better.

Doing EMDR on isolated traumas (Francesca’s death, my miscarriage, Traci’s overdose) seemed very effective. They were fresh, easy to access trauma. There was a specific start and finish and reason and it just worked. Obviously I was having disordered thinking with regard to these specific events.

Having a therapist who wants me to sit there thinking about how bad my birthdays are week after week when the only way I know to make them better is run away from home isn’t doing anything to improve my mental health. The idea of still needing to do this in order to not kill myself in twenty-five years is terrifying. I feel this draining of hope and will to live. No, I can’t lie to my brain and say it will get better. It was supposed to get better when I found a partner. It didn’t. It isn’t going to. Sometimes life is just like that. You have to accept the life you have. You can’t make everything perfect.

I don’t want to sit there thinking about how worthless and unloveable I must be forever.

It isn’t that no one can love me. But people can handle giving me about a teaspoon of love. Then I freak out and they run away. And at this point in my life it feels like all my fault. I am bad. I drive people away with my intensity and anger and frustration. It makes a lot of sense that people don’t want to put up with shit like I dish out. It is a completely logical way for them to care about themselves.

The last therapist I saw (who had to stop seeing clients for personal reasons) would talk to me about my life. We would strategize how to handle frustrating situations. We talked about how different personalities interact so that I can pre-plan what is acceptable from me. I don’t do that at all with my current therapist. She doesn’t have time. She wants us to hurry up and get to the EMDR.

I cut back to twice a month partially because I can’t handle feeling this suicidal every week. I do not have an unlimited amount of self control. The fantasies are changing. They are becoming more realistic. More like things I would actually do. More like things that would end my life without causing a huge amount of collateral trauma to innocent bystanders. In other words: more plausible. That’s not good. Yes, my kids and Noah would still have to deal with the results. But I wouldn’t be ruining the life of some poor truck driver.

I don’t feel like therapy is support right now. It feels like yet more burden of awful. It feels like just reminding myself that I am never going to be like other people. I will always have this caverning evil and disgusting and bad inside me that other people just don’t have. There is no way to change who I am or what has happened to me.

I need to talk to my shrink about this and I don’t know how. I want to just run away. I want to say, “You know how you told me that you were going to charge me $150/hour because that is your extended session EMDR rate and you assume we will have a lot of long sessions and we’ve never had a long session you just shove the EMDR into being most of our session and we barely talk and I don’t know you and you don’t much of anything about me beyond the book. If you only know my life up to 18 you don’t know me.”

I feel more defensive and frustrated by the visit. And I pay a lot of money for the visits. I don’t feel good about this.

K shouldn’t have to be the one talking me through reasonable discipline of my kids. That is a lot of what I pay a therapist for. But we don’t talk about my kids. We don’t have time because she wants us to hurry up and get to the EMDR. Which is making it so I am non-functional and can’t really take care of my kids. I don’t feel like she cares about the holistic picture of my life.

As someone with “extreme mental illness” firing a shrink is a loaded process. I’ve obviously done it (21 shrinks and counting) but when you don’t have a therapist and you are mentally ill all of a sudden every time anything goes wrong in your life, “Well what did you expect–you should be in therapy.”

Therapy is a really weird process. I was not taught how to be a functional adult as a child. That is the plain and simple truth. Therapy is supposed to be helping me become a more functional adult. It is a mixed bag at doing this. I didn’t do well with the chick who really wanted me to have DID (multiple personalities) and I’m not doing well with the chick who wants me to do all of my processing in my head with beeping and she’s just the one who presses play.

I did very well with my last shrink. She was supportive and encouraging. She listened far more than she talked and I never felt condescended towards. She was respectful and encouraging. She seemed to be very impressed with my life in general–I am making a lot more conscious choices than most people. It’s not that I am “that great” but I really consciously decide who and what I will be. Most people just kind of drift through life.

I want someone who can give me advice in specific ways at specific times and help me when I am struggling but mostly be a witness to the fact that I have done a lot of fixing myself. I don’t have that right now.

I’m not fixing myself lately because I’m reeling from the EMDR all the time and she gives me no respect for doing so ever in the past. I feel invalidated and helpless and like I can’t do anything to change myself when I leave her office. That’s not real useful.

So given them I’m all fussed about the above stuff I’m not having charitable thoughts about someone in the home schooling group complaining that I am hosting a running event in Fremont. She lives in Oakland and she wants me to move the event further north. How about San Leandro or the Oakland Hills? Uhm, how about if YOU host an event that is convenient for you and I will come or not and not bitch at you because you aren’t convenient enough for me. I drive a lot for this group. When I rarely host an event don’t fucking tell me that I should be doing it in a way that will make my life shitty and your life better. I feel disrespected. I don’t even know the woman who complained. If it was one of my “buddies” I might feel more open to negotiating because I would be blunt and say, “Ok what’s the trade because you are offering me a shitty deal.” You can’t say that to a stranger.

I leave for a trip in eight days. It was pointed out to me that I might want to pack. Feck. I care much more about the fact that the house is almost ready for the Easter party. Ha.

Yesterday I was an idiot and I didn’t write down that someone was coming over. Luckily she reads my blog and noticed that I didn’t mention her so she emailed me. Excellent. So I didn’t get through my to-do list but I got to see someone I’ve been trying to see for over a month. As a surprise. That was quite pleasant. Then my next door neighbor washed my van. I was rather surprised he did that.

Yesterday my friend said, “When my husband met you he said, ‘She fakes being happy really well but you can see by how she holds her face that she isn’t.'” Many cookies to him. Very few people notice. Very few people care.

I imagine happiness to be akin to the absence of pain. It is a rare and fleeting feeling in my life. I do love holding my babies. That makes me feel happy. Feeling how much they love me is the best thing that has ever happened to me in my life.

Harm reduction says to look at what you are doing in life and evaluate the harm it is doing. Right now my biggest harm is coming from therapy. That seems kind of backwards. It may be time to go therapist shopping again.

wedding babbling

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Hello and welcome. I presume you are all here because you know M & E, right? I just wanted to make sure we were all in the right place.

Today we get to participate in a modern day fairy tale. When people write love stories about getting to grow up with and marry the right person–they are writing about couples like M&E. Precious few people get it right so young. I have been lucky enough to know these two since almost the beginning of their relationship. I hope you will all bear with me as I ramble at them about the commitment they are making.

It feels presumptuous for me to tell you anything about relationships. You two have been together longer than I have been married. Luckily for you I have never let my lack of complete authority stop me from speaking.

Marriage is one of the hardest and best things you will do with your life. In picking this person you are saying, “I am good on my own but I am better with you.” You are consciously choosing someone to be your helper and partner in life. It is a great honor and a great responsibility.

Marriage has changed a great deal over the multiple millenium that such unions have existed. I feel like we live in an exciting time for marriage. At no point in the past did couples have as much freedom to define their roles as we do right now. You do not need to have a marriage that will make someone else happy or satisfy their needs. You need to have a marriage built on mutual understanding of your unique quirks and desires. No other marriage will look exactly like yours.

The people who are here with you now are the witnesses for this new marriage. This change in your life and your identity. In choosing to get married you are choosing to say, “The good of us together as a family needs to come before our individual wants.” That will mean hard choices sometimes. That will mean having to bite your tongue when you are feeling impatient. It will mean needing to learn how to express your wants and needs so that they can be met–if your needs aren’t being met then your family is not actually functioning. No one can be a martyr.

(Obviously addressing crowd.) Everyone here is a witness to this new marriage. You are here, ostensibly, because you love these people. I charge each of you with being a friend to their marriage. Help them grow together instead of apart. Being married is not always easy. It takes community and support and love from a lot of people to make a really great marriage. I say that we are all here for a modern fairy tale because these two have all of the elements for a great marriage–they are so lucky to have all of you.

 

Alright. That’s all the babble I have right now. The internet strongly implies I will need around 3,000 words for ~30 minutes of talking. I didn’t hit 500 words in this first babble and I know it isn’t polished or ready yet. Luckily I have two more months. I’m not even working against a harsh deadline yet. It’s an ok beginning for now. I’m out of typing.

Thank you, hormones, that’s better.

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I participate on a support forum for PTSD. I was just refreshing my memory of how PTSD effects body stress levels and coping. It is hard not to feel ashamed of being broken in the ways I am. It isn’t my fault though.

I haven’t thought about killing myself in over twelve hours. I track these things not to make other people nervous but rather because I have to believe there is enough of a pattern that I can make sense of it over time even if it never makes sense to anyone else.

My friend K has talked me through some blow ups with the kids over the past few days. She came and spent Wednesday with us because she was worried about me. I appreciate her a lot. She talked to me about how it is actually ok to have consequences with your kids and I’m not a meanie head. Life has consequences. Not punishments–that’s a horse of a different color–but there are sometimes unfortunate results to your actions. Bummer.

Having to be the heavy significantly depresses me. It is a fat load of stress and it feels terrible. I prefer it when my kids just kind of go along and do as they are told. Ha. Specifically at 9am the house was clean and I said, “Ok, remember that when you play with stuff you have to put it away when you are done. We are leaving in about three hours for an event and I do want the living room neat when we go.” I went to take a shower in the last half hour. Apparently Barbie needed a pixie cut. And some confetti. And and and and and and and. When I walked out and nearly had a heart attack my dear daughter smirked at me and said, “This is too much for me to clean up. I guess you are going to have to do it.”

We didn’t go to the event. Once she had the consequence and we talked about it and I had the few minutes of being mad while I did indeed clean up the mess we talked about responsibility and consequences we had a better day. It was like we needed to have a blow up. Then we got along. I don’t mean she did what I said for the rest of the day. (Cue hysterical laughter.) I mean that getting to say, “No. If you ignore your responsibilities there are consequences” made me more patient with the other boundary incursions all day. I got to put up one brick wall. This is a line. I WILL DEFEND IT. Then I felt better for the rest of the day. I could be more gentle.

We were sad to miss our friends. I think that was actually a lot of why the day went well after that. We did a lot of commiserating about how much we miss our friends and how sad it was that we didn’t get to visit with them yesterday. We were “on the same team” about being sad about not going. We had another chat about who is responsible for doing what in this house. “No actually it isn’t my job to follow you around all day picking up after you. It is your responsibility to clean up after your stuff. If you can’t clean up your stuff clearly you have too much and we should get rid of a bunch of it. What would you like to start with?” I do a lot. And often I am happy to help with stuff that isn’t “my job” just because I’m a nice lady–do not take advantage of me. I won’t be real friendly.

Alright, confession time. I left the room where the kids were and I put another dent in the drywall yesterday after I came out and saw the Barbie hair everywhere. (Really child. If you are going to give a haircut STAND STILL AND DON’T WALK AROUND THE WHOLE LIVING ROOM WHILE YOU DO IT.) I didn’t mean to. I was barefoot and I didn’t actually feel like I was kicking with force.

We went to Home Desperate and got drywall patch. I fixed the new one and the hole that has been in the wall for about five years now. While I fixed the holes I talked to Shanna about consequences. See, I have consequences for my bad behavior too. I have to fix the holes. It is a very bad idea to put holes in your wall. I am not being very responsible when I do it. I have to fix them now and that is annoying and inconvenient. But–better walls than people. Walls are easier to fix. You never never never kick a person when you are angry. Or hit a person. Walls don’t have feelings. It isn’t good to hit or kick them but better than a person. I waked into the wrong room.

I have been trying not to walk into the garage every time I get upset. The punching bag is in the garage. Unfortunately pot is also in the garage and the associate me going in the garage with smoking and I don’t want them to think that every single time I get upset I smoke. I don’t. It’s hard having this feel like an image problem.

I think that having kind of a scene was what broke the suicidal ideation this time. I don’t like that as a pattern. I don’t need to blow up at my kids in order to convince myself that I shouldn’t die. To be fair I don’t think it is a major pattern at this point. That hasn’t happened many times–specifically blowing up at the kids to deal with being suicidal, I mean.

But I do need some kind of stress-clear-the-air thing sometimes. How can I do that and preserve my relationship with the kids? So far they don’t hold a grudge against me for getting angry. It doesn’t happen all that often and it always blows over quickly and I don’t hold a grudge against them. I don’t stay angry with my kids. That’s a big thing for me.

Right before dinner I asked if the kids were upset with me for not going out. I was told that they missed their friends but they weren’t upset with me. Consequences happen. Both of them said it. I understand that they are at an age where sucking up to me is a survival trait. I hope I am not teaching them to squash their anger or upset because only I am allowed to have feelings. I comforted them when they were sad about not seeing their friends. We talked about when we will get to see them soon. We talked about how to ensure that we don’t have to miss out on seeing our friends again.

I also didn’t let them have the screen. We did have dessert and all other privileges. I don’t want to be too over-kill. But if you get in so much trouble you can’t go play with your friends I’m not going to give you the iPad to distract you with. Hell no. I talked about how I have to create my own entertainment and so does their dad. They have to learn how as well.

I don’t feel ashamed of how I handled it overall. That’s good. No, I’m not perfect. There is always room for improvement but I did ok. I have to understand that given how hysterical I was on Tuesday during the EMDR that my mood on Wednesday and Thursday was close to unavoidable. It will happen again. Welcome to deep trauma work. It has consequences.

How do I apply the principles of harm reduction to this new stress? Well, I’m only seeing my shrink twice a month because I can’t handle more. I feel like doing as much EMDR and as much group work as we have done is causing me to feel really emotionally guarded with my shrink. I feel besieged. I am very used to client directed talk therapy. Therapist directed EMDR heavy therapy is… different. I’m having a hard time adjusting to this whole, “Here. We’ll do this EMDR on you for basically all of our time together because that is a magic button that will fix you even though we don’t have a relationship.” It feels a lot like a fuck buddy, really. Here, let’s get together to do ____ together because even though _____ is fun on your own it is more fun with someone else! Now go away because I don’t actually want to talk to you afterwards. Err, maybe I don’t think about processing like other people do.

Just keep swimming, right? I’m busy. I’m keeping very busy. Only a few people have RSVPed for the Easter party even though I have had a lot more people get excited in person. I don’t know if people are coming or not. Maybe we will end up with ten pounds of sugar for five kids. That would be scary. Could be up to thirty kids. I guess I’ll find out the morning after a hellish drive. Ha. I’m pretty stupid. (Yes, 1/3 of a pound of sugar per kid is still a lot but I figure the parents will steal some as well.)

Today is my last full work day at home before I go to Portland and before the Easter party. That’s kind of intimidating. I am technically capable of doing work on days when I have other obligations but if I want to be nice to my kids I keep it to a bare minimum. It will all work out.

Drywall patching. Laundry. Clean the kitchen. Put out Easter decorations. Make lunch and dinner. Fill eggs with candy. Clean bathroom (really). And I’m sure my kids will want me to read to them and play with them and snuggle them. That sounds like a full day. I’m already tired. I haven’t slept well all week. I feel bad when my discombobulated cycles coincide with Noah having a rockin sort of week (he was interviewed by this internet business guru guy and he’s selling a lot of books) because then he feels guilty.

I don’t want Noah to feel bad about being successful because I am a loser. That’s not a healthy dynamic. I specifically and directly benefit from him maximizing his awesome. I don’t want that to be a fuzzy thing.

And all of a sudden I am having a full stream of words in my head for the wedding ceremony in May. I’m going to close this window and go work on that.

Can I get off this roller coaster?

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Remember that guy who said he would apologize for tazoring my vulva? Well it’s been two months. I’m not actually shocked that he didn’t do as he promised. Really it’s much more what I expect of people.

I cried for hours yesterday. Today is a homeschooling event so I have to pretend to be just fine. I have to teach Irish dancing. (Thank goodness for that boyfriend giving me an illegal copy of the instruction manual.) Today will end. I will be able to come home and cry after.

Yesterday during one of my sobbing fits the kids were cuddling me (I explain these as: sometimes people get sad and cry. It happens to everyone. It’s ok to be sad sometimes.) and Shanna was talking about the Valentines she is going to make for next year. (They had a library book out on the subject so Valentines Day is one of her favorite holidays.) I said, “Do you realize that you made Valentines for all of your homeschooling friends and your relatives in Texas and your sister and your dad but you didn’t make one for me?” The look on her face was pure horror. Later in the day when I was in another room she used a ladder to get into the Valentines stuff (it’s supposed to be off-limits) and she made one for me. She told me that this is next years early so that she doesn’t mess up again. She doesn’t want me to feel left out. I didn’t even yell at her for getting into stuff. I actually consciously didn’t give any Valentines because I knew I wouldn’t get any and I didn’t want that slap in the face.

My friend came over yesterday after reading my blog. She was worried about me. On one hand I feel really bad that I make people worry about me. On the other hand I can either be honest about what is happening inside my head or I can let people be totally surprised if I off myself one day. I choose to tell the truth.

I feel really bad for existing right now. Buck up or shut the fuck up. Be inspirational and happy and cheerful or shut up. Be nice. Be good. I can’t be. It’s too late.

Today is bad.

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All I can think about is getting a razor blade and driving to the beach. Several big deal cuts from wrist to elbow and then I would swim out until I couldn’t swim any more. I promised myself I would raise my kids so I’m not going to do it today. I want to. I want to stop hurting.

I have been sobbing and wailing and whining that I miss my mother for almost thirty years. Yesterday during EMDR the thought loop that kept getting stuck was, “Honor thy mother and father” and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I am bad. I do not honor my mother or father. I am bad. I can’t even follow G-d’s rules.

During Calli’s nine day labor from hell my doula and midwife were both very irritated with me. They both had children who were under a year old whom they didn’t want to leave. I was inconvenient as a client. So they were snippy and would come and go and didn’t want to be with me more than they “HAD” to. And I almost died. And I lay in bed for weeks because I couldn’t stand. I crawled to the bathroom because I could not walk the four feet. Thankfully Kira brought us food or we would have been in a difficult spot.

I am going to die alone. I am going to die feeling unwanted and unloved and unappreciated. I don’t really see any other ending for my story. Some days I am more sanguine about this than others. Everyone is alone in the end–right?

I have no interest in being alive at the end of today. But I promised I would raise my kids. So I will be anyway. It doesn’t seem to matter what I want in this lifetime. You get what you get. It isn’t about “right”. It isn’t about “fair”. It isn’t about “deserve”.

Noah told me that he is trying to give me freedom. I’ve been free since I was five years old. No one has known what I have done unless I have chosen to tell them. I have done whatever I want. I traveled. I met people. If I didn’t have the money I found a way. I have had more freedom than pretty much anyone I know.

Someone has to care about you before they have expectations of you. No one knew what I was doing.

I want to slit my wrists so bad. I have no interest in completing today. I don’t want this pain. I’m so fucking done. The last few days have actually been pretty good. I was in a great mood this weekend.

Honor thy mother and thy father. Sometimes it comforts/haunts me that because I am an American I am allowed to exist. In other places my disobedience against my parents would probably end my life.

Honor thy rapist. Keep him holy. Do as he says. Keep your mouth shut you stupid whore.

If I could get these things out of my head I would. I just don’t know how. I don’t know how to stop feeling like I should die because I am bad. I am poison. I am going to infect other people with my badness.

In my adult life I’ve had big celebrations for my birthday for 21, 23, and 30. Tom did the 23 birthday party technically after I broke up with him. He loved me but he didn’t know how to show it and a lot of things that I asked him for–a lot of kinds of attention that I needed–came in the month or two after I broke up with him.

I hosted my 30th. I spent the morning before the party beating my head on the concrete floor in the garage. I spent the day feeling like, “Why don’t these people want to see me unless I am offering food and drink and lots of other people to talk to?” I’m not actually sure I should try again.

What I want, the way I want to be seen does happen for some people. It’s not my lot in this life. Somehow I have to stop caring.

Instead I want to die. Then no one will even be bothered by a cursory glance in my direction.

I hate me so much right now. Fucking loser. Really the best thing my body could be used as is fish food.

Supposed to be reading.

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Book 7: The Myth of Ability –it’s about teaching maths. It was ok but very public school formulaic.  Book 8: Animal Farm by George Orwell. No, I’ve never read it before.

I’m rereading Outlander for book club and I’m working on Mindstorms and Collapse in a few pages at a time. That means if I finish Mindstorms and Collapse I only need to read three more books in the next three weeks. Oy. Maybe I will read the childrens books my in-laws sent for Christmas. I need to screen them anyway and they will be shorter. (Like YA childrens… not picture  books.)

I need to catch up on March.

I feel soft and badass at the same time.

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My skin is so nice. Oh man. Of course the woman giving me the treatment turned out to be my tribe. I didn’t press for specifics (uhhh it seemed inappropriate) but she said enough things that I know it to be true. I just know.

The first half hour I spent in the hot tub or sauna. The room was beautiful and huge. I felt small and I don’t very often. Then I moved into the treatment room. That was more to a scale that felt reasonable to me.

First she scrubbed me really forking hard with salt for a while. I rinsed that off. Then she slathered me up in mud and wrapped me up like a burrito. Then she did stuff to my hair and my feet and my face. Then I took another shower. Then she put oils on me. A few stages of this were billed as “massage” and given who I normally get them from it just didn’t rank as obviously meant to be therapeutic. It felt soothing though. Soothing can be nice.

We talked about intentional parenting. We talked about viewing your children as autonomous beings who do not owe you a relationship. We talked about modeling and mirroring and learning and the pressure of being on all the forking time. She is on the fence. She thinks she might want kids but she’s not sure she can handle them. She’s thirty-six. She’s running out of time.

If you don’t wake up in the morning and cry because you wish you were holding your baby then you probably don’t want to be a mom bad enough to go through the process.That’s how I feel about it.

We talked about having children to give yourself a reason to live and the problems and benefits of doing so. The only ethical way to do it is to think of your children’s needs above your own. Yes, they give me a reason to stay alive. That isn’t their problem. All they should see is that they have a wonderful mommy who loves them more than ice cream. In our house the measure of true affection is how it compares to ice cream.

We talked about hiding yourself in travel and needing roots at the same time. We talked about how you have to hide yourself in order to have “relationships” because if you are damaged and angry every problem will be your fault. It cannot be apparent that you are so angry. How do you mask it? How do you get along?

How do you get over hating everyone else who got to have a mother who loved them? How do you not take that hatred out on them?

I told her that I think very hard about how many people I want to have at my fiftieth birthday party. I want to still know these people. I want to still live here. Ok. What am I going to have to do in order to end up with that happening? It’s not a guarantee for people like me. I’m a runner.

And this conversation came in brief bits and spurts. It was never intense. It was a few sentences at a time here and there over two hours.

She asked me how I hurt my arms so I talked about writing my book and destroying my arms and doing it practically in the middle of the night because I didn’t have any other time and I fucking had to do it. She commented on how I seem to be a very driven person in general. I have managed to do a bunch of things–right?

She said, “I guess people like you are the ones who get things done in life. If you have to do it in the middle of the night you will because you want it done and that is just that.”

At the end she told me that she didn’t think she had ever spoken to a client as much as she spoke to me and she thanked me for coming in. She said that I gave her a lot of things to think about that are really important in her life right now and she’s glad that she met me.

That’s a well spent day, no?