Running buddy

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I wrote up a long post yesterday. Apparently my computer ate it. Internet in my house is very flakey. I am not impressed. Thank you to the folks who are worried about me. I appreciate people checking in. It makes me feel loved. I was pinged more than once yesterday. It made me smile.

Life is really busy. I’m anxious and fussy and exhausted. I’m thinking a lot. I’m really struggling with the running. In a fit of desperation yesterday I poked a friend and strongly hinted that she would be physically capable of doing the marathon with me. I didn’t think it would go anywhere. I was being a pest. Within an hour or so she had arranged to fly from a different state and stay with her family so she can run with me. She’ll pretty much only be there for the race. So she can hold my hand.

I need to go run and cry about how very unworthy I am right now. I’m really grateful that I have her to look forward to at the end of this training, now. It gives me a lot more impetus to not quit. I’ve been feeling sad and overwhelmed. I can do the running. I am struggling to deal with the fact that this running is making me too tired to really be functional doing a lot of other things. I have seven weeks of training to go. It’s feeling too long. Too hard. But now I can’t quit. Now there is no option in any way shape or form of quitting.

I’m really glad. I was starting to feel like a quitter in my head. Like there isn’t a point in me doing this. There isn’t much point in me doing anything besides wiping other peoples asses and washing dishes.

But someone wants to run with me. I won’t be alone. I’ve been singing various songs about her. Her name rhymes with “don’t have to be alone” if you get the syllables right. I don’t understand why she cares enough about me to just up and do this. But I’m really grateful. I’m really grateful.

Thank you!

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The text messages while I was running made me very happy. Thank you everyone. I can't go back through and respond because I don't have time. I feel like I have been either extremely busy or asleep since I stopped running. And my computer won't get on the internet consistently. I have stuff I want to write but I have to finish painting today because the washer/dryer are being delivered between 4:45 and 6:45. Must finish! Then the painting will be done in the garage. That will be a euphoric moment of "holy shit I finished a project".

Fifteen

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In the running community there is a phrase, “hitting the wall”. I’ve read about it. Folks say that at about mile twenty on your way to a marathon there is a place where you want to quit. From there on it is about being stubborn.

Today I felt like the wall was at the front door. I was tired.

If I treat this like a writing exercise…

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Dear J-

You emailed at a bad time. For no particular reason I woke up yesterday feeling much more suicidal than usual. I went on my seven mile run and had to deal with my knees shaking through most of the run because I was crying so hard my body was buckling. I got to Lake Elizabeth and felt a rush of anger at myself that I was so lazy that I stayed in bed till it was light. If it was still dark I could go down to the edge and swim out to the middle and drown myself and no one would be able to see me to rescue me in time.

Then I came home to your email. You want me to worry about you having a panic attack.

I’ll be honest and say that I laughed out loud. I did lol. I laughed. It bubbled up. I bent over laughing. I thought it was that fucking hilarious.

You know what, I’m not interested in a reconciliation. That sounds like work I don’t want to do. I’m kind of busy. I got a lot from our friendship, I’ll be honest. I cared about you a lot. I was looking forward to many years together. But between how you treated me and how you treated K, no thank you. K is one of three people my nearly two year old wants at her birthday party. I am not interested in a relationship with someone who treats me and mine how you do.

I can’t stop you from joining the homeschooling group. That’s not something that is in my authority or power to do. Shanna has asked me if she will ever be allowed to play with R again. I told her that when she is five if she is able to handle the phone and do the arranging I will drive her to and from play dates. If you show up at homeschool events I am certainly not going to be actively rude. I will never attack you physically or verbally. I do not plan to speak to you.

You see, I don’t have time for you. In order to have a relationship with you I would have to worry about you. You have proven yourself to not be someone who is worthy of how much effort that is for me. No thank you.

Krissy

I haven’t decided if I will send this. I love the internet. Thank you for listening to me babble.

An email I won’t send.

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“Hi Krissy,

I’d like to attempt to reconcile.

I’ll be completely sincere and give you my reasons;

1) I regret burning my bridges with you.  I think you’re a good person and I enjoyed spending time with you.

2) We are undoubtedly going to be a part of the same community and I don’t want to have an anxiety attack for 2 days after everytime I run into you.

I’d be open to meeting in person or chatting through IM or e-mail.

Thanks,
J”



Wait wait… let me get this straight. I am supposed to care about your panic attacks? Really? When I had a panic attack at your house and your response was to send me an email telling me that I am a bad mother and a horrible person and you’ve given me so many chances and you are just done. (I was never told I was given chances. This was a big shock.) You can’t watch someone be as terrible to their children as I am to mine.

And I’m supposed to care about your panic attacks? Really? 

The reason we will undoubtedly be part of the same community is because you are telling me that you will join the group I asked you to stay out of. After I didn’t leave my house for a year. Because of the fucking panic attacks you contributed to. I’m not going to say they are all your fault. I’ve had panic attacks for too many years to blame you. But you certainly make them worse. And I have studiously avoided every place I thought you might be.

But I should worry about you. And you feel bad about burning bridges. Well, I believe in natural consequences. Maybe next time you are having a bad day you won’t take it out on someone else and tell them they are bad and disgusting.

Bitch.

Get it out of your head.

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None of what I am thinking is all that serious or big. Why are my emotional reactions so out of proportion? I don’t even know. That’s the trouble with brain chemistry. It’s not always reacting to real things in front of you.

I can’t start running yet. It’s too early. Yesterday as I was running I thought a lot about how I should leave my house earlier and run to Lake Elizabeth and swim out to the middle then stop swimming while it is still dark and no one will see me. I can’t start running yet. I can’t go out until people will see me. I can’t go out until I would be traumatizing other people to try and die in front of them–that’s not nice. I’m not allowed to do that.

Why isn’t it more important that I would destroy my children? They would never get over losing me. I know that. They would spend their entire lives wondering why their mother didn’t love them enough. I can’t do that to them. I love them so much. But I hurt. I want to cut. I want to do something that causes me a lot of pain. I didn’t yesterday. I cried. I curled up in the fetal position and sobbed but I didn’t self-harm. I even ate properly at all the appropriate times.

It is very hard to believe that I am worth taking care of. How could I possibly be worth any effort? But every body takes effort. Living in a body is work. You have to feed it and let it rest and treat it at least a little gently. I see how much effort bodies take because I care for two small ones. It’s a lot of forking work. Doing the work for them makes me feel so bad. Why didn’t anyone want to care for me? Why didn’t anyone love me?

I feel taunted every day by the way I lived. I feel angry and jealous of my children. Why didn’t anyone love me? Being nice to my kids makes me feel really bitter. I hate that I have to stop and make up what a good person would do because I don’t know. I see my children do things and what I see in my head are these still-frame pictures of what happened to me when I did the same thing. I know what happened to me was wrong but I don’t know what to do.

I feel over and over all day how bad I must be to deserve how I was treated. I feel like I am choking and drowning in how bad bad bad I am. I deserve to suffer. I deserve to be in pain. I deserve to be told to shut my fucking mouth. I shouldn’t speak at all. I should be seen and not heard.

I don’t want my kids to feel this way.

As an adult I feel so much shame for the things I don’t know how to do well. All those things that other people spent long hours on during childhood. I hid. I didn’t learn things. If I couldn’t get it out of a book by myself it didn’t exist. I had no way of going and learning skills or behaviors or activities.

I feel overwhelmed by how badly living in poverty was. I feel like I’m not over it. I don’t know how to be someone who is safe. I only know what it means to be unsafe and in danger.

I miss my mom. I miss my mom so much that I would like to curl up and die to get away from missing her like this. I love my mommy. I want my mommy. I miss my mommy. But my mommy would hurt me. I think if I let my mommy hurt me again I wouldn’t live through it. That’s a lot of why I don’t have contact with her any more. I was absolutely not going to be able to live through more. I can’t be who she needs me to be.

I feel like I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what possible worth I might have. I don’t feel very useful. But people aren’t worthy or not based on work, are they? I don’t know. I work very hard. It always feels like my work is inadequate. I am inadequate.

I don’t intend to die today. I have stuff to do. I need to finish the box for Jenny. I need to send the care package off to the MDC woman who is leaving her abusive husband. I do things that make other people feel seen and important and loved. Why don’t I feel that way? What would it take?

I have a truly amazing husband. I don’t understand why he loves me so much. He’s so patient and kind. He doesn’t yell at me very often. I think he raises his voice a couple of times a year and it’s only to be heard over ambient noise. Noah is so very nice to me. I feel so undeserving. Every so often I ask him if he is storing up bitterness over the things I make him put up with. I ask him if he wants to get even with me. He gets the most baffled look. He can’t understand why I would think he feels that way. Experience.

I don’t feel like I hold up my end of the bargain. I don’t feel like I really make his life better. Certainly not enough better to justify putting up with me. I am so difficult. So unpleasant.

I wish I could get these voices out of my head. I would I could cut my mother’s voice out of my brain. “Why do you have to be so unpleasant? Why are you so difficult?” I don’t know, maybe because I was being raped and beaten and malnourished and neglected? Maybe that is why I was difficult? It really doesn’t matter why. I shouldn’t be inconveniencing anyone.

I want this panic and hate in my chest to leave. I want it gone. I want to not feel like my heart is racing and any minute terrible things will happen to me. Any minute Noah is going to turn on me and declare that he is well and truly sick of me–get out.

Instead, when I come back from the bathroom at 4:30 in the morning he talks to me for half an hour or so. When he hears me walk in the room he lifts his head from the pillow and smiles as he reaches for me. Having me near him makes him feel happier. I don’t understand. How can I make someone happy?

Mental illness is a liar. My mother is a liar. My sister is a liar. The voices in my head are liars. They tell me I am bad. That I hurt people by existing. Everyone would be better off if I was dead. My sister used to tell me that. Everyone would be better off if you weren’t here. I still believe it. And that’s part of why I walked away from my family. If you are better off without me, fine be without me. That doesn’t mean I have to die.

I’m feeling slightly weird about a few different interactions in my life. I can’t talk about them. Going forward I need to carefully weigh, “Is this person my friend or is this person a relationship with my children” and if someone is more on the kid end I simply can’t bring up issues. When I bring up issues I drive people away. I can’t do that to my kids forever. I have to stop listening and stop caring about people. I need to ignore their behavior and avoid them myself while facilitating Shanna having access. Her boundaries are different from mine.

I can’t keep pushing people away from my kids. The list of casualties in my life is long. And that woman who sent me the nasty Dear Jane letter just popped up again. She wants to reconcile because she misses me and she doesn’t want to have a panic attack for two days every time she runs into me. I’ll try real hard to care about your fucking panic attacks you stupid bitch.

I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have Noah. I would be a lot more sad. I know that part. I don’t feel like I deserve him. I know he is better than me. He tries to convince me that I am more educated but I’m having none of it. I don’t have a degree higher than his. And his degrees are from an actually difficult university. I went to a state school so pathetic it no longer even has pride of place-name. Awesome.

I’m really tired. This week the running is getting to me. I’m sleeping but waking up feeling really bad. Yay depression? It doesn’t matter if I’m depressed or if what I am doing is hard. It has to get done. Life moves on. We go to Disneyland in less than eight weeks. My marathon is in eight weeks and three days. Eep. That’s a lot of fun to talk to Shanna about.

I have a lot of good in my life. I am privileged. I am pampered and kept safe. Why do I feel like I am still in danger? Why doesn’t my brain believe my current circumstances? I don’t know. But it’s fucking annoying.

Bad day.

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Today is really bad for me. And I can’t talk about it. Talking about it at all would be inappropriate. I have these two small children here, you see. Shanna has a cruddy nose and a sore throat. I will be here all day with them by myself. Noah will be home after bedtime. It’s a very busy day for him.

I’m very suicidal. Not in the sense that I think that people should send someone to watch my children because they are at risk. More that I hate myself a lot today. I feel like I am the sole source of bad for my children. I feel like they would be much better off without a toxic piece of shit like me. Someone less stupid could take care of them. Someone who doesn’t need to curl up in bed with a teddy bear and cry at thirty.

Nothing bad has happened today or yesterday or even the day before. But I find places to hide in my house and I take breaks to cry, silently. I’m not supposed to be crying. It is shameful that I am crying. What an ungrateful piece of shit. But I can’t stop. I can’t stop.

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I have a long day with the kids ahead of me. I’m rethinking some of my discipline attitude this morning. The thought of being stuck in the house makes me want to cry. I’ll figure something out.

There are a lot of things I want to write about but I don’t have time. I feel like I am compiling a mental list of memories I want to flesh out into stories. Why I grew up hating yellow. My relationship with Disneyland (which really I want to send as a letter to someone in Disney customer service because I’m distinctly unhappy with Disneyland Paris). I want to write about M/s and what it means to me. (I know you don’t like that capitalization, Mo, and I can live with that.

Noah and I had a conversation this morning about M/s. It made me happy. I want to write about relationship styles and life approaches because I want to write them for Noah. It’s hard to fully explain myself in a conversation. I spend too much time quietly thinking and feeling unable to speak. I don’t want to do M/s at this stage of our life so the conversation is academic at this point. Theoretical. Hypothetical. Future tense. It’s fun to think about. We’ll see.

There are different kinds of relationships to model. I grew up with people who were highly enmeshed and codependent and as a result largely non-functional in society. It’s possible to be highly enmeshed and codependent and also functional. What’s the difference? I don’t know. But I think that it involves knowing that even though you want to be codependent and enmeshed there are times when no one but you is going to meet your needs and you have to get them fucking met.

I would like to have a lifelong relationship with my kids. We are going to have a very non-standard relationship. We won’t have a standard set of life experiences. My kids will probably be very differently independent than is common at whatever life stage. I am asynchronous with the world and I don’t know how to teach someone else to be. Professional actors are on a different schedule. Olympic level athletes are on a different schedule. Homeless people are on a different schedule. Professional sailors.

I have moved a lot. I have seen a lot of different schedules. I find it endlessly interesting how people decide to spend their time. I can often see how they are working toward goals. Sometimes I don’t understand their motivation. I try like hell to keep my mouth shut.

I don’t feel like I have the luxury of auto pilot. With great privilege comes great responsibility. I see similar threads in many different pieces of writing. If I were a real academic I would carry around a bibliography in my head. I don’t really care if anyone can check my sources though so I’ll just babble.

With great privilege comes great responsibility. What does that even mean? It means that even though I live in a time and a place with a strong focus on being like other people it doesn’t work for me. Trying hurts me. Nevertheless I have great privilege. I’m not filthy rich (I have very little disposable “extra” money if I want to meet specific long-term goals) but I have more than the vast majority of everyone everywhere through all time. I sound like a bragging asshole. It’s simply and literally true. I have the tax returns to prove it.

If that is true then I need to sit with what that means. I have more access to health care. I have more ability to buy things. I don’t have very much support. In order for me to get consistent support I have to pay for it and that is not very reliable and would cost a whole ‘nother job to support. It would mean changing everything about my life. So I make do without support. Noah does what he can (and it’s a lot more than most husbands from what I can tell. That man is very serious about wanting me to have time to do things that are important to me–I am blessed) but he’s not available to me for very many hours. I am functionally alone with my kids for the vasty majority of hours in every day.

Short term gain for long-term loss doesn’t work for me. I have long-term goals. I am going to make sure I can meet them. I am going to save money and plan. I have waited all my life for this. I have always wanted to do these things but I was afraid to do them alone. I feel ashamed of wanting to drag my kids through the life of experiences I want them to have. They won’t be like other people.

I do not want my children to have a bone deep understanding of what it is like to live with abuse. But I want them to meet real people who live very differently from them. I want them to spend time watching how those people live. I want them to understand what they have. I don’t know other ways to really teach that. It is so important to me to have the experiences I want to have with my children that I want to build a whole life around it. Well, or at least these twenty years. These are the years when I get to learn all of the things I want to learn. I get to go places and try things. I get to be silly and experimental.

But life comes with a price tag. How do you learn about money? What is money? How do you get it? How do you choose to spend it? Why do you choose to spend it that way? What experiences are most important to you?

How do you figure out what kind of grown up you want to be? How do you have the life you want to have? I am having the life I want to have. We take risks and find rewards. We are consciously building in buffers so that our risks have limited impact. I won’t gamble if I can’t afford to lose.

I’ve had several times when I’ve felt a bit mixed about my spending over the past year and some. Then I walk through Oakland and I see the window of the dry cleaners and I smile. And I’m really happy that Wicked Grounds is open every day to give people a safe place to exist when they otherwise have nowhere to go.

Even though I kind of wish I had paid off DVC. Not really. I’m a lot more glad that Wicked Grounds is open. I want to be part of it. I feel so glad that I have a way to feel part of something important to me.

Being part of the scene is not important to Noah. What he wants to do with and to me is between him and me. He doesn’t need anyone else’s sanction. He doesn’t need or particularly want community around this part of his identity. I do and I don’t. I don’t feel like it is a good idea to want approval from that community. That’s not a very positive opinion to have. I’m a very funny mixture of sex-positive and protective.

I have a very specific and intense grasp of one possible outcome of early sexual knowledge. I realize I am uncommon.

I feel like people tend to get immersed in the part of their life they are in. They want to immerse their children in that part of life. I have listened to a lot of conversations in which people talk about sex as natural and they don’t want to feel ashamed of it so they are open with their children. This can run the gamut, folks.

For me, in my house with my kids, the current limit of talk about sex is limited to “masturbation is awesome, normal, healthy and good… and private while you are a kid. Sex with other people comes much later.”

Of course the conversation will get a lot more frank in a few years. But dude, they are two and four. That’s where we are. They don’t need to hear that I like to cry during sex. They don’t need to hear a lot of noises at all. Sex is private.

I didn’t understand that properly until I had kids. I have never before wanted to have a brick wall between me and someone else before I have wild and unabashed sex. It’s not about shame. I don’t think–I suppose I could be wrong.

With my children around I must be alert, focused on them, and able to be disturbed at any point. It’s not good for my ability to focus on what is going on with my body. It’s hard to have much of any attention to spare for Noah’s needs at all, let alone sexually.

I feel like part of me is in waiting. And I feel like learning patience with that experience is part of being a grown up. But it’s hard. I don’t think I would be able to balance this kind of attention and emotional load if I was new to exploring bdsm. I don’t think I would be able to experience NRE and focus on my kids how I do. I have limits.

I don’t want to grow complacent. I have been given a ridiculous gift this lifetime. Regardless of what comes in the future Noah has provided me with a wonderful time and space in my life. I have been more safe here than at any other point. In less than a month we will have been married for six years. Which means I have lived here that long. Twice as long as I lived with Tom.

I want an enmeshed, codependent relationship because I want to feel pressured to stay interesting for Noah’s sake. I like the way he looks at me. I want to feel compelled to earn it. I don’t want to get lazy and go looking for that new-spark with someone else. I want this to meet my needs. If he can’t meet a need then I need to bloody meet it for myself. I don’t need to pass it on to someone else. I don’t want that.

I like who Noah wants to be married to. He wants a permanent crazy girlfriend. He likes living with someone artistic and creative who changes the world around him based on weird whims. I’m not sure why he likes that, but he does. He likes that I want the world to be more how I see it in my head. He likes the world I want to live in.

I didn’t know anyone would ever like me like this.

So there is this Katy Perry song. I feel guilty for liking it. I feel like that about Noah. Honestly. I feel like I have made it very hard to be with me. I want a fairly specific life and it’s not cheap. I feel guilty about needing access to so much money. But it’s there. We have an unthinkable amount of money for me. We have tv stars on tv money. That’s wh

stream of conscious

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This has been one of those thinking-heavy but writing-little sorts of weeks. I feel busy. I feel tired and stretched thin. I will be glad when training is over. My race is in nine weeks and two days. The running takes so much out of me and I’m just going to be increasing mileage from here. I feel kind of weird about it.

We’ve had some discipline issues this week. On Tuesdays we are supposed to go to the park with the home schooling group. I feel this socialization is very important. But while I was making lunch (it took an hour because Shanna had a lot of requests–I made scones from scratch, cucumber sandwiches, cut up a bunch of vegetables for dipping and made guac, and and and) Shanna went around the house destroying it.

I’m not sure how other children function. When I describe Shanna as a tornado I’m not kidding. In the hour I was busy in the kitchen she dumped the drawers in her room with clothes, the linen closet, took everything out of the toy box, took several games off of high shelves she isn’t supposed to access and strewed them between multiple rooms, dumped the Lego’s and spread them between multiple rooms, dumped many shelves of books onto the floor, and broke apart the foam letter mat in the garage in addition to dumping all the puzzles off of shelves onto the floor.

I started crying. I can’t go spend hours in the park physically wearing myself out and then come home to that mess. I just can’t. I’m tired. I’m running twenty-five miles a week or more. It’s not like I need my house to be museum tidy but I need to be able to walk through my home without injury. I told Shanna that there was zero possibility we could finish cleaning the house by time to go to the park and I was going to be tired enough after that much cleaning that I was not going to be willing to go late. I would need to sit down and rest.

She cried and screamed and told me I was mean and not fair. I looked at her carefully and then I went to the garage and started cleaning. When she followed me screaming at me I carefully walked her back into the house and shut the door behind me. I’m not going to be screamed at while I clean up after someone. I don’t fucking think so. I was very careful not to yell or scream.

Shanna has been asking me a lot lately how my mother would react in situations. It’s hard. While we were cleaning (after she calmed down) she asked me what my mother would have done. I looked around the house warily and said that my mother would have hit me over and over and told me I was disgusting and bad. She looked shocked. She asked me if I think that about her. I said no. I told her that her behavior isn’t very considerate but that’s about as bad as it is. She thought about that for a while.

A few times lately she has engaged in behavior that would have earned me a beating. I’ve been thinking a lot about that topic as a result. I “wasn’t hit much” by the standards of my family but I was also willing to be told to sit in one place and not open my mouth. I was willing to sit in a chair and read and not move or inconvenience anyone. That’s why I wasn’t hit as much.

Shanna did something, I can’t even remember what, and I felt very frustrated. I started crying, as I am wont to do when I am deeply frustrated. She asked me why I was upset. I told her, “Sometimes I feel very frustrated because I’m not sure what to do when you engage in behavior I dislike. My mom was very mean to me and I don’t want to do that to you but I don’t know what I should be doing and it is very very frustrating.”

Now she has taken to giving me advice on how I should handle things. It’s kind of funny.

I feel like Calli has exploded on the scene recently. Now she talks. A lot. All day. I have no idea how many words she has picked up. I couldn’t begin to count. I think back with nostalgia to how I wrote down every new word I heard from Shanna. I had a list. I don’t have that kind of time or attention now. She adds so many words a day that I have no perception of how large her vocabulary is. Somewhere between 50 and 500. If it isn’t 500 yet it will be this week at the rate she is going.

She signs a lot more than Shanna ever did, and I don’t think it is just because of the videos. She has a lot in her head and a lot of trouble with her vocal cords. She’s annoyed by her speech impediment. She knows she is saying words wrong. She tries to get sounds and can’t. I smile and pat her on the head and say it’s a matter of practice. It’ll come.

Calli is independent in ways Shanna has never been and that means I misunderstand the depth of her attachment to me. Calli runs away faster and farther and doesn’t look back… until she has to be on me for multiple hours and cries and whines if I put her on my back because then she can’t see my face. She has a really strong need to be physically near my face looking at me. She does it for many hours a day. She gets very agitated if she doesn’t get it. I smile at her as much as I can physically force myself. I love her so much.

It’s neat trying to teach them how to be friends. As I’m reading developmental stuff sometimes I feel guilty that I’m not providing Shanna nearly as much peer interaction as would be good for her (she kind of sucks with kids her age) and I hope that Calli and Shanna will be enough company for one another. Yes, we do see other kids. We still spend a very lot of time at home alone. I need to.

I feel very weird about balancing our needs. I need a fair bit of time at home. If I am out of the house too much I am exhausted and I cry inappropriately in public. Crying is a much bigger part of my life than it is for “normal” people, near as I can tell. Being too tired or hungry or stressed triggers tears for me. I don’t have to feel additionally sad. I have enough background sad in my life that I’m always up for a good cry. It’s very embarrassing and hard to control when I’m in public.

It’s a fairly predictable pattern for me. I can schedule things in advance around my needs and I can generally get through an obligation if I make it. But I don’t schedule anything else that day–including dishes. I’m trying to consciously learn more about how this works for me. I need control over this.

It is hard to explain what it is like to be in my body. Based on what I understand from books my body is not typical. My heart races a little frequently during the day. I feel waves of terror spontaneously and randomly. I have long periods of intense negative thoughts while I am engaging in just about any activity. Randomly cutting paper just to practice using scissors with Shanna can trigger a diatribe in my head.

I have a lot of control. These things don’t get expressed very often. But the cost is so high. I feel like thin, like when you wear through the sole of a shoe and can see the sock. Too much friction. Can’t keep going.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the long-term effect being a stay at home mom will have on my life. I’ve been thinking very hard about how worthless my society thinks I am. I’m thinking of the scorn I sometimes see on peoples faces. To be fair if I tell another mother that I am staying home with my kids 75% of the time they say, “Oh you are lucky.” I like that. I am. I am very lucky. I am so very lucky that I get to have the life I have now.

I tell myself that this stage of my life is my gift for surviving my childhood. I went through hell, sure, but now I have this. I feel ashamed of the extent of my negativity and depression and anxiety because I am one of the luckiest people ever in the history of human kind.

I am safe. I have a partner who adores me and helps me. I stopped working in the middle of pregnancy. I came home and sat and read. I didn’t clean. I didn’t cook. He either made dinner or we went out. I sat in a torpor and cried while he was at work. I felt horrible. But he came home to me every day. He took care of me. I will never be able to repay the debt of gratitude I feel towards this man. During the physically weakest part of my adult life he was a gentle and loving care giver. I’ve never had that before.

I have two daughters who see me and feel like the world is wonderful. I have been very nice to them–not that they are spoiled. Well, they are. But they have very nice manners. I’m pretty rigid in my expectations.

I spent my pregnancy reading and thinking about what kind of interaction I wanted to have with my kids. I worked out the details of how I would have to react to various kinds of stimuli. I have to plan in advance how I will react under stress because in the moment I can’t. I can’t plan when I am upset. And I have to react to my children full speed all day long. It’s fucking terrifying.

When you are under stress you revert to your earliest training. What was your earliest training like? You don’t want me to talk about mine.

So! We’re not doing that any more! I mean, I still do it in my head. I still have these horrible tapes playing in the background. I still have all of the same impulses and inclinations. But I don’t do it. And it is physically hard. It is work. All day every day. So I like spending a lot of time alone in a room. It feels so fucking good. I even get pissy about the cat sometimes.

While I run lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with God. I’ve been seeing the door to door missionaries a lot more. I don’t believe there is an omnipresent anything that decided long ago that every so often there had to be a kid brutally raped by her father. Sorry, no.

I believe it is random. I really do. I believe that life is terribly unfair. I recognize that most of my situational good fortune in my current adult life would not be available to me if I wasn’t white. That bothers me. I don’t think that I can believer in someone stronger than me controlling things and look around at the world and continue to keep going. That is too god damn depressing.

I am a not-so-dumb animal. I want to continue to eat and shit and mate and have non-sexual touching with people I exchange caring with. That’s what I god damn want. These are instincts. I want to be a human being worth knowing. What makes someone worth knowing? Damned if I know.

I don’t turn over any control of me to a Higher Power. It’s the big reason I will never try any of the “Anonymous” shit. Fuck you telling me I can’t do something by myself. Ha. Watch me, motherfucker. Have you met me? Can you really think of something that I am likely to want that I can’t do? There are physical feats I am not likely to accomplish–sure. I won’t be in the NBA this lifetime. I’m really ok with that. I don’t feel like that fact is a reflection of a failure of will power.

I can’t decide to be someone else. But I can be me without any help. I don’t need anyone to decide for me what is right or wrong. I can do that. I know what they feel like in the pit of my stomach. The problem is that I feel a lot of fear when I don’t have enough information. How can I make a decision when I don’t know enough about the situation to know what the right decision is? Oh god. But you can’t go through life that way. You do the best you can with what you know.

I do a lot of research. I don’t hesitate to say, “I don’t know yet but I will get back to you.”

But when you are dealing with children all day every day… yeah. It’s a mixed bag. Some things you can put off and a lot of things you need to react to immediately. I script. I do a lot of research around child development is happening with my kids so that I can react appropriately. I really want to be appropriate.

I don’t believe that anyone is controlling me except for me. Then what about these pervasive horrible thoughts? It’s random. It’s the natural reaction of trauma. I will never undo my life. I can just write scripts for the future that suck less.

I have a really good life. I am treated very well. I’m actually glad that Noah and I are having this period without the raunchy sex. It’s nice for there to be at least one period of my life where liking me means everyone around me is gentle and kind with me. Writing that sentence makes me cry. I have certainly had relationships and people in my life who have never hurt me.

I feel like I have a running calendar in my head: last self injury on _______ date. I’m not telling you the date because I feel embarrassed about this count. I have categories you see. It’s all split up into “well this counts for this but not for that” and I dicker about what I am allowed to do to hurt myself. Like I haven’t cut or hit my head or burned myself or anything like that in a long time. But I’m having a lot of food issues.

It’s complicated, yo.

But Noah is very gentle with me these days. I’m terribly sexually bored by it, but emotionally it feels really important and good. We are going to have to figure out the balance there eventually. I feel like the kids still provide enough physical stress that it isn’t a good idea. The kids are getting less rough with me–we’ve been specifically working on it a lot for the last couple of weeks.

I am not someone who would feel good about being one of the brick makers for the pyramid. I wouldn’t feel like I was awesome and doing something great. And yet someone has to be the brick maker. It’s a required job. I think that people who believe in a Higher Power make great brick layers.

I don’t believe there is a plan. I’m not willing to do something I find awful because it is part of something bigger than me. Fuck you I have suffered enough. Not that brick laying is awful. I’m not suited to being an NBA player either.

Thing is, I don’t know what I am going to be when I grow up. I’m not sure what I’m building towards. So I’m picking things up almost at random. I don’t know very many people like me.

I have had an unusual life. I have done things at the wrong stages and the wrong times but mostly it works for me. I am sexually wired towards some really disturbing things. Whether it is my fault or not is immaterial. It is. I am currently in a phase of my life where I am trying to build non-sexual relationships with two people in a very intense way. There isn’t a lot of me left to go do deviant stuff. It is physically hard on me to not fulfill those needs but emotionally I don’t have the ability to handle more pain right now. I need to know that Noah does not just want me around as a cum dumpster and thing to objectify and hurt. I need to be something more than that to him. But we will get back to playing with that some day.

Fulfilling your dreams is hard because in your head as you have the dream you fixate on looking/being a certain way. Doing things at certain stages. Some people solve this by not growing up in their head. I don’t have any interest in being anything like I was pre-twenty-five. Maybe I’ll think of myself as thirty forever. The year I trained for a marathon. That was the brutally hard thing I did that year.

I just mutate my self injury. I have to get it somewhere and running is enough. Holy shit.

I say I don’t know many people like me because I don’t know anyone else who mutates as fast as I do spurred by fear. That’s not a terrible judgment on people. Most people tend to be paralyzed by fear. Fear makes me move. It makes me change. I have a hard time when I find out that people I know are doing the exact same thing they did ten years ago. It freaks me out. I feel like maybe I’m defective. I seriously doubt there will ever be a period in my life where my days look the same from one decade to the next. Maybe when the fifteen years after the kids move out? I doubt it.

How I am is not good. I am not consistent enough. I am not strong enough. I am not I am not I am not.

Never the less I have to go start today. We are going to meet a friend with little kids at Habitot. I hope it goes well.

Broken.

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How come I can’t get off during sex until he puts a pillow over my face and hurts me at the same time?

I don’t know. But that orgasm was nice. (Err, I told him to. It wasn’t spontaneous on his part.)

I loathe Palo Alto Medical Facility

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I need to get a chlamydia test done for reasons I’m not going to explain here. Life is complicated. PAMF is being annoying. I had some kind of visit in the last year so they’ve told me that I will have to pay for 100% of the visit. Why do I have insurance again?

I think I’ll go to Planned Parenthood. Even paying out of pocket there is cheaper.

Busy weekend

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I went up to work at Wicked Grounds this weekend. On Saturday I went up after running thirteen miles. I was tired but ebullient. BART was really full so at one point I gave up my seat so that an elderly person could sit. Even though I just ran thirteen miles, I am clearly in a better position to be standing.

When I stood up two elderly Latina women started making comments–ok, so only one of them was loud. They glared at me. The words are already fuzzy in my memory (ahhh blessed medication) but she called me trash. They expressed shock that I was that gross and a woman. Ew. I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt with the words “Rope Slut”, and a zip up hoodie mostly closed over my chest. And a dog choke collar closed with a padlock. I looked at her quite fiercely and asked, “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” She turned bright red and looked down.

By contrast I ran around several blocks in San Francisco yesterday wearing a latex cheerleader outfit. It’s made with maroon and clear panels. One of the clear panels on the skirt is right over my ass crack. There is a deep clear vee in the front of the shirt. Now that I have ginormous mom nipples you can clearly see areola but not quite the nipple. It’s uhh festive. I had quite a few gay men tell me that I looked fabulous and they were proud of me for wearing it. It was… different.

Dore Alley is my anniversary. I got beaten by choice for the first time the night before Dore Alley in 2000. I was eighteen. It was my second weekend at the Power Exchange, a bdsm themed sex club in San Francisco. I had brought my sister the previous weekend and I was too afraid to play. I came back dressed in clothes I bought at Hot Topic and I asked a transwoman to beat me. I was afraid of the men, honestly. She flogged me very well.

I feel like Leather as an identity has changed a lot in the twelve years I have been part of the bdsm community. Even though I’m not active these days it still feels like my community. I have been there my entire adult life. I don’t have another community. There is no other grouping of people who will accept me for absolutely all of my fucked-up-interests.

I got to know a new person yesterday as a result of a massive faux pas. I used the wrong gender pronoun. I felt like a total fucking asshole. The woman-born-woman very bravely stayed near the cash register to tell me that I made a mistake when I said “he”. I felt so bad. (In my defense she is a very butch lesbian. Not that it excuses me in the slightest.) After that I ended up having a very long and protracted conversation with her.

It’s not every day I meet someone who says, “I know I am weird but it is because I was tortured as a child.”

Her androgynous gender appearance is the result of her father performing medical experiments on her from birth and trying to change her gender because she was born an identical twin and they wanted a boy.

We had a lot to talk about. We felt very comfortable together. We both found the bdsm scene at eighteen. She’s two years younger than me. I’m not sure how I have missed her for ten years. I do recognize her handle. I think I just have never been a San Francisco person. And City people don’t come south.

I got to sit down and have a surprise conversation with someone who I pretty much couldn’t shock. Do you know how often that happens to me? I’d put it at twice a decade. Normal people want to talk about their lives. From birth to eighteen I lived a traumatic horror show and when I turned eighteen I ran straight into the Leather community. I was embraced and adored. I still am.

I didn’t spend much time with anyone outside the Leather community for the four years I was with Tom. I was still close with Anna but Jenny and I barely spoke. We had very different lives even though we were both college students. I have rarely been like people my age. It was really amazing yesterday to find this person. I hope I can keep in touch with her. She feels like a gift.

The actual Up Your Alley Fair wasn’t very exciting. I felt pretty sad about how much it has changed. I saw far more latex than leather. Most guys were simply wearing underwear if they weren’t wearing pants. It didn’t look like a leather event. It looked like a bath house but outside with very little sex. I only saw three or four guys getting head. There used to be hundreds. I had the very strong impulse to ask the only really slutty guy I saw there (he had a line of boys) if he was willing to see if a mouth is just a mouth. I didn’t! I don’t do that any more! But I wanted to. I wonder if he would have let me. The fair felt uninspiring and if no one else was going to put on a show I might as well.

I really like this part of me. I want Noah to go to Folsom with me. Exhibitionism is big for me. I probably won’t have actual penetrative sex at Folsom but we will have to drive because I won’t be willing to make it home. The car can be put somewhere private.

I really like getting the shit beaten out of me while people watch and freak out. I like it. I really really like it. I like the energy of the crowd. I freak people out in dungeons too. I am on the far extreme edge of what is currently common. I wasn’t when I came into the community.

I found the leather community at the very beginning of the online era. People were still very paranoid about using the internet. It was harder to find parties because they weren’t advertised online. You had to get to know people still. We hung out in IRC talking all day and night together but we arranged the parties at munches. We had dungeons that were basically our community spaces. People spent a lot of time hanging around.

When I showed up as an eighteen year old it was very rare to see another person under thirty. The community was full of people who had already had full lives and then discovered something about themselves. They were people who made very conscious life choices to become the people they were.

Where I was there were a lot of older women who were very heavy masochists. Life has already made their ass hard. They have been getting hit for a very long time and they have leather  butt. They can barely bruise any more. Sadists like bruises. If it gets harder and harder to bruise you… well… I guess I’ll just have to hit you with something bigger.

I got to meet someone this weekend who grew up like me. She was intensely abused and ostracized as a child and then found the same Leather community. I know all of the people she was mentored by. I don’t know how in the hell I have missed her.

I really want to write more about sex but I should go in.

It will be a very long day.

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I have a theory as to why significantly more men than women run marathons. It’s because men don’t have to bleed every month. Today I have to run a half marathon and then go work a full shift at Wicked Grounds (come visit, ok?). I started bleeding yesterday. I’m pretty fucking uncomfortable. My lower back is quite unhappy with life.

What I would like to do right now is get an old fashioned hot water bottle and fill it and a new fangled heating pad. I want to lie in the fetal position with the hot water on the front of my belly and the heating pad on my lower back. Instead I am going to get dressed in that rabidly uncomfortable sports bra (My last long run caused me to get a rash from rubbing) and run for three or so hours. Because of how my body feels I’m going to aim for three and a half hours. Which is more than twenty minutes longer than my previous time for this distance. I hurt.

I should probably take some pain medication. Today will probably also be a day for caffeine. I have to start running no later than 5:30 if I want to do everything on time today. It’s going to be a very long day. I’ve already been up for a while taking care of Calli.

But I’m a fucking bad ass and I can do anything. Time to run.

friends-only on lj isn’t *exactly* public…

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I have been internally struggling with how much I want to write about the kids. Privacy and all. I've set my privacy bar at a very non-standard place. It's not transitive. So it's awkward.

I was watching a movie on Netflix about a beauty school in Afghanistan. It's kind of interesting. Then Calli woke up. I could hear her knocking softly on the door and saying, "Mama." When I got there and opened the door (carefully so I didn't hit her in the dark) the first thing she did was sign "milk". Yeah.

We settled in on the rocking chair. She nursed on both sides and then fell asleep on my chest. From start to finish of picking her up until I laid her back down in her bed was twenty five minutes. I saw the clock as I left and returned to the garage.

It felt like a lifetime. I think that a lot of my physical nursing discomfort with Calli has been anxiety around the pot. I feel bad that I smoke pot and nurse. I have done a lot of medical research and I have consulted with a number of medical professionals on this topic. It's not great but it's better than any of the other drugs I could be on, honestly. There is still this miasma of shame and guilt. It makes me tense. At this point I don't have a lot of milk left anyway. She's nearly two.

It is going to be hard to finish weaning. She's not ready. She only nurses once or twice a day but it is very important to her. If she doesn't get to nurse at those crucial times she feels really bad. She cries and cries. It breaks her heart. Nursing is a very complex experience on both sides. It still provides enormous health benefits to both of us. (My risks for various cancers and diabetes goes down by the year.) It is very good for both of us to do this.

And when I sit down and nurse her I focus on her in a way I don't the rest of the time. When I sit down and nurse and trace her face with my finger I see how much she has gotten from me.

Shanna feels like a mini-me in a variety of ways that bring me great joy. I feel like if I got to go down a list of traits that describe me and pick which ones to give to my kids Shanna got the things I would pick to give away. Shanna makes me very happy. Seeing her move around the world convinces me that there is good to come and I have to be here to see it.

Calli is a different experience. Calli is a lot like me, don't get me wrong, but if I had to pick the traits to pass on I probably wouldn't have selected quite the list Calli got. Calli is like a lot of the parts of me I struggle to accept. But this morning as I nursed her I found peace with that.

Instead of feeling bad I felt joy that she was there to remind me that even the parts of me I struggle with are good and worthy of emulation.For better or worse this tiny person sees me and sees someone good and wonderful. Someone she wants to be just like. So she picks things to pattern off of. If I don't like the patterns she is picking up, maybe I'd best watch my behavior-hey?

They are so different. Calli's birthday is next month. I asked her if she wanted to have a party for her birthday. She said yes, adamantly. I asked her if she wanted a big party or a little party. That took a little negotiation and explanation. Shanna campaigned hard for a huge party. She started listing off names of people to invite. Calli vetoed almost everyone.

Calli wants the woman who comes to our house every two weeks, her Godmamas whom she sees every month, and the family that has provided the most care taking for her since birth. She strongly vetoed every other name we could come up with.

Shanna invites every person she talks to on the bus and the train to her birthday party. It's hilarious. I'm starting to think I should reserve a spot at Lake Elizabeth and start letting her hand out business cards. If she wants that, she can have it. Calli doesn't want that.

Calli likes quiet small groups. She's overwhelmed by sound and too many people. She doesn't enjoy it. She likes having the few people she is comfortable around visit and that's it.

They mirror very different parts of me. I like it. I like watching them. I feel really good about the ways in which they are different. I feel like they embody the extreme ends of my personality. I feel like a constant peace keeper. "Shanna, don't pressure Calli to do things. If she says no you have to respect her wishes." They are both persistent. It's really wonderful.

I thought about all the things I love about Calli while I was nursing her. Including the fact that she continues to need me so intensely and viscerally. I thank anything that will listen for my children. To my children I am the most important and wonderful person in the world. They are probably going to be the only people I ever feel really comfortable around. They are the extent of my clan.

I haven't weaned Calli and I don't know when I will. It's one day at a time. Some day she will no longer need this from me. I hope I can continue to meet her needs for a while longer.

Early rising

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Yesterday was a very physically demanding day and I fell into bed due to righteous exhaustion at 7:30. I wake up at 3:30 whether I like it or not, lately, so that seems prudent of my body. I have always been inclined to be awake earlier than the people around me. I don’t really care if my blood type says I am pre-agrarian. Clearly my body thinks I should be up and milking some cows right now. I am adapted to farm life in some interesting ways. And I can’t shake these habits. I’ve never really lived on a farm.

For a while when we I was sixteen we lived on my grandfather’s property. It wasn’t anything close to a farm by the time I lived there. He had been dead for years and the various houses were rented out to lazy people. No one worked the property at all. It just decayed.

I’m out of bed right now even though what I want to be doing in snuggling Noah. He’s not a freak of nature like me. He doesn’t go to bed early enough to be wakened right now. I wasn’t this much of an early riser when I was younger but I’ve always had problems based on the fact that I wake up to early. It’s amazing how many people there are in the world  to get mad at you for stupid things like waking up early in the day.

Tom went between not liking it (while traveling because I am thoroughly obnoxious) and ignoring it. He went to bed late and got up somewhere between ten and noon. He wasn’t going to change his life for me. When you add in his work schedule it very quickly became obvious that once I had a real job (especially teaching, with it’s early-morning schedule) I probably would never see him again. We just didn’t match up. It was a petty reason but on the list of reasons we were Just Not Compatible.

I grew up with my sister loathing me. She is a night owl. She thinks the day should start at 2pm. My mom wasn’t that extreme. My mom was actually remarkably flexible. She could fall asleep whenever (years of pervasive exhaustion teach you this trick) and she was happy to take drugs (usually just caffeine, but harder stuff sometimes) to stay up as long as she wanted.

I’m extremely hostile about caffeine usage. I can tell I’m getting snippy towards Noah about the topic. My mom woke up every morning and took a hand full of pills. Sudafed and Vivarin were always in the mix though it changed up a lot over time depending on time of year and current health issues.

I don’t want to need stimulants to live my life. I want to go to bed when I am tired. I’m not entirely sure why this makes me pathetic but it seems to. I am out of synch. I do not have a “fun” schedule. My schedule seems to be freakishly well suited to my being isolated and alone. This is my chattiest part of the day. I’m in the garage typing because Noah has to sleep. This is when the loneliness gets to me the most.

I wake up in a good mood. I wake up fairly excited about the day. I just do. I always have. And then I have to go spend hours and hours in a room by myself not talking to anyone. For the love of Christ don’t talk to anyone. They need to sleep. Shut up. Don’t you care about anyone but yourself? I do. So I hide. I keep my mouth shut. It’s polite.

I wish I could do things and not feel like I am doing them because I am bad. It is highly inconvenient that my most cheerful part of the day are the three hours before anyone else is awake. If someone woke up with me this would be party time. I have nothing else that needs to be done and I’m quite energetic. Yay! That’s a lot of why running in the morning isn’t that much of a hardship. But I don’t like going in full dark. I’m klutzy and that’s a recipe for injury. My eyes aren’t so hot these days anyway. Dear g-d I need new glasses.

I don’t know if other people have the same experience, but for me getting older is this long surprising journey of finding who I am and what I need. Like the early rising. I’m a lot more at peace with it than I used to be. Now I go to bed at 7:30 instead of trying and trying to stay up later so I can be “cool”. I’m not cool. That’s just life. Oh well. For me to try and stay up in order to be “cool” makes about as much sense as lipstick on a pig. I’m a nasty fucking bitch when I stay up too late. My body doesn’t like it.

It’s hard because that cuts me out of just about every social group I have ever known about. I can’t go dancing. I can’t go to bdsm events. I can’t go hang out with people after fucking dinner. I can’t handle the late-night camping sessions. I’m in bed by 8. I’m exhausted. I am a very physically active person. If you include the silly little walking around during the day ten miles of movement in a day is very common. And I’m carrying a minimum of thirty pounds of weight while I do this movement because I have to get Calli around.

I’m oriented early. I just am. I wish I didn’t feel lame for it. I’m uhm, like Benjamin Franklin? Does that make me seem more virtuous? (He was a cantankerous old lech so maybe I’m on the right track.)

It doesn’t matter. Over the years I will use this time to write a good many books. I think I have a lot in me. Good thing I have thirty + years ahead of me of 3-5 hours of being awake before other people. It will give me a lot of time to get these words out of my head.

Today is Friday. It’s a rest day. I think I will stay home today. I will try not to freak out because I’m sick of the neighbor. I feel bad making my kids play alone. But I’m not happy about the behaviors they are picking up. I have limited ways of influencing this and all of them make me feel guilty. I think it’s time to stop feeling guilty and start feeling ruthless.

I made this chunk of my life about raising my kids. I need to make all forward progress about that. If I don’t like all the results of that forward progress, whatever. I can’t try to take care of everything or I will end up taking care of nothing.

long day.

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Well that is the last time I'm going out with that baby carrier. Calli is too fucking heavy. I hurt. Today I woke up and did my three miles (actually 3.26 because I didn't judge the loop perfectly) then we walked to Fairyland and went around Lake Merritt. We do public transit to Oakland so there is a fair bit of walking involved. My off the cuff whine says that I moved my body through at least eight, probably nine, possibly ten miles today. And I carried Calli for at least three miles of it. I carried both kids for about 3/4 of a mile. That was all I could manage. I hurt. Together they weigh ~64 pounds. And I had a bag that was probably almost five pounds.

I think I should stop thinking of myself as not very strong. It's an interesting part of my self identity. On Saturday I am going to go run my second half marathon this life time. And then I will take a shower and go to San Francisco and work a shift in a coffee shop.

I think I should stop thinking of myself as not very capable. I'm starting to think that if I am still not competent then the bar is too high. Give me a fucking break. I've done a lot of manual labor this week. I did a bunch of yard work. I have run 24 miles in the last seven days. And on Saturday I will go run a half marathon.

I'm having a little trouble with this explanation being me. I'm not athletic! I'm a shitty runner! I'm in terrible shape! See, I still have a big belly. (Whatever. I have an ass. I have a very very very nice ass. With shelf. And definition. And LIFT. It's god damn awesome.)

Ok. This is weird. My body has changed a lot. I don't feel like I recognize me very well. I look more intense and feral by the month. Getting through this much exercise is something I can only do through brute will. I hate exercising. This is a nightmare. Only it's not always. It is at the end of a lot of walking in a poorly fitting carrier.

I had a span of intense joy while running today. I had been fucking around with going a little faster then a little slower and I was just going through a corner right at the end of a get-my-breath-back slow jog session when Lady Gaga's "Hair" came on. I could feel the first few beats of the song make my body start lengthening. I consciously checked in with my lungs–my biggest downfall as a runner is I have very low lung capacity. Running has been amazing for this. I had a very slow breath rate and my heart was nice and low and slow. I saw the nice long straight block with decent sidewalk come straight into my line of vision. I lined up on the center line. It felt like giving a horse its head. I felt pulled forward by the fierceness of my energetic response. All of a sudden I just had to run. I sprinted down the block for all I was worth.

It felt so good. I felt so free. I felt so strong. I felt like a god damn bad ass. I probably flailed and looked kind of funny, but not really. I carefully felt every muscle group in my body. I felt like I was moving in tandem. I felt balanced. I felt really good. At the end of the quarter mile stretch I reached down fast and pulled my phone out of my pocket and turned it on to see what it said. The phone has a bit of a lag. By the time it registered I know I had slowed down from my maximum speed. It said I was running at 8.64 mph.

When I first started running I googled "What is the difference between running and jogging?" Some asshole on the internet said, "Nine minute miles. That's the difference."

I'm not there yet. But all of a sudden I feel the ghost of a chance. Some day I might be able to run one nine minute mile.

I cried a lot today. I come from a very athletic family. They sneered at me for my fatness. My sedentary life. It's all so complicated.

Dinner time.

Kids and parents

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I’m having issues with the neighbor kid and dealing with them is complicated. She is a year older than Shanna and she likes to think that makes her the boss. Lately she has been physically preventing Shanna from doing things I tell Shanna to do.

Yesterday I tried to go over to her house and talk to her and her family about it. I talked to the grandmother first. Then the mom. The mom didn’t want me to talk to the kid and said she would handle it. The thing is, this kid is in my house 20-30 hours a week. If I can’t talk to the kid about stuff then she can’t be here.

I’m feeling extremely conflicted. On one hand I TOTALLY GET WANTING TO MICROMANAGE YOUR KIDS. On the other hand, when someone is a caregiver nearly full time… uhm… well… telling me not to talk to your kid about issues is kind of a problem. I think I’m going to need to start sending her home a lot. And Shanna won’t be allowed to play over there.

The grandmother is ostensibly in charge during the day but she spends a lot of time lying down in the other room. She has migraines and a variety of mental health issues that are mostly untreated. She is on meds and she thinks that is all she needs to do for them. Uhm. If you spend more than twenty hours a week in bed because you are sad then your mental health issues aren’t treated. Ask me how I know.

It’s hard trying to figure out the right thing to do. I think I need to start watching them like hawks and sending her home at the first sign of trouble on a day. If I don’t then she punches Shanna. This is getting ridiculous.

I can be honest and admit that part of the problem is I don’t like little kids. They are assholes. (Yes, mine too.) The thing is, this is a little asshole I’m not allowed to discipline or tell no. I’m not going to put up with that shit. If you are going to grow up to be a fucking bully you can do it somewhere else.

But then I feel like, “If no one helps this kid… no one will help this kid.” This is how I fell through the cracks, you know? But she’s hitting my fucking kid. Pretty soon I am going to hit her. The last time she punched Shanna in the stomach hard enough to knock Shanna down and wind her I sent her home and didn’t let her come back for a week. I don’t think the kid’s family cared.

On one hand I feel bad not letting them play because it means that I am dooming Shanna to a lot of alone time. On the other hand I don’t want Shanna getting used to people hitting her. She shouldn’t think that is just a standard part of friendships.

It’s not just the hitting though. I told Shanna to go put her scooter in the yard and this kid physically blocked her and told Shanna she wasn’t allowed into my yard. WTF?! And her mom wouldn’t let me talk to her about it.

Thank goodness she starts school soon. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. Maybe we will just get busier and not have time for the kid. Too bad I don’t want to drive much.

This process blows.

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I’ve been sitting here thinking about why I need a therapist so much all of a sudden. What is this urge. What does it mean? Why is it happening?

I have this intense need to be seen. I need to feel like I exist in the world and I need to see proof of myself reflected in the eyes of other people. Right now I have Noah and the kids, mostly. I go through my life feeling invisible. I am not someone in the eyes of the people around me. I am furniture. They don’t know me and they don’t particularly care.

I have wonderful friends who give me what they can. They are all busy people. I tried to change the nature of my friendships-called-family and they blew up badly. It’s happened one right after another. I can’t keep risking this. This is too hurtful. My need is just too much for people.

I see a therapist week after week after week after week because otherwise no one gives a fucking shit about the stupid piddly shit of my life. I feel like I only exist in the highlights. No one cares what I am actually struggling with. No one wants the story. No one has time. Some of them kind of wish they could. The problem is that if they wish they could maybe then they feel some shame about not being able to help me. Then they get mad at me. Because it’s my fault they feel ashamed.

I need a therapist because I need to see knowledge of me reflected in someones eyes. I desperately fucking need to have someone know my complex story so that I can make small references to the distant past that is hugely significant. I fucking need that. I can’t handle having to live my life in the Readers Digest Version. I feel like a fake and a liar all the god damn time. I’m constantly feeling my heart race because I’m afraid I’ll slip and talk about the wrong thing at the wrong time and all of a sudden people will hate me and tell me they don’t want to be near me any more.

Don’t call this fucking paranoia. This is my god damn life.

I have to pay someone to be as consistent as I need. And even when I do pay someone to be in this role I can’t get it.

I’m looking for a parent. I’m looking for someone to be an active mentor. I feel so fucking alone. I’m so scared. I think I am pathetic. Isn’t it past time I was the adult already?

But I still hide under the desk and cry because I don’t know what to do when I feel consumed with self-loathing other than to hurt myself in some way and I’m trying not to teach that. I don’t know what to do. Right now I rock and cry. I feel like a blithering idiot but I try to comfort myself. I feel really stupid. I stroke my own hair.

No. No one is ever going to take care of me. I will never have that. When I am sick I have to get up and deal with it by myself. It is never going to be different. I just missed that. These things are stupid and petty and small.

But I haven’t cut myself in over a year. I haven’t cut myself since I stopped trying to meet the needs of my chosen family. I just can’t. I have nothing to give. If I want to keep the self control to not mutilate myself I have to save that energy. It is that hard to not hurt myself. To not beat my head on the floor. To not punch door frames.

Sometimes all I can do is sit under the desk and cry.

I need a therapist because I need someone to watch the seasons of my life. Who can coach me. Who can talk to me about why I am currently struggling and what are the “balls” I have to drop. How I can I figure out how to lower the amount of harm in my life? It’s a process.

When I am actively involved in communities I can sometimes coast without a therapist and do ok. I had a Buddy when I was a teacher. He had the classroom next to mine. We spent a lot of time talking. He got a lot of the story. Not the details of abuse or anything. But he learned a lot about me. A lot more than a therapist given how much time we spent talking.

I had that at the munch when I dated Tom. Losing that in the breakup was hard.

I need a therapist because for me what I am feeling right now is what I have always felt and will always feel. It’s not true. I have a very convenient memory. I need someone that I touch base with who really focuses on me. Where I get to be selfish and self absorbed and no I am not going to keep my mouth shut because I don’t want to “burden you”. Fucker I need some god damn support. And I have to pay for it. And it’s flakey. And it might die. Or tell me to go away because I do something horrible. Or it might stop showing up within an hour of the assigned start time. Or it might… just… need to move on. I’m a client, not a friend.

As inadequate as it is… it’s the only way I can have a relationship with someone where I see them every week. I need that. Even though it makes me feel pathetic and stupid and small. Better to pay a therapist to be my friend than to kill myself because I feel like I don’t fucking matter.

Just seems like money well spent.