’bout that doctor visit…

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Sarah was right, she’s a good doctor.  When she came in I was crying, because I’m like that.  She (after dealing with a huge coughing fit) sat down and just wanted to talk for over 30 minutes.  The first thing she wants me to do is go see a psychiatrist because almost everything wrong with me could be potentially related to my mental health issues.  I concur.  I have a doctor recommendation for that.  I’m having some tests done and she also hooked me up with a groino to perform the Essure procedure.  No.more.babies.  All in all I think it is the best visit to a doctor I’ve had in a long time.  Oh!  She told me that she wants me to work harder on getting consistent edibles because she doesn’t like that I’m smoking.  I almost cried tears of joy.

I am taking steps to make my life better.  They just don’t all happen as fast as I want them to.

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I’m starting to pay more mental attention to the things that feel off-limits to blog about.  I’m trying to decide where the boundaries will be.  I have been very erratic for a while.  That’s hard to deal with.  There is damage from that.  I will have to deal with it in the days and years to come.  I get to make a choice though. I get to decide if me talking about my shit leads to drama.  I decide that, not some mystical other person.  It’s hard to live with that.  People are going to get mad at me during life.  I am going to fuck up.  Being a responsible adult with a mental illness means that when I flip out and hurt people I live with the consequences in a mature and respectful manner.  I feel like it falls outside the bounds of “don’t air your dirty laundry” and instead falls into the category of strategic planning.  I have to live here.  You don’t shit where you eat.

That means that when people are upset with me for my behavior I have to nod and say, “Yes.  I did that.  You are right to be upset with me.”  And nod.  And know that I did whatever thing it was I did with the absolute best intentions and hope that some day things will heal.  I have a long life ahead of me.  I don’t really want to burn any more bridges.  I can’t afford to poison the well of my social community.  I don’t have anything else in the world.  It’s a complicated thing.

That is what it means for me to choose life.  I have to learn to swallow my pride and deal with situations that are hard because I god damn need a community.  I can’t alienate my friends more than I already do.  It’s hard being the kind of person that is hard to live with.  I try.  I think there is some bone deep knowledge of how to have long-term relationships that I lack.  I have fucked up a lot of important friendships in my life.  I try to tell myself that the people who have stuck around are the people who want to stick around.  They are the people who are willing to deal with the fact that I severely fuck up sometimes.  I worry about people being willing to put up with me.  I worry about being the monster I am occasionally accused of being.

Maybe if I continue to write about what is happening in my head I will get to the point of knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that when someone is angry with me it is not about me doing something outside my moral code.  If someone else doesn’t like my actions… that’s a different issue.  I can’t control whether or not other people forgive me or want the same things I want.  That’s life.  I don’t know how it works for other people, but conflicts with people I feel close to generally instill a lot of panic in me.  I try to strategize how best to deal with the situation.  The thing is, sometimes the right answer is to just sit back and let someone else decide if they are ok or not.  Because I am ok.  Even though I am sad about whatever conflict is happening at the moment because it’s awesome when things work out such that I get absolutely everything I want, I’m not really interested in changing my situation.  I did what I needed to do.  Ok.

Ok.  I can set this down and walk away now.  It’s time to think about something else.

Saturn return/Astrology rambling

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Uhh, this is random shit, but I found it funny.  No one needs to read this but I want to keep it. 🙂  I love paragraphs like this.  They are so random and vague and yet evocative.

-43 Square Sun – Neptune

You have a desire to be something special or to experience something more than the ordinary. You are a day-dreamer and idealist. It is easy for you to trust others, even (and perhaps especially) people who might seem from the outside looking in as unsavory types. You are looking to identify with something beyond what is normally expected of people. You may have had a childhood that didn’t help you direct or define your life. Perhaps the early family life was lacking in supervision or clearly defined rules. A father figure may have been absent or distant and ineffective. You may have a glorified image of your father. Whether the image is very positive or very negative (or if it swings between these extremes), the image is not very clear or rational. Whatever the case may be, you struggle with defining who you are. You might gravitate towards the “wrong people”, or get in with the “wrong crowd” in an attempt to define who you are. You might be susceptible to being taken advantage of by others, especially by men or authority figures. You may be easily led astray by peculiar desires or self-destructive habits. In order to add a greater-than-ordinary dimension of experience to your life that helps you to feel special and important, you might be attracted to Neptune-ruled behaviors, such as secret affairs, drugs, or other escapist behaviors. In some way, you may feel a strong urge to glamorize your role in the world. There can be some confusion about the past (such as remembering childhood experiences in ways that are far removed from reality), and a tendency to daydream about being someone more “important” than you feel you are. You may struggle with early conditioning that made you feel tossed aside or neglected in some way, and certainly not directed or supported. You are very sensitive, especially with regards to any real or imagined blows to your ego. If the natal chart shows a strong sense of reality and a robust mind (Mercury and Saturn well-placed, for example), the negative interpretations of this aspect are less extreme. Still, you are likely to recognize at some point in your life that you have a tendency to engage in escapist and self-destructive fantasies and/or habits. It is useful to be able to connect these behaviors with their probable source, which is likely to be a weakly-defined ego and identity in childhood. 

Some fucker sure has my number.

Moon in Aquarius people are rarely flighty people, but they can be unreliable when it concerns the little things in life. Often, this is simply an assertion of their independence. In the long haul, however, they are rather constant, as Aquarius is a fixed sign. As long as they have their own space and the freedom to be themselves, however kooky that may be, they are trustworthy and loyal. Lunar Aquarians generally make wonderful friends. They’ll make a point of leaving nobody on the outside. Many will fight for other’s rights and crusade for equality. What may be surprising is that Moon in Aquarius people have a lot of pride. In fact, when they’ve been attacked in any way (especially regarding their character), they can become very inflexible and cool. It can be difficult to know just how sensitive to criticism Lunar Aquarians are, simply because they hide it so well! When their character or behavior has been criticized, they tend to dig in their heels and keep right on doing it. They fully expect others to accept them exactly as they are, or they don’t have much use for them in their lives. These sometimes maddeningly unpredictable people are nevertheless quite charming. They have an unmistakable stubborn streak, but when left to be themselves, they make unusual and endlessly interesting people to be around. Life just wouldn’t be the same without Lunar Aquarians’ unusual spin on the world and the people in it!

I love how complimentary and general astrology is.

Short description:

She is sociable, intelligent and lucid. Thanks to great sociability, she has many friends. She is modern, original, inventive, non-conformist and brings new life to everything she does.

Weaknesses: she is eccentric, with sharp mood swings. Complex love life.

Heh. Maybe.

This position of the Moon indicates an emotional need for a feeling of belonging with, and support from, friends and associations with groups. You look to acquaintances for support, and offer the same in return. A changeable or unstable social life might be a reflection of inner emotional unrest. Waxing and waning feelings for others can cause problems in your relationships. You are a person who is filled with many dreams, wishes, and hopes for your future, and most of these are altruistic and good-hearted desires. However, you might change your aspirations frequently, with your changing moods, and have a hard time settling on goals to work towards as a result.

I admit nothing.

You have a great love of debate, if only to get closer to your own thoughts and opinions. Bouncing ideas off others helps you to make a decision, although coming to definite conclusions can be painfully difficult for you. You see the other side of the coin. You might often play devil’s advocate. Communication with a partner is craved, and you also love an audience for your own thoughts and opinions, but preferably a one-person audience, as you come alive verbally when it’s one-on-one. You can be quite skilled at keeping a partnership animated and alive with interesting tidbits, new ideas, and stimulating conversation. You can easily become bored in partnership if the lines of communication go down, even temporarily. You might also love to talk about and analyze relationships and marriage.

This next bit made me smile.

Venus in Libra people will try to impress you with their kindness, evenhandedness, and willingness to make your relationship work. They have a polished manner in love, which sometimes makes them appear insincere or superficial. They are gentle lovers who hate to be offended. They are threatened by bad manners and direct or abrasive expression of feelings. They not only prefer to choose the middle road, they seek the middle ground in their relationships. You can expect to be treated fairly, and you may be turned on by Venus in Libra’s willingness to concede and adjust their lives to fully accommodate you. Venus in Libra men and women have idealized images of their relationships, even to the point where the relationship becomes bigger than life, taking on a life of its own. They can become quietly resentful if they feel they are being taken advantage of — and they make it easy for more aggressive types to bully them around. 

Pleasing Venus in Libra involves treating them kindly and fairly. They love to share everything with you, so let them. Foreplay for them can be mental — they love to communicate with you about the relationship. Sharing turns them on, and tactless or uncouth behavior is a turn-off. Although they seem to put up with a lot, be fair with them. Over time, imbalance in their relationship is sure to make them unhappy, and when it comes to this, they may try to even the score in subtle, roundabout ways. Don’t let it come to that, and you will be rewarded with a lover who puts themselves in your shoes and treats you exactly how they would like to be treated.

The internet is a silly place.

Her fate depends a lot on marriage. Marries for love, children, happy emotional life.

Her fate depends a lot on marriage. Marries for love, children, happy emotional life.

You live for relationships. It is hard for you to think about being alone. Harmony is most important to you, so it is unlikely you will attempt to dominate a lover. You are a peacemaker, sometimes going to great lengths to achieve a balanced, harmonious relationship. Be careful not to bend over backwards just to keep the peace–you may be taken advantage of. Your marriage partner may be especially attractive, charming, or well off. You are extremely attractive, agreeable, and charming, drawing others to you magnetically. You need an unusual amount of contact and exchange with a partner, and might find that you feel completely lost without one. Some of you might quickly enter into partnerships, perhaps too quickly and neither equipped nor prepared for the responsibilities that a long-term relationship demands. In some cases, there can be a shallow or materialistic interest in partners. Your hips and lower back may be special erogenous zones for you, or they may be especially attractive body parts.


I love the internet.  Yes, my low back is awesome.  Noah take note of the whole next one.

This is one of the more sexual positions of Mars. While they are rather easy to arouse, their passion is long-standing. Mars in Leo natives enjoy sex more than most, as long as heavy doses of love and romance are part of the package. In partnership, they demand loyalty and admiration. Impatient with small-mindedness and disloyalty, Mars in Leo natives generally have a strong idealistic streak. They easily get fired up when they feel they’ve been humiliated, and they defend their high principles with ardor. Mars in Leo natives act with their heart. Their ego is tied up with their actions, so that most anything they do becomes a source of great pride. Though some are self-righteous and quarrelsome, the more sophisticated people with this position are kindly leaders. 

I like to think of myself as a benevolent dictator.

She makes a good marriage, with a useful partner who helps to bring success if only by his advice. She never goes outside the bounds of legality.

Hahahahahahaha.  I immediately started hearing “Breaking the Law” in my head.  Awesome.

10 Conjunction Neptune – Midheaven

Her plans lack realism and are therefore often unattainable.

Well fuck you too.

House I is the area of self identity. The ascendant is a symbol of how one acts in life. It is the image of the personality as seen by others, and the attitude that one has towards life.

Virgo ascendant Aries

Hard-working. Projects a loner personality. Very involved in her work.

Ascendant In Aries

People with Aries Ascendants are direct and quick. Their first instinct is to do, rather than think. Planning ahead? Forget it. Aries rising simply charges forward without much ado. This position does not make a person aggressive. Forthright, yes, but aggression is too strong a word for these natives. They have a youthful, direct manner that sees what it wants and generally goes for it. At the same time, there isn’t any malice in their intent. Some Aries rising people are competitive, but they generally put most of the pressure on themselves. These people love to come out ahead in all that they do. They get ready quickly, walk quickly, and have little patience for dilly-dallying. Their temper is quick, too. It’s also quick to disappear. Rarely do you find Aries rising people holding grudges. Their mannerisms are rather simple and straightforward.

Aries rising loves action, and is often trying to stir up some activity. Their strengths lie in their enterprising ways. Finishing things they start does not always come as easily, unless the ruler, Mars, is placed in a more tenacious sign, such as Taurus or Scorpio. Aries Ascendant often gives a rather swift walk, with the head leaning forward slightly. This walk is surprisingly distinctive. Headaches, and sinus and eye problems are the usual physical complaints of this position. Rashes and acne on the face and shoulders sometimes occur. Broad shoulders and slim hips are common. Often, Aries rising people are quick to smile, and they possess a youthful charm throughout life. Probably early on in life, Aries rising people got typecast as the “independent” child. As adults, people with Aries Ascendants often stick to that role in life. People don’t run to help them out — they appear quite fine doing things on their own. These people have learned to be self-reliant, and this generally stems from their early experiences. Despite a rather brusque and independent manner, these natives are usually very willing to compromise in their relationships, and are very attached to the people they hold dear. 

Ok, that one was more of a mixed bag.

House III is the area of social and intellectual learning.

House III in Gemini

She adapts well to any kind of change, and enthusiastically. She doesn’t like monotony. Early family life was busy, and usually this position suggests a number of siblings. Work in communications or the media is possible. Writing talent is also probable. Reads and thinks a lot, but is not very focused. Has a lot of projects going at once.

Yup.

House IX in Sagittarius

Long voyages abroad. Might settle permanently in a foreign country. Intellectual work, mathematical mind.
House XII is the area of education and of emotion.

House XII in Aquarius

Friends can bring quite a lot of problems.

Hilarious.

I’m not sure I believe any of it.  But it’s fun to think about.

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I was institutionalized for doing something that broke societies rules.  Suicide is just another taboo.  I have been suicidal for as long as I have memory of knowing that my life could end.  When I found out about the concept of death my response was, “That sounds great, sign me up.”  Relief from thinking and feeling and being me.

Fast forward, I’m not actively suicidal this week (yay!) but I have my days.  I move on to other taboos.  It is not irrational for me to fear reprisal for breaking taboos.  It is not irrational for me to think that people might harm me and do considerable damage to my long-term emotional health in the name of getting me to conform.  It has already happened.  Given that I am now an adult married to someone who is enthusiastic about my taboo breaking I am much less likely to get into a situation where I can be harmed for my taboo breaking.  So magically I am supposed to be able to stop that bone deep fear.  Now it is magically irrational and I should stop feeling that way.

If anyone has a pill that can do that, I’ll buy it.  I don’t exactly enjoy the fact that my heart has been racing almost continually for the past 24-ish hours.  I don’t enjoy the feeling that I am one ill-timed grab from my child away from beating my head against the concrete floor because I need something that powerful to overcome the intensity of my feelings.  I need something that can break through the screaming in my head.  I’m smiling.  I’m interacting with the kids a little, but mostly I’m just sitting and staring into space in between trying to figure out chores.  I timed it this morning and if I get up and start moving fairly quickly I can get all my daily/weekly chores done on Monday by 9am.  Not bad.  Now if only I knew what I wanted to do with the day.

We are going to go sign Shanna up for swim lessons today.  And we will go to the park.  But it’s almost 11 and I’m still scared and sad.  It’s hard to be around.  People don’t want to pussyfoot.  I understand.  It is a lot of work.  I don’t like doing the work I require either.  It seems kind of ridiculous to need this kind of extensive negotiations and fuss about boundaries.  It would be so much easier if I could just not fear irrational things.  It would be so much more fun for everyone if I could just be ok with however they behave because they don’t mean anything.

This is what this crazy girl looks like.  I will tell you up front, “Hey once you cross this line into this other category in my brain you can’t be around my kids any more.”  That isn’t about anyone else or their behavior.  I would think that the way to potentially soften that boundary would be to rigorously follow it for a very long time without the slightest deviation to prove that you understand that this is a real boundary and very serious for me.  I’m sad.  I guess I did fail.  I thought I was communicating clearly and I didn’t.

This is why I am not interested in polyamory.  All of a sudden I am supposed to emotionally caretake for more people.  I can’t take care of myself.  If you want to stand near me emotionally you have to have a very thick wall between you and me.  You have to understand that sometimes I am going to freak the fuck out and that doesn’t mean you did something wrong it means I was triggered.  You have to be a willow tree that is flexible with the winds of my moods but isn’t really affected.  Noah is my mate because Noah can hold me while I sob and cry and am hysterical and he doesn’t take it personally.  I can scream at him on the internet and talk about all the most intimate parts of our life and relationship and he knows that at the end of the day I cannot change him.  He just is.  He decides his behavior based on his best guess at my mood because some days things go well and some days they don’t.  But it’s not his fault.  It’s not about him.  When I am angry about something that Noah has done, part of it is his acceptance of responsibility.

Noah has raped me.  That’s a boundary violation beyond all others in an intimate partnership.  I know that he can do that to me.  It’s not an irrational fear.  It’s a healthy respect.  At this point I have to simply trust that he will never do that to me again.  Do you know why I trust him enough?  Because he rigorously, fanatically, slavishly observes my boundaries.  If I tell him he can’t say the word “the” to me today he will do it.  He will say: “I think that is an irrational boundary and I am not thrilled about it, but I will endeavor to follow your rule.”  And then he would.  He would make this overnight weird work around in his vocabulary.  Because even though it’s irrational and weird and makes his life hard… I’m worth that.  This would be why I can relax boundaries over time and we can take turns being the one who gets the most focus.  I trust him.

Other people don’t understand my boundaries.  They think it is about them.  They think they are threatening.  They think they are the problem.  That’s not it.  This is just what the crazy train looks like.  I make ridiculous demands.  Outrageous demands.  But I spell them out in advance and give people the opportunity to say yes or no.  The awesome part is when people say they understand and my demands are reasonable… until I follow up.  Then I’m doing something… I don’t know.  Mean?

It’s probably the stunt cock comment.  I have rewritten this section over and over.  I think there are two kinds of people.  For the purpose of this explanation I am going to call them bonders and non-bonders.  Just for this conversation.  When bonders have sexual contact it increases their feeling of wanting to spend time together.  When non-bonders have sexual contact they continue to want to decide if spending time together is wanted based on completely unrelated factors.

I kept myself distracted this morning doing chores until I ran out of “needs to be done today” that felt unstressful and I ran out of physical energy.  Then I sat down and realized how fast my heart was racing and I wanted to puke and I started shaking… because I have to get up today and go register Shanna in swim classes.  I have to do that.  I am freaked out because today I am not going to be able to take both kids with me, watch them, keep them safe, get information about the classes (not everything is on their website), wait through whatever lines we incur, stay calm even if Shanna acts out, try to remain calm as Calli beats the shit out of the back of my neck while I stand in line, have a coherent conversation with another adult while I am completely overwhelmed by noise (this is a pool building–they are loud), and I’m already having massive panic attacks and hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I can’t date anyone.  I don’t have a spare five minutes in my day to give a shit if someone is upset about what kind of time I can or can’t give to them.  Fuck anyone else’s needs.  I did not sign on for anyone else’s fucking needs.  I said that I wanted to be a dirty whore and step out on my life.  Dirty whores are not sensitive and new agey.  I said I wanted a stunt cock who would be nice to me.  Apparently I don’t actually know what that demographic looks like.  Noah tells me a lot that the only way to get good at things is to try and fail a whole bunch of times.

This is why crazy people look like drama.  I have in my head the interaction I want to have.  The kind of relationship.  That wasn’t it.  I probably need to hunt outside the poly community.  Hrm.  But then I will be dealing with men who are cheating.  Shit.

What does it actually look like?  Well, I want someone who understands that it isn’t personal, I don’t want my lovers over at my house socializing with my kids.  It makes me have feelings I don’t like.  So I correctly identify the cause of the fuss and I try to eliminate it.  If I invite you to a big party at my house where there will be 30+ people and I won’t be interacting with you much… that’s different.  But I want my kids to meet my lovers as distant people in a vague community of people they gradually get more exposure to as they age.  My lovers aren’t invited over for dinner.  My lovers don’t get to ask about toys. That makes the pit of my stomach claw and retch.  It’s not personal.  It’s not a rejection of anyone in particular.  It’s not that any of them are bad people.  I don’t think Tom is a bad person but I honestly don’t want him hanging out with my kids.  That’s not something you are supposed to admit out loud.

I don’t want people around my kids who cause me to feel more unstable.  I have to monitor and manage my moods.  That is a simple and literal fact of my life.  It will always be true.  I have to minimize my stress.  The obvious solution here is that I should simply be monogamous because then I don’t have to worry about meeting other peoples needs.  Ugh.  That’s not really going to work long term.  I want to have that part of me off existing.  But really, I can’t date.  I can’t be responsible for someone else’s happiness.  I just can’t.  I am not able to provide that for anyone.  I have nothing left to give.

This morning I had to go wake Sarah up to help with the kids because I desperately needed to smoke and write.  When I started this I wasn’t able to stop crying any more.  My stupid momentary frustrations were adding up.  Shanna hasn’t done anything wrong.  But she did throw crumbs all over the garage after I asked her to not bring food out of the dining room.  We have serious problems with bugs.  I am in a constant battle to confine food to the kitchen because otherwise I have ant infestations that send me into horrifying panic attacks.  And I have to keep my mouth shut and not obviously react and clean up the fucking ants no matter how I fucking feel because I am the fucking mom and I have to shut the fuck up and just do it.  So you know that overdosing thing when I was 15?  Yeah.  Ants.  That was my hallucination.  I constantly fight ants in this house.  It is this low level of stress thing for me that I can’t seem to get rid of.  It keeps my stomach hurting.  I find ants in my bed.  That honest to god scares the shit out of me and not screaming hysterically constantly is a heroic act.  I have learned to master that phobia.  But it’s really hard and it takes a lot out of me.

So Shanna didn’t do anything terrible or wrong or bad.  But I asked her to please keep the food on the linoleum.  She ran, giggling, and threw herself on the big ugly chair clutching the last of the delicious cinnamon raisin bread a dear friend gave me for my birthday.  We’ve been hoarding it out to savor it.  When she got up I noticed that she had smeared the bread and crumbs all over the chair seat, back, arms, in the seams, and all over the floor.  I had sudden images of ants.  The ants that are going to crawl on me next time I sit in that chair.  And then I have to calmly ask my wonderful sweet baby girl to take the rest of the bread back to the kitchen, you can see how there are crumbs everywhere.  If we spread crumbs we will get ants.  Have you noticed the ants we have in the dining room?  I want to keep all the food in there please, thanks.  Then I got to clean it up.  While I was in the garage cleaning up that spill Shanna decided that this is a great time to practice pouring.

Do you really want me to continue?  It’s not that a little water spilled is that bad.  It’s that there were crumbs all over the floor from the bread and now it’s a soggy mess.  It’s that it’s on the table, multiple chairs, and the floor.  It’s that she took containers out of the thrift store box to play with and now I have to dry them off and put them back in the box.  I should probably also hurry up and take it out to the van because HOLYFUCKINGSHIT will she just empty it in the next five minutes if I don’t.  And I need to stay calm.  And smile.  And be enthusiastic about her exploring the world.  And teach her how to clean up after herself–which is way the fuck harder to be patient while doing when I am in the middle of a panic attack.

Do you know what a panic attack feels like?  It feels like a heart attack.  And that’s been happening for over 24 hours now.  I’m not seeing a doctor because dude, I am probably doing this because I am going to see a doctor and I am freaked the fuck out.  For me to go talk to a doctor about the extent of my acting out and self-harm and transgressive behavior is for me to risk commitment.  I would not be able to tell a doctor with a straight face that I am not suicidal.  Because even though I haven’t thought about it this week… the minute someone asks me about it I will crumble and admit that yes I really kind of wish I could be selfish enough because this fucking hurts and I am so very very tired.

But I woke Sarah up.  Because I was getting to the point where keeping the mask on was resulting in me spontaneously crying.  Because when I’m that frustrated and I’m not allowed to show anger at all I start crying.  My sister used to taunt me with it.  Soon I have to go nurse Calli.  She is obviously getting done with me having a break.  It’s time to go let her nurse to sleep.

Yes I want a fucking stunt cock who keeps his messy emotional shit away from me.  I have nothing to fucking give anyone.

Feelings

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I keep reading about how this stage of healing is normal and necessary.  I’m still pretty tired of it.  I’m tired of feeling fear and anger.  I’m tired of closing my eyes and seeing screaming in my head.  I bet you didn’t know someone could see screaming.  I feel trapped and overwhelmed and desperate.  I feel like an animal. I feel like I am barely connected to the thinking part of me.  All I want to do is hurt someone.  Myself, other people… it really doesn’t matter.  I just want to get this pain out of me.  I’m really worried about having to spend a week or more freaking out about each individual trauma in my life.  I probably don’t need to explain how awful that would be, right?  For each incident?  Oh god.

It’s interesting how the old processing gets mixed in with my current anxieties and worries and morphs.  I have a really high level of inappropriate anger.  I am seething with anger over things that happened over a decade ago and it makes me jitter.  I am really struggling not to do significantly more hostile things than I have already done.  I haven’t self harmed in the past day.  That’s my first big victory of getting through this patch.  Last night I was freaking out and wanted to self-harm.  I comforted Shanna instead.

I need to get a futon.  I actually suspect that if I had a sleeping space in the garage away from the kids I could sleep at night.  I can’t move in my bed because the little @#$# darling children kick me in the face.  Shanna has been joining us in the middle of the night lately because she’s scared.  She wants more time with me and she doesn’t know how to get it during the day.  There isn’t enough time for her to get as much attention as she wants.  I’m struggling with how resentful I feel.  This is why I can’t have a job.  If I had to deal with the clinging limpet thing after work every day I would be so very violent.  The job would take away all my people-cope for the day and I would come home and hate her for touching me.

I don’t want to hate my children.  Not at all.  Not even for five minutes.  I don’t hate them.  Oh god.  Sometimes I do.  I hate them for touching me sometimes because I am so angry and upset that I still don’t have any right to have my body treated gently.  Never in my life have I had the experience of people being kind and gentle to my body on an on-going basis.  The vast majority of my sex has been focused on me being as uncomfortable/in as much pain as possible.  That seems to be what most of my lovers want from me.  Maybe it’s just what I tell them I want.  Maybe it’s just what I was told I was allowed to have.  Maybe I’m so tired of my body hurting that I feel weak and defeated.  I feel like my option in life is to suck it up and adapt to being hurt more.

That’s why I’m flashing back to the institution.  My kids do a lot of sitting on me and hurting me.  The only thing I can really do is heavily dissociate so that at least I am not hurting them back.  Today is going to be hard.  I can already feel my throat closing in panic.  I can hear Calli in the kitchen with Noah.  I should go pick her up and take her off Noah’s hands while he makes breakfast.  Instead I am hiding in the garage while I sob.  I don’t want my baby to touch me.  I don’t want her to pinch me or hit me or kick me or roughly grab my throat if I don’t respond fast enough.  I don’t want her to bite my nipple or twist it or yank on it or grind it or roll it or…

Weaning isn’t going very quickly.  She’s a baby.  She’s not ready to lose nursing.  On the good days it’s alright.  She’s already done very well at adapting to other people putting her to sleep.  She loves outings with Noah for basically the entire day.  She can hang out with Sarah almost all day.  She’s pretty equally fussy for them as me.  She has cut down her nursing, but it’s still happening and I’m feeling very avoidant.  I’m really hoping that she passes this sensitivity to cow dairy.  That would make weaning easier.

Now I’m out of the body memories because I am listening to Noah and Calli play and talk.  It’s really nice.  Earlier on in Shanna’s life I felt this constant pressure to be present.  I couldn’t let them have their private time.  Life is a lot easier on me since I have gotten over that stupid hangup.  No, I don’t think mothers should be required to be on duty 24/7.  I kind of hate my life.  Sure I half-heartedly encourage other people to consider having a stay at home parent (doesn’t need to be mom) because I think there is a lot more focus on a family unit that way but it’s my stupid prejudice and there are studies that agree and disagree with me and people will do what they need to do.  So there.  Maybe I’m feeling defensive about something else-net and I’m now over reacting.  Charming.

Emotional day.

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Yesterday I turned 30 and realized it was now half my life ago that I was institutionalized. I’ve spent the day with body memories of being strapped to a table while I fought and screamed. My body hurts and feels overly sensitive. I feel scared. I have tried to talk about it when and where it is useful.

Mostly I just try to make it through another day of being me. Today was a harder day than many. I hope that tomorrow involves less terror, anger, rage, crying, and pain. These are old ghosts. They may look like they are winning a pitched battle today, but I can outlast them. I’m still alive.

The problem with messy boundaries

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I’m pretty good at tracking my own emotional state.  Lots of practice and all that.  Today I was reminded what it looks like when people have messy boundaries.  Recently I have been talking with someone a fair bit and I made it clear over and over that I needed our interactions to happen entirely out of the sight of my children.  It’s someone I have sexual energy with and I don’t like having that around my kids.  It makes me uncomfortable.  An object was left at my house after the party last week.  It needed to be retrieved.

Specifically I was told someone would drop by sometime this week and grab it.  To speed that along I put said object in a bag and met this person at the door.  I was then asked if said person could come in.  There was a very understandable reason why said person wanted a rest period.

All of a sudden I am socially obligated, if I am a “friend” to have this person into my house.  Even though I have spent all day alternating between raging and crying.  I am not feeling comfortable in my skin.  I keep having the sensation of being trapped on a restraint table in a mental hospital, sure come right the fuck in.  No one did anything wrong, of course.  I could have said no after all.  It’s not like I would have seemed rude if I had said, “Uhm I’m a crazy person and this is a bad day.  Go away.”  I carefully manage going out of my house so I don’t lose it in public.

I make these boundaries clear with people in my life because I have to.  Because this is reality for me.  If I tell you that I don’t want to see you around my kids because it makes me uncomfortable what I mean is that I am going to spontaneously feel like I am about to vomit on the floor because I feel so completely uncomfortable with the fact that one of my lovers is being chummy with my kids.  That’s what my sister’s lovers did.  Right before they asked to fuck me.  I can’t turn it off in my head.  I can’t.  This is my fucking boundary and I god damn get to have it.

And when you were asked, “Was there anything else” and you say in that studiously soft and bedroomy voice… “There is one question I want to ask… but probably not in front of the littles” oh my fucking god.  That is why I told you I didn’t want you in my house with my children.  You just made a god damn allusion to my transgressive sex life in front of my kids.  I should be ok with this, right?  That’s the theory in Harmful to Minors at least.  But I’m not ok.  That fucking bothers me.  That’s not right.  Was it obviously over the line?  Of course not.  But it was skirting the edge of the line.  That was pointing at the edge of the line and saying, “Can I move it back just an inch?  It’s only an inch.  An inch doesn’t matter.”

I don’t fucking think so.

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It took 20 years before I told my family that my father raped me.  I don’t think of myself as keeping secrets and yet that’s a long time.

I’m reading TCTH again.  I’m feeling kind of upset about the constant refrains that people should get off all drugs.  I don’t think they are including psych meds and I am god damn using marijuana as a psych med.  So I’m feeling very defensive.  See, even the other survivors think I am bad for needing help in coping.  I am supposed to just manage.  I am supposed to have all this self control magically appear because I am ready to heal now.  How do I get through the parts where I am raging inside my head?  When I am stoned I can sit on the couch and stroke Shanna’s hair and smile at her while she babbles at me even if in my head I feel like I am strapped to a table screaming as loud as I can.  I feel like my head is going to explode from the intensity of this silent screaming.

When I am stoned I honestly don’t think it impacts her.  Noah and Sarah both say they cannot tell.  I do experience the emotions.  I do try to work through them in my head and in writing and in talking to people.  But I really and truly have to maintain a stone facade when I am with my kids.  I can’t have feelings that are about these other parts of my life.  I am too volatile.  As long as my children continue to cause me physical pain all day long every single fucking day I need some way of not reacting.  I have been very hyper sensitive for months.  This stage of processing is always like this.  My skin is too thin.  I am in horrible pain from the most casual of touches and nothing these children do feels casual.

I’m reading about Complex PTSD.  I feel haunted by the repeated mention of the fact that the abuse had to happen in an on-going situation where you couldn’t get out.  That’s what is contributing to my abject panic and desire to get away from the kids.  I feel trapped and they are hurting me.  It’s hard to know if any of this has physical cause.  I say.  I’m going to see a doctor.  I’m kind of terrified.

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I have a secret.  I carried a balance on my credit cards last month.  Almost $10,000 (it is more than that now).  I did it on purpose because I knew that I would be able to pay them off now.  I just got my last annuity check.  Every month since I turned 18 I have received a check for $1,200 every month completely tax free.  I was attacked by a pit bull when I was a child and my friend’s father represented me.  I think he did a fabulous job of handling my settlement.  On my 30th birthday the payments end with a $36,200 check.  (Last monthly payment + $35,000 pay off.)  I’m so thrilled about how much cash I have in my bank account that I’d kind of like to take a screen shot and frame this.  Before the credit card payments go out this month I will hit $50,000 in cash for about a day.

I’ve been talking to Sarah about this a lot.  I’m not sure if someone who grew up in a safe, secure home can understand the kind of elation I feel right now.  This is so much safety and security.  It’s freedom.  If I was truly feeling like I could not handle my life right now I could bail.  I’m not going to.  But right this minute I have all the means I need to disappear if I want to.  I don’t want to.  I choose to be here.  This is what I want.  That’s a weird feeling.  I am not a victim of anything in my life because I choose it.

Right now I’m having a lot of strong mood swings.  I’m doing a lot of hiding from the kids.  As a result the kids are extra-super-clingy.  Which cycles my moods faster.  It’s really nice to have this money appear right now to smack me in the face right now that I really and truly want to be here.  Even with the things I miss about going out.  Even though I miss friends and communities… I can never get this time back.  I really want to be here with my kids.

I’m struggling with the fact that I will no longer be supplying $14,400/year to the household.  I am, in fact, increasing how much I take out of the pool because I am going to do less work (hiring a maid) instead of working more and contributing money as well.  It’s hard to feel like I have enough worth to be in this position.  I find it rather odd to be trying to live more according to Noah’s principles than mine.  You see, I didn’t grow up with intellectuals.  I grew up with stupid, uneducated people.  Not all stupid people are uneducated and not all uneducated people are stupid.  But my family is both.  The idea that any mental work I am doing has value?  That’s odd.  If I have not done substantial physical labor I feel guilty all day.  I’m not supposed to rest.  People like me have to earn rest and there is no chance I have worked enough lately.  I’ve been lazy all week!  Well, sorta.  This is all vague.

Noah believes that me reading, improving myself as a person, writing, and interacting with other adults in intellectual ways are actual priorities.  He wants there to be time in my life for these things.  He does not think I should be working all the time.  It’s weird.  Those are not pastimes I was raised to appreciate.  I have always done them, but it was furtive and hidden.  Shameful.  My secret life.  But what if it isn’t a secret?  What if I get to sit out here in my personal Wonderland and write.  What if that is totally ok?  How about if I learn how to write while sober so that the kids can wander in and out so they don’t feel cut off from me?  Enh, that may be a stretch.  Hm.  I should think about scheduling.  The problem is that I don’t generally smoke on a regular schedule so I have ebbs and flows of how effective it is.  This is why I’m thinking about scheduling things.  I can’t believe I am thinking about scheduling my life so I can be a more effective stoner.

I’m weird, Sir.

Fear isn’t always irrational

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            I was institutionalized half my lifetime ago.  I tried to kill myself.  Specifically I went and found all the sleeping pills in the house (we had lots because my family bought them at Costco).  We were living in Redwood Estates up in the mountains.  It was a weird old house.  Long and narrow—it looked a lot like a giant barn.  At just under 2700 square feet the house seems like it should be perfectly adequate to the needs of any family.  Five bedrooms and two baths.  That’s a lot!  We must have been rich.  Only we had 12 people living in that house.  When I was 15 and I overdosed I had my own room.  No one liked me enough to share a room with me.  They would rather have every other room in the house be 3-4 people rather than anyone have to be near me.  I wonder why I was suicidal.
            They don’t understand how they set me up.  I lived in this weird world.  I went to school with these rich kids—they had freedom and security I couldn’t even dream about.  They broke huge rules without consequence.  There was always a way to fix any problem.  And my family left me alone all the time.  They alternated between telling me how wrong my behavior was, I was bad., bad, bad; and telling  me that I was so smart I could handle anything.  Then they sent me to my room to be alone.  I talked on the phone with boys and men because I didn’t feel secure enough to call girls.  Girls didn’t like me.  Boys and men did though.
            I used to call the dj at the radio station in the middle of the night for company because I was lonely.  He became my friend.  Then he became my lover.  I was 12 and he was 25.  That’s not part of the overdose story, but that’s the kind of thing I was doing when my family told me to go be by myself. 
            I don’t remember what set me off that night.  It doesn’t really even matter.  I’m sure it would be possible to spin it as sounding idiotic and small and I’m sure it would be possible to spin it so that it is the inevitable step in my decent into madness.  Cutting wasn’t doing much for me any more because I was afraid to hurt myself more.  I’ve always been kind of a coward.  That’s why I don’t think my cutting is actually such a big deal.  It is not the most damage I inflict on myself and I don’t understand why it is the one people freak out about.  Avoiding.  I’m avoiding.  I’m trying to remember where the pills were stored.  It’s evading me. I’ve lived in a lot of houses.  The details get fuzzy.  I know I came back upstairs with a glass of water.  That was foolish.  You see, the sleeping pills were the uncoated chalky blue kind.  They tasted awful.
            It was hard to continue swallowing pills.  I started off trying to take them by the handful, but it made them dissolve too much in my mouth.  I think those tricksy bastards in the manufacturing company had a plan.  They don’t want to feel bad about the deaths of stupid ninny white girls like me.  The kind who take many boxes of sleeping pills because they are so afraid of waking up the next day and having to inhabit this body and this brain for another day.  During that time far more so than now, it hurt to be me.  I gagged my way through that box.  By the end the simple act of trying to swallow the pills was pushing me to nearly vomit and I didn’t want to puke.  I knew that would force me to live.  I swallowed around 90 pills.  Three boxes of 30. 
            Then I sat on my bed and I waited to die.  It was one of the longest nights of my life.  There was this big part of me that wanted to know what it felt like.  I didn’t want to fall into death from unconsciousness—that sounds comfortable.  I wanted to be ripped in agony from life because that was the only real way to get away from the agony of pain I was in.  It sounds so emo.  It sounds so trite and common and standard.  Doesn’t every stupid teenager do the same thing?  I was a goth, of course I was suicidal.  I was conforming to non-conformity.
            Only that’s not how it was.  My father started molesting me when I was a baby. He put a gun to my head when I was nine years old and asked me if I deserved to live while I was sucking his cock.  I was raped over and over starting when I was seven.  I’m not emo.  There is nothing emo about me.  If anything my reactions to my life show a gross underestimation of how severe the trauma I went through was.  My brother was hit by a car when I was eight and was in a coma for five months.  I moved every 3-18 months until I was an adult.  I was not emo.  It’s a miracle I survived with any shred of sanity.
            When we visited Los Gatos I was expected to fall into the role of a happy well adjusted teenager.  All these people were living the same old same old lives and they couldn’t understand my constant disruptions.  What was my problem?  My mother acted like I had been standing nearby while other people were abused but I was just a whiner because my life wasn’t that bad.  I was told constantly how everyone around me had it worse than me and I needed to just shut up.
            As I lay there in bed waiting to find a true cessation of my pain in death instead I found out that if this was death I didn’t want it.  It was far worse than the mushroom trip gone bad a few years ago.  Far far worse.  That night still haunts my dreams.  You remember the scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when he has to stick his hand into the wall of bugs?  That was what my bedroom walls looked like.  My bedroom had those awful super dark brown faux wood paneling you see in ugly trailer homes.  There is nothing good about the experience of those panels.  It was already a horrible cave of a room.  And my heat came from the candles I burned, so I always had a dozen or more candles going, otherwise it was too cold. 
            I watched the walls stream with bugs and I lay there and cried.  It was all a lie.  There was no peace in death.  Death was just more hell, and an even more terrifying level at that.  I had to cry silently because I didn’t want to wake anyone else up.  I wandered the halls some.  I chased lizards up and down the hallway as they darted from shadowy area to shadowy area.  I know I vomited at some point, in the bath tub.  I did my best to clean it up.  I don’t know how successful I was.
            At some point as I lay there in a sniveling ball of disgusting mess I noticed that it was time to start getting ready for school.  I tried to.  But I was erratic and crying.  I begged my mother to help me get the kittens out from under her bed because otherwise they were going to poop.  That scared her.  I don’t remember anything about the ambulance ride.  I remember waking up briefly in the ER as they shoved a tube down my throat and forced me to vomit up charcoal.  It was painful and invasive.  It felt like my body was being raped in a new and exciting way.  Death truly holds no promise of cessation from pain.  I am not sure I believe it happens any more.
            I was fairly immediately put on 72 hour hold.  5150’ed as they say out here in California.  I was a danger to myself.  I think I just now right this minute got to the point where I understand voluntary commitment.  You see, I didn’t tell anyone I was raped or molested or assaulted or abused.  They all thought I was a spoiled Los Gatos kid.  Sure, people knew I moved around a lot and my brother was hit by a car.  But none of that was treated like it was traumatic in and of itself.  I was told I hadn’t been traumatized therefore I was just crazy.
            Not very many people came to visit me.  Strangely, my brother Jimmy made an appearance.  He told me that he loved me and he hoped I could find a way to deal with my problems.  Because I am the one with problems.  It’s not like anything happened to me that kind of explains or justifies my choices.  I was just freaking out, right?
            To this day if I am in a group of people and the group is told to “draw their feelings” I feel completely irrational rage and I struggle with not committing serious violence.  I want to break someone’s fucking nose for saying that to me.  I tried with the art therapy leader.  That was when I was dragged kicking and screaming and flailing down a hallway. 
            Don’t picture long and narrow and white like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or anything.  This was the 1990’s in the bay area in a child/adolescent wing of a hospital.  It was pleasant neutral colors.  That doesn’t actually humanize the experience of being forced through a doorway and on to a table.  The padding on the table does not prevent injury to your soul.  The straps don’t prevent you from hurting yourself.  All it does is show you that you are a non-person.  A thing to be controlled at all costs.  It doesn’t matter why you have these feelings inside of you.  It doesn’t matter how badly you have been harmed.  You have to keep fucking control over yourself or we will god damn control you.  No veneer of civility over it makes a difference.
            There is a humiliation to being overpowered that most people never really understand.  People get this intense feeling of scared, overwhelmed, maybe angry when they are held against their will.  Truly being overpowered when you feel like you are fighting for your life is not something you ever forget.  My body was compromised.
My father may have raped me.  But the institution convinced me that the whole fucking world believes I am just a thing and I do not deserve normal human consideration.  The institution made me into an animal.  When I feel unstable, which is honestly fairly frequently, I spend a lot of time looking around me and gasping in fear if someone moves towards me too suddenly.  Now I know that the people around me don’t always have respect for me as an autonomous person.  When are they going to violate me again?  When am I going to lose the right to make decisions for myself, again?
Can anyone really call my fears irrational with a straight face?  Ok fine, the kind of abuse I went through is a statistical blip.  It’s only because of kind and intensity.  The smaller incursions on my humanity happen all the time and I am expected to ignore them.  I am supposed to ignore people stepping all over my right to body autonomy.  Because I don’t actually have a right to body autonomy.
All I have to say is it’s a good thing that my life is trending better.  Maybe some day I will truly believe it is irrational for me to feel fear about people hurting.  Maybe some day it will be irrelevant and unlikely and all those other things other people get to experience.  My children will not understand. 
It has to be enough.

Scenes

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Do as I say, not as I do.  There’s an old trope.  I hear it going through my mind as she screams.  Mostly the words don’t really appear.  I stopped listening a long time ago.  Bitch.  Stupid.  Nasty tone of voice.  I am supposed to be all sweetness and light.  While she is… what exactly?  I don’t think I am going to follow that trope.  I snap back to attention when her hand impacts my face.
            “Kristine Lenora I am talking to you!”
This is it.  I get to decide now.  Am I done or not.  I feel the pressure erupting from the pit of my stomach.  No.  I am not going to do what you tell me to do.
I notice all of a sudden that her hand is holding her cheek.  She looks shocked.  I can’t even remember hitting her.  I turn around and flee back to my room.  My hiding spot away from them.
She never hit me again.
Which isn’t to say that I stopped the violence in my life, far from it.  But it changed in quality.  I had acknowledged her as the enemy and struck a blow for my own defense.  I declared that I was now an adversary instead of a subject.  That’s an important distinction when you are a terrorized child.  Every burst of self defense is symbolic.  I have often thought that if I were to get to teach classes to young children on how to survive being abused the first thing I would tell them is the most important thing they have learned is that they have to take care of themselves in this life.  It’s a hard and a sad truth, but it is part of life.  If you have to take care of yourself you need to figure out how to go about doing that.  Really taking care of yourself involves a lot of long-term planning.
Do as I say, not as I do.  In my family advance planning is a joke.  Everything is done late, at the last minute, there is never enough money to meet all of their obligations.  But they sure know how to party and relax.  Is it any wonder that I believe I must have a long laundry list of work I have recently accomplished at all times?  My alternative is to be a loser.  I will not be like them.  I have gotten out.  My life is different.
The thing they never tell you when you are signing up for “healing from childhood trauma” is there is no guarantee that life afterwards will really be better.  Partially because life is unpredictable but, honestly, it is mostly because people who go through trauma are not as good at the long-term planning thing.  I think that my ability to plan is a lot of why I got out.  I held phrases in my mind from key moments and they were my magical talismans.  The man who evaluated me for the GATE program told my mother, in front of me, that I was probably the brightest child he had ever met and it was a good thing or I would be incapable of learning given what was happening in my life.  My mother was a bewildering mix of angry and proud and I didn’t understand why.  I knew that this man had just said truly wonderful things about me, why did my mom get so nasty?  Now I understand that she felt judged because my life was so messed up.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my mother.  I am grieving more for her than for Uncle Bob and that feels disrespectful.  He’s the one who is actually dead and all.  But she is dead to me in spirit.  It is hard to realize that for me unconditional love doesn’t exist.  I feel like that makes me defective.  I want to cry and scream and beg people to please understand—it is just that I can not forgive.  I suppose that’s the hard part.  I do love her.  But I cannot forgive.  There is no forgiveness for what she permitted in my life.  The scope of trauma I endured goes beyond neglect. 
When I close my eyes and think about the day Michael raped me I can’t remember if I tried to explain to my mother why I was screaming curse words at him.  Every time I hear my daughter sass me with, “You don’t get to say that to me”, normally after I have enforced some odious and draconian rule like “Don’t hit your sister,” I feel this burst of pride.  My daughter will not be 30 years old and hiding in the garage to cry.  My daughter knows that she is good and wonderful.  My job is to not beat her down the way I was beaten down.  Aside from the issues with my father, my mother was ridiculous.  I was chased home by neighborhood bullies and my mother’s response was to beat me.  She didn’t ever stop to think that I was not the kind of kid who really did terrible things.  There was no question—I was bad.
There was no point in defending myself.  There was no point in explaining.  There was no point in telling the truth—not in any part of my life.  The best thing for me to do was to build up this part of me that was separate from them and defend it with all force.  My relatives often use physical intimidation as a way of enforcing control and they resent that I refuse to buckle.  I really am a spiteful little shit.  I mean, my sister threatened to beat me up at my baby shower and I wouldn’t even acknowledge her superiority. 
That was another lovely tense moment.  I could feel my adrenaline rushing.  I wasn’t sure how far she would push it and if my friends would be sufficient buffer.  At the pressure moment I decided that I didn’t want to get into it.  I fled the room.  Of course I was just over reacting.  I always am.

Just another day

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My shrink doesn’t think I should find stronger anxiety meds.  As I was leaving her office today I asked her about her opinion about what I should tell a doctor.  What part of my current shit is the most physical in origin and what is likely the best thing to do about it.  She thinks I should talk to the doctor about my stomach hurting and probably something for sleep.  As much as the smoking isn’t great for my lungs she thinks that having to go spend thirty minutes away from the kids is better than taking stronger meds so I can endure more pressure.  She may have a point.  As much as I have this inner resistance to it, I kind of think I may need to make a schedule for us and stick to it.  We could all use the predictability.  I need to have breaks from the kids most days.  Luckily, we now have a Sarah.

Is it really nerdy that I am going to make a big graph and highlight things and move them around?  I need to figure out something though.  I hate smoking.  It feels shitty.  I want to not need it.  Plan A right now on getting my shit together involves ridiculously scheduling my life so that I can try to find a way to balance my moods.  It feels like a New Shiny Neurosis.  If I want to stay off meds I need some way of reacting to my bio-chemical stress loads.  I don’t know another way.  What do I need in order to feel like I can stay calm.  I feel very weird about the fact that my therapist considers marijuana significantly superior to other potential anti-anxieties for me.  I suspect it is partially because of my ridiculous conflict around what I’m doing.  I won’t use it if I have to drive.  I am very careful about proper supervision of the kids, etc.  If I had pills that I could use when I was out I would probably end up trapped somewhere feeling unable to drive and get hysterical.  I suppose this way I always make it home because I don’t bring pot out of my house.  I’ve tried bringing it with me a few times and I never have the nerve to sneak off and use it.  It’s pretty funny.  Even if I am sitting amongst a group of people passing a pipe… I just can’t bring myself to smoke in front of people.  I have problems.

Today I told my therapist about the second time I broke my arm.  I was 12.  I had to call my mom at work to come home and take me to the hospital.  She worked 90 miles away in City of Industry.  She screamed at me a lot about how I had better not be lying.  I was scared shitless my arm wasn’t actually broken.  I had to endure a lot of pain before I was willing to call her and ask for help in the first place, but I didn’t have other options.  It was broken.  And to put the icing on the cake when I went back for the actual cast I told her I wasn’t feeling well.  She told me I was a hypochondriac and a whiner.  I vomited on the floor in the waiting room.  The hospital staff was really nice to me as I sobbed my apologies for making a mess.  My mom yanked me by my unbroken arm away and told me how disgusting I was for making the mess.  Sometimes I wonder if I am more fucked up by my mother or my father.

Now as an adult I get why my mom was so harsh with me.  She was walking a tightrope financially and she truly couldn’t take time off frivolously.  I was sick a lot (I’ve had stomach problems since I was a child) and Tommy needed a lot of time off.  His care would have been a full time job.  It was for more than one person, actually.  It’s interesting thinking about my mother now that I have children.  When I think of the things my mother didn’t know about me… I wonder what things I will miss in my children.  I’m absolutely confident that I am already a better mother than my mom though.  That’s kind of a weird thing.  I have already provided my children with more stability, security, attention, and kindness than my mother showed me.  In less than six months Shanna will have lived in this house longer than I have ever lived anywhere else.  This house, this life that I am building with my family… this is the only stability I’ve ever had.

Every time I move I mostly change friends groups.  I change everything about my life.  And I have done it every 3-18 months from age 3 till I was 19 years old.  Then I stayed at Tom’s for three years before moving around several times in two years before moving here.  I’m getting the feeling this is my forever home.  We may add a second story some day.  I’m trying to meet most of the neighbors on our street.  I am floating the idea past all of them for a block party.  So far everyone has indicated that they would try to come.  For better or for worse this is where my children will grow up.  These people will be their community.  I get a lot of say in how that works.  I want a Leave it to Beaver style community where everyone knows everyones business.  I guess I had better start meeting people and learning their business then.  It’s frightening to consider.  They will see me go through stages.

I am having trouble with this whole 5% thing.  I can’t shake the feeling that it is bad.  Like I should be culled from the herd for daring to deviate.  I’m trying to decide how and where I will deviate from the norms in my home and in my community because it isn’t fair for me to alienate people.  My children have to live here.  I am weird.  I know it.  The thing is, why am I so convinced that everyone will hate me?  Yeah, yeah… polarizing figure.  I’ve mellowed with age.  I’m a lot easier to be an acquaintance with.  I think.  It’s really hard to go meet my neighbors but Shanna thinks it is easy.  I’m trying to remember that part of me that sees every person as a potential friend instead of a potential judge.  Most people don’t care enough about me to bother to judge me.

In completely other news, Sarah is preserving food for winter.  I have succeeded in my way of being a provider for my family.  I win.  At the rate these tomato plants are going we might be able to eat a tomato based dish (pasta, chili, stew, etc) a week for almost a year.  That’s really cool.  We haven’t really gotten to eat much of the other veggies I’ve grown.  I think the cabbage is too tough to eat now, but I watched the full growth cycle and that has value.  It was neat to see these plants emerge.  I feel like as a science experiment it was a fabulously productive summer.  I failed on most of it in terms of providing food (with the huge exception of the tomatoes), but that’s what I was supposed to do.  I was learning what to do and not do.  I have to learn at some point.

Random feedback question, oh those who read this blog: I tend to keep a window open and add to it for a few days.  Are more frequent little posts easier to read?  Would you like visual breaks so you know when I walk away and come back because it’s often a very different thought?  Do you not care because my verbal diarrhea is hard to follow anyway so it might as well be a huge blob?  Feedback welcome on that topic.  Solicited, even.

It’s my birthday now.  Noah made me breakfast and let me sleep in.  Him making me breakfast is actually an every single day thing.  That’s one of the things that makes me feel loved.  He gets up every day and thinks about how to feed me.  Food = love.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mo’s post on submission.  It’s kind of funny because I don’t play much these days.  And I haven’t been in anything like a D/s or M/s relationship in eight years.  Not really.  It’s weird to think about because I don’t think people recognize how deeply ingrained my impulse towards service is.  I go clean my friends’ houses.  I always have.  I always feel like I must do physical labor for people I love.  Shared work is one of the quickest ways to bond with me.  I don’t bond well in party situations because I’m not one to relax while sitting in a room with people who have the ability to stop and stare at me.  They have to be distracted and looking somewhere else so that I don’t feel tense.

This is a problem mostly because I have this simultaneous issue that if I am the only one working I am a martyr and no one loves me.  This is a problem because I am much more bothered by visual disarray than anyone else in my house so I am constantly working and they truly can’t do that with me.  I am at an unhealthy place with my level of getting upset over doing house work.  I don’t like to feel taken for granted.  I need a lot of acknowledgment.  Even if I am the only one working, if I get frequent, sincere comments on my work I feel seen.

I think that I have been working in my head towards how to feel like my position in my family is one of submitting my work to the common betterment of my family.  That sounds really stupid and weird.  Ok, bear with me.  I “grew up” in a weird generation of perverts and I have all this bullshit about slave hearts going round and round in my head.  I miss the stillness I got in my head and in my heart when I was a slave.  I was able to shut off my background chatter of negative self talk and just work because that was my place and my job.  I was to facilitate Tom’s life.  It would be fair to think of it as dehumanizing me, or at least minimizing my importance in life.  I did everything with the specific goal of pleasing him.  It took enormous focus and energy.  I could lose myself in it.  I could stay present in the moment in a way that eludes me these days without enormous physical output.  Rototilling the yard keeps me in the same head space.  It’s probably what other people attain through meditation.  I can’t meditate for shit.  But I like bringing that calm focus into my work.

In the bdsm community you can spend a lot of time and money going to classes to help you learn how to cultivate a relationship where you can dictate the narrow limits of your life to allow you that kind of focus.  No matter what your side goals are: making money, buying a house, having kids… the only real goal is pleasing your Dominant/Master.  It’s a much more immediate thing to check up on.  Handy in the immediate feedback sense.  Easy to get obsessive with.  I was certainly obsessed.  I ate, slept, and breathed Tom’s happiness.  It is intriguing to think about that level of intensity.  I like to think that Noah is a great person to have an affair with.  When he turns the full power of his gaze on someone… it’s intoxicating.  I know some of his ex’s read this, you had better be nodding.

Noah is a crack boy.  He’s easy to get obsessed with.  Part of the reason is that it is always clear that there are big chunks of him that are simply not available to me.  I can never fully understand him no matter how many years I stare at him.  If someone is too available to me emotionally, I don’t pursue.  I have nothing to chase.  It’s terrible, but I don’t see a point in lying.  I like complicated people.  On the day Noah asked me to marry him he told me he also wanted me as his slave.  Neither of us really knew what that meant then.  I’m not sure I do either.  But I’m thinking about it.  I need an obsession.  I really do.

I have nothing to keep my brain from dwelling all day on how it is not fucking fair that by Shanna’s age I was giving out blow jobs to neighbor kids.  My parents were divorcing.  I had already been raped.  Very soon we were about to be homeless.  I think of those things and I look at my wonderful girl, who if anything is getting bored with how safe her life is, and I feel rage.  I’m burnt out though.  I’ve had all the rage my body can take for a while.  I desperately need a distraction that won’t fuck up my life.  My therapist is right that I should not try to get stronger meds so I can be more of a zombie all day long.  That’s not really the solution.

So I’ve been thinking about my wonderful husband.  I’ve been trying to deliberately think in terms of serving his life.  What would actually serve his life better.  It’s kind of funny that phrasing it in that way changes a lot of the discussion for me.  If I drop my set of living-life-expectations… it’s weird.  I should call a cleaning company tomorrow.  I should never dust again.  It makes his life worse because I don’t have the physical body load to do as much as I am doing and be in a good mood.  The reason I am so beat down is because I am trying harder and harder to take the shit work off of Noah because I need him in a good mood.  I need to make Noah happy.  I have to.  If I don’t I am failing at this life and Jesus H Christ I am the biggest piece of shit ever.  Not that he thinks that.  But as much as I love my friends, Noah is the only person on the planet I am going to see every day for the rest of my life.  Not my kids.  Not anyone else.  I want a happy marriage.  I really do.

So whereas we are not in a place where we can get the M/s thing to work right now I’m thinking about the future.  For the record I have changed some of my opinions.  I no longer go by Lenora, that was an in-the-closet-while-teaching thing.  How’s that for crossing the streams?

Anyway, I’ve been obsessing about Noah during my time off lately.  It seems the most benign and cheerful way for me to pass a little time while letting my body rest.  The last few years have been hard for him.  Any effort at all is pleasing.  I’ve already been reading more.  I’ve already read two books this week and I have a couple more I am working on.  He likes it when I am really on for verbal banter.  Oh man does that require more rest than I am getting.  It’s really nice for me to realize that some of the best things I can do to serve him and make him happier is eliminate as much work as possible from my life so I can sit around and read and pamper my body so that my interest in sex returns.  I’ve had a few glimmers lately and that’s been comforting.  But it’s not really back yet.  Next on my desk is Les Liasons Dangereuses and I really need to read The Prince again.  And I should probably review a rhetoric book because my arguing skills are shitty.  If I’m going to keep up with Noah I need to get crackin’.

Luckiest girl in the whole world

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We kind of ignored our fifth wedding anniversary.  We were busy.  I’m not actually sad about that because the party was fun.  Last night I was told extensively how much I have changed since marrying Noah.  I agree.  For the first time in my life I know what it is like to have someone unreservedly like me.  It’s a novelty.  And Noah doesn’t just like me.  Noah is kind of obsessed with me.  We have spent hundreds of hours talking about my life and history and psychological health.  There are not enough hours in a day for me to tell him more about the inner workings of my brain.  I was informed that is not normal.  Ok.

It’s weird to live with someone who likes me but has no compunction pointing out where I am doing something badly.  It’s refreshing.  After five years together, I even prefer his voice in delivering criticism.  When he’s consciously trying he’s good at being gentle with me.  We have a lot of verbal conversation short cuts that help with my layers of emotional baggage.  That was hard to build.  It is amazing that at this point we can have these massively intense conversations because we can reference this long history of conversations.  I’ve never really had that before.

It’s weird how this relationship is really my “college” education in the sense that most people have them. Noah has encouraged me to learn about things I actively shunned.  He has read books to me and articles and blog posts and comics and we have watched movies together.  We have built this weird unique little subculture just for us.  I imagine this is what growing up in a family is like, because we include the kids whenever we can.  This will be their weird little subculture.  I think about that.  My children will never have normal.  My children will be in the 5%.  Probably.  Maybe.  I hope.  I hope they know that the 5% exists and that they have the courage and fortitude to do anything they want to do.  I want children who are so courageous that there really isn’t much chance they will meld into the crowd.  I have that already.

Noah encourages me to feel really happy about being me.  He thinks I should grin when I think of something clever I said.  It’s kind of an odd feeling.  He likes it when I am cocky and arrogant.  But then I later collapse in private and have to breathe through my panic attack.  Noah is definitely a mixed bag for my personal development.  Sometimes I wonder if part of what makes me so uncomfortable when I go out into the world is the fact that I know that no one has ever liked me how Noah likes me.  I feel like other people dislike me in contrast.  It’s not true.  But it is true that I am starting to run into conflict with friends because Noah has influenced my behavior.

I have Noah at home telling me that conflict is an ok thing.  It’s hard to believe him.  It’s hard to believe that getting better at arguing is really going to earn me more friends.  Noah is trying to convince me that it will absolutely chase off some of my current friends but it will earn me friends who actually like me more rather than what they are projecting on to me.  I think that is what he is trying to convince me of.  I could be wrong. There is no way for me to remember everything we talk about with super concrete details.  I am out of tapes.

Why is being avaricious in a woman so threatening?  I’ll tell you flat out that if Noah gets to the point where he is offered $250k/year in salary, hell yes I’ll do anything he wants.  That kind of power and influence is highly erotic to a dirty little street kid like me, what can I say?  He can have a weekend where I do anything he wants.  And the current potential ideas are the kinds of things nice normal housewives should be degraded by.  I should feel devalued and lessened.  Cheapened.  Instead my response is: hawt.  It gets me off to think about it now and it will really get me off to do it.

My marriage wouldn’t work for everyone, but we’re having fun.  I can’t really see another way for me to deal with my class issues, really.  I could pretend they don’t exist… but they do.  We like looking at things head on.  I don’t see the value in pussyfooting around my stupid little landmines.  If I’m going to set them off, let’s go kablooie.  Why not do it in a way that maximizes the fun.  Seriously.  I don’t consider that a real question.  This is work I need to do in my life.  I need to deal with my class issues.  Mostly I talk about them in therapy, on the internet, with friends, with Noah, and I think constantly about them.  Ok, not constantly.  But they come up and I address them.  And every so often I go and play some dramatic game about sex exploitation.  So what?  I think that giving my husband a weekend for sex that we will both find really hot is a pretty reasonable reward for him being a fan-fuck-ing-tastic provider.  I don’t really care if anyone disagrees.  (Then why am I writing about it on the internet.  *sigh*)

I want to try to explain how I see Noah.  I really do.  I don’t have the words this morning though.  He’s such a big concept in my mind.  I watched this bad bad movie recently about 20’s relationship angst and the big whore butch dyke finally settles down into a monogamous relationship because “You hold my interest.”  I like the fact that sleeping with other people reminds me that I married the right person.  I enjoy it.  I want to do it again.  But I married the right person.  Never before in my life has anyone cared enough about me and my happiness to change their behavior for me.  That’s the part that other people don’t get.  That’s why I keep them at a distance.  They think I have to just “learn to accept them”, which means that I have to change to suit them.  Noah looked at me and thought that keeping me and making me happy was worth making dramatic bone deep change.

I am the luckiest girl in the whole world.  He has absolutely changed for me.  Yes, I’m going to change for him too.  Because I want to validate the important parts of him that much.  Because I think he is worth it.

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We kind of ignored our fifth wedding anniversary.  We were busy.  I’m not actually sad about that because the party was fun.  Last night I was told extensively how much I have changed since marrying Noah.  I agree.  For the first time in my life I know what it is like to have someone unreservedly like me.  It’s a novelty.  And Noah doesn’t just like me.  Noah is kind of obsessed with me.  We have spent hundreds of hours talking about my life and history and psychological health.  There are not enough hours in a day for me to tell him more about the inner workings of my brain.  I was informed that is not normal.  Ok.

It’s weird to live with someone who likes me but has no compunction pointing out where I am doing something badly.  It’s refreshing.  After five years together, I even prefer his voice in delivering criticism.  When he’s consciously trying he’s good at being gentle with me.  We have a lot of verbal conversation short cuts that help with my layers of emotional baggage.  That was hard to build.  It is amazing that at this point we can have these massively intense conversations because we can reference this long history of conversations.  I’ve never really had that before.

It’s weird how this relationship is really my “college” education in the sense that most people have them. Noah has encouraged me to learn about things I actively shunned.  He has read books to me and articles and blog posts and comics and we have watched movies together.  We have built this weird unique little subculture just for us.  I imagine this is what growing up in a family is like, because we include the kids whenever we can.  This will be their weird little subculture.  I think about that.  My children will never have normal.  My children will be in the 5%.  Probably.  Maybe.  I hope.  I hope they know that the 5% exists and that they have the courage and fortitude to do anything they want to do.  I want children who are so courageous that there really isn’t much chance they will meld into the crowd.  I have that already.

Noah encourages me to feel really happy about being me.  He thinks I should grin when I think of something clever I said.  It’s kind of an odd feeling.  He likes it when I am cocky and arrogant.  But then I later collapse in private and have to breathe through my panic attack.  Noah is definitely a mixed bag for my personal development.  Sometimes I wonder if part of what makes me so uncomfortable when I go out into the world is the fact that I know that no one has ever liked me how Noah likes me.  I feel like other people dislike me in contrast.  It’s not true.  But it is true that I am starting to run into conflict with friends because Noah has influenced my behavior.

I have Noah at home telling me that conflict is an ok thing.  It’s hard to believe him.  It’s hard to believe that getting better at arguing is really going to earn me more friends.  Noah is trying to convince me that it will absolutely chase off some of my current friends but it will earn me friends who actually like me more rather than what they are projecting on to me.  I think that is what he is trying to convince me of.  I could be wrong. There is no way for me to remember everything we talk about with super concrete details.  I am out of tapes.

Why is being avaricious in a woman so threatening?  I’ll tell you flat out that if Noah gets to the point where he is offered $250k/year in salary, hell yes I’ll do anything he wants.  That kind of power and influence is highly erotic to a dirty little street kid like me, what can I say?  He can have a weekend where I do anything he wants.  And the current potential ideas are the kinds of things nice normal housewives should be degraded by.  I should feel devalued and lessened.  Cheapened.  Instead my response is: hawt.  It gets me off to think about it now and it will really get me off to do it.

My marriage wouldn’t work for everyone, but we’re having fun.  I can’t really see another way for me to deal with my class issues, really.  I could pretend they don’t exist… but they do.  We like looking at things head on.  I don’t see the value in pussyfooting around my stupid little landmines.  If I’m going to set them off, let’s go kablooie.  Why not do it in a way that maximizes the fun.  Seriously.  I don’t consider that a real question.  This is work I need to do in my life.  I need to deal with my class issues.  Mostly I talk about them in therapy, on the internet, with friends, with Noah, and I think constantly about them.  Ok, not constantly.  But they come up and I address them.  And every so often I go and play some dramatic game about sex exploitation.  So what?  I think that giving my husband a weekend for sex that we will both find really hot is a pretty reasonable reward for him being a fan-fuck-ing-tastic provider.  I don’t really care if anyone disagrees.  (Then why am I writing about it on the internet.  *sigh*)

I want to try to explain how I see Noah.  I really do.  I don’t have the words this morn

How it becomes enough

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I have this user icon on a website.  It says: Everything is always okay in the end.  If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.  I have a doctors appointment for the 14th.  I need to get a physical and get a referral to a psychiatric doctor.  I need to get the manic cycles under control.  I did not sleep for over a week of June.  I also did not sleep on five nights in August.  On nights when I do sleep I often only get four hours of sleep.  This isn’t healthy.  I broke my manic cycle in a burst of body depletion at the party.  I don’t want to do that again in that way.  I don’t think it is awful that I did it.  It was actually wonderful.  I did get what I wanted out of it.  I know how it is enough.

I would like to have more tools for dealing with my anxiety and PTSD.  Refusing to ask for a doctors help is part of the bad message stuff from my family.  It’s ok that I need help sometimes.  Everyone does.  Cue defensive language.  The party was really great because my only goal was to let go of the anxiety and I not feel responsible for anyone and I not steer the bus.  I had a lot of post-party jitters and I ranted heavily at one of the participants about how I should have manipulated the situation more to control more about what other people experienced.  He was great about patting me on the head but mostly ignoring me.  The ritual portion of the evening went about as fantastically as it could have, actually… on reflection.  Over the course of the evening I had a really hard time staying in headspace.  I am horrified by how strong my anxiety was even though I had taken heroic measures to overcome it.  That is absolutely the limit of my ability to self medicate for my anxiety and it wasn’t enough.  I need to try something else.

Every single person in my house this weekend likes me.  Many of them love me.  I was able to move through that crowd and feel intense irritation from more than half of the people there.  That’s not rational.  That’s not real.  That’s me having trouble perceiving what people are freely offering out of love.  Which is not to say that I didn’t have fun!  I did.  I had a wonderful time and I metaphorically smacked myself in the ass and ignored my anxiety and interacted with people even though I felt anxious.  I wasn’t defensive.  I wasn’t aggressive.  When I started to try to control what people were saying/doing/thinking I tried to back off and just listen for a while instead of projecting onto other people.  It was a very conscious effort and that’s not something I can sustain.

I loved my party.  I had a great time.  It felt so good to connect with people who love me so much.  I’m going to have to rest a lot to recover from this though.  And my anxiety isn’t lower despite that much love present in one place?  I need some help.  That’s how it becomes enough.  Because life is what it is.  If I am a gaping maw of need I have to figure out how to deal with it on my own.  I cannot ask for any more of the people in my life than they already give.  I am very supported.  This is about me and the chemicals in my brain.  This is about a lot of years of being abused.

Everything is always okay in the end.  If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.  I’m spending a lot of my current anxious cycles thinking about how the ritual worked for me and why I’m having so much internal pushback on wanting to present it properly to the world.  I feel very vulnerable about it and I’m struggling with it.  The obvious answer is to just not write about it, right?  If it causes me anxiety to think about writing about it then I shouldn’t do it.  There is no need to write about it.  The only problem is, this is being me.  The writing about it is as integral to the process as doing it.  I don’t know why, but it is.  Thus the current massive anxiety.  I don’t believe in the pit of my stomach that what I did was ok.  Do you know why?  Because like all things in life it was a mixed bag.

The sex was good, I’ll say that unreservedly.  I shouldn’t have tried to do that specific flavor of sex in a group environment.  I did it because I wanted to do it in front of other people… I don’t know… to prove that they would still love me and want to cuddle me when I am that person?  I think that one of the best parts was when a very sweet man told me in the morning that he is still interested in me.  It was this interesting validation.

I tried as hard as I could to engage in self-harming behavior.  Oh that’s melodramatic.  I tried to break taboos.  That’s more true.  I engaged in unprotected sex before having a medical procedure done to ensure my own sterility.  I think breaking that bit of my worry around extra-marital sex isn’t worth it again.  I don’t have space in my life for the extra processing time it requires.  It makes things more complicated.  By that I mean, I’ve sat here thinking for at least several minutes each day freaking the fuck out about a vasectomy failing and not knowing who the father is.  I’m not comfortable in my body right now.  I feel like I violated something sacred.  My baby machine is one user only, damnit.  That part of me feels monogamous and kind of freaked.  It’s not particularly rational and is not a negative reflection on any one else.  But that takes up space in my emotional life and I don’t have room to give it.  So I feel increased anxiety symptoms all the time because I would really love to start having a period again any second now.  That was a life lesson.  I like condoms.  I have to get better at condoms.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.

I will probably be lame and buy a dollar store pregnancy test in three weeks just to end this cycle of worry.  And I’ve learned an important lesson.  I had fun.  I’m glad I did it.  I learned a lot.  That’s enough.

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Today is the day.  Party time.  I went to bed early, thus I am up at 4.  My body mocks extra sleep.  My body thinks that extra sleep is for lesser mortals.  You know, people with less adrenaline.  Holy moly I have a lot of energy coursing through my body.  I’m trying to bank it because I don’t want to be toast before people arrive.

I have thought so hard and for so long about this day.  I’ve been working towards this event night and day for four or five months.  It’s kind of weird to be here.  My goal today is to drown out the cacophony of voices in my head that tell me I’m bad.  I’m really not.  There are supposedly 69 people coming to my house today to tell me they love me.  My life isn’t half bad, you know?  And the only reason the party is this small is because of Burning Man.  Ok, that made my grin huge.  Holy shit.  That’s a lot of people who like me.  I don’t feel like I deserve to be liked.

Today is not about the bad tapes though.  Today I am going to plaster the biggest smile I can manage on my face and I am going to let my friends hug me.  I worked very hard for this party.  Now I get to enjoy it.  Noah, Sarah, and Kira will be the people who handle actual hosting.  They are all very happy to do so.  I prefer being a guest at parties.  To entertain and spread things out I’ve made fun play areas in the front and back yards.  The sand box is tented (I hope it didn’t fall off over night–heh) for maximum access without sunburning.  There is a secret room under the blue potato vine.  I have a cool yard.  There’s a secret room under a bush.  Yay!  Uhhhh just make sure your kids don’t eat any of the blue potato vine.  Apparently they are toxic.  The plant was here before me.  I yelled at a neighborhood kid yesterday for stealing one of my roses out of the front hedge.  It was kind of awesome.  I think that is my first “Get off my lawn” moment.

Yesterday I had therapy.  She seems thrilled with me.  She’s delighted with the party.  She is starting to direct sessions a little more and I think that’s a good thing.  I appreciate it when a therapists hang back and get the lay of the land before making suggestions.  Then I feel like they are making suggestions based on things I’m saying rather than their biases.  I feel like my therapist’s job is to listen to me tell my story and help me make connections between the various bits.  I’m too close to the pattern to see it without an outside participant.  Noah isn’t always available.  Not to mention that I have some inner conflict about a lot of things in our marriage.

This relationship is fucking work.  It’s good work.  I’m happy to be doing it.  I really and truly don’t want to be doing anything else.  The last two days were good examples.  I was uhm pretty difficult to live with this week.  I stress out about things.  And I don’t have anything that feels important in my life so this party is pretty over inflated for me.  We tried hard on all sides to really ask for the rest and help we needed.  I’m really hoping we all have enough energy to see everything through today.  Adrenaline and caffeine are my two best friends today.  I will have lots of adrenaline.  Holy moly this is a lot of people in my house.

It’s kind of funny.  I feel like I’m becoming weirder and more eccentric by the year.  I am twitchy about people in my house and yet I really want to show off all my hard work.  There.  I said it.  A big part of the reason I’m doing this is because I think my house is a fun play house and I want other people to know that too.  I want people to come play with me.  And my kids.  This is a great kid house.  Maybe it’s even a great home.  Maybe I have an actual forever home.  That thought makes me cry.  What does “forever” mean with regards to where you live?  I feel like an unrooted person.  I have few ties to a particular living situation.  That sounds weird.  It has never changed my life to live in one house or another.  It would now.  I am developing patterns and routines related to where I live.

I think it is funny that having Sarah’s stuff here makes me feel like, “Oh!  Now we have actual taste in the house!”  She’s a lot more into classic literature than I am.  Think about that. (Me: graduate work in English lit; her: space science and linux sys admin.)  Hilarious.  People arrive in five hours.  I pleaded with people to be punctual.  It’s a thing.  When people are late I have panic attacks.  I feel lame about it, but it’s a fact.  And if it is true then I should treat it as true and let people know that it is a big thing to me, right?  It’s not that I actually need all 69 people to show up on the dot of 10.  But if no one showed up by 10:30 (a pretty common occurrence) I would be in the bathroom crying and I wouldn’t perk up totally all day.  I don’t want that for today.  It’s been a draining few months.  I want to eliminate angst wherever possible.  And now I cross my fingers and pray.  I think it will be a wonderful party.  I have really good friends.

I should try to rest more.  Five hours.  Oh man.

Building energy

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This article is interesting.  The past six months have been very difficult on a lot of levels.  I’m starting to move into a deeper phase of dealing with my incest stuff.  I’ve been thinking about this chapter from A Wind in the Door Madeleine L’Engle:

Chapter 11: Sporos
A burst of harmony so brilliant that it almost overwhelmed them surrounded Meg, the cherubim, Calvin, and Mr. Jenkins.  But after a moment of breathlessness, Meg was able to open herself to the song of the farae, these strange creatures who were Deepened, rooted, yet never separated from each other, no matter how great the distance.
We are the song of the universe.  We sing with the angelic host.  We are the musicians.  The farae and the stars are the singers.  Our song orders the rhythm of creation.
Calvin asked, “How can you sing with the stars?“
There was surprise at the question: it is the song.  We sing it together.  That is our joy.  And our Being.
“But how do you know about the stars–in here–inside–“
How could farae not know about stars when farae and stars sing together?
“You can’t see the stars.  How can you possibly know about them?”
Total incomprehension from the farae.  If Meg and Calvin kythed in visual images, this was their limitation.  The farae had moved beyond physical sight.
“Okay,” Calvin said.  “I know how little of ourselves, and of our brains, we’ve learned to use.  We have billions of brain cells, and we use only the tiniest portion of them.”
Mr. Jenkins added with his dry, ropy kythe, “I have heard that the number of cells in the brain and the number of stars in the universe is said to be exactly equal.”
“Progo!” Meg asked.  “You memorized the names of all the stars–how many are there?”
“How many?  Great heavens, earthling, I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“But you said your last assignment was to memorize the names of all of them.”
“I did.  All the stars in all the galaxies.  And that’s a great many.”
“But how many?”
“What difference does it make?  I know their names.  I don’t know how many there are.  It’s their names that matter.”
The strong kything of the farae joined Proginoskes.  “And the song.  If it were not for the support of the singing of the galaxies, we farae on Yadah would have lost the melody, so few of the farandolae are Deepening.  The Namers are at work.”
Meg felt a sudden chill, a pulling back, a fading of the Deepened farae; there was a dissonance in the harmony; the rhythm faltered.
In her mind’s eye an image was fhalshed of a troop of farandolae dancing wildly about one fara tree, going faster and faster, until she felt dizzy.
“Sporos is with them,” Proginoskes told her.
“What are they doing?  Why are they spinning faster and faster?”  The circle of farandolae revolved so rapidly that it became a swirling blur.  The fronds of the great fara around whom they swirled began to droop.  
“They are absorbing the nourishment which the fara needs.  The fara is Senex, from whom Sporos came.”  There was chill in Proginoskes’s words.
The speed of the dancing farandolae became like a scream in Meg’s ears.  “Stop!” she cried.  “Stop it at once!”  There was nothing merry or joyful in the dance.  It was savage, wild, furious.
Then, through the raging of the dance came a strong, pure strain of melody, quiet, certain, noble.  The dancing farandolae broke their circle and scampered about aimlessly; then, led by Sporos, they raced to another fara and began circling it.
The fronds of Senex greened, lifted.
Proginoskes said, “He is strong enough to hold out longer than any of the other farae.  But even Senex cannot hold out forever.”  He stopped abruptly.  “Feel.”
“Feel?”
“The rhythm of the mitochondrion.  Is it my fearfulness, or is Yadah faltering?”
“It is not you,” Meg answered the cherubim.  They were all very still, listening, feeling.  Again there came a slight irregularity in the steady pulsing.  A faltering.  A missed beat.  Then it steadied, continued.
Like a gash through the non-light of Yadah Meg had a brief vision of Charles Wallace lying in his small room, gasping for air.  She thought she saw Dr. Louise, but the strange thing was that she could not tell whether it was Dr. Louse Colubra, or Louise the actual colubra.  “Don’t give up.  Breathe, Charles.  Breathe.”  And a steady voice, “It’s time to try oxygyn.”
Then she was drawn back within the mitochondrion to Senex, the parent tree of Sporos.  She tried to convey to him what she had just seen, but she received nothing from him in return.  His incomprehension was even greater than Mr. Jenkins’s had been.  She asked Proginoskes, “Does Senex know that Charles Wallace even exists?”
“As you know that your galaxy, the Milky Way, exists.”
“Does he know that Charles Wallace is ill?”
“As you know that your Earth is ill, by fish dying in the rivers, birds dying in the forests, people dying in the choked cities.  You know by war and hate and chaos.  Senex knows mitochondrion is ill because the farandolae will not Deepen and many farae are dying.  Listen.  Kythe.”
A group of farandolae whirled about a fara; fronds drooped; color drained.  The dance was a scream of laughter, ugly laughter.  Meg smelled the stench which was like the stench in the twins’ garden when she  had first encountered an Echthros.  
She heard a voice.  It was like a bad tape recording of Mr. Jenkins.  “You need not Deepen and lose your power to move, to dance.  No one can force you to.  Do not listen to the farae.  Listen to me.”
The great central trunk of the surrounded fara began to weaken.
Meg tried to project herself into the dance, to break the vortex.  “Sporos, come out!  Don’t listen.  You were sent to the Teacher.  You belong with us.  Come out, Sporos, you were meant to Deepen!”
Then it was as though she were the end skater in a violent game of crack-the-whip and suddenly was flung so wildly across the ice that she crashed into the end of the rink.  The force with which she had been thrown was so fierce that her kything was completely blacked out.
“Breathe, Meg, breathe.”  It was Proginoskes, using the same words which Louise was using with Charles Wallace.  “Breathe, Meg.  You’re all right.”
She reeled, staggered, regained her balance.
Again she heard the ugly laugh, and the false Mr. Jenkins voice urging, “Kill the fara!”
Then came Mr. Jenkins’s own voice.  “I see.  I understand.”  She felt emanating from him a dry, dusty acknowledgment of unpleasant fact. 
She returned sharply, still slightly breathless, “I don’t understand.”
Mr. Jenkins asked her, “Why did Hitler want to control the world?  Or Napoleon?  Or Tiberius?”
“I don’t know.  I don’t know why anyone would.  I think it would be awful.”
“But you admit that they did, Margaret?”
“They wanted to,” she conceded. “But they didn’t succeed.”
“They did a remarkably good job of succeeding for a period of time, and they will not lightly be forgotten.  A great many people perished during the years of their rules.”  
“But farandolae–why would little farandolae like Sporos–“
“They appear to be not that unlike human beings.”
She felt cold and quiet.  Once Mr. Jenkins had accepted the situation, he understood it better than she did.  She asked, “Okay, then, what have the Echthroi got to do with it?  They’re behind it, aren’t they?”
Proginoskes answered, “The Echthroi are always behind war.”
Meg turned in anguish towards Senex, calm and strong as an oak tree, but, unlike the oak, pliable, able to bend with wind and weather.  “Senex, we’ve been sent to help, but I’m not strong enough to fight the Echthroi.  I can’t stop Sporos and the other farandolae from killing the fara.  Oh, Senex, if they succeed, won’t they kill themselves, too?”
Senex responded coldly, quietly.  “Yes.”
“This is insane,” Mr. Jenkins said.
Proginoskes answered, “All war is insane.”
“But, as I understand it,” Mr. Jenkins continued, “we are a minutely immeasurable part of Charles Wallace?”  
“We are.”
“Therefore if, while we are on–or, rather, in–this mitochondrion, if Charles Wallace were to die, then–er–um–we–“
“Die too.”
“Then I fight not only for Charles Wallace’s life but for Meg’s and Calvin’s and–“
“Your own.”
Meg felt Mr. Jenkins’s total indifference to his own life.  She was not yet willing to accept the burden of his concern for her.  “We musn’t think about that!  We musn’t think about anything but Charles!”
Proginoskes wound around and through her thoughts: “You cannot show your concern for Charles Wallace now except in concern for Sporos.  Don’t you understand that we’re all part of one another, and the Echthroi are trying to splinter us, in just the same way that they’re trying to destroy all Creation?”
The dancing farandolae whirled and screamed, and Meg thought she could hear Sporos’s voice: “We’re not part of anybody!  We’re farandolae, and we’re going to take over Yadah.  After that–“
A hideous screech of laughter assailed Meg’s ears.  Again she flung herself at the dance, trying to pull Sporos out of it.
Senex drew her back with the power of his kythe.  “Not that way, not by force.”
“But Sporos has to Deepen!  He has to!”
Then, around the edges of her awareness, Meg heard a twingling, and Calvin was with Sporos, trying to reach out to him, to kythe with him.
Sporos’s response was jangly, but he came out of the wild circle and hovered on its periphery.  “Why did Blajeny send you alien life forms to Yadah with me?  How can you possibly help with my schooling?  We make music by ourselves.  We don’t need you.”
Meg felt Proginoskes’s volcanic upheaving, felt a violent wind, searing tongues of flame.  “Idiot, idiot,” Proginoskes was sending, “We all need each other.  Every atom in the universe is dependent on every other.”
“I don’t need you.”
Suddenly Proginoskes kythed quietly and simply, “I need you, Sporos.  We all of us need you.  Charles Wallace needs you.”
“I don’t need Charles Wallace.”
Calvin kythed urgently, “Don’t you?  What happens to you if something happens to Charles Wallace?  Who have you been listening to?”
Sporos withdrew.  Meg could not feel him at all.
Calvin emanated frustration.  “I can’t reach him  He slips away from me every time I think I’m getting close.”
Sporos was pulled back into the whirling circle.  The surrounded fara was limp, all life draining rapidly.  Senex mouthed, “His song is going out.”
Proginoskes kythed, “Xed.  Snuffed out like a candle.”
Senex’s fronds drooped in grief.  “Sporos and his generation listen to those who would silence the singing.  They listen to those who would put out the light of the song.”
Mr. Jenkins raised shadowy arms prophetically.  “To kill the song is the only salvation!”
“No!” Mr. Jenkins cried to Mr. Jenkins.  “You are only a mirror vision of me.  You are nothing!”
Nothing  nothing  nothing
The words echoed, hollow, empty, repeating endlessly.  Everywhere Meg kythed she seemed to meet a projection of an Echthros–Mr. Jenkins.
“Don’t you understand that the Echthroi are your saviors?  When everything is nothing there will be no more war, no illness, no death.  There will be no more poverty, no more pain, no more slums, no more starvation–“
Senex kythed through the Echthros.  “No more singing!”
Proginoskes joined Senex.  “No more stars, or cherubim, or the light of the moon on the sea.”
And Calvin: “There will never be another meal around table.  No one will ever break bread or drink wine with his companions.”
Meg kythed violently against the nearest Echthros-Mr. Jenkins, “You are nothing!  You’re only borrowing Mr. Jenkins in order to be something.  Go away!  You are nothing!”
Then she was aware that the real Mr. Jenkins was trying to reach her.  “Nature abhors a vacuum.”
Calvin replied, “Then we must fill the vacuum.  That is the only thing to do.”
“How?”
“If the Echthroi are nothingness, emptiness, then that emptiness can be filled.”
“Yes, but how do we fill it?”
Senex kythed calmly, “Perhaps you don’t want to fill it strongly enough.  Perhaps you do not yet understand what is at stake.”
“I do!  A little boy, my brother–what do you know about my little brother?”
Senex conveyed considerable confusion.  He had a feeling for the word ‘brother’ because all farae are–or had been–brothers.  But ‘little boy’ meant nothing to him whatsoever.  
“I know that my galactic host is ill, perhaps dying–“
“That’s Charles Wallace!  That’s my little brother!  He may be a galactic host to you, but to me he’s just a little boy like–like Sporos.”  She turned her kythe from Senex and towards the wildly dancing farandolae who had surrounded another fara.  This time she kythed herself towards them cautiously.  How could she be sure which one was Sporos?
An Echthros-Mr. jenkins whinnied with laughter.  “It doesn’t matter.  Nothing matters.”  A harsh twang wounded the melody of the farae who were still singing.
Once again Meg felt faltering in the mitochondrion.  Yadah was in pain.  Suddenly she remembered the farandolae who had saved her from the Echthros when Proginoskes brought her into Yadah.  Not all the farandolae had thrown in their lot with the Echthroi.  Or were those who had Xed themselves that she might live the only ones who would defy the Echthroi?  
She bagan calling urgently, “Sporos!  Farandolae!  Come away from  the Echthroi.  You will dance yourselves to death.  Come to Senex and Deepen.  This is what you were born to do.  Come!”
Some of the farandolae faltered.  Others whirled the faster, crying, “We don’t need to Deepen.  That’s only an old superstition.  It’s a stupid song they sing, all this Glory, glory, glory.  We are the ones who are glorious.”
“The stars–” Meg called desperately.
“Another superstition.  There are no stars.  We are the greatest beings in the universe.”
Ugliness seeped past Meg and to Sporos.  “Why do you want to Deepen?”
Sporos’s twingling was slightly dissonant.  “Farandolae are born to Deepen.”
“Fool.  Once you Deepen and put down roots you won’t be able to romp around as you do now.”
“But–“
“You’ll be stuck in one place forever with those fuddy-duddy farae, and you won’t be able to run or move, ever again.”
“But–“
The strength and calm of Senex cut through the ugliness.  “It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move.”
Indecision quivered throughout Sporos.
Senex continued, “It is true, small offspring.  Now that I am rooted I am no longer limited by motion.  Now I may move anywhere in the universe.  I sing with the stars.  I dance with the galaxies.  I share in the joy–and in the grief.  We farae must have our part in the rhythm of the mitochondria, or we cannot be.  If we cannot be, then we are not.”
“You mean, you die?” Meg asked.
“Is that what you call it?  Perhaps.  I am not sure.  But the song of Yadah is no longer full and rich.  It is flaccid, its harmonies meager.  By our arrogance we make Yadah suffer.”
Meg felt Calvin beside Senex, urging, “Sporos, you are my partner.  We are to work together.”
“Why?  You’re no use to me.”
“Sporos, we are partners, whether we like it or not.”
Meg joined in.  “Sporos!  We need you to help save Charles Wallace.”
“Why do we have to bother about this Charles Wallace?  He’s nothing but a stupid human child.”
“He’s your galaxy.  That ought to make him special enough, even for you.”
A cruel slashing cut between their kything, as though a great beak had cut a jagged wound. “Sporos!  It is I, Mr. Jenkins.  I am the teacher who is greater than all Teachers because I know the Echthroi.”  Meg felt Proginoskes’s kything clamp like steel.
The Echthros-Mr. Jenkins was holding Sporos, and speaking with honey-sweet words.  “Do not listen to the earthlings; do no listen to the farae.  They are are stupid and weak.  Listen to me and you will be powerful like the Echthroi.  You will rule the universe.”
“Sporos!” The real Mr. Jenkins’s kything was not strong enough to break through the stream  “He is not Mr. Jenkins.  Do not listen!”
Calvin’s kythe came more strongly than Mr. Jenkins’s.  “There are two Mr. Jenkinses by you, Sporos, two Mr. Jenkinses kything you.  You know that one is not real.  Deepen Sporos, that is where your reality lies.  That is how you will find your place, and how you will find your true center.”
meg’s mind’s-ears were assailed by a howling which was Echthroid, though it appeared to come from the pseudo-Mr. Jenkins.  “Reality is meaningless.  Nothing is the center.  Come.  Join the others in the race.  Only a few more farae to surround and you will have Yadah for your own.” 
“Yadah will die,” Meg cried.  “We will all die.  You will die!”
“If you come with us, you will be nothing,” the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins spoke in cloying kythe, “and nothing can happen to nothing.”
Sporos’s long whiskers trembled painfully.  “I am very young.  I should not be asked to make major decisions for several centuries.”
“Your’re old enough to listen to Senex,” Meg told him.  “You’re old enough to listen to me.  After all, I’m a galaxy to you.  It’s time for you to Deepen.”
Sporos wriggled in the clasp of the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins. “Come, Sporos, fly with the Echthroi.  Then you will crackle across the universe.  There are too many mitochondria in creation.  There are too many stars in the heavens.  Come with us to naught, to nought.”
“Deepen, Sporos, my child, Deepen.”
“Sporos!” The Echthroid howl beat against the rhythm of Yadah.  “We will make you a prince among Echthroi.”
Meg felt a gust of wind, the familiar flicker of flame: Proginoskes.  The cherubim flung his kything across the void of the Echthros-Mr. Jenkins, like a rope flung from cliff’s edge to cliff’s edge.  “Sporos, all farandolae are royal.  All singers of the song are princes.”
“Nonsense.  In Name only.”
“The Name matters.”
“Only to matter.”
Proginoskes’s kything was so gentle that it undercut the storm of Echthroi.  “You are created matter, Sporos.  You are part of the great plan, an indispensable part.  You are needed, Sporos; you hae your own unique share in the freedom of creation.”
“Do not listen to that hideous cherubim.  He’s nothing but a deformed emanation of energy.  We will give you no name and you will have power.”
Calvin pushed in again.  “Sporos, you are my partner.  Whatever we do, we must do it together.  If you join the wild farandolae again I am coming into the dance with you.”
Sporos quivered, “To help kill the farae?”
“No.  To be with you.”
Meg cried, “Progo, let’s go, too!  We can help Calvin.”  In her impetuous relief at having something to do, she did not feel the cherubim pulling her back, but plunged into the irrational tarantella and was immediately swept out of control.  Calvin was whirling beside Sporos, unable to pull him away from the circle closing in on the dying fara.
Meg was totally in the power of the revolving, twangling farandolae.  The orbital velocity sucked her in, through the circle and against the limp trunk of the fara.
Within the deahtly center of the dance it was dark;; she could not image the whirling farandolae; she could not kythe Calvin or Sporos.  She heard only a silence which was not silence because within this vortex there was an emptiness which precluded the possibility of sound.
Caught in this anguished vacuum she was utterly powerless.  She was sucked against the trunk of the fara, but the fara was now too weak to hold her up; it was she who had to hold the dying Deepened One, to give it her own life’s blood.  She felt it being drained from her.  The fara’s trunk strengthened.  It was Meg who wad dying.
Then arms were around her, holding her, pouring life back into her, Mr. Jenkins’s arms, the real Mr. Jenkins.  His strength and love filled her.
As she returned to life, the firm, rhythmic tendrils of the reviving fara caressed her.  Mr. Jenkins held them both, and his power did not weaken.  The murderous circle was broken.  Calvin held Sporos in his arms and a tear slid down his cheek.  Meg turned towards him, to comfort him.
The moment she kythed away from Mr. Jenkins and to Calvin, a new circle formed, not of farandolae, but of Mr. Jenkinses, Mr. Jenkinses swirling their deathly ring around the real Mr. Jenkins.
Meg whirled back towards him, but it was too late.  Mr. Jenkins was surrounded.  Meg cried, “Deepen, Sporos, it’s the only hope!”
The scattered farandolae darted hither and thither in confusion.  Proginoskes reached out wing after invisible wing to pull them in.  There was a frightened twingle.
“Look at the Echthroi!”  Proginoskes commanded.  “They are killing Mr. Jenkins as they made you kill your own farae.  Look.  This is what it is like.”
“Mr. Jenkins!”  Meg called.  “We have to save Mr. Jenkens.  Oh, Sporos, Deepen, it’s the second ordeal, you must Deepen.”
“For Mr. Jenkins?”
“For yourself, for all of us.”
“But why did Mr. Jenkins–didn’t he know what would happen to him?”
“Of course he knew.  He did it to save us.”
“To save us all,” Calvin added.  “The Echthroi have him, Sporos.  They are going to kill him.  What are you going to do?”
Sporos turned towards Senex, the fara from whom he had been born.  He reached out small green tendrils towards all the farandolae.  “It is Deepening time,” he said.
They heard a faint echo of the music which had been such joy when Blajeny took them to witness the birth of a star.  The farae were singing, singing, strengthening.  Sporos was joining in the song.  All about them farandolae were Deepening, and adding their music to the flowing of the song.
Meg’s exhaustion and relief were so great that she forgot Mr. Jenkins.  She assumed blindly that now that Sporos and the other farandolae were Deepening, now that the second ordeal had been successfully accomplished, all was well; the Echthroi were vanquished; Charles Wallace would recover; she could relax.
Then she felt Proginoskes pushing through her thoughtlessness.  “Meg!  You forget!  There are three tests!”
She turned from rejoicing. The circle of pseudo-Mr. Jenkinses was whirling wildly about the principal, closing in on him.
Proginoskes kythed so strongly that she was pulled back into painful awareness.  “We cannot let the Echthroi get Mr. Jenkins.  This is the third test, to rescue Mr. Jenkins.  Senex, Sporos, everybody, help us!”
Meg heard a shrill, high scream, a scream that turned into a horrible laugh of triumph.  It came from Mr. Jenkins.  One Mr. Jenkins.  There was no longer a spiral of Echthroid Jenkinses surrounding the principal.  They had closed in, and entered their prey.
Proginoskes’s kything cut like a knife.  “The Echthroi have him.  We must get him away.”

Bad decisions

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In life there are trade offs.  You only have so many resources at any given point in time.  I feel like an awful lot of the problems in life are because of the fact that there are insufficient resources.  And I don’t mean oil–I’m talking about time and attention.  I’m talking about the fact that I don’t keep up with my friends as well as I wish I could because I cannot handle the fact that I am already touched and pawed at all day long.

A friend else-net got very drunk last night.  She’s at a hard spot in her life and she wanted to drink to forget.  Of course she now believes this has destroyed her value as a person.  On the kind of nights where you drink to forget you tend to believe your value was gone before you started.  I make bad decisions.  I don’t want to add an adverb describing when or how often. Because the reality is I probably make bad decisions about as often as average and maybe less.  Do you want to know why I say that?  Because something being a bad decision or not depends on your perspective.

Getting shit faced drunk and passing out seems like a bad decision.  Until you realize that the alternative may very well be ending your life.  When you realize that choosing to get shit faced drunk so that you can make it through the one bad night is actually a good choice.  At the crisis point, get drunk.  That’s ok.  Really.  It’s not a bad decision.  If that is how you are going to still be alive in the morning it is a good decision.  It’s a bad decision to do it every night.  It is a bad decision to make it a lifestyle.  Anesthetics have their place in life.  I believe it is ok to self-medicate.  But be very careful.

Does that mean it is the safest choice?  Of course not.  Drinking until you pass out is dangerous and I don’t really think people should be doing it.  Much like cutting.  It’s not a great thing to do.  I don’t recommend it as a coping strategy for people who are looking for new tools.  Sometimes people do make mistakes while cutting and accidentally die.  It is not beyond the realm of possibility.

A lot of my friends point out that their lives “weren’t that bad” so they shouldn’t be upset.  I honestly don’t know a lot of people who experienced more abuse than me… and I still don’t feel entitled to be upset.  Not really.  To me that means that it doesn’t matter whether I am entitled to the upset or not.  I am upset.  I need to not worry about whether or not I should be.  I need to not focus on how my being upset affects other people.  I need to look at how being upset affects me.  It’s hard because for all that I have been talking constantly about being narcissistic… I’m truly not.  I have a hard time paying adequate attention to myself.  I worry constantly about the happiness of those around me.  I work extensively to build up other people.  That’s just an insecurity.

It’s just as true for everyone else though.  Ok, there are people who are actually narcissistic.  Most people are just existing though.  You get upset.  It’s ok to deal with being upset.  If that upset goes on for weeks, months, years… you use up your resources.  When you are low on resources sometimes you hit the bottom of the barrel.  It’s ok.  That’s why it is there.  It is still a tool.  The bottom exists for a reason.

Why am I babbling about this.  Because I can say this emphatically when I am speaking with my friend in my head.  When I picture my beautiful, wonderful friend who is going through a very hard time and there is nothing I can do to help… that feels like I am failing in my life.  I don’t want my friends to suffer.  I want to take it away and make everything better.  I want to help build my friends up so big and so strong that they cannot be hurt any more.

I’ve been reading more in TCTH (The Courage to Heal–I’m sick of typing it out.)  I think it is funny that every time I read it I get to a few pages past where I feel emotionally that day.  When I come back and catch up I get to read on the page these testimonies from all these women describing their emotional processes and I could have written them.  It feels really hilarious and predictable.  This experience of going through this book is ensuring that I know I am not a special fucking snow flake.  Ha.  It’s nice though.  I now have this invisible group of women who know what I have been through. Healing from incest is a fairly predictable path.  I’m not lost and wandering and doing it wrong.  I am working the steps.  I really and truly am doing something that is worth doing.  As hard as this is sometimes, as bad as some of my mistakes are… I am improving.

My momentary bad decisions do not negate the fact that I am a good person.  That it is worth getting up every single day and continuing for as long as my body will let me because I add good to the world.  Far, far, far more good than bad.  I haven’t been sleeping enough and my emotions are very close to the surface.  I feel very upset when I see my friends self-flagellating in ways I also do.  It hits home for me what I need to start working on doing and that’s hard.  I kind of don’t need more pressure to work, you know?  I’m very tired.  I feel so flawed.  I feel like I will never be good enough.

And TCTH tells me that is part of the process.  It will pass.  This day will end.  Today I will get good and stoned and I will wander around the house puttering and singing and talking with my babies.  If I just putter around absent mindedly all the rest of the cleaning will magically happen.  But I have to be very stoned.  Or I will be a stress monkey and twitch and be unable to complete tasks and cry and probably scream at both kids.  I have a choice, right this minute.  I can continue to distract myself with the internet because I believe smoking marijuana is a bad choice and I am a bad person for doing it, or… I can shut up and do it.  And have a really nice day.  Bye y’all.

Pssst

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Today I worked really hard and got a lot done. There is still a daunting amount of stuff that I would like to get done, but if I pace myself I can make it *and* sleep. We have made so much progress so fast that I am fairly shocked. It’s like Sarah has been here for a year, not a month. Today she ripped apart the kitchen and fully integrated everything. And made labels. She had to have her labels. Our linens have been combined and only the best kept. She had better silverware, pots/pans, plate ware, art… the list is long. A lot of our stuff just left. I filled the van so full I couldn’t bring anyone with me to the thrift store at least three times. I cannot count how many times I went with smaller amounts. We are still sorting down so that we really fit into the space but now it is the kind of crowded that most people just live with. I would really like us to pare down more so that things don’t get so messy. We’re working on it. At this point the house will be easy to keep tidy enough for a maid service. 🙂 Not that I’m hiring one at this point. But hey, tidy house!

I really love my garage. I sit at my desk next to the window and I catch a tiny glimpse of sky while I sit and daydream in the jungle or go for a dip in the sea. I feel like I don’t deserve something this beautiful and it blows my mind that I made it. The more I look at the bookcase the more I see subtle things I want to do over time to enhance it. This is going to be my muse for years to come. I built myself a play house. I’m home. Sarah and I are calling our house Wonderland. And I feel like I did make a wonderland. I didn’t know I was a creative person. That was not part of how I saw myself. I was cold, distant from creativity. I am flat hostile if someone asks me to draw my feelings in any setting. I am currently refraining from releasing torrents of profanity about what passes for the mental health system in this country. Ugh. Anyway. Apparently I like to paint instead. And I like finding unusual solutions as I create a thing of beauty (to me, if you disagree keep it to yourself) that incorporates and masks the ugliness of the outside world. I’m having fun. I’m not sure I’ve ever had fun like this before. Ack. Gotta go parent.

Kneejerk statement

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I had a brief panic attack as I looked through the referring URLs for my blog.  Lots of looking for porn searches.  I thought that was kind of amazing.  I really felt invaded and horrified by that.  That was hard to feel for a few minutes.  You see, there is this nice blogger who happens to be a chick.  And I don’t know about you but I find that people are way less heated about business building than sex.  This woman hasn’t done anything sexual in a public way, but she is denigrated sexually quite viciously.  I’ll tell you flat out, universe, that makes me feel like I should probably figure what I am: a sex blogger or a mommy blogger and never the twain shall meet.  Because if Naomi Dunford is getting death threats I need to prepare myself for the possibility that some day I might too.  I don’t think I can stop myself from posting on the internet.  It’s pretty compulsive.