If you want to feel better…

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This lady who is coaching me is really awesome. She’s a no bull shit person. She is a horse trainer (so she’s used to trying to get animals to change their behavior without being able to talk them into it) and she has recovered from a TBI so she deeply understands the frustration of being disabled and not able to just do for yourself the things you want to and are used to being able to do for yourself.

She has some good suggestions about how to manage home schooling stuff that we can’t do exactly how she did it with her family for logistical reasons but I can take inspiration and we can adapt to our circumstance and we will see how her system works. It involves a lot more of the kids getting to free wheel picking their schedule Monday-Thursday and Friday and Saturday have to be available for punting and not doing fun things because you haven’t earned them.

That’s complicated for me because I like making advance plans with Jenny and her family but if my kids have behaved in a way that we can’t go, I feel like I am punishing Jenny’s family. I’m not. That’s not the point. But my kids have to get their stuff done and they have to learn how to take responsibility for it and part of learning responsibility is you don’t get the fun end-of-week pleasures if you haven’t earned them.

I will have to work on my feelings here as much as the kids will have to work on their behavior. I’m not punishing anyone if my kids have to stay home on Saturday to do their work because they haven’t done it during the week. That’s my kids choosing that screwing around Monday-Friday was more important to them than seeing their cousins. That’s not MY CHOICE.

It is not my responsibility to force my kids or bribe my kids through doing their day-by-day work so that they can have fun pleasures. That’s a fucked up dynamic, yo.

That’s not a good preparation for life.

We can’t do the white board/magnet solution that she used. But we can tape an extra piece of paper over their day planner week with the master list of assignments for the week. They can cross things off and write them down on the day they got them done so they can track their progress. I like the idea of having brief check ins at dinner Monday-Thursday to ask how things are going without being controlling or pissy. Friday and Saturday are tentative scheduled things. “If everything is done then we can go to…”

It is a level of bribery but it isn’t minute by minute day by day bribery. The Friday outings will be more academic and the Saturday ones will be more social. (Other social activities aren’t possible on Friday without a home schooling community.)

She wants me to have a master list of my chores that I’m supposed to get done as well. Resting is supposed to be on it. PT exercises. I am supposed to try to develop the discipline to not go help the kids if my taking care of myself isn’t done.

Given that I am currently gritting my teeth and counting the days until I get back to pot because my entire body is on fire with pain…

My current method of coping is not sustainable.

A couple of days ago I had a lively conversation with friends about cleaning ones own house. It was interesting how the motivation to clean up ones own house is not related to salary/house hold income but often about perceived by the self social class. I very strongly view myself as not the type of person who pays other people to do my work for me. It’s not about if I can afford it (I can and Noah wishes we would) but it’s more emotional. It’s about a lot of lectures from my mother about people who won’t clean their houses being lazy. It’s about my sister being utterly unwilling to clean her house to the point of living in squalor. It’s about my overweening lack of self regard. I don’t deserve to have help with basic chores. I should fucking do this work myself because I already take more resources than I deserve.

*sigh*

But I can’t keep doing this much work. My body is degrading faster over the years. Medical care at this point is bailing water instead of fixing the hole in the boat.

I feel really bad about my body needing help.

It isn’t that I judge other people negatively when they get help. I massively supportive when Sarah could finally afford to get cleaning help. I could easily see that she needed it. I can see how my other friends benefit and it adds positive to their lives to get such support.

But I don’t feel like I deserve such support. This is a really hard conversation to have because I don’t ever want to make it sound like I think other people don’t deserve the help and almost any way of framing this conversation has a blast radius of people interpreting my self worth as applying to my opinion of them. That fucking sucks, yo.

It’s kind of like how sometimes my brother Tommy would rage until he literally blacked out because he was so frustrated with requiring help for basic body hygiene. He fucking hated himself because he couldn’t feed himself or do a lot to dress himself or brush his hair or or or or or.

He would burn the shit out of his mouth drinking boiling drinks because having someone else help him and cool it off offended him so much. He got blisters. He injured himself because he didn’t want any more help than the absolute bare minimum.

I am stupid like that.

I know it is stupid.

I know.

I know it is self hating.

I know.

Noah is trying to make deals with me about the rate at which I pick up projects once we move here. I am going to have to write this timeline out or I will “forget” and start doing work I shouldn’t be doing.

I am really freaked out that cleaning is something I probably really should outsource as I am adapting to permanently living without pain meds.

Well, until I can get medical pot in Scotland. It’s coming!

I genuinely don’t respond well to other pain meds. The pain specialist believes my next step is oxycontin and I don’t want it.

I think I will be willing to accept that as a pain reliever when I believe death is imminent. Until then, I prefer having my brain; thank you.

But my entire body is on fire. How much do I believe that is allowed to matter? I don’t know. I’m going to cry as I think about it. Every joint. Many areas are explosions of nerve pain. My neck. My back.

I don’t have a headache though, so no Ibuprofen. That’s the line. As long as I can think, no Ibuprofen. I need it to work in emergencies and if I use it all the time it won’t.

That sense of triage is very hard to live with.

Took a break. Did morning hygiene, went on a walk to the store to get the things we noticed we messed up on the grocery order (it’s a minimum of 2.5 miles round trip so that’s not terrible), and did goals for the kids for the academics for the week.

I am thinking that I will try to get my PT stuff done during nap time. I need to get a template going for myself of tasks. Really I need to figure out something like Noah’s insane Omnifocus stuff but… that takes spoons too. I will start with it on paper.

The problem with paper is that when I kind of forget about it for a while… I forget about it in a semi-permanent way. The computer thing popping up will maybe be harder to ignore? I don’t know.

I will keep thinking about the cleaning hiring out. For now, changing apartments every few months + the kids doing most of it and Noah doing part of it means that I’m not actually doing that much. Yes I still need to be doing less because of how much pain I am in.

This is a process.

Medication and medical care.

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It was occurring to me this morning that I’m doing surprisingly well for the level of medical care I have been receiving. It helps that I am very consciously doing less. There is less cleaning on the road. I am not gardening much. I am not running around socializing as much as I did in CA and I don’t feel the internal pressure to be helping my neighbors. (I loved my neighbors–don’t get me wrong. But I put a lot of pressure on myself to show up for them when I should have been sitting at home resting.)

Noah agrees that I am doing very well at not exploding. I am not crying all the time. That’s really good.

I am in tremendous pain. But instead of continuing to do lots of work anyway I am going limp. My arms are doing quite badly. My back and hips hurt so much that I am gritting my teeth a lot of the time. That’s not great.

But I am doing incredibly well at not taking it out on anyone else. Given how poorly I feel… I am proud of myself. I am doing quite well at keeping my poop in a group. I have not been screaming. I have not even been shouting much. I am quiet a fair bit. I alternate between mild exercise (I need to be doing my PT and I’m not) and a lot of resting/talking to the family.

The apartment is absolutely always less tidy than I would like. I am choosing to watch extra Netflix instead of cleaning it up because I need to not do more to wear myself out.

I am being a grown up. It’s kind of weird.

I am having some mood swings. I absolutely always feel like I “should” be doing better. But all in all I’m not doing shittily. How long have I been doing ok? I don’t know. Hard to judge.

Handing off the externalized brain

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Question: “Kids self motivation/executive functioning/need for control- how do you do the schedule for the week? Do you personally just make it up in your head and dole it out? Talk about it as a family? Once a week? Every morning? How do the kids get input? How to you decide what’s happening? How is it communicated to the kids in an ongoing way?”

We have, of course, tried a whole bunch of different ways of setting up their task list. We all have a lot of resentment over having worked with the charter school because both kids sat down and gamed out a whole year of curriculum for themselves (long-term planning around projects, how subjects would be evaluated after study, and what books/methods they would utilize to pursue different educational goals) and the Educational Specialist said “Wow you are my only family who actually did all the required work.” We are really bitter. The kids super struggle with “What is the point” after that experience.

For a while post-charter school I insisted on continuing to follow a long-term planning method and the kids just dug in their feet with a big “Fuck it.” No matter how much they had scheduled they did less and less of the work they were supposed to do. Not because it was too hard, not because they couldn’t… they would rather stare at a wall and get punished because “What is the point”.

So over the course of this year we have gotten less and less structured because they are really bitter and long-term planning was truly killing their love of learning. This is tricky on a variety of levels because my kids previously had a really deep love of learning and trying to jump over hoops for the sake of jumping over hoops made them burned out and bitter.

What we are doing now is sitting down on Monday with a day planner and talking through “What would you like to learn this week?” They still have a variety of learning methods and subjects they cover. It is not consistent from week to week. Some weeks they do a lot of math and some weeks basically none. Some weeks they work on other languages a lot and some weeks they barely touch it. Some weeks they study a lot of history stuff. Some weeks they ask for a lot of science documentaries. Some weeks it is tons of art history and drawing practice.

I have been trying really hard to let them set their goals. I don’t decide how much work they have to do. But once we spend an hour sitting together and planning they need to do it. I am really rigorous about follow through. It’s ok to set a few small goals. It’s ok to set big goals. You will do the work you lay out for yourself. Some weeks their work takes them an hour a day and some weeks it takes closer to four hours a day. I think this practice is important because they are learning what amount of time things take them. They are learning how to take into consideration “We have x plans and we will be tired after them so what do we want to do the next day?”

They track what chores they do and their homework in day planners. We have tried a bunch of other methods and this is the way they can be most consistent. Doing it online did not work out at all.

“Let’s talk about some systems that would give him more control over his time right now, there isn’t a need to wait for a house. With both of the older children you are in the throws of the transition from parenting young children to parenting teenagers. It’s not an easy time. So much managing, so much letting go, so many balances to get right.”

They control most of their time. They decide when they are going to get their stuff done. I am available to help with academics until around 1/2 in the afternoon and if you haven’t gotten your stuff done at that time you need to do

I ask questions like “Are you sure you can get all that done in two hours?” (Our purported goal for academic work in a day.) I will say things like “You haven’t done any (subject) in a while. Do you think maybe adding some this week would be good so you don’t forget?” Sometimes they agree and add some and sometimes they say they say they really don’t want to and I let it go.

I am big on project based learning. I am really into things like them drawing a comic book about a historical topic which means they have to do a bunch of research so they can explain what was going on. They’ve done different programming projects (EC made a really neat animated music video… that was taken down because she picked a song with a swear word. *smack forehead*)

We have a bunch of different approaches to math and they kind of move around and through them. They are not linear in their approach and this is going pretty well at this point. Text books were killing them.

House chores are renegotiated every so often (sometimes weekly, sometimes every few months, sometimes when we move). I list of what chores have to be done and they volunteer to do what they want to do. At this point they are getting paid for their chores and that is a mixed incentive. They are more prone to get up and do their chores without asking (which is great!) because they get a monetary penalty for me having to nag. But there are days when they just don’t care and say “I don’t care about earning any money today.” Last night I told MC that it was great that he didn’t want to get paid for his chores, he still got to do them and I just wouldn’t have to pay him. He said that sucked. I grinned. (It was about 10 minutes of basic tidying after dinner. He had been out of the house for about 28 hours. It was a good plan for him to do a chore even though he didn’t want to. He drops habits easily and doesn’t like picking them up.)

(Fuck. I lost a chunk of text here and recreating it is hard. Or it moved around and now this is repetitive? I don’t know. I need to get off the computer and I don’t have enough brain to fix it.)

I wait around in the mornings to help them. If they haven’t done it by 1/2 in the afternoon I say you must do it on your own because I have moved on to doing my own work and you don’t get to interrupt me to help you at that point. I kind of hang out doing interruptible stuff in the mornings so that they can have academic support at need. They pick what academics they do. They pick when they do chores. They pick which chores they are responsible. But once they say “X is my responsibility for the week” I hold them to it even if they kind of change their mind by Thursday. You can entirely renegotiate on Monday.

“They also need to be allowed to develop long term planning skills. Like multi step projects, using to calendar, lots of ways to encourage it if you’re afraid they are having trouble.”

They absolutely can do this. But the charter school made them bitter. The ES put together their portfolio to hand in to the state before they were done with their projects and she said she didn’t care about seeing the end results. They were completely fucking crushed. It hurt them so much. They worked so hard and she acted like the end result was pointless. They internalized that in damaging ways. But they know how to break a project down over months. They know how to plan it out on a calendar and they can do that like 80% independently. My job is mostly to say “I think you need to build in buffer time here, here, and here because projects always run over.”

“I’m going to caution you about your use of the term “self esteem”. Doing work for other people and thinking that makes it ok to take resources is a transactional relationship. “Self esteem” is valuing yourself because you are an individual who deserves to be valued, regardless of her productivity. You don’t have to pay for your existence. If you and Noah used to scorekeep, that’s just an additional layer of transactional. You’re still scorekeeping, it’s just more about yourself. That needs to be let go.”

I am super duper achingly transactional. I had to earn my keep in foster homes or I was kicked out. This is absolutely bone deep. I know it is a problem and I do not know how to let it go. I really struggle with my growing disability. I have bought my friendships over many years and I don’t know how to trust that they will continue if I don’t do work.

I don’t know how to let that go.

You are right that EC needs to learn how to come and ask for help with stuff instead of me volunteering the help. That’s going to be hard on both of us. But we are definitely to the point where I am enabling her not having to learn how to ask for help. MC does get more practice with deciding which of his emotions to share and he is better about speaking up when he is distressed as a result.

“Exercise, rest, your projects and things you want to get done in this life- I want to hear more about how you guys plan your time so I can help with that.”

We have different seasons. Sometimes a season lasts weeks and sometimes months or a whole year. I’m definitely in the multipotentialite realm. We have some goals as a family and we sit down and game them out (like travel. We have long conversations about where to go and why) and we each have our separate goals. Exercise comes and goes for a lot of reasons. When I am pregnant… my body decides that the parasite is the only thing I can support and as the pregnancy progresses I spend more and more time in a chair and everyone else struggles to cope with that. When I overdo and my body decides it is time for a long rest period whether I like it or not, everyone else slows down too.

We like going for long walks as a family. We tend to split into pairs and have intense chats. It’s really nice. We all come home from walks happy and feeling connected. (Which pairs changes sometimes by the week or month or day. We rotate a lot.) When one person is injured (like MC twisting her knee on the way into Japan) everyone else tends to slow to a stop. We are not good at leaving someone behind.

The PT exercises I am supposed to do take time, space, and focus. I often struggle to find all three at a time. I have not been consistent about doing them since we left California and I can tell that my body is degrading again from the strength I had built up.

We alternate between planning things out on paper or sending emails back and forth to track planning conversations for longer term stuff. The kids really like email planning conversations because they give the kids a feeling of importance.

My projects are kind of dumped on the family every so often. I found my old pictures! I cried with joy. Proof of all the huge house art projects, the gardening progression, the marathon training, all the places we travel to…

Sometimes I sort of ditch folks for a few weeks and expect them to just keep going without me. Like when I was laying out tile for the bathroom. I… didn’t do much directing or helping with homework for a bit. Get your chores done. I’m busy. The kids still did the vast majority of their stuff but some things fell through the cracks and I had to just accept that.

I read a book when I was first preparing for teaching. It explained that the very best teachers don’t have to be present in their classroom every single day and their students keep on learning without them. This was how I handled teaching and this is how I try to handle parenting. I teach a lot of structure, rhythm, and routine. Now you keep it up whether I am standing over you glaring or whether I am busy, ok? But pretty much everyone in my family has ADD. (MC was not diagnosed but the evaluator spent 15 minutes talking to him in his favorite “You are giving me all of your attention” environment and that was not very useful as an evaluation.) Look a squirrel is a big problem. But we all form new systems and follow them for a while really easily. We just want to change the system frequently or we get bored. Thus planning every Monday because longer than that gets boring.

We have layers of systems. There are hygiene/sleep layers. We have exercise patterns (morning/afternoon or what kind we are doing for a while). We have food preparation/planning/eating/cleaning up systems. We have academic/learning goals and methods. There are chore patterns.

The trouble is triage. How do you keep the same priority system over a truly long period of time? We do various shuffling based on why something becomes more or less important for a while. Consistency is not our strongest suit but we aren’t that bad either.

I worked with a lot of families as a teacher. We truly aren’t that bad. But getting us back on track isn’t my easiest work and I struggle with resenting it.

Our sleep cycles drift a lot with light patterns. We stay up much later (more like 9) in the summer and in the winter I am often in bed around 7pm. Breakfast is usually around 8am except when it isn’t. I struggle with feeling like flexibility is good and feeling like flexibility is bad.

So tl;dr the kids do their own planning in many parts of their lives. They buy their own clothes with a set budget. They figure out how to spend their money for school supplies and books. (Previously these were just set parts of the budget and now they are trying to earn how much money they get so they can decide how to spend a larger chunk of money at a time.) They set a lot of their socializing schedule with other people but sometimes they get dragged to what I want to do.

They have more control over their lives than I ever had until I was basically an adult. I struggle with this not being enough.

Homework (what do I need to work on)

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This morning I am waking up feeling gooey, schmoopy, overwhelming love for my family. Ok. Time to think about the stuff I need to work on about myself.

What are the whack a mole problems that come up? Many of them are problems in me and related to my thinking as much or more as they are rooted in anyone else’s behavior. Like: I really struggle with feeling like I want/need my kids to be more self motivated than they are. Then I get these reminders that they are actually really doing exceptionally well for their ages and developmental levels and my expectations are almost certainly out of whack. My kids have different things they struggle with: my son tends towards passive aggression and my daughter tends towards executive function failures. Ok. That’s not out of line with fairly normal stuff for kids. What I need to work on in myself is feeling more patience with the fact that they struggle in these areas and I have chosen to not put them into school where there would be teams of other adults teaching them how to manage these issues. I choose to be the one who must solve these problems or it is my fault they still exist. Sometimes I struggle with feeling overwhelmed about the magnitude of difficulty of work I have assigned myself. But it isn’t my children’s fault that I assigned myself this role.

The thing is, even though I struggle with some of their behaviors sometimes… I truly like my children and I feel like I have done well turning them into little people to be proud of. It has been the result of massive, overwhelming work on my part. I watch my children night and day and give them little course corrections, assistance, reminders, and help. NO FUCKING WONDER THEY TREAT ME LIKE THEIR EXTERNALIZED BRAIN. I can look at my Eldest Child and tell what she is thinking about with a greater than 90% accuracy rate. “You are having x feeling about y thing. Do you think maybe you should do z?” Her response is always “HOW CAN YOU DO THAT?!?!?! That’s a good suggestion…..”

I only guess my Middle Child’s thoughts and feelings with a more like 40% accuracy rate and he and I both feel a sting because of that. He consciously and deliberately shields his thoughts more. He works on having a blank facial expression. He works on projecting feelings he is not having. He got that from me. I feel like I am letting him down by not being able to read him better. He feels misunderstood and less appreciated. But he works on making it hard. He wants me to find a way to work harder and still read him so that he can feel as understood as EC. That’s complicated.

He got in trouble this week. He set his assignments on Monday. I didn’t add extra shit. He picked what he wanted to do for the week. He needed to get his work done on Thursday so we could go have a visit with the cousins. He didn’t get his work done. I was pissy and impatient because he really didn’t come close and he spent the whole day dawdling and I lost out on a visit too. (I can’t just leave him home and go without him for a list of reasons.) So I told him that since he wanted to just sit around and not get his work done during work time that he could just sit around and do nothing during play time and he could do it in his room without toys. He didn’t have a fun day.

The next morning when he woke up he had a fire in his belly because he didn’t want to miss out on any of his plans or on EC’s birthday fun. He got up super motivated. He got a bunch of his chores done before I even saw him in the morning. The first time I saw him in the morning was when I was waking up and still sitting in bed. He came in timidly and I smiled at him and invited him into the bed for morning snuggle. (We have much better days as a family when we start out with everyone snuggling for at least a few minutes.) He talked about his plan for getting everything done early so that he had a buffer in case he planned poorly and it took longer than he intended.

He got everything done with time to spare.

We walked over to Jenny’s instead of going on a family walk and taking a taxi. On the way we had an hour to talk to each other. The conversation was wide ranging and interesting. I asked him what he thought about the day before when he was in trouble. He said he spent most of the time trying not to think. I said, “So kind of an extended meditation practice?” He said yeah. He didn’t use the word, but he was trying to not catastrophize. He said (barely paraphrased), “I was so grateful that the first thing you did when you saw me this morning was smile at me. It showed me for sure that I was right to try not to think all the super bad thoughts. I made a mistake and I’m going to be able to get over it and you will get over it and we will move on.” I told him that yeah we will move on. He’s a great kid and I love him very much and I need him to trust me. So when I say “Do x so you can have y” if he doesn’t do x he can’t have y.

He said, “I know. It’s part of why I respect you a lot. I know you work really hard at being someone who is honest with me every day.”

I have a lot of fear that part of his passive aggression is an attempt to get back some control from just how controlling I am. It’s not a healthy way to try to get back some of that control. He has a lot more control over his schooling now, but I think he needs to have just a little bit more. I think that when we get a house again he and EC are going to be allowed to shut me out of their rooms for a full year so they can figure out their own tidying habits without me needing to be so fucking controlling because we are packing over and over.

I truly literally have to be this controlling right now or we won’t be able to get packing done with the travel. It’s rough.

When this is no longer necessary I need to give them a bunch of space to try things for themselves and fail.

I really struggle with the fact that they don’t have much in the way of long-term planning skills… but that’s my problem because they are age appropriate or a bit above. I need to control *myself* more, not them in this area.

We have done a lot of work on getting them to see me as an independent person. Frankly, having Her Sweetness has helped. They can see when I need to not take care of them because I have other obligations and both of the big kids are super mature about understanding that they got to be the whole center of my universe for many years and it is wildly uncool for them to not let Her Sweetness have a similar amount of time and energy. We are still struggling on getting them to let me rest without interruption, but they are better than they used to be and if I were willing to set more boundaries I think they would fall into line.

The struggle is I hate setting boundaries with them because that feels like I am doing a mean/punishing thing. I’m not. I’m valuing myself.

I really struggle with valuing myself. I really struggle with saying, “I need to not do anything for anyone because I have to take care of myself.” I think I went to so many doctor visits because every time I walked into an office the medical practitioner would freak out about how badly my body was doing and give me a tiny little bit of support so I could go back and do more work than I am truly physically capable of doing. I’m not going to have that medical team keeping me on life support here.

I have to value myself enough to say no way more and that’s hard. I get so much of my self esteem from doing things for people. From doing work and supporting people I gain the sense that it’s ok for me to keep taking resources for myself because I am sharing as much as I get or more. But this isn’t sustainable.

I don’t actually think the problem is with my kids behaving badly. They are really amazing children. I think the problem is me valuing myself and my need for rest. I absolutely literally require more down time than I give myself. I have to exercise in a fairly regimented way and I haven’t been doing it because I am exhausting myself providing emotional care for other people. That’s not healthy or a good way to be a role model.

I don’t want to teach my kids to be how I am. Which means I need to change.

I need to spend more time resting. I need to spend more time with just adults not taking care of children. I need to turn down opportunities to do labor (emotional and physical) for people. Not because I hate anybody. Not because I am angry and throwing a tantrum. Because I need rest. Because I need to love on me the way I love on my children. Because I need to spend as much time paying attention to my needs as I do to my children’s needs.

I learn a lot from my kids. They work to set boundaries for themselves. They understand that limits exist in their lives for their benefit. They do better and feel better if they exercise and eat healthy food and turn off the screens at night and get good rest.

I need to learn from my children.

I have an 11 year old.

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I am grateful every day for my daughter. I like her very much. I enjoy her company. I enjoy watching her grow and develop and separate from me. She has her own personality and interests. She gets to enjoy the things she wants to enjoy that I do not enjoy.

She also appreciates that I put a lot of effort into trying to please her. I appreciate that she notices my efforts. I appreciate that she is very sensitive to the feelings of other people. She doesn’t need to share the mood someone else is having, but she notices. That’s a really cool thing.

She’s gracious and kind. She’s thoughtful. She will go out of her way to try and help other people feel special.

I feel honored that I get to know someone like her. I really admire her and when I watch her behavior I learn a lot about who I want to be.

On one hand I want to list off all of the things that are going on for her… but it no longer feels appropriate in the way it does to list the milestones for my toddler. She’s a person who deserves a greater level of privacy. If she chooses to announce her height, weight, or favorite things on the internet she has the right.

I don’t have that right any more. She has grown beyond being observed in those ways by me.

I am really grateful I get to have this relationship. I am learning a lot. I look forward to getting to learn more from her over the next many decades.

Things I need to write about.

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I fired the online therapist who was not working for me. I asked a buddy if she was willing to do some coaching for me because she gives outstanding advice and she said that sounds like a fun project for a bit. She gave me some stuff to think/write about. I can’t get into it fully tonight but I am going to collect her current questions for me.

She asks/says:

“We need to explore what needs to be different about the kids for the long run, so that can be addressed. Make a list, word vomit, whatever feels good about what you struggle with them on, especially if it feels like whack-a-mole- always popping up.”

“On the “I’m a changing, fluid person and people find that hard to cope with” there are a few things to explore about that.

  • One, if a person has unclear boundaries (like we’ve talked about on the general board in regards to the attacking you) sometimes you suck up things that are actually not fine, and sometimes you get upset. This makes it hard for people, especially if you bring up the times they were wrong and you didn’t tell them. They get confused. So- the lines are the lines, and pushing on them should always be noted. (Boundaries can absolutely change over time too)
  • Two- if people have a wife/mom/employee appliance concept of a person, they can’t cope with changing needs on a day to day basis. Rosie the Robot maid doesn’t live here.
  • Three- anyone who score keeps, even a little, even in a very deep down place, will have trouble with changing needs. It’s too hard to add up if they are getting what they are giving (or more, depending on the selfish bend to it). So it’s frustrating for them to have you constantly need different things.
  • Four- of course people with certain types of a-typical neurological patterns will have trouble, but that’s not the majority of the people we are talking about
  • Five- children can have a hard time with a parent’s changing needs, because they don’t always recognize their mother as a separate person from themselves. Coming to terms with this is part of the developmental stages.
  • Six: “guessers”, from the ask vs guess culture have trouble since if you change all the time they have a hard time getting it right.
  • Seven: the opposite of ask vs guess might be declare vs expect. So if a person isn’t taking responsibility for declaring their needs, and instead expects people will just “figure out out”, that is confusing for people because they can’t get that right.

:point_right: I might even think of some more later, but that’s certainly a start for you to chew on as far as thinking about some past relationships and what patterns they might have had that need to be changed for better future relationships.”

“Are you aware of your needs as they come on, or only as they become urgent? Basics like food, toilet, water, sleep? Others like privacy, quiet, time for self, relaxing, rest, connecting to Noah? if the answer is yes, are you speaking up in the moment it starts? Or at least acting on it yourself? Or does it need to become urgent in order for you to act?”

I will try to get some sleep tonight and come back and more fully answer these tomorrow. But if I fail to get to them tomorrow… they are here and I know I need to be respectful of my friend’s time and energy. It is very kind for her to do this when it isn’t her job. (I offered to pay her for her time, but this isn’t her career. She’s being nice to me. Like when my friend asked me if she could pay me to listen to her and give her advice. The circle goes around.)

Walls and mirrors

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I have been walking around saying that phrase to myself for a few days. “Walls and mirrors.” My relationship with my kids is so complex. I started saying complex because of the therapist we did ecstasy with. He didn’t like the word complicated; he liked complex. Ok. Sure. Whatever. I don’t think I differentiate it in my head the way he does in his.

My children are both walls and mirrors. They are like me; they reflect aspects of my personality that I both love and hate. They are not like me; they are difficult to understand and opaque.

I truly believe that one of the big life goals I have for myself is to figure out how to have healthy relationships with them as adults and I don’t know that I know what that means. Are we enmeshed? Not according to the definition of the word because we all get to have our own very separate feelings and experiences. But we want a closer relationship than is standard for white USians. What does that mean? Do I want them to reflect me? Do I want them to be a wall on which I can paint?

I learn from my children. I learn things about who I do and do not want to be. I learn how I do and do not want to act. Sometimes I learn these lessons by fucking up and sometimes they forgive me and sometimes they hold a grudge. Both are reasonable responses in my world view. But both are problematic too. It’s all so hard to figure out.

Lately we are struggling with the changing dynamic that comes from them having adult sized bodies. They have long felt it was wildly unfair that people treat them like how tall they are and not how old they are. But dude and dudette, you are fucking huge. You can’t act like you are still little and to be coddled and tolerated as you are rough. When you roughhouse it fucking hurts and I am not supposed to respond as if an adult-sized person is hurting me you want me to act like you are still my precious toddlers.

This is part of why I wanted a third child. Even they are kind of able to understand “Oh. That’s what a toddler is. Not me.”

We normalize off of one another. We decide what is and isn’t ok by committee in ways that I don’t see other families doing and I don’t know if this is wrong or not. But I don’t have a handbook or a culture to fall back on to decide how things should be so we decide together what we want for our family. We prioritize things like trying to be healthy for the express reason that we want to be able to be together for a long time because we like each other. Fitness, vegetables, sleep, education… we talk about these things in terms of how we each fit into the family unit and how we will have to pursue our own paths. So far they still struggle to perceive that they will want their own space to the degree I predict they will. I remind them that a few years ago they were not capable of perceiving that they would want the space they want now… and I predicted it… and I turned out to be right. Maybe I am right about how much more they will want a few more years down the line.

We’ll see.

Maybe I am wrong.

We imprinted hard on the highly enmeshed babysitter we had for five years. She is her mother’s best friend. She is 21 now and barely starting to pull away and be her own person. My kids saw her going through her teen years hanging out with her mom all the time because her mother was her favorite person. They expect to feel that way.

Only I can’t fucking home school them that long. I can’t. I feel like this is too much for me at this point and I am going to struggle to get through the next year. What would make it better for me? If they were actually self directed instead of depending on me to be their externalized brain. I ask them about their goals then I set the path based on what they claim they want then I hold them to it and it fucking sucks. Because they drag their feet kicking and screaming the whole way. As they remind me weekly that they want the end result and I need to get them there. This is not healthy.

I am failing to teach them how to be self directed. I have such a powerful internal motor, such a strong sense of I MUST KEEP MOVING AND ACCOMPLISHING THINGS that Noah and the kids just… kind of fall into my wake. Which isn’t fair or true entirely because Noah’s career arc has been of his own making and there is a self-directed learner if ever there was one. But he didn’t ever want it until I told him I had big dreams and he wanted to hitch to my wagon. He wrote a book after me (and did way better at that than me).

Noah is incredible and it’s not all because of me. That potential was there before I met him. He had a burning desire to change and get out. But it is utterly undeniable that his career arc after marrying me was meteoric and it wasn’t before our marriage.

I don’t want to be that for my kids. And that’s complicated. I don’t want them to succeed because they are doing so for me. I think I communicate that to them in complicated ways so they don’t try hard because they don’t have much they want to accomplish for themselves. Their just-go-along life is good and they are happy. I mean… that’s good, right? Only it’s mixed.

I want to differentiate more from them and I don’t feel I know how to while also preserving how very close and connected we are. I come from a family of people who violently hate each other. Noah comes from a family of people who low key hate each other. Our kids really like us and want to be near us all the god damn time. It feels like a miracle. I like this. I want this to continue. Only I also feel like I am suffocating and I need space.

I don’t know what the balance is.

This much constant connection with my kids makes me not want sex and that’s complicated.

I went to a munch today. I met a few local perverts and it was quite lovely. It’s… going to be different here. A large party is the size of small house parties in California. More people go to Folsom Street Fair than live in all of the Highlands. There is no education network to speak of.

Meeting these new people made me want to write Part 2 so much. I want to write about all of the things I learned from the bdsm community in California. My mis-education in the hands of the Middle Aged Guard. I love the people who taught me so much. I am so grateful to and for them. I learned so much about life and what I wanted and who I want to be.

And now I need to go off into the world and be that person and I don’t feel like I know how to do that and have the appropriate space from my kids.

I miss sex and I miss bdsm. I miss feeling that yearning and want. In some ways I feel like it will be very good for my marriage to rediscover what those things mean to me away from that community. My wants and yearnings are so tied up in the people who kink-raised me. I am glad I will get to go do some processing of what that means in Portland before I land here permanently. Some of the more big-sister feeling people from the California community moved up there over the last few years and I get to touch base with them.

That’s a gift.

My life is so full of gifts.

I got to dig in the earth today. I put two plants in the ground in Jenny’s garden. She is so kind to allow me to come and do that work. Touching earth calms me down and makes me feel happy in a way very little else does. And I will get to visit these plants for years to come and hopefully see them thrive. I will get to know that Jenny and her family will see them daily and feel pleasure. I hope they will feel that I am extending a little branch of love into their lives.

My life is so full of gifts.

I am very excited about moving to the Highlands partially because it means I need to get my poop in a group and keep it there. I won’t have the patience and background radiation of living in therapy-culture. Folks won’t be the same sort of tolerant of my quirks. That will make many kinds of growth absolutely mandatory if I want to be happy and connected.

I did not talk about my psycho childhood at the munch. Boundaries will be so different here.

There are two Part 2s to write and I want to write them both. I want to write about the community that kink-raised me for other grown ups and I want to write about everything that lead up to Noah for my kids. Those are two very different books. One will be highly chronological (the latter) and one will be full of amalgamation and simplification as I figure out what the important lessons were and how I learned them (the former).

Even if no one ever buys them or reads them… I want to know that I have told these stories. Noah will read them. Noah will understand me better. Jenny will read them. Pam will read them.

So someone will know me better.

(But I will give them copies for free.)

How will I talk about that group? Will I call it the crucible? The binding? The synthesis? The smelting?

Ha.

It will start with driving to the first party I went to down in the mountains. Where I met my Owner even though the invitation came at a munch the week before. I have relived that drive in my head thousands of times. I know the music I listened to. I know how it felt to have all the windows down and the wind rushing through my hair. I was hurtling as fast as I could around all those curves in my mad rush to find myself. To find the mentors I desperately needed.

Thank you all so much.

I saw Dad for the second time at that party. I met him first at PE, and that will come later in the story as a flashback. It will start with that drive. Dixie Chicks: Goodbye Earl. Melissa Etheridge: I’m Only One. Meredith Brooks: Bitch. White Town: Your Woman. TLC: No Scrubs. Rascal Flatts: Waiting All My Life.

There was more of course. But those songs… they were on my absolute constant playlist.

How in the world will I talk about the bdsm and be appropriate for my kids? That’s going to be a tightrope.

The cattle prod. Breaking my arm and staying with him for years. Giving him a 3′ by 3′ by 3′ cage and fucking sleeping in it. Sleeping chained to the bed with just enough distance to be able to reach the toilet.

I want to understand this and for that I need enough distance to look at it. I want to figure out who I actually am and who I want to be. I want to get my poop in a group and be the person my children will want to be friends with some day.

And that means more fucking boundaries.

I don’t even know.

Bam. (That’s the wall.)

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My period is over, mostly? I think? But I am utterly exhausted. I feel exhaustion deep in the marrow of my bones. We didn’t go out and have fun with folks. We did our weekend tidy and then watched gardening shows.

I don’t have a lot of patience so I didn’t try to interact much. No really, I can’t express how tired I am.

Tired. Weary. Pain. So. Much. Pain.

Trying to research Brexit. What a cluster. It’s going to be somewhat like jumping out of the fire into the pot. (It is a step up… kind of… I guess….)

I am enjoying looking at the planting schedule for this gardening zone. There’s going to be a lot more mandatory starting-indoors than I am accustomed to. There will be many months of the year when I really can’t do much. That sounds… useful.

The future is feeling intimidating today. It feels like it takes so much energy. So much work. And I’m utterly weary.

A trip to lake vomitcaca

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Today a friend said, “You have a remarkable number of stories about children throwing up on you. Talking to you reminds me that I am totally committed to not having children.” I giggled a lot. Yes, dear friend, if you aren’t ok with being covered in vomit, shit, piss, and snot… don’t have kids. Kids have puked on every limb, my hair, in my mouth. Rivers of shit have cascaded down my body. I’ve been peed on more times than I can count. They have blown their god damn noses all over me and into my mouth.

And the blood. So. Much. Blood. My own, theirs… so much blood.

Do you know what bothers me more than bodily excretions?

DO YOUR GOD DAMN CHORES WITHOUT ME HAVING TO ASK 958 TIMES A DAY, PLEASE.

It’s funny where we all have our limits.

Living in the slaughterhouse

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Oh gosh. This period is so much. In a 12 hour span I completely soaked 4 pads and a pair of 2 tampon underwear. That’s a fuck ton of blood. When I was rinsing things out in the shower this morning before I toss it in the washing machine… it looked like a slaughterhouse. There was blood up to my knees from the splashing. It’s just… whoa. I hope that next month is a bit more sane. I don’t really have enough menstruation products to be bleeding like this. Right now I have on the panties, a panty liner, and two full pads. Please let me make it till after lunch. Then I’ll change the whole shebang (I actually remove layers as they fill up because sitting on a damp wad of cloth that is 2″ thick is quite uncomfortable) and put everything from last night and this morning in the laundry. For once I’m glad the washing machine is so small so I don’t feel quite so wasteful.

It’s a lot. LIke, oh my goodness and splashes of tomato sauce lot. Like slaughtering animals a lot.

As one of my former students used to say while cackling: “Never trust anything that can bleed for a week straight and not die.”

I don’t feel like I want to do much. I want to lie very still and bleed.

I feel like a rather shitty woman a lot of the time. I know women who go through similar stuff, with the same number of kids, and they have a job too. I feel like a lazy sack of shit. My hat is off to working mothers. Y’all are… magical.

Adulting like a rich bitch.

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Noah and I sat down and transferred a bunch of money from the house sale. We now have a whole bunch more money in investments and a lot less in checking accounts.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

I know I have never gone back and done the end of year report for 2018. I have the screen shots, I just didn’t write anything up. Whine.

I am feeling intense mental block around doing this. Even though our total wealth is going up like almost no one else for my generation I *still* feel intense overwhelming shame about how much money we spend. I feel fucking awful. I feel like what I am doing is grotesque.

I am not really missing my budget targets by that much? I am. Let’s be honest, here. But… I miss my budget targets in large part because I under budget on purpose and know we will make more money. Then when I go over… I’m still under what we make and we have invested really fucking well. Our net worth is a hair under $1.5 million.

That makes me want to choke.

When we buy a house in Scotland I may not pay it all in cash. I may get a mortgage because having a mortgage will cause me to hurry the fuck up and pay double and triple payments because I want to get rid of it in a way that I won’t save. Like, I will economize to get rid of the debt in a way I won’t if I just grab it out of investments.

I know the stupid games I play with myself.

Because I don’t want a mortgage. But I also want to leave those investments the fuck alone because those are for the future.

I don’t know how I will handle it for sure. Not yet.

But Noah would really like to hit $3 million so he can just stop working forever.

Will we make that target? Right now I feel like it is hubris to be too sure. But we went from ~$350,000 in investments and ~$350,000 in debt when we got married 13 years ago to almost $1.5 million and no debt.

Noah is 42. I’d really like him to be able to retire by 50. Because I am selfish in the extreme and I want his company. Because if he weren’t working for money he would teach people shit for free because people can’t really afford his time and he loves to teach. I would love to be able to give him that.

Why do I feel so god damn embarrassed about being a little bit over budget when we are having these kinds of results?

15 months and what do you get?

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A cute little toddler, that’s what. Her Sweetness is 15 months today so I thought I would write down some milestones. She says mama, baby, hi, nigh nigh, sometimes dada/daddy, and no. She signs more, food, all done, milk, up, and yes (sometimes). Am I missing any, Noah?

She started walking this week and she is really enjoying that process. Her first attempt at walking up a hill resulted in her falling backwards in slow motion first onto her butt and then all the way onto her back. She was smart enough to keep her head up so she didn’t get a head bonk though! That was well done.

Like all of my children have done she has a big bruise on her cheek from slamming her face into something when falling. It’s a right of passage.

She is starting to try to help me dress her. She can use a spoon or fork if we help load it, otherwise she is still eating with her hands. She loves showers.

She is usually taking one nap a day and most of the time it lasts two hours. Sometimes if she goes to sleep early (by 10) then she will only sleep for an hour or an hour and a half and take a second nap later in the afternoon. If she doesn’t go to sleep till 11 or 12 then she gets a solid two hour block and she’s good till bedtime. She usually naps in the stroller which is the best.

She usually goes to sleep at 9pm which… I feel is way too late. She sleeps till 5:30, wakes up to nurse and then sleeps again till 7:30 or 8 depending on when we get up for breakfast. We are all skewing later here.

She truly loves to color and I find that kind of incredible. At this age her older siblings had no such inclination at all.

She likes cuddling her dolls and she hands them back and forth so everyone can get a cuddle.

She wakes up first thing in the morning and reaches for her toy phone if she can’t get her hands on an adult phone. I find this hilarious.

She is not big on meat but she will eat some if it is well covered in beans or fruit goo. She loves bananas, raspberries, blueberries, oranges/tangerines, watermelon but she’s sometimes not interested in strawberries or pineapple. She loves baked beans. Loves them. She is iffy on bread but she loves oatcakes. Rice is the best thing ever, she will gorge on it till her tiny little tummy is super round. Pasta is sometimes good and sometimes she picks at it–she is totally happy for it to be covered in sauce. She likes apple pieces and not so much apple sauce. She prefers breakfast cereal to be wet and fed to her over eating dry pieces on her own. She will drink whole cow milk (out of an open cup) and she drinks a lot of water (out of an open cup or from a camelback water bottle). She is very excited when she can occasionally bat her eyes long enough and I give her a sip of tea or juice but that doesn’t happen even once a week. Ice is great fun. She likes most veggies we give her but she’s not big on them cooked into eggs. She’s not super into eggs in general and will generally only eat any if they are covered in… baked beans. You are sensing a pattern here, right? She will eat anything if it is covered in baked beans: bacon, sausage, crumpet, toast, eggs, grilled tomatoes… even if she is highly dubious of those things separate. She loves yogurt with fruit and granola. If we eat a cookie in front of her she is adamant that She Gets Some.

She absolutely adores her siblings and will gently stroke their faces and nuzzle them. She likes to lean in and pat them. (She does this with her parents too, but it’s way cuter with her siblings.)

She is still incredibly prone to diaper rash so we change her at the absolute tiniest sign of wetness. We go through so many nappies. But it is better than her poor little but being irritated. She really couldn’t handle cloth diapers–she’s too sensitive.

She is still in 12-18 month clothing. I am not sure if she will still be solidly in them enough that we should take them to Portland or if she will bump up to 18-24 month stuff. I will definitely be leaving all the colder weather stuff here because Portland will be a massive increase in temperature for us and she’s not that cold here. (We are going from 2-12C in Inverness to 14-27C. That’s a big jump. She’ll only need sweaters if we are out at night and during the day she’s not going to need outer layers at all.)

She likes looking at her board books but she doesn’t have the patience to be read to from them. She loves chasing balls and rolling toys around the room.

If I scold her at all she closes her eyes and looks sad. So I try to keep that to an absolute bare minimum and follow up any boundary setting with kisses and cuddles. I can tell you not to throw your food on the floor and still love you and think you are the best thing ever.

When the big kids and I roughhouse at all she gets very upset and tries to make us stop. She does not think fighting games are ok. She wants everyone to be loving.

I have fully night weaned and I’m grateful for the sleep. She still nurses quite a bit during the day and I will keep it up for quite some time longer. She needs the stability and comfort.

She’s great.

And this morning I got my first postpartum period. I’m actually happy about that. I can start doing more mood tracking. It’s very useful to know my hormonal cycle.

The light at the end of the tunnel is not a speeding train.

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H’okay. Looks like I have a way to wrap my head around how this is working.

Now- June 16 Inverness, Scotland

June 16- Aug 31 PDX, USA

Aug 31-Oct 30 Bangkok, Thailand

Oct 30- Nov 26 Wellington, New Zealand

Nov 26- Jan 3 Taipei, Taiwan

Jan 3- Feb 20? Uruguay (city TBD)

Feb 20?- May/June in the US while we mail our passports off to apply for a UK visa. Figure out shipping our stuff to Scotland.

June/July- move to Inverness, buy a house, enroll the kids in school (to start in August) and figure out starting to get household stuff.

The kids think this sounds like a plan.

Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit.

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Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit.

Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit.

Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit……

And I hate the whole fucking day.

(To the tune of “Happy Birthday”)

It’s not that Noah or the kids are going to be awful. They are going to show me love and respect and caring. And I am going to spend the day feeling like undeserving dog shit because I “should” be “honoring” my mother.

Emotional flashback for the lose?

Honor thy mother and father. But what if your father is a rapist and your mother is neglectful and cruel?

HONOR THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS BECAUSE GOD DAMN CONFUCIUS SAYS SO.

But what if honoring them will make me end up killing myself?

I know I’m supposed to stop talking about suicide. It upsets Noah. I’m not saying I want to or I should. I am making choices to avoid it. If I were on that god damn merry go round with my mother I think would. I think that I would be absolutely unable to absorb how much she hates me on top of how much I hate me. I have fucking limits, yo.

Instead we had a nice day at the botanical garden and science fair and park. Then my niece came over for her first ever overnight. We had a nice dinner (it was one of those meals where everybody ate slightly different things because they have different preferences) and the kids played and then we read stories. It went well. I am hopeful about tomorrow too.

And hell, I’m ditching Noah pretty early tomorrow to go get body work done and have tea with Jenny. Then she will pick up her daughter after the kids have a day to play together.

The only hiccup is the big kids thinking they can force the baby out of the living room so they can have privacy. Nope, go in your room.

Even that we weren’t mean about, just matter of fact.

I’m reading the forums again. I’m not commenting. I’m not rejoining the groups where I feel so uncomfortable so I can’t say anything. But I’m trying to make myself feel better? Misery loves company? If I read about how other people have it so much worse–they are going through active trauma and I’m just a whiny bitch–maybe I’ll stop crying?

I’ll tell you if it works out.

I took some Ativan tonight because I seriously need some sleep. But it’s 11pm and it hasn’t kicked in. Insomnia is part of depression for some folk.

I want my mother. I hate my mother. I miss my mother. I resent my mother. I love my mother. I feel unworthy of my mother. I feel bad that my existence caused her so much pain. When I think of her I still hear “Mama mama mama mama” in my head and I start rocking without even thinking about why I am doing it or if I want to do it. I have done this since I was 3 years old. Mama. Pleeeeeeeeeeease come get me. Mama. Pleeeeeeeeeeeease love me.

I wrote the book so I can’t rewrite these stories in my head. I can’t give her all the slack I want to give her.

I don’t know if she “really” loved me. I know it doesn’t matter. She neglected me and didn’t teach me that I should be alive.

She failed me.

And I fail her by not trying harder.

Life’s a bitch and then you die.

We all suffer.

Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit. Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit.

I don’t want to want to hurt myself because my fucking mommy doesn’t love me.

I feel so deeply uncomfortable sometimes when Noah or the kids refer to me by a mother name. Mama. Mom. Mommy. Mummy. Mum. Maman. They’ve fucking tried everything and I think they see me flinch.

Motherhood is the only club where I am welcomed in to be a member where I want to be there. Only I feel so fucking bad about myself.

I want so very badly to not be bad. I held my shit together today. I laughed. I told jokes. I kept my voice calm. I didn’t criticize. I wasn’t nasty.

I want to be good enough to deserve being kept. I’ll just wait until everyone goes to sleep to cry. Maybe that’s why I can’t sleep. If I cry when they are awake I am bad and I don’t deserve to have them. There is not fucking deserve. But I might fuck everything up. I might drive people away from me because I am a fucking monster, a bully, a bitch who does not get to have people want to be around me. Noah isn’t really asleep. He has his hand on my shoulder. He doesn’t know what to say and neither do I. I mean… I can type. But I can’t talk about this. It’s so repetitive. It’s so pathetic. I feel so fucking embarrassed for being this fucking stupid.

STOP CRYING YOU STUPID BITCH. YOU FUCKING SUCK YOU DUMB CUNT. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

Why do I always want to put a trailing ‘e’ on the end of words? That’s weird

What the fuck does shut upe mean anyway.

Be nice. Don’t be irritable. Don’t be angry. It’s not ok to be angry. If you do people will send you away. They will avoid you. They will tell you that they are doing so because you are bad for being angry. It doesn’t matter what they do. Just stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

But I haven’t cut today. I haven’t done any form of self harm. I sucked it the fuck up and I was nice all day. I gently touched everyone. I gave them what I wish I got. What I can’t allow anyone to give me.

I’m glad Noah fell asleep. When he touches me like that sometimes I feel like I should claw my skin off. I feel so bad. I don’t want him to touch me. Not because of him. Because I am bad and if he touches me badness might get on him and that will be my fault too. I know I’m supposed to trust that he knows what he is doing and he is making a decision (practically daily) to stay with me.

But I know I don’t deserve him. He is far too good for me.

And that’s part of why I get so bitchy. I feel so bad about ruining his life with a stupid whore.

I don’t even put out much anymore. I can’t tell if that is selfish in a good way or a bad way. I just know I feel ashamed. Fucking bait and switch you god damn lying cow.

I have nothing to give. And it would shred me because I cannot be turned on right now. My equipment feels dead. And it isn’t worth bleeding over.

Because I am selfish. Maybe that’s a good thing and maybe it isn’t. I am not capable of evaluating it.

All of life is fucking suffering.

Fucking Mother’s Day is Shit.

That’s how I feel about you.

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My kids and I were talking about negative moods yesterday. I spent a lot of the day crying and when I wasn’t crying I was mostly grumpy. I’m depressed. I fucking hate Mother’s Day. I am over extended as a lifestyle and there are consequences. This is normal cycle for my shitty brain. Negative moods are part of life.

They said that they have each had thoughts wondering if life would be better if they were dead. I said, “Well–do you feel like your life would be better if I were dead?” “NO NO NO NO NO” “Well, that’s how I feel about you. I feel like the world would turn dark and grey and I would never be fully happy again. I made you because I wanted to see you have a different childhood than mine and I wanted to see you grow up and I wanted to be part of your life events. Losing out on that would basically mean the end of hope for me. So no, it would never ever be better if you were dead.”

They both got that deep thinking slightly pained face.

Life is hard. Life hurts.

I talked to them about us having a family history of suicide and how that means we have brains that are oriented towards hopelessness and depression and we have to find bulwarks against those feelings. We have to find ways of coping on our dark days. We are not in the same position our relatives were in when they gave up hope. They asked me questions about the people who died and I told them about the lives of the family members who suicided. We don’t really know for sure if my grandmother suicided or if it was an accidental over dose the way it was for Grandpa’s wife, the lady Eldest Child is named after. We know that those two women were in tremendous pain and they felt empty and lonely and like nobody cared very much about them.

I asked my kids if they feel like nobody cares about them and if they spend their days alone and hurting? They said sometimes they hurt, but they know they are liked and they can barely find a few minutes to be alone. We talked about how I effectively ended my pre-kid life to ensure that they didn’t feel alone or abandoned. That got a little smile of acknowledgment.

I am there for them in a way I have never experienced and will never experience. They know I struggle with needing a few hours a week away from them and not feeling like that is an ok thing to need.

I told Middle Child that part of the reason I am so militantly supportive of his trans stuff is because I don’t want that to be part of why he gives up hope on life and I know it can work that way for a lot of trans folk. I accept you. I love you. I approve of you being whoever you are in this life.

I can’t make everything easy for you. I wouldn’t if I could because someday despite my best efforts I will die and you will need to be ok without me and I need to prepare you for the fact that life is hard. Life involves a lot of suffering. That’s just… life.

But for every single day that I am alive there is at least one person who desperately hopes you will cling to the tendrils of hope and keep trying.

They said they feel that way about me too.

So I’m still here.

They asked me how my mother responded to me having bad days as a kid. I told them she would say terrible things about what a burden I was. They said I have never told them that they are a burden; I say they are a lot of work and I am tired… but they don’t feel like it is the same thing. I said I agree. I don’t think they are a burden. I think they are a gift.

You know how if you stop running on overdrive you get sick?

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I’m not physically sick but I feel like I got hit by a mac truck of exhaustion. Getting some rest is making me feel worse about how much lack of rest I’ve had for a long time.

A bunch of little things are disappointing. Having my screen die the way it did means I might have lost 15 years of digital pictures. I paid for cloud storage. Nothing is on it pre 2016. I lost the road trip. I lost my whole life before then.

I really need the mental health support weekend I thought I was going to happen again this year. Last year was excellent. But the person who insisted she wanted to organize… hasn’t organized anything and she can’t afford to go so I think she is not feeling motivated to get it done. I could potentially buy last minute plane tickets but I don’t think she understands that if you try to book a big house for a whole bunch of people… that takes a bunch of lead time. And this time we are trying to go during a school vacation when everyone else will be on summer break so vacation rentals will be booked up. I think it is going to fall through and I’m feeling super sad. Not to mention that being the one to do the research and figure out where we are going means you need to be able to drop a bunch of money on the deposit and… she can’t afford even her own share let alone floating everyone else’s share until folks pay you back. I am not mad at her. But I feel really sad.

When I express frustration with my kids not following through on the routine tasks that have been in their lives for years someone always always ALWAYS asks if I have tried making lists for them and then I want to break ALL OF THE THINGS. Yes. I write lists for them. They copy the lists. We go through verbal reminders. Then…. they sit and stare at the wall until I say, “What’s next? Check your list. What’s next? Check your list. What’s next? Check your list.” Then by the time I get them through all of the things (WHICH HAVEN’T CHANGED SINCE YESTERDAY OR THE DAY BEFORE OR THE DAY BEFORE OR THE DAY BEFORE THAT) they are all “So how are we going to have fun together now?

And I’m fucking exhausted and frustrated and I want to go in a dark room and cry by myself and NOT FUCKING ENTERTAIN YOU.

Most of the time I suck it up and find something entertaining/bonding/fun to do because I feel like it is my job. But then sometimes (like now) I feel dead inside. I’m fucking rocking the baby to sleep as I type this. Because I am doing something for my children nearly 24 hours a day. (I have talented feet. Thank god this baby will go to sleep in a stroller with rocking.)

I have a growing number of emails to respond to and I feel sheer panic at the idea of trying to respond in upbeat, friendly, supportive ways.

I canceled my online therapy plan because I wrote as much to her as I write here and she would respond with a couple of sentences a couple of times per week. I get more response from my friends. My friends say more helpful things. Why am I paying $200/month for this? Maybe if I didn’t already blog it would be more useful but it really isn’t helpful for me to have that little back from a therapist.

It drives me nuts that I clean up from meals and the kids come back for seconds and make a big mess and expect the fucking fairies to show up and re-tidy the kitchen.

Getting a little bit of a break always feels like it hurts more than it helps. Because it doesn’t undo the damage I have done to myself with overwork and it just reminds me that I need so so so so so so so much more and I can’t have it.

I keep telling myself that it has gotten much less stressful every time a kid hits 18 months old. Only 3 months to go.

I keep thinking, “It would be better if I cut.” Because the very best thing I can do with feeling shitty is to make sure my feelings don’t impact anyone around me. I’m drinking more alcohol than I wish I would (about a shot, occasionally two) in a day because otherwise I will be hitting the Ativan more than is healthy for me because I need some kind of sedative and I keep thinking “It would be better if I cut.” And that makes me feel really bad about myself.

I was googling last night wondering “Is it bad for your kids if you pretend to be happy” and loosely paraphrased the responses I got were “Yes that is bad. So you should use your drive home from work to decompress so you aren’t faking it. You need to be actually happy.” and “No it’s great to pretend to be happy because fake it till you make it! Smiling even when you aren’t happy encourages your body to produce hormones that will make you feel happy even when you aren’t!”

It would be better if I cut.

I have yelled a couple of times since we got to Scotland but only a couple. And not in a few days.

I’m still doing better than I have done in California in years. I fucking hate that Mother’s Day is coming up because I always remind Noah to think about his mother and I always feel like a flaming pile of dogshit that I am not going to do anything for my mother so I don’t deserve to have anything done for me.

I am going out on a date with Jenny on Sunday. It isn’t Mother’s Day in this country anyway.

I have this terrible resentment that people will try to talk about how horrible family estrangement is for them but then you ask them more questions and it turns out they talk to their mother every week or their father lends them money every time they have a problem or their step mother comes over and spends whole weekends cleaning their filthy, disgusting house because it is just “Too hard for them to manage alone”.

And I want to put my head through a window. That’s your idea of estrangement? I haven’t spoken to my mother in eight years. I probably never will again. If I did she would ask me for money and to do things for her in the first five minutes.

It would be better if I cut.

It’s not even that I object to giving people money! It’s that she would combine it with telling me how stupid, ugly, and worthless I am. I am a failure. Now why don’t I pay for all of her needs?

Why don’t I just cut? It would be better.

Why don’t I get up and do more work for people. Why don’t I cough up more money to support people. Why don’t I just kill myself and leave a detailed will so that everyone who is better than me can have access to the only part of me they want?

Jenny has never asked me for money. And I will see her tomorrow and again on Sunday.

But I need to keep my shit together. I need to not be a problem. Or I will lose her too. Like I lost Sarah because I could not pretend well enough that whatever I got was good enough.

At least Jenny doesn’t ask me to fund her vacations while she hides and refuses to talk to me.

I feel really bad about myself.

Just keep moving. Keep pretending you are happy. Don’t let your problems make trouble for anyone else. This isn’t Burkina Faso and no one thinks your problems are problems for the community.

If you get upset again someone else will tell you that you have Borderline and you need to shut up.

Quiet week

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I have been withdrawing a fair bit this week. Noah had the kids for 7 hours on Tuesday. He took the kids down to the shop for necessary stuff on Wednesday and was gone close to 2 hours. I stayed up late last night watching Outlander because I wanted space away from other people’s bodies.

I think it is funny that a cumulative 10.5ish hours of not interacting in a week feels like oh my god I am rejecting everyone and being awful.

Well I’m going out on Sunday for about 5 hours too.

That means that this week I will have less time off from my kids than I used to get when we had a steady babysitter. And I feel like I am being horribly extravagant and selfish.

I need this. I need this a lot. I’m feeling guilty that I’m ignoring everyone so much… but I literally haven’t had this much time off in a week in over a year. It’s a need not a want and I wish I weren’t beating myself up internally for taking the time.

I can’t take so much time off mid-week every week because… Noah needs protected work time. But I should probably be taking a bunch of weekend time off every weekend until we go to Portland. That’s going to be a rough three week stretch alone if I don’t do something to put some spoons back in my drawer.

I see you.

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The fascinating thing about IP tracking is that I know how many different countries people visit my website from. In the last week hits from Australia, India, Scotland, all over England, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, France, Canada, and I regularly get hits from Russia, China, while also getting hits from 9 different US states.

Sometimes people are hanging out going through 50+ different specific links and spending 3-7 hours reading.

Dang.

Uhm, I hope you are finding entertainment value?

And that doesn’t include anyone who reads me through an aggregate reading service! Dang.

Hi. Hope you are having a nice day.