In flux

It’s really weird how much stuff is breaking. My laptop is being repaired right now. A replacement watch is on the way, because my Christmas present already broke. Most of my socks are wearing out. They aren’t getting one hole, they are getting 4-8 holes all of a sudden. There has been a little bit of anxiety around Eldest Child going to see grandpa. As of this moment she is going. We leave for the airport in 12 hours. No pressure.

She has a prepaid gift card and $260 in cash. I hope that is enough money to buy her food in the airports and groceries and the admission she will need to pay for when she does stuff with grandpa. He does not intend to pay for anything. He can’t right now. His girlfriend just got laid off. He would like to borrow $25,000 from me. I’m having really big feelings about that right now. I’m pretty sure I need to say no just because I am not feeling stable in friendships right now and I feel used. This is a really bad time for me to do a loan like that. This break up is hurting.

I have done my PT exercises at least three days in a row. Some of them are getting easier. I can do a wall sit for a full minute. I am struggling with that mindset problem where I want to get ahead. I want to give myself some kind of slack. So I want to do tomorrow’s homework today. But doing two rounds of PT exercises in one day does not actually work like that. I’m feeling deep frustration.

I’m having a lot of trouble sleeping. I’m so anxious. My thumbs hurt. I’m tired of feeling sad.

Things I am thinking about instead of sleeping

I want my computer back. My phone is not really an acceptable substitute. Although I will say that the talk to text function of the phone is way better than I ever gave it credit for. It’s better than dragon on every level.

I’m staring at this new layer of growth in my hair. I have these curls going straight up around my face. They look really funny. It’s almost like I had to Santa Cruz wave logo coming out around my face.

I am thinking about my body in ways that I have mixed feelings about. I have been binging on sugar for the last few months to deal with my feelings. I don’t have a lot of vices left; the sugar is awesome.But I’ve gained a couple of pounds. We have also not been walking as much as we really should be. We are working too much. As a result I’m getting softer and thicker around the middle. I am feeling very unhappy with myself for noticing. I don’t want to care about gaining weight. I want that to be OK. But my clothes are starting to not fit and I’m not really at a good place to go replace my wardrobe. I feel positively allergic to the idea of going on a diet. I don’t wanna ever diet again in my life and I feel angry at myself for thinking about losing weight. I don’t really want to lose weight. Maybe three or 4 pounds? I want my clothes to fit. I don’t really want to be smaller.

I saw my massage therapist today. Actually, I’ve seen her three times in the last four days. My body feels better than it has in months. My jaw feels so much better, even though it is swollen from all of the digging. My massage therapist has come along way. When I started seeing her the level of bigotry that she would casually display while talking was really hard for me. I have spent a lot of hours arguing with her. Today it was kind of funny listening to her talk about how most terrorists in this country are American citizens and they’re white men. Most of them are even Christian! That was a huge jump for her. When we first started working together she believed that most terrorists were Islamic and I’ve spent years bringing in statistics to argue with her. It was really wonderful seeing evidence that she has actually listened and take in the information in and she is spontaneously volunteering the information when it is relevant in other settings. That’s good. I feel like I did something with my time. I’m going to take her out to lunch soon because it is coming up on the anniversary of her mother’s death and she’s not coping all that well. She’s not allowing herself to reach out for connection in anyway and I’m worried about her. I will be kind of bummed when I lose out on that relationship. I have been very lucky in my medical providers over the last few years. There’s gonna be a lot that will be hard when I’m gone.

I’m thinking about my friends all day every day. I feel like I’m flipping through a Rolodex in my head of people. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I don’t have the ability to reach out to you right now. I’m really glad you’re in the world though. I really hope that things will work out such that we will be able to hang out again. I hope I will get my poop in a group and I won’t be annoying on the visit. I’m trying to get better about only visiting people for really short periods of time so that I don’t bother people. I don’t know how to change this absolute paranoia in my chest that if I overstayed my welcome I’m going to be finished permanently. I wish I felt more secure in my relationships. I don’t.

I am trudging through all of my adulting tasks.And both feel overwhelmed and like things are getting better. The end is in sight. We really are to the point where we are almost down to the possessions that fit in suitcases. I think we will bring four or five boxes to storage? Maybe? It depends on how much space the blanket fills up. We only want to keep a couple of blankets but they are bulky.

I feel like I am a different person than I used to be. I feel quieter. I know that part of it is how tired I am, but it’s bigger than that too. I feel like I am a growing mix of confidence and insecurity that’s really hard to pin down. Like, the fact that I’m taking off on this trip at all it’s kind of amazing. But I don’t feel worthy of love or relationship still. Even though on many stages of this journey we’re going to be seeing friends who really want to see us I still feel insecure. I still feel like people don’t actually like me. I really thought that by this point in my life I would feel more secure in myself but I don’t. I think that the fact that I am always working on things that I need to change contributes to why I always feel like I’m bad. There’s always stuff that feels not good enough. Like working with the vaginal dilators. I’m clearly doing stuff. This is necessary and important work that might improve my relationship with my pussy. But it’s hard. It feels overwhelming and scary. It’s weird hitting a tiny little bump inside my vagina and all of a sudden I have triggered feelings of existential terror. Then I have to calm down and try to make it boring so that the muscles relax so that I stop tearing and ripping and bleeding.

I am feeling really crowded inside of my head. I feel like I don’t have very much opportunity to talk. I am engaging in the least therapy of my life. This is the longest stretch of not consistently seeing somebody. I’m coming up on years of not having really consistent therapy at this point. I have somebody I see occasionally but they are not really a talk therapist. They work more on somatic stuff. So I haven’t had a talk therapist since I fired the lady who lives in Oakland. And that was three years ago? I don’t remember. I feel like it would be good for me to be processing with someone but I’m not at a good place for finding a therapist and I’m not feeling very confident about reaching out to my friends. What I want is so specific and structured and hard but it’s not fair to ask of anyone. And that hurts. Because I just can’t ask anybody for help right now because I am too hard.

I feel like we are coming out of the disequilibrium period with the kids. The last few days have gone better than things have gone in a long time. It helps that the kids are more or less caught up with school. It helps that I have less work on my plate so I am less overwhelmed and irritable. It helps that we’ve had some intense non-yelling conversations with Middle Child lately about what kind of relationships he wants to have with people and what kind of person he wants to manifest in the world. He’s doing a lot of really interesting work on himself. Like, he’s really interested in being a person that he wants to be friends with. That’s kind of fascinating for me to watch because I have never liked myself very much. I have never believed that I would want to be friends with me. If I could get away from me and never talk to me again that would probably be my first choice. But he really likes him self and that’s so neat to watch. He worries a lot, he is my son. He’s really cool. And my big girl is making me really happy lately. It’s weird feeling happy about my children. I feel bad about it like I am doing something I shouldn’t do. But they are so much of my life and my time. It’s hard feeling like I am being bad just by enjoying them as much as I do. It is hard feeling like my feelings about them are just about me and just about them and are not about all of these other people and situations in the world. It’s hard feeling centered in my own narrative.

I am struggling with the great influx of overt racism around the globe. I feel like the problems with white supremacy and patriarchy and white men are coming to some kind of feverish pitch. Where will it go? What horrible event is going to change this flow of hatred? I don’t know but it’s really scary. Also, Cardi B can tell me who to vote for in the next election.

My stomach hurts. I feel like my anxiety is on turbo again. I don’t feel like I am making choices that lift enough people. I don’t feel like I am doing enough for my species and I also feel like I do too much for people and I’m hurting myself in the process. I don’t understand balance.

I am really tired. I should probably try to sleep now. It’s feeling really hard.

Financial shifting sucks

Good golly I feel overwhelmed. Today Noah set up his direct deposit to stop going to the credit union and it will be split between two new banks. One international checking account and one US bank that has a safe deposit box attached to it.

The US bank will be where I funnel the donation stuff because the account has to be active enough or we can’t have the safe deposit box. I will probably also have a handful of direct deposit stuff come out of there but I will need to transfer money periodically to cover that. Ack. I just need to have enough transactions a month and I’m not sure what that will even mean.

The US bank doesn’t have a lot of money in it yet and the international account is still completely empty because deposits haven’t hit yet. We have 31 more days at this address.

We may want to save closing the credit union account until we come back after the cruise. We’ll see. We just can’t access this very well as we travel. The kid bank accounts are staying there. We will access them when we come through town. Savings account?

I need to run my credit and probably freeze it. Not today. For some reason that’s freaking me out.

Do you know how many things we can stop paying for soon?

  1. Gardener
  2. Car insurance
  3. Gas
  4. Home owners insurance
  5. Electricity
  6. Gas
  7. Water
  8. Internet
  9. US phone numbers (I need to figure out transferring to VOIP)
  10. HELOC
  11. Property taxes

That’s a lot.

Now I have to wait for money to arrive in those accounts. And I need to get a picture of my IDs in PDF form for the stupid mail forwarding company. Everything is 97 steps. Uploaded the jpgs. Now I wait for them to be reviewed.

Do the thing. Wait. Do the thing. Wait.

Hurry up. Stop.

Ugh.

Money is freaking me out.

I don’t know what to think or feel right now. Kinda numb. Ok. I’m going to stop being numbers productive. I’ve done at least 3 steps. That needs to be enough for today.

Pick up the pieces.

The last couple of days have gone just a tiny bit better. I’m trying so hard to get some more pause in my brain so I’m not getting upset at the kids. I have been wearing the airbuds and telling my family that I can’t hear them sometimes. It helps.

I need space inside my head where I am not on duty. I need to have time where I am not required to be listening to and responding to my children. I need it or I’m going to fail. I need space to just be me and not a mommy-unit.

It’s hard not having childcare. I have mixed feelings about asking the big kids to play with the baby. I feel like I am… cheating somehow. I won’t leave them alone in the house but sometimes I get to go to the bathroom alone. Tonight I went and did the vaginal dilation with the big kids watching her. That goes really well.

Sometimes I feel like the big kids feeling competent enough to take care of her is the best thing that could have happened to our dynamic. They both love feeling mature and responsible. I feel like this is so good for all of us. I hope I’m not screwing it all up.

I’m trying a new thing with the kids and school work. I have not managed the last academic term well. I was….overly influenced by my pedagogy training. I forgot all of the unschooling perspectives I have worked so hard for. That year with the charter school messed up my priorities like whoa. “This is mandatory.” “Yeah you are the only family who complied.” WHAT IS THE POINT OF PUBLIC  SCHOOL. What is the point of learning? What is education?

So the kids are being given more freedom with the screen and I am saying, “Have you gotten everything done you want to get done?” at intervals and the kids are doing more playing than they have done in a very long time. More than six months I’d say. And they are making forward progress at a better clip than they have managed in a long time. They need to play. I have been so dogmatically focused  on work that I am creating problems.

What I love about home schooling is this is my fault. My responsibility. If it goes well, go me! If it goes poorly: Krissy… get it together….

Sigh. We all need to play more and I feel like I am having such a hard time making play the priority again. I feel like the kids hit academic age and I practically want to shove them in the equivalent of an academic sweat shop. WORK HARDER. WHY DO YOU PAUSE. YOU MUST LEARN MORE. Uhhhh that’s not going to work very well. But it’s what I’ve been doing for over a year. Shit.

It helps that we have just a little bit of time left. 32 days till we are out of the house. It’s sold. That stress is over. The amount of stuff we have left is just not a big deal. We got two postcards in the mail today announcing thrift pickups on our street. Two of them in the next two weeks. What excellent timing. I think that’ll be most of what is left.

We have seven pieces of furniture left to get rid of: metal shelves, coffee table, armoire, standing desk, and the last three Ikea pieces (the glass cabinet holding our dishes, the dresser, and the last cube bookcase). The mattresses will go in the bulk garbage pickup that’s happening the day after we leave. We don’t have much kitchen stuff left. It’s going in waves.

I did practice packing today. All of our clothes, toiletries, school supplies, art supplies, kitchen stuff, and games. 208 pounds split between 7 bags. Not too awful because they’d be willing to let us have 400 pounds of stuff in 8 bags. I will be packing two big sturdy maximum-carry-on-size-that-can-still-be-checked so that if we want an 8th bag we have it. (And an extra carry on option for the future.) It’s a lot of shit and a fair bit of it will be used up and not replenished any time soon. I think we literally have about 20 pounds of art gear. And that’s a winter and a summer wardrobe for all of us. Including big jackets so that we don’t die in Scotland.

Carry ons are not packed yet. We each have a backpack. Eldest Child has a small purse that she tucks into her backpack. Middle Child has a rolling backpack (his school books are way too  heavy for him to carry) and a cute satchel we can’t bear to give away. Her Sweetness just gets a diaper bag. I carry my backpack and purse. Noah gets his backpack. I’m debating if we want to bring the stroller. We do use it a fair bit and it saves my back. There are other bags we bring empty just in case.

That’s 14 bags when we are permitted 17. I will have the extra 3 with us. Two big totes and a backup back pack that packs down like a grocery bag.

Of course I travel with reusable grocery bags as well.

I carry so much shit. But I can fix so many situations. My medicine cabinet is fierce. I can handle a lot of problems on no notice.

Still a daunting list of tasks in front of me. But the only thing I have scheduled for this weekend is massage so I should be able to knock a lot of it out. Work work work.

Ok. It’s past 8. I need to get my butt in bed.

Do not love.

I’m using the vaginal dilator. This is not a fun process. I have to push just hard enough against the walls of my vagina to cause mild discomfort but no pain then I have to back off. I just have to sit and do that over and over again. And try not to feel scared or upset because that eliminates progress.

Maybe someday my cunt will stop shredding.

Two sides

There are two sides to every story. I don’t want to make it sound like I think I was endlessly giving and perfect and she sucked. That’s not true. I was not healthy with my boundaries and I gave more than I should have hoping that it would cause her to get crappier with her boundaries so she would give me more.

That’s complicated.

Was I really hoping that she would get crappier with her boundaries? I don’t know. I wanted to be more of a priority.

Like the precipitating event that caused us to stop living together. We negotiated extensively that she would have dinner on the table at 5:30. I worked my whole day around getting home for dinner. She was in bed and had done nothing because she didn’t feel good.

When do I get to start the part of my life where I don’t have to do anything for anybody unless I feel good enough? Because let me tell you if I am supposed to wait until I feel good to do things for people…. y’all are fucked. I never feel good. Maybe a handful of days in a year I feel good. Mostly my body is a nightmare. Headaches, back pain, hand and arm pain. My neck hurts all the time. My feet are struggling with the adjustment to hiking boots (I’m probably lacing too tight) but it’s clearly helping my ankles and knees.

I need to learn some lessons here. I want to handle my shit better in the future. I want to have healthier relationships. So how do I need to change in order to make situations like this go better in the future? It’s going to be subtly different but I will be the consistent element. How do I not encourage people to treat me badly because it is what I expect?

I need to find a way to convince my brain that “You should do _____” is not actually an order and I don’t have to start complying. That’s hard. I do that. It’s worse with women than men. Things like, “You should teach sex ed to the kids in the group” so I went home and wrote up a full lesson plan. Then she said she was kidding. Why did I waste my time?

Because I’m waiting for other people to tell me what kind of tool I am. I’m waiting for other people to tell me how I am valuable to them so I can double down on those behaviors in order to be more pleasing.

I want to please you. I want to be loved. I want to be important.

But you put me on your calendar only to drop me anytime you don’t feel very well.

You hardly ever feel well, too.

This sucks.

I don’t feel entitled to anything so I don’t like to ask for support. So when I do ask and you let me down it feels like an absolute betrayal instead of like a person just not getting everything done. It feels like you are telling me that I never deserved the support I asked for.

You were really happy to be the person who did X for me. So I told you I needed X by Thursday. Then you forgot. Then you yelled at me that I didn’t tell you when I needed it. Ok sure, you went back and checked records and apologized later because I DID TELL YOU but that doesn’t save me on Thursday when you didn’t do the thing and you are yelling at me that it is my fault it didn’t get done because I wasn’t clear enough. When I was clear enough.

But you were effectively my free therapist holding the thread of me together for over ten years. You gave me purposed. You allowed me to love you. What is that worth in trade?

A lot. But I don’t know how much.

What is the part I need to not do again?

I need to stop putting myself into caretaker positions for disabled people. I am not well enough. I damage myself because you are more important than me. That will result in me not making it into old age for my kids. I have to stop.

I made these kids. I owe them; not you.

I am enjoying this baby so much. She’s feeling like such an important member of our little crew already. We all pivot to her. We all have to check our behavior with her. We all have to stop and decide if the way we have been unconsciously behaving is good enough for her. That’s feeling lovely. I can’t have another kid in ten years to restart this pattern, but this is feeling good.

Ok. Have to run.

Maybe if I write it down I can put it down.

I heard the end. I kind of recognized it as it happened and I kind of recognize it in the rear view mirror.

I like doing things for people. I like feeling useful and valuable and like I am of service. It’s a pretty overly core part of my identity. Many of my relationships involve a lot of me doing work for benefit of other peoples lives. I like being a supporting character in your story. I love you and I want you to have a glorious story arc that has nothing to do with me. So I’ll show up and clean your house.

I’ll drive across state lines to unpack and repack you while you are too depressed and in pain to do it for yourself.

I’ll take you with me on major vacations, even to other countries.

I’ll buy a fucking time share so you can have the vacations you want that you can’t afford.

But when you spend a week ignoring me on the week that was supposed to make up for you ignoring me for a year and you turn to me and casually say, “Oh by the way I need to talk to you about using next years points for a trip with my family” that I am clearly not invited on….

I just because an ATM to you.

No. Done. Stop. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

Nobody gets to treat me like an ATM. Especially not a rich white person. I don’t think so.

That right there is my line. I can see it very clearly. You stopped seeing this as a relationship where you have to give back. I’m supposed to keep giving to you no matter how shittily you treat me. No matter how much you cancel plans with me because everyone and everything else is more important.

It was a solid year of you canceling 80%. You wanted me holding time open for you so that you could cancel at the last minute. That makes you feel wanted and loved and connected. You could show up if you felt like it. I feel like you very rarely fucking prioritize me while expecting me to prioritize you greatly physically, spiritually, and financially.

Never make someone your priority when you are their option.

I wanted to be as important to you as you are to me. I was an important source of labor and money. You didn’t show up to be support for me.

You promised me that you would have strong relationships with my kids. I can count how many times you’ve seriously spent time with them in the last three years on my fingers.

Stop acting like I can’t track things and notice patterns. I’m not stupid. You make promises you won’t deliver on and you broke my fucking heart.

And you told me that you dropping me was all my fault because I got too angry. A lot of why I was angry is because you make promises and don’t keep them. So this cycle is all my fault.

Ok. I will step out of it. I don’t need to be in it. Then it won’t continue. Then it won’t be my fault. That is the power I have.

I know. It is never your fault you cancel. You are disabled. Hi. According to the very expensive team of people I pay I am disabled. And I am hurting myself by trying to show up for people who have no regard for me or my limits.

When will I decide that I am worth treating like a person of value? Because as long as I keep getting myself into situations where I believe I must stay in the relationship because I have known them for X time and I need them to stay in my life or it means I am bad and unworthy of having relationships…. that’s not a good dynamic. I should keep people in my life if I feel better about myself with the relationship instead of worse.

I turned hard to her when the cheating debacle went sideways. I was not allowed to pour myself into romantic relationships. I tried to have a major non romantic relationship.

It was never as major on the other end. I am very optional. That’s healthy! I need to… understand that this is very optional.

And stop picking the option that makes me cry. Cause hey dumbass, if you keep doing the same thing over and over hoping that someday someone will finally treat you well… fuck it. Move on with your life. There are 7 billion people. Don’t chase people who are going to treat you like an ATM. That’s not psychologically healthy.

Holy Crisco

Today is the day.

We start getting offers in the house. I babbled a little on Twitter but I think I can’t help myself. This will get a proper story.

There was a couple who showed up when they shouldn’t last night. They came after the open house. But I was home and everyone was dressed and I really want to sell my house so I showed it to them. I was a little melodramatic as I said, “But really the best part is the bathroom….” I’m getting show offy. It’s silly. I am super proud of how much effort I put into this house. I worked and the results are glorious.

I’m really hoping people include letters. I think I’m going to find what I’m looking for in a buyer. Like the couple last night was young and newly married and they hope to have children. They want two. They agree that this set up would be really perfect for two.

When someone leans out the backyard and gets quivery with excitement because they can imagine their child getting to go play in the fun yard…

That’s what I want. They asked me if it had ever been a school; I said near enough.

How could you leave this? That’s the right attitude folks. You want to know why you feel like that and I can walk away? You can’t make this. I can. I could do it again over and over. And I will learn from my mistakes and get better and faster each time I do it. You will buy someone else’s effort and have to take care of it and not let it degrade. Because you can’t replace it.

I’m glad you see the value though.

I think this is the first time I have ever seriously sold art. Because holy tomato on cheesetoast am I doing that. I’m selling art. And a house. And I’m waiting for bids.

Oh wow. That’s intense. GAH!

And I have to drive in the middle of the day so I can’t medicate much. Oh boy. I think a long walk will happen when the kids wake up.

I’m really tired. I hurt a lot. I feel slow and achey. I should take a bath. So should my kids. Maybe we will take a bath with our breakfast and then we can go for a walk. That would be really fun. Then a bit of academics before a car ride to see the orthodontist and a therapist. Because it’s a Monday. I am going to try and negotiate the orthodontist visits until the end of the year (she is loathe to do so… she prefers her calendar set only 3 months in advance but I’ll get my way so I can plan travel) and this is the last kiddo therapy session. There will be an adult check in with this therapist next week because I have questions about school stuff and I’d like advice and feedback. This seems like an important time to ask for such feedback.

Eldest Child has already had her last therapy session for a while. Indefinitely. There is nothing on the books. Middle Child has his last therapy session today. We are flying blind for a while. Parenting like normal unsupervised people.

This is terrifying.

Frankly their therapists have been trying to get my kids off the roster for a bit here. They mostly waited until we moved to be polite. Their words are approximately, “As much as I love hanging out with your child they don’t have any real issues and I have a waiting list of children who do….”

So on we go. That makes sense.

I’m told I am doing well. I need to believe all these people I pay lots of money and I need to just get on with it. Stop asking to be judged and just live.

I feel like this is a leftover from school. Where is my A? Have I done the assignment well enough?

The lady last night was super excited when I talked about how if you take a bath at night with a few candles the light makes the walls glitter. There are silver and sparkly and glittery tiles all through the walls and the light plays off the ceiling and it looks like clouds rolling through the sky.

It’s beautiful.

And this could all be yours! For the low low price of…. make me an offer that beats the other 90 something groups that came through this weekend. Cheers. Market rate, people!

If someone mentions being LGBTQI+ in their letter they move to the top of the pile. Because tribalism is real.

Not that I’m saying we are a tribe. I know better. Gosh the nasty things I heard about tribe.net as I traveled…. phew.

We all live within our own little bubbles.

My shoulder is feeling very jacked up again. I haven’t even done anything bad recently! What the heck! I’m being good! Sorta. That is one fat baby. She’s glorious.

I have over three hours until I need to drive. That’s awesome. Time to rest my arms again. Maybe.

Notice something good

I am not sleeping well this week. I’m anxious on turbo. But I’m staying up late and taking care of myself. I’m taking baths. I’m doing my exercises and meditating. I’m trying to get myself prepared for the next stage. It’s going to be intense.

Everything in my life is intense. That’s just how I roll.

My sweet baby is crawling well and is trying to adjust to not nursing at night. She remains the sweetest baby I’ve ever known.

My big kids are trying so hard. We are all scattered and disorganized but they are trying. I need to recognize and respect that.

And Noah… he’s so nice to me. Even though I’m totally not putting out.

If it stops working for us we will do something different

Well. That’s the end of cloth diapers. Our poor baby had a bad diaper rash for over a month. Getting rid of it was terrible. We switched to disposables because we were using big gobs of Aquafor and Hydrocortisone on her with every change (doctor’s advice). When it finally cleared up we switched back to cloth. Less than a week later she’s looking very red but it’s not quite a rash.

Oh fuck it.

This is not such a big deal that I need to stick with it no matter what. Yes, I will hate buying disposables. But on the up side: way easier to pack and deal with laundry.

So I’m going to be passing along my stash. This baby has sensitive skin. She’s sunny and good natured and easy in many ways but her skin is really sensitive. She has to be covered in creams and lotions constantly or her skin gets upset. It’s ok. We all need what we need.

She needs disposable diapers.

Permission

I feel like I’ve been pulling back from writing since I cheated. I feel ashamed of myself. I feel dirty and bad and like I am not a good person. Things with my relationships haven’t helped. I do so  much looking to my friends for permission to exist; permission to do things and feel things and want things. When my friends stop giving that permission I feel like I run down like a clock.

I looked to Sarah for permission in an outsized way. And that mechanism totally failed. Sarah is not reliable. She asked me what she was supposed to be protecting in our relationship. I don’t know how to explain it. I wanted her to actually prioritize me. I wanted consistency from her to prove that I deserve consistency. She’s really literally unable to be consistent. It’s not me. I am deeply comforted by the people who have contacted me to say, “Seriously dude. This is not you. She does this to everyone.” It’s not that I’m unworthy and pathetic and awful. It’s that Sarah is not consistent for anyone. She is inconsistently wonderful and amazing and astounding. But it’s inconsistent.

The inconsistency makes me crazy. It completely destroys my sense of self. I stopped getting mad at people for being late for dates because I stopped feeling like if I did that I would have anyone left.

I wanted Sarah to prove to me that even though my mother couldn’t be consistent…. someone thought I was worth it.

But I’m not.

Things like: we tried to have monthly in person dates and weekly Skype dates. I cancelled the Skype dates after a few months of trying because I was always waiting around and she couldn’t make it. I felt like I did something inappropriate when I asked to stop having the Skype dates because it was really hurting me to always be not important enough. And then the in person dates… yeah. That sucked. Those didn’t happen consistently and I ended up doing an awful lot of the carrying of the load. Because obviously with multiple children it’s way easier for me to do the work. Duh.

It’s like driving to Arizona to help her. Where is a similar level of support in my direction? Yeah. Right.

It’s not that she did nothing. It’s that I poured energy into her unstintingly and the end result is I am drained and bitter. I’m barely talking to my friends because I’m afraid I will take my bitterness out on everyone.

I don’t want to feel like this.

My neighbor tells me that he’s sad I’m moving. I’m the best neighbor he’s ever had. But we talk for like 2 hours in a whole year. Maybe you could have fucking appreciated me more actively and made me want to stay?

I feel so very lonely and disconnected. I’m barely talking to friends even when they are in the literal room with me. There is no point in me trying to use my voice. My children will just talk over me and drown me out.

I feel less and less like I have a self to exist.

I am so tired. I feel so hateful and worthless and stupid and sad. I want to leave. I am so tired of being reminded that I am not that important to any of these people.

Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.

I need a break. I won’t get one.

I need to feel like I’m important or I’m not going to live that long. Because taking care of me is hard. It feels so stupid to waste time and energy on me.

I feel so sad. I feel like dying would be so much easier than continuing to try and fail at being a person.

I miss Sarah so much that I ache all the time. And we hurt each other constantly. And she is literally incapable of being consistent or dependable and I need to stop looking to people who are inconsistent. This is one of the most toxic patterns still in my life.

I want to be good enough to make someone like that love me and treat me like I’m important. It’ll prove that maybe I was good enough for my mom it was just bad timing.

Just bad timing.

Noah wants to be enough. He wants to give me all the permission and acceptance and tolerance and love. And he’s a white cis dude. That’s so complicated.

I will wipe my ass and go to bed. Because there is nothing else to be done.

I am nervous about having to keep the kids out of the house all day tomorrow. I don’t want to go to the park. I don’t want to see anyone or do anything. I want to crawl into a dark room with no windows and not come out for a week or 50.

Try to catch the ends flying in the wind

There is a scene in a Tamora Pierce book. The mage is trying to spin pure magical energy into a thread so that it can be dealt with. She talks about feeling through the air trying to catch the ends flying in the wind. I feel like that but I’m trying to catch myself.

I am feeling so anxious and insecure. The reasons are many and varied. I am doing too much and there isn’t enough time in the day. I feel judged and I really don’t need to care about anyone’s opinion. These opinions have no impact on my life. But I still feel bad.

My  physical therapist is a really nice lady. I’m enjoying talking to her. She has been the first person who really wants to talk about the physical mechanics of my body AND she wants to hear about how I’m doing emotionally. Maybe not the first person…. but this is weird from medical providers. Especially with the vaginal dilators. She wants to hear a lot about my emotional experience. She says that over and over again I am proving to be a special case. She is telling me to do the exact opposite of what she tells a lot of her clients because I’m just wacky. Things like: when it comes to having better posture she wants most people to start adjusting in their hips/low back first and then move up the spine. If I do that then I crunch myself into a really bad position. I have to imagine a string pulling the top of my head to create space in the spine to allow it to get back into the normal position. If I try to adjust from the bottom I never get the space I need. With the dilators, most people who use them are counseled to have zero distraction while using it; I need as much distraction as i can manage. I’m using them for different reasons. I don’t need the emotional presence to do the work I’m trying to do with my cunt and it actually makes my work harder. I’m trying to break up scar tissue and get used to a casual presence in my vagina. I’m not working hard to create space.

Got distracted. Of course.

So much money

Yesterday a lovely lady from Task Rabbit cleaned my bathroom. It has never been this clean before. It gleams. She is not available to come back again this week. Fair enough.

I still need to clean the kitchen: oven, fridge, and I really should do a solid wipe down of everything else. We will sweep the house again on Thursday. Outside I think the kids have gotten most of the little bits of trash picked up. (I hope.) I need to go get more mulch today for the plants. I think I’m about two hours of yard work away from done and I have a dude coming tomorrow. He can do the lifting work.

At this point in the garage we have one 5×5 black shelving unit with all of our food and toys and books on it. We have the dish cabinet with dishes and bathroom stuff and kitchen frou frou stuff. We have the bathroom metal shelf in the garage with computers on it. Computer desk. The armoire will be taken outside today because we haven’t been able to get someone to pick it up for money.

The room is looking pretty empty. I’m almost salivating about the extra floor space. Oh thank goodness we have more room to move around instead of standing in one place rotating.

The house goes on the market in 6 days. We hope to be out of here permanently in 52 days. That’s my goal.

I’m looking at marketing materials. I think we are going to have to start at $825,000 and pray that we get several bids to drive the price up. When I look at what is selling now in our neighborhood…. we missed the peak. Dangit. Oh well. Get out.

And really, if we don’t clean the fridge or the oven before the staging…. no one is taking a picture inside them on Friday.

We are basically at “go”.

That feels so good.

The kids had a moment of panic yesterday when I pointed out “Those cubbies you keep expanding into more and more of? All of that stuff has to fit in your backpack.” They did the cartoon eyes bugging out of the head thing,. “But that’s too much stuff!” Well… you know how I’ve been after you to cull for six months now…. it’s closer than it was!

I read about other slow travel families. One family travels with like five different gaming consoles. We will travel with kitchen supplies. We like to cook. It’s a big deal. Missing out on key cooking pieces sucks. We will have knives and some fat and some containers and portable silverware…. I’m dorky. But goodness I love these collapsible silicon containers. And bathroom stuff is still a lot. And I haven’t packed our daily use stuff! We have too much stuff. And we should all be using mouthwash 5x’s a day until we move. Good grief.

I’m feeling both hecka anxious and really happy. It’s 2019. It’s time for a new adventure. A huge adventure. The biggest adventure of my life.

In 2018 at least someone in my family went to: (domestically) Boulder Colorado, Los Angeles, Austin Texas, Santa Barbara, Nashville Tennessee, and (non-domestically) Japan, Mexico, and Malaysia. In 2019: Nashville again, Minneapolis, probably DC, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, Scotland, possibly Netherlands, and England.

Dang.

Mexico sure was amazing. I want to see the other side of it. And the middle. We’ll be back.

Today I need to work on cleaning up the kitchen slowly. I need to hang out with my kids and snuggle. I need to exercise. I really should sort through the mass of screen shots I took right before midnight. Money last year…. ouch. We spent a lot. We aren’t broke but things are tight. I got us right up to the wire of selling the house. Frankly, I wouldn’t have let petty cash get so low if we weren’t selling. The latest remodel wiped me out. I’m feeling quite anxious and bad about myself. I allow us to go out to eat too much. But it helps, it really does.

Ugh. We live within our means. But I wish we were living within 50% of our means and I’m mad at me that we don’t. Because we always pick the more expensive higher quality choice. Ugh.

WHY DON’T YOU PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE ON MCDONALD’S. (my kids would)

Ugh.

But these are good problems to have. I’m not pressed. Just trying to figure out how to do better next year.

Find me is hard

My baby is currently eating a rattle and reading a book. Big kids are in the bath. Noah is out. I have… peace? I should be sorting paperwork. But I have a moment to be in my own brain! Fuck paperwork!

I am not behaving well. I swore *at* a kid today. I don’t think I have ever done that before. I said lazy fucker. That was not ok. That was really not ok and over a line. Literally the next sentence out of my mouth after saying it was, “Shit that was over the line.” And then I spent the next several hours talking about how the problem isn’t even that they are lazy. It is lazy of me to complain that they are lazy. The problem isn’t that they don’t bother trying. The problem is that we are all struggling like mad for focus. We are all hurting. We are all having every feeling every day and we are all done. The kids are on academic break and I’m not asking them to do that much work and doing anything is like pulling teeth. It’s that situation where if they had  a 90 item to do list they could probably get it all done but if they have a 2 item to do list they won’t do either thing.

I fucked up.

I don’t get to explain the full circumstance of why. It’s not an excuse nor a justification and I don’t have permission. But I can say that I did that and it was wrong.

I am not defending myself in proactive, healthy ways. I don’t have space lately. Even when I try it goes sideways. I genuinely NEED more rest than I am getting. I don’t know how to get it. I try. I do. I am nightweaning the baby in an effort to gain more rest at night. That means I am getting far less rest for a while. Sigh. Last night was particularly rough. The roughest in I couldn’t tell you when. I am so exhausted.

It hurts so much that I love people in the bay so much and I could not make it work here to fill my needs.

I am feeling like a giant gaping wound.

I am glad that both Washington DC and Japan (the first two hops) are not places we are seriously considering for long-term. I need to have a rest time where I’m not trying to reach out and create relationships. I can’t bring this bitterness with me. I can’t be the poison in the well. Or everything I touch will fail.

I need to have a time where I’m doing less. Travel isn’t as much work for me as being home. I think people dramatically underestimate how much effort I put into being friends with people. I am looking forward to a time where I don’t have to wonder if I am currently letting anyone down by not calling them at just the right time. I need to have a time in my life where I am not trying as hard I can to create space to go see my friends only to have them cancel on me over and over and over and over until I feel completely worthless.

I need to leave this place where it is more important that I not hurt anyone’s feelings by saying that my feelings are hurt.

Geez. Those other women aren’t talking bad about me. Why don’t I stop saying anything about them. I was assaulted and I did literally nothing in return. You want me to act like I should shut up because they aren’t bad mouthing me? For what?

Avoidance.

I don’t want to be on the home school mailing lists for activities in the bay area because they actively promote my rapist. One of my rapists. Do you know how much it sucks that there are a whole bunch of places and events I don’t want to do because of rapists?

Friends. Rapists. Former friends. Old lovers.

Ugh.

Just get over it. Just get over it. Just get over it. Naw. I’ll move.

There is so much going on in wanting to move.

The inside of the house needs to be clean in six days. In seven days we will be staging and doing photos. On the market in eleven days. Then…. we’ll see….

I pray we get fairly quick bids. Although…. I also… wouldn’t mind another three weeks to slowly get rid of stuff. Hm. I need to stop with the table in seven days. I need to look like a picture postcard outside.

All the yard stuff has six more days to finish. Ugh. My back is… not doing well. I feel better when I do my exercises…. which I haven’t today. Today we got the tree taken down and the floor is swept and mopped through the whole house. It’s not good enough…. but it’s a first pass of construction filth. I am going to be spending hours on my hands and knees; our mop sucks.

I am cleaning the bathroom. Really deep cleaning it in a way I should have done six months ago but sweet cheese where do I find the time.

Six months ago I had a four month old and a cleaning service that was ok but not amazing. It needed a deep  clean.

Houses suck. Cleaning is endless.

We have been going to homeschool park days with the splinter group. The lady who started it is funny to me because we have so much in common. Of course she would be the one to leave and say fuck this. And of course her kids would be targeted.

If you are sitting on the fence I hope a fence post ruptures your rectum.

I was not willing to do a “me vs them” group. Instead I’ll just leave.

People will be abusive everywhere. It’s not just here. I must change; I’ve gotta stop being such a bully. Part of that needs to be managing constant disappointment in the form of people who make and break promises. And I’ve gotta find a way to rest. I will not be able to be nice without rest. And exercise.

2019 is going to be selfish as fuck.

Can I do this?

I am really struggling with my feelings. On so many levels. I am struggling with wondering if I am physically capable of expressing them in appropriate ways. I am struggling with wondering if any of my feelings are appropriate anyway. I am struggling with my behavior and the behavior of my children. Being human is really hard.

I genuinely don’t know the right way to handle a lot of things. My friends. My kids. My life. I am feeling so sad. I am so tired of being sick. I am so sick of being tired. I hurt. I am exhausted. I am angry. I don’t want to do any more work. We put the house on the market in 12 days. I don’t know how much work I will get done by then…. but I bet a lot.

I am so weary.

No. No I can’t get into any of the details. If I did… I would go too far. So I can’t talk about this. Not really.

Find gratitude

Today I got Christmas cards in the mail. Including someone I love so much I feel like I will burst. And one from someone I have thought was just amazing for almost 20 years. And another. Because my friends think of me.

Today I have the most delicious relief from some of my pain. It went solidly from a 6 to a 5. That’s awesome. Thank you Taylor.

whimper

I love this baby. She makes my heart soar. My big kids are pretty awesome too. I enjoy getting to know them. I feel like we are finding our way back to the part of our relationship that works best for us.

Oh that husband of mine. He’s really generous and kind. He’s gentle and thoughtful. He manifest every day in so many ways that he wants to demonstrate love with his actions. When I’m in a good place it feels darn inspirational.

I’m grateful I have a nice neighbor who is helping me with this process in a way that involves him just walking over and inserting himself in finding solutions.

I am glad that we are almost to the finish line of this project. I’m tired.

I am grateful that I get to eat delicious food. I am earning these belly rolls.