We put the house on the market in 19 days. We need to get pictures done before that. I have about 10 days of work to do. Contractor said they would be done today. I have my doubts. I am starting to suspect they may be here for at least part of tomorrow. They should have been here doing the small side work pieces while the painting happened, but oh well. I feel bad for my contractor. Dude has been sick for all of December and he doesn’t get to stop working because his business partner is leaving the state. He’s doing the work of 2-3 people and he’s visibly suffering. I worry about him. He’s trying to stay afloat in a horribly abusive environment.

I’m going to stop and take a moment to shout out to my lovely neighbors. They are unburdening me of my possessions and thanking me for the opportunity. We’ve had a lot of great conversations with folks who have never bothered to introduce themselves until now. It’s funny.

The kids and I are sifting our way towards an understanding of how next semester is going to go. This semester has been rough on a couple of levels. Some of it was the result of their choices and I don’t feel so bad. Some of it was because I got into a cycle of flipping out and getting out of that cycle is tough. Some of it was because I got my brain into the mode that we were “catching up” to a particular point in the cycle even though…. uhhhh we aren’t really? EC is super excited that she’s starting 5th grade math because 4th grade math is getting repetitive and boring. Perfect. MC is backed off of the textbook because he needs to be spending a lot more time working on reading for functionality before he can be seriously reading directions to learn. I am feeling very upset with myself that I pushed him in a way I never pushed EC. He needed to wait too and I didn’t. Instead he now has the complex I wanted to avoid in public school. Damnit. It’s my fault for cooperating last year with the charter school. It’s my fault for trying to keep going merrily along from our end point last year. He needs a different sort of schedule.

MC’s next semester is going to be a lot more focus on learning the fundamentals of reading. He’s not behind in math. It’s ok if he falls a semester or so “behind” as he’s getting to the point of being able to fluently read the textbook.

Also: I didn’t nurse frequently enough yesterday and my boob hurts. Ugh. Being a dairy cow is so annoying. Nursing is, in general, going pretty well with this baby. When Her Sweetness has bit me I react with hostility, she feels rejected, then I comfort her and she stops biting. It is what it is. My “hostile reaction” is generally a hostile facial expression combined with turning my body away so I don’t look open to her. That’s enough to break her poor little heart. I can live with breaking your little heart. Don’t bite me. It’s a rare day when she bites me so it’s not common for me to look at her with hostility. I do occasionally say (as I’m meeting her needs) “I don’t WANT to meet your needs. I am VERY INCONVENIENCED by your needs.”

Lots to do today. Home Desperate: I need a toilet seat, 30 concrete stepping stones, rocks, and mulch. Seeing two friends. Dropping off stuff at a thrift store and at the storage unit. I get to spend a bunch of time with landscaping fabric/weed blocker and laying out some walkways in my yard. It’ll be perty. Tomorrow morning before picking up a friend I get to clean the house from top to bottom. If I have time before PT I should also do more landscaping. I have a lot of work and a very short amount of time to do it.

Right now I want to go back and give Past Me the biggest hug ever. A whole bunch of people told me to relax and work more slowly. They were all Wrong And Bad Advice Givers. I would be dying now if I had listened to any of those people. Instead I am plugging along and this is hard but not impossible. I have a lot to do but I am not completely breaking down. I am racing to the finish line of picture day. Then I just hang out and wait until my house is sold. I don’t have anything else big to do at that point.

God that sounds awesome.

I mean… I’ll be down to home schooling my kids and the work of perpetual travel. That’s hardly anything.

My life is unreal and I feel kinda jealous of myself.

I haven’t been blogging as much for a long while now. Mostly because I am trying to respect their frequent off-hand comments about wanting privacy. They don’t know what they want. They don’t know which topics bug them to have people know about. So they are just saying no. And I’m treating that as a blanket prohibition that I can’t talk about myself any more. This is not going to work out.

If I can’t organize my thoughts I get mean. I get vicious. I get incredibly unable to manage my behavior and then I’m a problem; a real one.

Penultimate day of the remodel before we put the house on the market. Ostensibly we are shooting for putting the house on the market in 20 days. No pressure. I plan to spend Monday (Christmas Eve) cleaning the house from top to bottom. No spider webs or dust can remain. Then I need to negotiate with my realtor about what is moving back into the house for staging purposes. A house is for sale down the street and the staging is super nice. They just dropped the price after being on the market for two months. That’s literally why I waited until January. My realtor said that would happen October-December.

I filled 5 green waste bins last night. My neighbors are awesome. Thanks for letting me use your bins. Leaves and blackberry trimmings and redwood logs. Gone. I think I’m 3-5 days of hard work away from the yard being gasp-worthy. It’s rough around the edges (because I prefer it that way) but I’m going to come through and add hard scaping and shape it. I have made a beautiful meadowy garden. I hope I find the right person to love it.

Good lord. I’m 3-5 days away on the yards and 1-2 days away on the house and I have 20 days and in between now and then is Christmas. Woof. That feels so real.

Let’s just call it a solid 10 days of work between now and leaving. Whoa. That’s intense feeling. Guess how many days I have of not driving out of Fremont between now and putting the house on the market? 10. That’s it. That includes Christmas and NYE. It’s convenient not being invited to parties this year.

To be fair, I refuse to work every day I don’t drive so mostly I’m going to be doing the work in between driving. *sigh*

I just can’t start cleaning or organizing again until they finish because the dust is prohibitive. I want a house full of functioning doors. This will be awesome. I haven’t ever had a house full of functioning doors here. There have always been broken doors and doors that were removed because they were so broken. I feel rich as fuck.

Last night Eldest Child and I had a great date. She got her ears pierced (YAY! So big!) and we had a lovely chat over dinner about school priorities. I asked her how she thinks this school year is going (poorly) and what she wants to change (almost everything). We figured out a few ways for her to change it up. And I don’t really have permission to document. This is driving me crazy. Because you expect me to remember shit without writing it down and I don’t know how you think somebody else with a different brain is your mother. I don’t remember shit if I don’t write it down. Ugh.

We are drifting away from highly schooly and back towards unschooling. Still not Radical Unschooling because…. no. But far more unschooly in terms of timing and topics. I need to stop screaming. I have to. This is just mandatory for everyone’s mental health. And part of that will need to be that I’m not kicking and pulling them through fairly standard curriculum. It’s been a shitty year and a half of trying to be at grade level across the board in subjects. My kids have caught up and proven that they can. Now let’s stop because this shit sucks. This program is fairly abusive and why are we trying to conform to it? Because I’m stupid. Because I get afraid that if I don’t force you closer to lock step that at some point your life will be hard. Harder than you can imagine.

That doesn’t mean I’m doing the right thing.

I told EC that she wants me to go back to blogging daily because I scream less when it is embarrassing that I have to go write down every single day that I’m screaming. As long as she doesn’t want me blogging…. I don’t have that public humiliation stop gap and I just go nuts. She’s thinking about it. It’s literally true though. I scream way less when I feel more monitored. I put these monitors in place on myself because it’s a way to work around my shitty impulses.

The baby was up every 1-2 hours last night. I’m so cranky.

Today I need to go buy a toilet seat that isn’t broken. Tomorrow they are doing all the flight of the bumblebee last minute adjustments. I’m looking forward to that. Like: installing doorknobs.

Emotionally I feel like I’m all over the place. I’m touching base with a lot of friends. That’s so fraught. I love these people intensely and I want to be the source of good feelings in their lives. I don’t want them to feel bad about our relationship. If I talk about not getting enough from my friends here… people feel like I’m saying that *they* let me down. Oh honey.

I’m so anxious about this.

I need so much. And I’ve tried so hard here. And balanced between hundreds of people it isn’t working. It can’t be any one person’s fault.

I think this feels so viscerally painful because of losing Sarah and touching base with the home school group. I failed at the bay area. I need to go.

Because it isn’t just Sarah. It’s the Bonus Family and the Godmamas. It’s all feeling so incredibly painful right now. I want to go. I want to go away from this place where I have begged and pleaded for people to be my family.

I have emails in my inbox I ought to respond to. I can’t. I feel so flattened. I have so little to give. I gave my friends everything I had. I’m empty.

I am seriously struggling with how much the kids don’t want me to write about them any more. It makes sense. They are allowed to not want all their business on the internet. But I’m with them just about 24/7. Effectively that means I’m not allowed to write about myself much anymore because I don’t have that many interactions in a day that are not 100% centered around them. This is feeling really hard.

Trying to figure out how to talk to people about why I am leaving is tricky. I don’t want to make people feel bad or rejected or inadequate. Folks are generous with me. Folks share what they can. But I’ve had to carefully construct a web of hundreds of people in order to get a small fraction of the support and attention I want. I can no longer deal with having to go to that many people to get my needs met because everyone has so little going spare.

It’s kind of like the difference between moving the beehive around or expecting the bee to travel through an entire forest to pollinate. I need to move my beehive. I’m tired. I can’t keep traveling this far to get what I need from folks. The bay area is too spread out. The distance is brutal. In the bay there is always at least 3 things competing for folks’ time and attention. It’s too big and too much.

Which doesn’t mean people are doing anything wrong. Just that this is no longer the place for me.

Three weeks till we list the house for sale.

I want to write about home schooling stuff and what I’m doing and why. But I don’t have permission.

It’s hard not to feel angry and irritated and fussy. My kids talk over me all day long. They constantly tell me that I’m wrong about everything (WHEN I’M FUCKING RIGHT). They correct my language. And I’m not allowed to write about my life anymore.

I’m having some fucking feelings.

So the mother of the boy who kicked me in the throat doesn’t spend a lot of time trash talking me and neither do her friends. Ok. Do you want me to give them a cookie? Literally the only thing I did to that mother was get kicked by her son and then tell her there was a problem. That’s what I fucking did.

But I’m supposed to give her a pat on the back for not talking shit about me?

Really? You think that? Oh my. Well. Guess what, honey. I am fresh out of fucking cookies.

You told me that you can’t take a side because you didn’t see the assault. Well. You know how I’ve been sympathetic for years and years as you tell me about the abuse you suffered? I no longer believe you. I didn’t see any of it; therefore I can’t take your side or be supportive. How about if I go sit with the people who hurt you. After all, they haven’t been trash talking you to me so clearly I should sit on the fence and hang out with them a lot.

That hurts you?

Oh well.

I walked away from the group because I didn’t want to face people like you. People who would tell me that they are my friend…. but they really want to still be friends with the person who kicked me in the fucking throat.

Go! Be friends with them!

And stop telling yourself that we are friends. We aren’t fucking friends. You are the mother of someone my kid likes. That’s what we are to each other. So I’ll send you fucking Christmas cards and you can feel liked and whatever bullshit you want to say to yourself about our relationship. But the fact is: we aren’t friends. We stopped being friends when you couldn’t take a side and instead you expected me to play nice at your kids birthday party when you invited both families. Guess what, bitch. That was taking a fucking side. And it wasn’t my side.

You picked the side that said, “My son did not do that and if he did it is your fault.”

If you feel sad about being called out for your behavior…. tell someone who gives a shit. I don’t fucking care if you are sad.

You can keep your daughter around him. I will get my children the fuck away from him. Given that he is just hitting the teen years and he’s putting knives up to girls eyes when they have the audacity to argue with him? Yeah. It’s gonna get bad.

And I will be thousands of fucking miles away. Because if I were within 50 miles you would probably want my god damn sympathy when your kid is the next target. I wouldn’t like myself very much if I said to your face “Ahhhhh, do you want sympathy now? Do you want to be believed? Well I didn’t see anything. Sorry.”

When I went to the fucking park and someone told me the story of the altercation on the camping trip I didn’t tell her that I didn’t see it so it didn’t happen. I said, “I believe you. That’s horrifying.”

But I’m the big terrible meanie because I talk about this. Because I express strongly that this is a fucked up situation and this mother is creating a monster. I can live with that.

You think that being nice means not making waves, not pointing out issues, not making people feel uncomfortable. Fuck your comfort.

I’ve been wildly uncomfortable for years now. I have known that weak ass bitches like you claim that you are my friend. With friends like you, who needs enemies. (I’m pretty sure I don’t have an enemy. There are people I won’t talk to… but I wouldn’t fight them. I don’t care enough.)

I have grown up a lot. I might snark here in my blog… but I haven’t started a fight in a very long time. I have ended relationships. I have walked away from a lot of people. I won’t bother to fight. Whatever it is that you are doing that bothers me: the best solution is to not be near you. Because I don’t need you.

It’s really weird having this bone deep confidence. I will be ok without any of the people I know. Like, I would cry like a little bitch of Jenny or Pam broke up with me. Like I’m crying like a little bitch over Sarah. It fucking hurts. But I will be ok. As ok or better than I would have been with her. Why? Because I’m a bad ass motherfucker. Because I have a family now. Because after the loss of my mother basically no ending can hurt that much. Because I can make more friends.

My kids have been expressing sadness about leaving the neighborhood. I keep telling them: I built this community and I can do it again. It will take me time and effort, but I will have both. I am a community-oriented person. I will always find a way to make relationships.

It’s a gift.

I know this about myself. I am extremely gifted at making new relationships. I put myself out there. I’m a trier. I am codependent as fuck and I love people. I will be able to form new relationships as sure as the sun will come up.

If I have 99 problems, inability to make friends isn’t on the list. I like to look at people. Folks like being looked at. I mean, I have my favorite people to look at.

I wonder if I will stop crying for Sarah before I stop crying for my mother. Maybe not. But we are hurting each other.I don’t want to hurt Sarah. I really don’t. And I do. I hurt her with my anger. I hurt her with my impatience. I hurt her with my expectations. I hurt her with being inflexible and rigid. I hurt her by absolutely requiring a kind of consistency she isn’t suited for.

I take so much responsibility because I am not big on blaming other people for my problems. Could I rant about ways that Sarah let me down? I could. But it wouldn’t make me feel better. It wouldn’t heal my heart. It might trickle down and hurt her more.

I have hurt Sarah enough for one lifetime. She gave me a second chance after I scared the shit out of her. I didn’t deserve it. And I lost it. I don’t believe in third chances.

Noah got a second chance. So did my first fiancé. I tried a second time with both of them. It didn’t work out with Steve. Noah is hanging on.

I focus on what I did wrong because I can’t control anyone else. And I will keep existing. If I want to do it differently in the future I need to be real honest about what I did this time. If I lie to myself I will just do it again. That’s inevitable.

I am trying with this expectation problem. I am not doing well. I am being too much of an asshole with the kids. I don’t have faith. I don’t trust. I’m grouchy and suspicious. I am dismissive and negative.

I’m not like Sarah’s mother. That doesn’t mean I’m doing well enough. That doesn’t mean I am giving my children what they deserve from me. Sarah’s mother is not the bar. The bar is not refraining from hitting them with weapons. The bar is not screaming for weeks.

I did scream for weeks. Months. Stupid, fucking math. I am worried that I am going to care so much about this that I create big permanent problems. That could totally happen. Parents do that shit.

I *did* hurt Sarah with my screaming.

Am I hurting my kids? They still say no. Their shrinks still say that it isn’t great but the kids seem ok.

Which thing that I do is going to break them?

I backed off on math for Middle Child. I found a different set of books for him. He’s pretty excited about this set up. He is doing well so far. I found three different workbooks, none of which are vaguely adequate alone. One is a step down (2nd grade) so that he can establish a bit more confidence for a few weeks. He’s upset that he keeps failing whole weeks of work. It has happened a few times this year. He’s not reading the directions and that makes it hard to do the right thing. It’s not an arithmetic problem. It’s a reading comprehension problem. He is still working on reading. His decoding skills have increased substantially; that’s most of what he got from the reading program that the school enforced last year. He learned decoding and copying. This will take years to fix. I’m not happy.

But it’ll be fine. He will spend a lot more time reading and he’ll learn to understand and he will learn how to express his own ideas in writing instead of just copying someone else’s writing. It may not be how his sister learned, but it’s ok. It’s pretty normal. It just…. wasn’t part of my fantasy. I wanted to wait until he was old enough to write the way I did with EC. I blame myself. I shouldn’t have signed him up for the charter even if I did EC. Bad call.

I regret that.

Nothing to be done for it now. Except to get off his g.d. back.

I can’t control other people and I can’t chase friendships that aren’t working. I have to concentrate on the people I brought into the world.

This is my job.

That was a nasty fall! Good grief. I have seen my chiropractor and my massage therapist. I’m doing better but I still don’t feel good.

My thoughts are swirling round in a blender.

When I talk about things I’m upset about the least offending people think I’m talking about them and get upset. So instead of processing being upset about person A I am comforting person B.

I understand why POC have no time for white nonsense.

Looks like there will be a break in the rain today. I should get some yard work done. If the kids get their academics done (it is looking like a maybe) we can go to the park this afternoon. I’m seeing the contractor today because hopefully work starts on Monday.

The kids aren’t behind but they are struggling to learn pacing and I’m not being as nice about this process as I should be. I need to give an apology during breakfast. They are going to fuck up. If they were in school they would have to fuck up in order to find out all the bits and pieces. I take this shit so personally and it really isn’t about me. *sigh*

We are so very close to an empty house. I will probably do another cull today because the kitchen drawers are going to have to be emptied out. There are only two drawers of stuff plus the refrigerator plus a container that sits on the counter left in the kitchen. All the cabinets are empty.

I placed an order this morning. I think I’m done Christmas shopping. If I’m good I will take boxes to the post office this morning and then I won’t have to feel so guilty about my niblings. I’m getting presents for my children, my niblings, and my spouse. No one else this year. I just can’t.

I keep thinking about things like cooking and sewing. I’m not sure why.

I keep having these whispers of stories run through my head.

I keep thinking I need to get a graduate degree in psych stuff so that I can manage my imposter syndrome better. I don’t think I’ll learn that much more than I know. I think I’ll have a piece of paper to point at.

So tired. I slept pretty well. I’m healing. In an 8 hour stretch I think Her Sweetness only woke up once.

She’s close to night weaning. Muahahahaha

Today’s tasks:

1. yard work
2. take boxes to the post office
3. box up the porn and take another run to the storage unit (want to dig out Lego’s) (So this is like three tasks in one)
4. finish getting the last bits out of bedrooms and the kitchen
5. more tidying in the garage
6. take pictures of the furniture to put on Craigslist
7. create CL ads
8. maybe schedule another date with the neighbor who wants to babysit Her Sweetness before we move
9. finish PT exercises
10. meeting with contractor
11. laundry
12. oh yeah, help my kids with school
13. write a postcard or three
14. figure out what I am making for dinner while Noah has the night off
15. make it to the park? we reallllllllllllly should
16. snuggle my baby and let her know that she is the most important creature in the history of ever
17. help Her Sweetness learn how to stand

gosh that’s enough.

I don’t feel like I did much yesterday. I went to PT and had a hard conversation in the morning. I fell and hurt myself on the way out. My arms are doing quite poorly today as a result of the fall.

Yesterday:

• PT exercises (yes these are up to a fucking hour)
• Went to PT (including driving this is a 2+ hour experience)
• Took the next pile of stuff for storage out to the van to clear space in the garage
• Did dishes and loaded the dishwasher (once? Twice?)
• Spent 2+ hours providing emotional support to the kids (puberty is sucking)
• Made breakfast (a deeeeeelicious scramble: eggs, garlic, butter, jalapeño, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, ham. It was excellent.)
• More general tidying and shifting stuff around
• My online shit. Some of which feels like work and some doesn’t.

Why does that feel like a day where I did nothing? That simple list shows at least six hours of work and realistically many more. That’s not laziness.

My standards for myself are very unhealthy.

Today we have had two breakfasts already. I made the first: steel cut oats, apples, cinnamon, vanilla, and brown sugar with cream. Nom. Second breakfast was apple pie. mmmm

I need to do laundry again (I did five damn loads on Monday). Tidy the kitchen. Her Sweetness is teething. Top two front teeth are coming in and she’s an unhappy baby because of it. In between bursts of rain I should probably try to do a little bit in the yard.

I’m feeling sad and low and depressed. I am hurting a fair bit. I’m thinking about Sarah all the time. Usually I talk to her all the time so it makes sense. At first this break up was feeling almost like a relief (we put way too much on ourselves trying to be there for the other and having less that I feel I owe someone *is* a relief) but it’s feeling less of a relief already.

I will miss Sarah forever. But I seriously don’t know that we are capable of being healthy for one another. She needs a level of not-angry that I can’t provide given how much she promises and drops. That’s not a dynamic I can be in and be nice and healthy. I will fail. I will fail over and over and over. I get angry when I’m disappointed. That’s a fact. Sarah makes promises she can’t keep. That’s a fact. If I am not allowed to get angry with Sarah as part of the contract of our relationship then we can’t have a relationship. Because she can’t keep the promises she makes and I am not capable of not reaction.

So here we are. And it hurts like a motherfucker because I love her with all my heart and soul.

I can’t keep having someone tell me that they will do things for/with me and then tell me that I am just like their abusive mother when I’m upset about them flaking. Nope. Can’t have that in my life. I can’t be your proxy to be mad at your mother forever. I can’t. Just like it isn’t fair to be mad at you for being the latest person to make and break promises, like my mother.

Baggage is real, yo.

My friends tell me I take too much responsibility on myself. But that’s all I have control over. If something is all someone else’s fault the only lesson in the situation for me is “Avoid that person” and that’s not a great lesson in general. I want to know what I can do/change to have better outcomes in the future.

I can’t ever let myself fall in love this hard with someone inconsistent again. Not because they aren’t worthy or lovable. Sarah is worthy and lovable in the extreme. She’s great. She’s a wonderful, fantastic person and I admire her deeply.

But we aren’t compatible and that’s really hard.

I’ve been worrying a lot about how this is going to impact my relationships with Pam and Jenny. Will I pull away because I’m afraid of leaning on people? Will I lean too hard and break the bond? Mostly I’m not reaching out because I’m afraid that absolutely any action on my part will be the wrong one. That’s hard. That’s scary.

My tripod of support lost a leg. What do I do about that now?

I have to be selfish about this to a degree. I have a lot of support to provide in this life. I need to figure out how to support myself enough to provide the support I have agreed to. That’s reality.

I love Sarah. That’s not going to change.

How do I get up and start walking away from this wound and focusing on the people who are still here? That’s hard.

My arms hurt so bad. My elbows and wrists and upper arms and shoulders are all aching really badly.

We have approximately 5ish weeks until we put the house on the market. I do not have the mental nor physical energy to chase all the hundreds of people I know in the bay area. If you want to see us before we go… it would be wise to reach out. Or you won’t see us before we go. Cause that’s how the cookie crumbles.

I love you. It’s not about lack of love.

I just… I’m trying to pull in the pieces of me that I have flung to the wind. I’m trying to sew them up into a canopy that will slow my fall as I jump off this cliff. I want to survive this jump and that’s going to need a well sewn canopy. I’m going to need every piece of me back that I can get back.

And that means I need to stop begging people to love me.

I am feeling utterly overwhelmed. Just talking to the PT about the vaginal dilation stuff she wants me to do is flipping me out and I’m coming home unsettled and kind of fragile and bitchy and that sucks. And I don’t even know how to talk to my kids about the fact that I kind of want to scream and break things because I am overwhelmed by talking to someone who is so emphatic about wanting me to change how my cunt works.

This shit is intense. I feel scared and nervous and upset. I feel like I need to shut down and tighten every muscle in my body for a fight.

Because I’m supposed to put some god damn plastic not-a-dildo up against my vaginal opening and not move it around.

I can’t begin to express how viscerally and existentially upsetting that is right now. Like, I’m literally clenching my legs closed as I type because I feel so upset.

It’s not supposed to be sexy. It’s supposed to be teaching the muscles to recognize being touched as not an attack. My PT stressed repeatedly that the clients who fail to make progress are the clients who say, “I can shove things in even if it hurts.”

Dat me.

I’m supposed to find 20 minutes every day in peace and calm stillness to gently stimulate my vagina. And now I’m crying.

Right this minute I’m feeling very overwhelmed about all the shit on my plate.

Home schooling continues. For the past couple of days I have been having the kids make up their own daily schedules and it has reduced my yelling in very useful ways. The kids are managing their time a little, but it’s a lot of time and brain power from me still. I weirdly enjoyed all the grading I got to do this week.

Packing and getting rid of our stuff is a job.

I have to start doing yard work more seriously to prep for sale. I put in a few hours yesterday and I should be doing an hour or two every day for a while. This is only annoying because the baby is hard core in separation anxiety and she doesn’t want to be put down much while I work.

My kids are needing a lot of emotional coaching right now. It’s a normal part of parenting, but we are having intense therapy level talks almost every day and sometimes multiple times a day. Processing how to appropriately explain the stuff they want to hear about puberty and sex and mental health is hard. Professionals train for years to be able to give the lectures I’m giving and most parents just refuse to answer these questions.

The baby is 9.5 months old and the whole first year is always overwhelming and hard. I’m not sleeping enough and my shoulders are wrecked from night nursing again. But it’s better than it used to be.

And I’m not going to chiro or acupuncture or much massage. Why? Money. Time. Energy. It is hard to do all the work to support my body feeling better. That’s a fucking job and I just don’t have time.

I have been….. partly through idiocy (choice) and partially through absent-mindedness not medicating on a regular schedule. I’m taking pills occasionally but not consistently. I might have to learn how to function without meds when we move. This is hard. I use this drug for a fucking reason.

The PT exercises other than the vaginal stimulation aren’t that hard but they do take time. At least 30 minutes. And now I’m supposed to add 20 minutes/day of vaginal pressure. And I should be out walking a lot. So at this point I should be spending a minimum of two hours/day on exercise. Oh that’s easy to do.

I’m trying as hard as I can to cook more. Noah needs less work on his plate. I keep thinking I’m almost done with packing and things will get easier. Hasn’t quite happened yet. I am praying that when we move and I don’t have as many house and outside chores this will be easier.

Is that it?

I feel a lot of pull to write more. Both fiction (oddly, because that’s not my normal thing…. but I have a couple of stories kicking around in my head and I want to see where they go) and non-fiction. I want to fix the second damn book. Ugh. Frustrating.

I’m still trying to establish a routine with hygiene stuff. Whyyyyyyyyyyyy is this so hard? Because I’m autistic and I have ADHD and PTSD and it’s very well documented that folks with any singular one of these diagnoses struggle with hygiene. IT’S NOT JUST ME.

And then there are all the relationships I feel like I should be doing a bunch of work to maintain. This is feeling so hard.

I’m overwhelmed and trying not to over react. I think that mostly for the past few days I’ve done ok. Today is hard. My kids don’t understand why I want to cry.

Noah would really like sex. He’s being super polite about it. He hasn’t pressured me or bugged me in any way. And we haven’t had sex. I have so many feelings about this.

I don’t know how to center myself right this minute.

Also: administrative note: I am going to try to post more from my phone because the talk to text works best there. It hates the adult-only tag and that makes my blog entries kind of annoying to track. I’m trying to figure it out.

I had dinner with a buddy’s family last night. The couple/grown ups are former students and I adore them. We haven’t gotten together in almost a year because of how overwhelming life has been. It was great seeing them.

They are getting ready to move out of state too. They are just done. I asked her if she feels a little bit mad at her friends and she was taken aback. For her, her friendships are what are carrying her through. I told her that I’m struggling with feeling a little bit mad at my friends. Not because they’ve done anything wrong, not because they deserve it. Because life is so hard and everyone I love has such a small amount to give. That’s feeling so hard. It feels like I don’t deserve to be around my friends because I am not solely overwhelmed with gratitude that people bother to see me at all. That’s a rough combination of feelings. I can tell I am to some degree avoiding people because it’s not ok for me to express my frustration.

I’m scared I will open my big stupid mouth and say something that reveals the frustration I feel.

I mean, I am losing one important relationship this year because I got angry about how I was being treated. That’s a lesson.

People don’t want my authentic self. I’m loud, aggressive, demanding, bitchy, and absolutely unwilling to compromise. Instead people want the high effort front I put on of being kind and gentle. Bah.

I feel like my end result of leaving the bay is knowing that no matter how hard I try I am not capable of fitting in to a group even if some of the people love me. I will always be the problem. I’m having really big feelings about always being the problem.

I feel pathetic that I still worry so fucking much about other people liking me or not. Grow the fuck up, already.

But this is part of the cycle. Me showing anger means I do not deserve friendship. I am not going to be capable of never showing anger. That means I deserve nothing, forever.

This is why Noah is so consciously tolerant of my anger. If I’m not allowed to be angry I’m not allowed to set boundaries and then I’ll just explode in other ways and that’s all bad. But it’s not great that he lets me get angry at him. I suspect “Must Be Respectful” as a rule slightly helps. It definitely restrains me from calling him an asshole more often.

Blah. Blurg.

I didn’t hear Beautiful at the door so we missed a visit. That sucks. I feel so embarrassed.

The remodel is supposed to start tomorrow and I haven’t finished the house. We have plans today so that’s going to be festive. Given that they need to fix our bedroom walls before the other stuff I think it’ll be fine if I’m still moving out of the house on Monday.

We have found three classes on Outschool for Eldest Child that will involve her meeting other children remotely and doing lessons together. It’s not a perfect solution but it might be a step in the right direction.

The kids and I are going to struggle with the speed of academics over the next few weeks. Not because it is too much, but because figuring out the flow and speed and order of operations is rough. It might be too much too. But the kids can get it all done in 2-3 hours when they feel motivated. The fact that when they aren’t motivated it takes all day…. yeah. Tricky.

My kids would love to spend all day playing. They have great imaginations and they never get bored. I am boring though. I’ll take your good time and interrupt it with math. And spelling. Neiner. It’s still more fun than going to school would be. Maybe. Maybe it isn’t and they should be in school. I’m open to this idea. Let’s see where we land.

I’m doing the PT exercises and I feel like they are kicking my butt. And we restarted walking after a break for the terrible air quality and my legs forking hurt. My whole body is pissed right now, from the core out. I’d say that I’m at a 4. It is interrupting and rude but I can function. It’s just distracting in every minute.

I am craving sugary bread like an addiction. It’s not cool.

I’m processing my feelings about my friends still. Trying to compartmentalize. I’ve been getting the same advice over and over and when that starts happening I like to pay attention. Paraphrased from the half a dozen people who have expressed this sentiment in the past few weeks: “You are good at taking responsibility for the problems in your relationships with people. That’s bad. Stop it. Ok, maybe sometimes you bear part of the responsibility, but you never bear all the responsibility and you act like you do.” Yeah that’s true. I act like the problems are all my fault. If only I had tap danced faster. If only I had managed to suck up my disappointment and never expressed anger. If only I had a shorter memory and I didn’t notice promises that were never intended to be kept….

I can tie that back to my step father screaming at me that if I didn’t make something happen it was because I didn’t want it bad enough. My failure to influence other people into behaving how I want them to behave is my fault.

Always my fault.

So if everything is all my fault because I am such a terrible angry person I will just walk away with my terribleness.

For all of my flaws, and there are many, I do not tend to inflict my presence where it is not wanted.

It’s been a lot easier to sigh and relax into Noah lately. Noah may run down like a watch that needs to be wound but he doesn’t make 15 other promises that cut into his ability to keep the first promise he made. He just… really wishes he got to have sex more. It’s complicated. It’s complicated in so many ways, many of which are feeling shockingly healthy. I am not forcing myself to have sex. I’m nervous about the vaginal dilators on my counter. The physical therapist spent a while fingering me. Not an experience I felt super thrilled about but it was ok. Her experience was that the longer she had anything inside of me the more tense and tight and rigid my cunt became. (Clearly she used clinical language.) I don’t relax how I am supposed to. This makes me want to go find the first Users Guide I wrote. I documented pain and tearing from sex as unavoidable all the way back then. I think it was 15 years ago.

That’s just what sex is like for me. Pain and tearing and bleeding. Super fun, yo.

But maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. Maybe there is another way. It’s going to be hard though.I feel sad and overwhelmed. I feel broken and unfixable. I feel like I will let Noah down because it is never going to get easier.

All I can do is try.

I’m starving. I feel like I’ve been starving for days. Freakin cold.

There’s a whole bunch of stuff I feel like I’m bursting to write about because I’m trying to get my head around it but I’m afraid of hurting people. So I’m hurting myself. Like I do. Balance is not easy.

How do you handle it when you aren’t good for someone? I’m not good for Sarah. This is true in a myriad of ways in a myriad of areas. There is no shortage of love in our relationship…. but there’s a lot of hurt. We turn to one another (in my judgey as fuck opinion) to be the mother that the other lacks. Sarah genuinely needs me to not get angry and not show disappointment. She needs me to be unfailingly accepting and loving. I can’t do that. I need her to be dependable in a way that she’s not physically capable of being and she can not emotionally handle admitting that she can’t do.

We bash ourselves against one another.

I have harmed my children because I believed promises that weren’t really made in good faith. I knew the promises weren’t made in good faith (this is not my first rodeo) but I wanted to believe so much that I made plans around the promises. Then I hurt myself trying to keep up my end of the deal and that’s a problem.

Why do I keep trying to believe these promises? Oh it’s complicated. Partially for the love. Partially for the same reason she believes I will be able to hold my temper enough to be safe for her–we want it to be true.

And in my mercenary as fuck way I can admit… she was the only person who made noise about actively pursuing a relationship with my kids independently. She didn’t always/usually follow up on the noise she made… but she made the noise. Which is more than others do. My friends mostly acknowledge my children in a limited way as an extension of me. Sarah loved them for themselves.

I don’t feel real good about what I have to offer my children in this life in terms of support or community. I just have to be better/more to compensate. That’s hard.

But just like I can never ever believe “I will take you to Magic Mountain” again I can no longer listen to “Let’s make a standing date” because I will hurt myself if I believe that. It won’t come true. I have to face the reality and not what I wish would happen. No matter how much I wish it would happen.

Love is not enough.

Which doesn’t mean that anyone is being bad or failing. But it can show a lack of compatibility. Compatibility is real and hard.

And now my daughter wants to sit next to me to show me how snowflakes are made.

Side note: I’m super thrilled that academics feel like they are finally coming together. The kids are doing more math than they feel thrilled about, but it’s a manageable level to get the kids 100% up to grade level by the end of this school year. EC is going to have a very easy next year in comparison. She’s excited. But we now have enough time and mental bandwidth to add in grammar work and more history and spelling again and more religion… the kids are writing several days a week and I like the stuff they are producing.

EC has to produce fan fic every other week and religion writing every week and she’s working on a larger essay about Malaysia. MC is just on the religion writing and a story about Malaysia. Frankly he’s still working on practicing putting words on paper so they are legible. It’s a process.

They have some grammar workbooks they are plugging along with. Science is creeping back in (Thank you air quality index for returning to just the yellow zone today) and there feels like lots of room in our week for doing other things again. Chores are happening more seamlessly again. We are getting back towards a routine. We aren’t exercising enough (not our fault!) but we will get back to it.

Always more to work on.

In looking around at various places to stay and spots we want to try out… my kids were very open to trying the Shetlands. Truly remote is interesting to them. We can try it.

I am looking forward to next year.

Inverness is not that cheap for rented digs. The Shetland Islands have some very cheap places to stay. But Scotland is only a permanent option if they pull out of the UK. We’ll see.

We’ll see about a lot of things.

We are concerned about access to pot, as we should be. But the kids said that they would be interested in a tiny little local school. I don’t know what we need.

Let’s go find out.

I read the first chapter of the Buddhist book. I caught up on Mint. I loaded the table in the front yard.

Tidying the house is never ending.

I’m looking into the travel for the next year. Woof. The kids only want to be in Japan for three weeks in between Washington DC and Noah needing to go to Minneapolis. I am wondering if when he goes back to Minnesota if the kids and I will just go straight to the UK. I’m looking into it.

So many factors. How expensive is rent in a given area. How much does it cost to get to that place. How long can I handle not being medicated? How many hops should I do alone with the kids while Noah is off doing work hops?

Lots to consider.

Today I am going to move more stuff out to the driveway. And I will police my children’s behavior. And we will drive to Mountain View, of course. Like we do.

I am having mixed feelings about all the stuff going. It’s both freeing and terrifying. I find it funny how many people want to know why I’m not obsessively trying to get every dollar back that I can. That would take so much time and energy and I will get so little back.

The kids are caught up on academics! We can plan an advent season! I’m thrilled! We debated if we wanted to have anything on the calendar that centers around friends. We elected not to. If we see friends, great. If we don’t–that needs to not be something that makes us sad. I expect to not see people much before we go.

I am struggling with wanting to make noise about breaking ties and wanting things to just blow over quietly. I’m feeling sad but not in ways that I feel justified for. I feel like this breakup is largely my fault so I don’t get to be sad. But every breakup is sad. I notice the gap when I want to talk to someone effusively about Christmas presents. There isn’t anyone else for that. So I kind of sort of talk to myself and move on with my day.

There is going to be a big hole in my heart.

It has to be ok because it is going to happen no matter what.

I am glad I have Noah.

I should get moving. I’m so tired.

The kids are caught up. We have a weekend free of academics. It feels like magic.

Today I have done a whole bunch of Christmas shopping because a bunch of websites are having sales. I think I might be done with Noah. I think I might be done with Eldest Child. I have most of what I want for Middle Child but I feel like he needs one more thing; I just have no idea what. Her Sweetness has a few things and I’m not too worried about her getting more. If she does, cool. If she doesn’t… oh well.

I have now ordered vaginal dilators for my PT. I have also done my exercises for the day. I will figure out how to have a stronger body. Damnit. I’m still shocked by how intensely painful these slight exercises are. The awful spot in my lower right back is throbbing. That’s where I get the awful spasms and I have for decades. She (the PT) said that it is almost certainly the end result of my body compensating for not using the proper movements/muscles. That seems quite probable.

I have feelings about ordering from vaginismus.com though.

Noah is home! I have taken a few hours off because it seems super wise right now.

Ok. Time to go see my family again.

Because otherwise I’m going to start listing Christmas presents and that’s not wise.

I read a great article on suicide today (here) and it made me think about how I use this blog. I don’t get a lot of comments. They come in weird spurts then my friends stop responding again. So I’m not throwing these words into the void because I get a direct response.

I’m trying to talk myself into hope. No one else can talk me into hope. Into feeling like there is a point in my life… goodness knows some well paid professionals have spent decades trying. Instead here I am, trying to make my own hope.

My emotions aren’t someone else’s fault. They can’t be. My emotions aren’t things that other people can control. Other people can have influence…. but that’s the limit. For the past year I have been bouncing off my friend and getting more and more distraught… then it hit a fevered pitch and it’s all my fault and now I need to pick up the pieces and keep going.

I did this to myself. I look to my friends to provide a form of stability that is very hard for anyone to maintain for themselves… let alone for a tie that is so distant as friendship. That’s not fair. I mean, there is no fair in this life…. but it wasn’t fair of me to need so much from her. But I will never stop needing that form of consistency so I need to back away from the relationship entirely because consistency is the thing she is least capable of in this life. Keeping promises just isn’t an option.

So what do I do now? Do I get harder and more bitter because I feel let down? Do I turn my grief to other people and hope that other people can be what she could not be?

No.

There will never ever be anyone who touches my heart the way she does. She is special and wonderful and I will love her until I die.

I love my mother, too.

Sometimes, love is not enough.

But I am grown now. I keep saying “When I grow up” and I have to admit to myself…. I am grown up. This is it. I am as grown as I am going to get. I will deepen and mature. I will spread and become more…. but I’m grown.

I am grown up and now I do not need to have other people reflect constantly to me that I should be alive. I know it for myself. I can point at reasons big and small. I know my purpose. I have a few different roles. It’s not that I am just a tool that can be used and discarded. I am special and useful and necessary in a way that is not easy to replace. The things I know, the collection of experiences I have had… cannot be duplicated. My usefulness is not like other peoples. Not because I am better! Because there are a million different niches of need and it’s hard for anyone to be replaced in their usefulness.

Incest. Suicide. These are things I am good at talking about when other people can’t. I have a strong interest and a lot of tools in my tool belt for coping when others can’t. I like troubled children. They don’t bother me with their outbursts.

But even aside from these things, it would be ok if I were just a wife and mother with friends. That would be ok. I don’t owe the world more than that. Not really.

I will have other friendships. I have other friendships. I give in varying amounts. I receive in varying amounts and that’s ok. It becomes a problem when the relationship promises far more than it can deliver on. This is why I am so adamant about not wanting people to promise me anything. I understand that most people won’t deliver. Then I will get upset. Then it will be my own fault that I am upset. And things don’t improve from there.

I feel absolutely overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to have the relationships I’m having with my kids. Are there hard parts? Yes. Oh goodness…. yes. But hard is ok.

How I let people treat me teaches my children how the world should work. When I am deciding what is good enough for me… I am modeling relationships.

That stops me in my tracks.

The only clothing that isn’t in the garage are the adult day-to-day hanging clothes, and the jackets in the hall closet. Everything else is in here now. Really… just about everything is in here now. We’ve really gotten rid of a lot of stuff. I am enjoying burning candles right now because when I use up the ones that are lit it is time to get rid of a bunch of candle holders and two more shelving units.

I think the only stuff left in the kitchen are the two drawers of stuff (silverware and the odd cooking supplies random assortment), the fridge, the microwave, and the tea. Because tea is accessed waaaaaay too often for me to move it to the garage already.

Middle Child has moved his bed into the garage. I like this mattress more than the one in my bedroom so Her Sweetness and I have been sleeping out here too. Once everyone is out here we can run the little space heater to keep the chill off (it’s electric) and not use the gas heater much (super expensive) which will be a nice bonus.

I have updated AA with our frequent flier stuff. Which is good because I’m sick of thinking about it.

I have not yet done my PT exercises and I need to.

I haven’t even the tiniest tiny bit yelled today. I pulled back instead.

Middle Child is no longer scheduled to do 3 pages/4 days a week. He gets to do 4 pages/5 days a week. That will have him finish his book on time. I will be checking daily so he literally isn’t capable of falling behind again because he isn’t catching up and he isn’t showing signs that he can handle it. I have to adjust my expectations.

At this same age EC was doing like 1 hour of homework a day and she had not yet ever looked at a real textbook. Two years later she can easily do 8-15 pages a day and rarely make an error. I don’t think my approach is wrong. I think I’m not giving him quite enough grace. But it’s complicated. I don’t know.

He is making progress. He’s at grade level. If he transferred into a public school next week he would be fine. That was absolutely not true for his sister at the same age. She was dramatically behind. I should have more faith in him. I believed she would catch up and she’s doing so rapidly. She’s most of the way through the 4th grade textbook now. She just started her third notebook because she’s done so much math already.

They are both writing about what they learned in Malaysia. I wish they didn’t want me to dictate their topics, but I think it’s normal.

They are both doing more religion writing. MC is still doing a lot closer to copywriting. He was forced to start reading and writing before he wanted to with the charter school. I wonder how much his reliance on copywriting is part of not getting to it with his own voice and timing. I’ll never know.

The religion study is feeling so relevant these days.

Guess how many cubes of books we still have in the house? (We started off with over a hundred?) 9. 3 will be packed up and put into storage (language learning and religion) but the other 6 are things we are going to hurry up and read then pass along.

Time’s running out….

I should stay off the computer in the next few months and read some dang books.

I have three boxes ready to mail to Jenny. I’m glad I didn’t send them earlier because I found more stuff.

I need to wrap up a few more pictures and take a handful of boxes to storage, but it’s maybe a trunk load.

This garage is looking remarkably like a studio apartment. Because we don’t want to deal with staging a house we are going to mostly leave it bare. We will leave the coffee table and use that for meals until we go.

That’s going to be a really fun Christmas.

For Christmas planning this year we are looking into all sorts of fun food gifts. And I think we will donate a bit more than usual.

I am not moving the boxes already by myself because my back is sore and if I hurt myself while Noah is gone it’ll be really rough on the kids. It’s fascinating how much I base my decisions on other peoples need for me.

We need to exercise more. But today has been wonderfully restful and maybe that’s a good thing too. I have made two meals. Washed two loads of laundry (about to go start a third). Watered the yards.

Oh, that’s another thing that’s eating at me: I haven’t been working in the yard because the air quality is so bad I really shouldn’t bring the baby with me and I can’t leave the baby inside with the big kids because they don’t feel comfortable being responsible quite yet. They think another 6 months or so.

I’ve been thinking about sex a lot more. That’s fascinating. I haven’t thought about it that much in years and it’s just… kind of there in my brain. I even reached out to the neighbor to ask about babysitting so maybe we can use these canes before they go away.

I want. I want something. I want…. I don’t even forking know.

I want Noah to come home. What was I thinking? (I booked him extra days in LA because good golly he needs a break.)

I am really enjoying my kids. I get irritated too…. but I still feel like I am living my best life right now. I’m tired. I’m in pain. So? Such is life. I get to hang out with people who explode with joy when they see me. My life is awesome.

I’m still getting a lot out of the private chat forum I’ve been hanging out in. My social anxiety is ramped up because of course I am feeling like all I am is an angry monster. I’m not. But I feel like that is the accusation that has been made. I don’t think that is something that anyone else said. I feel like that is the accusation.

Feelings.

Where is the middle path?

I need to get started on that Buddhist book for Pam’s reading group.

Oh! I sat down when I had some actual good moments of quiet and I did a bunch of catching up on Jenny’s vlog! I think I now understand why people tell me they binge catch up on my blog. I have, of course, been eager to know everything about Jenny for 25 years and counting so it was absolutely delightful and wonderful to get to listen to extended periods of her talking about herself. I don’t understand a lot of the knitting stuff, but I love that she will explain it to me. And I am a huge dork who was giggling and excited/amused about her going back and forth from centimeters to inches. I live that world.

Watching the vlog was neat because it made me wonder if other people get those waves of pleasure and delight as they read what I write. My friend wants to share her thoughts with me (and the rest of the world). It feels like such a gift and an honor. It’s like the epic emails Pam writes. They feel… like a mirror into a happier place.

I keep reminding myself that we probably have less than three months in this house. The rest of November, December, and as much of January as necessary to get an offer and get out. I really need to get started on the yards…..

Noah will come home. I’ll get it done. It will be truly smashing when I’m done.

Leaving is going to be hard. But I was up late last night crying about my mother. It’s time to leave. It’s time to not worry about running into my family any more.

I don’t think my nephew’s wife kept the baby. I have been a horrible stalking person and all the recent pictures of her show no signs of a pregnancy. The gossip I was told would indicate that she should be second or third trimester at this point and it’s pretty forking rare for someone’s body to stay that static so late in a pregnancy.

I feel really sad that both my niece and nephew have almost become parents recently and have been unable to actually do so. That has got to hurt them tremendously. Poverty is probably the main reason.

Life is not fair.

I have no idea what I’m going to do for dinner tonight. I should probably figure that out.