Sleep study part the first

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That was… fine. Just the initial consult. She said that I have an extremely posterior jaw and a narrow throat opening and that doesn’t bode well. With allll the symptoms I have I am definitely in need of an in office sleep study because they need to check so many factors.

Treatment is likely to have three options. The easiest and most obvious is a cpap. The only trouble is… I’m a fantastically active sleeper. I roll and kick and move all night long. I’m ridiculous. I have no idea how I could manage to stay attached to a damn hose. The second option is a dental appliance that would shove my jaw forward and keep my throat more open. I am so sensitive to all the braces and mouth guards and what have you I’m already supposed to wear that I imagine this is going to be painful. She said it often causes TMJ problems and I said, “I already have TMJ problems.” She winced.

Third option: surgery! There is the possibility they might want to cut hunks of flesh from my throat! DOESN’T THAT SOUND FUN?! And it might be really wise to go back to the orthodontist who wanted to crack my jaw then wire it shut and follow through.

The next few years are going to be really shitty. Maybe we won’t be moving if I’m in the middle of a bunch of medical treatments that really need to be followed through to completion. Fuck.

But how much pain do I want to be in for the next few decades? Sleeping would do a lot to decrease my pain. Just by itself. It is restorative and I don’t get it. That’s a problem. What would it do to my ability to control my mood?

Fuck. I don’t have good choices ahead of me. Can you imagine trying to homeschool two children while trying to care for a baby with your mouth wired shut for three months?

Maybe it’s time to break out the ASL videos and start practicing. Fuck.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

WHY AREN’T THE CHOICES ABOUT MY BODY MORE FUCKING FUN?!?!?!

I’m going to go cry now.

Next this afternoon we get to go meet EC’s possible new shrink. Onwards and upwards.

Please, if anyone upstairs is listening, please let me give my children all the tools they need to survive being in this world as my child. Please.

Just another day.

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I have a birthday coming up in a few hours. I’m ignoring it.

Do I feel more mature? More ‘together’ than I did a year ago?

I feel like I have more self control in some areas and I also feel like I am running out of fucks to give on social stuff. I’m increasingly isolated and pretty happy about it. I see people… but not like I have for most of my life.

I’m Skyping regularly with some of my closest friends. I have delightful people who come over for walks and for dinners. I visit people when they invite me. I’m not inviting folks over as often. It’s me, not you. I’m feeling distant.

A few years back my birthday was this fevered pitch of need. I don’t feel loved and I need people to jump through hoops to PROVE THEY LOVE ME. Folks jumped through the hoops. In the end I felt worse because I know they jumped those hoops for me and I still struggle to feel love at all.

It’s not what anyone else is doing. It’s in me. I don’t want anyone to jump through hoops anymore. I know the love is there… when I don’t feel it isn’t your fault and you shouldn’t try harder. It’s me.

Sometimes I feel kind of dirty and ashamed because I can see how loved I am. But feeling it is more complicated.

How much of learning to love yourself is learning to set boundaries to prevent people from hurting you? How much of learning to love yourself is learning to accept responsibility for the problems you cause?

I’m a judgmental piece of shit. I judge people left and right, often when I have no right at all. When it won’t even impact me.

Where is the line between judging whether something should work for you, judging whether something is a Problem, and judging whether something is just… suboptimal but fine. I’m struggling with this. I still catastrophize more than I should. Oh no! If you haven’t helped this person be independent by age ____ then they will have x or y or z problems!

Bitch, put your crystal ball away. You aren’t right all the time. And if they do have those problems… how is it your fucking problem?

Mostly it isn’t. And I need to chill the fuck out. There are things I need to judge, when small children are behaving in a terrorized fashion. But mostly… folks are doing their thing and it isn’t about me and I don’t need to be so reactive and bitchy.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I’m willing to put up with in the past few years. It’s shifting. It drifts. What I would tolerate three years ago I’m completely done with now.

I don’t know who I’m going to be by the time I hit 40. It isn’t that far away. 4 more years.

I’ve been out for 18 years. I’m still having to try and learn how to not pick codependent, dysfunctional relationships. I’m still trying to learn how to not judge things that are none of my business.

I don’t hit like I did. I don’t scream like I did. I don’t hurt myself anymore. I will tell someone to stop contacting me instead of cutting myself to manage the dysregulation I feel when someone I love tells me that their problems are allllllllllll my faaaaaaaaault.

It’s some kind of progress.

I’m not that great. Some day will I be able to feel less hatred for how far I have to go to be who I want to be?

Home. And Petty.

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I’ve spent most of the last week grateful I didn’t have a computer. I would have written some incredibly unkind things. I wanted to stoop to a level of petty that would be darn near epic. Why?

Because people get all twisted up in my head. I’m never responding to one thing at a time.

I’ve spent the last few years in therapy doing a tremendous amount of work around the fact that the Bonus Mama triggered all of my “like my sister” buttons, minus the sexual assaults. She has quite a few of the same problems and in my ridiculous codependency I’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to fix her problems.

It is a gift from the universe that I am now done with that set of behaviors. I never need go clean her house again. I never need try and help her children emotionally cope with neglect. I never need try and pretend that I am unaffected by the physical violence in her marriage again.

I am free.

I think this is a positive step in my life. I need to stop trying to cover for broken people. It’s a real problem I have.

I need to stop investing my life into trying to make up for people who won’t even admit that I’m doing a back breaking amount of work for them. It’s stupid. It’s self defeating. I have spent a lot of time and energy and money over the past few years trying to do something for the ephemeral child self I still have. Other people helped me so I helped her kids.

But I’ve given what I can and it’s time to move on.

People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Part of what this relationship came into my life to teach me is that when my children say, “I don’t want to associate with this person because she is mean” I need to never overrule them again. I need to never ignore such a signal again. I feel deeply ashamed of myself for telling my children to cope with behavior that made them feel diminished because I wanted weekend babysitting. That was wrong of me. My behavior was selfish and disgusting.

I was wrong.

I will never deliberately send my children to the home of someone who speaks to them with contempt again. I. Was. Wrong.

Hopefully I have learned the lesson I needed to learn and in the future when someone triggers my “like my sister” buttons I will run like my tampon string is on fire.

No more hoarders. No more people who refuse to acknowledge that they are literally physically, emotionally, and mentally unequipped to take care of their children while they brag about how great they are. No more people who are in a marriage that involves domestic violence, gaslighting, stone walling, and screaming matches that the children can hear only to turn around and tell me that if the marriage is destroyed it’ll be my fault. Sure. Because y’all had none of these problems the day I arrived. Right. Who is the one with the convenient memory? I write down all my bad shit so I can’t claim it didn’t happen. Remember how I’ve begged you to document your DV for 7 years because shit like this comes to a head and you always said, “But I don’t want to remember.”

Sure. If your marriage is destroyed it’ll be my fault. Yup. Right. Because I’m the one sitting there filled with contempt. Yup. That’s me.

Take your guilt trip to someone who is stupid enough to be buying. I’m fresh out of money for such bullshit.

I am free.

Do you know when I freaked out and started demanding that your kids be put in school the fuck away from you? When you took them to Moana and came home crying because you believe your children are incapable of understanding and appreciating the story. Guess what? Your kids are capable of understanding. You are incapable of teaching and your children need to spend time with competent teachers who can teach them. Stop fucking over your children because you are fucking broken and you want your children to be as limited as you are so you feel comfortable. Your children have more potential than you do. Let them go be taught by someone with actual ability to teach and they’ll be ok.

The worst thing that ever happened to you was someone telling you that your IQ is high. You use that number as an excuse for why you are better than people as you cannot fulfill basic life functions. It’s sad and pathetic and your fucking children need to be educated by people who have the humility to say, “I don’t know everything so I’d better study.” You think that if you buy all the books and don’t read them it’s just as good.

Your children deserve better than to be locked in your company all the time.

And after this I need to never ever write about your family again.

I’m done.

Set fire to the bridge

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I understand that you think I was out to wreck your marriage. I’m sorry that your irrational refusal to look at the science around vaccinations will cause such a result.

That does not entitle you to harm your children.

I don’t give a shit about your marriage one way or another. I literally don’t. I care that you were neglecting your damn kids. If pointing out that your behavior is having such a result means I am dangerous I can fucking live with that.

Stop fucking emailing me. I really don’t give a shit if you are sad and you miss me.

So no one worries

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I am heading off to hang out with a friend in about half an hour. When I get home we are going to start driving to SoCal. I am not bringing my computer. I may or may not use my phone for brief updates but I rarely enjoy the interface so probably not.

I’ll be back online by the 11th.

Love you all. Have a good week.

Yay another year passed.

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I’ve now been married for eleven years.

I like Noah. I don’t just mean I like what he does for me. I like him. I like the way he smiles. I love the way he softens around me like butter, as if I’m safe.

I like that even though I sometimes get very mad at him for having different opinions than I have, he doesn’t back down and he stubbornly defends his sources because he came to this conclusion for reasons. I like that he doesn’t bend at my whims.

I love watching him parent. I picked Noah as a coparent and I made a really god damn good choice. He’s such a good parenting partner for me. Our kids shine with love and that isn’t all me.

I appreciate how much work he’s willing to do to help me figure out my complicated body.

I like how hard it is to go to sleep sometimes because I wannna keep taaaaaalking to hiiiiiiiim.

If you had asked me when I was 10 years old if I believed I would grow up to have a good marriage I would have fallen down laughing. But here I am.

I smell sex and boundaries, yeah.

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For reasons I don’t understand I was never really willing to get into my sexual hangups with my previous shrink. I saw her for five years, through my marriage, when I’ve had what I would consider a moderately high number of sexual hangups and problems and I just… wasn’t real willing to talk to her about it.

I’m not sure how willing I am to talk to the current person about it but I need to at least talk to myself.

I pay good money to have people help me with my behavior in the larger world. I figure out sex as best I can on my own since Traci. I miss Traci. I could talk to her about wanting to say no and not being able to say no. Traci is my shrink who OD’ed on heroin. I get most attached to other folks who have big problems.

But back to my sex life.

I feel like being 18 years out frames all of it so differently. I’ve now had 11 years of marriage. The framework around sex feels different now. I’ve now had 11 years of legal, state sanctioned, appropriate sex. Holy crap.

But during my childhood sex was a constant topic. My family didn’t uhhh do sex education the way I do sex education (with books, lectures, and youtube videos about consent!) instead I was just told all the things I’d have to do. Consent was… not a word anyone in my family cared about. You have holes, that’s all the consent anyone needs.

My mother told me when I was a child that marriage meant being someone’s permanent whore and you don’t get to say no ever again so pick carefully.

And people question why I won’t let my mother speak to my children.

I still, to this day, struggle with figuring out when I want to have sex. I have a lot of compulsions around sex. I have had a lot of sex I felt like I must have but I’m not sure how often that was the same thing as wanting it. I know I wanted some of it but I honestly don’t know how to tease the strands apart.

What does it mean to “want” something you aren’t allowed to turn down?

I pulled a bait and switch with Noah. I thought I could keep that up my whole life and I promised him I would and I can’t. Not and be nice to him. I can’t spend the rest of my life with my god damn cunt hurting because free access to fucking a cunt whenever he wants to is what he bought with his marriage contract… and be nice. There’s a line in there somewhere and I don’t even know where it is. I’m trying to figure this out but it’s hard.

I feel like a contemptuous loser because I should god damn just be able to say yes and no to sex when my body wants to and it is ridiculously hard for me because when I try to check in with my body like that… often I just don’t know what I feel. Not really. Not till I try and realize it’s failing and then I don’t ever feel like saying “stop” is ok.

Then I’m that horrible cunt who gave someone blue balls. I don’t get to do that.

My current shrink was talking a lot about how boundaries are what allow for connection because if you aren’t in a safe zone for both peoples boundaries… you can’t ever really connect people folks aren’t safe enough to really connect.

I feel like that’s a lot of what happened to sex over the past few years. It stopped being about connection for me because it was a harmful mechanical process I just had to get over with.

I have to be fair… since I cheated things have improved. Noah isn’t assuming anymore. We are having sex way less often and it’s better than it’s been in I couldn’t tell you how long.

I feel guilty that I had to blow up the boat and do a lot to wreck my marriage in order to finally get Noah to hear the boundary “I need our sex to change.” I feel like I tried to communicate it in less dramatic ways and I failed. I was unable to properly speak my needs. I couldn’t figure out how to properly and effectively say, “I can’t be a voiceless whore anymore.”

But good golly saying, “Fine if sex with you isn’t going to be fun I need it to be fun with someone” that sure got things to change.

And things have been way more fun since.

But I’m scared. How do we continue this trend? How do I get better at advocating for myself in one of the most intimate areas of my whole life? I can state my needs so clearly I make doctors sneer at me for “being so good at advocating for myself” when they don’t want to hear it but figuring out how to get what I want from sex…

I thought I had it figured out but I had a performance figured out. I knew what acts to do and I knew how to manage my anxiety and discomfort so I didn’t flip out at people as I submitted to things I didn’t necessarily want.

I need to change this.

Noah is absolutely right that he tried to put measures in place that would require my consent/willing participation. But I just learned to put them into my mechanical process of “Fine this is part of what I have to do before I submit.”

I’m seriously not blaming Noah for me having these troubles. These problems predated him and they would exist if he wasn’t in the picture. He’s the rock I’m throwing myself against but it isn’t his fault I’m ground down. That’s me. If I wanted to share some responsibility… it comes from my parents. But the thing is, I’m a 36 year old woman. It comes from me.

Noah and I have talked a lot about the cheating. It hurt him really badly and processing it makes a lot of sense. Something he keeps coming back to is he feels I picked people who were “so much like him”. But to me they didn’t feel like him in some very important ways. I don’t have a legal contract with any of them that my mother brought me up to believe is a permanent contract where I don’t get to have sexual autonomy. That makes any and everyone different. Because I don’t have the same internal belief about what I am absolutely obligated to provide. If any of those people do something that I don’t like… I can get up and get dressed and leave and never see them again if I choose.

That makes it entirely different in my mind.

It’s not about the acts, per se, it’s about my degree of autonomy within the acts. My yes or my no decide everything.

At home I rarely bother to say yes or no because I act like it doesn’t matter anyway.

And I’m not saying that is a healthy justification for poly or an open relationship. A healthy justification for poly or an open relationship is that folks negotiated for it and both are ok with it. I do “understand” that. But my ability to make the healthiest choice available varies.

I’m truly not blaming Noah for this. He’s been trying to navigate these treacherous waters for a long time now. He’s tried a lot of ways of asking. A lot of ways of approaching. A lot of ways of indicating that I really don’t have to. My sense of compulsion doesn’t really come from him.

But I feel guilty that I pulled a bait and switch. I told him he could have a whore he could fuck every day without caring if I wanted it or not. Now I really can’t live up to that. I feel ashamed.

too much.

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I’m doing too much. It’s as simple as that. Homeschooling is a job. I have not been giving myself the mental credit for how much work I’m doing with it. I act like it is the background noise… like needing to water the plants. It’s not really a job job the way that planting or pruning is…

Only it really is.

I am mentally and on paper tracking math, history, science, language arts, foreign languages (we all do some study), art, and a whole bunch of other constellation topics like health and nutrition, and fitness.

I don’t give myself much credit. I feel like “Every mom thinks about their kids all the time. I’m not special.” But most parents are not forking homeschooling. I act like I should be able to handle my kids with the same amount of energy as my friends who have full time jobs and who put their kids in school/after school care.

But that’s not what I’m doing and I really need to stop feeling so ashamed that I don’t handle everything like the full time out of the home parents.

It’s ok for me to feel utterly exhausted by the amount of work I do for my children. I’m teaching and parenting without many breaks. I get some breaks, it’s true… but not a lot. I get approximately a teachers prep period amount of break per day. And my job is from when I wake up until I pass out.

I’m tired.

I miss the babysitter. Sigh. She’s really not replaceable. She was so perfect for our family. Although I will admit that I’m feeling pretty grateful to not be paying for her right now. She got pretty expensive towards the end.

She left in May. So I have been… pretty intensely with the kids since then. Except for Alaska.

Last night EC told me that when I was in Alaska “It felt like… it felt like something missing.” I missed you too, baby.

We talked to EC about enmeshment and what it means.  We mentioned that we are unusually enmeshed for folks of our demographic. EC beamed and said she likes it that way. I like it that way too. We are trying to figure out having room for individuality with our enmeshment. It’s a process.

***************************** (Above written in the morning before the day got busy. Resuming at the very end of the day after therapy.)

Today was a good somatic therapy session. We did energy work, of course, but we did a lot of talking about boundaries and connection.

I think I have been in therapy for pretty much my whole life because this is one of the only ways I know for sure that it’s ok for me to have connection without sex. Outside of the rock solid boundaries of therapy… that’s always been harder for me. It’s not that I don’t connect with people without sex (like, I’ve never banged Jenny and that’s 24 years and counting) ever ever ever. But it’s a lot harder for me and it’s so hard for me to trust it.

We spent a while talking about my frantic questioning of people to try and understand the “rules” of different relationships and how I often feel punished for being bad because people don’t appreciate that I need things spelled out in such fantastic detail because I genuinely can’t guess what people want very well. My shrink went on to a long digression about how that’s very common for Aspie/Autistic people. We need things spelled out so much that we anger people and it’s very common for Autistic people to be abused for being so annoying.

Oh shit. Now I’m going to sound like that dude I divorced for having inappropriate boundaries with my children. “I’m so peeeerrrrrrrrrrrrsecuted because of my Autism.”

Shit I hope not.

The thing is, I recognize that I’m a super high intensity needy as fuck person. I irritate people. That doesn’t make me a victim. It means that I irritate people like a sheet of fine grain sand paper. Whether it is my fault or not… it’s pretty natural that people react to being rubbed with sand paper.

Am I “bad” because I don’t understand the “rulez” other people live by?

Well Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ WHICH RULES am I supposed to follow? Do you know how many fucking different sets of rules I’ve been exposed to?!?!?!?!?!?

Random physical yuck

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I asked the sick person to not come to the party yesterday because I was concerned about a different party guest who is having surgery in a week.

So I woke up feeling like shit anyway. I’m so dizzy it hurts. My head hurts. I feel really sick.

Karma.

Sometimes lying is the truth.

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Today I am going to smile. I am going to laugh. I am going to be encouraging and I am going to seem happy.

It is my baby’s birthday party. I can’t make this about me. My baby needs love and support and to feel like they are delightful for being alive.

Yes beloved. I will put my shit in a box. I’ll deal with it later. Today it is about you. And you are glorious and a source of joy.

More than just a comment.

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I was responding to a comment the Quiet One left and it occurred to me that this is something I should put here to remind myself later. And then I expanded it like whoa.

I still know a lovely gal I met in kindergarten. I know most of the folks I was tight with in junior high and I’ve spoken to most of them within the last month. I rarely see pieces of my high school crowd but we stay in touch. I know a bunch of folks from junior college. I didn’t make friends during my bachelor’s degree outside of the bdsm scene but I still know many of those folks. I still know folks I met in graduate school. I have friends from the home schooling group we left. I even still know people irl that I met on forums years ago.

I keep people.

In communities spread far and wide. With personalities so diverse I’m sometimes shocked these folks have a crossover person at all.

I don’t have to think I am worthy. They do. I am not the one who has to decide if I am good enough for them. That’s not my choice.

I keep the people who treat me the way I want to be treated.

The gal I met in kindergarten? She was the only school friend in elementary school who ever sent me a letter after I moved away. I carefully hoarded that letter for years. It was a talisman. Which was a little weird when we had some less friendly interactions in sixth grade and I barely masked my desire to weep and rend my clothing and cover myself in ashes.

I’ve always been kind of melodramatic.

Later in high school there were two girls in Bakersfield who wrote to me when I left. They were harder to keep in touch with. Went off to missionary work.

People who write me or call me or reach out to me or ask for a date…

It feels like it pulls to a magnet buried deep in my belly. “Yes? You wanted me?”

I’m kind of over feeling numb to the Bonus Mama divorcing me. It hurts so much. I get why she did it. I don’t even think she was wrong to have the feelings she had. I had to speak up and advocate for the kids. I just had to. Yes it was over stepping. Yes I’m a pushy bitch.

But I had very serious clinical reasons for my recommendations.

It doesn’t matter. I wrecked the friendship pushing an issue I didn’t have the right to get in the middle of.

Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right?

I need to know I advocated properly for the kids. On my dying day that is the part I will be held responsible for.

It doesn’t matter if I made someone angry. I had to speak for the children in front of me who couldn’t speak for themselves.

They were signaling distress. You just had to read the cues.

And that means I’m an asshole.

Parents don’t want to hear, “I love you and I know you have tried your best. Your child’s needs aren’t being met. They need the opposite of what you are doing.”

No one wants to be told that. Well, except for me I guess? I go pay money looking to be told that.

I need help seeing where I’m fucking up. I can’t help my kids if I don’t deal with the ways I’m fucking up. Everybody fucks up. Where you draw your boundaries around that varies based on your needs and tolerances.

I am not you and you are not me. We fuck up differently. Or maybe we fuck up the same and it lands differently because our kids aren’t the same. I don’t know.

I didn’t understand, when I was 17 and I decided I wanted to home school, that I was trying to commit myself to a rigorous system that was closer to individualized therapy than what most people consider “raising children”. At least… that is what the people who spend time around me and my kids tell me. “Your explanations sound exactly like the therapist who comes to our house.”

I provide a variety of different kinds of therapies. I do it seamlessly and in the flow of just living.

Because Stanford was pretty sure and I’m pretty sure that EC is dyslexic this year will involve a very different type of spelling practice. Pre-tests will use a pencil and paper then we won’t write again. We’ll use physical materials so EC gets the kinesthetic experience of building the sounds of language with something less symbolic than a line on a paper. I’m going to look for as many weird ways to practice as I can. Sticks on a walk through the park. Clay. Sticking together those weird puff beads. Making words on the perl bead boards. It’s going to be different from time to time to keep her interested. It is hard for her to visualize how letters work. That makes a lot of sense to me. I learned how to see words like constant text on a computer screen but EC isn’t there. That’s ok.

She needs something different.

I’m trying to believe that I’m not as bad as I feel I am. I really want to believe that there is some hope that I can be a good enough mother. I really want to believe that I will be able to raise people who will grow up to like themselves and have lives they enjoy.

I don’t need them to be so rich. I don’t need them to be so educated. I don’t need them to be high status.

I don’t care if my kids pick up garbage for a living. My cousin did that for years. His girlfriend worked at the waste disposal company until ill health forced retirement.

I would take pride in my child having a work ethic.

And yet I know I’m “supposed” to be priming my kids to believe they Are Not Successful unless they Go To College and Get A Good Job and Get Married and Have Children.

I tell my kids that I don’t care if they go to college. There is money sitting there waiting to help them if they want to go… but they don’t have to go to college. It’s not required. I tell them that if they want to have any kind of work life or home life that’s not my business. I want them to be happy with their life and I don’t care if it involves a romantic partner or a legal ceremony or children.

You owe yourself a life you want to live. You don’t owe your parents shit.

And if your parents yell at you about your choices when you are an adult? They are abusive assholes.

Am I an abusive asshole to my friends? To be fair I haven’t yelled at someone about a choice that didn’t impact me that I didn’t agree with in ten years. In recent years when I’ve had a concern I’ve had a speaking voice conversation. I think.

Christ. I’m probably forgetting something.

I’ve yelled at Noah about completely stupid shit. I do think our relationship has abusive elements. I think it isn’t that I’m the “victim”. I think that given where we both came from… we have learned a lot about healthy boundaries but we still aren’t where we need to get.

I. am not where I need to get.

Ok, I am not diagnosing myself with this at all but this was interesting to read. That was the second link that came up when I googled “autistic difficulty controlling voice volume”. It’s really interesting how having a new shrink say they think I am autistic makes me think of weird little tics that go back to childhood. I have a lot of weird vocal variation. I work on it. I try to control it. I vary in ability.

I seem so normal.

Do you know how fucking hard it is? Over time I’m starting to understand why it has been so hard for me. I feel less bad about not being better at it earlier.

It’s hard that I won’t take more medication to try and help lift my mood because I’m pregnant but it’s not actually great for the pregnancy to be crying all the time.

Bodies are shitty.

 

More details

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I’m struggling with all the stuff around identity and self. I’m feeling really ashamed of myself for not having made more progress. I have not managed to turn every person I poured tons of energy into a lifelong friend. Some faded away and some told me to go fuck myself.

I’ve had a fair number of people break up with me after I give them an opinion they don’t want to hear. Whether I am objectively right or not is… meaningless. Sometimes I have been proven right in the long run. Sometimes I don’t find out.

Either way… I have lost my friend.

And it’s my fault. Because I can’t keep my fucking mouth shut.

Because I have to share my stupid piece of shit opinion.

Where the fuck do I get off? Why in the fuck do I try so god damn hard to control everyone?

Because I want people to look at me the way I look at other people and give their opinions. I don’t expect people to act on my opinion. But yeah… I do let people know when I have judgments. Because I’m an asshole.

My closest friends tell me I’m fucking up. They tell me when my actions are out of line. They do it privately and tactfully. I get called to the carpet. And I listen. I don’t always agree. Sometimes I respond with a long, spirited argument where I explain why their advice sucks because of these dozen factors they didn’t consider…

But I really like that dynamic. That dynamic can’t exist until I know someone well and they know me well.

And you know what? My experience of life is that most people get horribly upset if you tell them they are fucking up. People want to be told “You Are Awesome” without earning it, without working for it, without deserving it.

I ain’t got time for that game.

So I’ve burned through some relationships. And I’m feeling incredibly, intensely shitty about it. Because clearly it is all my fault because I am such a shitty person. Who is the common denominator in all these failures: me.

And it becomes more clear with every passing month just how badly I damaged my marriage last year.

I’m feeling like a failure at pretty much everything.

Our ES (Education Specialist) with the charter school homeschools her kids independently because she doesn’t want to mess with the charter rules. She was kindly and gently curious why I’m using a charter this year as clearly I have more her personality type. I felt really ashamed of the fact that I want the oversight so I know I can’t fall into a rut and stop doing any schooling for months around the end of the pregnancy and after the birth. We will have to keep working. We have deadlines for turning in materials. We can’t fuck with that. I can get in actual legal trouble if I slack.

And I need that insistence this year and I feel really dirty and bad because I know I need that.

I’m feeling really weird and guilty and ashamed of falling really far behind on gardening. I haven’t touched my yards in 4-5 months. They look like it. I have a collapsing hazard right in my front yard and I just…haven’t dealt with it.

I’ve been sitting on my ass in between driving to fucking doctor visits. I walk some, yes, but Jenny can vouch for not much in the past couple weeks. Not before I went to Alaska and not since I got back. I just…

I’m so tired.

But the tired is partially that walking up a hill through a river of molasses in January feeling. I’m weary. I’m feeling the depletion. I’m feeling Lightning suck the life out of me. At 15 weeks pregnant I’m not back up to pre-pregnancy weight. Barely down, only 4 lbs to go till I’m back to where I started. And the doctor I met yesterday was lecturing me on how I need to make sure I’m only eating the extra 300 calories a day I’m supposed to eat. Oh fuck you motherfucker. I’m lucky if I can eat an adequate number of calories for a non-pregnant day. So shove your fucking condescension where the sun don’t shine.

And the midwife in the practice, who spent a lot of time looking at my records, had in my previous visit told me, “EAT. Eat. Eat as much as you want. Eat anything. Eat constantly.”

Everything is feeling like nails on a chalkboard.

Folks are clearly trying to be nice to me. I can see the gestures. I can see the thoughts. But like… I’m running from mentions of my birthday and I’m crying and wanting to freak out. I don’t really want a birthday this year. It’s not about turning 36, whatever.

I miss my mother. It has now been half my lifetime since I spent a birthday with her.

Maybe that’s part of why I’m tanking. This is a huge milestone and I haven’t been thinking about it as I’ve been rapidly multiplying my tasks.

I’ve almost been out for as long as I was in. Just a couple more weeks.

Do I feel proud of what I’ve done in those 18 years? Yes and no.

Do I feel proud of me? Yes and no.

I wonder if my mother would feel any pride if she knew what I’ve done.

Many of the people who have sworn up and down that they were my family… that bond turned out to be incredibly severable. 

I know Noah is proud of me.

I am a selfish piece of shit and I wish that my mama thought I was her most successful child. I am the only one of my siblings to graduate from high school or college. I’m the only one who hasn’t been divorced before 21. I am a fucking better parent than my siblings because I have neither raped my children nor used corporal punishment as my primary means of discipline.

But how fucking shallow.

Being the scapegoat means that no matter how far above expectations you come in… you’re still out.

But I divorced her. What the fuck.

Yeah… but I divorced her because folks were fairly actively covering up for ongoing child abuse. I had just cause. It went past our generation. That’s so heart breaking.

And the fact that no one in my family thinks they should “get involved in other peoples business” it just keeps happening. Generation after generation.

Thus I share my opinion whether you want to fucking hear it or not. Because I’m not going to act like your actions happen behind a fucking wall. I see what you’re doing.

Most of my opinions are positive. Folks get done with me when I get to the point of voicing a serious criticism. Given that I know how poorly most folks take such efforts I don’t really do this sort of thing until someone has been in my life a long time.

I wrote that B’s dad cheating had an impact on me. I told A that given that she just had back surgery she really ought to prioritize a real mattress over getting a new iPod given that she was sleeping on an RV mattress laid directly on cinder blocks. Among many other similarly none of my damn business opinions. Like what I thought of everyone in her family just glossing over the fact that her father had completely financially ruined his family by maintaining a series of pre-teen Peruvian sex worker companions. He would fly down several times a year. He bought a house and would let them live there.

People don’t want my opinion.

I get that.

Don’t worry, I know that my diarrhea of the mouth makes me a piece of shit. But not being this flavor of piece of shit would mean that I had to be a different flavored piece of shit and I’m just not up for the effort of that kind of change. I mean who has time for that.

That would be a lateral and perhaps a slightly downward move by my moral code.

So I’m a bitch.

Don’t worry. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

I really should go to bed. I can hate myself tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day…

Mood shit

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I was talking to my massage therapist today and she commented that I sound depressed. I’m not taking much pleasure in anything. I feel sad. I feel irritable as fuck. I feel like I am a mean terrible person who won’t ever be worth spitting on if I’m on fire.

I want to quit everything and hide under a rock until I die.

Had to be done

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I woke up this morning and sent the OB a message saying I will be unable to be comfortable in his presence and I’d like to meet other people in the practice.

Nothing to argue with. No specific complaints to dismiss. Just “I won’t be able to be comfortable.”

I’m nervous about playing OB roulette while I’m pregnant but on the other hand I did better with the random on-call OB when EC was born than I did with my chosen birth attendant so who knows.

Clarity is good

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On the topic of invitations. Because maybe it’ll help me be less fucking pissed at my OB.

I think that there is a huge difference between a mass email invitation and a personalized invitation. Personalized invitations have degrees of formality. An individual email is less personal than a phone call is less personal than a written invitation sent via snail mail.

I send paper invitations when I’m like “This is truly a limited event. You are invited.”

I think that most people in the modern world are used to being herded along in big groups and the occasional poke and nudge that JUST THIS PERSON is worth a bunch of extra steps for the fun of their company feels really good.

If I send a mass email to the Wonderland list I do not expect all (now only 40-something) people to respond with a yes/no. I expect most people to blow off the email. I sigh deeply occasionally… but that’s my expectation. I think I will only hear from the people who are excited to be asked.

When I send a paper invitation I do not expect someone to go to as much effort as me to respond. I generally indicate that an email or phone call response would be dandy. It’s easier on the person responding and I get the message. Cool, cool.

But when I send you a paper invitation… I am an entitled twat waffle and I expect you to decline if you aren’t going to show up. Because I’m reserving space for you. If you don’t want the space please tell me.

Mass emails… whatever.

If you want to respond to an invitation in the negative “I am unable to attend” is the most non-offensive response in the world. It’s just a statement of fact without any attempt to explain why this event is not good enough for you. That’s a five star response.

Other completely acceptable responses: “I already have plans. I will catch you on the next one.”  “Thank you for the invitation but this is not a good weekend.” Anything of that nature is totes sweet.

“I wish I could but I am unable to get there” invites the response “What if we helped you with transportation” and should only be invoked if you really do wish you could go. Some hosts will feel a little passive aggressively pushed but I won’t. I will hear “Hey transportation is a fucking bitch and it limits my life” and I will deeply identify with this statement and I will think back to all of the awesome people who drove to pick me up in the mountains when I was a trapped teenager and I will probably try to help. Cause I invited you because I want to see you and transportation is a valid thing to need help with.

I don’t expect anyone to always say yes to me. If I have a 0% yes rate from someone… I will stop asking after some period of time because that sucks ass. There are a few people over the years who have never been willing to do anything with me but they frequently tell me they want to and I should invite them to something. So they can tell me no. That starts feeling incredibly shitty. If you have a 5% yes rate because (Reasons) that’s fine. That’s an effort back.

Hell if you always respond no and you send me long chatty emails about how frustrated you are with your life for getting in the way of hanging out with me because that’s what you wish you got to do and instead you have obligation X… I’ll probably still keep you on the list forever and hope for your company.

It’s the “Sorry we were invited to another event and we are WAY closer to them” that makes me want to set bridges on fire.

Cause what the fuck. Do I fucking tell you that you are only a Tier D friend and I only invite you to things when no one better is available? Hell fucking no. That would be messed up.

I don’t actually have Tier D friends. Not really. This shifts over the years. At this point I have my family, I have my very closest friends, and then there’s just everyone else I love. I see them when it works and that varies dramatically and isn’t a reflection of how much I love them or how much they love me. Life is complicated, yo.

I am super blessed with having awesome people in my life. They are hella busy. I accept and appreciate and support this. I’m not the center of everything.

But there’s rude and polite, yo.

That did not go so well.

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I met “my” OB today. I don’t like him. He inquired if Noah is a new partner and that’s why I’m having another baby. I came home and sent him this email:

“Hello Sir,

I need to let you know that the way you inquired if my partner was a new partner was… incredibly poorly done. I felt pretty insulted. It felt like you were inquiring as to which baby daddy number I’m on and after eleven years of marriage… Yeah that was not well done.

Kristine Gibbs”

He also proceeded to tell me I shouldn’t be on so many vitamin supplements. When I explained that this is a direct result of testing done within the last two months and is specifically to fix current deficits… he told me he will go check with the genetic counselor and they will get back to me with their opinion of the supplements I’m on.

He was rude when he inquired about sleep stuff. “Have you ever tried taking anything to help you sleep? Have you ever tried exercising?”

I… I am not going to fucking like this dude.

Naw. I’ve. Never. Considered. Taking. Anything. To. Help. Me. Sleep. Why. Would. I.

Fucker.

And exercise? What’s that? Clearly I’m too fat lazy and stupid to consider exercising.

Motherfucker.