Category Archives: adult-only

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Teaching was fun.

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The internet gave me the tentative go-ahead to carry on with my plans since they were more than 24 hours after the last uhm incident. So I taught a class yesterday. It was on boundary transgressions.

The word “rape” didn’t come up. I feel… fairly flabbergasted really. It was not that kind of crowd. We had eight students, so not a big class. Three women. Two of the women were ladies who have been around the block a few times and they were frankly inspirational. They frequently came up with better (more tactful, polite AND effective) responses to boundary violation situations than I did. I’m so glad they came.

This was mostly a new-to-bdsm crowd who wanted to learn more about social boundaries and trying new things. I hope I gave them some things to think about and some exercises to practice. *cross fingers* A couple of people left mid-way and the rest of the class said they were very happy to be there and they learned a lot.

I was surprised by how effectively I co-taught with my friend. I kind of thought that would be a bit rocky. I also kind of forgot “Oh yeah… I’m a writing teacher…” and most bdsm classes aren’t really writing classes. But mine involves writing! I brought paper and pens and everything. And they wrote. Like you do.

It was good though. Self-evaluation kind of stuff you don’t necessarily have to share with the class. They spent the time scribbling furiously so I don’t think they were completely unengaged.

So hard to judge.

There was a point about victimization I never made because it never fit appropriately in the conversation. It was a really… non-traumatized crowd. I remain shocked that most of the bdsm community does not come to bdsm through trauma. I *know* it is true… and yet I feel surprise. Every time I rediscover. “Oh wait. Not everyone is like me.”

But the point was: living in a state of perpetual victimhood will ruin your life. Yet sometimes you have to come to a place within yourself where you understand that for a limited time and duration you were a victim or you can’t grow past that place. You have to be able to recognize that everyone can be a victim but you don’t want to be a victim forever. You have to figure out how to change your mindset after a boundary violation and take back your right to respond.

You always have ways to respond you just haven’t thought of yet. Keep going back to your inner resources and brain storming ways to do it differently next time.

Alas. I made a similar sort of line of commentary but not explicitly that language. These people weren’t victims and they clearly didn’t understand the language of victimhood. It was interesting to adapt on the fly.

We did some fun role playing. Even though not everyone was eager to “act” everyone verbally participated a lot. I made everyone be talkative since the class was so small. I’m really good at that patient-smile-while-people-feel-pressured-to-talk. I’ll just grin expectantly at you while making lots of eye contact. We’ll see who can be silent. Muahahaha.

My co-teacher gave me some specific good feedback (less second person, he worried about one of my lack-of-eye-contact points I countered with “but if you make eye contact during writing assignments they stop writing because they think time is up” he said that was a good reason).

I had a great time. Lots of anxiety around the event for a variety of socially awkward reasons but it worked out. I’m glad I was well enough to attend.

And I signed the paperwork. I no longer have any legal ties to the coffee shop in San Francisco. It is being bought by two new enthusiastic owners. Everyone is excited. It’s staying within the community. Yay! I helped keep the coffee shop open because I wanted that to be a community space for all the young freaks who need it. I’m really glad that more people in the extended community are getting involved. It is more likely to last this way. Yay! Yay!

All in all, canceling Saturday was sad but we had a great weekend. We got to rest on Saturday and maybe that is for the best anyway. We have busy stuff coming up.

Oh! And the hot tub is gone! Hallelujah! I get to clean up and organize my back yard more. The Easter party will be epic. I’m growing to enjoy the Easter parties more by the year. I’m figuring out what I enjoy and what doesn’t work. I’m really pretty surprised that I can hide as many hundreds of eggs as I manage on my tiny property. But I find them for eight months.

I think that the Easter party is partially so fun because I’m not competing with much other holiday stuff. Ok, I lose people for Passover. That’s ok. It’s not Christmas-time. It isn’t over-all as stressful of a time of year.

I bought way way way less candy this year. Last year was overwhelming. See, I learn.

If the weather cooperates this Friday home schoolers will be coming over to paint the fence. This will be fun. I get the impression at least a few folks will come to hear Girl Genius.

This week is a running week with J. Maybe if we are going to do alternative weeks on Tuesdays and Saturdays we should make those running dates split up so we see one another once a week but not on the same day every week. Maybe. I’m going to keep up the running this year. Darn it.

It is time for the monthly pilgrimage to San Pablo this week. That’s a long drive. But seeing those folks in their home is important. The kids have to learn to manage grown-up-only houses. It’s a process.

It will be a very busy and hopefully fun week. Only four hours of driving scheduled over the next ten days. That should be nice. Yay for staying home and having people come to me.

Not good.

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This weekend I was supposed to go to the Tartan Fair, then get a massage, then go to a party. On Sunday I was going to teach a class.

I spent last night in the bathroom. In the past six hours I’ve been in the bathroom four separate times and no visit has been short. I didn’t sleep much for the cramping.

I hate when my body betrays me. This is my sad face. I am going to have to cancel everything for today and I’m not sure about the class tomorrow.

Damnit. Damnit. Damnit.

Bossy pants

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On the internet I read that some people have a problem with the word bossy. Whatever. I’m bossy.

Yesterday we went with two families to the local tea shop. Jenny introduced me to the tea shop so it has an extra special warm place in my heart. I’ve been bringing my kids periodically all their lives. I have my “tea shop patter” down.

When we are outside the store, “Ok! How do we examine things inside antique shops?” “With our eyes and not our hands.” “Where do your hands stay The Whole Time?” “In our imaginary pockets.”

When we get to the table I have all kinds of cheerful misdirections away from using the spoons as catapults. Yes this comes up over and over.

Yesterday it was kind of weird because I Mothered the whole table. I divided the food and told people what they got and insisted on ordering more food when someone kind of faintly said they were more hungry and … I didn’t mean to take over. There were two other mothers there. I thought they would be more assertive in just taking stuff. We ordered four tea sets to split between eight people. Isn’t it obvious to everyone at the table that we should split every sandwich in half so that everyone gets an equal amount?

Apparently not. Ok. I’ll be bossy then.

I’m never sure if I’m ruffling feathers or being rude or taking over with other peoples kids or or or. I didn’t mean to boss the whole table. I just boss my kids and your kids were standing nearby when I said it. I don’t think I’m the boss of them. You are totally free to argue with everything I say and do it a different way.

My kids do better when I set my expectations out clearly and specifically. I have learned what I want from them and how to say it in a way they can process. We have been to this tea shop at least 40 times. I have learned the patter.

I believe that if I want my children to learn to smile at me and say things in a nice way it is my obligation to say things to them that way. Every time. Even when I really don’t fucking want to. I still owe them courtesy and cheerfulness because if I want it back I have to model it. And model it. And model it. No matter how I feel about it that day.

It’s rather oppressive sometimes. But I do it because I like the results I get out of my kids. I like that I can take them anywhere and they will do really well for at least an hour. You can’t do that with every little kid. Once we went to this tea shop with a little boy friend. I didn’t find out until we got there that the parents don’t ever take him to restaurants because his behavior was terrible but the mom didn’t want to disappoint Shanna when she asked them to go. I left like a 75% tip that day because we broke things.

I believe that human animals can be taught to do just about anything if you try hard enough and are patient and loving and coaxing through the process. It’s a lot easier to run now that I have Blacksheep’s voice in my head instead of the nasty critical voices I have always heard about my feeble attempts at physical fitness.

Having someone believe you are capable is often the first and hardest step. Sometimes you really need someone else to believe you are capable so you can believe it of yourself.

I wouldn’t have “finished” the marathon without Blacksheep. She told me I could. So I did. Even though it was a really hard race.

I frequently feel awkward with the home schoolers. I wear my bossy pants. The wonderful lady who holds our group together with scotch tape and bailing wire is not naturally someone to get bossy with a large group. So she seems to appreciate that I’m happy to yell at large groups of kids (in a nice way) to organize group stuff. Like grouping up for pictures. Not yelling for behavior. That I stay out of until it gets really bad.

I’m pretty happy to be the one to herd squirrels. I miss stage managing. I miss teaching. I miss organizing groups of people into a result. I even miss working retail sometimes. Cleaning my house gives me less satisfaction.

But you do what you do for the day you are  in. Today I take care of my kids. For this period of my life my job is educating my children.

Holy shit are they going to turn out bossy. I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand. Holy Validation Batman. On the other hand… that is one of the personality traits that people dislike the most about me. I’m kind of damning my kids, know what I mean?

But the world needs women who are good at giving orders. I believe it with all my heart and soul. In order to give orders you have to believe that you have the right and that’s complicated.

I don’t have “the right” to boss everyones kids. I just do it any way. I do it until I’m told to stop. People don’t tell me to stop very often. When people do I tend to respond with, “Wow that teacher voice is hard to get rid of” and then people laugh. This culture has a lot of tolerance for teachers. I still skate on that quite cheerfully. I take any slack I can get without hesitation.

It is easier to remember things if you are taught when you are in a relaxed state of mind. Which is why half or more of my little “patter” lectures I deliver in little songs I make up. My kids don’t take my bossy pants patter as a negative. I’m trying to set them up to succeed. They like it when they know what is expected of them because then they have the option of doing it. They sure like the result of being able to do what people want from them.

They have learned the difference between how the antique store dealers treat them on days they only look and on days they touch. When they keep their hands to themselves they usually get a sticker and frequently are handed a cookie. Whereas I don’t do a lot of straight up bribery myself I am cool with other people using it as a tactic.

I feel like this is my opportunity to help someone else get punished less for fucking up. I can help you understand a lot of the boundaries so people don’t hate you the way they hated me when I was a child. I was as curious as Shanna. I broke as many things. (Holy shit for shoe shine that kid breaks things.) No one was with me though so I took my punishments on my own. Shanna has a different experience. Shanna is not having the experience of having to leave over and over and over and over because every time you break something it means someone hates you and won’t let you in their house ever again.

Noah really doesn’t understand how much I have changed. I’m a lot more ok with failure now than I ever believed I could be. When I was younger I was pretty paralyzed with fear about the idea of fucking up or making mistakes and breaking things. Noah taught me that you can’t learn without trying and failing. I spent most of my early life seeing my failings as a sign that I was a pathetic loser who shouldn’t be trying.

My kids aren’t like that. My kids don’t have a sense of self like mine. My kids think, “You can’t learn without making mistakes. When you break things you apologize and try to make it right.” Shanna has paid for things out of her allowance. She has repaired things. She has cleaned up the mess herself. And none of these results were decided upon with shaming, shouting, or contempt. I just talked to her about what the right thing to do would be. She picked the result and she was cool with it.

Shanna’s experience of life is: when you break something you need to figure out how to make it right. You have a bunch of options for how that can happen. Negotiate to figure out which is right this time.

Sometimes I flinch when she breaks things because I still expect to be hit. I feel really pathetic. But she doesn’t flinch.

My kids don’t flinch.

I’m doing something right.

All of the kids yesterday (five of them!) did great. We had a blast. Then we ran hard for an hour and a half to burn off the energy we stored up sitting patiently in the tea shop. It was great.

Sometimes I’m scared that home schooling my kids means they don’t get to have relationships. I fear isolating them. Then I think that instead of sitting in school all day we get to go to the tea shop and then the park. Not so isolated. And learning useful life skills.

Yeah, this is what I want to do with this time.

Kid quotes for posterity

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Shanna: “I cleaned the play room and the sleeping room and you said you would clean the living room and LO AND BEHOLD YOU BETRAYED ME!!!”

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Me: “Do you know how much I love you?”

Calli: (small sad voice) “No.”

Me: “I love you as much as I love onions.”

Calli: “What! No.”

Me: “I love you as much as a grain of sand.”

Calli: “What! No.”

Me: “I love you as much as a shoe.”

Calli: “What! No.”

Me: “Well then, how much do I love you?”

Calli: (in a happy, dreamy voice) “As big as the sky.”

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I can’t remember if I blogged this one.

Me: “Stop antagonizing your sister. …. Wait? Do you know what antagonize means?”

Shanna: “No I don’t and thanks for asking.”

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Shanna: (shove Calli with elbow) “If Mom is coming in to pick up our toys and donate them to someone else so we don’t have to clean them up any more SAY THANK YOU.”

Shanna and Calli in unison: “Thank you.”

 

… I can’t remember what else. They have been amusing me lately.

Many sitting ramble

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I have now spoken with three acupuncturists after the less than impressive acupuncture trip. All three have told me that I should write a registered letter of complaint asking for a refund and I should CC the licensing board. They are all very unhappy that their branch of medicine is being represented that way.

My shrink wants me to see an ob/gyn to talk about hormone balance. If my period cycles are 35 days long and I only bleed for three days and at the end of bleeding I am so full of rage that I can barely function for a few days… that may be something that can be fixed.

Like I want to see a fucking doctor.

But I do have a more appropriate ergonomic setup. Baby steps.

I’m even wearing the braces.

I’m still doing that existential exhaustion thing. I wonder how much of it is related to the pills instead of smoking. The pills make me feel far more tired than smoking does.

I feel like I the last few days I have been bouncing between rage (which I don’t act out very much or verbalize to a great degree)  and shame that I am such a bad person that I am capable of feeling such rage and mania where I try to prove that I’m not bad I’m not bad. I’m not bad. I’m not bad.

All of the childrens clothing in my friends house is now organized very nicely except for the stuff I pulled for donation. That’s just a big pile. But if she would permit me I would throw it in a bag and make it disappear like magic. But she has friends she wants to share the clothes with. I can delay my own gratification that much.

Because it’s all about me.

I make myself feel better about existing by being the person who comes over to your house and takes the garbage out without being asked. Clearly it is full and needs to be taken out. Sure I’ll do that. Oh I see dishes. How about if I wash them. Can I take your compost and recycling out while I’m at it? Do you have any laundry I can fold?

Just please don’t make me read to your kids. I’m sick of that shit.

I want to be good. I don’t know what “being good” means. So I try to do the only good I know how to do.

Domestic work is not valued or appreciated but it does genuinely impact peoples lives. I have the physical ability to make someone else’s life better by doing this work so I want to do it.

I still kind of hate myself for the lack of patience I had with my brother Tommy. I couldn’t handle helping him. I wasn’t nice. I wasn’t giving. I wasn’t generous. I was selfish and self absorbed. Sure, if I tried to help him he would hit me, call me names, and sexually assault me but surely that isn’t a good enough excuse for me to be so lazy about helping my disabled brother. What is wrong with me?

Yesterday I cleaned my pantry area. I found a bunch of stuff I’m ready to pass on. I reorganized a whole bunch of stuff. I found out that my former housemate left more than 100 movies in our cd binders. Whoops. I need to get those back to her. I need to send her an email. I wish I could do it right this minute without crying but I can’t. I will be able to do so by morning. That’s my deadline for myself. I can’t just put it off and off. I have to do it.

Even if I feel guilty. Even if I feel ashamed of myself for hurting her. I still have to contact her and say, “Whoops. I found some of your stuff.”

Life is awkward.

Have patience. Life does not have to be fully lived today. Yeah, this mood might be hard. It’s just a mood. It will pass.

I don’t have to already have done everything I imagine doing or I am a fraud. I don’t ever have to do all that I imagine doing. It’s just not required. No one is standing near me with a checklist declaring that my competency rate is only about 40% of what it could be if only I worked harder….

Breathe. Enjoy having the night off. I should probably do some editing. It is April now. I only have two more months. I could pull out the definitions. That would be an easy sub-job.

It is hard to feel the weight of the accomplishments behind me. It is hard to feel accomplished or competent. When I was young I thought that someday I would feel ok. I imagined that when I was a grown up I would feel confident that I knew the right thing to do and I’m doing it gosh darn it.

I don’t feel that way. I feel scared. I feel lost. I feel ashamed of myself in ways big and small.

I have been swearing a lot lately. It really is a fascinating barometer of my stress. I had it pretty well under control for a while. Not so much lately.

Six things I’m proud of:

  1. I’ve traveled a lot. By extension I have met a lot of really interesting people.
  2. I’m really proud of my yard. This piece of dirt is the result of my blood, sweat and tears. It looked like shit when I got here. Now people drive by and stop and ask to buy my house because of the yard. That feels miraculous.
  3. I’m proud of the degrees I earned (BA, teaching credential) and the degree I didn’t get. I didn’t walk away with an MA because I couldn’t handwrite fast enough. Because when I was a child in school learning handwriting I had the misfortune to be in a place where people were beaten for their handwriting. Mine will probably never improve because I have such tremendous issues around the whole subject. But those elitist cock suckers can’t take my education away from me.
  4. I am proud of myself for prosecuting my father. Even though it caused so much pain and trouble. It was the right decision. I was worth defending.
  5. I’m really proud of the running. I have almost certainly run more than a thousand miles so far. I’m going to run a lot farther and faster before I am done.
  6. I’m proud of myself for never feeling like I had to stay in a relationship just for the sake of having a partner. I left people who treated me in ways I didn’t want to be treated. I’m proud of that.

Even if I feel worthless, I don’t think that is a logical conclusion. I know I feel inadequate all the time and I know I feel terrible and bad and like people would hate me if they just knew. And the reality is that some would hate me. Some wouldn’t. Most really don’t give a shit one way or another.

I don’t need to be afraid of what people think of me. That is the freedom and luxury I have now. It is weird.

So the social gaffe I did on Friday? That I felt bad about? Talked to said person again. There seem to be no lingering of discord on her end. She’s anxious to forgive me and move on.

But but… it’s not ok for me to treat people that way. If I don’t think people will hold boundaries with me when I’m a cunt then I overstep. This is why I have so many friends who carry around 2x4s in the form of personalities. I feel safe.

I feel scared about my own impulses toward bullying. I hurt Anna very badly not that many years ago. I hurt Sarah. I could keep going on but my whining gets old.

I’m not a very nice person. I was talking to a friend about that. She said it is an American thing. In Russia they understand that sometimes people are assholes.

I think that basically everyone can be an asshole. Including my wonderful children. They are not monsters. They are not demons. They are not terrible. They are not bad. They are not horrible.

But sometimes… they are assholes.

It happens to the best of us.

I feel like living with them and learning to manage our asshole-self-interest conflicts is my death march toward functionality. And that ties back into my belief that I “owe” people the appearance of happiness.

I’m really kind of an asshole. Ok, no I’m a big asshole. A lot. A terrible one. But I don’t like the social and social-political backlash of being widely seen as an asshole. There are consequences. I don’t like them. So I try, very actively, to be perceived as not-an-asshole.

But then I come along aside a puppy. I see kicked puppies and I’m just like everyone else. I first want to help them. Then I notice that the help I am giving isn’t actually the help that they want or need and they want more than I can give and I feel a rush of shame and… I want to kick them.

I do this with friends. I’ve done this over and over and it is a pattern I need to not continue. Just because I see patterns in peoples lives and behavior that gives me no right to pronounce what I see. I’m not a god damn seer.

Where are the boundaries on fixing things for people? Well my kid just told me at dinner that I was rude for going through our friends dresser and rearranging the clothes. Err… she gave me permission! She wanted me to do it! I was nice! I wasn’t being rude! Oh. Oh…… But if you tried to do the same thing you would get in trouble. Got it.

Yeah, this is a special case. I knew her for a long time and I asked and she gave specific permission and that’s different.

Consent, baby. It’s important.

My pantry really kind of is a thing of beauty these days. I like what I’ve done with it. Ok, I’m proud of that too.

A long time ago, when I spent waaaaaaaay too much time on Mothering.com (before the bad site redesign) and there was a woman I made friends with. Once I asked her what she was proud of doing in her life. She said she didn’t take pride in anything.

I found that inexplicably sad. I could name many things. She had many children. She had left an abusive spouse and remarried someone who has been a fabulous partner. She thinks that because she is poor she has nothing whatsoever to be proud of. I couldn’t talk her out of that view.

Is my worth based on Noah’s paycheque? That’s a sobering thought. When I list off the things I’m proud of… Noah’s job doesn’t hit the list. I have nothing to do with that. I do feel proud of how I have managed the money put in my care. But I don’t feel proud of having the money. I don’t feel like having it says anything good or bad about my character or self-worth.

It just means I’m a lot less likely to ever be homeless again. That’s cool. But I … don’t feel “proud” of it.

I don’t exactly feel shame about having been homeless in the past. It is simply one more adjective that I’ve worn temporarily and then taken off. Kinda like “kid”. I was once.

Why isn’t “bad” like that? Why isn’t “monster” like that? Why isn’t daughter like that?

I don’t know. Maybe when you learn something strong and hard enough when you are young you can’t unlearn it.

So every day my children wake up to me smiling and saying, “Good morning! I am so glad to see you again!” No matter how I feel. Even if I’m crying. They don’t know what I am feeling or thinking they only know that I am mostly very gentle with them and when I am clumsy and I hurt them I apologize immediately.

Am I a monster?

Can a thing done ever be undone?

I don’t know.

This entry might be a little extra disjointed from usual. I’ve come in for three separate sittings and it is hard to keep flow going at that rate. I also go through periods of HAVING to tag and periods where I feel like rereading the entry to know how to tag it is too much work. Hilariously lazy.

Wake up. It’s another day. Today is Wednesday. Today we have swim class and Pam. Pam is still inviting herself over after knowing me for almost 18 years. She can stay as long as she wants.

Pam asked me about crowded cultures versus this American luxury of space. How do people who grew up in a country where boundaries are laughable luxuries not available at any price learn to understand the physical affront it feels like to crowd people who are used to more space? Is either side doing something “wrong”? How do we learn to get along?

I am looking forward to visiting Asia and India in particular so I can feel in my body what people who live there are used to. Hopefully I will be less presumptuous in my discussions. Or maybe I will be worse.

Asia in general (I would like to go to Thailand and Taiwan and a few other Asian countries) has more crowding but my understanding is that their cities will feel like such a different scale of human interaction that I will barely be able to absorb it. India I want because so much of my life involves Indians.

Cultural appropriation is a funny thing. There is some amount of it that is BAD and the internet tells me so. I can’t tell when or if any parts of it are allowed to be done without insult.

There is a store at our local mall that sells the pretty caftans and leggings the Indian ladies wear. I would love to shop there. Is that cultural appropriation? If someone who is Indian wears blue jeans and an American Eagle t-shirt–that’s not cultural appropriation. Is it cultural appropriation if I start wearing traditional Russian peasant clothing? It’s harder to buy in my local area.

Why don’t I just wear the traditional garb of my ancestors? Well… which ones? Mostly because my ancestors weren’t smart enough to wear comfy leggings and a nice A-line caftan that ends mid-calf. They wore much longer dresses and that gets to be a pain the neck.

What are people allowed to do and be without causing pain to the people around them? Must we all stay in our own little same-colored pods doing the same things so we don’t offend anyone? That doesn’t seem better. Cross-cultural contact involves people getting offended. Sometimes because of conscious actions on someones part and sometimes because someone doesn’t observe a taboo you think they should. Sometimes they are just passively not doing something you think they must.

I am going to offend people. I have to be ok with that. I’m an asshole. Most of the people I respect the most can be assholes. By asshole I particularly mean: someone who has very clearly defined boundaries and they are willing to proactively insist on their needs being met.

I know a lot of assholes. Go them.

A spider has the audacity to be slowly lowering itself about six inches in front of my face. Oh thanks a lot.

I am very sad it was raining on April Fools Day. I couldn’t do my painting-the-fence-thing. I also haven’t seen that neighbor outside in weeks. I’m pretty bummed.

But there are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese. I live in the time and the place where I can have unlimited dreams. They may not come true. They may be a figment of my imagination but that’s how the American Dream works.

I used to imagine that some day I would have a home and a family and that people would love me. I used to imagine that some day people wouldn’t hit me any more. I used to imagine that some day I wouldn’t be a piece of shit.

There are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese. Well, at least some dreams come true.

 

Anger.

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I am so angry I feel like I could levitate. It’s not one thing. It’s a million tiny things. But I’m fucking angry. Full of rage. I want to burn things down and make people bleed.

I have barely shouted and it has been entirely of the “STOP RUNNING THAT SHOPPING CART INTO MY ANKLES!!!!” variety so I don’t feel that bad. They did it literally seven times. I was so fucking pissed.

But I’m angry. Angry. Burn it down angry.

I am not entirely sure why. Part of it is anger over a social gaffe of my own. I was a complete asshole to someone who didn’t deserve it. I never like myself much after that. I don’t feel bad if I’m an asshole to an asshole. I feel bad when I kick puppies.

But that isn’t all of it.

I’m scared. I’m angry and scared. I’m trying new things and I am risking rejection and that is very hard for me. I want to show people why they should reject me out of hand. I want to test everyone and scare them and make them put up big boundaries to keep themselves safe from me because I am a bad person.

I’m scared. I’m angry but I’m more scared. I’m also having some issues with entitlement. My kids aren’t doing the basics of picking up after themselves this week. I don’t know what is up.

Shanna. Oh my goodness Shanna. I went into her play room with a box and I picked up allllllllllll the dress up clothes on the floor. Shanna quickly turned and shoved Calli and said, “If she is coming in here to pick up our toys to donate them to someone else so we don’t have to clean them up anymore–say thank you.” Then they both chorused, “Thank you.”

I…

Jeebus. What do I do with that. I wanted to snarl. I didn’t. Self control I haz it.

But I have taken a large number of toys out of their play room and put them in boxes in the pantry. Out of sight, out of mind. Please, Universe–stop giving my kids toys. We are full and over flowing and our blessing far exceed our ability to cope with them. No more toys for a few years, ok?

P.S. Books are ok.

Oh my goodness. I’m clearly having feelings. I’ve bought books recently. I’m not going to admit how much I’ve spent. I’ll have to fess up at the end of the year and you can bloody well wait till then.

I’m very excited. I uhh went online and found the entire Tamora Pierce collection. Oh yes, I did. I am very excited. I have already been pissy more than once that I gave the books back to my friend as quickly as I did because there are particular books I want to reread.

I also bought new because I am the kind of rich piece of shit who should be supporting authors. Damnit.

But uhm, eek.

I need to start selling books I write. Like, to the person who emailed me and requested a way to buy a book I have already written. Eek. Ok. Thankfully, Noah says I will have a sales page up very soon. Which blows my mind.

My life is good. I don’t know why I am so angry. Entitlement? I don’t feel “triggered” other than feeling habitually disrespected by the kids this week.

I have serious fucking issues around cleaning. I’m so sorry, kids. You must keep common space reasonably picked up or I’m just not all that nice. If your room is a mess I can keep my mouth shut. The living room being impossible to walk across…just fucking no. That’s god damn rude.

Ok. Must go pay attention to people here. Don’t really want to. Life doesn’t always give me what I want.

Every day love

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My kids like to go to sleep curled up against me. It always takes us a while to stop talking about how much we love each other. We say “I love you” many many—maybe more than dozens of times a day.

Sometimes I feel like it is weirdly excessive. Sometimes I feel like I am managing to finally experience what I’ve wanted my whole life. People actually like me here.

I haven’t been able to handle being on the PTSD forum lately. I can’t handle the way people talk about coping. Yes, these emotions are scary. No I don’t think that I should hide my scary life experiences. No, I don’t believe that the only appropriate place to talk about trauma is in a therapy office.

People who want to “get better” talk. People who want to “get better” have to take the risk of being hurt again. You have to trust with your whole heart even though it is terrifying and awful.

I am so grateful for Noah. These people talk about being married for decades and never telling anyone about their history. They have severe troubles in their marriage because their spouse doesn’t have enough information to be helpful even if they want to..

I am so grateful that I get to be with people every day who like me. Who don’t need me to just shut up and play a role for them. My kids know I cry. They don’t need me to go away and stop bothering them when I’m feeling sad. They give me a hug and say they are sorry I’m feeling sad. It’s not a huge deal. It’s not part of our daily or even weekly routine but it happens.

They validate that I’m allowed to have my feelings. They offer the comfort they can provide (a hug) and then we move on with our days. You can’t have this kind of support without admitting that you need it.

Noah is so nice to me. SOOO nice to me. He actually wants to see me every single day. He actually enjoys talking with me day after day. It is overwhelming.

My mama couldn’t stand me. I don’t understand why anyone else has an easier time. Only now that I’ve been a mom for a while I think I can understand why my mom had such a hard time with me. I was a truly difficult child. If they had used the phrase Oppositional Defiance Disorder when I was a child I’m sure I would have been diagnosed.

I’m not saying I am awesome and everyone is bad for not wanting me. I’m not saying that. I was awful. I was really hard. I was mean and spiteful and vicious. I still am if you catch me in the right mood. I was a complete fucking asshole.

But I wish my mama had loved me any way.

Every day when my kids tell me they love me I want to deflect it. I want to say, “No you don’t.” or “You wouldn’t love me if you really knew me.”

But yesterday Shanna asked me to read a book about development with her. (It’s So Amazing! It’s a book about conception/pregnancy/sex but it’s not exactly graphic. It’s a kids book.) We got to the part where every girl is born with all the eggs in her ovaries she will ever have.

Shanna told me, “So I was part of you when you were born. No wonder I love you so much.”

I almost lost it and it was hard to continue reading in a calm voice. No wonder I love my mommy so much. I’m part of her. I was part of her through all the suffering of her early life. I didn’t go off and separate until after most of the worst trauma. I am intrinsically and basically on her side.

But I have to protect my kids whether I want my mama or not. Because they are part of me. And it’s my job to keep them safe. That is my only fucking job. I wish that keeping my children safe did not mean shunning my mama.

I don’t feel I deserve the love of the people I live with because I can’t love my mama right. If you can’t do that surely you deserve eternal punishment. Chain me up right next to Prometheus. We both suck.

But the thing is, talking about my PTSD allowed me to develop the relationships I have. I could not have this supportive of a relationship with Noah if I did not talk about my life experiences. It is literally impossible.

So feelings. Talking about the feelings is hard. Talking about the feelings is the only way to build the intimacy that creates trust that alleviates the symptoms. The whole cycle is shitty and awful because talking is so hard because I don’t have that basic trust to start with.

Today is Lego Club day. Whatever my feelings are, they are mine. They stay here in Wonderland. Only Noah has to really hear about them. A little bit leaks out with other friends but not a lot. And I’m going to a home school event. I am there so my children can make friends not so I can get support. And I don’t fucking forget it.

I am grateful that I have three people who love me. That’s more than a lot of people get. I am so glad I get to have the life I have. I feel so safe. I feel like it is ok for me to take risks.

I made the event mailing lists yesterday. If you were not invited that is probably because I could only invite ten people at a time so I picked the first names who came up in my address book. I am having a crises of confidence. If I didn’t send you invitations and you like being invited to things at our house, email me. I am in the invitation list formation stage.

I think I made Google Groups so people can join or not and I no longer have to be afraid that I shouldn’t be bothering people with invitations. I have terrible anxiety about inviting people over. I don’t want to be told no. But I understand that everyone is very busy. If I have people who opt-in to “Sure invite me as often as you like and I’ll come when I can” maybe that will filter some of the anxiety. Maybe. (Seriously–please ask to join the list if you have any inclination. I’m not rejecting you. I’m being paralyzed with anxiety that you might reject me.)

I also finished the petition and printed it out. The kids and I should start walking the neighborhood to collect signatures today. Oh goodness.

I was very careful in my wording. I want everyone in our neighborhood to be happy, healthy, and included. Let’s find a way to work together. No one should be pushed out. But sometimes in order to cohabitate peacefully you have to talk about boundaries. Healthy relationships have boundaries.

Cross your fingers. Davey Crockett says: “Be sure you’re right. Then go ahead.”

I believe I am right to try and intercede. I believe that there is positive to gain for the people in our neighborhood if we can negotiate for the limits we physically need for health.

Despite waking up and feeling like I should spend the day under my desk rocking and crying (some mornings are just like that) I will do a lot of community building. It doesn’t matter that I feel like I “can’t”. The plain and simple truth is that I can. I just have to get up and do it.

Lazy whole forking week.

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Not one of my more productive weeks ever. Mostly I’m resting and feeling like my brain won’t operate at full speed. I feel existentially exhausted and frustrated and like I can’t do anything right.

I want to buy things. I want to go out and spend money as entertainment. I want to eat out every single meal because cooking makes me feel stabby.

I want to see people and I want to hide under a rock. The dichotomy of my life.

I choose to blame bleeding for this week being a flip out zone. I’m really grateful I can mostly cancel everything and stay home on weeks when I’m bleeding and I think EVERYONE HATES ME SO I MIGHT AS WELL BE THE CUNT OF THE YEAR! WHEEEEEEEE Ahem.

I haven’t flipped out. I just have a lot of really big feelings. Calm down. Everything is fine because you have the luxury and privilege to just be quiet when this happens.

I am so lucky. I appreciate my life. I appreciate that I can spend hours quietly cuddling and no one requires me to get up and work on something they care about.

I’m grateful for my life. I’m glad I get to be doing what I’m doing. I am enjoying it.

My kids are testing boundaries. And that’s life. I can cope. I just can’t seem to handle reading any books. Meh. My brain is full. I’m tired. I’m anxious. I want…. something. It’s not sugar. I tried that. It’s not protein. I tried that. It’s not vegetables.

Although I’m starting to think that tomatoes might be a part of my problem. I had a tomato based dinner with some wine (not a lot) and I was up in the bathroom all night with a burning cleansing. My body hates me. I have had more alcohol than that without a problem in the past but sometimes alcohol gives me trouble. Oh man.

I’m starting to think I should just give up alcohol. It’s not my friend. But it tastes good. Is this alcoholism? “But but… like twice a month I want a glass of wine… sometimes it irritates my digestive system and sometimes not. CLEARLY I HAVE AN UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH ALCOHOL.” Or something.

I want there to be something big and catastrophic wrong with me so I can be more than just a petty whiner.

Or for nothing to be wrong with me. Either way would be fine.

What behavior should I have.

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I’m not sure what to think about something. When someone adamantly insists, “I’m not being hostile or aggressive” but a sample of more than ten people all perceive someone as being both hostile and aggressive… something is broken in the process. Maybe there are some learned behaviors that appear hostile and aggressive that are happening unconsciously whether you feel that way or not.

Body telegraphing, if you will.

People certainly believe they have the right to punish you for variations from the emotional affect they believe you should have. You think I’m wrong? Watch little kids in a classroom. They are punished routinely for having the wrong attitude.

I worry about being someone who tone polices other people. I don’t think that is good juju. (I am reading Ashe Dryden because she wrote a neat article.)

If someone jumps up and down saying they aren’t angry but their body language is perceived as being aggressive they will be punished.

You have to learn how to “show” the same “feelings” as the people around you or you will be punished. It’s a lot more complicated than it seems. It is very cultural and people are required to adapt from environment to environment or they will be punished.

Try church hopping if you want an example of this. Holy toledo.

Silencing is the word Ashe uses.

Human communities are communities whether they are individual tech companies, web forums, bdsm communities, churches, schools, retail stores, or fast food chains in my experience. We don’t get away from our innate desire to find people who validate us and make us feel better about being the way we are.

When people tell me they don’t have that desire they are usually arguing about why they want to keep their social status on a website forum because they aren’t interested in other forms of social status. Whatever dude. I feel you. I go through my forum phases and I don’t judge.

The internet is going to change everything.

Only it won’t change a god damn thing. Because we will just bring all the everything with us. I am interested in what will happen. I still kind of hope that I will live through another revolution of some kind.

I mean, I already am. Not really. But I am living through the transition from the Industrial Age into the Technology Era and I’m doing it in the time and place where that is being made. I am sitting in my garage staring at a device that would seem like magic to any of my grandparents.

All of my grandparents died before 1990 and three of them died before 1980. They couldn’t imagine my MacBook Air. It’s playing music. I can see my pictures organized on a screen behind the one on which my magic typewriter is writing. My typewriter isn’t even attached to anything–it just floats free and has a magic sensor that lets it talk to my laptop.

Magic I tell you.

That’s a revolution in and of itself. The sheer access to information I have had in my life is magic. I used to have a lot of spare time. You know what I did? I read. A lot of it was shit. But I learned words. I learned concepts. I have the ability to imagine things that I’m pretty sure my family still can’t. Not because they couldn’t–but they are incredibly unlikely to care.

My grandparents would probably all be horrified by me if they knew me, even if they only saw the “settled” results. I did end up in a heterosexual relationship with two kids. I do dress them very conservatively. In some ways, shouldn’t I be worthy of approval?

Nope. I tell my kids they don’t owe any fucking adult their god damn submission. If someone tells you to do something that isn’t about your *safety* you need to decide how much you care about honoring their request. Don’t make messes other peoples have to clean up–that’s an asshole thing to do. But a lot of people are going to randomly tell you yes or no or whatever just to feel powerful. They have no power over you. You don’t have to fucking care if they approve of whether you are obedient enough.

That’s just not relevant.

So I’m pretty sure my grandparents wouldn’t approve. And yet their living great grandmother thinks they are awesome. She works with poor kids in a poor rural area. My kids know so much. They can talk about so many things. She’s not used to dealing with kids who are talked to one on one all day.

I think a lot about the things I learned from Sobonfu. Your ancestors are tied to you. It is their fault you are here so they owe you. It doesn’t matter if they like it. They can suck it. If they didn’t want to be responsible for you then they should have been more careful about what they sowed, eh?

I really like that view. I was raised with the opposite idea. That we owe permanent obedience and service to the ancestors for the blessing of birth. I hate my system.

I, however, have read enough economics to understand why “let the ancestors take care of things” is mixed.

Dependence. Obedience. How much do these things matter in communities, businesses, humans?

I don’t know. But writing time is over.

Oh! I ran the half marathon. My time was approximately 2:52. I don’t have the official race results yet. The early part was great. I kept pace with the 2:40 pacer up until mile 11 when I started having ankle spasms. I feel quite proud of my ability to finish under 3 hours given how much that hurt. It didn’t hurt if I walked very carefully. Only if I bent my feet.

Ok, now to schedule the next half and figure out what exercises I should be doing to strengthen that muscle. Holy shit ow.

Short post

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Breakfast is ready. We all slept in. But here I am. Medicating. If I don’t… I won’t eat. I feel like a gross terrible junkie because I take a cannabis pill and then go out to the garage to smoke. The pill takes forever and if I wait for it to kick in… I can’t eat until then. I haven’t vomited from stomach pain in a long time because I have been respecting the boundaries of the effectiveness of this medication. The smoking can be felt in less than fifteen minutes. As opposed to over an hour. (Besides the cannabis pills are absorbed better if you eat at the same time… which I can’t.)

I feel good. Isn’t that a weird thing to say after the previous paragraph? Some days I wake up and I look at the knives I have to juggle that day and I think, “Meh. I got it.” Some days I cry. I’m never sure which is which or why.

I think a lot of my anxiety about my involvement with neighbors revolves around this idea, “If it all blows up we may be stuck living near one another for years….”

We spend more time with our neighbors than anyone I know. We didn’t know these people before we moved here. I’ve forced relationships. Forced sounds like the wrong word. I’ve nurtured relationships. I have created them out of whole cloth. I have incubated and been persistent and these days people seem to really like me.

That’s weird, yo.

I’m looking forward to talking to the temple. I practically vibrate with excitement thinking about this. This is my chance.

If I want to be a big fish in a small pond. If I want to be someone who actively builds bridges between different kinds of people. If I want to be able to make peoples lives better this is the chance that has been thrust upon me this week. I’ve had other chances–some of them I’ve taken and some I’ve passed up, often with regret. I know there will be more in the future.

Meddle. That’s what I do. I meddle. I’m a teacher. I tell people how to do things better. I study people and relationships and patterns and I hope I can help people appreciate one another more.

This is a chance. I have the physical petition mostly written, I think. I have a few more things I’m going to tweak. I want to write up a one page hand out with “let’s have a neighborhood email list so we can arrange a block party and summer kid activities” on it.

It’s time to just go. But I’m not starting until after this half marathon. It’s freakin tomorrow. I need to focus.

I want to be someone who matters to people. I don’t want to be president. I don’t want to be the boss. But I want people to think that I often have interesting things to say and I’m worth listening to.

If you want that you have to just go do it. To that effect I’ve introduced myself to three new neighbors in the past two days.

Just go.

Never just one thing

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Overall I am in a good place. I’ve been pretty consistent in my emotional state and behavior over the past few days. But then there are those crashing waves of missing my mother. Having my life be overall wonderful makes those bits harder.

Why can’t I bring my mom along on this awesome-family-ride. Because my mom would wreck it. Because she would come to my house and tell me softly and sweetly how every terrible thing that goes wrong with anyone is my fault because I am so terrible. She would tell my kids that people suffer for them. She would tell my kids that it is all their fault that bad things happen to their parents.

You can’t control other people. My mom is who she is. She has had a viciously awful life and she has coped as best she may. I don’t really blame her for coping the way she has. Deflecting blame is a lot of how she keeps the worst of the misery from drowning her. I get it. I don’t even feel angry any more. But I won’t let my kids be the bottom of the shit hill.

I was asked why I didn’t just back off on time with my friend I’m having conflict with. Because he is autistic and that is EVERYONES first go to. If I put strict boundaries on the conversations he doesn’t bother me and we don’t have the conflict. We have extreme conflict because he’s a large white man who believes he has been persecuted as badly as any human ever. I can see why he thinks that. He certainly is treated badly. And to all evidence he is literally incapable of seeing anything but his point of view. He’s not just being stubborn.

I can see more points of view. I’m not sure if it is an advantage or disadvantage. I can see that he truly has suffered a great deal in his life.

Being a large white male doesn’t save you from being beaten up and raped and shunned and loathed just for existence. If you are weird you should die. I get it.

I’ve just lived in enough non-white areas that I see what my white privilege has granted me. I don’t think he has had similar experiences and I’m not sure he could internalize the lessons at this point anyway. At some point you are who you are.

I’m not who I will be yet. I’m still changing really fast. Some people don’t change very much. Some people are almost exactly the same at 60 as they are at 19. I admire that and despise it at the same time. I think I despise it because it is so far outside the realm of my capabilities and that makes me feel pathetic.

Today is a don’t-go-anywhere-don’t-socialize day. Tomorrow is a small amount of socializing for me. Sunday is a half marathon. I’m not feeling all that ready. I’m not eating right and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong exactly. My belly has felt really heavy and lump-like lately. Like most of my food is just sitting in my stomach undigested as a big rock. My legs are tight and sore. I think this might be a rough race. I need to back off on my hopes to be fast and just finish. It’ll be ok. My knee has been twinging. My ankle keeps giving me trouble. Not like OH MY GOD I CAN’T RUN but I have to slow down and be careful and deliberate in my foot placement.

When my kids snuggle up and tell me I am the best mama in the world I tell them that I am glad they like me because I am not everyones cup of tea. Shanna smiles at me and says, “Well they can have any wrong opinion they want to have.” I love my daughter with the power of a thousand suns. I feel so lucky that I get to spend all day with someone who likes me so much.

I’m still excessively grooving on this stay at home parent thing. No, I don’t want to send them off to school so I can have “me time”. I get me time. Maybe not as much as my friends who work but Noah and the kids and I have figured it out. It took a while. It took the kids getting old enough to entertain themselves and meet a lot of their own needs. I no longer have to assist with every pee or poop in the house. It is glorious to be freed from such a time consuming obligation. And I do less laundry. HALLELUJAH! You don’t appreciate the lack of something until you do it for years.

I can’t have the mama I want. But the nice lady who let me paint on her fence last summer is giving me lots of seeds. She saves from her garden. And she wants to sit around and exchange Chinese words for English words about plants. Peepaw (spelling is completely fucked) is the sound for the word that mean loquat. And that is the one I can sound out well enough to kind of write down. She told me at least fifteen more and that’s the one I remember the next day. I’m kinda slow and stupid sometimes.

I should learn the words for things I like to eat instead of for things I’m not that into. Duh.

I would like to be able to passably get food in about six languages. That would make me very happy before we take off on our year-long international adventure. Donde esta el bano (yes I know I am missing accent marks but it would take me multiple minutes of staring at the keyboard to get accent marks because I haven’t used them in a few years and I’m a lazy fucker and I can’t remember and… pretend I know that the e and the a and the n all have accents–ok?) is a phrase I need to be able to translate into Mandarin (more common than Cantonese), Thai (we are thinking about Thailand), French (much of Africa speaks French), and I already know it in English and Spanish. Only three languages to go.

Beat head against wall.

I feel very happy that language acquisition is one of the main tasks of my life for the next few years. I like the way it is self evident. Either I study and can talk to people or I stand there mute and feel awkward. I like those kinds of situation. “This is on you. Get it done or it will be hella obvious you were too fucking lazy.”

I haven’t edited in a while. I’ll get it done. Maybe I’ll do table work in the kitchen today with the kids. They like that. Clearly I’m not doing it during my pre-dawn time. I’m enjoying the lack of serious thinking. I’m mentally tired.

I’m keeping a lot in my head. Not that it’s important or anything. But I rehearse a lot of things in my head. I feel tired. My head feels sore. I feel like I try to think too many hours of the day. These purges help a lot. Thank you internet, you are there for me. I appreciate that.

I’m being a chicken shit about a number of things for no good reason. I’m just scared. Any time you act you risk people rejecting you. I’d rather sit at home alone by choice than be rejected and find out that I’m at home alone because no one wants me.

Let’s be clear that I’m not delusional enough to believe that no one likes me. That’s not the point. But there will always be people who have feelings in my direction that are hard for me to handle. And I have to deal with that without being an asshole. That takes work. I’m not always good at that work. Sometimes I’m really bad. Sometimes I fuck up relationships because how dare those people have big feelings. I am such an asshole.

I don’t think I’ve done anything awful recently. Always hard to tell.

Ok, I’m ready to stop typing. Have a day.

Dear Mama

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Hi. Long time no talk. I miss you. I miss you all the time. I don’t know if you miss me or not. I have never been very nice to you. I’m sorry for that.

A lot of things happened. It has taken a long time but I really don’t blame you. You had a very hard life. I can’t really imagine what it is like to have a life as hard as yours has been.

I’m sorry that I am one more person hurting you. I’m sorry you don’t get to know my children while they grow up. I’ve read a lot about incest. If I want to break behavior patterns in my family I have to keep my kids away from all of the supporting behaviors. That is the best I can do right now to keep my kids safe. And I have to.

I’m really sorry that I’m hurting you in this process. I would really like to write to you about them. I don’t know if that would hurt you more or if it might ease the pain you feel. I don’t know if complete mystery is easier than a partial story.

Every single day I am sorry that I don’t get to share them with you.

Some day, when my kids don’t need me any more I want to study incest. I want to figure out how to help people change the dangerous behaviors so that families don’t have to be separated to break the patterns. Right now there really isn’t a better answer. I’ve looked. I’ve spent years searching.

I am so sorry mama. It isn’t your fault.

I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you.

I’m so sorry.

good week

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I got my cleaning done. I got to put together Ikea furniture. Pam continues to teach my husband how to cook Chinese food. (I appreciate this because my guesses make everything about 12 steps too complicated.)

I made a seating area out of split logs. Now I can tell stories under a willow tree to up to eight children at a go. That’ll be fun.

My plants are growing. Every new leaf and bud makes me feel excited.

The kids are being good at expressing their boundaries this week. Which they aren’t always so that’s good. Being told no is part of the process. Being screamed at sucks. We are all much better about it on some days.

I should pay attention to the person who woke up at 5am to see me.

Consistency, pride, shame–you know, the good stuff.

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Therapy yesterday was unusual. Therapy involves a lot of anxious feelings for me most of the time. I go in needing validation that I don’t deserve to be burned at the stake for being a dirty whore. (No offense to sex workers. This is a childhood family imprinting issue not a reflection on a career choice that works just fine for many fine individuals.)

My therapist is getting much more comfortable with me. I judge this based on the fact that she is much more specifically directive with me now. For example: I relayed why I have been paying more attention to Fetlife lately and some of the back and forth difficulty I am watching. She told me to unfriend the people on Twitter who are all very upset with one another because I will never know the “truth” and getting in the middle makes me a target and goodness knows I don’t need that. So I unfriended people on Twitter. Both sides of the conflict. Which makes me feel like a heel.

I also installed a website blocker on Chrome. Now I can’t visit Fetlife on my computer and I won’t type on my phone or iPad so I am back to passive observing. Better for my blood pressure.

I don’t usually feel like my therapy sessions are full of bragging. I don’t think I’m that great until I start listing off how many different communities/activities would like it if I spent more time there. Specifically I said, “There is only 100% of me and there are at least fifteen places that want a piece.”

She said, “Fifteen? Oh surely that’s an exaggeration.”

Tick them off on your fingers: theatre crowd, Dickens Fair, Renaissance Faire, dancing, Burning Man, bdsm (which is really subdivided into a variety of factions), home schooling group stuff (which is really subdivided into a variety of factions), my neighborhood, my kids, Noah (yes he is separate from the kids), my yard counts as a community given how much of my effort and time I spend on it, writing, PTSD support stuff, rape/incest support stuff (you would be surprised how much of my time this sometimes takes up), and last but not least I have a really high number of out of town friends who like me to come visit them.

You freakin divide that pie. All of those communities involve five to twenty-fiveish core people I go to see.

At that point her mouth kind of dropped open and she said, “You have to think about that in context of the other clients I see. It is kind of extraordinary that you have so much love in your life.”

I don’t really understand it. I don’t see very much that is lovable. Well, until I see the behavior my children reflect back to me. Then I think I might be pretty nice.

I like being a nexus. Everything I have ever read about resiliency and being a survivor says the people with the most ties win.

Shiny change of topic. (At least I’m warning you for once.)

Elsenet I said that I felt conflicted about screen time and as a result I am inconsistent. A person I don’t know responded that they are also conflicted and so they are consistent. Except when they have a reason they think is good enough.

Before I say more on the topic of screen time I want to say that I have good friends who have screen policies for their children that run the full gamut. I have friends who permit absolutely no screens and I have friends who hand babies iPads. I’m walking a fine line here because I can offend everyone.

Just like with vaccines, I am an honest to goodness moderate. (I vaccinate but I don’t do it on schedule and I don’t do it as early as is typical and we skip some vaccines and I’m happy with my set of choices.) Thus with screen time. I have principles I follow instead of iron clad rules.

I don’t directly limit the number of hours my kids have screens. Instead what I do is say, “You can have a screen if you have cleaned up from all your other projects.” So they don’t get a lot of screen time. Ha. It is self selecting by and large.

But there are times when they get a lot of screen time because I need them occupied and sitting still and not disturbing me. I think it is one of the best forking inventions of all time. I think it is resulting in a lot fewer children being beaten.

However I feel like I am slightly manipulative about screen time because on days when I want a break I am way more cheerful and helpful in cleaning up. Ahem. Most days I’m kind of a hard ass and I stick to the line, “I didn’t throw it on the floor. I am in the middle of ______ chore. Please do it for yourself.” I do a lot of fucking chores just so I can have excuses. I feel sorta guilty about that. It’s how I can excuse my boundaries. I’m not sure it is “healthy” but there it is.

I feel weird having pride in my kids the same way I feel kind of weird having pride in the fact that people like me across diverse communities for very different reasons. Almost none of them like me because I used to be an easy lay. They like me for parts of my personality that I probably could/should take pride in. It probably would be healthy for me to see that I have positive traits and negative traits but mostly on balance I’m neutral to positive. I’m not a huge negative force or I wouldn’t be asked to go so many places.

I don’t understand what a privilege that is until I spend time really talking to someone who has never really been welcome in any community, ever. I have been shunned. But it’s been a long, long time. I could probably drop that paranoia.

I’ve been thinking about the comment my shrink made, “Do you like being this way?”

Yes and no.

I keep coming up with pieces of the hypervigilance I don’t like. I don’t like that I compulsively count the number of people in a room. I’m not in a fucking spy movie. I don’t need to obsessively check for exits. I don’t like that I have a huge chip on my shoulder because I assume everyone is one wrong sentence away from rejecting me and reviling me forever.

People mostly aren’t invested in me enough to be that hurt. I need to get over myself.

That’s kind of shitty to think about, yo.

Those are the kinds of tics an editor will take away. Do I want them to go? Do I want to stop sounding like me?

And now a three year old says I have to go play doctor. All of our clothes will stay on. Keep your mind out of the gutter.

Hard conversations are…

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Sometimes anti-climactically easy. I said, “We need to have a talk. I’m feeling very emotionally flooded after each visit and I spend a solid week processing with about five different people. This can’t continue.”

“So you want me less or not at all?”

“No.”

*complete shock*

“Let’s try boundaries first before going to the shunning step.”

“Ok! Let’s do that! Which boundaries where? Oh, and let’s add this other boundary.”

“And I’m still pissy about Christmas. My feelings were very hurt.”

“You know… I wondered day of if I had stepped in something and I wasn’t sure and I hesitated to bring it up–thanks for telling me. I’m really sorry. That wasn’t cool.”

Ok, technically it involved slightly more sentences but it was about that simple. The visit last night was nice. We talked about a variety of non-threatening/non-triggering topics and enjoyed one anothers company.

We are all lonely. Sometimes being around people means learning which things not to talk about on which days with which people. The other option is being alone. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t really want to make my friends be alone just because they have a hard time intuiting which topics are “sensitive” for me. I’m hard to read. On purpose. It isn’t fair to expect people to notice.

I’m crossing my fingers. I genuinely believe that it is good for me and my kids to get to know very different kinds of people and we need to figure out how to have our own boundaries with them. Rejecting people who have poor ability to intuit social boundaries is not helpful on the path to learning how to better communicate boundaries.

Also, this story hurts my heart. I wish people had cared about me like this when I was twelve instead of thinking I deserved the 25 year old drug dealers.

my life is good when I’m not chemically out of whack

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The new ergonomic keyboard doesn’t have all the parts necessary to work. This is annoying. That is going to be the low point of my day. Which is really cool. I can exchange my biggest problem of the day.

Every single day I wake up grateful for Noah. He is so nice to me. He is so kind. I have received more love and caring in the past seven years than in the previous twenty-five years put together. I am so lucky.

Many people have childhoods as bad as mine. Most of them don’t go on to have happy adult lives. At this point in time my strife feels like stuff I’m opting into or it is so structurally vast that it isn’t really a day-to-day problem for me. I have conflicts with my friends because I pick intelligent, opinionated, fierce people for my life. I go out and hand select them out of the bunch of quieter and more complaisant people. I can’t bitch that we have conflict. I can learn how to manage it without having a heart attack–damnit. Or I’m fighting things like rape culture and whereas it is a problem every day it isn’t a Daily Problem if you know what I mean.

If I was hungry that would be a Daily Problem. If I didn’t know how I was going to pay rent that would be a Daily Problem. I don’t have those kinds of problems anymore. My big problems are that sometimes my kids scream more than I like or I am inconvenienced by a major electronics retailer.

I just can’t bitch too loud, you know?

My garden is so beautiful lately that it takes my breath away. I MADE THAT MOTHERFUCKER!!! WHOO HOO!!!!!!!!! *happy dance*

I no longer feel like everything I touch turns to shit. Some stuff doesn’t work out. It isn’t all my fault and I am not poison. I can do things. My corn is popping up. Clearly I can do something.

I see so much green. I have more plans. It’s going to take years and every day of work will be a joy. I get to stay here long enough to make long-term plans. I get to dream about the future. Shanna likes to talk about building one of the houses next door so we can tear down the fence between the yards and build a second story walkway between the houses. (Technically she just wanted to fully connect the houses. I voted for the second floor walkway so we could still have the side yards in between for plants. She decided that I am smarter than I look. She is my kid.)

I think that sounds pretty magical and wonderful. When I remodel my house I am getting a sound proof room so my husband can beat me and no one will hear. I want to have that privacy in the future (I’m kind of sick of not being able to play at home) but I also want to have the connection with my kids. I like them as people. It’s not about having control over them forever. I enjoy their company. If they enjoy mine I’d be thrilled to keep hanging out with them. I genuinely like them.

I feel so lucky.

When you decide at seventeen that what you want is to be a home schooling parent there is a lot of room for things to not work out. I feel blessed that not only did I find a partner who is supportive but my children and I happen to have compatible temperaments. They have a lot of freedom to do things that bug me without penalty. Frequently I will acknowledge, “This is not my favorite thing. But I don’t get to control everything you do. I hope it goes well. I can’t watch.”

I feel incredibly lucky that my dreams are coming true and it’s actually a pleasant process. That is a rare dichotomy. Usually if you get what you want you find out it isn’t that great.

Noah is that great. The joy I feel spending all day with my kids is that great.

This weekend was basically perfect. I ran 12 miles. Socialized with a very old friend (16 years and counting–more than half my life now) for three hours; rocky stuff happening in her life but I’m glad she has the fortitude to take the steps she needs to take. It is kind of amazing the way her life is 100% different than it was three years ago. She has a new job in an entirely new field (she left theatre) she has a kid and she’s about to be single for the first time in a very long time. That’s a lot of big changes. Got an ergonomic keyboard and new running shoes. Otherwise we hid in the house. That’s a very slow weekend for us. Eight hours of bustle for me and no one else.

Of course because I was in the house and only busy for eight hours out of forty-eight I did a bunch of yardwork. Grow wildflowers, grow. Damn you. I hung up the hanging pots! I’ve had them for over a year and I haven’t gotten around to it. I’m getting all my residual chores done that I’ve been procrastinating on now that I’m procrastinating on editing. Doo de doo. I’ll get it done.

And the petition. I’m going for upbeat, friendly, everyone should get to live here without pain.

I’m really grateful that my neighbors are becoming so much more friendly over time. I will know everyone on the block some day. We have a new family! With kids! They are visibly Islamic so I will cross my fingers that I can behave in a socially appropriate enough way to manage to not offend the parents so our kids can be friends. My lifestyle is different. I won’t corrupt your young children.

I will wait until they are teenagers.

Ahem.

I will corrupt them with ideas like, “No one gets to touch any part of your body unless you actively want it to happen. If someone does so, find other adults who can help you deal with the situation.”

And, “Sex is awesome and if you want to have it then that is between you and your conscious. If you are going to have heterosexual sex, use two forms of birth control every single time you have sex. Always a condom no matter what. Always another form of birth control for the woman. If you are going to have homosexual sex then one barrier is fine. Use barriers. Every time. Even for oral.”

When you are young you don’t know what is going to happen to you 50 years from now. You won’t know you want to do until you get there. Leave as many options open as possible. Protect your body and your sexual health. There are no take backs once you contract a disease and you can’t tell by looking at people who has what. Even medical testing is iffy for a lot of diseases. Protect yourself until you are ready to have children. Or you get married and are on permanent birth control because you have ruled out kids. I don’t care what married people do. When you are a kid and you can’t take care of a kid, USE BIRTH CONTROL.

I support you having one kid, two kids, twelve kids, twenty kids (though I will instinctively wince just because oh man I can’t imagine that) or no kids at all because oh man kids are icki.

Maybe I will corrupt your kids. I want to introduce them to the concept of plurality. There can be more than one right answer. Your way isn’t the only way. My way isn’t the only way.

I admire many of the tenants of faith from all of the major religions. I think religion is mostly a set of written down rules on how to be good. Every one has their own idea of what “good” means. I think there need to be many sets of rules because we need many kinds of people.

All progress depends on the unreasonable (wo)man. If no one has a belief that is unreasonable to you then progress won’t be made. We have to stretch the borders of acceptable parameters.

Yes, autistic ways of being should be better understood and supported from earlier in life so that folks have an easier adulthood. I struggle with how to deal the bitterness from the current adults who didn’t get any help.

I understand what it feels like to desperately need help during your childhood and to not get it. I have more options for help now that I’m an adult. Autistic adults… not so much. The vast majority of all people with mental illness do not have the resources I have.

I am one of the lucky ones. How much of that is privilege granted to me by the color of my skin? How much of that has been my ability to meet the right people so I can get help? How much of that is that I first had access to state funded therapy and then I had good health insurance and then I had a rich husband?

If you prosecute your rapist then you get state funded therapy. You will be part of the victim-witness support network. That shit is worth its weight in gold. My PTSD has been classified as severe for more than half my life. The state has a vested interest in keeping me off of a bell tower with an Uzi. The state also wants me to not kill myself. The state put a lot of money into educating me and the state wants a productive citizen out of the deal, damnit.

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” JFK was a guilt trippin’ motherfucker. But he’s right.

My autistic friends teach me over and over and over and over that it really doesn’t matter what you “mean” when you say something. It matters what other people see, hear, and feel as a result of you saying something. If you play it right then you get the reaction and relationship you want. If you play it wrong then you alienate people and they hate you and blame their feelings of discomfort on you.

I’m such an asshole. I totally treat other people the way I am treated. Them’s just the rules of the jungle.

But if you consciously believe with your whole heart that it takes all kinds and there is value to every life then you ought not to be that kind of asshole. This is troubling. This is where my ethics and morals and behavior don’t line up. This is not so cool. Ok. When your behavior doesn’t match your ethics you have a few choices.

A) Ignore the mismatch and be a flaming hypocrite.

B) Acknowledge the mismatch and say, “But I have REASONS” and be a flaming hypocrite.

C) Acknowledge the mismatch and decide whether to change your ethics/morals or your behavior. This has mandatory follow up steps if the goal is to change your behavior. If you have no later checks then you will resort to “easier” instead of doing what is right.

Well, as much as I believe that it takes all kinds and everyone is valuable and shit I think that people have the right to reject me. I believe that people have the right to not want to know me. I believe that people have the right to not invite me to their parties and not invite me to their homes because I am rude and offensive. They don’t even need a reason. They can just be not that interested in me.

They have the right to not want to be my friend. I don’t get to take that away from them just because I long for community.

Like my neighbors. Some engage with me more than others. Even the ones who are clearly uninterested in a relationship they have gotten to the point of obvious recognition and acknowledgment of humanity.

My monkey sphere is pretty fucking full. It’s ok that not everyone in the whole world wants to be my best friend. I am incredibly overwhelmingly lucky to have the diverse relationships I have.

Not all of my friends are “nice people”. Some of them are canonical “nice people”. I like variety. I have something to learn from everyone. I am imperfect but striving. That is all I can do.

I’m glad when the anger passes. When the sudden rage dissipates. I don’t really “know” what causes it. It’s about a lot of different factors all exploding at once. It’s different every time.

In the wake of it I feel gratitude for the absence. I’m glad I didn’t fuck up a relationship. I didn’t scream. (One yell. But it was of the “I WOULD LIKE TO FINISH A SENTENCE WITHOUT BEING INTERRUPTED” variety and there are much worse things I could have done. Not great but I call it a win anyway.)

Children are supposed to test boundaries. That is the whole point of childhood. You learn what happens when you do things.

Shanna tries to be a joker. She likes to lighten the mood. She wants to make a face and make me laugh and have everything be all better now. It’s honestly kind of weird to me. Some of her “joking” faces have all the markers of “I want to start a fist fight”. I have taken to asking, “Is that a silly face or an angry face?” The answer is almost always, “Silly!” (She does get mad too–but that’s usually more clear and related to a situation I can understand.)

When my kids ask me to lighten up I either do so or leave the room until I can calm down because I’m flooding. They have a right to not be around a stress-tastic person. I want them to learn how to have boundaries too.

The thing about our relationship is that we always come back and snuggle after tense moments. We are incredibly physically affectionate. If my kids rejected my affection I would stop but they beg for more. I hug, cuddle, and kiss them hundreds or thousands of times a day. Maybe we have the odd day when I only kiss the top of their heads like ten times.

We check in and then we run off to do our thing again.

Are you still there? I still love you and want to be around you. Ok, I’m going to do my thing again.

I have wanted this my whole life.

I feel horrible guilt but at this point I can have two to three hours by myself on many days. My kids can be told to go in the back yard with snacks and they don’t come back for hours. I feel like I shouldn’t be abandoning them for those periods. But it’s good for all of us so I do it. Other parents don’t force their kids to be alone so they can get alone time. They put their kids in daycare so they can play with other kids instead of being forced into solitude. I don’t feel like a nice mom.

I would feel differently if Shanna were less social. I think Calli loves it. She checks in when she needs to for her hug and kiss and then she goes back to playing.

I spend my days making up songs about how much and why I love my kids. My children will not be the type to grow up and wonder if their parents loved them. My kids are more on the smothered end. Only I take them to the park and classes and parties and turn them loose. They are very engaged with the world and they do not allow me to mediate any more. Shanna flat tells me to leave her alone at parties. She knows that my anxiety cramps her style. It’s… a little weird. But she seems to be working with what she has so we’ll see where it takes her.

I’m not the boss of her life. I mean, I sort of am for a little while. But not for forever. It is my job to teach her the rote body memory necessary for caring for yourself with ease an adult. You will just be used to “This is what we do all day to take care of our bodies.” It won’t be this weird thing that involves transactions with other people all day long to get your basic needs met.

The thing I hate the most about all the American bastards who wrote about “self sufficiency” and “self reliance” and living out in the woods by themselves WOULD HAVE STARVED if not for the generosity of women in their communities.

Fuck your self reliance.

And yet! There is a basic level of self care that I believe that every human being should have. I feel rather disturbed by the number of adults I know who say, “I can barely boil water”. What the hell. That shows a dramatic and disturbing hole in your education. Your parents failed you. I’m sorry for that.

See, I’m a judgmental bastard all over the place.

And if you catch me on the wrong day I may rant at you about how debt (in particular consumer debt and school loans) is the boogeyman. It will eat your soul. It will force you into a crappy and terrible life where you have no ability to change the system. Debt will make you a slave.

Ugh and ick. I’m looking forward to the days of not having a mortgage. I feel grateful for this fact. I’m scared I won’t manage it in the five years I was hoping to do it. I’m afraid it may take six or seven because then we will have to come up with mortgage payments during the WWOOF year and that will be kind of annoying.

But it wouldn’t be the end of the year. And maybe if we rented out our house for pretty much the mortgage we could make it work.

“I will find a way or make one.” Roman Carthaginian general Hannibal didn’t fuck around.

The number of opportunities in your life increase as you build skills. I feel increasingly confident that I can meet the challenges that come my way. I may not get rich–but I think I will manage our resources well enough to not eat cat food in my old age. At that point my supposed food ethics may go to hell. I will eat what I can afford. I had better never develop actual gluten issues or I’m fucked. Giving up ramen would be traumatic.

I don’t have a lot of answers. I think I am ready to set some boundaries in a nice voice without being an asshole. I feel more relaxed after the weekend. I feel grateful that my problems are this small.

Six days till my next race. I’m ready but I may be slow. That will be ok too. I hope to best  three hours. We’ll see.

My life is pretty cool.

New project. Like I need one of those.

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My neighbor came and asked me to put together a noise complaint for the temple on the corner. She wants a petition that we can circulate around the neighborhood. They were very loud today. This is an ongoing issue.

I’m going to try to thread the needle on being polite to everyone’s needs. I like having a friendly relationship with all the folks. I had best word this petition carefully.

No pressure or anything.

Wired for sound.

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That’s the expression I use for vibrating with anxiety. I woke up because a kid turned the bathroom light on. I need more sleep. But I’m AWAKE.

Yesterday we went to the kid dentist. Both kids got A+ from the dentist. I feel weird about them getting graded. After telling Shanna with great enthusiasm that her teeth were perfect the dentist looked like he was sucking a lemon when I said that Shanna has been brushing and flossing herself for a bit over a month now. “That’s not ok. She’s not able to get her teeth clean yet.” …. did you or did you not just tell me that her teeth were perfect?

He’s also concerned about the size of Calli’s tonsils. Especially given that I do the gasping for air thing that probably means I have sleep apnea. The dentist also bitched me out for that. I should go do a sleep study and seek treatment because apparently sleep apnea can take up to six years off your life.

“You don’t understand. That gasping for breath sends your body into fight or flight mode. That can shorten your entire life span.”

“Uhm, with all due respect I have PTSD and live in a hypervigilant hell of fight or flight every day. I don’t think the sleep apnea is what is going to kill me. But thanks for your concern.”

He looked taken aback at that return.

I spent two hours reading about autistic adults yesterday. I have some ideas about how to manage my current boundary problems with a friend. I’m going to need to solve them and not expect a fix from my friend. Some things can’t be fixed by other people. Some things you have to do yourself. He can’t guess where my boundaries are.

I don’t want to stop weekly visits. But I do want to stop having to spend seven days processing each visit before another one happens to rocket me into feeling angry, used, and like I want to beat the shit out of someone non-consensually.

I think step one is going to be, “I would like to stop discussing the bdsm community with you at all. I can’t be free to say what I want to say in front of my kids and you say more than I think is appropriate and then I can’t respond and then I’m just fucking pissed. I need to not do this.”

That needs to be step one. If you can’t spend a two hour visit talking about something other than the bdsm community then I need to make the visits less frequent. Too much is leaking out around my kids. Not to mention that I’m only tangentially involved in the scene at this point and I really don’t need to be spending my time freaking out about what other people are or aren’t doing. I don’t need this shit.

That is step one. That is as close as I can get to not black and white thinking on this. Move the goal post. I don’t need to end the visits immediately because I’m experiencing too much emotion. I need to figure out how to have less emotion. It’s not “all his fault” I am having these feelings. But having theoretical conversations about what other people should or shouldn’t do causes me more distress than happiness and I would like to stop doing it.

That doesn’t mean my friendship has to go away. Let’s just have a bright shiny change of topic. All the autistic forums recommend going for as blunt and straightforward as possible. “I’m experiencing a full week of activation after our visits and I need that to change. One idea I have is that we could take the topic of the bdsm community off the table for a while and I can see if that is the problem. If that isn’t the way to solve the problem I may ask for further modifications in the future but for now I’d like to start by talking about other things. It’s only two hours. Surely we can find something else to talk about.”

I love you. I value you. I want you to exist not only in the abstract world but in my world. Right now I’m spending seven days a week being pissed off at you and that isn’t working for me. Let’s try something else.

People don’t trigger me because they are wrong or bad or pick a negative adjective. People trigger me because I have a long personal history of crap. My emotions reside inside my body and aren’t the fault of anyone. If I need to manage myself differently that doesn’t mean that someone else is wrong.

I wish I found my boundaries without feeling this much destructive rage. That would be useful. Future Goal And All.

I asked a friend how she handles her autistic son when he’s on a topic she doesn’t want to talk about. She said she tunes him out.

Tuning someone out is hard for me. I do kind of the antithesis of tuning my kids out. I’m nosy, probably borderline invasive (if I listen to my kids this much when they are 12/14 it will probably be an invasion of their privacy–I tell myself that small children have different boundaries) and I believe that the only way I can know my kids are getting what they need is if I provide it. I don’t trust that things will run smoothly unless I micromanage the fuck out of it. (I understand that other people go through life without micromanaging and things turn out fine. Bully for you. I have issues I’m managing.)

We’re always solving yesterday’s problems.

I think it’s funny how people say things to me and it becomes a major touch-stone theme in my writing for years. These little phrases. I am made up of thousands of people. I steal their words and ideas and sometimes their boundaries.

Sometimes loving someone means deciding, “I would rather not talk about _________ with you.”

It has been very rare in my life that someone has been able to provide me with such clear boundaries. I am slaveringly grateful when people can state clear boundaries around conversation. Otherwise I tend towards the “inappropriate”.

It is hard for me to guess which parts of my normal day to day life might traumatize other people. Ok, maybe not my current day to day life, but my past. I can talk about some things with some people and it’s bloody hard to guess what with whom. If I slip then I am a terrible person for traumatizing someone. So I hear. It’s hard to get over having therapists tell me that I should never discuss my history with lay people or I am being abusive.

“Group therapy isn’t appropriate for people with your level of trauma. You will just be abusive with the group members.”

Ouch.

I’m supposed to shut the fuck up. No, I’m not supposed to shut the fuck up. I’m really not. I’m not going to no matter how much some people wish I would. Noah likes reading it. He’s my ideal reader. Stephen King tells me I only need one and then I’m golden.

To abruptly change the topic: Calli is in a phase. I ask what she wants. I say ok, sure thing and move towards doing the thing. She changes her mind. I say, “I’m already 75% done with foo”. She explodes and starts screaming at me about how she wants the opposite of foo. I am terrible. I don’t love her. Hysterical crying. Flailing of arms and legs. It is the end of the world. If we are out in public I pick her up and carry her back to the car and drive home. If we are home I ask her not to scream in the living room and carry her to a screaming room if necessary. Then I need some time alone.

I’m too highly activated all the time. I’m worried about my reflexes right now. I’m punchy and twitchy.

I’m trying to just roll with it. I know from books (thank you child development books. You are the best things in the whole fucking world) that this is normal and standard and the best way to handle it is to teach emotional self regulation slowly and patiently. Validate the emotions and help them learn to calm down. Yup, you really are that disappointed all of a sudden. That sounds hard. Sometimes when you make a choice you have to live with it or get nothing. That’s how life goes. Yup, it’s terribly hard sometimes. Sometimes it is so hard you cry. I can see you understand that step already.

But it takes so much patience and calm. My well runneth dry.

A while ago I told a friend that her husband required the same kind of patience from me as her children. She looked kind of startled. A fair number of my friends (I almost defaulted to the sexist “male friends” but then I stopped and thought–nope it’s not gender related I just have issues with people.) require the same kind of “must stop and patiently explain what I’m thinking to someone belligerent and unfamiliar with my vocabulary” kind of behavior from me. I totally don’t mind doing it with kids. That has always been easy. Explaining “down” doesn’t bother me. It feels just and I don’t get nearly as frustrated.

I’m kind of a raging asshole when it comes to adults. I didn’t try to go for being a college professor for reasons. I don’t have fucking patience for them. Shut the fuck up and get your shit done you stupid fucking piece of shit.

Yeah, 8th period social club was way more effective as a teaching method.

(I don’t really believe that people are stupid pieces of shit for not knowing things I know. But I’m really not a very nice person in my head.)

No one has commented on my lack of tact in years. I wonder what that means about my social skills. It isn’t that I spend less time with people. I spend time with very different kinds of people. And I’m not hunting for sex. That probably is the biggest mellowing feature.

These days hunting for sex is more like shooting fish in a barrel. It changes the vibe. Hunting for sex is one of the least activating activities in my life. *nudge* “Wanna?” “Yes!”

It’s flattering but not exciting in the same way. It’s nice. I’m not complaining. Ok, moving on.

Hi, non-neurotypical brain let’s try to figure out how to make you interact with my trauma damaged brain without an explosion from adrenaline. Your tics and my tics have got to combine. We can find a way. Damnit. Fourteen years. I don’t want to lose more long time friends. Sure you piss me off. Everyone else does too if I spend enough time with them.

If I avoided people because they pissed me off I would never leave my house. Which would suck.

People delight me more than they bother me. It’s hard to hold that focus sometimes. That’s the extremist black and white thinking. “I love you. I hate you.” Me and Taylor Swift.

Our babysitter keeps asking for modifications based on how tired she is. “I know we said going until x’o’clock but can it be x-2’o’clock because I haven’t been sleeping well.”

On one hand I have thoughts of “unprofessional” and on the other hand I feel so delighted by her confidence in caring for her body. She’s a growing kid. I’m glad she is smart enough to prioritize sleep. I am unflaggingly sympathetic and willing to be flexible. I need her more than she needs me. I’d better fucking be nice.

In every loving relationship there is a power imbalance. Whoever loves the most has the least power. That’s what my mama taught me.

Is it mercenary to take stock of whether I need someone more than they need me and plan my behavior accordingly? It means I am much more of an asshole with people who need me more than I need them. That’s not exactly cool. I’m not talking raging asshole, but I’m less flexible.

Are those enough words so that I can sleep? Maybe. I have improved the ergonomic set up but it isn’t perfect yet. I need a better keyboard. The neck angle isn’t perfect but it has improved. At least I’m using the tray and a better mouse already. I do need a better keyboard. This one is way too narrow for me. I’ll save it for kidlets.

Just breathe.

I should post pictures of my garden. It’s beautiful. I have tulips and narcissus and sage and rosemary and the Japanese lantern all in bloom. The rose leaves are beautifully red. The Joseph’s Coat roses in the back are starting to bloom. The strawberries and blueberries have lots of flowers and starting fruit. The blackberry isn’t going to give me fruit this year. The hacking stunted it. I get it. Sorry, dude. I needed to change your trellis. The plum tree is covered in flowers. Yesterday I saw the buds on the cherry tree finally start opening.

Spring is here. We have peas, beans, and squash left to plant. The corn has appeared but I need to let it get a bit higher before I plant the peas and beans that will climb up the stalks. Then a few weeks after that the pumpkins.

The artichoke is huge but I don’t see signs of fruiting yet. I have no idea what it will look like. The asparagus is coming right along. I don’t eat them this year. Next year.

Patience, grasshopper. You have a lifetime.

My neighbor dropped off a few more strawberry plants. I’m thrilled to have them. I have a whole bed of strawberries and one of those strawberry pots. I was given it. I use pots that I’m given. We spend so much money on strawberries every year. At least $200/year on strawberries. I’d like to grow a whole bunch. I understand that Noah and I will eat fewer than when we have no small fructivores in the house. Still.

When I am old I hope my intestine will allow me to largely live on raw fruit from my back yard and meat. That would be rad. Way less cooking. I’ll get me a George Forman grill and I’ll be golden. Rice in a rice cooker. Fuck vegetables. That sounds like the amount of cooking I like doing.

I eat vegetables now because I’ve been brainwashed into thinking my kids must eat them and I must model eating them.

I’m going to take six years off my life due to sleep apnea. Heh. If I manage to live long enough to die of natural causes That’s a win.

It’s interesting how different people have different goal posts.

explosions of feelings

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I’m pretty agitated today. Clearly a large amount of this is self-created. I don’t know how much of it is other-created or if I’m just creating this whirlwind.

I’m upset about a lot of things that have no solution. And I’m feeling angry and reactive and like I want to blow up at everyone in the whole world.

I’m struggling with being patient as I explain my point of view on any topic. I just want to yell. I feel so angry.

I’m having a lot of black and white thinking. You are for me or against me. The reality is that people are for themselves. I can’t expect people to take a side with me if it works against their interests. They just won’t do it.

I want to hide under a rock and never talk to anyone again. I want to go find someone to talk to. Someone who will be patient as I babble out my anger and frustration but I am yelling too much if adult-subject-matter comes up.

I’m still doing ok with the kids. My overwhelm today hasn’t lead to screaming or yelling I just started crying. I don’t feel “better” about that than I do yelling. It freaked the kids out and then all of a sudden they started doing their chores without yelling at me about how unreasonable I am. It feels manipulative and awful. I suppose it is.

I am not trying to manipulate. I’m trying to ask for help and when you yell no after I’ve spent an hour doing things for you, sometimes I cry. I’m not trying to get you to do anything. I’m happy to leave the room and take my disappointment out of your eyeshot. It isn’t your problem I’m overloaded and sad and having big feelings.

Just shut your stupid fucking mouth you stupid bitch.

I want to cut. This is what my therapist calls “extreme abreaction”. I’m not really getting upset because my kids don’t want to unload the dishwasher. I’m getting upset because it feels like the men in my life think that it is way more important they be protected from a possible false rape charge than that people talk about their behavior in a way they don’t like. In a way that might help the detection of serial predators. Naw. We shouldn’t talk about shit. Just shut up you stupid whiny bitch.

If it was a real rape you would have gone to the police.

Sometimes I did. They told me that they weren’t going to ruin that nice boy for me.

By the time you are 40 it doesn’t matter that much how you were raised. You are who your genes say you should be. I’m told.

I’m scared of what my genes say I should be.

I’m an asshole. I don’t deny that. The current systems in place are not doing a god damn thing to stop rapists. So something needs to change. And yeah, that probably means that the hurt is going to move around. Given that 98% of rapists are men that probably means that there will be more suspicious gaze at men.

But instead of treating all men as blanket, proto-rapists what is wrong with instead keeping track of the incidents as they come up?

We can’t go to the police. We will be told to shut up so they can put the statistic in that we “rape victims” are really just liars and attention getting whores who had second thoughts.

But if we talk about our experiences we will be slandering those poor men.

I’m not advocating that every done-me-wrong should be treated like a rape.

I’m fine with both sides being heard. Right now we aren’t getting both sides heard. We are getting, “Is there enough evidence to prove physically that this was rape? If not then shut the fuck up you probably enjoyed it.”

The hacker who helped the Stubenville rape victim is doing more jail time than the rapists. That is what we think about the victims side of the story in this country.

Besides–in making sure that no community board has a centralized list to ensure that people are only being black listed after multiple infractions of a serious enough nature you have places individually black listing people based on the opinions of one or two friends who has a problem with the individual.

So you get the negative you are afraid of anyway and I don’t get to have any of the positive that I want. Thanks.

I feel both exhausted and so full of adrenaline I could run straight up a mountain. I want to pick a fight. I guess it’s a good thing I won’t let myself do that with my kids and I’m alone with them till bedtime. Enforced civility.

I’m not willing to force the civil for other people to the same degree. I often can’t when I feel threatened. My kids are inherently non-threatening. At all times I am overwhelmingly aware that I have all the power and they have very little or none. It is different with my kids than with other peoples kids. Other peoples kids feel overwhelming and threatening sometimes. Not like an “actual threat” but I activate on a biological level in a very different way than I do with my kids.

My kids are me-not-me. At all times I have this really conscious frame that this is the only chance I have to see a childhood where children are well treated every day of their childhood. It is up to me to produce it or not. Sometimes I’m less present in the room than they like because it is too high of a bar. But I’m around. They talk to me many times an hour.

Calm down Krissy. Stop calling yourself stupid. All of these feelings have nothing to do with your intelligence. Yes, you have been testy with your friends lately. That doesn’t make you the biggest bitch on the planet. When you check in with them they are not having a big problem with you. Yes, you are snapping–which they aren’t thrilled about–but all of them have specifically said that you aren’t being as inappropriate as you think you are. You aren’t as bad as you think you are.

But I’m bad. I’m really mean and hateful. You just don’t know how much because I don’t usually say it. Noah says it doesn’t count as mean or hateful if I just think it. I think he must be wrong. Surely I deserve to be flogged for all the yelling at my friends I do when they are not around. Usually when no one is around. I yell at them when I’m out running. I say all the mean things I think.

WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT!!!??!?!?!? STOP IT!!!! Variations on that theme. Usually culminating with something along the lines of, “ARE YOU INSANE? HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY THINK THAT. YOU CLEARLY NEED TO BE WHACKED IN THE HEAD WITH A LARGE TROUT.” (Trout was an IRC thing.)

I feel like I’m drowning in unmet needs. But I don’t know what the needs are and I don’t know how to fill them. I’m anxious and scared and angry. I feel like everything is all my fault even when it has nothing to do with me.

I need to figure out where I need boundaries right now that I don’t have them. I don’t want to hit the eject button in order to deal with my distress. I really don’t want to. I also don’t want to be yelling at all of my friends because I cycle higher and higher week after week getting mad at someone.

How to have boundaries. It’s an issue. The kids say I have to come in.

Advantages.

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Yesterday I took the girls on our first bike ride. We went a bit over two miles. I was thrilled with how well they did. When Shanna fell over she jumped up and brushed herself off and said there was no blood so she was fine. She announced, “Well now I know not to turn my wheel like that on a driveway.”

When we were getting started we went over to 7-11 so I could fill up my tires with air. There was a gentleman sitting next to the machine having a smoke.

He was dirty, thin, greasy looking, his hair was straggly and unkempt. But he smiled at my kids and nodded to me. I smiled back and said a cheerful, “Hello!” He seemed surprised because he startled then looked down at the ground.

*I* know that I am no better than him. I felt a little weird as my kids rolled through on their shiny brand-spanking-new bikes. We have so much and he has so little. You don’t spend your days sitting next to the 7-11 smoking if you have anything better to do.

I have a nice comfy backyard to sit in when I smoke. I am in no way shape or form morally superior to him. But I’ll bet that he would be surprised by the idea that I am not better. I bet he would be surprised to find that I don’t believe I deserve better than him. I don’t think he is getting what he deserves. I don’t have to know him. I don’t know very many people on this planet who “get what they deserve” for good or for ill.

I choose to enact a lot of weird poverty quirks in my life. I flush my toilet with recycled bathwater. I wash out plastic Ziplock bags and use them forever. I have some kinda bizarre grey water recycling in my yard. My composting is not fancy or staged. It’s primitive. I just bury shit.

I feel guilty that I wasted the money on brand new bikes. I could have hunted yard sales. My kids would not have felt bad. They are equally excited. They have no brand name preferences.

But sometimes there are things you just want and it isn’t about whether or not you deserve them. There is no “right way” there is just what you did today.

I am not better or more deserving than anyone else. I’m sorry that other people are not getting closer to what they deserve.

We don’t deserve shiny new bicycles more than that man deserves somewhere to go where he is wanted and loved. But we have the bicycles and that man doesn’t seem like he has anywhere to be.

Life is very unfair sometimes. Sometimes it is unfair and you are at the bottom. sometimes it is unfair and you are at the top. We don’t get what we deserve. We don’t even really get what we earn.

Next time I will ask him his name. I have seen him there before when I was getting gas but not getting air. Next time I will not walk past him as one more person treating him like he is invisible.

I can’t afford a pet right now. It’s not that I will take him on as a project or try to fix his life. I can’t. I can’t give him what he deserves. It isn’t mine to give. But I can ask him his name and I can see him as a real person and if he turns out to be chatty with provocation I can listen.

He’s here. And I’m here. And no one gets what they deserve. And no one gets all of their needs met. Maybe I can see him and that is better than nothing. Many days that is all I need. I need to be seen. I need to be encouraged to still be here.

I have a home where I’m allowed to line the walls with photographs of people smiling down on me. I can bask in their love all day every day even though those people can’t actually stand me on a daily basis. Or they live far away. Or they are busy. Or.

Here we like to think about Helping People meaning that you send money to the third world. There are people within one mile of your house who would have their lives immeasurably improved if you spent one hour a week with them.

The world doesn’t have anything to give you. The world only cares what you have to give. It’s hard. It feels unfair. It feels silencing and horrible and awful and ugh.

The world doesn’t give a shit about your needs. The world is too busy nursing its own wounds. It isn’t personal. The world sure as shit doesn’t care about me either. I have to. It’s my job to care about me. Not anyone else. I mean, I kind of bully a little of it out of Noah and the girls but…

Breakfast is ready. I love you. Even if you drive me crazy. Even if you have nothing to give me and I have nothing to give you and I hate your politics. Even if I hate your religion.

I love you and I want you here. Maybe I don’t want you right here all the time but I want you in the world. Take up space. You matter. You impact people. Your ability to smile at someone or help them or ask a follow up question like, “So how did your dad’s surgery go?” make people feel like they are part of a web.

Just go talk to people. Even if you are kind of annoying. We need to be poked.

I love you. Even you.