Category Archives: adult-only

Published in the adult-only category

Permission to rest

I feel like my body likes to slam me into brick walls every so often. That way I have to sit very still and rest afterwards.

So many wants. Maybe it is good to just sit. Christmas is in five weeks. We go to Disneyland in less than three weeks.

I’ve been looking at the budget nervously. I am ok with where we are. But I feel like I want the year to be over already so I can slam the door on it.

2012 was way better than 2011. I’m still going to be happy to move on.

That’s how I keep going. The future has to be better than the past. It just has to.

I’ve been sitting still. I can tell I am saving up energy. Thanksgiving is in two days. I’m pretty sure I will be able to eat.

Just keep moving. Or sitting. Either way.

That Dear Jane lady

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Originally posted on Feb 17, 2011.

First title: I got dumped.

Not by my husband, by one of the women in my mom group. I got sent a rather hurtful email. To be defensive, because I always am, the hot sauce comment was not even vaguely serious. I would never do that. It was an unkind thing to say at all, but I don’t think this level of response was appropriate. And the ‘cold baths’ were tepid, just not warm and fun. I took zero pleasure in them and I don’t feel they were cruel. They were business like and not *fun*, but Shanna was not harmed in any way and despite not being fond of them she doesn’t seem traumatized by being in less than super warm water.

“I’d really rather not have to say this and just avoid the subject, but I think I owe it to you to let you know that what happened today was not OK for us. The way you discipline Shanna makes me very uncomfortable. I feel really bad for her actually, i seems that at her age your expectations are way too high and the proportion of punishment and yelling is over the top. She is your child and you can parent her how you like, but I can’t be around it anymore. I think the reason she is hitting and acting more aggressively is probably because she is learning the behavior from you. The way you talk about potty training her by making her take cold baths and contemplating putting hot sauce on her finger to get her to stop picking her nose is very hard for me to hear because I think it is cruel to do to another person; especially a person who does not have a choice to walk away from a relationship with you. The way you freaked out today was over-the-top and you need to get some help because if you are losing it like that at a casual friends house then I can only imagine how bad it is at home.

I’m just writing this to be honest with you, so you know why I do not want to get together anymore. I know you probably think I am judgmental, do not know Shanna, and have never walked in your shoes, but I have really, really tried to keep giving you chances, but I just can’t put up with how you treat Shanna anymore, it is so hard to witness.

Sincerely,
J”

Basically what happened yesterday is that I had a panic attack and continued trying to parent through it. I’m quite certain that it looked like I completely lost control. It was very certainly not my parenting at its finest. Shanna was being aggressive/acting out previously and I had taken her aside and told her that if the behavior didn’t stop we would have to leave. She then whacked another kid in the head with a toy. For no reasonable reason (since when do panic attacks follow ‘reason’) I had an intense panic attack and I proceeded to deal with the situation. Badly. I was shaking and overly rough with Shanna and I wasn’t perfectly gentle with Calli either (she started screaming because she needed a diaper change pretty much exactly when Shanna hit the other kid). As is pretty standard for me when I have a panic attack I started shaking my head and chanting “I don’t want any help. I’ll do it myself.” Not my best coping mechanism. It was bad. I’m embarrassed. I would be embarrassed no matter what but that email is quite the piece of shaming.

I’ve been kind of free flow responding since yesterday. I’m not sure if this is coherent or not. I have zero intention of sending this to her.

So I’ve been doing some processing about this email and it’s not about me. Ok, you are also upset with me but this email isn’t really about me. Your language is very shaming. This is a big issue for you. How were you treated as a kid? Like you see me treating Shanna? Was it just something that happened to someone you knew?

You’ve obviously been building this upset with me for a while. I wish you would have talked to me about it. I really really wish you had talked to me about it. At this point it seems like you have thoroughly talked yourself into hating me and that makes me sad because even after trying pretty hard this afternoon I don’t hate you. Right now I do feels some disappointment in you. A friend doesn’t behave the way you are behaving. A friend would have told me many months ago, “You know, it really bothers me to listen to you discipline Shanna. I really feel like what you are doing is damaging to her and I don’t think you want to do that.” A friend would have some idea that I’ve been in the midst of pretty bad depression to the point where folks who are closest to me are pretty worried about me and I am actively seeking help. I have seen a therapist. I have been trying to arrange for additional support so that I am capable of doing a better job at being their mother. You don’t know that though. You don’t know that I take my mental health/illness very very seriously. You don’t know that every mental health professional I have ever worked with in my life considers my degree of control nothing short of miraculous. But you don’t take that into consideration. You also don’t take into consideration that I apologized to Shanna as soon as we got back into the van. I told her that my tone of voice (not to mention volume) was completely inappropriate and I should have never been rough with her. I know my daughter can’t get away from me and it sucks that she got a mom with my issues. But I am a selfish person and I wanted her, so yeah. She is stuck with me.

My expectations of her aren’t out of line for *her* abilities. My enforcement of my expectations is often too harsh. She and I talk about that. It’s one more thing on the long list of things I work on in myself. No, I’m not perfect. But you have never actually talked to me about your issues with my behavior. You have never said, “I really don’t want to be around it. Please don’t do it around me or I will have to stop spending time with you.” Not once. You never treated me like a person who was worthy of a conversation. That disappoints me.

The shaming language throughout the email disappoints me. I find it interesting how those who preach the loudest about being “gentle” are the quickest to shame. I responded to that shame. I’m very familiar with being shamed. But I’m done responding to this shaming. I’m done giving you that much power over me. I know pretty well how my attitude needs to change, I just haven’t been capable of doing that lately. That happens for me. There are periods where I get into a rut and climbing back out is incredibly difficult. It’s been a long time since I was in a rut this deep.

I am running on very little sleep (another 4:30 am morning here) which is not something I do well at. Both Calli and Shanna have hit difficult stages at the same time. Noah and I are having a hard time do to my extraordinarily low libido (though given how much time I spend in bodily contact with an infant is it any wonder that I’m touched out?). I have virtually zero personal time and apparently that is more important to me than I understood before having children. I’ve always gotten it before so there was very little reason for me to need to understand it.

But I need to stop giving myself excuses. Yes, this is hard. Yes, this is something that makes me feel bad and that tends to make my behavior go to shit. I’m out of excuses. It’s time to plaster a smile on my face and get it done. I’m not talking about stuffing my emotions, I’m not real good at that anymore. I mean that I need to get back to taking joy in my children and I need to find patience for them. My expectations of Shanna are not too high. However my discipline is too harsh. My daughter deserves more gentle admonishments and she deserves the body integrity I have not been observing lately. Waiting until she gets stuff done is hard, but it’s not like I even have the excuse of having a busy schedule so I *have* to get her to move *right now*. Grabbing her arm isn’t ok and I need to stop. I’m bigger and stronger than her. Yes, we all know that. It’s time to stop demonstrating it.

The increased hitting and aggression is completely age appropriate. It is pretty standard for kids to go through phases like this and I really don’t feel like Shanna is doing so to an outrageous level. I don’t hit Shanna. Ok, I hit her foot while we were driving to Disneyland because she got pissed off at one point and was kicking the drivers seat as hard as she could and I smacked her feet. I apologized for it and haven’t done anything of the kind before or since. I have been more physically aggressive with her lately, but that has involved things like pulling her by the upper arm. Not a great technique but it is really not on the top 10 list of abusive behavior.

This email was in no way intended as a kindness. But I can choose to get some good out of it. I am over the line of my personal beliefs about how I should be parenting. Even for me to get back to where *I* think I should be I will still have conflict with J and I’m going to just let that go. I don’t need anyone in my life who is that unwilling to work on issues up to the point where she shames and does her best to make me feel bad. That’s really not any better than my current (bad) approach.

Happiness is a state of mind, not a circumstance. I need to work on my state of mind.

Evading laundry

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I just had a really good idea. Some day I want to remodel my kitchen. It will happen when I’m in my fifties and THAT’S FINE. There is a wall I plan to tear out. A wall that is constantly spattered with food and grimy and nasty. I hate looking at it because I can’t properly clean it. It makes me feel pretty angry sometimes because I scrub and scrub and it is still scummy and gross.

I can learn how to tile on that wall. I don’t want to keep it permanently so I am completely free to make weird choices and mistakes.

Oh man.

I think my brain just exploded with joy.

I think I’m weird.

I think I am the luckiest person in the whole world because I have stupid intense urges and an indulgent partner who can afford my fairly cheap DIY projects. He doesn’t care what I make the house look like.

In fact, he likes finding out what I want to see in the world. He says, every so often: “I didn’t believe you that _____ change would work the way you said it would but you were right.”

I soar.

I feel like my “art” is my house. And I’m really not normal so I don’t have or want a house that looks particularly normal. It would be false advertising.

Welcome to Wonderland.

You would be amazed how often people try to turn the doorstop in my house so they can walk through a wall. I painted a hobbit hole under a rainbow and used the doorstop as the doorknob. People can’t tell that it’s just a painting. I don’t think it’s that realistic.

My in-laws told me to “buy something for myself”. I think I see an increase in the “home” budget for a little bit. I’m going to eek it out and keep myself busy.

That probably isn’t what they meant. But it is what will make me happy. That’s why I’m glad they sent money.

I’m sure that is a rude thought. Oh well. I’m pretty excited about having a whole bunch of extra money that I can spend on art projects that make my house better for me.

I have to figure out how to involve the kids or it won’t work. This is going to take planning. Luckily that is my favorite part.

This is what me distracting myself from feeling bad looks like. I have an idea! But I can’t sprint right now. I told Noah that I really want his time. That means no sprinting. That means figuring out how to do the projects entirely with the kids in a way that is fair (and educational) to the kids.

This is going to take planning and thought. What projects to do first–well, first I’m waiting to get the logs back so I can finish the playhouse. That will take about a week once I get the wood back. I will be glad to get all the debris up. Finally. Well, most of it. There is still a huge branch in the back that is waiting to be dismantled. The guy who helps me with my yard had problems with his chain saw last week. I think he doesn’t mind how eccentric I am because I actually don’t ask him to do much. Trim the front hedge and clean up my messes. I don’t even ask him to weed. But he faithfully comes twice a month.

I don’t know why I am being evasive on the internet. I’m feeling intensely lonely and yet like I have positive feelings. Not feelings that incline me towards folding the four baskets of laundry at my feet. I’m tired and whiny. I have been doing a lot and we are going out tonight. I am burning a lot of spoons today and this weekend is going to be overwhelming. I will get through it but I may not be talking much by the end because I will be bitchy. I hate that. It feels not fair to the people who see me on the end. But it will be what I have to give.

I will be polite but not chatty. I will make a few awkward positive comments of gratitude about being invited because I am really glad that I am invited. I like them. I am really enjoying watching their life from this distance of rare visits. But I don’t have anything else to give and big events are not a time to talk about any of the shit that I think about all the god damn time.

I get low on ability to remember what “polite” language is like. Noah and I don’t talk like that.

God I love Noah. And he’s in a phase where bugging him at work all day isn’t polite.

Thank you internet. I love you. You are always there for me.

I was thinking about how maligned short stories and novels were in their initial heydays.

Blogging is a terrible horrible low-brow writing form.

I’ve been doing it for what? Ten years.

Where am I going with this?

I’m going to tell you a secret, internet. I really want my whole story to be one that is one that can be picked up and read in its entirety. I think I am interesting. I feel like an asshole right now. That’s kind of awesome. I don’t think you will all like me. I think you will often think I am a fuck up. But I’m an interesting fuck up. I think.

I just don’t have time to tell you the story yet. And that means you get weird snippets. I feel weird that you read this year after year. I know that some of you have been following for a long time (btw–it is now a serious pain in the ass to find comments on livejournal. I won’t be responding or able to read the syndicate comments for much longer so don’t bother leaving them there. Soon-ish I will have an actual website and then I don’t know what will happen. ) and I don’t want to lose you.

I feel weird about that. I’m trying to figure out how to put my entire blog archive together. I have already told a lot of stories and I don’t really have the hand-strength to type them all again.

It would be fun to reread and figure out where the most interesting stories are. Lisa–I will find the story of the Dear Jane lady and re-post it. It is on livejournal.

Now I’m babbling. Ha. Talk to you later internet. You just became too personal.

Pity party, table of one

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Every life is a mixture of blessing and burden. Sometimes when I hear about the blessings that other people have I feel such envy. I dislike myself for feeling that envy. It is petty. I feel like I am going through life having one long series of pity parties for myself. My life is not like other peoples. When I found out I was pregnant with Shanna more than one person sat me down for a long earnest lecture about how someone like me (with mental health issues) has no business having children. I feel like I was essentially told to abort Shanna because I could not possibly be good enough to her.

That is not how other people experience the journey into motherhood. I am very glad that my friends have such different experiences. I feel very guilty that it is hard for me to listen to. I feel terrible about how much self pity I have. Get over it.

I feel kind of like a fraud. My family was fucking thrilled when I got pregnant. I paid for us to go to a conflict mediator. I tried to work things out. Then my sister loudly boasted about being able to kick my ass at my baby shower. Then my mother refused my request to come to Christmas because it “wasn’t worth it for her yet because the baby wasn’t interesting enough” because I am not interesting enough. Then it was “this is a loan not a gift. I will send you $20 every month until it is paid back.” She sent one nasty $100 after I told her not to buy any more cheap shit for my daughter until she pays me back. Then it was my sister telling me that the death of my father and brother were not allowed to count as significant to me.

If I want to know people I have to be very ok with the fact that nearly everyone I speak to is having a much more pleasant experience. I can’t be bitter. They are having troubles I am not having. I do not give proper weight to the difficulty of those struggles. I need to just love people if I am going to have relationships.

It’s ok if I cry about never really having a mother. That’s ok. I didn’t have a mother. I get to cry about that. No one ever really tried to meet my needs. No one volunteered or cared. I can cry about that. I can’t get mad because other people got more love than me. That’s not fair.

I don’t understand why everyone else deserves this love and I do not.

You know how I ate ramen for years? I started cooking it when I was three. All those years I was making the only food I really knew how to make. It felt comforting to have hot cooked food and we couldn’t afford frozen microwave food.

I have not been cared for in the ways that humans expect to be cared for by someone since I was an infant. When I was sick I was left alone to deal with it. I have dealt with post operation care alone. I was five. My mom didn’t want to look at my gross face after the dog attacked me. She told me that looking at that was my punishment for being stupid with the dog. She said I would learn not to stick my face in a dogs face. I had major reconstructive surgery with 117 stitches.

I am very glad that my daughters will have a different experience. And fuck you to the people who said I would be bad at this because it was inevitable.

I’m really glad that I am lucky enough to know people who have had completely different life experiences so they can tell me what it is liked to feel loved by a parent. I want to produce people who feel that way so I need to know what that kind of parenting was like. Thank you for sharing your lives with me.

(PS- I’m aware that I make a lot of weird typos and word substitutions. I don’t really have time to edit. I apologize.)

But then I came home and found out that my in-laws decided to send us a check for $15,000 out of the blue. Well, because a deer jumped on our car and because they still provide financial support to all three of his adult brothers. They feel bad for not helping Noah more. So they sent us money. Because they can.

I feel floored. That is seriously fucking with my world view. I am standing next to someone who benefits from enormous privilege. I get to borrow that privilege in substantial ways. It doesn’t come with a mother–I will never have any kind of relationship with my mother-in-law. We are non-compatibly crazy which is quite unfortunate. I don’t get to have a family but I get money.

I have a family. I have Noah and I have Shanna and I have Calli. Not everyone is so blessed.

Many years ago I had an intense fling with someone who was studying ayurvedic medicine. He did my natal chart. I had not told him much of anything about myself. He said I would always be lucky with money. Any time I needed it somehow it would arrive. I kind of startled. He laughed and said that anyone who challenged me in court would be sorry.

It’s not like I live my life trying to test that out but I have been really weirded out how much that has worked out. When I am not sitting at my pity party I am shocked by how much money just appears for me in a way that it doesn’t appear for other people.

The dog bite set me up for the first big chunk of my adulthood. Completely. I’m not sure it provided the lesson my mother intended. I run towards danger. The payoff is often well worth the damage I incur. I am ok with the results of karma in my favor. I had to deal with horrifying post-operative care when I was five years old and that was fairly traumatic. But it put me through college. And bought me three cars (they were all very good deals). And completely supported me for ten years. In a mercenary sense that was a good fucking deal.

Other people don’t have lives like mine. I don’t understand what it is like to be other people. But I’m very curious.

Had a good day.

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Yesterday was the best day I’ve had in a long time in terms of anxiety. It’s kind of funny that it worked out that way because I started out the day freaking out. Night before last I posted something on facebook about processing while crying and three very helpful women told me that it was common and normal. I had been relaying that my therapist was congratulating me on how unusual it is that I can do what I do. But these three women wanted to make sure I didn’t think I was a special snowflake. That’s not what they thought they were doing so I decided not to debate.

I kind of think of it like someone in North Carolina telling someone in NYC, “Shoot we get storms all the time. Why are you people whining about a little water?”

Scope. It’s about scope. And I’m not going to get into it on facebook. I feel character limits there. Plus I was on the ipad. So I deleted the post and went on with my day.

It was a great day. I went up to my friend Kira’s house. In the way of everyone who loves me she and her husband have something of a hoarding problem. Hoarders fucking love me and I don’t know why. Nearly all of my close friends over the year have had similar issues. Anyway. Apparently I was the first person to point out the connection between severely messy homes and mental illness to a few friends. I feel surprised that they hadn’t made that connection already.

Hoarders don’t feel loved by people so they collect things. That is my off-the-cuff semi-dismissive view of the people I have known who have this problem. I’ve known several dozen honest-to-dawg hoarders.

I like people. I like being around them. I like feeling useful and helpful and like I have something to give. I think I find the hoarders because they lack a specific skill set I excel in.

Holy shit can I clean and organize. I am not attached to things. Things are the opposite of safety for me. Things mean Problems. GET RID OF IT seems to be my obsession going through life.

So I went up to Kira’s house yesterday. We’ve worked on it a few times over the past two years of friendship. I anticipate many more days doing similar things. Mostly because I had such a great time. I didn’t medicate and I was more relaxed than I can remember being in years. I was useful. I was good. I was doing stuff that will have reverberating effects on their day to life for a long time. I probably did stuff that will make their marriage better (everyone has fights about messy houses) and it will be easier to parent.

That makes me feel good. The problem comes when I get too enmeshed and I either want to help more and fix more (what I did with Sarah) or I realize I am in over my head and I shove them away really hard (more complicated than that–but that’s basically what I did with Alex).

I’m scared of the process of finding appropriate boundaries. How much help can I give? Well, let me tell you, it’s probably good they live in Oakland. I don’t feel compelled to help very often so I don’t get overwhelmed. It’s just too far. The hurdle of helping is so high that I can’t do it much. When I do show up I move 1/3 of the furniture in the house by myself and move dozens of loads down the (frightening and perilous) steps into the basement.

I feel like fucking Superwoman. Kira took care of the kids. I would totally be the man in a dyke society. I have a hard time sometimes with how “womens work” my life is because I would rather be a construction worker. I kind of fucking hate cooking.

Cooking is endless fucking drudgery and making new messes that i will fucking have to clean alone so that people can uhm not notice that I did it. Whatever. In ten minutes this is out of existence and doesn’t ever fucking matter again.

When I go clean someones house and get rid of many years of piled up paper their house feels dramatically different and their life tends to feel more positive and easier for a while. They literally have less work looming over their head.

When you supply a meal you just need another fucking meal in four hours. I hate cooking.

I’ve been thinking about my negative feelings about my house. I’ve been thinking about the fact that I probably wouldn’t be able to afford going out and buying what I see in my head anyway. It only kind of exists. I’ve seen things that are similar but not quite.

Noah actually will be able to give me the house I want. It’s just going to take about twenty-five years because first we have to finish paying off the mortgage and then we have to wait until we need a new roof. I’m not going to tear off a perfectly good roof on a whim let-me-tell-you. When I think about it that way it just means I have more time to get the design right. I have more time to decide what I really want and that feels really exciting. At that point in time our kids will be mostly done with college (if they go–we’ll see) and we will have had the house paid off for a long time. That will be the first time we have had “extra money” in our marriage.

I want what I am doing so bad. I need this. It’s ok that I have a crappy ceiling (I may figure out how to fix what is bugging me so I can stop the internal whine track) because I have lived in this happy home for longer than I have lived anywhere in my life.

I really like my kids. I was so proud of them yesterday. I worked for a solid eight hours. They had to play in a back room by themselves and they did it. They were so good. When they had needs they came out and cheerfully asked for what they needed. When they were feeling like they missed me they would come ask for a hug then go back to playing.

Kira’s husband kept trying to get me to carry things through the front door because there are fewer stairs. I liked going through the back because then I got to see the kids.

At the end of the day Shanna told me it was sad that I didn’t get to watch them play so she hopes the next time we go up I can stay with them. That feels really good.

I’m going to change topic and go back in time chronologically. In the morning we first had swim class (Calli was freezing and upset the whole time) then we went back to the house so I could move the laundry into the dryer and get food for the kids to eat as we drove up to Kira’s because it was already a bit late for them.

I feel terrible guilt that I leave my kids in their car seats in the car with the windows cracked for about five minutes at a time sometimes but I’m not going to stop doing it. It takes fucking forever to get them in and out. A four minute errand becomes a twenty minute errand and I am screaming and them to hurry up and move. It’s really stressful and shitty. So I don’t do it. I deal with guilt instead.

As we drove up to Kira’s house Shanna told me how nice I was for getting them food because they were really hungry. I said, “I try.” She said, “Did your mom feed you?”

I assume most children ask these kinds of questions. I feel like I am hit in the stomach over and over. I laughed and said, “Of course she fed me. I grew didn’t I?” But I thought about it. I added, “My mom gave me ramen. She couldn’t afford things like fruits and vegetables. As a result I had a lot of stomach and body pain my whole life. I have terrible teeth. In general I am not in good health and some of it is that I wasn’t fed the things my body needed when I was a child. I’m trying very hard to ensure that you have a different life experience.”

“That’s very nice of you.”

“I think so too.”

I love talking to Shanna. I feel like Shanna is the only one who can say things to me without me feeling minimized or dismissed. I’m not mad at the women who commented on facebook. But I freaked the fuck out when I read their comments.

It has been a very long and very hard journey for me to get to the point of understanding that for me to do things is not the same as other people doing things. My brain and body work differently for a wide variety of reasons.

When I say I cry and process emotions I mean that sob hysterically and type one to three thousand words an hour (depends on how easily accessible the memories are–if they are right on the tip of my tongue then my fingers fly) while physiologically having the experience of having a heart attack. I have terrible panic attacks. I hyperventilate and gasp and panic and feel like I am dying.

Not very many people spend many hours at a time feeling like they are dying from a heart attack and just continue to think about what they are thinking about. That kind of experience is very overwhelming. It’s not the typical “crying”. Yes, I understand that people cry and talk about their feelings all the time. Uhm, scope.

It has taken a long time for me to have the courage to say, “My life experience is different and harder and I get to say that without having to feel like I am exaggerating.” Not every part of my life. I am really god damn good at cleaning.

Most people who feel like me just die. It hurts so much to live as me. I am in a fairly tremendous amount of pain basically all the time. It is extremely bad for your body to live with how much fear I feel. Organs are significantly impacted. Stress will kill you and I live with an amount of stress most people only get from living in an active war zone. And I have felt like this for about twenty-five years.

I am moving hell and high water to ensure that my kids do not understand this stress. That this is not passed on. I live a fairly ordinary life. I do have an extensive and varied social network. There are a lot of people who are close to my kids. Not every day close. I have to learn that most people don’t have much of that. My kids are active in the community we live in and our homeschool group and Noah and I have a lot of friends who are talking to our kids a few times a year. Not a lot, but relationships build over time. It’s normal to have a period where you stay home a lot after having babies.

Part of the problem with PTSD is that it triggers atypical depression. I’ve been looking more into this part recently. It’s probably why it is so easy for me to “turn off” being depressed when I want to. It isn’t true chemical depression it is my bodies coping mechanism for stress when I am stuck in one place. It keeps me from hyperarousing myself into death.

The brain is fascinating to study. I think it is interesting to read papers that I would previously have been convinced I was too stupid to understand. I just had to build a shared vocabulary.

I’ve been thinking about my discomfort with not knowing lately. It’s not like being a know-it-all has been good for me socially.

I was a “know-it-all” in school after school where I got beat up for paying attention in class. But now I have strangers arrive in my inbox, “Hi my name is _____. I am friends with _______. I told her that I was raped/attached/abused/experienced incest/etc and she told me to come talk to you.”

That feels like a lot of responsibility to know things. I have to learn more. If I am going to help people I have to know more. If I am going to show up and tell someone that I can completely reorganize their life I have to be telling the fucking truth. I can’t fall short. I can’t be almost good enough. I have to deliver. Or I am a failure.

Kira you want to know where I get my energy? From the driving terror to prove I can do what I say I can do. You notice how I don’t often show up and say, “I am committing to __________ work.” That’s because I take those kinds of promises ridiculously seriously. It’s really most of what I build my sense of self on. I am able to accurately predict what I can do. Then I’ll kill myself getting it done or I will feel gnashing anxiety until it is done.

I am so glad I painted the stripes in my laundry room after more than a year of waiting. I seriously felt bothered all the time. I feel a lot more relaxed. That’s why I haven’t yet decided what I am doing to deal with the insulation on the garage door. I don’t want to commit to anything yet because then I will hate myself until I get it done. I bought myself a good year of procrastination without anxiety. I don’t know what I want so there is no internal push to move forward.

Today I get to bring baby clothes to two friends who are expecting. Wonderful women who have blessed my life. I don’t see either of them very often (I think once so far this year) but I have known them for many years. I’m trying to understand in my gut that relationships wax and wane. If I’m a nice person the relationships will grow closer when they have kids. If I’m an asshole they would be wise to keep their kids away from me.

I don’t think very many people want to think about themselves that way. If I am a bad influence for your kids, by all means keep them away from me. I try very hard not to be. I try very hard to ensure that, partially because I have limited contact with most people, I am a good influence. I try to model good behavior. I consider modeling good behavior to be my primary job for the next fifteen years.

My kids were ridiculously good while I busted my ass for eight hours yesterday. I wish I could extract this emotion and freeze it in amber so I could put it on a string and wear it around my neck always.

Someone asked on the PTSD forum I frequent if anyone consciously re-parents themselves. I said, “Oh yes. I know that my voice is the voice that is going to be playing inside my kid’s head when they are adults. I’m trying to replace my mother’s voice with my daughter’s voices. So I’m really nice and have firm with boundaries with my kids and they do the same right back at me. I win.”

My kids are my reward for living right now. I am ridiculously grateful that I get to have the life I have. If Noah didn’t happen to be a rich guy I would probably be in a really bad spot right about now. I wouldn’t have the safety I have. I can’t imagine how bad my body would feel if I actually had to worry about money. And yet I’m turning down every invitation from the home schooling group that involves money. That raises my stress level every time.

I tell myself that they are two and four and won’t remember anyway. I tell myself that they are much better off staying home to play with me not feeling more stress all the time. I am an awful lot of fun when I’m not feeling extra stress. Driving is extra stress.

I love the parks we can walk to. Yes, we walk two and a half miles to the park. What else should we do with our day?

That’s the vacant void of guilt. What else should I be doing? Well, today we are going to drive Noah to work and use the Prius to visit mamas-to-be who live near where he works. It will be quite cheap as our excursions go. That eliminates 75% of the stress I feel around driving. I really hate spending money. It’s a fierce nasty knot in my belly. I don’t want to. That’s why Noah feels like he should make more money. Naw, I’d be like this even if you made millions. I just hate spending money. We have enough. I just want your time. I swear.

I’m really excited that I’m pretty likely to have two excellent days in a row. That’s a blessing.

P.S. Judith-the braces make all the difference in the world. Thank you.

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I feel a little better. I needed to say all that to Noah.

Maybe if I leave the monsters here I can sleep.

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I can’t sleep. I don’t feel good about keeping Noah awake with my crying. Ok internet, you can keep me company. I have done the best that I can with my ergonomic set up. I hope I don’t regret tonight. My arms hurt.

I can’t sleep because when I lie in bed I acutely notice this spot deep in my belly that has hurt since Calli was born. It hurts when I twist at all from a prone position. I’m kind of worried something is wrong.

I tried seeing a doctor a little over a year ago. I was told by the general doctor that she wouldn’t do anything for me until I dealt with psychiatry. Psychiatry told me they wouldn’t work with me until I stopped nursing and stopped smoking pot and start taking pills that will make my life a living hell.

I need a new doctor.

The problem is that finding a new doctor is kind of a nightmare of humiliation and expense. Doctors like to give me transvaginal ultrasounds despite knowing I am paying out of pocket and don’t want the procedure–I asked to just have a blood test. “Oh I just want to check.”

And I shut down. And I do what I am told. And I have to listen to a nasty lecture about how my previous miscarriage was my fault because I am still nursing Shanna and I will lose the baby I am carrying right now if I don’t stop nursing her immediately.

I didn’t stop nursing Shanna. She didn’t stop nursing until she was three. A full nine months after her sister was born.

Doctors are just people. But they think they are Smarter and Wiser than stupid little me. Even though this is my body.

I was told that my grandmother (father’s mother) died of cancer. It wasn’t found until it was too late for treatment. She was a stubborn woman and even though she was told she would die immediately she held out long enough to gather all of her grandchildren together one last time and then sit down with all of her sisters and do a crossword puzzle. It took a few months to arrange, apparently. Then she died.

I can’t help but wonder if she felt the pain inside her and thought, like me, I hope this kills me. Then at least my kids won’t have to deal with my suicide.

This is not a good approach to health care management. I really hate dealing with doctors. I find the entire process degrading and insulting. I never get adequate treatment and I always end up shutting my stupid mouth and consenting to procedures I initially protest. Not because I am convinced they are necessary–because when a sociopath tells me to shut up I do. I know I am at the bottom of the caste system. I shut up when I am scared. When I get to the point of going to see a doctor I am scared.

I don’t feel I can ask my midwife about it. She badly handled my labor. Really badly. She was burnt out on driving to Fremont. She shouldn’t have taken me on as a client. She didn’t really have the patience for dealing with me. She kept me from dying as I hemorrhaged in my bed so I feel like she fully earned her fee and all. But I don’t trust her any more. I will never ask her for help of any kind again.

I don’t want to keep Noah up as I cry because when you have mental illness you have to be aware of the cost on the people around you. I have to be careful not to overburden him. I can’t be too dependent on him. It’s not his fault that I don’t really have anyone else.

Noah and I are having a lot of hard conversations. And I’m not going to give details about them on the internet. He doesn’t get a lot of privacy in this lifetime but he gets a little.

Hard shit is hard. And tonight I’m having quite a pity party. I want to say that it feels like my whole fucking life has been hard. On one hand I want to berate myself for my hyperbole. On the other hand… can’t I justifiably say that? I mean, I do have easier periods. I’m drowning. And it’s my fucking problem.

And the lady who actually likes me in the home schooling group is telling me she might stop coming. (btw Lisa–don’t bloody tell anyone about the shit I write here.) That makes my throat close with fear. I wish the universe would stop fucking kicking me.

I feel like I must not be fit for human companionship. Otherwise I wouldn’t manage to drive people away so effectively. No one seems to be able to bear very much of me. They only want small pieces.

I had a hard time at the convention for a variety of reasons. I couldn’t be the performative whore. I am not hunting. I am trying to actively discourage people. I had to turn down multiple requests to play (which shocked the fuck out of me–that is not usual) which is kind of awkward. “Sorry but you don’t get to beat me in pay back for me beating on your (wasn’t then) wife many years ago.” Awww. Sad face. But but… I would look so cute bruised.

Yeah. A lot of people have thought that. A lot of people have wanted me to be in pain.

I feel like I am drowning. A nice bus to the head sounds really good right now. And close by. I think the best part of suicide is you don’t have to deal with the consequences of your actions.

I know someone who jumped in front of a train and survived. He lost the bottom part of a leg. He went on to become a minister. I fucked him in the dorm building of his seminary school. He was one of the most brutal people I have ever had sex with. He had an incredibly strong upper body (duh–he had to walk with crutches most of the time and he was a big man) and he really wanted to bruise me.

I was lying on the bed on my side. I was trying to look tempting. He mocked me and asked if I was playing my whore game. I kind of sputtered. Then he slapped his hands down on my side just below my armpit and my upper thigh really hard and picked me up and threw me against the wall.

I lay there and convulsed until he started hitting me again. He really liked slapping my face.

I chanted in my head, “I’m supposed to like this. I’m supposed to like this.”

After a few minutes of alternating between slapping my face and my breasts and my thighs and my belly he spread my legs open. He started hitting my cunt.

I didn’t really keep track of how long that went on but I just about levitated off the bed. It fucking hurt.

Then he put a condom on. Then he picked me up by the hips and flipped me over to my front. He yanked me up onto my knees and he entered me from behind.

It hurt. I wasn’t particularly well lubricated and condoms tear me internally during the best of times. Legacy of a network of scars that line my vagina. I was raped a little too much a little too early. I’ve seen the scars. A gynecologist used a clear speculum and a light and a mirror to show me why sex hurt me so much when I was 22.

I always thought it was just supposed to feel that way.

Being at the con this weekend was hard in a variety of ways. When I think about the things I have done I feel a wide variety of emotions. I don’t know what my core values are. I don’t know what I am most proud of beyond my children. I feel dead inside. I feel like I am nothing. I have nothing to give. I am a bottomless pit of need and that will always be just my problem. I don’t live in West Africa. We don’t consider stupid bitches like me community problems. (Errr–note to new readers: I participated in a grief ritual facilitated by a West African woman who talked about her tribe. It was a life changing experience. Sobonfu Somé is the name of the woman who presented and if you ever get a chance to work with her do it.)

My community is only interested in me if I want to dress like a whore and be beaten so they can watch and beat off. Or at the very least pawn off my kids on babysitters multiple nights of the week so I can “go out and have fun”. No.

I’m not interesting as myself. I have to play their games. I’m busy. I think my children deserve this span of time. They won’t be with me forever. In the long run, this is absolutely worth the sacrifices.

I hope. I pray to a God I would like to spit on. I think I am kind of officially “agnostic” at this point. I am trying to hope that science is right. Otherwise there is some all knowing “benevolent” person who wants me to suffer a really lot.

See Noah–I’m not just crying because of you.

I keep trying to tell myself that mental illness is a liar. This will pass. I will not always feel this way. I objectively know that I have non-depressed periods. It has been a bad three years.

I’m tired of being lied to. I’m tired of feeling abandoned and unwanted. I’m tired of people telling me how bad I am. I’m tired of being afraid of the next lie. How am I going to be hurt next? I HAVE GOOD FUCKING REASONS FOR BEING PARANOID. GIVE ME A GOD DAMN BREAK. But I hear I need to get over it anyway.

I think the stress is going to eat me alive. There isn’t much of my body that doesn’t hurt.

Noah is about to go through open enrollment at work. Our insurance is probably going to change again. I will probably not see a doctor before that happens.

I don’t think it is serious. But it feels like something pulsing. Like a piece of intestine got stuck between the abdominal muscles when they healed after the pregnancy. It’s a very dull ache. If it was sharp and piercing I would go see a doctor immediately. I tell myself that it could be referred pain. It’s nothing. I’m fine. I’m just a hypochondriac–just like my mama always (and I mean fucking always) said.

I have all the old goodies playing tonight. I hate my mother and I miss my mom so bad I feel like the top of my head is going to explode with pain. I have a blinding headache. I’ve been crying for a long time really hard. I’m probably getting dehydrated. And it’s not like I’m sleeping when I should be sleeping. And I’ve been sleep deprived for years.

Did I mention that the kids are going through a boundary testing phase and it is hard to not scream at them all day every day? I am not doing so. I’m not entirely sure that letting them watch the ipad for many hours a day is a great solution either. I don’t have a better one.

It was really weird being at the con. It’s really weird thinking about the things I have done. I don’t think I regret any of it. I learned from it. I learned what I specifically needed to learn from it.
Today I saw people I have beaten and tied up. People (male, female, other) I have had sex with.

It is so completely removed from my life now. I have done stage performances of bdsm with some of the people I saw this weekend. I didn’t see many classes. I have had contact with the presenters of all of the ones I did see for a decade or so.

In the class on erotic humiliation the presenter asked the audience to insult her core values (her Japanese-Americaness, her worthiness of being loved, her desirability, and her intelligence) in a sentence. After I listened to the audience fumble and lamely half-ass it for a few minutes I yelled, “Who would ever want an ugly, stupid, worthless Chink like you.” Her head whipped over. She told me to stand up and yell it louder. I made my voice get mean. I said it again.

Then I sat down really fast and my face was read and my heart was pounding and I was out of breath. She and I communicated about how much saying that affected me. She talked about how it effected the other people in the audience. Fucking awkward. (She was thrilled. That was exactly what she was fishing for.)

Do I still want to be this person?

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One of the weird things about not having a scale is I can see that my body is changing, but I'm not entirely sure how or in what ways. I'm not tracking any of it. I now have a weird hollowed out section right under my ribs. My "apron" (the leftover pregnancy skin) is a lot smaller than it was–but I don't have much data. My measurements aren't changing. I track those because I want Noah to buy me clothes so I write my current measurements on the white board in our room.

Actually my waist is an inch bigger than it was. Nothing else has changed. But that hollowed out section is different looking. Bodies are odd.

trauma in the body

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I’m not always particularly humble. Yesterday I was reading a book my therapist gave me The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment. It has been on my to-read list for a while but I haven’t spent money on books in a bit. Sometimes when I read books I think, “God damn I am a lot smarter than I thought.”

Specifically the author was writing about the introduction of the idea of short term/long term memory. It came into understanding in the 1980’s and wasn’t widely accepted until 1994. I clearly remember explaining my dog bite using this language when I was about six, so 1987.

Someone asked me if I could remember the dog bite and I said, “No–when you get that kind of scared, so scared that you think you will die then you stop being able to remember because your long-term memory isn’t working right then.” I remember that the person looked at me like I was crazy but didn’t say anything–I was just some kid. I was completely right.

Reading this book feels like independent verification of the things I have been variously researching on my own. I’m appreciating what she has to say. I would give almost anything to get a brain scan of my hippocampus. I would really like to know what size it is. I would be very curious what my body’s ability to produce cortisol looks like.

Page 7: “Somatic disturbance is at the core of PTSD. People who suffer from it are plagued with many of the same frightening body symptoms that are characteristic of ANS (autonomic nervous system) hyperarousal experienced during a traumatic incident: accelerated heart rate, cold sweating, rapid breathing, heart palpitations, hypervigilance, and hyperstartle response (jumpiness). When chronic, these symptoms lead to sleep disturbances, loss of appetite [side note–the anniversary of my father’s death has caused such anxiety that I don’t eat for a month and lose about ten pounds every October], sexual dysfunction, and difficulties in concentrating, which are further hallmarks of PTSD. DSM-IV acknowledges that symptoms of PTSD can be incited by external as well as internal reminders of traumatic event, cautioning us that somatic symptoms, alone, can trigger a PTSD reaction. PTSD can be a very vicious circle.”

Yup. That’s me. That’s what I am just supposed to “get over”. If you startle me I am very likely to jump multiple feet away and scream at the same time. it has always been true. People like to fuck with me because they think it is funny that I get so scared.

Randomly: I have often wondered if some of the people in my life do not in fact have ADD, ADHD but if instead they have PTSD and they just don’t deal with it properly. It’s interesting how many “adult ADD sufferers” often talk about similar symptoms to me. I don’t have ADD. My attention abilities are freakish. Except when I’m having panic issues.

This book also neatly explains triggers and why I don’t want people to care about my triggers. There are two “kinds” of memory: implicit and explicit. Implicit is for things like riding a bike and driving a car. You just have to learn the muscle memory. Explicit memory is for things like following a recipe. There is a very specific list of things to remember in order.

Pavlov trained his dog to salivate at the sound of a bell–a conditioned response (CS). If someone is raped by a person wearing a red shirt and then later (irrationally, but that is how CS works) red shirts may be frightening. It being frightening would be a “trigger”. It triggered your bodies instinctive memory of what happened to you.

I can’t expect everyone in the world to stop wearing red shirts. She (Babette Rothschild is her name, by the way) explained that you can get secondary conditioned responses as well. If you go out in public and have a panic attack while walking past a shelf of red fabric because it reminds of the shirt… that’s starting to migrate out. She theorizes that these kinds of progressions are how many people end up agoraphobic. You have more and more negative responses to going out that are further and further removed from the trauma. I agree with that.

It’s not like I actually worry about being thrown out of the homeschooling group. I simply have a lot of overlapping and layered triggers that cause me to be afraid when I am there. Some days being there is too hard because my body is overwhelmed by being scared.

When I use the spoon theory this is how I use it for me. Not every day but certainly many days I decide whether or not I can handle the stress of working in the front yard where I will have to deal with talking to people who walk by. That’s pretty limited. I feel ashamed of myself but I have to manage it.

When I was a child I would stop going to school when the stress got too bad. It didn’t matter if I missed a few weeks. A few weeks meaning up to three months. We would always be moving soon and I would just start over again in a new place and it doesn’t matter that I’ve been hiding in my house for two straight months because I can’t interact with other people without crying. This has simply always been my life. When I dated Tom I had long periods where I left the house to go to the grocery store and school and other than that I didn’t leave the house without him. Noah doesn’t want to do the same kind of role. This is complicated.

It is probably “for the best” that Noah doesn’t want to continue to support my bad but semi-functional coping method. I have to develop new ones now. I’m not doing very well. This too shall pass.

I’m ready for a different brain cycle.

I think this is normal, but I pretty much always have a soundtrack to my life playing in my head. I was talking to Noah last night while brushing my teeth. I was looking at myself in the mirror and I started hearing the song from RENT “Will I“. On one hand I feel like a co-opting piece of shit. I don’t have HIV/AIDS. I am not going to die from a wasting disease.

I do worry about losing my dignity. I feel like my link to the world is tenuous at best. I worry about not being able to be calm enough to be treated like a human being. I worry about being treated like an animal again. I do not enjoy being treated like an out-of-control wild animal. Sometimes I feel like I would do anything, trade anything for a chance at having a body that reacted normally to the world. I want to stop feeling so afraid that I need to fight for my life.

I don’t want people to “learn my triggers” and avoid them. I want to not have them. I feel like most people say, “you triggered me” and mean “you made me feel bad/anxious therefore you are bad”. No, that’s not what triggers mean. I go through the world terrified because I have so many specific references to traumatic life experiences. I would like to have fewer. I really would.

I’m working on it..

On the tmi front.

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I have always had a highly irregular period. My cycles have varied between three weeks and three months and everything in between.

During marathon training my cycles settled into being 36/37 days long. That is unusually predictable for me and I was happy about it.

Then today I broke that patten. I started bleeding on day 29. That’s within a day of the dreaded normal cycle. Oh no. That would be kind of weird. And hilarious. And bad timing for Godmamam weekends.

Shrink your world

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One of the problems with living your life through the internet is there is this constant reminder that there is someone awesome in the world… only you don’t get to see them. They are far away. Sometimes they feel “only” thirty-five miles away. In the bay area that’s no big deal for dinner.

But all of this travel has a cost. The cost isn’t as obvious as it used to be. One upon a time thirty-five miles was probably multiple days of travel. Now… why are you being so lazy? Why don’t you join a group that has a one hour meeting once a week forty miles away from your house. I go to therapy in Oakland because I can’t find a compatible therapist closer. I spend four and a half hours and $10.50 on the trip. That’s a cost.

Life is about a series of choices. You can deny that you are making them and whine about the results but you can’t change the fact that it is happening. Most of the time people do nothing. They watch tv or play a video game or whine on mothering.com. Not a one is more moral than any other. What would people do if they were doing? How would they live if they didn’t center their lives around “making money”? The vast majority of software that gets written is thrown away without being used. The vast majority of my work is thrown away. Laundry and dishes are eternal. They are just life. Everyone must deal with them. They take so much time.

What do we do when we go do something? Do we go watch a movie? Do we build something? Do we go somewhere interesting? What is interesting about it? Why is it interesting? Everyone has a set of decisions they make that satisfy their priorities.

I spend a lot of time at home. More than anything I want my home to be beautiful. It is kind of becoming the thing I care about. I don’t care about cars. I don’t care about my clothes overmuch. I still wear clothes I bought when I was fourteen. (polyester cotton blend dress–I may have it till I am fifty–it fits from 135 lbs to 205 lbs miraculously) I’m not going to focus much on fashion.

I can’t control Noah and I can’t control my kids and I can’t control very much of how my life goes over the next few years. I have made long-term choices that require frugal living. No whining.

I want my house to be pretty. I want to feel proud of it. This is going to be an interesting journey. I’m going to have to learn how to do most of this by myself. When the kids get older they will probably help but I can’t reliably count on anyone else. I don’t know how much money I will have for these projects. All signs point to less than $100/month. I love freecycle like nobodies business. I feel guilty sometimes because I kind of feel like I am stealing from genuine poor people. I am making the choice to not spend money and someone else may not have a choice. I don’t feel like I should let that worry cause me to sit in a depressive rut in my house. If the only way I can get stuff is freecycle, I have as much right as anyone else to ask. Sometimes I win; sometimes I don’t.

I crossed two things off my to do list today. I finally got the van maintenance done (I’ve been putting it off for over a month) and I signed the kids back up for swim class. They have their own section of the budget so they get to do activities. I don’t feel like it is reasonable to throw them into a life of poverty in favor of some someday when things will happen. Their lives will be better if they know how to swim. I’m not signing them up for fifteen classes, but we’ll manage some things. I think that is fair.

My neighbor is pressuring me to put Shanna into a private (religious) school with her son next year. Hell no with a side of biscuits. Shanna keeps asking about kindergarden. I may sign her up for the online charter just to shut her up. I feel like my mantra in life right now is “We’ll see”. Whenever the kids ask me when something is happening or if something is happening I say, “I don’t know! We’ll see…” like a tv announcer. This would be more effective if they had ever heard/seen this schtick before. I think it is hilarious that when they see pop culture they will think it is imitating me long before they know I didn’t make this stuff up. I really like being cool.

The biggest limitation is how much work can I do while still being nice. Gosh it varies. But if I do manage to get a lot done I am more likely to feel good about myself than in any other set of variables. Of course.

I’m obsessively thinking about money. Some time in the next month I’m going to lay out the year, talk about my problem areas and why I’m being stupid in the ways I’m being stupid (cause we go for the honesty here). Sometimes I’m stupid. Unfortunately my family has to live with that. And I’m the kind of freak who is going to explain to the internet how so and why. For no reason beyond I want to. Then I stop freaking out about it. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s better than most of my traditional ones. Just go with me here.

And I want to write out why I have the attitude I do about Christmas. I have been feeling really weird about writing lately. I’m not making any progress. I’m not able to work on editing. It’s too god damn depressing. I think I need to explore some non-typing, spoken word technology for the next book. I’m kind of worried about my arms. Luckily I have friends to ask about this.

I need to go get ready for a tea party. We invited the nice waitress from the local breakfast restaurant. She often brings small gifts for my daughters and we have gotten to know one another over a period of about six years. I’m scared. I want her to like me. I will be crushed if she decides I am bad. I’ll keep my mouth shut and the door to the bedroom with the pornographic pictures closed. No actually I don’t care if my kids see them. One is a really gorgeous artistic shot done by a friend of mine and the others are all me naked while pregnant. So not “pornographic” but people have expressed shock. Bite me. I think they are cool.

I need to stop wasting time. But I don’t want to work. Of course not, Krissy–you are depressed. Never the less the work waits. Here I sit. Yup, still here. Suck.

stop wasting your life

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Recently I got an anonymous comment on the post My Father Raped Me:

“I don’t think you’re disgusting. So you masturbate while thinking about getting raped, so what? I masturbate to the exact same kind of stuff, and I know I’m not disgusting. Human sexuality is nutbar. Might as well stop fretting and embrace it. You’re just wasting your life with all this moaning and groaning. Get out there and live, goddamn it!”

I read these things and think, “OH MAN. WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT YEARS AGO?!?!?!!!111”

And then I get up and I get dressed and I leave the house and I do something stupid or someone says something minor to me and I have a panic attack and I run back home and I don’t leave the house for a week or three. Unless we need food. I have a minimal level of functioning I manage. We can walk to a farmers market and to multiple small food markets (yay ethnic food) so we can get by within the limits of my cope.

You see, in order to drive I have to be sober. So all my functioning out in the world right that involves driving has to be without the anxiety medication that makes me functional. We walk miles and miles. I think Shanna walks at least ten miles a week and many weeks more than that if they successfully pressure me to go out. Calli is in a transitional stage where she literally can’t keep up with Shanna but she wants to and resents almost everything we do to manage it. She hates the Ergo. She only wants to be carried in arms. I’ve been a stupid typist for a decade–my arms go numb in a minute or two and that’s not particularly safe. We are in a fussy period. I recognize that other people would push a stroller but I quite frankly feel resentful as fuck about doing it so I don’t. We manage what we can manage. Sometimes there is crying because Calli is so fucking pissed that she can’t physically do what Shanna can do.

It’s funny when I’m not listening to the screaming.

When I am stoned and Calli gets to this point in frustration/exhaustion/rage I will force her kicking and screaming into the carrier (I’ve got mad skillz) then I walk along with my hands stroking her legs and her back and her behind and I talk to her about frustration. I tell her that she is strong for walking as far as she did. There is no shame in needing help–that’s why you have a mommy. Mommy’s help their kids. I comfort her while she cries and I calmly in a near whisper ask if she can please lower her voice a little because my head is really hurting.

When I am sober I shake and clench my teeth and have trouble not exploding with rage of my own because most of the time screaming triggers horrible headaches and I would cheerfully like to shove my head through the nearest car windshield just to get the fuck away from that noise.

It’s like being two different people.

One is able to be compassionate. One is already hurting too much.

My problems are not because of what I think about while masturbating. My problems are because my brain was damaged by long term severe neglect and child abuse. Telling me to stop moaning and groaning is pretty dismissive.

A long time ago I explained to a therapist (I can’t remember who or when) that I manage my symptoms through stress management. I have fine tuned what I can handle and if I go over what I can handle then I have problems because all of my coping methods are bad.

That is still mostly true. Being a mother has not worked out like I thought it would. I can’t financially afford to do as much as I would kind of like to do. Life is just like that. I get to do a fantastic amount compared to most people. I don’t complain about the fact that my life has limits.

The deer jumping on the car is going to be kind of hard to absorb financially. I’m going to have to make a lot of choices not to go anywhere just because I can’t pay for gas. The van is really expensive to drive. Going to the homeschool park days is approximately $12 in gas for every trip. That’s a toll that adds up. Given that Noah had to drive the van for two weeks our gas budget was more than twice what it usually is during that period. I have to absorb that. The only way to do so is to cut back on my driving.

It’s going to be kind of lonely but I expect the kids and I will get a lot of exercise and the house will be decorated. We will do a bunch of projects.

Ack. breakfast.

Tried something different.

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“Do you know why I usually don’t touch you when I cry?”
“No. Why?”
“Because my mom used to hit me when I cried.”

Last night I cried on Noah’s chest. I’m not 100% sure but I’m pretty sure that you can count how many times I have done that on one hand with fingers left over. We have been married for six years. I cry nearly every day. Often for many hours. I cry alone.

“No one wants to see that Kristine. No one wants to hear it either. Didn’t I tell you to shut up? Fine. I’ll give you something to cry about.”

The fact that I was raped over and over wasn’t good enough. The fact that people chased me home from school throwing rocks at me wasn’t good enough. The fact that I moved constantly and didn’t have friends or toys I could trust owning wasn’t good enough. The fact that I usually didn’t know if we would have a place to live next week or if we would be homeless wasn’t good enough either.

I cry alone. Often (though not always anymore–I kind of glory in being able to make noise when I cry now) I cry completely silently. Even my breathe barely raises in volume. I shared a bed with my mother till I was sixteen. I know how to have tears run down my face and slowly control the sobbing with breath so that I don’t get hit again. Mostly I just prefer to be alone in a room.

I was always told that I wasn’t allowed to cry unless I was hit–that’s the only good reason. Sometimes I wonder if I found the bdsm scene because I knew I needed to cry and I’m just not allowed to cry without being hit.

When other people think of “bdsm” I’m not sure what they think. I think there isn’t a lot of point if someone isn’t crying. A lot. Mostly uncontrollably. As a top I am ridiculously sadistic. Don’t play with me unless what you want from today is to end up curled in the fetal position on the floor sobbing your heart out. That is what I have in me to give. I prefer when my play partners nearly kill me. I want them to hurt me terribly and risk my life. I know I am not important. I know that very sick people exist in the world. I hope that if I can give them a cheap thrill they won’t hurt someone important.

When Noah raised his hand to stroke my face I flinched.

I was kind of randomly curious tonight so I looked it up. I’m pretty sure that I qualify for SSI for disability due to PTSD. If I had to hold down a job right now my life would be pretty nightmarish. I have continual flashbacks. I have a lot of panic attacks. I barely leave my house. I have to talk myself into believing there are “safe” people on the other side who don’t hate me before I manage. Going to the grocery store is hard. I understand that it is for most parents. But when other peoples kids misbehave in public they don’t crumple to the floor crying because it seems so overwhelming to deal with. I feel like a very pathetic person.

In order to figure out how to talk to my kids I sat around reading Jane Austen books. That is the language Shanna learned. That is why she is so excessively polite. I model it all the time. I made sure that for the first few years of her life she rarely heard anyone but me talk and I modeled extreme manners constantly.

I am trying to figure out how to shape the voices in my children’s head. I know I don’t control who they become. But I *do* control the messages they get about themselves right now.

My children believe manners are not optional and the world will crash to a halt with horror if you are rude. So they don’t do it. Except for the one big exception. “If anyone is ever touching any part of your body in a way you don’t like you need to ask them politely to stop once. If they continue, hit them. Scream. Run away. You are allowed to defend you.”Shanna is extremely aware that her vulva is a private space and that no one should touch it until she is full grown and has asked them politely to touch her there. I told her the “whys and whens” around sex are conversations we will probably have in more like ten years. She tried to ask for more information. I said, “At four all you need to know is no one can touch you there. You won’t be grown up for a very long time.” She’s ok with that for now.

It was weird to cry on Noah. I felt really bad about getting him all wet. The snot flows like a river. Mmmm sexy.

One of the things that is hardest for me about being rich is how isolating it is. I feel like I have gotten to know my neighbors to an unusual degree. They are certainly all shocked that I am attempting to do so. My experience of poverty (I understand that my life is not universal and I do not have the “universal poverty experience”) was that people had a lot more time on their hands. There was a lot of time to kill and no one had any money. People had to either fall into a depressive rut in order to survive or they had to get creative.

I am very creative. Unfortunately I hate working alone and I am really struggling with the period of time when my kids are no help and instead a bunch of extra work. I’m willing to bet that in two or three years Shanna will be able to do most of the things I like to do. She helps a little now.

I like building things. I like having a concrete change on the world. I often get very frustrated with myself because I am a perfectionist and I get little practice to practice so I’m not improving at skills at the rate I want to.

Noah not wanting to build with me is hard. He doesn’t want to do any kind of physical labor on the property. I feel like I am having to drag him kicking and screaming (by the god damn hair) towards the idea of doing any help with homeschooling beyond teaching programming. It is feeling very invalidating of the “us” label.

I feel like I subsumed who I was into my family. My life, my time, my work are all spent on things that directly benefit people in my family other than me. It feels like. Because I am self-serving like everyone else and I enjoy lying to myself.

I do home improvement stuff and I cook and I clean.

It is kind of funny because I feel a little competitive because many of my friends have kids in the same age range. Shanna is behind most of the kids we know academically. (I am tracking various kids in my head. It’s interesting.) On one hand I feel like this means I am failing as a homeschooling parent. On the other hand I have the belief that early academic instruction is a bad idea. I am making a conscious decision. It still feels weird that all my friends kids knew their ABCs faster, can count earlier and higher. Blah.

I believe, because research tells me so, that early introduction of these concepts does not improve IQ or overall achievement down the line. I still feel kind of weirdly insecure about my kid and what I am doing. I don’t exactly think my friends are drilling their kids. Why are they picking things up so much faster? I have no idea. But I feel insecure. That is one of the many things I am just going to have to live with being insecure about. I made a decision based on sound principles I still believe.

What I specifically miss about having community was there were always two or three women in the kitchen talking. I thought that was what the future looked like. I’m very sad because my life won’t look like that for another fifteen years. And then they may very well want to go off into the world and spread their wings. I may do all of these years hoping for that and not get it. I have to be ok with it. I can’t spend my life wishing for that. I would be doing something inappropriate. It’s so hard to know that I can never hope for that. I tried to have that with Sarah. She hid from my anger in her room. I don’t blame her.

I don’t share my anger with my children. I share it with the adults in my life. I’m afraid that if I have hopes for what they will do as adults I will get very angry with them for disappointing me. Talk about poisoning the well. I try very hard to not have expectations of them beyond how they are treating me right now. I treat them how I want them to treat me and by and large it works out. When they are having a bad day and they freak out and cry a lot I comfort them even though my head hurts so much I start to cry too. I rock with them. I tell them it is ok to cry.

I tell my kids over and over, “When you feel sad you are allowed to cry.” I will be their inside voice whether they are with me or not. I want them to believe it is ok to exist. I don’t want them to feel like me.

I tell them it is ok to be frustrated. It’s not ok to shout at people. Let’s figure it out. And mostly we do.

I feel like oozing toxic waste. I feel like poison. I am so sad and so angry. I miss my mom. Isn’t that crazy? Shouldn’t I just be glad to be away from her? But she’s my mommy. I ache for her so bad I feel like I can’t breathe. I feel like my organs want to go into failure. I want my mommy. I have been crying for my mother my entire life. Even when I had her I didn’t have her. My mother didn’t take care of me. My mother damaged me.

My mother told me I wasn’t allowed to be angry when I was raped. She told me I wasn’t allowed to yell or scream or cry. I have made my bed and now I have to lie in it. Silently. While men do whatever they want. And I still miss her. Sometimes that feels like the most fucked up part.

I am sad about not having a father. I do not miss James Archer. I didn’t know him. I don’t even remember what he looks like. That part makes me sad. Sometimes I think of writing Jimmy a letter and asking for a picture. I don’t know if he would send me one. I feel very sad about not being allowed to know what my father looks like. My mother gave Jimmy all the pictures of him many years ago. When I was still a child. I don’t even know if he kept them.

I don’t miss my sister. I think a wall came up when I found out about her forcing my niece to give my nephew a blow job. She became the living enemy. Being in a room with her and not spitting in her face is tantamount to supporting her behavior. No thank you. I think she is a piece of shit I stepped on.

I wish I felt like people loved me. I wish I could feel loved. I think part of the reason I cried on Noah last night was because I wanted to feel like he loved me. I didn’t feel that way. I feel dead inside. I feel like I went on an extended vacation to Chernobyl and my insides are radioactive and not quite functioning right.

I feel hollow and empty. I feel already dead. I feel like the cessation of breathing is a mere formality.

I have been here before. I know that how I feel right now is not how I feel all the time. I am dimly aware of that. I did have the chutzpah to up and get married. I felt loved. But mental illness is a liar.

When I was in the teaching credential they told us that a child has to hear ten positive things to cancel out everything negative said to them about themself.

When I think about what my mother said to me I cry. My inside voice is strong and loud and dominating. Shut up Kristine. No one cares, Kristine. Shut up.

I’m very ready for this cycle to change.

More about privilege

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I’ve been reading about privilege all day. Mostly because a friend posted that he thinks the word “privilege” should be added to Godwin’s law. If you mention privilege in an argument you automatically lose. Of course my friend who thinks this is a white male.

I have specifically spent a bunch of time reading rants from (self-identified) straight white men and their anger about the word. It is uhm educational. Near as I can tell most of the anger about the term comes from, “But I’ve had hard things happen in my life so how dare you act like I have had things easy.” I see a lot of people saying that privilege may or may not be relevant in population discussions but it is entirely irrelevant on a personal level. Everyone has so many factors involved that they cancel each other out.

I am white. I have benefited from white privilege. I got to leave my ghetto ass school in the projects in LA and come up to Los Gatos to benefit from a really quality education. There were about six black kids in Los Gatos High School. They all had to be exemplary examples of their race. They were all athletes and had high GPAs and *still* when one walked into the Togo’s where I worked the people behind the counter would say, “Oh shit. Lock the cash register.”

When I was five years old I was attacked by a pit bull and had half my face ripped off. I had excellent legal coverage because my best friend’s father was a lawyer. Because my best friend at the time has rejected me since I wrote the book I no longer feel bad about saying it was Brittney’s dad who sent me the cease and desist letter. The lawyer who protected me when I was five? He was quite happy to threaten me legally now. And given what I know about him I would bet you thousands of dollars that he wouldn’t have allowed Brittney to be my friend if I hadn’t been white. I wouldn’t have had that expert legal counsel. I wouldn’t have had the settlement that set me up for life.

I could go on and on. I could list the things that have been better for me because I am a woman. There have been many times when I was basically spared because I was a girl.

Like when I was fifteen and I stole my mom’s car? I didn’t have a drivers license (or an appropriate licensed driver in the car). I sobbed that I was on the honor roll at Los Gatos High School and had never been in trouble so he called my mom and let her pick me up. You want to guess how likely that would have been if I was a black fifteen year old boy? Or a Mexican boy?

I feel ashamed of the ways in which I have been accommodated yet other people are harmed. There is nothing I can do about it. It just happens.

I can list off ways in which I am privileged. I could keep going for as long as the kids will let me type but that seems kind of pointless.

I don’t actually think that my privilege makes me a good or a bad person. It is pretty value neutral. Whether I am good or bad is not about whether or not I have this privilege. You can be a good person and have privilege. You can be a good person and have very little privilege. They are completely irrelevant scales.

For me the reason that privilege is an important concept to talk about is because we are all locked into our own personal experience of the world. Can we all agree that mine was unusually hell-ish? Yes? Ok, good. Is it right that I get to go out and make decisions about how white men are treated? No. It’s a good thing I can’t. Because I am ridiculously biased. I am very prejudiced. I would not be a good person if I was put in the position of having to treat large groups of adults fairly. For some reason I don’t have a problem with kids. I had a few Mexican kids try to tell me that I was racist when I was teaching but when I made it clear that I hated everyone they backed off.

I don’t think I am perfect. I often doubt if I am even good. What I want is a world where people who have benefited from a lot of privilege (like me) go through their lives actively working to counter the effects of privilege on other people. Does that mean you should work every minute of every day on making your own life shittier (if you are white) because you believe it somehow evens the score?

Why did this become a race to the bottom? Why is this an argument about “You have this tiny advantage I don’t have so I am going to hate you.”

I have a hard time with the concept of white men (something that some of my white male friends express anger with me because I mention) but when you look at my life I am continually learning from white men. They hold most of the keys to the kingdom. When I want to learn about things I usually end up visiting a white guy and having to bite holes in my tongue to deal with their condescension as I try to gain the information I am there for. It’s really fucking annoying. (Ok, not every white guy. I’m mad at two people.)

I don’t feel that privilege conversations should be about shoving white men away from privilege. But I do think that more computer geeks should find ways of volunteering their time.

If you genuinely believe that you do not benefit from “privilege” but you are a white collar professional–why couldn’t you help tutor underprivileged kids? Why can’t you help them in the ways their parents literally can’t? It’s too many hoops? It’s not convenient enough? What’s in it for you?

I feel like post-marathon I have crashed into one of the worst depressions of my adult life. I’m having a very hard time moving from the position on the floor where I have been sitting for a while. I am not sleeping much at all because I cry all night long.

I know that at this point in my life I have almost nothing to give anyone. I am technically taking care of my kids–they are fed, supervised, read to, bathed, taken to educational opportunities… but I’m flailing. A lot of what is crushing me is the lack of community in my life. It isn’t that I have no one who is ready or able to help me–that isn’t true. I have pinch hitters. What I don’t have is community.

A good friend started up a canning group. A whole bunch of people I know through various other communities (people I’ve known for more than a decade longer than I’ve known her) are all joining. Apparently there has been this underground group of people doing this and I had no idea. I think it is wonderful that it exists. I don’t go to their meetings because no one ever showed me how to do canning. I’ve basically figured it out from the internet (I hope) but I don’t do a lot of it and I definitely don’t do so much of it that I have a bunch to give away.

There is this wonderful community forming. Of women I like and know and enjoy their company. I have spent hours and hours crying because it feels like one more group that is only for people who had functional lives and learned skills in the normal ways.

I learned how to be a whore. It’s not very useful these days.

I have unimaginable privilege compared to what I experienced as a child. Other people still have privileges I don’t have. Does that make them bad? No. But I bloody hope they recognize that they have different skills and opportunities. I hope they don’t dismiss me and talk about me being unwilling to work just because I have not succeeded in the same ways they have. I have worked very hard at the things I have accomplished.

Unfortunately not-dying isn’t something for which they give you medals.

When I talk to my male friends about privilege I am trying to beg for the right to be as important as they are. “See, look at all these things that happened in your life to make you have a much safer and in many ways better life than me. Is your life always better? No. But let’s look at the handouts you have and the handouts I have.”

I suppose that the important part is–what do you do about privilege? Well… when I told my friend that many of my female friends were no longer willing to be in a room with him because they find him so offensive his response was, “What is their problem? I’m not sexist.” He can even find one woman to back him up so he’s golden. He’s not sexist. That’s the end of the conversation. The fact that he treats women like servants… irrelevant. The fact that he is rude and domineering in conversations… not relevant. I have watched (the two friends in particular I am mad at) basically shout down a room full of women who were trying to have a private conversation. They thought the women were wrong and they had to tell them so. Over and over. Loudly.

If you are walking into a legacy professorship because of ties you have from when you were a teenager through your parents (who are also professors) you benefit from privilege. Stop telling me about how you work harder than anyone else. You will let your house become so disgusting that if I turned you into county health you would be sanctioned. Because you don’t believe you should ever have to do “work” when you aren’t being paid for it. That’s for losers like those chicks you bang.

But there’s no privilege here.

What do I think white men can do to deal with the fact that they have privilege? Well, for one thing you being offended is not actually a capitol case. I’m offended all the god damn time. Welcome to the internet. Something being less favorable to white men above all others is not reverse racism.

Individuals can suffer while the larger system favors their class. It happens all the time. Just because an individual isn’t getting the absolute limit of benefit from his/her privilege that doesn’t mean that they have none. I wish that people would stop denying that they have had advantages in life. Seriously. Be honest with yourself. What things have you had handed to you that you shouldn’t have been? Where were you lucky?

And then next time you want to pass judgment on someone for not doing the same things as you or for not being in the same place as you–maybe wait a bit.

Technically right now “I” qualify as being in the top 5% of the country based on tax returns. My husband provides well. That is a privilege I god damn didn’t earn. Am I a better person than anyone else? Hell no. I vote constantly for higher taxes and more entitlement programs despite the fact that I think Welfare is inherently broken and should be entirely redesigned. I’m aware that my intellectual issues with it are not very important in the face of all the real-live-people who would suffer and maybe die if I was more selfish.

I tell Shanna (and I suppose Calli though I lecture her less at this point) constantly that with great privilege comes great responsibility. I suppose I feel White Man’s Burden. I have had things handed to me. I have had things easier than other people–what do I do with that? If I spend the rest of my life hiding in my house because my life has been so terrible–oh poor me–then I have failed. I have failed at being a good person. I have ridiculous privilege. What am I going to do with it?

I wish that my male friends felt more of the challenge to be better than spurred to be worse when they think about their lives in comparison to other people. I wish it wasn’t, “I’m going to step on their head so they can’t compete with me.” We will rise or fall as a society together.

I want to rise. So when I notice my privilege I try like fuck to share. Because I didn’t earn it. It’s just there. And I bear a lot of responsibility because it is there. I wish I knew what that meant.

Don’t ask me questions if you don’t want the answer.

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You asked me what I am thinking.
I don’t know how to answer.
I don’t know how to tell you what I am thinking.
I am thinking about death.
I am thinking about status and privilege.
I am thinking about how I am a whiny bitch.
I am thinking about how hard it is that I have to fuck you in order to get cuddling.
I am thinking about how frustrating it is that I can no longer disassociate away from my cunt hurting like this.

I’m thinking about how sad I feel that when I talk about privilege my white male friends think I am saying their experience and life doesn’t matter. The fact that I have quietly sat and listened to them for many many many years before standing up and saying that they have to listen to me too–oh well. I am being unreasonable.

Sometimes it feels like I am supposed to stop existing so they can have all the space there is. They will certainly shout me down to take up all the speaking space. But I’m imagining things. They’ve never said anything sexist. They are victims just as much as anyone.

We are all victims. But some of us are victims making $100,000/year and some of us are victims making $20,000/year. Not me. I make nothing. But it’s a choice. I could have been making $60,000 right now because I have benefited from a lot of privilege. Not everyone gets to make the choice to be worthless. Most people work as hard as they can and are still told that their efforts are worth very little money. That means nothing. Those people are just lazy. Or stupid. Or something. Just less.

Oh I forgot. You have what you have because you worked harder. You wanted it more. You deserved it more.

I won’t talk about it again. I’m sorry I mentioned that it sucks that you had help that other people don’t get. I’m sorry that I mentioned that it sucks that you had a life I can’t really imagine having.

Yes yes. Being ignored and made fun of is terrible. I know. I had that happen too. In between people chasing me with rocks and sticks. Yes, someone punched you once. I understand that is terrible. I’ve been punched too. It really sucks.

I think that seeing as how I am supposed to only talk when you want me to and only think what you want me to and only fuck when you want me to…

I don’t think I want to be here. I feel stupid. I feel petty. I feel as selfish as I am. I don’t want to be here to continually tell you how awesome you are. I’m tired of being a fan club. I’m tired of being a cheerleader. I’m tired of telling you that you are so awesome and so smart and so worthwhile.

Because I don’t hear you say it back to me unless I badger the shit out of you. And then it’s grudging. After I’ve given you what you want.

I think that if I am stupid enough to pick a life where I am dependent on someone else then I deserve what I get and what I don’t get.

That’s what I’m thinking about.

No one is perfect.

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I’ve been mad at Noah for a bit. That’s hard. When I’m mad at Noah I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t want to rant about him in unfinished ways in public. Everything I put on the internet is here forever. I have to be prepared to live with having said everything I say. It keeps me honest.

Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what I am really mad about. I have to go through multiple layers of pissiness before I get to the bottom of things. I wish I were faster and able to do this process without uhm loudly bitching at him but I am where I am. The best part of being married to someone who is nearly incapable of reading body language and tone of voice is that I get away with sounding like an evil harpy if everything I am saying is true. I have to make god damn sure it is true. No one is fucking quicker to argue with me if I get a god damn detail wrong than Noah.

But sometimes I say true things. Sometimes the things that upset me really should make a person upset. I’m having trouble figuring out how that works.

Right now Noah doesn’t feel very successful or like he is good at life when he is with the kids and I. The three of us are an intense bunch of irrational non-vulcanlike-non-programmer freaks. How in the fuck can he talk to us? Everything that he has spent his life on is uhm weirdly irrelevant to the three of us… only he supports us. It’s kind of weird. As far as the kids are concerned he might as well sit at work and watch youtube all day. That is what computers are for–right? Sometimes when I walk into the garage on his work from home days I certainly wonder.

I feel horrible that I provide so little satisfaction to Noah. Being around me doesn’t seem to provide him with a lot of good feelings. Other than having sex he would rather be working. I know that a lot of it stems from the fact that he feels very pressured to make more money (he has multiple side gigs–he has been making more than $2k/month outside of his dayjob) because uhm… we spend a lot of money. I feel fairly sure that a lot of the spending the kids and I do would change if he was around more. I spend money in order to not sit in the house feeling alone and sad all day. The kids are a weird company/not-company. Uhm and we spend money when things happen like the washing machine flooding my garage and a deer jumping on the car. It’s not like our spending this year has been completely frivolous. And that’s right around $10,000 just with those two things.

I get that Noah feels a lot of pressure. I feel a lot of shame that I am no longer contributing at all to my own maintenance. In order to make money from sale of the book I would hve to a)get the cajones to get into print and then b)do a lot of marketing.

I don’t know about you but I’m having trouble coming up with a marketing angle for “Come read my tale of woe and tragedy. Don’t worry–it has a horrible ending so you can be sure to experience all the angst possible. No I haven’t written part two. You have no idea what happens next beyond, ‘Not dead yet.'” It just doesn’t have zing.

I feel like a burden. I feel like an impediment to success. But Noah wasn’t real motivated towards success until he got married. Not really. He did a lot of coasting.

Yesterday I went down and talk to my neighbor, Ed. We found out recently that Ed is in his 70’s. I would have said early 60’s. He’s an interesting fellow. I talk to him a lot because he spends a lot of time hanging out in his front yard. He likes to talk about his car. I’m not going to tell you about it because I don’t care. What I care about was yesterday I asked him, “How many hours did you work every week when your kids were little?” He said, “Oh I guess it probably came to about 60 hours per week. But there were a lot of weeks when he traveled

and right there is where I have to stop before I beat the shit out of someone. Out of time today. They won’t stop yanking on my arms.

come back later:
I don’t beat the shit out of anyone. I hiss through clenched teeth, “You need to stop touching me for a few minutes.” Then I stand in the corner of the room by myself until I calm down. I wish I didn’t get so angry when they are grabby. God it’s hard.

All signs point to lack of imminent death.

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I suppose some freaks might consider this good. Whatever. 😛

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Every time I stand up my vision goes black. If I clutch something it clears up enough for me to walk around but the edges stay out of focus the whole time I am standing. I may conduct today from the couch.

Please, stop telling me to relax.

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Every so often I will talk to someone New Agey and they ask me how they can be more sensitive of my “triggers”. I laugh and tell them not to worry about it. My triggers are mine. The world can’t be responsible for them.

I don’t know how to tell people that I don’t want them to tell me to relax. Don’t tell me to take a deep breathe. Don’t tell me to breathe into it. My earliest memories of my father involve him whispering into my ear, “Shhhhhhhh. Relax. Breathe into it. If you relax it won’t hurt. If you relax then your face won’t move. Relax. Let it happen. It’s going to happen. If you don’t relax it is going to be much worse for you.”

We we were in a group of people. The details are vague. People were moving nearby and I was practicing how to exhale slowly and carefully without flinching. I remember that I tried to smile at him. I said, “I lalu Daddy.”

“I lalu too, baby. Shhhhhh. Relax. You’re getting tense.”

Sometimes people ask me why I don’t “just forget” what happened. I don’t seem to be capable of denial as a defense mechanism. I feel haunted. I hate that I feel like a victim so much of the time even when nothing bad is happening. I’m just waiting for the next bad thing. It is inevitable. Who is going to hurt me next?

I’m working a lot harder at keeping people at a careful distance when I talk to them. I went to a party last weekend. I did the social chit chat thing without crying. That’s a big victory for this year. I feel pathetic. I feel a lot of other things but I’m not ready to write about any of them.

Sometimes it feels strange to me that I can talk explicitly about sexual abuse that happened when I was a toddler through child but I feel quite squeamish about getting specific about what I feel about anyone I am having ambiguous feelings about. Once I’m on a side of a fence then I spill the beans. I don’t want to dither about people more than I have to. It’s not nice.

I’m trying to figure out what and how that works for me. If I’m afraid of it then I will almost start doing it at some point. I have to wait till the kids move out. They didn’t sign on to that much asinine public shit.

I’m worrying about publicity and disclosure. Which is hilarious because Noah isn’t. Sometimes I think I keep him around because he reminds me a lot that I get to exist. I’m allowed to have opinions. I’m allowed to be an asshole in public. The world won’t end. Sometimes assholes say true things. Not very often. Even assholes can’t be worse than a broken clock.

I don’t actually think I’m much of an asshole online. Once in a while. Now I’m babbling. I don’t want today to start. I’m feeling very low on reserves. Luckily a Complication is coming for tea. I have therapy again tonight. I have a feeling that tonight is going to be the kind of night where I have a lot of trouble not beating my head on concrete.

It takes a lot of pain at this stage of my life to block out the experience of remembering things I don’t want to remember.

The worst part is that people always want to tell me to relax. Breathe into it. I want to fucking puke. I want to put my head through a window. Maybe the glass will be sharp enough to cut his voice out of my brain.

Shanna has been telling me to relax. I can’t explain to her why I sometimes have tears run down my face. I’m trying, Shanna. I’m trying. That is not something my body believes it is safe to do. I don’t say that. I say, “Because I’m so happy that I have someone like you in my life now.”

I think a lot about how the “parent by choice” sets a persons self-perceived value.

About that movie…

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I’m sorry about not mentioning the movie title. The title is Absent. If you do decide to watch it, there is a lot of information in it, skip the last twenty minutes. It turns into an infomercial. Which bugs me. Jesus and their Wildmen Group will fix alllllllll your problems. If you are a man. They were quite clear women are just fucked.

The older I get the more I believe that when people offer me two choices the right path is some yet unnamed third option. In grad school I wrote a very long winded snarky rant about the Robert Frost poem The Road Not Taken because anyone who obsesses that hard about trying to be in the minority is an idiot. No you are not a special fucking snowflake. Sometimes you walk the same god damn road as every one else–get over it. It was like Thoreau writing about self reliance. Mother fucker wouldn’t have survived if the wives in his community had not taken pity on his sorry ass.

I’m tired of hearing men talk about the hard lonely road of manhood. Manhood is not harder than womanhood and I’m angry about that attitude and assumption. I feel angry about the gender essentialists acting like all aggression, all choice, all validation must come from a man. It’s just not true. Studies routinely show that children raised by queer parents turn out “normal” or usually better than expected when compared to their peers.

The documentary had a number of very alarming statistics that show a strong correlation between fatherless households and all kinds of problems. The thing is–some kids come out of single mother households and do very well. Where is the gap? Why do some kids fail and others succeed? Yeah yeah resilience. Blah.

I actually think community involvement is key. It’s why I begged, nearly on my knees, for my friends to pick my kids and make a family for them. So far Marcie and Kitten are the primary people to really seek out a relationship. Shanna will spout off, “I like staying with Marcie and Kitten. I like having two homes with two families to take care of me and love me. I know that if anything bad happens I have people who want me.”

She asked me once why she “had” to go stay with them. She was less sure in the first few months. I told her that most kids are born into large extended families and they are protected if something happens to their parents. Unfortunately my kids don’t get that. We have to make our family. That is why she has to spend time with M&K because they are becoming her family. Your family is made up of the people who show up and love you and care for you. That is what makes family.

Watching this documentary made me feel really bad. I don’t like hearing my attitude and my words coming out of the mouths of a series of sex workers. “I just wanted someone to love me.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that I think I got so fat while I was dating Tom because I felt a constant pressure to look more socially appealing so that I could be a trophy out in public. Fuck you. If you want me to be a skinny trophy then I’m going to get fatter. And fatter. HA. I think that is how I avoided ever becoming a sex worker. If I had been thinner I almost certainly would have done it. I thought about it.

I thought in great detail about how I wouldn’t be able to handle the public humiliation of being a sexual object on the internet. Men are too fucking mean. I would feel bad because I am not the most common idea of pretty. Guys are vicious to women who have the audacity to want to be looked at while being ugly. And I’m not even ugly. I’m just not that gorgeous. They would tear me down. I would never be good enough.

I was just barely smart enough to know I didn’t want that. Specifically I didn’t want to feel like I was never good enough sexually.

When you wander around real life as a pretty-enough slutty girl you hunt with the shot gun method (send out a lot of shells and pray you hit something) and you keep low standards–you never have to feel not-good-enough. There is always someone for whom you are the best god damn thing ever.

Men gain status as they age. Older men have more money, more position, more respect. Women are the opposite. Our value lies in our reproductive-years-tied beauty. We peak at 19 and go downhill fast. By 23 guys were openly snubbing me at dance events to chase 16 year olds. I made god damn sure I was fat during my peak years. I wanted to make sure my peak wouldn’t be high enough to get me in more trouble. I think my life would have been much worse if I had been thinner or prettier. Specifically because I think I have a fairly realistic assessment of my looks and relative status. I know who I can chase without getting in trouble. Now. After many years of trouble and errors.

What do I mean by that? I mean I am too good for the losers. I do have standards. What do I mean by loser? Ha! Not for this post.

The big concept from the documentary that I am going around in my head is this idea of a parent-by-choice. People feel entitled to their mothers. That isn’t validating. They want to have someone else who loves them and spends time with them because they want to.

I think a lot about what parenting means. It is the process of teaching children how to become adults. In America for the last few generations most of that raising happens in schools. Don’t get pissy with me, working parents. Really. We expect the schools to teach them how to balance a checkbook. We expect the school to teach them about our political system and how it was created. We expect the school to teach them about health and hygiene. We do parts of it–but we do those parts grudgingly and with hostility. Maybe I am projecting my attitude onto other people.

Potty training Shanna was hard. Potty training Calli was easy. It isn’t that every part of parenting works that way. It’s that the reason that I had a hard time doing it with Shanna was because I had a hard time learning the routine. I struggled with it internally. I always felt hostile about having to pay that much attention to her body. I did it–you can’t EC a kid from three months old without paying a lot of attention. I did it and I smiled while I did it. But I begrudged it.

By the time Calli came along helping her transition to the potty was easier because I was frustrated and ready to explode because of laundry. All of a sudden modeling potty use was intuitive and constant. And effective. I think I gave Shanna a lot of mixed messages because when I was in a bad mood and feeling angry about her frequent potty-breaks-with-no-pottying I would stick her back in a diaper because I didn’t want to yell at her or shake her and I was getting angry. With the diaper I relaxed. By Calli I didn’t relax when she had a diaper on. Ha.

I did one of my periodic yelling-at-Noah things last night. Yelling is a strong word. We were in bed and the whole conversation wasn’t much louder than a stage whisper because the kids were asleep.

I’m sure that part of the reason that I’m thinking about this is the documentary. Tay–you’d be surprised. The documentary explicitly goes into “emotionally absent but physically present”. I think you would understand some of your fears about parenting more.

I don’t actually think it is so amazing everyone must go watch it. But yet it kind of is. My friends are breeding. How we treat our kids matters. Ignore the infomercial ending. You don’t need God to be a parent but you do need to be very patient and think about what skills you want your kids to have.

Your kids should be prepared to go live in the world. They need to know how to shop and budget. They need to know how to cook and clean and do laundry. If you really want to have your kids interested in electronics and math, you should probably figure out age appropriate ways to bring that into their life as much as possible. Even if your kid doesn’t become a geek they will still have a firm footing in your culture. Your kid is more likely to grow up attached to geek culture–that’s still a win in this valley. Y’all need support people.

Wouldn’t Shanna make a great project manager? ha.

Think about the world outside of school. We want our kids to live in it. We want them to have skills and abilities that the school system doesn’t teach. How do we get these things across? What are the most important things? I’m not sure. One of the hardest parts of homeschooling is having to be present with my own ignorance. I have to be constantly expanding what I know. When I get an internal indication that “That’s all there is to know about that!” because I have made up my mind… even though I’m shaking and can’t really hear what is being said in the moment I store it. I think about it later. I do sometimes become more rigid–not always. The not always is important, I think.

I think that teaching children takes a lot of time. I feel weird about the way in which I am treating this twenty year block as “not about me”. I am trying to learn what it means to stay in one place. I don’t have any scope for being in one place and watching the slow passing of time. It feels like I am not doing anything. My scenery isn’t changing. I’m stagnant. I’m doing a lot of things that are hard and uncomfortable. If Noah and I didn’t have kids I’m not sure I would still be here. I wouldn’t have asked for monogamy without kids. I don’t think I would have stayed for poly.

I look ahead in my life to when my children are older. At some point they will probably figure out how promiscuous I was. How do I want to present that message. “Yeah –it was great! You should try it!” or “It was terrible. Don’t be like me.”

I need a middle path. I was given this parenting book: Raising the Perfect Child through Guilt and Manipulation. I have a perverse habit of reading only what I want in books. Mostly her message about trying to force kids to be Catholic so they feel guilty doesn’t work for me. She is also a big sports fan. Not so much.

But she’s funny and her concepts are not terrible. I’m just not her culture. Anyway. What she is essentially explaining is: pick a definite culture. Indoctrinate the shit out of your kids. Do it in large ways and small ways. Mention your culture and your values as often as possible because your kids will be getting a lot of conflicting messages out in the world. Make sure yours is the loudest. You are the voice inside your child’s head. What do you want them to hear for the rest of their life? And cook a lot of good food so they always want to come home for dinner because being with you is better than being with anyone else. That’s her message in a nutshell.

Given that I don’t want to adopt the cultures she suggests (it’s not that they are bad they just aren’t for me) that means I kind of have to figure out what my culture is.

Long time readers, chorus with me now: I am ____________. I’m not going to say it. You have to comment. Ha.

But is it? I’m not sure.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: adult-only

Permission to rest

That Dear Jane lady

Evading laundry

Pity party, table of one

Had a good day.

trauma in the body

On the tmi front.

Shrink your world

stop wasting your life

Tried something different.

More about privilege

Don’t ask me questions if you don’t want the answer.

No one is perfect.

All signs point to lack of imminent death.

Please, stop telling me to relax.

About that movie…