Category Archives: adult-only

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Awake but too early to run.

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Today is only fourteen miles. When did more than a half marathon become “only” fourteen miles? It was a gradual process. In my mind and body I am already looking ahead to running twenty miles in seven days. I want it. I want to run the marathon. I want it. I want to do it. I want it so bad I itch and twitch and nervously sweat thinking about it.  Twenty-nine days and counting.

I can tell that right now my depression is pretty bad. I kind of hate everyone and everything in the world. I hate that I am told over and over that I an only ______ if I have __________ and I never fucking have the prerequisites. I will never have “the support necessary to heal”. I will always be alone. No, I don’t have a higher power to depend on. At this point in my life that isn’t going to work.

Because when I think very hard about it–I am getting it done. But I’m getting it done with a lot of fear and effort and work and crying. But it’s getting done. I’m already 20% through my parenting time. This phase of my life is not going to be forever. I believe in my heart of hearts that once I am done with the baby phase things will be easier.

Babies and toddlers are triggering. Arwyn wrote about that first. Babies and toddlers hit you and scream right into your ear over and over. They hurt you and you can’t do anything to defend yourself. My relationships with Shanna and Calli are the last fucking time in my life I will god damn let any mother fucker hit me. Well, maybe Noah–but that’s different.

If anyone other than my kids treated me the way my kids do I would give them a black eye. I’m fucking serious. If a god damn adult or teenager hurt me casually, fucking constantly, I would deck them. This isn’t ok. But it’s not on purpose. It’s an accident. They don’t mean to be so rough. You can’t get mad at a baby. Thus I stay stoned. So I’m not angry. So I’m not hateful. So that my brain is able to understand, “Oh, you aren’t attacking me. You aren’t a threat.” Plus having my sense of touch deadened by the pot is a great thing for me. Heightened arousal is kind of a nightmare after a while.

I love them so much. I have to believe they are worth the time and energy I put into them. I have to. It means I don’t have much left for myself or any one else.

Shanna keeps asking me about my mom. And about us. “What do I do if when I’m a grown up I dislike you the way you dislike your mommy?” “Well baby, if you decide you feel about me when you grow up the way I feel about my mommy I’m not sure I am the right person to ask. You will need to ask Marcie and Kitten and P and K and those other people who love you very much to help you. You are not going to be alone in this world, ever. There are people who love you and who will help you. And I don’t dislike my mom. I’m just not going to let her hurt me or you and she can’t really help hurting people. I hope I never treat you the way my mom treats me. If I do you will be right to protect yourself. I hope you never need to.”

What else can I say? It’s hard. It’s so very hard. I miss my mom. I miss my mom in ways large and small. I don’t dislike her. How can I explain? My mom told me over and over from when I was tiny that I was bad and that everything was my fault. If there is a fucking tsunami is southeast Asia it is my fault for being disgusting. I am aware that she wouldn’t make Shanna or Calli the scapegoat–I would still be that. I don’t want her to teach my kids that I am to blame for everything bad in the world. I’m not. I’m really not.

I am not doing well with that whole “making friends” part of life lately. Talking to adults is hard. How do you carry on a conversation when all you can see in your head is slow moving pictures of all the gore involved in shoving a head through a window. I know what it does quite well, actually. That’s why Tommy had to start wearing a helmet. He put his head through several windows. I know exactly what it does because I have cleaned up blood and glass and hair matter before. This is not news. I want to hurt. I want to make a big mess. I want to fucking inconvenience people because I am hurting. But I won’t. I’ll just see it in my head a lot. To the point where sometimes it is kind of hard to see the people in front of me, honestly.

I’m having a very hard time with not mutilating. In my head the things I “should” do are escalating terribly. I want to hurt me so much I can barely breathe. I feel like I am choking on the need to feel pain. I am disgusting. I am bad. I need to stop looking for help. The harder I look for help without finding it the more I believe I am worthless. No one will help because I don’t deserve help. Maybe other people do, but not me. I should just die. It would be better for the entire species.

I’ve sent out a bunch of emails looking for therapists. I’ve left messages. I don’t get calls back. I really am just too much trouble. I really hate me right now. I feel like all I want to do is go through the litany of why I hate me. Why I am disgusting and bad. Why I deserve everything that happens to me. Why I deserve so much more bad than I have gotten lately. Why it is time for someone to brutally hurt me–because I’m a piece of shit and that is what I deserve.

This is when I used to describe really elaborate scenes to Tom. Then he would act them out and hurt me as much as I wanted to be hurt. Noah isn’t Tom. Things work differently between us.

I don’t know what the road looks like. But it’s 4:51 and I would like to be on the road around 5. I should probably stop typing and start getting dressed. I’m giving myself four and a half hours to leisurely stroll down the fourteen miles. I’m hoping I beat people there so I can sit on the ground and stretch for a while first. That makes the food experience more pleasant.

A friend said on facebook that she will meet us at the restaurant. It is still continually surprising to me–I have friends. I don’t really understand this “friend” thing. Friends give you what they have to spare. A different friend gave me arm braces (thank you J!) so I will hopefully not kill my body on the next book. I don’t understand people giving their spare to me. Shouldn’t they give it to someone who is capable of giving them something back? I feel like I have nothing to give. I feel like an empty shell. I try to just decide that I don’t need to decide what other people get from a relationship with me. If they pick a relationship with me they probably know what they are getting. I don’t really do a lot of misleading advertising or anything.

I am a needy piece of shit. I have nothing to offer. I’m hostile and angry and tense. My experience of the world has been pretty unpleasant and it shows. I try to hide it but I can only do so much. I don’t understand why anyone would want to know me. I’m not sure I would want to know someone as angry as I am.

I think this is going to be a very crying filled fourteen miles. Slow. Just walking. It will be fine. Even though I feel sad, even though I am going to move slowly I will still be going towards Noah. Noah wants me. Noah wants me more than he has ever wanted anything or anyone. (Ok, maybe he wants to be a programmer more than he wants to be with me–maybe.)

When people in the recovery world ask about “support” and I say “I have a husband” it’s not really what they mean. It’s not good to be as dependent on a partner as I am on Noah. But he’s all I have. He is the only person on this planet who picked me and wants me. It makes it a lot easier to keep going because I know he will be on the far side. I can’t repay Noah’s support by forcing him to clean up bloody messes as I hurt myself. He deserves better.

waited too long

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I have a lot of shame and guilt around medicating. I “try not to use it” unless I am in crisis. When I am trying to use edibles that means that once I hit the point of crying and shaking and feeling really bad there is no potential relief for 45-90 minutes. Right now my body hurts. No good reason. Nothing happened.

All I want to do is cut. That would take this feeling away in less than a minute. I would feel better. I wouldn’t be crying. I wouldn’t feel frantic and scared and out of control and helpless.

But I would be teaching my daughters something. Instead I am teaching them that sometimes you cry. They don’t know what I am thinking. I kind of hope they never do.

I hate limbo.

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But I love having a plan. I have thirty days left until the marathon. If the kids want to watch the ipad, fine. I’m too tired to be entertaining. I want to be able to stretch without being knocked over. I’m also trying to not smoke. That leaves me dependent on edibles/pills and that’s a different experience for mood control. I think my lungs deserve a break this month. The hacking cough is really gross.

I think I should try not to type much. I need to find arm braces. I need to start icing my arms and stretching more consistently. Otherwise NaNoWriMo will wreck me. I’m looking forward to this book. Smart ass working title: Mary Sue’s Love Story

It’s weird thinking of myself as an animal training for a performance event. It changes how careful I am with myself. I give more respect to an animal than I do to myself. It’s not like I think I am an expensive race horse or anything, but I am being nicer to myself than I was and improvement is the point.

I finally set up the drop keyboard stuff on the desk. Maybe I won’t fuck up my hands by typing at a surface 6″ too high this year.

I gave away all the last of my tomatoes because K likes green ones. She makes a relish with them. I am planning to rip out all the tomato plants today and do a bunch of digging and maybe some planting. I am having a hard time with everything being waiting.

But holy christ do I not have the energy for people. I can barely be nice to Noah. I’m nice to the kids but I’m distracted. I feel far away. I think that is one of the big differences between the edibles and smoking. I get far less of this complete dissociation with smoking. I also get fewer panic attacks this way. I’m kind of looking forward to a few weeks of being this kind of stoned, honestly. It feels really nice for my nervous system–like a vacation from being me. I don’t have the heart pounding and the skin tension and easy startle. I feel really guilty when I am stoned like this. Like it is a cop out. I’m not learning how to really live. I’m not so stoned I am sitting on the couch and staring at the tv. But I am moving slowly and stopping to stretch a lot. I feel able to pay attention to the weird knots in my neck instead of just feeling angry with myself for not being as stretchy/bendy/flexible as I wish I was.

But I feel like I am breathing under water. I feel just a slight heaviness on my chest. It’s still easier than the panic attacks. But I can’t drive this stoned. I know I am reacting a few seconds too slow. I’m not stupid. Which means for a few weeks I can’t drive much. (No, I don’t drive after smoking either, but I can come home and immediately smoke and feel relief from the anxiety and edibles work differently in my system–it’s less of a push-the-button-get-medicine effect. It’s global or nada.)

There is a part of me that looks at the time line of my life and mentally stocks up pot for the crisis points–the anniversaries. The specific new, big traumas. I think I will be able to get to a point where I’m ok for weeks or months in between trigger points. I’m starting to wonder if I should even be trying to “not react” to trigger events. It seems like I spend a lot of time and energy trying to not get upset by things that would make any rational person upset. That’s silly. If I just batten down the hatches at those points, maybe there will be “ok” in between.

Less than seven years. I have to be completely functional without any medication to help within seven years. If I can’t go for a year completely sober here then we can’t travel internationally. Sober sooner would be better.

I’m scared.

We all have things we want to do in this life.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of support. I think about it in terms of the idea of being a main character. If you are someone who says, “I want _______ but I can’t have it because ________ won’t help” then you won’t ever have what you want. If you depend on someone else to do work in order for you to go get your dreams then you are dead in the water on the first day.

I want to be a writer. I want it so badly that my fingertips itch. I want people to know my name. I have a lot of book ideas swimming in my brain. I’m working on different story arcs. I know what I want to say. I just have to find time to go say it. That is hard and frustrating. It’s easy for me to say, “I could do it if only I wasn’t stuck with my kids all the time.”

That’s a cop out. That’s saying that I am entitled to not have to do the work I signed up to do now that there is more interesting work available. Sometimes people get away with this trade. If you can go earn a bunch of money then eventually you can say that your time is worth money and it is worth paying someone with fewer skills to do the easy stuff. You can’t say that until your time is worth enough money though. Before your time is worth money you are a whining twat.

That’s more or less how it seems to me. When someone comes to me and complains that they could be more creative if only they had more spare time I blink then want to laugh then want to punch them in the face. Don’t fucking talk to me. I haven’t had spare time in more than four years and I’m unlikely to for another eight or so years. If I sit here and get nothing done I have no one to blame but myself.

I am to the point where, quite bluntly, someone whining at me that I’m not doing enough for them makes me violent. Very violent. I don’t have an extra five minutes of support to give myself let alone anyone else. But it’s not fair. I haven’t noticed life being very fair.

Is it fair that I have to frequently go pause my day in order to hide in another room because I am completely physically overwhelmed by the physical sensation of being raped again that I can’t really see the people in front of me and I can’t respond to them? Is that fair? It doesn’t matter. It is. I can’t stop it. I’m thirty and I don’t know if my body will ever let me stop feeling like I am being raped. It seems pretty unfair to me. It makes my life pretty hard.

If I don’t do anything it is my own fucking fault and I have no one to blame. I can sit here and be useless and cry about how hard my life is or I can do something. I choose to work. I choose to take home schooling seriously so I spend a lot of time that way. I paint my house a lot. (And painting multiple murals with two little kids is pretty fucking hard work.) I write. My first book has been downloaded well over a thousand times. I have worked on my house to the point where there is a place for everything and if the house is destroyed I can pick it up in about an hour. That was a really hard place to get to in a house this small with this many people and this much shit.

If I give excuses for why I can’t do things I am just giving them to myself. I am just telling me that I can’t do things. Fuck that. I can do things. Not if only I had support I can fucking do things. I am buff. I am strong. I am inventive. I am creative. I am determined and stubborn and very dedicated. If I want something I go fucking do it.

I’m getting a little tired of being told it is my fault other people can’t do what they want. If only I was willing to work a little harder. If only I would float a little more money… No.

No.

I’m not going to be devalued. I put up with Noah needing a lot of time “off” because Noah’s time is quite literally worth a lot of money and the more politely and respectfully I “tolerate” him having extra time to work the better my life is. It’s different. Noah is working himself into the ground in service of communal goals. I can uhhh, not be an asshole about that. I can be enthusiastic support. I can see what we are doing here. He’s not acting entitled. He’s acting like he has a really hard project in front of him and he needs to get it done. Supporting a family is harder than I thought. My naiveté was influenced by never seeing a financially stable house during my childhood.

It is interesting to me to watch entitlement in other people. Which people think they deserve more than they currently have without being willing to do any work for it?

My nephew started working at a movie theater when he was eighteen years old. He broke some expensive equipment because he wasn’t paying attention while he cleaned it. He quit after eighteen months because he wasn’t a manager yet and that proved they didn’t respect him enough. He didn’t have a steady job for the two years after that I knew him. No one would hire him.

If you want to “start a business” in the bay area I believe you should expect a minimum of 80 hours a week of work. I have seen successful business owners and I have seen unsuccessful business owners. I would have to hire a babysitter with money I don’t have in order to go work in an adult-only environment. That makes it financially impossible for me. So I do the stuff I can do at home. I write. I paint. I run. I do the things that are physically possible in my life right now. I can’t add more. I physically can’t. I already rarely get more than six hours of sleep in a night. I can’t cut time with my kids. House remodeling is on pause for a few years.

For someone to act like I am a big meanie for not taking on their burdens right now is really making me feel violent. I’m very angry and feeling very unappreciated and used. For something that will never give me anything beyond a warm fuzzy feeling and an occasional milkshake. I could pay for the milkshakes myself if I didn’t have to pay $10 fucking dollars on public transit every time I have to go to work.

I don’t really think I need people in my life who let me know that my time and energy are worth far less than theirs. With Noah it is literally true and the mother fucker still gets up every day and makes me breakfast. He doesn’t act entitled to my fucking service. He’s nice to me. He’s apologetic about needing so much time. He puts a lot of effort into working efficiently and productively. He acts like him having time “off” from the kids is putting strain on me and he tries to do what he can to minimize that. He’s a god damn nice man. I really like him.

Then there are these other… I’ll stop. All the words I want to fill in with are not nice. Thumper’s father says, “If you can’t say something nice don’t say nothing at all.”

I feel very angry with the world right now. I have a very unusual experience of the world only it isn’t. I’ve been reading more on father/daughter incest. My experience of the world is pretty classic. We really are the victims of more violence. More people rape us. We are more likely to be shouted at as we run down the street. People can smell us. People don’t like us. People blame us. We deserve every god damn bad thing that happens to us.

It’s kind of funny that part of how I build “personal status” in my head is by knowing that I am well educated. I don’t have degrees proving it. I used to have the books I have read as evidence. Not any more. We down sized. Now my library represents books from me, Noah, Shanna, and Calli. I own approximately 10% of what I have owned since I was eighteen–for books at least. I got rid of a lot when I left Puppy. I got rid of a lot more in my relationship with Noah. Then I got rid of more to make room for Sarah. Then Sarah took the things we had duplicates of (it was suggested by me in advance because long-term I will have more means of replacing them even though I don’t right now).

Right now my library is pretty empty. It feels like my knowledge is pretty empty. I no longer have proof that I am well read and that I know things. I no longer have physical reminders, at least to me, that I am pretty fucking smart. I know a remarkable variety of things. I do deserve to be treated like someone worth talking to.

Yesterday at the park two of the moms were talking about opera–mostly they were kind of laughing that they both abstractly thought they should like it but they didn’t know much. I uhhh started talking. The lecture ended about forty minutes later and their mouths were hanging open. “How do you know all that?” I used to be a technical theatre major and I did a lot of reading in my graduate program about traditional plays and I have had season passes to opera companies. That’s how.

But it’s really not a topic someone would think to come talk to me about, right? If I had my fucking library you would.

One of the things that I like and dislike about the minimalist approach to stuff is it forces me to build an additional layer between me and other people. I can’t volunteer things about myself silently. I can’t advertise with stuff. I have to prove stuff by doing. I don’t get an out. I don’t get to fish casually. If I want to be respected on a given topic and not be ignored I have to be willing to verbally, ever-so-casually, slap my dick on the table. It’s pretty rare that I bother but sometimes I do. I have a really big dick.

One of the lasting effects of incest is the daughters always know and believe and carry within themselves the knowledge that their needs are just less important. They simply don’t matter as much as other people. It’s never confined to just the father. There is a whole family, a whole community involved in silencing incest and allowing it to happen. No one wants to be upset. No one wants to have to think about things like that. So they don’t. So we know that we just don’t matter compared to other people.

I’m in this weird position. It is not good enough for me that my kids be with a warm body and ill supervised. It is not good enough for me that my kids be parked in front of a screen all day so I can get work done. My first and most important job is taking care of my kids. And I have some extremely long days. That can’t be helped. There is no one else to do it. I have to be nice to my kids.

I have to be nice to my kids no matter how high my panic levels are. No matter how high my stress levels are. No matter what is happening in the world around me. That is how you break cycles of abuse. My mother wasn’t mean to me because she hated me. My mother simply took out her bad experience of the world on me. That’s not fair.

I can’t invite people into my life who treat me badly and tell me I’m not important. I just can’t. Because I bring that rage and futility and anger into my home with my children. No one is worth that. No one. My kids need me to not be treated badly. It’s a really nice experience, actually. I get to try to find out what it means to have a whole life where I’m not treated badly. Because when I’m being treated badly I get angry and I stay angry. It’s the only way I know to protect myself. I don’t need to protect myself from my kids. If someone is making me feel threatened then that’s just not good and I need to not do that any more. It’s not like I’m deeply enmeshed or anything.

In life you have to make choices. You can’t have everything. You have to decide what you want and go get it. You can’t let people or things get in your way. I want to be a good mother before I want to be anything else. That means that things that make it pretty much impossible to do that job well need to go. That’s just how life works. I will meet my current obligations and be done.

I’m done going to a place where I am expected to care a lot about someone else’s problems and do a lot of physical labor at my own expense in order to be supportive when said person knows jack shit about me and my problems and really doesn’t care.

Done.

Even if no one else does, I have to care about me. I don’t want to do that any more. It’s time to stop. I don’t want a toehold in that community enough to continue being treated like this.

In praise

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I don’t know how other people find self-worth. For me part of it involves being liked by people I admire. People I feel are particularly good at _________.

So I have this friend. I met her when I was fifteen. I met her because I was sneaking out of the house to go to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I started chasing a guy, well–several, named Scott. Scott was kind of available. He didn’t technically have a girlfriend or anything. We dated a bit but nothing serious–you see he was hung up on this other chick, P. I was so jealous I couldn’t see straight. I hated her on sight. Who is this slutty bitch?

Because you see, she had a boyfriend who went to a different university (all these people were five years older than me) and she was STILL STRINGING SCOTT ALONG. Obviously she was bad. I helped him out. I have never liked those girl games of promising and denying. I make up for those chicks. I feel like those girls are hurting the poor boys who have needs because I am a deeply damaged individual.

She was prettier than me. She was older than me (which was a big god damn selling point when I was fifteen). She had great breasts. She was really shapely. Dear god she had a nice body. I had some lurid thoughts about telling Scott, “Well why don’t all of us just…” but I didn’t. I was good.

Time went by. Scott didn’t last long in my life. Guys in that slot (ha) rarely last longer than three months. I ditch them quickly.

Years later I turned eighteen. I ran into the girl at one of the theatres in San Jose. I showed up to do low-level volunteer work at a theatre with a friend and she happened to be the stage manager. The show was Hair. That was such a lovely frisky time of life. Lots of hinting at sex but not much doing it. I was dating Steve.

(I have to give you a name. You seem to like Pam. That’s an acceptable pseudonym-right? I still think you are being ridiculous. You are one of like 3.7 million people with your name.)

So Pam was around. I was spending a lot of time with Kristine. (God bless her for spelling our name right.) I uhhh broke up with Steve because I wanted to sleep with a different Steve. I wanted to sleep with that other new Steve because Pam was stringing him along and I am a compulsive whore. So I dumped my boyfriend. I’m awesome. At least I didn’t cheat on him. That’s always been my line.

I started getting to know Pam though. As things that summer shook out in my life (found the bdsm community, drifted away from theatre) for some reason Pam kept calling me.

And calling.

And calling.

She would come pick me up and we would hang out. I felt… baffled. Why did she want to seek out my company? People don’t really do that very often. I am not pursued. I am avoided. I am abandoned by people I pour many years of hard work and energy into. I don’t get pursued much. It’s a heady experience.

So I spent a lot of time talking to Pam, because she wanted to talk to me.

It’s been a lot of years. She went off and worked on a cruise ship for five years. Then lived in Australia for a few years. Then Taiwan. Now she’s on the east coast having just graduated from an ivy league fancy-pants graduate school. (I’m proud of you for finishing your conclusion. Get started on the last paper.)

She used to traipse around the world being gone for years at a time doing very interesting things. She’s had a fun life. She always makes time and space for me. She calls me. She calls me faithfully though irregularly. Before I had kids I dropped whatever I was doing to answer calls from her. I once answered the phone while teaching because it is that important to me to answer the phone when she calls.

I do it out of respect. This person has spent a lot of money on international phone calls to me over the more than decade of our friendship because she wants to hear my voice. Because she just loves me. Because she wants me to tell her what I am doing and thinking and talking about. She is interested in me and she respects me.

And she is someone I have a lot of respect for. She doesn’t have all that high of an opinion of herself, which I hear is normal. I’ve seen her do things that I want to do but I’m too afraid. She has had the courage to chase a lot of dreams I can’t handle living. I feel like she is my gypsy self. She actually broke free.

And way back in the day when I was dating Tom she wanted to ahem find out more about the ladies so I helped her out with that. Really we’ve had kind of an interestingly sex-related friendship the whole time.

I support her in being parts of herself that the other people in her life wouldn’t respect. She’s kind of slutty, bless her heart. Not a lot. Nothing compared to me, of course. But she hasn’t settled down with one person and she’s kind of nomadic and not inclined towards monogamy.

Before Noah and I got married I was dating this guy I’ll call Spot. I met Spot at BaGG and he was kind of my “club boyfriend” during the time when I did a lot of clubbing. Given that once he had to drive me home because my drink was spiked I feel I was right in believing I needed a protector in that space. Spot overlapped with the early part of my engagement to Noah.

Pam came back to California for one of her periodic visits during that time period complaining long and loud about how she hadn’t been able to get laid in a long time. Given my compulsive bent I said, “Well, which guy do you want to borrow?” She said both. She’s like that. So I called up both boys and told them to come over for a foursome.

I didn’t want to completely run the fuck and that was the problem. For the first bit I assigned Noah to Pam and told Spot I was starting with him. I did announce this out loud. Spot decided it was more interesting to kind of glom onto Pam while she and Noah were playing and ignore me.

Can you guess how this went? Noah realized kind of late into the evening that I was sitting there trying not to cry. He tried to save. Once Pam realized I was upset she tried to save. Spot… well… I didn’t date him much longer and I don’t really talk to him much any more. He did give me the awesome kitty hat for my birthday though. He’s not a bad guy just… not perceptive.

And when Pam was in town while I was pregnant and not interested in sex I had her come over and fuck Noah so that he would be in a better mood. That was very mixed for me emotionally. I’m not sorry I did it–I got the results I wanted. But the cost was high. I don’t like sharing. I’ve decided I’m not going to anymore and both Noah and Pam are very supportive and awesome about it. They were never “dating” they are both just slutty like me. “I like sex. You are here. Ok!” But they are affectionate friends. Only they don’t really talk to one another unless they are both here to see me.

This must be what a V feels like. I don’t mind that they talk and are friendly with one another as long as they are both here to be paying attention to me. I can share that much. I’m generous and all.

I’m not explaining this right. I’m not explaining why she is important. Pam has had a life that is about as different from mine as a life can be in most of the big, obvious ways. And for some reason she latched on to me and fell in love with me and she has created a long term intense relationship for us that freely mutates with my mood swings. If I tell her to do things she says sure. If I tell her to stop doing things she says sure.

When I told her about the smoking she had this interesting reaction. She said, “Hmmmm. If you were anyone else I would start on a long lecture about how irresponsible you are. But you are you. How about if instead I say: I know that you reach conclusions after a lot of careful research, study, and thought. Why don’t you tell me what lead you to decide that was the best option because I know that it must be the best option out there. Or you wouldn’t be doing it.”

I cried. Part of what this relationship gives me is this ongoing feeling of someone feeling that I am important and worth seeking out. Part of what I get is the modeling of what being respected looks like. Not very many people respect me the way Pam does. Not very many people turn to me and say, “Hey I assume you are an authority on this subject. Will you please teach me part of what you know?”

I feel really silly but it feels good to have this person who is nothing like me so she doesn’t understand me at all but that just leads her to ask questions. She wants to understand me–I’m just different from everything she has ever known. She has to ask a lot of questions. I feel like she cares enough to actually want to know me. People don’t ask me very many questions. People don’t want to bother me. So for the majority of my adulthood I have sat alone in rooms not talking to anyone. Except when I’m lucky enough to have Pam call. I prioritize taking those calls over talking to people who show up one off to hang out at my house. I’ve been kind of an asshole about it a couple of times. Pam is very important to me. I drop everything for those calls.

Although having kids has changed this dynamic a lot. Often my phone is on vibrate or silent and I don’t hear it ring. We have a lot more misses now and that is hard for me. I no longer have the space to give our relationship complete seniority at a moments notice like I used to and it is very frustrating for me.

Pam makes me feel like a main character. She wants to hear my stories. She wants me to talk. She wants to know about me. She likes to cuddle me. She’d love more sex’n but is very supportive of that being off the table and thinks it is good that I’m taking care of myself. She wants me to think I am important.

I am fairly honest with myself. She is never going to live near me. She is never going to be anything but occasional phone calls and maybe a visit a year. But she puts a really lot of effort into writing me long emails (I just expect her to read my blog–I don’t have time for all that much long email writing on top of the blathering I do here and I’m a brat and I want it posted.) and she calls. She puts a lot of energy into making me feel important to her. Into reminding me that she thinks about me a lot. When she needs advice she comes to me. When her sister needs advice she tells her sister to come to me. When her friends need advice she relays stuff to/from me.

She has told me that I am her ideal parent. I set the bar for what “doing it right” looks like for her. She makes me cry.

We have occasional long stretches where I get mad at her for some reason or another. Sometimes with semi-cause (things were tense for a good six months after the thing with Spot) but mostly it’s just me having trouble dealing with the ways in which we are very different. I’m not good at that. But she is. And she talks to me actively about compromise and being respectful of one another. And she lives up to her end of it over and over and over and over and over. It’s pretty easy to trust her. She wears her intentions on her face. She is one of the most blessedly honest people I know.

The weird thing is, I’m pretty sure that isn’t the experience that other people in the world have of her. She does a lot of things that are very rebellious by her standards and she spends a lot of time being wracked with guilt for one thing or another.

One of the things Pam gives me is a constant reason to think, “How can someone so obviously tremendous in merit doubt their worth?” When I get an uncomfortable niggle of self-awareness from that thought I immediately stomp on it with great leather boots, of course.

Pam gives me the feeling that if I believe I am important I can go out and be that in the world. Maybe not to absolutely everyone–no one is. Not even everyone likes Santa Claus and if anyone was going to get universal popularity it is that motherfucker. Not me.

But I can be to a few people. And if I can make one life better isn’t that enough? Isn’t that something? Do I really have to be trying to amass a harem? I don’t want or need to be a guru. I want to be respected, not worshiped. I don’t need to be blindly followed. I don’t want or need people to be like me. I really like that there are people who say, “I want to know about _____ and I know you know a lot about it–can we talk?” It makes me feel like my existing in the world is useful. I do have things to give.

Pam is insatiably curious. If I look at my closest cadre of friends that is probably one of the strongest traits for all of my friends. They want to understand. I think you need to be such a person in order to bear my company for long. I’m what is termed “high needs” in young kids. It’s why Shanna’s questions and thirst for more more more from me doesn’t phase me. I feel the same way a lot of the time. Less now than when I was younger, I’m tired.

Pam I love you for so many reasons. Because your extreme perfectionism gives me a little light on how my own perfectionism is pretty twisted. You are good enough. You are smart enough. You are going to get a good job because you are a god damn amazing speaker and you get people. I think you will do well. You are like a cat. You always land on your feet. No, you don’t make a million dollars. No you didn’t become a famous model. You were thirty and not willing to starve yourself–you knew that wasn’t an option going in. You did fine. I wouldn’t have done as well. Sometimes I kind of hate you in an I love you and you are so awesome it feels painful to stand next to sometimes kind of way. It’s complex.

Pam is challenging to me to spend time with or talk to. I have to really think and process and be on in order to handle her. I’m fucking weird to her so I have to explain a lot of things that feel really tangential to me and it gets kind of hard to stay on a track. That feels frustrating. It feels like she is arguing but she is just pressing for enough information to keep following. I’m glad she has the chutzpuh to interrupt me and ask for clarification–don’t get me wrong. I want her to understand, but it’s been an adventure figuring out tone of voice stuff between us. We have different cultures. Very. Different. Cultures.

I have learned a lot and been challenged in a great many ways over the years as I have been exposed to her culture. She is very happy to introduce me to her other friends and she doesn’t give a shit if I make them feel uncomfortable as long as my subject matter is G rated. As a parent I feel a lot more comfortable with such limitations and impose the shit out of it on everyone around me so that has grown more comfortable. I feel like being a parent has finally given me a bridge into being willing to figure out respectable behavior. Pam is an invaluable resource.

No relationship between mothers and daughters is perfect. Pam tells me about her relationship and the relationships she sees and she teaches me a lot. I don’t really have any other access to such information. When I am in tricky situations with the kids I sometimes think about how Pam would handle something. What do I see her immediately do with my kids? I don’t see many people really walk up to my kids and treat them like people to have relationships with–Pam did from the first minute she met them. They were already people to her in her mind because she asks me about them all the time. She wants to know what they do all day. She wants to know the slightly condensed version of the Collected Works. And she comes back for updates quite frequently so things don’t even have to be condensed all that much. It’s really nice.

I can say, “I’ve been thinking about ____” and she responds with (I can hear her brain whirr) “Wait that is the person who did _______ and ______ and _____, right?” She can cross reference my whole experience with people because she has paid a lot of attention and gotten a lot of details about people over the years.

It’s really nice having this friend who is 100% outside my life so I can tell her what I really think about absolutely everyone I know. I don’t have to worry about polite courtesy. I can be honest. I cherish it.

I’m Pam’s beck and call girl. She doesn’t want a lot of my time and I feel so good about being wanted and appreciated that I’m going to respond as consistently and quickly as I can for the foreseeable future like I have for thirteen years. I like being wanted. Not many people want me.

How can you not understand how important you are?

Looking for a therapist (still)

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(First: I didn’t mention getting new shoes and I worried blacksheep. Yes, I got shoes that work  better for my feet. No more ouchie.)

I sent out some emails to local therapists last night. When I do the modern equivalent of throwing a dart at the phone book I find that I am mostly interested in working with black women–apparently. If you search through all the people who are therapists in Fremont (and are listed online in a way I can find) only black women mention the important buzzwords for me: intense early trauma, “all stages of addiction”, incest, complex ptsd, ongoing anger issues, depression. Even when white people (or Asian or Middle Eastern [from what I see here]) try to say they work with trauma they are fussy and particular. They work with “change of life traumas” or “immigrant family issues”. Not really my problems.

“Hi, thank you for calling me back I have a few important buzzwords I have to run past a therapist before I can work with them: incest, bdsm, promiscuity, self-harm, attachment parenting, complex ptsd and queer. Let’s talk about them.

I don’t have a problem with educating an open minded therapist about alternative lifestyle issues. I am looking for a long-term relationship. I have two distinct needs with regards to therapy: first is that I go through periodic intense crisis periods. I have very little prediction of when they will happen outside of obvious anniversaries of trauma. Those are often very intense for me. I strongly prefer someone who has some experience in EMDR and CBT because I need occasional directed work. Mostly I see therapists because I do not have ongoing bonding relationships with very many people and I suffer intensely from this. Lack of attachment is one of the hardest parts of my life for me. I use therapists as surrogate parents and friends.

I need a therapist who will not flinch or overly react when I am all of a sudden telling you intense details about lurid rapes. I need someone who will not get overly indignant all the time–that’s not very useful. I am already angry. If you flinch or react or pull away when I talk about difficult things I will begin to look for patterns of disapproval. I will find them, I will project the fuck all over you and then I will disappear. I need to have a fairly blank mirror to talk to for a long time. That is hard for therapists. I am a fairly weird patient. You have to get to know me slowly.

I have been in therapy more on than off for 27 years. I have a few intense hot buttons due to these experiences: first and foremost is punctuality. If you do not respect my time you do not respect me. I will take note. I won’t be back. No I won’t try to “work it out.” I’m fucking paying for your time. I feel entitled to my 55 minutes. It is one of the few things in this life I feel genuinely entitled to: I pay for 55 minutes and I bloody well need to get them. I need you to be careful what you say to me. If something sounds like a promise to me and you don’t follow through I will disappear.

And seriously dude, all of my symptoms existed in well documented fashion for many years before I tried smoking pot. The fact that 99% of western medicine believes that my first problem is marijuana and I “should be sober before beginning treatment” means that I’m just not in a position to accept a lot of help. I’m not very open to western drugs right now. The side effects are far worse than the benefits of the drugs. They hurt me. Pot isn’t great but it is effective and less damaging to me than most of my other options. I’m not interested in being shamed because I’m trying to deal with a lot of stuff that isn’t my fucking fault.

I don’t take advice well at the beginning. I have to warm up to people. I have to know someone for a while and hear a series of shorter conversations before I begin to respect someones opinion. I do not respect people just because they want me to. I am very anti-authoritarian and I am very resistant to being directed towards giving up aspects of my self-determined identity. I have come a long way. I need to be respected for that. I do not need more people who are just assholes about how I’m not perfectly like a non-traumatized person so obviously I suck.”

And the next asshole who sends me a long letter about how what I really need is to say how helpless I am and turn everything over to “God” and go to AA/NA is going to get punched. Fuck you very much. It’s an approach that helps approximately 10% of the people who try it. I’m very unlikely to be in that small group.

It’s weird to me that I am doing very well and very poorly at the same time. I’m afraid that is going to be permanent. I have a lot of body memories from being raped. Most of my intense suicidal ideation happens around wanting to be away from those sensations. it hurts and I’m really tired of hurting in that way. Flashbacks and corresponding suicidal ideation seems to be a permanent fixture in my life. Managing that takes a lot of energy. It has been really bad since Shanna was about eighteen months.

I really hate my parents. If my father were alive I think I would enjoy killing him slowly by inches. I would take off one finger and toe at a time before I slowly started carving shapes out of other parts of his body.  I don’t actually want to hurt my mom–I suppose that’s good. But I don’t want to know her. I don’t want to act like everything is all hunky dory and fine now. I’m not fine. I’m a fucking wreck. You fucking assholes wrecked thirty years of my life so far. How much longer am I going to have to feel like this? Maybe forever? Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Mostly I feel very lucky that I get to have the life I have. I enjoy my kids far more minutes of the day than they trouble me, even including all the extensive work I do for them. I’m really happy to have them here as companions for my life. I do not begrudge them some work. But it is a lot of work. It’s hard to find enough energy for everything.

It’s not that my relationship with Noah is free from all frustration, but it is very affirming. Noah thinks I’m just a great person. I like being around him. He talks to me like I am smart. My house is a very good and safe place to be.

Fragments

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I met one of the home schooling moms at the park last week. It was nice. We talked about a myriad of things but one thing in particular: I think it will take seven years of involvement before the home schooling group is “used” to me and I will be allowed to get comfortable. I think it will happen right before we leave to go travel for a year. And I will come back and feel fine with them. They will feel like a reunion. We’ll see if I’m right.

I’m really lame. Two of my favorite students are engaged. I met them six years ago. They have been dating longer than I have known them. One of them just graduated from college and the other is about to. I asked her if I could please come to the wedding. I told her that I don’t have to bring my family and I don’t have to eat anything. I’ll even bring a flask so they don’t have to buy my booze. I would just like to be at the wedding of people who can get it right that young. I would really like to see what that looks like because I admire them so much.

“No. I want you to come down here and spend the weekend by yourself. Alone.” Slam.

Calli and I had a “date” earlier. The kids love to be split up. We went and did errands. She likes helping and going bye bye. Shanna is a homebody unless she thinks there will be someone to talk to on the far side of the trip. I like getting to go at Calli’s pace. I feel fairly bad that I don’t give Calli time to practice and perfect things like I did Shanna. Like walking on curbs. I had a lot of patience three years ago to walk through the parking lot from one end to the other while Shanna walked up and down the damn curbs. It could take an hour. Now I really want to move faster most of the time. Today I let her walk at her pace. My reward was her telling me that she was happy over and over while laughing. It was a really nice morning.

My kids both actively dislike their names and prefer Baby and Cupcake Girl. I protest greatly. But when I introduce them to people I say, “This is Shanna–but she prefers to be called Cupcake Girl.” She beams at me. I don’t like it. Her name is Shanna. But fine. It’s your preference. Once in a while I whine at her that I really like the name Shanna. I liked it for years before she was even born. Now she tells me, “Stop whining mom.” To which I say, “It’s occasionally frustrating that you listen to me.”

“Did you like it when your mom brushed your hair?” No. No I didn’t. I hated it. My sister had a tough head. You could put a brush at the top of her hair and yank it straight down for a foot ripping the heck out of the snarls and she would just growl at you. I’ve seen her yank out handfuls in anger. My mom learned how to take care of little girl hair with her. I have a very tender scalp. If you pull very hard on my hair I get terrible headaches. More than one man in the scene told me that made me a very undesirable submissive while sneering.

I brushed my mom’s hair a lot once I was a little older, and my sister’s as well to a lesser extent. They both liked having me do it because I was very gentle, very slow. I did a lot of grooming for them. Curling their hair, braiding, that sort of thing. When my mom and I were in Bakersfield when I was sixteen we would sit and watch soap operas together and I would play with her hair. In the very apartment she lived in when she was unmarried and pregnant because her father wouldn’t let her live in the main house because she was a shamed woman. She was a 1/4 owner of that property. We thought that even though our lives were pathetic we were pretty secure in having a place to live.

We paid our rent. They made us leave. Her brothers forced us off the property because I burned candles in the courtyard and made them think I was a witch. I was in my goth period. I haven’t actively practiced Wicca in almost a decade and a half. I don’t think I get to add any more identity labels that might get me burned this lifetime. I’m going to stick with “kind of spiritual don’t want to talk about it.”

It is probably time for me to stop researching PTSD. I have it. My constellation of symptoms has virtually no chance of improvement according to all of the studies I can find. (google scholar is *awesome*) Given how many traumatic events, how many years of symptoms, how strongly suicidal I am, given the lack of support network, etc etc etc et-fucking-cetera. “Patients feel a persistent sadness that is probably permanent.”

broken. broken. broken. brain damage. permanent. broken.

It’s a very good thing I have Noah.

18 miles

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I packed my water bag with food and blister pads already. My clothes are lying out so that I can get up, take some Exedrin Migraine (that shit's amazing first thing in the morning before a run) and go. I bet it will still be dark when I leave. 

If I am very lucky this will be the third longest run I ever do in my life. The second longest will be in two weeks. The very longest is in five weeks. Time just keeps slipping away. 37 days. 176.2 miles left till I'm done with this goal. It doesn't sound that bad since I know I had to do like 450 miles this year.

I'm hoping for under five hours because I am not going to rush. We'll see how it goes. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee. Bill's Cafe in Willow Glen. I will have hollandaise sauce. Mmmmmm hollandaise.

Haunted

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Running is getting harder. There are a few things going on. For one thing I am dealing with the cumulative of suddenly doing massive amounts of exercise when I have never done so before. It’s an experience. But mostly I am struggling because of how my body is changing. As I lose weight/change shape/harden/whatever I can feel the bones of my brother Tommy coming through in my face.

This is weird and hard to describe. The more time I spend looking at Calli and the more time I spend running the more conscious I am of how my skull resembles my brother. And my running gait is embarrassingly like his. Embarrassing because Tommy had a severe traumatic brain injury. He didn’t run. He lurched. He looked awkward and weird. It was a miracle he walked at all so folks considered it a real big deal.

One year, in Apple Valley, he was on a disabled kids sports team, softball. I remember how Tommy looked running the bases. I move like that. I feel weird when I run. I lurch awkwardly to the side. I have trouble figuring out how to balance my weight. I almost trip a lot. I kind of go back and forth on the side walk.

Except for sometimes when I hit my stride just right and I feel like I am flying. Then I feel Tommy. Then I remember how he would smile the few times he really managed to get going quickly. That wild ebullition on his face. I feel that way when I am running really fast.

I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had lived in one place. If someone had looked at me as a small child and said, “Running quickly makes you feel good. Let’s work with this.” I was told to go to my room with a book and shut up. So I’m pretty awkward when I run. I have run more this year than the entire rest of my life combined.

Tommy hated me. Before the accident he was nasty and mean, “No one wanted you. Why were you born? Can’t you die already?” After the accident he was brutal and vicious.

Tommy’s speech was very difficult to understand. He had trouble enunciating and an average sentence would take multiple breaths and minutes to deliver. He hated me because I could hear the first three words and finish his sentences. “You rude, stupid bitch.” He hit me a lot. A really lot. When I think of myself as “not being all that physically abused” what I mean is my mom gave me four really memorable beatings and that’s it. My siblings hurt me all the time. That “didn’t count.”

Once, Tommy was screaming at me. I don’t remember what I did. Maybe nothing. Maybe something. I don’t know. He got as far as, “You are” and I finished, “a stupid worthless bitch, yeah I know” and I didn’t even look up from my book.

I remember the sound of inhaled breath. Then I don’t remember anything until I woke up on the floor. He hit me in the head. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. No one paid attention or cared. I don’t think I was unconscious very long. I think I managed to scramble up and away before he managed the physical dexterity to kick me. Either that or he did it once before I was awake. Regardless I got away just as he was trying to deliver a hard kick. He fell down. He crawled after me screaming that he was going to kill me. He wasn’t going to deal with such a stupid bitch any longer. He should have killed me a long time ago.

That was why I spent a lot of time in the willow tree in the yard. He didn’t have the arm strength to climb any more. I love climbing trees. I still love climbing trees.

That was Tuesday.

Essentially what I’m saying is: having running be a constant reminder of my brother is a mixed thing. I kind of wish I knew what Jimmy looks like when he runs. I’m not sure I have ever seen him run. In high school he was a state finalist. He was quite good.

Running fast is a gene. You have it or you don’t. (Based on what I’ve read.) I don’t know if I truly have it or not but I know I have never tried. It’s not until you are an adult many years later that you can admit to yourself that as a kid you never tried. You never really gave it a go. You have to be honest with yourself.

The only time I ran was when someone was chasing me. I rarely got away. Usually I was caught and had the shit beat out of me.

I think I am afraid of Shanna getting older. She is so like me. I’m afraid she is going to be a lightning rod for people who want to beat the hell out of her as well. I hope not.

When I was nineteen I asked Tom to crucify me. We used rope instead of nails (I’m not that hard core) and we built a padded back board with a cross piece together. Even if you are just tied to a board, being suspended in that position with all of your weight hanging is rather intense. Especially if you stay up for a long time. I certainly got to the point of hallucination from insufficient air and blood circulation.

I saw Tommy and I saw my dad. At that point they had been dead for about three years. The hallucinations didn’t talk to me at all. They just looked at me kind of dispassionately. I am not theirs but I don’t belong to any one else. When I was nineteen I felt it was pretty clear that I was good for one thing–being hurt a lot. That was the one currency I had to buy affection. I can take a lot of pain. I can take a lot of degradation. It just feels normal to me.

I’m having this weird body experience as  I run. I can tell where my body is going to start siphoning energy from fat stores. I’ve watched the various fat pockets on my body (I have a lot of them) over this year. As I run the fat jiggles, quite a bit–really. On a scale of 1-10, 1 being you can barely feel it and 10 being “cut my leg off because it hurts so much” then my fat jiggling is normally in the 2-3 range. I can feel it but it doesn’t hurt. Except when my body is nursing from a given area. I can’t find a better way of thinking about it. We are actively stealing from that spot right now. When I can feel my body stealing from a spot that fat pocket starts hurting at more like the 4-5 level. It starts to feel like pain. Then a week or so later I notice that it is a lot smaller. It’s kind of weird. I didn’t know bodies did this.

I am doing a lot of compensatory eating. I’m a little more than ten pounds heavier than I was in March for the half marathon. I’m very depressed. I’m eating a lot of sugar and crying while I do it. I don’t want my body to be smaller. I hate that I feel more and more like Tommy. Fuck that. I’ll eat ice cream. There’s a lot of ice cream in this world. I don’t have to fucking feel Tommy’s bones coming through. Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him.

Yesterday was an eight mile run then the girls and I did a round trip three mile walk for the park. I’m sore and tired. But I’ll do five miles today. And eighteen miles on Saturday.

I’m not going to let Tommy take this away from me. I’m pretty sure he has hurt me enough for one life.

More whining. I’m sorry I woke up so early.

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I’ve been staring at Mint for half an hour. I play with columns. The Sarah experiment was expensive. Not because of anything malicious on her part or anything like that. Life costs money. I’m ok with that. I’ve been slowly trying to dig myself out of that hole all year. This month is the first month I am not over the food budget. I will remain in the green as long as I don’t spend any money on food in the next three days. Good thing I’m well stocked. And if nothing else I have a yard full of tomatoes and carrots. Shanna may hate me, but we’ll have tomatoes for days.

I have felt ashamed of the fact that supporting me requires work for as long as I have known it was true. My father and mother would talk about what I owed them for supporting me. My mom has always felt guilty about how much work she has added to Auntie and that guilt has made her act out in some weird ways. I feel terrible about needing someone else to go work for me. I’m a lazy piece of shit. I can’t fucking support myself what good am I? I’m being terrible at the whore thing this month. I don’t really want to be touched right now. So, what fucking good am I?

Noah’s book is priced a lot higher than mine. He has made a lot more money at that than I have. It feels… appropriate. Everything about who and what he is dictates that he be paid a lot for what he has to offer the world. I give people free downloads. Because I know I am not really worth anything. Nothing that I have to give could possibly be worth anything.

I’m still selling copies. One or so a week. Heh. Maybe if I did something resembling promotion it would help. Those are pretty much random finds. Holy shit. Random complete strangers on the internet (it is an e-book) want to read about me. I get lovely emails sometimes.

I feel angry with Noah because he has worth and I don’t. But I don’t particularly want to go get a job. The idea of missing this part of my childrens lives makes me feel sick. No. I need every minute of intense love I can get. I need to be loved. I need to have my day full of people who genuinely like me and want to be near me. I may never get this feeling again. They will be adults before much longer. Maybe I’ll work some day. I don’t know what I’ll do, but certainly not now.

So I have nothing that the world values. That’s part of simple market economics. And I don’t really have much time to make things that could potentially be judged as valuable or not because I am busy being loved. And I feel like making that choice means that I am choosing to be nothing. I am something that only has worth and value for a short time. Then I cease to matter at all. In some horrifying ways I feel like more than other people I know that the support a mother gives is a one way obligation. I don’t expect much of anything from my kids as adults.

Which means I spend all day every day feeling like I am pouring all of myself, all of my energy, all that I have to give to the world into two people who will leave me. I feel scared all the time. I know that I am using all this energy–all of these resources in ways that will long term not serve me. I expect to have my fifties to look forward to while feeling like I have done nothing with my life but want love.

Even a cursory glance at my life makes it fairly apparent that for me it is true that no one stays. Noah says he will. I’m crossing my fingers because I don’t really believe him. I think that all I have to do is be a little meaner and he will understand how bad I am and he will go.  I just need to show him who I am. Don’t worry, he will go. Everyone does.

I’m really struggling with how alone I feel. If it weren’t for my kids needing me to wait on them hand and foot I don’t think I would make it through today. I don’t want to. But I have to stop crying soon.  I have to put this feeling in a box. It doesn’t matter what I want. I made a commitment. It doesn’t matter if they will leave one day. I made the decision to bring two people into the world who require care. I have sixteen more years of duty. I don’t get to shirk that. They really and truly need me. Even though neither of them are nursing. Even though they aren’t really “babies” any more. They need me.

Shanna needs someone who can deal with her intensity. She reminds me so much of me. I was beaten and shamed and told I was disgusting and annoying for being like Shanna. No one but me is going to want to love her so much. I really don’t think other people would have as much patience for her quirks. I can be gentle with her and forgive myself for being punished. I know she isn’t worthless. I know that this investment of time and energy and love will be good for her. I don’t know how it will work out for me long term, but I know that she will go off into the world knowing that it is good for her to yearn and do and be. Calli is quite clear that she wants me. Mama mama mama. If I am out of her sight for an hour there are a lot of tears. I can’t leave her.

I’m really sad. I’m really scared. I’m really lonely. There isn’t really anything I can do about these feelings. It’s time to go run. I have a race in 38 days with a very good friend.

It’s not that I think I don’t have friends or people who love me. But I spend fifteen to twenty hours a month with adults other than Noah who know me and like me. I don’t count the home schooling group because I go there and keep my fat mouth shut. It’s isolating and hard. I feel bad all the time. Like *I* am bad. With my kids. With people I associate with for my kids. It’s hard. It’s really hard.

Not being nice to Noah.

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Sometimes when I am having a hard time at “life” I end up very angry with Noah. It’s not particularly fair to him. It’s actually a lot of the reason I originally wanted Sarah to move in. I thought she could help fill the aching hole I have because Noah is gone all the time. It didn’t work. She wouldn’t come out of her room. I was still alone all the time only I had another person to clean up after. I couldn’t do it.

I know I “should” have a better control over my temper but I don’t. I can (barely) keep it off the kids. As a result when an adult walks in the door they become the lightning rod for all the emotions I was not allowed to express at the kids. Sarah really didn’t appreciate being the person on whom I dumped my anger. I don’t blame her. I don’t blame Sarah for hiding from my frequent anger eruptions. She has every right to do that. She had every right in the whole world to not want to be my punching bag. Truly. I am not upset with her for avoiding me. I just couldn’t live with it. I couldn’t handle living with another person I had to be really nice to. I am too selfish. I am too much of a bitch. It leaves Noah by himself as the person I can get angry at.

It’s not really fun being the one person I can safely get angry at. Noah deals with. Noah understands that I really don’t have many outlets. He is the adult in my life I can talk to about the hard things. That means he gets all the hard things. Including when I am angry with him and blame him for not supporting me enough.

Before we got married I was quite cruel to Noah about how “lazy” he was. It took several years of him ramping up work stuff more and more before I understood that all the staring at a glowing box he does is “work”. And it directly leads to money that supports me. I have tried hard to get rid of my attitude but it’s hard. I was taught, specifically and deliberately, that mental work doesn’t “count” and doing a lot of it without doing physical work makes you a piece of shit. You are a lazy piece of shit. You are shiftless. You are nothing. I didn’t grow up with a family who values academia to say the least.

It’s been a gradual process as I try to discover how to live with someone who lives and works in his head. Tom wasn’t like Noah. Tom also had the hard streak of “must work with hands in order to not look ‘lazy'” and he would do things like build furniture on the weekend. It felt like, sure he does namby pamby brain work during the week but he is still a man. He can fix my computer, my car, and when I say, “I’m tired of having an electric oven. I would like gas” he did all the work to convert the kitchen for me. He just did it. Like that. No big deal. Err, Noah doesn’t do that.

If Noah does a house chore he always leaves parts for me. If he had to use tools they are left out until I put them away. I can wait for fucking weeks and look at the big shop vac he left out after cleaning the hot tub and it won’t go anywhere until I put it away. (Thank you for cleaning the hot tub. That is a huge, shitty job and I didn’t want to do it. I’m really appreciative.)

In many of the worlds I have lived in, Noah would be a worthless piece of shit. But he really isn’t. He isn’t. He isn’t. He isn’t. He works very hard. He does a lot of chores. He spends as much time with the kids as he can. He pays as much attention to me as he possibly can. He works at things that are very difficult to him from when he wakes up until he passes out. I know that. I can see it.

But I get angry with him for not instinctively filling all the roles I kind of assign him in my head. I get mad that supporting our family creeps slowly into filling more and more and more hours. I get mad because I want more support. I thought I would have support. All those people at my baby shower and Noah promised me I would have more support. People are liars.

You aren’t supposed to say that though. I have gotten support. I have a lot of people I can call out of the blue for help. They will be happy to help if I specifically ask and chase them down. But frankly, most of them don’t pursue relationships with my kids so I have let it fall away. I can’t chase people down and beg them to have a relationship with my kids. Most people don’t really give a shit. I have to let it go. I have to not try to force it and create it. Then my kids will turn into me. They will have to get used to trying to form relationships only to observe that once they stop doing all the work and travel… they just don’t see people any more. It’s not worth it. It’s really not.

It’s not worth it *to me* to try and form community. I’m so tired of being lied to. I don’t trust people. I hate people. And Noah has to live with me. And I feel so bad. I’m sorry I don’t trust Noah. I’m sorry I bite his head off. I’m sorry that he has to bear the brunt of what a fucking asshole I am. I really feel like that is probably a bad deal for him. I’m not sure he should do it. But the alternatives are really bad for me so I try not to encourage them too much.

Whether I try hard at it or not I drive people away. When I try to get close to them it just means that I am opening myself up to more hurt. I’m not sure how much more I can bear.

I feel terrible when I yell at Noah. For days I feel this hanging cloud over me. He’s going to get sick of me being an asshole too. He is going to leave, just like everyone else. He has been kind of avoiding me lately. Out alone time is full of me being a bitch. I don’t blame him. I wish I could avoid a bitch like me too.

It’s scheduling stuff. That’s all.

It’s not helping that as the days go by I hate running more and more. I don’t want to do it. It’s physically uncomfortable (not painful, but I am clearly straining my body). I’m god damn exhausted All.The.Fucking.Time. It doesn’t really feel like relaxing alone time. The only time I have to relax and be quiet is when I am smoking pot. I may never stop at this rate. I’m developing a Pavlovian response that I am only allowed to sit down, I am only allowed to write, I am only allowed to read the fucking internet when I am smoking. That’s when I sit down. That is the closest I have to rest. And I type furiously in a bad posture the whole time and my arms hate me. I think I should look into arm braces.

Noah isn’t doing anything terrible to me. He really isn’t. He’s not being selfish. He’s not being excessive about the time he needs, not really. It’s not his fault that I am so alone. It’s really not. I can’t expect him to be everything to me. He can’t be. It’s not fair. Some year I am going to have to realize that not everyone in the world is alone, but I always will be. I need to stop resenting it. I need to stop feeling angry with Noah for abandoning me–he’s not. It’s not his fault that I have driven everyone else away. I can’t expect him to make up for everyone else.

I go back and forth between believing I live a life of utter pointlessness–I feel like a complete waste of oxygen–and believing I must have lived through my childhood for a reason. Please, please, please let there be some kind of plan. Please, let me be useful. Please, let there be something I can do that is worth doing. That is worth going through hell for. What I am doing isn’t. What I am doing means that going through hell should kill you. There is no reason to survive for more of this.

In choosing to not die today I feel like what I am doing is dooming Noah. I will hurt him over and over. Yes, I wake up in the morning and sob and cry for hours because I believe Noah would be better off if he didn’t live with a disgusting bully like me. He says I’m not that bad. Yeah, my tone of voice isn’t great but I’m not that bad. I don’t believe him. Because he will change his mind one of these days. Everyone does. I’m not worth putting up with. I really want to die today. I don’t want to fucking run. I want to die. I don’t want to do today.

But I have to run nine miles. And one of the home schooling moms invited us to walk to our local park today and meet her at 10. (Her son is kind of obsessed with Shanna and vice versa.) I try not to speak very much around her. She seems nice. I don’t want to drive her away. So I’m very quiet. The only way for me to earn a grudging entry into the group, I feel, is for me to be as silent as possible. The only thing me speaking does is earn me a swift kick in the backside. I can’t do that to my kids. So I’ll shut up. Just shut up, Kristine. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. No one wants to hear your stupid, fucking mouth. You stupid, mean, little bitch.

Stupidly defensive.

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I feel strangely guilty for liking Disneyland as much as I do. I really do. I’m not alone. This is a grand passion that many people share. But I feel vaguely ashamed of being part of the cult. I’m even part of the time share. Cue jokes about lame people.

When I go down for the marathon I am getting an annual pass with Shanna. This is the last year Calli is free. Shanna and I will go four times if I get my way. I think I will. With an annual pass and a time share the only unusual expense is gas. And I have a fund for that. It’s less than $100 round trip in the blue car. I put about $40 extra every month into a fund for Disneyland travel. I don’t feel too guilty.

Disneyland is pretty much the only place I feel like I can trust people to be really nice to me. I spend my life on edge waiting for people to snap at me. That’s part of why Disneyland Paris is so awful. You go there expecting, you know… Disneyland and instead you get France. Fuck yourself very much.

I haven’t had an annual pass since before my parents divorced. I had one when I was three. That’s not true! I have the vague memory of buying one on the Christmas Day I spent there with friends after Tom and I broke up. I didn’t actually make it back to Disneyland that year–unsurprising I was busy figuring out being a teacher–but I bought one as a self-comfort thing. This time I have three sets of reservations so far. The fourth will be easy.

I am going to be there for the anniversary of my father’s suicide. I’ll be there on my father’s birthday (missing my mom’s birthday by three days). I will be there for Shanna’s birthday and I think I will go again for the fourth trip for my birthday. I have given other people trips to Disneyland for their birthday but I haven’t been for my birthday… ever. I really should stop giving other people things I want. People always leave me. Then I get to remember that I will go through great effort for other people and it’s not reciprocated. Fuck them. I should save my energy for me.

All told that will be nineteen days of travel. Noah will be there for the marathon and I suspect he will come down for my birthday. The other two trips I will be alone with my little girls. I can’t wait. I like traveling with them. I pare down my needs until we can move at the same pace. It’s a lot of fun. Watching Shanna and Calli navigate new situations and people are some of my greatest joys in life. Seeing them exist makes me feel very good about the world. See, I did make it a better place.

I like watching their joy and eagerness. I like watching Shanna run until she is so tired she can’t walk any more and she must be carried. I like watching Calli be brave and fearless… as long as she is standing behind me. Otherwise she is cautious around new people. I like watching my solemn, intense little girl light up like a roman candle when I walk into sight. I like being loved. I like watching how my children believe that love is absolutely limitless. Shanna goes back and forth between which kid she is going to grow up and marry. So far she is not picky between boys and girls. Sometimes she talks frankly about how she is going to have a wedding with one person and a hand fasting with someone else. (Thanks to Grandpa J, his wife C and his hand-fasted partner D.)

Shanna likes people of all races and physical abilities. If you will sit still and talk to her she likes you. Sometimes she seems to disconcert the large black men on BART. I beam benignly from behind her. The conversations are great. “Does your mother know you are talking to me?” “Yes.” “She doesn’t mind?” “Why would she? Are you a bad person I shouldn’t be talking to?” Then they blink in kind of confused/bemused horror. Then they just talk to her. It’s great.

I used to think Shanna was extremely physical. It turns out I was a first time mom who had never been around a baby. Who knew? From birth Shanna was obviously trying to pattern off of me. She wants to be like me. Calli wants to be like Shanna. Only she’s hitting milestones a lot faster than Shanna. If it weren’t for the difference in leg length I don’t think Shanna could catch Calli. Calli is starting to get mad if I don’t let her practice running with the group. “Me hurry!” Of course with emphatic scowl and pointing to the ground. Yes ma’am.

That’s one of the things that I think makes the biggest difference in how my kids speak on a regular basis. I say “Yes ma’am” to things. I use a lot of weird speech patterns, basically on purpose. I like playing with accents. It makes me happy. I use funny accents because then I consciously think about what I am saying and how I am saying it. Then I don’t snap. I’m not nasty. I use a lot of polite words in theatrical, emphatic ways.

I’ve never understood why other people think I am as rude as they seem to. I try. I really do.

I think people who are on the fence shouldn’t have kids. It’s a huge commitment. It’s a lot of work. If I didn’t feel like I was alive for this very purpose I don’t think I could do this. I would hate them and hate my life. But this is the life I want. So I’m trying to figure out how it goes.

I’m struggling with finding the last granules of patience I have left in me for a baby. Calli is still a baby. She gets a while longer. I told her that milk will be all gone on Tuesday on her birthday. Even though she is potty trained, even though I can’t handle nursing her any more… she really does still feel like a baby. It’s funny, when Shanna was that age I marveled at how kid-like she felt. Now that I have a kid I look at two and think, “Baby!”

I’m basing this intense belief on different developmental stuff I’ve read about. Kids’ brains work one way before three. It’s a large developmental stage. Then three to six is another big period. I’m not going to get into it. If you are interested there is a lot of research.

I’m thinking about pacing of the day and learning activities, that may not be obvious. I have a hard time with baby-pace. I don’t like it much. But I follow it. It’s not like I run my home like a daycare or anything like that but I consciously think about what kinds of interactions and reactions are appropriate. I can say things to Shanna I just can’t say to Calli yet. I feel like it requires intense concentration in my mind to censor things to an appropriate baby-place.

I am a volatile person. It has been very difficult for me to be mostly level and calm and happy for more than four years running with my babies. I freak out on the internet because this is the only place I have to put those feelings, those words, that part of my existence. People who watch me interact with my children who do not read my writing have no idea that I am depressed and suicidal unless I tell them. When I have told people (seriously, I think part of the way I am handling my mental illness is building up the responsibility to my community to not die) they are shocked and surprised. They never would have guessed! I think people aren’t very observant.

Everyone is motivated by different things. Part of what I like about staying at the Disney time share is the way it will push the kids into a foreign environment and they will get to find out which parts of their lives and routine is place dependent and which things are all-the-time-required. Like brushing your teeth. You do that no matter where you sleep. You have to eat no matter what. But things like clean clothes? Well… it varies. How you wash. If you wash. How dirty you get. There is a lot of variation possible in life. How do you roll with differences? How do you learn how to observe local customs and adapt to be like the natives? Even things like how do you learn how to use different versions of what you have–like a dishwasher.

When we are alone and going at their pace my kids can do at least half and sometimes all of the work to feed themselves. They can deal with a lot of minor cooking stuff (ok, Calli isn’t there yet–Shanna makes enough for two) and it’s easy to get them to do other cleaning stuff if everything is kept simple and slow. Calli sets the table while Shanna makes food. I think about how I learned to do things. I think about what it is they need to learn.

I think my kids will know how to cook more at five than I knew how to cook at eighteen. That is really kind of weird to me. I knew how to make ramen. I could open cans and microwave things. I could follow the directions on the back of a tv dinner. You can hand Shanna a (small) pile of vegetables and she’ll fucking make you soup. It feels weird to me that these things are so important to me. My kids will know how to handle food. My kids will know how to make a meal plan and go to the grocery store and come back with ingredients instead of boxes and make food. I learned it slowly over time as an adult. It’s been hard. It’s been embarrassing.

I have weird issues around food. If that’s not obvious by now. I feel very differently about what I/we eat when Noah is home than I do when he isn’t home. Taking his preferences into account messes me up. I have to think a lot harder about food and process because I’m trying to take a lot of different things into account.

When I’m alone with the kids I let Shanna do the best she can for as long as she can. She generally finishes enough for her and Calli. Sometimes I finish Calli’s share. Then I do mine. I don’t have to think about mine. It’s automatic and easy. I get territorial about feeding Noah. And if I have to take the time to do two adult portions it is a lot faster and easier for me to do basically three adult portions and call it a day rather than let Shanna slowly and ponderously do everything she wants to do. (cutting, cleaning veggies, breaking things up, assembling plates, whatever food task) Calli helps as she can. Mostly she sets the table and yells “Me do!” without being able to figure out which side of the plastic knife is sharp. It’s a process.

I’m looking forward to being alone with the girls for a few days. I’m looking forward to sleeping with them in the big hotel bed. I’m looking forward to simple foods Shanna and Calli can get on their own. I won’t bother too cook meat while we are gone. I may not cook much at all. We like fruit and raw vegetables with dip and bread and cheese and lunch meat and cereal. That sounds like a vacation to me. A glorious vacation. If I put a bowl of fruit on the table my kids would eat it. No matter how big the bowl was.

Abrupt topic switch: Noah timing stuff and my complaints about losing a year. I was told that bit was unclear. A while ago Noah and I sat down and fleshed out what he would like to do career wise over the next few years. Where would he like to end up. What is our plan for retirement (says she who doesn’t work)? If you are going to be my provider forever then we need a god damn plan because things don’t always work out just for hoping. If you want to get somewhere it’s probably a good idea to make sure you take steps in that direction.

For all that I am so rebellious and anti-authoritarian… I do have a high school diploma (this was complicated to get and I am the only one of my siblings with one–I am the youngest of four), BA, and teaching credential. I failed the MA, but I can jump through hoops. I usually don’t want to.

What path are we on? Where is this hand basket going and who is driving? So we made a plan. Then Noah had someone bring up an interesting idea. But it takes a year away from me. And leaves me standing with a year left in the baby stage and only a couple of drips of patience left and my husband about to make me a work widow. Apparently my response to this is, “Fuck you then I’m running away to Disneyland.” It’s ok. I’ll come back. I think it will be fun.

I think I will slowly replace my memories of my mother in Disneyland with memories of my daughters. It will be good. I will get to share my good memories. Shanna asks me a lot if I used to do ___________ with my mom when we are doing stuff. I try to answer simply and honestly without a lot of detail when it is bad. “No, doing this with my mom wasn’t a lot of fun. She didn’t have patience left by the time she got to me so it was hard to learn. I got in trouble every time I did anything even slightly wrong. I hope you feel like this is going better.” Said after Shanna had dropped about 1/2 a cup of flour on the counter, step stool, and floor. My mother raged. My mother screamed at me and told me I was a disgusting brat.

When Shanna has mastered a skill I feel a relief of fear. I no longer feel tensed up waiting for a blow. I feel like I am waiting for her to grow up without being abused before I can really trust that it can happen at all. I’m waiting for the abuser to show up. I’m waiting to get in trouble for her mistakes. I’m waiting to be told that obviously my daughter is a loser like me. Only it isn’t coming. I got us away. We can hide away and do things at her pace and move slowly and feel safe. It’s really nice. We can learn things at the pace we learn them instead of trying to hurry up or slow down on someone else’s agenda.

I think this last year of babyhood will be the last year that Calli is less capable than Shanna physically. I think that when her proportions lengthen out she will be a force to be reckoned with. I’m looking forward to it. I want them to run with me. I want them to challenge me to work harder. I want to learn how to run from joy instead of fear. I have spent my whole life running away. I don’t want to run away any more. I want to stay here. Except for trips to Disneyland. That’s just going home for a few days (as they like to say–it’s awesome).

My kids have to learn how to stand in line politely. They have to learn how to look at a barrage of options and make a choice. We live in the world we live in. Disneyland is not the world. But it’s a very safe testing ground of a lot of basic skills for very young children. I can relax and not worry about the assholes who feel inconvenienced by me having young children out in public.  Shanna’s friendliness bothers people sometimes. They chew her (and me) out for it. I think she needs to learn how to deal with those assholes, yes, but man it will be nice to be in Disneyland. It really will be magical for my kids. I can. Why not? Why do I feel defensive? Because I don’t approve of all of the everything associated with the Cult of Disney™? I’m not even sure. I know it is wasteful of resources. It’s clearly a first world evasion of stress.

I don’t live in poverty any more. Why do I feel so ashamed of that? Why do I feel bad about being secure and having things? I feel absolutely required to believe that my preferences are wrong and bad. What other people want is more important. More relevant. More… just more. I don’t know. I am less. I should shut up. I should stay home and not spend money. Between the annual passes and gas Disneyland is going to be ~ $1,000 for the year of going. (Uhm, on top of paying the time share. Musn’t Forget That. It will probably not be fully paid off this year. It almost certainly will be paid off next year.) I get $100/month to spend on anything I want. We also have a $100/month “entertainment” fund. And Shanna’s spending money comes from her allowance. She has been saving up. She’s really proud of herself. I can afford this. It is within my means as a hobby. Why does it feel so much more extravagant than other things? I don’t know but it’s silly. I have small children. It’s a fucking great hobby.

Whatever. I should go start breakfast.

On guns

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I can’t remember the first time I saw a gun. I am pretty sure I can remember my first time shooting. My father took me out to the desert with my brothers. I was four or five. My brothers were five and eight years older than me. Old enough that I thought my brothers were basically already grown ups. I didn’t think of the as kids like me. When they told me to do stuff I had to jump or get hit–same as the grown ups.

I remember my father taking great care as he showed me how to line up the sight on the rifle. I remember the thrill of knocking cans over. I knocked the can off a rock from twenty feet away. It was like magic.

I don’t remember seeing a gun again until I was nine or ten. I can’t remember which. Even when I try to write my whole life out I don’t remember for sure when this happened. The next time I remember seeing a gun was when my father set a hand gun on the couch next to him before he made me suck his cock. When he was done he picked up the large, shiny revolver and he held it to my head. He asked me if I deserved to live. I shook and cried.

When I was sixteen the middle college program I was in made everyone do aptitude tests. Over and over I was told I should go into the military. I am well suited. I would always turn to the teacher and say, “I’d have to touch guns, right? Then–no.”

All of the gun sightings in the rest of my childhood were benign: through shop windows and the like. When I started dating Tom at eighteen there was a sticky issue. He sleeps with a loaded gun right next to his head. If I was going to be sleeping with a loaded gun less than three feet from my head I should probably know how to handle it safely.

When I think of Tom as my Daddy this is the kind of thing I remember. This is part of why I loved him so much. Tom didn’t entirely understand my gun issues. He knew “something bad happened”. Tom didn’t want to know my story. He actively discouraged me spilling all the details. But he took me to the shooting range. He helped me learn safe gun handling and firing. He taught me how to check to see if a gun is loaded. You never touch a gun unless you know for sure if it is loaded or not. My Daddy would make me practice safe handling methods until I was shaking with fear so hard I could no longer physically grasp anything. Then he would take me outside and hold me while I calmed down. Then he would bring me back inside and switch to rifles.

I do fine with rifles. I’m a good shot with a .22 rifle. Quite accurate. It’s the hand guns I can’t handle. It’s the hand guns that make me quake with fear and unable to think coherently or rationally. I believe that human beings have the right to live even if that means we must kill other animals and eat them. I’m ok with being up the food chain. Hunting makes sense to me. Rifles make sense to me.

Hand guns scare the ever-loving-shit out of me. In another year or so I am going to find a gun safety course for Shanna. Calli will have to wait a few years then she will do the same process. My kids will re-up every few years. Guns are tools. I want my children to understand and respect them. They don’t have a Daddy who will teach them. I will have to find a way. I thought Uncle A would do it. But he’s gone now. That happens.

Sometimes I feel daunted by the things I don’t know that I want my children to know. How can I teach them to move through the world without being paralyzed by fear? How can I teach them to be safe without also triggering them learning my ridiculous panic? I don’t know. So far the explanation is, “I know I’m over reacting to this but it’s not necessary. This is one of those places where my brain is being broken. Crying is not mandatory at this stage.”

I’m trying to get to the point where I believe in my gut that the point isn’t about whether you cry or not while you do things–the point is that you do them. I do. I do things over and over. I do things that are very hard for me. I don’t deserve a medal. I do deserve to keep living.

If I ever own a gun it is likely to be a big shot gun. I won’t buy ammunition. I’ll just buy it to practice cleaning about three months before my daughters start dating. I think it is really weird that I have any impulse to laugh and agree with this sort of behavior. Why do I think it is good to threaten teenage boys? Because in general my life experience tells me that boys will be nice and respectful towards a girl if they believe there will be extreme negative consequences for ill behavior. Otherwise they are abusive and terrible.

One of these days I’m going to have to have different life experiences so I can stop hating everyone in the whole world. I hear there are nice people out there. Somewhere.

trying to figure out the pieces.

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I hasten to say they aren’t real “voices” properly but be careful what you say to your kids. Your voice will become their inner voice.

Today will be busy. There is a Signing Time concert and then Calli’s birthday dinner. Her birthday isn’t technically until Tuesday. She wanted an orange castle. Sure, no problem. It was kind of nice having to make it. Shanna didn’t want me to make her birthday cake. The godmamas were better. I tried to just feel gratitude. This was fun. The girls and I made a huge mess together and had a blast in the process. Shanna can ice multiple cupcakes without feeling the need to eat them immediately already. That’s big progress. Calli eats more than she ices. I figure it is her birthday. Why not. I bake with an eye towards expected windfall.

Yesterday’s run was good. I ran out to the very edge of town. I passed very few people, mostly elderly Asian couples wandering together. Perfect. When I quickly get passed by male runners most of them take the time to wave and give me a thumbs up and tell me I’m doing great. The hecklers are certainly in the minority. It’s part of why I feel so angry about being told to drive somewhere else. I don’t want to cede ground. This is my home. Near as I can tell I may never leave Fremont. If I don’t get to be here then I don’t get to be anywhere. I’m much more interested in signing up for martial arts. It’s always been on my “some day” agenda. I think right now Plan A is to find somewhere I can go with Shanna when she turns five. A lot is waiting for her to turn five.

I feel kind of weirdly guilty because I have so little interest in “stimulating” my babies. I think they don’t need classes or lessons. I think they need to play with me. So we play. I want to be done with this phase. I want to move outward. I’m bored and out of patience. I’m not sure how I am going to handle reading We’re Going on a Bear Hunt another four hundred times. I refuse to read books more than once a day. House rule. I spend at least an hour reading a day. I could not handle rereading the same books over and over.

I should do scheduling. I have been procrastinating for a week. Don’t wanna. I still don’t feel caught up. I’m not ready to move into the steady phase yet. I’m still running. I’m so tired and it’s hard to predict. I need to get started for the kids. Urg. They like routine. This way they are constantly whining for the iPad and it’s hard to be nice to them. Stop all the gosh darn whining. “Try again.” I say it a lot. Shanna has the hutzpah to remind me if I sound whiny or too loud. I want her to be my inside voice.

Sometimes our interactions remind me of Francesca, my friend who died when I was pregnant. Shanna is not my boss and she is not wise in the ways of the world. What she is, is an individual with strong preferences. She is good at taking up space. I like standing near her. I feel comfortable. I am obviously there because she wants me there. When she doesn’t she either politely asks me to move or she kicks me. Either way I get the point. I feel like I can trust Shanna. I smile a lot during the day. I feel safe.

My bad memories are fleeting things. Ghosts that stand on the periphery. Whispers that pop up when I feel stress. When I suddenly find a huge mess. When I walk in and find out that the next two hours of my day will be devoted to scrubbing something on my knees. I cry. I hear “worthless” over and over in my head.

It’s remarkable to me the degree to which housework is a complex hostile force in my life. Only losers clean. Pissy Krissy. Prissy Krissy. I like finding systems. I like making order out of chaos. It has always seemed to me that other people specifically find joy in fucking up my systems for me. Chaos scares me.  Chaos in the form of a messy house looks like mental illness to me. I’m sure there are a myriad of reasons for it but I can’t see anything else. I’m locked in my experience of the world. All the messy houses I have dealt with a lot have had major mental illness issues. Sometimes alcohol abuse. Sometimes physical or sexual abuse of children. I feel like I live on the fringe of society. I am only invited into the darkness.

Right now I am pretty sure that I don’t always feel like this. I’m having a hard time because Shanna is so like me. I think of how my mother treated me. Hell, I even think of how my mother would treat Shanna. I even feel angry because I know my mother would treat Shanna far better than she treated me.  My mother is telling the truth when she says it would be different. But not different enough. There would still be all those broken promises. And I would still have to keep my mouth shut.

No matter how it worked out for other people my experience would still be different. I would feel like I had no choice but to close my eyes and my mouth and put up with it. I can’t. I can’t. I would rather die. It is that important to me. I can not continue to be who they want me to be.

Why do I feel so unable to exist while people have strong expectations of me that run contrary to my nature? Self-preservation? Most people in my life want nothing from me. In terms of numerical representation in my life. It’s nice to have people out at arms length. They can have what they have and do what they do and it has nothing to do with me. It feels safe.

Doesn’t everyone hear voices?

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Everyone is sleeping. I’m sitting in the living room. It feels really weird. The sun is coming up. It’s 6:34. Where is everyone? I could go wake Noah up–he wouldn’t mind. I figure he needs the sleep. I ate a blueberry muffin. Not exactly a breakfast of champions. I’m going to run twelve miles today.

Someone on the internet told me that if I was being harassed in my neighborhood I should drive to a better neighborhood so I can run there. That made me feel really angry. I felt insulted and disgusted by the suggestion. Noah asked me if I was looking for sympathy or advice. I thought about it really hard. I was pretty sure I wanted advice but not that fucking advice.

Then I got several other pieces of advice. I understand that other people feel comfortable with hand guns, but I’ve had one pointed at my head. I don’t think there are any circumstances under which I could really handle having a gun on my person. I don’t like the options it gives me. I was thrilled when someone suggested changing time of day, wearing a loud whistle, carrying mace, borrowing a dog to run with, or finding running buddies.

Ok. Now that’s a god damn list of suggestions that doesn’t bother me. It was a really strikingly different set of reactions from me. This is why I used to be fanatical that I didn’t want advice. Because I don’t have a lot of control over how strong my emotional reaction will be. When it’s generic people on the internet I will maybe/probably never meet it doesn’t matter. As long as I’m not a dick it doesn’t matter how I feel. That’s convenient.

People react to things based on a long list of complex factors. Everyone has a different life. I have a hard time when people suggest things that aren’t a good fit. I feel enraged by the suggestion that I should be a different kind of person. I do not want to be someone who runs away from difficult situations. If things got worse I might run with a big stick. I’m ok with the consequences of having that taken away from me and used against me. Unless someone is highly trained in martial arts they are unlikely to hit me any harder than my boyfriends.

I think a lot about why “women like me” don’t survive. I feel like my desire to do things in a way different from the herd makes me defective. But I’m doing the best I can. What is an acceptable life?

I’ve been yelling too much lately. Shanna is trying hard to learn to sneak. That’s a process I am struggling with. I used to do it. I feel kind of thrilled by having this mini-me in the house. I get to be so much nicer than I had.

Even though I feel like I am yelling more than I want to be yelling I have these tapes in my head that play over and over. I’m not like that. I don’t go on tirades. I make my point and I move on. I try to. I think I do. Am I ever allowed to be secure about this? Would it ever be ok for me to feel complacent on this subject? I don’t think so. So I am constantly wary. I must not go on tirades at my children. I must not go on tirades at my children.

I hear them in my head. When Shanna does stuff that I have done I hear my mother. I hear her screaming. I hear her choking and crying as she hit me and screamed at me that I was bad and stupid and how dare I and and and.

I’m having a hard time lately. I feel like a big part of the reason I want to block out this period of their childhood and be with them all the time is so I can experience what it is like to have a whole childhood that is safe. I don’t know. I have these terrible voices in my head. I am so afraid of being like my mother.

I am already too critical. I feel harsh lately. Overly judgmental. Really I feel like I should just shut my stupid mouth. When Shanna smarts off at me I smile at her and try to gently lead her tone and words in the direction I want them. In my head I hear, “You stupid little bitch”.  Sometimes I honestly wonder about schizophrenia. When I was a teenager one of the meds they put me on caused me to be “borderline schizophrenic” according to the psychiatrist I was working with at Kaiser. I hear a lot of things that are not going on a lot of the time. It is very hard to not have multiple memory tracks going at once in my head. Sometimes it makes it hard to hear what someone is actually saying to me. I know it makes me sound sharp and harsh. Someone is always being nasty to me in my head. But it’s not an excuse.

That’s why I speak gently to my children. They won’t learn how to treat me unless I model it. I want them to be polite and gentle with me. So I am with them. It feels important. I am not going to be a hypocrite in that way. I am not going to yell at them and hit them for “talking smart”.

I hear stirring.

You bring it on yourself.

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“Some people believe that when you think about things like rape and assault you bring it into your world.”

Yeah. I know. People have been telling me that they have different lives than me so it must be all my fault I have the experiences I have for my whole life. I must have brought it on myself. I bring everything on myself.

I understand why my brother used to beat his head into windows. After a while they made him wear a helmet full time because they got tired of repairing the scalp wounds.

Nothing bad is happening. Today has been mellow and easy so far. But I really want to shove my head through a window. I want to break someones bones. I don’t really care who. I want someone to lie on the ground in front of me heavily bleeding while I kick them for a while.

Then I will tell them to “get over it” and “you brought it on yourself, you know. You must have at some point been afraid this would happen. You thought of it. It’s your fault.”

I guess I’ll go clean the bathroom. Folks like me are good for that kind of thing. And the window in that room is small and would be a difficult target.

(For the record: not mad at the person who said it. I uhhh have a lot of previous pissiness with such phrases. You weren’t being a jerk even remotely. I can still HAVE FEELINGS because I’m like that.)

sticks and stones

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People tell me to just get over being afraid. But when I leave my house I have people yell that I am a dyke, a lesbian, a bitch, and a whore. People who have never met me and who know nothing about me. I have been raped a lot. I’ve never had a violent attack from a stranger, though. These days that feels like the biggest threat left in my life.

Given that I have boys yelling insults and put downs while following me home on bicycles (they were riding in the same direction anyway, I’m sure) I’m not really sure how it would be rational or reasonable for me to feel safe. I’m supposed to just shrug it off. Given my life experiences that is death. No. I can’t just brush off people threatening me. I fucking can’t. So I’m told to “drive to better neighborhoods so I can be safe”.

There aren’t safe places for me. I can’t drive to anywhere that is safe for me. Such a place doesn’t exist. Today that scares the ever-loving-shit out of me.

Do I think I was actually in danger from those teenage boys? I don’t know. Teenage boys are about as safe as a pack of rabid dogs in my experience. And I was just about to be in front of the house of the people who don’t want to know me any more. I don’t really feel I could have expected help. I would have been alone. Was I actually in danger? Things happen. They probably know where I live now.

That scares me. That scares me a lot.