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Why I want to be a stay at home mom

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So I was watching the Steve Jobs speech at Stanford and it occurred to me that I should spend some serious time thinking about why I am a stay at home mom.  I’ve been having internal pushback towards my decision making process lately and I think I need more clarity.

I view parenting as accompanying your child through an apprenticeship to adulthood.  One that my mother failed at.  My mother gave me adult responsibilities when I was very young.  I had to be responsible for myself in a way that was not appropriate or fair.  And I failed often.  The result was that I got hurt often.  I don’t instinctively know what skills a child would have to avoid problematic people.  I don’t want to teach my children to be just like me.

I don’t think my aggression is an ideal life attitude.  And I want my kids to be allowed to be them.  I don’t know how to do that without looking at them all day long.  I don’t know how to bond in a shorter time span than that.  I believe that working mothers love their children just as much as I do.  I don’t know how they find time in the day to deal with that much emotion.  I can’t.  It overloads me.  Having to be patient and interactive with them is incredibly difficult.  If I had other things adding stress to my life (like a job) I would be nasty and mean and vicious pretty much all the time.  It is hard for me to be nice and I find that embarrassing.

I only know how to get through the bad days by having a lot of control over every single solitary thing I say and do all day.  You can’t do that and have a job.  So really, I just don’t want to have a job.  No.  That’s not true.  I do not believe I am capable of managing the stress of a job and the stress of children.  I would not be pleasant, ever.  Dealing with my mental health takes up too much time, honestly.

And I am getting to discover what it is like to unfold in a safe, gradually expanding environment.  I am watching how Shanna changes.  It’s amazing to me to look at her in all of her grumpy glory and think, “That is in absence of any external stress whatsoever.  Hunh.  How does that jive with what I remember doing/being/saying?”  I’m learning what it means that someone else can’t “make” you feel something.  My children get on my nerves.  That is kind of their job.  When I lose my temper and start yelling at them I have this huge hammer in my brain hitting me as hard as possible saying, “She’s a fucking three year old!  She doesn’t know this is an annoying thing to do!  You are supposed to be helping her learn not berating her for her inadequacies!!”  I feel like my anger is not supposed to be part of the equation.

Do you know why I feel that way?  Because in my family you weren’t allowed to address small injustices or issues.  You were required to stay silent through small problems and big problems alike.  I was supposed to just smile and “be pleasant”.  “Why is your tone of voice so nasty all the time” was the favored thing to tell me.  I learned that I was simply an unpleasant person because I wanted them to stop “playing” with me in ways that hurt me.  I was a whiner.  At least according to them.  And looking at Shanna… I can understand why people around me didn’t notice that anything wrong was happening.

If I put my hand around Shanna’s hand to hold it when she’s not in the mood it doesn’t matter if I am holding her with so little pressure I barely encircle her hand.  “It huuuuuuuuuuuurts.”  I feel like I’m going to lose my mind.  She is constantly whining about how much I am hurting her, when I am not even touching her body.  When I am walking towards her with the hair brush she starts crying and clutching her head and rolling around the floor sobbing because I have hurt her.  When I haven’t touched her yet.  I did that too.

Do you know what my mom did?  She probably thought she was just trying to get it over with as fast as possible.  Oh how I screamed.  I have done the same thing to Shanna.  You pull them over to the couch, hold them between your knees, and as fast as possible you get the knots out no matter how they squirm.  But my would start with a fine tooth comb at the top of my head and yank.  I have a baby brush with soft bristles and I start at the ends and I pull knots apart with my fingers.  I don’t think Shanna is reacting to what I am doing less than I reacted to my mother.  I sincerely believe that Shanna experiences actual physical pain for less than 10% of the time I am brushing her hair.  My mother could be gentle but when she was in a hurry… well… that was that.  And she was in a hurry a lot.  I was the youngest of four.  She worked most of my life.

If I had to hurry and get Shanna ready for daycare before I got ready for work we would not have a pleasant relationship.  She wakes up slow.  We generally sit in a chair for half an hour cuddling before we do anything at the beginning of each day.  Calli is joining us now.  Then Noah makes breakfast and the kids go back and forth between us.  If I also had to get ready for work then, that would be the end of my writing and relaxing.  That is when I have that time.  The other tasks would get managed somehow by someone else.  I would just lose writing.

It’s hard for me to actually admit that I need this writing.  It feels so banal, so unimportant.  Why would anyone ever care about anything I have to say?  Who the fuck am I?  Because if I’m telling you the truth I want people to read this.  I want people to give a shit what I say.  But I’m not sure anyone should.  Have I thought anything useful?  Have I taught anything?  I don’t know.  Not enough, I’m sure.  What is teaching anyway?  When I worked as a high school teacher my goal was to have the kids be able to argue with me more by the end of the year.  I want them to be ever increasingly sure of their own opinions.  I want them to be able to talk in finer and finer detail about what they believe.  Because only once they can talk about it can they really be a fully integrated person and deal with their little hypocrisies.

I actively want to avoid being a hypocrite.  That means being very sure what my priorities are and changing my behavior when it’s not in alignment.  It’s hard.  It means I don’t get to coast for long.  What are my priorities.

Me.
Noah, Shanna, Calli, Sarah.  Not necessarily in that order.  Spending time with them.
Writing
Learning/Reading
Socializing with other people
Gardening
Housecleaning
Cooking

It’s a short and broad list to start with. That means that when I sit down to read a book to Shanna I am not evading my housekeeping duties.  I’m following my priority list.  I want to stick my tongue out at an imaginary person now.  I feel like there is some judge and jury out there who is going to tell me I am a bad mother because I want to sit in the garage and smoke pot instead of clean my house.  Seriously.  Who the fuck wouldn’t agree with me?  I’m writing, damnit.  Why am I writing.  Why does writing matter.

Writing lets me get out the stupid shit I am thinking about into a format where I can see it, understand it, and recognize that it is idiotic.  If it is just running around and around and around in my brain… I don’t know how to get off the train.  The writing changes it from a train on a circular trap to a traffic loop.  Yes, it is possible to get caught in the center if you are being dumb, but there are exits all fucking over the place.  Just pick one.  Are any of them really worthwhile?  I don’t know.  I don’t know if anyone will read my writing one day and feel like I made their life better.  I gave them an idea they didn’t have before and it made their life just a little easier.  I feel like it is so hard for me to “act normal” that certainly some other people are also just acting and they might like a trick.

I loathe when people say, “Be yourself!”  Yourself is a bizarre construct of all the different influences you’ve had in your life + personal taste.  It’s pretty vague.  And let me tell you, when you do things you genuinely like (like making your hair increasingly AWESOME) people are quick to remind you that you are stepping out of the herd and you should stop that.  I think I dyed my hair because it makes me visually a freak but it doesn’t cause any more pain to my body.  I think that is a god damn excellent direction of progress.

I want to be a stay at home mom because some accident of fate handed me a partner with sufficient money to support me all my life in a manner to which I would like to become accustomed.  We’ve been married for five years.  Until now I have contributed enough to pay for my truly unnecessary stuff.  I was self-sufficient enough.  Now I have no form of income.  Now I am completely dependent on someone else for the first time since I was 15.

Of course I’m secretly having a fucking heart attack and hoping that I do a good enough job in November that I can sell the book.  I don’t want to be a god damn dependent.  But I don’t want to do anything that requires me to deal with other people.  Err, well, that kind of limits the options.  And honestly I wouldn’t take a random retail job right now.  For one thing it would be hard to get someone to hire me because I am so overqualified.  I think I could overcome that though.  It’s called lying.  But I would feel guilty for taking that job away from someone who needs it more.  I don’t want an office job.  I don’t want anything where I have to be doing additional work.  Ha.  I feel like being the housefrau maid for my family is enough fucking work this lifetime, thanks.  And I want to write.  And my husband wants me to write.

I have such intense feelings about Noah’s perception of my writing.  He takes it more seriously and gives it more respect than I do.  I think that Noah is the one who convinced me that I am a writer.  That anyone who compulsively feels the need to write 10-20 pages a day is a fucking writer.  That’s just not normal.  Normal. Normal. Normal.  I hate that word so much and I use it constantly.  I think it goes a long way towards wrecking the meaning I am going for.

Why am I so god damn compelled to be just like everyone else?  When I stand near people too long I start acting like them.  I conform.  I do it in subtle ways at first, then loud, then I explode and yell at them and make it seem like I was being oppressed by the ways I was conforming.  Even if the other person was unaware of the whole situation.  They are just standing there confused.  In my family the constant chatter is about telling you what to think, when to think it, how to think it.  So someone sitting there and telling you something about how they handled a situation is fairly explicitly giving you directions on how you are expected to handle it in the future.  You know that whole, “Childhood as apprenticeship for adulthood” thing I have?

Until fairly recently my aunt and uncle were supporting their three adult disabled children.  And a bunch of grandkids and SOs.  Because they reinforce one another’s behaviors.  They will rise or fall as a unit.  They are all so ridiculously similar it isn’t funny.  Like obsessions with collecting useless things.  Everyone has a different animal.  For every holiday under the sun people compete to find you something with that animal on it.  But they are all dirt poor.  So all the stuff is cheap, ugly, and really pointless.  And they have LOTS of it.  That’s one small point, but they do the same thing with everything.

When I walk into a middle class persons house I instantly put on my ‘acting’ face.  I start to imagine, “How would people who live here behave?”  Do you want to know why I paint my house really dark colors?  Because I grew up in houses with dark wood paneling.  They were caves.  I don’t know how to cope with relentlessly white walls.  We had relentlessly white walls in a series of depressing, horrible rental places.  Or ugly paneling that turned the house into a dark cave.

So I painted my house purple and cornflower blue and green and raspberry and navy blue…. among other colors.  They are dark enough to make me feel calm and settled.  Aunt Vonnie’s houses were the home base.  That was as much of a home as I knew.  That feeling is in a dark house… even though it bugs me.  I don’t want to be the kind of person who has a uniformly dark house.  It feels oppressive to me.  But I like darker, more saturated colors.  Who says a house has to look like the materials came that color direct from nature?  I never got that memo.  I guess I ditched that day at school.

This constant attempt to conform to whomever I am standing near creates problems.  Because then I get angry at the person for “making” me feel like I have to conform and be like them.  I have had this problem in particular with a couple of female friends.  We will be having an intense conversation about something and they are giving advice and all of a sudden I go ballistic and start screaming because I don’t want to be like them.

I don’t know how to handle those feelings very well.  That sudden explosion of fear that they are trying to wipe me off the planet.  I know that it was that fear that got me out of my family.  I respect that fear.  I respect the fact that my individuality comes with a rock solid fist to defend it.  But I really wish I wouldn’t hit my friends.  They haven’t done anything.  This is my fuck up.

I am struggling with the fact that my self control runs out.  I have too many things I am trying to control. I don’t know how to relax and let go of the anger in the moment very well.  It cycles so fast out of no where.  When I am at home I take a time out.  It’s not perfect because I’m doing too much stomping away/slamming doors.

The only normal I care about is the one where my kids aren’t afraid of me.  I don’t want my kids to quake with fear from my voice.  That is not a relationship I want.  But I want to be effective.  Three sucks.

I want to be a stay at home mom so that my kids and I can learn how to be nice to each other without outside pressure.  We can learn how to be a family together.  Because really I don’t know much more than them.  Luckily Shanna is an excellent teacher.  She’s having an emotional period, but mostly she can talk about her preferences and make requests and follow directions.  She is in a rough phase (the book told me to expect it! I love that book) and that’s ok.  Hormones are rough.  I try to be gentle and understanding.  For her, this is just a phase because nothing bad has ever really happened to her.  Minor injuries and scrapes.  Losing her friend Rowan was the biggest loss she’s been aware of.  If I am patient and loving, she will come through this and on the other side she will hopefully understand that three year olds are assholes and I was really nice to her.  This is part of the circle of life.  I wish I could apologize to my mother for some pieces of it.

But that is when we jump on the merry go round again.  I don’t think my mother abused me as a small child.  I think she neglected me to such a degree that it becomes criminal.  I think she tried to enculturate with the only thing she knew… and it worked.  I am indeed, white trash.  Even that didn’t go how she planned.  One of the strongest and most defining things about white trash as I understand the concept is the fierce loyalty.  Blood is everything.  How do you think they get away with incest?  If you are related to someone you are obligated to do anything they want… forever.

Excuse me while I pause to vomit on the floor.  I respond to feeling like I should conform with hostility and aggression because it was a very useful tool at one point.  My friends aren’t trying to convert me though.  Gah.

I should stop writing.  It’s already too long.  But I don’t want to.  This is the problem with trying to do shorter entries.  I don’t always see a clear stopping/starting/dividing line.  How do I talk about things in separate posts when it is all one big concept in my head?  But then I ask and people tell me, yes they would prefer shorter posts.  And then I feel like I am failing to deliver something that people want.  I wish I didn’t do this to myself.  Shit.  This is over twelve pages long.  Ok, I’ll stop.  And it took me just over an hour.  That’s actually kind of hot.

Admiring women

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If you know who this is, don’t say it.  It’s going to freak her out.

I have been thinking about one particular friend of mine a lot recently.  I go through phases where I focus on people heavily in my head.  Mostly I don’t tell people that I am doing this because it is frankly kind of creepy how much I think about other people sometimes.  Anyway.  So she’s been on my mind a lot lately.  I recognize that I focus on people the way I do because they are doing/saying something that reminds me of me in some way.  Because everyone is obsessed with themselves most of all.

So this friend is brilliant.  I kind of have a large ego.  Kind of.  At least about my intelligence.  As long as you come talk to me on a good day I’ll remind you over and over that I’m damn smart.  I think she is smarter than me.  I certainly think that she has a larger index of stuff in her brain than I have.  And she can think faster than me on a great many subjects.  I notice because that is the kind of thing I subconsciously (and consciously) compete on.  That’s my thing if I have one.  My knowledge on most topics is not deep.  But it is broad and I make connections very quickly between things that are not obviously related.  She’s better at it than I am.  In some ways this kind of pisses me off.

But like I do when I admire things in someone, I like to watch them do it.  The problem with this particular friend is that she probably has a lower opinion of herself than I do of myself.  You can see why I scratch my head about this fact.  I go back and forth between loathing myself and thinking I’m the best thing since sliced bread.  She is better than me at the thing I value the most about my intelligence.  Why the fuck isn’t she the cockiest piece of shit on the planet?

Oh!  Right.  Other people have other value systems.  Got it.  Weirdos.  You see, this is why I should get to run the planet.  Everyone will be happier.

In surface ways this friend and I are not very similar.  We picked very different kinds of job stuff, we have fairly diverging lifestyle and sexual preferences, and she’s single with no interest in kids.  But we had enough similarly unhappy-making things in childhood that there is an attitude similarity at times.  Anyway, I can project on to her like mad and she can’t stop me.  So neiner.

When I think about this friend I am struck by how much more than me she has done in terms of learning things and accomplishing things.  She probably would laugh and say that wasn’t true.  But the thing is, she is a fairly senior (actual profession deleted).  In my little corner of the world people who do “X” are higher up the social food chain than me.  In fact I was told by a different person (a woman) in my social group once, “Well you should be used to being discriminated against as a woman, you are not a geek.”  Because if you become a geek you become magically better than those other women and the men should suddenly recognize that you deserve nice treatment!

Anyway, so this friend of mine does not value herself much despite having a job that is one that would convey to a man high social status.  Do you know what this says to me?

I really can’t fathom what value system my friend actually has.  How in the world can she be reaching the conclusion that she has no value?  By what metric?  In what system?  On what planet?  Oh, because your piece of shit father felt threatened as fuck by your very existence so he felt free to tell you from birth that you were nothing.

I’m not sure why people think that families are good things.

The most awesome thing about not being dead is I get to go meet new people.   The most awesome thing about being an adult is I no longer have any reason to have to be near my family of origin.  The most awesome thing about being an American is that I can write any fucking thing I want on the internet and so long as it is true, I have freedom of speech.  At least until someone decides they don’t like me.  And when they decide they don’t like me, I can use the court system to back up my mother fucking rights.

You are pretty enough.  You are smart enough.  You are exciting enough.  You are good.  The core of you brings joy to the world.  How can you not see your value?  Whatever system you are using to judge yourself is broken.  I suggest picking a new system.  If you don’t like any of the ones I have suggested here that’s fine, we can brainstorm more.  There will not be a shortage of available value systems that like you just how you are.  And other awkwardly worded sentences will be in stores near you.

Why do I personally ascribe to the value system that gives career X value?  That’s complicated.  I care because the majority of my social group cares.  Why do they care?  Because it is a career on the cutting edge of technology.  Because it involves being paid an obscene amount of money during a recession when most people are barely making ends meet.  Because it requires years of study and intense effort to actually be good.

I think it is an additional random interesting data point that it is an intensely male dominated field.  And my friend has low self esteem and thinks she is low status.  I think she’s just standing next to a bunch of assholes all day.

Sometimes I wish I could hand my friends a mirror.  I want them to see what I see.

Why I want to be a stay at home mom

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So I was watching the Steve Jobs Ted Talk and it occurred to me that I should spend some serious time thinking about why I am a stay at home mom.  I’ve been having internal pushback towards my decision making process lately and I think I need more clarity.

I view parenting as accompanying your child through an apprenticeship to adulthood.  One that my mother failed at.  My mother gave me adult responsibilities when I was very young.  I had to be responsible for myself in a way that was not appropriate or fair.  And I failed often.  The result was that I got hurt often.  I don’t instinctively know what skills a child would have to avoid problematic people.  I don’t want to teach my children to be just like me.

I don’t think my aggression is an ideal life attitude.  And I want my kids to be allowed to be them.  I don’t know how to do that without looking at them all day long.  I don’t know how to bond in a shorter time span than that.  I believe that working mothers love their children just as much as I do.  I don’t know how they find time in the day to deal with that much emotion.  I can’t.  It overloads me.  Having to be patient and interactive with them is incredibly difficult.  If I had other things adding stress to my life (like a job) I would be nasty and mean and vicious pretty much all the time.  It is hard for me to be nice and I find that embarrassing.

I only know how to get through the bad days by having a lot of control over every single solitary thing I say and do all day.  You can’t do that and have a job.  So really, I just don’t want to have a job.  No.  That’s not true.  I do not believe I am capable of managing the stress of a job and the stress of children.  I would not be pleasant, ever.  Dealing with my mental health takes up too much time, honestly.

And I am getting to discover what it is like to unfold in a safe, gradually expanding environment.  I am watching how Shanna changes.  It’s amazing to me to look at her in all of her grumpy glory and think, “That is in absence of any external stress whatsoever.  Hunh.  How does that jive with what I remember doing/being/saying?”

If I ran Occupy Wall Street

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Ok, instead of being hand wavey, what would I do?

There have to be a short list of demands that are something that can be done by someone in power.  They should be very simple to get a yes or no on it happening.  For example:

I think that Occupy Wall Street should put forward a petition.  President Obama should use the right of eminent domain to take ownership of all the empty “ghost” houses that are sitting empty all over the country.  That housing should all move from being the property of the various banks and become Section 8 housing.  If not Section 8, then those houses should be auctioned off immediately and the bank doesn’t get to quibble about price.

I think that every person who is in the top 1% should have to be publicly audited by more than one firm.  If they have so much as not paid a parking ticket, throw the fuckers in jail.  We are done catering to the rich.

I believe that there should be a one time only chance for people who are under water to refinance their home to something reasonable.

That’s three concrete demands.  Obama and Congress could do any of those.  It wouldn’t be popular.  But if I were the charismatic leader in charge of this movement I would put forth those three demands.  I would give a time limit in which to get them done.  And then I would start large scale destruction of property.  Because if this was my revolution, I wouldn’t sit on a side walk.  I’m kind of violent like that.

Do you know why this isn’t my revolution?  Because I see the direction we are going as being historically precedented.  I don’t think there are enough people who are serious about the same goals.  People aren’t pissed about fucked up housing prices, they are pissed that they don’t have the social mobility they want.

Right now our country is doing pretty shitty compared to the rest of the world, earlier in history we did a lot better.  I think these things are fairly cyclical and there’s not much that can be changed about the downfall of an economic system.  All the money being in the hands of a ridiculously small group of people while the vast swarms worked themselves to death is pretty much the historical norm in every place everywhere.  Ok, not hunter gatherer tribes.  Is it right?  I’m still not sure I understand what that is even asking.  Is it right that feudalism existed?  Is it right that China had an absolute Emperor?  I’m not sure “right” is the thing to worry about.  I’m not sure what is.

Let me put this another way.  It’s not about thinking that people deserve anything.  It’s about the fact that I think the 99% has forgotten that they fucking outnumber the 1% and they are being stupid.  No one is going to ensure that other people get what they deserve.  People have to learn how to get it for themselves.

But I don’t really mean that we are all wild animals fending for ourselves.  I take care of my kids.  Not because they deserve it, but because I want to.  I give them the things I want them to have.  I want them to have a stable home.  I want them to have good food.  I want them to be happy and have fun things to play with.  I get to give my kids the things I give them because of a ridiculous amount of privilege.  I don’t think that my kids deserve any better than one else’s kids.  But I can give them different things.

Do I think it should be equal across the board?  No.  I actually don’t.  Do I think there should be a minimum standard for everyone?  Yes and no.  The realist in me believes that it will never happen.  Because there is no should and there is no deserve.  The idealist in me wants to try hard to build a world where some day everyone will have enough.

I don’t know if Occupy Wall Street is going to make the world better.  It depends on a lot of factors.  I think if anyone is smart the Mayor and the NYPD will STFU, try to facilitate this happening peacefully for as long as dumbasses want to live in tents.  It’s going to snow soon.  If the government just waits it will win.  I think that things will only come to a head if the Mayor or some other high official get stupid and pull the trigger.

I think that the reality is that people don’t have a cohesive message.  They don’t know what they are fighting for.  If you aren’t fighting for something you don’t stand a chance.  Down with tyranny means shit.  You don’t fight to defeat the tyrant.  You fight to god damn win your freedom.  It’s about what you want.  And you have to be willing to be very angry and make a lot of noise.  Because change only happens when you make enough people uncomfortable.

I don’t see anyone (who is wealthy and currently in power) but Fox News feeling uncomfortable.  And that means this is going to fail as a revolution.

The American Dream

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The media is telling me constantly that the American Dream is dead.  That no one can better themselves.  That no one can succeed.  I feel so confused.  Then how did I go from being the kind of kid who stole food to the kind of kid who gives people thousands of dollars when they are in a car accident just because I like them and otherwise they won’t be able to pay rent.  How did that happen?  Noah.  I married up.

I feel weird guilt and shame over having access to Noah’s money.  I feel bad talking about anything related to class because I am no longer poor.  I will never be poor again.  Noah comes from the 1%.  He isn’t there himself… yet.  But from everything I understand about human development and financial success, Noah will probably get back there.  People who grow up with that kind of money learn how to make it.  They learn how to be the kind of person who has it.  And I’m just desperate and needy and I have a broken compass.  I don’t have the ability to tell when something is “enough” sometimes.  Not money, drugs, sex … Even though I’m not an “addict” by the classic definitions I still have a broken compass.  I don’t know how much is enough or too much sometimes.

I don’t have very many friends who are willing to live like Noah and I do.  We live really far away from everything.  We live in a house that is much smaller and crappier than we could technically afford.  We live here and we will continue to live here pretty much forever because I’m not willing to spend more money than the astronomical amount already spent on this house.  Noah mortgaged over a quarter of a million dollars on this house.  I think that’s insane.  But it’s really cheap for a house here.  It will be paid off before I am 40.

I got lucky.  I married Noah.  That was kind of sort of how I reached where I am.  But I also went to college and worked.  It’s not like I would have been this wealthy as a teacher, but I would have done just fine.  I still would have felt like I made the American Dream.  Because my goals would have been smaller.  I got out of poverty.  I became the first one to be educated (high school diploma, BA, teaching credential, and 7 years of MA work).  To me that feels like I am done.  I reached the American Dream.  I went to college and I’m not in debt!  I paid it off within a year of being done with classes.  Because I was married to Noah and when I was working and he was working we had an obscene amount of money.

This is the part that is odd to me.  Noah doesn’t make more money than our friends.  Most of our friends have combined househole incomes that are much higher than ours.  We live in the bay area.  Our friends are the ones who went to fancy schools and became computer people.  But no one else I know thinks they are filthy rich.  People complain about not being able to do everything they want or having to compromise on things.

I feel so confused.  I have to wonder if my compass is the broken one.  What do people think the American Dream means?  Do you think it means everyone gets to retire at 35 to free health care forever?  Permanent jobs with a high chance of retirement?  I don’t consider it part of the American Dream that people have to own a house or make a lot of money.  I consider the American Dream to be the willingness to change your stars.

Everyone is born with a future that looks like it is obviously theirs.  They can take it if they want.  Or they can go make their own future.  They can be whoever they want to be.  They can rise in the world.  It doesn’t mean that everyone will be filthy rich, but people who hustle can improve their lot.  I’m told it doesn’t work that way for everyone.  That I am a fluke.

I get told that a lot.  Everything about me seems to be a fluke.  Why did it work out for me then?  Why do so many things work for me that other people say cannot be made to work ever ever ever ever?  For me this is part of feeling invisible.  I never know how to respond when I read things that say it is not possible for me to have done what I’ve done.  Do you want me to burst into flames?

Whenever I think of the American Dream I think of teaching The Great Gatsby.  Gatsby wanted Daisy.  He wanted to be rich too…. but mostly he just wanted Daisy.  He got rich because he was trying to earn Daisy’s love.  Noah seems to feel the same way about me, which is odd.  It’s weird living with someone who thinks he has to earn me.  I’m shit, aren’t I?  Why would someone want to earn me?  Does that mean you try to coat yourself more heavily in flies?  Of course not.

Noah sees me as high status.  That is the American Dream, really.  It is the ability to change your social status.  I don’t understand for the life of me why anyone would associate me with being high status.  Ok, I have access to a hefty bank account.  I didn’t have that before Noah, though.  Why does that raise my status?  Why do I magically become a better person?

Why will people look at me when I am dressed nicely.  Why will people talk to me more now, even though I look increasingly weird?  Sometimes it seems like there is an aura that comes along with financial safety.  And other people recognize it.  It is a relieving of anxiety.  It’s practically a difference in smell.  As if people who have to worry more have a more acrid body odor.  I don’t think that’s literally  true or real.  But there is some strange wall.

The idea of the American Dream mixed with being white trash is the crux.  It’s about being told that I can’t do things that I already have done so fuck you very much.  It’s about feeling like it’s not ok to be who I am because I am weird.  Because I have done things other people haven’t, for good or bad.  Because I am just plain different and I don’t know why.  It is hard to talk about difference without making it sound like being superior or better or aggrandizement.

Some people like chocolate.  I don’t.  I like vanilla.  For variety, maybe peppermint.  Does that mean that vanilla is truly qualitatively better because I like it more?  Demonstrably not.  I don’t think I am a better person than most other people.  Better than my sister, yes.  Better than mom, probably.  Other people?  Enh, not so much with the comparison.  I don’t know what road they walked.  I don’t know who tried to knock them down or how.  I’m not better.  But I have done different things.

I want to understand why I make different choices.  I want to understand that about myself.  I want to be able to hack the system.  I have big life goals.  If I want to reach them I am going to have to work very hard for a very long time.  I cannot believe the attitude that it is hopeless.  I can’t.  I can’t have the feeling about myself that seems to be common for my generation.  I think I can do fucking anything.  I already have.  I don’t identify with deserving anything.  I don’t think I deserve universal health care.  I think that when I needed insurance I had to find weird jobs that would offer insurance that I didn’t really want to do.  But I had different options.

I benefit from enormous privilege.  I’m sure that most of the reason I was able to succeed is just because I am white and slightly above average in attractiveness.  I’m not stunning.  I’m not gorgeous.  But I’m cute.  And I’m bubbly.  And I’m a hard worker and a people person.  I had advantages.

I talk about being white trash because I don’t think it is possible for someone of color to do the same things I did because I see how the deck is stacked against my friends.  They are fighting different wars.  They have to fight at all times covertly because they are watched.  They can’t directly cause fights the way I can get away with.  I feel deeply uncomfortable with this knowledge.  That as I sit here in my smug pretention of “Well I succeeded!” Yeah… I did because of an intersection of lack and privilege.  I don’t know that any part of my life is relevant to anyone else.

Who the fuck am I to talk about succeeding when I had the dog bite settlement that paid for an awful lot of my life.  When I smugly talk about cobbling together insurance I honestly feel kind of sick to my stomach.  I did it.  But I always had $14,400/year to live on.  Ever since I was 18.  Because I was attacked as a kid and half my face was ripped off.  I had a good lawyer.  I think I only had a good lawyer because I am white.

The girl who was born across the street from me.  B.  Her father was my lawyer.  He was my very best friends father.  B wasn’t hanging out with the non-white kids on the street (her New York Jewish parents moved her out of that neighborhood when we were four).  He is an excellent lawyer.  I don’t even think he took his full fee out of my settlement.  It was less than $100k in settlement but he invested it well for me.  I took that money and I changed my whole life.

My brother Jimmy was hit by a car when he was a kid and got a settlement when he was 18.  He spent the money on a raised truck, a killer stereo (that was stolen a couple months later), and a lot of drugs.  It was gone in a few months.

My brother Tommy was hit by a car when he was a kid and got a settlement.  Technically there is $6,000 left of it somewhere.  I’m thinking about claiming it as my father’s dependent.  As an inheritance. Jimmy calls it dirty money and says he doesn’t want it.  I think that money is fucking useful.

I suppose at this point my dream is to stop feeling so angry.  I want to be able to talk and think without being so full of bad feelings.  My stomach hurts.  I’m really tired of my stomach hurting.  I’m not special. I’m not better.  But I did things that other people couldn’t do.  I feel like I should be proud of myself.  And I simultaneously feel like being proud of myself is somehow wrong or bad.  I should be ashamed of myself because I think I have done anything worth noticing.  What kind of self absorbed bitch am I?  Who the fuck am I to look down my fucking nose at anyone else?

I’m not looking down my nose.  I’m trying to figure out why I made different choices.  I wish I understood better when the choice moments were.  I am not responsible for where I ended up entirely.  It’s accident as much as planning.  But if I wasn’t in this house right now having a good life I would be in a different house having a good life.  My teaching job would still be stable financially even if the work was shitty.  I lived in an apartment I could afford on $20k/year and by now I would be making about $60k.  It would have taken a while, but I probably would have bought a house in cash in ten years.  About when I’m going to pay this one off instead.

Because somewhere, at some point I crossed a line.  I will never be poor again.  I have lost the habits.  I make different choices.  I can be broke.  It feels like a difference in attitude.  Do you know why I am not worried about my ability to succeed?  Because I walked into my first real job interview and said, “I know I am the first person you are interviewing and you have three days of interviews to go but if you don’t hire me today I am not available.  Sorry.”  I was offered the job an hour later.  I take a lot of pride in that.

Because the only time in my life I have ever failed at something I wanted to do was passing the MA final exam.  And really I probably psyched myself out so bad that I’m not surprised I failed.  Ugh.  It’s obvious I know the material but I can’t write enough for academia.  I never wanted to be part of academia, not really.  Having an MA would change my life.  I didn’t want it bad enough to make that change.  That is how I feel about it.  Almost like the lit MA was wrong for me.  It would have changed my life choices in a way that would have been ultimately less helpful.

I’m starting to wonder if someday there is social work in my future.  That would be a different MA.  Ugh.  I’m not sure I can handle more school.  Ever.

I feel weird because I am alive during a Revolution.  These are interesting times.  And I don’t feel like I have much to say as part of the Revolution.  That’s weird and uncomfortable.  It’s not like I’m watching Fox news or agreeing with them.  But I don’t agree with a lot of the politics I’m hearing lately.  My opinions are just different.

I want to stop being so narcissistic and notice that other people aren’t as similar to one another as I project.  I’m not a special snowflake.  I’m not more different.  But I think I am.  This is where the hubris comes in.  How can you believe with intensity that you are different without believing it is superior?  Do I think that other people should try to be like me?  No.  Things that work for me won’t work for most other people.  I don’t think other people would be ok with the amount of intense emotion my life contains.  I get the impression other people are more calm.

I feel like the American Dream was always a sham.  Look at Death of a Salesman.  Right there.  He believed that who you know and charisma will get you where you need to know.  It won’t.  I only occasionally have charisma, mostly I alienate the shit out of people.  But I work fucking hard.  I work hard and I know how to game the system.  I wish I could teach other people the rules of the system so they could game it as well.  I don’t think this should be a unique ability.

As crazy, as unstable, as difficult, as confrontational as I am… I do know how to shut up when necessary.  I just don’t think it is necessary nearly so often as other people do.  I, in fact, think that everyone should make a lot more waves than they do.

I don’t think I have “figured things out” or done things in some magical right way that other people don’t do.  I think there is a way of developing your intuition so that you learn which choices are really not safe.  I avoid the unsafe twinges.  I kind of wonder if that is how I survived.  I was afraid at the right times.

I don’t think that people necessarily understand that rage is often, at least for me, the flip side of terror.  I spend my life horribly terrified that something bad is going to happen to me again.  I am genuinely scared.  I shake.  It makes me angry that I feel this way.  That I am so scared of everyone and everything in the world.  I don’t like that when people say things that make me feel invisible I want to hit them.  Obviously I don’t do so.  That would be problematic in a whole new exciting way.  But I’m often not nice.

Nice.  There is that word again.  I wish I was unoffensive.  I wish I was nice.  Somehow it is magically better to be nice.  There is that American Dream again.  You are supposed to be a nice, quiet, middle class person.  But I’m not.  I’m loud.  I’m brashy.  I’m aggressive.  I’m trashy.  I like loud upbeat country music.  And Lady Gaga and Pink.  I like Steel Magnolias unapologetically.  I grew up rural and don’t know city manners.  I really don’t understand why my city gives a shit if I grow vegetables in my front yard and I think they can fucking sue me if they want me to stop.

Being nice feels like lying.  It feels like constant low level lying.  It means you never tell the full truth because the full truth is often uncomfortable.  You always leave stuff out so that other people never have to feel bad.  I FEEL BAD MOST OF THE TIME.  Why shouldn’t I tell people the truth about how I feel?  Why should bad feelings be hidden?  Should they?  Is that what people want?

Let me tell you, if there is a time and a place where it is appropriate to sit around and tell stories about incest I’ve never found it.  Even therapy is only kind of sort of the place.  Because just sitting around and telling the stories seems to be un-useful.  But I sit around and drop those mentions into casual conversations.  Because that is what is in my head.  And it alienates people.  It’s my truth.  It’s my story.  I’m not actually hurting anyone by letting people know it exists.  But it feels not nice.

It is because I think my mental health is more important than other people feeling comfortable that I describe myself as white trash.  There is a self absorption that I witnessed in my family.  A way of seeing yourself as the central figure in this terrible tragedy.  A way of acting like everyone in the whole world is out to get you and everything bad that happens to you is part of this giant conspiracy.  Everyone is out to get us!  They all hate us!  They think they are better than us just because they have money!  Well fuck them!  We at least have pride!

It’s weird and kind of sick.  There is an abnegation of responsibility for everything that happens to you that I don’t understand.  Sometimes I want to slap my sister and say, “Ok so our dad raped you.  Time to stop dating men who are drug addicts because you are trying to get daddy to love you.”  That.  That is a lot of what this comes down to.

Do you know how I survived?  Do you know how I attained the American Dream?  Because people told me that I was shit and I didn’t deserve it.  And my response was to fight back.  It’s not that I think I deserve anything.  I don’t think I have stuff because I deserve it.  I have stuff (college education, money, no car loan) because I made them my top priorities and I didn’t let anything stop me.  I want to say that nothing catastrophic happened to prevent it, but that’s a lie.  Tommy’s accident.  All the rapes.  Going to 25 schools before dropping out of high school at 16.  I did have catastrophic things happen to try and stop me as a kid.  But you just keep getting up and doing things.

And then some day you are 18.  And you leave.  And you never look back.  And with every choice I make I think, “What would my sister do?”  Then I do the opposite.  That’s not actually true, but it’s kind of funny to think about.  I did get out.  Do you know what my family gave me for high school graduation?  Pots, pans, a crock pot, towels.  They wanted me the fuck out.  They wanted me to go.  Because I was different.  Because I caused problems.

I don’t even really feel like my family is white trash, per se.  When I’m being an asshole I include them in the collateral damage.  Mostly they don’t want to be like me though.  They have other dreams.  They are hick and redneck and poor.  But they aren’t white trash.  Mostly they don’t have my aggression.  My sister does.  I would say without reservation that she is also white trash.  Not my aunt or my cousins.  They are just standing too close to evil, manipulative people.

So maybe being white trash is relegated to being an incest survivor?  That’s not really it, but it factors in. It’s so many things all at once.  It’s not one thing.  When people feel defensive and try to tell me that my qualifiers aren’t the right ones because they also fit those qualifications… Oh gosh.  I’m not trying to make you feel defensive.  I’m not trying to be not nice.  I don’t know that at the end my definition of white trash will ever be useful for anyone but me.  I’m not sure it is applicable.  Ok, for my sister too.  But past us?  I can’t know enough of someones story to judge.

I say I am white trash because I am always going to say things about myself that offend the shit out of the people around me.  They will always feel hostile about me saying the stuff I’m saying.  I can only control whether I say it or not.  And sometimes I can’t control whether I say it or not.  I don’t really understand why trauma has affected me in these ways.

I listen to Adele singing Someone Like You a lot lately.  I’m scared that some day my mom will show up on my doorstep.  I’m afraid she won’t.

“I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it.
I had hoped you’d see my face and that you’d be reminded
That for me it isn’t over.”

The problem with having PTSD is that it is never over.  I have to deal with what happened to me forever.  It will never be over.  I will never be over being a survivor of incest.  I will never get over being a dirty little street kid.  I will never be over being moved around constantly as a child and being prevented from properly bonding with people.  I will never be able to have that stop being true.  I will always have this part of me that feels empty and bad and like I am shit.

It’s not over for me.  And it spurs me.  It makes me angry.  It gives me wings.  And I flew away.  For all that it isn’t over, it is.  I have this husband who thinks I hung the moon.  I have wonderful children who love me and adore me.  I have already made other peoples lives better.

But as I watch the sun come up I question what this American Dream was meant to be anyway.  It’s not the house that matters.  It’s not the money.  The freedom I have is the freedom to say, “No.  You cannot invalidate me.  I exist.  I am different from you.  My life experiences have shaped me.  And I’m ok.  I do not need to change.”  I’m white trash and I’m proud of it.  I’m proud of my ability to fight and over come adversity.  I’m fucking proud of myself.  I think I’m bad ass.  Noah thinks so too.  Does it really matter if anyone else does?

No.  But that’s my American Dream.  I don’t abandon my self label with my change in financial status because that would be too convenient for everyone around me.  They would like to pretend that people like me don’t exist.  I feel like most of the people who are big parts of my life are fairly sheltered people.  Even the ones who were abused tended to grow up in mostly safe, stable places.  They had dads who were emotionally abusive assholes.  That kind of thing.  But they had consistency.  They still only know people who are mostly like them.  Except for me.

I still have to say that I am white trash because people try to excuse my behavior as being some sort of byproduct of unavoidable trauma, the poor dear.  People love me and want to comfort me and tell me that things that happen to me aren’t my fault.  I’m a victim.  Well, sometimes.  But an awful lot of my current problems are my fault.  They are my fault because I choose to be aggressive and hostile.  Because I choose to remain white trash instead of catapulting to being middle class.  It’s kind of a choice and kind of not a choice.  I’m not middle class anyway, I’m nouveau riche.  I skipped the middle class.  That is kind of weird in and of itself, isn’t it?

When I try to think about what I want from my life I’m pretty happy though.  Everything I want is something that I could have.  I want to write and grow.  I want deeper friendships.  I want to have hard conversations with my friends about class.  I love my friends.  I want to find the ability in myself to feel like I have enough.  Like I am not still yearning.  Really, there isn’t much left that I have to do.  Write.  Publish.  Wash.  Repeat.

But first, I have to go cuddle my perfect daughter.

Blogger won’t let me comment.

1 Reply

Preface: it’s awesome that I can’t comment on my blog.  Go technology.  (I got this cool comment, I wanted to respond.)

Why do you call yourself specifically *white* trash? It can sound weird and off-putting to people of color to hear that, because it carries the implication that just plain trash would of course refer to someone non-white. Obviously a life of rape and welfare fraud and Nice People not looking you in the eye isn’t something that happens solely to white people. Is the part of your identity that includes your family’s antagonism toward black people and a black girl’s antagonism toward you sufficiently important that “white trash” is the right label?

I don’t normally comment anonymously but from everything you’ve said about your rage, I think that might be the way to go. What you’re saying is interesting and that’s why I’ve commented, but after having someone tell me on Facebook that my opinion on something didn’t count because I can’t trace my family back to the Mayflower like she can, I’m a little wary of setting off white girls who know my name.

I think that is a fucking awesome comment and I thank you for leaving it.  🙂  Uhm, and I’m sorry people have been assholes to you.  Despite my profusion of swearing I try to be civil to actual people.  I hope you will take my swearing in the abstract.  It’s excessive emotion leaking out, none of this was written with hostility.

I don’t know how to answer that.  I want to.  There is an answer in there.  I’ve been trying to find it for a while.  There is something there for me in the intersection of how my privilege and my lack of privilege has existed that has specifically felt different from the people I have known who were not-white but also poor.  (That’s been a lot of people.)  There is something about the hick, cracker, redneck, weird mountain people…

I’m not sure what it is.  I want to be able to explain it right.

I know it sounds off putting on a racial front.  I know it offends the shit out of my friends for me to say it.  That’s part of why it feels right.  Because I feel like I am that kind of offensive.  It’s like “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist Sometimes”.

The racism of the people who raised me is part of it mostly because it is part of the cultural construct.  It’s part of… creating the ambiance?  This is really hard to describe.  Being poor doesn’t mean you are racist.  Being racist doesn’t mean you are poor.  But there are poor racists.  I don’t think that any of the individual things that have happened to me has been unique to me.  However the combination seems to be unusual.  It’s something in the combination that becomes a specific category.

Ok, the word ghetto:

A part of a city, esp. a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups.
The Jewish quarter in a city: “the Warsaw Ghetto”.

Uhh.  Is that how people in the US use it?  No.  They mean poor and usually black, but possibly hispanic.  It’s a denotation connotation difference.

For me there is a difference in some part of the connotation.  So there is this song by Confederate Railroad (country music–see, hick shit) called I Like My Women A Little On The Trashy Side.  It epitomizes, for me, a lot of how I feel about the idea of being trashy.  I like the song because it is upbeat and enthusiastic.  People like what they like in an unabashed heartfelt way that appeals to me.  They are raw.  They have no class.  And they like being that way, thankyouverymuch.  I think there is trashy, trash, and white trash as three distinct, possibly overlapping, circles.

The movie Hounddog.  There is a specific culture and mystic to white trash.  It doesn’t look the same when other races enact the same patterns.  There is a flavor difference.  It’s not better.  It’s not worse.  I spend a lot of time looking for movies and books and stories and songs that embody this for me.  I can’t find any parallel that feels right anywhere else.

I don’t know why the violence and the country music and the racist rednecks and their constant belittling of how the women don’t do enough fucking work.  It all ties together for me.  It is all part and parcel of the same willingness to fight.  Fight because you were born feeling less than.  You were born with a fucking chip on your shoulder because the whole god damn world acts like they are fucking better than you and that’s not god damn right.  Because I fucking deserve better.

But I don’t.  No one does.  I don’t see the same hubris in other races.  That sounds… trite?  Stupid?  Like I’m sucking up?  I don’t find examples in poor white culture that I want to emulate properly.  Roseanne was the strongest rolemodel and look what happened to her.

There is some part of being willing to say that I’m not special because I’m white.  I’m white and I’m trashy and I’m white trash but I’m not really trash.  I don’t really think any human being qualifies as trash.  Just because I can wear the right clothes and style my hair and “pass”…there is still this part of me that can’t get over everything that was poured into my head.  All this hate and anger and rage and feeling of injustice.

I don’t think I am special because I am white trash.  I think that actively reminding myself that I have a long way to go before I have the ability to act like a fucking human being around all people in all circumstances without regard to provocation is something that I have to do to me.  I have to deal with the fact that I don’t know how to be appropriate.  It is a problem for me.  It is a problem in my life.  I’m working on it.  I don’t know how to fix it any faster than I am.

I am white trash because I only find echoes of me in poor white girls in Southern movies despite the fact that I was raised primarily in the bay area in yuppie central.

I don’t know how to speak about my experience without acknowledging that I’m white.  I am.  And I don’t feel like I can speak to the universal poor experience.  Or the universal trash experience.  I can only speak to mine.

And I’m white trash.  It’s a circular logic.

I hope this felt more like an answer and less like me being set off. 🙂

I lov

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“Why do you call yourself specifically *white* trash? It can sound weird and off-putting to people of color to hear that, because it carries the implication that just plain trash would of course refer to someone non-white. Obviously a life of rape and welfare fraud and Nice People not looking you in the eye isn’t something that happens solely to white people. Is the part of your identity that includes your family’s antagonism toward black people and a black girl’s antagonism toward you sufficiently important that “white trash” is the right label?

I don’t normally comment anonymously but from everything you’ve said about your rage, I think that might be the way to go. What you’re saying is interesting and that’s why I’ve commented, but after having someone tell me on Facebook that my opinion on something didn’t count because I can’t trace my family back to the Mayflower like she can, I’m a little wary of setting off white girls who know my name. “

I think that is a fucking awesome comment and I thank you for leaving it.  🙂

I don’t know how to answer that.  I want to.  There is an answer in there.  I’ve been trying to find it for a while.  There is something there for me in the intersection of how my privilege and my lack of privilege has existed that has specifically felt different from the people I have known who were not-white but also poor.  (That’s been a lot of people.)  There is something about the hick, cracker, redneck, weird mountain people…

I’m not sure what it is.  I want to be able to explain it right.

I know it sounds off putting on a racial front.  I know it offends the shit out of my friends for me to say it.  That’s part of why it feels right.  Because I feel like I am that kind of offensive.  It’s like “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist Sometimes”.

Of course I’m not special.  I don’t think that anything that has happened to me has been unique to me.  However the combination seems to be unusual.  It’s something in the combination that becomes a specific category.

Ok, here is an example: the word ghetto.

A part of a city, esp. a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups.
The Jewish quarter in a city: “the Warsaw Ghetto”.

Uhh.  Is that how people in the US use it?  No.  They mean poor and usually black, but possibly hispanic.  It’s a denotation connotation difference.

For me there is a difference in some part of the connotation.  So there is this song by Confederate Railroad (country music–see, hick shit) called I Like My Women A Little On The Trashy Side.  It epitomizes, for me, a lot of how I feel about the idea of being trashy.  I like the song because it is upbeat and enthusiastic.  People like what they like in an unabashed heartfelt way that appeals to me.  They are raw.  They have no class.  And they like being that way, thankyouverymuch.

The movie Hounddog.  There is a specific culture and mystic to white trash.  It doesn’t look the same when other races enact the same patterns.  There is a flavor difference.  It’s not better.  It’s not worse.  I spend a lot of time looking for movies and books and stories and songs that embody this for me.  I can’t find any parallel that feels right anywhere else.

I don’t know why the violence and the country music and the racist rednecks and their constant belittling of how the women don’t do enough fucking work.  It all ties together for me.  It is all part and parcel of the same willingness to fight.  Fight because you were born feeling less than.  You were born with a fucking chip on your shoulder because the whole god damn world acts like they are fucking better than you and that’s not god damn right.  Because I fucking deserve better.

But I don’t.  No one does.  I don’t see the same hubris in other races.  That sounds… trite?  Stupid?  Like I’m sucking up?  I don’t find examples in poor white culture that I want to emulate properly.  Roseanne was the strongest rolemodel and look what happened to her.

There is some part of being willing to say that I’m not special because I’m white.  I’m white but I’m still trash.  Just because I can wear the right clothes and style my hair the same way and “pass”…there is still this part of me that can’t get over everything that was poured into my head.  All this hate and anger and rage and feeling of injustice.

I don’t think I am special because I am white trash.  I think that actively reminding myself that I have a long way to go before I have the ability to act like a fucking human being around all people in all circumstances without regard to provocation is something that I have to do to me.  I have to deal with the fact that I don’t know how to be appropriate.  It is a problem for me.  It is a problem in my life.

I am white trash because I only find echoes of me in poor white girls in Southern movies despite the fact that I was raised primarily in the bay area in yuppie central.

I don’t know how to speak about my experience without acknowledging that I’m white.  I am.  And I don’t feel like I can speak to the universal poor experience.  Or the universal trash experience.  I can only speak to mine.

And I’m white trash.  It’s a circular logic.

I feel like a big meanie.

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I spend a lot of time feeling very mixed about what I write here.  I honestly usually forget what I have written almost as soon as I hit post and I don’t reread things very often.  I use this space to dump the thoughts that are intrusive into the rest of my life.  They are the harshest things I think.  I’m aware that I am “mentally ill”.  Whatever that means.

It’s hard to not feel ashamed of myself for putting these things out publicly.  You are supposed to put these kinds of thoughts in private journals you later burn.  You don’t want to taint the world with any of this.  I worry about some of the processing I do here.  People don’t like finding out how deep my rage is.  It makes them uncomfortable.  I am going to, once again, alienate people.  Not everyone.  Not the people who matter.  But I will lose people who are only casual distant social contacts at best.

It’s weird to know that I have to live with the consequences of my words, for better or worse.  I say a lot of very harsh things.  I’m trying to walk a fine line between talking about the emotions I experience and why I have them and blaming other people for upsetting me.  I know I’m crazy.  I know I’m having a reaction that is out of proportion to our exchange.  But I’m still having it and I have to deal with it somehow.

Just doing deep breathing exercises is ineffective at managing my rage.  Writing works.  And so I will write about things that make me very angry.  And people will get upset with me.  I’m pretty sure this is an unavoidable fate.  Given what I’ve read today I feel like I should be braced at any moment for a death threat.  On one hand that makes my paranoia sky rocket.  Because do you know who is a credible threat to my life?  Pretty much anyone in my family.  Hello illegal connections.  Not to mention that the whole lot also has serious mental health issues and lots of guns!

Awesome.  I really and truly believe that my brother would never come after me.  I think he wants to believe he is above such things.  And his wife is awesome and balances him really well.  He married a really good woman.  The only credible threat is my sister.  She has threatened to beat me up in public in the last few years.  If I publish there is a very real chance she will show up on my doorstep out of the blue with a shot gun.  She’s pretty insane.  And she has done a lot of very bad for your brain drugs for a very lot of years.

Even though I want to puke on the floor thinking about that… I’m going to keep going on writing.  And internet threats seem so very non-threatening.  So laughable.  Really.  Does some wanker on the internet think that they can hurt me more than my family?  More than my father raping me?  More than my brother beating me, arranging to have other children beat me, and sexually assaulting me repeatedly?

I don’t think I will lose sleep over emails.  I’m already up.  Bah.  That’s a snotty ass thing to say.  I’m in a really bad phase right now in coping with my shit.  Some day I will go back to not dwelling on being less than.  I think.  At those times I will be vulnerable.  And it will make me lose sleep.  But I don’t really think there is much that can be done to cause me to stop writing.  Not anything in writing, anyway.  Not from fear.  I think I am kind of looking forward to that first burst of adrenaline.  I do love a good threat.

I don’t know if it is ok to talk about things that hurt other peoples feelings.  But I’m not sure I can help it.

White trash

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Somehow I feel like the definition of white trash is very important to my personal lexicon.  After all, it is my self-identity.  What do I mean by it?  I mean that I startle people.  I mean that I experience sudden rage and lash out at people in socially unacceptable ways.  I mean that many of the things I like are demonstrably low class.

Uncle Bob, when I was a little kid, would spit out the car window when we drove past the house where the black guy lived.  That’s all I knew about “the black guy” who lived in the canyon.  When I was in high school and I lived in Bakersfield I was accosted on the bus by a black girl who yelled at me that I was a racist because I was reading a book and giggling.  I think the only reason she didn’t kick my ass is because my response to her yelling that I was a stupid bitch was to say, “Come on!  You haven’t even met me.  Normally it takes someone at least five minutes to decide I am a bitch.”  Her boyfriend said I was alright and to leave me alone.

I don’t know why that story stays with me so much, but it does.

It’s hard to talk about different things from my childhood happening because I know the stories are confused in my head.  I know they are confused because sometimes I know things happened when I was living in a certain house but I can’t remember when I lived there.  I’m afraid of trying to take the pieces apart.  I’m afraid of trying to make this a real narrative.

I’m afraid of remembering something wrong, writing it down, and being called a liar.  I’m not lying.  I’m just trying to remember things that happened a long time ago.  I’m trying to string together why they are important.  Why is my life worth reading about?  It’s kind of weird as I look at my over crowded bookshelf and think most of them are not better writers than me.  But they are published and I’m not.  I think that’s the biggest difference.

I’m terrified of trying to publish.  I’m terrified that I won’t have the drive to push it through.  I can’t expect to be magically “discovered” and babied through the process.  I will have to make it happen.  I will have to shop around for an agent and a publishing house.  It scares the pants off me.  I am going to have to actually deal with being judged.  I’m not so good at that part.  I have to feel like this is really and truly honest to god worth doing.

It’s hubris.  But I think people would… if not enjoy… then at least appreciate reading this story.  I think that even though a lot of people will hate me and revile me and say nasty things about me… I think somewhere there is a young girl who will get out of an incestuous family because of me.  Some day some girl is going to say, “You saved my life.”

That’s reason enough to do something hard and scary.  One life is enough.  Well, I’ve already saved mine.  I suppose by that metric it’s enough.  But it’s not.  I want to be a hero.  Ok, that made me smile.  I do, I want to be a hero.  I want to learn how to say just the right thing to make people know that no matter how bad you feel about yourself, there is hope.

I kind of hate Elizabeth Wurtzl.  I think Prozac Nation was a horrible book about mental illness.  I spent the entire book wanting to bitch slap her and tell her to stop whining about her cushy life.  For the record, should Elizabeth Wurtzl ever come read this… I wouldn’t ever say that to you in real life.  Pain is pain.  But seriously dude you had an easier life than me and I’m allowed to be pissy in my blog about it.  It’s not personal.

The reason it bothers me so much is because I have a hard time with pampered rich people who get to be depressed and non-functional.  I’ve been depressed most of my life and I’ve been more functional than most people.  Depression makes everything harder.  It doesn’t make it impossible and it bugs the shit out of me when people say it does.  Ok, maybe it does for you.  I can’t know what it is like to be in other peoples heads.  I know that I have not had the luxury of being non-functional while depressed.  I’m too busy surviving.  No, I wasn’t happy, but so what?  Who the fuck was promised happiness or a good life?  Not me.

When people talk about how we should have universal health care I laugh.  It’s not nice of me, but I do.  I feel like universal health care in this country is a pipe dream.  We have too many people.  Unless you, generic person who is espousing universal health care, want to go become a doctor and work pro bono for the rest of your life, how do you think that doctors should be paid for their time?  How should medical equipment be paid for and acquired?  Should everyone in America get to have million dollar surgeries when they get sick?

Money is finite and people die.  I think that even if America managed to get the basics covered, I would be opposed to absolutely across the board health care coverage.  I think we are all living too long.  Honestly.  I think that humans were meant to die a lot earlier than we do now and make room for new people.  I don’t like most life saving operations.

My personal experiences with life saving operations gave me back Uncle Bob and Tommy.  I’m not sure either were good uses of money.  How do you say in the conversation about universal health care, “Actually the reason I oppose universal health care is I think they shouldn’t have brought my brother back to life so he could beat me and attempt to rape me for nine more years.  The piece of shit should have been allowed to die when he was twelve and it was his fucking time.”  How do you say that about your brother?  How do you form a political opinion that endorses other people dying?  Because I endorse my family and me dying in the same way.  I’m ok with it.  I’ve made my peace with death.  It will happen when it happens.  I don’t want to cause my death right now, but I don’t know that I would fight cancer.

Humans are meant to die.  I can’t help but think that I’d rather die of whatever disease strikes me than miserable old age and being lonely.  I only want to live to be 80 if a million people will light a candle for me.  Otherwise, well, whenever it happens is ok.  That’s life.

I think the only part of death that bothers me any more is knowing how devastating that will be for my family.  I cry and smile at the same time thinking about it.  Now there are people who would mourn.  It wouldn’t be like Tommy’s memorial up in Redwood Estates.  By the time he died he only had one friend outside our family because everyone else abandoned him.  People aren’t nice to disabled kids.  He was an asshole too, but people aren’t nice to those who are disabled.

I hear people talking about how things should be “fair”.  To whom?  Why?  What the fuck makes you think that?  What does that even mean?  Does that mean everyone gets the bare minimum?  Does that mean everyone gets what they want?  I don’t know.  I have an easier life than I’ve ever had.  I just went out and bought a bed last night for the garage so we have a more comfortable place to have sex.  That’s fucking spoiled.  I don’t know how to reconcile my unwillingness to share with the fact that I’m very willing to share.

I’m ok with paying high taxes.  I think we should.  I like roads and fire fighters and schools.  They should exist.  I like being the one who can give my friends financial support when they need it.  I feel kind of weird about the word charity but I give a ton of money away.  Only occasionally to organizations.  Mostly to individual people who need help.  It feels related to me.  If I am giving it to an individual person I know if I approve of how they are likely to use it.  I do give or not give based on my judgment.  I will admit that.  It also depends on how close to my monkey sphere someone is.  I can handle that.

It’s kind of hard having a different opinion than most of my friends.  I feel like I should apologize.  When people get all huffy about human rights I want to laugh.  I think that I no longer have the same entitlement as my friends.  I don’t believe I deserve good treatment.  I like it.  I want it.  I don’t think it’s about deserve.  Not really.

That said, if I win the lottery I am starting a domestic violence shelter.  I do believe that people should help people.  I feel weird about the government doing it.

Whenever people tell me that welfare fraud doesn’t exist I laugh and laugh.  Bullshit.  It depends on what you mean by “fraud”.  Are there people who get welfare and buy drugs instead of food.  Yup.  My sister did.  I’m tired of having my liberal, upper class friends talk about the poor as if they are some deserving group on the mist who should be cared for.

The poor are the people on the bus in your town you ignore.  The poor are the people with ill behaved children in the store that you glare at.  You think you are better than poor people.  Well, a lot of people in my social group do.  I am white trash because I am still fucking angry at all the rich people I hang out with.  I resent them.  I resent them for acting like I pass.  It doesn’t matter how much money I have in the bank I will always feel like the dirty little girl you people walked by without meeting my eyes.

I am white trash because white trash take care of their own.  Near as I can tell middle class values are shit.  I have no respect for them.  It involves a lot of “being polite” for the sake of not ruffling feathers and blending in.  No thanks.  I don’t blend in.  Not once I open my mouth.  These days not at all.  I love my hair.

(Err, uhm, disclaimer: I don’t actually hate or resent my friends.  I have emotional issues.  I write about them because I’m trying to work through them not because I am trying to alienate people or say they suck.  I don’t actually hang out with people I don’t like.  I like my friends.  But I have mixed feelings about some of the things they say and do unconsciously.  That doesn’t make them bad.)

I am white trash because I can’t let the little classist and racist and feminist things go in conversation because I believe direct confrontation is preferable to being passive aggressive.  And I’m ok with shouting.  A lot.

I’m white trash because when I speak about myself in public people quickly dart their eyes away.  They can’t look at me.  Not always, not everyone.  But the vast majority of people I meet.  I haven’t met very many people in my life who can hear me talk out loud about incest and look me in the face without flinching.  I’m sure I shouldn’t take that personally.  But I do.  Things that have happened to me mean that sometimes people can’t look at me without flinching away.  I do that.  I can control whether or not that happens.  I can decide what to tell people.  I can decide to pass and be nice and middle class and stop making people flinch.

Only I can’t.  Because I’m white trash.  Because I will always blurt things at uncomfortable times that make people flinch.  Because I will always be just a bit dirtier and worse and more disgusting than everyone around me.  Because who and what I am seems to be an affront to so.many.people.  I am white trash because I think it is sporting to warn people that if I think they are a fucking asshole I just might tell them so.  While I am visiting their house.  In another state.  I’m just kind of awesome that way.  I don’t seem to be able to control my rage after a while.  I have to say that my outbursts have gotten way more socially acceptable over the years.  Yelling at Rebecca’s dad was really rude, but he deserved it.  He was a twat.

Do you know why I blow up at people who are in authority?  Because blowing up at people in authority saved my life.  No.  That’s not hyperbole.  Think about my parents.  Think about being brought into the world to parents who are ok with me being raped by every male member of my family.  I was born fighting.

That is why I am white trash.  Because I’m ok with that fight.  Because I accept that fight as being just life.  Because I don’t think I deserve anything better.  Because I don’t really think anyone else does either and fuck you if you think you deserve better treatment.  I did not god damn deserve being raped over and over and over.  But it happened.  I can’t let it end my life.  I can’t sit around and whine about how not fair life is.  If I had done that as a child I would have died.  There is no fair.  I did not deserve being raped.

How many times was I raped.  I try not to think about it.  I don’t think I’ve had a number in my head for it in a long time.  Michael, Jeremy, I’m blanking on that guys name in high school.  Memories are awesome.  The guy that I met at Lauren’s house.  The one I thought was safe.  The guy from the coast guard.  My dad with the gun.  My dad all those other times I can’t count.  That’s only five.  That’s not so bad, right?  Oh, and Paul.  And countless times when I lay there and cried and didn’t bother saying no.  That’s been a lot of people.

I don’t think that people understand that I take pride in being white trash.  I take pride in my strength.  It’s gotten me a long way.  I will always disconcert people, I have no interest in being a different person.  That’s the hard part.  I don’t want to be anything other than who and what I am.  But people tell me I should.  I shouldn’t call myself trash.  It’s not nice.

Uhh, piss off.  Life isn’t nice.  I can deal with that in the ways that work for me, thank you very much.  Life isn’t nice and life isn’t fair.  See, these are the things I don’t want to say in an actual conversation with a friend.  When they tell me, “Oh don’t call yourself that” I have to bite a hole in my tongue to not respond with, “Who the fuck died and made you the fucking arbiter of what I should mother fucking call myself?!”  It’s not very nice.  And I try to be nice to my friends, mostly.  But I feel these things.  That’s why I call myself white trash.  Because that is my emotional process around people telling me not to call myself white trash.  I want to cuss them out and say I will do so if I please.  And that’s why I’m white trash.

Hm.  I’m not just trash.  I’m not and I know it.  I’m not garbage.  But I am a specific cultural construction that I refer to as white trash.  That’s a useful way to think of it.  Gotta make breakfast.

antsy

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What to say, what to say.  I’m banging my head against the wall.  Oh god.  I told Jeff* I was going to write a book about my life and he told me that he wants to read it.  That he knows it will be good and he finds me inspiring.

No. Fucking. Pressure.  But that’s good.  I kind of like pressure.  I like pressure in the sense that I like knowing that holyfuckingshitsomeonethinksthataboutme.  It’s kind of a weird thing to be told, you know?  Startling.  I feel like a festering pile of shitscum.  What the fuck do you mean I am inspiring?  Do you know how lazy I am?

That’s the thing.  People who are inspirational are people with broken compasses.  They are people who are not capable of being rational.  This is both good and bad.  When you think back to those caveman-ish sorts of days… frequent adrenaline bursts were part of life.  They were mandatory.  We no longer live in that kind of world.  But as animals we haven’t evolved.  Our society doesn’t have good outlets right now that function in a constructive way.

I need more adrenaline in my life.  I’m not sure how to get it.

* name changed to protect the guilty innocent former coworker.

Some problems are too big to fix.

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This isn’t fucking one of them.  I’m going to Ikea again today.  I’m buying a bed to put in the garage.  Today.  We have ongoing issues with where and when to have sex.  Our house isn’t that big.  The baby is still in our bed and likely to be for close to another year.  Ugh.  The logistical issue of where to have sex, The ugly chair that is falling apart and broken and really can’t handle much pressure… not to mention it’s totally uncomfortable and awful; the couch where the kids periodically walk in and we have to be silent and it’s still not that comfortable; our bed with Calli asleep (yes we do it occasionally, but we try not to); the shower; or the floor.  Take your pick.  Doesn’t it all sound exciting and comfy?

Ok so we aren’t having as much sex as we’d like.  It’s been a consistent issue for over three years.  Logistics are the first big stumbling block.

Something that bothers me about the constant “be yourself!” that people spout is… it’s not very true these days.  If you don’t like someone or something they do, then you don’t talk to them any more.  There are too many people to know these days.  Keeping people you don’t like is silly.

Silly.

I have been listening to Adele’s song “Someone Like You” a lot lately.  I’m thinking about my mom.

Casual Encounters

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Last night we tried to pick people up from the internet.  It didn’t go as planned.  I’m far more cheerful about it than one might expect.  I had a lot of fun singing karaoke.  And the DJ was way hotter than the guy I was there to meet so eye candy was nice. I felt like a cougar.  The DJ looked barely legal.

I’m not actually sad about it not working out.  I often like the idea more than the actuality.  I felt fun and interesting while only having to commit to sex with Noah.  Yay.  I’m really weird about sex with Noah not being as exciting as sex with… well… just about anyone else.  It’s different.  It’s not that I dislike sex with Noah.  It’s just that it’s different.

Being interested and willing in having sex just for sex is different.  When I’m in that mood, sometimes Noah is perfect and sometimes he’ll do cause he’s here.  I almost think that Noah is thrilled about the days when it really doesn’t matter who the dick belongs to.

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“We have named personality type Six The Loyalist because, of all the personality types, Sixes are the most loyal to their friends and to their beliefs. They will “go down with the ship” and hang on to relationships of all kinds far longer than most other types. Sixes are also loyal to ideas, systems, and beliefs—even to the belief that all ideas or authorities should be questioned or defied. Indeed, not all Sixes go along with the “status quo”: their beliefs may be rebellious and anti-authoritarian, even revolutionary. In any case, they will typically fight for their beliefs more fiercely than they will fight for themselves, and they will defend their community or family more tenaciously than they will defend themselves.”

Yup.  I’ll stand up and say that it is right for someone to talk about the things I talk about.  I’m defensive of that idea.  I’m much more likely to do it if I think it is for someone else’s benefit.

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Seasons changing.  So much changing.  Uncertainty.  Mood shifts.

It’s getting closer but not fast enough.  I never think things have happened fast enough.  It will be ok.

I have been talking to a lot of people about writing.  It’s astounding to me to wander around to my friends and have them tell me resoundingly that they think I have several books in me, and they want to read them.  I feel this impending sense of doom.  Of course I will fail everyone.  I don’t have anything to say.

I do.  I have things to say.  I have a story to tell.  It’s just as worthy of a story as any other.

If I started writing the book today it would be the story of why I divorced my family.  I don’t know if that is what it will be by November.  It’s morphed a lot over time.  I don’t think that is the right book though.  That’s a mood.

Do you know what will last?  I will write the story of me for my mirrors.  My husband, my Sarah, my kids.  Friends who love me.  I tell this story because if I died tomorrow my story would be gone.  My children would know very little about me.  There aren’t very many people who would or could step up to tell them about me.  The only two people I am still close to from childhood, Jenny and B, they didn’t see almost any of my life.  They can’t tell anything about me.

I only talk about the abuse.  Like that is all that made me.  It’s not though.  No one is that simple.  Everyone is more complicated than that.  But other people grow up with people who see them and help make them for decades.  I didn’t.  No one remembers pithy little stories about what I did in school.  No one remembers that great mission project in fifth grade.  We made it out of cookies and used frosting for glue.  The inside was supported with Lego’s.  It was epic.  No one knows that I spent six weeks doing a mini lesson on aeronautics and could never make a paper airplane fly.  I’m pretty sure I have still never done it successfully.

Do you know what keeps me up at night?  The fear that I don’t exist without my family.  Without the people who do have positive memories of me.  They know every good thing I did as a child and they loved me.  I miss my mommy.  I miss my mommy so much.  I was always a mama’s girl.  I was so clingy.  I begged for her.

I can’t let her do to my children what she did to me.  And I need to explain exactly what that was.  Not really for anyone else, for me.  I need to forgive myself for my choices.  I need to explain them.  I want to.  I want to know that at any point in time my children will have access to all the stories I can give them about myself.  They will never have to deal with the loss I am dealing with.

I know very little about my mom.  I know basically nothing about my father.  I know absolutely nothing about anyone further back in my family.

I am alone.  My brother hates me.  I should not be telling these stories.  He wants them to die.  I don’t think he’d mourn much if I died too.  He would probably think I deserve it.

I don’t.  I want to explain why.  I shouldn’t be dead.  It’s demeaning to me to say I should be dead when you hear about my life.  I’m tired of being told to kill myself.  I’m tired of being told that someone like me should fucking give up.

I don’t want to.  I want to watch my babies turn into children.  I want my daughters to invite me to their fucking weddings.  I don’t want them to run away from me.  That means I want to examine what my mom did that drove me away.  It was there.  It was there from very early on.  Conform or leave.  It’s always been clear.  And I don’t conform much.

I’m scared to really do this and I’m terrified of not doing it.  I want to create the space and do it right.  I am going to tell this.  It will be a book.  I don’t know if it will be worth reading.  I don’t know why anyone will care.

This week a former coworker told me I should write the book.  He will read it.  He thinks lots of people will want to read it.  Why do people write?  Because they have something to say?  Because they have such an overweening ego that they neeeeeeeed to have strokes from random people?  Because I just want to be loved.  I want to feel like, whether anyone agrees with me or not, I explained my side.  It’s not really a debate.  Only it is.  I’m not having a debate with anyone else.  I’m debating with myself.  I’m deciding whether or not I want to forgive me.

I want forgiveness more than just about anything else in the world.  I need it from me.

I asked my favorite student what I taught him.  He smiled at me.  That quirky, gorgeous smile.  I think he had a crush on me.  He told me elaborate stories about sleeping with his 35 year old boss when he was 18.  Ahem.  He told me that I taught him that it’s ok to be yourself.  And to like himself.

I want to teach me, too.  Maybe that is the book.  Why I should like me.  I don’t know.  I am kind of afraid that I am going to write out thirty years of anecdotes and not know how to make it a story.  A story needs a point.  Well, Stephen King tells me otherwise.  I’ll figure it out as I go.  I am so going to need a good editor.

It’s weird to be present with this project.  There are different sorts of things to think about.  There are the later mechanics of dealing with a book looming.  I’m scared.  I’m trying to mostly not worry about that till  February or March.  Mostly.  Periodically I read short things and freak out.  I’ll have to think about that later.

When do I write?  How do I create space to do that reliably?  Ack.  Complicated.

I’m also going to run a 5k with a friend at the end of November.  Oh this fall will feel different from the summer.  I feel like I have to tell the stories all in one big go.  Then I can stop this frantic refrain of hiding in the garage and crying because no one knows them.  Of course I will leave things out.  Life is like that.  I can’t remember everything.  Many of the stories of me are gone.  I don’t really know much about what I was like as a baby.  I know that when I was 14 months old I toddled into the bathroom and said, “Kissy go pee pee” and like that I was potty trained.  I know that my mother told me that.

Given that Shanna was in diapers till she was thirty-twoish months.. holy moly.  And I think of Shanna as being advanced.  Psh.

That was my funny voice.

I don’t want to spend my life dealing with overwhelming flashbacks of abuse as Shanna grows up.  I’m kind of hoping to circumscribe that by doing it at speed in November.  God help me.  No, I’m not going to do a lot of drugs.  That’s hard to control.  I’ll have to be soul achingly bare.  Ew.  I’m worried about being stable the rest of the time.

I’m getting really bitchy and picky.  I feel like I am.  I need… something.  I need to break a rule.  I need to do something I’m not supposed to do.  I am holding too many balls in the air.  Something has to give and give hard.  Right now I’m doing that in the wrong direction.  Too much of it comes out in snippy stupid comments to Sarah.  I need to find an outlet.  Soon.  That’s a really dangerous line of thought right now…  wait.. a very pleasant thought just went through my head.  I’ll be in my bunk.

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This life shit is really tiring.  I have a lot of stuff to do.  Some of it I feel like I can’t talk about.  I can’t talk about it because it involves doing stuff for Sarah and I have this strong internal pushback that talking about it is shaming her in some way.  But it’s not.  I don’t think Sarah should feel bad for needing my help in order to get things done in my time frame.  I have a pretty ridiculous time frame.  Sarah can do these things.  Just not as fast as I want her to.  That’s a very different distinction.  I’m having trouble internalizing it.  I feel like I am creating the problem in talking about the mechanics of life.

Things were different with Tommy.  For a long long time there was very little he could do.  And he hated everyone for it.  It embarrassed him.  You were never to speak about the help you gave him, you were just supposed to shut the fuck up and be there the minute he had the fucking need and just spontaneously do it. Or he got angry and violent.

Maybe it makes a lot of sense that I’m having trouble with dealing with some of my feelings around doing stuff for Sarah.  It’s complicated.  Everything always is.  I think one of the hardest parts is that she needs so much sleep.  And she does.  She has to have that much sleep or she can’t put coherent sentences together.  I believe her.  I still struggle with feeling abandoned with the kids.  She’s a night owl.  My kids are early birds.  An awful lot of their awake period is while she is still sleeping.  Noah is still here for part of it.

Hm.  Problem solving.  Right now I am feeling overwhelmed by how much of the day I am alone with the kids.  Shanna is acting exactly how a three year old should act.  That lovely book I read about three year olds told me that this would happen.  Her advice was as much babysitting/care by other people as you can manage.  Three will be over soon.

Right now our priority is to have Noah home from work as early as possible because I am fried after the long day.  I wonder if it would work better if Noah went into work much later (he is a software engineer, no one would blink) and hung out in the mornings and planned to come home after dinner.  Or we could play with how the kids eat and get them on a four meal a day schedule and he can eat fourth meal as dinner at more like seven.  It’s not unprecedented.  The kids would probably be ok with that adjustment.

I don’t know.  I’m not sure what we should do.  But it’s my blog and I can babble all I want to.  I’m struggling with getting through the mornings until Sarah wakes up.  I feel increasingly bitter and resentful because I am taking care of the kids during the time when I physically can best do the chores around the house.  So I’m constantly yelling at the kids to leave me alone while I clean.  If Noah went to work later in the morning… I could do all the chores before he left.  The girls would love to have that time playing with Daddddddddy.  If Noah waited until a more civilized hour to go into work, it’s only a thirty minute drive.

Even if he still left before Sarah woke up I would be only dealing with the kids and not trying to run around and do chores at the same time.  Who knows.  Maybe.  Maybe it would be better for Noah and the kids to have calm hang-out/play time in the morning rather than fussy evenings.  If I don’t start the day pissed off before 9 am… I have a better day.  I don’t neeeeed Noah by 5 pm.  Sarah is a lot more capable of being consistent with evenings.  It would allow her to get all the sleep she needs.

It means we would have a lot more time when there are two people in the house and a lot less time when there are three adults in the house.  That might work out better.  Sometimes writing about my thinking helps and sometimes it hurts.  Sometimes I get too entrenched and hard to negotiate with.  Often I don’t feel like I get an even amount of thinking/explanation of thinking on the part of my partner and I get pissy.  That’s not real helpful.                                                                                                                      

Just visiting.

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Today I went down to the school where I used to teach to hang out with an old co-worker and a former student. I no longer know any students on campus. It was weird and hard. I was told more than once that I can come back any time I want to. I am still thought well of. My former co-worker told me that I am inspirational. And he apologized for not always being able to handle hearing my stories. I told him it was ok. I can’t handle them all the time either.

I asked my student what I taught him. He said, “You taught me to be myself. More than anyone else ever in my life, you taught me to like myself. It’s made a big difference.”

I didn’t cry, but it was close.

Mirrors

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Whenever a woman tells me, “I don’t really have chick friends” I turn my head and blink funny.  I don’t know where I would be without the women in my life.  They provide a very different mirror from the men in my life.  I need them.

My friends arrive in waves.  I find new groups and meet tons of people all at once and only keep a few from each generation.  I have a friend who was born across the street from me.  Four months before me.  Through thirty years and fifty plus moves we have kept in touch.  I love her a lot.  She is very different from me.  She’s a JAP and makes no apologies.  As she shouldn’t.  She’s tentative and slightly nervous but very ambitious.  I think she will have a life she is proud of.  I think that she will be old and smile because she is a really good person.  I’m glad I know her.

Her parents divorced acrimoniously when we were in high school.  Most of her grand parents have died.  These are the traumas of her life.  She has taught me about stability.  She has been the most consistent person in my whole life.  We go through periods of being closer and less close.  That’s ok.  She always comes back.  I can’t wait till she has kids.  I will be over there a lot.  We will have an interesting time negotiating her telling me to stop bossing her around.  She rarely manages to do that well.  I’ve been bossing her around for 30 years.  It’s hard to stop.  Once she has kids… I need to not boss.  It’s going to be weird because she will make entirely different choices.

For one thing, she’s Jewish.  If she has a boy he will get snipped.  That’s her culture.  She makes no bones about it.  I will, of course, quietly submit some information for her to read if she wishes and then I need to shut the fuck up.  I can’t bitch at her about circumcising her son.  I can’t make this the issue that ruins our friendship.  I need her too much.  When people think about “cutting off” a friendship, they are thinking about what do you get from the relationship.  What does this person need that you no longer want to provide.  What do you need that they no longer provide.  Most people aren’t honest about those exchanges, but they exist.

I need this friend.  This friend is very important to me.  This friend is the only person in my life from my childhood.  I need her.  I need someone to talk to my kids about me.  I need someone who can talk about  how I have grown and changed with real serious perspective.  I feel so alone in the world without a family.  It’s terrifying.  This is being an orphan.  I feel like I am going to pass out of notice and be forgotten unless people like this exist.  I am going to master my temper and my nasty judgment.  I am not going to alienate this friendship.  I love her too much.  I love her like I love my mom and my sister.  But she has never hurt me.  I want to keep her.  I will do things that are hard for me because she is worth the effort.

Don’t get me wrong, she’ll know I’m not thrilled.  But I can go to the fucking bris and keep my fucking mouth shut.  I don’t think I can do it for anyone else.  I can do that for my mirror.  She shows me that I can.  She shows me the truth about who I am and what I am capable of.  For her, I could move mountains.  I can totally keep my mouth shut and make idle chatter with her dad and brother.  I will hug her mother.  I need to call her mother and ask if she has pictures of us from when we were little.  Maybe her dad does.  This family shows me that I survived intact.  Me, as a person.  They knew me from my birth.  They saw me through everything that happened.  At least once a year through my childhood and we’ve kept in touch as adults.  They took me into their home when I was homeless as a small child.  More than once.

When people talk to me in shocked voices about how strong my boundaries are… it’s a funny conversation.  They are stone walls out there.  The inner circle doesn’t really have boundaries.  I will shut my fucking mouth about the degree of my horror of circumcision for this friend.  I will simply not go to the bris for other people.  That is how I can avoid making a scene and making something private about me.  I will god damn behave myself and be civil and sweet with my friend and her family.  With someone else I feel like if I am having a bad day I might just snap and tell the (hypothetical) other parents I thought they were disgusting savages.  I have my biases.

I don’t have a culture to participate in that requires such an action.  Thus I have the luxury of it being a clear situation for me.  My friends give me reasons to have to shut down my own bigotry (I have lots) and stop and really think about why in the fuck someone might make such a horrendous decision.  Well, for one thing I would do significantly more traumatic things to my kids and not think twice about it.  Horrendous is a strong word.  My personal life experiences are such that I place genital integrity above cultural identity.  Convenient given my cultural identity, eh?  And that’s the thing.

I think that if the general population stops being assholes and drops the legislation push that most Jews will stop circumcising in the next couple of generations.  I think that people will evolve.  If they are left alone and allowed to do so.  Persecuting a group isn’t how you make them change.  It is how you cause them to dig in and become stubborn.  Ask me how I know about that behavioral quirk.

I keep my friend because she is good.  And she still does things that feel bad to me.  Learning to navigate judging the behavior of other people so I can make my own decisions is complicated in the face of these complicated people.  I feel more comfortable with extremes.  Oh well.  I love her.  I need her.  I want her.  Ok fine, if I have to I will grow for her.

In chronological order next comes Miss Jenny.  She’s Jennifer to you.  She’s my Jenny.  I don’t even know how that started anymore.  I met her in junior high and I hated her.  However the loneliness of rural children is a powerful force.  We got over it.  And we kept in touch.  I would say we were barely friends in high school and college.  After college we have been quite close.  She has also been around through a lot of different phases.  And she was closer to my life.  She knows many of my friends (heck, she knew them before me).  She is the reason I learned to dance.  She is the reason I started blogging.  She taught me about Renaissance Faires and Dickens Fair and The Starry Plough.  I wanted to go dancing, but mostly I really wanted to hang out with Jenny.  I like her.  She makes me feel good about myself.

On the trauma scale, well, she had some stuff happen.  Enough that when I showed up at her house sobbing after the suicides in my family, she could take care of me.  She was only 17, too.  She knew what to do.  Jenny is significantly more stable feeling, even when her life seems outwardly unstable.  It’s a core feeling.  She is there.  I feel like it doesn’t matter if I go five minutes, five months, or five years without seeing her.  She’s Jenny.  She has this really strong presence.  She has taught me a lot about mastering my emotions.  Personally I think she’s a bit closed off, but I get to have any wrong opinion I want.

Jenny is consistent emotionally in the ways I fail.  She gives me a stable mirror for my storms.  She teaches me about dealing with the in-between-places.  She may not like it, but she deals with limbo fairly well.  She’s good at getting up and staying busy.  It’s not a skill everyone has and she had to slowly learn it.  Honestly she sucked ass at that when I met her.  I think that was because of issues with her mom.  But we all have those in junior high.

The next big wave came with the theatre group.  I am not as close with anyone from that community.  None of them have kids and that has been challenging.  Flakey bastards.  But I keep in touch with them and we have dinner once or twice a year.  Of all the waves of my friends, this is the group that builds me up the most.  That’s an interesting thought.  They have no reservations about me.  I don’t remember ever having a disagreement or argument with anyone there (other than my boyfriend) about anything I did behavior wise.  They were completely comfortable with me.  It’s been a little odd at how impressed they are with “what I have done with my life”.  I’m in a fallow period so I feel pretty lazy.  But they are still working the same jobs doing pretty much the same things they were doing when I met them thirteen years ago.  It has been a busy decade and some for me.  It’s nice having them pop up and cheerlead every so often.

Then there was bdsm.  I met the Godmama at my second munch ever.  (She’s the legal next of kin to my children.  That lawyer was expensive.)  I think that one of the most important things I get from this relationship mirror is that, what I can bear is not what everyone can bear.  I mean, that’s true in every case.  But she is really good at laughing at me when I express to her that her life would be hard for me.  She is so different.  It’s not any one thing.  It’s everything.  Almost all of our hobbies are entirely different.  We have very different social, romantic, sexual, relationship needs.  And by golly that’s ok.  I think she is the most adamant person I know about us both being ok.  It’s very comforting.

She has had a much more challenging life than the previous people mentioned.  She’s also a lot older than us.  Almost twenty years older.  It’s a very different relationship.  It fills different parts of my needs.

I wandered off and the thread in my head changed.  Fudge.

Trust is hard.

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Today was a rough day for me.  I had a lot of intense emotions.  But I did talk about them.  Badly, at least at first.  I have to trust that the people who love me knew that there were going to be bad days.  It’s this balancing act between not wanting to take advantage of good will and… no really.  I have bad days.

I wish I could get over feeling like I must be nice.  I think my life would be easier.