Category Archives: adult-only

Published in the adult-only category

I feel like a big meanie.

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.

the worst bit

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Do you know what the shittiest part about wanting to be such an awesome person that when I die in my 80’s a million people will mourn? It means I have to get up and stop moping. It’s fucking irritating.

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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.

Fun plotting.

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I’m drawing pictures of my imaginary house. I like to think about what I would change. It’s kind of daunting to think of paying for it. I don’t want to finance it. I’m really repelled by the idea of paying interest on things that I want. It strikes me as the wrong approach to life. It is going to cost at least $250,000. Realistically, a shit load more than that but not everything has to be bought at once. That’s about the original asking price of the house.

My neighborhood is full of renters. This area could change for better or worse easily. I have no guarantee of recouping my investment. That will be an easier pill to swallow if I save up the money in advance and have it to spare. The problem with loans is that you are signing on to always and forever have this obligation. It makes me uncomfortable.

A lot of it could be done for cheaper if I wanted to do it myself and deal with “close enough”. After looking around my garage for a few months I can tell you I won’t be happy with “close enough” forever in my whole house. I’m kind of tired of living in a cage. I want a house with a lot of light. My entire childhood I lived in close dark cramped quarters. I don’t have to do this forever. As my children grow and invite friends over… I am going to need to have somewhere to go other than my bedroom. If I want my kids to have friendships that do not bend at my whims, I have to have a place to be away from them.

When people glorify the Noble Savage and idealize that behavior into AP dogma things get twisted. I don’t live in a tribe. It’s not possible for me to give as much constant contact as that requires. AP as preached by the extremists on MDC (just to be clear who I am talking about) is pretty restrictive. And the choices they advocate can be right given a very narrow set of circumstances which apply to their lives.

I honestly believe that if I lived in po’dunk North Dakota I would not have vaccinated my kids and I would have laughed my ass off at people who told me my kids were at risk for the diseases that are mostly wiped out in this country. If I lived in Missouri… I’d look at what diseases are happening in Mexico and I’d vaccinate based on that. I like international travel. I like going off and creating stories. I feel absolutely driven to be an interesting person. Damnit. My kids need to be vaccinated.

But not for chicken pox. Or rotovirus. Or the flu. I think we overmedicate as a country. I will tell my kids about chicken pox and try to expose them when they are young, but if we don’t catch it in the wild I will vaccinate them at 12. Earlier if they tell me that I am nuts and they don’t want chicken pox. I get the impression Shanna will be the kind of girl who speaks her opinion. At least occasionally.

Anyway. All this to say that I think we will get along better as she grows up if we have a bigger house. I have issues. I know this. The thing is, all those Noble Savage societies have a very different structure to their entire community. They have more support than a nuclear family does in America. It’s an apples to oranges comparison. It’s not that a child must have mommy 24/7. A child needs to be cared for by consistent caregivers 24/7. It’s not the same thing. I can believe that an infant in the first few months may fare better with just mommy. I now have a toddler and a kid! I don’t have a baby any more!

The upside of having married Noah is… I can have dreams and know that I don’t have to be the only road to accomplishing them. I can’t express the safety that feels like. It makes my breath come short. When I’m hiding by myself of course I dream of having the book I write in November be good enough to publish. It’s a nice dream. But I spend about five minutes doing that. I don’t think it’s good to think too hard about that. I think about what I want to say. And why it’s worth saying.

I have a lot of format ideas that I’ve been noodling with for years. Noah has listened to more teary conversations where I sob that I want to write a book about everything that has happened than I care to count. I need to do it so I can move past this phase of my life. I’m not over it. I haven’t said enough about it. There isn’t anyone in the world who knows the story from start to finish other than me. I lost the people who were my witnesses.

I have to write it down. I can’t be the only one who knows I exist and why I exist the way I am. It’s not fair. They can’t do that to me. They can’t take away my right to have eople in the wolrd who know know me. They can’t isolate me. They can’t tell me I am a liar. They can’t take my story away from me and call it a lie. Fuck them.

I want to write my story because it is true. And it fucking bothers me that no one but me saw it. I’m tired of being told that I am lying. I need to feel that intimacy with people. And a few people will read it. I hope it will be told in a way that is good enough to publish and a lot of people will read it. I hope people will get an edutainment out of it. It’s not that I’m always right. I’m not. It’s that my perspective is different. It is jarring to people. That is why I identify as white trash. I have a way of speaking, of presenting myself into the world with aggression. But not just that. I call attention to myself with things that are kind of tacky.

Just wait till I’m done with my house, y’all. It’ll be great. Do you know what I’ve learned sitting here in my wonderful garage? I’m not satisfied with close enough. I despise the unfinished wires. I loathe the exposed pipes. I have a friend who offered to help (he means do all the work; he’s sweet) me fix a lot of that cosmetic stuff. But none of that would change the fact that the city of Fremont says this can’t be a living space. It’s a garage. That’s why I won’t call it a den or office or whatever. It’s a garage. It’s a great garage… but it’s a garage. I want to move up in the world. This will never be good enough for me. I will always feel like I am hiding in the dark. I need more light. The living room isn’t really good enough either.

I won’t ever be happy in this house until there is a lot more light and higher ceilings. It’s too claustrophobic and dark. It reminds me of the house in the mountains. It’s not the color of the walls–which I like. I am not a tall woman. I can touch my ceiling. I have tall friends. I dislike that they have to duck and be made smaller in my house. It’s a standard ceiling. I have to jump. I don’t care. It’s like trying to get around in a 6′ town when you’re 10′ tall. I hate it. I would never have picked this house. And moving isn’t the right option for a variety of reasons. A more expensive house would still be wrong because what I want is a custom house. I can do that here.

So how the fuck do I raise that much money. Well, as it so happens, I married this geek. He makes a decent salary. If he keeps going at the rate he is going financially it can happen in about 13 years. That’s a long time to be impatient. How much do I want the money? When would I like to do the remodel? These are interesting questions. The big structural stuff I simply can’t do. I can’t add a second story full of windows and reinstall the solar panels. I’m good, but I have my limits. We just replaced the roof. Most of the stuff I’m seeing says that I can expect it to last 15-20 years. Tap fingers. It’s been on for two years. Twitch. Well. That gives me a lot of time to save money. There is no chance I will tear it up in the next ten years. That’s a kind of wasteful that would turn my stomach.

Ok. I can fuss with the garage. And try to be frugal. And put money away. I can have that dream. It’s just long-term. I kind of hate the long-term. Ack. It’s terrifying to think of committing, truly committing, to being in this house in ten years with a track record of maintaining the same financial pattern for that long. It makes my blood run cold. That’s a lot of fucking pressure.

Side note. Right now I have Rascal Flatt’s song Stand on repeat.

On your knees you look up
Decide you’ve had enough
You get mad, you get strong
Wipe your hands, shake it off
Then you stand, then you stand

Learning to marathon means that some goals are just not a high priority. No matter how intense they feel in some moments. I will have to learn how to live in close quarters with a lot of people for a while. I do need privacy. I need to learn how to create that space for writing. I need to get the book done and over with. I have too many uuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhh I wannnnnnnnnnna in my brain. I need to get one of them done. I have proven to my own satisfaction that I know this story. I can tell it. And I can certainly do it quickly. I can write the whole thing down in one go.

But I can’t blog it. Blogging is different. Every time I blog I write to a different person. I have a different ideal reader and I’m trying to coax a different reaction. I need to write the book for Noah. And I can’t do it with him reading and nodding and changing his behavior in random ways near me. I would be influenced. It’s really hilarious to me to think that. Noah is too important to me in a global fashion. If I want to truly create something for him I have to do it in complete absence of his knowledge of it. Otherwise he will come home from work grump on a day when I posted something I am particularly proud of and I will feel crushed and I will stall on writing.

I use blogging as a crutch. I have learned to write in blogging. I don’t know if that will translate to a book.

Take what you are given before it is gone

I have a story to tell. Not telling it is interfering with my life. That means it is time to stop medicating to prevent my story from being present. It means telling it fully from start to finish. And then stopping. And letting it go. Maybe only Noah and Sarah will read it and care. I don’t believe that is true. I’m actually terrified. I’m afraid only Noah and Sarah will read it and care. I’m afraid that it will only influence them. Because it will influence them.

Writing this book will change Sarah and Noah. Eventually it will change Shanna and Calli. I won’t tell either of them about the book until they are adults or until it is so famous I have no choice. But this having this book in existence in complete form means that I can have people who can fully speak my verbal shorthand. I can create a way to be fully present in all my broken glory with the adults in my life without having to constantly think about it and try to keep it away from my kids. Blogging isn’t enough.

I want stories to be comfortable and familiar. I don’t want to feel like I am unmasking more abuse constantly. I want the adults in my life to be able to help me censor for my children. I want to be able to say that I am thinking about Tommy and have them be able to ask, “What about him?” and be able to give them a useful answer. One that will allow them to be present with me as an adult as someone who sees me without me having to tell this long gory story in front of my kids.

I feel this constant pressure to monitor every word out of my mouth. I feel horribly uncomfortable because I want to feel this intimacy with Noah and Sarah and it eats me alive. I can rectify this problem. I can spill my guts. And then I can relax and listen to them talk and stop feeling so driven to share my story all the time. I want to be able to listen. Right now I don’t listen. I blog and then I nod along waiting for them to mention it and help me process… only those bastards have lives. My writing is for me.

I need to just write for me. It’s not working how I want it to work. Let’s try a different approach.

Life’s like a novel with the end ripped out.

It’s time to go do life.

The house

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I want people who went to the DHPs to walk on to my property and say, “Oh my god is this the same house?” I probably would not have picked this house. Given that it is exactly the size/shape/layout/everything as one of Noah’s ex girlfriend’s childhood home… it’s a little too standard. It’s a tract house. Someone other than me won $55.5 million last night (that was the cash value–actual prize was $113 million). That means we won’t be remodeling soon. Rats.

I don’t think I want something that will be easily categorized as a “style” of architecture. x

Choosing life

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What I like the most about Harm Reduction Therapy is that you start with the basic premise that you don’t want to die. If I really and truly wanted to be dead, I would be dead right now. Instead I have chosen life, over and over. Just over a year ago I had a chance to die peacefully in my bed holding my last precious gift to the world. It would have made for a touching movie and all. But I wasn’t ready. When my midwife said, “If you close your eyes you won’t wake again” and I practically asked for toothpicks to keep my eyelids open.

Most of the time I struggle with ensuring there is more than 50% of me that wants to live. It’s hard to explain what this feels like. When you experience a fight or flight reaction in your body because you are afraid, one of the first things it does is cause digestive problems because your digestive system gets put into a holding pattern while your body focuses on other things. It’s quite brilliant, actually. But it’s uncomfortable after years of daily, continual small startles that shut off my digestive system. One of the ways this manifests for me is burning, awful diarrhea. Cheers.

I want to stop startling. I want to stop being afraid. I want to stop being in pain. I’m not entirely sure how to go about the whole thing. On one hand I have 30 years of establishing this pattern. On the other hand, it’s not like it’s been all the time in a long time. I just have a little bit of reducing my stress levels left. The parts where you stop feeling where your friends hate you and want to attack you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the gaslighting article I read recently. And this one about how “citation needed” is not actually an argument. I spend a lot of time with agressive geek boys. I spend a lot of time with my stomach hurting because I feel very uncomfortable with the level of agression I need to display in order to be comfortable around many of my male friends. They expect me to rise to their leve of sarcasm and snottiness. Sometimes I do. Often I feel attacked instead. It’s not exactly a gentle friendship approach. I feel weird because I don’t know how much space in this area it’s actually ok to demand from a friend.

I am currently having a hard time with a friend because his casual conversational gaslighting makes me so angry that I can’t handle being around him without spending most of the time screaming at him that he is an asshole. I don’t go through most of my life feeling angry and screaming at people that they are assholes. I truly don’t. There is more than one person in the world who causes me to feel this way, but it’s probably far less than 10% of the population.

Why do I feel so guilty about getting angry with how they treat me? I don’t like the way that I am treated. I’m allowed to get angry about it. Why am I so closed off to the idea that it’s ok to be angry? I’ve had a lot of people mention in my life that they think I am angry person. It’s never said with a tone of approval. Many of my friends have casually told me they think I am really angry. It comes up. I don’t know that there is judgment intended, but I get told a lot that my reactions are irrational or overly sensitive.

I’m kind of ready to tear down the rational tree and use it for firewood. I’m starting to feel like the obsession with “rationality” is just one way of manipulating people. If you didn’t have the experience in front of other people in a verifiable way then your lifetime experiences should not be relevant if they are outside the common pool. Freak. Why don’t you act like everyone else.

Because I haven’t met very many people who can sit down and trade me story for story. I have never met anyone who has a lifetime total of more weird traumatic shit happening to them. I don’t say this in pride. I set the bell curve on weird, apparently, for the people I know. I have to believe that there are people in the world who survive as many or worse things. I have to have faith that people have survived worse than me. That gives me a path to follow. There have to be people who have as much right to be angry as me. I am angry. I am very angry.

I think it is right that I am angry. I am right to be angry about the things that were done to me. I’m right to be angry when a friend says something rude but covers with, “It was just a joke. You are too sensitive.” Actually my level of sensitive is exactly where it should be. You are a fucking asshole. But how do you say that to your closest friends? They have sensitivities of their own.

How do you have a conversation with someone who was bullied as a child and say, “You learned some of those behavior patterns a little too well.” I’m really tired of being at the bottom of the shit hill. As a child I was taught that the way to get out of from being at the bottom of the shit hill was to find someone lower in status and dump all the shit on them. That was my role in my family. I’m tired of playing that role with my friends too. I’m tired of feeling like I have to shut my mouth and put my head down because I am too angry and I should stop being angry and learn to just accept people as they are. Fuck that.

I think I’m ready to say that gaslighting isn’t ok. I consider it abuse. It is crazy making. I’ve had enough god damn crazy making. I get to say, “Actually you don’t get to decide for me whether or not I get to have an opinion. You are not the judge and jury on “rational””. It doesn’t matter if my side of an argument is “rational” if it is true. Many things are not rational and still true. Pi is irrational and you don’t see anyone trying to banish it.

Whether or not my feelings, reactions, thoughts, etc are rational is not a useful part of the conversation. And derailing the conversation to whether or not my feelings are acceptable to have derails the conversation from whether or not someone else’s behavior is reasonable. Obviously opinions will vary. Where do I get to set my lines though?

I think that next time I go see my friend I have to be in my own car. Instead of getting angry when he dismisses me I think I will get up and leave. I’m done with accepting that in my life. I’m done with biting my tongue when someone who “loves” me tells me that I am over reacting and I need to chill. I’m done. I choose to live. It isn’t living to be angry like this. It isn’t living to feel like I have to carefully monitor every single fucking word out of my mouth so that it is all coded in strong enough language so that I am not dismissed instantly by someone who thinks he is just smarter and better than me.

That codependent chicklist I was looking at? That’s my relationship with this friend. I can’t be in control all of the time and I don’t want to be. I want to stop feeling like I have to control our friendship in order for him to stop talking to me like I am shitty and stupid. I want to stop feeling like I have to carefully pick my words to ensure that the evening goes how I want it to. I want to stop feeling like I have to restrict the conversation to like three topics or I will feel like shit at the end because I am tired of feeling berated.

I have done the cooking and cleaning and serving and tongue biting thing to preserve this relationship for a long time. I’m not sure why. Because I feel an emotional connection. I feel an emotional connection with my mother too, I’m not talking to her. I think it is hilarious how people tell me that our chosen family bonds are strong enough to weather anything. I always want to snicker. It’s really cute that people trust me like that. I’ve already walked away from my entire biological family. There are at least a dozen, probably more, people in the world who are my actual “family”. And I don’t believe those ties are important. Why do my friends think they are in a different position?

I’ve read a fair bit about how severe trauma makes it more difficult to bond. I could move away from the bay area tomorrow. I’d miss people, sure. But I would be able to find other people for the level of friendship I have here. I’m confident. Especially if I took my household with me. I don’t see other people much. I could cut contact. I don’t want to.

If I want to have healthy relationships with people. If I want to have a healthy life… it involves committing to relationships and situations. That is what keeps people balanced and here. That’s what choosing life means. I choose my friends because they make me think and work at being a better person. What should I do when a given friend is not encouraging me to be a better person? What do I do when a friend wants me to stay the same person I was when I was 19. I’m kind of tired of the sarcasm, bitterness, and constant verbal sparring. It’s not my culture. Yeah, I married a geek. He adapts. Noah doesn’t bait me and he is only sarcastic in very gentle ways. He’s nice to me. I can live with Noah day in, day out and never be made to feel smaller.

Noah doesn’t want me to feel smarter than him. He doesn’t crow when he is right, which is a good thing because I would get nasty fast. You see, he’s right a lot. Probably most of the time. I rarely argue a factual point with him. I hate being proven wrong. However, in with his being-rightness, he has a lot of humility. He doesn’t think he is a better person because he knows things I don’t. That’s the difference between him and most of the geeks I know. That’s why I married him. He doesn’t think he is better or smarter than me, even though I think he is. I usually feel like men look down on me, especially when they know a lot of things I don’t.

Noah believes that I have equally valuable knowledge in areas he doesn’t. He trusts me. When we are talking about a topic where I have more subject knowledge than him… he might ask probing questions about the nature of the support of my knowledge… but that’s it. Even when he tells me I’m wrong it is very clear he is challenging an opinion not me. I feel respected. I feel like Noah married me because he wanted an equal partner to go through life with.

That’s not how it feels with other people. It feels like a constant jockying for “who is right”. Not all people, of course. My assholes. I’m vacillating about how to communicate this best. It’s mostly my assholes but most everyone does at least a little of this. My assholes are really bad. They bait everything. You can’t say the sky is blue without them challenging it… why? Just to be funny? It’s not funny. It makes you look like a dick. And I’m sick of it.

I’m getting kind of tired of being baited. I’ve had enough this lifetime. I’m tired of ending my time with my “friends” angry and hostile. If I feel like that after spending time with someone… it isn’t fun. And I should stop doing it. I am not ok with constant dick contest challenges to everything I say. I get enough of that with Shanna.

Then it comes down to the guilt of holding boundaries. If you hold boundaries people will get mad at you and tell you that your boundaries are in the wrong place. I can promise you that the person I am talking to will get upset if I just up and walk out ten minutes into our next hanging out time. The hanging out time that I haven’t scheduled. Because I’m not over being mad about the last hang out. It was almost a month ago. This isn’t good.

I feel like staying on this merry go round isn’t choosing life. It’s getting derailed. But I’m kind of tired of walking away from people who love me. Everyone fucks up. I can’t give up on everyone, right? Isn’t this what battered women feel? I love him but I feel bad when we are together. I love him but I’m tired of him making me feel small and stupid with his casual comments about how irrational I am. I am tired of being brushed off because obviously my opinion is worth less because I was traumatized as a child. It’s a great dismissive tactic. “Oh you are just over reacting because you had trauma as a child.” No. I am not over reacting you gigantic piece of shit. My reaction is totally appropriate. You are an asshole.

I’m tired of feeling like I have to come up with extensive justifications before my feelings magically transform into being “ok” because *you* agree with them. Who died and made you in charge of rationality? I don’t think I actually expect people to do only what I say. Noah sure doesn’t. Sarah doesn’t. Shanna doesn’t. Calli doesn’t. I love them and let them go about their day. Because them going about their day never makes me feel small and bad and stupid and inconsequential. If my friends make me feel that way (yeah yeah no one can “make” you feel anything) then maybe I shouldn’t hang out with them. Maybe the word “friend” is misapplied.

How do you decide if behavior is too much in a friendship? How invested do you have to be before you will put up with anything because he means so well. He’s convinced he is being friendly and that kind of mocking/joking/baiting is awesome. I disagree. Does my opinion matter? Do I get to have any influence over his behavior? No. I can’t control him. But I can walk away. I kind of feel like that has to be my next step. I have tried hard to control his behavior and make it “ok” for me. It’s not.

The next time I see him I am driving. I am not going to try and control his behavior. I’m not going to continue the endless begging I have done for ten years to try and get him to stop being nasty. I’ll just get up and leave. It doesn’t matter if I’ve been there for 2 minutes or 2 hours. I’m done talking to him about this. That is what choosing life is in this situation. I can’t “make” him be nice. I can’t. But I can get up and walk away and say it isn’t my problem. If he considers his behavior jim-dandy that’s fine. I don’t. I can control whether or not I listen to it.

Honestly that would probably be a good approach for him too if I am a jack ass and start bitching at him like a harpy. I don’t pretend I’m innocent. I’ve done my share of bullying. I’m ready to stop though. I can’t push him into being what I want him to be. He’s there or he isn’t.

It’s hard reaching this point of resignation. He is obviously committed enough to the friendship that he is making grandios statements about how nothing could end our friendship because we are so close. It’s like he’s never met me or listened to any of my stories. I can end any relationship if I don’t think it is good for me. I do not actually feel life long compulsion to maintain relationships “just because”. Everyone else was raised with that. Not me. I wonder how sociopathic that is. I don’t feel like I have to stay with Noah. I want to. I could leave. Easily. I don’t want to. I like him. I like being around him. He makes me feel good about myself.

If my friends don’t make me feel good about myself, maybe they aren’t such good friends. Where is that line though? Where do I get to say, “Well obviously he still enjoys my company and gets positive from this interaction… but I feel drained and angry. I have nothing to spare. I’m done.”

I don’t exactly have a lot of spare energy or patience in my life. I need my friends to be easy. My kids require all the patience I have in life. I barely manage to be civil with Noah and Sarah with their (patient, gently worded) requests and conversation on many days. Why in the fuck should I turn around and have a social engagement that fills me with rage and frustration for over a week? I don’t believe that is all my fault. I don’t feel that way with very many people. Just my assholes.

I can’t be at the bottom of the shit hill anymore. I’m done. I’m tired of nasty comments and casual put downs. I’m tired of being made to feel less-than. If you spend your whole god damn life in a dick contest trying to prove that you are smarter, better, more knowledgable… and you are going to prove it by making everyone else look dumb then you aren’t a man. You are an obnoxious little boy and I’m sick of it. I’m done being patient with adults who won’t grow up and learn to be civil. If you want to stay with the good-ol’-boy network that tolerates that shit from guys, fine. I’m done.

Choosing to be alive means consciously trying to avoid pain. I’ve spent a lot of time being angry about this friendship. I don’t want to just dump him. There is a bond there. But I need to keep it very distant. And I need to just get up and walk away from him when I’m getting angry. If I don’t he will never believe that I am serious. He’s gotten away with this shit for over ten fucking years. No wonder he thinks it is ok. You don’t convince someone that their behavior is a problem by biting your tongue and putting up with it.

The thing is, I’m not an innocent victim. He hasn’t abused me. We have a mutually broken dynamic. It’s not his fault and he hasn’t done anything terrible. It doesn’t have to be abuse and terrible for me to say no more. I’m allowed to do that at any point. Truly.

Codependence checklist

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– Feel most comfortable when they are giving
– Find needy people to take care of
– Try to please others instead of themselves
– Have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility
– Feel anxiety, pity, and guilt when other people have a problem
– Wonder why people don’t do for them
– Feel victimized by the “selfishness” of others
– Try to be all things to all people all the time
– Have difficulty saying “no” and/or setting boundaries
– Feel empty and bored when they are not involved in a crisis
– Seek out chaos and then complain about it
– Get angry when somebody refuses their help or doesn’t take their advice
– Tend of have a self-esteem that is connected to “doing”
– Try to prove that they are good enough to be loved
– Are afraid of making mistakes
– Are easily offended by other’s “rudeness” or “insincerity” or “uncaring attitude”
– Can become self-righteous with phrases like “I would NEVER do that….”
– Try to be perfect, and expect others to be perfect
– Have self-blame and put themselves down
– Must be in control at all time.

That came from here. I have to cringe because that is so me.

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I always feel confused when people say I have a lot of triggers. I’m not even sure what that means, exactly. I know that I can be bopping along reading a sweet letter from a mother to a daughter about Santa and burst into tears because all in a flash I think of my mother. I think that my mother didn’t actually get to have visits from Santa when she was a child. The first Christmas stocking my mother ever got in her life she got from me when I was 16. I was absolutely horrified when I understood that she had been filling stockings for her children for 29 years and she had never gotten one herself, ever. My dad was an asshole; he got one every year of their 15 year marriage.

I have been married for five years. Somehow I doubt that their marriage was like mine five years in. For my mom and dad that is when Jimmy was being born. All of my mom’s stories about my dad are tinged with bitterness, so I can’t get a straight answer about anything. He was an addict, I’m sure it was up and down. Noah doesn’t seem to think I am an addict. I suppose that’s good. Things are up and down anyway.

It’s interesting how music is universal. Yes, that’s a topic shift. You can listen to a song and feel identification with it no matter how close your actual life experiences are. At the moment I’ve got Journey, “Don’t Stop Believing” and if ever there was a song that lots of people feel inspired by… even while they know they are drowning in their own cheese. This song is increasingly popular again. And it’s not because it’s a great song. It’s cheesy and pretty silly. But it’s fun and it’s how I find my pleasure. I have a play list called “healing”. I haven’t listened to much else in the past year. Periodically I will hear a song on the radio and add it. It’s four hours long. These are the songs I listen to over and over again. I like songs like Dolly Parton’s “Better Get To Livin'”.

This is a mixed thing because unless I only pick music that has been written in the past ten years… I have associations with my early life with most songs I would pick. I sit back and think of driving with my mom. I must have been six or seven. It was before the accident. We were singing along with the Four Tops on the tape player. Same Old Song. “It’s the same old song, but with a different meaning since you’ve been gone.” I had no negative associations with music then. We were singing along loudly. The windows were down and there was a nice warm breeze.

I remember stretching back in the seat, back in those days six year olds sat in the front seat without a seat belt. Shhh don’t tell anyone. The seat belt law was passed when I was four. I found out about it in school when I was eight. I read my mother the riot act and I started insisting on wearing one. I also made her wear one. That is why the government wants children in public school, just saying.

I looked at my mom while she sang along. She was so cheerful and happy. She was hardly ever happy. She was usually sad. If that song came on the radio while I was on the freeway I might cause an accident because I would cry so hard. I miss my mom.

Recently I sent my friend this article on gaslighting. In further conversation with him I made a point that I realized is the point for me. I’m tired of having to defend my arguments basic validity. Not that I think I shouldn’t have to argue my side of the issue. I’m tired of having to bring in a long list of sources before I am “allowed” to have my side. Before I have proven that my side is an acceptable side for someone to hypothetically have. This.

What does it mean to be triggered? Isn’t everything all connected for everyone?

High Maintenance

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I’m not uniformly high maintenance across the board. And things shift a lot over time. Once a boy I was interested in told me that I was “high maintenance but low drama”. He could handle one date a month with me. We never got very close.

Being high maintenance is very different based on how you do it. I need a lot of intense emotional support. I need to be told things many times. I need to be touched or not touched immediately and without question based on my whims. I have a lot of control over what conversational topics happen around me because if I start getting angry for some reason I tend to escalate. I manage that by walking away from things that anger me or people who are engaging in conversation I don’t want to hear. I don’t mean that I tell everyone to shut up. I just mean that if I can’t handle what is being discussed I go sit in a different room. It’s not the easiest thing to live with. I have a lot of “systems” in place that make perfect sense in my head and I can’t explain them to other people because I know them in a kinesthetic fashion.

I am extremely particular but Sarah says not outside the normal range. That kind of weirds me out. Really? Other people have as many stupid little mandatory preferences as me? You know When Harry Met Sally? You remember how she ordered food? I’m not quite as fussy as her… but almost. Although I’m less fussy about food.

I’m sensitive. I wish I wasn’t. I wish I didn’t have a sensitive nerve ending in my body. Sometimes my skin is hyper sensitive and small touches hurt. Sometimes if I am not in the mood for a conversation I feel intense sadness or anger because I have some tangential thought process running tandem that is really unhappy. The stupidest things can trigger me into devastation and feeling like I am alone in the world and everyone around me would dance on my grave. It’s often hard to believe that someone like me could have any worth at all.

That’s high maintenance to live with. It’s fucking irritating. Especially because I go back and forth between these terrible lows and feeling like I’m a lot better than those other schmucks, so what’s the problem? (“Better” being defined as not having whatever problem I’m reading about on the internet. If you set a low bar, you can always achieve it.)

I’m not sure, but I would guess that one of the hardest things to live with is how quickly I expect people to make decisions or act upon things I have said. Because if people don’t respond/acknowledge/move fast enough I whirl in place and stomp off to do whatever it was I was talking about by myself while muttering. It’s not a very nice thing to do and I try to stop myself. I whirl away because it’s hard for me to ask for things sometimes. I should probably ask for some kind of visual acknowledgement that they heard and understood my speech so that I know to stand and wait while they think. Right now the problem is that I state what I want, don’t see immediate interest, and I feel like okfineI’lldoitmyselfit’snotabigdealanyway. It is a little huffy, but it’s huffy in a “I don’t want to be a burden and I feel like I should have done this for myself without mentioning it anyway. I mentioned it because sometimes you leap up to “do things” for me and it feels nice but if you aren’t in that space I’ll just go do it.” But it never comes out value neutral. I always look pissed.

The anger. The anger is probably the hardest thing to live with. I get angry so easily over such stupid things. I let it go quickly and I apologize profusely, constantly because I know it is inappropriate to get as angry as I do. But a lot of my anger is justified. And I apologize for that too. Because I’ve been told over and over, “Wow. You get angry a lot.” Because I feel like anger is wrong and bad and I should stop feeling anger. People comment on me being angry. That must mean I am inappropriately angry, right?

I feel shamed by comments on my anger. If people can see it I am failing at life. I feel this enormous pressure to develop a cheerful mask. Repression be thy name. I don’t really want to have to repress my anger. I want to not feel it. I want to not get so angry over tiny little things. I’m aware that a lot of the problem is sleep deprivation and stress. I can’t even tell if I get angry at a normal level. I don’t know. I can’t tell how often any one else gets angry.

Except for Noah. I freak right the fuck out if he gets angry. It’s been very difficult for us to work towards a space where I can let him be angry and not make it about me. I still have to check in about the fact that he’s not angry with me at a particular time. And then I want to fix whatever is upsetting him. It’s very codependent of me.

And you know how much I write about myself? Noah talks about this shit for hours and hours and hours and years. It’s frankly creepy that anyone other than me has this much interest in me. I’m so keeping him. Noah repeatedly, adamantly gives me approval for everything I am and most everything I do. He is a fount of affirmation and support. It is very important that my support network be well supported. I’m trying to do a better job at supporting them.

I feel like we are getting a lot closer to a balance. Things are a lot better with Sarah here. I haven’t had an exchange with Shanna I would call ‘nasty’ since the train coming down from Scotland. I think that a tirade going on about two minutes longer than necessary about train manners in a bad tone of voice after a month of travel is forgivable. I have been rude, and I’ve apologized and she seemed perfectly ok with the apologies. That goes both ways. Her behavior has been up and down, but I feel like it’s all been handled well. I’m taking time by myself a lot more and I’m a lot more calm because of it. The smoking helps, but I spend a lot of time out here not smoking just because I dislike the physical sensation. I’m just hiding. I’m just intimidated by the intensity of being mom.

I’m sensitive and my kids frankly freak me the fuck out sometimes. It’s hard to enjoy ice cream if you are allowed to eat nothing but ice cream. I mean, my kids are more meat and potatoes. I can handle eating them every single day. Now there’s a metaphor. But even though I want meat and potatoes every single day I want meals in the day where I’m eating something else. Variety is good.

I used to think I was an extrovert who was forced into solitude. I’m beginning to see that I am an introvert with occasional social needs. It’s kind of a weird identity shift. At this point in my life I think of every single person I talk to in terms of how much of my energy they will drain. Sorry, friends. I love you! That’s why I spend the energy I do. A friend is coming over this morning. Hopefully she won’t read this until after she has been at my house. I’m honestly kind of freaked out by having her come over today. Her son is very energetic and I’ve been trying to get Shanna to be slightly less messy in the house. Throwing things outside is great. Inside…. not my favorite. I know that the right thing to do is to ask them to help clean up during the visit. We’ll see how that goes. Ugh. I’m just so tired. I don’t want the extra mess. Fuss. Whine. But I want to talk to her. Ack. Personal time is over.

The Mom Pledge

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I was reading up on the Band, because they matter. And I foundThe Mom Pledge. Text is:

The Mom Pledge

I am a proud to be a mom. I will conduct myself with integrity in all my online activities. I can lead by example.

I pledge to treat my fellow moms with respect. I will acknowledge that there is no one, “right” way to be a good Mom. Each woman makes the choices best for her family.

I believe a healthy dialogue on important issues is a good thing. I will welcome differing opinions when offered in a respectful, non-judgmental manner. And will treat those who do so in kind.

I stand up against cyber bullying. My online space reflects who I am and what I believe in. I will not tolerate comments that are rude, condescending or disrespectful.

I refuse to give those who attack a platform. I will remove their remarks with no mention or response. I can take control.

I want to see moms work together to build one another up, not tear each other down. Words can be used as weapons. I will not engage in that behavior.

I affirm that we are a community. As a member, I will strive to foster goodwill among moms. Together, we can make a difference.

Part of what makes this kind of thing so weird is, what is “rude, condescending or disrespectful” according to this code? I’m afeared that an awful lot of what I say would be one of those words. I’m not trying to be rude. I reign in my condescension as hard as I am able. I’m afraid it pops out occasionally when I’m not looking. People often think that me questioning them at all is disrespectful. Pointing out inconsistencies in a story is disrespectful. On one hand I want to say, “That sounds great!” But I’m afraid it’s just one more way that I feel like I can’t hold up the original spirit of the thing so I don’t join. I’m a snarky bastard. Most of my friends are.

I don’t really think of myself as a “Mommy blogger” despite the fact that I have crotch droppings and mention them here. I feel like I write about my mothering shit the same way I write about me just existing. I happen to be a mother. But it’s not all that much of what I want to think about during my off-time, you know? I have to write about being a mother in so far as I’m trying to hack the experience. I am trying to dissect it to see how it works so that I can put it back together in a different way.

Inviting Sarah to live with me is part of mothering. Even though Sarah is inconsistently available at times she is still stable in her moods. When she is here she is here. Part of being a mother is recognizing that children need to have people in their life who are rock steady dependable in their affect. I’m not and I never will be. I talk about me not being steady. I talk about how to cope with that. And I fucking well moved someone in who was stable. Noah is also more emotionally stable than me. I worry. Specifically, to pull from that last link:

“This handling of mental illness (there were several negative examples) tends to present it as something out of control, scary, and dangerous. And also very, very selfish. Mentally ill people in pop culture are often deeply self-absorbed, wrapped up in themselves and their disorders, which means they have no time for anyone else. When it comes to parents, pop culture implies that mentally ill parents are too broken and damaged to possibly provide the level of care and support their children need. When this is the understanding of mental illness that many people have, it sets dangerous precedents.

Finding positive depictions of mentally ill parents is an uphill struggle, let alone depictions of parents who are members of Mad Pride movement, who may reject conventional treatment approaches to mental illness. For people with mental illness who want to be or are parents, pop culture provides ample reminders that this is a bad idea and should be reconsidered. For people without mental illness, pop culture provides ample judgment fodder and this can be a big problem when those people are decision-makers, the people who, for example, get to evaluate whether a parent should be allowed to keep a child after a report to child services expressing concern, or who sit in judgment on a jury.”

I worry a lot. I worry about talking about my mental illness because I don’t think I can get away with claiming to myself that I don’t have mental illness. There are legitimate names for my experiences. The whole thing can be codified as a case study. But it’s my life. I speak overly harshly sometimes. I don’t have the self control not to. My option is to never speak again. *I* feel like my behavior is perceived as being outside the bounds of that pledge up there. *I* feel like my behavior is perceived as “rude, condescending or disrespectful.” I don’t mean to be though. This truly is my polite voice. I am what my life has made me. I am frequently harsh in tone. I do it meaning well. I am not trying to be a didactic asshole.

Bad situations in my life have been really bad. When I say that I was at an important crossroads, I was often making a choice that resulted in a more dramatic shift than most people have as an option. That’s convoluted. Not very many people can talk to a rape crisis clinician for five minutes and be told, “You should be dead.” That’s happened to me when I have talked to a lot of different people. My choices kept me alive. I chose life. Over and over. That sounds melodramatic and I want to punch myself for using that particular cliché. It’s true though. I self harm because it is choosing life. It is choosing to allow myself a small amount of relief from the pain rather than actually relieving the pain. I got away from my father. It was hard. It took fighting off my family, but I did it. I got away from my family. I could be another drug addict loser. Instead I’m a drug addict with a functional life. I am a drug addict with elaborate checks in place to ensure that I am not permitted to be erratic around my children. My drug addiction is what allows me to be consistent. Without it I am swinging too hard right now.

But sometimes I come in here to the internet and I vent my frustration. MDC is really hard to read sometimes. The problem is that my life choices have been between really really bad things that seemed ok to outsiders and things that looked bad to outsiders but was actually great for me. My whole view on life choices is skewed far off to the left from everyone else. For most of my life if you had offered me the chance to die on any given day, I would have taken it.

I had children because I choose life. When people ask me why someone like me had kids, and I get asked, I say that biological compulsion is a big deal and I was a lot more stable then. I don’t say, “Fuck you for implying that I am too broken to have worth on this planet you fucking asshole.” I had children because I desperately want to spend most of my time with them. Because I like seeing them change day by day. Because even when Shanna or Calli are doing something that makes me want to put my fist through a wall I would cut my hand off before I would slap them in the face. Because they are mine. The first people who love me without any hint of judgment. That will come later. They will judge me. They will judge my behavior as a mother. They will judge me as a person. It’s my responsibility to make the choices that will allow us to have a good relationship.

I don’t accept it at face value that I will have a relationship with my grown up children. I’m aware that there are conditions on such love. It’s hard. Do you know why people stay in relationships with their abusers? Because if you walk away from that love, what will you do about the aching loss it creates in your life? I had children and I went around and deliberately chose adults to help me raise them. Adults who are just as intent as I am that our children be kept safe and healthy. Adults who hold me accountable for my behavior. I’m not actually taking the risk that other people think I am taking.

If anything I am too hard on myself and I demand an unhealthy amount of 24/7 cheer from myself. It’s getting better. Normal, healthy people have mood variation. Right now I do not get consistent sleep and I haven’t in a year. I have outsourced feeding me to other people and that’s a mixed bag. They aren’t actually aware that I stopped tracking that because I’m kind of a shitty person. If I don’t tell them that I have abdicated responsibility to them then I get to be mad at them a lot when they fuck up. Control games are awesome.

This is hard to talk about. Because I can describe it that way, as a control game, but it’s not like I’m experiencing it that way. I focus on taking care of my kids. I get them through their day. They eat at regular intervals. I uhhh don’t like a lot of the food they like to eat. I have texture issues. It’s not even that I don’t like those foods. If someone else took those foods and cooked them till they were mush I’d cheerfully eat it. Shanna and Calli like crunchy things. That feels bad in my mouth. I usually come in and get food for them quickly and then get to the point where I probably should shift gears and make food for me… only I get distracted and do something else. I “forget” to eat. It’s partially a consequence of my weird picky food preference issues.

When Noah or Sarah want to eat then there is pretty much always a way for me to feel like something I want in my mouth is an option. They like things that are spiced closer to how I want it (I like slightly less salt than Sarah and slightly more salt than Noah) and it works. Even if it pings me as being slightly over or slightly under salted… that’s a small sin. That’s how food works when Sarah or Noah is cooking. I can eat it.

For example, I can’t handle eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches very often. The oil from the peanut butter stays in my mouth and bothers all the other flavors for days. And the jam often tastes too sweet. But I can’t handle eating peanut butter plain because the flavor is too intense and it makes me feel icki. On some days I can handle eating nuts plain. Most days the idea of crunching a nut between my teeth will give me shivers down my spine like nails on a chalk board.

But given how many things I feel I must do in a day… I don’t want to go through the effort of making a meal for Shanna and a meal for Calli and a meal for me. Given that my meals are a lot more work. I just don’t eat. Because I’m not really worth it. But Noah and Sarah think that feeding me is worthwhile. Hey! I know if I wait a bit longer Sarah will want to eat and it will be easier to just make one mess for the both of us and… It works until it doesn’t work. When it doesn’t work I generally get pretty grumpy. And that’s how a lot of my self regulation goes.

Ok, this is a problem. I need to fix it. It’s hard to get to the point where it feels like I have any more ability to do “care” for a body. Even my own. I get really angry with myself for how long it takes me to poop now that I have kids. That’s weird. The whole gestating/labor thing changed my plumbing in ways I am not appreciating. And it doesn’t help that we are eating so many vegetables that my digestive system is on protest. I don’t believe all the people who say this is a healthy diet. I never had to poop this much when I was living on top ramen. That has to be easier on my system. Ahem.

People are whole systems. I’m kind of a mommy blogger. I’m kind of a mental health blogger. Kind of feminist. I’m just me. I don’t think I am going to post the Mom Pledge thing on my site permanently. I will agree in my head that I should follow those rules. I will think they correctly describe my approach to life. But I won’t publicly join a group about it. That sounds like behavior policing to me. I can’t handle it.

Anxiety, spike.

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Today I am going to go see a psychiatrist. The medical group I work with made it very difficult to get this appointment. I was interrogated by multiple people and it was very obvious that if I didn’t answer in a way they liked I was going to be locked up whether I like it or not. Self-harming is illegal, you know. It’s pretty terrifying to me that I have to be careful in how I word things or I won’t be coming home today. The terror is enough that I kind of want to cancel the appointment and continue to hide in my house forever smoking pot. At least right now I don’t have to worry about someone else deciding they know what is best for me and forcing my lock-step through their program again.

For me the institution and the group home and public school were all pretty much cut from the same cloth. Obviously there were degrees of seriousness for how they slapped people down for stepping out of line. For the whole god damn rest of my life “help” means people doing things to me against my will. That is what help is. It doesn’t matter if I am crazy or sane, it doesn’t influence how people treat me. Do you know what does influence how people treat me? How much they actually listen to me before they start acting.

I don’t know how to make any part of my life or experiences or needs or whatever into brief little sound bites that keep me out of trouble. That is a lot of what other people seem to have that I don’t. It’s not that no one else had anything shitty happen to them. It’s that no one else seems to have diarrhea of the mouth and the compulsive desire to tell everyone in the world, “My dad raped me and I still can’t sleep at night because of it. It’s not so bad really. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in a world where I don’t wake up at 3 am unable to go back to sleep because I am no longer stoned and I can’t bear the nightmares. Luckily I went to bed at 7 last night. I got in a lot of sleep. It seems to be the only way to hack the system.

I am afraid that if I tell the truth today I won’t be coming home. I have responsibilities. I have people to care for. An institution isn’t a “break” it is a horrible rending and tearing of not allowing me to have contact with the few people in the world who love me and are nice to me. Please God, I never want to be in an institution again. Never. Never. I am really afraird of talking to a psychiatrist today. I know that if I’m honest about how I have been since April they will talk to me about my “options” by which tell me what they are considering forcing me to do. Because the minute I walk into this doctors care I no longer get to have the final say about my mental health.

I feel like I am about to puke on the floor. I have six hours of terror to get through until I meet this doctor. How this goes depends on the psychiatrist I see. If this is an open minded person who believes there are many roads to an acceptably good life, I might get some actual help. If this person believes that all people must be like _____ or they need “help” I might be walking into an actually dangerous situation for me. And I don’t know in advance what kind of person this is. And dear god the power she will weird. I’m actually more scared because it is a woman. Despite the fact that every sexual assault was perpetuated by men, I still feel much more terrified of women. Women are meaner. Women hurt other women and girls just so they get the rush of feeling bigger. I have some issues with women.

I am aware that the most likely result of today is that I will come home with a prescription of some sleep and/or anxiety medication. I’m willing to bet money that the doctor will be fine. That I will talk about my horror story of a life, say that I self harm in limited ways because of a life of horror and right now the pressure is simply too much for me to cope with “healthy” coping mechanisms on my own and I need help. This doctor would probably be ok with drugging me into a zombie state for the rest of my life if I need that to stop being angry all the time. I don’t want that either.

What do I want? What do I hope for? If I don’t know I can’t ask. I want to sleep better, longer, and in the middle of the night rather than through the evening. I miss Noah on nights I go to bed with Calli. I want to be able to control my anger. I want to not hide at home because I am terrified people will dislike me and be mean to me. I am so afraid of people being mean to me. Sometimes I think I have picked the wrong friends groups.

People I know hurt my feelings a lot. I’m really over sensitive. I try hard to keep it as just my problem because I know I am over sensitive. But that means I don’t go out. Because people hurt me casually without noticing. I notice. I stop going out. This is the flip side of “blunt”. An awful lot of things that people say attached to the phrase, “I’m just being honest” are awful. Awful. Awful. “I don’t think you are a bad person or anything, I just think it is a sign that you have no respect for yourself if you have slept with so many people.” I don’t think that is true. If it was true, thank you for telling me that you think I treat me like a piece of shit because I don’t have the same attitude about sex that you have. Obviously us whores are lower life forms.

I do speak negatively about women who have sex with the guys I sleep with. Not to put them down, but rather I refer to us collectively as whores. I’ve noticed lately that I am inadvertently thinking negative-ish things about women I really have no negative thoughts by. Especially over the past three years, I just don’t have negative thoughts about the women Noah sleeps with. D is not a whore. She’s a very nice lady who sometimes sleeps with my husband when the idea of sex makes me cranky. The only exchange is stress relief. That’s not being a whore. It’s being an unconventionally awesome friend.

I have some mixed feelings about sex. I can’t imagine why.

That last sentence makes me smile. People like to talk about the things that are important to them. Most people seem to find books, movies, their kids, their jobs, and their hobbies to be the extent of what they do with their talking. I’m important to me. Trying to figure out how to hack my system and behave how I want to behave is my hobby. Other people seem to not have the road blocks to existing that I have. I can get things done. I can be productive. I can even seem happy. But I have to rig the game.

I can visit with friends. I can deal with all the stuff that needs to be done to keep two little kids growing like weeds and healthy. I can’t go meet new people by myself. I can’t handle things that feel high pressure. New people are terrifying. New people represent this constant low level risk of nastiness. Either I will be stupid enough to say something about myself and they will be disgusted and not like me or I will be stupid and comment on their life choices in a way that is inappropriate. The internet is not doing wonders for my social skills.

There is a local meet up group for home schoolers. Sarah tried to go to one of their events yesterday and missed them in the crowd. The organizer sent me this email asking if Sarah is…. part of my family? Because then she can just be accepted into the group instead of being a provisional member. They’ve met me and the kids and if she’s attached to us she is obviously not a predator or creepy person. They don’t have to meet her first if she is attached to us.

That honestly makes me feel weird. I told her, “Yes Sarah is part of our family. I’m sorry we don’t get to more events. That is when the baby naps. We are hoping that now that she has crossed into toddlerhood that naps will drift and we will be able to come to a lot more events.” That’s a good way of not sounding like a crazy fuck up. “Actually I usually skip your events because there is this one cunt I am afraid of meeting up with and it keeps me at home shaking with terror.” You know that friend who dumped me with the nasty dear Jane email? She’s active all over the bay area with anything vaguely crunchy and parenting. I don’t really want to run into someone who will tell me that I am such a bad parent she doesn’t want to know me.

All of these things are related and combined in my head. People are terrifying. At any random moment people who are staunchly my “friend” will turn on me and start telling me how bad or gross or wrong or… something. I’m inappropriate. I should be kept away from decent people because I am so bad bad bad. That’s why I am so afraid of the institution. It feels like just one more way that society wants “people like me” to be eliminated. If I can’t control myself well enough to pretend that I am just like everyone else they are going to put me in a place where I will god damn get control.

It’s hard to explain to people what the institution was like for me. You can’t go to the bathroom without permission. You can’t eat without permission. When food is put in front of you, you are required to eat all of it or you get punished. A lot of the girls in psych wards are there for eating disorders. As a result every person there is given the same food and you have to eat every bite whether you like it or not. I was told very clearly that if I refused food I would be strapped to a table and a feeding tube would be inserted. That was what I was told when I said I didn’t want to eat the scrambled eggs because they were too soft and I thought they tasted bad. All of my life I have hated scrambled eggs that were too soft. I like them burned. I like them absolutely hard. The institution made them really runny and slimy in a huge batch. They wouldn’t even microwave the fucking things for me to cook them more. The employee told me that I had to eat all of it or I would be forced to eat through a tube. When I started eating with tears running down my face and I was actively fighting my gag reflex… the employee smiled and called me a good girl.

That’s fucked up. I’m sorry. That is not about helping me be “better”. That is about helping to break my spirit and force me to conform to someone else’s idea of being a good person. Seriously? My mental health is related to me being able to choke down under cooked eggs? Why in the fuck was that important? Why was that a battle? Why did I have to eat or risk more invasive medical procedures? Why should I believe anything other than Western Medicine is Evil. Giving that much power to people is wrong. No one should have been able to do that to me.

I’m sorry, but suicide and self-harming should not be punished the way they are. Do you know why people are punished this way? Because it is disruptive to society for people to be unpredictable. People who commit suicide or self-harm are likely to be different and cause waves. We certainly must stomp that right the fuck out. No disruptions of routine. Everything.Must.Flow.Like.Clockwork. Or you are bad. And we will force you back into line.

You can’t eat when you want to. You can’t go to the bathroom when you want to. You can’t sleep when you want to. You can’t play games when you want to. You can’t listen to music when you want to. You can’t decide who you talk to. You can’t decide what you eat. You can’t decide what clothes you wear. You can’t decide how to treat your body–your decisions are substandard.

That’s what an institution is like. You are expected to slowly shuffle from activity to activity (eating is an activity) exactly how and when they say. You cannot question anything. You cannot have a body that likes to eat every four hours instead of eating at 6:30, 12:30 and 6:30. You cannot have any privacy in your head. If an employee (it probably is only supposed to be the therapists, but the orderlies are assholes too) decides to start interrogating you about what you are thinking you had better have an acceptable answer.

When I was institutionalized the story was that I had a rough life but no one knew what that meant. They knew I moved around a lot. They knew that my brother had been hit by a car. There was some vague talk that maybe some sexual abuse had happened. I hadn’t told anyone about being raped. Not by anyone. I went into the institution and was told to lay out all my secrets on a table for them to judge and decide about. Of course I didn’t tell them shit. They were forcing me to eat runny eggs and walk from room to room under their command. There was no safety. There was no room for me to exist at all. I’m just glad it was only two weeks.

I can play the game if I have to. Of course I can. I wouldn’t be alive and outside of jail if it wasn’t true. But I break the social contract in a lot of ways. A lot of ways that are easy to ignore when I am at home by myself in the garage. No one will hurt me here. No wonder Alex’s therapist said I am like the crazy ass Vietnam vet who stockpiles food and ammunition. I don’t think our larder is especially bursting with stores and I don’t own a gun. But I do very careful limit how much I deal with people. I only invite a few people to my house and I don’t go out often. You never know who is going to be nasty to you.

I remember not caring about the fact that people judged me badly. I mean, I can deal with the random public and I do. I go to the grocery store and have pleasant interactions. I can take my kids to the zoo or museum and we do fine and have fun. I can’t go to a big party with a bunch of “friends”. I can’t go meet a medical practitioner because this person will abruptly have “authority” over me.

I’m tired of feeling like I am wrong or bad just for existing. For saying the things I say. For taking up the space I take up. Even if I do go to an event I feel this constant pressure to sit in a corner and not say anything awkward or uncomfortable. This is hard. If someone says, “So what have you been up to lately?” it’s a huge anxiety bomb. Well I’ve spent most of 2011 having a mental breakdown and I wrote about it on my blog extensively. Want to hear about my long list of rape experiences? No, no one wants to hear that. But it’s what I want to talk about. So I stay home by myself and I write. I can’t offend anyone if I am writing alone in a room.

Cue chorus of snickers. Ok, if people are offended by what I write when I am alone in a room I don’t feel much responsibility for that. Stop reading then you stupid asshole. No one is dragging you to a computer and chaining you there until you read all my inane drivel. My whining. I’m not feeling good about myself today. I’m really afraid of this doctor. I’m really afraid that this doctor has the power to say, “You know how hard you are working on being a stable mother? Well… someone like you shouldn’t have had kids and we are going to protect your kids from you.” I have to be careful what I say in front of this doctor or I risk CPS. I’m afraid that it doesn’t matter that I only self harm behind closed doors away from my children. I’m afraid I am going to be told that someone like me is too toxic to share the same air. It’s for everyones good that I be removed from the home.

I was often taken away from my family as a child “for my own good”. I was always sent back after a while because there aren’t enough tolerance for me anywhere else either. Difficult. That’s me. Always have been. Always thinking I get to have an opinion and preferences. Always thinking that it matters what I want. Stupid me.

There are few things in my life more terrifying than the institution. I know it would be a different one this time. A “better” one. It wouldn’t really be better though. It would just be the system trying to convince me that as long as they don’t force me down on a table we are all doing what we want to do. It’s a lie. Me doing what I want to do involves hiding in my house and beating my head on the concrete floor when I can’t handle the anxiety. Ok, that’s not really what I want to do. But I prefer beating my head at home to beating my head in the institution and I wouldn’t stop just because they told me to.

In fact if a group of doctors told me I had to stop or else… all of a sudden my skull would be covered with scabs because I would do it a lot harder. Or else what? What are you going to do to me that is going to be worse than what has happened to me? Do I really need more people hurting me? Do I really need more people trying to impose their will upon me? That is how to make me a healthy person? For yet more people to try to control me when they don’t know what happened to me?

Coping mechanisms can be good and useful and necessary at one time and become less good over time. Self harming has kept me able to function and go about life. It *is* a stress relief. I have done a lot of good in my life. Why is any of it negated because I had to self harm in order to have the focus to work? Why? I can see telling me that there is a better way and offering me other options. That’s awesome. I want to have other fucking options. I’m tired of my head hurting. But I can’t just find this self control out of thin air. I’m out of will power. There isn’t enough lemonade in the world.

I don’t self harm every day. Unless you count pot, which is kind of a weird thing for me. On days when I am stoned I don’t self harm at all. I haven’t beat my head against the floor in almost a month, actually. Not since the day of the party. That morning I lost it and I haven’t since. Having all those people come over was… challenging. It went well and everyone had fun. I still spent most of the time freaked out waiting for something awful to happen.

Since then I say, “Sarah I need to tap out” and she says, “Ok!” and I go sit down and smoke and think for thirty minutes. Then I’m cheerful again.

I want to work with a psychiatrist because I don’t know much about mood stabilizing drugs. I need to learn.

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