I had a realization yesterday about pieces of the anxiety going away: I don’t see white men anymore. I don’t have to be ready to fight at any given moment. When I say that my anxiety is less, that’s what I mean. Violent crime is really low here. As a white person, the police would be very eager to help me deal with any problem I had with a citizen as a matter of national pride. If I showed up visibly assaulted to a police station… they would take it seriously.

In the US they would tell me that they won’t ruin that nice boy’s life over me.

So that’s a huge component of my day to day anxiety. I am afraid of white men for very good reasons. Like with my shitty neighbor: I had to kick him over and over and bruise his ribs to get him to let go of my upper thigh. That’s just life in the US. That won’t happen to me here. I can’t imagine a Japanese man thinking he had the right to do that. Sure, they might try to look up my skirt. I hear about issues of gropings on trains, but walking down the street it isn’t going to happen and I’m avoiding trains.

But I am afraid of my friendships. I am afraid of messing them up more than I do by existing. I am afraid that if I advocate for myself that people won’t want to be in my life anymore. I am afraid that if someone asks me for an overwhelming kind of support I will hurt myself to give it because they are more important than me. I am afraid that it isn’t ok for me to ask for any support. So I am not asking for support.

I haven’t talked to anyone on a video chat in a couple of weeks because I would want to dump my emotional pain and I don’t have the right.

I need to just try to shove this shit in a hole and try to get back to “appearing happy” because that is all people want from me.

If I can’t spend a phone call asking questions about their life and supporting them I don’t have the right to have a phone call at all. Right now I don’t have anything to give so I am not calling anyone. I am having brief internet chats because it is slightly easier for me to shove my crap down and not bring it up as much… but I’m not even doing as well at that as I should be. I feel so much shame for every mention of feeling bad.

How dare I think my feelings are important. Just shut up. You are centering yourself again you stupid white bitch.

Eldest Child hurt her knee the day we arrived in Japan. She spent a few days walking on it and now she is waking up with it swollen. Yesterday it felt better by the afternoon so she wanted to walk to a restaurant. I shouldn’t have allowed it. I won’t allow it today. We are applying ice. She is taking ibuprofen. When she takes the ibuprofen she feels fine and she wants to play. She needs to bloody sit still for a day or three. Clearly nothing is broken. Clearly she doesn’t have a torn tendon or anything. She just won’t let it rest and walking to a restaurant means a good 2 mile walk roundtrip at minimum. Today I will be carrying all of our food home for everybody. I have carried most of it home for the past few days.

Noah is doing less of the food prep here. He has a serious need to spread out and I can cope with neatly preparing things on a tiny counter better than he can. So I’m doing it. It’s not my favorite but it’s important in this space. So I’m doing a lot of fetching and prepping food many times a day on top of my normal workload. He’s doing more baby care while I do the prep but that means she is wandering around his feet while he’s on the computer. (He has a presentation in 9 days that is kinda the entire point of his job and is why he gets paid the big bucks. He needs to be working a lot and I get that. He’s not being lazy nor rude.)

The big kids are frustrating in the extreme because I have to beg, cajole, and push them through even doing the dishes. They truly want to do nothing for anyone. They don’t want to do basic hygiene unless I stand over them glaring. They don’t want to wash dishes (we have a plate, utensils, a bowl, and a cup per person along with a knife and cutting board used per meal–it’s way less than they used to cope with at home) or sweep or do anything unless I am aggressive and kind of mean. They want to play, demand sugar, and say that I should be entertaining them more. As my work load has increased.

I am struggling to keep my temper. I am not yelling or screaming mostly because it would be so abominably shameful to do here. Wheeeeeee.

I feel really bad about myself. I feel like a failure on almost every level. I feel stupid. I feel worthless. I feel like a tool that is nearing its breaking point so I should be thrown away and replaced.

I don’t feel valuable or loved. Noah is trying, but I feel near constant guilt that I’m not pouncing him for sex the minute the baby goes to sleep because don’t I owe him that too? I am really scared I am going to get to Scotland and I will have to avoid Jenny’s family entirely or risk being anything other than perfectly nice so that I deserve them hating me. I can’t lose Jenny right now. Not right on the heels of losing Sarah. So maybe I can’t risk contact with her or her family while I am such a fucking stupid cunt.

I have to cry on the toilet because there is literally no other place for me to be.

I am trying to be light and perky and giving because I know that is what is expected of me.

But I am empty.

Me and the big kids are having a lot of nightmares. Last night for me was about a “Christian Mission” housing orphans and sex workers. The organizers deliberately kept it bare of anything but beds (with no covers for the mattresses) and it was dirty and run down and giant like a maze. There were no corridors. You had to walk through rooms to get to rooms. I was looking for my mother in there and I kept walking through sex workers having to deal with violent clients. The owners were secretly rich. They got government funding to run this shithole and they didn’t see why they should have to share “their” reward.

Eldest Child has been having a lot of nightmares about Paul Hollywood chasing her with bread products. She has brought this up most mornings for weeks. Middle Child has had a continuing dream about all people under 40 being forced to live in one building complex where they are forced to work. (You are let out at 40 because you have no more value.) There is a long list of rules you have to follow and if you break any you are put in jail where you will do everyone else’s laundry by hand.

We are all anxious as fuck.

I am struggling with feeling like I am bad for writing about my feelings. Surely I am only doing so because I want to control people and I am bad. I am trying to force people to act in a certain way; I am being controlling and evil and…

I have a hard time with the way that mental health diagnosis stuff is weaponized. I can’t count how many lay people have told me that I must have Borderline because they don’t like how I am acting. Actually bitch, more than 30 clinicians have come to the conclusion that I definitely don’t so why don’t you go fuck yourself with a rusty spork.

I used to be friends with a woman. When she didn’t like my behavior she would start telling me that I was acting manic and I needed to get that under control. When I politely and calmly asked her to not use diagnosing language for me because she is not someone I am paying to have a medical opinion about me she completely fucking exploded and started screaming at the top of her lungs that she is a terrible person WHO SHOULD JUST DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE. I spent a bunch of time trying to calm her down and assuring her that I don’t think she is a terrible person who does nothing right, I just have a problem with this one behavior. It was really awful. How come I have to become your therapist telling you that you are ok because you did something that wasn’t fucking ok?

I am terrified of forcing people to appease me. So I spend a lot of time appeasing others. I don’t want to be appeased. I would rather move away and stop talking to anyone rather than force them to jump through hoops to appease me.

I am also struggling with a dynamic with my kids that has been going on for years. I have many examples going back a long time. I do this thing where I deliberately focus on the kids for a day each in a week then on a different day I say “We did x person’s thing 3 days ago and y person’s thing 2 days ago and z person’s thing yesterday today I want us to do ______.” Every time my kids start badgering me and/or tantruming about how they want _______. Sometimes it is something they want to do (that won’t be fun for me at all–like supervising them in a play area) but often it is demanding that I supply them with sugar. “I want ice cream” repeated for hours.

It makes me feel really really bad. I pay a lot of attention to you. You get your way a lot. Why don’t I get to say I want to spend 3 hours doing this other thing?

Noah always tells me that I can go do the thing by myself and leave him with the kids so that the kids don’t have a chance to do it to me. Then I find a corner to crawl into and I cry.

Why don’t I just be alone. I go through all this effort for all these people and when I want to do something I think is fun… why don’t I just be alone.

I don’t want all day every day to be my fun stuff. I don’t ask for anything even vaguely approaching that.

One of my buddies really wants me to call her. She has texted me a few times asking me to. But she wants a free therapist (she has never seen a real therapist). She wants advice on parenting and dealing with her parents and dealing with her legal troubles and dealing with the government. She spends about 5 minutes asking me how my kids are doing then she launches into all the stuff she wants help with. She doesn’t know anything about me. I don’t ever get to talk about how I am doing or what is going on for me. She literally knows nothing about me other than I always seem to have answers to her questions. I haven’t called her. I feel guilty. She begged me to please do so soon, definitely before I leave Japan. Something is probably going on for her and she wants me to tell her how to fix it.

I can’t fix my problems. Why do you want me spending my energy on fixing yours?

I am struggling a lot with feeling invalid. If i have both negative and positive feelings about someone clearly I am vacillating between idealizing and tearing someone down. Uhhhh, no? I am having both sets of feelings at the same time? I am not alternating? Oh. Well I have strong negative and positive feelings about people sometimes. THEN YOU HAVE BORDERLINE. Wait, what?

I feel like a lot of people weaponize mental health discussions to invalidate people having feelings as a reaction to legitimate negative treatment. I am pretty sure Sarah felt like she was supporting me as much as I supported her. If I disagree with that assessment it must be because I have Borderline.

I feel like I have to get enraged before I believe it is ok to defend my boundaries, then I am a bad person because I got so angry. But if I try to defend my boundaries in more mild ways I am walked on. I have no acceptable way to explain what I want or need. Anything I do to try and manifest that something is a problem for me is either ignored or used as a reason to prove I am bad.

I had to be willing to toss my relationship with Sarah overboard before I could say “The way you ask me to devote all of my spare time to you but then you rarely show up because your other friends are more interesting/important isn’t ok”. I am not allowed to object to being treated shoddily until I am willing to say “Fuck you. I am done.”

Then I have Borderline because I end relationships!

So what you are saying is that if I don’t let people treat me like I am disposable I have a personality disorder?

Ok.

I am tired of feeling like my emotions aren’t valid because they aren’t what other people want them to be. I am tired of having people (often strangers, but sometimes those who are closest to me–like Sarah) use weaponized language about my mental health. Either I act like they are perfect and never complain about their behavior or I have a personality disorder or a mental illness I have not been diagnosed with. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to figure out what is actually wrong with me because so many people have been confident telling me there is a lot wrong with me.

Yeah. There is. But I have a pretty complete picture of what that is now. And fuck you for thinking that your stupid, ill informed, ignorant, hateful opinion needs to be added to my mental picture of myself. You are a selfish asshole. How’s that for a diagnostic reference for you?

I am tired of feeling sad. I am tired of feeling less important than other people. Noah tries all he can to mitigate that for me but it is so big.

A talented Black woman I learn from said recently that she won’t engage with white women because white women are violent (verbally but this shit counts) in their pursuit of having the status of white men and they are happy to step on men/women of color in the process. I have not stopped talking to my friends who are not white because of that statement, but it makes me question whether I have the right to ever approach another POC for friendship because I am inherently violent and dangerous.

I don’t want to hurt people. But I absolutely have. I have significant power to do more damage.

The only way I know I can stop hurting people is to die. Which is not saying “Be my friend or I will kill myself.” I am saying that people are hurt in so many ways by so many things that the only way to FOR SURE never cross a boundary is to not be alive. Human beings fuck up. I fuck up. I cross boundaries and say things I shouldn’t and I hurt people. I am not entitled to that right. I shouldn’t be hurting people.

So maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to talk about my feelings at all because I am the problem.

I have been reading 10 Reasons to Delete Your Social Media by Jaron Lanier. He talks about how the algorithms used on Twitter/Facebook (he hates Google too) are specifically designed to increase anxiety, depression, and addictive like behaviors. Which in turn make you irritable and upset.

Noah says he does see such upticks in my behavior.

Maybe part of trying to maintain stability without medication is deleting my account. Again. And never coming back this time. I keep having conversations with people about this book and the constant response is, “But I would lose contact with people I care about because the only way I hear from them is Facebook/Twitter/etc.”

Maybe if you only know people through a broadcast medium that makes you feel upset… you aren’t really hearing from them?

This is literally why I write letters. If I want to stay in touch with you I will fucking stay in touch with you. It takes me a while to circle through everyone… because I stay in touch with a lot of people… but that’s ok! That’s how much I genuinely have to give people instead of putting out broadcasts that people don’t care that much about. I invite people into the postcard circle. If they prefer to hear from me on Twitter…

Maybe they don’t need to hear from me at all.

That’s ok, too.

One reason I like Twitter is because it keeps me in touch with what is happening to other people with chronic pain and other people who have been abused by the system. It’s validating as fuck. The writers from Twitter that make the most difference for me… I already follow on Patreon. I should probably delete my Instagram too. Noah points out that I am giving Facebook pictures of my kids and I feel sick about that.

It’s the whole individualist vs group identity thing. Social media lets me feel validated from people like me… but I often get just as much validation from people who aren’t like me and maybe that is a better way to deal with life.

We have a rental car right now. It doesn’t make my life better. It means I spend a lot of time driving and that hurts my arms and back really badly. We did go to Dole Plantation because my kids love mazes and that’s the biggest one in the world. Well, that’s sort of in dispute. But we stopped on the road trip every time there was a maze. The kids would have been sad to miss out on another opportunity.

It was fascinating exploring how much of this island is still kind of remote. There aren’t many services with a 45 drive and that’s basically rural. We have been staying on the side populated by locals. We are near the homeless camps, away from the wealthy houses. That’s way better for me on every level.

I think some of the homeless folks have been having fun at my expense and I really don’t care. They tell me outrageous stories and I don’t argue with them and they go back to their friends and laugh uproariously. Ok. I don’t care.

I understand why people need to laugh at visible outsiders who appear to be rich. I accept it as part of the price I pay for being wealthy. I spent my childhood doing anything I could to make people at my current level look ridiculous. Turn about is fair play.

I didn’t finish packing yesterday and I feel some distress about that. Today I need to finish packing, do some laundry, drop stuff off at a thrift store, and see if I still have room in the bag to get souvenirs for nieces and nephews. I am not in weekly or even monthly contact with all my nieces and nephews, but I try hard to always get them things from the far off places we go. Sometimes it takes me a while to mail it… (like the packets I sent out last week that included a bunch of stuff I found over the years) but I think of you! You are important! Getting to the post office is a challenge for some reason I don’t understand.

My aunts and uncles never thought of me. I was never important. My nieces and nephews will know all of their lives that I think of them and believe they are worth effort. Maybe it will turn into adult relationships someday and maybe it won’t. But I will have done what I wish adults did for me and that’s the best I can do.

Well, Auntie let me live with her when my mother couldn’t feed or house me. But presents were uhhhh… yeah. Not a big part of our language. When she did give me presents they were often wildly inappropriate in one direction or another. Like she gave me Vanity Fair (the novel, not the magazine) when I was 8. Then she gave me a bunch of middle school level books when I was in high school because she thought my reading was too adult. (I was reading adult romance novels which were seriously pornographic.)

Well my 18th birthday and my graduation from high school were uhhh on the nose present holidays. I was given pots and pans, dishtowels,  and other stuff to get the fuck out.

And they expressed, after I was 18, surprise that I left and didn’t come back. You never wanted me and as soon as it was legal for me to go you told me to get out. What the fuck do you expect from me? That I will waste all my spare time trying to visit you so you can treat me with contempt?

My self esteem isn’t that low.

I’ll stick with social media for depressing me, thanks.

I hate the bed in this apartment. I have slept for shit all month and my back is incredibly sore. I can’t wait to get to Thailand. Massage is $4/hour.

Hey…. there’s Thai massage 10 minutes from where we are staying in PDX. Nice.

But first, Japan and Scotland. In Japan there is a Thai massage place 25 minutes away by train. And in Scotland there is a place 40 minutes away by bus.

Ok. Maybe I will continue to be able to walk. Excellent.

I have already completely stuffed 12 bags and a 13ths is pretty mandatory because that bag is a pain in the ass to pack in another bag. That’s not so bad! Our number of “stuff” bags is going down rapidly.

I need to figure out what to do with the forking car seat. It isn’t even valid in Japan or Scotland due to differences in country regulations so I need to leave it here. Or maybe if no one wants to pick it up from my craigslist ad I will bring it from country to country and then we won’t need to buy one in PDX. I don’t know.

I feel overwhelmed at the moment.

My big kids can only really be expected to handle their two bags. That leaves 8-9 for Noah and I to handle. That’s… a lot.

I have decided that public transit to and from airports is ridiculous and we will take fucking taxis.

Getting to our apartment in Malaysia was incredibly stressful and I don’t need to duplicate that experience. Taxis are usually only about 10% more expensive (for 4 people) than public transit and they are faster, easier, and I don’t have to worry about finding a fucking address in a different country.

I really wish I was sleeping better. I need to take Ativan tonight. I have to sleep before the flight. I’m going to have like 12 hours of babywearing in front of me. I was S_M_R_T and I packed the tens unit in my carry on. Once I am through security I am going to put it on in the bathroom and that will hopefully make the journey less hellish.

Her Sweetness is almost 24 fucking pounds.

I think it is funny how much strangers feel free to talk about how fat my babies are. “Wow. That kid is huge. How old is she? !!!!!! My kids weighed that much when they were 3 years old!!!!”

Ok? What’s your point?

Have you noticed that my 10 year old is the same height as you and outweighs you? We aren’t built like you….

I have spent my children’s entire lives waiting for the point when they would cross the line from having a little pudge for growing into being really overweight and it has never happened. We are really active. This is the way their bodies are supposed to be shaped.

Eldest Child read a book called Our Bodies, Our Bikes (it’s by a lot of different authors) because I am trying to get her to understand more of what it means to have a body and to be active with that body. She has a growing awareness of how weight conscious the world is. She says she is happy I deliberately and consciously kept that fact from her for most of her life. I’m glad you don’t feel betrayed, kiddo. I was worried. A study in 2010 showed that 80% of American girls have dieted by 10 years old.

Fuck. That. Shit.

I spend a lot of time talking about how much I love my fat belly because it is proof I am lucky enough to be a mother. My body wasn’t shaped like this before I had kids and I am really thrilled about having them. I spend a lot of time looking at pictures of severely obese people and talking about how gorgeous and awe inspiring they are. We used to have pictures on the wall of naked fat people because they are fantastic art.

If someone makes a negative comment about my body in front of my kids I respond with, “I love my body–are you crazy?” Which isn’t cool because crazy is an awful word… but it’s a deliberate attempt to shame people for saying my body isn’t as it should be.

Yeah, I will shame you if you tell me to lose weight. If you don’t want to be shamed for fat hating… stop fat hating. Easy problem to solve.

EC has stopped listening to youtube gamers who fat shame because she doesn’t like it. I consider that a massive victory.

Every body is good. Bodies come in a lot of different shapes. There are advantages and disadvantages to every possible body configuration. Play to your strengths, don’t spend time bemoaning the body you wish you had and get on with life. You are good enough just how you are. There might be sports that are harder or easier for you based on your shape, but having the non-ideal shape doesn’t mean you can’t do it at all… it just may take more practice.

There are bodies built for swimming or running really fast. But you can swim or run (well really, walk fast) at just about any body size. Disabilities change all of this and they are normal and natural and it’s great that medical science helps people find ways to do things that would have been hard or impossible 200 years ago.

Yay science!

I talk a lot about the strength involved in being fat. It’s wonderful. I talk about maintaining flexibility and strength no matter what shape you are because health is the goal… not looking any particular way. We can’t all look the same. That’s just fucking life.

Look how you look. And love yourself.

You will get one body. Be nice to it. It took me a long time to learn how to be nice to my body and I pay for that. Let’s figure it out for your kids while you are young and then… maybe you won’t hurt like me in 30 years.

The nightmares. Oh goodness. So last night I spent all night dreaming that Noah has gotten furiously angry with me and he started being nasty and hateful all the time. I read a thread on Twitter yesterday that a disabled woman wrote about her partner being nasty to her because of her disability needs. So of course I dream that Noah has gotten sick of helping me and he became contemptuous of me not doing everything around our house by myself.

Noah has only ever gotten that angry with me when I cheated on him and spent a bunch of time paying attention to lovers instead of him. (And when he was that angry with me he didn’t start insulting my lack of ability to do everything. He was pissed about a certain set of behaviors and he yelled at me over them. We had a really bad few months.)

Ok, I did that because using my words nicely didn’t change what I needed to change and that sucked.

But my subconscious thinks that is what I deserve all the time no matter what.

I don’t do everything for us the way that some women do. I know women who do fucking everything. All the cleaning, cooking, childcare, and they earn an income. I do about half of the cleaning and the kids do the other half. Noah does most of the cooking and I help when I feel like it. I do the vast majority of the childcare but Noah does more than many fathers I know (having them 24/7 means our ratio isn’t very average). I haven’t earned an income in over ten years.

So of course my subconscious thinks Noah is going to lose his shit and get really mean to me. Even though he isn’t like that. Even though he is fantastically kind to me and has been in a sustained way for 15+ years. Fuck my brain.

Traveling from misery to misery. Well, I am deeply concerned about my lack of access to pot. I use it for a reason, well…. many reasons… Not having it is going to make my life harder on every level.

Since I stopped devoting all of my dumping-the-kids-on-Noah scheduled time on Sarah I have been reaching out directly to a lot more friends and that’s been going well.

Part of the reason the bay area was absolutely done working for me is that most of my “social opportunities” involved needing childcare. Most of the places I hung out before having kids: bdsm community, Burner raves/camping events, late night dance events, clubbing…. they all necessitate me going alone or requiring childcare. Neither Noah nor I were all that comfortable with me going alone so…. I just dropped out of social communities basically entirely. I know folks who are comfortable bringing their kid to gatherings of kinky people in non-play settings. I know people who bring their kids to all the Burner events. I know people who bring their kids to the late night dance events.

I won’t.

I spent a lot of time in each of those communities helping my women friends deal with proximity to their rapists because none of those communities would eject predatory men. The bdsm community kind of tries sometimes if someone is bad enough but the bar is really extreme.

I can’t bring my kids to environments where I absolutely know that there are a bunch of predators present. I am not comfortable with my ability to protect my children in such environments because I was not good at protecting myself and I do not want to teach my children my bad habits.

I was friends with a lot of predators.

It isn’t that I am stupid enough to think that there aren’t predators out in the vanilla world. (I associate the Burner events with being kink-adjacent because of the quantity of public sex displayed.) It is that I am a lot more confident dealing with a new-to-me predator through shunning and avoidance than I am trying to teach my kids to do that to people I am clearly comfortable with.

So I stayed home for ten years. Cheers. I went to home schooling events. I hung out with other families.

I want to go find somewhere that treats family inclusion as the norm, not the exception.

It isn’t that I think my friends are wrong for including their kids in events that I won’t bring my kids to. That’s not the point of saying this. *I* can’t do it. *I* don’t trust *my* ability to keep my kids safe.

My kids will get to adulthood feeling like their sex life is personal and not to be exploited by asshole adult men if I have to live in isolation to do it. I just don’t want to live in isolation to do it.

I want to find a place to live where we don’t have to drive all the time. Even if I had moved to San Francisco (The Capitol City) or Oakland so that I could walk more… my friends in the bay were spread from Aptos to San Pablo. I would have had to tell my friends they weren’t worth my time or attention anymore to stop driving in the bay.

I couldn’t do that.

Maybe I can move somewhere else and work on not making so many GU friends. (Geographically Undesirable)

Driving was hurting me. I have the x-rays to show my spinal degeneration. Woo! Speaking of which, today I get to go pick up a rental car. Ha. Haha. Hahaha. *cough* I need to start making these reservations in Noah’s name and sending him to do all the driving. The thing is: I do a lot of the driving to do errands while he works and I don’t feel all that good about saddling him with all the chores in his outside-work hours. (See opening paragraphs about him already doing a lot to support my disabled ass.)

We went walking on the beach last night after dark because it was too fucking hot to move all day. It was a lot of fun. We will probably do it again before we leave.

But I don’t want to live near a beach permanently. Oh cheese toast the grit. The black feet. Ugh.

I am a little agitated this morning because I am anticipating driving… (it fucking hurts) but I’m still doing better. My sleep is intermittent. I am doing the best I can without pot.

I ran out of fancy face lotion. I won’t get more here. I will bring the curly hair leave-in coconut oil treatment because I assume that will be hard to get in Japan. It’s interesting sorting through to find out what things I feel are important and worth carrying from country to country. I am really liking the Function of Beauty shampoo and conditioner and I didn’t expect to. Given the price… I’m glad I love it. I feel my hair looks nicer than it has in a long time. So, I’m glad I kept experimenting.

We watched an episode of Queer Eye last night. I’ve never really watched it before. It was neat and we enjoyed it.

Ok I am out of physical ability to keep my kids off my computer. Guess I’m done for the morning.

I don’t write any of these things because I want to hurt you. I write these things because until I can look at them and get some distance from them swarming in my brain I hurt myself. I do it in a myriad of ways. I do it by literally physically hurting myself. I do it by berating myself constantly for how pathetic and stupid I am for feeling upset when nobody intended to hurt me.

It isn’t that people betray me constantly. It is that I have a serious problem with letting my expectations get out of line and I don’t know how to keep my expectations in check without writing out how much I wanted versus how much I got.

I think a few people betrayed me: my mother, my sister, my brothers, my father. But my friends? Sarah didn’t owe me the devotion I wanted. Dad doesn’t owe me support. Friends who are trying to the best of their ability to support me in being a better mother don’t owe me anything more than they have going spare on a given day; they are not required to give at a certain level/rate.

I don’t say that I need to assume people are lying because I think people are being malicious or hurtful. I think it is absolutely board-standard for people to over rate how much support they are going to be able to provide because they want to provide more support than they can. I do this too. I want to be a major source of support to dozens of people…. and I can’t. People are not bad because they over promise.

But I act like a serious asshole when I develop expectations around the promises people make. I spent literal years asking Sarah not to promise me anything unless she could actually deliver on her promise. It didn’t impact how much she promised. She escalated the intensity of her promises because she wanted to be able to love me the way I wanted to be loved. But she can’t. She doesn’t have that kind of time/energy going spare. That’s not a betrayal. But it does hurt me because I am painfully fucking literal and when you tell me that you are going to talk to me every week and you cancel 3/4 chats because you are tired… I hurt. When you tell me that you are going to take my kids because you want to have weekends with them and that happens like 1/5 times you schedule… I hurt.

I can hurt even if you aren’t doing anything wrong. If people are that bad at estimating what they actually have to give then they can hurt me without ever betraying me. I need to learn how to live in a world where people are always going to be like Sarah. That doesn’t mean I can handle the degree of it that I get from Sarah…. because I hurt myself to keep promises and she is trying to get healthier and stop hurting herself to give to people. It’s a broken dynamic. That doesn’t mean she is betraying me or that she is evil.

But when I can’t process my hurt anymore because her feelings about being humiliated are more important than me dealing with the fact that I need to be changing what I want from her and she doesn’t want me to use the only venue I have for coping with my disappointment…

That’s a problem.

I will love this woman until my dying day. That doesn’t mean I can keep falling into a pattern where I give until I hurt and she only gives what she comfortably can. Not because she is doing something wrong…. because I am entirely failing to have appropriate boundaries. Because I am failing.

I can have better boundaries with other people.

I’m telling you. Fat hoarders are my kryptonite. I love them and want them and I try to enmesh with them so hard… it’s a problem. I have a type. It isn’t ever their fault that I do what I do. But I have to change myself so I stop feeling so dependent on their attention.

Every single minute I spend being upset that a friend can’t give me what I want is a minute I can’t spend noticing how off the fucking charts awesome my current life is. I have 4 people who love me so much they can barely give me a moment of peace or an inch of space around my body.

Last night my son slept on the floor next to my side of the bed because he wanted to go to sleep holding my hand. My baby girl had to check every hour on the hour all night long that I was still RIGHT THERE. At exactly six this morning my big girl came in and joined us on the bed because she wanted snuggles and love.

I felt absolutely flooded with love and joy and peace. I haven’t felt this much goodness in my body for a while. I have been overwhelmed by being upset and feeling not good enough.

This is why I purge these feelings here. So I can get them out and get back to feeling good things.

It does work; it does help. But I have to not care about your feelings more than mine.

That’s hard. I do care about you more than I care about me. But I don’t care about you more than I care about my children. So here we are. I’ve been writing about feeling hurt for a bit here. Because I need to if I am going to get this bile out of my brain so I can focus on just how lovely it is to have my children.

Not having pot is going to be the hardest part of traveling. I use it for so many reasons. It’s an antidepressant, anti-anxiety, appetite stimulant, pain reliever, and it helps with my ADHD symptoms. Pot is the best thing ever.

I haven’t screamed in over a week. I feel pathetic for that being an accomplishment… but I have been an asshole for the last couple of years (OF LIVING IN THE “PERFECT” BAY AREA) and I’m trying to get that under control.

I had separate time with all three kids yesterday. An hour or two of just playing with each kid one on one. That was really nice. I don’t manage that balance very often. I asked EC if she got to change one thing about our life what it would be: she said me yelling. Otherwise she thinks our life is basically perfect for her.

I have finally figured out parental controls on their computers (it is hard to get around to all the things I “should” do) so that I can stop nagging about timers and them not respecting timers and limitations. Now their computers shut off when they are out of time. If I can convince Noah to stop logging them in on his half of the partition this will work out. Noah hates being the heavy even more than I do. That’s not the best part of our parenting dynamic.

Throwing away the workbooks was the right choice. Both kids are writing a lot. They are rushing through books with glee. They have been doing more cooking because we have a math based recipe book and they are really excited about math not being “sit and do variations on the same type of problem for 2 hours”.

Thank you for the chat about unschooling and math, Mr M. I needed all of the information you gave.

We watched Saving Mr. Banks together in the morning and that lead to some really interesting conversations about loyalty and imagination and coping and control. I have to worry about my daughter burying herself in loyalty. My son is trying to figure out how he can have as much control over himself as he wants so he only treats people how he believes is right. It’s wonderful hearing him say, “How can I make sure I never do _____?” Well, wanting to avoid crossing boundaries is the first step. Let’s talk about how to practice with small boundaries in your every day life so that the habit of noticing other peoples’ boundaries is so ingrained that you don’t cross bigger boundaries. He takes it very seriously.

I am a lot better at helping them with interpersonal skills than I am about enforcing an elementary school curriculum. I hated teaching in elementary schools so… that’s not that big of a surprise.

But my kids are writing me emails and I respond with lists of questions for them to expand on and they are really good at that dynamic. Writing isn’t hard. Doing stupid worksheets is hard. Doing math as a grind on boring shit is hard. Will we probably miss some steps? Yes.

I missed so many pieces of school because every district taught things at different speeds. I don’t think I have it in me to be pleasant and gentle as I force them through every stupid step. That sorta makes me feel like I shouldn’t be home schooling and I also feel like school is stupid and pointless a lot of the time so them not having to do it is… better in the long run.

I don’t know. We had a really good day of interacting.

I have had to deal with depression since I was a little kid. I think I was first officially diagnosed with depression 30 years ago. Grief hits me hard. It is hard not feeling like my brain having these patterns is my fault and a sign of my moral weakness. If I tried harder I could be a better, less mentally ill, mother. WITHOUT THE ONLY EFFECTIVE MEDICATION I’VE EVER FOUND, DAMNIT.

But that is one of those lies we tell ourselves and each other. You can’t will yourself out of mental illness.

I know I sound like an absolute asshole when I say that I need to assume that people who say “Oh I’ll do _______ with the kids” is a liar. I’m not saying that because I will be mean to people when they make claims like that. I’ll try to smile and nod. But I need to not believe it. Because when I believe it I develop expectations, then I am disappointed. The people who have relationships with my kids didn’t tell me that they were going to… they just did it. They established their own lines of contact and they talk to the kids as it suits them and the kids. There are people who do that. Then there are the people who tell me that they will… but they don’t.

I’m not trying to recognize these patterns to be mean. I am trying to stop over reacting and feel like I hate my friends. My friends are my friends and they are not obligated to be friends with my kids.

Being diagnosed as autistic makes me feel more kindness towards myself on trying to compartmentalize. Black and white thinking is my natural territory. Trying to figure out where other people are telling social lies to make themselves feel better about themselves is hard. Most people do it. I probably do it sometimes too and I gloss right past my own deficiencies.

I am ridiculously, painfully literal. I always have been and that character trait is not going to go away. Trying to learn how to not get freaked out when other people are not literal is hard. I have to put effort into it because other people are rarely literal.

There have been well over 100 entries in my address book. I need to cull people from my mental roster of “important people” because most of those people don’t reach back much. I put in the effort of carrying the relationship and it’s too much. And that means I spend time analyzing our interactions to see who is worth my time. If that is the same thing as scanning for betrayal…. ok?

I have to be kind of mercenary about this. There is only so much time in the day and I can’t carry friendships with people who don’t treat me very well. They drain me. They contribute to my dysregulation. But I don’t like ending relationships. I tend to have “I will give and give and give because I don’t want to lose you” extinguish bursts with people before the relationship ends. It isn’t healthy and I know that if I want to be more stable in the future I need to do less of this.

I need to stop trying to buy peoples love. But given that my mother stole all the money I earned when I was a teenager and my brother asked me for thousands of dollars the minute I turned 18 and my sister asked me to buy her a house and…

It’s not a big surprise that I end up in that dynamic. But I need to stop. It contributes to my general feelings of worthlessness. It makes me feel like if that is all people want me for I should kill myself. I am not interested in being someones friend if they primarily view me as an ATM.

The thing is… once people notice that you have a boundary weakness they will poke at it. If someone has fallen into that habit… I need to fire them from my life because I won’t be able to get them to stop in a healthy way.

And there is a big difference between someone pushing through a boundary weakness and accidentally triggering me.

The folks who only want to see me if I spend hundreds of dollars on them getting what they want? That’s pushing through a boundary weakness. Mentioning that someone could call CPS on me? That’s accidentally triggering me.

I do understand the difference. But when my central nervous system is exploding with panic and fear… it takes days or weeks or sometimes months to calm down. Because these kinds of triggers always seem to come packaged with something else going wrong and then my reaction to the trigger is 2 or 10 or 100 times bigger than it would be if it happened at a time when I was doing ok. That does not make someone evil for stepping near a trigger, not at all.

All I can say about that is that trauma therapists are impressed I can calm down at all. The last therapist I worked with, a somatic therapist, spent our last few sessions working with me while I had my baby present. They were constantly commenting on how my emotional dysregulation is clearly not causing sheer physical panic because my baby would pick up on that and she is… super placid and happy. That’s not supposed to work like that. Babies respond to the “vibes” of the adults around them. My baby acts like she lives with fully regulated people.

I am the best faker, ever.

Given how much calm I must present to my children sometimes I have none to give my friends and waaaaaaaaaaaaaay less to give to my blog. So I write in hyperbole and extremes and fury. If you take that personally, maybe this isn’t healthy for you to read. These are my thoughts. My thoughts are not the same thing as my actions. If you want me to feel bad about my thoughts then we shouldn’t be friends because you are not a healthy person for me to have in my life.

There is a reason I don’t go write these thoughts in chat rooms or send them as comments to other peoples sand boxes. That would be cruel. That would be actively seeking people out to hurt them. I don’t do that.

But sometimes I freak the fuck out in my journal and I write all the extremes of my thoughts so I can process them. You don’t have to be part of this roller coaster. I can’t get off it. If I don’t write these things down my behavior is dramatically worse and that’s not ok.

I stopped feeling like I could write about how Sarah was treating me. Instead I screamed at my kids.

I’m sorry, none of you are worth that. I am sorry I tried to let Sarah’s feelings be that much more important than mine or my children’s feelings. That was the wrong fucking priority. If she feels “publicly humiliated” by me talking about how she treats me, I can end the relationship or she can change how she fucking treats me. I only have control over one of those options.

People triggering me are not in that camp. That’s differently complicated.

Sigh.

I should schedule some video chats with folks for later this week. There are people in this world who love me and want to see me and talk to me. I shouldn’t focus on the people who don’t show up.

There are a lot of people who have never betrayed me in any way. They have been consistent, reliable, and trustworthy. Do you know what they don’t do? Make promises about who they will be to my children. They don’t tell me that they will be my family. They tell me “I like you and I have about 3 hours a month/year/whatever I can devote to talking to you in the overall scheme of my life.”

The number of letters and postcards I write is testimony to the people who have always been honest and wonderful to me.

I address those people one on one and express my gratitude for their behavior directly. I don’t write about them on my blog as much. Writing about people is complicated. I tend to feel like people need to opt-in to being discussed and I don’t ask a lot of my friends for such permission. So I tell them privately how much I appreciate them and I talk shit about the people who upset me in my blog because if you fuck with me… I don’t care that much about your privacy.

And many of the people I am trying to work through my feelings about… haven’t betrayed me. But they have hurt me. I need to figure out how I want to change myself because of those injuries: some small and some large.

Like: Dad hasn’t actually betrayed me. He has been a bit of a user and he’s kinda selfish… but that’s not a betrayal. I am trying to figure out how I can set my expectations of him as a friend so that I am not hurt by him being kind of selfish. When I meet his new girlfriends I always warn them that he is a truly wonderful person who will always take care of himself first. Many of those girlfriends have come back and thanked me years later because…. I was right. That isn’t the same thing as betrayal. I still spend time with him. I love him very much. I really enjoy his company and the time we spend together. But I need to not act like he is my father and I do not owe him what a father is owed.

Sometimes as I try to figure out how to correct my behavior I am rather melodramatic. It’s my fucking journal.

The thing is… the friends I had in the bay were mostly moving away or they lived far enough away that seeing them was literally hurting my body.

I can move somewhere that is more concentrated and build another community for myself. I am infinitely capable of doing so. I need to get through this shitty depression and find my verve again.

The older I get the more that I know these things cycle through. I won’t always feel how I have been feeling.

I feel that grieving my relationship with Sarah hard is appropriate and respectful given the length and intensity. I don’t wish her ill. I don’t want her to suffer. I just need to stop being in a relationship with her because I am codependent as fuck and I am damaging myself for her.

That’s not even her fault.

I am trying to get better at boundaries.

And part of that means trying to feel like this family is enough. If you think that is an approach you judge…

Why do you need to come to my journal and tell me that? Am I coming to your house and shoving my decisions in your face?