I am trying to figure out what my future is going to mean. Noah and I don’t have a lot of time to talk. I mean, we are together discussing minutiae all day long, but the heady conversations… occasionally we steal an hour or so from sleep but I feel so lonely a lot of the time. It’s hard to keep up appropriate boundaries with the kids when I don’t have adults to talk to.

And writing is so fraught. I am constantly worried that if I am honest about how I am feeling I am going to destroy what friendships I have left because my feelings are inappropriate. How dare I feel disappointed in people. How dare I get angry when people say things that hurt me. I should understand that they are trying and they are good people.

How dare I misunderstand or over react or not have the set of emotions they think I should have. I am such a bitch.

My reactions are based on my life experiences. How dare I not act like your life experiences are the Real True Appropriate life experiences.

And it doesn’t matter which “you” I’m talking about. It’s everyone.

I am just wrong. I shouldn’t have lived through the shit I lived through so that I can go on making other peoples lives difficult.

I am aware that most of the places I am going… the way I trauma bond will be a problem. Most cultures are private with their pain in a way that Californians… aren’t. I mean, even for a Californian I am extreme…. but I’m extreme not from another planet. I’m on the spectrum, just way out at the edge of the bell curve.

I am grieving so many people and events and situations. And there isn’t a way to have space for me to really feel all the full intensity of my feelings. I am in constant suppression mode. I am not allowed to have big feelings in front of my kids. But all I am is big feelings. So I feel like I am bad in just about every minute of every day.

How dare I react to my life experiences.

I feel so very sad.

Yes, I know that my problems are my fault. If only I had conformed more. If only I had been more like other people.

When would that have been possible? Where? How?

I’m in a pit. Anything vaguely positive I am spinning into justification for why I should die. What have I done in the past?

I tried to let the love of my friends carry me through. Holy shit is that the pit of despair at this point. I don’t feel loved. I feel judged. I feel found wanting. I feel deficient and pathetic and stupid and oh my poor children.

I don’t want to feel better about myself because some shitty person thinks I’m great. I want to be so fucking nasty and cutting about many of the people I have depended on for my self worth. I want to rake them over the coals and absolutely eviscerate them based on their flaws.

Only I don’t. That won’t make me feel better.

I want to feel like I have worth and value in the world. And I don’t. I mean, I’m a milk supplier. I am still mandatory childcare. Does that mean I am counting the days? 16 years, 10 months and 3 weeks till I am fully expendable?

It’s tied in with my mother and Brittney and my sister and Anna and Marcie and Sarah and Kira and Angela and Deborah. If it were grief about one person I could cope. It isn’t.

I think that part of what I liked about Malaysia was knowing no one. I didn’t have to feel disappointment when no one would keep their promises.

Because mostly… people don’t keep their promises. And I internalize that. I can still remember my step father picking me up and shaking me: “If you didn’t make it happen it was because you DIDN’T TRY HARD ENOUGH.”

If I can’t get someone to do something it is because I failed. Because I am bad. Because I didn’t work hard enough.

I can’t do enough work to be lovable. It is very hard to keep working as I incrementally give up on any chance of being loved.

I grow increasingly paranoid that my children will leave the day they turn 18. Why would they want to stay in a relationship with me? Only Noah does.

I want to mutilate my body so very much.

I miss pot.

I was looking at our passports last night, and the expiration dates, and what countries we are going into soon… oh. We need to have two passports renewed. ASAP. Or… Thailand and Taiwan will complain because they want your passport to be still valid for a long time after you enter, not a short time.

Ok, we will be in the Portland/southern Washington region longer than I hoped. More like two months. I think I am going to attempt to extend the AirBnB in Inverness and just extend that portion to meet up with when we have to get to Washington. That’s less moving for the kids. It’s only another couple of weeks. Noah will be going to Rotterdam and Brighton without us. I need to handle passports and we have a hard deadline of going to Bangkok the first week in September so… gotta get shit taken care of.

At least I can have pot.

I haven’t bought all the airline tickets and middle stops for Noah yet. But I have a line item to do list in our travel compilation doc. It’ll all get done over the next few days.

I think we stayed too long in Hawaii. Our local friends are getting flakey. “I will call you on Friday to tell you when I want to hang out” has turned into not hearing from her on Friday or Saturday and my kids are starting to twitch with anticipation. We leave in 14 days. The kids blew the first week. They got to see friends once the second week. Now we are entering the penultimate week and they have no plans made. I am doing my best to rest and not care. I need to not care what anyone else is doing.

I shared food with the homeless folk at the beach so they gave me a hit of pot. I was surprised I felt is since my tolerance is normally so high. My belly went, “Oh that. Yes please, more.” Alas, I am not going to ask them for tons.

Things are improving, but we still have stuff to work on. Because we are human.

But I am: not on the medication that many doctors think is the last resort for me to get my shit together, my sleep is interrupted constantly and I’ve been functioning on 4-5 hours of sleep for years. This mattress sucks and my back is starting to hurt. Babysitter’s mama has asked about taking my kids one at a time for a special outing. This sounds nice for them and like I won’t get any kind of fucking break because the two kids who are left will be like “Hey that kid is getting extra attention I WANT EXTRA ATTENTION TOO” and I am going to melt down. Taking one kid at a time does not give me a break, unfortunately.

I did some, but not all of my PT yesterday. I’m having so much trouble yelling at everyone to leave me alone long enough for me to do them. If I start and the demands start… I stop and just give up. I am so tired of trying to force enough space for me to get to have anything. I read books 1-2 pages at a time in between interruptions and it is so frustrating.

I simultaneously feel like I am losing my mind and like I am just becoming more and more numb. I am so weary. I am not exploding as much. Maybe they aren’t hitting my electrified boundaries in the same way? I’m still snippy and impatient. But I’m impatient because I have to ask them 6-10 times for things to get done.

I am so fucking tired and frustrated.

But I’m not yelling.

We don’t have a list of house chores the kids have to do before screen time. So that’s going poorly. I need to have a way to tie it to some kind of behavior and I haven’t figured that out yet. I am really annoyed I have been telling Shanna to take a shower for three days and she hasn’t done it because she keeps saying “After this game” on her fucking computer. She just got it back and she’s about to lose it again. Fuck your fucking games. They are not requirements for life. And you’ve been nasty to your brother since you got it back.

But when her brother watches screen, he spends EVERY OTHER MINUTE OF THE DAY pestering everyone to play with him. He thinks it is everyone in the houses’ job to entertain him and buddy I don’t think so.

When I am recuperating my body from taking you to the beach ALL DAY the day before it’s not fair for you to whine at me that I’m not playing enough. And the day before the beach I took you to the fucking mall to replace the things that you outgrew and you had a fun day and I spent all day handling heavy shit.

I am really tired of my children thinking I have an inhuman reserve of strength for being their pack mule.

I am sad that my back finally hurts. Time to look for a massage.

I was feeling a might bit cranky over the last few days because I realized… oh no. I have to take the kids shopping. Middle Child’s shoes were falling apart and Eldest Child’s shoes are now too small and both of them outgrew their underwear (MC desperately needs pants but we are about to move to colder climates and they don’t have appropriate pants here so we are waiting anyway) and they are both at tricky in between sizes where sometimes kids stuff and sometimes adult stuff fits better.

Ack!

So I spent a while searching on the internet, like a good modern person. Pearlridge Center (the largest mall in Hawaii) had the biggest selection of both kid and adult clothing and shoes. It was an hour and 45 minutes away on the bus. So that meant planning a full dang day around getting underwear and shoes.

We got to ride past an awful lot of Oahu though and that was neat. I feel increasing concern as I travel and I see the same US brands everywhere. I thought Kuala Lumpur would feel more foreign and it didn’t because of US brands. Hawaii holds on to its local character in a few ways (only Hawaiian banks!) but there is a lot of creep in stuff.

It was neat being in a place where buildings taller than two stories are very rare again. We have been going back and forth between MASSIVE cities and tiny little towns. I do feel more comfortable in smaller towns, even with the added travel time for getting around.

The bus does not allow any large items–I saw folks with suitcases get told no they can’t get on. This is slightly alarming because I need to do laundry soon at a laundromat. I may need to finally investigate something like Lyft.

Our first stop was Macy’s because that was the first entrance from the parking lot. The kids tried on a lot of shoes and none of them fit well and were comfortable. The sales folks were fairly aggressive about trying to find us something to work. I am pretty sure they get commissions, but the shoes were fucking expensive and very uncomfortable. That’s a bad combination.

Guess where we found shoes they liked and that felt good? Payless. And because Payless is apparently going out of business, we got both pairs for $39. Can’t beat that.

We looked in 6 stores for underwear. Only one place (The Children’s Place) had underwear that would work for MC and EC could only find appropriate black underwear at Victoria’s Secret. Eep. (She has multiple black skirts and only white underwear. This… doesn’t look that great. She glows through her skirts.)

The kids wanted US chains for lunch. Ugh. I had delicious Korean BBQ. They finished their lunches and ate part of mine. Everyone agreed my food tasted the best. Well… I tried to tell you in advance…. We were starting to get just a bit cranky when I declared the food break. Afterwards we all did quite well with our patience and behavior. (There was some melodrama in Macy’s as if these were the only shoes in existence and you had to pick which of these hurt least. Nooooo. I never said that. Erf.)

Probably the roughest part of the day was Her Sweetness refusing to take a nap. She got very cranky.

While we were there the kids got haircuts because they have both been complaining about their hair.

I found a neat purse, made by a local mother and daughter that is the best purse I have ever seen in years of searching for a bag I would like. I bought it. I won’t ever get the chance again and I have never in my life seen a bag and instantly coveted it and longed for it. That was nice.

I also bought my friend who lives here a Hawaiian dictionary because she keeps saying she doesn’t understand any of the local stuff. I don’t think that’s ok. So here, let me buy you learning materials. We expect people moving to the mainland have to learn English. You can learn the language for where you are standing too. It’s part of why I want to feel more confident in my Spanish. Why I tried picking up Malay words. Why I will try to learn words everywhere I go. Meet people where they are. If we fully move to another country I will expect myself to develop fluency in whatever language.

It’s respectful, yo.

I had a lovely chat on the bus home with a Filipino woman. (It was relevant, we were talking about Manila.) I have now had a full dozen Filipino ladies lecture me on how Manila is better than Kuala Lumpur and I find it delightful. I need to go. I am told Halloween is one of the best times of year to visit. Sounds great. We talked a lot about working with teenagers and helping them be their best selves. Another guy on the bus joined in our chat when we got to the teenager part because he had a lot of questions about helping his niece. Her answer: aloha (love). My answer: respect. Teenagers are doing the very best they can with the tools they have. Show them respect and they will bloom like a flower. He appreciated that. He grinned and said we were both basically saying the same thing.

We all want to be loved and respected.

I uhhh messed up getting off the bus. I got off three bus stops too early. Dangit. Oh well.

Her Sweetness is about to be shifted to Youngest Child. Picture my grumpy face. She has now picked up that “charming” habit of biting my toes if they are near the edge of the bed. Every child I have ever taken care of has done the same trick. It’s not weird. It’s not bad. But it fucking hurts and I’m back in that “Toddlers are Triggering” stage and oh fuck. You can’t retaliate. You can’t hurt them back. A mad face and refusing to pick them up for a few minutes is absolutely the limit that you can do with a one year old. That hurts them. So I spent a few minutes tenderly cradling my foot after each bite. SHE FUCKING BIT ME TWICE.

Then she bit her sister!

UGH!

Toddlers!

This is my not so thrilled face.

But, it’s a stage. She will move through it. I have confidence. Her sister and brother haven’t bitten my toes in years.

Ha.

I gotta say, Noah’s cooking here has been *great*. I like it when he has this set of restrictions and food choices. Two thumbs up.

I need to investigate a massage from one of the over a dozen Thai massage places today. I’m not in pain, but I’m not feeling great either. I’m getting very stiff and sore. Maybe if I treat this quick it won’t get to pain.

Bless you, Dr. Meng. You are incredible.

And breakfast is ready.

PS, we see rainbows almost every day. It’s really cool.

I was homeless and poor throughout my childhood. Foster parents, my mother, and schools all told me that if I didn’t act right CPS would be called. I was supposed to be pattern matching my behavior off of all of the untraumatized (also, neurotypical) people around me and if I failed I would be put in kid jail because I wasn’t fit for society. I cannot remember a time before that fear was deliberately implanted in my psyche.

When I was 3 my mom was working nights and she left my 16 year old sister in charge of me. My sister was as good at meeting her promises as Sarah so she left me home alone and went to a party with her friends. I was bored. I decided to go get some Barbie stickers from Safeway. I had three pennies. I thought I was rich. I walked to Safeway.

On the way someone who happened to work for CPS drove by and saw me. She picked me up and took me to the business office. I remember playing with the manual type writers and having a great time. They gave me cookies and juice.

When my mom picked me up she looked exhausted, but she tried to look happy. She laughed as she explained the “mix up”. “You know how hard it is to keep some kids contained!”

In the car she hit me over and over. She told me that those were the special kid-police. If I was ever bad again they would pick me up again and she wouldn’t be allowed to get me because I would be in kid-jail forever. She said no one likes bad kids and I will be punished for years by them. She listed all the bad things that would happen to me in kid jail and she was very clear that I would deserve all of it. She practically frothed at the mouth as she told me how embarrassed she was to have such a stupid, bad kid.

For the next 13 years any time I would say or do anything she didn’t like she would tell me that CPS was going to come and get me if I disobeyed her. “If you are too much for me to handle you are going to kid-jail. Keep back talking, Kristine.” In between slapping me across the face.

Then I grew up. I watched other families go through nightmare situations with CPS and I saw people go through months or years of painful separation. In all of the cases I knew… I was totally aware that what was happening to me was worse than what was happening in the families I knew who were separated. None of those kids were raped by their dads how I was. My mom barely fed me and those kids got meals on the regular. Those kids lived with parents who weren’t perfect… mostly they pissed off a neighbor and then their lives got really hard.

My family was monstrous. And no one cared.

Then I started ODing because I needed the fuck out. So I got put in a lock down psych ward where people strapped me to tables and injected me with drugs (that gave me negative side effects!) because I was so bad. Then I was put in a group home where I was never allowed to be in a bathroom without a staff member staring at me to prevent me from harming myself. I wasn’t allowed to go to school because I couldn’t be trusted. My mom was right. When I was going in and out of consciousness in the hospital my mom leaned in and whispered, “I tried to warn you this would happen if you were bad. You shouldn’t have been so bad.”

Then I became a teacher and mandated reporter. I tried to change my view of CPS. I called a few times on kids were clearly being abused and I prayed the system would be more gentle with them than me.

CPS didn’t do anything to help any of the students that were coming to me with huge bruises. Nothing.

CPS didn’t do anything to help when I called because my sister was handing out illegal drugs and alcohol to a bunch of middle and high school students. My sister lied and laughed it off as a family squabble with no grain of truth. They believed her because my family is mostly made up of excellent liars.

Then I became a parent and started hanging out on parenting forums. Holy shit the stories I have read. Oh. My. God.

Then my kids did something I truly wish they hadn’t done. It came out of fucking no where. They have not seen such behavior EVER in their lives. They have never been exposed to the idea of that being acceptable I HAVE STOOD THERE AND MADE FUCKING SURE THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN INFLUENCED BY ADULTS WHO SAY SUCH BEHAVIOR IS ACCEPTABLE. But kids do shit. They have since the dawn of time. I put my kids in therapy. ALL the therapy. They each had individual counselors and we worked with a family therapist for quite a while. *I* called CPS and said “A thing happened and I don’t know what to do.”

That phone call was the best CPS contact of my whole life. The lady told me that since I was a concerned parent she was turning the recorder off. She did NOT want to know my name. She said I deserve complete privacy for this call and no one will ever be able to track me. She listened to what happened. She asked me what I was doing about it. She told me that they offer people access to resources I already have in my house: my library sounds better than hers. She told me that I was a good mother because I had already responded with such enthusiasm to them needing outside help and there was nothing more she could suggest. She told me she was sorry I had 100% normal kids who had to try something because it’s hard. I am so grateful for that woman.

Then, after we had been in therapy as a family someone fucking called CPS on me. They had no details. They just believed there had been hand wavey some kind of sexual abuse.

Someone fucking turned me into CPS with absolutely no idea of what had happened. It wasn’t a report from the therapists WHO COULD HAVE GIVEN EVERY FACT AND EVENT IN EXCRUCIATING DETAIL.

So yeah. I know that people can call CPS on me.

CPS cleared us. Clearly we (the parents) hadn’t done anything wrong and kids make mistakes sometimes and we were working as hard as we could on helping them learn how to do better. There literally isn’t more we can do. We are doing absolutely the limit of what parents can do to try and help their kids learn how to do better.

I asked a bunch of teachers for advice on how to help my kids focus. Kneeling on rice was tossed out there as something to try.

But hey someone could call CPS on me. Like I had no idea that was a possibility no matter what I do or don’t do.

My stomach hurts. Getting to rewrite this stuff to try and explain why I am upset so that maybe people won’t be angry with me forever for not taking their off hand comment as neutral…

That hurts too.

How dare I have had my life experiences. How dare I get upset when things that have been used as a torment since I was 3 years old are casually mentioned as punishment again.

Other people don’t see it that way. Clearly, I should just get over it.

CPS has been the boogeyman for me since I was a little kid. My mom constantly told me that if I didn’t act right CPS would take me away for being bad. I never internalized that CPS would protect me or that CPS existed for my benefit. CPS was the authority that would ensure I was never allowed to have a family again.

Then I had kids.

If you read parenting forums (which I do, because I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing and feedback and learning what other people consider “normal” is very useful) CPS is DEFINITELY the boogeyman. If you don’t do well enough, your children will be stolen. If you do the wrong thing you will lose your kids and the nightmare of getting them back…. oh god.

I have known a bunch of people who had their kids taken by CPS. I grew up poor. That shit isn’t that rare. Some of them deserved it. Not all of them. The most abusive people…. never seem to fall into CPS’s net. They get ignored and glossed over.

CPS following up with our family when they did over the incident we had a few years ago… that was simultaneously FUCKING TERRIFYING and relieving. Because someone fucking turned us in. That means people are reporting me behind my back. (Relieving because the CPS investigator commented that I did not do anything wrong and kids make mistakes and we were trying as hard as possible to do the right thing.)

So when you say “someone will call CPS” that’s not hand wavey possible warning. That’s something that has literally already happened to us.

I don’t have to do anything wrong for people to call CPS on us. That already fucking happened. I did nothing wrong.

If you don’t understand why “people will call CPS on you” might sound threatening…. well ok. But in my brain telling me that my mistakes are things that will get me turned in feels existentially threatening. Is it also a possible reality? Of course. People might turn me in for everything and nothing. I don’t have to do anything wrong for CPS to be called.

That makes it really hard for me to evaluate how to alter my behavior to be correct. Because I’m not trying to do the right thing because it is the thing that solves our problems I am trying to avoid being punished.

Maybe instead of finding the right thing to do I will just stop admitting in writing how I fuck up. Oh that’ll help everyone.

Thank you so much my dear friend. You know who you are.

Yesterday a friend who was homeschooled and who went on to work in K-8 education… who is also autistic and understands some of how my brain works… gave me a bunch of book recommendations and blog suggestions to help me reorient how I am looking at education. That’s a bunch of highly actionable work for me.

I have often cited the statistic that in the average elementary classroom there is approximately 45 minutes of real learning per school day… then I proceeded to flip out about my kids doing less than two hours because… because perspective is hard. Because I get lost in soup in my brain. Because I feel like if I don’t I will fail them. Because I fail to have the friendships I want and I fail to find the support I need so I need to work them harder so they are prepared to have a future by themselves with no one to help them.

Because I am exhausted and I am not making good choices. Because the way I am melting down is not surprising or unusual in context. Because if they wanted to transfer into school tomorrow and it wasn’t easy for them to be A/B students I would feel like a failure.

So much ego. So much bullshit.

It isn’t that I fail at all friendships. That’s not it at all. I really wanted enmeshed-pseudo-family friendships. But only reallllllllly unhealthy people are interested in that at all. And when you try and enmesh with reallllllllly unhealthy people there are fireworks.

He suggested that Step Zero of working towards Big Goals should be spending a while researching whether that goal is even worth attaining (what does that job actually entail) and research for the kids into what other people have done to reach the goal. Long before I start holding them to a path because holy shit they are little kids and they really don’t get it.

This is so much more effective than “Stop doing that or people will call CPS on you.”

Do you know how fucking angry it makes me that people threaten me with the authorities left and right and I was left in my psycho family to be raped and beaten for decades? Rage. Blind fucking rage. I must be perfect or I deserve to lose everything but I don’t deserve protection myself because I am not worthy. That dynamic does not help me be kinder and more gentle with my kids.

My mistakes are too big to be forgiven. No matter what those mistakes are. Because I am a piece of shit who shouldn’t be here anyway.

That doesn’t help me act better. It makes it harder to ever do better and it makes me feel more frantic and sick in my belly all of the time.

It’s not that I want people blowing sunshine up my skirt and telling me I’m perfect. I’m not. But threats are threatening, not educational.

I don’t know about you but I operate less well when I feel threatened than when I feel safe and supported.

I haven’t felt very supported in a while. I had to flip out extra bad to figure out how to go find different people to talk to because the people I have been leaning on the most in the past few years either… treated me like shit or they just don’t have relevant information to share. It’s not that they are bad, but this isn’t their area of expertise.

I have always had long stretches of time where I put my head down and I just barrel through. I just have to pray I set my course correctly when I got started. I am not sure doing the charter school was actually the right decision when I was pregnant. It started us on a whole downhill sprint towards standards I don’t even believe in.

I feel ashamed of that. But the terror of CPS taking my children away for neglect, or because I am doing too little educating, or because I am educating them wrong, or because I am too harsh one day…

That’s fucking real. That’s held over my head in big ways, even by people who profess to care about me.

I feel like at some point in my brain it became less about “What is best for my kids” and instead became “What do I have to do to avoid being punished” and that does not provoke healthy behavior from anyone.

My fucking ES (Educational Specialist–basically the teacher who coordinates stuff for the charter school) telling me constantly that this MASSIVE stack of work was mandatory fucked me up. When we got to the end of the school year and she said, “Wow you are the only family I work with who actually did any of this….” that fucked me up.

I have a hard time with black and white thinking. I struggle to perceive gray areas and the middle path.

Let me tell you, when I’m convinced I’m bad and I can’t do anything right… I make that true over and over and over.

And then I feel like I am bad because the people who were effectively threatening me were doing it because they mean well and how dare I not respond to that as if it were the same thing as positive feedback. That’s a poisonous dynamic. I turn around and do the same bullshit to my kids and… negative feedback and threats don’t work very well.

fuck.

It’s kinda like how dare I get upset about Sarah promising real support with the kids and then never showing up.

If I get angry about how people talk to me or treat me that is a defect in my character. I should just be grateful they acknowledge me at all.

That does not give me the energy to do better.