Category Archives: adult-only

Published in the adult-only category

The best you can.

Leave a reply

One of the things about tracking my body obsessively…. I was looking at my Fitbit data last night. I get 4-5 hours of sleep in broken chunks most nights. I can count how many times I’ve gotten 8 hours of sleep (not consecutively…. hahahahaha) in the past 6 months on my fingers. I don’t have more data than that because I switched watch types and the old one was too bulky to wear to sleep in because it KEPT ME AWAKE. But let me tell you, the first six months of a baby and pregnancy…. not much sleep.

Why don’t I have more to give.

I track when I get my PT exercises done so that I can talk to my medical providers about my issues. I miss them more than I don’t because if I spend hours freaking out about stupid academics…. I don’t get to PT. Because I’m sitting very still trying not to be a bitch and that takes all the energy I have left.

Why don’t I have more to give.

I can look back over my calendar and track literally every phone call I’ve had with friends over the past few years or when I see people in person. Due to planning around fucking Sarah most months I spent less than 12 hours having conversations with friends that are not done through my fucked up hands on the internet. It’s part of why M & B coming for visits was so fucking euphoric for me. I got to try to relax into someone being around and try to get over the awkward as fuck hurdle. My social skills atrophy. (I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the internet conversations. I would break completely without them. But it’s different.)

Why don’t I have more to give.

I can track on Mint all the money I spent trying to get help with my kids. All the money spent to services trying to locate help. It’s harder to exactly quantify how many hours I spent writing and responding to ads only to get… nothing. My time off is almost entirely for medical care so I don’t collapse under the weight of working *literally* 19 hours every day/7 days a week.

Why don’t I have more to give.

Working that much is my fault. I get it. I chose to have another baby and the first year is a nightmare. I knew that. I chose to do a whole bunch of big projects (have older children, travel, sell our house) while having an infant.

I chose to sell our house to get away from the bay because it was killing me.

Do you know that when almost anyone says they will write to my kids or talk to my kids or spend time with my kids I now place that person in the category of “Fucking Liar” in my head? Because I have so much hostility and anger and rage about this topic. I can count the people who can say “I will talk to the kids” and I actually believe them on one hand.

Why don’t I have more to give.

A lot of my energy over the past few years was spent on looking for connection and it failed. It failed and failed and failed and failed.

Geeeeeeeez, why don’t I try harder to be niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.

I wasted my nice on believing that you would do what you say. You don’t. So here I am.

Fucking Sarah.

“When you get angry at me because of my behavior you are acting just like my mother and that’s why I don’t come around. You have Borderline Personality Disorder.” A bunch of people who are actually fucking qualified to judge that have said definitely not. I am not borderline. But they think you sure sound like a bitch and they understand why I’m mad, so ok.

I am angry with myself for trusting you. I am angry with myself for believing that anyone would want to keep such promises to me. I am angry with myself for not cutting you out of my life 15 red flags ago. I am angry with myself that I wasted a week of vacation time on you treating me like shit again. I am angry that I may never go back to Disneyland because it feels like fucking poison on my tongue.

Disneyland is about my mom and Sarah. Pretty much the two women I have loved the most and they both treat me like shit.

Why don’t I have more to give.

Noah is an amazing partner. He tries hard to give as much as he can. But he’s one person and I’m a black hole. That’s not fair. Not to him and not to me because one person will never be able to fill my bucket. My kids take from me. They don’t give much and that’s appropriate for now. Some day them taking and giving nothing back is going to be a real issue. That day is dawning over the horizon but it is not here yet. It’s still years away but I can start to see that it is coming, just barely for my oldest child. And she will never be able to be my adult friend the way that people outside the family can be. It will just be less of a one way street all the time. It’ll be like here where they set up three lanes of traffic going in the primary direction of traffic with one lane coming back the other way. They reverse this mid-day. Unless I get old enough for her to be my care taker (which I kind of doubt given my body) I don’t think it’ll ever switch to being three lanes back to me.

I am supposed to give my children all the love and support I never got as a child. Stuff I never even witnessed up close happening to other people. But I’m supposed to know how to do it because I’ve read some books.

Why don’t I have more to give.

I am doing my best. The fact that I’ve come as far as I have means that people basically expect me to be a non-traumatized person now. I’m supposed to have gotten over it. But I am having to teach myself a lot of interpersonal shit without help. Yeah I’ve paid for a lot of therapy. I’ve gotten pretty much what I am going to get from that setting. I can write scripts with the best of them.

The actual pressure of having to give like this day after day after day after day after day after day…. therapy doesn’t really prepare you for that. Therapy is an hour a week. How can you learn how to regulate this much intensity in an hour a week? I can’t. If anyone has fucking tried I have fucking tried and you can’t say I haven’t.

Why don’t I have more to give.

I give everything I have to give. But my bucket was filled with poison a long time ago. I’ve tried adding healthy shit since then, but when I get down to the bottom…

Sometimes all I have left in the bucket is the poison. And I should not be giving anymore. That is so very complicated.

The kids are almost to the end of a couple of their workbooks. When we leave Hawaii, they will each have math and one workbook left. For the love of cheesetoast, can we please get the fucking math done some year? (This is because I culled their workload before we left Fremont.)

We’ve spent the last few days talking about negative attention and positive attention and how I really want to be giving them positive attention but they are wearing me out and I don’t have any left because I am spending 3 or 4 x’s as much time on academics as we should be spending and I am wrung out by the end. I feel as bad about what is happening as they do. But, yesterday they got it done and they got to go with a friend. They even made enough extra progress that today is pretty certain too. The three people we know in Hawaii would be happy to see them daily until we leave. We allllllllllllllll need this support. Please, do your work so we can all have this. It’s not much work. It’s not too advanced. It’s not too hard. You just have to… do it.

There are good reasons I don’t have more to give. But that doesn’t stop me from giving all day every day. Even though I’m exhausted. Even though I’m tapped out. Even though my bucket was filled with poison and lies.

Is what I give always perfect or ideal? No. But I give my best every day. I have variation. Like a human being.

And yes, people do expect that I will always be good or they have the right to criticize and demand more. Even though they are not helping. Only hurting.

Perspective is hard.

2 Replies

I struggle with receiving advice from people who have kids in the same age range as my kids. It’s kind of like how I don’t think anyone should write a parenting advice book while their kids are under 18: you don’t know how your methods work out in the long run.

Today a friend who has an adult daughter just a bit younger than me wrote to me about her concern. She didn’t phrase it at all as if she was criticizing me. She said, “This is what I did wrong and these are the long term consequences for me and my child.” I really appreciate that.

I need to have course corrections from outside sources. It’s important. It’s mandatory so that I don’t fuck up entirely.

Some days I am making the best bad decision I can because I do not have the ability to make a good decision.

That is absolutely shitty. My children will pay for that.

“All that I wanted from you was to gimme
Something that I never had
Something that you’ve never seen
Something that you’ve never been
But I wake up and everything’s wrong” – “Work”, Rihanna

My friend says she is afraid I am regressing (because she does) and I’m lashing out at my children (like she did).

I cannot imagine a kinder way to criticize me.

I live in abject terror of ignoring my kids, because my mother was severely depressed and she paid almost no attention to me, positive or negative, for months or years at a time. So I give my children negative attention when it might be healthier to take space from them. Because of my wounding.

There is no fair here.

And most of the people who told me they would help my kids by showing up…. they didn’t. And I don’t feel like it is ok to demonstrate my disappointment to them. I have to assure them that they are fine. Even though I am not fine partially because people keep fucking lying to me. Then I flip the fuck out and my kids bear the brunt of that.

It is not fair.

Today the plan is to do two hours of academics then the kids are going outside to play, whether they are done or not. I need down time. I need to rest. They don’t NEED me to pay attention to them all day. If they get their stuff done they can go spend time with their friend. If they don’t, they can choose being alone.

That is the best bad decision I can make today.

And I feel like this is so much crueler than soap in the mouth or kneeling on rice. Because that is my perspective. But folks are arguing with me. Folks I respect.

I don’t know the right thing to do. I went from one form of abuse to another to another. But I’m supposed to know the right thing to do. Even as people tell me that the right thing is boundless energy and give… and they will support me so I can do that…. then they don’t and I have to keep giving no matter what I am or am not receiving.

Ok.

Growing pains and mistakes

1 Reply

Many of my friends are traumatized people. When they respond to me or give me feedback… they are not taking careful stock of what I am doing and reacting to my actions. They are responding from a place of wounding. That’s not wrong and it’s not bad and it’s not always irrelevant… but it’s important for me to keep in mind so I don’t flagellate myself to death because they are upset at what I am doing. Their reaction is more about them than me. But I take it hard.

I try hard to ask a lot of different kinds of people about my behavior for that reason. I try to ask people with a wide range of backgrounds and experience. I try hard to regulate myself more strongly off of people who have actual relevant experience in whatever issue I am trying to deal with at the moment.

Sometimes I really fail at that and I spend days raging at myself and feeling like there is absolutely no hope of me ever being better because I have triggered a traumatized person. That’s not very useful for me, my husband, my kids, or even my friends.

I’ve been reading more psych books. Because I’m trying to find the middle path.

No, offering my children a variety of not-so-comfortable inducements that they can try and reject at will is not the same thing as spanking them for being bad. It just isn’t. We are trying things because I am out of cope and some of the things we try are going to be less than optimal and they will fail.

That’s fucking life and it isn’t the same thing as child abuse.

We tried it. The first day they thought it was very useful to them and they wanted to try again. The second day they didn’t like it and they felt kind of bad about it and they said they didn’t want to do that again.

Ok. We won’t do that again. My goal was not to inflict pain or punishment on them. It was to create a less comfortable environment.

The fact that folks would be totally ok with me drugging the shit out of my kids to have a similar kind of behavioral impact is utterly bizarre to me.

I am trying to figure out what lines need to be held. I am going to mess that up sometimes. We renegotiated academic goals about a month ago. We halved the work load. I tried to hold the kids to what they agreed to because that is my job. But it may be that once again the goals we set are not the right ones and we will have to adapt.

I am freaking out partially because I have not stood next to people who did this well. I am faking it. I don’t know what the hell I am doing. All my classroom experience did not prepare me for this part. In a classroom, the standards are arbitrarily set by the state and the students measure up or they fail. I am not setting arbitrary standards for my kids. I don’t have “You must be x proficient” goals for them and thus we are flailing really hard as we figure out what our goals should be and how hard I should insist on meeting the goals the kids claim they want to reach.

This is a process.

But I need to stop screaming.

I don’t have rest. I don’t get much support. Almost everyone who says, “I will help you by doing x” has turned out to be fucking lying and I need to stop allowing anyone to claim they will help me with my kids. It just results in me hating my friends with the fire of a thousand suns because almost no one follows up on what they say they will do.

The people who have absolutely rigorously met the standards they set for me are rare. I can pretty much count them on my fingers. I think that the fact that they go off of one hand is something that I should be celebrating instead of being so upset that the number of people doesn’t reach my toes.

But people keep making promises and not keeping them and that hurts me.

I don’t feel entitled to that hurt and that’s part of the problem. I don’t let myself admit to myself just how much these people are hurting me until I am exploding with rage all over the place because I can’t suppress my feelings anymore. I try hard not to get angry about people saying “I will do x with the kids” and then never doing it because I want to honor that people mean well. They want to be helping me. But the reality is that most of the time they want to feel helpful not be helpful and I need to stop looking to those people. Really almost any people.

We need to find a way to balance this so we can be self sufficient. That is not what I have been trying for…. ever.

The psych book I’m reading right now Born To Be Good talks about how in the US people define themselves as individuals (I’m an artist, a runner, a dancer, a writer) and people in other countries tend to define themselves through their relationships (I’m a daughter, a mother, a wife, a friend, a cousin) and a lot of my problem has been that I have been trying as hard as I can all of my life to define myself through my friendships because the daughter/sister/niece roles failed so abjectly for me.

But my friends have not been able to turn and be stable for me the way that family relationships do for other people and that’s been really destructive to my entire mental health.

Leaning this hard on my friendships for my identity and my self worth has resulted in decades of feeling worthless and like I should kill myself because no one is ever going to prioritize me like I do them. I hurt myself showing up for friendships when I should be selfish and care for myself and that’s stupid.

For the last couple of days I have been trying to process for myself that 50% of all people who hit grade 12 in school are below proficiency. My 5th grader is already writing essays that rival many of the 17 year olds I taught.

Maybe I don’t need to be so worried about them being “at grade level” and doing all the busy work of going through school. My kids have a very solid grasp of grammar and math. They are approximately at grade level. They would probably be B students if they went straight into school right now for the last few months of this school year.

Why am I so freaked out every moment of every day about failing them as a teacher and not preparing them for what they need to know? Because nothing I did was ever good enough to make my friends show up for me in the ways they constantly claimed they would so how can I know if what I am giving my kids will be enough for their future so they can show up and do what they want to do?

Maybe that isn’t entirely my battle to fight.

My kids have been digging in their heels and doing less and less. They were told weeks ago when we reset the metrics that they had to be current in order to go hang out with the babysitter. They then messed around on the boat and did nothing and got a week behind. They have not been interested in catching up since they got here.

Why am I wearing myself out trying to force them through the work necessary to earn the free time they want to have? This is so stupid.

I know that they can get all of their work done in 2 hours a day with time to spare. Maybe I need to give them two hours to do it then kick them out to play outside by themselves while I have down time. If you don’t get your stuff done so you can go with your friend, sucks to be you. Play by yourself and get out of my face. I act like I owe them constant stimulation and entertainment and so do they. And it is turning me into a psycho harpy. This is not working. I can’t be 24/7 stimulation for 3 kids and have anything left for my own health.

I don’t think we should lower the standards to nothing and completely unschool. But I also think that if they want to fail and not earn rewards…. I should let them. I have not been letting them. I have been hurting myself dragging them to their rewards.

Why. What am I teaching them?

That I care way more about their happiness than they have to. I care more about their happiness than my happiness or Noah’s happiness or my health.

Why.

Because I am afraid that if I don’t they will treat me like my friends.

You know what? I am leaving the fucking country because I am so angry about how my friends treat me. I have chased people for years begging for their love. I’m doing the same thing with my kids.

This is stupid.

I am going to fail no matter what I do. Which makes me not want to try.

Leave a reply

Yesterday when I checked in with the kids about kneeling on rice they were positive and said that they thought it was effective and they wanted to continue. When I checked in with them this morning… they had a different opinion. And Dana is saying I am basically spanking them.

Fuck me.

It’s awesome how easy it is to tell me I am wrong and what I am doing is bad but there aren’t concrete positive solutions suggested.

And this is why I spend so much time feeling like I should just kill myself because I will never be able to do anything right. Because this doesn’t just work this way with school shit. This feels like all of my fucking life since I was a little fucking kid. Just do it right, Krissy. Why are you so stupid and you keep doing it wrong?

No one wants to help. No one wants to tell me what to do. They just want to tell me I am wrong.

I didn’t pick this curriculum for the kids, they picked it for themselves. We discussed what goals they wanted to reach, we talked about what that path would look like and then they picked the books they wanted to do to reach it.

But they are kids. And they picked incredibly lofty goals that not many people actually end up wanting to reach. Thus I get to be the fucking bully all day trying to force them to do shit they don’t actually care about.

I mean, it’s not true that no one wants to tell me what to do. I get completely opposing advice: “Stop schooling them at all! Let them play all day or you are a monster who is crushing their spirit!” (CPS defines that as abuse.) “Put them in school!” (I have received medical advice that it would be detrimental to my daughter’s mental health. My son would probably do better except for that whole trans thing where schools tend to beat on trans kids and many of them end up suicidal and he has a strong family history of suicide so that’s a serious worry for us.)

Great.

So the end result is: “Why don’t you sit next to them 24 hours a day gently and kindly guiding them through every single detail of everything so they never have to have an uncomfortable feeling or struggle.”

Ok. But I am disabled and my body is going to fail if I do that. Great. That will serve everyone well.

I have to stop screaming. To me, that is the most important goal right now. I am hurting them and myself and I don’t want to be this person.

Moving isn’t what caused this. It has been happening since last August, before we decided to move.

I am having ongoing conversations with multiple teachers (they have specialties ranging from preschool to college), I’m talking to a horse trainer. I’m trying to listen to the guidance we got from their therapists.

And no matter what I try I am still wrong and bad.

You had no interest in helping when that was something you could have done. You just want to tell me I am wrong.

Ok.

You told me you would reach out and be a source of support. But that turned out to not be convenient for you.

Ok.

Yeah. That’s life.

Yes, I want people to help me with course corrections. I do. But that isn’t what is happening. If you have nothing to offer beyond criticism, that’s not the same thing as helping me. If you tell me that you will interact with my children to be helpful and then you never bother…

I am so fucking angry.

Mixed feelings

2 Replies

It may have been the best school day of this school year. Apparently kneeling on rice is a fabulous inducement?

I have so many mixed feelings.

By “best” I mean that we worked together without fussing or yelling or being nasty about anything. Nobody had to be glared at. “Ok, it’s x’o’clock and you haven’t finished, time for 15 minutes of work on rice.” Then all of a sudden they finished SUPER FAST and they weren’t upset and I wasn’t upset and the work got done…

Being mean is being nice. Being nice is being mean.

Parenting is so confusing.

I feel physically better than I have in a while. I didn’t yell today. My body is very happy about that. I am really embarrassed and ashamed of how much I have been yelling. I have been very out of control.

If I tell the truth and set boundaries people will leave me.

Maybe only the people who need to be gone from my life anyway. Even if that hurts. Maybe hurting and setting boundaries is good. How many times do I have to learn this fucking lesson.

Maybe less hysterical, we’ll see.

3 Replies

This year… the kids don’t want to do academics. But they have lofty goals. If my kids told me they wanted to grow up and be a hair dresser and a mechanic I would not be so obnoxious with them about academics. They want to be engineers and politicians according to their stated goals and that means you fucking have to do academics.

Why am I freaked out all of the time? Because I’m never doing one thing. I’m taking care of a nursing baby (which is a lot of fucking work), cleaning up, helping with homework, being a travel agent, and I’m supposedly disabled and I should be doing many hours a day of body maintenance. Do you know what I haven’t done in a week? Any of my fucking exercises because there is fucking always three things more important. Dealing with rental cars and shopping. More baby care. Big kids refusing to do academics unless I stand over them and scream. I am back up to 121 emails (like half of them are requests for me to review every stupid company I touch. They don’t want my reviews. Y’all suck.)

I feel like I am always a day late and a dollar short.

Like a month ago we negotiated with the kids to slash their workload massively. Much lower daily goals for work. What happened when we negotiated that? They stopped doing absolutely anything and are now three weeks behind again and I want to put my head through a window.

So they don’t get to see their babysitter until they get their shit together. They have already blown 7 possible days with her and they may not bother to work today and miss more days. We are here for 27 days.

I can’t make them care. If they don’t get it in gear by the time we are in Japan, we will have to shorten the trip to Scotland and come back to the US. Our traveling adventures can’t happen if they refuse to make any forward progress. I’m not asking for up to grade level. I’m not asking for a normal “school” work load. But you must do something. If you refuse to do anything productive at all, we are not fucking doing this. We will move somewhere cheap because I am not going to enjoy anywhere we move and it might as well not cost a lot of money. Which means the schools are going to be rough. I’m sure my kids will get the crap beat out of them for being weirdos as is the standard American experience.

Oh well. I can’t save you from you getting consequences and I am tired of trying.

I’ve been talking to a buddy who is a horse trainer. She tells me their lives are too comfortable and I need to start making it very uncomfortable to not comply. Don’t hit them. Don’t abuse them. But… they have a lot of comforts and they don’t need any of them.

She’s not wrong.

I don’t think they need to get so much choice and freedom for a while. They currently think they are the bosses of me and I don’t fucking think so.

If this shit continues I am absolutely going to kick them out at 18 and say “I don’t talk to people who treat me like shit.” And that would suck all the way around. Maybe some soap in the mouth so they realize that dressing me down all day long isn’t ok is the lesser evil.

So yesterday we talked to the kids about how things are going. The kids know they aren’t doing what they say they will do. Like EC didn’t do 1 day of work out of the 10 days we were on the boat despite spending 6+ hours a day “working on homework”. I am infuriated because this shit fucking sucks. Being stuck in the room doesn’t bother her. She has a lot of fun. My buddy suggested kneeling on rice for 15 minutes to keep her from doodling and having fun the whole time.

Today her math is done by 9:45am because I told her at 10 we would start 15 minutes of rice to help her not be distracted.

I don’t want to enact negative consequences. I want them to just want to do the thing. But they don’t. They set up long term goals, and they ask me to help them reach those goals. Then I have to be the heavy being a butthead to drag them kicking and screaming towards their stated goals. This is not fun for me.

I think we should figure out an online math tutor. Maybe if she had outside accountability and someone else saying they are disappointed in her…. she would care more?

MC has been treating me really badly. When the old babysitter arrived for dinner (I barely let the kids talk to her, she was here to visit me not you) she commented on how shocked she is that their behavior has gone down hill so much. They are incredibly rude to me and it’s not ok. The other day I was eating lunch and grading MCs homework and he sat in a chair in front of me and just started kicking me. For entertainment. This shit is his norm right now and I am about to explode and beat him.

Maybe soap in the mouth isn’t so bad.

He says he wants to be respectful, but currently he is not managing that at all. He is too comfortable in his established routines. Something needs to change.

I desperately hope these negative consequences are not going to be long term strategies. I desperately hope we can do this for a few weeks or months and change our patterns of interacting.

We’ll see. If things aren’t different in 6 weeks I’m picking some town in Oregon or Idaho or Washington and we are just moving there. Not into a fun forever home. Into somewhere cheap so they can attend public school for a year and we’ll spend that year figuring out what to do next.

We wanted to spend 2 years traveling so we could find a forever home that feels good. Maybe we can’t get our poop in a group and we don’t get to do that.

Life is complicated.

I can’t help but feel like part of this is fall out from the fact that if I had tried to hold boundaries with Sarah I would have lost her years earlier. I had to accept whatever shitty treatment she felt like giving me or I would have lost what minimal support she gave and that was too painful.

I don’t feel good about myself. But. Time to do more work.

I think I have failed at home schooling.

Leave a reply

Or maybe it worked for a while and it isn’t working any more. The kids don’t want to do work anymore and the effort it takes to force them is hurting our long term relationship. It didn’t used to be like this. I am feeling so sad. I’ve been waiting for the kids to turn a corner and just… do their shit all year and the only time they work is if I stand over them seething. If I sit down for a minute and stop badgering they stop doing anything.

I can’t do this any more.

I’m always happy to answer questions. I do not appreciate having to stand there and say, “What is the next number you are supposed to write down. Now, what kind of math problem is this? Write the symbol.”

EC is 10. This is bullshit. I can’t fucking do this.

I did not object to this level of help when they were preliterate or when they were learning to write. But she’s a very good writer at this point. She doesn’t make many math mistakes. She just doesn’t feel she should have to hold a pencil and write things with it unless she is under duress and I feel like shit all the fucking time. I hate myself more with every passing day. I feel sick to my stomach.

So yeah. We will move to some town. I won’t be trying to make friends. I won’t be exploring new, interesting places. I will sit in a house all day with a baby then spend my afternoons and evenings forcing kids to do homework instead of spending 12 hours a day yelling about academics.

I feel really sad and like a failure. I don’t think this is going to result in much happiness for me. I don’t know if it will result in happiness for my kids. But I can’t keep yelling like this. It’s been a whole school year of it and it really isn’t ok. I feel so bad. And I am unable to do anything to motivate my kids. I can’t make them care.

April is booked in Japan. I literally don’t have a plane ticket bought after that. I still want to go to Scotland to visit Jenny, but maybe I can only be there for two weeks.

We can’t just pick a country and start school there because of residency issues. It would take too long for us to be allowed to stay, we will miss the start of a school year. So we have to go back to the US.

There aren’t very many places in the US that I can handle living in the weather. That’s a serious limiter. Probably central Oregon.

I anticipate a black depression while we live there. I don’t think I will be capable of doing much other than keeping the baby alive.

It is so stupid for me to want things.

Plan and plan again and throw all of those away.

Leave a reply

I don’t think we will be able to travel. I think the kids need to go to school. I am failing and that’s not ok.

Boarding school would be $120,000/year for both kids. Can’t afford that.

I don’t want to go pick somewhere random in the US and I feel existential terror about moving where I know people. It’s not going to go well.

People don’t like me when they have to spend much time with me.

Stress.

My self hatred is on absolute turbo

3 Replies

I am frustrated. I am not medicated. I am in pain again after the most beautiful reprieve of my adult life. I feel stupid, worthless and like if I am going to be worked like a dog until I drop then I should just drop now because I am so fucking tired. I feel really hopeless today. I feel like a failure at absolutely everything and in every relationship.

I feel incapable of sustained happiness. I should have accepted the Oxycontin prescription and climbed into a closet for the rest of my life. Then I wouldn’t notice how much I hate myself and how I am treated.

My children shirking their work and lying on the heels of Sarah breaking up with me… I feel like I am nothing but rage and pain. I didn’t lie convincingly enough. I didn’t pretend it was ok for her to lie to me and abandon me so I am bad and I deserve nothing.

“By the way I want your points for next year for a trip with my family.”

Which I am not a part of. Thank you for reminding me, oh “chosen family” that you want my money and resources and not me.

I feel a lot better about giving the money to women of color or single mothers. Fuck you.

Fuck you for using me the same way you use your grandmother. You lie and steal money from her too. You have effectively stolen money from most of your housemates too and none of us are allowed to talk about it or we are picking on you!

If anyone gets mad at you for treating them like shit obviously they have Borderline Personality Disorder.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Bitch you bought a $500 plane ticket with money that was supposed to feed my children. That’s far from your only shitty act, it’s just one of the easiest ones to explain. That’s how much you care about my children.

You said you would be there for my kids. Then cancelled constantly because you always had better things to do.

I see you. I see your lies.

Stop making promises you will never, ever keep.

In Hawaii

Leave a reply

I miss pot. I am doing better at being nice to the kids but a lot worse at being nice to me. I am really struggling with advocating for myself. I am really struggling with feeling like I have to work until I break myself because I don’t matter. I wasn’t in pain for multiple days. It was really nice. Then today… I hurt again. I hurt because I forgot the stroller. And then I didn’t phrase the request to rent a stroller or wagon clearly enough so we didn’t. So I walked around for hours with close to 20% of my bodyweight on me. I wasn’t wearing the right shoes for that. And then the food really sucked and I was so angry about it. How can you fuck up a buffet that much?

I really liked the Polynesian cultural Center when I went when I was 21. Now it bothered me. The layers of whiteness inserted into cultures is a lot more obvious now. Now it feels really grotesque the way the Mormon church is trying to make money off of these people.

It is hard hearing about people’s connection to the land and feeling a lot of pride in who they are. My ancestors were shit. And I don’t belong anywhere. There isn’t anywhere that is strongly my home.

The boat

Leave a reply

I don’t care if it is a ship instead of a boat. It was an interesting cruise. The highlight was the acupuncturist. She is hands-down the most effective acupuncturist I have ever worked with. I am pretty sure she is the most effective medical provider I have ever worked with. I’m not in pain. I have a few places where I feel a little bit stiff and a little sore, but not pain. I usually have to do fantastically heavy drugs in order to feel this good. I’m really pleased with her work. And she wasn’t expensive for what she did.

I spent a lot of the trip processing stuff with Sarah. There is a lot I have not been willing to admit to myself about how bad that relationship was for a lot of years. I am really struggling with dealing with that emotionally. She used me.

I think this is going to negatively impact my ability to trust people for a long time. I have been very willfully not seeing the problems because I didn’t want to lose her.

I am feeling a little bit nervous about this perpetual travel thing. I have not been as nice to the kids as I should have been. I am struggling. For a long time I used Sarah loving me as proof that I was worthy of love and that allowed me to feel gentle and like I had some love to give. I feel like the bottom opened up beneath me. I feel unworthy of love and like I am bad. And it makes me feel mean and vicious. I don’t like me very much. That’s never good for my behavior.

I wish people wouldn’t tell me that I am inspiring. I talked to a few people on the boat about life and stuff. There was one guy in particular who was born and raised in San Francisco. He had a lot of questions about what being homeless was like. He had a lot of questions about why I hate the rich the way I do. He could not understand why I believe that billionaires are evil. After I talked long enough, he got it. It took some talking though.

I have a sore in the middle of my forehead from the acupuncture needle. It’s kind of funny, the acupuncturist constantly smacked me in the center of the forehead. She told me she was waking up my third eye so that I could accept the blessings of the universe. It’s funny that I am walking away with a scab there. It’s like my third eye really doesn’t want to open.

San Francisco is so cold. We were warm just a few days ago. And we will be warm tomorrow. I used to think that I like the cold more than the heat. But my bones ache.

Damn.

Leave a reply

The money has hit our accounts. I have paid off all credit cards. We now have zero debt. All of the utilities associated with the house are done. We sold both cars. Insurance is set to cancel on the 4th.

I’m putting luggage tags on right now.

I’m almost through with the hard part. Whoa.

 

What are we looking for?

Leave a reply

I feel like part of the reason I am leaving is because I want to stop feeling angry at my friends. It isn’t their fault that I wanted them to be more like family and that isn’t what they want or need. It makes sense that they already have families and they are not auditioning new crazy members.

I think it’s going to be really interesting to find out what it feels like to only deal with my family for a long time. I won’t be able to look to my friends.

I think that is how I have killed my ability to stay here. I needed my friends to be family and they aren’t up for that and I can’t cope with the reality. Will I do the same thing in a different place? I don’t think so. I won’t establish myself in communities there in the same way.

If I try hard to be reasonable with myself, I know that I would be welcome in a lot of different communities. If I showed up week after week, they would be happy to put me to work. I wouldn’t be expunged. I have not been driven out.

But it’s more complicated than that. An awful lot of the communities I left I did so because of health problems or trauma reasons and I can’t really figure out how to not be bitter about no one noticing or caring.

I have a fair number of friends who are more disabled than me. I make sure I do the work to carry the friendship because that’s fair. But fucking everyone thinks of me as more able bodied and resourced than them. I’m not.

Fully able bodied people expect me to drive 40 minutes to visit them in their completely child-unfriendly houses.

I am really struggling with my feelings around this. Because I don’t get to act entitled to people’s time or attention. They don’t want a child friendly house. But they want me to come visit and somehow keep my children from touching anything?

Seriously, if you ask me over and over how to make your house a better place for my kids and you never take a single suggestion and you berate my children for touching your stuff? Uhhh I need to stop coming over.

THEN PEOPLE GET MAD AT ME. THEY SAY I AM BEING MEAN AND SELFISH BECAUSE I DO NOT WANT DRIVE 40 MINUTES FOR MY CHILD TO STAND STILL IN A ROOM AND NOT TOUCH ANYTHING.

Get the fuck out of here. My kids are far more important to me than you are.

My kids are there. You are not. You expect me to give to you endlessly as you bitch about how I didn’t give you more.

My fucking children are more grateful than you bastards.

My children understand that the time and energy I spend on them has a cost and I have to pay it. My friends seem to think that I am a bottomless well of attention and energy for them. It’s really kind of odd.

It’s kind of funny how much people let me know that I exhaust them by driving really far to see them and showing up to do work in their house. Ok fine. I can stop. I won’t exhaust you anymore.

A buddy today told me I should change so I can have more friends.

No. No. No. NO. NOOOOOOO

If I made my personality less abrasive I wouldn’t have more good friends I’d have more people happy to use me.

If you knew I was cracking under too much stress and you made promises to be there for my kids… how dare you cancel every visit then tell me you think I’m doing a bad job. You made sure my calendar was limited to you. That was all the spoons and time I had for planning. Then you rarely showed up. So mostly I just stayed home and cried.

And I couldn’t talk about the year of this shittiness while it was happening OR I WOULD BE FUCKING DISLOYAL.

I feel like everything is all my fault. How dare I get so angry. How dare I act so frustrated. How dare I run out of the ability to take care of every one every minute of the day while getting nothing back…

You try taking care of people 24/7 for ten years and see if you can manage to never get frustrated.

I am glad that for most of the next 9 months I won’t feel like I need to reach out to people to help. Jenny’s life is well in hand. She doesn’t need me and she has very little free time. We have been talking about how busy she is in advance of me coming. This is wise. That way if I see her for 2 hours in a week a handful of times I won’t feel rejected. I know that is squeezing me in.

I struggle with the fact that other than these four people, no one’s life really has a Krissy shaped hole. It doesn’t matter when I am gone. I am not integral.

That makes me wish I were dead.

That makes me feel like a complete fucking failure at life. I truly wish I didn’t hold these relationships as the deciding factor in whether I have failed at life.

Look around, bitch, you’ve done other cool shit.

But it never feels like enough. I love you so much. But love is not enough. Fuck you John Lennon.

We leave in less than 30 hours

1 Reply

All the feelings. I am having all the feelings. I don’t remember if I logged here that the rheumatologist says I definitely have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (after years of doctors telling me that there is no point in screening me) and I have arthritis. Osteoarthritis, not rheumatoid arthritis. Not that I’m super hip to the difference.

The house is so empty. The kitchen is empty. This is nothing like going on a trip. Our cupboards aren’t bereft of food… they are empty. The plates are gone. The cooking items are gone. Today we will do another thrift run on our way to drop off a car with a friend.

One of our cars goes away forever, today. The other one will technically remain in our possession for 15 more days because we need it between now and then but we are filling out paperwork today. We are just borrowing it for the next 15 days.

Tired. Can’t sleep. So many feelings. So overwhelmed. It is feeling terrifyingly real. We are going any minute here. I’m glad the kids can sleep. We are all anxious.

Holy tomato sauce on cheese toast… my kids are caught up on academics. I was starting to feel like that was an impossibility. But Eldest Child did a heroic push and she’s caught up. Now I need to catch up on grading. No problem.

Oh, we need to take the car seat out of the Prius and put it in storage. Eeeeeeep. Today is the day. We maybe should have/could have done that yesterday. I didn’t think of it. Oh well. I’m sure we would have wanted another run to storage today anyway so I can put paperwork in there for the house. We aren’t going to drag stuff pillar and post.

I’m going to do my best to have a media blackout for a while. I need to get off the internet. The internet hurts my mental health so much. It is hard to see a point in getting up in the morning and trying at life while reading the internet. Everything feels so hopeless. So I’m going to go talk to real people instead.

I wonder if Her Sweetness will use this car seat again while she is rear facing. I don’t think we would bother to come get it for August. We will try to borrow one for a month. It would be cheaper to buy a new one than to come get it. So we definitely won’t see this car seat again before she is about to turn 2 unless it takes a fair bit longer than that. We’ll see.

Where are we going to land? I don’t know. It is haunting me. Where can we be happy? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But it isn’t here. It’s not just me who is struggling here.

Let’s go see what’s out there. Oh goodness.

No computer

Leave a reply

A couple of weeks ago when I had a late night and I was awake while everyone slept I went into the bathroom to talk to my phone. This is less convenient now that three members of my family are sleeping in the room that shares the wall with the bathroom. We do strongly prefer being close to one another. It’s a little bizarre how much we like being close to one another. I don’t remember seeing anything like that when I was a kid. I didn’t know other families who are as cuddly as we are. I’m still not sure I know people who spend as much time just touching each other as we do. It’s completely non-sexual. Which occasionally feels weird, but healthy.

Noah and I are struggling to figure out where our sex life fits in around the needs of our kids. We are definitely placing our kids needs as more important than our sex needs at this stage of our marriage. They need us. It’s interesting to me how the American custom is that kids should be away from their parents at night as soon as possible. My 10-year-old is very happy sleeping in a different room. She wants that space now. She is ready. My eight-year-old is not ready. He gets upset with being alone in a room all night. I don’t see a point in shunning him.

I have a different background than most, I guess. I was bed sharing with my mother when I was 17 because I didn’t want to be alone. Also because I’ve had back problems since my age was in the single digits and if I didn’t want to sleep with my mother the option was sleeping on the floor.

Sometimes it is surprising to me that my son rolls off his bed and sleeps on the floor on purpose. By the time I was his age my body was already broken and that hurt too much.

My daughter bought a tube top and a mid drift bearing shirt because she’s always hot. She is not seeking attention. It is hard not to be afraid for her. She doesn’t even understand the vulnerability that she has. She can’t really imagine being assaulted.

They surprise me in millions of ways.

Ack, nursing time.

Today I booked…

2 Replies
  • waxing
  • hotel in SF between cruise and Hawaii
  • car for beginning of Hawaii
  • car for end of Hawaii
  • emailed folks about the van hand off and transportation needs in SF
  • We want the Kuko line in Fukuoka. It will take ~22 minutes from the airport to our apartment. When we get to our stop, it’s a 5 minute walk. Awesome
  • I don’t think we’ll rent a car in Japan: https://yokanavi.com/en/transportation-facilities/
  • Holy crap! Japanese law says that babies don’t need to be in car seats while driving if you are a)in a taxi (logical) or b) nursing or changing a diaper!!! Whoa

 

I literally can’t look at us leaving Japan today. I can’t. My brain says it will melt. We are booked through April 22nd. Hopefully I can handle dealing with that step tomorrow because it would be super nice to have all of this done this week.

I’m feeling quite pleased with my progress. This is happening.

I still need to get to:

  • plane from Japan to Minneapolis for Noah
  • hotel in Minneapolis for Noah
  • plane from Japan to Scotland for me and kids
  • where are we staying first in Scotland? I assume Inverness but I should schedule a chat with Jenny
  • plane from Minneapolis to Scotland for Noah