We leave on Monday. Technically we don’t leave until the clock ticks over to Tuesday (12:30am) but we need to arrive at the airport on Monday. Sarah will be coming home from a trip so we will have dinner in the airport together after her flight and before ours.

That feels really special and lovely for my birthday. I feel rather excited about being included in this fantastic person’s busy life.

I am… mostly packed but not entirely. My Google spreadsheet is epic. I should post it. Why do I bring so much? Because having to derail my vacation to go find medical shit sucks and we won’t have transportation nor be that close to a city. I’m going to pay $50 to check a bag with medications and toiletries so I don’t have to bring liquids on the plane.

And that bag is going to weigh 48.5 lbs. I’m going to shift around some of the stuff in there to shave off a few ounces. I will find a way.

I tried a new shampoo/conditioner today on the advice of internet people who heard me bitching about my hair. It’s part of the Function of Beauty website thing. They ask you a bunch of questions about your hair then custom make something. I don’t have perfect curl definition but my hair feels soft and dreamy and really nice.

Packing. Lunch. Errands.

ACK!

Noah is off. He’ll be gone for like 43 hours.

In the past couple of days I have been expressing boundaries everywhere. I’m setting them with my kids, with Noah, with friends, on websites. I have unsubscribed to forums that are increasing my feeling of dysregulation. I have unfriended people I love on social media because that interaction isn’t healthy for me when I’m unmedicated. I am telling neighbors “I am going now” when they won’t shut up. I am…

I am trying to ensure I don’t explode at my kids.

I keep having this mental image from a Tamora Pierce book. In it she has has a character meditate to control her magic, this character expresses her magic through fiber arts, and spinning is a big thing for her. So when she is trying to control her power she visualizes pulling it in and putting it into a nice tight string on a spindle.

I feel like I’m doing that.

Pot allows me to be patient with things that bother me. Pot allows me to ignore minor boundary incursions and small slights and little hurtful things. Without the pot I am raw and wounded and I cannot handle a lot of things.

I am using each one of these points of irritation as a guide. Maybe I have been allowing myself to be hurt more than I should and I’ve been dissociating from that pain using pot. That seems totally possible. Even likely.

Let’s find out which relationships suffer from these boundaries. I need to set them though. I cannot accept the amount of going up and down the roller coaster I’m doing if I am going to be nice to my kids.

Being nice to my kids comes before accepting upsetting statements from adults. If I have to get to where I can’t hear the adults, ok. That’s the price.

I feel like a fairy walking around yelling, “A BOUNDARY FOR YOU, AND A BOUNDARY FOR YOU, AND HOW ABOUT TEN BOUNDARIES FOR YOU.”

It’s a process.

But I feel happier than I expected. More calm. I feel ok.

I’m conflating things in a way I don’t like. Clarity matters when you want to ask for change.

In general Noah prioritizes me above everything else in his life. To an absolutely unhealthy degree. He prioritizes me over sleep and work and friendships. This is not ideal. When I’m bitching about him sleeping through the weekend…. that’s a shitty thing for me to do. He goes short on sleep most of the time because I wake up so fucking early and I want to eat breakfast and he wants to cook it for me.

Yeah. It’s awful for me to bitch about the naps he takes to make up for going short on sleep because he is making me breakfast.

He used to stay up all night playing video games. I would say that has happened at most twice in the past year. I really don’t think it has happened twice. Maybe once. When he stays up all night… he’s working. His job involves a lot of people on the other side of the world and he has very few markers to give him confidence that he’s doing his job well. Someone in Japan saying, “Hey Noah–fix this” is one of the few things he has to look at and see that he is actually being perceived as successful at what he’s trying to do. I get why sometimes he needs to respond instantly. It’s not fair for me to get mad.

It’s ok for me to be overwhelmed and feel sad when we don’t meet up perfectly. It’s not ok for me to be mad about Noah doing his job.

For the record, I am proposing that I take over breakfast again so he can work later and sleep later. I suspect that’ll help him get some time when we aren’t as demanding. Days are hard. All of us want his attention basically all the time.

I spend so much time being grateful that he has a brain that is worth so much money on the open market that we can have this much of his time. I feel sad that this isn’t available to everyone. I know that everyone isn’t interested in this much togetherness, but I wish it were an option. It’s one of the most unfair things in life that people have to work so many hours to survive. Capitalism is fucked up.

I want to support Noah better because then he is able to support me better. I’m selfish. And I like him and want to keep him for decades. That means he needs upkeep and maintenance.

He’s worth it.

He does need sleep. I know I need sleep and there is no fair in this world. My sleep issues are pervasive and constant and he can’t do anything to protect my sleep and make me sleep more. It’s literally impossible for him. The only thing he can do for my sleep is be in the room so I feel safe.

I can make space for him to sleep so that he can be more physically and mentally healthy. He is capable of sleeping when we make space. So yeah, that’s important. If I could nap he would protect my sleep with equal vigor.

No one is screwing me here.

EVEN WHEN I WANT TO BECAUSE TINY BABIES ARE COCK BLOCKERS.

Sarah and I are trying to be smart. We noticed that our next date is overlapping a weekend when she’s supposed to visit my kid. The last time we attempted that the whole weekend collapsed under the weight of too many plans and expectations and not enough spoons. So we moved it to be the only thing in a weekend so we can have the energy to really pay attention to each other. I’m not going to be here much longer. This matters.

I have been having a really intense amount of thinking and feeling about Sarah. I’m thinking about queerness and “dating” and what a relationship is. Not long ago I said to Noah, “Are we ever going to talk about Sarah being my girlfriend” and he kinda hurumphed in a way that acknowledged that there is there there but… yeah. We can’t do poly so we can’t label or name this or describe it or…

She’s my Sarah. I’ve loved her for 14 years. We almost broke up once and it was devastating to both of us. I hope we never fuck up so much again.

I know a lot of hetero “dating” couples who don’t have conventional sex. Sarah and I have had more sexual contact than some people who “date” do. So what does that mean?

Fuck if I know. But she’s mine. And I’m so grateful. When I am sad she is one of the few people I trust absolutely. When I am flailing and I feel out of control and I feel like I don’t know who I am or what I am doing or what I want Sarah can say, “Dude. I know you.”

That… is so much.

But Noah needs to be absolutely centered.

Complicated.

Triggered. That word is used so much. I think I use it slightly more broadly than appropriate at some times. But last weekend and this weekend are good reminders to me that I have some work to do.

Appearance stuff is tied into safety. But… weirdly so are the stupid video games. I know that video games have been a wonderful source of comfort and bonding and fun for many of my friends. That’s great.

I want to write so much. But my shoulders are fucked up and it hurts.

So I’ll sit here and feel instead.

And I won’t hit post and this will sit here for days. Why not.

I’m having a lot of big feelings. I think that this week has involved a lot of realizing just how often I don’t set necessary boundaries and sometimes I don’t even know what that means. I worry a lot about other people getting what they want and sometimes I don’t care much about what I need.

I “know” that most of the people in my life have been carefully selected because they are unusually willing to accept setting and receiving boundaries. But I still feel fear. I still don’t think I am worth putting up with if I make it “too difficult”.

I’m still holding my breath waiting for everyone to leave.

If I say, “This is not ok” who is going to have a problem with that. Like, I was told today that it’s not ok for me to say in threads on a forum that it would be awesome if we could find ways to insult people that are not derogatory to sex workers. That’s derailing. So now I won’t be going back to that forum because I am not capable of walking past casual insults and pretending it’s ok. I can’t do that. I don’t owe anyone silence or compliance or conformity.

But I do it to myself anyway. I enforce silence and compliance. In my own stilted and broken way I try to conform. I just mostly fail.

I vacillate between setting my boundaries too firmly and rigidly and far out and not setting them at all. This is less than ideal.

I’m really tired. I’m not sleeping for a few reasons. On the list is the lack of pot. On the list is nursing a fussy baby. On the list is being a whiny baby who can’t sleep when Noah is up and he had a hard night.

Noah doesn’t stay up AT me. He stays up because he has needs.

It is very hard to not be selfish and angry about not being able to sleep when he is gone. I do an absolutely inappropriate amount of trying to regulate off of him. This sucks because he’s not all that well regulated but he tries so hard.

I miss childcare. I am not doing very well with being on duty 20-22 hours out of 24. My last serious break was a year ago when I went to Alaska. Before that it was May of last year.

I’m fucking tired.

I understand that other people have it worse than me. I don’t feel entitled to be upset about the challenges of my current life because things are so much better I need to just quit whining already. But this is hard. It isn’t the hardest thing I’ve done, but it is never fucking ending.

I am struggling with feelings of jealousy and feeling left out. I failed at staying involved in hobbies or social groups. I feel like part of why I want to run away is so that I don’t feel actively ignored by people who post pictures of hanging out with people who are more…. something than me.

I wish I could just decide to stop feeling things.

You don’t have to pay that careful of attention to know that I’m weird about appearance stuff. Many people are; I’m not unique. People judge you based on how you look and that’s so complicated. I have been very lucky because for most of my life I’ve lived in a place where dirty hippies are normal and expected so I’m not someone who sticks out like a sore thumb. I’m kind of normal. I live in the only place in the world where the rich people dress worse than the poor people. I am scared to leave.

But I have to.

If you look through my pictures of my childhood you will see how every so often my hair was butchered short. That was because I was left alone for most of the time starting when I was three years old. I was not capable of caring for myself and no one was interested in teaching me. My mother spent a lot of time telling me that I was a reflection of her and so it wasn’t ok that I was so disgusting looking. But she didn’t help me and she didn’t teach me how to do it for myself. I was just shamed. That’s not true. I wasn’t just shamed. I was screamed at. I was hit. I was told that my opinion about the length of my hair was entirely unimportant because I was too pathetic to deserve it.

I’m flipping out this week because I’m triggered. More triggered than I have been in years.

More triggered than I have been since I tried to throw a super huge party where everyone was supposed to be there because I’m so great. Yeah. That flipped me the fuck out and I had to hurt myself in compensation for being stupid enough to try that.

Traveling is scary because you have one chance to make a first impression. I’ve been told since I was a little kid that I make horrible first impressions but when people are forced to interact with me over a longer period of time they discover I’m actually really great.

That’s not the best dynamic for travel, you know?

There is like 5,000 extra words in my head and no spare minutes in my day.

I overdid it yesterday. I feel wiped. If I want to have fun this weekend… I can’t work today like I did yesterday. I feel like ass. I feel so much pain.

I have decided that since this isn’t ever going to feel much like a party and instead it will be a series of short visits with friends… no one cares about how much I clean up and I’m going to stop.

It’s different when 30-50 people are going to be here for 4 hours. Then I need to clean up the space to literally make room for people. When it’s like one family at a time? Psh. We’re fiiiiiiiine.

I do want to trim the blackberry and finish cleaning up the blue potato vine cuttings. But that’s it in the yard.

The house is fucking clean enough.

I am not going to finish my 51 item to do list in August. I will finish next week before we go to Mexico. That’s being kind to myself. This is an arbitrary deadline. None of these things are mandatory or important. They are all self imposed. I can choose to be kind to myself occasionally. I got 40 things done. That has to be enough right now. And some of those items were massive like packing and getting all the boxes out of here.

I’m so tired.

I didn’t sleep much because I hurt so much. Around 4:30 Noah and I woke up and talked a little and he rubbed on me and it felt so euphorically good I managed to get two hours of really solid sleep.

I hurt.

I need a bath. Luckily I’m smoking right now (pain. So. Much. Pain.) so when I go inside I have to get straight into water before I pick up the baby. Yay! Timing!

I’m almost done with the boxes for Jenny. I might be able to get them out of the house before the party.

I’m so bad about boxes for Scotland. I start them and it takes me 2-5 months to finish and actually mail them. I’m ridiculous. I think about them all the time. But finishing things is hard. I feel like I’m not as good of an auntie as I want to be and I feel upset with myself for it.

But I’m also half dead.

It’s hard hating myself so much for not having more to give when I’m giving until I collapse.

There is this thing that Middle Child does when he unloads the dishwasher. He likes to take every single plate that we own at once. That’s a big stack. More than once he has dropped a plate this way because he can’t really manage that tall of a stack yet. His desire for competence outstretches his current abilities. He’s now eight. That continues to be the most normal situation he could possibly be in.

I think that’s basically what I am doing.

My life is a careful balance of triage. I am always looking at what is most important and I need to ignore all the lower priority actions to cope with that issue. In my life at this moment my single most important task is breastfeeding my baby. I am her literal life support and that has to be my first priority all day every day. My second task is being good to my children. Being nice takes a lot of energy and thought and planning for me. I’m a really harsh person. I have to work very hard on blunting the blade of my personality; it’s a conscious decision.

When I stack too many plates…

I’ve also been the person packing my family of five’s possessions. I am forcing them to help me with culling because I don’t know what is important to them to keep. But I’m boxing and moving stuff because every single person in this family has a full agenda of work every day. Auxiliary projects become mine. My kids work and there’s a limit to how much is appropriate at their current ages. If I give them more work than is appropriate they might be able to accomplish it. More likely they would fail and internalize that they suck. I’m not going to put them in that position if I have any way to avoid it. I will absolutely damage myself to avoid putting them in that position. I am less important. Period.

But there are layers and complications to that too. My utter eagerness to throw myself into damaging situations is another problem to be managed. That has to be on the triage list. Not hurting myself.

I feel like I am failing to communicate (to myself as much as anyone else) why this appearance shit is coming up and is so intense. This is the very definition of a PTSD trigger and is probably why I went off the rails so very badly last weekend.

My appearance has been a problem for most of my life. My mother did not have time to take care of my appearance and she had no end of scorn for me because I didn’t figure it out on my own. Frankly the autism diagnosis makes me feel so much better about myself it isn’t funny. It’s pretty common for people like me to struggle with appearance stuff. Oh. I’m not just bad. I’m autistic and this is a normal thing for me to struggle with.

My mother spent a lot of time very angry with me because my appearance was a reflection on her and I looked like shit. I looked like no one cared about me. And when you look like no one cares about you people are mean to you because that’s a permission slip. That’s a blank check. Especially as a child. A child that has no adult cosseting and protecting them is a target. Shit rolls down hill and every one has a hard life. Children are vulnerable targets for excessive spleen.

Topping off with having people call the police on us in Virginia on the road trip because we looked like vagrants.

I have had negative consequences for my appearance over decades. It is not a minor issue. I will be judged by my appearance and that judgment will reflect on my family.

That is quite literally a sight of existential torture for me. Me being so bad at looking like a “decent woman” might cause my children to be hurt.

Ok.

If I can’t even fucking get myself together enough to look decent for a fucking lunch/dinner engagement with my friend on a fucking random Sunday at home when I have the easiest set of resources as my disposal… what is going to happen when we travel?!

Cue beating myself in the head until I bruise myself. I have so completely failed to accomplish adulting that I can’t look decent without extensive prior planning and inappropriate leaning on my children to do work. That’s not ok.

So I went to therapy yesterday. My therapist spend a lot of time looking like they were biting their tongue because they wanted to shout “WHY DO YOU KEEP MAKING THESE BAD DECISIONS?!?!?!?!”

Traveling is complicated. The last time I left the country was after Uncle Bob died and I about lost my mind.

Uhhh I hope it goes better this time.

Why do I need to do this so very badly? Because I do. Because I need to get out of this valley before I set it on fire. (Not really. I’m not an arsonist. I would not have any interest in hurting anyone. It’s metaphorical.) There are dynamics here that I don’t know how to change or walk away from and stay in one place and there are things in myself I want to change. I am not making the progress I want to make. I need to change my setting. I want to understand the wonderful people who come here better. I want to understand where they are coming from.

I want to understand more about this bubble we have lived in for so long. You can’t do that from inside the bubble. You can’t see the water you swim in.

My shrink said something very useful. They said, “You can’t use drugs. You do all the easy low-level suggestions for stress management that someone would come up with. Ok. You know, for most of my clients this is really hard because they don’t have a single person in the world they are connected to. I have to tell them to go find a tree. For you, I say you need to let your friends be your medicine.”

Maybe that’s what I want to have Sarah embroider on something where I can see it.

Let Your Friends Be Your Medicine.

I really do have the very best friends in the whole world. I am so lucky.

So after therapy yesterday I came home. I found a stash of medicated mints buried in the bottom of the diaper bag. I took a regular sized dose. Then my time off started.

I decided the best thing I could do for my family was go to the fucking mall. I went to Macy’s. I commandeered a nice lady. I walked up to her and said, “Are you very patient?” She chuckled and said she thinks so. I asked if I could tell her a story. She said that sounded fun.

She helped me. She helped me find clothes that are comfortable enough that they don’t hurt my poor aching body and I can crawl around and play with my children. She helped me find clothing that was age appropriate and work with my coloring. She vetoed most of the things I suggested for one reason or another. She brought me things in the dressing room that she thought would be good for me.

I left with three pairs of pants, two shirts, one skirt, and a dress. All of them fit the bill for my very convoluted list of requirements over the next few months. Combined with the nicer nursing tank tops I got when the baby came and the nice sandals I found recently…

I now look like a responsible grown up lady.

I wish it hadn’t been such a stupidly melodramatic process.

This is why I’m practicing the makeup stuff now. Even though sometimes it literally makes me cry and that’s not good for putting makeup on.

I need to worry about these things. I need to worry about it right now so that my children don’t suffer. In the triage of importance of my life these skills are somewhere around 4 or 5 on the priority list right now because they are hard, they take repetitive practice over time, and my children will be hurt if I don’t.

But they are hard because working on this is a direct challenge to my deep seated sense of self hatred and belief that I deserve nothing good in life.

So it’s tricky.

Because in order to give my children a better life… I can’t treat me that badly. I will be hurting them by proxy.

Ok.

I haven’t medicated today but I feel better. I feel ok. I feel like I can go eat. I have a lot of work to do today.

Today I’m cleaning the house for the party this weekend. The kids are working on the backyard. Tomorrow I’m going to help the kids in the backyard. I told them that if they get most of it done today so I only have a little bit of clean up work tomorrow then we can bake a cake on Thursday afternoon and spend Friday morning decorating it fancy. If the yard work takes all day on Thursday then we will bake a cake on Friday and it won’t get decorated fancy because it won’t have time to cool.

We’ll see what they get accomplished.

I have been busy. I have gotten a fantastic amount of stuff done. That 51 item to do list? I’m down to 14 things and I will finish in the next four days.

Today was fascinating. My tone of voice sucks golf balls through a garden hose. I am very harsh. I don’t even feel angry or irritated. I’m just sharp. Middle Child asked me to please medicate tomorrow because he doesn’t want me to seem angry at him on his birthday. That means I’m taking a lot of showers. But he’s worth it. Ok. I do have this stuff left for emergencies. I guess this qualifies.

Sarah started the post-game of “Why did this fail” and it’s kind of weird to me that ALL of the overwhelming intensity of yesterday is gone. I feel tired and sad. My household scheduled too much and promised too much and we couldn’t live up to it. Those kinds of failures are normal. I don’t feel like Sarah let me down.

Last weekend became too many things. It started out as just a visit with Sarah like we do monthly. I asked if we could do our nails and have tea. But my family wanted to join us, which is slightly unusual. Then her nail person was out of town. Then we wanted to schedule a weekend for MC to visit and this was the best option. Then Sarah was slammed at work for two weeks straight. Then then then.

Nobody did anything wrong.

Except me. Hitting myself in the head hard enough to bruise myself was the wrong reaction.

The kids fucking up/bailing on chores was normal and appropriate, though frustrating.

We just had too much scheduled and not enough follow through to get it all done. That happens.

Why do I turn abso-fucking-lutely everything into deserve?

My kids do a really ordinary quantity of fucking up. It’s ok that they are kids. I strongly suspect that if I had been fully medicated I would have been annoyed and upset… but I wouldn’t have flipped out.

I’m not sure that any one of the things that happened yesterday were really as bad as they felt in the moment. It’s just that there were a bunch of them. And I really need to give a shout out to Noah. He managed me. He was great.

But I don’t want to need managing. That’s embarrassing and pathetic.

Yesterday I lost my shit. It was a horrible day. I haven’t flipped out that badly in a number of years, Noah verifies. This is why I document. So I know that I haven’t been doing this all the time. This is genuinely unusual. It was kind of a perfect storm and if I want to prevent the next one I need to figure out where I can change things.

First problem: I am really freaking out over this whole “trying to not look like a dirty hippy” bullshit. I am utterly shocked by the degree this hurts me. This is raising my ambient freak out level every minute and it has been doing so for weeks. I hate my looks. I hate my face. I think I am both just pretty enough to get problems and not pretty enough to be worth anything. I know a lot of beautiful people who are basically paid for existing and being attractive. That is not my life and never could be. Putting makeup on feels stressful. Not because running an eyeliner around my eye is hard but because doing anything to draw attention to myself is potentially dangerous.

The last few times I was raped forcibly were on nights I had put a lot of effort into my appearance. It’s not that every time I have done so I have been in danger. That was over 12 years ago.

But it’s utterly shocking to me how many people feel free to comment on my face. Going to the grocery store is a fucking head fuck. Whether I look good or bad people feel free to comment. I feel like I should start hitting people. But I won’t.

So thinking about trying to look better is making me feel like I’ve been rubbed with a cheese grater and I’m overly sensitive and brittle and angry. And I’ve had a couple of pairs of pants split recently. And more of my pairs of pants are about to split (the fabric is visibly giving up the ghost) and I was supposed to go to San Francisco yesterday so I could go to this neat travel clothing store and try on clothes. So I could have some fun/useful pants for the upcoming travel.

I realized that every pair of pants in my drawer were either purchased for the the time period between my first two pregnancies (MC is turning 8), the trip to Scotland (7 years ago), or the road trip (I shopped 4 years ago). No wonder the ass seams are splitting.

I was also going to look in some stores for a purse of a more appropriate size because all of my options in my house are too small or too big and it’s really frustrating to have to carry a huge backpack all the time for a purse worth of stuff.

But yeah. I didn’t go. So I guess I don’t need those items.

There isn’t a local store that has what I want. I’ve looked.

So yeah. That doesn’t help my feelings.

Also: I set up a tea party with Sarah. I had asked about spending a whole fun day together and getting our nails done and really having some festive pampering time together. That turned into a weekend with Middle Child. She wasn’t going to be able to get nail appointments with me so she said she would just do it with MC. I flipped out about that and said, “NO. I asked for it. It can’t be for him.” But then work fucked her (she’s totally wiped) and we didn’t do the weekend with MC at all. I had wanted a fun dress up day. It turned into a big thing for my son instead of me. Then it got cancelled all together.

So I asked for a thing. It turned into a thing that wasn’t really about me. Then never mind at all.

I asked for it because my bucket feels really empty and I’m tired and I feel shitty and stupid and bad about myself.

And yesterday when I wanted to get ready, before anything had happened… I spent the day begging Eldest Child to do the fucking laundry because I don’t have a lot of cute clothes and they were all dirty.

She put stuff on “quick dry”. So the clothes wouldn’t dry at all in restarting the dryer over and over. It was an accident. She’s a kid. She didn’t know what she was doing.

But I was freaking out about doing laundry for hours. Because I wanted to start getting ready and I couldn’t. And as I’m wandering back and forth in the house fretting about how I can’t get ready for the fun day I really desperately felt I needed… while everyone else in my house had time to gussy up.

I felt like shit. Yeah of course that’s how it went. That’s how it is supposed to go. Because I’m shit and they are not.

So basically I said fuck this. I’m not going to a fancy tea party looking like shit when everyone else gets to dress up and be pretty and have fun. I won’t have fun. I’ll spend the whole time feeling like the food has no flavor because it’s overpowered by my snot as I cry.

Because I’m stupid.

And at some point in expressing my frustration about things working out like this… I hit myself in the head. I didn’t break my glasses (good). But I did give myself a festive bruise on my forehead and hand. They both hurt a lot. Good job, genius.

I asked Noah if I’m obnoxious about the dressing up/wanting to be pretty thing very often and he agreed that it’s something like twice a year I do this. I want to feel like I look nice approximately twice a year. And very frequently my kids stomp all over that. It’s a rough set up for us. Like, going to Dickens Fair. If I’m going to get into costume and dress up that takes time. I don’t do it very often. I’m not practiced and quick. So my kids demand that I make much of them first… and then there isn’t time to make much of me. So I often end up in pants as they are dressed nice and I feel so angry and bitter and unworthy and shitty about myself.

How come me wanting something means they fucking get it and I can go whistle?

My friend pointed out that this was my fault because I need to set the boundaries. Very useful advice, that. So. I have spent a few hundred dollars (memberships on websites where babysitters supposedly gather) and probably over a hundred hours looking for fucking support with my kids. I’ve emailed dozens of potential babysitters. Do you know how much help I’ve been able to find since the babysitter moved away 15 months ago? Yeah. Basically not any.

So. When you tell me that I should create more space for myself… WHERE AND HOW AND WITH WHAT FUCKING SUPPORT?

I’ve tried to hire it. I can’t. I’ve tried finding friends to volunteer. That ended up with the fucking Bonus Mama threatening to hit my kids for years.

We’ve had a lot of processing conversations about what I did to my children by exposing them to that fucking woman. Because I needed god damn support. It’s my fault my children were threatened with being hit if they didn’t clean up after someone else’s children because I needed babysitting and that’s what I could get.

So. Keep telling me how it’s all my fault I don’t have more space for myself. That’ll help fix things. Cause clearly we have so little outside contact because I don’t care and I don’t try. Sure.

I put them in camps. I put them in classes. None of these are enough. I’d be happy to pay the support. I’m not just complaining about not having volunteers. I can’t find an employee. Folks around here want $35+/hr and a guaranteed minimum of 20+ hours a week. To pay for that I’d need to get a job and then I should just fucking put them in school for free.

It’s funny that my kids sometimes try to pull this “I understand. You don’t like being around me” thing. I respond, “Yeah. Clearly I hate being around you. That’s why I sent you to boarding school.” “Wait, what? I don’t go to boarding school.” “Oh. Ok so I don’t hate being around you that much. I just hate being around you so much that I make you go to school for 7 hours a day.” “Wait, what? You don’t do that. You keep me home with you.” “Oh wait. So… I keep you with me basically 24/7 but occasionally I ask for an hour off to be alone in my head and that hour off MEANS I DON’T LIKE YOU AND DON’T WANT TO BE AROUND YOU. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!”

EC was able to wrap her mind around this concept when I explained it in terms of her wanting to go to summer camp and have a break from her brother occasionally. You don’t want an all the time break. But a little break sometimes is nice.

Also, yesterday I hit the wall of running out of medication. I’m down to one cheesecake and vape stuff.

I used the vape pen yesterday after Noah asked me to please do so. I don’t like using it because I almost threw up. My body is not interested in smoking. And when I smoke I have to take a shower before I pick the baby up again which is often inconvenient. I probably ingested 25-50 mg. Lately my usage has climbed back up. The pediatrician told me that if I am in as much pain as I am… there is no detectable impact on Her Sweetness at this point so she was comfortable with me using a bit more. Pain has been negatively impacting my caregiving abilities. So I have been using more. During the pregnancy I white knuckled with 100mg/day. That stayed true for the fourth trimester. In the past three months I climbed to 250-300mg/day. It has been helping a lot. And then I fell off a cliff yesterday when I ran out. That really doesn’t help. But I need to find more coping methods before I try to travel without medication. I think it would be catastrophically stupid for me to show up in Malaysia for the first two weeks of a tolerance break.

This is a warning shot off the bow. I need to get this behavior under control.

My really inappropriate ranting yesterday was about hating myself and feeling like I don’t deserve anything good ever. It didn’t get really grotesque but it wasn’t good. I have apologized but jesus I’m sick of me and my stupid ass useless apologies. I don’t seem to be able to stop fucking up permanently. So the apologies seem so bullshit sometimes. Other people comment on how freely I apologize. Sometimes I wonder if I have devalued it.

I don’t think my children were awful yesterday. I think things didn’t work out and I needed it to work out and I flipped out. Things fail sometimes. Frankly, Sarah was feeling like crap. Everyone in my house is getting sick.

Oh, I’m sure that isn’t helping. My nose is running and my throat is a little sore. The baby is a snot monster. Noah and the big kids are commenting that they don’t feel good either.

Part of needing yesterday was that dressing up with Sarah is one of the more fun activities in my life. I get to do it… every few years. Dressing up has been on my mind a lot lately (not like super formal, but not looking ugly and dirty) so I wanted to remind myself that there are times when it is joyous instead of just stressful and shitty.

And then yesterday happened. Cheers.

I don’t think anyone fucked me. I don’t think anyone was purposefully mean or rude or selfish or anything. Things didn’t work out and I have no bandwidth for absorbing disappointment.

The weekend party is going to be stressful as fuck and not about being pretty. I just can’t. There will be absolutely no room in that weekend for me to be stupid and think about my stupid face. I just can’t. That’s not fair to my friends. I can’t allow myself to even have prettiness cross my mind or I’ll fuck things up. Like I do.

I can have fun with my friends. But I can only do so many things at once. “Prettiness” uses so much fucking bandwidth. It’s so overwhelming and draining. It takes time and energy and focus and rechecking and being careful and mindful all the time of touching my face and…. I can’t do that and focus on a bunch of people. I am not capable. I am too pathetic.

Hey I remember completely freaking out at the last big birthday party I had. (30th) I wonder what I’ll do to fuck this one up.

And tomorrow is dear Middle Child’s 8th birthday. He has quite a day planned out. He knows exactly what he wants to eat all day. He knows what games he wants to play. I do have a therapy appointment… it uhhhh seems important…

I have two therapy appointments before we go to Mexico. Seems wise. I’ve seen my therapist twice in the past 9 months.

All things considered…. I’m holding together possibly better than expected.

I feel ashamed when I attach emotional importance to events and then things go sideways and I’m upset. It feels immature and like a real problem. Like I should be more mature or some shit. But I get to see Sarah once a month and we skip a lot of months for health reasons.

I am experiencing distress around how much of my energy and time are sucked into care taking other people. It’s my life and I choose it and I don’t want to give up the life I have. But it’s a lot. I get really tired and worn out and I feel very depleted.

Out of the past 30 days only 10 days have involved walking less than 3 miles. Most of those days were like 2.8 miles. I’ve been within spitting distance over/under 5 miles on 8 days. We have 7 weeks until we go to Malaysia. During that time period I need to make it so I’m not going under 4 miles on any days and have at least some of the days be closer to 7/8 miles. Because we are going to be walking that much in Kuala Lumpur and if we want to have fun while we do it… we need to be in shape. Or we will cry in pain.

Today I need to get a storage unit and start filling it. We are having a house party in five days and I’d like to have space for humans instead of boxes. Lots of boxes.

I need to not flip out like that again any year soon. But I also need to acknowledge to myself that it has been a long time since I have been that upset and that represents a lot of progress. I can be proud of the progress even if I still slip up sometimes.

I’m still in a better place than I was ever supposed to be capable of attaining.

Even though I’m still a fuck up.

My friends are all very different people. I don’t have a “friend mode” I can sink into the way I have a “teacher mode”. Some of my friends are perverts of the most extreme stripe. Some of my friends are conservative Evangelicals. Some of my friends are immigrants and they find my behavior to be absolutely unpredictable and odd.

All of these people like me for me. Not for what I do for them. There are periods of time where I do jack shit for people. I don’t provide food. I don’t go help move furniture. I don’t babysit.

I still have friends.

Some of my friends I can talk to nearly daily. Some of them it needs to be a few hours in a year and that’s ok.

There is no one way to be my friend. I would be sad if all of my relationships tried for some kind of “equality”.

My relationships are healthy and strong when I like myself and I like my friends and they like themselves and they like me. Things fall down when I hate myself. I create problems that don’t need to be there. I’m tense and argumentative. I’m prone to bait people just to be a shit.

If I want to continue these beautiful friendships, if I want to keep the chosen family I have created for myself… that is complicated. I can’t blow things up when I’m pissy. I have to proactively talk about problems and find solutions.

I wish that didn’t require 99% of my mental capacity. Some days I feel like I only have about 7% going spare.

But parenting has taught me that there is never again going to be an easier stage. “I want the solution to be easier” will probably never happen again. My life is hard and it could totally get harder. I need to be stronger. I need to have more patience. The problems are not going to get easier for me so that I can stop growing.

And that’s ok. I accept that deal. I even embrace it.

I will find a way to create the healthy boundaries that will allow my beautiful friendships to continue. I will figure out how to move the slider from 4 hours a day to 4 hours a year without being upset about it. No one is being nasty by having their own needs and boundaries. No one.

We are loving each other by saying, “Hey this doesn’t work for me” and giving the other person a chance to adjust. Even though on some days my boundaries are not perfectly observed… all of the people who truly sucked at that have been ejected. I don’t put up with shit. Ok, I put up with a little shit. Because human beings will always give a little bit of shit.

Even Sarah gets on my nerves and she’s the least irritating person I’ve ever fucking met.

Me getting frustrated is about me. And the only person in this entire world that I have the power to change:

Me.

Do you know what I want to say to every single person I know right now? I love you. We’ll find a way. Because I need to know you are in the world. Even if the way is, “Krissy I’m sick of talking to you. You can follow me on social media but shut up about it.”

That is an option.

I have this thing I do. I decide that in order to feel valuable in myself I have to feel like I am valuable to other people. I kind of have this expectation that I should be a wind up toy, waiting until someone wants to interact with me. But when I do this I tend to start leaving more and more space in my head for other people to define me.

I cause problems when I do this. Because I get mad. Because people never want me in the ways I truly wish they would want me because that’s life for every single person. I know I’m being ridiculous.

I’m thinking about myself inside of relationships. Know how I’m really good at harsh boundaries with people who aren’t in my inner circle? That’s to mask how shitty I am at boundaries with people inside the circle. I don’t want to tell them no or that’s not ok or this has to stop. Because if I hold the line like that I take a risk and people who have made it to the inner circle are few and far between. If I fuck with those relationships I fuck with my core identity.

So I try to guess what people want from me and I try to manifest it. My guesses are often shit and me trying to frantically manifest what I think someone else wants from me very rarely works out. I fuck that up left and right.

So then I’m in this position where I know that I have changed and my friend has changed (life is like that if you are lucky!) and I don’t know what my friend wants from me and I feel hollow and scared and like I need to tap dance faster so I don’t ruin everything.

Then I get angry because FUCK YOU FOR MAKING ME FEEL LIKE I RUIN EVERYTHING. IT’S NOT ALL ME, DAMNIT.

Then I notice that the anger is inappropriate because this was all a bullshit cycle in my head anyway that nobody but me opted into. Nobody went out of their way to try and make me feel anything.

Sigh.

I am trying to recognize that my friends were attracted to me because I am a dynamic person. Nobody comes to me for consistency. People come to me for constant change and improvement. That’s the schtick here. People who have stuck around for any length of time need to be comfortable with me changing and changing what I ask for regularly.

So why do I feel so fucking allergic to trying to communicate about those changes? Why do I think those people need me to be in an unchanging box?

Because I’m an idiot.

Because this is why I can’t move to Portland. Because every time I talk to Dad or the folks at the munch they act like I’m 19 and have no kids and I am the person I was when they met me. Err, no. They act like it’s ok to fuck with me for shits and giggles.

We all get to have our own thoughts and feelings. Some of my friends are better able to validate some sets of my thoughts and feelings than others. I know this. It’s not a fuzzy idea it’s a rock solid concept in my brain. I already KNOW that some of my friends are not able to be supportive on some topics because of their own life experiences.

I need to stop looking to those people to be potentially capable of perspectives they are incapable of having. It doesn’t trash the friendship for me to have boundaries about topics. It is more likely to preserve the friendship and have it go on for a long time. It’s ok to have a white list of topics instead of a black list. That doesn’t mean a friendship has degraded. It means that you recognize the limits of your compatibility and you are making sure you don’t rub off the edges.

I am going to learn how to be a grown up and handle these things. I am not going to fuck up a friendship this year. I am not. I am not. I am not. I am not. Things will be at least as good at the end of this year with my friendships as they were at the beginning. Damnit. Or it won’t be about me.

We all have different limitations and complications and problems. Love means trying to find a way to communicate without shaming or pissiness. Love means “I will find a way to carve out a space for you in what I have left. It won’t come out of the main meat I have to live on, but I have extra. Part of it is for you always and forever. But you have to come out of the extra.”

Maybe that extra won’t happen weekly or monthly, maybe only a few times a decade. But it’ll come. And I’ll give it to you because I love you.

There is no shame in only having a little to share and sharing it with your whole heart.

I don’t think my friends are secretly angry I’m not conforming more of my life to them. And if they are… that’s a problem. When a scheduling conflict arrises it isn’t about hatred or disdain. It’s about life. We are grown ups. Grown ups have a lot of shit to do. If you don’t like it then you need to grow the fuck up.

But I feel like someone must be secretly angry at me and I punish myself for it up one side and down the other. I feel like “I’ve been renegotiating boundaries. I’ve been asking for changes. Clearly this means I’m bad and I should be abandoned.” But that’s from me.

My life would get a lot better, my friendships would get a lot better if I didn’t do so much hurting myself and claiming I’m doing it in proxy for my friends.

I really appreciate my little family. It’s not that any of us are perfect or faultless… but we all try so hard. I let my kids get a little glimpse behind the curtain last night. Middle Child has been expressing a lot of anger/frustration over me wanting to know his thoughts and feelings but I don’t share all of mine. Yesterday we had a long conversation about why the boundaries are where they are and why they will continue.

But we did talk about food. And I cried. More context:

We were talking about chores and Eldest Child was mentioning that she’d like food preparation to be something she does more of. She likes making meals–it’s fun for her. Noah talked to her about how she could volunteer herself at more stages of the food process and I said, “It’s ok for you to help all you want but this is not going to be an assigned chore for you for many years.” She asked why. Then I decided to tell them more background as a way of giving context to both of them and letting MC know more about me in ways he’s been asking to.

I talked about how I got into the position of eating only ramen. That was the only thing I could control. It was the only thing I could eat that I could predict how much pain my body would be in. I talked about the disruption of my early life. I pointed out that when I was their ages I’d already had a year or two that I basically missed with my mother. I told them about Sarah moving in with us and my completely and totally inappropriate flip out about dinner not being on the table on time.

We then provided more history on why “dinner not being on the table” is a domestic violence problem and tied to Sarah’s personal history… so yeah. Me kicking a cabinet door off the wall because I was upset about food not being prepared for me…. That was 100% an abusive act.

Then the kids wanted me to explain why it was an abusive act. How am I abusing the cabinet? Ahhhh… it’s not about the cabinet. It’s about letting people know that if they disappoint you that there will be a violent response.

The lightbulb went on. Ohhhhhhhhhh. Yeah. That’s not ok.

No. That’s not ok.

So no, baby, you are not allowed to have feeding me be one of your chores any year soon here if ever. I’m not rational. I’m not nice. I’m aggressive and scary and a problem. So… you don’t need to be in a position where I’m likely to turn that shit on you. Ever. Never ever ever ever in a million years.

I asked how often I have to remind her about her other chores. How would it go if I had to add pestering her for me to eat food? She understood. She will help her dad and not worry about it being a formally titled “job” at this point.

I let them hug me.

That was a big deal. I told sad stories and I let people touch me afterwards because they wanted to comfort me. I let them. Usually I will actively rebuff anyone who is silly enough to offer me comfort. I initially backed away and put my arms full length between us. I didn’t want it.

I realized that I was hurting myself and my kids if I did that. People want to comfort each other. Hearing about another person’s pain and not being allowed to offer comfort is distressing. My kids were hearing about pain their mother has experienced. Pushing them away and being nasty would have hurt them. Letting them hug me and say they are so sorry that happened… that’s part of the grief process. That’s part of the circle of being part of a family.

That’s not how our family should be operating all the time. And in general I’m still keeping my shit firmly behind the curtain.

But I let my kids hug me and feel sad for me yesterday. I can still count on one hand the number of times I’ve told sad stories from my childhood and let them comfort me. That feels important. This cannot be constant or regular. That can’t be the focus of our lives. But when it comes to setting boundaries and explaining limitations…. very rarely it can be useful.

I’m weird about food. I am. I have a lot of quirks and little fussy points. My kids see a lot of them but they don’t understand. That’s normal and appropriate. Now they understand a little bit more because that’s important. If they understand a little bit more of the framework… they won’t take it so personally when I’m being me doing my thing. “Oh, mom’s just doing her thing” instead of “People must be like that.”

EC was feeling kind of offended that I don’t think she’s “capable”. Oh honey. It’s not about your ability to prepare food. It’s that you are a kid. It’s that it is never appropriate for me to expect you to sustain my life. It’s that I get really hangry and it’s not ok to turn that on you when you are being a normal kid. It’s that food is loaded and emotional and intense and I’m better than I was but I’m not back to a normal person’s reactions to food. It’s hard.

She understood and decided that she didn’t want to be offended anymore. It’s not you baby, it’s me. I don’t want to get mad at you. I don’t want to rage at you. That’s not ok. I want to accept the gracious offerings of your kind volunteer meals without expectations. I want to know that it is a bonus gift you are giving to your family and we should all be so happy you love us enough to want to try.

I don’t want it to be just your job and you suck if you fail. I’m such an asshole about that dynamic. I’m great with volunteers! I’m demanding and I have too many expectations once it is “your job”.

I’ve been talking to the kids more about setting ourselves up for success or failure. We have to be honest about our temperaments and abilities.

I feel grateful every day that I get to be part of this family. The smiles are so sweet. The cuddling is so gentle and refreshing. I feel like even though we have waves and bumps and hard moments… I could not be in a better place.

It’s the quality of the smiles. Everyone in my house has this melty “I’m so safe and happy and I feel relaxed and life is good” smile. That smile releases something in my chest. I just want to be near more of that smile.