My brain feels so fuzzy. I feel muddled and confused and only sorta mentally aware. I feel like I haven’t slept properly in quite a while. I wonder if any of it has to do with using Sativa during the day for the past two days? I don’t recall this happening in the past but I’ve been off Sativa for a few months. I doubt it is related. But I’m feeling so spacey.

The sleep study was interesting. I had a lot of lucid dreaming. I kept thinking I was the Diva from The Fifth Element because as I flopped back and forth in the bed I had to manage the weird bundle of cords coming off of my head. It felt like her hair or something. I felt like I was awake/aware all night and I also felt like it only lasted about 5 minutes.

The other person who was there for a sleep study arrived after me and left before me. I think he had fewer connections on during the process because if not I don’t understand how the employee had a chance to finish taking all his stuff off before I woke up. Also, his face didn’t have massive weird white blotches. I kept waking up pawing my face because the cords and wires felt awful.

I have a low amount of hope for my ability to get used to a CPAP. But I’ll try!

I don’t get the results for a week.

If I don’t feel better in a few hours I may wuss out and ask Noah to drive FMC to therapy because I’m not sure it’s a great thing for me to drive today. I feel… numb and cobwebby and confused.

The second trimester is kicking my ass up one side and down the other. I think I kind of remember this happening in previous pregnancies too? The first trimester is rough and the second trimester is worse. I’m nauseous all the god damn time. I can barely eat. I’m still not up to pre-pregnancy weight. It amuses me to think that all of the early baby growth comes from the baby and placenta eating me. Any day now every ounce the baby gains is an ounce directly stolen from me because I’m not gaining weight as a system. Really… it’s already true. But it gets way more pronounced as the baby grows faster.

I have rarely had the chance to talk to other pregnant people who lose a bunch of weight. I am curious if other people have weird feelings about their bodies being eaten. Like, it feels weird in my body as it happens. Like I can feel the parasite sucking me away.

I wish I could eat more. I’m not hungry. Food is horrible and I can barely choke it down without feeling ill. I feel really sick.

And the more sick I feel the more anti-social and unworthy of ever having a friendship again I feel. Which is why I’m grateful for the lovely friends who check in with me even as I do a crappy job of reaching out.

Most of my relationships rely on a lot of effort from me. I am ok with this balance in the main. I just have nothing to give right now and instead I am a bottomless pit of need. It feels different this time though, easier. I feel less like a bottomless pit and more like I’m just needier than usual. It helps that in this pregnancy the kids are being so damn nice.

I read on the internet that mothers who need/want help from their children are terrible lazy people. Ok. Sure. I’m terrible and lazy. But I want the fucking help. My daughter made her own damn bed this morning and I am not sorry. (FMC can’t make the top bunk alone yet and that’s ok…)

My kids can clean up their own stuff. I don’t need to do it for them. They can get food for themselves most of the time; they don’t have to but they are capable and I feel good about this. To be fair… food mostly comes from Noah so that’s not my trip anymore.

Noah and I had a really good conversation yesterday. We locked ourselves in my room while the kids played (loudly–we knew they were fine at every moment) for two hours and we talked and had sex because frankly… we need to. We talked more about M/s and bdsm and my cheating. We talked more about my fuck ups and mistakes and Noah’s projections and assumptions. I feel it was a slightly better conversation than we’ve had for most of the last year.

I completely blew up for a few reasons. The biggest one was really that I couldn’t absorb more painful sex “for the team” and I have complicated feelings about that. I feel like I made a mountain out of a molehill. I feel like I tried so hard to ask for that to stop and it didn’t stop. I feel like I have had so many decades of pain in my cunt that there is no way it can be a small thing ever again. I feel like if I am not allowed to cope with that in any of the ways I have usually coped with that… I need god damn something.

Traditionally I coped with being a hole for usage by cutting myself or burning myself or hitting my head on concrete. I am not allowed to do any of those things anymore and I can’t convinced myself that I am small and bad and I should be in pain without them. And that means I can’t deal with my cunt hurting like that.

Casual sex was… really the most gentle potential self harm I could come up with. And I picked people who genuinely care about me and who were united as a front in telling me to go home and get my shit together when they realized I was… not interacting with them in healthy or appropriate ways.

I feel like as far as going off the rails goes…

I made sure I didn’t damage my body in a way that was going to have long-term consequences because I’m supposed to not do that anymore. So I’m upset with myself and I feel like I coped as well as I fucking could.

Which doesn’t mean it is a way of coping Noah can bear.

Which also doesn’t mean that it proves that at my core I don’t want Noah and I’m not excited by Noah.

And that’s a lot of how Noah took it and continues to take it. Which is a real problem for my marriage. I made that bed and now I get to lie in it.

It’s all so complicated. Sometimes it is very hard that I have come so far that people expect me to be able to function like a healthy, whole person and I’m still not. I’m better than I ever was… but I still struggle with all these ways I’m just not ok. I’ve come a long way but that doesn’t mean I have the background other people have to lean on.

When I panic or feel scared… I still want to revert to programming. Even though I know that programming is going to kill me or wreck my life.

Do you know how hard it is that panic or fear has to be the trigger for the most intense lock-down control of my behavior? So I don’t blow up my life.

That’s not normal. That’s not how humans are designed to function. Fear and panic mean you lose control not that you have to be under way more control.

How come black belts still get mugged and raped? Because fear shuts you down. Fear makes it impossible to function in your normal manner.

But for me fear has to mean that I have much finer control than average. Fear means I have to consciously and deliberately slow down how I am thinking and think through the behavioral options much more carefully than normal and I have to triple check every thought I have to see if it is appropriate or if it is fucked up by the programming I experienced.

We are all programmed by our childhoods.

My programming tends to put me in danger over and over.

Realistically… I’m super happy with myself that when I went hunting when I was freaking out because I couldn’t figure out how to change a dynamic in my life… I picked people who weren’t all that likely to hurt me. In terms of the scale of my life… that was actually well done. I didn’t go hunting Craigslist. I met people from okcupid but in a coffee shop and that was it. I didn’t go looking for danger. I stuck with people who would hurt me in very safe ways. I picked people who have demonstrated for a long time that they want me to be happy. That’s… a huge step up for me.

Even when I’m doing something for mixed, probably bad reasons… I’m making better choices. That has to be progress.

I picked people who were kind to me instead of treating me badly. That’s still a sign of improving life choices.

My nods to self harm are less destructive over time. That’s something.

I still did a lot of harm to my life and to my marriage… but I didn’t shorten my life.

But now we are back to the point where I have to figure out how to get Noah to believe that I like him and I’m excited by him. That’s kinda hard when I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I have poured out my lifeblood for him and that’s fucking exhausting. How do you exhaust yourself utterly and still have room for excitement?

I think we do have exciting moments. But they are mixed in with a lot of not very exciting moments because I’m fucking tired. Yes, I seemed more excited by dates in a minute by minute way… and I also spent very little time with those people.

Scale matters.

I’m so tired I feel like breathing is an effort. I want to spend weeks lying in a bed doing nothing.

How in the fuck am I going to make someone believe I am excited by anything?

Tonight is my LONG AWAITED sleep study. We are playing in an RPG today so we are going to drop the second vehicle at the clinic on our way to game so I can go straight to the evaluation at the end of the game play and still get home in the morning.

Since no one felt overwhelmed with desire to babysit tomorrow we will have a restful day post-sleep study. That’s probably wiser anyway. We collapsed on each other on Thursday when Noah got home. Another day of doing that would be lovely.

EC and I processed almost everything they want to sell at the consignment sale last night. The sale isn’t till next month but I told her if she waits till the last minute I’m not helping and she has to do all the frantic rushed work alone. She elected to ask for help early. Clever girl. We had a lovely date together doing the work. Noah and FMC had a date of their own.

Our kids are hilarious about the way they talk about how there are DIFFERENT KINDS OF DATES. They are really emphatic that they do not go on ROMANTIC dates with us, just friendly ones. It makes me giggle. As if I need them to let me know not to have romantic feelings towards them when we are out. Ok darling. I promise to put my romantic feelings in a box when I’m with you. *cough*

FMC got more forking dolls for their birthday. Grandma’s box arrived. A boy and a girl. FMC has decided they are brother and sister so “No kissing or nothing because that’s not ok between siblings.”

This life they are living… it doesn’t resemble the world I grew up in.

I’m so glad.

We are having a lot more sibling rivalry and I need to read up on how the fuck to manage it. I have done a good job of teaching EC to be patient with younger kids and generous with her stuff. FMC is a tyrant and spends most of their time talking about how much better they are than the people around them. I’m feeling some feelings about this.

I hope FMC turns out to be a better big sibling than they are a younger sibling. They still hit a lot. They still call names whenever they are thwarted. This is all directed at their sister and no one else.

EC is not a god damn punching bag. The only thing that slows FMC down is when EC punches back.

I’m at the point where I say, “FMC isn’t a baby. If they hit you… don’t take it.”

I have no desire to encourage fighting. I have less desire to teach EC they need to accept being hit without response. Oh fuck that. We start with our words. But if someone won’t stop fucking hitting you… flatten them.

You do not owe anyone the acceptance and tolerance of pain. Fuck. That. Noise.

We are talking about it in family therapy. This has been a consistent pattern for a while but I feel like it’s escalating and I’m frustrated. I need more books.

I was the shithead baby. I don’t know what to do about this. I never hit my siblings (they were 5, 8, & 13 years older than me… if I tried I was flattened) much but I did spend a lot of time talking about how much smarter I was. Because I was.

I’m a judgey piece of shit and I’ll say it is less clear that FMC is head and shoulders smarter than EC. They might be. But it’s close. My siblings uhhhh…. well maybe they might have been smarter than me if they hadn’t all started abusing drugs and alcohol in junior high. I didn’t. I ended up with a better working brain.

*shrug*

But yeah. The competitive spirit is real. Real fucking frustrating.

Sigh.

For the second pregnancy in my life a cherished friend came over and asked me Why? It came up in context of telling me how surprised they were that two of their friends share their values so little that they are willing to have a third child. Don’t we think that is a terrible thing to do?!

I understand population growth issues. I do. I understand that having fewer children in general is wise. I get it.

I also have a desperate need for family that just isn’t going away and there isn’t another way to manage this problem. I’ve tried the chosen family thing. Guess what? At crunch time… folks go back to their “real” families and I’m left on my own. Except now I’ve created my own real family and they really like me and want me with them on every single instance of those days when everyone else leaves me to go back to their families.

I know I am selfish. I want a family. I want a big family. I can’t tell you what it means to a dirty little unwanted street brat that I have this growing, extremely loving family. I have a home. I have a place. I am wanted here.

I mean… someday my children will grow up and create more boundaries. But all signs point to my children wanting to still know their parents some day. They won’t live in our back pockets forever… but we will talk.

I get the strong impression that my children are the sort who will enjoy coming home for holidays at least sometimes. And I’m the sort who would say, “If coming home sounds boring is there any way I can sweeten the deal for a visit?”

Bribery is awesome.

There are lessons about parenting, about being a mother that I desperately still need to learn. Like, so far I have two children with wildly compatible personalities. What are the chances of that continuing as a trend? Ha. Ha. … ha. Oh shit. At some point I’m going to get a child for whom I am going to have to drastically change and grow.

I look forward to that.

My children are a spur to my behavior changes unlike any other in the entire world. I brought them into this world and I believe I fucking owe them a relationship that accommodates where *they* start out. It’s not all about me. I love that mothering has no patience for self absorption, well… not the way I do it. This is why I lock myself into rooms sometimes so I can be as self absorbed as possible for a bit. When my kids are present… I’m basically not allowed. I have too much I have to focus on outside myself. I have to worry about their hunger as much or more than my own. I have to worry about their energy level as much or more than my own. I have to consider about their emotional state.

I require myself to see my children as autonomous people I don’t understand yet. It’s why I ask so god damn many questions. Because I don’t actually know you even though I’ve spent thousands of hours staring at you. You are still a mystery. A glorious, beautiful mystery I will spend my entire life figuring out. Thank you for being here with me.

I want more children because I walked into this relationship saying three…. maybe two children.

I’m terrified of the fourth. Fuck. I’m terrified of giving birth to any more. I’m not so talented at labor. It is really hard to contain my rude feelings when my dearest friends talk to me about labor. I want to be kind of all JUST DON’T TALK ABOUT YOUR SHINY LESS THAN 24 HOUR LABORS. I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR SUCH STORIES UNLESS AND UNTIL I HAVE ONE OF MY OWN, CAPICHE!?

I don’t really mean it. But I’m feeling really scared of labor. My last labor almost fucking killed me after 9 fucking days. I’m allowed to have some big feelings, here. Can we talk about y’alls short labors after I am on the far side of this terrifying labor that may take who knows how many days because my body just doesn’t want to work harder.

I’m seriously ok with a c-section this time. I now believe that a c-section probably wouldn’t be much worse than my last god damn vaginal delivery. And I’d have good drugs. C-sections have a 6 week recovery period but you are supposed to be up and walking around as quickly as you can manage. I will probably be able to manage in less than the 2 weeks it took me to walk after my last god damn delivery.

I take it pretty seriously that labor used to kill half of all women. That woulda been me not many decades ago without question.

So I’m terrified of giving birth. But I want the people on the other side of this travail so bad I shake.

But whyyyyyyy don’t you adopt?

I hear this question so fucking frequently.

Do you not understand that I have a mother-wounding bigger than Alaska? In adoption… the baby has lost their birth mother for some reason. That’s a wounding. With the wounding I already have I truly believe I would be bad at centering the needs of a child with a similar wounding. I believe it would be hard for me to comfort someone for decades about the fact that I am not the person they want to have comforting them.

Which isn’t to say that all adoptions go badly. I know some families who have adopted and done very well together. The mothers are wonderful. I admire them deeply. But I believe they have a well of something inside them that I lack.

I am pointing out my failures. Not failures in the entire system.

I really need to be someone’s person. Not someone’s tolerated replacement. I can’t do that. The way my children love me? That’s a balm to my soul. That calms me down and gives me focus for changing and growing that nothing else has ever done. I’m supposed to be here with them. I’m supposed to take care of them. It’s not that I’m supposed to suffocate them forever with attention and smothering… but I’m supposed to be part of their constellation of support.

I’m also supposed to make sure they have friends and other adult support because let’s find a healthy balance here. This isn’t all about me.

But I belong here. I am an integral part of this dance.

No one in this house will tell me I’m not their real mother so fuck me. They will tell me they hate me. Some day a child will probably tell me they wish they had another mother.

But even that has less sting. I wish you weren’t what you are. But you are it.

Ok!

I’m allowed to take care of these people and it isn’t creepy and codependent. It’s necessary and appropriate! The overwhelming instinct I have is ok here. I’m not wrong.

Do you know how it feels to me to not be wrong sometimes? It’s kind of fucking rare. I assume I’m wrong in the vast majority of circumstances. I’m too loud. I’m too intense. I’m too needy and no one fucking cares. But however I show up to the role of “mother” is ok.

I’ve been reading stuff about Carrie Fisher as a mother. I’m not nearly so wacky. And that’s ok. Mothers have to be different. We have different kids and different lives and different capabilities.

I’m super interested in this third child. Noah and the kids who are here keep talking about a fourth. That’s where I get into my hemming and hawing.

I’m scared I won’t have enough to give. I’ll be 38 or 39 when a fourth child is born. That’s fucking old in my shitty body that didn’t like giving birth at 29. I know it isn’t old in the scope of women giving birth these days. But my body is shitty. These little factors matter. Not to mention that my pregnancies suck ass.

I believe with all my heart that I will do well parenting three. I’m nervous that four will actually hit my limits and I’ll fail. I’m scared that I will let my fourth child feel even a little bit the way I did as a fourth.

I do not want to create a child who will feel like a burden.

I keep saying we’ll see when folks bring it up. Because I don’t know yet and I’m afraid to guesstimate the capacity I will have in three more years. What will be going on medically? Not a fun thing to think about.

I’m 19 weeks pregnant. One more week till I’m halfway. I’m definitely feeling movement already and have been for a bit now during quiet moments. And given that I have IBS and constant abdominal pain from gas and shit moving around I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FEELING OF GAS BUBBLES AND THE FUCKING BABY MOVING AROUND–STOP ARGUING WITH ME.

Near as I can tell, I have more Come to Jesus talks while pregnant than anyone I know. More people feel free to tell me while I’m pregnant that I shouldn’t be pregnant than any of my friends. I guess that’s what being a train wreck in motion will do.

It is hard that it is always close friends I love and respect a lot. At least this time I wasn’t told I would be a failure because of my mental health. Just that I’m not considering everyone on the planet’s well being as I’m being selfish.

Ok that isn’t how it was phrased. But communication is a mixture of what you say and what I hear. I’m always going to turn your mild criticism/off-hand comment into a reason why I’m a disgusting monster who should die. Because communication is about what I expect to hear too.

My friends tell me that no one says things to them while pregnant. Even if they are having the child under very different circumstances.

I mean good fucking grief. I’m married to the same person I’ve always been married to and we get along really well and co-parent together like whoa. I’ve lived in the same house for 11 years. I’m financially stable and secure and my children all have substantial nest eggs for their future. My existing children are really happy and secure and well adjusted.

But I should still totally be talked to about how terrible it is to be pregnant. Because I’m me.

No, because my friend was marveling at the fact that they can’t understand how their friends have such different values about “living green”. (I’m not the only one in their  inner circle to have a third child and they just don’t understand us.)

Selfish twats. There’s your answer for why.

(Ok, I shouldn’t speak for this other mother. That’s rude.)

There has been one week of my children’s life when I was not coherent or capable of parenting because of grief/mental breakdown. I called in the cavalry of my extended community and my children weren’t alone for a minute.

I handle my shit.

I’m not perfect. I’m not the best mother in the world by any stretch of the imagination. But I’m not shitty. I’m not in competition for being in the worst 10% of mothers either. I’m doing ok. Why do I want more children?

Because I want there to be another child in the world who is wildly wanted and who is looked at from birth like they are a person of their own who deserves to be considered and I have exactly one way I can make that true.

Really I have very little power in this life to effect the lives of other people. But I can do this.

I believe that someday, when I learn the lessons I’m working on with my own children, I will be an excellent foster mother. But I sincerely believe I haven’t learned all I need to learn yet and I don’t want to make those mistakes with foster children who have already been hurt enough. My precious bubble wrapped babies can absorb a few fuck ups without losing resiliency. Their lives are pretty awesome. Mistakes that won’t make them flinch will derail someone else’s bonding ability. Perspective matters.

Why is fostering so different from adopting to me? I don’t know. In fostering there is way less implication that you are “getting your own kid”. You are helping to raise someone else’s kid. It’s just full fledged acknowledged. And that I can do. I’m good at that. As long as I know my place and I know it isn’t “mother”. But I am not ready.

I need to learn more about sibling rivalry and in-house fighting with people who more or less get along and love each other. What I know about sibling interactions is so fucking toxic and I’m trying to replace the information in my head. It takes time.

I never learn as fast as I wish I did.

I’ve read a lot of books about being in healthy families. I need to have these feelings in my body because otherwise it’ll be like me teaching that kid trig when I was a teacher. I can teach a thing I don’t understand and can’t duplicate myself… but it’s really hard and I leave feeling drained and worthless and stupid.

Even though Noah thinks I should feel proud and capable… I leave knowing I still don’t understand. I’m just reading it out of a book. I don’t understand in my heart and in my mind and I really want to.

A hollow parroting of what feels safe and healthy to someone else doesn’t feel good to me. I need to understand.

Something I have been noticing, that is a slight left turn. I’ve been noticing that I want more tactile interactions with friends. I’m not using my words and asking for them. But I feel the impulse to ask for snuggling during visits. This is a kind of weird impulse because I’ve spent a lot of time in the past two decades making sure everyone knew to keep their god damn distance except sex and brief greeting/departing hugs. But I’m feeling different. It’s weird. It feels like an interesting shift.

I don’t want to jump everyone. I just want to lean my head on their shoulders. I just want to snuggle the way I get to with my kids. I want to feel that more with adult bodies.

I’m pretty sure this is the strongest this urge has been in my life. I want non-sexual contact. That’s weird for me. For so long it was threatening. I had to turn it into sex or else.

But I’ve been doing this different thing for a while now.

I get to pick up Noah in about six hours. I’m looking forward to that a lot.

Pam suggested that I don’t need to pity people for not having white friends. Oh boy. I sucked air on that one. Shit, I sound that stupid? I don’t think I *pity* people for not having white friends. White people really kind of suck.

It’s more that I have an innate terror of being treated like I am invisible. I don’t need to be someone’s best friend but I need to have people act like I am present.

So like the neighbor on the corner. People referring to her as “That Chinese lady” is erasing and rude. I mean… yes she is both Chinese and a lady… but she has a damn name. She has a personality that is much more interesting and important than her ethnicity. She’s one of the neat gardeners. She has funny stories. She’s super generous and kind.

If all you are willing to acknowledge about her for decades is that she is…. Chinese…. that’s fucking shitty to me. It is her neighbors being fucking self absorbed assholes. Why in the fuck would you not get to know the people who live near you?

I’m not “friends” with everyone in my neighborhood. I don’t have time. But I’m cheerful and outgoing and I introduce myself and I act like people are here. Lots of folks don’t reciprocate much and that’s ok. Even the people who don’t want to be my friends…. I can tell you something about them other than their ethnicity. So and so is incredibly meticulous about their car–they clean it at least once and often two or three times a week; eventually I will be rude enough to ask them if they use their car for work and appearance is completely important. I can tell you who cooks food of such delightful aroma that walking past their house is hard because I waaaaaaant to stoooooooooop.

I know which houses have children even if we don’t speak. I know which houses have elderly people who don’t get out much.

It is weird to me that people would want to live around others for decades and not know these things. I didn’t know all these things in the first 5 years I lived here but after 11 years… why in the hell would you not get to know your neighbors?

My neighbors knock on my door and ask for help reading documents, they borrow tools and ladders, they give me food, they ask me if they can borrow one egg because they ran short for a recipe.

I live in a god damn neighborhood. I live in a community and a lot of it I have created by force of will. I’m not ok with people referring to “The Chinese Lady On The Corner” as if it is a title. She has a name. She is a person. Don’t do that. And people tell me all the time they are glad I’m here doing this. Folks are enjoying knowing people more.

WHY DID Y’ALL WAIT UNTIL SOME PUSHY BITCH MOVED IN TO ENACT THIS SHIT!? Most of these people were here for 20 or more years before me. But they didn’t meet anyone. They didn’t feel…. I don’t know… permission?

It isn’t that I think that everyone must have white friends. It is that I think it is horrible to be alienated in your neighborhood. I think it is horrible to not be able to have people who pass you every day treat you like a real person.

A lot of my neighbors barely speak English. They speak a myriad of languages. They teach me small phrases or greetings because clearly I want to reach out. Most of the older people who walk past my house for health purposes seem to find me pretty funny.

I wish more people wanted to create community connections across different cultural lines. Not because it is a pity to not have white friends. If this were a Hispanic neighborhood and the Indian/Asian immigrants felt they couldn’t talk to anyone I would think that was sad too. Even if you basically took white people out of the equation.

It isn’t that everyone should want white bastards in their life.

I’m not color blind. I see race. I see differences. I think differences are what make us interesting. I think that having friends who do not have your specific background is educational, fun, and a good idea for future security.

In my life I have been shocked by who has given me help during the worst of crunch times. Near strangers.

I know my neighbors and I give my help freely and unstintingly. I don’t keep score of favors. There are some people I help a bunch and some I don’t help at all. We share food with a lot of houses and we discuss gardening with far more people.

I can find stuff in common. For one thing, it’s really fun to talk gardening with folks for whom English is not their native language because we talk about the names of what we are growing and then it gets into neat etymology conversations about the similarity in sounds.

I don’t think anyone should be pitied for not having white friends. But I think it is wonderful to have friends who can help you think about the world in different ways.

I think this springs from not really having a culture I strongly identify with in a positive way. I don’t want to be reaffirmed in my identity. I imagine it would be very different for folks like Pam’s family who like their culture and their language and don’t really see benefit to branching out.

But that is really fucking hard for me to imagine. It kind of breaks my brain. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be inside a brain that felt like that. I can’t imagine only wanting to know people who are like me.

Fuck. What would that even mean?

Which doesn’t mean people are wrong or bad or to be pitied for having a mindset I can’t understand. But it does mean I’m obnoxious about inserting myself into peoples lives because I can’t imagine that they don’t want me.

That’s not true. I know lots of people don’t want me. It is more accurate to say that I can’t imagine people not wanting more connection. Which is seriously limited in my thinking.

But what does “I know enough people” feel like?

I sure as fuck don’t know.

I have this existential hole inside me. I don’t know what bad things are coming just that more bad will come and my ability to survive will depend on the kind of net I have created for myself. I can’t imagine feeling secure with a net made up of only one kind of person.

I was sent to too many strangers of various backgrounds to ever believe my safety can be guaranteed by white people.

Which doesn’t mean my perceptions are right, just that they are mine.

I’m certainly used to many neighbors being kind of direct in how they let me know that they aren’t interested in getting to know me. Yeah, that happens too. Most often by folks who moved here and brought their WHOLE family with them. They have no time or mental bandwidth and I try not to be obnoxious. I’m friendly and courteous without pushing too hard (I hope).

Part of the reason I think it is sad that folks don’t cross racial lines is because some of the folks I talk to tell me flat out that they are much happier living here now that they talk to people who live near them. They had been sad. But for some reason it never occurred to them to try and talk to people until I initiated?

WHY IS THE WHOLE PLANET FULL OF LESBIAN SHEEP.

I’m a ram. Ma’am. Because sometimes cis-chicks just have to step up.

I’ll walk right up to you and say, “Hey. How you doin?”

If somebody has to open the door well, I’m used to burning my hand. Won’t matter if the door handle is hot and uncomfortable.

Which is part of how I fuck up so much. If you constantly put yourself in uncomfortable situations where you have to be brave and communicate in ways that are outside your norm… you fuck up a lot.

I even kind of think I don’t fuck up that much given how often I step outside my bubble.

But maybe I’m lying to myself.

I hope to goodness I don’t pity people for not having white friends. But I do feel irritated as fuck with white people not taking the initiative and saying, “I have lived here for a while and you are new. Hi! My name is: ________. I hope you like living here.”

Not because we are the gatekeepers… we aren’t. Because I wish people of every race would do that to new comers in their community and I try not to yell at people of other races. I yell at white people. It’s my lane.

So I think it is more that I am upset with white people for not trying harder than it is that I pity people of other races for not having white friends.

For a long time this was a white majority country. I think whatever group is in the majority is an asshole if they don’t reach out to under represented groups.

I hope that isn’t the same thing as pity.

What will people remember? That I made them uncomfortable? That I was so mean? That I was kind? That I am, to steal a phrase from a friend, a good foul weather friend?

I am not good at the calm day to day. That is not what I am oriented towards. But I have these people, a growing number, who absolutely require the day to day from me. I change for them in ways I have been absolutely unable to adapt for anyone else in the world.

Because they are the absolute only people I truly believe might still be around in fifty years.

Otherwise I will mostly know new people. I have no idea where I will live. I have no idea if I will be the meanest old bitch you’ve ever seen or if I will be kind and generous and patient.

Time will tell.

People’s opinion of me depends on a lot of factors. It depends on when in my life they met me (I’ve had some less than stellar stages). It depends on when in their lives they met me. It depends on how much authority over one another we had. It depends on how much we actually knew about one another.

I know I am intense. A kind of intensity that wears people out even if they love me. People move on because they just can’t. I’m too much. And that’s ok.

Some people absolutely hate my intensity and me for having it. That’s ok too.

What is not ok is if they expect me to change for them. I am what I am. I am intense. I think about intense topics. I talk about things other people really don’t want to hear about. That’s ok too.

I am trying to get better about figuring out when and under what circumstances these conversations are ok… because sometimes they are. But I can see how much I have hurt people in the past.

When I was a child I waved the trauma I was experiencing like a scythe to get people to leave me alone. Fine. You want to call me names? Well your taunts are stupid and immature. Why don’t I fucking tell you what my fucking father says to me.

Folks just… ignored me after that.

And it was never worthless whore. Somehow with all my lack of tact and my constant diarrhea of the mouth… I didn’t really admit that till adulthood.

Worthless, sure. Witch. Evil. That I was a demon who was sent here to hurt people.

It’s easy as shit to scare little kids.

What will people remember about me in the end? A whole lotta shit good and bad. Because I am both. Because I am a wonderful and terrible monster. Will I cause harm? Probably. Will I help people? Most likely.

And I’ll fuck up all the time as I’m trying to learn. I will continue to stumble and fall. Because I always want to go just a bit faster than I can really bear and so… it happens.

I’ll try to admit it. I’ll try to be honest about why I was in the wrong. I will try to make new mistakes.

Yes Shakira. I will try. New mistakes. Every day.

I understand more and more about what my mother meant when she said that my Sissy and I had completely different mothers.

When Lightning is born I will have been out for 18 years. When EC was born I had only been in a forever home for less than 2 years. Now it’s been 11 years.

I don’t scream like I did. I don’t have the impulse towards being physically rough with people I had. I am still louder than other people might prefer. I am still a fairly prone to darting around and moving quickly. But I know more about where I end and you begin.

Some people focus their lives around their friends or their jobs. I feel pathetic… but for me it is my kids. I don’t think that is mandatory for being a good parent; I think it is probably fairly unhealthy. I’m trying to do it in a way that doesn’t fuck them up.

I’m trying to be a good example. A good example isn’t inappropriately enmeshed with their children so I’m trying to maintain boundaries around that. My kids know I need adult friends to talk to because many topics are Not For Them. My kids know I pay a therapist to help me deal with all the big feelings I won’t tell them about and instead all I say is “I’m having big feelings and I don’t want them to impact you more than absolutely necessary. So if my tone of voice is weird or if I’m quiet… don’t feel bad. I’m in my thoughts.”

I loved teaching for this. When I was outed all over the place at Camp Everytown is was amazing to me that all of my students expressed shock and horror because the entire revelation was shocking and seemed impossible based on what they thought they knew about me.

I am capable of good boundaries. People know what I want them to know.

Does that mean I’m a liar? I do write down a public record for anyone who wants to check. I just don’t… admit it in the moment.

It would be bad for me to try and place my emotions at the center of every interaction.

I’m trying to figure out when bringing them up is appropriate. Because mostly I’ve learned that people don’t care and I should shut up or they are too young and it isn’t appropriate.

I do have friends who ask about me. I love you so much.

It’s part of why I learned to drop whatever I was doing and talk to Pam. Here is this wonderful person who is calling because she wants to hear about me.

I don’t… have a lot of people who do that. I get a lot of calls from telemarketers.

So in the end people will mostly judge me based on a carefully curated set of interactions. Or on a meltdown. Or both!

Phew, Lightning is getting active. I’m getting a lot more decisive bumps. A lot more hey. notice me.

I feel you. I know you are not me. I know you will be a whole separate person and I thank you for sharing this time with me. It is wonderful to feel you grow under my heart.

I do not promise you that I will do anything you need. Sometimes… I will fail. That will happen. I promise you that I will always think of you as a separate person who deserves to be considered.

Sometimes in life you can make everyone happy or you can be effective. There will be times when I kind of stomp on what you want or need. I’m sorry. But yeah, that’s going to happen. I truly don’t know a way around that. At some point I will hit a limit in myself and I will have nothing more to give in a day.

So then why do I think I should have another kid?

Hey (whisper whisper) do you ever do that self evaluation bullshit you claim you do?

I do. I won’t be going on another six month road trip without Noah.

I have limits, of the physical and emotional and cognitive variety. Yup. This is a fact. Mostly I’m capable of planning around them. The trouble comes when I don’t respect my limits and I try to get through a set of work that is too much for me.

I’m better at managing this. It’s still in progress.

I’m better at recognizing that there is no value in chasing most people for friendship. If they don’t say yes to something within a few months… stop throwing good energy after bad.

And now it’s time to climb in the bath tub and watch Signing Time.

The only time we have to leave the house today is for martial arts. The school refers to this class as “BBC” meaning Black Belt Club. But I don’t feel like I should talk about my kids needing to get to BBC much. It has too many interpretations. Ahem.

This is good. The past few days have felt slammed. Saturday was busy alllllll day. Sunday we had a guest until dinner time so it wasn’t restful. Monday we had stuff going all day. Today… we get to do academics and chill and then go to one class. It’s like having a rest day.

I think I have screwed up on something. My kids don’t talk that much to my adult friends when they come over and I think part of this is my impatience with them interrupting me. So they just aren’t trying very much in front of me and I need to figure this out. I know the kids like my adult friends but I fear I have been a jerk and made that tricky.

They do interrupt to the point where I feel like I’m going to lose my mind because I can’t finish a fucking sentence some days.

This is going to be a tough issue for us to figure out. I love that they volunteer their voice and opinion. I wish they could let other people finish a sentence first. I need to find a way to access some tools around this problem. I can manage this in a classroom of 32. Why can’t I manage it in my house? I suspect partially because in my classroom I just ride roughshod over every one and say, “This is how it’s gunna be. Play along or sit outside.” My kids… I don’t actually ride roughshod over them much. It’s a point of policy. So they are kind of entitled twits sometimes.

I still have an ongoing struggle with just how fucking entitled my kids are even as I recognize that it’s my fault. How can anyone believe with a straight face that they just deserve life as good as my kids get it?

It blows my mind.

My kids are trying as hard as they can to understand lives that aren’t like theirs… but they are so sheltered. Years ago Pam told me that my kids were So Not Sheltered. Sweetie… as someone who grew up in abject poverty surrounded by violence… let me tell you… my kids are fucking sheltered. They aren’t ignorant but they are sheltered.

I did this. I sheltered them. I have kept them from dealing with the brutality and selfishness and indifference that waits just outside our door. Life is shitty and hard. My kids… sort of know that from books, movies, and stories.

Sometimes it feels really alienating that my children have no scope of reference for almost anything about me. Sometimes it feels like I have arrived at success in life. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

My kids will never truly have the reflexes of little ninny white kids. But they won’t have the instincts of folks who have been abused. I really wonder how they are going to be as adults.

Last night EC was snuggling up to me… I don’t remember what she asked exactly but I said, “I love you so much. Not because you are perfect, sometimes you are quite the little punk. I love you because you are real and interesting and HERE.” She smiled and grabbed my hand and drew it to her face and she said, “I love how you say that.”

My kids don’t aspire to being perfect. They know that life is a balance of being thoughtful and being a selfish asshole. I mean… other people frame it differently… but I feel this is an important lesson. We aren’t striving for perfection. We are striving to be thoughtful as we deal with our own selfish needs. I don’t really know a “better” than that to shoot for in terms of behavior.

Oh the first day of me being irritating to verbal rebuffs… uhhh…went. I saw so much cat butt face it was hilarious. FMC insisted that if I was going to work on that with EC I had to work on it with them too. Suuuuuuuuure. I’m not being mean (I’m not doing anything that my Uncle Bob did to me on a near daily basis) but I am poking and being obnoxious. We are definitely improving the speed of verbal response instead of just flinching. And several of the times I kept going once I hit the first no. I said, “Ok. If that first soft, quiet no doesn’t stop someone… how will you step it up? If the person says ‘What? What did you say?’ how will you enforce your boundary?” We are talking a lot about gradual escalation.

If you move immediately to hitting lets talk about the consequences. EC is *thrilled* to be gaining weight but I point out that I still have over 90 lbs on her. If she escalated to hitting and I was less of a nice person…. how would that go for her?

She kind of flinches and contorts her face and says, “Probably……. not so well.”

“Ok. What will you SAY next so that you aren’t the person escalating things to blows?”

Both children are coming up with much better scripts with pushing.

I want my children to be ready and able to use physical force to defend themselves. I want them to understand that 999/1000 it is better if you deescalate verbally. I use the lesson of my cousin (the one I talk to on the phone in Kentucky) being a physically aggressive person to talk about this. She was always a fighter. That was her go-to solution for most things. She was the biggest, tallest, heaviest person in her grade until high school so it worked. At 19 she tried to use this way of solving problems with a large adult man. He beat her so badly she was in the hospital for weeks.

Don’t pick fights unless you have no god damn choice. Because it will end poorly for you most of the time.

I’m still proud of myself for the verbal deescalations I’ve managed over the last few years. I have come a long way. I don’t escalate things any more. I don’t want to. I don’t want explosions that hurt people. It’s not my goal. I’ve come a long way.

One of my buddies in the bdsm community told me that I’m a topic of conversation. People bring up how terrible it is that I have children because clearly I’ll be an awful mother.

Ok. Well near as I can tell that’s a common opinion for folks in the scene. Ok. You can have that opinion.

I’ll sit here with my joyous, independent, funny, vibrant children and be awful. Sounds dandy.

It’s hard for us to go to bed when Noah isn’t around. He gets way more impatient about the giggling and the silly conversations at night so he shuts us down so we will Go To Sleep Damnit. When it’s just the three of us… it’s so lovely I can’t shut it down well. FMC has been up till 9 or 9:30 the last two nights because we are so damn happy to be able to chat until we pass out. It’s so weird to me how giggly and happy they are.

I can’t remember being like that as a child. I mean, I can remember laughing…. but I wasn’t like them.

I feel so grateful that I get to be around them.

Even if I am a train wreck in motion… my sparks are pretty glittery.

We trade food a lot with one of our elderly neighbors. She’s really sweet. Sometimes when I interact with her I get the impression that we are the first white family she has ever befriended and I feel sad about that because she has been in this country a long time. She’s so nice. She should have had friends for all the decades of her life here. I mean, she does have friends. She knows the other elderly Chinese immigrants in our neighborhood and they lunch together a lot. But if she has been here and no white people have stepped up to introduce themselves and be friendly…

Well I always knew my race sucked.

Our new next door neighbors are really nice. They are very recently come from India and the local wildlife is scaring them to death. We get opossums. We had a lovely chat about how not scary these animals are. They were so relieved to hear that this animal is not aggressive like a raccoon. They had heard horror stories about raccoons.

Hey Noah! I asked around! Rattlesnakes *are* considered normal around here. I feel so ignorant and wrong. I will have to go apologize for my ignorance. I’m not sure how I’ve lived in the bay for 30 years and I didn’t know that rattlesnakes are normal in this region.

See, my ignorance is vast and hard to encompass.

This is why I tell my kids not to cite me as an authority. I’m wrong all the time. Look up a credible source if you want to say for a fact that something is true. I misremember. I am misinformed. I just plain understand things wrong. It’s life.

I tried to sleep without my pillow fort last night because both kids wanted to sleep with me. Ugh. I’m glad Noah is coming home soon so I can go back to using 2/3 of the bed with impunity. He’s so tolerant of me bed stealing the entire fucking bed. The kids… no. They just climb right fucking on top of me.

It’s a good thing I love them so much I feel like I am drowning in feelings.

Both of my dear friends couldn’t make Skype yesterday. It was a good day to have extra down time. I’m not mad. I am really enjoying having the space reserved to talk to my friends every week, it feels psychologically reassuring and it also feels nice that sometimes it doesn’t happen and I get an unexpected hour to rest my brain. I schedule my brain for too damn many hours a day.

I feel bad about flaking on a friend who was going to come over and help me this weekend. I just had no brain left and I would have stood there and cried if she had tried to help me be productive. Brain power is a resource and I run out.

I feel like I am trying to figure out where my actual limits are and retreat to them more than at most other points in my life. I’m trying hard to take it seriously that Noah put it in my contract that I have to take care of my mental and physical wellbeing. Which means I need to stop working until I am numb and I have damaged myself more. That’s hard for me… I’m a tool and it’s hard to let a tool stop and rest just out of the kindness of your heart. The tool isn’t broken completely? Keep fucking working.

But if I’m trying to stick around for decades I can’t anymore.

Once upon a time my first Owner used our M/s relationship to force me to learn a lot of executive function skills. We didn’t talk about it like that, but with the perfection of hindsight… that’s a lot of what we did. I had to learn how to manage a household so that someone else didn’t have to think about solving problems. That was the most clockwork I have ever been about household chores. ( had a fuckton of free time.)

It is very complicated at this point. Homeschooling uses my brain for 10-30 hours a week. Managing my children in general requires…. as many hours as I don’t forcefully dragoon into other service.

That leaves me with less for everything else and that’s complicated.

How do you juggle? Which balls do you drop?

I am struggling with this phase where we are introducing ourselves to therapists we will eventually not see very often but for now we are still in the getting-to-know-you phase. The current plan with all therapists is that we will see them intensely for 3-6 months then start tapering frequency. We want to maintain a relationship but the therapists are all clearly stating that as long as we have no crisis… they are somewhat superfluous. But the single factor I consider most significant in life is the fact that…. there will be another crisis. It’s just a matter of time.

So I persevere. They will have therapists they can go to when things melt down. It will be in place for them. They will just have support there when they can’t carry their own troubles.

I wish I got to be the boss of the world and being a therapist was a much more plum assignment so that every child could have this kind of relationship. Not constantly in your life but there in the background as a tool.

I think it is kind of funny that the thought of people sitting around and discussing what a shitty mother I am makes me kind of giggle. I am so much better at this than I expected that you can’t even imagine. It’s a fucking miracle.

The kids are well set up in their academics and don’t need much from me this moment. This is… not the norm for how things have been going so I’m grateful. Lately they have both needed a lot of intense interaction and so I’ve been doing it. I’m feeling worn out but it’s kind of in a good way. I like the intense teaching.

It’s funny to me that Noah knows I would have a harder life without him but I don’t think he understands how much it isn’t about the day to day stuff he does. It is the listening. We talk about what we do for one another. We both think we are consciously giving so the other doesn’t get sick of us. It’s a system that kind of works for us.

But I get the kids fed without him. I get the house picked up without him. The laundry gets done without him. Sure his help is lovely and awesome and makes my life easier… but I can cope without those kinds of support.

I don’t cope without his feedback on my thinking processes very well. He builds up my self confidence. That’s so much more important.He’s harsh with me about my thinking too. He’s not real big on letting me keep my delusions. The fucker.

It is hilarious to me how many times a day I want to check in on social media. I’m hitting the IMs harder. It’s tricky though because there are only a few people I don’t feel like I’m irritating with IMs. Mostly I worry about bothering people and disrupting their lives so I don’t initiate. I talk to the handful of people who initiate with me at least occasionally. I’m ok with doing like 90% of initiating. If I never get an initial poke… I just hit a point after a few months where I will stop. And maybe never do it again. So I don’t IM with that many people. Thank y’all for your patience with me. I know that I get super wordy sometimes.

I keep having waves of terror about money and I know it’s ridiculous and it’s ok to kind of hate me. We are more in debt than I want to be and I have an existential fear about that. I know that it doesn’t matter because the debt isn’t at a high interest rate and we have far more assets than we have liabilities and… I don’t care. I didn’t want to be this far in the hole at this point. The bathroom remodel… that was such a clusterfuck. The expense…. good grief. I mean… we paid an extra $15,000 for the right to say that we hated working with Future Vision Remodeling Company. That kind of hurts. But it was worth it! And we otherwise went more than $60,000 over what I wanted to spend. That hurts a lot. So I’m way behind on where I wanted to be in debt reduction and I feel like I am letting Noah and my family down. That was my project and I didn’t manage it properly to keep it in budget and I picked bad companies and wasted money and…

I feel guilty. I made us a great bathroom, sure, but I wasted a lot of money in the process and that will put us a year to two years behind where we wanted to be in terms of future security and that adds up over time. That’s a lot of extra money that won’t get invested because I… I was foolish.

I let Noah down. I’m supposed to be responsible for the money and I wasn’t very responsible. I make a lot of mistakes with our finances… usually they don’t hurt this bad.

It feels so bad to be fucking up at this level. That money could have finished funding a college savings account. That could have…

It could have been a lot of kinds of security. It could have paid off my mortgage faster. I fucked up bad.

That’s weighing on my shoulders. I feel irresponsible and like I have proven that I should not be given the responsibility I have to manage money on this scale. My Mint review at the end of the year is going to be fucking embarrassing. This year… Last year… The more money comes in the shittier I am at stemming the flow out.

This year the problem is medical. My medical bills are high. We spend $3,000+ per month on medical and I feel really ashamed of that. I should not be taking so much from my family. But I’m doing this with the hope that I can fix some problems and some year I won’t be so expensive and I won’t be in so much pain so I won’t want to die so much.

I feel really guilty about my ongoing pain. I am getting impatient with myself and my body and I feel like it is really fucking annoying that I can’t just get over it already so that I can stop being such a fucking irritating waste of resources.

I’m doing the best I can. It never feels like good enough. I hurt so fucking much. I really really really should stop typing.

Noah is ok. He made it to Hiroshima and their current weather forecast is clear and mild. So he missed the worst of the storm. Phew.

The kids and I are doing fine. We miss him. I think it is funny that having Noah out of the house means I do a lot of random anxiety cleaning. The house is just about to the point where I don’t feel anxious about piles still sitting around waiting for management. Stuff is cleaned up from the remodel and life and… we are ready to move on to the next stage. (Except for the piles that will require the most cognitive load to put away. I did procrastination cleaning where I do the easy stuff that I do to avoid the stuff that Needs Done.)

I’m even getting close to figuring out where all the baby schtuff goes. A few things are shoved into corners but mostly items are just finding homes.

I forgot about the massage party my massage therapist REALLY wants me to host. Is there much interest? She would bring a colleague she has trained and they would both come to my house and do chair massages on folks for 30 or so minutes for a pretty darn cheap rate. Is there much interest in such an event? Cause I’m not up for planning a failure right now.

I checked and I’m about half a pound down from my pre-pregnancy weight at this point. At 18.5 weeks. BUT DON’T EAT MORE THAN 300 EXTRA CALORIES A DAY. Even though at this point I’m rapidly getting to the point where I’m going to need to need to gain a little over a pound a week to be in the “recommended range” so shuddup.

I just need to fecking eat, m’kay?

I haven’t taken my vitamins in two days. Partially because I’m feeling hella nauseous and when I try to swallow handfuls of pills when I feel this way I’m much more likely to upchuck them. Partially because I was an idiot and when we were coming home from LA I left a weeks worth of pills to melt in the car on accident. See, I take some gummy vitamins to minimize how much hard swallowing I have to do. Gummies melted… all over the other pills… creating a solid block of nasty about the size of a walnut shell. I can’t swallow that and I can’t take it apart without shattering the nasty tasting pills. So yeah. A week’s worth of medication down the drain. That costs… a lot of money.

I’m getting to the point of feeling sick to my stomach when I think about how much money I’ve spend on nutritional supplements over the past few years only to end up with no detectable load of these fucking nutrients in my body.

That’s just… ugh.

I feel like I am draining my family’s coffers to try and build up my body and it’s failing so I’m wasting these resources that could be better spent…

Ugh.

It’s hard that I have doctors telling me that the only way I can prove that I’m trying to get better is to come to every appointment and take every supplement and jump through every hoop and then other doctors tell me I’m a horrible person if I drive to the appointments because I’m so dangerous I shouldn’t get behind the wheel of a car.

But who the fuck can afford hundreds of dollars a day or 5+ hours a day of time? I can’t do what I need to do and not drive.

So I’m evil if I do and I’m bad and not trying if I don’t.

Sigh.

I’m so fucking tired.

Kid conflicts are interesting. Today I noticed that I have probably done a bad thing with my children. I have trained them that to believe that people will apologize and take responsibility for what they do unintentionally. In the vein of: “I stepped on your foot and I didn’t mean to and I’m sorry.” Most people aren’t going to apologize. And my kids are really struggling with that. I feel like it is my fault they don’t already know that the world is going to batter them and not care.

I didn’t prepare them for this. That feels like a failure on my part.

This week will be spent on roleplaying opportunities to use our words to say no instead of depending on nonverbal communication. Ok it works in this house with your family because we know your signals and we love you and we WANT to be hearing this information. That won’t be true out in the world. I need to help you get ready for the fact that folks are going to insist long and loud that they had “no way to know you didn’t want it to happen”.

No. No. No. No.

I’m going to be an asshole and bedevil her. We are going to negotiate in advance that I am going to specifically push past her non-verbal signals so she HAS to say no.

In a way that kind of creeps me out… this reminds me of a scene I did with a lovely friend many years ago. She couldn’t safeword. Not to save her own life. Literally. She did not have the verbal ability to protect her body because she didn’t believe she deserved it. So I beat her and talked to her and begged her to tell me no until she did.

I will not be punching my child the way I hurt my friend. Oh boy that would result in losing her forever.

But I can be irritating as shit. I can pester. I can be annoying and intrusive with my energy until she just HAS to SAY NO.

It’s funny how there are shadows of life experiences that come back. You have to be able to say no my darling. You have to believe that your body is worthy of defense and you can do it.

You have to. I won’t be there during the most important moments. It’ll be you and the bad thing happening.

You have to protect you.

Even though I did a piss poor job of it most of the time and I really don’t have the right to judge. I’m not good at self defense. Not when it counted the most. I crumbled like a mud sculpture in the rain.

But you, you my baby. You must be stronger than me. You must have the belief that you are worthy of defense.

You are not a worthless whore and you never fucking will be.

And so we practice. How do you say no. And NO. And I SAID NO ARE YOU DEAF?!

Ok… I just negotiated with her. She says she is going to be very unhappy about this exercise but she sees why it is important. Ok fine. FOR ONE WEEK. That seems reasonable. Boundaries are awesome.

I wish I had a better idea of how I’m fucking my kids up in the long term….