So… I’m feeling kinda ashamed of a thing I’m doing. But I’m not sure if it’s bad. During this pregnancy I’m thinking a lot about Future Middle Child as AFAB. (Assigned Female At Birth) I’m doing this because the physical sensation of my current pregnancy is so different from my previous pregnancies and I’m sorta obsessed with wondering if it increased testosterone.

So I care about the chemical soup I am floating in during pregnancy when a set of genital configurations were present.

I know that it doesn’t tell me what my kids gender will be and I know that they may or may not grow up and keep whatever set of junk they are born with. That’s all totally cool.

But when I’m pregnant and trying to figure out my place in my story… the AFAB part seems relevant because if this currently growing child is AMAB that means this pregnancy probably is partially different because of that part of chemical soup and that’s interesting for my future medical treatment.

But I feel like I’m reinforcing a binary view of my kid. I don’t believe they will always be as femme of center as they are right this minute. I think they are going to have a complicated life. And I’m on board.

I’m just… thinking about the chemical soup I swim in while I’m incubating.

I wish that didn’t make me feel like I was erasing my child’s identity. I know you are nonbinary. I will help you in whatever way you need on that journey. But there were these few months where we shared a blood stream and you were my me-not-me and you changed me and I’m trying to understand how that works in the larger scale of my chemical soup.

I’m wondering if testosterone supplementation is something I should consider after I finish having kids. I’ve flat been offered it by one doctor in the past. It would mean a drive to San Francisco but… I could take bart. And visit Sarah.

I don’t think I am trans even slightly. But I think that testosterone might be something I could use a wee bit more of.

How do I talk about this without talking about this. The CPS call is really… intense. The specific phrasing that came up “Kids explore. Kids try games. Kids make choices we really wish they would’t make because they have to learn.”

I’m trying very hard to turn this into a reparenting moment for myself. I did stuff that was worse than what my kids have done. I was also younger and acting upon the explicit directions of my parent.

This feels like one of those life moments where I really need to forgive myself. I was five when I raped a little boy. I didn’t know what rape was. I didn’t know what consent was. I thought I was supposed to do that to everyone. Kids explore. Kids try games. Kids make choices we really wish they wouldn’t make.

A lot of my friends have spent over a decade trying to talk me into believing that I’m not a terrible, horrible person because I fucked up so completely when I was five. I have not been interested in nor able to absorb their words.

Am I more ready now? CPS didn’t come down like a ton of bricks. There was no blanket condemnation. There was a resigned sadness to the fact that kids do shit and it doesn’t make them beyond redemption it just means they need concentrated extra lessons on why they can’t do it again.

I was up half the night thinking about my father. I genuinely don’t know how to feel about him. I was also thinking about my mom.

I’ve spent most of the past couple of years feeling guilty and ashamed for breaking contact with my mom. I owe her.

But even though my mom only beat me a few times and even though my mom was “unaware” of the sexual assaults… My mom told me to my face that marriage meant becoming someone’s whore and never having a choice about sex again in your life. I was young. I was what, 12? 13?

That’s fucking up my marriage in some complicated ways. Growing up to believe that sex is supposed to be painful and my enjoyment is… not the point anyway… I’m a hole to be filled.

That fucks up a marriage.

Because I want to change it. I sure as shit don’t want to model that horror to my children. So what does that mean? I no longer want to believe that being married means I’m a whore who owes sex in exchange for the roof over my head and the food in my belly. This is hurting me so much.

I’m not saying this came from Noah. I walked into this marriage with the belief it would be that way. Noah didn’t object to the idea that it would be ok for him to have sex when he wanted regardless of how it felt to me.

That became a problem. Which isn’t his fault but seriously alters our relationship anyway. Because if that is all I am in this relationship then I need to go have other relationships where I am not this because I cannot bear the mental load of deserving to be fucked painfully for my whole life as just what I deserve.

If what I am in this house is a whore who owes service for my food and board then I need to have relationships where that is not what I am. Because I need to be something different. I need to not just be a worthless whore for my whole life.

Yeah, I blame my father for this. It seems legit.

I need to “get over” so much. I need to get over feeling haunted by the fact that I was brought into this world because a rapist wanted to hurt a woman he viewed as a whore who was getting too uppity. My existence is a punishment.

I was not brought into this world in love or joy or desire. I was born from hate and malicious intention. I was born because my father wanted another whore to rape.

It is incredibly hard to feel like that isn’t my burden to carry. It is hard to feel like it isn’t my fault. I am evil. I was brought into the world to be a weapon and a victim.

My mother wanted to abort me and she couldn’t for religious reasons.

Just about 36 years later that shouldn’t matter so much. But I’m still crying.

I’m tired of being told that I am rude and disgusting for asking my friends for help when help should only come from family. If I asked for more help from my children that would start crossing lines. It would be getting close to emotional incest and no that’s not an acceptable trade for “not being rude” to my friends. I’m needy and I’m pathetic and my friends are willing to put up with that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the folks who broke off friendships with me in the last year. I love them very much. I’ve put 7 and around 12 years of effort into those women. But the thing is I’d say the rude, judgmental shit I said again. I don’t think I was wrong. Even with the consequences. So I get to feel sad about the fact that there are consequences for actions and I don’t think there is another way for this to work out. Life is like that.

I was talking to a friend about the people I have problems with in the bdsm community. The funny thing is… if I did get along with the people I actively avoid… I would know for sure that I wasn’t a good person. I would know for sure that I was scummy and low.

I don’t want to know that for sure about myself. So I’m ok with having large conflicts with some people.

I don’t believe it is ethical to “mentor” an 18/19 year old and line up your nasty old men friends and tell the young person now they have to fuck all these people “in order to learn”. I don’t need to get along with people who will act that way. That’s disgusting.

I don’t have that many conflicts with people. Not considering how many people and communities I know. I feel like I mostly have conflicts for good reasons.

The thing is, my friends don’t hesitate to tell me when I’m fucking up because they want me to be healthy. My friends call me on it when I’m too harsh with my kids. They tell me to be nice to my husband. They tell me to be nicer to myself. They judge my choices and tell me that some of them have a poor chance of working out.

I want that from my friends. I wouldn’t want friends who watched me set my life on fire and they sit around “minding their own business”. That’s not a fucking friend.

If you hate me because I say in front of you and your child that hitting children is wrong and indicates that an adult is out of control and the ADULT needs to be removed before they cause damage…

I can live with that. I don’t feel bad even a little.

Even though you hate me for “shoving my culture down your throat”. I will cheerfully shove the culture of “don’t beat your children” down EVERYONE’S THROAT AND I WON’T FEEL BAD.

I feel bad that I exist because I am a weapon and I’m intended to be a victim. I don’t feel bad about most of what I do with my agency while I happen to be alive. Despite my extreme dysregulation… I think I make a lot of good choices. Not alllll of my choices are good, that’s so true. Which is why I’m glad I have friends who watch me and say, “Krissy you are fucking up. Stop it.”

I have a really hard time with the fact that most of my life, most of my measurable “success” at anything in this life is going to be my motherhood.

I really wanted to be bigger than that. But I’m not really.

I’m not a real sex educator. I organized education for a convention that people flew to from all over the country, but whatever.

I’m not a real teacher because I hide at home and educate my children but my efforts aren’t any more substantial than “all mothers think constantly about their children” so what I’m doing is just… nothing.

I feel worthless and pointless and I’m in so much fucking pain.

Pregnancy is really shitty. And this is my easiest pregnancy ever.

None of the reading I do matters. None of the work I do matters.

I don’t matter.

Even if my fuck up when I was five was kind of understandable. Even if I can forgive myself for that action (which I really don’t know if I can do it or not at this point) I don’t know that I can forgive myself for being born. I shouldn’t be here.

It’s interesting talking to the kids’ therapists about ancestral trauma. That’s a real thing. My kids carry within them the weight of all that happened to me and all that happened to my mother and my father and my grandparents. Some truly horrendous shit has happened to my family. And my kids carry that in them.

How can I help them feel like they are not a weapon and a victim?

Getting off Twitter and being off facebook means that I’ve been… hanging out in parenting forums. Where are my pregnant people at?

I hate pregnancy forums. Very full of “If you need to ask for help you are an incompetent, rude loser who shouldn’t have had kids.” But those same assholes usually have a mother who comes over and offers help and that isn’t rude at all.

I HATE YOU SO MUCH.

“If you don’t have someone in your life who perceives your needs and who volunteers spontaneously to meet them you are an incompetent loser who does not deserve anything.”

READING THIS SHIT IS SUCH A BAD IDEA.

I’m mentioning disability issues (mental and physical) and limits of not-having family. You fuckers don’t get to win this topic without a god damn argument.

I need a better hobby.

But I feel really lonely. I can direct my kids through work. Or I can listen to Noah talk about his work. Or anyone in the house will tell me more than I ever wanted to hear about video games and comics.

I feel really lonely.

I know I’m talking to friends on Skype more and that does help. But I still feel lonely. This is such a big feeling.  Really I’m back to seeing people a fair bit. I see a whooooooole bunch of people… a little.

I can’t ever look for the enmeshed thing with a friend again and that is what hurts. Bonus Mama was my last try this lifetime.

People can handle me for a few hours a year. Sometimes a few hours a month. Almost no one wants to spend multiple hours with me in a week unless they live with me full time. I’m too annoying.

I spend all of my time with people consciously trying to not be too much. Don’t say too much. Don’t ask for too much. Don’t be too much.

Pam and Sarah and Noah can handle full unbridled Krissy. But Pam needs huge breaks. Sarah needs huge breaks. Noah’s fortitude is shocking. Noah can handle me, but Noah isn’t interested in the vast majority of things that interest me. He will tolerate me having huge thoughts and feelings… but he isn’t… there with me if that makes sense. He’s an observer.

I feel like almost everyone else starts pulling away from overwhelm after a few hours. It’s visible.

I’m not mad at anyone. This is my fault. But it’s hard. I feel so bad that I am like this. That I can’t be someone that makes people feel comfortable and at ease and like being around me is soothing.

Instead I am dysregulated and I make other people feel dysregulated and they need to get away from that. I’m not angry at people for it. That’s a good choice. But I feel sad. I feel lonely. I feel like *I* am wrong.

Why do I want to stay in the bay area? For my social life? Oh that’s so messy.

The bay area is littered with social groups where I feel like I don’t belong and I shouldn’t show up because I offend people. There can be one person in the group I had a slightly rude look from 15 years ago and I won’t come back. Avoidance is strong with this one. Or so many reasons.

I’ll never work Dickens again because I don’t want to run into my rapist. I avoid a lot of dance stuff for a lot of reasons. There are chunks of the bdsm community that are closed to me because they cater to rapists or racists.

I feel inferior. I feel like I don’t belong. I feel like other people are better than me and I shouldn’t inflict my presence on people. I feel like the only place I belong is my house and the best thing to do would be to collapse the fucker on my head.

I am struggling with having people “In Authoreteh” give me pats on the head saying I’m doing things “right”. Stanford, CPS, and multiple therapists are all on deck telling me that I’m handling problems as well as they can be handled. I AM doing the hard work. I am saying the things that need to be said. And I still feel like they all just misunderstand and I’m an incompetent loser who is ruining everything and I’m bad and I’m bad and I’m bad.

There is no possible chance on this fucking earth that I am doing the right things as a mother.

I am too globally wrong to be doing anything right.

I think it’s funny that I have to find stupid judgmental strangers on the internet to validate that I’m entirely wrong and bad because I can’t find people who know me or who have professional experience evaluating families to tell me I’m wrong and bad. I really am ridiculous.

If I were perfect I wouldn’t spend so much time crying because I’m a piece of shit.

I got 5.5 hours of sleep last night. It’s funny how it hurts. My body says, “YES! LIKE THAT!! MORE!!” but how much you want to bet I’ll get 3 hours the next night?

Apparently it is the height of being rude to ask people for help after you have a baby. If people offer you should mostly turn them down because if you choose to have a baby YOU DESERVE TO DO EVERYTHING FOR YOURSELF OR YOU ARE BAD AND LAZY. The internet is happy to validate that I suck. Cause I ask for help.

Krissy. You need a healthier hobby.

This house is… going to have trouble meeting our needs as the years go by. I think we could make it work. Noah and I could go back to sharing a bedroom. The older kids could keep sharing. Younger child(ren?) could have the other room. I could partition the garage more for an office for me.

Phew. That sounds stressful.

Dining room table space is going to become a challenge in this house.

The eternal question is where to go.

One of my beloved’s is campaigning hard for me to stay because she will stay forever. But she has a huge house and a big yard and if she needs to take in boarders to feed herself in her old age she can. Like, she can have a wing of the house to herself and rent out the other three or four bedrooms.

I think her house is almost three times the size of my house.

I don’t know that I need that much more space. With the garage we are up to about 1500 sq ft. I could really go for having a house that was 2500 sq ft with an actual garage for storage.

I want more space in the living room/kitchen/dining room. And at least one more bedroom. I would like two toilets again. I don’t care about having more than one bath tub/shower.

God I’m going to miss this bath tub forever.

I don’t want to spend a fantastic amount of money so that means not here.

We are talking about aiming for 2022. I need to have the loans paid off by then so we can decide where to go and what to do next. It is so far away and yet it is going to come hurtling at me like a rocket.

My body feels all the hate for me right now. My body says, “You bitch. You took me to Fresno. Fine, fuck you. I’ll get even with you for DAYS.”

I am, how do we say, uncomfortable. I woke up every hour or so last night to have violent diarrhea as my well cooked carcass tries to evacuate every orifice. I have spent the last 12 hours wondering when not if I will vomit. (Although if I’ve gone this long… maybe I won’t.)

The quinceañera was lovely. It was really special to get to see a little girl I knew growing up be delivered into the next part of her life. White people suck because we don’t have beautiful transitions like this to help our children be ushered into more responsibility. Instead we are the kinds of assholes who spend a lot of time on the phone with high school and college teachers trying to prevent our children from ever taking on responsibility.

I felt a little funny because I haven’t seen this family since we moved away. I was kind of surprised to be invited. There were only two families invited from the home school group we used to hang with.

I studiously maintain: I never came back after the road trip because of pain associated with driving. Only a few people in the group ever heard about drama. I think that is for the best. It is true that after the road trip I could no longer physically handle driving 45 minutes each way to sit in a park when I can walk for 20 minutes and go to a damn park.

It’s kind of nice to be able to say with complete truth: I rarely leave my city more than twice in a month and I mostly leave for medical appointments.

It isn’t that we stay in our house, we don’t. But we stay close by. Our world has shrunk. I like that part a lot. I’m so over driving.

Driving for 6 hours round trip yesterday fucking wrecked me. My hands hurt. My back and neck hurt. I only drove for 2.5 hours. That was too much.

One of my children was on restriction at the party for reasons I won’t discuss. I was quite impressed with how respectful they were about it. They didn’t argue and whine they just observed stated boundaries. Well done.

I don’t think I will be making it to SF for pride today. I feel like warmed up shit. I got almost 4 hours of sleep last night after 2 hours the night before. The sleep deprivation is catching up with me in incredibly painful ways.

I’m losing my ability to digest properly because my body is so exhausted. This doesn’t feel fun. But I seem to still be pregnant and all. This is a tough little parasite.

Today has literally nothing on the calendar. We only get such a day every few months. I may spend it sleeping.

I neeeeeeeeeeeeeed sleep. So I took a second dose of pot last night. I slept 7 hours. And the heavenly chorus sang Hosanna.

We decided camping in Fresno in 104 heat was not ok. We will spend 6 hours in the car in one day for the party instead. This means my cat will not miss so many doses of medicine because we could not find anyone who wanted to hang out with my cat all weekend giving her drugs every 8 hours.

I am… still deeply confused as to how to handle a problem.

I keep people. I have a lot of people in my life from 20 years ago. I don’t see them all the time, but we pop up in one another’s lives.

I have problems with some people. But given the number of people in my life… I struggle with a fairly low percentage. Most of my struggle is with my internal ability to perceive what people mean by behaviors or words. I struggle to believe that people like me unless they are standing in front of me saying, “I like you.” If you said it a week ago I’ve already forgotten.

It’s not nice of me, but it’s real.

We are changing some things about how we school. We will have some outside oversight so that I’m not in this position of All Powerful Person anymore. That’s not working for me. We need it to change.

But we don’t need the kids to go to school for 30 hours a week. I genuinely believe (and I’m backed up by professional evaluation) that my Eldest Child would have major problems in traditional school. But we need something slightly different than what we have been doing.

I ain’t God and it’s bad for me to be in a position like God.

I am appalled that charter schools exist. I think that if you want to home school it should be your deal. But charter schools exist and we are now signed up with one that will give me $1800/year/kid for classes and educational materials. $3600/year is going to alter my budget. That sounds fantastic. Because the school will cover their classes and stuff for a year (including giving them a laptop) I can put most of my kid budget towards baby shit and paying for the birth.

Oh god. A birth will be expensive.

Money is giving me fits lately. This is a horrible year for money. My end of year review is going to be baaaaaaaaad. I’m already feeling anxiety and it’s only fucking June. Owning a house sucks.

I do still love my bathroom. It’s worth what I paid for the bathroom. But all the other shit that went wrong and cost extra money… like cleaning the black mold out of the wall of my bedroom…. It adds up.

My bank balance is lower than it has been in many years. I’m scared. Nothing else can break soon.

I talked to our delightful local mechanic about how the Prius is misbehaving. In his opinion the smartest thing to do would be to trade it in *now* before it finishes breaking. We’ll get $1,000 or so on a trade in. It’s in terrible condition and we’ve repaired the front end twice from accidents. (I fell asleep while pregnant on 880 & a deer landed on my car further south on 17. 880/17 hates my car.)

We decided not to camp in Fresno for the weekend at 104 degrees. Instead we will drive down for the party, sleep in a hotel, then drive right home. A hotel is $50 more than camping for the weekend would be and I don’t have to suffer through not sleeping in the heat while pregnant. Seems smart.

I’m having a hard time with how many people are moving away. L, I know I was a total loser and I didn’t visit you over the last year because of the remodel but it sucks that I can’t come visit you now that things are settling down. You are so wonderful.

I like where I’m sitting and I don’t. I don’t like that it is changing and my friends are leaving.

Pam keeps telling me not to leave the bay because someday she will come back and next time it’ll be for good. But she will live across the valley in an area even more expensive than this and I do not share her certainty that rich people will find a way to save the bay from global warming issues.

I’m reading a book named White Trash. It’s not the same kind of book I would have written. It’s better. It’s historical. It goes through the history of disposable white people in this country. It is fantastic. I’d love to discuss it with people. One friend is reading it already. Anyone up for a book club?

Stuff and stuff. Stop typing, Krissy. You hurt.

This is the weirdest fucking pregnancy.

(Side note about swearing: recently someone [can’t remember who] pointed out that swearing is often used in place of words that would be differently offensive: such as ableism. Swearing is thus a choice to move who you are offending. That reframes whether swearing is good or not in a way that really works for me. Anyway.)

I have the feeling in my body like I had when I was marathon training. I can feel my body eating itself. My weight is staying strangely level. I’m not eating 2100 calories every day and according to the fitbit I’m burning 2600-2700 most days because I’m exercising like a fiend. I feel myself gaining muscle (which weighs more than fat) and I can feel my body shifting the eating-fat-storage around.

When I was marathon training I got used to this particular feeling where a fat deposit would start hurting and then shrinking. That’s going on right now in my body. Particularly my upper belly. The fat deposit that is over the diaphragm/stomach portion of my torso is aching in the way that usually means I’m about to have a flat stomach again. Only this is a bad time for that.

I’ve attained a flat abdomen for a few individual months of my life. Then I gorged on ice cream till that shit ended.

Being thinner is NOT A GOAL.

It’s fine if you care about losing weight. Your body is yours. I’m done with the abusive cycle of dieting and acting like my body is anything other than a mighty tool which needs CALORIES, MOTHERFUCKER.

I want to constantly be on the phone with blacksheep asking nosey/weird questions about how her body feels while exercising but she’s busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest.

I highly suspect that I’m going to be in perfectly good shape to run a 10k while 6 months pregnant. Like blacksheep did. At the time I told her she was bizarre. Now I feel like a huge giant terrible asshole for implying that what she did was wrong. She does what her body needs. It isn’t usually similar to what my body wants and I need to get my head out of my ass.

Goodness. There’s been a couple of times lately where I’ve had cause to do the sit-back-and-evaluate-your-parenting thing lately.

Do you know me? Do you know my kids? If you seriously thought I was abusing my kids I would hope to god you would turn me in to authorities. My children deserve that. Even if it would be traumatic for me.

I am not the best parent ever. Far from it. I’m too mercurial. I’m not consistent enough. I’m not good at facilitating what it means to be “normal” or teaching people how to fit in. There are a lot of mothering skills where I just flat fail. But I’m not sure if I do so in a way that is abusive.

I make different choices than most of the people I know who parent. It’s not because I’m better and it’s not because my children are turning out better. Neither are at all true. I know a lot of mothers who manage to juggle jobs and independent lives and their children and they do it with aplomb. They don’t need to spend this many hours a week treating being a parent like being a job with constant high effort training.

When I talk about how many hours I put into this job I’m not doing it to brag about how superior I am. I’m not superior. I’m trying to develop an honest perspective around the fact that it takes this much work for me to be good. Not great. Not the best. Good. I have to treat this as a full time job in order to not tank completely.

I am proud that I can teach myself so many things and I can instruct my kids. That doesn’t make me a better mother than someone who had a good mother and who parents from instinct in a way that is respectful, kind, and loving. I just can’t compete. That is more healthy. That is better. But I try to convince myself that if a piece of shit can improve… that’s something.

Ok. Now it’s a new adventure. I just signed the kids up for a home school charter school. I’m still going to be the primary teacher, but they will have oversight from someone other than me. Accountability to someone other than me. Oh it sounds glorious.

I saw my therapist yesterday. We did EMDR, as usual, this time it was different. When pregnant they don’t do the fast, emotional upset causing stuff. She keeps the rhythm slow and soothing. She wanted me to think about the baby that is coming. She kept asking, “How do you really feel about the coming baby?” She wouldn’t accept, “I’m excited.” She kept pushing for negative emotions.

I’m scared shitless of how I’m going to handle a child with THIS MUCH ENERGY but beyond that… I’m so excited.

She wanted me to think about how I’m going to have to get over my shit about white men/boys if this child is as loaded with testosterone as I suspect given my physical state. (Not that all people who have lots of testosterone and/or a penis are men/boys but there is a strong chance.)

It is true that I need to spend a lot of time processing my shit around this. I cannot take out my rage on my son.

Just like that woman I wrote about yesterday took out her rage at every white teacher and administrator and whatever on me she came here.

I am not throwing stones. I am not better. I have acted out just as much in rich white peoples houses. I’ve broken more shit in temper tantrums. I have gone off on people much more personally.

Seriously the big insult she could throw against me was that I was a control freak. Uhm, yeah. Given the recent autism diagnosis it makes even more sense than usual that I am a control freak about a lot of things in my life. I’m rigid in order to cope because my body gets overwhelmed by a lot of stimuli. That’s true. I get why it triggered the shit out of her, but I asked over and over how to accommodate her needs and she’d smile and say, “Oh I’m fine” until she lost it because she had never been fine.

That happens. Part of the reason I think about it so much is because I don’t feel victimized. She didn’t hit me. She didn’t hit Noah despite getting inches from his face and screaming at him about how she was going to get him. Because he looked at her.

She was completely and totally flooded. She wasn’t capable of rational thought or evaluating if we were threats. Our very existence is proof of an existential threat against her people. I don’t deny that even a little.

I’m not angry at her. I’m sad. I’m sad that no matter how much I work in this life I will always be one of the oppressor class to a lot of people. No matter what I do. No matter how much I help. No matter how patient I am with them as they tell me that every person who looks like me is equally culpable for the suffering of her tribe.

It’s ok that she feels like that. She’s not wrong.

But it’s hard that we are representatives of opposing races instead of people who can know one another. I’m not exactly one to say, “Nuh uh. White people aren’t as bad as you think.” Yeah, we are. As a group, collectively… white people are as bad as you think and probably worse.

And I’m white. So what does that mean about me? Maybe she was totally right to shun me the way she did. To go on ranting about how terrible I am because… for a few moments while she screamed at me in public I shut down like she was my mother.

I absolutely admit that I have the white fragility thing like whoa. I will crumble if you scream that I am bad in public.

I didn’t fight back and argue. I said, “Ok. If I’m so bad when do you want to leave?” And then that became another oppressive thing I was doing. Because she wanted to scream at me and stay and have a nice time that I paid for.

Hey buddy, even I have limits. If you are screaming at me that I’m terrible… you don’t need to stay in my house longer. And no I’m not going to keep funding a spiffy vacation for you and your kids. Because I’m going to avoid being in a room with you. And then that became one more reason white people are bad.

There was no way for me to be anything other than a monster.

I know.

My shrink yesterday asked me about my sleep. I told her I’m getting 3.5-4ish hours of sleep in a night. (Yesterday I got a 1.5 hour nap in the afternoon. I was so glad.) I told her I was considering adding one more dose of pot in a day so I can sleep. She said, “How tired are you? Maybe you just don’t need the sleep. Humans go through periods of elevated (I’m blanking on which hormone she cited… I think I remember it starting with a c but I suspect not cortisol…) and they don’t need sleep for a while. People go on 2, 3, or 4 hours of sleep when they fall in love, when they do a big project… it happens. Don’t take more pot.”

But if a psychiatrist wanted me on a heavily sedating medication she would urge compliance. But more pot administered because I think it is a good idea… that’s not ok.

Sigh.

I was not willing to drive to Oakland on how much sleep I’ve been getting. I rode my bike + bart. It was fucking exhausting. Oakland scares me so fucking much on a bike. Too many cars + hills. That was awful for me. I’m kinda mad at Lightning already. This kid is… taking over my impulse control center and I’m doing shit I NEVER FUCKING DO and it scares me really bad. I’ve never been a bike person. It’s never been a good idea. My family gets hit on bicycles. This is such a bad idea.

But I feel like I NEED IT OR I WILL EXPLODE FROM EXCESS ENERGY.

I have never exercised this much in my life. Not even training for the marathon. I’m putting in more hours right now. I’m cross training like never in my life.

Having this much energy means I hear words in my brain even faster than usual. That’s a little terrifying.

Do you know how much specific, conscious effort I put into creating new voices in my brain? I hear blacksheep when I’m exercising. Her gentle, loving expressions, “You can do this. I know you can. You are strong.” I hear Sarah, “Oh you can do this. I’ve watched you do amazing things.” When something is deserving of derision I hear Patti, “uhhh…. what?” said with just the right inflection.

I hear so many of the people who have been lovely enough to come to my house when I’m calm and talk to me when I’m capable of imprinting your lovely voices over the mean ones in my head.

I hear Pam. I hear Beautiful. I hear Claudia. I hear Jenny. I hear Erin. I hear Taylor. I hear my submissive. I hear Miss Vicki. I hear Valia’s glorious laugh.

I am so blessed. I could keep going all day listing names. I hear you. You changed me. You made me better. You made it so when I meet new people I can’t wait to find out how they will be the same or different from the fantastic people who motivate me to keep trying.

Hope is not dead as long I hold you all in my heart and mind.

I think of the woman who came last summer. I think of that Taylor Swift song “Mean”. I wonder if she has ever started understanding that she is never going to be the weakest man in a room again.

I was not the weakest (wo)man in the room when we were both freaking out last summer. In a whole bunch of ways that are systematic and completely unfair. When I had more like that amount of power compared to the people I was in a room with… I used to lose my shit over and over too.

I can’t be angry at her. I have to see her as a deeply wounded person who is lashing out because she has been stomped so thoroughly. I’m not mad. I’m sad. Because I liked her. I wanted to be of help. Only I wasn’t. I hurt her. By existing.

I can’t act like she was mean to me. She was defending her life in a blind fight because that is where she is in life right now. That’s not about being mean to me.

I was not a victim. I hope I did not victimize her. But it was a really sad thing. I don’t know that I could have done anything to make it go better. I’ve been thinking constantly for almost a year… what could I have done differently.

She needs to find community with non-white people. White people upset her. That’s ok. It’s not wrong. I support there being space where white people are not welcome because we bring our much with us. That’s ok.

I’m really proud of myself for deescalating things when she was screaming and physically threatening Noah. I did manage to get her to calm down enough to see that neither Noah nor I were going to hit her. Even if she had hit Noah, I would have restrained her without hitting.

She’s been hit enough in this life.

Many of us have been hit enough. Too much. We don’t need more hitting.

We need more crying together. But tears are only available to white women, I’m told. I saw her cry. But she denies it.

That’s so complicated.

It’s not fair that we had a fight and she gets to go back to her life of suffering and I get to go back to my life where 70% of my suffering is manufactured by my brain. (I do have a bunch of legitimate pain stuff….)

I don’t go hungry any more. I don’t have to worry about feeding my kids. I don’t have to fight with the government for my children to receive services that they need. I just pay. I can fix my car when it breaks. I have a forever home that is just a handful of years away from being fully paid off.

I don’t get to act like a victim in this situation. It’s not victimization. But it is a severing of friendship. It is a divorce. It’s sad.

I’m trying to figure out what to learn from this going forward. My shrink wants me to learn the lesson that I should stop trying so hard with people. She says I should never open my home again to people with trauma because look what I get.

Do you know how many of the people in my life have trauma? If I stopped inviting them over I’d stop having human contact and that’s not ok.

I didn’t forcefully eject the friend who called me an evil drug pusher either. He was reacting to stuff in his life. I told him I understood why he was struggling and lashing out and when he was ready to get over it I could forgive. It took five years but he came back. He did apologize. He was going through shit and he took it out on me. Yeah, that happens.

I forgive you. I’ve done worse. And in this world I can’t really afford to throw friends overboard willy nilly. I need your voice in my head convincing me I should not die.

I reject people who look like a threat to my children. Beyond that… I can deal with a lot. I’m not an easy person and people come back to love me. I can love you even if you aren’t easy. I don’t need you to be easy. I need you to be real.

I like to say that I wasn’t looking for a life of convenience. I am looking for a life of intense connections. That’s going to lead to some big explosions.

That doesn’t mean you stop trying. That doesn’t mean you decide “People aren’t worth the trouble–I’m going to hermit.” At least that isn’t what I have decided. You do you.

(Side note: in the background I have youtube playing a bunch of videos of FTM folks singing pre and post transition. It’s a really neat background. People change so much based on relatively “small” hormonal changes. This is so fascinating and wonderful.)

I am alive in the time period best suited to me in all of history. I can meet the most variety of people. I can learn so much. I am blessed beyond all measurement.

There were times in my life when I was a victim. Those times are long gone. Unless I am suddenly attacked by a stranger… I’m not sure I’ll ever be a victim again. Bad things will happen, but that’s not the same thing.

I have reached a freakish plane of existence.

There are times when I think that one of the best things that happened to me as a child was the severing of my bond with my mother. If I had maintained that bond most of my life wouldn’t have happened. I would have stayed closer. I would have kept up the abusive patterns that reign in my family.

Is my life perfect? What does that even mean? I have strife. I have conflict. I have challenges. But I have more luck and safety than most.

I’m a genuine good place. My bitching is kind of ridiculous.