I’m not good at asking for what I need. I would go so far as to say I am a complete asshole. I bottle things up until I explode and then I’m mean.

Not good at asking for my needs. Not at all.

This is complicated. The reasons I am this way are many and beside the point. I can stand up for some needs in some ways. I’m way better at advocating for other people than I am for myself. But I can stand up for myself in some ways. In some specific ways it is harder than other areas of my life.

I am bad at telling someone I am deeply emotionally involved with about my sexual needs. Especially if I perceive my needs as being different from theirs and I am not supposed to make things difficult.

I’m really compulsive about responsibility for sexual gratification. Having a father who tells you over and over again that it is your responsibility to get people off makes that hard. I know that a great many folks have gotten the message in some way in some spaces but it’s different when it is your father and you are a toddler/young child.

Imprinting, yo.

I have tried very hard over the years to live up to my end of the bargain. I have tried to be always-available-at-your-pleasure-cum-dumpster. I was told by my mother that when you get married you agree to whore for that person forever, so pick wisely.

I have spent a lot of my marriage feeling like I married someone who wants sex every day and that means I get to do that. Because as my shrink says, Marriage is about meeting your partner’s sexual needs.

I’m hurting myself really badly in service of this belief.

I mean, I think I have slowed the damage. I think things are improving. Our sex life is getting less frequent and a lot better when it happens.

But no, I’m not good at asserting boundaries until I am attacking you because how the fuck dare you do that to me.

No it isn’t fair.

Do you know how hard it has been for me to learn the academic skills and organization stuff I do? All of a sudden I’m getting validation that yeah it is shittier for my brain to do these things and it feels like it comes way too late to do any good. I feel like I missed a lot of windows on being able to be functional or more adult than I am because I couldn’t fucking settle down and just do the thing.

I am as defensive and nasty as I am because my entire sense of self is built out of match sticks and playing cards. If you breathe on it too hard it might fall down. Then I have to build it again painstakingly. It is fucking annoying to do at this point.

I think that in life you pick your battles. You can’t have everything you want. You can’t win every fight. So be careful what you argue about.

I have not wanted to argue with Noah about the sex stuff harder than I have for a lot of very complicated reasons. And I hit a wall. A wall where I needed to see what is me and what is us.

I had a lot of time to think while he was in Cincinnati because I apparently just don’t need sleep if he isn’t here. I also didn’t eat much. It was swell. Anyway, I spent a lot of time thinking.

I have always assumed/acted like Noah not having much natural empathy means he doesn’t have the same feelings I have. Which has apparently been causing some problems and serious misunderstandings. Whoops.

It did take the second time of crying to feel like Holy shit this is really real and isn’t going to go away as a source of pain. Maybe that’s because I’m a self absorbed piece of shit. Noah sat here in this house and waited for me to go have an adventure on the road trip and then I came home and treated him like shit.

This has not been one of my best years.

I don’t understand why Noah thinks that being married to me is much better than not being married to me but as long as he’s staying, I am.

But we do need to find a way to build more separation into our relationship. We are merged to a point where it is causing problems. I don’t really have a me left and I need one.

Yeah yeah I went on the roadtrip… I worked in my mom role 24 hours a day 7 days a god damn week. It was me-not-me. There wasn’t room for just me. I had a handful of adult conversations that were not on the internet but not that many in 5.5 months.

I like my kids. I’m grateful I get to be with them as much as I do. Sometimes I feel like I am going to lose my god damn mind because I am with them too much.

More than one thing can be true.

Noah is making fun of me because he doesn’t think I will ever slow down my rate of working. Is the work enough to feel like “me”? Not really. What would be enough? I don’t know.

I tried going back to one of the most successful ways of solving problems in the past. It failed really big time this time. I really wasn’t trying to be more malicious than that. I was being selfish, I was being short sighted, I was callous. I was not consciously malicious. I wasn’t trying to get even. I was trying to find a different way of coping with a problem that is frankly bigger than me.

What is abuse and when should you flee from it and never look back?

Who gets to decide?

My mama had to run because her husband beat and raped her children. That seems pretty clear cut. Noah’s parents don’t split up despite periodic stretches of interpersonal violence directed at one another.

Who gets to decide what is abuse? Culturally these things vary.

Recently someone was trying to describe me unfavorably and they said that I give people money because I feel guilty.

That’s pretty damn accurate. I feel guilty in an existential sense. I have survivors guilt like a motherfucker. I was the beneficiary of a lot of help I didn’t deserve more than other people and they don’t get the help. I don’t know how to pay it back other than to pay it forward. There isn’t a rational system of “I help you because you deserve____” It isn’t that methodical. It is about giving what I can even knowing it is never enough. It is better than nothing. It isn’t enough. It really isn’t. I don’t think I’m solving a problem. I’m not a hero.

I’m just trying to not be a complete piece of shit given the options available to me in life.

I have put my money where my mouth is when it comes to supporting diverse businesses. I support communities I am not part of. I don’t think all help has to be for me or people like me. There are a lot of underserved populations out there.

It’s not all about race. There are other demographic factors involved. This isn’t that post.

But this money stuff is part of the sex stuff with Noah. I have incredibly mixed feelings about the fact that I am entirely dependent. Noah tells me frequently that I am entitled to half of his salary. He says I have earned half his salary.

Bleh.

I mean yes, I’ll take it. But it almost feels like blood money. Noah loves his job. I don’t want to denigrate that. But it’s a system I have resoundingly rejected being part of, only it is making me rich. I am complicit.

Noah is going to work in the industry he’s going to work in. It’s not about a particular company. I don’t want him to quit. He loves his work. It feeds a part of his soul and that’s super important. But it is super super super not my culture. Only I sorta married in. I have feelings about that.

What have I done with my life? I married a tech boy and had babies. Oooh. How original.

Ok so there are some fun details that I left out in that sentence. But I need to have more of an identity than wife and mother and I’m really not feeling it and I don’t know how to fucking feel it.

Slut has been comfortable for most of my life. That was a separate me. But it comes at too high a price.

The threat of him fucking people is good for our sex life. The reality of him fucking people often tanks our sex life and I go on a bender of suicidal ideation. If I could press a button and make this cycle go away I would.

If I could just be ok with him falling in love so fast and wanting to be there for someone else and…

I’m a bitter asshole about the fact that I’m with the kids more and getting the kids alone for a bunch of extra time so he can go be lovey dovey just fucking rains on my parade. Even if it is in trade for me getting time off to do the same thing. It isn’t the same kind of balance. He doesn’t spend as much time with his fucking kids. I mean, ok he spends a lot more now that he works in the house but still….

It’s different, yo.

When he says he wants to go see friends, that’s fine. He gets a kind of support from that interaction that he really can’t get from me.

I swear to fucking god I don’t feel suicidal because I want to manipulate him into doing what I want. I’m inconvenienced by this. It sucks. I am at a point where I am doing better than I have ever historically done and I still don’t like me an awful lot. I perceive him finding romantic happiness with someone else as a relief. Maybe I can be done here. He found someone better.

Pretty much anyone would be better.

Yeah yeah I don’t think that in reality it would be so simple. I’m not replaceable. It’s complicated. Blah. Blah. Blah.

Impulse problems. I’m trying to cope.

I have spent most of my life dealing with my self hatred by hurting myself in a myriad of ways that are basically completely off the table right now. If you eliminate all the small reactions then you get build ups and big reactions and those cause fucking problems.

It isn’t that Noah is hard to talk to. This is me. This is about my internalized inhibitions and prohibitions and safety and brokenness. But I think there is stuff he has had trouble communicating about too.

I’m being an asshole about “But we both suck” lately. I’m cool with taking responsibility as long as it is crystal fucking clear that I am not the only asshole in this relationship. I’m not sure it is a positive place to be.

I’m jumping up and down demanding credit for the parts I did do right. I canceled dates. I stopped doing things. I stopped seeing people. It was a collapse which is mixed… it isn’t sustainable either. But I stopped without being told to.

I didn’t make him veto people. I didn’t make him demand that I stop dating.

I just… stopped with the understanding that I’m not going to be monogamous and we’ll figure out what that means exactly later.

Noah wants to be the center of my world and he is. But what does that mean. How consuming does that need to be?

Too much to think about. But at least I started bleeding and I feel slightly less depressed.

Noah got the book Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel. I’m almost half done with it and I swear this woman knows my life. Yes. A lot of what I did earlier this year is explained in the book.

I’ve spent my whole life being textbook, why stop now?

You just have to find the right textbook. So I’m weird, I’m a statistical outlier… in a completely predictable set of ways. Humans are funny.

I desperately want to study other people who grew up in incestuous households and find out what else we large scale have in common. Anyway.

I have spent most of my marriage parenting. I have spent most of my marriage in my house relating to the people who live here and not many other people. If you look by time spent… I seriously don’t have that tight of relationships with anyone else. Attachment. Attachment. Attachment.

But who am I? Where did I go? Where is the space for me to have separation? Does it exist? In some ways this is like a teenage rebellion and in some ways it really isn’t.

I feel bad coming back to this over and over, but Noah has a career. He has a career where the best in the world in his field invite him to join them at lunch because they understand he is the up and coming in the field and they want to share his knowledge. Sure, he feels insecure about how much he “deserves” to be at the table… but he also has the job that was hotly contested and his heroes are glad he got hired.

Uh. Yeah. I’m a great mom.

Wooo.

You know what kinda sucks? I know a lot of great moms. They manage to do it and still have jobs and friends and hobbies and…

I spend a lot of time shutting everything else down to focus on parenting so that I don’t blow up inappropriately at my children. I go months without touching dirt in my back yard because I can’t even find time to garden because I need to keep my workload low or I will freak out at my kids and that isn’t fair.

What does “being disabled” mean?

What does individuation mean?

I have my friends. That’s kinda what I have. And it’s very important that I not depend on any of them too much so I need to have a really large number of them so that I can have a part time job in managing my connections to people because…

Otherwise there isn’t a me that is separate at all.

This is hurting me.

I mean yes, I write. I write a lot. Furtively. Usually before everyone has woken up or in stolen moments like these.

I feel shamefully small and unimportant and useless.

And I’m going to have more babies to compound my sense of being trapped and useless and limited with nothing to offer.

I have nothing to give beyond what I give to my children. I feel really bad about that.

I sideline sex with Noah too. There isn’t enough me in my life for me to desire sex for myself. Which means I have sex “for him” “for my marriage” a lot of the time and I feel sad and withdrawn and frustrated.

I used to have sex because I wanted to get off.

For a long time now it hasn’t been like that. Ok, things improved this year. This year has been great.

I’m scared about the previous 2-5 years and what is going to happen again.

We spend so much time quantifying our sex that we don’t pay a lot of attention to the quality of our sex.

And it is hurting me very much. I’ve done it. I’ve been complicit. In many ways I’ve helped drive it. I’m not denying that.

I have always been partial to self harm.

Hunh. I think I just figured out part of a dynamic we deal with. When I feel overwhelmed with work… I’m not great at recognizing that it is my project and I have to deal with it. I get kind of pissy and I push other people to work more. It’s not a great/healthy approach to life. I don’t care what you’re a workaholic about… just work. But the thing is, if I am the only one working, meaning not resting, people want me to take breaks to entertain them because they’re bored. Noah expects me to still have the same energy for sex even when my body hurts and I’m exhausted.

So yeah. I push them to work until they understand how I feel so they don’t fucking have the expectation of me that I feel as rested as them.

I don’t think I push the kids as hard as I push Noah. But that is something I’m going to have to watch because I get around my impulse to do so by reminding myself “Their work is play”. How will I behave when I perceive their work differently?

When I finish the remodel… I’m going to be directing Eldest Child’s screen time for the first time ever. She will be specifically encouraged to start working on a set of concrete skills and I’ll be supervising it like academics. She has stuff she wants to be able to do. The way you do that is to build the habits.

Guess what I know how to do like a motherfucker? Build habits. I’m not sure how I developed such a rigid, workable, way to acquire skills so quickly. In retrospect probably moving schools so much.

I went to 25 schools before I dropped out of high school at 16. Later I went to 7 colleges and universities.

I can adapt to environments and expectations and new rules. Sure.

That kind of flexibility is part of why I like traveling with my kids so much. I’m there with them for a much more structured, supported version of being dropped in a variety of environments.

Since we aren’t going to be going around the world doing work on farms with a tiny baby or a toddler… I just… can’t… I wonder what we will do with that allotment of energy and mental planning around. Hm. There was a lot I wanted to learn. A lot I wanted to do with my body. I won’t be able to a) manage my mood & b) manage my pain levels & c) learn & d)effectively transcribe for my older children & e) care for a baby. Nope. That’s… too much. I can’t.

Home schooling my kids is my primary job. Not learning a skill I want to have. Even if that feels frustrating.

I “say” that we take it year by year and I don’t know how long we’ll home school. As long as the kids want. I’m setting up for the long haul.

I did an awful lot of training so I could shepherd my children through this process. As I go through the experience and I bring dusty plans out of a box because, “Hey I’ve already worked through part of my plan for this situation. No trouble” and I can handle things that would be too hard to deal with one after another after another if I didn’t know what I was doing.

I’m not perfect. Not by a long stretch. But I have Plan A and Plan B and Plan C and Plan D… because I know I suck. I know I will fail. That’s why I make so many fallbacks. And when I run out of plans I just improvise at full speed. Sometimes I’m shocked/thrilled by what comes out of my mouth. I have better impulses at a lot of this than I expected.

Expectations. That’s where we get into trouble. We the collective we, not me and my intestinal parasites. My family builds around getting a certain portion of support from me. When I don’t feel like I have it to give, because I feel under too much strain for whatever reason…

I don’t know how we figure out that fallback. That’s something I don’t have a plan for and we are fucking it up. I feel pressured all the time to be a god damn wind up toy for their pleasure. And we are together 24/7. I need to have less to do. I’m not sure how I feel about being so depended upon to be amusement and stimulation of all types.

I feel…. pissy. I was at the point where my kids were getting old enough to have some space from me. I was individuating and it was rocky and it sure as fuck wasn’t Noah’s favorite…

Baby.

I feel like I reached the end of a tether while wearing a choke chain.

I want the baby. I want the child. I want the person. I’m god damn pissy about the timing. I’m frustrated there was no warning so that I could have mental plans around this.

I spent so much energy mourning a future I wanted and couldn’t have and now it is kind of landing in my lap. I feel like an ungrateful piece of shit. But it’s complicated.

What will it be like going through those early triggering stages again with a different child? Will I reprocess them again? Oh goodness. I hope not. All I know is they will be something different. I like something different.

It is funny to me how much I’m not saying right now. So many specifics I’m not writing down. I’m already the problem. How deep do I want to dig myself?

Tile is coming along. Shifting stuff to more permanent homes is happening. I’m creating space in sections that are likely to expand. I haven’t done any painting lately because at this point I need to reclean the walls in the kitchen before I paint again and… oh man. It’s just a whole process and I’m tired. I have to get tile done. That’s soon. That’s other people work. I’ve done one whole wall of the wet room. I’ve done more than half of the wall next to it and the shower wrap around wall. I have done part of the facing wall.

I need to do: the small partial wall between the toilet and the shower. The walls around the bathtub and up near the sliding door.

I’ve done partial/decorative pieces for both spring and summer and I honestly think that’ll be fine.

A friend is currently remodeling their home and is interested in maybe having me use a whole bunch of my leftover tile for that project. Which is kinda thrilling to me. But crazy. I’ll probably ask to go lay out the tile and oh will that be fun for my back.

At least they are getting the 3″ tiles instead of the 1″ and 1/2″ tiles. That has been the hard part. All those tiny little fuckers to pinchy maneuver. Oh my hands.

There’s going to be a lot to look at in my bathroom. I’m so excited.

Last night the kids and I watched Pirates of the Caribbean for the first time. In the bath tub. It was glorious.

I like my life. I like the people in my life. I just…

I was individuating. Now I can’t again. It is feeling really hard. I know that the attachment is important. I know I want the long term relationship with adult children. I know it is worth it to me to put in another 20 years on kids. But I’m chafing. I was down to like 12 on a lot of measures.

I want to meet these people. These people who are like me but who aren’t touched by incest.

I really want to know people like that. I know that probably seems like a weird thing to motivate wanting children. But it is a huge factor for me. A lot of my feelings that I’m a monster originate in this idea of being “tainted”.

I’ve been thinking about cultural perceptions of violence and intimidation. By a great many measures I’m… not a particularly violent or controlling person. Not compared to some norms that exist.

What is the norm against which I ought to be judged? I’m really not sure.

I’m really not sure.

I’ve come really far from where I started. But is it far enough?

I don’t know.

I’m sure not. There is more I have to fix. Problems I need to solve. Ways of being that I have to root out and excise.

It’s an obnoxious process.

I’m tired. Most of the time that Noah has been gone I’ve been working very long hours. I have to put in my hours with the kids, then after a while they watch screens for about three hours while I work. Then I stay up long after they are asleep working. I’ve not gotten a lot of sleep in the past week. My body hurts. But I got a lot done.

It’s funny how resetting the house lets me see lots of things that I would like to “fix” long term. Not this year. Not next year. I’ll start a list for maybe 2019. Maybe that can be a project year. Maybe.

We’ll see how much slack I manage to keep in my schedule for how long. We’ll see how much debt I manage to pay off between now and then. Breathe in, breathe out.

The kids will wake up soon and I don’t have a buffer grown up. I should get off the computer now.

I’m finding myself extremely distraught over the reality that I’m told I have to just accept everything that other people do because they can’t help it but I need to hurry up and change.

I am the problem. No matter what I give or how much I give it will never be enough. No matter what I accept or adapt to, I still need to be more accepting.

I still need to change because I can’t expect other people to.

I’m the abusive monster. This is apparently a reality that… just is. I’m the problem.

I don’t feel any kind of hope right now.

Shut the fuck up you stupid bitch. Open your legs. Shut your mouth. This is what you are good for.

I don’t feel like things are hopeful. I feel like the next few years will be a nightmare of hyper vigilance trying to not be an unwitting part of a giant Milgram experiment.

Then there is my personal life. I still don’t know but I’m scared of that too. I’m scared because I opened Pandora’s box.

I’m fantastically angry about some things. I’m angry about being told that other people “can’t help” what they are doing and that means I have to accept things they do. How come I always get told that I have to change but others can’t help how they are? Am I magic?

I’m not saying I shouldn’t have to change anything. I’m just feeling annoyed about some dynamics.

I truly wish I had more ability to just change how I’m told. I wish I were less impulsive. I feel sad.

I think it is pretty funny that I pushed Noah to go see a therapist so the therapist could encourage him to leave me. Because his life might be better without me.

I wonder about that. If I thought that disappearing from life would improve Noah’s life I would probably do that. I’m not convinced though. He’s pretty fucking dependent on me. Not as dependent as I am on him–I know.

It’s complicated. We depend on one another for validation of our existence. We depend on one another for a listening ear and support for growth. Not many people, in my experience, want to push others into growth as aggressively as we do with each other. Does it always go well? What is life without a little risk.

We talked a lot last night, after our dance lesson. After a stormy relationship around the entire concept of dancing Noah went and scheduled an Arthur Murray dance lesson for us. We went to the place that is just over a mile from our house. We had a lot of fun. The instructor seemed quite impressed that we were “new students” but we actually can dance. Woo. The instructor there is probably the best dance instructor I’ve ever personally worked with. He can evaluate things like “You are technically on the beat but you are arriving as soon as the thought of the beat arrives which is a little fast.” He took feedback really well. When I said, “You can’t explain it to Noah like that. You need to say concretely, ‘Ok that trick didn’t work. Let’s try something different’ to let Noah know that you are no longer trying to get him to do the same adaptation.”

I understood that he was drifting from “try walking past her” to “stand in one place” but it was fuzzy and Noah just can’t have fuzzy dance instructions. I was impressed with how well the instructor took it when I said that Noah has baggage around bad dance instructors and he needs clear instructions. Super flexible guy.

Not that I really want to spend money right now. Ugh.

We might do it for a month or two because it sounds fun but I don’t think we are signing on for a serious many months long commitment. If you pay for four private lessons in a month you can get as many group classes as you want. I could handle dancing a lot more for a bit… I miss dancing. If he is finally coming around I don’t really want to miss the gravy train.

My end goal is to stay married to Noah. Why?

It’s so many things. I feel deeply selfish for most of my reasons. No one else on this whole planet looks at me the way Noah does. I want that. More than the sex or the money or the weight of shared history… it is the way Noah looks at me. I’m not sure I would be able to be as good of a parent without him. The way he looks at me creates the possibility for me being the best me I can imagine.

I can’t do that without Noah. Without Noah I get the me that is reflected off the rest of the world. I’m kind of a petty bitch in that light.

People who have known me for a very long time sometimes tell me how shocked they are by how much I have changed. Noah believed I had the potential all along. He isn’t shocked.

I need that.

I feel like I spent the first 25 years of my life being almost completely underestimated then Noah married me and said, “Alright. Now you’re off leash. Run.”

I need that.

I will accomplish, I will be exponentially more in life if I stay with Noah. I’m selfish. I want to see what that means.

I went and saw my massage therapist. I said, “My elbows and low back are killing me”. She said, “Ah. You are back to tile I see.” Like a clairvoyant genius.

I gotta stop fucking up my body. Oh yeah. I’ll stop typing now.

I’m thinking constantly about distance and closeness; individuation vs attachment. The depth of Noah’s devotion to me blows my mind. He’s obsessed with me after a decade of marriage, but not really in a creepy stalker sort of way. In a way that means that he cares what I want and will religiously center me in his decisions. That is both terrifying and wonderful as his therapist suggested.

Noah centering me as much as he does means I kinda have to center him as much, which is complicated.

I have spent ten years doing an awful lot of work to try and make Noah happy. I really have. I’ve tried to create a safe and secure little home where he doesn’t have to do that much work to have a really nice experience. I’m a pretty damn rad home maker.

But it isn’t all that I am. A long time ago I heard a little truism-quote “Women marry men hoping they will change and men marry women hoping they never will.” Sometimes that feels kind of true. Noah has changed during our marriage and I celebrate those changes and I’m grateful. I’ve changed and it seems to be… more of a problem.

Noah adapts to me then it kinda sucks if I keep changing.

We are in a weird spot. I was starting to try and do the hard work of changing out of the young-kid stage because I believe that’s a fairly unique stage in life. I shut everything down for a baby. Other people know how to attach to an infant and still participate in the world and I am a stunted loser. If I’m going to get to know my baby I have to eliminate most distractions and just sit with the baby.

My attention is a fascinating topic.

Recently I’ve been thinking very hard about my ADHD diagnosis and what it means about many of the PTSD symptoms I’ve had all my life. I’ve been told and told and told that I’m trying to extinguish these PTSD symptoms. What if they are ADHD symptoms and permanent? How much effort have I put into trying to change parts of my behavior/personality that can’t really change?

Shit.

For all that I don’t try to conform to be “normal” much… I have put a tremendous amount of time and energy into changing and trying to be a better me. How much of that time and effort was completely wasted because psychiatrists wouldn’t bother to give me accurate diagnosis because surely all of my problems come from trauma.

This is far more upsetting to me than it might seem.

I feel like I have wasted literally decades of therapy trying to extinguish behaviors that are permanent parts of my anatomy and I need to learn to manage instead of just thinking I’m fucked up and I need to be fixed.

Maybe I’m less broken and more nonstandard than I’ve ever been allowed to think.

That actually hurts very very very much.

I’ve seen 21 therapists and probably another 9 psychiatrists. No one has ever seen this. That sucks.

When I needed accommodations there was always this cloak of “Because you are so Fucked Up” whereas my kids get to grow up with behavioral and emotional support and get told, “Meh every brain/body combination needs something different. This is what you need. Ok.”

The amount of shame I have always felt about my inability to focus the way other people wanted me to. It was always claimed to be about me being damaged.

Brain damage.

How much of it is brain damage and how much of it is innate?

How much of it is because of my father’s behavior and how much of it is because of both of my parents genetics?

I was thinking about something recently. My father’s suicide. You know what? In some way… him doing that was a really kind, generous thing. Know why? Because we got money. Lots of it. When he died my mom started getting his social security. That was the most stable money my mom had access to in my childhood. It was four or five times what he irregularly sent in childhood. His death was one of the fortuitous events that let me stabilize around 17/18.

If he had lived; if he had gone to prison… things would have been different. They would have been bad.

He died a month after I turned 17 and that money let me go to a stable school for a year and build bonds with people, many of whom I still know.

I honestly believe that part of the reasons rape victims are prevented from prosecuting is because the system knows that recognized victims get help and financial support and the government doesn’t want that many new sources of financial obligation.

We are an ungenerous nation.

I am an ungenerous person. I do generosity wrong. I do it to fill a hole in myself instead of focusing on filling what other people need. I do it from a place of insecurity, fear, and trying to earn the right to take up space and resources.

It’s not really generosity if I do it because I have to.

Shiny change of topic. I think I know what I want to talk to my psychiatrist about. I’m not going to be starting any new drug regimes staring down a pregnancy. But I want to have a seriously outlined, well thought out plan to handle my next end-of-early-childhood-stage emotional boredom explosion. Cause it’ll happen as sure as rain.

My impulses go towards sex. Always have. But not sex with Noah because frankly there’s not much novelty left there. Marriage is like that.

So what the fuck do I need to do?

I need a whole series of plans for how to manage this. I will want Plans A-J at least. I will need them in writing with directions on how to bail out of a plan into the next plan when things break down.

Because that’s how plans go.

That’s how I go.

I fail a lot. I fail at a lot of things. The only reason these failures do not end my progress is because I always have another plan. I live by my plans. I live for my goals and I rigorously follow some kinda path towards them. I don’t make it to completion on every plan. Sometimes I just fail. Like the around-the-world trip. I had $40,000 saved towards it. Now that’s been rolled into my bathroom. Because we aren’t going around the world. We are having babies.

It’s one or the other.

Being a mother is the best route to happiness I have found in this life. I am going to follow that trail to its end. I’m not done.

And I picked Noah as a breeding partner, quite frankly. He didn’t ask me to spend my life hanging out with him. He asked me if I wanted to be his slave and have children with him.

We are still talking about that first part. What does it mean in the overall light of our parenthood and my unwillingness to be submissive in front of my children? But hoo boy we were serious about the kids part.

We like our kids and they are sunbeams of happiness.Their needs are met. They are getting the support they need to thrive. Not much makes me fee more like I am doing my life right.

We all set our own standards of judging ourselves. I judge myself based on how I parent. I’m not perfect. I fuck up. I am not always kind or generous.

I was thinking recently about how most strong leaders are raised in adversity. I don’t think my kids will grow up to be genuine leaders despite both of them saying they want to be president. I just… I doubt it. They just haven’t yet figured out that there are lots of ways to help people other than being president.

I think that’s ok. I talk a lot about the path they will need to take if they are serious about any career. It’s kind of remarkable that both of them have buckled down to daily academics with nary a whimper. I have not been this… pushy with book work ever. Now they both sit at the table and just plug it out, cheerfully. “I want x. This is the process. Ok.”

I feel like a terrible terrible person for admitting this, but I’m going to anyway. I have the strong suspicion that Youngest Child is far more globally gifted than Eldest Child. Eldest Child is starting to catch up on academics and Youngest Child is standing nearby looking over her shoulder and telling her all the answers.

Reminds me of me and my older brothers.

This is going to be interesting to watch. Eldest Child is precociously verbal and has a ridiculously strong EQ but academics are more of a slog. She isn’t coordinated. She is strong and she has endurance… but she’s still not comfortable with her body.

Youngest Child (oh crud the kid will need a new nickname) is fast and has endurance and they are coordinated and they pick up academics at the rate of whoever is standing near them because they want to be able to follow along and be right. This kiddo is much more emotionally stormy. They don’t understand their own emotions or other peoples emotions as well. They try really hard though, but despite tons of modeling and support… this is just hard for them.

We all have what we struggle with.

It is fascinating to me to look at my kids and see the distribution of my genetics. I have some prodigious athletes in my family. I’ve started talking to Youngest Child about going to middle school for sports. If you want to be good in high school and get a college scholarship for sports… start playing in middle school. I mean, ideally try lots of sports to see what you like in grade school.. but seriously start in middle school. And the kid will probably have an easy adjustment to school style academics.

Eldest Child… would love the social aspect of school and would fail academically. I think she will do fine in college. I don’t think she has the attention span to switch topics on demand like earlier levels demand. She gets frazzled and can’t follow things. She needs a very controlled pace. She can’t have distractions (like other fascinating people nearby) because she can’t focus. I do suspect she has a learning disability but I’m not entirely sure which one or if I’m handling it right. I’m handling it ok enough that it is mostly masked but I feel confident it will become more obvious how I’m failing her with time.

It’s remarkable what watching them causes me to forgive in myself. “You’ve got to work with what you’ve got kid. No point in longing for what someone else has.”

We’ll see. We’ll see. They are both fascinating to me. I assume children are fascinating like this to most parents. I certainly get told similar breakdowns of traits from most of my friends.

I have subsumed a lot of my identity into trying to figure out how to meet the needs of my children because through this process I will learn to identify my own needs and figure out what I need to be doing to meet them. I sure wish I could do this faster. It’s a process.

How does that interlay with all the kinky sex I wish I was having? Sigh.

I don’t know yet. It’s complicated. One of the shrinks I say keeps saying “It’s not complicated it is complex” which is a distinction that… I really just don’t buy into. La la la la.

Saying complexity is good and complication is bad seems like a shitty way to treat a language.

Yeah, anyway. Good morning.

I believe with all my heart and soul that an advanced first world nation should supply a living wage to all citizens just for existing. You never know which poor kid will grow up to be a genius who can change everything. So support everyone.

To me it seems like self interest. Enlightened self interest, but whatever. I’m selfish as fuck. I think every citizen should be able to feel like their housing and food are secure so they can fucking think about other things. I think we will grow like nothing ever seen if we do this.

Can you imagine what it would be like if a country as advanced as us let the collective brainpower of a generation sit around and think in safety?!?!?!!? So many problems would get solved because people have time and bandwidth to do so.

Just about exactly one year ago today I picked up a hitch hiker in New Mexico. She was young. After a while, given contextual clues, I picked up that she was Navajo. She was trying to get from one reservation to another reservation in Arizona. Her only means of transport was walking or hitchhiking. 100 miles through the desert. At night. Oh honey. I’m going to drive you the whole way because I couldn’t live with myself for dropping you off in the desert in the middle of the night. I am not a monster.

I asked her what kind of work she does and she hung her head. She said, “I don’t have a job.” I laughed and said that just because no one is paying her that doesn’t mean she isn’t doing work. I don’t get paid for most of the work I do; it is still work.

She looked flabbergasted.

I think of this a lot.

I’m having one of those days, where for no reason at all, I feel like everything I do is pointless and I’m stupid and I’m not all the way back to worthless, but I’m having a day. Maybe I’m in the PMDD window? I’m on day 21 of my cycle. 31 day cycles certainly happen for me.

I don’t know. All I know is it is hard to feel like I’m being stupid and wasting time and refusing to do work that matters.

We live in a world that says ones value is largely calculated based on ones ability to earn money. I… I really kinda suck at that. Sure I can manage money like a bad ass. I can’t earn it though. I’m well aware that if I had picked a partner who also wasn’t good at making money… I would have had a very different life.

I’m having a hard time believing that this much time and effort on my house is really appropriate. I feel like I am doing something bad.

It is a frightful amount of money. I feel like I should settle for something 1/6 this price and do something worthy with the money. Too late.

I’m selfish. So very selfish. I want this. I spend a lot of time in my bathroom.

Unworthy.

People in Flint Michigan do not have clean water to drink. People in Haiti are struggling to pick up the pieces of their lives. 1 in 4 children in my county go hungry.

I’m part of the problem.

I’m not working to improve the lives of humanity. I’m… building a rad bathroom. Hey, if you want to come over and take a bath you can. I’ll share.

I’m feeling petty and small for needing to have a setting that reflects what I see in my head. All of life is a stage and I need specific stage dressings.

How do we figure out who we are? Is it based on our actions? Our relationships? What other people see in us?

How much do intentions matter vs effect?

Tricky.

My house is weird right now, because things can’t get put away right, yet. But when I’m done it is going to be incredible. There are different areas and different purposes and it is highly evocative of far away places. So as you are doing whatever you are doing, you always have the option of day dreaming. It is lovely.

I’m very close to thinking I have the prettiest house I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been in a lot of expensive houses. I’ve seen what wealthy people find pretty. Ugh. No. Not for me.

I have planted a jungle of plants in the yards. It is quite impressive how much diversity and color there is in the yard.

I feel so much potential in this tiny little space.

But that feels small and petty and selfish.

Things are plugging along fast here at Wonderland. We no longer have a bed frame. We gave it to a buddy. Our mattress is back on the floor because now we have enough room to put a twin mattress next to us and a crib mattress at the foot of our mattress so we don’t have to fight so often about the kids wanting to be in our room.

I give up on trying to force independence for a few years. They’ll sleep without us someday. True this makes sex inconvenient. Which is why Noah put a lovely lock on the garage door. Once the tile is out of the way we will have a great bed in the garage for sex. It’ll be grand.

I understand why they want to be close to us while sleeping. It makes sense to me. I don’t feel like trying to sever that closeness. We all love to reach out a hand or a foot just to make contact.

Something like 13%(ish) of 8-12 year old kids sleep with a parent every night. I slept with my mother until I had boyfriends or girlfriends in my bed.

We are maintaining a separate bedroom for them. Everyone has their own sleeping space. But sometimes people sleep on the couch. Because they want to. Sometimes people sleep on the floor in the living room. Because they want to. Sometimes everyone wants to sleep in the grown up bedroom. Because they want to.

This isn’t anxiety related at all. It’s kind of fascinating. I have proven to myself that we can force sleeping alone. But it’s not that much fun for anyone so why am I forcing this? One of the top 10 best things about the road trip was getting to sleep with the kids basically every night. The only nights I didn’t were when Noah was there and we wanted some privacy.

Middle of the night sex isn’t what it once was for me. I don’t feel the need for the same level of privacy. If I want to elbow him and crawl out to go to the garage for a while… we can do that.

What am I confused about though? That’s why I started writing.

I’m confused because some of the most beautiful people I know are told frequently that they are ugly. I don’t get it.

I’m confused because I feel like I’ve been having sex for over three decades and I’m only starting to sorta get what sex might actually be.

I’m confused because I don’t understand what slutty means to my identity and how descriptive or prescriptive I need it to be. I don’t know why this is so much of me.

I’m confused because I don’t know what fucking color to paint my house. I can make a strong case in several directions.

I’m confused because now that I have this shiny ADD diagnosis… I can’t do much about it because I’m about to get pregnant. I can’t try any medications. Well, I could. But I choose not to.

I’m confused because I wonder which of the choices I’m making that are the-best-I-can-make are very wrong. That’s always true. It always happens. No one ever makes the Right Choices. Everyone makes the best-choice-they-can-make-that-minute. It’s based on so many factors and complications that… it’s huge. It just is. People do the best they can. Maybe not their ultimate best given specific training and feedback and effort on a thing but they do what they can given who they are and what they have and what support they have and what resources they have and the education they have and the family they have and…. It’s complicated. Some of these choices we make, that are the best we can do, are wrong.

My shrink told me that in her opinion… as long as I don’t blow up the boat in the same way again… maybe all the stepping out wasn’t so bad. Specifically because it made us talk about some sex stuff we have been avoiding for years but mostly because… that kinda helped push us into having more kids. And she thinks that given how much I wanted kids… it wasn’t too high a price to pay.

Learning experiences often hurt.

Now that the decision is made I feel confused and freaked out a little by having a baby. My head is spinning in circles of, “My house is not baby set up” and I’m feeling panic. But we’ll figure it out.

I’m thinking about how much I have enjoyed being touched less. I’m thinking about how much I enjoy not sharing my boobs. Oh god.

Hey, I’m just doing a bit more to help my lifetime diabetes and breast cancer rates go down…

Oh god.

What am I doing? My back god damn hurts. This is going to suck ass through a straw.

I’ll figure it out.

But I’m so excited I can barely wait till January to get started… but we need to for a variety of reasons.

Oh good golly I hate birth control.

Yes, condoms can be sexy. They are also extra friction, which I hate. Even with lube; I know. Don’t give me the commercial, ok? I’m spoiled.

Life calls.

Well, it is official. I have ADD. I’m having some distinct mixed feelings about this. My therapist and psychiatrist both tried to uhhh “explain” why I didn’t get this diagnosis when I was younger in very CYA ways. “Well it is very hard to tell ADD and trauma apart.” “You didn’t show signs of distress.” Wait, whut?

She meant that I am very smart and I was able to pass grades in school so clearly I am totally fine.

But what the ever loving fuck?

I’m finding that I’m still having trouble shaking the strapping down during the second surgery. I keep feeling tightness in my body and when I check in with that part of me, I feel scared.

My shrink said, “It’s natural that you feel this way. Being strapped down like that is a major violation.” It wasn’t the second time. They were trying to keep me from falling off an operating table. That’s not a major violation. It was a major violation when they strapped me down just because they didn’t like my mood. I wish my body would forget. Not all strap-downs work the same way.

I’m having a lot of thoughts about intimacy, sex, love, wanting, keeping score, forgiveness… and I’m totally not ready to write about any of them. Oh the potential fall out.

My heart hurts.

I want my house back. It’s been so fucking long and I’m going stir crazy. I think I only have another week of major construction work before they start on tiling. Oh that would be lovely. I want my floor back in the garage. I want to have a play room so my kids can get their shit off the living room floor. Right now… the living room is the only place to play and we all think that sucks.

I haven’t been inviting people over. There isn’t space.

I am feeling weirdly kinda thrilled about Eldest Child and I both having an accurate diagnosis at this point. That means a lot of my weird rigidness around creating order is… a very functional adaptation to problems we actually have. I’m not just a fascist bitch. YAY! I’ve run across several mentions in the past few days that we all need separate work spaces and I think I’ve decided how I’m going to make that work space wise. Desks in every damn room. So, kid sized desks in the play room and in the sleeping room (which will have room once most of the furniture is taken out like we have scheduled to do…) and the coffee table in the living room and the red table in a corner of the garage where you can’t see Noah. Which will give me four work spaces for little people. Perfect when we have the Bonus Kids.

Cause I’m just a few weeks away from giving every one dedicated work time every day. Because I’ve almost got the bones in place for that.

The littlest two are too young for academics so they can work on art. Play Doh for hand eye acuity or drawing or painting. Sure, why not. I’ve got just about everything in the house. But the littles need their own work so they leave the biggest kids alone for a little bit. Eldest Child is kinda annoyed with me over having to do academics at the rate she is currently doing them. I said, “Hey I asked you if you wanted to start catching up in second grade and you said, ‘Naw wait till next year’ so that means you have a lot to do in one year. Take your medicine.”

I’m not entirely sure we are unschooling any more given that I’m trying to teach the habit of working every day so I mandate structure more than we used to. We are still studying the stuff she asked to study. She picked out the books she’s plowing through… not me. I’m just enforcing the creation of habits.

You are your habits.

I’ve always gotten my planning done in bursts. Noah has been working on developing the habit of checking in every Sunday with long lists of life-preparation-shit. I’m trying to join him and after a few weeks or months I’m going to push the kids to do it as well. Planning out your week just makes everything flow more smoothly. But I need to try and build the habit myself before asking the kids. Too much is changing for them. I need to change me before I can change them.

They both plan like I do at this point: in bursts at random times. It is wonderful for me to listen to them plan things out though. They think like me. It’s incredibly validating. They think about different scenarios and fall backs and logistics and… Oh my babies. You make my heart soar.

I’m a nerd.

I can’t figure out what to do with the bottom left corner of this mosaic. I hate what I have tried so far. Grouse, whine, fuss. Ok, maybe I don’t hate it… but it’s not right yet. I love how I’ve managed to create the idea of differing distances and scale and perspective. I’m a genius.

And so humble.

We’ve been slowly putting all our investment stuff on Mint. As more of our money becomes visible to me…

Holy Fucking Shit.

We have managed to save/pay down debt at the rate of over $100,000/year every year of our marriage. Given what else we’ve done… I’m both terribly impressed with how I’ve managed to stretch the money that far and ashamed I haven’t done better. Especially over the past few years as his salary has been so incredibly high.

I can only afford to do this because Noah happened to pick the most lucrative hobby of his generation as a seven year old kid, he was white, and he came from family money which allowed him to go to one of the best schools in the country.

Privilege is a mother fucker.

Next year, given that I won’t be traveling I hope I pay off/save a combined total of $150,000. (Specifically: investments go up by $50,000, debt will go down by $100,000. That will leave me with ~$60,000 left of debt. I’ll pay that off the next year.) That still, uhh, leaves us a lot to live on. More than I could earn in a year.

Either the year after that or maybe the year after that… we’ll probably hit a million dollars in investments.

Before I’m 40.

My shrink spent a while today trying to tell me that because I am so accomplished how could anyone have been able to tell that I had ADD? I’m so… capable.

I have found some fucktastically effective coping methods, it is true. What could I have done if I had better/more effective support? It’s either terrifying in a good way or maybe a let down. Noah tells me pretty frequently that he thinks I have not come close to my potential yet and he looks forward to seeing what that means.

Resilience. This word keeps coming up. What the fuck does resilience even mean? Don’t give me a text book definition. I can rattle that shit off. But what does it mean feeling like? Cause I’m resilient like fuck and I still feel like a loser.

I had structural power on my side, but that isn’t effective for everyone who has it. Most white people who start out poor like I did do not manage to leap frog to the other side of the socio economic spectrum. Try something. Fail. Get up and try something else. Fail. Repeat.

That’s resilience. It is being willing to try something else after failing. Holy shit I’ve failed so much.

I think I fucked things up with some friends. I think it is my fault. I’m not angry at anyone about the cock up. This is on me.

But I’ll try again. Maybe I won’t pester them, boundaries matter, but I’ll try again in life. It’s a long life. There are a lot of god damn people in the world.

I am propelled forward in life by this deep aching need. A need for love and connection and respect and to be treated well. These are not things I was handed easily or automatically. I’ve had to work.

Try. Fail. Try again.

Sometimes when I hear men complain about how unfair it is that they have to work hard to learn social skills I want to scream and break things. It has been so hard for me. I have fucked up over and over and over and it has been god damn painful.

No sympathy from this corner, buddy.

I have believed all of my life that my brain worked differently than other peoples and I’m getting increasing feedback that I was right. Yeah, things that might be easy for some people are genuinely harder for me.

I ALWAYS GOD DAMN THOUGHT SO.

But you know what, I got this far without outside help figuring out how to help me. That’s pretty good.

*pat self on back*

Good job, self. You aren’t a completely worthless shitpile. Well done.

I was sitting in the back yard recently and I thought, “Well done past self. You were so awesome to do all those hundreds of hours of work. It has really paid off.”

I need to find a balance between work and rest. My future health will depend on me pacing myself and I totally get into work-a-holic periods where I wreck my body. I can’t keep doing it. I need to get this cycle more predictable and workable and sustainable.

My body hurts so much. And there isn’t a lot of point in working hard to make it hurt less before the big work is done because I’ll just hurt myself again in a day.

I have about 14 hours of detail work left in the kitchen. I have to finish the mosaics. I have to paint the play room. I have to empty everything out of the shed so it can be moved then I need to reorganize it because damn my system collapsed. Then I need to sort most of the stuff in the entire house and put it away.

I seriously hope we are done before Christmas.

I’m not sure we will be done with the arbitration which kinda sucks. Sigh.

I am so very weary. Why am I not sleepy?

Can’t sleep. Future will eat me.

Not to mention that this election cycle is awful. The internet is a sad place to be. I should probably stop reading Twitter until after November 8th.

I have filled out my ballot. I’m good.

There’s not a thing on this earth that could make me vote for Trump. Sweet sunny Christmas no.

I’m clearly going to have leftover tile. I’m going to talk to local art teachers. I’ve got enough stuff for several full classes to make reasonable sized mosaics if the tiles were broken up. I’m not sorry I didn’t end up using everything. I’m glad I had the variety. I am really excited about finishing winter. This is going to be so pretty. I have a lot of sparkly tiles. Let it snow; let it snow; let it snow.

I’m over you, autumn. That tree was a motherfucker.

But it’s so prettttttty.

I will be happy that I get to look at you. Making you was still evil.

I’m going to try again on sleep.

I have to sit very still because I probably popped the artery with an increase in blood pressure. The nose is sensitive and the blood vessels aren’t buried deep and increases in blood pressure puts strain on thin closures. Given that I lost a whole bunch of blood clots in the last bleed that were quite large, one the size of a golf ball… I’m not done healing from the original surgery most likely.

It was really stupid to dive into a pool. I take responsibility. I thought three weeks was long enough. He said 3-4 weeks for exercise. Then I looked online (after my first nose bleed) and saw that swimming is supposed to be held off for 6+ weeks. Whoops.

It’s my fault.

Yeah… I know.

So I have an appointment this Friday with my surgeon and I’m supposed to stay as still as I can manage until then. That’s 10 solid days of sitting.

I FEEL LIKE I AM ABOUT TO EXPLODE WITH EXCESS ENERGY.

I need to be cleared for driving a long way on Friday. The following Tuesday I have appointments in Oakland/Berkeley I want to keep. I will find out the results of the ADD testing and I’ll get a genetic test done to see part of why I am so wacky when it comes to my medication responses. I hear that these days they have better ways of trying to tell why a person is wacky. We’ll see.

I am scared that the genetic testing will be, “We don’t know why you are so reactive to medications” followed by “You must be making it up” when I have a consistent 20 year history of having abnormal physical reactions to medications. Well, not even abnormal physical reactions. All of my reactions to medications follow known potential side effects. I just get the unusual and extreme side effects. They are always listed on the package as possible but the doctor says, “My other patients don’t respond this way. It is weird that you do.” BUT THESE REACTIONS ARE LISTED ON THE PACKAGE. WHY DO YOU SAY IT IS WEIRD THAT I HAVE THESE REACTIONS WHEN THEY ARE LISTED ON THE GOD DAMN PACKAGE?!

I’m going to stop and say again: my recent ER visits went fantastically well. I am going to hold on, in my mind, to this image of doctors getting to do exactly what they are trained to do and doing it well. They weren’t threatened by my weird reactions so they didn’t shame me even a little. Shit happens and everyone did their job well.

Doctors are not always shitty.

But psych patients try the patience of doctors. Psych patients try the stamina of doctors and they don’t like it.

Whyyyyyyyyy am I so treatment resistant to many of the things doctors want to throw at me to solve my problems? I think it is because solutions are way more complicated than that. I think that if my body had settled down and tried to “behave” more when doctors gave me pills… I wouldn’t have fought so hard to change every aspect of my life. I think that on some subconscious level I knew that the solution to my problems had to come in relationships and life experiences and genuinely figuring out how to stop acquiring more ongoing trauma… Pills would have prevented me from having the fierce drive to change everything in my life. I would have been more apathetic. More accepting. That would have been bad.

Maybe I had every negative side effect because feeling more-ok with not-okness would have been devastating to the overall curve of my life.

I really don’t know. I know that I try things. I know that I follow directions for how to “get better” and deal with my issues and… only some of the things work.

Mostly what has worked has been getting away from ongoing traumatization. Mostly what has worked has been finding a partner who will help me and be with me and adapt to my needs. Mostly what has worked has been having children and proving to myself that I can be a good mother. I have some value. I have some ability to do good things.

Being a good friend has helped. Seeing that I have resources to share has helped. Not feeling like I am just a pathetic eternal sinkhole of need.

If medication had worked when I was 15 and I had learned how to conform better to what was happening…. would I have prosecuted my father? Would I have pushed so hard to get the fuck out of high school?

If medication had worked when I was 19 would I have worked so hard to find coping methods? Would I have finished college and left my Owner? Or would I have… reverted to a mean? I don’t know for sure. I know that having an intense amount of drive is a lot of what kept me pushing to find new things.

If medication worked better now would I try so hard to find more books to read, more strategies to employ, more reasons to make things work on my own?

I don’t choose to have the reactions to medication that I have. I just have them. I just document them. It would be easier if I could stop doing research and working and just… coast on some extra help from a pill. But it hasn’t worked for me.

I fucking wish it would.

I’m not saying that other people who can take medications are lazy or not trying hard to improve or aren’t doing work or…

I’m talking about my journey with my individual issues. I’m a deeply flawed person. I ain’t judging you. Glass houses and all that shit.

Noah has been extra schmoopy lately. Like, schmoop on turbo.

Noah gets up in the morning because of me. Noah works all day because of me. When Noah is resting for a few minutes, he comes to cuddle up to me before returning to working. Because I’m really the whole center of his world. Yeah yeah, kids, but no. I’m it.

My mama told me that whenever two people are in love one person is more in love than the other person and that person is at a disadvantage.

I feel like my relationship has gone back and forth and right now… Noah loves me more. And I have not been honoring the gift he is giving me. I have been hurting him with that. I have been allowing him to be at a disadvantage. God damnit if I’m not proving my mama right. Fuck and shit and craptastic.

Noah does love me like I’m his favorite Disney princess. (A reference to a thing that happened online and I’m not giving context.) Noah loves me like I’m his favorite person of all time.

I need to stop being such a fucking asshole and I need to work on appreciating what I have more. I need to figure out how to fall more in love. I need to honor the fact that I am treated way better than I deserve. I need to honor the fact that Noah has changed his whole god damn life for me.

Noah gives to me the way my female friends give to their male partners. With an open hand. Without demand that I earn his love in return.

God damn how did I get so lucky in this lifetime? Sometimes people tell me that of all people I deserve what I have now. No. That’s not how it works. It doesn’t matter how shitty my childhood was. No one could possibly deserve what I have now. I just have it. Because life isn’t remotely fair.

Given how much my head still hurts, it is easy to remember that sex is off the table for a while. I have been feeling a lot of urge to snuggle and kiss though.

DO YOU KNOW HOW GOD DAMN AWESOME IT IS TO BE ABLE TO BREATHE THROUGH MY NOSE WHILE I’M KISSING?! IT’S LIKE A WHOLE NEW WORLD!!!!

I’m very excited about this breathing through my nose business.

Noah is earning a lot of adoration lately. He’s being so very nice. He’s doing so much stuff. I’m kinda compulsive about working. In order to persuade me to sit on my ass… Noah is doing most of my chores. Not all of them (and that’s ok) but enough that I really don’t have justification to get up and work. The stuff that I’m not doing right now is stuff that can wait. He’s doing everything that can’t wait.

I feel like a princess.

Why doesn’t everyone get to have a partner who will treat them the way that Noah treats me? Ok, minus the kinky sex. Not everyone is into that part. But the support, the love, the attention.

I wish everyone got to be loved the way I am loved. It feels like magic.

I strongly dislike medically mandated rest. I get prescribed rest every few years. Usually by doctors who are greatly exasperated by my work load. To them I say: STOP JUDGING ME.

But when I get told to sit on my ass or else I try to listen. So I’m up to day four. I was told this time that I should sit for at least a week. The surgeon would prefer longer but I whined.

This means having a baby is put off by several months. It’s just not on the table yet. Feck. Like, don’t think about it till December or January. From October. That makes me very sad right now.

Other things I can’t consider doing right now: painting, gardening, cleaning out the shed for the remodel (the construction workers are going to to move it but it needs to be emptied first), cleaning my house (luckily Noah did this part yesterday so I feel less twitchy on this front), typing all that much (my arms are enflamed like a motherfucker), exercising, sex at all for a while, masturbating, driving, socializing…

I’m feeling very fussy right this minute.

But I’ve sat still through Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Where is my fucking medal.

I wasn’t still for a solid three days after the first surgery. This may be part of my problem. I’m trying to do better after this burst artery business. That was kinda scary.

I think I’m up to four near death experiences. Three medical one psychological. The first was the pit bull bite. I could have died from blood loss then if I hadn’t been near a good hospital. I’m a truly lucky bitch. The second was when my father held a gun to my head and asked me if I deserved to live. Psychologically… that fucks you up forever. That’s almost dying. Third was bleeding out during my second labor. That was really scary. And now the fourth was having an artery burst in my nose.

The doctor said: “No way can you go to Las Vegas this week. Imagine what would happen if you started bleeding in the middle of the desert.”

Oh yeah. I’d die. Because this isn’t a game. Oh.

I’m kinda like a cat, counting up my lives.

Only five to go. Time to stop fucking around with this mess. The near misses will be scarier later. And that’s not including the times I’ve done stupid things like letting someone hang me with a noose.

I haven’t traditionally had a lot of care with my life.

But I have these kids now. Things have changed. I really want to see what kind of grown ups they become. I’m endlessly fascinated with them. I get tired and need time off, sure, but I don’t get sick of knowing them. I didn’t think parenting would be this wonderful.

It’ll be more wonderful when my house isn’t being forking remodeled. But progress is being made! They are more than four weeks into the work now. In a supposedly 6-8 week project. Windows arrive in ten days. I’ve had no windows in the front of my house since February. It’s getting cold again. Which makes six weeks unlikely but eight weeks possible. I’m crossing my fingers.

Hey, that means I can’t consider getting pregnant till the remodel is over. Sigh.

One of my friends sent me this link to a private island for sale in Scotland. If I sold my house I could probably cover half of it. Holy fucking shit. That’s… kinda mind blowing.

Sex is so weird. I’m transactional with it and I’m getting to the point where that is a serious problem for me. So I’m teasing my friends about something and not writing about their situation because tact but it made me think about myself. If I wanted something and Noah told me I could have it if I blew him every day for a year… he would wake up with a mouth on his cock every morning for 365 days. If I wanted something and that was the price…

Price. Should things have sex as a price? Everything has a price. For years now I’ve paid the price of sex for Noah’s good humor. And just recently when I stopped having sex with Noah (mostly for medical reasons) he’s… had trouble in the ways we predict. So I feel like I’m being derelict in my duties to provide sex. And I’m feeling bitter that I must. So using sex to pay for things is complicated.

Will I do it? Sure. I’m a pragmatist. Will I be long term happy about it? Well that’s a different question. It kinda sounds like I’m joking about the pragmatism thing, but I’m not. I’ve had a crazy lot of sex for pragmatic reasons. A long time ago I overheard a sex worker saying, “Every woman is a sex worker, but only some of us are smart enough to get paid.” I’m not sure if she was quoting someone else. I…

I don’t understand how sex works for other people. For much of my life sex was currency. I’ve used it for lots of things. These days mostly to keep Noah happy. That’s mixed.

What did I find out during my slutting around this year? I discovered that I still have oceans-deep wells of desire inside of myself but they are not accessed when I am having sex for someone else.

That’s useful to know.

It isn’t that I don’t desire Noah. I want to spend my time with Noah. I like Noah very much. But we have a lot of sex for him when it doesn’t work for me. That’s… psychologically damaging. It means I partition off that the sex I have with him isn’t for me. I’m not saying it is his fault; I’m saying it happens.

Do you know what else I learned about slutting around this year? I can’t keep doing it. It’ll fuck Noah up in a way I’m not ok with being responsible for. It won’t kill him. It may not even cause a divorce. But it would kill his spirit and I’m not going to do that. I owe Noah better than that this lifetime. He’s been very good to me.

I don’t think I can be monogamous. But I can’t do what I was doing. This is going to be tricky to work out and take years.

I hurt him. I hurt him in a way that is going to take serious repair work. I did that. I fucked that up. I am as big of an asshole as I sound when I say: “I didn’t think it would hurt him that much.”

Well, it did.

I did. I hurt him that much.

And he’s still all in. Because we don’t really get a second chance with someone else. We’re done for. This is our shot in life. This is the one chance we get to do this right. So either we ride the waves and figure out how to improve shit… or we give up on this fairy tale. This belief that we, fucked up people that we are, can be loved and completely accepted in this lifetime.

We are both hard. We are not people who would find a second replacement life and just make it work. I know people who have great second marriages. I know people who rebuild life into third and fourth marriages.

I can’t do that. I could be something different, but I don’t think I could ever try again. And with the whole kids thing… this is our one chance to have an intact family. We have high stakes. We don’t have families that love us to fall back on. Noah is closer than I am, but not that much.

I know. I’ve seen the last twelve years of his life. I know he doesn’t really have anyone to fall back on other than me.

I know.

I have good friends, the most amazing friends… but I’d have to figure out how to stand alone too. I don’t have a family to fall back on. My friends give me what they have to give. They are my friends.

I’ve seen the difference in the lives of my friends. They have families. My chance at that is with Noah and my kids.

And I did a lot to fuck it up this year.

I also learned that Noah is right. I will never run out of sex or dating opportunities. I just won’t. Whether I look for them or at them is a different matter. It’s kind of an interesting thing to try and internalize. I am attractive enough. I am interesting enough. I am educated enough. I am snotty and entitled about how I am treated enough…

I will always have a high market value. That’s… not something I expected this lifetime.

I will never seriously deal with an ain’t-shit-man again.

It isn’t like they will never hit on me. But I won’t put up with that kind of crap. I have too high of standards and that is Noah’s fault. I think I won the husband lottery. He’s an absolute pain in the ass who wouldn’t work for most people very well… but he’s god damn perfect for me. He is willing to adapt and help and give in a way that… most men really won’t.

But I get how he would be hard for someone else. Totally true. I’m no picnic so I don’t complain about him being work.

Even when I’m just looking around the house at the murals… most people wouldn’t have let me do this. Steve would have said no. My Owner would have said no. Puppy would have said no. They would have said I was “destroying the value of the house.”

Noah tells me to have fun.

I also learned this year that Noah isn’t much better at telling me no than I am at telling him no. That’s good to understand. He will let me hurt him. If I’m going to avoid hurting him I need to just know where the boundaries are. He isn’t going to enforce them.

I also pushed my luck enough to find out that a few things are ok that I would have assumed weren’t. It wasn’t entirely bad. There were things that worked out ok.

There were things that weren’t ok. Absolutely every step of dealing with the Quiet One was mishandled and fucked up.

I’m feeling kinda glad in retrospect that since I fucked up so badly with someone I made sure it wasn’t someone who was deeply entrenched in my life. I kept good boundaries with my friends. Noah isn’t upset with any of our long term friends over this experiment. I get why he had the feelings he had about the Quiet One.

He doesn’t have to veto.

In this process we also got to the point of understanding what “veto” actually meant. And why it exists. Because this year we had to revisit what it means and why I’ve done it in the past and god damn if I wasn’t right.

I’m a fuck up. But that doesn’t make me wrong every time.

Life is really complicated like that.

Today I am still stuck in a chair. Eldest Child is off with the Bonus Family. The kids asked if they could visit separately this time. It sounded fine to the adults. I’ll play more games with Youngest Child. Noah will probably read to us.

Luckily this isn’t a day where I can fuck much up. I’ll just… sit in a chair. Or on the couch. Maybe both at different times. Woo.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the fact that I have come a long way in terms of my behavior with my kids. I am far better at reacting. I’ve had practice. I’ve developed much greater patience. I think I have managed to do it through simple brute force. I’m feeling kinda proud of myself because I think the person I was who taught in a high school ten years ago is not the person I am now. I had distinctly more limited patience at the time. I’m doing what I want to do.

I don’t know another way of learning. I’m not good at the subtle. I’m good at broad strokes and insistent demands: “No, not like that. Like this.”

I am shocked at the ways in which I have changed my behavior. Pleased, yes, but shocked. It’s only when I stop and think about how far I’ve come that it really hits home. When I think about myself in the present I feel impatient with all the ways I am still failing to meet the metrics I set for myself.

I honestly believe that having my children mirror back my behavior is the single most… motivating experience of my life. I want to do better because I want to give them better because I want them to be able to do/have/be better.

At Stanford they started asking Eldest Child about adult goals. What’s your plan A? Be president. What’s your plan B? …. crickets.

I talked to her yesterday about this. I said, “You know… being president is a lot of pressure and work. You could instead help elect presidents” and her eyes grew wide. Yessssssss. She’s very excited about this prospect.

I think maybe she absorbed a bit too much The West Wing as an early child. She’s kind of ridiculously interested in politics. She is very clear that she wants to be in government because she wants to help people and government is a way to help huge swathes of people at once. She’s given up on being a doctor. “You can only help one person at a time that way.”

I understand, kiddo.

She is both a lot like me and a lot more subtle than me. I hope that having a mother like me isn’t a deal breaker for a future political life. I won’t apologize for existing nor for writing about sex for decades.

Oh, in other news, speaking of family embarrassments: my in-laws are coming to town. Thankfully not to our house. They are coming to San Francisco. For one night on their way to a four month cruise. Because they enjoyed the last cruise they were on so much. The one that was like 2-3 weeks after ours. Ours that they said they couldn’t go on because they couldn’t be away from home.

I….

Bon voyage motherfuckers. It’s ok with me if you don’t come back.

Would I have been happier with them on the cruise with us? Probably not. But I feel like I truly don’t ever need to put effort in again. I’ve done so in a variety of ways. I’m… getting what they feel like back which is mostly a middle finger. I’m done trying. It’s throwing good energy after bad.

I don’t think I’m going to get anything positive back from them this lifetime. They’ll send the shit they feel like sending whether it works for me or not. They will request attention when they want it and I don’t need to care. Hey, they will be on their cruise ship through their Christmas/anniversary/birthday rush this year. Maybe we don’t have to send presents.

Awesome.

In a side note, this lady makes kids music that works in the same way as a lot of my little songs I sing with the kids. Yay for not having to invent everything for yourself.

I’m feeling weary. This remodel won’t be done till Thanksgiving. I’m so tired. I want to be able to clean my house in a way that is low stress and easy. That requires getting more space. Somewhere to put all this bathroom and closet stuff. Erf and uggg. (The towels will be living in the bathroom.) The linens will probably have to be stored in the garage, which won’t suck for laundry simplicity. I love my garage. I feel like the garage amount of space is what makes this house usable. I think I would go bananas if I were actually limited to 960′ sq (approximately). Our house is just a bit under 1,000′ sq. I measured but I no longer remember the exact number. It’s very early in the morning. I am back to not sleeping that well. But with the garage, and the new bathroom addition we will be up to 1, 520′ sq. Practically a palace.

Hey I lived in a one car converted garage with my mom. My house feels… full of potential and space to me. It’s all about what you’re used to. Auntie’s houses were bigger… but there were so many more people. Sure they had a 3,000′ sq house… but twelve people lived there. It didn’t feel spacious. It felt dirty all the damn time.

Auntie isn’t the sort to make other people do things.

One of my friends has a saying: “Do you want a lazy mama or a crazy mama?” Whereas I don’t say it to my kids… I do think it on a regular basis. My kids work. I can’t be Auntie. I’m raising workers, not shirkers.

We have a fun Busytown: What Do People Do All Day book. It is… hilariously Marxist. “Everyone is a worker!” It includes how Mommy works and how a kid is supposed to work. There is so much indoctrination material available if you just cull stimuli properly. I feel downright Machiavellian sometimes when I think of how I’m constructing my library.

Kiddos “found” a “new” book yesterday in the house cause I’m getting some shelves freed up so I am spreading the books out so they are more useable again….. It’s a process.

But library tending: I’m serious about my library. I have all kinds of books designed to be valuable in a wide variety of settings for people of diverse personalities and ages. I pretty much have something for everyone. I back a lot of Kickstarters for interesting books. Things you can’t buy in stores (yet… hopefully someday they make it).

And I got to absorb Sarah’s library. That was a diverse thing of beauty. She’s been collecting fabulous books for longer than me. I understand why carrying it around is hard at this point. She can visit it anytime she wants. She can have anything she wants back, forever. But I get to read them in the meantime. I’m pretty thrilled.

I have the next few years cut out for me. That feels so lovely.

Guess what Eldest Child doing academics means? It means… I sit next to her, prodding… for the whole time… or…. there are some fantastic doodles and no work done when I get back.

It’s a good thing I have worked with a lot of kids who need similar support. It’s not that unusual. There was a boy I hometaught when he was suspended from school for behavior violations who needed to be forking spoon fed everything but then he could perform just fine. He was in a bunch of low level classes because he couldn’t pay attention to save his life… but he was bored. He could have been in harder math, English, science… but he had to have someone spoon feed him. It’s an attention problem.

When these kids are learning something because they want to learn it… they are flippin incredible. When an adult tries to say, “This is what you must learn now” then… it comes in painstaking inches.

I had the worst time trying to learn multiplication tables. I think that they started trying to teach them in grade four but I didn’t pick them up until… grade eight I think? Not until I started doing more interesting math and I started multiplying more often and I just picked them up.

I need exposure through use instead of sheer memorization. I need to develop the ability to picture a larger story in my head so I can replay it and watch my hand form the answer on the paper. I visualize my memories like that. I don’t remember hearing things all that well. If I just read something it is better than hearing it…. but I learn best when I remember doing something myself.

And sometimes… I need to be spoon fed or I just can’t learn something. Because I just can’t keep my attention on it.

I took an ADD test yesterday. I stared at a computer for twenty minutes pressing a space bar. I made a lot of mistakes. If the dude sitting behind me was taking notes he heard the progression through shoot to fudge to crap to shit to fuck. I started out trying to be good. And I was pretty much dancing in my chair. Because I do that when I’m just sitting and trying to focus like that. My body twitches and jerks and I hear music in my head and I wiggle accordingly. (In my head I was hearing: Try Everything from the Zootopia soundtrack. Shakira gives me life.)

Given that a lot of the test is about measuring movement…

I don’t get my results for weeks. Because an expert has to read the printouts and I don’t have an appointment for a while. Wheeeee.

I should schedule a follow up for the nose surgery. There’s something a little weird on one side… and I’m still producing blood every day. I’m so sick of medical appointments. And then I want to get pregnant?!?!?!

I’m… not thinking. Baby fever makes you stupid. Biology is a bitch. I’ll do it. I’ll go. I’ll do what I’m supposed to do.

Baby. Baby. Baby.

It’s truly not a sane urge.

Having kids with Noah is wonderful.

There’s so much I want to do and try. Time to get busy.