Category Archives: anxiety

Rape, rape culture, and home school dynamics. (What a fun title.)

If I sat down and delineated all of the relationships that are bumpy right now… I wouldn’t have many people willing to talk to me next week. I feel like if I am having this many problems all at once it must be me. I’m doing something. I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing wrong.

Is it oversharing? I haven’t even done that much of it lately. Not for me. Not in the scope of my level of over sharing.

I don’t know.

Passive aggression today. (Err, obviously not with the person who might read this.) There is one mom in particular who likes to make cracks about me. In the past it was a comment about how it isn’t possible to tell the difference between when I whine and when I talk. Today it was how no one will miss me if I disappear for a month. “Oh I’m kidding.”

I would cheerfully like to lock my front door, set up grocery delivery service, and maybe come out next year.

At least someone else, who I consider more friendly to me, looked kind of shocked when she said no one would miss me. I don’t think I was the only one who thought the “joke” wasn’t funny.

I’m sorry I’m not the quality of person you wish you got to associate with. What would you like me to do about that?

I’m feeling really really sad about some scheduling things. I don’t think anyone did anything wrong. Sometimes scheduling is hard and makes me sad.

I am happy that I got to speak with someone else on the unschooling list who felt very upset about the whole exchange. She felt that his “I’m not defending what he did to Krissy… but this show is great! He won an award!” was pretty disgusting. I’m so grateful to hear that I’m not the only one. I’ve been feeling really bad about the fact that I live in a world that prioritizes the funny rapists. I don’t feel like I want to live in a world like that. She said she wouldn’t care if I was the only victim this guy had–the fact that he has many such stories from many women isn’t more problematic. The fact that people will cover for him even for one rape is seriously a disgusting thing. She said she doesn’t want her kids in a room with someone like that and she’s grateful I spoke up.

Mostly I get crickets back. So I never know how much of what I say harms people or helps them. The people who do speak up are usually men telling me to shut up because I might hurt one of the poor men folk. I have less sympathy for this point of view than many might hope.

I don’t go out of my way to hurt any individual men. Well, or at least it has been a great many years since I have. (And all of those guys had to ask VERY NICELY.)

If I hurt my rapists by talking about them… sorry dudes. You made this bed, not me. I didn’t tell you to do what you did. So I get to talk about it. You get no privacy from me.

The vast majority of men in the whole wide world haven’t done a negative thing to me. So mostly I think guys are ok. I wish they would yell at one another for inappropriate sexist behavior more often but no one is perfect. I’m a yeller. I understand it isn’t everyones thing.

I feel scared. Unimportant. Stupid. I feel like if I got raped so many times it must be all my fucking fault and there is nothing I can do to take away me deserving it. I feel like maybe I wasn’t clear enough with Paul. Or with Dan. I told them so many times that I didn’t do bareback sex. Over and over I said, “This is a cover required portal. Thanks.” I thought I was funny. I said that I only have sex when two forms of birth control are used. (I sure as shit knew I didn’t want to coparent with either loser. Having protected sex is one thing. Having a baby with a loser is different.)

Am I allowed such fine tuned boundaries? Or is that breaking some rule such that it’s ok when guys want to stick it in any way?

“He won an award! He’s so funny!”

I hate you. I’m glad I don’t even know who you are, funny unschooling asshole dad, but you can jump right off a cliff.

Wait. Isn’t that me wishing harm on an individual man? Didn’t I just try to claim I don’t do this?!?!?!

Well, ok I’m a fucking liar. It’s unusual for me to wish harm on someone. And I don’t wish to go harm him. And I don’t wish to have someone else go harm him for me. But I’d be cool with him jumping off a cliff. Ok, no I wouldn’t. He’s a parent. That would be horrible and I would be a horrible person for being cool with him committing suicide.

Ok… uhm… don’t jump off a cliff. But shut the fuck up, okay? Stop endorsing rapists. It makes you look like a Very Bad Person with Questionable Judgement. Now that I know that you will send your kids to Paul I think I need to make sure my kids are never alone in a room with you.

And yet I live with someone who has committed rape. What kind of fucking hypocrite piece of shit am I? I really wonder sometimes.

Why can I forgive one rapist and not another? Well. I don’t have a good answer to that question but it fucking keeps me up at night.

Noah is not the only rapist I have forgiven. Life is very complicated. Why in the hell do I carry around a grudge bigger than Alaska for some of the dudes who raped me? Why do I pick and choose?

I want to believe that part of it is, I don’t forgive the ones who have a long list of victims. I don’t forgive the real predators.

So Noah isn’t a real predator? Enh, not really. Noah learned boundaries slow and hard but he has shown continual progress across the board in his life. He hasn’t sat in one place doing the same thing with chick after chick after chick. I have seen no sign of my kids having anything like inappropriate sexual knowledge and I bloody well look for signs. I believe that he has been as honorable within our family as one can be.

This unschooling dad who is defending Paul probably has many years of positive experiences. Lots of trust. Why shouldn’t he defend his friend?

Do I really believe that rapists deserve to be shunned for all time and banned from all gatherings?

I can’t say yes with a straight face, now can I?

I think this is where I sit in the hamster wheel. I can’t say that all rapists should be banned. This is what is keeping me up at night. Then what do I think should happen?

I’m not shy about outing Noah. Which means that I am inviting other people to shun him if I say that rapists should be shunned. Is that what I want? Do I believe that secretly it would be better for them if they just got the fuck away from Noah? Err, no. I think he’s a really interesting person with a lot to offer.

Why don’t I want to see Paul in such a light? Why do I want him to be cast in the role of villain so I can rant and rail and hate him so much? Is this misdirected shit at my dad?

I think that part of it is–I can forgive someone for raping me. I know that my behavior “invited” such response. When there is a whole string of other women… you know… no. You are hurting people. I know of three other specific women who have been extremely fucked up by you. You are a bad person. You are a liar and a cheat and a fraud as your profession. You say hateful nasty things that you really believe with a smile on your face and people laugh because they think you are “joking.”

If you make a big chunk of your living from being a jerk… I don’t think that is funny. Clearly lots of other people do because you have made a career out of this. People are fucking weird.

But given the things I like to do… I can’t say that much.

Only clearly I can say a lot.

I sat a friend’s sister down before Burning Man last year and gave her an intense conversation about always having a sober trip sitter if you do drugs so you can be safe.

You never know when there will be someone around who just wants to “stick it in a few times. It’s no big deal.”

Because too many people, me included, don’t think all rapists should be banned from all spaces. So they are everywhere.

I know there is a large demographic who believes that it is my fault or the woman Paul raped before me’s fault or the woman before that’s fault. We didn’t report. We haven’t put Paul in jail. It is our collective fault that he is out there raping a whole string of women.

Cause uhm, yeah. That makes sense. It is his dick and it is our fault we have cunts he can put it in. Like, duh.

Something like that.

My heart hurts. I feel so sad. But at least when I can write about it Noah knows why I’m so tetchy. It’s easier to accommodate my anxiety du jour if he knows what it is shaped like.

Sometimes I feel very sad and very scared that at the end of the day I belong with the rapist camp. I know so many rapists because, well duh. I just would. That’s just the shape in the world I belong in.

Why do I only forgive some of them? Noah’s not the only one. But the others in my life have more right to privacy. Noah’s a sucker for marrying me. Marrying was like the opposite of an NDA. “I agree to having my life discussed in detail on the internet. Even the embarrassing shit. Ok, maybe mostly only those bits.”

Is it just because I like Noah’s jokes more? He doesn’t make jokes that make other people look small or pathetic. His jokes are about bicycles. And smart ass parrots. He doesn’t want to denigrate people.

Is that enough of a difference? Does that justify my attitude?

“Get over it.”

I’m trying. It’s complicated.

Paul and I had sex several times. It wasn’t a stranger rape. He was a sometimes-partner at sex parties. He is less than 1% of my sexual partners. Why do I care so much that one time he did something that was against my boundaries? Why is it such a big deal that I want to keep my children and the children of my friends away from him?

Because he bloody well groomed me into inappropriate displays of trust followed by an action that could have resulted in an STD or a baby. He’s a big whore. He has no right having bareback sex.

Paul feels like a legitimate threat. Not to me–never again. I’m no longer in a vulnerable demographic as far as he is concerned. But there are a lot of nice young girls out there. Waiting to be groomed.

That scares me silly.

I feel attacked even though I am not the one at risk. Even though no one is attacking me. Even though instead of attacking my character or criticism instead only support was voiced. I en’t saying my feelings are logical so don’t nitpick.

How do I get over feeling attacked? Anxiety is energy stored in the body that needs to be used somehow. Well, I have a 10k race tomorrow. That should help.

It is hard to stop feeling attacked when I continually run into people who make little “jokes” about me. Oh I’m sure she doesn’t mean it. (See–it’s totally not just men I have trouble with. I have troubles with all possible gender configurations. I’m flexible like that.)

Deep breath. In. Out. Not here to make friends. Here to provide children with opportunity to make friends. I don’t have to be friends with the parents. It is not a requirement.

Would it really be that tacky if I started bringing a book and sitting off to the side? I feel like speaking in the group is resulting in people disliking me and I would prefer to just opt out.

I’m tired of feeling scared of every word out of my mouth. I’m tired of feeling like I’m doing something wrong.

This is why I loudly say I’m poor white trash. Or I used to. I’m not any more. Now I don’t get to say that and my lack of cultural mesh is just my fault. I’m just… wrong.

I’d rather be wrong because I said I’m poor white trash than because you’ve just decided to despise me despite my best efforts at being sociable. I’m not as good at the social slams and I don’t really like being around it.

I need to make some different choices. What the fuck.

I feel sad. I feel bad. I feel like I’m doing everything wrong. Define “everything”. I can’t.

I could come up with complaints about my parenting, but they are all fairly minor complaints. In the scheme of things I’m doing ok.

I don’t think I’m doing everything wrong with Noah. He keeps telling me he likes me. When I crawl back into bed after one of my many trips to the bathroom he snuggles me like a teddy bear. Clearly this is a man who has jumped over hoop after hoop after hoop to demonstrate his love for me. Clearly.

Do I think everyone should put as much effort into me as Noah does? Nah. That would be hella annoying. I don’t have anything to exchange on that level and the exchange is most of why it is important.

I want my belly to stop hurting. It’s not food. It’s anxiety. I want my teeth to stop chattering like I am on the verge of crying. I want to stop crying. I want to be less testy.

Where’s my god damn zen state?

Up your butt and around the corner. That’s where it fucking went.

I am so mature.

In other evasive news, I have started making more editing progress. I’m not making it shorter. That will be why I pay a real editor. But I am doing a lot of editing and clarifying points. And this coming week I have three separate days where I have babysitting so I will have more space from the kids. One of those days is just an hour for therapy. Two of the days I will use the time for editing. I have a local teenage baby-sitter and I found a local stay at home mom who wants to do trades. Awesome. She has work she needs to get done too.

I’m not actually doing everything wrong. I just feel like it. I just feel like I’m walking with a black cloud over my head.

I’m not doing everything wrong. When I am less able to be stimulating to my kids, I make sure they have lots of contact with other adults and children. They aren’t being isolated. Yeah, some weeks they get more screen time than they “should”. But they are still well under national average so whatever.

My kid is going to go run a 1.5 mile race tomorrow because she really wants to. I know she can do this distance because I have run much farther with her. I’m not worried about them getting some screen time. Balance, grasshopper.

I’m not eating a balanced diet. I haven’t done meal planning in a while. I’m not sleeping adequately or evenly. I’m not exercising consistently enough. Basically I’m not doing anything to keep my body on an even keel.

See, we all fall down sometimes. It’s not about how many times you fall down. It’s about how many times you get up.

Why do I think Paul should be shunned and not Noah? That question keeps me up at night. How can I justify my own nitpicky hypocrisy? Why are some people beyond redemption and other people aren’t? I don’t know. Why the fuck are they?

“I’ll just stick it in a little.”

Because I still want to beat my head when I think about how stupid stupid stupid stupid I was for being near a piece of shit like you in the first place. Wanting to be near a dirt bag like you sure seems to be indication enough that I deserve whatever I get.

Now I’m picturing Agatha Heterodyne chasing my brain hamsters screaming, “DIE!!!!” (Noah will probably provide a link to an appropriate web page tomorrow. He’s cute like that.)

Why does my cunt matter so much? Because I god damn say it does. Because it does. Because it is part of me. Because I get to decide what is and isn’t important as it goes in and out of there. No one else.

If you don’t understand that basic ownership violation I just… maybe I’m finally out of words.

Confluence of events

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The thing about PTSD is cumulative stress is a greater than normal problem. A bunch of “little stressors” combine to make big ones. If I have one piece of support fall down the whole structure is going down. Which is to say, I’ve had a bad week and some. It’s my problem. I’m carefully staying away from the idea of asking for help. When I am already in this state and I start asking for help I don’t react rationally when people appropriately tell me “no”. So I can’t ask at all.

I’m not dealing well with people emailing me to tell me how awesome my rapist is. I find myself crying at random points in the day because all I can hear in my head is what a worthless whore I am. At least he is funny. He even won an award for being so funny.

Uhm. Bully for him?

I am struggling with the fact that the homeschool group is not full of my friends. They are the parents of the kids my kids play with. Leaning on them for emotional support is inappropriate and potentially a hostile environment. They sure as fuck aren’t going to take my side. They want to remain neutral and hear all the points of view. In their world it is totally ok to go to the rapists’ show. He hasn’t done anything to them, after all.

I feel attacked. I don’t think anyone is actually attacking me. I’m pretty sure no one gives enough shits about me to attack me right now. But I feel fully activated for a big fight. I feel scared. I feel unsafe.

I feel like no one is going to like me any way so I might as well be as aggressive as humanly possible just to make sure I don’t end up with the short stick as usual. Which is a privileged, asshole way to respond to problems.

I don’t see much in me worthy of liking lately.

It is hard trying to be “rational” about other people handling their own needs and priorities. I feel abandoned and unimportant.

I am not responding to emails because I have nothing positive to say and I want to unload a big fat self absorbed whine on everyone so I’m just… saying nothing.

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all. Which is a lot of why I haven’t been blogging.

I feel like shit. Physically and emotionally I feel awful. I feel sad. I feel unwanted and stupid and like I should stop bothering people. I should go the fuck away already.

I suppose the upside is I don’t especially feel suicidal or like I want to cut. I just want to hide and avoid everyone.

Who the fuck could like a stupid bitch like me? I’m not funny. I’m not especially worthy of anything.

Just a waste of fucking resources.

Turn it around.

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That doesn’t happen very often. We had a fantastically grumpy early day. Then from dinner on the day was gleeful and awesome. A friend came over to dinner. He is a balloon twisting artist. I don’t know when the girls and I have laughed so hard or so much. It was ridiculously fun.

He made mermaids and aliens and a heart scepter and a whole bunch of swords so we could have a (non-ouchy) battle and a bow and arrows and a spear and a few other things.

It was so fun. We laughed hysterically for just about an hour straight. He’s really funny and good at the performance aspect. He’s been practicing for ten years so he’s got it down.

I feel so lucky to know the people I know. They will come over to my house and talk to me and tell me stories. They have fantastic stories. I love stories.

Sometimes I feel kind of weird that so many of the people I introduce my children to are people I met through “Alternative Lifestyle Communities”. They are big perverts.

But they are big perverts who are completely uninterested in children and who only do things with consenting adults. I watch them intently and their behavior with my children is rigorously correct. They are probably more worried about slipping up and seeming inappropriate than I am.

I watch my kids. If they hear something inappropriately verbally I can help them process it. But nothing will physically happen to them. I don’t worry that much about keeping their pristine little ears protected.

If the most racy comment of the night is “Who is the size queen here?” (He made a sword for himself out of the much bigger style of balloon. It was kind of funny, really. We would trade off who was fighting with it and tease just a hair.) I can live with that.

My kids are going to grow up in America. If they don’t learn that some people are obsessed with size… then they’ve missed a vital part of the culture. Give me a break. Helllllloo Texas.

(Hey all you Texans. Neiner neiner neiner Alaska is bigger and I’ve been there too.)

I think it is hilarious that in preparing for Easter some of the moms have offered to bring food potluck style. Some dads are coming on their own. They haven’t offered to bring anything.

I see this pattern and try to convince myself that I’m not a failure as a mother because I’m shitty at brining stuff for potlucks. I’m the asshole who shows up with a bag of chips.

Like you do.

I feel unusually upbeat this morning. I’ve been kind of whiny and sad in my head lately.

Oh man. I was talking about some tv character being annoying because he/she/it was annoying and freakin Shanna turned to me and said, “Well you should like her/him/it because you are whiny too and you should like people who are like you.”

Oh man. Kid. Oh man.

I squinched my nose at her then realized… She’s being sincere and literal. No teasing is happening.

Then I burst out laughing.

I like that my kids don’t really tease me. They haven’t learned teasing. We do very little of it in this house. Once in a while we will tease in a tiny way and then will follow that with a clarification that we mean it with love. Noah and I are both on the paranoid side. I get the impression that he is a lot more ok with teasing than I am but he has worked to talk to me how I want to be talked to.

Teasing is really hard for me. It feels like lying. If I feel like someone is lying to me then I get really really angry and hateful almost instantly. People tease trying to be friendly and share affectionate feelings. It will make me turn on you like a viper. Don’t fucking tease me. I’ve been fucking taunted enough for one fucking lifetime.

I think that ones overall response to these things largely depends on how you grew up with teasing. My family teased me constantly. They may even have meant it lovingly sometimes. I don’t think my family hated me as much as I kinda think they did. But they did show me contempt constantly. And no one was willing to believe me that I was being horribly abused. So their teasing felt more like turning the knife than making a joke.

I hate teasing. I try to do very little of it. Once in a while I tease because I know that other people bond through teasing. I can generally force out a sentence before I start apologizing and making it clear that I wasn’t serious.

Sometimes my kids say things to me… and it sounds like a tease… and I can feel my body start activating the threat response system. Then I realize that they aren’t teasing. They are saying what they literally perceive. They aren’t mocking me. They are making the connections that they see out loud because I have modeled not having an inside voice. I think tactless things out loud all day long. My kids live with that.

It is really interesting to have to work so hard on calming down with them.

I talked to my shrink about my current hypervigilance about my hypervigilance (I’m a cluster fuck of fun) and she agreed that it might be a worthy process but yeah I’m going to be so exhausted I can barely breathe for a while.

Trying this hard to be aware of unconscious processes and change them is really exhausting. I’m just living on the prayer that it will be worth it in the end.

I have stopped going to most of the forums I used to frequent. I’m feeling like I have nothing to spare but frustration and snottiness so I’m shutting up. If I am impatient with where someone else is on their journey… that’s my problem and I don’t need to be a cunt. Just shut up for a while.

I go up and down the spiral. Sometimes I am way more functional than I am at other points. I really have no room to judge anyone else. It may feel like Uncle Bob’s death was a long time ago but it wasn’t. I was not competent at all to do the basics of caretaking for a good solid week.

I don’t have any right to judge where other people are. I know that my seasons of pain come and go. Sometimes I can function and be out in the world and sometimes I can’t.

But sometimes where I am has nothing left over for other people. I don’t need to be mean about it. I just need to take care of myself. Less typing is good anyway.

I feel like I’m being avoidant with the kids. Not terribly so. They still aren’t spending much time alone. They still ask me questions every ten minutes all day long. But I am mentally checked out more. I’m creating more walled rooms in my head that I can step into when I can’t handle focusing on them.

I get so tired. It isn’t their fault. They are probably what you might call “spirited children”. Which is a nicey nice way of saying that they have a lot of energy and willingness to just do shit in frequently destructive ways.

Kids do that. You have to be patient. But I’ve been reading a lot. I just reread the Stieg Larson Millenium trilogy that was originally intended to be a ten book series but the author died. Damn him. I can see the foreshadowing. I can see him laying tracks in the first book for stuff that won’t happen till the seventh or eighth book. Lisbeth’s sister was going to be a big deal.

I’m avoiding editing. After Easter I don’t really have a choice. I have less than six weeks until I send it to my editor. Get crackin’.

Noah is making more progress on my shit than I am. I feel pretty guilty about that.

In general I feel the need to point out how much I appreciate Noah. Not many people in the world are willing to consciously adapt to me. Noah showed me what that could look like and I don’t think I will ever be ok with losing this now. Noah makes me feel like I am ok. There is nothing terrible about me. I have some annoying preferences, but who the hell doesn’t? Whatever. No big deal. Easy to accommodate.

It is only in seeing how he fails to live up to what I expect that I see how contemptuously I expect people to treat me. I’m pretty sure I project a lot of contempt. To be more clear: I think that I assume people feel contempt for me when they don’t. I have contempt for myself and that’s enough for me to assume other people share the sentiment.

It is incredibly hard to learn how to accurately perceive the world around you. You see the world through your particular little lens. Maybe you think the world is essentially good because you have had mostly positive experiences. Maybe you think the world is terrible because you have had mostly terrible experiences.

The world is neither. The world is mostly indifferent. I struggle with seeing that and understanding it. I struggle hard with being able to believe that the world doesn’t actually care that much one way or another about me. At least not until I have gone out and done things that the world can judge.

Then some people will like it and some people won’t and mostly people won’t care. Move on.

You can’t be doing it for them. You have to just do it for yourself. Because you have to manifest in the world what you want the world to be.

Despite the ever changing sea that is my emotional experience of the world, other people perceive me differently.

The nice 90 year old lady at the Post Office thinks I’m just great because I helped her cross the street when she was scared.

I think the world is a place where all the people around you would be potential allies and help if you just could figure out how to ask for your needs. Does everyone care? No. Frequently you can’t find the right way to appeal to people. Sometimes your basic position in the world bothers people and they will avoid you if you make clear your needs.

I think this is what is keeping me away from the PTSD forum right now. Everyone else is in the bunker-down-nobody-loves-me-everyone-hates-me-guess-I’ll-eat-worms stage. Or at least those are the threads being posted.

No, your PTSD is not some terrible secret you have to keep or everyone in the world will reject you for being terrible and disgusting. Yes, you will have to do a lot of self advocating and specifically requesting the kind of contact you want with people. Yes, it’s hard.

Ok, I try not to talk about neighbors. Here’s a thing that is coming up. I go to other peoples houses and more or less invite myself in. If I don’t do so for a while then people feel like I am rejecting them and I don’t like them anymore.

I go home and think WHY THE FUCK DO I HAVE TO INVITE MYSELF OVER?! YOU NEITHER WANT TO COME TO MY HOUSE NOR INVITE ME. WHY THE HELL SHOULD I DO THIS?!?!?!

But I get passive aggressive emails telling me they miss me when I don’t invite myself over.

I think everyone is shitty at relationships and when people know you have PTSD they are frequently more timid because the risk of social discord is high. They don’t want to hurt you again. So they don’t know what to do. So they do nothing. And that feels like rejection.

But they are sitting in their house feeling sad about me not being there. It’s a whole cluster fuck.

People. Oh man.

“I wish this person loved me enough to chase me for a relationship. Since they don’t love me that much I won’t bother them.” And thus the world goes ’round.

I think that the main reason my thinking on this has shifted to the current location is because of all the writing I do. People feel brave enough to tell me that they want me to keep writing for many decades. Until they die or longer. They want me in their lives. But time and distance and complications of life mean I don’t see these people much. But they want me to continue.

I don’t think that the average person with PTSD has people reaching out to tell them that they need to keep on keepin’ on. And that is sad. I am very lucky to have the people in my life I have.

I feel sad that most people seem to have the experience that telling people they have PTSD results in really negative relationship shifts. I find I experience more positive shifts. Yes, I have to do a lot of work because people are timid. But they do try hard with me. People give me space for some of my weird reactions that I can’t help that much. I have not been uninvited to all the parties just because I cry from stress at the parties. I go do my thing and calm down and come back when I can and people are cool with that. I take care of me and I’m still welcome to be part of the space when I’m ready.

At some point I will have spoons to share and I will try to be more motivational like with them. Not right now. I’m tired. I’m trying to figure out what I need to do. I can’t talk about my process while I’m figuring it out. Big shifts are hard.

Changing the hypervigilant behavior is really really hard. I’ve been working on it for a bit. I don’t know how long I will last in this phase. I suppose it would help if I articulated a goal to work towards. And metrics for success. That way it won’t become just a way to grind myself down.

Specifically, what have I been working on?

I am trying to stop counting how many people are in rooms. I’m trying to stop reorienting myself towards exits every few minutes. I suppose I’m trying to stop the behaviors that seem the most irrational to me. They aren’t helpful and they aren’t even all that related to my trauma. They are just things I started doing to cope with the anxious feelings. But they use a lot of tracks of my brain and contribute to my feelings of always being in danger.

I’m not sure I am specifically addressing other behaviors right now. Trying to be conscious of when I start to engage in those actions without thinking is really draining and hard.

So I started them to cope with anxiety but they create a different anxiety of their own. Kind of like pot. Harm Reduction. Less harm. That doesn’t mean that the next choice is a good choice… just a slightly less bad one. If I had “good” options I might take them. I don’t. I’m doing the best I can. Just like everyone else.

Or maybe they aren’t. I can’t really judge.

Today is entirely unscheduled. We will probably do the inside decorating. I’ll clean up the garage. Again. It always needs to happen. Oy.

Maybe I will spend a big chunk of the day sitting on the couch with the kids. We can read. That seems like a really good day right now.

post-therapy

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Yesterday was a moderately challenging therapy session. I didn’t cry or anything so it doesn’t get to the level of “hard” per se. My therapist was uhhh “kind” enough to tell me about another support group in Oakland. No, actually, having to drive to Oakland more often would not lower my stress. Sorry.

My shrink and I talked about the difficulty driving. When I am alone in the car I distract myself from my irrational desire to drive the car into dangerous situations by playing music very loudly and I sing along at the very top of my lungs. Frequently when I arrive places I’m hoarse from all the screeching. My kids get kind of pissy with me when I play loud music or scream along with the radio so I don’t do it when they are in the car. Which actually makes driving with them harder than driving alone.

I wish that I didn’t have suicidal ideation so often. I wish that I could make the decisions about my life without factoring in, “Well, how many hours of self-harm thoughts can I entertain today without slipping?” I’m a lot better than I used to be. There is definite improvement. I’m not “all better”. Driving is still really hard. Most of my slipping these days comes in the form of massive dissociation so I have no idea what is going on with my body so I am constantly covered in bruises I have no idea how I received. It’s pretty minor compared to the cutting so this is a big step up. But man all the bruises have been hurting more lately. I’m getting old. Ha.

We did EMDR on the driving ideation issues. The phrase that kept coming up (sometimes I get word phrases sometimes I get picture associations) was “terrible trouble”. As I’m driving places my stomach shreds itself because I am afraid of the trouble I am going to get into on the other side of the drive. I get it going to the grocery store so it’s not all social anxiety I can kinda sorta justify. It’s just associated with driving,

I was really in trouble all the fucking time as a kid. I’m not over it. Sometimes that feels pretty pathetic.

We talked about the whole “getting in trouble for vomiting” thing in the form of the demanded apology. (I heard back from the woman who wanted one. I think she accepted my apology. I still have some mixed feelings about needing to give one for… vomiting. Not like I picked the activity of the night on purpose to fuck over her life.)

I am so delighted that when I get in trouble these days… it’s really not a big deal. If the two women who were mad at me continue being mad at me till the day I die…. that’s really not that big of a deal. Ok, one seems to be over it, the other has already hated me since I was 19. If she keeps hating me it isn’t a loss. Really if she hates me that may be a badge of honor proving that I am making correct choices in life.

That happens you know. People disliking you is sometimes a really good sign.

Depends on whether you want people like that to like you. If you don’t particularly respect someone it can be a particularly good thing for them to dislike you. I’m just sayin’.

When I walked into my therapists office she said, “Wow. You look exhausted.” That can’t be a good sign. Yes, I am. Notice how I haven’t been writing? I’ve been sleeping in lately. Even with getting several hours of extra sleep each night for a while… I still look like shit. I’m not sure if I’m sick or what. My stomach was really off yesterday. Eating at all was awful. But no food no fuel so I have to eat even when it hurts.

I don’t have “cold or flu” symptoms. Just stomach pain, exhaustion, and general pain. Maybe that is a flu like symptom. But I still don’t know that I have the flu. and I am officially not allowed to get sick for at least five days. Damnit.

I’m struggling with my outsiders view on another persons marriage. I’m experiencing a lot of anxiety about situations I can’t control. Terrible Trouble. It’s coming. Always. Always. Always coming.

I feel scared, helpless, worthless, and stupid. I don’t know the right thing to say or do. So it must be because I am defective.

I feel weary.

In therapy we talked about my latest efforts to be hypervigilant about my hypervigilance. Maybe this is why I am so fucking tired. I am trying to stop counting people in a room. I’m trying to only check for exits when I arrive in a new place instead of checking every few minutes like an OCD routine. I am not made more safe by checking that the exit door is still there every three minutes. I am probably made more unsafe by obsessing over whether the door is still fucking there. Really, genius? The fucking door is going to move? No. I’m afraid I will get disoriented and lose the direction. It’s not that the door will move. It is that I spent a very high percentage of my life dizzy. I’m always afraid I will lose my inner compass and not be able to make it out. Yay vertigo.

I do wonder if that is a lot of what is wearing me down. Being that conscious of my nearly sub-conscious obsessive checking is really hard. Restraining myself from counting the people in the room over and over and over is a lot harder on me than just doing the fucking counting. I’m trying to extinguish this behavior on the slim hope that some day I won’t have to obsessively concentrate on my nearly sub-conscious behavior. Hopefully some day I will have the energy back from the obsessive counting and the monitoring of the counting and I will be back in the net positive. Hopefully this is saving long-term effort.

But those gambles only sometimes work out. The deficit of exhaustion in the meantime is really rough.

I wrote to Noah’s family yesterday. That always increases the shitty I feel. I miss my mom. Why do I only get to talk about my kids with these people who don’t like me anyway? It’s really hard to keep trying when I know his mother doesn’t actually have any affection for me at all.

But she loves my kids. And my kids deserve all the love they can get. And Noah isn’t going to facilitate a relationship because he doesn’t care or understand what a complete lack of family can do to you. So it is up to me. I understand the scope of the problem and I’m not as personally repelled by the situation. I get why he ran away and didn’t come back. But that attitude will hurt my kids and I can’t let that be their entire experience of life.

Noah’s mom may not win prizes for being perfect but she is being a great mail order grandmother. I should not denigrate that. The kids appreciate that she thinks about them and makes effort. I need to respond. I wish it weren’t so fucking hard.

I’m doing one of those cycles where I don’t understand why I try so hard for relationships when people don’t really like me anyway they tolerate me as an alternative to being completely alone.

I can find ways to minimize the amount I believe anyone might like me. It’s a super power. Or something. Even though people come over. Even though I can tell you that it is irrational.

Irrational feelings happen anyway and they are very tiring. Exhausting. Trying to argue with your brain all day that people don’t actually hate you is really hard.

My arms hurt. I’m so tired I keep randomly crying because I can’t force myself to not cry. It’s too hard to not-cry.

Ain’t we always looking for a silver lining?

What am I grateful for? Noah. Always Noah. Shanna. Calli.

How come my “what” I’m grateful for always comes down to a “who”? Because outside of having access to a non-shitty keyboard I can live without pretty much every what. Ok, I need food/shelter/booze like they tell you in Yakitat. But really what do I feel grateful for? My garden. That’s a what.

It’s not about what. It’s who. I get to spend all day figuring out how to be nice. We talk about how sometimes folks put their meanie-pants on. That doesn’t mean they are necessarily ALWAYS mean. Everyone has bad days. Bullying is quite the discussion here. Just because someone has done something you dislike that doesn’t automatically make them a bully. Pleasing you is not a mandatory part of life. Being mean to you is different than doing things you don’t like. And even your best friends will have days when they put their meanie-pants on. The meanest of people will have good days.

What makes someone a monster?

If I’m not qualified to judge who the fuck is?

Calli and I went to sleep talking about how my teddy bear, Ted. T. Bear, is very good at scaring off creepy crawly night monsters. He’s nice to his humans and super fierce with night monsters. Sometimes the best of creatures have to be scary sometimes. Sometimes being scary is part of being able to survive.

For the whole rest of my life I am going to treasure the memories I have of my children. There will be no more relationships in my life that represent such perfect trust.

I am so sorry, mommy.

I wonder how long my kids will like me. My therapist wants me to believe that the people I know are all aberrations. I think I can count on my fingers the number of people I know who like their parents and who actively want relationships with their families. My shrink tells me this is because I broadcast a wavelength that scares the shit out of people who like their families and they don’t really want to hang out with me. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It is possible that I will come out the far side with children who like me.

If I make it to a natural death that is a win on my life. Sometimes I feel so sad that it is true. When I drive I feel scared that I don’t want to be alive bad enough. Some day my lack of burning desire to be alive is going to be a problem. It’s not just that I have to deal with the “want to die” urge. I need to find some way to actively want to live. I don’t think I do. I don’t want to hurt people. Is that a good enough reason to stay alive? If that is all I have it has to be good enough for today.

Calli and Shanna and Noah. That has to be enough. I don’t want to hurt them. I’ll just cry. That doesn’t hurt anyone.

I don’t even know for sure why I’m crying. I don’t know if this is just exhaustion. I can’t even tell if I’m sad. I’m just crying and crying.

I feel bitter right this minute that smoking pot is the most effective means of getting it into my system if it weren’t for my pre-fucked up lungs. Thanks for all the chain smoking, mom. Chronic bronchitis. If that kills me it will be kind of ironic. It can, you know. Stupid pills aren’t very effective. Well, they are kind of effective. They make me tired as fuck. Which does slow down the anxiety. But in a less useful way.

I’m clearly trying to avoid smoking. Otherwise I would just write about how awesome it is a medication. Instead I will grumble.

Hey, that’s a ‘what’ I’m grateful for. Pot. Pot provides more than 60% of my ability to stop feeling scared and instead feel calm and happy with what I’m doing. How sad is that? Well it would be way the fuck more sad if my state still had this medication banned. *phew* So I’m glad that this medication exists. I’m grateful for all the lovely official dispensaries that will give me medication IN THE FORM OF CANDY. Oh man. The candy is awesome but a bit more expensive than the pills. Everything is a trade off.

Not to mention that I try to avoid eating a lot of medicated candy in front of my kids. That spells trouble.

They are very clear on the appearance of medicated candy and that they must not eat it. We have looked at the medication specifically and talked about how it looks like candy but it is really medicine and it will make you feel terrible if you take it when you don’t need it.

We talk a lot about appropriate doses of things. I eat more food than them. I drink more water in a day. I take more medication. These things are body-weight dependent activities and I am bigger. Trying to take in more than you need is really bad for you and lets go over the list of why until you can rattle it off as fast or faster than I can.

Don’t eat food, drink water, or take medication above what you actually need or it is bad for you. Just seems kind of logical.

Uhm, I base the “don’t eat too much food” on my childhood where I went through periods of forcing myself to eat long past the point of hunger… sometimes cause I had nothing else to do. When I was in eighth grade I hit this stage where one package of ramen just didn’t quite fill me up. (Now as an adult I would say “add an egg for protein then” as a kid… I would neither have thought of that nor been willing to actually consider it if I did think of it. Eggs come one way: scrambled hard.) So I forced myself to learn to eat two because I didn’t want to throw away some noodles.

I’ve got some issues around food and money and stuff. Like you do.

As much as I love Pam I’m kinda glad she’s busy tonight. I’m annoyed with myself for adding an extra dinner guest to the week on Thursday. Friday night Noah and I have a babysitter scheduled so we can go on a date. If I can fucking stay awake. Pathetic. But the extra dinner guest is a friend going through a really hard break up. I could be selfish and say I’m tired. He’s so sad though. Really all I’m going to give him is 2-3 hours of attention. I’m not so tired I can’t get it up for that.

At the end of your life you will not be remembered for how you felt. You will be remembered for how you make other people feel. I can cough up 2-3 hours of talking to a grieving person. It lightens the load. It really and truly does. If I thought it “did nothing” I wouldn’t bother but it does a lot.

I’ve read too many cases of near-suicide. “Someone surprised me by paying attention to me and convincing me that I still had worth.”

I can see worth in just about anybody. I can sit down and explain the worth I see in you if you want. If it will make you feel better I’d be thrilled to help you see how you fit into the kaleidoscope of life. You have worth. You matter? Want me to point out the spokes in your life? I can show you who you touch and how. You matter. You do.

Why is it so much easier to see for other people than myself? Don’t know but it is. Well, I can see my worth. I just don’t always feel like I have the strength to keep on keepin on. My worth is mostly in my ability to lighten the load for other people. I’m really good at it. It is a particular talent.

I used to think that my only “talent” was speed reading. You can’t go to a talent competition and win a prize for it so of course I thought I was a loser as a child. Now I think I have always underestimated the value of my brain.

Now I think my strongest talent is empathy. It’s a super power. At least occasionally.

But I’m tired. So very tired.

Drips, drabs, ups, and downs.

6 Replies

We went up to San Pablo yesterday to see some friends. This is after that specific friend coming to my house monthly for ohhh four years now? I am starting to try and do some trips up there in exchange for all the trips to my house. The distance between us is not shorter just because he is a guy with no kids. I can do effort too.

And when I drive up there I get to spend time with his lovely wife. I find the visits to be highly educational in diverse arenas. For one thing: she knows way the fuck more about gardening than I do and she’s happy to talk about plants. Lately getting near someone with lots of plant knowledge who does not eschew my children is somewhat tricky. I’ve tried to sign up for gardening classes THAT ARE BEING ADVERTISED ON AN UNSCHOOLING MAILING LIST and I was told I would have to get babysitting. Stop fucking advertising in this space if my fucking kids aren’t welcome you fucking fuckers. I didn’t say fuck to the people in question. I just dropped it.

Beyond the gardening stuff, I am having a bit of trouble with Callidora. Well, phrasing it that way sounds more extreme than it is. Many of my parenting approaches work really well for Shanna and don’t work at all with Calli. Luckily my friends’ wife seems to identify really strongly with Calli. They are very similar temperamentally and she is giving me a lot of feedback for how to tweak our interactions so they work better.

I feel so much gratitude I don’t have words. Someone is willing to look at me and look at my daughter and look at our relationship and say, “You are doing ok, but you both might be happier if you did……”

Err, in defense of my hubris more than once I have said, “I’m afraid I am going to have to do ____” and her response was “Yes. That is exactly what you have to do.” So she isn’t entirely telling me new information. But she is very good at skimming out the bullshit and getting to the heart of the matter. “This is failing because of x.”

I don’t trust many people to give me feedback. I’m not sure why I trust her feedback as much as I do. For one thing she doesn’t use the word “should” and I’m not sure if that has become a specific trigger. Maybe I explode at people for that word rather than because I am completely unwilling to accept advice? It’s hard to tease out.

Also, she tends to say “Calli seems to be a lot like me. When I was a kid I had x and y and z experiences and this is how it went well and this is how it went badly. If Calli is as much like me as she seems right now, you are going to have to deal with a and b and c. It’s not a good idea to do d.”

I guess there is an implied “should” in that but she doesn’t say it.

It also occurs to me that I push Calli in a way I have never pushed Shanna. When Shanna was three I had a one year old. We did not spend a lot of time pushing the absolute physical limits of what she could accomplish until she collapsed in frustrated tears.

I’m having a hard time understanding fully that Calli wants to be able to do things she isn’t ready to do yet and I need to find a tactful way of bailing her out even as I push Shanna to try. Differentiated instruction is a bitch.

(Err, the bicycle riding project is coming along. We’ve hit a few hiccups. As my wise new running mate commented, “Dude. You’ve been out with them four times? Relax and do more low pressured practice.”

Yeah yeah. You may have a point. But we bought the bikes because we want to ride to the park. I need to decide in my adult brain that even if that is the eventual goal… we sure as shit can’t start by doing that. I should probably not try to leave our housing development again until June. We need more low-stakes practice than we have had. Hours and hours and hours and hours.

It is not just a form of transportation. It is about entertainment. It has to be about entertainment at first or they won’t gain enough proficiency to use it as transportation later. The transportation part doesn’t have to be worked out at three, instantly. Relax you bitch.

Medication has been spotty this week. I (re?)noticed a pattern. Whenever I get to the point of using sufficient medication that I actually feel good instead of having just the edge of the pain taken away I punish myself for days with under medicating so I feel a lot more pain. I’m not supposed to be using pot like a pot head. I’m not supposed to be trying to get high. I’m supposed to be just managing the pain.

I think I am too much of a Puritan. My sister told me I had ancestors on the Mayflower (Not her–different fathers.). Maybe it is too deeply buried within my DNA? I can’t stop believing that I must suffer. Anything that feels good MUST BE BAD.

I have been very consistent lately about giving up my morning “off time” to wake up with the kids. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. On one hand I’m more frazzled and I’m not taking a compensatory amount of time later. On the other hand… we are getting along better. When the kids open their eyes in the morning to me in their bed smiling at them… the whole day is easier. The first thing they hear every day is, “Good morning. I’m so glad to see you again. I’m looking forward to our wonderful day together.”

They smile back and say, “Me too!” then grab my neck and pull me close. Then I get a sleepy “Good morning.”

Sometimes it feels weird knowing that I do this as a parenting gesture in large part to make up for the hole in my heart. No one was ever happy to see me during my childhood. I was a terrible, unwanted burden.

I completely support mothers who need to abort children born of rape. I wish my mother hadn’t allowed her religion to force her to keep me. I was not wanted. And they made my life hell.

Now I have something different. It is so very nice. But it’s a lot of emotional and mental and physical work. And I get really tired.

When I’m tired it is harder to be consistent. When I’m scared I start screaming. That’s consistent.

Calli has asked me to stop raising my voice at her when I’m repeating orders/requests/whatever you want to call them. Demands? She told me (while making eye contact so this is serious as a fucking heart attack) “I will be able to listen to you better if you get close to me and whisper in my ear that it is important.”

If a three year old can so clearly ask for the kind of interaction she needs then I am a fucking asshole if I ignore the request. This is how I teach them ownership of their body and consent and boundaries.

I’ve been working on it. I kind of feel that I should create some accountability tool for myself. Maybe another sheet of paper on the wall. I can ask Calli to help me decide whether I approached her correctly or not and we can decide if I get a mark in the “right behavior” column or the “not so right” column. It will also help her clarify which aspects of the raised voice stuff are a problem for her.

My kids are not going to grow up thinking adults are perfect and kids need to bend to the adults around them. Ha. Ha. Ha. No. We want to live together. We need to adapt to one another.

I’m happy about the upcoming social stuff. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed that people are agreeing so delightedly to come to my events. My RSVPs fill up fast. (Err, RSVP for Easter if you are coming… not many spaces left.)

I have had something like six people in the last two weeks get really excited when I confirm that I’m hosting Easter again. “OH! You throw the best parties!”

I do?

Oh.

Well that’s awesome. How do I do that? What makes them “the best” for you? Because I spend my parties in kind of an anxious hell hoping I don’t offend everyone and run them off such that they never want to come back.

And yet I keep hosting. Irony.

I don’t seem to be running people off. I mean… I do… but I don’t. I run some people off.

I feel very guilty when I admit to myself that I run off people who need things from me that I can’t give. My anxiety and shame around not being able to meet their needs makes me angry and cruel. It isn’t my fault I can’t meet their needs. It isn’t their fault I can’t meet their needs. It isn’t their fault they have needs. I have needs they can’t meet either. But I get mean. This is a major character flaw of mine.

I don’t do this with people who have small needs I can easily meet. If people need something from me that is going to be an up to five hour commitment one time… I love doing that. That helps me feel like I am part of a community and I’m useful and all kinds of good feelings. When someone starts to need 3-10 hours of work from me every fucking week in order to have a relationship with them…

I get mean. I am awful. I am not a nice person. I don’t know how to have healthy limits without being an asshole. I’m not making excuses or justifying my behavior. It’s wrong.

I have been talking to a friend a lot about how different it is in America versus other more crowded countries. Americans apologize for bumping into someone. In China you would never say any word other than “sorry”. So they don’t bother.

I spend a lot of time apologizing for taking up space. I spend a lot of time apologizing for being inconvenient. I spend a lot of time apologizing for not being able to do/be what someone else wants/needs.

I am sorry I am so inadequate. I clearly see that I am.

Right now I’m having anxiety attacks because some folks are mad at me. Folks I don’t really need to “care” about per se. They aren’t my friends. They are the close friends of one of my friends. They are mad at me because my vomiting on Friday caused them some inconvenience. I have apologized profusely for inconveniencing them. I’m sorry they were brought into the situation by our mutual friend. But yeah. I’m the bitch.

And I feel consumed with shame and I have for days. I inconvenienced them. I stole hours of their life and made them about me when they already kind of hate me. I’m really sorry. I did apologize. I have not been acknowledged and that is what I assumed would happen.

I get into these situations. I’m sorry I inconvenienced you. I have very little control over when I vomit. I’m just glad I didn’t make a mess on my floor.

But it impacted your life. And you wish I didn’t impact your life. So you are angry with me because I popped up and existed in a way you couldn’t tune out.

I’m really sorry.

This is more or less why I avoid that whole segment of the “community”. I don’t really like feeling like I am doing something wrong by breathing in a way they can hear.

So yeah. I don’t think I will teach with my friend again. There is a bunch of stress in the lead up and if I get sick there is lots of acrimony, blame, and anger. Not from my friend. He was mellow about the situation. But he didn’t feel qualified to handle the class alone and those are the other people he has in his life to turn to for support.

Yeah well, me hanging around near them feels like an abusive family reunion where they all wish I would drop dead. The sooner the better.

More one of them than the other but… well that’s not a story I’ll write down yet. Maybe a few more decades. It being thirteen years ago still isn’t long enough. Some day.

It’s not all her fault. I was a bitch. But man. Oh man. Ok. Shiny change of topic.

I’ve been having a lot of feelings all week over that. I was doing great last week until I started vomiting on Friday.

I associate vomiting with letting people down and being a bad and weak person. When I get sick my association is that I will also be in trouble for some reason. I am inconvenient when I’m sick.

Noah is working hard to change some of these patterns. He’s nice when I’m sick. He does a lot of telling me that it isn’t my fault and I didn’t do anything bad. I feel really pathetic for needing it. But I do. And he does it. I am so grateful for him as a partner.

I like teaching though. I will look for more opportunities to teach. Just no co-teaching in a situation potentially wrapped in shame-inducing trauma. When I had to cancel a class as a professional teacher… no one made me write a formal apology. I’d like to go back to that kind of treatment. Thanks.

My running mate wants me to stop thinking of writing as a hobby and start thinking of it as a business. I’ve sold enough forking copies of my book that I can stop pretending I’m not a real writer. I shouldn’t have to pay for my book editing and publishing stuff out of my “fun money”. It’s not my hobby. Noah doesn’t take his business expenses out of his fun money. It’s a separate category in the budget. It’s not very healthy for me to demean myself in this fashion.

I will severely limit my career as a writer if I can’t employ an editor until I save up enough fun money by denying myself everything. Denial as a full-time lifestyle in a household that otherwise has a lot of privilege… that’s kinda self-hating. It’s being weird. It’s unhealthy.

Why do women do this to themselves? My writing “doesn’t count”. It’s just… something I do. Like the laundry. And when there are expenses for it, well, they are “mine”, right?

I developed a lot of habits over the years of having the annuities and living with men. What I could have was very strictly limited to what I had in that $1200 every month. I didn’t over extend. And now I have no real personal income and… I’m flailing. The $100/month of fun money is… not enough. Not for me to feel like I can track all of “my” spending separately from household stuff.

We just have a clothes budget. It is for all four of us. If someone gets something then the other three have to wait a while. *shrug* But it changes how I think of things. Although… when I bought the pretty clothes in Portland I took a big chunk out of my personal money. I spent more than $500 on two items of clothing. It didn’t seem fair to make my family give up that large a share of the clothes budget on me getting two items. So more than $300 came out of my fun money. That seemed fair to me.

When the kids really get a big clothes splurge… it goes in the “kid” section even though mostly they come out of the main category.

The kids have a big section of the budget that is amorphously used for classes, home school supplies. books, toys, gear of whatever kind (was baby carriers and diapers now it has moved on to bikes), and rarely clothes.

A long time ago I consciously went out and started spending time with older men. They could talk to me about money. How they got it. What they did with it. I made my own judgments about who lived in which kind of house and who had how much money. I’ve always been tactless as fuck. I would point blank ask them how much cash they had in the bank and whether or not they had investments.

I didn’t understand most of what they told me. But I remembered it. It’s kind of funny to have little memories float up now and again as I’m trying new things with investing.

Be sure you are right, then go ahead. I will, Davey. I will research and research and research and I’ll figure out what I think is right. Of course I know I could always be wrong. Some minute change in my life might make all of my careful risk calculations moot and irrelevant.

I have no way of predicting that. So I have to just act and hope for the best.

Save.

Debt is evil.

Make your money work for you.

Pay yourself first.

Sometimes I think I turn to these mantras as the only way I have of blocking out all the voices in my head who want me to think I am stupid and a bitch and I should just stop inconveniencing them by breathing.

I’ve been really stunned by the intensity of my suicidal ideation this week.

I also haven’t been doing my daily check in calls with my friend. She’s really busy on a project. She’ll be back in a week or so. I support and respect her participation in this event and that means she has no time to think about me. I am a big girl and I’ll keep my big girl panties on.

It is interesting how suicidal ideation is not always about depression. I don’t feel like I am feeling depression symptoms. This is more on the anxious/overwhelmed side. Manic is a word people like. But I’m not… doing anything manic.

Just out of the blue driving on the freeway I see a weird opening where it would be possible to turn and be hit by a semi-truck and I want to do it more than I want anything in the world. I want in that moment to feel a lot of pain and then die. I want it as much as my heart wants to beat. It is immediate and visceral and all encompassing.

I have to breathe very lightly and lift my hands so I have a very light guiding pressure on the steering wheel. Sometimes I get off the freeway to breathe and stretch my neck and remind myself, “Not today.”

The reasons I don’t like driving are varied and complicated and… I’m willing to bet that someday I will not be able to drive any more. It is part of the reason I am as strongly motivated to make friends near my house as I am. Walking will always be a good idea. Forever. For my health.

Thanks, Pam, for letting me write this morning.

My head feels better. I feel a lot less shame. Writing it down helps.

I don’t need to feel shame because other people would prefer that their world didn’t overlap with mine. I could reject our mutual friend so that they never have to hear about me again, but given that he values his relationship with me that seems kind of awful.

But I think I should have different boundaries. Still working on where those need to be. Boundaries are tricky things. You only find out you have them when they are transgressed. Ha. THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE CLASS. And what I got out of it is: I need to make sure I never have to deal with your extended friends again. Awesome.

That’s a lesson I can learn.

They aren’t going to like me. No matter what. Ever. I need to not care about that. They are allowed to have their experience of the world where I am… something. I don’t know what. I shouldn’t speculate. I would surely overstate my importance. I certainly don’t suspect that either of them while away hours just hating me. I’m not that important.

So I don’t need to feel shame because they are feeling irritation. That’s not something I need to take on. I gave an apology. I offered restitution to the best of my ability. That’s what I’ve got. Move on. I didn’t vomit on purpose.

And when I feel shame for my social behavior I rush home to assure myself that I am managing my money properly. No one is going to be able to force me to move. I’m allowed to stay here. I’m jumping through all the hoops that actually matter for my life. I don’t have to care that they dislike me. There won’t be any consequences.

And then I can stop thinking about it.

Thank you internet. That’s the end of my confession for today. I have some dirt to play with and a fence to sand. Tomorrow a bunch of little kids are going to come paint a few sections. We are adding more year by year. Drips and drabs. It’s really fun.

Saturday is the Girl Genius Volume 1 read aloud. Email me for details if you want to come hear Noah do all the hilarious voices.

Teaching was fun.

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The internet gave me the tentative go-ahead to carry on with my plans since they were more than 24 hours after the last uhm incident. So I taught a class yesterday. It was on boundary transgressions.

The word “rape” didn’t come up. I feel… fairly flabbergasted really. It was not that kind of crowd. We had eight students, so not a big class. Three women. Two of the women were ladies who have been around the block a few times and they were frankly inspirational. They frequently came up with better (more tactful, polite AND effective) responses to boundary violation situations than I did. I’m so glad they came.

This was mostly a new-to-bdsm crowd who wanted to learn more about social boundaries and trying new things. I hope I gave them some things to think about and some exercises to practice. *cross fingers* A couple of people left mid-way and the rest of the class said they were very happy to be there and they learned a lot.

I was surprised by how effectively I co-taught with my friend. I kind of thought that would be a bit rocky. I also kind of forgot “Oh yeah… I’m a writing teacher…” and most bdsm classes aren’t really writing classes. But mine involves writing! I brought paper and pens and everything. And they wrote. Like you do.

It was good though. Self-evaluation kind of stuff you don’t necessarily have to share with the class. They spent the time scribbling furiously so I don’t think they were completely unengaged.

So hard to judge.

There was a point about victimization I never made because it never fit appropriately in the conversation. It was a really… non-traumatized crowd. I remain shocked that most of the bdsm community does not come to bdsm through trauma. I *know* it is true… and yet I feel surprise. Every time I rediscover. “Oh wait. Not everyone is like me.”

But the point was: living in a state of perpetual victimhood will ruin your life. Yet sometimes you have to come to a place within yourself where you understand that for a limited time and duration you were a victim or you can’t grow past that place. You have to be able to recognize that everyone can be a victim but you don’t want to be a victim forever. You have to figure out how to change your mindset after a boundary violation and take back your right to respond.

You always have ways to respond you just haven’t thought of yet. Keep going back to your inner resources and brain storming ways to do it differently next time.

Alas. I made a similar sort of line of commentary but not explicitly that language. These people weren’t victims and they clearly didn’t understand the language of victimhood. It was interesting to adapt on the fly.

We did some fun role playing. Even though not everyone was eager to “act” everyone verbally participated a lot. I made everyone be talkative since the class was so small. I’m really good at that patient-smile-while-people-feel-pressured-to-talk. I’ll just grin expectantly at you while making lots of eye contact. We’ll see who can be silent. Muahahaha.

My co-teacher gave me some specific good feedback (less second person, he worried about one of my lack-of-eye-contact points I countered with “but if you make eye contact during writing assignments they stop writing because they think time is up” he said that was a good reason).

I had a great time. Lots of anxiety around the event for a variety of socially awkward reasons but it worked out. I’m glad I was well enough to attend.

And I signed the paperwork. I no longer have any legal ties to the coffee shop in San Francisco. It is being bought by two new enthusiastic owners. Everyone is excited. It’s staying within the community. Yay! I helped keep the coffee shop open because I wanted that to be a community space for all the young freaks who need it. I’m really glad that more people in the extended community are getting involved. It is more likely to last this way. Yay! Yay!

All in all, canceling Saturday was sad but we had a great weekend. We got to rest on Saturday and maybe that is for the best anyway. We have busy stuff coming up.

Oh! And the hot tub is gone! Hallelujah! I get to clean up and organize my back yard more. The Easter party will be epic. I’m growing to enjoy the Easter parties more by the year. I’m figuring out what I enjoy and what doesn’t work. I’m really pretty surprised that I can hide as many hundreds of eggs as I manage on my tiny property. But I find them for eight months.

I think that the Easter party is partially so fun because I’m not competing with much other holiday stuff. Ok, I lose people for Passover. That’s ok. It’s not Christmas-time. It isn’t over-all as stressful of a time of year.

I bought way way way less candy this year. Last year was overwhelming. See, I learn.

If the weather cooperates this Friday home schoolers will be coming over to paint the fence. This will be fun. I get the impression at least a few folks will come to hear Girl Genius.

This week is a running week with J. Maybe if we are going to do alternative weeks on Tuesdays and Saturdays we should make those running dates split up so we see one another once a week but not on the same day every week. Maybe. I’m going to keep up the running this year. Darn it.

It is time for the monthly pilgrimage to San Pablo this week. That’s a long drive. But seeing those folks in their home is important. The kids have to learn to manage grown-up-only houses. It’s a process.

It will be a very busy and hopefully fun week. Only four hours of driving scheduled over the next ten days. That should be nice. Yay for staying home and having people come to me.

Every day love

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My kids like to go to sleep curled up against me. It always takes us a while to stop talking about how much we love each other. We say “I love you” many many—maybe more than dozens of times a day.

Sometimes I feel like it is weirdly excessive. Sometimes I feel like I am managing to finally experience what I’ve wanted my whole life. People actually like me here.

I haven’t been able to handle being on the PTSD forum lately. I can’t handle the way people talk about coping. Yes, these emotions are scary. No I don’t think that I should hide my scary life experiences. No, I don’t believe that the only appropriate place to talk about trauma is in a therapy office.

People who want to “get better” talk. People who want to “get better” have to take the risk of being hurt again. You have to trust with your whole heart even though it is terrifying and awful.

I am so grateful for Noah. These people talk about being married for decades and never telling anyone about their history. They have severe troubles in their marriage because their spouse doesn’t have enough information to be helpful even if they want to..

I am so grateful that I get to be with people every day who like me. Who don’t need me to just shut up and play a role for them. My kids know I cry. They don’t need me to go away and stop bothering them when I’m feeling sad. They give me a hug and say they are sorry I’m feeling sad. It’s not a huge deal. It’s not part of our daily or even weekly routine but it happens.

They validate that I’m allowed to have my feelings. They offer the comfort they can provide (a hug) and then we move on with our days. You can’t have this kind of support without admitting that you need it.

Noah is so nice to me. SOOO nice to me. He actually wants to see me every single day. He actually enjoys talking with me day after day. It is overwhelming.

My mama couldn’t stand me. I don’t understand why anyone else has an easier time. Only now that I’ve been a mom for a while I think I can understand why my mom had such a hard time with me. I was a truly difficult child. If they had used the phrase Oppositional Defiance Disorder when I was a child I’m sure I would have been diagnosed.

I’m not saying I am awesome and everyone is bad for not wanting me. I’m not saying that. I was awful. I was really hard. I was mean and spiteful and vicious. I still am if you catch me in the right mood. I was a complete fucking asshole.

But I wish my mama had loved me any way.

Every day when my kids tell me they love me I want to deflect it. I want to say, “No you don’t.” or “You wouldn’t love me if you really knew me.”

But yesterday Shanna asked me to read a book about development with her. (It’s So Amazing! It’s a book about conception/pregnancy/sex but it’s not exactly graphic. It’s a kids book.) We got to the part where every girl is born with all the eggs in her ovaries she will ever have.

Shanna told me, “So I was part of you when you were born. No wonder I love you so much.”

I almost lost it and it was hard to continue reading in a calm voice. No wonder I love my mommy so much. I’m part of her. I was part of her through all the suffering of her early life. I didn’t go off and separate until after most of the worst trauma. I am intrinsically and basically on her side.

But I have to protect my kids whether I want my mama or not. Because they are part of me. And it’s my job to keep them safe. That is my only fucking job. I wish that keeping my children safe did not mean shunning my mama.

I don’t feel I deserve the love of the people I live with because I can’t love my mama right. If you can’t do that surely you deserve eternal punishment. Chain me up right next to Prometheus. We both suck.

But the thing is, talking about my PTSD allowed me to develop the relationships I have. I could not have this supportive of a relationship with Noah if I did not talk about my life experiences. It is literally impossible.

So feelings. Talking about the feelings is hard. Talking about the feelings is the only way to build the intimacy that creates trust that alleviates the symptoms. The whole cycle is shitty and awful because talking is so hard because I don’t have that basic trust to start with.

Today is Lego Club day. Whatever my feelings are, they are mine. They stay here in Wonderland. Only Noah has to really hear about them. A little bit leaks out with other friends but not a lot. And I’m going to a home school event. I am there so my children can make friends not so I can get support. And I don’t fucking forget it.

I am grateful that I have three people who love me. That’s more than a lot of people get. I am so glad I get to have the life I have. I feel so safe. I feel like it is ok for me to take risks.

I made the event mailing lists yesterday. If you were not invited that is probably because I could only invite ten people at a time so I picked the first names who came up in my address book. I am having a crises of confidence. If I didn’t send you invitations and you like being invited to things at our house, email me. I am in the invitation list formation stage.

I think I made Google Groups so people can join or not and I no longer have to be afraid that I shouldn’t be bothering people with invitations. I have terrible anxiety about inviting people over. I don’t want to be told no. But I understand that everyone is very busy. If I have people who opt-in to “Sure invite me as often as you like and I’ll come when I can” maybe that will filter some of the anxiety. Maybe. (Seriously–please ask to join the list if you have any inclination. I’m not rejecting you. I’m being paralyzed with anxiety that you might reject me.)

I also finished the petition and printed it out. The kids and I should start walking the neighborhood to collect signatures today. Oh goodness.

I was very careful in my wording. I want everyone in our neighborhood to be happy, healthy, and included. Let’s find a way to work together. No one should be pushed out. But sometimes in order to cohabitate peacefully you have to talk about boundaries. Healthy relationships have boundaries.

Cross your fingers. Davey Crockett says: “Be sure you’re right. Then go ahead.”

I believe I am right to try and intercede. I believe that there is positive to gain for the people in our neighborhood if we can negotiate for the limits we physically need for health.

Despite waking up and feeling like I should spend the day under my desk rocking and crying (some mornings are just like that) I will do a lot of community building. It doesn’t matter that I feel like I “can’t”. The plain and simple truth is that I can. I just have to get up and do it.

my life is good when I’m not chemically out of whack

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The new ergonomic keyboard doesn’t have all the parts necessary to work. This is annoying. That is going to be the low point of my day. Which is really cool. I can exchange my biggest problem of the day.

Every single day I wake up grateful for Noah. He is so nice to me. He is so kind. I have received more love and caring in the past seven years than in the previous twenty-five years put together. I am so lucky.

Many people have childhoods as bad as mine. Most of them don’t go on to have happy adult lives. At this point in time my strife feels like stuff I’m opting into or it is so structurally vast that it isn’t really a day-to-day problem for me. I have conflicts with my friends because I pick intelligent, opinionated, fierce people for my life. I go out and hand select them out of the bunch of quieter and more complaisant people. I can’t bitch that we have conflict. I can learn how to manage it without having a heart attack–damnit. Or I’m fighting things like rape culture and whereas it is a problem every day it isn’t a Daily Problem if you know what I mean.

If I was hungry that would be a Daily Problem. If I didn’t know how I was going to pay rent that would be a Daily Problem. I don’t have those kinds of problems anymore. My big problems are that sometimes my kids scream more than I like or I am inconvenienced by a major electronics retailer.

I just can’t bitch too loud, you know?

My garden is so beautiful lately that it takes my breath away. I MADE THAT MOTHERFUCKER!!! WHOO HOO!!!!!!!!! *happy dance*

I no longer feel like everything I touch turns to shit. Some stuff doesn’t work out. It isn’t all my fault and I am not poison. I can do things. My corn is popping up. Clearly I can do something.

I see so much green. I have more plans. It’s going to take years and every day of work will be a joy. I get to stay here long enough to make long-term plans. I get to dream about the future. Shanna likes to talk about building one of the houses next door so we can tear down the fence between the yards and build a second story walkway between the houses. (Technically she just wanted to fully connect the houses. I voted for the second floor walkway so we could still have the side yards in between for plants. She decided that I am smarter than I look. She is my kid.)

I think that sounds pretty magical and wonderful. When I remodel my house I am getting a sound proof room so my husband can beat me and no one will hear. I want to have that privacy in the future (I’m kind of sick of not being able to play at home) but I also want to have the connection with my kids. I like them as people. It’s not about having control over them forever. I enjoy their company. If they enjoy mine I’d be thrilled to keep hanging out with them. I genuinely like them.

I feel so lucky.

When you decide at seventeen that what you want is to be a home schooling parent there is a lot of room for things to not work out. I feel blessed that not only did I find a partner who is supportive but my children and I happen to have compatible temperaments. They have a lot of freedom to do things that bug me without penalty. Frequently I will acknowledge, “This is not my favorite thing. But I don’t get to control everything you do. I hope it goes well. I can’t watch.”

I feel incredibly lucky that my dreams are coming true and it’s actually a pleasant process. That is a rare dichotomy. Usually if you get what you want you find out it isn’t that great.

Noah is that great. The joy I feel spending all day with my kids is that great.

This weekend was basically perfect. I ran 12 miles. Socialized with a very old friend (16 years and counting–more than half my life now) for three hours; rocky stuff happening in her life but I’m glad she has the fortitude to take the steps she needs to take. It is kind of amazing the way her life is 100% different than it was three years ago. She has a new job in an entirely new field (she left theatre) she has a kid and she’s about to be single for the first time in a very long time. That’s a lot of big changes. Got an ergonomic keyboard and new running shoes. Otherwise we hid in the house. That’s a very slow weekend for us. Eight hours of bustle for me and no one else.

Of course because I was in the house and only busy for eight hours out of forty-eight I did a bunch of yardwork. Grow wildflowers, grow. Damn you. I hung up the hanging pots! I’ve had them for over a year and I haven’t gotten around to it. I’m getting all my residual chores done that I’ve been procrastinating on now that I’m procrastinating on editing. Doo de doo. I’ll get it done.

And the petition. I’m going for upbeat, friendly, everyone should get to live here without pain.

I’m really grateful that my neighbors are becoming so much more friendly over time. I will know everyone on the block some day. We have a new family! With kids! They are visibly Islamic so I will cross my fingers that I can behave in a socially appropriate enough way to manage to not offend the parents so our kids can be friends. My lifestyle is different. I won’t corrupt your young children.

I will wait until they are teenagers.

Ahem.

I will corrupt them with ideas like, “No one gets to touch any part of your body unless you actively want it to happen. If someone does so, find other adults who can help you deal with the situation.”

And, “Sex is awesome and if you want to have it then that is between you and your conscious. If you are going to have heterosexual sex, use two forms of birth control every single time you have sex. Always a condom no matter what. Always another form of birth control for the woman. If you are going to have homosexual sex then one barrier is fine. Use barriers. Every time. Even for oral.”

When you are young you don’t know what is going to happen to you 50 years from now. You won’t know you want to do until you get there. Leave as many options open as possible. Protect your body and your sexual health. There are no take backs once you contract a disease and you can’t tell by looking at people who has what. Even medical testing is iffy for a lot of diseases. Protect yourself until you are ready to have children. Or you get married and are on permanent birth control because you have ruled out kids. I don’t care what married people do. When you are a kid and you can’t take care of a kid, USE BIRTH CONTROL.

I support you having one kid, two kids, twelve kids, twenty kids (though I will instinctively wince just because oh man I can’t imagine that) or no kids at all because oh man kids are icki.

Maybe I will corrupt your kids. I want to introduce them to the concept of plurality. There can be more than one right answer. Your way isn’t the only way. My way isn’t the only way.

I admire many of the tenants of faith from all of the major religions. I think religion is mostly a set of written down rules on how to be good. Every one has their own idea of what “good” means. I think there need to be many sets of rules because we need many kinds of people.

All progress depends on the unreasonable (wo)man. If no one has a belief that is unreasonable to you then progress won’t be made. We have to stretch the borders of acceptable parameters.

Yes, autistic ways of being should be better understood and supported from earlier in life so that folks have an easier adulthood. I struggle with how to deal the bitterness from the current adults who didn’t get any help.

I understand what it feels like to desperately need help during your childhood and to not get it. I have more options for help now that I’m an adult. Autistic adults… not so much. The vast majority of all people with mental illness do not have the resources I have.

I am one of the lucky ones. How much of that is privilege granted to me by the color of my skin? How much of that has been my ability to meet the right people so I can get help? How much of that is that I first had access to state funded therapy and then I had good health insurance and then I had a rich husband?

If you prosecute your rapist then you get state funded therapy. You will be part of the victim-witness support network. That shit is worth its weight in gold. My PTSD has been classified as severe for more than half my life. The state has a vested interest in keeping me off of a bell tower with an Uzi. The state also wants me to not kill myself. The state put a lot of money into educating me and the state wants a productive citizen out of the deal, damnit.

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” JFK was a guilt trippin’ motherfucker. But he’s right.

My autistic friends teach me over and over and over and over that it really doesn’t matter what you “mean” when you say something. It matters what other people see, hear, and feel as a result of you saying something. If you play it right then you get the reaction and relationship you want. If you play it wrong then you alienate people and they hate you and blame their feelings of discomfort on you.

I’m such an asshole. I totally treat other people the way I am treated. Them’s just the rules of the jungle.

But if you consciously believe with your whole heart that it takes all kinds and there is value to every life then you ought not to be that kind of asshole. This is troubling. This is where my ethics and morals and behavior don’t line up. This is not so cool. Ok. When your behavior doesn’t match your ethics you have a few choices.

A) Ignore the mismatch and be a flaming hypocrite.

B) Acknowledge the mismatch and say, “But I have REASONS” and be a flaming hypocrite.

C) Acknowledge the mismatch and decide whether to change your ethics/morals or your behavior. This has mandatory follow up steps if the goal is to change your behavior. If you have no later checks then you will resort to “easier” instead of doing what is right.

Well, as much as I believe that it takes all kinds and everyone is valuable and shit I think that people have the right to reject me. I believe that people have the right to not want to know me. I believe that people have the right to not invite me to their parties and not invite me to their homes because I am rude and offensive. They don’t even need a reason. They can just be not that interested in me.

They have the right to not want to be my friend. I don’t get to take that away from them just because I long for community.

Like my neighbors. Some engage with me more than others. Even the ones who are clearly uninterested in a relationship they have gotten to the point of obvious recognition and acknowledgment of humanity.

My monkey sphere is pretty fucking full. It’s ok that not everyone in the whole world wants to be my best friend. I am incredibly overwhelmingly lucky to have the diverse relationships I have.

Not all of my friends are “nice people”. Some of them are canonical “nice people”. I like variety. I have something to learn from everyone. I am imperfect but striving. That is all I can do.

I’m glad when the anger passes. When the sudden rage dissipates. I don’t really “know” what causes it. It’s about a lot of different factors all exploding at once. It’s different every time.

In the wake of it I feel gratitude for the absence. I’m glad I didn’t fuck up a relationship. I didn’t scream. (One yell. But it was of the “I WOULD LIKE TO FINISH A SENTENCE WITHOUT BEING INTERRUPTED” variety and there are much worse things I could have done. Not great but I call it a win anyway.)

Children are supposed to test boundaries. That is the whole point of childhood. You learn what happens when you do things.

Shanna tries to be a joker. She likes to lighten the mood. She wants to make a face and make me laugh and have everything be all better now. It’s honestly kind of weird to me. Some of her “joking” faces have all the markers of “I want to start a fist fight”. I have taken to asking, “Is that a silly face or an angry face?” The answer is almost always, “Silly!” (She does get mad too–but that’s usually more clear and related to a situation I can understand.)

When my kids ask me to lighten up I either do so or leave the room until I can calm down because I’m flooding. They have a right to not be around a stress-tastic person. I want them to learn how to have boundaries too.

The thing about our relationship is that we always come back and snuggle after tense moments. We are incredibly physically affectionate. If my kids rejected my affection I would stop but they beg for more. I hug, cuddle, and kiss them hundreds or thousands of times a day. Maybe we have the odd day when I only kiss the top of their heads like ten times.

We check in and then we run off to do our thing again.

Are you still there? I still love you and want to be around you. Ok, I’m going to do my thing again.

I have wanted this my whole life.

I feel horrible guilt but at this point I can have two to three hours by myself on many days. My kids can be told to go in the back yard with snacks and they don’t come back for hours. I feel like I shouldn’t be abandoning them for those periods. But it’s good for all of us so I do it. Other parents don’t force their kids to be alone so they can get alone time. They put their kids in daycare so they can play with other kids instead of being forced into solitude. I don’t feel like a nice mom.

I would feel differently if Shanna were less social. I think Calli loves it. She checks in when she needs to for her hug and kiss and then she goes back to playing.

I spend my days making up songs about how much and why I love my kids. My children will not be the type to grow up and wonder if their parents loved them. My kids are more on the smothered end. Only I take them to the park and classes and parties and turn them loose. They are very engaged with the world and they do not allow me to mediate any more. Shanna flat tells me to leave her alone at parties. She knows that my anxiety cramps her style. It’s… a little weird. But she seems to be working with what she has so we’ll see where it takes her.

I’m not the boss of her life. I mean, I sort of am for a little while. But not for forever. It is my job to teach her the rote body memory necessary for caring for yourself with ease an adult. You will just be used to “This is what we do all day to take care of our bodies.” It won’t be this weird thing that involves transactions with other people all day long to get your basic needs met.

The thing I hate the most about all the American bastards who wrote about “self sufficiency” and “self reliance” and living out in the woods by themselves WOULD HAVE STARVED if not for the generosity of women in their communities.

Fuck your self reliance.

And yet! There is a basic level of self care that I believe that every human being should have. I feel rather disturbed by the number of adults I know who say, “I can barely boil water”. What the hell. That shows a dramatic and disturbing hole in your education. Your parents failed you. I’m sorry for that.

See, I’m a judgmental bastard all over the place.

And if you catch me on the wrong day I may rant at you about how debt (in particular consumer debt and school loans) is the boogeyman. It will eat your soul. It will force you into a crappy and terrible life where you have no ability to change the system. Debt will make you a slave.

Ugh and ick. I’m looking forward to the days of not having a mortgage. I feel grateful for this fact. I’m scared I won’t manage it in the five years I was hoping to do it. I’m afraid it may take six or seven because then we will have to come up with mortgage payments during the WWOOF year and that will be kind of annoying.

But it wouldn’t be the end of the year. And maybe if we rented out our house for pretty much the mortgage we could make it work.

“I will find a way or make one.” ~~Roman~~ Carthaginian general Hannibal didn’t fuck around.

The number of opportunities in your life increase as you build skills. I feel increasingly confident that I can meet the challenges that come my way. I may not get rich–but I think I will manage our resources well enough to not eat cat food in my old age. At that point my supposed food ethics may go to hell. I will eat what I can afford. I had better never develop actual gluten issues or I’m fucked. Giving up ramen would be traumatic.

I don’t have a lot of answers. I think I am ready to set some boundaries in a nice voice without being an asshole. I feel more relaxed after the weekend. I feel grateful that my problems are this small.

Six days till my next race. I’m ready but I may be slow. That will be ok too. I hope to best three hours. We’ll see.

My life is pretty cool.

Wired for sound.

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That’s the expression I use for vibrating with anxiety. I woke up because a kid turned the bathroom light on. I need more sleep. But I’m AWAKE.

Yesterday we went to the kid dentist. Both kids got A+ from the dentist. I feel weird about them getting graded. After telling Shanna with great enthusiasm that her teeth were perfect the dentist looked like he was sucking a lemon when I said that Shanna has been brushing and flossing herself for a bit over a month now. “That’s not ok. She’s not able to get her teeth clean yet.” …. did you or did you not just tell me that her teeth were perfect?

He’s also concerned about the size of Calli’s tonsils. Especially given that I do the gasping for air thing that probably means I have sleep apnea. The dentist also bitched me out for that. I should go do a sleep study and seek treatment because apparently sleep apnea can take up to six years off your life.

“You don’t understand. That gasping for breath sends your body into fight or flight mode. That can shorten your entire life span.”

“Uhm, with all due respect I have PTSD and live in a hypervigilant hell of fight or flight every day. I don’t think the sleep apnea is what is going to kill me. But thanks for your concern.”

He looked taken aback at that return.

I spent two hours reading about autistic adults yesterday. I have some ideas about how to manage my current boundary problems with a friend. I’m going to need to solve them and not expect a fix from my friend. Some things can’t be fixed by other people. Some things you have to do yourself. He can’t guess where my boundaries are.

I don’t want to stop weekly visits. But I do want to stop having to spend seven days processing each visit before another one happens to rocket me into feeling angry, used, and like I want to beat the shit out of someone non-consensually.

I think step one is going to be, “I would like to stop discussing the bdsm community with you at all. I can’t be free to say what I want to say in front of my kids and you say more than I think is appropriate and then I can’t respond and then I’m just fucking pissed. I need to not do this.”

That needs to be step one. If you can’t spend a two hour visit talking about something other than the bdsm community then I need to make the visits less frequent. Too much is leaking out around my kids. Not to mention that I’m only tangentially involved in the scene at this point and I really don’t need to be spending my time freaking out about what other people are or aren’t doing. I don’t need this shit.

That is step one. That is as close as I can get to not black and white thinking on this. Move the goal post. I don’t need to end the visits immediately because I’m experiencing too much emotion. I need to figure out how to have less emotion. It’s not “all his fault” I am having these feelings. But having theoretical conversations about what other people should or shouldn’t do causes me more distress than happiness and I would like to stop doing it.

That doesn’t mean my friendship has to go away. Let’s just have a bright shiny change of topic. All the autistic forums recommend going for as blunt and straightforward as possible. “I’m experiencing a full week of activation after our visits and I need that to change. One idea I have is that we could take the topic of the bdsm community off the table for a while and I can see if that is the problem. If that isn’t the way to solve the problem I may ask for further modifications in the future but for now I’d like to start by talking about other things. It’s only two hours. Surely we can find something else to talk about.”

I love you. I value you. I want you to exist not only in the abstract world but in my world. Right now I’m spending seven days a week being pissed off at you and that isn’t working for me. Let’s try something else.

People don’t trigger me because they are wrong or bad or pick a negative adjective. People trigger me because I have a long personal history of crap. My emotions reside inside my body and aren’t the fault of anyone. If I need to manage myself differently that doesn’t mean that someone else is wrong.

I wish I found my boundaries without feeling this much destructive rage. That would be useful. Future Goal And All.

I asked a friend how she handles her autistic son when he’s on a topic she doesn’t want to talk about. She said she tunes him out.

Tuning someone out is hard for me. I do kind of the antithesis of tuning my kids out. I’m nosy, probably borderline invasive (if I listen to my kids this much when they are 12/14 it will probably be an invasion of their privacy–I tell myself that small children have different boundaries) and I believe that the only way I can know my kids are getting what they need is if I provide it. I don’t trust that things will run smoothly unless I micromanage the fuck out of it. (I understand that other people go through life without micromanaging and things turn out fine. Bully for you. I have issues I’m managing.)

We’re always solving yesterday’s problems.

I think it’s funny how people say things to me and it becomes a major touch-stone theme in my writing for years. These little phrases. I am made up of thousands of people. I steal their words and ideas and sometimes their boundaries.

Sometimes loving someone means deciding, “I would rather not talk about _________ with you.”

It has been very rare in my life that someone has been able to provide me with such clear boundaries. I am slaveringly grateful when people can state clear boundaries around conversation. Otherwise I tend towards the “inappropriate”.

It is hard for me to guess which parts of my normal day to day life might traumatize other people. Ok, maybe not my current day to day life, but my past. I can talk about some things with some people and it’s bloody hard to guess what with whom. If I slip then I am a terrible person for traumatizing someone. So I hear. It’s hard to get over having therapists tell me that I should never discuss my history with lay people or I am being abusive.

“Group therapy isn’t appropriate for people with your level of trauma. You will just be abusive with the group members.”

Ouch.

I’m supposed to shut the fuck up. No, I’m not supposed to shut the fuck up. I’m really not. I’m not going to no matter how much some people wish I would. Noah likes reading it. He’s my ideal reader. Stephen King tells me I only need one and then I’m golden.

To abruptly change the topic: Calli is in a phase. I ask what she wants. I say ok, sure thing and move towards doing the thing. She changes her mind. I say, “I’m already 75% done with foo”. She explodes and starts screaming at me about how she wants the opposite of foo. I am terrible. I don’t love her. Hysterical crying. Flailing of arms and legs. It is the end of the world. If we are out in public I pick her up and carry her back to the car and drive home. If we are home I ask her not to scream in the living room and carry her to a screaming room if necessary. Then I need some time alone.

I’m too highly activated all the time. I’m worried about my reflexes right now. I’m punchy and twitchy.

I’m trying to just roll with it. I know from books (thank you child development books. You are the best things in the whole fucking world) that this is normal and standard and the best way to handle it is to teach emotional self regulation slowly and patiently. Validate the emotions and help them learn to calm down. Yup, you really are that disappointed all of a sudden. That sounds hard. Sometimes when you make a choice you have to live with it or get nothing. That’s how life goes. Yup, it’s terribly hard sometimes. Sometimes it is so hard you cry. I can see you understand that step already.

But it takes so much patience and calm. My well runneth dry.

A while ago I told a friend that her husband required the same kind of patience from me as her children. She looked kind of startled. A fair number of my friends (I almost defaulted to the sexist “male friends” but then I stopped and thought–nope it’s not gender related I just have issues with people.) require the same kind of “must stop and patiently explain what I’m thinking to someone belligerent and unfamiliar with my vocabulary” kind of behavior from me. I totally don’t mind doing it with kids. That has always been easy. Explaining “down” doesn’t bother me. It feels just and I don’t get nearly as frustrated.

I’m kind of a raging asshole when it comes to adults. I didn’t try to go for being a college professor for reasons. I don’t have fucking patience for them. Shut the fuck up and get your shit done you stupid fucking piece of shit.

Yeah, 8th period social club was way more effective as a teaching method.

(I don’t really believe that people are stupid pieces of shit for not knowing things I know. But I’m really not a very nice person in my head.)

No one has commented on my lack of tact in years. I wonder what that means about my social skills. It isn’t that I spend less time with people. I spend time with very different kinds of people. And I’m not hunting for sex. That probably is the biggest mellowing feature.

These days hunting for sex is more like shooting fish in a barrel. It changes the vibe. Hunting for sex is one of the least activating activities in my life. *nudge* “Wanna?” “Yes!”

It’s flattering but not exciting in the same way. It’s nice. I’m not complaining. Ok, moving on.

Hi, non-neurotypical brain let’s try to figure out how to make you interact with my trauma damaged brain without an explosion from adrenaline. Your tics and my tics have got to combine. We can find a way. Damnit. Fourteen years. I don’t want to lose more long time friends. Sure you piss me off. Everyone else does too if I spend enough time with them.

If I avoided people because they pissed me off I would never leave my house. Which would suck.

People delight me more than they bother me. It’s hard to hold that focus sometimes. That’s the extremist black and white thinking. “I love you. I hate you.” Me and Taylor Swift.

Our babysitter keeps asking for modifications based on how tired she is. “I know we said going until x’o’clock but can it be x-2’o’clock because I haven’t been sleeping well.”

On one hand I have thoughts of “unprofessional” and on the other hand I feel so delighted by her confidence in caring for her body. She’s a growing kid. I’m glad she is smart enough to prioritize sleep. I am unflaggingly sympathetic and willing to be flexible. I need her more than she needs me. I’d better fucking be nice.

In every loving relationship there is a power imbalance. Whoever loves the most has the least power. That’s what my mama taught me.

Is it mercenary to take stock of whether I need someone more than they need me and plan my behavior accordingly? It means I am much more of an asshole with people who need me more than I need them. That’s not exactly cool. I’m not talking raging asshole, but I’m less flexible.

Are those enough words so that I can sleep? Maybe. I have improved the ergonomic set up but it isn’t perfect yet. I need a better keyboard. The neck angle isn’t perfect but it has improved. At least I’m using the tray and a better mouse already. I do need a better keyboard. This one is way too narrow for me. I’ll save it for kidlets.

Just breathe.

I should post pictures of my garden. It’s beautiful. I have tulips and narcissus and sage and rosemary and the Japanese lantern all in bloom. The rose leaves are beautifully red. The Joseph’s Coat roses in the back are starting to bloom. The strawberries and blueberries have lots of flowers and starting fruit. The blackberry isn’t going to give me fruit this year. The hacking stunted it. I get it. Sorry, dude. I needed to change your trellis. The plum tree is covered in flowers. Yesterday I saw the buds on the cherry tree finally start opening.

Spring is here. We have peas, beans, and squash left to plant. The corn has appeared but I need to let it get a bit higher before I plant the peas and beans that will climb up the stalks. Then a few weeks after that the pumpkins.

The artichoke is huge but I don’t see signs of fruiting yet. I have no idea what it will look like. The asparagus is coming right along. I don’t eat them this year. Next year.

Patience, grasshopper. You have a lifetime.

My neighbor dropped off a few more strawberry plants. I’m thrilled to have them. I have a whole bed of strawberries and one of those strawberry pots. I was given it. I use pots that I’m given. We spend so much money on strawberries every year. At least $200/year on strawberries. I’d like to grow a whole bunch. I understand that Noah and I will eat fewer than when we have no small fructivores in the house. Still.

When I am old I hope my intestine will allow me to largely live on raw fruit from my back yard and meat. That would be rad. Way less cooking. I’ll get me a George Forman grill and I’ll be golden. Rice in a rice cooker. Fuck vegetables. That sounds like the amount of cooking I like doing.

I eat vegetables now because I’ve been brainwashed into thinking my kids must eat them and I must model eating them.

I’m going to take six years off my life due to sleep apnea. Heh. If I manage to live long enough to die of natural causes That’s a win.

It’s interesting how different people have different goal posts.

All the things.

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I finished The Cannabis Health Index. I may need to own a copy of my own. It was incredibly hard to just sit down and read it (I’m pretty sure I’m confusing a lot of cancer information in my head right now because I’m really not a medical expert.)

Mostly what I come away from the book believing is that I need to do the math on how much pills cost and find a way to earn that amount of money for myself so I get over my overwhelming guilt about taking family money for “drugs” (apparently that is the deal my brother had with his wife as a stay at home parent–he had to work enough to pay for pot and alcohol). I have a lot of “risk factors”. I can’t do anything about that. My body is not in great shape. I need to lower my stress and this is the most effective medication I know exists. Ok.

Apparently my shrink knows the author and she’s going to have lunch with him this week. She says she will pass on my opinions on the book. I feel a little weird about that.

I finished the first round of editing Outrunning a week early. That makes me feel happy with myself. I read through the essays and got rid of the worst of the grammatical weirdness and put keywords all over the place. Round two involves matching up key words and eliminating all the duplicate phrasings. Going through it once helped me spot some of the repetition. Key words will help.

It’s still kind of unorganized and there are a few sections I need to hack and write again to be more explicit. I’m pussy-footing and being vague in a few places where I should be more explicit. Kids won’t understand the PC hand-wavey shit. Say it like it is.

I do need to justify why arbitrary rules can be ignored. Don’t worry Pam. I’ll tell them why eating dessert first isn’t a big deal.

This week has been packed. I am very lucky that people ask to spend time with us. Very lucky. Overwhelmingly lucky. Sometimes lots of people ask for the same week. This week had 2-3 social engagements every day. It would have been three on almost every day but we had some blissful cancellations. Sometimes I feel weird about being glad for cancellations. At least it feels emotionally superior to my years-ago feelings of fury and hate. Easier to maintain friendships and be understanding.

People get sick. The parents of our little friends sometimes have to work. We can either be understanding and supportive or we can give up on them as friends.

I’m not really in a jettisoning people from my life stage. I’m trying to build. Tolerance is in my best interests. Enlightened self-interest and all that.

I do not worry that I am under socializing my kids. Oy. I don’t worry as much about me being isolated either. I’m starting to see my time alone as strictly self preservation against all the different things I have to think about all the forking time.

I appreciate that I am managing to build a life that mostly exists within ten miles of my house. It is a slow process but it is working. I’m existing in the space I’m in. I’m Occupying my space. I take up room and talk to people and get to know them and ask about their lives. I’m getting to know more home schoolers and better know the ones already in our lives.

I’m in the phase I’m in.

I want community. I want it so bad I can taste it. This is the process and I need to figure out how much of the cost I can bear.

It occurred to me that I should stop thinking of our food budget as an area to constrict. Part of the reason that we spend as much money as we do is that we have extra people at meals at least five days a week. Sometimes just one person but often up to twelve. We have several parties a year. That’s just part of our life.

We’re feeders. Come here hungry. We’re happy to fill that need. There are a lot of problems we can’t fix but you don’t need to leave our house hungry.

But I’m kind of a fascist about what I want my kids to eat. And I read too much about food quality to buy cheaper products full time. I have the luxury of buying food that I prefer. Ok, that still includes Kraft mac’n’cheese and ramen because I have some taste preferences I can’t seem to ditch. Also: when I’m very overwhelmed and I need to stay in emotional control I can’t cook anything more complicated than that. Even making sandwiches stresses me out more than that. Making ten sandwiches will result in my hands shaking by the end. Lame.

So I do what I need to do. I feed people. I have good nuts and fruit and cheese and meat and awesomely shitty starches. Take your pick.

We all make choices and set priorities.

I will continue to hemorrhage money on meat, fruit, and vegetables. I will source them as locally as possible. Dairy is more mixed for me. I’m going to keep buying my fucking ramen and mac’n’cheese.

If I want to be able to keep sharing this quality of food with my family I have to just accept that as the cost of doing business and not feel guilty. It is expensive to eat well. It sucks but it’s true. I need to get over my inclination to feel guilty about high grocery bills. I’m not wasting the money. Yes, we “could” spend less money on food. But I get to buy meat mostly outside the industrial meat complex. I get to support farmers trying to grow organic food for a living wage within 100 miles of where I live. I want that industry to succeed. I like shopping at my farmers market.

I have choices because I have privilege. I’m not doing what I “must” if I force my family to live on rice and beans all the time. I could do it. But I don’t see high moral value in doing it. It’s a perfectly valid choice. It is not, however, a more moral choice. It could be argued that a vegan diet would be more moral but I’m at peace with my status of omnivore. I try to make sure the cows, chickens, pigs, and lambs that make up most of my meals lived decent lives. It’s important to me.

I think that understanding my choices in context helps me appreciate my successes against my metrics.

If I had a different amount of money my metrics would change. Like they do.

Trying to look for some peace with my budget process. Looking for that Zen place.

It’s kind of funny. Today I sit down and feel like I’ve checked almost all the boxes for this month and it’s the 21st. I still have some seeds to get in the ground. Two or three hours of work, not bad.

Next week there are one or two things every day. Swimming counts as a thing. Dentist counts as a thing. It’s not all social. Looking at the number of hours of babysitting I think I should spent all day with the kids in between or they will flip out. Brace yerself, Eppie.

I’ve had a lot of alone time this week. (Thus the productivity.) Next week I need to be done at 6:30 and be more present with them during the day. Ok. That is the main job and all. Noah has been reading to them for hours every night and I either hide in the garage or go to bed.

But when I cycle this way sex gets fewer and farther between. (Last night was great, honey. Thanks.) It seems like the main way we can work it out now is to have me go to bed at 6:30 pm so I can take a three hour nap and wake up for sex when the kids are asleep. Ha. Disco nap.

Keep all the balls in the air. Haven’t had a panic attack in more than two weeks. That’s pretty good. I have been medicating. I haven’t felt the need to cut. It is nice to notice the absence of that wanting. I have other anxieties but it’s not extreme.

Just keep swimming swimming… something.

Ugh. Going in.

post-therapy: medication

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My shrink gave me a very firm talking to this morning. I’m not sure she has ever been this directive before. Maybe she feels she is growing into the role now that I’ve been going for a year? In her opinion if I’m still having one-two panic attacks in a week then I need to medicate more heavily and stop fucking around with it. If I won’t consistently use pot then she wants me on an anti-depressant and an anti-anxiety med. I’m not sure yet how I feel about this upsurge of bossy from her.

Panic attacks, for those who may not know, can include several of the following symptoms:

“Racing” heart
Feeling weak, faint, or dizzy
Tingling or numbness in the hands and fingers
Sense of terror, or impending doom or death
Feeling sweaty or having chills
Chest pains
Breathing difficulties
Feeling a loss of control

(Thank you Webmd.com.)

For me I tend to have racing heart, dizziness, tingling in my hands and fingers (but that could be just that I type too much), sweaty, chest pain, breathing difficulty, and the horrible overwhelming feeling that I’m about to be punished because I am bad. It sounds kind of mild when I write it down. Most people who have them say they feel rather like a heart attack. They physically hurt your body and wear you down over time.

At this point I’m down to having that happen 1-2 times a week. Most of my panic attacks are in the 5-8 minute time duration window.

My shrink asked me if I liked being this way. In that, “are you keeping yourself sick because you like the attention” sort of way. I told her that I don’t deny that I like a lot of the effects of being hypervigilant. I like how many things I’m able to track at once.

I think there are reasons I need to stop doing it though. I need less multi-tasking. Interesting project opportunities continue to arrive. Hrrrmph. Tired.

And yet there are things I’ve gotta do. I could choose to not do them. It is true. But I would not like the consequences.

She told me to medicate more consistently and figure out how to increase the number of minutes I spend per day on active stress reduction. Yes, ma’am. One more forking thing to track. Goody.

It’s weird dealing with having these urges come up. I’m trying hard to learn that these things aren’t a normal part of life. I mean, I’m not alone in having panic attacks or anything. I’m not claiming I’m a completely unique snowflake or anything. This is just the road I’m on. It is well documented. I read lots of books about it. I am pathetically textbook. Feck.

What does being something different even mean? Do you know what my email handle came from? I wanted to stop using the internet handle that my Owner gave me. It was time to be something different.

So yeah. My therapist has opinions about how my PTSD symptoms are being handled. She agrees with me that I should pat myself on the back for the progress I have made and yet… I’m not where I want to be.

In a timeline: the last seven years has been the longest period of my life where I have lived in one place. Nearly twice as long as the runner up. I’m seven years post-rape. That’s after twenty-three years of being intermittently raped by a total of twelve people.

Why do I keep listing it? Because I want attention for it? *snicker* I don’t get attention for it. I make people not talk to me anymore by talking about it. Talking about it is the main way I make sure people don’t want to know me any more. It’s rather effective.

It is just true. It just is. Everyone else gets to tell me for the twenty-fifth time about their life pattern. I listen. I forking listen until I can recite the stories as well as my friends tell them about themselves.

I can clearly see all the victim blamey reasons I’m less likely to get raped from here on out. I no longer dress slutty in public unless I’m out with Noah and standing next to him the whole time. (I was only rarely dressed inappropriately in the contexts in which I was raped.) I don’t drink in public unless Noah is there. (Only three? of my rape experiences involved alcohol. I think it is awesome that I am so tired I can’t think through the roster and figure out if it is actually three. Writing No Secrets helped me lose a lot of the strings on the memories in mind. My flashbacks have dropped to basically nothing. Haven’t had one in a long time.)

Long story short: I haven’t had anything resembling a “normal life” for very long. It’s ok that I’m not very good at it. I probably deserve a lot more slack than I give myself. Only maybe I deserve a lot less. I’m never sure about these things.

More consistently medicate and spend more minutes every day on stress reduction. Ok. (Not medicate *more* or *more heavily* but more consistently. That means things like paying attention to dosage and timing and blah blah blah.)

I don’t think that I “like being able to say I’m mentally ill”. That’s more about me not being willing to hide it. I write as part of managing it.

I partially track ups and downs here because Noah has a better sense of time than I do. He can see how often I’m posting about what and help me a sense of how long different stages last. He doesn’t see most of the panic attacks.

Close friends know I have a thing about punctuality. It’s important to me. Folks probably don’t know that if I’m late somewhere I frequently have panic attacks. My uhh parenting style results in a *lot* of running late. If my kids don’t want to be at the park when the event is supposed to start, I let it happen. I try to let them set a lot of their schedule. If they dally on the way to a class it is their own darn problem. I’m at the front door ready on time and I give lots of reminders.

But I don’t nag. And I don’t force them out the door on time.

So I sometimes have to go in my room and have a panic attack. I’m down to about once a week. I swear, this is not that high for me in terms of frequency.

I’m feeling very defensive about being told to medicate more. Obviously. I want to think I’ve come a long way and I’m still making progress and isn’t that good enough and… apparently not.

The random outbursts of hyperventilating and crying etc kind of bother my kids.

Calli’s kind of in an important developmental stage. Modeling anger regulation is kinda important. This is really hard.

I feel like I have taken on a role playing gig slated to run for twenty years. I’m still figuring out my role.

Reflections

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Today I took the girls to visit an old friend of mine. I haven’t seen her much since I had kids. She’s older than me and she has a grown daughter. Talking to her is different now than it used to be.

Now she actively tries to tell me not to use her as an example. I don’t know if she was simply unaware of how I tried to pattern match off of her in the past or if it seemed more harmless.

Now she adamantly tells me that I should not make similar choices to her. She is not all that happy with the far side of the parenting road and she thinks that she made a lot of wrong choices.

Given that she is a specialist who works with developmentally delayed children (wow I know a lot of them) I did my normal poke, “Several friends think I should have Calli evaluated as potentially somewhere on the spectrum or possibly a speech delay. What do you think?”

She snickered. She said, “I have a 3.5 year old client who can point and say “unh” when he wants something. She’s really not delayed.”

This was kind of weird because I realized how much I want to brush off the encouraging and/or positive comments I receive about my children. Instead I worry and worry about the outliers who tell me, “I think you should ____”.

I never know how to feel about that. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about it, but lots of strangers stop me to grab my shoulders and stare at me in a really intense way and say, “Do you know how exceptional your child is?”

It happens every few months. I uhhh don’t know how to react. This is usually after ten or so minutes talking to Shanna. Talking about that sounds like bragging but honestly it makes me uncomfortable.

It’s not like it only comes from the sweet old grandmothers. It comes from a wide variety of people in a wide variety of circumstances. They are a lot easier to brush off and not think about much. I worry about the criticisms.

I want to believe that people are seeing the real experience of my life when they see potential areas I’m fucking up and not when it’s going right. The going right must be a fluke, right? I don’t believe compliments or positive statements. Although I’m not looney–I know my oldest child is advanced in speaking. But yeah. Whatever. How’s that going to effect the price of tea in China?

When I first knew a lot of my friends as mothers they were still young-ish mothers. I knew them through the periods they talk of with regret. It’s weird to now hear that side of it because I didn’t know anything at the time. I thought they were so great. Now they tell me not so much.

I’m worried, like I am. What am I fucking up? What am I missing? What am I not catching that a competent professional would catch?

Then I went on to read a thread on a homeschool email list about the idea of seeing a speech pathologist/therapist/getting kids evaluated for autism/etc other labels. The point was made that many, most issues (like speech stuff) would naturally resolve around six but we put kids into therapy earlier than that “so they don’t get used to the stigma of being deficient”. (Not my phrasing–emphasis is mine.)

It was a long thread and I’m quoting a very small part and the person I’m quoting had many interesting ideas so I’m not trying to paint it badly. But it was one of those “howdy there, juxtaposition” moments. (I’m working my way through a book on how people reach insights. It’s fascinating how connections layer.)

Anyway. The point was I think it is kind of interesting that I’m dithering about getting Calli evaluated. I have not been able to make up my mind if I want to pursue it or not. If she has speech delay it is extremely minor and most kids resolve minor issues on their own by six. She doesn’t have a severe speech issue. That is clear. She seems to have some difficulty with some sounds, but we do exercises. I’m not sure speech therapy would have much to offer her. The pediatrician does the basic autism screening and has at every appointment. The pediatrician says Calli is fine. But I worry.

And I hesitate to put my sticky little feet near the waters of the system. Do I really want my local school system building a dossier on my kids so that they can pester me about what I’m doing and whether I’m doing it right?

I go back and forth about how I feel about working with charter schools and it comes down to, ultimately, the fact that if I got the wrong “supervising teacher” to work with I would explode with rage.

That’s not so healthy or functional, I know.

I don’t do well with people who have a small amount of arbitrary power and then are petty. It’s a super common trait though and not a situation I really want to deal with.

But I worry about the idea that I am flying blind with no one to supervise me. The trouble is finding someone I respect who would be in an appropriate position to work with me. Mostly I just ask different people who have different specialties for informal evaluations.

Yeah. I feel mixed about the “methodology” I’m following. It’s uhm. Well. It’s unschooling. I don’t have a rubric of right or wrong. I’m just… doing.

What I’m trying to do is teach me and Shanna and Calli how to be polite to people. We have very good manners together. We can go to a grown-up only house and behave exactly how we should because there are Rules and we gosh darn spend the whole car ride there going over them. There are different rules for different places

I consciously and deliberately always specify why a rule exists.

You know that obnoxious “why” phase parents bitch about? We don’t have much of that here. I explain why before they can ever stop to consider how to react to an arbitrary rule. We don’t have many arbitrary rules.

Even “no food on the carpet” is “except on party days or very rarely with something that has NO CRUMBS”.

I need my children to be able to pick up on subtle behavior clues. I need it like I need water. It is not normal or natural to be as obsessed with it as I am. That means that it is not acceptable for me to expect my children to just be able to do it.

It means I have to explicitly teach my children how to evaluate how to talk to people. It means I have to go through and explain detailed body language stuff. We work on it a lot.

It’s controlling and wacky and crazy. But I tell them a lot, “I’m teaching you what I have learned. I don’t know everything. Sometimes I’m just flat wrong. As you grow up you will have different experiences than I’ve had and you will decide that I’m very wrong about some things. That happens to the best of us. For now, try to get some idea of what I’m looking at. It will take time and practice and you are going to make some mistakes and feel embarrassed. Brush it off and try again. You have to fail a million times before you can be an expert at anything.”

I want my kids to have the self confidence that comes from being allowed to try 30 things that fail before you find something that works.

And that means I frustrate the shit out of them.

I sorta think of myself as aspiring to be a cross of Mary Poppins, Mr. Miyagi, and Professor McGonagall. But more cuddly than that list implies.

I’m very demanding and exacting and I expect that is going to suck to live with long-term. We’ll see.

I don’t like curriculum but we talk about history a lot. I believe that studying history is important because many of the mistakes that we might make were already made by other people–go see how it worked out for them and then decide if you want that kind of result. We talk about historical people and periods and events and we read biographies.

When Shanna makes a grammar error and I correct her she does actually say, “Why was that wrong?” so I guess I get some “Why” questions. Mostly she says “What does ____ mean?”

I set the framework in their heads. We talk about space and biology and evolution and chemistry and physics and botany.

We haven’t been seriously working on language stuff but our play sometimes includes bouncing between using all the words in our collective vocabulary in every language we know to name objects in a space. It’s fun. They teach me words. (I verify things on the internet…) That will only get bigger as they get older. It’s a great way of getting them to sit still and be patient. I start by pointing at something and I will say it’s name/color/some descriptive term and someone will respond with a variation or move to a new object.

Unschooling means we spend our lives learning. The kids have spontaneous jam sessions where they sit down and make up song lyrics for a half hour to an hour. I uhhh look askance from a distance as someone who has always felt excluded from the cliqueish world of playing music. Shanna really likes making music and making up lyrics to go with what she is playing. It is a lot of fun to watch. It’s not “serious learning” but I would argue that it’s also important. She’s only five. Yes, some disciplines believe you can force children to learn even younger than she is. There is also some reason to believe it is better to start at more like seven or eight when the kid will really understand the range of options.

For now I’m comfortable with dithering. Or maybe I just think eight because that is when public schools start music. Who knows.

Shanna’s learning enough right now. She really does have a lot she’s trying to do.

We play math games. I don’t start them. I would probably avoid math much more if I could. Ugh. Shanna is very focused on math to my jaundiced view. She probably sits down to spontaneously do math work every week or two. She’s not a prodigy or anything but she’s interested and she feels like she is successful at it and she knows that understanding math is important for many careers. She doesn’t have any opening for bias that might imply she might be potentially bad at math.

We spend our days moving back and forth between subjects all day long. Cooking is chemistry and math. We talk about how much food costs. We talk about why we make the choices we make with the money we spend on food. There are a lot of shoot-off topics from there. Sometimes I do sit down and draw out how something would visually look if I think it would be hard for them to imagine.

But it’s all organic. (I don’t mean the hippy dippy shit.) I mean it just kind of happens. I respond to their questions all day long. I alternate filling their heads with so much information they sometimes look like they might explode with telling them, “I don’t know how to do it. You figure it out.”

We are loud people. We want to be heard. That is the last trait I want to extinguish in my kids. Same with not punishing them for whining. *I* whine. I’m not going to forking punish my kids for doing what I model. That would make me a despicable hypocrite.

I do not punish my kids for doing things I have taught them to do. Iron clad rule.

Does everyone live with rules? This many rules. So many rules. I feel like I am drowning in all the rules, rules, rules. Be this here. Be that there. Be something else someplace else.

I like the Biblical phrase “a house divided”.

Fall. Fall. Fall.

Only I’m not divided. I promised me I’d never do that. I would never split off my memories so that only certain parts of me existed at a time. Apparently that is one of the main ways folks like me get out of childhood. That’s what the specialists tell me.

I’m not splitting. But I’m learning how to be polite in a wide variety of different cultures and it’s hard. I think I only get to like 70% correct anywhere I try.

I always say too much. I’m too forward. I’m too loud. I’m too inappropriate (although this one has faded now that I only over-share sexually with some of Noah’s random co-workers at Christmas parties. Surely that’s uhm not as bad as I’ve ever been before. That’s been it for the last several years running.

This is big.

And yet I shouldn’t talk about it because it is indiscreet. But controlling hypersexuality doesn’t go away when you are married and monogamous and having moderately good sex with your husband. (I post about bad spells and he goes, “Ahh. An opportunity. So if I put in more effort I get more sex? H’okay then!”) We’re too tired for the earth shattering kind of sex. Some day we’ll get back there. *cross fingers*

I feel like that is the main overwhelming fact of parenthood. Exhaustion. I actually sleep pretty well these days. What, I only miss 2-7 hours in the average week lately? I’ve been sleeping pretty well. I wake up when I want to and not because I have to. That’s doing ok. But I’m still exhausted.

Yes, it’s a running day and I’m tired after eight miles. But it’s not that. I think the running makes me feel better about being this tired because I am whether I run or not. At least when I run I get to have this macho swagger for a while as I feel my rock hard thighs. Holy crap. I didn’t know my legs did that. (They stopped being rock hard when I defrosted and relaxed after the run… but they had like an hour there.. Maybe I need more mid-run stretching breaks… hm.)

I think that the schedule I should keep is either run or edit seven days a week. I only predictably have till 6:30am to work. The whole rest of the day is too overwhelming with kid-need-to-communicate. I love them so much but sometimes I feel like a wrung out sponge.

When I look kind of deflated Noah says, “Well we didn’t pick the low intensity kind of parenting.”

Nope. Not so much.

If I get through this twenty year period and I end up with adult children who want to be my friends and who can go off into the world and have happy lives…

I don’t want a codependent relationship forever. I don’t want two dependents. I want to engage in loud, wild, crazy sex in the middle of my living room. You can move out some day, kiddos. I have plans.

But I hope and pray every day that they will want to be my friend. I want to hear about their lives. I want to know what happens to them. Sure, I hope that they will tell me sometimes that I am a good mom. Mostly I hope that I will look at what they do with their life and think quietly to myself “That was a good choice.” I should keep my mouth shut. It is not my job to judge who they become as adults. Not one way or another.

I don’t judge them much now. I evaluate them. But I describe everything in terms of progress and development. There is no “good” or “bad”. I’m just making sure you are doing what a three year old should be able to do.

I worry that if I decide to have her evaluated she will have a very small delay and I will be told that I “really should pay for therapy so she won’t be more delayed later” (when that is only a faint possibility).

Yeah, I over think things.

If she has a 10% or 20% delay then she is still in the range of normal. She’s just not right at the center line or above it. I don’t believe there is a chance that she is more delayed than that. And her expressive language is advanced. I think she just has to grow into her mouth.

I want to give her time. I think that is all I have to give her. I don’t want to think of her as “behind”. She’s Calli. She’s not the most advanced in every single part of human development but she is certainly not struggling to be understood.

If she starts having problems having conversations with strangers because they can’t understand her then I will take her in for an evaluation. That seems like a good bar. As long as strangers can understand her and have a pick up conversation she is doing well enough for three.

Ok. I think I can stop worrying about that now. (I can dream, can’t I? Actually I can’t because I’ve started having pot at night again. Thank you blissful slumber. Yes, my tolerance is lower.)

I feel like I am so tired I will go fall in my bowl of soup. Maybe time to start getting ready for dinner. I’m so glad it is a leftovers night.

I planned out dinners for February and March. I’m pretty good about sticking to my schedule if I make it. I’m hoping to uhm bring down my food budget a little. It’s hard given some of my food priority stuff. I do my best to buy my meat from actual farmers. I make a big exception for sausage. I’m going to hell for the sausage. I have some very strong feelings about the unsustainability of factory farmed meat. But man I know how expensive it is to be all prissy about “food ethics”. Maybe this year I should be better about tracking food spending. I wonder what I’m putting where. I could look at vendors. on Mint… Hmmm. Now I’m procrastinating. Put down the darn keyboard, Krissy.

I worry about these bounces.

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We’ve had a very good weekend. I medicated so my mood was better. I worry a lot about how I fuck with medication and go up and down in mood. My shrink confirms for me that the unpredictability of mood swings are some of the most damaging parts of having a parent with mental illness. A parent who is just *depressed* is one thing. A parent who goes up and down with little apparent cause is much harder on a child.

But we’ve had one of those “just another day in paradise” weekends. I’ve gotten to spend a lot of time with Noah and the kids. When we get to just be together and we don’t have to get a lot done I am completely and totally sure that my life could not be better. This is what I’ve always wanted. I belong here. I am loved here. I am wanted here. These three people are just about as obsessed with me as I am with them. It’s a mutual admiration society.

We’ve been doing a lot more with neighbors. I am consciously not writing about those experiences despite the fact that I like record keeping. Writing about people is… mixed. Sometimes people don’t mind and are positive or neutral about me writing about them. Sometimes I upset people and I really don’t mean to. I don’t feel like it is safe to talk about people right now. It would hurt too much if my current connections blew up. I can’t absorb another big loss right now.

The biggest pull back going on in my life right now has been honestly discussed and a frame work has been put around it. I respect and support all of the reasons for the pull back so I have to just live with my feelings of terror. No one can take those away from me.

I’m scared of the future. I have so little control.

But what I know for sure is that I had a really great weekend with my family. I feel loved and wanted and supported by the three people in this house. My kids are getting big enough that sometimes they will say, “What could I do to make your day a little easier?” If I tell them a chore they go do it in order to bask in the glow of my gratitude. They do it because I ask them similar questions and do similar sorts of work for them.

I’m hoping that the fact that I usually can talk about my mood swings in advance before I snap will mitigate the damage I do.

All parents damage their children. I am told this over and over by people who are much wiser than me.

I apologize for my moodiness. I acknowledge that it isn’t their fault. If I say something in a nasty way I will apologize and try again. “I am sorry that came out really hostile and you haven’t done anything at all to provoke hostility. I’ll try again.”

Today I believe that I am doing ok. I’m never going to nominate myself for mother-of-the-year. My kids are happy, healthy, able to adapt to a wide variety of situations and people, and they are learning about as fast as I can put material in front of them.

We’re doing ok. Even if it isn’t the same path as everyone else. There isn’t actually a monolithic path any way. We are all doing our own thing.

I talked to a new-to-homeschooling mom recently. She said she was researching and she felt very unsure about which direction to head in terms of unschooling vs. curriculum. I said, “Don’t worry about picking a label. Do what works for your family and be prepared to try something different every year if you have to and let your labels come after the fact. Labels should be descriptive and not prescriptive. Don’t pick a label and then force yourself to make those choices.”

I say that even though I’m pretty married to unschooling. Not radical unschooling. Not Unschooling. We are unschoolers. I don’t believe that learning fits in a nice pre-ordered box. We learn all the time and we take our sources from sometimes unorthodox locations and I think that is more or less the right way to go through life. But I understand that sometimes you have to jump through hoops and I’ve been able to do enough of it for myself that I’m satisfied I understand the process.

I’m going to spend February editing. I hope to ship it off to a friend to edit by June. I should probably negotiate with her. Ha. She told me to my face she was interested in working with me and given that I plan to pay her I don’t think it will be a hard sell. She’s a professional and all. This time I’m picking an editor who has written and edited a lot of books and run a publishing company. I hope that I do better with the next round of editing process.

It has been a good weekend. I ordered a toddler back carrier. Shanna and I want to walk farther than Calli can manage and my arms go numb holding her. I found a spiffy one more appropriate to her very large size. I only had little baby carriers before. This has a very high back. More supportive and safe and all. It’ll be good to wear her again.

It’s interesting how regressing stuff works. Sometimes they are so clingy. And I soothe them and hold them and talk to them and then eventually they want to run away again. I’m home base.

I have wanted this feeling for my whole life.

Please love me.

It’s hard that the intensity of their love sometimes feels like it is drowning me. People are not meant to raise children alone in nuclear families. It is not right or normal for our species. Children should have a tribe. They should have a wide variety of adults they spend time with so they can find out more about the world-that-is-not-their-parents. I’m doing the best I can. I’m trying like fuck not to drive away the people who know my children.

I can’t always invite. I’m sorry. I think it is pretty ridiculous how often I cry because I miss people I could call and invite over. They would probably say yes. But I can’t invite them because they might say no and that would hurt so very badly. I can’t handle a no. So I can’t ask for a yes.

I think that is part of why I throw parties. If someone tells me no for that at least I can tell myself that they didn’t want the crowd. I can take the no. It is less of a personal rejection.

I feel so scared. How long can I manage to be good enough for my kids? Am I good enough? Who is going to even notice if I start fucking up? Will my kids be left to the mercy of me self-reporting on the internet to get intervention on their behalf? (I’m paranoid so I ask professionals and I’m told I haven’t done anything that merits a CPS call. I ask, “Are you sure? I’m not very nice.” Sometimes they snicker and then tell me about their problem cases. Ok. I’m pretty nice.)

I don’t know if I am teaching codependence or healthy interdependence. I’ve not had a lot of healthy interdependence. But I believe in it as a concept. I’m fucking trying.

Sometimes I wonder what I will be like when I grow up. I’m very much using this time as my incubation period. I’m not grown up yet. Maybe by 60? Heh.

Sometimes I think it is confusing when people talk with horror about aging as if it were a bad thing. Childhood was terrible. I want as far away from it as possible. I was 29 once. I want to move on. I want something different.

My early teens and 20’s were spent in a masochistic/self harming/promiscuous blur. I’m ready for something different.

But when I see girls like me who get up and out of all that they stop talking about their perspective. They learn to pass and I’m not trying for that. Not really. I don’t want to pass. Or I’d stop telling people that my culture of origin is poor white trash.

It’s time for dinner.

Find gratitude

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1. I’m grateful that I get to spend every day of my 30’s finding out what a happy childhood looks like. I may never get to know what it feels like, but I will never know what it feels like to be a black man either and I’m not crying over that every day. (Not because I think that there is a thing in the world wrong with being a black man… I just haven’t cried about it on a daily basis. I do tend to cry when I read auto-biographies by black men. But I tend to read auto-biographies of people who have had rather shitty lives, so yeah.)

2. I am grateful that despite my dithering and worry and anxiety I have access to a medication that can make me feel better. Having the possibility of feeling good in my body is promising even if I choose to sit in feeling bad for a time for whatever reason I do.

3. I am grateful that I live in a time and a place where people like me are not stoned to death.

4. I am grateful for my patient, kind, giving husband.

5. I am grateful that (so far at least) my children seem to love me so much. I can’t be all bad because they don’t have a lot of mixed feelings about me. They love me and think I’m wonderful. They rarely get irritated with me. They don’t seem to hate me, ever.

6. I am grateful that I have the privilege to parent in the way I want to parent. I am grateful that I live when and where I do because not everyone in the world is able to make the choices I am making.

7. I am grateful for every scrap of food in my kitchen. I have had times in my life where the kitchen was bare. I am so grateful that it is not true any more.

8. I am grateful that I get to “play” with gardening instead of having to learn how to grow food or starve.

9. I am grateful that when my arms hurt I can take a break from typing and my livelihood is not in danger.

10. I am grateful that my children feel entitled to snuggle every single morning of their lives. It has been such a continual ritual that they are really demanding and pushy about it happening. If I seem unavailable they will come get me and say, “Mom. It’s time for a morning snuggle. Go to the couch.” Yes ma’am. I’m coming.

That’s why my kids are so polite with me. Because I say “yes ma’am. I’m coming.” They see it modeled. They want to be like me. I am very polite to them. I do not expect deference. I do not model top-down respect. I think that I am their temporary boss and hopefully eventually their friend. I don’t own them. I need to be nice to them if I want them to want a relationship with me when they get older.

It will be a good day. A friend said, “Hey! How about if I babysit for you on Friday night so you can have a date.” Hell yes. Thankyouthankyouthankyou.

Mostly it will be a good day because I’m fucking medicating today. I’m not up for another day of crying because I am a piece of shit for rejecting my mother. I don’t have the desire to do that today. Luckily I have a handy dandy way to ensure that I don’t have to spend my day that way.

God Bless America.

Unusual session.

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I don’t cry much during therapy. It’s just not part of the process for me, mainly. I don’t cry in front of people very well. Today I probably cried for half the session. Partially as a result of that and partially just because well duh she sent me home with a book. The Cannabis Health Index. It is an examination of all the published medical studies about cannabis. It is meticulously footnoted and researched. If you want citation, this is the book for you.

PTSD is not one of the best studied issues in the book. Only three published studies and whereas they are hopeful/positive they aren’t strongly conclusive. Fair enough.

One of the things I like about the book so far is he says that cannabis is not dangerous but it isn’t harmless. There are demographics and populations who really shouldn’t be using pot; there is harm to come from misusing any medication. But when you compare it to the tens of thousands of people who die from medical prescription issues or the combined hundreds of thousands of people who die from alcohol and tobacco… it’s not dangerous.

A lot of what he (Uwe Blesching, the author) talks about is how cannabis allows you to change your mental state so that you can begin to unravel the problems in your mind which are manifesting in your body. He’s very specific and detailed as he examines how it can often allow you to be positive and think through the things that are hurting you. Often we hurt ourselves by being unable/unwilling to change patterns in our lives. He proposes that pot is a way to build a bridge between the mind and the body.

We all have confirmation bias, right?

I’ll point out that he is pretty serious about using the lowest dose medically appropriate and being on it for the shortest period of time possible. He wants people to use it as a medication to allow them to heal and then move on.

I’ve heard from a lot of people that alcohol more or less worked that way. They “outgrew” the need they had for alcohol even though for some period of time they were dependent on it.

A lot of my problem is that I am emotionally retarded. I do not mean stupid or any similar derogatory meaning. I mean underdeveloped. I mean immature. I mean held back. I mean less advanced than is typical or expected for someone my age. Like, literally emotionally retarded and not “I’m so laaaaaaaame.” (Yes, I’m defensive and worried about being misconstrued.)

So, I’m emotionally retarded and I feel a lot of shame around that. Pot allows me to stop feeling mired in the intense self belief I have that I am inherently bad and unlovable. Pot allows me to stop feeling like I should be punished for hurting the people I have hurt in my life (my mother is one of the main people). Good golly I want to be a martyr.

Pot allows me to be patient with myself as I try to work out how to have emotional regulation so that I can on-the-spot teach it to my children. I believe that my job is to teach my children emotional self-regulation. The primary way that children learn is through modeling. With pot I can manage emotional self-regulation. I can respond more “appropriately” to different stimuli instead of going into gut-level flight or fight response.

The problem is that I feel intense guilt about spending the money on pot. That’s one of the biggest problems I have. Krissy you are rolling in money. Get the fuck over it. (Ok, I’m not “rich” by the standards of the people I know. Which freaks me out. I’ve been in more than one $10 million home.) Only I can think of a million and one things that I believe are “more worthwhile” than me being relieved of torture in my brain. I’m much more inherently comfortable with the idea that I should be suffering than just about any other possible life result for me. This is kind of a problem.

I felt immediately defensive when the author suggested that maybe I don’t actually want to get over PTSD because it feels more safe/comfortable/whatever. If I feel immediately angry and defensive… I should probably examine whether something is accurate. Because I’m like that.

Cannabis is the only medication I have ever taken that produces significant positive, measurable, real difference in my life and mood. But it’s not cheap. And I feel enormous shame and guilt about being such an expensive pet.

Noah doesn’t begrudge me. Not at all. I don’t get push back from Noah about money. So far he says he is very happy about what I do with the money he earns. He specifically praises me and expresses gratitude.

I still feel ashamed.

That euphoric-ish feeling of not hating myself pretty much only comes with being pretty stoned.

Ok. I ordered some. I’m going to make tincture. I’ve been doing ok with what I have tried of it. I’ll cross my fingers that it lasts me long enough to be cost effective. *choke*

I think it is pretty miraculous that I got to pause in the middle of writing this and spend an hour researching strains before ordering from my local delivery service. Talk about luxury. I can have my pot delivered to my house after my doctor gives me the recommendation. God Bless America.

The book stresses that one of the benefits of the medication is that it allows you to feel at peace with being where you are. If I were to paraphrase his message I would say: pot allows you to not feel guilty about the number of spoons you have and it helps you cheerfully decide how to spend them. It’s not that pot increases your spoons by that much. But feeling guilty and feeling a lot of shame over having the number of spoons you have does actively decrease your spoons further. So pot sorta seems like a way to raise spoons.

Does that make sense?

I’m not far into the actual guide. I intend to read all of it. My head is going to be bursting with things that are hard for me to recite accurately. Oh man. Apparently Multiple Sclerosis is the most focused on area of study by far. I look forward to what I will learn. So far I’m just through the introduction (all 72 forking pages of it) and the sections on Aging (the first) and PTSD. Cause, duh.

Yeah. Feelings. Nearly time for sleep.

Medication and mood.

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Now that I’ve been not stoned for a long while I’ve got to say that this sucks. A lot. I miss being stoned. I miss the feeling in my abdomen of lower stress and less pain. I miss the automatic pause in my thinking before I react to anything that happens to me. That few seconds of “Must process what I think of this before I react” was awesome. The hypervigilance means I react without even thinking about what I want to do. My startle reflex is so fast. Which means I have banged the kids around a bit in the last two weeks on accident. Like, they jump on me and my body instinctively kind of blocks it so they fall off and hit something.

I’m not saying I’m shoving them or anything. I’m not being violent. I’m just recoiling and trying to avoid getting hurt. Instead they get hurt and then yell at me because I’m SO MEAN. When I was stoned all the time I didn’t have the quick recoil so they would hurt me instead of me accidentally hurting them and then we could talk about why doing ____ wasn’t a great idea. I feel like that was probably overall a kinder trade but they are jumping on me with slightly less force after a few weeks of falling off and it hurting.

The marks on the paper on the wall are really working as far as helping me control my volume. I haven’t screamed lately. I did yell at Shanna once yesterday. But all I said was her full name and “go to your room” after I’d been asking her nicely to leave the muffins alone for like an hour. (She grabbed one off the counter when I was trying to put them in bags. After her time out she came out and said, “Mom you misunderstood. I wasn’t going to eat it. I was just going to hand it to you. I don’t think I deserved time out for that.” I said, “Did you wash your hands with soap before you grabbed food that would be shared with other people?” Her eyes went big. “Ohhhh. No. I didn’t. That was a mistake. I’m sorry.” “I don’t always yell at you just because I’m a big meanie head. We have rules for a reason.” “Ok.”)

I’ve been working hard on inculcating them with the mantra of “before we prepare food we wash our hands with soap.” I have a variety of tunes I sing the process to. “Before we can prep our food we must wash our hands wash our hands. Before we can prep our food we must wash our hands and always use soap.” That one is more or less to the tune of “The wheels on the bus.”

So if that is the only shouting in a day I feel that I could continue to improve but I’m not doing shitty. I’ve been around other mothers lately. That always resets my bar on “Oh yeah. I’m not actual much of a yeller in the scheme of things…”

I feel weird about the way I’m kind of two faced about rules. On one hand I feel like we don’t have a lot of house rules. On the other hand holy shit we have a lot of house rules. Things like washing your hands before you prepare communal food. Is that a rule or a habit I’m trying to instill? I can’t really tell how to think about these things. I spent too long in the poly community. I have a lot of anxiety and guilt around imposing “rules” on people. I’m “inappropriately controlling people by putting my rules on them.” But these are my kids! I’m supposed to create the rules!

I have a lot of rules around food. No food on the carpet. You have to wash your hands before you prepare communal food. (If you are making a pbj for yourself and no one else I don’t actually care–if you want to eat your own filth that is your business.) No licking communal food tools–that’s nasty. I’m inconsistent on table manners. On one hand my children have experienced a fair number of lectures about “proper” behavior at the table. On the other hand I tell them that there are a lot of circumstances where it doesn’t matter how gross you eat and at home the rules are a lot more relaxed than they are when you are at someone else’s house or when we are at a restaurant.

My kids have been very carefully exposed to a lot of different kind of restaurants and they understand that some restaurants they can fuck around in and on some they have to be on their absolutely best behavior. I have no fear of bringing them into expensive chi-chi restaurants. They do better than the average adult. But I coach them in advance and I talk about why it matters and I talk to them the whole time they are in the restaurant and I keep them engaged. It’s a lot easier to follow the rules when you are having fun and you want to be where you are. My kids treat going to different environments like games. “How do we act when we are someone who goes here?”

I’m tense and anxious but I haven’t been simmering with rage. That’s a great step for me. The inappropriate anger is a serious problem for me. That I’ll medicate for and not feel super guilty about. It’s not ok to take my random ambient anger out on my kids. It isn’t their fault I’m angry and I’m not going to take it out on them. In this house shit does not roll down hill. Calli has enough trouble dealing with Shanna. I’m not going to be mean to them because Calli would not handle being at the bottom of the shit hill well.

When I clean my kitchen lately I spend a lot of time crying and apologizing to my in-absentia mother. I’m sorry I hurt you so much. It’s my fault. I’m sorry I wasn’t a good daughter. I’m sorry I betrayed you. I understand that you weren’t the one who hurt me, but you did fail to protect me and I’m sorry that you have gotten the life you have gotten. I’m so sorry you went from a family where you were treated badly to a family where you were treated worse. That’s not fair. And then your reward in your old age is ungrateful children who have all abandoned you. Life is genuinely not fair. I’m so sorry.

(Today is a therapy day so I have to figure out how to talk about this.)

My frightening thoughts are not as bad as they are sometimes but with less pot they are more dominant. Probably only like a 3-4 severity.

I can’t tell if I count as “avoidance” behaviors in a lot of cases. I am avoiding people and situations I used to go to but mostly I don’t think they are appropriate for my kids and I don’t want to waste my few hours off on going to pursue people who are living lives I can’t be part of any more. I have a lot of guilt, depression, and worry. Not about tangible real stuff. My life is very (blissfully) stable right now. So depression/guilt/anxiety symptoms are probably riding in the 5-6 range as far as causing distress.

My startle reflex is through the roof. I’m tense and on edge a very high percentage of the time. I’d say up in the 7-8 range. I feel like I have to be prepared and ready to fight all the time. Luckily I’m not having outbursts of anger. *phew*

I feel like I am managing my anxiety symptoms by doing the future-tripping stuff I do. Planning for things I will do in the future gives me more of a feeling of control over my life. I can’t control what happened to me in the past. But I can make sure my future has the shape I want it to have. I need to think of the 3,592 things that could go wrong and have contingency plans for all of them and then I can feel ok for a little while.

Future tripping isn’t just about travel planning. Garden planning. Meal planning. Setting up schedules for when I will pay what bills or deciding when I should transfer money for x event.

I am ridiculously proud that Shanna’s 529 is already 1/4 funded. She’s only five and her college fund is 1/4 of the way to where I want it to be. Because it is invested (and investments grow all by themselves like magic) I may be close to done contributing in her name. This year I will be contributing a lowly $1200 towards Shanna’s fund and Calli is getting more like $5000. Gotta get the ball rolling. Calli has nothing so far. I try to justify this to myself as “Well, we will be done with the mortgage for like ten years before Calli goes to college. If I don’t save enough in advance we should probably be able to pay it as she goes.” *cross fingers*

Sometimes I feel weird about the avoidance symptoms of PTSD. I can’t tell if my behavior is avoidance or if I’m just continuing the patterns begun in my childhood. We did stuff for short periods of time then we moved. These patterns were set by my mother, who almost certainly has PTSD. I only spend time with people for fairly brief periods of time then I don’t know them any more. Or if I do know people it becomes distant. Most of the people who have been big parts of my support network over the past 15 years are people I sorta still know in a distant way. But being close with people is hard. I’m bad at it. At this point it feels like I am just bad.

I don’t know how to behave in a way that makes other people feel comfortable. So I deserve to be alone. Many of my relationships have historically depended on me chasing people and I can’t any more. So they are mostly over.

I treasure the people who invite themselves over. I feel slightly more confidence that they actually like me. I don’t feel very likable. I feel like a nasty, stupid bitch.

Sometimes I wonder if I will get past the child-rearing intensity and just withdraw entirely from the world. I go out as much as I do because I have to provide my children with community. When I am no longer home schooling and hanging out with the home schooling people will I stay home and just not see anyone? I’ve read 16 books so far this January. When I no longer have children will it be a solid 23 books so far?

I don’t know.

I’m not going to be clingy with my adult children. I will encourage them to go or stay as it suits them. And when they go I will do my crying in private. It will not be their problem. I am not their problem. But I don’t know what I will do.

I’m scared.

One day at a time.

I need you.

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Those three words make my heart start racing like I just completed a sprint. You need me? OK! What do you need?! I CAN DO IT! This morning my baby woke up scared and needed to cuddle me. Easy peasy. I have a firm policy of waking up with a smile if my kids wake me up saying “I need you”. Ok. It’s my job to be there when you need me, so yes ma’am.

Do you know why my kids have good manners? Because I say yes ma’am and no ma’am to them for just about everything. If my kids scream at me I raise an eyebrow and say, “Try again” in a calm voice. If they scream a second time I say, “Do I respond well to screaming?” Then they visibly shake themselves off and calm down enough to ask for what they want.

Based on the dozens and dozens of books I’ve read about early childhood development the first 5-7 years of life should be spent on socialization, attachment formation, and learning to manage your emotions. I have gone through my life crippled by my inability to manage my emotions in times of stress and that is largely because I was not taught how to deal with my body. If I grew distressed I was punished.

I don’t let my kids have a lot of screen time because screen time is shown to increase emotional dysregulation. I feel it would be counter productive to hand them a bunch of emotional dysregulation during the period of their life when they are poorly regulated and struggling for basic control. I mean, they are pretty good and all… but they are 3 and 5. They are good for their ages and that means they have a lot of work left to do.

I think about this because when I babysit for other kids I learn that the short cuts I’ve worked on with my kids don’t work as well. My kids respond to “Try again”. “Will that work?” is enough to stop the vast majority of tantrums. “So what is your goal here?” is another favorite I lean on extensively. I talk them through how to get what they want without using methods that will result in escalation of conflict. That’s what I spend my days doing. I hang out with them and help them manage their emotions as they are doing what they want to do.

Other peoples children kind of look at me blankly if I just say “Try again” and that’s hard at this phase. I have to turn around and manage my own frustration and emotional dysregulation because my short hand didn’t communicate what I wanted it to communicate and so I am left struggling to find phrasing that will work which means a bunch of quick thinking. I shouldn’t complain. But man I am grateful I have been able to train my kids the way I have.

Yup, I’ve trained my kids. And it’s awesome.

I feel a lot of guilt for not actually having the control I wish I had. I feel a lot of shame for the fact that if my children were less well trained I would have a much harder time being nice. It is hard for me to be nice to other peoples kids who don’t respond to the training cues.

I *do not* yell or scream or shame or respond badly to children not understanding my cues. Instead I take a deep breathe and smile and out comes a whole flood of words that explains why I’m asking what I’m asking and I give them a whole bunch of suggestions for how to solve whatever problem is coming up.

But it’s hard. It wears my body out to emotionally flood that many times in a short period of time. I believe that the children deserve the respect so I’m going to deliver it even if it means I cry the whole way home because my body feels like shit and I’m tired and worn out. My stomach hurts so bad.

Sometimes my physical comfort is not the highest priority in my life. That’s hard. Sometimes my friends need help and I’m the one who could show up and supply the necessary help and I believe in Pay It Forward like I believe It Takes All Kinds. I HAVE to step up when friends have nowhere else to look for support. If I don’t then the ship will go down and it will be partially my fault.

No, not really. Other people having problems in their lives isn’t my fault. But if the reason I choose not to help is because it is hard and it makes me feel bad and I cry for an hour or two afterwards because of stress… that’s not a good enough reason to choose not to help in a crisis. That’s a good enough reason to not sign up for four home school outings in a week. That’s a good enough reason to not sign up for helping once a week indefinitely. But it’s not a good enough reason to refuse help in a crisis.

Which leads back to spoon management with my kids in my life.

I have to leave enough slack all the time to absorb occasional bursts of spoon excess in one area or another. This is part of why I’ve been reading so much lately. I’m trying to build slack into my spoon usage. There are times when all of a sudden I use extra spoons on a project or on driving or on helping other people and I have to be able to continue delivering the same quality and quantity of care to my kids.

Taking care of my kids is hard but worthwhile. I’ve been doing really well post-Christmas. I am staying more level. I’m responding in the right tone of voice and I’m responding in a timely fashion instead of sometimes choosing to let them fight it out because I can’t intervene in a timely fashion in the right way. (I don’t let them physically fight things out but sometimes if they want to have a screaming match over something I will tell them that they can scream at each other in the back yard.) Mostly I try to help them work things out. It’s exhausting to be a referee all day.

So given that my focus is on socialization, attachment formation, and emotional regulation it’s kind of funny when a friend says, “So how about their academics? When do you do that?”

Err… I don’t. Not really. I mean, I read to them a lot. I read to my kids for 5-15 hours a week depending on the week. Noah reads to the kids for an additional 5-10 hours a week. As often as possible I sucker my friends into reading to the kids.

I get workbooks when Shanna is given her “school allotment” and she goes shopping and says, “I think I should practice shaping letters so let’s get a workbook”. I never indicate that she should get out a workbook and practice. But the suckers are being used steadily. I feel kind of confused by her choosing to do worksheets, but whatever makes you happy kiddo.

That said: if you go through the kindergarten standards (Which I do–quite regularly) you would find that Shanna was more or less competent on the full curriculum before the start of her “kindergarden” year. Given that the state now believes children should be fluent readers in first grade she is *not* through the first grade curriculum but I think the state is on crack for expecting that anyway.

(I mean for science: one of the many things kids should know why different kinds of plants grow in different environments. Shanna can give you long lectures on the evolution of plants and animals. We watch a lot of documentaries and I feel pretty surprised by what she knows. She designs structures so she can talk about what things work better and why. Sure a lot of her structures are meant to be froofy princess shit, but whatever. I don’t care if you are building a castle or a space station–you are building. It works.)

I will confess that I need to get my hands on a globe so we can play with a flashlight and talk about the seasons more. We’ve talked about it representationally on flat maps… but that’s not the same. I need to get off my butt.

We work on the PE skills in malls all the time. How do you learn to be aware of your body? How do you move through crowds without bumping people? How do you decide which objects you can go under or over in a public place? Or must you go around them on the side? This is what kindergarden PE teaches. We play catch and kick ball. They do yoga and go on three mile walks a few times a week. (I’ve been better lately.) Sure, Calli gets piggy back rides for over a mile of the walk… but she’s hella short. She’ll get there.

I will confess that my kids are not fully versed on the “triumphs of American history” but they do know a lot about racial issues through the history of this country. Shanna call tell you about segregation and Jim Crow laws and why Rosa Parks was important. I’m going to keep doing things my way instead of talking about how awesome Paul Revere was. (I mean… really he was a patent thief and an asshole and there was a girl riding the alarm the same night as him but HISTORY IGNORES HER. Ahem.)

Given that all of the kindergarden reading/language arts standards are “With prompting and support” yes, Shanna can do all that is expected of a five year old. She can tell you about myths from different cultures. She can tell you that a poem rhymes and a narrative tells a story in plain English. She can identify the narrator and she understands “what’s the point” as “tell me about the plot”. She can count to 100 (and beyond, I think) and add and do basic subtraction. She understands the beginnings of numeral placement. She knows her shape and can talk about what is necessary for each kind of shape.

And no, I don’t spend time on academics. I’m not going to waste her time. But what I mean when I say “I don’t spend time on academics” is I don’t ever sit down with a curriculum written by someone else and say, “Ok now it is time for school.”

We talk about cylinders as we are putting dishes away. We talk about the difference between a square and a rectangle when we build raised beds in the back yard. We do addition practice in the car because she starts it.

I do not direct her learning much. I don’t pick the whack job documentaries she watches, though I try to watch with her. She can talk to you about generations of animals dying out–whole species! She’s fascinated by the way animals change over time. She’s pissed off that evolution doesn’t happen fast enough for her to really watch it in her lifetime.

I talk to my kids all day long about everything I see. “Why do you think they made this bench out of wood and this other one out of metal?” “What is this made out of?” My kid can tell you the merits of using different kinds of spatulas to cook different foods.

We do science by cooking and gardening. We talk about history all the time. I’m fond of saying, “We study history because humans have been alive a long time. Almost every mistake that you will want to make has already been made by someone else. You can learn a lot if you just read about people and their choices.”

My kids are growing up in a house where “hacking” DOES NOT MEAN following directions on a kit that some forking grown up made for you. No. That’s not how life works. You are not going to spend your life just following directions that someone else makes up. You are going to have to make your own directions. How do you do that?

If you want to learn to sew (which Shanna does) I can show you the basics and I can provide you with materials, but no I’m not going to do it while you watch and I’m not going to stand next to you and micromanage you doing it perfectly. You are going to mess up and feel frustration. You are going to have to learn how to rip out your own seams and try again.

I can’t make things easy for you. I wouldn’t even if I could. Life isn’t going to be easy.

My job is to help you learn emotional regulation and help you feel like you matter in the world so that you won’t spend your life wanting to kill yourself because you believe you are a worthless piece of shit.

Everything else you can learn as you go. I promise.

At the end of kindergarden they wanted to hold me back because I wasn’t mature enough. I’d been to five fucking kindergardens, no I wasn’t as “advanced” compared to the kids in the tiny school I was in last that year. The teacher thought I was stupid because I couldn’t read yet. I picked up reading in first grade and by second grade I was testing at the 10th grade level.

I’m not worried about early asymmetrical growth. Don’t you understand that the standards were created by bureaucrats and *not* educational specialists? (Go ask education specialists. You will find a few who endorse the standards but mostly they don’t like the idea of a national curriculum–people don’t work that way.)

“The things that are the hardest to learn are often the most rewarding once you master them. You have to keep trying even when something makes you mad.”

That’s what my kids hear over and over. A far cry from “I guess I can’t do math because I’m a girl.” That’s what I believed as a child. Because I was told that math was hard for me because I was just a stupid girl. Word for word. Over and over.

When my kids try to do something that is way too hard for them they say, “Whoa. I think I need to learn a bit more before I understand this.” I almost fell out of my chair laughing when Calli said that. She was confused but delighted that she made me laugh.

I think my saving grace with children is I don’t expect them to do much or support me. I understand that the support is a one way street. I do the supporting. That means I never get disappointed and lash out at them for not helping me when I want/need help. I have internalized so thoroughly that it isn’t their job.

That said they have more and more chores. Shanna unloads the dishwasher, clears the table, and keeps her stuff tidy. When she has to clean up her toys she often says, “What am I, your maid!?” I tell her that until I start forcing her to do laundry for the whole family and do the sweeping and mopping and vacuuming she doesn’t get to claim maid status. I’m teaching her to clean up after herself which means she is being her own maid… not mine. She generally doesn’t argue much.

And now I have a wonderful girl on my lap. She says she wants to watch The West Wing with me. heh.

Suicidal ideation

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Suicidal ideation is what happens when your brain experiences too much pain and doesn’t know how to cope any more. In many ways it is the “lazy” way out. The more suicides happen close to a given individual the more likely that person is to see suicide as a reasonable response to a given set of circumstances.

My grandmother, father, and brother all committed suicide. Overdose on prescription meds, carbon monoxide poisoning, and self-immolation being their respective choices.

When I was going through my laundry list of traumas on top of the fairly severe neglect I experienced during crucial developmental stages I was not allowed to cry about what happened to me. I was required to be stoic. If I cried or exhibited obvious signs of sadness I was beaten. “To give me something to cry about” because clearly what had already happened to me wasn’t enough to deserve tears.

I regret that this set of life experiences led me to the point where as an adult it is very hard for me to cope with psychological distress without suicidal ideation.

I know it “isn’t an option” at this stage of my life. But luckily I have a husband who understands that there is a very high likelihood that when this phase is over that ban will not be in effect any more. It means a lot to me that there is at least one person who understands and says he won’t be mad at me. He will be sad, of course. But if some day I do that at least I won’t have the karmic debt of betraying him.

Fifteen more years.

Yesterday while we were walking Shanna made a comment about how it was her fault that I was mean sometimes. That led to a long and intense conversation where I said over and over again that *I* am the only one responsible for my behavior. Not anyone else. It is never EVER a kid’s fault if a grown up does things that a grown up shouldn’t do. She said, “But the chemicals in your brain make it harder for you and then I’m not nice so it is my fault.” NO NO NO. Yes, the chemicals in my brain do make it harder for me. That’s true. But it is still my responsibility to work as hard as I need to work in order to be nice to my kids. If I slip and do something mean it is ALL MY FAULT. It is never a child’s fault when an adult does something mean. Never. Never. Never.

I told her it is like when Calli bites her and she doesn’t bite back because she wants to show Calli how to be a good sister. Sometimes Calli makes a mistake. Being a good big sister means that you tell her it was a mistake and you try to show her how she should be acting, not that you turn around and do the same mean thing.

I told Shanna that it goes double and more for grown ups. Grown ups don’t get to blame bad behavior on children. If a grown up blames a kid for their behavior the grown up is doing something wrong and immature and inappropriate. We can all only be responsible for our own behavior.

Just like if Shanna or Calli do something I don’t like it isn’t all my fault. They made a choice. I don’t have to like it.

I was raised in a world where shit rolls downhill and it is always the fault of the youngest person in the room when something happens. My children will not grow up in such a world.

I’ve been having a pill a day for a few days now. That is smoothing out a lot of the rough edges, but I’m not stoned and controlling my behavior and ideation is really hard. In order to just get rid of the pervasive negative thoughts I have to be pretty stoned.

I don’t know how I am going to find balance on this. I think there is the non-zero possibility that I will find a way to earn money of my own over the next few years and eventually just be ok with being extremely stoned for most of the rest of my life. That may be the way I avoid killing myself. I’m trying to feel ok about that but I’m not there yet. I still feel disgusting and like I should be shunned and punished for being so dirty.

A woman I don’t know posts a lot of porn on her tumblr page. I’m cool with that. A lot of it is really hot. Yesterday she posted a picture that was one of those animated gif things. (I find them kind of creepy.) When I looked at the picture I could tell that other people would be fixated on what was happening with the genitals. I looked at the woman’s face, like I do. Her lips appear to be saying, “Please stop” over and over and over with that frenetic animation that gif’s have.

I am extremely supportive of adults wanting to do consensual rape play. Many healthy and whole human beings have the desire to role play rape and I think that is normal and acceptable.

But rape play done as pornography where people can end up with a singular shot from the scene that looks… entirely like rape instead of like rape play makes me feel very sad.

I feel very sad about how rape is normalized in the world. It’s just a valid way for guys to get off. But thanks to not being very stoned in weeks I get to wake up to horrible dreams of being raped. Now in my dreams I like to cut the throats of rapists. It doesn’t actually improve my mood when I wake up that I am now just as much of a monster as any of them in my head.

I feel small, selfish, and bad.

Suicidal ideation is very selfish. It is about looking for a way to stop hurting.

I used to do bdsm as a way of looking for catharsis. When someone is beating me I’m allowed to scream and cry and process some of what I store in my body. (I’m a big fan of Babette Rothchild’s work on trauma–The Body Remembers.) I have a lot of physical and emotional pain stored in my body that I have never been allowed to cry about. I have never been allowed to deal with the physical reality of all the things that happened to me.

After a while I stopped thinking that bdsm was a valid way of attaining the catharsis I need. Too many DMs stop my scenes because they don’t like the screaming. Public play spaces are for people who are doing light, fluffy sexy things. Not for people who want to genuinely experience awful things and scream about their pain.

I mean, I have been crying for years but I haven’t been crying for decades yet. I didn’t start really crying about these things until Uncle Bob died. Before that I would have bursts of crying randomly that weren’t very soothing or cathartic. They were the smallest increments of blowing off steam I could manage in order to not kill myself that day. I have always cried from stress. My sister spent my entire childhood being nasty to me for crying out of frustration. It wasn’t very cathartic.

After Uncle Bob died I finally had a time and a space where I was *allowed* to cry and cry and cry and cry for hours upon hours for days. Thanks to my friends showing up to take care of my kids for a week. Even when I went to Jenny after my father and brother died I cried a little, but not like I’ve been crying for the past few years. Not in a looking for catharsis way.

Suicide is about being overwhelmed with pain that you can’t handle. I’m scared about how much pain I carry around. I put a brave face on it, mostly. Most of the people who know me will see anger more than they will see sadness or pain. I do that on purpose.

Being vulnerable is scary. Most of the people I have ever tried to be vulnerable with are… gone. It’s my fault and I know it. If only I hadn’t been so intense maybe they might have wanted to keep knowing me. But I’m too much of an asshole. I have no one to blame but myself.

That doesn’t really leave me feeling like there is a lot I can do other than die if I want to stop hurting people. No one else is to blame for my reactions or emotions or behavior. It’s my fault. If I am scary or violent it is my fault.

It doesn’t matter how much people lie to me. They are “doing their best” and it isn’t ok for me to react with anger. I am allowed to withdraw and that’s it. And if I withdraw it is my fault I don’t get to have relationships with people. I chose to back out because I couldn’t handle the trade. That is about my failure, not anyone else’s.

I would rather be disappointed by the truth than lied to. The truth is that no one other than Noah is ever going to show up and want to be supportive of me with all my conflicting, complicated, layered issues. I’m a lot of work to know. It isn’t worth the trade for anyone else. Even Noah has distinct limits about what he can and can’t do or handle. I have to respect those limits. If I have more needs than he can handle that is my problem and not his.

People who get support are people who were born into a support network I don’t have. It’s not their fault they get it. It’s just luck. Do you know who “gets over” PTSD? People who have a large support network to help them process their grief and trauma and pain. People who validate them and tell them that it is absolutely right for them to have the feelings they have. Do you know who doesn’t get over it? People who are told to get over it.

Life is pain, Highness. But the way you process it and move on is by acknowledging it and thinking that it is pain and you need to process it.

Maybe if I had more support to give I would be able to find people who would be able to give me more support. But I’m empty.

I will raise my kids. They will hopefully internalize my many lectures about how other peoples behavior is not their fault. They are not my support units even though they are starting to do more chores. That’s pretty cool.

I need to find a way to be enough for myself. That may mean giving absolutely nothing to anyone outside of my house. I have a lot of need. It isn’t anyone’s fault any more it just is. I have to bear that whether I like it or not. It just is.

Less than six hours to a doctor appointment. I hope this will result in less pain in my body. I hope that less pain in my body will result in less suicidal ideation.

Hope springs eternal.

All honey badger like.

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I was thinking about what triggers the suicidal urges. Because I need to control them. There are lots of triggers but some are more predictable than others. Gaslighting is a pretty sure fire way to cause me to psychologically recoil and believe that the only option is checking out.

Gaslighting is, more or less, when you try to make people mistrust their own perception of reality. When you tell someone to depend on you while avoiding emails for months. “I’m there for you” while flipping someone off. That’s very minor gaslighting.

“People tell you what they think you want to hear because they don’t want to disappoint you.”

When it comes to the potential safety of my children I need to deal with the absolute cold, hard reality of life. I can’t just pray that “everything will work out”. Lots of people try to tell me that my life worked out just fine because I’m not dead yet. Fuck you.

I have to believe actions. I have to. I have to watch what people do and extrapolate from that.

I “know” I am not actually “alone”. I have friends. What I don’t have is a safe haven for my children. That attacks all of my core sense of self, all of my core sense of safety.

I get what people have leftover after they take care of the things that actually matter to their lives. I bloody well know that.

That’s not good enough for my kids.

I think it is weird that I’m willing to throw down that as a boundary for my children and not for myself. I think I get more than I deserve from most of my friends. I think my friends are patient and generous with a crazy bitch they owe nothing to in this world.

My children are not crazy bitches and they do not god damn deserve to go through their lives learning that they get what other people have leftover and they had better smile and be sweet or people will decide they don’t even deserve that.

I know I shoot myself in the foot a lot with this whole “lack of gratitude” thing. I don’t just say “thank you”. I say, “Uhm… you showed up with $1 when you promised $6,203. Where is the rest?”

My kids deserve that. I don’t know why but they do. Because everyone should deserve that. I sure as fuck wish I did.

I’m scared. I feel really bad that until my children are adults I will live in terror that they will get shunted off to a bunch of rapists or a crazy lady who has beaten every other child she’s had.

I’m scared. I am not omniscient. I cannot make sure my children will be safe. That makes me feel very bad about myself. That is the most important task I have ever or will ever have. I can keep them safe as long as I’m alive and that’s it.

I “understand” that many parents are in similar positions. They didn’t have a childhood like mine to look back on.

Everyone seems to want their children to have “better” than them–whatever that means to the individual parent. I want my children to actually be wanted. I want my children to never feel like they are an unpleasant burden. But unfortunately when your mother is a crazy bitch you aren’t very wanted by other people.

I’m so sorry.

Disclaimer: No one in my life has called me a crazy bitch in a long time. I haven’t been called crazy or a bitch by anyone other than myself (to my face at least) in at least ten years. This is simply how I live with the shame and guilt of so many friends breaking off contact. If you have the same problem over and over again… it probably isn’t someone else’s fault. It is probably your fault.

It’s my fault.

Under promise; over deliver.

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About six years ago I started seeing a guy for massages. A few months into knowing one another I said, “We are more ‘friendly acquaintances’ than ‘friends'” and he took that as a challenge. He’s been showing up at my house once or twice a month ever since. He helped me remodel my garage back when he had two days a week off instead of one. Now that he works six days a week he can only handle shorter visits and I wouldn’t dream of imposing physical labor on him. That’s what friendship means. Seeing one another’s limits.

Yesterday he said that he and his wife have been talking about what they have to offer me in terms of support because clearly I could use some. He said that he was not sure that he could make any type of permanent commitment, the most they could consider was maybe five years or until the WWOOF year since that’s six years away. I countered with the fact that I probably would not be able to trust a longer than three months at a time commitment. We will keep talking. We’ll see.

So I have been pretty sober lately (I took medication this morning because if I wake up at 3am sobbing it’s going to be a day) and that means the return of dreaming. I’m really sorry I’m dreaming again.

My mom used to forget to pick me up from school. In her defense I didn’t always live with her so it’s not like I was a day-in-day-out responsibility for 18 years and she oops forgot in the middle of that. It was pretty common for me to sit in front of school until dinnertime because that was when she thought of me. One memorable day involved sitting there till bedtime. Sometimes, in some places, a principal would come and sit with me and wait. I always knew we would move soon after that happened because my mom didn’t appreciate the principal’s nasty look.

I woke up thinking about my sister. She would shove me or hit me or knock me down. By the time I was eight or nine I would tell her, “If you hit me I will call 1-800-4-a-child and report you for abusing me.” This would result in hours of her screaming at me. There were lots of variations but the basic thread was that I was a stupid bitch and a cunt and she would show me what real fucking abuse was if I didn’t fucking watch myself.

For a while I asked some friends if we could have dinner once a month. I was slightly pestering. I asked repeatedly over a many month time frame. I was told “Oh yes oh yes”. Then my emails didn’t get returned. I started asking more than six months ago and it hasn’t happened yet. I don’t think I will ask again.

My bestie keeps talking about wanting to move out of the area. I’m having trouble containing my feelings when she does this. I understand that my role as her friend is one of support and it isn’t ok for me to tell her she can’t move if that is what is right for her. My job will be to help her pack and wish her well and keep in touch. If I lose out on most of the support I have in the process that is my problem and not hers. That is how life works.

I feel really pathetic for needing help and support. This is why I’m trying to get to know the neighborhood teenagers. They are more likely to still be around in a few years and I won’t take it personally when they want to move on in life.

I think I overly internalized the friend who dumped me for being a drug addict because of the pot. I mean, he was just building on my lifelong hatred of all of my family members. The only drug I ever saw them do was pot. So I attributed all of the behavior issues and problems to pot and I hated it with a passion until well into my mid 20’s. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I kind of “figured out” that the behavior problems were because of the meth and coke and crack and crank and whatever other names you want to use. I don’t even know which of those things are “the same” but I know that they are all words I heard in my home as a child. I just didn’t understand what they meant.

I tried pot because a friend told me to. Pot is the only thing that has ever broken through the repetitive negative thoughts. Pot seems to be the only way I don’t go through my day whispering “worthless whore” to myself over and over. I wish I could end the repetitive negative self-talk.

When people tell me “I want to come over, how about x day” and then they don’t come… it just builds on my sense that I am worthless. For my own self-protection I need to not try with those people any more. Even if that makes me feel bad and like I am abandoning people.

I feel horrible guilt that my spoon level requires that I only know people right now who are capable of under promising and over delivering. That is the only way I can know that I am not going to have to suddenly compensate for what feels like people lying to me.

I understand that people “didn’t mean to”.

I have to be nice to my kids all day every day. It doesn’t matter what other people mean. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Which results in an awful lot of my friends feeling like they can’t reach out or offer anything to me at all. Because they can’t PROMISE and so they feel that what they have to offer is worthless.

Man it seems like all we are going to do is fuck each other up.

This is part of that “I am toxic waste and will hurt everyone around me” thing.

I appreciate the people who are telling me not to go off my meds. I appreciate that people who show up at my house and actually watch me interact with my children over prolonged periods of time tell me that I should be medicated. Honestly not as much the other kind of people. Sharing that you think you are better because you medicate and you suspect it is true of me is different than telling me what to do. (K–you totally nailed it.) Splitting hairs is what I do.

If what you mean to say isn’t being heard how you mean it then you need to be willing to adapt your message for a different audience. That is what communication is about.

I’m kind of good at that and kind of shitty. Embrace the dichotomy. Resiliency is based on opposing traits. I hear. From “experts”. Psh. Who gives a shit. I am not actually all that impressed with science. Go look at meta-science about research. It’s all crap. But it’s all we have.

There’s a Carsie Blanton song about that: All We Got.

(Did it work?)

I spend a lot of time every day being grateful for Noah. He grew up with a level of mental illness I will hopefully never reach. It taught him a lot about not looking to other people for his reality. It taught him that he might have to actually defend himself from people who want to hurt him. And yet his dad is still there. Fully committed until one of them dies.

When you say “for better or worse” no one promises that there will be more better than worse.

Living with Noah isn’t always perfect. He pisses me off sometimes. But he is consistently kind and generous with me. He meets his commitments. He’s sure not to commit to something he can’t do.

I think I will get mad at every person who is ever in my life. Anger is how I find my boundaries. It isn’t the most ideal reaction–yeah I fucking know. But Noah has earned a lot of trust from me.

He pisses me off, but when I figure out that I’m angry I can walk away and defuse my anger and come back and negotiate calmly (ok my tone may not be perfect) and there can be a resolution. And he won’t agree to something he can’t do. We find a way to reach something we can both live with. Then he fucking does what he says.

It’s…

When he does fuck up it usually makes him feel worse than me. And at this point the fuck ups are at the level of “I thought we had the ingredients for _____ meal but we don’t.” Uhhh, I can live with that. It’s my fault we ran out anyway because I didn’t bother going to the grocery store.

Oh man. I can feel the medication now. Thank g-d. Arms hurt.

It just occurred to me that I have a ‘brother’ tag and a ‘daddy’ tag and a ‘mother’ tag… but nothing for my sister. I think I’m still afraid of her. She doesn’t live that far away from me. She knows where I live (err, if she is capable of remembering). She uhh consorts with undesirable folks. To be an uppity piece of shit about it.

Kids are up.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: anxiety

Confluence of events

Turn it around.

post-therapy

Teaching was fun.

Every day love

my life is good when I’m not chemically out of whack

Wired for sound.

All the things.

post-therapy: medication

Reflections

I worry about these bounces.

Find gratitude

Unusual session.

Medication and mood.

I need you.

Suicidal ideation

All honey badger like.

Under promise; over deliver.