A social-media-friend posted today that she wants to take a month off of comparing herself to other people. My instant thought was, “Wow. I can’t do what you are doing.” Which cracked me up. Someone else is trying to stop comparing themselves to people so I compare myself to them and feel like a loser. Like I do.

Right this minute I’m waiting for my meds to kick in. We were out of the house for ten hours and holy crap I could use extra apathy right about now. I don’t medicate when I’m driving (safety first!) and it makes my stomach hurt. It is really hard to eat as many calories as I need when my stomach hurts like this. So by the time I got home I was shaking.

During the road trip I think that I need to plan around being able to medicate by 1 or 2pm. I just don’t think it is smart for me to require myself to go longer than that without medication. It hurts my body. It means that by 6pm I’m not able to be patient with the kids and I end up having to apologize and I’m crying and it’s just… not something I can do steadily for five months. This hurts.

It was a good day. Two social calls and dinner/playtime at Ikea. We drove really far north and I stack those days pretty heavily because I’m not willing to drive more days.

Lately every social call feels fraught. Who am I going to drive away next? I don’t feel secure in my relationships. It was funny to talk with the folks at the first social call about insecurity and how it drives people away. Irony and all that.

And now my cat wants to crawl on my lap and I am gently but firmly telling her no. I cannot fucking pay attention to anything but me right this minute.

This insecurity feels tied in with the comparisons and with my wacky-ass perceptions of status. It should be said that my early understanding of “social status” came from the Clan of the Cave Bear books. Status decides that when the group goes for a walk you stand between (wo)man number 4 and (wo)man number 6. Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually work that way in my real life. This means most of my early understandings are completely useless.

Noah tells me that someone else said (dinno who) that societies need to have a clear top and a clear bottom (of the social ladder) and it needs to be hard to tell where the rankings are in the middle. That seems plausible and all.

I read an article today that said it is better to not have “goals” and instead have “systems”. I agree and disagree. (For example: don’t have “run a marathon” as a goal; instead you should have the goal of running x miles on y days through the training period and that will allow you to run the marathon later.) I… Ok I’ll just say it: I think that is stupid. Well, not stupid exactly but missing some important steps.

If your goal is to write a book then you need to figure out a system to support that goal. If your only thing is, “I’ll start writing every day! Surely everything else will work out!”

I can tell you that it is perfectly possible to have a disciplined system where you write daily for years and never get around to writing the book. Sure, the system matters.. but without goals I think just setting up systems kind of burns out.

I don’t know many people who run enough to just do a marathon because they like maintaining that training schedule. I’m sure there must be people in the world but I feel confident saying they are rare. That means a whole lot of people (like me) do a marathon because they have a goal of doing a marathon and not because they want to Have The Long-Term System of Running.

Post-marathon I’m trying to figure out how running and exercise will work for me on a longer-term basis and that is systematized to some degree… but not just set a system and forget it. The system changes because my goals change over time. Sometimes I’m training for a marathon and sometimes I’m training for a 5k. There is not a system that will just cover both situations.

I’m quite certain there are writers who sit down and just babble daily and miraculously a book appears at the end. Most of the people I know who have written books have to start with the idea of what they want to write. They may not have every single line or plot-twist pre-planned, but they know they want to write a book. The goal isn’t just writing for the sake of writing.

Which brings me to: how do you evaluate your system or goals? How do they play into status? And then oh no do you compare yourself to other people to evaluate your progress?

At this moment in time I haven’t cut in over three years. I had one previous longer stretch in my life where I went longer without cutting, but at that time I was engaging in a myriad of other self-harm acts fairly intentionally. I wanted to hurt me. If I compare just to myself, am I doing well or not that well right now? It’s not my longest spree of non-self-harming because there are days when I have some alcohol and I know crystal clear that it hurts me to do so. Is having the occasional drink of alcohol better or worse than my previous tendency to go pick up very risky sex? I’m really not sure.

I evaluate some of these things by talking to other people who engage in self-harm. I compare my level of self-harm to theirs and I think about the sustainability of what I am doing.

At this stage of my life I feel comfortable saying that I am unlikely to accidentally kill myself with my self-harm. I am no longer doing things that could kill me accidentally. I’m still not good at taking care of myself, but I’m not courting death. That distinction matters to me.

When I say that I compare myself to other people that self-harm I don’t mean I decide that one or the other of us is “better” or “stronger” or “crazier” or … whatever. I mean I look at the range of self-harming behaviors and I try to figure out the potential lethality of what I’m doing. I try to determine if what I am doing something that I can keep up and sustain my life.

Cutting isn’t an option because it is modeling for my kids and they are both emotional enough that I am not going to be the god damn model for that behavior. Just no. I don’t pull my hairs out anymore because look at you fucking funny. I don’t pick up casual sex any more for a whole long list of reasons; very high on the list is that I don’t want to model such behavior for my children.

I know people who are able to be promiscuous AND good parents. I don’t think I am among their number. I’ve seen it happen–really and truly. There are some people who can compartmentalize their lives and engage in behavior when their kids aren’t around. My boundaries are shit. If I think something is ok sometimes I’m not good at saying no when I “should”. So I just don’t look around for prey anymore.

I’ve managed to alter some of my compulsive behaviors–I am working hard on my hypervigilance and I’m making progress. I am not managing to lessen my paranoia that everyone in the world is going to end up hating me because I am a disgusting human being, but I don’t think people will attack me randomly. That is progress.

Noah thinks I deserve to have a high opinion of myself because I have reached many of my life goals. He thinks I should think of myself as successful. I can’t figure out what would make me feel successful. Money isn’t doing it. School didn’t do it. Will parenting when I get to the far side? Somehow I doubt it.

I feel like I have spent my life trying very hard to walk next to the line of status without ever joining. Sure it means I will never be “high status” but it means that my position in society is ambiguous and people don’t know how to treat me. That’s better than people knowing they can treat you badly. Indecision is important. Privilege is important.

Sometimes people in my life say things like, “I don’t believe in privilege.” Invariably they are white. Usually they are men (but not always!). I believe in privilege. I’ve been much closer to the bottom of the social status ladder than the average white person from my current social class. If someone says they don’t believe in privilege my thought is, “Then why do white people commit more crimes and black people spend more time in prison?” It’s systematic. That doesn’t mean that individual white people never get a raw deal.

I went to parties over the past few months. It’s the holiday season–parties happen. Specifically I went back and visited a social group I used to spend a lot of time with and whom I haven’t spent much time since I had kids. It was weird. The whole time I was there I was shaking because I was convinced I would say something off-putting to someone and I would be told I had to leave. Even though the hosts are not that kind of people. I would have to physically assault someone for no reason in front of a crowd to be ejected. They don’t eject the rapists or the other awful people. My paranoia is kind of ridiculous. (Though to be fair I didn’t see a single rapist [that I know of] at this party–which was a great change. Every other time I’ve been in their house I’ve known of 1-3 rapists present.)

Sometimes folks ask me to tell them who the missing stairs are. Sometimes I can tell and sometimes I can’t because if I told it would be obvious who the victim is and I was sworn to secrecy. I’m not good at holding my own secrets. It is hard to hold them for other people. I think I have done so pretty well over the years. I talk about having the knowledge (because having the knowledge and sitting on it is fucking awful for me) because otherwise I will blurt. Talking around something is a way for me to avoid jumping up and down on it.

Sometimes, when I know about a missing stair and I hear from yet another victim I feel very guilty–like it is all my fault this additional person got raped.

These things all feel tied up to me. Status, comparisons, missing stairs, privilege, feeling successful, making goals.

I’m told regularly that I should only compare myself to myself. But what about when I’m backsliding. It totally happens. Then I feel like a shitty piece of shit who should die. But when I’m backsliding and I look around at other people who have comparable problems to mine I can find some compassion for myself. Most people with severe mental illness backslide. It isn’t because I am a failure. It is because I am a person with severe mental illness.

Today I was talking with a friend who has much more severe physical issues than I do. Never the less we could talk about comparable childhood issues and she was able to give me some useful ways to talk about my sensitivity issues.

I had not ever really thought about the fact that I write so poorly partially because holding a pen/pencil hurts my hand. Anything that requires tight movements of my fingers. Know how I freak the fuck out when it comes to having to do fine work I have to pinch my fingers to do? It hurts. It always has. I have to talk to someone with a diagnosable hyper-flexibility disorder in order to find someone with comparable problems. Talking to her means that I got to be told, “Hyperflexibility problems happen on a spectrum. It is possible to have one or two hyperflexible joints that will cause you major life problems.”

Oh. Yeah, I’ve always had several joints that were hyperflexible. My hands hurt like a motherfucker when I try to write. My knees hyperextend like a motherfucker. They always have. I have to be careful how I hold my legs or they hurt really badly.

I don’t recognize that these things are problems unless I compare myself to other people. For me they are just how my body works. I can compare how my body changes over time, but even that is hard to do because memory is imperfect. I can watch how my behavior changes over time… sorta… mostly I assume that my behavior is shit because I’m a shitty person.

Sometimes I cry and apologize to my kids for being so mean and they look at me very confused and say, “I didn’t hear anything mean.” I am not a good judge of whether or not my behavior is acceptable.

Partially because “acceptable” changes from person to person and I know a rather freakishly diverse group of people. I fucking love my friends. They are so awesome. I’m grateful you spend time with me and show me what it is like to be a person like you.

Noah sometimes tells me he thinks I should feel more successful because of how I handle money. I don’t know how to really make him understand that I don’t feel like having money is a sign of success. It’s mostly a sign that nothing bad has happened recently. That doesn’t mean I’m so good or anything like that.

One of my friends was talking about her money situation with regards to having two special needs kids. I listened and thought, “I’m a fucking piece of shit for complaining about my life. Compared to this I have such a fucking cake walk.” At this stage my problems are mostly self-imposed to the degree that mental illness can be self-imposed.

I do not feel that someone else having a hard time means that I am successful and judging your success or not by how much money you have seems to necessitate thinking that people who have less money are less successful. Oh barf. Fuck you with a fucking chain saw.

I don’t envy money. I envy people who have emotionally-close families. I envy people who have a life-long group of very close friends. Most of the people I’ve met who have noticeably more money than me… I don’t envy a god damn thing about their life. I wouldn’t trade my life for theirs for anything. Once in a while I meet the rare rich person who also has a ridiculously tight family unit… ok, I envy them. That seems god damn unfair.

It has been a weird life. Seeing my boss last week was fascinating. He knew me when I was very poor. He gave me work so I didn’t have to live on ramen any more. He semi-regularly bought me food because otherwise I wouldn’t be eating during work shifts. Now I can take him out to lunch. Does that make me feel “successful”? Not really. Mostly I felt very sad that life has been so hard to him over the past decade that he needs to have people buy him food. He looks like a scarecrow. He’s lost almost 30 pounds and he was always a slender man.

I went to the park with one of my former students. I listened to her life woes. She talked about longing for a $2 ball of string for crochet and having to put that desire off for months or years because she doesn’t have an extra $2. I said, “When is your birthday?” “Two weeks ago.” “Here is money. Happy Birthday. I love you very much and I think it is not ok that there is a universe where I have extra money and you can’t have a $2 ball of string. Don’t tell your husband I gave you the money.” (Long story there I’m not sharing on the internet.)

Do I feel “successful” because I rarely pass a homeless person without giving them food or money? No.

Having more “things”, having more money than other people does not make me feel better about myself at all. It feels orthogonal to my search for self-worth.

What has made me feel successful? Having strangers on the internet tell me that my book made their life better. I made them feel less alone and less bad about themselves. That feels like success. Mostly my life doesn’t involve a lot of people telling me how I’ve made their lives better. Life doesn’t really go that way by and large. It’s ok. It is what it is.

I walked out of my college graduation feeling like a fraud and a piece of shit. It is pretty remarkable (and pathetic) how I can turn things that *should* make me feel good about myself into reasons to hate me.

I have many pictures on my walls. Well over 150 pictures. More will come. Some are studio pictures, many are candid shots. They span many many decades. I have the one picture of my grandparents that I have on the wall. I see the faces of my sister and brother and many many friends who are no longer in my life.

I think I consciously don’t want to cull the pictures of the people who are no longer actively in my life because I know how important they are to me, even though I don’t see them any more.

If my sister showed up at my door tomorrow crying and apologizing… I’m pretty sure I couldn’t shut the door on her. If she showed up yelling I could slam the door in her face. If my brother ever decides to try to mend fences I will probably bend over backwards. If my mother ever has the courage to approach me I will probably fall to my knees apologizing for being such a bad daughter.

It is hard for me to have boundaries. Even with people who hurt me very much.

Sometimes I feel like I am “not attached” to people because I can walk away from so many relationships. Last year I ended a 15 year relationship. That hurts. I did not feel the person could be safe for my kids and that’s just a non-starter. Sorry, you aren’t more important to me than my kids. My kids are my responsibility in a way that no friend ever could be.

My favorite shirt now has nine holes in it. (To completely jump topics.) I’m very sad about this. The biggest holes are the size of a quarter. It’s time for this shirt to go. (I’ve already sewn up holes several times and it is starting to look like shit.) Money is convenient and awesome to use for trading for goods and services. Money can be used to trade for things that other people perceive as social status whether I agree with their evaluations or not.

I had the fucking ladies who worked in Tiffany’s oohing and awwwing over my wedding ring. I believe the whisper was, “Oooooh. That’s real.” Which… how the fuck they can tell is beyond me. Frankly that seemed weird to me. The rings that other women wear are imaginary? What the fuck?

It was a fucking outrageously expensive ring that I still feel guilty about buying. I could have paid down my fucking mortgage more.

The thing is, I’ve had several occasions as an adult (since getting married) where I needed to manipulate the fuck out of people to get them on my side. (Police officers, lawyers, and judges top the list!) The fact that rich people look at me and know my jewelry is real means that I get less pushback than I would get if I were more visibly poor.

I watched how my mother was treated. It was really bad.

Rich white people look at me and think, “Ahh. On My Side.” Knowing that rich white people look at me and think that makes me want to puke. But I’ll exploit it when I have to. Because that’s how the world works.

I deeply admire my friend who is trying to find self-worth without comparing herself to other people. I think that is healthy and admirable. I also think I’m not capable of doing it. Maybe never, definitely not right now. (Not that she said nor implied that I should copy her. Err, I am just having my feels over here.)

I don’t like me very much, but my kids do. My kids pick hanging out with me over options that frankly sound more fun to me. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are entirely sincere about the depths of their devotion. They prove it over and over again. They pick hanging out with me over other people. Blows me the fuck away. When we talk about our favorite part of the day at dinner, more than half the time one or both of my kids tell me that their favorite thing was snuggling with me or spending time with me.

I know this will change and I need to let it change. I tell the kids, “I’m really happy you feel this way about me right now. It will be ok if I am not your FAVORITE PERSON forever. I will adjust and learn to live with whoever supplants me in your affections.” When I say that Shanna looks at me intently and says, “Moooom.” She has an adorable glare that goes with it.

I really don’t know how the future will go. And I’m scared. But I’m really grateful I get to face the future with Noah and Shanna and Calli. And my friends. I have great friends even if I don’t trust that will still like me in the future. I’m sorry I don’t have more trust. I have a lot of good reasons to think people aren’t going to like me long term. It’s not just paranoia.

But I recognize that I’m pretty paranoid and that isn’t useful or necessary.

I don’t want to put my mood tracking stuff in any posts marked kid-friendly. To me that is part of the dividing line. Which means 500 words is about as many as I can manage in a row before I’m like “Yeah that’s how kid-friendly I can be.” Good grief.

Today is very different from yesterday. Today I’m not angry. I don’t feel any rage. Instead it is anxiety. The fact that I get angry like I did yesterday is fully reason enough for me to deserve terrible punishment and for everyone to stop talking to me forever. Even if I didn’t say anything to anyone. Even if I didn’t do anything… I could and that’s enough for me to deserve PERMANENT SHUNNING.

And even that sounds more intense than I really feel right this minute. If my anxiety runs up and down from 0-10 I’m probably only at like 6 or 7. I feel a little bit of self-assurance that I didn’t blow up a relationship yesterday even though I was a bad person having feeeeeeeeeeeelings but I could have and that’s enough to deserve punishment. I’m going to take a moment to lovingly rub the insides of my cheeks with my tongue where they are currently macerated and tell myself thank Gawd it isn’t a 10 Anxiety Day.

Our second baby-sitter quit already. Well, more accurately she called and said she could no longer work during the week at all (stuff with her kids) and she has no-showed more than 50% of the weekend hours she was supposed to work. So I told her that I will look for someone else. Half quitting half getting fired? It was a nice dream while it lasted. I liked her. She was nice and she worked really well with the kids but if someone is only available on the weekends and they only show up half the time on the weekends… that doesn’t work for me. And she was the only person who would interview. Ha.

I have emailed my former student who is listen on the baby-sitting site. Technically the hours I want are outside the window she lists on her profile and that is why I didn’t ask her first. But the hours I want only extend one hour outside her preferred window so I sent her an email today asking if it is horribly rude to inquire about hours outside what she advertised. We’ll see what she says. I would actually be really excited to work with her. She was one of the ones who hung out with me a lot during breaks and after school. I like her a lot. AND she’s super physically active and might be better than me at teaching Shanna how to ride a bike. I’d be super thrilled with that bonus. She is one of the students who taught for me when I had substitutes.

When I was a teacher I had a very firm policy: my classes should run like a clock. The students need to have the routine so ingrained that they can do it whether I am there or not. So when I knew I had to be absent in advance I would select one student from each period and have them come in during lunch before my absence. We would go over the lesson plan and I would answer all the questions they had. Then each period had their own fellow-student-teacher-of-the-day. Subs loved me. They all would give me their personal phone numbers and beg that I call them first when I had to be out because my classes were so easy.

I miss teaching. I was good at it and that is a validating feeling.

I haven’t been good about getting to homeschool events lately. I was sick then it was the holidays. I think I need to figure out pieces of my attitude about the home schooling community. I’m having a hard time figuring out where I fit. I haven’t ever felt like I fit anywhere. This is not a problem based on the people in the group. I could find things to complain about (and in person I do…) but really I think this group of people is really awesome. I feel very lucky to have found this home schooling community. It doesn’t exist everywhere.

Some times I have big feelings in the direction of the group organizer. It happens. She does not exist solely to fill my needs and I have feelings about that. Sheesh. How dare she. But she has kept a group going for a very long time. I respect that. I respect what it takes to put your head down and keep plugging along even though it is hard and people come and go and you never know what you can depend on. I have deep appreciation for her hard work. I couldn’t do it. I’m grateful that she is there providing the background structure that I’m allowed to drop-in and join when I can and there isn’t a lot of guilt about me not showing up when I can’t.

So the fact that she doesn’t live and exist to meet my needs is something I can forgive and all. I have my feelings and they aren’t her fault or problem. But I need to figure out how to interact with someone who is that steady and there and in charge. That is a kind of figurehead I have had a lot of trouble with historically.

She must have a plan that moves on forward without me. I’m not dependable. I have deep respect for that. But that means that sometimes I have a hard time seeing how I fit into the group. That’s not her fault. I’m not blaming her.

Fuck talking about this stuff is hard.

It is really frustrating and hard sometimes that I know so many really busy people. If you don’t happen to have a perfect scheduling line up you get bupkis. I really struggle with not taking it personally.

I know it isn’t personal. Other people are centering their lives around them and that is right and appropriate.

It is really hard seeing where I fit. I’m so hard. I’m so picky. I have so many stupid nit-picky things that I will completely fly off the handle about and… gawd I’m not fair.

I get so angry. Does my anger make me unsafe? Or just uncomfortable to be around? Is it ok for me to make people uncomfortable? Is making people uncomfortable the same thing as bullying or abuse?

It is very hard to see how there might be a space for me in a community unless the community is looking for a new bully.

I am so defensive that I am on offensive enough that I am scared I’m a problem. I don’t know how to evaluate this.

Relatively high anxiety day.

And now… it’s time for the babysitter to go home. I should stop typing. Whoa anxiety. Shaking. Stupid body.

 

I’m trying not to cry so I’m keeping busy. The camping trailer is entirely together except for the board that will be cut to fit on Friday. Yay! I put the tent up. It is spacious and wonderful. My bossy neighbor (I appreciate the advice so much) came by and said “Scotchguard. Get you some.” So I will do that soon.

Today during babysitting time I will finish backing the pallets in the yard. Then I will get dirt from the nursery. Then I can fill in my new planter boxes that have been sitting there just kinda hanging out for months. They were finished before the elimination diet. I have not felt physically well enough to do anything about them since. Now that I’m eating pretty much anything and I’m exercising again (my ankle finally feels better after falling in October) I feel physically up for doing things again. It is like magic.

(On the poop front. A few days ago I felt like I had to go really a lot so I went into the bathroom. I tried to relax and not “force” things out but not much was moving. I encouraged a bit and was rewarded with bile and a touch of slippery, mucosy blood. Haven’t seen any blood since. I stopped trying to go that day. Since I stopped tracking I’ve seen a variety of consistencies. I am (at this point) mostly respecting FODMAPS only I’m back on wheat and dairy… mostly. Sorta. If I *really* want something with wheat I have it. FODMAPS technically isn’t a gluten free diet (depending on which source you read) it is a wheat-free diet. So I’ve been skipping wheat stuff as much as possible and having some wheat now and then without getting upset. My poop isn’t as awesomely solid as it was, but I’m also having lots of Big Feelings and that upsets my digestion.)

I have to get the planter boxes finished because I have to start planting the mushroom kit we got from Ms. Bladerunner (technically I only have 35ish days left!) and I need to move some plants from the front yard to make room for the incoming bathroom expansion. We have an appointment with them tomorrow night to talk about the next stage. Blueprints are done. We are going to go over them, ask for modifications, and hopefully get a start date for work. I’m crossing my fingers. I’m feeling really yicky about breathing black mold.

I have started preparing for the trip in terms of medication. I talked to my nice delivery driver. “I swear on a stack of bibles I’m not reselling, but you are going to see some very large purchases from me early this year and then I’ll disappear for a few months. I’m not stocking up before losing my card. I just won’t be able to buy on the road.” He was very nice about it. We spent a while talking about his impending fatherhood and how it changes life. He advised me to pack the medication separate from everything else and put a copy of my medical recommendation on top of the container so if anyone opens it, that’s the first thing they see. He’s a smart guy. I’ll use that tip.

Do you know what just fucking occurred to me. I really shouldn’t go through Canada. The international border is probably the most dangerous spot for me with two children and a lot of quasi-legal medication. (It’s legal in some states sorta but illegal for the federal government.)

Well… I’m sure glad I thought of that now.

Damnit. I really wanted to go through BC.

Good thing I stop and consider my actions in advance. Ha. (sometimes)

Want to know what’s awesome? Once I catch up on the planter boxes and finish the trailer on Friday… I don’t have any big projects hanging over me. I have just the ongoing daily life stuff. The remodel will impact my life but I’m not doing the work. I don’t think I should start another big project until next year. Wait! I know what I’m going to do. Once I have the yard a bit more settled after the remodel, my nice yard guy and I will be putting in a drip watering system on a timer so my plants don’t die in the six months I’m gone. I have limited trust in my husband’s ability to keep my garden alive. Not because he’s a bad person or anything. He’s just…. not so much an “out door guy”. He has many wonderful talents. Including being able to pay the nice yard guy to put in a drip system. Everyone wins! Yay!

Talk and not talk. What makes someone safe for me to be around? I don’t know. I know that I have big triggers of things that will cause me to blow up. If someone knows that I have these triggers and doesn’t care to modify their speech then I need to take steps to insure that I don’t blow up. That’s the grown up response.

I’ve been reading a lot about existential loneliness. I think in my youth, ignorance, and self absorption I had no idea how much of a truly universal phenomena this is. I hit some point in my early 20’s where I told a friend, “I’ve figured out that “being grown up” has to be the same thing as being ok being alone.” I was never ok being alone as a child. I was alone… but it wasn’t ok. I wasn’t ok. Now I have found my way to alone being ok.

The older I get the more I appreciate my own company. No one yells at me for crying when I’m alone. No one tells me that I’m letting people down by not projecting the kind of joy they want to see. I’m not being held to an impossible metric I can’t meet. No one insults me and calls it a “joke” when I’m alone. I’m really easy to insult. Yes, I’m “over-sensitive”. Being alone is awesome. No one will tell me that the way I exist is wrong.

I spotted another PTSD support group. Since people keep telling me I should find a support group. No aspect of trauma can be discussed at all to prevent retraumatizing people–all discussion will be in the moment positive steps you are taking.

Snicker. Not a group for me.

I would rather be alone than be in a “support group” where I have to carefully sterilize everything I say in order to only be a positive influence on people around me. That’s too much pressure. I can’t do that. I sure as fuck don’t expect anyone to provide that for me. I think that providing support is sticky and messy.

For one thing, in the kind of group where we are only allowed to talk about current things… I’m a rich bitch. I should have no problems and let me tell you in a support group I would be god damn reminded that I have it easier than everyone else so shut the fuck up about your problems. I’ve seen it happen to whoever is sitting highest on the hog in most support groups I’ve ever been in. Someone has to be told they have it better so that other people can say they aren’t doing as well because of x, y, and z privileges. That’s been my experience through I have no idea how many support groups.

I’ve been in support groups for families of brain injuries, incest, PTSD, sexual assault recovery, and for post-mental-hospital-commitment-support. Many of those topics I’ve been in several different support groups over time. The patterns are really consistent.

I am predictable. If I’m told I am not allowed to discuss my trauma at some point I will compulsively blurt something and get in trouble. I’m really bad with being told I’m not allowed to talk about what is hurting me. I don’t follow those rules. It feels like those rules exist to punish me for not being comfortable for other people. So I get asked to leave the group.

I’m kinda done with that at this stage. I’ve had enough therapists tell me to my face that I’m never going to be a good fit for group therapy combined with failing at it a bunch of times that I’m done.

And 12-step groups have their own issues. Combined with me not being an abstinence only believer.

What would “better” look like for me? What am I working towards?

It is hard to create a metric mid-stream. I have periods where I cry a lot and periods where I don’t cry for weeks. I have periods when I have specific interpersonal stress and I’m angry a lot for a while but mostly I’m not angry.

I’ve been upset since October because of a specific incident and then I had other things snowball on top of that to max out my stress response and that’s been festive. To prevent screaming periods I have flatlined what I expect of myself in terms of projects and I reduced social contact and mostly I’ve gotten through this period.

I’m afraid that 10 days before my period I may always want to die. This is a known, common chemical problem. That isn’t about me “doing something wrong”. The only thing they can tell me to do is go on an SSRI and I’ve tried them and they don’t work well with my body. That is a medically proven phenomena–the drugs react very badly for some people. I feel like writing about it and crying on the day I feel like that are reasonable responses. I haven’t cut. I’m not drinking alcohol on those days to “block the pain” or anything stupid. On the days when I feel really bad I don’t ask too much of myself beyond survival and I sit and cry. Then the day ends and I go back to my life.

It is inconvenient. It isn’t my favorite thing about myself, but it is fairly predictable and I can schedule around it to a large degree given the constraints of my life.  Mental illness isn’t ever convenient, near as I can see.

What is “better”? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But my kids are awake. My navel gazing time has ended.

My kids continue to inspire the feeling that I do actually need to be alive. Not just because they “need me” (they are less dependent by the day) but because I can feel how much I need and want and love my mother. If there is the slightest chance they will feel that way about me, I want to be here for it.

I don’t want to be like my mother–three out of her four children have worked very hard to get her out of our lives. One killed himself. Two divorced her. I’m sure it hurts very much. If my children rejected me the way my mother has been rejected… I would not sit through decades of that. I’m sure that is why my mom can’t repudiate my sister even though my sister is a child-rapist.

If it is take a bad person or have no one… I don’t know.

Life is complicated. I have no answers. What is “better”? I really don’t know.

I know that I have worked really hard on my hypervigilance this year. I no longer count exits in public places. I consciously chose to alter that behavior. I think that is a big deal. I consciously chose to feel safe enough to believe that in an emergency I will be able to follow a crowd and get out. I don’t always need to be prepared for a bolt-hole. That is a huge adjustment in how I spent my attention when I’m out in public.

Doesn’t that count as “getting better”?

I’m feeling very flattened by my shrink. I’m not looking forward to talking to her tomorrow. I feel so sad. It isn’t just that she is fallible–that happens. (She gave bad advice for court, in my opinion and in the opinion of my lawyer–but she isn’t a lawyer.) I don’t even know. I’m just… blurgh. Yuck. My stomach hurts.

We have started training for the 5k at the end of January. Really we could do it cold, but it will be easier and more fun if we are in the kind of shape where we could run a 5k instead of slowly trudging it. We probably won’t be running, we plan to do it with friends, but it is nice to have options instead of hoping you can make it through the distance. It’s one of the color runs. The kids run for free and friends asked us to do it with them. We’ll see how that goes. If it doesn’t work out I think I’m not going to sign up for a race with friends again. That isn’t going very well for me. Apparently running is going to be a solitary hobby for me and I just need to accept that. Not the end of the world. Scheduling is just too hard.

I am learning about myself that I only have so much oomph for chasing a given person in my life. I can pour energy into a relationship and at some point I have to get a bunch of energy back or I run out. Once I run out I have nothing left to give. I will have to go off somewhere by myself and slowly build up my reserves and eventually I’ll meet someone else I hope will give some energy back and I’ll try again and I’ll give until I run out and then… the cycle continues.

This is why people on a long rotation last a lot longer. I don’t empty the bucket I have for them very quickly–it takes years and years. When I pour a lot of energy into someone in a relatively brief period of time and they take the energy and they don’t give me any back…. I hit a wall. I hit empty. I hit done. I don’t have enough people in my life pouring energy into me. I don’t have enough to just give it away.

I need to feel like people pay attention to me. I’ve noticed that I’ve just about entirely lost the feeling of being the main character of my life. This isn’t working for me. I don’t need to be the main character around which everyone’s life revolves (ha-fucking-ha) but I need *my* life to revolve around me. Lately I’ve been feeling like I only exist to be a supporting character.

I mean, I stayed home and did the elimination diet and that involved not really talking to people much. It wasn’t really a time period that invited people to focus on me. Heh. I don’t need people to care that much about my bowels. (Though it would be nice if I could get a doctor to care a little.) I’m treating my body like it is important. That should solve a lot of the main character issues. Hell, friends even tried hard to accommodate my food ups and downs. Why isn’t that the same thing?

I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out.

Noah just scared the shit out of me. I still startle easily. The day should begin.

I feel like I’m getting a lot of help with the kids. The neighborhood girl, I found a lady online who has come a few times, Noah is doing lots, adult friends come over and pay a lot of attention to the kids. I feel like things are improving over where they were a year and more ago. I don’t feel as desperately overwhelmed by being with them *all* the time. Cause I’m not. Noah is going to be gone for five days in January. Only one of those days involves me being alone with the kids all day. Every other day has two or four hours of help. That feels different.

I’m feeling scared about paying for so much child care. It’s going to be a big bite out of our budget. But after playing with Mint earlier today… that’s less scary. We are burning through money at a rapid rate but Noah is earning a lot more than I’m spending. Our investments continue to grow (Shanna’s 529 has had an 11%-15% growth rate!) and I am overwhelmingly happy about paying a big chunk on the mortgage. It means I have slightly less padding with the remodel coming up, but I can finance the bathroom remodel for 0% (for two years) and my mortgage is a lot higher than that. It’ll all get paid off. In the next six years. Holy crap. It will. It really will. At this point we have less than $190,000 (I’m not perfectly sure where in the $180,000’s but I’ll find out at the end of the year.) to go on the mortgage. This year I probably paid off over $25,000 in principle (there was more money sent–but it went to interest) which isn’t quite as much as I want to be sending. But with every year that passes the $25k is actually higher because I’m paying less on interest. Math is so awesome.

I feel incredibly overwhelmed by the fact that I will pay my house off that fast. And I will go on a big cross country trip next year. And I’ll go on a Disney Cruise in 2016 and get remarried because we want to. Because that way I will get to wear a pretty dress and have pictures taken with my daughters. Because I feel sad that just like my mother, there isn’t a picture of my wedding day. I was sad my whole childhood not to see a picture of my parents get married. It wasn’t till I was married that I realized… she was nine months pregnant. No wonder they didn’t take pictures. (Wasn’t his baby.) And we will spend a year traveling the world in only about seven years.

Noah makes me feel like all of my dreams will come true. If I can figure out how to stretch the money far enough… I can do whatever I want.

It’s like magic.

I’m feeling incredibly blessed and incredibly crazy lately. My emotions are bouncing like a fucking rubber ball. I am intensely aware that I have a lot of good in my life. I don’t know how to deal with the pit of anxiety in my stomach. It will all be taken away and given to someone good. Someone who deserves to have nice things. That will never be me.

I’m feeling a little more settled on some of my feelings about my shrink. I’ve had some good thinking time in the last day or so. If I can’t find a way to feel more validated by her then I should in my head pull back and just see her long enough to reup my medical card before the trip. When I come home I can start the search for a new shrink.

I think that next time I will look for someone near me who is open to being trained by a client. Which sounds kind of weird. I’m happy to educate you about alternative lifestyle choices, weird educational theory, or give you long lists of books that are more authoritative than I am. No problem.

I need a therapist who will validate that I am clearly trying hard. I need a therapist who thinks that I am doing well given the load I bear. I need it. Or I need to stop paying for something that isn’t meeting my needs. This isn’t a bullshit thing. This is a real problem.

I don’t need a therapist to think I am perfect or to give me unthinking platitudes. I like people who call me on my shit. But I need someone to call me on my shit while still basically liking me and thinking that I am overall trying–I’m just fucking up in this spot.

I spent a lot of today working on the itinerary for the road trip. Soon I will need an email list for keeping up with all the people I’m trying to see. One to one contact will overwhelm me. I’ll forget people then they will feel rejected and sad. My monkeysphere definitely stretches the limits of my ability to cognitively picture everyone without added connecting steps. I think of people in groups. I think of how I know them, who I know that they know. Without those steps… I’d lose people. I recognize their face and say, “Vaguely familiar but I don’t know why.”

I think that www.freecampsites.net is one of the coolest websites on the internet. I’ve had a busy day.

I have planned out how far we are driving, where we are sleeping, and how long for each hop all the way through early November. I ran out of time to finish the last few weeks. Also I’m waiting on a response from Noah’s family. I told his brother that I could technically make the Texas leg longer if folks really want us to. But I’m at the end of a five month trip so I just scheduled a few days. Let me know if I should change those plans because you really wish you got more time. I told them to let me know by January. At the end of January I will be scheduling my Disneyland hotel room for the last hop on the trip. Technically… I can book today. But I’m being nice. If I want more Texas time that bumps my Disneyland dates.

Ok, spent a little more time rescheduling stuff for the trip. I made it so I can *either* do camp/drive/camp/drive (with relatively short hops) for the last section of the trip OR I can add time into the Texas wing and have more drive/drive/drive days. It’s not going to be my favorite, but I really am limiting the number of miles we go in a day so we will have lots of non-driving time in every driving day. I’m only driving 3-4 hours.

I’m looking forward to this challenge in ways I can’t describe. I haven’t run away from home for a long time in a long time. Even the trip to Scotland didn’t feel long enough and that was a month. Being still is hard.

And, to be honest, I’ll appreciate my friends so much more after an absence.

Pretty sure I’ve nailed down Disney World dates. 9/22-10/15. Not quite a month. Long enough. Three weeks will be great. I hope we get to resort hop from Old Key West to Boardwalk to Saratoga Springs to Animal Kingdom Concierge. The last few days I don’t want to buy food. I want to live off the concierge buffet and leftovers. Ha.

I feel like I had a day of productive work. I have nailed down probable sleeping locations for the entire camping trip. I fixed the mileage counts to be attainable given the new speed limits I must follow. The whole damn way I will hear this song in my head. I probably won’t make my kids listen to it.

But I’m having serious thoughts about whether or not I want to introduce my kids to The Coup in the next few years. I will introduce the band by middle-school age. Just not sure when.

Since I’m linking to music, this song made me very sad then angry. I turned it off and started going off. “What a stupid song! What an idiotic idea! I can’t believe that in 2014 anyone is so ridiculously stupid as to say that only girls can cry. What is wrong with her?!”

My kids will be very warped.

I spend a lot of time appreciating my kids. They seek me out. Over and over all day. They come looking for me just because they want to be near me. I’m not used to that. Sometimes it is a little overwhelming but I try to ride the wave.

I don’t believe in the staircase approach to life. I don’t think you are always getting better and improving. I believe in the roller coaster model of life. Good things happen and shitty things happen and there is no end in sight. Suck it, bozo.

No matter how good it is *right now*… this isn’t permanent. It’s just right now. Don’t get too attached.

I feel like 2014 was a great year. Yes, it had ups and downs. Some pretty big inconveniences (hello… court… my dishwasher flooding the kitchen…) but I’ll recover.

I have not had an experience in the last 12 months that increases my trauma load. The most traumatic pieces of the year came from friend relationships. Half from me appropriately seeing that someone had such issues that the person does NOT belong around children and struggling with that and the other half over being a needy pit and not knowing how to manage that. So I guess that’s same ol’ same ol’.

2015 is shaping up to be a fantabulous, amazing, awe inspiring year. I’m really looking forward to the trip.

I have stopped tracking. I’m pooping. Once or twice a day. It’s solid or close enough to solid that I wouldn’t be able to get anyone to care. I’ve had a few random squirts of diarrhea late in the day a couple of times but mostly… things have settled down.

My legs are tight because I have been sitting still for three months. Time to change that. We have a 5k at the end of the month (all four of us!) so we have been getting out for some practice walks. I told Noah that I think we should have a three day cycle. Walk the full distance (3.1 miles) one day. Next day run as much as we physically can for 30 minutes. Rest day.

Given that we are running at the pace of 4 and 6 year olds…. I won’t be increasing my speed as much I otherwise might but we’ll have fun. We’ve been consistent for about a week. My ankle still twinges when I sit criss cross apple sauce. Come on body. Heal.

I understand that objectively my paranoia is very odd to other people. Clearly, not everyone hates me. Clearly my life is not all bad. Clearly I’m not in overwhelming pain every minute of the day.

I just noticed that Sobonfu Somé’s grief ritual in San Francisco this year will be the weekend of March 20-22. I am going to try and make it again. I suspect that having a release of grieving before running off for months is a good idea. It’s on my calendar so I hopefully won’t double book like I did last time. That made me so sad. That grief ritual has been the *only time in my life* where it was ok for me to cry and scream and rage like that with other people around me holding space for my behavior to be acceptable and appropriate.

That’s like… whoa. Like… hella whoa. I would like to go back.

My life is so full and so blessed. I feel like I am going to have to be very careful what socializing I let in for the first six months of the year. I have to build a spoon reserve. I have a lot of long, big things coming up. This year is incredibly busy.

In January Noah will be gone a five day trip. (Yay for Dad’s weekend! I’m glad the boys are finally running off.) I’m not alone with the kids as much as you would think given that. It will be fine. We have Lego Club to keep us busy. We have hair cuts and trips up to visit friends. We need to schedule a Modesto trip. And a specific friend has been cancelled on multiple times due to illness and it is time to make it up to her. At the end we run a 5k.

February: 5 days in Disneyland. That will make the whole month feel slammed. (but in a good way!)

March: Four day SF/F writing convention. Three day grief ritual. The kids get to go to the dentist (luckily this is a fun process). That’s the big stuff.

April: BABSCON (My Little Pony shit). Otherwise just “normal” socializing. I should probably carve out some time for a camping test-trip this month. In fact, I’ll be nutty and propose a trip to the home schoolers. I’ve gotta say, camping with the home schoolers has been really nice. No interactions with humans are completely perfect at all time but we have fun. I don’t feel overwhelmed. I don’t feel loathed. It’s really nice.

May: Maybe a camping weekend if April doesn’t work out. Otherwise, May will be kind of slow on purpose. A lower than normal level of socializing.

June: we leave mid-month. After I get a massage. Because I’m spoiled and lucky.

Man I need to quite typing and go to sleep.

I’m in a terrible mood today. Lots of factors. I haven’t been taking “my” time off. Noah feels a lot of pressure to go work more. I don’t think this is mostly coming from me. I think he wants to go do these things. When we get to the point of having more than $100k in cash and way over half a million dollars in investments before we get into some of our other assets and we have virtually no debt (other than our mortgage)… you aren’t working because we desperately need the money. That’s crap. Yes, I have things I would spend money on… but it’s crap that we need it. We don’t need more money.

But Noah would really like to stop working for a company. And he wants to build something on the side before he quits. From where I am sitting he is working two jobs.

I’m struggling with this. Recently he’s been doing a lot of wandering over to the computer to type frantically during our “family” time. I’m feeling abandoned and angry. I haven’t been spending much time with friends–most of what I do get is distracted or rushed. When I do have “time off” I wander off by myself and Noah follows me because he wants attention.

I’ve been sick for a while and that is making life hard. People make plans with me and then decide to cancel them. Three, four flakings in the last week? That adds up for me. Lots of people canceling on me in a week makes me feel really bad. If I hadn’t already scheduled the open house I wouldn’t add one to my calendar right now. Right now I feel like the only appropriate place for me is way way way under the water beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

I got a letter from Kaiser. My case manager is someone handling me being mad at the guy I just fired. That’s going to be what he does and that’s it. They are just trying to make sure I can’t sue for malpractice. They don’t want to help me.

I want to die. I want to get away from people dumping their needs on me while I can’t take care of my own. I don’t know how to get my body to feel ok. I don’t know how to stop feeling like people actually hate me. I don’t know how to feel like I deserve to be alive.

I should probably start with more medication. I haven’t had any today. Part of the trouble is: I’m running low on pills and I can’t bring myself to buy more pills when I have a freezer full of edibles preventing me from buying real food and putting that in my freezer. But all the edibles have wheat or dairy or both. If I have a minimum of three months on an elimination diet… that means I just don’t get to use a big chunk of my freezer for 1/4 of a year.

Reselling it isn’t legal.

I won’t want to take stuff that has been sitting in my freezer for 9+ months on the trip, so I can’t just start my stockpile.

I feel like I’m being mean to Noah and I can’t tell if I actually am or if I just think I’m a mean piece of shit. I’m not being cheerful, that’s for sure.

I feel like both Noah and I are tapped out lately. Both of us want support and the other doesn’t have much (if any) to give. Noah is being ridiculously nice with trying hard to figure out how to cook given this moving target.

Why am I so mad at him for typing a lot when I read a lot? Because I’m a hypocrite. Because the kids want attention and him checking out means that absolutely all of it falls on me and I’m bitter as fuck. I continually feel sad and guilty because I can’t actually help Noah with his work much, but he can help me with mine. And he does. So I feel like a using piece of shit. I’m not helping him so I have no right to expect him to help me.

It really doesn’t help that I’m sick and I don’t feel good and I have no energy. I’ve been doing very little for weeks and I’m not better. I’m less tired than I was, but I feel like “exhaustion” is still a good descriptor for how I’m doing. I’m eating a little more now that I can have garlic. I’m not pooping consistently (well… I’m pooping… but it’s not hard) on the expanded diet and that is making me sick with worry on top of not feeling good.

The last doctor I talked to told me it could only possibly be wheat or dairy. So I reintroduced everything else and lost solid poop. I think she’s wrong.

Also I suspect that I’m on the path to having just the word “Kaiser” trigger anxiety shitting. Yay for feeling like they “care” about my “health”.

I get into these states where I hurt and I don’t know why I hurt and people around me aren’t very helpful and I get so very angry. Then people don’t want to be around me because I’m such an angry person.

I want to die so much. Today I don’t feel very much hope. I want to cut so much.

Noah and I had a fierce argument about Paul Graham. Cause I totally fucking care and all. Or not. Noah likes Paul Graham because he explains how to do things. I am less enamored because the guy is clearly only talking to the top 5% of society but he tries to make it sound like his advice is applicable to *everybody* and if you don’t follow it you are just lazy. Or something.

I have a hard time with people with enormous privilege breaking down their process for success and saying, “It’s easy! What you do is start with step A and then go to step B and then move to step C.” When they don’t understand that there were actually 350 steps before step A that they didn’t realize they were taking. I used as a counter-example Warren Buffet. Everything I’ve read from that man sounded pompous. He makes it really fucking clear that if you haven’t taken the prerequisite 350 steps you’re fucked and he has nothing to say to you. (That’s what I’ve read–I’m sure I haven’t read everything he’s written.)

Not too long ago I read a story about a young girl moving to this country and getting a job as a maid/nanny. She couldn’t figure out how to use the washing machine. So she did the whole family’s laundry by hand. Week after week spreading things out on the grass to dry. (True story–written by the girl who later learned to use a washing machine.)

There are so many steps involved before you are able to go be “successful” in an advanced society. Some of them can be skipped, not most.

I think the most important step is when you figure out that it isn’t YOUR responsibility to hand wash everyone’s clothing. If that girl had even known how to complain about not knowing how to use the machine it would have been different. She had no words to use to ask for help with her ignorance at first. Her ignorance was so big it was hard to develop a chink in the armor for education.

There are habits of rich people. I read about this. (Strangely, many of my natural habits-early riser, be awake many hours before you start ‘work’ are actually habits considered mandatory by successful people in large studies. Whatever.) There are habits of poor people. Understanding what your habits are and changing them is hard. Doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor. Your habits are your habits. Examining what they are and how you got them is hard.

I get so angry because people like Paul Graham don’t understand that learning how to use the washing machine is almost a prerequisite for starting a company or it is entirely irrelevant. If you are rich enough to pay someone else to do your laundry it doesn’t matter. You have leap-frogged having that skill matter. If you are poor and you want to appear professional, you had best fucking learn how to do laundry. Doing laundry such that your clothes stay “nice” is a skill (one my mom had and I lack). I’ve seen this skill. My mom had clothes throughout my childhood that would have looked appropriate on a lawyer in a nice office. She could keep her clothes nice. I can’t.

I understand that Silicon Valley likes to believe that it has “changed all the rules” and really what it has done is make it so the people in the top 5% have more freedom than they used to have. Woo. Watch me do cartwheels in happiness.

We argued about this because folks online didn’t like Paul Graham’s most recent essay on being mean. Noah can’t understand why anyone has a problem with the essay. I said, “His definition of mean and mine probably aren’t the same. His friends are nice to him–their social equal who is also already rich. How do they treat the janitors in their companies?”

I’m sure these people are wonderfully civil to absolutely everyone in their lives. Even the janitors. But do they make sure their janitors have reasonable living wages or does that just not matter? My definition of mean may be different.

I’m fine with requiring civility from a “civilized” society but I don’t equate it with nice. And saying that mean people don’t succeed is… well…

Mark Zuckerberg is currently the cock of the walk in the valley, right? Know how his “real names” policy is harming a lot of people? Oh–but that’s probably not “mean”.

It’s always ok to step on people low enough down the ladder. You aren’t mean. You are just making good business decisions.

I am incapable of thinking of a company as “successful” if it treats the janitors and secretaries badly. I think your company sucks and I hate it and you if you try to convince me why really it is so great. Don’t get me started on Google. (Yes, they are better than average in the valley. That impresses me less than you might hope. I want ALL employees to be treated like people.)

Is this why I am not a Captain of Industry? Probably. I also make no claims to being “nice”. I’m sure Mr. Graham would be happy to tell me that I’m failing in life because I’m so mean. (Or maybe he wouldn’t–after all he’s NICE!)

I think people fail for reasons a lot bigger than whether they are nice or not even though “niceness” may appear to figure in. People who succeed have the largest social networks and often that comes along with being charismatic and likable. In my personal experience being charismatic and likable means that people get away with being extremely not-nice whenever they want to.

If you make sure your rep’ is clean enough, you can do fucking anything.

Look at Bill.fucking.Cosby. He’s “nice”.

My experience of dealing with people in the valley (and I’ve met way more than my share of millionaires and multi-millionaires and one or two who I think were close to billionaires) is that they are as nice as long as they feel like it and not a minute longer. I’m less impressed with this than other people might be.

I don’t hate Paul Graham. I don’t want him to stop running YCombinator because from what I can see–they do interesting and important work that I sure as shit don’t want to do. I don’t even want him to stop writing about what he does.

What I like about Warren Buffet is he is a shameless old bastard. He’s got what he’s got. He doesn’t feel ashamed. Near as I can tell he thinks he is better at earning money than almost anyone alive and past that he doesn’t seem to put his ego out in writing that I can detect. I’m totally good with that. Be what you are.

Paul Graham always sounds to me like he is writing for the top 5% but he really wants the top 40% to read it and be inspired and hurry up and do something. I have… feelings about this.

When I’m getting mad at Paul Graham I’m aware I’m doing it from a few different angles. First: I’m aware that as a bright female I’m definitely one of the ones who is letting my generation down by “not doing much” and his essays always feel… that’s my problem. That’s not about his writing. Secondly: I read his essays from the point of view of someone who grew up in the bottom 5%. Most of the people who were there with me are still there. I married up more than I “got out” on my own. There were no bootstraps present. Ok, even that isn’t true. I got out because of the settlement. I was bit by a dog and the accident settlement was well managed and I dragged myself out of penury. It wasn’t really Noah who did it.

But I had so much help. I am so painfully aware of the help and support I got from a thousand different sources. I’ve been good throughout my life at pulling five minutes of support from person A and five minutes of support from person B and making that somehow be enough. I’m sucking at that lately–my life is so different–but that has been how I have traditionally gotten my needs met. Most people like me aren’t given that help and I feel angry on their behalf. Mr. Graham isn’t really writing at the bottom 5% though and my anger is… not helpful. I don’t know how Mr. Graham could give most people in this demographic even vaguely useful help, period. For folks in this camp learning to use the washing machine wouldn’t help because they are lacking so many skills… they just won’t catch up.

The 6%-35% are the target demographic (I’m pulling these numbers out of thin air) I feel pissy about. That’s really complicated, though. Many of the people in this demographic could benefit from Mr. Graham’s advice if they really buckled down and took seriously that mistakes and failure are mandatory for learning. Most of these people have the potential and they’ve had most of the support necessary for ensuring that they have the ability to follow through on potential… what they need is drive. That is so much harder to teach. If you can teach drive you are a better teacher than me. I can’t.

I can’t teach drive. I can inspire it, sometimes by accident, but I don’t know the steps. I’ve read all the books on determination and trying (ok, not ALL the books) but I still can’t teach it.

Either you have the will to get back up when someone punches you or you don’t. I don’t know how to teach that.

So why do I get so mad at Mr. Graham? Probably mostly because he’s a successful white man and I’ve Got Issues.

I honestly don’t believe that being “nice enough” is what is keeping more women from succeeding and men like Paul Graham give people in authority more standing to reject women who aren’t nice enough. Paul Graham said that mean people fail! You were mean to me! I’ll make sure you never work in this town again.

When you research what happens to women in the tech industry… I think it is a big fat fucking lie that people who are successful are nice. Elon Musk seems like a pretty fucking successful guy and a quick casual google search seems to indicate that he’s a son-of-a-bitch to work with. He’s a mixed bag in terms of how “nice” or “good” he is. The actual word used to describe working with him was “dick.” He’s doing good for the world and bad at the same time. People have very mixed opinions on him.

I believe that when rich white men pompously stand up and say that the way to be successful is to be nice they are screwing over a lot of people. It is simply not true that being nice is the way to success. How many fucking people have “nice”d their way to richness and fame? I’m not sure I can name one. Wait! Maybe Julie Andrews. I’ve never heard a serious negative story about her.

And Mr. Graham does try to say that he’s only talking about his field–clearly in other fields there are meanie-pants walking around.

But I find it galling and irritating that he’s going to try and claim that he can evaluate whether or not his friends are mean and how much that related to their success. Maybe he and I just don’t use nice/mean the same way. It is very possible that he means just social civility with no actual measure of the impact of behavior on people around you. That’s a convenient way to ignore all harm caused by dominant groups.

Man I’m in a mood.

It really isn’t Noah’s fault that I’m in a bad mood. Even though he does like to show up during my “alone time” and act like a lost puppy in need of love. He is a lost puppy. He does need love.

I just wish he would ask for it when I’m not traipsing off to be alone. What was wrong with all those hours I sat in the living room and you were off doing your thing?!

I love you. I do want to give you attention. I also want attention. I want to have something to talk about other than my not-cooperating body. I want to feel cheerful and like life is good. I want to have positive things to say.

I could live a full-time life of denial. That way I could only talk about pleasant things. If I matter little enough that I don’t even need to come up in the conversation… then maybe I could manage to be pleasant enough that people would want to talk to me.

Today it is good that I can’t run anyway. I’d like to jump off the overpass in front of a semi. That sounds properly cathartic right this second. Maybe I could finally get something through my stupid brain. A truck! HA!

I should eat again. And my battery is D-E-D.

People who are “more important” than me are looking at how PTSD passes through generations. All I can say is, “No shit PTSD changes families.”

Sometimes I think of my mother’s terrible fear of the police. Then I think of my own fear, hatred, and dislike of the police. I learned it at home. I learned that feeling during the period of time when my family lucked into the unusual experience of being a white family that could not bear closer scrutiny. That’s unusual. Usually white folks just don’t have good reason to be afraid of the police in this country–so people occasionally tell me I’m irrational. Never anyone who is black–only other white people; I’m not sure that I am irrational, though. I mean just on that one topic.

Sometimes I feel awkward about the fact that the way I parent is described by therapists as doing exposure therapy. My kids have a slightly unusually low startle reflex. I have worked with them throughout their lives to have a less-active startle reflex. They are relaxed and happy and ready to approach whatever is coming. They aren’t afraid.

A lot of how I do this is by being a surprising, startling person who backs off fast at any sign of distress. They get to have an unusual amount of control over what happens to them. As a result they feel very confident in their mastery of many situations. My kids can adapt to different situations in ways I never could. I’ve worked so hard on this.

We have lots of conversations about, “Every building, every park, every space you ever enter has a slightly different set of rules that people are following. It is a good idea to watch people for the first few minutes you arrive–you will learn a lot about local tolerances. If someone has a problem with you, use your words to try to deescalate things and if the person gets in your face, come get me. Don’t face someone down alone. I want to be standing there as a witness. I’ll let you take care of it, but you need backup in place.”

My kids are preternaturally confident that with me standing behind them they can do anything. Sometimes I question whether it is wise to give them this much of a big head. Then I realize that for them… it is probably true.

Sometimes it is hard seeing myself as a positive force–I’m just bringing a whole string of broken genetics and terrible circumstantial training to the process of parenting. Then I look at my kids and I have to believe I’m not a waste. I made them. That’s something.

Heck, then I hear from yet another former student and I think I can’t be a complete waste of air. I am shocked in an ongoing way by the intensity of emotional connections the students still feel to me. I had impact like whoa.

Mostly it is the kids who stayed after school. The ones who cried on my shoulder about coming from bad families. The ones who were told and told they could never be nothing. I think crying with them and telling them, “Everyone said I could never be nothin’ but a drug addicted prostitute. Fuck them. Fuck. Them. You go be what you want to be.” helped a lot. You never have to be limited by the expectations of assholes who don’t love you anyway. Go be what and who you want to be.

Yesterday Call and I went to Dickens Fair. Shanna picked staying home with Daddy to make cookies. I support non-maternal-parental-bonding so that sounded great. Calli and I got to have a lovely date.

We were there for three hours. That was longer than I think I have managed with kids before so I declare it a solid victory. Calli had a lot of fun. She bought herself a HUGE cookie with her allowance for the thrill of power of ownership. I had a lovely chat with the cookie vendor who is apparently, a Brony. He’s a Pinkie Pie. I told him I’m an Apple Jack and he “hoof bumped” me. Hilarity. It’s kind of funny that in watching the show… yeah I’m totally an Apple Jack. I like reading and all… but I’m not much like Twilight.

Genetics are funny things. I watch my children and I regularly feel baffled about how they took all of my personality traits, put them on playing cards, and then randomly handed the deck out between them for a nice game of War. I switch between being preternaturally able to work a room of strangers–I can walk into an event and meet tons of new people most of whom will think I am terrific and wonderful; then all of a sudden I’m shy and standoffish and I want to wait and set the terms of engagement very studiously. Shanna is the first and Calli is the second. Only they don’t switch back and forth the way I do. So getting to really watch the pitfalls of either one being your primary approach is… interesting.

Calli had a lot of trouble engaging with people at Dickens Fair without Shanna to break the ice with her. She had a lot of fun–but she didn’t know how to deal with some of the character interactions. She is used to watching Shanna for a while before she has to talk to someone. She takes someones measure as she watches them talk to her sister. Calli handled getting dance partners with no difficulty including talking her way into a partner-switching-set she was way too small to participate in. SHE DID GREAT!!! All the Fezziwiggers were shocked but thrilled. She did way better than kids more than twice her height and given how tall she is for her age, Go Calli! So proud.

Calli is a dancer and Shanna is not. That’s kind of weird for me. Shanna is klutzy as the day is long. She has very little physical intuitiveness. She can’t follow to save her life. Calli is a natural. You get Calli on the dance floor and it doesn’t matter what style of dance is happening she can follow it in under five minutes. It means that I now look at Shanna kind of differently. Ha. When Shanna had a terrible time in ballet picking up the most basic of movements I thought she was too young. Now I think that Calli, while younger, could do better in the same class.

It is very hard for me to recognize that my perfect little angels aren’t perfectly well rounded. Sniff.

They are going to be different people. I look forward to discovering more about them year by year. I tell them in the mornings, “I have to get to know you again. You changed while you were sleeping and if I get complacent and I stop looking at you then I will stop knowing who you are. I have to look at you again and again to rediscover your changes.”

Holy f-in-Crisco. Yesterday Shanna woke up and her belly was basically concave. I said, “Whoa. You grew last night.” BODIES ARE SO COOL! Once in a while Shanna tests the waters with questions about whether my love for her will change if she is skinny or fat later. I ask her to describe the bodies of people I love. She eventually verbally acknowledges that I love people who are skinny as skinny can be and I love people who are about as heavy as it is possible to be and still be mobile. Clearly my love does not place limits on the bodies of the people around me. She nods and says, “ok”. I talk about logistical difficulties. There are pluses and minuses of being skinny and for being fat. Neither is objectively “better” or “worse” but being either might be good or bad for a specific task.

Heavy people have a weight and a leverage that often allows them to get something done when a lighter person just physically couldn’t move something. I have a deep admiration for this survival ability. Strength is a big god damn deal in my world. No, we do not prefer skinny around here. Skinny is fine. It isn’t bad. Love your body however it happens to appear. Skinny or fat can make it impossible to find clothes because designers are assholes. Being more slender makes it easier to do some things. Every thing in life has things that make it easier or harder. That isn’t a moral judgment.

I tell my kids that there are people in the world who make moral judgments about weight–I don’t like those people. I think they are bullying people who have minimal choices about their bodies. I have mixed feelings about the fact that I have been considered “fat” for most of my life but if I work hard enough, long enough, eat little enough, and exercise to a nearly unhealthy degree… I can get out of being considered fat. But it is nearly a full time fucking job. It is hard and it takes an overwhelming amount of resources. (I would not have been able to buy running shoes this often before I got married. I simply did not have this kind of money.) So clearly I was able to stop being fat–which makes me more moral in the minds of some people. But I was only able to do so because I had a big scoop of privilege dumped on my head. That makes me feel a little sick inside.

Don’t hold me up as an example of how it can be done. Oh god no.

I sort of feel like maybe I want to get the adipositivy calendar and put it on the wall. I want my kids to see unabashed appreciation of fat bodies the same way they will see unabashed appreciation of skinny bodies elsewhere in the world. Drat. Next year the calendar is a mosaic. I’m less drawn in. The 2014 one was rad.

I’m now eight days away from my next attempt at a visit from Kaiser. I may actually ask someone to go with me. I’m scared to go back given that the receptionist called the police on me last time I went in. What is going to happen next time I go, you know?

I don’t deal well with authority. People who work in systems need the system to Be Respected and I don’t respect systems. Your system doesn’t work for me. Fuck you for trying to force a square peg into a round hole. I’d rather you honestly say, We are not able to treat you.

I’m a special god damn snowflake. Just like everyone else.

My ankle hurts less than it did, so it is clearly healing. It’s been like four weeks? It doesn’t actively hurt all the time anymore, just when I sit cross legged. When it stops hurting when I’m sitting down I will probably try to resume running. I can tell the rest of my body is pissy about the lack of exercise. I’m stiff and sore everywhere. I want to live on Ibuprofen and I can’t because of the test in a week. Yay! Or something.

This year’s cookie exchange will be a lot smaller than it has been for the past few years. I’m not sad. I like both of the ladies who are coming over a lot. There are so few children that I can bust out some more interesting projects that I can’t manage with a huge group. It will be fun.

I need to get some of this food stuff worked out. I’m tired of feeling suicidal and food stuff is making that ridiculously hard. I spend a lot of time lately feeling like I should just die because keeping me alive isn’t worth the effort. Keeping bodies alive takes work. I don’t have much patience for such shit with regards to me. I’m willing to do the work for my kids but doing it for me is harder.

Learning to make gluten/dairy free food is much harder than learning to make healthy food for the kids. And that was a major educational journey for me involving reading a lot of books and spending a lot of time looking into nutrition. There are reasons I jump up and down and refuse to put my very young children on skim milk. Their brains are developing and need fat, thank you very much.

I remember my brothers being very skinny as children but they were athletes. I was never skinny. My sister was never skinny. My children are so slender. I’m going to give them forking whole fat milk. Clearly it isn’t hurting them. (Also: I see their poop. Not hurting them!)

My poop isn’t wanting to settle down again. I would blame myself and cheating on the diet but I’m more inclined to blame myself and say “anxiety”. Dealing with Kaiser is going to get to the point of inducing diarrhea at the name so this is going to get complicated. Yay anxiety! Yay for feeling like shit and like the people who work there would prefer I die so I stop bothering them! My body will do its level best to kill me just so that I don’t have to feel people hate me so much.

Melodrama much? I can’t tell.

People aren’t against you. They are for themselves and you are just incidental. That becomes malice when they hold the keys to the castle.

Sometimes I get these little whiffs of reminder–that people aren’t for me and I feel deflated. I feel like I don’t know how to be part of their life.

We haven’t talked to the Godmamas since before the accident. I don’t know how to reopen the doors of communication. Last I had contact I was told not to contact again. That ban was never lifted so I’ve just… not tried again. If the only thing I’m told is “Leave us alone” I’m going to back off. Well, I was told I could ask for information from the person who is buried in medical school but I also have to expect that she may or may not really return emails because… she’s busy. I take that as leave us alone.

Not to mention that I made a few comments on G+ posts and that was received with hostility so I stopped following and have backed off. This is complicated given the net of legal paperwork involving them. I really don’t know what to do about the Godmamas.

We need to go see our lawyer. And I need to admit to myself that all of the people who I thought were going to reliably stay in my life… are gone. Godmamas, Brittney, Alex–haven’t heard from them. Probably won’t ever again. That was my full list of people I trusted to be able to help my kids.

30 years, 14 years, 12 years of friendship and they are gone. Well, maybe I’ll see them again some day for a few hours of talk. But they are not present in my life and they aren’t appropriate as hand offs for my kids any more.

I feel like it is my just desserts. Please God, let me live till my children are grown so they never have to pay the full penalty for being my children. I only need 13.5 more years.

On the upside, Noah’s college best friend and his wife have agreed to be added to paperwork. We don’t have a backup plan. I don’t know who to name as executor. I haven’t scheduled an appointment with the lawyer to revamp the paperwork because I don’t have more names to give. I feel so sad.

Sometimes my friends hear Shanna mouthing off at me (by which I mean repeating verbatim [with the same inflection] things I have said to her) and they tell me they could never tolerate having a child talk to them that way. I laugh and tell them I appreciate it. She is looking at me and noticing me enough to have an opinion on my behavior.

We are all very clear with one another in this house: I love you and sometimes I really hate the things you do. Your behavior can be very annoying. Doesn’t change how much I love you and want you nearby annoying me day after blessed day.

Shanna has very little awareness that she is in a period of life called “childhood” where most people would give her very few rights. She thinks of herself as being shorter than she will be and less competent than she will be with more practice but she’s here. That’s what she needs from the world. She will not someday be worthy of doing things. She is worthy now. Maybe she won’t be as deft as an adult but that’s a stupid reason to refrain from trying.

It sometimes takes a lot of fast talking about safety considerations to convince her that a certain task should be held off until she is taller, heavier, has more fine motor control, etc. She thinks of herself as being here, ready, so let’s go.

I feel like watching Shanna gives me this really pure vision of how people see themselves as unchanging. She genuinely does not see herself as less than she will be when she’s 30. She is just there. She’s not waiting to grow up. She’s living. I spent a lot of my childhood just waiting for time to pass. I could do things when I was older. There was always the put-off. I was never interested in what I was age-appropriately allowed to do. I was always reaching. I’ve let Shanna reach.

Kid can use a very sharp knife with aplomb. She can cook a wide variety of meals. She can talk to just about anyone. I don’t worry about Shanna’s ability to make a place in the world for herself. She will be ok. She has such verve and will to live.

I feel like Shanna had a “baby” stage where she knew she couldn’t do things and then she grew out of it. Somewhere between four and five. I don’t think Calli has outgrown it yet.

Calli doesn’t yet feel like the permanent person she will be for all times. She’s still shifting, like water. They say that the personality hardens/forms/becomes set around 5/6. Calli had some fearfulness stuff when she was 3 so I have been working on it pretty hard for over a year and she’s past that. She’s got a ways to go before she’s 5 but it feels like she is on a great path. I’m glad that she will turn 5 on the road trip. (If I can get my blasted health in line.)

I think that Shanna is always going to be more of a wanderer with me than Calli is. I think Calli is going to have to really consciously learn how to adapt. I think she will have more struggles. But who knows. Maybe I’m wrong. Earlier in life I didn’t see Calli’s passionate devotedness to me. Lately it has become impossible to not see. The switch from 3 into 4 has meant that Calli is way more attached and loving than she was before.

Sometimes it looks like Calli felt like she wanted to be more loving before but she didn’t know how. Sometimes it seems like she eventually learned how to get the loving attention she wanted and then she asked and asked and asked and asked. She didn’t rebuff me when she was littler. She just didn’t ask much. And I had Shanna so I wasn’t pushing for more attention from Calli so Calli was left to be… passively ok somewhere more often. Now she’s done with that shit. She’s ready to be the Center of the Universe. (She has a t-shirt that says she’s the center of the universe. She wears it a lot and reminds me that she is special and I have to love her. It is hilarious. “Mom! Remember, I’m the center of the universe. That means I get what I want.” I look at her with a raised eyebrow and she practices her best shit-eating-grin.)

Shanna freaked out from day one if you set her down at all. Calli didn’t do that so I think I incorrectly interpreted that as a preference for being set down. Live and learn.

Shanna wore me the hell out. I’m sorry Calli. I had less need for 24/7 contact when you were born. I’m terribly sorry.

But now Calli gets her many hours a day of snuggling. Shanna’s down to just insisting on half an hour a day of dedicated snuggling time. Calli is a love-bug. She would be happy if I wore her on my back all day every day but I can’t. She’s too heavy.

I talk to my kids about disaster training preparedness and I talk to them about how to deal with emotional fall out from trauma. “Someday something terrible might happen to you. You might feel so scared. You might feel like you are going to die. Bad things happen to people. If you want to survive it is good to know in advance how to find help. Here’s what you do…” I’m not super dark about it. I talk to them about how to evaluate safe people. I talk to them about how to talk to police officers and give police reports. I talk about how the police are only sometimes your first call. I tell my kids which words are key to getting help fast. “I am in immediate danger”.

I am fascinated by the research happening around generational transmission of PTSD. Is what I’m teaching my kids helpful to them or not? I don’t know yet. We know that many layers of trauma happen because people are enculturated to go look for that trauma. I was taught to go find rapists. Taught. By my father and brothers and sister. My sister hunted for boyfriends by being pen pals with convicts. She did this many times. I’m dead fucking serious.

Siblings may have more effect than parents on behavior. Sissy, you taught me well. I don’t smoke. I don’t chew gum because you hated it. And I think it isn’t ok to tell men no for sex. Thanks for all the lessons.

That’s not true. I think it is now not only ok but mandatory that I tell men no for sex. But it isn’t because of my preferences or beliefs, my cunt is off-limits. It is already on contract with another guy. Sorry.

Awkward.

I ate half a meat pie yesterday. I’m not sorry. Even though it has gluten and dairy it was glorious. I dream about those pies. I love them so much. Calli hated the kind she ordered but she loved the kind I ordered and I equally love them all so I was happy in any case.

I was a big sucker. There is a downfall to going places with one child. The requests for stuff are halved and they sound so much more reasonable… Calli got a pretty pink bonnet that matched the Victorian dress she had on (that she will probably be able to wear for another year and which has a matching dress a size up that she will wear for two or three years after that… the hat wasn’t a bad buy) and a dress. The dress wasn’t necessary. But it was a really pretty hand-smocked Christmas dress. And it was less than half the cost of the other dresses she wanted. But it’s an every day play dress that she will really wear. And it’s SO LONG that her sister can borrow it this year (and maybe next year) and Calli will wear it for three or four years. See my defensiveness, it is mighty. I refused to buy another frou frou dress up dress. But a pretty little play dress that you can wear almost daily in the Christmas season that has fun little peppermint sticks? Ok. I’m that kind of sucker.

They got other new dresses from Grandma the day before. I’m willing to bet that part of my defensiveness is I know they don’t “need” this sort of thing from me. They truly do not need more forking clothes. (Especially not Calli. Anything itchy has already been shoved on her half of the closet so she has all the 5/6/7 dresses and she wears them interchangeably; size is a myth.)

Is it terrible that I am deeply grateful that I got daughters who are so into dresses? I liked dresses and hated pants. Well, I hated jeans. Leggings are fine to wear under your dresses. My kids dress exactly how I would have killed to dress as a child. I didn’t have a wardrobe full of beautiful clothes. I have pangs that my children wouldn’t if it weren’t for Noah’s talented mother.

My kids really have outstanding clothes. Noah’s mom hand-makes some really beautiful stuff. I am getting better at sending thank you notes just because year after year of largesse is making a dent in my hostility and hatred. I really appreciate the clothes.

Sometimes, in a weird way, I sort of think of them as presents to the little girl I was. I wanted to be pretty the way Shanna is. I never was. I wanted to be pretty the way Calli is–I never was. I was poor. I was dirty. I was erratic and weird and inappropriately sexualized. I wasn’t just pretty. I was attractive sometimes, but in ways no child really should be.

My kids are innocent in a way I didn’t know existed when I was a child. If I had met someone like them I would have done anything in my power to shatter the privileged fucking bubble they lived in.

It was nice seeing people yesterday. Many commented that it was “so good to see me” “I know it is hard for you to make it out–I’m so happy for you”. I was told that people miss me.

I’m sitting right here. You don’t have to miss me. You just have to come see me. But that’s effort.

What you miss is the energy I put into making your hobby more fun. It was never really my hobby. I just wanted to stand near you. I don’t care about doing those things you do with all of your time. And if I have to care about those things to be part of your life then I won’t be part of your life.

I am selfish. The older I get the more and more selfish I become. I am not good at fading into a system and becoming one of the worker bees. I don’t believe that the system is worthy of support.

One friend asked why I don’t bring the kids and work at Dickens. I said, “You mean why don’t I come work very long hours for no pay while someone expects me to cough up lots of time and money for elaborate costumes that I will be criticized if I don’t spend enough time and money to decorate?” He said, “You sound bitter.” I said, “Only about five people remember that I worked at Fezzi’s despite their impassioned “Once a Fezziwigger Always a Fezziwigger” and they all knew me before I worked there. If they honestly told people, “We won’t remember you unless you work here 10+ years and make it to management” I wouldn’t be bitter.”

Expectations, baby.

I put in my time in the bdsm scene. I understand that people don’t get instant standing in communities. I’m not trying to be a high status person in every community I walk near. But I want to be acknowledged as a community member. Or I’m going to think of myself as not part of the community and I’ll be bitter.

My bitterness isn’t the fault of anyone currently dealing with me. Not really. My family picked rapists over me. Even dead rapists. Loyalty to dead rapists is way more important than me. My bitterness creeps into other parts of my life. I’m not that important.

I certainly understand that communities can’t pathologically hold on to every dilettante who comes along. I get it. But can we get more honest advertising?

I actually feel like that is something that the lady who runs the home school group does really well at. Even though I’m flakey and there are gaps in my attendance–she notices when I come back and says my presence was notably gone and that was sad.

Why don’t I respond to that with hostility the same way I respond to Dickens Fair with hostility.

Ahh! No one in the home school group has raped me. So being there is inherently more comfortable and safe. People who are pissy about me not working Dickens Fair are telling me that my discomfort working with a rapist is something I should just get over so they can have their fun. Different.

I wrote till everyone woke up and Noah and I had a long fierce discussion of the merits of Paul Graham’s essays and it’s time for breakfast.

Pam was here this morning and she wanted to be helpful. She’s a kind soul and she likes being helpful. We ran into a problem I have in a lot of settings. I don’t know if this will turn into a real post or just some blathering.

The older I get the more I feel… not tenuous about my connection to language but I recognize my failures more immediately and they feel bigger than they used to feel. If I start a sentence and realize mid-way that it won’t be effective then I start feeling paranoia, anxiety, distress and my ability to talk in a coherent way rapidly plummets.

Pam asked me, “But don’t you like telling people how to do things?” I do! I love love love having my bossy pants on. But I like having my bossy pants on when I have had time to sit and think and prepare and get my ducks in a row before the person-who-needs-bossing is present.

I feel my failures to communicate well a lot more than I used to. I feel ashamed of myself and stupid and like a failure. I used to think that other people were stupid and they just couldn’t understand. Now I think that I have failed to communicate because I am too stupid. Then I get really mad. Then my tone of voice goes to shit.

It doesn’t work the same way with kids and I’m trying to figure out why. I suspect that part of it is–I don’t bother trying to “save face” with kids. If I can’t do something they won’t get mad at me–they can’t do it either. If I can’t find the right words to explain something they aren’t going to get mad, they don’t know the words either.

I love children more with every year that goes by.

So today I was trying to make a gluten free, dairy free apple pie. To the best of my knowledge I have only made one or two pies before and I don’t make crust. I buy crust. Today I had to make crust. And I can’t use canned fillings right now so I had to do the whole fucker from scratch.

I am not good at cooking. It takes a disproportionately high percentage of my brain to do it right and that causes me distress. It means I have to turn off many tracks I’m normally running. It makes me feel trapped and stupid and like I can’t do fucking anything right. Objectively I mostly understand that it is false–I make good things at least sometimes and passable stuff most of the time. But this is the crazy-thinking I’m talking about.

Cooking is hard for me for no reason I can really pin down. Yeah I grew up in poverty not seeing cooking, but a lot of things are in that camp and I don’t scream at people who talk to me while I do those other things.

Cooking takes so much thinking for me. I read and reread the recipe many dozens of times and I still do something wrong, basically every time. I’m a lazy bastard and I skim most things and it gets me through life. Cooking proves that my reading skills aren’t what I think they are. That hurts.

Luckily Noah is willing to do most of the cooking.

With kids I say, “I can guide your hand through the process I’m using but I can’t explain it. You have to feel it.” With adults I don’t want to fucking touch them and I can’t find the words and I feel so upset with myself.

Also: it is weird to me when and where and why I accept touch from people. There are people I grow to feel close to and I generally like hugging them. The people who really prove they love me are people who walk up to me and ask for a hug. That’s a big fucking deal. YAY FOR LETTING ME HAVE PERMISSION TO DECIDE WHO TOUCHES ME!!!!!

But I get into a lot of situations where people think it is totally kosher to just start touching me. Most of the time this happens with women of color. I think I have more hostility with white women and they notice and don’t lean in without solicitation. But I’m touched just about every week by a woman of color. Often they hug me, without asking. I freeze, try to consciously insure that I don’t hurt them, and try to breathe deeply. It is a shock every time even though it happens all the god damn time. It is rarely men but it does happen once in a while.

Usually this happens after a conversation that causes the person to feel emotionally close to me. They want to touch me to cement that bond. I feel like they don’t fucking know me at all and why in the fuck are you touching me? Very rarely do I respond with hostility any more. Sometimes I pull back, but I try to do it without comment. Strained smile sort of thing. More often I make the conscious decision to give them a hug because clearly they need one even though I don’t want to be hugged.

I’m not a martyr. But I do think that most people in the world have a touch deficit they don’t know what to do with. I also feel like I am very blessed to get a surfeit of touch in my life from people who love me more than life itself so I can pass some along. I needed hugs badly in my childhood and I didn’t get them. I understand why people would interpret my verbal sharing as a sign of bonding. I understand why people want to hug when they feel bonding.

But man this shit is complicated.

I feel like having people show up and “want to help” is sort of similar to how I treat the touching. People want to help because they want to feel helpful and they usually need a lot of direction and assistance and basically the make the work harder.

I would like to take this moment to stop and say that there are big exceptions to this problem. And when I run into genuinely competent people I tend to want to fall at their feet and worship them. When I remodeled my garage I had help from such friends. It was one of the most wonderful projects I’ve ever done. At the time I cried and angsted and fussed like I do. In retrospect what I remember is that a whole bunch of people showed up and said, “Tell me where you want me” and with the barest guidance they produced results that were often better than what I could have described. Friends with many years experience doing exactly that type of work showed up. It was like having a bunch of mentors show up at my house to guide me through the process. That feels like magic. Usually this isn’t how it works.

I don’t think that most of my friends are incompetent. I feel like most of my friends are smart enough to notice that I am picky as fuck and I have a habit of flying off the handle when people do things in a way that doesn’t follow my weird, hard to explain preferences.

Jesus fuck, why do you people spend time with me?

A few blessed times in my life friends with expert knowledge have told me, “You have ____ problem and it falls into my area. I’ll be at your house on Saturday to fix it because it is bugging me.” Err, that’s why I clean my friends houses. Exactly why. Because it bugs me. Well, sorta. It bugs me to sit in a mess and not do anything. I have horrible anxiety if I sit idle in a messy room. There is clearly work to be done. Get off your ass. (To balance the equation–I almost never dust and a lot of my house gets dirty and I don’t care that much. Good thing Noah notices filth! I notice clutter.)

I don’t know how to explain quickly, when I feel anxious, “It is nice of you to offer help but explaining how to help would take me approximately 2.5 times as much work as doing it myself so just go away.”

Part of it should probably include, “I am reading the directions and following them. I am at step #. If you can just keep going from there on the directions you can help. If you need help or instruction then no.”

I don’t know how to talk to people very well. I am such an asshole.

I take comfort when Pam tells me she comes over here because people are way more nice than at her house. It makes me feel like I might be over-stating how bad I am. She says that even though she is my screaming-at-person-of-the-month. God I’m sorry.

One of the moms in the home schooling group is super woo woo and she drove to my house yesterday with woo medicine for me. Because she was really worried about me at the park. The only “permission” she really asked for was my address and to know when I might be home so she could hug me at the same time.

I like that and I don’t. It is very hard for me to let people love me or help me. I want to be so mean. I want to drive them away before I get attached and they leave anyway. At the same time, I am not doing well health wise. It was really kind of her. She believes  in her woo and she wants to share it with me. It won’t hurt me.

I’m taking the pills and smelling the oils and all the shit. I should go outside and do the moxa acupuncture thing too. All the woo!

But you know what? Despite my mouth still hurting I feel a bit better today. I actually suspect the Pedialyte is partially to credit with me feeling better. I feel noticeably better after each liter I drink. I feel like a wilted plant that gets water. I go from feeling weak and nearly unable to stand to feeling like I could do something–nothing ambitious like exercise, but something.

And I had diarrhea long enough to give a great stool sample to Kaiser and my bowels have mostly resettled. The chick I saw on Tuesday was really adamant that I have to keep dairy and wheat out of my diet for three months. I am mostly willing to follow this. I am adding raw milk to my tea because the other faux milks taste gross in the tea (I’ve tried) and the whole tea-drinking-ritual is a big part of my self-care. No, herbal tea doesn’t cut it. I drink decaf Earl Grey and that’s that. (Ok, I like peppermint too. But it’s not a great breakfast tea.) But I feel like if I’m drinking 2ish ounces of raw milk every few days that is as down-to-little/nothing as I can live with for many months. I think I can settle into gluten and dairy free if eggs and corn are reintroduced. They have been. No diarrhea so I’m going to take eggs off the no list. I’ve started eating them again with a vengeance (I missed eggs.)

You know…. I introduced a much broader diet that is still tightly controlled for metrics like organic/pasture raised/raw and I feel a lot better than I did when we were eating out more and I was eating lots of dairy and wheat. But I still don’t know for sure if either of them are causing the problems because clearly I can have at least some of both and poop because it has been happening.

Stress is pretty clearly the biggest problem.

That is part of why I’m saying “I’m keeping black tea with raw milk” because I really do that as self care. I think about Jenny and Sarah and Laura and Denise and Mo and Lisa and Julie and Julia and Marisa and Angela and Paula and Erin and and and and…. Drinking tea is when I stop and do my emotional check in with women I love. Who I think about rotates through an enormous list. I could not begin to name them all here. I am very blessed to have lots of women in my life who deserve a lot of love. And I’ve tried it with milk substitutes and I spend the whole time I’m drinking thinking poisonous thoughts about how gross the shit in my mouth is. It is not self care.

I’m ok with giving up cutting, promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, and junk food. I want to keep my fucking tea with milk. God fucking damnit to hell. I want to sit and think about the women I love. It is better than meditating.

But back to help. I am not good at accepting help. I want help. I need help. But I suck at accepting it. I’m not nice. I’m not a good person to help. It probably seems like a waste of time because I’m not very grateful. My experience is that the most needful people are the least grateful. They fucking hate you for helping them. It is like you insulted them. People who don’t NEED the help can be very grateful. Life kind of sucks.

I am going to interview some babysitters tomorrow. Oh man. I’m nervous. I’m not very good at this sort of thing. Being upper middle class (you know… having employees…) is a whole skill set I didn’t grow up with.

I don’t know how to be the person I’m growing up to be. I’m not gracious. I want to say motherfucker in almost every sentence but I’m trying hard to cuss less because Shanna lecturing me is getting really fucking annoying. I have not been willing to care about anyone else’s feelings on this matter. Shanna is a god damn master manipulator. “Mom! I’m going to get in trouble if I say that and if you keep SAYING IT then I THINK ABOUT IT and I’m going to SAY IT. STOP.”

That kid.

See why I can’t give up the tea right now? There are limits. I’m not even supposed to cuss as I walk around my house any more.

There are huge down sides to having children who think they are allowed to be as bossy as an adult. And yet her harping on me is going to be good for me in the long run. It was a real problem that I couldn’t control my swearing when I was teaching. I swore a lot. Eventually I was going to get in trouble. I played R rated music in class about incestuous rape and murder. (It was a unit on tragedy. One kid said that there were no modern tragedies–that the genre was older. Another kid came in after school and played me this song and said “Hey Archer–give it a serious listen. Don’t get distracted by the swearing. Tragedy isn’t dead.” So I played it for the rest of my students as a modern example of the genre and assigned them all writing assignments about the feelings they had after hearing that song. It was *intense*. One mom called in to ask what in the hell I was doing and I explained in detail. She sounded… shocked… but totally went with it when I was done tying it in to Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare and Freud and… I can argue well sometimes.)

I should stop typing and go serve pie. Gluten and dairy free pie. Mmmmm. (I have to say: Noah did great with a gluten and dairy free meal. And now we have enough leftovers for a week. And I can eat all of it.)

 

I am apprehensive about being assigned a case manager. My instinct is to treat it like a punishment and recoil with a hiss. I’m so rational. But I can instead choose to find gratitude. This is an Opportunity. And since I am frantically thinking about this process instead of winding down for sleep, I will record my thoughts. Maybe parts of this will be useful to recycle for emails with new person.

Dear So And So (because)

Hello! I am excited for this chance to work with you. I do hope you are a person who likes puzzles because I’m kind of a challenge. As I’m sure you know, mental and physical health are intrinsically linked. All of the work of treating my physical health is held up by the work of treating my mental health. Before I get into either my physical or my mental health issues (don’t worry–I’ll get there) I feel it is important to introduce myself a little.

I like to set people up for success. I am quirky and it is hard to guess what things I am particular about and thus I volunteer more information than perhaps people might want to hear. I’m usually good at hearing boundaries like “I’ve heard enough on this topic, thanks” but unfortunately as a medical provider that is sticky. If you don’t let me finish on a topic (yes, it is annoying that I’m long-winded) you may not get all the necessary details. Sometimes they are at the end of a long schpeal.

I take a lot of patience to deal with. I am mercurial and moody and because you will almost entirely be dealing with me in a hospital setting I will frequently appear very angry. Unless we have just had a specific negative interaction the anger isn’t about you. I have a long and storied history with medical treatment. My family has had a lot of medical issues and I have spent many years of my life unhappily in hospitals. I am also in a lot of pain and very frustrated. I’m not angry because of you. I am angry when I’m in hospitals. I chose home birth partially for this reason. It was easier to change the setting than my attitude.

I know that this anger makes it hard for doctors to talk to me. I try to manage my feelings. I try to monitor my tone of voice and my words but they get away from me. I am suppressing a lot. I promise. This complicates health care a great deal.

As a case manager it is useful for you to know that I have a major chip on my shoulder about “people in authority” not caring about me. I fell through every crack in the system when I was a child. I had a horrifying life and no one helped and I’m bitter. I’m sorry that this will mean that I don’t give you as much patience as you deserve at first. It is very hard for me to build trust. If you are interested in the Readers Digest version of my list of traumas I can send you the one page sheet I give to new therapists. Approximately one sentence describing the major traumas that happened every year from two through twenty-five.  I don’t need to get into it here.

Working with systems is very hard for me. I have not traditionally been very successful in them. I have complex, unusual needs and it is very hard for me to get the awkward help I need. I look so very functional and mental illness is funny and invisible and so hard to treat.

I am particular about being both highly rigid and accommodating. What I mean by that (I’ll take punctuality as one example but there are many) is I can be very rigid about what I hear. “I’ll call you tomorrow” that doesn’t result in a phone call feels like a deliberate slight. A stab in the back. A betrayal. (I am… somewhat prone to the dramatic. Better to warn you.) However if you know that you are someone who is often running late you can say to me, “Hey! We have an appointment at x’o’clock. I frequently run up to an hour late. That is the reality of the kind of job I have. Bring a book and prepare to enjoy your lovely down time in the waiting room.” I will nod and say: “Cool.” And it will be totally ok. Even though usually I get kind of nutty when people are more than about twenty minutes late. If you set my expectations appropriately I am easily managed.

Really that is the key to successfully working with me. Set my expectations appropriately and I will think you are better than cheese on toast. Which sounds really good now that a doctor told me to cut gluten and dairy for a minimum of three months. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. (Obviously I will be editing before I send to a real professional. I’m crazy but I’m not that crazy.)

Physical health (in no particular order):

• digestion problems
• joint pain that has been sporadic, perhaps linked to PMDD/period?
• headaches
• nutrition support–this is *not* something where a generic group class would be even vaguely appropriate. I need someone to work with me on my food issues and they are weird.

Mostly (As my blood work and other work ups will tell you) I’m healthy. But I’m in pain. Pain that is sometimes severe enough to make it hard for me to engage in my normal life. Why?

Then of course we get into the layered mental health. Also in no particular order:

• I have PTSD
• I have GAD
• I have been diagnosed with depression at various points. It is not a label my current therapist feels is an over riding feature of my presentation so I’m including it partially for background notes.
• I have been diagnosed as bipolar, but this is again disputed. Some doctors claim my issues are all chemical. Some doctors look at the calendar and notice Hey! Every freak out is timed right next to a major trauma anniversary! 
• I deal with suicidal ideation. NOTE: I SAID IDEATION. I DID NOT SAY I AM CURRENTLY SUICIDAL AND FOR THE LOVE OF CHRISTMAS DO NOT FREAK OUT. Sorry for the shouting. Man this is a hard one to deal with. It is hard being me. People who say, “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem” can spend a decade or so in my life before they speak. My problems aren’t temporary. My problems are big and ongoing.
• That said! I am completely aware that I am living in the golden era of my life. I am more loved now than I have ever been or than I will be in the future. My kids will never like me this much again. Ha. Mental illness doesn’t care that my life is kind of awesome right now. It just tells me that I should be sad and scared and I should die because I am bad.
• I have a therapist. She is an incest specialist. She is totally happy to talk to you about my treatment if you are interested in her contact information. I hunt high and low for therapists. I need people who are used to dealing with some of my specific brand of broken.
• I am not particularly interested in trying psych medications at this time. I have tried in the past with great ill effects and little to no positive effect. I have a delicate balance in my life. I am not going to upset the cart to make Kaiser feel better about getting me on drugs. Thanks!
• I have a medical marijuana card. I recognize that Kaiser doesn’t do that sort of thing. Whatever. That’s fine. Could you please at least be polite about the fact that I started using pot when I was 27 and using it for medical reasons? I mean, if I had started self-medicating at 16 you should still be polite to me but I tried all of the meds you want to offer me first (and all of the other doctors at Kaiser should be polite too… and they aren’t..). I’m going to yank out a big fat-ass was of privilege mother-fucker. (Yes I will edit.)
• Even if there is “Some New Med” I’m kind of done. My body doesn’t like new hormones, thanks.

Leading me into: can I please, please, pretty please work with a nutritionist who cares about holistic health? Do such people work at Kaiser?

I understand that “gut health is the key to mental health” and I’m aware that seratonin is produced in the gut and it is common to get depressed when you have diarrhea (which I’ve had for most of my life) when your seratonin is flushed out of your body without being absorbed. Awesome, possum.

Ok. I’m starting to nod off.

My emotions are going up and down and up and down and up and…

I’ve been basing my elimination diet restrictions around things I find on the internet. Because that is at least more information than I have previously been able to get from doctors. This is very frustrating because every body has a unique set of needs and limitations.

I’ve been eating tons of bananas and eschewing apples because the internet told me to. Today the woo-doctor told me I’m allergic to bananas and not to apples. Cue image of me beating my head on the floor.

I stopped eating pecans because the internet said that was probably my problem and I kept the peanut butter because the internet said it couldn’t be causing my issues.

Woo-doctor says that pecans are fine and peanuts are a problem.

I just… Oh my god this is so visceral and primal and hard. Every food feels like poison.

Today he said I react to tomatoes even though he said I didn’t last time. I had violent diarrhea after eating the tomato recently. Like whoa. I have had a spectacular amount of diarrhea in my life. This made me go whoa.

Food is just so god damn hard.

At this point I have been “treated” for all of the food allergies he detected. As of this morning… I still have diarrhea. He hasn’t finished treating all of my environmental factors. That will take at least one more, maybe three more visits. I’m feeling sad that I’m this far into treatment and it still hurts.

I see the GI department at Kaiser next Monday. I am not anticipating meeting a doctor who will give a shit (ha ha ha). I’d be willing to put a lot of money on the idea that I will leave crying with no help. On Wednesday I will have a broken tooth repaired. At least I have full confidence that I have A medical professional (singular) in my life who is fully worth what I pay for his time.

I’m feeling entitled and pissy. How can I spend THIS MUCH MONEY AND TIME in order to get… no relief of pain.

Because that’s how it fucking works sometimes. But it is why I don’t give poor people shit for not solving their problems. Health problems are fucking expensive.

I have three or four emails to respond to. I have several people who have kindly extended invitations and I need to respond. I feel… ugh. I want to be around people so much my skin aches but trying to schedule and follow up feels painful.

I’m going round and round in my head with some of my feelings about my friends. I can’t stop thinking about Pam telling me that I’m too hard on my BFFs.

My BFFs aren’t treated fairly at all. They don’t walk into a relationship with someone who sees their good qualities and wants to appreciate them for those qualities. I’m a using piece of shit. I see how people complement (or not) my own issues and I pick people who have gaps in their life where I can convince myself that I’m neeeeeeeeeded. Only I’m not. And over and over I run into the brick wall that I am not necessary to anyone’s life. Period.

Oh my fucking god it hurts. I know that just about everyone is in the same boat. I don’t feel my existential whining is tonier or deeper. Same shit different day.

I don’t want my friends to love me like a friend. I want them to love me like family. I want someone to love me the way I love my children. It isn’t going to happen. And sometimes I come up against unmistakable proof that I will never have that love. Ever.

I spend weeks crying and weeping and wanting to die.

It isn’t anyone’s fault. No one owes me that. The one person who maybe might have owed me something has given me what she had to give and that’s that.

It is so hard stepping back and having to be ok with the fact that I am a friend. No one will ever love me that much. Noah comes the closest. My kids will grow up and move on with their lives more than likely. I won’t be their bestie either. Noah is it. That’s my chance.

Noah is very separate from me. We will never do the enmeshment thing I do with women. We are too different. We don’t really like spending our time in similar ways. He is not one to work with his hands beyond typing and I struggle with not holding that against him.

I really am an asshole.

It feels really bad that people do love me and I look at it and think “it’s not enough”. I don’t feel very good about myself. How fucking dare I demean the gift of love that people didn’t have to give me in the first place?

I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.

It has occurred to me that it might turn out to be true that the only person who can love me as much as I need to be loved is me. Only I’ve been taught I’m not worthy of love. So I can’t really love me very much.

Something else occurred to me. When I talk about being the lucky one for having found Noah… that isn’t because I believe that Noah is actually categorically The Best. (He isn’t.) Noah appreciates me. I don’t know very many people who are appreciated the way Noah appreciates me. I don’t know many spouses who feel that way about one another. I don’t even know many friends who really feel that way.

It is weird being appreciated. Not many people are granted that gift in this lifetime. Most people get moments of being appreciated. They get some specific incident. Noah… it’s just more broad than that. Even though I’m obnoxious, and moody as fuck, and hard to live with… he can wax rhapsodic at the barest hint that I would like him to cosset me. No matter how angrily he was arguing with me seconds before.

Noah is my biggest fan.

I don’t get the impression many people ever get to know what that feels like. And I am sorry for everyone else.

Sometimes I think that if I had found a woman to love me and enmesh with me the way I wanted but not a man… I would have exactly the same problems with my friends but the gender would reverse. I don’t throw myself against the brick wall of friendships with men any more. I just don’t.  Either a friendship with a man is easy or it doesn’t exist.

But holy shit for Crisco I bang my head on relationships with women. I want to fall in love so deep and so fast that I get dizzy.

I feel like the biggest asshole in the world because I tell these wonderful, caring, giving women that they aren’t enough. That’s what I do to my BFFs. I need so much from them and I get so angry when they just plain can’t. It is very codependent of me.

A long time ago I had this epiphany–if I have the same problem with person after person after person… it probably isn’t their fault.

Kira loves me. Sarah loves me. Anna probably still loves me. Brittney probably still loves me. Lauren feels strong affection for me. Julia probably still loves me. I say probably because I haven’t spoken to them in many years. I just… can’t imagine that feeling changing. Not from those women. Just like I will love them, Steve, my Owner, Air Force Michael until I die. Just because you are not in a current relationship with someone that doesn’t mean you stop loving them.

None of the women I weep over dislike me or are mad or are rejecting me. It comes from me. The push and the pull both.

Well I’m not waking up crying. That’s good. I feel less jittery and scared. I feel less like I need to die because I am a piece of shit. That’s probably good too.

Somehow I feel more ashamed of myself talking about the abatement of suicidality than I do about reporting it when it is happening. I don’t talk about wanting to kill myself for attention–if I did it would be a big fat fail. I don’t get extra attention when I’m suicidal and I’m pretty nasty to people who want to pop up then. I am kind of like a wounded cat. I want to crawl under the house and be left alone until I feel better.

When I feel shitty already I am going to lash out at every person who walks by whether they are trying to help me or not. Sometimes trying to help me is a big red flag. “What do you want? Why are you doing this? Clearly I need to drive you away.”

I’m very scared of being 5150’d and part of the reason I talk about being suicidal as much as I do is so I have a long track record to defend *not* going into the hospital. I am more likely to survive if I am left in the nest I carefully created for myself.

Yes, my behavior and my words can seem scary to other people. I am doing better than I did. I have improved. I *am* more healthy. No, I’m not where other non-traumatized people are… I never will be. I can never undo the past.

I feel both very bad and good about the fact that my kids understand “down” days. Today is a day when mom is going to cry a lot and not be good at answering questions–it isn’t personal and it isn’t a reflection of how much I love you. I’m trying my best and sometimes I can’t be chipper and entertaining.

I tell my kids, “People are shaped by the experiences they have. It is part of the reason I am so protective of you both. You will not have to remember back to horrible events that shape your whole life. You will be whole and able to make what you will of the future.”

Yesterday they played at the park for three hours. Mostly I could see their clothes in the pack running around at a great distance and that was all the “supervision” they had.

Well, I heard one kid yelling at Shanna for her foul mouth. He did so because his mother told him to. Shanna was bragging about how “bad ass” she is and he didn’t like that language. I didn’t hear Shanna’s response but I doubt she is going to drop the phrase because this kid yelled at her.

And it begins.

Also, the daycare lady at the gym told me she had to scold Shanna for her “attitude”. I kind of said, “Hmm” and nodded. Shanna is going to get scolded sometimes. That’s life. I sincerely doubt some random woman telling her that she must respect Miss Foxy is going to change her personality much.

My girls are not going to be quiet and demure in the ways people expect girls to be. I’m ok with that. I have never seen boys get “scolded” for “attitude” the same way I see girls get reprimanded. I’m sure it does happen. My vision is not omnipresent or anything. But I’ve seen it happen to an awful lot of girls. You aren’t being respectful (meaning quiet) enough.

What-fucking-ever.

Well, if Shanna is so rude that she gets banned from daycare then she will learn a lesson. Otherwise I don’t feel a need to get involved or care.

I love you. I think it is ok that you have lots of attitude. Noah has been having trouble with Shanna’s attitude lately too. Mostly because of a specific phrase that she picked up from me. So I don’t give her shit for it. She likes to respond to questions/orders with “Seriously?” just like her mama. I respond in exactly the same tone without any rancor. I don’t mind or find it problematic.

My kids respect me. I’m not worried about them using a tone of voice that “doesn’t sound respectful enough”. I have always thought that was a petty need to control.

Which is to say… I don’t flip out when they are disrespectful in the ways I model and I have other disrespect triggers. *cough* Like a proper hypocrite.

I want forceful, aggressive children who can assert themselves in just about any situation. I want bossy girls.

I tell them all the time, “Who is my wonderful bossy little plan-having girl?” They beam.

My girls believe that “being bossy” is synonymous with “having a plan” and that is fucking awesome. Have a plan. Tell people how to do things. That’s a positive trait. It will serve you well throughout your life.

And it is time to go.

The fellow who runs the myPTSD website has come up with some good analogies for stress. Simple, visual reminders that once you have the disorder you permanently (or until you do massive amount of work to retrain) just operate at a “higher” stress level than average. He uses cups to illustrate how with PTSD your cup is always somewhat full even when nothing has happened to you today. You have less ability to absorb stress. Stress is such a stupid word. What does it even mean?

I’m having a hard time feeling like a self-contained unit. I feel permeable. I feel… thin. I feel scared. I feel like other peoples opinions just fucking matter too much.

So this year I set the date I wanted for a Christmas cookie exchange. There may only be two other women there doing it with me because my desired planning conflicts with the desires of most of the other folks I invited because they are all off doing a group thing together. That I’m not involved with.

Sometimes I’m good at feeling like people living their lives has nothing to do with me. Sometimes I’m good at knowing that a snippy comment from a friend is about *their* stress cup and not me and sometimes… not so much.

Sometimes I feel torn down and stomped on and spit on. Even though… no one did any such thing. The feeling is coming from me and it is really hard to have this feeling around people and keep it clear in my head that it isn’t about them. They aren’t the reason I feel this way.

I’m not sad because my friend made a bad joke about not loving me. I’m sad because my mother and father didn’t love me. My brothers and sister do not love me. If they do love me, they “don’t love me enough” to not hurt me.

Life is very complicated.

I get very enmeshed with my BFFs and I’m bossy and controlling in ways I shouldn’t be. Because it is one of the longest-ago-examples and because she will probably never speak to me again it is easiest to use Anna as an example. She isn’t the only one. I’m not going to give all the details (I have a small amount of tact) but I’ll say that she came from a problematic family. Not like mine–fucked up in their own special little way. Every single thing that I judged (then and now, really) as “wrong” or “fucked up” can be explained as a difference in what we have been socialized to accept.

With the 20/20 of hindsight… I’m very certain I was openly contemptuous of things I should not have been judging. I would yell at Anna about some of the interactions I witnessed. I swore at her that she needed to stand up for herself or she was pathetic. I was probably as abusive as her parents. I love Anna. Very much. I understand why she ended contact with me. I was not capable of hearing about the problems in her life without becoming so distressed that I reacted as if *I* was trapped in that horrible situation. I was never able to step back and objectively feel like it “wasn’t my problem”. It felt like my problem. Her family engaged in a wide variety of behaviors that…. Ok I can’t say more. She and her parents are semi-functional people.

What does “functional” mean? It is one of the things I focus on in raising my kids. How do I turn them into functional people. One of my relatives worked at a movie theatre for a few years starting at 18. He quit at 20 because he didn’t feel “respected” enough and he hadn’t been moved into management. He somehow destroyed one of the super expensive pop corn machines by fucking around. No shit they haven’t promoted you yet. But he was completely indignant. And proceeded to not work for years and mooch money off his much younger sister who worked at In-n-Out.

I want my kids to be able to support themselves without effectively stealing from people who don’t have enough for themselves. I think that being poor is something that happens. I think that being a house wife when you are poor is not the same thing as taking money from a sibling with an after-school fast food job. If one or both of my daughters married someone who worked with his hands and didn’t earn a lot of money I would try to encourage my daughters to figure out how to supplement their income even if they wanted to be housewives. But I’m going to encourage my daughters to prepare for a future of working no matter what.

I have written two books in the last few years on top of many other large projects. (I have entirely fallen into a spiral of self hate and I have not submitted books for publication.) My children think of me as “working”. They don’t think “stay at home” is the same as “does nothing”. That is not part of their world. They do not live in an environment where the work I do is devalued–it is seen as important and something that someone  has to do and you can’t pay someone to really care about the same exact things as you. Even if I put my kids in the best hippy dippy unschooling-not-formal-curriculum private school in the world I couldn’t pay their teachers enough to care about them as much as I do.

Yes, some of those teachers would be better educated on a variety of topics about which I’m entire ignorant. That gap has been more obvious to me lately.

I don’t know everything. I don’t know what is right for everyone. I know that Noah and I both have family backgrounds that are very devoid of love. If you hear the stories about our parents’ childhoods and our grandparents’ childhoods…. no wonder they were miserable assholes. They were miserable. And they were totally assholes. We’ve got a long line of bullies and violent people behind us.

My kids are going to need an inordinate amount of love. Generational trauma leaves effects that are detectable on brain studies. DNA is altered from severe trauma. Tendencies towards problematic parts of your DNA are switched on. Just about the only thing that any science can find that really solves this problem is a ridiculous, over-whelming amount of love. More love than “normal” people need.

I can’t pay someone else to love my kids as much as me. It just isn’t possible. I am deeply grateful for the privilege that allows me to be with them day after day, even as I crave more time away from them like a heroin addict wants a needle.

But I can carefully find people who come close. I can make specific, careful choices about how and when and where I make the decision to leave them with someone else even though they won’t be loved for a while. Because I am privileged.

It has occurred to me more than once that when I travel I should consciously prefer states with my gym membership. 2 hours a day of workout time with a baby-sitting system I feel comfortable with. Oh man that just sounds fucking awesome to balance all the sitting in the car. I’m having thoughts.

But appearing at least moderately stable is important for the kids. When I’m having bad periods (like I am) I talk to the kids about it. They feel free to ask me questions.

“Why are you crying?”

“Because I am sad.”

“Why are you sad?”

“I’m thinking about things that happened long before you when my life wasn’t wonderful like it is now. Sometimes it is hard because I feel like I am 2 and 12 and 22 and 32 and 33 and 42 and 52 and 62 and 72 all at once and all of the things I want to have done crowd in my head with all of the things I have done and they mix up with things that have been done to me and sometimes I feel sad. When you feel sad, it is a good idea to cry. That lets the emotion out of your body so you don’t have to hold on to it for a long time.”

“Oh. Should I hug you?”

“You don’t have to hug me just because I am feeling sad. But if you want a hug it is ok to ask me for a hug even when I’m sad.”

“May I have a hug?”

“Yes.”

Calli is the one I worry about. Calli is the one who is going to need to have practice with boundaries 1,000 times with someone who is willing to call the plays standing there. Her emotions are so big and it is so hard for her not to hurt other people when she is angry. She wants to hit. She hasn’t hit in a while. I’m very proud of her. Someday I will think back and laugh at myself for worrying so much about a transient behavior problem when she was three that she outgrew by four. But I think she’s going to need more direct work on managing social interactions. She is less naturally inclined in that direction.

I’m more or less a one on one therapist she has to live with. Man that has to suck. But they are allowed to tell me, “I did not ask for feedback on this topic” and I usually back off. Usually with a quick “Yes, ma’am.”

That’s why my kids say “Yes ma’am” to me. I say it to them when they ask for just about anything. Modeling works.

Wendy, I want to not yell because if I don’t think it is ok for someones boss to yell at them… why is it more ok to yell at my kids? There doesn’t always have to be punishment. Sometimes a punishment doesn’t have to be manufactured in the form of a headache from being screamed at. Me being an asshole won’t convince them that I am right.

I need to stop yelling. I’m thinking about painting it on the wall. I found a pinterest quote I like. “There should be no yelling in the home, unless there is a fire.” David McKay, apparently.

Yes Wendy, I’m already working on a lot of things. Maybe I should work on fewer things for a few weeks and instead stay home and work on not yelling.

I don’t want to destroy any relationships this year. I don’t think anyone has done anything worthy of punishment. I just am out of spoons. I don’t have much on the calendar for November or December other than running and home school events. I consider those something I have to do to check my attendance card for “socializing” the children. It is funny feeling collegial with them. It is lower pressure than “friends” socializing. (Which isn’t to say that no one there is a friend. But the people who are friends are people I have spent one on one time with talking in a non-group setting. You know, like friends.)

I’m sad. And it isn’t anyone’s fault. I scheduled the open house to coincide with my birth mother’s birthday and my leather mother’s birthday. Complicated. I didn’t do it because of that coincidence. I mostly did it because it is my lowest mileage weekend in a seven week block and I would prefer to be all peppy and such. But coincidence.

I am not done with Noah’s stuff for Christmas. I need to do that. I want November and December to be mostly no shopping. Just the basics of staples. If I’m having trouble with food… I just don’t have the spoons to do much more eating out plus running plus paying attention to the kids…

And now they say I’m done.

 

Holy Irritation, Batman! Irritated. Like, crawl the walls and stab people irritated. My kids are jumping up and down on every hot button I have.

I went away. Kids need to be irritating to people who leave because they want to see if the person who left did it because the kids aren’t loved. I get it. It’s normal and developmental and all that. OH MY GOD.

Last night Calli got to have her FIRST EVER experience of going out with allowance money to buy things she wanted to buy. My baby is growing up. She picked out a Rainbow Dash wallet (got to have somewhere to keep your money) and a present for her friend. I’m not saying what the present is because the mom reads here. Suffice to say: it is very kid appropriate. Calli will probably come visit and want to borrow it. Oy.

I’m having very mixed feelings about a way that I’m disciplining Shanna. I have rules about taking food out of the refrigerator without asking. If you ask 9/10 times the answer is yes. Sometimes I’m saving something for a particular meal and I really don’t want you to take it. But, ASK. Shanna… Shanna really thinks it is ridiculous that she isn’t allowed to do anything she wants at any moment. So when she got into the fridge yesterday I said, “Ok you just gave up dessert for the weekend.” I’m having second thoughts. I *really* am not sure it is right to punish with food at all. Plus, we are going to a birthday party. I feel like a giant asshole.

But holy hell the girl doesn’t take me seriously. Maybe I am being inappropriately controlling. I am open to that argument. Maybe I should just relax about the food stuff…. but then they would never eat real food and I would never be able to complete a meal because pieces would be gone. Never the raw meat or veggies. I would live on meat and veggies and they would eat all the cheese and yogurt when I wasn’t available. Then they would never ever sit down to a meal with me.

I kinda tried seeing if it would work better for a few days once. My kids are too little. Self control they do not have. And when they aren’t hungry they just can’t sit down to have the pretense of a meal.

So I feel like a giant asshole. I told Shanna that if she is respectful about turning down the dessert at the birthday party today I would probably relent for Sunday. I told her, “If you cry and make the mom feel bad for you… forget Sunday. No way. You earned this. I’ve talked to you about the fridge 47,839 times. If you are polite, I will not be a jerk about the whole weekend. I know it is hard to remember things.” I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve punished infractions with regards to the fridge. Well, I’ve yelled before. They’ve probably had time out. But I don’t think I have withdrawn privileges before. That feels more like a punishment.

And I never ever feel good about taking dessert away. I believe that we live in a culture that is super saturated with sugar. I try to limit how much my family gets because it isn’t good for us, but we have a fairly high sugar diet. My limits are higher than some people allow in the first place by a huge margin. Sometimes I will say, “Because we went to ___ and there was a river of sugar we are skipping after dinner dessert tomorrow” but that is as far as I try to go with withholding dessert. It’s a trade more than a withholding.

I feel really uncomfortable with power struggles over sugar. And yet I believe it is a highly addictive substance that my species has proven issues with and these are my kids and it is my job to take care of them. Complicated feelings.

At some point in your life you need to deal with the fact that there are arbitrary rules sometimes. My refrigerator rules are close to arbitrary. I could afford to replace food at whatever rate they consumed it. But man, when do I get to say, “You have to respect what I say at least a little.”

If I punish them for not respecting me I’m not exactly earning respect, now am I? Only I kind of am. If I say something a few thousand times and never back it up I’m teaching them that I don’t really mean it. If I back it up then they do believe me when I say things. Shanna does express appreciation for the fact that she knows I really mean what I say. I don’t bluff. I don’t try to stretch my reach slightly beyond where I can actually reach. I have my boundaries and they are god damn brick walls with sentries on top.

I won’t know if I’m doing the right thing until it is far too late to course correct. I have horrifying anxiety and guilt around punishing my kids. It seems like such a bad idea. This is why I don’t hit. I’m never sure I’m in the right. You shouldn’t hit people unless you are 150% sure it is necessary. With my kids I never have more than a 10% sure impulse because I KNOW hitting isn’t the answer.

But taking dessert away… that is a lot more muddy. I’m not *hurting* her. I’m not saying she can never have it again. I’m saying, “you took a sugary thing out of the fridge without permission, fine. You traded that for your next dessert. Sucks for you that it was going to be at a birthday party.”

I worry about my need for control. Worry. Worry. Worry. But I worry a lot more about parents who abdicate control over their children. My kids need me. They are not yet able to care for themselves or make decisions about their best interests. They just don’t have the full scope of information yet. I don’t control everything. I fear I try to control too much. Which is hilarious considering that I control a very small fraction of how much most parents control.

My kids have an amount of freedom nearly unheard of in their generation. And I feel guilty for trying to control them too much. Irony.

We are still going to the birthday party. We still went to the mall and had fun shopping. We will still have a wonderful time at a birthday party. And Shanna will have the opportunity to practice her self control. It is a very hard skill. I get it. I have to practice too. It is really hard. I told her, “Next time you are tempted you will be more likely to think about the potential consequences. Is it really so hard to come and say, ‘Mom, can I get ___ out of the fridge?'”

I say yes 9/10 times. I try so hard to say yes. It is a serious, conscious priority in our relationship. But when there is a boundary and you ignore it… watch out.

It probably doesn’t help that there has been an argument raging on my PTSD support site since before I left for my birthday. One dude asked those of us who were habitually abused as children if any of us feel we have gone on to be more successful than our abusers. Of course this means lots of people who don’t feel successful have been yelling at us for days that we are mean and saying bad things about them for not doing… something. This morning I snapped and said it isn’t much of a support site if I am never allowed to talk about the things I’m proud of and I can only talk about what a worthless whore I feel like.

I’m sorry you feel so broken you can’t do exactly the same things I can do. If I try I can hold the bar of “success” such that I never ever ever appear to hit it. I totally can do that. I feel like life has actually landed me in a slightly more successful than average position (college degrees aren’t held by more than 50% of the population, I’m not struggling financially in a time when most of my generation can’t get a toe hold) but I still have a lot of issues.

I still spend a lot of my life crying in the garage because I feel like a pathetic, worthless whore who should die. How do you define “success”?

I feel like if I can’t talk about the things that I feel proud of doing then I don’t really have a lot of reason to hope. I could look at people who have done more than me and decide that I should give up because I haven’t done what they have done. I could. I really could.

I understand that it isn’t fair that I have a partner who can support me financially and many people with similar mental health issues do not have such a luxury. I get it that the roll of the dice is terribly unfair. For the record, I sign every petition to congress about a mandatory minimum income I find. I think everyone needs more support than they have.

If you hate me because I managed to find someone to support me, ok. That’s fine. You can hate me for that. I don’t “deserve” to be in the position I am in. I’m not a successful person because Noah wants to fuck me. I think that my success is mostly orthogonal to the fact that Noah helped me.

I graduated from college before I met Noah. I entered into the teaching program without him. The strides I have made in emotional control have been more possible because of him, but I did the work on my own.

Am I not allowed to feel pride about any of that? Really? I should decide that because I have PTSD I should give up trying and hide at home forever because people like me can’t be successful.

Fuck that noise.

I’ve studied a lot of history. I like history. History fascinates me. History is the story of the people who would not fucking give up. Human beings have incredible powers to adapt and change and be different than they are originally.

I can tell you a story that makes me sound pathetic, hopeless, and entirely unsuccessful. I can tell you a story that makes me sound nearly heroic, inspiring, and really successful.

Point of view matters. I don’t want to be told I should be trying to sound pathetic. I’m pretty angry about the number of people attacking this thread because “All of you successful people just want us to feel bad.”

No. I don’t want you to feel bad. If you feel bad, that probably happened before you read my posts. If you feel bad that is probably related to your life circumstances and not mine. Don’t fucking act like if I ever have a positive thought I’m shitting on you.

I hate forums.

But I really struggle with feeling alone. And forums are there 24/7. I love forums.

I’m a serious pain in the ass.

I’m god damn allowed to feel proud of myself for graduating from college (first of my direct line that I know about–I have three aunts/uncles who went to college and that’s it in the entire extended family to the best of my knowledge). I don’t need to feel kind of embarrassed because someone else didn’t manage. I don’t need to feel guilty that I am leaving behind my compatriots.

That is the kind of shit that keeps communities down. Why in the hell are we so angry, as a species, at people who do well?

The fact that you feel suicidal doesn’t invalidate all of the things you do with your time while you are feeling suicidal. The fact that I feel worthless doesn’t mean I am. I don’t need to define myself as unsuccessful to earn party loyalty points. I just don’t.

I fucking hate party loyalty.

The West Wing is my best friend. So the series was kind of ridiculous in having Bartlett replace three Supreme Court Justices. But in the process the president interviews different candidates. A rejected one said that some people are moderates because sometimes they go the left and sometimes to the right. A true centrist doesn’t position him/herself on issues.

I think that one of the things that makes me hardest for people to deal with is that I am very difficult to predict on how I will land on issues. And I tend to land really strongly with whatever position I take.

I have positions that are all over the political map. And I’ll get into screaming matches defending all of them. I dislike leftists and right-wing people equally.

Shanna just woke up. She is now telling me that she is going to learn how to write and teach me how to write in a way that doesn’t hurt my hands so I no longer need to keep an online journal.

“Talking with my parents is more fun than anything else. More fun than playing with friends or having tea parties or watching Minecraft tutorials. I love my parents.”

Kid, you make my heart explode with joy. I am so grateful that you are in the world. Now I will pay attention to you instead of the screen.

Today I am free to leave whenever I want to go. I’m going to take the kids to park day first. Noah took the day off work, partially because he wasn’t sure when I was leaving. Tomorrow is my birthday. I’m turning 33.

I’m going to be by myself from when I wake up until I go to sleep. I’m hoping I will be able to think about positive things in addition to my normal free-flowing self-hate.

Shanna helped me pack. She was most insistent. She picked out my clothes and carried things out to the van and she set up my bed. She told me she wanted to make sure I knew how much she loves me.

I don’t deserve her. But I’m going to keep her anyway.

I over reacted at dinner the other night. Shanna used her dress as a napkin. I was kind of a jerk face about it because she happened to be wearing one of the few dresses I have bought for them–it was overpriced but so stinking cute I relented even though I generally don’t buy them clothes. We get so many hand-me-downs and gifts that I don’t have to spend money. But I did on this dress. And she wiped her tomato soup covered mouth on it.

So I went through her closet trying to see how many clothes she has wrecked that way because I was sorta ranting that she was ruining “everything”. When I was done checking I figured out that she has seven dresses that are stained beyond redemption out of… 30 or so? Can’t recall.

So I had to apologize. “I was a jerkface. I ranted about you ruining “all your clothes” and that was inappropriate. You clearly haven’t actually done that. I am so sorry. I totally over reacted. Besides, you are a kid and they are your clothes. I’m not being very nice.”

I told her a bit about when I was a kid. My mom had to buy me things because we moved all the time and I didn’t get hand-me-downs and we were very poor so she couldn’t replace things. My mom was constantly very worried that we not *look* poor. (People who look poor get beat up more often. It’s just true.) So I would get screamed at for days and hit if I did exactly what Shanna did. I told Shanna that I am sorry I am passing this on because I don’t actually *need* to. I’m just repeating what my mama did without thinking about it and that’s wrong.

I’m sorry.

She hugged me and said, “If you feel anxious that Calli should get some hand me downs that aren’t stained maybe we could go through the clothes and pick out a few to keep special and then I get to just wear the rest.”

I told her that it isn’t right that she is more mature than I am. I thanked her for being so thoughtful and generous and kind. I told her that is a brilliant solution.

I like my daughter so much. I feel so grateful for being near her every day. I feel like my kids are the first people in my whole life who not only can bear my company they like me. All the time. Every day. Even Noah needs a lot more breaks from me than they do.

I think it is funny that I will probably spend most of my day away missing the girls. That is what happens on Godmama weekends. I spend a lot of time thinking about them. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I still don’t know what I’m bringing for my dinner. I also haven’t heard back from the camp grounds. Hm. Maybe I should have called more than a few days in advance. Whoops. I didn’t think mid-week would be a problem. I may need a plan B.

Don’t worry. I’ll come up with something. I’m resourceful. And rich. This whole “I can throw money at problems” thing is like magic. Thank you, Noah.

I will be getting off the internet soon. First I will be printing some maps. I am debating if I want to bring my phone “just in case” I get lost and need directions (that totally fucking happens) but leave it on airplane mode (or just turned off) for most of the weekend. Do I have the self control? Not sure.

I would strongly prefer to just not have screens with me at all because I don’t want to use one the whole time I am gone. I need a break. My arms fucking hurt. I brought plenty to do.

I haven’t had a whole day to fill just by myself in… years. Many years. Almost a decade I think. More than 24 hours alone with no agenda of work in front of me? Weird. I’ve had time alone. I haven’t had idle time alone. I don’t generally do idle time. I think this is partially in retaliation for how much idle time I had as a child. I’m ready to fucking do something.

But not tomorrow. Tomorrow I will do… only whatever feels nice that second. I’ll get bored (ha–probably not) and see where it takes me. I don’t get bored. I get busy. Being bored is a product of not having enough work to do. I always have work in front of me. Challenging, interesting work that I create for myself to do because I am not a get bored kind of person.

I have seventy bazillion things I want to do, build, see, hear… I don’t have time for boredom. But I do need rest.  Somehow I doubt it will be boring.

Lal is Hindi for red. Ungli is finger. I brought language workbooks. Working on building Hindi vocabulary. Working on Spanish grammar. My grammar sucks so much in other languages. I’m trying though. Some day I won’t sound like a slow 6 year old. Learning Hindi is giving me renewed confidence in my Spanish vocabulary, which is kind of funny.

I have all these words in my head but I don’t know how to put them together so I don’t use them. I *did* memorize a huge chunk of the Spanish language in all those years of study. I surprise myself. I didn’t think I managed. I just… don’t know how to speak. But I can pick out words in a newspaper with the best of them. I can get up to 70% in a lot of stories. Luckily there are lots of cognates that help me with the other 30% so I can usually understand the gist.

I’m 33. I used to believe that if I wasn’t multi-lingual as a child it just couldn’t happen. Now I think that by the time I am an old woman I will be able to interview people in several languages. It will happen.

It feels kind of weird, this preparing for old age thing. It is weird wanting to live. Expecting that I will live. Expecting that unless a tragedy occurs to rip me from my children… no pain is enough to justify leaving the world just because I want to.

I want to see if Noah is ever going to be able to work with teenagers to help them learn how to code the way he wants to.

I want to see what Shanna actually reaches given her ambitions. Will she change her mind and do something she has never even heard of yet?

Calli is an ever expanding mystery for me. I am continually shocked at her depth and intensity. I underestimate her and I look forward to finding out what she becomes. It is going to be a surprise to me no matter what it is. I was surprised she was a girl. I haven’t stopped being surprised since the day she was born. On the second day it was, “What do you mean you are ok sleeping on the bed without touching me? Whoa. That’s a whole new world of possibilities.”

I tend to think Calli is sad when she is angry or angry when she is sad. She generally screams the difference at me. We’ll figure something out. I will learn to say, “I can’t tell what you are feeling–are you willing to share with me how you are feeling?”

I can be taught.

Noah told me the other day that he draws great comfort from the fact that as the years progress, I keep trying new things. Like starting birth control as an experiment with my hormones. I look for new and different therapy styles and options. I *do* see doctors–a whole variety of them. I have been willing to accept the hit in overall lifestyle choices to pay for more body work because it makes me easier to live with if I’m in less pain.

I don’t just accept that how I am is how I will always be.

I believe the future has an endless array of options. I believe that how hard I work every single day matters to my future. I understand that making one mistake ten thousand times won’t get me where I want to be. I need to make ten thousand different mistakes. (Luckily I’m already well into the process. I fuck up so much.)

Yes, I try to keep my sense of humor about my mistakes. Otherwise I cry and want to hurt myself. I hear little voices. Bye.

I’ve been getting stuff done, like whoa. I’m proud of myself. The site redesign is nothing resembling “professional” but it is moving in the direction I want and that is pleasing. I now have a kids-only blog section. I haven’t started updating it with fury yet. I’ll get there.

I want to have a blog that people can share with their kids. That means not juxtaposing the crazy with the kid shit. And the kid-friendly area will be no swearing. To this I say: fuck fuck fuck fuck. I will maintain a sandbox where I can be as crazy and grown up as I need and any motherfucker who doesn’t like it can stay in the kid section. (I love you. That was hyperbole for fun. I don’t think you are a motherfucker if you dislike swearing. I just really like saying motherfucker. It’s an awesome word.

There will be an RSS feed that filters out all the swearing and sex. But I’m not done yet. Give me time.

Especially when we are traveling, we will want to keep in touch with a lot of local kids. I’m hoping the blog will kind of work out. We’ll see.

The toilet the handyman fixed will not flush poop. Fuck my life. I’m feeling so much rage in his general direction. Oh. My. God.

The last few days with the kids have been really great. It is like we hit an oasis of less defiant. Oh thank goodness. I needed a couple days in a row of them acting like they like me.

Hilariously–I’m reminded that it isn’t all about me. Yesterday I was snuggling youngest child and she leaned her head back to look up at me and she said, “Mom, you know what?”

“What?”

“I really like me.”

I grinned and said, “Good! I like you too. You are super spiffy.”

And holy crap Shanna has been impressing me with her competence lately. She can do more work than many full grown adults I have had the misfortune to work with. I have no doubt that she is going to be a rather intimidating adult to know. I look forward to the honor.

I have a basically finished letter to my mother and an in progress letter to Noah’s mother sitting here. Both feel oppressive and horrible. It’s like carrying the One Ring around. Oh fuck.

Oh, speaking of Noah… today is our eighth wedding anniversary. These have been by far the best years of my life. I’m glad he asked. I’m glad I impulsively said yes. We have been so happy. It is so nice having an in house best friend who never ever calls me names in anger. (He only calls me mean names during sex and I’m ok with that–I got to pick the names. Uhm, and it is super hot.)

I am sorta keeping up with fitness stuff. I am maintaining enough training that the 10k won’t be a problem at all. I am going to have to get more serious during the half marathon training if I want to make a serious go at the marathon in March. Right now I would be walking the whole damn thing and I’d be lucky if I hit 16 minute miles. Running blows. Why do I do this? Oh yeah. I like how I feel in between running sessions.

It seriously makes my back hurt less. Fitness makes my body easier to live in. I don’t have to love it. I just have to be around for my kids for decades to come. If I’m in constant pain I won’t be much fun.

I feel like it is pretty ridiculous that I bounce the way I do emotionally. When I’m up, I can so clearly see that I am loved and supported and valued far beyond what someone like me could expect. I have a lot of good friends. I have a tremendous number of people who show up year after year after year. Yeah, I’m intense and people can’t really handle being my bestie–I wear people down. But even my burned out besties usually stay in my life, just with slightly more remove. They protect themselves (which is right) while letting me know that they do love me.

No one can ask for more than this.

I suppose this is why it is “mental illness”. I’m not capable of controlling my emotional state. Oh–I’m on birth control. I am heading into the period of time where I have been dropping like a stone into suicidal ideation. Let’s see if a week of pills is enough to deal with that or if next month will be better or the month after that or never.

You keep trying, even when things often don’t work out. Because there is nothing else to do but admit defeat. I don’t fucking like defeat.

I was looking at Mint yesterday and beating myself up for overspending my set budget this year. We have only saved $7,198. I had this moment of cognitive dissonance. Wait… is that a lot or a little? OH MY GOD.

And that money we only managed to save, that I don’t count or consider enough? That’s not including the approximately $19,000 earned from not-Noah’s-primary-job I don’t count in the budget and I treat like bonus money–all of which I saved.

I waver between feeling rage at my incompetence at saving more and delight that I’m doing so well. I can’t tell which side is right.

I feel like I’m not actually doing so well. If Noah weren’t capable of earning buckets of money I couldn’t keep the fucking ship afloat. Only some people can take whatever amount of money, blow it all, and end up in massive debt. I don’t do that.

Well, I’m about to take on a bunch of debt. Probably nearly $60,000. I want the bathroom I want. I will be happy with it for the rest of my life. It’s worth the money. Imagine how much nicer it will be to come to parties at my house if there were two toilets. Whoa. Big awesome improvement.

A long time ago a friend was studying Ayurvedic medicine and he asked to do my birth chart. I gave him the data. He came back and told me with eyes wide that I would never ever need to worry about money. He told me that if anyone ever came against me in court over money they would lose.

He didn’t know about the dog bite settlement that set me up for life.

The thing about fate or destiny or whatever you call it–is you can make just about any life seem “inevitable”. You can find ways to explain a life that make you “destined” for the specific person you are talking about. But what if you had been born a state over? Would you still have been destined?

Depending on how you tell it, my life can seem like a series of ridiculously lucky breaks or a series of tragic incidences where I am a complete victim. It is all in what you choose to believe is inevitable.

Sometimes I think that going to twenty five schools was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I learned, intimately, that schooling is an artificially constructed concept that has little consistency from location to location. Learning is completely separate from “schooling”.

When I worked in the scene shop in college, my technical director asked me every fucking day if I knew how to use x power tool for the project we were about to embark on. Three years in, “Do you know how to use a power drill?”

“I know how to hold it to your head to prevent you ever asking me a stupid question again.”

I had built this man complex sets. It was a really annoying daily question. But he had that pattern for the same reason my massage therapist is COMPLETELY FIRM about nudity rules no matter the comfort levels of his clients.

The consequence of not following the pattern with a new person is so dire that you are not allowed to drop the habit even if it would be convenient for someone else. I get it.

So I worry and worry and worry about money and yet… there is a part of me that sits back kind of smugly and goes, “I’ve got this. No sweat.” I didn’t only save $7k. I saved over $26k. But man I don’t want to give me credit. Maybe I would feel better if I did.

I’m super excited about the bathroom, actually. This is going to be the most intensive for-me thing I’ve ever built. Ok, I won’t be building it. But I will be heavily involved in design. I am probably going to drive several people crazy. Sorry. At least I pay well for my exacting standards.

The Wonderland we come home to at the end of the road trip is going to be pretty much my dream house. Which is kind of funny given how hostile I have been to this house over the years. It didn’t start out being what I wanted. To be truthful, probably no place would be. I am grateful that I have had the privilege to change my home into what I want it to be.

People keep commenting that it feels kind of like a school. I know. I want that feeling. When I was a child school was safer than home and some of my happiest moments were with good teachers. I am doing everything in my (considerable) power to take the best of the things I saw and share them with my children.

I got to see so many places.

I have been in this house for eight years. My child was born in the kitchen. I have trees and good fruit in the yard. I have swings. I have hoards of screaming children careening around the place. (They aren’t screaming because they are upset. They are just Fully Engaged.) Soon I will have a bathtub big enough for two grown ups and two toilets. Yup, that is pretty much my dream house.

If I wanted to, I could tell you a story about how this is all inevitable. This was just Meant To Be.

But I know I was frequently voted as “The Most Likely to Become a Drug Addicted Prostitute” by class mates from school to school, year after horrible year. So let’s not kid ourselves and say it was inevitable.

But it was possible.

Now my brain is going straight into the Lego Movie theme song: Everything is Awesome.

Did things go better because I managed to find the right time and place for me? If I had been born in Indiana and I had similar life experiences there… I don’t think I would have turned out as well. I wouldn’t have had the resources. Living in California, often in high affluence areas means I had access to support that just doesn’t exist in other places.

You never know what is “inevitable”.

I feel more interest in what is possible.

I have really good people in my life. I went to a party recently that is more like the parties I used to go to and not much like most of the parties I go to these days. It was intense. I was grateful to be there for a variety of reasons. Even though I don’t feel like I am currently “at the level” of most of the people in the room, they see no reason to exclude me for a blip. I had been really nervous about the party because I thought I wouldn’t know a high percentage of the people. Ha. I hadn’t previously known exactly one person there and he was new to everyone in the room from a foreign country.

Holy shit. I am part of the in-crowd. Not every in-crowd–there are lots I am not part of and I honestly don’t aspire to them. The group of people I picked when I was young and I have continued to chase long after it has been practical… they want me and love me and see me as an equal.

Recently I told a friend, “You may feel like you are a complete fuck up. You may feel like you never do anything wrong, but there is factual evidence to the contrary. So you can have your feelings. I’m sorry you feel that way. It isn’t fun. But I get to hold on to the fact that it isn’t factually true that you are a complete fuck up and you never do anything right. You have done things very right with me the vast majority of the time.”

It’s true of me too. I fuck up sometimes. Mostly I do pretty well. Some days I’m proud of my record. It isn’t that I hold on to every person I have ever known. I cull out the people who are most important to me. And year after year after year they return my affection. They tell me to knock it off when I’m out of line. And they continue to love me. Because I don’t do everything wrong.

I saw a neat Pinterest quote and I’m going to butcher it so I’m sorry oh gods of I could look it up but I’m too lazy.

If someone struggled with MS or (other horrible disease) for 63 years you would say they were inspiring and a fighter. When someone dies at that age of severe mental illness you call it a tragedy and they “should have gotten help”. Robin Williams did everything you are supposed to do. He saw psychiatrists. He got sober. He checked himself back into rehab to support sobriety. He jumped the hoops. He still died.

That is a rough paraphrase so I’m not even putting it in quotes. But, for the record, I did not come up with the idea in the previous paragraph.

That has been sitting heavily on me for a few days. I’ve been thinking very hard about that. Shanna is starting to specifically challenge me on, “You are going to stay with me as long as physically possible, right? You don’t have to be with me every minute. But you have to stay here in Wonderland so I can come back to you.”

I don’t think this is motivated by my suicidal ideation. I don’t talk to the kids about it *at all*. I get the impression that kids just go through these phases. But it is especially poignant for me.

I brought you into this world. It is a harsh and cold place. Yes, I will stay with you as long as I can so I can make your burden easier to bear. Yes. You are worth that. Even though there are going to be some very bad days I won’t want to get through.

It feels so tragically unfair that I can’t just give this promise to Noah, but I can’t. Luckily he is an opportunist and he’ll take whatever hook he can get. If I don’t die for the kids, at least he gets to enjoy me.

But mental illness is a (whole bunch of) serious disease(s). I have been dealing with it for multiple decades so far. 63 is kinda old for someone like me. So I watch the news coverage of Robin Williams (well, I read it) and I feel sad but like it is ok that he got his kids to adulthood and then took care of what he needed to take care of. Maybe he wasn’t able to promise his kids the way I am able to promise mine. I get the impression that sometimes dads don’t feel the kind of connection I feel. (Clearly many do.)

I don’t feel like he was selfish. He did raise his kids. He took care of his real responsibilities. Then he was done. I can’t be mad at anyone for that. I hope no one would be mad at me.

Well, Shanna could be mad because I broke a promise. No one else is entitled. I didn’t promise you shit. I bet Calli will climb on that bandwagon before too long. She will be worth a promise too.

I like Calli so much and I can’t wait to see what kind of grown up she will be. Intense and passionate and driven. We will get through the stickier parts of being helpless and our relationship will  change a lot. I’m looking forward to it.

But the girls are going to be intense and passionate and thankfully, not screaming in my face all day some year soon. I’ll be left in a lot of quiet with Noah. That sounds so nice. He can bore the shit out of me with comic books and I can bore him to tears with constant talking about plants. It’ll be awesome.

H’okay. Those back spasms that just happened aren’t awesome though. Crap crap crap. I get them periodically. I have since I was a kid. But it has been a while and I hoped I was doing stuff to make them not happen. Fucktastic.

This has been an interesting week. I had a super intense therapy session focusing on my codependence. I tend to get upset right along with my friends. When something bad happens to them I lose a lot of sleep.

My shrink and I talked about boundaries going both ways. It isn’t just about things I want people to do or say to me. It’s about what emotions I allow to effect me.

The next two days were nearly euphoric. I had that Zen feeling I chase so hard.

*My* life is really good. I have big emotions but I have absolutely zero traumatic situations that are ongoing. I have nipped that shit in the bud. My money situation is… fluctuating but stable and positive. (I like to freak out about money. But I feel pretty safe even with my freak out.)

But mostly my relationships with Noah, Shanna, and Calli are so good. Even the boundary testing stuff the kids are doing is normal, appropriate, and acceptable even though it drives me batshit. It is supposed to. That’s life.

Yesterday we had a little bit of a rough day and it was my fault. I was kind of jagged. I have made tons of progress on the book. I’m done editing. The manuscript is finished. I put together chapter summaries and a one page synopsis. The synopsis made me cry because I think it is good. I can tug on some heart strings. I have a few more layers of preparation I have to do before I can submit to publishers. I have about fifteen likely looking publishing houses in open browsers. I’m going to submit to two by my birthday.

I put in a good writing day in the morning. I felt very satisfied. Then I just kind of went off the rails. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I want to be doing on the book next–it was intrusive and hard to refocus on what I needed to switch gears and do.

I had to finish packing for camping (all I had left was clothes [for a one night trip–big whoop] and food) and it took me forking forever. I walked in circles and dithered and found myself staring off into space a lot.

The girls invited a neighbor kid over. They played while I worked.

I think the camping packing was so hard because I kept switching chores. The kitchen was a big mess. It’s not clean now but you can consider finding the counter now. It took a while. And Shanna was doing a paper mache craft (yes I know there should be accent marks on that word) in the back yard and she kept coming inside to tell me I had to help her. And Calli was mad that I didn’t want to take her on a bike ride.

The kitchen cleaning was so important because we had a huge infestation of ants ON MY KITCHEN TABLE. Not cool.

Ok I’m starting to see why I was so edgy and irritable all day yesterday.

I have a tremendous amount of anxiety around time management. It’s a big thing for me. Every person who has done work on my house has… more innate flexibility than me. Also: everyone is busy. I get this. Waiting makes my stomach hurt.

I feel so guilty for feeling anxious. It shows that I don’t trust them. I feel like a huge asshole. I’ve worked with this family before. They do good work. I’m very happy with everything that has been done.

But when you say you will be here at 9 and I see you at 11 my stomach hurts really badly. When I get a phone call at 10 telling me you will be there soon and you show up at 3… my stomach hurts.

So I’ve had a rough week. I feel guilty because they are getting the work done. Usually he is so late because he was building something at home using his tools because building it on site is hard.

I am thrilled with what they are doing. They’ve used my huge pile of reclaimed wood to build wonderful planter boxes that I will soon paint then fill with dirt! I am excited. I have one shed and a big box put together and the fence is moved.

I’m a little cranky that the inside-the-house stuff has been put off. I would have preferred having the toilet fixed the first day, you know? So they have been scheduled to work here for ten days so far and the toilet isn’t fixed. I’m feeling a bit whiny.

They offered to come spend all weekend here. I’m going camping. So the toilet won’t be fixed this weekend. So eleven days after they were scheduled to start work before my toilet gets fixed. It’s already been broken for a while and we’ve been coping. But man! Ok, that’s part of why I’m irritated.

I apologized to the kids for being cranky. I told them that I had a lot on my mind that was making me feel upset and angry and frustrated and it isn’t about them. I’m sorry my tone of voice sucks. Shanna asked what I was thinking about. It is going to be weird growing up with them.

I told her that a white police officer shot a black boy in a different state and the entire situation is being handled badly in a violent manner. I said the police are pretty much declaring war on the black people who live in this town.

Her jaw dropped and her eyes bugged. “That’s a good reason to be upset!”

I told her that while I appreciate the work that is being done on the house I’m having a hard time with them running late a lot. It makes my stomach hurt and then it is hard to be patient.

By the third time I apologized in the day (I shouted when Calli closed the van door on me as I was going through my back pack. It fucking hurt.) Shanna told me, “Mom you don’t actually have to keep apologizing. You don’t sound as bad as you think.”

I am so grateful for the life I lead that I have… not enough spoons to type the words.

Today I have a chance to go camping with a family we’ve been spending a lot of time with for several years. This will be our first trip together. If this doesn’t go well… interest in sharing a hotel room at Disney World may fade. Ha.

I am highly motivated to make this work. This family is Geographically Desirable. Do you know how forking rare that is?! I run farther than their house on a regular basis. My kids can ride bikes that far.

I am highly motivated to make this work. I feel grateful that I was given the opportunity to develop more of a relationship with the family.

Also: her family is not much like most of our friends. And that’s a good thing. My friends and Noah’s friends are mostly part of fringe communities. It is good for us to know people who aren’t specifically weird in some way they brag about. Well, they are unschoolers. But other than that…

See, even my normal friends aren’t very normal. I love my life so much. I am so lucky that I get to live where I live in the time I get to be alive. Not everyone hits such a good temperament match. Many people feel out of synch.

I am in the right time for me. I live for transformation and change. The movement from the Industrial Age to the Technology Age is all about transformation and change and adaptation to new environments.

I didn’t know this was coming when I was a child. I had no idea. As I moved 50 times and attended 25 schools I didn’t realize I was learning how to move between systems and adapt.

I learned to see them as systems I could opt into or out of whenever I chose. Other people seem to see them as… just the way things are.

Things can be any way you make them be. The reason that Common Core will fail is because you cannot design a singular system that meets the needs of millions of people.

Different communities, different families have needs that vary. Some families need school that functions partially as daycare. In those sorts of communities, schools would benefit from extending the number of hours the children are in school and having long recess sessions in the middle of the day. Feed them three meals that actually nourish their bodies so they develop a community together. They will rise.

And on that note, my wonderful daughter just woke up. She asked for a morning snuggle. I’ll talk to you later, internet.

After having my teeth chatter all day yesterday (nerves) I didn’t sleep very well (Noah was up working and it was too warm). But Noah did his bat-like-ears thing this morning and we had a nice cuddle (no euphemism) and chat.

I sometimes really consciously limit things at cuddling if I’m really emotionally volatile. Those are the days I dissociate really early and I’m just taking one for the team. I’m trying to do less of that. If I don’t want to get off I shouldn’t have sex.

(Side note complaint about The West Wing. How would it be possible for someone to accidentally get GHB when they mean to get ecstasy? I mean, I get why Zoe didn’t know something was in her drink. But the French royalty boyfriend is retarded to such a degree that he shouldn’t be able to tie his shoes if he didn’t know the difference in those drugs. GHB is a snotty salty liquid. Ecstasy comes in powder or pills. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT YOU ARE GIVING YOUR GIRLFRIEND THE WRONG DRUG?! Fucking idiot. Having consumed more than my fair share of both drugs I feel qualified to speak.)

Speaking of fucking. I screwed up yesterday. We didn’t make it to National Night Out. Calli insisted on riding bikes. Then she didn’t want to ride, she wanted me to hold the bike and push it the whole way. That makes my back hurt really badly so I was pretty grumpy before we got halfway down the block.

On the way home (we literally only went past four houses) both kids were screaming at the top of their lungs at me about how terrible I am and I kinda lost it.

I screamed: “I am not fucking taking anyone to any fucking party. You are fucking crazy if you fucking think I will give you fucking ice cream after you fucking scream at me. I am not taking you fucking kids anywhere.”

I think that was the whole rant. It’s really not good.

We brushed teeth and I put the kids in bed. I didn’t yell again. Well, from the garage I yelled, “Go back to bed” once or twice but I didn’t yell it loud–just enough to be heard through the door.

After an hour or so the kids were still up and I was calm. I went in to lay down with them and snuggle. Shanna was very specific that it was not ok to call them “fucking kids” and she asked me to explain what “fucking” means anyway.

That was hilarious and awkward.

I told her that it is one of those words that has more than one meaning. We’ve been talking about idioms a lot lately. So I started with saying, “Mostly it is an idiom that means ‘I’m frustrated’. When people say fucking it is just a way of saying out loud that they are frustrated about something.”

She said that next time I should just say I’m frustrated because it isn’t ok to call them fucking kids.

I said that she was right. Then I paused and tried not to be awkward as I said, “There is a second meaning. The second meaning is why people say it is a “bad word”. You know how (babysitter) tells you that ‘stupid’ is a bad word? Well… fucking is like 50 million bazillion times worse. Because fucking is also a word for sexual intercourse. You know, having sex? Making babies? Putting a penis in a vagina? You have books about this.”

She kind of startled, looked at me with wide eyes and said, “Mother. How could you call us that?!”

I said, “Well to be fair.. that is how you were made.”

She fell over laughing. She giggled and said, “We are fucking kids!” And then she laughed until she snorted.

She asked why people think fucking is a bad word. I told her that people think it is bad because most people feel uncomfortable with any word that makes them think of sex because most people think sex is COMPLETELY PRIVATE and talking about it is bad.

She asked me if I think talking about sex is bad. I snorted and said, “Of course not. If you notice… I don’t tell you not to say ‘bad words’ I say pick where you use them carefully. Just because some people don’t want to hear something that doesn’t mean you never get to say it. Just find someone who is ok with you talking about it.”

So not cool and hilarious and awkward all in one story. I don’t think Calli followed the whole conversation but she was very sure that I needed to apologize profusely to both of them for being so mean. So I did.

They apologized for screaming at me. They said that next time they will make a different choice because they are sad about missing the event. I said, “Me too.”

I think I write these things down because I am afraid I will forget. I want to remember the whole arc, not just a piece of it. Yes, I fucked up. I will probably do so again.

I spent a while reading a book about mothers with Borderline Personality Disorder last night. My amateur armchair diagnosis says, “Nope. Not my issue.” So I’m glad I sat down with the book. Maybe I’ll let go of some of my guilty paranoia around that one. I’ve got issues, but that isn’t one of them.

I am predictable for my children. I don’t blame my emotions on them. They are very secure. My kids trust me and we all handle separation pretty well. I don’t feel like I’m doing the clingy attachment stuff. I let them go do their things. I smile and cheerfully wave and tell them that I will be right here when they need me again.

We are supposed to go to Aqua Adventure today. We are having dinner with my favorite former students. (Since they had me perform their wedding that title is now official.) I get to see their darling little nine month old.

I want to hurt myself because I believe that I hurt people and I must be punished for doing so. At least partially, there is a lot going on there.

But I have these people who persist in being in my life year after year when they have no reason to do so beyond desire for my company.

It is hard to be as self-hating as I am with this many people loving you. It takes work. It is really lame.

All I want for my birthday is pictures of people who love me. Despite my raging irrationality…. even I can’t argue with all the smiling faces I see on the walls around me.

I can understand why some religions were unhappy about the idea of capturing a likeness of people. You do capture part of their soul. And it comes and lives with me here in my house. And it tells me that they would be marked forever if I killed myself. So don’t do it.

It is hard sometimes to feel connection. I like visual reminders so much. I have so many people who love me. I am so lucky.

Maybe the kids and I will fill the morning with selecting pictures to print at Costco. We haven’t done a print run since last year. I was emailed a few pictures for the purpose of putting on the wall. I haven’t printed them yet. I should do that.

Right this minute I don’t want to hurt myself. That has to be enough for right now.

I should also hang the punching bag today. I really do need to hit.

The best part of growing up is being able to sit through a day or days of intense desire to hurt myself knowing that the feeling will end. Even though it feels like it lasts millions of years while it is happening.

Even if I feel ok right now, that feeling will end too. Nothing is permanent.

But I have a husband who loves me a lot. He demonstrates this with kind words and gentle touch and physical labor to make my life easier after lots of mental work to make money. I have a husband who, instead of protecting himself from me financially when we got married, put his separate property into a joint legal trust because he wanted to make sure I knew I was always taken care of.

Even if at some point we hate one another. There is no going back from this joint union of assets and help. It could be ripped entirely asunder but no one is going to just go back to how things were.

I hope we continue to like and respect one another. I hope I can continue to manifest being the kind of partner he wants to have. It’s not just the sex. I do a lot of things. Noah gives me more credit for them than I do. I notice that his life is more streamlined than it used to be, but I tend to under rate how much credit I should get for that.

He doesn’t stint in his praise.

I won the jackpot. I don’t know how I ended up with someone who likes me this much. I don’t know how I managed to find a partner who is willing to try so hard to make my life better. The listening and support and encouragement are the most important parts.

If Noah made this much money and tore me down I would not be ok right now. It’s not the money that makes things work. I think we would be ok with far less money. I think if he made less money but encouraged me the way he does I would probably work harder on figuring out how to get paid for writing. If I’m going to destroy my body for this task I might as well make it money earning. Geez.

Instead I’m an expensive pet writing for my ideal reader. (That would be Noah.) The more I write the better he is at treating me how I want to be treated. It’s a win for us.

I think it isn’t fair that I don’t get similar pointers, but life isn’t always fair. I’m expected to do way more mind reading. Good thing his mind is easier to track. Food. Sex. Comics. Games. Programming. Pretty much in that order.

I think I have multiplied my lifetime reading of comics by about a million since meeting him. I have never been a comics person. Now I even go buy them on my own. Damn him.

Even Noah has his downsides. (This is my attempt at being “funny”. Since people often fail to notice how funny I am I thought I would point it out to you.)

I can really appreciate a man whose main downside is that he is obsessed with comics. It is remarkably benign. He giggles a lot.

I hate the phrase “cry for help”. It carried innate shaming within it. Like you shouldn’t need the help. You shouldn’t be bothering people.

When I feel a lot of emotional distress it makes sense to me to ask for help with it. I’ve read a lot of books over a lot of years that tell me it is “healthy”. In fact all those books tell me that not asking for help is a problem.

So I talk about my self-harm urges and my suicidal ideation. Even though I’m also told that talking about those things is traumatic for other people and I shouldn’t do it.

These things are real problems for me. Dealing with them is hard. I have been trying to make progress on my self-loathing and self-harm for decades.

I’m better than I was. Am I better than I was 18 months ago? January of 2013? 2012 was a bad year. 2013 was a good year. January was the beginning of an upswing but I was probably still reeling from Christmas. Christmas is awesome. Christmas sucks golf balls through a garden hose.

I have another book I need to figure out how to publish. Lots more money. Less debt. I like my yard more. I like my house more. I like my kids more. I like my husband more. Do I like myself more? Am *I* better than I was?

I’m not sure I know what that means.

I have definitely learned things I am glad I have learned. I have not hurt myself on purpose in that whole time frame. I’ve ready more than 120 books since then, many of them new to me. Almost half. And then I read them a second time to make sure I got enough out of them.

I haven’t made nearly enough language progress. That’s kind of embarrassing. I’m having trouble keeping that high on the priority list for time spent. It isn’t feeling pressing yet. When it feels pressing I will curse my lack of forethought. I really need to develop some habits in my life.

Given that Noah hasn’t started breakfast yet I should go run. That’s a habit I need.

Ok. Bye.

It is incredibly unusual for me to go to therapy and spend more than half the session crying. Today was one of those days.

She told me that it isn’t actually much of a surprise that I want to scream at everyone, even when I’m not angry at them. I have spent the last six or seven years whittling down my bad habits/escape paths.

I don’t hit people any more. I don’t get hit. I don’t pick up dangerous sex. I have even stopped drinking, even though I never did that much of it.

I write, I run, I talk, and I cry. That’s pretty much all I have left myself for stress relief. The problem is that the running is both good and bad. On one hand, it is good for me because it uses lots of large muscles. On the other hand I come home so activated that I am ready to freak out within minutes. Because my whole body is turned on and ready to react RIGHT NOW.

I can make anything complicated.

She said that given that for most of my life I dealt with these feelings by hitting people… I should probably cut myself some slack for feeling so frustrated with people. I’m not screaming at people. I’m not being totally inappropriate. I feel my feelings and then I go off by myself. Yes, I feel like I want to scream. But I’m not actually screaming at people left and right.

I feel like I want to and then I feel ashamed of myself and then I want to beat my head.

I think I’m going to take a few months off from parties where I know less than 25% of the people going. This isn’t going well for me right now. I have enough stress.

When I go to a party and I know the host and pretty much only the host I spend the event in an agony of anxiety waiting for me to do something inappropriate that will get me banished forever because of course the host likes whoever I am going to offend much more than the host likes me. Obviously.

Even though I have really good friends who have put up with a lot and who have really shown up to be supportive when necessary… I still think at any second a better person will be standing nearby and I will be told to take a walk.

This constant need to test relationships is bad for me and my friends.

We talked about my mom and how much I miss her. She wants me to consider starting a letter-only relationship like I have with Noah’s parents. I’m not sure it is a good idea. My mom isn’t good with boundaries. If you give her an inch she will take a hectare.

I can’t open that door until my kids are old enough to not be at risk near my family. My sister is too dangerous. That’s a hard thing.

My shrink wants me to strongly consider making an informational phone call to the police department in the city where someone I know lives. We were discussing my feelings about things he has posted online and she startled really hard. She told me that I am not someone to over react to threats, so if I feel like I need to get away from someone because he is physically dangerous I should probably tell the police that he exists. They may or may not follow up, but when you look at guys like the Santa Barbara shooter… Seriously. Someone needs to say, “These guys aren’t right and you should keep an eye on them.” Only… I’m conflicted. This is like complaining about doctors.

Have you noticed how I can complain about doctors on my blog but I can’t submit a formal letter of complaint? I couldn’t complain about the fucking plumbing company who fucked us out of thousands of dollars.

Do I think he is dangerous enough that the police should be aware of him? Is he or is he not a broken stair? Well, he defines bullying as being rejected from social groups he wants to be a member of and he believes he has the right to shoot people if they bully him. Maybe the police should hear about that?

I am scared enough that I no longer want him in my home. Probably ever again. No, I will not meet him in neutral public places. He believes he has the right to shoot me if I bully him. Oh he would deny that, but he has said enough time that he has the right to defend himself against bullying that… I have to believe him. He does think he has the right to shoot people for making him feel bad.

That’s pretty fucking scary.

And that was only a five minute derailment during my therapy session. We talked about it because I said the kids were asking to see him and I was ambivalent because the kids are very emotionally attached to him. After hearing more context she said that I should walk away and hope the kids mostly forget. It sucks, but that is what you have to do sometimes.

I feel like a piece of shit for walking away from my friendship. But I have to think that I am important enough to stay away from people who think they have the right to shoot other people because of their feelings.

Nope.

Hunh. Now that I realize that the two biggest things that came up in therapy were mom-things and scary-guy-with-a-gun-things maybe my incredible activation level isn’t so surprising.

I don’t know what to do about either situation. I feel like I have no good solutions. And these are kind of big things to deal with. This is heavy duty emotional processing to just toss on top of my full-speed-ahead life.

Ok, maybe it is less surprising that I want to beat my head on things than I want to believe. That is the easiest thing to “slip” and do. All I need is privacy–no gear. And when I have extreme emotional stuff going on, my way of dealing with that has traditionally been to hit or be hit. Noah’s not a masochist. I am so god damn loud I can’t really bottom at home. I should hang the punching bag. Maybe even today.

I had a really good visit at K’s house today. Her kids really like me and that makes me feel proud of myself. They are both kids who would flinch if I was scary. They don’t flinch from me at all. They run towards me with open arms exclaiming my name because they are so happy to see me.

Holy shit that feels good. It is worth every over-night babysitting gig and more of them. Many more over the years.

Even though I feel like a rabid beast who should be shot for the good of the herd, apparently I can be safe. I can take care of kids without hurting them.

My kids don’t seem like the same kind of proof. I’m well acquainted with the fact that abused children are the most loyal. My kids liking me is biological self-defense. K’s kids liking me… that’s a gift.

In the car this afternoon Shanna told me, “Your smile is the greatest Christmas present I could possibly receive. I treasure it more than all the toys I’ll ever get.”

I cried. Because I’ve been crying for days and man that was a wash of emotion. I’m so grateful they can’t see my face while I cry while I drive.

I am not complaining about my kids or diminishing how much they like me.

I feel very lucky.

Then we had a really good park day. There has been a huge influx of little girls in the 4-9 range. Those kids can fill a lot of hours of play.

I find it kind of funny how the moms I felt less comfortable around… aren’t coming to as many events any more. I hope I didn’t push them away from the group. The people I feel more bonded with are becoming more of a core group. There are still some interesting dynamics, but I’m really glad I found this community.

I can say I’m feeling crappy. I can allude to things I don’t do with my kids around without being explicit just to clarify a point and no one cares. It’s ok.

People know about the kink cafe in San Francisco. That kind of “knowing” but not discussing.

Oh man, speaking of that community. I was invited to a party. We will be going, because it is a special event for someone in my leather family. I get to meet her new Master. It’s going to be Quite The Party. I noticed that one of the people who likes me the least from that community was invited.

I think it is hilarious how many of my really close friends are very close friends with people who dislike me a lot. To be fair, the animosity is frequently reciprocated in these cases. The funny part is: I think the dislike exists when the person and I are too similar and we can’t bear close contact with someone who is like us.

So let’s be clear that I’m not saying, “I’m better than them.”

Of the approximately 18 people invited to this gathering I have previous positive relationships with 3, negative interactions with 1, and I’ve met 1 other person once and we had a cordial exchange as we expressed our mutual appreciation of our friend. That leave 11 people I don’t know at all.

Man I feel like I should say no. But this is family. Serious Bizness.

Why is Leather Family less of a hostile concept than chosen family? Why am I so god damn inconsistent?

Well, the Leather folk always made their limits and boundaries about what they were committing crystal clear. Well, or we fucked up a few times over the years and had lots of clarifying.

I have a much harder time figuring out how to do that kind of ground-up negotiation with vanilla friends. “Our relationship structure isn’t working and I need to change our dynamic” is kind of weird to most people.

I would like to have a short list of people to whom I was so Committed that I had to turn down lots of other events where I barely know anyone.

I go to a lot of parties where I know less than 25% of the guest list. I network like nobodies business. Weak ties are some of the most useful ties to have.

But man I’d like Family. Chosen family as a concept has blown up for me. Lots of people told me that I was part of their chosen family. I haven’t heard from almost any of them since I got married. Whatever.

Leather has been different for me. Sure, they are all flakey bastards and I kind of hate them sometimes. And yet they aren’t flakey. They just have specific paths they walk. When I want to come join them, they will always make space for me.

But I can’t bring my kids. You know how it goes.

So Leather Family is in a nice neat box for me. It feels safe and comfortable because if my Leather Family had a need that conflicted with my kids, hands-down my kids win. No question. But if I am in the same space as them, or if they need me I will show up. Just like they show up when I tell them they have to.

At my events you always have to kind of wonder who is conservatively religious and who is a flaming pervert. I love my life. I feel so grateful for the diverse cast of characters.

It’s National Night Out. Time to go see my neighbors.

Before I launch into my complaints, let me take a moment to note that a nice lady from the party yesterday sent me an email to inquire how I was doing. She noticed I was upset and she wanted to follow up when she didn’t have children clinging to her and screaming in her ear. I get it. I really appreciate the thought. I feel more guilty for not having fun.

But back to the complaints. There is a frequent thing I hear “California Time” that really bugs me. Unless my mother was lying to me (I believe her on this topic) I am an eighth generation Californian. My family has been here a while. I feel unusually qualified to judge whether or not something is “just a Californian thing” or if it is an import thing. California is a state full of immigrants.

Not because I think all people who are born in California are just like me, anything but. However when I stand next to someone who moved here as a twenty-something adult for a job, I feel I have more broad experience to base my judgment on. More than likely their experiences are mostly with other imports at their job.

I’m not saying Californians are never late. People from every place are sometimes late. My personal life experience is that Californians are late (the kind who are born here) when they accidentally schedule two things too closely together. The imports are late because they can’t be bothered to show up on time. After all, they will say, they are just on “California Time”. When people say this to me I have trouble not hitting them.

The difference is intent is important to me. One set feels like people who consistently are trying to shove 27 hours into 24 and that’s hard. The other set feels like, “I don’t have to care about you because I’m allowed to just do whatever now that I live in California.”

I dislike the imports who claim California Time with such a passion. You are fucking up my culture. This is my fucking state. Go do your late shit somewhere else.

I hate this because I show up at a party of imports and they want to bitch about how much Californians suck. Fuck you. I was the only person here on time and I am the only actual fucking Californian. All of you can suck on behalf of Ohio or Pennsylvania and leave my fucking state out of it.

I’m over-sensitive. But I’m in a slightly better mood than yesterday. That’s improvement.

Today while I have babysitting I should probably work on Outrunning. I have some follow up stuff to do now that I have it back from my editor. She doesn’t like my title. She wants me to find something lighter and fluffier. Hrm. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m looking for the suicidal kids. The light and fluffy title won’t grab their eyes.

I’m scared because once I finish the last editing bits… it is time to figure out how to send it out. I should probably try to send it to a dozen or more places by my birthday. Thinking that makes my stomach explode with acid. Oh shit. This is going to be a fun and festive activity.

Because it causes less stomach pain I will spend the next few minutes thinking about the party yesterday. It wasn’t that anyone did anything WRONG. I was off. I was feeling sensitive and whiny before I got there and a couple of people had tones of voices I reacted to when hearing them. That doesn’t mean they didn’t anything wrong. They aren’t responsible for my emotional state.

I had a better time but still a hard time at the picnic on Saturday. Not because anyone did anything wrong. People were really nice. Noah was really nice about the whole thing. He dressed up and danced with me and smiled and it was fun. The kids had a ridiculously good time.

It isn’t other peoples fault when I am struggling. I just happen to be standing near you when I have the struggle.

Despite how many words I can type, I’m not all that articulate when I’m having big feelings. So when I start feeling really uncomfortable and like I am wrong and like I should be forced to leave because I don’t fit with whatever is going on I get… much less socially savvy than usual. Which is bad because my social savvy is mixed anyway.

If you want me to articulately defend why I have an opinion in a mixed crowd where I don’t feel safe I am going to feel judged, loathed, and like I should go light myself on fire. Then I will be really angry with you because I had all those feelings standing next to you.

I’m not an easy person to talk to. I appreciate that people bother. I know it is hard sometimes.

I am really really shitty at responding to things cold. I don’t work that way. If you give me some time I can put together a 20 page defense, sure. This is why I don’t argue very much on twitter. I can’t do 140 characters.

I feel like I “should” start doing some form of work. Really I’d like a nice session of head banging. I don’t feel like I’m doing much right.

Even though Noah wanted me to hold firm on boundaries, I’m glad I let Calli go to sleep with us last night. I feel like I am doing wrong in so many places and in so many ways… I’m glad I hold my babies when they want me.

I will not look back in regret and think, “I wish I had snuggled them more. I wish I had appreciated how small and helpless they were.” I will take all the snuggles they want to give. Even when I don’t want to be touched. This time is so short. I have them for so brief a time.

She will be three for just a few more weeks. Shanna already doesn’t want us overnight. Calli will get there.

I don’t need to shove them towards independence. They will get there sooner than I am happy about anyway.

Shanna and I had a delightful conversation yesterday about wetting the bed. She’s had a couple of accidents recently. She insisted we go buy a mattress cover. She asked me why it happens. I said people wet the bed for all kinds of reasons. It is common for kids to have a period of time where they are learning lots of new things and they are so tired at night that they just can’t wake up to go to the bathroom. I told her it is common when kids have big scared or sad feelings they don’t know how to deal with. I told her it is called a “regression” and sometimes when your body is learning new things it kind of forgets stuff you already know for a few weeks while it is focusing on a new thing but it comes back. Sometimes you are having such an awesome dream that you just don’t want to wake up.

She said, “Well I am not sad or scared so I guess I must be sleeping too deeply. That makes sense. I sure am tired at the end of the day.”

Shanna expresses a lot of appreciation for how I handle accidents. Which is funny. Where did she get the idea that she should get in trouble? I’m not sure. But she seems to just know that some parents aren’t gracious. I tell her, “Dude I’ve had accidents as an adult. They are called accidents for a reason. Not a big deal.”

When I feel like I’m doing everything wrong. When I feel like I am a total failure I just have to look at my kids. They know they are loved. That was the bar. Ok. I’m not failing at everything. They don’t feel scared. They don’t feel sad. They like their lives. They like me so much that being away from me is nearly torture. Well, that doesn’t necessarily say anything about me–kids are like that.

I don’t feel like tagging.

 

Yesterday I said that I have “never” had positive group identification. I’ve never felt like I belonged and knew everyone and they knew me. Then I spent the rest of the day rolling that around in my head. Is it true or is just how I feel right now?

The two big “what about …” that popped up were our wedding reception and my 30th birthday. Those were both large events at my house where the main draw was that people like me and/or Noah and they wanted to be there to show their love. Our wedding reception had more than one hundred people.

What the fuck can anyone expect?

The problem is the wedding reception overlapped with the last time I ever saw Anna. She came to visit me from out of state. Ostensibly to help get ready for the reception. We hadn’t seen one another for a few years. Then she got here and I found out she was a drug addict (all legal prescriptions) who was barely verbally aware of what was happening around her and her back problems (the reason for the prescriptions) made it so she couldn’t do much of any help. And she was the only help I had. And she spent 90% of her time talking about how important it was for her to be at the Harry Potter release party that weekend.

I was completely freaking out before the reception even started. It was hard getting all the work done. It was two or three people worth of work and it was 1.24 people available to work. I never relaxed during the party. I didn’t enjoy it. I spent most of the party trying not to cry.

I did enjoy when Noah and I got to read our vows in front of our friends. That felt like witnessing. But I did not have the feeling of being supported and loved and seen. It was, kinda like what I want, only not so much.

Anna and I had a horrible fight the next day and I haven’t spoken to her since. Almost seven years. I was a complete dick to her. The fight was my fault.

I told her that priorities were completely fucked. She was obsessed with buying a new iPod but she don’t have a real bed and she has had multiple back surgeries over the last few years and she was on so many pain meds that she couldn’t function. I said, “What the fuck is wrong with you that you prioritize a music player.” No one likes being told stuff like that. She couldn’t hold down a job because of pain and mental confusion from medications. She was living with her psychotic, evil, very abusive parents and all she cared about was the new Harry Potter and getting a new iPod.

I was not nice. I think it was probably a very healthy decision on her part to be done listening to me. Even if she is making bad choices, that’s not really my business and I shouldn’t be such a raging cunt.

So I didn’t walk away from my wedding reception feeling seen and important. I spent the morning beating my head on concrete and the evening crying. It was hard and draining and not a lot of fun.

Same with my 30th birthday. It was a huge party. So many people came. People do like me. I don’t know how to get past this feeling that people only like me if I perform just right because that trashes the parties for me. I was so scared I would do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, and then there would be a mass walk out because people are only here for the free food anyway.

I don’t like me very much. It is very hard for me to wrap my head around other people liking me.

So when I have this horrible feeling of alienation… I literally don’t know what someone else might do to get past this feeling. I’m trying.

Running with Blacksheep had the feeling. That was really wonderful. I do get the feeling of bonding and mattering on a one-to-one basis.

When I’m running and feeling bad about myself and I’m crying and I feel disgusting and I want to hurt myself, I think of Blacksheep singing silly songs and encouraging me. She was so fucking nice even though I was whiny and difficult and kind of a problem. She dragged me through that race.

I struggle really hard with the difference between “knowing” that people love me and feeling that people love me. The gap between those levels of existence create my problem. It is that gap that can kill me.

I went and looked for blog entries. I didn’t write about the blow up with Anna. I’m not surprised. That’s the kind of thing I can’t write about too soon after it happens. I didn’t write that much about my birthday party.

For my 30th birthday I wanted a two part party. The first part was all the lovely vanilla friends for a tea party and the second part was for a drug fueled orgy. I spent the morning before the first party began beating my head on concrete. I plastered a fake smile on my face for the tea party. I did a lot of drugs and freaked out all night anyway. Because even on heavy drugs designed to increase bonding feelings I feel like everyone standing near me is lying about liking me.

They really hate me. I’m disgusting. They are just being polite.

I keep trying because I keep hoping that this feeling will go away. There has to be some way of feeling connected with multiple people at once.

Sometimes I struggle with feeling connection with all three members of my household at once. This really is a deficient system in me. I have this hyper-focus for my feelings of attachment. I hyper-attach to one, maybe two people at once and I can’t really see or feel or experience attachment to other people. I have had to grow quite a bit. There have been periods where I’m all bond-y with the kids and I’m not nice to Noah for a while. Then things shift and Noah is on the inside and I kind of push one of the kids away for a bit (sometimes both).

How much “go play” is healthy? Unschoolers have very different tolerances on such things.

With my kids I’m pretty good (I think) at maintaining the professional engagement even if my emotional attachment comes and goes. There are days when I frankly dislike my children. Sometimes they can be raging assholes. Sometimes on those days I feel genuine empathy and I help them through the emotional bumps of life that must occur. Sometimes I hate their living breathing guts and I have to monitor my hands and my tone of voice and my facial expressions with great precision.

Just because I’m having a feeling that doesn’t mean I get to act on it. No matter how angry I am with them (for reasons or no reasons) I must control myself. My hands have to be gentle. I must not look too scary. I must project loving even when I feel none. Or at least more patience than I feel. I have to be patient. I have to be loving. I fucking picked my job. Don’t be a dick.

When I am in that space of being careful is when I feel the least attached. I don’t feel real. I don’t feel like my feelings matter. I am just there to be a support for other people having the experience they want to have.

This is the problem with group identity. I create this problem within my self as more and more people walk through the door.

I act very differently with different people. Some people think I am quiet and timid (I swear to G-d people say this to me on a regular basis–“Wow you are so quiet and so timid, it’s ok to talk”. I giggle.) No. This isn’t an environment where it is ok for me to talk. But thanks for playing. I think they say this because I stand there with my hand on my mouth to remind myself that I shouldn’t speak.

When I invite lots of people over because I want to be able to feel bonded with them it backfires. I experience horrible anxiety because I don’t know how to behave as the group size increases. I don’t know what will be ok. The things I talk about are on such a huge spectrum from mild to wild that I can’t figure out what to say. I physically hurt the whole time. My stomach is on fire and I want to cry.

I haven’t had a party that big since my 30th birthday. We’ve had much smaller parties and they’ve been a lot easier.

Our Christmas open house last year was unusually successful for my sense of emotional attachment. I had anxiety. I didn’t beat my head before the party. There were fewer people. There were manyfewer people I barely know. There was a higher percentage of people I have known for 10+ years than I usually have at parties. That was really nice. I had many moments of one-to-one bonding feeling. I didn’t ever get rid of the underlying feeling of, “If I fuck up everyone will stomp out and hate me forever” but I had moments of reprieve. I had moments of, “I am so glad to see you. Tell me how you have been.”

I did freak out about the token Asian thing. No party is perfect.

I really appreciate all of the people who continue to show up. Who like me enough to tolerate the fact that I don’t always feel like they like me, or like I physically can like them. When we get into the same room–the liking is there. In between visits it gets stored in a black hole very similar to Mary Poppins’ carpet bag. You can’t see what it is in from the outside. It seems like there is nothing of worth. Then you open it and reach inside and you magically find the feeling you need.

Oh. It’s you. I like you.

And we are off to the race horse.

Why do the group events with the home school group not count? Because they don’t know me very well and I have to be on really careful “work level” behavior at all times. Sure, L reads. I am pretty sure she is the only one in the group. I make other people uncomfortable and being near me is visible work. Being there isn’t about me anyway.

Why didn’t the reception count? It should have. By every criterion I’m an asshole for not thinking that my wedding reception counted as a time when many people demonstrated that they love and see me at the same time.

I don’t know. I don’t know why I feel so dead inside. I don’t know why I can’t feel that lots of people love me. I don’t know why I can only feel love from a small number of people before I default to absolute certainly that now that there is sufficient mass everyone is about to hate me. It’s fucking inconvenient.

I have a bad habit of acting like just because I believe I am unlovable that everyone agrees with me.

The bdsm community seems like it should have presented such a feeling, at least at some point. But I only really talked about myself to a few people. Only a few rare women actually knew much about my life. And my Owner was always clear that he was happier having my background be a closed book. He didn’t want to know what made me who I was or how I got to where I was.

So no, I didn’t feel seen or important or loved for me.

Noah has been such a dramatic force in my life. He was the very first person who ever wanted to know all my stories. Sometimes it feels like he gave me permission to live. My writing has gotten steadily more explicit and focused since I’ve known him. He wants to understand me. That means I have to figure out how to explain me.

When I went to Camp Everytown as a teacher and I had to publicly (though mostly silently) reveal all those details about my life to a large group of people… I ended up getting in a fight because the “bisexual” kids told me I was a disgusting bigot for describing myself as a queer. The other adults just about asked me to leave the event because I wasn’t keeping it together as a supportive adult well enough. I was not welcome to come back in later years so that I could adjust to the experience of having that many details of my life get revealed.

I’m different. Legitimately. Everyone is a special snowflake, yes I know. Even with weird people I’m weird.

I don’t feel seen very often. I feel like people see what they want to see. Someone who is more like them and probably softened. I try to be ok with that. I know that I see other people as being far sharper than they think they are. We like to see ourselves in others.

Yesterday we party hopped. A little kid birthday then a grown up birthday with some kids at the party. At the end of a very long day (the kids and I were out for a little over nine hours) there was a little issue with the baby at the party being grabby.

I happened to walk outside just in time to see the baby grab Calli’s face and pinch really hard. Calli screamed and cried. Then the baby did it again while I was walking over. I was nervous Calli would knock her block off.

I sat down and pulled her into my lap. She told me what happened and she told me how it felt and she told me about her feelings. I repeated all of it back to her and sympathized. Yup. It happened. Yup, it hurt a lot. Yup, you are sad. Would you like a hug?

Calli talked to the baby and asked for an apology. She said she accepted it after it was offered.

Then the baby squeezed Shanna’s arm. And around we go.

At this point I decided that it was time to go home. It was after seven and nearly bedtime and both of my kids are crying and not calming down and… time to go home.

Calli screamed the whole way home and the whole time while getting ready for bed. She didn’t want to go to bed. She didn’t want to do anything. So I went to bed with her. And I sat there and I talked to her about how proud I was of her behavior that day.

She calmed right down. She told me all about how “I showed the baby how to solve a problem. RULE NUMBER ONE: NO HITTING. Rule number two: use your words when you have a problem. Rule number three: tell people how they should touch you. RULE NUMBER FOUR: NO HITTING Rule number sixteen: use your words.” She went on for a bit. Then she calmed down and settled close to cuddle with me and things went better.

I do actually think I am pretty good at my job. I like them so much and they are worth the effort I put into this.

What is it that I need in order to feel connected? I don’t know.

To be clear, I don’t think Noah deserves the ambient rage I sometimes want to direct at him. Even if he is sometimes infuriating (he is) he doesn’t do anything awful. He’s not horrible. He’s just…standing in a complex place.

I worry very much about my ability to maintain control over myself. I fly into rages. I am violent. I am really pretty awful. I have managed to successfully keep that mostly away from my kids and Noah. But I fuck up sometimes. My self-recriminations and regret don’t mean shit.

I’m scared that at some point the only way to ensure that I don’t fuck up in ways I can’t get back is to leave. Which is a fuck up of its own that I can’t take back.

It is hard when I feel like I don’t deserve to be here. I don’t deserve the civility or the kindness or the love.

In other news, the youngun’ from the neighborhood I recently recruited has an ambitious friend. He asked to come onboard for training and further work. We had a lovely twenty minute conversation about negotiation and initiation and money. For the first few visits I’m going to pay the one person rate. During this period the tweens (cause they are both 12–they aren’t even teenagers yet) will be looking around the house for shit they can do. Then we will write up a price list.

I told them that I have learned that I am an entitled bitch when it comes to paying people for their time. If I’m paying you… I need my life to be easier. If my life isn’t easier I’m not willing to pay for it. If my life gets way easier I’m willing to pay and pay and pay.

We talked about how, “If I have to keep coming up with stuff for you to do so you can earn money…. does that make my life easier? Sorta. Maybe. Not that much. You won’t get that much money for that.”

I told them both that they need to save up and take CPR and maybe 1st responder classes. I told them that doing so will jack up their hourly rate a lot. They both perked up at that. “Really?” “Yup.”

I told them that if they want to sit on the couch quietly and watch my kids play I will pay them a maximum of $5/hour. I am paying you to stimulate my children. Yes it is work. Very hard work. That’s why I’m willing to pay you to do it sometimes.

I’m hoping to develop a wider shallower net of support. If each kid can handle doing 3-5 hours/week then between multiple kids I can figure something out.

All you can do is keep trying.

My kids asked a friend if they can adopt her as an auntie last night. She asked what that entailed. I laughed. The role currently has an extremely broad application. It means “adult I will see again during my childhood”. Not necessarily often. Sometimes mostly you will see them over Skype. But these are the people who love you and think about you.

My kids have a much gentler application of “chosen family” than I do. I’m very glad for them. I’m glad they feel so much love. I wish that I had similar feelings. It isn’t the fault of any of my friends that I don’t.

Pam told me that I expect a lot of my BFFs. Yup. I really do. I’m not very fair towards whoever is currently filling that role in my head. Apparently I take the “forever” part very loosely. As life has changed I’ve had different people be closest. I hope that doesn’t devalue the relationships I have.

I expect a lot of the people I pull in closest. My expectations are not really attainable. They aren’t really healthy. I know. I want someone who wants to be my mother and my sister all in one. And I don’t really know anyone who actually has the spoons for that. So I mourn and mourn and mourn. And it isn’t anyones fault. Not mine. Not any of the poor women I get mad at for failing to meet what I need.

They can’t. And it isn’t reasonable or fair to ask it of them. I’m a fucking asshole for acting like anyone owes me that.

To be fair. I don’t think anyone owes me anything. I said this is what I need. It hurts and it sucks and it isn’t fair to anyone. It sucks that I have this huge hole in my heart where my mother and sister should be. It sucks that I am not good at containing the grief and it spills out onto wanting more than I can have from other people.

Part of what makes this so hard is: the people I pick for BFFs are people who want to be able to help me feel whole. They throw everything they have at me. And I walk away crying because it isn’t enough. And everyone feels like shit. It isn’t fair to anyone involved. It is so fucking hard. It feels like if I could just stop being an asshole then everything would be fine.

I don’t know how to turn off this need. It feels like poison.

I told Noah this morning that he is wrong about blame. He thinks it is wasting a lot of space in my brain. I think that blame is very helpful to me. When I feel overwhelming rage towards Noah the fact that I rationally know and fully believe that he is not to blame for my emotions is the reason that I can have the level of control that I have. If I stopped considering whether or not he is to blame I would lose the frame for keeping him out of the blast radius. He kind of nodded.

Being crazy sucks. Having emotions this strong sucks. Learning to control your body after a lifetime of being very violent sucks.

The down side to the blame is if I ever run into my sister and she starts something I may beat her unconscious because there is a lot of rage over a lot of years and I have siphoned it off of other people onto her into a way that isn’t so fair.

There are downsides to everything. I kind of wish she would move far away: Kentucky might be ok. (We have a cousin there. She could join family.)

It doesn’t really matter how much I despise myself for having the emotional process I have, that doesn’t change it or make it better. Accepting that I have it and learning to work around the current system is the only effective way to move towards change I have ever found.

For every issue I have with Noah I’m aware that I can spend multiple weeks with him nearly 24/7 and we only have mild intellectual arguments. That’s not really how it works with other people. Noah is willing to work around my temperamental behavior in a way that strikes me as potentially problematic.

He tells me when I’m going too far. He has gotten me to stop hitting people. He has probably evoked most of the most-positive changes in my behavior this lifetime. He has boundaries and he defends them.

But he’s willing to sit down and learn about all of my weird little quirks. He’s willing to try things and discard them and then try them again when I ask. He works so hard to make sure I like being with him.

It is hard staying when I feel so unworthy. I deserve a dirty, non-working drug addict who will beat me. But not when I say “pretty please”. That would be sick.

Wandering off for quiet time before it is gone.