Category Archives: people do love me

Reflections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I consciously and deliberately always specify why a rule exists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that means I frustrate the shit out of them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like the Biblical phrase “a house divided”.

Fall. Fall. Fall.

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

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

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

This is big.

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

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

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

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

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

Nope. Not so much.

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, I over think things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Running is so different now.

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That first year I was running I felt like I was being hounded by demons on every step. I spent most runs sobbing and crying and spitting big gobs of mucous out of my mouth so I could breathe. It was a regular occurrence for me to fall to my knees and cry for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes and sob as hard as I could in the middle of a run. I spent a great portion of every run planning how I could kill myself with the handy materials (jump off an over pass, eat poisonous plants, deliberately step in front of a Mac truck among other ideas).

I think that happened because I was training so I could run with my brother. I know my brother hates me and blames me for a lot of things that couldn’t possibly be my fault. So training to run with him was really hard. I’m kind of glad he flaked.

Instead of having a gut wrenching awful experience I had a very hard experience with someone who loves me an awful lot. She must or she wouldn’t have flown from out of state to run an awful marathon with me. It was not convenient for her to do. She went through a lot of trouble.

And all through that difficult race (it was a very hard race for experienced marathoners–the conditions were just awful) she was there with me coaxing and playing and keeping my spirits up. She sang to me. She told me funny jokes. She would gently and lovingly coax me into a minute of running… just a minute… to speed up our pace from the crawling walk I mostly managed. I would not have been an official finisher of that race without her. It was too hard for me alone.

So now when I run I notice that my internal dialogue is different. Instead of hearing what a lazy, fat, stupid, disgusting, waste-of-time bitch I am the whole way I have Blacksheeps gentle voice instead. “You can do it! I have so much faith in you. Small steps, just move ’em quick. Just a minute of running then we can walk again. You can do it. I believe in you.”

I don’t cry when I run any more. Sometimes I’m still pokey and slow and that’s ok. I get a little more of a questioning eyebrow response back now. I don’t get told I’m fucking pathetic for going so slow. I get more of a, “Are you sure you can only move that fast?”

Right now I’m training for my training half marathon. I’m going to do another half marathon later in the year with Blacksheep. I’m doing this one with the mindset of getting into better shape so I can go closer to her pace. I know she will be patient with me no matter how fast I will go–she will not shame me. She will not degrade me or act disappointed. She will be encouraging and enthusiastic about me trying so hard because she knows how long the journey has been.

When I think about reparenting stuff this kind of thing is kind of what I mean. Blacksheep talks to me the way I talk to my kids. Like they will mistakes and get back up and try again because that is what you do.

Making mistakes does not define you. Refusing to correct your mistakes does define you. There are choices in life.

I’m looking forward to both 1/2 marathons this year. And…. I’m thinking that I might go right from the second 1/2 marathon into training for a full marathon again. I like how my body feels when I’m doing the long-distance running. I’d like more of that with tapes of Blacksheep playing in my head. I need that in my life.

It’s not like she’s with me on every run. But I can remember and draw strength from the love that is there.

I do that with cooking and Sarah. When I’m feeling scared and I can feel myself wanting to curl up in a ball and cry because I feel stupid and like I can’t I can’t I can’t. Sarah comes and whispers in my ear, “Yes you can. It’s easy. Here let’s read the recipe together.”

This is how I piece together my reparenting. I’m going to go have my glass of tea now.

Thank you so much for loving me.

Daily ritual stuff

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Sometimes I read on the internet about how it is beneficial to have a daily routine. My problem is there aren’t enough hours in the day for all I would “like” to do.

One thing that is becoming a set part of every day is drinking tea. I like to think of it as my morning bonding moment with the women in my life. Even though I know that men drink tea too I think of women. I think of Jenny and Paula and the other formerly Miss so-and-so friends (all of whom are now married and thus no longer Miss anything) and Patti and Sarah and I remember gleeful moments we have shared over tea.

I drink every morning and I say a prayer for all of their good health and continued strength. Whether I see them or not I think about them. I have spent most of my life believing that if I just want something bad enough it’s like magic. I can make it true.

I want these women to be happy, healthy, and fulfilled. With or without me. So I drink a cup of tea and think about them and pray for their benefit. If anyone is listening I hope my karmic experiences weight my begging. Clearly I’m owed some favors for dealing with shitty stuff.

Judith. Kerry. Debbie. Stacey. Kira. Anna. Brittney. Marina. Elora. Erin. Michelle. Andy.

I sit down and cycle through women in my head. I’m not going to get through the full list in this entry and I won’t try. I’d leave someone out and they’d feel butt hurt and that isn’t the point. The point isn’t who I think about *today* because the list changes so much over time.

Remy. Rose. Marcie. Mo. Wendy. Ali. Deborah. Lauren. Denise. Chris. Amy. Talia. Angela.

I think and think and remind myself that even if these people are mad at me, they probably haven’t stopped loving me. They may not express it in ways I see or in ways that “feel” like love to me but that doesn’t mean anything about their feelings. I can’t judge what they feel. I remind myself of that over and over.

I can’t judge what other people feel.

But I enjoy sitting down to my tea and thinking about the women who have shaped me. Some of them did so on purpose. Some of them probably never realized the degree to which I have consciously patterned off of them. Many of them probably have no idea just how much time I spend sitting around thinking about them. What choices do they make? Why do they make them? What can I learn? How would I do it differently? What would it take to make me behave the way they behave? What differences would have to come up in my life to change me?

Not because I think they are wrong and I am right. Anything but.

I tend to be able to see other people as more grown up than me in a wide variety of ways. I want to grow up. I am envious of how other people manage. I need more tricks.

So whereas there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to put my life on a routine (painting, writing, editing, playing with the kids, reading, cooking, cleaning, seeing people–all of these things combine to need a 57 hour day if you want to do all of them every day) I try to start the day thinking about the many women I know who inspire me.

I try harder because I can tap into, “How would ______ handle this problem?” How would someone who was more patient solve this? How would someone who was kinder model this? How would someone with an inherently higher level of lovability manage?

It’s like having the pictures on my walls. I have lots and lots of pictures on my walls. I tell myself that these are the people who would be sad if I killed myself. (There are guys in the pictures too. The tea ritual is about my ladies. My life is not just an all-girls event.)

I’m not very good at feeling connected to people. I’m trying to learn to feel bonds. Mostly I have spent my life thinking that I am a worthless piece of shit who could only improve the planet by no longer being a waste of resources. Changing is hard.

Shanna is making my mothers day present already because there is a Berenstein’s Bears book about the topic. A scrap book of pictures about the experience of being a mom. She picks pictures off the wall and then has me pre-screen them.

We can never get another copy of Talia’s senior picture from high school so we can’t use that one in the scrap book. I can never get another copy of the picture from my junior high school dance where my friends Iris, Jenny, Kira, Yvette, and Nikki are posing.

Anything we have taken on a digital camera–go ahead. I can have more prints made if I miss a specific one on the wall.

I am increasingly sentimental as I get older. I’m trying to believe that things continue on. It’s all part of a longer story. I’m not over yet. It has been weird to grow up and realize how much my ability to organize and my lack-of-attachment to “stuff” has been about my constant feeling that I will die soon. Or that I should die soon. It’s not nice to leave a mess for someone else so get your shit together.

I have too many books to read. I can’t die yet.

Every morning I sit down and think about the women who guide me whether they know it or not. I don’t feel like a “church” would work well for me. I’m not willing to follow dogma of any kind. My karma ran over your dogma and other such “intelligent” *cough* humor.

A wise woman told me I would have to build my own community. I really have. They are spread out. They show up sporadically–more like a rural community. But they are there.

I see them. I see them in my mind and in my heart and sometimes I get to see them in person. That has to be enough. It is all there is.

Sometimes I feel bad about the way attachment works in my brain. I wish that I could turn it on or turn it off and stop futzing with it. But I think the only way I could do that is to just turn it off. And I don’t want to. I want to be able to love and be loved. I think it matters that I have relationships with people who don’t live in my house so I can model what that looks like for my children. How do I teach them to feel loved?

Part of it is just not breaking them. Humans normally have the ability to feel loved. But it feels like more than that. Noah and I *both* struggle with attachment issues. We both have family issues and we both feel intermittently loved by our friends. (No slam on anyone in our life.) But we have similar issues. If we want to have kids who have a larger emotional range than us then we need to figure out how to facilitate that whether we join them there or not.

No pressure.

I feel fairly confused by how it works in other cultures. Attachment, that is. On one hand Buddhism talks about detachment, but I think I’m missing a lot of the point. Pam’s mother expects her to call all the damn time and that’s not very detached, you know? More research. Talk to real people instead of reading white-people versions on the internet. What the hell do white people know about Buddhism? (Not that I’m converting. But I’m interested in how they solve this problem.)

Yesterday was kind of rough. I expect the kids to get all of their stuff off the floor every other week so I can vacuum. I didn’t finish till 7:30 last night because they totally didn’t want to cooperate. I’m glad that their “uncle” showed up to help them because if I had to do it… oh man. I was running out of not-screaming-strength. *phew* This is why they need a tribe.

Sometimes someone other than mom needs to patiently show them something. Sometimes mom is about to flip out and she needs to go in a dark room alone. Yay quiet.

I feel shocked that one of my former lovers is the most consistent person in my childrens’ lives so far. He has consistently shown up for longer than anyone else at this point. He’s here to see me and see my kids. If I’m being bitchy he doesn’t talk to me much and he just spends time with the kids–which is a wonderful thing.

I don’t trust anyone. I carefully weigh and measure if people are doing as they say they will. Most people don’t. I’m so grateful he is consistent. He’s very careful to promise less than he thinks he might be able to deliver on. That’s a lot of why it works. I’ve known him for more than thirteen years. And he has been coming every week–sometimes more than once a week for over a year, I think over a year and a half at this point. He hung out with the kids more sporadically before that. (He wasn’t great at the baby phase.) But he has been in their lives pretty consistently for their entire lives. He took all of the pregnancy pictures when I was pregnant with Shanna. He showed up in the first five days of life for both kids. He wanted to imprint on them. He has continually made time and space to just show up.

I honestly didn’t expect it and that’s a lot of why I didn’t have kids with him. He asked me to co-parent and I didn’t think he had it in him to show up consistently. I was wrong about him. I think I was right that we wouldn’t be the best co-parents (I’m too much of a cunt) but I dramatically underestimated his intentions and consistency. I’m sorry I so undercut him. He’s been really great. If I had turned out to want more like the single-parent thing he would have been a good ally for that.

He’s acting like a big brother. He had a kid brother and he tells me that he’s doing what he saw done in his family when he was young. You just show up. Yeah, sometimes people are assholes–you tune them out that day.

I’m not very good at that. I’m grateful to be near it sometimes. (I am learning to tune out a lot of what he says in similar ways. We have Very Different Opinions About Life.) I want him to be allowed to live. I want to be allowed to live.

It’s working for now. See, I’m not just focused on the ladiez. I’m willing to take whoever shows up. If you are willing to love me we can find a way.

I worry about these bounces.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have wanted this feeling for my whole life.

Please love me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s time for dinner.

Find gratitude

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Bless America.

Dreaming of travel.

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I don’t feel well today. My body is very uhm attached to the porcelain god. Such is life.

When I feel shitty the kids destroy the living room around me and I talk to them about travel plans. They have vetoed the idea of visiting the Disney Vacation Club resorts that are not part of a theme park during the 2015 trip. I thought it would be nice to just go to the beach. They say uhmmm not so much. So we will be at Disney World for a very long time. We will be switching hotels a lot.

As of my spreadsheet for today we will be arriving at Disney World on 9/2/15. We will bounce between seven hotels and eventually leave the area on 10/8/15. I have every expectation that I will be completely sick of Disney by the time we leave. That will be using what is left of 2014’s points, 2015’s points, and basically all of 2016’s points too. I can live with that.

I’m still playing with how far I think I can handle driving on the driving days and how long I want to set up camp in various places. I more or less run my life with the expectation that even 48 hours of my presence is often distressing and unpleasant for other people. I’m looking at maps and trying to decide about visiting various people across the country. I need to figure out my spoons for managing the kids, wrangling food, driving, and still being acceptably mild in my interpersonal interactions that I never make other people upset so that we have to move on before I am physically ready.

I feel sad that I am so hard for people. I don’t want to ruin any more friendships so I have to be very careful how I dole out time with me. I wish I was better able to just act right. I try, but I mostly just seem to keep failing.

Altogether (right now) it looks like we will be leaving California on 7/8/2015 and arriving home on 11/18/2015.

Maybe could extend or shrink if we want to cut off spending time with people on the ends. Or if I wanted to have fewer rest days and more driving days. On that schedule I would have 31 days of driving spread out. I would only drive more than 400 miles in a day 4 times. Those legs don’t have good cut-up-spots. Most days I will drive fewer than 300 miles. I would prefer to be actively driving for less than four hours in a day.

Shanna says she votes for more hiking/nature/camping and less time in cities. I’ll do my best but if we are going to go allllllll the way out to Ithaca to see a friend then I will force her to submit to a little bit of New York City. Neiner.

Incidentally, there are some people scattered throughout the country whom I already assume we will see because I have long standing “I will come see you some day” exchanges with people. (Aunt Mitty, DA, Shalyndra, my ex-internet girlfriend from MDC, some folks in North Carolina, Pittsburgh unschoolers) Those are the folks who have expressed enthusiasm and hope that I will inflict my distinguished personage upon them. *cough* If you think you are not on my list and you want to be on my list you should speak up or I will go about my life assuming people don’t want to see me. Like I do.

It’s interesting thinking about the planning stuff now. I think that if I am going to be medicated then I will need to find some way to beg/borrow/rent a vehicle that will allow us to sleep behind locked doors. That would eliminate about 90% of my paranoia about sleeping alone in a tent with two little kids while I’m stoned. If there is a locked door then there will be enough noise and movement to wake me up.

Must work on that stage of the plan. Less than 18 months to go now. That’s in actual planning stages…

I apparently have strong priorities.

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I have some really bad habits. To start with: I like working out what I will do by talking to other people. Then in the process I discover my boundaries/priorities because I get explosively angry at the nice people who I am talking to when they suggest something that isn’t what I want to do. I hope I didn’t bite anyone’s head off yesterday. I tried to end conversations when I felt myself wanting to scream. Thank you so much for talking to me.

I wish I could figure out what I think without feeling the need to scream. I didn’t scream. Not once. But there were many hours of crying and feeling upset.

I cancelled the grief ritual registration. I’m trying to build community with the home school group and I don’t go out with them much. The group in general spends a lot more time with one another than my kids spend with them. If I weren’t going with the group I wouldn’t bother to go to Cirque right now anyway. I wouldn’t have bothered paying for tickets. And it was bought in a group package so I don’t think it would be easy to exchange.

I agreed to the Cirque trip months before I thought of the grief ritual for this year. Apparently I don’t like the idea of flaking on my original plans just because a better offer showed up.

I keep flaking on the nice lady who is point on the group trip. Canceling would be a lot like flipping her off and saying her effort wasn’t important because I found something better to do. People do that to me a lot. I don’t want to turn around and hand that down.

I’m sad about missing the grief ritual for a variety of reasons. I don’t have a whole lot of catharsis in my life. A nice lady said, “Do you even have grief left?” and I didn’t yell. *pat self on back* Yes. I have a lot of grief. I feel like I’m drowning in it.

I used to process by doing bdsm until I could scream/cry it out. A long time ago. Then play spaces changed and these days it isn’t ok to play in public the way I used to. These days you have to be careful to “not scare the newbies” so really brutal/loud beatings are considered inappropriate. I’ve had a lot of Dungeon Monitors (I kind of hate DMs) interrupt my scenes to tell me to be quiet. I just won’t try for heavy scenes in public any more. And I don’t have a sound proof house and I know all my neighbors.

I used to get kind of impatient with people who said they couldn’t scream in their home because they didn’t want to bother the neighbors. Ha. Things change.

I miss Castlebar. No one cared how much you screamed because we were in an industrial neighborhood at night near a freeway. No one could hear it or care. It was great. Ok, only having three walls so you froze all winter kind of sucked… but I still miss it. I liked it better than the fancier spaces where you have to be quiet to play. I’m not quiet.

Many people suggested exchanging the Cirque tickets and just going at a different time as a family. It’s not a bad suggestion. But it’s kind of like if your family was all going to Disney World and I said, “Well you don’t need to be there with them. Just go a different time.”

Of course you could, but then you would be missing the family trip.

I want to go see S and O and A as they experience Cirque. I’m trying to be a grown up who is consistently in their lives. My kids are growing up with them. I’m trying to find experiences my kids get to share with other kids. Mostly they are just stuck doing things with me when I can handle doing them. They don’t get to do a lot with other kids. They don’t have five days a week where they are with other kids.

I really do appreciate that people helped me figure out my priority list. It isn’t anyone’s fault that I do that by getting angry about suggestions that won’t work for me. I’m sorry.

I don’t think I actually yelled at anyone. I just had surges of emotion. I think I squashed them. I think I was appropriate. I am never sure though. I’m always afraid that my nice friends will talk to me then I’ll be a cunt then they won’t be my nice friends any more.

I lose a lot of sleep worrying about this. I’m sorry I get so angry over things I shouldn’t get mad about.

In other news I continue to not use much of my apathy enhancing drug. Holy shit does that mean that every emotional reaction feels like it is turned up to 11. I’m doing well at not screaming at the kids. I’m barely even yelling. I seem to be getting a point almost every day and I try to comfort myself with the idea that I’m barely raising my voice and I tend to cut it off mid-sentence… I still get a point for the AHHHP. The check mark thing on the wall is helping me. I feel humiliated when I have to give myself a point so it is getting easier to remember.

I can’t just “not yell” but I can avoid shame. It’s weird.

I really appreciate that people talked to me through my annoying hand wringing and crying. I’m sorry that my process works this way. I wish I were “calm and rational” but I’m not always.

What is more important to me–catharsis with mostly strangers, or bonding with kids I want to know through their childhoods?

Not a decision anyone else can make for me. People don’t understand what it means to me that I didn’t get to do the group activities as a kid. I did things alone. I never had a group because I moved all the time. Even when I did things ostensibly as part of a group I didn’t know anyone so people wouldn’t talk to me. They wanted to hang out with their friends. I want my kids to get to be friends with S and O and A. It’s a big fucking deal to me. I feel incredible guilt that I only get off my lazy ass and join the group for one activity a week.

I just can’t handle the driving most of the time. The home school group goes pretty far afield and just about all of their activities are a minimum of a 30 minute drive each way for us. I can’t do that every day. I freak out and have no spoons left for getting anything else done.

I have strongly internalized that home schoolers don’t stay home. They are out in the world. But our world is largely bound by the limits of our ability to walk. My kids are buff. I need them to be able to do heavy manual labor in less than seven years. I don’t think that the standard American kid raised in a car can turn around and just do that without a lot of pain and awful.

My kids will always be pulled out of the group a lot. Next year we will be gone for 4-6 months. I haven’t decided yet. The bare minimum will be 4 months but there is so much I want to see (so many people) that it may stretch out. That’s a long time to just be gone from their friends.

I need to provide them with time with kids. I just have to. That is more important to me than me getting a weekend of catharsis. It is inconvenient that there isn’t a convenient other ritual coming up. (There is one in Sacramento in a few months. On Shanna’s birthday. Sigh.)

I don’t think I can explain what being in a supportive environment while I cry feels like. I have spent my entire life knowing that it isn’t actually “ok” that I cry all the time. It is shameful and annoying and I need to shut the fuck up because I bother people.

I know.

My problems are my personal problems and they don’t belong to anyone else. I know. That’s an awful lot of why it feels like I need to just die when I feel overwhelmed. It isn’t ok to let my issues spill out and contaminate other people.

So going and meeting a woman who believes deep in her belly “all problems are problems for the community” is… intense.

The thing is, this kind lady isn’t available to be anything to me at any point after the ritual. She can tell me how it is in her village in Africa for people who grew up there. She’s busy and travels a lot and doesn’t live near me and she has no bandwidth to spare for random ritual attendees.

So my problems are still mine. Even though some people don’t have to bear their problems alone forever.

I struggle so much with bitterness.

The whole “Bank of Mom and Dad” isn’t really about the money. It is about having people who are deeply committed to helping you and supporting you through your life. They are invested in you being ok.

I don’t have that. I didn’t ever have grandparents. My aunts/uncles mostly abandoned me when my parents divorced because I went with my mother and no one liked her. My mom grew up in my position in her family. The unwanted child everyone hated. I don’t think she was the product of rape but no one ever liked her. I feel so sad for my mom. Then she grows up and her kids hate her too.

I fear that I’m on that road.

I have friends who have genuinely lost their mothers. How dare I feel so bad about choosing to cut off ties.

I had to. There is no other way to ensure that my kids don’t grow up in the same cycles I did. From when my niece was very young my mother told her that things were “all her fault”. So by 17 my niece was working at In-N-Out and supporting her sibling and mother out of guilt. She felt overwhelming pain at the idea of Auntie having to work in her 70’s because she (my niece) was the reason my Auntie spent her retirement money and now she (Auntie) doesn’t have any left.

What bullshit. Auntie had to work because Uncle Bob was a sonofabitch who spent money like it grew on trees to deal with his bitterness at having his wife’s family around. That is not my niece’s fault.

It’s just not and my kids will not grow up in that kind of fucking environment where kids are programmed to think that being born was a terrible burden on everyone around them and they should spend their life apologizing.

Just no.

I am experienced enough to know that people who think they can maintain their connection with family and “shield” their kids from the worst of it usually end up finding out twenty years later about horrible abuse that happened just behind the corner of a room. I know too many cases where children were raped in the few minutes it took to go get a toy from a room.

My children will not be spending their lives around recidivist rapists. I don’t fucking think so.

So I get to live with this grief. Doing the right thing doesn’t usually mean doing the easiest or the most comfortable thing. It means doing the right thing.

I chose to bring little people into this world. It is my responsibility to keep them safe during their childhood. I don’t think many people know better than me how fast things can happen when you are near evil people.

I have two wanted children. They are loved and a blessing. That is all they will fucking hear in their childhoods.

And they won’t have to miss out on doing things with their friends because their mom is selfish. They’ve been hearing about Cirque for months. Telling them they don’t get to do it with their friends would make me a selfish asshole.

I’d like to believe I am better than that. Maybe I’m lying to myself but I’ll keep trying anyway.

My friends gave me the advice they gave me largely because they believe I have the right to be the main character in my life. They believe I have the right to place my needs as the most important.

And I get mad at them for that. What does that say about me?

I’m not really “mad” at them. But my body does angrily reject the notion that I should be the only important person in my story. I don’t think I am more important than my kids. I don’t think that my preferences matter more than theirs. I don’t think I get to just selfishly usurp their life all the time. I do too much of that as is.

I’m not sure I’m right. I’m not sure there was a ‘right’ decision here. Ultimately I kind of decided “I’m going with the commitment I made first.” That may be faulty logic.

Thank you for talking to me. I wish I were less of an asshole.

Happy 2014.

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I don’t really want to write a retrospective of the year. It was a better year than most for me. Maybe one of the happiest of my whole life. My PTSD symptoms continue to be challenging but I don’t think I got dumped by a long-term friend. I didn’t have to move. I got to buy anything I wanted. I did get support even if it didn’t feel like “enough” (that’s not really anyone else’s fault–I’m not even sure what “enough” would mean) and that is a big step up from most of my life.

We had dinner last night with my current “bestie” and her family. She’s the only person I talk to almost every day who doesn’t live with me. That person changes over the years. I try at this point to not hold on to attachment to a specific person needing to be there for me forever. I will never have a BFF. Britt decided she didn’t want me and that’s fine. My Jenny loves me and will love me forever but she’s far away and I won’t ever get to spend a lot of time with her again. That’s ok. I still love her with all my heart and soul. It is what it is.

My bestie told me she doesn’t think going cold turkey off pot is a good idea. She watched me cycle emotionally a lot yesterday and she flat told me that she thinks I am doing a self-hating thing. This is why I pick opinionated people as friends. They tell me what they really think. Even though sometimes I’m an asshole in response. I’m way better about the asshole thing than I used to be.

I am trying to let go of feeling sad about all of the relationships that have ended. People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime and you will never know who is in which category until you die. That’s when you finally have perspective on the story. It will all be ok in the end.

2014 needs to be a year of not spending money. I need to take the long term financial planning stuff seriously. I have some expensive goals.

Otherwise I think that mostly I need to work on being more brave. And kind. I need to yell less.

I happen to love a lot of other people who also have psychological challenges of their own. I’m not the only one with anxiety and panic disorder and PTSD and depression. If I want those people in my life I am going to have to consciously and deliberately keep inviting them in or they won’t be in my life. They can’t invite themselves in. Or they won’t. I don’t know which and from where I am sitting it doesn’t matter. It all comes out the same in the wash.

People are never going to be “all I want” from them. I have to manage that. It isn’t anyone else’s fault. It isn’t my fault either. It isn’t anyone’s fault near as I can tell. It just is. I can either be kind and loving or I can be nasty and alone.

I don’t want to be alone. I really don’t.

I’m looking forward to 2014. I have so much to look forward to. I love spending time with my kids so much. I am deeply grateful to the friends in my life. Noah is the source of all my safety and security. I cannot begin to express how much I notice that. I need to treat Noah as well as he treats me. I’m really grateful that I get to have someone who loves me this much in this lifetime.

I won’t keep everyone forever and ever. I need to not feel that it happens because I am a worthless piece of shit. That’s not it. Sometimes the people who can’t be in my life do truly love me… but sometimes love is not enough. I am hard. That will always be true. I need to transfer the bitterness about losing some people into gratitude for the people who can stay. It isn’t anyone’s fault that some people have to go. It’s just life.

Part of the challenge for this year will be to get my body to hurt less. I hope to get my brain to stop chanting that I am a worthless whore. It’s a goal.

I’m really looking forward to my birthday this year. I was talking to Noah about it this morning. It looks like I will take off for nearly a week alone because my birthday is on a Wednesday and I think it may be a good idea to schedule the half marathon in Portland the weekend before or the weekend after. I will check with blacksheep and race schedules and decide for sure. Shanna says she is not interested in going to the Unschooling conference in Washington the weekend of her birthday. She wants to be here with friends.

I’m looking forward to waking up alone on my birthday somewhere far from my home. I will have no one and nothing to take care of except my base bodily needs. That sounds like the best birthday ever right now. Maybe I’ll go dance in the trees all by myself.

Oh man breaks are awesome.

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I am enjoying the fuck out of this time off. I am relishing it. If it were a pile of money I would take all my clothes off and rub it all over my body. It’s awesome. Being not-in-charge is intoxicating.

I spent a while today talking to a friend who is Not Having Children. (Go her.) She talked about appreciating the spontaneity of her life. I felt some envy. But not for one minute do I wish my children away. I just like breaks.

I appreciate that despite my flailing and being generally obnoxious I have really good friends. Even the people who “disappoint me” aren’t doing much wrong. They are doing what they have to do to take care of themselves. I respect that. I can still be hurting even while I’m glad you are taking care of you.

Somehow things will work out.

When I talk to other people with PTSD it is very common to hear that none of them want to plan anything for the future. They don’t believe they will have a future. There will be no lessoning of symptoms. No peace.

It’s kind of funny, even in the midst of my hand-wringing ohgodohgodohgod anxiety I am (at least occasionally) able to stop and take a deep breath and recognize that this moment sucks but they won’t all suck.

When my therapist works on EMDR stuff and she has me think very consciously about my children as they wake up in the morning. I am very lucky and more mornings than not I get to climb into bed with my kids and look at their beautiful faces as they wake up. They both light up the minute they see me. They are so excited to see me.

Not every moment sucks. Some moments take my breath away with joy.

I like breaks because I have a chance to process my anxiety and stop and think “I miss my babies.” When they are ALWAYS here I never miss them and that’s hard. Absence makes the heart grow fonder… or some shit.

I’m think think thinking about how I am going to get through next year. I will have to get a handle on my anxiety. Good luck. I will have to stop screaming. No really. All four of us need to sit down and have a “family meeting” about this. We need to figure out what kind of loss of privilege is appropriate for all four of us because each and every one of us has to do this.

We love each other too much to keep treating one another this way. We can do better.

I probably won’t socialize very much with grown ups. Luckily grown ups are able to sustain relationships through large gaps. Kids can’t really do that. I need to save all my spoons for managing my body and my family. Even if that bothers me. Even if I feel boring or bored or whatever.

I know that despite this existential loneliness I feel I am not alone. I know that I am loved. I know that many of the people who love me are not able to see me very often and that doesn’t change the fact that they love me.

Do you know that I sit here and go through name rosters in my head and love you? That is what I have learned to do to combat the attachment issues. If I don’t do this… I forget. When I run into someone I haven’t thought about in a long time I feel no emotion towards them at all. I have to rehearse and remind myself of my love. Even when I’m mad at you. Even when I’d like to chew you out for something. You are still on the list and I consciously think about how much I love you. I have to or I would forget. That’s part of how it works for me. I have to try hard to keep loving you. I think you are worth it. I am willing to spend time nearly every day whispering all the names of the people I love.

Thank you so much for loving me. I don’t feel worthy but I will do my best. I am so sorry for all the difficulty I cause. I’m sorry for all the distress I cause.

I don’t want to be invisible. And this is just the ride I’m on.

Attention seeking.

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I read a lot of really nasty things on the internet about how mentally ill people are just “attention seeking”. Every single time I read something like that what I get out of the experience is, “No one gives a shit about my experience of life and I should never ask for help.” Luckily I live with someone who demonstrably thinks that attitude is bullshit and he *does* want me to ask for attention when I need it.

Yesterday started off rocky but improved. Noah was very nice to me in those ways that Noah is very nice. I really like living with him. My issues with my body predate him and aren’t because of him and nevertheless he tries hard to make my life better. When I communicate that I am doing especially badly he takes a deep breathe and finds a way to be more giving.

Sometimes that means making all the food instead of just most of the food when he is home. Sometimes that means a lot of massage (yesterday was a fantastic rubbing day). Sometimes it means reading me books as a way of paying attention to me but not focusing on me. It’s a subtle distinction but very important.

When Noah is nicer to me in these ways I tend to feel a lot more inner push to make sure I’m finishing “my share” of the work around the house. Things get much tidier after he has paid attention to me because he likes the house tidy. I try to streamline things so he doesn’t have any more stress than usual. If he spends the whole day rubbing me there is basically a 0% chance I will turn down sex. You’ve totally done the prerequisite touching. Ok.

The folks on the PTSD forum spend a lot of time talking about how “not safe” it is to talk about having this disorder and what it means. They believe you should only tell people if you HAVE to. If there is no way to avoid mentioning it. Like, if you are going to marry someone you have to tell them in advance but they can usually justify not talking about it for years of dating.

I have the opposite approach. I tell everyone. I document the ups and the downs. Not because I expect lots of people to react or to treat me particularly differently. Partially so people can (hopefully) understand that my extremes are not their fault. Clearly I have extreme reactions all the time to seemingly inconsequential stimuli. It is not someone else’s fault when I suddenly have intense feelings of shame and worthlessness and suicidal ideation. It just happens sometimes.

I can usually pull together a basket of “Ohhh…. this happened and that happened and that thing over there and that’s when I lost control” but the fact that I lost control isn’t the fault of cause A, cause B or cause C. I lost control because maintaining control is very hard and I struggle with it all the time and sometimes I slip.

I am outbursty, loud, and over-sharing pretty much all the time. So it’s not because of you. Nothing YOU did caused this.

Well, unless you are one of the many people who abused me. But I doubt it. They are pretty much gone from my life. And I don’t even think that my issues are anyone in particular’s fault. My issues are the result of a tremendous number of small and large failures on the part of people who were responsible for the safety of a child.

Now that I have the responsibility for the safety of children I can see that. It’s not my mom’s fault. It’s not my dad’s fault. It is my mom and dad and sister and aunt and uncle and brother and school principals and school teachers and neighbors and therapists and….

My brain wouldn’t have gotten so fucked up if I hadn’t been severely neglected and abused. That was a joint effort to create.

But here I am. What do I do now? Do I expect people to dance like monkeys for my entertainment to try and make up for all the shit that happened before? God I hope not. I visit with friends when I have the self control to make our visit mostly about their feelings of comfort and safety and I avoid people when I can’t manage to behave well enough. I invite people to parties mostly because I know a tremendous number of really cool people and I think their lives would be better if they cross pollinated. I don’t expect to be the center of attention and if that starts to happen I will leave the room.

So man I have feelings about this whole “attention getting” thing. It sure sounds like people shouldn’t be seen. It sure sounds like no one should allow the truth of their life to be visible to other people and I don’t like that one bit.

I’m sorry that my truth is so melodramatic and sad. I really am. Lying about it in order to make other people feel better would drastically increase the likelihood that I will die from suicide. It’s always there for me at the corner. I don’t do it because enough people have convinced me that *they personally* would be hurt that I can’t do it. I love them a lot more than I love me and I can avoid causing them pain. If the trade is pain for me or pain for someone I love I will always volunteer to be the one in pain. I’m used to it. I have a lot of experience with pain. Most of the people I love are much less experienced and I want to keep it that way.

It’s a dance. This attention seeking bullshit. I need enough attention that I can talk myself into not dying and not so much attention that I need to leave the room because I can’t handle people looking at me.

I was asked (on the forum) how I could learn to see myself with compassion. How could I work towards seeing the value I add to the world that my friends can clearly see. How do you move past feeling like a worthless piece of shit?

I don’t really know. I am an over-achiever to compensate for my feelings of low self-worth.

This means that when I go to random parties and I don’t care about whether people like me or not (like Noah’s work Christmas party) I have a rather ridiculous number of cool stories to tell. I usually feel surprised by how many neat things I have done. Wow. I’ve had an interesting life. I don’t notice except when I am telling someone new. When I’m just sitting around being me I feel lame, boring, whiny, and obnoxious.

Don’t forget! I whine every day!

Over-sensitive, whiny baby. Things like the comments my friend made about the Christmas presents I bought. I will never bring it up with him because I’m not fucking interested in being told he was just joking and I should lighten up.

Have you noticed how I’m not a “lighten up” person?

Yes, this is manifestly all my fault and a problem I have. I know. I fucking know. I know that many people have teasing as a love language. I get that. It doesn’t change the fact that I leave and go home to cry and cry because that teasing doesn’t feel like love to me.

Am I allowed to have my reactions and feelings or do I have to conform to what makes other people feel comfortable?

I’m sorry I am so sensitive. I really fucking wish I wasn’t. But I am. I could deal with it by not talking to people any more so that I don’t get upset with them. I could deal with it by allowing people to say whatever they want and I’ll just do my crying in private. I could deal with it by asking people to stop (boy does that have a shitty track record–usually letting people know that it intensely bothers you is a cue for them to intensify how much of it they do). I could try to weed out the people who are teasers–but that doesn’t work.

Some days I can handle more of it than other days. Some days some teasing is genuinely ok and I don’t leave to go cry. Some days when I hang out with people I can pull off happy and cheerful while they are with me and I am crying before they are to their car. Or before I am to my car if I am at their house.

“Oh they didn’t mean anything by it” does not help me feel better. I don’t feel better at all that people casually say nasty things to me. They don’t mean to be nasty. It isn’t nasty from their point of view.

This is the walking on egg shells shit.

I feel dismissed and like it doesn’t matter that I have a whole frame around why I have the reactions and feelings I have. I don’t matter. What matters is that I maintain the structure and shape of what makes other people feel comfortable. Obviously I am over-sensitive and thus it is just my problem.

I’m looking forward to the grief ritual in February. There are parts of it I won’t enjoy. I get very angry when people meet for these kinds of things and declare that we have “created a community together and now we can support one another.” Bullshit. You are people I will see at a weekend conference and then probably never again. Maybe we will wave at a coffee shop. We are not a fucking community. God I get so angry when people say things like that to me.

I get why they say it. Most of the people in the room are students at a particular university and they have lots of classes together. They *could* form a community. I am not interested in joining your school (I’m not going to do the commute nor the cost) so I am not part of your community. I get it. I am not part of the community for reasons of my own choosing. I get it. It’s my fault. I get it.

I am enjoying having many days in a row where we aren’t seeing anyone. It is no one else’s fault I am so touchy and difficult and I wouldn’t be able to calibrate to someone else right now. Better to not be near people if I can’t be nice enough. I don’t like dealing with the long-term damage of people knowing just how difficult I can be.

Because seriously, when people complain about me being difficult that is on the day where I saved up all my easy. I’m fucked no matter what I do.

I feel sad and angry and trapped. I’m not trapped. These feelings will fade. My life is good. I am not upset because of anyone who is standing near me and I’m very sorry I have these feelings.

They will pass.

This is how people make it to level 2.

Leave a reply

After writing long angsty things I specifically emailed my friend. The response, “I was joking. I had a great time. Your friends are awesome. You were completely fine. I’m going to go take a shower now.”

Yup. That’s how you manage my anxiety. Pat me on the head and then go about your business. Perfect all around.

In other news Christmas was really awesome. The kids are hyped up to within an inch of being able to spontaneously combust and so they have cried a lot. Otherwise it’s been a good day. GoldieBlox and RobotTurtles and marble run and musical instruments and Legos. Life couldn’t get better.

And I got several books. Shop Class As Soul Craft by Matthew B. Crawford, Healing Developmental Trauma by Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre, and Predators, Pedophiles, Rapists & Other Sex Offenders by Anna Salter.

Obviously my husband knows to whom he is married. I feel loved. And adequately socked. It’s a good Christmas. Lots of bath products. YAY!

Sensitivity

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I don’t think that I am “responsible” for how other people feel. I don’t think I can “make” them feel comfortable or uncomfortable all by myself. This is a collaborative sort of dance.

That said, I take it very seriously when friends point out areas where I am making them feel uncomfortable. “I was just joking” brush offs are an easy way for conflict-avoidant people to state their issues without having to get into a full scale conflict. I get that people don’t want conflict with me. I’m annoying as fuck. Not only do I fight like the devil but I am incredibly defensive and prone to act like people are attacking me when they aren’t. Not an awesome situation.

So I try hard to pay attention to the fact that people who love me a lot are generally people who have worked hard at avoiding conflict with me. I only have one or two pro-conflict close friends. Mostly my closest friends are people who are willing to learn how to deal with what a special-fucking-snowflake I am. Noah says I take an unusual amount of energy to get to know. I believe him.

I worry. If you’ve read more than 100 words I’ve written you already know that. I worry about just about everything. I *really* worry about whether or not I am behaving in a way that is sensitive and respectful of the people around me. It may not seem that way to other people, because when I fail I fail big-time, but I swear I am working hard at tact and being kind to people who have different boundaries.

I wish that I just got to declare that my behavior was awesome and that everyone who interacts with me should feel comfortable and safe.

I don’t get to decide that. As a white person for me to *ever* declare that someone who is not white must accept my behavior… yeah no. That’s just not on. If I were a male I would think that was an additional strike against me. It may not be fair but life rarely is.

Do I get to decide that white people must accept my behavior? Oh heck no. But I think I have slightly more familiarity with the ways in which a white person is likely to take offense. I guess correctly slightly more often. Not usually and not most of the time but slightly more.

The older I get the more I appreciate that religion plays a big part in how people perceive my behavior. I didn’t understand that as a kid. Some religions are ok with people being obnoxious and questioning. Some religions not so much.

I can’t control what other people believe or think or feel. But I try really hard to examine what I am doing when they give me clues into what they are feeling or thinking. I’m trying to detect patterns that I can influence. Influence is very different from control.

I live in a time and a place in history where being sensitive to the needs of people who are not-your-race is important for everyone. I believe with all of my soul that it is most important for people who have privilege to struggle with understanding people who have less privilege. I think it is not always the responsibility of people on the bottom to be sensitive to those poor rich people. Or white people. Or whatever.

Privilege is a multi-faceted and complicated beast. I think that privilege comes in a kaliedoscope of colors. There is racial privilege, socio-econommic privilege, the privilege of having social connections, being neurotypical or not, ableism, sex privilege (which both genders have their own kinds of privilege) and I think the intersection matters a lot.

I can sit there and draw out diagrams for where I think I have privilege and where my friends have privilege. I’ve thought about it obsessively for years. Partially I’ve been trying to figure out why some things are easier for me and some things are easier for them. Partially I’ve been trying to figure out which behaviors are linked to which life experiences so that I can better plan out how to treat my kids and my friends.

I’m trying to fake how to be someone who has always had privileges I’ve never had. That’s really complicated sometimes.

For me, paying attention to how I make people of other races feel is absolutely vital and part of my learning-to-not-be-a-schmuck process. But talking about it makes people feel uncomfortable. Welcome to my catch 22. (Which I’ve never read.)

I’m deeply grateful that my friend felt comfortable enough to tell me that discomfort was experienced. That’s brave and hard. Then I go and write about it and make it all difficult and uncomfortable. Because I’m awesome.

If I want my house to be safe I need to figure out what that means. For one thing some people are ok being written about and some people not so much. I am crossing my fingers that this one doesn’t blow up in my face.

I don’t think I want to try to have a party in December again. I think that in the future I will shoot for January after people have caught up on sleep.

Part of that is honestly so I can shape the guest list more carefully. Lots of people were traveling.

There is this careful balance to walk. I can’t pressure POC to come to my parties because that is creepy, weird, and not so cool. But I feel like it would be smart to try and plan in advance around the schedules of people I want to have at the parties. And if I want my non-white friends to feel comfortable that means asking some point blank scheduling questions of only my POC friends. Which makes me feel weird and racist and like I am courting them as exotic pets.

I would not consciously schedule a party so I could have more white people present so it feels rather uncomfortable to schedule a party so I can have more POC present. But that may be the only way to tip the attendance balance so that people don’t feel like tokens.

I’m not sure what the right answer is. I’m afraid that when it comes to dealing with issues around race I am going to lose no matter what I do. “Hey can you make sure you come to my party so my friends can see that I know more than one person who looks like you.” Wow. That’s an asshole move on every level.

But just inviting people and hoping for the best is questionable too. Sometimes that will mean that my events are more than 90% white.

I suppose it matters what my goals really are. Is my goal to be able to show off once a year that I know a diverse group of people? Not really. Who am I showing off to? The other people at the party? My white friends aren’t impressed and if that was my goal my friends who aren’t white aren’t impressed with me either. Because man that’s a shitty goal to have.

On a specific level I have the goal that my children will grow up having long-term intimate relationships with people of widely divergent cultures and races. That is a goal I feel more comfortable having. That’s less about impressing anyone and more about teaching my kids that people have more similarities than differences so look to anyone standing near you for relationships. Just love people. That I feel very much like I am accomplishing. My kids spend a large percentage of their time with other people around people who don’t look just like them. They see a lot of adults of various races on a regular basis. They interact with a lot of families of various religions and creeds. I feel good about teaching them to respect a lot of kinds of people.

I feel like I am walking my talk with my children. I am not doing a perfect job of teaching them about people of diverse lineage but I’m doing ok and they walk up to every kid at the playground and ask to play. They reach out to people whenever they get the chance no matter how that person looks. Ok. That’s a specific parenting goal met.

It is hard to figure out what being sensitive to my friends means. I am literally not capable of making everyone comfortable at the same time because people have conflicting needs.

But you pick your priority list and you go with it. You do the best you can. If I am making this particular person feel anything other than welcome and like (s)he belongs then I need to change something.

And at the same time I don’t want to start inviting people to my parties or not based on race. But what if inviting more people who are not white and *not* inviting so many white people is the only way to make some people comfortable.

It’s true and valid. Just like some women will never be comfortable interacting with some of my male friends and I have to decide who to invite because I can have one person or the other.

First I will eventually stop pontificating and I will ask my friend for feedback after these blog entries have been read. I’m sure this person will come up with something to say. That’s usually something I can count on. Lots of opinions from that one.

I think that as a white person it is never ok for me to just default to “I’m ok and you have the problem”. That is just not an acceptable starting position. Beyond that I really struggle with knowing what the next right step is.

I have a limited amount of control over who shows up at my parties and I have even less control over the feelings of the people who come.

But I want to be sensitive to the idea that I could do something better. I could make people feel more comfortable if I tweaked ______.

Yes, my dear blacksheep, part of it is learning to care less and be more like a honey badger. I’m not sure that I am that kind of girl, you know? I’ve been taking apathy enhancement drugs for years now. I still care too much. I still care so much I can barely breathe sometimes.

I want the people I love to feel loved and supported and like I think the world (and this room) is a better place when they are in it. If I am communicating something else then I need to work on that.

It is hard to nudge people in the direction of feeling loved when you are as basically hostile as I am. I cause people to feel unsafe and nervous. I get it.

It’s kind of like my continued fondness for a man who has been blacklisted from all of the local events. He’s a predator. I still like him. I understand him and have compassion for him and I know how to play his game like a pro. The other women I know just want to pretend he doesn’t exist because his game doesn’t work for them. He means well.

It doesn’t matter what you feel it matters how you make other people feel. The best predators know how to induce feelings of calm and safety in their prey. Sometimes I feel tremendous guilt for the attitude that just about everyone in the world is prey and I’m a mean and nasty predator.

Only there isn’t much I want from people these days. I’m not hunting for anything other than positive regard. I don’t want to be anyone’s favorite (well, other than Noah) but I want people to think I am basically a net positive for the world.

I want people to think that talking to me makes them feel good about themselves. I want to help people to feel brave about making choices. I want to help people feel like they can stand up for themselves.

If I’m making you feel like a token, tell me so. If I make you feel like you are just something on a checklist “Make a friend who is brown” then I am not making you feel like you are important. I’m failing to do the stuff that is so important to me.

I need that feedback. Without being told that my current approach is failing it is hard for me to know.

It is hard hearing criticism. I won’t lie. I’m obviously very defensive.

(I still had a wonderful party and I don’t feel like this is a depressing/bad train of thoughts. I’m nervous and a little sad but I still have a lot of happy endorphins from seeing so many people. I talked to a lot of people and didn’t freak out so I’m proud of myself.)

But if you want to be consciously anti-racist you have to look at what that means. If you are not part of the solution you are part of the precipitate.

Don’t quit. Don’t decide you are obviously a worthless bad person because someone had enough feelings to make a joke. But think about what you will do differently next time to encourage more people to feel more comfortable.

Progress. Not perfection. Keep trying. That’s the whole point of life.

post-party

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That was a great party. We had ~45 people come over a 9 hour period. Our guesstimate is there was never more than ~30 people at a time. There were ~12 kids. (I’m using ~ because I counted roughly in my head and I probably missed bodies.)

It was a lot of fun. I really like my friends. They are all very neato people. I’m lucky.

Cutting and parties and the parasympathetic nervous system

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My therapist, predictably, doesn’t want me putting a lock on the bathroom door. She is asking me to wait a few weeks. She has a list of things I just need to try before that step is a good idea. She was quite insistent in that way shrinks are which is why we pay them, no?

She mentioned a medication and I didn’t write it down immediately and now I am waiting on a response to an email. Research. She said there is an unusual drug that is not an anti-depressent/anti-psychotic/anti-anxiety that is sometimes used with addicts including severe cutters who can’t get past the “tension release” stage. Supposedly it acts on the mechanism in the brain that requires the brief releases from tension.

I mentioned that I pretty much always freak out like this right before a party and I feel really self-conscious and bad because it seems like inappropriate attention seeking behavior. Her response was, “Your parasympathetic nervous system is trying to get your attention and that’s not a bad thing.” Right before I have lots of people over my body prepares for the fight/flight/freeze thing and I get over loaded. In her opinion I need to figure out some larger structure around stress release particularly right before events–she says cutting isn’t a good option.

Psh. What does she know.

(That was my “I’m funny” voice.)

She says if I’m going off pot this medication may be an appropriate next step. It makes me want to cry. Western meds have completely wrecked my body every time I’ve tried. Name a side effect–I have gotten pretty much every non-fatal one.

I also talked to the home schooled teenager on our street yesterday. We are going to start weekly babysitting. I need more of a break than I’m getting. It is just fucking mandatory. People go insane in circumstances like mine even if they started out basically healthy. I don’t think I have been basically healthy… oh uhm, ever?

I pick my therapists very carefully so she asked me, “How did you and Noah use bdsm to manage these cycles in the past?” Bless her heart. If you have the wrong therapist for you they can be the most worthless excuse for a human being but if you have the right match you can make lots of behavioral progress. (That’s not really fair. They aren’t “worthless” just because they are a bad fit but when you are really upset and hurting it feels that way.)

So the topic of weekly canings came up. Not canning. Not putting food in jars. Being hit with sticks. This time the reference is more on the fun side, kind of like the swinging only this time she meant the other meaning.

I’m not opposed to giving it a shot. I pointed out that Noah and I have never done behavior management this way. I did that with my Owner. We had a very different dynamic.

I continue to have mixed feelings about the idea that it is better for someone else to hit me than for me to cut myself. I understand that a lot of people who generally support the idea of bdsm agree. If you believe that bdsm can be a healthy activity then you probably would side with it being superior to cutting. Probably. I can’t speak for everyone but I’ve been told that a lot.

I watch The West Wing too much so I am starting to explain things to myself in terms of the story arc. Cutting is about dealing with the pressure caused by a nuclear reaction. First the reaction goes into a series of containment devices (my previous/earlier coping methods) then eventually it gets to the point where the containment devices are full and there is more steam coming and either you vent to the atmosphere (causing possible massive damage) or you risk a full scale explosion which will absolutely for certain cause way the fuck more damage. Better to vent a little.

That’s what cutting is. Cutting brings all of my physical stress down to a level where I stop swearing and yelling and freaking out. I’m nice and calm. It’s better than a Valium.

It is hard being told “I know you have this awesome coping method that works better than everything else I am recommending put together… but don’t use it.”

That doesn’t feel like a supportive act. I’m trying to look at the big picture. One of the dominant symptoms of my various forms of mental illness is difficulty with tunnel thinking. When you are in the tunnel you don’t think you will ever be out again. You can only think in the panic of the Right Now. There is no larger picture.

My shrink confidently and manipulatively brings up phrases like “Harm Reduction.” Psh. Like I give a shit about that theory. Psh.

(Once again with the funny… If I didn’t tell you then you wouldn’t know that you are supposed to chuckle. I learn from television shows which tell their audience when to laugh.)

At this stage cutting would dramatically increase the harm I am doing in the process of coping. If there are any less harmful methods left to try I just can’t get to the last method yet.

I’m not really at a point where I’m thrilled about being told “Just be more patient” because that’s what it sounds like.

I’m trying to think about water flowing over obstructions. Sure, it could destroy one path by trying to send all the water one way in a jet or it could try to find another way around. Water is good at getting around whatever you try to block it with. Resourceful.

Last night was Noah’s company holiday party. I did better than I’ve done the last two years. Improvement is good, right? Once again it feels kind of pathetic that I have to struggle so much in order to not be inappropriate.

Last night I swore more than is probably strictly speaking ideal but I didn’t worry about it. I was at an adult party. Noah didn’t care or think I was too extreme. I can live with the other teacher/parent people looking a little shocked when I say “What the fuck?”

I think this party felt lower stress because I didn’t know anyone. For the last few years I had to manage the line between hanging out with people I actually knew and dealing with the amorphous boundaries of “work people”. That’s harder. This time I just go to try to censor appropriately and that’s easier.

When people tried to shock and titillate me by referring to going to a conference that had a leather track I got to cross examine and figure out that it must have been some kind of more general alternative lifestyle convention because I’ve never heard of a 10,000-15,000 person leather conventions in LA in the past few years and I’d be shocked if I missed that. When he tried to allude vaguely to other factors as proof I rattled off the names of all the big cons with their rough head count of attendees and expressed lots of support for my position. That’s always fun. No, I know this stuff. I don’t think you are talking about a just leather con.

In the conversational flow it would have made sense to bring up Debaucherama and I totally didn’t talk about winning Slut of the Year. I was very tactful and appropriate for work people. Ahem.

I turned to Noah and said, “You know which story they just lead me to the door of and here I am not walking through it.” He patted me on the back and all. The coworkers raised their eyebrows and said, “Maybe we can come visit on a different night.” Ha. Like I’ll tell them then.

That was a great party. Sigh.

Also, DA–because of you I get to tell the best stories at parties. I feel like a dumbass but people always bring up travel at these kinds of parties and getting to talk about going to Alaska in my friend’s private plane is rad. I feel officially cool when I tell those stories. Yup, I’ve done bad ass things. That’s right. Including hiking in the Alaskan wilderness. My life is awesome.

It is interesting trying to figure out how to “spin” stories so I can be appropriate for work parties. I’m not so good at this. I did manage to avoid bringing up sex last night. *pat self on back* The leather con attendance thing doesn’t count.

In preparation for the party I went shopping for a dress. Mostly because it kept me out of the house so I wouldn’t cry. I over-ruled the shop lady. She didn’t think the one I bought was the best idea. I’m a bit too lumpy for it in her opinion. She’s a skinny lady and thinks that style of dress is for more stick-shaped women. Psh. Whatever. It was a skin-tight little number with lots of boob attention. In a size medium. No wonder my clothes don’t fit if I can walk into some boutique shop and come out with a size medium. I haven’t been a size medium much in my life. This is weird. I’ve been a large/extra large (or bigger) for most of my adult life.

Noah was quite happy with my selection. That was the whole point.

Sometimes I feel weird about my mixed feelings around dressing frumpy versus wearing clothes that are sexy. When I’m feeling sad and anxious dressing up either feels soothing or stimulating depending on the context. Some days I do consciously think of the trophy wife thing. In general I’m not such a good trophy. But I try to clean up good once in a great while. In general I look frumpy and boring and that is for the best. Lately I’ve been wearing the skirts from my Renaissance Faire outfit over pants because I just want to be covered that much.

So going out in a dress that accentuated a figure I’m not used to having was kind of weird. Several coworkers stared a lot all night. That is always a little awkward. But if you go out dressed like that while wearing bright red lipstick you invite looking. It is a weird line.

I know that Noah gets a status bump from the Neanderthals he works with if they think his wife is hot. I have mixed feelings about this. But once a year I can dress up. Hell it isn’t even once a year that I dress that way now. But man the dress is hot.

I should take a picture. I look really good. If I had looked like this many years ago I probably would have gotten closer to a four digit number instead of a three digit number. Maybe it is for the best that I was chunky and had to win people over with my awesome personality. Snort.

I think the dress would not look out of place on the show Mad Men. Not that I’ve watched it. But I’ve seen a few references on magazine covers in grocery stores so I know the show exists and a brief google image search supports with my assumption.

Now I have fancy party dresses in size 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 sitting in my closet. Because who the fuck knows what size I will be next year. I no longer get rid of the fancy party dresses. My body changes dramatically over time.

I’m struggling with the fact that I “know” I am small but when I look in the mirror I don’t think I “look” small only I know I do to other people. I look like me and in my head I’m a fat girl (I have justifiably been for a lot of my adult life) so I still kind of see that. I have always been content and happy with being fat. Now I’m not fat and I miss it. On one hand I know that it is easier for me to find flattering clothing (based on the number of times I saw people do double takes when I walked by my dress was flattering) but I’m not sure if I like that. I am not good at guessing which dresses will be flattering. I have to try fifteen on.

My body is different and in ways that are somewhat more societally “approved” and that bothers me.

I don’t really want more approval in that area. Being thinner sure doesn’t get me more sex with Noah.

And yes, all of this is tied up with the whole parasympathetic nervous system and cutting. It is.

Does dressing up and wearing lipstick change how much I want to cut? I certainly feel less like I am about to blow my stack this morning, but how much is it related? How much is it about just getting five hours off of my kids yesterday between the party and therapy?

Those little thrills of recognition when a man checks me out function in similar soothing ways to the cutting. I feel kind of ashamed admitting it, but in for a penny in for a pound. It is the kid-version of what I used to do with finding promiscuous sex. “Whoo hoo people looked at me.” Less of a lift but a lot safer and lower effort.

(I spotted one last night who totally looked like my prey. It’s about the kind of smile. I miss hunting.)

I feel very conflicted about the whole “attention getting” behavior bit. I console myself with the idea that despite writing about what I am feeling/doing in the moment I don’t actually bring it up with people. When I am cutting I do it in a place on my body I can conceal and the vast majority of people don’t know. I write it down because I want proof that I’m not lying to myself about what I’m doing. I don’t think I get additional attention around self-harming behavior. Other than when I was institutionalized as a teenager because I wouldn’t promise to stop cutting I haven’t gotten a lot of “attention” based on self-harming.

Talking about it alienates people and ends friendships. I don’t think I talk about it for attention. I think I talk about it because the more silent and ashamed I act about my behavior the harder it is to control.

If I talk about wanting to cut sometimes that is enough to get me through that feeling of wanting to cut and maybe tomorrow I won’t feel that way any more. It does work for me. Today I feel less desire to rush to Home Depot and buy a lock. That’s enough of a pause to ensure that I probably won’t be cutting this week and probably not this month.

Is that enough?

It is a lot like how I manage my suicidal ideation. “This is how I feel right now and if I honor it maybe I don’t have to do it.” I don’t live well with secrets. Believing that I have to lie about what is in my head intensifies and strengthens all of my negative self-beliefs. Nice people are allowed to talk about how they exist in the world. Stupid, worthless pieces of shit like me should shut up and stop polluting the airways. Just stop fucking breathing so you don’t contaminate anyone.

I don’t know if everyone’s lives are careful balancing acts. For me I have to manage stimulus and soothing pretty carefully. Lack of either one is dangerous to my ability to function.

I schedule parties once in a while because I know so many people that slowly cycling through them all one on one is kind of impossible. I would have a date every day of the year if anyone at all was on a repeating weekly or monthly cycle. I know a lot of people. I like them all. I want to continue knowing them. Heck, I want my awesome friends to meet one another because networking is very important for a successful life. Everyone needs access to resources.

I told my shrink that I missed a flight to Oakland Airport and got rerouted to SFO and I managed to arrange a pickup at midnight through Twitter. Because I just have friends who can do that. She was surprised. I am beginning to think that her other clients live in caves because she spends a lot of time being surprised that I know so many people and that they do the things they do with me.

I get that my life is a weird and extreme place. It has extreme bad and extreme good. I am very lucky and I am very unlucky. I have a ridiculous amount of privilege and yet I don’t. It all depends on what you are looking at and judging right this minute.

As a child I learned that one of the main things I needed to do to keep myself safe was make sure I know as many people as possible. If one person is mad at me/doesn’t like me/doesn’t want to help me/doesn’t want to spend time with me… find someone else. There are always more fish in the sea. There are billions of god damn people on this planet. Surely I haven’t alienated all of them yet.

I think that moving more than fifty times made it so that I never got to sink in and decide “This is just the way life is.” There is no set way my life is. The circumstances vary so much that they are nearly unrecognizable from day to day or period to period. Folks who knew me primarily as a slave to my Owner are rather shocked by me these days.

Walt Whitman may have thought he contained multitudes. I think I may have lived more lives than him. Sometimes I feel like a cat only I’ve had far more than just nine lives.

Do you know where the cats have nine lives thing comes from? When cats experience injury or illness they hide somewhere while they heal–it is an anti-predator sort of behavior. Then they come out and are fine again. So people used to speculate that they could regenerate.

I hide to lick my wounds then I appear again. Often in very different circumstances with fairly different behavior. Going from theatre to bdsm to teaching to parenting has been pretty dramatic. From stage to stage there is almost no overlap in terms of behavior or activities.

I think that is part of the reason Noah and I don’t do bdsm better together. I compartmentalize and Noah is the partner who has been nice to me and that’s hard to change. Even if bdsm might have other benefits.

tl;dr: I’m mad at my therapist for trying to talk me out of cutting. But that’s pretty much what I pay her to do so it’s a wash. Stupid parasympathetic nervous system. Why the fuck can’t you just act nice?

Oh, and after completely freaking out yesterday morning and feeling like the best thing to do would be to see as much blood as possible… I started bleeding.

Any suggestions on how to manage the monthly depression crash I’m getting? Yay impending blood loss. It is becoming really predictable. Which is strangely comforting. Just because I haven’t hacked the system yet I appreciate that patterns are emerging.

My worst depression days are followed immediately by me bleeding. I feel comforted by the hormonal link. Less like I am just at the mercy of the waves of my insanity.

leaving on a jet plane

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We leave our house for Texas in nine hours. I should probably go to Kaiser and refill my Ativan prescription today. That I can fly with. I’m very happy that I made 30 Ativan pills last six months. That’s about the correct rate of sleep assistance for me. (Last refill was the beginning of June.)

I slept for seven hours. That’s not enough after getting three hours the night before. I am SO VERY AWAKE.

The gingerbread house party deal was really awesome. Everyone had a lot of fun. The other moms were really proactive about jumping in and helping my kids during the actual construction of houses while I drifted around all spacey from lack of sleep. I really like the women I am spending time with in this home school group. I am progressively more “out” with all of them about a wide variety of topics. It is kind of weird how being out with them is making me feel more and less safe with them.

I feel more safe because so far I have gotten the opposite of rejection from all of them. They go out of their way to make sure I feel included and like my presence is a good thing in their lives. I could not possibly begin to express how impactful this is. They are not all “like me”. They are not tribe. They like me anyway. They think I have value. And they go out of their way to keep telling me that they want me around. That their kids FUCKING LOVE coming to my house. That feels so good. I’m not chasing everyone away. I’m not being bad.

I feel less safe because I’ve poured a lot of myself into them already. I am not as big a part of their lives as they are part of my life just because they have other people who take up space. They have families and churches and communities they have been part of for most of their lives.

I have a lot of level 3’s.

I love my level 3’s with all my heart and soul and I say prayers of thanks for them just about every day. I do not denigrate my level 3’s.

But it is very hard knowing that I have to be very careful all the time or I risk alienating people who are a huge part of my network. They don’t have to know they are a huge part of my network. I know.

I know that when I do things in my house I do it because I hope ____ will tell me I did the right thing. I know that when I respond to my kids I am actively channeling _____ because she is just plain better than me.

So the more I give of myself to this homeschooling group the more pain I am potentially opening myself up to in the future. That’s hard.

But I’m doing it anyway because this life thing goes better for most people than it has for me and I am responsible for providing this kind of environment for my children. It’s my job to work through my anxiety and provide them a community.

It is hard to once again feel like my experiences don’t matter. It does help that I know that my terror is irrational. My experience of being afraid when I am with home schoolers is not predicated on their behavior or attitudes. It is instead from my previous history with other people. I am trying hard not to project. I am trying to not believe that one personality quirk in common with someone who rejected me means that I will be rejected again. I don’t have a crystal ball.

Luckily home schoolers, regardless of the whole “pervy tribe” thing, are at heart people who want to do things their own way. This seems to transfer to a higher tolerance for people being very different. Pinterest has allowed me to see other sides of these ladies. Ha. (They may not swear around their kids but they are ok with swear words existing and being used and all.)

I’m glad I did the gingerbread house experience. Next year I will be making gingerbread boys and girls for the kids to decorate. Much less baking involved. My forefinger is still completely numb. Stupid knife.

I did not try to restrict the sugar intake because that would have been a losing battle. As a result Shanna went to sleep with a nasty stomach ache. She commented, “You know… I think that maybe next time I won’t eat so much sugar. This doesn’t feel very good.” I didn’t laugh. I’m proud of myself. Instead I cuddled her to sleep and said, “Yeah. We’ve all been there. You have to figure out what your body can handle. I’m sorry you hurt now.”

I need to back off on my cleaning expectations. They are 3 and 5. I have been turning into kind of an asshole for a few weeks and I don’t even know why. I’ve been refusing to engage in any play unless they clean up first. They aren’t ready for this. I apologized for my attitude. I’m not treating them like little kids and they are little kids. I need to be more patient.

I also need to reread my 3 and 5 year old books. Maybe I’ll take them to Texas with a highlighter. Then I can pass them on to K’s husband who told me he promised that he would read them if I highlighted the important and non-repetitive passages. They are kind of annoyingly repetitive. (He has a full time job, is in full time college, and he has two kids. I think it is reasonable to say “I can only handle the highlighted sections.”)

We would all be better parents if we really took into consideration the current physical development of our kids. They change so fast but still not as fast as we might hope on some days. It’s important to let them be kids. They will never ever get another chance. (Being an Adult Baby or interested in Age Play doesn’t count.)

The thing I like the most about my kids is that they really are always trying their best. Sometimes their best is not what I, as an asshole adult, want but it is their best. I can tell them it isn’t good enough and create that dynamic in their mind or I can say, “That is exactly what a five year old should be able to do. Excellent. You’ll get bigger and things will change.”

Shanna is starting to have serious interest in reading. Last night she complained to me that she’s really frustrated because the only words she knows how to spell are “Shanna, zoo, Calli, and love.” She wants to know more. I told her that it is ok that she doesn’t already know everything. She’s five. Her brain probably hasn’t quite switched yet so that learning reading is super easy–don’t get impatient. Soon it will get much easier and then you will be shocked by how fast it comes. I told her that if she wants to start really practicing, she can at any point. Whenever she is ready.

Unschooling is really emotionally complex. I have all these assumptions and desires and preferences. My kids meet and totally don’t meet them. I still believe that if I sat down on paper and explained my ideal child Shanna is it to a T. That makes me feel guilty and like I don’t love Calli enough.

I don’t think I love Shanna more. But she is what I would have designed on paper before having children. We are so deeply compatible that I worry that we aren’t and I’m making it up in my head and I will fuck her up by assuming we are.

Calli is more directly challenging to me on a minute by minute basis. She surprises me all day every day. I like it. She’s neat. She is starting to really come into her own. I love the way she will absolutely defend her own boundaries and then be nice once you have allowed her all the space she feels she needs.

Keep that up, wonderful girl. I am so proud of you. You clearly know that you get to take up space and exist. Watching you is so exciting. She likes being a benevolent tyrant. If you defer to her being in charge then she will be generous and kind and ridiculously sweet. If you try to insist that she isn’t in charge then she explodes. Luckily she is starting to be mollified by the idea that she is always her own boss. No, you aren’t the boss of Shanna. Sorry, kid. But you are your boss. I’m a temporary assistant manager.

Calli’s favorite game is “Mamas and babies” and I have to be the baby. I’m a thoroughly obnoxious and demanding baby. She loves it.

Calli keeps telling me she doesn’t want to grow up. She wants to be my tiny baby forever. Sometimes I feel like I’m not as important to Calli as I am to Shanna. Then I get my head out of my ass and I see that Calli is maybe more attached to me than Shanna.

Shanna likes me and I hope we will be friends when she grows up, but she is outward focused. She is going to be someone who wants a lot of friends in her life. I will not be the center of her world forever. I get the impression that Calli will seek out fewer people. I may always be more central in her life. Who knows. The future is a long way off. I’m enjoying these little flashes of how wrong I am about my assumptions. Calli is very attached. Calli is somewhat needy and I am struggling to really enthusiastically meet all those needs. I think I was more giving with Shanna.

I like them both so much. I feel so lucky that I get to hang out with them all day. I think it is funny how often Shanna talks about wanting to go to school “Some day when I am big!” but when I tell her that school involves being away from me all day she says, “Not yet. I don’t want to do that yet. In a few years. Then I will be ready.” She debates the merits of starting at 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. She says she thinks that she will definitely no matter what be ready by 14. I told her I suspected that was true. By 14 she will be old enough and big enough that she will certainly want to go learn things I can’t teach her.

I mention that we want to spend the year she is 12 traveling, so maybe going for a year or two before then would be fun to find out what it is like before she travels? Maybe she just wants to wait till after that to start? I don’t know. It isn’t my decision.

Sometimes it is weird noticing how many parenting things I think aren’t my decision. Other people make these decisions for their kids. I don’t feel qualified. I don’t think I know what is inside their heads and inside their bodies. I don’t know what the best decision will be in the long run.

I maintain this feeling of being conflicted about home schooling. I love it as much as I believed I would when I was 17. I feel scared that I am doing this for my needs instead of theirs.

I continue to do research about education styles because I want to be as eclectic as possible. Every single theory of education has benefits and deficits. Some can be combined in useful ways to get the benefits of multiple disciplines and some are inherently contradictory. I’m trying to figure out how I can get out of my head enough to be objective about what they need instead of just doing what I feel comfortable with.

Home schooling isn’t about making my life easier. That’s not the point. It might coincidentally do so… but that’s not the point. If I start making decisions based on my convenience I will fuck up my kids and that’s not cool.

K, I’m almost done with the book you gave me. I think I have a lot of the earlier part of the series. I may take one or two on this trip. Wow these are easy to read. It’s another Tamora Pierce book for those who don’t know K’s taste. She is going to get me through the entire collection of stuff that author has written.

I’m not worried about my children learning to read. They want to read. As soon as their brains are ready it will come. If they have learning disabilities and it doesn’t come automatically that is something I will watch for and address. Dyslexia runs in my family. My kids want to read. That’s the important step. They know that books contain whole universes of awesome and they want to benefit. I’m not worried.

I feel so weird knowing that whatever problems emerge (they will happen–that’s how life works) I have a lot of ability to handle them. I don’t feel very helpless any more. Sometimes I feel paralyzed with fear but I know that if I can get my stupid body moving I will be able to do something that is acceptable even if it isn’t the absolute best solution ever in the history of ever.

It is weird feeling confident and unconfident at the same time. Is unconfident a word? (internet says it is a word.) Insecure?

Of course there are problems outside my scope. If my kid gets cancer there isn’t a lot I can do. I mean, we have insurance and I would take them to every doctor. I would beggar myself in the process with no worry about the future. Take care of my baby.

Let’s stick with educational worry, ok? That I can do something about.

It is weird knowing that if my kid came down with a major medical malady Noah’s family would probably pony up. I am not someone who has had that as a resource in this lifetime. From when I was very young I have consciously thought that if I get diagnosed with a terrible disease the right choice for me is to die as fast as possible because no one who has ever been responsible for me had the money to pay for much treatment. I don’t want my family to suffer after I’m dead because dying was expensive. But things are so different now.

I feel very weird about the way suicide keeps being pushed further and further back for me. It is feeling less and less like an option. I could not do that to Shanna and Calli. Even if I did have cancer. They deserve the fullness of every minute I can give them. Killing myself is actively hurting them, forever. I don’t want to do that to them. Suicide has become my constant feeling of “out”. I don’t have to take this (no matter what “this” I’m talking about). I can die.

Now I can’t. It is… weird. I want to see what my children are like in their 30’s and 40’s and 50’s. I want to find out what the repercussions of my parenting style are. They will exist. I’m going to do things wrong if I haven’t already. (I have.)

I believe with all my soul in what I am doing. I think the American school system is broken and I don’t want my kids to be part of it. I don’t want to work long and hard enough to pay for private schools when I’m not sure they are enough better to justify how much less I would see my kids. We have great upper division education. We don’t do so well with the littles.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. There are amazing teachers within the system who do a great job. I think that some people luck into having positive public school experiences but it is a crap shoot. I don’t think I am the right parent to navigate my kid having a positive experience. I don’t think I can do it. I feel like a failure.

I do and I don’t. I feel like a failure for not being able to manage the public school system as a parent like I feel like a failure for not sewing. I feel like I “should” be able to but I can’t. Yet I don’t actually consider those skills mandatory for life.

Do I think I “could” learn how to manage the public school system? Sure. It’s a system. I could figure out how to hack it. It would be really hard and it would take a lot of time and energy and work and I don’t think it is worth it. Just like I could learn to sew but I don’t think it is worth upping my frustration level. The level of positive I would gain doesn’t outweigh the cost right now.

I believe there are different circumstances that would change my mind.

Everything is situational.

post-therapy (more) hobbies and yay friends.

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It made me very happy to tell my therapist “My friends and I are in a fierce and loving argument/discussion about hobbies and how I should learn to manage time better.” She thinks it is great that you all interact with me. Heh.

Then when I explained the “I can’t do fiddly shit” she said, “Oh of course not. Your flavor of PTSD should be kept as far away from those kinds of actions as possible. If someone has dissociation issues then often things like knitting can help them be more present. You are so hyperaroused that it will drive you crazy. Don’t do that. Try martial arts.”

See, the knitting is very good and healthy for lots of my friends and not for me. I appreciate my pats on the back. Validation is my friend.

I talked to her a lot about wanting to come off of pot. I’m past the baby stage. I told myself I was using pot to give me the self control I needed to get past the baby stage when the kids really couldn’t help how much they triggered me. I don’t have babies any more. Shit.

I think there is the non-zero possibility that I will stop using pot until my kids are adults and then start again. Being stoned is awesome but I want to teach my kids a different lifestyle.

My shrink says she has known people who have had good luck taking some melatonin during the day while getting off pot. You have to be careful to never take it for more than ten days in a row (I should research why) but it can be useful. I also have to up my B vitamins. I should be taking 1,000-1,500 units per day. Ew. Ew. Ew. I should double the fish oil dose. I should start 5-htp.

The idea is that this will probably take a full year. Not to get off pot. That will take less than a month. I have to get my bodily stress more under control. It is going to be a process and it is going to be hard. I will have to really retrain my body with new habits. New habits can be formed in as little as thirty days. I don’t think my lifelong habits will be undone in a month. Ok, I’ve already worked on a lot of the other big problem areas, but more to handle.

Yesterday Shanna kind of complained about me watching The West Wing. I told her I was watching it because I was frustrated and annoyed and I was trying not to yell at her. She said, “Turn it off and let’s talk about it. You won’t solve anything this way.”

I feel so lucky. I feel like I have so much reason to work on my issues. I finally have iron clad reasons to think that my emotional state matters. It impacts my kids hugely and massively all day every day. I matter.

My therapist continues her stream of being shocked by how many people I know. She has been sorta trying to talk me into working with a writing teacher she knows. He could edit my books. I told her I was saving money to work with my friend Janet. She has a lot of experience with writing and running a publishing company and she told me she wanted to work with me. I really want to try that avenue first.

My shrink said, “Oh, what publishing company?”

“Greenery Press.”

Her jaw dropped and her eyes bugged. “You know her?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve known her for more than ten years.”

“Uhm, yeah. Work with her. That’s amazing. Wow. You know a lot of people.”

I really do. I know some ridiculously cool people. I get out and talk to people a lot. I am constantly out trying to pull more people into my tenuous web of connections. I like people. The more people I know the safer I am.

By contrast she (my shrink) told me it was pretty chicken shit to have relationships with people where I invite them over a lot and then I stop and expect them to invite themselves over. She said that’s not cool and I should stop it. I said, “But I’m scared.” She said, “So are they.”

Damnit.

She wants me to consider working with kinky survivors as one of the hats I put on some day when I’m a grown up. She thinks I would be uniquely well suited to being able to help people in that category. I’m flattered. This comes up because I spend a lot of time on the PTSD forum fielding questions about bdsm. It is hilarious to me that I hand out this long list of book recommendations and I am friends/former play partners with almost all of the authors. Yeah, I vouch for the information in the book and the integrity of the people giving the information.

I told my therapist about Noah’s reaction to me wanting to go to Islamic countries as an old woman as part of my work with incest. (Noah’s response was, “Ok we need to start martial arts. Now.) Her eyes teared up and she said, “You are so lucky to have a partner who is that supportive of you. Do you understand how rare that is?”

I do understand. I’m grateful every single day.

No, Noah doesn’t try to talk me out of things. I say, “I’m thinking about doing _____” and he says, “How can I help!?” (As a bonus he also makes cookies. So far this year: snickerdoodles (three batches [err… I ate a whole one alone…]), chocolate chip, haystacks, and he has made dough for refrigerator cookies, sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, and molasses crinkles. He’s serious about liking my ass slightly more when it is bigger. Ha.)

I have friends who put up with me being rude, offensive, and foul mouthed.

I am ridiculously lucky in this lifetime. Not very many people receive as much non-family support as I get. It’s all about perspective, right?

Apparently I need to start a structured routine for a (long) while. I need to have “sitting on a swing for an hour” as part of every day. (Rocking motions are soothing to your brain. If you are upset, hug yourself and rock. You may feel lame but it does help.) I need to find a martial arts gym that will let us come in 2-3 days every week. I need to be running almost every day. (Rest days are important too.) I need to start teaching Shanna how to ride a bike and practice with her. (She has one… but she’s a wuss. She won’t try it unless I’m really bugging her. She likes going as fast as she can with her feet thankyouverymuch.)

I tend to have structure for a short period and then go off the rails when I add a big project. I can’t have any big projects for a year. This feels crushing and unfair. Waaa waaa waaa. Should I call the waaaaaaambulance?

I have to train my body to relax. I’m not sure I have ever been relaxed. Yeah, it will probably take a year. If I am fully relaxed at the end of a year it will be a G-d damn miracle. But I have to try. And this is the year. Go.

If I want to be able to do the serious international travel later I have no choice but to do this now. I can’t put it off any more. I don’t want to end up beating my head on concrete again the next time I leave the country. It is really unpleasant. In 2015 I want to travel with my kids for almost six months just to see if I can. I have to do this work in 2014. I’m feeling very annoyed with myself.

Why don’t I just give up on these hard things and have an easier life? What is wrong with me? Well, I don’t think that what I’m doing right now is actually easier. It is a different hard thing that I have slowly juggled towards as being the best I can get with my current coping skills.

I need different coping skills.

I feel like now it is finally safe enough to try. I have two kids who love me to the moon and back and who want to be nice to me. They just need me to teach them how. I need to teach without yelling or being nasty because then I will actually teach yelling and being nasty.

I feel so blessed that I have this time and this space. I don’t feel I have earned it. I don’t deserve it. But here it is. I have time. I have safety. I have money to fill in the gaps for when I can’t do everything for myself.

I have so much privilege that there is no longer any justifiable excuse for me not doing this work. Shit.

(I do believe it was justified earlier in my life. I was not physically or emotionally capable of doing the work before. I was never safe enough.) If you have to spend all day running to stay in one place someone who criticizes you for not finishing a marathon is a fucking asshole. You are doing what you can do.

I am seven years post rape. I have lived in this house for more than twice as long as I have ever lived anywhere else in my life. I have three people I get to live with who all think I am really nice and wonderful.

It’s time to stop being afraid all the time.

Being afraid makes me nasty. Being afraid makes me inclined to fight anyone and anything at any time because I perceive everyone as a threat. I am really sorry that I am so scared.

I’m going to work with a doctor on my body pain. Pam has offered to either go and hold my hand or babysit. I think I would prefer the hand holding. I’ll arrange the appointment on a day when Noah can stay with the kids.

I am very lucky. I am sorry I act so ungrateful so much of the time.

Bouncing up

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“I read your book. It made me feel really depressed but then I felt a lot better about my life.”

Oh. Uhm, good?

We went to an Amanda Fucking Palmer show last night. It was at my friend’s house in their living room. It was ridiculously fun. It turned out that almost 25% of the people in the room were there because they knew me, which was frightfully convenient from my point of view.

I don’t usually feel all that safe in groups. I really did last night and it was a nice feeling.

I spend a lot of time figuring out ways to denigrate the opinions of people who think highly of me. It’s a skill. With the people who were there last night… if they said I was awesome I couldn’t argue. They’ve known me a long time through a lot of different phases.

It’s weird sometimes, this having public accountability stuff. If a former casual lover tells me I’m awesome I will pick that apart and get nasty. If one of these friends tells me I’m awesome… I will tear up and say thank you. I want them to like me. And they do. Maybe I’m not so bad.

It was a worse party for not having a Blacksheep. That’s just a true fact.

I got to throw myself on a couch holding my husband and two good friend and Amanda Palmer. Of course she got up approximately 2 seconds later because she had shit to do. This is as close as I get to star fucking these days.

My friends turned the basement of their house into an art gallery featuring work by the various attendees of the event. It was really rad walking back and forth between people introducing them.

“Oh, you like this picture? Then let me introduce you to my friend over here who shot it. Here friend-who-is-a-nature-photographer, meet this other friend who is a bondage-photographer. Oh and here is this other photographer who is less into bondage and more into fetish (which is a different genre.)”

That was cool. I like being able to introduce my friends to one another. I think they are good people and that they will have appreciation for one another’s skills.

The vegan soul food was ridiculously good. I’m not really a vegan eater and this was good. It was also mostly gluten free. This gives me hope for the future elimination diet period. There might be food in the world that follows the guidelines without sucking. Yay!

Today is supposed to be a Dickens Fair day. Everyone stayed up too late. The babysitter keeps every light in the house on and lets the kids keep the iPad long after bed time to “calm them down”. Uhhh… that’s not going to make them go to sleep. We will have words before the next baby-sitting engagement. Gentle ones. I’ll talk to her about strategically leaving the lights on in the front of the house to make her feel safe and like people won’t do a hot break-in but can we turn off the light in the kids bedroom and the hallway… please?

It’ll be great. I’m glad they got to have a fun night playing. It is awesome when babysitters have extra lax rules because then children crave their companionship. Ha.

I spent yesterday being all pissy and fussy. It wasn’t other peoples fault. I just was. Then the concert was fabulous.

Amanda sang two songs that are new–she hasn’t released them anywhere. One was about how stuff can be evil and own you and you need to assign the meaning to your stuff that it has. The second was about a kid who told her he was being raped by his dad. This is as close as she can get to advice for him.

I cried. It was really touching and beautiful. I’m grateful that people are out there in the world acknowledging these things.

In general I was impressed with her ability to perform. Many singers can sing in a studio. She was mesmerizing.

I’m grateful I live in the time and place I live. I have so much opportunity and access and potential in my life. Sometimes it feels like if anyone at any point in history could do something surely people can do more/better/faster given the technology and access we have now. We have so much potential (wo)manpower. We have so many wonderful people all out there existing.

Surely we all get to be here.

Ok Blacksheep, you are right to point out that I shouldn’t think of my writing as having the power to “make” anyone feel anything. They bring their feelings to the writing.

But I write in large part because I seek connection. This is how I bond. I *do* want to make people have a set of feelings. I’m trying to. It’s a conscious effort.

I want to make people feel like they are making the right choices for them. I want to make people feel like they are doing the best they can do with the things that landed in their life this lifetime. I want to make people feel like they are important and should be here.

That’s really a lot of the reason I write. I need you. And you. And you. I really do. Even if I think you are an asshole. Even if I think you are a predator. Even if I think you make really bad decisions sometimes.

I still need you to exist. I understand that my needs aren’t your problem but I was sorta hoping we could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. I need you. I think you need me too. I think you need to see how different I am and how whack job my choices are so you can properly appreciate “holy moly I’m glad I have my life“.

I’m glad you get to have your life. I’m glad it is different from mine. I’m glad you get to make all your own brilliant choices. I can’t do everything and I want to find out more about human potential. I can watch you and feel admiration all the time that our species is so complex and wonderful.

I can change if you exist. You present me with this permanent foil of “See, it doesn’t have to be this way it could be that way.”

There are always more options.

I have a God complex. I want to be able to make people feel things. I really really do.

I want to make you feel important. I want to make you feel valuable. I want to make you feel loved.

Whether you like it or not.

Home again, jiggity jig.

7 Replies

I like my home. We are home. Ms. Blacksheep got sick. Much sadness is had by all. So we came home a day early. Yay home.

I was told that I am perhaps more hypervigilant than necessary and I could be more honey badger like.

Thing is, hypervigilance isn’t something where you can say, “I’ve been hanging out at a 9 for years now so how about if I turn it down to a 7 in your house because you’re cool and all.”

Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.

For most of the past week I have had the really intense, invasive thought, “I will never have a dad who hasn’t fucked me.” I can’t get it out of my head. I keep repeating it over and over to myself.

Do you really think that would be an ok thing to bust out at your house? Really? If not then I can’t turn my hypervigilance down. At all. Not a notch.

When I am feeling stressed and kind of anxious I have a bad habit of talking about my many sexual exploits. That is my “relax and feel comfortable” line of conversation. If I can’t start extensively going off on the many people I’ve fucked then I am on Best Behavior and no I can’t relax.

Noah asked me what the penalty would be for people not liking me now. I said that the problem is that I only leave my house with the hope of finding people who like me.

I’m not interested in most hobbies–have you noticed? I don’t hang out with people so that they can also do what I am doing at the same time. I just don’t give a shit.

I leave my house because I want affiliation and I want people to like me. I only interact with people from a sense of “Please affirm that I shouldn’t die because you like me.” No, I’m not calling this “healthy”. I am just accurately labeling how it works for me.

I go visit you, Blacksheep, Bladerunner, Pam, S, K, T, P, etc because I want you to love me. That’s it. That’s all. When I stop inviting you over it is because I am scared that you don’t actually love me very much and I am just bothering you by asking you to come over.

I can’t see inside you. All I know is my very broken perception of how you treat me. I want people to love me so bad that sometimes I feel like the only reason I get out of bed *ever* is with the desperate hope that someone will love me.

I don’t feel very lovable. I don’t feel worthy of Dad’s love. I feel like an ungrateful piece of shit who should be lit on fire.

Even though I was very nice to him the whole time I was in his house and I cleaned the house before I left so he wasn’t negatively impacted and I left enough money on the counter to cover our food. I still feel like a disgusting user. I still feel like there is no reason for him to love me.

This is why I appreciate so much that people insert themselves into my life. Dad tells me to come visit. Blacksheep arranges plans. Etc on down the list.

I’m scared. Basically all the time that I am not worthy of being loved so I should die. Yeah, it is hyperbolic and annoying. Try living in my head for a week if you want to bitch about how annoying it is. It sucks.

I have better weeks and worse weeks. Clearly when traveling it escalates in pitch for me. They are all people I rarely see but upon whom I base a lot of self worth. If these wonderful people see something in me worthy of loving then maybe I’m not as bad as I think.

If I were to not care what people thought of me I would stop leaving my house. If I didn’t want love so bad I feel like I will drown I wouldn’t deal with people. The stress isn’t worth it.

Let me tell you I would not be nice to your random friends if I didn’t want you to love me so fucking much.

I wish I were just nice. I’m not. I’m only nice with a lot of conscious effort.

Noah asked me “what I want from life”. I want people to love me. I mean, I will do a lot of other stuff while I’m praying for that to happen. I’ll build shit and paint shit and garden and hang out with people doing random other things.

All of it is a structure around my fervent prayer, “Please love me.” Sometimes this need feels so big it will drown me. This is the need that nearly killed me because for a long time… people didn’t love me much. I went through most of the formative period of my life having everyone tell me how much they hated me and resented my presence. I was an unwanted burden.

Yesterday I was talking to Ms. Blacksheep as her illness kind of unfolded. I erroneously made a comment about her being overscheduled. She set me straight. Apparently the move to Portland has involved a more reasonable work schedule and shit.

Man. I work at least 75 hours a week. If you include kid care (which is myriad and complicated), reading (I don’t just sit down to read for pleasure I sit down for 3 hours to read this book and then I move on fast), other house repair, home school events (which count as hard work for my body system let-me-tell-you), and cleaning. I think it is very rare that I do less than 11 hours of work in a day. I don’t just sit around and rest. I don’t really know how.

I therefore followed up with, “How does that work?!” I should figure out this “being healthy” thing. Working 11+ hours every day is not really “healthy”.

I work because I have no value sitting still. I’m a piece of shit who should be earning my keep but I’m not really. I think I am lazy, and not very effective. Don’t ask me who isn’t lazy or who is effective. I can’t answer that. Anyone but me? Regardless of how our to-do lists match up?

Ok, not rational. I get it.

I am so scared I won’t be prepared for something I work hard all the time because I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel like I will be allowed to stay if I become any more of a horrible burden than I am. Is Noah doing or saying anything to cause me to think he is on the verge of kicking me out? No. Of course not. Noah makes undying promises of support all the time. And he backs them up with converting his inheritance into community property so that no matter what I have to take half of his assets whether I like it or not. He won’t let me walk away penniless and pathetic. Even if I’m the one running away.

I’m not saying I’m rational. I’m saying I am where I am. In many ways this does represent positive progress from where I was. Seriously, I’m much healthier than I was fifteen years ago. Life is about progress, right?

I try to not hate myself for being this broken and annoying. I wish my brain just worked. I wish I didn’t hate me so much. I wish I wasn’t so convinced that I am doing everything wrong and at any second people are going to be fucking sick of me and they will tell me to go away and not come back.

I wish I believed that people would actually be there for me. I don’t. I have no faith at all.

I have a long list of people who have told me I “could” call in the middle of the night. I don’t. I don’t feel comfortable or safe. I will use up my welcome and then I will not even have the bits I have now. Don’t overtax your support system. Just don’t.

I’m really glad to be back in my home. The longer I live here the more I like it.

I would not belong in a bigger house. I would have so much imposteur syndrome. The shoddy little tract house is about as high as white trash like me should climb. If you get too high then people want to knock you down because they don’t like seeing a loser with more prestige than them.

Also: these big houses are expensive. This trip I got to visit the House That Porn built. (When I defend pornography as a lifestyle it is because I happen to know a lot of pornographers. Some of them are excellent people and some of them are scum, pretty much like every other career choice.)

This house was four stories tall and beautiful. All through the house was interesting art. The couple who lives there has an incredible eye for beauty. They know how to make you really stop and think about the things around you. But it was all funded by porn. Well, as long as you have savings just in case I think it is awesome.

I couldn’t live there. I just couldn’t. I tried asking them how it felt to live in such a big fancy house (when I first met them they lived in Santa Cruz in a place more like the house I am in now) and I was told, “Enh this is small and shack-like.” You just can’t get a straight answer out of him.

Thing is, I’m pretty sure he was entirely sincere and he just lives in a world I don’t live in.

(They’ve moved through four houses since moving up to the Portland area. This house is not the biggest they have owned but it is the fanciest. Like, whoa.)

I really like a variety of people. I think they are all doing the right things for them. The Christian home schoolers and the pornographers are each doing what makes them happy. Awesomesauce.

I want to live in a world where you all exist. I want to live in a world of stay at home moms and stay at home dads and working moms and working dads. I want the variety. I want it so much. I am not more validated by people being like me. People being like me usually makes me sad because it probably means they are not as happy as they could be.

I’ve been reading about group cooperation among humans and animals. I don’t have an “in” group. I haven’t for a long time. I seem to have some weird ability to grab on to the whole of humanity and say, “Ok, you’re mine.” I don’t need them to be related to me by blood or to have grown up in the same place or even for them to read the same books.

You’re mine. I love you. I want you in this world. I think you are good. I want you to still move about in the world doing things. I really do. Even if they work in opposition to what I’m doing. What is life without a little opposition?

I want it so bad.

I want them all to love me and think it is ok for me to live. I don’t need them to do much for me. I just want the love.

Something you discover when you read a lot of rape narratives is there is this horrible phrase that comes up a lot. “Please love me.”

Rapists like to make people say it so they can justify what they are doing. If you are forced to say something it doesn’t count no matter what you are saying. It is easy to force people to say things. Really easy. Like, whoa easy. I can do it. No problem.

Please love me. The phrase turns my stomach and makes the hair on my neck stand up.

But I mean it. I’m obsessed with it. I want to be worthy of love. I don’t think I am. I’m very sad about that.

Keep trying

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This trip has involved more “heavy” conversations with Dad than I can remember having before. I’m really glad I came. Even with my irritation about football. That’s a trigger. That’s not his fault.

You don’t understand what someone is giving you of themselves until you find out more about them. I’ve been kind of interrogating him. I’ve asked a lot of questions about his family-of-origin, about how he raised his kids, his money situation, his life choices… all kinds of things. I know Dad but I don’t feel I know him if you know what I mean. Ha–I’m almost punny.

Yeah. I found out some things about Dad’s financial situation that surprised me. Noah makes a lot of money. We live in a bubble of tech workers who all earn rather obscene amounts of money. Dad’s not in that bubble.

The idea of “generosity” or “caretaking” change as your quantity of money changes. Dad is much more into making food for people than he used to be. He no longer volunteers to take everyone out to restaurants. That’s a good choice. But man I don’t feel like I have any right to say anything didactic about how he handles his money. He was a CPA for longer than I have been alive. Right now finding a good job is hard.

Noah asked me if Dad keeps all the daughters and I said no. Most of them move on. Most of them bring their needs to Dad and expect him to meet their needs and I don’t. I don’t think Dad is obligated to take care of me. I appreciate any tiny nudge of caretaking and in turn I will clean your whole house before I leave. I’ll leave grocery money on the counter so you can’t argue with me. I know that our monthly grocery bill is more than half of Dad’s monthly income. He does not need to pay for us.

But he loves me. And he loves my children more by the year. I can’t buy that. I may have money but I don’t have a lot of people who want to sit down with my kids and show them how to play with a Wii. I’m grateful that he wants to.

My life has been such a series of up and downs with relationship to money and secure attached relationships. I have money now. I’m squirreling it away. I obsess constantly about not saving enough even though I’m way above all of the averages and expectations. It’s not good enough. I’m not safe enough. But the human dependent loving relationships… I can’t just fix that for myself.

I don’t know how to defend myself without running people off. I’m trying to change this. Defending myself is a real, serious priority for me and I’m not going to give up on it. But the mechanism could be more gentle. I would like to alienate people less.

I really like this feeling of being welcome in Dad’s house. I really like that he has spent a lot of years so far putting drips and drabs of trust and love into my bucket. Dad has earned every ounce of tolerance and patience he needs from me. He really has. I do have to work on being patient with him. He is very much not like me and that is hard sometimes.

I’m really grateful he has allowed me to grow up in this relationship. Kind of like how I am grateful to my Owner.

These men may not be able to give the kind of emotional support I want but it isn’t their fault and it isn’t their job and they really have given me all they have to spare. Say thank you. Smile. Don’t be nasty. Go somewhere else for the rest of your needs.

Thank you, Noah.

I love Dad a lot. I’m really glad I get to know him. He validates me and appreciates me.

Last night he told both of us that he thinks our priorities are in the right order and we are clearly making good decisions right on down the line. He said he was proud of us.

I need that feeling so bad. I am so glad I am not a disappointment. I’m trying so hard.

No, he doesn’t do everything I can imagine wanting him to do. He watches way more sports on television than I want to be near. Really if that is my big complaint I need to shut the fuck up.

He does pretty fucking well by me. Even if he does make fun of me more than I want. His way of being is valid. We’ll figure it out. I will keep coming back year after year. I like being in his presence.

Not because I like feeling smug because I’m making good life choices and he is in a hard phase. I feel guilty that he is in a hard phase. His life got really hard when his wife died. This was a ship that needed two incomes. He has struggled a lot with picking up the pieces.

Being here is changing some of how I think about death. Francesca didn’t commit suicide (we think) but she did accidentally kill herself. The hole she has left in me, in Dad, in all of the people in this community is still gaping and raw. It has been more than five years.

It wasn’t like this after my father or my brother died. There wasn’t a whole community of mourning. Really it didn’t matter much that they were dead. They were both so far outside of my life and my community that I wasn’t impacted. I never saw them when they were alive, why would it matter that they were dead?

I have always thought I would be more like my dad and brother when I die. No one will give a shit. No one will be impacted.

I don’t think that any more. Now I look around and think, “I would hurt people the way Francesca hurt people.” Err, that sounds like I’m blaming Francesca. I’m not. I’m not saying she hurt people. Her death hurt people. Her not being in the world has been very painful for a lot of people. She is not replaceable in any way.

I miss her so much. Not very many people were as forgiving of my fuck ups as she was. She could look at me and say, “Krissy I don’t think that came out how you meant it. Would you like to try again?” People just don’t say that to me. They think I mean what I say and say what I mean so I am just a mean and nasty bitch.

I have a lot of big feelings. My tone of voice often sucks. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. I’m trying. I’m better than I was.

Sometimes I wonder if me wanting to go off pot so much is going to be like a schizophrenic refusing to take their meds. Is my control going to slip in ways that make me more dangerous to be around for other people?

Francesca would have told me that she got off heroin so I can do anything.

Sometimes we need the relationships we have because the people in them view us in a way we need to be viewed. A lot of people who have done “great things” did so because they were conforming to the popular opinions about them. They were told they could and must.

Dad thinks I’m pretty spiffy. He tells me so. Maybe I can substitute his beliefs about me for my own.

What does love mean, anyway? I love Dad. I want to do nice things for him. I want him to be happy. I want him to feel like he gets the things he wants in life.

He sure as heck doesn’t feel that way. The older I get the more I discuss white privilege with white men the more I feel kind of sad for everyone in the whole world.

If this is the “easy level” no wonder life sucks so much for everyone else. It isn’t easy or fun or comfortable here either.

I feel sad that I am not better at having relationships with shorter gaps in between visits. I am profoundly shitty at seeing people frequently. My boundaries get worse. I get more impatient and needy and difficult. I keep everyone on varying length rotations.

I wish that I handled Portland better. I like all the people here so much but it is also hard for me. I have to “behave” and it isn’t how I normally act so I have to think really hard and try really hard and I get so tired. I feel like such a failure all the fucking time.

I miss Wonderland. I’m glad I get to go back to it. I have a hard time with my relationships at home too, but being able to retreat into my cave of wonders really helps.

Here in Dad’s house I always feel like I am about to break something and I don’t mean to. I don’t want to leave a wake of destruction… but I do. I always have. I don’t get that mad at my kids for breaking things because I am a Destruct-o-Matic. I feel scared. I feel like I am about to do something stupid, reveal a need I shouldn’t reveal and then I will be banished.

I wish I could feel like people love me. I wish I could predict the boundaries of my acceptable behavior better. I wish I could maintain appropriate behavior better. I fuck up so much.

Ok, time to do something else.

Catch up sleep is my friend.

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I got nine hours of sleep last night. I only manage such a feat a few times a year so I’m excited. I medicated for sleep last night. I don’t do that much. Mostly I just medicate the day-time anxiety so I’m not a mean, nasty bitch. Once in a while I help myself sleep. My body feels pretty happy right this minute.

We sat around yesterday. I did a couple loads of laundry and made dinner. That was my productivity. Noah caught up on the internet and the kids played. Today will be a going-out day again. Tomorrow too. We got an SMS from Ms. Blacksheep and I told Shanna and Calli that we were offered the ability to sleep near their new friends A and M. Shanna declared loudly that she was ready to leave Grandpa’s house in favor of being near A because A IS MY BEST FRIEND. WE SHOULD BE AT HER HOUSE! Oh. Well, ok then.

It is interesting watching the vagaries of children. What does “best friend” mean to a five year old? I’m not going to say she is right or wrong. I’m glad y’all are getting along. Sure, we can camp at their house after school the last day/night so you can see them again. That sounds great.

I think the kids are getting pretty bored of watching Dad play video games (his way of playing with the kids) or now he has switched to watching football. He has exhausted his repertoire trying to entertain them.

I think I maintain a relationship with Dad because we live very far apart and I don’t have a lot of expectations of someone who lives this far away from me. If I lived close to him I would resent the fuck out of coming to his house and making dinner for him only to have him walk away from the table with barely a nod to watch football. Yeah. I don’t work this way.

People are so different. Being in this house is reminding me of why I’m glad I don’t have a television set and I will probably never have one again in my life. I feel so much anger when someone ignores me to watch tv. I don’t know what it is but football makes me feel hate.

Really. Watching other people run back and forth on a screen is more interesting than talking to me. Well fuck you very much too. I’ll just fucking leave.

When I was a kid the tv was on 24/7 and I was constantly screamed at to shut up so I didn’t distract people from watching tv. But they were never not watching tv. So basically I was just supposed to be silent.

I hate the tv. I hate the fucking surround sound that means I can be on the far side of the fucking house and I can’t get the fuck away from the fucking football.

I’m having issues. Time to leave. I love Dad with great intensity but it is such a good thing I’ve never actually lived with him. I don’t think we would get along. I don’t say that because I think that he is a bad person. I don’t think he is a bad person. I think he is a very good person. I really do. My feeling “triggered” is not about him. It is not his fault. I don’t think he is bad for liking football. I just don’t like it.

This trip I have been busting out terminology. He says he didn’t know I had PTSD. He knew that some things happened to me a long time ago but he has carefully avoided knowing what or that it might have current effects on me. I’m getting clinical. He kind of looks shell shocked. I should probably shut up.

Only if you want to know me and you have known me for almost fifteen years… you probably should have some idea about what my life is like. You should know some real things about me.

If the only thing you know about me is that I like single tails and canes why are you calling me your friend? We aren’t friends. If that is the only thing you think is worth putting in your memory banks about me then we aren’t fucking friends.

I’m just another girl in your line up.

I took a break there for an hour or so to talk to Dad because he woke up and came down. He is trying so hard. I feel really guilty for being impatient with him.

Dad is doing his best to have a relationship with me. He is fully bringing all he has to offer and that is all that any human being can do. It isn’t his fault I am so needy and damaged. He didn’t do any of it. He has been intensely respectful of my consent for the entire time I have known him. He’s a big consent advocate in general.

Dad can be an asshole, yes. Mostly though he is a very good person. I feel so glad that I get to know him.

We had a good talk this morning. I sort of opened the flood gates. He asked why I write the way I do. I told him that I have this burning internal need to exist in front of people and mostly my life is very isolated. I either write about myself or I feel like I don’t exist. I want to exist so fucking bad.

I love Dad a lot. He has been very good to me. I feel very guilty for feeling irritated with the things he does. He isn’t hurting me.

He’s really nice to the kids, too. He’s been patient with them destroying stuff. He hasn’t yelled at all. If I think back I can’t think of him ever yelling at me once. He just doesn’t do that. He tends towards apathy not inappropriate control.

No person is without challenging parts of their personality. I have more than most. I need to be patient with people being where they are.

He confirmed that I am way easier to be around now than I used to be. I’m a lot nicer now. He said that Francesca really saw my potential. She made sure I kept coming around. And now she is gone. I miss her so much. I saw her potential too.

Every time Shanna is kind to animals I tell her about Francesca. That was kind of Francesca’s thing. She was an animal rescuer. My kids have played Diego and Francesca the Animal Rescuers!

It makes me cry. I wish Francesca had gotten to be a grandmother. She would have been a very good one. She didn’t get to have kids. Life is like that sometimes. I miss her so much.

I have this feeling and I try to believe that other people would miss me like this if I died. So don’t die.

Yeah, I feel more patient after the sleep. I get so nasty when I’m exhausted. I feel really bad about it but I don’t know how to control it better. Sometimes I don’t sleep and that is that. Sleep hygiene. Or something.

Sometimes it is hard knowing that almost every relationship in my life is opt-in. People can choose to show up occasionally or not as they see fit. There is no assumption that we will be together and you have to opt-out. That’s the difference between friends and family. You have to guiltily tell your mom you aren’t coming “home” for the holidays. You don’t have to tell me shit. The assumption is I am on my own.

But Dad keeps opting in. Maybe I should work on being less of a cunt. I have already made a lot of progress. He tells me so.

PS- my arms burn like fire.

PPS- Dad asked for the link to my blog again. Good thing I don’t say anything behind anyone’s back that I won’t say to their face.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: people do love me

Reflections

Running is so different now.

Daily ritual stuff

I worry about these bounces.

Find gratitude

Dreaming of travel.

I apparently have strong priorities.

Happy 2014.

Oh man breaks are awesome.

Attention seeking.

This is how people make it to level 2.

Sensitivity

post-party

Cutting and parties and the parasympathetic nervous system

leaving on a jet plane

post-therapy (more) hobbies and yay friends.

Bouncing up

Home again, jiggity jig.

Keep trying