Category Archives: people hacking

Virtue is its own reward.

I wrote my mother in law an eleven page letter this morning. I went to bed with Calli. I passed out hard as soon as my head hit the pillow. I woke up four hours later. Bathroom trip. Then I tried to go back to bed. Instead of sleeping I continued my obsessive composing of a letter to my mother in law.

Her last letter was really nice. And it was more personal than usual. I won’t type to this woman. I don’t want her as part of my internet. This relationship only works through letters.

I woke up thinking about what I wanted to say, and crying. They are the only blood family I can talk to about my children. I want them to know what their grandkids are like. So now three hours later I’m done writing and I’m tired. I’m going back to bed now.

I think the monkey is off my back.

And then you stop crying and go hang out with a kid.

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Calli only had two hours of iPad time. Then we went to the park. I walked around Lake Elizabeth pushing the stroller. My shoulders forking hurt. I covered about three miles all told. We didn’t make it to the water park because it took too long to walk from summer camp and change clothes.

It’s been a really nice four days alone with Calli. She spent a lot of today telling me over and over, “It would be ok for Shanna to go to more summer camp. You’re my favorite and I like being with only you.”

I laughed and pushed her higher on the swing. I said, “Are you sure? I don’t play princes and princesses with you.” I sighed deeply and said, “Well sister isn’t ready for school full time yet so you have to share me still.” I asked her if she would get lonely with how often I like to go in the garage if she was alone more.

She really said it over and over.

I feel like Calli has blossomed dramatically lately. She is all of a sudden way more charming. She broods less. She inserts herself and absolutely fucking insists on having her turn to talk. Sometimes I feel like she just doesn’t close her mouth for more than ten minutes in a day. She started talking a lot later than Shanna so this flood is sometimes surprising. Shanna was a chatterbox by fifteen months old. I feel kind of inured to her volume and pitch. Calli’s voice is a different pitch and I struggle sometimes with her max volume. But I think I remember struggling with Shanna.

It’s developmental. They literally can’t control their volume easily when they are small. It is a process. She’s doing fine.

Calli spent most of today smiling. We played a lot. Lots of tag and cuddling and talking. I even pushed her on the damn swing. I don’t do that every day. I probably don’t do it every week. There are swings. Go sit on them and figure out how to push yourself. So this was a kind gesture.

I got in the miles I needed to do. I’m staying on track for the exercise I need to be doing. I went slow today but I was pushing forty pounds. I am allowed to go slower.

Not too long ago a friend mocked me when I said that I had done a given day’s exercise at an 18 minutes/mile pace. He laughed and said, “That isn’t even walking speed. Are you crawling?” I managed to not turn around and nastily ask when was the last time he has gone further than a block so how would he know average traveling speeds.

It’s ok that I’m slow sometimes. I get there. Lots of people can’t. Sneering at me for not being faster is not going to actually motivate me to move faster.

Being really nice to myself when I average 21 minutes a mile because I completed the distance and I probably didn’t want to is more important than worrying about being a fast runner.

I’m not fucking trying out for a competitive event. That has nothing to do with what I’m doing. I’m trying to have enough energy to play with my kids. I’m trying to maintain some level of strength and health so that my life doesn’t turn into unending pain long before I die.

I know that not everyone can avoid the amount of physical pain they are in. When I am stronger my back hurts less. It is dramatic. It is one of the clearest connections to my back pain I can find. The more exercise I do the stronger my core is the less I hurt.

Every body has different needs.

I’m glad I let myself cry. I felt a lot better afterwards. Stress. Feelings. They impact a body. I can relax enough to go exercise and play with Calli after I cry. Before I got out the excess emotion I couldn’t play nice. I was snippy and over sensitive.

I’m feeling really rejected lately. Which is partially a delusional creation of my mind and partially an accurate reflection of some circumstances I’m standing near. I’ve had a lot of plans cancel in the last few weeks.

I back out of group events. I don’t back out on one-on-one dates unless there is an emergency. I’ve had three one-on-one things cancel in the last week. And a different set of complications with a different situation.

So I have some justification for feeling rejected. (One of them was even a total no-show in a public place. That sucked.)

But man I blow things out of proportion. And I always manage to find patterns in things happening close together in time. I personalize things I shouldn’t personalize.

The mom no-showed because she had issues with her kids. I haven’t talked to her yet but I can tell you that it is the reason. I can’t get mad.

Oh watch me.

But then I feel like a schmuck. Because I should be supportive. I do understand how challenging children can be.

In this garage, and by extension on this blog, I get to have some feelings. Writing means I take things out less on my kids. I vent my spleen here. Then I can stop thinking about me and focus on them in the moment.

Kinda like venting some steam before the nuclear reactor explodes. There is possibility for damage because writing about intense feelings is a mixed bag socially. It definitely limits ones scope in life. And it limits which people want to be in your life. I can live with the limits I have.

It’s not like I have a choice, right?

I’m looking forward to the upcoming schedule for the later summer/fall. It has already dramatically shifted from what I posted a few weeks ago. This makes me want to beat my head against the wall.

And we want to figure out how to schedule another day with the really fun traditional school friends who came over recently. Both of my kids have already asked.

Oh man. Things are just moving along at a blistering pace.

I feel excited about doing the Hindi class alone with Calli. She’s ready to have some things be just for her. She needs some skills Shanna doesn’t have. She told me that soon she wants to start a dance class. Shanna got to do a dance class and she wants to. Dangit.

She has done a summer rec kind of dance class. She longs for a more serious class. She fantasizes about it in front of me. I’m trying to wait out the lag time until we have some buffer in the kid budget because the bikes weren’t cheap. I’m not behind any more but I don’t have much buffer. I like buffer.

I feel a little weird about the fact that Shanna’s two weeks of summer camp was more than $700 but Calli’s sixteen weeks of language is only $100. Well, it’s 54 hours vs 16 hours.

How do we differently value time spent?

How do we differently value people?

I do think it is nice that the Mad Science summer camps are all run by women. Every teacher is a spunky lady.

I would pay more for the Hindi classes, just for the record. I think their time is worth something. I recognize that I’m kind of a pain in the ass add-on student and if they want me to pay a registration I will.

When I stop and take stock of how many skills my kids are working on right now: responsibility (chores), physical skills, emotional skills, and mental skills..

I’m kind of shocked they aren’t more neurotic. We grow in a lot of directions all at once. But we balance that with a lot of free play and time to be as silly as you need to be.

My kids are teaching me how to be silly. I have always been painfully literal. I don’t joke all that well. It is part of why I’m not really funny.

Sometimes I stop and ask Shanna, “Wait. Why are you making that face? How is it supposed to make me feel?”

She almost always says, “It is a silly face. You should laugh.”

And I do. I laugh because I’m so glad she wants me to laugh. She’s not being disrespectful. She’s trying to lighten the mood. She doesn’t want me to feel small or bad or stupid or…

She just loves me.

I can piss and whine and moan about the fact that people outside my home have the audacity to have priorities other than me but inside this house I’m pretty special.

I sure like being here. I’m a security blanket. I’m a soother. I’m comforting. I’m the one they like the best. (Except when they like someone else more. And that’s ok too. Someday I will be firmly supplanted.)

I feel so lucky that I like my kids as much as I do. A few times a mom has confessed to me that she just doesn’t like one of her kids. I always feel so sad. It happens. It is life.

I’m so grateful that I like my kids. I’m glad we have very compatible personalities. And all of us seem happy to jump through some behavior hoops to be loved so we are working out the difficult bits.

I sure hope I deserve them in the long run. I pray that I am good enough.

My life is so full of awesome.

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Yesterday was awesome with a side of awesome-sauce. When the only down part of the day is me bawlling out the kids for “pruning” (aka HACKING ALMOST TO DEATH) most of the food plants in the front yard. Shanna decided that it would be awesome to clean up the house to make it up to me. I’m not sure some of the asparagus can recover. Luckily it is a spreading plant and even if those bits are dead, more will grow eventually. It’s going to take a good three years to get back to where the blueberry bushes were. My tomatoes are not going to be robust this year. (I’m ok with that. I didn’t want to grow any.) She pruned the apple tree that was just starting to do well. This is my sad face.

And that was my only bad. If that is the only bad in my day, well, I can get ten minutes of yelling out of it and then a little pout and move on. Ok, I’m done now. I really like problems that will fix themselves with time.

Otherwise the kids and I had a really nice day. We spent some time walking around Los Gatos. I talked to them about stuff I did as a kid. They were really interested in all the stories. I find myself perpetually in a state of confusion that they actually give a shit about me. They really do. They want to know about me. They want to know more than anyone other than Noah. It’s crazy. If anyone other than my kids followed me around asking for stories about my life it would probably be a little creepy. But my kids hunger for them.

I feel seen and valued. I tell them all the time that I am so glad that now I get to walk these places with them. Every memory that involves them is sweeter than what came before. I’m glad I get to show them things I like and places I have existed. I’m glad that they are happy I am with them.

It feels like it goes beyond the whole “If my mom hadn’t been alive I wouldn’t be alive.” They like me. They want to know me. I don’t feel I deserve it.

I’m probably going to apologize for yelling when they get home. I lost my temper. It’s ok to tell them why what they did was a bad idea. I probably didn’t need to shout it though. That wasn’t very nice of me. Sometimes, I’m not very nice. Which is a mixed thing.

My kids believe that it is ok for them to fuck up. They take it in stride, apologize, and then move on full stream ahead. “Oh shit. Mom is really mad at me because I did something I shouldn’t have. Hey! I’ll clean up all my stuff! Mom likes that!”

Repair attempts. I hear that acknowledgment of repair attempts are the strongest indicators of healthy and happy relationships. (Ok, mostly I’ve seen this with reference to marriage. If your spouse is TRYING to repair a fuck up, ALWAYS at least acknowledge that you see that they are trying–even if you kind of don’t want to let them make the repair yet. “I can see that you are trying really hard to help me stop feeling mad right now. I’m going to need to be mad for a few minutes. I appreciate that you are trying. I will be back to reciprocate in a few minutes when I calm down.”)

My kids try to repair. I try to repair. None of our fuck ups are that big. And our forgiveness is brobdingnagian. (That’s one of my FAVORITE WORDS EVER.)

Last year, when the awesome dad from the home school group was working in my yard, their teenage son came with him. At one point I told the boy to do something for his mom so she would get really excited. I did my kind of squeak and bounce thing. He his eyes got kind of wide and his head leaned back and he said, “Uhhh. My mom doesn’t get excited like that.”

I told him he obviously isn’t trying hard enough. He seemed skeptical. But I think about exchanges like that when I have my ALL CAPS LOCK ALL THE TIME days. I am that excitable in person. I understand why my kids are loud.

(Jenny–the town is so different. Next time you come to California we need to take Little Djinn there. It’s wacky how different it feels now. The Safeway has been totally remodeled. Now there is underground parking and the store is like twice the size. The Walgreens moved. That was kind of weird for me. Auntie shopped there a lot so the idea that it moved… No! Stop ignoring my sentimentality when you make business decisions!)

This year is fifteen years since I graduated from high school. Twenty years for Noah. Whoa. Time flies. Not that he graduated. And I graduated despite not going to high school. Life is confusing.

Clearly a high school education is not the make-it-or-break-it part of education. The pair of us argue with that idea pretty firmly. “Oh really? People can’t be successful or functional unless they can adapt to a toxic high school environment. Who was it that said it is no measure of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society?” (For the record it was: Jiddu Krishnamurti. I LOVE the internet. I never have to say I don’t know something again.)

Success is such a funny thing. The goal posts just move.

Recently Noah and I were discussing my lust for order. I wish I were someone who could be regimented and predictable. He commented that someone highly regimented can’t be successful in his profession. The point of his job is to imagine things. You can’t do that if you are predictable–not really. You can go down a checklist of possibilities, but you can’t imagine something different.

I suppose this is like the Imagineer vs. the Engineer. Ha.

These days when I set goal posts for the future I understand that they are mutable. My original goals of “save $250,000 and own my own house” were supposed to take me till I was sixty or so. Sometimes it is hard holding in the impulse to just cash out stock and pay the house off tomorrow. I could. And I’d still meet that minimum barrier for safety.

But my goals changed. Yes, I want the house paid off. But holy crap I’ve learned what investing money can do to your overall security. Shanna’s college tuition is almost 1/3 there. She just turned six. I didn’t actually contribute that much. It grows. Like fucking magic.

I feel… less fanaticism about paying the house off Right Now. I’ll get it paid off soon enough. It’ll be fine.

For someone who doesn’t believe in God I spend a lot of time praying. Every month when I pay my bills I sit still and I close my eyes and thank whatever is listening that I can pay every bill without robbing Peter to pay Paul.

My mom got to have that feeling once a year. When she got her income tax return. It was spent the day it arrived catching up on things that had to be paid. Every year of my childhood. The eleven months in between were anxiety filled cry fests. What was she going to do wrong this month. She started out every month short. And she didn’t really have a way to get more money.

Today I went out to a lovely breakfast with Noah. I couldn’t eat very much of it because my stomach hurt. We put it in a to-go container for me to eat after I medicate. It’ll be awesome then.

I see every thread of privilege that runs through my life. I feel like the threads are interwoven with gratitude and sorrow and shame. I’m grateful I get to have the things I have. I appreciate them. I’ve seen the lack. I understand how good I have it. I feel really sad that most people never get to feel this easing of worry. When they say that money can’t buy happiness… it can buy you ways to not worry. I feel ashamed that I have all this and other people have so little. That feels disgusting and inappropriate and wrong.

I feel good that my kids know that when you walk buy a homeless person begging, you find something to give them. Food, money, some conversation if you really have nothing to give. You treat them like a person. We have so much extra. If we don’t share then we are shitty people.

I don’t think I will get my grocery bill under control. But I have relationships with a fair number of homeless people and I don’t feel bad about handing them bags of food. My kids see that a lot. That’s just part of their experience of the world.

We are very lucky. We have extra. If you have extra and you don’t share, then you are an asshole.

Yes, we need to have conversations about systemic solutions. But I am not a hive creature. I am an individual. I can’t solve whole systemic problems. Often, I don’t know what the answer is. But I can help the person standing in front of me.

Are they currently suffering as the “result of bad decisions”? Maybe. But I’ve seen an awful lot of people make the best god damn decisions they had available and they still didn’t work out so well. I’m not in a position to judge. If Noah didn’t like fucking me so much… I wouldn’t have so much extra.

I don’t really feel I have a lot of moral high ground. And I feel a great deal of dismay that I am supposed to feel superior to people who earn their living the same way I do only they don’t also have to do all the fucking laundry. Sex work really doesn’t seem that different to me.

“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.” Sometimes attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt though no one knows for sure.

I have a small mind. Sometimes I think I glory in that. I like to discuss people. I try to do it as more than just gossip–I like looking for patterns and figuring out how people work and why they do the things they do.

I have a strong natural dislike of population studies. I like individual case studies, one after another. I think that in the generalizations you lose the truth. This comes of being an outlier on most scales. Not as many any more… I’m trending towards average as I age. At least on some metrics.

But if you can never undo what you have done, then there are scales on which I will be an outlier until I die. I’m not sure I will ever get over distrusting population studies. But I want to go do a study on a population. I want to do it one person at a time.

Noah just asked me, “Have you ever considered what a system would look like if it was set up to manage people like you?” (Meaning contrary and difficult people who are prone to do the opposite of what you tell them to do even when they are shooting themselves in the foot.) (We’ve been talking about systematic solutions Like You Do On A Sunday Morning.)

More choices. More money. I consider every child born to be an investment in the future of this country. Each individual person has the potential to do Great Things if they are encouraged appropriately. Maybe their Great Things will be in their neighborhood. Maybe in their state capitol. Maybe on tv. I don’t care. Whatever. Do what makes you feel like you are doing the thing that you are good at doing. It is different for different people.

Getting training in your life path is hard and costs money. I really believe in the basic income. I think that children as young as four and five should be allowed to petition the courts to be adopted by a guardian of their choice. Even if the court is a little worried. Kids who are adopted out should retain a child advocate who will work with them throughout their lifetime. Kids who need to leave their nuclear family will probably need a wide net of different kinds of support people.

Kids should be born with the ability to pay for their own day care and food, should such assistance be necessary. These kids will pay my social security. I need them to be as healthy and functional as possible.

Instead our system tries to tell people that they have as few choices as possible. We constrain learning and say that if you don’t learn well by listening to lectures and doing worksheets obviously you are pretty stupid.

Not everyone has that experience of the school system. Some people experience a bewildering array of options and learning possibilities. Guess how much money the parents of those kids usually have?

Maybe money does buy happiness. Or at least it can buy the ease of worry to the point where you are able to feel happy.

But people can learn with almost no money spent. Money isn’t the point. Having a truly engaged teacher is one of the main building blocks of education. The people who help you discover things on your own are the people who increase your options for the future. People who give you a checklist of what to do and what not to do are limiting you.

I think this is beyond me today. And I’m getting stabbing pain in my elbow. I’m going to stop now.

Drifting

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This medication is kind of weird. The strains vary a great deal. One experience is not like the next. Dosage is kind of complicated.

All of my life I have had periods where I feel kind of dreamy and disconnected. I imagine it like floating on top of a still pool. I can kind of hear what is going on around me, but I’m not part of it and it can’t touch me. Maybe I’m swimming in a pool encased in glass? Other people can see me. I can see them going on about their daily labors.

I drift.

It only comes on during moments of repose. I suppose this is dissociation. Disorientation. I feel dizzy.

When I’m having one of those days before I ever touch the medication I know I’m in for a ride.

It’s been kind of weird over the last few years to go from getting the traditional sit-on-your-ass-couchlocked-stoned to being very functional while high. At this point it doesn’t slow me down. But I had to learn how to focus intensely through the pot.

I like it because it derails all of the “side conversations” my brain normally comes up with. My inside voice isn’t very nice to me.

With pot I can forget about the nastiness or stop listening. Something like that. It doesn’t hurt in the same way. I feel less paralyzed in some ways, yet I feel like my legs are jello. Moving is hard.

My kids are off playing by themselves. I told my shrink that I get a good 2-3 hours every morning where they go play hard after breakfast and they don’t talk to me much. Her jaw dropped and she said, “How did you manage that?!” “Consistency.”

I’m starting to feel guilty about how much time I am building into their lives away from me. I feel this nagging guilt that I should be more present. While they are happily playing with Lego’s I should be in there playing with them or I am not properly appreciating the time I have with them.

Oh fuck that noise. People have to learn how to do shit on their own without turning and saying, “Here do this for me.” When I’m there, that’s how it goes.

After the fifteenth time of saying, “No I don’t want to play for you I want to build my own” I am really whiny and annoying and I’m ready to huff out of the room. Better to just let them play.

Normally this is when I bustle around and do my chores. Today… I sit. I slept in. I didn’t medicate or have my silent time before everyone got up.

Getting up in the morning and setting up my little “space” and sitting down for a smoke and some time to write makes me feel centered in a way little else can. Smoking alone isn’t nearly as good. Writing alone isn’t nearly as good.

I know that folks like Steven King exhort me to stop thinking I need the drugs in order to write well. I don’t think I need the drugs to write well. I think I need the drugs in order to have patience, not scream, and not cry throughout the day. But the ease it gives writing is pretty convenient too.

Most people, as part of the normal maturation process, learn how to have a pause in between experiencing things and reacting. I’m kind of broken there. I don’t have the “pause to process”. I have instant extreme reactions. Medication helps with that.

It’s kind of weird yelling so much less. When I do raise my voice I feel horribly self conscious. I feel like I have broken a rule. It is not as normal for me to be screaming across a building at someone. So I feel like I’m bad for doing it in other spaces.

I used to yell all the time. I’m loud. I have been for a long time. That was the ricochet after mumbling my way through childhood. Am I learning voice modulation or am I just feeling more shame about new topics?

Oh, when I say they will “play by themselves” I mean that I will have to go in and moderate several squabbles, help them find something, help them get dressed, sometimes wipe a butt, and say in an irritated voice “If you are hungry you can finish eating the breakfast that is still sitting on your plate.”

So when I say I get 2-3 hours of them being busy… Sigh. That’s what this life means. That’s what I mostly want. I feel bad that I force them into so much independence but I would lose my mind if I tried to be “more present”. I would have to just listlessly go through the day not moving much or thinking. I can’t play their games with them at the speed they go while also cleaning up after them, preparing for them, and being dispatched to the kitchen every 5-10 minutes for more snacks.

Demanding doesn’t begin to explain what this is. Dictators. I’m the fucking lackey. (Actually… no… that’s different. I’m just the lackey.)

For the last few days I haven’t been sure if I was getting sick or just running too hot.

It honestly makes sense that I’m canceling as many things as I am this week. All of my time with Jenny was added after the schedule was made. Much of my additional babysitting was added after the schedule was made. So I made a schedule I could keep for the month, then I added in 60-70 hours of socializing/baby-sitting/driving. No wonder I’m so tired.

It was worth it. I don’t feel bad about missing the county fair this year. I don’t feel bad about missing a park day. I don’t feel bad about skipping Aqua Adventure for a week if my kids outright refuse to do their chores.

If I have to do three peoples worth of work, I am not going to have the energy to go drag you around a water park, sorry. My body has limits.

So instead of leaving the house at 10 am for the fair then going to Aqua for a few hours after that then going to San Francisco for a concert… I’m just doing the concert. Oh man I’m so glad I am smart. I may even take a nap.

I’ll finish painting the door I currently have on saw horses. The kids and I are going to do another toy cull. Their grandmother has sent them six or seven large boxes and we’ve had a birthday since our last cull. It is getting really hard to clean again. Toooooooooo much stuff.

If I can’t get the house clean on Monday because it is more than a day of work to get the house clean… that’s not ok. I start working at 7:30 in the morning. If I can’t get it done by 5 pm, we have too much shit. Some of it has to go. And y’all have to fucking help me because this is fucking ridiculous. I didn’t make the fucking mess.

We clean once a week to vacuum and sweep/mop because otherwise we get swarms of ants. I’m not hysterical. I’m not fussy. I’m not particular about everything being fancy. But we do have to clean. It isn’t an optional thing.

Every house, every family has different circumstances. Not everyone has ant problems. Some people have the luxury of being more relaxed. I’m sorry your dad bought a house directly on top of the entrance to ant heaven and all of them traipse through our property on their way out into the wide world. We get so many fucking ants.

I’m not nearly as phobic any more. I suppose exposure therapy is uhm useful. I no longer scream and claw and fight to get away from them. Wheeee. Now I sigh and clean them up.

Getting older is weird. There are so many things I thought I “couldn’t” do when I was younger. Now… I recognize my limits. But they are much broader than I ever imagined as a kid. I do have limits. I have finite access to money. I have finite strength. I have finite time.

But with proper training, my abilities are many and varied. All I have to do is find a teacher and devote the time to practice. I could do so many things. I’m not afraid of programming or rock climbing or advanced math or learning languages or performing physical feats. I’ve already completed one marathon. A friend is talking pretty hard about getting good enough for Big Sur. 26.2 miles of frightening hills. You HAVE to finish in less than six hours. That’s serious training. (J- I think we should try to get to the point where we can do a half marathon in two hours before we switch to training for the marathon. We will need some speed to go with our endurance for the hills. And oh man we are going to need to find horrible hills for training.)

You know what? I could do that. It would take training. Cross training. Conscious development of my body. But I could do that. Sure.

Give me a calendar, a list of tasks, and I’ll give you a schedule to get it done. Sure.

It is weird having this space in my mind where I know I can do things right next to this place of feeling like I can’t reach out and touch reality.

It doesn’t matter how I feel. It matters how I can make other people feel. That’s what they remember. They remember what I accomplish and my ability to encourage them to feel good about themselves.

I don’t blow your skirt up over nothing. I will tell you the bad right along with the good. Everyone has both.

I was asked yesterday why staying with Noah is worth it if he not the type of partner who would be “defensive” of me if someone got aggressive or hostile in conversation.

I think that if someone tried to hit me Noah would attempt to intervene. I think if Noah say Joe Blow preparing to hit Josephine Blow he would probably intervene.

But the verbal shit? Naw. He comes from a world where that sort of … “conversation” is normal. That’s just how they talk. No, he doesn’t defend me from assholes. I’ve made my peace with that. If I say, “So and so is not welcome in my home ever again.” He doesn’t balk or argue or try to persuade me. I get to have boundaries.

If your partner won’t let you have those kinds of boundaries… well… yeah. I need to feel safe in my home. That includes being able to decide who is and isn’t welcome. It’s a deal breaker.

I don’t have to know everyone. If you want to maintain relationships with people I don’t like, whatever. Do it on your time and away from me.

I have friendships that aren’t during shared time.

I’m still (barely) active in the bdsm community. I go to be social. Mostly I sit around and talk to old play partners and we remember how fun things were. We get cheesy grins. Sometimes there is some fond hugging. There are always the reminders “If you change your mind on this monogamy bullshit… let me know.”

I know. And I love you.

For all that I’m a fucking asshole when I talk about the idea of “chosen family” I have a friends circle that blows my mind. I have so many embedded layers of people who love me. When I think about it at all, I feel really happy.

I haven’t driven everyone away. Not everyone can handle the intensity frequently. And I can’t handle the intensity of everyone frequently. Ow tired.

But they come when I need them or ask them. And I come when they need me or ask me. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Sometimes I think it is kind of a miracle that I have managed to find so many wonderful people to love me. That… doesn’t always happen for girls like me.

It is humbling to think about how lucky I am. All of the accidents and choices that had to happen to get me where I am.

Never new that it was so far from 6 Flags Magic Mountain (the one near Disneyland–I was born biking distance from this amusement park so that is where my siblings talked about “being from”) to Fremont.

Sometimes I feel part of the flow of my life. Sometimes I feel like I float above it. Outside it. Watching it. When I’m not busy telling myself how terrible I am for every mistake I think, “Hm. Not bad.”

It’s a start.

Anger and feelings

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Now my ergonomic keyboard isn’t working. Because there is a conspiracy to destroy my arms.

Today was a therapy day. We talked about my feelings. Cause I have them. And I pay someone to listen to me fucking talk about them.

Something that happened before with running: after a while I can’t tell the difference between the different kinds of stomach pain. Anxiety, hunger, and illness all feel the same. They can all involve vomiting (or not) and tons of nausea. There isn’t much difference. So as my exercise increases and I’m using more calories my belly hurts a lot of the time. And I can’t tell the difference between hunger and anxiety. Which freaks me out chemically.

We talked a lot about my feeling angry earlier this week. And how my reaction to feeling anger is days of self-recrimination and punishment. I don’t feel like it is ok to be angry.

Even though these days the extremity of my anger is expressed through slamming a cabinet shut. And not that hard. Because I’ve already had to repair cabinets I’ve ripped off the wall and I uhhh don’t want to do that again. I’ve got enough shit to do.

I have punched a hole in a wall in years. I haven’t cut myself in years. I haven’t hit anyone in years. I haven’t inappropriately screamed and screamed at someone in a long time. I have screamed at my kids, but not recently.

I’ve been holding it together. I haven’t flipped out on anyone beyond a quavering voice in a long time.

I realized today that I haven’t had a panic attack in months. (I think that this is helped by how much pot I use.) That is a big deal. Through my teen years and my twenties I didn’t have very many months without panic attacks. Heck, for much of that time I didn’t have many weeks without panic attacks. They tend to go in waves. They get really bad for a while then they subside a little for a while. I’ll take whatever reprieve I can get.

I’m doing better. I really am. People who have known me since I was a teenager tell me I am much more calm. That’s a good sign.

But when I feel angry I treat that as deserving as much punishment as if I went to the park and started slapping kids. My standards for myself really aren’t within a range I can accomplish. I can’t stop feeling angry sometimes.

I haven’t raged at anyone in a long time. This is about as much control as someone like me gets. I spend a lot of time feeling like I am pathetic and disgusting if this is the best I can do. I’m not actually a nice person. I can just play one on tv.

My shrink asked me why on earth have I been babysitting so much for other people lately. I told her it is because I want those kids to know me. I want to have real relationships with them. I have known some of them since birth. I desperately hope they will see me as more than just an occasional party host. I want them to think of me as a caregiver.

That requires giving some care. With a smile on my face. When I feel frustration I need to ACKNOWLEDGE it and talk about how I will deal with it. That conscious modeling teaches the kids so much. My kids and other kids.

“Gosh. I’m feeling really frustrated because this isn’t going how I want it to go. I suppose I have a few choices. I could scream and jump up and down. Will that make things better? (Kids chorus: “No.”) Err, I could get mad and break it because then I won’t have to deal with this again. Will that make things better? (Kids chorus: “No.”) Oh. Am I going to have to take a deep breath, calm down, and try again? (Kids chorus: “Yes.”) Ah crum. That sounds like work. Alllllllllllll riiiiiiiiiiiight.”

Whine is intentional. It makes them giggle.

I’m not sure when I will feel like what I am doing is “good enough”. Part of my problem is, I deeply admire people who are making radically different choices. I want to emulate them. I want to pattern after them because I like them and respect them and look up to them.

But if I do I will wreck the good thing I’ve got going here. Some things aren’t compatible.

I told my shrink that I’ve been having a lot more sexual fantasy/visualization stuff again. She asked like what. I said I miss going to grocery stores looking for a trick. My favorite game is going to a vanilla place (not just grocery stores–but man I love them) and looking for someone. I win if I can get someone home and naked in under two hours. I’ve won the game. Not every time, of course. That wouldn’t be a very fun game.

I think my shrink hasn’t quite fully picked up on the “queer” thing. Multiple times she used very heterosexually focused language to describe who I would pick up and what I would do with them. I corrected her.

Girls who like casual sex are much harder to find than boys who like casual sex. That doesn’t mean I like boys more. Just that when it comes to going hunting, sometimes I like shooting fish in a barrel. Ahem.

She told me that the fantasy shit is “very empowering”. Which is a phrase that triggers my gag reflex. I’ve uhhh heard a bit too much about how victims should empower themselves. It always sounds squicky to me. (Squick, for those who don’t know, is the visceral, physical sensation you get when someone does something you really don’t like. Like someone sucking your toes if you hate that sort of thing. When you get that instinctive shiver of “yuck“. I kind of want to go on to a long list of things that squick some people but I’ll be kind.)

The scared, shameful, dirty feeling after I get angry is probably the most pressing “PTSD symptom” I have right now. That anxiety eats me for days. It means I can’t sleep. It makes me shorter and shorter.

If I feel intense anger it is really hard to calm down. It is really hard to stop feeling attacked and threatened.

I’d like to be clear that I’m rationally aware that no one is attacking me or threatening me at this stage of my life. Not no one. It’s been a long fucking time. I am not saying that I’m getting threats and so of course I’m scared.

No. If I go through the experience of getting angry (my baby-sitter being kind of flakey is annoying but not really that catastrophic–I get other kid care right now) even if I don’t do anything inappropriate I have days of fierce, mean, nasty self-recrimination. I eat irregularly until my stomach is a mass of pain. I don’t sleep enough–not nearly enough. The last few days have involved a lot of staying up late and still waking up early to grind on what a disgusting piece of shit I am.

I’m better than I was. I can distract myself if I’m awake and in front of a screen and smoking pot. Then I can stop the inside-voice-ranting. If I try to lay in bed and go back to sleep… Forget it. The brain weasels will eat me. I’ll end up crying and retreating to the garage to let Noah sleep anyway.

I suppose I use writing about the way I would use a sponsor if I were the AA type. Instead I smoke my pot. With the blessing of no less than two doctors and a therapist.

My shrink told me that I should probably move my blog to being behind some kind of wall. Folks under 18 shouldn’t be allowed to get access to my main writing.

I have feels about that. But if I’m going to be publishing books for the under 18 market I might now also want to have a public blog where I talk about the super hot stripper who was happy to uhhh come to the bathroom with me at a strip club one night. Or the other really hot girl I fucked in an elevator at a club. We really weren’t supposed to be doing that there.

My life has been pretty good.

Yeah. I like girls.

Life is pretty good.

2 Replies

Wow, thanks for all the comments. That started my day off differently than normal. I’m having trouble controlling my smileys despite my promise to myself that I wouldn’t use them in the blog. Ahem.

I’m in a good mood. I finished scheduling arrangements for the summer. Shanna has a couple of weeks of summer camp. They are kind of random.

Mondays will be cleaning/family-gym night. (Noah and I started dating by being gym buddies. He’s fun to exercise with.) And the kids love the day care. With a trip to Aqua Adventure in the middle of the day.

Tuesdays switch a bit. Every other week we go to Oakland for therapy. I usually spent post-therapy talking to K for a bit. Sometimes we go to park day afterwards. Or we don’t go to therapy and we try to go to park day. If it is my only unscheduled day of the week, sometimes we stay home during the day. Tuesday nights will be babysitting from 4-8. We will sometimes date but mostly that’s alone time.

Wednesdays are variable. Concerts. County Fair. Visits with friends. Stuff happens. We go to Aqua Adventure in the afternoon. Then Pam comes over to spend the night.

Thursdays mornings for four hours I exchange child care with a local stay at home mom. One week at my house, next week at her house. I can’t believe how crazily productive I am during that period. (It used to be three hours, we decided to bump it after we’ve ended up standing around talking for two hours after most sitting-sessions because the kids are not ready to split up after three hours.) One week I get to go up to L’s house and plan out Calli’s birthday party. (It’s a joint thing cause she’s got a birthday twin. It’s working out.) Every other Thursday I will be running with J. The in between Thursdays will be Noah’s night off.

Friday days are variable. Gym visits with a mom so the kids can play in the day care. Help K clean out her basement (I’ve been looking forward to this for years. I have pestered them asking, “So! When can we clean out your basement?!”) Aqua Adventure most weeks. (All these trips to Aqua Adventure are dates with another family. I have to go.) Nights are Family-Date-Night. The kids will help make dinner. When Noah and I cooperate, the kids always find ways to keep us busy.

Saturdays are variable. We do stuff. Sometimes it is just a massage. Sometimes we go see people. Sometimes we hang out at home and keep busy. This is when Noah gets in the epic reading sessions with the kids. (Would anyone like to go to the day-time PEERS event in August? It sounds fun…. And like my hours…)

Sundays start with Shanna making breakfast. Then we walk to the farmers market. Then we hang out and rest for the remainder of the day.

On top of that I have a very full exercise schedule. 2-3 days of running. One walk to the farmers market. 1-2 days of cross training. (I start out with more cross training and slightly less running but that shifts as I get closer to the half marathon.) Stretching and strength training. One rest day. Must rest or you don’t progress as well.

Dinners are planned until September. I consciously put a lot of easier stuff on the calendar. I’m going to need easier cooking if I will get through it. I’d like to conserve some money. I’ve been uhm, over spending. It’s halfway through the year and I am not over budget on most stuff, but I have absolutely no wiggle room and I really wanted a cushion. Sigh. At the end of the year I am going to send a bunch to the mortgage even if it hurts. I hope to build a cushion so it doesn’t hurt. The mortgage is still hovering at $200,000 and if I am going to pay it off in six more years then I need to get some large payments in, the sooner the better. Interest is a beast.

Debt is bad.

Really, if I got the house paid off in 2019, that would be dreamy. If all the mortgage money was suddenly going spare I could do a lot of interesting things. The longer I drag out the mortgage, the more I pay. That’s the simple logic of interest. The faster I get rid of the mortgage the more of my own money I get to keep. I can do fun things with it instead of give it to a bank.

I don’t pay on my car loans for the full term either.

Interest is yucky.

Except when I’m earning it. Then it’s awesome.

When I was a little girl, my life financial goal was to have $250,000 invested and to own my own home and car. I wanted no debt and a cushion “in case”. I picked that as a goal when I was, 10? 11? I know it was firm in my head before 12.

The fact that we have more than one account with that amount of money blows my fucking mind. I haven’t finished paying off the house yet. Damnit. Soon. Before I’m 40.

Thank you, Noah. I couldn’t have done this alone. To be fair, you couldn’t have either. You kind of suck at managing money. We make a great team. When we got engaged you had one account with that much money. You had a thirty year mortgage that you weren’t making expedited progress towards. You had a lot of debt from motorcycle purchases and accidents and home improvement and medical bills.

I’m pretty good. Doubled the investment. Paid off all the debt. Bought two cars, paid them off nearly instantly. The house is probably only six years away from being paid off. If I slacked it has a maximum of seven years left on the mortgage. Instead of twenty more years.

It is really easy to try hard for someone who rewards my hard work with kindness, attention, and love.

Not to mention that we went from being pretty much the crappiest house on the block to having people stop and offer to buy it because they like the garden so much.

I’ve been good to your bottom line. That’s pretty awesome.

You started off in a privileged position. It would not be reasonable to expect someone to do what we have done without the outrageous privilege of having a bunch of money handed to them.

I don’t know how I had my childhood but came out with different financial values. It’s A Mystery.

I honestly think it was the guaranteed income. It changes your whole way of thinking. When I grow up I might be willing to lobby congress for a guaranteed income. I think that is the only logical solution for a country with our resources and our degree of poverty.

Income inequality is bad for the country. Period. I don’t know when in the fuck I changed. Probably when I got my head out of my ass and looked at what was really happening to people near me because they didn’t have guaranteed income and I did.

I think I had the reverse of most people. Most people are protected by their parents during childhood and they have to make their way as adults–many are ill prepared. I was not financially cared for as a child. Once I turned eighteen I had a guaranteed income until I was thirty. I knew exactly how long I had to get my shit together and I put most of the money into college.

That’s an insane privilege. I didn’t know it while I was young.

It isn’t a hand out. It’s an investment. “I want you to do well, so our whole country will do well. This amount of money will keep you from making desperate choices so that you can survive. That way you can learn to thrive.”

This shit is studied.

Anyway. I’m in a good mood. The kids have been very affectionate and kind of clingy. Given how much they reject me lately I’m enjoying it. I think that they are noticing how much time we spend with other people lately.

Like: in the next two weeks I am providing 32 hours of babysitting for other peoples kids. That’s a fucking job. I do a lot of jobs all at once. I know that is kind of the joke about stay at home moms. Then add home schooling. Even unschooling is work. Don’t be fooled.

Right this minute I feel like I can handle all the balls in the air. I have said no to the things that weren’t fitting for me. It is hard but it was the right decision.

I can do this much scheduled and accomplish the things I want to do. Ok.

Also: I have to take the summer off of Netflix. I am watching too much. I’m going to try to limit my screen time to pre-6:30 am. I have a lot to do. (So I won’t be on chat much.)

I have a lot of projects I want to do. Sitting at the computer means I don’t get antsy enough to do them. If I change that dynamic, I get more done and I feel more satisfied about my time spent.

This is one of those times when my center of focus is moving in closer. I know this has happened before. It happened when I had Shanna for one thing. I just stopped communicating with most of the outside world. For years. I have been re-emerging.

Now I kind of don’t want to. I’ve built a world. I am really busy inside this little world. There’s a lot I want to do.

I need to buy saw horses. I have a lot of projects I want to do this summer and saw horses would make all of them easier. (So much for not painting this year.) That money will probably come out of my ‘entertainment’ budget. Because man is it cheaper to entertain myself at home than out. I have all the paint I need. Maybe another sheet of sand paper. Then we paint. No problem. I own all the other bits.

This is why some people can spontaneously make things. They have already accumulated all the crap. That’s why other people hoard. They want this feeling. “Oh I have everything for that.”

Only hoarders can’t find it when they want it. So they buy it anew for every project.

Man. Layers.

I remember my grandpa’s shed. He died when I was twelve. He was the only grandparent I met. He had painted the outline of every tool on the pegboard so he knew exactly where to put it.

In that moment, of seeing his shed I understood how things “should” be organized. It is all so clear. Yes.

I think I’ve been trying to get there ever since. I’m not there. I’m still shifting. He was in his 80’s. I doubt his work shop was always that meticulous. Give me time.

Someone recently said, “If this is how you use your garage… where do you put your storage?”

Storage? What’s that? My closets mostly don’t have doors. I don’t have an attic or a basement or a shed. My garage is fully occupied but not with storage. Ok, I store books on book shelves. Different.

I have what you see. I’m just trying to get the organization perfect. It happens in layers.

We change. Our needs change. Life is a process. I’m still arriving. I have so much more patience for that now than I used to have.

If a Zen moment appears, grab it. I feel ok. I feel like I am ok. I am doing what I wanted to do. I have, in fact, done far better than I dared dream. I haven’t perfectly arrived, but life is about the process. I’m doing well at the process.

My family thinks I am doing well by them. I’m not a perfect friend but I’m not a piece of shit. I do my best. Sometimes that isn’t enough. That’s life.

At this moment I honestly believe I couldn’t be doing more than I am. But I’m not over extended. Just busy. Booked. I can’t say yes to a lot more. People can join me on what I have already planned. That’s all I have to offer right now. And sometimes, I need to reserve family time. Holy crap do we spend time with people.

We need to reset our normal. Because even we–freaks that we are–have our own normal.

I have lots of gardening I should be doing. See–I need to stay home. There is work to do. While I babysit. Oh man.

It is going to be a blessedly full summer.

Running and body stuff

13 Replies

Bodies are weird. People are weirder.

I spent 2012 running because I wanted to be able to check “run a marathon” off of my bucket list. I had not been much of a runner before that. In the process I found that my body changed substantially. I was already riding the wave of lower-than-usual-weight because my Uncle Bob had recently died and I had divorced my biological family and that was really hard on me and I lost a lot of weight from not eating. I was down to the weight I had previously only reached while starving myself on Weight Watchers and exercising five days a week.

So having the “thinner” body is associated with lots of bad stuff for me. I get there when I’m starving myself and/or dealing with a lot of psychological pain such that my stomach hurts too much to eat. It’s not fun.

Also: when I lose weight the amount of street harassment goes up.

Think about the implication of that. I lose weigh *because* I am already having problems and then all of a sudden the ambient harassment I get in public increases.

Folks ignore the chubby chick running around the neighborhood. When I get thinner men start telling me they want to “come with me” or “distract me” or they just yell shit. And my neighborhood is pretty safe. I know enough of the neighbors that if I have a problem I can go three or four doors down, bang on a door and say, “I’m sorry to interrupt but I’m having a problem.”

I love my neighborhood so much. I appreciate that my neighbors are so friendly with me. I’ve been here for eight years now. I know people.

So it’s not like I’m scared but I really don’t like dealing with it. I feel worn down and tired. Being “thinner” feels more like being a piece of glass that gets thinner and more breakable with time. It’s not a good thing losing mass.

I don’t own a scale and I haven’t in a while and I don’t want to. I don’t care about tracking the number. Knowing it occasionally is just to have data. My recent doctor visit says I went back up to 170. Given the running schedule I’ve put together for the rest of the year… that won’t be true long.

Right now I have a belly. I like my belly. It means my forking pants fit. At this weight my “skinny” pants are tight and my “fat” pants are a bit loose but I can wear everything. It’s convenient.

If I lose a bunch of weight again I should probably just buy some clothes that fit instead of holding my pants on with rope the way I have been doing for a while. I don’t like most belts. So I use the rope belt that Jenny made for her Renaissance Faire costume years ago. She made it by braiding really bright ribbons.

I use this belt all the time. Every time I run it holds up my pants.

Every time I wear the belt I think of Jenny. I think of her kind of silently blessing my endeavors. Jenny loves me. Jenny wants me to keep on keepin’ on.

Being smaller is a weird thing for me. For one thing it means I am more shaped like my mother and that’s a mixed blessing. On one hand, she’s pretty cute. On the other hand… when I catch a glimpse of my body abstractly in a reflection I miss her so much I feel like I get hit with a solid fist of pain.

I want my mommy. I’d much rather be fat and never see her in the mirror again.

But if I’m going to run I don’t think I’m going to pull off fat. No matter how much I eat and let me tell you I try to keep weight on while I’m running. I eat like a hummingbird–my weight sixteen times over a day.

Running puts a natural limit on how much I can eat. After I get accustomed to the pace again I won’t be able to over eat very often. When I’m running my stomach picks a size and that is the size it is. I don’t get to under eat and I don’t get to over eat any more. It’s a really weird feeling. I didn’t exercise as a kid enough to know if that happened then.

So I do my best to eat a lot. I up the calorie density of everything (mmmm butter). But it turns into muscle and I melt away. Because apparently the me I see in the mirror is composed up of a lot of fat.

I don’t actually come from a family of heavy people. The only people in my family background who are heavy are the people with severe mental illness who are entirely sedentary. Everyone who isn’t so depressed they stop functioning is pretty fit.

I think I’ve tried to ignore that most of my life. I’ve always been sedentary and chunky-to-fat.

Losing the label of “fat” is weird and hard. It has been part of my identity for most of my life. I’ve been one of those prideful and hostile people. I don’t mind being fat and I will yell at people who act like it is a problem.

The heavier I am, the less sexualized I am to random men. Of course, there are guys like Noah who like heavy women but they generally are the kind to be chatty and friendly at a party and not the kind who yell things on the street. Which is to say: getting laid isn’t a problem at any size. But I like the invisibility of being heavy in day-to-day life.

My joints bother me off and on. Particularly my hand joints. I now compulsively make the same hand gestures as my mother. This getting old business sucks. As a result I semi-regularly don’t wear my wedding ring set.

I picked a platinum monstrosity. It’s gorgeous and I still feel a giddy thrill of “ohmygod someone let me have this?!” when I look down but it’s solid. Some days I can’t wear it because it makes my finger burn like fire. Which is unpleasant.

Oh holy shit do men feel like it is ok to just get close to me. I don’t remember this from when I was younger. “Hi” is usually the limit of the conversation with the strangers because I think my facial expression is not “welcoming”.

That being scary business is useful.

I wish I could be friendly without getting harassed. Gosh that would be nice.

I can. When I’m fat. So I look at my running schedule for the rest of the year and I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I sure like being fit and strong and there are a lot of things I want to go do with my body that require as much or more fitness than I have now. On the other hand… being attractive kind of sucks.

I’m really kind of funny. I spent most of my early life working as hard as possible to attract as much sex as possible and now that it is appropriate (hey–at least more than it was when I was a kid!) I’m trying to figure out how to make it go away. I’m kind of stupid.

I seem to never be willing to do what is expected of me.

It is easy for me to be loving with my body when I’m fat. I feel less betrayed by my presentation to the world. When I’m fat it is easier to take long baths and rub in lots of lotion and give myself gentle touch. When I’m skinnier I tend to take showers and try to get “being naked” over with as fast as possible. I don’t really want to look at or touch myself.

I can tell by my clothing that my weight is shifting a bit. I’m trying to be conscious of the nicer things I do to myself and I’m trying to not stop.

I’m not sure if stopping the nice stuff is because I was that skinny during periods when I was insanely busy or depressed and most of my “me” time available was spent on exercising or working. I didn’t have as much time to sit around and take a bath.

So is it the chicken or the egg? I don’t know.

There are all these layers of things. When I’m running I mostly eat a reasonable diet… only I can’t keep my sugar under control. Sweet bread. That’s my down fall.

The difference is the exercise. When I get into a good routine for exercising, training for longer distances means specific conditioning, it’s a shit-ton of calories. Not to mention that I’m building muscle, which is more efficient at burning calories.

I think I partially stopped running cold because uhm… I was starting to have thigh gap. I think I stopped having thigh gap when I was eight. I don’t feel all that good about having it now. Yes, I’m aware some women are obsessed with it. I do not want to be in that camp. I don’t want to be associated with that camp.

I want to be strong and fit and have the fucking body I’m used to. God damnit.

If I could be a marathon runner with a size 16 body that would be perfect. That’s what I would want if I got to pick a body out of a hat. Unfortunately when I’m seriously training I’m more in the 8/10/12 range depending on brand. I hate the brands that tell me I’m an 8. First of all: no I am not. There are standards, you fuckers. Stop lying to people. Second of all: it is really fucking frustrating to have to take three or four sizes of something into the dressing room in order to find something that fits. Fuck all you fashion bastards.

I fucking hate buying clothes.

And where am I going to store my “fat” clothes? I sure as fuck am not getting rid of any of it. I’ve very carefully found my wardrobe. Maybe under my bed? Oh man.

I like being strong. I don’t like that it seems to come packed with being thin. That seems stupid to me. See, no one asks me what I want. Whine whine whine.

I understand that I live in a time and place where being thinner is a fucking billion dollar industry. (Many billions? I don’t track.) People seem to waste their whole lives on trying to lose weight. I don’t get it.

Ok, I did Weight Watchers when I hit my lifetime maximum weight and I could no longer ride the rides at Disneyland Paris. That bothered me. Being kicked off a ride because I was too physically big was uncomfortable emotionally. So I didn’t want that to be true. Also: I was in the bdsm community and I was on the verge of leaving my Owner and I needed to hunt. So I did lose weight on purpose then.

Then it came back and I was a lot happier.

Then it went away and I wasn’t so happy.

Then it came back and I was a lot happier.

Here we go round again.

I think my lowest adult weight was 148 when I was depressed after Puppy left me and I stopped eating for a month. I was living on a Jamba Juice a day. I got the big size. Sometimes I could swallow cheese. Sometimes it made me puke. This happened right after I moved out on my own to live alone for the first time ever. No one was there to care. So I didn’t care.

My highest non-pregnant weight was 218 as measured at Weight Watchers. I suspect I was a bit heavier a few weeks previously when I was at Disneyland Paris. Pregnant was 222. In between pregnancies and for a lot of my life I hung out in the 180’s. During my previous “more fit” periods I hung out around 165. Running leads me into the low 150’s.

I know some people gain and lose more than a hundred pounds. I know people who have gained and lost more than two hundred pounds. A range of 70 pounds isn’t that extreme. But my body changes a lot. I understand that in the world of Fat Acceptance I max out at what some people consider “skinny fat”. But if I’m fat enough to have employees of department stores sneer at me and tell me I won’t find anything in their store and if I’m fat enough to have people yell it at me while I walk by… it counts.

And every time I gain and lose my body changes shape. I’m hoping that soon I will look matronly enough to be left alone. I notice the dangling chicken wings below my arms with delight. I have old lady arms! Yay!

I’m not dead. I get to be an elder. Even though I’ve never respected my elders, most other people do. People are getting nicer to me with every passing year.

I note these changes with happiness. I feel kind of confused by the people around me who want to remain as young looking as possible. Being young has not been a good stage for me. I want to leave it behind. Far, far behind.

I like being bad ass. I even like being hot. I don’t like being treated like I am responsible for the random desires of men I don’t know. Yeah, I used to be interested and I didn’t mind so much then. Things change. Figuring out the signals is really hard.

I don’t want to be hostile but I haven’t found a better way of getting men to take “no” the first time I say it. Any softer “no” leads to extra pushing. If I am sure the answer is “no” the first time I must say it with great conviction. Otherwise they will push much farther than I want them to. This is consistent.

Anyway. I’ve been running on schedule for about a week now. I’d been running inconsistently one to three times a week for a while. I trained semi-efficiently for the Oakland half in March and I seriously hurt by mile 11. I need to treat my body with more respect and train better this time. Which means being a lot more serious about my cross training and weight training and stretching.

Which means my body is going to change pretty fast. My body, much to my surprise, likes picking up muscle. The more exercise I do the more it snowballs. I come from a family of fit people. My brothers were sports nuts. They had some talent. Tommy’s team was on its way to the Little League nationals when he got hit by a car. (Not literally on the way. The game was a few weeks? days? away. I can’t remember. I was little and living in a different state.) Oops. I never did hear what came of the team. I was too little to care. My other brother was sixth in the state for cross country in high school. But he was expelled two weeks before graduation for having alcohol on campus so it didn’t go anywhere for him. He could have gone to college on scholarship. Whoops.

I understand more now about genetics. When I was a kid I mistook the fact that I was learning for being unable to learn. I thought that because the people around me were so much better than me and they always won that meant I always would lose and I had no ability to improve or ever win.

Now I feel really sad that no one ever stopped and said, “Dude. You are four. Stop comparing yourself to people who are five and eight years older than you. Go compete with people your age. You are doing just fine. Keep trying.”

I gave up before I ever tried. And moving the way I did meant that I never had… anything. I just stayed home because it was the only way to be safe. Being sedentary was mandatory. So I never improved and it became a self-perpetuating “I can’t because I don’t”.

The things I know now…

If I had somehow had the will to exercise I probably would have been a much scarier kid. Probably better that I preferred reading.

But my kids are buff. My kids have so much freedom to move. Sometimes my inner eight year old weeps at how unfair it is that my kids have so much freedom compared to her. That was probably one of the worst periods of “can not leave my room without pain being inflicted on me”. That piece of me is specifically alive and well and bitter as a pull out of my inner child. It is as close as I come to having multiple personalities. The traumas I incurred at different ages have left specific big knots of scar tissue.

I wasn’t hurt physically for all of my life. For most of the time I was just left alone. Even though I am an intensely social person. Just like Shanna, I came alive at the sight of another person. Shanna can, and does, play alone–but it’s very different from her interactions with people. She gets to be with people all day every day. Well, sometimes I tell them to go play and I spend an hour in the garage. But they have never ever been left actually alone in the house. Well, not beyond taking the trash out. I don’t forking count that. I’m on the property. I can hear them.

Stopping to pay attention to this connection (my inner child acting up means my body has more activation and energy and I feel pissy) is part of the re-parenting process. I feel self-conscious and bad because this is part of what I want to get from the home schooling process.

I have to work through my resentment of other people getting “better” than I had. It is a lot of conscious effort to relax and calm down and be able to be present with my children. I have to actively forgive myself for having the childhood I had. It was not my fault. Both of my children are well into the ages when I was out finding neighborhood kids for oral sex. My kids don’t know what oral sex is. It has never entered into their fuzzy little brains. They are too busy whacking things with swords. As they should.

In being nice to my children through their developmental stages I work through understanding what should have happened to me. I learn what appropriate behavior is by reading multiple developmental books and educational theory books. I cross reference and design a model of an “appropriate” teacher for this stage. And I embody it to the best of my ability.

When I fuck up I apologize, explain what I should be doing and I do better next time. Just like my kids do.

We are all in progress here. I tell them, “I have never been a mother to a six year old AND a three year old at the same time before. I am still learning how it works. I’m sorry I made a mistake.”

Our mistakes are small and our forgiveness is huge. It works out.

My children will never remember anything other than a mother who is physically fit. They will not understand that I spent most of my childhood in a depressed haze sitting very still watching the same few VHS tapes over and over and over.

I’m in one of those phases where I understand why the “Trauma Recovery” people say that you have to forgive. My mom was not in a position to give me what I needed. Not at all. Not even a little bit. I can see why I was so hard for her. I’m actually impressed she didn’t beat me more often. Now that I understand the context of her life better… oh poor Mom. I’m not being sarcastic. I feel really bad for her. But I don’t think she could keep from fucking up my kids. Maybe in thirteen or so years I can look her up. We’ll see.

I am a very active person. It’s kind of insane that I spent my childhood as stationary as I did. I get why it happened. But it was really crazy-making.

I did have periods of activity. Auntie was good about making kids go play in the woods. Well, more accurately… she worked night shifts and I was alone most of the time when I lived with her. So I went out into the woods. I couldn’t wander neighborhoods in the random other places we lived because I got lost or got into fist fights. Auntie’s house was consistent enough that I could learn the lay out.

My relationship to my body has always been one of frustration. I have always been torn between being mad that I’m not bigger and being mad that I’m not smaller. Ok, I’ve lost the desire to be smaller. When I was younger and trying harder to pick up sex partners I was wildly jealous of the women who were 5’1″ or shorter. Now I think it would be inconvenient. I retain my desire to be bigger so that I could be more physically capable. I just don’t have the leverage to do some things. It is really annoying.

It has always been weird how much I trade off using my actual weight for using strength as I get smaller. Many of the tricks to use my weight as leverage stop working. Even twenty pounds of difference is a lot. That’s a lot of strength to make up.

Bodies are complicated.

Control

11 Replies

I’ve been thinking a lot about behavioral modification and control. I mean, these are frequent topics for me but they’ve been using a lot of bandwidth lately.

What do I want to be? Who do I want to be when I grow up? Am I allowed to be that person while I am fulfilling the same roles I have always filled for people who will not meet my needs?

I have some friends, at least a few, and many of them are guys. Not all of them. I’m not one of those women who “can’t get along with women”. Which I always hear as “it is easier to manipulate men so I stick with them”. I like and hate everyone equally. At least in terms of group identifiers. I like Christians as much as I dislike some of the dogma associated with the religion. I like guys as much as I hate them. Individuals of course all get their own readings.

“When women say “all men” they hurt the feelings of the nice guys.”

Maybe the nice guys need to learn that when people are writing something they aren’t always writing to and for you. If you can’t handle reading something unless it was specifically written to coax you then you have bigger problems than anyone else can solve for you.

I read a lot of very anti-white writing. I read a lot of people of color who have tremendous chips on their shoulders. They just fucking hate white people. I’m white. Do I feel like I should get defensive and try to get them to prove that they don’t hate *me* because I’m *special*.

Or would that make me a self-involved asshole? Think hard here.

I know more men who are not rapists than I know rapists. By a large margin. That does not mean I should give strangers the benefit of the doubt. Sorry. Even if it hurts your widdle feewings.

I don’t figure out who the predators are by looking at them. I do default to assuming that the less physically attractive someone is the lower the chances they are a successful predator. I am more relaxed around men who seem non-sexual enough.

Which is probably something that causes those men enormous pain in their lives. See how I can’t fucking win? The signals that do signal safety are things that are offensive to really judge.

But even that isn’t full proof. I know better. So I’m paranoid.

I don’t think that most of the men in my life would have the balls to attack me at this stage. I have done my best to develop a somewhat scary reputation and those things spread. Folks who know me are fairly safe. But a lot of my male friends are what I’d call Alpha. They are bossy motherfuckers and by and large that works for them. They don’t get called on it much. They have carved out little lives where they are tyrants and everyone around them does what they say and falls in line and things work out. They aren’t violent or “abusive”. But they will grind on you till you verbally give them what they want. I know a lot of men like this. Only a few women.

These men take a lot out of me. They take as much out of me emotionally and mentally as managing a large group of children. For one person. Seriously–I can manage six kids on a day trip by myself far more easily than I can have a friendly chat with many of my male friends individually.

I’m starting to see that as a problem.

As I get older the needs in my life are becoming more predictable. I have more of a schedule. I’m not always moving. I’m not always adjusting to an entirely new cast of characters. I have added in the home school crowd in the last three years and then a running buddy after that. Otherwise I haven’t been picking up new relationships lately. That’s weird. I have been dusting off older friendships. I have been spreading myself out differently.

Sustainability is more of an issue now. I can’t drop many balls in order to completely adapt to a new environment. That’s a privilege I have lost. I didn’t know it was a privilege when I had it. Now “normal” people make more sense to me. Why they say “I can’t” to so many of the things I propose.

Life is different now. I have to have a very different amount and kind of control. Now it’s a marathon, not a series of sprints.

My running buddy and I have decided that it is more sane (given our life constraints) for us to do a 10k at the beginning of October and a half marathon at the end of November. She thinks we will be walking. I don’t think so. I think our first 10k time was pretty fast. I think we will be able to train up to having my third official half marathon be as fast or faster than the second. We’ll see.

Running with her is fun. She and I have a lot in common. If our lives were more similar I think we would conflict like oil and water. Luckily our life constructs are so entirely different that we don’t have to worry about our (ridiculously firm) opinions getting clashed with. We are both very encouraging of taking up space and what that means. We are both also working on control in a variety of parts in our lives. But very differently so we can talk without feeling judged for how we do it. Our circumstances are entirely different. We need different tactics.

A lady I like and respect says she is thinking of starting a discussion group for women once a month. I would drive to Redwood City for that. I would feel comfortable and safe talking to people that woman would invite. I would be different from most of the people she invites. I may or may not be the emotionally explosive (we’ll see) but I will be able to blurt something, then apologize for tone and rephrase and they will try to hear me. The stakes will be low.

When I get too tired from the emotional labor of translating from my brain into “difficult self-centered man language” (obviously not all men or I wouldn’t be bothering to specify a sub-group) I get really testy and pissy. I take it out on everyone who walks by. I feel brittle and made of glass. Like the slightest lean of an arm on my boundaries might shatter them. Then I withdraw and spend a lot of time crying.

I probably need to pay more attention to who makes me react that way and pull back from all of those relationships. I’m starting to see how the cost is becoming higher than I can pay. I don’t have enough spoons to have to process someone that much. And the only way to get them to stop hammering on you is to keep arguing until you win or meekly say they are right a few times so they will back off.

I’m not fucking letting them win their bullshit arguments. I could start using some variation of “You are being an asshole. Shut the fuck up.” But I don’t think that would go over that well.

My other option is to drop the friendships. Which will result in its own bitterness and trauma. Because life works that way.

Knowing you and being your friend is very hard work. Sometimes I can do it and sometimes I can’t. Being friends with me is very similar, so clearly it isn’t an “only men” thing. But aping this form of masculine behavior (because clearly what the people who object to my attitude are really objecting to is that I am a woman with this attitude–from a man it’s ok) causes me other problems.

Men don’t like losing dominance challenges to women (unless they really like it and that’s a whole different ball of string). Although many men are just flat used to losing dominance challenges and they sort of sigh with resignation and get on with it. The fight has long-since gone out of them.

Then there’s Noah. He neither likes it nor has a desire to deal with it much. We try to solve this by not challenging one another because neither of us appreciate losing dick contests. We have different strengths. Cool. You go be awesome over there and I’ll be awesome over here and we can wave. Both of us are grudging losers. But we don’t hold grudges. And we are willing to be convinced when someone has good data. So it works out.

So clearly not all men suck. Yeah, I get it. But some really do.

I have control over very few things in this life. I sorta have control of my mind and body. I mean, I’m not crazy effective with my body but I’m relatively fit. Not mentally. Oh man. But I get by. My deficiencies exist in ways that I can work around and develop counter-balancing strengths that balance things out. Life works that way.

We aren’t all cookie cutters. Trying to develop the control to just do what others tell you is antithetical to developing the control that allows you really define yourself.

You must pick one or the other. If you want to be obedient, you give up the ability to really judge what you are. Your very essence and priorities and impulses have to be secondary to what someone else wants.

I am not a secondary character.

I have been. I was because I wanted to fully embody what that meant. I wanted to understand it.

Apparently I decided I don’t want to be it. That’s been an interesting process.

I don’t know what my very-argumentative-men friends get from knowing me. I think I need to stop caring. They take so much from me that I don’t have enough left to do what I need to do. That’s not fair to me.

I don’t really care if cut-off culture is “mean”. It is mean of you to come to my house and argue with me for hours such that I spend hours crying. For years.

Why do I accept every friendship on offer?

Because I do. Because I always have. I let people come until they don’t want to come any more. But sometimes they have to put up with me being explosive while they are here because I am just fucking out of cope. Lots of people take that as a sign and never come back.

I drive people away. I don’t do it on purpose. I do it when I lose control. When I can no longer choke down how bitter and angry and violent and hateful I feel.

It doesn’t have to be at the person in the room. Maybe I’m just having a day where I’m heavily processing stuff about my biological family. If I’ve done a lot of very hostile writing that morning the whole day might be off. Then I’ll lose the reins on my tongue. Something that is highly tinged by my ambient hostility will come out. Whoops. I didn’t really mean it. No really, I didn’t mean it. I said it because I’m feeling spiteful and that was twisting the way I think about you. I’m really sorry. I’m really sorry.

Is isolation really the best solution? Just work on cutting people out of my life until I get to the point where I can always control my mouth when I am with people?

When I hear people complain that someone requires them to “walk on egg shells” I hear “I don’t want to have to care about who is listening before I speak”.

Yeah, some people personalize everything they hear and decide that the speaker must be talking about them personally and therefore the speaker hates them and is a Mean Evil Person. Yup, I know.

I read a lot of rabidly anti-white writers. They are fully unapologetic as they rant about how evil they perceive white people to be, yes, all white people.

I read this and I try to understand why they believe what they believe. Why it has come to be unavoidably, undeniably true for them.

Everyone has a story. Their story makes sense for them whether you like it or not.

What kind of control a person has decides a lot about what kind of life they have. How do you teach self-control? Financial control? Work ethic? The ability to be adaptable and able to just make something work with whatever it is you have in front of you? These things are all experiential. You have to do them and make mistakes and learn how to do it right. The younger you start the better.

I confess that I feel a little growing anxiety around Shanna not reading yet. I’m reading dyslexia information with dismay. Most of the markers for a diagnosis of dyslexia involve social problems caused by the social stigma of being slow. I am choosing to just read the development books that say “It’s normal for many children to transpose letters till seven or eight.” I notice. But I’m not “doing anything” to correct her.

Everything I have read says that some children are just not physically ready to read until seven or eight. Their brains are too busy doing other things and when you try to force it, you lose a lot of self-confidence that can’t be gotten back.

I’d rather have Shanna deciding what she should be doing with her time right now. She wants her parents to read to her. She isn’t ready to start reading. Ok. I didn’t start reading until the end of first grade. I didn’t really expect her to be required to start reading before I did even though so many of her little friends read. We know a high number of hyperlexic children.

I need to not look at hyperlexia and think my kid is slow. That’s not rational. Good grief.

Shanna’s comprehension skills are several grade levels higher than her physical ability. Lots of research says that will equalize if she’s given the time and space to live and be and learn what she needs to be learning right now instead of worrying about that.

I read the nay-sayers too. I know the con arguments favor conscription into the systematic learning enclave for the sake of party unity.

I don’t think everyone is the same. And I don’t think that everyone has the same ability to be able to conform. I know what the standards are. My kids are always going to be above and below their peers in varying metrics. People are like that. The hope is that they will come away without the bullying and belittling that exists in public schools for any variation.

I’ve been to a lot of public schools. They are all brutal. Some people get lucky and they are in the middle or they are high in the pack so they do ok by the system.

I don’t think my kids will be in the middle.

I don’t think they will always be high across the board. Ha. Shanna isn’t that coordinated. She makes up for it with tenacity and endurance. She’ll try again. And again. And again.

Sometimes watching her fail at things fills me with awe. She knows it is possible for someone to do this. So even though this hurts (and occasionally out will pop “shit”–I ignore it) she keeps trying. I’ve seen her whack her head dozens of times trying to do something. She did get it right eventually. Stubborn fucker. My kid.

Calli, by contrast, is slightly less persistent but much more initally successful. I’m in trouble. I think Calli stands and watches Shanna’s fuck-ups and learns. She is much more able to figure out how to do something right after Shanna has figured it out. Ha.

School is almost out. We are going to be riding the bikes in the parking lot every day. Side walk learning was just a non-starter. She kept falling into driveways. Lots of scrapes. Lots of not-willing-to-keep-doing-that.

She sees no upside. “But I can already run to all the places you want to ride bikes to. It’ll be fine. I’ll just run along side you.”

Only then I have to go at the speed of your running compared to the speed of bikes. NO.

Calli can outdistance her with a balance bike. It’s pretty impressive to me.

In the last month I’ve had a whole bunch of people ask me “Is Calli tall?” Uhh, I don’t know? For the comparative age she is much taller than Shanna was. She’s wearing size five clothes and she turns four at the end of the summer. I think they are only 5″ apart in height. I don’t know what the average gap is between siblings who are two years apart in age. And I don’t know if Shanna is tall. I haven’t been paying attention to such metrics. I could go look it up. I mean, I am on a forking computer. Shanna is in the 88% and the 24% for weight. Calli is in the 96% for height and 57% for weight.

Holy shit. I guess they are tall. And I was right for perceiving that Calli was on a faster growth curve than Shanna. I think Calli will be the taller adult. That’s my current crystal prediction.

On the last few pediatrician visits we haven’t talked percentiles. I didn’t ask and it didn’t come up. I suppose he isn’t worried so he doesn’t say? He just says, “They are growing well. Good job.” and does a no-touch pat on the head.

Wow. I haven’t looked at percentiles in years. I’m writing it down mostly because this is the only way I will have later record.

Since Calli is by far the more coordinated one we should put her in basketball. Ha. I play more catch with Calli. Shanna has never liked it much. I’ve always tried. She likes “fetch” more than catch. It’s kind of hilarious. She’s happy for the interaction. She’s happy to be met where she is. She doesn’t like having balls thrown at her. But she’s happy to chase one for the fun of it.

I can understand that.

Put your own oxygen mask on first.

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I used to think it was useful for me to think of people as “family”. Tonight I got to have dinner then go to the Diana Gabaldon speaking engagement with a woman I used to think of as a big sister. I talked to her a lot when I was younger. She did a lot to guide me in the bdsm community. She helped me learn how to keep myself safe.

It’s been a while now that I have consciously eschewed the chosen family dynamic. I have friends. I have really wonderful, excellent friends. I am truly blessed in my friends.

So it’s weird sometimes when I spend time with people I used to think of as “family”. I can feel how my inner walls and boundaries have shifted. In the main I feel like it is a positive thing because I have a lot less hostility towards the idea that my friends are giving me every speck they have to give me than I do towards the idea that they are my “family” and they uhhhh… don’t meet a lot of my needs.

Do I have entitlement issues? Rage issues? Oh yes. I have a firm idea of what “being family” means. I experience it with Noah. I am teaching my daughters how to do this, but it’s different with “chosen family”. I drive people away. Or I walk away.

I have expectations and that screws me every time. The secret to happiness is low expectations.

But you can only keep your expectations low if you get your needs met some other way or if you are so beat down you have stopped hoping.

Sometimes I’m afraid of the bottomless pit of need I feel inside me. The desperate need for attention, affection, love, permission to live, approval.

Yeah, I take any relationship that is offered. They all have things to teach me. They all have things I want. Every person I walk by on the street is a missed opportunity. Sometimes I feel like I spend a lot of time grieving every single one of them.

I want you to love me. I want you to love me. I want you to love me.

I’m selfish. It’s not like I’m really walking around feeling like, “Oh man! Let me love you!” That shit sounds like work.

I really enjoyed getting to hear Diana Gabaldon speak tonight. She was very blatant in her enjoyment of the ego stroking she gets. It was hilarious to watch. She glowed. She’s 62 but from where I was sitting I would have guessed she was in her mid 30’s. She has a kid my age. And one older, I think–I may have misheard because it was loud.

She’s still happily and lustily married. I approve.

She talked a lot about her life and her career arc. She’s a good story teller and she’s obviously said that whole thing hundreds of times. Very smooth and entertaining.

I’m… too twitchy. I’m always afraid I’m on the verge of offending people.

I offend people. And then I feel very sad. Because that offended feeling is what they will walk away with. In their head, that feeling is me.

Oh man I hate that. It’s better to err on the side of being quiet. Only I don’t do that. Because I’m an asshole. But I’m a sad asshole.

Cause I embrace contradictory emotional states. I’m told by experts that such an ability is part of the reason I’m not dead.

Sometimes it feels weird understanding that historically, women like me rarely do as well as I have. I’m not talking about Noah’s money. I did get a bachelors degree and a teaching credential. I did successfully teach. I worked in theatre for several years and did just fine. I worked in libraries for years.

I go out and find ways to be part of things that work for me. I usually take small and/or support roles because I know I won’t be around long. I try my hardest to leave a good impression. I want people to think well of me. So I look for ways to work.

Often that work is social. I like seeing people. I feel validated by people in a way that is surely unhealthy. I do have crowd management skills. You can’t stage manage dance shows for small children without developing them. I like to believe that I’m charming. I like to believe I can turn out a descent conversation for a wide variety of people.

I’m not just a one trick pony. I’m Downer Debbie and I Deliver but I do also have other modes. I am not interested in online dick contests about academic theory (fuck you, grad school) so I don’t get into nuanced responses to the educational theory I read about but I’m happy to talk about it if asked. I travel and have neat stories that conveniently leave out the bits about hysterical crying and beating my head on the ground. These days I talk plants. That’s SO SAFE! It’s an awesome topic. Gardening! Running is safe to talk about.

I’m not just that skanky ho who talks about depressing shit any more.

More tracks. I still have great sex stories. But I need to be asked for them. Or I default to assuming people would retreat with their fingers in their ears screaming, “EWWWW TMI!” So I don’t write about sex much lately. Obviously sometimes I don’t give a shit and I tell stories, but only as they feel like a need to discuss topic.

I’m still obsessed with sex. But now it is legally and “morally” permissible because that just means Noah’s life is good. I do owe it to a man, don’t I?

Ugh and ick and weird. Sex is so fucking weird. It gets weirder every year. More complex. More complicated. Can’t I just go back to tracing the outline of a knot in a piece of wood on dicks and be done with processing this crap?

Even when sex was “simple” (ha!) it was never simple for me.

Sex is tied up in money and rage and entitlement and perversion and pain and love and tenderness and fear.

You don’t pick what you have the talent to write about. Or for fuck’s sake I would pick another talent.

Distraction

2 Replies

If you do much research on mental illness, or really any undesirable behavior you want to eliminate, distraction is key.

This week in therapy my shrink spent a lot of time harping on the idea that I need to start being a lot more choosy about who I allow into my life. I always wonder how much my shrinks judge me. No, actually I don’t wonder very often or I would be very paranoid. Occasionally I wonder. When therapists very rarely encourage me towards squeezing people out of my life (it is rare but it happens) I always wonder how long they have sat on that impulse.

When did my description of my friend start bothering you? They never tell me, of course.

Therapy is such a weird beast. It is a relationship but not a a real one. It is unidirectional and unbalanced. There is honesty but not full honesty. Truth but not the whole truth. The whole truth involves someones opinions which I shouldn’t be taking into consideration.

I shouldn’t change to make my therapist happy. She otherwise isn’t part of my life. I should not alter the support I get to make her happy.

But sometimes you do have to follow their advice because they are right. She doesn’t say “so and so is icki” she says “what do you get from this relationship and what do you give to it? If the balance doesn’t work for you then you need to move on”. She says to me, “I know that for most of your life you have had to accept relationships with anyone who wanted to have a relationship with you. That is no longer true. You need to keep your children safe.”

I was raped over and over because I made a lot of stupid choices. Because I accept any relationship that is offered. Because I don’t say “no” when I should.

Yeah yeah yeah people think of me as being overly firm with my “no” delivery. You only know what my life is like after more than half a dozen rapes or more. The people who have known me the longest met me when I had been raped at least half a dozen times.

The things that happen to you change you. I did not know how to say “no”. I have learned to say it loudly and firmly. Loudly and firmly enough that I often bother people who wish I was “softer” about the process. Oh fucking well.

“Most people have no more than five people in their true inner circle.” (Quoting my shrink again.)

Jenny. Noah. K. My kids. Pam. That’s six. I have absolute trust in their love for me. Do I feel that way about anyone else? Not really. Jenny bought her way in by being the only person who comforted me during a horrible childhood. K has been the single most helpful person by a humongous margin during the parenting journey. I talk to her more often than anyone I don’t live with. I think she is the most motherly friend I have ever had. She has actually shown up when the rubber meets the road for the past few years. Pam has been with me for more than half of my life. To the best of my recollection I have gotten really pissed off at her, but never for actual boundary violations. I can’t remember one.

Other people were in the inner circle at other points. When they were able to show up. Life changes. I don’t stop loving them. Not a jot. But I don’t have trust any more. If I search my body this moment I’m not angry about the fact that I have seen the waxing and waning of so many friendships. They were with me when it made sense. It doesn’t make as much sense any more.

I can’t explain what it was like in my childhood. I was not allowed to cry. My crying irritated people and it was beaten out of me. That’s a lot of why I cry so much now. I was horribly brutalized and then punished if I grieved.

I want to write in excruciating detail about my current emotional outpouring towards people. But I don’t want it as part of the record. There are names I don’t write about. Lots of them. There are lots of specific details I don’t want to announce in public. Mostly because I’m aware that my perceptions are highly biased and I’m a much bigger judgmental asshole than people understand and I need to keep it that way.

I don’t want the fall out. I’m that lame. So I’m having trouble working through the emotions. Writing things out is a lot of how I get rid of things. It has become very useful for me over the years. (Yes, people who like people journals get these things out without the public fall out. Clearly I don’t write that way. You don’t get to pick the writing talent you get. You just get it.)

So I’ve been looking for distraction. Painting went so breathtakingly well. The only time I raised my voice was when Shanna was backing into an open paint can. (It was a good save. She wasn’t cranky.) *phew* I did it.

I’m reorganizing toys again. Because I like playing house. Because it makes me happy. I refine how I organize as I watch them use things. I try to figure out where how to have things “live” where they are played with. I want to make their set up convenient for them so it is easy for them to clean up.

It is hard to find a system when you are a kid. You literally don’t have the schema to do it. Kids need to be shown how to find systems. Some people are naturally very gifted, but usually there is the overall framework of systemization within their life and that is why they are so accustomed.

I’m not very good at providing constant systemic living. I will never run a prison. I believe that needs and wants change dramatically over time and it is good to be constantly tweaking your system to be more appropriate for where you are today.

Sustainability is hard to find. What can you keep up? Deciding to be rigid in your system means you exclude millions of awesome options. I like trying lots of things. I need more flexibility.

It is hard reading my shrinks’ evaluation of me. I don’t think it is accurate that I can’t work because of relational issues. Although I had a lot of job volatility throughout my work life. Ha.

Today will be fun. I have babysitting time this morning. I am going to sit here and do all the work for the home school yearbook. (I’m a slacker. I should have done this a month ago.) I need to go to REI. That will be festive. I’m glad I can do it without the kids. I would like to work on the reading list for the book, but I only get three hours. I will need to get it done soon. Blah.

I need to do scheduling today. I need to plan out my running and exercise. I’m doing a half marathon with a friend in October and I’m really not doing appropriate exercise to support that. I have to start. It takes planning or I just don’t get it done. Deep sigh.

I don’t understand how other people naturally just do exercise. I have to plan how I will force myself. I have to have a reason to exercise–an upcoming obligation that will require my body to have something it doesn’t have right now. Long-term planning is too hard.

Distraction. What is distraction? What is focus? What am I doing with my life? Are the people who come and go the focus or a distraction? Is the painting a distraction or a focus? Is reorganizing the toys so they are easier for the kids to clean up a distraction or a focus?

Isn’t it all about your priorities? Isn’t it different for every person you ask?

Is writing a distraction from my life or one of the focuses in my life? Gardening? House maintenance (both of the repair and of the cleaning variety)?

What is life?

What does it mean to have a focus in your life? I read a lot about what other people do with their time. You can tell what people care about by looking at how they spend their time.

It’s ok that we are all different. If we were all the same that would be boring. We need symbiotic relationships.

The inner circle doesn’t mean that you only have relationships with people you trust that much. There are lots of other kinds of relationships. It is ok to share smaller pieces of yourself with people.

And it’s ok to walk away when it no longer works for you.

It doesn’t make me a bad person. People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Not everyone will be there forever.

There are some perverts who probably shouldn’t be around my kids. I recognize that in a larger sense–my kids are not exposed to the broader bdsm community.

Things that are ok for me aren’t necessarily ok for my kids. My kids are impressionable.

Boundaries are complicated.

What makes someone an asshole? Caring about their own needs to the point where they are ok with other people getting hurt sometimes as they take care of themselves.

What makes someone a bitch? Saying or doing things to hurt other people on purpose to be spiteful.

Notice how the gendered one is a lot nastier? I notice that in my language.

I’m an asshole. I try hard to not be a bitch.

I don’t have time to explain why this dude is wrong. There are so many ways he is wrong that I would permanently damage my arms. Ain’t worth it.

I get to walk away. Yeah, it might hurt you but I am not obligated to sit around and tend your feelings. Notice how you have never tended mine? Fuck right off.

But spite isn’t necessary. What’s the difference? When you are writing, what’s the damn difference?

Well, I say fuck you to the universe but I don’t say it to people. I don’t publicly (or privately) slam people when I end a relationship. In general I maintain a policy of being very positive when I talk about former friends/partners/acquaintances. I’m well-fucking-aware that you are judged by how you judge other people

So I’m an asshole, but I try to limit the scope.

I always have the right to walk away. It is the most American attitude one can have. Well, or the other American attitude “I have the right to own a gun so I can shoot people who seem scary“.

I seem scary to a lot of people. To the point where strangers will comment on it in public. I worry a lot about guns.

I kind of hope that the next revolution in this country is a call to disarmament. Citizens give up their guns so that police can de-militarize.

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Wouldn’t it be nice to stop hearing about mass shootings at schools?

And wouldn’t it be nice if white people were called terrorists when they instill terror just like people of other races? Parity in discussion would help us figure out the common solutions.

I need to answer a whole bunch of emails. I haven’t forgotten you. I just… haven’t scheduled yet. Scheduling goes in batches. I can’t handle adding things in between scheduling-fests. Then I get “over scheduled” and I’m shaking by the end of the month. It sucks.

Tonight I get to have dinner with an old friend before we go to the Diana Gabaldon reading. I’m excited. There’s a new book in a series I love.

This will be the very first time I’ve ever been to a reading for an author I know. I have heard random people at college but I had no previous knowledge of them. A step towards fandom I guess?

What is the focus of your life? How do your actions support that? How does your time spent support that? How does your energy spent support that?

When you are old, what will you appreciate more? That you spent time working in your garden or that you spent time with people you will definitely not know by then? Depends on the person. Depends on how the time with them is spent.

Sometimes you need to pick the garden.

Boundaries are hard. Being an asshole is hard.

Feelings

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This week I read an essay by a female writer in which she mentions that she “never writes personal essays because she doesn’t want them to take away from her reputation”. She writes about “real stuff” don’tchaknow?

Well, I write personal essays. And bugger off if you have a problem with that.

So, that said, lots of feelings lately. Jenny and her wonderful baby visited us over the weekend. (Another mom friend came with her baby on Friday. It was baby central. Having the three of us together with our kids felt like a dream come true. I’ve been hanging out with those ladies (all of us have birthdays within four months of one another) for over ten years. Watching us grow up has been so neat.

Jenny (but mostly her baby) is used to a quieter life than we lead. My kids are *very* overwhelming for people who are used to quiet. My kids are shitty at respecting personal space. We are working on it, but this isn’t a skill that will come naturally to them. They want to be close to people. Like, on top of them close ALL THE TIME.

It is always an adjustment for us to try to tone down for other people. It is good for us but it is hard. If you throw in the whole fact that Jenny is one of the most important people in the world to me and losing her friendship would be devastating it makes for some tension.

I was too worried about the kids. So I started out sounding pretty nasty. Jenny heard my way of speaking and copied some phrasing and then my kids freaked out. That is not Jenny’s fault. But it made for a rocky first day. Jenny asked if they should leave early. I felt so sad that we are so hard to put up with.

So Jenny and I had a talk and then I had a long talk with the kids. Things went way better after that.

Shanna was inclined to get her back up. “This is my house and I shouldn’t have to change.” I said, “But Jenny is my best friend and I only get to see her every few years and I miss her so much it hurts and can we please try hard to make everyone feel comfortable?” Shanna agreed after that.

And the rest of the visit was great. But I had lots of leftover anxiety/stomach pain.

I feel pretty proud of all of us that we managed to have a good rest of the visit. It was really wonderful to see Jenny mother. I have known her for about twenty years now. It was like seeing, “Ohhhhhh this is what you have been building towards all these years. This is who you wanted to be.” It was really beautiful. She’s a very good mother. My friends inspire me to try harder for my kids. Jenny’s daughter is very shy. Jenny makes sure the world is appropriate for her kid and she does not back down. I have so much respect for that.

I have twinges of sad because, why didn’t anyone love me like that? but mostly I stomp on them and I’m just really glad to see that my friends are such good people.

I am so blessed in my friendships. I don’t know how I managed to meet such good people. I feel honored and unworthy at the same time.

I think that if Jenny lived closer we would adjust better and my kids would get used to the different rules. They have adjusted to K’s house (my friend who baby-sits while I have therapy) even though they really didn’t want to do so. (Shanna in particular is really stubborn about not wanting to adapt. It takes me explaining the consequences for not adapting before she is willing to try.)

Then yesterday after Jenny and her wonderful daughter left a different mom and kids came over. And we had a different friend planned for dinner last night.

Jenny was the last person added to the schedule and I was going to shoehorn her in no matter what. But if I had known Jenny’s schedule further in advance I wouldn’t have booked two social engagements the day she left. Holy crap I am tired.

The dinner was easy-peasy. He’s non-stressful.

The mom and kids… whoa. All the anxiety of the weekend multiplied by ten shoved into a 2.5 hour period.

When I get to the point of snapping, “I’m kind of tired of being wrong in my own house so can we just change the topic?” it’s not going well. (She apologized later for jumping all over me, but holy shit it was a stress monkey visit.) I feel like things must be kind of rocky for her, because she had a lot of anxious energy (shoot me now before I go all woo woo on you) and she probably wasn’t so much reacting to me as just in a room with me.

But the weekend with Jenny used up a lot of my ability to sit still even though I felt anxious. And there is the little fact that fucking up my relationship with Jenny would do a lot to ruin my life and fucking up almost any other friendship I have would have lower impact. Yeah, even though I don’t see Jenny very often.

The older I get the more I look at the pillars of self. The things that make someone “Them”.

Brittney was my oldest friend. But Brittney never did a god damn thing to help me. She wasn’t there after trauma. She didn’t want to know about my life. She wanted me to visit her upper middle class valley lifestyle and act like I fit in. I don’t.

Jenny, at this point in time, is the person standing the longest. Twenty years of friendship is an accomplishment for someone as unstable as I am. Especially because Jenny and I have never been the most obvious of friends. We have very different personalities.

But when I can’t function and I need help Jenny has shown up. The emotional support is as important (or more so) than other kinds of support. Jenny held me when my brother killed himself and when my father killed himself. Jenny has been there through boyfriends and friends groups and hobbies.

I am so glad the rest of the visit went well. I felt really happy about seeing her. I probably won’t see her again for two years. I feel like I already want to count the days.

They are going on a Disney Cruise with us in 2016. Because Jenny loves me.

I really don’t understand why. I don’t feel like I deserve her friendship and loyalty. I recognize that I have it, but I don’t understand. I hope I was as nice to her as I was trying to be. It’s always a bummer when I am an asshole on accident.

When I’m an asshole on purpose I don’t feel so bad.

I remain grateful that I get to have the lifestyle I want. I am so grateful that I get to home school my kids. I am so grateful that I can stay home and play and learn with my kids in a non-stressful environment for me most of the time.

The occasional stressy weekend reminds me that my life is so blessed. All of the Jenny stress was worthwhile. I feel anxiety about being nice enough. That is something I have to work on and be aware of. I understand it to be a legitimate issue for me.

It’s not like having to be in a stressful environment for no good reason. It’s not like dealing with school. It’s not like dealing with jobs. It’s not like dealing with extended social groups.

Jenny is one of the few people on the planet whose judgment I actually care about. I mean, yeah, I have issues around wanting people to like me but in general… I don’t actually feel it matters enough for me to change myself for other people.

Jenny is worth any amount of adapting I have to do no matter how hard it is for me. That feels hard. Over longer periods of time I can adjust and change more slowly and that feels easier and more manageable. Just having a weekend feels like “Be good or lose friends” and that is so hard.

I fuck up so much. I feel so ashamed of how bad I am at controlling my behavior. I’m too loud. I’m too aggressive. I say things people really don’t want to hear.

I feel ashamed that I live on the sufferance of people being willing to tolerate someone who is not very nice. I wish I were more worthy.

My stomach hurts so much.

I’m tired of feeling afraid all the time.

Hey, today is a therapy day. Maybe EMDR will help. Ha.

Who needs a title.

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Even though I rarely split my random thoughts into multiple posts, today seems like the day. Scheduling can stand alone.

I am so excited about seeing Jenny that I can barely sit still. I haven’t seen her since her wedding and that was literally years ago. Scotland is pretty far and I don’t have the money to travel with two kids as often as I would like. Too many other trips I’m saving for. Damn priorities. I will make it back to Scotland. Just not that soon. This way I get to meet my niece! She is coming to my house! I am so excited. I am going to take many pictures. She won’t remember Wonderland but hopefully the pictures will inspire her to feel more comfortable visiting again when she gets older.

I fantasize about trading kids for a year when they are older. We’ll see. Not because I want to be away from my kids for even five minutes. Just because it’s an opportunity to live in a different place with someone who would be good at taking care of you. That’s not an opportunity every kid has. My kids are so lucky. They will never have any way to wrap their tiny entitled little brains around how lucky they are.

I struggle with that. I talk to my therapist about my jealousy. She says it is a good thing I can admit it because lots of people feel jealous of their kids and can’t admit it–that creates other problems. I know I’m jealous. I know I wish I could have had a life that was 20% as nice as their life is. But I can’t change the past. My life is pretty rad now.

I don’t have complaints about my life. I’m in one of those magical windows of time when even my fucked up brain can look around and register, “Yup I’m safe. And my life is fucking awesome. I get to do exactly what I want when I want. No one yells at me. People like me enough to let me get away with shit. I have totally nailed this ‘life’ thing.”

Ok, I’m still sad about not having a mom who cares about me. But that isn’t something that *I* can do anything about. Everything that I can influence is going well. It isn’t my fault that I have the problems I have. I’m doing very well with what I was served this lifetime. Most people who get the hand I’m dealt burn out long before now. Most people who grow up thinking they are a worthless piece of shit who should die never get past that.

I’m grateful for every moment when I don’t feel like that. It feels like a gift. It feels like a surprise. I don’t hate myself right now. I don’t feel like I should die so that I stop poisoning everyone around me. The absence of feeling is amazing. I don’t feel like I should die.

Dealing with being suicidal is very hard. It hurts physically and emotionally. The days when I don’t have the evil voices whispering that everyone would be better off without me are by definition Good Days.

Today I baby-sit and I clean. Because I’m a dork. Jenny and little djinn won’t give a shit if my house is cleaner than it is right now. Jenny won’t complain about the fact that my annual dusting day is months away. (Ha. I wish I were kidding.)

But I love them. I love them so much and I don’t get to see them very often. It feels like an honor thing. I want to welcome them into a nice-ish home. Ok, my house will never be a Nice House (imagine I know how to do the little raised TM thing like a trademark sign). I have a weird house. It’s small. I repair things and they kinda look like shit. It wasn’t a Nice House when I arrived. But it is a lot of fun. There is a lot to look at. There is a lot to do. If you are bored in my house it is because you are of a weak and inferior mind. And don’t fucking say out loud to me that you are bored because there is always cleaning or dusting. I don’t care if you live here or not I’ll make you work if you complain .

I feel weird pride in my house. It isn’t a Nice House but it is a really lovely home. I think that I was a big asshole to Brittney because I always felt insecure about the fact that she has lived in a Nice House her whole life other than her college co-housing experience. Her family just does that. Last I heard she was putting off kids kind of indefinitely because it was more important to be able to afford a huge house. She didn’t want kids until she could give them what she had. But when we were kids the Nice House didn’t require two parents working 50+ hours a week. So she isn’t giving her proto-children what she had. She had a mother who stayed home and took care of her.

I am insecure and petty. I am not very supportive when people talk about such goals. I shoot holes in the reasoning. I think this contributes to Brittney ending the relationship. I was not even vaguely supportive of her lifestyle. Really she didn’t dump me until I talked honestly about her dad–she has to pick him over me. He’s still a constant source of money and support. I don’t think he would tolerate divided loyalties.

I’m not even sure why I’m ruminating on her this morning. Because I contrast her in my head with the people who haven’t decided to ditch me? She had the right. Any one and every one has the right to not want to know me. I can be a serious asshole. No denial here.

Losing Brittney was as hard or harder than losing my family. And I lost all of them permanently when I wrote the first book. No one wants me to reflect on how they impacted me. Ok.

I developed the desire to NOT have a Nice House when I visited Brittney as a child. We weren’t allowed to touch anything. Her mom was very house proud and made sure that everyone knew that the house was HERS and we were there on sufferance so DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.

I don’t want a Nice House. I want a nice home. I don’t want expensive things that can’t be touched. I want shit I can touch and break without having to scream and cry over how terrible it is.

So my house is full of shit from Ikea. And I’m pretty happy about that. When my kids draw on things I shrug. When things break my kids know to say, “Oh thank goodness that came from Ikea so it is easy to replace!”

I was exposed to Nice Houses as a kid. What I learned from that experience is that I don’t belong there because I’m not good enough.

So why do I care so much about cleaning my house just because someone is coming over?

Well, the traditional meaning of the word “slut” more meant “woman who is bad at house keeping”. I may be a slut (retired) but I’m not a slut. I know that women are judged very harshly on their ability to keep a reasonably tidy house. Yes, my house meets “reasonably tidy” in spades but I spend a lot of time feeling guilty about my annual dusting. I just can’t give a shit to do it more often.

But I might feel panic and do it before my lovely international visitors show up. Because neurosis is like that.

Jenny lived in a Nice House when we were kids. (Yes, I know that the pre-earthquake house was far less Nice but I only knew the post-Loma Prieta Earthquake rebuilt house. It was Nice.) Jenny had a mama who could cook, clean, garden, and work.

I felt so jealous of Jenny when we were younger. Now not so much. Not because her adult life has been bad (not even close) but because we have such different personalities that we want very different things. I don’t feel jealous towards her any more. I just like her. I just feel glad when I get to be around her. I know more of the cost of her life. I no longer begrudge her the way I did when we were in middle school. I didn’t understand then.

Sometimes I wonder if I ever could have gotten over feeling jealous of Brittney. I don’t want what she has. Not even slightly. I don’t want the asshole-liar-cheating father even if he is rich. I don’t want the narcissistic mother who cares about very little other than her looks. I don’t want the job that is soul crushing and terrible… but earns a lot of money.

I don’t feel jealous any more. Instead I moved on to being a critical asshole. Cause that’s so much healthier and shit.

Brittney was my first friend. I was born across the street from her five months after her. I’m very sorry I only had her for thirty years. Even if I am a fucking asshole who doesn’t appreciate her the way she deserves to be appreciated. I miss her like I miss my abusive-as-fuck sister. It doesn’t matter that our relationship was totally fucked up. You are what I had and I miss you. Even though I’m an asshole, you are such a huge part of me. So much of who and what I am came to being because of reacting to them. For better or worse.

I have been so blessed in my friendships. Brittney did love me. She just can’t deal with someone who is as much of an asshole as I am. Somehow I think that is a very healthy choice.

Maybe in another few decades she will forgive me and look me up. I doubt I will look her up. Just like I will never chase Anna again.

Some doors are slammed closed for good reason. People protect themselves for good reasons. I know I hurt people. I have to be supportive of them protecting themselves from me or I am just another monster.

But it makes me appreciate Jenny so much more. Twenty years of friendship now. And we started on such rocky footing. I haven’t always been as nice as she deserves. (To be fair I’m not sure she has always been as nice as I deserve…)

At some point you have to forgive people for their fuck ups or you don’t get to have relationships. Every one fucks up. Every one. There isn’t a person on this planet who is perfect.

I’m really excited about seeing Jenny. I may even splurge on energy and dust. Just because she is So Special. Not many people merit me dusting LetMeTellYou.

My house may not be Nice but I like it. When I look out the garage window I get to see a lovely garden. I get to look at the marigolds that started as volunteers in my friend’s yard. She told me to take some home. Now every time I see the flowers I think of my friend and feel happy and loved. My tomatoes are protected by love, motherfuckers. (Companion planting. Marigolds help chase off pests from tomatoes.)

I’ve spent a lot more energy than average on being sad that I am not “good enough” for people to love. I am not the kind of person that so-and-so wants. That was part of moving all the time and constantly dealing with the fact that I disappointed people everywhere for not being… something enough. It varied from place to place.

I’m never right. Not for any where.

But I’m right here. In this house I’m the right kind of me. I don’t have to be like anyone else. I don’t have to know how to maintain a Nice House. I’m not inferior and bad just because I don’t know how. I’m not bad here because my seed using skills are… limited. It’s ok that I need starts.

I spend so much time and energy being ashamed of my mistakes and inadequacies that sometimes I wonder if I could single handedly run a power supply plant with all my wasted energy. If I could take back that wasted energy and put it on the power grid I could probably power Fresno.

Lame.

Today will be good. Babysitting and cleaning and resting. That’s enough for a day. The next few days I will have to be on my best behavior. No crying. No slamming things. No shouting. The little one who is visiting isn’t used to someone as volatile as me. I don’t want to scare her. That means I have to reign in. I don’t as much for kids who get to know me over time.

In general I think it is good for little kids to know a variety of kinds of people–including volatile people like me. Life involves a lot of different coping skills–I’m a useful person to learn to deal with. But for short periods of time sheltered kids just hide from me if I don’t tone it down. If I know this in advance it is my fault if I don’t solve the problem. I can’t expect a freakin one year old to adapt to me. Let’s be reasonable here.

One of the moms in the home school group keeps saying that she thinks I’m meditating in secret and lying to her about it. This kind of confuses me. She perceives that over the time she has known me I have gotten a lot better at keeping a reign on the energy I put out into the world.

K-I think these fucking kid-lit books by Tamora Pierce are useful. And I feel lame for that.

I still don’t meditate (though it is on my checklist of things to start doing. Yes, I know I freakin should) but I do consciously think about reaching out and metaphorically grabbing my extra energy and putting it in a box. Not the same as meditation. But I am trying to conserve my energy more. I’m trying to scare people less.

I know that my frantic-self disrupts lots of people. Just by standing near me. I’m trying to be better about that. Being near autistic folk has made this…. more important. Sometimes I walk into an autistic house and get immediate comments about how I need to pull in my anger because it negatively effects the people present. I’ve heard this from more than one person in more than one place. So I’m trying. I think it is funny how it is mostly the moms of autistic boys who tell me this. “Don’t set him off.”

My existing too loudly in a room (while standing still and not saying a word) sets people off. It gets kind of annoying.

But you get the body and life you get. You can deal with it or you can be an asshole and expect the whole world to bend to you. I want to keep being invited back. That means I have to figure out how to stop radiating anger when I’m in those houses. It is hard. Sometimes I can barely even tell that I’m doing it. Nevertheless I have to gain control.

Just do it already.

Bounce (again)

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Sometimes I feel weird writing about my good moods. I am, generally speaking, such a whiny bitch that talking about the up days seems… misleading? Confusing? Inconsistent? Whatever. It’s a good day.

The camping trip continues to give a rosy glow. I’m really grateful that it went so well. I am feeling much more confident about my plans with the kids.

Today was an EPIC park day. We took the yearbook picture so families who hardly ever come out were there. We stayed for four hours and I had to drag the kids bodily out of the park.

I talked to the mom I have been having the feelings about. The one who implied I wouldn’t be missed. She was horrified that I took it the way I did. She said (roughly–of course), “I meant that it is not unusual for you to stay home for periods of time. It is ALWAYS obvious when you aren’t there and you are missed quite a bit. I’m so sorry it sounded that way. If I ever sound that way again–ask about it immediately. I don’t want you to stew in feeling bad about something like this.”

So that went about as well as it possibly could have gone. For which I am extremely grateful.

It is very hard to know how much of my hand wringing self-hatred is just my brain hamsters and how much is that people genuinely have problems with me.

People have problems with me. That’s not in dispute. I am difficult and complicated and lots of other challenging stuff. That’s just a fact.

But as time goes on it seems that people are having fewer problems and my perception isn’t changing. Maybe people always had fewer problems with me than I worried about, but I had a lot of people react with great hostility so I don’t think it is all in my head. Parts of it, sure. Not all of it.

Things are changing as I get older, too. I am so glad I found this home school group. In general I feel like I am fitting in well. By that I mean: people seem to actively appreciate things I have to offer. Many women sigh with relief when I gather the children together for the group stuff. I have no problems screaming across the whole park to round people up. Other people really don’t want to do it. Yay for synchronicity.

In general today was really good. Multiple women extended “Hey we want to get together and do ____ when is good for you?” I feel so overwhelmed with gratitude it is kind of pathetic. Wait… you want to spend time with me? Really? You aren’t putting up with me because you have no choice?

Oh. That does change things.

Some days there is this feeling of, not exactly relief but a lower level of difficulty. I feel less like every body hates me and I should die in a fire.

This weekend at the camping trip one of the dads was being a dad about the topic of fire. I kind of tried to deflect it and said, “I don’t feel real comfortable with fire” and he kept on going. Eventually when he was still making jokes like four minutes later I blurted, “My brother went out behind the local grocery store and doused himself before lighting a match. I don’t really like fire.”

His eyes went wide and he stopped poking at me. He said something to the effect of “Wow. I’m sorry.”

I know I am over sensitive on a wide range of topics. I know I am a whiny baby. I know. I know.

I want other people to know too. And to know why. And to care. And for people to not have to walk on egg shells but not poke me on sensitive subjects either.

It takes time. It just takes time. And I’ve been part of this group for over three years. Things are a lot better. In general my life is so much better than it was.

Most of my recent flares of “OHMYGOD” drama that I go through have been resolved with calm conversations. I clear up my misunderstandings and someone apologizes for not being more clear and we move on.

This is still new to me. I’m still learning. I wish I were better at this already, but I’m not. I’m just where I am. I’m trying. Things are improving.

Sometimes I feel shocked that things continue to improve. When will I hit a big nosedive and do super shitty all of a sudden again? I did spend a lot of May crying and feeling really depressed.

The last four days have been good. If I add up all the minutes under an hour of crying. That’s really good.

I’m grateful that people keep giving me chances. I don’t think I deserve them but I understand that these chances are not all about me. Mostly they are about the fact that I have enough to offer and people have enough need that we match up. I’m really not as bad as I think.

We are all just trying.

Editing continues

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I have finished section one. It is 13,908 words. It is exactly 1/3 of the chapters I wrote for the book. (The middle section has more chapters than either other section.)

Roughly the sections are: Introduction/history/definitions, General life skills/sex/friends/social media/etc, Scary Shit.

Now that I’ve finished the easy section I’m feeling nervous.

If you are an early reader be aware that the Google Doc folder now has updated chapters that are titled as chapters and everything. All fancy and official like.

I’m still open to all feedback. (Pam, I haven’t integrated the feedback you gave me on the Google Doc folder, but I have it in physical writing. It will be up in the next day or two.)

My editor is out of town a fair bit in early June. I may fudge a bit and do the bibliography then and not stress about doing it before June.

Coming along.

I did something brave about a boundary. But I feel like I did it in the most chicken shit way possible. I’m trying to decide if tomorrow I want to go deal with another hard thing that is hanging over my head. Just get it the fuck over with. I don’t like limbo.

I think that the other hard situations are things that can only be solved with time. I don’t think there is another resolution available.

In other news, I was told this weekend that I may not get a chance to go to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival next year. This year, the 40th, may be the last given the push-back the organization is getting on their transphobic policies.

I… I have mixed feelings. I would really love to be in an all woman environment for a week with the kids. But I don’t need them to be women-born-women. I just need them to be people who identify with the more female end of the spectrum. I’m even cool with the event involving people who are androgynous/non-gendered.

I’m sorry I want so badly to get away from men. But I really do. Not forever. I like you all an awful lot and I’m not actually ready for my radical lesbian separatist commune.

Other than my mother, my aunt, my sister, and my niece I haven’t ever spent a lot of time in an all-female environment. My uncle was often blessedly absent. He did show up every day though.

I never did summer camp. I didn’t go to a private school. Hell, when I do go to events I usually ensure I’m plastered to someone with a dick because it’s safer.

“I have a boyfriend” is the only line that has ever kept me safe. Fuck everyone. I have never been raped while in a serious relationship.

So I feel a little weird about wanting to go to a transphobic event. I don’t feel good about that aspect of my desire to participate in the event.

I don’t feel threatened by the transwomen in my life. They are some of the most supportive people.

Yeah, I do feel threatened by the men. More than I “should” feel threatened. Whatever.

Deep breaths. No one is attacking me. None of this is personal. People aren’t reacting to me, they are reacting to things in their own lives. They aren’t talking to me. I’m observing things. I’m… over reacting. I’m sure.

I’m making progress on the book. I feel proud of that. My entire body hurts. I’m not sure why. I’m not sleeping well. Too much anxiety.

Deep breaths.

Anxiety is energy you want to spend that doesn’t have anywhere to go.

Nothing to do but sit and wait for time to pass. I fucking hate this. Things to do, but at a later time, simmer in my brain. I can’t stop thinking about them. They use up so many cycles.

I think I am going to go to sleep early. I’ll wake up and finish the second section before therapy.

Boy do I have a lot to talk to my shrink about. Shit I’m not telling the internet. Yeah, I do have some gosh-darned tact.

SEE!

And this weekend I demonstrated that tact when I discovered that the help my friend wanted from me was different than the help I envisioned in my head. I didn’t ever offer up advice. I was good. Be supportive how people want you to be supportive, damnit.

Otherwise you aren’t helping you are being a jack ass.

It’s probably actually a good thing it went the way it did. It was rather restful in terms of helping-friends-clean days go. That was awesome given that I feel like ass.

Deep breaths. Whatever will be will be. The future is not ours to see.

No, I’m not a monster. Not everyone hates me. I don’t need to go eat worms. I am not hurting anyone by writing the book I’m writing. It isn’t terrible. I’m not bad. I’m just saying the things I wish I had known.

I’m not telling them what to do. I’m giving them information and I’m tying it in with morality and ethics and long-term planning. I’m talking about diversity and privilege money and shame.

I’m not doing something bad.

I wish it didn’t hurt my heart to write these things down.

I’m sorry boys–no one likes young men. It’s true. I talk about why. I talk about how unfair it is.

I don’t think that men have it all good and women have it all bad.

It’s not that kind of book.

I talk about how to find adult allies in different living environments. How do you figure out who is a predator? How do you learn to ask the right questions to get the help you need?

I’m talking about food, bodies, exercise, and dealing with people who have mental illness.

I don’t think I’m being scary. These are things that exist in the world. Here is some matter-of-fact information about how to interact with increased safety. But I feel a lot of anxiety. I’m going to have to be brave to get the book published. This will be hard.

Criticism sucks. Have I mentioned that my editor is apparently notorious for fairly harsh criticism. I look forward to bathing in the stormy glow.

It’ll be rad. Yeah. Sure. Oh man.

I’m scared. But move forward or shut the fuck up, right?

I’m trying. Shrink down. Maybe that’s easier. Maybe I can carry that. Drop some balls. Move on. Just keep swimmin’.

Marking time

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Yesterday as we were driving a song came on the stereo. Travis Tritt singing Great Day to be Alive. I have so many layers of association with that song. When I was twelve and I dated the twenty-five year old DJ from KRTY Travis Tritt was his favorite singer. “The only fan club he will ever join.”

One of the lines is “It’s been fifteen years since I left home.” Holy crap. In October it will be fifteen years since I left home. In October it will be ten years since I left my Owner. My brother Tommy has been dead for sixteen years next month–officially half of my life. October is sixteen years since my father killed himself. Not quite half my life yet because of that annoying birthday in September.

Wow things change. It was hard leaving home. It was hard leaving my Owner. Both times I was afraid that I was leaving looking for something better and I didn’t know that I would find it.

I’ve always been fond of the devil I don’t know.

It has seemed to me throughout most of my life that I have no recourse for moving backwards. The resiliency books told me that people who succeed are people who have no real back up plans. They must succeed.

Fifteen years ago I knew that I would have to get out of my family’s home and stay out. There was no going back for me. I knew I would not be able to take support from my family as an adult. That support is a poisoned pill.

My Owner said he wanted to remain friends. By which he meant that if I showed up at the events he liked to go to he would be happy to continue to objectify me and talk about me like I was slightly stupid furniture forever more. (I spent a lot of that relationship tied up being used as actual furniture. I didn’t think he would suddenly start respecting my brain post-dumping.)

I can’t go back. Every step in my life has been a step towards being less abused. Less objectified. Less taken for granted.

Why does my stomach hurt so much? Why am I so afraid? At this stage I’ve pretty much done it. No one is hurting me any more. Sure, sometimes I deal with assholes, but it’s never ongoing persecution any more.

I haven’t been hit nonconsensually in a long long time. Part of it is that I’m getting older so I just look less like a target (being a kid is so shitty) and part of it is the confidence that financial security brings. I’m not a good target any more. Not only am I happy to viciously physically attack someone who is physically aggressive but I have the money sitting around to pay a lawyer–which is a privilege. That’s a big fucking deal.

I will probably never be helpless again. Sure, I will always have to deal with assholes once in a while. That’s just part of life. I’m an asshole so I can’t really act like I deserve better or anything.

My stomach hurts because I’m in one of those phases where the chemicals in my brain tell me that the people who tell me they love me are lying. It doesn’t count. It isn’t real. It… it will change. They won’t love me for very long. I’m not good enough. Everything changes for me. Over and over again. I have not had a life with consistency.

The great part about being the age I am now is that I have enough experience to know it is a lie. Not everyone who tells me they love me is lying. Noah is not lying. Jenny isn’t lying. Hell, Sarah isn’t lying. Several people have emailed me lately to let me know they are thinking about me–even people who don’t read my blog so they aren’t on the roller coaster of whine with me.

I am *not* trying to say that I want people to jump through hoops to prove anything to me. If I can’t see something that is already there… other people can’t help me much.

I don’t actually think those people would bother to lie to me. Lying to me about loving me would take will and effort. They have to go out of their way to talk to me. I don’t suspect anyone of having a lot of energy for willfully deceiving me. Come on, I’m not that important.

But I’m scared. I’m so scared.

Deep breaths.

Reality and illusion are harder to separate than you might think.

It is hard to go through the motions of acting like I believe people when I don’t. That takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of conscious act of willpower. I’m kind of afraid I’m in a chemical depression right now. Every single fucking thing I’m doing right now feels so physically hard. My entire body hurts a lot of the time. Maybe I’m sick. But I don’t know. This has been going on for a bit and I don’t have a lot of concrete symptoms beyond “feeling like shit”.

Moving feels like walking uphill through a river of molasses. It is a huge act of will to move my legs at all, then I can barely make progress.

(Yes, I know I went running last night and maintained a decent pace. It hurt. I have learned that something hurting me is irrelevant to whether or not I do it. Lots of years of training behind that bit of logic.)

My chest hurts. My throat hurts. My back hurts (upper and lower). My sides hurt. My hips hurt. My arms hurt. My shoulders hurt. My knees are feeling kind of whiny. I may be ready to switch to shoes with more support.

Today is a field trip to the beach. Weeeee. A field trip where I had to set the boundaries and tell several people, “Actually if there is a waiting list and people are being denied access to the event it’s not cool that you just “bring along a friend”–sorry.”

I’m struggling with that aspect of the home school community. Frequently the group events have a limit of number of bodies, for a wide variety of reasons, and people regularly think those rules shouldn’t apply to them. Then they want to come ask me for an exception. This has happened with a bunch of different events. I’m kind of bitch-tastic. “Uhm, no. I told other people they weren’t allowed to come because we were full so you don’t get to queue jump because you are fucking special.”

We are home schoolers! We are all special snowflakes!

Yeah, that’s nice. Sometimes there are still limits to the number of bodies we can accommodate for a lot of reasons. Today the limit has nothing to do with me or my preferences–someone else set the limit but I’m going to bleepin’ enforce it.

I am so weird about rules. On one hand I am a contrary bastard and if you tell me a rule I will probably immediately break it unless you can convince me not to. (The kids and I had a long, earnest conversation in the car yesterday about why I am fanatical about following the correct rules for driving [Helloooooo…. people die if you fuck that up. It’s not a god damn game.] but other rules are almost always negotiable or flexible.)

So I’m not saying that the people who ask for exceptions are terrible people. Just that they are breaking a rule I don’t want broken. Which is random and arbitrary and I’m a major rule breaker most of the time. I don’t understand my priorities sometimes.

I suspect that part of it is, as a teacher: I know my limits. There are times when I can only handle teaching x bodies. If someone wants me to do x + 1 it will make the whole thing unravel and I will be unable to do what I wanted to do. Which fucking pisses me off. Is it lame that sometimes I just can’t absorb another body? Maybe. Oh well. It’s where I am.

People are allowed to ask for special exceptions. I’m allowed to think they are kind of assholes in that moment. Just like I’m an asshole every time I ask for special exceptions. Which I do all the time. Because I’m a self-involved asshole. Just like every one else.

So when you say there is no harm in asking… well… sometimes it harms peoples opinion of you. I understand how that can suck. I deal with similar backlash for my own asshole behavior.

Hey, I’m not saying I dislike assholes or that I don’t want to know them or anything like that. I’m just saying that I’m capable of seeing more than one side of a person. We all have a potential asshole inside us. Not just cause we sit on one. Sometimes advocating for yourself can’t be done without being an asshole.

Go ahead and advocate for yourself. I’m serious. Be ok with being an asshole sometimes.

If people can’t handle you being an asshole sometimes they probably are too high maintenance to be worth a relationship anyway. Man I can’t take that kind of pressure.

I like complex people. I like having years and years to study people and figure out why they do what they do. People are mostly internally consistent. They have justifications and reasons for what they do if you sit down and listen. I find the stories endlessly fascinating.

So when I say I’m struggling with boundaries around these things it isn’t that I think other people suck and should die in a fire for making me enforce boundaries. That is very much not what I mean.

I just mean that sometimes enforcing boundaries makes my stomach hurt. Which makes me glare in grumpy fashion at the person who needs a boundary enforced. I don’t begrudge them. I try not to complain in the moment. But I get to bitch in my journal. This would be why it exists.

I really hate these periods of irrational thinking. Where everything feels weighed down with “No one could possibly actually like me.”

All of those small boundary incursions feel like massive disrespect and dislike. They feel like people are assholes because I am a piece of shit who deserves to be walked all over. I understand that it isn’t personal. They aren’t asking for an exception because they want to be annoying for me they are asking for an exception because they want to be part of a group event and not feel left out.

That’s kind of the opposite of hating me if the event is at my house. Yet these feelings persist.

Sometimes it feels like I am looking at my friends through a glass wall. I can feel the affection I have for them. I can’t feel any affection from them. It feels like all I can see is a masquerade of affection. I know I am the problem and not them–but I don’t know how to change it when I am in it.

Mostly I try to not blow up my relationships and keep my mouth shut till this phase passes. It always has before.

Fifteen years since I’ve been gone. I never would have imagined that I could accomplish all I have done. When I was eighteen it was not a goal to be a writer. Isn’t that kind of funny? I knew I wanted to train as a teacher as a back up career but what I wanted was to home school my kids. That was what I wanted to do with my life.

It isn’t enough now.

I will start getting editorial feedback on my second book in a few weeks. Then I get to start hunting for a publisher. I have to be brave. Even though it is scary.

Too many scary things lately. Maybe that’s why my stomach hurts and I feel so paranoid. Or I’m just in a cycle, like I do. Noah says these cycles are not very predictable in terms of timing. Bummer.

I’m aware it will be a good day. I will forking force it to be a good day.

Yesterday had peaks and valleys but mostly it was a good day. We went to the mall after the park and looked for a present for Shanna. We stayed in Claire’s. She was very clear what she wanted. Good grief.

I feel weird about raising little girls who are coding girl so hard. How did I get ultra femmes? Then again I obsessively played with makeup when I was little. I don’t care about it now. Most of the people I know who are obsessed as adults weren’t allowed to play with it as very small children. Maybe there is a motive to my madness in supplying them with makeup.

Things that are taboo hold a lot of allure. Things that are matter of fact parts of your life are less obsessive. I just don’t see the need to fight my kids on things that don’t matter.

Well, why do the limits matter so much on home school events? Depends why that event has a limit. For home schooling events we are often depending on moms to supply lots of other children with education/entertainment. Everyone has the limit of size of crowd they can effectively reach. That varies from person to person and event to event.

I can only run a sit-down event for about 20 people. That’s the limit of my space. I can handle open-ended parties of 150 people. I feel very comfortable directing large groups through actions when I am out in public. Like, I have no problem trying to corral 30 or 50 kids in a park or museum or something like that. I can do that kind of crowd management.

Not everyone shares my limits. Some people can handle talking to a maximum of a dozen people before they start kind of freaking out. Some people can handle crowds of thousands before they feel panic. Everyone is different.

When you are going to an event… you need to be nice to the person who is kindly providing you an experience. Don’t demand something they can’t provide. That’s all I’m saying.

Ok, I stop typing now.

The lucky one

1 Reply

I woke up feeling positive affect. (That means I’m in a good mood.) Since I spend so much time feeling shitty (and writing about it) sometimes I like to make sure I show some balance. I feel some balance. My feelings aren’t *balanced* but there are representative samples from many points on the spectrum.

If you know what I mean.

Anyway, really it started yesterday. Yesterday was a fairly mellow day. I did gardening and some house cleaning and the kids and I read and played. Nice day.

At one point I was getting angry with the kids for outright refusing to clean up so we could go do something I wanted to do I started getting loud. At one point I started shrieking, “Am I going to have to scream? Is that the..” I cut myself off. I stood very still and took several deep breaths.

“No one ever has to scream. That is a false choice. No, I can ask this without screaming. That would be a failure on my part. Baby, please just pick stuff up.”

Shanna smiled huge, gave me a big thumbs up, winked and said, “Good job mom! You totally calmed yourself down there and I’m really proud of you for recognizing that you never need to scream.”

We only got like 70% of the picking up done. I let it go. I felt a little embarrassed by Shanna’s commentary. And happy at the same time.

I like and appreciate and value people watching me enough to make positive comments on my behavior progress. It’s a little weird having my kids give me those sorts of compliments. But I take positive opinions where I can get them.

At bed time Shanna asked me something about the time before kids. I said, “Know how I get grumpy sometimes” “Yeah” “Well… I was way more grumpy and mean and I used to hit people pretty frequently when I was mad.”

She looked at me with as much shock and horror as if I said I like to sit around dumping salt on snails all day long.

Then I said, “You know how I am sad sometimes and I cry pretty often?” “Yeah” “Well before you were born I cried a lot more. I was very sad about most of the things in my life.”

She looked kind of troubled.

Then I said, “Know how I am mostly happy and cheerful these days?” “Yeah!” “That’s because of you. That started when you were born. Your dad helps a lot because he is the nicest person to me I’ve ever met. Your sister helps. All three of you give me so much love that it feels like maybe some day I will be able to stop crying.”

She hugged me fiercely.

I am deeply aware that people who are as broken as me usually don’t get to “pass” into happy families. That’s not usually a life path that opens up in front of us. Some days I understand in the depths of my soul that I am one of the lucky ones.

For every bad thing that has happened to me I have had some other corollary thing that was positive. I have had an unusual amount of privilege. Not just white privilege, not just female privilege (which exists in my entirely judgmental opinion) … it’s more than that.

Sometimes I feel like a cuckoo. I can be dropped in any nest and I will manage to survive. I have had access to some ridiculously prestigious spaces. I was trailer trash for a long time. I’ve been homeless. I’ve been in a wide variety of $5million + homes. I’ve been in $20 million homes. That is a kind of access that isn’t available to everyone.

I’ve seen enough things to continually inspire me. I can walk into any situation and find the perks and downsides. There are always perks. There are always downsides.

They say that people who deal with depression perceive the world far more accurately than average. In reality, the world sucks.

I go back and forth between feeling flattened by the limits I perceive and knowing that if I can’t find a way I will make a way. All of the limits you perceive are just obstacles. No matter how big or frustrating.

We sent someone to the moon. What the fuck else can our species do?!

I have thirteen chapters left to edit for the book. Many of them are only two or three pages long so that’s not so bad.

Then I need to do the pull out sections. Definition pages. Resources lists. Bibliography. Ew. Ew. Ew. Writing sucks.

But! I’m thinking about doing one of those fancy-ass annotated bibliographies. Where I not only give them a list of resources (internet, book, phone) but give short descriptions of how and when they are useful and where they fail. That saves other people a lot of time trying things out that won’t be a good fit.

It is hard to talk about this book. If I get a few more readers who tell me that they like it and think it is full of useful information I hope it will be less hard to talk about. Yesterday I tried to explain it to our teenage babysitter. She’s a religiously home schooled sixteen year old. Ok fine, my kids aren’t sheltered in the scheme of things.

But she asked me what the book is about. I said it is a book about harm reduction aimed at middle school kids. I asked her if she is sort of familiar with the Alcoholics Anonymous method where you must be 100% abstinent forever and convince yourself that you are powerless. She said yes. I said, “Well… not many people do well with AA. It doesn’t have the highest success rate. Most people do negative things: drugs, alcohol, cutting themselves, other bad coping methods because they have things going in their lives that are genuinely causing them pain. Telling them to stop the coping method without solving the pain is really stupid. It’s not that you need to just learn to bear this pain forever all day with the grace of god. It’s that you need to lessen how much pain you are in so you don’t need to be doing the bad things.”

She said, “That sounds like a really good book. I hope I get to read it soon.”

If I can help other people feel less pain, that’s a mitzvah. That’s a life’s work. That is worthy.

Even if there isn’t a lot of money in it. I have Noah. I have the privilege to not care.

I cannot begin to express the gratitude I feel because I get to live my life any fucking way I want. The limits I run into are more self-imposed then exterior.

I could go buy a fancy RV. But I’d rather put that extra $20k into my mortgage so I can stop paying fucking interest. Maybe after the house is paid off and my kids are teenagers the four of us will have an interest in a bigger RV as a way of longer term traveling. If I want to waste money on it then it will be ok. It will be after the WWOOF year. So if I am on track for college savings and retirement savings… why not?

After I remodel my house. I don’t want to spend $25,000 on a vehicle before I spend $25,000 upgrading my bathroom.

If these are the limits of my life… I really have no room to bitch. First World Problems as they like to say.

I look at all the books in my house and I feel lucky. I get to read… almost as much as I want. The kids complain if I read too much.

Today, if the kids are willing to clean up, we are going to the water park. (Last night I only asked for the living room to be cleaned up so that their poor gimp-tastic father could walk around without injury. If you want me to take you to a kids play place… pick up ALL of your stuff. Or no.)

Then this afternoon our beloved Taylor is coming. My back is looking forward to this. I should probably get dressed and go run right now before breakfast. Then it will be done for the day.

I am so grateful that I’ve found a sometimes-running buddy. I’m looking forward to a half marathon with her in October. I am looking forward to training again. My body feels a lot better under those conditions.

Ok, go run.

Can’t argue with a spreadsheet.

3 Replies

I have been taking a good long look at my budget for the upcoming roadtrip. That’s way more fun than thinking about how to manage conflict.

An RV would be $15,000-$25,000 depending on what I was able to find. There are occasional “steals” at $15k. Plus a massive amount of ongoing maintenance I can’t predict now. Plus twice as much gas as I originally planned. Plus learning to manage a longer, taller vehicle that will be hellishly difficult to park.

A pop up tent would be $6,000-$11,000. Plus ongoing expenses I can’t predict. Plus learning to drive a 30′-40′ vehicle. Plus much more gas than originally hoped for.

Did I mention that my original budget for this trip is $12,000?

Shit.

Whereas I can get a roof storage container, portable toilet, tent that kind of telescopes onto the back of the van for privacy and space to stand up, nice camp kitchen set up, and the odds and ends I want for over $2k. I could probably get much cheaper if I was willing to troll Craigslist patiently.

Sold.

It’s going to be much much physically harder. I’m not “looking forward” to how physically hard this will be. All of my other plans will have to scope down until I can handle things.

On the upside I can’t find any advice on tent traveling with kids for extended periods more recent than say… settling the US. People don’t do it. I bet I will find some interesting writing material off of this trip. Ha.

The kids have some super rad tumbling mats from Ikea ($10 a pop) that fit sideways in the van if you leave some of the sections folded. If I take out the middle row seats and have the car seats come in and out (The Britax Frontier is not that hard to install–it’s just getting a tight seatbelt connection instead of those FROM HELL clips on the True Fit I have.) from the back row… we could sleep in the van and use the exterior space more optionally for other purposes.

We don’t *have* to set the tent up every night. I am going to have a fabulous roof container to store shit so I can have a versatile potential set up.

Ok, part of me thinks it is kind of hilarious that I am going to attach a tent to my van that has a main room and a vestibule so the vestibule can be my bathroom.

As this morning demonstrates to me once again… I can’t be without toilet access in the middle of the night. Just can’t. Must have access. Luckily these days there are some darn nifty little numbers that will be easy to bring with us. And from the pictures it looks an awful lot like you can unscrew the storage tank and walk to a public toilet and slowly dump it in with two or three flushes and you are good to go.

That seems like a level of septic management I can handle. I was frankly a little terrified of the whole RV hook up thing.

I’m scared. This seems like… a fuck ton of work. It’s going to be hard. But I want this experience and I really don’t want to spend my entire budget before I hit the road, know what I mean?

I was asked, “But couldn’t you resell the RV or trailer when you get home?” The answer being, “I hope but such things are hard to predict and I would have to just be prepared to eat the money. Plus lots of other money in the future if I want the vehicle to be in good enough shape to sell.”

I want to pay off my mortgage. Buying an RV would seriously derail me. It would derail the international trip.

Ok fine. I can suck it. Yes, it will be hard. We will also be staying at friends’ houses pretty frequently. It will work out.

I’m more worried about Noah joining us than just the three of us. It will make sleeping harder. I’m not sure if the four of us can sleep in the van together. We may need to have options for sleeping on the ground those nights anyway. In general my plan is to sleep in the van. I really prefer the idea of sleeping behind metal and glass and locks. Is the van totally secure? Of course not. But I like my illusions.

I have woken up from sleeping in a tent to find a grizzly bear foot print less than three feet from where my head was. That scared the crap out of me. Of course I took a picture. (And DA remembers–see, that proves it.)

Do you know what part of it is? If I let the budget for this trip explode… Noah will sigh, put his head down, and “try to earn more money”. Naw, the original budget will be more than adequate. I am already fleecing him in ways that give me the vapors. I feel like I am taking advantage of him. But he is agreeing and such. He wants his kids educated by me. In whatever way I see fit. He sees it as an investment the same as a private school.

Life is complicated.

There is exactly one bike rack on the market that will allow us to take three independent bikes plus the recumbent trailer we are endeavoring to learn how to use. We haven’t fallen yet! I’m proud of us. *phew*

Shanna says she is looking forward to this trip. I told her that our screen time will be severely limited. I won’t be able to be online either. She clapped her hands and said, “So you will be forced to play with us ALL DAY EVERY DAY. That sounds wonderful.”

Oh man.

I told her that every single day I would need to take private time and the way that is going to work is I will sit in a chair outside where I can see them and I will put head phones on. I don’t want to talk the whole time I have the head phones on. I need time to be private inside my brain. She said she can agree to that because they will be able to see me so it’s all good.

She jumped up and down and squeed. She is so fucking excited that I won’t be able to hide in the garage. Sigh.

Sometimes it is hard for me to understand how much my kids like me. I’m not sure I have ever in my life had as unmixed of emotions as my kids have. They love me and adore me and nearly worship me. There isn’t a lot of hesitation.

I have never seriously hurt them and the minor injuries I cause tend to involve lots of apologies and noticeable change in my behavior so I don’t duplicate the fuck up.

Some days, some moments I am able to see that I am doing what I want to do as a mother. Even though it is hard and I am very scared. I am doing it.

The only thing Calli understands about the trip at this point is, “I get to go to Disney World, right?”

Since everyone decided they didn’t want my points for Hawaii, you can be at Disney World for a really long time, kiddo. I’m sorry that my friends had life events come up that caused them to not go on their trips. I’m ok with getting more time to luxuriate around a pool at Disney World. I won’t have to set up a tent for a month. Sounds fucking awesome.

Although if I wanted to conserve points… Disney World has a camp grounds. Ha.

I don’t want to stay longer than four weeks so the point conservation is less mandatory than it could be. There are too many things to do in the country to spend all of our time at fucking Disney World. But I think a month in the middle of this trip will be decadent.

I want to save budget money for going to the fancy princess tea party at Disney World, no I don’t want a fancy RV or pop up trailer that bad. I’d rather get to do all the things I want to do than have a posh sleeping place.

Because now my budget is down to being about $10,000 because I’ve spent the first $2,000.

(I had to decide. I had to just do it. We have a camping trip in two weeks and… I don’t have a plan as to how to provide for it. Erf. I told Noah that I want to put the tent up and down four times during the weekend while I have a grown up there to help me. The last time or two I want to put it up alone. Shanna says that I will never put it up alone. She will always help. We’ll see.)

The funny thing is, I bet Shanna will be able to be all the help I need. By the time we leave on this trip she will be seven. I have felt shocked her entire fifth year by how competent and capable she has become. I expect seven to knock my socks off.

She says she is looking forward to “all that nice lazy time for me to practice my cooking–we won’t have anything else to do.” She says that by the end of the trip she intends to be an expert at preparing camping meals.

And Calli says she is looking forward to me having to read to them for hours every day. She says that will be her favorite part. I have been a slacker asshole on reading for a while. I have been overwhelmed by life and my emotions.

We won’t drive every day. On driving days we will go three or four hours then set up camp. Camp set up needs to be perfected in under an hour. Take down needs to be perfected in half an hour. I will have to practice until I can get it. If I include food prep that will put me up to about six hours a day of “work”.

I won’t be able to garden or socialize much. I won’t have to clean the house. I won’t have my whole library with me so I can read a book or two a day. I won’t be reading on the screen because that’s just fucking rude after a while. Plus, I don’t want to spend the whole time obsessing over charging my fucking phone.

With sleep that will account for 14-16 hours of the day/night. That leaves me with a solid 8-10 hours every day of leisure time. I should probably schedule an hour in the morning of writing time and an hour after dinner of “mommy-quiet” time. That gives me 6-8 hours a day of paying attention to them.

I’m looking forward to sleeping with them more. If it didn’t seem so mean to Noah I would probably do it all the time. I love waking up to see them. I can’t believe I made you.

I feel so lucky. Even when we fight or have disagreements, I still feel so passionately in love with my kids. Not sexual passion. It’s not like that at all. I feel pretty grateful that I missed the pedophile gene in my family. I experience no arousal at the sight of a child.

But I have intense surges of emotion. Sometimes they feel so strong I almost can’t keep standing.

This is the best thing I have ever done. This is the best me I have ever shared with anyone.

A few months ago in February it marked ten years since I met Noah. In August (actually on my nephew’s birthday) it will be ten years since I broke up with my Owner-turned boyfriend. He wasn’t my Owner by the time I left. That had been over for a year because it was “too much work”. In September it will be eight years of marriage. Next month marks eight years of living in this house.

Time keeps passing. It isn’t like it used to be. I used to mark the seasons of my life by which trauma occurred and where I was living. “Well I was raped when I was going to x school so I must have been y age because that is the correlation to the grade I know I was in at that school. So-and so died or had a violent accident while I was at that other school.”

The most terrible break ups of the past ten years have involved Puppy (not that horrible and I’m happy to be rid of him) and my family (terrible, but necessary and contained in scope of harm) and Sarah. And she’s not completely gone. That we may be able to grow past some day. We ain’t dead yet.

Uncle Bob’s death and divorcing my family is probably the biggest trauma in the past eight years. Ok, that last rape is hanging on to the curve. Kind of sucky that it will always overlap the marriage timing.

But we had lots of therapy over that shit.

Now I’m marking the years by “the year I hired an awesome guy to build up my backyard” or “the year I added trees” or “when we went on that trip”.

Is this what “normal” life is like?

I’m trying to psyche myself up for the conversation I will need to have soon. I’m leaning towards:

“Hi. May I talk to you kind of privately? We don’t know very much about one another. Sometimes when you don’t know someone very well, humor is especially tricky. Humor either creates a feeling of shared experience or alienation and it’s a difficult line to walk. At this moment in time I am giving you all the benefit of the doubt in the world. I believe you are trying hard to create camaraderie within the group. Unfortunately I’m not really someone who has a “typical” sense of humor.

Which is a long-handed way of saying that sometimes your “jokes” are kind of personal and they feel denigrating to me. I don’t like feeling denigrated. I need to avoid people who evoke those feelings in me and I’m hoping I don’t have to start avoiding you. Outside of a few specific jokes we have otherwise had positive interactions and I would really prefer to continue down the positive path.

My kid is kind of in love with your kid. It would be super rad if we could all get along. I’m really struggling with your humor. I need you to lighten up on me. I’m on the sensitive side and that has to be ok.”

I have been thinking about it a lot. It is a lot less aggressive. A lot more from the point of view of getting along. Less threatening sounding. Less attacking sounding… but I make it clear I will avoid her if I have to.

It is ok for her to have the sense of humor that she has and it is ok that I am a sensitive fucking snowflake. Surely we can find a way to get along. Not that my issues are online. But that Wired article is pretty cool.

And hey Lisa–it’s funny that you tell me that it’s not an option for me to leave the group but you are ALWAYS talking about how much you want to move. If I did smileys on my blog I would stick my tongue out at you. But I have more dignity than that. So neiner.

Today I feel less like every one hates me and I should go eat worms. That is nice.

Identity stuff

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I had the night off. So I went for a run (about 3.5 miles), took a shower, then headed off to see one of my Daddy’s. We went to a gay bar for kinky queers night. I spent a lot of the night reminiscing about the good old days.

On the drive down I rolled all the windows down in the car and I played my sluttiest collection of songs and I took a trip down memory lane.

Sometimes, when I stop to go through the mental rolodex, I feel very grateful for the life I have lived. I have touched (metaphorically and literally) an awfully high number of really interesting people. First love songs are kind of funny because I get to pick and choose between which early partner I kind of miss.

My life is so different than it was. That was a lot of the theme of conversation. “Wow. Things are different now.”

In August of this year it will be ten years since I left my Owner. Lots of changes. Basically every single individual piece of my life is different.

I think hard about why I’m making the choices I’m making in contrast with the other choices available. I am doing with my life exactly what I set out to do. But I didn’t know it would work out the way it has. I didn’t go into parenting expecting mostly vanilla monogamy. But it is what is working for us right now.

I have feels about that. About how I have changed. I don’t know if it good or not so good. It just is. This is just another thing I’m doing for a while. I don’t know how long it will last.

Slutty songs in my world are always interspersed with sad songs because I listen to a lot of sad music. That means I alternate thinking about those who are no longer in my life with Those Who Are No Longer With Us. I usually spend a while in such moments crying about the fact that Noah will die some day. I ponder how I would handle it.

It’s funny how my mood changes. On some days I ponder celibacy as a widow because man, no one can measure up to Noah. On other days I think about a fuck-buddy relationship with the dear friend who is kinda in the #2 slot as far as the Top 5 go. Then I think, “Nahh. I’d go to a queer leather con and find 5-10 women. Oh hell yes.” I miss girls in a way I just don’t miss boys given that I fuck one quite regularly.

It was very nice last night to be in a space at an event where ogling the hot women was not only ok it would have been a little rude to completely not observe how much effort they put into their hotness.

Oh man. The nice girl in the legging pants with the flirty ruffled short tunic that completely didn’t cover her loverly ass? She had nice shoes and nice legs and an ass that can make a grown woman cry for joy. It was so nice of her to stand so near my line of sight for extended periods of time.

I kinda miss fucking women. It’s just different. I am different when it happens.

I’m feeling stress, so I took a trip down memory lane. Dylan Thomas says you can never go home. I feel like I can visit home, but I can’t live there any more. And that’s ok too.

Mostly it was just lovely having a night where I could bounce from topic to topic to topic and I didn’t have to worry about offending or scaring anyone. These are some of my wonderful old friends and play partners. They’ve known me for more than 1/3 of my life. (They are older than me so the percentage is lower in the other direction.) They are blog readers (at least occasionally) and have been for most of a decade or longer.

It is so nice to sometimes be able to jump around talking about widely disparate parts of my life and identity. I could talk about the stuff that I’m feeling weird about and why I’m choosing it even though it feels weird. They could listen and understand why I would make the choices I’m making. Oh how I live for validation.

Sometimes you can’t go to the home school mommys and ask for validation. They don’t have any idea (not really) of what I gave up to become a parent. They have no idea what the contrast is like between me now and what I was like before. Their evaluation of me is… kinda limited. They can judge what they see today, not progress.

I feel so lucky for my old friends. I feel so lucky that these hot, fascinating people say “You ever decide to break the Big M give me a call.”

Hawt.

Not that I’m breaking my monogamy. I was a good girl and all. But I got to talk about why I am doing this.

Of course it would be lovely fun to have you beat the shit out of my while I scream “Monkey Fucker” again. That was a really good time.

When I’m talking to people who had reasonably good childhoods who went into Leather later in life… it’s weird talking about how I am doing this partially so I can step back and understand why other people react to me the way they do. This is as close as I can get to experiencing “childhood” as other people know it.

Sometimes I sort of think of my approach to parenting as being similar to people who go into monasteries and take vows of silence to really test themselves. My life is hard. It requires a tremendous amount of focus, concentration, and effort to do what I am trying to do. Because my standards are so high with regards to my behavior… it’s a fully time job just managing my emotions. This is my boot camp. These are the only judges I will ever fucking care about and the way I judge is to watch our interactions. A high percentage of our negative interactions are clearly my fault and I work on minimizing the damage I do in presenting negative behaviors.

I never punish my kids for doing something I model. No punishments for swearing. You learned those words from my mouth. Why would I hurt you for listening to me?

The hitting is a thing though. “I’ve never hit you?! Where in the world do you come up with the idea that it is acceptable to solve your problems with your fists? I never taught you that!” That sort of indignation. Sometimes, if they are in the back yard alone… I let them fight it out. I feel guilty but I know that kids who go to school have so many more fights than my kids that I’m maybe doing them a disservice if I never let them practice and learn… I feel deeply conflicted.

And last night I could talk about it and not feel scared that I was going to offend the shit out of people till they will no longer talk to me. I feel scared in the home school group. Best behavior, Krissy!

Relaxing is so nice. It’s nice knowing that I have already changed dramatically on every access and these people still like me and respect me and are glad they know me.

I can’t be doing everything wrong.

Oh, and because I was too chicken shit to say anything about this last night with a stranger: yes, some white people do occasionally get confused for one another. True, that happens. But when that happens it is usually two white people who have some major overall similarities.

When two Asian women who look nothing alike and who are widely diverse in age are treated as interchangeable in a community because all of the six Asian people in the bdsm community are treated like they are interchangeable… maybe white people don’t need to talk about how it’s no big deal. It is alienating and othering. Sorry, white people don’t get put into a little pod and treated like they are all interchangeable. The #knowyournegro and #knowyourasian campaigns were started by small very specific groups of people who are widely treated like they are more or less the same person by a HUGE NUMBER of clueless white people. It’s just kind of different.

If people who are not white are complaining about the fact that they are not recognized as an individual person with their own personality… if you are white… just shut up. Seriously. Don’t try to one up this. It makes you look like an asshat.

Money, money, money by the pound.

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I’m scared and insecure. Let’s talk about money. I won’t feel as bad about myself. That can’t be healthy, can it? I feel insecure about some parts of my life. Let me wander over and assure myself that my social problems are not going to derail me getting to do whatever the fuck I want to do. Maybe that isn’t unhealthy.

I have decided that I can’t buy an RV for the road trip until I have maxed out on saving for the road trip and I have maxed our emergency fund. That seems S-M-R-T.

This month’s salary + bonus (the bonus Noah is whiny enough to say isn’t high enough) will almost entirely go off for credit cards, mortgage, etc. Luckily I can now say that the second business I helped fund has been so successful I have been bought out. The check is on its way to me. I’m a god damn entrepreneur. Go me.

With that bump I will have $21,000 (rounded, obviously) out of the $25,000 I want in the checking account before I travel and $25,000 out of $40,000 in an emergency fund. That means I want to save an additional $19,000 before I buy an RV. And it means that I will be blowing a huge hole in my emergency fund that I will have to recoup. So uhm. Erf. But I think I can do that in the next few years. Seriously, he makes obscene amounts of money. If I can’t do that then I’m a fucking loser. Technically I have been saving at a rate to make the goal on the emergency fund in four years and some. I want that as back up before we go over seas.

Yeah yeah yeah I have an IRA, 401k, two 529s, and additional investment stuff going on. Don’t tell me, “Oh gosh if you have that much cash you should invest!”

I like having a cushion. I invest, but I like my cushion. Shit happens. I like having many options. I like knowing that I will be able to do what I want to do.

Noah has already earned $15,000 out of the $60,000 I think we will need for the around the world trip. His ability to earn money continues to blow my mind. That is kept in a third account.

My real “back up” in case Noah loses his job is the fact that we have $60,000 in cash distributed between accounts nominally in the name of other more shallow goals. Of course all such frippery could be tossed to the side in case of a catastrophe. I’ve got back up plans for my back up plans.

I… don’t earn money. But I manage it very well. He wouldn’t have this much if he had to manage it himself. That isn’t his strength. That’s my strength. I’m not so good at earning.

A friend was mentioning how her partner needs to hire a professional organizer and I said, “I’m close to putting out my shingle. I’d charge $30/hour.” She yelled at me for a while. She thinks my starting rate should be $50/hour with the possibility of a sliding scale if I’m feeling fucking generous.

I am going to potentially have four whole hours tomorrow to edit the book. Maybe someday it will earn money. Probably when I’m dead. That’s usually how it works for writers. Luckily I have children who will get the income. It won’t just go to a publishing house. Ha.

I feel pretty weird about having this much money. But looking at it does help calm me down.

My mom spent my whole childhood crying over money. All the time. Almost every day. My mom has experienced poverty in a way I will never really understand. Children don’t get it. Kids don’t understand being poor vs. rich. It is too complex. Now I feel like all I can do is try to imagine my mother’s experience.

I’m so grateful I don’t have to endure what she went through. She has no money sense. Even when she has enough in her pocket to cover all her expenses this month she can’t do it. I don’t know what broke her or when.

Even if things in my life were to go badly they can never ever ever go as badly as they have gone for my mom. I have a college education and a history of helping to start businesses. I have a rich and varied work history and a lot of people who would vouch for me. I could find work at a reasonable salary. My mom never could.

The head of my union told me that if I ever want to go back into teaching it doesn’t matter if they are hiring or not they will hire me. I can teach gang kids. I can form personal relationships and help them understand the benefits to them of literacy.

That’s a god damn marketable skill.

I feel really bad for my mom. She is becoming a Dickensian character in my mind. She never had my options. She never had the same privileges I had.

I went to Los Gatos High School. Maybe only for my sophomore year but I got to learn about the standards of college and a rigorous set of expectations as a teenager. My mom graduated from Bakersfield High School pregnant with absolutely no expectation that she would need to learn anything more complicated than cooking, baking, and sewing.

For the record, she’s great at all three. Better than me.

It is harder and harder for me to be angry with her as the years pass. I feel really sorry for her. But I can’t let her hurt my kids.

My children have absolutely no exposure to toxic, bitter people. None. The last few years have been the nicest of my life. I have felt suicidal less often then ever before. Pretty frequently I find myself consciously making choices that work to extend my life because I’m not ready to die yet.

I never felt this good about myself when I knew my mother. Having pity for her is fine. I can pity rabid animals too. I shouldn’t pick them up.

It’s all mixed up. My mom. Money. Feeling scared. Feeling attacked. That asshole “funny” unschooling dad. The mom who keeps making cracks about me. Scheduling difficulties and feeling unimportant. Other people have their own shit and aren’t just my support units. It all feels the same. The same unworthy, stupid, bad. Talking about it feels manipulative, but I don’t want anyone to change what they are doing.

I feel this way right now. I don’t always feel this way. I write it down partially so I can prove to myself, “See–it changes. It goes up. It goes down. You have weak boundaries right now. That isn’t anyone else’s fault. It’s ok. They will come back up again soon.”

Soon I won’t feel like everyone hates me and I should go eat worms.

I wonder how much it is tied to Shanna’s current defiance. She’s getting very close to being the age I was when I caused the fight with Tommy that involved Uncle Bob burning Tommy with the hot coffee.

The punishment for that was moving to Texas and my brother got hit by a car. I will have a hard time handling this defiance streak. “Abreact.” That’s my therapists favorite word. Reliving trauma. Supposed to be in a therapeutic session but welcome to my life. Flashbacks?

I’m not having flashbacks. But I am reliving some of the terror I felt when I was disobedient. When she turns around and flips out at me I feel like it is all my fault and I am about to be punished and then I over react.

It’s going to be a rocky few months. Holy shit on Crisco. But we will get through it and we will develop new coping methods for handling triggering situations without abuse. Like you do. If you want to know your kids in thirty years.

I tell my kids that I’m sorry for my mistakes a lot. I hurt Calli yesterday. We were playing and dancing and I twisted her arm a little wrong. I’ve done exactly that dance move with her hundreds of times. But she gained weight recently and it pushed her past a threshold. Oops. I’m really sorry. We spent a while cuddling with an ice pack. She’s fine now. But she was really freaked out and she kept yelling that I hurt her.

Yes. I did. I’m really sorry. It didn’t hurt the last time I did it. I won’t do it any more. You are too big now and I didn’t notice because I wish you were going to be my tiny baby forever. As you grow up I will sometimes hurt you because I misunderstand how your boundaries are shifting. I’m so sorry. I can’t be perfect. There is no such thing. I will make many more mistakes. I’m so sorry.

By the end we were petting the cat and each others faces and she told me she forgives me and we went on with the day.

It doesn’t really matter if some woman who will never be my friend makes jokes about my lack of value. But I miss my mama. And I wish that my mama had thought I was valuable. My mama didn’t miss me when I was gone for a month either. No one really misses me if I’m gone. I know.

Some days it hurts more than others.

I’m not “funny”. Instead people “can’t tell the difference between my whining and my talking”.

I am a whiny baby and I don’t like being picked on.

It’s really not fair that I have to continue having involvement with this group for the sake of my children when I would rather just not go back. That’s how I handle these things. I can’t have a fight. I can’t make drama. If I don’t like how I’m treated, I leave. But I can’t leave.

I can make sure I stop talking to this woman. She thinks she is “funny”. I think it’s not funny to tell someone who has been suicidal for most of their life that no one would miss them.

Happy fucking Mothers Day

I’m almost done with the third quartet from Tamora Pierce. I’ll go back to reading about people who are allowed to start fist fights with bullies. Sometimes I wish my life were that simple still. I am going to read every book she has ever written. I even have the add-odd short story collections. I’m really glad she is out there writing.

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

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

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

I don’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He won an award! He’s so funny!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only clearly I can say a lot.

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

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

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

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

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

Something like that.

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

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

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

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

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

“Get over it.”

I’m trying. It’s complicated.

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

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

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

That scares me silly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where’s my god damn zen state?

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

I am so mature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll just stick it in a little.”

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

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

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

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

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: people hacking

Virtue is its own reward.

And then you stop crying and go hang out with a kid.

My life is so full of awesome.

Drifting

Anger and feelings

Life is pretty good.

Running and body stuff

Control

Put your own oxygen mask on first.

Distraction

Feelings

Who needs a title.

Bounce (again)

Editing continues

Marking time

The lucky one

Can’t argue with a spreadsheet.

Identity stuff

Money, money, money by the pound.