I woke up to a whole bunch of emails today. All of them make me feel a lot better. I hate how much contact with other people decides a lot of how I feel about myself. One of my neighbor said she started reading my blog. She said I don’t hold back. I tell it how it is. She says my words really get stuck in her head. I make her think. Wow, I hope that’s not a bad thing.

A different friend realized that my scheduling email had gotten stuck in their spam filter and we established contact so that we will be hanging out a little bit when I go up to the PNW.

One of my buddies on the far side of the country sent me his address because he’d love to get postcards in here for me. He wrote back to tell me about his life.

Several people have been emailing me in response to postcards. I get to hear about their joy. It feels really nice. I am glad they are finding joy. They really need it.

But most intensely was an email from Pam where she detailed all of the stuff she respects about me. She wrote about what circumstances I am in my best. It is nice to be reminded that I do have a best. I spend so much time feeling like I suck at everything. I don’t see the good parts about me very well. I see how much I fail.

There were a lot of good parts and good people to the bay. I do acknowledge that. But driving to see them was going to kill me.

Japan continues to be up-and-down for us as a family. If Eldest Child’s knee was doing better we would be having a much better time. Being housebound while she heals is really hard. For comparison, the two apartments that we are renting here in Fukuoka are about the size combined as our dining room and living room in Fremont. That’s all the space. And the space here is partitioned into four separate rooms. We are decidedly cramped.

Middle Child really needs to be taken out for long walks every day and we’re not being good about doing that. He is so much happier when he’s exercising. He is starting to really notice and that’s cool. I love seeing them develop awareness of their bodies. Eldest Child talks a lot about how eating more fruits and vegetables makes her feel better. Middle Child notices exercising increases his happiness level substantially. I didn’t notice that sort of thing as a kid and I feel so proud of them.

I continue to struggle with how much parenting requires me to put myself aside and focus on them. We are together so much that it means I don’t pay attention to me. It means I feel like I’m actively harming myself because I really don’t know or care how I’m even doing.

We didn’t do hypnosis before bed. So I had nightmares all night long. I had a few different ones last night. I could tell when one was ending and another was starting. That’s so annoying.

I miss pot. I really do need the help elevating my mood. I am miserable without it. I hate how much I blame myself for my depressed mood. “Just get over it already.”

I hate that I feel like Sarah telling me she wants to take a little break would have ended when she wanted to have access to financial resources again. I hate that I feel paranoid about money. I hate that I feel like people want me around so they can use me. It’s not always true. None of the people who have contacted me since I left want anything from me other than to spend a little bit of time with me. I know that. I mean, they may want me to help them find something on the Internet or talk to me about how to fix a problem in their life. But nobody’s asking me for money. Nobody’s asking me to come over and fix anything.

Compartmentalizing feelings about this many people is challenging.

I feel like my Discord group is becoming less useful to me. I feel like I’m spending a lot of time arguing about things that I don’t need to be arguing about. Things like, do you mothers have the right to get happy about people lecturing them about safety stuff. The non-breeder in the group had the point of you that mothers should just stop assuming that people have negative intentions and accept all advice as being kind hearted. But in my experience folks get rabid and nasty if you don’t follow their advice. And the advice from my first child to my last child took a 180. Should I have followed the safety advice in the first set of advice? Should I follow the completely opposite advice that I got the last time around? My pediatrician looked really sheepish when she was telling me the guidelines for my third kid. She said that science has found that all of the advice she gave me for my first two kids was really bad. And people wonder why I don’t instantaneously comply with new safety guidelines.

I don’t need to get into a cheerful, pleasant conversation about safety guidelines with everybody who wants to have them with me. Many of those people turn around and tell you how stupid you are if you don’t immediately comply. I just say fuck off at this point; I don’t wanna have this conversation. It would be a tremendous waste of my time if I were willing to comply with each of those conversations. She couldn’t see the parallel to street harassment. I see it quite clearly. She said that people are just trying to help. Well, maybe they are, but I’ve been doing this long enough that I understand that their advice is on a timer until it is debunked. I don’t need to spend a lot of time politely listening.

Yeah I am a bitch because I don’t carefully listen to each safety evangelical. Ok.

Why do I feel like these conversations devolve into shaming? Maybe because I’ve been doing this for over 11 years. People start lecturing you about safety the moment you know you’re pregnant and let anybody else know.

I haven’t had any other experience that parallels the level of forceful advice giving that parents receive. And I have a bunch of chronic health complaints where people like to give me stupid advice. Parenting is much more prone to prompt every idiot to tell you their opinion of how you are doing it wrong. I would get whiplash if I cared and tried to comply.

I very carefully pick who is allowed to give me advice about parenting. And unless I have come to you and specifically asked for your advice, you probably are not on the list.