I wish I could sleep more. I have been waking up after 6.5 hours and I can’t get back to sleep. That’s when I would go wake Noah up to put me back to sleep. But Noah is gone. Instead I wander out to the studio and scream/sob for hours. It’s so hard to think about moving forward with life but I do it anyway.

Because I am me and I’ve been single for about 10 minutes in my whole life I am dating. I was trying to find casual sex that would turn into a friendship and not much more. That isn’t going to plan. Mostly people didn’t turn into friends. One of the guys is trying but we haven’t managed a hang out yet. Another one is very friendly when I see him in town and that’s mildly awkward for me.

I feel like I am a fairly hideous person for being in a relationship at this point. I would say that Noah is rolling in his grave only he’s in a box in my room so that can’t happen. I have never been the type to sit alone and cry without moving forward. Life has to keep moving. The main way I acquire access to energy is sex. If I want to be energetic and cheerful for my kids (and I do) then I need sex. It’s not really optional for me. I feel bad about this. Noah wouldn’t be hunting at this point. He would be a lot less functional than I am. I agree with the kids that he would have gone off the rails entirely. He lived for serving me. He might be doing better with the lawyers but he would not be ok. It would be like the road trip where he shut down and didn’t see friends or do much that was fun that wasn’t centered on me. Noah didn’t want to live without me.

It’s wild going through Noah’s Dropbox. His obsession with me was pretty epic. The notes he took on our interactions over 20 years are daunting as fuck. He wrote a book on me in terms of number of words. It’s a really long book. I can go back through the layers of contracts we wrote together. I can see how Noah evaluated himself as a husband and father week by week for decades.

I keep wondering if I want to delete any of his files or if they will sit in the ether forever as a mausoleum. It’s fascinating going through and looking how he organised his brain. He has so many old files. I’ve got to say that it is shocking to me how much I was part of every thought he had. I’m going through sections that are ostensibly about jobs. In the middle of a bunch of old notes about job hunting and tech stuff there are long essays about how Noah felt about me and our marriage. I have so many years of his feelings to read whenever I want. This is just the stuff I can read in Dropbox. He has so much more on his computer. Reading it is hard.

He loved me so much.

I feel like I am drowning in sadness but that’s not fair. The kids need me to get up and be active. They need me to be effective and supportive and gentle and loving.

Throughout our whole marriage we would both get to points where what we knew/could carry wasn’t enough. Every time we would get mad and say something to the effect of, “Why is the answer always ‘Then you need to get stronger’?” We never ran out of issues and problems. We were never good enough for everything we needed to do. We always had to keep getting stronger. Life wasn’t going to get easier; we needed to be able to do more. He took that so seriously. I can see the evidence of him working hard to be better year after year. He never stopped.

Until he stopped. Now I wake up and reach for him in the night and cry because I will never touch him again.

It’s good that the man I’m dating is getting the strong impression that he has to get over comparisons between him and other people I date. I’m never going to be monogamous again. It’s simply not on offer to anyone else. It was brutally hard with Noah and I’m not going to sign on for that much feeling like a piece of shit ever again. I like sex. I like sex fairly casually with people I barely know. I’m not ok with someone being mean to me because of how much I want sex. I need to have agreements that allow for me being me in ways I was not allowed to negotiate with Noah. No more veto power.

I want to communicate about my sex life, of course. I care a lot about everyone’s physical health. I am not going to take risks that harm people I love if there is any way to avoid it. I will talk about what I am doing and when and I am open to negotiations about degrees of risks.

I broke Noah’s heart a long time ago when he saw me consider the possibility of dating after his death. I feel like I am a horrible person. I also feel like I have a lot of work to do and I don’t know a way to get enough energy other than sex. Sex keeps me motivated to stay alive in a way that nothing else does. I’m going to have sex and I don’t want to be shamed for it.

Yesterday I was asked if my life has gotten easier because I don’t have to route around Noah anymore. She meant well. She is struggling with stuff in her own life and she’s not sure if an ending would be a good thing for her or not. I can understand why she asked. It doesn’t feel like a callous question.

No, my life is not easier. If anything it is so much harder that I feel like I can barely stand up under the load. I spent my marriage trying desperately to live up to Noah’s standards with him as scaffolding and support teaching me how. Now I’m left trying to keep this going and it feels like far too much for me. I was not brought up to be someone who knows how to handle most of the things I now have to do. I’m making it up as I go along and I am terribly out of my depth.

Same pal said a couple of years ago, “I can’t fathom dealing with the amounts of money you go through.” Yeah. It breaks my head too. When I married Noah I had just barely gotten to the point where I could afford a studio apartment instead of living in my car. Now I have to maintain this house. This house that my children desperately want to keep because it is the last place their father lived.

Gentleman asked me some questions recently, basically how I earn a living to support the lifestyle I have. I felt like a fraud. What do I do? It feels like not much. How did I earn this lifestyle? Well, I’m really good at sucking dick. Also, I’m great at self denial. I turned down a lot of fun for a lot of years because I was saving money. Also Noah earned an obscene amount of money. Combine my impulses towards saving with Noah’s ability to earn and here we are. 28 more months on the mortgage then I reduce what I have to spend every month. I’m paying off the roof I had to replace.

I also have doors that are no longer functional that need to be replaced. Windows that are rotting. And a sink in the upstairs bathroom that doesn’t drain at all. The cold water tap in the bath tub has completely stopped working at all. It makes my stomach curdle thinking about all the repairs and work I need to do. I know my in laws will cover it but it makes me feel really bad.

What do I do to deserve this? Nothing. I don’t deserve it. I just have it because life isn’t fair and there is no such thing as deserve. I will have this going forward because I am still not raising my children at the lifestyle level my in laws would prefer. We have not accepted their help much before Noah’s death. We were about to. He was in the process of retiring to be my full time carer because of how fast my body is crumbling.

Gentleman told me to be careful because people are going to want to use me for my money. I giggled. Like I don’t hand money to people constantly as a way of life. Only now that’s trickier. I’m keeping up with budget tracking slightly better. I run out of Social Security money approximately on the 18th of the month because of all the standing bills. Past that, the investment money fills in until the 23rd, roughly. That last week is going to have to be covered by my in laws every month.

How can I hand a lot of money away now? I don’t have enough of my own to cover the month. It’s weird having money locked in limbo that I still can’t touch thanks to probate/confirmation. (Finalising a death is probate in the US and England and it is called confirmation in Scotland. As I was told with many supporting details by my Scottish solicitor.) I have enough to cover the difference in income and need over the next two-ish years by myself once I get access to that one damn bank account again. That was the savings account where I saved for travel. If I can’t afford a trip in advance I don’t take it. Right now I’m trying to get up my nerve to tell my inlaws that I need more to cover the rest of the year. This sucks so hard.

I feel like the practical thing is selling this house and buying one in slightly better repair that costs half as much. It isn’t that hard. I’ve looked. Thing is, all of those options are ones where we will not enjoy living together in an ongoing way. We won’t have enough space to do all the stuff we normally do at home. I won’t be able to grow much of any food and I’d be in neighbourhoods where people would not appreciate me trying to let a wild jungle grow in my garden. Right now I’m far enough out from town that my quirkiness isn’t a big deal.

I don’t know that I will ever have the hand spoons to do giant murals in my house again. I suspect that if I moved I would not have the spirit to try. I feel broken. I don’t have a fantastic Wonderland to share anymore. The magic maker is gone. The person who made me feel like it was ok for me to do anything I wanted is gone.

Up-side: I could buy a house in an area where the schools would be less likely to beat my daughter and maybe she could figure out the transition to school. Would that help her feel more Scottish? There’s no guarantee though. I got beat in almost every single one of the 25 schools I went to. I’m pretty sure my daughter is going to have the same kind of big mouth I have. Uprooting our whole life so she can maybe only get beaten a little is a big gamble.

No, nothing is easier now.

I’m not that worried about someone wanting to use me for money. I will continue to pay for dinners for friends because even with things as tight as they are for me… I am still walking an easier road than many. My in laws are happy to make sure my lifestyle doesn’t slip that far because they don’t want my kids to know want. I am already seeing the ways that once I stop paying for all the costs associated with Noah’s death, my spending will decrease quite a bit. His death is costing between 2 and 3 months of run money. It’s an expensive year again.

My social security income will be stable until 2034. It covers almost half of my normal expenses for the life I had with Noah. Paying for his death has put this year up in the realm of normal expense. Solicitors, lawyers, and accountants are all more expensive than usual this year. I don’t like the idea of needing my in laws to intervene constantly for the next 20 years. I mean, at some point the will sell the ranch. Either they will decide to split it 4 ways or 8 ways. That means my household will either get 1/4 or 1/2 of the profit. That ranch is kinda ridiculous. It blows my mind that some time in the next 5 or so years that money is going to show up.

I don’t need to think about how I’m going to earn enough money to make it to 2048 when I can use age limited accounts. It’s too scary to contemplate right now. An awful lot of that time I will be able to work and so will the kids. We’ll be fine. We won’t have the same kind of life that Noah provided but we will be ok.

It’s weird knowing that. It’s not in doubt. I may have to do things I don’t love. I may not be able to assure my children as much permanent security as I would prefer but I will leave my disabled kids in a pretty damn good position. They will be safe. They won’t have lavish wealth to throw away but they can survive and be safe. They will be able to pay for their own medical care. They probably won’t have nice cars.

I’ve not been writing about this much. Eldest Child is sick all the fucking time. He’s going to have a challenging life.

I am highly conscious of the fact that I am in a bridge period. It doesn’t exactly feel like limbo this time. Limbo is painful in a different way. This feels like a much more self aware and dramatic methodical process. Sometimes crossing a bridge is hard in times of difficult weather. That is part of crossing a bridge. It may not be easy but there is a clear starting point and a clear end. I am moving from being Noah’s wife to being Noah’s widow. My aunt-in-law still writes my letters to Mrs. Noah Gibbs. She can’t spell my name at all. Yeah.

Realistically I am trying to close the gap until they sell the ranch. That is the difficult part. I should assume 5 years even though she would like to do it faster. With the collapse of the US government this could be an interesting ride. The UK government isn’t far behind. Thanks, Russia. You couldn’t be satisfied with taking Livejournal.

As Noah’s wife I felt I had the safety to be completely out about my queer, kinky antics. I’ve kept my mouth shut about most of that since I moved to Scotland. This is a more conservative community. The way I write about myself is many degrees more outlandish here than it is in the States. The political climate is such that wisdom would indicate that I should climb back in the closet. That seems silly to me. The WayBack Machine is no longer to be trusted. We can’t say that the internet is forever. The US government is trying to wipe mentions of all thinks queer and kinky.

A long time ago, when I was a young kinkster, I got to sit at the feet of intense and beautiful women who had been living as sexual outlaws for their entire lives. As I watch the governments doing their best to implode on both sides of the pond I can’t help but wonder what I have done to myself. I have never been able to be secretive in the ways they do. I am not able to hide the things I do without shame. I think sex is good for people and kink that is done with self awareness around harm reduction is a great hobby.

It is both easier and harder now. I do not have the threat of Noah standing behind me anymore. I will probably never have a significant protector again in this life. I am unlikely to ever have a relationship with someone who has more resources and force to provide than I have. I am the force in my life. I am the head of my household. I will be for the rest of my life. My children will never see anyone I date as being the boss of the family. That could not possibly happen. They didn’t think their fucking father was the boss. When someone asked us who is the boss all four of their heads pointed at me. Noah believed that he was serving me. That was what Owning me meant. It was a very complicated relationship. Before things go south with the governments I really need to cross post everything from other social media sites. I’m feeling really worried about spamming the fuck out of the email people. I’ve been prolific over the last couple of years. It’s easily several novels worth of reading. That feels rude.

Why are you people so crazy? Isn’t the real question why am I so crazy? Why do I want all of this in a consistent archive? Now it isn’t about helping Noah understand me anymore. Now it is about letting people come find me if I am the kind of person they need to find. Sobonfu told me I would have to build the community I want to inhabit. That’s a really scary thought. Matisse says that if you write about yourself you run out of things to say. I have never hit this wall. I’m 25 years in.

I am going to transfer everything. I’m having mixed feelings about what to do with Noah’s entries. I feel like I should go reread all of his long writings about life and about me. I won’t read his whole professional history of writing. That’s too vast and I won’t understand a lot of it without intense study. I’m not Alexander Hamilton’s widow. I’m Skye O’Malley. My life will not be spent memorialising him. I will cry when I think about him. He will be one of the many men I have loved. He will be the one I loved the most, my only mate. He was the father to my motherhood.

I don’t think I will ever allow anyone to take care of me or be my protector. I’m on my own now. I have to manage with small bits of help. I’m not built for celibacy. It is what it is.

No, my life is not easier now. And I’m not so flush with cash that I am worried about being taken advantage of. I am very good at saying no when I don’t feel flush. Right now I am looking at long term security over short term fun. Like I have for most of my life. Sure, I splash out sometimes but only after I’ve paid Future Me and made sure the futures of my dependents are secured. As long as I’m looking at calendar days and figuring out when I have to ask for help I am not independently secure. I need to close that gap on my own. I don’t like asking for their help. It doesn’t make me feel great. I am grateful. I am going to take it because I’m not that self hating. I’m not going to suffer for pride. Fuck it.

I’m ok saying that my life has been hard enough. I don’t need to hurry up and leave the place where I planted all these trees.

2034 is when my income will change and then it will change again in 2036. I have that long to figure out how to ride it out till 2048 when my life will get easier. Do you know what is crazy? If I am even a little bit careful I will make sure all three of my kids are ok permanently. They will have their basic income covered. It’s not enough to easily move out and be independent. That would require a full time normal job. They will have enough to collectively maintain this house and buy food and pay for utilities. If they split it, it won’t be very impressive. It may be enough to keep them unable to get benefits but not able to get by comfortably.

They are going to have to work but it won’t have to be full time. I come back over and over in my life to the idea that the dog bite was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I had a basic poverty level income to build on. It was something reliable and I needed to fill the gaps above that. It supported me living in my car. At least I could afford the car.

Thank you, Larry. I know you are mad about how I wrote about you in the book. I wasn’t trying to hurt your feelings. I’m really grateful for you. You were a complicated force in my life. Thank you for sharing your culture, your family, your home, your love, and your legal services. Thank you for teaching me about the long run.

Speaking of which, time to go make breakfast and kiss people awake. I am so glad to see you again.

With every passing day I settle into this new shell to a different depth. It’s hard. I am so anxious it is unreal. I feel like I don’t know how to move forward without Noah to support me. I learn more with every passing day.

For the vast majority of my time the kids are the only people I talk to. They are going to be the people I live with for the longest in life. In two years I will have lived with my son longer than I lived with his father. I never wanted to be away from Noah. This hurts so much.

I’m really sad about the ways that my daughter is manifesting her grief. Every day she talks to me about how I need to find someone to marry because she needs a dad. I can see this massive wound forming in her and it scares me so much. The hole of needing a father drove a lot of my life. It shaped my romantic relationships in dramatic ways. I am worried about her. I am not able to fill all of her needs. My attempts to form more intense relationships on her behalf are not going great. I send messages and I don’t get responses.

I feel like I am failing her. It’s a very different kind of support for the big kids and we are all more or less doing ok with taking care of each other. Shortie has a good 4 hours a day of attention-need that is above and beyond what the big kids and I can provide. It is the hole Noah filled. We can’t expand enough to plug the hole. We are all at reduced capacity.

I have been talking very frankly with the kids about how I know I am not fully meeting their emotional needs. I’m trying but I don’t have enough capacity to be the sole sustaining parent carrying both sides of the load that existed with two parents. This is hard on all sides. I really appreciate that we are all being patient with each other around our reduced capacity in most ways. Well, sorta. Seven is always a challenging age. This time I am going through a rough stage while dealing with overwhelming life trauma. It’s extra spicy.

Every morning I wake them up and I tell them that I am glad to see them again. I watch them breathe that in. Their chest expands and their faces lighten. All of them. They feel this ritual. They believe it. Noah and I did that. We made people who feel loved all the way to the marrow of their bones. They breathe it in like air.

When we have conflict or they do something they shouldn’t I remind them that I made a promise on the day they were born. I will forgive their mistakes. I hope I can in return earn their forgiveness. I talk early and often about restitution and repairing mistakes. They all tell me that I am good at letting go of things that upset me. I don’t seethe or rage in an ongoing way. I may have a sharp outburst of anger when something happens but it passes quickly. I am so glad they experience me that way.

A long time ago a therapist told me that when it comes to evaluating what kind of person someone is one should speak to the children not the coworkers or friends.

I’ve had to have some uncomfortable conversations with my son. He got the worst brunt of my anger. Sometimes it is hard for him to see his sister getting an “easier” deal than he got. He remembers when I screamed for long periods of time when I was overwhelmed. He remembers a handful of overzealous punishments as “all the time” in the way of time dilation for trauma memories. It’s about being in the always/never place. He asks bitterly why I don’t treat her the way I treated him.

Baby, no part of her life is like yours. I don’t have the emotional and physical energy I did. I don’t have the money to support the same kinds of shenanigans going forward. My son had traveled more by 3 than my daughter has by 7. That’s going to continue to be an ever widening gap because I won’t be traveling like that going forward. I can’t. He asks why she isn’t “losing her Disneyland trip” because of a stupid petty prank she pulled. Dude. This is going to be the only one of her early childhood memory. Literally one. You used to spend two weeks a year there. There was one year where you had five weeks spread between Disney World and Disneyland. You lost one long weekend trip at her age because you managed to hide a scheme you were pulling for three months.

There will never be parity between you. Do not demand that she get all the shit when she can get very little of the good. That is not justice. She is going to have less grandiose good. Yeah, a lot of her punishments are going to seem less severe. She is already dealing with an entire life that is radiating pain.

Do you really want her to remember you as a bully during this horrible time in her life? I sure as fuck don’t. I’m being patient when I don’t want to be. I’m letting her wake me up by kicking me in the fucking head every night. I did the same thing to my mother. I remember her complaints. It feels like justice.

I am a single mother. Like my mother. Like my sister. Like my brother’s ex-wife. I am the only widow. Well, auntie lost her husband in her late 70’s. She is a widow too. Somehow it seems different. I am not speaking with any of them. I just think of them and feel sad.

I think of the ways I don’t want to raise my children. I think a lot about the patterns I will not pass down. I think of exploitation and shaming and weaponised incompetence and codependency.

I choose to believe that conscious interdependence where people have the right to opt out of pieces whenever they need to is different. Maybe I am lying to myself but I doubt it. Interdependence is the norm for humanity. Ok, mostly folks aren’t allowed to choose all of their roles.

There is, quite obviously, no actual metric mothers are held to. We are unobserved by outsiders for the majority of our best and worst moments. They are private. I believe this is why my therapist said that the only people whose opinion matters are the children. So far the primary complaint my children have of me is the same one their father had: they wish they could have even more of me.

That seems less damning in a parent/child dynamic. I give a lot. I give for a lot of hours in a day. They are so great my kids wish they could have more. The older they get, the more tired they get, and the more forgiveness they have for me running out of give. They can see that I am giving at my limit.

It is weird how much the success of my days is measured in the amount of time I spend absorbing the emotional experience of other people. I take all of it that I can.

I am seeing the differences emerge. This third child is going to be the reader. She is reading almost two years ahead of either big kid. She doesn’t have Noah. I can’t replace how much he read. I literally can’t. She has been taking a lot of initiative lately. This is mixed.

It is really hard not having Noah around for family meetings. We’ve now had our second. The first for conflict mediation since he died. We have mostly been getting along shockingly well. Chore negotiation is a flat fail. None of us can keep to a schedule. We are still navigating stuff day by day. I feel weary to my soul. I can’t plan for what I will accomplish in three days let alone every week for the next month. Speaking of which, oh shit. I forgot the bins again. Time to go start the day. I’m a day late and a dollar short, as usual.

Widows keep telling me that I shouldn’t expect too much from myself in the first year. This year is a brutal nightmare. The governments of two countries expect a lot from me this year. My kids expect a lot from me. The trouble is, I’m running out of give. For reasons I am not going to get into the person who came for surgery support isn’t working out. She is leaving. I’m feeling pretty terrified. I had surgery 11 days ago. I have 10 weeks of recovery in front of me before I am supposed to resume anything like a normal schedule.

I’m grateful for the help she was able to provide. Now I need to keep rolling along.

I miss Noah so much it feels like I am going to die from my heart exploding. He spent a lot of years learning what he had to do to get me to rest. What specific subset of chores has to happen so that I can go to bed and relax? He knew. He could scan a room and see what would bother me and what I can ignore. I miss my love. I miss my husband. I miss being special and important. I miss having someone worry about my pain and discomfort. I miss having someone to talk to for as many hours a day as I wanted to talk.

There are things I’m struggling with that I can’t write about. Our family culture is not an easy one to join. We talk about things in ways that are, sometimes, deeply alienating and uncomfortable for people who are not part of it. I always regret this mismatch but I also have no desire to change. I do not want to give up this part of my culture and I can feel an insistent wall of decisiveness between me and anyone who tells me not to keep this part. It happens at times. They mean well; I see that. This came after many years of hard work. I’m keeping it.

I’m feeling incredibly insecure. It seems kinda reasonable right now. I am not going to try to guilt trip myself out of this. Being disabled and having three kids is fun load to carry. I should feel insecure. I have to figure out how to carry forward on my own. It doesn’t help that this is a Biblical plague year for me. I am hoping less will go wrong in the months to come. I have fun travel and adventures stacked from August to October. One reason I need to be careful about recovery is I have incentive to not drag things out. If I want anything to go well later then I need to nail this pacing on the first try. No setbacks.

No pressure.

I had a good hard cry with my son yesterday. I don’t feel good about leaning on him for support. He said, “We waited until I was basically an adult and I am offering you are not demanding it. This doesn’t count as parentification.”

Thing is, I’m in a hard spot. I either get help from the kids or I hurt myself in a way that might hurt them in the long run. I am not handling the level of helpless I am very well. This feels demeaning and degrading. This was hard enough with Noah around to pet me and tell me that I was a good, brave girl. I’m feeling neither good nor brave this time.

It’s interesting going through the process of getting to know someone new right now. I am an insecure nitwit, that’s for fucking sure. I was asked if anything about a body horrifies/bothers/something me. My brain is barely operational right now. I’m having to rewrite half of my sentences due to complete incoherence. I am dropping words and I’m having to route around gaps. It’s weird being in my brain today. It’s not a good place.

Anyway, he asked me if bodies bother me. I responded with a list of all the horrifying body situations I’ve been through. He said I am basically a nurse.

I have a knee jerk response to that. No, I’m not that cool. What I am is someone who grew up poor in the US. We have to develop a wide range of skills and no one is coming to take care of us when we get most ouchies. I come from a family of people prone to getting in major accidents. There’s not much about a body that can upset me. People have bodies. Bodies need care. I care about people. No, bodies aren’t an issue for me.

I don’t have as early a response to body odor as many do. If anything I smell hard working mammal and enjoy it. I’m not upset by farting though I may make jokes sometimes. I don’t care if someone shaves or lets hair grow.

I am talking around an issue I’m not explaining. I’m alluding to an insecurity and I’m not stating it. I’m doing a lot of that kind of thing right now. I’m talking around the hole in my brain where Noah belongs. He is supposed to cut through my meandering and simplify my problems and issues so they feel more tractable and fungible.

I want promises I can’t have and wouldn’t believe. I want certainty and my life is completely lacking in it. Instead what I have is bone deep terror of the future. I have a track record of people not being able to handle me very long. I won’t be kicked out of my home when this happens anymore. That’s an improvement. I am going to have to start levitating and not having needs though. I can’t need anyone.

I have to hold everyone in an open hand, ready to release them when they need to go.

I did actually feel pretty secure for a while there. I believed Noah wouldn’t leave me. Such hubris. I mean, he didn’t leave on purpose. He is still gone. I allowed myself to believe I would have a future in which I was cared for. More the fool, me.

I know people love me. That’s not something I doubt.

I feel like dog shit. I should try to sleep a bit more. I hurt so much in my body and in my soul and in my mind. Then I need to get up and make breakfast. It doesn’t matter how I feel. It matters what I do. I have babies to feed. Get on with it.

I’m not ok and it doesn’t matter. I have work to do. I have people who depend on me. I am not the most scheduled person. I get enough done.

I got through the big scary email from the accountant yesterday. I didn’t get almost any other admin work done because I ran out of time to work. I have a very limited number of spoons every day right now. Triage is hard. I hate being vulnerable and weak and needy. I am incompetent. It hurts my soul to be this. Oh fucking well. That doesn’t matter. It’s simply accurate.

I need to hide like a cat while I heal. Asking for support is such a fraught thing. Instead of support maybe nothing beyond food happens for months. Maybe that’s good enough. If I’m not selfish I will hurt myself more. This is feeling absolutely impossible to resolve in a way that has me getting more adult work done any month soon.

I’m not ok. It really doesn’t matter. I don’t get to stop.

My life is absurd. Sometimes I have to laugh about how ridiculous this is. I’m still physically and emotionally recovering from being raped close to a year ago. There are layers to that trauma socially and physically that will take a while to fully integrate. Noah has been gone almost six months. I had surgery nine days ago. Yesterday 4/5 people in my house tested positive for covid. (Luckily the person who was supposed to perform in a play last night was negative.) Fuck my life.

I’m so sad I missed the play. It’s not cool to go out when you know you have covid so I didn’t.

I’m still the one who has to wake up in the morning and get chores done. It doesn’t matter how I feel it matters how I act. I’m moving slowly and gingerly but stuff will get done. I thank my lucky stars all day every day for the amount of ease and grace in my life. I’m struggling but none of what I’m struggling with is going to drown me. I won’t let it. I’m a cockroach. I keep moving no matter what happens. I can’t be stopped.

I have to acknowledge that part of it is the ruthless way I pursue interactions that fill my bucket, so to speak.

I went hunting for NSA sex. Mostly I found it with a series of people who are profoundly incompatible with me on dozens of levels. Mostly I found men who were going to objectify the shit out of me and not see me as a person they should feel lucky to be in a room with. It’s dramatic to me when I can see and understand this massive difference between how much I am seen or not.

Gentleman is trying to see me. I am an alien creature and he struggles at times. He asks clarifying questions and he retains the answers. It’s really funny to me the way he has avoided all of my preferred boundaries to instead sidle closer to me day by day. He’s not being rude or exploitive. He is refusing to objectify me. He is humanising me. He insists on knowing why I have boundaries so he can honour the spirit even when not the letter.

I didn’t want to date because I didn’t want someone to have a lot of expectation of me being able to give them what they want to fulfill their life goals. I can’t show up and be the +1 for someone else because my life is really full. I have very little to offer. I am exhausted and depleted and overwhelmed basically all of the time. So he pushes for dates that fit around my schedule. He shows up and provides a lot of emotional support and he’s surprised he gets anything back at all. He lets me give what I want to give without being bitter that it isn’t suiting his perfect specifications. When I can’t do much he doesn’t treat me like a broken toy he talks to me. He doesn’t have a lot of set agenda for how we will interact or what we will do. He is flexible in ways that surprises me.

Noah cared about me and Noah twisted himself into pretzels around my needs but there was always the intense, constant pressure to change myself to be more pleasing to him. That was one of the biggest overarching elements of our marriage: I was supposed to change to suit him better. I went after that. I wanted that too. It was what Noah and I chose with our eyes wide open.

I can’t ever choose that again. I can’t ever be clay in someone’s hand to mold at will. I have to fulfill my obligations and that means I need to not change too much. I have to stay on the path I was on, for better or worse. Even if I am not still Noah’s wife I am still the mother of Noah’s babies. I owe them a duty of care and provision and I feel the urgency of need to complete this process with my entire soul.

I am both sad and delighted by the ways my relationships with my children are all deepening. Loss can easily break people apart under strain. We are growing closer together in the way we have after every difficulty since this family began. Noah and I began this as a conscious co-creation and now the kids help me carry it along because they know no other way and they don’t particularly want to stop. We have strife that we must overcome together. We have challenges and we overcome them together. When we elected to leave the US we did so knowing that therapists and other forms of support would be thin on the ground and we would need to turn inward to one another for a lot more support. We chose this life.

The other day I was in the kitchen with my son. He was working on baking a cake for some friends in the community. I was packing up a dinner portion for Gentleman. It turned out that my son needed some things from the store. I asked if it was ok to ask Gentleman to pick stuff up on the way over.

We had a long conversation about food culture and snobbery and access to diverse food. It was really good. It was good for me and it was good for him. It was important to talk really explicitly about the fact that we need to work on our scathing attitude towards people who have not had as much access to diverse foods as us. It’s totally unacceptable in this setting. We have had a privilege and it’s not ok to be cunts about other people having less access. We have to be soft and kind as we offer to share our weird food with people. They will often feel challenged by the amount of variety our family seeks out in food. We don’t eat like the British, that’s for sure. We definitely don’t eat like the poorer people on this island. We can’t be cunts about it.

This is such a weird experience for me. I have gone from being the poor person with the highly restricted food intake to the point of being the rich person who is trying to gently and softly expand the experience range of people who haven’t had as much luck as me. It’s fucking wild. I don’t know who I am through a lot of this. I feel confused and like I am trying to consolidate a self out of tiny little pieces of life experience but none of them are congruent or compatible.

I know that one of the things that is complicated about dating as a single mother is that my children should not go through the ringer being exposed to a series of people. I am wildly aware of this. Continuity, stability, and predictability are all on my mind as I figure out what it means to change pieces of my life or ways I spend my time.

It is hard not to talk to my children about dating as an experience the way I have talked to them about almost every experience I have had since they were born. I don’t have Noah as the person who can take all the overflow emotions and words anymore. I feel deeply stymied. I hope that over time I can learn to not give a shit and put more of it here. I want to stop blogging on social media. It creates a feedback loop I don’t like. People think I write to get attention. Not exactly. I feel deeply uncomfortable with the way people feel free to try to edit my thinking when they get to see pieces of it.

I am having deep discomfort with the fact that my children are going to be the primary Witnesses of my life going forward. No one else will ever stand so close to me. Given that I have doubts about ever living with a partner again they may be the longest and most enduring relationships of my entire life. They are going to know things about me dating. I am not a great liar.

My son and I talked about the fact that one thing I am getting out of dating right now is a place to put excessive “I want to take care of you” energy that I have. I don’t want to smother the shit out of my kids. We are all fairly independent creatures who like to do our own things. They need me to have other outlets in life. I am feeling weird about how intensely I am enjoying my relationship with Gentleman.

It’s highly gendered in many ways and also not. I am not looking for a provider or a protector. I am looking for a companion. I am looking for someone who both likes to give care and receive it. I’m looking for someone who can both accept me plainly as I am and help me figure out how I will adapt to make my life easier. Apparently I have a real thing for the sort of man who tells bad jokes all the time. Jokes. It is my destiny to endure a Biblical plague level of suffering thanks to bad jokes. Bad jokes in the “oh my gosh this is 5 year old humour” kind of way and not in the mean/aggressive/hateful way. Lots of fart jokes. Lots of very silly puns.

I endure a plague of bad jokes. I’m just saying.

They make me feel safe and relaxed. I love silliness. I love the way my horrified negative facial expressions makes people explode with laughter and delight. They are so happy to torment me. Good thing torment is my love language.

I need this silliness and this container for giving care because otherwise I’m not sure I’d be getting the basics done. I’m making sure food is present. I’m making sure people care for their bodies. I’m making sure the kids have some level of educational progress. That’s what I’m getting done and my “to do” list that I need to do when I am not actively care giving keeps getting longer. I don’t have the energy to do it. I don’t have the mental fortitude and I feel really ashamed of that. I can talk to myself on the internet but no I can’t go hunt up all the fucking forms for the accountant.

It is exceedingly hard to brain right now.

I miss Noah all the time. I feel bad about knowing that he would be able to help me be in a lot less pain right now. He knew a lot of tricks and I would have been feeling a lot more comfortable, even while sick, even while recovering from surgery. I feel selfish for how I miss him. I am sad about what I’m not getting. I’m sad about what I can’t give. I’m sad that this huge piece of myself feels like it vanished into thin air. Who I was because of my connection to him doesn’t exist anymore. Part of me died.

There are flickers and remnants of that person in other pieces of me and will exist in amalgamations of personality fragments going forward but the wholeness of that particular self is gone. I’m aware of it all the time. This chasm of pain and fear and loss. I really thought I was going to get to be that part of me for the rest of my life. I had a lot invested in being that self forever.

Now it is over and I stagger forward out of the wreckage. I am wounded in so many fucking ways. I feel absolutely awful physically and emotionally because of so many things. I’m NOT EVEN BRINGING UP OLD STUFF BECAUSE THERE IS BARELY ROOM IN MY BODY FOR AIR. Even though I see the old cycles and patterns and pain influencing the new layers. I can’t acknowledge the impact because I have to keep moving. It’s there. I feel it. I can’t dwell. It is too hard to acclimate at speed the things that are happening in this moment. I will have to wait until I slow down and have time to breathe. Will that time ever come? Are those moments in the past?

No. Someday I will have adult children who don’t need me and all the time in the world. I will come to a stop someday and do absolutely nothing beyond base survival for months. It will be. I am allowed to get to that point. It will be ok when I do.

I look forward to that. Maybe I can go hide on Shetland or Orkney for a year. I can spend my time not giving.

Maybe. Until then, it is past time to be starting breakfast. I should get up and get on it. I have babies to kiss and food to make. It is time to start another day.

I love the phrase butthurt. It brings me joy. I, however, do not love it when my actual butt hurts. Which it does. Ow. Given that once upon a time I documented gross levels of details about my poop here I feel like this is not a TMI level of disclosure in this space. It hurts having hemorrhoids cut off.

My kids are the light of my life. They are who I have to look to as I move forward. I’m getting awesome help from friends in taking care of them (I feel very lucky). I keep wondering how I am going to be able to pay forward this help in the future. Luckily more stuff will keep on happening whether I like it or not.

I am doing both a good job on resting and also feeling like I could stand to do a bit more. So there is that. I’m trying. I have not had the brain to go through email in over a week. This is suboptimal because I have stuff that needs done. I have tax paperwork to manage and legal stuff and travel stuff that needs sorted. Thinking coherently is beyond me.

I miss Noah all day and all night long. I reach for him over and over. I burst into tears several times a day every day. This is terribly painful.

I’m finding dating complicated as a widow. I don’t have the ‘my ex sucks’ attitude that most people have. I don’t have the life experience that there is no point to giving your all to a relationship. I don’t have the view that I should refrain from commitment because no one will stay. I mean, he didn’t stay but he didn’t want to leave. I have a different kind of terror. Mine is rooted in the weakness of the flesh.

As a hypersexual person I’ve had nightmares about someone dying during sex for most of my life. Noah and I weren’t having sex but we were lying together intimately. I was mostly asleep cuddled on his chest. I am freaked out by cuddling. I want comfort but I’m also afraid of more death. I’m afraid of being close to another person and failing to save their life. This haunts me wildly.

I go back and forth between being upset with myself for dating someone semi-seriously so soon and hoping that Noah wouldn’t be upset with me. I hadn’t intended to find someone as nice as I have.

Phew. Is it time to be more honest with y’all? It’s a scary thought. I’ve been pretty closeted since I moved here. I’ve met 13 men this year. I didn’t sleep with all of them. Most of them have been fine but not partners I will keep. That was what I expected. I expected the quickly coming and going and not being compatible with folks. I expected to be told that I am too much trouble and no one will bother for me. Instead he is pretty nice about the ways I’m weird and he listens and asks questions and remembers the answers. Sometimes he is confused about why I am telling him things.

Because I am a difficult person to be with. You have to accept an unusual amount of unpredictability and wildness. Because if I don’t tell you early on I feel like a liar and a deceiver and someone who should be abandoned when you find out the truth.

I should try to sleep again. Sleeping is hard.

I spent a while today writing the letter for withdrawing our children from school. It feels like I must be bragging/lying/exaggerating when I list off our qualifications, materials, and philosophy… but uhm… yeah that’s just true. We are, in fact, unusually qualified to home educate our children. We did this on purpose.

The kids are relaxed in a way I haven’t seen them relax in a long time. That’s nice.

I am currently somewhere in the middle of five books and only because I finished one a few minutes ago. Reading about being an intensive person, another PTSD book, a grimoire for kitchen witchery, and fruits and vegetables for Scotland. I finished the rereading of a fantasy book focused on friendships. For every twenty pages I plow through of the other four books I get through a whole fantasy book. Learning feels hard again. But I’m trying.

I made the kids negotiate what a school schedule is going to look like for them for the rest of this school year. It’s… a lot more relaxed than it was in the past. Partially because they are at grade level so I don’t need to be fussy. That feeling of panic I had about them not doing enough is gone. That is a gift we got from school.

EC now has a bunch of “funny” stories about the teacher accusing her of making up words because ECs vocabulary is so broad. Sure, there are some maths skills we didn’t perfectly nail but that would be true from any curriculum in existence. MC will have a bit of extra maths for a while but I’m not concerned and we will indeed work on handwriting. I am glad she can take off on reading without waiting for her handwriting to be good enough, She read the entire book series I gave her for Christmas (that I bought because I was told it was “the thing” for her grade level) on Christmas before mid-afternoon. Well. It’s kind of like when my mom refused to buy me any more of The Babysitters Club books. She’s not at grade level anymore, Toto.

Noah and I are having some feelings about the lack of opportunities to date, but here we are late at night on our own computers just… blurgh. He would respond with vigor if I wanted to pay attention to him. It’s not that I don’t want to. But I don’t want to. I’m tired. It’s not the kids it’s life.

It’s kind of funny that the school thinks that they need to be in school to get a proper education; I’ve planned 12 hours a week of direct instruction and they will progress as fast or faster than their peers do. So far the kids say the thing they will miss the most is not getting to do the dance section of PE. ONCE THE FUCKING BOAT ARRIVES I am going to dig out my copy of Irish dance instructions from the Plough and we can do kitchen dancing. Noah knows the basics, I can quickly pick stuff up again and teach it. It will be fun. Yes, we will be limited to stuff that needs four people, but that’s alright.

I’m struggling with being deep in my feels about life. I feel so much (internally imposed) pressure to try harder on reaching out to people but I also feel depleted. What does friendship mean?

Does friendship mean that you are obligated to show up a certain number of hours? That you are obliged to place a certain number of phone calls or send a certain quantity of emails or letters? I carry a lot of my friendships and I don’t know how to feel about that. I don’t carry every relationship. Some people reach out to me more than I do them… not many… but a couple.

I feel like I’m at this interesting point in my internal cycles. I am utterly over pouring out energy into relationships. I’m over feeling I have to earn people or love or a place. If I have to work that hard to be loved I don’t fucking care about being loved. Is that awful? Is it healthy? I don’t know. I feel like this period of apathy is part of needing to separate, part of needing to figure out what I actually NEED as opposed to wants. I do need to be loved but I don’t need to be the life of the party.

Christmas was great. I don’t know if my kids were playacting for my benefit (will I ever trust that they feel safe enough to display their authentic emotions?) but they seemed euphoric and delighted about their presents. They got things they need and things they want and they are being given the gift of time and perspective going forward. I’m really glad we tried school. I don’t know that either child will want to try school again before university. We’ll see. I have zero desire to push them and that feels good today.

I am glad that they like me and I like them and we don’t really need the approval of other people. My kids give me a sort of validation no one else can give me, not even Noah. They want to be around me and they choose my teaching over that of other people. They see me as being the best opportunity on offer.

Damn.

The kids have noticed that their “friends” at school need them to be a very curated version of themselves in order to be tolerated. I mean, I have guidelines too–you will have table manners or else but when we are not in a restaurant… be whatever feels ok to you. I don’t need you to pretend all the time. I just need you to care about how you are impacting the people around you when they are trapped in a small space with you. Don’t be a selfish asshole. You can be loud and rude and obnoxious at other times when it is totally appropriate. Context dependent rules are a big deal. We talk a lot about how different settings require different things from our behavior.

School requires you to accept that authority cares more about minimizing the amount of work they have to do than keeping you safe. School would much rather have you shut up and accept being hit rather than stand up to bullies–if you do so you are now the problem.

My brother came up in conversation. (He can fart on command, this was relevant to our topic.) The kids asked why I don’t talk to him. I told them for a bunch of reasons that are detailed in the book they can’t read until they are adults. They said, “Oh you did bad things to him?” Nope, no I didn’t. “Did he do bad things to you?” Not really. “Then… why?” Because he is angry that I made other people stop doing bad things to me. “HE SOUNDS LIKE THE HEAD TEACHER AT SCHOOL.”

Yeah. We can withdraw from school.

I am by no means a perfect person. I fuck up. I do things I shouldn’t. I also work hard at not hurting people. I have learned to keep my opinion to myself when I think people are doing things wrong for the most part. I haven’t given anyone else parenting feedback in a very long time. We all get to parent as we see fit. Only our children get to evaluate us.

I like my kids and so far they like me more than any other teacher on offer. We will make friendships with people who share our interests (I heard about a nearby home educating family who really wants to try D&D…. Noah is great at DMing for kids…) and hobbies. Frankly the school kids here don’t do the stuff we do for fun.

I’m going to keep trying to go to the toddler activities. When I’m out of the house the big kids are going to work on programming. That’s a Noah subject and I don’t need to be present for it. If they finish their target for the day they will switch to art/music/reading. We have lots to do.

We don’t get bored. Well, I alternate between thinking boredom is a necessary part of life and thinking that only boring people get bored. We have a lot of unstructured time. We never run out of ways to fill it. Is that being bored? We make our own entertainment and we really prefer it that way. I’m taking some tips from the horse trainer lady on how to handle kid accountability on home schooling. (Her kids are in and out of school as it suits the needs of her family.)

The future is coming. Right now I’m not worried it will eat me. I’m pretty sure it will be less painful than what I have already experienced.

When I don’t write for a while I get super agitated. It’s complicated. There are many layers of things going on and I can’t write about a bunch of them and that’s really bothering me. I’m contemplating picking people I can write letters to because that at least allows me to talk to someone about what I’m thinking, but that feels loaded too. There are so many things happening. On one finger: I write because it helps me organize my thoughts and feelings. On another finger (because this is way the fuck more than two hands, yo): I write because I am leaving this documentation in the ether for my children. On another finger: I write because it helps me connect with really interesting people. On another finger: I write because it is so much better than self mutilation. On another finger: I like doing it. Writing about myself allows me to create who I want to be.

I am absolutely brimming with feelings because moving here allows all of us a fresh start. In so many ways we are leaving behind who we were and we are becoming something different. I like something different. But Noah and I created selves in the bay with great effort and work over many many years. Leaving all of that behind to start again is incredibly hard. I don’t get to walk into a room and have my reputation precede me. I have to introduce myself. I have to decide what I will say about myself.

I went to a fantastic lecture the other day about migrants and boundaries and borders. I said thank you to the speaker and she asked me a little about myself. I said her lecture was making me think a million thoughts about my own experience of moving 60+ times in the US before traveling the world and landing here. It made me think about all of the things I saw in immigrant neighborhoods in California. It made me think about all of the people I know who have crossed borders. She asked me to email her so we can continue the conversation. I haven’t yet, I was cooking and then flopping in exhaustion in between medical appointments.

I saw some really interesting looking ink at a craft fair and while I was browsing and trying to decide if I wanted to buy any I heard the creator telling another customer about how obsessed she is with painting trees. Me too.

I met a nice young man at the local shop. We got to talking and it turns out he is into D&D and he’s a literature major at the university and we exchanged phone numbers and we’ve been talking about books and comics and things.

I have been to the local munch a couple of times. I have met some really interesting people there. I am saying loudly and clearly when cute people flirt with me NOT POLY. CAN’T DATE. PROBABLY NOT EVER. I am not available, no matter how my stories about the past make me sound.

I feel bad that I haven’t been going to as many of the baby classes/events but they use half a day and utterly wear me out. I don’t get much else done on days that I go and I have had appointments and deliveries and Noah was gone. I can’t do everything. And just doing the mommy-of-a-toddler thing is… not where I am as much anymore. I am that, clearly. But it’s not my whole identity and I have to actively create a whole new identity again.

I have to be a balanced person. I have to be many things. I have to figure out how to talk to people and ask them questions that don’t revolve around tech and I have to have a self that is not defined by all the communities I have bumped into. I have to be a whole new creature.

I wanted this and I’m doing it.

On the days when I get to go ride my bike through the city I feel intensely alive. I think of Mrs. Whatsit and I have shouted, more than once, “Wild Nights Are My Glory!” No I am not over the rain or the weather. It makes me feel alive. It makes me feel brave and determined and willful. Riding my bike in pouring rain makes me laugh and grin and sing loudly because I am just so happy I get to be out in it. I get to do this. I get to be here. I… do want some waterproof trousers though. I feel a bit awkward sitting places with a soaked bottom.

I love this city of immigrants. I may be in Scotland, but a fair number of people here were not born here. Hm. Ok, I can only find data showing 7.7% of this city was born outside of the UK. A lot of the folks living here are not from Inverness, the city has doubled in ten years and that’s not because of birth rate, but they are not all international migrants. Lots of them are UK internal migrants. The city feels alive and growing. I love that most people I ask tell me their immigrant story and they tell it with great pride. When I find the rare Invernesian who was born here I tell them, “Do you know how lucky you are that you got to be born here?” They always laugh and ask me why. When I start telling them why this is my favorite city in the world the response is always, “Wow–I’ve never thought about it like that. I’ve always just wanted to complain.”

I think about it like that.

I feel lucky to be here, even with the hiccups. Even with the complications. Even with the things that are hard and aren’t going to get easier any time soon.

Life is not easy anywhere, not for anyone. Not really. Life is suffering. Life is a trial and full of tribulations. Life hurts. Life will insult you and knock you down and cause you pain.

But at least here I get water and wonderful walks up the hill where I get to come down and see a glorious hillside so beautiful that I know I am going to paint picture after picture of it before I die.

I am going to be an artist here.

I remember, years ago when we were in Rotorua New Zealand we went into a little art gallery. The artist was present working as he minded the shop. He was from the US. We asked what made him end up there. He said, “I came here on vacation and I couldn’t bring myself to leave.”

I understand, man. I understand.

I love the fog here. I love the cold, crisp air. I love that I am winterizing my garden for the first G-D time in my life. It’s fun. It’s an adventure.

I’m exhausted to the marrow of my bones. I want to do more and I really really need to do less. Noah commented that maybe we should have moved to Edinburgh, there would be more services there like therapists and specialist doctors.

No. I will learn how to manage my mental health here. I have never had solutions for my medical problems, I am just grateful that now I have names for them so I can find peace in my heart with knowing that “Yup. This is a problem. It exists. I’m not making it up. It sucks. Yup. Moving along.”

I don’t want to be in a bigger city. Maybe in 20 years when this city has grown too big for me I will want to move out to an island so I can run from people again. Who knows.

Who knows what the future will bring. Who knows what identities I will get to create. Who knows how I will spend my time or how much functionality my body will still have. I guess we’ll see.

My accent will continue to drift. I will always be a Californian. But I drop a Southern drawl into conversations when it feels fitting. I can pull up a few words that sound Australian. I can confuse people with whether or not I am Canadian, apparently. I’m sure I will pick up Scottish phrasing too.

And all of it will be me. It will never sound like just one thing. I will always be more than one thing. I will always contain multitudes. I will always be influenced by all those dead white guys writing about their walks in the woods.

People keep asking me if I have a job. I say, “Well I do a lot of work. I’m a writer and an artist and a mother of three who is overly fastidious about house work. I garden and read and try to learn as much as I can about a great many subjects. I don’t have a job, but I do have many vocations and I am lucky enough to have a partner who supports me.” Sometimes if I am feeling cheeky I say that I don’t have a job I am a burden on my partner.

My ridiculous partner who thinks of himself as a failure because he is not in the top 1% of absolutely everything he ever tries and does. We match. I know why he worries about money. I am not worried about money. I think we have all the money we require for 2020 in the bank. I think we have most of 2021’s necessary money too. I think that by the end of this contract 2021 will be covered. So in 2020 he will be trying to earn 2022’s income. I’m not worried. Cause for one thing, the bank shares payment we get for 2019 and 2020 and 2021 is probably actually enough to pay for 2022 just on its own. So really he’s shooting for earning more like 2023’s income in 2020.

We will be fine. Yes, yes we should invest some of it which makes the math look different but good grief. That’s not even touching the bank account with US dollars sitting in it (probably another year of run money) nor any investments. We’ll be fine.

That’s what we do. We make things work out. We are tremendously lucky. Noah was born on third base. I have a natural ability with budgeting and saving. We also both work like dogs. We’ll be fine.

That’s one piece of the work I do: I manage a pretty obscene amount of money. We are looking into all of the moving pieces involved in US citizens investing in the UK. We have a bank advisor and a lawyer and an accountant (two accountants, really–including a US one who used to work for the IRS on international tax returns). This shit is complicated. No advice, please. I’m already paying for the advice of quite a few experts.

The amount of money we manage is work and sometimes I feel fussed about how many layers there are… but I’m not afraid we won’t be ok. I am genuinely not. If we took out $50,000/year from investments and didn’t earn another penny we would have at least 20 years of run rate and that’s not even right because things would still grow in the meantime and the bank shares would still come and… We aren’t going to touch the investments for a long while. When we do we will have enough to get old with. We will be fine.

You have taken care of me, Noah. Someday it will be my turn to say, “See what I have done. You are safe forever.” And when we die all the money that is left can be paid forward into the world. I’m not hoarding it for my kids. Sorrynotsorry, kids.

I only had one grandparent who made it into their 80’s. I only had one great grandparent who lived into their 70’s. I am not from a long lived clan. I don’t need another 60 years of run money.

It’s weird to think about. How long do we really have left?

Long enough. And I’ll get to hold Noah’s hand the whole time.