The emotional fall out might be worse.

 The lack of distractions means I am alone with my thoughts. This is not pleasant. I have been feeling terrified that my parents are going to show up and make my life a living hell for daring to 'abandon' them and 'the family'. I have been having a lot of traumatic stuff coming up over the last few days and some weird nightmares (despite my medication to make it where the nightmares don't happen). I should probably be writing more about this in my therapy journal but I'm afraid to write it down in there because the kid part of me insists that my writings are going to be found and used against me. Because that was a thing that Mom did. She'd rifle through my room and go through my journal. When I had a locking journal, she picked the lock to read it. As such, I didn't use it very much. I hid my notebooks among my school stuff, in weird places around the room, and literally between the mattress and box spring of my bed.

I got beaten for writing 'lies' when I initially started keeping a journal in third grade. I was writing down things that happened in my daily life. Including stuff about the beatings and the psychological abuse. Mom took that journal and threw it on the burn pile, telling me that she was going to burn everything I've ever written or was going to write if I wrote 'lies' again. I stopped writing and focused on sketching from third grade to fifth grade. My parents mocked me about my dream of being an author or they would tell me what kind of author I should be. It became apparent that I had some talent for writing in middle school when I made the honor roll. Suddenly, they backed off on mocking me and started talking about what I should publish.

High school came along and I wrote my first novel. My parents told me to pitch it to a predatory press that required a fee for submission and such. It was the first thing they saw and they seized on it as an opportunity to make money. They saw my prodigious writing as a chance to make some easy money. After all, they weren't doing the work. Mom planned on managing my writing career, giving me a line of bullshit about how I needed a buisness degree to make it anywhere in writing. She tried to push me to write children's lit, which is not my strong suit. At one point she threatened to revoke my access to the computer if I didn't write what she wanted me to. In a rare show of boldness against her, I said, "Fine, I'll get a typewriter from Grandma and do it the old fashioned way." And Mom knew that my grandmother would happily loan me a typewriter.

Mom still rifled through my stuff in high school. She successfully found one of my journals in the midst of a pile of poetry notebooks. She screamed at me but didn't burn it. By then, they didn't have a burn pile going and the physical abuse had stopped. All she really had was psychological torture to use on me and in that particular instance, I just spaced out and the screaming was just noise at a distance. Being able to dissociate at will was a survival mechanism. 

I was raised in a household with a weird cult like organization. My place was always at the bottom of the social ladder. At the same time, if my parents were fighting, I had to ferry messages between them and get in trouble for meddling at the same time. I was taught that I was essentially subhuman and a blight upon the family line because I was born female. And yet, I was expected to uphold the 'honor' of the family where as no such expectations were placed on my brothers. I was expected to be silent until spoken to. I was expected to keep my opinions on anything to myself until I was asked them (which rarely happened). I was expected to keep the house clean and do the lion's share of the chores whereas my brothers were assigned chores and could slack off. I was frequently doing my brothers' work. Mom would give the room a white glove test to make sure there wasn't a speck of dust anywhere. If she didn't approve of the job done, I had to clean everything all over again.

I was regularly told that I wasn't going to find a husband because I was a "poor housekeeper and a bad cook." I was regularly told that "they" didn't actually care about me and that the only people who cared and loved me was my family. They didn't love-bomb me as much as they treated me like a person from time to time instead of like a bit of unwanted furniature. For the formative years of my life, this was what I got. When I started dating N- my parents decided that he was a good prospect for me because he was going right from high school into the military. They were indifferent when I broke things off with him, deciding that I was going to be marrying someone else that they could count on having enough surplus funds to take care of them. I was their retirement plan. I didn't realize that until Beloved came into the picture and they hated him. Mom regularly was telling me about wealthy men she had contact with via her job in phone sales who were looking for a wife who could cook. She was shopping around for a husband for me. She kept telling me that Beloved wasn't good enough for me and that he didn't really care for me.

I knew the truth. Beloved and I had loved each other for a long time before we started dating. I knew he wasn't going to cheat on me or abandon me. I knew that if by some happenstance I wound up pregnant, he'd step up and be a father for our children. My mother all but called me a whore when Beloved and I began to have a physically intimate relationship. She threatened to throw me out of the house but my father, in a rare moment of sanity, stopped her. All through out the time I was in contact with my parents, my mother had hyper-critical things about my marriage, how I was raising my children, and that I "settled". The evening before my wedding, she said that I would have been better off marrying N- because she was sure that he had, by then, secured an officer's position and we'd have a fancy military wedding. I had an immediate gibbering panic attack over the mere thought of N-. Mom called Beloved over with the statement, "I've never seen her like this before."

I think the only reason why she didn't smack me across the face to make me 'snap out of it' was because the wedding was the next day and the handprint would still be obvious despite the makeup. That was her approach to mental health issues. My father called them weakness of character and that they were all made up because the person wanted attention. Beloved had seen me have panic attacks, he had talked me out of them plenty of times. He had me calmed down in about 5 minutes. Mom realized then that there was no way for her to talk me out of marrying him.

She denied the prospect that the marriage was the union of two families into one with the comment "This isn't a marrying of clans." She wore black to my wedding and tried to upstage me with her form fitting rhinestone off the rack evening gown. And even after the wedding, she mentioned these wealthy men she knew were looking for wives. Basically telling me to divorce Beloved and marry for the money so that they could be taken care of in their 'golden years'. It was part of the reason why I stopped talking to her.

Now, I have the stuff from my early childhood and the cult like mentality that "family is everything" going through my head. And the implication that the family that I was born into was my real family and the family that I have with my husband is just "playing house" keeps troubling me. I find myself afraid that they're going to show up and physically force me to leave with them and make me stay at the farm. I find myself afraid, again, that my days are full of delusion and that I am actually still living on the farm as a kid. And I have the massive guilt rolling over me for cutting ties that I have broken frith with my ancestors and my descendants by walking away from them. I know logically that they wouldn't want me to go back to someone who hurts me deliberately and would be a danger for my children. Emoitonally, I am petrified that they're going to rip me out of my life and make me their chattle again.

People read stories and are titilated by the details of things like a submissive person getting a funishment of kneeling on rice for a while until it gets uncomfortable. I have an indifferent reaction to it because I lived that. My mother dumped part of a jar of rice on the floor and had me pick it up by hand, whilst kneeling in it. I was seven and it was in the middle of the summer. When I got done, my knees were killing me and I had imprints of rice on them. I wasn't allowed to use a broom and a dust pan and for some reason, my mother decided that it was my fault that she spilled the rice because I 'surprised her' by walking into the room. They read stories and get titilated by the details of a switching but I've experienced that and am indifferent. Almost all of the 'torture' scenes from Kushiel's Dart, I experienced. There was no titilation for me. Just, a mental commentary on how well written it was and how close to reality it came. The joke about drill sergeants making recruits scrub things with their own toothbrush wasn't a joke in my case. My mother decided that I hadn't adequately cleaned the bathroom and made me scrub the toilet with my toothbrush and a paste of baking soda. My father found me sobbing and had me stop, got me a new toothbrush to use for myself and threw the old one away. It had only been about two hours.

Sorry for the rambling here. I'm just typing things out as they go through my head. I should really be writing this in my therapy journal. Gods help me, I'm terrified right now. I've projects to work on that I'm afraid to because of the lies that my parents told me about what the results of said projects would be for me. They said that if I wrote anything about the occult that people would come and assault my family and lynch me. They said that if I wrote about anything religious, the same thing would happen. I've the beginnings of a career writing about religious and occult topics. Nothing horrible has happened to me. At the same time, however, the stories they told me to scare me off of those topics are ringing in my head. And I'm somewhat paralysed from my emotions to be working on my housework because I'm afraid that it's not going to be good enough and Beloved is going to leave me for it.

I'm a bit of a mess right now.

Please tell me it's not Monday.

 I started my day off literally running face first into a wall. No concussion or anything major, but I feel quite uncomfortable. I have really bad night vision and I am now waking up before the sun in a room with no windows (due to bad planning when they converted this building into apartments). I suppose it was just a matter of time that I had it happen, but I am frustrated.

 I didn't sleep well last night. I had dreams of watching the police brutalize a peaceful protestor who was sitting on the grassy median on some highway holding a sign that read, "No justice, no peace. Know justice, know peace." I was screaming at them to stop as they beat this man who wasn't hurting anyone. I woke up with the screaming in my throat waiting to come out. That was around 2am this morning.

I did not know the extent of the wild fires out west until this morning. It's terrifying, especially considering that I have some folks who are dear to me out there. As of the moment, they are safe, but I worry about them. I am afraid that between the pandemic and the wild fires, there's going to be a great deal of injury and loss of life out west. Like the instances of police violence and systemic oppression, I am helpless to do anything about it but pray.

The good news for today is that packages that Beloved and I were waiting on arrived safely. Cuddle Bear decided to take it upon himself to make lunch for him and his brother because I wasn't feeling well. He did a pretty good job. Snuggle Bug has managed to not make the kitchen a lego firewalk when he was building earlier. And when a box of legos fell over, he picked it up like it was no big deal.

I feel rotten right now and I'm trying not to let on to that fact around the kids. They, however, have noticed that I don't feel well. Hence my eldest deciding to make lunch and the kids attempting to independently manage the digital learning stuff they were doing this morning on their own. The digital learning was a mixed bag situation. One of the boys (Snuggle Bug) had problems with the Zoom meeting where it just wasn't going to let him into his class. It kept saying it was trying to connect and then nothing happened. Fortunately, Cuddle Bear was in the same meeting with the teacher and communicated what the problem was. So, Snuggle Bug wasn't counted as absent, but the problem with getting into class meetings persisted. We're guessing it was something internet related and hoping that tomorrow goes better.

I am feeling somewhat distraught about some bodily issues I have going on related to perimenopause. The doctor has ordered some blood work and next week I get to go have an ultrasound to make sure there are no abnormalities with my uterus. I'm experiencing more aggressive perimenopause symptoms than most women my age. The distressing part is how it is impacting my ability to have sex. I have a high pain tolerance and I do have some kinks involving masochism but the pain after we've accidentally gone too far or pushed things a little too hard, that sucks and reminds me of horrible things at random moments. Yay ptsd. (It can die in a fire.)

Monday Menu week of Sept. 7, 2020

 So, I got my ducks in a row and I actually got a menu made. Then I discovered that I had forgotten key items on the shopping list. Quick trip to the small grocery store just up the road and Monday's dinner has changed. The rest of the menu remained the same. Again, I haven't the spoons for making a table, so this is going to be a list.

Monday 
Breakfast: French toast sticks / oatmeal w/ an egg
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner Burgers Pulled pork w/ fries

Tuesday
Breakfast: French toast sticks / oatmeal w/ an egg
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner: Tacos

Wednesday
Breakfast: Donuts / oatmeal w/ an egg
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner: Pad thai w/ chicken

Thursday
Breakfast: Donuts / oatmeal w/ an egg
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner: Chicken korma w/ "rice"

Friday
Breakfast: Cereal
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner: Fish, chucken nuggets, fries & salad

Saturday
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs w/ toast & bacon
Lunch: Sandwiches
Dinner: Chili & biscuits

Another Black Man Murdered

 In a city north of us, a black man was murdered by police. It was covered up by the city officials. The details about the murder was brought to public light by the family of the deceased. Now there are protests happening. There was one last night. The people were peaceable but approaching the barrier that was set up around the public safety building where they were protesting. What did the police do? They shot pepper balls into the crowd.

There's another protest today. Tension is high as the mayor's made a statement that was patent bullshit and the seven officers who were involved were put on leave. I'm furious. The mayor said that when she was made aware of the murder that she was using her 'legal mind' instead of thinking about it 'as a mother or a sister.' I'm sorry, but if your 'legal mind' says that covering up a man's death at the hands of law enforcement officers, you're complicit in that death. If you don't immediately get suspicious when you're told that a person who died under police watch died of an "overdose" then you are not doing your job. Too many police brutality deaths have been attributed to "overdose" that it's laughable (as in laugh so that you're not screaming).

If I could go join the protest, I would. But there's a problem. The government is responding to peaceable protestors with violence. If they decided to drop tear-gas on the crowd and I was in it, I'd quite likely have an asthma attack, a potentially fatal one. If you can't exercise your right to peaceably assemble and demand redress of grievances, you don't have that right anymore. They've taken it away. Just like they took away that black man's right to due process by suffocating him.

When you strap on a badge and a gun, your duty is to protect and serve the community. That includes the safety of the people you arrest. That includes the safety of the people who are yelling rude things at you. If you can't handle people yelling at you, you shouldn't be in this line of work. You sure as hell can't be trusted with lethal force if you lack the self control to restrain yourself from applying it egregiously. Police officers are charged with keeping the peace. That doesn't include murdering black and brown people. That doesn't include harassing black and brown people. And that sure as hell doesn't include assaulting the people who protest your abuse of power.

"Blue lives matter" is bullshit. It's racist. You can choose to be a cop. You can't choose your skin color. No one deserves to die because they're not white enough for your tastes.

It is done.

 I bit the bullet and dropped all but one aunt and my nieces from my FB list. I'm still in passing phone contact with another aunt but I expect nothing to come of it. She's more interested in her son's wedding. I'm not going to blame here, it's a big event. But to only contact me to say that there's a wedding and then later that the wedding has been postponed in the course of 16 years, that's pretty clear that there isn't any real desire to talk to me.

My anxiety has been high over the last three days as I struggled with the decision. Now that I've made it, I thought that I'd have some kind of feeling of peace or catharsis. My anxiety remains high. I find myself expecting my Mom to show up on my door step to scream at me about how I've abandoned the family. But, honestly, the phone works both ways. I've been eyeballs deep in home schooling / distance learning with the kids since March. Before the pandemic set in, they could have called me to let me know that they were doing things. The burden of contact, however, has always remained on me.

I've got better things to do than chase around toxic people and try to court their good favor. I'm sure that I made the right decision. At the same time, I feel tremendous guilt and anxiety. I know that it is the programming from how I was raised. I was taught that family was everything, and the only family that mattered were my blood relations. I was taught that I was nothing if I wasn't placed in context of my parents' household dynamic. I was treated like chattle and when it became clear that I had some skill and talent for writing they tried to take that over and make me do what they thought was the most profitable. They all but disowned me at the wedding. My parents are not good people. And they've only gotten worse since my paternal grandparents died.

On my mother's side, the guilt trips from my grandmother are frequent and she loves to paint her daughter as the martyr. I got sick of that, so I stopped writing her letters or calling. The social pressure from my maternal relatives to "forgive and make up" with my parents is strong. And I just can't do it. They keep hurting me. Given a chance, they'd hurt my children. So, I cut off ties with them. I have literally nothing in common with my maternal side of the family but genetics. So, now, I suppose I am officially an adult orphan by choice.

I am not going to allow the cycle of abuse to continue. I have stepped away from them to prevent it. I'm struggling with having made that choice because I was basically raised with a cult mindset that the family was everything and that I had to prove myself worthy to be family and please my parents. But they changed the rules on me (and my brothers) everytime we accomplished something. Once, I thought my father was an honest man. But, looking at his pattern of behavior, he's a poor man who aspires to be a grifter like Donald Trump with out the work of the hustle to do it. My mother's a narcissist and either a sociopath or psychopath. I'm not sure which term fits best for someone who would hold their three year old kid out over a three story drop and scream at them to behave with the impled threat that they were going to kill them if they didn't. Shit like that didn't happen once or twice. It was on a daily basis.

The trauma is such that I struggle to remember things from my early childhood up to the beginning of junior high. Most people have some kind of memories of elementary school. Mine are a patchwork of bullying that happened on the bus and abuse that happened in the home. And I'm the one who remembers those years. My father asked me at one point in time if they beat us. I lied and said I didn't remember. He doesn't remember those years, but as I work through therapy and do my writing exercises, more comes clear and it's just all ugly. I have a quarter of my life that I don't remember clearly and that disturbs me on a fundamental level. 

The psychologist who evaluated me at one point said that I had trauma equivalent to combat veterans. He expressed amazement that I was semi-functional. I replied that I had no choice. A therapist expressed astonishment at the abbreviated description of the horrors I have lived through. She asked me how I got through it. My answer was simple: I don't die. That grim, battlefield mentality has carried me through a lot of shit. It will get me through whatever fall out comes from cutting off everyone. Keep your shield up and push forward, eventually you'll grind your foes under your heels.

Cutting ties, unraveling the past.

 I've been struggling for the last week as to if I should cut ties with my Mom's side of the family. The ties that are there are limited. We view each others FB activity but don't interact. It's litereally been decades since I've had face to face interaction with any of them. What little interaction I have had is usually some form of a guilt trip for not talking to my parents. It's painful when I have them telling me that I am acting like a child. I know that it is out of ignorance as to my reasons why I have broken contact with my parents. I don't like to talk about the brutality that I grew up with. I know that I don't owe anyone any explanation for why I have made my decision to cut all contact with my parents. And yet, to make these relatives to stop guilt tripping me, I would have to drag up all the old wounds. Doing so would hurt and I would be at the risk of them justifying my parents' behavior as necessary or saying that I was overreacting because they were raised by parents who were equally brutal.

At the same time, I can not live this lie anymore. I don't have a loving and supportive family in my family of birth anymore. The people who were loving and supportive are all dead save for one or two. The living members stand for things that would see people like me punished under color of law. An uncle once said that my choice of religion made me as bad as a pedophile and that they'd call child protective services on me. My brothers' both treat me like a piece of furniture that happens to be in the way when we're in the same room. Aside from that they fully support the eugenics policies of  people like Donald Trump. Therefore they feel that anyone with mental illness or some form of defect should be killed because they're a "drain" on society. This attitude is encouraged and supported by my parents.

They believe that Covid-19 is a government conspiracy. They believe that Black Lives Matter is all about rioting and destroying property (which they arroganty believe is owned by white people). They believe the conspiracy theories about how wealthy people (read wealthy Jews) are keeping the money from the working class. At the same time, they look at Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump as examples of what a 'real' millionare should be like and claim that they're beyond reproach. Especially Donald Trump. My father's been an acolyte of Donald Trump since the 1980s. I have loathed Donald Trump since the 1980s.

In all of this, my mother's side of the family is absent. Occasionally presents were sent up. But, I came to realize early on that they're trying to purchase affection and loyalty. I had something of a relationship with my maternal grandparents for a while. When I cut ties with my parents, the guilt trips came constantly. So, I went no contact with them. I tried at one point to be a part of their lives (my grandparents) but it was always one-way contact. I had to play court to their good favor to get a reply. I had to stroke egos to get favorable responses. I know now where my Mom learned to play that game.

So, I am in a way becoming an adult orphan by choice. I didn't have it happen that my parents disowned me, as happened to my nieces. Which I will never forgive my brothers for, becaues they were disowned due to the fact that they were not born male. But I might as well have been disowned. My parents told me that my brother should have been born first. My parents told me that I was a failed abortion. My parents told me that I was inferior because I was female (somehow this didn't apply to my mother, just me). My parents told me that I was their problem child and assumed that I was on drugs. They denied me privacy (telling me that privacy was a prvilege but giving me hell if I interrupted my brothers with anything). One time, they took the door off of my room because they were mad at me for not allowing them in when they wanted in. (And my reason for not allowing them in was because I was changing clothes, but this didn't matter becuse my room was the only passway to their room at the back of the house on that floor.)

I was raised with this cultish belief that family is everything. I was raised with this attitude that the honor of the family (going back generations) depended on my actions. I was raised with conflicting messages about what it meant to be a woman but the default messages beneath them was that I was to be submissive, subservient, and my value only mattered on what I could do for others/produce. I was a commodity. I was chattel. My parents saw me as a potential meal ticket when it became apparent that I had some talent for writing.

My parents saw me as a potential meal ticket with my first boyfriend (the abusive bastard) going into the navy. They envisioned him rising in rank and getting a nice fat check that we would be obligated to provide for them in their retirement. As I went off to college, they had similar designs upon my future hoping I was going to leave Beloved for a wealthy doctor or some lawyer. I didn't and they did just about everything they could to sabotage my relationship with Beloved. My parents never invested in savings for retirement. They were always chasing the next scheme that was supposed to make them rich. They took the money that was held in trust for me to go to college and spent it on gods only know what, but when it was time for me to go to college they said the money was gone.

When I graduated college, they called me a failed investment becauese I didn't get a big ticket job right out the gate. They called me a failure because I wasn't working the jobs they thought I should be. They thought temp agency jobs were beneath me. They thought that retail jobs were beneath me. When I got sick and I lost my job at the call center, they threw me out of the house because I wasn't providing enough support for the household. Mind you, there was no discussion of rent. I was paying for my own food. I was doing chores around the house when I wasn't at work (where others were not, I basically went to work and came home to clean house for them). So, when I got sick enough that I couldn't work, they threw me out.

It was for the grace of my paternal grandparents that I had an apartment to live in down in the southerntier. My parents were angry and after my case because I wasn't paying rent to my grandparents and I wasn't paying all of the bills for the apartment. I was barely working and still sick. I had a job at a farm supply store that was half-time. My parents shamed me for getting food stamps (despite the fact that they had been on food stamps for a period of time themselves). My parents shamed me for everything the could think of when they randomly showed up at that apartment. Including the curtains that they said marked my apartment as the residence of a whore.

They had the audacity to sabotage my wedding plans. The wedding I got was not the wedding I wanted, it was the one that they wanted. They told me that it wasn't about me and I had to stop being so selfish. They loved to tell me that I was selfish when ever I stood up for myself and demanded that my concerns be considered. They loved to tell me that I was selfish when I took time to attend to my own needs. And when I got sick, they blamed me for it. It didn't matter why I got sick. It was always "if you only drank more water and got more exercise this wouldn't have happened." I was told that when I had to have surgery for an ovarian cyst. I was told that when I had to have an appendictomy. I was told that when it came to my mental illness. I was told that when I had problems with preeclampsia with both my pregnancies. And I was shamed for having a c-section for both pregnancies. I was shamed for my getting an epidural for my first pregnancy. And my mother threatened me with violence if I screamed while I was in labor with my second child. 

Thus, she wasn't there when it happened. Not too long after Snuggle Bug and I came home from the hospital, Mom showed up and wanted to 'talk' about our relationship. She went into a rambling tirade that ended with a threat to burn down the house that my nieces lived in regardless if they were there or not. I couldn't sleep that night. It was 3 in the morning when I sent an email to my father about this. When I got back was "sometimes parents say what they need to say in a way you don't like." He backed her up on the threat against the lives of their grandchildren. At which point I sent a return email stating that if anything happened to any of my nieces and I had reason to suspect they were part of it I was sending the emails to the police.

The next day, they showed up on my door step. I didn't let them in. I hid in the bedroom with the children and prayed that they'd go away. Cue 5 years of no contact with them or the rest of my father's side of the family (with the exception of my grandparents). Then Grandpa got cancer and I was there for the family. Which consisted of reestablishing the treatment like unwanted furntiature for the sake of my grandparents. When my Grandma died, I walked away. Now, I'm getting ready to walk away from my mother's side of the family because we literally have nothing in common but blood. And that didn't make a very big difference to them in the past. I don't think it's going to matter going forward.

I invited my cousins to my wedding. And I find out after the fact that they got married. I sent letters to relations about how my family was doing. I was like dropping them into a black hole except for the occasional letter back from my maternal grandmother about how I was acting like a spoilt child and an ingrate. With a dash of "you parent's aren't well and they want to see you." Well, they know where I live. My phone number hasn't changed in the past 16 years. I know they have it. My email address hasn't changed. I know they have it. They're playing a game of chicken. They want me to blink first and come back to be the victim of their misogyny and the one who bears all the blame for their fuck ups.

I'm sorry, but I can't do that. I've got my own life to live. I've got children to raise and a marriage to keep. You were so sure my brothers could do no wrong. You were so convinced that I was the problem child. And where do we stand now? My brothers are living with you. Neither of them are employed. One has abandoned his family and is an alcoholic. The other has just disowned his daughter for asking him to walk her down the aisle at her wedding. And then there's me. Your problem child daughter.

I've been married for 16 years as of next friday. We have two healthy children who aren't terrified to be themselves and are, yet, still well mannered and well behaved. I have a college degree from a prestigeous college. I had built up the beginnings of a career in teaching before I became disabled and unable to continue that career. I am working on a career as an author despite my disability. I have over seven books to my name. I am working on a part time job as a tarot reader where I make enough money to cover the investment needed in my writing career.

I'm not the failure here. I am successful beyond my wildest dreams because I have accomplished my goals. So, I'm cutting ties that no longer serve my health and well being.

American Apartheid

 I gave a brief Twitter thread on this. I feel that it needs to be addressed more fully. I grew up in a small town in WNY. This is a state considered to be Blue and liberal. We're not as progressive as you want to think. We're not as bad as some other areas, but things aren't good. We'll put aside the town folks versus the farm folks. Because that was a thing. In the school I went to the sum total population of students who were people of color could be counted on one hand with fingers leftover.

They were treated differently than their white peers. It was assumed by many people because they were persons of color they weren't as smart as their classmates. It was assumed that the tall fellow was going to be the school basketball star. (He was indifferent to sports and more of a practical joker.) They were always regarded with suspicion by their peers. Rumors flew that they were drug dealers and that they carried weapons to school hidden on their person.

Then an exchange student from South Africa arrived. Everyone wanted to impress him. They put on their 'company manners' and began treating the black students a bit better. As soon as the fascinating and exotic exchange student left, they went back to their racist garbage. On the rare occasion there was a physical altercation, it was assumed that the black student started it. The fetishization of the exchange student was disgusting. The popular kids clique tried to get him to like them but he preferred to mingle among the entire student population. They warned him that the black students were trouble. He ignored them and reguarly spent time talking with them. I think that is where he went from being somewhat gregarious towards everyone to slectively being polite to some and actually friendly towards others in the school (like the weirdos).

The events of September 11, 2001 happened and the racism came out in full force against the black students. Ones with names that sounded vaguely Arabic were openly called 'sand niggers' and accused of being supporters of the Taliban. Ones who didn't have Arabic sounding names got the same treatment. There was verbal and physical harassment. This all happened in a small town that was supposedly one of the better places in the county because it was home to a SUNY campus. Social pressures in that town pushed people of color to form their own groups out of a need to have safety in numbers. It didn't just happen among the kids in the high school, it happened every where.

If you were at a diner and the majority of the population in the diner was white (which it typically was) a black person would come in and a bubble of silence and suspicion would follow them as they moved through the building. It didn't matter if it was an employee coming to work or if it was a customer. All people of color were regarded with suspicion.  I remember working for a time at a farm supply store in the area. I was told to regard the Hispanic customers with suspicion because they'd try to get goods for free or would supposedly reach into the till if I had my back turned. Migrant workers from the farms around the town were treated like prospective criminals. I refused to participate in that garbage.

The people who were the problem customers were never the Hispanic customers. It was the young gun white farm boys who thought they could flirt/intimidate me into giving them a 'deal.' It was the middle aged white customers who said sexually harassing comments at me. Never did I have a single problem with harassment from people of color. 

Years later, I lived in a different town. All that racism was right on display. They called the gas station owned by a Pakistani immigrant "the Hindu Hut" and spread rumors about how dishonest they were in their buisness dealings. When a Hispanic owned and operated restaraunt opened up in the next town over, rumors went flying that they were staffed with illegal immigrants, paying everyone under the table, and serving food that went against health code regulations. I have neighbors that fling around the word 'nigger' when talking about anyone with more color to their skin than they have. There are a small legion of people who embrace the confederate flag as their 'heritage' and are very vocal about how black people don't belong in their community because they shouldn't bring their crack addict friends and their drug deals into the community. They say that they should stay up in the 'ghetto' where they 'belong'. 

And this is in western New York, which is supposedly a place where you can life a life of opportunity regardless of your skin color. They say that segregation ended with the civil rights movement. That's not true, it just became more subtle. They say that discrimination against people of color ended with the civil rights movement. That's not true. They'll come up with bullshit reasons to refuse to give you a job or just throw your resume right in the trash. I've watched it in action as I was working in retail and people who were of color applied for work. They want people of color to 'know their place' and that place is supposed to be at the bottom of the social ladder.

I didn't meet my first person of color teacher until I was at college. I didn't meet my first person of color administrator or person of official authority until I went to college out of state in a big city. There's lots of smart and well educated people of color who could be working in education but all too often discrimination regulates them to menial labor. That's just one area of many where I have seen discrimination in action. We are not half so enlightened as we would like to claim we are.

People want to lionize Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. while at the same time sanitizing him and whitewashing his message. They want to up hold him as the peaceful protestor who became a martyr. They forget that he said "Riots are the language of the unheard." People say that the riots that happen around now are because people are bored from being under the confines of COVID-19. No, that's not why it's happening. It's happening because they are being systemically murdered under the color of law becaue of the color of their skin. It's happening because they are being systemically denied justice because of the color of their skin. It's happening because they live in constant threat of their lives and livelihood because of the color of their skin.

No one should die because of the color of their skin. No one should have to justify why they need to stay alive. There is no meritocracy that says the more good deeds you do, the more you are allowed to live. Black Lives Matter is a human rights issue. I, for one, support the movement and regret that I can not do more for them.

Seasonal affective disorder, bipolar, and ptsd super team of suck.

 I haven't been well over the last few months. The high stress levels that go with distance learning and the uncertainty of school beginning has me somewhat frayed. I've been steadily getting more depressed since the Summer Solstice. It has me considering, seriously, getting out my lamp and using it in the half hour in the morning that I don't have that morning sunlight when I get up. And possibly for a while in the evening. I don't know what the best way to approach this, but I'm thinking light therapy may be helpful even though it isn't even really where it's dark around 6pm.

My mood cycling hasn't been great. I was a bit mixed for a few days and then back down into depressed. When I was mixed, I was cranky and restless. I haven't had a full blown manic episode. I'm glad for that. But I do kinda miss the energy that I had during the hypomanic episodes. The Vraylar that I take for my bipolar has evened everything out and I'm low key depressed most of the time now. It' just there in the background and I don't think it will go away. Or at least, it won't improve until the crisis of Covid-19 has passed. 

I'm exhausted from operating in crisis mode all the time. My brain says that the air is lava and I'm reluctant to go outside because of it. I'm afraid to send my kids back to school in a few weeks but I just don't have the capacity to keep doing the distance learning. I feel really bad that I don't have that capacity. Undeneath the layers of trauma and illness, I have the school teacher in me screaming to get out and help my kids. But I'm so tired and it's so hard to focus for extended periods. Add to this that the kids have two very different levels of educational needs that I would have to rapid switch between to make sure they're getting the help they need, and, well, I just can't do it anymore.

I've been having problems perseverating on the general bastardry of some of my relative. I catch myself having mental arguments with them despite the fact that I'm never going to speak to them again. I'm also full of grief over the fact that their toxic behavior has denied me the luxury of having a healthy relationship with them. I am getting super anxious posting on FB because of other relatives, whom I know talk to the ones I've cut off. These other relatives haven't contributed anything of meaning to my life in the last ten years, if not longer. Still, a part of me says I shouldn't cut that tie because they're my family.

I know that if I reveal the ugly secrets about the household I was raised in, they'd try to explain it away or they'd go back to my parents and tell them what I was saying. At which point my parents would do something stupid, like show up at my apartment to start a fight. The trauma of my upbringing would be a bit easier to bear if it weren't for the fact that I regularly find myself in a position where I have to bite my tongue and play nice with "company manners". It is emotionally like going to family gatherings where there's trouble brewing just beneath the surface and no one is going to acknowledge it but they're going to pick at each other to try and make someone the bad guy and the 'trouble' can be their fault.

I catch myself walking on egg shells again. It's got me edgy and anxious. I'm doing my best to manage it but that coaping mechanism of shutting down and being a ghost keeps popping up. I am tired. I'm stressed out. I find myself wanting a cigarette despite the fact that I haven't smoked in almost twenty years. I know I can't do it. Aside from the fact that it's a money pit that has no returns, I'm asthmatic and smoking would be really bad for me. Not to mention, I'm not sure how it would interact with the laundry list of medications I am on. I find myself wanting to drink. Not because I'm an alcoholic but because I miss the taste of whiskey and the sensation of drinking it. It was an occasional treat that I really enjoyed. But now, again, because of the laundry list of medications, I can't do that.

It's really hard to allow myself to do the things that I enjoy like my embroidery. I'd have that tapestry mostly finished by now if it weren't for the fact that I feel like I haven't earned the privilege of doing so. It's all the stuff from how I was raised coming back to the fore. And that's because I've been isolated for months and it's bringing up memories of the isolation I grew up in. I'm frayed a bit and my hot buttons for anger are getting more exposed despite my efforts to cover them up. It's just hard because I feel like I should go get into these fights but doing that would damage other relationships and have a negative net return. In part because these people don't take me seriously and just think I'm a "nice, quiet" person.

Fiber Fluff Ramblings.

 I have officially begun my holiday knitting. My MiL asked for another nice scrubby washcloth. So I'm making her one that matches her bathroom. I think I have the right shade of red. I'm going to try to make two, if I have enough yarn. It's left over yarn from the red section of the Monstrosity. I have not done any work on the Monstrosity because the weather's been too warm and I'm at a point where the whole thing has to sit on my lap to be worked on. That is enough to be stifling, even with a box under it to lift the thing up a little so there can be airflow going about under the project.

I am in the progress of trying to decide what I'm going to make for the boys. They are in obvious need of longer scarves. I'm half tempted to do what I swore off of doing and making another illusion knit scarf. This time in the school colors with a paw print on it. Right now, they each have a scarf in school colors that from a self-striping yarn that worked up with big blocks of each color. The scarves, however, are beginning to get a bit short for them. The other option I am considering is making them each a pocket scarf one in blue and the other in orange. (Blue and orange are the school colors.) 

I am entirely stumped on what to make for Beloved. He's got hats, a scarf and matching fingerless gloves in his favorite color, and a random miser's purse (made from my handspun in his favorite color). I know that if I attempted socks, they wouldn't be worn. Because he wouldn't want to destroy them. Maybe I'll make him a bookmark. I do have punched paper bookmark blanks sitting around.

On the spinning front, no real progress of note has been made. I have to rearrange my spinning space. I am sitting in a chair with arms that isn't a problem if I'm using a supported spindle or a drop spindle. It is, however, making it challenging to use the kick-wheel because I can't draw out as much yarn as I'd like to at a single go with the wheel. I also need to find the grippy mat that should go beneath the kick wheel because it likes to try to get away from me as I work. I, of course, put that mat in a safe place. I've been looking for it and feeling like a fool for my difficulty in finding it.

Fiber fluff ramblings

 I've been lax in my spinning. The recent stretch of hot and humid weather really didn't encourage me to try to spin because I knew the fiber was going to stick to my hands. I gave up on the remaining half pound of the purple-blue-pink colorway because it was so felted that there were mats. I've put it aside to use as stuffing in toys or something. Now, I am working on about 8 oz of grey Alpaca. 

It's been a bit awkward going for two reasons. First is the fact that I am trying to spin at a weight heavier than what I usually do. I keep falling back into my habit of super fine, at which point the stuff drifts apart. I'm using my kick wheel and spinning it in the opposite direction than what I usually do. As a result, the yarn has less twist. This is not a bad thing if you're trying to get a fluffy yarn. It is, however, awkward because my bodily memory wants me to set it spinning counter clockwise rather than clockwise. Fortunately, the pencil roving is forgiving and I can get the weight I want relatively easily. I just have to stay focused on my spinning.

The monstrosity shawl is sitting in the project room right now because it is just been too warm for me to work on it. I've reached the point that it is large enough to cover the couch. I had initially planned on working the whole thing up in the full spectrum of colors. Now, I am stopping at green. I have no idea what I am going to do with this thing. I think it is heavy enough that blocking it may not be necessary. It is in acrylic. Ironing it to kill the yarn is going to be a tedious task but not as tedious as finishing this final triangle.

Despite telling myself I wasn't going to do it, I'm back at making washcloths. They're small and work up quickly. This makes them a good anti-anxiety projects, I guess. Beloved got me the cone of dishcloth cotton (4ply worsted weight) two weeks ago. I'm already half through it. My MiL requested I make her another acrylic wash cloth. I'm going to go stash diving later to see if I can find enough of the color I have in mind so that it matches the colors of her bathroom. I'm likely going to knit this because I have a feeling I lack enough to make a good sized washcloth out of it in crochet.

I'm having a hard time finding the motivation to work on Snuggle Bug's rainbow socks right now. I've got about half of the first toe done and I just look at it with this tremendous sense of disappointment. It's like having second sock syndrome with the first sock. Perhaps part of my problem with staying motivated to work on this and my other projects is because I'm mentally fatigued from all the effort that keeping the kids working on academics and entertained. I don't know. But, I know that I need to get back to work on some of this stuff or people are not going to have their Yule gifts. So, nose to the grindstone and all that.

Ramblings. (TMI: Lady bits stuff)

 I'm too young for this shit. I'm defnitely perimenopausal. I'm having sexual difficulties and that's being compounded by the fact that I suddenly have a rather significant sexual appetite. It wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that lubrication is a problem. When we got silicone based stuff, that helped some but we still have had incidents where I've begun bleeding in the process of things and everything has to stop. 

I can almost tolerate my hair going grey and thinning out in spots. But this business of my sex life (which was kinda on life support to begin with because I have kids, nature's most effective form of birth control) being problematic again is bullshit. It's beginning to look like I physically don't have the capacity to engage in sexual activity for the length of time it takes for me to achieve satisfaction because I injure myself somehow in the process and begin bleeding.

I have no words for how upsetting this is. It took me years of therapy and hard work to get to where I could enjoy sex. There are positions that we can't use becasue they trigger flashbacks, still. I feel like I'm damned some how to never get what I desperately want - a healthy, passionate sex life. Here I am, trauma is swept out of the way by hormones thanks to bodily changes. I feel like I can pursue sex and nothing bad is going to happen to me because of it. It's a liberating feeling. And yet, my body is failing me in this department.

I don't know if it is because everything there has become more sensitive. I don't know if it is because no matter how much lube we use it just won't be enough. I have no idea. I could theoretically bring this up with my gyno, but I don't think there's much she could say to help with that matter. I'm frustrated and sad. I feel like I'm broken, again.

Not sure what to do.

Ever since late April, I have been off of Keen. I've been busy minding the kids and falling behind on housework. The distance learning thing was a challenge but I think we made the best of it while we were working through it. Now, summer school is over and there is preparations being made for the school year to begin.

I'm honestly nervous as a cat in a rocking chair factory over the idea of sending the boys into school. At the same time, I know that I don't have the ability to keep providing educational support for them. We're in the process of acquiring masks and discussing the safety features of the different varieties we're considering. It's frustrating because they're all so different. I feel woefully underequipped to handle any of this. Some of this is my anxiety kicking me in the teeth and some of this is I'm depressed right now.

I've been contemplating attempting to do stuff on Keen again. At the same time, I'm concerned that I'm going to be neglecting responsibilities in doing so. I'm back at square one when it comes to this stuff. I theoretically have a customer base waiting for me to return. I post weekly updates on how things are going over here. I just can't get over the feeling that I am not going to do as well as I was before becasue of COVID-19 killing people's income. I have the impending sense of dread that I have been out of the loop too long and the customers who were beginning to come to me on a regular basis have found someone else to patronize. 

It doesn't help that the busy time of day is when I need to be winding down for the night and getting ready for bed. I tried staying up a bit late last night to see if I could possibly do the chat thing for a little while after dinner. I was so burnt out this morning that I was stumbling. I just can't be up for that 7pm to 12 pm window that is when they have the highest caller to advisor ratio. It robs me of my time with my husband and would completely disrupt my sleep pattern (which would be a very bad thing).

At the same time, Keen provided me something of an outlet in the midst of this COVID19 business to do something productive. It gave me a social connection. And it allowed me to make a little money off of my hobby (understatement) of tarot reading. I want to do more on Keen. And yet, I am afraid to try because I am afraid of what the results will be. I'm cautious of abusive clients (because they're out there and they'll treat you like dirt if you don't read their mind and confirm their biases). I feel bad about the pricing scheme that Keen is using because they've gone from taking about 30% of my fee to a little over 50% of it. I could switch to a different method of doing tarot for hire but I don't know the first thing about marketing. And I tend to rely on Keen to drive customers to me (though they're less effective at that than they were in the past).

I don't know what to do. I have this dreadful feeling that we're going to need extra income. I have this anxiety that we're going to need to find away to get more shelf-stable goods into the apartment before winter. I am afraid that someone is going to get sick and we're not going to be able to get the help we need. To say the least, my anxiety is running riot at the moment. This does not put me into a conducive headspace for doing tarot readings. I feel self conscous asking any of the friends I know who do readings for one because I don't know how to repay them. I feel like the days of trading a reading for a reading are behind us.

Christian Privilege is Persecution?

 There's a thing trending on Twitter right now "Christianity Will Have Power." I wrote a thirteen segement Twitter rant about it that Twitter nuked from orbit. Well, Twitter has no power here. I'm angry. I am angry as a mother of two children who are getting stealth indoctrinated into Christianity when we're not a Christian family. I'm angry as a woman who has been persecuted for her religion for two thirds of her life, upto and including physical violence against me for my beliefs. I am angry as a citizen of the United States of America where there is separation between church and state.

The last time Christianity didn't have power in the US of A was during the pre-colonial period. Since then, they've been pushing their religious agenda and persecuting people of other faiths across the continent. Some people will point at my statement as being anti-American. Hate to put it to you this way, bucko, but it's the truth. And if the truth makes me anti-American, so be it.

The last time Christianity was persecuted in earnest was during the Roman Empire. That happened right up until it became fashionable inorder to prevent slave rebellions and was made the state religion in an effort to keep the wealthy Christians in line so that the Empire didn't collapse as quickly. Christianity has a bloody history going back to the beginning of its insitution as a state religion. The Council of Nicea actively encouraged the execution and erasure of "heretical" variants of Christianity. The operations that were engaged in were so complete that historians only find fragments of the more populated groups in texts referencing the 'problems' they created. Modern Christians have no idea about the purge of non-approved Christian sects performed by the Council of Nicea.

Your bible is a political document intended to enforce the power of the early Christian church that eventually became the Catholic church. It is cherry picked from the writings of the different variant groups of Christianity that arose during the house church era (when the actual persecution was going on). Ever iteration after is a political document intended to perpetuate the views and positions of the authors of that version. There is no one true Bible. Hate to break that to you, but history says so.

As a political document that was intended to enforce an agenda of the superiority of the Church insitution (which the Roman Emperor was heavily influencing at the time it was developed, thus being supported by proxy through this document), it laid the ground work for the construction of the Catholic church. Now, some may say "what about the Eastern Orthodox and Russian Orthodox Christians?" Well, that split came with the split of the Roman Empire into two (Eastern Orthodox Christianity being centered in Byzantium and Catholic Christianity being centered in Rome). The migration of Eastern Orthodox Christianity into the region that eventually became Russia gave rise to the Russian Orthodox version of Christianity. They operate off of a political document similar to the Catholic Church's verion of the Bible, intended to support the power structure of the new overculture of Christianity.

I could continue my crash course in the history of Christianity but I digress from my point. The Evangelical Christian movement (aka the Moral Majority) have been working since at least the 1970s to turn the United States of America into a theocracic oligchary with only nominal nods to the democratic republic that it began as. Because of the blind eye turned to this movement due to the fact that so many people in the United States are nominally Christian, they missed the growth of more radical elements. This would be the Dominionist Christians. They are the equivalent to the sub-sect of Islam that seeks to see the day of judgment promised in their holy book and would wage war with the entire world until all are brought to kneel to their god. Guess what the Dominionists are seeking, the exact same thing. They're starting here in the USA because they're our homegrown branch of extremists.

Who is it that is pushing that all who claim to be Christian pledge their support *cough*fealty*cough* to the sitting president? All those Dominionist Christians. Who is encouraging them to do this? Why his orangeness himself. What is the end result of this push if they are successful? The elimination of the division of church and state. The establishment of a state religion. It won't be generic Christianity as we see it in the overculture. It will be Dominionist Christianity.

These are the people who have told me that I am equivalent to a child molester because I am a witch. These are the people who have spat on me and called me satan's whore when I was a mere 13 years old and just figuring out what the hell the word religion meant because I was raised by atheists. It is this community that practices bleach enemas on their children who have mental imparements because they were told it would 'cure' them by their pastors. They slavishly obey their pastors. They engage in child marriages to older men. Girls young as 12 are being married off to men twice their age. They engage in rehoming unruly children. They bomb women's health centers and declare that a woman has no bodily autonomy. For these people, the Republic of Gilead is an ideal, not a warning.

They wear the cloak of Christianity and claim to be persecuted for the sake of advancing their power. They wear the claim as a badge of honor. But none of them have truly been persecuted. When was the last time you heard of a megachurch getting burned down? When was the last time you learned of legislation against them practicing core elements of their faith? The claim that the COVID19 restrictions on gathering is religious oppression is bullshit. 

And yet, so many "Christians" claim they are persecuted where I cannot practice my holy rites in fear of being fined or possibly imprisoned. They claim that they're not allowed to preach their faith, but can harass me with impunity when I walk down the street. 

To Hel with Christianity if that is the Christianity that you are trying to force down my throat. I know people who practice what Jesus of Nazereth taught. That is not it. May Loki show all of you what he finds funny. May Skadi bring you the rewards for all the ill you of sown.

I am not well.

 I keep replaying scenes from the past in my head. I am working very hard to stay grounded in the present. I have music playing loudly. The kids are chattering between themselves. The sound is helping me stay focused on the moment. At the same time, I want to cry and hide. I just feel awful right now. I can almost hear my parents declaring how lazy and useless I am. (No, I am not hallucinating. It's just the memories are that strong.) I don't know what to do with myself. It's hard for me to focus right now because of all the old garbage rattling around in my head. It's exhausting and terrifying at the same time. I'm emotionally reliving what they did to me and I don't want it. There's no logical reason for this to be happening. It's been over sixteen years since I lived under their thumb.

And yet, here I am, feeling afraid that they're going to come for me. Feeling afraid that they're going to rip my family apart out of spite and to punish me for not be slavishly bound to them. I'm literally trembling, feeling sick to my stomach, and struggling not to start crying.

But, I look close enough to fine that the kids aren't troubled. That's all I can do right now. Do my best to keep it together until the kids are focused on something else and I can let this out or something.

I am exhausted. And horrified.

 I feel like I didn't sleep at all last night. I just feel exhausted and I have no idea why. My brain was insisting it was Saturday when I woke up to take my morning medication. So, with out much in the way of qualms, I laid down on the couch and fell back asleep. I woke up again as the kids were demanding food telling me it was 8:30 am and Beloved was getting ready for work. I was confused and then remembered it was Friday.

My back is feeling somewhat better than it was yesterday, which is an improvement over how I was feeling on Sunday. I have a pretty arrangement of bruises in the middle of my back and scattered about the rest from all the random crap I landed on. I think I figured out what was in the middle of the rug where I hit. A plastic dinosaur. With spikes on it. I resisted the temptation to throw it the hell away after I found it. I handed it to the resident dinosaur fan (Snuggle Bug) and told him to put it away in a tone that came out a bit harsher than I intended. He was about to ask why and pile it up with the Transformers that he was playing with and changed his mind when he saw the look on my face. I apparently looked angry. I was, with the stupid dinosaur and the whole situation. 

Yesterday was a day of near misses. I kept tripping over my own feet and barely missing falling over stuff. I could say that I kept having near misses with flashbacks too. I kept feeling myself beginning to fade out of the situation and then I would ground myself, partly by making a point to sit in a hard backed chair so that I would feel the sting of the bruise on my back. Not the healthiest method of grounding, I will confess, but it was effective. The bruising across my back was part of the reason why I kept almost having flashbacks because it's pretty much all in the region where mom broke a dozen wooden spoons about my head and shoulders when I was around Snuggle Bug's age. (Speaking of Snuggle Bug's age, when the hell did my baby turn into a pre-teen? Oh, yeah, he turned 11 last week. I'm doomed.)

I kept having near misses with panic attacks regarding the kids going back to school. I know it is the beginning of August and they're still getting everything sorted out. The pictures that came out of the school down in Georgia scared the shit out of me. The school's reaction to the students who shared the pictures made me angry. We're in the middle of a pandemic and these kids have no social distancing measures in place for hallway passing. The number wearing masks I could count on one hand out of at least a group of thirty or so in that picture. At least one school in Florida is shut down because of COVID19 after opening for less than a week. 

We're in the process of trying to source masks for the kids to wear to school. We're discussing decontamination procedure for when they get home from school. We are quietly struggling with enormous anxiety over how the school is going to handle social distancing on the buses because they're not designed to keep kids 6 ft. apart. Rumor has it that they're going to have students sit together by family. That's ok if you have a small family like we do, but what about the families in the district that have single children or more than three kids. (One family my friend knows has seven kids. Gods only know how they're keeping up with all of them. That must take a ton of organization and coffee. I'm struggling with two.)

The school is giving us the option of staying home and doing distance learning for the semester but we've discussed it. I simply can't handle it. I'm getting frayed at the edges. It's effecting my mental health in bad ways. As much as we don't want to do it because of the fact that I am in the high risk pool if I catch this thing, we are sending the kids to school for face to face learning. There's the negative effect hitting me on the psychological front that is pushing us towards this decision. There's the fact that I simply can't provide the two very different levels and styles of educational support that both kids need, that they will get from face to face instruction. And there is the fact that the kids need the socialization with their peers for more than an hour. It's more than "they need to be with their friends" both kids have some socialization cues that they're missing and they can only learn them from experience. We've tried teaching them, but we can only do so much. They need to go back to school for their counseling to help them develop the skills to handle social situations and learn appropriate ways to socialize. They need to go back to school to get the occupational therapy that we can't provide.

There's a whole list of reasons why my boys need to go back to school and it's longer than my list of reasons why I need them to go back to school. I am afraid that this is going to get one of us sick. Not because we're not following safety precautions but because I have watched my neighbors become increasingly lax about following personal safety precautions. I'm thankful that Snuggle Bug seems to have grown out of his asthma problem. At the same time, it can put him in the same risk pool as me. It's scary. I'd make our own cloth masks but I can't get the tension fixed on my sewing machine and, honestly, I'm not as good at using a sewing machine as I am with hand sewing. And the prospect of hand sewing bias tape is hell.

I'm horrified by the way people are pushing so hard to put some of our most vulnerable population at risk for this disease based upon the false assumption that it doesn't effect kids as dangerously as it does adults. I've been following the data since April. It is as lethal to children as it is to adults. Especially if they have a preexisting condition. I get angry when someone says "It's not as bad as polio." The numbers say that it is exactly as bad as polio except that 1/3 number is dead instead of paralyzed. And I'm worried about flu season because there is a variant of the swine flu brewing in Asia that has the potential to be as bad as the Spanish Flu pandemic. Which is thus named because Spain was a neutral party during WWI and only place reporting on it, not because it originated there. It started out in an army base in Kansas. But no body mentions that bit of history.

Damn PTSD. It can go die in a fire.

I've been getting triggered again. I've tracked down what's been triggering me. And Beloved's going to help with an effort to resolve that. I'm just mad that I got triggered in the first place. I like to think I had a handle on my PTSD triggers and that I was managing it ok. And then it was like an emotional landmine went off. I found myself caught between rage, grief, terror, and numbing out. Given the situation, I spaced out. It was the only way to handle it with out things spiraling out of control.

Since then, I've still been partially triggered. I keep spacing out. I keep rehearsing arguments in anticipation of a fight with the person who triggered me. I keep perseverating on the incidents that triggered me. It's just been exhausting. And, on top of that, I'm feeling depressed and helpless. When I'm not going back to what triggered me, I find myself going back to the events that traumatized me at random. Stuff that I was pretty sure I had processed and integrated into my consciousness and "healed" keep coming up.

I'm not sleeping well. My schedule is shit. I am twitchy and anxious. It's good that I talk to my psychiatrist tomorrow. At the same time, I am not well. The stress of the isolation of COVID19's forced social distancing brings up memories of living in the boonies where I didn't have peers to interact with except at school. Summer vacation was when things got bad. My brain keeps bringing it up. I have to consciously remind myself that I am no longer twelve and being terrorized by my parents (and under the condition that I have to keep it quiet as the grave lest they throw me out of the house or have me locked away in an institution - which was the regular threat).

My children are managing this stuff relatively well. There's some frustration and anger that their birthday parties have been cancelled. There's been some frustration and anger that we can't go to the park and use the playground equipment. Aside from that, they're more or less ok. I'm the one who is walking around a ball of anxiety and quiet terror. I have some how managed not to be too short tempered with the kids. I think that's the influence of the xanax. 

I've started doing my therapy writing in my journal again. It's only been a year since I wrote in there. Because I forgot it existed and I kinda felt like I was doing ok. But, I'm not. I'm debating switching from a handwritten journal to a blog format. I don't know. I do know that the things triggering me right now I can't do much about them. My whole back hurts from my fall on Sunday which brings me right back to when my mom broke a dozen seasoned wooden spoons about my head and shoulders because I accidentally broke a coffee cup of hers. My feeling depressed brings me right back to when I was depressed in high school and I sought help only to have my mother slap a butcher's knife down on the table and tell me if I really was suicidal I should do it in front of her to PROVE I needed help. Hell, taking a shower causes me to flash back to when my mom assaulted me in the shower to 'help' me wash my hair by dumping two bottles of listerine over my head as she "scrubbed" harshly, damn near knocking me over. Since then, the smell of listerine makes my heart hammer with fear and the taste of it makes me gag.

And I keep catching myself gaslighting myself over this stuff. I'm not in a great way right now.

I don't want Florida's weather, please send it back home.

It is going to be a short post because it is the end of the day. It has been hot and humid. Surprisingly, my plants outside are doing ok. The Japanese beetles have slowed down their destruction of my rose bushes out front. They have yet to discover the one on the back deck. I am not completely sure what's brought about this change. Perhaps my flicking them off the bushes in the morning has been helping, I don't know.

I have been sorely tempted to take the boys over to the park so that we might spend some time in the water cooling off. The problem is, pretty much everybody and their brother has that idea, and there's still a pandemic going on. So, today I let them take extra long showers. They seemed to be refreshed after that. If nothing else, they were clean and smelled good. (Cuddle Bear is beginning to have a distinct scent to himself now as puberty is sinking its claws into him. I had wished we had a little more time before we had to work on stuff like finding deodorant that agrees with his skin and such. I was wrong.)

Summer session is challenging. Cuddle Bear is in Extended School Year program and visits the school four days a week for an hour and a half. They're practicing social distancing by having two students per classroom and the staff all have masks. He is being transported to school in a car with the driver wearing a mask and the car is cleaned up between students (each student being transported alone). They're not requiring masks for the students at this time. Beloved and I are talking about getting the boys a set of masks for when the school year begins and they are out in public more. Right now, we're home 99% of the time.

The big challenge with summer session is Snuggle Bug. He is in the Summer Skills program. They are doing that via distance learning. It's a little easier because I'm not rapidly switching between two different grade levels to do academic support for. At the same time, Snuggle Bug is attempting really hard to have fun instead of learn. He makes silly faces at the camera randomly. He throws out random jokes or starts making duck noises to make people laugh. He's a real character and trying to rein that in has been really hard. But, when he does get to work, his work is an unexpected approach. Their current project is planning how to run an imaginary ice cream truck. The teacher asked for songs the truck would play, he was first in the list with a suggestion: AC/DC's Shoot to Thrill. 

It's been an adventure to say the least.

Not quite right in the head...

I was ambushed on FB by a video of an ambush. I could theoretically track it down but I don't think it would do my brain much good to do it. There's enough videos of this going down, I'm fairly sure that just a search string of "BLM police ambush" would bring it up. There was a black couple driving in their car away from where the principle activity of the protest was going on. They were going away. Neither of them were doing anything of particular suspicion except driving while black. Their car windows were up. The driver's intent was on navigating traffic as the passenger was staring ahead, presumably looking out for pedestrians because there was a lot of foot traffic.

A police officer in riot gear walks up to the passenger side door and starts banging on the window. The passenger looks over, clearly alarmed. The driver is doing their best to keep driving despite the distraction. In a matter of seconds, they swarmed the car. A pole weapon of some sort was used to puncture the tires of the car on the passenger side. They attempted to force open the doors of the car (which leads me to believe they were locked, it looked like a newer model car and those auto lock the doors once you go above 5 miles an hour and won't unlock until the car is put into park, regardless of if you slow back down below the threshold). Then they broke the window on the passenger side and reached in to wrench open the door. As they did this, they broke open the window on the driver's side. The passenger was dragged bodily from the car and thrown to the ground. The driver of the car was tazered multiple times from multiple angles. I couldn't watch the rest of the video.

The majority of the "officers" engaged in the activity here were not clearly marked as police. The only reason why I knew the one who walked up to the car and started hammering on the window with his fist was a police officer was because he was accompanied by a police officer in tactical gear carrying a round style riot shield with the word police clearly printed in bright yellow across the back of his vest. The rest of them, gods only know who they were. But they were carrying weapons. They ambushed this car in traffic leading away from the protest and dragged these citizens out.

I don't know where this happened except it was somewhere within the United States. I would assume Portland, WA because that's where the majority of this bullshit has been happening. The sight of it, however, looked like it could have been downtown of the city just north of us here, of any city in the country. These people were not being violent. They were not breaking the law. They weren't given the opportunity to "obey the police." They were ambushed and violently assaulted under color of law by unmarked agents of the government. Because they were black and in the wrong place.

Witnessing this brutality second hand triggered my ptsd to some extent. I got a little spacey and had a hard time thinking clearly. It brought up memories of my parents brutalizing my brothers and I was helpless to stop them. I am a bit more oriented in the present. I am saddened that my trauma won't let me act in some fashion to stop this. I am terrified what this means for people who would be branded political dissidents. I have the luxury of being fairly inobtrusive because I am a white, middle aged woman. I have over the years moved from wearing my fancy headcoverings to just a bandanna. It helps me blend in better. It keeps me from having people slow down and give me dirty/threatening looks when I'm out taking a walk. I dress relatively conservatively. That with the bandanna has people assuming that I am one of the local more conservative Christian mothers.

I, however, am not what they assume. I don't know when they're going to start coming for people who are mentally ill. I don't know when they're going to start coming for the people who oppose Trump and his party. I don't know when they're going to start coming for the people with autism and other disorders. But I have studied history. I have watched this since the inception of the Department of Homeland Security. They're going to come for us. They were just biding their time until the people who fought against fascism were dying off.

The Boomer generation will write this off as a mad woman's ramblings. They'll call me a "snowflake" or something else stupid. Now is not the time to try to reason with them. It is clear that they have been duped (willfully or not) into thinking that fascism will bring back what they consider their golden era of their youth. Now is the time to pour sand into the gears. Now is the time to lose paperwork. Now is the time to sabotage the machine. Until someone comes and puts them down. 

Of course this has to happen in the midst of a pandemic. Gods help us.

Ramblings

I feel like garbage right now. I have a migraine. My mood is a dumpster fire because of a combo of depression and ptsd bullshit. I just find myself wanting to have a shot of whiskey and smoke a cigarette. Because of the cocktail of medications I'm on, I can't have the whiskey. And I can't have the cigarette because of my asthma. I still find myself wanting them. I don't even know why I want the cigarette. The last time I had one, I think I was 20. I didn't smoke for even a year. 

We're still doing distance learning. Summer school is a major pain in the ass. It's not the teachers. It's not the tech. It's not the students. It's all of it and none of it at the same time. I am just exhausted from being "on duty" all the time for the last several months. I had considered home schooling the kids at one point in time. I have learned from this experience that I clearly do not have the patience, skill, or spoons to do it. I might have before the bipolar came along and drop kicked me in the head. I might not have had it in me, we'll never know.

In the news, I learned that one third of the population of the USA believes the Covid-19 death toll is overinflated. That horrified me as much as the sheer number of people I see going about their business as if nothing is wrong. Way back in April, more people were masked up and practicing safety measures. But now, most of the people I see out and about are not. It'd be one thing if they were practicing social distancing, but it's not happening as much as it should be. As a result, we stay in our home most of the time and only go outside to the front yard. No trips to the park this year so far. The kids are not happy about it but they're resigned to it.

I have no idea what school is going to look like. I don't know if I have the fortitude to continue distance learning in the way that we're doing it right now. But I don't want my kids catching this thing. It has been claimed by some people that Covid-19 doesn't impact the younger age bracket. That's a lie. There's been a bunch of lies like that told by high profile figures. As a result, we've got 1/3 of the population thinking that Covid-19 is just the same as a bad cold. 

And all of this is before you get into the Black Lives Matter business. (I am pro Black Lives Matter, if you don't like that, stop reading my blog.) I just don't have the energy to post about that right now. Maybe I'll be able to summon something up to post about it tomorrow.

Screw Bipolar with a Rusty Chainsaw.

It was literally the day after the solstice when my depression began to rear its head. Here I am a few weeks later, I feel exhausted, burned out, and like I'm a complete failure as a parent. It's clearly my depression talking. It's clearly the fact that my screwed up brain chemistry is cycling my mood downwards again and complex emotional trauma is spurring it on. I had this weird thought that I was going to be able to write again and get myself a bit of work going doing readings. After all, I was sort of managing it in April. I didn't plan for my brain to say "Fuck this shit, I'm done."

It's been nearly two weeks since I have written in my daily journal. My planner is all a mess because I haven't been keeping it updated all month. My daily routines are screwed up, even the new ones that I established with the attempt to keep the kids on top of their academics. I need some time that is relaxing but that's impossible to find. I need some time to get housework done, but it's hard to juggle that compared to the need to monitor what the kids are doing. Since school's been out of session, boredom has been driving Snuggle Bug to making some reckless decisions in an effort to alleviate his boredom. That's made it harder to keep track of things.

I don't know what to write. The longer I go without writing, the more readership I lose on my blogs that are work oriented. But I'm stuck in this  mental fog that makes writing relateable content really hard. I'm at this place emotionally where I feel like no one wants to read my work because it just isn't any good. I have all of the garbage that my parents said about my career goals ringing in my ears right now and it's pretty damn awful. (Thankfully, I'm not hallucinating them haranguing me about how I'm a failed investment because of my college debt and the fact that I don't have a career that's making big money right now. It's just all memories getting triggered.)

I was less a cherished child and more a potential meal ticket if I made it big in my writing when it became clear that I actually had some talent for it. That was when they started to 'sorta' support me when it came to my writing. Before that, it was made very clear to me that my value as a person was weight against what I could materially contribute to the family and that I owed them a debt of 15k because of the cost of my birth. I was told that I was an investment and that I had better pay out well or I'd have hell to pay for it. When I went off to college, they expected me to leave Beloved and marry a doctor or lawyer (and thereby become their meal ticket because I'd have married into money). When my mother wasn't working to sabotage my relationship with Beloved, she was trying to get me to consider leaving him for an arranged marriage with some rich guy in Texas who was looking for a young, pretty wife who could cook. (The bitter irony that my mother who spent all her time in my youth telling me that I wasn't ever going to find a husband because I was a bad cook in her eyes and a lazy housekeeper wasn't lost on me in her efforts to arrange this union.)

So, I'm depressed and having all of that garbage come up while I am trying to deal with kids who are about at their limit for staying home all the time. The park is open, but if we go there they'll want to use the playground equipment. I don't have the supplies to clean it all off before they use it. So, we haven't gone over there since last autumn when the weather was nice. They're beginning to wear a rut into the front yard as they ride their bikes around it. My attempts at gardening are going poorly. Some of it is the heat and some of it is just ... Well, I've been depressed and the weather's been awful for gardening, so I haven't been doing much outside with it.

I don't know what I'm going to do. I have to figure out something to get me out of this spiral before it gets bad. I just have no idea what it is going to take.

What the actual fuck?

I broke contact with my parents after my grandparents died. They're toxic people. I'm just going to call a spade a spade here. They're toxic and dangerous to the mental health of the people who are vulnerable around them (like children). This is the second time I broke contact. 

The first time was after my mother decided it was a good idea to threaten the welfare of my nieces in order to force me not to allow their mother (who is a good and decent person despite whatever garbage you've possibly heard my mother spew) to watch my young children. I literally couldn't sleep that night because I was so distressed by her threat. So I emailed my father and explained in great detail what happened and stated that if anything happened to any of my nieces and I had reason to believe that they were involved I was going to go to the police.

My wonderful mother proceeded to bad mouth my sister-in-law even more and told the rest of the family that SHE had said that, and that SHE had driven me away from the family. Cue five years of not speaking or dealing with anyone on that side of the family except for an aunt and my grandparents. Then my grandparents got sick and I was told by the dead relatives that the family needed me. I put out an email to my parents asking what was going on (they didn't reply) and I went to my grandparents. I informed them that I was back in contact with my parents. My grandfather wept with relief. This was right before he informed me that he inoperable brain cancer.

An awkward year followed with Mom doing everything she could to keep me out of the loop. When my grandfather died, I was literally the last person she called and she made sure to tell me so. I stuck around for my grandmother, whose dementia was so advanced that she was in bad shape and barely recognized me. That was when Mom started taking shots at me again and doing stuff in an attempt to trigger my PTSD symptoms. It didn't work, she was clumsy about it. I got mad. I then decided that after my grandmother passed on, I was gone. Because my mother was still trying her damndest to psychologically abuse and manipulate me.

I stayed connected with her for a time on FB because I worried that I was literally going to be the last person to know if my dad dropped dead. Then I stopped giving a fuck about that when they showed up after the fact and informed me that he had heart surgery and she was having him carry a heavy box full of random shit (christmas presents and whatever else) as he was in the recovery phase of it all. To make it even more grotesque the goddamn woman was all but laughing when she was talking about my father's surgery. They then lamented about their financial woes and dropped hints that I should plan on taking care of them because they have no retirement. They looked around the apartment to try to figure out what valuables I had, but nothing was on display. They assumed that because I was writing and publishing books that I had money to give them.

They thought I was their meal ticket. The same people who called me a failed investment when I couldn't get work immediately after college came sniffing for money. They tried to pull on my heart strings and they got nothing. They said that they were having financial difficulties and I answered, "Yep, it's rough out there." They went radio silent until my 40th birthday, when my mother sent me the present of a guilt trip for my birthday via FB. Again radio silence.

My eldest niece moves off the farm with her fiancee. A few weeks later, my insane mother sends me a Trump rally video. They're straight up Trump supporters. It is an embarrassment and a shame. My paternal great-great-grandfather saw the writing on the wall during the Weimar Republic and took his family and fled to the US right about the time that things were preparing the stage for the rise of the Nazis. My great-grandfather fought in WWI. My grandfather would have fought in WWII except for the fact that he wasn't permitted due to regulations (he was a year too young for the draft). My paternal side of the family here in the US did not support the Nazis or the German-American Bundt (the pro-Nazi wing here in the US).

So, to see my parents supporting a fascist piece of garbage like Trump is humiliating and I am glad that my grandparents didn't live to see it happen. I don't know what I am supposed to expect out of this rally  video. I don't care either. I've decided that I am going to block them on FB. This will likely cause ripples. I don't care about that either. Only a few relatives have reached out to me from that side of the family to see if we're ok in the midst of these years of silence. A cousin of mine is getting married, we got an invitation. We're not going. Because my mother will create a scene. This is, after all, the woman who told me that everyone would think I was a whore if I wore a red wedding dress (which I wanted since I was a girl) but decided to wear a chinzy, cheaply made, tacky black "evening gown" to my wedding and attempted to gaslight me into believing it was navy blue.

I'm sure that there's a statistically good chance that she might read this. I've posted links back to my FB with public rants. If she is reading this, I hope she realizes that she's as good as dead to me and so is my father for supporting and encouraging her to continue to abuse people at her leisure. I tried twice to have a serious relationship conversation with my parents about their behavior and the toxicity in the relationship. It got turned into "you're crazy" and "look how you're upsetting your poor mother" with a few threats to possibly throw me out (this happened while I was still living under their thumb).

But you know what, when I got really sick and lost my job because of how sick I was, they threw me out. And had the gall to claim that it was because I wasn't contributing financially to the household. Never mind that my brother could sit on his unemployed ass and play video games all day. Never mind that my other brother could ignore his family when he was over seas or on leave, choosing to stay at my parents house and play video games all day. And when he was over seas he was drinking away a paycheck that should have been getting bankrolled to support his wife and three children. But I was the "problem child".

So, in short, fuck my parents. To Hel with them and everyone else who says I should forgive or reconcile with them. I don't fucking support abusers, especially MY abusers. I don't truck with wanna be Nazis who bring shame on the entire damn family with their bullshit. And I sure as hell am not going to allow them access to my children. Not over my dead body. Go fuck up your lives, mom and dad. Go make everything about you when your lack of effort and drive, your lack of responsibility, and your tendency to blame everyone else for your fuck ups comes back to bite you on the ass. I'm done with you. I don't care if you die or not. You can take all of my stuff that you've been holding hostage (including my inheritance from my grandparents and my great-grandmother) and fucking burn it. My dignity is worth more than that pile of stuff. My sanity is worth more than that pile of stuff.

I'm sorry, mom, I turned out a lady instead of white trash like you. I know you tried your hardest but you couldn't break me. 

Month since posting, not good for the ego.

I've been so busy with stuff with the kids that I have fallen behind on everything. I am beyond exasperated with it all. The good part is that we finished the school year strong on the distance learning. The less good part is that we're continuing the distance learning for summer school purposes. The most exasperating part of all of this is the fact that the kids are at two entirely different educational levels and need entirely different support structures. The necessity for rapid switching between the two levels and different learning support needed is exhausting and leaves me feeling depressed and incompetent.

I'm now on a higher dose of one of my anti-anxiety medications and that's been a big help with things like being afraid to go outside because of Covid-19. I am still in many ways housebound due to the risk posed to me by the virus. For the first time in months, I took the car and brought my youngest son out for a dental appointment. For something so routine, I was still somewhat anxious. It wasn't anxiety to the point that I couldn't do it, but it was there at the back of my mind.

It was surreal and yet reassuring to see them kitted up like they were ready for surgery. My youngest child commented on how the dentist's office now looked like a hospital. We were met at the door by staff who took our temperature and asked us some routine questions. We wore masks in and out of the office. I decided that it would be easiest for everyone to schedule Snuggle Bug's next appointment by phone. I left with a complimentary pen. The complimentary pens were a marketing ploy, now they're being deployed as disposable writing implements for things to get signed. I figured that was a smart move on the office's part considering that no one was typically taking the pens to begin with. I'm pretty sure they have a crate of them sitting in some back corner closet.

There's been some passive-aggressive fuckery of late from some folks off line that I can't avoid. It's a slow burn, but it is making me angry. The most recent came in the form of "helpful commentary" that was thinly disguised bitching about what I had done. I kept a blank face and my responses to "I'll take that under advisement." or "I hadn't considered that, I see your point." The speaker was oblivious to the subtext of it all and couldn't read my response. The person who knew me best in the room was astounded by the fact that I pulled that off. I replied that it was easy because the speaker started out with a phrase and repeatedly used the word "critique" which triggers a blank external response and cold analysis of what ever was being said due to growing up with "critiques" that were abusive bullshit and backhanded comments. I even managed a pleasant tone with my null responses.

So, now I have to decide how I'm going to handle it. Someone who "critiques" my work and isn't a professional in the arena that they're giving their opinion on isn't getting any consideration. I learned long ago that being a critic is a profession and it's more than just giving opinion. It is detailed analysis of a work with notes on the strengths and weaknesses. If the critic is mentoring the person whose work they're critiquing they will follow up with how to improve the weaknesses and avoid the holes in the plot. If you're not a professional chef, for example, don't critique my cooking unless you can follow the format of analysis, strength, weakness, and how to improve. Otherwise, it's just a damn opinion. And opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one.

But, going forward, I am going to be dealing with the passive aggressive crap more. I've a problem with passive aggressive behavior. It triggers a great deal of anger. It makes me want to break someone's face when they baby-talk my autistic children because they assume that the boys can't comprehend what they're saying. It makes me want to get into the face and scream at the person who bitches about me or my family with backhanded comments. This kind of shit is the reason why I don't talk to some people who were significant in my youth anymore.

And word gets back to me how they decided that I must have felt that I was better than them. That's patently bullshit designed to make me feel guilty and go back with a penitent heart. All I did was walk away. I did it for my health, safety, and the well being of my family. If you think that it means that I think I'm better than you, well, maybe I am better than you because I wouldn't have said that shit about you after you walked away.

So, yeah, the last month has sucked. I'm angry. I'm overheated because of the relentless heat and humidity. And I feel like I'm a failure because I am making zero progress on any of my own projects.