One day.
Two truths.

I forced myself into the shower this morning, and it worked like a charm. I let the water wash off Ryan and my stress and my past and all of the things that were keeping me stuck. I practiced violin with Finn and got him to school on time. I went to a café downtown and ordered a croissant and an oat milk latte and got to work on my writing homework, which is always less intimidating than I think it will be. For me the act of beginning has always been the hardest part of it all. Writing, cleaning, practicing music, reading, walking, the day… I felt accomplished enough by eleven, so I even went to the book study I had planned on skipping. After group DJ pulled me aside and told me she had talked to Bill about staying at his house. She’s been encouraging me to leave my marriage or at least have a safe place to go while Ryan is having episodes. She thought I could stay in Bill’s mother-in-law suite, but he’s offered to open up an entire floor of his house for me and my kids, possibly my dogs. He has a husky he shares part time with his ex. I still feel bad for taking advantage of it, but she said that Marcia, her sponsor, said it might be good for both of us. He’s lonely, but not creepy. He really is a nice guy; he actually bought DJ a car because she couldn’t afford it and is letting her “pay it off” by helping him with some paperwork once in a while. I need to talk it over with my therapist. I don’t think I’m ready. It’s been too close to my last relapse, I don’t have my full license back yet, I still have one semester of school… It sounds like excuses, but if I pull the trigger, I need to know I will get full custody of the children and I’m not confident where I am right now. I also need to organize the “evidence” I have so I can give it to my lawyer. I’m not sure I want to do this, sometimes I am, other times I think we can work things out if I do a bit better and he tries at the same time. I hated growing up without a father. Ryan’s family is such a huge part of my kid’s lives, and it would affect them greatly to go without them, even for a little bit. It also affects them when Dad is cruel and angry every day for no explainable reason. Both of us need to do better. I’m not ready to make a move yet, but it’s nice to know I have the offer. It’s not the first offer I’ve had like that, but it’s the first one that would benefit both of us and the most space I could have to myself. I wish I could do it now, but I don’t think it’s responsible. It is partly fear, but also just knowing what I need in place to do everything correctly. Just because DJ wants me to make the move doesn’t mean that I’m ready. Once I do that, there’s no going back. I haven’t known Bill long enough to know for certain that I will feel safe there. It’s a lot to think about. For now, I need to get my house in order and get ready for my kids' last swim class. The next couple of weeks are going to be busy and I’m grateful that something motivated me to get to work today. I can feel a depression setting in and I need to do the right things to keep it from overtaking me. It is so draining to deal with Ryan, every single day is stress and a battle. One day at a time.

This isn’t my story to tell, but it’s relevant today, so I’m going to tell it anyway. When I broke up with Augustine in 2010 it was before he was working as a cook. He already knew that was what he wanted to do, but he hadn’t taken much action to make it happen and was still working as a checkout guy at the local superstore. I had broken up with him and moved to Mississippi while leaving him with a lease he couldn’t pay for and an agonizing heartache (the first time of many). This isn’t about me, however. He was way too smart to work that job, and it was frustrating to me because he was so against academia that he wouldn’t finish school or do anything (in my mind) to progress in life. I was frustrated with this because it seemed like such a waste to me, which is ironic since I later drank and drugged away my life, too. He had a strong background in philosophy, and it’s still one of his favorite things to talk about, probably more than food. I guess it even came up at work, and he had discussed it with a regular customer. This guy eventually got to know Augie, and told him that he was the director of a school for people with special needs. He was interested in Augie’s knowledge of philosophy and eventually offered him a job teaching at the school. It sounded too good to be true, cashier to teacher! Augie’s lease was also ending and he needed a place to live and this guy offered to let him live with him and his wife. I guess he had done this with some of the other teachers in the past, too, to “help them get on their feet.” I know this story because it was one of the first things Augie told me when we started talking again, two years after we broke up, and it was hilariously awful, I couldn’t forget. Augie started to get a weird vibe from this guy, like he was hitting on him, and he had found out while teaching that he wasn’t the only male “teacher” that had lived with this guy and his wife. He needed a place to stay, though, and he said that he kind of just let this guy flirt with him and didn’t lead him on, but also didn’t shut anything down because he needed a place to stay. He thought he could balance all of this long enough to get another job and find a place to live. I can’t recall the circumstances now, because it’s been about 14 years since I heard this story and it never really came up after the first telling, but one day he was giving Augie a ride somewhere and before he dropped him off, he put his hand on Augie’s leg and started rubbing it. Augie is a very hetero macho kind of guy. He immediately said “what the fuck?” At this point in the story, he did take some of the blame, because prior to this happening it was obvious to him that the director was hitting on him, but he hadn’t physically touched him before. Augie had him pull over, got out of the car, and had to get friends to help him get his stuff out of his house the next day. I was laughing hysterically as he told me this story. I have so many lingering questions I wish I’d asked or recalled the answers to. I didn’t bring it up again because it was so awkward, and also because I felt guilty about his struggles after I left, since I was partially responsible for the shitty position he was in. I didn’t grow up as poor as Augie, but I completely relate to him in that my parents offered me zero help after high school. We can get into why that might be later, but I had the same experience as someone whose parents couldn’t afford to help them, perhaps without the feeling of unconditional love. It was scary when you could barely make rent, because that might mean you’re homeless one day. Homelessness means you can’t hold a job. I was always one mistake away from the gutter and it’s a terrifyingly stressful way to live. It’s almost the entire reason I stay with my abusive husband. I know he’ll always take care of my physical needs and that gives me a feeling of safety I’ve never had in my life. I am in danger in other ways, but my kids won’t be hungry or go without, and I have the resources to get on my feet. It’s taking longer than I’d like because he demands a lot from me, my time, my attention, and dislikes hobbies that take me away from him or the family. For a while I fought my husband to have my hobbies, but I didn’t like leaving my boys with him, so I’ve given them up. I left the Socialist Equality Party, I haven’t protested since school started, I don’t write for WSWS anymore, I don’t take art classes, I’ve dropped a lot of AA obligations and stopped volunteering at the Center. I do school, enough AA to stay sober, enough stuff with my friends to make sure I’m not isolated, and when I’m not swamped, I still have my jewelry store, but that’s on pause currently. I want to just focus on my kids, but I need to finish school so I have an option to get out if I need to. He’s on best behavior right now, but it won’t last, it never does.

I am struggling to keep up with all of my responsibilities. I have trouble prioritizing things because my husband and I disagree on what’s most important, and there’s a price I’ll pay if I want to do things my way and not his, so he often wins because I am just exhausted with standing up for myself constantly. The kids should be first, always. He’s okay with the kids just being generally safe, but will let them cry and go unattended. It bugs me because he claims to be “watching” them, when he’s not physically present or he’s glued to his phone. He wanted me to stay in bed this morning since I was up late doing homework, but Finn was crying and he wasn’t comforting him, so I got up. School is important, I’m almost finished, but I find it hard to focus, especially if the kids are home because I know he’s not giving them the attention that they need and I hate that he always puts them near a screen. My phone definitely eats at my productivity, too. I get sucked in, even though I turned notifications off, I will check text messages or emails I get from Finn’s school, then I end up scrolling. I delete social media constantly then have to reinstall it to answer a message or join a group for school. It feels inescapable. I try to bring books or the New Yorker to appointments with me so I don’t look at my phone. I really like listening to music and podcasts and I wish there was a way to access those without needing a phone connected to the rest of the internet. I’m an addict, so it’s unusually hard for me to break up with bad habits. I think about it a lot and I think it’s interfered with my life even to the extent of drugs and alcohol. It steals my time. I feel so much better at the end of the day when I’ve done real work. I do like taking photos and video editing and such, but I stopped doing it regularly because it feels like a waste. I like to make art and use my hands and read from paper. Alcohol took my twenties, my phone my thirties, now it’s time to stop.

I didn’t have internet in my house until I was about 12 (2000), but I was familiar with computers because I had one at home in elementary school and I recall my grandmother showing me a search engine, possibly Yahoo, before we had internet at home and she told me I could look up anything I wanted to learn about. Of course I looked up Michael Jordan, because he was the most famous person on the planet at that time. My elementary school had a computer lab and we learned typing quite young. I’m not sure if that was standard at every school in the 90’s, but I did move a lot growing up and I was always ahead of my class at typing in the various schools I attended after that. In middle school our library computers had the internet and we were given email addresses. I sat two feet from my friend and we sent emails back and forth. It took a couple of minutes for them to actually send even to the computer next to me, but we were amazed! It’s funny now because it would have been much faster to pass a note, as we frequently did then. A year or so after our first email experience I was at the same friend’s house and we used her family computer to go on a chat room. We were talking to random people and one guy we started a conversation sent a video and my friend clicked on it and he was touching himself. We were horrified, as we were 11 or 12 at the time, and immediately closed out of the chat rooms. We were also scared we’d get into trouble. I never went on a chat room again after that, only instant messenger with my friends.

I brought Finn and Seamus to the good park, with castles and ships and houses, swings, teetertotters, rope trees, etc. Finn was found instantly by a friend from school who kept him busy running around. Seamus is so brave, he likes to go down all of the big boy slides and he'll go down head first and giggle as he slides off it to the ground. I tried with Dad, but everything he says is so negative. I invited him to go out with us, but when I tried to talk to him at the park he wouldn't respond, so I just played with the kids and sat away from him in a sunny spot. We went out for dinner after and I watched the boys and kept them in line so he didn't get angry, but he still yelled at Finn before the food even came about eating everything or he'd take his lemonade. He's turned everything into a battle; he doesn't even give Finn an opportunity to act well before he gets upset. I need to get the kids away from him before he causes more damage. He made passive aggressive comments on the way home about not having the Subaru or his truck, so I tried to go tit-for-tat with every comment saying I didn't have Chicago or a family anymore. I never say anything negative except to prove a point, so now when he says nasty things to me instead of saying silent, I respond with something that's equal so he knows what it feels like to constantly be bombarded with negativity. He made a ridiculous comment about working for the sprinkler guy on the weekend for extra money, which is insane since he makes almost 300k/year. He said he needed extra money so me and the boys could continue to do fun things on the weekend. I made the point that we left the other day because he had left the kids unsupervised, then when he was around, he was being verbally abusive. I told him I'd gladly stay home all weekend and not spend any money, but I needed him to physically be gone from the house because I felt unsafe at home and he was damaging the boys. Later he apologized and said he was going to reset and he hears me, etc., but it's infuriating that I have to say all of these horrible things for him to stop. I don't like putting him down, I tried to compliment him all day, was very grateful and gracious that he took us to dinner, told him we appreciated it and had the boys do the same… He enjoys hurting other people's feelings, and it hurts me to do so. I just want to be free of all the misery he carries around with him, but it's not so simple, especially with kids to think of. He threatens me and I know he can make me look really bad and use my addiction against me. I am trying my best to be very strict with myself, my routine, and document my behavior and his. Every day is a battle. The worst days are when I just feel lonely because I don't have an adult to talk to regularly.

I hate that I think nostalgically about my exes because for the most part they weren't great, but comparatively they were saints. The first one I have a lot of regrets with mostly because I know he's an amazing dad and we shared exactly the same values and the things I want to instill in my children. He was also incredibly smart. I broke up with him for being late all of the time and also because I hadn't really had a chance to date anyone else and selfishly wanted to know if I could do better or be with someone more motivated, because he was pretty stagnant back then. He's married now and has two boys like I do and makes a good living. His wife won't let him communicate with me, and I can't say anything bad about her because she's probably right to insist upon that. I think a lot about all of the time we spent together and how he shaped so much of my adult personality. Then again, if I weren't in the worst relationship of all time, I think I would also remember that he could be intimidating, emotional, oblivious… When I said I broke up with him because he was regularly late, I don't mean a few minutes or an hour. He missed job interviews because he slept through them, he would miss lunch and days with me and not wake up until the evening, even when we had plans. He was supposed to help me move into my dorm room hours away from his house, but never showed up that day, even when we left a couple of hours late to wait for him. He missed me leaving for college, and wouldn't see me for weeks. I was heartbroken, it ruined my whole first day at college. My friends told me I could do better and asked why I put up with it. Honestly, I loved him very much, and to this day I haven't met anyone with the same values. He helped homeless people and drunk college students regularly; he wouldn't even take hundreds of dollars from a drunk guy he got home because he said he'd regret giving it to him in the morning. He was loyal and loving and also hurt and a little bad, he was tall, handsome, charismatic. I miss him and think about him probably literally every day, at least for a second. Not always longingly, just he was important and integral to my political development and love of learning various subjects. My parents didn't like him and that shaped my decision to break it off with him. My mom wouldn't pay the application fee for me to apply to MSU because she didn't want me in the same city as him, she wanted us to break up. I didn't learn that until years later. After him there was a friend I dated briefly, who had a girlfriend out of state, so that was a disaster. We had this flirtatious relationship for years and years and even tried dating later when we were adults, but were honestly both enormous fuck ups. We are still in touch but not regularly. Then there was maybe the love of my life. He was an asshole, brilliantly smart, interested in philosophy and a number of subjects that flew over my head, but I tried to keep up with him. He was very masculine, had a commanding voice, was strong, was confident, all really attractive things. He wasn't as tall as I'd like and didn't have any body fat, but intellectually I was completely enamored with him. He could cook; he even became a cook. We were together two years, apart two years, then together again for two, apart for one, together for two… I kept leaving him because I'd trainwreck my life. I left him for a tall adventurous guy I met in college, who was the most exciting and fun person I've ever known, and he died at 38 last August. I was heartbroken to hear it. He had just gotten married that March. After we got back together the second time we moved to Chicago together. We grew up together. There were some really bad times and we treated each other like crap sometimes. In the later years things were better, he was kinder and stopped drinking so much, I got sober and went back to school. I left him after a week-long relapse, not intending to end things, just get my parents to pay for rehab, then come home, but my mom immediately insisted we break up and it took me an entire year to convince my family that I needed rehab. His mom text me long after we broke up and would say she thought of me as a daughter and she even came to seek advice on sobriety and I hooked her up with my sponsor. She died a couple of years ago. I didn't really think it would be appropriate for me to show up to her funeral, although her daughter told me about it, so I sent flowers. I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do or not. Her son won't speak to me, although I was the one who initially broke contact. I want to make amends and he isn't interested and I can't blame him. "No one will ever love you as much as I do, you know that, right?" is permanently etched into my memory wondering when he said it if it were true, and today thinking that it likely was the truth, even though I didn't want it to be. I don't doubt he loved me, he had to to keep coming back after all that I put him through. My husband now doesn't love me, but he also puts up with a lot. I think to him I'm his property. No one else I dated was really that important. Those were the three I loved the most. There were a couple others for a couple of months I'll write about eventually, but those three shaped my entire life and personality. The only one I still had any contact with is the one who died, and I'm so grateful for our last phone conversation and catching up and that we could laugh about our adventures and speak like friends. I'm so regretful I didn't get out to visit him, but it's complicated since he was an ex. I certainly never thought the last time I saw him would be the last time, and I didn't think the last time we spoke would be, either.

I barely slept last night because Finn was kicking me off the bed and I switched rooms a couple of times. I text my husband this at about 4am hoping he'd let me at least sleep in before I took over the kids. He did get up with them, but I heard screaming around 9 and immediately got out of bed. Seamus was putting googly eye stickers all over the window and Finn had found my permanent markers and destroyed some wooden projects and basically ransacked my work desk. I wasn't mad, no one was watching them. Ryan kept running angrily from the roof to the bathroom to turn on the water. I'm not sure why he started a project, but he certainly couldn't watch the kids. I think he intentionally doesn't wake me up so I have to deal with complete chaos. I would have preferred he just got me out of bed earlier and I would have watched the kids so they didn't destroy my stuff and get ignored all morning. I also am not sure anything is wrong with the pipes. I know he's a paranoid schizophrenic, but he won't take meds, no longer sees a psychiatrist, and I know basically nothing about his diagnosis or what that means, especially unmedicated. Typically, episodes are brought on by stress. He recently had stress at work and even thought he might be fired, which is worse for him than a typical person because his entire identity is about money, saving money, making money, generational wealth, etc. Anyway, he's also very weird about water and one episode he thought the basement flooded when it didn't, he's constantly hearing the pipes rattling and other sounds I don't hear or care about. I feel like water and him panicking about fixing the pipes is typically the first sign of an episode, so I didn't want to stick around to figure out what was happening. I took the kids to an event I wasn't planning on going to, but they had fun. It was basically a hay ride, pumpkins, a playground, and cider and donuts sort of thing. One of the women in the group had a seizure while we were in the pumpkin patch so an ambulance came through to get her and we were stranded for a while. Seamus was super grumpy, and one of the paramedics gave him a stuffed dog, and he gave it a big hug and immediately calmed down. It was adorable. Unfortunately, puppy fell off the hayride back to the farm. Lilly's boyfriend saw a mutual friend arrive at the patch as we were leaving and called him to have him find the dog. He actually found it and got it to us an hour later as we settled in for cider and donuts. It was actually a fun time, although we didn't stay terribly long. My MIL has the kids tonight. Ryan seemed better, but he didn't want to see the movie I wanted to see and suggested dinner. We have nothing to talk about and I know it kind of pissed him off, but I just went to the movie by myself because he didn't want to go later and I am honestly still kind of scared to just be around him. I don't think he's a monster, he does a lot of good loving and protective things. It's his actions that are typically helpful, but his words are always hurtful. Maybe a sociopath, probably, but also possibly on the spectrum, and hurt people hurt people – he was abused just like I was. I haven't given up on myself and I don't want to give up on him unless I have to to protect the kids. I go back and forth on this a lot. Sometimes I can only see the bad in him and I give up, then he does something unexpected. That could also be part of his manipulation, and he is quite manipulative, but I also tend to minimize my bad qualities and although I do believe I'm kinder and more ethical than he is, he has other qualities like discipline that I don't have that I need. I'm scared to take the kids and leave them with just me, because I'm bad in a different way. I can't say no, I'm so afraid of being my mom I spoil my kids, but that's not going to be good for them. I'm working on this. I do let them do unhealthy things and sometimes it's because I get no backup from Ryan, but other times I think it's just because I'm weak and I don't want my babies to be upset. It hurts, and that's selfish of me because it's going to harm them more out in the world if they don't here no from me at home, so I need to build those skills. I don't have to be cruel or loud, I just have to hold the boundary. When I am the person, I think I can be and trust myself with them, we will leave, but right not it's not just Ryan that's the problem, it's me. And there's also a huge chance that when I fix my worst character defects, Ryan will treat me much better because it will take some stress off his plate. He's very transactional and literal. Autism or sociopathy? I am very lonely, however. I miss having an intellectual connection and having a partner someone who I feel is on my side to make me feel better and not worse. It's hard to even find friends to connect to out here in "Trump Country." I wasn't perfect today, but I'm proud of myself for going to a social event alone when my friends couldn't go. I ran into other friends and met new people who were very kind to my boys. I got to see Nathan Felder's documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, and the reviews were right, it didn't feel like three hours. I checked the time on my phone when I thought we might be at the two-hour mark and it was five minutes from being over. I don't think I learned anything about her, but it was very good. It made me think about Ryan – her relationship with her controlling spouse. They're not the same, though, but have similar qualities. I don't think Ryan would have liked it anyway.

I don't think I ever did a corn maze until I was in high school, like all of the farms out here have, but my mother did like this one cider mill in Franklin and I just remember they had the best donuts and cider, and a huge water wheel that I was fascinated with. The last time I visited I was also with my great-grandfather, and he's my favorite person in my entire family. I never saw him act senile even though he lived into his 90's. He was so optimistic and loving. I think that the values my grandmother had that I always admired so much came from him, to her, to my mother, and then to myself. He cared about people, any people, we're all the same. He also grew the most perfect grass. That's not a comment on his character, but it's just something I recall about his lawn, it was pristine. He took good care of his belongings and his people. I miss him so much and still think about him all the time although he's been gone for almost twenty years now.

My husband claims he’s been “extra nice” for the past week, saying nice things and helping with the laundry. He’s still saying the cruelest things just wrapped up passive aggressively, and he will flat out deny it even if you repeat it back to him verbatim, he didn’t say it. I tried to make weekend plans with him offering to pay for Lewis Farms, which he said was too expensive, or to take the kids to the dog park with trails, but he said we didn’t have room in one vehicle, I suggested two. He always explains why we shouldn’t do something. I suggested that we could instead divide and conquer, each taking one kid to do fun stuff this weekend since he didn’t seem interested in any of my ideas. He sent this: “It sounds like you don’t want to handle both kids. It’s not the first time recently handling both kids seemed like too much for you.” He denied that this was condescending. This was obviously said to make me feel insufficient as a mom, but he claims this is “nice” behavior. His version of nice is often not saying cruel things, so not being nice, but not being mean. He can’t even do that, though. I can’t even praise him for helping, because he complains so much if he has to do any amount of housework. For him, he works, then he comes home and disappears downstairs or out back, on his phone or computer or smoking pot… He did the laundry except for mine because he “didn’t know where it went.” He mismatched my socks, folded the towels inside out, didn’t use the correct cycles. I don’t care about that and wouldn’t say anything, but I feel like the socks was just a big FUCK YOU to me, because he could have just not matched them, but instead he decided to match them incorrectly and he’s a very particular person, so it would be mentioned had I ever mismatched his socks. These things are small, but every day there is an equivalent battle. I just want to get away from him, but I’m trapped. If I ask for a separation, he threatens to take the kids because I’m an addict, even though he can’t watch them. Any time he’s solely in charge of the children he drops them at his mom or dad’s house, or he just doesn’t watch them like the time I came home and the police were there because my 4-year-old had wandered out into the street and dad didn’t answer the door when the police knocked. When I pulled up, I could see Ryan through the front window, but the cop took my ID and talked to me like I was the one who had messed up. “This is how CPS gets involved, ma’am.”

When I would get bad grades or let down my parents in some way they liked to have these evening dialogues with me that often ended with the threat that if I kept doing what I was doing I would work in fast food until I died. I understand what they were trying to do, scare me from being “lazy.” The problem was that I was never lazy, but often depressed which looks very similar to an outsider. It was almost a full-time job just practicing the viola as much as my instructor and mother wanted me to, while my friends were allowed to watch tv or given cash to go out to eat with their friends I was practicing. These lectures stayed with me when I applied for my first job, when I had advancement opportunities, when I thought about going back to school. I told myself over and over again that I wasn’t qualified for anything other than fast food. My mother constantly rejected any ideas I had, just like my husband does now when he tells me why any plans or ideas I have will fail, rather than just listening or God forbid saying something supportive. I feared rejection so much, because that’s all I ever received and I felt, at least back then, like I was worse than other people, less capable, more burdensome, because that’s what I was told about myself. Inevitably I got a job in fast food because the thought of it was less terrifying than applying other places. I worked three jobs to make rent when I moved to Chicago. My boyfriend had a period of a few months without work and we had no savings, so I had to pay rent somehow. Because of my work ethics, I moved up quite quickly from just working in a sandwich shop to managing, then being assistant manager, then general manager and having my own store in a matter of years. It felt good to be salaried, since I had been a college dropout, it was the best I had done to that point in my twenties. I must have come home, to Michigan, for some holiday likely Christmas because I didn’t visit more than once a year. My grandmother asked me about being a manager excitedly, and she was an actually accomplished woman giving me the floor and encouragement. I don’t recall what I said, but basically described what I was doing, our goals to build sales, and talked about how busy I was but excited. In front of everybody, my mom says “it’s easy to be a big fish in a small pond.” Thanks, mom, I will always remember that. Nothing I do will ever be good enough for you, so I don’t think about you and what you would think almost ever. When I do, I correct myself, because I am enough. I want my sons to know that they are enough, that their best is enough, that even when they don’t try they are still loved and enough.

Today I was an addict at her worst. It’s not one thing I need to be hyper-vigilant about; I can get addicted to anything. After therapy I went shopping because I was in Grand Rapids, but I need to be saving money, I have no money to spend, yet I spent. Mostly craft things for gifts and events coming up. That doesn’t make it better, it’s so compulsive and I can’t stop myself. I don’t need to buy anything. When I was younger, I often went days, weeks even, without purchasing anything. Today it’s so hard, you can’t look at your phone without getting triggered by targeted adds and stores are set up to sell you things you don’t need. I want to be disciplined so badly, but I am still failing. I tried to do meditation or mindfulness, but was afraid that I’d be interrupted at home by one of my two, but really three, children, or three dogs. I’ve been doing it on walks instead. I need to get my focus back. I’m impulsive and I keep giving myself projects that I can’t take on and I’m so insane I just keep doing the wrong thing and I think it will somehow bring me happiness, but it brings me stress and anxiety. I hate being an addict. I can see how sneaky and completely insane my thoughts are, yet I can’t escape them. Understanding and knowing doesn’t help. I have been selfish today. A lot of the time I don’t think I can get better. I need rehab, or at least a break from responsibilities and living with a sociopath. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to do the right thing, because I care so much about other people, yet I keep hurting them. It’s impossible to understand. I hurt others and I hurt myself over and over and over.

I almost never got to eat candy when I was a kid, but on the rare occasion I got my hands on some smarties I’d organize them carefully and savor every single one. I’d make them into lines based on color, then I’d give each color a meaning. For example, eating blue gives you the ability to fly, white gave you strength, pink would make you invisible, etc. I did the same thing with skittles or M&M’s. My fake pills before pills.

I lost half a day to insomnia. I wasn’t up all night, I can’t stand that unless I’m cleaning or being productive. I have trouble falling asleep, especially if it’s an extra-caffeine day. I don’t think I overdid it yesterday, however. I know I got a Starbuck’s because I ran into Craig and I remember telling him that I was taking writing classes, and he was happy to hear that since he had encouraged me to pursue it last year. He’s a retired lawyer, with several published books of poetry. He started later that I did, so that gives me some hope. I hate lying in bed being unable to sleep, because that leads to ruminating, which I used to be phenomenal at. I typically fall asleep listening to an audiobook through a sleep mask while my husband watches YouTube videos on his phone. Sometimes it’s just some guy camping or building a mini-house, other times there’s extreme construction or destruction noise and it’s obnoxious. The mask takes care of the light and the sound. Otherwise, I’d just read in bed like a normal person. I’ve taken melatonin for sleep, which helps greatly, but causes terrifying vivid nightmares. Benadryl makes me very tired, but I can’t stop taking it once I start without missing a night of sleep. Also, it gives me very bad restless leg syndrome in higher doses. I was prescribed Trazodone for sleep out of rehab years ago. It does make you sleepy in this very specific 30-minute window, but if you miss it, it’s useless, and I found it made me quite groggy in the morning. I have a probably at least 6-year-old bottle of it under my bathroom counter. Last night, taking a page out of my man-child husband’s book, I tried eating some pot to go to bed. It worked amazingly well until about halfway through the night when it wore off. I proceeded to ransack my children’s snacks and eat that and enough pot to fall back asleep. Unfortunately, I overdid it and was definitely still high when I woke up. I just wanted to eat. I made tacos for breakfast. I usually skip breakfast unless it’s coffee. Pot is definitely not a long-term solution for sleep. I’d like to have my own room, but our house is tiny and I need to keep my husband happy or he has episodes.

The first time I smoked pot was with my high school boyfriend. I’m not even sure that he still smoked himself when I started, but he used to and I wanted to because all of his cool friends did it and I also wanted to do something bad to say “fuck you” to my parents. It’s very typical addict behavior for one of us to drink poison expecting someone else to die from it. I don’t recall actually smoking it, but I’d imagine it was from a glass bowl that was our typical paraphernalia back then. I barely remember walking around enjoying the feeling, but I do recall being seated at our favorite Mexican restaurant. Back then they still had a smoking section, which I loved, except I hated the smell while I was eating. The music was ominous and sounded like people on horses coming to get us, I told my boyfriend, who was just amused at how fucked up I got from some low-mids. A couple of months later I was teaching my own friends how to smoke pot in my treehouse. One in particular annoyed me because she kept laughing as she’d put her mouth up to the pipe, blowing all of the marijuana out of the end. That was gold to me, the kid who didn’t have an allowance. I did have a job at McDonald’s when I was 16 making $5.15 an hour, part of which went to taxes. I had made $60/hour playing for a symphony when I was younger, making my hourly McDonalds wage feel like working for free, which it basically was and still is.

Today I met up with Anette at the library to go over my step work. They didn’t have rooms available, so we relocated to the Alano Club across the street to the back room since I knew the 11am book study had been canceled and the room was available. I find her to be very helpful and relatable. She goes through things at a slow pace to make sure they’re 100%, which I appreciate. She isn’t dragging, however. I had started a 4th step “light” but she’s having me focus on 3 until we meet in two weeks. Spirituality and “Higher Powers” are new to me. Step one, I’m powerless over alcohol and my unmanageable life, done. Two is believing that something greater than myself has the ability to restore me to sanity. This I too believe, because I’ve seen AA help me and others who I thought were completely hopeless. The collectiveness of the people in AA might be my higher power, but it still works within the guidelines. Step 3, I’ve decided to turn my will and life over to the care of God as I understand him. I see why she held me back here. I’m still trying to figure out what God is. I came into this program as an atheist, with no intention to change. After years I was advised that I was missing the spiritual component of sobriety, so I began a quest to find that spirituality at the very least if I didn’t believe in God, but that came very slowly. I don’t believe we can know “God” like the organized religions do. The most I’ve been able to believe is the connectedness of the universe and understanding that humans have a minuscule perspective of the universe and we are connected in ways that we cannot possibly understand. I can believe in a God of sorts, the energy that binds us, guides us in a certain direction. If I’m being really honest it has taken many years to be able to say that and believe it. There was nothing for so long. I wanted there to be something, but found it improbable, even impossible. I’m not sure how to practice step three. For now, I’m going to try to find that connection, I’m going to check in on friends, I’m going to take my dogs into the woods and feel nature, I’m going to snuggle my little boys close to me to feel the strongest love I’ve ever experienced, so strong that I feel physically different around my kids. I want to smell their heads and snuggle them and make them giggle.

I may have been the actual worst alter girl of all time. I wasn’t that familiar with the catholic church when I began serving. A lot of my friends had talked about church and Jesus and I had read a children’s bible that my step-dad’s mother gave to me. When I was about nine, I asked my mom some questions about church and who Jesus was, really just wondering what it was like and why we didn’t go when other families did. This sparked something in her and she decided that the three of us were going to become super Catholics for five years, then completely stop going to church again. I’m sure that wasn’t her original plan, but I found the whole experiment to be very silly. My mother threw herself all in. She subscribed to Catholic magazines and she’d make clippings of prayers we’d have to say before eating dinner. She taught Sunday school, got confirmed, and attended a bible study once a week. They couldn’t afford a babysitter for me, so I’d get to sit in Father John’s apartment connected to the church and watch Hey Arnold on his TV. It was great for me, because I wasn’t allowed to watch TV most of the time at home. We started going to church weekly, but I had missed baptism and first communion, which are typical rights of passages before serving as an alter girl or boy. I was baptized eventually. The other children serving had been going to mass their entire lives, so they knew the format completely. For me, it was confusing, and I had stage fright that was particularly bad because we attended such an enormous, although beautiful, church. Our priest was an alcoholic in recovery, so it was very important that the wine and grape juice were kept separate. That’s an easy one to completely fuck up. Once, when putting a tablecloth over the alter, I noticed that it was crooked after I had already sat down. Someone seated behind me encouraged me to fix it, but I was so nervous, I walked up to it and instead of straightening it I overcorrected and made it far more crooked in the opposite direction. I felt ashamed like the entire congregation was staring at me. A close friend of mine shared what her parents had said about me serving after mass, and while I can’t remember exactly what that was now, I know that it was unkind and they wondered why I was allowed to serve at all. She was the youngest of four and all of her siblings had served before she had. The thing was I hated serving, and was only doing it at the behest of my parents. When I held the bible for the priest to read from it was so heavy and I had very little upper body strength and my arms would start to shake, which made it harder for the priest to read from it. To make matters worse, I also shake when I’m nervous, so there was no chance I could hold the oversized book still. One time I recall serving with an older boy I didn’t know and made a comment about how boring it was to have to be in church and he scowled at me. I didn’t expect that because my friends all felt the same way about it, but later that month it was announced that he had decided to join the seminary. I felt stupid after hearing that, but at least I knew why he glared at me. I enjoyed serving for the midnight mass on Christmas because I loved the smell of incense, staying up late, and it was so beautiful to see all the candles lit throughout the church. I dumped wax from my little candle onto my hand and made a mold of my fingers to pass the time. I liked playing with fire, too. I could touch the fire, I knew it was hottest at the bottom near the wick, but the top of the fire wasn’t as hot and I could let my finger linger in it without getting burned. I kept doing it until I had a black stripe of ash around my finger.

Depression almost feels like getting a cold in the beginning. It comes on slowly, before you really know what it is, you feel almost tired. Maybe you don't want to get up with your alarm, or after the third alarm when the dog is sniffing you out and you just bury yourself tight under the covers. It feels impossible and overwhelming to start any task, not just big things, but small things like doing a few dishes or taking a shower. It's not sadness that comes first, like many people think, it's an inability to function and do normal daily things. Even things that you once found pleasurable. I genuinely love cooking and doing things in the kitchen, and the anticipation of cutting even one onion feels like entering a new session at CrossFit. I can sit still, but I can't distract myself with books or tv. I can't pay attention. I think about what I'm not getting done and it overwhelms me and cuts my self-esteem, but it's not enough to motivate me to actually get going. It's like nothing I do will be enough, so why even start? When it gets really bad, you can't eat, but before that stage you might want to eat, but you can't prepare food. Even sticking something in the microwave and waiting is too much. Not worth it, you just sit. I know not to ruminate or time travel, so I stay present, just feeling every second of not being enough, not being capable, being burdensome to those around me.

My friends knew I was depressed when I was a teenager. It was more situational, living with unpleasant people who enjoyed targeting me. Because of this, I was depressed for years in a row, while now my depression ebbs and flows, but typically doesn't last longer than weeks or sometimes months. Back then, depression was my identity. I had been depressed for years upon years, and I didn't know what it felt like to feel normal. I didn't believe it was possible for me to feel normal, not until I discovered alcohol, but that came later. Winters were especially hard. I was very lucky to have a solid friend group; we would literally meet together every day at Espresso Royale or the MSU Student Union when that was closed. I had a tendency to disappear when I was depressed. I'd stop showing up, then I'd stop answering my phone, then texts, and even AIM (AOL Instant Messenger for you babies). My best friend, Cal, was annoyed by this, as were the others, and he took it upon himself to make sure I left my house every single day that winter. When he first declared this, I thought it was all talk, but he meant it. He'd call non-stop until I answered. Mostly I humored him, and I could feel the love from my friends wanting me to come out. I didn't feel wanted at home, the opposite, I was a burden. Some other friends liked to go to MSU Professors of Jazz concerts on Thursday nights, and one in particular would call me over the phone because he didn't have a cell phone. Mostly I wouldn't answer because talking on the phone was as terrifying for me as giving a speech about a subject I didn't know in front of thousands of people. I couldn't prepare for it, I didn't know what the person on the other end would say, and the unpredictability scared me. I only walked into situations I was fully prepared for, that's how I stayed safe. I lived with a parent who was completely unpredictable. Sometimes pleasant, often unpleasant, with no apparent trigger. Anyway, this friend would leave a message like "going to the concert at 6, we better see you there!" and I'd go. Usually, I'd fall into a downward spiral in the wintertime, but this winter I stayed afloat. On my worst day I isolated, ignored my phone, and stayed in my room all day. I kept hearing a noise on the side of my house and my parents were about to call the police when I realized that Cal was standing in my driveway throwing snowballs at my window because I didn't answer my phone all day. He literally got me out of my house every single day. I didn't spiral. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is what saves you. Just going for a walk seems pointless and tiresome, but after it's done, you're well enough to make it through the rest of the day. That's all you need to do, just one day at a time. Don't look too far ahead, and certainly don't look behind, just move forward.

I took the boys to look at tools with dad, then grandma watched them for the afternoon. There was a last minute shindig since Emma and Elaine eloped and I didn’t have more than a few hours to throw something together, so I did a money bouquet with flowers made from money and photos of them and some actual flowers mixed in. I had enough time to make some fruit and berry squewers. I wanted to do pears and brie, but it was time to go so I’ll save that for lunch some other time. I appreciate my husband’s large family. It reminds me of a time when I was very young and always surrounded by family. I dropped everything today to be there. I want my boys to grow up with the support of a village. I want them to always have someone they’re comfortable to go to for help. My personal dreams send me back to Chicago, but I like living here for my sons because they’re surrounded by love and support.

I remember summers when I was my oldest son’s age, 4 going on 5. My mom and I lived with her parents, but I stayed with my Great-Grandparents on the weekends and after school. I remember adults talking, maybe a bit louder as evening approached when the drinking began. My uncles were goofy and they liked to tease me and tell me lies like my grandpa put bugs in his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My Great-Grandpa was wonderful and funny and he liked to tell me stories of things I had done when I was so young I couldn’t remember. I especially liked any story he told about his life. My Great-Grandmother was the family worrier. I am a lot like her. She was always checking in on me and I loved that. My grandmother had such a presence, she was beautiful and smart and had a career. I aspired to be like her, she just felt important and I didn’t know why. My grandpa I loved, I carried around a lunchbox full of pennies pretending to be my grandpa with his suitcase on his way to work in the city. I can’t remember any specific gatherings from around Finn’s age, just the general feeling I had around my family. Everyone had their own parents, it felt so safe. I lived in multiple houses. My Great-Grandparents spoiled me, so I loved them the most. My Grandparents still worked, and I respected them because they were adults, both with big important jobs. My mother was the most beautiful wonderful person, she taught children music, and I was enamored with her and wanted to do everything she did.

Finn left school yesterday and asked about a nutcracker. We were able to put him off a bit, but this morning the first thing he asked was if we were going to get a nutcracker, and Dad was certainly not going to let us drive four hours to Frankenmuth. This is how I found myself with kids in tow at Hobby Lobby, where ethically I know I shouldn’t spend my money, but where else can I find a nutcracker in early October? They had some enormous nutcrackers so high on the shelf that they obviously didn’t intend to sell them. Thankfully we found some bare wooden nutcrackers and Finn was excited at the idea of coloring his himself. I picked out the mouse king nutcracker, and after a million questions about why my nutcracker was a mouse I found a kid-friendly animated Nutcracker to show my boys while we colored our wooden toys. I had made some other afternoon plans for us, but kept having to cancel and change things. My husband had to work, then he wanted to go discing with his friends, then the work thing seemed legitimate, then we were all going to go to a movie together, then the work thing turned in to a big fuckup by him and his team, so he was stuck doing that. I was home worried about him trying to answer Finn’s persistent questions while I mentally deescalated my husband’s work crisis. We basically had a snow day in October. Dad is home now; the kids are actually eating vegetables which is the highlight of my day. Finn still wants to see a movie and dad thinks we’re going to argue if we’re in the same room together (probably true) so I’m going to take my 4-year-old to an inappropriately late movie. All in all, things ended okay again today. Like yesterday I thought the world was burning down during a few points, but by evening all was well again. I need to remember this tomorrow when I start to panic.

Like a typical 90’s girl, I was a tomboy. I daydreamed about climbing trees and kicking balls. I hated dresses, ruffles, and dance, but my mother wanted to be a ballerina when she was young, so off I went to ballet instead of soccer. I already felt like an awkward presence, being pale and freckled with orange hair, then just a little taller than the other girls. I wasn’t graceful, I fell often, and my parents frequently accused me of having heavy footsteps in the house. I couldn’t do anything right in their eyes, even walk correctly. I was so adamant about not wearing a skirt that I convinced my dance instructor to create a grumpy dwarf character for one performance so I could wear shorts while all the other little girls wore sequins and tutus. The year we did the Nutcracker Ballet I was cast as the fall fairy, and although I disliked being a girly-girl, I did enjoy representing autumn. I loved the colors of my orange leotard and the leaves on my fairy cape. I identified with fall as my favorite season, the colors were beautiful, it started to get chilly, my favorite holidays were coming up, and the air smelled crisp. Fall was short-lived where I grew up, it began to snow in September. I loved the building I had dance class in, it was very old, it even had old cigarette and candy machines. I think they worked, but I don’t think I ever tried to use them, the candy was from the 70’s. It felt haunted because of the squeaky wooden steps leading down to the dance studio. I was usually dropped off to dance with my friend Lief because my parents both worked in the evening. After dance everyone was picked up. I didn’t see anyone coming to get me and eventually the building lights were turned off, so I went outside and sat up on the huge snow bank in front of the building. It was cold, and I could kind of see where my house was across the canal because I grew up in a valley but I didn’t know the way and it was a lot farther away than one could reasonably walk. Eventually headlights pulled in and my step-dad apologized profusely for forgetting to pick me up. I got in his pickup, happy to be warm, and I watched the lights across the canal and crossed the lift bridge until we got to 6th street, and went straight up, almost a 90-degree angle it seemed. When he pulled into the driveway there was dark smoke coming out of every single window of the house. I thought it was on fire. He rushed inside and I saw him run back outside with a small pan he was holding away from himself in an oven mitt and placed in the snow. “I forgot to turn the beans off,” he said. The one thing my mother had asked him to prepare for dinner, he knew he would be in trouble. He had to open every window in the house to make sure the cats were okay, and it was freezing, I never really thawed out from my time waiting in the snowbank. Then again, up there you never really thawed out all winter, you were just kind of cold from September to June.

I must be going through something. Everyone must be, how can we keep going in a state of constant fear, fear that climate change is going to end the species, or flood our basement, fear that our unstable president is going to piss the wrong person off, and they retaliate, fear every single day that’s inescapable. The news is on your phone. You can’t not look at your phone, especially if you’re a mom, you have to schedule swimming and play dates and violin and the constant stream of events on this device that takes over my mind.

I got up this morning, like usual, made breakfast for the kids, made lunch for school, checked Finn’s backpack. We had extra time before school, and sometimes we go for a walk, but it was cold this morning and I had a letter to mail, so we walked around Meijer instead because they have a mail slot. I say no to one hundred items, then he asks for a purple Halloween bucket that costs $1.50 and his shoulders are hunched and he’s so sad that I’ve said no to every single junk thing that he wants. Last time it was a $15 snow globe that he broke, he told me dad is “fixing it.” Right. I buy the Halloween bucket.

I drop Finn off in his class line in front of school and he waves to me, and I almost run into other parents because I try to wave back for as long as possible on my way to my car. Finn is my whole heart, he is my first-born son, he is my entire universe, and sometimes it is very hard to say goodbye to him, even though I have things to do and he has things to learn.

He is my very favorite person on the planet and I’m calling his dad to ask if I can take him to Frankenmuth because he wants a nutcracker like mine, the one that broke and dad said he’d fix, but didn’t. I didn’t know it would turn into such a fight, I feel trapped, he feels like I just do whatever I want, yada, yada, yada, as George would say… Not going to Frankenmuth. Dad doesn’t want to have new experiences; dad is scared of everything.

This sends me in my time machine to my past where I’m in a relationship with someone I like, someone I can stand to spend time with, someone I even want to have conversations with. I text him “if you change your mind, I’d really like to talk to you,” but he blocked my number. It never says “delivered.” Fuck. I had love once, I had a best friend, I had life. I didn’t know it was rare and I didn’t know I was lucky and to hold onto it. That’s what they all say.

Now my day is broken up between chores and the time machine, and the change-time machine and the future machine. I will never get it back. I will never feel at home with someone. My husband cares about money. That sentence describes his entire personality, hopes, dreams, and goals.

Finn’s school photos come in the mail. His impression of someone smiling is hilariously unflattering. I didn’t know what to do, I guess I just order 200 photos of my kid making a really silly face in his best sweater with a collared shirt. I don’t understand why photographers ask kids to smile, because they aren’t good actors. Instead, maybe memorize a few jokes, something to make them actually laugh. Isn’t it all digital now? I think it’s funny, but when I mail people these photos, will they think so, too?

My husband comes home and is actually a good dad and maybe the big enemy I’ve built up in my head is just fiction. We even try to go to the homecoming game where I run into my friend Amber, but eventually lose her to other friends. Seamus loves stomping on the stands and yelling with the big kids, and Finn’s fascinated with the marching band, just like I was once upon a time. It was a surprisingly sweet ending to a day spent dodging crying spells and time traveling.

I don’t remember exactly when I pulled out my first hair, but I do remember that my mother warned me “next you’ll be pulling your hair out,” when she tired of me biting my nails until they bled and saying “ungch” repeatedly or any of my weird ticks. I tried it and did not see why anyone would enjoy it. I kind of did it because she said it, and then at some point it started to feel good, and I started to be good at it.

I grabbed them by the root; I knew how to get a juicy root from the best spot on my head. In the front around the hairline, the roots would be hard and dry, you wanted something from the middle or the sides of your scalp. Trichotillomania, it’s called. A word only I would know.

I don’t know if I can relate it to something a normal human would enjoy. It’s kind of like that refreshing sound you get opening a new can of pop. It is also sometimes like an itch that needs to be scratched, but other times it’s just business.

It ruined my life for a couple of years in elementary school when I’d try to cover my bald spots with hair gel, metal clips, and a wide black stretchy headband. I remember the gross feeling of spray gel running down my bald scalp until it dried. I tried to have a combover like Donald Trump, but was not hiding anything.

Ever since then I’ve kept it in check. Never enough to be noticed. Sometimes I’ll go years without pulling a single hair. In this relationship I feel like I’m back in my mother’s house, constantly walking on eggshells trying not to wake the beast.

The strange thing is that I married exactly who I wanted to, and the things that are more dangerous about him make him more attractive to me. That’s the most messed up thing about having such a damaging childhood, the abuse feels like home.