Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

I've been meaning to write lately, honestly I have, but it's just difficult, y'know?  If I don't have the baby boy nursing on me, then I am either scrambling to find and eat food, or I am tending to one of the girls.  And, of course, when everything has equalized and is quiet, the girls manage to wake up the boy and everything ramps up again into the cacophony of childhood.  But back to the writing thing...

 The upcoming move to Washington has been weighing heavily on me and has been stirring up a lot of emotions which normally lie dormant.  I don't like to think about my childhood and analyze how horrible it was; I am much more comfortable as a story-teller and being able to win all the "my childhood was worse than your childhood" competitions that I have with my fairly privileged friends and husband.  Clinically, my childhood was not that bad.  But it did damage me, and damage me severely, and it is continuing to do so.  Moving all the way across the country permanently really represents a breaking point between me and my family.

I think that I'm grieving.  I know that my mother won't stay in touch with me or my family; my mistakes of a husband and children.  Not only will I be depriving myself of a mother (well, biologically at least), but I will taking away a grandmother from them.  Same for my father, but he's only recently back, and still hasn't disowned me though he lives next door.  Not even mentioning my brother.  He's pretty destroyed now. 

But grief and grieving.  It's not even grieving for something that I have.  It's grieving for something that should have been there.  I should have grown up with people who loved me.  My children should have grandparents who want to spend time with them.  I shouldn't have had to take care of my parents and to have internalized lessons of sexuality and chemical dependency as the norm. 

Sometimes I just want to cry and say that it's not fair. 

Sometimes I wonder who I would have been if circumstances were different. 

Sometimes I wonder how much longer I can fake being sane and strong. 

What I Like

What I Like

I like words.  I like finding new words, discovering old words, and finding new meanings for words which I already know. 

I like chocolate.  I like hot chocolate, chocolate cookies, homemade and box made chocolate cake, chocolate candies, chocolate body wash, and chocolate colored paint.  However, I don't really care for chocolate lip gloss or canned chocolate frosting. 

I like spring because it means I can open my front door and my windows and turn off the heater.  I also like seeing the flowers begin to bloom despite my complete inattention to them.  I like the idea of spring cleaning even though my inability to do such is renowned.  I like hearing the little frogs, the "peepers" in the swamp that borders this piece of property in Maine.  I like the smell of earth and being able to go outside in my bare feet and feel the ground be warm under my toes. 

I like magnetic poetry even though I have none of it up currently because of the children.  I like the simplicity that it offers.  The limited availability of words to be chosen.  Plus it reminds me of Chicago and Amy when I was fourteen.

I like photography and taking pictures.

Pink Flower

Even though I haven't done it in awhile.

I like being able to sit down and write. 
Even though I haven't done it in awhile.