This year we’re adding some structured learning on weekdays. Both boys have notebooks to record their progress this year. They both have math and writing in their notebooks.
Aiden being able to vote in 18 months, we’re studying science with a college professor on The Great Courses Plus and reading together Robert Reich’s new memoir Coming Up Short. We look up all the historical terms and discuss how past events connect to current events.
I got a copy of the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, but I found a more kid friendly book on it that we’ll get in a couple days, along with an infographic book on how our government works.
Today we learned about the second law of thermodynamics and how it applies to water and to engines.
Now he’s reading a chapter on dogs from Temple Grandin’s Animals Make Us Human.
We watched the first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine this morning. I told him it started when I was 12 and ended when I graduated high school. It’s the series that raised me after mom died. I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation with Mom before she died when I was 12.
We related the themes of the show to what’s going on in the real world. Aiden asked if Jadzia Dax was the first gender-fluid character on tv. I don’t know. But they did have the first onscreen female to female kiss, I think, with that character.
It’s fun learning with him. He snuggled me on the couch when we watched the science class.
It’s hard doing all this myself, but it’s worth it. Now we just need to join a community. There’s got to be one for us somewhere.
The last couple of days I have been working on my gouache painting skills. I’m celebrating finishing a painting, despite it’s flaws. Gouache is hard because it dries darker. The water makes it brighter, so you think you are painting crimson, but it dries like blood. lol
Five Boyhoods, published in 1962, is five short memoirs written by men who grew up in sequential decades starting in the 1880s and ending in the 1940s with John Updike.
The short memoirs give fascinating insights to what it was like to grow up a boy in America a century ago. The first one reveals how his father, as a medium, tricked his audiences. The author worked selling his uncle’s papers at six years old. I didn’t let my kids anywhere without me at that age.
One author mentioned he never heard “homosexual” or “rape” growing up, though they definitely happened then as often as now. Another author said nothing about sex or the body was talked about, and his parents didn’t even hold hands in front of anyone.
My uncle and aunt on one side and an uncle on the other side were/are gay. My brother is gay. I’m bisexual. My oldest niece is gay. We’ve been fortunate enough to grow up in a world where we can find and support each other, where people will help us fight for our rights.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I was born in ’81 to a 19 year old mother and her husband, who had an 18 year old daughter that year. Mom joined the air force, and when she was 23, her husband shot her. The Air Force flew her to California to heal.
Mom grew up in a small Appalachian church and was whipped until blood ran down her legs for wearing pants as a teen. She almost always wore pants when I was a kid. She limped and her face was half paralyzed from the shooting. She’d been beautiful, and she still was, on the right side. The left side was frozen in a wide-eye grimace.
Her first husband died from a heart attack when I was five, living in California with Mom. She married the man who nursed her back to health, and he adopted me. He gave me a sister and a brother, and I was a bossy older sister, I hear. In California I attended kindergarten, and my main memory from that year is standing on stage with dozens of other students singing, “This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land.”
We left California the Spring I turned 6, and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas when Bill Clinton was governor. I had one friend in Little Rock, but all I remember is walking around the housing area on the base with her. I think she was older than me. But I was 6, playing outside without my mom, so that’s something I have in common with the boys in Five Boyhoods.
I turned 7 in Orlando, Florida, where Dad was honorably discharged. He worked hard to make a good life for us. He was well loved by everyone he worked with, all his life. I remember him running beside me, holding on to my bike while I pedaled, letting go and cheering me on. I remember riding on his back at a school field day and he raced other similarly encumbered Dads. I don’t think he won. I was a chunker.
Mom was 19 when I was born, and the man who became my Dad was 17 that year. My parents were young, but well liked in the neighborhood and community. Mom hosted Buddhist meetings in our home; she converted in California when she was healing. We would spend major holidays with family in Virginia with our Christian farmer family on mom’s side, and in Dad’s parents trailer in South Carolina. Orlando, South Carolina, and Virginia might as well have been three different countries.
I was the oldest of the cousins, as mom was the oldest of her siblings, and Dad was only 17 when I was born. His sister had a son a couple years younger than me, and they lived in Florida, right behind our elementary school. We would sneak onto school grounds to play on the playground, climbing the giant tires, tire mountain. Making potions in the sand.
In Virginia, we had huge family meals, and family reunions. Mom’s seven brothers and sisters and their families all gathered at Grandma’s house. The younger kids would go play while I helped prepare the meal, or hid from the noise and read a book. I wasn’t much help, and I got a lot of reading done. The men would sit in the den, watching wrestling under the glass-eyed stare of four buck heads mounted on the wall, Grandpa’s cigar smoke wafting among the antlers.
Mom was infected with HIV and Hepatitus C when she was shot. Dad knew, but us kids didn’t know Mom was dying. Ronald Reagan hated gay people so much, just about everyone hated gay people so much, the drugs to prevent HIV from turning into AIDS weren’t made legal in America until after Mom died.
I’ve been listening to my frustrated thoughts about MAGA, and decided to turn them on myself. They are ignorant; I am ignorant. I want them to educate themselves, so I’m educating myself.
I was raised Buddhist, so I didn’t grow up in the church, and I only read the Bible from a historical perspective in college. I bought the most accurately translated one, but didn’t get very far. All these months later, I found a course on The Great Courses Plus on the Old Testament, and it is fascinating. The professor knows Hebrew and talks about translation, Hebrew humor and poetry structure, history, and the structures of the different books, and the Psalms. When I go to read it again, there will be context in my brain, and I won’t struggle to picture it all in my head.
It occurs to me that I have respect for every religion and culture except the one my mother was born to. I have resented Christianity my whole life, and now I’m casting aside that resentment and studying my mother’s culture as if I were studying an ancient foreign culture…which, to me, it is.
Maybe that will help me connect with people beyond my small circle of like-minded friends.
I’m reading The Gifts of Imperfection for the first time in several years. In the first chapter she talks about her “dig deep” button. The inner will to push through and carry on. Which leads to burn out.
So she came up with an acronym. Deliberate – pray, meditate, or state intentions. Inspired – get inspired to make a change. Going – take action.
Old me would pull a tarot card or do a reading for myself, so that’s prayer and meditation rolled into one. The cards would inspire me to take action.
I was feeling lost. Ever since I went manic and acted mean for years, I’ve felt lost. So I asked the cards, who am I?
I pulled The Empress. The Empress has always come up for me, since I was 13 with my first tarot deck. The Mother. The Nurturer.
I used to believe there was too much bad in the world, so I would only contribute good. But I didn’t see my own mistakes. When I was angry and didn’t know what to say, I would use my behavior to express my upset. I would refuse hugs, for example. As an adult.
I think being diagnosed autistic four years ago has given me clarity into my faults. Some of them are unchangeable, just the way my brain works. Others are embarrassing, because I realize I didn’t raise myself properly.
If I didn’t understand a rule, I broke it. If I felt bad, I acted out. If I felt strongly, everyone knew it.
Now I’m reading the books that helped me feel healed and whole before 2020. I can face my shame and embrace new ways of thinking about my behavior. I can learn how to apologize when I feel bad without spiraling.
My son’s best friend is in beauty school, and did my hair yesterday. First the bleach, then a trim, then lime crime “genie.”
When I was 18, the beauty school was a movie theater, one I used to walk to. They played music from my teen years, like Spice Girls. It’s crazy to sit in the remodeled theater lobby while the next generation paints bleach on my hair.
When I was 18, my cell phone had buttons, real buttons, and very small digital screens. The summers weren’t as hot – I was able to walk 3 miles in the heat to karate class and back all summer without heat stroke.
When I was 18, our class song was 1999, like our year. My favorite song was All Star, by Smashmouth, and my two favorites from the Mickey Mouse club were just starting their solo careers with Hit Me Baby One More Time and Genie in a Bottle (like my hair color! hee!)
Y2K was a thing my Dad was working overtime to prevent, not a nostalgia fad. Columbine happened, and it shocked the nation back then. I remember thinking the adults would take care of it. I certainly didn’t feel like an adult yet.
My favorite movie was The Mummy. Egyptology was my dream at that age. I started college that year, majoring in Anthropology.
Which brings me back to now. Twenty five years later, my life has been so different than anything I could have imagined back then. There are so many things I wish I could go back and tell myself. Well, I can in my imagination.
I would tell myself to call my grandparents every Sunday.
I would tell myself sex isn’t good without friendship and love, and foreplay is the best part.
I would tell myself to find a mother figure in real life that I could go to…from my mother’s generation. My best friend was too young for that role.
I would tell myself to work on my relationship with my siblings, and to believe Dad when he told me I was bipolar.
Gods, how could my life have been better if I’d had treatment for the bipolar before age 42!
At least my kids are mentally healthy. They are happy. They have a great relationship. They are playing Roblox right now.
My kids never knew a time without smart phones, ipads, youtube. They’ve grown up with virtual reality and worldbuilding games like Minecraft and Roblox. They have online only friends. I got my first computer when I was 10 (in 1991!) They have never known a time without computers.
They can’t play outside all day in summer like we had to. Not here in central Florida.
I don’t miss being 18. Not knowing I was adhd or autistic or bipolar made me hate myself for my symptoms. I was always fighting myself and beating myself up for every failure. I was not a very good friend to myself. And I really needed a parent I could talk to about important stuff.
It took a day to recover from our day at Legoland, but we had a blast. They reopened the kid slide area at the water park, and both my sons got to play on it together. They have such a great relationship, especially for being 8 years apart.
Anti-depressants cause heat sensitivity, and I got a migraine at noon. When I started feeling sick, I bought sixteen ounces of powerade for five freaking dollars. Later we spent $21 on three small scoops of ice cream.
It’s one thing to overcharge, but to give such small portions for so much money should be a crime. There are no water fountains. It’s hot and humid and you can get a souvenir cup that’s refillable all day for $21. Maybe I should have gotten that instead of the ice cream…lol
I wanted to get a picture of Dylan on a roller coaster, since I failed to get one on his first ever roller coaster. I didn’t know what time we rode it, so I couldn’t get a picture at the desk in the front of the park, but this time I knew the boys were on one roller coaster between 5 and 5:15. I paid $26 for 4 wallet sized prints and a magnet, keychain set. I put them both together Friday morning. I had Aiden’s first rollercoaster picture on my keychain eight years ago.
We rode the Ancient Egyptian themed shooter ride. I got 5500 points. Aiden got 16000. Dylan didn’t even try. lol
Mostly, Dylan wanted to play in the water, and it was his birthday, so that’s what we did. We used sunscreen this time, and did not get burnt!
Dylan wore his waterproof go pro around his neck, and it fell off in the water slide play area. Luckily, he saw another kid playing with it and got it back.
I only took a few pictures. Mostly my phone stayed in the backpack. I didn’t take any in their new aquarium, Sea Life, because Dylan was taking them with his camera and I didn’t think to. There were not many people in there when we went, which made it extra nice. They have touchscreens to teach visitors about each creature. And the kids get to choose which color the jellyfish glow by pushing buttons.
It’s too bad Dylan isn’t into building with Legos lately. But also good, because he didn’t want any Lego sets.
Legoland is great for young kids, and my teen had a blast too. Maybe next time we’ll try one of the shows.
When someone complained to me about the mystifying behavior of people she didn’t like, I would at first try to explain. Eventually, I realized she wasn’t complaining to understand. And I started saying, “You can’t understand crazy unless you are the same kind of crazy.”
She didn’t think she needed her meds, and I trusted her because I had no experience with bipolar people. I didn’t know I was bipolar then. I started studying it to understand her, but I didn’t see it in myself because clinical language fails to capture lived experience.
I could see her manic swings, but not my own. Because I was taking care of her like she was sick, she got happier and I got more stressed and sicker. I explained my adhd characteristics to her, and she took it as me excusing my inexcusable behavior.
I was watching Dr. Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown on youtube with Will Wheaton as her guest, and he mentioned a book I bought but haven’t read yet. And now I can’t find it. Did I mention I have ADHD?
Anyway, the book is for adult children of immature parents. And most of us had immature parents. Especially us firstborns. My eldest certainly had a less mature version of me for his mom. My youngest is benefiting from what I’ve learned from parenting his brother, and from what I’ve learned about myself.
The culture wars sometimes seem to be between parents who hit and humiliate as “discipline,” and parents who believe children deserve respect. Guess which side I fall on? lol
Anyway, i can understand everyone’s crazy, because I have always been crazy myself. I lose control when I’m stressed out, but that’s not PTSD, like I thought it was since I was a teen.
I was always afraid of psychiatric medication, with good reason. Taking the wrong one or the wrong dosage can make you worse, and you have to experiment to find the combination that gives you the greatest benefit with the lowest bad side effects.
My side effects are nausea and weight gain. I’ll take continuing to be fat and random feelings of nausea that pass after a few minutes over having hypomanic and depressive swings every day for the rest of my life.
I missed a dose earlier this month, just fell asleep before taking them. The next morning, I tried to take them, but my stomach revolted. I fell into a depressive episode that only lasted three days, as the meds stayed down that night and every night since. But that episode reminded me how I used to feel all the time. For years, antidepressants would make me hypomanic and I would think they were making me better because I wasn’t drowning in depression anymore.
I had to experience real mania before I suspected myself of being bipolar. And I had to experience a manic episode when my siblings were visiting, driving them away, before I got evaluated for it. Then I finally got on mood stabilizers, changing my life.
When I’m crazy, I think crazy and act crazy and it’s my meat suit, but it’s not the me that’s typing right now. It’s my Hyde. I know I’m getting hypomanic when my Hyde starts ranting in my head. It’s been months. I know it will happen again, but now I accept it instead of fighting myself. I don’t embrace it, exactly. More, accommodate it. Avoid all stress. Distract myself from the ranting intrusive thoughts. Telling everyone I’m hypomanic, so they know I may act out of character, but also to keep it fresh in my mind. If I catch myself getting whiny or irritable, I retreat.
I’m peacefully parenting my inner toddler. I think that’s what my Hyde is. An exhausted, hungry, attention-needing toddler. My family spanked us for being hangry and tired. For making our needs known the only way we could in those moments.
Just because you can’t see a struggle, doesn’t mean it’s not exhausting and breaking someone down.
Just be kind, and if you can’t be kind, just get away.
I don’t want to be mean, or ugly. But sometimes I am. I have to forgive myself, even if no one else does.
I think forgiveness and empathy are tools of emotional maturity. I think we are all less mature in some moments than in others. I believe in giving grace, even if I don’t get it back.
Our youngest is turning 8 on Thursday, and we’re taking him to Legoland to celebrate. This morning Lil Bit and I met the dogsitter and his dog, in preparation for staying the day with them. I learned that huskies and australian shepherds have special fur that is double insulated – meaning it keeps them cool in summer and warm in winter. Some owners shave them in hot states, which can cause them to overheat, and the fur may never grow fully functional.
I saw my psychiatrist today. All my meds are making me sane and balanced. It’s nice to feel normal for long stretches of time. Well, as normal as I can feel. As long as I don’t leave the house, I can forget how normal people see me.
I just need to stop caring what normies think. Get back to my affirmations. Other people’s opinions of me are none of my business. I can hear criticism and abuse without hurting my heart with it. I can hear the emotion behind the words and see the needs behind the behavior.
Unfortunately, normies outnumber abnormies.
Funny. I have the hardest time thinking about what to write when I’m writing morning pages by hand. But now that I’m sitting at my computer, my thoughts are just flying from my fingertips.
I’m having mild flashbacks, if there’s such a thing. An echo of manic rage and pain, and typing for hours on my phone, facebook, blog, everywhere. I don’t remember what I wrote, but there are aftershocks of shame and pain.
I don’t want to dive into my manic thinking. I saw some of it in my old morning pages. It was stream of consciousness jumping from stream to stream to stream for pages and pages.
I have videos and audio files I recorded when I was manic and couldn’t sleep or be still or calm the fuck down.
I don’t know how to make any of it right.
I can’t even remember everything I need to make right.
So, what then?
What would I tell my kids to do? Probably, apologize and accept their response, or lack of response.
But I also feel like I should just leave them alone. Now I’m a bad person to them, and they don’t want to hear from me.
Parts of me feel pulled in so many directions. I want to study anthropology, and writing, and spirituality, all over again. I want to write a fiction series, a self-help book, a children’s book, a memoir or two, AND I want to create a neurodivergent oracle deck.
I’ve been thinking about making a neurodivergent affirmation deck, too. Things we autistic, adhd, bipolar, etc people need to hear, unique to our shared experiences.
And I want to paint, draw, sing, declutter, organize, take my kids out, read, garden, do laundry…ok, I don’t really want to do laundry, but I need to. So then there’s all the other stuff I need to do.
My meds don’t fix my executive dysfunction, sadly. Nothing really does. There are tricks to help, like using someone else’s brain.
I’m disabled, and that was hard to swallow. Not because I see disabled people as bad, but because I realized that all these years of hating myself and struggling to survive, I really did need help. Always. Every day, even with common tasks I “should” be able to do at my age.
And my heart breaks for the millions of people like me who don’t know why they are the way they are, don’t know they can get help, and of course all the people who have no access to help.
And part of me is pissed that we allow assholes like Bezos, Musk, Trump to control more wealth than any one person could ever deserve while the bottom 50% of Americans struggle to survive.
People struggling to survive don’t have time to educate themselves. Our public schools are a terrible joke gone horribly wrong. Voters are the minority in this country of government by the people.
And everyone is sure they’re right and the others are wrong.
I’m tired of feeling helpless and hopeless. I’ve got to get more involved in changing the world for the better.
I care enough to talk, and to post, and to vote. Now I need to get over my phone anxiety, make calls, and join a resistance group. Get off my butt and do something.
It’s been over a year, and I want to commit to writing in this blog weekly.
When I wrote my first book, I had teachers doing all the executive functioning and motivating for me. I had to have my work in, people were waiting on me, I needed to earn at least a B to stay in the MFA program.
When I revised it for publication, I had an editor waiting on me, and potential sales to motivate me.
Now I have all these ideas, all these passions to write about, and I guess I need to attract people to wait on me. I can write for my future readers. lol
Someone in an autistic led group I’m in described her time since her diagnosis as “since I became self-aware.”
The last few years have been a deep dive into self awareness for me.
I didn’t just work with my shadow. When I was manic, I embodied it.
I’m supposed to take responsibility for behavior I couldn’t control and wasn’t aware was hurtful until after I’d already done it. I don’t know how to do that. So I’ll write about it, maybe figure it out.
There are so many things I want to write about today. The war in Iran being supported by Evangelicals and MAGAs, for one. But I need to finish my morning pages and figure out my next blogpost or few.
Adventures of an Earthborn Alien 