what does my life look like if it doesn't look like this? what does it look like if i don't do the same things everyday? why do i choose the same reality day after day? why am i paralyzed by fear to alter simple routines? why does cutting out certain things feel like the loss of a limb? is that a good thing or a bad thing? is it bad because i've chosen to abandon something that is dear to me, something that i am comfortable in, or is it good because that thing so dear to me brought so much stress to my life? is it quitting something that i am passionate about or is it kicking an addiction? can the addiction be both a benefit and detrimental? i suppose by very definition this is true.

back to the real question - if i don't do this, what do i do? have i opened a door to limitless possibilities or closed a door on a valuable outlet and resource? do i harm myself or others in this or do i harm myself or others without it? the internet and mothering have become in many ways just something to do, something i work at as a default when there's nothing left to do or in order not to think. is it possible that i could spend that time much more creatively and be something better than i am or will i merely fill the space with the mundane? which is better? which is more purely virtuous? which benefits my children? my family? myself? what do i do if i don't do that? a list:

• take walks
  
• drink tea
  
• write
  
• paint
  
• knit (learn to knit)
  
• sew
  
• think of new things to try
  
• grow things
  
• craft
  
• purge
  
• get more sleep
  
• read
  
• finish the plant hanger
  
• finish the quilt
  
• write letters to grandma
  
• hang out with friends
  
• have sex
  
• bake
  
• get things done in a timely manner
  
• make collages
  
• keep track of unschooling stuff
  
• think
  
• go to the library
  
• visit museums
  
• go to the nature center
  
• take the kids to the park
  
• put together the photo albums
  
• go vegan
  
• write down funny things aleks says
  
• finish bastian's baby book
  
• listen to music
  
• fix the quilts
  
• do yoga
  
• write poetry
  
• work on my book
  
• take a class
  
• study midwifery
  
• create who i am
  
• ask important questions
  
• volunteer at the food co-op
  
• make sure aleks brushes his teeth everyday
  
• blog
  
• return emails
  
• go somewhere
  
• solve the energy crisis
  
• take more photos
  
• try to understand quantum physics
  
• explore the universe
  
• compose a letter to opt out of christmas
  

if i get too busy, i can't do the things that really nourish me and add something to the world for those in my immediate vicinity. on the other hand, i think my service at mothering was and is a good thing that benefits others all over the world. but i need a break and all those others deserve someone with fresh dedication and enthusiasm.

i do not take my children for granted. i know i am their protector and, at least for now, their sacred soft spot to come home to. i take joy in their laughter, their discoveries, and their triumphs. i am also human. i fail everyday to do it right. i fail everyday at not trying to do it right, but trying to do it well enough. i end up doing it well enough, mostly. my perfectionism eats at me sometimes, overwhelms and drowns me in mountains of the unaccomplished, even the unseen or unknowingly wanted. my perfectionism keeps me going in fits and spurts as i make vain attempts at absolutely everything. and in my head, as i acknowledge this flaw that seeks to destroy me by building the impossible expectations, there, alongside it is the great list of all that i am not doing in and in many cases not even attempting. my perfectionism is a snake eating its tail - it is a failing among failings. and still i cannot ignore all that i want to do or should be doing. and alongside all my failings are all my worries. sometimes they overlap and sometimes they breed. my obsession with social concerns grows because i do know i am my children's protector and i have not yet found a way to protect them from the world. i stand in agony watching the nation polarize into opposite extremes, waiting for the expansion to result in collapse. i stand paralyzed by fear, waiting, waiting, waiting. i seek distraction in the endeavor for the middle class fantasy, in the guise of the modern, enlightened housewife, in the cloak of the eco-mom, as if style had anything to do with the philosophy. underneath it all i am merely terrified of what will happen when the infrastructure fails and the water runs out. it has been at least a year of this. this underlying anxiety that threatens to swallow my entire universe when the stress level creeps a bit higher. we are ever involved in the work for the future. we are constantly committed to moving ourselves forward, but in this year and in the history we've created and the experiences we've witnessed, it becomes increasingly difficult to know what the end is and to hold it in our sights. there was once an image. there was once a dream. i had a vision of what i wanted to be. and now, and now, and now... now i am not certain that i will achieve much of anything if the history of this nation continues on this path, if the history of this world persists as it is. when the stress of my life becomes so much, when my husband has failed at his greatest test and all the future is uncertain, amidst all these family deaths, and all this family strife, amidst sickness and mad attempts at eco-feminist versions of donna reed, amidst personal insult, amidst so much uncertainty and suspicions cast in my direction, amidst inner calls for change and cries for personal enlightenment, to change my future and create my day, when all this turmoil is tumultuous and threatening, i find myself oddly focused in every direction simultaneously and obsessed with what i can do to become anti-racist, with what more i can do to combat global warming and completely terrified not of avian influenza, not of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, not of terrorism, but of the real dangers my government and my fellow americans pose to the world and to ourselves in our thirst for fuel, in our quest for ikea-jizz, in our ever demanding levels of walmart ultimates. i find myself waiting for babylon to tumble. this becomes quite uncomfortable for some of my acquaintances. i apologize now for this. i doubt it will end. i believe now the accident resulted in my sustaining a certain level of anxiety that is now persistent and constant and which rises like a tide when outside stress stimulates it. for that i now fear for my children every day. i do not know how to circumnavigate it, nor do i know how to stop being just myself responding to normal levels of stress and the constant flux of moods that cause me to fail as a parent and not love my children perfectly every moment of every day. i do take joy though. sometimes i smile and sometimes i even laugh out loud. still, under my skin, there is a vibration, a constant unease that will not go away. i am doing what i can. i do not know any better.

all the big questions are spinning in my head. day in, day out, they persist. cigarettes glint fiery ashes off the interstate asphalt before me and i am singing very loudly along with the stereo to stave off despair, searching in the moment for the joy of the world, my chest thumping in tune, my eyes wide, trying to imagine the world full of possibilities and hope. if all possibilities occur in endless dimensions, can we bridge the gap? which reality is most real? can i exert control over the possibilities of my life? if it takes stepping outside of my frame-of-reference, this perspective, my trained understanding of the methods of the world's working order to achieve choice in a real instead of imagined way, to make alternate choices than the ones i believe possible, how do it do that? how do i step outside myself? how do i release myself from the confines of my understanding? how do i explore the world outside my narrow scope? is there any possibility of cooperative governing in my lifetime? if we do not manage to turn global warming around within the next decade will the infrastructure of this society collapse under the weight of demand for shrinking resources? will my genes move forward? will my children be okay? will my heart break from the mammoth truth of so much poverty, rape, torture, and genocide in this world? how can i sit in my house in my neighborhood on this summer night drinking cool clean water and eating organic pretzels whilst so much of the world's population struggles to maintain itself? my breasts are filled and emptied each day over and over by a smiling, tooth-filled mouth and clean good nutrients get in, heal him. i enjoy such privilege and cannot fathom the terror of so much of the world. surely there are campfires going somewhere and people are singing somewhere. surely someone is laughing and someone is kissing and someone is making love. i need to know that there is possibility and i can sense only so much despair. i do not know how to do this. i do not know how to make other choices. i cannot see the possibilities before me and shape my day. i cannot sense the atoms in the air and the smallest bits in between all the in-between-ness. i cannot feel the light burst into flame burst into my skin, the air is singeing all the hope from out my brain, the collapse of this known universe cannot come into my heart, i cannot let it, the thoughts cannot make enough sense it is so very late i must be going.

i am melting. the heat is taking away my patience. it has evaporated, yet clings to my skin as so much stickiness. we return from weeks at my mother's house, from all the many family deaths, visiting cousins and useless uncles, swimming everyday and aleks "rolling into a ball underwater," husband away, sisters screaming the usual obsenities at one another, cicadas humming in the back field, the crow of too many roosters (godfather now incredibly elderly though not infirm), the dog, the cat, the ample room for running and playing and pooping in the yard, the difficulties of being in someone else's non-child-proofed house... we return and we are melting and the work i neglected by being away stacks high. the ants are swarming a bit of cashew on the floor. we remain inside, the playground abandoned. i craft darth vader birthday party invites and argue with the girl at cake, wondering why they only sell cake yet do not bake it and realize they will not make me a yoda-shaped cake and secretly marvel at the uselessness of such an establishment. it is all the getting back into a routine and the sadness that accompanies that, the difficulty of emotion, the stress and inevitable shouting. i check out parenting books at the library, wanting to restart and be better at this. i also borrow a book on racism as it is everywhere in my life just now, the arguments grow, as do the inconsistencies and i am troubled trying to understand it all, make sense of whether experiencing white privilege automatically makes one racist or not. i feel as though i know some things to be true, but cannot craft a satisfactory argument and certainly cannot do it in writing, only in the incessant babbling of my flapping mouth. my husband tires of it. there are so many things swimming in my head all the time now, i cannot stop and i feel so overwhelmed by it and by the things i need to do. i chip away at it. i move one foot before the other. i accomplish what i can.

my brain is filled with chatter and anxiety. i am feeling mad, wholly "other", outside the realm of my otherwise comfortable little existence. the book i am reading is revealing truths i knew or somehow sensed, but did not confront or connect in this new, insane manner. i am not sure how to live in the world, how to not go off on mini-tirades. so accustomed am i to speaking my mind, to broadcasting my thought on things, that it is difficult for me to stop myself, to attempt to pause before elucidating the things bouncing around my brain, thus the discomfort i am causing everyone is a bit alarming. but how do i reconcile it? how do i live my life without the constant narrative filtering and illuminating all that i see, hear, read, experience in this culture as white normative behavior and white supremacist racism? how do i integrate that? i knew before this book the shocking truths of this global society: the rape and destruction, the history of torture and genocide all mounting to our sparkling toaster ovens, birthday pinata stuffing plastic crapola, prada handbags, dollar bin merchandise, blood diamonds, plantation roses, et cetera et cetera. but this is too much. this is in every thought. before i could tune it out, cope with the present issue, the current child-raising debacle or near-irrational quest for culinary supremacy (soak my grains?!?!? are you fucking kidding me??!?). but now. but now but now but now... now each time the television is turned on here in my mother's house i launch into some tirade about how every commercial and every reality show is all justification for the normalization of whiteness. now when asked what i am thinking while examining my little sister's european vacation photos, i mention that truly i am noticing how every monument is a dedication to genocide or religious indoctrination and how it was all likely constructed through slavery to exalt rich white men bent on world domination. now sitting through my grandfather's funeral mass i hear for the first time the blatant justification of white male supremacy a la social darwinism via "thankfulness" for "blessings received," in addition to an acceptance of war and murder as part of nature and god's gift (ecclesiastes 3:1-8, 11-12), yadda yadda yadda, wank wank wank. what do i do? how do i live like this with such sadness, such heartbreak and still invest emotionally in all the bullshit problems of my universe? i know not how to change the world. i am doing all i can on this small island to bring choice to women, to buck the system of consumption, to lessen my impact and to feel not so alone in seeing everything so starkly and heartbreakingly. please, if there is hope, send word as i am flailing in my attempts at understanding...

i feel as though i am perched precariously, as though i might slip and lose all of this. any semblance of balance feels like an illusion. i feel so much weight resting on my shoulders and i add to it daily with new inventions of self. i am trying to be so many things. i make new roles for myself, set new goals: a photograph sold, a birth attended, a protest organized, a book to be written, the potential for work beyond motherhood. i must be completely insane to consider the possibilities when all is still so fragile, when my relationships are still so malleable, so soft and uncertain. everyday there is tension. it rises and falls and is hidden then obvious, but it is there, whether invisible or not, all is frail. i am terrified that a strong gust might come along and blow it all to bits. and there is also the need rising in my belly, a gurgling to really let it out - to let the air out of this life and let me hang languidly in the sun, waiting to fill up with warmth and a sacred appreciation again, a belief that we are capable and strong. but i feel so incapable. i cannot keep it all up. my mood waxes and wanes and surely all of this must collapse sooner or later. we cannot keep in silences, in half-spoken moments of truth and expect there to be an intimate trust maintained. it is exhausting to feel at one moment able, active, in progress, and in the next exhausted and flailing. i am confused by my life. i don't know which way is up. i am so completely narcissistic that i cannot even begin to know how to interpret silences, or which questions to ask. there is no road map for being supportive. i feel it out and do my best (and truth be told, perhaps much better than my partner were the situation reversed), but if there is no indication? are we moving forward? are we going somewhere? am i just stuck here waiting for the wind to change? i don't know how to do this. i don't even know what we are doing. i cannot know - no words are spoken, nothing is said. i ask daily questions. i get the children up and feed their bellies and try not to be such a failure at feeding their hearts. i try to make plans, to keep the home stocked and ready. i put things on the calendar and get books from the library. i try to engage in lively conversation. i try to think of things. and i think for moments that this is right and this is happening and that i am okay and everything will work out and yet i find myself let down and languishing. i am holding up both halves of colossal impossible structures and i cannot sense their shape. it is all made of balsa wood and will break if breathed on wrong. a great chasm will open in the ground and swallow me up whole if i stack too much more onto myself. and is this all fiction? am i making it up? is it all really so melodramatic? am i not just lazy as always, sitting in front of the computer under the guise of doing some form of work, something that interests me (or more usually just pisses me off)? am i not just reading trash novels and having sex dreams? aren't the kids really just playing on the floor, destroying room after room and my excuses piling beside me, the rain, the wet grass, the inability of me to move my ass from out this chair and into clothes in a timely manner? is it so bad? i am scared. i am afraid of becoming heartbroken. any moment might unleash me in anguish, me so self-obsessed i could scarce recognize normalcy, let alone attain something resembling it. i feel so stupid. i am bad at this. all of this. i don't even make any sense.

i have been thinking of late, due to the shocking number of intelligent, feminist, progressive women i meet who make the most typical, acquiescent "choices" regarding their health care during pregnancy and birth, that birthing at home is indeed radical, that midwifery is grassroots political protest, and that women need to get out of the hospital if for no other reason than to buck the system created and sustained by men for no other apparent reason but to oppress women.

i get so accustomed to my little bubble of fellow homebirthers and advocates of attachment parenting/natural family living that i forget that the rest of the world is pretty much not at all like us. i have had lengthy discussions with close friends who insist that they would never birth at home despite the overwhelming evidence that it is a safer, friendlier option and have in the past dismissed my own frustration by acknowledging that it is their choice. i no longer believe this. it is no more the choice of women in america today to birth in hospitals than it is their choice to spend 80 dollars every time they walk into target or to buy gasoline for their car. there are certainly other options, but they are not remotely easily accessible.

making alternative choices requires first stepping outside of the box, divorcing oneself from the norm, from one's peers, from the status quo. this may additionally require being ostracized and ridiculed. secondly, one must be solidly educated on how to even make an alternate choice, finding out what those choices even are, how it works, where to find it. thirdly, one must pay for that choice either by sacrifice or by additional expenditure in time and money. to make an alternate choice, one must think for oneself, do research, dedicate hours and days to understanding and accepting the ins and outs of that choice.

that first step is a doozy though, and once you take it, you will be taking it for the rest of your life. announcing that you birth at home will forever invite stares, slack jaws, and questions. you may always be radical to friends, family, acquaintances, strangers, and how sad it is that normal birth may appear to the outside world as so abnormal. homebirth may get the token mention in a book about pregnancy and birth here and there, but it is mostly misunderstood and misrepresented. even dr. sears, whose own children were born at home, does not give it a solid endorsement for most women.

birthing at home is about taking back one of the most sacred and innate events in a woman's life. it is about reclaiming our bodies as our own and our physiologic wisdom as inherent. it can be about doing what is safest, but i am beginning to see it as a first step in putting the medical model in its place of "only in emergencies" and moving women away from the supine position of inexpert in our bodies and for our children.birthing at home is a quiet frontline of resistance to the continued subjugation of women. march on, sisters.

making dinner, i wanted to be thinking about how being a mother has radicalized me, how all the things i believe in have evolved thanks to having children. instead, as i was flipping through joy of cooking looking for the definition and precise measurements for how one might julienne something, my eldest child started throwing the wooden toppings for the wooden pizza up in the air, barely missing the sauce i'd prepared, and i found myself shouting, forcing his hand to pick the toppings up, not successfully explaining why exactly wooden toppings turned misguided missiles and subsequent giant mess was a bad idea, or at least unacceptable and then i thought, "well how radical is that?" it astounds me how often as i am sitting in my own thoughts on attachment parenting and how best to do it, i find myself stressed to the point of ignoring its primary tenets. but i absolve myself of feeling guilty. the thoughts on parenting increasing my radical tendencies inhabited only a very small portion of my day as my husband is sick and not getting out of bed and my children are insisting on messes and we were out of diaper covers and it is raining and chilly again. so clearly the stressors were unusually increased. barring extraordinary circumstances, sometimes, admittedly, i yell. i am not proud of the fact and i do not accept it as inherent to my method of childrearing, but i do realize that i am human and it is necessary for my children to understand that i have flaws so they can accept their own imperfection when they are older and overanalyze crap like this, surely in therapy, complaining about their mother.

catastrophe strikes. confusion abounds. the things i think are detrimental to the level of activity necessitated by my life, by the things i need to do. there is no time to sit and figure it out, yet that is all i need to do. i need to sit and work my ass off to accomplish something. and yet again, as usual, the boulder that hits me/us is in despite of all the hard work, despite the brutal level of commitment we have demonstrated. i am fucking sick and tired of the intermittent wrench thrown in our workings, the loss of control we seem to suffer so regularly. there has been nothing handed us, save the color on our skin, the tendency of our desires, the status of our socio-economic upbringing. there has been no money on platters, no invitations to jobs or to schools extended based solely on our lineage. there has been no hint of nepotism. no shadow of favorites played. i know the privilege inherent here, but it is not in play when trucks fall out of the goddamned sky. no amount of whiteness seems to be able to prevent that. i want nothing but to reach a point where we can enjoy the fruit of our labor, where i can plan to live in one place and all that entails: saving for a house, working out the legalities of home-schooling in our state, attempting to acquire an apprenticeship. i just want a workable budget, an income instead of a hole dug in our savings, the ability to say that i will or can do something in the next three years. i am exhausted by waiting. i am exhausted by the constant dedication necessitated by graduate school: the long hours, the wandering mind, the never-ending work load, the meandering schedule, the pressure constricting thoughts and feelings and availability. i just want a real life. one in which there are possibilities and choice. i am in the constant attempt at grown-up-hood and there are boundaries i cannot breech whilst this is all still in process. there is some portion of my life that no amount of new furniture or fad diets or new babies will help me to reach. i can stack it all up and still hit this glass ceiling again and again: jon is not finished with this lengthy project and at this rate, it is indeterminable when he might be. i want to want. i want to afford the opportunity to create opportunity for myself. i want something for me. i am tired of being this foundation of support. i am worn out by all of this. there is a lump in my throat aching and begging for something new and something profoundly mine. i try to create it in the gaps. i become the pseudo-student midwife or the volunteer moderator. i join yahoo groups and myspace, build a website like i were advertising anything other than the product of this mind which is neither for sale nor for any sort of cause or resource of information. i just lay myself out for the voyeur to ponder. there is hardly fun or profit involved. i suppose my business is attention-getting and it is only there for itself. the existence of all of this is but to exist. i am good at talking excessively and typing sporadically on all the notions that strike me, but it serves no purpose and does very little good, i am convinced. i am so tired. i am finished with it. i am done. and yet, i have to find a way to plow through. i must find a method for staying afloat and buoying all those around me as well. to that end, i plan to draw a suitable budget, eat to live, and volunteer simplicity. and for all that, i must be completely fucking insane.

my pockets and purses used to flood with scraps of paper, receipts, napkins, build-your-own-sandwich sheets, note-sized library paper, all littered with bits and pieces of thought, of poetry, and intent. i used to write. i used to be a writer, always thinking of the experience-as-editorial. i used to frame my life in the cup of my hand and listen to it and the words it was speaking, the images unfolding in my mind. today for the first time in ages i wrote something down on the back of the grocery list (which was, incidentally, written beneath the recipe for dinner). i was thinking of the way that mike doughty was singing about a girl and i was wondering to myself as the baby was sleeping in the back seat and the groceries were bobbing around in the trunk about what love was supposed to be. i was considering myself and my expectations from a decade before this, what my dreams outlined true love to be, often on the back of receipts and build-your-own-sandwich sheets, no less. it was all moonstruck and falling, swoon dead, quivering loins, et cetera. it was all perky breasts and limitlessly erect nipplage. tongues tied amongst each other, furious, undying love. and the expectation was that love would discover me and see me for the first time as i am, that true love would uncover me, help me to realize the bits of me that i'd neglected and reach for all my dreams with me. i, of course, would do the same in return and together we would unearth new truths about the universe. depending on which way i hold it to the light, that's basically what actually happened. ever since, i've been too busy with the life i set in motion to have too many thoughts to scrawl on bits of paper. ever since, i have been chugging along so faithfully at building the life i'd dreamt, that there hasn't been much in the way of envisioning it. unfortunately, i cannot yet determine if the reality is of remarkable likeness. i think only memory will be able to match fantasy in terms of glow and vibrancy. retrospect will cast all this in new, perhaps more favorable light.

crises of identity. there has been, of late, an underlying urge to do or be something other than what i am. i have felt the deep need to escape this family and the crushing disappointment of having reached twenty-seven and done nothing worthy of consideration or account. there are no forms of recognition hanging on my wall, no university degree or certificate that says that i am anything. the fact of my high school diploma is even questionable in its value. i don't necessarily want the praises of this society and my ideal would be to change my culture's ideas about what is valuable, but still i have that feeling of lacking because nothing i've done is of any matter enough to be designated as worthy of a paycheck. i write but i do not publish. i paint but i do not exhibit. i craft but i do not sell. in fact, i do not exploit any of my talents for any purpose but gift-giving and practical and impractical home usage. i can't even land the job that i pushed for the existence of and already partially do in a volunteer capacity. it's not that i even want to work outside of the home. this just gets exhausting, the same maintaining of cleanliness and filling up of empty things day in and day out. i have gone a very long time without the acknowledgement that what i do is of any use and the urge to be a part of something larger than myself bubbles up from that. the urge to be someone outside of this life and the boyish extensions of myself clinging to me and crawling on me. i want to believe and to know that i can affect change somehow. i want to feel as though i really matter. i know that my children offer me that in a way that no adult can, but adults can offer me that in ways that no son ever could. i need to feel whole and intentional. i need to feel as though i am moving in some forward direction, pushing onward to some tangible end. this instead turns into drudgery, something to move past, to get through. i just want to enjoy my time here and to know that i am worthwhile as me. i just want to think about something else for a little while.

i don't have silence enough in my mind to concentrate on the philosophical aspect of my life and the weight of everything on my shoulders. i don't have seconds alone enough to type out deep-hidden thoughts, the things buried in my brain, the constant soundtrack of ongoing processing, that screeching of data going by and the creation of it via magic dust into information and knowledge. there's no time to think. there is only the moving through my life just now. no time for figuring or imagining. no time for analyzing or calculating. just the list in my hand of the things to be done. just the rags in my hands, the babies in my hands, the dishes washed and the laundry done. there is but the going to the grocery and the going on walks to enjoy the springtime. the waking from a long sleep and having no thoughts, just a relaxed brain, focused on the tasks before it. i am doing the things i always do - the tending and the washing. i am doing, as always, the things that must be done. will there be time for me one day soon? will i tire of this? of being the support for everyone around me, the thing on which to lean, the tool for their activity, the aid for the accomplishing of everyone else's goals? am i sick of this? do i want more than this? do i want something to do that feels like something? something with a sense of accomplishment rather than constant toil? is that the sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind? is that this urge, this move forward, out of the darkness of winter and into the light of action? am i lacking of something that is me, something else that i can commit myself to? am i truly experiencing the life of those around me, dedicated to it as i am, to making their urges and desires possible and thus not living myself, thus filled with a hole where a purpose should be? and what is there to be done about it? these people need this caring. my family is in great need of my support. don't they? or is that the story i tell myself to make the work feel important? maybe it's just the influence of this culture that doesn't value anything that doesn't earn a dollar (or doesn't give a dollar because it doesn't value it). maybe it's the influence of the women i see and read about who have lives outside of families or at least seem to. it's a dreadful sacrafice to make and it sucks that it must always be either this or that and never can the balance be struck when it all rests on women. i know our brains our generally designed to some degree for caretaking, but they are capable of so much else as well, and my hands that cleanse and scrub and pick up shoes start to feel so empty.

always trying, forever failing. i am in the midst of the constant attempt at anything: perfection, the planning of this life in a responsible and seemly fashion so as to be the best me and to also make the most of my time, care for the people i am designated to care for in an appropriate manner, responsibly, evenly. i am in the midst of trying to be, of trying to do all the dumb crap i gotta do, of trying to become something other than what i am. i am in the midst of sorting it out, being uniquely myself, being balanced and zen. i am in the midst of trying, trying, trying. i am in the midst of forgetting, of failing, of doing it wrong and hardly learning anything from it at all. i will simply have to do it again, fall down over and over and nearly never get it right, occasionally hitting on something that makes some sense, but promptly losing it. it is life. it is what it is. but in the midst of all my attempts at everything, i am in the midst of overlooking the destination, denying the desirability of it in order to calm the thirst and judging others in bitterness of what i lack. i suppose that's the cycle of what it is. it is part and parcel of the trying trying trying and the sorting and sifting. i feel like my thoughts are objects that i turn over and over in my hands, working them, caressing and molding, rounding, shaping, and all the while discovering, seeing what it is and feeling the weight of it, trying to sense each curve and crack, trying to be and understand whatever it is. i am at a loss to know the truth behind any motivation. i can't say for certain where thoughts come from; what dreams may come. what is the purpose? what is the plan? how is this and how ever do i do? i plainly do not know. the weight of this and that - tragedy, turmoil, mundane nothingness - it's all similar, stacked similarly in my brain and in my belly. i devote as much time to deciding what's for dinner as i do to anything else. and yet so often i can't determine these patterns. the stress of my life is so intangible - it comes of nothing and from nowhere. it is just the invisible pressure to do. the nonsensical force moving me in forward directions. i do and i do and i do and always my thoughts find fault, my heart senses absence. i cannot be everything all at once all the time.

when you're gone i sense the lack of you. air fills the place you belong, following me around like a ghost. i lay in bed listening to the rise and fall of our sons breathing. i see their noses and brows outlined in the darkness. they look just like you, i think. you planted them in me and they grew from nothing. they are half you, and yet they cannot fill the hole you've left. i know this journey away is only temporary, but it occurs to me as i try to sleep here in my mother's house that this is my plan for the worst-case-scenario - to live here, sleep here with our sons and sense the lack of you surely more succinctly, more cuttingly than now. i imagine you gone forever and my shoulders shudder and quake with my weeping at the horror of it. it would be so impossible to breathe without you, let alone raise our boys, be strong, continue on. these days apart may be made worse by our struggling of late - the stress of your career on the line, the preschoolian's problems, my inability to dig myself out of myself at times, but it is a great reminder of how deep is our need for one another. this family we have created is a lifeline to the world and all my improbable, horrific imaginings simply underscore that fact, remind me of the strength of this blood that connects us, how important our flesh and our mutual struggle. we are molded of the same thing. we are one. i cannot forget. i love you. come back soon.

i am spinning my wheels. i am stuck in the mud. as much as i accomplish anything, move the slightest bit forward, i am being pushed back, seeming to stand ever still, yet flailing. there is so much mess about. so much eight arms swinging about, bringing things and little boys to and fro; constant madness and there is an inner turmoil to accompany the outer chaos. there is a sense of all this being unjustified, unfair, not right. there is a sense that i am under constant pressure and the slightest bit of anything pressing on me any further causes eruptions, spasms of profanity and gritted teeth. one day the car seat wouldn't go in and it was all tourette's and tmj - i was needing so badly for it all to stop. i hated the car seat, the car, the fact of the need to drive, this history that made me require this hunk of plastic that will surely be landfilled, this unnecessary mined ore and all the petroleum of the world - the arab oil dictatorships, this president and his saudi ties... the call for jihad seemed suddenly so reasonable as i was running late and the car seat still moved and bastian fell asleep between my purse and diaper bag in the front seat, waiting. jihad! fuck the car seat! that is the essence of the unreasonable erupting from me. that is the every day, these days. i cannot articulate anything and i cannot pinpoint what is wrong. i have been having a bad life and i am waiting for it to be spurred to improvement. i am trying to accomplish just that by the movement of any project in a forward direction, but my long-term destinations are insurmountable even in my dreams where i announce that the pursuit of midwifery is a decade away; and my short-term goals get buried by my sons spewing snot and making constant messes. even dusting the bookshelves becomes impossible as things are all drenched by the three year old in food bits, soap, and salt. he finds new concoctions for the things he drinks, eats, and eliminates with our floors and furniture. my life is the cup of tea made and forgotten as one child pees in his diaper while the other pees on the floor and i move from place to place, wiping and vinegaring, discovering peanuts in the plants or jam on the computer screen, hours later discovering the tea on the kitchen countertop, cold and unnecessary or unwanted with the lunch i must attempt to make. i am spinning in circles, looking for a pathway to release into and finding myself merely continuing to spiral. i cannot hold a thought and i am going nowhere.

the terrible truth about being so domestic and so nuclear as a stay-at-home mother is that i spend half of my life buying things. i am the stocker and i do the inventory of our home. i make lists and buy gifts and am drawn in by the secret drug in the air at target that tells me to consume. this all despite my urges and philosophy to be both frugal and to live simply. it seems nearly unavoidable. i hate it at the same time that i long for things. i am seduced by slick magazine spreads and by the well-researched product arrangement at the stores. i see things that i probably do not need but most certainly could use and i long, i lust, i do figuring rapidly in my head to determine the cost-benefit analysis on my bank account. i have no credit card debt. i am not gluttonous, yet i consume. i imbibe things. i am drunk on my own buying-power and i hate it. china is growing and manufacturing and polluting and violating the rights of their humans constantly that i might have shiny new canisters for my flour so the plastic that held my whole wheat stone-ground loveliness does not leach its toxins inward and onward to my breads and baked goods, toxifying the gastrointestinal tracts of my children where already surely there are pesticides and jet fuel from the air and water. the whole thing is disturbing, disgusting, depressing. i know that i have been duped into it by the big box marts, by the television and the pop-up ads. i know that the target is me. i am a part of one of the great markets of the modern era and it is delusional of me to think that i could escape it. i hate it. i hate it. i hate it.

perfection through planning. i am ever trying to do this life correctly, to make the appropriate choices at the appropriate times and do all the preparation for the future now. i find that i cannot know enough. there is no way, surely, to do it all right. there will always be struggle. but is it silly to be so planned about it? to try so hard at having such an organized and prepared little life when surely there will always be surprises and curve balls, accidents and mistakes made? it is stupid to presume that one can ever be truly prepared. we cannot predict one moment to the next or the years stretched before us. it is simply one foot in front of the other and one block built at a time and yet i try so hard to do and to be everything. is it a fruitless endeavor? is it wasting the precious time i have or making better use of it? will i fail? will i succeed? am i trying too hard, setting myself up? is it inevitable that i will make some mistakes and successfully avoid others? am i searching here for meaning and purpose, design and intent in a universe that is merely random? or is there some way to control it all? some way to set things in motion the way that i've decided they should be by choosing and acting in accordance with all the possibilities of the universe? can't i simply pick? or are the two issues not at all interrelated as i am making them out to be? am i being ridiculous? am i searching the crevices of my life for evidence of the divine, trying to instill a sense of karma where there is none? is it not just a story we tell ourselves that there is god and there is finite anything? am i here attempting in my own small ways to create a mythology that can deem my psychological processes appropriate or improper? sometimes i long for the had of god to part the clouds and point out all the answers to all my questions, namely that what i do is what i am supposed to do, that all i am is rightly me. it would be nice to expel self-doubt so neatly and finally with a flick of the divine wrist, but it seems ultimately a little stupid and counter to the point of all this, should there be, in fact, a point. the point is to get on with it all and of course to get it on. i can only endeavor to do my best whether by design or by accident. i can only endeavor to be purely me by listening to my own voice coming out in my questions and to create myself moment by moment in the image most desirable to me. it is whatever it is. questioning each tiny motivation is to but leave questions hanging about on the air like rhetoric. there is no design other than what i put forth and not everything is within my control. there are too many others wandering about sporadically and randomly colliding in a great waltz of chaos for any of this to even vaguely resemble preordination.

i have not the time to sit in constant contemplation of the meaning of things, of my life, of the infinite. i move back into the mode of planning and doing and feeling decent and have nothing to say about it. i started to see a therapist and just as i sit on her couch and begin to speak, my words feel so small, so unnecessary, so spent. i have already said it all in conversation and on paper and online. i have already cast out all the concepts and theories of my struggle and come oddly to the conclusion that i am not at all crazy, despite the intensity and frequency and tenor of my words, they are but evidence of such small, normal problems that are but the stuff of life and ebb and flow just like the weather. i am left with nothing more to work through at the moment, hardly anything at all to say. i can revisit all the issues i've expounded upon so clearly already and realize only that there must be ways to live in avoidance of the threshold where rage sets in, at least for the benefit of my children and then of course to funnel that energy elsewhere into more self-serving and restorative exercises. but of course there is no way to avoid yelling at my kids forever. bad days will surely come and i must simply work through it all as best i can. i will but move through my life and read and write and sort and sift as applicable as is my usual nature. it is so odd to sit on the other side of it and to realize that what in one moment feels so extraordinary is actually entirely mundane.

the words do not come out, they do not speak, they stay hidden, bottled within me. i have nothing but a need to speak this, to work it out somehow. instead i stack them up inside, reaching to my limits, building pressure. what will happen if the boundary is breached? will my heart stop? will a blood vessel in my brain burst, squirting fountains of red from out my nostrils? or will it all merely dissolve away eventually, the moments ticking a removal of each brick of pressure and anger from beneath the words in their ascent? will i simply write it out and lose the need? is this the funneling of energy elsewhere? or is it simply too tiring to keep up so that all that steam fizzes out through my ears, leaving me spent, exhausted? how do i do? how do i make use of all of this, find ways to not repeat all these mistakes that i make? anything i try to assign to this bad day to identify it, to map it and find the solution just turns to dust, slips through my fingers like so much sand. my brain turns into a muddle. the jigsaw puzzle pieces change shape as i go to fit them together; the colors blur. i cannot even see what i am doing or how i am thinking. what is this? i feel such guilt, such sadness all born from such outrage born from nothing. today we are all sick, except aleks who was sick yesterday, but is better today. somehow his vacation from mischief brought on by the illness must now be made up for, so he is exploring all crevices of things-he-need-not-touch while the rest of us try to just keep breathing as our nostrils close up and our throats swell and our brains fog. this has led to much frustration on my part as i try to care for the baby and jon sleeps on the couch. i tried to do nothing with him - watching a movie while the others slept - and it ended badly as he kept pulling my hair and the baby woke up. i went to lay down with sebastian who needed me beside him to get more sleep and left aleks with the movie. in this time he scaled heights of the closet never before scaled and got things down and cut things up. upon my discovery of this in my tired, lone-parent state, i acted in ways i should not have, accidentally bumping his head in the process and left in no shape to apologize. jon wakes to child screaming and rushes in to take aleks out, cuddling him and trying to make him better. this is fine except that i am left feeling so judged and in no place to heal my self and in no place to actually improve upon my behavior. so i am left with all the words in my head as i pick up and put away: i spend half my life organizing storage and putting things out of aleks' reach, it seems. things that do not belong to me and whose purpose and function is a mystery - boxes computer equipment came in and and millions of random cd-roms, the bicycle tire pump that's supposed to be in the basement, board games, bookbags, all manner of things that do not belong to me. and what happens to all of these things i have so carefully organized is that they get pulled out and put back in wrong places, only for me to organize again and still i have no idea what their use is and even as they are exposed to daylight by those who might in fact know if they are needed at all, they are ignored and jammed and packed away again and again. and i am judged for my frustration and my inability to keep it together just as i was judged for being the one who was sick just after christmas - when jon was the one taking care of both children (as i do every day) when he was well and had a house full of assistance and aleks was not on a well-again rampage. when i had the flu and could hardly move without aching and he was perfectly well, still he was angry and bitter, annoyed that he could not get back to his work and still i tried my best to accommodate him. it all feels so unfair. i don't get a day off from anything, certainly not without paying a heavy emotional toll. and now all i need is help. i need to not be this way, or to not be made to feel such guilt, such judgment cast my way for having a bad day. intervention is indeed needed, but only in the form of emotional support. because i have no one else. everyday i am fighting this battle alone. i am thinking all the thoughts and making the decisions by myself. there is hardly any aid and there is only my hand guiding both of us, trying to figure this out and find ways to be more effective and all that happens is that i become more and more of a failure.

i am, in some small and some not-so-small ways, doing better. i am not screaming. i am not descended into madness. i am interested and participating in the world around me. right now, i am really fine. why should there be times when i am crazy, when all the world seems dark and i am scared of the irreparable harm i may be inflicting on my son? most likely, the only person irrevocably scarred by my rage is me. it is the cycle of fury and guilt that makes the universe bleak. it is that my violent speech is so beyond my control - a monster springs forth from the pit of my belly with such inertia and so surprisingly, that i am stuck, powerless to stop it. there is a me that stands by watching, knowing all the correct ways to handle the situation and instead staring slack-jawed in helpless horror. all the guilt in the world does nothing to dissuade the rambling, ranting me, does nothing to reduce the monster's size. i do all this writing and considering in search of the magic bullet to slay the beast for good. i am forever searching for a way out of the mess, as though this were separate from my life, merely some temporary setback - as though i could distinguish between myself as i am and myself as this other. but where are the lines, the boundaries? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself? how am i not myself?

how am i not myself? that's sort of the thing about me - i am always very much uniquely me. in all the messy, not-so-nice, aggressive, blunt, funny, sarcastic, down-to-earth-ishness ways that i am me and the me comes out in my speech and in my actions - i am me. i am often intensely me. i wear my heart on my sleeve. i literally broadcast my heart across the internet. i am loud and i am hyper. it is how i am organized and how i am capable of doing all the things i do. it is how i am creative and how i am insightful; how i am inventive, decisive, compassionate, cruel, empathetic. how i am positive is how i am negative. how i am perfect is how i am flawed. i try to separate the two sides out to leave nothing but the parts i like. i try to battle the me that is painful, but really i think the best i can hope for is to not rub the parts i don't like so much in trying to scrub me clean that i am left raw and unable to cope. there is a balance here in me, but it is far from perfect or exact. the sides are not prevalent in equal measure. the more i push and prod myself to do better, or more perfect, the more the stressed, angry, bitter me comes out to release the pent-up tension. i cannot be perfect. i cannot do everything. and it is okay to even not be okay. it is okay to feel sad and flawed or angry and bitter. it's just a part of the whole. i am ever trying to balance it out, however unconsciously. i am always in the act of doing more or less, working towards just being, towards just going towards. towards the future, towards an outcome, towards a resting point, towards an action or experience. i am a body in motion, in time and in circumstance. i must find a way to stop the battle. i cannot cut off the limb that holds the ax. it's all a part of the same thing and the key is to accept what is; to be who i am in all the ways that i am. in trying to escape the wrathful me, i deny the entire person and it only digs the hole deeper and makes my world feel bleak and hopeless. i must find ways to accept myself and not aggravate the aggravated by trying to push it away or cover it up. how i let these emotions out is of course important, but the way i try to escape my life is not the solution for moving through it.