My head feels so cluttered. Like cotton stuffing and I have no room to think normally. I can’t regulate myself well.

I want to throw stuff in my house away. I need to clean but I never feel like it’s clean enough. And the only way to do that is get rid of everything. So I obsess on it. I can’t make a move to just clean normally because my head is stuffed. And chucking it all is a way to clear my head - I guess. Makes sense.

My body feels full of pressure because of it all.

I’ve not had coffee in a couple days. I hope to keep it up.

I feel so lost. It’s like now that the kids are older too, and I have more time ‘for myself’, I just can’t seem to focus. I feel like I don’t even know how to make a decision. Organizing my thoughts is difficult. And my coping skill of zoning out doesn’t always help.

I want to clean my house but I need it empty and quiet. I have a busy and loud house, so there you go.  I like cleaning late at night when everyone is in bed, but I don’t have the energy at this time. Plus it’s summer, and it’s uncomfortable. I find myself getting heat flashes, skin tingles (like goosebumps), and feel yuck.

I want to throw everything away!

What if I don’t belong anywhere

I need to focus myself to learning something/s. It could be music related, crochet related... I’m really not sure. Medieval studies? Gregorian chant? It would be easy to just stay stuck in the sahm roll, but even many sahm’s find some business success while taking care of their kids. Why do I suck!

Conservation?
Japanese?
Latin bible studies?
Special edu?
Music/Occu therapy?

Where is my strength? It often feels like I have no strengths. I definitely feel lost, and have no confidence in myself. So where will I fit? What if I never fit anywhere? And what if I’m legitimately useless?

/sigh

I feel sucked nearly dry. 

Had a blowout yesterday with jim. I'm empty today. 

I want my own life. I have a life of husband and kids , but I think I'm needing my own existence. I have no confidence that I'd be good or interested in anything. 

As a kid /young adult I had a couple paths I wanted to take. Maybe one was more prominent than the other, except one of my parents poisoned my mind and killed my Dream for the most part. 

Once a time is past is it always too late? 

Restless body syndrome

I am very tired and yet cannot relax. Anxiety (or something) is pumping through my body right now. My whole body is feeling like it’s going to burst. One thought is slamming into the next, and it feels like I'm sinking and gotta get off this boat. But I can't get off. Writing about it is helping to slow down my brain, and gain some control. I think. Lots of my triggers come from situations I feel I cannot escape, or change, of course related to growing up in situations I couldn't escape or change. Then, even when I could've left, I didn't. So feeling helpless goes a long with it. Why can't I be stronger!

I’ve been saying it forever that I need to start getting physically active again. Not just a walk here and there, but real workouts. Truth is I’m scared, and fat, and the discomfort was never something I endured well with. I like the feeling of being done with a workout, but I’ve always hated the effort. What’s wrong with me.

I am very triggered tonight.
Just learning more about that shooting in Corona with the off duty officer and the mentally disabled individual who was shot and killed, and then his parents were also shot while most likely trying to intervene or protect him.
Of course my thoughts spiral, and I can't help but think about my own kids.
I pray there's some justice. Cops are always getting away with murder.

church

I dont know if this is a rock bottom stage or what that Im in.

Church has stressed me out. The noise, the un-peacefulness, the pressure of being surrounded by people, constant movement, of talking with people up close and being "on", people hugging me (which sounds horrible to complain about but its the stimulus of the intense interactions that overwhelms me), and the choir singing with loudness, high pitched voices that are not pleasing (or relaxing), and that might be about it.

The pressures are that Im always going to be asked to do something - make something - as had been done in the past. I realize I could just say no, and in fact I had to do this recently even after my husband told the person not to ask me but they did anyway. So you can imagine that I dont have much confidence of feeling "safe" with this person. I can chalk their behavior up to them being scatterbrained, but is that an excuse? Should I just ignore this, or do I try to protect myself from them like I do with everyone and everything else? 

Church has definitely ruined my life. The act of going, of being in the building (because I've already made the association between anxiety & stress & racing heart beat & dizzy spells, and being at church), and all the other things a protestant unchurched person would giggle with glee at thinking I was being loosed from the chains of religiosity. (I can say that because that used to be the way I thought when I was a modernist christian.) The fact is, I want to go to church services. I feel terrible about not going, and avoiding it for fear/anxiety of being triggered.

Ive got to the point where Im truly barely leaving my house. I can go to the market with my husband, or go at night when there aren't a lot of people. If I go and its crazy loud or something, I can't function, I cant focus, and I've had to tell the husband to take over deciding which way to go or what to buy because I literally couldn't think anymore.

I was supposed to go and clean church  today, Saturday. At the last minute I lost it, started crying, couldn't handle that pressure, and got super frustrated with myself. Husband and kids just left to clean for me.

I feel terrible about it, and guilty. But Im about ready to also say that I need meds. I need something. Im not getting better, only worse. And whatever I have going on is definitely getting in the way of me living a regular life. So I might just admit it out loud that Im done with even thinking about going to church until Ive got the meds thing and my psycho anxiety under some sort of control.

Another thing I've been thinking about is weather or not there is some type of ocd going on. I always reference my past to myself when the kids were very small, and I was overwhelmed by thoughts of leaving them in the car, or accidentally killing them...or would it be on purpose? I even had these fears with my husband taking them onto the balconies. It didn't make any sense why I would even be concerned with something like that? My husband was never violent with me or anybody else...It was awful and had I realized just how much help I needed at that time Im pretty positive I wouldve been mostly definitely dx with ocd. It was horrible.

So now I realize I have a tendancy toward obsessive and intrusive thoughts that could very quickly spiral out of my control, into very a stressful existence. Where I might differ from just being a neurotic to being ocd is not having the action to go along with alleviating those thoughts. My intrusive thoughts do feel out of my control sometimes, and I do try to have a plan of action for when I need to distract myself (crochet, music), but as soon as I stop those activities the thoughts or feelings can come right back. Sometimes my brain is just too tired that all Im left with is a lingering pressure of stress, and a depression that leaves me limp. So I might "freeze" at that point, or if the anxiety gets bad enough I will just dissociate. And I know I will dissociate because it actually feels like as the pressure within my bodies raises, all of a sudden a valve gets opened and all that pressure leaves at once, and I am left empty. Maybe I cry afterward, but its like unfeeling tears, and they just spill out as i go about pacing around, trying to figure out what to do next.

At the start of this I said that church has ruined my life. From the very beginning of deciding I needed to get connected, I knew it would be hard. I never had an easy time, and I struggled from the very first time I set foot through the door. I kind of knew what I was in for, but i pushed through it. I don't know why I did that, except that i felt guilty for not trying and pushing, especially when the kids started to come with me and they wanted to experience the church socialization aspect of it. So I kind of did it to myself.

I also just needed to learn when to say NO, and be ok with that. In fairness, I did try to say NO once, but was , in my opinion, unfairly cornered on the matter, and the matter was presented as "not that bad". So I did it, and it gave me the most challenging panic and stress I'd ever experienced, like I was going to literally drop dead of a heart attach if I didn't get a grip. It sucked. That was the last time I participated in that activity, but now Im reluctant to participate in any more. I don't stay for lunch anymore, let alone contribute to cooking. I wouldn't mind doing that again, I just need to get stable.

I don't blame the church experience, and I dont really mean that church has ruined my life. If anything, it just opened my eyes to particular promblems I actually deal with. And, I think what's made my life's journey so confusing, is that my issues have manifest themselves in different ways. I can see my life as a series of "phases", and problems getting resolved or managed or lessened, only to have new ones come up.

I don't want meds. Part of my neurosis if being freaked out by the thought of having to take them. So Im in a cycle. But as I said, Im only getting worse. And while Id rather live a life that I need in order to avoid those things that trigger me, I also can't even do that things that I actually want to do. (Mastergardener, japanese, music, etc)

i have to make a new home. or leave.

some quick updates:

I started a new blog and shelved my previous two for now. I'll be combining the previous and two, and keeping the newer one as a microblog journal, so it won't be as personal and open as my other blogs. I guess it will be a curated look at my life and writings, rather than a full-on somewhat unrestricted stream of consciousness. Plus, i'll be bookmarking things similar to twitter. Other than that, I haven't done much writing.

On a, perhaps, related note, Im in a legit depression right now. IT all started when Hamster died. IT really through me into deep thought about life and the fall, and it was kind of similar to how messed up I felt after realizing how even our governement and politicians were (2016). Anyway, it was kind of an awakening of sorts, but it hasn't necessarily freed me. I wouldn't call it the black pill, but I think I was more affected by things than I thought I was. And now, perhaps because I wasn't really writing much of anything during my grieving time over Hamster, and because I was trying to avoid writing so eric wouldn't read my stuff, Im slidden back into a time of depression energy. So maybe not writing anything was a mistake? But it was also tricky because I don't have my own computer, writing on my phone is not easy, I didn't have a lot of energy (depressed/grieving), and I though resting my brain was the best thing. Maybe that wasn't the case.

Anyway, the whole homeschooling thing is leaving me feeling very bad about the whole thing, because it feels like i can't dedicated my whole, or even part, self to it. If feels like Im failing them because they needs special attention. And I can't give it properly.

Everyone needs so much one-on-one. Its draining. I can do one kid fine. Well, to be honest, sometimes I can't even do that either because of my energy or patience, or both. We can do group things. But my eldest, Im going to be real, he is not going to go to college more than maybe a few classes. I think he wouldve graduated high school with mediocre grades and not known much of anything he learned. It's hard to say, but his learning is not like most people. He is not stupid, just not academically capable beyond basics. He could probably learn the more difficult things but they would have to be broken down into ELI5, and in small bite size pieces, and at a slow every day pace so he doesn't forget, and it would have to be something he was really interested in (although perhaps not). This will never happen in a public school, or even a private school with other kids and a schedule. It barely happens here and thats because I just can't make it happen the way I should because of my own issues.

I don't know how else to say it, and he's 15, and I don't think im saying it just because he's young and young kids usually don't know what the hell life is all about. He doens't really even know what he likes out of life so far. Its either that he just can't make a decision, or literally nothing is interesting to him beyond like video gaming. But after some talking more and more on this subjects, I think he realized the sense of urgency he needs to have in order to learn more about himself in order to carve out a path for himself in life, and he recognized that he likes to do physical work (like riding his bike, and mowing the lawn).

He still had an interest in creating stories which is good (and he loves the world of warcraft lore), he just doesn't know what to do with his ideas, or how to craft stories, etc. So on my end, that will be the next step to help him in getting those skills up, and also start reading tolkien.

He was really interested in coding at one point, because of his invasive thoughts and anxiety about things involving computers, and the challenge of what he saw as software engineering, he's put himself off that idea. To be honest, I didn't think he was smart enough for it anyway, or at least didn't have the discipline to learn, and he at least realized this about himself as well - that he didn't have the discipline. BUT, the Littles are starting to learn some coding so I've encouraged eldest to not give up, he may still be able to learn about it and use it in other ways which are less overhwleming.

I thought at one point maybe, because he does have a good troubleshooting attitude, that maybe sys admin would be better for him. This is still a possibility, but Im not pushing the computer thing too much because of his anxieties, and to be honest, I  don't want to see him working with tech so much.

I honestly think it's better for him, healthier, to keep that stuff for on the side, or a hobby, and that the bulk of his daily work attention be on something spiritually and physically beneficial for him - like creating things, or working with animals, or out in nature or something like this. But i know he's the one who has to go through this journey, not me.  He just needs lot's of help with things concerning academic work. Even creatively, he needs lots of help and guidance in a way that shows he's a very slow learner, and not able to adapt. I pray that his dad can get his blacksmithing going, because it would be good for Eldest to learn a skill like that.

The Littles are good. Middlest still struggles with certain things, and now is our time where we have to talk a lot about it, and deal with the struggles head-on. He's gotten so much better at articulating his feelings, so I know that even in the years of dealing with the challenges, he's learned things about himself. So I guess this is a new phase where things are going to get more advanced, and the sad thing is that with any issue you can work your way through, sometimes there are other issues right below it - kind of like for every two steps forward you take, you also have to take one back. I think that's the phase we're at with Middlest. But as I remind myself, he's learned a lot about himself, so I do believe he will continue to improve.

Littlest is just Littlest. Same silliness, if now worse. Funny though. All the kids make me laugh. I think in the end he'll be alright. He just needs encouragement and opportunities to do the things he wants to do - like art.

As for me?
Im trying. I still working on my blokflute. Im really enjoying the alto. I'd love to join the recorder society, I just havne't gotten up the nerve yet. Im afraid of becoming afraid, if that makes sense. Same as what happened with church. Its been a huge disappointment for me. The whole things. Not that i want to learn the church in general, im just saying the experience of being there has been such a struggle, and progressed so much, that I can't even bring myself to go more weekends. Its hugely disappointing because thats not what I want.

On a very strange, related topic, Im finding myself more and more drawn to the catholic church. I think I just need a western rite EO church, but ... Im not sure. I don't know that I could become a catholic unless it was with a very traditional church group, and apparently those are not the mainstream, so that bothers me. Along with a bunch of other things. I would be joining the catholic church with the understanding that I don't agree with much of their doctrines, and what is the point of that?

I think the issue is of feeling like being "home". Im having a big struggle with not feeling like i have a "home". Its more than just a feeling of "fitting-in". Its filling the part of the heart that involved YOU as a young person, and where you came from, and the continuity of knowing where you come from. I don't know how to explain it.

Ive been very much feeling like Ive been missing my hometown(s), and its not necessarily the house, or exact town that I miss, although there is some of that. It's the traveling around and living here or there, and think about the places i would escape to experience peace for a short while in my tumultuous and chaotic life that I miss. I had the feeling of 'home' ONCE, in chico, and I've never felt it again.

I think whatever is happening to me now, its making these other feelings come up because its just what I know. Its instinctual to 'go home' when the world is unsure and unfriendly - and when you can't (because your actual home is the source of trauma) and must experience prolonged chaos/abuse/neglect/violence/etc then this is how you end up with complex trauma / cptsd. So because my actual home, which was supposed to be a safe haven, didn't exist, I created that feeling of safety by wandering around and emotionally attaching myself to other placed and adventures I had, which were my little escapes/temporary homes. Thats what I think, anyway. And because I don't feel 'at home' here where i am, im reverting back to my early roots. So I don't know what to do.

My decades ago ex boyfriend is reading my blog

My decades ago ex boyfriend is watching my [other] blog ... again. I think he found it through Instagram. Oh well it doesn’t matter how he found it. He always seems to find my spaces online. He’s determined, I guess.
I shouldn’t care , but I do. I care that I don’t know his intentions, and that he’s satisfied with lurking rather than reaching out just to say ‘hello’. Well I’m not satisfied.
But why?
I suppose because I don’t have control over this particular situation? ...Once again.
Or maybe I feel he’s not worthy to read about my life, some of which is very personal. It’s one thing for strangers to read your diary you purposely left out, but another for your ex boyfriend whom you thought you’d marry and have kids with to do it.
Why is he still watching me?
His girlfriend-wife-whatever she is would not be happy about this.
I’m debating - again - if I should block him or not. This gives control back to me, which is important for me , I think. Plus Ive become quite obsessed with looking for his ip # in the stats. I don’t like that I do that. I just want to write and not think about him, because it possibly affects how I write and what I write.
It’s well and good for him to look into my life, sneak around, as it were, and insert himself into my life, but not to leave an invitation into his? It’s his prerogative I guess but it does suck ,and seems selfish. He’s always been a bit selfish actually.
Is there any benefit to me in letting him see all my stuff? He’s always done this, it’s so fricken weird.
He visits my other site at least twice per week but sometimes more. It kind of drives me bonkers.
I thought of laying it on thick how physical me and the husband are (because even though it’s true that we are intensely physical,  I think his sex life is not very good and he’s expressed jealousy at the thought of me having sex with my husband) , but what’s the point in that? It would be for a show, to hopefully make him not want to read my posts anymore. Except the writing would not be for  genuine expression purposes. And That’s not me. (Well ,I don’t want it to be.)
I’ve layed one little trap to see how much he actually is watching me. But what I might do is list my blog in a forum or something. It would be nice to have interactive visitors to my blog rather than to be focusing on one lurker from my past.