I’ve been talking about getting a tattoo for a while now. I know what I want, the radical feminist symbol. I just don’t know where on my body I want it yet. I’d love to get it somewhere like the inside of my arm but I don’t want to be confined to long sleeves for the rest of my career. DM has gotten really into the idea of this tattoo. I think it is a way for him to be proud of me, proud of me for being proud of myself. Proud of me for being able to express it.

I’m very badly sunburned. I mostly ignore my body. I don’t particularly like it, but it is what it is. I tend to live in my head. I don’t think of my body as being me. It’s where I live, not who I am. But because I have such an awful sunburn, my body invades my head. I spend a lot of time thinking about the suburn and therefore my body. It forces me to realize that my selfhood and my physicalness are not so separate. When my body becomes part of who I am, I really don’t like myself.

DM took the car today. He rarely takes the car. He walks to work. It is almost completely my domain. It makes me feel guilty how much I rely on the car. I’m supposed to be this young, liberal girl. I’m supposed to rally against our reliance on automobiles. But not having the car today made me feel trapped. My car has always saved me, been a coping mechanism. At sixteen, my car provided me with an identity different from my family’s. Not being able to get where I want easily when I want scares me. Such a lazy American.

DM and I spent all of last night driving to his parents’ house in Wenatchee. I like them. I like being around his dad, especially. He’s so weird. He either doesn’t realize it or he thinks it’s the best thing in the world. I like his mom but I wonder if she thinks that I’m somehow taking her son away from her. I’m replacing her as DM’s caretaker or something. Not that I don’t like her and I’m pretty sure that she likes me, but there is still this undercurrent of awkwardness. I don’t know how to interact with her.

DM has a one-track mind on a scale that rivals anyone else. He can be reading something on the internet, you can yell his name, shake him, and do a little jig and he won’t acknowledge that you are alive. He was sitting at the counter reading a blog on his computer. He was laughing so loudly. He was totally involved in what he was reading. Nothing else existed for him but the humor of what he was reading. I wish I could be so into something, so purely feeling one emotion. Instead, I’ve got 5,000 all mixed up together.

I hate being hungry. I hate and love eating. I do not like having to eat. I’d rather only think of food when I want to. But eating also makes me feel bad. Eating anything feels like I’m committing a great sin. Since I can remember, eating always got me dirty looks from my family. They thought I was too fat when I was in preschool. I still carry the shame they gave me around eating. I hate eating in front of people and I still think about what my mom would say about what and how much I’m eating.

My agency has training this week. I hate my agency’s trainings. Its not really because its boring (though it is) and its not really because I don’t agree with their theoretical viewpoint (which I don’t). Its because it is a social interaction that I can’t really get my head around. I’m awkward when everyone else is smooth and put together. I am shy and weird and can’t seem to get myself to interact appropriately. And then my supervisor says in front of the entire group that I am really shy but that I should answer the question anyway. Not helpful.

I have a phone interview for a job tomorrow. The woman seems wonderful. I’m not nervous. I am only nervous because I’m not nervous. Job interviews should have me trembling in my flip flops. I’m not. I feel like I’ve already got the job and now we go through the formalities. Maybe it has something to do with submitting my resume, her calling me the next day, and then having an interview the next day. I wonder if this is some sort of faux confidence I get so that I can come off as sure of myself during the interview.

I’m in baby mode. Every time I see a little kid or baby, I want one. I want to be a mother, I want to have a child. I still don’t want to be pregnant or give birth, but I want to parent. It disturbs me that I want this. I don’t know WHY I want it. I don’t like the idea of wanting something that doesn’t have an understandable reason. I want to be able to understand what in me is making me react to children that way. Maybe so that I can better talk myself out of it.

I have a second interview for a job in New Hampshire next week. I think that I will like this job very much. But the idea that I could be living in New Hampshire inside of a month terrifies me. I’m not really sure that this is what I want. A month ago I was excited about it. I saw clearly all the good things about moving and all the negative about staying. Now it’s flipped. All that I see are the stressful and bad things about moving and living in New Hampshire and all the things I’ll miss here.

Being with my family makes me realize that it will be good for me to get away from my family and that I will miss them terribly. I don’t quite understand that. I think that most of the self consciousness and bad feelings I experience when I’m with that are all me. I’m generating most, if not all, of them. I don’t know why I will miss them so much. I wouldn’t go as far to say that I enjoy their company for more than the briefest period of time. Maybe its just because I want to still have hope.

We’re spending the weekend in a cabin on the Columbia River with my family. It is, of course, beautiful. I was sitting on the porch of the rented cabin staring out across the wide river. On the other side are tall cliffs and hills. New Englanders would say the whole ridge was one of the biggest mountains they have ever seen. All I could think about was being big enough to stomp around the ridge. Being such a giant that it was a minor bump for me. I wanted to control the environment by being huge. I guess we do.

When I was a teenager, I’d spend significant amounts of time in the bathroom. I’d sit and stare at the wall. For an hour or two. Sometimes I’d sit on the floor and read. It was the only room in the house that had a lock and that was safe from everyone else. No one would come barging in, no one would belittle me, and no one would ask me what the hell was wrong. It was the only place that was safe and private. The only place I could really be me. Sometimes I still hide in the bathroom.

I love my little sister. I desperately want to save her, want to rescue her and make her world beautiful and full of happiness and possibilities. I feel like it is my duty to make sure that she does not suffer through all the shit I have. I need to make sure that no one ever abuses her, that our parents don’t fuck her up, that she only hurts in the necessary ways of growing up. I forget that her experiences are not the same as mine. Saving her is not going to save me and she doesn’t need rescuing.

Last night DM went and got me paint and brushes and paper. I painted a picture tonight. I was scared. My painting is ugly and stupid and I will probably throw it away but I had so much fun. I spent more than two hours squirting paint, putting it on the paper. For a tiny part of those two hours, I stopped thinking and focused. No drugs, no alcohol, no sex, nothing mind altering. I need to do this again, if I can just get over the fear. It’s the process not the product and the process is not scary.

I like it when the world feels fuzzy. Everything is still there, it still exists in the same way it always has, but I can choose to keep it out of focus. Instead of seeing everything in crisp, clear detail I can choose to leave things out of my consciousness for the time being. Only when I’m stoned can I really focus on one thing. I don’t feel like it makes me happy, just that it lets me peel away all the things that get in the way of the tiny little good feeling I have. I’m probably wrong though.

I need a lesson on proper etiquette when talking with people who don’t speak English. I really want to be sensitive and caring and understanding but I just don’t know how I would want to be treated. Maybe I need to visit a foreign country where no one knows English. I was talking to one of the Spanish speaking janitors today. I asked her how her summer went and she thought I said something about her barrette. I went with it, complimented her very pretty barette, and left. Should I have tried to make her understand or was that good?

I don’t have anything to write about today. I was awake for a whole five hours today. The other hours, I was sleeping. During my few waking hours, I tried very hard to think about nothing. Everything I think about has the negative tint of depression to it. Everything is hopeless, everything is negative, and nothing will ever be different. Even though I can look at this and identify it as ridiculous, I can’t stop believing it. It’s hard to understand how completely this feeling of hopelessness takes over. I can’t even remember the severity when I’m not in it.

So often I wish DM was quite a few different things. I wish he were clean. I wish he knew how to pick up after himself. I wish he had a real job. I wish he were a multi-tasker. I wish he could pay attention to the world around him. But more often than not I give up on the wishful thinking. I realize that if he were all those things then he would not be all the things he is now. And I love him now. I do not want him to be anything but my silly husbandy dude.

In high school, I spent almost all of my weekends at a local, all ages club called Impact. Impact stood for something Jesus related but I don’t remember what. We would watch local punk bands, stand outside and talk, hang out in the back of someone’s van. There was always someone I knew there. There was always something mildly interesting going on. I was there, pretty much every weekend for two years. I never felt like I belonged there, though. I never felt good enough. I wanted to be like them but I wasn’t. Oddly, I really miss that place.

I don’t want to write today. I’ve got nothing interesting to say, not that I ever had anything interesting to say. I just feel so irritable, so angry today. I’m mad at the neighbors for being loud. I’m mad at myself for doing nothing. I’m mad at DM for trying to be silly and saying something stupid. Mad, mad, mad. I hate being mad. I wish I would get angry for specific reasons. Instead I just get mad in general, for no good reason, at no specific person. It’s frustrating and stupid. Then I get more irritable for being irritable.

DM said he felt very bad today. We spent all day in bed (I almost always spend all day in bed, he doesn’t). I get so paraonoid. Paranoid that we are going to go back to him behaving like he did in New Hampshire. I had become a slave to his mood, to his depression. My day centered around arguing with him to go to work, making sure he wasn’t going to hurt himself, finding him something to eat, etc. and making sure that I would get my work and homework done in between. I can not do that again.

I want to give my clients a sense of freedom. I want them to know that they don’t have to be bound by culture, history, family, money, religion, gender, and all those other things. I want them to know that they can change things, that they do have choices, that they are overwhelmingly capable. It IS in them. I want them to realize it, to feel how much power they have. I want to give them the freedom, the space to exercise it. They need to know that it is going to be fucking hard but they are not alone.

Today I went back to sleep because I was hungry. Dana and I have virtually no food. Getting creative and finding something in the back of the cupboard is too hard. I’ve been lucky if I’ve eaten one meal a day lately. Food never used to be such a problem. Lately I have massive amounts of anxiety, almost panic, when I need to eat. Being hungry makes me feel so helpless and scared. I think its related to not really being able to get myself to leave the house all that much. Outside is scary. Outside is where food is.

He woke me up. He knew I’d only been asleep for an hour and a half and he woke me up. He said he felt bad. He said he wanted to cuddle. I wanted to hit him. He’s been doing this the last week or so. Waking me up because he feels bad and wants me to do something about it. I get mad because I’m awake and because I don’t want the responsibility for his mood. It is not my job to make him feel better but I have to keep telling myself not to feel bad for failing.

DM has a small, recurring monthly donation to the Democratic National Committee set up. It drives me crazy. I hate it. I do not like the idea that any of the small amount of money I make goes to an organization that supports the ridiculousness and corruption of elections. Our system is fucked up and giving money to them just makes it worse. Plus I’d much rather give money to someone who DOES something. A group that actually tries to make the world better. There are lots of people who are doing good things, politicians aren’t part of that group.

I have this feeling in my stomach. I often get this feeling. It’s a mixture of panic and anticipation and anxiety. Those are all the same, huh? I think its mostly panic. I give much of my resources to attempt to shove it back down. It doesn’t go. It disappears and appears whenever it feels like it. I don’t know how to calm it. I don’t know what it wants or what I need to do to prevent it. For most of the day, I can resist its demands that I curl up and sob. This feeling makes me tired.

I keep telling myself that coping with substances isn’t so bad. That it is the only thing that makes me feel like I can breathe for a bit. I’m trying to tell myself to stop feeling guilty for trying to distract and feel good. I saw this cartoon that had a woman at an AA meeting. She was standing up and saying that they misunderstood her. She didn’t want to stop drinking, she wanted to stop feeling bad about drinking. I don’t want to get rid of some of my vices yet, I don’t need to feel bad for that.

I want Dana and I to be parents. I think that when we are ready, we will be good parents. I don’t, though, want to ever be pregnant. I never have. Mom says that I would say that I didn’t want to be pregnant when I was seven and she was pregnant with my sister. The thought of having a growing life in my body and then pushing it out is almost repulsive to me. I’ve been thinking about sterilization and the reluctance of doctors to believe young women are capable of making that choice. Why can’t I know already?

Two more entries for July and I don’t have a thing to say anymore. Nothing at all. I’ve run out of feelings and thoughts and interesting happenings during the day. There is the janitor. The janitor will stand in the doorway to my office for half an hour and tell me about something he finds profound. He’s not very insightful but likes to think he knows about me. Today he said I was well behaved and had a good job because my husband told me too. I didn’t know how to explain to him that he had it completely backwards.

I’m telling my supervisor during our meeting on Wednesday that I will be quitting YC. This is scary. She will not be surprised but I’ve never really quit anywhere before. Everywhere else, it just ended. I graduated or slowly cut down my hours until there weren’t any. I’ve never really said, here, I don’t want your job anymore. I don’t want this perfectly good, paying job. I’ve never been in a position to be able to leave a job. I’ve always needed to be really grateful for whatever I could get. I feel like I’m saying fuck you to them.