The Things I Can’t Tell Her

Krystal,

I love you dearly, I really do.  I really appreciate everything you’ve tried to do for me.  I appreciate the help you’ve been, and all the times you’ve listened while I’ve ranted or cried.  I’m glad I have someone like you to help put the pieces of me back together when I just don’t have the will to do it myself anymore.  There are times when I don’t know what I’d do without a friend like you in my life.

I guess that friendship seems to come at a cost these days.  I didn’t realize you had offered me a place to crash whenever I needed it without actually asking your husband first.  Had I known that, I never would have asked to take you up on it.  I would have just left well enough alone and stayed away.  It was nice of you to offer, but it wasn’t fair to your family to do so without consulting them first.  It kind of hurts that you took that safe haven you’re trying to give me away because you really couldn’t offer it after all.  I understand, but it still hurts.

It’s hard to admit, but it also hurts that you seem to think my children are the problem children.  When I mention that mine aren’t the only ones that are problems, you respond with "So tell me, how am I fucking up my kids?"  That doesn’t open up lines of friendly communication.  That tells me everything I say after that is going to be a threat.  It doesn’t feel like I’m in a safe place to say how I really feel, so I don’t.  I toss out the smallest thing I can, trying to make it as insignificant as I possibly can.  I simply told you that your kids aren’t well socialized.  I told you that they needed to get out more and learn to deal with more kids than just the one or two they hang out with regularly.  That seems like a pretty insignificant thing, and it’s an easy one to fix.  That’s not all the problems I see.

It just doesn’t strike me as right or healthy to see a nine year old boy watch the clock for an hour and a half because someone told him to tell them when it was nine-thirty to get us to stop asking us every two minutes, and I mean two minutes without fail, when you would be back and what was taking you so long.  It doesn’t seem right that when I was watching him during the day that he’d harass me if I set a schedule and diverged from it by so much as a minute.  It bothered me to hear him asking when you were going to be there when I said you got out of school at one-thirty and you weren’t there at exactly one-thirty-one.  When you tell me he doesn’t want to tell the girls to stay out of his room when they’re bothering him because he wants to be nice, and therefore is making himself miserable, that doesn’t seem like a healthy trait either.  He needs to learn to stand up for himself, otherwise when he gets out into the cruel world, people are going to walk all over him.  Yes, he’s got plenty of time to learn that, but he doesn’t even have a sanctuary from his own family.  It’s hard for me to watch him being a parent for all the children in the house.  He’s a kid.  He should be able to act like a kid.  Instead he’s acting like a mini-adult.  He’s trying to tell the other kids what they can and cannot do with the authority of someone who knows.  He shouldn’t have to feel he’s responsible for the other kids in the house.  It kind of makes me wonder why he does.

Then there’s Lili.  She’s very domineering over Corde.  She tells Corde what to play, how to play, and even what to say.  If she so much as deviates from the script, she gets angry and tells Corde she’s wrong.  Apparently she’s the only one allowed to have an imagination some days.  The moment things go against her she sulks and whines.  Corde so much as chose to play with Ian instead of her because she was being too bossy and she went to her room and cried instead of learning how to deal with it.  If Corde were to make the same complaint, I’d have Ian and Lili both jumping down my throat saying she was throwing a fit and she wasn’t doing whatever it was she was supposedly supposed to be doing.  I know it may sound like an insignificant thing, but she’s got to learn she can’t always have her way with her friends just because they’re younger than she is.

And the ganging up between Lili and Ian against Corde has got to stop.  I understand there’s a brother/sister bond there, but it’s hard for Corde to feel like she has any rights when it’s a constant game of two against one.  Every time she gets an ounce of control over the situation, she feels like she has to hold it with a death grip or she’s never going to get it back again.  She finally gets the toy she wants to play with and she’ll pitch a screaming, crying fit because they want to take it away again.  I can’t blame her.  I know how it feels to have everything you want ripped out of your hands the moment they get it.  I know how it feels to accept the compromise of second best when you get the promise that you’ll get what you want later, but later never comes.  To her the world is full of empty promises, especially right now.  Yeah, a good deal of that is because of her dad.  Even when I make promises, there are times when he gets in the way of me following through with them.  Even so, it doesn’t change the fact that even her friends are showing her the same treatment.  All she sees is that she’s never allowed to get what she wants.  I’ve tried to step in and help her, but it’s awkward at your house.  I don’t feel right telling your kids what to do in their own home because it’s your house and your rules.  Maybe I should just work up the gaul to tell them no matter what you may think of me for doing so.  I don’t know.  I just don’t want to upset you or ruin a friendship because I’m trying to defend my daughter’s right to freedom, creativity, and independent thought.

No, it’s not always that bad.  If it were, I just wouldn’t bring my kids around anymore.  There are some days when they play perfectly well.  There are some days when they’ve only got a few bumps in the road.  However, it’s those days that Corde throws royal fits that you’ve really got to look at.  Why is she throwing those fits?  It’s so easy to blame me.  It’s so easy to say that I’m way to lax of a parent.  It’s easy to say that she’s used to "daddy-sized discipline" so anything else isn’t cutting it.  That takes the blame out of your house and your family.  However, maybe the problem warrents a little more investigation.  Perhaps it’s not always so easy as her lack of sleep, the problems at home, or my parenting style.  I won’t deny that all those things are possibly part of the problem, but I also see how she plays with other kids.  I also see the way Ian and Lili are influncing the way she plays with her friends who are younger than her.  Now instead of using her problem solving skills when Delik won’t play the way she wants him to, she starts bossing him around and c

omes running to me expecting me to solve the problem because he’s not playing according to her script.  It’s rubbing off on her and I don’t like it.  I’m not saying this problem is the end of the world, but perhaps something needs to be done to reign it in.

Yes, I know the food outside the kitchen thing has gotten a little out of control.  I can’t entirely blame Corde or Aris for that.  I used to have a hard rule that food stays in the kitchen.  If I caught you with food outside the kitchen, you lost the priveledge to eat it.  I know it may sound harsh, but with snacks, that was the only way I could get Corde to keep them at the table.  With meals, we all used to sit down at the table, so it wasn’t a problem.  When your kids came over, I’d give them snacks now and again.  They ended up all over the house no matter what I’d do about it.  Ian was constantly giving Claire food.  She’d walk all over the house with it.  Lili would bring over sandwiches and apples in the morning.  As much as I told her food belonged in the kitchen, she kept bringing it out to the couch when I wasn’t watching and would start eating.  The way I’d find out is when Corde would start complaining that Lili wasn’t sharing.  They all knew the rule was food belonged in the kitchen.  Eventually I got so sick of reminding that I just gave up because I didn’t want to fight over it every day.  However, I was determined they wouldn’t bring cookies upstairs because I could deal with ants in the living room, but I didn’t need ants in Corde’s room, biting her and keeping her up all night.  Well, wouldn’t you know it?  They brought cookies up to Corde’s room.  I had just talked to Lili four times about not bringing them up there when she was trying to sneak them up for their "school snack".  I reminded her several time "food belongs in the kitchen."  I was really upset to find cookies up there.  Then when we get to your house, suddenly it’s Corde’s influence that food was outside the kitchen.  It’s not fair to blame her when they started it here first.  Then there’s other mixed signals.  You tell your kids not to bring food in the living room, then tell them to go on and take food up to their rooms, as long as they aren’t messy.  Well, if they can break the food in the kitchen rule for their bedrooms, what about the living room?  And Sonny let’s them get away with it too.  Ian even brings the babies food while they’re in the living room.  I don’t feel it’s my place to exile them back to the kitchen because it’s not my house.  It’s not my rules.  I don’t know if that’s a hard rule, or a rule that’s broken for certain occasions.  Unless I know that, I’m not going to put my foot down and tell your kids what to do because I don’t know for sure if it’s okay or not.  Had I known it was such an issue and had permission to tell them not to do it, I would have put my foot down long ago.  This may sound funny, but as a nanny, I learned to uphold other people’s rules with far more determination than I uphold my own.

And as for your house being a disaster all the time, I’d help if you’d just let me know how.  I’ve literally been yelled at for washing someone’s dishes because I "wasn’t washing them right".  I’ve been forbidden from folding laundry because I apparently don’t fold it the right way.  I’ve been told I wasn’t allowed to clean in a house I nannied for because the woman couldn’t find anything after I was done, even though I put most of the stuff in the places she told me it belonged in the first place.  Yes, I let my own house fall into ruin.  The sad truth is that I’m so used to moving that I don’t put much investment in the place I’m living in.  What does it matter if I’m only going to be there a week?  A month?  A season?  Yes, tht is really sad.  Yes, I’m going to have to get over that.  Having stayed in the last place I was in for a year and trying to do at least the same in the place I’m in now, I’m trying to develop more of a respect for my own space.  However, the harsh reality is after living in lord knows how many places, at least twenty at the last count and I really don’t care to sit down and do all the math on that one, over a seven year span… That’s an average of three places every year.  Some years we moved more than that.  And in truth, that’s just a low estimate.  I know because I wrote in my own diary at one point that it was at least twenty one.  From the day I turned eightteen I didn’t know what the word "stability" really meant because I had none.  My parents kicked me out because I refused to pay $400 a month in rent so that my sister could have her own room because we’d been sharing a room all our lives.  I didn’t think it was really fair, especially since that would have been my entire month’s wage and I wouldn’t have been able to afford food and transportation.  Yeah, I didn’t have a great job at the time, but I was expected to have a part time job and repeat my senior year of high school while I was sick with the mystrery disease that my doctor couldn’t figure out and my parents refused to believe I had.  Before that my mom’s idea of a clean home was a path to walk on between each room so you could get where you were going, and the only way to eat was to wash everything you were going to use before you used it.  I can’t even count the number of times I washed all the dishes only to find the next day they were all right back in the sink.  We didn’t have a dish washer either, so I had to do it all by hand.  Yeah, I kind of lost my care for my home environment because of that.  I’m easily overwhelmed by messes.  What I really need is someone to hand me a towel and say "Come on.  I wash.  You dry."  I really need someone to say "Hey, let me help you get all the books in he shelf so you can actually find the floor to sweep for once!"  I need someone to tell me what needs to be done so I can do it, and not let me get overwhelmed.  However, you note that while you were struggling to sweep and talk on the phone at the same time, I took the cue and just did it?  I was rather overwhelmed by everything that needed to get done in your kitchen, but I was able to pick one thing, small and insignificant as cleaning your stove was, and did it.  Even if it’s just a list of things that you wouldn’t complain if I did them, at least I’d know what was okay and what I shouldn’t mess with.  I mean, organizing all the paperwork and computer stuff last night, I felt really uncomfortable doing that.  I knew it would make you feel better to have it not all over the floor, but I didn’t know if it was paperwork I should be sorting through or if I’d be making you uncomfortable about it.  I can honestly say the only thing I remember was something with Time Warner’s letterhead, but I didn’t even really look at it.  The Time Warner Cable symbol just sticks out to me because I’m familiar with it.  I just need to know how to help if you want help because I really can’t handle it if I try to help and it turns out I did somet

hing that wasn’t appreciated.  It makes me want to shy away from helping ever again.  Yeah, that is a personal problem and not your problem, but I’m trying to find a way that I can go beyond my comfort zone to see what you need in order to do sosmething to help because otherwise I’ll just be waiting for suggestions that you’re not comfortable giving.  I really do wish I was as motivated and in some ways brave or maybe bold is a better term as Sonny and could just do things without asking, but until I know what’s safe to do, I just can’t break outside that comfort zone.  It’s that whole actions speak louder than words thing.  Until you just put me to work like anyone else who lives there, I can’t assume it’s okay to do these things.  I need some kind of action to show me that I can make myself at home there, not just words.  I mean, to give you an example, I still ask you for a glass of water, or if I can have some soda.  I even ask if it’s okay if I can bring over milk because I know you guys are hurting for money and I’m just going to be over there anyways.  I feel bad eating there, even if I’m invited to because I don’t want to create more mouths to feed that you just can’t afford to feed.  That’s why I ask you to tell me how I can help because if I don’t want to seem to be insulting over your lack of money by bringing over food and milk.  I don’t want to be overstepping my bounds by doing something wrong or insinuating that you somehow can’t keep your house becaue I just do things.

I guess what I’m saying is I need to know where the rules are.  As much as I seem like an adult, on many capacities, I’m just a kid.  Just like kids, if I don’t know what the rules are, I have a hard time keeping to them, except instead of going wild and testing to see where those lines are, I police myself really strictly.  I guess part of it is how I grew up.  You never do anything in another person’s house unless they invite you to.  To do otherwise would insinuate that they were a bad host, or that they didn’t know how to keep their house.  I was expected to write thank you cards or notes for every gift I ever received or I’d seem like I was ungrateful.  My mom never made me do it.  She didn’t even suggest I should until I was sixteen.  As a result, I stopped getting gifts from most people.  Even when I was nannying, the rules were all pretty straightforward and clear cut as to what I was and wasn’t expected to do.  I always insisted on house rules with room mates because I learned early on that without a good set of house rules, nothing would ever get done.  Same with friend’s houses.  I was a guest until I was given some other responsibilities or freedom in the house.  I’ve had the rules of ettiquette as both hostess and guest forced on me so strongly that it’s hard for me to break out of that and just do what I’m needed.  It’s why I’ve grown so comfortable in the role of counselor, because that’s something I can do without having to break free of the mold put on my life.  All it takes is listening to the person and what they need to hear and finding a creative way to tell them what their spirit, body language, and words are telling me.  They’re really solving their own problems.  I’m not telling them anything new.  I’m just finding a way to rephrase it and help them understand.  When it comes to that, there are no rules to be broken.  There are no restrictions of etiquette.  After all, if they didn’t want me to help them, they wouldn’t be telling me in the first place.  It’s so much less complicated to me.

There are other worries of mine too.  The whole drama with Sonny is a perfect example.  As much as I’m glad he went to Cedar Park with me for that show, a part of me wishes it never happened.  Yeah, I had a good time.  It was great falling asleep on the couch with him.  It was nice to get close to him.  Now all these walls are being thrown up.  It’s gotten awkward and difficult because somewhere along the line he got the impression that I’m suddenly wanting this to be more than I really do.  He mentioned things were moving too fast, though I didn’t really see how that made sense.  That’s a phrase saved for relationships, not friendships, and clearly that wasn’t how things were going, not in my mind at least.  On Saturday I felt like I was finally able to have fun again.  I could act silly and goofy without having to worry about what he would think of me.  I was able to be myself in a way that I hadn’t been able to be in a very long time.  I won’t lie.  I had a damn good time.  I don’t think I had a night out like that since I stayed at Dmitri’s during Arisia.  I was able to genuinely laugh.  I was able to relax.  I felt comfortable being me again.  I hadn’t felt that much like I was expressing my true self since high school.  I’m always too guarded for that.  Of course, back in high school I didn’t know I had other personalities, so that’s a lot of the reason I wasn’t so guarded back then.  I didn’t know that I was ever anyone but me.  I didn’t have this constant wondering in the back of my mind of what might set me off this time.  In truth, with Sonny I didn’t care because I sincerely doubted I’d scare him off.  Yeah, it’s easier with him than with you and Gina, and it is because he’s male.  I don’t know why, but I’ve always been more afraid of being judged by women.  I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that I’ve always had more attraction to women than men.  In that aspect, women have more of that intimidation factor of "the opposite gender" than men do for me, if that makes any sense.  Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened.  I can’t help but think that it was something someone said to him, or maybe all the joking at our expense, but somehow he got it in his head that I seriously wanted nothing more than to lure him into some kind of sexual relationship.  Maybe it was Lynxie.  Lord knows that personality has made a whole mess of things before.  Whatever it was, now I feel like I’m losing someone who had the potential of best friend status.  He’s withdrawn and put up a wall.  I’m sure all the talk of whether we’re about to kill each other or be all over each other doesn’t help.  Yeah, there’s a reason I was avoiding that line of questioning.  It made me very uncomfortable, but I was afraid that if I said anything it would have just been warped into more teasing about the two of us getting together.  Yeah, maybe that’s not how you are, but how can I trust that?  That’s pretty much been what my entire life has been about to this point.  For the longest time jokes like that were made and it’s ruined friendships before.  And the more I tried to deny it, the more they insisted it must be the truth.  Now it seems like no matter what I do, that friendship is going to be one with a root in a lot of chaos and turmoil.  I have to admit, after all that drama I’m a bit afraid to talk to him again because I’m afraid it’s going to get spun off into some out of control drama.  I’ll admit it, it kind of hurts.  All I rea

lly wanted was someone I could go out with and have a good time.  I was honestly glad to have found someone who fit that role.  I was glad to have found someone who actually gave a damn when my feelings were hurt because they just wanted me to be okay for selfless reasons.  Goddess, it’s been a long time since I had a friend like that in my life.  I’m starting to wonder if it would have been better off if everyone just left it alone.  I don’t know.  Maybe things will bounce back from this, but that’s up to him at this point.  It seems like anything I do is just making the situation worse, and any time that someone tries to step in on my behalf, it all spirals out of control.

And what makes it worse still is I somehow let myself be encouraged in these thoughts.  Somewhere along the line, someone put the idea in my head that he was interested in me.  Honestly, I could have cared less.  I was too smart to get into another relationship with a Scorpio, even a friendship, because Goddess knows they’ve all burned me in the end and I can’t take another let-down.  Still, the idea was put fort that maybe he’s what I needed.  I don’t blame you for that.  I guess in so many ways if we can get everyone else out of the middle of it, maybe he could be what I need, that best friend that’s always there to help me back on my feet when I’m too afraid to get back up and face whatever just took me out.  Yeah, there was the thought that he could be a lot of fun as a short term relationship, but never anything long term, and Goddess do I regret saying that!  It seems like once again I opened my mouth when I never should have and everything’s gotten so warped and twisted that I hardly recognize it anymore.  I don’t know how this happened.  Maybe I said something in an inaccurate way.  Maybe he overheard something and took it to mean too much.  Maybe I just pushed his buttons the wrong way and he didn’t like it.  I don’t know.  However, I do know that if no one had ever told me he was interested in me, I never would have gone there.  I would have continued to be oblivious and wouldn’t have even tried to convince myself it’s worth seeing what happens.  He and I would still be talking in your living room or kitchen about the most recent drama in his life whenever we both happened to be there at the same time, and maybe it would be better that way.  I don’t know.  I just feel like such a fool for letting other people influnce me like that.  I probably shouldn’t be surprised that most of the relationships in my life have involved manipulating and controling me.  I’m just far too easy to influence.  And it’s not like anyone’s conniving me into believing it.  I’m just following along with the suggestion, blissfully in pursuit of some kind of happiness.  I know you didn’t mean it.  I know if you knew what it would come down to, you never would have encouraged it.  Goddess, this is Jane Austin’s Emma, and I swear, you’re Miss Woodhouse and I’m Miss Smith.  If you don’t catch the reference, maybe we should watch the movie some day.

And the worst thing about it all is that I don’t feel I can tell you these things.  I’m so afraid of hurting you or losing you as a friend that I’d rather bottle it up inside and risk hating myself for it.  All things like that do is encourage bitterness.  I don’t want that.  I don’t want these things to come between us.  I guess I just have to find some way to tell you.  I’m not sure how, but I’ve got to find a way.  If I don’t, these things are just going to fester up inside me until I just can’t take it anymore.  Either that or I’ll just let them pass like water under the bridge and they’ll continue to be problems again and again.  I’ll be honest here.  I value your friendship too much to lose it.  I really do like you.  I hate that I have these feelings right now.  It makes me a completely worthless and shitty friend.  However, you deserve better than the disagreement we had last night.  You deserve better than half admissions of how I feel.  Maybe through telling you how I feel, we can start making steps to get past this.  In some aspects, like the things with the kids, they’re not really that big of a problem.  They’ll either work it out or they won’t.  It’s obviously not a problem all the time.  Like I said, I can help with the kids.  I just need to know what’s expected so that I can be a little more proactive in keeping the chaos down.  If I’m having a hard time understanding the rules of your house and I’m an adult, I can’t imagine what it must be like for Corde.  I’m sure that’s where a good deal of the chaos comes from.  I think that’s something that can be worked out and I think it’ll help everyone.

Here’s the important part.  I don’t think you’re fucking up your kids.  I don’t think you’re ruining their lives.  I think you’re a good, but very overwhelmed mother.  In that aspect, you’re no different than I am.  Yeah, we deal with it very differently.  Our stresses are different.  However, we’re both still good parents and just trying to do what’s best for our kids.  And it’s always so much easier to see the faults in other kids, or what’s not normal in other kids than our own.  And I will admit, Corde’s got at least as many problems as Lili and Ian, probably more given the situation we’re in and the general amount of chaos in her life to this point.  However, you’re right.  I think if things are going to work where our kids spend a good deal of time together, we’re going to have to co-parent when they’re together.  You need to stop feeling bad for making Corde hold to your rules.  I need a clearer concept of what your rules are so I can help hold everyone to them, even when you’re not there or are busy.  I mean, when you were taking care of your husband, I kind of turned it into a house run by my rules.  I decided I was going to sit down and organize something for you.  I put the kids to work.  Ian was to keep Claire quiet.  Lili’s job was to put the movies in their correct boxes.  Corde’s job was to find all the pieces of the train that were scattered in the pile I was sorting out and put them away along with any other toys I came across.  It worked great.  It’s an old trick I used to use when nannying.  If the kids are busy doing something else, they’re not getting in trouble and they’re learning responsibility at the same time.  Not only were Lili, Ian, and Corde getting along, but they didn’t start to get loud again until Sonny came home and I kind of gave up on finding busy work to do.  If you want me to pull out the nanny skills and give them structured things to do while we’re hanging out so they don’t drive us all nuts, let me know.  I just don’t feel comfortable stepping up and doing that because, well, I’m not your nanny.  You haven’t asked me to help with your kids.  As a guest, it’s not my place to suggest activities to keep the kids entertained because that’s kind of rude and implies that you don’t know how to keep kid