That's not to say I'm not an interesting person...

I feel like, when you're going through something, you can't see it well enough to write about it.

That's why I'm always writing about being young and troubled.  If I feel like writing something, I dig into my vault of embarrassing memories.

I can write about my kids because I'm outside of them and I can see them.

I find it hard to write about my life and who I am, right now, in the moment.  Sometimes I get concerned that I'm giving the impression on my blog that I'm some kind of exciting deviant with emotional problems.

I used to be that.  I mean, I still have emotional problems, but everybody does.  Now, they're called stress and PMS and being a mommy of two small children.  The truth is that I'm really kind of well off, in my current position.  (Not monetarily, heh.  I wish.)

I don't stay up too late.  I don't drink, ever.  I go out for lunch with my sister or Kurt or a friend about once every three or four months, and that's the extent of my social life.  I don't associate with anybody who gets in trouble.  Nobody is ever mad at me, except for like... when I ask Kurt too many times, "What's wrong?" when he's tired and just got home from work and then gave the kids a bath.

I never do anything illegal.  I never do anything to bother anybody.  I've even gotten a handle on the way I used to yell at people out of my window in traffic.

That's not to say that I'm not an interesting person.  I'm fine.  You find me interesting.  It's just that my life is not even a tiny bit as colorful as my memories are.  I write about junk and sunrises and dysfunctional relationships and extreme religion and doing it with boys, (mostly my husband, but still...) and I wonder if some of you who are reading me regularly... if you don't think I'm something different than what I am, in the moment.

I don't know.

I just finished this book, and it was amazing.  People do things and then they grow up and understand them.  I was a young person who couldn't manage my life.  I thought I was pleasure seeking and irresponsible.  I was actually desperate.  I was actually confused and in a lot of pain.  It's so easy to see that, now.  I mean, it's so clear that only a total idiot wouldn't recognize it, but I couldn't see it while it was happening.  I thought I was just born bad.

My dad told me that.  Some people are just born bad, and I was one of them.

Sometimes even now, I'll look at my childhood and look around at my brothers and sister and all the troubles we've had with living, and I'll wonder if everything that happened was really real?  There were times when we were happy.  We were just kids and we felt normal.  Everything was wrong, but we thought everything was wrong for everybody.  We thought that every kid grew up scared and lonely.

You can't see things while they're happening, but I've learned enough to know there are clues.

If I'm unhappy, that's a clue that something's going on that I'm not seeing.
If I'm anxious, that's a clue.
If I'm feeling exhausted.
Or if I'm happy and motivated and full of energy.

I'm trying to be better at reading all the clues.