30 minutes while Sara's in the bath. I told her that her crazy Mom was doing a writing prompt for 30 minutes each day (weekdays, most likely) and that I'd prefer if she'd just leave me be for that amount of time. She, as always, understood and is very cool about it.

I dislike kids a lot, but Sara's different. She's this wonderful generous soul that understands everything. I gave her the chances I won't give to most kids because she's my daughter, but she's won me over just by being herself. My life would be a lot poorer without her in it.

So she's in her bath right now with a horrible cough echoing down the hall. She's been coughing like that for weeks now. I kept putting off calling her GP because I didn't want to make an appointment without talking to her Dad first, and then because I would be booking one for him to take her to. I'll make the call now since the trade off is completed. 3 years early, but I'm so happy about it. We agreed a year ago that since he's been with her full time for most of her young childhood (a part of childhood that I dislike the most) I should get her for her teen years.

I like teenagers more than I like kids. I prefer better-formed people.

Hmmm, I just got the feeling I'm avoiding something by nattering about kids. What's funny about this 30 minute daily write is it is the most honest I've ever been online. I almost never free write and let the chips land where they may. I used to do this all the time in my paper journal, a form of self-therapy if you will. Just write until I find the truth and maybe some solutions. I once told Mike that if I ever stopped writing to worry. Because I wasn't looking at myself anymore.

I stopped writing a while ago. But I don't think it's entirely a bad thing. There's only so much self-observation and analysis that a person can handle before it breaks down. There are those dark spaces within everyone that probably should stay dark. I'm a pretty highly self-realized human being, thanks to years of intensive therapy. (I'm talking full day programs here. Therapy and self-examination *was* my job for a long time.) I shoved a flashlight into every nook and cranny in my soul over and over again.

It's hard being that honest. Hardest work I've ever done. And I finally see the benefits of it. God, the woman I once was. Rather, the girl. I was terrified of leaving my home. I couldn't walk a block without sinking into a panic attack. Riding the bus was a experiment in terror. And the things I did to myself. Dear god. The drugs, the booze, the sex, the self-destruction.

I think the self-destruction was a part of the self-discovery. How does someone expose the secrets they keep from themselves for good reason? It's said that it gets worse before it gets better when someone is in therapy, and hah, what an understatement. Ahh well. I think I realize now that I'd be too self-defensive to do good work if I went back to therapy.

But there are the issues and questions there. I'm not normal. I don't know exactly where I fit in. I'm highly isolated by choice. I don't even participate in the online world. I've become a ghost. Which is an odd thing for me to be.

What's more odd is I don't know what my normal is. I've been adapting for survival for as long as I can remember that I don't understand who I am when I don't have to do that anymore. Am I person that really doesn't get fired up about anything? Am I really this bitter and cranky? God, I don't know.

My life isn't empty or barren at all. There's so much there and I do enjoy little things but never with the burning passion that I used to have. Is this normal? Was my burning bright just a facet of the suicidal tendencies? Was it only because I was fighting to exist at all? Something like if you're afraid of the dark, stuck in the middle of a dark, dark wood; you'll light the biggest damn bonfire the world has ever seen, just because.

Heh, this is truth. Not any single thought today, but I realize that in forcing myself to ignore my censor, I create a place where I write again. The questions without answer is so me. So much of what I have done, always. I feel that if you ask a question, you release it to find its answer and then return. So I ask a lot of questions.

I'm sitting here looking at the clutter on my desk, trying to find the next thought and it's flitting away. I look at the list of things to discuss at the next summit meeting (a monthly meeting between the 3 of us: Sara, her dad and myself to discuss her life) and I realize that even when I feel lost in my life, I still have my order there at the same time. It's kind of a split in my self, this part that is always highly functioning. The part that got my daughter dressed and off to daycare, and myself to school while the other part of me planned my suicide that night.

Am I train wreck journal? I've tried not to be. I've tried to couch my history, my life, myself in pretty prose and vagueness so that I don't become one of the many jokes, a train wreck journal. But I think that attitude does the world a disservice. Both of them. Mine to lie and hide and the assholes that think when someone hurts it's something to mock. I remember that terrible aloneness in being a split person, in hurting so bad that I wanted to die but also pretending I was ok so nobody would make it worse.

I guess I hate what it's like online. That truth is only valued until it makes someone uncomfortable. That it's just high school all over again. But here I am, writing out my life for anyone to see and putting it online. With my domain, with my photographs. I tried to explain it to a wonderful, interested man in Toronto as a type of Home. But it's not really. We don't invite people to just walk in the front door of our physical homes. We don't actively advertise and seek out the attention from our neighbours to our every little thing.

Is it arrogance? That someone would be interested in our lives? That we want the attention and the adoration we feel is our due? God knows. Part of the reason I do this is for the history. I read my online journal again. I don't touch my paper except to dust them off occasionally.

And that's 30 minutes.