My personal life is calming down. I don’t like confrontation. I hate confrontation. I avoid it at all costs. Things are calm now. They’ve tapered off. I don’t want disagreements or drama or insanity touching my life. I get enough insanity at work. I’m all too heavily relied on by my employer, my family, my loves. They need me. No one needs me to feel bad. No one needs me to have regrets. No one needs me to be criticized for being myself. I need to live my life. I need to be there for my babies.

Time heals all wounds. This is a truth that will always be true. It’s not a simple truth. It has many facets. Something people seem to forget is that even if time has healed a wound, falling on the same knife still hurts and re-injures. Time doesn’t make you impervious to the injury healed. Injuries don’t always heal exactly as they once were.

I still don’t know where I stand in life. I suppose I’m expected to know or I will be in the near future, but right now all I know is the day to day struggle that I’ve managed since birth.

Yesterday was the first birthday of my namesake. He’s getting so big, so quickly. I love my babies. It was a fun day even if he didn’t smash his face into his cake. I plan on uploading videos to youtube of him attempting unwrapping presents and eating cake.

Every week brings something new. He’s learning to walk, learning to talk, and getting the hang of everything. It’s still such a shock to me. The difference between having a son and a daughter is just so striking. My daughter becomes more emotionally dependent as she gets older. My son is very emotionally dependent now. He gives hugs and cuddles readily, whereas my daughter was very independent as a baby. He’ll become more independent and less emotionally attached as he gets older. I’m going to have to cherish this time. It’s going to be short lived.

I’m just throwing out finality. I need closure. So, for closure, I’m going to write this.

I’m done. I don’t need people to judge me and the way I live. I don’t need criticism. I don’t need bullshit about what I do, say, or things I think or feel. If you have an opinion- great. Keep it to yourself. I’m not a hoarder. I don’t keep every opinion everyone has ever had of me. They’re about as useful as assholes. Everyone has one, I don’t need to see it.

I have two problems. I have a religious person trying to tell me that I don’t live by a book I don’t care about. I have a non-religious person trying to criticize me for living by a book they don’t live by. I also have a serious anger problem that I likely learned from the non-religious person. Whenever I’m hurt by people I become completely unhinged. I’ve been like this as long as I can remember. I never get physical. I just say so many hurtful, regrettable things. I know my mother regrets things she says because I regret things I say. I’m always sorry for what I say. Always. I know my mother feels bad.

Finally bought a Moleskine to continue recording thoughts and feelings in. Journaling is pretty important. Whether you’re known to be insane or are a stable human being, it’s important to record things. What we say for future generations to consume is both important and ephemeral. I believe we can impact decisions made tomorrow with what we feel today.

In any case, I’m going to take a more active role in vomiting profusely into the ether what I feel the ether is missing. I’m going to write more about things that happen in my daily life and about things in which I find a great deal of passion for.

Five missed calls from my grandmother. Five. Someone must have died. No one ever has anything that urgent to call me about unless something at my employer broke and I need to drive in to fix it.

I return her call and I’m asked if I did my taxes yet. Of course. I’ve bought a good many things I’ve needed. It’s been a rough year. We’ve even spoiled ourselves for going without for so long. We have deserved it, having struggled through. Unlike my snake of an ex who has her rent paid in full with child support. I’ve had to put blood, sweat, and tears into everything I’ve earned. No free rides. I pay my dues, even if it’s just shoe money for a section 8 recipient.

I’ve spent a long time trying to get together a twitter scraper. I haven’t had more than twenty minutes a day, at most, free time to spend doing it. I finally spent some time ripping apart a quick script written in python by someone else, using tweepy. It’s really damned handy. I’ve set it to grab the max allowable tweets from any given user and take data I find important, then format it for storage in a comma-separated value flat file. I spent maybe four hours dicking around with the thing to get it working as seamlessly as possible. Once the “eureka” moment hit, I only spent about twenty minutes to turn data collection on an irritating, but practical, exercise in identity concealment.