I was institutionalized for doing something that broke societies rules.  Suicide is just another taboo.  I have been suicidal for as long as I have memory of knowing that my life could end.  When I found out about the concept of death my response was, “That sounds great, sign me up.”  Relief from thinking and feeling and being me.

Fast forward, I’m not actively suicidal this week (yay!) but I have my days.  I move on to other taboos.  It is not irrational for me to fear reprisal for breaking taboos.  It is not irrational for me to think that people might harm me and do considerable damage to my long-term emotional health in the name of getting me to conform.  It has already happened.  Given that I am now an adult married to someone who is enthusiastic about my taboo breaking I am much less likely to get into a situation where I can be harmed for my taboo breaking.  So magically I am supposed to be able to stop that bone deep fear.  Now it is magically irrational and I should stop feeling that way.

If anyone has a pill that can do that, I’ll buy it.  I don’t exactly enjoy the fact that my heart has been racing almost continually for the past 24-ish hours.  I don’t enjoy the feeling that I am one ill-timed grab from my child away from beating my head against the concrete floor because I need something that powerful to overcome the intensity of my feelings.  I need something that can break through the screaming in my head.  I’m smiling.  I’m interacting with the kids a little, but mostly I’m just sitting and staring into space in between trying to figure out chores.  I timed it this morning and if I get up and start moving fairly quickly I can get all my daily/weekly chores done on Monday by 9am.  Not bad.  Now if only I knew what I wanted to do with the day.

We are going to go sign Shanna up for swim lessons today.  And we will go to the park.  But it’s almost 11 and I’m still scared and sad.  It’s hard to be around.  People don’t want to pussyfoot.  I understand.  It is a lot of work.  I don’t like doing the work I require either.  It seems kind of ridiculous to need this kind of extensive negotiations and fuss about boundaries.  It would be so much easier if I could just not fear irrational things.  It would be so much more fun for everyone if I could just be ok with however they behave because they don’t mean anything.

This is what this crazy girl looks like.  I will tell you up front, “Hey once you cross this line into this other category in my brain you can’t be around my kids any more.”  That isn’t about anyone else or their behavior.  I would think that the way to potentially soften that boundary would be to rigorously follow it for a very long time without the slightest deviation to prove that you understand that this is a real boundary and very serious for me.  I’m sad.  I guess I did fail.  I thought I was communicating clearly and I didn’t.

This is why I am not interested in polyamory.  All of a sudden I am supposed to emotionally caretake for more people.  I can’t take care of myself.  If you want to stand near me emotionally you have to have a very thick wall between you and me.  You have to understand that sometimes I am going to freak the fuck out and that doesn’t mean you did something wrong it means I was triggered.  You have to be a willow tree that is flexible with the winds of my moods but isn’t really affected.  Noah is my mate because Noah can hold me while I sob and cry and am hysterical and he doesn’t take it personally.  I can scream at him on the internet and talk about all the most intimate parts of our life and relationship and he knows that at the end of the day I cannot change him.  He just is.  He decides his behavior based on his best guess at my mood because some days things go well and some days they don’t.  But it’s not his fault.  It’s not about him.  When I am angry about something that Noah has done, part of it is his acceptance of responsibility.

Noah has raped me.  That’s a boundary violation beyond all others in an intimate partnership.  I know that he can do that to me.  It’s not an irrational fear.  It’s a healthy respect.  At this point I have to simply trust that he will never do that to me again.  Do you know why I trust him enough?  Because he rigorously, fanatically, slavishly observes my boundaries.  If I tell him he can’t say the word “the” to me today he will do it.  He will say: “I think that is an irrational boundary and I am not thrilled about it, but I will endeavor to follow your rule.”  And then he would.  He would make this overnight weird work around in his vocabulary.  Because even though it’s irrational and weird and makes his life hard… I’m worth that.  This would be why I can relax boundaries over time and we can take turns being the one who gets the most focus.  I trust him.

Other people don’t understand my boundaries.  They think it is about them.  They think they are threatening.  They think they are the problem.  That’s not it.  This is just what the crazy train looks like.  I make ridiculous demands.  Outrageous demands.  But I spell them out in advance and give people the opportunity to say yes or no.  The awesome part is when people say they understand and my demands are reasonable… until I follow up.  Then I’m doing something… I don’t know.  Mean?

It’s probably the stunt cock comment.  I have rewritten this section over and over.  I think there are two kinds of people.  For the purpose of this explanation I am going to call them bonders and non-bonders.  Just for this conversation.  When bonders have sexual contact it increases their feeling of wanting to spend time together.  When non-bonders have sexual contact they continue to want to decide if spending time together is wanted based on completely unrelated factors.

I kept myself distracted this morning doing chores until I ran out of “needs to be done today” that felt unstressful and I ran out of physical energy.  Then I sat down and realized how fast my heart was racing and I wanted to puke and I started shaking… because I have to get up today and go register Shanna in swim classes.  I have to do that.  I am freaked out because today I am not going to be able to take both kids with me, watch them, keep them safe, get information about the classes (not everything is on their website), wait through whatever lines we incur, stay calm even if Shanna acts out, try to remain calm as Calli beats the shit out of the back of my neck while I stand in line, have a coherent conversation with another adult while I am completely overwhelmed by noise (this is a pool building–they are loud), and I’m already having massive panic attacks and hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I can’t date anyone.  I don’t have a spare five minutes in my day to give a shit if someone is upset about what kind of time I can or can’t give to them.  Fuck anyone else’s needs.  I did not sign on for anyone else’s fucking needs.  I said that I wanted to be a dirty whore and step out on my life.  Dirty whores are not sensitive and new agey.  I said I wanted a stunt cock who would be nice to me.  Apparently I don’t actually know what that demographic looks like.  Noah tells me a lot that the only way to get good at things is to try and fail a whole bunch of times.

This is why crazy people look like drama.  I have in my head the interaction I want to have.  The kind of relationship.  That wasn’t it.  I probably need to hunt outside the poly community.  Hrm.  But then I will be dealing with men who are cheating.  Shit.

What does it actually look like?  Well, I want someone who understands that it isn’t personal, I don’t want my lovers over at my house socializing with my kids.  It makes me have feelings I don’t like.  So I correctly identify the cause of the fuss and I try to eliminate it.  If I invite you to a big party at my house where there will be 30+ people and I won’t be interacting with you much… that’s different.  But I want my kids to meet my lovers as distant people in a vague community of people they gradually get more exposure to as they age.  My lovers aren’t invited over for dinner.  My lovers don’t get to ask about toys. That makes the pit of my stomach claw and retch.  It’s not personal.  It’s not a rejection of anyone in particular.  It’s not that any of them are bad people.  I don’t think Tom is a bad person but I honestly don’t want him hanging out with my kids.  That’s not something you are supposed to admit out loud.

I don’t want people around my kids who cause me to feel more unstable.  I have to monitor and manage my moods.  That is a simple and literal fact of my life.  It will always be true.  I have to minimize my stress.  The obvious solution here is that I should simply be monogamous because then I don’t have to worry about meeting other peoples needs.  Ugh.  That’s not really going to work long term.  I want to have that part of me off existing.  But really, I can’t date.  I can’t be responsible for someone else’s happiness.  I just can’t.  I am not able to provide that for anyone.  I have nothing left to give.

This morning I had to go wake Sarah up to help with the kids because I desperately needed to smoke and write.  When I started this I wasn’t able to stop crying any more.  My stupid momentary frustrations were adding up.  Shanna hasn’t done anything wrong.  But she did throw crumbs all over the garage after I asked her to not bring food out of the dining room.  We have serious problems with bugs.  I am in a constant battle to confine food to the kitchen because otherwise I have ant infestations that send me into horrifying panic attacks.  And I have to keep my mouth shut and not obviously react and clean up the fucking ants no matter how I fucking feel because I am the fucking mom and I have to shut the fuck up and just do it.  So you know that overdosing thing when I was 15?  Yeah.  Ants.  That was my hallucination.  I constantly fight ants in this house.  It is this low level of stress thing for me that I can’t seem to get rid of.  It keeps my stomach hurting.  I find ants in my bed.  That honest to god scares the shit out of me and not screaming hysterically constantly is a heroic act.  I have learned to master that phobia.  But it’s really hard and it takes a lot out of me.

So Shanna didn’t do anything terrible or wrong or bad.  But I asked her to please keep the food on the linoleum.  She ran, giggling, and threw herself on the big ugly chair clutching the last of the delicious cinnamon raisin bread a dear friend gave me for my birthday.  We’ve been hoarding it out to savor it.  When she got up I noticed that she had smeared the bread and crumbs all over the chair seat, back, arms, in the seams, and all over the floor.  I had sudden images of ants.  The ants that are going to crawl on me next time I sit in that chair.  And then I have to calmly ask my wonderful sweet baby girl to take the rest of the bread back to the kitchen, you can see how there are crumbs everywhere.  If we spread crumbs we will get ants.  Have you noticed the ants we have in the dining room?  I want to keep all the food in there please, thanks.  Then I got to clean it up.  While I was in the garage cleaning up that spill Shanna decided that this is a great time to practice pouring.

Do you really want me to continue?  It’s not that a little water spilled is that bad.  It’s that there were crumbs all over the floor from the bread and now it’s a soggy mess.  It’s that it’s on the table, multiple chairs, and the floor.  It’s that she took containers out of the thrift store box to play with and now I have to dry them off and put them back in the box.  I should probably also hurry up and take it out to the van because HOLYFUCKINGSHIT will she just empty it in the next five minutes if I don’t.  And I need to stay calm.  And smile.  And be enthusiastic about her exploring the world.  And teach her how to clean up after herself–which is way the fuck harder to be patient while doing when I am in the middle of a panic attack.

Do you know what a panic attack feels like?  It feels like a heart attack.  And that’s been happening for over 24 hours now.  I’m not seeing a doctor because dude, I am probably doing this because I am going to see a doctor and I am freaked the fuck out.  For me to go talk to a doctor about the extent of my acting out and self-harm and transgressive behavior is for me to risk commitment.  I would not be able to tell a doctor with a straight face that I am not suicidal.  Because even though I haven’t thought about it this week… the minute someone asks me about it I will crumble and admit that yes I really kind of wish I could be selfish enough because this fucking hurts and I am so very very tired.

But I woke Sarah up.  Because I was getting to the point where keeping the mask on was resulting in me spontaneously crying.  Because when I’m that frustrated and I’m not allowed to show anger at all I start crying.  My sister used to taunt me with it.  Soon I have to go nurse Calli.  She is obviously getting done with me having a break.  It’s time to go let her nurse to sleep.

Yes I want a fucking stunt cock who keeps his messy emotional shit away from me.  I have nothing to fucking give anyone.