Monthly Archives: September 2011

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I spend a lot of time feeling vaguely upset with myself for being so self-obsessed that I am utterly incapable of writing fiction.  But I just had an idea.  What would I be like if I had not been abused.  It would be interesting to try to write two chapters in parallel going through an imaginary life I could have had while comparing it to what did happen.

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You never know the full impact of your life until you are dead.  I don’t want to die yet.  I figure I have at least fifty more years.  Given that I am thirty that means I have a long way to go before I hit halfway through my lifetime.  I hope I am grown up by then.

I was born the fourth child in an established relationship.  My mother was a stay-at-home mom who excelled at cooking, baking, sewing, and being involved in all aspects of her children’s school.  She often babysat for half the neighborhood because she was just good at managing children.  My father was a printer.  It was the family business.  He tended to work graveyard shifts because it earned a lot more money.  My father was also kind of the suburban ideal dad.  He coached many sports teams.  He was heavily towards boys, that’s normal.  He only wanted to teach things like sports, heavy Sci-Fi novels, and appreciating alcohol.  He figured that was his role in the family.

The first few years of my life were just a continuation of the same-ole-same-old my family had been doing for years before me.  My father was apt to say “no” to things so my mother learned how to work around that.  My mom thought that her little boys should have linoleum in their room because all they wanted to do was play cars and the carpet was terrible.  So she put the boys to sleep in her bed, took speed, and ripped the carpet out in the middle of the night and had the linoleum 3/4 installed before he came home from work.  She never did tell me what he said when he got home.  Now I can never ask.

I have to admit that most of the same-old-same-old in my family was pretty darn good.  My mom said that my father was bringing home $900/week in the 1970’s.  That’s a fair bit of money.  They were able to do things like install a pool in the back yard.  That was my sister’s 16th birthday present.  My father asked her if she wanted a horse or a pool.  She wanted to be popular in the neighborhood so she said pool.

My brothers were both born gifted athletes.  And they lived with a rather good coach who worked with them night and day.  Everyone did well enough in school to not bring shame on the family.  My brother Tommy had learning disabilities.  It was obvious he would never enjoy reading as a hobby.  Frankly it was already obvious he had a career as a professional athlete ahead of him if he wanted it, so who cares?  At least that seemed to be the feeling.  That is what the stories say.

My family lived in idyllic Southern California.  Far enough from Disneyland to be considered hick but close enough for annual passports.  We also lived biking distance from Magic Mountain.  I hear Canyon Country was a fun place to grow up in those days.  It was the kind of community you see in movies.  Tight knit.  Not the kind of place that produces monsters, right?  But actually that is the perfect place.  Most people are good kind people.  They mean well and all.  It’s easy to understand why they want to believe the nice family down the road is ok.

My father gave my sister the pool to buy her silence and consent.  I don’t know exactly what her sexual abuse was, she was never willing to tell me.  Years later she told me I never asked and I had to laugh.  I used to pester her like crazy.  I wanted to know what he did to her because I had been told he molested her.  I didn’t know what that meant.  I didn’t know how to match that up with my experiences.  I didn’t know if I was being molested or not.

My family went camping a lot.  My parents were on adult soft ball teams.  They were very active in the community.  Everyone knew them.  Why would anyone think he was raping his teenage daughter?  After all, he was so nice for adopting her anyway.  You see, my sister was a bastard.  My mother slept with someone in high school and he wasn’t ready to admit being a daddy.  He accused my mom of sleeping around.  Folks believed him.  My father’s brother married my mother’s best friend.  My parents eloped a week or so later.  I think my sister was around a year old, but I’m not sure.  Hey!  I have the family bible!  My parents got married on January 13th, 1969.  Holy shit.  My sister isn’t a bastard.  My sister was born on January 21, 1969.  Oh wow.  My father married her when she was 9 months pregnant.  I don’t know how I got that detail wrong my entire life.  Holy shit.  I thought he adopted her.  That’s actually an intense clue for me.

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Holy shit.  I’m Russian.  Now I’m distracted by the family bible.  I had no idea that whole branch of the family was Russian.  I was always told German.  Maybe I should reread the Mennonite books.  If I want to tell this story right, I need all the background.

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I spend a lot of time feeling vaguely upset with myself for being so self-obsessed that I am utterly incapable of writing fiction.  But I just had an idea.  What would I be like if I had not been abused.  It would be interesting to try to write two chapters in parallel going through an imaginary life I could have had while comparing it to what did happen.

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You never know the full impact of your life until you are dead.  I don’t want to die yet.  I figure I have at least fifty more years.  Given that I am thirty that means I have a long way to go before I hit halfway through my lifetime.  I hope I am grown up by then.

I was born the fourth child in an established relationship.  My mother was a stay-at-home mom who excelled at cooking, baking, sewing, and being involved in all aspects of her children’s school.  She often babysat for half the neighborhood because she was just good at managing children.  My father was a printer.  It was the family business.  He tended to work graveyard shifts because it earned a lot more money.  My father was also kind of the suburban ideal dad.  He coached many sports teams.  He was heavily towards boys, that’s normal.  He only wanted to teach things like sports, heavy Sci-Fi novels, and appreciating alcohol.  He figured that was his role in the family.

The first few years of my life were just a continuation of the same-ole-same-old my family had been doing for years before me.  My father was apt to say “no” to things so my mother learned how to work around that.  My mom thought that her little boys should have linoleum in their room because all they wanted to do was play cars and the carpet was terrible

There are more ups lately

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That said!  (You see, Marisa, I take directions!  Shorter entries.)  I feel like things are improving and growing ever more stable in the house.  I can’t express the safety that Sarah gives me.  She is in the house and aware.  She tracks my moods.  She appears with food and watches me eat.  She knows if I am eating enough vegetables or not.  She gives me enough protein.  I no longer have to think about buying groceries or putting them away.  My contribution to cooking lately has only involved the microwave and sandwiches.  Ok, one day I fried sausages.  The amount of work I have to do in a day is substantially lower.  So much lower that I am kind of reeling from the possibilities.  I don’t know what to do with myself.  I’m trying to find a comfortable rhythm on housework right now.  I’m trying to figure out how to structure our days.

I tend to get up and spend my time in the garage fortifying myself with apathy.  Yay apathy.  I then proceed through my morning chores (here’s the mommy-blogger part of life): I water the front and back yards (yes I’m aware there is modern technology that could take care of this for me.  Acquiring it costs money and installing it takes time, unless you are volunteering both shoosh.), dishes (we use a mountain of dishes), at least one (often three) load(s) of laundry every single day, and I’m playing with how I want to balance things like sweeping, mopping, vacuuming.  I should probably clean the windows on my house some year.  Somehow I doubt that year will be 2011.  Then I have the whole rest of the day to do stuff.  I’m generally done by 9am.  I don’t start working till 7:30.  My work day starts when Noah leaves.

That’s the part that is unbelievable luxury.  My wonderful, gorgeous, considerate husband gets up every morning and deals with both children while making breakfast.  He does this so that I can have time to go be me off away from the clamor in peace.  He believes I deserve space.  He is an introvert.  He loves me and he gives me that thing he wants more than anything else in the world: peace.  He does it by taking on all the clamor that is much harder for him.

I come out here and I purge whatever stupidity is lurking in my brain.  I do it in a myriad of ways.  I read.  I watch movies.  I think.  I get to think about my place in this universe.  I get to think about myself and my life and try to gain perspective.  A lot of why I don’t go out more is that I lack perspective.  That’s an interesting thought.  Do you want to know why people survive genocides and atrocities?  Because we are animals and we want to fucking live.  Because no matter what happens to you today, there is always hope that tomorrow will be better.  There is always hope.  As long as mankind manages to trudge forward there will be better.  If not for you, then for your children.  You have to come to a point as a parent where even if your life really sucks, you keep going because you have an obligation to try to make things better for your children.

The challenge becomes what is “better”?  I don’t think most people think about that very hard.  Of course in America that means more money, more things.  Dude, my fucking three year old has an iPad.  I am not throwing stones here.  This is my culture too.  But I’m trying to figure out what things are better in terms of my culture and what things are actually objectively “better” for a human being.  Honestly that is a lot of what I sit here and think about.

My children are going to be shaped by growing up with a mother who suffered severe trauma.  This is a fact of life.  They will never have different parents.  God damnit.  They are mine.  I get to decide what that means though.  It’s not all bad, yo.  I know that my childhood was weird, from top to bottom.  I don’t think other people understand quite what that means.  I have no idea how to pass on a standard childhood.  I quite literally don’t think I am capable of bowing to the yoke now.  My children will travel an extraordinary amount.  That’s part of why I think homeschooling is the right choice for our family, honestly.  And yet travel doesn’t teach you all of that.  Children are exposed to different cultures right where they live.  To this effect, I have to learn how to get along with other people.  That takes effort for me.  Ha.

To this effect we are out meeting our neighbors.  We are plotting a block party.  I know what my childhood was like.  I don’t know what other people really and truly experienced, by and large.  I know what kind of “better” I want for my kids though.  I want to build community where we are.  I want to know my neighbors.  I want to walk to the park from my house.  I don’t want to drive all over the bay area so I can get to know the “right kind” of people.  I am not going to chase down the crunchy crowd.  It’s too hard.  I don’t meet people well in those kinds of circumstances.  But when I’m just kind of around, and you are mostly meeting me as Shanna wanders through life?  That’s easy.  I can do that role well.  When I am being Shanna and Calli’s mom I focus on things like exploring and talking about the physical world.

There’s not a lot of room for crazy in that role.  So my neighbors don’t see it.  To them, I am the mom who has her kids out on walks all the freakin time.  I’m obviously pretty weird, but I am so friendly and cheerful that I just can’t be that bad–right?  And oh those darling little girls.  When my neighbors look at me they don’t see a crazy girl.  They see an impressively good mother because they see my kids before they see me and they make judgments.  I am told all day long what a good mother I am by everyone in my neighborhood.  I don’t think I have even told Noah or Sarah that.

I’m growing to like Fremont.  I want to stay.  I’m not overloading my neighbors.  I see them casually on walks.  We talk about the weather and gardening and children.  They don’t know anything about my childhood and I see no reason they ever should.  It’s not being in the closet exactly.  Because when I’m acting kind of twitchy and they kind of recoil I say, “I’m sorry.  I have PTSD and sometimes I say things that come out sounding a little weird.  I’m sorry.”  Then they smile in an affirming way, touch me on the shoulder and say it’s ok.  That has happened twice.  They now make a point of coming out and talking to Shanna.

I need to find out how to put down roots right where I am.  If I am going to be…something.  I don’t know what.  I need to do it here.  I need to figure out what better will be for my kids.  And early mornings are a great time to think about it.  Whatever it is I don’t have time to do it yet.  Right now I need to figure out how this daily life thing goes.

We have started spending more dedicated time every day where I more consciously lead us in a learning direction.  Working more specifically with numbers, talking more about the stuff I am reading.  Playing games where she responds with answers.  I am not pushy about it and when her attention wanders I follow.  I tend to explain why I think she will want to learn ‘x’ some day but now isn’t the time.  Like surfing.  She has noticed that surfing exists and I told her that I totally support her in wanting to learn to surf!  Uhm, let’s start with swimming…

I feel like I am trying to help her understand long-term planning.  Doesn’t every parent do this?  I won’t have a public school to teach her stuff though.  I have to do it.  It’s really complicated trying to think about all the things public school actually teaches as opposed to what they think they are teaching.  What lessons about conformity, group identity, and innate understanding of beurocracy will my children simply miss?  What did I miss?  Do I care?  It’s fun to think about.

I’m mostly trying to rest and recover from the amount of sleep deprivation I have been operating under.  My body is so wasted.  I want to start running soon, but I need to get sleep under control first.  I don’t actually think I can yet.  I get too dizzy.  I’m working on it.

I have to post or I’ll ramble…

This is why reading is dangerous.

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I’ve been reading Le Liasons Dangeruses and it’s hot and fun and neat.  I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a short story in that style.  I uhm had the not-so-brilliant idea to start a livejournal flamewar between entirely consensual people about a fictional break up.  See a parallel?  It uhm, didn’t go well.  I feel guilty because I more or less pulled everyone into it and it turned into a whole drama and now people are very upset.  Maybe I should stop reading books.  They give me ideas.

Or maybe I should have paid more attention to the preface.  The author was not well thought of.  In fact, most of society reviled him, rejected him, and treated him like a monster.  By the end of his life he publicly repudiated the book and tried to start converting other people into rejecting the book.  If I think things like an internet flamewar are funny, I am going to be in limited company.  I like the satire involved.  I actually had a fairly long entry mostly done to continue on with the next stage of the drama.  I started getting specific.  Then someone told my friend that this process felt like an assault.  Like a violent airing of dirty laundry.  I panicked and deleted what I had written.  I’m kind of pissed off at myself for deleting it.  It was an interesting entry.  It had potential.  I had many points in my little entry that were wonderful jumping off points for my cohorts.  There were things for Noah, Sarah, and L to play off of.  It was completely over the top.  Truly.  How could anyone have magically been involved in my life in a daily fashion for 18 years without anyone hearing about it?  But I digress.

I was not going to post any of that here.  And that is when I realized that I was filtering the story.  For whatever reason this space is a space where I keep my writing absolutely publicly accessible.  I’m not going to require that anyone keep up with a bunch of other sources to follow this.  And most entries are fairly stand alone, I think.  That other blogging site is different.  It’s a community site.  It’s self-referential.    I think that if I had really wanted to do this right, the thing to do would have been to coordinate more.  Maybe all of us should have created a filter and written the whole thing to completion before publishing the entries at specific times or all at once.  That would have worked and been interesting.

Uhh… what we did was kind of lame and half-ass.  We weren’t writing fast enough.  And the people who had posted were not available all day to monitor the dwama and stomp on the flames.  Jury duty is kind of a bitch like that.  We probably should have thought of that too.  Shit.  My stupid is showing.  Or rather, maybe that I’m not the best planner at all times.  This was ill thought out.  That frustrates the hell out of me.  Now I don’t feel comfortable finishing.  Even if we did make a filter and do the whole thing off in private, I now have this ball of anxiety in my stomach.

You see, my filth rubbed off on my friend.  People are mad at her just because she was stupid enough to come be influenced by my.  The things I want to do are bad.  I triggered an “assault” through “violent airing of dirty laundry”.  Wow.  I’m going to now do everything I can to ensure I don’t run into that woman at a party.  I don’t think I would be able to look her in the face without feeling waves of shame.  I’ll take my shitty white trash taste away from you.  I’m sorry I did something somewhere you could possibly see it that you don’t like.

Lj is dead. Long live satire.

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LJ has been a constant in my life for a long time. At this point I am moving most of my serious blogging elsewhere. But I like LJ. I have been a festering pit of despair for a few months. I’m trying to pull out of it. To that effect I am inviting more people over to my house and we are being silly and creating in-jokes. How about if I make a deal with you, Oh LJ-land. When I am being silly with the people who visit my house and creating in-jokes I will use the tag -that-. If you don’t like bitchy dwama-filled flame fests amongst people who have never dated, probably will never date, and who think it is all hilarious skip those posts.

Why I write about my trauma

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Recently else-net some folks were talking about the fact that getting into the nitty-gritty of their trauma just feels like rewounding.  It serves no purpose so they avoid doing it.  I immediately felt defensive.  I have been explicitly told by a therapist that I am damaging people by writing about what happened to me.  I only had one appointment with her.  Whereas it is good and healthy for me to journal about it… I shouldn’t inflict my trauma on anyone.  I am in fact abusing them.

Let’s uhhhh look at that for a minute.  If I sit in the privacy of my garage and write about things that happened to me as a child on the internet I am an abuser.  Even though no one (not even my husband) is compelled to read what I write?  If people are not interested or it is too intense, they stop reading.  Most of my closest friends can’t handle reading my blog and they are very frank about it.  Not only do they not want the intensity of the stories they can’t handle the volume of reading.  I’m uhm prolific.  That’s ok.

This kind of thing is a difference in philosophy.  In my opinion.  Now, I don’t have a degree to back me up on this topic (psychology) but it seems as though most of them are just making shit up.  I might as well do the same thing seeing as I’m only trying to make me happy.  My theory is: I feel better when I talk about the stuff from my childhood.  Not right away.  Not when I am doing it.  After every mad rush of writing I feel relieved.  I feel like I no longer have to carry the secret around any more.  It’s not a secret.  It’s just a story.  It’s a story that other people know now.  It’s a story I can look at and try to find value in as I go about my life.  It probably won’t have value to other people because their lives are different.

I’m not really writing for anyone else’s benefit though.  I write because I am compelled to.  I always have been.  I don’t think my approach is necessarily sane but I’m not sure you can call it insane exactly.  Well, I do the same thing over and over and I hope to keep getting the same reaction–self improvement.

I write because I want to.  It’s as simple as that.  I don’t think that means anyone else has to.  But I want to.  If you don’t like what I write, don’t read it.

Now if only I believed all this.

I feel so betrayed.

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I have worked so hard on my issues. I have tried to be the best condescending primary partner ever. I tolerated all that interacting. I didn’t make drama. I don’t understand exactly why anyone would get to the point of not wanting to share my husband. Didn’t I bend over backwards far enough for you? Didn’t I ensure that all your picky little preferences were met?! I see how it is now. Fine. Show up for dinner at 4 if you are going to be like that.

’bout that doctor visit…

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Sarah was right, she’s a good doctor.  When she came in I was crying, because I’m like that.  She (after dealing with a huge coughing fit) sat down and just wanted to talk for over 30 minutes.  The first thing she wants me to do is go see a psychiatrist because almost everything wrong with me could be potentially related to my mental health issues.  I concur.  I have a doctor recommendation for that.  I’m having some tests done and she also hooked me up with a groino to perform the Essure procedure.  No.more.babies.  All in all I think it is the best visit to a doctor I’ve had in a long time.  Oh!  She told me that she wants me to work harder on getting consistent edibles because she doesn’t like that I’m smoking.  I almost cried tears of joy.

I am taking steps to make my life better.  They just don’t all happen as fast as I want them to.

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I’m starting to pay more mental attention to the things that feel off-limits to blog about.  I’m trying to decide where the boundaries will be.  I have been very erratic for a while.  That’s hard to deal with.  There is damage from that.  I will have to deal with it in the days and years to come.  I get to make a choice though. I get to decide if me talking about my shit leads to drama.  I decide that, not some mystical other person.  It’s hard to live with that.  People are going to get mad at me during life.  I am going to fuck up.  Being a responsible adult with a mental illness means that when I flip out and hurt people I live with the consequences in a mature and respectful manner.  I feel like it falls outside the bounds of “don’t air your dirty laundry” and instead falls into the category of strategic planning.  I have to live here.  You don’t shit where you eat.

That means that when people are upset with me for my behavior I have to nod and say, “Yes.  I did that.  You are right to be upset with me.”  And nod.  And know that I did whatever thing it was I did with the absolute best intentions and hope that some day things will heal.  I have a long life ahead of me.  I don’t really want to burn any more bridges.  I can’t afford to poison the well of my social community.  I don’t have anything else in the world.  It’s a complicated thing.

That is what it means for me to choose life.  I have to learn to swallow my pride and deal with situations that are hard because I god damn need a community.  I can’t alienate my friends more than I already do.  It’s hard being the kind of person that is hard to live with.  I try.  I think there is some bone deep knowledge of how to have long-term relationships that I lack.  I have fucked up a lot of important friendships in my life.  I try to tell myself that the people who have stuck around are the people who want to stick around.  They are the people who are willing to deal with the fact that I severely fuck up sometimes.  I worry about people being willing to put up with me.  I worry about being the monster I am occasionally accused of being.

Maybe if I continue to write about what is happening in my head I will get to the point of knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that when someone is angry with me it is not about me doing something outside my moral code.  If someone else doesn’t like my actions… that’s a different issue.  I can’t control whether or not other people forgive me or want the same things I want.  That’s life.  I don’t know how it works for other people, but conflicts with people I feel close to generally instill a lot of panic in me.  I try to strategize how best to deal with the situation.  The thing is, sometimes the right answer is to just sit back and let someone else decide if they are ok or not.  Because I am ok.  Even though I am sad about whatever conflict is happening at the moment because it’s awesome when things work out such that I get absolutely everything I want, I’m not really interested in changing my situation.  I did what I needed to do.  Ok.

Ok.  I can set this down and walk away now.  It’s time to think about something else.

Saturn return/Astrology rambling

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Uhh, this is random shit, but I found it funny.  No one needs to read this but I want to keep it. 🙂  I love paragraphs like this.  They are so random and vague and yet evocative.

-43 Square Sun – Neptune

You have a desire to be something special or to experience something more than the ordinary. You are a day-dreamer and idealist. It is easy for you to trust others, even (and perhaps especially) people who might seem from the outside looking in as unsavory types. You are looking to identify with something beyond what is normally expected of people. You may have had a childhood that didn’t help you direct or define your life. Perhaps the early family life was lacking in supervision or clearly defined rules. A father figure may have been absent or distant and ineffective. You may have a glorified image of your father. Whether the image is very positive or very negative (or if it swings between these extremes), the image is not very clear or rational. Whatever the case may be, you struggle with defining who you are. You might gravitate towards the “wrong people”, or get in with the “wrong crowd” in an attempt to define who you are. You might be susceptible to being taken advantage of by others, especially by men or authority figures. You may be easily led astray by peculiar desires or self-destructive habits. In order to add a greater-than-ordinary dimension of experience to your life that helps you to feel special and important, you might be attracted to Neptune-ruled behaviors, such as secret affairs, drugs, or other escapist behaviors. In some way, you may feel a strong urge to glamorize your role in the world. There can be some confusion about the past (such as remembering childhood experiences in ways that are far removed from reality), and a tendency to daydream about being someone more “important” than you feel you are. You may struggle with early conditioning that made you feel tossed aside or neglected in some way, and certainly not directed or supported. You are very sensitive, especially with regards to any real or imagined blows to your ego. If the natal chart shows a strong sense of reality and a robust mind (Mercury and Saturn well-placed, for example), the negative interpretations of this aspect are less extreme. Still, you are likely to recognize at some point in your life that you have a tendency to engage in escapist and self-destructive fantasies and/or habits. It is useful to be able to connect these behaviors with their probable source, which is likely to be a weakly-defined ego and identity in childhood. 

Some fucker sure has my number.

Moon in Aquarius people are rarely flighty people, but they can be unreliable when it concerns the little things in life. Often, this is simply an assertion of their independence. In the long haul, however, they are rather constant, as Aquarius is a fixed sign. As long as they have their own space and the freedom to be themselves, however kooky that may be, they are trustworthy and loyal. Lunar Aquarians generally make wonderful friends. They’ll make a point of leaving nobody on the outside. Many will fight for other’s rights and crusade for equality. What may be surprising is that Moon in Aquarius people have a lot of pride. In fact, when they’ve been attacked in any way (especially regarding their character), they can become very inflexible and cool. It can be difficult to know just how sensitive to criticism Lunar Aquarians are, simply because they hide it so well! When their character or behavior has been criticized, they tend to dig in their heels and keep right on doing it. They fully expect others to accept them exactly as they are, or they don’t have much use for them in their lives. These sometimes maddeningly unpredictable people are nevertheless quite charming. They have an unmistakable stubborn streak, but when left to be themselves, they make unusual and endlessly interesting people to be around. Life just wouldn’t be the same without Lunar Aquarians’ unusual spin on the world and the people in it!

I love how complimentary and general astrology is.

Short description:

She is sociable, intelligent and lucid. Thanks to great sociability, she has many friends. She is modern, original, inventive, non-conformist and brings new life to everything she does.

Weaknesses: she is eccentric, with sharp mood swings. Complex love life.

Heh. Maybe.

This position of the Moon indicates an emotional need for a feeling of belonging with, and support from, friends and associations with groups. You look to acquaintances for support, and offer the same in return. A changeable or unstable social life might be a reflection of inner emotional unrest. Waxing and waning feelings for others can cause problems in your relationships. You are a person who is filled with many dreams, wishes, and hopes for your future, and most of these are altruistic and good-hearted desires. However, you might change your aspirations frequently, with your changing moods, and have a hard time settling on goals to work towards as a result.

I admit nothing.

You have a great love of debate, if only to get closer to your own thoughts and opinions. Bouncing ideas off others helps you to make a decision, although coming to definite conclusions can be painfully difficult for you. You see the other side of the coin. You might often play devil’s advocate. Communication with a partner is craved, and you also love an audience for your own thoughts and opinions, but preferably a one-person audience, as you come alive verbally when it’s one-on-one. You can be quite skilled at keeping a partnership animated and alive with interesting tidbits, new ideas, and stimulating conversation. You can easily become bored in partnership if the lines of communication go down, even temporarily. You might also love to talk about and analyze relationships and marriage.

This next bit made me smile.

Venus in Libra people will try to impress you with their kindness, evenhandedness, and willingness to make your relationship work. They have a polished manner in love, which sometimes makes them appear insincere or superficial. They are gentle lovers who hate to be offended. They are threatened by bad manners and direct or abrasive expression of feelings. They not only prefer to choose the middle road, they seek the middle ground in their relationships. You can expect to be treated fairly, and you may be turned on by Venus in Libra’s willingness to concede and adjust their lives to fully accommodate you. Venus in Libra men and women have idealized images of their relationships, even to the point where the relationship becomes bigger than life, taking on a life of its own. They can become quietly resentful if they feel they are being taken advantage of — and they make it easy for more aggressive types to bully them around. 

Pleasing Venus in Libra involves treating them kindly and fairly. They love to share everything with you, so let them. Foreplay for them can be mental — they love to communicate with you about the relationship. Sharing turns them on, and tactless or uncouth behavior is a turn-off. Although they seem to put up with a lot, be fair with them. Over time, imbalance in their relationship is sure to make them unhappy, and when it comes to this, they may try to even the score in subtle, roundabout ways. Don’t let it come to that, and you will be rewarded with a lover who puts themselves in your shoes and treats you exactly how they would like to be treated.

The internet is a silly place.

Her fate depends a lot on marriage. Marries for love, children, happy emotional life.

Her fate depends a lot on marriage. Marries for love, children, happy emotional life.

You live for relationships. It is hard for you to think about being alone. Harmony is most important to you, so it is unlikely you will attempt to dominate a lover. You are a peacemaker, sometimes going to great lengths to achieve a balanced, harmonious relationship. Be careful not to bend over backwards just to keep the peace–you may be taken advantage of. Your marriage partner may be especially attractive, charming, or well off. You are extremely attractive, agreeable, and charming, drawing others to you magnetically. You need an unusual amount of contact and exchange with a partner, and might find that you feel completely lost without one. Some of you might quickly enter into partnerships, perhaps too quickly and neither equipped nor prepared for the responsibilities that a long-term relationship demands. In some cases, there can be a shallow or materialistic interest in partners. Your hips and lower back may be special erogenous zones for you, or they may be especially attractive body parts.


I love the internet.  Yes, my low back is awesome.  Noah take note of the whole next one.

This is one of the more sexual positions of Mars. While they are rather easy to arouse, their passion is long-standing. Mars in Leo natives enjoy sex more than most, as long as heavy doses of love and romance are part of the package. In partnership, they demand loyalty and admiration. Impatient with small-mindedness and disloyalty, Mars in Leo natives generally have a strong idealistic streak. They easily get fired up when they feel they’ve been humiliated, and they defend their high principles with ardor. Mars in Leo natives act with their heart. Their ego is tied up with their actions, so that most anything they do becomes a source of great pride. Though some are self-righteous and quarrelsome, the more sophisticated people with this position are kindly leaders. 

I like to think of myself as a benevolent dictator.

She makes a good marriage, with a useful partner who helps to bring success if only by his advice. She never goes outside the bounds of legality.

Hahahahahahaha.  I immediately started hearing “Breaking the Law” in my head.  Awesome.

10 Conjunction Neptune – Midheaven

Her plans lack realism and are therefore often unattainable.

Well fuck you too.

House I is the area of self identity. The ascendant is a symbol of how one acts in life. It is the image of the personality as seen by others, and the attitude that one has towards life.

Virgo ascendant Aries

Hard-working. Projects a loner personality. Very involved in her work.

Ascendant In Aries

People with Aries Ascendants are direct and quick. Their first instinct is to do, rather than think. Planning ahead? Forget it. Aries rising simply charges forward without much ado. This position does not make a person aggressive. Forthright, yes, but aggression is too strong a word for these natives. They have a youthful, direct manner that sees what it wants and generally goes for it. At the same time, there isn’t any malice in their intent. Some Aries rising people are competitive, but they generally put most of the pressure on themselves. These people love to come out ahead in all that they do. They get ready quickly, walk quickly, and have little patience for dilly-dallying. Their temper is quick, too. It’s also quick to disappear. Rarely do you find Aries rising people holding grudges. Their mannerisms are rather simple and straightforward.

Aries rising loves action, and is often trying to stir up some activity. Their strengths lie in their enterprising ways. Finishing things they start does not always come as easily, unless the ruler, Mars, is placed in a more tenacious sign, such as Taurus or Scorpio. Aries Ascendant often gives a rather swift walk, with the head leaning forward slightly. This walk is surprisingly distinctive. Headaches, and sinus and eye problems are the usual physical complaints of this position. Rashes and acne on the face and shoulders sometimes occur. Broad shoulders and slim hips are common. Often, Aries rising people are quick to smile, and they possess a youthful charm throughout life. Probably early on in life, Aries rising people got typecast as the “independent” child. As adults, people with Aries Ascendants often stick to that role in life. People don’t run to help them out — they appear quite fine doing things on their own. These people have learned to be self-reliant, and this generally stems from their early experiences. Despite a rather brusque and independent manner, these natives are usually very willing to compromise in their relationships, and are very attached to the people they hold dear. 

Ok, that one was more of a mixed bag.

House III is the area of social and intellectual learning.

House III in Gemini

She adapts well to any kind of change, and enthusiastically. She doesn’t like monotony. Early family life was busy, and usually this position suggests a number of siblings. Work in communications or the media is possible. Writing talent is also probable. Reads and thinks a lot, but is not very focused. Has a lot of projects going at once.

Yup.

House IX in Sagittarius

Long voyages abroad. Might settle permanently in a foreign country. Intellectual work, mathematical mind.
House XII is the area of education and of emotion.

House XII in Aquarius

Friends can bring quite a lot of problems.

Hilarious.

I’m not sure I believe any of it.  But it’s fun to think about.

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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.

Feelings

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I keep reading about how this stage of healing is normal and necessary.  I’m still pretty tired of it.  I’m tired of feeling fear and anger.  I’m tired of closing my eyes and seeing screaming in my head.  I bet you didn’t know someone could see screaming.  I feel trapped and overwhelmed and desperate.  I feel like an animal. I feel like I am barely connected to the thinking part of me.  All I want to do is hurt someone.  Myself, other people… it really doesn’t matter.  I just want to get this pain out of me.  I’m really worried about having to spend a week or more freaking out about each individual trauma in my life.  I probably don’t need to explain how awful that would be, right?  For each incident?  Oh god.

It’s interesting how the old processing gets mixed in with my current anxieties and worries and morphs.  I have a really high level of inappropriate anger.  I am seething with anger over things that happened over a decade ago and it makes me jitter.  I am really struggling not to do significantly more hostile things than I have already done.  I haven’t self harmed in the past day.  That’s my first big victory of getting through this patch.  Last night I was freaking out and wanted to self-harm.  I comforted Shanna instead.

I need to get a futon.  I actually suspect that if I had a sleeping space in the garage away from the kids I could sleep at night.  I can’t move in my bed because the little @#$# darling children kick me in the face.  Shanna has been joining us in the middle of the night lately because she’s scared.  She wants more time with me and she doesn’t know how to get it during the day.  There isn’t enough time for her to get as much attention as she wants.  I’m struggling with how resentful I feel.  This is why I can’t have a job.  If I had to deal with the clinging limpet thing after work every day I would be so very violent.  The job would take away all my people-cope for the day and I would come home and hate her for touching me.

I don’t want to hate my children.  Not at all.  Not even for five minutes.  I don’t hate them.  Oh god.  Sometimes I do.  I hate them for touching me sometimes because I am so angry and upset that I still don’t have any right to have my body treated gently.  Never in my life have I had the experience of people being kind and gentle to my body on an on-going basis.  The vast majority of my sex has been focused on me being as uncomfortable/in as much pain as possible.  That seems to be what most of my lovers want from me.  Maybe it’s just what I tell them I want.  Maybe it’s just what I was told I was allowed to have.  Maybe I’m so tired of my body hurting that I feel weak and defeated.  I feel like my option in life is to suck it up and adapt to being hurt more.

That’s why I’m flashing back to the institution.  My kids do a lot of sitting on me and hurting me.  The only thing I can really do is heavily dissociate so that at least I am not hurting them back.  Today is going to be hard.  I can already feel my throat closing in panic.  I can hear Calli in the kitchen with Noah.  I should go pick her up and take her off Noah’s hands while he makes breakfast.  Instead I am hiding in the garage while I sob.  I don’t want my baby to touch me.  I don’t want her to pinch me or hit me or kick me or roughly grab my throat if I don’t respond fast enough.  I don’t want her to bite my nipple or twist it or yank on it or grind it or roll it or…

Weaning isn’t going very quickly.  She’s a baby.  She’s not ready to lose nursing.  On the good days it’s alright.  She’s already done very well at adapting to other people putting her to sleep.  She loves outings with Noah for basically the entire day.  She can hang out with Sarah almost all day.  She’s pretty equally fussy for them as me.  She has cut down her nursing, but it’s still happening and I’m feeling very avoidant.  I’m really hoping that she passes this sensitivity to cow dairy.  That would make weaning easier.

Now I’m out of the body memories because I am listening to Noah and Calli play and talk.  It’s really nice.  Earlier on in Shanna’s life I felt this constant pressure to be present.  I couldn’t let them have their private time.  Life is a lot easier on me since I have gotten over that stupid hangup.  No, I don’t think mothers should be required to be on duty 24/7.  I kind of hate my life.  Sure I half-heartedly encourage other people to consider having a stay at home parent (doesn’t need to be mom) because I think there is a lot more focus on a family unit that way but it’s my stupid prejudice and there are studies that agree and disagree with me and people will do what they need to do.  So there.  Maybe I’m feeling defensive about something else-net and I’m now over reacting.  Charming.

Emotional day.

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Yesterday I turned 30 and realized it was now half my life ago that I was institutionalized. I’ve spent the day with body memories of being strapped to a table while I fought and screamed. My body hurts and feels overly sensitive. I feel scared. I have tried to talk about it when and where it is useful.

Mostly I just try to make it through another day of being me. Today was a harder day than many. I hope that tomorrow involves less terror, anger, rage, crying, and pain. These are old ghosts. They may look like they are winning a pitched battle today, but I can outlast them. I’m still alive.

The problem with messy boundaries

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I’m pretty good at tracking my own emotional state.  Lots of practice and all that.  Today I was reminded what it looks like when people have messy boundaries.  Recently I have been talking with someone a fair bit and I made it clear over and over that I needed our interactions to happen entirely out of the sight of my children.  It’s someone I have sexual energy with and I don’t like having that around my kids.  It makes me uncomfortable.  An object was left at my house after the party last week.  It needed to be retrieved.

Specifically I was told someone would drop by sometime this week and grab it.  To speed that along I put said object in a bag and met this person at the door.  I was then asked if said person could come in.  There was a very understandable reason why said person wanted a rest period.

All of a sudden I am socially obligated, if I am a “friend” to have this person into my house.  Even though I have spent all day alternating between raging and crying.  I am not feeling comfortable in my skin.  I keep having the sensation of being trapped on a restraint table in a mental hospital, sure come right the fuck in.  No one did anything wrong, of course.  I could have said no after all.  It’s not like I would have seemed rude if I had said, “Uhm I’m a crazy person and this is a bad day.  Go away.”  I carefully manage going out of my house so I don’t lose it in public.

I make these boundaries clear with people in my life because I have to.  Because this is reality for me.  If I tell you that I don’t want to see you around my kids because it makes me uncomfortable what I mean is that I am going to spontaneously feel like I am about to vomit on the floor because I feel so completely uncomfortable with the fact that one of my lovers is being chummy with my kids.  That’s what my sister’s lovers did.  Right before they asked to fuck me.  I can’t turn it off in my head.  I can’t.  This is my fucking boundary and I god damn get to have it.

And when you were asked, “Was there anything else” and you say in that studiously soft and bedroomy voice… “There is one question I want to ask… but probably not in front of the littles” oh my fucking god.  That is why I told you I didn’t want you in my house with my children.  You just made a god damn allusion to my transgressive sex life in front of my kids.  I should be ok with this, right?  That’s the theory in Harmful to Minors at least.  But I’m not ok.  That fucking bothers me.  That’s not right.  Was it obviously over the line?  Of course not.  But it was skirting the edge of the line.  That was pointing at the edge of the line and saying, “Can I move it back just an inch?  It’s only an inch.  An inch doesn’t matter.”

I don’t fucking think so.

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It took 20 years before I told my family that my father raped me.  I don’t think of myself as keeping secrets and yet that’s a long time.

I’m reading TCTH again.  I’m feeling kind of upset about the constant refrains that people should get off all drugs.  I don’t think they are including psych meds and I am god damn using marijuana as a psych med.  So I’m feeling very defensive.  See, even the other survivors think I am bad for needing help in coping.  I am supposed to just manage.  I am supposed to have all this self control magically appear because I am ready to heal now.  How do I get through the parts where I am raging inside my head?  When I am stoned I can sit on the couch and stroke Shanna’s hair and smile at her while she babbles at me even if in my head I feel like I am strapped to a table screaming as loud as I can.  I feel like my head is going to explode from the intensity of this silent screaming.

When I am stoned I honestly don’t think it impacts her.  Noah and Sarah both say they cannot tell.  I do experience the emotions.  I do try to work through them in my head and in writing and in talking to people.  But I really and truly have to maintain a stone facade when I am with my kids.  I can’t have feelings that are about these other parts of my life.  I am too volatile.  As long as my children continue to cause me physical pain all day long every single fucking day I need some way of not reacting.  I have been very hyper sensitive for months.  This stage of processing is always like this.  My skin is too thin.  I am in horrible pain from the most casual of touches and nothing these children do feels casual.

I’m reading about Complex PTSD.  I feel haunted by the repeated mention of the fact that the abuse had to happen in an on-going situation where you couldn’t get out.  That’s what is contributing to my abject panic and desire to get away from the kids.  I feel trapped and they are hurting me.  It’s hard to know if any of this has physical cause.  I say.  I’m going to see a doctor.  I’m kind of terrified.

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I have a secret.  I carried a balance on my credit cards last month.  Almost $10,000 (it is more than that now).  I did it on purpose because I knew that I would be able to pay them off now.  I just got my last annuity check.  Every month since I turned 18 I have received a check for $1,200 every month completely tax free.  I was attacked by a pit bull when I was a child and my friend’s father represented me.  I think he did a fabulous job of handling my settlement.  On my 30th birthday the payments end with a $36,200 check.  (Last monthly payment + $35,000 pay off.)  I’m so thrilled about how much cash I have in my bank account that I’d kind of like to take a screen shot and frame this.  Before the credit card payments go out this month I will hit $50,000 in cash for about a day.

I’ve been talking to Sarah about this a lot.  I’m not sure if someone who grew up in a safe, secure home can understand the kind of elation I feel right now.  This is so much safety and security.  It’s freedom.  If I was truly feeling like I could not handle my life right now I could bail.  I’m not going to.  But right this minute I have all the means I need to disappear if I want to.  I don’t want to.  I choose to be here.  This is what I want.  That’s a weird feeling.  I am not a victim of anything in my life because I choose it.

Right now I’m having a lot of strong mood swings.  I’m doing a lot of hiding from the kids.  As a result the kids are extra-super-clingy.  Which cycles my moods faster.  It’s really nice to have this money appear right now to smack me in the face right now that I really and truly want to be here.  Even with the things I miss about going out.  Even though I miss friends and communities… I can never get this time back.  I really want to be here with my kids.

I’m struggling with the fact that I will no longer be supplying $14,400/year to the household.  I am, in fact, increasing how much I take out of the pool because I am going to do less work (hiring a maid) instead of working more and contributing money as well.  It’s hard to feel like I have enough worth to be in this position.  I find it rather odd to be trying to live more according to Noah’s principles than mine.  You see, I didn’t grow up with intellectuals.  I grew up with stupid, uneducated people.  Not all stupid people are uneducated and not all uneducated people are stupid.  But my family is both.  The idea that any mental work I am doing has value?  That’s odd.  If I have not done substantial physical labor I feel guilty all day.  I’m not supposed to rest.  People like me have to earn rest and there is no chance I have worked enough lately.  I’ve been lazy all week!  Well, sorta.  This is all vague.

Noah believes that me reading, improving myself as a person, writing, and interacting with other adults in intellectual ways are actual priorities.  He wants there to be time in my life for these things.  He does not think I should be working all the time.  It’s weird.  Those are not pastimes I was raised to appreciate.  I have always done them, but it was furtive and hidden.  Shameful.  My secret life.  But what if it isn’t a secret?  What if I get to sit out here in my personal Wonderland and write.  What if that is totally ok?  How about if I learn how to write while sober so that the kids can wander in and out so they don’t feel cut off from me?  Enh, that may be a stretch.  Hm.  I should think about scheduling.  The problem is that I don’t generally smoke on a regular schedule so I have ebbs and flows of how effective it is.  This is why I’m thinking about scheduling things.  I can’t believe I am thinking about scheduling my life so I can be a more effective stoner.

I’m weird, Sir.

Fear isn’t always irrational

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            I was institutionalized half my lifetime ago.  I tried to kill myself.  Specifically I went and found all the sleeping pills in the house (we had lots because my family bought them at Costco).  We were living in Redwood Estates up in the mountains.  It was a weird old house.  Long and narrow—it looked a lot like a giant barn.  At just under 2700 square feet the house seems like it should be perfectly adequate to the needs of any family.  Five bedrooms and two baths.  That’s a lot!  We must have been rich.  Only we had 12 people living in that house.  When I was 15 and I overdosed I had my own room.  No one liked me enough to share a room with me.  They would rather have every other room in the house be 3-4 people rather than anyone have to be near me.  I wonder why I was suicidal.
            They don’t understand how they set me up.  I lived in this weird world.  I went to school with these rich kids—they had freedom and security I couldn’t even dream about.  They broke huge rules without consequence.  There was always a way to fix any problem.  And my family left me alone all the time.  They alternated between telling me how wrong my behavior was, I was bad., bad, bad; and telling  me that I was so smart I could handle anything.  Then they sent me to my room to be alone.  I talked on the phone with boys and men because I didn’t feel secure enough to call girls.  Girls didn’t like me.  Boys and men did though.
            I used to call the dj at the radio station in the middle of the night for company because I was lonely.  He became my friend.  Then he became my lover.  I was 12 and he was 25.  That’s not part of the overdose story, but that’s the kind of thing I was doing when my family told me to go be by myself. 
            I don’t remember what set me off that night.  It doesn’t really even matter.  I’m sure it would be possible to spin it as sounding idiotic and small and I’m sure it would be possible to spin it so that it is the inevitable step in my decent into madness.  Cutting wasn’t doing much for me any more because I was afraid to hurt myself more.  I’ve always been kind of a coward.  That’s why I don’t think my cutting is actually such a big deal.  It is not the most damage I inflict on myself and I don’t understand why it is the one people freak out about.  Avoiding.  I’m avoiding.  I’m trying to remember where the pills were stored.  It’s evading me. I’ve lived in a lot of houses.  The details get fuzzy.  I know I came back upstairs with a glass of water.  That was foolish.  You see, the sleeping pills were the uncoated chalky blue kind.  They tasted awful.
            It was hard to continue swallowing pills.  I started off trying to take them by the handful, but it made them dissolve too much in my mouth.  I think those tricksy bastards in the manufacturing company had a plan.  They don’t want to feel bad about the deaths of stupid ninny white girls like me.  The kind who take many boxes of sleeping pills because they are so afraid of waking up the next day and having to inhabit this body and this brain for another day.  During that time far more so than now, it hurt to be me.  I gagged my way through that box.  By the end the simple act of trying to swallow the pills was pushing me to nearly vomit and I didn’t want to puke.  I knew that would force me to live.  I swallowed around 90 pills.  Three boxes of 30. 
            Then I sat on my bed and I waited to die.  It was one of the longest nights of my life.  There was this big part of me that wanted to know what it felt like.  I didn’t want to fall into death from unconsciousness—that sounds comfortable.  I wanted to be ripped in agony from life because that was the only real way to get away from the agony of pain I was in.  It sounds so emo.  It sounds so trite and common and standard.  Doesn’t every stupid teenager do the same thing?  I was a goth, of course I was suicidal.  I was conforming to non-conformity.
            Only that’s not how it was.  My father started molesting me when I was a baby. He put a gun to my head when I was nine years old and asked me if I deserved to live while I was sucking his cock.  I was raped over and over starting when I was seven.  I’m not emo.  There is nothing emo about me.  If anything my reactions to my life show a gross underestimation of how severe the trauma I went through was.  My brother was hit by a car when I was eight and was in a coma for five months.  I moved every 3-18 months until I was an adult.  I was not emo.  It’s a miracle I survived with any shred of sanity.
            When we visited Los Gatos I was expected to fall into the role of a happy well adjusted teenager.  All these people were living the same old same old lives and they couldn’t understand my constant disruptions.  What was my problem?  My mother acted like I had been standing nearby while other people were abused but I was just a whiner because my life wasn’t that bad.  I was told constantly how everyone around me had it worse than me and I needed to just shut up.
            As I lay there in bed waiting to find a true cessation of my pain in death instead I found out that if this was death I didn’t want it.  It was far worse than the mushroom trip gone bad a few years ago.  Far far worse.  That night still haunts my dreams.  You remember the scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when he has to stick his hand into the wall of bugs?  That was what my bedroom walls looked like.  My bedroom had those awful super dark brown faux wood paneling you see in ugly trailer homes.  There is nothing good about the experience of those panels.  It was already a horrible cave of a room.  And my heat came from the candles I burned, so I always had a dozen or more candles going, otherwise it was too cold. 
            I watched the walls stream with bugs and I lay there and cried.  It was all a lie.  There was no peace in death.  Death was just more hell, and an even more terrifying level at that.  I had to cry silently because I didn’t want to wake anyone else up.  I wandered the halls some.  I chased lizards up and down the hallway as they darted from shadowy area to shadowy area.  I know I vomited at some point, in the bath tub.  I did my best to clean it up.  I don’t know how successful I was.
            At some point as I lay there in a sniveling ball of disgusting mess I noticed that it was time to start getting ready for school.  I tried to.  But I was erratic and crying.  I begged my mother to help me get the kittens out from under her bed because otherwise they were going to poop.  That scared her.  I don’t remember anything about the ambulance ride.  I remember waking up briefly in the ER as they shoved a tube down my throat and forced me to vomit up charcoal.  It was painful and invasive.  It felt like my body was being raped in a new and exciting way.  Death truly holds no promise of cessation from pain.  I am not sure I believe it happens any more.
            I was fairly immediately put on 72 hour hold.  5150’ed as they say out here in California.  I was a danger to myself.  I think I just now right this minute got to the point where I understand voluntary commitment.  You see, I didn’t tell anyone I was raped or molested or assaulted or abused.  They all thought I was a spoiled Los Gatos kid.  Sure, people knew I moved around a lot and my brother was hit by a car.  But none of that was treated like it was traumatic in and of itself.  I was told I hadn’t been traumatized therefore I was just crazy.
            Not very many people came to visit me.  Strangely, my brother Jimmy made an appearance.  He told me that he loved me and he hoped I could find a way to deal with my problems.  Because I am the one with problems.  It’s not like anything happened to me that kind of explains or justifies my choices.  I was just freaking out, right?
            To this day if I am in a group of people and the group is told to “draw their feelings” I feel completely irrational rage and I struggle with not committing serious violence.  I want to break someone’s fucking nose for saying that to me.  I tried with the art therapy leader.  That was when I was dragged kicking and screaming and flailing down a hallway. 
            Don’t picture long and narrow and white like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or anything.  This was the 1990’s in the bay area in a child/adolescent wing of a hospital.  It was pleasant neutral colors.  That doesn’t actually humanize the experience of being forced through a doorway and on to a table.  The padding on the table does not prevent injury to your soul.  The straps don’t prevent you from hurting yourself.  All it does is show you that you are a non-person.  A thing to be controlled at all costs.  It doesn’t matter why you have these feelings inside of you.  It doesn’t matter how badly you have been harmed.  You have to keep fucking control over yourself or we will god damn control you.  No veneer of civility over it makes a difference.
            There is a humiliation to being overpowered that most people never really understand.  People get this intense feeling of scared, overwhelmed, maybe angry when they are held against their will.  Truly being overpowered when you feel like you are fighting for your life is not something you ever forget.  My body was compromised.
My father may have raped me.  But the institution convinced me that the whole fucking world believes I am just a thing and I do not deserve normal human consideration.  The institution made me into an animal.  When I feel unstable, which is honestly fairly frequently, I spend a lot of time looking around me and gasping in fear if someone moves towards me too suddenly.  Now I know that the people around me don’t always have respect for me as an autonomous person.  When are they going to violate me again?  When am I going to lose the right to make decisions for myself, again?
Can anyone really call my fears irrational with a straight face?  Ok fine, the kind of abuse I went through is a statistical blip.  It’s only because of kind and intensity.  The smaller incursions on my humanity happen all the time and I am expected to ignore them.  I am supposed to ignore people stepping all over my right to body autonomy.  Because I don’t actually have a right to body autonomy.
All I have to say is it’s a good thing that my life is trending better.  Maybe some day I will truly believe it is irrational for me to feel fear about people hurting.  Maybe some day it will be irrelevant and unlikely and all those other things other people get to experience.  My children will not understand. 
It has to be enough.

Scenes

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Do as I say, not as I do.  There’s an old trope.  I hear it going through my mind as she screams.  Mostly the words don’t really appear.  I stopped listening a long time ago.  Bitch.  Stupid.  Nasty tone of voice.  I am supposed to be all sweetness and light.  While she is… what exactly?  I don’t think I am going to follow that trope.  I snap back to attention when her hand impacts my face.
            “Kristine Lenora I am talking to you!”
This is it.  I get to decide now.  Am I done or not.  I feel the pressure erupting from the pit of my stomach.  No.  I am not going to do what you tell me to do.
I notice all of a sudden that her hand is holding her cheek.  She looks shocked.  I can’t even remember hitting her.  I turn around and flee back to my room.  My hiding spot away from them.
She never hit me again.
Which isn’t to say that I stopped the violence in my life, far from it.  But it changed in quality.  I had acknowledged her as the enemy and struck a blow for my own defense.  I declared that I was now an adversary instead of a subject.  That’s an important distinction when you are a terrorized child.  Every burst of self defense is symbolic.  I have often thought that if I were to get to teach classes to young children on how to survive being abused the first thing I would tell them is the most important thing they have learned is that they have to take care of themselves in this life.  It’s a hard and a sad truth, but it is part of life.  If you have to take care of yourself you need to figure out how to go about doing that.  Really taking care of yourself involves a lot of long-term planning.
Do as I say, not as I do.  In my family advance planning is a joke.  Everything is done late, at the last minute, there is never enough money to meet all of their obligations.  But they sure know how to party and relax.  Is it any wonder that I believe I must have a long laundry list of work I have recently accomplished at all times?  My alternative is to be a loser.  I will not be like them.  I have gotten out.  My life is different.
The thing they never tell you when you are signing up for “healing from childhood trauma” is there is no guarantee that life afterwards will really be better.  Partially because life is unpredictable but, honestly, it is mostly because people who go through trauma are not as good at the long-term planning thing.  I think that my ability to plan is a lot of why I got out.  I held phrases in my mind from key moments and they were my magical talismans.  The man who evaluated me for the GATE program told my mother, in front of me, that I was probably the brightest child he had ever met and it was a good thing or I would be incapable of learning given what was happening in my life.  My mother was a bewildering mix of angry and proud and I didn’t understand why.  I knew that this man had just said truly wonderful things about me, why did my mom get so nasty?  Now I understand that she felt judged because my life was so messed up.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my mother.  I am grieving more for her than for Uncle Bob and that feels disrespectful.  He’s the one who is actually dead and all.  But she is dead to me in spirit.  It is hard to realize that for me unconditional love doesn’t exist.  I feel like that makes me defective.  I want to cry and scream and beg people to please understand—it is just that I can not forgive.  I suppose that’s the hard part.  I do love her.  But I cannot forgive.  There is no forgiveness for what she permitted in my life.  The scope of trauma I endured goes beyond neglect. 
When I close my eyes and think about the day Michael raped me I can’t remember if I tried to explain to my mother why I was screaming curse words at him.  Every time I hear my daughter sass me with, “You don’t get to say that to me”, normally after I have enforced some odious and draconian rule like “Don’t hit your sister,” I feel this burst of pride.  My daughter will not be 30 years old and hiding in the garage to cry.  My daughter knows that she is good and wonderful.  My job is to not beat her down the way I was beaten down.  Aside from the issues with my father, my mother was ridiculous.  I was chased home by neighborhood bullies and my mother’s response was to beat me.  She didn’t ever stop to think that I was not the kind of kid who really did terrible things.  There was no question—I was bad.
There was no point in defending myself.  There was no point in explaining.  There was no point in telling the truth—not in any part of my life.  The best thing for me to do was to build up this part of me that was separate from them and defend it with all force.  My relatives often use physical intimidation as a way of enforcing control and they resent that I refuse to buckle.  I really am a spiteful little shit.  I mean, my sister threatened to beat me up at my baby shower and I wouldn’t even acknowledge her superiority. 
That was another lovely tense moment.  I could feel my adrenaline rushing.  I wasn’t sure how far she would push it and if my friends would be sufficient buffer.  At the pressure moment I decided that I didn’t want to get into it.  I fled the room.  Of course I was just over reacting.  I always am.

Just another day

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My shrink doesn’t think I should find stronger anxiety meds.  As I was leaving her office today I asked her about her opinion about what I should tell a doctor.  What part of my current shit is the most physical in origin and what is likely the best thing to do about it.  She thinks I should talk to the doctor about my stomach hurting and probably something for sleep.  As much as the smoking isn’t great for my lungs she thinks that having to go spend thirty minutes away from the kids is better than taking stronger meds so I can endure more pressure.  She may have a point.  As much as I have this inner resistance to it, I kind of think I may need to make a schedule for us and stick to it.  We could all use the predictability.  I need to have breaks from the kids most days.  Luckily, we now have a Sarah.

Is it really nerdy that I am going to make a big graph and highlight things and move them around?  I need to figure out something though.  I hate smoking.  It feels shitty.  I want to not need it.  Plan A right now on getting my shit together involves ridiculously scheduling my life so that I can try to find a way to balance my moods.  It feels like a New Shiny Neurosis.  If I want to stay off meds I need some way of reacting to my bio-chemical stress loads.  I don’t know another way.  What do I need in order to feel like I can stay calm.  I feel very weird about the fact that my therapist considers marijuana significantly superior to other potential anti-anxieties for me.  I suspect it is partially because of my ridiculous conflict around what I’m doing.  I won’t use it if I have to drive.  I am very careful about proper supervision of the kids, etc.  If I had pills that I could use when I was out I would probably end up trapped somewhere feeling unable to drive and get hysterical.  I suppose this way I always make it home because I don’t bring pot out of my house.  I’ve tried bringing it with me a few times and I never have the nerve to sneak off and use it.  It’s pretty funny.  Even if I am sitting amongst a group of people passing a pipe… I just can’t bring myself to smoke in front of people.  I have problems.

Today I told my therapist about the second time I broke my arm.  I was 12.  I had to call my mom at work to come home and take me to the hospital.  She worked 90 miles away in City of Industry.  She screamed at me a lot about how I had better not be lying.  I was scared shitless my arm wasn’t actually broken.  I had to endure a lot of pain before I was willing to call her and ask for help in the first place, but I didn’t have other options.  It was broken.  And to put the icing on the cake when I went back for the actual cast I told her I wasn’t feeling well.  She told me I was a hypochondriac and a whiner.  I vomited on the floor in the waiting room.  The hospital staff was really nice to me as I sobbed my apologies for making a mess.  My mom yanked me by my unbroken arm away and told me how disgusting I was for making the mess.  Sometimes I wonder if I am more fucked up by my mother or my father.

Now as an adult I get why my mom was so harsh with me.  She was walking a tightrope financially and she truly couldn’t take time off frivolously.  I was sick a lot (I’ve had stomach problems since I was a child) and Tommy needed a lot of time off.  His care would have been a full time job.  It was for more than one person, actually.  It’s interesting thinking about my mother now that I have children.  When I think of the things my mother didn’t know about me… I wonder what things I will miss in my children.  I’m absolutely confident that I am already a better mother than my mom though.  That’s kind of a weird thing.  I have already provided my children with more stability, security, attention, and kindness than my mother showed me.  In less than six months Shanna will have lived in this house longer than I have ever lived anywhere else.  This house, this life that I am building with my family… this is the only stability I’ve ever had.

Every time I move I mostly change friends groups.  I change everything about my life.  And I have done it every 3-18 months from age 3 till I was 19 years old.  Then I stayed at Tom’s for three years before moving around several times in two years before moving here.  I’m getting the feeling this is my forever home.  We may add a second story some day.  I’m trying to meet most of the neighbors on our street.  I am floating the idea past all of them for a block party.  So far everyone has indicated that they would try to come.  For better or for worse this is where my children will grow up.  These people will be their community.  I get a lot of say in how that works.  I want a Leave it to Beaver style community where everyone knows everyones business.  I guess I had better start meeting people and learning their business then.  It’s frightening to consider.  They will see me go through stages.

I am having trouble with this whole 5% thing.  I can’t shake the feeling that it is bad.  Like I should be culled from the herd for daring to deviate.  I’m trying to decide how and where I will deviate from the norms in my home and in my community because it isn’t fair for me to alienate people.  My children have to live here.  I am weird.  I know it.  The thing is, why am I so convinced that everyone will hate me?  Yeah, yeah… polarizing figure.  I’ve mellowed with age.  I’m a lot easier to be an acquaintance with.  I think.  It’s really hard to go meet my neighbors but Shanna thinks it is easy.  I’m trying to remember that part of me that sees every person as a potential friend instead of a potential judge.  Most people don’t care enough about me to bother to judge me.

In completely other news, Sarah is preserving food for winter.  I have succeeded in my way of being a provider for my family.  I win.  At the rate these tomato plants are going we might be able to eat a tomato based dish (pasta, chili, stew, etc) a week for almost a year.  That’s really cool.  We haven’t really gotten to eat much of the other veggies I’ve grown.  I think the cabbage is too tough to eat now, but I watched the full growth cycle and that has value.  It was neat to see these plants emerge.  I feel like as a science experiment it was a fabulously productive summer.  I failed on most of it in terms of providing food (with the huge exception of the tomatoes), but that’s what I was supposed to do.  I was learning what to do and not do.  I have to learn at some point.

Random feedback question, oh those who read this blog: I tend to keep a window open and add to it for a few days.  Are more frequent little posts easier to read?  Would you like visual breaks so you know when I walk away and come back because it’s often a very different thought?  Do you not care because my verbal diarrhea is hard to follow anyway so it might as well be a huge blob?  Feedback welcome on that topic.  Solicited, even.

It’s my birthday now.  Noah made me breakfast and let me sleep in.  Him making me breakfast is actually an every single day thing.  That’s one of the things that makes me feel loved.  He gets up every day and thinks about how to feed me.  Food = love.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mo’s post on submission.  It’s kind of funny because I don’t play much these days.  And I haven’t been in anything like a D/s or M/s relationship in eight years.  Not really.  It’s weird to think about because I don’t think people recognize how deeply ingrained my impulse towards service is.  I go clean my friends’ houses.  I always have.  I always feel like I must do physical labor for people I love.  Shared work is one of the quickest ways to bond with me.  I don’t bond well in party situations because I’m not one to relax while sitting in a room with people who have the ability to stop and stare at me.  They have to be distracted and looking somewhere else so that I don’t feel tense.

This is a problem mostly because I have this simultaneous issue that if I am the only one working I am a martyr and no one loves me.  This is a problem because I am much more bothered by visual disarray than anyone else in my house so I am constantly working and they truly can’t do that with me.  I am at an unhealthy place with my level of getting upset over doing house work.  I don’t like to feel taken for granted.  I need a lot of acknowledgment.  Even if I am the only one working, if I get frequent, sincere comments on my work I feel seen.

I think that I have been working in my head towards how to feel like my position in my family is one of submitting my work to the common betterment of my family.  That sounds really stupid and weird.  Ok, bear with me.  I “grew up” in a weird generation of perverts and I have all this bullshit about slave hearts going round and round in my head.  I miss the stillness I got in my head and in my heart when I was a slave.  I was able to shut off my background chatter of negative self talk and just work because that was my place and my job.  I was to facilitate Tom’s life.  It would be fair to think of it as dehumanizing me, or at least minimizing my importance in life.  I did everything with the specific goal of pleasing him.  It took enormous focus and energy.  I could lose myself in it.  I could stay present in the moment in a way that eludes me these days without enormous physical output.  Rototilling the yard keeps me in the same head space.  It’s probably what other people attain through meditation.  I can’t meditate for shit.  But I like bringing that calm focus into my work.

In the bdsm community you can spend a lot of time and money going to classes to help you learn how to cultivate a relationship where you can dictate the narrow limits of your life to allow you that kind of focus.  No matter what your side goals are: making money, buying a house, having kids… the only real goal is pleasing your Dominant/Master.  It’s a much more immediate thing to check up on.  Handy in the immediate feedback sense.  Easy to get obsessive with.  I was certainly obsessed.  I ate, slept, and breathed Tom’s happiness.  It is intriguing to think about that level of intensity.  I like to think that Noah is a great person to have an affair with.  When he turns the full power of his gaze on someone… it’s intoxicating.  I know some of his ex’s read this, you had better be nodding.

Noah is a crack boy.  He’s easy to get obsessed with.  Part of the reason is that it is always clear that there are big chunks of him that are simply not available to me.  I can never fully understand him no matter how many years I stare at him.  If someone is too available to me emotionally, I don’t pursue.  I have nothing to chase.  It’s terrible, but I don’t see a point in lying.  I like complicated people.  On the day Noah asked me to marry him he told me he also wanted me as his slave.  Neither of us really knew what that meant then.  I’m not sure I do either.  But I’m thinking about it.  I need an obsession.  I really do.

I have nothing to keep my brain from dwelling all day on how it is not fucking fair that by Shanna’s age I was giving out blow jobs to neighbor kids.  My parents were divorcing.  I had already been raped.  Very soon we were about to be homeless.  I think of those things and I look at my wonderful girl, who if anything is getting bored with how safe her life is, and I feel rage.  I’m burnt out though.  I’ve had all the rage my body can take for a while.  I desperately need a distraction that won’t fuck up my life.  My therapist is right that I should not try to get stronger meds so I can be more of a zombie all day long.  That’s not really the solution.

So I’ve been thinking about my wonderful husband.  I’ve been trying to deliberately think in terms of serving his life.  What would actually serve his life better.  It’s kind of funny that phrasing it in that way changes a lot of the discussion for me.  If I drop my set of living-life-expectations… it’s weird.  I should call a cleaning company tomorrow.  I should never dust again.  It makes his life worse because I don’t have the physical body load to do as much as I am doing and be in a good mood.  The reason I am so beat down is because I am trying harder and harder to take the shit work off of Noah because I need him in a good mood.  I need to make Noah happy.  I have to.  If I don’t I am failing at this life and Jesus H Christ I am the biggest piece of shit ever.  Not that he thinks that.  But as much as I love my friends, Noah is the only person on the planet I am going to see every day for the rest of my life.  Not my kids.  Not anyone else.  I want a happy marriage.  I really do.

So whereas we are not in a place where we can get the M/s thing to work right now I’m thinking about the future.  For the record I have changed some of my opinions.  I no longer go by Lenora, that was an in-the-closet-while-teaching thing.  How’s that for crossing the streams?

Anyway, I’ve been obsessing about Noah during my time off lately.  It seems the most benign and cheerful way for me to pass a little time while letting my body rest.  The last few years have been hard for him.  Any effort at all is pleasing.  I’ve already been reading more.  I’ve already read two books this week and I have a couple more I am working on.  He likes it when I am really on for verbal banter.  Oh man does that require more rest than I am getting.  It’s really nice for me to realize that some of the best things I can do to serve him and make him happier is eliminate as much work as possible from my life so I can sit around and read and pamper my body so that my interest in sex returns.  I’ve had a few glimmers lately and that’s been comforting.  But it’s not really back yet.  Next on my desk is Les Liasons Dangereuses and I really need to read The Prince again.  And I should probably review a rhetoric book because my arguing skills are shitty.  If I’m going to keep up with Noah I need to get crackin’.