Monthly Archives: November 2011

A story that isn’t going in the book. (TMI warning)

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I had reason to think about something that happened a few years ago.  I placed a casual encounters ad on Craigslist.  I think I only got a couple of responses.  Only one was coherent and comprehensible as English.  Oh, and the one that was a guy from a local bdsm mailing list emailing me directly instead of responding to the ad saying, “I know this is you.  Don’t use so many identifying characteristics in your ad.”  We exchanged two or three short emails and then met at Starbucks near my house.  This was after Puppy dumped me and before Noah asked me to marry him.  The only time I have ever been really single and on my own in my life.  I didn’t have anyone to sleep with and I was horny.  I didn’t want to masturbate again.  It’s just not the same.

So I met this guy.  I have no idea what his name was.  He was a lot nerdier and more shy than I usually go for.  And he told me he was really into oral.  I kind of cringed, but hey I’ll try anything once.  It was incredible.  That was the best oral sex I have ever received in my life.  That man was a God.  I don’t think I have ever experienced so much sensation in my vulva before.  I dissociate pretty quickly most of the time when someone goes down on me.  I had a few experiences (I wrote about them!) that made me feel uncomfortable about people going directly at my crotch.  If someone gets genital very fast I get scared off.  I just close off my ability to feel what they are doing.  Needless to say, I just don’t bother having oral sex much.  It’s fussy and complicated.

Ok, back to this guy.  So we undressed very awkwardly and climbed into my bed.  I giggle a lot when I’m nervous.  I hear it’s charming.  We started experimenting with how to touch one another.  I’m usually very tentative when I first start touching someone.  He was really sensitive.  He didn’t want a lot of touch for himself.  He wanted to pay attention to me.  It’s hard to even explain how he did it.  He didn’t touch anything inside my labia for like twenty minutes, but he was paying a lot of attention to that part of my body.  The crease in my thigh was endlessly fascinating.  By the time he finally touched something more ahem direct.  I melted.  That was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had in my life.

I’ve never felt ok asking for that kind of thing since.  Or when I have tried it has resulted in a pretty rough rushed entry into harsh genital stimulation.  Then we fuck five minutes later.  It’s just not the same.

I have sex with strangers because sometimes you can shut out everything in the whole wide world and just accept the best part of this person into yourself.  The best thing they can give can be a wonderful thing.  You don’t have to worry about overall compatibility.  It’s not about truly connecting.  I’m not lying to myself.  But the novel experience of getting to try completely different speeds of sex is wonderful.

It’s hard to have that much variety with one person.  Noah and I both have a specific kind of sex that we strongly prefer.  We have trouble figuring out how to change speeds sometimes.  Ok, instead of deflecting I’ll just say it.  Today we were having a very different kind of sex from normal.  Then I started to feel like I was supposed to hurry up and get off and validate that this was a hot experience, right?  It’s kind of my party trick.  But I wasn’t even close.  And trying to make myself do that usually results in some longer lasting discomfort.  It’s really annoying.

Noah didn’t ask me to.  Tell me to.  Or imply that I should.  I think I should.  I think that is something I have to do.  I even know why.  It’s hard to change this setting in my head.  It’s hard to stop having performative sex.  Even when I am alone in a room with my partner I still have to know that the sex we are having would be fairly spectacular to watch.  I don’t do things just because they feel good.  I really don’t like this about myself.

The great thing about writing this out is now Noah can read it.  And he’ll be able to change gears properly.  That’s why I like him so much.  He’ll find a way now that I’ve told him how.  At least once.  Then we’ll go back to the sex we prefer.

On a different note.

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Today I was facebook stalking an old friend.  This friend is a shaman and I was looking through picture of a wedding where said person performed the ceremony.  How’s that for awkward non-pronouning.

Noah claims we are going to have a wedding for our tenth anniversary.  I don’t believe him.  Want to know one of the secret reasons I eloped?  I have wanted to have a big fancy wedding my whole life and there aren’t enough people in the world who love me to justify one.  I really wish there were hundreds of people who wanted to come to such a celebration about me.  But there aren’t.  And that’s life.

Anyway.  Noah says he is doing this.  I don’t believe him.  I’m not allowed to believe in this before it is happening because this not happening would wreck me.  If he continues to say that he will do this… and he doesn’t do it… that will be massive.  That will kill me trusting him.  That will kill any chance he ever has again of making me a promise.  So I don’t believe him when he says this.  He’s lying.  He’s telling a story.  He’s building a sand castle.

That kind of thing isn’t part of my story.  I don’t get to be that person.  That only gets to happen to nice people.  People who have friends.  People who are not stupid creepy shut-ins.  People who are not broken.  People who have families.  People who do not behave badly in public.  People who do not bring shame on their family.

I was thinking about this because, if I was going to have such an event.  Who would perform the ceremony?  Who would I trust to do that for me.  Who could be the promise keeper for my relationship.  Who actually has such power in my life?  I don’t know.

It’s complicated.  It’s a good thing I don’t believe that it will happen.  That would be an intense thing to have to decide.

Irrational feelings

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Noah made the comment that our nonmonogamy rules are based on polite fictions.  I did not yell or scream or hit or punch or any of the things that went through my impulse queue.  He just called me a liar.  But he did it in one of those civilized ways you can’t really argue with.  He can get away with it.

He’s not calling me a liar.  He’s pointing out that my emotional experience and the actual real experience often differ and we planned for my emotional experience.  He’s kind of a fucker that way.

We originally said we wouldn’t date until Youngest Child (whoever that would be) was five.  We think that little kids need a lot of attention from their parents.  I’m starting to realize that I overestimated how much I would be able to give to my kids without getting anything for myself.  I planned on seven to ten years of me not getting any attention.  Maybe that was poor planning.

Noah points out that I’m being unfair and dishonest about how I’m representing the breakdown of our respective time off.  Maybe.  I’m not going to say yes to that yet.  I have too many years of him having a lot more time and space than me.  I’m still dealing with being completely overwhelmed and unable to function.  I’m trying to figure out where the happy medium will be.

The class he signed up for?  The one we thought was six week?  It goes till March.  So much for carefully figuring out how our reserves of energy will be spent over the next few months.  Not how I have been planning.  Ok.  I can regroup.  That’s fine.

Noah is going to want to go out on a date.  I don’t know when.  Not this year.  It will probably come up some time next year if I’m even vaguely honest with myself.  With how much time I have spent on okcupid lately I understand why women will line up to date my husband.  I don’t like feeling like part of a group.  I have trouble with being out with my family of five sometimes.  If I wasn’t so clearly a huge needed constantly necessary part of the group I wouldn’t be comfortable.  Parties are hard.  I feel like I never fit in.  If I go to a party and I feel awkward and uncomfortable from the time I arrive but Noah looks like he fits in I feel like I should leave.  I should let him have this space he is comfortable in.  It’s his.  Not mine.

That’s kind of how I let Tom have the south bay bdsm community.  If I am attached to someone and they disengage from me in any way when we are out with a group I feel the instant need to panic and leave.  I can’t be there.  I’m not wanted any more.  I have no place.  No identity.  I’m nothing.  I vanish once the identity I have in the group leaves.

I can’t be one of Noah’s girls.  If I am one of Noah’s girls I don’t exist when he is not with me any more.  I feel like I am watching someone else live my life.  Someone else gets to be Noah’s partner.  I guess that means I stop existing as his partner.  When he was dating W. I sat at home crying and cutting.  I didn’t tell him about the cutting much.  Everyone knew about the crying.  I wanted to have as much physical pain as emotional pain.  I wanted to see how big of a wound I had inside.  I couldn’t tell.  I couldn’t tell how big, how destructive the pain was until I saw how much of my leg I had to sacrifice to it.  I had to know how big it was.  Do you know why I stayed?  It was never more than a two or three slice date.

I think I’m done with writing about when I started cutting, for the book.  I haven’t continued to bring it up because it seems weird to do so.  For about seven years I cut more days than I did not.  Do I really need to say that over and over through the story?  Should I talk about the fact that I learned to measure my emotional pain by how many cuts it took to get me to calm down?

I am nonmonogamous and deal my intense jealousy and emotional break downs around Noah dating because it is only a two or three cut activity.  That’s not that bad.  I didn’t need to cut every date.  I established how much pain it was.  There were times when I used to make cross hatches on my thighs that were five or six inches long.  I would make hundreds.  Two or three cuts that are only an inch or so long?  Psh.  This really isn’t so bad.

It’s hard when Noah says that are rules are based on fictions.  What he is saying is that I was making up a part of me.  Or making up what I thought I should say.  I was lying.  I don’t want to be a liar.

I don’t want to be a liar.  But I can’t figure out how to explain what is going on with me.  I’m saying the closest thing to the truth I can at any given moment.  Sometimes, when I’m dealing with my emotional experiences, the truth is like water.  It flows wherever it wants to paying no attention to previous course corrections.

I’m dating.  I shouldn’t lie about it.  I haven’t found a boyfriend, but I’m dating.  Maybe I should stop trying to set rules about how long we have to endure any given state of life.  I keep fucking up my guesstimates.

I said five years because I was hoping that by then I would feel secure enough with Noah that I wouldn’t feel so threatened every time he looked at another woman.  So scared of losing him any minute.  I don’t think time is really going to give me that though.  I would feel just as paranoid in twenty years.  And I can’t seem to be monogamous.  I’m not ok with being a hypocrite.  That’s a lot higher in my personal scheme of sins than almost anything.  I’m acting like a hypocrite.  Shit.  I don’t wannnnnnnna stop.

I didn’t ask for monogamy as part of our marriage.  I specifically excluded it from our wedding vows.  I knew I didn’t want it.  I have to let Noah figure out what he wants without dealing with temper tantrums.  It’s not fair.  It’s not the kind of marriage I want to have.  I can’t freak out in front of the kids when he is out, either.  Luckily it will be a smooth transition for them because they already don’t see him several nights a week.

Speaking of appropriate topics, I won’t be able to make fresh references to Noah’s whores.  That uhh won’t go over well.  Maybe I’m going to have to work on that whole thought process a lot over the next few months.  I doubt he would try before the end of the class he is working on.

I’m weaning at eighteen months.  I’ve decided.  That’s the end.  I’m gradually working her down.  I’m only allowing her to nurse twice a day right now.  It will be once a day for the last while.  There are things I want to do with my body that I don’t want to do while nursing.  It’s time to stop.  I want to be able to make choices based on what I want rather than on what I have to do.  Do I get tossed out of the crunchy mom club for not doing child lead weaning?  I’m not making it to two years either.  Calli is fifteen months tomorrow.  I feel like I will lose my mind in the next three months.  I hate nursing.  That’s all I’ve got in me.

I’m going to try stopping the pot in December.  I am going to start actually training for running.  I need to stop coughing.  Eek.  I’m nervous.  I’m going to talk to my psych about that and using Ativan more than I am.  I was given six pills for a month and I still have two left.  But I’m still smoking pot every day because of the writing.  I’m going to stop writing on the 30th.  I’m going to switch to using Ativan instead.  With the goal of not needing anything at all in the next few months.  I’m already cutting the Ativan in half and I may need to cut them into quarters if I use them more.  Right now they make me fall asleep.  I really and truly am not safe to drive within four hours of taking one.  That limits my life.

So I need to be able to cope if I want to go off and do the things I want to do.  It’s time to get off the crutches.  That’s going to be explosive for a while and I’m scared.  I smoke pot because I have a temper problem.  Because it’s hard for me to be calm and patient 24/7.  I just don’t have that naturally.  I’m going to need to find other ways of dealing with my anger.  Running is going to be a lot of it.  But I also seem to be using dating to fill a lot of my energy input needs.  I feel deeply conflicted about it.  But I am.

I fucking need something.  I don’t want to just sit here and eat and try to convince my brain that I’m happy that way.  It’s a false association.  Being fatter doesn’t actually make me happier even though I have this really strong self-belief that it is true.  My weight is pretty irrelevant but the other circumstances in my life matter.  I have usually been happier while I was fatter.  It wasn’t because of the weight though.  I need to stop feeling bad about not being fat.  Yeah, that convoluted.

I’m bigger than my mother.  I’m not fat.  I need to let go of her endless lectures about what a cow I am.  I’m not.  I’m a fairly average sized woman.  My mother is extremely petite.  Let it go Krissy.

Tonight we are going to spend money we really shouldn’t be spending this month on an over the top luxury meal with my lovely Complication.  She’s worth it.  I’m going to enjoy every fucking minute of it.  Later I will have a panic attack at the AmEx bill.  Then I will stop, breathe, think of the sight of my Complication eating good food and pay the bill without complaint.

That’s what you do as a rich person.  You facilitate life being good.  For yourself.  For other people.  Because you can.  Because why the fuck not.  There is no deserve.  There is no “right” to these things.  I’m not bad for spending this bonus money on an over the top good meal.  I’m not wasting it.  I’m enjoying it.  I’m enjoying every bite.  I’m enjoying every minute that I can of a life that is full of a lot of ups and downs.

When you have much greater lows than normal it only seems fair that you get to have better highs, right?  I’m about to go to the French Laundry for the second time in two years.  I am a lucky bitch.  I have a husband who loves me tremendously and is willing to spend most of his spare time on figuring out how to earn more money so he can pamper me more and more.  Because he wants to.  Because he thinks I deserve it.  Because he thinks it is great that he can do that for me.  Because wanting to give to me makes him want to go out and conquer the world so that he can give it to me.

I think I will need to be ok with him sleeping with other people once in a while so he can come back and appreciate me more.  I really am unique.  When I sleep with other people I come back and tell Noah what they did wrong.  He does the same.  It’s a very bonding experience for us that we match perfectly for pretty much every part of sex.  The rhythm is ideal.  No one else quite gets there.  Those other people are fun and awesome, don’t get me wrong.  But Noah is home.  And I am that for him.

These irrational feelings are hard.

Sacred cows

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I’m trying to decide what mood I want to be in for today’s writing sprint.  My first date yesterday was an only date.  That’s ok.  I’m glad I had the “I want to be chased” thought yesterday.  By the time I got to the date I was real clear that I was uninterested in being the one to do 100% of the physical aggression.  I’m happy to do 50%.  But I’m not running the fuck.  You don’t want me bad enough.  No more pity fucks.

I don’t need to go have pity fucks with strangers.  I had sex with Noah twice.  It was hot.

I was thinking about the fact that a lot of folks have been discussing “appropriate topics” lately.  Over here at Soggy in Milk we are the all-inappropriate-all-the-time channel so I’m going to wax poetic for a few minutes.  Bear with me.  So imagine you had this nice normal life.  You have great parents and a couple of siblings you adore.  As you go through your life you get to spread daisies and sunshine and shit when you mention your euphoric family.  Everyone compliments you and tells you how wonderful you all sound.  Then I want you to stop for thirty seconds and think of what you have read from me here.  Man I really want you to do this again after you read the book, if you want to.

Now.  How the fuck do you think I feel when people talk about their families?  What exactly should I say if in response to questions about my family?  Should I lie?  Evade?  Be as curt as possible so as to minimize the damage I am invariably going to do?  Be honest and watch as people all but run as fast as they can to get away from me?

Seriously.  Where is my good fucking option.  Because you assholes seem to think that the topic of “childhood” and “families” is perfectly appropriate in public.  Oh, people will tell me, “Well you can talk about Noah and the girls!”  How generous of you.  I’m so grateful that I have a pat answer now that will satisfy your need for idle chit chat about things you are uninterested in.  Let. me. make. you. more. comfortable.  I live to serve.

I am angry about the so-called polite conversational topics because they exist to silence people like me.  They exist to make people like me invisible.  And powerless.  They exist to make it impossible for most people to successfully prosecute their attackers because it’s not ok to say what has happened to you.  Ever.  People who say, “Well it’s ok to say it to the police” have obviously never pressed charges for sexual assault.  I have.  Do you know how the police treat you?  They say that you have mental problems and you should be in therapy.  Despite the fact that the next door neighbor heard the whole thing and reported it to the police.  I was still dismissed as crazy.

Fuck appropriate conversation topics.  Do you know what is an appropriate conversational topic?  Police brutality.  Incest.  Rape.  Poverty.  These are things that can and must be talked about as often as necessary.  In any circumstance.  Ok, not in any circumstance.  But in any circumstance where there are only adults present.  I don’t think every five year old needs to hear about incest.  But every child should grow up hearing frank conversations about police brutality and poverty.  They should know that these things exist.  This should be part of their lives too.  Because it is part of being aware of the world around you.

If someone brings up a topic you don’t like you can try to change the conversation and make it all about you, or you can engage in a dialogue.  If you are feeling massively uncomfortable, say that.  Look at why.  If your upset is about your irrational beliefs being challenged… fucking go with it.  Get over yourself.  Seriously.

Things don’t change until people are upset enough to make them change.  The longer you brush uncomfortable conversations under the rug only to be had at rare, carefully pre-selected, never risky times you are growing at a snails pace.  That’s not something that fuels real personal growth, I’m sorry.  I’m that kind of control freak.  I can do that.  I love doing that.  It means I don’t do any personal growth.  It means I hide in my little freak ghetto and get into a rut.

I’m better than that.  I need to go have the uncomfortable conversations.  I need to be honest.  I need to exist in the world.  I need to demand the right to take up just as much space as everyone else.  I’m not going to evade or give a half-truth when someone asks about my family.  I will answer questions honestly.  I will act like I have nothing to be ashamed of.  “Oh, what’s your family like?”  “Incestuous rapists.”  And I will take the blinking eyes I get.  I will take the look of shock and horror.  And I will try not to flinch.  And I will try not to cry.  And I will try not to run away.  And I will try to answer the following questions graciously without my voice cracking.

I’m not doing something bad by telling my story.  I’m just existing.  Yes, it’s a harsh story.  Sometimes life is harsh.  Sometimes people have harsh lives.  It’s far more common when you live in poverty.  That is a big part of the story.  Why did I move so often?  Because my mother was running away from my dad and from one abusive situation to another.  Because we lived on charity.  Because we had no choice.  Because we were evicted repeatedly for non-payment of rent.

I’m tired of trying to make up a story that will make other people feel comfortable around me.  I have spent my entire life trying to figure out how to lie well enough to be able to talk about myself.  I’m really tired of it.  I’m really tired of trying to invent a me that is good enough to be in public.  If I carefully censor myself enough, maybe I will be a good enough person to deserve to be part of public discourse.  This feels really shitty you know.

This wouldn’t be such a big part of my story if other people didn’t require that I tell elaborate lies in order to appear “normal”.  It’s not lying!  It’s just… not mentioning things.  Uhm.  If you don’t know that my family is full of incestuous rapists then you don’t know anything about them and I shouldn’t bother talking.  Because it affected everything.  It makes a big difference when I talk about my mother hating that I swore if I mention that I was raped about twenty minutes before she beat me for cussing.  It gives a whole new perspective.  That was my life.  I was raped and then I came home to more poison.  Multiple times.  It’s kind of weird that I would come home from being raped and be mean and nasty and full of rage, right?  But that kind of behavior was not to be tolerated and I was to be brought down a few pegs.

It’s time to go start writing on the book for today.  For better or for worse I found my tone.  It’s time to go put a narrative on this bastard.

epiphany

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When Tom ended the M/s portion of our relationship (after being directly challenged in therapy) he said: “It’s not worth the effort.”  I took that as a statement about his belief about putting effort into our relationship as a whole because as a 24/7 slave… that’s a big deal.  We never recovered.  He didn’t want to get married or have kids with me.  He wanted me to just kind of exist without getting any of my needs met and keep company with him doing the shit he wanted when he decided he wanted it.
It occurs to me this morning that I’m approaching hunting wrong.  I go through a lot of effort to meet people where they are.  I do the driving.  And as a result people don’t value me much.  They stop responding to me.  I’m chasing them.  I think I should stop.  Why in the fuck am I out wasting energy on chasing people?
I think I’d like to be chased for a while.  I think that I’m going to stop sleeping with people on the first date because the first date is going to have to be really convenient for me.  And that means sex isn’t on the table.  We aren’t going to do that at my house.  I think that part of the problem is that people don’t generally properly appreciate the fact that it takes a lot of time and energy to drive as much as I do.  Maybe they should bear some of that cost.
This is where I have this funny side thought.  People tell me I should be very careful about talking about where I live.  Some one could come after me.  My response is, “What are they going to do?  Put a gun to my head?  Rape me?  And this is a change in my life pattern… how?”  They can do that whether I am hesitant to list my address or not.  I’m not hard to find and I never will be again.  There are too many people I kind of hope will come find me.  Like Belinda.  Or Michael Paul Douglass Goble.  If he ever wants to look up Krissy Archer I hope he finds me.  That means I have to take the risk of other people finding me.
It’s really a statistically low chance.  People are far more likely to be killed by their families.  Given what I have survived I’m just not all that scared.  I mean, I am.  Let’s be real.  But not enough to shut up.  Ever.  I can’t.  Never again.
And this is all tied together.  I need to feel like I am a destination worth reaching.  It’s ok to talk about where I am.  I’m in Fremont.  If you live in Berkeley and you think I am interesting you had better get used to driving south.  And I have a weird ass schedule.  You will have to be flexible.  And smarter than me.  
Or worth seriously traveling for.  Once someone has established that they are worth going to, ok.  I do want to have sex and all.  But I would like to be courted.  I have never made anyone court me before.  I wonder what that would be like.  But I still can’t date or have a boyfriend.  I’m just making friends.  I’m seeing if there are people out in the world I should occasionally go see when I have spare time.  Because I need more of those people, right?  
I get something from sex.  And I give something.  There is an emotional transaction.  I need it.  I don’t know how this is going to work.

I miss you lj.

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Once upon a time I put my more personal blogging on g-blog.  I don't think I ever told you the truth lj.  You were meant as a dumping grounds for memes.  Stupid, light shit that breaks the day up.  Things to entertain my friends and not depress them.  Then g-blog went away.  You were promoted.  We had this weird filter tango thing.  I discovered that when I am writing for tightly controlled filters I feel more and more constrained until I can't say anything because I might say it to the wrong person and then I MIGHT HURT THEIR FEELINGS.  I couldn't take the pressure.

I moved on.  I'm blogging at blogspot now.  People opt-in or out as they see fit.  It's open to strangers on the internet and they have to manage their own fucking triggers.  It's great.  I don't miss you.  Only I do miss you though.  Here, how about a meme for old time's sake.  I promise, I will tell the funny versions.
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Give me a number (or three), and I'll answer the question that goes with it. I may or may not do this publicly, but the person who asks will get a response one way or another.

01. My sexual orientation.
02. What I'm really bad at.
03. The one person whose arms I'd like to be in.
04. My best first date.
05. A description of my self-esteem.
06. Who my best friends are.
07. My favorite book.
08. Biggest turn-offs.
09. My favorite place to which I've traveled.
10. My favorite animal.
11. Someone I miss.
12. The reason behind my last break-up.
13. What I did yesterday.
14. My greatest achievements.
15. The craziest thing I've ever done
16. A description of my last kiss.
17. What I find attractive in a person.
18. All of the pets I've ever owned.
19. My favorite ice cream flavor.
20. The one place I wish I was right now.
21. The most cruel thing anyone has ever said to me.
22. All of the places I've lived.
23. Qualities that make me more likely to love a person.
24. My future plans.
25. One of my internal conflicts.
26. What I'm doing tomorrow.
27. My life's aspirations.
28. My most embarrassing moment.
29. Two of my insecurities.
30. What I would do if I won the lottery.
31. What I love most about myself.
32. My biggest pet peeves.
33. What musical artists I've seen live.
34. How many kids I would like to have.
35. My idea of a perfect date.
36. What I'm really excellent at.
37. My most traumatic experience.
38. Where I would like to live.
39. The nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.
40. Whether I like where I live now.
41. What I can hear right now.
42. My relationship with my siblings.
43. What's currently worrying me the most.
44. Something I've repeatedly wished for.
45. My relationship with my parents.
46. What I dislike most about myself
47. Where's Waldo?
48. Whether I currently resemble the person who I thought I'd be at 18.
49. What I would tell my 18-year-old self.
50. Why?

Stats are awesome.

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I have gotten almost as many hits from Sebastian Marshall’s blog this week as from all other sources combined.  The spam percentage is still high, of course.  Uhh, fellas?  I don’t write about geek shit.  I’m probably not going to be that interesting.  I will probably eventually get to the point of talking about blowjobs again.  And I have a date today at 3 with an okcupid person.  So far the plan is to explicitly not have sex.  That will be easy because he lives in Concord and we are meeting in Oakland.

Sometimes I think my life would be easier if I didn’t have it as an explicit goal to fuck a lot of interesting people.  It’s hard to find a lot of interesting people.

Be Thankful

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I often hear people say: You shouldn’t compare abuse.  There is no use.  Trauma is unique and people react differently.  Today I am going to say: yes you should fucking compare.  You probably have no god damn perspective on your life and you really should go out and compare.  You should find out how good you have it.

I feel deeply uncomfortable with how good my life is now.  I’m aware that my current safety and stability is not about deserve.  This is not the natural results of a lot of hard work.  It’s a fucking fluke.  I managed to marry someone rich.  Whoo hoo.  What. An. Accomplishment.  And yet people want to tell me that my life is awesome because I deserve it.

Does that mean I deserved to be raped?  Does that mean I deserved to live in poverty when I was a kid?  No.  There is. no. deserve.  I’m kind of angry that people use that word ever in conversations about money.    It’s not just the money though.

I think that people should sit down and compare abuse for a few minutes.  My father told me that I was a literally-evil-as-in-descended-from witches-evil and a whore.  That it was all I would ever be.  My father taught me that pain should go with sexual contact.  That I should endure it with a stony face.  From when I was a baby.

Did that happen to you?  No?  Well then maybe you should go thank your father.  Maybe you could take a moment to realize that if your dad is an asshole, but never did anything actually bad maybe that was him showing restraint.  Maybe he is not your cup of tea, but not exactly someone who should die in a fire.  Say fucking thank you.  Because I’m here to tell you that you weren’t treated how you were treated because you deserved it.  You were treated that well because no one wanted to treat you worse.  And for one fucking day I think people should stop and realize that it isn’t a birth right.

When people are kind to you, don’t expect it as your due.  Thank them for it.  It’s a gift.  Maybe grudgingly given, maybe cheerfully given.

Did your mother tell you that you deserved what you got after you were raped?  No?  Maybe you should say thank you to her.  Maybe you actually have a much better mother than you know.  Maybe you don’t know just how good you have it.

Did your brother tell you that the only career you would be good at was being a prostitute?  No?  Maybe you should say thank you to your brother.  He might be an asshole, but he recognizes that there is a line. And he didn’t cross.  He doesn’t degrade your humanity and think you are a piece of shit hole.  I promise you he isn’t doing it because you are so fucking awesome that of course you deserve to be treated well.  He’s doing it because he has made a choice about the kind of person he wants to be and how he wants to treat people.  Even if he doesn’t know it.  Because this is a choice.  Be thankful.

When I called my big sister sobbing, begging her for help she laughed at me and told me I was interrupting her having sex.  Then she hung up on me.  I spent the rest of the night trying to OD on crank.  Because no really, no one gave a shit about me.

I think people should compare abuse.  I really do.  I think these conversations should be explicit.  I think they should be candid.  I think people should stop walking on eggshells around this topic.  Given how many people tell me, “Oh I had a hard childhood too” then backpedal fast when I start talking this is a conversation that needs to be had.  People don’t know what a hard childhood is.  They have nothing to compare their own childhoods to most of the time.  There aren’t many books about genuinely bad childhoods.  So people don’t know what it means.  I think people should.  Most people have a lot more to be thankful for than they think.

It’s hard sometimes when people complain bitterly about their families.  I miss my family.  I’ve spent a month telling all the worst stories I can about my family.  I still miss them.  I still know my place there.  Yesterday was hard.  I spent all day rehearsing negative awful things to say in my head.  Because I know that my role at big holidays is to be the one who starts a fight and then runs off crying.  That way everyone has an opening to say how awesome it is when I’m not there any more.

I used to listen to those conversations as a kid.  They would comment idly once I left, “Oh thank god she finally left.”  I don’t think there were very many days in my childhood where my mother didn’t comment about how nasty and awful I was.  I was too critical, always.

Maybe your family wants you to call on Thanksgiving because they love you and miss you and really wish they got to see you more.  And they don’t know how to effect that.  You ran away from them to have your own life and they miss you.  Is that really so bad?  Is that really so terrible?  Is a five minute or even fifteen minute phone call really so onerous?  Really?

I wasn’t alone yesterday.  I have Noah.  I have Sarah.  I have Shanna.  I have Calli.  My Complication (who has yet to tell me if it is ok to use her name) was here.  A friend named Dave (who doesn’t get to opt-out of using his name because there are 3,000 Daves in my community) also came to dinner.  That was nice.  The food was excellent.  Pre-dinner another couple of friends stopped by for a chat.  We all went to bed really early.

I wasn’t alone.  But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m still the problem.  I’m still the wild card.  I’m still the one who might break out crying and stomp off.  I’m still the one who is difficult to predict and triggery and an asshole.  I’m so fucking self-absorbed.

But I tried really hard to talk about the things I am thankful for.  Because I don’t deserve them.  I didn’t deserve the things that happened to me as a kid and I don’t deserve the things that happen to me know.  It’s not about deserve.  I changed my luck.  I’m excited that my life is different now.  But it’s not about deserve.  It just happened.  Life is like that.  I think that people can work their whole life and never get what they want.  I think that people can work for five minutes and get more than they ever dreamed.  It’s not about deserve.  It just happens.

I have relatively good health.  I have a safe, stable home.  I have friends who are willing to tolerate a torrential flow of shit-talk from me.  I have a husband who thinks I can do or be anything I want in the whole wide world.  Well, maybe not an NBA player.  Or an astronaut.  Oh well.

I am thankful for the privilege and security I have because it is allowing me to be a good mother.  Other women can be good mothers with less support.  I don’t think I would be able to.  My life is set up around babying my mood swings and impatience.  I have created space for dealing with my rage.  Because I have Noah and Sarah and a big pile of money.  I’m not a good mother because my kids deserve it.  I’m a good mother because I am lucky enough to set up my life in a way that allows me to be.  I can play to my strengths and minimize my weaknesses.  That isn’t about deserve.  But it is really nice that my kids get to have that.  I would like to find a way to teach them that it isn’t a right without having to hurt them in the process.

I am really thankful that I get to sit down and think about these things and make decisions about them because of my raging privilege.  I am so fucking lucky.  That makes it harder that I’m still bitter.

I’m bitter when I hear people sit around trading off how onerous it is to have families.  I can’t have a family because I believe that it is unhealthy for me to have ongoing relationships with people who enabled me being raped for more than a decade.  What’s your fucking excuse?  Oh, they aren’t your same chosen culture?  Uh.  Grow some fucking balls and learn to deal with the fact that world isn’t just like you.  I promise you that the world isn’t just like me.  I have to find a way of talking to them anyway or I get to be alone.  I think it is hubris to toss away your family.  You never know when you might want them again.  And some wounds can’t heal.

I think people should catalogue their abuse.  And then actually compare.  No really.  Make a decision for yourself.  Either be ok with it or walk away.  The back and forth is bullshit.  Holding on to bitterness for things that happened decades ago is bullshit.

And I do it.  I know I am hurting my life with this bullshit.  This was one of the best Thanksgivings of my life.  Yeah, I spent some of the day in my room crying.  But less than usual.  Far less than any given year from my childhood.  No one had anything resembling a fight.  I had one explosion where I told people to stop bitching about having to call their families.  That was it.  That’s pretty good for me.

I feel really bad that I know that my pretty good would be unacceptable for most people.  Only one melodramatic meltdown ending in tears.  But if you are going to compare you have to really compare.  I had 18 years of people telling me on Thanksgiving that I was unpleasant to be around and difficult and I should just leave.  Was that the experience of most people?  Probably not.  Maybe it’s ok that I still cry.

But I also try really hard to notice that I have it really good.  My life is exceptionally easy and good right now.  I have the kind of life that people dream about.  Maybe I need to stop crying.  I may have had a bad childhood, but whether I have a bad adulthood is up to me.  I can choose to spend every Thanksgiving crying or I can work on not doing that.  It’s not making my life better.  It is no longer a good thing for me to isolate myself.  Once it was a good and necessary thing.  I need to learn how to deal with the discomfort of being around other people.  Even though it is hard and it hurts.  Because I have these amazing people who have stepped up.  I need to be thankful for them, not bitter about my bio-family.  Because there is no deserve.  I don’t have this now because the universe adjusted from an inappropriate tilt and now I have what I deserve finally.

I’m just really fucking lucky.  And not everyone is as lucky as me.  For me to piss and moan and whine is pretty disrespectful, honestly.  It’s bullshit.  And I should change it.

A little light reading.

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I’m working through TCTH again.  I love the part where these women rabidly go off on how evil SM is.  You are better off breaking up your marriage and being celibate for the rest of your life than engaging in SM if you are a survivor.  Interesting priorities.  Sex is like alcoholism.  I’ve had bad experiences therefore what I do needs to be tightly controlled.

My mom used to refer to Tom as my sugar daddy.

mopey

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I wrote a lot on the book today.  So I’m kind of anxious and fussed.  I went over to Pinterest.  I like not having to read.  But the wedding ones get me.  Mostly the pictures of the happy brides with their fathers.  Why do I have to compulsively talk about being an incest survivor?  Because it impacts every part of my life.  This isn’t something that happened to me one time.  I have not lost the rest of my life because I was raped when I was seven or eight or nine or or or or.

I hide in my house because my father filled my head with poison.  He convinced me that I was a worthless piece of shit.  He convinced me that I should present myself to people as someone who should be raped.  That it was my destiny.  That is what my parent told me to be.  My father wanted me to grow up to be a whore.

You want to know why I don’t follow polite social rules?  Oh good fucking grief.  When in the hell was I going to learn them?  In one of the series of schools where I was brutally beaten because I compulsively talked about sex and made everyone uncomfortable?  Or I was cussing.  Or my handwriting sucked.  There were a lot of reasons for beating me.  At home?  With the rednecks?  My ignorant family?  From my father?  Ha.

I think it is hilarious that people think that American culture is apparent and obvious and easy to follow.  I don’t know what the fuck you people want.  Other than to not be uncomfortable.  Well then don’t talk to me.  I may or may not be able to accommodate you.  I would apologize only I’m not sorry.  I don’t think it is my responsibility to ensure that everyone is comfortable.  My responsibility is to say what I need to say in order to get through the day.  If I don’t say what I need to say then I get bitter and nasty and carping and desperate.  I start breaking things.  I start cutting.  I start doing all kinds of other festive things.

I’m sorry motherfucker but you get to feel uncomfortable for a few minutes.  It’s your fucking turn.

In which I reveal the extent of my ego.

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I wrote just over 5,000 words on the book in two hours.  During that time I also did major reorganizing on the whole book.  And ate breakfast.  And wrote a few posts in a few places.  Last night Noah and I had a very intense conversation about what being a slave was like.  I’m getting closer to being able to write about it.  It won’t happen until after this book is done.  I’m getting so close.  45,000 words.  It’s not done.  It’s far from perfect.  It needs a lot of editing.  I want to hit at least 60,000.  8 more days.  15,000 more words.

I want to be the kind of person who gets things done.  I want to be the kind of person who really can sit down and write a book in a month.  I want to be the kind of person who completes a marathon.  I didn’t say run.  Pay attention to that word.  I may be the last person over the finish line.  I’m ok with that.  I will do it. As one step on that journey on Thursday I’m walking a 10k with a friend.  I get to start seriously running in December.  So far I’ve been half-ass running but mostly just working on being able to walk farther and farther.  I’m trying to build up to running slowly.  My knees are not used to this shit.  I don’t want to push it.

I don’t want to be famous because my father held a gun to my head and raped me.  I want that to be a small footnote in my life.  Right now that takes up too much space in my brain.  I need to find other things I want to do and talk about.  Sex is always going to be a prime topic.  But I need other tracks.  I need other roles.  Why not running?

And if I’m going to run I’m not running to get out of the house.  I’m doing it to accomplish something.  I need to have a goal.  Something big enough and hard enough that people will be impressed.  Or I won’t bother.  Because that’s just how I work.  I have to be fighting to do something uncomfortable.

That was part of why I had to leave the bdsm community the way I did.  I always have this compulsion to be the biggest bad ass.  Even if only this one small secret way I don’t tell anyone about.  I want to be the edge of the bell curve in intensity.  That’s frankly dangerous in some communities.  So after I broke up with Tom I knew I had to get the fuck out of that community.  I wouldn’t survive more intense than what I did with Tom.  I would have wanted someone who was a cocky asshole who had something to prove.  If you’ve been hanged by the neck once you don’t need to do it again.  I feel fairly certain that some day someone will fuck me with a gun.  I don’t know who or when.  That’s why I’m not in the bdsm community.  I don’t need to find that person any year soon.  I don’t need that temptation any year soon.

It’s hard knowing that I just don’t have the same attitude towards the sanctity of my life that other people have.  I want to know what else I can survive.  What else will get me off?

And I want to serve.  It will happen again some day.  I will find a way.  I will figure out what I mean when I say I am a slave.  And I will find a way to make it real in my life.  I want to be part of building something.  I want to subsume myself.  I want to make a King.

Clarification.

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So uhm I said casually that I was glad that my affair fizzled out.  I just realized that.  Uhm, I’m glad that I am not giving up more sleep than I am giving up.  I’m sad that muse wasn’t up for more of what we had at the beginning.  It was really hot and fun.  I’m sad I’m not writing the torrid IMs planning for sex.  But my wrists are thanking me that I’m doing less typing.

Life is about finding the balance.  I’m sad about not having the affair work out because I was enjoying it.  But I was really operating past my body capacity and it’s a good thing I stopped.  Uhm.  Just to be clear.  Some day he won’t be celibate anymore.  I hope he’ll call me.

Email to middle school core teacher.

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Dear Mr. S-,

Hi, my name was Krissy Archer.  I’ve been married for five years at this point and that doesn’t even feel like who I am any more.  I’m Krissy Gibbs.  I’m a much happier person than I was.  This year for NaNoWriMo I am finally getting around to writing about my childhood.  I’m a survivor of incest and rape.  Some of that was happening while I was your student.  Right now I’m writing about when I was in Fisher and I was looking through the year book.  You signed it: Krissy– Hope you enjoyed my class a little.  Your hard work is appreciated.  Keep it up.  Have fun.
I’m sure that was a fairly standard thing for you to write.  I think I was in your first year of teaching.  You were a good teacher.  You let me spend a lot of time in your room.  Teachers like you gave me a haven from a pretty horrifying life.  I taught high school for three years before I had kids.  Reading your inscription in the yearbook made me think of all the times I wrote similar things on the yearbooks of students when I had other things I wanted to say.  The professional boundary is an interesting one.
I’m curious if you remember anything about me.  I no longer have any contact with anyone in my biological family.  I am trying to write down everything I possibly can about my life.  I feel horrified by the idea that if I died there is no one in the world who can tell my children anything about my life before I met their dad.  So I’m trying to write it all down.  But my memories are all bad.  It’s hard for me to remember anything positive.  I was wondering if you did.
Krissy Gibbs

—
I’m a big fan of people wanting something different.

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Last night I once again went to a sex party and didn’t have sex with anyone.  This time I did play though.  It’s a subtle distinction.  I also noticed a few interesting things about my anxiety.  I’m really glad I’m not allowed to really date anyone right now.  I’m glad that the affair kind of trailed off.  I’m not hunting for a partner.  I’m looking for friends.  And I’m not hard up for sex.  Why am I acting desperate?  In November we’ve been having sex more or less daily. Before that we were having sex three to five times a week.  Why am I out hunting so hard?

Part of it is that I’m lonely still.  There isn’t much to compare to NRE and I’ve been in a stable relationship for a long time.  Mostly I want friends.  But I want friends I can have sex with because that is how I get my touch needs met.  Yeah yeah I “should” get over my issues and be able to handle getting my touch needs met non-sexually.  Whatever.  I don’t wanna.  I want to figure out how to get them met without doing damage to my life.  Whatever that means.  What does it mean to be stable?  To be consistent?  I’m not sure I know.

What do I want to be doing in five years?  In ten years?  In twenty years?  What parts of my life will be the same?  What parts will be different?  How much leeway do I want to leave in my plotting?  By which I mean: which things are non-negotiable if I am going to qualify as “stable”?

I don’t think that most people think about that in advance much.  Not really.  Not what that might mean.  They don’t think about how hard it might be.  I do not like that Noah wants to sleep with other people.  Only I do.  Only I like that he is the kind of person who likes that.  Only I like that he loves that I’m the kind of person who likes to sleep with other people.

I feel bad that Noah wants to sleep with other people because I’m afraid to trust him.  More than most people, he’s all I have.  I have spent more time talking to him than any other human being.  By far.  And I’ve known him for almost eight years.  He knows me.  If I risk him getting to know other people I risk him deciding they are better than me.  Letting him fall in love with someone else means that I have yet more lonely hours to fill as the people that I want to be with have something better to do.

Only it doesn’t have to mean that.  Even when I choose to be alone in the garage, why does this have to be a banishment?  Why does it have to be some terrible thing?  I have massive social anxiety and I am the mother of two young children and I have the weirdest damn sleep cycle in the world.  Of course I’m socially isolated.  This is not a statement about my character.  This is a natural part of my life cycle.

It’s all tied together.  It’s hard to believe that I still exist.  It’s hard to hope that this hard cycle will end.  It’s hard to believe that this much hard is worth it.  This much hard meaning dealing with my intense abandonment fears, parenting, being a partner to a disabled person, and having to support Noah in his career aspirations.  I picked these roles.  They are all hard.  They all take a lot of physical effort and emotional effort.  No wonder I want to hide in a dark room.  At least it’s quiet.

I have some weird ideas about who I am and what I should be doing.  I don’t think I understand them all yet.  I’m not sure I need to because I need to change a lot of them.  I really only look at myself in the most negative ways possible.

Today Shanna was resisting putting her underwear on after taking a shower.  She put her face in her hands and started rocking back and forth.  She was chanting, “I can’t.  I can’t.”  I stopped.  I asked her, “Are you doing this because you see me do this when I’m upset?”  She perked right up, jumped out of role and said, “Yup!” I told her that we try to reserve that kind of display for something slightly more life impacting than being cold after a shower.

I need to stop saying I can’t.  I’ll make it true.  I can.  I’m just shy of 39,000 words.  I am trying to decide if I should try to push through to 40,000 tonight.  I kind of think it would be better to rest.  Right now I’m writing about 1994-1995.  Fisher Middle School.  Oh boy.  This is when I start to introduce people who are in the current cast of characters.  People I don’t want to piss off.  But no pressure, right?

This is why people don’t write this shit.  It’s a lot of fucking pressure.  Do you want to know why I am chickening out about making the book about more than just the first 18 years of my life?  Because I’m almost 40,000 words in and I’m not even close to done and I still have a few years I haven’t even started writing about yet.  Because I think Jenny will forgive me for things I say about then, but I’m not so confident about the other people in my life.  Time to write.

I’m going to talk about triggers.

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I've spent the past few weeks reminding myself that my early life was a festering shithole of despair the likes of which very few people survive. I'm running low on empathy for other people. So that seems like the perfect time for me to talk about my expectations of how other people will manage their shit. We all have it. That's fine. If you feel upset by things you are reading on the internet, close the window. If you feel upset by things you are hearing said in person you have two choices, you can try to tactfully change the subject; this is done by hearing a conversation segue and going full steam ahead towards that Shiny Change Of Topic!. Heck, you can even announce, "Look! It's A Shiny Change Of Topic!" as you do it. That's ok. That's a way of trying to be comfortable in conversation.

Or you can get off your ass and walk away. At no point it is it ok for you to start ranting about how people have triggered you and they are all bad bad bad bad people for daring to say something that Hurt Your Feelings.

Wow. Do you think you are the only important person in the world? Do you really believe that in order to be in your life people have to spent 100% of their time doing only activities you approve of? You have issues. Big issues. The kind that can be manipulated by fucked up professionals with lots of training on how to manipulate peoples emotions.

I have a lot of triggers. I could not begin to enumerate them all. They change over time. When I am in a period where I am heavily triggered, I stop participating in the world. I go home. I stop reading other peoples blogs. I stop participating in forums. I still post, because I do so compulsively and I could not stop if I wanted to. But I'm not reading. I don't have the emotional energy to risk looking at other peoples lives. I might get upset. If I get upset I will have days of back lash. I will feel this constant internal struggle between rage and despair because dear god why do people always do this to me?  The truth is, they don't always do that to me.  It happens sometimes.  But when your brain is in whatever chemical state it is in right now sometimes… that's the only state you can remember being in.  That's not a rational feeling.  That's not a true statement.  You have other moods and other ways you feel. Maybe not recently.  But life is long.

Deciding that who and what you are right now is so important to preserve that everyone around must change in substantial ways to make you more comfortable uhm, well… that's fucked up.  I'll be flat with you.  That's disordered thinking.  That's having omniscience problem.  Get over yourself.

People need to go live their lives and have the experiences they have, for good and bad.  The more you try to step in between other people having their lives the farther you are away from having an actual relationship.  People are not puppets.  The kind of person who will only do what you say is generally kind of icki and I don't want to be near them.  People who want to "call the shots" on how I talk about my life makes my skin crawl.  That's my fucking trigger.  And guess what, I'm a grown up.  I go back to my fucking sandbox and I deal with my emotions.  In an appropriate way.  In a limited way.  I'm going to rant through this post and then I am going to roll my eyes and go back to my life.  Because I don't need to deal with other people being passive aggressive and control freaks.  I have better things to do with my life.  

I modify my behavior willingly for the people I live with.  They have a right to ask me for concessions.  At the same time, I push for time to write because I need it for my mental health.  I have to push back there.  I have to push back about that universally, across the board.  I need to not only say that was an epic party, but holy shit I got to play with two hot girls.  One I made smile and one I made cry.  I felt honored by both.  They both teach me different things about life.  And I need to honor the lessons I am learned.  That is something that I need for me.  I need to figure out how to navigate my triggers in life.  Because I have a lot of them.  I'm trying to figure out what that means.  What can my life look like.

I'll tell you that declaring subjects or locations off-limits for other people… that's not part of the agenda.  If it is on your agenda then you should stop dicking around and commit yourself for a while because you are obviously in a place where you are not able to have healthy relationships and you need some intensive therapy for you to figure out that you are not God.

One of the problems with polyamory

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I don’t know if other people sit around in their off-time listening to songs and trying to place them onto various relationships.  Particularly, today I am listening to Adele’s Someone Like You.  The way she talks about the song in this video is striking.  It has dramatically altered my hearing of the song.

I miss Steve and Tom.  I think I would be able to be the kind of person Steve could be friends now.  I think I have changed my reactions to some of our patterns.  I didn’t like how I treated Steve, but I liked Steve.  I would have broken him if I had stayed with him.  Instead I ran away.  I didn’t just break off dating him.  I stopped going any place he might be.  I avoided his friends like the plague.  Anyone who knew us both lost me after the break up.

I walked away from my life.  I broke all ties.  I changed my major in college.  I dropped out of college.  I broke up with Steve just a few months before our wedding and then I evaporated like a drop of water.  But there were a lot of reasons I wanted to marry him, you know?  He was a really amazing person.  I miss him.  I miss the things he brought into my life.  I don’t want to have sex with him, that part didn’t work well for me.  But I miss him being my close friend.  I dated him before I had ever told anyone the full story of my abuse.  Before I was out publicly as a rape survivor.  I could still name every single person I had ever had sexual contact with.  I had two lists.  One of girls, which was very long.  I didn’t tell people about that list.  And the boys, which was long but not frightening because I don’t count my rapists.  Oh wait, there was a third list in my head–the rapists.  I could still count my positive boy-sex experiences on my fingers with Steve.  Steve was the first boy who ever gave me an actual orgasm. I faked it before that.  Uhm, sorry people from high school.

I miss Steve a lot.  He was passionate about things the way Noah is.  I love basking in that kind of joy in the simple act of attaining knowledge.  Steve liked to learn.  He was inspiring to be around.  He isn’t book smart, and it was by choice.  He came from a highly educated family.  He was a self-didact though.  He knew how to do an amazing array of things.  And if he didn’t know how to do something he would figure out how to learn.  Nothing daunted him.  I miss that.  I didn’t know how to deal with it when I was 18.  I didn’t know how to explain to him that things were harder for me than him because I didn’t have this loving background telling me I could accomplish things, I had to move slower than him sometimes.

Enh, I don’t remember the particulars well enough to analyze it.  Whatever.  That’s not the point.  I would really like to know what kind of man he has become.  I’m pretty sure I was right back then when I knew that I wouldn’t enjoy living with him long-term.  But I think I could be his friend now.  I think I would know how to listen to his interests without bashing him over the head with my issues.

I ran from Steve to Tom.  In a straight line.  Jumping on a few nice people along the way.  I was 18 and living with a lonely old lady who wanted company and I wanted to be surfing the internet looking for sex.  As soon as I became involved with him I started using his house as a base.  I was there a lot when he was at work because I didn’t have anywhere else to be.  His internet was paid for, he didn’t seem to care.

I’m not sure he understood how much time I was there.  How much time I spent auditioning a life in that house before our relationship got all that serious.  I picked him.  I wanted him.  I didn’t have to look around the local community for more than three months before I was damn sure he was the only person in that lot I wanted to seriously pursue.  And I did.  And on our first date he told me that he was looking for the One.  The One he would marry and have children with.

I am not going to get into it much right now.  That’s too big of a story.  I can’t do that today.  I can’t write it down today.  But I can sit here and listen to Adele sing.  And I cry.  Because I can’t write that story yet.  I am in the middle of another one.

I date Puppy because I was trying to replace Tom.  Puppy was the most abusive relationship I have had as an adult.  If he had not ended it when he did I think he would have hit me.  He was escalating in his violent displays when I didn’t react how he wanted.  I wasn’t good enough for him.  His family hated me and picking me would have meant ostracizing his family.  Or having to have relationships with them that involved no discussion of his life with me.  He didn’t think I was worth it.  He was a nasty piece of shit to me trying to get me to break up with him.  When my response was to cry for a while then try to problem solve he freaked out.  He wanted me to do something nasty so he had justification for his behavior.  I feel like my relationship with Puppy absolves me of my guilt for treating Steve so badly.  I learned how to control that anger.  I’m really sorry I fucked up like that at 18.  But I learned.  I changed.  Some people never do.  I’m proud of myself.

I am too angry with Noah.  Almost none of it is directed at him.  I’m not angry because of anything related to Noah.  I’m just angry.  At so many stupid things I remember and can’t let go of.  So many things that I’m trying to write down and be done with.  Puppy left me with a nasty email about how I will end up bitter and alone.  Just. Like. His. Mother.  Yeah, that’s about me?  I think not.

I don’t need to feel bad for my part in that any more.  That was a shitty relationship.  I don’t think it escalated to abuse but it wanted to.  It didn’t partially because I learned to control my temper.  That’s pretty cool.  I needed to do that.  It was essential in helping me be a good teacher.  And oh boy is it more important as a mother.  I’m sorry I hurt Steve.  But I forgive myself.  I had good reasons to be angry.  The more of this book I write the more I understand why people in authority positions widen their eyes when I tell my stories.  I should be exploding with anger.  I should be standing on top of a tall building with a machine gun taking my rage out on all of humanity.  That’s what a wounded animal as smart as me would do.

For all that people tell me I’m an angry person, I’m not.  Not really.  I was.  I’m sad.  I’m afraid.  Writing my story down all in one block and thinking about how many years of my life I have spent alone in a room is hard.  I don’t know how to have a real live actual family.  I’m scared.

I dated Tom for more years than I lived with my brother Jimmy after the age of three.  I lived with Tom for almost as many years as I lived with Tommy.  We were very close.  But he could never decide if I was really worth so much effort.  He wasn’t interested in getting married and having kids with me.  I think that given his life priorities, he made the right decision.  I’m not the right kind of girl for him.  And that still hurts.  I wanted to be.  I tried so hard to be what I thought he wanted.  Oh so many things I want to say.  They come over me in waves, these memories.

But I don’t think I can be friends with Tom.  We were too much.  I want too much.  I miss too much.  I want too much of him still.  I don’t know if anything could ever actually work.  I’m not going to let myself think about it.  I can’t.  I ran away.  I slammed the door on that part of my life pretty hard.  It has taken many years for me to figure out that some people in that community can be my friends because they aren’t actually interested in being his friend.  I didn’t have to ask them to pick a side!  They came pre-picked!  I’m a shallow piece of shit.

No, I have problems with boundaries.  I don’t think I would be able to have any if I spent extended time with Tom.  Once again, I don’t know that it is even sex I want.  I want to crawl back into his head.  I want to once again hear him tell me about the most intense parts of himself.  I want to watch him enjoy driving.  I want to be tied up.  I wouldn’t mind it being non-sexual.  I miss being enjoyed for just being there to look at.  That’s something that’s hard to communicate about objectification.  It means that someone doesn’t have to know all of my dirty stupid little secrets, they can enjoy looking at me.  Maybe I am beautiful.

Maybe if I write about what I really miss in enough detail I can find a way to get those specific needs met in other ways.  It’s worth a try.  But not today.  Maybe someday I will find someone like Tom.  Maybe I will be able to figure it out.

Daydreaming is weird.  Because I have these thoughts.  I have them a lot when I’m driving.  Polyamory means that I can have my Bridges of Madison County track in the back of my brain and know that I am not being disloyal to the people in front of me.

I feel sad that Noah does the same thing.  I don’t know that he does it exactly the same way I do.  But he has similar yearnings to not feel like doors are closed.  There is one girl he is kind of bitter about.  I handled it badly.  He really was falling in love.  It felt like watching my chance at stable happiness leave every time he went on a date.  I don’t trust that anyone else can love more than one person at a time.  My family couldn’t do that.  One kid at a time was “special” and whoever wasn’t in the center… well… when my brothers weren’t at the center it was because they weren’t there.  Sometimes when my mother and I lived alone somewhere I was the center.  That was wonderful.  Anytime there was anyone else around I was ignored.  She had missed those kids the whole time she had me.  She had talked about that endlessly.  She didn’t talk about me in glowing terms the way she did them.  She didn’t idealize me.  She lived with me.

I don’t want to be that for Noah.  I’m scared.  It is so hard to trust him.  It is so hard to trust anyone.  There is no one else in the world I would even bother to try to trust like I trust Noah.  I can’t.  I’m not capable.  And that hurts.  Once people have been close to me like that, if they fuck up even slightly then I have to completely and totally evaporate from their lives.  I can’t handle being demoted.  When Noah starts paying attention to someone else I feel demoted.  I go from being the wife to being part of the harem.  Now I’m “one of Noah’s girls”.  I feel disposable.  It’s not true.  I know Noah doesn’t feel that way.  Not even slightly.  But that’s what I feel.

You know.  Once I get the problem nailed down this specifically it’s time to talk to the California Mindfucker.  I like NLP.  It’s a convenient tool.  I keep hitting this same wall.  And it’s not rational.  I can explain it 50 more times and they will all come down to the same thing.  I want to change my irrational feelings and I’m not managing on my own.  There are tricks for that.

Different facets.

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Today is hard because I have already been a friend, a lover, and a therapy client.  Any second now I need to be a mother.  I need to be a partner.  I need to be a wife.  I need to be a boss.

It’s hard to be these different parts of me.  They feel like they don’t add up to a person.  I’m not sure if they are less or more than a person, but not really a person.  A host with many guests.  I hurt.  I hurt inside my heart.  I am all these things and more and it feels like a terrible thing I am doing.  I am supposed to pick.  Ok, probably not one.  But just two or three.  Fine, I can be a mother and a therapy client and a wife.  Those are supposed to be my priorities, right?

But I really enjoyed being a lover today.  Today I felt beautiful.  Noah tolerates a lot of my derogatory self-talk.  Well, he ignores me.  He tells me I’m beautiful.  He tells me he likes me.  Today my Daddy made me stand in front of a mirror and he touched me and made me look and told me that I am beautiful.  I feel like I can still barely lift my head.  I can’t look up at someone saying that about me.  I’m not.  I’m so ugly and mean and bad.  You don’t know how bad.

Maybe.  There are parts of me that are ugly and mean and bad.  I have done things I am ashamed of.  I have hurt people.  But maybe this isn’t an ‘or’ situation.  Maybe I’m ugly and I’m beautiful.  Maybe the most beautiful thing I have done in my whole life was standing up to my family and prosecuting my father and preventing him from ever victimizing another person.  I did that.  All by myself.  My father was a serial rapist.  He had molested many people from childhood to adulthood.  I. Got. Rid. Of. Him.  As sure as if I put a gun to his head.  I made sure he could never hurt anyone again.  Ok, so I didn’t expect him to kill himself, not really.  I was surprised.  I was devastated.  I knew it was a risk.  Everyone thought he would put a gun in his mouth.  But he didn’t.  He sat, like a chicken shit, in his garage and ran his truck.  While he sat there he wrote notes of hate to me and my mother.  I burned that note many years ago after Tom urged me to.  It ate at me.  He told me, essentially, that he was committing suicide because I was an evil liar and he didn’t want to go to hell for the sin of murdering me because I murdered my brother.  Did you follow that?  His grammar (and spelling) was worse.  But the hate was god damn obvious.  What a piece of shit.  He sent that note to his daughter.

It’s not like he could tell himself that he was innocent.  Give me a break.  He didn’t want to go to prison.  He was too fucking chicken shit to accept the consequences of his actions.  I’m not.  My father is dead.  I’m glad.  I made the world a more beautiful place by effectively killing him.

But I am still what he made me.  I still thrill to the touch of my Daddy.  Maybe I can find a way for that to be ok.  Maybe that’s just one way that my friends can love me and touch me and heal parts of me I can’t reach by myself.  Every man I call Daddy has been in my life for a long time.  Specifically, Dad has been active in my life for nearly as many years as my biological father.  I stopped seeing my biological father when I was thirteen.  I have known Dad for eleven years.  I have spent considerably more time in Dad’s company than I did with my father in my entire life.  Dad is also a really good grandpa to my kids.  He loves them.

And Daddy?  Well, he sure knows how to make me come.  And he is ok with me waking him up in the middle of the night when I need to talk.  He has been for more than seven years.  I have done so, whenever I needed to, for over seven years.  And I’m crazy and bossy and difficult and he loves me.  It was really nice to come home to my Daddy today.  I am feeling pretty shocked by how this feels.

Maybe the only kind of love I have ever known how to get from a dad will be met.  And it will be met in a way that allows me to be healthy and whole.  I’m not a hole.  My Daddy may be a big slut, but I’m special.  I always have been.  And Dad?  I’m his first daughter.  He introduces me that way, which is funny because he has a biological daughter.  He’s had several girlfriends after me who are also “daughters”.  But everyone knows it’s different with me.  I’m not a girlfriend and I never was and I never will be.  He just takes care of me when I don’t know how to do it for myself.

I feel very little.  And happy and sad at the same time.  I feel like I am holding the hand of my best friend at the funeral of a very bad person.  I am safe now.  I will never be hurt by my dad again.  I may be single tailed by my Dad.  I may be fucked by my Daddy.  But my dad will never hurt me again.

Maybe I’m not over the incest thing.

Someone like you

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Writing about my family makes me think about every romantic relationship I’ve ever had.  How and where was I looking for Daddy?  It’s interesting that I don’t like dating tall men.  If they are over 6′ I’m probably not interested.  My father was 6’7″.  My mom was 5’2″.  I had one date with a guy who was 6’10” and that was too much for me.  I couldn’t deal with that.  It felt really disgusting and inappropriate.  Which is kind of a strong reaction to an otherwise really nice guy.

I forgot something when I went looking for an affair.  I forgot that I want people who give me a lot of slack and a lot of space around my “issues”.  I want people who are already broken in because I don’t know how to tell the story piecemeal any more.  I lost that because of Noah.  Noah can handle such ridiculous intensity from me that I don’t know how to tone it down for other people.  Noah can handle me sobbing and screaming and beating on pillows in the middle of an otherwise normal conversation and transition straight into sex when I want it.  I’m pretty sure I have scared Noah or made him feel put-off at some point, but I’d be damned if I could remember when.  Whatever I throw at that man, he just rolls with it.

I forgot how special that is.  I’ve been alone at home with Noah for years growing ever more entwined.  I can use increasingly terse shorthand and he knows these elaborate stories.  After Noah talking to a new person is hard.  It feels frustrating because I don’t know how to explain things in easily digestible chunks anymore.  Now I want to hurry up and finish the book so I can hand them the whole story in advance and say, “Either you can handle this or you can’t.”  That’s not how normal relationships go though.

Last night I went to sleep with my muse.  When I woke up I came over to Daddy’s house.  I haven’t had sex with Daddy in… six?  seven? years.  It’s been a while.  It was similar to and different from what I remember.  I feel like we make fewer assumptions now.  He has so many years of being a close friend that there isn’t much I can’t say to him.  I can be as stupidly blunt and tactless as I am without feeling like it’s going to alienate him.  If he was going to be alienated, it probably would have happened when I dumped him seven years ago.  Instead he remained one of my close friends.  There have been many times over the years when I have shown up at his house at odd hours and he has held me while I cry.

It’s weird sitting in his house now.  I’m killing time until I go to therapy.  He’s working.  It feels comfortable and uncomfortable.  This isn’t where he lived when we dated.  Somehow that’s a good thing.  I’m kind of sad his housemate hasn’t come out of her room.  She is another former lover.  I haven’t seen her much in years and I miss her.  She is one of the few women I’ve had one on one sex with in the last ten years.  I kind of hope I get to give her a hug before I leave.  She came out!  I got my hug.  Yay.

This feels like visiting a part of me I left behind.  These are people from my old life.  In some ways this is like walking into a weird old movie and in other ways it feels like getting to relax.  I have nothing to prove.  I don’t need to show them who I am.  They know already.  If I start crying in the middle of breakfast fairly randomly I don’t have to worry about that being a deal breaker.  I’m not going to risk rejection in this house.  Not unless I do something extraordinarily egregious, which I can’t imagine doing.  This is nice.

I’ve been sitting here thinking about similarities and differences among the men who have tried to handle me.  I do best with men who are able to be still and silent while my emotions rage.  It’s hard on them.  I know.  It’s hard not to take it personally when I’m freaking out.  Noah handles this better than anyone ever has.  He listens really intently to what I am saying and to what I am not saying.  He’s good at ignoring the hyperbole and figuring out why I am actually upset.  He has spent so much time listening intently to me that he knows before I do when I am avoiding a point to get upset about something standing next to it.

Daddy doesn’t make the same leaps.  But he listens.  He stays present.  He has yet to be scared off by anything I’ve told him.  This is why people are poly.  Because there is more than one person who can be present with me.  It’s hard to have the same reservoir of trust with a “friend”.  It’s a different kind of trust and support.  After more than seven years he has certainly earned my trust.  It’s neat finding out what it is like to evolve in a relationship.  I’m doing it with Noah.  I’m trying to do it with Sarah.  I’m trying to do it with Daddy.  I wonder what my life will look like in five years.

Daddy told me that it’s been neat watching me grow up.  He doesn’t think I would have been able to be a mother when we met.  I was still too hair trigger on leaving.  He’s probably right.  It’s really nice knowing that he can look at me and see that I’m not perfect, but I’m still pretty good.  I’m still worth keeping around.  Because he loves me.  Even though I’ve hurt him.  Even though I feel like an unending river of fucking up.

This is so confusing.

The Daddies

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In my adult life I have picked up a lot of men who love me and call me Princess.  It’s a special breed of man.  I have had sexual contact with all of them though I haven’t ever actually had PiV with one of them.  I got the impression recently that it might change soon.  We’ll see.  Gosh.  How do I differentiate them for this article.  Hm.  Well, there’s Dad–he’s up in Portland.  And the other two are both Daddy J____.  So that’s inconvenient.  Uhhh, one is in San Jose and the other is in Oakland.  That will have to be the detail.

Dad came into my life first.  I met him when I was 18 at the Power Exchange in San Francisco.  He was some skeavy old man and called out to me, “Hey you!  Come here!  We need bottoms.”  Always classy, that’s my Dad.  For the record that night I gave him a dirty look and avoided him.  I warmed up to him as I saw him at events around the bay in the subsequent months.  He spent a lot of time wasting his breath with lectures on how I should respect my elders.  He had no idea that I was innately hostile to any and all authority.  When he told me to respect my elders I would nastily snap back, “Yes, Dad.”  It gradually grew less heated.

At some point I acquired a bacterial infection.  Given my horror of all things medical I did not get it treated right away.  But I did hang out on IRC whining.  Dad spent a lot of time in the channel.  He offerred to meet me at the hospital so I didn’t have to be there alone.  He gave up watching a Sharks game with me.  We had a fun conversation with the orderly.  He made sure I was safe.  Not very many people have ever done that for me in my life.  I always have to go alone.  I would walk through fire for that man.

We’ve been friends for almost 12 years.  I will be going to his 60th birthday party in February.  I was at his 50th.  I will be at his 70th.  He’s my Dad.  I’m really glad I have him.

We have a weird play relationship.  There are specific techniques he has that I appreciate a lot.  Otherwise we aren’t much of a match.  And sex just didn’t work.  I couldn’t handle that.  AHHHH.  It was squicky for me because of the Dad thing.

I have a friend in San Jose who is my Daddy.  He is slightly twisted with it.  We’ve done some bdsm play and a little bit of light sex play, but we haven’t gone all the way.  This is weird because he’s one of the local poly gods.  I’m close enough in that I have a good relationship with him.  I don’t know how I would fuck that up if we had sex.  I do tend to make things more complicated than they need to be.  I actually think it wouldn’t fuck anything up.  I have no expectation that our relationship would change in the slightest if we shagged.  I would giggle more when he makes certain jokes and turn red.  That would be pretty much it.  It’s kind of nice to know that.

And uhm, my other Daddy.  I dated this man back when I dated Noah the first time.  I met him right after breaking up with Tom and I was looking hard for a Daddy.  We didn’t work out because we had different hunting priorities and I couldn’t handle that in a primary.  But we’ve remained close friends.  Recently we started kind of sniffing each other out.  I asked him why he was interested in putting up with something as difficult and complicated as this is going to be.  He said, “I love you.”  Yes.  That was the right answer.  He has proven over many years of me being really irritating that he does love me.  He never stopped.

This is why polyamory is so complicated.  How do these friends who are more than friends fit into life?  How do people build a tribe?  I’m still not dating so it is pretty irrelevant right now.  But it’s nice to fill my idle moments with thoughts about what it will be like when we don’t have babies any more.  What kinds of things will we be doing?

I want to travel and camp and go out into the world in a way Noah doesn’t.  I will take my kids with me most of the time, but I’m going to want to do grown up things too.  That’s going to be complicated to navigate.

When I think about my Daddies I think about how I ask for love and support from people.  These three men (along with the California Mind-fucker) have been my support for a very long time.  It’s interesting how our interactions change over time.  It’s interesting who we become to one another.

I stopped thinking about incest stuff during masturbation and sex a couple of years ago.  It became unacceptable to me in sex.  Not as a mother of daughters.  Ugh.  Ew.  No.  It helps that I’ve only been sleeping with Noah and I don’t want him thinking sexy incest thoughts.  Ew.  No.  I can’t handle that.  I know it would be a roleplay.  Don’t care.

But uhm, I’m going to be crawling into bed with my Daddy in about 12 hours.  We’re just going to snuggle.  So he says.  We’ll see.  I’m chanting downwards, “Stop bleeding. Stop bleeding.”  He wouldn’t even care.  He has a cold.  I don’t care.  I have a cold sore.  He doesn’t care.  This is the difference between an old lover and a new person.  I don’t have to feel like I am “up” to this.  I can just go as I am.  Because I’m good enough.  Because he loves me.