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.