Monthly Archives: October 2012

Emotional volatility, yup that’s me.

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My brother is not racing. Blacksheep’s plane was delayed six hours then cancelled. She caught a much later flight to a totally different airport. She will arrive at her moms-in-law’s house less than twelve hours before the race.

That’s pretty god damn intense. She is working hard to get here. Wow.

I can’t get more pot. Apparently SoCal dispensaries require you to have the Full Letter from your doctor. I’ve never been asked for it before. Fuck. I cried all the way back from the dispensary. I went to three checking.

I feel like I am supposed to be in many places at once, always being nice. I’m not nice. I want to scream and jump up and down and kick things.

I have completely shredded my cheeks, tongue, and parts of my gums from anxiety. I can’t cut anymore so I will apparently suck on my mouth like I’m on ecstasy. I guess I shouldn’t even have written the word yesterday. Ha. I’m not on e. I’m very sober. It’s shitty.

It will work out. I may go home a day early. Yes, I’m that lame right now. It’s either that or sit in the hotel room crying because there is no way I will be able to handle crowds the day after the marathon sober. Just no. I don’t have that to give right now.

We’ll see. I’m tired. My neck hurts. I’ve had a headache for days. I haven’t actually packed for the marathon yet (I’m not sleeping here tonight). I think I am avoiding doing so because I want to quit. I don’t want to run. But Blacksheep went to an awful lot of trouble. And I know my brother won’t be there. It’s a bucket list thing.

My brother decided not to do it. I don’t know why. I will never know why. I will probably never see anyone who shares my blood other than my children again. I’m really glad I have kids. A bucket list wouldn’t be enough today.

This is what I medicate away from. This sensation of being trapped in a rusty bear trap. I would like to chew off my leg just to get away from the trap. Surely whatever damage I do to myself doesn’t matter. I just need to get away.

I was asked for more information.

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I was asked to give more information about the situation with Kevin. I don’t know how to do that without telling a story, so here I go.

In August of 2004 I realized that my relationship with Tom was over and I broke up with him. I met a man named James at a sex party and we talked online for a few weeks before having a date (or any kind of sex for that matter). Our first date was the first weekend in October and he brought me down to Red White and Blue Beach in Santa Cruz–a nude beach. It was basically a regional Burning Man event. I met a lot of people that night and started doing a lot of drugs. Ecstasy was my favorite. I did it every 4-6 weeks for about nine months.

Not long after I started dating James I met Kevin. I don’t remember where exactly for sure. I suspect it was at a mutual friend’s house who hosted a lot of hot tub parties. We always danced around boundaries. We warmed up to one another slowly and built a friendship. I was very lonely and I didn’t have many places to go. Most of the people I knew either didn’t invite me over to their houses or I didn’t feel like they would accept my invitations. So I spent time with the people who invited me.

Kevin often offered me massages. He also listened to me talk about various questionable things and tried to sound supportive. It was always tricky because he would simultaneously tell me me that he respected me and he was glad that I spoke up about my boundaries but he would “oops forget” over and over. I brought it up more times than I can count. He would sometimes say he “understood” and sometimes express confusion over what I was talking about. He is quite good at making people feel crazy. Even though his hand was just inside my vagina he would deny it adamantly and express concern for why I was over reacting to a massage.

Eventually I started dating someone else and faded away from the Burner community. I wanted to stop doing a lot of drugs and I wanted to stop feeling like I had to defend my body with force. I stopped coming to events at all after a female friend of mine lead a class on “boundaries” meant to help the women who were sexually assaulted at beach events pulled me up in front of the room and mocked me for “how good I am” at defending myself. She said that not everyone needs to be a bitch like me. I didn’t see a good reason to come back.

I stopped going to those events because my experience of heavily nudity focused events (and Burning Man stuff seems to be) involves a lot of men who feel like me saying no is doing something rude and mean. I can’t live with that. I am one of those stupid girls who is easy to peer pressure. When people pressure me I cave. I shut my mouth and close my eyes and put my head down and accept what is going to happen. My experience of resisting pressure isn’t good. Either I’m publicly mocked for being a bitch (usually by women) or I am raped.

I stay home.

Can’t sleep. Captain Hook will get me.

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I can’t sleep. I should have brought sleeping pills. I read somewhere that if you take sleeping pills you are five times more likely to die. I’ve been trying to not take them. See, I didn’t even pack any. Obviously I don’t want to take them. But I fell asleep at nine and I woke up at midnight and I’ve been awake for an hour fretting and I don’t feel the least bit tired. I feel amped and anxious. I feel like my heart is about to jump out of my chest.

I’m thinking about self-mutilation. I think I am writing the intro for that chapter in my head right now instead of sleeping. (I honestly don’t want to really write it tonight–sleeeeeeeeeep.) Self-mutilation is a big topic. It’s cutting and burning and banging your head and all sorts of other fun ways to spend an afternoon. Everyone self-mutilates in slightly different ways for slightly different reasons.

Personally I like cutting the best because I like seeing blood. I think I don’t have scars from cutting because of my “personal style”. I like to do tiny cuts that are just barely deep enough to break blood vessels and then I will do dozens or hundreds of those until I have enough visual sensation of blood. Other people like going deeper because they like the pain of cutting muscle. That kind of pain doesn’t give me the focus or control I want. It makes me feel triggered and frantic. Everyone is different.

Bad coping methods. They truly are better than nothing. If nothing will get you dead do something bad instead.

I don’t carry sleeping pills with me because I am always afraid I will have a bad day and be done. It feels like having them with me is too big of a risk. In my house I can handle having A Dose but I don’t trust myself outside of my house. I have worked up a ritual and an approach and a way of managing myself at home. It’s different everywhere else. My resources are spread differently. It’s harder to have the self control to take a dose. I’m just so freaked out that I want to sleep and I’ll do anything. Including taking way too many pills. Because today it feels like nothing could possibly be strong enough to make me sleep. My brain is cycling around too fast and all I want to do is sleep. I don’t think I would be able to take one dose. I would take one and five minutes later another and five minutes later another until I fell asleep.

That’s kind of bad. So I don’t do that.

Instead I write an email to an old friend telling him that even though I am generally speaking a judgmental asshole and I’m really mean I don’t think I clearly told him that I think he could be a good parent. I need to say that. I need to say it without other things right next to it so the message isn’t lost.

I think about Jimmy. I think about Tommy. I think about that little fucker at Lakeside who broke my arm because Tommy wanted him to.

I may end up finding a dispensary down here. If I am going to go buy drugs to help me calm down it is probably a better idea to prioritize being more stoned over taking more sleeping pills. I don’t want to smoke at Disneyland so I’m limited to the other methods I had on hand. It’s a very scant week’s supply. I certainly don’t have enough to also take it to help me sleep. That’s probably a bad choice right this minute. In fact as I am sitting here typing it occurs to me: I do have medication that will make me sleep tonight. I’m not taking it because I’m trying to ration it. But I can buy more. I’m one of those asshole privileged people. I don’t have to deal with this feeling all night long so that I am a nightmare tomorrow.

Thinking! I can do it! The awesome part is how fast that is to implement. Done.

The funny part is I won’t feel it for a really long time. So I’m still going to be up for a while. Just knowing that I’ve already started solving the problem is relaxing. I won’t be awake all night. Ok, so I’ll probably be awake for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night. I hear that it is fairly normal for my species. It’s only going to be 2-3 hours because I medicated. Otherwise I would watch the sun come up.

I can’t do everything. Sometimes it feels like I can do very little. I can not-die today. I will touch people who love me and let them touch me–even when it is hard. When I read about attachment theory it makes me very sad. I can’t let people touch me very often. I don’t feel very “attached”. I feel like I am free floating. Only G-d knows where I will land.

Goodbye, old friend

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Yesterday someone I have been close with came and got me for lunch. We have known one another for twelve years. For a long time I considered him family. He came over for Thanksgiving and Christmas many times. Things have gone through a lot of ups and downs. He came over to tell me that his wife is pregnant and he is moving cross country. He assures me he will come here to visit so we will probably see one another as often as we do now.

If someone doesn’t know my kids at all because they have never spent any time with them I can’t think of that person as family any more. That is becoming a litmus for me. My children are my family. Perhaps they will be the only people I am that kind of close with. I’m doing my best to teach my children how to have the kind of relationship I want to have.

Family doesn’t say, “Wow. Your life is hard and shitty. Sucks to be you.” Family helps.

I think really hard about what I want to teach my kids. So far Shanna and Calli automatically share any good thing that comes into either of their hands. When I say, “Oh gosh. This is going to be a big job. I think I will need help if I am going to have the time and energy to go do fun stuff after” both kids jump up because they like doing fun stuff with me. Shanna already knows there is a sharp correlation between how much waiting on everyone I have to do and my willingness to play messy games. I’m a hard ass about it. I have to be or I will lose my fucking mind.

It was hard having lunch with my friend. Both he and his wife have told me emphatically and specifically that he has never said a sexist thing in his life.

Then why did he have to go on for four or so minutes when my drink arrived about how disgusting “girly” drinks are?

I also enjoyed the long lecture about how until a given Indian person has proven that he is significantly more competent than 95% of white people that he must be stupid and incompetent. You know this for a fact because your company outsourced a bunch of junior engineer positions to India and those people are just stupid. You know they will fuck up anything you give them at least three times so you try to carefully condescend to them so they can’t fuck up anything important.

Well, it’s overall a reasonable business decision, I guess. But do you really have to rant about those people like that? Are they really less competent than the average white person? Really?  Really?! Have you met the average white person?

PEOPLE ARE NOT SMARTER BASED ON WHAT COLOR THEIR SKIN IS NOR WHETHER THEY SIT OR STAND TO PEE.

But you’re not sexist or racist.

Oh, when you were trying to describe the focus of your PhD research to people you probably shouldn’t say, “Oh gosh I’m not sure if I can dumb this down enough for you” and you probably shouldn’t say, “Oh wow. You have gotten a lot more sophisticated. You wouldn’t have been able to understand this before.”

You mean when I was nineteen and I had absolutely no exposure to computer networking I didn’t immediately ping on all the buzzwords? Sure yeah. At this point I am thirty-one and I have been living in this valley a long time. Yes I fucking understand virtual machines you god damn condescending asshole. It took someone assuming I wasn’t stupid and talking to me about them. Thanks, Noah.

When I talk to people I met twelve years ago the main thing I think about is how universal their lack of respect for me is. They are shocked I understand things. They are surprised I can understand complicated systems. Wow. That tells me a lot about what you think of me.

People who met me twelve years ago wanted to fuck me or play with me. I didn’t develop very many relationships with people in other categories. And they think I am stupid. Any hole will do in the dark, right?

I feel really weird about someone who will tell me over and over that he thinks highly of me while being casually dismissive fucking constantly.

There were a bunch of stupid, insulting little things. Every time he said something rude he would notice me flinch. He said, “Oh I didn’t mean that in an insulting way.” Oh, of course not. You couldn’t possibly be insulting when you react with horror over anything “girly.” Nope. I don’t know how many times I flinched. Mostly I stayed blank. He told me he couldn’t read my vibe. I said maybe I don’t have one. He said everyone does. I said maybe mine isn’t visible to him. He seemed upset by that. 

I am not a figment of your imagination. I am not a construct that fits your needs. I’m a complicated person. And you don’t know me at all. If you know about my bdsm interests and not much else you don’t know me. Hell it’s getting to the point where I think that people who don’t know me as a parent probably don’t really know me. It’s a very different experience.

I still love him. That’s not the point. I love him very much. I have loved him for a long time. I’m really not up for continuing to feel put down, casually, pretty much all the time in conversation. Maybe I’m over-sensitive. Given that quite a few of my female friends won’t be in a room with this guy because they find him so insulting I doubt it’s just me. I just didn’t think I had a right to complain about how he treated me until several women said, “You know, you don’t have to let him treat you that way.” I don’t? But beggars can’t be choosers. I take what friends pick me.

Or I stay home. Alone.

He asked me how I have been doing. I told him I wake up just about every morning and catalog the ways I want to die. Everyone who told me that they would be there to support me through having children is gone. Because I am a giant asshole and they don’t like me any more. Fair enough.

I’ll stay home.

I’m not completely alone. I get visitors. My friends give me what they have to spare. I’m grateful.