I feel so jealous of my friend Pam that sometimes I feel like the top of my head will explode. Why does she get a HUGE, supportive, loving family? Why is she better? She tells me that you get out of life what you give to life.

My father was a rapist. He raped my mother. I’m what he got out of life. I have raped people–not recently–but I have. It was just what my family did.

Pam has both grandmothers still alive in their 90’s. Vibrant, bossy, sassy women. Pam has more cousins than she can count on her fingers. She draws diagrams of her family tree so she can keep them straight. And she visits ALL OF THEM. Even the distant cousins. She’s teaching all of the kids Chinese.

Just thinking about her family makes me cry and cry. I will never have that. I *can’t* have that. Not unless I want to sacrifice my children and no no no no no no.

I think this year is going to be a rough holiday season. I miss my mom. I feel like missing my mom is like having a phantom limb. I keep reaching for it because I can feel it… but there is nothing there.

Sometimes people try to tell me that I am too relational in my self-concept. If I am not relational I shut down. I have no reason to keep trying. I’m not terribly motivated by anything just being in existence for me.

I do just about everything I do because I am trying to be something in relationship to other people. I want my kids to grow up in a bright, colorful world where it is ok to just try things. So I have to model it. Even though I feel shitty and upset and like I would rather just hide under my bed and cry. It’s not about me. Shut the fuck up and get off your lazy ass.

I hate painting. I have hated painting since I was seventeen. I used to be very vocally nasty when the scene shop director told me I had to paint. I *did it*. But I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to. I always felt like what I was doing wasn’t good enough and I was ruining whatever thing I was painting on. From his point of view: enh it’s a prop that will be painted over in six months. It’s a junior college play. Your best *is* good enough.

Often my internal track is screaming of one kind or another. Sometimes spewing vitriolic words about how stupid, pathetic, and generally unworthy I am. Everyone should get away from me before I hurt them. Don’t they know that I am dangerous?

Lately I hear a lot of laughter. It’s not better. Mostly I haven’t thought about this since I moved out. Throughout my childhood whenever we landed at Auntie’s house things were different.

My mom and I moved a lot. Sometimes I was alone sometimes I was with her. When I was with her and going through the random homes one after another I felt ok enough. My mommy wants me and loves me and she is doing her best to take care of me. I knew it then.

Then we would end up back at Auntie’s house. I was always in trouble. I had to stay in my room because I bothered everyone. But I could hear the laughing. It always sounded like a party was happening right outside my door and I wasn’t invited. My mom and sister and aunt were friends as well as relatives. They had a lot of fun together. Then there was me.

I was never wanted. Even beyond the whole rape thing I wasn’t wanted. From when I was a tiny girl my father conditioned me to make any and all touch sexualized. I made people feel creeped out. “Normal” people didn’t want to be near me because the way I touched them was inappropriate. I think my mom and sister didn’t want to be near me because they didn’t want to have to acknowledge how inappropriate my behavior was.

I think I go years without thinking about the laughing. I’m not sure what is triggering it now. But this is really hard.

I am so grateful that I found Noah. He laughs at my bad jokes and doesn’t laugh at me any other time. He doesn’t find joy in my misfortune.

If I tripped walking in those horrible shoes my Owner wanted me to wear he would laugh at me. It was hilarious that I was such a klutz.

Noah is nice and kind to me. And he gave me two beautiful children who are really nice to me in between occasional spurts of being kid-like. (The balance is fine. Every kid has moments of being an asshole.)

I feel really guilty for feeling the way I do. I know I have a lot of friends. I know that people love me. I can watch their behavior year after year and see that it is demonstrably true. I don’t have the right to feel like nobody loves me.

But my mommy doesn’t love me. That kind of taints the whole world.

Shanna heard me crying and is now lying next to me on the couch. Her whole body is pressed against my leg. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve having someone this loving and this pure like me.

I feel so bad about myself when I yell at her. I’ve had a good week and some on that front. It’s not long enough for a good streak but you can only build a good streak one day at a time.

I have no right to feel like people who are in my life right now hate me. They get mad at me sometimes but I feel that is quite a healthy reaction to some of my behavior and I in no way want to talk them out of it. Getting mad at me is appropriate at times.

I feel like a black hole. Like there is no point in anyone ever bothering to try and love me. I am so broken I will never be able to feel it any way.

But I feel Shanna. She walked out here and said, “I missed you and I heard you crying so I thought I would come cuddle you.” It has to be enough. It is what I have.

I’m beginning to think that it doesn’t matter if I feel loved. Maybe that piece just broke off. I can look at peoples behavior and figure out if they are acting like they like and/or respect me. I don’t understand this “love” thing. Throughout my life I have learned that people will only be there for me if I can ask in exactly the right way at exactly the right time. Otherwise they are mid-stream on their life and I am just too far away from their stream. It isn’t about love.

I kind of hate the word love. People use it all the time. What does it mean? Does it mean I want to fuck you? Does it mean I want to gently stroke your beautiful hair while you sleep next to me on the couch? Does it mean I will find a way to gently ask you to stop hitting me even though this is the 23,302,283,844 time I’ve asked? (Kids need repetition. And kindness.)

With Noah I treat love like a choice. I’m not sure I always have warm fuzzy feelings towards him–he can be a righteous asshole at times. But I *choose* to stand near him. I *choose* to do things to make his life better because when his life is better he’s more patient with me. See–it’s all self-serving. We have a great virtuous cycle of being nice to one another going. I feel so grateful for his kindness.

It’s a lot harder to cry with Shanna this close to me. I don’t want to wake her up again.

I feel so guilty when I look at my children. I hope I am not forcing them to meet my needs in inappropriate ways. I don’t know. I really can’t tell. I don’t tell them about my mental health stuff. Shanna has directly asked enough times that she knows “When bad stuff happens to you as a kid it kind of changes the way your brain works. It often means that you get too scared or too angry. Your brain didn’t learn how to tell the right time for being scared or angry. Then it gets confused and it is hard to keep it on the right track when you grow up.”

I don’t make my children clean up after me. I don’t expose them to sexually advanced material of any kind. At this point the limit of our sex education is the correct anatomical name for everything along with the phrase, “Masturbation is awesome!… in your room.” (I really and truly believe that a healthy masturbatory life is one of the frameworks for being a happy and sexually healthy individual.)

(Answer to question I have gotten in the past “How much masturbation is too much?” Well… are you missing school, work, church, outings with your friends/family/significant other? Are you refusing sex with your spouse in order to beat off for hours? That might be a problem. As long as your masturbation fits neatly into what would be your “personal time” anyway… wank on. It’s ok. Really.)

But I look at my beautiful, oh-so-sheltered, little girls and think, “I’m going to have to teach you how to keep your body safe.”

Am *I* someone who is even capable of understanding what that means?

As a test dummy (not that she’s a dummy!) I have a kid from the home school group as my “test audience” when I am writing. She’s nine, so a bit before puberty. She is incredibly sheltered. She is incredibly sensitive to scary things. I *can’t* be too graphic or scary or intense or it will be a bad book for her to read. I don’t want to write a book that will hurt the children I know. I want to write a book that will feel safe and comfortable and like every little kid just happened to get a smart and caring big sister.

Pam is kind of my model on this. Her rule is that she doesn’t tell her younger sister (big age gap) anything about her behavior until her sister is the age she was when she did it. That is part of how she appropriately censored.

(Now that I have discussed drugs and three-ways with Pam’s sister I think that Pam can stop acting like her sister needs sheltering but I understand that sister dynamics are complex.)

I want the little boys and girls in my group to be ready to handle a very complex part of their life. Sexuality is part of every individuals global self identity. I don’t mean global like international like other countries. I mean that your sexuality effects what you think of yourself. It effects how worthy and pretty and fun and interesting people think they are.

Sex is one of the most natural things we do. It may come right in line after pooping. It just happens. (Err, not that pooping and sex should be combined–bacterial mess.)

How do I teach people to think that sex is something that nearly everyone is hard-wired to want and that’s ok. (There are some people who genuinely feel no sexual desire… they are unusual [but still awesome!]) How you handle that want is what makes you a good person or not.

Consent is sexy.

Sometimes I find it funny that the sex workers I know are some of the most conservative people about introduction to sex stuff. Most of the sex workers I know think that people under 21 shouldn’t do sex work. Most of the sex workers I know think that you shouldn’t lose your virginity until very close to 18 if not after that.

When you are a teenager everything feels so immediate and intense and important. You must do everything NOW! I certainly had a lot of that. But not everyone has that. Man.

What the hell do I know? I think I am going to curl up around my baby now. She’s so big. It shocks me every day that she started out as a teeny tiny piece of me. Now she is almost to my armpit. Scary.