Therapy yesterday was unusual. Therapy involves a lot of anxious feelings for me most of the time. I go in needing validation that I don’t deserve to be burned at the stake for being a dirty whore. (No offense to sex workers. This is a childhood family imprinting issue not a reflection on a career choice that works just fine for many fine individuals.)

My therapist is getting much more comfortable with me. I judge this based on the fact that she is much more specifically directive with me now. For example: I relayed why I have been paying more attention to Fetlife lately and some of the back and forth difficulty I am watching. She told me to unfriend the people on Twitter who are all very upset with one another because I will never know the “truth” and getting in the middle makes me a target and goodness knows I don’t need that. So I unfriended people on Twitter. Both sides of the conflict. Which makes me feel like a heel.

I also installed a website blocker on Chrome. Now I can’t visit Fetlife on my computer and I won’t type on my phone or iPad so I am back to passive observing. Better for my blood pressure.

I don’t usually feel like my therapy sessions are full of bragging. I don’t think I’m that great until I start listing off how many different communities/activities would like it if I spent more time there. Specifically I said, “There is only 100% of me and there are at least fifteen places that want a piece.”

She said, “Fifteen? Oh surely that’s an exaggeration.”

Tick them off on your fingers: theatre crowd, Dickens Fair, Renaissance Faire, dancing, Burning Man, bdsm (which is really subdivided into a variety of factions), home schooling group stuff (which is really subdivided into a variety of factions), my neighborhood, my kids, Noah (yes he is separate from the kids), my yard counts as a community given how much of my effort and time I spend on it, writing, PTSD support stuff, rape/incest support stuff (you would be surprised how much of my time this sometimes takes up), and last but not least I have a really high number of out of town friends who like me to come visit them.

You freakin divide that pie. All of those communities involve five to twenty-fiveish core people I go to see.

At that point her mouth kind of dropped open and she said, “You have to think about that in context of the other clients I see. It is kind of extraordinary that you have so much love in your life.”

I don’t really understand it. I don’t see very much that is lovable. Well, until I see the behavior my children reflect back to me. Then I think I might be pretty nice.

I like being a nexus. Everything I have ever read about resiliency and being a survivor says the people with the most ties win.

Shiny change of topic. (At least I’m warning you for once.)

Elsenet I said that I felt conflicted about screen time and as a result I am inconsistent. A person I don’t know responded that they are also conflicted and so they are consistent. Except when they have a reason they think is good enough.

Before I say more on the topic of screen time I want to say that I have good friends who have screen policies for their children that run the full gamut. I have friends who permit absolutely no screens and I have friends who hand babies iPads. I’m walking a fine line here because I can offend everyone.

Just like with vaccines, I am an honest to goodness moderate. (I vaccinate but I don’t do it on schedule and I don’t do it as early as is typical and we skip some vaccines and I’m happy with my set of choices.) Thus with screen time. I have principles I follow instead of iron clad rules.

I don’t directly limit the number of hours my kids have screens. Instead what I do is say, “You can have a screen if you have cleaned up from all your other projects.” So they don’t get a lot of screen time. Ha. It is self selecting by and large.

But there are times when they get a lot of screen time because I need them occupied and sitting still and not disturbing me. I think it is one of the best forking inventions of all time. I think it is resulting in a lot fewer children being beaten.

However I feel like I am slightly manipulative about screen time because on days when I want a break I am way more cheerful and helpful in cleaning up. Ahem. Most days I’m kind of a hard ass and I stick to the line, “I didn’t throw it on the floor. I am in the middle of ______ chore. Please do it for yourself.” I do a lot of fucking chores just so I can have excuses. I feel sorta guilty about that. It’s how I can excuse my boundaries. I’m not sure it is “healthy” but there it is.

I feel weird having pride in my kids the same way I feel kind of weird having pride in the fact that people like me across diverse communities for very different reasons. Almost none of them like me because I used to be an easy lay. They like me for parts of my personality that I probably could/should take pride in. It probably would be healthy for me to see that I have positive traits and negative traits but mostly on balance I’m neutral to positive. I’m not a huge negative force or I wouldn’t be asked to go so many places.

I don’t understand what a privilege that is until I spend time really talking to someone who has never really been welcome in any community, ever. I have been shunned. But it’s been a long, long time. I could probably drop that paranoia.

I’ve been thinking about the comment my shrink made, “Do you like being this way?”

Yes and no.

I keep coming up with pieces of the hypervigilance I don’t like. I don’t like that I compulsively count the number of people in a room. I’m not in a fucking spy movie. I don’t need to obsessively check for exits. I don’t like that I have a huge chip on my shoulder because I assume everyone is one wrong sentence away from rejecting me and reviling me forever.

People mostly aren’t invested in me enough to be that hurt. I need to get over myself.

That’s kind of shitty to think about, yo.

Those are the kinds of tics an editor will take away. Do I want them to go? Do I want to stop sounding like me?

And now a three year old says I have to go play doctor. All of our clothes will stay on. Keep your mind out of the gutter.