Noah and I continue talking, like we do. I continue to believe that I am lucky to be married to him and I need to not fuck this up. He is being so patient and understanding.

I have been a serious asshole. I didn’t negotiate in advance. I started breaking rules and saying, “Shit shit shit I can’t follow rules any more.”

That’s fucked up. I’m not being good at all.

And he’s being patient with me. I don’t deserve this. I also don’t deserve having Pam come over to make me dinner and waking up to Noah making me breakfast and I get those things too.

Life isn’t really about what you deserve.

He’s my best friend. He is the person in the world I feel safest with. I think we can figure this out. I mean, is it really a bad thing that he’s not an evil sadist? Probably not. It is probably why he can take care of me and love me the way he does. The way I need him to.

Even though I have a hard time with the fact that I have to be directive during sex… if I do just a little bit of it boy is the best lover I’ve ever had. Ok, maybe I want some vacation from being directive… but it’s hard to argue with that kind of success. I get why he wants advice. I do.

I like being married to Noah. I like how we talk. I like how we cuddle. I like how he kisses me. I like how he makes me food. I like how hard he works at the things he thinks are important. I have mad respect for him. There aren’t many people who say, “I will do _____” and follow through on it like Noah does. I watch for that. He’s amazing.

He isn’t perfect and he isn’t everything. But what he is is so good.

Noah sees me in a way no one else alive has any desire to see me.

I can live with stepping out to get my ass beat.

I can’t live without Noah. He points out that I said pretty much exactly that about four days before I broke up with him the first time.

Yeah… notice how even breaking up with you that time didn’t involve me being able to stop climbing into bed with you? Or hanging out with you? Or cooking you food? Or wanting to work out with you so I could flirt and beg you to be inappropriate with me?

You haven’t been someone I could walk away from. Even when I tried.

No one else has ever given me permission to tell my story.

And shit, at this point it would mean split custody and dealing with dispersal of property… given that you’ll let me go fuck whoever when I get a little nutty…

I need to stay. This is the only route to happiness for me. I know it. I mean, if you die (please don’t) I hope I can figure something else out… but I really doubt I will ever be this happy without you.

No one else will ever want to go through years of experimentation to figure out how to feed me without making me sick. And honestly you know more about it than I do. You pay more attention than I do. You care more than I do about my health.

Thank you for forgiving me for breaking rules. Thank you for forgiving me for being shitty about telling you that I broke rules. This is part of why I compulsively log all of my fuck ups here. So that even if I can’t say it I’m not completely lying.

Which isn’t good enough. I need to stop it.

I am kind of ridiculously grateful that you have agreed to “no rules” for a while here. Yeah. I do need it. I need to be a free agent just deciding based on my whims and not based on what somebody else wants for a while.

I need to spend some time figuring out what I want. And that means not caring about what you want.

I mean… I have to only do stuff that is kosher for me and whomever I am playing with. Respect and boundaries and yada yada. I know. I’m trying for that. I’m trying to not be too pathetic in my begging for people to blow right past where they are comfortable and hurt me until I’m unable to walk.

I know that most people just won’t do that because yeah… liability…

I know. I’m trying to uhh respect some boundaries somewhere. I’m not sure how well I’m doing. Oh fuck everything.

Do I have boundaries right now?

I will discover them in the moment. I want to discover them in the moment. I want to find out what they are because right now I don’t even know and that is bothering me.

I have no idea where my limits are right now. I’ve been operating under other peoples limits for so long I feel like I don’t know who I am.

“In addition to being a hippy-dippy housewife Krissy also moonlights as a severe masochist. Details at 11.”

Who am I?

What about me is worthy of love? What about me is worthy of tolerance whether you love it or not? What about me is ok? What about me is wrong? Wrong for whom? Why does it matter?

I called it in January. 2016 is going to be a fucktastically intense emotional year. What about me is worthy of love.

I want to be able to talk to my mother someday. I cannot do so until I love myself completely without her regard. I have to love myself or I may leave that conversation and go drive off a bridge. (Side note: I am continuing to hand write a book for her. Progress. Not close to completion. God this hurts, emotionally. The handwriting process is fucking intense for me with all my issues around handwriting. Anyway. That’s a different processing thing going on. I’M SO TIRED OF PROCESSING. CAN’T I JUST CRY FOR A WHILE?!)

Because I don’t think she’s going to love me and that’s going to have to be ok. That has to be ok.

I can’t let that end me.

My children deserve better than that from me.

I’m still thinking about that thing that is weighing on my heart. A thing about promises and what I can really and truly be. I’m still not going to admit publicly what it is. I have told Noah what I’m thinking about because thinking about this makes me so frantic that he needs to know why I’m flipping out. He lives with me and has to help cope for the amount of strain I feel.

He cares so much about how our children are treated. He has been willing to jump through any hoop I put in front of him with regard to helping with the kids. He does monitor my behavior. He assists me in figuring out self care so that I have more patience to give. He makes sure I don’t get to be too much of an asshole. He will tell me my tone of voice is inappropriate.

(This isn’t a constant thing because I do well most of the time. But we don’t act like parents are perfect.)

There is no chance I could be the parent I am without the amount of support I have gotten from Noah. I won the lottery.

I don’t know that I am that good of a parent. But I know that whatever good I have been able to do has been because of the privilege Noah has given me and the support he has generously offered.

Maybe it is good he isn’t more sadistic and selfish. Really really really good.

Noah isn’t the first person to ask me to marry him. He’s the only one where I ultimately decided it was a good idea to say yes. I put him through hell as a courtship. Then ran away to get married in secret because I couldn’t handle having anyone look at me as it happened. Would I be able to keep this promise?

Who knows.

It’s been almost ten years. I think I have mostly kept the promises I made. Good thing monogamy wasn’t actually on the list.

I have a date tonight. And a date tomorrow. And another on Sunday. I’m going to go take a nap. I’m going to need my strength.

I’m sure I will tell you how it goes. At least a little. Maybe. We’ll see. Maybe all you’ll find out is “Will see again.”

Hopefully I live up to my advertising.

I’m whinging on Twitter about this and I want to be clear in my overall documentation.

I’m not upset that people turn me down. I’m upset because I put people in the position of having to say no and that upsets a lot of people. Many people feel just about violated by having to refuse something they don’t want as having something happen to them by surprise. I’ve had people get so mad at me.

So far so good on what I’m asking for these days. No one has blown up and been very angry. There are lots of “I’m up for x but not y or z” which isn’t a flat no in the same way. But it’s a lot of negotiation.

I’m feeling very anxious about enforcing this on people. Am I being an asshole? I don’t know.

Of all the people I’m negotiating with the only person I was a dumbass and flat asked for assurances that I’m not pushing too hard is my submissive. I have to kind of pretend that I assume everything is going fine with everyone else. I’ll tell him I’m freaking out directly. Because shit dude it’s been 15 years and if I can’t say that at this stage fuck everything.

Is it ok that I’m asking you for things that you have to say no to. I don’t want to be a problem.

Not that he’s saying no to much. I’m not upset about him having boundaries. Anything but.

Having boundaries is ok. I feel very bad that I’m so bad at figuring out where other peoples boundaries are. I need really explicit verbal conversation in order to understand and usually I need to repeat questions a few times and…

I feel like a bully. I feel like a monstrous predator who is trying to force people to do things. Even though I’d prefer people say no to things they don’t want. Making people say ‘no’ hurts them sometimes.

I’m forcing “Ask” culture on “Guess” culture people sometimes and that bothers them a lot.

I’m reminded of the chick this last year who told me in great detail how horrifying rude I am to ask for things instead of just accepting what is offered to me.

You know what… without asking… people just don’t fucking offer what I want.

Does that mean it is wrong for me to ask? Because people rarely automatically offer up what I want?

I don’t know. She clearly thinks so. My submissive says, “This is just how relationships go. You are fine. We are negotiating.”

I want to cry.

I’m sorry that I am not good at intuiting what is “right” and what is “wrong” and I need you to tell me explicitly.

I feel like a failure.

I know that this feeling is today. I don’t think it is always. But right this minute I feel like I’m hurting people and I feel scared of that.

Luckily today Noah is going to beat me six ways from Sunday and maybe I’ll forget.

It is 1:26. I woke up at 12 and haven’t been able to slow my thinking down since. First: have to pee. Then pain stuff. My back hurts still. This period has been awful. My arms were hurting. I was up and down to get water, Ibuprofen, my braces… after an hour and a half of racing thoughts on top of mounting physical whines… fuck it.

What am I so worried about?

I want. That means I’m going to ask people for things that they may not want. Oh I don’t like myself very much for that. I feel really bad for the fact that I spend a lot of time putting people on the spot and causing really awkward and uncomfortable feelings. People are going to have to say no to me.

Hundreds of people have already said no to me in the past. I have no reason to suspect the future is going to change that dynamic much. Asking people I already know is only so much more successful because… complicated.

I don’t god damn know how to read signals. Outside of a few glaring examples I’m usually not real clear who is interested in me for what.

This is a rather distinct problem as I treat other people wanting things from me as permission to be that thing.

Which is kinda ridiculous and lame at this stage of the game.

I’m completely freaking out about how some of my uhhh more conservative friends are going to feel about this uhm U-bend turn in behavior lately. I haven’t done any of this while they’ve known me. It was all in the distant, more theoretical past.

Hi. I iz weird. I hope you still like me.

I’m scared.

When I was tossing in turning in bed I started thinking about the things I want to ask for and I felt so ashamed I wanted to go in the bathroom and start cutting just because then I won’t go out and ask anyone for anything because I’ll be too ashamed and…

No.

No.

No.

I’m not going to cut myself down to size anymore. No. No. No.

On Twitter, a woman I follow (Feminista Jones–just so it’s been said) posted a link to a woman who wrote about accepting compliments on dating sites with “I know” and how that leads to a lot of abuse.

Like a fucking moron I spent a while reading the comments. A shocking number of people believe that if you don’t perform humility appropriately you deserve any amount of abuse people want to throw at you.

You know what? I don’t think I’m pretty. I don’t think I’m beautiful. I think I’m kinda a funny looking motherfucker. But for the fucking rest of my life I vow that if someone tells me that I’m pretty/beautiful/whatever I’m going to say, “I know.”

I won’t say thank you unless I asked for the compliment before it was delivered.

Why?

Because I’m a rude motherfucker.

Because I want to know this about myself without it being about you or your opinion. Because if you are the kind of person who believes I deserve abuse if I have positive self regard I want to know that as fast as humanly possible so I can get the fuck away from your disgusting self.

Shiny change of topic. I’m hunting so I went bra shopping. Mostly… I just don’t wear them cause I don’t give a shit and Noah doesn’t either. This was something I argued about with the friend who took me shopping.

The contention was: if I dress up for Noah in fancy lingerie/makeup he will be inspired to greater than normal heights over my sweats/t-shirt ensembles.

To this I say… you really don’t know Noah. It doesn’t matter what I have on. It really doesn’t. It matters how much I strut/push/seem interested.

Ok, now it is true that I turn on more in the dressing up process so usually I strut more (thus hunting meaning I go bra shopping) and that’s fun. But no really Noah doesn’t care. If I wear uncomfortable shoes and put a whole bunch of effort into my appearance… our sex life stays static. There isn’t really a spike. I’ve checked.

After ten years you don’t think I check that shit!?

Ahem.

Heh.

That’s the hilarious thing about keeping records of your sex life. I haz the data.

Ok, we do both like dressing up sometimes for a role play scene. But it has been years. Sad face.

I won’t play where my kids can hear and we haven’t had overnight babysitting much in years.

Other source of anxiety: how is this impacting the kids? I don’t think this is impacting my time with them that much because it is coming out of personal time. I’m just getting less alone time.

I can’t get to the point of no personal time but I’m not close to that.

Given how much work I’m pulling off, I think hunting is actually helping me with the kids. I’m being pretty damn patient. I’m not yelling much. I haven’t screamed recently. I’m being clear with expectations and boundaries. We are having good conversations. I’m not being good at record keeping, but Eldest Child is actually making a lot of progress on school-y stuff lately by choice.

I’m feeling realllllllllllly bad about asking people for things they then have to turn down.

But I’m a lot more scared to stop asking. This process feeds me. It makes me have more to give my kids. I am so empty. Noah fills me as much as he can (ok the sex puns here are just so bad) but he needs so much work from me…

It’s been a long ten years.

I’m happy to be where I am. I’m happy with how I spent the last ten years. I can honestly say I would not have been physically capable of doing much more work.

I am so grateful I get to work with and in front of my kids.

That’s another anxiety brain monkey: god home schooling is selfish. It’s not just selfish because I’m keeping my kids from having other opportunities and I’m limiting them to what I can offer (although that’s there). It is that I am not helping to make the system less abusive for other kids. Why aren’t I organizing the PTA to refuse homework in elementary school?

Because I’m selfish. Because that would be a hard horrible uphill losing battle and I’ve lost so many battles to this system already.

I’m selfish because I was highly trained by a public education system and instead of being the fucktastically effective teacher I am for hundreds or thousands of children I am picking two.

I borrow kids whenever their parents will let me.

I want to have impact on more kids than just mine. But I need to see to mine first. Because I’m selfish.

I had them. I made them. I made them on purpose out of pure selfishness. Because I wanted to meet them. Because I wanted to know if something that came out of me would be as intrinsically bad and horrible as I thought or if maybe I could make something good.

So far so good.

What a horrible science experiment life is.

On a regular basis people tell me they admire me because when I had children everything changed. I upended every part of my life to have a new center. I don’t think that is the “correct” way to live life. I think that is what I had to do to try and create a less broken system given where I was coming from. I made them because i wanted to have no choice but to be something different. I’m a mom now. I’m not just a mom. I’m their teacher too. The buck stops here if there is a problem. It is my fault. I can’t blame a care provider or class mate or other authority figure.

If there is a problem… it is me. I have to change me in order to change how I am modeling behaving in order to fix behavioral problems in my kids. If there is a problem I have to learn how to differently express the boundaries until the kids can understand.

One of the things that made me so effective as a teacher was the fact that I consider it the teachers failure if a student doesn’t learn something. I remember one test one time where an entire unit just… failed. Something like 80% of the kids in all periods failed this exam.

I wept and apologized. I told every period that I let them down and I am so sorry I wasted their time with such bad teaching. I am very sorry that we will have to repeat this information and still get through everything else and that is all my fault. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

Guess what? They fucking learned it after that. Not because I forced it or drilled anything. Because I found more creative ways to teach.

Teaching is about inspiring people to want to remember something you need them to know. It isn’t something that can be demanded. You can’t force people to learn. You can get people to rote memorize things… you can’t force them to learn.

Learning is about leaps and connections and being able to apply things in a cross curriculum fashion. Not being able to do a math worksheet in a given period of time. I believe in cross curriculum education.

I was told that kids need a math class to learn all the ways to solve math problems.

Pshaw. You clearly don’t have any idea how much math we use. We talk about many many many ways to solve problems. Because there is no one way to solve all problems. Given that I spent my childhood being told I was bad at math because I was at grade level (compared to my reading scores, which were off the charts high) I’m shocked at how being a maths-person is just part of the identity of this house.

We talk geometry, algebra, and make references to more complicated maths just as a matter of course. “How would you figure this out?” We talk about how to solve problems and we do arithmetic for fun. (Which is how you fucking know it isn’t at my initiation because I don’t think arithmetic is fucking fun.)

We are talking about combining fractions more and more. I gotta say… it freaks me out how easily these kids pick up concepts. I struggled with some of these into college.

It must be from Noah.

Home schooling is selfish because my kids are going to be so fucktastically weird. They will never be able to conform very well. They are going to be weird, weird fucking weird.

I like them so much.

We are all selfish in different ways. Is it ok? Is it ok to keep asking for things I’m not going to get? Asking for kinds of relationships and interactions that other people don’t want?

Getting rejected sucks. I get told “no” and “I don’t want to” a lot. That’s the downside of asking.

I HAVE NO PITY FOR PEOPLE WHO COMPLAIN THAT THEY CAN’T DATE BUT WHO NEVER EVER ASK ANYONE OUT. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH REJECTION I DEAL WITH TO GET TO BEING THIS SLUTTY?!?!?!!?!!!

Yes, it is easier for a girl to get laid. I don’t just want to get laid. I want a very specific, in high demand skill set.

Noah may think I’m all that and a bag of chips but I’ve been in this market long enough to know that I can only be so demanding with some people. He’s going to keep being shocked by how often I’m turned down and I’m going to keep nodding and saying, “Yup. That’s how it goes.”

And when people do say yes they usually say yes to what they want to say yes to which isn’t quite the same thing as what I wanted and them’s the breaks.

Can I sleep now? Should I hide eggs first? Probably. Go get phone for flashlight…

I’m still high from last night. Today I realized something kinda funny: I’m good at turning people I have sexed into friends and it is kinda hard walking back to sex from friendship.  Awkward. How do you send signals when you’ve already sent so many “don’t touch me” signals.

Oh man. Complicated.

I have this sneaky suspicion that I want something I am not going to get. That’s ok. Life is like that. Even if I don’t get what I want from this interaction I’m going to cheer like hell for you to get what you want in life. I don’t like this word “deserve” but I think that if you got what you wanted you’d be good at it.

It is weird liking people.

I’m having fun. I hope I am helping other people have fun.

I’m nervous. I’m nervous about how to keep all these balls in the air. Oh I’m having fun. I still feel full of want. It’s deeper and fuller than it was a few days ago. It isn’t as frantic. Thanks, Daddy. I needed that. It really helped.

It also helps that Noah and I have four days straight next week where we are going to do heavy sm because we can. Thank goodness for camp.

Because we want to do it. Because we haven’t seriously played in years because getting the right size and shape of spare time is hard. 

I have such an interesting time visiting the community. Many of the people who were the village elders when I was a snot nosed 18 year old are still there. Still doing what they were doing.

I feel like they look at me differently now. I was talking to Noah about this. I said it feels weird that they treat me with so much respect. He says that usually people don’t have the experience of becoming the kind of grown up their elders respect and that is why it feels so weird to me. I don’t know. I’ve never been someone else.

I feel like the people I grew up respecting now act like they look up to me and that is fucktastically weird for me. I mean… I don’t think they “look up to me”. Shit this stuff is awkward.

I’m a peer. I am no longer a snot nosed kid they mock and deride. They listen to me with respect instead of rolling their eyes. No one has denigrated my opinion in a long time.

When I start kicking the crap out of people for being rude no one even thinks to tell me I shouldn’t because it is just expected that I’m going to do whatever the fuck I’m going to do if you start it.

I don’t start shit. But if you start it I’m going to bring it.

Dominance challenges. Dick contests. Posturing.

Oh motherfucker I can do that.

But I’m told I don’t posture any more. I just lay down my resume and look at you cold because I can back my big talk up and I’m still underselling myself. Ahem.

I’m thrilled to talk loudly about what a wimp I am as everyone watching winces every time I get hit. They know that was a really fucking hard hit.

I’ve spent a lot of years not getting hit and not hitting people. But do you know what I like to do of a Thursday night? (Or really any other night of the week.)

I like to go find one of my dear friends. Because I rarely switch with the same person, as I slink up to someone fluttering my eyelashes… it’s clear what I want. Whether that is to make you cry or for you to try as hard as you can to make me cry.

I really like calling myself a wimp. I’ll say it loud and long. But people who evaluate this sort of thing with credibility tell me that I’m an incredibly heavy masochist. I’m a small woman, so I can’t take what some of the big guys can take.  (Or hell, even some of the big gals.) But I’ve done scenes where audience members had to leave to vomit from fear. Because I’m happy to play until I’m screaming and screaming and screaming and fighting to get away. I’m happy to be hit with canes and single tails until I bleed.

There’s this one guy in the scene. He told me he really wants to cut me open and solder the wounds closed. If I run into him again… I will ask if he is still interested.

Why? Because in twelve years I’ve never been able to get that out of my head.

Fuck yes I’d like to try that.

I would trust that specific man to do this for a long list of very specific reasons I’m not going to list here because hello identifying information.

Some people can’t be as out as me.

I haven’t done tile in two days. I’m so weary of doing it. My hands hurt. Breaks are good. Also: I have to wait for another delivery before I can finish the tree. I should finish the mountain and work on the other corner of the shower.

Those are the most important bits that need to be tiled. The rest is just gravy. I mean, I’m going to do the rest because I have a fuck ton of tile but I’m not going to do all the walls in both half bathrooms in tile. Too expensive. My heart is sad. Paint to the rescue. Good motherfucking thing I know how to use a paintbrush.

I’m afraid I know why I’m sorta procrastinating on tile.

I told myself that if I finished all the tile way before these twerps are done with the remodel… I’d fix some of the yucky paint in the kitchen since I’m going to be dealing with the remodeling chaos still anyway.

I’m perilously close to having to repaint the ceiling. Shit. Years ago the light fixture broke and we replaced it with something not even close to the same size and the ceiling looks like shit and it bugs me.

I want to repaint it to look like a jungle.

Because I’m me. That’s why.

I’m not committing to repainting the whole kitchen right now. That would be nuts. My arms are pissed. (Why do I type? Because I feel weirdly lonely. Even though I had a date today and good sex and I could be snuggling with my family. But my stomach hurts quite a bit so I’m smoking and… that means not with the family. So I talk to myself instead of babbling in IM because after a while I just feel… pathetic.)

I’m going to bed any minute. I hope I’ll sleep late. Tomorrow I get a massage. Yay! My arms!

Tomorrow my tasks are: massage, dispensary run, tile, negotiate with Noah about our upcoming dates, and hang out with the kids. It should be a nice day. (The dispensary run and the negotiating will happen during the window of time when the kids are with the babysitter. Obviously.)

I don’t feel lonely. That’s not fair or accurate. It’s the wrong word. I actually feel very connected, lucky, blessed, and like my life is incredible beyond measure.

But I’m hunting for something and I really don’t know what it is. What I’m doing isn’t scratching the itch yet. I think…

I think I need to stop talking before I get myself in trouble. Goodnight.