Part of the reason I don’t like to write more in times of lots of extreme ups and downs is because I feel stupid. There have been up moments. I feel like maybe there are more positive moments than terrible moments over the past few days. Things are leveling off.

I feel like we are getting closer to an agreement we can live with. It isn’t perfect on either side (compromise isn’t a dirty word) but it is something we can live with. Perfect for Noah might involve a much longer leash than I can cope with. Perfect for me might involve a whole lot more patience with my shenanigans.

You give what you can give.

I still like being married to him. I’m still happy that I get to talk to him and fuck him and have him tell me that we will figure it out.

Don’t compare partners. But only one person carries me. I notice that. I do compare that. I honestly believe I would have to be a fucking moron to not weigh that more heavily.

That doesn’t justify being mean to anyone else or taking them for granted or using them and discarding them. But I do compare what kind of support I get because I need to make sure I get enough support.

I have to.

Am I selfish? Yes. Is that ok? I don’t know. Noah thinks that banging me is worth the price of admission. It is high.

Tonight we have the penultimate conversation. One of the least scary ones. I am sad that I didn’t manage to get all the people in this month. One of them I will talk to in June because sweet sunny french fries I couldn’t see more people this month. I feel like I’m about to collapse. And I have a cold.

We are getting closer and closer to understanding kinda what we want. Maybe. Uhm, lots of group sex. Because group sex is awesome. Ok, it has obnoxious dynamics to deal with (what sex doesn’t) but I can adapt.

It isn’t that our sex life is inadequate, not really. We have fucked 31 times so far this month and I’m so chafed that sitting down is… uncomfortable. It isn’t that we can’t fuck each other enough.

We went to an open relationship discussion group recently, because I like talking about this stuff. It was fascinating how bad I felt. “Not poly. Slutty.” No. I don’t want to devote every Thursday to you. Even if you are spiffy.

My life is too full.

I would have to cut a few full branches off the tree of my friendships. In order to make room for new growth. Who do I cull? Not you. Not you. Not you. Not you.

Shit.

I rant and rave about how there is no such thing as “deserve” in life. But I think maybe to some degree I have earned the relationships I have. I don’t want to cull any of them. I’ve worked so hard. But choosing to not devote more intense energy to individuals is a choice. I’m scared of putting all my eggs in one basket.

I have poured so much into Noah. Narrowing my other support seems… questionable.

I’m trying to feel more connected but it is hard. I’m having trouble feeling grounded. I feel floaty. I feel disconnected and distant. Cutting does that. I’m way more calm though!

I learned something interesting: I can do much more extensive cutting on my thighs with no marking than can happen on my breasts. Noah marked my breasts, just a little, and those marks are much darker and more apparent than the pretty serious cutting I did on my thigh. Skin is fascinating.

Today I should pack for the grief ritual. Sarah picks me up at 1pm tomorrow. Tomorrow is Noah’s last day of work. Hurrah. Let me run away from home. I’m gonna cry. Doesn’t this just seem like a good time to take all the grief and pain and scream about it? Hell yeah.

Don’t hurt yourself.

I will try to stop.

Do you know what the worst form of self harm I’ve done lately is? Breaking agreements. The cutting on my leg isn’t that big of a deal. Not really. Not in the scheme of things. I broke agreements I made. That hurts me. Noah is going to keep talking about how he knows he needs to get over it… and it’s going to be long term damage. Because I hurt my home. I did that.

I’m mad at him for all the things he has done. But most of what he has done is to not do. I do the bad shit. I break things. I blow things up. I say, “I can’t follow rules right now.”

I don’t know what rules I can follow but not those anymore. They don’t work now. Well, I have a better idea of where we are going. We start writing soon.

And by burn I mean bridges.

Ok I need to type. I haz feelings. I’ve been pretty quiet about them and that sucks for me. It sucks in a lot of ways. In order to compartmentalize my extreme disordered thoughts when I’m not typing them out I have to do a lot of depersonalization. I feel like less than a person. I feel hollow. I don’t feel fleshed out. It isn’t exactly the same thing as dissociating but it is related.

I have offended one person and I didn’t offend that person so much they want to banish me from their life they just don’t want to be that close to my sex life. Totally reasonable.

My sex life is a chaotic place. You need to be ok with ups and downs and extreme changes in emotion or…. we just can’t have sex as part of an ongoing relationship. Because that happens to me. I have big feelings.

I was honest with the psych nurse yesterday. (I have two new scripts. Klonopin (a longer acting sleeping pill like Lorazepam to deal with the early wake ups) and Abilify.) She asked if I had any suicidal urges on the Gabapentin. I said no but my self harming urges went through the roof. She asked what that means.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and said, “Ok I’m not going to lie I cut last week.”

“Ok, where? How deep?”

“On my thigh. It’s not deep. It really isn’t dangerous.”

Then I went into my medical schpeal about avoiding tendons and arteries and she asked me how I insure cleanliness and I told her I use disposable scalpels to avoid infection risk and…

When I was done she blinked and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever worked with someone who is as serious about mitigating the harm that they are doing. Uhm, well done.”

That was funny.

You are harming yourself and you know it. But you are doing it so you don’t do what might be worse harm in another place. As you harm yourself you are following elaborate safety precautions. Oh. Well. Uhm. Ok.

When was the last time you cut? Almost five years ago. Let’s talk about the similarities there.

In  both situations I felt like I had mountain sized emotions that other people were not ok with dealing with and I had to make them go away. Now. Stop on a dime. It doesn’t matter how you feel it matters how you act.

That’s hard. I don’t know another way to do it. When I feel absolutely in a trap and I have to make my hysteria go away now… I don’t know another way to do it. I really don’t.

Why did I feel like it this time? Because I was going to flip out in front of the kids and I’m not ok with that. I’m way ok with flipping out where they can’t see me. I wasn’t going to be able to hold it together in front of them on that day and that… that isn’t ok.

Shove that shit in a box, bitch.

I can’t freak out at my kids. I just can’t. Not when I’m upset about things in my sex life. That’s not ok. Hold it together. But does cutting count as holding it together? Well, my kids haven’t seen the marks and they haven’t had to deal with my extreme behavior either. I’m not sure if that is good enough but it is what I had to give last week.

I put myself in situations where BIG FEELINGS are unavoidable. Then I struggle to deal with the repercussions. My feelings cause other people to have feelings. Situations cause other people to have feelings. Then the feelings must be dealt with.

Thank all the stars in the heavy for easy going, slutty folk. Y’all are the best. You are ok with doing what you are doing and on the good days I show up and fuck you and on the rest of the days you don’t get mad at me for my inadequacy at being consistently up.

Noah and I are… a lot of the way through negotiating. It still hurts. Why does it hurt? Because neither of us like it that either of us will ever do anything but look at one another. We both want that from one another. LOOK AT ME.

So how do we share that? How do we share this intense possessiveness we both feel? I don’t know. But we are going to find out. When it goes well it goes so freakin well. When we both feel safe and loved and like we are getting what we need we have a lot to share and we aren’t selfish and we aren’t stingy.

But how do we get to the point of feeling safe and loved? That’s the hard bit.

We go through phases of feeling that way. I know that I complained about how only other people make Noah glow and that’s not true. I see him glow with me too. It just only happens on days when I spend a lot of time adoring him and that shit takes work.

I need to do more of that work. I like the results.

Sigh.

What is it that we really want? I want to speak in we. Maybe that’s bad.

I want enmeshment. I want intensity. I want attention. I want to be a separate self and I want to not have much of me that is outside of our relationship. I want sex like this month to be most months of the year. I want to feel special.

I hate that I have absolutely no idea what could cause me to feel special. I don’t. Even though Noah has spent ten years doing his best to cause me to feel special… I don’t.

That seems so unfair. It means there is nothing I can ask him to do to make me feel special. Clearly it isn’t going to come from him if we have utterly failed so far.

I don’t know and it really sucks.

I want time spent. I want conversation. I want perversion and tenderness. Time. Time. Time. Time. I want your time. I want to crawl inside you so that you carry me around in a Joey pocket and I never have to miss a minute with you. Ok, maybe I’ll crawl out and leave you alone when you are pooping. Because oh my god. But the rest of the time I’m happy to be with you.

I don’t need you to garden. But it’s nice when you decide to come sit in the shade near I’m working so you can talk to me.

I don’t need to program. But I like sitting near you when you are doing so.

I don’t like doing the cooking. But I like when we work together and I do all the other stage setting parts of making a meal and getting drinks so that things just feel more put together when we sit down to eat the wonderful mea you have made.

I like grocery shopping with you and exercising with you and meditating with you. I like that you, alone in the whole world, are happy to try that hard to learn how to be happy so you can teach me how to be happy.

Thank you. That is a gift I cannot repay.

I see you. I see the vulnerability and sadness that comes from feeling like there isn’t a thing about you that is lovable. You do deserve love. You didn’t believe you deserved it when I told your mom she wasn’t allowed to come after the motorcycle accident and we took care of you because we loved you and you don’t believe it now when I do my very best to show you that you are important every single day.

Yeah, I’m all in.

Yes, this sexing other people thing is going to be hard. But it’s also so much fun. It takes energy from both of us to share. It’s hard. We don’t love it. Neither of us like sharing our toys very much. But we do actually both like the results. We do like the increased skill base and knowledge and repertoire. We like the glowing and the extra energy.

Even when I want to scratch your face off. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

IF ONLY I COULD STOP LIKING THE BENEFITS OF NONMONOGAMY.

Uhm, I need to go water the back yard before taking Eldest Child on the school tour. Fudge.

If only I were less slutty this would all be less complicated. I would say there are seven people who are being actively being impacted in an ongoing way with our nonmonogamy. We have talked to 3.2 of them. (I started a conversation and it didn’t get finished and it has a long way to go.) 2 are scheduled for next week. I have a date on the books with the person I started to talk to and didn’t get to finish. I need to book one more person over.

I definitely started off with some of the most easy going folks.

Let me say, as someone who is not easy going dealing with people who are is such a treat. Wow. You make life so pleasant. Thank you for that.

I am… not going to write today about how the chats went. Complicated. Layers of reasons. Suffice to say: yes I was blushing. I still can’t believe I’m saying some of this shit out loud. Doing it is easier than talking about it.

I really have no idea how my life will look at the end of the year.

I am feeling overwhelmed at having this many people who are like, “Ok on bad days call and ask for…”

But… you don’t understand. People find out about the bad days from my blog. Otherwise they are invisible. I don’t ask for help. I don’t communicate my needs in a non-passive-aggressive-just-for-documentation-sort-of-way.

Why?

Because being direct about my needs mostly hasn’t gone well so that’s a habit I just dropped. It’s complicated.

The more I need/want something the harder it is for me to say out loud that I want it.

I’m fucking obnoxious. But when I was a kid revealing a strong need or want was a way to get targeted for having it. I know I need to get over my childhood. I’m working on it. It comes in layers. I’m not done with this layer yet.

I remain grateful to the tips of my toes for Noah. The only person who never ever makes comments about how I write too much. He’s glad I give him so much of a window into my head. It overwhelms other people.

Hey, you are allowed to opt out any time you need to. You don’t need to give me an elaborate explanation. You don’t need to tell me, “You just write too much.”

No. I don’t. I write how much I need to. Maybe it is too much for you to handle reading given the constraints of your life and your reading speed, and that’s ok, but it doesn’t mean I write too much.

Ahem.

I’ve spent a lot of the last few days meditating on the idea of being the “biggest bitch” and what that means to people. Over my life time I have repeatedly been told that I am the biggest bitch. By men and women. I’m evaluated with other negative words too of course, but biggest bitch has come up more than once so I’m thinking on it.

I think about what it means to want things and want relationships and demand that your boundaries matter.

I think about what it means that some people desperately want me to get better at asking for things and being at least a little demanding and then there is everyone else who wants me to shut the fuck up.

Life is like that for everyone, I think.

I’m thinking a lot about what I want the shape of my life to look like. I’m thinking about the people I want in my life. I’m trying to figure out why I want the things I want. The reasons are changing as I went from having an amorphous “I waaaaaaaaaaant” to “I want _______.” Those are different.

Why do I want you? I could list reasons why, if you were curious. Why are you worth the trouble? I can tell you. I think about it. There are reasons or I wouldn’t bother. As has been pointed out with a chuckle more than once lately I do have a very full life.

If I’m trying really hard to pull you into it… it’s not out of pity. It’s not out of obligation or meh.

I want you.

You get to decide how you feel about your end of that. I don’t get to tell you how to feel. I want you to like you as much as I like you. Then maybe I can learn to like me as much as you like me.

Yesterday didn’t quite go according to plan. Things were just… not lined up. And when we went dancing it turns out we should have checked the calendar. I’m not a line dancing kinda girl. I have flashbacks of junior high PE and it isn’t real fun for Noah either. If he has a limited willingness to dance… I’m not fucking spending it on line dancing.

So instead we were in bed at nine. I got about six hours of sleep in my first sleep. That’s way better than four. We decided it was smarter to try and get more sleep before the camping trip rather than try to be fun last night. Smart choice.

(Deity–my hands were wet from washing dishes. Nothing more fun than that.)

From 3:30pm-5:45pm I was driving to and from Oakland. Oh that tried my patience. The trip home was actually wicked fast. Took 45 minutes in traffic. That’s quick. The trip up took an hour and a half. Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

That was my nap time.

I’m looking forward to every part of today. My submissive and Cupid will be at this party. Noah and I have some fun talking to do. At least some of the folks Noah plays with will be here. So much talking to do.

No puking, Krissy. It’s just talk. Everyone here is friendly and amenable to negotiating. No one has a long list of “YOU MUST DO THIS OR I DON’T WANT TO KNOW YOU”. It’s ok.

It’s going to be ok.

Hell, it’s going to be fun.

Chill the motherfuck out.

I hate this anxious feeling. Like a whining dog cringing. I feel like I should crumble into a little ball. Who am I to ask for so much. Who am I to feel entitled to dictate terms like this.

I think… when it really all boils down… it comes down to… who am I to set boundaries? I accept boundaries. I run into them. I don’t set them.

How god damn audacious. Who do you think you are.

It’s not even a question. A statement of incredulity. Uppity bitch. Shut up.

My driveway has been buried under palates that need to go to the dump for a while. My neighbor came over and said, “So it’s time for me to start collecting the garbage again? Which things should I leave?” That’s a kind of… assumption that I can live with. Thank you. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get rid of them. Awesome. Maybe we can park on our driveway this year.

The evaluator came yesterday and took test cuts of the roof. It was constructed entirely incorrectly and can’t be insulated correctly, the roofing material couldn’t possibly be attached securely as is, and large swatches were done in ways that will fail super soon.

In other words: I wasn’t paranoid. I was right.

Arbitration is going to be fun. But I’m going to get a whole bunch of money back. I hope. I was told that anyone who ever goes up against me in court will end up sorry. How far should I test that fortune telling? It was funny how his eyes bugged out when he said that. “When it comes to money and going to court…. anyone who goes against you will be sorry. You will win and win and win.”

So my birth chart has something going for it.

There is a part of me that has always wanted to test that prediction more. Because I know that I will end up in court over incest research someday. I’d like to trust my magic feather a little more. Be a little more certain before I get there. Part of winning in court is knowing how.

Step one: develop good relationship with a lawyer.

Check.

Step two: line up experts with evidence to prove you are right.

Check.

Next!

Gosh. Pieces of this are almost fun. In a spiteful don’t fuck with me sorta way.

You fucked with my home.

Turns out having a friend visit for a weekend is going to sit heavy on me. I give Noah a lot of credit for my life. I wouldn’t be where I am without him.

She has different views. I mean, yeah… she knows I would be in a different place. She thinks I would have found a way to do the important bits without him.

I wish I had so much confidence in myself.

It’s nice having people come visit so they can be your externalized self-confidence. “You are under rating yourself and let me tell you how. In great detail.” Thank you my friend.

We also had a fantastic conversation about poverty, being white, white trash, and multi-cultural environments. That was just a weekend of talk-talk-talking.

Hey wanna come hang out at Krissy’s House of Cheerful Conversation?!

I feel bad about the degree to which my ability to be fun/nice with guests is tied to how medicated I am. If I sound pissy and frustrated… it probably isn’t you. It is probably that my entire body hurts and I can’t eat when I’m sober and that feels awful and I haven’t slept right in a long long time. I had a good 40 days there for a while. Then my Lorazepam was cut because she’s worried.

Sigh.

This is why I stay so stoned. But I feel embarrassed getting this stoned in front of people. I use a lot of pot to be as functional as I am around the house. So if I have to drive before I see people…

People think I’m pissy with them or offended or…

No. I’m just operating near my physical limits and the strain shows. I’m sorry. I try to be careful with my tone but it gets away from me.

I’ve been driving too much.

I am really excited about the changes that are going to happen around here starting June 1st. Noah has a new job. He will be working from home. I… don’t want to say much more about why this is super exciting until he does so more publicly.

But I’ve always wanted him to work from home. He finally is doing so. I’m really happy about this. He is too. He hates working in offices. Dealing with that many people all day drains him and makes him really unhappy.

Commute time can become exercise time.

Cooking will be easier.

I am so excited.

Once the mosaics are off the floor the garage is going to change again. I love my garage. I like how many different uses it has had over time. This incarnation is going to be fun too.

Part of the fun? The garage is way more sound proofed than our bedroom. I’m going to be putting a lock on the door. We might actually do a little play out here when the babysitter has the kids. Nothing loud or messy or complicated. But if I squeak a few times no one will hear. That’s not true in our bedroom. And all the furniture is additional sound dampening.

Excellent.

The other thing about dating and going to parties right now? I uhhh really want to stop spending money for a bit. We are going to need a serious cut back for a bit. Between the remodel and the cruise…. we are tapped out. The flow is maxed out right now. And then some. I’m going to have to dig out of a hole. It was a planned hole. But… it got bigger. And the road trip was more than I hoped it would be. Because I was in so much pain I was in hotels a lot more than I wanted to be.

So. Something has to give. I know how to lock down. I can do it. Uhm… any… day… now…

Sigh.

But there’s a lot of fluff in our budget right now and some of that has to get trimmed for a few months.

I HATE BEING A GROWN UP. FUCK RESPONSIBILITY.

“But volunteer!” No. I’m cranky and in pain. I work all the fucking time. When I go somewhere I don’t go to fucking work for them too.

Not right now.

I’ll figure something out.

I didn’t go out to eat for lunch yesterday even though I kinda wanted to.

I’m not sure I’m handling sibling stuff that well right now. (For another abrupt topic shift.) Eldest Child is… starting to want to separate more and that’s fair and reasonable but it is happening in shitty ways.

I kinda react like a viper. There is this one mom I know from homeschooling. She’s intense. She does not let her kids abandon one another at the park. Play together. Find a game that works for everyone. Compromise. There is no “But that’s for babies” in her house. PERIOD.

I don’t agree with every aspect of everything about parenting with her and that’s totally cool but I seriously pattern off of her with the sibling stuff. But I’m not sure I’m doing it right.

I know it is kinda part guilt tripping. I have mixed feelings about that.

I tell Eldest Child, “You know what, you can be mean to your sibling because it wins you points. That’s a choice you can make. You can be funny and spiteful. But you’ll pay for it. Have you ever heard me say a nice thing about my big sister? Do I see her? Would I help her if I passed her and she was stranded on the side of the road? No. Go ahead. Keep being nasty to your sibling.”

Eldest Child is ready to leave baby things behind and she’s out of patience. Youngest Child is not ready to give up on being a baby and is regressing in obnoxious ways all over the place. I want to jump up and down and scream, “I THREW MY FUCKING BACK OUT CARRYING BOTH OF YOU WHEN YOU WERE IN THIS GOD DAMN PHASE SO STOP BEING SO FUCKING IMPATIENT WITH YOUR SIBLING.”

Clearly this is triggering.

I can’t carry Youngest Child basically at all any more. I feel sad. I have destroyed my back carrying kids. I have to stop.

I don’t regret it. I am so happy I kept them close to my body as long as they wanted. Well, YC would still like it… So we have been sitting and snuggling a lot more.

I’m having really big feelings of inadequacy lately around managing some of these transitions. It has occurred to me to wonder how much hunting is tied to the fact that very little inside my house leaves me feeling adequate. I’m always a day late and a dollar short. I feel like I never get it done. I’m never good enough. Because it is so unrelenting. I have to pace myself. So I’m always always always robbing Peter to pay Paul.

So Noah and I are going to sit down and talk life priorities. And scheduling. And… we’ll have to just not deviate for a bit.

I need to stop driving so much. It creeped back in. We need a more set schedule for sleep. We have to let our bodies heal. We need exercise. I’m running out of time in which to set the patterns for my body that will let me get fast enough to potentially keep myself safe given the shit I want to do with my later life.

I need to stop fucking around. I’m in ok shape. But I have to work on speed. Shit.

And if Eldest Child is less certain about school than she thought… well… that means I need to get my shit together. She needs more structure from me next year. I can do that. Yes ma’am. You want more structure… but not timed reading tests and standardized tests and timed math tests and someone standing over you sighing as you work.

God I get it.

I can help you with that. No trouble. I can build a schedule for that. I love building schedules. It is going to be interesting having Noah and Eldest Child on more set work schedules while Youngest Child still really isn’t so I have to have a weird hybrid bounce in and out of structure/free time.

Oh this is going to be the best adventure yet. I’m so excited.

Oh Noah. This is what we’ve always wanted.

We will make this work. Period. This will be glorious. Occasionally obnoxious. But I think this is going to be good. You have noise canceling headphones, yes? If not–we are buying really nice ones.

This morning I get to spend some time with a roof evaluator looking at my house. Weeeee. Then I get acupuncture. Then I run around and collect supplies for camping. Then babysitting ends and I take the kids to Oakland. Then I come home and take a nap. Then Noah asked to take me dancing! He turned down an invitation to a different kind of event to take me dancing.

He says he feels bad that he’s never offered in ten years. *Sniff* We dance at weddings. Dat’s it. And he says he feels bad about that because his issues with dancing weren’t about me and I’m lots of fun to dance with.

I am not a well established part of the dance community who will sneer about how you aren’t a very good dancer. I’m not polished. I’m not perfect. I fuck up constantly when I dance and my reaction is to laugh and laugh and laugh. I’m there to move around and have fun. I’m not that picky.

If someone comments on my footwork being messy I turn around and wiggle my butt at them. I am not there for stage performance quality dancing.

I do not aspire to being here for your entertainment, motherfucker.

I hope he will have fun. I know I will. We are going to the Saddlerack which will be entertaining.

Then in the morning we will finish the last bits of packing and drive down to Santa Cruz early for some time at Kiva before the camp event. Given how my back feels… let’s do some relaxing before I camp. Goodness.

Spasms suck. But it is that kinda week.

We will have a nice lunch in Santa Cruz too. We will talk and talk and talk. God I love talking to him. That’s what kid free weekends are for us: let’s alternate talking and sex. The whole time. We’ll barely sleep.

Why would we want to do anything else?

We will talk a lot more about the structure of this nonmonogamy stuff. Maybe start writing more down.

I gotta say, his current entrenched position is much less threatening than the position he has held for many years. This is progress.

I’m looking forward to camping. I’m looking forward to the easiest conversation of all happening this weekend so a little bit of the poison in my belly will dissipate.

I’m scared of one conversation in particular. That one is freaking me the fuck out. Why am I so afraid of that one. It’s the only one where I’m afraid of punishment or negative response. I think everyone else will be fairly close to “Oh. Ok. So that’s what you’re doing.” This one person… I’m afraid I am going to hurt them a lot.

I feel so bad.

No way out but through.

I don’t feel like Noah and I understand the shape of this yet. Not fully. I’m still scared of that.

The good news really does change a lot of stuff. Holy shit.