Do you know what I like about my marriage? We are the sort of people who want to schedule a 12 hour day of emotional processing and then we just do it. Hammer away at topic after topic after topic.

I haven’t been posting that much. Part of that is I feel like kind a fuckwad for how many ups and downs there have been. I understand that most relationships have ups and downs and all, but most people don’t publish them on the internet. I get to feeling self conscious and stupid.

I feel kinda bad about being a train wreck sometimes.

Things are improving a lot. I think. I don’t get to speak for Noah. We are doing a lot of bonding sorta stuff. We are talking about the nitty gritty of our insecurities. “I’m sorry I flip out when you date.” “Yeah but I do it too…”

It’s complicated.

What do we want from one another or from other people in our lives? Shit if we had an easy answer to that we wouldn’t need to spend so god damn much time talking.

Seriously, we had to get the kids out of the house so that we could talk and talk and talk without interruption. It is glorious having a Bonus Family in our lives. I gotta say. Support is fucking awesome.

Today we took turns wrecking our bodies and taking care of each other. Because it facilitates bonding in some weird ass way. When you are helpless, sick, and incapable of caring for yourself it just feels different having someone take care of you. We take care of one another all the damn time. We have an incredibly codependent relationship and we like it that way. But it’s different. If you can get up and do it for yourself… it’s a lot easier to take it for granted when someone does it for you. But if you are stuck sitting in one place as you kinda flail and you are incapable of doing for yourself…

You take care of me. I love you.

It’s complicated, yo.

We talked about M/s stuff and what it means to me. We really didn’t get that into what it means to Noah. Not really. I think that needs to move up the agenda in importance. Luckily we have another trash our bodies and talk all day event coming up soon.

These events have to go away soon. This is our last shot for years cause I don’t act like this while pregnant or nursing. I want to say and/or nursing because I know how it goes for me. Oh boy.

Anyway. We are trying to get a whole bunch of processing in before my body only kind of belongs to me. We tried doing a bunch of “set the rules and coast” ten years ago. It was mixed. I wonder how it will work this time. I made deals I could not keep. I was stupid. I was… uhm, I’ll call it optimistic to be generous with myself.

I thought I could take one for the team. Whenever it was needed. Forever. Guess what? I really fucking can’t.

But what does that mean?

Noah asked me what M/s means to me. I said it is kind of like a highly bred puppy. If the right person buys the puppy and trains them and enters them in contests… that puppy could be a shining star. That puppy could enrich the life of its owner both literally and metaphorically.

But if the puppy instead ends up in a shelter and is adopted as a random mutt… guess what? That puppy probably won’t hit its potential. I’m not saying it will be completely worthless and have nothing to offer in terms of companionship… but the animal probably won’t be as healthy. The animal will not be as comfortable or as cared for.

M/s, to me, is a way of taking responsibility for one another. It is a way of saying, “As the slave it is my job to serve you and make your life better and make us as a unit better than we can be alone. It is your job as the Master to look at me and sometimes know better than I know myself what I need to be ok and successful.”

It’s not really a fair deal, is it?

There is no fucking fair.

We are doing a lot of specifically talking about the work we do for one another. It’s a fucking long list. I used to be an asshole and say that Noah was lazy… uhm, err I haven’t thought it in years and I’ve been a terrible influence on him. At this point he probably works far past the point of healthfulness.

Dude, he showed me the scheduling program he uses to track how to be an adoring husband and how to be a devoted father (in addition to a wide variety of more selfish/not me related topics) and… I swear I got an organizational hard on. Holy shit. I’m a job.

He has taken notes for years on how to be a better partner for me. He writes down what brands and styles of things I like. He tracks what kinds of prep to do before dates (take a shower, trim beard, research activities… he lists it all).

I god damn know I’m unworthy. Holy fucking shit.

I feel kind of guilty for not having taken more notes. heh (I keep it in my head better.)

Noah knows that one of the straws that broke the camels back when I left my Owner was that after four god damn years of eating together at McDonald’s together the bastard had no idea what sauce I ate on my nuggets week after week after week. That… that showed me how little I existed in front of my Owner.

Noah has heard all of my stories and he makes damn sure I don’t have to complain about the same problem repeatedly.

Except for the things where I do. Because life is like that. Damnit.

But there are some things that are easy to fix. He can see the simple stuff and make sure he doesn’t fuck up there. Holy tomato that’s a lot of effort.

We were talking about how hard it is when the other of us falls in love. He kinda asked why I fell so hard for Deity. Oh, that’s easy. Deity managed to jump up and down on one of my big buttons in life. He talks to me and about me like he is proud of knowing me.

I’ve fucked a lot of people. Do you know how many of them announce in public that they are connected to me and they are proud of that and they think I’m just so god damn awesome. If I stretch I could definitely get off a second hand of partners. Which means I’m probably under a 10% rate.

The vast majority of people who fuck me act kind of embarrassed about it later. They don’t introduce me to their families. They don’t bring me around their friends. They don’t talk about me in public.

Even most of my friends don’t introduce me to their families. I feel like Sarah, Jenny, and Pam stand out in that arena. They are the friends who have absorbed me seriously into their families. Blacksheep has done this to a slightly less extreme degree but I get the impression that if she liked her parents more I would have been introduced. I certainly know her moms-in-law.

It’s complicated.

I feel shitty about myself a lot of the time. I steal pride from the people who love me and pretend I felt it all along. Even though I didn’t. So having people be all, “Dude, you are AWESOME” is a completely self absorbed reason for loving them. They see me as lovable and that makes me love them.

I’m not sure if it is pathetic or just kinda normal.

I don’t want to make it sound like no one else has introduced me to their families. That’s hyperbole. It’s… there is a difference between, “Here is my buddy. You’ll probably never see them again” and “This is MY Krissy. You will be nice to her. She’s mine. I’m keeping her.”

I get that sometimes. I am that fucking lucky sometimes.

Pam treats me that way. Sarah treats me like that. I’ve known Jenny’s family so long that… if I’m around for family events I do feel invited even if I’m kinda sorta inviting myself. The trouble is physical proximity not emotional distance.

Noah didn’t have a great relationship with his family before me but when his family acted like I was to be shunned he ditched them and kept me. It’s a big deal.

As we look at having more children and we talk about why we want it so much and why our kids blow our minds… Our children don’t have that hollow, brittle, breakable feeling that people like us have. Noah and I both act like we are empty inside and we desperately need to chase love in order to be accepted. We manifest this drive differently but it is a very similar motivation.

Our kids don’t have that. Our kids glow with feeling loved and accepted.

I’ve been trying hard to reach out to adults who might be able to help me understand Youngest Child’s journey better. I need to write a whole separate post about this process, but in very short I’ll say: I’m hearing from a lot of different people that the fact that I want to help and I want to accept my kid however they feel they are… that’s going to make the difference.

I really and truly hope they are right. I’m trying so fucking hard to provide support. I want my kid to feel like whatever they needed, I found a god damn way to provide. I mean… I’m going to not do everything right. They will hurt and fail sometimes.

I recently read a thing. I feel bad about plagiarizing but I seriously can’t remember where I read it. It talked about how someone was reading The Little House on the Prairie and Laura Ingalls wasn’t traumatized by her life it was Just Something That Happened. It made me think about a thing.

People aren’t traumatized by bad things happening to them. It is bad things happening when they really should’t that traumatizes people.

That is complicated. There is a difference between everyone everyone starving because there isn’t food that is different from sexual assault. My whole life will be colored by that sexual assault shit. But why? When will it stop mattering? When it stops impacting how I interact with other people and it really still does.

I was talking to Noah about religion. I won’t tell his story because that is his to tell, but I keep coming back to how humanity is my religion. Not individuals. People. As a whole. I work and I try and I grow because I want to be better for people as a whole. I want to do better for you. I want to help all of us. From some person I’ve never met in Maine (I recently met a lovely Mainer for the first time) to people in Africa and Australia. It doesn’t matter to me that your life isn’t about me. I want to be better for you when I meet you someday because maybe I will. I do like to travel.

Do you know what I really suck at? Understanding that everyone has individual temperature comfort ranges. But anyway.

I should stop typing but I’ve missed you, internet. Thank you for being here. Thank you for giving me a place to feel like I get to exist even as fucktastically weird as I am.

We are made entirely of flaws stitched together with bad intentions. (And I didn’t make that phrase up either.) I meant good intentions. Now there is a slip…