Well, I’m going to be typing this puppy slowly with my left hand. My right arm isn’t working well. Elbow says fuck the whole world. Tens unit now, ice soon. Then bath.

Why do I do the things I do? It’s complicated. Which things? Which time?

I don’t want to be in pain any more.

I think that right there is the root of a lot of my suicidal ideation and impulses. I want to stop being in pain and my experience of being alive is that there is no end to pain.

I enjoyed the party more than I thought I would. Noah observed that we had a really high cancellation/flake rate (those are different actions: thank you to people who cancel, I know that shit happens) but we probably ended up with about the right number of kids.

The family with teenagers showed up about half an hour late and that was kind of perfect. Her big kids found all the remaining eggs (to the best of my ability to determine). I wanted to stagger the start time anyway.

I had several really pleasant interactions with children of friends who hadn’t previously warmed to me. That was nice.

My smile wasn’t fake all day. I did feel joy. I just also hurt really really really badly. Articles like this neatly encapsulate part of why it doesn’t feel safe to be honest about how my body is doing. I am abusing people.

I am a monster no matter what I do.

What is a monster?

There is a minister in San Francisco I need to find a way to have a chat with. She gave an excellent presentation on monsters and I’d really like to talk to her in more depth. I should look her up. I bet she’s open to that kind of thing sometimes. It is part of her profession.

I’m drinking tea and eating the last of the pecan pie Noah made for our friend’s birthday. He found a recipe with no corn syrup for me because he loves me.

Noah does so so so so so so much because he loves me. That is a man who is motivated by love.

What am I motivated by?

I want to be in less pain.

The new research on addiction stuff shows… duh duh duh… the problem is connection.

Is connection the answer to my pain?

This is complicated. I have some interesting books on neuroplasticity after trauma I’m rereading. I’ve read them before. I’ll probably read them more times after this time. I can’t recite the shit in my sleep yet.

I absorb it in layers as I am at different developmental plateaus. I can see (with the awesomeness of hindsight and obsessive documentation) how I understand things differently over time.

I do change. I do grow.

Do I feel less pain?

What an interesting question.

Setting up for parties is enormously stressful. I often kinda melt down. I spent a lot of time beating my head on concrete in between setting up for my 30th birthday party, where I later did ecstasy with friends and spent most of the party on the couch having panic attack because I couldn’t believe that anyone actually liked me.

I don’t much like being in my body.

Or my brain. I would even deal with the body if I could just get a shiny new brain.

Noah tells me that what he is researching is interesting to him because of the emphasis around getting to exist without shame.

I wouldn’t know what it was like to not feel shame. I wouldn’t know what it was like to feel comfortable. I wouldn’t know what it was like to not feel pain.

Let me put that more plainly: I have always felt ashamed. I have always felt uncomfortable. I have always felt pain.

It moves around. Sometimes it is more emotional. Sometimes it is more mental. How do I distinguish? There is a difference between crying and being unable to remember numbers during math.

There were extensive periods of my childhood where I was literally incapable of remembering a series of digits. So clearly I was stupid.

I went to 25 schools. No teacher saw me for very long. How I presented in the first two days decided how I was treated and it went well and it went very very very poorly.

Some teachers recommended that I be tested for special ed because clearly I was retarded. Some teachers recommended that I be tested for GATE because clearly I was a genius.

More than one thing can be true.

And I’m 35 fucking years old and I still think about this and cry. Because I don’t know what I am. Because I can’t narrow it down. I’m too retarded to belong with the smart people. I’m too “high functioning” to need more services than basic therapy to help make sure I don’t end up the kind of person who climbs to the top of a bell tower with a gun. Cheers.

That’s not entirely true either. They’ve tried lots of meds. I’m told that at around a dozen I’ve barely seen the tip of the ice burg and I should keep trying! There is a wonder med out there for me! And in the process I need to lose more months of my life to feeling so bad I want to die and be told that the correct response to the medical community giving me drugs that make me want to die is to put myself inpatient so they can give me more drugs and cut me off from the only community and the only positive connection I’ve ever had.

Tell me more about how you have my best interests at heart.

In the state of California’s mind the fact that I reached adulthood passionately convinced I should never own a gun is a win. Cheers. Therapy Worked. Patient Is Cleared For Society.

Everyone is biased. Everyone is wrong. But I have to walk around feeling the effects of the wrong decisions that happen in my body, not you.

Don’t act like there are equal stakes here when you are trying to avoid a malpractice lawsuit for not following the letter of the rules exactly the same for each patient.

I mean, I get it. I think it’s totally appropriate to have that stance. But I need to act like how I feel is more important than going through a process.

Is the result the point or is the process the point?

It matters.

I learned that lesson very well as a slave. There were times when shortcuts were absolutely the right decision. Save a dime or save time and it was a good plan. There were times when shortcuts resulted in severe punishment. I had a couple of doozies.

I remember when my mom met my Owner. She looked at him and she leaned over to me and whispers. “You do what he says? Really? Why?”

Yeah. I know.

But I did. I took my punishments and I learned which processes to god damn follow. He had been in the military and there were some things where the process was the entire point. Oh. Ok. Sure. Whatever.

That was a man with good boundaries. I’ll say that for him. He told you what he wanted to give in a relationship and what he wanted to get and he didn’t really move from where he started.

I’m not like that. I change.

And then I change again.

And then I change again.

Poor Noah.

Well, I’m in a lot more physical pain than I used to be in… But I don’t think I’m in as much emotional pain as I was. I know that I still write about the ups and downs and they still sound extreme… but I have a lot of intrusive memories interacting with my kids. Yay PTSD is fun. I mean, they are present in one of the back channels of my mind.

My child is about to turn nine. When I was about to turn nine… oh god. It wasn’t good, yo. Not typing that shit today.

My child is leaning close on turning seven. When I look at my sweet, emotional, sensitive, nobody-loves-me-everybody-hates-me-I-guess-I’ll-go-eat-worms child I think “And this is with people telling you all day long that we love you and being patient with your shit. Wow. No wonder I completely flipped out.”

If my Eldest Child shows me a picture of what I wish I could have been like if everything were perfect? Well… I think my Youngest Child shows me a more realistic picture of what I could have been like under best case scenario. That baby needs a lot of love and approval and building up. There’s a leaky hole in them. They struggle to know they are as wanted and loved.

And that’s with drowning the kid in affection since birth. I mean good grief.

I have one child who pluckily declares that her parents almost never get mad unless they have a very good reason and another who is afraid that they aren’t as good as everyone around them. Oh baby. How did we do this?

It’s a stage. I know. Deep breath. Keep doing what you’re doing. Everyone has moments of self doubt. Everyone has times when they feel like they aren’t enough. But you are all you are. Keep working on learning new skills and learning new facts and learning new processes and you’ll figure out what you need to know for life.

Life means so many different things to so many different people. And every single way is right.

Well, if it isn’t right that isn’t because it isn’t the same as what other people do. Maybe folks are doing something what is wrong for them and they ought change that. But that doesn’t mean they need to conform to being just like another person.

That’s never the way.

Do I actually want to die? Or do I just want to be in less pain?

That’s kinda an important question when you are talking about a permanent solution, no?

Or at least people keep telling me.

When I think about many more years with Noah, I want to smile. I will tell Noah that I want a falling star and he will say, “Do you have one in particular in mind or will any one do?”

I’m going to sit in my bath tub and think about how I can be in less pain.