I find it funny how when I am pregnant I am aware of cognitive load in a way I’m not really at other times. It’s similar to how marathon training taught me what hungry felt like. Before that I didn’t have much connection with the signals in my body. I eat because it is time to eat or because I’m being a vicious nasty person.

In general I don’t think about how much interacting with people is a cognitive load to carry. I think about math being a cognitive load. I think about art as being cognitive load. Reading varies depending on material but it can be draining to the point of doom. I read intense, complicated subjects. My brain has to dance backwards wearing ballet boots to keep up with that shit.

But I don’t think about conversations as being cognitive load most of the time. Mostly conversations are the wind beneath my skipping feet. They give me lift and energy and movement. I love conversations.

Fuck. Right now thinking is sooooooooooooo haaaaaaaaaard. I feel like I’m being even more gauche than usual. I’m definitely not listening as well as usual. My brain gets over loaded and I can feel a flinch reflex and then I start blurting out something that is easier for my brain to process so I don’t have to hear more. I know it is an asshole move. I’m trying to keep it under control. I’m only sorta succeeding.

I am feeling incredibly blessed by all the conversations I’m having lately. But I feel like I have a permanent hangover. Thinking is harder by the day.

We have two days with nothing scheduled during the next 22 days. I’m a little nervous. Mostly that’s medical appointments and exercise classes. But shit, dude.

Moving to the woods where this shit isn’t possible sounds sooo awesome.

But I’ll Skype like a mofo. Just you watch me.

Skype is making talking to the people I like so much better. I’m typing less to IM. I get to have the joy of seeing facial expressions. Video chat is magic.

I talk a lot of shit about technology. I talk a lot of shit about expensive toys. I understand that we have the good, positive, life changing things we have because of the bullshit. But I still want to bitch about bullshit.

I’m an asshole like that.

Noah pointed something out, about how I’m an asshole. It’s an important thing for me to think about more than once and the public humiliation of writing it here will help sear it on my brain so I don’t slide on this issue again.

Noah points out that I’ve spent a lot of our marriage talking harshly about how I really don’t care about the emotions of white men. So if I feel like I don’t know how he has felt for the last few years… how much of that was him protecting himself from my nastiness?

I am such a fucking bitch.

(He didn’t say the bitch part. He doesn’t talk to me like that. Ever. Even when I was a cheating fucking hag.)

I need to work on giving Noah space for his feelings in our relationship. I have made an unsafe container for him and that’s not ok. I didn’t do it on purpose, but I did it. Maybe part of the reason he feels so boring to me is because I have made it unsafe for him to share the parts of himself that I find most interesting. What a way to set us up to fail.

Yeah. I did that. And I need to fix it.

I have done that bullshit thing in myself where “I’m not as bad as ______ so I’m fine.”

No. It’s not fine to make it unsafe for my husband to express feelings. That’s not fine.

I don’t ever get to decide in my head that I’m not a bully or I’m a good person. I will keep uncovering these fuck ups until I die.

I pray that my children will be better people than me.

I cannot make it unsafe for my son to have feelings.

I don’t know that Lightening is a boy. I was just given a bunch of cute femme baby clothes to go with the cute femme toddler clothes I still have. So whatever genitalia this kid comes out with… they may end up in a lot of dresses because that’s how the cookie crumbles.

But I’m kinda poisonous in how I talk about white men. I’ve got some big nasty feelings. And my kids haven’t done anything to me. They don’t deserve that. The vast majority of white men haven’t done anything to me. But you mighta done something to someone else and I don’t fucking trust you.

That’s complicated.

Noah has done something to someone else. I know because she told me and he corroborated. They have different points of view, of course. But yeah. That happened.

Noah picked some horribly bad timing for a scene I stupidly agreed to have no safeword and to allow it to be sprung on me at any time. Yeah. That was…. a big deal.

And I think I hold a grudge. I think I use these things in my head as reason to be on my guard and kinda mean and to make sure I don’t look like a good victim ever again.

I plan to live with this man until he or I die. I begin to understand my aunt and uncle’s marriage. Things got bad. For better or worse. Who says you get better, bitch.

But Noah…

Noah has earned forgiveness. He has earned the right for a genuine fresh try. Knowing that he will hurt me again some day in some way.

Noah has memorized me like I am his favorite poem. He has twisted himself around the gnarls of the tree that is my soul. And he has done some damage as he spread and as he learned… but he has healed me in so many ways. I was ready to fall down in the wind. And he gave me something to lean on and keep growing.

We will both fuck up again. We are monsters. Monsters do that. They hurt people. They don’t have to mean it.

Sometimes.

Things.

Just.

Happen.

Cognitive load. Who is most important to me. How do I allot the time and energy my brain has to give? I’m tired.

There are a whole lot of people where I pray they will be willing to forgive me for the months and years I drop away. The remodel ate my brain. I didn’t contact many people. Now my brain is being sucked into a biological process. Hi. I may love you, but time I barely have. Brain power is in shorter supply. God I can’t drive to social more than I do. I hate doctors. I have hope for my current doctors. I have a whole bunch. I see soooo many doctors. uuuuuuuuuggggggghhhhhh

Don’t traumatize your fucking kids, yo. This shit is expensive.

It is fun talking to other parents about where they set their lines and why. We are all so different and all the reasons are valid in context.

I don’t think I would be physically capable of getting over my hatred of white men if I had to do so as a childless woman working in an office. I hear enough about office politics that I’d be a political lesbian under those circumstances because men just…. no thanks.

But that isn’t the life I chose. For reasons. There’s shit I need to learn. There’s shit I need to be physically able to care about and the only way I know to learn how is to develop those relationships within a family.

I don’t have another way to get a family that will actually stick around. Ok adoption. But then I won’t work through the things that are connected to me and my issues and my stuff that I specifically need to reparent.

I’ll work through their issues instead. And I will have to be put to the side.

But I really need more family feeling. I can’t call my brothers and learn to get over them torturing me when I was a child. I can’t call my sister and try to forgive her for refusing to keep me out of dangerous situations when I begged her to take me home. I can’t call my mom and forgive her for telling me that I made my bed and I needed to go sleep in it when my father was raping me.

I have children to protect.

We go on the best date nights with our kids. Our kids associate dates with intense one on one conversations where you educate one another about all sorts of topics.

Before I was five years old I knew that a date was supposed to end with a dick in my mouth.

It’s intense for me to talk to people who have long term poly relationships with no sex. I treat a lot of my female friends like they are long term romantic partners. Without sex. I have a few male friends who are kind of like that but everyone got more distant after last year and the rubble. Makes sense. They are trying to be my friends and respect my marriage.

It’s kind of intense having honorable, decent people in my life with boundaries. I didn’t grow up with folks like this. Boundaries are expressed so you know where to step first.

What is this life thing going to turn into. I don’t fucking know.

I never really aspired to being a monster, you know.

But when I was Eldest Child’s age committing breaking and entering. Because it was better to hang out in empty houses than stand around on the street alone.

My kids will never have my burglary skills. I’m not sure if this is good or bad.

It’s… different… hanging out with kids who are so safe.

I start to understand interactions from my childhood in a whole new light. And my kids are coached on consent forking daily. Most kids aren’t. Most kids have squidgy boundaries. My kids say NO. No squidge.

It is safe for them to do that and for them to have feelings.

This needs to be true for Noah too.

I have not been fair.

This needs to change.