I really struggle with what it means to be human. I struggle with what it means to be allowed to defend yourself. What does it mean to be allowed to assert yourself even when others don’t like it.

I hurt Noah a lot last year. I think I will flinch when someone says “2016” for the rest of my life. I hurt him emotionally for several months. Yup. That happened. I did that. I did that in large part because I was trying to cope with the physical damage that was happening to my body.

I don’t think Noah was damaging me on purpose. That wasn’t his “goal”. His goal was connection and he was seeking it in the best way he knew how. But I showed up in this relationship broken.

I wrote in my first fucking users guide I think in 2004 that I have extensive scarring damage in my cunt. Vaginal sex hurts me. I keep having it because I like it even though it hurts me. There are times when it doesn’t hurt that much and there are times when I feel like I will go out of my mind from the pain. Because it is so deep inside me I can’t get away from it. I feel like I want to scratch my skin off to get away from that fucking pain. I want to reach inside me and yank my cunt and uterus out and never have anyone use me like that again. Sew the fucking hole closed.

I have been trying to talk about this for years. I have been writing down that it was an active problem for at least 13 years. It is not news.

I have never treated it like a problem my partners need to care about. I have been incredibly callous about it. But if you had been taught that you were going to have a problem your whole life starting when you were a baby and it was a problem for the next 30 years you might be kind of callous in how you deal with it too.

Having sex with multiple people changes how my body operates. It’s like switching a car’s gears. For one major factor: it is so much easier to dissociate. I enjoy the sex way more when I’m only sorta physically/emotionally present. Which is fucked up. The more numb my cunt is the less I am aware of how much it hurts but I have to have a really freaky amount of sex to get there. I have to be wearing out a bunch of people before I get to this state. When I access this mode of existence… it’s just different. My body hardens itself against what I am forcing it to put up with.

Which isn’t a slam on the lovely people who fuck me. Y’all ain’t doing a bad thing.

I can show up for the kind of sex I have perceived Noah as wanting without feeling emotionally battered by it when my body is in that mode.

I have really struggled with matching Noah’s sex drive over the years. I have done my absolute best to carry that god damn quota even when I was in a lot of physical pain and I really should have loved myself enough to say that I wasn’t up for sex. But I don’t really love myself so protecting myself seems like such a stupid waste of time.

I’m a waste person. Might as well use me up and discard me instead of take care of me.

So I’ve grit my teeth and shut my eyes and I’ve had a lot of very painful sex. All in the name of “connection” and “showing love”.

Do you know how degrading it feels to have someone tell you over and over that they are showing you love by reaching up inside you and damaging your insides?

I have tried to talk to Noah about this pain over the years and I have not found words that got the message across. I have failed to explain why this is a problem and how I need it to change. So last year I hit a boiling point in my ability to cope and given that I’m not supposed to be mutilating myself to cope I had to find something else in my bag of tricks that would let me carry the burden farther. I went with an old trusty standby–promiscuity.

In many literal ways promiscuity kept me alive for decades. It kept me trying again when it came to reaching out to people. It kept me in a mindset where I could put my head down and just work at the things I needed to work at because I was dissociating hard from the pain in my body. I am a very effective tool when I am not paying attention to myself. Promiscuity aids me in that.

Noah perceives it as an existential threat to our relationship. I view it as giving me the ability to cope with things I can’t cope with. I get that I can’t ever date again and keep Noah. Any and all sex I have with anyone until Noah dies needs to include Noah. I get that. I get that Noah can’t handle me going off the rails like that because it ties into Noah’s core wounding from when he was a kid.

But what in the hell are we going to do about my cunt and the fact that trying to be in less pain, trying to cope with the pain I am in makes me bad and an abuser because I’m hurting him.

How come it is so easy to label me as abusive when I am trying to insist on less damage happening to my body?

A friend posted a review of the movie Bladerunner the other day. I’ve never seen the movie and I never want to. The review was incredibly triggering to me. It explained the movie as being about A.I. slaves who are only allowed to live for four years and they are killed if they rebel. Creatures that are created to be sex slaves are killed if they ever assert their right to say no.

I can’t watch that movie. That’s not entertainment. That feels like my life.

Ok, not really. But too fucking close for comfort.

I am bad because I hurt Noah. I hurt Noah so bad that he believes that no reasonable person could hear his story and think he should be married to someone as abusive as I am.

oh.

I am really struggling with what it means to exist in my body. Flailing through insisting that I have the right to exist without constant pain means I’m bad. Insisting on less damage to my body means I’m bad because I’m “withholding sex”.

I think I wanted to fire my last therapist as badly as I did because she spent a lot of time telling me how I have to care about Noah’s needs and marriage means I need to have sex with him. She was so hard on #TeamNoah that I felt like I was an expendable piece of the puzzle.

That’s a shitty dynamic with someone I’m paying $180/hour to help me feel better.

How much pain am I required to be in in order to be “good”?

I can’t keep this cycle up. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

I cannot act like my cunt is an acceptable expendable part of my anatomy in service of other people getting to feel good and it’s ok if it makes me want to die.

And if I’m a bad person and a monster because I flip out as this is happening then maybe it is better that I just go ahead and die now because I just cannot continue this dynamic. It is better to be dead.

I have no more ability to absorb damage. I’m done. I’m tapped out. I know that makes me a bad wife and a bad person. Fine. I can be out of the picture then.

I would much rather be the horrible wife who killed herself to get away than be the monster who sat here hurting him decade after decade. Isn’t one decade enough?

But the problem is one of my kids is… really kind of in a crisis point. I’m not going to write about it because this isn’t my story to tell at this point but if I died any time soon my child would believe for the rest of their life that I did it because they were bad.

I feel the weight of that like an anvil on my head.

I really don’t want to hurt my baby like that. I know that dealing with my suicide would be hard enough. This timing would be catastrophic for life.

But I can’t wait until Lightning is here. That’s really not ok.

I understand the mothers who kill their kids when they kill themselves. Not that I have any plans to kill Eldest Child or Future Middle Child. I really don’t. I can’t handle slapping or spanking them… I really wouldn’t be able to talk myself into killing them unless there were horrifying extenuating circumstances like they were about to be killed in a slow brutal way by a bad person so I do it quick. Something ridiculous and dramatic that is never going to come up.

So yeah. Can’t wait till the third kid is here. That gets too complicated.

But if I feel like I’m a bad person for hurting Noah by cheating on him that’s nothing compared to the damage I would do if I killed myself right now. My babies would not get over it. I think FMC would be a basket case for life. I think EC would kind of hold it together but she would feel hollow inside forever.

I don’t want to hurt either of them like that.

It feels so selfish to want to be done. It is selfish. I know.

If being good means letting people hurt me inside my body forever so they can feel good…

I’m not sure I care that much about being good either. Who is selfish here?

People have been telling me for almost 20 years that sex is supposed to feel good and make you feel connected to people. Excuse me while I laugh until I need supplemental oxygen.

Sex is alienating and degrading and painful. Sure, I get off on it. I’m a masochist. But that doesn’t change the poison I carry around inside me.

Noah is kind of bitter about the times when he asks me about connecting physically and it turns into him rubbing me and I fall asleep. To him that feels like him not being allowed to get what he wants. That’s not sex. That’s not connection.

The only thing that counts is the thing that hurts me. So sex isn’t about connecting with me. It’s about using my orifices until you are done. Can we stop fucking pretending that this is about emotional connection then?

If sex was about us connecting emotionally and about my body feeling good… those times that start out as a massage and that’s how far it goes… would count.

But they don’t. And I am bad every time that happens. So sex is not about me feeling good.

Me feeling good is the opposite of the point of sex.

And I’m supposed to cope with that by shutting up and opening my legs. Or I’m bad. I’m not allowed to fuck other people to make it easier… that makes me bad. I can’t say “no” because then I’m bad. I can’t…

I can’t exist in this dynamic and be good. There is no good for me in this set up.

And I guess it is my fault. Because I haven’t managed to negotiate in a way that meets his needs and allows me humanity. I’m bad. I’m hurting him. He should leave me because I am so bad. Any person who cares about him would tell him to leave me because I am so bad.

That’s what he believes.

Being me really kind of sucks.

Should I be permanently investing in lidocaine so I can stop feeling my cunt and I can stop acknowledging that the pain matters at all? Is that really what I should be doing.

That is sure as shit what I walked away from my therapist thinking she believes I should do.

“Marriage involves compromise, Krissy. You need to meet his needs.”

Or I need to die. That could work too.

I have fucking tried to talk about these problems. Have I done a good job? Well no. I don’t have good language for all of this. This is the water I swim in, how do you describe it? I have sex that doesn’t hurt… occasionally… it’s kind of random and I can’t predict it very well… So how in the fuck do I say “more like that”? Mostly it god damn hurts.

And I’ve been shutting off my brain when that happens for more than 30 years. If you have similar experience I’d love to talk about it and if you don’t I don’t fucking care what you think and you can shove your fucking opinion where the sun doesn’t shine.

Side note: I can’t remember if EC and FMC were as active in utero as Lightning. This kid is a tornado. Constant barrel rolls inside me. This is a very alive creature. I fear this child will be born running.

And I’m so tired.

Sometimes it feels like the kid is actively protesting my depression and my thoughts of killing myself and thus my parasite. “NO. I AM HERE. THAT IS NOT OK. I HAVE SHIT TO DO. LET ME OUT.”

I’m going to add a third dose of pot for a bit. I’m crashing too hard in between doses and I don’t care if some medical providers want to hysterically wave their hands and talk about “But oh no! We don’t have adequate safety testing!” Yeah but it’s safer than anything you want to replace it with so shut up.

If you ever 5150 me you are fucking dead to me. Do not think about calling the police for a safety check. If you report me as suicidal then they may or may not find my body. Don’t do it. Is it scary for you to read that I’m having big feelings? Put your big kid panties on and cope or stop reading my blog. I am documenting the ups and downs of mental illness. If that roller coaster is too much for you, then you are allowed to step off. I am not allowed to step off no matter what. When I hide what I am feeling so that people do not punish me for my feelings things get worse. If you 5150 me you will be punishing me for daring to talk about something you find scary. The hospital will not help me in any way shape or form.

Do you know what is a lot more helpful? My friends letting me know that they love me and if I need them they will do whatever they can. I probably won’t ask for anything. Mostly I’ll say “thanks” and just walk right past the offer. If I don’t say thanks I’m sorry for that–I should.

This is not a journey you can change for me. This is not a journey that would be helped by more people in authority showing me that I don’t matter and hurting my body to make me more convenient for them to manage.

I am long term chronically mentally ill. That means I can’t act like everything is a crisis. I have to be moderate in my response to my brain freaking out. As K points out, I document the waves and ride them and mostly that’s what I’ve got. More drugs don’t make things better–I’ve tried over 30 psych meds. I’m on the most effective one and it’s far from perfect. More therapy isn’t that helpful at this stage. I still go to therapy… but it’s not a silver bullet. It’s not going to magically fix me.

I’M DOING ALL THE THINGS THEY WOULD INSIST ON IF THE GOVERNMENT WERE MORE HEAVILY MICROMANAGING ME SO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE.

Just because you are doing the All The Things to manage mental illness that doesn’t change the fact that it is a shitty ride.

Ok, that’s pithy and wonderful. I love that sentence. ha.

*pat self on back for clever line*

Noah is talking to Pam. Noah doesn’t feel he can lean on his friends because he believes it will turn his friends against me and they will all be constantly telling him to leave me and he doesn’t want to hear it so he’s talking to my best friend of 20 years. He thinks I’m mad at him for this. Mad really isn’t the word.

Either he’s right that anyone he talks to will grow to hate me and believe he should abandon me and I will lose my best friend or he’s wrong and maybe he needs to fucking hear that he isn’t right.

But I’m terrified about this. There are layers here. If he’s right and I deserve to lose my best friend when she hears his side of the story… that will suck but I made my bed and I get to lie in it. If I deserve to be abandoned then I should be. If Pam tells him to divorce me and save the kids… it will be because that is necessary.

I think he needs to talk to someone. If Pam is the only person he feels he can talk to, so be it. I find some irony in the situation for spiteful reasons I won’t write down. But yeah. Talk to someone. If it is Pam, fine.

If I lose another person… I deserve it.

Besides, if I off myself Pam would probably be one of the people who supports Noah the most over the years with the kids so I need to make sure that bridge is well established. They might need it.

I think ahead.

I’m sad and I’m tired and I feel hopeless about the possibility of being in less pain. I feel like I will never never never never never matter enough for that to be enough of a priority to make it happen. It’s too hard. It’s not worth what it would take.

I know Noah has tried over the years to make sex better for me. But if we are starting from me having the mindset that sex hurts and that’s the way it is… that’s only going to be a marginal improvement and I’m going to still flip out sometimes because I can’t cope.

I’m not saying it is his fault. I’m saying I don’t know how to change this.

Sex hurts is a core belief. I believe that sex hurts like I believe that gravity exists. Like other people believe in G-d. It’s just… how it is.

How do I survive this? How do I change this? How do I make it so that I’m not a terrible, horrible person because I am tired of my cunt burning and aching and hurting?

I’m pretty sure that Noah and I don’t fight much where the kids can hear because yesterday we had a doozy and the kids heard and they were both absolutely shocked that they heard us yell swear words at each other. They both commented on how weird it was. “What happened?”

None of your business.

Sometimes people fight.

They are 7 and 9 and they don’t have memory of us screaming at each other before. That’s kind of fucking miraculous to me.

I know we need to not make a habit of this.

You figure out how to fucking have a civilized conversation when all you want to do is put your head through a window. I don’t fucking know how right now.

I am trying to reach out. I am trying to communicate. I am trying to figure out how to change things so that I’m not so freaked out. This is hard.

There is this section in the Rihanna/Drake song “Work” that I really like:

 All that I wanted from you was to gimme
Something that I never had
Something that you’ve never seen
Something that you’ve never been
But I wake up and everything’s wrong

That’s what we are trying to do here. Something I’ve never had or seen, something you’ve never been.

I have friends who identify as women… who don’t have vaginal sex. There are various reasons for this and every case is quite unique. But when I find out this is the reality they live with… I have this shocked attention experience. “Wait. Wut?” It isn’t that I believe that they should. It is that… they have relationships… with people who have penises… and… they don’t seem to be perceived as bad for having this limit.

How does that work?!

I’m not even saying I want to swear off vaginal sex forever. I do like it. But I’m not allowed to be good and have limits around how often or when… how do you manage to be good and not do it at all?

I don’t understand.

It’s like you just told me you were born with three tongues in your head. How in the fuck does that work?

My cunt has been such a non-negotiable part of my life. I am very curious how it works for other people. What does sex look like when you get to just declare parts of your anatomy a no-go zone? I mean… yeah I’ve read about queer sex. My queer sex involves a lot of strap ons because penetration is…

I don’t really understand sex without penetration. That’s not my reality.

I’m a hole. That’s what I am. That’s what I was made to be. That’s why I was born. I can’t understand being something else.

But it hurts. And I can’t keep hurting like this. Even if I’m bad for insisting that it stop. Even if I’m so bad that I deserve to be alone and unloved forever because I’m not compromising enough.

Ok. I should probably stop before I get onto the 9th page of writing this morning. It’s been a good hour of writing.