Right in this moment I feel physically yucky. I feel on the verge of puking. I ate a small bowl of soup for dinner and a slice of bread and I feel so full that I want to pop. For the entire rest of the day I ate a bowl of cereal, one pancake, and one piece of string cheese. I shouldn’t feel full.

My shoulders hate me for how I have been typing.

This baby is so active I feel like a live eel is going through my abdomen and whipping all my internal organs.

EC had her first chiropractic adjustment today because she landed wrong a bit ago when doing gymnastics play with her sibling. The chiropractor said that the way she is hyper-sensitive to most touch is an indication that she has nerve impingement and she probably should have been coming in for adjustments years ago. Sigh. She loved the adjustment and she walked out gasping about how much better her neck and back felt. She’s due to go back with me next week. Maybe I can prevent things from becoming entrenched problems for her?

My kids did not do their academics today how they should. Nor their chores. They just… went off the rails for the day. Today was exasperating. But the kids did get their own library cards (PAM. I FINALLY DID IT.) and they had a great time hanging out with the other children at the library. The other kids asked my kids to come back tomorrow afternoon so they could do homework together. This little girl gave EC a long lecture about how if she doesn’t take her academics more seriously she is going to grow up to be stupid and never get a good job. I was impressed by just how intense this girl was. She was only in the 3rd grade and she was convinced that any slacking today means your life is ruined. Tomorrow will be a work-all-day sort of time and that’s not going to be anyone’s favorite.

I asked a beloved friend to babysit this weekend. She’s been the only person to be consistently available since our babysitter moved away. It’s always weird asking her to babysit because I feel like I’m using her. But this is a great excuse to get her to my house for a 24 hour visit because I get to hang out with her before and after. That’s a real blessing. I appreciate our chats so much. This weekend her dog gets to enjoy the nice dog bed we got for her. We want them both to feel comfortable and happy here. Her dog is getting older and the hard floor isn’t very loving for her poor bones. A nice comfy bed will be a much better option.

She is babysitting so we can go to a party for Noah’s Japanese teacher. So I’m going to the second party in a 9 day period for Noah and his friends. I need to get over thinking that Noah bends over backwards for me and I do nothing for him. That’s bullshit. I support him all over the place.

And yet at this moment I don’t feel as sad and frantic as I have for a while. I don’t have the keening feeling deep in my chest.

Oh, and I accidentally let my kid see a flash of pornography. We were opening up my blog feed reader to go back and check Aunt Jenny’s journal and double check the birthdate of her second daughter and…. it turns out that all of my recent posts were from a friend who posts a lot of porn. I will never open feedly with my children in the room again. I will go find Aunt Jenny’s blog through G+ next time. Oh god. Oh god.

I’ve already emailed their shrink, of course. (The response was remarkably supportive and awesome. I’m so grateful for this shrink.) So far FMC (when will they become just MC? Will I wait until Lightening arrives?) says that they are very uncomfortable with having seen that. They have more than once mimed getting into doggy style and commenting loudly “He was like this and she was like this and I think his penis was going in her vagina!” Yes… You are right… that is what was happening. They are very certain that they shouldn’t have seen that. I agree. Sigh. That was my fuck up. God damnit. It was like a 2 second glimpse but that was too fucking much.

I tell them that feeling uncomfortable makes sense. That’s not something they should be seeing. It isn’t appropriate for a kid. I told them that it partially feels uncomfortable because sex is a private thing and seeing someone else have sex by surprise is a boundary violation and that should feel uncomfortable. I told them that by the time they hit puberty they will be more curious about seeing stuff like that and then they will know appropriate ways to seek out times and ways to learn about sex that don’t feel like boundary violations.

They asked me why people take pictures like that and why is it on the webpage where I was going to learn about their cousin’s birthday!?!?!?!?!?!?! I explained about a blog feed reader where lots of blogs are put in one place–I have all kinds of blogs I follow and they all get dumped on one front page. I said that people take pictures like that because sex is a complicated part of adult life and people like to look at it and talk about it and figure out different things about it. I said that I have many friends who are curious about sex and many friends who teach people about healthy sex so…. yeah I have sex stuff come up on my blog reader. But I’m an adult and all the people who participate in these conversations are adults and if we sometimes see a picture of sex we won’t be shocked or upset so it’s ok for us. It’s not ok for them (FMC) and I’m very sorry I let them see something they weren’t ready to see. That was a failure.

They are taking this in.

But you know what? I feel much more confident in my belief that my child has never been inappropriately touched. They are so confused by the topic of sex. I think of how practiced and casual I was at their age. I can stop and take a moment to feel really proud of myself that I have raised children who are this damn sheltered.

I did that. That feels so good.

Olympia looks interesting…. Thanks so much for that suggestion! We’ll have to learn more. I’m thrilled by how arts focused and LGBT+ friendly they are. And at 83% white it is… more diverse than a lot of the area. Sigh.

LGBT+ friendly is going to be pretty dang important after all.

It took more than nine years of parenting before I fucked up enough for a kid to have a 2 second glimpse of porn. I maybe feel better about that than I should? I will lock this down more over the next few years. I will stop looking at porn on my normal web browser and clear the cache. My kids deserve that much effort. Autofill on my browser is… uhhh… pretty obscene at the moment. I’ll get that done this week. Even though they don’t use my computer much. Doesn’t matter. Hygiene is important.

These children show me where my boundaries are muddy. Children need boundaries of solid brick. Best get on mending those chinks.

They are worth learning anything for.

Right this moment I feel like maybe I will learn how to be good enough for them. I’m not certain–definitely not cocky. But I see a hint of hope in the sky.

This brain of mine. It’s a roller coaster.

This is why my kids see therapists. Because having a parent with mental illness sucks. Having a pregnant mentally ill parent sucks so much more.

I really kind of lost it on Friday. I was not ok. I was cycling through crying and raging and the kids were… really freaked out. Which is appropriate and fair and reasonable and completely understandable. I did my best to clarify over and over that I was losing control of my brain and my body and it wasn’t because of them and it wasn’t their fault and I’m so sorry I sound like such a nasty bitch. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

But sorry bakes no bread.

Yesterday (since it is past midnight) the kids kept coming into the room where I was and asking…. “So… how are you feeling?” They did it so many times I did get kind of irritated. I told them that if what they want to know is if I’m about to go off and start screaming at them again they might get a more productive answer if they just ask that question. Because “So, how are you feeling” 95 times in a day is not going to get you the answer you are looking for. You don’t actually want a minute by minute run down on every thing I feel. You want to know if my feelings are big enough they are going to cause consequences for you.

Which is a completely reasonable question.

But let’s phrase the question in a way that will give you the answers you want instead of soft shoeing around the topic. It’s more useful all around.

I told them I’d much rather them ask me if I’m on the verge of screaming. That is what they want to know. They nodded and said they will try to ask it that way since yeah… that is the data they are looking for.

I didn’t scream yesterday. It was just Friday.

I feel like my brain is exploding and melting at the same time. I’m really overwhelmed. I told both kids that even though folks keep asking me if I’m going to have a fourth child… I can’t do this to my children a fourth time. Pregnancy is so hard. I’m so psycho. It is so hard to stay in control. It takes…. something I don’t have to feel ok during pregnancy and a fourth pregnancy wouldn’t be easier.

EC agreed that this would be a really hard process if we had a baby around who needed care and attention while I was freaking out. She says thank you that I don’t want to do this again. Yeah… I have limits.

I’m a selfish terrible person and I am having the third child I desperately wanted. But that’s it. I’m done.

I’m out of creative “give” in this life. I have nothing more to give to create a person. I’m empty.

Which is rough at not-quite 29 weeks.

I am amused that I still have an apron. The apron is the flap of floppy skin on your belly you get after pregnancy. I know that some people get this from weight gain/loss without pregnancy but mine decidedly came from pregnancy. And I still have it at 29 weeks because I haven’t gained much weight (still hovering just below 9 lbs judging by the only consistent scale in my life). Heck, in most sitting positions I still have a chub line at my belly button. For someone who looks so pregnant I look rather fat and not pregnant. Which I’m not minding. It’s just funny to me.

I had a very hard time on Thanksgiving with the fact that a friend invited us to have dinner with her family and then… she left to go to another party with her partner and left us there with her extended relatives including her crazy ex-wife. It wasn’t a bad day but I’m having big feelings about it. I have already told the friend that I’m upset. She said she wants to make it up to me. I will hold my breath for that approximately never.

I feel like part of the feeling of emotional/spiritual collapse I’m feeling is how much it sucks to live in the bay area. The bay area is so big and so intense that no one has a lot to give. I do a lot of things for a lot of people. I have zero expectation of reciprocal relationships. I don’t give to Person A because I expect Person A to be able to turn around and do something for me. That’s not how life has worked for me. Instead I help people and I hope that someone will show up to help me. In many cases, this works out super well for me. It’s not going so well right now.

My friends are busy people and I have no right to expect anything from anyone. If I were to ask and be real specific and beg a sufficient quantity of people I could probably get support. But it’s draining and exhausting and I don’t have that to give right now.

Like my buddy telling me that I need to hurry up and find a babysitter replacement so I can get more support. “Get on care.com!” People say. To you people I say: I fucking hate you for saying that. My experience of searching for babysitters online is that I can spend $40 a month to send messages to people who will either never respond or will schedule an appointment and then flake or people will call me up and offer me services I specifically don’t want. Like for this old lady to babysit my infant while I drive my older kids all over the bay area because surely when I put up an ad for driving assistance what I want is to lose time bonding with my baby instead.

Stop telling me to just get on care.com as if that solves my problems. It creates a whole new job and set of expenses and I’ve tried it multiple times over multiple years and the closest I came to a successful hit was when I ran into a former student and got to find out that she was in grad school. She wasn’t available to babysit…. but I’m thrilled to hear about her college experience.

It’s not easy to get help or support. It’s a whole extra job to find someone who gives a shit and who will show up.

I miss my babysitters family so much. The babysitters mom is the main person who calls and checks on me and who wants to hear every detail about how my pregnancy is going. I am so sad that their family moved to Hawaii. I am grieving them so hard it feels pathetic. Her mama was the only mama who had time to just…. show up for me. She has an uncanny knack for poking me when I feel at my lowest.

I am so grateful she reaches out to me at all.

But I have this life where I spend a lot of time feeling physically isolated in a crowd and it makes me crazy. I live in this densely populated place and I feel like I don’t get to see people in person for support almost at all. Having all my friends be online is… not perfect.

It doesn’t help that most of my closer friends are currently going through their own crises issues. Chronic illness/cancer/job stress/there is no end to the difficulties hitting my friends. So I feel like a selfish asshole asking for anything from anyone. I don’t deserve it.

My fucking money can keep me warm.

But I can’t pay for feeling like people care about me. I feel incredibly expendable. If I am not available as a worker to provide something that other people want there isn’t a lot of point in dealing with me.

I’m still driving far to provide other people with emotional and physical and logistical support. Because they need it.

And I cry the whole way there and back because I don’t deserve the same thing.

It isn’t that I expect my friends who are suffering to suck it up and provide support for me. It’s that I am sad that with all the people I know there is no balance to it. Yes yes it is my fault that I don’t ask for more help so people don’t knnnoooooooow how to help me. Yes. I know. It’s my fault.

It is my fault I was stupid enough to get myself into a situation where I needed support when it doesn’t god damn exist for me.

stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid woman.

That’s not fair. Noah is amazing. But Noah is so tapped out it isn’t funny. He’s trying. He’s really excited that this pregnancy has involved more “Run out and buy me x food” than all the others put together. He feels like he has arrived at his favorite kind of usefulness in this lifetime.

But I feel like I’m drowning in feelings most of the time and I’m not supposed to talk about them because my children are always around and it’s not appropriate in any way shape or form for me to talk about the intensity of my mood swings around them. So just shut up you stupid bitch.

And that makes it much harder to keep a solid rein on my feelings. Which makes it harder to not scream. Screaming is the result of all the things I’m not allowed to say giving extra intensity and power to the few things I am allowed to say.

I’m really struggling with the fact that it is my job to emotionally regulate everyone around me. I’m supposed to help everyone give names to their feelings and figure out how to handle them appropriately. WHEN IS IT MY GOD DAMN TURN TO HAVE SOMEONE JUST SIT THERE AND WATCH ME AND HELP ME MANAGE MY OVERWHELMING FEELINGS?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I’m bitter and I’m angry about how much I am expected to be able to give/teach without having been given/taught it myself.

I was reading something yesterday where a woman who is an autistic engineer talks about how frustrating it is that she is constantly told that she should teach men how to deal with feeeeeelings because the dude “might have Aspergers” and he needs help. She’s frustrated as shit and I wanted to jump up and down and scream THAT IS LITERALLY MY WHOLE LIFE. I have been in therapy for decades, yes, but I’ve never had someone be willing to hang out with me during real life and do the management of feelings thing. But an awful lot of fucking people just expect me to do that for them.

Fuck everyone.

I haven’t looked at Mint in over a month. It is going to be really painful when I do. I need to get up to date on tracking transactions and I’d much rather climb into a full bathtub with a razor blade.

I feel like I don’t like anything about me.

I am feeling really tired and frustrated with people expressing frustration with my crying. I got to the point of crying this much because it was the result of no longer doing so much self-harming. It became the coping method that replaced all the things I’d much rather be doing.

But crying is manipulative. You only cry because you want to control people.

So basically what you are saying is I can not have feelings in my body that are not about you. Who is manipulative and controlling here?

People want to have the public cover of telling me not to self harm because that is the correct party line to make them feel good about themselves. But they would much rather have me self harm if it means I shut the fuck up and don’t tell them about what I’m feeling and don’t impact them with my emotional reaction in any way.

A quiet bitch is a better bitch.

We went to Dickens Fair on Saturday. I saw a bunch of people I knew. I didn’t speak to anyone. I carefully avoided eye contact. I have nothing to give and I’m well aware that they don’t give a shit about me. “Once a Fezziwigger always a Fezziwigger” is a fucking lie. I didn’t even set foot in the dance area. I avoided Mad Sal’s because I didn’t want to see my rapist. My charming, funny rapist who is still so popular.

I know who has importance in the scheme of things. It isn’t me.

I want to leave the bay area.

I would like to move somewhere that I haven’t been helping people for 20 years so I don’t feel so bad about the fact that no one gives a shit about me.

It’s not that “no one gives a shit.” Blah blah blah. Busy/tired/have nothing going spare to give/etc. I know. I’m not angry or bitter about any one person. I believe and accept all the reasons *you* are not available.

But there are so many of you and no one is available. That collective failure hurts. It’s not that I’m upset with anyone individually. I get that *you* have nothing to give. I really do understand that.

If only I had fewer needs. Then I wouldn’t be such a problem.

I really shouldn’t be typing. But I can sit here and break my teeth or I can type. Fixing the teeth is even more expensive than fixing my arms.

A friend sent me an email and pointed out that she thinks a lot of my depression is linked to the pregnancy. I think you are right.

I have so little to give. I don’t have patience. I don’t have energy. I don’t have compassion. I feel full of sadness and empty space. I feel like I can barely walk around and interact and if I hit the slightest road bump in any way I need to just get the fuck out of whatever space I’m in because I am completely incapable of problem solving.

It hurts.

Noah wanted to get up and make breakfast and I almost bawled because I didn’t want him to stop holding me. The kids want a lot of physical contact from me, but it all feels packaged with a demand that I pay attention to them and dote on them and pour energy into making them feel loved.

I feel so empty. I feel unworthy and unloved and unlovable. I know that isn’t “true”. But it is how I feel. And it hurts.

I want to feel like it is ok for me to be weak. I want to feel like it is ok for me to be a failure. But instead I need to suck it the fuck up and figure out how to be stronger. It hurts.

I feel weary and useless. I feel like my list of “I should do” only gets longer by the day and I will never manage to be effective at making progress on any of it.

I have all these people in my head that I keep on a list. I should contact them approximately every x weeks so that the relationship doesn’t fall down. I am not maintaining almost any of that right now. Which means that because I’m not reaching out all of those relationships are disintegrating. It feels like my fault and it feels like I should take the hint that these people weren’t into me in the first place.

I feel like everything is about me being bad and if only I weren’t here there wouldn’t be so damn many problems.

Something I have noticed in the past, when I’m trying to crawl out of a depressive slump I feel silly posting about how I’m trying to change my thinking. I don’t feel like I’m bordering on grandiosity at this stage, but I struggle with feeling like any improvement/more positive thought process is a sham.

I’m going to have to try hard to think of something Noah said as a mean thing he said in the moment when he was hurting and not a genuine indication that I should follow what he was saying. That’s really hard for me. If you indicate that you have a problem with me talking to your friends… that’s the kind of boundary/limitation/indication that I am a problem that fits in exactly with my narrative of the world. Ignoring that it was said because you don’t “really mean it” is uhhh not exactly in my normal tool kit of abilities. This is hard.

I read somewhere that the difference between a “real friend” and someone you just know is whether you can call them for help in an emergency. The thing is… if I had a real emergency I’d call up to 50 people to get the help I need and not run out of phone numbers. There are folks in my various communities who would step up but I can’t guess in advance who would have the bandwidth on any given day. I can’t predict who would help. It would be people who would surprise me. I have a weird amount of faith that it would work out and I would get help but I can’t use that set up to point at my “real friends”. I think that it’s more complicated than that. But I won’t ask for help short of an emergency because that uses up later abilities to ask for help in an emergency. So anything short of catastrophe is my problem.

I think I would be helped by folks who are not that invested in me but who instead noticed that they have something spare to hand out on a given day. That’s complicated.

The kids are so happy to see Noah again. The whole house smiled all through yesterday. I love the way we are clingy and enmeshed and very encouraging of each of us going off on individual adventures. Everyone in my house is encouraged to go do their own thing… and come back and share stories later. EC has saved enough chore points to guarantee a slot in sleep away camp in the summer. She is over the moon. I should go ahead and register her soon.

It is fascinating to me the ways my kids are slowly moving into wanting space. They want space from the family unit the way Noah and I take space–rarely and in big blocks. They are not interested in going to school and having 7 hours a day away–that’s too much. That sounds awful. But a full week away on an adventure sounds awesome. Going and visiting Aunt Sarah sounds wonderful. If Aunt Debbie called and invited them to visit for a week they would go and barely look behind them to wave as they got on the plane. But no school. It’s interesting to me. I don’t fully understand the nature of their attachment. I’m told by a variety of professionals (because I don’t really trust my evaluation of my kids) that my kids are incredibly securely attached and this is not anxious or avoidant attachment at all. My kids feel good about themselves and their lives and they know they aren’t interested in school.

I wonder how much it is that my kids are almost allergic to sitting for as many hours a day as school requires.

EC already talks about how college is going to be appropriate for her because she can set it up so she never has to sit for longer than 3 hours in a go in a day. This is a child who understands her limitations. She does not think she has it in her to sit for a 7 hour school day. Given that I’m thoroughly convinced that she would be in trouble every fucking day in school because of how antsy and talkative she is… I really am not pushing this. Even though 5th or 6th grade would be a great time to transition into school before high school…. She says absolutely not. She’s not even willing to do the charter school next year. It’s too much outside direction of her learning. She wants next year to be an intense delving into world religions and we can’t get the charter school to approve/pay for that so she’s done.

It’s kind of amazing watching a kid who knows so intensely what they want their life path to look like. It’s not that she can’t do focused work… it’s that it happens on her schedule and impetus.

FMC is completely over the charter school but they will want to continue some of the supportive services… which is funny to me. Sure kid.

I don’t think I am going to dig in and spend the next 5 years on trying to improve my health. I don’t think I’m going to get braces. I think I’m going to be willing to try a few things when I’m not pregnant in terms of messing with my thyroid or a couple of other things the pain doctor really wants to try and then I think it’s time to accept that my body is on the journey it is on. I am never going to be able to get off this track and onto the track of someone who cared for their body from childhood. That’s not available. I’m going to get what tricks and help I can and then I’m going to stop hemorrhaging money on my body. I’d rather spend the money in different ways.

I’d rather figure out more about dealing with our financial future. I’d rather go have adventures.

But I will probably continue acupuncture/chiropractic/massage care basically forever. That’s what helps the most to shore up my degrading body.

Luckily those are the “cheap” parts of my health care. The effective parts. The ineffective parts are super fucking expensive.

I am also really really really tired of throwing up if you didn’t know already. This sucks. Apparently my weekly vomits are going to continue right on through the 3rd trimester. I hear this is a good sign in terms of possible child loss. The sicker the baby makes you the more likely you are to carry full term and have a healthy child. I think that midwives tell you this just so you don’t spend time being angry at the baby for causing you to feel like shit for almost a year.

I keep saying the name we have chosen over and over like a mantra. I did this when FMC was born. The name we picked for FMC had been Noah’s first choice girl name during EC’s pregnancy. So I spent a lot of time saying the two first names in a sing-song chant. Now I’m doing all three names together. It’s kind of my version of stacking the deck so they think of themselves a set.

I’m becoming increasingly certain I’m done at three kids. I have no fucking interest in a fourth pregnancy. This is fucking horrible. I’m too old for this shit. Yes, I know I have friends who had kids older than me… they didn’t start out with a horribly degrading body.

If I want a fourth child in the house it’s time to grow the fuck up and figure out fostering. But not till Youngest Child (YC) is at least four. So we have about 4.5 years to get settled somewhere and figure out how to sign up for fostering.

I think I’ll be ready in my 40’s.

I have to grow up someday.

Noah pointed something out yesterday that was… interesting to think about and I hadn’t up to that point. FMC has a lot in common with Noah’s mother. I go talk to Noah’s aunts about his mother growing up because I’m a nosy fucker. The stories I bring back about how his mom reacted to everything as a kid…. yeah… that’s familiar. Nothing is ever enough and everyone is betraying you if you are not in control. Oh god that sounds familiar. It was kind of a sucker punch to the gut moment for me.

I spend a lot of time thinking about how my children are dealing with ancestral grief/inherited trauma from my side of the family. There’s a shit ton of it from Noah’s side too and I don’t pay enough attention to that because I am selfish and short sighted. But that’s real too.

Noah’s aunts tell me that Noah’s mom never adjusted to having a single working mother. She had no patience for her mother being out of patience at the end of the day. She needed more from her mom and her mom had nothing more to give. The other siblings understood and helped their mom and didn’t take it personally that she was doing her best but she was grumpy because her job was rough. Noah’s mother though… it was never fucking ok that she was getting the backlash from her mother working with a bunch of bratty kids.

Jesus that sounds like FMC.

FMC does not tolerate me being too distracted. Things get bad really fast. That kid can act out.

When FMC starts to complain loudly about how their sister is not obeying their whims I have started trying to redirect them to think about what they have actual control over. Their feelings, their body, their reactions. We are talking about this allllllllllllll day long. The power plays in this house are brutal lately.

Our job right now is working on emotional self regulation in a way FMC has never been forced to before. It’s not mean. It’s not punitive. I’m pretty cheerful and matter of fact about it. “Ah. This is where we are developmentally. We need to talk about this now. Ok. Let’s do that.”

EC is taking this super seriously. I tell her that she is never going to run out of people who irritate the shit out of her. She can’t make them stop being irritating–that will never be in her power. The only part she has power over is deciding what kind of person she wants to be in response. She’s thinking really hard about this and taking it seriously and I really respect the thought she is putting into it. I told her that in my opinion… she has to dig deep and find patience for FMC for about 5 more years. And then if FMC hasn’t stopped baiting her and aggressing… she will be allowed to tell me she’s basically done and we will find a way to separate the two that is respectful for both of them and she doesn’t have to seriously pursue keeping a relationship with her sibling. I won’t force a life long relationship. But FMC is working through a lot of developmental stuff right now and writing them off at this stage is premature and not fair. Let them develop and learn. If they refuse to accept these lessons… then you can protect yourself and I’ll support you.

Hell, I’ll support you if you protect yourself between now and then. But I won’t let you stop trying till then.

You both deserve that much effort. Your future together deserves that much effort. Not you bending over backwards forever…. that would be wrong…. but let FMC grow through being a shitty little kid. You got to be a shitty little kid. Have some patience.

You are right sweetie, being the biggest sibling sucks. It’s not fair being expected to have that much patience. You are really right. Life isn’t fair. But let’s talk about how many privileges you get that your sibling doesn’t get because you are older and you have more patience and more self control and…… that’s not fair either. But it’s life.

There is no fair.

I’m sending the kids to Texas with Noah in 2.5 weeks mostly because Noah’s grandmother is on a downhill slide. She’s been having strokes. She’s in her 90’s I think? Noah and the kids will visit her multiple times for short visits over a few days because that’s what she can cope with at this stage. She basically can’t leave the house and cooking is hard because she’s mostly blind. She’s tried so hard to be part of the kids’ lives even from far away. I want them to have memories of her and she’s almost gone. I feel like a jerk because I don’t care that much about the kids seeing Noah’s parents. His parents send boxes of stuff and don’t really bother to get to know the kids. Their great grandmother sends chatty letters with lots of questions. She wants to hear about their quirks. She takes a lot of pride in their academic accomplishments. She is the person I write about every new development with schooling or academic evaluation. She cares the most. I will miss Noah’s grandmother.

It’s funny that Noah’s mother doesn’t like her mother much even still.

I worry about my future with FMC. I don’t think they would forgive me for getting a job if I did. Not any year soon here. Not that I planned to get a job. But I can’t pick up a serious distraction of any kind or it would be a problem.

I get that FMC is super attached and needs a lot of contact. I sure wish that contact was less poking my fucking face as I’m trying to fall asleep. That pisses me off.

KIDS ARE IRRITATING.

But when I want space from FMC I want them to sleep on their own damn bunk bed instead of sleeping in the spot where YC will sleep because then they can’t reach my face to poke me as I’m falling asleep. I want like… a foot away and three feet up kind of space. Not like a whole bedroom away space.

It’s fascinating learning how to communicate boundaries with them. I feel like I’ve improved a lot over the years. Because none of us want “go away to another place” amounts of space. We want a foot over and three feet up on your bed in the same room amounts of space. We want “be far enough away that when you twitch you don’t kick me” space. But only with a few inches of clearance. You had better not leave the room or I’ll miss you.

And it goes in all directions. Noah is just as clingy and it’s adorable. I keep wondering when any of us will get “enough” attention and want to withdraw more and it just never fucking happens. I mean, all of us get to the point where we need a few hours of alone time occasionally but it never goes longer than a few hours. All of us complain about separations after a few hours. My kids bitch about missing Noah 2 hours after we drop him off at the airport. When one kid goes to a week long city camp the other kid is complaining about missing them before lunch of the first day. My kids were whining at me on Skype the whole time I was in Alaska.

Separation is good but it goes on too long!

Whatever sense of belonging I will get in this lifetime… it is going to come from this family.

I feel like I am feeling so sad about my friend telling me that it is irresponsible to have a third kid for carbon footprint reasons (Yeah I know that is technically true) because my friend has a place he is invited to go every Christmas and Thanksgiving and anytime he wants, really. He has to juggle between which of his bio-parents to visit. He has a spouse with an active family they are involved with. It’s not always perfectly healthy and they don’t always enjoy the visits…. but they are always invited.

I’m occasionally invited to orphan events but not really consecutive years in a row. If I don’t have children I will just have the rest of my life of no one really wanting me on holidays, except for Noah of course. So as long as you have people who want you on every holiday…. I don’t think you should be judging the fact that I need to create the people who might hopefully want to see me.

There is no fair.

Am I being selfish? Yup. Abso-fucking-lutely. The drive to create love is absolutely overwhelming. And I have failed at creating the kind of chosen family people tell me I should have created as a substitute. I couldn’t carry that. I have never managed to fit in. People try me out once or twice with an invitation and then…. I’m not invited back. I’m not blaming anyone or getting angry.

I just…. I just want there to be people in the world who actually want me. This is the way I can make that true. My kids want me so much it is overwhelming. My kids want me so much that a foot over and three feet up is waaaaaaaaay too far and they’d rather cram themselves into a space designed for a child under the age of two. Even if they are an extremely tall child who is more like the size of a nine year old. Priorities.

They say they will vacate the bed when Lightning comes.

Until then they are the baby. Period.

Given how much they are looking forward to being a big sibling and helping… ok. You can have this last hurrah my lovely baby. Just…. stop poking my damn face.

ugh.

This week was scheduled in an unfortunate manner. Today FMC and I will be out for a long day because they have therapy at 1 then they want to go to the Trans Day of Remembrance event. They have been telling me that they want more trans events in their life so I’m mentioning anything I see. They want to go learn about the members of their community who lost their lives. It’s interesting how much they are fully connected with “trans people who suffer are like me and I want to know about them and I want to help if I can”. They asked me if there was a special shrine or temple or place where trans people go to honor their community members and I said that I didn’t think so but that space is shared with other groups. They said they want to talk to the grown ups in the community about how to learn more about all the people who have come before them. I told them that old people love talking history so that should go well.

I feel a little weird about taking them to trans events because I feel weirdly like I am riding their coat tails… but this is their community and I want them to feel like they belong. If they are ready to start asserting themselves in their community at 7… rock the fuck on kid.

Tomorrow we have family therapy at 1 then I have a haircut at 7 which will mean two crappy drives to San Jose in one day.

Wednesday is a trip to San Pablo. I love my friends. I hate the drive.

Thursday we are going to an orphan Thanksgiving in San Jose. My kids are thrilled because there will be LAN Minecraft. My plan A is to spend a lot of time crying in the bathroom.

Friday is just local medical care (thank goodness).

Saturday we are going to Dickens Fair for our one visit per year. Wheeeee.

Next week I only have to drive on three days. And the furthest drive next week is 30 minutes. So that’ll be better.

Sarah invited me to come visit her when Noah and the kids go to Texas. I have medical appointments most days so I don’t think that’ll work out. So instead that week I’ll just enjoy the one day of leaving the city.

I’ve been sleeping pretty well lately. 7 hours is a short night. It’s been a week or two of this? I’m grateful. I’ve had 9 hour of sleep nights recently and goodness I needed that. Thanks, baby, for letting me sleeeeeeeeeep.

It’s been nice having folks from the bdsm community poke at me in various ways to commiserate over the death of a community member. I’m sad to hear that he OD’ed. So many of the people who were the pillars of the community when I arrived are now dead because of ODs. I love you all and I am glad you are no longer in pain. I wish your life had been less painful for you while you were here.

It makes me wonder how many people my death would touch.

Let’s not find out soon. Let’s grow the web instead.

I like that both of my children know that when anyone starts my funeral the first thing that someone needs to say is, “Krissy was a bad ass motherfucker.” I think they will sob while they say it… but I think they’ll be able to say it.

None of this “Krissy was a wife and mother” bullshit. That may be a lot of what defines me in this life… but it isn’t what you say when you introduce me. I’m bigger than that.

There’s my hubris showing.

I’m enjoying making future plans with Noah and the kids. We are going to go on a lot of adventures. Because we are very lucky.

Last night the kids begged to go to the gymnastics “Parents Night Out” event. We had run into a little girl at the museum who goes to the same gymnastics studio… and she homeschools… so of course we will be there! Sure! Let’s make friends! You live in our area!?

So Noah and I got an unexpected date night after he returned from New Orleans. That was lovely. We had dinner then he went with me to my acupuncture appointment. I don’t think he has ever done so before?

I saw a new acupuncturist. Whenever I get through with Noah…. she wants him. She was really into Noah. It was hilarious. She kept talking about how he has all the best qualities. I kept going, “And he _____ as well.” She looked just about dreamy. It was adorable.

She was a fantastic acupuncturist. She picked great spots and she was very soothing and near the end she did what was essentially a lymphatic massage on my hip area that was looooooovely but I’ve never had an acupuncturist do that kind of cross-work before.

She… had a lot of perceptions she felt free to share. Perceptions that require I look at myself and my life in ways that are much more positive than I am willing to see. She latched right on to the fact that I am so into my kids to make up for what I didn’t have. I am being the mother I couldn’t have.

She spent a lot of time talking about how if Noah is so wonderful… that means I had to be equally as good to draw him to me. She was quite adamant and I’m sitting there trying not to do my self-hating dismissal thing.

She commented that I seem very calm and happy for someone who says they have depression and anxiety. I told her that I am a very good liar. I can work a room at a party then duck into the bathroom to sob hysterically and beat my head on the floor then wash my face and go back to the party. Everyone will think I’m great! It is a skill set that kept me alive.

She looked sad.

I’m at this point where I feel guilty talking about what is going on in my head because I know I have a good life. I know Noah is better to me than I deserve.

I had to work really hard last night on not being weird because Noah came home from the conference really happy. Happier than he’s been for a while. I had to talk myself through, “Part of this happiness is that he is glad to be back home with us. It isn’t just that being away from us is so awesome that he can go back to smiling when he’s had enough of a break. But I had to work hard on not crying over that last night. Because my brain sucks.

I believe Noah when he says he had a lot of fun… and he’s ready to be home. But I don’t know how to shake this undercurrent of premonition that he’d pick someone better if he could find them.

Why don’t I draw more comfort from my extroverted, slutty husband not being able to find someone he likes more even though he totally god damn looked? He’s just…. so good. And I feel like I am so bad. And he deserves better than that.

But year after year he keeps picking me.

I really enjoyed the conversation we had last night. We drifted through lots of topics catching up on all the things we saw and did and thought about during the separation. We don’t really communicate much during trips so when we get back together there is this huge dump of information and that’s fun.

It was fun sex too. He really is trying. I’m trying to be better about “not yet”. It is so hard to talk about what I want as it is happening. I’m trying. I wish I didn’t feel so pathetic about being so old and still so bad at this.

My list of things I am shitty at doing doesn’t seem to get shorter.

But I have a husband with all the best qualities so apparently I shouldn’t complain about life.

27 weeks. I’m in the third trimester. The home stretch. I’m still puking and dealing with awful sour stomach. Yesterday the kids talked me into going out to lunch. On the way home I had to pull the car over so I could vomit all over the road and in my neighbors yard. That shit is so embarrassing. It was one of those prolific pukes where you feel like you are throwing up everything you have ever eaten. Ugh.

Sciatica is kicking my ass. I’m stretching all the time, including the specific exercises recommended by my chiropractor and it still hurts like a motherfucker.

I’m back to the point where no food sounds ok. Everything sounds pukey and nasty and I just don’t want to eat. I’m still bouncing up and down in the 5-7 lbs gained range. I’m glad I’m not still in deficit.

I’ve been sleeping ok. 7-10 hours a night for the past few nights. Sleeping with the kids is a bit of a pain because they take up so much room in a queen sized bed these days. Something like the road trip would be so much harder now that they are bigger. But neither of them have any interest in passing up the golden opportunity of Noah being gone.

It’s always interesting to me that despite being fairly clingy most of the time… when we travel whoever is out of the house is off-leash. We barely talk. I know some people who have firm rules about calling every day and we just… don’t. Noah’s playing and having fun and that’s good and he should focus on that, not on how we are doing. We are fine.

I mean, I’m a mopey bitch… but that is just a baseline and doesn’t need extra consideration.

I hate how much comfort I take from the fact that my kids see shrinks and the shrinks tell me I’m doing well. The shrinks tell me that my kids are very responsible but not parentified and it doesn’t slow down the creeping horror in my heart that I am going to inappropriately lean on them.

It’s kind of funny. When my kids slack off on responsibility and *don’t* behave as if they owe me anything…. I praise them. “Oh good! You are thinking about yourself first! That’s important. You are a kid. You need to be thinking about kid things not adult responsibility. Well done. I’ll pressure you about adult responsibility in a few more years. Ride that gravy train as long as possible.”

I’m trying to teach them how to be responsible for themselves… not how to assume responsibility for everyone around them and it is such a tricky line.

I invited my cousin to spend a few days around Christmas with us. She’s lonely and would otherwise spend Christmas alone in her room. I haven’t seen her since before FMC was born. DAYS, not weeks. I tend to want long visits with people and then they don’t go that well after a while and I’m trying to learn.

I’m trying to wear the belly band because it helps with the stabbing crotch pain. But it makes my acid reflux worse. I ripped that motherfucker off yesterday when I was trying not to puke in the car and it was too little too late in terms of pressure. Oh god. At least I managed to wait till I was out of the car… I puked all over my hair. That I had washed two hours before. Life isn’t fair.

The longer I feel like a festering pile of shit the more I think “Can’t have a fourth kid. Can’t. This isn’t ok.”

Yeah yeah I’m supposed to care about carbon footprint and be evaluating my reproductive choices based on not using resources. Whatever. I’m deciding based on my ability to withstand suffering.

No one can make me feel good about myself. But I read all the time that you can’t love someone else until you love yourself and that’s a lie. I love my kids. I love Noah. I love my Jenny and my Pam and my Sarah. I love alllllll the rest of my friends who get a more hand wavey recognition of allllll the people because once I start listing too many names I forget someone and that feels mean.

I love a lot of people. I let the love they feel for me carry me through life because I don’t know that I am physically capable of loving myself. I don’t believe that I have to love myself before anyone else can love me because it is demonstrably not true.

I’m really excited about meeting this child. I can’t wait to find out how different they will be than the children I already have. What new mix of my personality and Noah’s will emerge? It’s a wonderful adventure. Will they look more like EC or more like FMC or will they look barely related? Who knows! It’s an adventure!

The baby is over 2 lbs already as per the ultrasound last week. This kid is incredibly viable already and that makes my jaded little heart sing. Every day of continued baking is a bonus. I am torn between hoping the baby will come on Valentine’s Day because that would be lovely and thinking it sucks to have birthdays on major holidays so early would be kinder for the rest of the kid’s life.

I will take what I get and be ok with it.

I just want to meet the baby who will become a kid who will become a grown up.

Yesterday FMC said something that struck me. I wish I had registered the context more but I didn’t. I was kind of spacing out and FMC announced, “Yeah, I work on (mumble mumble) because I really want to have a good relationship with you when I’m a grown up.” It’s amazing to me the degree to which we all feel like we are trying to earn the right to stay together. People don’t stay in relationships if you treat them badly and my kids understand that. We all know we have to get our shit together.

But I laugh when I tell the kids that the worst, most offensive things they do are still small potatoes compared to the shit I did as a kid.

I don’t wonder how I have driven off so many people. I know that my behavior and my attitude aren’t so awesome. And that’s after years of improvement. I don’t feel like I am victimized by people rejecting me. I feel I deserve it. I am not good enough at making people feel comfortable. I make people feel uncomfortable. And I get why shunning is an appropriate reaction.

I just have to pray my kids don’t grow up and do it too. But if they do… I will know I deserve it.

And this guy who was one of my first consistent play partners in the community died. He OD’ed. My personal list of folks I am connected to who have OD’ed is really kind of frighteningly long. I know a lot of people who are in a lot of pain.

Something I know I cycle back to every few years is this sense that I don’t belong anywhere. There aren’t any hobbies I feel like I get to identify myself based on them because I don’t count. I barely consider myself part of the bdsm community, I’m not really a dancer, I don’t do reenactment stuff anymore…

I don’t go to parties almost at all. In most social groups I can look around and identify the missing stairs so I just don’t go.

Avoidance.

It’s not just the missing stairs though. It’s that I don’t see why people want to know me and I know I’m a lot of trouble. So I feel like the best place for me is at home where people don’t have to see my stupid face.

I need a lot from people. And asking doesn’t go well. Better to just stay home and cope with not getting my needs met in a way where I don’t become the designated problem in a group.

I was thinking about an aspect of my relationship with Noah and his difficulty determining my priorities (or my difficulty perceiving his priority order).

I feel all the time like I am drowning Noah in unreasonable demands. I want him to be an attentive parent in a way that is not part of his lived experience in the world. People didn’t pay attention to how kids were doing when he was young. They hit kids who got too loud and demanding. Noah is required to entertain and engage with his kids even when he doesn’t really want to. Just like I am required to. We decided we wanted this kind of family together but I have been the one to keep reading the development books and micromanage “Ah. They are changing developmental stages. So we have to adapt by…”

I seriously don’t know another man, woman, or enby who would put up with the kind of pushing I do about Noah’s interactions with his children.

I downplay my role in Noah’s financial success story like whoa. But the truth is that he wasn’t real motivated to go work his ass off and more than triple his salary without my dreams and desires providing the fuel. He wants to fund paying the house off early. He wanted to fund all the magnificent travel we’ve been able to do with and without him.

It is not a reasonable demand to ask him to come up with $20,000 so I can take my children on a 5.5 month trip. But I asked and he delivered.

He did that for me. He did that out of love and adoration. He did it because he wants to find out what kind of children I will be able to raise if I have carte blanche.

And the cooking. Let’s not ignore that Noah has meticulously learned my dietary needs and preferences and he spends so much time and energy trying to figure out how to help me feel ok.

And then I go and call having sex with him being handed a shit sandwich. It’s not the overall experience that’s bad. It’s the pain my cunt is in sometimes that is the problem. That’s the bit I object to. Not Noah getting off. Not being close to Noah and being intimate. Not touching him or him wanting or any of that bit.

The part that is a shit sandwich is me cleaning up the blood from my torn pussy. It sucks, yo. And come makes it god damn buuuuuuuuuuuurn on top of itching and hurting just from being torn.

Noah is upset about how much he felt like I was lying last year. It’s been complicated dealing with how much it feels like he has lied to me about the relative importance of PIV in our marriage too.

I think neither of us really know. I don’t know if it is lying or overwhelming ignorance and staunch unwillingness to engage with that ignorance.

IF IT AIN’T BROKE. DON’T FIX IT.

But something is broke and it’s eating at our marriage. And it’s all twisted up.

Part of the problem is that Noah does so much… it couldn’t possibly be reasonable for me to need anything else.

I dropped Noah off at the airport at o’dark’thirty and I didn’t feel like I could go back to sleep so I called my cousin. In addition to the new baby coming I got confirmation that my brother is divorced. So that’s his second divorce. I suspected that was true when he unlinked his facebook account from hers and started posting rants about how evil women are for calling themselves “single mothers” when they have alienated the father. Ok then.

It was good to talk to my cousin. We spent a lot of time talking about how I fucked up last year. She’s definitely #TeamSexualAssaultSurvivorsFuckUp. Which is interesting. She wants me to find more compassion for myself because the amount of fucking up I’m doing is still low on the scale of what is kind of expected from me. Relatedly we talked about my sister a whole bunch and how she was acting out the programming she received.

Noah is right that he doesn’t have a clear view into my priorities. I don’t think I know what my priorities are so how could I have communicated them clearly?

My cousin spent a while intensely lecturing me about how even if I don’t actually like or respect or value myself… I need to demand that Noah act like he likes and respects and values me.

Noah isn’t wrong when he points out that he tried ways to change how our sex life worked. (He did.) But it was always…. It always felt like he was offering me a huge variety of sauce toppings for my shit sandwich. It’s still a shit sandwich.

Noah doesn’t demand sex. He doesn’t force it. He just… complains and whines and mopes.

The trouble is that Noah is my sunshine. When Noah is depressed I fail in ways big and small. When Noah is unhappy I internalize that it is all my fault and I have to do something to change it. But the only thing that works is sex.

So that means that if I want Noah to be happy I have to not care how much my cunt hurts and I need to show up and offer sex… even if it makes me bleed.

I’m not saying that Noah presents it this way and I’m not saying this dynamic is all his fault. It isn’t all his fault. A tremendous amount of this comes from me and my broken mental health patterns. This predated Noah in many ways.

But when I tell Noah for years that sex is hurting me and that I can’t keep doing that and he keeps fucking me dry while I cry and cringe…

It sure feels like Noah is agreeing that I’m not very important, or at least the structural integrity of my cunt isn’t very important.

I’m a huge fan of the work of Victor Frankl, a psychoanalyst who survived the Holocaust. He wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning and it centers on how people survive horrifying events by having something that motivates them. I have mostly found his approach to be more useful than the vast majority of psychologists I’ve read. Why are you here? What are you living for?

I am… ridiculously and disgusting outward focused. I depend on other peoples opinions of my merit and worth to convince me that I shouldn’t hurt myself more or that I shouldn’t die. I have never internalized that I am important in my story.

I am important to the extent that I can provide support or help or resources or… something. It’s part of why these periods of disability are so hard for me. When I can no longer show up and provide a bunch of labor in exchange for my right to breathe I should stop breathing.

This is complicated in so many ways. How am I going to handle my children growing up and not needing me? I’m scared of that. I don’t think the way I parent is the ideal way to parent because I don’t have a lot of self or identity left after what I am supposed to give to them and that’s not healthy.

I don’t like me very much. And I’ve spent my life see sawing between violently rejecting people for trying to treat me in ways I don’t like and semi-consciously/fully consciously subjecting myself to people who would abuse me because that is what feels comfortable and right and appropriate for me.

Why have I stayed in a relationship where being in that much pain from sex was just considered an acceptable cost?

How much of that is because I don’t think I deserve better?

It’s complicated how Noah has given me both the same’ol’same’ol’ and dramatically different/better than I have ever gotten in the past. I am deeply aware that some of the expectations I have of Noah are ridiculously unfair. I depend on him to love me and show me what loving me is supposed to look like. I depend on him insisting that shitty treatment isn’t good enough for me. And when he seems to agree with a piece of it (it’s totally ok to hurt my body as he chases his orgasm) I feel… I feel invalidated and small and worthless and like I will never really matter to anyone.

I hate myself because when something starts shifting, like our recent attempts to have non PIV sex, I am so upset with him while I’m glad that it is happening. Why did it take 11 years and me almost completely destroying our marriage before this could be an option on the table?

I had to hurt his feelings bad enough that he would consider looking at the severity of damage that was being inflicted on me and consider changing things. That sucks. I tried asking nicely.

I tell my kids that they should try hard to be nice and if nice isn’t doing what you need it to do… go for effective.

If I were trying to be compassionate towards someone else going through strife I would say that change hurts and sometimes you have to decide if the pain you will inflict through demanding change is greater or less than the pain you will endure if things don’t change. Then do what you have to do.

A lot of what I expect from Noah isn’t fair. But most of what I expect from myself isn’t fair either and that’s a difficult equation. I’m not really sure I know how to have fair expectations. I wouldn’t know what that even means. My life has never been fair.

I don’t want to “win” the argument. I want to not have my cunt hurt. I want to feel like I am not just a worthless whore who has to trade my cunt for my right to be here. I want to feel like I have value and merit in this relationship besides my ability to trigger orgasms.

I want to feel like I am worth keeping. Even if my cunt doesn’t work.

The acupuncture place near my house is being an adventure. I feel like the first gal did a competent job with the symptoms I mentioned but I didn’t feel a dramatic difference. The second lady listened to my background stuff, kind of sagged just a hair, then she said, “I have a 27 year old daughter who struggles with mental health issues and I’ve fought depression my entire life. I’m very familiar with this being a long-term slow battle.”

Then she proceeded to do the same points as my former favorite acupuncturist whom I stopped seeing because I couldn’t deal with an hour + drive each time I saw her. No other acupuncturist I’ve seen has started with these points and… I think they are a big deal in my body. It’s kind of neat to notice after 10 years of acupuncture that certain points do seem to make a bigger difference than others. The one in between my eyes, in my eyebrow. Lots of points on top of my head. These things seem to help remove the layer of frantic “I have to claw my skin off to get away from myself” feeling. That’s something I should pay more attention to. So far I like the second lady here more than the first. I am going to meet the whole damn practice though. It just seems wise right now.

Sciatica is a bitch and I’m pissed off about how much this hurts.

Noah hypnotized me to sleep last night and I got a solid 9 hours of sleep. I haven’t been able to sleep that much in a night in a while. It feels good.

I’m trying really hard to think about Sarah’s words: I contribute to the problems in my marriage but I don’t create all of them. They aren’t all my fault.

Noah and I didn’t arrive wanting a low-key, easy-going marriage. Neither of us wanted to just kind of hang out with someone as they lived their life. We both went seeking intensity. And holy shit we found it.

We’ve been talking about bigger patterns in our marriage. How much were the early years influenced by the rape scene 3 months after we got married? How much of my belief that I don’t deserve to have my cunt stop hurting is exacerbated by fear or anxiety about my entire right to exist? How much do I say yes because saying no and being forced hurts so much more? That’s real.

I’m not saying I actually believe that Noah will rape me left and right. The one thing that happened was the result of very poor negotiation on both of our parts. I have learned some harsh lessons. I will never again in my entire fucking life make the promise that I will accept a fresh new trauma on someone else’s timeline. I should never have said he got to surprise me with a fucktastically over the top intense scene. Then he picked a tremendously shitty already traumatizing day. That has consequences that reverberate for a long time.

But I have not really tried to advocate for myself. I have. But I haven’t been good at it in the moment. I’m great at Monday morning quarterbacking and coming through and writing impressively long screeds about what I want.

In the moment if I feel scared I put my head down and I say nothing because being forced once you say no hurts so much.

Sometimes I feel very scared that the way I managed to stop being raped was I just… stopped… saying… no.

That’s not fair but it is part of my emotional experience of life. I had more than 20 years of steady, irregular rapes. If you can go through that and not be paranoid you are a better person than I. Go somewhere else to feel all smug and proud of yourself, m’kay?

Recently Noah admitted out loud that even though he has given lip service to being open to alternative sex stuff (not PIV) he has… never really been open and he acknowledges that his body language has been very off-putting on the topic.

I’M NOT GOD DAMN HALLUCINATING.

I’m so grateful he was willing to say that out loud to me. That has been real. I have been willing to try for years and he hasn’t been and this isn’t something I feel confident about so I don’t have the ability to force this through on my own. I need someone who is interested in non PIV intimacy or I can’t insist.

There were more than ten years where non-PIV just “didn’t count” and that’s been incredibly hard for me. So yeah. I finally hit a wall and did whatever the fuck I god damn could to increase my capacity for accepting PIV and that blew up too.

During that period where I was out dating Noah and I had more sex than we’ve had since the first year of marriage. It did work.

But it felt tainted to him and he didn’t want it like that. Ok.

I can do the hypersexual thing. But there is a very high cost. There is a cost physically and there is a cost emotionally… and Noah really isn’t interested in dealing with the consequences of either and I am not capable of managing them off-screen.

Noah and I both showed up as highly scattered, dysregulated people. We have turned to one another and said, “Ok, provide stability and consistency.” It’s kind of a cruel expectation we have of one another. Neither of us are naturally consistent people. But Noah has his elaborate systems of checks he has put in place and I have my extensive systems and we’ve managed to mostly get the trains to run on time. Our children will not experience us as highly scattered, dysregulated people. They think there is a normal with interruptions. That’s… way the fuck better than I expected from us.

We’ve both been much more successful at this aspect than anyone had a right to expect of us given where we started.

It is hard for me that Noah tells me that I haven’t created a safe enough space for him to share how he feels about things. This is hard in part because Noah doesn’t exactly always make it easy for me and that’s not a good enough excuse for me to just shut down. I’m expected to keep sharing even when it is hard and it is frustrating for me that there is a double standard. I am intermittent in how easy or hard I make it to share feelings. I know that sucks. But making a safe container for you isn’t my whole life and expecting me to make it my whole life would require a dramatic restructuring of our priorities and… that’s not really on the agenda. Which means that you need to god damn share even when it’s not that easy. Or you can’t expect me to care what you feel because I don’t god damn know.

It is hard that Noah’s sexual shame is running into mine with all the speed of a runaway train. He feels guilty and ashamed for asking for contact/to be seen as a sexual being. I feel guilty and ashamed that I am not always physically capable of participating in sex without intense pain and injury.

This is a shitty combo.

The only thing I can really say in my defense is I told Noah at the very beginning of our marriage that we were going to have big problems because I don’t really say no to things I should say no to. I CALLED IT.

It is incredibly emotionally hard that I feel like only the sex is important. The sex is the sole measure of my worth as a wife. That’s god damn killing me.

Only it’s not like I’m allowed to ignore Noah the rest of the time and focus on filling my cup so that I can show up for that bit. I’m supposed to lavish attention and affection on him all the time. I’m supposed to be adoring as he feels clever telling me about the latest video game thing he’s on about. I’m supposed to clean and make his life just kind of appear for him. I’m supposed to bring socializing opportunities to him because it is hard for him to arrange his own stuff and he needs it psychologically. I don’t really feel like I run out of what I’m supposed to do for him but it doesn’t count.

I think if it counted I wouldn’t be as upset.

I don’t think I’m even upset about my role here. It’s fine. It’s very service oriented and that suits me. I’m upset about being expected to carry the role of a service slave but be judged solely on the merits of a sex slave. I’ve talked to a lot of people who practice consensual slavery and I’ve read a lot of books on the topic… no one call fulfill every kind of role. You figure out what you are good at and that’s what you offer.

I can’t be a full time sex slave. I have literally tried in my life and I am not physically capable of sustaining it. It is not an option for me.

I’m not saying it is evil to want a relationship where someone is exclusively focused on your sexual needs… I’m saying you have to understand that it will be a limited relationship and that person will probably not be good at folding your laundry.

Skill sets are real.

Given the totality of what Noah wants from me… it is literally not an option to have our life function that way. We would be bad parents and that’s not something that either of us are ok with picking. We are trying to figure out the balance of how much time and space is it ok for us to take for our relationship separate from the kids (and it’s about to get harder) because it is definitely ok for us to take time and space for sex… but that can’t be what our relationship is about. It takes too much time and too many spoons.

I think about what it would be like to have more energy for sex too. I don’t god damn have it.

I really did make a gorgeous back yard for outdoor sex… sigh…. BUT WHEN DO I GET TO ENJOY IT?!

Damn kids.

Completely a side note and a switch of topics. I got frustrated with FMC last night at dinner. I was joking and I told Noah that I wasn’t sure he wanted us to have four kids anyway because he would end up with three daughters and an enby. FMC went off on me as if I had misgendered them.

I got a little shouty but I didn’t scream and I tried to bring my volume and intensity down as I went. I told kiddo that it is incredibly frustrating to me that they yell at me constantly about misgendering them EVEN WHEN I’M DOING IT RIGHT and that is not ok. I’m tired of being yelled at all the time about how wrong I am… when I’m doing it right. This isn’t fair and it is pissing me off. I DIDN’T CALL YOU A GIRL. I DIDN’T SAY YOU WERE MY DAUGHTER. I SAID YOU WERE MY KID. I SAID YOU WERE OUR ENBY. STOP YELLING AT ME AS IF I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

I get that this is a big deal. I get that being misgendered is a problem. THEN LISTEN FIRST AND FIND OUT HOW PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY GENDERING YOU BEFORE YOU START YELLING, ALRIGHT?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!

Freaking kids.

I love them with all my heart and soul and I’m grateful I get to spend every day with them. Don’t get me wrong. But sometimes even the best people can be fucking irritating.

UGH!

Marriage is hard. Parenting is hard. Life is hard. And I’m playing on easy mode.

I’ve been playing the new Kesha album on repeat for a while now. Three songs in particular: Praying, Let It Go, and Rainbow I’d kind of like to go through and write explications. Not explanations. It’s a literary term. It means to go line by line through a song/poem and respond to it in terms of historical and/or personal contexts. Because gosh all three songs take me on a journey. Praying for me is about my sister. Oh. My sister’s son’s wife is pregnant. My official message to my cousin about this news is: “I hope she has an easy pregnancy, a quick delivery, and a healthy baby.” I pray they never let my sister babysit but I won’t say that part to anyone in my family.

I don’t know if my nephew is going to be able to break the chains that bind our family. I’m scared and sad. But there is nothing I can do.

I can raise my babies and keep them away from the pedophiles. That’s what I can do.

Lately the kids have hit a verbal/developmental stage where they are ready to talk about stuff that happened a few years ago that they hadn’t told me before. That’s hard. It is hard hearing about ways that I have failed to protect them because I did not know they needed the protection. I’m really grateful for some of the divorces that happen in my life because it is for the best for my children.

I am sad that my children had to watch that much fighting and screaming (I wasn’t present) and I’m sorry that my children had to deal with a caregiver who would threaten to hit them if they didn’t behave. I wish I had known.

The clarion call of useless parents everywhere. Fuck.

If my children saw more fighting in that house in a couple of years of occasional visits than they’ve seen in their entire life in our house… that divorce needed to happen.

No wonder all four kids came over here and wanted to act out intense domestic violence scenes with horrible divorces. I would listen quite carefully as this happened… but it was a game and they never actually hit anyone so I didn’t stop the process. They had big feelings to work out.

We are all trying to manage our own baggage.

When we go through periods where Noah feels less adored… he shuts me out. And it’s not his fault that his “I’m defending myself because you are a bitch” face looks so much like my brother Tommy. I’m familiar with that glare. It is very hard for me to continue to try to be present and giving and loving when someone looks at me like that. But he’s entitled to facial expressions.

Am I entitled to act like I see the facial expressions? This is all so confusing.

And my sweet girl wants some attention. I should go do that.

I am not here because I have to be. I have walked away from many people, situations, and places. I am here because I want to be. I am here because this is the best place I’ve ever been, warts and all.

I am here because when I manage to give Noah feedback on what I need he takes it seriously and tries to adapt. I am here because Noah makes me feel like it is ok to be that annoying Smart-Kid-Walking-Encyclopedia. Do you know how much I irritate people with my constant need to narrate what I know? Not everyone likes that part of my personality very much. Noah encourages me.

Noah likes that I wanted to grow up and play Mary Poppins with his kids. Our kids. The children who look at us like we hung the stars and the moon and we are the best things ever.

I was trying to explain to Noah the other day that him staying up late and sleeping through days is a big deal and that was a little hard for him to wrap his head around. I told him how much the kids look forward to weekends with him and he kind of minimized what I was saying. So I asked the kids yesterday at dinner how much they look forward to time with him. River. Of. Love. You may “see” us all the time because you work in the same house… but we feel the difference between you being present and ignoring us and you being present and turning the ray of sunshine that is your attention on us. When you check out… we feel it. Like the sun turning away.

I am partially here because, for reasons I don’t understand, Noah is better at making me feel sympathy for how hard it is to be a man than basically any other man I’ve ever met. I watch Noah struggle to deal with how much he internalized that no one likes little boys and they will only like you as a man if you give and give and give and give.

My baby Enby is sick. Last night they spiked a fever and they started vomiting. Just once, but it was… prolific and the poor kiddo is feeling terrible. They act just like me when I’m sick which kind of amuses me. They are listing every part of themself that feels bad and getting most huffy with feeling bad. “And MY THROAT HURTS TOO!” heh.

But the look on their face when I pamper them… that’s pure Noah.

I’m a really good at being a nurse for sick people. I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like shit and when someone else is sick I’m good at figuring out all the ways to make feeling miserable a bit more bearable. Everyone in my house beams at me as if I am an angel of mercy descending to ease their suffering. They all have identical expressions of, “You’re here and you love me.”

Yeah. I am here. And I do love you. I can help you get through this. It’ll be just a blip.

I have so much sadness inside me because when I would get sick as a child my mom would flip out and get angry with me. I can now understand that she was barely surviving and anything that made it harder was worthy of resentment and anger… but I was a little kid who got to feel ashamed of myself every time my body was weak. It meant moral failing.

Nobody in this house is going to feel like that. Noah kind of tried early on in the relationship and I’ve been an asshole about mocking man-flu… but I also baby Noah anytime he feels off. He has the same melting, “You’re here and you love me” thing the kids get. It’s a way of relaxing into feeling loved and accepted even when you aren’t at your best.

When I think of the work I do for Noah… it’s not really the dishes or the laundry that matter. He was a bachelor. He can do that shit. Part of what I have done is help create a family where Noah gets to feel respected in a way he never has before. Sure, he’s “The Oracle” at work (Smart-Kid-Walking-Encyclopedia for the win) but at home we listen to him and we listen to what is under his words and we take care of him.

Part of the problem in our marriage is how much we read one another’s body language and leap to incorrect conclusions. Part of what makes our marriage so awesome is how much we read one another’s body language and leap to correct conclusions. So this is tricky.

No one has ever spent as much time staring at Noah and trying to make him happy as I have. The reverse is probably even more true.

The work I do for Noah involves things like helping to guide his relationship with his kids. “Hey so you reacted like x when the kid did y and let’s talk about developmental stages and tone of voice…”

Neither of us are “natural” parents. We are both the result of a lot conscious hard work and efforts to change. We want something that we’ve never seen and something that we’ve never been. That’s hard and takes course corrections and feedback and the willingness to humble yourself when your fuck ups are pointed out. We do it for each other. I tell Noah what I’m working on and he gives me feedback on how well I’m progressing.

Noah seduced me by telling me that if you can’t look back on yourself 18 months ago and say, “Wow I really sucked” then you aren’t trying hard enough. *cough* Well… May of 2016… *cough*

It helps if you fuck up big time every so often… easier to look back and say you sucked…

I am here because for all that the video games and comic books drive me nuts… I feel safe and mostly accepted. I don’t feel like a good wife. But I feel like a person who will be tolerated pretty much no matter what. Noah doesn’t always like me. He won’t ask me to go. I understand that the geek social fallacies work in my favor sometimes.

I am here because even if I am a monster I am a monster in a cave of monsters and that’s ok.

I am here because Noah will tell me the truth even when it is unpleasant and I end up liking him a little less for what he is saying. I know I can trust him even if I do spend time being mad at him.

He has such a beautiful smile. I love looking at it. It’s kind of funny to me that I know he likes our kids very much… but he still doesn’t turn the softness on them the way he does with me. I see facial expressions directed at me that he doesn’t use with anyone else. He is soft and gentle and melting. I just finished rereading Melting Stones by Tamora Pierce. It’s about a mage who works with rocks and she ends up having to deal with a newly forming volcano and the issues that might cause. She interacts a lot with the spirits of the volcano. (Go with me here, it’s a fantasy book.) The way the book talks about her wanting to soften the edges of herself and melt into the pool of fiery spirits…

That’s how Noah looks at me. Like he wants to melt away the edges of himself and just flow into me.

Which is a lot of why it hurts so much that I wrecked this.

I don’t know that I will ever deserve his trust again. And that’s my fault. I did that.

Time to pay the piper.

One of the neat things about the road trip was having the emotional experience of bringing home with me. The kids and I spent the trip listening to Kacey Musgrave on repeat and singing “Any place beside you is the place that I call home.” We had this open gaping wound of missing Noah, but when he came out to visit… we didn’t miss the building that much. Wonderland is a cool house as houses go… but we focus on the people. The people make us feel loved and accepted and wanted and like we should be here. And the people can go anywhere with us.

I was proud of myself last night. Noah spent a while massaging me (he says the current horrible stabbing pain is sciatic nerve pain. Oh joy. More fucking pain) and afterwards he indicated that he would be interested in moving to a room with privacy. The thing is, I am depressed as shit and I haven’t been doing my chores promptly so the family cloth was in the dryer for like 3 days and my whole crotch is a mess of burning pain because I’ve been using toilet paper. Toilet paper is the devil. So I told him I’d be happy to come with him and be with him but I need to leave my underwear on.

I’m trying.

Do you know how ridiculously hard it is for me that I have turned him down for sex many times in the past month or two? I… don’t do that. I’ve turned him down as much recently as maybe in our whole marriage put together. We’ve certainly had as much alternative sex in the past two months as in the rest of our 11 year marriage put together. I am… not the most skillful handjob giver in the world. What I lack up in dexterity I make up for with extra bonus oral sex. I’m slightly better at that.

I’m having fun with telling him not to rush and just enjoy feeling nice. We don’t have to hurry through.

I am here because even if I need other friends… Noah is my best friend. He doesn’t flinch from me in the way basically everyone else does. And even he still flinches sometimes.

EC keeps telling me that she thinks I am going to want another kid. Noah has hinted broadly that he’d be ok with getting another vasectomy as soon as I want him to. If I end up with a c-section I’m just getting a tubal done. If I have a better vaginal birth…

But I hate being pregnant.

EC says, “It isn’t that you are crazy. It is that you like your kids so much. I totally think you will want four.”

Even she understands that five would be a bridge too far. Oh good. But I came into this wanting three…

Today is kind of busy. 8am Skype. 10am cleaners. 12pm chiro. 2:30 massage. It’s going to be a good day because at the end I won’t hurt as much. It is Friday Pain Relief Day.

Oh shucks. Noah is supposed to go get a hair cut and he was going to bring the kids with him. Luckily our hairstylist has an 8 month old and she’s currently germ paranoid so cancelling the same day is preferable to bringing a sick kid. We’ll call her and talk about it.

I gave in to cleaners twice a month since we lost the babysitter. I think it is easier to live together when we have slightly fewer chores… Goodness knows I’m slacking off right now. My body feels like shit.

I feel kind of ridiculously happy that I came up with a name for the next kid that basically means spiritual gift of charm. That’s… hopeful in this house of tactless wonders.

I am here because even when I am depressed as shit I still manage to get up and do the basics. I still manage to provide care and connection even when I feel horrible. I want to. I feel good about it. It’s important. I matter here.

Both of my kids have expressed fear about me dying during childbirth. We talk about it and I try to be realistic and kind about it. It is a risk. I’m never going to promise you that I won’t die. I will absolutely die someday and you are going to have to cope. But I don’t think I will die that day. That’s why I’m going to a good hospital and I’m being picky about doctors. I’m trying to stay fit. I’m trying to eat well. I’m doing what I can to stack the deck in my favor and then it’s just about luck.

They both tell me that they don’t want me to go. I tell them that I don’t want to go but someday I will have to because everyone does. But I hope it will be many years hence so that we can enjoy one another’s company for a very long time. But I don’t know when it will be and that’s why I pressure them so hard to learn the things I need them to learn. I don’t know how much time I have and I have a lot to teach.

I tell them that someday it will be their job to keep themselves safe and I won’t be there. The things that will decide if they come out ok or not will be their will and instincts. I’m doing what I can to train you to react in a way that will prolong your life.

FMC asked me why I love them so much if they are an asshole. (I don’t call them an asshole but I do talk a lot about how everyone is an asshole sometimes.) I told them that people are irritating and annoying and that is life. People are selfish and they have to be and that’s right and just. And I love you because you are bright and shining and you try and you fail and you get back up and you try again. Because that is life too. I love you because you are fierce and strong and you demand to be seen. I love you because you are unwilling to be ignored.

You refuse to be underestimated. Excellent. Keep it up.

I am here because no where else in the world will give me the chance to be who I want to be.

It’s kind of funny talking to Noah about our marriage. Funny because we go round and round. Neither of us have any desire to leave but sometimes I’m really not sure why we want to stay.

What do I want from our marriage? Gosh.

When I call my friends to complain about Noah my friends spend half the time saying, “Yeah that thing is shitty… that’s true… but let’s talk about all the good things.” Jesus fucking Christ my personal god damn therapist was so #teamNoah that even though sex was causing me literal physical pain she told me I should keep putting out because marriage is about compromise and he does so much for me.

I feel like there is no one in Noah’s life who feels that way about our marriage. I feel like Noah doesn’t talk about our marriage much to anyone and when he does it sure isn’t to sing my praises because when we have a problem… where are the chorus of voices telling him that I do so much for him and marriage is about compromise?

Noah didn’t marry someone super high functioning and promising. He married a god damn train wreck. And I have managed to accomplish things in the past 11 years that seem like a fucking miracle to me. I am pretty god damn stable. Yeah I cry and I have mood swings… but I haven’t actually caused a lot of problems and drama in our life. I do my chores. I take care of the kids. I learned how to handle major financial investments because Noah couldn’t handle doing all of it even though the topic gave me panic attacks when we got married. I have been responsible in a way that I honestly didn’t think I would be able to deliver on.

I have even damaged myself for years and years and years trying to meet his need for sex even when our sex life was not working for me at all. I never quit. I never stopped trying. Yeah, eventually I was a giant asshole and I added sex with other people as part of my coping strategies and that blew up mightily in my face. Yeah that sucked. It didn’t help how I wanted it to help. It got ugly.

I have an incredibly high need for social interaction. I am extroverted. I NEED people. And I don’t have a whole lot of opening for that in my life. I mean, I get lots of kid time… but I need grown ups.

I spend the vast majority of my whole life knowing that I can’t talk about 90% of what is in my brain or I am a bad person. I’m very careful what I say and to whom.

I don’t know how to deal with this in the context of our marriage. I used to do a lot of things. I used to be such a social butterfly it was unreal. Renaissance Faires were fun but I can’t do that sort of thing and stay married to Noah. It means so much time away from home and that wouldn’t work out. Dickens Fair… I have no desire to work with my rapist and he’s beloved and popular and I’m not. I tried the home school group for years and that was complicated as fuck and Noah never appreciated the fact that there was emotional fall out from me dealing with large groups of people constantly who weren’t my friends. The bdsm community is late at night, which I’m not physically good at, and it is intensely threatening to Noah. Even if I was capable of behaving more appropriately he wouldn’t be real happy with me going out there to socialize because he knows that I could pick up play and/or sex any day.

It is hard that the only groups Noah particularly wants to hang out in are groups where no one wants to talk to me very much. An incredibly high percentage of the people that Noah would like to spend time with either treat me like I am furniture or they talk down to me because *I* didn’t go to a prestigious school so obviously I’m dirt. And that’s not my imagination. That’s not my rampant paranoia.

My rampant paranoia is that I don’t trust that *my* friends like me. It’s reality that most of Noah’s friends don’t like me.

And that isn’t the end of the world. Noah gets to go on trips with these people. Noah can go have lunch with folks and he does. I don’t lock him in a box. He’s totally allowed to have lots of people in his life who have no use for me. Hell, I booked the god damn trip for him and the kids to Texas so he can go visit his family… who really don’t like me.

I don’t think I try to control Noah’s life and limit him to people who only like me. But I notice that pretty much the vast majority of people that Noah wants to consider friends don’t like me and don’t really support our marriage.

I notice that. That hurts. That feels like Noah must not think our marriage is that great and he probably doesn’t spend a lot of time talking me up to these people.

When he went and saw a therapist she pushed hard for a divorce. We are definitely not talking about our marriage in the same way.

And that makes me feel like only one of us thinks that there is any good in our marriage. Maybe only one of us is getting good from our marriage and that isn’t fair and he should leave.

I want to feel like how hard I have worked to learn stability and to be present and to meet his needs actually has value and I don’t feel like that. I feel like the fact that I finally god damn defended my right to feel pleasure in my cunt means that I deserve to be abandoned as a bad wife.

I didn’t give enough. So I’m worthless and I should go.

I want to feel like me giving my best isn’t such a shit pile.

I want to feel like both of us appreciate our marriage. Instead of poor Noah he married that white trash bitch so now he is suffering, oh poor man.

It doesn’t help that we have ended up in a situation where if I do try to be friendly with people Noah likes that blows up and goes poorly and I’m bad again.

I’m really tired of everything adding up to what a bad wife I am. What incentive do I god damn have for trying harder? I sure as shit won’t end up in a better position that meets more of my needs.

I’m tired of being the designated problem. I’m the one who fucks up and Saint Noah tolerates me.

I want to feel like if I’m not in the mood for sex for a while that isn’t a crime I am perpetrating. I want to feel like it is ok that if we haven’t had a good conversation in a while I DON’T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU. I want to feel like the dishes fairy and the laundry fairy who visit our house actually count as balancing the work that Noah does with cooking. He doesn’t god damn do all the chores in our house and I will get in a fight over this topic. I’m really worn out on the narrative that Noah neeeeeeds sex to pay him back for how much he does for me.

Near as I can tell my payback for my half of the work is that I am allowed to claim half the income. How come your half of the work entitles you to sex that hurts me?

How come your half of the work entitles you to everyone thinking you are the best god damn thing since sliced bread and my half of the work means that I’m a piece of shit and you should leave me?

I feel really scared that I am actually that bad. And if I’m that bad after trying this hard… there isn’t really hope I can improve enough.

I’m really sad.

I feel like I know that I have a good partner. I feel sad that I don’t feel like I am a good partner.