I have been walking around saying that phrase to myself for a few days. “Walls and mirrors.” My relationship with my kids is so complex. I started saying complex because of the therapist we did ecstasy with. He didn’t like the word complicated; he liked complex. Ok. Sure. Whatever. I don’t think I differentiate it in my head the way he does in his.

My children are both walls and mirrors. They are like me; they reflect aspects of my personality that I both love and hate. They are not like me; they are difficult to understand and opaque.

I truly believe that one of the big life goals I have for myself is to figure out how to have healthy relationships with them as adults and I don’t know that I know what that means. Are we enmeshed? Not according to the definition of the word because we all get to have our own very separate feelings and experiences. But we want a closer relationship than is standard for white USians. What does that mean? Do I want them to reflect me? Do I want them to be a wall on which I can paint?

I learn from my children. I learn things about who I do and do not want to be. I learn how I do and do not want to act. Sometimes I learn these lessons by fucking up and sometimes they forgive me and sometimes they hold a grudge. Both are reasonable responses in my world view. But both are problematic too. It’s all so hard to figure out.

Lately we are struggling with the changing dynamic that comes from them having adult sized bodies. They have long felt it was wildly unfair that people treat them like how tall they are and not how old they are. But dude and dudette, you are fucking huge. You can’t act like you are still little and to be coddled and tolerated as you are rough. When you roughhouse it fucking hurts and I am not supposed to respond as if an adult-sized person is hurting me you want me to act like you are still my precious toddlers.

This is part of why I wanted a third child. Even they are kind of able to understand “Oh. That’s what a toddler is. Not me.”

We normalize off of one another. We decide what is and isn’t ok by committee in ways that I don’t see other families doing and I don’t know if this is wrong or not. But I don’t have a handbook or a culture to fall back on to decide how things should be so we decide together what we want for our family. We prioritize things like trying to be healthy for the express reason that we want to be able to be together for a long time because we like each other. Fitness, vegetables, sleep, education… we talk about these things in terms of how we each fit into the family unit and how we will have to pursue our own paths. So far they still struggle to perceive that they will want their own space to the degree I predict they will. I remind them that a few years ago they were not capable of perceiving that they would want the space they want now… and I predicted it… and I turned out to be right. Maybe I am right about how much more they will want a few more years down the line.

We’ll see.

Maybe I am wrong.

We imprinted hard on the highly enmeshed babysitter we had for five years. She is her mother’s best friend. She is 21 now and barely starting to pull away and be her own person. My kids saw her going through her teen years hanging out with her mom all the time because her mother was her favorite person. They expect to feel that way.

Only I can’t fucking home school them that long. I can’t. I feel like this is too much for me at this point and I am going to struggle to get through the next year. What would make it better for me? If they were actually self directed instead of depending on me to be their externalized brain. I ask them about their goals then I set the path based on what they claim they want then I hold them to it and it fucking sucks. Because they drag their feet kicking and screaming the whole way. As they remind me weekly that they want the end result and I need to get them there. This is not healthy.

I am failing to teach them how to be self directed. I have such a powerful internal motor, such a strong sense of I MUST KEEP MOVING AND ACCOMPLISHING THINGS that Noah and the kids just… kind of fall into my wake. Which isn’t fair or true entirely because Noah’s career arc has been of his own making and there is a self-directed learner if ever there was one. But he didn’t ever want it until I told him I had big dreams and he wanted to hitch to my wagon. He wrote a book after me (and did way better at that than me).

Noah is incredible and it’s not all because of me. That potential was there before I met him. He had a burning desire to change and get out. But it is utterly undeniable that his career arc after marrying me was meteoric and it wasn’t before our marriage.

I don’t want to be that for my kids. And that’s complicated. I don’t want them to succeed because they are doing so for me. I think I communicate that to them in complicated ways so they don’t try hard because they don’t have much they want to accomplish for themselves. Their just-go-along life is good and they are happy. I mean… that’s good, right? Only it’s mixed.

I want to differentiate more from them and I don’t feel I know how to while also preserving how very close and connected we are. I come from a family of people who violently hate each other. Noah comes from a family of people who low key hate each other. Our kids really like us and want to be near us all the god damn time. It feels like a miracle. I like this. I want this to continue. Only I also feel like I am suffocating and I need space.

I don’t know what the balance is.

This much constant connection with my kids makes me not want sex and that’s complicated.

I went to a munch today. I met a few local perverts and it was quite lovely. It’s… going to be different here. A large party is the size of small house parties in California. More people go to Folsom Street Fair than live in all of the Highlands. There is no education network to speak of.

Meeting these new people made me want to write Part 2 so much. I want to write about all of the things I learned from the bdsm community in California. My mis-education in the hands of the Middle Aged Guard. I love the people who taught me so much. I am so grateful to and for them. I learned so much about life and what I wanted and who I want to be.

And now I need to go off into the world and be that person and I don’t feel like I know how to do that and have the appropriate space from my kids.

I miss sex and I miss bdsm. I miss feeling that yearning and want. In some ways I feel like it will be very good for my marriage to rediscover what those things mean to me away from that community. My wants and yearnings are so tied up in the people who kink-raised me. I am glad I will get to go do some processing of what that means in Portland before I land here permanently. Some of the more big-sister feeling people from the California community moved up there over the last few years and I get to touch base with them.

That’s a gift.

My life is so full of gifts.

I got to dig in the earth today. I put two plants in the ground in Jenny’s garden. She is so kind to allow me to come and do that work. Touching earth calms me down and makes me feel happy in a way very little else does. And I will get to visit these plants for years to come and hopefully see them thrive. I will get to know that Jenny and her family will see them daily and feel pleasure. I hope they will feel that I am extending a little branch of love into their lives.

My life is so full of gifts.

I am very excited about moving to the Highlands partially because it means I need to get my poop in a group and keep it there. I won’t have the patience and background radiation of living in therapy-culture. Folks won’t be the same sort of tolerant of my quirks. That will make many kinds of growth absolutely mandatory if I want to be happy and connected.

I did not talk about my psycho childhood at the munch. Boundaries will be so different here.

There are two Part 2s to write and I want to write them both. I want to write about the community that kink-raised me for other grown ups and I want to write about everything that lead up to Noah for my kids. Those are two very different books. One will be highly chronological (the latter) and one will be full of amalgamation and simplification as I figure out what the important lessons were and how I learned them (the former).

Even if no one ever buys them or reads them… I want to know that I have told these stories. Noah will read them. Noah will understand me better. Jenny will read them. Pam will read them.

So someone will know me better.

(But I will give them copies for free.)

How will I talk about that group? Will I call it the crucible? The binding? The synthesis? The smelting?

Ha.

It will start with driving to the first party I went to down in the mountains. Where I met my Owner even though the invitation came at a munch the week before. I have relived that drive in my head thousands of times. I know the music I listened to. I know how it felt to have all the windows down and the wind rushing through my hair. I was hurtling as fast as I could around all those curves in my mad rush to find myself. To find the mentors I desperately needed.

Thank you all so much.

I saw Dad for the second time at that party. I met him first at PE, and that will come later in the story as a flashback. It will start with that drive. Dixie Chicks: Goodbye Earl. Melissa Etheridge: I’m Only One. Meredith Brooks: Bitch. White Town: Your Woman. TLC: No Scrubs. Rascal Flatts: Waiting All My Life.

There was more of course. But those songs… they were on my absolute constant playlist.

How in the world will I talk about the bdsm and be appropriate for my kids? That’s going to be a tightrope.

The cattle prod. Breaking my arm and staying with him for years. Giving him a 3′ by 3′ by 3′ cage and fucking sleeping in it. Sleeping chained to the bed with just enough distance to be able to reach the toilet.

I want to understand this and for that I need enough distance to look at it. I want to figure out who I actually am and who I want to be. I want to get my poop in a group and be the person my children will want to be friends with some day.

And that means more fucking boundaries.

I don’t even know.