I feel like one is starting and that scares me a lot. Alebeard is talking me down. This is a strange universe.

Ok, next day. This is good. Noah and I talked a lot. This is a hard space. A lot of what is going wrong right now is not about one of us being malicious. We are both feeling highly traumatised and that’s not a great thing. Noah doesn’t feel like he can get support from anyone because when someone hears about how I acted after being raped they will tell him to divorce me.

I can’t publish the transcript between the rapist and myself before the trial. I will afterwards. It will be in the public record how horribly I acted because then Noah won’t feel like I have a dirty secret. I’m a dirty whorish piece of trash. I never advertised otherwise.

After being raped I proceeded to do a really good surface demonstration of falling madly in love and being willing to toss my whole life aside for this man. I gave every sign of whole-heartedly embracing my new destiny as his partner. I was cruel and dismissive towards Noah and him knowing that I said those things is causing him a lot of intense pain. He’s sharing that pain with me. Fair enough. Maybe I do deserve this part.

I deserve to have everyone who hears about my behaviour tell Noah that he should get away from me because I am disgusting. I know I am.

I feel like this stupid rapist is the natural and inevitable follow up for what I did in kindergarten. I have been chasing people to give questionably appropriate blow jobs since I was 5 years old because my lizard brain is deeply aware that I exist for this purpose.

That hurts and scares Noah a lot. It is existentially threatening and terrifying to him that I have this programming in my brain.

Most of the time in most circumstances I have it well under control. I’m not handing out blowjobs for a fiver in a parking lot. But it feels like an overarching threat. I could. That feels like a threat inside of me to me. I assume it feels worse for Noah.

Compulsion. The fact that this stuff is compulsive and difficult to control if there are specific triggering events. Knowing that I have this cascade of behaviours living in me is a mixed bag. This makes me feel dangerous, like a gun. Like I am the threat.

This is part of why it feels like I am the problem. I am the threat. I am the one who is going to cause the pain. I am inappropriate and reactive to things Noah wishes I didn’t react to in any way shape or form. “Things” she says as if men are things. Noah’s not afraid of me leaving him for a woman, which is a bit funny, but holy heck any guy is a potential threat. I suppose it is flattering that he perceives me as being so desirable but I’m pretty sure I’m never going to be successful enough as a slut to be able to have every man.

Dale Estey’s gentle 1989 novella The Elephant Talks to God takes a whimsical jab at such a thought experiment. Immanent in nature, God appears as a cloud or rock to converse with the inquisitive elephant. The elephant wants to know: How is it that nature, which is so giving, can also be so rude? What does it mean to be an elephant, and not an ant, for instance, or a tree? Is there one truth about the world, which presents itself to all of them so differently, and how would someone find it out? Why is there fear, and what’s the deal with love? What happens in death? Why is there such a thing as “if” — that is, choices and possibilities? How tragic is it that a butterfly, so beautiful, lives only through the summer?

“Butterflies don’t live a season,” answers God. “They live a life.” The elephant protests. “They’re gone when it’s their time,” replies the cloud. “To a butterfly the season is their life, they expect nothing more and fulfill their existence. To the trees, your life is brief…. Seconds or hours, long shadows or short, it’s all the same kind of time. The butterfly feels he has as long a life as you.” Then pondering how such limits could be more gift than theft, “God spoke to the elephant, and called him by his name, and filled his heart full of his beloved butterflies, and they soared through his blood, wingtip to wingtip, until he understood the power of their life.”

www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/do-elephants-have-souls

What is the value of a life? What is the purpose of life? My purpose has been tied to sex in ways that are challenging and difficult. Noah’s fear of my sexuality is a big issue for us. Noah has terror about my sexuality.

If I were better able to be monogamous this would be no problem at all. I could lock it up in a box only he gets to open and everything would be fine. The trouble is my sex drive tends to be mostly “on” or mostly “off”. I can channel it when it is on but most of the time if monogamy is the requirement it is better for it to be turned off. I wish I could perfectly wish away/turn off my sex drive. I’m sorry for every time I can’t. It is turned off most of the time I am around my kids. That’s been part of why I don’t have a lot of spontaneous desire sitting around the house with my family and why Noah feels so threatened when I have it outside the house. If I’m not feeling it sitting in a room with Noah and my kids I must not want Noah very much.

I wonder on and off through the years if I shouldn’t go back on something like an SSRI because it will eliminate my sex drive.

Me wanting sex is a problem. I don’t want polite, legal, appropriate, monogamous sex. So it’s better that I don’t want it at all ever and I simply endure it. I am a big problem when I want it.