Today is going to be bad. I started my period yesterday, I’m sure that contributes to how emotional I feel, but it’s not all of it. A friend asked me if I wanted to spend brunch with her on Mothers Day. I told her I didn’t want to because it would be too hard for me, can we meet another day. She said that was fine because she was offering for my sake instead of hers. I want to beat my head against the floor and scream, “That’s why I don’t want you here.” That is what I’m hearing in my head this morning. I don’t want you here. I’m only doing this for you. I don’t want anyone to do anything for me. I want people to want to be with me. They don’t.

If she didn’t want to be with me she wouldn’t offer, right? I’m just over reacting, as usual. I feel so stupid and ungrateful and mean and vicious. I feel hateful. Why can’t I let anyone just like me? Right now my needs are so big I can barely see around them. I am so selfish.

I can’t find my sports bra this morning in the dark. I find that incredibly frustrating. It’s enough to make me sink to the floor and just lose my shit crying. I am so stupid and pathetic I can’t even keep track of my things. This morning I feel like I hate pretty much everything about myself. I am forgetful. I am bad. This is a problem because if I wait too long from when I wake up to start running then I have to eat breakfast because my stomach hurts. I can’t run too soon after eating. It fucks up the timing of my whole day.

I get the impression I cry more than average. I cry for several hours every week. I’m sure I have weeks where I don’t cry but it has been a while.

Yesterday I stopped the car while I was driving because I had to cry for a while. I couldn’t see the curves on the road through my tears and I don’t want to have that kind of accidental death. I don’t want Noah to think I killed my kids on purpose. That would be a horrible thing to live with. I can’t stop crying lately. I feel so terrible. I feel like such a terrible person. I feel like I don’t deserve to live. I think it doesn’t help that I’ve been stubborn about being sober. Needing medication makes me bad. If I don’t use the medication I am “less bad” but I feel far worse about myself. It’s complex.

I dropped Shanna off at her Godmamas’ house yesterday. She stays for the weekend frequently. Soon it will be every month. She loves staying there. She loves her Godmamas. So far they are the only people who have a regular, consistent relationship with the kids. I feel like that is my fault. That other people would be present in their lives if I wasn’t a bad person. Shanna has lost friends because of me and my stupid mouth. People no longer spend time around my kids because they dislike me so intensely. They are so angry with me that they don’t want to know my children.

Why shouldn’t I feel like a terrible person? I drive people away. I hurt them. I do bad things. I am too angry. No one should be as angry as I am. It’s apparently horrifying. Whether or not I started out deserving to have bad things happen to me I deserve it now. I have earned it by being such a bitch. I’m not good or kind or gentle or nice. I know. The only thing I can do to stop earning bad things is to never speak again. It sounds like hyperbole but I’m terrified it is true. I am terrified that I am so bad that the only thing I can do to be less bad is to simply stop speaking. My influence is bad. I hurt people. I am bad.

I feel like it was the wrong decision for me to have children. I am not good enough. I can’t change it now. I feel sorry that my children don’t get to find out what it is like to grow up with a good mother. I’m sorry that my children don’t get to find out what it is like to grow up in a family. I bring nothing but myself. There is no one who is attached to me.

Interacting with people is hard. I talked to my friend yesterday. I met her four days before I met Tom. She told me that in her opinion I shouldn’t refer to my situation with Tom as a “relationship” because to him I was a fetish doll, not a person. She said she always disliked the relationship. She explained some of his techniques when we were arguing when I saw him on Monday. He has to discount me as a source of information. My opinion is literally worth less to him. He denies it when challenged directly, but he casually mocks me continually.

I spent my entire childhood being put down. Sarcasm is generally used when someone wants to dig at someone else. To poke them. To take them down a peg. Noah is not sarcastic with me very often. He is quite careful to do it in ways I’m not going to be bothered by.

Tom was very sarcastic with me pretty much all the time. It was hard to live with. If I spoke I was inviting being taunted. He meant it all in great fun. He thinks he is quite the wit. I found it rude and dismissive. I can get him to concede an argument but it gets bloody and nasty and I just don’t want to have that kind of relationship so I get used to not being right. I get used to just closing my eyes and shutting my mouth and trying to make my face go blank while say, “Ok. Fine.” But if he’s laughing while he is saying it then it’s just a joke and I can’t get butthurt, right?

I wonder if I feel so intensely suicidal because I am thinking so hard about my relationship with Tom. I’m not sure I want to admit to myself how bad that was. I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t rape. It was all fully consensual. But I consented to a lot of things I shouldn’t have. I used Tom as a way of attaining harm that was only marginally less bad than slicing my legs up. I don’t think anyone  plays like I did if they aren’t very ok with the idea of possibly dying today. I’m feeling really freaked out as I think about this book. I haven’t even gone through the pictures yet. Tom took thousands of pictures of me. By far my sex life is the most photographed part of my life. I feel weird about that.

I think this book is going to be a lot harder than I thought. I should probably start looking at pictures. It is hard to know that I let someone treat me in ways that weren’t very nice. I don’t have a problem with the beatings. I had to ask for those. I have a problem with the fact that I can go to seven years of graduate school in English and teach the language for several years and he will still tell me that I am stupid for not believing him about a made up grammar rule. I’m really glad I broke up with him. I understand why I have missed him. He does feel comfortable and familiar in a way the rest of my life right now doesn’t.

I don’t think I’m going to go to the rope munch on Monday. I don’t want to see Tom. My triggers are my problem, right? No one else has to care about stupid things that set me off, right? I don’t like being treated like a lower class of person. My response to being treated that way is to feel intensely suicidal and I just can’t deal with that. I can’t deal with being told I should be cheerful about being demeaned and ignored.

I’d rather start a fight. I would rather behave in a way that is bad. I would rather tell you to fuck yourself. And thus I drive more people away. I should stay home.