I remember Sissy acting how I am.  When I was little.  She and her boyfriends would make a lot of jokes about how you knew it was good sex only if you hurt afterwards.  I remember her wincing and being nasty because she was on edge.

I haven’t been nasty.  But I’m distracted.  I feel like a ghost.  I feel like I am looking at people I love through a fog.  I won’t be able to feel deserving of love until my body stops hurting.  I don’t like that.  But I think it’s true.  I think that as long as I move my head gently to the side and my whole chest hurts I will feel slightly bad.  I will feel made smaller.  I will feel like someone doesn’t want me to cheerfully inhabit my whole body.  Because it is true.  Someone I like.  Probably even love to the degree that I love my friends.  He has been a friend for over half a decade.  If he asks me to hang out today, I will say yes.  But I won’t have sex again.

I don’t owe anyone this pain.  I don’t care if it makes sex more exciting.  If you can’t enjoy sex with me unless I am in pain for a week afterwards I don’t want to have sex with you any more.  I’m not going to get all stupid and say that my body is a temple and should be worshiped, but I can’t deal with hurting like this.  It takes me away from my life.  It takes me away from my kids.  Hurting like this makes me feel little and weak.  Scared.  I’m reminded of how frail this shell is.  How little protection I have in this life against all the many things that would cheerfully see me dead.

Yeah, I don’t like it but the more someone hurts me the more I think of my dad.  At least this time.  Why do I go out and find asshole men who want to hurt me?  Well, at least I’m not stupid enough to wrap my life around one of them.  Oh, wait.

Noah is different.  Noah makes it very clear that he wants to do those things.  He enjoys them when I consent to them.  When I am also in that mood.  When I’m not in that space, he doesn’t hurt me.  It’s been a lot of years since we have played heavily.  He just doesn’t hurt me anymore.  Because he loves me.  It’s really weird living with one of those assholes who likes to hurt me… only he doesn’t hurt me.  I feel this conscious feeling of being in a pause though.

I’m scared.  I feel trapped.  I feel anxious.  I feel like this is what I should expect for the rest of my life.  That this is what I am good for.  I don’t want to be hurt.  I’m so fucking tired of hurting like this.  And then I have to smile and be patient and act like it doesn’t hurt me all day long when my kids want to hug me.  I can’t stand hugging my kids right now.  I don’t like that feeling.  It tears me in two to be simultaneously angry and sad that my kids want to touch me.  That’s not what I want to feel.  I want to be glad for their touches.

I fell asleep around 3pm yesterday afternoon.  I woke up long enough to eat soup (thanks to Sarah taking care of me) and kind of hang out till bedtime.  Then I went back to bed.  I woke up at 2am.  I sit here and think.  Today will be hard.  Sarah has a migraine.  I still hurt so much.  Because I am angsting about hurting so much my back is also aching fiercely.  It’s a complementary system.  But this night will end.

I think that part of what is hardest about this is I feel the need to keep this pain fiercely away from my family.  I don’t even get the little jokes with my lover about how it’s a good thing the memory keeps me from getting too angry.  It wasn’t worth it.  If I felt this way because of sex with Noah it would be different.  If Noah had hurt me like this he would be babying me.  He would want to fix any inadvertent damage.  He would cuddle me.  And I would let him.

Instead I hurt because a friend thought it was hot.  And I’m sitting in the garage alone because I don’t want to inflict my restless movement in bed on Noah.  The kids haven’t been sleeping well either and he needs rest.  Not everything is about me.  Closer to morning I don’t think I have a choice.  I need Noah right now.  I need him to remind me that I’m not the dirty little girl any more who should be treated like this by everyone.  I remember this feeling a little too much.  I have hurt like this a lot.  For almost 18 years.

The first time I had sex by choice it was with a drug dealer more than twice my age.  I told him I wanted him to fuck me.  He did.  I crab walked backwards across the floor trying to get away from him once it started.  Until my head was against the wall.  He didn’t stop.  He thought it was hot to chase me like that as I squirmed and cried trying to pull away.  “Oh yeah, you know you like it.”

But I didn’t.  And I still don’t.  I hurt.  And my baby is crying.