Can I say enough of what I want to say without getting in trouble. That’s the dance.

When you are a person who acts there are going to be times when you fuck up. You will do wrong. That’s not… avoidable. It just isn’t. You will step on toes. You will cross boundaries.

That’s life.

The trouble is in repairing those mistakes and moving on. The trouble? Maybe the meat of life. Because I don’t know about y’all but I don’t get through a day without a fuck up. Some are huge and some are tiny, but they always happen. Life isn’t about when you fall down, it’s about how and when you get back up.

In the last period of discussion things have been… more tumultuous. Thus a lot of my radio silence. I don’t want to document some of these bounces even a little. That’s hard for me. There are a lot of reasons I don’t want to document a lot of what I’m thinking and feeling. Despite popular opinion there are lots of boundaries around what I write. I only have a few friends who are smart enough to show up at my house, grin, and say, “Ok tell me what you can’t write about.” Those people hear the best stories.

I know that the pendulum is swinging hard and I don’t know where the center will be when it stops. I hesitate to comment on just how fucking far the pendulum is swinging. Folks get alarmed.

Part of the reason I usually try to be honest and document the most extreme moments is because very few people who live with this disorder are safe enough to do so. By and large… I am.

But I’m not safe enough to get into all the nitty and gritty of this. Even I recognize my points of vulnerability.

Why am I not safe enough? It isn’t because anyone will hit me. It isn’t because my reputation will be destroyed or anything like that. What reputation I have is… there. I’m unstable and that’s a well known thing. Hard to tarnish that reputation. What are people going to say, “Oh look the mentally unstable person is unstable.” News flash at 11: water is wet.

Hi. Love you too.

That’s kinda the joy of having documented this shit for so very long. MY BEHAVIOR IS TO SPEC AND AS ADVERTISED AND ACTUALLY I’M IMPROVING. So don’t complain too loudly. (It is weird trying to stay present with the feeling that as much as I don’t like this much swinging… it is an improvement over the past. It really is.)

Am I annoying? Well yeah.

How do you go through life knowing you are a monster and manage to not abuse anyone? I’m trying to find out. What is the difference between being an asshole sometimes and being abusive? I’m told that a lot of it is about patterns and frequency. Everyone loses it sometimes. But you can’t lose it in the same way over and over and call it a mistake. If you do the same thing every time a trigger happens… that is possibly abuse or leading to it. Depends on what you do.

I have a wide constellation of coping methods. I’m trying to get better about how I use them.

I feel very ashamed that as I move through life I use my reflection in the mirror of my children as the primary judge of whether I’m doing ok. They are happy, secure, they feel loved, they feel like bumps in life mean a few moments of discomfort and not tragedy.

They learned that from me. I must not be as bad on the outside as I feel inside.

How cryptic can I be about something and still say it. It is amazing to me what is considered threatening from a woman and to be avoided and what is considered acceptable from a man and he is fine for being that way. Just fucking amazed over how these standards play out.

That said: thank all the stars in the heaven for easy going slutty folk. I’m not one of you. But I appreciate you. I appreciate that you don’t mind that in between showing up for the sex I am going to be off-stage HAVING BIG FEELINGS about everything because that’s just what I do. My feelings by and large aren’t your problem. Even if you read them in my journal, my feelings aren’t your problem. If my feelings distress you, stop reading about them.

And for the love of toast don’t tell me extensively why you stopped reading. Please. I beg of you. Just go quietly into that good night and let me wonder.

I already have a lot of voices in my head narrating what I should and shouldn’t say because I hurt people by existing. I don’t want to add your voice.

If you ever feel specifically hurt by a topic and you want to email me and say, “Hey Krissy. I love you and I know this is awkward but x is really triggering for me. May I ask you to get better at tagging x so that I can look at your tags before deciding to read an entry so that I can skip those pieces? I would appreciate that.” My response would be to fanatically never miss that tag again. Or, you could try: “Hey Krissy. I know that I am not the person you are writing about, but I am attached to person you are writing about and I’m having feelings. Is it possible for you to maybe tone down ______? I would really appreciate that.” My response would be: Of course I will respect your feelings. (I know I am not consistent with tagging. I’m not… writing for the whole world. If you are a close friend asking me to make sure I hit a specific tag is a small thing for me to add to my brain. Trying to really be serious about tagging and warning my writing for any possible trigger that exists… that’s a lot of pressure. But if you are a regular reader and you want to say “Hey x is a thing for me” I can totally get better about marking x. I just… fuck it’s a lot of pressure to warn about everything I write about. But I get avoiding things. I do it too.)

I have a lot of people I don’t write about for various reasons. I have a lot of people where I can allude to some things and not others. I’m ok with boundaries. But they need to be stated. I interact with hundreds of people. If I try to intuit all the unspoken “Please don’t” boundaries I will freeze into inaction and never ever write a word again.

I’m thinking really hard about writing. Whether it is more positive or negative right now. Part of the reason it is hard for people to detect that I have boundaries at all is because they are so variable. I have them in such different places for different reasons and some of those I can articulately explain and some of them are… a mystery to me. They just are.

I like what I learn from writing. But can I pay the cost for it?