My psychiatrist told me that she could handle any problem I have/had because she worked in the Tenderloin in San Francisco for years. I think my problems are often not much like those she is going to face in the Tenderloin.
Most people who live in the Tenderloin and seek counseling for drug addiction aren’t there because of fractured personalities from moving so much as a child that they didn’t go through normal personality formation. They may have other developmental problems from moving too much, but I seriously never met a single person who comes close to my moving issues. I’m relatively confident that most people move around within an area and don’t develop the issues I had going from rural desperately poor Oklahoma to Los Gatos, California (rich as fuck) to Compton, California to to to to to.
My instantaneous rejection of things that will not be something I change into is because I’ve been put in so many settings… I know how I adapt.
I have had far more privilege than the average person in the Tenderloin and that’s going to change how we need help. The travel I’ve done. The security I’ve had in the last ten years… these things change the approach a lot.
Other than pot, I don’t consider myself an addict. I don’t bury my problems in cocaine or meth or alcohol. I just do more work or I self harm or I find sex.
Why nonmonogamy? Because I can’t get the intensity of connections I want without it. I need to figure out more about bonding with people. I need more practice figuring out how to love and have boundaries and this is part of that for me. Because I need to learn and this is one of the best vehicles for my education. Because it is so close to my native life experience. It is so primal. It effects so much of my entire nervous system.
Because sex means life. I know I have plenty of sex with Noah. Novelty matters for me.
Because if I wrapped all my tentacles around Noah and said give me attention give me attention give me attention as much as I want attention he’d…not like it as much as he thinks. When I’ve tried it… it was very mixed.
I have a lot of need for intense connection.
If I had a mother I don’t think I would need this. But I don’t. So I need something major to shock my system into believing that yes I do deserve love too. I’m not just bad. This is a life giving act. Even if I’m not making life with the vast majority of my partners, I understand the purpose of sex is to make life. That is why it happens. It feels like creating connection and intimacy and love in the world.
I like it.
If I had a mother I could connect with the way I connect with my kids when I feel insecure I think I would be a different person. But I don’t.
And, being slutty makes me feel cocky and that’s fun. Not much in my life makes me feel cocky. (Hey L–remember when I climbed the tree at the home school park day just because all the moms were flipping out about how dangerous it was? That worked too.)
I don’t feel cocky about my parenting. I strive for humility. Hubris would be fatal. I don’t have it all figured out. I need to live with doubt. I need to live with constant questioning of my motives and my methods.
Why nonmonogamy? Because a fantastically cute boy just emailed me to tell me that he’d like to take it a step further and have sex on Saturday. Oh shit. Excellent. It is tentative. It is maybe. It is we’ll see.
Krissy, Krissy, Krissy what are you doing?
I’m spending time with people. Because I feel like I need it really badly. Because my ability to chase the women in my life is at a very very low ebb. I need to feel loved and I can’t bang on doors to ask for it right now. They are all busy. They mostly have children and jobs or at least just very consuming jobs. It is appropriate. I just… I’m just feeling out of chase. I do that.
Boys… chase.
Why nonmonogamy? Because being slutty makes me feel good in my body better than anything else in the whole world and I spend so much time feeling so bad in my body. Do you want me to live for a long time? I need to feel good in my body sometimes.
I do get it in other ways too. But slutty sex is like a water cannon of joy slamming into me.
I can’t help but feel this is tied in with being “good” in terms of what my biological father taught me. He wanted me to be sex crazed. He’d be proud. I… have feelings about that.
I tell Noah what I do. And Noah doesn’t shame me. So I don’t feel ashamed. I feel confused because it is hard on Noah that this is as good for me as it is. But we put up with other annoying things from one another.
Cause if Sweet Boy is all, “I’d like to take it to the next step” I’m all “Hell fucking yes.” I mean. We’ll see if it happens. Ahem. As the grown up here. I told him we will need to talk in person about limits and absolutely stick to them in scene and we’ll see if sex is really what he wants. If he doesn’t really want it before the scene starts… we aren’t doing it in scene. Because I won’t renegotiate as we go. So lots of talking to go.
Oh I love talking.
Why nonmonogamy? Because I have to learn how to deal with a lot of my deficits. Noah has learned work arounds for many of the ways in which I fail. When I go out into the world and deal with other people… I lose my crutch. I have to grow. Or I will fail.
I was just itching for more suspension. I’ve been wanting to do suspension for a long, long time and no one has seemed interested. So. He asked. That means I get to want it with him. I mean, I know I could go find a generic person to suspend if I advertised. But I’m not really that much of a top and… I don’t know. I’ll top when someone switchy comes to me and asks. And I like my submissive. But he doesn’t like rope.
I want to make someone dance in the air who will appreciate it. It’s been a long time and I think I will get the chance on Sunday. I’m excited. I really want to do this. I don’t know why. To prove to myself that I still can? That I haven’t forgotten the physical techniques? Really I’m being kind of an asshole. I should torture myself with months of floor bondage again first. But I tie knots all the damn time! I’m not out of lashing practice.
Just not with bodies.
(Lashing is when you tie things together.)
I feel cocky when I feel like, “Yup I’m a bad ass who can do this.” But I’m kinda over feeling like, “Well a long time ago I was a bad ass who could do that.”
I want my identity to be present tense. And I want to see what happens to his face while he dances. Oh goodness I want to see. He has such a beautiful face. He’s so shy at first. Then so expressive.
And my cunt is ripped to shreds. If I’m not healed by Saturday I should say no anyway. Sad face. Feck and Drat and Dagnabbit.
Uhm, it doesn’t hurt as much as yesterday? But it’s still not great. AHHHHHHHH No fair. Ok. Off to a day.
Hello there – I hope you don’t mind a comment from someone you haven’t interacted all that much with over the years.
I would be interested in hearing more from you about this –
“fractured personalities from moving so much as a child that they didn’t go through normal personality formation. They may have other developmental problems from moving too much, but I seriously never met a single person who comes close to my moving issues.”
I went to 17 schools during K-12. The longest time I recall being in 1 city was Phoenix for 2.5 years. The shortest might have been 6 months in OKC.
Since leaving home in 88, I’ve probably moved around another 14 times – but most of that has been in the Bay Area, so I don’t feel like I’ve lost as much in those moves as I did during the ones in my childhood.
Hey there old friend, I don’t mind a comment from you in the slightest.
I went to 25 schools k-12 and I dropped out at 16 and went to college. My longest stint pre-18 was 18 months. I often lived some place for a month and then moved.
Since I turned 18 I have (including a period of homelessness) moved 9 times and it feels glorious to be so settled, cause that’s in 15 years.
I have written a lot over the years about the problems this caused, is there anything in particular you are curious about? I’d love to chat with you about this when I see you on Sunday.
Thank you for expanding on everything. I haven’t heard anyone suggest before that moving around so much could have a negative impact on personality development.
I only looked at it in the most obvious way – a person doesn’t have a chance to develop roots, to grow and nurture long-term relationships. They are always the ‘new kid’ and always the target of other kids looking to prove something.
That is always what I looked at as being the biggest contributor to my mental health issues – the lack of having much stability, the lack of close friendships, and since I was always torn down & had no one very interested in building me up … the near total lack of self-esteem.
When I was younger, the only 2 positive things I about myself that I held on to as being irrefutable was my intelligence & my singing ability. I was always on the honor roll and always one of the top stars in choir (in everyone school I went to) … the proof of those things came from the outside in ways that people couldn’t take them away from me. Everything else though ….
I found myself today trying to figure out how many times I moved as a kid. I got tired and spaced out (insomnia last night) at 21. But that left out like 7 cities in Los Angeles, Pacific Grove, and 2 places in Tulsa. So… 30ish? I’ll need paper and a pen and an energy drink to work it out! lol
I had some of that ping ponging over the poverty line also. Poor, then solidly middle class in a nice neighborhood in a 4 bedroom house, then poor as fuck where we’d run out of food and be forced to subsist on the emergency refried beans that he kept frozen in the freezer in tupperware. Ugh. , then Slightly better in low income projects, then in Santa Monica across the street from a golf course in a lovely home with a lovely yard and a nice neighborhood, then poorer again in a small cheap apt on the line btwn Santa Monica and Venice, then out to Tulsa to live with my Aunt and Uncle in their very comfortable lifestyle.. I left out steps, a lot of steps. I went to 14 schools k-12. 15 if you count Cabrillo. and oh! There was a night school class.. lol. and a summer school in high school that was at a totally different campus…, but that wasn’t about moving. Neither was the vo-tech program I got drummed out of.
I think dissociative issues in my family are genetic. It’s an easy defense for us. My mother’s personality is fragmented. I’ve dissociated to cope. My adult daughter dissociated when she was being bullied in middle school by her former ‘best friends’. But the moving and the abuse and the volatility (love and violence and creepiness) from one parent and …cold benign (most of the time) neglect from the other parent, that shit didn’t help. I used to have a pattern of having an argument with a person and just writing them off. When I was a kid it would work out, I’d move. I had to learn to work through that sort of shit as an adult.
Incidentally, I lived in San Jose at 5 years, Tulsa from age 15.7 to 18 and 8 days, and Carson (adjacent to Compton) at age 19. Scottsdale complex. In 1987. Bloods and Crips were shooting it out in the complex’s central playground at night. It was a sort of a rough place to live with a baby. OTOH, having a baby was like a shield, no one gave me shit about anything other than nursing. “Girl, that’s Nasty!” And letting my crawling baby play in sidewalk puddles after the lawns were overwatered Every Morning. Same reaction, “That’s Nasty!!” *sigh* I felt like such a hippy there. 🙂
My father liked living in the coastal fog belt, my mother liked inland deserts. I had heat stroke and heat exhaustion a Lot.
Sorry to ramble, it’s late and my thoughts are disordered. 😛
The thing that keeps me coming back to my therapist is every time I start freaking out about something she has done/said we have a productive conversation about it and she apologizes for her end of messing up.