Author Archives: Krissy Gibbs

About Krissy Gibbs

Just your average hippy white trash incest survivor stay at home mom. Is there an average for us? No? Oh well.

I want to be open.

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So here’s the thing: bad things are going to keep happening. 2024 was not a great year. I had surgery. Noah had surgery. I was sexually assaulted. Noah had a bursitis issue. My body has been well into melt-down/burn out for some time and my physical pain issues are ridiculously high.

When I felt this bad in California I had to keep working and driving. I saw a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, and a massage therapist nearly every single week in order to function. Now, I don’t function very well. I get the absolute basics done but that’s it and there is no way I would be safe to drive. I had a really intense conversation with myself when my California license was expiring. I had a few options. I could ask a friend to let me lie and change my address so I could get a new California license. Some folks have offered in the past. I could work harder to get a UK license, which would be the correct choice of course.

If I had a license I would feel compelled to use it. I would feel required to make other peoples lives better by using cars more. When I think of how much worse it often got in California because of all the driving? I thank my lucky fucking stars that I have reduced the stress on my life enough that I can control a flare this bad with yoga classes and careful pacing of exercise.

I haven’t seen any kind of physical support person since before my surgery and that was almost half a year ago. I am doing so much better physically than I used to do. I could be doing better if I had more support but that will always be true and I will not have the support so get on with it.

I can only do what I can do from this house. I don’t particularly want to move. The medical care in this city will be limited for the rest of my life. So I can’t drive. I can’t bear the strain.

I gave up having a license after 20 years of having a car meaning freedom and independence. I have lived in cars for a couple of years in non-contiguous spread out periods, never longer than 7 months at a stretch. In a real way giving up my license is giving up my normal Plan B for where I can go in an emergency.

I gave up on getting a license here after not trying very hard to start with.

That means my life will be necessarily small as I won’t ask someone else to do all the travel. That closes a lot of doors all by itself. I want to form relationships with people who live within approximately 5 miles of my house. That’s a significant limit.

I want to be open to the universe, to adventure, to opportunities but it feels like I am being closed down in ever increasing steps and it is weighing heavily on me. In a way the issue of increasing disability dovetailing with a reduction in financial status is convenient. I no longer have to consider how to manage all that disposable income. It’s simple: I don’t have it. I think I did well with it when I had it (paid off debts, built long-lasting wealth) and I think it will be ok to get off that train.

I don’t have to keep working like my life depends on it. Is that fair to embrace when everyone else does have to work in unhealthy ways to survive? There is no fair. There is no deserve. Life is unfair in every fucking way. Me working or Noah working to earn money so that we can justify the capitalist machine grinding people to dust is kinda weird. We can survive without giving our life to companies that make us miserable.

Why in the fuck should we try hard to stay in that? We do need to find ways to be part of community here, but why does it have to involve enriching someone else with our time? Because eat the rich. If we are honest about our life then we sure look like targets. Meh. When have I not been a target?

I want to be open to what comes in life. I don’t want to go forward with a specific size and shape and shopping list of what it needs to look like. I have so many limits. Creating more arbitrarily seems like a recipe for failing at life.

Too many feelings.

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I am feeling a lot of pain and isolation. I am struggling with how paranoid I feel. I make the assumption every time I leave my house that someone is going to be hostile or nasty. I get a surprising amount of random verbal abuse. Other people hear it–I am not delusional or paranoid.

I started 2024 with so much hope. I had big plans for working hard and contributing to communities. In the end I am isolated, lonely, and I feel deeply excluded. I feel wounded to my core by being asked to stop coming to cycling events. That was the vanilla community I invested in the most since moving. Now I feel like I am dirty and bad and I hurt people by existing near them.

I’m sorry I made you feel like a bad mother because I was willing to defend your gay kid and you weren’t. That wasn’t my intent. You weren’t in my thoughts at all. Your kid was. And that means I’m not welcome anymore.

I’m scared of the queer community now. The fact that basically no one from the organisation committee is checking on me feels fucking vile. I was raped on the final night of a month long spree of events where I personally produced 28 events. (Some cancelled due to illness so I didn’t hit 30.) That feels like evidence that I did not make any friends this Pride.

The NHS told me that I’ve already gotten so much therapy that I shouldn’t need anymore and if I do I can’t apply until I still have symptoms months after the trial. Fuck if it doesn’t seem like the *plan* is to avoid prosecuting rape/sexual assault cases by being so unsupportive the victims commit suicide. From where I’m sitting that looks like THE PLAN. It’s a lot cheaper that way

Noah fell and broke his ankle. He needed surgery. It was a little bit stressful figuring out when the surgery would happen. The NHS really does act like people are just waiting around at liberty to jump whenever they are called. It’s quite different to interact with.

I feel increasingly certain that I made the right decision in cutting things off with Travel Boyfriend. He was not acting like my friend. I feel less anxious. I feel less like I am supposed to be trying harder to win approval. Instead I am back to exhausted lethargy. Anxiety is a motivating emotion. I don’t want to be running on anxiety all the time though. I’d like to actually feel ok.

I know that EMDR would help a lot. I feel deeply upset that I was told no and that I can wait for years. It makes me feel substantially more out of control, helpless, and like I don’t get to be in control of my body.

I wish I felt like I had energy. I have a lot of things I want to do but no ability to focus my body or my brain. I’m in a lot of pain. I feel overwhelmed waiting for things to land on my head. I feel sad and scared and vulnerable and angry. I hate that I can’t be around people without crying.

I hate being me. I don’t want to walk this road. I don’t want to have to manage these trials and tribulations even though I do have so many wonderful aspects to my life.

I know I am lucky. I know I have a good life. It is hard to feel like I should be in it. I feel wrong from the core of me. I work hard on hiding it but it’s a mixed bag. I wish I could like me the way I like other people.

Noah is at the hospital and I miss him. As much as I think I will be stupid enough to want to sleep with someone else one day I think it is insane that I want to be away from Noah at all. He is the sun I orbit around. When he isn’t here I don’t know what to do. If I don’t have Noah to take care of–what am I even good for? Hell, the kids don’t even need me for cooking anymore. They are all shockingly competent.

I am so glad for Noah. I should go to bed. I’m going to the walk to the hospital in the morning and fetch him home in a taxi. Then I’ll get to baby him for a few weeks. I’m looking forward to having a holiday with him alone. It will be our first time having more than 48 hours alone since before Eldest Child was born. Little twerp is closing in on 17. That’s a lot of years of not having time alone.

I think we’ll manage to have fun even with limitations. Noah is fantastic to be with. I’m glad we get to do this. It is a silver lining on a whole bunch of negotiation that lead to nothing.

I choose me.

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Ok. My buddy Dave said I need to stop thinking about what happens to me as defining who I am and I need to write my own story. Fine. Be that way.

I have a habit of seeing potential in people. I make them feel inspired. I make them feel like they can go do wonderful things because they are so great. This is complicated because most of us don’t live up to our potential. Potential doesn’t mean you actually have the drive or skills to make something a reality. It means that if you have drive to learn the skills necessary you can make it a reality. Some people can’t make some things happen even with drive and skill. I could not be a professional stunt woman. My body can’t do that. I’m not sturdy enough. I lack the potential outside of whether or not I have the drive or skill.

Over the years I have invited several people into my life who had great potential and very little drive. They all kind of wanted me to be the motor behind them pushing them through. It’s a really unpleasant position for me to be in for my friends. It is hard enough as a mother.

I’ve been floating between fury and incandescent rage and deep abandonment for days. I cannot trust people who over promise and under deliver. That is a relationship deal breaker for me. It is too reminiscent of my family of origin. Someone wants credit for promising to do something even though they don’t do it. Like my sister claiming in mediation a decade later that she had been a huge supporter when I prosecuted our father. No you fucking did not. You iced me out. You told me it was my fault my brother died and my fault my father died. You refused to speak to me for months after raging at me.

Don’t fucking tell me that you are providing support when you aren’t.

With the fuck off letter from the NHS yesterday I am feeling incredibly vulnerable, weak, abandoned, and dehumanised.

Also, yesterday was the day when TB finally decided that he doesn’t want the possibility of sex to exist between us at all. He decided that 9 days after the cut off date for me paying for a rental house. I’m on the hook for a £500 romantic get away even though the person who invited me on it now is treating me in ways I don’t appreciate.

I went back through the handful of things he has actually been willing to commit to writing in the past seven months. He pushed me to invest in him really hard. He has wanted an avalanche of support. Do you know what he said to me after the rape and aftermath? That he was really disappointed that he wasn’t the next person to kiss me.

Fucking awesome.

He hasn’t been a source of support for me. Instead I went through chat logs and video call timing history and I have been leaning on 16 different friends (including Noah) to the tune of hundreds of hours of support in order to figure out how to cope with how TB has been acting.

Do you know what I don’t fucking need in my life? Someone who treats me shabbily enough that I need more than a dozen people providing support. That’s bad. It’s unsustainable. Between the time I spent processing with other people and the the time I spent giving him support… that’s all time away from focusing on my kids.

I didn’t participate in planting anything this year because I spent all of my gardening time talking to TB. What a fucking waste of my time.

I made him a man and now he wants to go off and spread his seed because he feels like someone will find him hot and want him. Wow. I’m sitting over here being a raging cunt and judging every aspect of his life choices and finding him deeply wanting in terms of a potential co-parent to an infant.

He’s never bothered to learn the language of the country he moved to in five years. Despite having a huge number of housemates he has no significant savings and no retirement. He thinks he’ll have to work until he drops dead. It’s a lot harder to earn enough money for the strain of kids that late in a career. His position in the country he is in is not stable. If he produces a child there, it is possible he will have to leave the child behind and go back to the US because he can’t stay. It is going to be fucking pathetic if he has to go try to learn German somewhere else so that he can get back to being with his family.

He’s almost 44 and he’s just starting to look for a partner. That means his vetting process is going to be sloppy and rushed because he is pressed for time. He is very likely to at best get to a point where it is appropriate to have a child with someone by 46-48. He won’t be one of the dads at high school graduation; he will be grandpa. He won’t be supporting his kids through their transition to adulthood; he will be needing them to provide his elderly care because he doesn’t have the fucking money for a home.

Someone choosing that turns my stomach. I judge. Something he doesn’t seem to understand is that I have very different metrics in my head for how I judge parents and how I judge non-parents. He went from me judging him according to a very liberal “Well if you are happy that’s good enough” standard to “Are you thinking about the well being of your dependents before your own happiness?” He’s not.

Frankly I also judge the digital nomad movement and fucking Americans traveling constantly all over the globe amassing massive frequent flier miles and pricing locals out of being able to afford to live in their traditional homes. The life he has lead over the past 20 years isn’t one I have a ton of respect for when I look at it as his “I am preparing to be a parent” period of life.

His entitlement is what I left California to get away from. Why in the fuck am I allowing this to be such a big part of my life? Because I care too fucking much about old friends from the old days. I’m a loyal bitch.

I don’t think I am loyal enough though. I think he has burned through the credit he had deposited in the Bank of TB & Krissy. He took and took and took until I have nothing left to give him. He used me up by never giving anything back. He has not been acting like my friend. He doesn’t help me with anything. He always offers to distract me with stories about himself. He sends me stupid emojis to tell me he is thinking of me. He likes to send “poke”. It gives him a little dopamine hit.

I’m not a fucking video game.

I’m fucking mad. But I think that this anger is healthy and good. My boundaries are being tramped into the mud. I can fix that. I will end this relationship. I will choose to put the energy that I have been giving to him back into Noah, my garden, my kids, and myself.

I’d rather spend my time talking to my supportive friends about myself instead of stupid fucking TB.

Letter from the NHS

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I’m copying this shit because it’s so fucking epic.

I’m writing to you as (deleted), Consultant Psychiatrist, referred you to Psychological Services. As you are currently engaged in counseling with Connecting Carers and are due to continue this through RASASH, we are not able to offer you assessment or therapy within our service. I would agree that RASASH would be the most appropriate form of intervention at this time to address your current difficulties and circumstances. As you have previously engaged in extensive psychological therapy I would hope that once this acute period of distress has settled, and with input from RASASH, that you feel more able to implement the learning and coping skills from previous therapies.

Connecting Carers and RASASH offered me someone to sit in the room with me while I cry. They said they would give me tea and cake. They are community support workers, not therapists.

Well. I don’t think I will bother asking for mental health support in this country again. I am saving this letter. If I ever commit suicide I am using the back of this letter for my note.

Having a hard time

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I’m upset about the lack of support from the NHS. I talked to someone high up at New Craigs (the psych hospital) and she told me I can’t have therapy until after the trial. I feel like if they won’t support me through the more traumatic period I’d rather set the building on fire than go there for help afterwards. (No I am not going to set anything on fire. I am not a violent person. I will, however, opt out of appointments and treat it like a source of hostility and pain instead of help and healing.)

The GPs won’t diagnose me with EDS or fibromyalgia so I’m unable to qualify for medical cannabis. That leaves me with the black market and a lot of lung damage. I feel humiliated and debased.

I feel like the NHS Scotland wishes I would just die and stop being a problem. Or at least leave the country. They would be happy with either.

My house is down with Norovirus. All three kids have fallen like dominoes day by day and I expect to go any minute.

I’m on a medication break because my usage level has increased times 5 and that’s really bad for my body. I’m not coping well. I’m in a lot of both physical and psychological distress. I believe with my entire soul that the NHS does not give a shit. I’m pretty sure I’m going to develop serious health issues here and I won’t seek care.

Hell, I tried to make an appointment with a for-pay clinic in town. They told me it is obvious I am in significant distress and they will see if they can do anything for me then they didn’t respond again.

This is fucking hilarious because I’m not even asking them to do much. I want them to evaluate me and confirm my original diagnosis information so I can go to a different private clinic with UK records and get cannabis. They won’t do it though.

I feel completely dehumanised and devalued and debased. I feel like dirt.

You are on your own, kid

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I’m trying to figure out how to wrap my head around the next stage I need to move through. I love talking to crazy hippies. They have useful ways of framing issues.

A lot is happening around me and to me and even within me but I am just me in the middle of it. How do I shove these different layers of experiences into different boxes so that I can walk forward with less dragging me down? I won’t be having help from a therapist for this time down this labyrinth.

Rape is spewing out all over the place in ways that are deeply problematic. There are the historical layers of training, response, and even most of the deep suicidality comes down to trying to escape that pain. There is the physical damage and the emotional damage and the psychological.

The physical damage is still present in the forms of pockets of deep scar tissue around old wounds and injuries. When I am extremely emotionally dysregulated this gets worse. Luckily my cunt has been improved dramatically with the lovely process of pelvic floor physical therapy. My back is fucked for the rest of my life–it can’t be fixed. It must be endured.

The emotional damage is in the ways I have shitty behaviour patterns from my life, I am emotionally abusive because I talk about being suicidal. I talk about raging self hatred and how I deserve really over the top punishments to everything. That is emotional abuse towards the people around me and it’s not fair. That’s been an ongoing battle my whole life and I am a lot better than I was, until something happens and I slip. I don’t know that I will ever fully conquer this hurdle.

Psychologically I would say that that the panic attacks and mental confusion and explosiveness (often due to overwhelm) were in a pretty great place as of the start of this summer. I was a little irritable and deep in burn out, but I wasn’t having PTSD abreactions or panic attacks and I wasn’t suddenly screaming from out of control terror. This is the area that I think has the greatest potential for shifting in a meaningful and timely way. I can actually do something about a lot of this, and I just need to get my plan in place. It would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to triage everyone else’s needs. The last week or two have already been a tiny bit of crawling out of the pit.

I’m not ok. I’m sad. I’m anxious. I’m not looking forward to my parents’ birthdays in a few days. I never do. I feel like I am trying desperately to feel connected and love. It is less of a lie sometimes. I know the love is there but I can’t feel it.

I reach for feelings of love and then my brain gets distracted thinking about someone who doesn’t feel able to have a relationship with me anymore. This year I feel my failures so deeply and painfully: the Bonus Mama, the God Mama, and The One Who Got Away are taking up a lot of space in my brain. How did I wreck those relationships? Will I keep wrecking everything in those ways? I don’t know.

I’m scared and I don’t feel very lovable.

My “on repeat” song today is the grudge by Olivia Rodrigo. I couldn’t tell you who I am thinking about. I just know that it takes strength to forgive but I don’t feel strong.

I actually had several better days before today. I hit another bump. Part of me wants to crawl into a hole and never come out again. It is hard to believe I should keep trying since I suck so much. Yesterday was better.

I hope tomorrow is better.

Click bait says, “Are you scared of saying the wrong thing?”

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Yes, yes I am. Thanks for asking. No I don’t want to hear your advice asshole. I was told that if I talk about my history of abuse I am just as bad as the people who did it to me. I’m scared of saying the wrong thing because apparently I’ve been even more bad than I thought. I’ve been bad since year 5 of my marriage. That’s a bitter pill to swallow. That’s the last time I acted right.

I can barely remember 2011. Apparently since then I’ve changed for the worse and I don’t know how to go back.

My lack of crystal ball is really compromising my ability to be a human being who isn’t a shit stain. I don’t predict myself all that well. I don’t predict what feelings or reactions I will have to people. That means I am bad.

I thought the goal was for me to change over time but apparently now that change means that I am doing a lot of very bad things. I don’t perceive any sign that any part of who I am is good enough. Noah is going to chirp up, “Me too!” Yeah I know. Which is why us doing this is stupid. We make each other feel like shit. The fact that I am not an untraumatised naturally monogamous person is deeply traumatising to you. My existence is a threat and I can’t undo it.

No, I can’t predict in advance where and when I’m going to feel attraction in advance to give you a warning every time. No, I can’t. I am a fucking piece of shit with a broken fucking crystal ball. What I remember about the stupid middle school teacher guy was that after that I was never to ask for any kind of contact or play or even kiss a friend ever again. That’s what I remember. So if you think I did that right and it was treated as me doing a good thing it resulted in the cessation of my right to ever be not monogamous again. I wonder why following that playbook exactly is not that fucking automatically appealing. The thing that locked down our marriage forever is not my boiler plate for opening it up.

Fucking shocking.

I feel like I might spit in your face the next time you say “Being with me is just like death.” Do you really want to keep writing that fucking spell? You are creating your future with your fucking words.

So am I, I know.

I think I am going to have to avoid other people like they have contagious diseases because anything else is me being disloyal. Because yes I will feel attracted to people. I will. I am a disgusting baseless whore. If you want me fucking *you* and getting off then yeah I have to be allowed to just have fucking natural desire in my body. Or you can have a set of holes that doesn’t experience any feelings. Because that is the result of not being allowed to have feelings except under very controlled and specific circumstances. Have you seen the last 13 years? I haven’t wanted a lot of sex when I feel like I am being watched for any sign that I am being disrespectful by feeling desire I should not be feeling. Better to not feel any desire at all.

It feels so extreme and binary and impossible to get out of this all or nothing state. It feels impossible to get to a place where you are not treating me with dripping contempt constantly.

You want your life to be a scratched record, a Groundhog Day of the same thing over and over until you die. You will have your odd night out chatting with the vaguely tech oriented people here and otherwise you are fine with pacing the house doing chores and playing piano and reading. You barely believe you need to leave the house for exercise–It took over a decade of pushing and being annoying about it.

Apparently my track record over the past 13 years of being a parent is such that my family, not even just Noah, thinks I am barely restrained from going and hopping on a bunch of anonymous dicks. It sure is nice being a respected person. I mean, I hear from people who are respected. I wouldn’t know. I feel incredibly degraded, disliked, and disrespected. Because yup, that’s what I do all my time. I go get laid.

Yup.

It’s getting harder to keep going in this Feri book. I remember why I put it down last time. I am not allowed to have a relationship with sex that is about myself. No. That is a lie. I cannot pretend to follow a path that requires me to be a human being with autonomy and self actualisation when it comes to their personal sex life. That’s a fucking lie. I don’t have it and I will never have it.

“Fine, you mean you want no rules.”

I mean it doesn’t matter what you say at this point I’m not the only one who can’t tell the truth to save my life. You say one thing one day and contradict yourself the next. You flip flop and set traps so you can berate me again. This isn’t fun playing. This is fucking abusive. I am not allowed to want anything. It’s like my physical objects: I’m not allowed to care about stuff. I need to expect that it will be taken from me and potentially destroyed or just removed. I need to not take a sense of comfort or joy from anything.

I counted out on the calendar all the 30 day blocks up till 500 days after I notified the police. That’s the median length of time such a case takes moving to verdict from reporting. I shouldn’t really be making plans in that time because I don’t have a lot of control over what I will be required to do or when. And looking at the bank balance that is going to be what we get to live on for as long as I can stretch it… I shouldn’t make plans anyway.

We will sit here. No, Noah, being with you isn’t like death. In death I won’t be in pain any more. I won’t hurt myself by wanting things. I won’t be bad anymore. No, being married to you is not like death.

You tell these elaborate annoying stories about how much I clearly dislike you. Well I fucking clearly dislike how you are god damn acting. I have deleted a lot of name calling in this one.

I have gone to great effort to create a life that revolves around you. I want your time more than I want more money. I do my best to offer up services that you turn down constantly because you’d rather I not wear out my body. It all leaves me feeling like there isn’t a lot of point in me even trying to serve you. You don’t want it. You reject it on a regular basis. The thing I am actually getting from spending more time with you is an increase in suspicion and controlling behaviour. It’s sucking.

I feel less and less like a cherished part of anything. I feel like an unfortunate obligation that you got stuck with. You tell me that you love me and you show me by devaluing everything I do and who I am.

This is not just my depression twisting everything you say and fuck you if you try to pull that bullshit with me.

If my life is not small enough then I am in a lot of trouble because I genuinely believe that less human contact would be psychologically damaging to our children. If I have to have less then they need to go to school because even being hit is better than literally being stuck with me on a permanent lock down. That’s not ok. That’s fucked up for them. It will damage them. I don’t have it in me to be a fun performing pony 24/7 to make up for all the other relationships.

You did help me out in the garden today for an hour. That was nice. I’m not saying you do nothing nice. You do a lot of nice.

You also let me know that for the vast majority of our marriage you have had a very low opinion of me. I got 5 years of high opinion and its been down hill since then. Well that’s a fucking awesome thing to know.

And these days I don’t perform rape victim well enough so that’s the cherry on top of the I do not deserve any trust or respect ever again for the rest of my life. The hope of being someone who is worthy is gone. 13 fucking years. I am one of those women. I am held in deep contempt and distrusted and devalued but as long as I keep opening my legs and mouth I am worth keeping.

As long as only one person uses the holes.

I feel so dirty. I feel like it wouldn’t be possible to boil me at a hot enough temperature to get rid of the filth.

I also feel like I am starting to feel my eyes close and I am weaving as I stand. Nothing more can be done in this day.

We mostly cleaned off the driveway. I folded laundry, cleaned the kitchen, did dishes, and sucked Noah’s dick before he fucked me. Some days that would feel like a very good day. Today I just feel numb. I don’t want to appreciate anything because then it will be taken away. I do want to criticise even as I know that doing so is only going to make it more likely to continue. I feel unable to stop. I fucking get it, Noah.

Maybe if I can make myself work more I will hate myself less. It’s worth a shot. I’ve also been getting through books at a blistering pace since I’ve been off social media so much over the past couple of months. I’m struggling with when I get offended by a book and I don’t want to continue. But I want these books read, damn it. Not tonight. Tonight I need to sleep.

This is going to hurt for such a long time.

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Yesterday I was informed that the Crown Prosecution Services has until December 2025 to decide if my case is moving forward. I don’t know anything until I get a notification. I am supposed to sit here in frozen, silent horror for over a year. My therapy options seem to be limited to “community support” of the sort where they will bring tea and cake and listen to me cry. Not very much actual help or support.

It’s funny, a couple of people have offered “me and Noah” support and then it turns out they only want to talk to Noah. Ah. Because I apparently already have so much support and he doesn’t have any. I am not arguing. If that is someone’s perception they can have it. I get so much that I don’t need anymore. Seems legit. I have gotten far more than my fair share of therapy in this life.

I’m struggling really hard with the dynamic where I’m supposed to be overflowing with happiness and sexual energy but also looking at the floor and not attracting any attention.

My stomach hurts really bad. I don’t feel like I have the opportunity to act “right” and not be bad. Whatever I do will be wrong. I don’t feel like there is much about me that is worth liking.

Apparently 2011 was the last time I negotiated honestly, in good faith, about my sex life. Ok.

It’s not ok for me to have experiences or feelings that I don’t predict in advance. I am a bad person if I don’t know I will have a feeling long in advance and warn Noah about it. This is why it is good that I was asked to stop coming to bike stuff. I shouldn’t be making friends here. I might have feelings and that would mean I was betraying Noah again.

I should probably go clean something. It’s what I am good for. I feel like I can’t. I feel like my brain and body are a solid block of wood. I feel stupid and useless and worthless and bad and mean.

Apparently I beat Noah’s sexuality out of him.

I’m scared about seeing TB in January. I feel like I am being set up to fail. I did not predict that we would be attracted to each other. That means I am a lying liar who lies. Everything I don’t know in advance is a way that I am bad. I am a fucking deceitful lying piece of shit because I don’t always know how I will feel in advance.

It hasn’t been ok since 2011 for me to say, “I want to go hunting.” I have been fighting my urges as hard as I can for nearly the whole time since. Doesn’t matter. Lusting in your heart is the full sin.

I’m going to be damned if I do and damned if I don’t in January. Just fucking watch.

My head hurts so bad it feels like it will explode. I wish I felt like there was any point in telling a doctor that I’ve been having overwhelming headaches constantly but it doesn’t feel like a safe thing to do.

Sitting alone in a room means I am bad because I am not working or providing care to someone. Not being alone means I am bad because I am failing to perform human in the way that people want.

If I had more energy I would hate myself. I feel too tired. I can’t do anything right but that doesn’t mean I ever get to stop trying.

The more I learn about mental health care in the UK

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The more I believe I will probably be on my own for figuring out my shit going forward. I am eligible for supportive counseling, which is not therapy. Before the trial it is unclear as to whether or not I can or should have any kind of therapy and in any case my notes have to be shared with the defense team. So uhhh, no I guess I don’t need therapy.

I’m in that rough spot where I would benefit from being able to talk about the ways my mental health is not going well. I can’t say more to Noah though because too much of it feels like I am threatening him. I need to just not talk about it at all. I’m feeling a lot of feelings about this. I don’t want to dump on my friends so most of what I am saying about my mental health is that it is not great. I don’t have anyone I feel comfortable talking to.

I don’t have a single person I’m willing to freely talk with about what I am thinking. I feel like every thought in my head is proof of why I deserve more punishment. Why I should allow my life to be smaller and smaller. Why I should shut up forever.

Between the fact that everything I say can be used against me in court and the fact that everything I say upsets the people I live with it feels like I should stop speaking entirely. I will be punished if I don’t.

Yesterday wasn’t great and today is waking up harder

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I’m crying a lot again. I feel bad and dirty and gross and like I don’t deserve any kind of goodness or softness or support of any kind.

My mama beat me because she didn’t like how I acted towards the boys who raped me 36 years ago. My Daddy hurt me 3 months ago because he didn’t like how I acted towards the man who raped me.

It is feeling entirely fitting that soft and gentle support and non-judgmental acceptance is for other people. I will never be good enough for that. Never. Because I can’t bear the thought of my Daddy hurting me again after someone rapes me I will need to not come home the next time. I know exactly what will happen to me and I can’t take it. I can’t keep surviving the punishment that comes after each rape.

I had to get up and leave the table when my son dramatically stated that we all deserve the same thing after something bad happens. I was freaking out.

No. We don’t. When bad things happen to all of you I treat you with gentleness. I baby you. I coddle you. I savagely defend you from being bothered.

We don’t all deserve the same thing when we are hurt.

I feel so bad. Why don’t I jump up and work hard and act all plucky and emotionally giving and loving and kind?

Noah is going to feel invalidated. He massages me! He does other nice things for me! He barely raises his voice at all. Does that all count for nothing?

It would count for fucking nothing and there would be insane amounts of violence if my children were harmed the way that I am.

But I consented! Yes. Absolutely. I consented. Of course I did. Was there a different option? No, not with what we are and what we do and what we choose. I don’t get to decide. That was an agreement made long ago. I am the fucked up, bad, out of control one. You do what you must to keep me in line. If I want to be treated better then I should act better.

No. We don’t all deserve the same thing.

I feel like I could blow away in a stiff breeze.

I have to go meet a different support person. I am not expecting much. I don’t have a way to try to tell my story in 1 hour blobs to strangers that gives me any benefit. Like, I can’t get any good from that. It hurts to drop these tiny pieces of me with these people I will not work with going forward. I don’t usually make a great first impression. So I’m briefly meeting a whole bunch of people who are probably going to think I am a weird freak and no, none of this makes me feel better.

I feel like I am not good enough to deserve kind, gentle support from anyone or in any way. I feel so lonely. I feel empty.

This election is a nightmare. I was trying to find a way to flip the script and try to future trip with the kids about ways to pivot… nope. Just fighting and pissiness and dissatisfaction. So definitely no bounce that direction.

Back to head down in miserable waiting to be judged by strangers. I have that lovely gift of a prophecy from Ted. But what if he is wrong? What if I am such a disgusting whore that these strangers look at me and know I deserved it?

Clearly my reaction in the two weeks following mean that I loved it and I wanted him more than anything. Obviously. There could be no other meaning. I am a disloyal bitch.

I deserve all the bad I get.

I could really use EMDR.

It’s just another day in what fresh hell is this?

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Is this spring actually a good time to bring three smart mouthed teenage transgender kids across the southern US? If I had an extra quarter of a million dollars (I really don’t) it might be worth it to stock up an RV with gay books and sex education books and Plan B and go from high school to high school.

That would be good trouble.

It will be trouble one way or another. I’ve been talking to the mama of the third trans teenager we would probably bring with us to the states if we went. She was a trucker in the states for ten years. She’s a tough as nails lady. She’s scared thinking of what might happen given Trump winning the election if our kids run their mouths at a truck stop. I mean, sure, we could try to avoid the south. My friends in Oregon are dealing with outbreaks of violence from Proud Boys in their neighbourhoods. Fuck.

I left because I didn’t feel safe and I didn’t think my kids were safe. Almost 73 million people just voted for Trump. There are ~346,078,398 people in the US. ~22% is under 18 and can’t vote. There are almost 270 million adults in the US. That means a little over half of the adults who live in the united states vote. 1/4 of the people who live there just voted into the highest office a terrifying man. No. I can’t go back. Sorry grandparents.

I need to move forward. Not back.

My kids are a lot like me. They draw the lightning. People want to hit them for being different. It’s happened in a variety of states and countries at this point. We are irritating motherfuckers. We are literally doing our best to conform. Doesn’t matter. We aren’t someone or others version of “normal” and they believe they have the right to hit people who aren’t normal.

To some degree we learn how to fight and there are a lot of kinds of fights we are good at winning. No one wins every fight. No one. Mostly though, plan A is avoiding as many fights as possible.

Don’t make changes when things are bad.

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My brain is a fucking asshole right now. I’m isolating a lot so I don’t take it out on people. I’m coming out periodically to do work for people and announcing loudly, “This is my love language. I love you. I am not avoiding you out of dislike. I am keeping my shitty brain to myself until it stops being so shitty. I don’t want to wreck a relationship saying something I don’t mean in the long run.”

This is how I feel deeply privileged in this life. I get to do this. Golly this is amazing. I don’t have to shut up and keep it together at work. That feels like such a luxury.

I hate being depressed. I hate how every single thing comes out harder and more sad and feeling pointless and I feel worthless. It’s stupid. It doesn’t allow me to have reasonable or rational conversations.

Today we hop on a train and go south for immigration stuff. I’m tired and overwhelmed already and I’m not even required to be up for an hour. Another day, another step towards permanent settlement. Holy shit. I might never have to go back to Gunlandia! If y’all somehow get your shit together and oust the fascists and pass serious gun reform I may consider coming back. Those two things seem absolutely impossible. So even though the UK is far from perfect, I’ll stay in the place where my children won’t get shot.

It is actually a clear and pressing and overwhelming worry in my mind. I’m scared of bringing my three loud mouthed trans teenagers (one is a Bonus Kid) to the US if Harris loses in 4 days. I’m freaking scared. This seems stupid and unwise. I may not be able to handle doing this. I may feel like I can’t depending on what happens in the next month or two in the US. If there is more violence in January? How can I justify that?

I don’t know. But I’m pretty scared. Life is hard and a lot and I feel deeply out of control of it. I feel like I won’t be able to get my feet under me till after the trial. I am going to feel entirely out of control until then.

Hey, I started this then walked away for a few days and didn’t hit post. It was an eventful few days! Yesterday was the best day I’ve had in a long time. There were ups and downs and stress points but we had some genuine fun together and we laughed. That was so nice. We have now submitted our biometric information to the UK to help with the process of permanent settlement. All of our paperwork is in. Now we wait for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn.

Then we walked to the train station past racial discord as crowds were outside yelling about fireworks and bonfires. Apparently we were walking on a part of a street we weren’t supposed to be on. Folks were very unhappy seeing white people there. I just held tight to a hand and kept going. If you pass through quickly enough you can get through almost any territory without a problem, at least that has been my experience. As long as you are not staying it’s ok to hurry through while obviously not from around here.

It is hilarious that people really clock me as an American without me having to say a word. It happens constantly. I continue to have weird public shaming experiences in public toilets. This time someone was going off about how disgusting I was for pooping outside of my home. I should only pee in public toilets. She was almost apologetic for being nasty, but then she saw me and said, “Oh an American.” Then her friends cackled about how it is fine to be rude to Americans.

Every single conversation I have starts with “how long are you here”? Folks don’t warm up much when I say the rest of my life. Xenophobia is awesome.

I am at the point where I am watching the US election with frozen horror. It was wild going past all the bonfires, most of which did not look government approved. Only one involved a tense racial situation with the Black folk on one end of the road clustered around their firework display in the park and the white folk just outside the park on a patch of grass with a fucking giant fire that included pieces of furniture. That was a rowdy group and I didn’t feel safe. I got out fast.

I’m having difficult feelings about a lot of the racial tension I see online and that I feel in interpersonal dynamics. I feel like at some point I stopped believing the myth that only white people are racist. The genocides that are occurring in the world right now are not all white people killing other folk. It’s more complex than that. People are deeply xenophobic and racism is an intense part of that and I think it is in every person and in every culture.

Yes, the US and the UK have structural racism problems that need to be addressed in concrete and specific ways. I am 100% behind ancestry-driven reparations. I think there is a legacy of cultural debt that colonialist powers have that we deserve to pay back in ways big and small. Yes. But there are other debts.

It is feeling weirder and weirder to me to act like the US and the UK are a substantial portion of the people in the world and what is true in those countries is The Truth. It is really bothering me. It is making me feel more and more revolted. It’s like how I didn’t vote in the US election this year. First time in my life. Do you know why I didn’t? Because I never want to live there again and it is morally questionable for me to exert influence in two countries because I am just more important and people deserve to have to live under the effects of my choices even if I never have to live under those effects. Why in the fuck should I help pick a mayor for Fremont? Do I know how good of a job someone is or isn’t doing? No and I’m not fucking going to know. Why should I be making choices about who is the board for BART. It’s not my damn business.

I need to be looking to the Highland Council and learning what is going on in the place I live and be a part of that. I no longer believe it is ethical for me to try to control the destiny of a place I have abdicated. I am still required to pay taxes and I’ll do it, but golly. At this point voting in both places feels like trying to be an absentee landlord. It feels like being a colonialist. It feels like trying to have my cake and eat it too.

I do not want to be in the US. I do not want to be tied to its fate. Hell, the main reason I’d ever work in politics is because that is one of the easiest ways to renounce citizenship. I feel sorrow for what my ancestral line came and did to the North American continent. We hurt a lot of people and we participated in a lot of violence.

It’s funny that we started as Europeans who came and hurt the Native Americans/Indians/Indigenous/whichever word fits the preferences of the group and now we are Americans who have to try not to hurt the Europeans. I’m watching the UK go through a different set of issues around racism. Here, the average non-white immigrant came here themself, or their parents did, or their grandparents did because they wanted access to opportunities. They chose this. That is not such a neat and tidy story in the US though we desperately wish it was. We wish we were “a nation of immigrants”. Instead the US is a nation of immigrants, the survivors of the genocide we perpetrated, and people who were kidnapped and enslaved. Like, that’s a fucking different set of issues to have around racism.

It is interesting walking through very different cities in a variety of countries and experiencing very different crowds. The undercurrents are strange to me. I don’t know the history. Almost every single one of these people thinks of their life story as “normal” and “just life” and “just how things go” and they can’t imagine people having an entirely different set of experiences beyond fantasising about being rich. That’s a thing most people try to imagine. It’s not what I imagined when I was young.

Having enough money to fix the roof and put food on the table doesn’t remove stress from your life. It doesn’t remove trauma. It doesn’t mean that things always go well or easily, it just means that you have the privilege of being able to fix some things before they become grindingly painful. I can’t fix everything. And I can’t avoid grinding pain. I’m out in the studio right now medicating because my whole body hurts like a motherfucker after the last 36ish hours. We did a lot! I didn’t sleep much. I don’t think I got an hour of sleep last night. I did make good progress in my book and I am really enjoying it.

Those are positive emotions. This is good. I am not out of the woods and I expect to have some shitty days as a rebound. I still have a lot of underlying disordered thinking going on. I can see pieces of it. I’m fucked up around a lot of food stuff right now. I’m having a lot of alienated feelings about my body and desire to hurt it. I am struggling between wanting to fast/starve myself and wanting to eat as much as possible so that men are less likely to be sexually attracted to me. Neither is healthy at all but my brain is flip flopping like a fish between them.

I had a few really positive exchanges with all of the kids. It was a good trip. We got along and had fun together. We went to the Science and Technology Museum and then we found an international food court and got one or two entrees at a time and ate our way around the globe for three hours. We waited a while in between orders to see if anyone was actually hungry enough for more. It was amazing and also expensive. That’s our eating out for November.

It sucks having my brain be a dickhead. I am very lucky that for this rodeo I live with people who love me very much and who are willing to do a lot to show me. I wish that meant that my brain wasn’t a dickhead. That would be so awesome.

Thank cheese for a good day

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I’m really grateful that Noah and I had some good talking yesterday. I am glad that we hugged and touched each other in mellow and non-scary ways. We are both going through a ridiculously hard thing. It is really important to remember that this is a terrible thing that is happening to both of us. More to me, but he’s getting whacked hard too.

My brain is being a giant asshole right now and it means that mostly I’m only remembering the hard and scary parts of my marriage and my relationship with Noah. I did go very far out of my way to find a Big Bad Wolf.

He’s really not a terrible person. All of the shitty things he has done have come with the halo of consent. It’s been a fucking trip. When I say I deserve things that he does to me… well… he and I discussed doing it and then we did it so I guess in the most literal sense of the phrase, I do deserve things that we say we want to do together. It’s a complicated thing. No person arrives at the decision to do a thing completely unshaped by the life experiences they have had.

Noah observed that what we are expecting of ourselves and of each other is quite literally inhuman. People don’t do these things. What we want to be to each other is not standard. I get that. Like, that was not really enough sleep last night because sex after a while of no sex was a lot more important. It was good sex.

I wish that means that I woke up today full of resilience and definitely over my depression. I didn’t though. I still feel shitty and stupid and it takes a very small comment from a teenager to set me off. Teenagers are assholes. Teenagers are trying to create a reality in which they don’t need their mother anymore and that’s pretty fraught for me. The point of my job is to work myself out of a job. I am working towards my sole future occupation: Noah’s companion.

There’s this way his cock gets right before he nearly comes. I notice it best when we stop having vaginal sex and switch to oral. The head feels really tight and swollen and like it is about to explode but most of the shaft is actually fairly soft, it’s nothing close to his most erect. Details like that are going to be most of what I think about in the future. Savouring that feel and texture difference in my mouth and in my hands.

I used to tell my mom that I wasn’t going to be able to be successful as an adult because the only thing I was good at doing was reading fast. I’m really good at making Noah’s dick happy.

It is hard for him and it is hard for me that it doesn’t feel like enough. I’m not saying that I have to suck other dicks. I am saying that I don’t do well when I feel disconnected and unwanted.

My day job is in a complicated place where 2/3 of my primary charges now resent and scorn me. I’m just counting the days till number 3 joins in. I know that Noah sees this with impending glee: soon he will have me all to himself.

Given what happens to me when I try to make friends it is a mixed bag from my view at the moment. I am really upset and sad that I am scared to make friends now with the idea of sex being entirely off the table. That is feeling dramatically unsafe. It also makes me question the sex and friendships of my youth.

I don’t think I am going to stop feeling depressed and frozen and scared until the trial happens and that feels dramatically unfair to my family. I go to sleep every night angry with myself for not getting more done and I wake up every morning feeling frozen and stuck and unable to move because I will be wrong. It was really hard to eat this morning.

Today will be less perfect. That’s ok. There are brighter days to come. My local garden store had plants 50% off because they are going out of business. I have some holes to dig. Let’s see if I can get off my backside. Ugh.

It’s not that I dislike him

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I like Noah very much. What I don’t like is how I feel. What I don’t like is feeling like I need to spend the rest of my life hiding from people due to his overwhelming insecurity.

I don’t hate the life I have created. I don’t want to be out of it. It’s just small and getting smaller and I don’t have any sign of permission for growth any year soon here. I don’t know that I will be allowed to do much of anything involving other people after the indenture. I mean, I can do research and I can write books. It’s not that I can’t have interactions with people at all. I could support Noah in socialising with his people, as long as I bounced my eyes carefully and was careful not to become too friendly with anyone.

I need to stop looking for support. I need to stop looking for people who will invest in me. I get what I get from Noah and the rest I need to just come up with on my own.

I’m really scared that I’m not enough.

I no longer believe that I get to throw myself back on the net that I have created. It’s not ok.

When I think about where else to sleep, one of the obvious options is the pull out couch in the studio. Only that’s where it happened.

I feel very sad and very scared and very alone. I feel like my childhood never ended. I feel like I am waiting to be made to leave. I know I won’t be, but that’s what this feels like. It’s why I isolate as much as I do. My brain expects and needs that as the result of how I am feeling right now. When this happens I have to go away. Because I am so bad that no one can endure me.

I am going to need to request more sleep medication soon. I’m going through it much faster than usual and I am scared they are going to tell me no. I am afraid they are going to tell me that unless I can be compliant with how they want me to be fixed I deserve nothing at all–not the medication I got to after years of experimenting and sleep tests and evaluations of other ways of managing my extreme PTSD symptoms.

For the love of Cheese, please let me sleep. Mostly I don’t need help very often; it’s not bad most of the time. I’m not ok right now and I need this help and it’s the only thing I’m still getting that they might question. I even fired the counselor I liked so they can’t say I’m getting help already outside the system.

I bet I am going to get in trouble for that. I’ll be told that I don’t care about getting well so I don’t deserve the medication that has been a steady source of appropriate and non-escalating usage for over 10 years.

I really don’t like being me.

Layers of ouch

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It’s hard when Noah’s attempts to be cheerful feel like specific mindfucks. He is trying to not encourage me further down the spiral but it also seems like a denial of reality. Things are rough so let’s pretend this year didn’t happen. Maybe I’ll think back on it as a time when Noah was loving. Naw, I don’t think 2024 is going to have a rosy glow of being loved. It’s not like 2016 involved you feeling loved in the end even though my last date was in July. This year I haven’t had an official date. Just a rape where you hurt me afterwards and told me it was for my own good and you were going to keep doing it.

I don’t know when you plan to start hurting me periodically to require the fawn reaction from me, just to keep your feet wet, but I’m fucking freaked out.

Combine that with the fact that I’m sucking your dick every day and while you do massage me, positive sexual between us is mostly not happening. I show up and suck your dick and sometimes you come in my body without trying to make it nice for me.

I feel like a stupid fuckdoll. This is why I can’t live in Gunlandia. On a really freaked out day a gun to my face would be far too tempting.

I actually went to bed in something fun last night hoping Noah would find it and touch me at all in a way that doesn’t feel like clinical maintenance. He didn’t come to bed till super late then he never touched me at all. At some point I moved from the middle of the bed over to my side and grabbed my teddy and pulled the weighted blanket over me. It’s effectively a wall that creates a don’t-touch-me zone. I am not sure I’m going to bother coming to my bed tonight. This is making me feel like shit. I feel disgusting. I feel nauseated by who and what I am. I am pathetic.

I am angry with myself for seeking his touch as comfort because it is the only thing I’m allowed to have because I end up feeling worse about myself. I wish I didn’t want or need anyone. I wish I could fry my brain enough that I would never reach for another human being again. I’m so tired of feeling like this. This is my fucking mother. I have wanted to feel cared for and loved after being raped for my whole life and it hasn’t happened. This is yet another one. I feel disgusting and used. Dehumanised. I am not a human, I am just holes.

I feel like I want to scrape the flesh from my body. I should be in so much pain that I cannot form a coherent thought. That feels like justice.

I feel like I don’t deserve anything good and I should back out of all social engagements because I might talk to someone in the wrong tone of voice. I don’t want to be surprised by getting hurt after I enjoy talking to someone so I shouldn’t talk to anyone. That way when I am hurt to force a fawn reaction it won’t feel like retaliation. If I do nothing then it isn’t retaliation it is just the way my life works. It’s just the only thing I deserve.

I deserve pain. I deserve to be used, but only by the person who paid a lot of money for me–it’s not fair for him to share. I deserve nothing good but what he feels like letting me have. I’m not a real person I’m a thing. Maybe I deserve nothing at all. I’m in a lot of pain and I don’t see a way that it’s going to change. I’m scared. I’m sad. I feel like this is going to be what I get forever going forward. Be smaller. Want less. Don’t look for comfort. That’s for people.

God this feels so much like dealing with my mother. If I am not doing work why even allow me to be in a room with you. I feel dirty and defiled and like I cannot be cleaned. Some things can’t be fixed; they are just rubbish.

I feel like this assault is being treated like one of the many times I am just bad. I deserve every bad thing that happens around it because I am a disgusting whore who didn’t manage to get out of the room fast enough. I deserve as much punishment as I’ve gotten and a whole lifetime worth to follow. I have earned every mean and bad thing thing. It’s like I got the top prize in being a disgusting whore and instead of a teddy bear I get to be hurt for the rest of my life as a reminder that I’m not good for anything better. I was born to be holes. I was born to be disregarded and injured and damaged. I have no right to complain. My mouth is a hole for a cock, not for me to complain out of.

Just shut up you stupid bitch.

You can’t “just stop” you have to start doing something else.

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I was unkind to TB tonight. I should not be rubbing his nose in my feelings. That’s not necessary or fair at all. Should I have ignored the feelings? Probably. I think I shot myself in the foot this year. Cause the funny thing is, part of what makes TB so wildly interesting and appealing as a secondary to me are all the reasons why there was no chance in the first place. It was really silly of me to think he’d do that kind of work to be a secondary. To be fair! If I had held the line at being a once a year travel girlfriend maybe it could have been a thing.

If that sounded good to me I could have it.

I have a lot of names in my little black book. I don’t need a new notch on the bed post. I have old friends who would treat me well all over the place. If what I had ever wanted was brief visits to fuck-friends I probably would have pushed for that.

For a short while I dreamed about what it would be like to be in a room with someone who only wanted to make love to me.

I need to go forward with the understanding that we entertained the idea of a few extra links of chain in the Choke Chain but we didn’t ever really take it off. We said we would. We said that the impact on my mental health was a problem but we say a lot of shit.

I think that the decision is that Noah being stable is more important and thus I can’t do disruptive shit. The vanilla social circle I tried to build has had a crash and burn. I think the vanilla queer community is well meaning but sorta stunned in their very Scottish way. Maybe eventually I will make some friends there but I don’t think it’ll be soon. I am experiencing total emotional freeze with most of the kink folks. I have a couple of friends but mostly I’m avoiding the other people because I feel like they don’t like me much. I’m not very fun.

I’m scared to shut down my writing entirely. As much as this might seem like I’m just whining, it’s better than it leaking out into my life. If I put it down here I feel less like I am about to explode. I am more appropriate with whoever is in the room. I’m really struggling with how little I like anything or anyone right now. I feel absolutely savage. It’s a good time to not say much. I don’t want to say “no” I want to scream “NO” so loud that I shatter glass. I’m not doing that!

Harm reduction is great stuff. Am I doing my best? I am not. I am struggling. Am I getting the very basics done and making sure my kids are safe? It’s a fucking convenient time for Noah to not have a job.

What are we doing going forward? Right now we are in a hellish limbo of waiting for this fucking trial and then waiting to see how long it takes the government to process our paperwork so we can arrange travel. Travel that I have distinctly mixed feelings about and a whole heap of dread.

Jeez, there doesn’t seem to be a good reason to be so upset. Those privileged rich white bitches, nothing is enough for them. Do you know what I have learned? Money doesn’t solve everything. I was a psycho broke bitch and I’m a psycho rich bitch.

Now I have different things I have to consider. I have to care about the load I put on my body. I have to care about subtle social dynamics I would not have considered in the past. I have to think about what is best for the three people who had absolutely no say in them being brought into the world.

It’s not really about me.

I don’t feel like it gets to be about me very much and that’s a hard thing. I feel like I make it about me way more than anyone wishes. Mostly it’s not things I choose or I want–I haven’t enjoyed my cancer or surgeries or recoveries from injuries.

I am in a place where I feel both resigned and really sad about the amount of sex I have had and that I will have that hurts me because it really doesn’t matter. Me feeling good is not a significant factor in a lot of my life, it can’t be. If I waited until I felt good I would simply not live. Maybe that would have been better but it is too late now. I picked this. I picked it good and hard. I made the indenture 28 years.

I don’t know what I will do afterwards. I mean, I’ll stay. I don’t know what hobbies I’ll be able to sustain in the long run. I don’t know which parts of me are going to fail the fastest.

I know that I need to never fall in love again. If it is starting to move in that direction I need to ghost the person hard. I can’t ever need someone. It’s not ok.

Every life has limits.

How to keep going?

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I don’t know how much of this is tied in with the trial. I am not dealing well with waiting permanently with no information. I’m really scared. I’m not sure what I’m scared of. I think I will be a creditable enough witness given the other victims. It doesn’t rest on my word to call this man a predator. I was not the first. I was not even the first to press charges.

I feel weird that the Scottish government is squarely acting like I am a vulnerable person. I have official designation and shit. It means I get accommodations.

In my life being vulnerable has always meant putting a target on my forehead so that people can line up to take shots. It’s not a fun prospect. Looking weak means people want to get in a shot to hit you next. Everyone wants the next turn, it looks so fun. I am so conscious of the fact that I am in a place where savage hierarchy is the norm. It’s part of why I am not going out much and I fucking dress up when I do. I need to look like you would be sorry if you fucked with me.

Not that it worked. Fuck.

I can’t do enough to keep me safe short of never being around people. Not that it works forever for me because Noah is inside the house and he will do something again. It is hard that a lot of our relationship is literally based around the idea that he terrorizes me and then vaguely gaslights me and implies it isn’t happening. I’m just making up a list of things to react to. It’s not like we have idle conversations about how he is going to attack me again some day when I am deeply depressed and not functional and hurt me really badly. Feeling depressed definitely doesn’t feel an inherent threat in and of itself or anything.

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It is my fault he is traumatised. I went off the rails again; I set him off. What else did I expect? I get what I deserve. I will deserve it next time and the time after that too. I will never stop deserving it. There will be justification for why hurting me is perfectly fine because he feels insecure and mean and he takes care of me. Didn’t he help me get home from the hospital after the surgery? Jeez, don’t act like hurting me is a big deal.

Sorry about that. It wasn’t important. It was nothing. It doesn’t count. Like when Derek slapped me when I was 15 and said, “That doesn’t even count as a hit. There isn’t a mark.” I am wrong to remember and act like it counts.

My mom also says she didn’t hit me.

She means she never beat me to the point of serious injury but saying that would sound bad so that’s not what she says. I’m supposed to just get the point and agree that naw, I wasn’t hit because that way no one needs to show me the difference.

I keep having this awful thing happen when I am crying, I keep hearing different voices hiss, “Do you want me to give you a reason to cry?” It’s this constant reminder that there is no level of pain where I am justified in breaking. Shut up. Just take it and keep working. Oh, and smile. Act grateful.

Look at this nice house you are allowed to live in. Look at the fact that your clothes aren’t rags. Look at the food you are given. Demonstrate your gratitude or you will be sorry.

I am already sorry. I am not sure how to be more sorry.

A buddy sent me contact info for a counselor/breath worker. On one hand, my breathing is definitely shitty right now.

This is why I usually go and find a therapist when I am ok. So I can get to know them not in a crisis state so that they can see that I am fucked up when I walk in and they know to treat me as if I am not ok. I don’t know how to go establish trust right now. I feel like one wrong word and I am going to bounce.

What is the point in trying to form new relationships right now? I have upwards of a 95% failure rate and I can’t take that right now. I am fucking aware that most of the world would prefer that people like me just stop taking up an inappropriate amount of resources. One surefire way to accomplish that.

I don’t feel like a bad ass today. I feel dirty. I feel disgusting. I feel like I am pollution. I feel like I don’t know how to be in a room with people. I am just so gross and every part of me feels bad. I am scared to talk to people. I will say something I shouldn’t or stand in a way I shouldn’t or move my body in a way I shouldn’t and I will deserve whatever I get.

I want to lock the door and cover the windows and never come out again. They can come and get me when they can’t stand the smell of the corpse.

I feel like I am never going to be good enough to stop deserving punishment, so why try? I am so very out of pointless, useless, ineffective try.

I feel like I am supposed to react to being beaten down by jumping up and looking for a fight. I am supposed to assert my right to live.

I don’t feel it any more.

It’s not like I feel much faith or hope in the NHS. I feel like I should start opting out of care so they can’t hold it over my head like a weapon.

I feel deeply under threat from pretty much every direction and the mother fucker raped me in my studio. I have literally nowhere I get to go to feel safe. This is the room where Noah hurts me too.

The symbolism of these men in this room as my “safe space” is kind of like my entire life in one pretty picture. This is what I get and what I deserve and what I will always deserve until I die.

I don’t know how to be ok right now. Yeah, I know that Noah touches me nicely too and that undoes all the damage.

It totally works that way and I’ve been nice to Noah lots over they years and that’s why nothing I do ever traumatises him in any way, right? Isn’t that how this works?

I feel like a toy that a child broke. Now the child is hitting me against the floor because they are furious that I am broken. Only that isn’t fair. Noah didn’t do all of the breaking.

How in the fuck am I supposed to buck up and model that life is a lot of hard work but it’s worth it?

There is a bunch of highly specific work I could and should be doing for my garden for this winter if I want to be working towards that party I want in 16 years. What am I doing? I’m sitting inside and crying and screaming because that’s the last form of self harm I am allowed to have. I scream until my skull wants to break in two.

I don’t know what I am supposed to do with this breaking, Akhilandeshvari. I know that what would be best for Noah would be for me to not need anyone other than him again. That is what he wants. He’s ok with friends but he needs them to be like tertiaries, not secondaries.

There have been so many times in my life when I have wished that a trauma could break me down so that I never reached out again and each time I have been broken open further. I am doing a lot to avoid that this time. I am not reaching out to people. I shut down social media. I’m going out little and skipping everything I can. I’m trying to avoid talking to people as much as I can.

I am trying to close. Maybe if I do it this way there will be less objectionable behaviour.

The path is really dark

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I get the impression Noah wants me to snap out of this. I was lying in bed this morning between Noah and Shorty and the cat waiting to have a positive emotion. I tried to feel loved. Naw. Instead I lay there with my teeth grit waiting for the fucking claws to rip apart the tendons in the sides of my knees. I was not disappointed.

I feel like I don’t know how far down I was slapped. I hate myself on pretty much every level and I am struggling to get anything done.

During the daily blow job, which is sometimes kind of fun and sometimes a dissociative nightmare, I realised Noah was starting to get close and I haven’t wanted sex lately so I asked him what he wanted to do. He wanted to put a towel down (period) and fuck me on the floor.

Fucking. When two people are fucking each other it’s a lot of fun. When one person is fucking someone it can feel pretty awful. It doesn’t help that I spent months talking to Travel Boyfriend about all the love making he wanted to do and I’m reading a Gabaldon novel where the deeply romantic lead always says that he wants to be with you.

I just get fucked. Even when it hurts terribly and I’m gritting my teeth and waiting for it to end.

That’s what monogamy means. I am a hole for Noah to use how he wants and what I want out of it is not very important. Me enjoying myself is not the point, never has been, never will be.

I was invited to a party for this afternoon but they are extremely covid conscious so it will be 100% outside and it’s raining cats and dogs. It’s also more than a half hour of riding hard away. I will be soaked to the skin before I arrive to stand around outside. Sounds fun. (I do actually like this family. They are other crazy Americans.)

I feel frozen with horror. It wouldn’t even be safe for me to stop my frothing self hatred. If I stop then Noah will think I think too highly of myself again and he will hurt me again. I need to make sure I feel like I want to be hiding under a table all day. That way I won’t get uppity.

I feel like I would turn and run if the dad in the family came over to talk to me alone. No. I’m not allowed. I might look like I’m cheating again since that’s all I do. Funny how knowing that if I even look up from the floor I might get in trouble again kills my sex drive. Dad’s been gone for almost 3 weeks. I’m not interested in sex. Sex is this terrible thing that wrecks my whole life. It isn’t life affirming.

Sex is this horrible terrible thing that was forced on me until I learned to respond and then I was punished for it. I hate sex so much. I wish I could cut the part of me that ever wants sex out of me.

I hate my body so much. I want to kill it.

I hate being depressed

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I am angry. I am irritable. I don’t want to move. I feel only anger and fury and dislike for my children. I’m not feeling motivated to eat. I’m sleeping absurd amounts but not feeling even vaguely rested. The NHS page on depression is so belittling that I’d like to learn how to launch a DDOS attack and bring down the NHS website because I’m so fucking angry that I’m being told I should maybe talk to someone, eat healthy food, and exercise.

Here the treatment for depression is: nothing! Surely it will go away. Wait, it didn’t go away? Fine, then let’s give you a fucking self help book and you can go home and fix it without bothering us. You do a workbook on your own and a therapist checks up to make sure you did your homework. They might send me to a group exercise class since I can’t figure out how to exercise on my own. Bonus points for it being a kind of exercise that will cause me injury and then they can tell me that I don’t care about my mental health again. Then eventually if all that fails (which it will in 99% of fucking cases, but let’s abusively shove everyone through the process because EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE) we will let you talk to a therapist many months of suffering later. When you talk to that therapist you will be told to go on an SSRI. You will get some cognitive behaviour therapy bullshit. CBT is widely considered to be gaslighting and wildly abusive. It is *the* form of therapy offered on the NHS. If I’m severe enough they might consider letting me have abusive CBT *while* I’m being forced on a drug that is going to make my life a living hell.

I want fucking EMDR.

Here they max out at 16 sessions for any kind of treatment. This is why I am considered treatment resistant because in 16 weeks a therapist has barely learned the shape of my problems.

Amusingly, the nerve pain medication I’m on–Amitriptyline–is their second line “I can’t take SSRIs” option. So I’m already on that antidepressant and I have been for years.

EMDR is not even on their list of possible treatments for depression. They won’t let me have it at all. I feel so angry that I am going to have to fight this hard for a non-invasive, non-drug form of help. That seems really broken to me. I want the least expensive option. I don’t want talk therapy for the rest of my life and 16 sessions is fucking stupidly a waste of time and resources. I am not a 16 session patient.

I feel sick and bad and useless and stupid and like I should die. I don’t want to snuggle and I feel like I am going to throw this fucking cat across the house if she doesn’t stop scratching me to ask me to pet her. (I haven’t thrown her.)

I feel like I don’t know how to stop roiling in rage and pain. Everything in my brain is saying that I am a piece of shit who should die. I don’t do anything that is good in the world. I am only bad. I feel guilty for backing out of the date with TB and also like I might cause serious damage to a long term friendship if I go and I flip out at him because I’m completely dysregulated. That’s not fair.

He dodged a bullet. Lucky him. He was smart to opt out of being a bigger part of my life. I’m really not worth it. And I think he was the one shot I’m going to take. He was barely passive and accepting and supportive enough of my marriage for Noah and no one else is ever going to care even 10% as much as he does about preserving my marriage. He’s a really good friend and I am lucky to know him. I wish I felt like there was any good luck for him in knowing me. I feel like a punishment and a curse.

I should be getting ready to bike over to go rock climbing. It’s hard to move at all. I want to lie on the floor in the fetal position for the whole day.

I want to fade away entirely.