Category Archives: abuse

Not. Ok.

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Noah says, “Not infrequently, I got hit by you without hitting back.” That means I’m hitting Noah and I’m unaware of it. That’s a real problem.

If I am unconscious of hitting someone that’s a big problem. That’s a problem the size of Montana and I’ve seen Montana. I am completely freaking out over this.

I am a much bigger monster than I even realized. That’s a real problem. I am the problem.

If I knew where my scalpel was I’d be in the bathroom. I’m old enough and fussy enough that I won’t cut with a dull knife any more. I don’t like the scarring. I like my scalpel so that I don’t scar at all. My legs look fine and I have probably made a few thousand cuts in my lifetime.

Yay for sharp blades.

Sarah you may think that no one deserves to be in that place but apparently I am not fucking capable of being conscious of my behavior. Do you know what cutting does? It kinda turns me into a zombie. It completely floods my brain with “Shut the hell up you fucking fuck” and I don’t talk and I sure as fuck don’t hit anyone.

Why is it wrong to do then? If it the sole method of truly controlling my behavior why is it bad?

I apparently am not controlling myself as well as I think. What I am doing is failing.

I’m not even god damn aware of it.

That’s a real problem. And I’ve been fucking freaking out all god damn day because of this. I do not seem to be able to stop being a monster.

Does this mean I’m hitting the kids too without noticing?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I don’t know. I don’t even know how to ask them.

Oh my god.

You know what, Noah… I think your approach of “not talk about it except sometimes hitting back” has failed. It’s been 10 years. You say I’m hitting you still and you mostly aren’t responding. Maybe we need to try a different approach. Apparently just hitting me occasionally isn’t teaching me.

Who the fuck would have guessed that?

To be fair, I am 100% cognizant of the fact that I used to hit people all the time. I used to hit people just about every day.

How often am I hitting people if I don’t notice?

Hitting

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I’m thinking about hitting a lot lately. It factors in that I’m taking a martial arts class so I’m hitting a few times a week. It factors in that I’m in a class this weekend to help me hit people without hurting myself. It factors in that I have a long and colorful history around hitting and being hit.

I don’t think hitting is morally right or morally wrong in and of itself. I think it is situational and context dependent. I think sometimes hitting is downright fun and sometimes it is severely traumatizing. Just like sex can be fantastic or a real problem.

Noah and I hit each other. Mostly this isn’t a big deal because we ask permission first and we do it in specific, negotiated ways. But sometimes someone (mostly me) fucks up and hits in a way that isn’t appropriate.

Does that make it abuse? Abuse is treating someone cruelly or violently. Was I cruel to Noah? I was demeaning. I was rude. Is that the same thing as cruel?

I hit him harder than I hit Eldest Child, but not hard in the world of me hitting people. I’m trying to learn better self control. I still fail.

When I was younger I used to hit people all the time. When I say all the time I mean that not many days went by without me hitting people. Now, outside of specific skills classes you can count on the fingers of a hand how many times I have fucked up and hit someone in the past few years.

It is a lot of progress, but is it good enough? Probably not. I am still trying to work on more self control. The problem is, I have about eleventybillion things that all need lots of self control. Self control is finite.

I’m not mad at Noah for hitting me back. I started it and I deserved it. I’m angry about how hard the hit was.

In my head I liken this to a Chihuahua and a Great Dane. (Not that I advocate hitting animals in any way shape or form–that’s never ok. They really can’t consent.) If you kinda whack a Great Dane on the back the animal might think you are just being a bit rough. If you do the exact same whack on a Chihuahua… you might be able to kill the dog.

I’m not mad at Noah for hitting me. I’m mad that he hit me that hard where he did. Because god damnit aren’t we paying enough fucking money on my god damn medical bills. I am a breakable toy.

I’m not saying I don’t deserve to be hit back when I start it. I’m saying, “How much pain can I actually absorb this lifetime.”

I’m scared. I’m scared because I feel like I’m walking a tightrope where I’m supposed to be appropriate enough for everyone else and still manage to get my pain levels down low enough to where I don’t want to die all the time. I don’t know how to balance this.

Noah and I were talking last night about the fact that it is very hard for me that I don’t have places in my life where I’m supposed to dump the big kinetic, frustrated energy I have in my life. There isn’t anyone I’m supposed to really hit. Noah and I schedule dates every so often where he beats the crap out of me. Because we both think it is hot. It’s consensual, highly negotiated, and a lot of fun. I’m not complaining in the slightest about him hitting me hard when it is on my ass instead of my head.

I think of these as boundary problems. Not necessarily abuse because we do not define some level of hitting as abuse. Some level of hitting is specifically negotiated and ok. Outside of that we have boundary problems. Are they the same as abuse? We both fuck up.

I think that abuse makes people feel small and trapped. I don’t feel like that. I don’t live in fear of Noah beating me. I think that if I’m an asshole he will reciprocate… is that abuse?

We don’t get into angry fist fights. Usually what happens is I don’t think about an impulse, I smack him, he smacks back, we both apologize and it’s over. I can live with that. I have impulse control problems (documented. It’s a thing) and yeah I fuck up. He feels he can live with the level I fuck up because I don’t attack him in anger. I smack him idly while having a conversation in a way that was completely normal for me for decades. I have mostly stopped doing it and sometimes I slip.

I grew up in a hitting culture. America is a gun culture. I grew up around people who hit casually, frequently, as a matter of course. I think my children would be shocked at how much hitting used to be common in my life. Now there’s a slip up every great while. I don’t think I hit Noah like that every year. But once in a while I fuck up.

How many fuck ups are permissible in a lifetime before it isn’t a fuck up it is a lifestyle choice?

If out of 365 days in a year I fuck up once or twice… and I don’t even do it every year so not really even once ever 365 days.

Where does it become abuse?

You know what? I didn’t hit the kid who kicked me in the throat. I don’t hit my kids when they hit me. Last night a kid I like was kicking me in the face (not real hard) and I got up and moved away from the kid after multiple verbal warnings because I sure as shit wasn’t going to hit this kid.

But I fuck up sometimes.

I’m not trying to justify or excuse it. I’m trying to describe it. I don’t think I should be doing this. I think my continual “I’m trying and failing” is pathetic and kind of… yeah. Grow the fuck up. I’m almost 35 god damn years old.

But I know a lot of 70-something year olds with impulse control problems that make mine look like a cake walk.

Am I really so evil and disgusting? I have a hitting problem. I know. I feel like a piece of shit because I know that if I go play with my friend and stomp him into the ground I will probably stop wanting this so bad for a long time. I will want it again eventually (Yes, I am a documented sadist) but not for a while. It’s like relieving pressure instead of having an explosion.

Oooooooh. I just got an email back from my friend. Noah told me I could set up some dinner dates with my friend (for extensive negotiation) then we are going to need to find an appropriate venue. Then alllllllllllllllll the hitting and kicking and slapping and pinching and scratching will be appropriate! I CAN’T FUCKING WAIT. Only I’ll wait. Because I’m patient. Like a spider. This will be all the more glorious for the anticipation. I’m really really excited that this friend suggested playing. There are things I like doing to people that not many people in this world want to experience. If you find someone who is not only tolerant but enthusiastic? That’s god damn magic.

Well I’m at an interesting point for reading this article this morning. It’s discussing victimization by gender in the UK.

I’m one of the percentage of woman who is problematic. I don’t deny that at all. I don’t deny that there are problematic women. I’m here so obviously they exist.

I have a kid clutching one hand. I guess that’s it for today.

It’s bound to happen to trainwrecks like me.

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I was snarked on a troll site. I was dumb enough to read the thread. I’m an abusive monster says the all knowing internet.

I’m really sad now. It feels like quite an interesting change from the rock star feeling I’ve been having as I nail interaction after interaction of integrating new people and routines and complications.

It doesn’t really matter. The worst things you have ever done are all you are.

And I already knew I was a monster. I knew that long before the kids. So of course it is only natural to think that I am monstrous towards them too.

I spew all my irrational feelings on the internet. I must be a horrible person. Duh. Like, obviously.

You know I write those monster blog posts before the kids are awake, right? It’s not like I spend all day doing this. Ok, right now the kids are awake but there are two other fucking adults interacting with them.

Does my husband step in to protect my children from me? Well, we’ve certainly had conversations about what to tone down. He has absolutely helped me draw boundaries. I picked him because he is both willing and able to do so.

I’m sorry that me talking about the things I like about my relationship with my husband is so obnoxious.

I really shouldn’t have read that thread.

You know, if you truly think I suck… you don’t have to read it. You are allowed to have blissful ignorance that miserable bastards like me exist.

You get to have that privilege if you want it.

Rape & privilege

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I’ve been talking about rape a lot on Twitter lately. I want to organize my thoughts a bit more, even though my arms burn like fire. So this may be a bit choppier than I normally blog. The Twitter character limit formatting is changing my writing. I hope in a positive way. I know I get too verbose for most people a lot of the time.

Noah spends a lot of time telling me that I spend too much time trying to figure out “who is to blame” for various problems. He’s right and he isn’t.

Thing is, dealing with rape is complicated. It is complicated at a personal level and it is exponentially more complicated at the level of a city and … then try to solve that for a state or a country.

My therapist tells me that it isn’t a good thing that the only way I know how to keep myself safe is to keep actual walls between me and other people. Well, it is the only effective method I’ve ever discovered.

That said, I travel more than the vast majority of people ever do. It’s just too expensive for most people. So I put myself in lots of situations. I put myself in situations where I have to keep, not only myself, but my children safe. Am I willfully putting us into danger just to… I don’t know… prove some macho ass shit to myself?

I genuinely don’t think so. Stranger assault is statistically rare. We don’t invite people into our tent/room. We talk to people in crowded public places then move on. It genuinely doesn’t feel risky.

Do you know what was risky? The way I was taught to walk into bedrooms with people because you wanted “privacy” after just knowing them for a few hours. That was how I spent my childhood. Asking to go into peoples rooms and initiating as much sexual contact as I could get away with and only acknowledging rebuffs grudgingly.

Sometimes it makes my heart beat fast when I enforce boundaries with my kids. They are not allowed to walk up and sit on laps any more. Not with a complete stranger. They can’t jump on strange men. Playing for two minutes doesn’t make them close enough to jump on, nope. You have no idea what is going on with their bodies. You don’t know if they just had surgery on their back. Nope. Don’t jump on strange people.

It is really weird to feel like the biggest god damn hypocrite on the planet. Don’t do anything I did.

This experience is how I understand the neglect I experienced. I completely lacked a frame for it before I was a parent. The awareness comes in stages of dawning horror.

How fucking formative that trauma was. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.

I’ve been acting like a bully with the kids. I’m not asking them to do things I’m ranting that I’m sick of them not doing the thing without being asked. We are talking about it.

I feel really guilty that Eldest Child said, “It’s getting to the point where it’s almost 50/50 nice and mean and that has to change. I know you are tired. Maybe we shouldn’t go out of the room much for a few days.”

I feel this horrible mixture of pride and guilt that she has to help manage me. She can be aware of those kinds of needs. That’s amazing. I don’t want her to parent me though. I’m not using emoticons even though I want to put like 75 frowny faces in a row.

I try to tell myself that the feelings of guilt and shame are because I was raised to believe it is not ok for anyone to ever have to pay attention to me and take care of me. It is not ok for me to want anyone to help me.

I try to tell myself that this is ok. It is a kind of enmeshment, yes, but we talk about how this is not her job and she is going to not be responsible for me long term. I thank her for feedback about her perception of being around me. I seem tired. I should rest. Yeah, thanks.

She acts like I am worthy of paying attention to. I wish that didn’t make me cry.

I’m going to jump back to rape. Why am I confident that my children will not have a life like mine? A kid kind of grabbed at my kids crotch. The instantaneous response was, “You do not have my consent! Get your hand off!”

I win.

I couldn’t save my niece nor my nephew. But my kids don’t think that anyone who wants to is allowed to have access to their crotch. They believe their consent is vitally important.

I win.

That doesn’t mean they will never be raped. I understand that. Let me tell you, I’m not done educating them. I’m just going at an age appropriate rate.

A lot of “staying safe” is a complex web of knowing the right words to say at the right time. If you have highly specific technical language you don’t seem like a good victim and any good predator will walk right by you. Obviously you have the support to protect you. You are not going to be easy to intimidate.

People comment, just about daily, that my children are so aware and ….themselves. It is funny how often the wording is almost exactly that. Another friend commented that it is amazing that people don’t think Eldest Child is bossy. She just has a good plan she wants everyone to follow.

I talk to them about what they want to get from life all the time.

Eldest Child and I have been talking a lot about what she wants to do school-wise when we get home. She has specific requests. She wants to work on languages more. She is frustrated by the limitations on who she can play with. She freaking asked if we can look for a Chinese class (I can hear Pam cheering from here) so she can work on that more consistently. She said we all should take Spanish together (I’ll see what I can do, Youngest child wants Spanish and is not up for Chinese). She said maybe on Hindi for a while. She said we should practice the alphabet and such at home but she thinks we don’t need that as a formal class. So I guess that will be some structure in our days.

We all want martial arts. The kids want gymnastics as well. I can’t teach them many skills like that. I’m happy to pay someone who can.

And she wants to play the violin.

I said we would add lessons one a month until we got up to the full load because all of that at once would crush her. She says that is probably smart.

I appreciate how often she tells me I’m smart.

You know… I think that’s why she does it. She’s a perceptive little thing.

My kids are not going to look like good victims. Not ever. They are going to seem like… they have all the support in the world. It’s only sorta true, but I’m going to give it my all.

But you know what? This option isn’t exactly available to most people. My kids get a full life of having a Ladies Illustrated Primer walking around with them. That’s not what most people experience.

Holy tomato I love my job.

My kids are in touch with their bodies. They know what they like and don’t like and they consider their preferences to be absolutely worthy of consideration at all times. Good prey act like it doesn’t matter what happens to them. They often don’t know what their preferences even are. “And as much as we cannot guarantee our own safety in this life, we can build resilience to weather what may come.”

I can never guarantee that my children will be safe. Not truly. Not completely. But I can teach them a variety of skills that will increase their likelihood of not only escaping from a lot of traumas but being able to cope with the inevitable tragedies in life.

My children will experience loss and pain. That is a non-negotiable part of the human condition. I know that. I’m trying to teach them how to ride the waves.

We took a break from the screens. The kids begged me to go back to the beach. It’s supposed to start storming tonight and rain mostly till we leave so I said yes. Even though it scared the absolute shit out of me. The kids kept asking me to go sit with the grown ups and just let them play.

No. No. No.

I sat between them and the ocean. There were four good waves where they started getting dragged out to sea and I grabbed them and bodily pulled them back to shore. They stopped arguing with my presence after the second grab. But they really didn’t want to stop working on the dam they were building.

They are fucking obsessed with building dams this trip. They have built them in little itty bitty creeks, rivers, lakes, and the ocean. It was awesome watching them lecture much older girls about how “We have to find a variety of materials to help provide structural integrity! Just sand won’t hold!”

That was why I had a hard time stopping the play. It was so… intense for them. But that ocean doesn’t fuck around. Lots of places are currently flooded and people die from being swept into the ocean all the time. It’s not a game. There are no take backs. The ocean is bigger than all of us.

After the fourth time when I grabbed them and I felt like I barely pulled out of the wave I said, “Ok! That’s it! I’m done!”

The kids didn’t really argue with me. They spent over an hour saying repetitively after we got back to the hotel room, “I think you just saved my life. Wow. You care that much. You are going to stand right there so you can save my life. I think you just saved my life.”

My response is, “I brought you into this world and I’m not giving up on you yet.”

They snuggled with me and looked a bit stunned.

The ocean is not something to fuck around with.

Want to know something kind of hilarious? I had a similar experience with the kid who kicked me in the throat at a group beach trip.

The ocean is bigger than you. I don’t give a shit how strong you think you are. The ocean is bigger than you. Never fight the ocean. You will lose.

So yeah. I think I’m done. If it is storming I am definitely not going down there with the kids. If we want to swim in between rain bursts they have a pool. That is risk enough with a damn thunderstorm.

You have no idea what you mean to me. No forking duh I am going to keep you out of the ocean when it is dragging you like that and you are screaming out in fear. That is my job.

It is both my job to teach you to respect that power and my job to protect you from it as you gain enough experience to have proper respect. It’s a complicated operation.

I think I am really feeling the need to cross reference all of these experiences because I am trying to understand the scope and effects and structure of rape culture. What does it even mean?

Do you know who really taught me I didn’t deserve rape? Sex workers. Grown ass women who were god damn sure what was and wasn’t ok to do to them. I know women who have been sex workers for decades and members of the kink communities for decades who have never been assaulted. I study them with a more than just friendly interest. I want to understand their instincts.

I want to teach those instincts to my children and people who aren’t sex workers have never been able to break them down in a way I can understand. They specifically can talk about what they do to manage risk. I know vanilla women who have never been assaulted. They don’t understand why that is true. They just got lucky.

So I talk to the people who can actually give me the information I seek. I am shameless and mercenary about it.

I’m not teaching my kids to be sex workers. I’m teaching them to think of their body as belonging only to them and never to anyone else.

I am doing my absolute best to raise people who will react indignantly if someone tries to abuse them. My kids interrupt me if they think my behavior is getting near a line. They are immediate in their ability to say what is or isn’t ok about what is happening to their body. It is stunning to see.

I have labored for so many years to try and develop those skills.

Sometimes I feel so jealous I want to shove my head through a window. Just to get that feeling away from me.

My brother used to put his head through windows. They made him wear a helmet whenever he wasn’t in a building with safety windows.

We have really liked hurting ourselves in my family for a long time. I feel so grateful that my children showed mild inclination and were quickly reassured that it is not the right decision to hurt yourself when you are upset. Ask for help figuring out how to handle your feelings when you feel overwhelmed to that point. Your parents will listen to you no matter what.

You don’t have to feel pain. We can maybe help.

I feel so grateful that I found a sperm donor who had excellent genetics and sincere interest in being a really involved parent. This is a wonderful experience to watch.

But Noah has committed rape. And so have I.

Do I think all rapists belong in jail?

Jimminy Christmas don’t ask me. 

This rape culture shit is complicated.

I want my children to be able to do better. I want all the children to have better. Education is the single best route to understanding diverse people and life experiences.

I honestly don’t know what else to do. I need to pick up the kids soon. I’m going to stop.

Kids are wonderful and tiring

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I want to write but my thoughts are scattered and my arms burn like fire. This hotel room table is at a bad height for me ergonomically and I never let that slow me down. I’m kinda dumb.

I’m over reacting to a lot of things. I’m having trouble not screaming over little, stupid things. It doesn’t help that the kids truly are being irritating. What is happening is: I’m pushing them away because I need space and time to calm down in my body. When I push them away they feel freaked out, rejected, and needy so they cling harder and whine the whole fucking time they are grabbing at me in ways that hurt and piss me off.

Next week the kids have scheduled child care. They asked. I feel a little guilty because Eldest Child flat said, “Mom can we arrange a bunch of childcare next week? I know it will be expensive but I’m pretty sure it will be good for all of us.”

Holy crap. How did I get a child this wonderful? This insightful? This aware?!?!?

My shrink regularly tells me that Eldest Child is preternaturally aware of how people work. “7 year olds just don’t care that much about other people. She’s unusual.”

This because my kid can graphically go through verbally describing why people get upset and which contributing factors are likely to bother which person. “It makes sense that you are angry mom. It is very frustrating when I do _____.”

I don’t know if it is weird. This is all I know. My kid behaves this way because I model it. I don’t really know another way to parent.

My kid understands that in some situations she messed up, sometimes I’m the one who messed up, sometimes Youngest Child messes up… the kid is just good at saying, “Ahhh I think this mistake happened because x person was tired and we haven’t eaten. Let’s fix that.”

I worry about teaching her to take too much responsibility for other peoples stuff, but at the same time she’s quick to not take responsibility when she wasn’t involved so… I don’t know. Maybe it will all work out? Who knows. But she is an amazing person. I am so grateful I get to stand near her.

My Eldest Child is so breathtakingly willing to accept consequences for screwing up that I can’t possibly avoid them for myself when I screw up. When I am inappropriate with the kids we discuss making amends. “What do you think I should do to help make up for this mistake?” Because I talk to them the same way about their behavior. No one is above making amends.

If you screw up you must take responsibility and find a way to solve the problem as best you can. Some problems can’t be fixed and you just have to live with the guilt of knowing you hurt someone/broke something. But you can learn how to not make that mistake again.

Everyone makes mistakes. The best people make mistakes every day and learn from them and make new mistakes tomorrow.

You can’t get through life without mistakes. You will never learn all you need to know. Mistakes teach you about fringe cases and important details. Mistakes teach you about how your awareness needs to spread to more areas.

Mistakes are as mandatory as breathing. You can’t grow without breathing and you can’t grow without making mistakes.

It’s ok. We all mess up. Sometimes the mistakes kinda suck and someone gets mad and maybe there’s screaming or a fight or grounding. But then you pick yourself and you keep going. Because that is what life is.

I check in with the kids after I scream at them. “I was a jerk and I was too loud… but I didn’t go over the line and start insulting you or calling you names, right? Was I in bounds that way?”

Once Eldest Child said, “Actually you slipped and called us brats. Don’t do that again.”

Yes ma’am.

I haven’t done it since.

And my children have never had the experiences I had at their ages. They have never been told that they are stupid, worthless, unworthy, a bitch, a cunt, a whore or that they are too pathetic to deserve life.

I have to tell myself that an occasional errant “brat” isn’t the end of the world. Especially when my children have the self confidence to turn around and tell me that saying “brat” is over the line and I need to knock it off right now.

This trip is causing me to see both of my children in a bunch of different settings so I’m feeling increasingly certain that Eldest Child needs to be evaluated by someone other than me. She has a lot of sensory issues and avoidance behaviors that she is developing to cope. I don’t want her to get locked into avoidance as the only way to cope with sensory overload. I did that with food as a kid and it is part of why I have so many health issues.

I’m really grateful that for all that she is hypersensitive to a lot of things… she doesn’t have the food texture issues I had. Thank goodness.

I’m watching her struggle with the same things I struggled with as a child. The things that made me feel helpless, incompetent, and like I was a failure as a human being. I have enough education and awareness at this point that I recognize that these patterns mean there is something not wired correctly. Help is available in the world. We just have to figure out what kind of help is needed and access it.

She struggles at the same things that used to cause my brothers to laugh at me and tell me if I “couldn’t even throw a ball I was too pathetic to deserve to live.” I’m not really sure why sports are so fucking important.

She doesn’t need to have the years of self-hatred I had. We can find help.

I feel sad and happy at the same time. I know enough that my kids won’t have to suffer like I did. But there is this part of me that can’t stop grieving over the fact that no one gave a shit about me for decades.

I know it isn’t true now. I know that I am loved and cared for now. I know that if I am in need of help now I can find it and/or pay for whatever I need.

But I still hurt. I feel like a pathetic, self-pitying bastard. It doesn’t feel like it is ok for me to keep mourning all these layers of shit from my childhood. But I hurt so much.

I’ve barely cried in months because I don’t like doing it around the kids and I don’t have privacy. I’m sure that is contributing to how backed up I feel emotionally. I don’t have a lot of release available to me when I’m alone with the kids. I really and truly need private space for the ongoing processing of trauma.

I have really big feelings about that. I’m feeling a lot of shame and guilt that I’m sitting here crying and whining like a dog because I can’t stop because I haven’t cried in a while.

The kids and I have been watching a new show, “Call the Midwife”. It’s borderline inappropriate for the kids because it deals with some really harsh truths about life in poverty. But I’m not one to shelter my kids from the fact that other people suffer terribly. They don’t deserve to go through life not knowing that other people have it shitty. No one deserves that, in my opinion, and I kind of hate the parents who bring their children up in a bubble such that the kids can’t understand suffering of other people.

Anyway.

Last night the episode talked about the “Workhouse Howl”. The keening, crying screaming noise that only happens when people suffer horribly for years with absolutely no chance of ever stopping that suffering.

I felt kind of freaked out because when the character started the cry… I knew that I make that sound. My kids kinda looked at me when the crying was explained. Yes, I make that sound sometimes.

It isn’t true that I have no chance to stop the suffering any more. But once your body starts crying like that… stopping it isn’t a voluntary thing. It just happens. Once you have been in that much pain for that long… you can’t always keep it in for the convenience and happiness of everyone around you.

Suffering and pain are really complicated and layered. I would like to believe that some day I will get to the point where I no longer hysterically scream/cry sometimes without volition because I have so many pent up emotions I can’t suppress the noise.

Being rich doesn’t fix these problems. Being rich means you can slowly begin to get help, but getting help is a confusing, horrible process. Even though I can pay for help, I have to know where to go for help, who to ask for help, and what kind of help I need to ask for.

That’s hard.

I have to find the solutions and then find people to help me implement the solutions. It’s hard. I understand why people who are struggling with poverty just can’t.

Trauma impacts you forever. I’m kind of tired of people acting like trauma isn’t a big deal and you should just “get over it”. You know what, motherfucker? I am getting over it. I am making progress. It’s still a nightmare. It’s been a nightmare to be in my body for decades. It is slowly improving but I have trouble believing that being inside my body is ever going to be a pleasant experience.

I wish I could stop crying.

Abuse & therapy

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I was asked for a little advice. A friend is getting to the point where (s)he believes that (s)he can no longer be in denial about being in an abusive relationship.

I’m going to use very gender ambiguous language here. As ambiguous as possible because this is not a gendered issue. Abuse can happen to anyone regardless of their age, gender, sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, etc.

Abuse can happen to anyone and it is not your fault. You cannot control the behavior of other people. If other people decide to abuse you… you have control over how you react. You do not have control over their behavior.

This is a website that goes through some things to think about with regards to abuse. What things count as abuse. I am intensely bothered by this attitude we have in America that abuse is always (or even mostly) perpetrated by men upon women.

I think we can only say “mostly” if we ignore a lot of more subtle forms of abuse. Yes, men tend to be more physically violent than women or non-binary people. I think that is a result of enculturation as much or more than biology.

Men are abused. Non-binary people are abused. We need to get rid of the narrative that only women are abused.

If you think you might be in an abusive relationship you need to start thinking about some aspects of your life differently. You can no longer consider your partner before yourself. If you are being abused you must act to protect yourself. What does that mean?

Well, I think most people who are being abused would be best served by getting into therapy with a skilled and educated provider because such a person can help you access resources in your area I can’t know about because I’m some chick on the internet who doesn’t live near you.

But I’m 30+ years into my therapy career and I’ve seen 21 therapists and I’m well aware that skilled and educated providers are thin on the ground.

Be ok with firing a therapist if they turn out to not be skilled or educated in the kinds of stuff you need help with. Therapists are service providers and if a service provider doesn’t have the skills you need… move on. You wouldn’t hire someone to dye your hair if the only skill they have is doing a buzz cut.

It’s not about being mean to the therapist. You don’t owe a therapist anything other than appropriate compensation for the time you spend with them. Beyond that you don’t owe them anything. Move on if a given provider isn’t fitting. Therapy is about helping you develop the skills you want to have and you don’t currently have. Their feelings are irrelevant.

I mean, they are people and they matter… but don’t keep seeing  a therapist because you feel bad about breaking up with them. They really should have at least enough training to encourage you to move on to someone who is a better fit. If they are clingy… run fast. Consider reporting them to the state board.

Ok, how do you interview therapists to see if they are right for you? There are a bunch of factors to consider.

  1. Are you looking for help working through a short-term crises or are you looking for a long-term therapy relationship? It is best if you can screen for suitability for your needs early on. If you don’t go in with expectations set it can really be hard. Most people who are not mentally ill can have 3-6 months of supportive sessions to get through a crises and then move on without therapy. Not everyone is a lifer. I am, and if you are then you need to learn how to look for that. At this point I tell new potential therapists, “I’m looking for a long-ish term commitment from therapy. I need an intense relationship with a lot of transference because I’m trying to heal wounds from neglectful parenting. I need a relationship with someone who can be supportive and enthusiastic about me being genuinely a non-standard person. I need a parental substitute who can help guide me without trying to control me.”
  2. Do you know much about different therapy types? It might be most effective if you do a little bit of research before you go in. CBT, DBT, psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy, Existential therapy… there are as many different models of therapy as there are people who need help, just about. Google these terms. I don’t want to put just random links up next to the terms and there is a lot of conflicting information out there. You have to be educated because most therapists aren’t capable of telling you, “I know x but you probably need y.” You have to learn what the options are and you have to proactively say, “I think I need help with changing my behavior. I believe a dialectical behavior therapy approach would work best for me.” Then go shopping for people who have specialties that match up with your best guesses. Your best guesses are all you have at first. (Personally I now say, “I need Harm Reduction therapists. Period. I don’t work with abstinence only people.”)
  3. Be ok with making mistakes. Life is about screwing up and then learning to do better. You’ll screw up as you try to figure out how to stop being abused. It is really hard.
  4. Document as much as you can force yourself to. If you are married and especially if there are children involved things may get to court. If you go to court you want to have documentation of when you have what kinds of arguments. Write down as much as possible about what you are saying and about what your partner is saying. Date everything you write down. If you are dealing with a bad co-parenting situation, write down every time your partner demonstrates neglect towards your children because it could be vitally important in court for protecting your kids. It’s time to stop thinking about what you want instead you must think about what is best for your children. If you have no children… well, documenting will save you headaches in court. If you aren’t married and things are bad enough for documentation… maybe just run. Rebuilding may not be harder than what you are doing.
  5. If you decide to pursue therapy as a short term process, go in with as much supporting documentation as you can so your therapist can jump in full speed with you. Write up documents. Write up a cast list for your life. Write up diagrams explaining how people are connected. Mention major traumas that may be applicable. Talk about how your work/school/friendships are being impacted by this problem. You need to explain to this professional how much of your life is being impacted. They can’t know unless you tell them. If you write this stuff down as a document they can read it outside of session and you probably won’t be charged for the time. My current shrink read my whole auto-biography when we started working together. Now that’s professional dedication.
  6. Be aware. Joint counseling is NOT RECOMMENDED in abusive relationships. Couples counseling often just adds fuel to the fire. Get yourself in order.
  7. If you are being abused the best advice I can give you is don’t try to change your abuser in any way. That’s a waste of your energy and time and you need to throw as much energy and time as you have at yourself. You need to prioritize you. You matter.
  8. If it is bad enough, you can call your domestic violence shelter in your area and ask for help finding resources.
  9. Calling the police is a very mixed experience. I can’t say if you should or shouldn’t. It depends on how bad the abuse is.
  10. Be aware that the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship is when you leave. That is when the most folks are killed. Be careful. Read The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker and learn how to listen to your gut. You can’t move on in life if you are dead. Take threats seriously, but don’t get paranoid. Learn how to evaluate threats.
  11. Reach out for help. Tell your friends. Don’t get isolated. You’re going to need help. It’s ok to need help. Helping you is part of the glue that holds social communities together. Helping people in a time of need is bonding. It’s ok to ask for help. You are still a grown ass woman or a grown ass man or a grown ass person not on the binary. You are not diminished by needing help. You are humanized.

I love you. You need to love you too.

Watching whiteness work.

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Tonight I watched something that upset me a lot. We were down at the hotel pool. We were there for a while when another family showed up. Two kids, both looked to be in the 3-4 range.

The daughter looked to be clearly a biological child. The son was clearly of a different race than everyone else present. He was a medium brown.

The daughter taunted the son. The “mother” proceeded to take away the boy’s flotation device and torture him.

I can’t think of another way to describe a mother forcing a little kids head under water while the kid screams “no, please stop mommy.”

The mom said, “Stop yelling you little pussy.”

We left. I don’t know these people and it isn’t an incident that the police would take seriously. I can’t report them to CPS because I don’t know who they are.

The world is such a sad place.

I hope that little boy has someone protect him at some point. I will spend tonight weeping at my helplessness. I feel so useless. He deserves better.

I didn’t intervene because it has been fairly well documented that intervening in situations like that often escalates the problems for the kid. I felt so completely useless.

More Portland notes

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Part of what I love so much about my friends is they don’t hesitate to say, “Why are you cleaning his house? I thought you weren’t going to do that any more.” WHY MUST YOU PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT I SAY AND THEN HOLD ME ACCOUNTABLE.

What the hell.

Why am I cleaning Dad’s house while I am here? Because this is the filthiest I have ever seen his house in 14 years of knowing him. He is very depressed. He is very overwhelmed by life. He can no longer afford to hire help and he is way in over his head.

I can’t watch someone who has taken me to the hospital when I was sick sit and suffer in a situation where a few hours of minor labor on my part will help solve the problem. Part of the depression problem is he feels used up and useless and unwanted and and.

It is hard to love yourself and take care of yourself when you don’t perceive that other people love you. I love him very much. I want to help remind him that he is worth loving.

So I clean his house. Not the whole thing. But he’s having a big party this weekend after we leave and now he’ll be ready without frantic work. And he was out of Kleenex so we bought him four boxes. Because no really he is struggling financially. Things are bad.

I am paying off my mortgage as fast as humanly possible and I never want to owe money again. Dad is really in a bad place and it scares the ever loving shit out of me. He’s not in danger of being homeless soon, but his life is on a downward trajectory. Period. He’s in his decline. It reminds me that Noah and I have one of those coming up. I need to make sure we will not end up in Dad’s position.

Part of the reason that Dad is screwed is the way community property stuff works in Washington. He didn’t just get everything that his wife had when she died. It was a real mess. And expensive. And she had been the one with the well paying job and all of a sudden he had to keep the whole ship afloat alone. It’s been bad.

If I die I don’t want Noah to go through this kind of situation. I will never be in a position like Dad–I am too basically frugal. Noah could end up there if he wasn’t careful. If I’m not careful enough in advance. I’m doing everything in my power to keep Noah and I safe through our old age. I’m trying as hard as I can to ensure that even if we divorced some day I have been frugal enough that neither of us will suffer in our old age. I want to do right by him. Noah has done right by me. He has given me everything I wanted and more. I owe him. I owe him a comfortable, happy life forever if it is in my power to effect.

Dad came and picked me up and took me to the hospital when I was 19 and homeless and hiding at my boyfriend’s house when he was at work. Dad said that I was too sick to stay home because I could die. (We had been chatting on IRC about my various physical issues that day.) When we got to the ER I had a nasty bacterial infection. Dad was probably right that I could have died in the next day or so if I had left my boyfriend’s house to go sit in my car and cry from the pain. That was my Plan A.

I would not be alive if not for my friends. I can pinpoint specific times over and over again. I don’t think I would have survived my father and brother committing suicide without Jenny. I’m absolutely sure that without having her to go to both nights I would have walked into traffic on a major highway.

I don’t owe Aunt Cookie anything. I don’t owe Aunt Candy anything. If Noah and I split up I would only hear from them to facilitate visits with the kids. They don’t give a shit about me. They aren’t my family.

I owe Dad. I owe Jenny. I owe Sarah. I owe Kira. I owe Noah. I owe Marcie. I owe Anna. I owe Brittney.

I’m not still in contact with all of those people. Doesn’t matter. They walked away from the relationship, not me. The door will be open until the day I die. I owe them a debt I can never repay. There is no end to the debt.

In my mind the only thing that someone can do to completely discharge my debt to them is to become a threat to my children. That slams the door forever. That is the only thing that can. Abusing me doesn’t slam the door. But my children are sacrosanct.

I can forgive people abusing me. Mostly I understand how I help provoke the behavior. I rather enjoy such dynamics. But not my children. Never my children.

We’ve been talking a lot about boundaries and saying no and being a good person. Shanna is in a phase where she really wants things to be black and white. “If you buy Nestle products you are a bad mom.” Actually honey… that’s not true. Just about everyone in America buys Nestle products and they aren’t all bad moms. Buying Nestle has nothing to do with whether or not they are good moms. That’s orthogonal. Then I had to explain orthogonal and draw a picture.

Man, Calli is obsessed with asking, “What does ______ mean?” I think she asks that question about 500 times to every 1 time Shanna asks. It is trippy. I’m not sure what it means about their varying vocabularies. Calli really needs to have new concepts ripped apart. Shanna absorbs a new word and then holds it until she can understand and apply it. Shanna rarely asks for definitions.

Anyway, back to Nestle/boundaries/being a good person… We keep talking about how being a good person isn’t based on one set of behaviors or one measure. It’s not about whether you do x. Nothing in life is that simple. Nothing. Nothing.

Being a good person is about making mistakes and apologizing and trying to do better. It’s not about being perfect to start with. No one is perfect. Trying for perfection will fail and drive you crazy.

Ran out of time.

Trauma recovery

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I’m going through a trauma recovery workbook.  I’m probably going to read it six times. On page 47 it says,

Characteristics of Traumatic Relationships: Betrayal occurs at the hands of a trusted caregiver or supporter.

How Helping Relationships Can Re-Traumatize Youth: Youth feel betrayed by the organization, program, or provider.

Characteristics of Traumatic Relationships: Reality is reconstructed to represent the values and beliefs of the abuser./ Events are reinterpreted and renamed to protect the guilty.

How Helping Relationships Can Re-Traumatize Youth: Reality is reconstructed to match the needs and values of the provider or agency, not the youth.

 

I have feels. I’m not a youth any more. I don’t deserve to be centered any more. But these parts of me are still broken.

“In order to protect themselves, consciously or not, many youth act out to speed up the rejection that they are convinced is coming anyway.”

Like talking about the Godmamas being on their way out and then I got a nasty fuck you letter because I had talked about their attitude in a way they didn’t like. Like that. I do that. I do that a lot.

“If we don’t exit/punish youth when they break the rules, aren’t we enabling them? No. When a youth that is highly impacted by past trauma is exited, what is the lesson? Although providers may believe youth are learning they can’t write on walls or disrespect providers, mostly providers are just confirming a youth’s belief that they are unlovable and undeserving of attention and support. It is not suggested that agencies and providers ignore inappropriate behavior. Instead, it is recommended that providers work with youth to identify problematic behavior, put it in the context of trauma, and help youth find different ways to express anger, frustration, or sadness. The goal is for youth to know that providers can see far beyond the problem behavior, and see the youth’s capabilities and potential to succeed.”

Feelings. What is my fault? What isn’t my fault? What should I be punished for? What shouldn’t I be punished for?

I don’t really know.

Reading stuff like this reminds me of when I was teaching. I was very good at working with gang kids because when they walked in angry… I assumed it had nothing to do with me and I offered support instead of punishment. What happened? Why are you so upset? It must be something awful; this isn’t like you. Then they will crumble into a ball of tears because the anger was just an attempt to hold it together.

People want to be seen so badly. It’s not just me.

Most of the people who try really hard to seem tough are people who have been beaten down. Life is really hard.

I’ve talked to several former students in the past few days. I ran into one at the convention. We were very happy to see one another.

I don’t fuck everything up. I fuck things up when my boundaries get muddy. When I want too much. When I’m too needy. When I ask for help or love or support that I know I have no hope of getting. Because I really don’t matter that much.

Slow week. Thank goodness.

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We see friends on Friday. We don’t see friends till then. I think this is very good. I think this is very important.

There gets to be a point where my skin is so thin that if someone breathes too hard I bruise. I’m there. It’s emotional as well as physical. My body hurts so much. My belly has been hurting for days. I am having an “IBS attack”. Horrid cramping and diarrhea and pain. That happened all weekend at the con. I had some big fucking feelings.

Watching how people act is very important. I act like a wounded animal. As a result I’m kind of unpredictable. That means I’m the problem. I understand. I’m used to that.

I’ll stay home and keep my issues to myself.

Your fucking problem you stupid bitch. Just shut up. Shut the fuck up you stupid fucking cunt.

It’s not one thing. It’s everything. I am so upset. But! At least these days my very upset is mostly limited to writing bitchy things on the internet. Really…. this isn’t even that bitchy.

I’m not saying in detail all the mean things I’m thinking. I’m suppressing them. Don’t ever fucking say I don’t have tact, motherfucker.

This right here, this is tact.

Meeting bronies was fun. I won’t be going back to that convention.

I HAVE ABOUT 389,287,927 MEAN THINGS I WANT TO SAY TO PEOPLE RIGHT NOW.

The bad thing is the list of people I want to say them to is only a few thousand names long which means I have a high density of mean things I want to say to just a few people.

But I won’t. Because I’m a grown up now. That shit has consequences. I haven’t matured, I’ve just developed a super ego.

I think it is very weird that I am so worried about consequences from people who already have given the only consequence they have to give: revocation of their regard.

I am not worthy of support or defense. My problems are mine. And if I’m too nasty because defending myself is kind of hard then I will be ostracized because I’m the problem. Not the people hitting me; Me. Not the people defending the people who hit me. I’m the problem.

Do I want such people to like me anyway? What would I have to believe about myself in order to act in a way that they would support? I would have to agree with the premise that if I am kicked in the throat I deserve it and I should apologize for it happening and I should offer to try to stay away from people in group situations because I’m the problem.

Uhm, no. That would not be good mental health.

Group cohesion over the physical safety of group members can bite my ass.

If I lose friends over having that opinion… they were never my friend. They are just somebody that I used to know.

I feel like a tremendous asshole partially because this little drama is happening off-stage for most of the group. I haven’t even talked to many people about it. I didn’t ever tell the group organizer. This is me having made a mistake about the level of support I might expect from one person. And I’m looking at running from the whole group over effectively two families. The one with the kicker and the one who told me to promise that I won’t be a problem any more.

Why do I turn that into “the group”? Why do I do that? I’m having conflict. I haven’t tried to work it out verbally since my one failed attempt. I have not really given an opening for any kind of backpedaling or attempt at any other kind of resolution.

Err, doesn’t really seem “wise” to do so.

I’m having a big problem with the fact that I simultaneously don’t feel like a victim (it was a kid fucking up–not a deliberate assault from an adult… it’s just not psychologically the same thing) and I feel like I’m being victim-blamed.

There’s a lot of transference going on, clearly. This is becoming the “situation du’jour” for me to project my abandonment issues and reenact stupid shit from my family. “They always pick the abuser.” I’ve put a noticeable amount of time into this specific set of relationships. More than I’ve put into the vast majority of people I know.

I guess… I guess I lacked the perspective to understand that this amount of time is very little and very unimportant to people who have had lives very different from mine. Time dilation is a problem for me.

I’m not reacting to right now… only I am. This weekend was very frustrating. The kids… it was a boundaries testing weekend. Those happen. Children are supposed to do that. It is how childhood is supposed to work. I have stacks of books that tell me this will happen. It was a rough weekend.

And then the hotel staff threw away a bunch of the Easter eggs. Because some of them had unwrapped jelly beans in them. I tried to get individual wrapped things of jelly beans and they wouldn’t fucking fit in the eggs. Then when I asked if I could have back the bag of eggs that weren’t hidden or given to children… the person running the hunt said, “Next year buy toys for the eggs.”

I was not very polite. “I won’t be doing anything for you next year.” She looked… pissed off and angry. But then again this is a woman I’ve known since I was 19. We’ve never gotten along. If I had understood in the very beginning that it was that (insert name) I probably wouldn’t have donated eggs in the first place. It made the hunt somewhat unfortunate. Dramatically unfortunate. The person in charge wanted to just go around and have adults collect them to throw away.

I told the kids to run. They listened to me. Luckily we had some big kids so probably at least 100 were picked up.

Next year buy toys?! And you would expect them to be themed. Which means you think I should spend $500+ on toys for people I don’t know. Bitch you are dreaming.

Quite frankly, if I’m going to spend $500 on toys for kids I don’t know… I’m not giving them to the kids who are privileged enough to have parents who bring them to a My Little Pony convention. Yeah right.

(It’s not that I’m against donating $500 to worthy causes. A bunch of spoiled kids aren’t a worthy cause.)

Yes, I’m judgmental as fuck. I can live with that.

I’m partially pissed because I buy candy that *I* will eat. Which means there’s no HFCS, it’s organic sugar. Those assholes threw away a lot of money today.

IT’S ONE MORE THING.

It’s not a “big deal”. But I won’t be going back to that convention next year. I don’t think it is the fault of the convention but I didn’t have much fun. There was a lot going on.

I’m so glad we don’t have much scheduled coming up. The “group” camping trip will probably end up being us and three friends of mine. We will have fun. I am crossing my fingers that two families can go, but I’m not holding my breath.

Maybe that needs to be how I treat “friends” from this point forward. I’ll cross my fingers but I won’t hold my breath. I will allow myself to hope (because gosh I enjoy your company) but I won’t hurt myself with hoping.

I need to be prepared to have fun anyway. I need to make this trip work.

I can’t make everything work. There are relationships I can’t salvage because our basic needs and orientations are too different. There are people I can’t spend much time with because we are both aggressive and overly sensitive at the same time. There are people who just can’t handle being around how angry I am.

Even if I am currently feeling some anger at you, I’m aware that the anger I feel towards you is a speck of sand on the beach of my rage. You aren’t really what I’m angry because of. Ok, I didn’t like that thing that time… but that thing isn’t really why I’m angry.

I’m angry for existential reasons. I’m angry because my mom told me to find a way to just get along with my brother. My mom told me not to disrupt group harmony by getting hysterical over him beating me up and trying to rape me. Just don’t be a problem, Krissy.

I’m not angry because of you. But right now you are standing near me and I am very very angry.

I want to hurt myself really badly. I want an end of these angry voices in my head. I want to beat my head until the throb is so loud I can’t hear them any more.

Krissy is the problem. It has ever been thus. My friend said today that she knows the one way to stop this pain. She’s right. There is only one way.

Today this wave isn’t enough to crest over me. Today is not the day. This isn’t that much pain. I can handle this.

And, I’ll say it: I’m a lucky person. Noah really makes up for a lot of life problems. He is so incredibly kind to me. When I can’t say nothing nice… I’m still grateful for Noah.

Noah tells me it is ok to get mad. Noah talks about the psychological underpinnings of why people must have group loyalty and why that is such a problem for freaks like us. We are the people who have been historically shunned and stoned. (And not in that fun way.) Disruptors.

We are the problem from the point of view of the group. Complaining is the problem. Getting kicked in the throat is fine. Having difficulty breathing is fine. Having trouble swallowing food for days is fine. Complaining is not ok.

This is part of why I don’t do well in social groups. I go home and write about this shit. I’m an asshole.

I want to matter. But I don’t. And it makes me hard. And that makes it even harder for me to matter to people. And it’s all my fault. Because I was the problem. If I could have found a way to not be a problem then things could have been fine. I was serving the forces of group unity.

Now I’m not. I’m trying to act like I, as an individual, am important and that’s stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

My mom couldn’t treat me like an individual. My needs weren’t seen. My needs weren’t important.

The part of me that “should” learn how to deal with people in this situation is stuck. It still thinks that people who react in this manner have the power of life and love and death over me. It isn’t true any more. But my brain is stuck. My brain doesn’t know what it should know. My brain just knows… again.

I’m really happy that I’m going to stay home for a while and meet my own needs. I sure like my home. I like the people in it. Even though the kids… well… we had an adventure together. They have to test boundaries. Some days I handle it better than other days. I was cranky anyway. It sucks for them when I don’t have extra spoons. My belly hurt all weekend and that makes it harder to be patient.

When a kid refuses to use the toilet when you are in the bathroom and says, “No I must go back to the table” and then you go back to the table to drop the kid off and “I have to go pee” and… all weekend was like that. It’s not big stuff. It’s really trivial shit. But I had no spoons for it.

And the kids said their favorite part of the conference was buying the toys with their allowance. I said next time we are going to Target and saving me the cost of the conference.

The bronies were nice people. Folks at the convention went really far out of their way to be nice to random kids. I was highly impressed by the enthusiasm and affection all the cosplayers displayed. They truly love what they are doing and are happy to gab about it for hours. Given how much time Shanna spends talking about sewing stuff… it was a dream come true.

She’s almost 7. Joanne’s down the road won’t teach sewing till a kid hits 8. Good thing we get to blow half a year on a road trip while waiting to grow up. We have hand-sewing projects to keep us busy until then.

I have this problem. Where people want to be my friend-out-at-arms-length and I want them to be my bosom-companion and then I have expectations I shouldn’t have and then… I get upset when they aren’t met.

I create this situation. I just don’t know what to do about it. Transference, projection, abreaction, worth, self-esteem… oh my.

And through it all loops this chain of whispering voices, “Not worth the resources. Just die already. Just die already. Why the fuck aren’t you dead yet you fucking cunt?”

I would like to order a new brain, please. Can I have one delivered in Two Days with Prime?

Come down like a box of hammers.

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I was thinking about the idea of “safe space”. I hang out in the lobbies of a lot of communities that are very focused on this idea. Places where people are safe. It means very different things to different people. I was thinking about what it would mean to me.

I believe that children need to hit. I believe it is part of the developmental process and …yeah it happens. I believe that the appropriate response is coming down like a box of hammers. On any given day my children get one chance for hitting someone. If they hit a second time we are going home right the fuck now and we will be having an unpleasant conversation the whole way home about how you do not have the right to hit people.

I believe that a safe space for me would involve people caring more when their children hit other people.

I don’t live in a world where that is true. Well, there are always people who over react. I don’t scream hysterically at my children for hitting. I don’t hit them. I don’t ground them for extensive periods of time. I don’t take away a bunch of privileges. I sure as hell don’t punish them once we get home–by then they bloody well forgot anyway.

I react in the moment. You get one chance per day. Not three fucking chances on hitting people. I don’t think so. Unless someone else hit you first, and then ok fine you can hit.

But quite frankly… my kids rarely hit back with anyone other than one another. They like fantasy violence quite a bit. They definitely egg on “fighting”. But they are very aware that if they hit a non-combatant mom is going to explode like a fire cracker. No. No. No.

You do not hit someone unless you have their consent. Did you ask them if they want to play a fighting game with words? No? Then what in the world makes you think it is ok to hit them?! IT IS NOT OK TO HIT SOMEONE WHO HAS NOT CONSENTED TO BEING HIT.

Lots of people will agree to play fighting games if you ask. It’s fine to ask.

But I don’t feel like other people have the consent fetish that I have. I need things negotiated and spelled out. Other people… not so much.

I’ve got to say, when my kids were habitually hitting the punishment did continue to the house. When it was happening almost every time we went somewhere we had groundings at home over it. It is a normal developmental stage.

The important part is how adults handle it. If adults act like it is fine… well. That’s a fucking lesson. If adults teach that you are allowed to hit as long as you don’t get caught… that’s a fucking lesson.

My kids don’t enjoy my blistering lectures. Do they “get” all of them? No. They don’t. I talk as if they were adults and they aren’t. They “get” a fraction of what I’m saying. But these conversations are cumulative. They will remember that from as far back as their memory goes their mother was absolutely consistent you do not hit someone who has not consented to being hit.

I understand that other people don’t think this is a message that should be consciously taught. Maybe they just never think of it as an option as opposed to making a decision. I don’t really know.

But it won’t work any other way in my house. I’ll drag you home from the park yelling at you about how you have no right to strike someone else. I won’t feel bad. I DON’T GET TO HIT YOU. YOU DON’T GET TO TURN AROUND AND HIT OTHER PEOPLE. WE DON’T PLAY THAT SHIT AROUND HERE.

Play fighting is different. That’s a game. Know how you know something is a game? You asked someone if they wanted to play before you got started.

But Shanna seriously has issues about getting in other peoples personal space bubbles. I suspect that is part of what causes kids to feel motivated to hit her. She gets right the fuck in their face and most people aren’t taught what to say. Maybe she’ll learn. I’m not sure how many more times she will need to be hit though. I couldn’t begin to count how many times she’s been punched. We talk about it a lot.

So much for home schooling meaning that my kids won’t be beat on. At least I’m there and I get to take them fucking home after the third hit of the day.

If my kids get one chance, why do I give other people two chances? Because one kid hit both my kids once and the other time… man those two have a long running sorta-feud. Given how many times Shanna has punched him… well. What did she do this time? And he does apologize. Usually even without prompting from an adult.

So how many chances do I give? I don’t know. I’m very tired of being hit. Very very very very very very very very very tired of being hit. And I am even more sick of my kids getting hit. And I notice that they are usually the ones who come crying because they got hit.

I’m not sure if they are bigger whiners or if they are actually hit that much more often than other kids.

I’d like to go a whole fucking year without being hit nonconsensually. I’ve never had a year like that. Not one.

I feel very triggered. I wasn’t “pushed out” of my biological family because I prosecuted my father. But I was told through actions that in order to be allowed to stay I would have to accept that everyone around me would rewrite history. “It didn’t really happen.” “He never did anything like that to anyone else.” “You are the problem. We were fine until you caused problems.”

I’m the problem. I should apologize. I should promise to not be a problem any more.

The only way I can promise that is if I die. I’ve never been anything but the problem.

Cue round of intense suicidal ideation. THIS IS A SHITTY TIME. I HAVE AWESOME KIDS IN THE HOUSE WHO ARE BEING NICE TO ME AND LOVING ON ME. WHY IN THE FUCK AM I IN THE YARD CRYING BECAUSE I FEEL UNLOVED AND WORTHLESS AND LIKE I SHOULD DIE.

Because I can’t not cry if I’m in the room with them right now. And Noah is here. It is being handled.

I’m not going to die over this. These people are so not worth it. If losing my mother isn’t going to do it… hell no. But turning the movie screen surround sound system off is hard. I have a lot of willpower to abstain from following through; stopping the thoughts is harder. I feel like I have run most of my life on sheer hate. I’m not dead yet because you will not win, motherfucker.

Which motherfucker, precisely? I don’t even know any more. Take your fucking pick. I’ve got a whole fucking card deck full of names.

Do something different. Yes, the crying and typing is an improvement over the cutting and the head banging, fine and dandy. (Though the arm pain means that this is maybe actually one of the most self-harming actions of my whole life. Cutting had far less chance of crippling me. Ok, banging my head could have caused a stroke. WHATEVER.)

I should fucking know by now. If you have a problem with people you have to shut the fuck up. People are not actually interested in “working through differences”. They want confirmation bias that they are right and you are wrong. I should never have bothered to talk to that fucking mother in the first place. I knew she wouldn’t give a shit about her kid hurting me. Why in the fuck was I so fucking stupid?

I am the problem. Clearly.

If I didn’t have a house full of kids, whoa. I’d make different life choices.

But if I didn’t have the kids I wouldn’t be dealing with these people anyway. So maybe it’s a wash.

Why don’t I just walk away? Why is this worth bothering to try for anyway? Mostly because I’ve kept my kids here for four years and I’ve told them to bond with people. Now I feel like a monster.

Everyone I tell them to bond with I eventually run off. I am a piece of shit. I suppose it will be a good thing that I have bonus kids here tonight. I will have something to do while I’m awake anyway. They always need a lot of help at night. They haven’t done that much sleeping outside their house. Lots of checking in, “Yes, you are still with Krissy and Noah and Shanna and Calli. Yes, you will see your parents again soon. Yes, we love you. Yes, they love you. It is time to sleep now so we can play tomorrow.” I can fucking smile on cue to be reassuring. I’ve worked hard.

I believe that children deserve to have an adult who wants to meet their emotional needs around. It doesn’t have to be a parent full time. It is healthier if it isn’t. Children need to learn that having needs is ok. Needing reassurance is ok. Needing to have help feeling safe is ok.

I can feel safe here. If I can’t feel safe other places, well… if I weren’t such a fucking problem maybe I wouldn’t have so many problems.

I’ve never been able to find a way to not be a problem other than staying home. Or dying.

I want to run away so bad. I’ve lived here too long. I’ve used up my welcome. People are tired of my bullshit. I don’t blame them. I’m tired of it too. If I could run away from being inside my head I would. I want to turn the movie screens off and I can’t.

I keep coming back to swimming out into the ocean. That really does seem to be my first choice. If I go far enough it is pretty fucking sure. I didn’t do so well with over dosing. My body is so sensitive to medications these days I don’t think my body would permit an overdose. I couldn’t use a gun. I converted my garage so I can’t follow my dad. I’m really not a big enough asshole to use Tommy’s method. That was seriously traumatizing to the people involved in the rescue. That’s not fair you fucking asshole. If you are going to kill yourself, at least don’t make a bunch of fucking spectators watch you burn. Not cool. People don’t get over that. Hell, I didn’t even see it and I can’t get over it.

Swimming. Yes, swimming straight out into the Pacific Ocean sounds great.

I have kids! Can’t! Calli tells me all the god damn time that I have to die of very old age. I’ll try, baby.

I’m definitely having temporary problems right now. In ten years this won’t matter at all. Stop being so melodramatic. Err, I’m diagnosed with reasons why I react this way. Fuck you, negative-self-talk. I am fucking improving. I god damn held it together great today. I didn’t start crying till bedtime. That’s doing just fucking fine, ok?!

Whether something is good or bad depends on your point of view.

So sad.

Peripheral

5 Replies

I asked my current longest running friend how she experiences my emotional ups and downs. She said “Peripherally because mostly I’m focused on me.” It was… humbling in exactly the right way. It was a reminder that the people who love me don’t have to come on the emotional roller coaster with me. They can love me and hear about my life and support me without being traumatized. My experiences are peripheral to their lives. It’s… kind of a freeing way of looking at it.

I don’t know how much to center myself. I don’t know how much impact I have on other people. I don’t know how much they can withstand from me. I don’t know this partially because people are all so different. I have been blessed with friends who can hear about some severe traumas without being damaged. But lots of people can’t even handle mildly upsetting things without freaking out, let alone trauma. So calibration is a bitch.

On the way home from the grief ritual on Saturday I got news that I didn’t like. If I was under the delusion that talking about a road trip for multiple years before I did it would result in people making sure they were home when I come to their city….uhm I am now back in tune with reality. The folks I know make their plans without consulting with me. Lots of folks I wanted to see (I’m up to like 8 different people across the country) aren’t going to be home when I come through town. The… ironic part is how many of them will be in the bay area when I am in their home states. I am having a hard time not feeling specifically avoided. I live in the bay area and you don’t come when I’m there to see me. You come when I am in your city. It… it is hard to not take personally. I’ve been planning this road trip for years. People could have asked me about conflicts. They didn’t. Now I can either change my plans (to make a long trip even longer) to see them or give up the idea of seeing them.

Which is why it is good to be reminded that I am peripheral to other peoples lives and I shouldn’t act like I am at the center. I’m really not. Folks don’t schedule around me. Hoo boy folks don’t schedule around me.

I think this would be easier if it were one person I was having this experience with. Then I could decide how much I prioritize that specific person and make a decision and move on. But once you start stacking that many people and that many conflicts… it gets exponentially more complicated.

I’m having conflict with my plans from five separate people in Portland. That’s… that seems to be a sign I shouldn’t go to Portland. If 5/8 of the people I go there to see won’t be available and one of the people I do want to see has been coming to the bay area without talking to me over the last year so I’m all butt hurt… Maybe Portland wasn’t meant to be part of the road trip? I could take it as a sign to save myself a thousand or so miles of travel. But then I feel like I’m not proving my love to the 3/8 people who are still there.

I’m having internal conflict over my adopted dad coming to the bay area multiple times without bothering to have dinner with us. Why the fuck should I keep trying to create a relationship with you when you come to my area without even the smallest of effort in my direction? It’s not a relationship if I am carrying all of it. But you know what? He didn’t ask me to be my dad. He didn’t ask to adopt my kids. I asked him. And I have to take what he feels like giving. I don’t get to demand more.

But I spent this weekend at a grief ritual. And I spent this weekend reading The Art of Asking by Amanda Fucking Palmer. So I’m in a funny place with regards to my feelings about “just stop asking people for love.”

That’s what cutting Portland out of the road trip would mean for me. It would mean that I am not able to go to that city with my heart in my hands saying, “Please love me.” I feel pathetic about it, but that’s a lot of what I do with my traveling and my life experiences. I go about and meet people I’ve known for a long time and people I have just met and I energetically ask them to love me. Please think I am worthy of humanity and decency and love. I’m scared that I am not deserving. And I need it affirmed over and over.

You need ten positive things to balance out every negative thing you hear about yourself. I spent the first 25 years of my life hearing 1,000 bad things for every good thing I heard. I am spending my adulthood trying to convince myself I am not what I was told I am.

But asking people to love you this way means risking rejection.

Part of my problem is that I have too many expectations of people. I really do. If I were actually content with five minutes of attention from the people I love I wouldn’t feel so disappointed. They can eke out five minutes. They can’t eke out two days. I’m not saying anything bad about them for that. They are where they are. And I am where I am.

I have spent most of my life using physical pain to remind me that I can’t ask for help because people don’t actually care very much. Now everyone in my life really wants me to stop hurting myself. And things are better than they were–more people are willing to demonstrate caring than I have ever experienced. It is getting better year by year. But I am not good at keeping my needs in check. I’m not good at ensuring that I don’t overwhelm people.

I am trying to learn the skills to deal with rejection without feeling like I should die. My hyperbole is not because of anyone in my life right now. It is because I have felt like I should die since early childhood. I’m looking for signs that I should or shouldn’t die. As soon as I feel like there is more weight on the side of no really I shouldn’t be here any more I try to leave. I haven’t tried to leave in 18 years. I was taught that the penalty for trying to leave and failing is really bad. Unless I’m willing to go swim out into the ocean until I can’t come back… I probably won’t attempt suicide again. My gestures are used up. Next time it has to be effective and no take backs.

I’m still weighing every rejection. I’m still tossing evidence into a sack towards the inevitability that I should die today because some day that day will come. Some day it will be the day I should die. It is not avoidable.

I notice something in the cycles of asking for support that I go through. If I ask a lot of people at once for something I don’t want very much… it usually works out. If I ask one person for something I want very much… it rarely works out. One example that is shallow and petty but small and easy to describe is the leather dress. I lived with my Owner for three years. We had a very intense relationship. I did not ask him to buy me things. He bought food for me in restaurants and that was it. I bought all groceries for the house. We were both incredibly sensitive to the idea that he was my Sugar Daddy and he was therefore careful to not pay me.

Isn’t that kind of funny? He wanted to make sure our relationship was “clean” so he would safely not provide very much support. Ha.

Anyway after being together for just shy of 4 years we were at a leather conference. I found a leather ball gown I was simply in love with. It was gorgeous. It was way out of my budget. I had never before asked him to pay for any of the ridiculously large fetish wardrobe I bought because he wanted me to wear those clothes. I didn’t ask him to pay for the 20+ pairs of shoes I bought because he wanted me to wear them. I didn’t own any of those shoes two years after I left him. Most of them were gone in three months. I hated those shoes. But I had to buy them to make him happy. I lived on $14,400/year and he made over $250,000. Anyway.

So I wanted this dress and I asked him to buy it for me. I said it could be my birthday and Christmas and everything put together. He said no. He said it wasn’t worth it to him to buy it for him. This happened in July. We broke up in August. Want to know what is funny? Noah organized my other-lovers and bought the dress for my birthday in September. I didn’t ask my other-lovers for the dress. I just cried on my blog.

I still have the dress. I wear it sometimes. It is one of the few items of fetish wear I have left. Mostly I’ve passed things on to people who are actually into that kind of thing. I used to have a wardrobe that made fetish models and professional dominatrixes drool. I’m not a fetishist though.

I spent a lot of this grieving ritual thinking about how I need to forgive myself for having needs that are in specific shaped boxes. I am not going to get those boxes filled because friends don’t work that way. I could maybe get the needs met if I was open to the universe supplying some random person–that’s how things work out for me. But as long as I get into this place where I create fantasies of doing x, y, and z with a, b, and c because I love them… I’m mostly going to be disappointed. My friends are not programmable. They don’t have the same interests and impulses as me.

This is what makes things so tricky. I have very specific needs and wants. People aren’t Burger King. You can’t have it your way.

A friend suggested that I negotiate differently. Instead of offering a Thing I’m up for, try to negotiate two or three things that might work for both. Thing is, I’m negotiating with anywhere from 3-25 people in a week. I can’t be that flexible. I run into bandwidth limitations.

I am not physically nor emotionally capable of being that open-endedly flexible with that many people. Maybe other people could… I can’t.

I will lose me. I understand that other people can keep themselves while being very flexible. That is awesome for them. That’s not me.

As I read Amanda Palmer’s book I kept thinking, “I have tried to have similar trust in the universe. That is part of how I got raped by 12 people. Uhm… This doesn’t work equally well for everyone.”

I feel like the term “Survival Sex” is only fairly recently added to my working vocabulary. It is… not exactly sex work because money doesn’t exchange hands. It is having sex with people in trade for food or housing. I’m struggling with not having the right goods to trade for my needs any more. Once upon a time I could trade sex and get most of the immediate needs I had met. Now I can’t trade sex for a variety of reasons and I don’t know what currency I have that is of value. My attention? But I bother people so much.

If you look at history there are people who can ask and have their needs met and it is like magic and then there are people who ask and get spit on. A lot of it depends on who you know. How magical is your safety net? The fact that Amanda Palmer had so many people with extra money to throw at artists is part of why she has done so well. If she had not grown up in that net… it would be a very different story.

It is a lot easier to trust that people will meet your needs when your needs have been basically met your entire life. It is not so easy to believe when there have been brief shining moments when all of your needs were met for brief moments and mostly… not so much.

I don’t know how to stop taking it out on my friends that my needs are too big for any of them. If my friends meticulously did every single thing I wanted from them… I would probably still feel this way. My problems are existential and not logistical. I get a lot of assistance and cooperation from friends. My friends do wonderful things with and for me. I can pinpoint problems in the system but… mostly my friends are ridiculously good to me. No, people don’t schedule their lives around me. I’m peripheral. But what they have to spare they hand me generously. It isn’t their fault that it isn’t enough to meet my needs.

Is it my fault? Is it anyone’s fault? I worry about fault so much partially because when I talk about how people aren’t meeting my needs people are quick to assume I’m blaming them. If they feel blamed for my problems they are more likely to cut me out of their lives and then I will be that much further from having my needs met.

You can’t talk about the fact that what you are getting in inadequate. You will cease getting any help at all.

Watch how people treat people of color who complain about the system. If you say, “This isn’t meeting my needs” people will say, “Fine then I won’t help you at all you ungrateful bastard.”

I don’t know what I want from people. Not really. I can come up with imaginary scenarios that would take 20 years of back story to make possible but beyond that… I don’t really know.

I want to feel seen.

In the class part of the ritual Sobonfu said, “If someone is crying and alone in my village someone will come and sit with them. If they don’t start talking, the listener will go get more people. If a small group isn’t enough to get the person to start talking we will get the whole village together to listen. Some problems are so big they cannot be carried by one person or by a small group. The whole village has to see and hear the problem before it can be resolved.”

I feel like that. I feel like there isn’t much of anything that people can do for me at this point beyond seeing and hearing me. I want to feel like an integral part of the system. I want to feel like my pain is so important that many many people care enough to take time out of their day to just see it. So that it can feel real. So that I can put it down. So that I don’t have to metaphorically spend all day clutching it and screaming “Look! Look Just fucking look.”

I don’t want to be disposable.

I’m afraid of treating my friends like they are disposable. I’m afraid I have no path to being correct and meeting my needs and their needs.

Part of my problem dealing with people comes from scale issues. I have an unusually large net of people. They are all fairly loose connections, but I have them all over the place. Weak connections lead to a safer and happier and more successful life. But how do you decide how much energy to give to weak connections?

I think that part of the relief when the Godmamas dumped me is like when a company fires an employee and gets to wipe their vacation time off the books. It is no longer an outstanding debt the company might have to face at any point. I left space in my heart and mind for them. They didn’t want it. They told me no over and over for years. But I left that space open. I tried to cram other people into gaps and holes around the area I was leaving for them. It’s like doing a computer defrag on my emotional priorities.

Ok, you want to be not important. Ok.

All of the people who have made conflicting plans are people I really like and I don’t want to defrag them out of my life.

I feel like there is no way to win.

Either I absorb all the disappointment and sadness and regret and keep coming back to beg for love another time or I give up on the person as a source of support.

This is that black and white thinking that mentally ill people are supposed to “work on”.

It’s not either/or. But I don’t know what it is.

Why am I doing the road trip? For a whole bunch of reasons. Because I want my kids to meet people all across the country and find out that their social skills need heavy adaptation from environment to environment. Because I want my kids to physically see this country so that when we talk about geography and history they have real schema to match things up with. Because I have wanted to do a trip like this my whole life and I never had anyone who wanted to do it with me and I’m too chicken shit to go alone. Because I can. Because I think we are going to reach a point in history where the carbon cost is going to be too high and people can’t do this any more. I want to do it while I can.

Because my cousin sneered at me while we were preparing for the New Zealand trip, “Why are you going overseas when you haven’t seen all of this great country.” Bitch, I’ve seen more of this country than you. It isn’t that great. Shut up.

That cousin hasn’t ever liked me. It wasn’t my fault she disliked me. She moved to Georgia not long after I moved in with Auntie and Uncle Bob for the first time. She cried telling her father that she was sorry she was taking his grandchildren away from him. He said, “That’s ok. I have Krissy.” My cousin never forgave me.

You know what? Uncle Bob dropped me when a younger and more sycophantic girl came along. He dropped that girl when another younger girl came along. You can get over hating me for stealing his love. I didn’t steal it. It was never really mine. He wanted a role and I couldn’t give him the role he wanted. I’m not grateful enough.

I had too much abuse mixed in with my not-really-good-enough support. Some boxes of Fruity Pebbles didn’t solve my problems and everyone kind of hated me for that.

If I could be blithe and capricious with seeing my friends things would work out much better. If I could accept the gift of their friendship and hold it in my open hand without grabbing and crushing it… things would work out better.

But I’m needy and desperate and sad and lonely. Even when I’m in a house full of people who love me. This is clearly not about the people who are currently in my life. This is not about the deficiency in behavior or planning or whatever from the people I know.

This is about a hole inside of me the size of Alaska.

If I’m going to be kind of an asshole about it I would say, If my friends weren’t so cool I wouldn’t be so upset about only getting a small slice of them. But man that’s a dick move.

I can’t actually handle that big of a slice of most of my friends. I start flipping out. I literally shake and I get nasty and difficult. Which is part of what makes my entitlement and possessiveness such a problem. I want them. I want all of them. Then I’m an asshole.

Like I did with Sarah. I want Sarah. I want to live with her and be with her all day every day. Just because I want it that doesn’t mean I can do it in a way that is healthy for both of us. My needs are too big. Her needs are too big. Our needs conflict in very complicated ways. It isn’t about either of us doing something wrong we just aren’t compatible as house mates. That happens.

I need a degree of rigidness and predictability that is very hard for almost everyone. That isn’t about anyone doing me wrong. It’s a recognition of the fact that people can be very complicated. If I don’t have that rigidness in my life then I have breakdowns in my behavior. That rigidity is how I have learned to compensate for not having the support I needed. I created the structure and support I needed for myself by myself but there is a cost.

That cost comes in how much I can trust other people. I have to be able to pick up the pieces if their best isn’t good enough. I have to be able to recover from feeling rejected. I have to be able to feel like I still have a self who is deserving of life at the end of the day. That is not something that other people are responsible for nor can they have serious impact on how it turns out.

The thing is, if everyone I knew catered their whole lives around me and scheduled around me and constantly pestered me to center me in their lives… I would implode. I could not do that. I would reject everyone, stop answering the phone and email and hide in my closet for months.

My friends really aren’t put in a position to be very successful with me. I’m sorry for that.

What I want is friends who are off doing their things. Their things inspire me. Their things remind me that it takes all kinds and all of these diverse, interesting, busy people are necessary to have the world be this fabulous.

And that means I have to take what is left over and find a way to cobble it into enough.

I am really scared that I will have to bail part way through the road trip because I will not have the emotional nor physical stamina to do such a journey alone with the kids. In order to spend quality time with the people we love in Portland I would have to make the trip longer and show up earlier. I don’t think I can bear that cost right now. I think that given that 5/8 of the people we love in Portland will not be available… I should take that as a sign from the universe to come back to Oregon another time. I will not run out of chances.

But I’m scared that if I make that choice I am giving up on those friends. I’m afraid that not putting in the extra effort to force it to work means I am not dedicated enough and I do not deserve those relationships and I will not be given access to them in the future.

I’m afraid that if I decide to not go to Portland during the road trip it will be in large part because I’m saying “Fuck you” to Dad because he didn’t see me when he came to the bay area. He was about 1/3 of the reason I deleted my Fetlife account. I don’t want to see evidence that I’m not that important to you. I don’t want to know. I mean, I know I’m not that important. But I don’t want to read about you talking to your friends about your excitement about visiting them. You don’t visit me. You don’t call me. You don’t email me. I contact you. Or we have no contact.

Yeah, that’s how my relationships with “fathers” go.

Portland is very wrapped up in my feelings about Dad. We usually stay with him when we go up. And right now…

Right now I can’t ask. I can’t ask him for love or support or anything. I can’t ask him to acknowledge that I am alive. I just can’t. He doesn’t want to. If he wanted to be part of my life he knows where I am. He chooses not to.

I…

It isn’t something he has to give.

So when I’m talking about Portland all of my conflicting feelings about all of the wonderful people there crash into each other. And it makes all of the processing ramp up several notches in intensity. I’m not processing how I feel about accommodating Person A. I’m thinking about how I can fit in Person A, Person B, Person C, Person D, Person E, and all of them have conflicting schedule limitations and issues.

Cutting Portland out would mean we had time to get to Missouri. Where one of my online-support-group friends lives. She has twins who are right in the middle of the ages of my kids. I’ve been talking to her about parenting stuff for years. She mailed me artwork for my wall when I was having the break down around Uncle Bob’s death and divorcing my family. She has sent me letters and emails over the years.

So cutting out Portland isn’t just about whether or not I want to say “Fuck you” to Dad or whether I want to try to work around everyone else’s travel schedule. It’s also about whether or not this road trip is about cementing old connections or making new ones.

Portland will still be there in the future. I guarantee that even if this trip doesn’t work out… we’ll get back to Portland. The folks who live there are an intense draw. Even if I get mad at them sometimes. Even if sometimes I feel feelings because I am not the center of their life and THAT TOTALLY SUCKS, YO. I will get back to Portland.

Missouri… maybe. Maybe not. This may be the only or one of two times I will ever go there in my whole damn life.

What is this trip about? Fuck if I know.

But you know what? I walked out of the weekend feeling less upset. I stopped feeling really guilty about how I’m handling the throat kicking incident. If I lose the home school group that’s ok. They were never mine to begin with.

I’m going to be really sad if I lose some of the important Portland people in my life. I can live with not seeing them this year, even if it is disappointing. I don’t want to live with losing them forever. That’s so much harder.

I’m going to close with a quote from Amanda’s book:

We make countless choices every day whether to ask or to turn away from one another. Wondering whether it’s too much to ask the neighbor to feed the cat. The decision to turn away from a partner, to turn off the light instead of asking what’s wrong.

Asking for help requires authenticity, and vulnerability.

Those who ask without fear learn to say two things, with or without words, to those they are facing:

I deserve to ask

and

You are welcome to say no.

Because the ask that is conditional cannot be a gift.

This is what is so hard about me asking my friends for things. I wait to ask until the no hurts me. I have refrained from asking for thousands of small, petty things because I was afraid. Because I don’t want to overwhelm or bother people. So I wait until it is a crises. Then I ask. Then I can’t absorb “no”.

Which means I’m damning everyone from the beginning. I’m not asking for gifts. I’m asking for… investment. I’m asking for responsibility.

You can’t ask your friends to be responsible for you. Then they aren’t your friends any more. They are your wards or your parents or your guardians or something.

I damn myself over and over again. Because I cannot ask when it is just a gift. Because I am so scared. Because my needs have never been very important, even when they really needed to be.

This weekend I had an interaction with a person in which they expressed that part of their goal during the ritual was to not feel pain. I kind of scoffed at that, because I’m an asshole. The person said it at the beginning of the day on Saturday before the ritual proper had started.

I found those words sticking in my head all through the day. I just… couldn’t make myself grieve the way I did last time at the ritual. I didn’t have the hysterical screaming and flailing in me. I didn’t need to beat my head until I couldn’t raise it from the pillow anymore. Instead I found myself just curling up in the fetal position to cry softly.

It was… kind of weird. I’m not really a “let it flow gently over you” kind of person.

The next morning I found the person and told them about my experience the day before. Their face lit up. They were so glad to have had that impact on someone. I apologized for scoffing and said, “I think I needed to hear exactly that. Thank you.”

On Sunday, Sobonfu asked everyone to touch one another more. Even if you are normally a non-touching person… let people touch you. You need to feel like you aren’t alone. You need to physically feel that a person is there with you in your grief.

I’m really a no-touching person.

At one point in the day I was grieving and it turns out that the person who had said they didn’t want to experience pain was my supporter. (Part of the purpose of the grief ritual is that when you are grieving you are always supported. There is a person there to help you however you need.) This person decided to do massage work on me while I was crying. Eventually I moved around so I was lying on my belly just letting it happen.

It was almost magical. I get a lot of body work done. I experience a lot of physical pain and I know a lot of ways to manage it. I do a lot of yoga/stretching… All The Things. I’ve been getting somewhat regular massages since I turned 18 because other wise I get back spasms and spend a lot of time lying on the floor crying and unable to deal with my life.

This was a really transformative body work experience. I walked in with multiple places screaming out in intense pain. I walked out having my pain halved. She didn’t work on me for very long and it wasn’t intense work. But she knew where to press. And it was the physical contact in conjunction with the crying.

In that moment it was ok for me to be asking for support. It wasn’t pathetic. It wasn’t inappropriate. It was what we were all there for. It was entirely appropriate.

I feel like part of my problem is that asking for support puts people in the position where they might have to say no to me. People don’t like saying no. I try not to put them in that position. Which means I wait until it is too urgent. Then I can’t hear no.

It’s a problem. It’s a bad cycle. I’m having a hard time climbing out.

Part of the difficulty springs from the fact that there is no right answer. You just do your best. That’s all anyone has to give.

Money and privilege

10 Replies

It is fascinating to me how different people prioritize their money. I’m not saying my way is “right”. I make a lot of very wasteful choices. My Disney obsession is expensive and probably not “worth” the money. But I spend it anyway because I want the customer service experience. I understand that other people are not interested in the customer service experience. That’s fine.

So then you get into this position where asking people to go with you is weird and mixed. It’s expensive. It takes a big chunk of someone’s disposable income. This seems like an asshole thing to even ask about.

But not asking means you are discounting people from your life without even giving them a chance. People surprise me all the time with what they will agree to.

I try to only ask if I’m ok with “no”. I don’t want elaborate “no”s. I don’t really want to be told in great detail why my plan sucks in your opinion. No is fine. Not your thing. Not in the budget. Just “no” is great.

Not everyone wants to do the same things as me. I’m used to that.

I read about how the primary way to deal with addiction and mental health issues is to seek connection. My experience of seeking connection is that mostly what it does is dramatically increase the rate at which people tell me they don’t want to spend time with me or do things with me.

We won’t be painting the fence this year. No one is interested. So much for that tradition. It was something we did a few times and then people didn’t want to do it any more. I’m afraid that will be my story on that one.

I’m feeling very paranoid about the home school group in general. I feel like I should go.

Really, I’ve been intensely suicidal for over a day here and that’s most of what’s going on. I did stuff yesterday and I tried to pretend I wasn’t having the movie screens of how I should die in my head. I haven’t had suicidal impulses for a bit. They started on Tuesday, intensified yesterday and are still present this morning. Asking people to do things with me is hard. It opens me up to hearing that people don’t have time or interest in being in my life. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t personal.

I feel like I may drop out of the home school group until after the trip. I feel like shit there. I feel unwanted, like no one gives a shit if I die, and like I’m the problem.

Yes, yes, these are not “rational” thoughts. I’ve never put much claim to being “rational”.

I’m still not dealing well with something that happened there a few weeks ago. There was a specific trigger. I’m still reeling from it. Near death experiences kind of fuck me up.

I was hurt pretty badly. And I’m not going to get much support around that. Because that is how things go for me. Instead I’m the problem.

I’m so tired of being told that when white boys assault me it is my fault and I should be punished. I am not ok.

I feel so much shame. Like I shouldn’t even be talking about it happening at all. Not even in the vague ways I am doing it. I should be tied to a rail road track so I can be run over.

Looking for more connection with people just seems to be a good way to ensure that I’m told over and over that I’m not a priority.

I talked to a parent at the park this week. She was one of the few people RSVPed to painting the fence. She flakes more than 50% of the time on the day of the event. I told her that because she has such a poor track record, if more people don’t show up I’m canceling. She said, “Just cancel now.” The other person at the table started a long explanation of why they aren’t coming.

I know you have 15,000 reasons and it isn’t personal. It isn’t about me. But I need to change my behavior anyway. If I’m looking for connection and people don’t have the time/interest/energy/money I am maybe better off not asking any more. Which is kind of a problem. Because one of the primary ways of treating mental illness is seeking connection.

But I don’t feel I’m worth anything. I feel like connecting with me is clearly not worth the investment.

It doesn’t help that my life is full of a lot of moving parts. There are people who are willing to do some very narrow slices of things with me if I can accommodate all of their needs.

I really don’t know what to do about my needs. I need to stay home and make sure my needs are met in this building without anyone else. I don’t have other options. Not really. I have it inconsistently. Unpredictably. When other people feel like it. Which is how the world works! I’m not in a unique, sad position or anything. I’m not being persecuted.

I just have to decide what to do with the spoons I have given the level of engagement I get from other people.

I wish I cared about people less. My life would be so much better if I cared less about people.

You know what? I’m not served by being vague about this. Only the person who assaulted me is served. So a few weeks ago I was rough housing with a kid (like I’ve done with literally hundreds of children over the course of my career in education) and he chose to kick me in the throat.

I tried talking to the kid. I tried talking to the kid’s mom. It turned into “all my fault” and I’m “scary and dangerous”.

Your kid almost killed someone and *I* am scary and dangerous? I couldn’t swallow without pain for five days. Breathing wasn’t fun in the first 24 hours.

I have *lived* with someone who had to have a tracheotomy due to a swollen throat. Not an experience I want for myself.

This is really triggering me all over the place. Doesn’t matter how good or bad anything else might be, this takes away basically all of my good “cope” abilities.

Another fucking white boy almost killed me and it’s no big deal. I’m the problem.

I feel so much hate I don’t know what to do. I am super thrilled to have this family out of my life and I will never say another neutral or positive thing about them. I think only bad things. Maybe that isn’t what their friends want, but I don’t give a shit.

The kid commits assault and the mom defends him and blames the victim. I have no good to say. That’s not a “mistake” any more. It could have been a mistake. Now it is a coverup. I feel nothing but hate, scorn, contempt, and disgust. What pathetic, horrible people. But that’s what being rich will do for you. You can totally be like that and get away with it.

I do not have good luck with upper middle class white people. It’s like being back in Los Gatos. It’s like when that fuckwad Justin climbed on top of me and tried to rape me and only was pulled off because I screamed loud enough to wake other people up. Nothing happened to him. HE’S A FUCKING MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER NOW.

But I’m sure he learned how to be a nice person along the way. Not.

I feel like I should just stay home forever. Otherwise I have to deal with little piece of shit white boys assaulting me and I have to be cheerful and fine with it or I will be the problem.

I can’t go to the park and be angry. That’s not “appropriate”. I’m not allowed to get angry that I was assaulted and almost killed.

I went flying backwards and landed several feet away. This was a fucking serious kick from a kid who is the size of a small adult.

So instead I will spend my days with movie reels running in my head of all the ways I should die. And I won’t offer to host anything for the home school group. And maybe I’ll stop going entirely.

The group would much rather have this other family. They fit in better. They aren’t a problem. After all, him assaulting me isn’t a problem. I’m the problem.

I want to slit my wrists so fucking much. It feels like I’m lying to myself if I think things will ever get better. I will never fucking matter. It will always be ok for white boys to damage me. I am not important.

Probably didn’t help that the asshole at the speech knew literally nothing about me, invited me to speak, then proceeded to interrupt me and tell me I’m not allowed to say that, or that, or that. After I spent weeks in advance asking him for guidance and he blew me off. I felt so insulted and angry.

I hate white men so fucking much right now. Which isn’t fair at all. It really isn’t. I fucking know it isn’t fair. But most of my life isn’t fucking fair. Right now the not fair is being spread around. Sorrynotsorry.

Sometimes I honestly wish that I would get assaulted by a woman or a black person or someone of Hispanic descent or Asian or whatever just so I can stop hating white people as the sole recipient of all my bad feelings towards the world. Surely there are bad people in other categories.

I only have problems with white men and boys. No, I don’t like white women much either.

Maybe I’ll go to India and change that. Maybe I’ll leave the rape capital of the world going, “Yup, still hate white men more than every other category put together. Weird.” Most likely I will get through the India trip without being touched. Which will feel kind of ironic. If I go to the rape capital of the world and I manage to avoid being raped… it’s going to be a pretty fucking big deal in my world. Like, whoa.

It is hard to explain how terrifying it is to live with a swollen throat. “Oh god. Am I going to have to go to a hospital (which is a big problem for me from the word go) and have people I don’t know, like, nor trust stab me in the throat to put in a tube so I don’t die?” Tracheotomies are no joke. Tommy’s scar looked like a gunshot wound. People would recoil in horror when they saw him. It made him unable to ever speak normally again. Too much damage to his vocal cords.

I feel so disposable.

Supposedly a family from the home school group is coming over today. How much you want to bet that they will cancel? Doesn’t matter. Not folks I can talk to about the reason I’m upset anyway.

I know I should “just get over it” and I will. But this is going to take a while, I think. It doesn’t help that I’m having a lot of other big emotional events around it at the same time. It is making it hard to process the assault. It is making it more complex and layered and picking out which pieces are upset about what is hard.

Eventually I’ll figure out how to turn off the movie reels. This will not be the assault that causes me to commit suicide. Fuck that little bastard. He isn’t that important. Neither is his mother. About whom I would like to unleash a torrent of swear words the likes of which even this blog has never seen.

But I won’t. I will call him a little bastard for kicking me in the throat. Only in my blog. Never to his face. If he grows up and feels angry with me because I said that I can live with that. I’m pretty fucking angry he kicked me in the throat and doesn’t even have to apologize. It’s apparently acceptable for him to do. If it is acceptable for him to kick me in the throat it is acceptable for me to call him a bastard in my blog and in my blog only.

My fucking sandbox. I’m allowed to be pissed here. I could swear about the mom more. Frankly, she’s the grown up making decisions here. I’m afraid that if I let myself get more angry at her she will become a lightning rod for all of the anger I feel towards every white woman in her position and that’s… that’s actually not ok. That’s dangerous for me. I don’t need to focus that much hate on her.

She only deserves as much as she earned.

Why am I less worried about conflating the hate I generally feel towards white men towards the kid?

Honestly because I’m less likely to do something to the kid. If the mom ever verbally started something I might feel a much stronger inclination to punch her in the face. I wouldn’t hit the kid. Not even if provoked. He’s a kid. I have that kind of control down pretty well after years of practice. I don’t hit kids. But the mom? She’d deserve it. But I don’t deserve the amount of jail time I would get so I’d best work on that self control.

I honestly believe that if you defend your kid almost killing someone that you deserve to be punched in the face.

I come from the kind of background where both of them should get the shit beaten out of them for their behavior. I understand I no longer live in such a world. Things will continue to be unfair. Rich assholes have always and will always be allowed to get away with assault and mostly with murder. I will continue to hate them. I will continue to hope that bad things happen to them. I won’t spend much time or energy on hoping that. Bad juju is bad juju and the more time you stew in it… the more of it you get. I understand that.

But getting really angry about being assaulted is healthy. I need to not just sit here feeling like a disposable whore. Better that I get upset. Better that I get angry in my own self-defense than internalizing their message that I deserve what happened. I don’t deserve it.

Unless I was actually assaulting the kid I don’t deserve what I got. I was tickling him after he pounced me on a trampoline. That does not deserve a fucking throat kick that launched me backwards multiple feet. No fucking excuse under the sun.

I hope I never talk to the kid again. Even if I do, I won’t call him names. I’m allowed to blow off steam here. It is appropriate *here* and only *here*.

It isn’t his fault he is one of a long-line of abusive pieces of shit I’ve had to deal with. I continue my pattern of not fucking liking blondes.

(Sorry to friends who are blonde who have been nice to me. I do like *you*. I’m really sorry about these gross generalizations. I don’t truly mean them in every particular case. Big feelings are big. I’m married to a fucking white blonde guy. It is like how sometimes people in interracial marriages are still huge fucking racists.)

I would just say I’m a misandrist but that’s not even all of it. I don’t have problems with men who aren’t white in the same way. And I have truckloads of issues with white women so it isn’t just misandry. I’m a race traitor. Not really. I married a white guy and had white children so I’m not a race traitor. I’m just incredibly self-hating. No, that’s not even it.

It is hard for me to not project my bad former experiences onto new people. All white people look alike. It’s hard to treat them like individuals who deserve individual treatment until they behave in a way that makes them individual and nice enough to me to fucking deserve me being nice to them. White people have a much higher bar to jump over before I will be nice to them. I default to as much courtesy as I can manage with people who aren’t white. With white people I’m defensive and pissy from the first word.

Which may be part of how I confine my bad experiences to white people. Would make sense, yo?

Which is kind of funny because more than 50% of the people in my life are white. Am I a raging asshole to them at all times? I don’t think so. I can learn to treat people as individuals.

I’m nice to Noah the vast majority of the time. But I’m nice to Noah because he said, “What happened to you?” and then he sat there and listened respectfully and remembered things and altered his behavior to fit my preferences.

I haven’t had that experience with any other white men. They don’t give a shit about me. They just want me as an audience for how cool they are or to wait on them or to have sex with them. They aren’t interested in me.

Which might explain my level of hostility. White men don’t know shit about me unless I beat them over the head with the information. They don’t ask. They don’t want to know. Between the beatings and the rapes and the fact that most white men act like I’m a blow up doll… what’s to like?

I am not interesting because Noah likes sticking his dick in me. Fuck you. I am not fucking impressed with being told that I am interesting because I’m married to an interesting man. Go straight to hell and do not pass Go and do not collect $200.

You know what though? I’m probably going to be an asshole about backing out of home school stuff. I will probably leave a lot of “yes” RSVPs just in case I feel up to coming. That way I have options on a given day. But I’m going to start canceling a lot more often. And at the last minute.

I’m going to stop acting like I owe anyone anything. I don’t. I have tried really hard to honor commitments to the group like they were serious commitments. That isn’t going well for me. Fuck it. I would benefit from being intensely more selfish for a while.

And that asshole who told me I was only interesting because Noah wanted to marry me? The only god damn question he had about home schooling was the most stupid, contemptible question, “What about socialization?” Oh fuck you with a pogo stick. Know how you are wandering the globe playing at being a cool guy instead of raising your kid? Don’t talk to me about socialization. Sticking your kid in school and day care isn’t socialization. Socialization is what happens when your children interact with people of all ages and learn how to manage different situations. For kids with good parents who go to school they learn socialization on the weekends. My kids have the opportunity to learn how to deal with diverse people of all ages all day every day. Fuck your ignorance.

I wouldn’t be so pissy if he wasn’t generally insulting in my direction. But if you condescend to me that much in a five minute conversation fucking watch me hand it back to you.

My stomach hurts. I feel like I’m going to puke. I’m not sick. I’m angry. I’m anxious. I’m afraid I will be punished for writing all this. It’s not ok to be such an angry person.

It’s not ok to get so angry about someone almost killing me.

What the fuck is wrong with the world?

I have post traumatic stress disorder. What that means is my brain was altered by my life experiences. It is difficult for me to stop feeling fear and/or anger when they come up for me. My brain was altered by my life experiences. It isn’t something that is a choice. I’m not angry because I think it is fun or awesome. I’m angry because my life has been in danger many times and getting angry is what got me away from danger and kept me alive. It is a survival trait. It is not bad. But boy howdy it is shamed.

It is important to get angry when someone tries to kill you. You need that anger to get the fuck away from them. You (general you) feel that kind of anger because your body wants you to know that you should not be near people who make you feel that way. They are bad for you. They are dangerous.

In our modern society we conflate “people who have opinions I disagree with” with “people who assault me” and that creates a lot of problems. We treat arguments as if they have the same weight as physical assault. (But only if it is a white person who is getting their feelings hurt.) We treat physical assault as if it only matters if it happens to select classes of people. You have to be socially higher up than the person who assaults you.

I will never stop being white trash. Doesn’t matter what my fucking bank balance says. I’m not poor white trash any more. That’s very true. Social class is a very complicated beast.

That, “I need to stay away from her because I want to punch her in the face” thing? That’s why I will never stop being white trash.

I will not punch her in the face. I don’t think there is much verbal provocation she could give me that would cause me to risk jail time. She isn’t worth it. I would only actually strike her if she hit me first. I’ve learned my lessons about punishment quite well. My superego is well developed and healthy and all that. I’m not going to jail over a bitch like her.

She isn’t worth it.

But I think that ranting about this in my blog will turn out to be a good thing for me. It will make it a lot easier to put it down. I think I should stop reacting with shame and silencing when I have these experiences. I really wanted to put this in a box and not write about it for years. Not until it feels safe. That’s how I have handled most of my traumas. I don’t write about them right away… I can’t. This is actually really quick turn around for me. Two weeks? That’s rapid turn around.

My shrink suggested that part of the reason I am as upset as I am is because I am watching that mom be a very bad parent. That is an anxiety producing thing for me. I’m a teacher. I’m an abuse survivor. Bad parenting is really really hard to watch and not do anything about.

She suggested that I have enmeshed with the kid and feel upset because the kid is not getting the necessary and appropriate parenting and that fuels some of my despair. I can’t fix every broken family and that is really hard for me.

I think she’s sweet to suggest it but I’m not sure I deserve quite that much benefit of the doubt. Heh. Maybe. Empathy does seem to be my superpower.

My assumption is that I will be gardening alone today. If someone decides to show up, bonus. I’m not waiting for it and I’m not looking for it. I invited people. Folks are busy. They tell me frequently that they want to come, but the reality of modern life is everyone has too many obligations. I get it.

I’ll get my work done. I’m not building the garden for anyone else. Not really. I’m building it because I’ve always wanted to live in a place that had a big, nice, garden. I used to walk past this house on my way to the bus stop from Auntie’s house. The elderly woman who lived there didn’t mind me detouring off the road and walking through her garden on the way. It was so wonderful. She died when I was in middle school. A different family bought the house. They cut down the garden to make more parking spots.

I want connection with people too much. I spend too much time and energy looking outward for my worth and meaning and value.

Yes, my children need to have friends. They do have friends. Maybe I don’t need to worry so much about this home school group. Maybe I’m not a good follower and it is necessary to be a follower in order to keep silent about abusive behavior in a group. I don’t know.

I stopped hanging out with the dancers when I learned who all the rapists were. I couldn’t be in the room with them any more. I stopped going to bdsm events alone when I was raped there too even though it was supposedly “safe” to be there. I stopped trying to work at Fair when a guy raped me and no one was going to care.

Should I stop hanging out with the home schoolers because it really isn’t very important when a kid almost kills me?

That is my pattern. I stopped hanging out with the Los Gatos High School people much because they all picked Justin. They hang out with him a lot still.

No, I’m never going to forgive him for that “little mistake”. He will never apologize so there is nothing to forgive. There is only reason that I know he is not safe to be in a room with.

But I’m irrational, they say. Oh fuck your rational. I’ve been hurt enough.

And you know what? Each time I’m told it is my fault. Completely fucking consistent reaction.

Thus I sit here thinking about swimming out into the Pacific Ocean until I can’t possibly make it back to shore. Then stopping. And waiting. I hope a shark doesn’t eat me. I’m really scared of sharks.

I hope I drown fast.

How come the Zen feeling and the suicidal feeling coexist like this? I started out yesterday morning feeling very calm. I knew I’d had the flashes of ideation, but it felt under control.

Then the rest of the day happened.

I like my house. I like the people in it. I like that I get to be here. I like what I am doing with my days.

But I’m a disposable whore who should be put down for the good of the herd.

I’m trash. And trash can bring down the general value of a population. Cull the outliers so they don’t mess up your system.

I want to beat my head so fucking much my neck muscles are locking.

But I’ll write about it and purge it and probably go have a good day with the kids. I have four hours off this morning. I suspect I will sit very still in a dark room. Maybe it won’t be that dark. Maybe I’ll read. I do have a bunch of interesting looking new books. I’m also in the middle of Battle Magic and Dataclysm. I should finish both books before moving on. I could totally read.

No chat room today. Arms hurt like fire.

I should stop.

I’m a talker.

1 Reply

I read a nice article on parenting and princesses and race and I had lots of thoughts.

The first “Barbie” that came into our house was black. The first cuddly dolls I bought were black and asian. Eventually white dolls filtered into the house too. I didn’t buy them.

My children are white, privileged, and upper middle class. They will see the world I present as the default world.

I have pictures of naked fat people hung in my house. I love the work that Adipositivity does and I’m very happy to have my children grow up seeing the beautiful art work. Naked people are not a big deal. My children have been to naked bathing places. Yes, even ones that have both genders present. They are pretty good about how to behave. They’ve seen a lot of kinds of bodies. They think that people are beautiful in lots of different shapes and colors.

I can’t imagine living in a world where you must be thin, blonde, blue eyed, and white to be beautiful. That repels and disgusts me. No. I will not live in that world. You can’t fucking make me.

And thanks to the wonders of home schooling… my kids are growing up in a bubble of my reality distortion field. My six year old comments on being too skinny after her latest growth spurt, “I should eat more.” At a time when 1 in 4 girls under the age of seven have been on a diet. My kid has never heard about calorie restriction for the purpose of losing weight.

Food is fuel. My kids would tell someone that they were loco for not eating. “Without fuel you can’t use your body or your brain. You can’t grow. Don’t get dumb, eat something.”

I feel like I am living a science experiment. With enough privilege… is it possible for someone to grow up with the benefits of modern life while largely skipping the cultural framework?

I’m going to fucking find out.

From the time my kids were curious about bodies and asking for the names of parts they have been able to recite, “Most boys have a penis but not all. Most girls have a vulva but not all. Some people don’t really want to be a boy nor a girl and you have to ask them for their word.”

Ok, that third bit wasn’t there in the first year or so. I didn’t think of it then. We grow with time. But the kids have known it for a while now.

No, I’m not good at asking everyone their preferred pronoun.

I believe it is my job as a parent to prepare my children for the world. That doesn’t mean I need to immerse them in the toxic waters before they even know how to swim. My kids will deal with the fascist beauty standards at some point. But until them I will tell them that my mom-apron is a badge of honor and you have to “level up” or be born lucky enough to be fat enough to get one.

When your kids love on your belly this much… it is sad to see it shrink. I’m not having fun with losing weight.

I believe it is my job to set the terms of reality for now. In our experience of life people have different skin because their ancestors emigrated at different speeds away from the equator. No more, no less. If you meet someone in a given place it doesn’t matter what they look like, assume they are from here and act like that is true. They will tell you if they were not born here. (Wherever here may be.)

Boys and girls are both interested in My Little Ponies. It is always ok to ask if a kid wants to play a pony game. Some boys love playing “poor boy in distress” and you can totally ask if you can be his Princess-to-the-Rescue.

You are allowed to want to be the boss. That doesn’t mean other people at the park will listen to you. Good bosses learn how to be pleasant while they get people to do what they want. Sometimes a bossy voice is the best way to get your way and sometimes it will block you. Think about how you interact with people.

Science, math, and engineering are the building blocks of life. We talk about them all the time. There will never be a thought that “girls can’t do that”. Pshaw. Watch us.

My children are growing up with a very dynamic woman who does things. I declaim intentions and I get shit done.

I feel very conflicted about the not earning money bit. I really do feel like I’m letting down the feminist cause. I speak very positively about the benefits of being a working woman. My kids very much admire the working moms we know. Sometimes my kids ask to move in with them. Then I say, “Know how much time dad is at work? She wouldn’t be with you for that many hours of the day. You’d go to daycare with other kids.”

“Oh. I want to stay with you.”

Ok then. We’ll keep doing what we are doing so long as it suits us all so well. Calli and Shanna chafe at how many hours I spend “away” from them now. I don’t get 20 hours a week off between Noah and baby-sitters. They are really not up for less parental time. It is interesting to watch.

It is hard for me to live with the perfect seriousness of their declarations. They have no sarcasm yet. “I love you. You are the very best mom for me. I’ve looked at the other options. I’m so happy I have you.” Heh. I’m not the platonic ideal of motherhood. I would not be a good mom for many many many many children. I’m so lucky and so happy that I ended up with kids who are such good personality matches. That doesn’t always happen. It’s a gift.

Yesterday Shanna and I had a neat exchange. I don’t remember the segue but she said, “Yeah and if you did x like me you would have been beaten. I’m glad you don’t beat me.”

I said, “Is it kind of weird that I talk about that? I will never harm you like that. I will poke you. I will be obnoxious in your direction. But I will never harm you like that. I talk about it because it lives inside of me and I’m trying to make sense of it. I’m trying to figure out why they did it and why I am not going to make the same choices. I need to figure out what I’m going to do instead. I’m not very graceful about the process. I’m trying.”

She looked up at me and beamed she said, “I know you will never hit me. But it does make me have big feelings when you talk about it.”

I told her, “I’m glad you know that. I’m really sorry I scare you.”

“I’m really sorry they hurt you.”

Then she leaned her head on me. I hugged her. Then we went on with our chores.

I feel guilty about not earning money, as a feminist thing. I’m one of those terrible, disgusting upper class bitches. I’m a sponge “living off” my husband. I’ve read lots of nasty nasty thoughts about people in my position. In a lot of spaces I move through it would be more respectable if I had weekend shifts as a sex worker. At least then I would have the potential for autonomy and I wouldn’t be a dependent.

I live in a very specific, very specifically chosen world.

But feminism is about everyone getting to make the right choices for them. Yeah, I’m a dependent. I went hunting for a partner who was interested in supporting me as a home schooling parent. That was what I advertised myself as looking for. Usually I would bring it up by the third date. The only times I didn’t was when I knew before asking it just wasn’t an option for Reasons. I didn’t provide false advertising. I didn’t say I wanted 50/50. I didn’t look for equality.

Yet I did. I also said that I wouldn’t be in a power unequal relationship during the time I raised my children. Some SM or some roleplay is different. I don’t want to be a slave during the time I have children. They will not grow up with a subservient woman as an example. Nope, nope, nope. That was a conscious choice.

Other people feel like the job they do is enough reason to stay alive. Or they don’t think there is a reason to die, so whatever–they are here. They don’t question it. I think I need Reasons to stay alive. I need specific, conscious things that are pulling me here. Because I don’t have a powerful urge to stay. I need to know things will be better/different in the future. I need to. I need to work towards that reality about as hard as I can.

I don’t know how to shape a healthy family in the toxic stews of mainstream American culture. I see people who mostly do it… but I don’t understand how. That’s not a slam on them.

I need to pull out. (And we all know how well the pull out method works, don’t we?) At least for a little while. At least for personality formation stages. I want my kids to learn from me for a while. I want to teach them what the world is like. I don’t want to risk an apathetic kindergarden teacher. That damage can’t be undone.

My children are learning that boundaries are appropriate, even talking up the power structure. When I’m in a bad mood my kids will say, “Mom I think your tone of voice is a lot harsher than you mean.” They feel totally comfortable saying, “You need to calm down before you talk to me.” But they also deal with the fact that sometimes people sound angry without taking it personally. They have lots of practice with, “Mom is in a bad mood. Tone of voice will suck for a bit. It’s not you. I’m really sorry.”

They know that when you do something wrong you apologize, and try to do better. You don’t say, “Well you deserved it.” “I only hit you because you broke a rule.” That doesn’t happen here.

In our house if someone says, “Stop it” you must stop. Period. Even if you are the larger, more powerful grown up. We are past the dental wars, thank goodness. I hope to never have to overpower them again.

I am so grateful I get to have this experience. And I know that I mostly get to have it because of Noah. I am totally aware. That’s a lot of why I try so hard to be nice to him. He has been very good to me.

Life is very complicated.

Sarah brought up a point. She said (roughly), “So I was concerned after the day where you said 8 hours out of the house was rough. How is five months going to go?”

I’ve thought of that. It’s complicated. Part of it is: on the road trip we won’t have the socializing obligations that take so much out of me. We’ll have brief periods of seeing people, but not really. I work hard with the home school community. I have horrible anxiety there sometimes. Not with the women I know well, I’m pretty comfortable with them. But there are some of them that… well… I’m terrified of saying the wrong thing and having them tell their kid(s) to shun my kid(s). It’s very hard for me emotionally to interact with them. And sometimes… it isn’t appropriate to opt-out of interacting.

So spending 3 hours in a group outing is more like 15 hours of being out while alone with the kids.

Spoons, glorious spoons, we have to count them.

But I also won’t have the support I usually have. I have no idea. This could blow up in my face. I’m open to that possibility! I’m hoping that by being open to the idea of failure it will be less likely to happen. Realistically, I think there is the non-zero chance I will get to Noah’s first visit with us and cry and say, “You have to help me drive home.” Then we’ll spend 5-6 days coming home. I’ll give him at least two weeks notice of this.

Failure is always an option… otherwise you can’t try. That said! If we can’t do this trip I have to stop talking about the around-the-world-trip. So there is a fair bit at stake here. Either we can do it or we can’t. What kind of bitch am I? The kind who claims she can do cool shit and then fails?

I think not.

I’m not really a bitch. I’m not sure why that word felt appropriate there. Trying to convince myself I’m more macho than I am? Something.

Every time I look at the map I rethink sections of the trip. “Oh! I forgot about so and so! They live right over…”

I’m kind of working on Plan B.2 right now. Because the detour I thought of last night only involves detouring off the main inter-state freeway onto more local highways so we can see some friends on the way past their state. That’s not anything big enough to justify calling it Plan C.

Because I labeled a Plan A. And that got shot to hell by thoughts of international border crossings and a strong need to re-see the Grand Canyon. “Mom it’s kind of ridiculous that you think that me seeing it when you were pregnant with Calli is good enough.” Strong opinions. We have them.

You saw snow when you were 2! What do you want from me?!

Every year snow trips, apparently. Oh well.

Can’t have everything, kiddo. The sooner you figure that out the better. Your life is not exactly lacking in experiences. There will always be people who have done things you haven’t. Don’t get competitive about life experiences. You’ll sound like an asshole. Do what you want even though that will mean ruling out options. You have that luxury.

Bragging.

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I was feeling kind of angsty. So I used an 18 year old coping method and I went and found a chat room. I sure like talking to people. That lead to a series of weird feelings.

I can’t get into specifics for Reasons because I was hanging out in a mental health support chat room. Folks care about their privacy a bit more than average.

I talked to a person who had an experience with abuse masquerading as bdsm. We had a long conversation. This person had no idea that such things happen to other people because this person was never part of “the scene”. I think I blew that persons mind a bit. I was casual and up front with all kinds of general attitudes and problems the community has. I feel guilty that I may have dove into the deep end of their trauma just casually answering the questions I was asked. They didn’t feel that heavy or intense to me because bdsm wasn’t traumatic to me. The community wasn’t traumatic to me. So I feel pretty guilty that I might have hurt this person by my indifference to the intensity that they experienced. I shared links to articles written by folks in the scene about the kinds of problems this person experienced. Mind blown. “This happens to other people?!?!?!” Yes. There aren’t that many truly singular human experiences. Most experiences happen to many people and you just have to ask around until you find your tribe.

That was actually a neat conversation for me. I’m very into talking about community dynamics. But it was so personal for them…

But more than that… I felt like I was bragging. When I’m asked, “How do you know so much about this topic?” “Uhm… I’ve been to a lot of national bdsm conferences. I’ve taught bondage and suspension classes. Go to a kinky book store, read the names of the authors… those are my friends.” And uhm, many of them have played with me. I feel like I must be lying or exaggerating but it is just plain true. I used to go around the country tying people up and being tied up for fun.

Then the topic morphed because the people in chat morphed. Chat rooms are like that. We talked a lot about travel and different climate zones and how food migration works and…

I have a lot of stories. When I get into a chat room and people are just casually going through lots of little references to get to know one another… I have a lot of stories. I think I sound more interesting than I am if you just listen to the things I’ve done.

I think I sound like a liar. I talk casually about travel all over my country and the world. I talk about good and bad things as casually as if they had equal impact on me and people react very oddly to that. I’ll go from telling a story about a principal being on first name basis with me in 5th grade to talking about being beaten daily by a different principal and neither mention feels “important” to me in the way it seems to hit other people. “Your principal hit you!” Uhm, it was Texas. They did that as of the 1990’s and I’m pretty sure they still do it now. It’s not a big deal.

That “it’s not a big deal” is part of why I feel weird. I moved so many times that I seem to have picked up pieces of a lot of different life stories and then I shoved them all together in a way that sounds… frankly impossible to casual listeners.

I have been called a liar to my face many times, that’s why I think I sound like a liar. I couldn’t possibly have done all the things I say I’ve done.

Dude, I really don’t exaggerate for effect much. I don’t have to.

Yes, I really was a teacher. Yes I really was a stage manager too. I’ve had people challenge that I could have done all the things I did. Uhm… I went to college. I did theatre in college. Being a stage manager is not exactly rocket science…. they let teenagers do it. Depending on how liberal you are with the definition of “teach” I have worked in an educational capacity with kids from 1st grade to community college. (I was a substitute for a while. That’s a hard fucking job.) In the community college I was the youngest person in my classroom. My students loved me. I can encourage you through writing a much more… assertive view than you even knew you had.

Yesterday I felt waves of shame, like I should stop bragging. I was just participating in a conversation. But that feels like shoving things in peoples faces. Other people participate in conversations by mostly listening. I should do more of that. Obviously me talking is a problem.

Why?

I don’t know.

I didn’t dominate the conversation. I wasn’t the only one talking. I wasn’t the only one with stories. But I was talking with up to five or six people and I dropped the most stories. I suspect this is related to typing speed in addition to other people being shocked that I just kept going. Nope, I’ve got lots more stories than these. I’ve barely shown you the tip of the ice berg.

What do you mean you are done?

Oh. I’ll shut up now. Uhm… I guess people are going to talk about tv characters now because they are out of personal stories.

Right. Uhm. Yeah. I’ll uhhh shut up.

I really like talking about myself. I really like hearing other people talk about themselves. Why do other people want to spend so much time talking about celebrities? It is very confusing to me. I only vaguely know the names of the people they are talking about from magazine covers in the grocery store. I’d rather chew my arm off than research these people so I can join in the conversation.

Uhm, I’ll go clean my house now. Thanks.

I flat refuse to spend time researching so I can join in slut-shaming other women. Fuck. That. Noise.

I think women get to fuck as many people as they want and it is none of your god damn slut-shaming business. Go straight to hell.

In my defense… I did not say that in the chat room. I did get quiet.

WHY DO PEOPLE GET SO UPSET THAT A WOMAN THEY DON’T KNOW IS HAVING SEX WITH A MAN THEY DON’T KNOW!!!!!!

I feel pretty upset by how much of this I’ve seen in the last day. That woman you are describing as a whore has fucked way fewer people than me. What do you want to say to me now? Nothing because I’m different? Fuck you with a chain saw.

Oh, you judge her because she was “stupid” enough to let her boyfriend take naked pictures of her? THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF SUCH PICTURES OF ME. FAR MORE EXPLICIT PICTURES. Fuck you very much.

I feel pretty pissy about this topic. Thus the shouting.

The only reason I’m “different” is because I’m not doing it today. If I was still behaving that way you wouldn’t think I was different. I am making different choices now for specific reasons related to managing my trauma. Not because I am a morally superior person who has conquered my base urges. Fuck you with a 2″x4″.

Even when I get ranty like this… I feel weird shame like I’m bragging. I’m just talking about my life but it feels like I’m exaggerating to make a point.. I’m not. These are just my thoughts and experiences. Ok, plus a few vague general threats at non-specific people. Not real threats. I don’t plan to shove anything forcibly into anyones orifices without permission ever in this life. But I’m colorful in how I bleed off stress.

This article right here is part of why I defend sex work so vigorously. It has a place in society. Women who have sex with lots of people have a place in society no matter why they are having that sex. Sex is one of the most primal urges we have and I don’t see how suppressing it does folks good. Let’s look at the history of abuse perpetrated by the Catholic church in the name of suppressing sexual desire. Not good juju.

I will not join in on dog piling on someone to tell them they are bad for making a choice you don’t agree with. That is not my job here on this planet. I really don’t want to tell people how bad they are.

I want them to feel like they are ok. And feel like there are probably other people like them and they are ok too.

I want people to feel ok with existing. I want people to believe that a community exists for them even if it is hard to find.

To me, the sum of my stories is a search for a place in community. I have tried a lot of things looking for community. Some tricks worked and some tricks failed spectacularly. I talk about both sides equally as freely. If other people can learn from my failures that makes them even more valuable.

I learn from other peoples failures. Part of the reason I haven’t really been in a relationship with intense domestic violence is because I watched it happen to other people and I made different choices.

The first time a boyfriend slapped me I exploded like a hurricane and ended the relationship. I am not going to fucking let anyone get away with slapping me and saying it doesn’t count as “really hitting”.

I have a very strong ability to set the reality of my life. I don’t let other people define what happens to me. My words. My opinions. My life. Fuck Right Off.

Why haven’t I had an abusive boyfriend? Because I only date people who force me to beg for my beatings. Or I walk. If I hint a little that a beating might be nice and you start hitting me… I leave. That’s not a safe situation. I often talk about deserving things I don’t really deserve or want. A partner who took such musings as hints to hit me… would not be safe.

I pick partners who make me beg for my beatings. I have to give explicit directions about where and how I want to be hit or they just don’t hit me. I really like the boundaries I’ve developed.

BDSM is not abuse. The difference between bdsm and abuse is educated consent on the part of the bottom. I have a real problem with experienced dominants manipulating inexperienced submissives. I think uneducated consent is basically invalid.

But I have strong opinions. When I play with newbies I give them a fucking lecture a mile long before I touch them. I want educated consent.

I learned by giving a blowjob to a little boy in kindergarden. Later he told everyone I raped him. From where I was standing…. he hadn’t said no. From where he was standing…. he hadn’t said yes.

I have a hard time forgiving myself for a mistake I made when I was five. I don’t get to make those kinds of mistakes ever again. Period.

Barely a topic switch… whether I am ever promiscuous again may actually revolve around how my kids turn out. If they are happy, healthy people who don’t give a shit… I might do it. If they would be horrified if they found out… I’m probably done.

I can’t hide who and what I am. I choose a relationship with my children over other aspects of myself. Even though I’d love to convert half the women in my future nursing home to lesbianism. That would be hawt. At least bisexuality if they didn’t want to swear off men. Personally I like people at all points along the gender spectrum. Yay people! Yay bodies!

When I first came into the bdsm community/public sex community I met this lovely woman. She was in her late 60’s when I arrived. I think she was 69 when I was 18. So that’s 15 years ago. I am pretty sure she’s still active. I saw her not that long ago. She is my hero.

I want to be playing with hot young 40 year olds when I’m in my 80’s. I’ll play with old people too… but that would be really fun. I think it is gross that the old men want teenage girls. I’ve done my virgin initiations. They weren’t the most interesting sex I’ve had. I’ll take grown ups, thanks.

The breeding period requires particular behavior sets from me. I chose it willingly with my eyes wide open. The boundaries do not yet chafe.

I get cranky about incidentals in my life. I get frustrated by details of my life. Overall I am so very happy that I’m doing what I’m doing. I like where I am. I’m learning how to be appropriate. I’m doing so in an environment that is actually safe for me. I will always have a version of appropriate that doesn’t match up with other peoples perfectly.

Like last night I apparently educated a local middle schooler about the basics of sex ed. Whoops. Hadn’t really set out to do that. But she asked direct questions. I’m not going to give evasive or shameful answers. Her friend freaked out and tried to shut me up. “SHE DOESN’T KNOW THESE THINGS YET!!!”

Yeah. And that’s dangerous. She needs to know these things so she can keep her body safe.

Someone with fully developed breasts and an hour glass figure needs to know the basic technical non-salacious names for sex. And if someone stands there and asks me direct questions… I’m going to answer them in plain language.

Awkward.

So yeah. Last night I was taught why my friend said, “Your kids are not sheltered.” No, but they are protected. I believe ignorance is dangerous. This is a big, scary fucking world. There are ways to minimize your risks.

I’m not blaming victims. I’m talking about how some women can walk through life making seemingly dangerous choices and they never get assaulted once. There are ways to minimize your risks. There are tricks to keeping yourself safe. I’ve talked to a lot of women about how they manage their lives.

I want to protect my kids. I believe that knowledge is power. They have all the age appropriate books on sex that exist. They know that sex makes babies. They can look at an anatomy drawing and show you where the vulva, labia, clitoris, prostate, anus, urethra, or penis is. Technically, Shanna has memorized more of the specific names than I have. I always have to reread the book to see what a lot of the accessory names are. I know fallopian tubes, but there are some tubes in guys that I don’t remember. She does. But I’m not the one who spends a lot of time talking about wanting to be a doctor.

They also know that sex is something adults do for fun but it isn’t for kids because it can hurt kid bodies.

Why did this come up? Because there are sexual references everywhere and Shanna asks what they mean. I am not graphic, but I say, “Well grown ups like thinking and talking about sex. So that’s a reference to sex. You’ll understand it after puberty.”

I talk about sex as if it is a normal, natural part of life. I talk about choosing when to have children based on being able to take care of a family. I talk about having “kissed boys and girls other than your dad before him because I wanted to make sure I knew I found the right person”. I’m not graphic.

I don’t want to be “out” with my kids the way some of my friends are out with their kids. My kids won’t see deviant-from-normal behavior during their childhood. Regardless of what I do during baby-sitting time.

And a lot of it comes back to feeling weird for talking about this stuff. Am I bragging? No. I’m trying to work out the logistics of my life. I’m trying to get a clear picture on who and what I am. I am trying to prove to myself, Yup. Still here.

I’m in the breeding period. Most members of my species end up here on accident and they kind of chafe at the boundaries as a result. Their freedom was curtailed not by choice. I want this so much.

I want to know what a childhood is like when the parents are not having sex in front of nor with their children. I want to know what a childhood is like when there isn’t constant drug and alcohol induced partying going on. I use pot, but it isn’t a party drug for me. It is something I do in isolation or I take a pill. I’ve only smoked around a handful of people (the wonderful folks who come over for dinner) and it doesn’t happen until after the kids are asleep. My kids are not growing up in a party house.

Only they are. It’s kind of weird. I’m finding out what “vanilla” parties are like and they are pretty fun.

Not long ago my neighbors re-did their house. They were tired of “looking like a preschool”. But… you have young children. Ok, the materials should age up, but why in the world do you think that your house shouldn’t look like kids live there?

Stop judging, Krissy.

I like that kids like coming here. They feel comfortable. I like that I can invite a whole bunch of people over and it works out really well. Everyone leaves raving about how they’ve had a wonderful time.

I’m going to go have fun with my family now.

Not feeling productive.

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I intended for Saturday and Sunday to be rest days. Then Monday became a rest day. And Tuesday. And now on Wednesday… I’m going a bit batty.

Did an hour of yard work this morning. Some planning stuff for trip. Crossed a bunch of tasks off my “to do” list. But I did most of it sitting still so I feel like a slug.

I need to find the energy to go move a bunch of plants in my front yard. But I’m feeling intimidated. That’s going to be a huge job.

I think that I am going to take cuttings from the rosemary to start over, but let them plow the sucker. It’s huge and I don’t really want to try and dig it out. Besides, I only need about 1/4 of that size of plant for my herb needs. I want to move the mums. They were a present from friends. I don’t think I’m going to worry about moving the cactii and geraniums. Those can be plowed. I’ll get more cactii in the future. Geraniums are a pain in my back side.

That leaves the oregano and the flowering maple. I’m scared of losing the flowering maple. It’s doing so well in my yard. But it’s gotten pretty big. I have no idea where to move it. Front yard? Back? I don’t have a good spot. The internet indicates it shouldn’t be too hard to move because I’m supposed to hack it back in March anyway. Awesome. Says up to 1/3 should be taken off. That will help me move the sucker. It can get up to 10′ tall! Maybe I do have a nice spot in the back yard…. Also sounds like maybe I should propagate a few branches in case my main plant dies. Then I have back ups.

I really like the flowering maple. It’s pretty. I’d be sad to lose it.

I also need to move my “reading circle” from the front to the back. That’s going to be some back-hurting labor. Oh-the-well. I’ll manage. We use it more than you’d think. We like playing on it.

Plugging along. I want to get up and DO stuff. But it’s still a good idea to rest. Sigh.

Today has been an emotional journey.

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I’ve been crying on and off for 13 hours now. It’s a day. I went to a tea party. I cried at the tea party. Even though strangers could see me. (Usually I have better control than that; mostly I get to a bathroom in time to hide my crying.)

One of my former flings was at the tea party. He spent a lot of the party hitting on me really hard. He remembers me very fondly. I feel like I should take a shower. (Although to be fair–the pride weekend we hooked up was wicked hot. He’s a switch and just as good at taking pain as he is at giving pain. We had a really ridiculously hot weekend of beating the shit out of each other in between rabid fucking. Ok, I remember him fondly too.)

But I still feel like I should take a shower. Which is becoming a thing for me. I was talking to Noah about this yesterday. I’m in a weird spot with sex. Sex is feeling weird and dirty and gross and like I am disgusting for having it and I don’t understand why anyone would want to do that. Which… isn’t really like me.

I have been having sex of some kind for over 30 years. I’ve been having vaginal sex of my own volition for 21 years. I feel very weird about having sex be this weird for me. I was never put off by sex and now I am. I feel like I’m in a really terrible rut for this. It hasn’t been going on for a super long time, maybe a few weeks?

It is very weird for me to feel repulsed by the idea of sex. And I’m feeling that way really intensely. It is making my relationship with Noah rocky. And then having an old flame hit on me magnifies it in intense and awkward and uncomfortable ways.

I’ve had some weirdness ever since getting pregnant the first time. Decreased libido, I don’t feel sexy when my kids are around, I don’t “turn on” very easily any more… there has been a lot of weirdness to adjust to, but the repulsion feels new. (I don’t think I have suddenly developed an aversion to Noah. I am much more repulsed by the idea of sex with anyone else right now.)

I feel dirty, bad, and like if I have boundaries I am a terrible person who deserves to be punished. Sex feels almost like a punishment.

Today has been such an explosion of self-loathing. In every way possible. I should die. I should die. I should die. I should stop being such a scary terrible person. I don’t know a way to stop being so fucking scary without dying.

This morning Noah made us a really elaborate breakfast. In the process he shouted at the kids a few times. From the other side of the house I felt shocked and afraid. When I came into the kitchen the kids were totally cool with it. I asked Noah if he needed time to go calm down and both him and the kids defended that he was fine.

If I say “empty the dishwasher” sometimes the kids will all but cower under the table. I don’t even have to raise my voice. (Actual screaming provokes less of a reaction.) Noah says it is because I am so intimidating. You know–like a large black man.

Are you fucking kidding me?

So I spent the day crying because I’m a piece of shit who should die because I can’t seem to do anything to stop scaring people. No matter how hard I try, I’m still that fucking scary bitch who should be punished for having emotions that are too big.

Sometimes I can whisper a request and the kids will react as if I have done something terrible. I feel manipulated.

I feel like I should die because it isn’t possible for me to attain behavior that would be considered “acceptable”.

I spent a bunch of time at the tea party talking to a woman I used to go dancing with. Both of us have been on mental health roller coasters over the last few years. When she has problems, her friends take her in. She has spent a lot of the last few years basically couch surfing with friends who cook for her and clean up after her and she has a great team of doctors she works with who are really nice to her. In the conversation I asked a little bit about what kind of traumas trigger what kind of things for her and she said, “I’ve never had a traumatic experience in my life.”

When she said how grateful she is that her friends have taken her in and supported her this way because it is really hard for her to take care of herself when she is depressed I said, “No one has ever loved me that much. Not my friends, not my parents. It doesn’t matter how I feel. I have to take care of myself.” Then I cried.

Noah takes some care of me, but he doesn’t do that much. People have done some things to care for me. One friend cooked me breakfast lunch and dinner for three weeks after my second child was born. When my uncle died and I dropped my basket I had friends show up for a week to baby-sit my kids.

But in between some pieces of help I have to get off my fucking ass and do everything else for myself. I don’t get months of support. I get a few minutes then a kick in the ass to get the fuck back up and take care of myself.

When my wisdom teeth were removed, I was 21 and living with my Owner. My mom came to stay with us to “take care of me” afterwards. I had four dry sockets. I was in horrible pain. My mom sat on the couch reading and I cooked and served her food.

I’m a self-pitying son of a bitch.

When I get really sick 9/10 times I drive myself to the hospital. I don’t really know who to ask for help. Even though doctors have told me flat out I can’t drive those days… I do it anyway because that is the only transportation I have.

I’m having a really hard time this week with the whole “scary” thing. I won the court case, but I don’t feel “cleared” at all. This is a consistent problem for me. Near as I can tell the only thing I can do to avoid scaring people is stay in my room without talking to people.

I want to die so much.

I’m having a really hard time with knowing that my therapist doesn’t have a lot of hope for me changing. That is really hurting.

If you ask my kids at any other time if they think I am scary they say no. They tell me they know I wouldn’t hurt them even though I get very angry sometimes. But man they cower. They cower like I chase them with a belt. Hell, they fucking cower more than someone who has been chased with a belt. If you get hit enough times you learn that cowering just pisses people off and they hit you more times.

Noah and I talked today about putting the kids in school. He asked what I would do during the day. I said cut. It would be totally easy to hide if I had that much alone time. We don’t want to put the kids in school. But if I think the kids are being damaged by being around me (uhm, cowering) then maybe school is more appropriate.

You never know what the “right” decision is until it is too late to do anything about all the wrong decisions.

Despite hearing today from a teacher who likes Common Core I remain unconvinced that school is currently the right choice for my kids. This teacher asked how my kids have learned to talk about math problems if they have never had a math class. If I’ve never sat them down with a textbook and worksheets, how can they learn?! It’s a miracle. But without curriculum assistance of any kind my kids can do addition, some subtraction, and the occasional multiplication problem. (The 4 year old isn’t doing multiplication yet, but she has demonstrated that she understands the principle.) We do them verbally.

I feel like I’m being mean and ungrateful towards Noah for having this many big, unpleasant feelings. I feel like I am doing something specifically objectionable because of disloyalty. I feel like when I talk about my lack of support I am implying that he isn’t doing enough and that isn’t true. I’m pretty sure there isn’t time in the day for Noah to do more.

But I still have so many needs and there isn’t anyone I can ask. I try really hard to build some of the consistency I need and it falls through over and over.

It isn’t that no one ever does anything for me. I know that I *do* get help. But I get one off help.

I want a god damn mother.

Right now I am feeling very self-pitying and sad. I wish I had the flavor of mental illness where people love me and take care of me and feel sad that I am hurting instead of the flavor where people think I am scary and intimidating.

I want to die.

My friend said she feels confident that with the help of wonderful doctors she will improve a lot and her life will get better and she won’t have so many symptoms.

If you read books about suicidality, there are specific “things” that are the reasons people kill themselves. There are only a few categories of spurs, really. I have most of them really active in my life. I don’t think I will ever stop feeling suicidal until I can find a way to meet the needs that are driving the impulse to die. My problems are relational and I can’t fix them by myself. And I can’t make anyone care about me that much.

I don’t know that I will ever get much better. I will never believe I am worthy of enough love to justify staying alive. “Never is a long time.” I don’t feel very hopeful today.

I hope that some day this will feel less intense. I hope that some day I will believe I am worthy of someone taking care of me and I will find a way to make that happen in a way that will benefit my mental health long term.

Right now I feel like no one loves me enough.

Which is of course all my fault and all my problem.

Bullying

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I sort of feel like “she’s bullying me” is the clarion call of my childrens’ generation the way “it’s not fair” was for my generation. They do not understand what they are complaining about and it sounds pretty funny to me most of the time. “No, actually your sister doing something you dislike isn’t the same thing as bullying.”

We are starting to run into bullying situations. I have a heavy heart as I think about how much like me my daughter is. Shanna can be a bully. The other day at a park a bigger girl told Shanna to be on “guard duty” so Shanna beat the shit out of the little boys who wanted to come to that part of the playground. Luckily she is very bad at fighting. But she hit the little boy in the face.

I intervened about as fast as I physically could. We talked there and ended up coming home early because the excuse, “The bigger girl told me to do it” isn’t one that buys you a lot of slack with me.

I believe that one of the things I said as I huffily dragged her from the park (she was screaming about how I was bullying her by not letting her play) was, “It is despicable to hit someone half your size as part of a game. I don’t care if you think I’m bullying you. You can go home and play alone if you are going to act like that.”

I haven’t lost any sleep over enforcing the boundary but I do worry about her growing up. She’s going to have to make a lot of the same mistakes I’ve made.

I was a vicious bully.

I worry about my privileged little princess punching down. I was not starting life in a position much like Shanna’s. My behavior and hers… really shouldn’t be comparable. I fought all the time because I was being viciously beaten and raped. My kid has never had a traumatic experience. But she seems to feel almost as much need to hit and be defensive. I’m not sure what to do with this. I keep offering martial arts and she is turning me down.

I believe that “bullying” or punching down behaviors need to be watched forever. One needs to engage in self-monitoring. Everyone punches in some direction–never punch down or you are a bully. That’s just a rule in my little world. You can’t punch down. If you do you are hurting people who are less able to defend themselves than you are and that is poor sportswomanship.

Wow. Spell check let me have that word? Cool.

Shanna is trying to use physical intimidation a lot more in general lately. That is not going as well as she might hope. If you shove your face in my face and growl at me I’m very likely to grab the shirt of your outfit and make sure I win that intimidation game. I tend to win even with people who are bigger than me. Shanna doesn’t have a chance. I’m scary when I feel threatened. I had to learn the skill.

Part of the reason I don’t hit my kids is because I do not want to punch down. They are already so very helpless compared to me–less helpless by the day but still–that hitting them at all would be punching down. Always.

It is going to be quite a journey for Shanna and I to learn how to be bossy together without being bullies. Bossy is good. Bossy is great. Bullying is not acceptable.

People learn things best by doing something wrong and observing the consequences. I need to be patient with my children and with me. We have to mess up or we won’t learn. Sometimes, that messing up involves punching down when you don’t understand that it is a problem.

I’m looking forward to when my kids are old enough for the really mess-with-you-mind teaching. I want to talk about the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment. I want to talk about obeying orders. I want to talk about what it means to hurt someone else on the say-so of your “boss”.

But I’ll wait to mess with their minds for a few more years. Puberty will be so much fun.

There is a difference between having engaged in bullying behavior and being a bully. It is the same dichotomy that exists in racism, sexism, ageism, ableism. There is space for an ignorant person to say something or do something without a larger scope of targeted behavior. When does someone jump the tracks into “being” that kind of person.

I’m not sure. But I’ve met people who are on that side of the line. It’s like pornography–I know it when I see it.