Category Archives: answering questions

Sick house

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Shanna slept through yesterday. Calli woke up with a fever. I feel hot. We leave for Disneyland in 7 days, which means I am semi-amusedly looking for spots. 4 days till we would be able to tell. Whee? Sore throats, minor coughing. Shanna is just not eating and that bothers me. I’m forcing liquids into her though. I’m bribing with sugar-water. (Juice, ginger ale, Sprite, Izze sodas–I bought one of everything that had no hfcs. Hfcs triggers diarrhea so it doesn’t come into my house.) Sugar water just doesn’t come into our house that much so the kids are more willing than usual to drink.

I’ve spent a lot of the morning reading vaccine stuff. Because there is a big outbreak and life is like that.

It is weird to me to read this stuff. I don’t like the pro-vaccine lobby and I have barely less respect for the anti-vaccine lobby. I think they are both hysterical.

I’d like to stop thinking about this topic but I probably won’t until it is out of the news.

I feel very very very very angry when people say that a choice that is not theirs is a “no brainer”. Not your call. You don’t get to decide that for other people. You have no idea how many factors go into this decision and your response is dismissive, elitist, and obnoxious.

I go back and forth between feeling a lot of sympathy for people who have immune compromised children and thinking, “You expect the whole world to accommodate your kid. Good luck with that.”

Should unvaccinated infants *be* in places like Disneyland where there are routinely international travelers who may or may not be vaccinated? Is it really a smart choice? (I took my kid when she was 6 weeks old and completely unvaccinated so this is a question that isn’t just abstract.)

We can’t make the world safe and I feel like that is what the pro-vaccine lobby wants.

We freak the fuck out about controlling everyone near us so we can reduce “risk” but we get in our cars every day and don’t think about the fact that the car is the fifth most likely way we will die.

But man listening to anti-vaxxers talk about how “healthy diet” is the panacea to stop all illness… turns my stomach. If that were true, we wouldn’t have had disease pre-junk food, and pre-vaccines. And we did. So I don’t believe that eating healthy is the whole solution. Yes, it helps. It isn’t the whole story.

It is kind of funny to me that I put a lot of time, effort, and energy into promoting the idea that people get to make their own choices. I’m not sure why I care so much.

My kids have a pediatrician appointment coming up. Time for a check up. Time for more vaccines. Calli will get her last MMR (kind of ironic that it will happen after the trip to Disneyland given the current hysteria in the news) and Shanna says she wants chicken pox. I haven’t asked Calli very carefully how she feels about CP but she may or may not decide to get it the same day as her sister.

It is their body and their choice. I made the choices when they were too small and they aren’t so small any more. They have opinions. They don’t want to get sick. They want to take steps to prevent suffering.

Ok. Yes, ma’am. It is your body. I will treat it how you tell me to treat it. I did my best before I had your directions. I’m trying. I’m going to make decisions you don’t like. I’m trying to err on the side of not doing something if you can do it later. Kinda like you can never take back a circumcision. You can never unvaccinate someone. I’m not going to rush into doing things to your body unless I have a very good reason. Hell, I won’t pierce my kids’ ears until they are old enough to be responsible for the holes.

Your body. Your decision.

Which means that I could let my selfish, ignorant children make decisions that expose lots of other people to bad things.

Yeah.

I have really mixed feelings about Make A Wish sending sick kids to places like Disneyland and Disney World. Non-vaxxers go. Who should get banned for the good of the other side? The vaccination is a choice or not. No one has the choice about whether or not you have cancer. Should schools be allowed to ban kids? They are sending home non-vaccinated kids right now. I can’t say they are in the wrong.

People are going to die. I spend almost much time and energy worrying about how evil I am for giving my kids peanut butter as I spend worrying about whether we are vaccinated enough to protect other people.

I still won’t get the flu vaccine. The news reports about how, “Well… we picked the wrong strains and people are getting sick like crazy… but you should vaccinate anyway!” No. No. No. No. No. No.

Ok, it might decrease how many days I’m sick. I’d rather stay home an extra day. Yes, that’s a privileged position. I also feel incredibly uncomfortable with the fact that everyone is admonished to start anti-virals the minute they know they have the flu. HAVE ANTIBIOTICS TAUGHT US NOTHING?!?!?!?!

Also: I’m incredibly frustrated that almost every news report conflates “people who were one month late on one vaccine one time” with “non-vaccinated”. Because under-vaccination is just as big of a deal as not vaccinating at all.

I have a bone to pick with most of my atheist/science leaning friends. Scientific studies about vaccines tell us about what has already happened. They are not directions for the future. Many of my friends read scientific studies and say, “Now we know what to do!” No. Now you know what *is*. Science does not tell people what to do. That’s ethics. That’s philosophy. That’s… all kinds of other shit. That is fucking religion.

Science is about the process. Science is not about telling people what to do. That’s policy.

I can understand why you want to have your science influence policy… but science is not policy. There is not a direct, “Well if you look at the numbers it is a no-brainer.”

Actually… people are more complicated than that. There are always factors you aren’t considering because real life is not science. It is more complicated than a clinical trial.

Do I think that people who deny scientific results are making good choices? Sometimes. I’ve thought the salt hysteria was stupid for most of my life. I eat a lot of salt. Now scientists are abashedly telling me that it is ok even though for most of my life AVOID SALT was the mantra. Science changes its opinions pretty dramatically over time.

Before you say vaccines are “proven safe” I will say that formulas are taken off the market every few years because of problems. My children were NOT given the same vaccines I was given. They are rather different. To me, that means that the people who were worried about the vaccines… probably had some points. Are their points important enough to not vaccinate in comparison to the benefits of herd immunity?

We are *totally* talking religion and not science.

I’m ok with people believing in vaccines as their religion. That is completely ok with me. I’ll pat you on the head and say “Yay!” the same way I do with my Christians and my Buddhists and my Hindus and my Muslims. I’m super-thrilled you have a rule book for how to be a good person. Let me tell you that is great.

Don’t fucking tell me I have to follow your religion.

I vaccinate. But I am not a Pro-Vaxxer. It is not my religion. Just like I don’t identify as being a dancer. I just love to dance. I will dance all day long if I’m not tied up (and I can still dance while tied up–I’ve proven that lots and lots) but I’m not a dancer.

I’m not a Pro-Vaxxer.

I do not believe that my way is the One Twue Way and I do not get to force other people to be like me. People make decisions for very complicated reasons. Maybe other people think fear plays too big of a part in not vaccinating and I think fear plays too big of a part in vaccinating. We are all fearful. We are just different in how much I think I should get to control millions of other people over my fear.

I have a lot of fears. I’m aware that many of them aren’t rational. I think that many of them are perfectly rational and appropriate. Neither the rational nor the irrational fears are ones I should use as justifications for controlling millions of people.

But what about the poor children who are suffering from terrible diseases who can’t be vaccinated?

Life really sucks. It is sometimes way more unfair for some people than others. That is true. I weep for you. (I’m not being sarcastic. I spend time in my garage crying over the pain of people I’ll never meet. I’m kind of weird.) I will not force millions of people to make a choice they don’t want to make for you.

Wait… isn’t that what most social justice issues are framed as? I’m trying to think of how to frame it and I can’t come up with a good parallel.

Mostly though… no I don’t think vaccination is a social justice issue. Vaccination for other peoples benefit isn’t like anti-racist work. It isn’t like eliminating rape jokes from your vocabulary. I think it is a personal and a moral issue. I don’t think the government has the right to force people to be injected many dozens of times in their lives for the good of other people the same way I don’t believe in eugenics. Nope. This is not like gay marriage or inter-racial marriage or even immigration rights because those things are about not interfering in other people getting to have their lives. Vaccination is forcing someone to DO something.

Someone compared it to check ups for cars in Germany. I would say that driving a car is not a right. If you want to participate in the society of drivers, the society itself has a right to gate keeping. Society telling me I have to vaccinate or… what… exactly… is different. Right now there is no punishment. Let’s see when that changes.

We are want millions of people to go pay a doctor to inject them for the good of other people.

Doesn’t that sound like more something that should come from religion? You have a moral duty as a citizen to care about the health of your neighbors. It isn’t just about YOUR health–the good nutrition does nothing to help your poor neighbors. Your individual health isn’t the only health that matters, what about the people who will die in the next nasty epidemic unless they are shielded?

Does the whole fucking community really get dragged into protecting the most vulnerable whether they like it or not? That’s NOT SCIENCE. Not science. Not science. Not science.

I’m ok with people saying loudly and unequivocally that vaccination is the ONLY moral choice for all people who are healthy enough to vaccinate. I don’t have one ounce of complaint with that statement. Not ONE. THAT IS COMPLETELY OK. You can be a judgmental prick all day long and I will applaud your efforts towards a cause you truly care about. Knock yourself out.

But there are vaccine reactions. I know real live people who have had them. Fuck you if you don’t believe me. I knew a kid who got fucking polio from the vaccine. So don’t act like nothing ever happens. (Yes, I understand we no longer use live virus, yada yada–stuff happens and people try to say it “never” happens and yes it does.) I’ve known lots of other people with other reactions. I go hunting for fringe cases. That’s kind of the basis of most of my friendships. “Hey! You have this super weird experience in you background that other people will deny even happened because it threatens their view of reality. Tribe!!!”

But I know people who have had family members die from various vaccine preventable diseases too. Some of them are rabidly pro-vaccine and others still feel it should be a personal choice.

People get to pick how they die. And whether we like it or not… parents have a say in how safe their kids are kept for 18 years. That is how our country works right now. We would not like the alternative of kids being kept safe from their parents. It would be bad. I know a lot of really good women who are terrified CPS is going to come if they ever yell at their kids. This is not good for families either.

I should have been kept safe from my family. I went through absurdly extreme abuse. But… I have no idea what safeguards should exist to protect kids like me. Kids should have an easier time asking for help in their communities. People need to believe the kids who do come forward. We need to not ignore the kids we see who are struggling with abuse.

Kids should be allowed to ignore their anti-vax parents and get vaccinated if they want to long before they are 18. It should be a medically appropriate decision for a kid to make at 12.

Really, it is more like smoking. Only it isn’t. We don’t have the legal right to force people to never smoke. We just have the right to keep smoking out of most public buildings. With vaccines, you don’t have the choice to protect other people sometimes while still choosing for yourself other times. It is all or nothing.

I don’t think we should force. I really don’t. That’s bad juju. I think shaming people who make choices we don’t agree with will close the door to future conversations.

Isn’t this what people complain about with feminism? That feminists are too shrill and slam the door? The pro-vaccine lobby is too shrill. Instead of shaming and belittling people who make fringe choices we need to figure out how to get them to feel like they are part of an in-group with people who are vulnerable and need to be protected.

We don’t need to tell them how stupid and awful and selfish and bad they are. That has never improved a damn thing.

Do I really believe that everyone should vaccinate?

No. I don’t. I think that if you choose not to vaccinate then you need to voluntarily quarantine yourself at the slightest chance of illness though. If you want to go back to the old days, go back to the old days. People didn’t used to go to fucking Disneyland with the fucking measles. (Yes, I know you are infectious before you can see spots. Usually you have a fever.)

What am I going to do if we aren’t better by Monday? Am I going to go if we are still running fevers? Am I going to be one more selfish asshole going to Disney this year?

No. Probably not. I will probably tell my friend to start looking for possible people to go with them if we are sick on Thursday. I care about ethics. I do think about the Make A Wish kids getting to go to Disneyland.

I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt someone just because I wanted to go on “It’s a Small World”. What a selfish piece of shit.

And so, we all get to make our own choices. I do believe people get to be selfish. Not everyone has my options. Not everyone has the privilege to say, “Meh, if I miss this trip I’m still spending 3.5 weeks at Disney this year.”

Would I be so magnanimous if this was my only chance in a five year period? Man. I might wear a face mask and gloves. I wouldn’t go bare faced and cough on people. But probably… I would stay home. I’m like that. I’ve missed other big trips. I miss adventures because I get sick. I don’t do the walking wounded thing. I probably could but I see it as a problem. It ignores your impact on the people around you.

So. That’s my more than 140 character feelings about vaccines. Since I was asked.

 

Answering comment

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Shalyndra–my shrink was frustrated because when I get upset and bad things happen I get in a loop tape of thinking that I want to die and she is tired of it. She wants me to move on so she can feel more successful as a therapist.

If I could break that fucking loop tape my life would be very different.

Thus the accusations of “You like being like this.”

That isn’t all she was frustrated about though. She wants me to believe that me getting angry in public is the same as her demanding to bring her dog into restaurants. She doesn’t understand why that is a problem for people and she thinks that me getting angry is a similar kind of blind spot. I’m not seeing how much of a problem my behavior is for other people.

But I get stuck on: it is god damn illegal for you to bring your dog everywhere and me getting angry is *not* illegal. So the parallel isn’t working to show me how not ok getting angry is. Because if you are telling me that I have as much right to anger as dog owners have to bring their dogs with them everywhere they go… we have a problem.

That’s not ok.

Letter writing

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My generation is not so big on handwritten letters. In general we stick to email. It’s easier, less effort, less waste, etc. But I believe that letters still have a place in society.

I’m not big on the traditional “rules” around when and how to write so I ignore those. I have come up with my own general guidelines for writing letters. A bit ago a friend asked me about how writing letters worked and this is my attempt to respond. (Sorry it took me so long. I was thinking about it.)

We live in a time and a place where there are thousands of things competing for your attention. Being on the computer at all is an exercise in distraction.

Why: Why bother writing letters? It’s a pain in the hand. Mostly it is because the thrill of getting a personal letter doesn’t go away. Everyone is used to post-mail being bills and horrible advertisements. Getting an honest-to-goodness letter feels thrilling and exciting. Someone cared enough about you to write a letter. It is like a tiny little micro-gift of love and attention.

When: When do you write them? I don’t believe in hard and fast rules. We have too many things competing for our attention. I think that it is good to look at your calendar and spot areas where you have a good solid two hours. You don’t need to use all that time, but futzing with addressing an envelope, finding a stamp, etc adds at least half an hour. You want more than an hour because when you sit down you need to organize your thoughts a bit. Do you have to write a letter when someone gets married? When they lose a job?

Write a letter when you want to let someone know that you have been thinking about them. That’s really the only when.

Who: Who should you write letters to? Anyone! Older people appreciate it the most. If you know someone over 60, chances are they would appreciate a letter. It is a throw back to their childhood when communication was that way or no way. (Yes they had phones… but they were *expensive*.)

Kids love letters. Kids will save them and think of you throughout their childhood. Kids will know that you are an adult who cared enough to notice them. They remember.

Your friends will feel special and loved. An email is nice, but letters are so much nicer.

And I despise handwriting. I think that writing letters is torture. But it makes other people so happy. Writing someone a letter is a way of consciously demonstrating that they are important in your life. Sometimes there isn’t another way of doing so. Sometimes you don’t have the spoons to pay as much physical attention to someone as you wish you could.

But they can get a letter in their home. They can feel loved and seen and cared for. And it doesn’t take that many spoons.

I love writing letters. I love the feeling that, unlike my normal for the masses babbling, I’m specifically trying to create a relationship with a person. I only write a letter to further serve a bond. If I write you a letter it is because I want to show you about as much respect as I can show for a person.

Hand-written letters will never go out of style. Email will never take the place of walking to your mail box and seeing a letter from a loved one. It’s just… not the same.

What: What do you write though? It depends on who you are writing. For my in-laws I stick to mostly recounting what the kids are up to. I understand that they aren’t that into me. When I write to close intimate friends I tend to share feelings. I write to tell them why I was thinking about them–how it made me feel. “I was thinking about you last night. I was thinking about when we did _____. I am so glad you are in my life.” Lots of variation is possible there.

Letters exist to help people feel more connected. Reminding someone of a memory means they are very likely to remember it better. They will remember you better. They will remember how they feel about you.

Only it is tinged with the rosy glow of memory. Science has proven that it is much harder for us to remember bad things than good things. When you remind friends of times gone by, they tend to forget the irritations. The difficulties. They remember that you stayed. They remember that you were there. They remember that you were their friend.

That’s the important part.

Sharing memories is a lot of what relationships are built on. The more memories you share the deeper your relationship. The more reminders of your memories you have the stronger you feel about them.

How much: How much do you have to write? I’ve gotten six word postcards that made my day. I have had the good luck to receive twelve page letters. Frankly, that got a little overwhelming. He was an intense guy.

You are just writing to them to remind them to think of you the way you think of them. If you can do that in a few words, feel free. It is just as meaningful.

Yelling at people isn’t so bad.

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Apparently things with Noah’s family are very different than my previous perceptions. Yes, I got a preview of this last week at dinner. This week my sister in law came over for many hours and told story after story. Noah is absorbing the stories and thinking about implications.

Apparently my words are being used to slap my mother in law around. (There isn’t much, if any physical abuse in the house–it’s a verbal abuse sorta space.) I told my father in law that I wasn’t interested in trading one abusive mother for another. I’m sorry that has been used by a gaslighter to punish someone.

But on the upside apparently me being a bitch in that way spurred my mother in law into therapy and there have been dramatic strides in her behavior. Kinda like when I yelled at Rebecca’s dad all those years ago.

I find it kind of… funny… that when I yell at people it sometimes spurs life changes. That’s like negative reinforcement all over the place. See, I should yell at people. It’s good for them.

No, no it isn’t. Only my kids show lots of signs of resiliency and part of it is that they are non-jumpy because of how desensitized to noise they are. Sudden yelling isn’t scary. They know that nothing bad will happen but they need to change their behavior.

I’m kidding about yelling being good for them. I think that it actually is more of a big deal that I don’t yell that much. They don’t get tirades about their behavior. I cut that shit off after a couple of sentences. It’s not ok to berate kids. I can express that I don’t like something and then I need to move on.

I told my sister-in-law to brace herself for kind of a dump on the way to the house. I’ve seen the house she has grown up in. I saw the house she was visiting in Los Gatos. My house is kind of a dump in comparison. Small, dark, and messy. Not to mention the chips in the paint all over the walls from my obsessive furniture moving.

Her response was, “I like this. It’s cozy and homey. I want a house like this.”

Oh, I forgot. She has had to grow up with cleaning a huge, empty, unloved house. Oh. Of course she doesn’t value them much.

Noah and I had a talk this morning about how it is working out that he still doesn’t have much of a relationship with his family… but I do.

I talk to his aunts and grandmother and parents more than he does. I haven’t reached out as dramatically to his siblings, but that is partially because they have reached out less to me. All the older generation women have put effort into me. They just… did. They send presents and letters and they volunteer their interest.

It is a lot more than I have ever gotten from a family member. So I respond. Noah kind of tunes it out because he has never experienced anything else so he doesn’t value it.

Contrast is useful.

Oh. Wow. A journalist in the UK (not from a very well developed site–it looks like they are just getting off the ground) found my blog and asked to interview me. Sure. I can do that. Incest, PTSD, and how it effects my life. I’m grateful I didn’t have to track a reporter down and say, “Please interview me” so I’m glad to have the practice. I don’t have to start with the NY Times.

Life plugs along. It isn’t a good thing I yell at people. It is a good thing I am in the world. I say things that make people think. I am a useful data point. It is good to have extremes. Without them the middle gets very boring.

It is ok to have us progressives in the world. It gives the conservatives something to contrast with.

I need you.

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Those three words make my heart start racing like I just completed a sprint. You need me? OK! What do you need?! I CAN DO IT! This morning my baby woke up scared and needed to cuddle me. Easy peasy. I have a firm policy of waking up with a smile if my kids wake me up saying “I need you”. Ok. It’s my job to be there when you need me, so yes ma’am.

Do you know why my kids have good manners? Because I say yes ma’am and no ma’am to them for just about everything. If my kids scream at me I raise an eyebrow and say, “Try again” in a calm voice. If they scream a second time I say, “Do I respond well to screaming?” Then they visibly shake themselves off and calm down enough to ask for what they want.

Based on the dozens and dozens of books I’ve read about early childhood development the first 5-7 years of life should be spent on socialization, attachment formation, and learning to manage your emotions. I have gone through my life crippled by my inability to manage my emotions in times of stress and that is largely because I was not taught how to deal with my body. If I grew distressed I was punished.

I don’t let my kids have a lot of screen time because screen time is shown to increase emotional dysregulation. I feel it would be counter productive to hand them a bunch of emotional dysregulation during the period of their life when they are poorly regulated and struggling for basic control. I mean, they are pretty good and all… but they are 3 and 5. They are good for their ages and that means they have a lot of work left to do.

I think about this because when I babysit for other kids I learn that the short cuts I’ve worked on with my kids don’t work as well. My kids respond to “Try again”. “Will that work?” is enough to stop the vast majority of tantrums. “So what is your goal here?” is another favorite I lean on extensively. I talk them through how to get what they want without using methods that will result in escalation of conflict. That’s what I spend my days doing. I hang out with them and help them manage their emotions as they are doing what they want to do.

Other peoples children kind of look at me blankly if I just say “Try again” and that’s hard at this phase. I have to turn around and manage my own frustration and emotional dysregulation because my short hand didn’t communicate what I wanted it to communicate and so I am left struggling to find phrasing that will work which means a bunch of quick thinking. I shouldn’t complain. But man I am grateful I have been able to train my kids the way I have.

Yup, I’ve trained my kids. And it’s awesome.

I feel a lot of guilt for not actually having the control I wish I had. I feel a lot of shame for the fact that if my children were less well trained I would have a much harder time being nice. It is hard for me to be nice to other peoples kids who don’t respond to the training cues.

I *do not* yell or scream or shame or respond badly to children not understanding my cues. Instead I take a deep breathe and smile and out comes a whole flood of words that explains why I’m asking what I’m asking and I give them a whole bunch of suggestions for how to solve whatever problem is coming up.

But it’s hard. It wears my body out to emotionally flood that many times in a short period of time. I believe that the children deserve the respect so I’m going to deliver it even if it means I cry the whole way home because my body feels like shit and I’m tired and worn out. My stomach hurts so bad.

Sometimes my physical comfort is not the highest priority in my life. That’s hard. Sometimes my friends need help and I’m the one who could show up and supply the necessary help and I believe in Pay It Forward like I believe It Takes All Kinds. I HAVE to step up when friends have nowhere else to look for support. If I don’t then the ship will go down and it will be partially my fault.

No, not really. Other people having problems in their lives isn’t my fault. But if the reason I choose not to help is because it is hard and it makes me feel bad and I cry for an hour or two afterwards because of stress… that’s not a good enough reason to choose not to help in a crisis. That’s a good enough reason to not sign up for four home school outings in a week. That’s a good enough reason to not sign up for helping once a week indefinitely. But it’s not a good enough reason to refuse help in a crisis.

Which leads back to spoon management with my kids in my life.

I have to leave enough slack all the time to absorb occasional bursts of spoon excess in one area or another. This is part of why I’ve been reading so much lately. I’m trying to build slack into my spoon usage. There are times when all of a sudden I use extra spoons on a project or on driving or on helping other people and I have to be able to continue delivering the same quality and quantity of care to my kids.

Taking care of my kids is hard but worthwhile. I’ve been doing really well post-Christmas. I am staying more level. I’m responding in the right tone of voice and I’m responding in a timely fashion instead of sometimes choosing to let them fight it out because I can’t intervene in a timely fashion in the right way. (I don’t let them physically fight things out but sometimes if they want to have a screaming match over something I will tell them that they can scream at each other in the back yard.) Mostly I try to help them work things out. It’s exhausting to be a referee all day.

So given that my focus is on socialization, attachment formation, and emotional regulation it’s kind of funny when a friend says, “So how about their academics? When do you do that?”

Err… I don’t. Not really. I mean, I read to them a lot. I read to my kids for 5-15 hours a week depending on the week. Noah reads to the kids for an additional 5-10 hours a week. As often as possible I sucker my friends into reading to the kids.

I get workbooks when Shanna is given her “school allotment” and she goes shopping and says, “I think I should practice shaping letters so let’s get a workbook”. I never indicate that she should get out a workbook and practice. But the suckers are being used steadily. I feel kind of confused by her choosing to do worksheets, but whatever makes you happy kiddo.

That said: if you go through the kindergarten standards (Which I do–quite regularly) you would find that Shanna was more or less competent on the full curriculum before the start of her “kindergarden” year. Given that the state now believes children should be fluent readers in first grade she is *not* through the first grade curriculum but I think the state is on crack for expecting that anyway.

(I mean for science: one of the many things kids should know why different kinds of plants grow in different environments. Shanna can give you long lectures on the evolution of plants and animals. We watch a lot of documentaries and I feel pretty surprised by what she knows. She designs structures so she can talk about what things work better and why. Sure a lot of her structures are meant to be froofy princess shit, but whatever. I don’t care if you are building a castle or a space station–you are building. It works.)

I will confess that I need to get my hands on a globe so we can play with a flashlight and talk about the seasons more. We’ve talked about it representationally on flat maps… but that’s not the same. I need to get off my butt.

We work on the PE skills in malls all the time. How do you learn to be aware of your body? How do you move through crowds without bumping people? How do you decide which objects you can go under or over in a public place? Or must you go around them on the side? This is what kindergarden PE teaches. We play catch and kick ball. They do yoga and go on three mile walks a few times a week. (I’ve been better lately.) Sure, Calli gets piggy back rides for over a mile of the walk… but she’s hella short. She’ll get there.

I will confess that my kids are not fully versed on the “triumphs of American history” but they do know a lot about racial issues through the history of this country. Shanna call tell you about segregation and Jim Crow laws and why Rosa Parks was important. I’m going to keep doing things my way instead of talking about how awesome Paul Revere was. (I mean… really he was a patent thief and an asshole and there was a girl riding the alarm the same night as him but HISTORY IGNORES HER. Ahem.)

Given that all of the kindergarden reading/language arts standards are “With prompting and support” yes, Shanna can do all that is expected of a five year old. She can tell you about myths from different cultures. She can tell you that a poem rhymes and a narrative tells a story in plain English. She can identify the narrator and she understands “what’s the point” as “tell me about the plot”. She can count to 100 (and beyond, I think) and add and do basic subtraction. She understands the beginnings of numeral placement. She knows her shape and can talk about what is necessary for each kind of shape.

And no, I don’t spend time on academics. I’m not going to waste her time. But what I mean when I say “I don’t spend time on academics” is I don’t ever sit down with a curriculum written by someone else and say, “Ok now it is time for school.”

We talk about cylinders as we are putting dishes away. We talk about the difference between a square and a rectangle when we build raised beds in the back yard. We do addition practice in the car because she starts it.

I do not direct her learning much. I don’t pick the whack job documentaries she watches, though I try to watch with her. She can talk to you about generations of animals dying out–whole species! She’s fascinated by the way animals change over time. She’s pissed off that evolution doesn’t happen fast enough for her to really watch it in her lifetime.

I talk to my kids all day long about everything I see. “Why do you think they made this bench out of wood and this other one out of metal?” “What is this made out of?” My kid can tell you the merits of using different kinds of spatulas to cook different foods.

We do science by cooking and gardening. We talk about history all the time. I’m fond of saying, “We study history because humans have been alive a long time. Almost every mistake that you will want to make has already been made by someone else. You can learn a lot if you just read about people and their choices.”

My kids are growing up in a house where “hacking” DOES NOT MEAN following directions on a kit that some forking grown up made for you. No. That’s not how life works. You are not going to spend your life just following directions that someone else makes up. You are going to have to make your own directions. How do you do that?

If you want to learn to sew (which Shanna does) I can show you the basics and I can provide you with materials, but no I’m not going to do it while you watch and I’m not going to stand next to you and micromanage you doing it perfectly. You are going to mess up and feel frustration. You are going to have to learn how to rip out your own seams and try again.

I can’t make things easy for you. I wouldn’t even if I could. Life isn’t going to be easy.

My job is to help you learn emotional regulation and help you feel like you matter in the world so that you won’t spend your life wanting to kill yourself because you believe you are a worthless piece of shit.

Everything else you can learn as you go. I promise.

At the end of kindergarden they wanted to hold me back because I wasn’t mature enough. I’d been to five fucking kindergardens, no I wasn’t as “advanced” compared to the kids in the tiny school I was in last that year. The teacher thought I was stupid because I couldn’t read yet. I picked up reading in first grade and by second grade I was testing at the 10th grade level.

I’m not worried about early asymmetrical growth. Don’t you understand that the standards were created by bureaucrats and *not* educational specialists? (Go ask education specialists. You will find a few who endorse the standards but mostly they don’t like the idea of a national curriculum–people don’t work that way.)

“The things that are the hardest to learn are often the most rewarding once you master them. You have to keep trying even when something makes you mad.”

That’s what my kids hear over and over. A far cry from “I guess I can’t do math because I’m a girl.” That’s what I believed as a child. Because I was told that math was hard for me because I was just a stupid girl. Word for word. Over and over.

When my kids try to do something that is way too hard for them they say, “Whoa. I think I need to learn a bit more before I understand this.” I almost fell out of my chair laughing when Calli said that. She was confused but delighted that she made me laugh.

I think my saving grace with children is I don’t expect them to do much or support me. I understand that the support is a one way street. I do the supporting. That means I never get disappointed and lash out at them for not helping me when I want/need help. I have internalized so thoroughly that it isn’t their job.

That said they have more and more chores. Shanna unloads the dishwasher, clears the table, and keeps her stuff tidy. When she has to clean up her toys she often says, “What am I, your maid!?” I tell her that until I start forcing her to do laundry for the whole family and do the sweeping and mopping and vacuuming she doesn’t get to claim maid status. I’m teaching her to clean up after herself which means she is being her own maid… not mine. She generally doesn’t argue much.

And now I have a wonderful girl on my lap. She says she wants to watch The West Wing with me. heh.

Looking for a threesome

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A wonderful friend told me that she and her husband are interested in looking for a person to have a threesome with. After saying “It won’t be me” she laughed and said, “I just want advice.”

I can do advice! And while I sit here in Texas with my second drink of the day I’m feeling very full of stuff I want to share. Hiccup.

Group sex is complicated. More brilliant people than me have written about it. When you have group sex you have three people all of whom have very different pictures in their heads of what “group sex” looks like. My personal experiences involve every gender combination of up to seven people. Because my life has been awesome.

First thing first: having a threesome as a couple adding a third person is the *worst* way to do it. Unfortunately if you are part of a couple your partner would probably object to being ditched while you go find two other single people for such an experience. When you have a couple adding a third person you have all those messy couple issues on top of the simple sex issues.

The reason I say this is the worst is that almost every threesome horror story I have ever heard started from that configuration. Almost every successful story I have heard involves three single people getting together for one night.

When you are in a couple you have to stop and think, “How will I react if my partner spends more time paying attention to the other person? How am I going to feel if it starts feeling like those two are having sex and I am the audience?” That can be a sucky feeling. Figuring out how to turn a seeming-new-dyad into something that includes a third person is fun but hard.

In my opinion threesomes (or moresomes) work out best if someone is specifically designated as running the fuck. You need to have someone who is consciously paying attention to who is playing with whom and for how long. You need to suggest activities if someone looks left out. “Oh Sue over there isn’t touching anyone! What should we do to her?” Then drag the group focus onto the wallflower. Some people like being a wallflower and if that is your dynamic–negotiate that in advance.

Threesomes have the potential to have mixed signals in terms of barrier protection. A long term married couple doesn’t want to use a condom together even though they MUST use barriers with an extra partner. So in my opinion the polite way to handle this is to default to the strictest set of rules for everyone. Otherwise it feels kind of awkward and weird.

And that hot guy you brought home may not want to deal with a cock covered in cunt juice. Maybe he isn’t into that part of girls very much. It happens.

My experience of the best threesomes have been all female or two male/one female. I am an insecure nitwit and I really struggled with two girl/one guy. I really completely bombed when I was part of the couple adding a girl. I couldn’t get over my insecurities. With two (mostly) heterosexual guys and me there can be many hours of fun though. Ha.

I hunted very successfully on www.okcupid.com and Craigslist. Yes, it takes patience and time to find the right people. There are a lot of people in the world. If you want casual sex you will have to get up the courage to ask a lot. You have to be completely ok with dozens or hundreds of people telling you no. If you can’t handle no then you just don’t get to have group sex this lifetime and get over it.

It really doesn’t matter if you are fat, ugly, or generally low in social status. What I have seen teaches me that pretty much anyone can find someone to say yes if they ask a lot.

If you are looking for a threesome, or really any casual sex you need to get over the idea that you will be a special snowflake in the life of everyone you fuck. Just accept it. Be prepared for awkward waves on public transit sometimes. It’s ok. It truly is.

If what you want is an experience rather than a relationship then you have a few responsibilities. First and foremost: do not treat the person who is kind enough to share this experience with you badly. If you do then you are a piece of shit who deserves to be spit on. Someone who consents to having sex with you always deserves your kindness and respect.

ALWAYS BE RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE YOU HAVE HAD SEX WITH. REGARDLESS OF BAD BREAKUPS.

I try not to yell, but I’ll yell that. If you say bad things about people who have had sex with you then you say way more bad about you than them. Keep that in mind.

No one is a life support for a cock/pussy/tits for you to admire. That’s a real god damn person right there. They have wants, needs, aspirations. You need to treat them like someone awesome who is sharing a wonderful part of themself. Even your casual bar hookups. People matter. How you treat them *matters*.

I like casual sex and I am totally cool with people wanting it. But be nice. We are all humans. We all want to feel like we are respected. Start with that point of view and you will do ok with almost everyone you could ever want to have sex with.

Introduction to bdsm as a person with significant mental issues

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I was asked a whole bunch of questions else-net. I will put the answer in both places because I think that this person is not the only one who will want this information from me in the future.

First and foremost: whereas my experience has been broad I am just one person. Your personal experiences are going to be different from mine in ways I cannot predict in advance. Take everything I say as very gentle guidance and not as an order. I am not the boss of you. Even though I speak in absolutes and I am a HUGE bossypants. I just talk that way. I don’t mean anything by it.

How do you find people? Well I started on the internet because I am a lucky duck and I came of age in that era. I went to www.bondage.com, www.alt.com, www.match.com (ironically where I met my first “online dom”–that’s a lame story if ever there was one), and IRC. I was pre-www.fetlife.com. I don’t actually recommend fetlife as a good place to meet people. It is moving further and further away from being a community space.

Go to munches. (Yes, I know people in NJ. Let me get in touch with people and I’ll see what I can find out about your area.) When you go to munches go with the expectation that most people will be really old, very over weight and fairly ugly. Of course that will not be even remotely true of a lot of people you meet. But if you go with that expectation then you will be prepared for the reality of the bdsm community. Also: expect that they will be a clique and hard to join. The sad fact is these are people who have been rejected a lot so they are prickly and nervous around new people.

We are not the beautiful people. But we are real people. We are creepy sometimes. We are overly intense. People who find their way to the bdsm community have almost certainly spent a lot of their lives feeling rejected, wrong, and disliked. Not everyone but a large chunk.

Go expecting to be your own entertainment when you get to a munch. Getting to know people sucks. It’s awkward and stiff and terror inducing. These are perverts. Many of these people would cheerfully tie you up and beat you until you scream bloody murder.

The good ones will only do so if you say “Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top.” There will be predators around though. You will have to keep you safe. Even beyond the predators there are a lot of people who have poor social skills for a wide variety of reasons. People are not going to be good at managing your boundaries. You will have to be pro-active and vocal from the very beginning. In my opinion it is ok to end up more on the bitch end of things. Keep YOU safe. Other people don’t know how to be nice to you unless you explicitly tell them.

That is one of the hardest parts of coming into the bdsm community as someone with significant mental health issues. You were probably exposed to things that made it hard for you to stand up for yourself. But when you engage in bdsm you have to do it from a place of absolute Trust. Bdsm is ALL about trust. The physical sensations are nice and all but really what we are playing with is power.

The sadomasochists are going to string me up from a tree. I’m not talking about Dominance/submission. Not all people are into specific consciously power differentiated roles. You don’t have to be a Dominant or Submissive. Maybe you are just into the physical sensations.

But I tell you that it feels different to be hit by a friend you love and trust than by someone who doesn’t like you very much. There is still power involved. Maybe it is the power of giving someone access to your body. You are relinquishing nothing. You are sharing the power.

That trust and power bit are very important. If you don’t think you have the power to keep yourself safe and decide what happens to your body then bdsm is maybe not the best place for you to come learn such power. Some people with extreme mental health problems do ok and become healthier as they have bdsm relationships and experiences. Some people tank really hard and implode. No one will be checking up on you other than you. You have to take it very seriously that you are responsible for your mental health. If you can’t manage your symptoms, then maybe right now isn’t the best time to start.

If you are officially diagnosed with mental health problems I can guess that you have a hard time picking people who are really safe to be around. I may not be right but I probably am. When you have mental health problems your perceptions of the world are always a bit at an odd angle.

It is hard to develop the conscious ability to be rational in judging whether someone is safe or not. You can’t necessarily go by the clues other people tell you to use.

For one thing the most important book you will ever read is The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. When you have that small icki uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach get away from that person and that activity.

That doesn’t mean that a creepy guy at the munch means you never come back to the munch. But if you feel chased off by someone creepy (could be a woman or a person of non-binary gender) then the right choice is to network online and find a buddy for the next munch. You still should go meet people.

Munches aren’t for everyone. I have also had great luck hunting for partners on www.okcupid.com. Ostensibly it is a “vanilla” site but yeah right.

If you want to top you need to make sure you never inappropriately hit anyone. If that sentence makes you feel vaguely worried, well then you need to spend more time introspectively thinking about it.

Enthusiastic consent is the only way to begin a consensual bdsm scene. If someone is saying, “I’m not sure” then you don’t start. You have to both be completely sure that you want to be doing what you are doing. (I know a lot of experienced bdsm people who will reply that they start bdsm scenes with murky consent sometimes under some circumstances. The point of this essay is for people with mental health issues who are just starting. No, 301 play just isn’t a good plan.)

As a beginner negotiate for what you will do rather than what you won’t do. Creative sadists will make you very sorry you thought you could limit the things you don’t want to have happen to you. Take my word for it. Negotiate the activities.

Keep in mind that life is long. I have seen a lot of people enter the bdsm community and kind of go crazy. They are like kids in the candy store. I want to try EVERYTHING. I want to play with EVERYONE. (*ahem* This may or may not be what I did.)

As a result I had some very bad scenes that hurt me very much. I had one particular scene go very badly and I hung on to the trauma from that for over ten years. I finally went to the top and asked him to specifically, in writing, apologize for our scene because he made mistakes. I made mistakes too and I explained them in detail. But I needed to have him apologize to me and recognize that he did something he didn’t mean to do which caused me great harm.

That kind of thing doesn’t usually work out more than ten years later. If you think you need an apology for something that went wrong, I encourage you to get to know the experienced people in your community as mentors and ask someone to mediate a discussion. The way forward out of conflict is for everyone to feel heard.

In the bdsm community (at least where I live and it seems to be a national conversation but I could be wrong) there is a lot of conversation about consent and what it means. How do you say what you want and get what you want without someone coercing or forcing you to do things you don’t want.

I’ll tell you that those of us who struggle with “normal” life are at a severe disadvantage here. We have to work a lot harder. If we want to escape additional trauma we should move slowly. Glacially slow. I promise you, if you wuss into the community and slowly get to know people and don’t play for six or twelve months of getting to know people… in the scheme of your life that is not time wasted. That gives you a chance to really decide what you want to do.

Go to play parties if possible and watch people play. Go home and masturbate. Think about what things you like and which things made you feel uncomfortable. Avoid the fuckers who think “pushing limits is the best kind of play.” Maybe for a very experienced player with no psychological issues. Not for newbies. Not for people who struggle anyway.

All bdsm will throw you off balance. Your chemical balance will go all over the place. During play and right afterwards you may feel euphoric. Don’t expect that feeling to be permanent. It is often followed by a “crash” and depression. When your body is depleted of all those fun chemicals it is hard.

Figure out your aftercare. Aftercare is a real and serious thing. Aftercare is how you will take care of your brain and body in the few minutes, few hours, and few days after a scene. You will probably need different steps. Prepare nourishing food. Sit around cuddling under warm fuzzy blankets. Read your favorite soothing books. Listen to music that makes you feel safe and like you are a great person in the world.

Read books and websites. More research!

I think that is most of what I’ve got at this moment. Of course here is the obligatory reading list:

(Anything from Greenery Press)

Particularly: The New Bottoming Book and The New Topping Book both by Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton.

Playing Well With Others by Mollena Williams and Lee Harrington

Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns by Philip Miller and Molly Devon

I happen to (luckily) personally know Janet, Mollena, and Lee. I have known them for a very long time. They are some of the most brilliant and inspirational people I know. I trust them absolutely without question or I would not send you to their books. I don’t know Philip and Molly but that was one of the first books I read and it stood me in good stead.

BDSM is about the people doing it. The people who are only into tickling count. The people who are only into bondage with NO PAIN count. The people who want to do roleplay rape scenes count. The people who want to have no roles they play but they stand there punching each other count.

What do you want bdsm to mean to you? The sky is the limit. But be careful. Watch yourself. I want you here for many years of kinky fun. You can be monogamous or nonmonogamous.

There are no rules beyond “Everyone must consent”. Go have fun.

I was also asked some particular other questions: do you have to have fetish clothes? No. You don’t have to have them. Many people think they are fun. If you go wearing basic black you will be fine. Avoid running shoes. I bought my first fetish items at Hot Topic.

I came into the bdsm community many years after I was diagnosed with mental health problems. I think that it would be different for people who were involved in bdsm before their trauma. For me all of my life has been post-trauma because it started so young.

Don’t hesitate to get into bdsm at any age. I know hot, festive people playing in their 70’s and 80’s. I hope to be one of them.

You say you want people to visit you yet you have no time; what gives?

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Great question. How can I whine fucking constantly about being overscheduled and lonely at the same time. Totally reasonable to wonder about.

Ah! You assume me being “scheduled” implies social time! Well, some of it is social time. But an awful lot of the stuff that is on my “schedule” is work.

If I don’t schedule when I will do gardening work… it doesn’t get done. I have a crisper drawer full of daffodils and tulips. Those need to get in the ground in the next ten-ish days or I won’t have a spring crop. They had to sit in the crisper for approximately six weeks. I have to put “gardening day” on my calendar or I will have wasted a shit-ton of money on bulbs. I can’t just have stuff in the house and hope I will get around to it; I don’t.

I put “decorate for _____” as a scheduled activity.

Some days my scheduled activity is “go to therapy” because after therapy I’m kind of a wreck. I often spend hours crying and I can’t really change gears to “go do” something else because I can’t sustain the attention. Is it pathetic? Well, whatever. That’s beside the point. It is what happens. After therapy I need to cry and cry. Will I ever stop feeling crazy? Will I ever feel in control of my body? I don’t know. So I cry.

Some days we have home school events scheduled. I take it pretty seriously that I have to provide social interaction for my kids. They must get to know children. So I can’t be a hermit-crab. So we have home school park days and occasional outings and one day I invited people over to make gingerbread houses (which will involve two scheduled days of preparation in advance to *make* all the fucking gingerbread so I have to be home and working those days).

So when I say I am “scheduled” I don’t always mean “with people” or “with friends”. (I am maybe moving in the direction of friendship with some of the home school moms but mostly I try to not be offensive because I need my kids to have access to their kids. I may *like* a lot of the home school moms tremendously but being around them is an anxiety train wreck because I am so afraid that they are going to start hating me and then they won’t let my kids play with their kids and it will be all my fault. It is nothing resembling rest to hang out with them.)

I have a day set aside to pack for the Portland trip.

I have two days devoted to gentlemen doing work on the house. Plumbing and building an insulated wall behind my garage door because holy crap do I need my garage to be useable this winter instead of being a fucking refrigerator.

I have a trip to Portland that will take ten days and a trip to Texas that technically only takes three days but with packing and a rest day afterwards (our flights are late at night–the kids will be crispy fried) that is more like five days of commitment.

If you want to know about “social time” I have two friends who are coming over for tea in December. (One will be gluten free–which takes extra thought preparation for me.–TOTALLY worth the effort.) I have a friend who comes to dinner on Wednesday nights. Someone else is coming this weekend. I scheduled an open house in December. (I think that at least ten people will show up. I’m excited.) That’s my me-social-time till the end of the year.

I talk to K every day on the phone or I go absolutely crazy. That is one of the biggest supports in my life.

I even schedule days where the kids get to decide what I have to do all day because otherwise they feel ignored all the damn time. (They aren’t ignored… I talk to them all day while I’m doing other stuff but they really wish they were the center of the universe AT ALL TIMES.) I have to schedule playing with them because I am so tired all the time. If I don’t schedule it I don’t do it. That’s how spoon management works.

So that is how I can be overscheduled and lonely at the same time. I don’t see much of my “friends”. But I get a lot of work done.

feelings exploding.

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I’m having a lot of intense feelings. Oh well.

Today I will go order cakes. (Multiple birthday girls = multiple cakes. I think people who ask kids to “share a birthday party” and who then make them share a cake aren’t very nice. I mean, I get it from a financial point of view… but I have birthday issues.)

I feel intense anxiety about letting Calli pick the guest lists. She kept stuff very small. She doesn’t like lots of people around. When I asked her do you want to invite ____ she said, “But we have too many people! We can’t play when there are too many people!” Standing her next to my oldest child it is hard to understand that they have the same DNA. Calli likes to interact with about five people at a time and she defends that boundary with very sharp sticks. Shanna wants to invite half the western hemisphere over to hang out.

Part of adapting to them is letting Shanna have big parties and then I have to get over my guilt at not inviting everyone we know to Calli’s parties. She started listing kids to invite on her finger and when I asked about additional grown up names she said no. I have to not feel like I am slighting people. It’s hard.

We will also pick up more lumber. Looks like the playhouse will have all but the final shade covering and paint by the end of today. That is thoroughly exciting. 🙂

Today wonderful people are coming to my house to make the big pile of concrete and debris go away! My yard will be dramatically less dangerous in only 24 hours! YAY! I worry a lot about inviting children to construction zones. My kids get hurt a lot. We’ve had many bloody feet from stepping on screws and nails. Luckily this experience has taught them that when mom says, “This is an important place to wear shoes” they have stopped arguing. The cuts were worth it. Ha. (I am normally very tolerant of being barefoot. I only break out shoes for a reason.) But I don’t need all of our friends-who-are-children going through the same right of passage at my house. 🙂

I wanted to go visit my friend’s baby today. Instead I will fill buckets with tiny little chunks of concrete and carry them from the back yard to the front yard to the big pile. The more I get out of here today the less I have to deal with later.

Today I will hang up the swings for the kids in the back yard. I am unlikely to hang the adult swing today. I am told it involves blocking the original structure and whereas I’m not an idiot and I could cut wood and do the blocking I have only hand saws so I kind of wait for the dude with the power saw to cut all the wood. Lazy woman.

Every year or two I decide to do home improvement projects. I basically always have a party scheduled as a deadline or I just..never…quite… finish… It is effective but stressful. In the future I need to remember that I should be the only one racing a time clock. No one else wants that stress.

I have September and October on the board. Neither are all that scheduled. I think I am going to deliberately not schedule more. I need to regroup. I need to think hard about who is likely to still be in my life in twenty years. Who should I be handing my energy resources to? Where will it have long-term pay off? It is mercenary, selfish, and the only way I will make it to the end of my life without hating everyone in the whole world.

For most of my life I have indiscriminately helped anyone who needed help. If someone I barely knew needed help moving I was there. Things like that. I’m not saying I have a lot of help to offer. I’m saying I have specific resources. When I hand them to people I will not have an ongoing relationship with I get a little boost but mostly a big drain of energy.

Mostly I like doing a lot of anonymous paying-forward of good things. I think that is what makes the world go round.

I’ll get back to it. It is important to me to help people I don’t know. It is a spiritual thing. But I have limited ability to just do that. Right now what I am trying to do is build community. Most people join a mostly-existent community and then try to fit in. I can’t. I am wholesale constructing my own. It is slightly different. It is a more conscious thing. It’s more work.

Taylor asked why I don’t write about him more. Because he is so deeply entrenched in my life at this point that if I accidentally hurt him by processing something in front of him then the repercussions are bigger than I can handle. I have had evolving opinions of his wife. (Never bad–I have certainly not thought DTMFA or anything.) I recognized her as disabled years before he was willing to say so out loud. That means I need to keep my fucking mouth shut because it isn’t my body or my life being impacted. My view of her is irrelevant and may make her or her husband angry.

The lines around who I can talk about and when and why shift dramatically. Mostly I find out the boundaries by no longer having friends. I get fired a lot. I’m used to it. Other people tell me that I should stop writing then if I am so rude and offensive and I want to have friends.

When I stop writing I substitute cutting and other forms of self-mutilation. I write because this is the closest I can come to convincing myself that I am important enough to not be in pain. I can see patterns and understand things when I write. I can also drive off all the people who don’t actually like me any way. It’s a double win?

I am not smart enough, clever enough, fast enough, whatever enough to deal with my emotions without writing. Well… I can. I can force myself to be silent. I can not, however, at this point, actually keep all of my pain to myself. Maybe that makes me whiny, self-absorbed, and stupid. I have to live with that. I have to live with the fact that the only people whose opinion I give a shit about would rather be offended by my writing than count my scars. They don’t need to see the growing evidence of my stoicism.

If I could cope in a different way I would try that. I have tried lots of things over the decades. Cutting and writing are the last bad coping methods still standing. I try to tell myself that my writing isn’t that bad. I worry about the future. I worry about getting to a place where I know that my writing just upsets everyone and it is all my fault for being such a bad stupid bitch. I will stop writing then. At that point I don’t think anyone will ever be allowed to see me naked again. I want to move on from cutting my thighs so much. That was how I hid it as a teenager. Now when I am upset and I think about cutting I flirt with hurting my breasts and my belly over my ribs and my calves and… I’m pretty sure that if I go down that path there is only one way for it to end.

What would it take for me to stop believing that I should die in order to make everyone else’s life better? I don’t know. But I’m not there yet.

Why bother?

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Some stranger on the internet found my blog and is leaving comments on entries from years ago. “If you feel so broken why did you get married and have kids?”

Well it was that or kill myself. I took a chance on life. I took a chance that I could manage to not break other people the way I was broken. Maybe it was hubris.

more questions

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From Resurrection After Rape: 

How often do you think about your rape, and do you ever feel like you have thoughts about it that you can’t stop?

It varies a lot over time. I can make myself busy enough that I don’t think about rape for weeks or even months at a time. But there is a physical price tag to staying busy enough. Usually after such a stretch I get ill and have a lot more flashbacks than usual for a while.

Mostly as I go through life I have a few days a week where I can’t stop thinking about rape. It is in some corner of my mind churning and churning. Why? What is all this “rape is about power” bullshit about? I think about Noah raping. I think about what that means a lot. I think about that kid Jeremy. The 17 year old who sodomized me. That seems more clearly about power. With my dad I think it is safe to say it was about power. With my brother Tommy it was very much about power.

I think about poor Michael. He didn’t want to have sex with me. He did it because he would suffer if he didn’t. Was his cousin really the rapist? Why don’t I think of his cousin as a rapist? He fucked my mouth until he came. I think that qualifies as rape when the female involved is a crying seven year old.

Yeah, I think about this a lot. Being around children constantly makes me think, “When I was your age I was ______”; “When I was your size someone _______.”

Tonight I had a conversation with my shaman. We talked about whether or not children should be afraid of their mothers. I told him that I believe that mothers have a moral imperative to consciously try to be not scary to their children. Mothers certainly are able to scare their children but they should consciously choose the opposite. Unless there is a damn good reason then go full bore and scare the ever loving shit out of them. No half measures. Don’t dick around at the edges. Have a god damn good reason for what you do.

I don’t know how to stop the thoughts about rape. A lot of them are not thoughts so much as random spasms of pain. It isn’t real pain it’s a weird phantom pain. It is the memory of pain. All of a sudden some stupid little neuron in my brain misfires and I feel suddenly as if I am being raped again and it hurts. It really fucking hurts. But it doesn’t really hurt. I’m just crazy.

I think a lot about being almost seven years rape free. I say it to myself a lot. More than six years. Almost seven years. This is a good trend. I want this to continue. No more rape. How do you stop being raped? Have I really stopped? Did I just lengthen the time between rapes? Oh god.

I’m scared of the travel I want to do in the future. So scared I sometimes have brief ideas of killing myself rather than facing the danger. Not really. That sounds way the hell worse than I mean it.

This whole depersonalization thing is hard to explain. I spend a lot of time feeling like I’m not really fully alive. The idea of dying is very comforting and easing and like it would be a positive step. Relief. When I am really scared I know that the only way to stop being afraid is to die. I will be afraid until I die. I believe that and weep with the knowledge.

I don’t kill myself every time I am afraid though. I think about it. I see it in my head. I watch movies about how it would happen. The rape is very much tied up in this. The physical somatic sensations generally trigger a whole bloodbath in my head.

And I can’t talk about this. I don’t talk about this. Pretty impressive, eh? Only I slip sometimes. Then I’m reminded that I’m BAD BAD BAD. I have traumatized someone! I am abusive! What a fucking monster. I should be… whatever. Moving on.

What kinds of nightmares or memories do you have about your rape?

Whoa. Not a good question to ask me. That’s a flood. I have a lot of memories. Thanks to THC I don’t dream any more and I haven’t in a long time. I consider that a blessing. I used to have terrible nightmares. I have a variety of different memories about the rapes. Some of them I have what I think of as a “movie” in my head. I watch those experiences from a very third person point of view. I was older and better able to dissociate at will. I don’t have very many physical memories of those experiences but I can tell you uncanny details about the physical spaces.

I have a lot of physical memories of the early rapes–the stuff with my dad. I feel like there isn’t enough steel wool on the whole god damn planet to wipe the feel of his touch off of me.

Michael is one of the most real to me of all the rapes. That was a transitional one. I was seven. That was the first vaginal rape with a penis. I had a serious crush on him and I had been following him around for a couple of months. I wanted him to like me so much. I have a lot of very intense memories of the entire relationship. It’s vivid as pictures and sounds and smells and I can feel him in a way I can’t with almost any other rape. I’m not sure why that one imprinted so much more than anything else. It’s not like I can remember every aspect of being seven that clearly.

That one is coming up more as the kids in the home schooling group are all heading for that age range. I have a lot of troubling thoughts when I see them. I keep my mouth shut. I keep my fucking mouth shut.

How does thinking about rape make you feel and why?

Scared. Angry. Those are my two main emotions. Scared because I genuinely feel like my life experiences are such that it is stupid to believe I am actually post-rape. I feel like there is a very low chance I will never be raped again in my life. I feel with every fiber of my being that the only way I can ensure I am never raped again is to be dead. That makes me very angry and makes me feel very scared.

How hard is it for you to talk about your rape?

Well I can write all night long. I don’t speak about it well. My throat closes. Or I go emotionally flat lined and I can say anything shocking I want. I won’t get emotionally invested because I know that I have to be monitoring the people in the room and pull back on my commentary any second now or I will get in a lot of trouble for being bad.

I don’t actually get in a lot of trouble any more. Well, I lose a high number of friendships. I suppose that counts.

What, if anything, makes you afraid to talk about rape?

I’m afraid of being abandoned more. I’m afraid of being told that I am boring. I am afraid of being told that I say the same thing over and over and no one gives a shit. I’m afraid of being told that I am stupid and it was all my fault.

Who have you told about your rape and why did you tell them?

Err, everyone on the internet. Why: because we like you! Err, because I feel like my head will explode from how much it hurts to have all of these things in my head and not be allowed to talk about them. I am not allowed to talk about them. If I talk about them I will be abusing people. I just have to shut up shut up shut up shut up. But I can’t seem to still my fingers. It is one of those weeks. I was on good behavior last week. It has a toll.

What did they say or do about it?

Err, not much. I mean, some people have been more or less supportive in conversations. But what is anyone going to do about it? (Besides go leave a review for my book. Seriously people.)

How did your rape make you feel about yourself as a person?

That I’m a worthless white trash whore and I had better fucking get used to it.

How is your rape affecting you as a person right now?

Well I have serious worries about the stress load on my internal organs. Being inside my body is not fun.

What thoughts do you sometimes have about yourself because of the rape?

Well if I had never been raped the likelihood of decades of suicidal ideation was lower.

What do you wish people knew or understood about the rape so they could help you now?

This one really is the kicker, isn’t it? What do I want from people? What do I want them to understand about being assaulted? Well, I want to be allowed to exist as a really damaged person without being shamed. I want to be worthy of consideration. What help can people give me now? I honestly don’t know. The folks who visit are really awesome.

What is the scariest part of writing about the rape?

I have never received a death threat due to my writing. I sometimes wonder if it is only a matter of time.

 

There are a bunch more but I’m tired. Goodnight.

PSA: Exit plans

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Sometimes talking to people makes my heart stop.

If your partner knocks you down that is domestic violence. That is something (s)he can go to jail for. If you do not know this already: please learn it from me. Your partner is not allowed to knock you down. Your partner is not allowed to knock you down. Your partner is not allowed to knock you down.

If you have a partner who has done so then you need to find a coffee can and dig a hole in the yard. You need to start hiding money in that coffee can because there is the very real and escalating possibility you will have to leave in the middle of the night or you will be killed.

I wish this was hyperbole. This is statistical fact. There are very distinct patterns to domestic abuse.

Does every single person who knocks his/her partner down once kill them? No. Of course not. And one is allowed to forgive such a thing happening once. We are human beings and we fuck up. We are allowed to forgive fuck ups. You can maybe even forgive the second time.

By the third time you need to have an exit plan. You need to have a diary where you record every incident of violence along with the date and time and description of what was going on before and after the incident. You very seriously need to find a way to hide cash. I’m not fucking kidding. If you are financially dependent on someone else you need to have as much cash physically hidden as you can. Multiple thousands of dollars if you can. If you can’t put that much in a can to hide then take $20 out of every paycheque.

You deserve to be safe. You deserve to not be hit in your home. Your children deserve to never see their parent get hit.

If your partner hits you and you need a place to go in the middle of the night, call me. If you have my phone number then you are welcome to show up in the middle of the night during an emergency. I swear to god.

Everyone should feel safe in their home.

Dear anonymous person on the internet,

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You challenged me on Twitter. You told me that Occupy was dead and why should you care about some guy being tortured by the Police in Maine–it’s not your government.

Given that we live in a country where part of our civil war was based on the fact that some states were engaging in inappropriate activity and other states decided to stop them… I can’t imagine not feeling like part of the United States. Maine matters to me like California matters to other people.

Do you think that everyone else in the country watched the Rodney King riots and thought, “Good thing it isn’t my government doing this to someone.” Whoa. I can’t understand that thought. The militarization of the domestic police force is of enormous national concern. It quite literally keeps me up at night. How the police act in one city influences how they feel it acceptable to act in all other cities.

I have been thinking for days about how to talk about this subject. I have a strong tendency towards tl;dr so I’ve been struggling to find a pithy argument. It is quite frustrating that someone on the internet argues with me and demands a counter argument but I can’t count on someone to read more than three or four hundred words. That’s not an argument it is an exchange of theme songs.

For me, not caring about the police in Maine is like someone in Germany not caring about the first few train loads of Jews being abducted. I understand that I just lost this argument based on Godwin’s law. I spend my life living as if I am one of the first ones called. I can’t afford to think that the first few groups of people the police harass are acceptable collateral damage. My life won’t let me think of any situation like that.

I have had extremely damaging run-ins with police in my life. White trash whores are not really respected by local police forces–they decided who and what I was before I hit puberty. They were not interested in protecting me from rape or sexual assault from childhood. I live enmeshed in rape culture in a way that very few people can understand because very few people have more rapists than fingers.

I believe that a boy being tortured by the police in Maine matters because I have to believe that I would matter in his place. That it wouldn’t be ok for them to do it to me. I live in a time and a place where I can not have the hubris of saying, “Oh it wouldn’t happen to me so it is ok that they do it to someone else.” If they were going to do it to someone they just might do it to me. It wouldn’t be the first time I have had my rights taken away and I’ve been strapped down by government forces.

I understand that my life experiences are unique and unusual. My opinion intensified by one hundred after having children.

My then three year old marched with the Port Shutdown in Oakland. She remembers Occupy. We talk about it. I was one of the first people at the General Strike port shut down. I watched the thousands of people stream into the port. I watched what happens when people say, “It doesn’t matter that you say this doesn’t effect me and I should shut up–I have a voice and you can not silence me.”

I hear that Occupy is dead. I do not believe this. I believe that Occupy lives in the heart of every person who will not be silenced. This summer I will be painting a mural on a neighborhood fence because some kids keep putting graffiti on it. The elderly lady who owns the property is not up to maintaining a fence free of graffiti. I’m going to use neighborhood children to help me paint.

Occupy is not just about living in tents and existing to annoy city hall. Occupy is about seeing something in your community and trying to fix it. Maybe I would feel less personally connected to the boy in Portland Maine if I had not just mapped out how I would drive there a week before seeing this video clip. I was specifically planning on going to that city. In my country. In my car with my kids. How could I not feel like what happens to him matters to me?

Why should you care? I haven’t been able to figure out how to convince you. I ask that you be polite about my belief. I should get angry when the government tortures people because it is wrong. That is just how the world should work in my head. Ok, that’s as pithy as I can manage. You see why I didn’t respond on Twitter.

Early Childhood Sexual Assault, Anger, and Parenting

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Another one found me. My tribe. She asked a bunch of questions and I don’t want to directly lift her message because I didn’t ask permission first and she was all polite and stuff.

How do we deal with this anger? How do we teach something different? Are we doomed to teaching our daughters to be screaming harpies just like us? How do we get out of bed in the morning and manage to not kill them all? Yes, yes they are the reason we keep living so of course we don’t really want to kill them.

First and foremost if you are a survivor of ECSA you should almost certainly be in therapy for the entire time you have children living at home and maybe for the rest of your life. You were taught bad things for your brain and body during the formative period of your existence. Overcoming that is a conscious choice every fucking day for the rest of your life. Sorry.

Ok, maybe someday it will be unconscious but I kind of doubt it.

What do we do with the anger? In my opinion step one is examining your anger. Why are you angry? Anger is a signal that something is crossing one of your boundaries? How does that work for you?

I’ve done a lot of work on my anger. I’ve written a lot here about that over time. What I mean by “done a lot of work on my anger” what I mean is I understand when I am getting angry because I feel trapped and helpless because in the past I was trapped and helpless. I have learned that I get to say, “I don’t like how you are touching me, please stop.” I have learned that I get to say, “When you speak to me in that tone of voice it sounds to me like you are angry–am I hearing you correctly or am I over reacting?” And “Right now I’m having a lot of big feelings and I need to go feel them for a few minutes before I can talk to you.”

I get mad at my kids. I yell at my kids. I do more of it than I want to and I feel fear about the future when they you know… actually talk back. Parents yell at kids because parents feel out of control. I have a lot of control issues. The primary reason that I am making a lot of the parenting decisions I am making is because I am doing my best to lower the number of places in our lives where I feel like I “have to” make my kids do something. I don’t have to make them get up at a certain time. I don’t have to make them eat. I don’t have to make them do their homework. I don’t have to make them… whatever.

When I yell at my kids I try to cut myself off in mid-screech and apologize and leave the room. Me yelling is not about them. That’s the first step.

If you are yelling at your kids because they are doing something you don’t like it is your fucking problem as the adult to apologize for losing your temper and being an asshole.

Seriously. Yelling won’t solve a fucking thing and it just makes you an asshole.

Should I say that again? I’m an asshole. Sometimes I yell at my kids because I’m an asshole. I don’t yell at them because they are bad. I yell at them because sometimes I am an asshole.

Ok. Now that I’m clear on that part. In any situation where a child has done something that bothers me I need to first examine why I’m so pissed off. What boundaries feel intruded upon? Why do I feel the need to scream? Am I inconvenienced because I don’t want to clean up a mess? Am I upset because I feel they wasted something (like throwing food all over the floor or if they cut up expensive clothing [it happened]) I need to first think, “Do they have any schema in their brain for understanding why I would care about this?”

Most of the time… maybe? Not really? But my kids are little. They are two and four. As they get older this will be different and more of a struggle.

Once I figure out why I’m freaked out I need to figure out how to fix it. Usually I need to be in a room by myself for a few minutes to calm down once I’ve started screeching. Then I come back and talk it out.

“I’m sorry I screamed. I felt surprised and overwhelmed by how much work I anticipate having to do. Yelling wasn’t the right answer. Were you doing an experiment? How did this come to be? Ok. We do need to clean this up. Will you please fetch _____?”

I try to have a calm conversation as we are going about the clean up process. I HAVE BIG CONTROL ISSUES AROUND MESSES. I said that in capitol letters because I understand that it is my issue and not everyone shares it. I’m kind of standing on the table and reminding myself that my issues are not anyone else’s problem and I get to do that in my journal. So there.

But my kids have to live with me. So I have to teach them how to be respectful about public spaces. I also have to calmly, politely, and with great fucking patience teach them step by step how to clean up after themselves. If I huff and do it myself then they are not capable of doing it in the future. That’s just plain bad planning. If I’m all nice and shit to my kids while they are little I hear it pays off.

Kids fighting. This is something we are just starting to get to. I confess that I am going to have a very hard journey through sibling rivalry. You know that expression, “I hope you die in a fire” as a way of expressing that you hate someone and want them to suffer? Well, that’s how my brother died. He covered himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire because I prosecuted my dad for raping me. Ok, not because. But it was in the five month period between when I pressed charges and when my dad killed himself the morning the trial was to start. I found out about both deaths through a screaming hysterical phone call from my oldest brother as he told me both deaths were all my fault and he hated me. My sister encouraged me to be a whore, take drugs, and submit quietly to being raped by the guys in my family.

I’m going to have an awkward journey through sibling rivalry with my kids. I’m just saying.

Lately my oldest has been in a phase where she constantly wants to play “let’s race” then she will circle the other player for a while chanting, “I’m the winner and you’re the loser.” Of course this is in a sing song voice.

My youngest responds to this by hitting her older sister and saying, “You so mean.” Good for her.

Ok, that’s not what I say in the moment. But it’s what I’ll say in my damn journal.

In practice I talked to my oldest about the kid up the block who is just a little motor cross champ in training. This girl is a year older but she rides her bike really well and can take jumps off a ramp and she practices all kinds of stunts. She’s going to be quite the bad ass in a few years.

I asked my oldest daughter if she would like it if her friend did the same thing to her about bicycle racing. Obviously the neighbor is going to win every single time they have a bike contest given that my kid can’t even ride a bicycle properly. I asked if she wanted to be taunted and called a loser. She looked horrified. I asked her why she thought it was ok to do to her sister. She apologized and offered a hug.

I talk to my therapist about losing my temper. Her response is her most fucked up clients are people who had parents who always controlled their anger. It’s normal and healthy to get mad. What matters is how you handle getting mad. Do you blame your kids? Do you tell them that you wouldn’t get mad if they ________. Whoa. What an inappropriate amount of responsibility to put on a kid. Really on anyone.

I have issues with being lied to. If someone habitually lies to me I tend to get angry to the point where I kick holes in the wall and then I stop dealing with that person any more. This has been a frequent pattern for me. I can’t do that with my children and all children lie.

I’ll tell you the truth and say that one worries the shit out of me. I don’t have a good plan yet. We’ll see how things go.

Will you ever have peace? Well… what does peace mean for you? It means something different to everyone. Yesterday I had a moment of Zen.

I was out in the garage in the morning before anyone woke up and I was feeling panicked and scared and like I will never be worth anything at all–my husband really wants me to work on that word “worth” and deal with what it means to me–and I will never be able to accomplish anything and I will never be good enough and I will never do anything that makes the world a better place. I am just a fucking waste of oxygen.

Doesn’t sound like a moment of Zen does it?

Then I stopped the whole cycle of suck for one moment.

My father was a severe repeat offender. He raped many children. He is dead because of me. He stopped because of me. Because of me my father was not able to pass his warped values down to my brother’s children. My still-living brother hates me for taking his daddy away.

I had a moment of complete calm. I did make the world a better place. It was hard and it was scary and it involved a great deal of pain and making a lot of people hate my guts. It involved having to break the bonds of family. But I did it. I made the world better and safer.

It’s not hyperbole. It is simply and literally true. How my father and brother chose to die was not my fault. I hold no responsibility there. But I stood up and told the truth and I said I wouldn’t be raped any more.

I am an angry person partially because it took sixteen years before I could get my father to stop raping me. Over twenty-three years I was raped by twelve people. Because I was taught to go find people who would treat me that way. And they can smell blood in the water. They know I am not good at stopping people from hurting me.

I believe I should be in pain. It is one of the basic under pinnings of my world view. I don’t truly believe that consciously but if you look at my life it is clearly true. At every stage, at every age I have hunted hard for ways to hurt myself. I have cut myself, burned myself, found friends who believe that whores don’t get to say no, and boyfriends who like to hit their girlfriends. I made sure it was “bdsm” and I “consented” because do you know what happens when I say “no”?

Someone holds a taser to my vulva. True fucking story. That’s what god damn happens when I say, “I don’t want someone to use a cattle prod on me.” The response is “Well this is a taser. Here you go!”

Do people like me ever heal?

What the fuck does that mean?

I haven’t been raped in years. I’ve told my husband that if he ever rapes me again I will not only divorce him I will make sure he rots in jail. Not because I think he has plans to do so. But because that is something that I have to be prepared to do in defense of myself.

I have to believe that I do not deserve to be raped. I have to believe that I do not deserve to be in pain. It’s the only way I can teach my children to not believe that they should be raped or in pain.

It’s complicated.

Do you know how you teach your children? The vast majority is unconscious. They just watch you. They watch how you are an adult taking up space in the world. They watch how you let people talk to you. They watch how you talk to people. They watch what you tolerate and when you say, “Hey I deserve better.”

They watch if you think the way to handle a disagreement is to fly off the handle and scream.

That part sucks ass. I’m just saying. I feel like a total douchebag sometimes. I apologize.

My children are aware that a long time ago stuff happened to me that changed how my brain works. Once I get into an emotion like anger/sadness/frustration I have to consciously work on changing that because my brain wants to just stay in that rut. It’s not because of them it’s because of stuff that happened years and years before they were born. They are not the reason I get so mad and I’m really sorry that sometimes it feels that way. Let me excuse myself into time out for a few minutes so I can come back and do this like a nice person.

(For the record I rarely smoke during these time outs because I think modeling Get Stressed = Do Drugs! is a bad idea. Even though I gosh darn want to. That’s why I smoke on a schedule so that the kids don’t associate outbursts with needing anxiety meds. And I now have a vaporizer! It has been here for twelve hours. Uhm, review later.)

I’ll be honest that I tell myself “I lived through twenty years of hell. I can do twenty years of kind of frustrating.”

Because really… the kids are frustrating. They aren’t bad. They aren’t malicious. They aren’t evil. They aren’t hurting me. But they frustrate the shit out of me sometimes. That’s ok. Learning to deal with frustration is probably good for me.

Or something.

When you go find a therapist you have to be hella picky. You need to interview the therapist and decide if this person has an attitude and approach to like. When you pick a therapist you are essentially picking a surrogate parent of sorts. A guide towards more appropriate behaviors. You get to pick which therapist will be able to guide you in a way you want to be guided. You don’t have to become a born again Christian just because some shrink tells you that is the answer to your problems.

You are unique. Your attitudes, your beliefs are things I don’t share and I don’t understand. I don’t know what kind of support you need. You have to find a therapist who will be good for you… so I don’t know exactly what advice to give.

I tell therapists during the phone screen: “I need you to never flinch. I need you to be a blank wall. You are not allowed to say, “Oh no” or “You poor dear” or any other such commentary or I will leave and not come back. I do not need to be mollycoddled. I need to be able to talk about my traumas so you can help me learn to work around them not so you can minimize or avoid them because they make you uncomfortable.”

It weeds out a lot of people, let me tell you.

Comment policy

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Yesterday I was told that someone would like to leave more comments but she feels weird asking questions about one sentence out of a six page piece of writing. If she can’t address the whole thing she thinks she shouldn’t comment.

I very nearly reenacted something I did often while teaching. I would collapse to the floor and start rolling around and beating my fists on the floor while moaning, “If you have questions and you don’t tell me I CAN’T ANSWER THEM. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”

It was a thing. I did it many times while teaching. It always shocked people and made them kind of jump back at first. But then they laughed and started asking more questions.

It is kind of awesome that home schooling gives me a permanent excuse to simply think of myself as a teacher. I stopped thinking or referring to myself as a dancer within months of stopping that activity. I don’t think I will ever stop teaching. I love teaching. If I say something you don’t understand, for the love of shiny green apples please ask me questions.

You don’t understand. I fucking live for this shit. I don’t want to be an enigma. I want to be able to explain things better than I currently do. I want to be a better teacher. If I am confusing people then I am not yet a good enough teacher. I need to know that. I would love to know where and how I am confusing so that I can be less so.

Please don’t feel silly asking me questions. I may not answer them instantly and (if I know you in person) I may be happier sitting you down to explain it in person rather than in writing because tone sucks so much in writing. BUT I LOVE ANSWERING QUESTIONS. Seriously.

Have you met me?

The loyalty trap

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Recently a friend tactfully and gently pointed out that the way I write about family isn’t exactly standard. The kind of help I think I would get is fairly unusual. I couldn’t name a close friend who has the kind of relationship I write about wanting. No one has family who just shows up to take care of you–that isn’t how things work in America.

To this I reply: Ahh. You think that I have a mental model of a healthy family with boundaries. Hahahahaha. No. I come from a crazy enmeshed codependent family. What I talk about wanting is what I have seen. I get my longing for family from watching how people treated my sister having kids. Quite frankly folks worried about her being incompetent and immature. So they just showed up and helped. My mom did. My aunt did. My brother did. I did. Sometimes cousins helped too.

I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately trying to figure out what I mean when I say “white trash”. I’m trying to figure out how to explain it. Some day I want to have a concise definition that really explains what it means to me. I’m not there yet.

Movies I have streamed on Netflix recently: Winters Bone, The Poker House, The Burning Plain. All featuring the same actor (Jennifer Lawrence) and I feel kind of weird about her going on to be an action star. I probably won’t get around to watching the action movies any year soon. I care about the depictions of violence and family.

If you care about movie spoilers don’t read the rest of this post. That is your warning. That said, I think all three of those movies would be useful for people who want to understand me. Of course none of them is exactly right but there are interesting elements in each.

In Winters Bone she is trying to track down information about her father. She has to ask nosy questions. She lives in the Ozarks and she has to pester extended kin that don’t like to be pestered. She gets beaten by a group of women who do it so that her uncle can’t get mad at the men. There is this strong pressure through the whole movie that the police are the enemy. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. My family used to do drugs like that. These days everyone has prescription meds.

In The Burning Plain you see seemingly disconnected stories that eventually make sense. It’s about mothers and daughters and feeling invisible and accidents and hating yourself and running away to deal with how much you hate yourself. Charlize Theron manages to look as empty as I feel. The way she self harms, the way she runs away because she is bad… yes. I understand that.

The Poker House is the most recent one. It is based on Lori Petty’s actual life. (The chick from Tank Girl.) Holy shit for shoe shine. My mother never prostituted herself and my mother never did drugs in front of me, so I had a very different set up than this movie. Nevertheless I had similar levels of neglect. Similar kinds of being abandoned in unsafe environments. I thought the rape was extremely well done and non-graphic but accurate. That is the truth. That is how fast and how easy it happens. I actively dislike the fact that Lori Petty’s take away message is “Don’t hold a grudge–forgive people for hurting you because they were hurt too”. To that I say: “Bullshit. I have children to protect.”

When I gave up on my family I gave up a lot. I gave up a support network that hasn’t worked in years and fucking loves hanging out with little kids. My family loves children under about eight. They are still cute and fun. Especially little girls. And my little girls are so angelic and wonderful that they would have done well.

But three people in my family have told me that my sister sexually abused them. I have fairly good reason to think that my kids would be good targets for her. The price of all the support is that you have to keep your mouth shut and understand that “people make mistakes” and ignore horrifying behavior year after year. If you need the support and you cannot survive without it this is the bargain that must be made.

I don’t fucking need the support that bad. I can sit home and cry from being overwhelmed instead. It’ll all work out. They are less overwhelming by the month. Shanna is much better at picking up after herself and my life is getting much easier on a day by day basis. Before too much longer they will actively make my life easier. They want to. They understand that doing so leaves me with more energy to do the things they want to do. Their mama didn’t raise no fools.

My sister hasn’t had a job since around when Shanna was born. She was laid off and lived off unemployment. I have the general impression that they are waiting for my mom’s social security to come in. She’s going to get my dad’s because they were married long enough. I think that is totally fair and it means that her retirement will be the most financial security she has had since divorcing him. I hope she finally settles down. I hope my sister isn’t molesting the kids she baby-sits. That’s what she does with her time. She stays home and takes care of little kids so their teen moms can go to school and/or work.

But I know she is a pedophile. I know how inappropriate she was with me. We didn’t have sex. But she did start telling me when I was four years old what I had to do to relax my anus so anal sex didn’t hurt so much. It was actually a thing for me for years. I didn’t manage to successfully have anal sex until Noah. (Violent sodomy as a small child doesn’t count. No, I didn’t relax enough to make it hurt less then either.) He was the first person who could work through that fear. A number of people tried before then. It always hurt too much and the hysterical crying freaked people out.

I felt specifically bad and like a failure because I was not able to have anal sex with the people who wanted to before Noah. I have had a lot of intense feelings of lack of worth because I was not able to do what people wanted. I was supposed to.

My sister is probably really who taught me this. I think she was the main consistent source of this. She talked about sex all the time and had sex in front of me and consciously and deliberately told me what I should go do.

I can’t play the game any more. She’s not ok. And my children do not deserve to be exposed to her.

But I’m losing out on cousins who fix my cars. And cousins who know how to help with plumbing. And all the free babysitting I want. And holidays full of people. And a niece and nephew who really need my help.

I can’t play the game any more. I’m not at the bottom of the shit hill any more and I won’t allow them to set the terms of reality. I just can’t. But it is hard.

You know how I moved around a lot as a kid? I was often staying with relatives. I didn’t know them well and I didn’t stay long so I never got to know them… but they took me in. Over and over. My family takes care of children. They would have been very happy to know my children.

But it’s a trap. It’s all or nothing. You have to play the game and keep the silence or you are out.

I’m out.

Guys aren’t the only predators

1 Reply

(disclaimer! I only share private emails without permission if they are nasty. I asked if I could share this.)
This was all an email sent to me by a friend/former lover (emphasis his):
“I get self-conscious about posting comments on your blog. I don’t want to post anything that would make you uncomfortable in public, like some of the things I say in this comment… so I don’t. This is what I wrote:
About getting to “yes:” What if a woman climbs on top of me and starts tearing my clothes off? Despite the fact that I am, like, a 3 at best, this does happen occasionally. Generally, I am so shocked that I can’t speak a word at all. Do I need to get a verbal yes from her? Does she need to get a verbal yes from me? How do I know who needs to do the asking and who needs to do the consenting? I suppose everyone should ask and everyone should verbally consent. But then, no woman but you has EVER verbally asked for my consent.

About you: You are not optional. I’ve sometimes been around you and not liked the emotions I was feeling, but in the end being your friend has never failed to make me a better person, and that is my criterion. Throw you under a bus? NEVER EVER. And I’m certain I’m not the only one.

Be well. May I give you a big, big hug? 


Krissy, I am terribly frightened about my friend I told you about who said I was creepy. She’s my best friend in Ithaca, and I know I haven’t raped her because we’ve never so much as touched. But I think I leaned WAY into her and did the emotional equivalent, whatever that is. I need to learn that consent is not just for sex. I spent all this week 3000 miles from home being horrified at myself as the emotional realization of what I had done struck me. It was the worst Thanksgiving ever, for both of us. I seem to hurt everyone I ever care about and I can’t stop hurting them. I think that being human might be the unlimited capacity to hurt others. 🙁 
She reminds me of you. If I have EVER hurt you in any way whatsoever that we haven’t talked about and resolved, I am really sorry for whatever it was. I never mean to hurt you.”
Ok! I’ve been thinking about this for six days. Hopefully that is enough time to digest my thoughts. We’ll see. First of all I am a lot harder to make uncomfortable than this. Heh. I love comments and questions. They validate my existence. 
Second: rating your attractiveness then self-denigrating is beside the point. If multiple women have climbed on top of you and pulled your clothes off there is virtually a 0% chance they rate you so low. So when you turn around and do so you then you are handicapped in being able to respond because you are not thinking about their actual motives. That’s not helpful.
Third: if women are climbing on top of you without your consent, how do you feel about it? Are you upset? Is this something you want to make go away? Is this something where you wish you understood the mechanism because HOW CAN I MAKE THIS HAPPEN MORE?! I can’t tell exactly from your message. It seems to be something of a mixed blessing for you. 
If someone is climbing on top of you and moving full stream ahead there is *no reason* for you to freak out and worry about consent in my opinion. In my opinion the more passive “moving slowly” person (regardless of gender) needs to give consent. 
In my experience most sexual scenarios start out with one person being sure and the other person being convinced. Because I have frequently been the more interested party that is why I ask for consent.
I am pleased to hear that you remember me asking you for your consent. That means I did it properly. It was memorable. You were god damn sure you wanted to fuck me before I started doing things to your body. That’s the proper way, in my opinion.
If women are doing things to you that you don’t like, please for the love of shiny green apples, tell them to stop. No woman is owed a ride on your dick no matter how attractive it is. Seriously. I am not making fun of you even slightly. You do not owe a woman anything. Ever. If you are not enjoying everything that is happening then say no. 
Given what I know about you I think that some kind of assertiveness training might be helpful. You live in an area of the country I know little about so I can’t tell you specifically where to go. Non-Violent Communication might be good. If you were here I would tell you to go to HAI (Human Awareness? Institute–something like that) because HAI is all about the naked touchy feely and learning to have boundaries. I think you would fit right in but I don’t know if they exist where you are.
I had to sit on this for a week because I had to sit here and think really hard about what I think guys should do if women are initiating sex too quickly–boy howdy that happens. I’ve had men tell me to slow down in a wide variety of ways. Some of them respectful and some of them not. 
I have had times when I was being very sexually aggressive and the guy in question put his hands on my hands and said, “As much as I am enjoying this–because I really am–I want to get to know you a lot more than I know you right now before we do this. I’m not feeling safe.”
On one hand I kind of felt like I had been smacked in the face with a big trout. On the other hand, I didn’t take it personally and I didn’t feel bad. He didn’t shame me. He didn’t act like I was doing something bad. He acted like I was doing something he probably would enjoy… after knowing me for longer. I’m absolutely ok with people telling me that. For someone else to tell me what makes them safe is for me to be able to say what makes me safe. 
I’ve had guys pull back and say, “Ew. Why would I fuck a troll?” Those guys should be smacked. Just sayin’. Don’t be like them.
How should you deflect if you aren’t enjoying things? I’m shitty at polite/tactful rebuffs. For this I commend you to other places on the internet. (Maybe Captain Awkward?) I am good at forceful rebuffs that freak out people who weren’t trying that hard and are barely effective against predators. It’s uhm, not a great situation.
Does that at all answer what you were thinking about? You don’t need to feel guilt whatsoever. If you are the more passive partner during sex FOR THE LOVE OF CHRISTMAS DON’T FEEL LIKE A PREDATOR. I don’t care if your bits are innie or outie. That’s not what decides power, control, or aggression. Or even just plain selfishness.
On to this other friend you have. I don’t know. You are prone to be very nasty to yourself even when you don’t deserve it so I’m having trouble judging how bad this is. You might be feeling like it is a 9 on the scale of awful and she might think it is a 2. I have no way of judging. You assume people get extremely angry with you and hate you pretty frequently (I have a lot of sympathy for this paranoia) but I haven’t seen much evidence of it in your life. So on one hand I’m being kind of dismissive but not totally.
I don’t know how bad this is. I don’t have enough information. I believe it is possible that you leaned in and made her uncomfortable. Should you be crucified for doing so? Oh good grief no. I have ridiculous personal boundaries and I don’t crucify people who stand too near me. So I counsel finding a middle ground there.
Have you talked to her? Have you said anything along the lines of, “I have been following the cultural norms for behavior I had previously been taught. I’m getting the impression you have different preferences. May I ask you for assistance in determining how I should shift my boundaries to make you more comfortable? It seems like right now I’m doing stuff that bothers you and I’m not sure what it is that I’m doing and I’m not sure how bothered you are.”
Yes, I talk like that.
That’s all I’ve got about her.
Oh good grief no you’ve never hurt me. You are a gentle, kind, compassionate man. You have taught me a lot of very interesting and useful skills (backpacking, survivalist, physics, relationship skills) all the while being far more physically appropriate and kind than almost any man I’ve ever been involved with. Do you not understand that part of the reason we didn’t have more of a relationship was because you were so nice to me and it made me wildly uncomfortable? I don’t know how to act with passive kind men. I always feel like I am stomping on them and hurting them. So uhm I ran away.
No, you never hurt me. I think you are wonderful. I am so thrilled that you are married now. I think your wife is a very lucky woman.
No, you never hurt me. You were very very kind to me. Thank you.

I should have seen this coming.

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I have had several men ask me in the past day if they would be on the list of people I pulled into a room to “have a talking to”.

I can’t answer and that is really intense feeling. I want to answer. I desperately want to. I want to be able to absolve of guilt. I want to be able to hand down sentencing.

These aren’t my secrets. If I go about telling men, “You but not you” then I risk revealing what has been told to me in confidence. The women who have confided in me did so with the rock solid belief that I would never betray them. I have to continue to earn that trust even though it is driving me insane.

I can’t answer any of you. I can’t say, “Oh of course I haven’t heard anything about you!” because even if that is true–that just means I haven’t heard anything. I can’t give anyone a gold star that says, “Certifiably not a rapist” unless I go talk to every partner you have ever had.

Unfortunately in my little world the burden of proof isn’t that I haven’t yet heard anything. I have to know it is true or I won’t say it is true. The emotional burden of guilt from being wrong is simply too high. The absolutely strongest recommendation I can give is, “I haven’t been told anything about you.”

And even that reveals the fuzzy outsides of what I have been told. It starts to narrow the field. What if guys start comparing notes to see what I said to whom? That’s completely conceivable. How can I maintain confidentiality that way?

I just can’t respond about this topic. Not really. I will respond to each of you individually (probably after finishing this blog–I haven’t been at a computer since I hit post yesterday) because I appreciate that you are someone who cares about my opinion. But I can’t answer this question. I just can’t.

My honor doesn’t look like the honor everyone else carries around but I will defend it tooth and nail. I gave my word that I was a safe space for these women. I can’t dishonor that.

Even though I want to go beat some people over the head with big sticks because of what I know. I have to keep my fucking mouth shut. I have to smile and give that asshole a hug when he comes up to me at a party because if my behavior radically changes towards him he will probably figure it out.

I can’t out people.

I can tell my secrets. I can tell my secrets all day and all night. I can write or scream them as much as I want. I can’t tell other peoples secrets. That is an individual journey. If someone is forcibly outed that becomes a new trauma. It can’t be a healing process. I don’t get to hurt people like that.

The shape of this community role was actually discussed in my last therapy appointment. She asked me what I take pride in. I told her that I take a lot of pride in the fact that traumatized women find me and feel comforted by me. I wanted and needed someone to go to. I had no one. I have become what I needed. I work very hard at it.

Maintaining confidentiality is part of that. I cannot be trusted if I cannot keep my fucking mouth shut.

Have you noticed how hard it is for me to keep my fucking mouth shut? Oh man.

I was asked several specific questions by a good friend that he felt self-conscious leaving in comments here (totally ok!) about how consent works. He has had a very different set of life experiences than me (women don’t tear my clothes off much–at one point in time I was very upset about that) and he has to cope with things I haven’t imagined yet.

I think it is going to take a couple of days before I can fully answer the questions. I don’t want to give a half-assed reply. I think it deserves serious thought. When men I already love bring me questions about how they can better understand consent in their life I feel a great responsibility to answer in a way that is a)useful b)non-harmful to the man (they do matter too) and c) something that has an actual set of logic behind it.

Thank you for caring about my opinion of consent. I am going to think very carefully and answer you fully. I don’t want to be unclear or unable to explain my thinking. I hate it when I do that.

I have a ridiculously busy day off-line ahead of me. It is going to be a day that combines a wide variety of different high anxiety situations for me. But a kind of anxiety that centers around am I really good enough to be the person in this position in this interaction?

Today I have the opportunity to have a sit down with an eighteen year old girl with borderline personality disorder who is getting into drugs and casual sex via the internet. When she leaves me she is going to stay with her Master overnight.

I can barely stop myself from rubbing my hands together with glee. I have trained for this. I can’t control her. I can’t decide how her life goes. But what I wouldn’t give to have had someone like me when I was that age.

Then I get to go to Dickens Fair and apologize to the friend who kind of catalyzed my leaving Facebook because I deeply value the relationship and I don’t want their to be hurt feelings over my deleting the stupid account. If I can’t keep my emotions in check it is my responsibility to deal with the kinds of input I allow into my life. Facebook, for a variety of reasons, makes me significantly more unstable. I need to eliminate it from my life. I’m sorry she was the one standing closest when I noticed but it is really not her fault.

And she is one of the fucking coolest people I have ever met in my whole life and I don’t want to drive her away because I am crazy and unstable and dramatic. How about if we just have those in person interactions that make us both feel good about ourselves. Facebook is not good for me. It’s not about her. I have those kinds of issues with lots of people online. I don’t read tone well. I hear it with the voices in my head.

Pretty much all the voices in my head hate my guts. Everything I read comes through that filter. It’s very hard to circumvent.

I like in-person interactions. They are real. They aren’t about me fighting with my ghosts while someone else is trying to have a conversation.

I don’t want to detonate that relationship for a laundry list of reasons. In person I don’t freak out about what she says to me because I can hear her voice. I hope that it will be ok that I can’t handle facebook.

Sometimes it feels very humiliating dealing with the limitations of my brain. That is what this is. I have to accommodate what I need even though I am having a completely irrational reaction. Whatever. I can’t rational my way out of it. It happens over and over uncontrollably. The only thing I can do is remove the stimulus.

And then enjoy people in person instead of clinging to facebook as a way of holding on to a thread of contact. I can’t weave a tapestry out of those threads. I need the in person. I need to change what I have been doing. I hope this turns out to be a positive step.

And even if that friend decides she can’t handle my drama (reasonable) I will still be at Dickens with someone who has a current higher thresh hold for my shit. I will accept the grace while I receive it. She knows she is chaperoning me so that I feel safe.

That’s a pretty big gift. I need to walk through the day feeling that gift. When I feel really scared I know that I was given a participant pass by one friend and another friend is keeping the dark at bay. I am not the untouchable I believe I am.

These lies will pass.

Don’t ask me questions if you don’t want the answer.

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You asked me what I am thinking.
I don’t know how to answer.
I don’t know how to tell you what I am thinking.
I am thinking about death.
I am thinking about status and privilege.
I am thinking about how I am a whiny bitch.
I am thinking about how hard it is that I have to fuck you in order to get cuddling.
I am thinking about how frustrating it is that I can no longer disassociate away from my cunt hurting like this.

I’m thinking about how sad I feel that when I talk about privilege my white male friends think I am saying their experience and life doesn’t matter. The fact that I have quietly sat and listened to them for many many many years before standing up and saying that they have to listen to me too–oh well. I am being unreasonable.

Sometimes it feels like I am supposed to stop existing so they can have all the space there is. They will certainly shout me down to take up all the speaking space. But I’m imagining things. They’ve never said anything sexist. They are victims just as much as anyone.

We are all victims. But some of us are victims making $100,000/year and some of us are victims making $20,000/year. Not me. I make nothing. But it’s a choice. I could have been making $60,000 right now because I have benefited from a lot of privilege. Not everyone gets to make the choice to be worthless. Most people work as hard as they can and are still told that their efforts are worth very little money. That means nothing. Those people are just lazy. Or stupid. Or something. Just less.

Oh I forgot. You have what you have because you worked harder. You wanted it more. You deserved it more.

I won’t talk about it again. I’m sorry I mentioned that it sucks that you had help that other people don’t get. I’m sorry that I mentioned that it sucks that you had a life I can’t really imagine having.

Yes yes. Being ignored and made fun of is terrible. I know. I had that happen too. In between people chasing me with rocks and sticks. Yes, someone punched you once. I understand that is terrible. I’ve been punched too. It really sucks.

I think that seeing as how I am supposed to only talk when you want me to and only think what you want me to and only fuck when you want me to…

I don’t think I want to be here. I feel stupid. I feel petty. I feel as selfish as I am. I don’t want to be here to continually tell you how awesome you are. I’m tired of being a fan club. I’m tired of being a cheerleader. I’m tired of telling you that you are so awesome and so smart and so worthwhile.

Because I don’t hear you say it back to me unless I badger the shit out of you. And then it’s grudging. After I’ve given you what you want.

I think that if I am stupid enough to pick a life where I am dependent on someone else then I deserve what I get and what I don’t get.

That’s what I’m thinking about.