Category Archives: body stuff

Oh god, no

Last night I had the most vivid nightmare I’ve had in years. I have mostly managed to get rid of my nightmares. My sleep problems are usually more related to digestion than nightmares. But last night… last night was horrifying.

In my dream Noah leaned over and told me that he was going to kill me. I told a few people but mostly blew it off. Later in the dream… he killed me. Slowly. By inches. Laughing the whole time.

And I feel very much like I don’t deserve comfort. Like I would deserve it if it happened.

I don’t think this is my magic pill.

Med symptoms?

Folks are noticing that I’m surprisingly impatient. My body feels incredibly stiff. My boobs hurt like a motherfucker. My boobs hurt like engorged with milk hurt. Oh man. Apparently Latuda stimulates prolactin and can cause lactation. Oh joy. While it does that it prevents pregnancy.

Just where I want to be heading.

What does “dating” mean anyway.

I kinda had this epiphany yesterday.

“Hey Noah. Have you passed up chances to play with Beautiful?”

“Not really.”

“Meaning you take them any time they come up.”

“Yeah.”

“And that’s been happening for eight years. Yeah. You’re dating.”

But not dating in a way that scares the shit out of me and causes me to have panic attacks and freak out. Because it’s very low key.

It was just funny to think about. Because if I’m dating my submissive… I have only had like two more dates with him than Noah has had with Beautiful and I’m definitely dating him.

WHY DO WE HAVE TO USE THESE WORDS. FUCK ALL THE EVERYTHING.

But I don’t think this idea that Noah isn’t going to date is tenable. It’s a nice idea. But yeah. It’s not going to be uhhh accurate. Right now the person he is dating is comfortable with it being at the whim of my mental health (thank you, thank you, thank you) but that’s a messy thing. I don’t want to be the weather vane controlling everyone’s lives as I go up and down the roller coaster.

Oh fuck everything.

The more honest with ourselves we are about what we are doing the less likely it is to blow up.

WE AREN’T DATING WE ARE JUST VERY GOOD FRIENDS WHO HAVE VERY INTIMATE CONTACT. FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS.

Yeah. You just tell yourself whatever the fuck you need to say to get through today. The truth will still be sitting there.

Dating.

What does dating mean anyway? I used to get so mad at my Owner when he would say he hadn’t dated someone. I was all, “You had a three month period where they were at your house three nights a week. You dated for a brief period.” “Oh but it wasn’t serious dating so it’s not dating.” That conversation made me want to break glass.

Thing is, Beautiful is mostly happy with group dates where they just split off to play for a while and otherwise we are together. I like that. I like that a lot and I’d like to see if anyone could fit into a similar sort of role in my life. If these people want to come hang out with us when I am pregnant and miserable or in the babymoon year…

I wouldn’t be alone this time.

I mean, I’m not going to be alone this time. I have the big kids and Noah works from home. It is going to be different from top to bottom. But the kids aren’t company and… Noah still has to ignore me for a large chunk of the day. That’s fine. I miss talking to more people.

Ironically one of our children said, “We should name the child (Beautiful’s real name) because that is a beautiful name.” I think this person is in our life. Ya’know…

loved working retail. I was good at connecting with people all day long one right after another. Being home is…. hard.

And begging friends for play dates is hard work. Mostly everyone is too busy. Or they only want to get together under some narrow parameters outside the house because they don’t want me in their house so they feel uncomfortable coming to my house. Sigh. I’m totally ok with always hosting. I don’t feel imposed upon. I feel catered to.

I feel really really guilty asking people to drive to me all the time. The road goes both ways and I should offer to reciprocate. But I really don’t want to. So I’m asking people less. Because I’m feeling bad about asking.

What is dating? Dating is an extra layer of “It is ok to inconvenience me as you ask me for something.”

Why do I think things with Beautiful aren’t just casual play partners? Cause when I ask if things will escalate when I’m pregnant and not interested he does that head duck thing where he doesn’t want to admit I’m right.

I guess it is good I haven’t managed to chase off every woman who was interested in Noah. Sigh. I swear I wasn’t trying.

I wonder if ADD meds would help with my urge to self harm. A quick search says it is inconclusive. I’d be happy to give it a go.

I don’t know if I want to continue Abilify. I still am not convinced it is doing enough positive. An inch of improvement isn’t worth it. And the kids say I’m getting crankier.

Ok, here’s some blatant honesty. One reason I have always harshly rejected the label of poly is because I have known some extraordinarily bad parents who happened to be poly. It is more important to me that I nail being a good parent than that I nail any other role. If I’m a bad wife, girlfriend, friend, whatever. I can live with that.

I don’t think I could live with myself if I really believed I was a bad mother. I’m a harsh critic. I work really hard on my behavior for my kids.

I’ve seen people do poly really wrong. I’ve seen it hurt kids a lot. I’m scared of that. I’m really really really scared of that.

I like nonmonogamy. It means that our lives aren’t just sexually exclusive. It doesn’t really make any promises about the size or shape or definition of what anything inside of that means. It can mean a lot of different things and a lot of different levels of friendship and love.

What does love mean anyway?

It means I want Noah to be happy and not depressed. That means that when my body goes completely to shit when I’m pregnant… either I encourage him to see Beautiful more (he slept with a different friend during other pregnancies) or I deal with him getting increasingly depressed. These are the options. We’ve been through this dance. I know what the choices are.

But what about the absolute freaking out I do when he comes home? Meh. Even that is muted when I’m pregnant. I don’t give a shit about much other than how much pain I’m in. Bitch come here and rub my back. And my arms. And my feet. Just don’t stop rubbing till tomorrow, ok?

My shrink said she didn’t know if I could get over my fear of Noah dating in this lifetime. But if it has already been kinda happening for eight years… (I actually have a specific brain hack plan in place for how to deal with moving through some of this fear and we have a phone called scheduled on Friday to find out if we will be able to do it.)

Where is the threat?

What is the threat?

What is there to be afraid of. Other than that he will be too god damn enthusiastic when biting my neck.

OW

When I come out of feeling asleep from the breeding period, I wake up with a vengeance. Noah doesn’t do that. If he falls asleep again… waking up would be hard. He’s going to get very habituated to his depressed habits and that doesn’t suit my lifetime goals.

Where is my enlightened self interest here?

I woke up after 6 hours of sleep, and ended up painting by candle light starting at 3am. I’m tired. But I think well in this kind of tired. I read that is an ADD thing too. Deliberately exhausting yourself before you can focus. If this is a lot of what the problem is… I’m going to be so bitter it hasn’t come up before now.

I’m almost 35 fucking years old. I had problems all the way through school because I was a disruptive little snot. Why didn’t anyone ever suggest this?

Ugh. Anyway.

I’m going to add to the data form for the Stanford folk that I think Eldest Child has it. Both she and I only skip one to two markers per person. Different markers. We both kinda scream it. If you sit and read books about case studies that is. That whole super high needs baby thing? Yeah.

Eldest Child doesn’t look like me but she has a lot of my personality and physical weirdness. A lot of extreme sensitivities and fussiness about needing things to be just so. She gets overwhelmed, but I manage her overwhelm so well that it is practically invisible at this point. I would not want her on medication. She is learning to cope with her body and she’s doing great for the life she has now.

But I bet I could learn some tricks to help both of us.

And you know what? Adding people into our lives will be adding people who might know more about this disorder than I do. People who can help me so that I don’t have to be the expert on everything.

I’d be ok deferring expert status on a whole lot of shit. I don’t need to know everything in the world. Ain’t my job. I have enough jobs. I’m tired.

I’m told it isn’t my job to meet everyone’s needs. Believe me I know. But I still feel like what I have to offer is so very inadequate. I am so high maintenance. What do I offer that is worthy of such effort?

Inclinations

I’m running into a problem in my sex life. I’m closer to a vanilla bottom a lot of the time and that’s some serious mixed signals in my little world. I like sex. I don’t need it to be that harsh. I don’t need to be hit all the time. I really totally don’t fucking need to get pinched a bunch. My body lives in a lot of pain a lot of the time. I spend a lot of time trying to manage my pain levels. Getting hit is complicated.

But I’m a masochist. I really am. Sometimes it is the best thing ever.

I’m not that much of a sadist either. I have times when I get really super duper in that mood and when I’m in that mood absolutely nothing else will do…

But if you look at the last 15 years… I’m not a serious sadist. Lots of years involve no sadism and only a little bit of missing it.

And I’m heading back into another breeding period. My masochism and my sadism went on walkabout last time. I still like sex. And I want kissing like I want air. I want lots of gentle touch because my whole body is going to fucking hurt for nine months. I am not an easy pregnant person.

I’m even more weepy and sad and isolated feeling. I want my mother and I can’t have her and that hole in my heart eats at me so badly when I’m pregnant.

It has been hard for me my whole life that when I feel worst I am the most isolated. It happens over and over. If I’m sick… I’m usually alone.

I’m looking forward to a pregnancy with a work-at-home partner and older children. I hope it won’t feel so sad. I’m kinda hoping that we can find a way to have people come over that isn’t a problem.

I don’t know what the future will hold and I’m feeling like a huge selfish asshole. I’m worrying about my needs and I’m being really ungracious and fussy about other peoples needs. I’m not being generous or loving. I’m such a fucking asshole.

Part of the problem is I have a very long list of people who want me to consider their needs and feelings. They conflict–I promise you. I have to kinda prioritize and then where in the hell do I fit in?

I don’t know. But I’m sharp and difficult when I say no because I hate saying no. I feel like such an asshole. “Hey you are being brave and wonderful and asking me for this thing that is really important to you. OH MY GOD DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING TIRED I AM!?”

I can’t remember the last time I got more than six hours of sleep in a night. It’s been a bit. I’m dealing with 2-4 hours a lot of nights. What can be done about it? Well I see a whole bunch of doctors and I try what they tell me to try and…. here I am.

My shrink wants me tested for ADD because in her opinion it is not fucking normal to go on 2-4 hours of sleep a night, hold together (mostly) my normal life and have sex for an hour or more most days of the week. She says that is an excessive amount of energy. Really outside the range of normal.

I wouldn’t fucking know.

I am not as toppy during sex as some folks would like.

The other night with Sweet Boy he really wanted me to top all the sex. I could for a few minutes then I untied him and said, “No I can’t do this anymore.”

I don’t like running the fuck very much.really don’t like it much past the first or second time of having sex together. I get it the first time… I’m weird to fuck. Past that, I’m seriously a bottom when it comes to sex. And that passivity goes on turbo when I’m pregnant. I’m receptive but initiating feels so awful.

And if I have to tell you what to do and how to do it? Shit. I’d rather pick my nose.

No offense. It’s not about you. It’s about me.

When I quit my job when I was pregnant with Eldest Child I had severe nausea (I was puking multiple times a day) and I was falling asleep at work, in traffic… everywhere. I could not stay awake. A friend who was a nurse asked me what job I would go get instead because “gestating isn’t a job.”

Many other friends were… happy to share with me their opinion that pregnancy isn’t a disability and I should buck up.

You know what, motherfuckers? If you don’t live in my body…. shuddup. I god damn start out disabled. Pregnancy is a nightmare.

Pregnancy is horrible. And I’m looking at it again. I was kinda thrilled by the idea of never being pregnant again.

But baby.

I want the baby. I want the baby of my body. But I hate pregnancy. I am so sick when I’m pregnant. I am in so much pain. It is such a difficult process. According to natural selection I should already be dead from this.

But fuck natural selection. Science.

When I started looking for people to date I wanted play partners. For very sadomasochistic sex. Then Noah changed his mind about a baby.

That’s seeming like a dumb thing to hunt for at this point. I can’t live up to that. I… will really not be able to live up to that starting in a few months and it will probably be years before I’m back up to speed again. Shit. Shit. Shit.

I feel like I’m jerking people around and being a terrible person.

I went and had lunch with Daddy James. I wanted to touch base with him in a I’m-not-just-in-your-life-to-use-you-for-sex way. He told me it was ok to keep changing what I’m negotiating for because life keeps changing what I have to offer. Thank you Daddy. He also told me it is ok that I am difficult to put up with. People get other things in trade and it is worthwhile for them.

I don’t see how what I have for trade that could possibly be enough to justify putting up with me.

Especially as I’m about to revoke a lot of what makes me a fun toy. I’m not so fun when I’m not up for play. I’m… a lot more boring. Hey, let’s garden or watch Netflix. woo.

Noah wants me to take a month and date as much as I want so that he can experience the full terror and find out just how bad it is going to be. The kids are asking for us to be home 4-5 days/week with no visitors.

How the fuck do I balance that? I’ve got easily dozens of people I’d like to see who’d like to see me. Some of the activities they want to see me for are high energy and some are low energy and I’m kinda flipping out about both kinds equally. “Hey drive to my house and sit around” is just as intimidating as “Let’s do x super high intensity activity.”

OH MY GOD I CAN’T RIGHT NOW.

I want to I want to I want to but I haven’t got it to give.

What I have to give is very narrow and particular and time limited. Like, why in the fuck am I up at this time of night? Because three hours of sleep is enough, apparently. Fuck.

I feel so sad that I am so inadequate to meet the needs of the people I love.

I am inadequate. It’s funny how nonmonogamy is just a chance for me to feel inadequate with more people. Wheeeeeee

I can’t do/be what Noah wants and I can’t for anyone else either. I’m feeling really sad about that right now. I can’t ever be good enough. I can’t ever do enough. I will never be able to satisfy people or make them happy. I will never be enough.

I feel like I’m in a weird transition. I thought I was transitioning out of intensive parenting into more independence and abruptly… I’m in reverse going back into the most restrictive part of this job and lengthening my time of indentured service. What the fuck am I thinking signing up for thirty god damn years of home schooling.

Twenty years sounded awful enough.

Holy shit.

I was really enjoying the expanded freedom of the Bonus Family. That’s not really a thing for a few years again. I hope I will still get my Bonus Kids sometimes. I hope that maybe the older kids can go for a night or two a month still just a way of having “their” time and space away from being in baby-land. But I won’t want or need a couple of weekends. I’m sitting here with a baby anyway. I’d rather have all my babies around more.

Fuck. This is a huge change. This is a massive upheaval. Why are we doing this?

Because I can deal with transitioning back into the world in ten more years. If the IDB (incest data base) takes me a little longer… oh fucking well.

I want this baby. And Noah keeps saying, “Two?” I don’t know. I can’t commit to that till I get through a third pregnancy. But more than likely if Noah asks me in two years if I want another baby he won’t be able to keep me off of him.

Because yeah. I get quiverful. I get wanting more babies. I get it. I get it. I get it.

I’ve already had one person who is not-breeding say it’s ok if I replace them in the population. Anyone else want to volunteer as well to justify my second kid?

I’m not even joking very much.

Parenting is the one thing I genuinely feel like I am excelling at doing. I’m far from perfect but I adapt and I grow quickly. I see problems and I address them.

I think I could handle four kids just fine. I think it would be wonderful. No Pam, I don’t want to hear your negative Nancy shit. I’m aware that you are now a voice of dissent. Ok. Heard. Now don’t bring it up again.

I feel like such an asshole for being mixed when a friend told me she wanted a fourth baby years ago. Fuck. See, the ways in which I am an asshole always come back to bite me in the ass.

I should have said, “I support you.” I’m sorry. I did that wrong.

I know there will be problems. There will be problems with or without another baby. I asked the magic 8 ball and it is never wrong.

There will be problems with or without two more babies. That fucker was consistent in its answers.

Yes.

“Will there be problems if we have a baby?” Yes.

“Will there be problems if we don’t have a baby?” Yes.

“Will there be problems if we have two babies?” Yes.

I’m telling you. The magic 8 ball knows.

I don’t feel confident in the choices I’m making. A lot of what I can see is that each of my choices hurt other people for a cascading list of reasons. I’m not going to be available for what they want…. and I don’t even know how to say what I need.

I don’t know how this is going to work. I don’t know how any of this will balance out. Between the kids, Noah, me, and all the god damn people I care about how is this going to balance?

WHY DO SO MANY OF YOU BASTARDS KEEP LATE HOURS. THIS WOULD BE EASIER IF Y’ALL WERE AVAILABLE AT MORE LIKE 7-10AM!

Ahem.

Why isn’t everything all about me? Because it isn’t and it shouldn’t be. Even if I am the main character in my story… I’m not the center of anyone else’s story. Not even Noah’s. Not really. I’m his wife. That’s an accessory to his life and story not the point of the story.

I gotta be honest with y’all. When I think of what I’d like it’s not that much one on one date time. I’d like more people around and carefully managing people one to one… is a job. Especially within the framework of 4-5 days/week are just not options I wish that there were a bunch of people who said, “X day works for me. Are you free?” And it’s ok for me to say yes to three or four people because… quite frankly… that means that there is a lot of kinds of attention to give and get all at the same time.

That feels like Auntie’s house when I was a kid. Only no one checked if it was ok to come over in advance. They called and said, “You home?” then they came over. Auntie knew a lot of people. I loved my Auntie and of the people in my family she’s the only one I’d want to be even a little bit like.

She’s honorable. She takes care of people. She gets shit done.

She’s enabling as fuck and that’s something I struggle with emulating too much.

I’d like to have open houses on Friday’s. Some people can bring their kids with laptops and sleeping bags and the kids can have a LAN party before going to sleep. The adults can talk or play games. I’d like to not have to be careful about managing invites or treating it like a “party”.

I like to keep the house company-ready just as a matter of course so that having people over isn’t extra work. Then it is less stressful. Cleaning up for people feels bad.

It’s interesting reading this book on ADD my shrink gave me. Driven to Distraction. Reading it is making me cry because it sounds so much like me. Bits and pieces and here and there. But… it would make a lot of sense. My list of flame outs is long and inglorious. My self esteem is shit (at least in part) because I spent my whole life being told I was bad for the ways I deviated from normal.

My shrink is calling my psych to say, “Instead of an SSRI (which has a proven problem history) how about trying a stimulant?”

I’m excited to have someone case managing me like this. She’s known me for years and her feedback feels very useful when dealing with a prescribing person. I’ve always wanted a case manager.

Really I’ve always wanted a knowledgable pushy mother. Kinda like I am. Deep sigh.

Go be what you want to see in the world.

This biology shit is hard core. I want to be a parent. It’s the most important thing I do. I learn the most from it. I grow the most because of it. I have to or I will be a shitty parent.

I don’t want to be one more shitty parent.

I owe them more than that. Because I made them out of pure selfishness. I owe them every ounce of work I can put into being a good parent.

And I have a lot of work in me. How do I focus it more? What do I want to focus it on? My kids. For a lot of years to come they get the lion’s share. They deserve more than I have to give. That’s a lot of why I want to add other adults.

Beautiful tells me she will feel more free to invite herself over. Fuck yes.

I guess I did something right for once.

The Quiet One is an increasing factor. I don’t know what the fuck. But not saying anything here at all feels like lying because this is part of how I keep accountable with Noah. Fuck. I feel like this miraculous available during the week day, local, oriented towards care taking of children person just fell out of the clear blue sky and I don’t know what the fuck.

I really don’t. Because he has some boundaries that are going to make him tricky as heck to negotiate with in particular ways. It is none of the internet’s business because he’s going to be one who doesn’t want to be written about in the same way as a lot of other people I see. Some folks ask for more explicit reports. Some folks believe they deserve privacy. But there is a balance for me.

I don’t want to be a liar about what I’m doing. For good or for bad.

That road is straight to hell.

Kisses. More kisses. More kisses.

I go through waves of needing to not be hit because I need to not think I deserve to be hit. It’s complicated.

If you couldn’t hurt me I wouldn’t be interested. Danger. Danger. Danger.

This is why I like to schedule things at my house.

When it all goes to pieces, I still have chores to do. One of the difficulties in trying to be someone who organizes get togethers is… you have to deal with other peoples schedules. Whether I schedule in advance or at the last minute this sucks.

Yesterday we were supposed to have a playdate with five families. All bailed at the last minute. I think one is in labor (good reason to skip the park! Good luck!); another has to wait on a bureaucrat who is making her life hell (good golly that sucks. Good luck!); another forgot it was election Tuesday and oops she always works (ok, this one kinda bugs me a bit); another was just running behind and she could have showed up two hours late if we waited (no, I’m not gonna); last but not least one family said they were technically happy to show up… with hand foot and mouth disease–that cancellation is my fault.

But I was on my way to babysit other kids and see another family. Picking up a highly communicable disease on the way seemed rude.

Nobody did anything wrong. But it still feels hard.

Sometimes people ask me why I’m not more willing to drive for park playdates these days. I stop laughing eventually.

Because driving far from my house for a park play date is a variable experience at the end of a hard experience for my body. Nope.

Last time some of these folks missed a playdate I scheduled over near them and they asked if we could come back the next week to see them.

Funny how folks don’t generally say, “Know how we broke our plans? How about if we offer this super convenient for you alternative?” That’s not how it works. I offer to come to them and do a bunch of work and they expect me to just do it again. Because clearly it wasn’t that hard the first time so just keep doing it. But it’s too hard for them to come to me.

Ok.

I would like to take this moment and say “Thank you” to all the people who come visit me on a regular basis. Thank you for helping me feel like maybe I do have some value to someone.

Last night Noah and I had it out a bit more. This is going to be a rough year. I’m not writing them down here but I sure went down my list of done-me-wrongs. I did that after running four miles because I was afraid I would otherwise do something drastic and awful.

That’s like healthy progress, right?

It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss.

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What does it mean?

How do I fill my bucket without hurting Noah? That seems to be where we are stuck. Yesterday a solid 8 people asked me why I was wearing braces. I begin to understand Mitrian’s anger and frustration. I tell people because I type too much. They ask why. I say because it is better than screaming at people. They say, “Yes. Keep typing.”

I’m so glad to hear that more people agree that me harming myself is superior to me impacting other people with negative emotions. Now we just dicker about methods.

This became absolutely crystal clear to me when I was talking to someone about cutting the other day.

Cutting actually heals pretty easily in the scheme of things. I am permanently crippling myself in the name of self harm that is more socially acceptable. Because the only place I’m actually allowed to exist is here. Everywhere else is a compromise.

I’m having huge feelings about my date with Cupid not including any intimacy. I’m not upset that we didn’t play. I’m not even cranky about not having sex. He’s not a life support unit for a dick. But we didn’t hug or kiss. So I feel like I didn’t really fill my bucket. And that’s the date I get this month.

I mean, I feel like an asshole for feeling that way because I came off an excellent group date with Noah and Deity and playing with the Sweet Boy.

But that was my only option for one to one serious adoration this month.

Noah and I do adore each other sometimes, in the middle of being cranky and fussy. Right now it’s hard. I know we aren’t actually usually cranky and fussy but I am today and so it feels like always.

What is it that I need here? What isn’t being met? Why do I feel so empty and fussy and sad?

This is a brutal period. I am soaking through pads and that hasn’t happened since I was postpartum. I’m a light bleeder.

I feel like…

I feel like that stone that was sitting heavily in my breast got too heavy and burst through the lining of my body and fell through my organs and out my cunt.

I cannot give that gift away. It is not mine to give. I cannot make that promise. Probably not ever. I wanted to. I can’t. That is not a promise I know I can keep and not being a liar is more important than making anyone feel better for a moment. Even for many moments. Not if it comes at the cost of a lie.

I have been trying to see if I could find a way to promise that I would not end my life early by choice. I have been trying to see if I could find a way to make it bearable to carry this pain no matter what because it would be too selfish to leave the people who love me.

I cannot make that promise. I am selfish. And I hurt. I have hurt all my life. I have never been free from pain.

Some day I will have a bad day. That day will be too much for me. Yeah, there probably could have been more good days on the other side of that bad day. Probably. But I don’t know where my limit of carrying bad days is. That has to matter.

Do you have to be ok with it? No. Do you have to like it? No.

All that matters is that on the bad days I am alone. I will carry what I can carry until I can’t carry it any more and then I will set it down.

I need to not give a shit that it might hurt you.

Words and asking

Yesterday Noah asked me why I didn’t use my words to ask him for something if I wanted it. I hissed, “How well does that go?” He said that I get a lot of little things I ask for and almost none of the big things. I just about screamed, “That’s why I didn’t fucking ask.”

There is this story about my mom that goes around and around in my head. My mom got tired of having her little boys play with their Matchbox cars in the kitchen, the only non-carpeted room. She knew my dad would tell her no to ripping the carpet out of their bedroom. “It would hurt the resale value of the house.” So she waited until he went to work (he worked graveyards), put the kids to sleep in her bed, took speed, and ripped the floor up by herself. She had the laminate mostly installed before he got home.

I asked my mom why she didn’t ask him. She snorted and said, “If I ask then I get told no, then the consequences are big. If I just do it… he’s not going to undo it.”

I think that’s a lot of why when I decided I couldn’t be monogamous right now I said I just couldn’t follow rules and I needed to try stuff. I needed to see what felt right and not say no to things before I even really decided what I felt about it.

And that backfires. Like such arrangements do.

Sometimes. And sometimes it is absolutely the only way to get what you want at all. Yeah, I was a serious asshole. I really was.

I feel like the fact that my sex life has been entirely measured in someone else’s satisfaction for many years now has broken something in me. Something I don’t know how to fix. I’m bitter about how much “taking one for the team” I’ve done.

I guess the thing I’m getting from the team is physical support through disability. Oh.

It is interesting having a friend visiting for the weekend (sorry I’m puking) who is an absolutely ardent feminist. Of the take-no-shit-variety. I was doing my expounding on trying to figure out what I “owe” Noah.

She looked so pissed. I said, “It’s ok. Say it. Even if it’s mean.”

“I want to punch you in the face. You don’t owe him shit.” She went on at more length. But that bit is enough.

An awful lot of our relationship is predicated on transactional trades. We spend a lot of time talking about how much we owe one another. It’s complicated. It is a lot of what allows both of us to feel safe.

But there is no fair.

How much of everything in life has to be changed just because of one shift. I don’t know.

Yesterday I emailed all of my folks and told them I am not going to go out on a date again in May. We need to actually negotiate. This is involving some really long, rough conversations in person and a shit ton of livejournal entries on our private filters. There are things my kids don’t need to see someday.

I am so weird about boundaries.

I think that part of the problem right now is I have made a lot of deals over the years I probably shouldn’t have made. Not how I did. They took from me in ways I didn’t really have that much to give. And I feel long term hurt by them. And I’m feeling bitter. And I’m holding it against Noah.

That list of done-me-wrongs never needs to be part of the public record. That’s kinda like crying rape because you didn’t like the sex. The fact that these are in retrospect not deals I should have made…

That’s not something I’m going to publicly take Noah to task for. That’s complicated.

I made choices. I made choices I shouldn’t have made, but I didn’t know that till it was too late. That isn’t something to punish Noah for. But I clearly do.

Recently Noah made a list of shit he was holding over me (good god that. STILL?!?!) and I should probably do the same.

That won’t be public.

Noah and I are in a funny place. We both understand very clearly that if we don’t make this marriage work… we will just not ever be ok again. We won’t get over this failure. Neither of us would remarry and have more kids. We would date and be complete assholes about never trusting anyone again. This is… one of those things about our personalities. We both walked into this not sure that it was really a good idea to be taking a risk on even one person when we have been burned and burned and burned and burned.

When you learn before age 3 that you are not loved, not likable and all you are worthy of is abuse and contempt…

Trying once is really what you have in you. Getting over that is brutally hard. You can try once. After that it will be broken in a way that can’t be got back.

We get one shot at happily ever after.

No pressure.

To be fair most of the first ten years have been excellent. This really has been a good marriage. But some things need to change and how they need to change and what that shape will look like is… in flux and that’s god damn terrifying. Change sucks donkey dick.

I find it… interesting… that Noah is really willing to talk about a third kid lately. Yeah. That would put me right back on a choke chain. It’s true. I would go home with my baby again.

I want another baby. I’d see a high risk OB. I’d be at a hospital the whole time. I’d follow orders so I wouldn’t die. But… yeah. I don’t think it is going to happen for lots of reasons.

I know my friends are starting to talk to me about adoption but I’m really not done grieving the son I wanted to give birth to.

This is complicated with a gender fluid kid who really… is on their own journey.

I wanted to work through my shit with a little boy. I know that isn’t “fair” either. But I did. I have to grieve not getting that. I mean, I have a great relationship with my Bonus Kid and I’m really happy he visits more lately. But it’s not the same.

I have never been allowed to love a little boy of my blood. My nephew was the closest I came to that and… complicated. My brothers were violent monsters. I had no other family contact.

This is just a thing.

I dreamed about my son for years. Sometimes I wonder if I was dreaming about the sons I could have had with previous partners and that just wasn’t meant to be part of this story with Noah. I don’t know.

It’s complicated.

Yes I know there are lots of kids who need homes. They are going to have different problems genetically than my family. I don’t already intimately know what needs to be done to correct their unavoidable issues; I have researched everything that has touched my family extensively over the past fifteen years. It is going to be a very different very hard problem to work with a different child.

I am so tired.

Now that I have an almost 8 year old and an almost 6 year old, do I really want another baby?

Yes. I really do. But it isn’t going to happen. Sometimes I wonder if wanting space away from Noah is part of grieving that. He doesn’t want another baby.

I get why. There are good reasons. I feel sad.

Being a mom is kinda the thing I think I’m best at. I get quiverfull. I get it.

This is all so complicated. Because if Noah was all “Fine let’s have a kid” I’d be all “Bye side-boys. I’ll see you in 5-7 years.”

Even though the rest of the deals are still not where I need them to be long-term. I wouldn’t care.

Life is so complicated.

My biology understands that I exist to breed even if the rest of me would like to do other things with this meat sack.

People are so fucking weird. Even though I don’t really have the spoons to have a baby I would. I’d start trying this month if Noah consented. He’s about to be 40. Time’s a wastin’. I turn 35 this year.

But that ship has sailed. We need to figure something different out. Shit. That’s hard. It hurts.

We construct these careful houses where we can be safe. Do this, don’t do this. So we try to draw as little negative attention and as much positive attention as possible while maintaining stasis. We accept limits that may not be sustainable in service to particular goals.

I don’t know what sustainable means. I am not the best sustainer in the world. I work best in sprints followed by periods of collapse. Parenting that way sucks. So I have to be more level for them. Which is an interesting thing to balance. I can stay level if I stay small. Or if I get bigger with support.

I can’t be a bigger person and take up more room and get no more support and stay completely level. I can’t. [delete text that doesn’t go into the record].

I’m having feelings.

Thank you to everyone for the extent of the “I know you two will solve this” message I’m getting from a variety of folks. From folks we date/play with to other friends. It’s kinda funny. I feel all y’all believe in us far more than I do right now.

Thank you. I need you to carry that belief for a bit. It is hard for me.

Part of being able to construct your own reality rests on the basic requirement that you must be able to believe in what you are doing. I have a pretty good reality distortion field. But it’s flickering and I feel like I am not able to believe in what I am trying to make true.

I don’t know how to feel more safe and open right now. I feel closed off, defensive, scared. I’m not negotiating from a mindset of generosity. I have a scarcity mindset and I feel so tired of always having to take one for the team.

But Noah takes a lot for the team too. I’m not acknowledging that enough. We have both been running deficits for years. It isn’t just me. I… I don’t even know where to begin in this negotiation. This is so hard. Do we make lists of things we have been missing/pining for and then rank them in importance?

How do we deal with time? Is it about how much time we spend together? Is it about “how dare you spend time with someone else?”

Honestly I was out too much at night in April. I wasn’t touching base with the kids the way I want to. I have arranged all the night time babysitting we are going to have till the end of July, I think. I’m not going to go out more than that. No matter what it is for.

This time with my children goes so fast. If I miss much of this time I can’t ever get it back. I don’t get a second chance. I do remember that priority.

But I don’t ever get back the chance to have the sex life I want to have in this life either. If I just… don’t… that’ll be a thing.

How much do I want? I don’t know. Honestly given how busy my life is… I literally don’t have time for as much independent dating as I did in April. That’s going to kill me. No hyperbole. My body will give out if I don’t sleep more than that.

What does sustainable mean?

What is a need and what is a want?

I feel like I need to have some kind of nonmonogamous contact in my life. What that is… I don’t know. I think the need level is probably actually fairly low. I think one date a month probably would be ok. I’d like to go to parties at other times and be allowed to play then. I could accept having to play together. That would be fun to figure out. It would change who we play with somewhat and what kind of play we do. Maybe?

I can deal with evolution. I don’t have to play how I used to play, not exactly. I don’t anyway. So much has changed.

I feel like I did need to go try. It was wonderful and I’m really glad I got to be reminded of what SM means to me. And I got off a lot.

I do need some of this in my life. I may increase how much I need as my children need me less.

For now I do know that my time and energy is still… mostly going into the kids. I choose this. I want this. This is who I want to be. When I finish growing up I will be able to look at incontrovertible proof that I can sustain something. I need to see the real evidence of that before I will believe it. I’m not even halfway there yet. Don’t get cocky, wench.

Hubris is dangerous.

I have about three more years till I hit the halfway point. I believe I have about four more years with Eldest Child and about six more years with Youngest Child to teach them what they need to know to keep themselves safe… or they will have to learn it on their own painfully. That’s my window. Either I help them establish the habits that will carry them through a lifetime… or they have to learn them later, painfully, on their own.

Development is a funny beast. I’ve studied it a lot. I have incredibly strong opinions about brain development and attachment and behaviorism and emotional health and mental health and…

And I get one chance to do this right. Period. If I fuck it up I will forever more be trying to heal damage I caused.

No pressure.

I love unschooling. I’m not even being sarcastic. This is my kind of pressure chamber. I thrive under this specific kind of “Succeed. There is no or else. Succeed” pressure. I just… do it. Ok.

If you can’t find a way you make a way. The most resilient people are the ones who believe they have no choice but to make something work.

This whole “owe” thing is complicated. I get the anti-feminist bits of it. I do. But you probably don’t see how much it gives too.

Ugh. Systems. They exist for reasons and some of those reasons are good and some are shitty. WTF

But I really do need to think about this “you don’t owe him shit” thing. What do we choose to owe and what is being extorted from us? I think that is the more crucial distinction. I think making conscious trades and feeling indebted for them is not specifically evil. I think that having someone extort recompense for trades… is a problem.

Where is the line?

Shit monogamy is easier. You give what you have to give and that is that. Kinda end of discussion.

I NEVER EVEN TOOK CALCULUS. FUCK THIS ADVANCED VARIABLE BULLSHIT.

My kids are asking me a lot of questions about Lemonade. Yes they get to hear it with the swearing. There are some fucking subjects that deserve swearing. The work is to figure out context. We talk about that a lot. Code switching is a big topic around here. If you maintain super formal “nice people” manners 100% of the time… a whole lot of people will think you are a snob. Having multiple kinds of approaches to talking to people is handy.

I said to a friend “We only fight about nonmonogamy.” The response: “So you only fight about sex.”

Ok, yeah. That’s true. Not money. Not kids. Not housework (if I start feeling peevish about not getting enough help I can ask for it and get it with great civility).

Sex.

Sex is so annoying.

WHY DO I LIKE HAVING SEX SO MUCH!??!?!?! Sigh.

I really do.

I like what happens in my body when I’m having sex with more than one person. I like it a lot. I like what it does to my general energy level. Is it worth this fight?

Yeah. It is.

If we are going to be married for many more decades… I’m not spending them always taking one for the team. I need my sex life to be about my pleasure.

And pain.

I’m pretty sure I know who I want to hurt on a longer term basis. I am less convinced I know for sure what I need from my bottoming/submitting/etc. I have some idea of pieces I’d like. But are those all needs? Not really. I could be pretty flexible. I could adapt.

I am weirdly conscious of how much of my sexuality formed around my Owner. I’m ok with lots of those buttons shifting. I have no attachment to them staying where they are. But I need them moved and not just… ignored. If that makes sense.

I am a cheerful situational pervert. I’m happy to please the one I’m with. I don’t need all aspects of my experiences to be the same.

I’m not the kind of fetishist who collects the garments and sized toys that all future partners will wear one right after another.

But I’ve sure worn a lot of them. For a little while. I have never been willing to do that for very long.

I don’t like anyone that much.

Do you know why some of the awful stuff between Noah and I really doesn’t need to be published? It’s bad enough that I’m an abusive bully. I don’t need to publicly humiliate him. That’s a very different sort of line. I say some awful things some times. It’s bad enough that he can hear it in his head. He doesn’t need to see it. And know that lots and lots and lots of his friends are going to see it. Know his children can read the things that hurt him the most.

Oh JesusFuckingChrist No.

No. There are things that can’t be taken back. I can say that things are hard for me. I can’t list done-me-wrongs. Not publicly. No.

owe my family better than that.

See how the owe is complicated?

It is useful and problematic at the same time. Just like me.

Drug report: Gabapentin

I took 2 pills at 8pm. I was in bed and asleep before 9. I woke up at least two times but I think three. Noah says I was not very asleep past 1:30. But I feel like the fact that I was able to get back to sleep at all past 1:30 was pretty good.

I had severe pain in my chest. I don’t know how to describe it. Words are hard. It was in the top left hand side of my ribs. It felt like several muscles around my ribs started throbbing and burning and I don’t know what. Where you can grab the ribs and put your hand around them on the top part, right under my boob.

Chest pain is a worrisome side effect. But I’m not 100% sure this isn’t part of Cupid bruising the shit out of my ribs. (Yes, you bruised the shit out my ribs.)

I’m not sure how I feel about this med. I’m not sure I should take a daytime dose today because I have to drive. But I don’t have to drive for many hours afterwards. I’m worried because it is my first day. I maybe will wait till tomorrow when I don’t have to drive. I have literally no idea what daytime impact this will have on me.

I really don’t want to die on accident because a med made me not-alert. So yeah. I’ll wait till tomorrow to find out how this feels during the day.

I’m happy with the sleep. It isn’t my best ever but it is definitely in the better half.

Boundaries on and off screen

I am somewhat hyperaware that someday my kids may grow up and read this. It could happen. That means I actually… edit… maybe more than you might think of my life here. I’m nervous about how I present Noah. I talk about him in terrible ways sometimes. I also very carefully avoid saying a lot of terrible things about him.

I do not want sides taken. I do not want back and forth bickering in public. I do not want my children seeing the depths to which we sink when we are being fucking petty. Why not? It’s complicated.

We haven’t fought like this since we closed our relationship. Fighting like this is why we closed our relationship. Because we didn’t think we could stay married through fighting like this.

But that was when we had babies and it just wasn’t ok at all for me to have emotional variance because of my relationship with Noah. I had to be regulated because I was teaching emotional regulation just about 24/7.

That was kind of a difficult thing for someone who is as dysregulated as I have been all my life. I look at my children and feel that I succeeded. Clearly they got the lessons they needed developmentally when they were needed. I did it. I stayed calm. I taught them how to handle conflict and big feelings without flipping out.

I did it.

Which means I can have more things in my life that cause my feelings to fluctuate. Which is fucking tricky.

Nonmonogamy is going to be hard. There are a lot more insecurities here than either of us are really having fun talking about.

What does safety mean? What does connection mean? What are we working towards? What do we want? What is the purpose of sex in our relationship? What do we do for one another versus for ourselves?

I sure wish that these conversations could come with a little more sleep for me. Out of the past three nights I’m now only down about one night of sleep. That’s improving…

But we talk all night long because we can’t talk in front of the kids.

I am not sure either of us are being fair. Yeah, I’m being an asshole. I’m not in denial. I’m not trying to say that I’m being fine and he’s the asshole. I’m really not saying that.

I cheated and broke his heart. He thought he was going to get to be my one and only forever and ever amen.

He’s allowed to be absolutely furious about that.

I know.

I’m trying very very hard to not get into done-me-wrongs. I will talk about what I know I have done wrong. I don’t need to get into done-me-wrongs.

It won’t help. I hiss those often enough in person. It’s not like I’ve forgotten the list. I just don’t need to write it down.

How do you fight in civilized fashion when you are a compulsive over-sharer? Like this. You say what you did wrong and talk about being angry without placing blame. I’m not saying that Noah is to blame for my feelings. He isn’t. I mean… a couple of his particular phrase choices were infuriating… but whatever. I’m being a right bitch in this fight.

How do you build towards a vision of self that may not be what your partner wants? How big do you want your partner to be? How small so you can feel bigger? I don’t know.

Who is pulling whom around on a chain.

I don’t want to leave. That’s part of the reason I have no particular reason to bad mouth Noah up one side and down the other. I don’t want to leave. Even though I’m angry about some stuff right now… that’s life. I flipped the canoe of our life over. There are going to be some feelings we have to deal with. I’m ok with that. I’m not enjoying this process but I see it as necessary.

I’m not afraid of conflict.

I’m afraid of not getting my needs met.

I’m afraid of not being who I want to be because I am afraid that someone else doesn’t want me to be.

I’m afraid of making myself small and unthreatening and never doing anything with my life again because I have decided I don’t deserve to ask for what I really want.

What does necessary even mean?

I’m sure I don’t know.

Am I fucking everything up permanently? Well. I guess we will find out. There is the non-zero possibility.

It is hard when I feel like I’m absolutely the bad guy here. I’m the one insisting on change because the status quo wasn’t working. I feel like a fucking asshole for not making it work. For not deciding that it was just good enough because that was all I agreed to this life.

I did not promise sexual fidelity in my marriage vows. Yeah. I slammed the door four years ago when we were having screaming fights about lying and … shit don’t rehash it. It wasn’t well done.

I feel like everything bad must be all my fault. I feel like I am a monster. A selfish, disgusting monster.

Day 38. Still no bleeding. PMDD means that right before I start bleeding I tend to have intense spikes of depression and anxiety. My suicidal urges go through the roof. This is a well documented phenomena.

I need to be something other than a cum dumpster who can’t cum. This just… isn’t working any more.

I wish I didn’t feel so fucking bad about that.

Sometimes people ask why I write such whiny melodramatic stuff. Aren’t I embarrassed? I’m documenting what living with an acute stress disorder is like. The kind that results from brain damage. If you think I should be embarrassed that says more about you than it does about me. No, it’s not fucking smooth. Yeah I’m a lot of fucking drama. Lots of ups and downs.

That’s what brain damage does. Pieces of it are absolutely my fault in an ongoing way I really don’t deny that. But I’m also trying to deal with my problems. That means I’m going to flail and do things that don’t work sometimes and I will document those fuck ups so I don’t forget and have to make the same mistake over and over.

I’m not writing for you.

I’m writing for me.

Catharsis

I need to start getting my thoughts in order to talk about catharsis. I’m sure that what I actually say will vary from what I’m writing about. Such is life.

Because I’m me, let’s start with a definition:

ca·thar·sis
kəˈTHärsəs/
noun
  1. 1.
    the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.
    synonyms: emotional release, relief, release, venting; More

  2. 2.
    MEDICINErare
    purgation.

Strong or repressed emotion. I have buckets of that. When I think of catharsis I think of a flood of things all at once. I think about beating my friends until they cry because it is hard to cry on your own. I think of being beaten until I genuinely sob. Not many people have ever done it. I think of being crucified. I think of atonement. I think of freedom from the burden of carrying these emotions forever.

I have two female friends in particular I think about when I think about cathartic scenes. One is my Sarah and another is one I don’t have permission to name. With Sarah a lot of what I work towards is helping her feel ok making noise and taking up space. I do that very deliberately because I have known her for a long time and she has good reasons to make some fucking noise. It’s ok for her to cry about the stuff that is happening and has happened. But that’s a hard thing when you are punished throughout your childhood for having negative feelings.

My other friend had a hard time safewording or really saying no to anything, ever. What is a safeword some of you sweet people ask. A safeword is a word that can end the scene. For most people red stops a scene and yellow means “please check in”. Traditionally speaking safewords can be any significant word or phrase that wouldn’t occur naturally in a scene. In really heavy sm scenes… sometimes a safeword is the difference between a scene and abuse.

So I asked my friend if she wanted to learn how to say no. I hit her for a long time. A really long time. It felt like hours. I was vicious and terrible. The whole time I told her, “I want you to decide when this stops. You have to tell me to stop. You have to defend yourself. You have to know you are worth that.” And on and so forth because fuck I talked for a long time.

Eventually she did crumble and sob and beg me to stop.

I hear she’s done much better with boundaries ever since. I’m glad.

Sometimes you can’t really understand the size and shape of your boundaries until you go all the way to the other side of them so you can get a good look at where they should have been.

I think of a lot of my rape experiences like that. “I should have done ____.”

I didn’t know.

Positive stuff. A few truly stand-out scenes as a bottom. The first crucification was the most intense. When you don’t know what to expect, it is more intense.

Without getting into details about why I told my then boyfriend/top/later Owner that I had a lot of sins I needed to atone for. He joked and said he could crucify me. I said that sounded great.

We built a padded backboard together. Full of hardware and gizmos to make the gearhead happy. I was grateful for all that time in the wood shop learning skills. Yes, I can help you construct equipment. I am a useful tool to have around.

There was obviously a crossbar for my arms. He tied me to the backboard using polyester rope. That was his preference at the time.

I’ve been suspended in a lot of positions. I’ve been suspended by enough people that I think I have a good idea of what the different positions are like. They are all intense in different ways.

The crucification was early in my scene career. I didn’t have much experience then. I was shocked by the breathlessness. That was what made the scene so intense. It hurt, yes, but it was the constriction of my lungs and diaphragm that caused me to see stars and hallucinate and feel like I was talking to dead family members.

I remember feeling a sad benevolence. These people absolutely could not love me while they were alive. The love they feel now is hollow and empty and useless but present. What does it mean? It means they don’t hate me.

It’s ok that I was born. It is ok that I chose my life over theirs. It is ok that I forced retribution on my father for hurting me.

It is just how life goes.

I talked to my boyfriend a little bit about what I felt and experienced. Not long after that he told me he didn’t want to know more about my past. Heh.

I really desperately needed the experiences he gave me. I think he kind of sensed that and couldn’t do it if he knew just how badly I was abused. Especially considering how recent it was when I met him.

I met my future Owner less than a year after my father killed himself.

Now, as a 34 year old that kind of blows my mind. Wow. Less than two years after my father sat in a garage with the motor running and a note saying everything was all my fault… I became a 24/7 slave. Now it was half my life ago.

I didn’t have a normal college experience. I had weird ritualized sm and no alcohol or drugs and I was shoved through doing homework and learning responsibility and household management experience.

He was a parental figure as much or more than a boyfriend. He taught me about loans and interest. He taught me about different levels of protocol and etiquette and appropriate behavior for different settings. It took a while before I was civilized enough to go to work stuff with him.

We spent a lot of god damn time on behavior training. I needed it. I needed to have someone pay attention to me and help me learn those skills just about like ABA therapy.

Do you know what I find funny? Most every boyfriend I’ve ever had is thrilled I married Noah. Because he pays the kind of attention to me none of them ever wanted to pay. They are happy I found that.

I like my life.

Another stand out scene: that scene with the couple in Portland the weekend before Noah asked me to marry him. I love going to Portland. I do so much fucked up shit there.

In that scene it was the first time they had ever co-topped together. It was intense the way they would stop addressing me to focus on one another and talk about what they wanted to do as if I were just kind of a toy then they hurt me fantastically. This is the stand-out most painful scene of my life. He picked me up by my pectoral muscles and shook me like a dog.

That pain made me almost completely lose my mind. It felt like my body was about to be shredded apart. Given that I have previously had the bottom quadrant of my face ripped off by a pit bull, that was an intense experience.

And when I came down to the ground again completely flipping out his partner slapped my face.

I think I collapsed to the floor.

I honestly don’t remember at all what happened after that.

It was a casual pick up scene with folks I barely knew from the rare parties I attended in Seattle.

Why was it cathartic instead of traumatic? Consent. Bitches. There are scenes that once you are in them… there is no way out but through. There are life experiences you must endure that are traumatic even though you want them.

Childbirth comes to mind.

Why did I trust this man to do this to me? He had extensive training by my government on how to torture people. If anyone was going to be able to do it and walk me right to the edge of the line of what I was going to be able to walk away from… it was him.

He did a fabulous job. Good man.

And his partner? God damn. I love a mean woman.

Why was this so positive? Partially because for the whole rest of my life I have an established 11 experience when it comes to pain. Unmedicated childbirth is not the most painful experience of my life. Having my face torn off wasn’t more painful.

Holy fucking shit.

Being in that much pain lets you appreciate all the days you sit at a 6. It’s not so fucking bad.

Would I be so into Noah if I hadn’t had such a shitty life? Probably not. But I am who I am and it is working out pretty well.

Catharsis.

I need to talk about how Noah creates safe space for me. That’s a big deal. That’s kind of the foundation for a lot of the good that has happened.

Noah was ok with me coming out to the garage every morning for months and months and sobbing hysterically. He didn’t react like I was a weirdo and I should stop making him uncomfortable. He said, “Ok. This is where you are right now. What do you want or need from me?”

The process of training him in how to be support has been long and layered, but there is improved trust with every year. That makes everything easier. He does what he says.

Goodness I trust him. The ability to trust someone is… huge.

My cathartic experiences with other people have been primarily one-off releases of emotion in my body. I’m not usually supported before or after. I had a great deal of structural support but just about zero emotional support from my Owner. He had very specific verbal boundaries around this and I really think he behaved ethically.

But I want something different from my forever and it’s ok because I have it.

A lot of my cathartic experiences with Noah have been more gentle and about building connection and intimacy and attachment and trust and care taking and…. It’s different.

And then there are the drug experiences. We’ve had some fucktastically good drug experiences together.

But uhm, that’s not what the show is about.

People are weird.

Masochism

Maybe I can’t sleep. I woke Noah up for sex (like a nice girl) and that wasn’t enough to make me sleep again.

Masochism has been a very central pillar of my life. The degree to which I submit my will to someone else’s will is much more variable but if you include emotional masochism… I’m always a masochist.

I’m going to sound a little snotty. I don’t mean it that way. I’m trying to figure something out.

Last night it was fascinating being in a triangle between Noah, Deity, and Cupid. I say this because Noah is somewhere between Cupid and Deity in interactions at this point. Realistically I shouldn’t judge Deity’s sadism because I get the impression I’ve just seen the first hints of teeth and I haven’t seen the real thing yet.

But I went from sitting in front of two mean boys who wanted to hurt me to being hit by a sadist.

In the past few months since I’ve shown up at the bar I’ve gotten to relearn I fucking hate pinching. I am having a hard time not slamming my skull into peoples noses as they pinch the shit out of me. It makes me angry. I want to fight back. I’m trying really hard to go along with it because clearly other people are enjoying it.

But it makes me feel hateful and angry.

Sometimes some grabs with a full hand aren’t as irritating… but the small grabs… fuck I feel mean.

It feels like I’m dealing with mean boys again.

This is a weird thing. Because I sure do like mean men. But I feel differently about mean boys.

This is hilarious because I am the youngest of all of these people. So what. It’s an energy thing not a statement about age.

I don’t know why the pinching makes me so mad. I try not to get angry. I try really hard to be pliant. I feel fucking angry.

My brothers pinched me a lot. My father pinched me a lot. You are displeasing. Shut up. No one wants to acknowledge you. Take this reminder that you are not worth actually acknowledging and shut up.

In order to take it I have to go to a fairly dissociated place with regards to feeling it in my body; I have to choose to shut down my fight response and accept.

Noah was asking me questions on the way home. He could read my facial expression during the pinching and backed off. He switched to punching. Yeah, that’s how you can butter my biscuit.

I feel like there is this line between masochism and submission and I’m stumbling on it right now. What is the difference between pain you submit to because it is pleasurable to your partner and pain you submit to because you like it?

I like being punched. I can be punched for hours and I’ll just make appreciative noises. The bruises can be massive. I’ll purr like a cat in between shrieks and bellows and orgasms. I like punching.

Pinching… it takes me right out of headspace. It makes me feel like I need to prepare for a fight. It is intensely triggering to my fight reflex. Which makes submitting to it an interesting challenge.

What bothers me is it never feels like people are challenging me on this incredibly sensitive boundary because they want to have power over me and they want to cause me to work through it. I usually feel like people are pinching me absentmindedly. Like a fiddle toy.

I hate that.

Am I submitting or bottoming? Am I doing this for you or for me?

I don’t know.

It’s like hair pulling. It’s one of those things that people just do because they have this schema around rough sex that it is a mandatory part of things. But if you yank on my hair absentmindedly I will not be able to focus my eyes tomorrow from pain.

My body is in a fair bit of pain under normal operating conditions. I showed up at the bar tonight feeling like I was at a 6. Then I got pinched. Then beaten.

This god damn tile work is killing me. My neck hurts. My back hurts. My arms hurts. And now my ass hurts too. Glorious.

The ass is the only part that’s fun.

How will I be hiding my bruises? Well… I need to develop some habits around dressing in private. Ahem.

I feel like the bruises are coming in harder and faster this time than they did the first time I played with Cupid. Well done.

Noah asked me how I managed to process the hits because they came quick and hard and he’s used to me getting overloaded and shutting everything down.

Instead Cupid hit me hard and quickly and when I collapsed to the floor to squat because it was too much he put his arm around my chest, leaned me back against him, and kept hitting.

My cunt is still throbbing because that was so hot.

I was overloaded but I didn’t feel panicked and I’m not sure why it happened that way. I panicked more and made him back off more at our first date at his house.

I suspect that a hair of it was that I was completely surrounded by people and if it really got out of hand I had help available. It was safer to let it go farther.

I don’t think that was a conscious decision but I think it factors in somewhere.

Where is the line between masochism and submission for me? I felt like part of the reason I could go deeper was because Cupid was managing energy well. He was being aware and barely callous in just the right ways. I’m pretty sure he could tell I was making some noise but not exactly what came from me or what came from the other folks making noise. So he thoughtfully leaned in and let me know that he couldn’t hear very well and he’d be looking for other signals that I couldn’t handle it.

That let him push right through most of my masochist-not-submissive early warning signs. All the “I’m not sure I like this” noise he could just ignore. That’s what I mean by callous. But he did it by being very responsive to physical signals and just… interpreting them how he felt like. He kept going because he read enough yes in my body.

I am so incredibly not upset. I will be spending time in my bunk today thinking about this again. Probably a few times.

It isn’t that I want to distract you with kissing and get you to not beat me. It is that when you intersperse kissing with hurting me I want to give you so much more. Because you are hurting me. Because you are connecting with me.

I was listening to an old episode of the radio show that I’m going on. A woman was expressing her strong preference for not kissing early on.

That was funny to hear just now. I want kissing. I want kissing and kissing and kissing and kissing. Don’t fucking hurt me if you aren’t going to kiss me too. If you aren’t going to kiss it better I don’t fucking like you very much.

But I do sometimes play with people who don’t kiss at all. But that’s because they don’t kiss anyone and they know how to connect anyway. We also don’t go as deep or as hard with the play.

WHY IS THIS SO CONFUSING?!

(I’m totally ok with that person not wanting kissing during first time sex. Whatever floats your boat. It was interesting to feel how I feel about that.)

If you want access to my body it starts with my mouth and my mind. Otherwise go fuck yourself.

I don’t think it is that pinching is a hard limit. I think it is that pinching is a serious kind of play for me. It’s a really big mind fuck and I don’t think people understand that in general. Pinching requires some serious fucking submission from me and playing with that idly is… complicated. Like, I need to talk to Daddy about this. He’s a pinchy motherfucker. (Which I’m not mad about.)

But I need to talk to him about this. Words. I need to find words. I want you to understand that when it comes to my body pinching it is a much more serious activity than hitting me with a mallet.

I like the mallet more.

The mallet doesn’t make me feel like I want to take my finger nails and rake them across your face.

I feel mean when I’m pinched. I don’t feel sexy. I don’t feel wanted. I feel angry. Trying to tamp that down and not explode all the fuck over people is an act of conscious, serious will.

We all come from very particular life experiences. I’ve dealt with a lot of mean boys.

I’m trying to figure out what I feel and why. I don’t figure this stuff out very well unless I’m bouncing off of people. I don’t think about why pinching is such a thing because I’ve just managed to mostly scare Noah out of doing it.

Then I go hunting like a fool.

Fucking pinchy bastards are everywhere.

How do I feel about pinching? I feel like I hate you. Just for a few seconds. Just as long as you are pinching me. I get over it. But I have to decide to. That kind of thing takes a toll. How many times I have to decide to stop hating you in a night adds up.

It is a very different kind of submission than accepting that when I resist someone beating me they will just slam me back down on the table so they can keep hitting me. God that was hot. Ok, I’ll relax and just accept that this is happening now.

Ok.

I’m sitting on a very comfy lawn chair. My ass hurts.

Thank you. I’m grinning.

Why are some kinds of pain enjoyable even when I don’t enjoy it. I promise you that I didn’t enjoy most of what Cupid did to me last night. It fucking hurt. But I really liked that he wanted to do that to me. I liked that he wanted to take that enjoyment from me even when it was really hard for me.

Why doesn’t pinching work that way?

It can. With the right set up and frame and acknowledgement that this is a huge trigger you are pushing on.

That’s not how it usually happens though.

Why don’t you pinchy motherfuckers push on a trigger point or something. Much less effort on your part, more pain on my part, less feeling like I want to rip your fucking face off.

Everybody wins.

Somehow I think that an incredibly small fraction of the pinchy motherfuckers will listen to me. That’s both why I date them and why I hate them.

Fuck.

IT WOULD BE OK IF YOU ACTED LIKE THIS WAS A BIG THING. IT WOULDN’T MAKE YOU LESS DOMLY OR SOME SHIT.

It isn’t that I have a problem with mean people hurting me in this way if it is done right. It is that it is hard to do right and most people won’t bother.

That’s a thing.

Being picky sucks.

And then when we got home Noah put his cock in me and it hurt like I was being fucked with a knife. I stopped the sex. No. Just… no. Actually, I’ve been fucked with a knife and it didn’t hurt that bad. The person wasn’t trying to puncture my uterus.

I have no idea what was going on. I woke him up for sex this morning and it wasn’t orgasmic for me, but it didn’t hurt. I think I was so afraid of it hurting that I wasn’t really going to relax that time. But I wanted sex anyway.

I wanted sex specifically so I could talk to Noah about how much I like him and want him and need him. He is being ridiculously supportive as I’m being kind of a pain in the ass. It makes him happy when I demonstrate my gratitude with frantic, clutching sex where I talk the whole time about why he is important to me.

Noah is kinda my world. I need him to feel that or I’m doing something wrong. His primary way to feel loved is to have sex. Not just have sex, I need you sex.

But who doesn’t want that?

I’m just glad he is amused that I enjoy kissing other people so much. I’m glad he is interested in watching other people hit me because he learns more about me as a creature to be studied. I’m so fucking glad that Noah spends this much time wanting to look at me.

He’s been doing a lot more writing for me lately. I like that. I like that so much. He’s been writing scene reports so he can learn from them. He’s been writing about his insecurities and that’s letting us talk about what we want in the future from an unequal power dynamic. The day he proposed to me he told me he wanted me to be his wife and his slave. I said I could do that but it would take a very long time to get to the slave part.

It… was mixed last time and I don’t want to have to walk away from our relationship because that part crashes and burns.

So Noah appreciates chances to watch me interact with other people because he sees how I react to things without his own internal filtering going on. We can talk about why I leaned in to some things and why I grimaced at other times.

Noah wants to look at me. Noah wants me to do whatever the fuck I want just so he can watch.

I love you Noah. Even if you are a mean boy sometimes.

Thank you thank you thank you everyone. Thank you for giving me these opportunities to learn more about myself. I am grateful.

My arms. My arms. Oh my arms. Must stop.

Body update

I haven’t been subjecting you poor people to hearing about my bowels lately. Blacksheep asked so I’ll catch you up.

I seem to have mostly cleared out the parasites. According to the woo doctor. She tests this with frequency shit so uhhh yeah.

She says she’s impressed with how well my gall bladder cleared out. She says usually folks spend six months or more doing that. I said, “Yeah I ain’t doing that.” She looked at the screen and said, “Yeah there would be no reason to.”

At this point there are still things she wants to work on and there is still a bunch of pills to go. But not in a big rush and not like before. I’m not doing tons. I can take it slow.

Ok, to be graphic about the poop now… it’s… shockingly normal. 

I poop two or three times a day. I think I still tend towards looseness the day or three around the start of my period. They are solid enough that I feel weird about it. My abdomen is frequently kind of uncomfortable because it isn’t sure how it feels about all this solid stuff hanging around so long.

I would say my energy has doubled or tripled compared to where it was when I came back from the road trip. I’m sleeping better (thank you Lorazepam) and I’m getting more energy from folks in my life (thanks folks).

My body is feeling… all over the map in terms of pain. Typing, tile, intermittent exercise with intermittent stretching is…

I need to get more systematized around this.

I know.

Ugh finish remodel. Ugh.

But if you spend your whole life waiting to get started on the most important supportive pieces?

Shit.

I hope Noah gets this job. That would make a whole bunch of things easier and more fun. *cross fingers*

If I could stop reaching out to my friends on the internet my body would improve. Whatevs.

You pay the piper for the life you choose. That’s just how it goes.

Sharing complications

I am… a tremendous asshole. I know this. I know this so terribly well. Noah and I have been talking a lot. I wish I had the spoons to record lots of it but I don’t. Ow.

This is the very first song I ever stripped to. There are things I’m still not going to discuss that have me singing this song to myself lately.

I gotta say, sex with Noah has been off the hook lately. We’ve been playing with erotic hypnosis stuff. As a result he is grinning so widely he looks like he is about to split his face. It’s going well. I am, uhh easily suggestible. I also have lots of experience in my background of what was essentially hypnosis orgasm training. Because my life has been awesome. So I’m physically capable of orgasming repeatedly on command. And we’ve been playing with erotic hypnosis.

*fan self*

It’s going well.

WHY AREN’T WE INSPIRED TO DO THIS SHIT WHEN WE ARE MONOGAMOUS?!

Neither of us know. And we feel sad about it. Because even though the sex has been intermittently good throughout the monogamy…

Sustaining heat like this is hard and it… mostly happens when I’m off fucking other people and I come home ready to sit on fire hydrants.

I want sex.

It isn’t because I’m not getting it at home. I’m getting it at home. I’m getting it fucking awesome at home. But it’s a symbiotic thing. We’ve been together a while now through several cycles.

Heh. This isn’t our first rodeo.

But I’ve clearly changed in what I want and in what I’m looking for and what this is going to mean. I’ve done a flat 180 on a whole bunch of things just about overnight.

WTF?

I don’t know.

I don’t want to miss the fun I could have in my 30’s. Being alive is so awesome.

I could work harder. I could work more.

My body is tired.

I don’t just “relax” very well. I never have. I’ve been working really hard for a really long time. I mean, I build a lot of playfulness into my work so I have fun being a workaholic… but that doesn’t mean I relax well and my body really needs me to relax.

I need to be able to do it without the pot.

No. I want to not need the pot. My lungs hurt. Other methods are so expensive.

I don’t know what I want from the future. I don’t know how much involvement in the bdsm community I want. I feel so conflicted about dragging Noah. He doesn’t feel much need for community around his sex life. He doesn’t feel weird. He doesn’t feel like he needs validation. And he’s less drawn to hunting.

For the rest of my life hunting is going to feel…. different. Now that I have cut someone open as they fuck me so I can suck the blood…

Holy fucking shit.

Cough

Sweet Jesus what is wrong with me? I have no self control lately. Things that have been off the table forever are just… interesting. There was a hot 24 year old. But he deleted his profile so I’m phew not going to get more pushing from there. I was having a hard time saying no.

Thank God he deleted his profile. 

I wasn’t that temped only I was. Cause holy shit if you saw the pictures. But he deleted them.

I’ll just keep fucking my delightful old man. No hardship.

Why isn’t it enough?

It depends on what you mean by being enough.

For a long time now sex has been kind of a chore. I had a quota to fill and I put in my time meeting it whether I was interested or not.

Honestly I think it is kind of hot that I really did that for years. Just like I think it is hot that I did a whole lot of things that I genuinely didn’t want to do when I was a slave for years. I specifically like doing sexual things I don’t like to please my partner.

But there’s a cost. And a weird balance to find. Because I have to be pleased too or… I wilt. It is harder and harder not to cut.

I can clearly look back and see how how it is promiscuity or cut. That’s been a huge pattern for me. It is like I can choose to do what I need to do to stay small and shut up or I can go symbolically choose life. (Err, let’s be preventing those babies–shall we?)

This has been true since I was in grade school.

It’s complicated.

Noah told me he doesn’t do more cutting on me because he is worried about it taking the place of me cutting myself.

I wonder what cutting my submissive will mean in a grander scale. So far it makes me feel like a hyena, not like someone who should be small and quiet.

I mean, I’m manifesting this by being nice to little kids and making art in my house. I’m not acting more vicious anywhere else. (Err… I don’t think. I’m getting specific feedback that I’m doing well by a variety of observers. Forking everyone is commenting on me looking so happy.

Goodness gracious I’m getting laid well. You don’t know what it means.

So I’m not getting it everywhere I’m invited. I’ve been saying no. But I’m feeling more able to feel adored. Which sucks. Why can’t I get this from Noah? It’s not like he has changed how he feels.

Daddy and my submissive are both my friends when we aren’t fucking. Why is this so much more validating? It just is.

So much for once a month. So much for once a month per person. I’m having four dates with the deity this month and uhhh I should *cough* admit that.

I can see why my shrink is yelling at me. Yeah. Daddy and my submissive have both stayed in their boxes. I do see them more, but not in a way that is inconsistent with a very long relationship. In consistent settings.

Oh fuck.

Ok Noah Ok Noah Ok Noah. Yeah. That. Nervous. Yeah.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Yup. That’s what I’m going to go do. Fuck him. Yup.

Not my normal type. Nope. That’s why it is so dangerous. Yup. What the fuck is my type now. I don’t fucking know.

But I’m going to go do some fucking and find out? I’ll report back. I promise.

And then Cupid is writing me dreamy stories about where he is going to put his hand and I just can’t stop squirming.

It is about the expression in their eyes. I pick people for how their eyes come alive. That is what I look for. That connection. I want that. I’m getting it in spades and I feel… so very much. I feel so alive.

I’m not drowning in the river of want. But I’m not sated. I recognize that I’m being shit at boundaries and that can’t continue. Noah’s right that six months of this would be a problem.

What is sustainable?

I want to find out.

What is respectful?

I want to find out.

What is fair?

Oh get the fuck over that shit. Life ain’t fair. There is no fair. Fuck fair with a 2″x4″. (*phew* I did it right that time.)

If I am doing these things in service to loving myself, which I… rather think I am… I need to think about sustainability from the point of healing. I’m working on healing a whole bunch of different things. What does it all mean?

On that note my arms burn and my neck is sore from looking down. Goodbye oh laptop of doom. I love you. Kids are waking up. I get to go be present with the vanilla reality of my life. I choose this. I want this. I have fun with this.

It’s festive dealing with my Bonus Kids as they grow up. We hit speed bumps. They don’t like me every moment. I hold a lot of lines they don’t like but I’m happy to explain why I have the principles I have. “I put these things in front of you and tell you to do them because I have put a lot of work into knowing what is good for you right now. Please cooperate darling.”

They don’t always like me. I make them eat chard. Clearly I am from the devil.

You’ll live, beloved. And you’ll grow up feeling better in your body than I do.

Love is complicated. Sharing traditions and beliefs and desires is complicated. We all want different things. How can we get along? What is fair? Oh don’t even start.

What do we want? Since there is no fair. What do we want? Because there is a we and an I in this. I don’t even mean me and my intestinal parasites. I mean that in order to have what I want I need to have people in my life who want the intensity of connection I want.

I’m really kinda done with casual for the now. I mean… ok I’ll fuck people at a swingers party because that’s fun. But it’s a different kind of intense. First dates with strangers suck.

I’m spoiled as fuck. I’m good.

I have such lovely options available to me.

By the way, Deity and I were really good last night. I don’t think I let myself flood with oh god I like you when the kids were around. We didn’t kiss at all until the kids were asleep and we didn’t do anything even vaguely raunchy. We talked.

I’ve been wanting to talk to him like that for a long while. I uhhh doubt we will talk quite like that when I go over to his house. I think our mouths will be more distracted. And I am interested in these topics. And I need to god damn stop typing.

How can someone feel so lucky and so stupid and so happy and so nervous and so giddy and so relaxed at the same time? Well I kinda think anyone would feel relaxed after how much I came last night.

Holy shit, Noah.

Thanks.

I’m well done.

 

 

Punching is so awesome.

Last night was a punching heavy night. I was punching a lot and then I got punched a lot. Life is fair sometimes.

I played with the Professor. He plays with a lot of new people and he is good at helping people explore sensation. I told him I didn’t know what I wanted to be hit with because I genuinely don’t know what I like at this point, but I know I’m on the thud end.

He brought an assortment of toys and hit me for a while with them before switching to punching.

I liked and hated most of the toys. I loved the punching. Loved the punching. Got off on the punching. That was fabulous deep thud. That rocked all the way to the center of me.

Surface pain on my skin is harder. The flogger was a lot of surface area of skin. I feel like I like/enjoy/can tolerate floggers exponentially better now than I could when I was younger (I am apparently getting older and less sensitive) but they are still hard. I feel panic when a large amount of surface area is hit at once.

And holy shit for shoe shine do I dislike any hits on my low back. Mother fucker. That’s always been true.

Once, when I was 19 I was on a date with a friend and he was passing me around a party. I complained so much about specific kinds of hitting that he found a marker and made a big X on my low back and wrote “NOT HERE” and on my ass he wrote “NO STING”. Then he had way more people hit me.

It went better at that party after that.

I feel like things have drifted but those are still fairly accurate warning labels and I should figure out how to explain them better on my own.

My low back has been problematic since early childhood because of a vicious assault. No, I don’t like it when I’m hit there.

It isn’t sexy. It isn’t easy to process. It hurts.

Thank you for the lesson.

The flogger on the upper back wasn’t like that. That was horrible and painful and mean and… hot. I felt like if that came with a story I could really get into suffering like that. As a stand alone sensation it wasn’t my favorite but I could see the appeal. Which is a huge shift for me. Thank you for the lesson.

I felt kind of ridiculous for liking the Nerf thing. I shouldn’t like being hit with a Nerf toy. That’s perverted.

It was a great warm up toy. Oh man. He did a warm up. It was like magic. I remembered correctly! Warm ups are awesome! Yay warm ups!

He was very good at the reassuring-from-the-back-hug. Some tops nail that and some… don’t. He was really good.

Last night was a night of SM like I used to do. Lots of violence and my genitals were not in play at all. It was a stark reminder of how much I have drifted. Oh yeah. That used to be my life.

It isn’t any more.

I have a tremendous quantity of feelings to process. I’m going to put them in this nice neat box I have here and deal with my day. I don’t have any other play scheduled after today and that will stay true for a bit.

I need to process these bits. I need to integrate what I need to say differently. I need to think about what to say about play for it to be more of what I want.

I need to figure out more about what the fuck I want. I have inklings and that’s not good enough. I need to think about this.

Why don’t I feel comfortable talking during play sometimes? I really don’t. I don’t feel like anything I could say would be ok. So I don’t say much. I don’t like that. It isn’t useful. Just making noises isn’t good enough feedback.

I feel like I need to figure out the difference between playing to suffer and playing to have fun and playing to get off. I think they are different. I think I need to figure out the limits on the suffering I can offer at this point.

My low back needs to be off the table. That’s going to need to be a hard limit. Fine, maybe someone else won’t be damaged by light hits there. I can be. It needs to be a hard limit for me. I don’t need to talk about it and I have to figure it out before I bottom again because… someone is going to cripple me.

Words. Words are hard. I like typing. I like typing till my hands cramp and ache and this is so definitely my current favorite form of self harm.

Words are harder. Words are scary. Speaking is hard. I need to work on more scripts. Ugh.

Just being able to make the noises is huge progress for me. I know it doesn’t seem like that to people. I know it just seems like some obnoxious thing I do. It has been hard for me to be in my body enough to connect with what is happening. I have tried hard to do that.

I have spent a lot of my life dissociated. I go back and forth between dissociation and hypervigilance so that I either don’t know what is happening around me and to me or I’m freaking out about everything near me.

It’s fun.

The hypervigilance has improved dramatically over the last few years. I have consciously worked on a number of my tics and they have improved. I still don’t have a comfort zone but I don’t feel crawl-out-of-my-skin-anxious as often. I am also far less dissociated. I can’t be and take care of the kids. I have to be present. I picked the high-intensity version of parenting. I can’t phone it in much. They won’t let me.

Maybe my comfort zone is fucking people. Every other part of interaction is harder and more complicated. It’s why I’m pushing people for fucking with play.

I think. As I look in retrospect at my behavior over the past few weeks. I think that is what is going on. Ok. This is why I talk to myself. Because I’m trying to figure out why the fuck I do what I do.

I think it is healthy for me to sit with the discomfort that comes from people not asking for access to my genitals. But it is hard.

Ok maybe I am lying. Yeah. I do have a comfort zone. I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all when Cupid or Deity or Daddy were fucking me. Not when I fucked my submissive. Not when I picked up a random at a sex party.

That felt comfortable. Other aspects of our interactions are not always comfortable for me and I stick them out anyway. But…

It’s part of why I’m pushing so hard for kissing. Kissing feels kinda like that but more available in public.

Ok. Well. I’m figuring some stuff out. This is kinda fucked up. I need to find some way of feeling comfortable that doesn’t involve soliciting sex. Well… ok, I do feel comfortable around the kids. Most of the time. Except when I’m triggered.

So it isn’t only during sex.

And it is variable with Noah. Sometimes I feel comfortable and sometimes I don’t. We’ve had a lot of sex over a lot of years and we often do it whether I am up for it or not. Because that is our deal. I’m not sorry. But it means that I have had mixed experiences of the sex.

I need to update the users guide again. Hilarious. Well… this is a changing time.

Hunting lessons

Exhaustion is a real thing. When I’m over tired I can’t read tone to save my life. I’m whiny, over-sensitive and I’m going to spend a lot of time crying. It’s not about a person saying something… it’s about being tired. I didn’t respect that yesterday. Given how much… pushing it I’ve done on sleep stuff lately I need to build better boundaries around this. Don’t respond to messages when I’m that tired.

I wrote about 7 pages in a word document yesterday. Notice how I’m not posting it? I don’t think I was even a little coherent. I was tired and scared.

I live with a kind of existential dread most people can’t understand. On one hand I’m one of the asking-ist people you’ll ever meet. I ask and ask and ask for things. On the other hand I live in mortal terror that I will rape someone again. That I will ask for something and someone won’t feel comfortable/safe saying no and I will be an evil monster as usual.

This is complicated for me. Because if you can’t say, “Hey do you want to do x?” and get a yes/no answer…how the fuck is life supposed to work?

I don’t know.

Folks tell me that I’m doing a good thing by giving people opportunities to refine their boundaries and decide what they do and don’t want.

I feel scared all the time that I’m on the verge of hurting people. I feel like I should withdraw a lot because I’m pushing too hard. Noah says this may be a bad time to assume that my bad reading of one persons tone means I should stop asking other people for things.

For some reason he seems to think that individual humans should be judged on their own behavior.

Whatever.

So it isn’t going to be a rule (because how the fuck well do I follow rules?!?!) but I think it should be a guideline to not respond to ambiguous messages at all when I’m tired. Once I’m not tired I can say, “Hey I’m not sure I’m getting your tone of voice here. Can you clarify?” Cause wouldn’t that be useful.

I don’t feel like I did yesterday. Glorious 8 hours of sleep. I hate sleep deprivation.

Many folks in the scene have been asking me, “Oh do you remember Mistress ___? She’s coming around more again.”

Goody. She likes to tell me that I’m a bigger bitch than her because I don’t handle sleep deprivation well. Can’t wait to run into her. weeeeeeeeeeee

I’ve gotten off overly lucky this hunting phase. Things have been going too smoothly. I’ve been getting too many ‘yes’ answers. Too many people telling me I’m doing it right. When I hit a bump it feels… big.

It isn’t. I’m going to get over it. But yesterday I couldn’t read tone and I spent a lot of time crying. Like I do.

Sleep. Dear goodness, sleep.

When I was a kid my sister used to tell me, repeatedly, that if I have the same problem over and over it is my fault and not other peoples fault.

I push boundaries. I do it globally. That makes it seem to me like it is all my fault and I’m a bad person. It means that when I feel spooked that I came too near a boundary with one person I want to globalize it and use it as a reason I should stay home and stop hurting people.

I want to use that experience as evidence that I am a monster who is unable to stop hurting people. I want to use the hint of possibility that I pushed too hard as evidence that I should stop asking for anything from anyone because I am not deserving.

I want to tell everyone that I know they don’t really want me and I should stay home.

I kinda got yelled at for that yesterday. Not “YELLED AT” but forcefully reminded that it isn’t my place to tell people what they think or want.

Yeah.

I’m sorry.

I feel bad for wanting you. I feel like I am placing a burden on you that I shouldn’t be placing. It isn’t fair. It isn’t appropriate. Just because I want you that means nothing about what you want and I don’t know what you want.

I don’t know and I’m not sure I’m good at reading people.

Noah makes sure to do over the top physical gestures to highlight how delighted he is by me constantly. Because otherwise I walk through my life feeling like an anvil of disappointment is about to drop on my head because I am not good enough to please anyone.

It isn’t fair to need people to be so demonstrative of their approval. I should just believe.

But I don’t. I’ve had too many years of wanting to die because I am not enough. I do need to feel like people really want me to be there.

Or I should go home and snuggle my kids. Because my kids really want me to be there.

I’m not saying I want to die right now. I don’t. I’m doing alright. I feel… whiny not suicidal. That’s fantastic progress for me. I feel sad and anxious and like I really want to figure out how to do this right some fucking year.

I want to stop messing up negotiating. I feel like there is no valid excuse for fucking up this way at this stage. I’m not a kid messing up out of ignorance. I’m a grown up who fucks up because I’m sloppy and I don’t dot all my i’s and cross all my t’s.

I feel ashamed of that.

But I don’t know how to find a happy medium on the herpes shit. It is… complicated. So many people have it but the few people who don’t know/haven’t been specifically told they are positive… it’s a thing. Should I tattoo “I have herpes” on my forehead so I don’t ever fuck up that bit of negotiating again?

Kissing is a big deal. My Owner didn’t kiss me. I’ve dated other guys who wouldn’t kiss me but who would allow me to provide some kind of service (sometimes sexual and sometimes not) for them.  I can’t do that any more. I just can’t. Maybe that section of the users guide should be rewritten.

I like kissing and I know I’m diseased. I’m sorry. I feel bad about existing in this dichotomy but here I am.

Thank you for not caring, Noah.

Kissing feels connecting and bonding. Kissing feels like the difference between just being an object and being a person having an intense shared experience. I need kissing at this point or I really shouldn’t be playing with someone at all.

I’m not negotiating this well and I need to change that.

Lessons hurt. I hate learning lessons. Fuck opportunities for growth. FUCK THEM WITH A POGO STICK.

Do you know what would make all of this easier? If I were less fucking hypersensitive. But if that were true in one area I’d be a lot less sensitive in other areas.

I don’t actually want to stop being who and what I am. I like being sensitive. I like that I react strongly to my perceptions of peoples feelings. That often goes well. But sometimes I’m tired and I read something wrong.

Yeah. That happens.

Uhh… I do better in person. Where I can look at facial expressions and eventually feel comfortable asking millions of questions. I do have to warm up to the questions though. I am actually kind of shy at first.

I don’t want to scare you off. I want you to volunteer stuff. No one ever tells me enough about themselves.

Oh they tell me more than enough about their hobbies. I want to hear about you.

I know it is kind of weird how much I actually like people. But I’m not playing. I do.

I don’t want you to be in a room with me so you can act out my fantasy. I want to be in a room with you so I can see you more fully developed as a character of your own. If you talk fast the whole time I get more of a picture of who you are. (I like turns to talk too. Don’t worry. I know how to talk fast.)

I’m high maintenance. I want understanding and that mandates intense communication. I’m not comfortable. I don’t exist near people to feel comfortable in their presence. That is not how life goes for me. I am not comfortable.

I am with you because I want to understand you. Because I find you compelling. Because I want to know you. Because I want you.

I may not understand what that means. I probably don’t. I will ask for things. I wish you would ask more so that every step of verbal negotiation didn’t come from me.

That is true so much and it scares me because when I am always always always the leader how do I know I am doing what people want instead of dragging them through things they may not be completely on board for doing?

Trust people to be grown ups?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Sorry, gotta catch my breath.

Phew. Laughing that hard is dangerous. I’m going to bust a rib.

People laugh at me when I say “when I grow up” in reference to my future research. They ask me if I’m grown now. No. I’m not.

don’t know many grown ups. And I don’t know many people my age or younger. I chase an older crowd and I always have. Guess what. Most of them are not grown up. I mean, they are grown. They are “adults”.

We are all fucking up and growing.

We aren’t done growing up.

I know… a few. They are inspiring and intimidating as fuck to me.

Hands hurt too much to go into that.

Hunting lessons…

Wanting is hard. Wanting is scary. The rejection isn’t the scary part. The scary part is the terror that I will hurt people. I will hurt people. Not because I will hit them (though I will) but because I will say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or ask for something in a way they don’t feel comfortable refusing and they will feel regret and I will feel shame.

That’s gonna happen.

That is part of hunting.

That fuck up. It is inherent. Other people minimize their risk by looking for one lifetime target and calling it good.

I… like to learn lessons. I have so much to learn. There is so much I want to know. There are so many situations I need to be able to have absolute control over my reaction no matter what physical or emotional stress is going on that I have to perfect this.

I have to. This is going to be necessary for me as a grown up. I am going to need to have 100% control over my reactions. I will need to know “I don’t open my email until I’ve had at least 20 hours of sleep out of 72.”

I need to know myself.

Noah didn’t think the messages sounded the way I read them. It took a lot of explaining and whining and telling back story before he went, “Oooooohhhh… ok. I can see how you read it that way.”

So it was a stretch that was only possible because I’m so awesome.

God I’m ridiculous.

No. I just have a long and complex story and I’m reacting as if all if it is true in every moment of every day and those filters are better and worse based on factors like sleep. Ahem.

Other people can handle sleep deprivation. Great for them.

I can’t.

But there is so much fun to be had in the middle of the night.

I have five solid nights in a row where I’m staying home and getting sleep before our next night out.

But then a different party is the next day.

Fuck. Ok. I need a break after that. I iz at capacity. Ow. I found it. Noah told me he thought I would.

I wanted to see where it was now. I found it. Ow. I’m old.

Why didn’t I want to go to a dark place? I don’t know. It wasn’t that the pain level was beyond my capacity. I never got near an 8. I just…

I don’t know.

It didn’t feel that way. It didn’t feel like that was what was appropriate in the setting? I don’t know.

I need help going on a journey. If I’m going to stand somewhere and just… do what I do… that…. uhhhh… varies.

It is wildly unpredictable.

I also have a really hard time with feeling like I am topping from the bottom. Noah and I have had a hard time figuring this out. I… don’t know how to gracefully lead as a bottom. I suck. So either I shut my fucking mouth and smile as the top decides what is going to happen next or… things get kind of awkward and tense and I spend the rest of the scene feeling bad.

So yes. Sometimes I don’t know what to say.

Even me. I get tongue tied. It is true. I feel like a jukebox waiting for someone to pick a song to play. I don’t know what to say. I don’t have any idea of what would be pleasing. I have such a short window of time in which to try to be pleasing…

I’m afraid of picking wrong.

It isn’t that I’m trying to make up a story to tell. It is that I don’t know which version of myself to start with. There are so many. The order in which I present them matters. It can lead to increased intimacy or it can lead to things like, “I need you to stop telling me about your background. I don’t really want to know.”

This is why Noah and I spend so much time during sex talking about previous sex we have had either with one another or with other people.

I know that I will only learn how to read these things better by running into these walls at full speed so I see all the signals all the way up to long past when I “should” have stopped so that in the future I will understand that danger signals much earlier and have a stronger need to distance myself fast. I know this is “safe” practice.

But I’m so tired of being disappointing. I’m so tired of having people forcefully shove me away because I am wrong.

Asking, wanting, desiring always means risk. It always means possible rejection or unmatched interest or pain.

Always.

Is it worth it?

Even though I’m still tired and even though I still have turbulent feelings…

Yes.

All of it. All of them. Every lesson. Every experience. I’m not sorry I asked. I’m sorry if me asking was done badly. I’m sorry if I asked in a way that did not support people telling me no when they should have or if they really wanted to in the fullness of time. I’m sorry that I will keep making mistakes.

But I’m not sorry enough to stop.

I want to learn this.

I will make mistakes. So will other people. I will get up. I will try again if they are game.

I want.

But first I want more sleep.

 

Things I learned today.

The scene was quite lovely. It was shorter than I was hoping for but I hear that’s my fault for being inspiring.

No, that’s not what he said. I’m being an asshole. But it is why I’m soliciting people who will beat me until I actually cry instead of barely stop mewing in resistance. It’s a very different experience. Noah is great at mean sex.

I want to get beaten.

The spanking and the punching was really awesome. I felt like I could have rocked back and forth on that for hours. Ok the stomach punching was like fucking woah I almost puked. But you know… shit happens. I didn’t come close to ending the scene. The punching on my shoulders was holy shit intense because I have a bunch of adhesions up there from injuries I’ve sustained over the years. I don’t think he was hitting me that hard but holy crap.

I’m not saying no. It felt positive. But it was really sensitive.

During the scene I had this thought, “I have this vague memory of something called a ‘warm up’. Maybe? What is that? Hmmmm….” Because I am that much of a smart ass. I didn’t tell him that I thought it till the scene was all the way over because I’m  barely polite.

I did tell him I was going to write it. He laughed.

I’m so glad Noah thinks I’m funny instead of gross or offensive.

Like that. But more. Longer. Harder.

I think the problem came up because once he started caning me… yeah… that’s it. I want to fuck. I want want want want to fuck.

BUT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO TELL ME NO FOR A WHILE!!!!

I mean, really.

Denial is not in Noah’s vocabulary. I don’t want to be denied denied. I want to be teased for a little while.

Oy.

It’s uhm, a subtle distinction.

Noah’s like, “You’re ready? Ok!”

I love you so much. Thank you for liking me this much. I do like it. The reality is my cunt can’t handle hours of wear and tear on a regular basis so you are perfect.

But variety.

The clothespins were fantastic. Oh please more of that.

I hated them and hated them and hated them and hated them until I was begging for more and fuck I love that.

I was asked recently if I liked anal sex and separately why I like anal sex. Because anal sex makes me come so hard that I get muscle cramps through most of my body. Yeah. I like it. Not cause it’s dirty. Because nothing else makes me feel like that. The fact that it is dirty just means you take a shower right after. Not a big deal.

Ok, we did great today with the anal. Full marks. Slow, patient, lots of lube. Well done.

Oh I’m so well done.

The role play started out vicious. Midway I really needed him to switch from telling me that I was worthless to telling me I was good because, see I had been following your rules I just didn’t understand you thought I should be doing that with you.

So I made that switch work well in the scene and I got the cosseting and good girls I needed. That was really nice.

Yay. Happy dance. Now I get to… go pick up a kid for a picnic in the park and a very different kind of play date. 

Snicker.

I think this is the best I’ve felt in my body in a very long time. Thank you Noah. I know I’m teasing you a little. I don’t mean to be a jerk. It was really good. Like that. But more.

Feeling more complete

At the conclusion of Cranky Day I went up to Wicked Grounds and had dinner with two wonderful women. We had a great conversation. I felt seen. I felt like I had friends. I felt like I know these peoples stories and they know mine and they want to know more. I know I want to know more about them.

It isn’t just about hunting. It is about needing something bigger than a four person nucleus family with a babysitter.

My submissive walked in, surprised to see me, on a date. I was tactful I think. Barely grabby enough to remind him that I can but not stepping on the toes of his date. I think. I hope. *cross fingers* (No complaints from him.)

I think it is funny how I’m kinda putting people in boxes they didn’t ask to be put in. I don’t know if those are boxes they want to be in.

I am sorta doing with my submissive an intensified, deeper, adult, more intimate version of what I barely hinted at with my best friend in junior high. My poor best friend. I spent so much time hitting him. He told me that it didn’t hurt that much and clearly I needed to be hitting someone so it was ok. But I never kissed him. I never got even close to being sexual with him. That was completely off the table. (I actually went and stayed with this friend on the road trip. His wife is awesome and he has a darling baby boy. I’m so happy for him.)

I’ve never really soaked in wanting without hurrying up to sex. I don’t even really know how to do that. I feel like I’m signing up for the most torturous science project of my life. How does one sit with desire and coax it without indulging it completely?

I don’t know and I want to find out.

When I am grinding on your crotch and you can smell me the thing isn’t that I lack desire to fuck you.

I want to fuck you. But much more than that I want the power to decide not to fuck you. The first power like that I’ve ever really had in my life.

That’s a kind of intoxication I don’t know how to describe.

I love that I can lay on you and kiss you as much as I want to and you will gasp and moan and pant and start crying… but you won’t grab me and force me to do more than I am ready to do.

This is an utterly novel experience for me.

It is gross and creepy and yucky but I feel like the seeds of wanting this came from being a parent. I kiss my kids without escalating. But it isn’t passionate. It is loving and tender without being remotely sexual.

It really taught me a lot about the variety of love I can feel. I am curious about the extent of that variety in a way I was not before having children. How many ways can love?

Am I physically capable of passion without hurrying to get it over with?

And it will be complicated to figure out the dynamic of pain and tenderness. When I say that I haven’t really dominated you in the past, the tenderness is a huge chunk of what I mean. I have tried very hard to give you the kind of pain I thought you wanted. I wasn’t there just being selfish. I like that kind of play and I thought you only wanted a specific thing from me.

If what you want is to do what I want, then this is going to be a whole lot more gentle. Because you don’t understand what I want as much as you think you do. Yes, I want to hurt you. I’m going to fuck you up severely. But that will be like 10% of our relationship.

I’ve watched you for a decade and a half. I’ve watched you be a man of integrity, honesty, character, and dedication.

Why in the world would I want to spend the majority of our time together degrading you?

Just got off the phone with my shrink. That was a lovely phone call. I gave her an update on the folks I’m pursuing. She said, “Oh I know these names.” That makes me happy. She thinks it is a good thing that I am taking my sexual satisfaction this seriously. “If this is what it takes and you can do it… do it.”

She also said that the thing I was cranky about is something we’ve discussed in therapy many many many many many many many times and yup I’ve been cranky about it for a long time. That is an accurate perception on my part. I’m not being hysterical. This is an issue.

I described my April and said, “Ok that is 0-60.”

I said, “IT IS ONLY ON 3 DAYS!!!!”

“Oh. But it is so much emotional intensity… it feels like a lot more than three days…”

Deep sigh.

You don’t understand. I used to do this 5-6 nights/week.

Three nights in a month doesn’t feel like 0-60 for me. And two of those nights I’ll be with the kids for most of the day anyway.

So it doesn’t represent that much time away from my normal life except in the form of lost sleep.

So it feels different to me.

I’m being real careful to catch up on sleep first.

My shrink said yeah, just use Lorazepam every night for a while. Catch up on lost sleep. Just doooo eeeet.

None of this, “But I’m overmedicated” bullshit. I’m not.

I think I have decided to try the Gabapentin. I’m scared shitless. But I seriously need a break from smoking. This is killing my lungs. Edibles are so expensive.

I would much rather give my money away than hemorrhage it on pot. Realistically: I’d rather pay chiropractors.

I’m not sure I will ever stop completely. I like it. But I don’t want to need this much of it. At this point it is hurting me.

My lungs are so pissed.

I won’t be on the computer today. K is bringing the Bonus Kids over. We haven’t had a visit in a while. I’m really happy about it.

Last night two wonderful women decided to come talk to me just because I said in a public way that I would be out of the house.

I feel so lucky.

Thank you for seeing me. Thank you for loving me.

Arms hurt. Love you so much. Bye.

Not fair

I spend a lot of time worrying that what I want isn’t fair. Not to Noah, not to the people I am propositioning, not to my kids, maybe even not to me.

What is “fair”?

Noah is having some feelings about how much time I’m spending thinking about the folks I’m chasing. That is logical and reasonable. I haven’t spent much time with anyone yet. It’s mostly in my head and some IMing and letters and emails. It’s almost entirely emotional energy at this point. But he notices.

I feel like it isn’t fair that I forcefully reject the label of polyamorous because I just can’t take on being responsible for someone’s needs that way. This article reminds me that I don’t have much to offer.

The thing is… I actually do talk to my prey quite a bit. I think there is a big difference between one-offs I pick up at parties (where I usually will not even write down my email address or phone number or name: if you can remember my name to google me you can find me) and the people I…

am attached to.

Because this is love. I don’t want to call it polyamory because I have issues of my own. But this is love.

Why do I love my submissive? Because he is smart, funny, he’s a great father. I have barely met one of his children one time many many years ago in a waving from the car sort of thing (I think but I might be remembering wrong) so I’m judging from his self-descriptions.

But I know how much time he spends. I know what activities he engages in. I know how he encourages his kids to try and fail and get up again. I respect him.

Even though I disagree with some of the decisions that his personal beliefs lead him to make… I actually have respect for the fact that he has his faith and he is going to god damn act it out. It matters to him and I really respect that. I respect it when people take their faith (whatever that is) seriously.

My faith is it takes all kinds. And if we are going to all make it that will take money and help.

I love the way he has taken care of his slave. He has one of the longest term M/s relationships I know. They are so loving and considerate and caring. Being around them always makes me feel just a little bit happier that such people are in the world. I respect that they model how to talk to one another and be loving while having boundaries.

I even really respect the fact that even with ownership between them they get to do what they each need to do for their lives.

Because we are all different. We are all complicated. We all have such different needs. They show me one way of working out those different needs. They don’t switch together because that’s a complicated thing in a dynamic. But other people are different.

I can understand to some degree. I can’t switch with Noah. Sometimes that is hard. Sometimes I think it simplifies things and improves my life. I appreciate that Noah doesn’t have a strong need for me to turn on dominance with him when I’m totally not in the mood. That was hard with my Owner. He’s a very switchy person. He wanted to have ultimate control of what kind of stimulation he was getting when, but sometimes he wanted to be dominated on demand and that was serious work for me.

I have a deep, burning inner sadist but this dominance thing is different. No matter what my submissive is saying. He doesn’t know. Picture me sticking my tongue out but this is a smiley free zone.

Today I took youngest child to the penultimate ballet class of the series and I used the hour to exercise. I ran for 40 minutes then I did a bunch of crunches/push ups/planks/leg lifts/etc until I needed to get the kidlet.

I have an increasingly weird opinion of my body. Why can’t I get stronger and stay fat this isn’t fair. I do drop weight pretty fast when I start heavily exercising. I feel this awful feeling of “See. If you only cared about your looks you could be thin” and I want to scream back WATCH ME BUY 15 GALLONS OF ICE CREAM AND EAT IT ALL THIS WEEK MOTHERFUCKER I’LL SHOW YOU ‘CARES ABOUT LOOKS!”

Ahem. But I’m not sure that is actually good for my health. So I don’t know what I’m doing.

I want to be better able to ride Noah (or anyone else). So I want to get better at running. Because right now I want to do that. I’ve been having a lot of fun on top lately with Noah even though that is historically not much my thing.

Really lots has been changing about my sexual interests over the last few years. On one hand Noah is so ideal because he is up for trying anything with the merest suggestion. On the other hand I’ve kind of exhausted the things he really wants to try.

Even though people are constantly surprised that I’m not the top in the relationship… no… I like being a sexual follower. I like doing what you want to do err, but let’s be clear that is if you are in the mood to do what I like doing. Cause I’m a selfish shithead. I like being told what to do and how to do it. Even if what you like isn’t perfectly my favorite I really like that you want to tell me to do it.

So I’m in an interesting place with my submissive. He thinks I’ve been so dominant with him and I think I’ve been an incredibly perceptive service top. I say the things to you I wish someone was saying to me.

Sigh

I’m actually looking forward to Noah watching me top in a few weeks. He’s never seen me top Sarah. He’s never seen me seriously beat on anyone. I feel like… after ten years he gets to meet a whole new me.

This is terrifying and exciting at the same time.

I hope it doesn’t change how he sees me too much.

I need to review some anatomy lessons. Especially the bone structure of the face.

God I’m mean.

No marks anyone can see when you go to work. I’ll be good.

I may draw these lines with a bright red marker to remind me. And cross out the no-no areas on the body with bright red. Because I’m still learning new boundaries and it’s important I don’t fuck this up.

The amount of trust that is being placed in me, quite frankly, scares the shit out of me. Why would anyone put their physical safety in my hands like this? Why would anyone give me permission to do this much damage to their body?

Shit, why am I just about begging the Professor on my knees to be just as rough or worse with me?

Because I’m a masochist.

Because I’m a sadist.

Because I have wonderful, complimentary friends who can help take me to heights of ecstasy completely impossible in vanilla sex. I know. I’ve tried and tried and tried.

I want someone completely and totally pedantic to crawl inside my head and whisper pretty much whatever he wants because I have faith that he sees me better than I see myself and I think he will say things I should hear.

I hope my submissive trusts me for fairly similar reasons.

I know Sarah trusts me for that reason. Lots of history proving that I will tell you what you really need to get programmed into your inside voice as I cause your body to absolutely flood with chemicals so that these lessons can be beaten as deeply into your unconscious existence as possible.

You are good. You are worthy. You are strong. You are beautiful. You are so very necessary. You are wonderful. I see you. I am so happy you are here. Thank you for being here with me. Thank you for loving me. I love you. I love you. I love you.

The script varies and has different components but that’s kind of the basis of what I like to beat into people.

I don’t hit people because I want them to feel small or bad or wicked. I hit people because it is fucking hot and you are so fucking nice for letting me do this. Extra bonus points if it gets you off. I’m completely satisfied with you just enjoying it.

For me, and for some other perverts I know, bdsm is sex of the mind and the body but not necessarily of the genitals. It can involve the genitals but it doesn’t have to. It’s about the chemical experience of strong sensations in your body. It’s about the power dynamic of doing that to someone or letting someone do that to you. Submitting your body to someone else’s desires is hotter than the sun.

I mean, I think. But I’m highly sexually submissive. I just don’t do that without serious negotiation. I think those kinds of roles are things that must be highly explicitly stated. I think the expectations must be verbally agreed on or (preferably) written down so that can be reviewed as necessary.

Power exchange means permission to have expectations about how you will be treated. Without some serious verbal negotiation (or written for an ongoing relationship) it is inappropriate to get into a situation where you have serious expectations of how you will be treated.

Folks just don’t actually generally sign on for that. Not when it comes to pain play and power imbalanced relationships. Not anymore. Once upon a time such things were normal and expected but things have changed.

Now it’s abuse. If someone tries to control you or hurt you without extensively asking your permission they are an abuser and you need help.

Things change.

We have to adapt. Even if our wiring doesn’t want to. Even if we would be much more successful predators if we were more up front about our hunting.

Side note. There are many women in this world I’d like to meet and talk to. How does it feel to live in your world and have this many partners? I’m kinda a freak in my world.

I’m not sure they want to talk to me. Maybe I’ll find out some day.

You never know what might happen. Life is long.

It is weird how with every passing year I feel like I have more and more I want to do before I die. I feel so much more urgency to be busy and active and accomplish things. Shit. I might live to be as old as 80. That’s a lot of fucking time to fill. I’d better make lists. Or I’m going to be old and be pissed I wasted so much time.

Sometimes I’m quite angry with myself for how I spent my childhood. Then I try to find compassion. If I had been out trying to exercise by myself as I moved around as a child the horror stories I experienced would have been much more frequent.

It’s ok that I hid. I had good reasons. I need to stop hating myself for everything I had to do to get through hell.

It’s over. I can change now. I can do something different.

I feel guilty, Noah. I feel like I’m letting you down. I also feel like I’ve been dragging and dragging and dragging for a long time. I think you are filling my bucket with everything you have going spare.

I need a deluge from somewhere. So I have a nice safe deity lined up who will fuck me senseless and maybe eventually get around to hurting me; a nice safe Professor who will beat the shit out of me and (we’ll see); Sarah who wants me to gleefully beat on her while telling stupid jokes; and a nice submissive who wants me to make him bleed and bleed.

That’s a deluge if ever I’ve produced one. That’s a lot of energetic stuff going on.

I’ve never managed a line up that felt this intense this… instantly… before. April is going to be god damn intense.

Oh yeah, and I’ll be playing with Noah and our normal sex life will continue. Cause that’s not going to change.

I have a very hard time feeling like this is ok. But whether it is ok or not I am going to do it. Because Noah is the only person who could stop me (other than my proposed partners losing interest) and he’s… ok with it.

Maybe that’s over stating. He’s nervous right now.

I get it. I’m being a selfish bitch.

I feel like I am about to god damn explode out of this little box that my life is allowed to be. This is not all of who I am. I am big. I am so many things. I am so many people. I want so many experiences at so many intensity levels. I want all of it. I want all of you.

I’m a little surprised I managed to damn this for four years. That’s my longest stretch of monogamy in my life.

Watch the riverbanks flood. Just wait. Soon there will be so much green.

Speaking of which: I’m very happy with how the tile mosaics are coming along. As long as these people I already dislike manage to install this well… I will live in a gorgeous house. I’m a lot more talented than I thought, which is kind of funny.

I can make beautiful things. No, not perfect. No I don’t make pictures that look like photographs. But I help people feel feelings.

That’s all I’m trying to do.

Different people encourage me to look at myself in different ways. Yes, they may call me filthy names, but they also concretely say, “Let’s look at x, y, and z and talk about it objectively.”

Because the filthy names are at uhm, my request. It’s ok. It gets me off.

So the whore thing is so complicated. On one hand I want to stop having this negative thing in my head where I keep coming back to this awful place of feeling bad about who I am. On the other hand if someone is hurting me and fucking me and whispers that I’m a whore and I should come…

I will. Over. And over. And over.

I kinda don’t want to give that up just cause it isn’t pc? It is super hot.

But I want it to stop being part of my negative tape when I am having a bad day. I want to stop randomly feeling bad about myself and calling myself a whore because of it. That’s dumb.

I want to change that.

But eliminating the word whore from my life entirely isn’t it.

That would be easier. Avoiding this powder keg would be easier. But then I wouldn’t get to orgasm like that and I’m not that pc.

 

Control, sex, identity

I’ve been a kinky motherfucker all of my life. I officially entered the bdsm community at 18, but I was doing kinky stuff before then. I’ve been giving oral sex for 31 years. I’ve been having PIV (penis in vagina intercourse) by choice for 22 years. This summer marks 16 years of my life in the bdsm community. In two more years I will have been in the bdsm community (to some degree or another) for half of my life. I feel very confident saying that being a pervert is part of my identity. Part of my identity I’m thoroughly comfortable with.

But things shift over time. The kind of pervert I am changes. The kinds of things I like has drifted considerably, especially since having kids.

In all these 16 years I have resolutely shied away from pursuing any kind of ongoing interaction where I was to be Dominant. That’s been a line for me. I like being toppy. I’m sadistic as fuck. But I’m not a Dominant. Nope, that’s not me.

I’m a serious control freak and I manage a lot of that by being the submissive/bottom/slave because then I’m the one who does the vast majority of the work and it goes how I prefer. I date lazy tops. Perfect.

But my life has changed a lot. I feel like I have changed.

There are a lot of people and situations in my life where I could railroad people and control the shit out of them. I’m home schooling my kids. I could micromanage the fuck out of them. I could require them to be submissive to me. Legally I have the right. Yesterday I read this post that reminded me of why I really don’t want my children to be submissive to me in any way.

I don’t know about you, but I fall into being a bully real easy. I have to be careful not to control people inappropriately. I have big opinions and big feelings and people who aren’t rock solid in themselves like being influenced. I could be a serious problem for a lot of people.

I try so hard to not be that. I keep my boundaries fiercely. I don’t boss people beyond very specific, small, limited places where I ask for consent. “Hey we want to organize this event, can I boss people around to get things done quickly?” At this stage of my life 9/10 times when I ask that people gratefully say, “Oh please do.” I’m good at figuring out a plan. I’m good at bossing people.

But I’m scared of it. I avoid it. I don’t seek it out in an ongoing way. I do not want a job where I have that kind of control over people. I am not stable enough. I am not kind enough. I make such bad assumptions.

I act without thinking and I hurt people when I do too much of that.

It isn’t safe nor appropriate for me to be too bossy with any of my friends or family members.

But lately I want to boss. I want to control. I want to have influence in an ongoing control-tastic way.

I got this email from my friend. The one I topped the other night. The one I’ve been thinking about a lot for a while now. The one who likes the really super intense play that I like.

I’m thinking about him way more than is good for my overall balance of life. Holy shit. What do I want from him?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So much. So little. Such specificity. I don’t want to try to meet all his needs. I want to negotiate a very small slice of his soul and control the ever loving shit out of that. As I hurt him really badly.

Anyone who tells me they really want to see me come up from biting them with blood dripping down from my mouth?

Shit. We need to get tested.

Cause I can’t draw blood until we have both been recently tested. I have kids. I have to care. I have too many friends who have contracted Hep C.

Cause if you have been dreaming for years about having me hurt you like that and I have been dreaming for years about hurting you like that and my husband doesn’t mind and your partner thinks it is hotter than the sun?

Uhm…

Why not?

I have worked very hard to cram all of the “me” that is a pervert into a very small box that I keep in the closet. I take it down for very rare special occasions when my kids are far away and kept safe with someone I trust completely.

I know that many people in the community are ok with somewhat fuzzy boundaries with their children. I am not comfortable with that. I need boundaries between them and my sex life constructed with steel beams and concrete reinforcement. This is a no-information/no-fly zone kiddos. Nope.

No, I won’t swing in the house with the kids.

Just no.

Not because I’m judging you. Because I’m trying to deal with the body and brain I have. I’m trying to deal with the highly traumatized DNA sequence I passed down.

Why does sex with Noah behind a closed door feel fine as long as we are quiet? Because I’m really thrilled that my kids think that sex is a natural part of growing up and finding a partner. I’m ok with modeling that.

I can’t model promiscuity. Not given my background.

You know what? My kids have flat told me they don’t want me to date. They know that we have friends who date outside their marriage. They don’t care about what other families do. They told me flat out that they don’t want to give up more time with me.

They are little for such a short time. I’ve already been a pervert for so long. I have already been a slut for so long. Those things will still be there when my children no longer want me like this. I have one shot in this lifetime to nail the kind of parenting relationship I want to have and that means giving my children far more than I want to give. It means giving up things I want really badly for a while.

Life is always about choices.

Noah could tolerate a lot more promiscuity and boundary pushing and dysfunction. But then I’d be teaching it to my kids.

No.

It isn’t that I think that modeling dating is inherently wrong. I truly don’t. Other people have very different lives.

I think I don’t know how to model long term stable relationships. I like picking up strangers and fucking them once or twice and moving on.

I don’t want to model what I like.

Even if I don’t want to stop liking it. I just don’t want to like it in front of them.

This feels so complicated. I don’t like being in the closet. I don’t like feeling like a liar. I don’t like feeling like I am being anything other than 100% brutally honest.

You know what? I am with my kids. I still have boundaries. They sometimes ask probing questions about my history or my experiences and I will either say something matter of fact like, “Yes I dated lots of people before I got married because I wanted to figure out what things were important to me” or “That’s something private that I will not discuss with you during your childhood. You need to grow up without having that information in your brain. You can find it out later.”

So I’m not… lying… but I only answer selectively.

Part of how I have kept these divisions is “I did a lot of stuff in the past I’m not doing now and I have no shame about any of it” and “Right now I’m doing the mom thing.”

But the “mom thing” isn’t all of who I am. Even the (incredibly hot) sex I have with Noah feels like part of the mom thing and…

It isn’t all of who I am.

I’ve gone through a lot of evolution of perception of self. Especially with regards to the word whore. (Small disclaimer in case anyone is new: I’m not talking about sex work. I’m talking about personal associations from formative abuse. Specifically I have to figure out how to get my brain to work around shit my father did. It’s complicated. I’m not knocking anyone or any careers.)

I’m going to need some way to refer to this person I’m playing with. I will need a code name. I’m not ready to make one up yet so this is awkward. I have blanket permission to write about him, but he values his privacy.

For a long time I genuinely saw myself as a kind of sacred whore. I had sex with a lot of people, many of whom… weren’t getting a lot of other play. I feel like there is a lot of emotional healing that comes through sexual intimacy and you can absolutely experience that with strangers. There is a validation and affirmation that doesn’t exist in other kinds of connections in my experience. But it only happens with a highly, highly experienced partner who knows how to read intricate body signals and ask the right questions.

I’m really good at it. I’m told. By an exceptionally long list of people. So I have to believe it is true.

This person I’m playing with likes a lot of degradation with his submission. He wants to be called a whore and I get that. There isn’t a lot I find hotter during sex than having someone grind into me and call me a whore… so I get it. Better if I’m being hurt while they are calling me a whore and fucking me. I’ll usually come right there.

I’m having big feelings about degrading him. He asked me a lot of specific, leading questions leading to his desire to be degraded. Oh my.

I want control so badly right now. I want to be able to boss someone around a lot. I want to really play with someone’s mind. I want to headfuck someone until I can tell them that down is up and up is down.

I know how.

I’ve taken lots of classes. I’ve practiced with lots of people who are considered experts. I trained for this.

But I’ve never actually gone and done it. I’ve always been terrified of this. I don’t have the right. I was a Wiccan too early in life. What you put out there comes back to you times three. Be very careful what you wish for and make happen in your life.

I want to crawl into someone’s head and change parts of how he feels about himself. Not in bad ways. I don’t want to hurt him. I want to… tweak him. Because it’s hot. Because controlling people is so fucking hot.

I don’t want to hurt his life. I don’t want to interrupt his relationship with his partner or his kids or his job or his other play partners or…

I just want this. This piece of control. That I can’t explain yet. I don’t know what it is I want so god damn badly right now.

Thinking about the fact that he has to wait for a letter in response to his email because I feel like making him wait …. I’m going to masturbate quite a few times today. This is hotter than fuck.

(Yes I have appropriate boundaries around it. Don’t worry, I can come quick. I only need like three minutes of privacy.)

The email he wrote me is earth shatteringly hot and I can’t quite quantify why. The depth of longing. The number of years this longing has been sustained for.

I met him when I was 19. He likes to say that I had him from, “And who the hell are you?” Apparently that was the first thing I said to him and he was done.

You know…

I feel like this is a bad rom com justification for intense longing wearing people down.

In this moment I all of a sudden understand one of my friends much better. She has a marriage in which they do not discuss politics because they are on opposite sides of the fence. This man and I… have very differing views. We are going to need a hard and fast rule that if one of us notices that we want to have an argument because it is veering near politics we will need a Shiny Change Of Topic. Because…. I know his views. I know his views about a lot of things don’t align with mine for very complicated and diverse reasons.

He isn’t someone I could have married and had kids with for a laundry list of reasons. Guess what? That role in my life is filled and I’m fucking thrilled with how it is going.

But there is this stuff that I really fucking like to do that I can’t do with my husband because holy shit is he not interested.

Noah’s ok with some biting and scratching because it indicates enthusiasm and he likes that. But he is not a masochist and he has decided limits and he gets mad if they are crossed. It isn’t hot.

He has offered, over the years, to do some bottoming if I feel like I just absolutely have to do it and I just… can’t hit him. Not like that. He doesn’t like it. I topped him once because he wanted to feel what it was like to go through a hook pull and he needed help from endorphins and it sucked for him.

I can’t ever do that to him again.

But I really really really like hurting people and it is much easier to control that impulse on a regular basis if I have occasional times when I get to feel like, “Yes, This Is The Right Time And Space”. It is easier to understand what boundaries feel like when you get to have lots of them in different places at different times for different reasons.

I’m horrified by the idea of putting mild pornography in front of an unknown vanilla audience. But I will take all my clothes off in a room full of strangers, crook my finger at a person I don’t know and proceed to fuck right there. I will go to Folsom Street Faire and tie up any person who wants to get tied up because I know I am safe and competent and I won’t hurt them and they will get to have a sensual experience.

Boundaries, motherfucker.

Some time ago one of my children was being friendly with a random other child while we were waiting in line somewhere. The kids were going to have to just stand there for an hour or more. After a few minutes of Eldest Child trying the mother looked at me and said, “Your children have no boundaries, do they?”

Whoa.

What a global statement. We are friendly in a way that is highly unusual outside of California. We are enculturated to being part of a place that treats everyone warmly and like we could be best friends and we just don’t know it yet.

This is where we have always lived. This is how we know how to be. It isn’t that we have no boundaries. I’m wary about going into peoples houses. The kids have a lot of boundaries around going into secured spaces with people they don’t know. They are only allowed to be taken in the cars of very specific people and we have passwords around that.

No boundaries, holy fuck.

We like to pass the time in line by being friendly. Some of those random chats have turned into beautiful friendships. You know what? On the road trip we stopped in Michigan to visit with a man I met in a grocery store. Because he was wearing a pervy t-shirt and I needed to ask him to join the Mountain View Perverts Society. (We weren’t a real thing, but there was a shocking density of pervert households in a small area; we knew each other.) At worst it usually means standing in line is less tedious.

No boundaries. Jeeez.

You know what? My husband neither wanted nor asked for sexual fidelity when he married me. Nor did I.

I said I would be faithful to our relationship. That doesn’t mean anything about who I fuck or beat. If I am faithful to what Noah wants from me… You know what? I’m better able to be present with Noah if I have other needs met by other people. It means I spend less time being frustrated with him that he completely fails to be a queer masochist. I mean, what the ever loving fuck did I do wrong in this life to end up married to a hetero top?

But you have to take the hand you are dealt. He wanted me. He wanted to do the kids and home schooling thing. He has been up for everything I want to do in life. He isn’t someone who has as much strong direction as me. He’s thrilled to have someone with a stronger rudder around.

But I can’t control him. I don’t boss him. And I can’t hit him.

I have someone I like, someone I love even, walking into my life and telling me that they want me to hurt them as much and as deeply and as harshly as I want to because they think I deserve to have that release in this lifetime.

Holy fucking shit. God that’s hot.

What do I mean when I say I don’t want to date? Because clearly that means something to me. I think it means: if my children have already known you as the kind of person who comes to one big party a year and maybe one dinner a year… that’s probably where it is going to stay. I don’t take much time away from my kids. I need a lot of alone time and that dominates the time I take away from my kids. If I start seeing someone else on my own time frequently… it would cut into how present I can be with my kids and that’s not ok. But I want to see him so much.

And I’m making him wait for letters before we negotiate more. Oh, he’s probably reading this. But that’s different, you know? There are a lot of things I’m not saying here. A lot of things that are going to be private negotiations and may not ever be written about because I’m not 100% sure I want my kids to be able to find that in the archive.

I want to do some pretty fucking evil things.

And he really wants to let me.

Why is that so bad?

I don’t know.

I’m having a hard time talking myself out of it. I don’t want to talk myself out of it. I want to ………

Oh god.

Yes, when we played last weekend it was not anywhere near what we’ve talked about so far. Yes it was sexier. Yes it was more gentle. I was trying to not squick the vanillas, ok?!

Boundaries, motherfucker.

God. This scene is going to be so hot I should sell tickets.

Hey, maybe it would be a way to get enough money to pay to rent a play space during a time when my babysitter is actually free… Ha.

No pictures though. He has privacy concerns.

Yes. I want to take you. Yes. I want to take you.

God the sex is complicated. I think…

I think that is going to have to be part of what makes this so fucking hot. I think my pussy won’t be involved. I’ve never had a stone relationship before. I have never before in my whole slutty life been interested in having a stone relationship. I don’t know what the fuck this means.

It isn’t that I think I won’t have sex with people other than Noah. He kinda holy-crap enjoyed the swinger thing and… yeah I can do that.

It isn’t “what I want” in the same way. But it is close enough and fun enough and sure.

I want to use you and use you and use you and fuck with your head and build you up and help you feel a whole lot more cocky about how wonderful you are with everything you have to offer. I just want this tiny piece of it. But I’ll talk a lot about how much I enjoy all the other parts of you. I want you to be whole.

I want you to be a whole you. I think I can feed part of you.

I think you have already given me something.

I’m sleeping a lot better.

I told the woo Dr I need a month off from these supplements. I need to figure out how my body is doing after what we have been doing.

A lot of my pain issues are improving. I can feel that most of my current ache is because of current unfamiliar strenuous labor. My hands are getting wrecked. I really ought not be typing.

But I can’t say all of these things to Noah. And I need him to know that I’m thinking them. Because I need to be as absolutely transparent with Noah as I can be and in most of our lives… we just can’t talk about this stuff.

I don’t want to “date” in the next ten years. I want my kids and Noah to take up pretty much all of my time. I need that safety. I need it. I don’t know how much time I can carve away from that in order to come out with the relationship I want to have with my kids.

Don’t worry, I’m going to launch these puppies. Then I’ll have more, ahem free time. But a lot of that will go to Noah as his reward for supporting me and providing for me so well for so long.

I don’t know what is left.

I kinda want to find out.

I feel so alive.

Med evaluation

I have a med evaluation appointment in a week. I’d better get my thoughts together.

I’ve been using pot for almost eight years. It changed my life. I use pot to help me sleep, increase my appetite so I can eat healthy balanced meals (I have terrible stomach pain from anxiety), as a pain medication, as an anti-anxiety medication, as an anti-depressant, and just generally to give me a slight pause in between experiencing something and needing to react. Without the pot I respond reflexively to a lot of things in ways that are problematic.

I don’t know what to do about this cocktail.

I am at the point of diminishing returns. I have to consume so much and it is so expensive that it takes too much time and money away from my life. At the very least I need a solid several months off. I tried taking time off earlier and it failed hard.

I need a bridge. I need a different crutch on my way to walking.

Isn’t this what harm reduction is about?

I have dramatically improved my relationship with food over the last few years. I get far less diarrhea now. I have periods of relatively normal bowel function for the first time in my life. I’m going to be working on that in an ongoing way for a while, though. I’m seeing a nutritionist.

I need help sleeping. That’s the first and most important key to this lock. When I go off pot I stop sleeping. Over the counter sleep aides aren’t very effective. I build tolerance really quickly and it just goes up and up. I think a week of sleep aide is a pretty good nightly dose. I may or may not be able to get enough sleep that way.

I need help with my anxiety. I am terrified a lot of the time and it manifests as me being bitchy. I can’t do that to my family or friends. My life is safe now but I haven’t talked my body into understanding that yet. I’m 10 years into safety after 25 years of problems. I’m seeing improvement but I’m not done.

I think that I should probably stick with St. John’s Wort and/or 5-HTP to replace the anti-depressant. I’ve tried most families of anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and many anti-anxiety meds. I can take some but not many. I have horrible side effects from medications that end up being much worse than just living with the problems.

I’m hard to medicate.

Long term I’d like to be able to do serious international traveling. The pot isn’t very helpful under those circumstances either.

Ideally I’d like to find two systems that kinda sorta work but aren’t great. One being using pot for all of the above. The other being some complicated system of other meds that are used as needed while I go on long fast periods.

I think I will be a life long pot user. I think I need to have options for when pot isn’t an option because sometimes it isn’t.

I’m not sure what that is going to look like.

But I need to be able to take 6+ off from pot and have that work. I need to be able to do that for efficacy reasons.

My tolerance is just…. not sustainable at this point. I’m back to where I was before the break a few months ago. I don’t want to pay for this every month and I’m doing lung damage.

Balance the harm.

Try to reduce it.

Try to manage the risks so that you still get the upside without so many penalties. Life is just a game, right?