Category Archives: cryptic shit

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But I miss you, internet. You are my best friend.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how lucky I am. My life seems miraculous to me. I have so many things going right.

If my *biggest problem* of the last few weeks is that other people aren’t good at being as punctual as I like… I need to not bitch. My life is so wonderful. I am blessed. I am loved.

I am still in touch with at least a dozen people I was friends with in high school and middle school. Twenty years of friendship. I can’t be as bad as I think. They wouldn’t still be calling me and visiting. They drive far out of their way to see me. I can’t be nearly as bad as I think.

My kids are challenging sometimes. That’s normal, expected and for the best. I wouldn’t want them any other way. We are in a phase. A phase where lots of rules are broken and lots of glass gets broken. This phase will end. Thank goodness.

Lots happening. I miss you, internet. I promise I will be back soon.

I need to stop criticizing other people. I can have opinions about specific interactions I am involved in, but I can’t criticize the personhood of another person any more.

Noah reminded me that years ago I referred to someone as a poseur. I cringed when he repeated it to me. I am such a schmuck.

Mostly, mostly, mostly I need to not judge other parents. I am not in their homes. I do not know how they parent. I am not in a position to judge. I need to internalize that times about 50 bazillion. I think I’m not bad about it now but I do more than I feel ok about. I don’t need to judge anyone but me.

drowning in my own bile

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I feel like I’m drowning in my own bile. I don’t even know what is going on. The last few days have been really emotionally tumultuous. Noah asked me what I thought triggered it.

I think that part of my problem is that my perceived expectation of my value is different than my perceived lived experiences of my value. Does that make sense?

I know I am dripping with financial privilege. I always thought that having more money would mean feeling more secure. I always thought that being able to buy any food I wanted would be the same thing as happiness.

Many of the women I spend time with have been discussing the same theme lately: are people in your life friendly or friends? I didn’t even bring it up so I feel a bit better about that. I’m not the only insecure one.

For example of drowning in ones own bile: I managed to run into a woman at the water park I like a great deal. I got to know her during swim lessons for the kids because we overlapped for a long time. I don’t know why but I’m totally drawn to her. I have been since I met her. Her personality makes me feel more calm and assured. She just has that competent “I know what I’m fucking doing so move out of my way” sort of vibe. God I love self-assured people.

She just got back from Hawaii. They went with friends. 14 people. They go together on a big trip every other year.

I told her, “The funny thing is, that’s why I bought a time share. And I don’t have enough friends to fill a trip so instead I go alone.”

This is choking in my own bile. I have weird pull out pieces of privilege. I want to share that so fucking bad because having privilege that you get to enjoy only while alone doesn’t really feel like privilege after a while. It disgustingly feels kind of like a punishment. Which makes me feel ungrateful and guilty and terrible. I am such a shitty person.

I have friends. What I don’t have is a friends group. I have lots of friends who are super busy doing their own things. It isn’t even that my friends can’t afford to join me on my adventures (though that is true) mostly it is that they already have the friends-group they are going to have. And I’m never really part of groups.

I feel like a fucking asshole. I know that this isn’t other peoples fault or problem or anything. I know that I am just a selfish asshole. I don’t like myself for being what I am very much.

I’m reading a horrible, terrible, no-good book. It’s about health in marriages. It is horrible because it spends a lot of time talking about emotional needs and how people should try to be vulnerable and bring their needs. It’s about attachment between adults the same way I’ve studied attachment with children. I’m so fucked.

No, I can’t bring all my cavernous needs to Noah. I can’t bring them to anyone. They are my fucking problems. They are problems inside of me and they aren’t anyone else’s problem.

And that makes me want to die. Noah says he wants to make my life so good that I never want to leave it. The problem is, the money really isn’t what matters. And he can’t give me a depth of relationship that covers all the holes inside me. Not because he doesn’t care, but because what I need doesn’t come from a person. It comes from a whole interconnected tribe and I don’t have one. I’ve never had one.

And so I drown in my own bile.

I feel so sad that I see people 4-7 days a week and it doesn’t help me feel like people see me or give a shit about me. I feel so sad that when I look at my life and interactions I can’t understand why anyone would miss me as anything other than a work horse.

I had a panic attack yesterday while driving. I really didn’t want to go socialize with people with whom I am friendly instead of friends. But I had pre-existing plans. And I don’t like to cancel. So when I got lost on the way to somewhere I have been dozens of times I started crying and hyperventilating and screaming and I had to pull off the road to calm down so I didn’t cause an accident. It’s been a while since I had a panic attack. I will choose to be happy about the gap in time instead of hating myself for having another. I’ll have more. Many more. That’s just how my body works.

I want group identity so badly that I drift through the feeling that I will die without it every so often. It has come up again and again in my life.

For a while I will have the energy to pursue someone for a closer relationship. The feeling of needing to die from lack of connection fades. Then I run out of energy for forcing a relationship and things kind of fade and I want to die. I want to die so much. My body hurts. My heart hurts.

It isn’t fair to my children. They should count now. They should be enough for group identity. I’m a fucking Gibbs girl now.

Only I know that if I stand next to anyone else named Gibbs, other than the ones who live in this house, I’m very much not part of the family.

I wish that my kids felt like more of a relationship. It feels so much like a job. A draining, hard job. I do get love back, but mixed in with a lot of hitting, screaming, and my needs being entirely unimportant.

Noah is so tired. I feel guilty for asking him for anything. He doesn’t have any more attention to give.

I hate myself for being such a whiny, needy baby. I want my mommy so bad.

Instead I will sit here and watch The West Wing and I’ll eat a cheese stick. I’ll cry.

Really, it’s for the best that I don’t have more of a friends group who wants to try group activities sorta under my umbrella. My group trips rarely go well. It’s usually my fault. I have a hard time with people shirking work. In most group trips there are people who work and people who don’t and I get into conflict with the non-workers. Most of the other worker-bees don’t complain and thus I’m a problem.

I know.

I’m selfish and entitled. I don’t like myself very much for it.

I’ve certainly been on group trips to things. They work out when I am barely known to everyone there and I don’t talk much.

I’m sorry that I am such an asshole. It has been so necessary on so many levels that I don’t really see that part of my personality going away.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m a sorry sack of shit.

Today is another day. Hanging out with the mothers’ helpers. Ice skating. Noah’s sister is in town and we are having dinner with her and her boyfriends’ family. Because she came to California to see her boyfriend, not her brother. We are going to Los Gatos. I will endeavor to pretend I am a first time visitor to the town because man that smoothes things over. No, “I have a diploma from your high school” because then it spirals into Stories. I know better than to tell Stories tonight.

Tomorrow is so busy. Birthday party. Other party.

I know so many people. Why do I feel so lonely? It’s the difference between being friends or being friendly. I’m very friendly with people. Mostly, lots of people like me. That’s because I keep my fat, stupid mouth shut about almost everything I think. My feelings don’t fucking matter and I know it. Yeah, I’m a whiny bitch. I know. I’m very sorry that I’m hurting. I’m very sorry that sometimes that is obnoxious to be around. I try my best to not make it anyones problem.

And I want to die. It is so pathetic. There isn’t anything going on right now that justifies my feelings. Nothing bad has happened. I feel lonely. I alternate between having pathetically low expectations and having expectations that are so high that only a blessed few ever see anything like that.

I want a family. I want grown ups who spend time with me and who are just there. I have a hard time with how much Noah works. I support it. I don’t bitch, well… I don’t let him work overtime.

We have discussed how my behavior would be a serious problem for him if he was in a less-impacted profession. My insistence that he work for 40 hours flat would cause career problems in almost any other career. Yeah. I’m a selfish piece of shit. Lots of women have it much harder than me and they aren’t whiny bitches.

I want to die. Because clearly there is someone more worthy waiting in the wings who would better appreciate the ridiculous privilege I have. Only there isn’t someone waiting in the wings. That isn’t how life works. I would fuck my children up for a very long time.

Missing my family is like a wound filled with gangrene. No good will come of this. It poisons every part of my life.

I know it is my responsibility to be pleasant to people. It is not their fault that I hurt. It would be a lot easier if I was still allowed to cut. I don’t blow up as much. It is like venting steam out to prevent an explosion.

What triggers it? I have some suspicions but I can’t write about it. Even I recognize some limits. The only reason I haven’t had a good session of head banging already is because I would have to admit that I did it and I would have to reset the clock on talking about my self harm.

I’ve been pretty good for a couple of years. Almost three years. I don’t want to slip now. I don’t want to have to tell anyone how broken and stupid and pathetic I am. And I won’t lie. That compulsive telling is probably why I am alive.

It feels like a betrayal of how hard Noah works to be this sad. He works hard to earn money and he works hard to be emotionally supportive. He does his very best. And I am an ungrateful piece of shit.

Distraction

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If you do much research on mental illness, or really any undesirable behavior you want to eliminate, distraction is key.

This week in therapy my shrink spent a lot of time harping on the idea that I need to start being a lot more choosy about who I allow into my life. I always wonder how much my shrinks judge me. No, actually I don’t wonder very often or I would be very paranoid. Occasionally I wonder. When therapists very rarely encourage me towards squeezing people out of my life (it is rare but it happens) I always wonder how long they have sat on that impulse.

When did my description of my friend start bothering you? They never tell me, of course.

Therapy is such a weird beast. It is a relationship but not a a real one. It is unidirectional and unbalanced. There is honesty but not full honesty. Truth but not the whole truth. The whole truth involves someones opinions which I shouldn’t be taking into consideration.

I shouldn’t change to make my therapist happy. She otherwise isn’t part of my life. I should not alter the support I get to make her happy.

But sometimes you do have to follow their advice because they are right. She doesn’t say “so and so is icki” she says “what do you get from this relationship and what do you give to it? If the balance doesn’t work for you then you need to move on”. She says to me, “I know that for most of your life you have had to accept relationships with anyone who wanted to have a relationship with you. That is no longer true. You need to keep your children safe.”

I was raped over and over because I made a lot of stupid choices. Because I accept any relationship that is offered. Because I don’t say “no” when I should.

Yeah yeah yeah people think of me as being overly firm with my “no” delivery. You only know what my life is like after more than half a dozen rapes or more. The people who have known me the longest met me when I had been raped at least half a dozen times.

The things that happen to you change you. I did not know how to say “no”. I have learned to say it loudly and firmly. Loudly and firmly enough that I often bother people who wish I was “softer” about the process. Oh fucking well.

“Most people have no more than five people in their true inner circle.” (Quoting my shrink again.)

Jenny. Noah. K. My kids. Pam. That’s six. I have absolute trust in their love for me. Do I feel that way about anyone else? Not really. Jenny bought her way in by being the only person who comforted me during a horrible childhood. K has been the single most helpful person by a humongous margin during the parenting journey. I talk to her more often than anyone I don’t live with. I think she is the most motherly friend I have ever had. She has actually shown up when the rubber meets the road for the past few years. Pam has been with me for more than half of my life. To the best of my recollection I have gotten really pissed off at her, but never for actual boundary violations. I can’t remember one.

Other people were in the inner circle at other points. When they were able to show up. Life changes. I don’t stop loving them. Not a jot. But I don’t have trust any more. If I search my body this moment I’m not angry about the fact that I have seen the waxing and waning of so many friendships. They were with me when it made sense. It doesn’t make as much sense any more.

I can’t explain what it was like in my childhood. I was not allowed to cry. My crying irritated people and it was beaten out of me. That’s a lot of why I cry so much now. I was horribly brutalized and then punished if I grieved.

I want to write in excruciating detail about my current emotional outpouring towards people. But I don’t want it as part of the record. There are names I don’t write about. Lots of them. There are lots of specific details I don’t want to announce in public. Mostly because I’m aware that my perceptions are highly biased and I’m a much bigger judgmental asshole than people understand and I need to keep it that way.

I don’t want the fall out. I’m that lame. So I’m having trouble working through the emotions. Writing things out is a lot of how I get rid of things. It has become very useful for me over the years. (Yes, people who like people journals get these things out without the public fall out. Clearly I don’t write that way. You don’t get to pick the writing talent you get. You just get it.)

So I’ve been looking for distraction. Painting went so breathtakingly well. The only time I raised my voice was when Shanna was backing into an open paint can. (It was a good save. She wasn’t cranky.) *phew* I did it.

I’m reorganizing toys again. Because I like playing house. Because it makes me happy. I refine how I organize as I watch them use things. I try to figure out where how to have things “live” where they are played with. I want to make their set up convenient for them so it is easy for them to clean up.

It is hard to find a system when you are a kid. You literally don’t have the schema to do it. Kids need to be shown how to find systems. Some people are naturally very gifted, but usually there is the overall framework of systemization within their life and that is why they are so accustomed.

I’m not very good at providing constant systemic living. I will never run a prison. I believe that needs and wants change dramatically over time and it is good to be constantly tweaking your system to be more appropriate for where you are today.

Sustainability is hard to find. What can you keep up? Deciding to be rigid in your system means you exclude millions of awesome options. I like trying lots of things. I need more flexibility.

It is hard reading my shrinks’ evaluation of me. I don’t think it is accurate that I can’t work because of relational issues. Although I had a lot of job volatility throughout my work life. Ha.

Today will be fun. I have babysitting time this morning. I am going to sit here and do all the work for the home school yearbook. (I’m a slacker. I should have done this a month ago.) I need to go to REI. That will be festive. I’m glad I can do it without the kids. I would like to work on the reading list for the book, but I only get three hours. I will need to get it done soon. Blah.

I need to do scheduling today. I need to plan out my running and exercise. I’m doing a half marathon with a friend in October and I’m really not doing appropriate exercise to support that. I have to start. It takes planning or I just don’t get it done. Deep sigh.

I don’t understand how other people naturally just do exercise. I have to plan how I will force myself. I have to have a reason to exercise–an upcoming obligation that will require my body to have something it doesn’t have right now. Long-term planning is too hard.

Distraction. What is distraction? What is focus? What am I doing with my life? Are the people who come and go the focus or a distraction? Is the painting a distraction or a focus? Is reorganizing the toys so they are easier for the kids to clean up a distraction or a focus?

Isn’t it all about your priorities? Isn’t it different for every person you ask?

Is writing a distraction from my life or one of the focuses in my life? Gardening? House maintenance (both of the repair and of the cleaning variety)?

What is life?

What does it mean to have a focus in your life? I read a lot about what other people do with their time. You can tell what people care about by looking at how they spend their time.

It’s ok that we are all different. If we were all the same that would be boring. We need symbiotic relationships.

The inner circle doesn’t mean that you only have relationships with people you trust that much. There are lots of other kinds of relationships. It is ok to share smaller pieces of yourself with people.

And it’s ok to walk away when it no longer works for you.

It doesn’t make me a bad person. People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Not everyone will be there forever.

There are some perverts who probably shouldn’t be around my kids. I recognize that in a larger sense–my kids are not exposed to the broader bdsm community.

Things that are ok for me aren’t necessarily ok for my kids. My kids are impressionable.

Boundaries are complicated.

What makes someone an asshole? Caring about their own needs to the point where they are ok with other people getting hurt sometimes as they take care of themselves.

What makes someone a bitch? Saying or doing things to hurt other people on purpose to be spiteful.

Notice how the gendered one is a lot nastier? I notice that in my language.

I’m an asshole. I try hard to not be a bitch.

I don’t have time to explain why this dude is wrong. There are so many ways he is wrong that I would permanently damage my arms. Ain’t worth it.

I get to walk away. Yeah, it might hurt you but I am not obligated to sit around and tend your feelings. Notice how you have never tended mine? Fuck right off.

But spite isn’t necessary. What’s the difference? When you are writing, what’s the damn difference?

Well, I say fuck you to the universe but I don’t say it to people. I don’t publicly (or privately) slam people when I end a relationship. In general I maintain a policy of being very positive when I talk about former friends/partners/acquaintances. I’m well-fucking-aware that you are judged by how you judge other people

So I’m an asshole, but I try to limit the scope.

I always have the right to walk away. It is the most American attitude one can have. Well, or the other American attitude “I have the right to own a gun so I can shoot people who seem scary“.

I seem scary to a lot of people. To the point where strangers will comment on it in public. I worry a lot about guns.

I kind of hope that the next revolution in this country is a call to disarmament. Citizens give up their guns so that police can de-militarize.

Wouldn’t it be nice?

Wouldn’t it be nice to stop hearing about mass shootings at schools?

And wouldn’t it be nice if white people were called terrorists when they instill terror just like people of other races? Parity in discussion would help us figure out the common solutions.

I need to answer a whole bunch of emails. I haven’t forgotten you. I just… haven’t scheduled yet. Scheduling goes in batches. I can’t handle adding things in between scheduling-fests. Then I get “over scheduled” and I’m shaking by the end of the month. It sucks.

Tonight I get to have dinner with an old friend before we go to the Diana Gabaldon reading. I’m excited. There’s a new book in a series I love.

This will be the very first time I’ve ever been to a reading for an author I know. I have heard random people at college but I had no previous knowledge of them. A step towards fandom I guess?

What is the focus of your life? How do your actions support that? How does your time spent support that? How does your energy spent support that?

When you are old, what will you appreciate more? That you spent time working in your garden or that you spent time with people you will definitely not know by then? Depends on the person. Depends on how the time with them is spent.

Sometimes you need to pick the garden.

Boundaries are hard. Being an asshole is hard.

Editing continues

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I have finished section one. It is 13,908 words. It is exactly 1/3 of the chapters I wrote for the book. (The middle section has more chapters than either other section.)

Roughly the sections are: Introduction/history/definitions, General life skills/sex/friends/social media/etc, Scary Shit.

Now that I’ve finished the easy section I’m feeling nervous.

If you are an early reader be aware that the Google Doc folder now has updated chapters that are titled as chapters and everything. All fancy and official like.

I’m still open to all feedback. (Pam, I haven’t integrated the feedback you gave me on the Google Doc folder, but I have it in physical writing. It will be up in the next day or two.)

My editor is out of town a fair bit in early June. I may fudge a bit and do the bibliography then and not stress about doing it before June.

Coming along.

I did something brave about a boundary. But I feel like I did it in the most chicken shit way possible. I’m trying to decide if tomorrow I want to go deal with another hard thing that is hanging over my head. Just get it the fuck over with. I don’t like limbo.

I think that the other hard situations are things that can only be solved with time. I don’t think there is another resolution available.

In other news, I was told this weekend that I may not get a chance to go to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival next year. This year, the 40th, may be the last given the push-back the organization is getting on their transphobic policies.

I… I have mixed feelings. I would really love to be in an all woman environment for a week with the kids. But I don’t need them to be women-born-women. I just need them to be people who identify with the more female end of the spectrum. I’m even cool with the event involving people who are androgynous/non-gendered.

I’m sorry I want so badly to get away from men. But I really do. Not forever. I like you all an awful lot and I’m not actually ready for my radical lesbian separatist commune.

Other than my mother, my aunt, my sister, and my niece I haven’t ever spent a lot of time in an all-female environment. My uncle was often blessedly absent. He did show up every day though.

I never did summer camp. I didn’t go to a private school. Hell, when I do go to events I usually ensure I’m plastered to someone with a dick because it’s safer.

“I have a boyfriend” is the only line that has ever kept me safe. Fuck everyone. I have never been raped while in a serious relationship.

So I feel a little weird about wanting to go to a transphobic event. I don’t feel good about that aspect of my desire to participate in the event.

I don’t feel threatened by the transwomen in my life. They are some of the most supportive people.

Yeah, I do feel threatened by the men. More than I “should” feel threatened. Whatever.

Deep breaths. No one is attacking me. None of this is personal. People aren’t reacting to me, they are reacting to things in their own lives. They aren’t talking to me. I’m observing things. I’m… over reacting. I’m sure.

I’m making progress on the book. I feel proud of that. My entire body hurts. I’m not sure why. I’m not sleeping well. Too much anxiety.

Deep breaths.

Anxiety is energy you want to spend that doesn’t have anywhere to go.

Nothing to do but sit and wait for time to pass. I fucking hate this. Things to do, but at a later time, simmer in my brain. I can’t stop thinking about them. They use up so many cycles.

I think I am going to go to sleep early. I’ll wake up and finish the second section before therapy.

Boy do I have a lot to talk to my shrink about. Shit I’m not telling the internet. Yeah, I do have some gosh-darned tact.

SEE!

And this weekend I demonstrated that tact when I discovered that the help my friend wanted from me was different than the help I envisioned in my head. I didn’t ever offer up advice. I was good. Be supportive how people want you to be supportive, damnit.

Otherwise you aren’t helping you are being a jack ass.

It’s probably actually a good thing it went the way it did. It was rather restful in terms of helping-friends-clean days go. That was awesome given that I feel like ass.

Deep breaths. Whatever will be will be. The future is not ours to see.

No, I’m not a monster. Not everyone hates me. I don’t need to go eat worms. I am not hurting anyone by writing the book I’m writing. It isn’t terrible. I’m not bad. I’m just saying the things I wish I had known.

I’m not telling them what to do. I’m giving them information and I’m tying it in with morality and ethics and long-term planning. I’m talking about diversity and privilege money and shame.

I’m not doing something bad.

I wish it didn’t hurt my heart to write these things down.

I’m sorry boys–no one likes young men. It’s true. I talk about why. I talk about how unfair it is.

I don’t think that men have it all good and women have it all bad.

It’s not that kind of book.

I talk about how to find adult allies in different living environments. How do you figure out who is a predator? How do you learn to ask the right questions to get the help you need?

I’m talking about food, bodies, exercise, and dealing with people who have mental illness.

I don’t think I’m being scary. These are things that exist in the world. Here is some matter-of-fact information about how to interact with increased safety. But I feel a lot of anxiety. I’m going to have to be brave to get the book published. This will be hard.

Criticism sucks. Have I mentioned that my editor is apparently notorious for fairly harsh criticism. I look forward to bathing in the stormy glow.

It’ll be rad. Yeah. Sure. Oh man.

I’m scared. But move forward or shut the fuck up, right?

I’m trying. Shrink down. Maybe that’s easier. Maybe I can carry that. Drop some balls. Move on. Just keep swimmin’.

 

Relationship fluctuations

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Right now I’m having big feelings and they are tricky to write about. They involve a lot of people and a lot of situations. Many different parts of my life. Vague-blogging is awesome blogging!

No one needs to meet my needs. They are my problems. I live in a time and a place where my problems are my personal problems.

I think that part of my issue is I don’t feel very respected. In order to be respected you have to be seen. You have to be appreciated. You have to be specifically valued and important.

I don’t matter much. There are no talents or skills or worth I possess that mean enough so that people think it is worthwhile to get to know me in exquisite detail so it is even possible to give me what I want.

I want the kind of awareness that only comes from being with people for hours and days and weeks and months and years. I’ll never get it.

Instead I have to recognize that I am not capable of giving other people what I want from them. So I have no justification for bitching.

Fucking lame.

I don’t see other people in the context of their experiences and their pain. I am not sensitive to their quirks or preferences or needs. I’m not better than any one else.

If I’m not dishing out that kind of respect, how dare I expect it?

I don’t expect it. But I still feel sad. I feel sad that I live in a world where other people will never be known to me such that I can respect them how they deserve.

They will always feel like alien creatures. I will always stand near them and feel afraid that I am doing everything wrong. I will always feel like clearly I am wrong. I am doing it all wrong.

I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to be.

Drips, drabs, ups, and downs.

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We went up to San Pablo yesterday to see some friends. This is after that specific friend coming to my house monthly for ohhh four years now? I am starting to try and do some trips up there in exchange for all the trips to my house. The distance between us is not shorter just because he is a guy with no kids. I can do effort too.

And when I drive up there I get to spend time with his lovely wife. I find the visits to be highly educational in diverse arenas. For one thing: she knows way the fuck more about gardening than I do and she’s happy to talk about plants. Lately getting near someone with lots of plant knowledge who does not eschew my children is somewhat tricky. I’ve tried to sign up for gardening classes THAT ARE BEING ADVERTISED ON AN UNSCHOOLING MAILING LIST and I was told I would have to get babysitting. Stop fucking advertising in this space if my fucking kids aren’t welcome you fucking fuckers. I didn’t say fuck to the people in question. I just dropped it.

Beyond the gardening stuff, I am having a bit of trouble with Callidora. Well, phrasing it that way sounds more extreme than it is. Many of my parenting approaches work really well for Shanna and don’t work at all with Calli. Luckily my friends’ wife seems to identify really strongly with Calli. They are very similar temperamentally and she is giving me a lot of feedback for how to tweak our interactions so they work better.

I feel so much gratitude I don’t have words. Someone is willing to look at me and look at my daughter and look at our relationship and say, “You are doing ok, but you both might be happier if you did……”

Err, in defense of my hubris more than once I have said, “I’m afraid I am going to have to do ____” and her response was “Yes. That is exactly what you have to do.” So she isn’t entirely telling me new information. But she is very good at skimming out the bullshit and getting to the heart of the matter. “This is failing because of x.”

I don’t trust many people to give me feedback. I’m not sure why I trust her feedback as much as I do. For one thing she doesn’t use the word “should” and I’m not sure if that has become a specific trigger. Maybe I explode at people for that word rather than because I am completely unwilling to accept advice? It’s hard to tease out.

Also, she tends to say “Calli seems to be a lot like me. When I was a kid I had x and y and z experiences and this is how it went well and this is how it went badly. If Calli is as much like me as she seems right now, you are going to have to deal with a and b and c. It’s not a good idea to do d.”

I guess there is an implied “should” in that but she doesn’t say it.

It also occurs to me that I push Calli in a way I have never pushed Shanna. When Shanna was three I had a one year old. We did not spend a lot of time pushing the absolute physical limits of what she could accomplish until she collapsed in frustrated tears.

I’m having a hard time understanding fully that Calli wants to be able to do things she isn’t ready to do yet and I need to find a tactful way of bailing her out even as I push Shanna to try. Differentiated instruction is a bitch.

(Err, the bicycle riding project is coming along. We’ve hit a few hiccups. As my wise new running mate commented, “Dude. You’ve been out with them four times? Relax and do more low pressured practice.”

Yeah yeah. You may have a point. But we bought the bikes because we want to ride to the park. I need to decide in my adult brain that even if that is the eventual goal… we sure as shit can’t start by doing that. I should probably not try to leave our housing development again until June. We need more low-stakes practice than we have had. Hours and hours and hours and hours.

It is not just a form of transportation. It is about entertainment. It has to be about entertainment at first or they won’t gain enough proficiency to use it as transportation later. The transportation part doesn’t have to be worked out at three, instantly. Relax you bitch.

Medication has been spotty this week. I (re?)noticed a pattern. Whenever I get to the point of using sufficient medication that I actually feel good instead of having just the edge of the pain taken away I punish myself for days with under medicating so I feel a lot more pain. I’m not supposed to be using pot like a pot head. I’m not supposed to be trying to get high. I’m supposed to be just managing the pain.

I think I am too much of a Puritan. My sister told me I had ancestors on the Mayflower (Not her–different fathers.). Maybe it is too deeply buried within my DNA? I can’t stop believing that I must suffer. Anything that feels good MUST BE BAD.

I have been very consistent lately about giving up my morning “off time” to wake up with the kids. I’m not sure if this is good or bad. On one hand I’m more frazzled and I’m not taking a compensatory amount of time later. On the other hand… we are getting along better. When the kids open their eyes in the morning to me in their bed smiling at them… the whole day is easier. The first thing they hear every day is, “Good morning. I’m so glad to see you again. I’m looking forward to our wonderful day together.”

They smile back and say, “Me too!” then grab my neck and pull me close. Then I get a sleepy “Good morning.”

Sometimes it feels weird knowing that I do this as a parenting gesture in large part to make up for the hole in my heart. No one was ever happy to see me during my childhood. I was a terrible, unwanted burden.

I completely support mothers who need to abort children born of rape. I wish my mother hadn’t allowed her religion to force her to keep me. I was not wanted. And they made my life hell.

Now I have something different. It is so very nice. But it’s a lot of emotional and mental and physical work. And I get really tired.

When I’m tired it is harder to be consistent. When I’m scared I start screaming. That’s consistent.

Calli has asked me to stop raising my voice at her when I’m repeating orders/requests/whatever you want to call them. Demands? She told me (while making eye contact so this is serious as a fucking heart attack) “I will be able to listen to you better if you get close to me and whisper in my ear that it is important.”

If a three year old can so clearly ask for the kind of interaction she needs then I am a fucking asshole if I ignore the request. This is how I teach them ownership of their body and consent and boundaries.

I’ve been working on it. I kind of feel that I should create some accountability tool for myself. Maybe another sheet of paper on the wall. I can ask Calli to help me decide whether I approached her correctly or not and we can decide if I get a mark in the “right behavior” column or the “not so right” column. It will also help her clarify which aspects of the raised voice stuff are a problem for her.

My kids are not going to grow up thinking adults are perfect and kids need to bend to the adults around them. Ha. Ha. Ha. No. We want to live together. We need to adapt to one another.

I’m happy about the upcoming social stuff. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed that people are agreeing so delightedly to come to my events. My RSVPs fill up fast. (Err, RSVP for Easter if you are coming… not many spaces left.)

I have had something like six people in the last two weeks get really excited when I confirm that I’m hosting Easter again. “OH! You throw the best parties!”

I do?

Oh.

Well that’s awesome. How do I do that? What makes them “the best” for you? Because I spend my parties in kind of an anxious hell hoping I don’t offend everyone and run them off such that they never want to come back.

And yet I keep hosting. Irony.

I don’t seem to be running people off. I mean… I do… but I don’t. I run some people off.

I feel very guilty when I admit to myself that I run off people who need things from me that I can’t give. My anxiety and shame around not being able to meet their needs makes me angry and cruel. It isn’t my fault I can’t meet their needs. It isn’t their fault I can’t meet their needs. It isn’t their fault they have needs. I have needs they can’t meet either. But I get mean. This is a major character flaw of mine.

I don’t do this with people who have small needs I can easily meet. If people need something from me that is going to be an up to five hour commitment one time… I love doing that. That helps me feel like I am part of a community and I’m useful and all kinds of good feelings. When someone starts to need 3-10 hours of work from me every fucking week in order to have a relationship with them…

I get mean. I am awful. I am not a nice person. I don’t know how to have healthy limits without being an asshole. I’m not making excuses or justifying my behavior. It’s wrong.

I have been talking to a friend a lot about how different it is in America versus other more crowded countries. Americans apologize for bumping into someone. In China you would never say any word other than “sorry”. So they don’t bother.

I spend a lot of time apologizing for taking up space. I spend a lot of time apologizing for being inconvenient. I spend a lot of time apologizing for not being able to do/be what someone else wants/needs.

I am sorry I am so inadequate. I clearly see that I am.

Right now I’m having anxiety attacks because some folks are mad at me. Folks I don’t really need to “care” about per se. They aren’t my friends. They are the close friends of one of my friends. They are mad at me because my vomiting on Friday caused them some inconvenience. I have apologized profusely for inconveniencing them. I’m sorry they were brought into the situation by our mutual friend. But yeah. I’m the bitch.

And I feel consumed with shame and I have for days. I inconvenienced them. I stole hours of their life and made them about me when they already kind of hate me. I’m really sorry. I did apologize. I have not been acknowledged and that is what I assumed would happen.

I get into these situations. I’m sorry I inconvenienced you. I have very little control over when I vomit. I’m just glad I didn’t make a mess on my floor.

But it impacted your life. And you wish I didn’t impact your life. So you are angry with me because I popped up and existed in a way you couldn’t tune out.

I’m really sorry.

This is more or less why I avoid that whole segment of the “community”. I don’t really like feeling like I am doing something wrong by breathing in a way they can hear.

So yeah. I don’t think I will teach with my friend again. There is a bunch of stress in the lead up and if I get sick there is lots of acrimony, blame, and anger. Not from my friend. He was mellow about the situation. But he didn’t feel qualified to handle the class alone and those are the other people he has in his life to turn to for support.

Yeah well, me hanging around near them feels like an abusive family reunion where they all wish I would drop dead. The sooner the better.

More one of them than the other but… well that’s not a story I’ll write down yet. Maybe a few more decades. It being thirteen years ago still isn’t long enough. Some day.

It’s not all her fault. I was a bitch. But man. Oh man. Ok. Shiny change of topic.

I’ve been having a lot of feelings all week over that. I was doing great last week until I started vomiting on Friday.

I associate vomiting with letting people down and being a bad and weak person. When I get sick my association is that I will also be in trouble for some reason. I am inconvenient when I’m sick.

Noah is working hard to change some of these patterns. He’s nice when I’m sick. He does a lot of telling me that it isn’t my fault and I didn’t do anything bad. I feel really pathetic for needing it. But I do. And he does it. I am so grateful for him as a partner.

I like teaching though. I will look for more opportunities to teach. Just no co-teaching in a situation potentially wrapped in shame-inducing trauma. When I had to cancel a class as a professional teacher… no one made me write a formal apology. I’d like to go back to that kind of treatment. Thanks.

My running mate wants me to stop thinking of writing as a hobby and start thinking of it as a business. I’ve sold enough forking copies of my book that I can stop pretending I’m not a real writer. I shouldn’t have to pay for my book editing and publishing stuff out of my “fun money”. It’s not my hobby. Noah doesn’t take his business expenses out of his fun money. It’s a separate category in the budget. It’s not very healthy for me to demean myself in this fashion.

I will severely limit my career as a writer if I can’t employ an editor until I save up enough fun money by denying myself everything. Denial as a full-time lifestyle in a household that otherwise has a lot of privilege… that’s kinda self-hating. It’s being weird. It’s unhealthy.

Why do women do this to themselves? My writing “doesn’t count”. It’s just… something I do. Like the laundry. And when there are expenses for it, well, they are “mine”, right?

I developed a lot of habits over the years of having the annuities and living with men. What I could have was very strictly limited to what I had in that $1200 every month. I didn’t over extend. And now I have no real personal income and… I’m flailing. The $100/month of fun money is… not enough. Not for me to feel like I can track all of “my” spending separately from household stuff.

We just have a clothes budget. It is for all four of us. If someone gets something then the other three have to wait a while. *shrug* But it changes how I think of things. Although… when I bought the pretty clothes in Portland I took a big chunk out of my personal money. I spent more than $500 on two items of clothing. It didn’t seem fair to make my family give up that large a share of the clothes budget on me getting two items. So more than $300 came out of my fun money. That seemed fair to me.

When the kids really get a big clothes splurge… it goes in the “kid” section even though mostly they come out of the main category.

The kids have a big section of the budget that is amorphously used for classes, home school supplies. books, toys, gear of whatever kind (was baby carriers and diapers now it has moved on to bikes), and rarely clothes.

A long time ago I consciously went out and started spending time with older men. They could talk to me about money. How they got it. What they did with it. I made my own judgments about who lived in which kind of house and who had how much money. I’ve always been tactless as fuck. I would point blank ask them how much cash they had in the bank and whether or not they had investments.

I didn’t understand most of what they told me. But I remembered it. It’s kind of funny to have little memories float up now and again as I’m trying new things with investing.

Be sure you are right, then go ahead. I will, Davey. I will research and research and research and I’ll figure out what I think is right. Of course I know I could always be wrong. Some minute change in my life might make all of my careful risk calculations moot and irrelevant.

I have no way of predicting that. So I have to just act and hope for the best.

Save.

Debt is evil.

Make your money work for you.

Pay yourself first.

Sometimes I think I turn to these mantras as the only way I have of blocking out all the voices in my head who want me to think I am stupid and a bitch and I should just stop inconveniencing them by breathing.

I’ve been really stunned by the intensity of my suicidal ideation this week.

I also haven’t been doing my daily check in calls with my friend. She’s really busy on a project. She’ll be back in a week or so. I support and respect her participation in this event and that means she has no time to think about me. I am a big girl and I’ll keep my big girl panties on.

It is interesting how suicidal ideation is not always about depression. I don’t feel like I am feeling depression symptoms. This is more on the anxious/overwhelmed side. Manic is a word people like. But I’m not… doing anything manic.

Just out of the blue driving on the freeway I see a weird opening where it would be possible to turn and be hit by a semi-truck and I want to do it more than I want anything in the world. I want in that moment to feel a lot of pain and then die. I want it as much as my heart wants to beat. It is immediate and visceral and all encompassing.

I have to breathe very lightly and lift my hands so I have a very light guiding pressure on the steering wheel. Sometimes I get off the freeway to breathe and stretch my neck and remind myself, “Not today.”

The reasons I don’t like driving are varied and complicated and… I’m willing to bet that someday I will not be able to drive any more. It is part of the reason I am as strongly motivated to make friends near my house as I am. Walking will always be a good idea. Forever. For my health.

Thanks, Pam, for letting me write this morning.

My head feels better. I feel a lot less shame. Writing it down helps.

I don’t need to feel shame because other people would prefer that their world didn’t overlap with mine. I could reject our mutual friend so that they never have to hear about me again, but given that he values his relationship with me that seems kind of awful.

But I think I should have different boundaries. Still working on where those need to be. Boundaries are tricky things. You only find out you have them when they are transgressed. Ha. THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE CLASS. And what I got out of it is: I need to make sure I never have to deal with your extended friends again. Awesome.

That’s a lesson I can learn.

They aren’t going to like me. No matter what. Ever. I need to not care about that. They are allowed to have their experience of the world where I am… something. I don’t know what. I shouldn’t speculate. I would surely overstate my importance. I certainly don’t suspect that either of them while away hours just hating me. I’m not that important.

So I don’t need to feel shame because they are feeling irritation. That’s not something I need to take on. I gave an apology. I offered restitution to the best of my ability. That’s what I’ve got. Move on. I didn’t vomit on purpose.

And when I feel shame for my social behavior I rush home to assure myself that I am managing my money properly. No one is going to be able to force me to move. I’m allowed to stay here. I’m jumping through all the hoops that actually matter for my life. I don’t have to care that they dislike me. There won’t be any consequences.

And then I can stop thinking about it.

Thank you internet. That’s the end of my confession for today. I have some dirt to play with and a fence to sand. Tomorrow a bunch of little kids are going to come paint a few sections. We are adding more year by year. Drips and drabs. It’s really fun.

Saturday is the Girl Genius Volume 1 read aloud. Email me for details if you want to come hear Noah do all the hilarious voices.

Noticing stuff.

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I just finished reading a book that went into a lot of detail about reading body language. In it they mentioned “emotional leaking” which is more or less when you are having strong feelings and you are trying to verbally express something other than what you are feeling. Like you are expressing support for someone while flipping them off with both hands the whole time you are telling someone how much you care about them.

Things I can’t say.

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1. I still wake up in the morning and grieve because I am not the kind of person you wanted.

2. I miss you more with every day. This is really hard.

3. No, actually I can’t call. I know it would be “ok” with you but I can’t. I am broken in this way. I just can’t do it. I don’t see you. That puts up a barrier. I can’t cross it. I’m sorry.

4. I wish things had turned out differently. I think it could have been better.

5. Sometimes I wish I could drive to your house. I wonder if you would let me in or scream at me.

6. I don’t know you and I will never know you. I’m trying as hard as I can not to think judgmental thoughts about you. You are making very different choices than me. Choices that make you more appealing than I am to people I like very much. It is hard to not feel jealous of you.

7. Sometimes I wish I could use a sewing needle to suture your mouth shut.

8. Maybe people aren’t mean to you because they are all inherently mean people. Maybe people are mean to you because you are a tremendous douchebag.

9. There is not a thing in your life that I want. Not a decision I would duplicate. I still wish that I could be you. I wish that I understood why you want what you want. I wish I understood the mental processes that lead you to make the decisions you make. I want to be you. I don’t want to be like you.

10. When I look at you I feel sad. I know we will never be close and I wish we could be. I admire you so much. I am sorry that I am such a piece of shit.

Good fear bad fear

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I was standing in line at the grocery store. The snooty-ass Whole Foods down the street from my friend’s house. I was there for ice cream and to kill time as I waited for my friend to finish something at the house.

I’m standing there be-bopping in my little world while I waited in line. It was a very slow line. I don’t even remember what song it was but my “under my breath” singing became uhm not so under my breath and the guy in front of me turned around.

I turned bright red and looked down and started fumbling awkwardly with my back pack so that I could avoid eye contact.

“Ah, so what flavor is for tonight?”

I jumped a few inches. I didn’t think he would actually talk to me.

“Vanilla! Always vanilla. Uhm, err and Sea Salt Caramel.”

“My friends swear by that brand, what do you think of it?”

“I don’t have an opinion. I usually buy from my local ice cream shop in Fremont, Loard’s. I’m visiting friends tonight. This is within walking distance of their house.”

“Oh. Do you get up to Oakland often?”

At this point I shifted my arms to place my big fat wedding ring on top of my pile of stuff. “Naw I usually stay close to home and family.”

“Oh.” He turned around and finished his transaction. He stopped to rebag his groceries into his personal carrying sack because he had been busy talking to me and had forgotten to give the cashier his bags.

I paid in cash, pocketed the money and left the building about as fast as I could. I went up the street walking at a rapid pace. He outdistanced me. He stopped just in front of me and looked like he was about to verbally engage me again.

I kind of shrank away. He looked sad. He turned and started walking up the hill significantly more quickly than I could–he was more than a foot taller than me and I am pretty ambling.

He didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong. It was an awkward mix of flattering and scary. I don’t want to be pursued ever again. I don’t want anyone to look at me as prey any more. It scares the ever loving shit out of me.

But I do want it. I do want people to think I am pretty. I do want to be desired. I do want to go sit on my Daddy’s lap and have him stroke my hair and call me Princess and grind me on his crotch. (I have this friend. He’s absolutely old enough to be my father. Really I have these three male friends and it’s very confusing and just go with it ok–my biological father is dead.)

I want these things. It is very confusing to read things about “rape recovery” because man it really presents a dim view of the idea of consensual bdsm. I feel like I don’t agree with the idea that just because I was raped there are whole classes of behavior I am now too tainted to engage in. There is a large and loud contingent in the bdsm community in general that wants people like me (crazy for short-hand PTSD and GAD for longer hand) to just opt-out.

Go be invisible. Fall out of the herd. Die.

That is the Darwinian message whether they intend it or not. That is what happens when fringe communities drift toward the mainstream.

It’s cool. I’m used to it.

I am gosh darn delighted to report that I’m starting to experience an uptick in libido. Last month was quite drought-like. Ha. I’m not actually entirely sure that directing my compulsive sexual outbursts into a monogamous relationship is entirely healthy either.

I’ve told Noah about some of the more extreme things I want to do. He is rather terrifyingly interested. The kinds of things you can’t write about in advance or people try to stop you. I’ll wait till my kids are adults–I promise.

I am what I was made. Is it ok for me to be? What is right and what is wrong? When I was sixteen I went to visit my mother’s life-long best friend over New Years. I remember her recounting a conversation she had in her Bible study class, “Oh goodness girl we get racy! You know, the Bible says that what a man and a woman do together within the bounds of Holy Matrimony is alright. It’s all good. You can go ahead. Have fun, sugar. But not until you are married.“ Death glare.

I spent a lot of my childhood thinking I would grow up and marry her son. I would do what he told me. I would obey. I would be his proper wife.

When I was twenty or twenty-one, I can’t remember which, I went to that guy’s wedding. I was with my Owner. We watched a wedding ceremony that was way more hardcore Dominant/submissive than our Owner/property contract. It was really pretty funny.

My Owner took responsibility for me like someone takes responsibility for a stray cat. He kept me safe and fed for a few years and he had some strict rules about behavior. It was all negotiated very specifically.

It managed my anxiety. I knew what I was good for. I knew what he wanted from me. I trolled his favorite hard core fetish pornography website to figure out what he wanted from me. I learned how to be what he wanted.

But it wasn’t me. I’m not an actual fetishist. I just want people to like me. I’m willing to do just about anything to feel like I deserve someone liking me. I have an intense need to feel pain. It is very easy to use bdsm as a reasonable source of satisfaction.

But what does being submissive mean? What does being a masochist mean? What does being a slave mean? Do these acts turn me on? Sometimes. Not a majority of the time. I err enjoy thinking about them a lot. My memories keep me warm alll winter.

When I was training for the marathon I enjoyed my little jaunt down memory lane. I ran past places I’ve had sex and thought about what might be happening with those guys. I have no idea. I hope they are well.

I was reading Wikipedia. Intrusive thoughts. That was what triggered this whole piece of writing. It’s very OCD focused and all sarcasm aside that’s not my set of issues. You know how much the “stereotypical guy” thinks about sex–right? A lot, constantly–something of that nature. It’s not true, but it’s kind of the attitude.

Outside of this whole “being with kids” thing I tend to think about sex obsessively and compulsively. Compartmentalization for the win! If you added up all the hours I have spent masturbating it probably stretches into a couple years of my life at this point. I like me.

It has been really abrupt and challenging to deal with having this split personality thing. I do not think about sex when my kids are around. That means I totally want to shove Noah into a sexless role because that is how I think about him right now. I’m not aggressively interested in sex yet. It’s starting to come back. I’ve had several years of very little sexual interest. This has been a very odd period for me.

But we still have a lot of sex. If we only have sex six times in a month that is drought-like. And I feel guilty and like I am not holding up my end of the bargain. We’ve only had one month where we had sex less than ten times and I felt really angry with myself the whole month that we only had sex six times. I just couldn’t god damn do it. If I had tried I would have hated him.

It is hard knowing that if I grow to hate him it wil be largely because I have not told him about small boundary incursions and then it will escalate into a large problem without him even knowing the storm is about to break. I don’t want to hate him. Hating him serves none of my life goals and would basically prevent most of the rest of them.

Sure, I could find new goals. More humble goals. But man that makes it sound like I like him because of money. It’s not money. Noah pays attention to me and encourages me. I have always written but I needed Noah to give me permission to write about the really dark stuff. I needed an Audience.

My Owner wouldn’t read stuff I wrote. My ex-fiancé wouldn’t read what I wrote. Puppy wouldn’t read anything I wrote. All of them told me, “People should be allowed to have private space to write about their feelings.” It was practically that exact wording from each of them.

I’m not sure I would be able to keep believing I deserve to exist if I didn’t live with someone with an ego the size of Texas. He is brash and self-assured and god damn full of himself and he’s completely sure he wants to spend his time with me. He tells me so over and over. He proves it through actions and patterns of work over long periods of time. He’s consistent. It’s really not about the money. The money is more a side effect.

I will always have a hard time remembering him raping me. He really enjoyed how much I did not enjoy that. He gets one. I agreed to one. I set those boundaries in advance. I didn’t try to say “safeword” or anything hokey like that. I fought him. That was really weird. I knew he wouldn’t stop. I knew that fighting him just antagonized him and made it worse. If I actually wanted a dead fish rape I could have had it. I just would have had to go limp. It was my own fucking fault it was so brutal.

It’s always my fault.

I write this knowing that people in the home school community will read it. People who were in my house today. People who are quite Christian. I’m not like you. Only I am.

I have heard my friends in the Leather community wonder if we should have some kind of “coming out day” like Gay Pride. I think that if I am in the closet to you it is because you have never actually looked at me. You instead chose to see a mirror of you and you ignored the shadowy parts where I was different.

We all have more similarities than differences. Whether you are talking to the prostitute or the investment banker or the gas station attendant or the flight attendant or the programmer or the sys admin or the house wife. It is said that if you look for the good in people you will find it. No, that’s not true. Abe Lincoln says that if you look for the bad you will find it. I’m ignoring him. I don’t like agreeing with people very much.

I think that if you want to get to know people and find commonalities and ways of getting along you can. There are stories about Auschwitz prisoners talking in a friendly manner with guards. I’ve read them in classes. Of course with my Swiss cheese memory I have no idea what the names were.

People can find ways to relate. The things that unite us are greater than the things that divide us. Blah blah.

I don’t believe it but I believe it is true enough in a pinch. I think that as a species we need to have a live and let live philosophy. The problem is how to handle perception of scarcity of resources?

Sex is a resource. There are a lot of people who are sad they aren’t getting any. Did random dude at the grocery store for sure want to get in my pants? Enh, It’s not 100%. But I have an extremely high success rate with this kind of scenario. I can generally get that kind of approach to result in sex within six hours.

Then I probably never speak to them again and eventually cannot remember their name. I have a vague dread of running into them but I’m cheerful and apologetic about not remembering names. They are only sometimes mad at me. Ha.

Guess what? Guys aren’t more ok with being used than girls are. Well, some are. Not mostly though; they get hurt feelings. This is why you can’t date/have sex with too many people in a given social group. You poison the well.

Love and affection and sex are different needs but we often try to meet them in a jumble. What you do when people don’t actually meet all of your needs? Go find someone else?

I get the general impression that if I worked harder on exercise I could sleep with an even more obscene number of people than I have already slept with. Four digits. Five digits. Why the hell not? All it takes is low standards and a willingness to ask–right?

I don’t think I would find any more self-esteem at the bottom of that well. It’s not like I’m doing the equivalent of being a born again virgin declaring fidelity to my man. I’m not made  sanctified in my compulsive sexual acting out because of some fucking walrus in Nevada.

I have a lot of sex because it is what I am required to do. Not required by Noah–we don’t have that kind of relationship. This is what I feel I owe him. I somehow have arrived at this being part of the trade he gets for putting up with me.

Lately I have initiated sex because I was actually interested. And I got off. And it was only a little uncomfortable and not even painful. That’s fairly unusual these days. That whole combination doohickey. I have sex because that is the deal.

You get married and you are his whore. That’s the deal. You had better find someone you can handle whoring to.

That is what my mother taught me. Word for word. I bet you money she would deny ever saying it. I can’t forget. I remember and remember and remember and seal my lips. My daughters will not hear that from me. No Sir.

I don’t know the difference between wanting to feel like I am allowed to exist and wanting to have sex. Most of the validation for my existence has come through sex. Kind of pathetic, right?

Now I have these kids. It’s different. This incest shit will not go on to my children. They will be kept away from my whole family and aren’t all women in my position absolutely convinced that their partner would never do such a thing? All I know is my kids show absolutely no signs of abuse. I can cross my fingers and pray. Seriously–isn’t that how life works?

How do I ever trust anyone? How do I ever let go of fear enough to go to sleep at night? I lie in bed sometimes and can’t stop thinking about my father touching me. Intrusive memories. I’ve got ’em.

Just get over it. Just move on. I have increasing neuroscience on my side motherfucker. It’s not that easy. Trauma damages the brain. New instances of trauma layer on top of older layers in difficult to dissect patterns. In the scale of a lifetime I am getting over it; I am moving on. It’s just not as quick or as silent as you would apparently hope.

I’m still existing. I’m still talking and talking and people only have to listen if they want to.

I’m only really writing for my Audience. He’s read everything I have written since the age of twenty. Well, not all of my school papers. Only the ones I put on the internet. I can’t say all of the things I wrote in this post to him. He’ll get all conversational off-roady on me and we’ll talk about something else. I want him to see this. I want him to be part of this struggle. This is his sex life too. I want monogamy because I want a partner who is very invested in helping me figure my shit out. Me not figuring my shit out means big dips in your sex life.

I married someone who thinks nothing of taking NLP, hypnosis, and cooking classes to meet chicks.

What I need most in this lifetime is for someone to love me and believe that it is not only permissible for me to change it is required. I want to be loved by being encouraged to grow. I want to be loved by being taken care of. I have a provider, let’s be clear here. It’s a fairly primitive sort of gratitude.

What trade does anyone make in relationships? The pleasure of one anothers company? What does that mean?

When I am around people I feel uncomfortable, anxious, and like people are going to start screaming at me pretty much all of the time. Apparently I cause other people to feel like this as well because they comment on being afraid I will yell at them regularly. Noah says I don’t yell very often. I suppose it’s all relative.

I still want to be around people. I understand that this is a kind of fear I have to learn to work through.

Rapists don’t make me feel more fear than random groups of people. Hanging out with predators makes me feel more comfortable. I know how to play that game. I know how to get through that scenario.

Learning how to tell the difference between “good” fear and “bad” fear has been the journey of my adulthood. I need companionship and community. I just need it. It’s a species-level need. I don’t need to feel fucking guilt about it. There are six billion fucking people on this planet and precious few of them truly want to be alone. I mean, people need alone time. That’s not what I mean.

I struggle with how to build friendships. There are all these rules about what you can discuss and when. I uhh don’t like following rules. A while back I was a rude fucking asshole with a friend as I pushed her to try and change her sexual boundaries with her husband for me. Not cool.

I think that being monogamous will keep me from shitting where I eat. Sexual monogamy means that I am not a threat. I can be a non-sexualized being to the people I meet. I don’t have to know or care about their sexual interest in me.

Only sometimes it appears whether I like it or not. Good fear. Bad fear. Move towards it. Move away from it.

How the fuck do people figure this out?

GAD sucks.

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I need to leave in forty-five minutes. Book club. We read Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Woo! One of my favorites. I’m excited.

Then I will come home and get the girls and go to a fantasy faire. So like a Renaissance Faire (has anyone ever told these people that the Renaissance mostly took place in Italy?) but even more obviously based on people just liking the clothes. Fairy tales and princesses and pirates. It’ll be fun.

I ran. 5.85 miles in 80 minutes. I will be more enthusiastic at the race because I will be trying not to hold my friend back so I think it will be fine. *cross fingers*

My inadequacy is trying to drown me lately. Every playful jab feels like a slap in the face and a refresher of the idea that people don’t like me. People aren’t trying to hurt my feelings. I’m just over sensitive don’tyouknow? I don’t feel likable. I feel like the cracks about, “Wow. You’ve got some issues to work out” just don’t really seem necessary. I want to turn around and snap, “What’s your fucking point? Just because you don’t want to work hard that doesn’t mean you should fucking mock me for doing so.” (Err, we were weeding at an apple tree orchard. It was an off-hand comment. No one meant any harm. I shut my mouth and put my head down. I didn’t say a word.)

No one ever seems to mean their harm. So if you are harmed shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up.

I can see myself hiding in a lot of corners. I am worried about people being behind me. I feel unsafe. I feel like people are going to talk badly about me. I hate feeling like walking into a room is going to result in a rush of whispering as people talk shit about me. I understand that at this stage of life a lot of this is paranoia. But it isn’t all paranoia. I piss people off.

And they don’t ever have the fucking balls to talk to me about it. I hear about it through back channels and gossip. It insults the fucking shit out of me. It makes me feel much less happy about seeing people at all.

If everyone expects me to yell at them all the time I feel like there isn’t really a point in showing up. Obviously my company can’t be much of a pleasure. I’ll stay home and not inflict my unpleasant nature on anyone.

I’m sorry I exist.

I know I’m too loud. I know I’m too harsh. Why do you think I consciously identify as white trash? I’m explaining to you that I do not share your middle class values. I do not think I should be quiet. I do not think my household should be quiet as people tiptoe around trying to “not bother” anyone.

If someone is fucking bothered they either need to god damn deal with it or not snidely fucking imply that I should fucking share their culture. I don’t. I don’t know your fucking culture and I couldn’t fucking conform to it if I wanted to. I don’t have the instincts. I will never have the instincts. I don’t want them.

I don’t want to be like you.

It’s not because I think there is something in particular wrong with you. You are fine and all. But I can’t be you. If I tried to be like you I would have to sit down and consciously think all the time about how I had to behave. I would have to work really hard for months or years on learning to modulate my voice–all activities you did in your culture in the first five years or so of your life.

I learned that I had to yell or I would be hurt really badly. I learned that I had to make some fucking noise. I have to be obnoxious and pushy and difficult and demanding. I have to or I will die. That is what I learned.

It’s interesting as I study child development and as I watch my kids and as I think about my own life.

I won’t ever be like you–whoever you are. I can’t. I don’t have your culture. That has to be ok. It has to be. I can’t change it.

Offensive

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I’m having Feelings. Of the variety I can’t really talk about because it turns into Dwama. Sometimes it is hard to predict why people won’t like me. I think I should take this moment to appreciate people self-selecting out of my web. It means I don’t have to feel spread as thin.

I do wish I had more control over what people find offensive. Sometimes when I bother people I feel like it is just a manifestation of how not-ok I am in the universe. Sometimes when I bother people I know it is about shit in their life and it isn’t really about me.

I like the second case better.

just stalling.

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I’m struggling in ways I need to articulate. Right now it is just a lot of bad feeling in my stomach and it’s not doing me any favors. I can’t concentrate. I can’t feel like I am even in the room I am in. It is so hard to stand near other human beings.

I want people to love me. They don’t. I feel very sad about that. Ok–before that sounds like the ridiculous pity party that it is let me clarify. When I am standing in a random store in my town the people who are next to me in line don’t love me. When I am a friend’s party and I know the host and no one else in the room–mostly it is reasonable to feel like the people standing next to me don’t love me.

Those are completely reasonable thoughts. No, it’s not reasonable to expect people near you to just love you. I don’t live in a small town. I have moved so much in my life that if it wasn’t for blogging people would know almost nothing about me. I exist in peoples head as a full and complete construct because I add details off in the background.

Other people don’t provide such insight to me. I find this quite frustrating. I’m stalling.

I’m angry and I’m sad. When I sit down with a new therapist and have to go through the list of things that happened to me as a child I used to have to sit through at least half an hour of someone exclaiming with great vigor, “Oh gracious child! How did you survive?! You should be dead!” I uhh had trouble bonding with most of  them. I learned to prescreen by saying, “I need to have a therapist who can work with very intense trauma without deflecting or derailing. I need a therapist who can listen without interrupting to project onto the story.” I say that or very nearly that during phone screens.

It is hard to believe that it is ever ok to put down anything down on the internet as “your side of the story”. They tell me that the internet is forever. I don’t actually believe them or care very much. This is the only way I can exist right now. There is not enough time in the day for me to talk about the things that are going on for me emotionally and appropriately parent my kids. Right now the default is that I can’t talk.

I’m struggling with how to set the behavior patterns I have to follow in different scenarios. I am acting like a selfish asshole. It’s a step in the right direction but probably an overly large one. I am having a hard time with what it means to exist out in the world. If you tell too much truth it can never be taken back. It hurts peoples feelings.

Men have feelings too. The fact that I feel the things I feel is very offensive to many of them. Well, ok. I’ll uhhh stop talking about it then. No, actually I won’t. What I will do is not be on facebook and if you like my blog: tell your friends. I really can’t be there to read the comments. I read everything through filters you don’t know or care about. The same is true of others. It’s ok.

In order to be a writer of the kind I want then I need to exist only for an opt-in audience. I’m not sure what that will mean exactly. Facebook isn’t an opt-in audience. There are a lot of social conventions I don’t fully understand. I can’t feel like I need to balance as many roles as I currently have.

I have to reduce the number of roles if I want to actually tell the stories I need to tell so I can get on with my life. I want too much. I need to change my attitude about writing and why I am doing it. And I need to change how I am treating the circles of people in my life.

My opinion is often very unwelcome.  It is hard recognizing how hard a brick wall that is.

I want to be able to tell the stories I want to tell. I want to be allowed to continue to exist on the fringes of communities in a way that will allow my children  to have relationships I don’t seem to be able to have.

But my arms hurt. That’s my official evasion. Maybe I will be able to talk to Noah about it tonight. I don’t know.

Please, stop telling me to relax.

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Every so often I will talk to someone New Agey and they ask me how they can be more sensitive of my “triggers”.  I laugh and tell them not to worry about it. My triggers are mine. The world can’t be responsible for them.

I don’t know how to tell people that I don’t want them to tell me to relax. Don’t tell me to take a deep breathe. Don’t tell me to breathe into it. My earliest memories of my father involve him whispering into my ear, “Shhhhhhhh. Relax. Breathe into it. If you relax it won’t hurt. If you relax then your face won’t move. Relax. Let it happen. It’s going to happen. If you don’t relax it is going to be much worse for you.”

We we were in a group of people. The details are vague. People were moving nearby and I was practicing how to exhale slowly and carefully without flinching. I remember that I tried to smile at him. I said, “I lalu Daddy.”

“I lalu too, baby. Shhhhhh. Relax. You’re getting tense.”

Sometimes people ask me why I don’t “just forget” what happened. I don’t seem to be capable of denial as a defense mechanism. I feel haunted. I hate that I feel like a victim so much of the time even when nothing bad is happening. I’m just waiting for the next bad thing. It is inevitable. Who is going to hurt me next?

I’m working a lot harder at keeping people at a careful distance when I talk to them. I went to a party last weekend. I did the social chit chat thing without crying. That’s a big victory for this year. I feel pathetic. I feel a lot of other things but I’m not ready to write about any of them.

Sometimes it feels strange to me that I can talk explicitly about sexual abuse that happened when I was a toddler through child but I feel quite squeamish about getting specific about what I feel about anyone I am having ambiguous feelings about. Once I’m on a side of a fence then I spill the beans. I don’t want to dither about people more than I have to. It’s not nice.

I’m trying to figure out what and how that works for me. If I’m afraid of it then I will almost start doing it at some point. I have to wait till the kids move out. They didn’t sign on to that much asinine public shit.

I’m worrying about publicity and disclosure. Which is hilarious because Noah isn’t. Sometimes I think I keep him around because he reminds me a lot that I get to exist. I’m allowed to have opinions. I’m allowed to be an asshole in public. The world won’t end. Sometimes assholes say true things. Not very often. Even assholes can’t be worse than a broken clock.

I don’t actually think I’m much of an asshole online. Once in a while. Now I’m babbling. I don’t want today to start. I’m feeling very low on reserves. Luckily a Complication is coming for tea. I have therapy again tonight. I have a feeling that tonight is going to be the kind of night where I have a lot of trouble not beating my head on concrete.

It takes a lot of pain at this stage of my life to block out the experience of remembering things I don’t want to remember.

The worst part is that people always want to tell me to relax. Breathe into it. I want to fucking puke. I want to put my head through a window. Maybe the glass will be sharp enough to cut his voice out of my brain.

Shanna has been telling me to relax. I can’t explain to her why I sometimes have tears run down my face. I’m trying, Shanna. I’m trying. That is not something my body believes it is safe to do. I don’t say that. I say, “Because I’m so happy that I have someone like you in my life now.”

I think a lot about how the “parent by choice” sets a persons self-perceived value.

I’m not very good at being polite while effectively communicating.

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I’m having a hard time being nice to people. Specifically men who like to clear up “what I really mean”. I don’t mean that men should do something about rape. I mean that men AND women should do something about rape. If those lazy chicks would start doing something, maybe we could get somewhere one of these years.

That’s not what he meant. Of course.

When I say, “I think that men should actively slap down this kind of language” I don’t mean “Wouldn’t it be nice if men and women constantly paroled one another and gave out friendly little advice about tone and language.”

Women disapproving of rape centric language isn’t exactly news. It hasn’t accomplished much. Chicks are on the other side of the Embargo refusing to dole out sex rather these guys talk right or not, why should the rapetastic guys give a shit that women who won’t put out dislike what they say? Women have nothing to offer that the men consider worth curtailing their behavior for.

When men censure other men for using inappropriate language it is either ignored because it is from a stranger (reasonable to ignore strangers) or it is coming from a buddy. Your buddies help create your world view.

I occasionally hear guys say things like, “Why won’t you give me a blowjob? Why are you being mean like that?” If there was a handy buddy nearby to say, “Dude she doesn’t owe you a fucking blowjob shove off.” He’d be a lot less likely to harass women in front of his buddy. Maybe less willing in general. That’s the best I’ve got.

The police and outraged women cannot create an environment where a problematic behavior goes away. Shall we look to Prohibition? Rape centric language works the same way.

I’m going to pick an internet cultural point just for fun. How about Reddit. If ALL THE WOMENZ downvote something inappropriate it will hardly be a dent. Guys need to stop ignoring things they disapprove of. Instead of saying, “Well it’s not my thing but I’m not going to lecture them” say “Yo, posting pictures you surreptitiously take of some chick’s panties isn’t cool” and there are tens of thousands of similar comments? Well, it would be much harder for the assholes to have the day. There is no hope for websites like Fetlife. That’s just a rapist party ground. 

When you put men and women in a room together you get a different culture than when men are alone. Women are trying to change the communal space and being slapped down hard. A lot of the problem is that we have no access to trying to change the culture where men go off by themselves. That’s pretty entrenched. I can’t do anything about it.

And if one more man that I know sanctimoniously tells me he doesn’t know anyone who supports rape I will vomit. I could start listing your friends you asshole. I could tell you stories that would make you shiver.

Sometimes I feel a little weird about how many women come to me with their rape stories. They will never prosecute. So I walk around feeling like a one-woman Megan’s List. I know who has been arrested for rape. I know who chases the 16 year old girls and pushes them too hard. I know who says, “I’ll just touch it with my fingers” before pushing a cock in. I feel bound by the seal of the confessional. I can’t tell who these people are.

I give subtle warnings but frankly I’m not sure anyone should listen to my timid “He’s not a good person” when I can’t give any details. Sometimes I start crying because I am so overwhelmed by what I know but I can’t share it. I wasn’t given permission. I know about a lot of rapists in the bdsm community and in the dance community. I know who raped their sister. I know who has a habit of “slipping the condom off” after a few minutes of sex.

And I can’t do anything with this body of knowledge.

Noah says people will be more offended and not less if I explain why I talk about white men the way I do. I have had very few ongoing interpersonal relationships with men of other races. I don’t feel like I understand the cultural bias enough to speak about them as a group.

I suppose that technically when I am generalizing I should go all the way to saying “white American men” because Europeans act differently.

These are the men who make up the vast majority of my life experiences. I have had a lot of terrible experiences. I have yet to meet a black man and have someone tell me he is a rapist. I know it happens but it is invisible to me. So I don’t flinch when black men walk by.

When I look at white men I see all the potential power they have in my society. Not that each man is actually loaded with privilege and ease. I understand that they have a distribution too. But I have known rich monsters and poor monsters. They aren’t very different.

I generalize about that group because I have had highly negative and highly positive experiences with men in all socio-economic groups and different social communities. And I like to travel. I meet people all over the place. I have been to 27 states so far and I will see all of them.

I asked Noah today if it was hard being married to someone as angry as I am at his demographic. He said it is much like living with any random person because everyone hates white men. I feel sad when Noah talks about his experience of living in the world. It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun being him.

I suppose it would be fair to say that I have a lot of neutral interactions with white men–although honestly those are more rare for me. In all the random social contexts when I interact with people briefly it’s likely to be a woman or a non-white man. Like checkout clerks. Those are the most neutral interactions in my life.

Otherwise I find myself loving or hating individual white men. It’s rare for me to feel ‘meh’. And I usually know within a few minutes if I hate someone. It is rare for me to change my mind.

When I love someone and I am very angry with them sometimes it feels kind of like loving them and hating them at the same time. I can tell that the danger zone for me is when I lose respect for someone. I don’t really know how to handle this like a grown up. Luckily it seems to involve people fading completely out of my life whether I like it or not. I am just riding the waves of people coming and going. Don’t get attached to anyone.

I’m doing better with the kids. It helps that Calli has picked up like 20 new words and it is making it easier to talk to her. We had a rocky couple of weeks. I’m glad things are settling down.

I feel worried that I won’t allow my children authentic emotion. Then I talk to them and I stop worrying. I’m kidding. Calli doesn’t want to ever identify herself as sad. She thinks she will be punished and sent away from me if she is sad. I am working on teaching her that there is a difference between “sad” and “ear splitting shrieks that will shatter my ear drums and cause a week long headache”. Being sad isn’t a problem. Hurting my head a lot is. It’s a journey.

I think it is interesting how when I look around at the world I see people trying to get by. That’s life. It’s a constant struggle to get what you need and what you want. I see people using modern conveniences as if they will provide happiness. How is that working out for y’all? It’s pretty shitty for me. I like my new washer and dryer and all but they haven’t improved my mental health.

When I think about generations past most of what I think about is how they spent a lot more time having to deal with being alone in a way that I cannot imagine. I have books. I have a computer and an internet connection. I am never completely alone. I always have a way of distracting my mind. I can’t help but think this is bad for me. Am I so anxious because I kill a lot of time distracting myself and I am not accomplishing much with my life? I have a hard time adding things on to parenting. Often that is all I can do. I feel pathetic about that.

Once upon a time people raised their children and their food. We would starve.

I think that part of the reason things are going better lately is Shanna is catching on to this housework thing. I guess we needed a week of being stuck at home for her to be bored enough to figure it out. Of course this involves me doing a lot of baseline work to keep the house clean. Anyway, for the past few days she has been coming to me and saying, “If I clean up the living room can I do a craft?” Then she cleans up the living room. I am so ecstatic I could swoon. Calli helps. They both try to sing the cleaning up song Kira taught them. “Look at Mommy do her share” always comes attached with this very doting smile and a hug. Sometimes Shanna feels patronizing in a good way.

I feel incredibly volatile. Happy then angry. I am having an interesting time emotionally handling the kind of disclosure going on in therapy. I really need to talk about these things. And I feel guilty talking to Noah about all of it at this point. I’m sure he’s bored. I’m bored. I feel very ashamed of being someone who has to talk about incest a lot. I need to talk about what I saw and experienced and how it changed me. I fucking have to and I don’t have many good places. But it’s hard going from that level of discourse back to biting my tongue and praying I have the ability to stay silent. Because everything in my brain is poison and I don’t want it to seep into the world.

My cheeks are raw. I have been biting the hell out of them. That seems to be the next thing I am doing. I do it completely unconsciously and I don’t notice till too late. I want to be in pain. I feel pretty disgusting and it seems somehow a moral wrong that I am in so little pain.

Last night sex was hurting. I told Noah to stop. He did immediately and was very supportive. I feel like I failed in my duties. I don’t get a checkmark towards my quota if I’m a loser and I can’t finish. Noah doesn’t feel that way. He was really nice. It wasn’t his fault it was hurting. Bodies are tricky. We both did everything “right”.  I still feel wrong. I still feel bad.

I feel this horrible sense of foreboding. I am not fulfilling my function. My role. There is this whole Embargo thing that protects other women. I am not fulfilling my function as the one who has to make up for all those asshole, selfish girls. I am saying no. That’s not something I am supposed to do. I feel braced for someone to hit me. I feel terrified. When I go out into groups of white men I have to be tense all the time and prepared to deal with someone who is going to be mad that I am joining the Embargo. I can’t relax. It could happen at any point.

But men of color don’t harass me in the same ways. They will express general appreciation for me but there is no attempt to move towards me (they usually back away while calling a compliment so as to appear less threatening, in fact). That’s not how white men work.

At the dance community I don’t have anyone suggesting that I am mean for not giving out blowjobs. Instead I have men sneer while they look me up and down and tell me they don’t want to dance with me. It’s not better.

I’m the only woman I know who went to Renaissance Faire for the sole purpose of picking up men and I slept alone. Even my normal fuckbuddies went off chasing other people. There are some groups that find me attractive and then there is the rest of the world. Where I am apparently far less cute than I think. And they sneer at me for wanting to touch their hands.

I know that there are other communities out there. Well, I hear. Sort of. Occasionally. After the fact. But things start too late at night or they are far away or they are not even vaguely kid friendly. Maybe I’ll find a community some day. Right now I am sticking with the home schooling group.

It’s weird. I am not going to be a person who really immerses herself in that world. I’m not going to chase fame for being a parent. It kind of bugs me. And I don’t think that one reads my blog and thinks, “Yeah, another Mommy Blogger.” That makes me curious. Would anyone describe me that way? I find the term hilarious. I write about incest and rape and violent sex. Oh, and I have kids.

Is my gender or my relation with those two people enough to change everything I am and have been online for ten years? (I read a blog. In case you are wondering what this random tangent is about.)

I have been feeling weirdly guilty about how disjointed my blogging is. I keep forgetting why I do it. I do it because otherwise these words get backed up in my head. When I get them out I can stop rehearsing. It doesn’t matter if other people are annoyed by how repetitive I am. It doesn’t matter if it is comprehensible to everyone. This isn’t a book. This isn’t a self-contained essay. It’s a journal entry. I miss that aspect of “livejournal”. It’s my personal journal. I just post it on the internet because otherwise I stop writing. I won’t do it just for me.

I feel like I specifically use blogging as a hack to get through my defense mechanisms. I am willing to write things in weird disjointed ways over long periods of time to a semi-anonymous audience. I will explain some things and not others with no rhyme or reason. I can handle that level of commitment. I can’t commit to always being coherent. I reference a lot of random things very quickly. After the fact it doesn’t always make sense to me either. This is stream of conscioiusness.

But I find patterns in the gush. I see in glaring detail the omission of the word contempt for the slow fade of love. I don’t stop loving people because I am mad at them. I stop loving people when I feel contempt for them. It’s not a pretty thing to say. That’s a lot of why I work hard to not criticize Noah overly. I don’t want to walk down that road.

I picked this life. I want to stay in it. That involves maintaining respect for Noah. He mentioned last night that he is going on 40. Yup. He pointed out how he is aging. Yup. When I met him he was  28. I think he has improved substantially. I think he has turned into a man. I appreciate the sacrifices he makes for me and for us–they are many.

Noah says that I am alienating my audience (white males) in my rhetoric. Yet years ago he went from saying, “I don’t think there is any sexism in my company” to being able to point out specific things people say that suck. And sometimes he even calls them on it. I like hearing about his day so I get a lot of details.

He has changed. I take a lot of responsibility. I’m not an easy pill to swallow. I can be quite bitter. But there is good to be found.

I wish I felt like I was good. I mean–I know I’m an asshole. I’m not a bitch. How about that for my anti-women shit. Assholes are self absorbed and unwilling to bend for someone else’s convenience or preference. Bitches actively want to hurt people and will go out of their way to punish people. How do you like that difference in gendered expectations?

I think men are damaging because they are apathetic about the harm that happens near them. It isn’t their problem, Jack. They don’t even notice it because it is so normalized for them. And when you slap them in the face repeatedly with the fact that it is happening they resist. Until they say, “Hey maybe you are right.”

Subtle polite messages are ignored. I’m not trying to hurt you, my darling white men. I’m just trying to slap you out of apathy. I understand that this approach is not for everyone. I am Not Everyone’s Thing. I knew that.

I’m tired of having men tell me they don’t know anyone who supports rape when they know a number of rapists. I just am not allowed to say out loud who they are. In fact they support rapists with ongoing friendship and love. Yeah. Stop telling me you don’t support rape. Fuck you.

Why don’t women report more to the police? Because it’s he said/she said unless a woman has the presence of mind to go directly to a hospital for a rape kit. It is pretty standard trauma reaction for women to not think clearly after being raped. Lets humiliate them for that as much as possible and see how many try to stand up for themselves. At this point I don’t think I could successfully prosecute any of the men who have assaulted me as an adult. I don’t have any options unless I had a very successful lawyer and my odds would still be miniscule. I don’t have money to burn on wasted attempts at vengeance. Give me a break.

No, I didn’t mean that men AND women have to work harder to end rape. I think women are already working about as hard as they can. Where are the god-dam men? Those supposed “allies” who “don’t support rape”. Yeah. Stop hanging out with rapists and I might believe you for more than a millisecond.

I am so tired of being lied to. I think I am glad we didn’t get the car back yesterday. I can use another day of being trapped in the house. I’m not feeling sociable.

I think that part of where women come into this is that every little girl should be told that when someone penetrates their genitals without consent that is rape. Let’s get this word force out of it. Because it means different things to different people and emotional coercion counts. If someone puts something in your genitals in a way you have not consented to that is rape. Or in your mouth. You can be raped with oral sex.

I feel like we don’t have a group consensus on what good touch/bad touch even means. So how can we have a discussion?

frustrated

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I feel like I haven’t been blogging much lately.  There are a bunch of things happening I feel like I can’t talk about.  I’m really bad about that.  If I have to censor what I say and speak carefully I don’t see much point in talking at all.  If I have to do those things then my point of view isn’t actually desired and I’ll just shut up.  It’s part of why I don’t follow social conventions much on “appropriate topics”.

Life involves an awful lot of work.  I can only do so much and feel good in my body.  There needs to be a balance of different kinds of work: mental, physical, emotional.  Without balance it all falls over.

I’m trying to edit the book.  I have 13-14 pages left.  I’m struggling.  I’m feeling a lot of tremendous anxiety about the end of the book.  How do I ensure that all the right elements are in place to honestly lead to the rest of my life?

I’m thinking hard about the foreward.  Ok fine, I wanted to write this.  Reasonable, fine.  Why do I want to publish it?  Why do I want other people to know this story with me?  Because I’m tired of being alone with it.  I’m tired of having people giving me entirely inappropriate advice because they assume my life was like theirs.

Other people grow up with families who pass their stories on.  People know what “Bob” acts like; you can tell because they say things like, “Well you know how Bob is.”  No, I don’t know.  I have never been around long enough to find out.  And people haven’t really been around me long enough to understand me either.

No one can ever know these things about me unless I tell them.  I have spent my entire life feeling isolated and alone and scared.  Once this story has been set down there is no fucking way I wouldn’t publish.  I want to be known.  I want to be seen so much it makes me ache.  I’m publishing because I want to.  Because it is an interesting story and I want to share it.  Because people will finally understand my vague allusions.  When someone wants to give me advice I can ask them if they’ve read the book and then let them say what they want.  I don’t have to follow the advice.  But I get to know that this isn’t some random passerby who doesn’t know shit about me.  This is someone who cares enough to go read the backstory so that (s)he can be part of my life.

That feels really different.  Most of my family will be shocked if they ever read the book.  They have no idea about most of it.  They don’t know me and I savagely resent them for this.  I savagely resent that god damn everyone in my family will get to say, “But we never knew!” and be telling the truth.  I think that is what I can’t forgive them for in the end.  They managed to silence me such that I was never able to get proper help from all that psychiatric care for fifteen years.  They can’t silence me forever.  I want to tell my story.  I want to get very clear about what happened to me and I can’t do that in private.

That’s strongly related to why I am upset about some other things in my life.  I’m not happy about how I am being treated and I feel like I can’t talk about it in public and I don’t have anywhere else to talk.  I am talking in therapy and to Noah about this situation but that’s the limit of my talking to people.  I literally just don’t do much else of it lately.  All of my IM buddies have disappeared.  Fuck you all.  (I’m kidding. I love you and miss you intensely while you are having Real Lives.)

It’s time to go parent.