Category Archives: friends

But I like the telling part…

I went to a party last night. The kind of party where you aren’t supposed to talk about what you do. But how much do I respect those boundaries? Only by the skin of my teeth. Which has no skin. So I totally don’t get that expression.

It was hot. I had a lot of fun. It was interesting to manage my feelings and expectations. Noah had more uhm contacts than me (this was intentional) and we both left feeling like we had a really positive experience.

I do have explicit permission to write about one of my partners. He has given me blanket permission to write about him. But that’s complicated. You see, a lot of folks I know… also know him. I’m having big feelings. They come in waves and layers and they impact many different aspects of my life.

Who am I? What do I want? Am I good or am I a monster? Can’t I be both? Is it ok?

I’m not sure I want to stop being a monster. What I want to do is go bite him right on top of the bruise he has from me biting him last night. That’s what I want to do.

He said that for that night it was a 9 but in the future I can treat it like a 7 because he really wants to let me do what I want to do.

So. Hot. Explosively. Hot.

Well I had my first fuck since Muse. Not with my friend I am hurting. Why not?

Why not?

Why do I need that to be a boundary? I’m still thinking about it. It’s complicated. It has to do with a sense of obligation, about boundaries, about my own limits around energetic output, and of course it’s about the fact that when I’m being super slutty… I wanna bottom.

Even though it is explosively orgasmic to fuck your throat, it is hard for me to turn around and say, “Ok now I want you to fuck me like this and like that and do it this way and harder and…”

When I’m fucking I want to drop like a rock.

That was part of the trouble with breaking the rule in Portland. I wanted to break so many rules. I wanted to cheat. Because he likes flipping people.

That’s where I get in trouble. My friend, who lets me hurt him so exquisitely, has absolutely no drive or desire or impulse to flip me. Not an ounce. None. I’ve looked in that well. I’ve dug out the bottom praying for brackish sips of toppy energy.

I love you so much. I want to drop when I fuck.

I feel bad for wanting that and I don’t want to feel bad for that.

I can do enough feedback to tell a stranger how to avoid land mines and encourage them to hit the tempo I want. That’s easy. I can’t tell a submissive how to fake being forceful enough to fuck me. I know folks who can. My hat is off to you. Sounds fucking hot. I can’t do it.

That was the thing with my Owner. He liked to submit to me. But when he was done he wanted to flip the table hard and have me go down.

I like that.

If I don’t feel a strong challenge, if I don’t feel like someone kind of wants to crawl inside me to eat my neck from the inside… meh. I’ll go find someone else to fuck. Don’t worry. There are more out there. Dick is the most plentiful thing on earth. As Feminista Jones recently pointed out, dick is more plentiful than drinking water.

And if what I want is someone who will fuck me like an animal then go away and not talk to me anymore?

I’m in a god damn buyers market.

This is part of why negotiating boundaries with Noah is so hard. I’m so touchy. I’m so sensitive. I need so much attention and energy and maintenance. We aren’t going to be polyamorous any year soon if ever. I have no desire to share that big of a piece of him.

But how does it work to fuck your friends? How does it work to keep people at a distance? I don’t know.

My kids are my secondaries. That sounds creepy. I don’t think we have an emotionally incestuous relationship. I think we have a lot of boundaries around what it means to be support for one another. I don’t think I am overly enmeshed or overly dependent on them. But I am really seriously teaching them how to take care of themselves. And I’m doing that by figuring it out (kinda) in front of them.

I believe with all my heart and soul that much of this journey needs to be off-screen for them. Sure, I write about it publicly and some day they may discover just how skanky their mom was/is…

I can live with that.

I believe I am allowing them to grow up in a world where sexuality is normal, healthy, private, and personal. People do it in a lot of different ways for a lot of reasons and there is no one way that is right or wrong. We have friends of quite diverse family arrangements. And I’m matter of fact and shame free about all of it. I explain why things I tried failed because of defects in my personality. It isn’t that those ways of existing are wrong.

I just can’t do them.

I don’t know why sex can be biting someone and slapping him and fucking his throat with my strap on and that’s enough. We didn’t even kiss.

But sometimes that is a complete sexual experience that needs to be respected within the boundaries that apply to it. Sex isn’t what you think it is. Sex is a lot of things.

I kissed his body. I kissed his neck. I licked him. Do you know the most contact I had with his cock? When he was wearing pants I kneeled on his crotch and jerked him off with my knees. I was still fully dressed.

Sex can be a lot of things.

Sex can be a lot of things it can’t be with Noah. That’s feeling interesting to me right now. And then the pick up sex.

Gosh. Feeeeeeeeeeeeelings. Where do these all fit in my heart, in my loins, in my life?

I asked permission for the pick up sex. Absolutely no cheating happened. This was all highly negotiated and safe and what not. Lots of condoms and covered oral sex. Ok we didn’t use gloves for fingering.

I swear to goodness driving across the country with my kids was more dangerous than fucking this dude.

Why didn’t I hunt for a woman?

Complicated.

Because there are more feelings involved. Squishy feelings. Feelings I have a harder time keeping at arms length. Because I want to fall in love with you. Because I miss women so much. Because I would want to… not have the boundaries I’m supposed to have. Because I do want to come over and bring my kids and all of us can cuddle because surely that’s not a problem, right?

A long time ago I went home with a couple after a wild drug fueled orgy. I shit you not. In the morning the three of us were lying in bed naked doing more drugs. In walked their eight year old kid.

No one blinked. This was just normal.

I left very soon after. I didn’t really keep dating them. I couldn’t do that.

My kids know I smoke pot. My kids know I have had sex. My kids see my casually naked because I genuinely see nudity as not a big deal.

My kids don’t walk in on me smoking pot with my lovers in the nude. Nope, nope, nope.

Do I think I’m better than them? No. Not really. Because you can go down a list of this for that wrong for right and… I’m not. I’m not better than anyone. I don’t have stones to throw. But I have decisions to make about where my boundaries need to be.

Isn’t judging kind of a necessary thing in life? It doesn’t have to mean someone else is in the wrong. But you have to judge anyway. You have to judge if something is right for you.

I asked very careful permission before I engaged in any sm play because this was not a bdsm party. I asked the host, I found a semi-private room. I asked the other people playing in the room for permission before I got started. When other people wanted to join us in the room I asked them if they were comfortable before things got going.

I want it to be ok for me to be in my place in the weird ass world and I want it to be ok that sometimes other people need to be protected from my baser urges. My baser urges are pretty wicked and I know that. Whoa.

I kept it light. I knew I was at a vanilla party. I’m told I only got up to a 3/4 for the hitting. The biting I got more fierce because that doesn’t scare people who are watching. Uhm, not as much?

No punching. No kicking. No serious choking.

I kept it kinda sensual mean.

aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh. I’m going to beat off like a fiend for weeks thinking about this. I need to go to a real bdsm party with him so I can fuck him up. I feel like I’m fiending like a junkie. I like this feeling.

This used to be my life. Ok, I didn’t top that much. Enough. I topped as often as other people could talk me into it. Because people who really crave being hit can tell what I have hiding beneath my smile.

How am I going to keep boundaries around this?

I’ve already loved you for way more than ten years. I’ve known you for more than fifteen years. If this changes, what will that mean? How much of me is going to go to a relationship that has been… super low key for a long time?

That’s the rub. That’s where the negotiating comes in.

Last night I was teasing him and I was teasing me. I know what we both really want and I couldn’t give it to him there. It wouldn’t have been appropriate.

See: I can be taught.

He told me, “Many years ago I decided that even if I didn’t know what you wanted from me, I want to give you everything I have.”

Danger. Danger. Danger. Soooooooooooooooooo much temptation there. That could be so much fun. So much intoxication. So much excitement.

Crap.

It’s magical. It’s appealing.

I have at least ten more years before I will consider seriously dating. Realistically I’m not sure our marriage would survive a serious outside relationship for one of us. We are enmeshed mother fuckers.

But I don’t mind when he goes and does x with someone else.

Cause it isn’t cheating. I walked into the room. I saw what was happening. I saw who it was happening with. I grinned. I walked out.

I like watching other people but I honestly don’t like watching Noah have sex with a stranger. I like watching him fuck my friends because then I can tell them both what to do and be a bossy shithead. That’s kinda inappropriate when he’s banging someone I don’t know. Boundaries, bitch.

And the very best part is when we got home he wasn’t ready to get a hard on so he put on a strap on and fucked me till he was ready to get hard again. Because I wasn’t done yet and if you aren’t hard that’s fine, we have equipment for that. I’m not done yet. And then we woke up and had frantic sex again in the middle of the early morning.

Because we feel cocky, snotty, insatiable, and completely and totally lucky that we get to come home and fuck each other.

I think it is hilarious that my shrink is shocked by how much sex we have considering how long we have been married. “Krissy, you know that people just don’t do that, right?” Meh. I know people who do. Maybe you don’ t know the right people.

It’s all about where you stand.

Noah likes to make fun of me. If I can find people who are more extreme at something I will loudly and prolifically say that I’m not that good at ________. Doesn’t matter what the topic is.

If there are fifty people alive who are better than me, clearly I’m not that good.

Uhhhh, right?

Depends on your scale. I’ve never ever tried to be a specialist. I’m a generalist. So what the fuck does that mean?

I don’t know yet.

Let’s find out.

Peace

2 Replies

This morning I had a peaceful moment. One of those true, Zen moments of “I am happy and this is where I want to be.” Eldest Child woke up to use the restroom too early. I was awake doing chores, like usual. She asked me if I would climb in bed with her so she could sing me a lullaby. Twinkle Twinkle was the song of choice. Then she spent a while talking to me about why she likes me.

This is kind of a habit I have with the kids. I don’t put them to bed all the time, probably not even half the time these days at home. Maybe a quarter of the time? But we had the road trip and all the years before that of shared bed times. At bed time, what we do is we cuddle up close and spent 15-20 minutes talking about all the reasons we like each other. “You did ____ and I was so impressed with your thoughtfulness. You did ______ and I was shocked to see that you have made that developmental jump. I thought that was a (age inflation) thing and I’m really wow’ed. You said ______ word today and that was surprising because I didn’t know you knew that word!”

We bookend that with waking up to morning snuggles. During morning snuggles we talk about what we need to do today and how the schedule will work.

I can understand why my children insist I’m not an asshole and I just have bad moments. I don’t understand it so much from other people. Sometimes I feel like my children get to have a relationship with someone that no one else even gets to meet.

Sometimes I am capable of seeing myself as kind, giving, and loving.

That doesn’t change the fact that I’m an asshole.

Contradiction is necessary for life. For survival. You can be kind and an asshole.

Why am I so convinced I’m an asshole? Because I lawyer up fast when my contractors give me trouble. Because I find that swearing at men really harshly is one of the best ways to convince strange men I’m not interested in their attention. Because I find that sometimes it is necessary to kick people really hard to get them to let go and I’m willing to do it. Because I’m going to keep talking about why the word whore is eating my brain even though people with sex work careers twitch and feel really upset about it.

Want to hear something wild? Yesterday one of the most famous sex workers of our era gave me permission to use the word whore however I need to in my processing. She says if anyone questions me again I can send them to her.

That is… incredibly validating. Wow. Thanks.

I’m not sure I’m ever going to pull that card. But I may print out that tweet and cut it up small and put it in my wallet next to the permission slip from Noah. Just so that I think about it.

I have permission to look at this however hard I need to in order to get over it. She said so.

I am so fucking weird about permission. I’ve spent my whole life cringing, crying, and hurting myself because I felt that was the only thing I was allowed to do without permission. I need permission to stop. I need permission to feel something else about myself.

Why does that have to be the default? I mean, blame your parents yada yada, why does that have to be my default?

Why do I have to assume, in every moment, that I am the least valuable person present and if someone should die it should be me?

Not that I want to get to the point of wanting to sacrifice other people for myself.

Wait, maybe that is it.

I have never known a white person with really high self esteem who isn’t willing to throw other people under the bus for their own advancement. I have known people of color with high self esteem whom I have never seen sacrifice a friend. I know people of color who are exploitive assholes, too.

I’m trying to think through my white friends… y’all make very self absorbed choices. I do too. I’m not sitting on a high horse. I’m sitting flat on the ground. I’m not high and mighty here. I’m trying to figure out how this works.

I am willing to throw people under a bus if I feel I have to do so in order to be effective.

That’s why I’m an asshole. I need accurate labeling so other people know they have to protect themselves from me.

I want to help you. I will try to help you. But if I feel I have to be effective in some area for Reasons…

I’m a selfish piece of shit. That’s why I’m alive. I’m willing to say that Safeway doesn’t matter as much as me, I’m stealing food. I’m willing to say, “Being around people who make choices like x is so problematic to me that I will bug and bug and bug people who make choices like that until they don’t want to know me any more.”

I’m an asshole because I make a lot of assumptions about people and I don’t check my privilege nearly often enough. I’m trying to get better. This is hard.

My life has been kind of hard to adjust to.

I spent my childhood moving like a ghost through different communities. I never stayed long enough to belong. I lived in a lot of neighborhoods where we were the only white family. I grew up feeling like being white was a bad thing. Know why? White people don’t care about their kids very much. That was how I experienced it as a child. I don’t think that is literally true across the board. That was my experience. In white neighborhoods there were always packs of unsupervised children doing horrifyingly inappropriate things. In neighborhoods of color there might be much older teenagers or 20-somethings causing trouble, but the kids were god damn watched.

I was chased out of so many homes for having bad behavior. I was told I was a bad girl dozens, maybe a hundred times.

It’s funny how my memories of these things change and drift. I remember them very differently as my understanding of the situation changes.

When I was 21ish I honestly didn’t remember all those lectures about being bad. I had kinda blocked them out. I knew I was bad but it was a fog hanging over my life. I didn’t have all those disparate voices going through my head.

As a parent watching my children be children (by which I mean breaking rules and fucking up) I hear those people in my head over and over more and more clearly. Oh. That was why they said that.

Click.

Now I get it.

Shit.

I have always felt like I was living in many ages at once. But I feel like my future selves have changed a lot over my life. My ability to perceive who I could be has changed.

These days I can picture having grandchildren who scornfully tell my children that they should be more patient, like Grammie. I will giggle. My children will say, “YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SHE WAS LIKE TO GROW UP WITH.” I will giggle.

Do you have any idea what having that vision in my head means to me? I have the belief that I might be able to arrive at having the kind of experience of being in my body that I want to have. I believe that I might get to the point of being actually regulated and calm.

I have hope for something I was not capable of dreaming up 20 years ago.

It’s amazing what ten years of safety can do for a body. I see it in myself. I see it in my children. That is something that home schooling does for me that isn’t necessary for almost anyone else I know.

I require this specific time to be set aside in my adult life where the entire point of my day is to model how to have big emotions, get them under control, deal with them appropriately when they come up, and then keep working.

Not suppressing. Not denying. Not minimizing. Not avoiding until it comes crashing down on you at some inappropriate time in the future. Your feelings matter. They live in you and they serve a purpose. If you ignore them in the moment you will pay a price later. There are times and places where emotional displays are not appropriate, but get that stuff out as fast as possible so it doesn’t become a poison.

I am grateful every day for the life I am leading right now.

I have the safety, the money, the access to care providers, and the education to do something about the trauma in my body.

That is magical. This should be available to everyone who has experienced trauma. We would be a better world.

People deserve to be seen in context and understood. Most people who seem “crazy” to you wouldn’t seem so crazy if you knew more about their story. I tell my children all the time, “Weird just means you aren’t used to it yet; eventually it is just normal.”

My mom used to say, “The only norma people are the ones you don’t know very well.”

One of my neighbors is stepping up the offer of maternal-nature-friendship. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, Thank You Oh Universe, You Sure Do Like To Hear My Calls, Don’t You?

On the other hand… I’m scared of blowing up what we currently have if she finds out more about me. I’m not exactly the uhhhh conservative type and she is quite shy, scared, and sheltered. I don’t want to hurt her. She will need a lot of boundaries around the kinds of things she can handle hearing and I’m not sure how to find those boundaries without fucking up pretty badly. Once you say something it can never be unsaid.

We have a really solid, positive relationship. Losing it would be brutal. This feels really tricky. Our families are fairly strongly connected at the level we have now. I feel really like this is a big risk. Much bigger than telling all the strangers on the internet about my raunchy sex life and habit of beating people up for fun.

I’m kinda weird.

My superego is fucking developed at this point, ok? I’m growing up.

I’m an asshole and she is not. She wants to mother me. What will she do when she finds out I have approximately 500 x’s as much life experience as her?

There is a thing I think about. When I was in the bdsm community I was really serious about learning all I could as fast as I could. I played a lot with a lot of people. Basically I spent more time on bdsm than I spent on my college education, which I was pursuing simultaneously. Much Much Much more time on bdsm.

I was a serious slut and it was really fun and I have no regrets. I learned what I wanted to learn from that experience. I’m shocked at how often I find ways to apply the lessons I’ve learned, not in ways you’d expect.

I had more life experience at 25 than many people have at 50. It isn’t hyperbole, it is simple fact. I say yes to almost anything that comes up. I know very diverse people in many communities. I’m a moody bastard with a short attention span.

I’ve done a lot of things. It is something I notice when I meet new people these days. I sound like a lying braggart. Nope. I got receipts. I did all that. Why? Because I never felt like I had a better choice than to do what I was doing so I did it all in. As soon as something stops feeling like the best choice in the moment I break down, fall into a deep depression. Go home. Hurt myself until I figure out that the boundaries required in that community are not things I can maintain long-term. Then I heal. Then I try again.

It goes faster and faster as I age and get boundaries carved out of granite. It is harder to change them. I am less tolerant of my internal, “I need to conform by doing x in this environment” sensor and I just flee.

I have a home now. I have less reason to tolerate your bullshit rules. Wanna know why I know they are bullshit rules? Cause this ain’t my first rodeo. Don’t worry, I think the rules in my house are bullshit too. They are all weird and arbitrary. They are made to suit the moods of whichever asshole in the vicinity is loudest.

I know.

I used to know a man who liked to say, “I’m the only psycho in this relationship” or maybe he said he was the only one who gets to be crazy? I may be misremembering. I’ll cop to that.

I need to be the biggest asshole in the space I’m in. So Noah is an asshole, but I know that I’m much more likely to be the one to bulldoze than him.

It works for us. Picture a heart emoji here, but I have technically banned them so this will have to do.

He doesn’t think I’m an asshole. That’s part of why this works. I think we are both assholes and I’m just a bigger one. But he’s all mellow and tolerant so it works out. Do you however you need to, ok?

I’m going to be kinda passive aggressive here and say: if you are one of Noah’s friends… this is a great time to ask him to go out some time. He needs to talk. To more people than just me right now cause life is like that sometimes.

I can’t fill his tank as much as he needs me to right now. Because I’m dealing with the remodel and and and. His job is kinda hard.

I need to go beat the shit out of people. I don’t know what he needs. But right now, he’s wilting like a flower and that’s a serious bummer. I don’t know what it is that is missing right now, but clearly all the right nutrients aren’t in place.

This is the kind of micromanaging, paying attention that I want in my life. It is why I appreciate the people who have stuck with me and really got to know me so much. Because I’m more pushy like this by the year. Because people do it more with me. It’s a careful balance. How much controlling and influencing other people should we do?

I really don’t know where those boundaries ought to be. I’m not pulling up Noah’s email account and making plans for him. That’s over the line.

Where is the line?

Everyone is different. I want you to get to be who you need to be. I want to figure out who I need to be and I want to just do the shit out of it.

This feels like baby steps towards self love, doesn’t it? This morning feels good. I have to say that these piles of tile are inspiring. I may be jaunting off to get more sparkly tiles today. I’m really excited about the snow wall. I want to build that first because I have so much white and it would be nice to get it mostly used up and out of the way so I see how much I need to still buy in terms of tile for the rest of the bathroom. I really can’t tell yet.

It depends on how high up the walls I want to go, right? We’ll see!

Youngest child’s half bathroom is spring. Other half bathroom is summer. The bathing room is going to have autumn and winter. I can’t wait to look at the sparkly snow while I take baths in candle light at night. That will be so beautiful.

I’m serious my friends, if you want to come take a bath… let me know.

I’m thinking hard about how I want to make the tree of life that will climb up the wall over the bath tub. I need to look at more pictures. That will probably be that last bit I design because much of it might be painted, I haven’t decided.

I know that “traditionally speaking” you want flat walls. I’m not going to have flat walls with perfectly level tile. It’s going to be pretty rough and it will be on purpose and structured and artistic. I think it will work.

Oh please God let this work cause this puppy is going to be expensive if I fuck up.

Go big or go home, bitch.

Oh goodness what did I get myself into?!

Have I told you that the floor will have a stone path lined with green tiles to look like grass?

I’m having SOOOOOOOOOO MUCH FUN.

If only the roof weren’t uhm, being tricky. We are still negotiating. I’m blathering on Twitter but I won’t rehash it here. Just… gotta keep walking on. I’m trying to not be angry. At this point all of the guys in the company have apologized for making decisions without me when clearly they made the wrong choice at a critical juncture. I had preferences and they didn’t ask. Even though I’ve told them over and over and over I want to be asked.

Ok. Trying to move on. Have to get this shit finished. If it’s beautiful… I will still write positive reviews with caveats about how I had to be fierce in advocating for myself.

I made it very clear that from here on out the crew was not to dump their lunch garbage all over and leave it here for weeks. Saw blades are all over the ground and that’s not cool. My lawyer was at this meeting. I should stop talking about it for all kinds of reasons.

I wanted to write something down here for documenting purposes. Instead, I hit cut’n’paste and sent it to my lawyer.

That seems smart just now.

Past self, you picked this woman out based on proximity and hope. Well done!

Today will be a good day, I think. I hope. I believe. Oh yeah, a friend asked if she could come over to dinner. I should tell Noah. Ha. Surprise. We have six people coming over for dinner.

Roll with it. Life flows like that. If people ask to come over for dinner the next night and I have no plans…. I’m weak. I have no willpower for that kind of rejection. Because you hit my sweet spot. Basically no output of energy and lots of input of attention. Yeah, you can do that. Sounds awesome. I have to cook anyway. Don’t worry. I always have enough food around.

You never know who might be coming to dinner.

Glitter, expectations, potential, and success.

3 Replies

Well this is going to be a bragging asshole kind of post. I already feel guilty. But I’m going to do it anyway. Why? Because people are complicated and shouldn’t be treated like single issue focused creatures.

I’ve been touching base with some of my boys. This is always a little bit of a weird experience for me. It’s not that they sit around and wait for me but… they leave a space in their life for me. In case I should ever choose to step back in. That is daunting, flattering, and exciting. It means I should consider how to manage the situation so I don’t hurt anyone in a way they don’t need to be hurt.

The goal here isn’t to break as many hearts as possible. The goal is to make as much love as possible so that everyone can be happier, right? But happiness is one of those tricky things. Sometimes it is zero sum game and sometimes more happiness multiplies the happiness. It depends on who you are dealing with, what makes them happy, and what kind of happiness they aspire to in the future.

I feel that if my hoohaw is glittery enough that people are trailing me for decades… I can be gracious. That’s an honor, yo.

But it’s kind of a weird honor. It’s an honor that for at least a few months in a row I stopped wanting. (May I say how tactful my boys were. They stepped right back and didn’t re-present until I started sounding feisty again.)

My boys were respectful about the difference between “no” and “not now”. Thanks!

That’s… well done. Fabulously done. I’m impressed. No one pissed me off with their tenacity. They just kinda… hung out till I was ready to interact with them how they like to be interacted with again.

Oh. Well shit.

I’m feeling feisty. I don’t know what this is going to mean. I’m not feeling slutty, it’s different. Noah really does a good job of fucking me how I want to be fucked so I don’t feel like I’m missing much in the sex department. But I miss bdsm. I miss being that person. I love watching folks eyes light up when they see me because they know I’m about to send a chemical storm of awesome through their body.

There isn’t much else like it.

I think it is funny how the boys stick around and the girls swim on. ~~I don’t have a single girl waiting around on me.~~ (Actually one spoke up!) Even though I like playing with girls more than I like playing with boys.

Want to know one of the sad facts about the patriarchy? Men and boys are conditioned to get by on the scraps they receive from people every great while. They are good at self-sustaining in between bursts of what I feel like giving them. Women are more complex and either give up on sex and decide they aren’t worthy so they don’t stay in the queue or they move on and slam the door behind them.

That’s my slutty experience.

I don’t think my boys should wait around. I think it just happens. I think it is more that they don’t slam the door behind them than that they are waiting. If that makes sense. It’s not that they are aggressively chasing me at this point. (I’d be fucking rude if they were.) But they… let me know that if I ever change my mind…. here they still are.

I appreciate you so much there aren’t enough words.

You definitely do something for my self esteem that other parts of my life don’t impact. *puff chest*

Very very hot people are thoroughly convinced that they deeply want something I have to offer. Yeah. I feel cocky about that.

Noah and I were talking about the concept of potential the other day. He said that he’s pretty sure he’s used most of the potential he was born with in this life (I must say he’s done well by it) but he isn’t sure about me. He can’t tell at all where the limits of my potential are he just knows I’m not there yet.

That’s…

Oh. Yeah. This is why I like being married to you so much. It’s not just that you waited for me and came back. It’s not just that you fuck like my favorite porn star. It’s not just that you work and work to help make my dreams a reality…

It’s that you genuinely believe my potential is so great that you are going to work your whole life and feel like you are doing the right thing to help propel me forward.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

That’s intense, yo.

I am not just a slave put here to serve the interests of narcissists. heh.

To be fair that narcissist gave me the best possible start to my adult life. He gave me safety, boundaries, and the requirement of developing limits. I’m grateful.

I’m also ready to be something different.

That is feeling quite complex.

My friend asked if were going to be monogamish going forward. I feel guilty because I was the one who closed the relationship because I didn’t think we could recover from more mistakes any time soon. Now I’m the one most antsy. Typical.

I don’t know what we are going to do. I look forward to figuring it out with Noah though. He’s the best person I’ve ever met to talk to.

I have a lot of things on my to do list. They will all get done. I have a lot of things on my bucket list. Most of them will get done. Mostly because I get to do all this planning with Noah and between the two of us… we are quite remarkable.

Noah tells me that the secret to happiness is low expectations. It’s true and not true. On one hand, I expect Noah to be obnoxious and I used to think of him as lazy. (I’ve stopped.) On the other hand I kind of expect him to jump through flaming hoops… and he does.

He has risen to the level of father I demanded of him. I am constantly blown away by what a good father he is. He decided he was doing that shit and he does it like whoa. He’s serious. We made these people. We want to pay as much attention to them as we can possibly stand for their childhood. We pick the high intensity version of parenting. Can we have more time with them? Do we really need to sleep? Can we spend more time with them?

They will grow up so soon. They will go off. They will have to do their best with the lessons we have taught them. It is such a short time.

I don’t want to waste very many minutes.

If I could be lying prone snuggling up with my babies or I could be doing something “productive”? Guess what… productive will be here later. My babies will move on. I pick my babies.

I pick my babies.

So what the hell is up with my boys?

I’m a complex woman. I might be a gentle earth mama but I’m also a nasty predatory sadist. These days I know how to hunt for prey that really really really wants to be caught so I don’t feel bad.

Dude. They’ve been fucking waiting for almost two decades. I’m not hurting them by playing games that we both like. I’m having fun. I’m having a kind of fun other people don’t want to have and that’s ok. They don’t need to do it.

As for me, I’m going to beat a nice cock for hours and hours. I’m going to kick it until I have no more kinetic energy left in my body. When I’m done I’m going to snuggle my wonderful friend and feed him snacks and thank him for being so wonderful as to share this experience with me.

I appreciate you. I’m glad we can have this time together doing something we both like so much.

It can’t happen until I seriously catch up on sleep. I feel like a zombie.

Why do we pursue health? What does health mean?

Fuck if I know.

I don’t know what I expect from the future other than I will find adventures. Know what I know about adventures? Sometimes they are a much better story after the fact than a good experience while it is happening.

I have felt a lot of cognitive dissonance lately because people are feeling free to tell me that they had low expectations and high expectations and I’m exceeding them. All of them. I’m just… more than anyone thought I could be.

I don’t know what that means exactly. Doesn’t everyone have this potential? You can write your own story. All you need to do is take every opportunity to act upon the world, right?

I want to learn how to be a tactful ensemble character. I’m not going to stop being a main character. But I don’t want to treat people like they are disposable. Some chapters are short and we part ways and I’ll never talk to you again; that’s ok.

But some chapters pause then resume. Some characters come back in over and over again.

I see you. I am grateful.

Too much, again. Damnit.

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Stuff is creeping in. Today: having lunch with a friend then we are getting tattoos. Tonight I’m having dinner with a lovely friend. Tomorrow is all the massage. The kids also have stuff to get to.

It isn’t that what I’m doing is hard, it is that I’m having to switch gears on what I’m thinking about. I was thinking about that process lately: transitioning. I’ve been staring at the kids all week and thinking about the idea of transitioning from one activity to another and how do we do it?

A friend asked me how I feel about classes that my kids sign up for. Do I insist on attendance? Err… it doesn’t come up much? My kids aren’t very scheduled. Our classes are exciting treats that we are very happy to learn about. There is no dragging. It isn’t hard for us to get out of the house (mostly) because I start getting ready about three hours before we need to leave.

Most days we sit down at breakfast and talk about the structure of the day. What are we doing? Where are we going? I give the kids an idea of what to expect and when I’ll start prompting them to get ready.

Very rarely I run into the room and say, “Oh shoot! I didn’t look at a clock and I forgot _____ and we need to walk out the door RIGHT NOW!!!”

I am shocked that when I do this the kids usually jump up in the air and start rushing to get ready like someone is chasing them with a hot poker. They have bought in to “this is our life and we are obligated to show up when we say we will”.

I talk a lot about respecting teachers because they choose to share what they know with people who want to learn. That’s a gift and an honor. You must respect the efforts of teachers.

Kinda funny given how anti school I am, right? I’m not anti teachers. I’m anti-Industrial-Era-conformity-brainwashing.

That’s not the same thing as learning or education or teachers. In fact I have incredible respect for the process of learning.

Not that every school (public or otherwise) works the same way. I know. But it’s a crapshoot year by year. In “school” you don’t get to pick your teachers, mostly. In life you do. College is a weird hybrid of “school” and life because you have some choice but not that much. You pick your place of education more. (Not that most people research the teaching staff much before picking a university.) You get to drop classes and take a different teacher if you don’t like an approach… sometimes.

I have multiple bad grades (D or F) on my record because of personality conflicts with teachers. Does that mean I know nothing about those subjects? Nope. It means that bitch didn’t like me.

That happens.

School is about measuring how you jump through the random hoops that someone decides to set for you. You think it is even and fair how those hoops are divvied out? Ha. Ha. Ha.

Standardized tests are flat out abusive to most minority populations. Why? Because they say, “Hey, how quickly can you identify all this random shit from White American Culture? Not fast? Then you’re stupid.”

That’s abusive.

And school in America in the year 2016 is about, “How fast can you regurgitate facts about this culture to prove you are ‘smart’.”

Yes there are exceptions. Yes there are good teachers in public schools and there are good private schools.

Are those private schools available to people who are very poor? No? Then school in America is about regurgitating facts. I don’t care that your kid might be getting away with having a good experience. The majority of American children are not.

How do I know this? Why am I so god damn confident of what I know? Because I went to 25 schools. Then 7 universities. Then I substituted in about 8 schools. Then I taught in 4 schools.

It’s not a huge sample size. But it’s big enough to let me see a diversity most people get to pretend doesn’t exist. I went to schools in rural areas, in neighborhoods of a predominate ethnic identity other than white, in rich schools, in poor schools, and many levels in between. I’ve seen Silicon Valley, Compton, and rural Oklahoma.

I can’t speak to the east coast from personal experience. But I read a lot of teachers. I’m pretty sure I’m right from coast to coast. Teachers are talking about the problems in the system. All you have to do is go look a little bit and you’ll find criticism. You’ll never run out of it to read.

I don’t think my way is right or mass actionable. I don’t think the solution to our broken schooling system is everyone opting out to home school. But I don’t know how to force the solutions that are necessary. I don’t know how to force a non-abusive mechanism on top of an abusive system and I just can’t be part of that abusive system any more. Not as a student and not as a parent.

Could I be a teacher in that system? Sure. Why? Because I’m subversive as fuck and I think the kids who are there need people like me whenever possible. Will I sacrifice everything in my life on the altar of helping other peoples kids?

No. I made these two people. I’m responsible for them.

Yesterday I cracked. I stopped asking the kids to help and I sent them outside to play. They had a glorious day and I got the house like 75% of the way to clean. Yes, I know people believe that I clean frantically full time and my house is always spotless so it isn’t that much work (or something). Well, actually…. (I find myself using that more often because it is now a banned phrase in many places. I try to only do it when I’m being a snot and refuting ideas about myself that annoy me.) I don’t clean that much. My house turns into a pit just like everyone else’s house. But I host big parties pretty frequently and I usually spend about a week cleaning before hand. So people think my house is always clean.

It’s a ruse.

I can usually flight of the bumblebee and feel presentable for dinner guests. And my kids have to pick up their toys before they get screens so our house doesn’t get that bad. Only mostly they clean by shoving whichever behind whatever and into wherever. So every so often we have to dump ever drawer, every shelf, every everything in order to find things. Because seriously after a while we can’t find anything and then everyone expects me to be a fucking homing beacon and they ask me 9,032 times a day where “x” is.

I can’t.

They ask me to buy them new shoes because they can’t find any to wear. I clean their room and find four pairs. That kinda thing.

So a few times a year we face overwhelming chaos. For the love of toast I don’t know how families with two working parents ever clean at all. When it gets bad (like me being gone two weekends in a row so things kinda pile up extra hard, and we are remodeling, and school level transitioning) it will take a solid 8-10 days of me cleaning for 4-10 hours/day.

(There’s always a day in the middle where I clean for four hours then collapse in a heap and cry for a while.)

This cleaning is extra epic because Youngest child has to be entirely moved out of that bedroom indefinitely for the remodel. They are currently replacing the wall/window and that room is not sealed to the out doors. (They have built the new bathroom walls/front wall in front of it, but it’s not all done and everything.) Lots of construction debris in there. Kiddo can’t use that room.

So they are sharing again for a bit. Which was ridiculous extra cleaning and sorting. Frankly I think they were god damn awesome.

At one point Eldest Child started crying and said, “I’m just not good at cleaning. I’m not smart at this and I never will be.”

I laughed and laughed and laughed. She looked at me and said, “WHAT?!”

“You act like I fell out of my mother’s womb being able to clean. I couldn’t do it when I was seven. Frankly I think you have more skill than I had at that age.”

She blinked for a bit, dried her eyes, and got up and made tremendous progress all in a big burst. At the end she grinned at me and said, “Ok I am getting better.”

Cocky little thing. Yes, you are. Every day. Every year. You are getting better.

So I think about these things because transitioning eats into progress. The more times I have to transition in a day the less progress I make on all tasks. This is a well documented phenomena. You can spend four years taking a Spanish class, or four months of immersion. And after the immersion experience you will be far more fluent.

Some guys I know were bitching at me that I should really stop what I’m doing with my life and learn all about the influential music from 1968.

I told them I don’t have time and they demanded that I justify what is more important than that. I rattled off what I’m doing with my life. They kinda blinked at me and said, “Ok maybe you don’t have time.”

No shit, Sherlock.

Everyone has different stuff going on in their lives. Everyone has a different comfort level of transitions. I don’t need to judge what other people need in order to feel comfortable. That internal Holy Fucking Shit No reaction needs to be turned off. Ain’t nobody trying to tell me that I need to pick it up. Not really.

My inside voice is changing. I do hear you.

Chill. The. Fuck. Out.

Why do I talk to myself? Because over time I am changing how I react to different stimuli. It was said that a lot of what is interesting about me now is that I do fewer global freak outs. When something is upsetting to me I don’t scream about everyone and everything. I can say exactly what I’m upset about and why and I can usually trace it down to the root. That’s letting me pull the weeds. I can tell which tendrils are a problem.

It’s ok that I failed in the school environment. I mean, I was usually an A/B student (except for personality conflicts) and I’m still a failure in the school environment. It isn’t that I’m unintelligent. But I cannot conform in the ways required to go period to period learning in the teeny chunks that can hopefully be absorbed by a large enough percentage of people to not be a complete waste of time to everyone. Woo.

Do you know why I was a good teacher? Because I met before school, during breaks, after school, and on Saturdays with students who could not understand what I was teaching and I helped them catch up on foundational information they missed along the way.

I can’t give that much of myself to people outside my family right now. My kids need that time from me. Why? Because we have some fucked up brain chemistry and DNA from generations of trauma. We need to do what we are doing right now.

We are learning how to adapt to life. We are learning how to learn. We are learning shit loads of stuff that we will be able to use later. We are planning. We are growing.

And we are doing it slowly. We are doing it by concentrating on one thing at a time for a few weeks.

That way we can spend many hours a day on one task and make substantial progress at it instead of spending 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there.

It is hard. It is physically and mentally and emotionally taxing. But I enjoy it. I feel rewarded. I feel like my reward is the conversation I get to have around the table every meal. My kids fucking think.

I know so much intense analysis of My Little Pony characters that it is ridiculous because I don’t think I’ve ever watched an episode. I know their back stories, motivations, and things that are being foreshadowed. Yeah. My kid told me, “They are seriously foreshadowing something about her in this episode….” Then later I heard, “In this episode they broke the fourth wall to…”

I asked her if she knows what breaking the fourth wall actually means. Nope. So I explained. In great detail. With lots of examples. Afterwards she started rattling off examples.

Yup. Like that.

I treat my children like if they don’t know something yet it is because I have not yet done a good enough job of talking about it. So I’d better get on that.

I really like my life.

I like feeling responsible. Resiliency experts say that people are most likely to be successful if they internalize that they must be responsible. In other words: we must find a way or make a way. So we do.

I feel that way about anti-racist stuff. Incest research. Home schooling. Teaching my kids how to take care of their shit.

I believe I must make this work. Period. So I will.

What does that actually fucking mean? It means that I picked this life. Who the fuck knows why. So I’m going to live it to the absolute fullest. With great privilege comes great responsibility. I’m one of the luckiest mother fuckers born in the history of all time.

How did that happen?

Even with all the trauma. So fucking what. Every level of person experiences trauma. That’s universal. Not every being experiences trauma (lucky bastards) but every level of human experience has trauma.

What traumatizes one person is standard, normal, and appropriate to someone else. So check your fucking judgment, wench. (talking to myself…)

I have an idea for the tattoo. I’m not going to write it out in advance. But I’m going to have a wonderful time talking to my artist today. He’s so wonderful.

And I’m having lunch with a friend first. Then dinner with a different friend.

I don’t in any way want to complain about the fullness of my life. I am blessed. I am loved. People seek out my company on my terms. Because they consider the effort to be worth what they get in return.

I can’t judge that. I need to just say thank you.

I’m trying to slow down. Frankly the remodel is driving me batty. They are banging all day long. So every second all day long I have to process hitting sounds and decide they aren’t a threat.

That wears me out.

But I have to be home. For Reasons.

So I’m doing what I can to destress in the house. My anxiety is spiking like a motherfucker. But! I know it is temporary so I can have something I badly want and I’ll get to have it as long as I live here. Sounds worth putting up with.

But it hurts my body. It’ll end soon.

Every time I transition from thinking, “Is that the door?” back to whatever I’m doing… it takes a penalty spoon.

So I’m thinking about transitions like fuck right now. How many activities can I manage to get done in a day? How much work? How many different kinds of tasks? I think it is funny how different stages of cleaning feel different to me. I can’t declutter a room, organize it, then remove filth all in a go. I just can’t transition like that. I have to declutter the house. Then organize it. Then clean. I can’t go back and forth because I experience distress physically and psychiatrically.

Transitions are that hard for me. I will fall to the floor and sob and not be able to do whatever it is you want of me because I just can’t.

That’s something that has been a pattern in my life for a very long time and I’m just kind of recognizing what that means in my head. Oh. Flooding. Oh. That’s…

Oh.

Yeah. That.

I like intense connections with a lot of fucking bandwidth. So when I need to spread that bandwidth out between 37 different distractions instead of 2-3…

I hurt.

It isn’t anyone else’s fault. But I’m trying to figure out what managing that means. I need this to get better. I need to stop flooding when I walk near someone else’s life because I feel like I should try to conform and I can’t I can’t I can’t.

No one god damn asked you to. Chill. The. Fuck. Out.

I’m trying.

It’s funny to stop and think, “This is actually a huge improvement!”

Good grief.

There are a high number of specific high intensity things I want to get done in this life. I won’t get them done in 15 minutes of prep at a time. That’s ok. I don’t need to schedule my life how other people do. It is working for them. Stop projecting.

We all want different things. Health means something different to every person.

I’m trying to figure out what it means to me. This is proving to be more complicated than expected. Not sure if that is because I was naive to start with or what. Anything is possible.

I’m making a lot of progress with my pain stuff. (The overall refraining from typing is helping. Hey–it’s Friday. I kinda took a few days off… I am trying to moderate…)

I’m making progress on pain stuff. My bowels are… well… I’m told this is progress? I don’t fucking know. But it is weirder than hell. I mostly stopped with the pills for a few days (because obviously my body was freaking out) on the doctors recommendation and the freak out ended right away. This is supposedly a sign that things are working right on schedule. I will resume sloughing the parasites from my liver later today. Oh joy. But! I’m seeing… uhm… something fucking weird that I’m told is results?

Pooooooooooooooooooooop.

We talk about poop while eating all the time.

Muahahahaha

My kids are very comfortable saying, “I’m going to eat lots of vegetables because your body sucks.”

If you can’t be a good example, be a horrible warning. Do one or the other and then do that motherfucker.

I guess?

Yesterday I screwed up. I put in a load of laundry and I didn’t even think about what I was washing. A new dress up clothes thing was put in the basket. It had never been washed. It was bright fucking red. So all the martial arts uniforms were very pink.

Oooooops. Shit. Like rose colored pink. Dark rose. I was all, “NOOOOOOOO!”

Then I thought about my mama and I breathed a prayer of thanks. “Hey kids? Want to learn how to fix a mistake?” I used oxygen brightener and bleach and I boiled it on the stove top and those fuckers are white as snow once again.

Because my mama taught me what to do.

That’s a good memory. Thank you, mama.

Thank you for teaching me how to do my laundry on the stove because that was what we had and you were going to make sure I had the skills to be presentable no matter what happened to me or how bad my life was. You tried. Thank you.

During this process my friend was over and she asked if I wanted her to do the poking/stirring over the fire. I didn’t want her to. I felt entirely Zen in that moment. I am where I want to be doing what I want to do. I’m showing my kids how I fix a mistake. It takes time and effort. But it’ll be ok.

It was one of the most intensely blissful moments I’ve experienced in a while. That’s flow.

If I cared very much about getting out of my house and not being “stuck” with these experiences as the woman… I wouldn’t get to have that. I’m glad I get to have that. I’m glad I get to see the value in my mother.

I miss you, mama.

I miss all the friends I’m not reaching out to because I’m overwhelmed. I’ll come back. I’ll have spoons some day.

In March we have social stuff planned on the first two days. Then… uhm… I don’t know about the Easter party. Wonder how my bathroom will be? Err… I’ll let people know two weeks before?

I think that I need to not schedule anything else in March. Which is intimidating. I’m not resting. I’m working and socializing because I’m so desperate to catch up on the work. I need to rest and I won’t stop working so socializing needs to be back burnered for a few weeks. Just Do Eeeet.

What work do I feel so pressed to do? Well… we are transitioning from preschool to elementary school. Which is a fuck ton of work for me. (I don’t know how you folks who home school with kids in preschool, elementary, middle, & high school do it. How do you find space?! )

The thing I miss the most about teaching in a school is the prep time plus the right to control what everyone was going to be learning. This is much harder. I have to prepare on the fly for a range of topics. It’s brutal some days in terms of cognitive load. It is fucking hard breaking down every little thing into schemas and concepts and repeatable skill training.

This is why other sane people outsource this shit. But we have some genetic stuff to consider that will make us always on the edge of the bell curve. I’m glad the training exists for people in the center of the bell curve. Yay you!

Hi, I’m Krissy. I’m an outlier.

Name the metric.

I just uhm…. like to be difficult?

IT ISN’T PERSONAL, OK!?!

I should stop now. If I get up and start moving now I’ll have all my morning prep done before Noah finishes breakfast and I will be able to eat at the same time as them instead of sitting down as they finish eating. I’m a pain in the ass to take care of. I struggle to think the effort is really merited.

Know something that I find wacky? Youngest child just fucking loves to stand there and hand me pill after pill after pill. Kid says, “You have to fix the problems. You have to get your poop better so you can digest food. I want you to die when you are very very very old. So here.” It varies somewhat, but this entire experience is just…

validating as fuck.

I’m trying to figure out what I need. My issues are complicated, layered, and difficult to solve. I know you are doing what you need to do to solve your issues and it doesn’t look much like what I’m doing.

I need to figure out how to not feel so fucking bad about that. It’s ok that I need stuff other people don’t need. That doesn’t mean I’m bad. That doesn’t mean I should die so I stop stealing resources from more worthy people. It has to be ok that I need what I need.

It isn’t fair that I have the money to pay for it and other people don’t. There is no fair. There is no deserve. There is no way to have things come out even.

I had to believe there is no deserve when it was really bad. I have to believe it about the good stuff too. Or …. or I just can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t get fucking pompous and shitty and “Oh I have a good life because I deserve it. Because I worked harder than other people.”

Gag. Cough. Puke. Bullshit.

No. I really didn’t work harder than other people. Ok, I worked harder than some people. But not harder than everyone. Some people worked ten times as hard as me. They didn’t get where I am.

It’s not because I’m getting what I deserve.

Nothing is fair.

4,050 words. I should stop anyway. Oh my poor wrists. But I feel better. I feel like I’m finding the words to the parts I need to talk about without talking about what I don’t need to talk about.

That feels better.

How do I get to be me without hurting other people?

That’s the journey.

Totally flooded.

4 Replies

I haz big feelings. My stomach hurts. But I feel like I worked out this awful thing that has been in my neck/shoulder for years. I feel like I did a major trauma release in this class. That’s kinda intense. Exposure therapy for the win.

This is what exposure therapy means. The attackers are safe guys in suits who maintain their distance so they can maintain their aura of scary. But they are monitored by women the whole time. It isn’t some guy deciding to do something to a woman when he feels like it and she should have to react right. That’s not exposure therapy. Exposure therapy means a female coach kneeling with her face next to your face whispering, “Remember to breathe. Stop. Wait for the moment. You can do this.”

Stop calling real life abuse exposure therapy. It isn’t. Ok, digression over.

My second experience at Impact was fairly different from the first. I didn’t have a friend in the class. It felt like the group warmed up slower but then made more genuine connections once we did warm up. Everyone started off tentative and not too chatty but by the final day we were pretty friendly. That felt nice.

I took a risk the morning of the third day. I said that the cheering wasn’t making it through to me during my fights and I really needed the line to get louder and more encouraging because it’s scary to fight in quiet. I feel alone. I have to say, those women came through once I made a specific request. They did great.

I didn’t ask for more than one extended fight this time. I literally just… couldn’t. By the time I got through the one extended fight my body was saying, “Let the men make them easy from here on out.”

The guys… they have to work ridiculously hard to do an extended fight with the people who really want blood. They do extended fights to teach women that even when you feel exhausted (this is as close as they will get to the exhaustion of a fight where you will be dealing with someone hitting you) and tired and worn out you can still defend yourself. I think I have a better understanding of fighting from a place of exhaustion from the get go, so I didn’t need the exercise this weekend.

I chose to leave a few spoons in my drawer. Because today I seriously need to pay attention to the kids and if I had left it all out on the mat I would spend today in bed crying. I just couldn’t. This wasn’t a real fight to the death so it would have been inappropriate to wear myself out that hard so I couldn’t hang with the kids.

I pay attention to these things.

Topic switch. Back to hitting.

Yes, I think (upon further reflection) what I am doing with Noah unconsciously probably would be better termed a tap or a light smack… but that is still putting my hands on someone else’s body in a way I’m not paying attention to. In a way that he chooses to describe as being hit. Because he gets that choice. I need to stop it.

Just like people don’t get to tell me that when the kid kicked me in the throat it wasn’t assault. Yes, actually it was an assault. I’m not going to prosecute because I don’t think the kid had malicious intent. But it was an assault.

It is possible to hit and not be causing (permanent) damage. Not be hurting people. Still be a problem. Still need to stop.

I need to have so much fucking control over my body that I do not put my hands on people at all unless I am doing it in a way that I am highly conscious and in control of exactly what I’m doing. I can’t be muddy. I can’t be like “Close enough is good enough.” Not with what I want to do with my life.

So maybe I’m over reacting and maybe I’m understanding how much work I have left on this problem. I need to stop hitting people. Entirely. 100000% unless someone is directly threatening my physical safety.

I know I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to live in gray areas but this is a black and white thing. I’ve done too much hitting in my life. I need to get this under control.

I mean, not that I’m going to cancel that nice date with my friend. I’m going to do everything in my power to get to the point where I only hit people (even lightly) when they say, “Pretty please”. Or they start a fight.

I spent a lot of this class thinking about escalation. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I escalate.

I know it’s all victim blamey and shit, but yeah a lot of the fights, a lot of the rapes kinda happened because I had no ability to deescalate. It hurts seeing that so plainly over time. I am not good at managing peoples emotions in a deescalating way. I’m good at cranking the volume up. I stimulate feelings I don’t settle them. This is a problem.

I think about things like the neighbor who has been sexually harassing me. Did I encourage him? I don’t think so. 90%+ of the time I talk to him my kids are standing right there and I don’t encourage displays of sexuality in front of my children. So I’m inclined to believe this is his desperate fantasy that he isn’t dead yet and he’s still sexually interesting instead of this being about me. But do I deescalate properly when he brings stuff up? Mostly I call the kids and keep walking when he gets rude. What else should I be doing?

Well I think kicking the crap out of him then telling him I cannot be in control if a man grabs me may have been effective. He’s keeping more physical distance these days.

But is he going to creep again? My guess is yes. Because creepers gonna creep. Does it make it all my fault if it happens again because I’m stupid enough to talk to him?

You know what? I get to walk around my god damn neighborhood without having to physically fight off unwanted sexual advances. That’s fucking ridiculous. No this isn’t my fault and I should not have to avoid walking down my own god damn street to avoid being sexually harassed. That’s not reasonable. If he starts shit I’m not the one escalating. He is. I’m just not going to fucking be passive. I’m very friendly and non-threatening with him. I have no desire to hurt him. I’m just not going to let him do shit to me I don’t want to have done.

That has to be ok. No matter how old he is. No matter how much I like him. No matter if I know any man ever again.

I get to say yes to everything that happens to my body. Or I get to fucking hurt you. That’s the deal.

I’m getting closer to the point where I feel I could actually do it in a fight.

It was hard having Noah there. I asked him if he thought I could stop him if he tried to rape me at this point. He isn’t convinced.

I need to take more classes. It is 100% my goal to be able to so deeply scare men that they do not believe they could successfully do that again.

Not because I want to hurt men. Because I’m not going to be raped again. I’m done. The passive has been raped right the fuck out of me. I’ve taken all I can take.

It is quite literally my goal to die before letting someone rape me again. I want to fight to the point where someone has the choice to kill me or leave me alone.

I’m done.

Something broke and it can’t be fixed.

To be fair, Noah didn’t see my extended fight. He saw the easy peasy fights the instructors give you to blow off steam so you walk out of the room feeling strong so you don’t leave feeling like you should walk in front of a bus. They plan this shit. They know the roller coaster they put people on. Noah didn’t see quite how effective I am at kicking peoples skulls in. I practice from a variety of angles. I’m semi-worried that I will actually kill someone because I’m going to be kicking with such incredible force and anger. I may well shove someones face into their brain.

I won’t lose sleep over that. Ok, yes I will. I will be convinced I’m a monster who should be killed. Maybe I’ll go to jail and think that’s fair.

But I won’t be god damn raped that day.

I feel dangerous and horrible. But yes I am prepared to use deadly force to prevent someone from raping me again.

I have to believe I deserve that or I need to die today because I cannot endure another rape. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

I’m done. I have to believe I am allowed to kill someone to stop them if necessary. I know that in an actual fight I will have to use the minimum amount of force necessary to stop a fight. I know that. The chances I will get to a fight that results in death are incredibly freakishly low. Only I’m going to pursue a career that will make people hate me with the power of the sun.

So maybe my chances aren’t vanishingly small. Maybe they just aren’t that high?

I don’t know that I am yet at a point where I am capable of holding the adrenaline in and just doing the necessary hurting.

During one of my fights the suited instructor literally ran out of the room to get away from me because I was chasing too much.

I mean, I didn’t chase him off the mat. But I did take steps in his direction. I hear that the expression on my face was uhhhhh… terrifying.

I don’t know if that is a regular schtick of theirs to try and break the tension because it’s funny. Or if he felt like that is actually how an attacker would respond because holy shit.

I don’t know.

You never know.

They call the rape prevention moves “reversals”. Because you are reversing the power. Those are the ones where you have to stay still on the floor and use physics and it’s scary and complicated and fairly precise. I find them horrifyingly triggering.

It’s really hard to say, “I tried that and what happened was…” I failed. That’s what happened. I failed when I tried to do that. I didn’t prevent a rape that day.

Ahhh. I tried to move long before I felt weight. There was no physics to help me. Fuck everything. Well, specifically he fucked me. After slamming my head into the ground so hard I saw stars. I stopped fighting.

I don’t know if it would be different today. I don’t actually feel confident. That was just a fucking class. I was chanting to myself the whole time, “There is no chance this man would actually rape you. There are witnesses. He’s wearing very difficult clothing. This isn’t real.” Because I wanted to run screaming I was so fucking freaked out. But… that means it isn’t that real in my body.

Would I be able to access this when I’m scared? I’ve worked so hard for so many years to break the freeze response. I’m tired of going numb. But it is a genuine survival skill. I have worked hard to make it less likely I will survive.

I’m ready to die or assert myself. One or the other. But I do not yet know for sure that I’d win.

It is hard believing that I would kill to defend myself and that is part of why I am a disgusting person. I don’t know that I really believe I have the right. I am bad. I want to hurt people.

Not really. I’m just god damn done letting them hurt me.

That’s not true either. I do want to hurt people. I want to hurt people who like being hurt because it released kinetic energy from my body and it allows me to be more calm and gentle when necessary and appropriate.

Hitting is all of these things. It is tapping Noah when I shouldn’t. Even though it doesn’t hurt I’m touching someone without consent in a way that can be described as hitting. My friend who is inviting me to a lovely session of testicle kicking, that’s hitting too. It is completely consensual. He’s going to have a good time, I’m going to have a good time–it’s going to be fun! And being willing to beat someone unconscious for trying to rape me.

It’s all hitting. It is all violence. But do they mean the same things? Should they be treated the same way legally? Should they be treated like trauma because “hitting”?

Everyone gets to decide for themselves what is traumatizing. I’ve done bdsm scenes that were WAY more intense/painful/fucking out there than my rapes. My rapes traumatized me. My rapes were an action that I did not consent to happening to my body in a way that proved to me that I do not have the right to have agency over myself or my life. My bdsm scenes were done with friends and they were fun. Even if they were painful and scary. I knew what I was signing on for. I did it on purpose. I did it with full force and vigor and choice.

That makes all the difference.

I don’t feel traumatized by the throat kick. I feel like I learned something about boundaries.

If you fuck up and assault someone… that isn’t the end of the world. How you respond afterwards is what matters.

If you fuck up and assault someone on purpose… that’s different.

I genuinely believe there are accidental assaults all the time. Just like there is involuntary manslaughter.

Ok, I have one specific complaint about the class this time: I really didn’t appreciate the “boogeyman homeless guy” thing. That fucking pissed me off. The vast majority of assaults are someone you know. Leave the fucking homeless guys alone. They are doing their fucking best and I’m god damn tired of the nastiness of housed people.

Being homeless does not mean you are a god damn rapist.

That’s the attitude though. Homeless guys are creepy and scary. Do you know why they creep you out? Because you feel like they aren’t like you and that’s gross. I feel like they are like me and they are in a hard place right now.

I don’t need to feel scared of someone who has so little power and authority in life compared to me. Am I prepared to defend myself if someone does start something? Sure. But I’ve been interacting with homeless people for decades. I’ve done so all over the country and in other countries.

I’m not scared of homeless people. They are scared of me.

Why? Because they know I can call the cops and have them put in jail. That’s how the power dynamic works. Can I really? Would the cops do it? Maybe. But it’s pretty likely. If any of you dressed-like-you-live-in-a-house-people called the police on a homeless person there is a high chance the homeless person is getting arrested.

For vagrancy. For loitering. For trespassing. For intimidation. For assault.

Even if that assault was accidental. Who cares? It’s a homeless person. They are creepy and icki. We don’t want them around, prosecute.

Stop. Calling. The. Cops. On. Creepy. Homeless. People.

Unless you see them commit a serious crime, just leave them the fuck alone. Ok? They have enough god damn problems without whiny people harassing them.

(I’m not really talking to a specific person or even the folks in the class. I’m mad at the universe over this one.)

I’M TALKING TO THOSE ASSHOLES ON NEXTDOOR.

“I saw a homeless person on my street so I called the police.” I hope you die slowly in a lot of pain.

Like those assholes who called the cops on me in Virginia. I looked suspicious. I had out of state license plates and camping gear. Clearly I was up to no good.

This is my cranky face.

It is weird trying to find a place where compassion and the right to break your face live right side by side. Because in being able to defend myself like this… I’m trying to have compassion for myself. I’m allowed to say that 12 rapists in one life is enough. I’m allowed to say that I was 25 when I was last raped and that’s god damn when it ended. I’m allowed to absolutely fucking harm anyone who tries again.

That is what compassion for myself means. Maybe another woman could passively permit a rape and not kill her attacker and later prosecute and that would be the most “ethical” choice of all… or something.

I can’t absorb any more.

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

How do you get ready to actually be able to kill someone if you have to? I don’t want to. I really don’t want to.

Shit I already feel guilty that people seem to kill themselves after dealing with me.

(Yes, I know I am not “at fault” for any of these suicides. Life is complicated.)

In class someone thought it was funny to make a joke about fire. I sure know how to shut down jokes about fire. It was asked “Does anyone have any trauma around fire? No? Good….” Then I raised my hand. “Yeah, my brother self immolated.”

I bring all the fun jokes to an end.

God I suck.

Hell, I’m not even saying to stop using the joke. It’s ok to jokingly tease a group of people and tell them the final test will involve jumping through a fiery hoop. That’s not a bad joke. That’s not a real threat.

That’s ok.

But god I can kill any joke.

I am so not funny that it is really really funny. It is to the point where my litany of traumas is becoming almost hysterical. I have a trauma for any god damn situation.

It is kinda funny sometimes.

WHEN WILL THE INSANITY END?!?!!? is most of the joke.

Well, I’m still having an extraordinary life… but I’d say it is mostly no longer traumatic. I have boundary violation issues every so often that must be managed.

I don’t think I’ve been traumatized in while. I think the last trauma was severing with my family. (I think I traumatized Sarah after that… but that’s a different discussion.)

Why do I split hairs like this? Because my shrink tells me to break everything down into its smallest compartments and then sort them out.

What is hitting? What is violence? What is trauma? These things are so broad and yet so very specific.

Random defensive pissiness: I read an article yesterday. Don’t remember where or by whom and I don’t care. The person was pretty much saying, “Stop talking about your white privilege because you are just grand standing. If you were really doing anything to dismantle structural racism you would do it silently.” Oh fuck you.

I’m trying to fund the revolution, motherfucker. I am putting my money where my mouth is. I do more with every year and I track it better so that I can know that I am doing more with every year.

Recently Noah told me, “If you don’t feel like you do anything in the world… you are giving more and more money away every year. You are financially impacting the lives of more and more people. That is doing something.”

I don’t do this because I’m a nice person. I don’t do this to be good. I do this because I can never help the child I was. I do this because it needs to be done and other assholes aren’t stepping up.

I’m an asshole. I can live with that. But I want to be an asshole who has specific boundaries around where and how I hit people, how I escalate fights, and when it is appropriate for me to use force.

I think that hitting people to teach them is a shitty way to teach them if you want an ongoing relationship. That style of teaching instill anger, fear, distrust, and the belief in the person you are educating that they deserve to be hit.

Ask me how I’m feeling about Noah right now.

We need something different.

I do not feel traumatized. I feel like I discovered a boundary. I need something different. This isn’t working for me.

I have enough brain damage for one lifetime.

I think that hitting should be used when you are ok with ending the relationship and not before.

If you don’t think I should be packing to leave then we should not be in a physical fight. That needs to be a boundary. And no, that does not mean I should get free hits without retribution. That’s not what I’m saying.

I need to stop hitting casually. I need to be taught through repetition and mostly through words. This behavior will mostly be extinguished through catching the “taps” that “don’t count” because actually they do. They teach muscle memory. They remind me that hitting is ok.

I used to hit ineffectively so I thought it was fine for me to hit people. At this point I’m very effective and that means I need to treat my hands like weapons and be in full control of them.

Things change.

Noah hit back because I hurt him. He has the right. I’m not really mad that he believes he has the right to defend himself.

I’m mad that men start out able to defend themselves with so much force without having to take class after class after class and work and work and work.

I’m not sure that I’m mad at the men. I’m just mad.

I know that I need to get over all the shit that happened to me. But a lot of the places I hurt almost every day are from specific assaults.

Do you think you would be able to forget if you were reminded by your body every day?

Maybe if I can actually heal I stand a chance. Maybe.

Chiropractic appointment in 3.5 hours. I’m going to call and schedule acupuncture for this week. I don’t see a massage therapist for a while but I’ll be ok. Two weeks? I’ll live. Ha.

Cause the next time I see massage therapists I’m uhm seeing two in one day because I didn’t really look at the calendar before booking the second one. That’s ok. One person works on a very small area for the full hour and the other person does a more general massage for an hour and a half. It will feel like magic. I will need to drink so much water that day.

I’m really trying.

Some day I would like to spend less money on health care and spend more money on donating to communities of color. They need the money. I’d rather not need to spend it on my body.

I really don’t think I’m the best place to spend all these resources. But I recognize that it is literally necessary for a time if I am going to heal and be able to do the work I want to do. If I want to stop feeling suicidal because I cannot deal with how much pain I experience on a daily basis… I need to spend the money since I have it. I don’t have a justification for giving it away instead of fixing what is wrong.

Not at this point. Not really. I will be a more effective tool if I stop and do maintenance.

That’s just prudence.

Is that close enough to self love to count?

I’m trying.

Today I am going to spend with the kids. Except for the chiropractic appointment. They’ll do bookwork during that time. We’ll be together the rest of the time. I think we should garden. We’ll read. We’ll snuggle.

I will remind my body that despite these training exercises… I’m safe now. I am safe now.

We need to meditate tonight. During the class I was fucking whigging out for a while. Then I remembered what I’ve been saying to myself when we meditate. “I breathe in nothing that will pollute me; I breathe out the nothingness that has consumed me.” It helped. It helped a lot. The fact that I’ve been practicing at night has helped. I calmed down much faster than I used to be able to.

Jenny tells me that I look at how far I have to go. She looks at how far I have come. I write it down so I can see too.

Hitting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where does it become abuse?

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

But I fuck up sometimes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A new normal

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Well since I blocked IP addresses and referrer sites I’m no longer having panic attacks about the number of hits my blog is getting. Want to know something funny? The number has climbed. I just don’t know where it is coming from. I used to average 40-80 hits/day fairly consistently. That’s been true a long time–like, years.

Now over 200 hits a day is rather common. But I don’t have a trail directly from me to people mocking me.

I’m cool with this. I can live with lots of people coming around. Just don’t… directly leave a trail to being mean, ok? Then we can all live and let live and it’s all good.

I hired a contracting company. I scheduled gardening stuff. I did an hour of clean up/weeding yesterday and I felt so happy about how my yard is coming along. I really have created a magnificent experience in this tiny little yard.

Oh! I had the most exciting thing happen this morning!!!!

I woke up to this really strong mental picture. Of a giant drawer that is almost entirely empty, but rattling around on the bottom… there was one spoon!!!!!

I haven’t woken up to having a spoon in my drawer in a long time. I’ve been dealing with very painful deficit for a while here.

But this morning I woke up with a spoon. It isn’t enough for what I’m going to do today. I’m going into deficit already.

But I WOKE UP WITH A SPOON.

That means I’m generating more than I’m burning for the first time in a long time.

YESTERDAY WHEN I WENT TO SEE MY CHIROPRACTOR MY HANDS WEREN’T BURNING.

That hasn’t been true in months.

My tolerance for pot is way lower than it was. In the past two days I’ve been using 10%-20% of what I was using a week ago and I feel about as high as a kite. Which… is a little mixed. I haven’t been high in a long time.

I’m one of those highly functional heavy users most of the time. I lost a little of that. It’s a hilarious mixed bag.

It is going to be a truly exciting day. I have a different doctor appointment this morning. Then I get to do a little bit of gardening. Then a little bit of writing. Then I get to go to tile stores and ask for the leftovers from boxes. Then I get to have dinner with some of my former students. Some of the ones who build me up and make me feel like clearly I am an important person in their lives because they have made great effort to keep me present.

I am really hopeful about the possibility of today being a good day.

Stomach hurts

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I’m sick. I feel awful. Like normal when I’m sick I’m beating myself up emotionally. I woke up this morning missing my biological family something fierce. It hit me like a freight train.

I miss them but I can’t be part of the family. I won’t keep secrets. I won’t act like everything is fine.

The generation after mine got raped too. I can’t pretend everything is fine.

But they can. So they get to have a family and I don’t. Because that’s how the cookie crumbles.

How ungrateful. I have a family. I have Noah. I have my kids. I had sure better not fuck it up. This is all I have.

I feel completely and totally certain that if Noah and the kids all died I would not live 24 hours.

I feel like this is the most sad I have been in a while. This feels brutal. I hurt so much. Part of it is weird bitterness over adopted family stuff too.

I walk away from people so they can’t walk away from me. Which makes it my fault relationships don’t last. Which is easier to bear than the fact that people just don’t like me very much.

I’m in a god damn mood. Pity party, table of one.

I feel sad, keening grief. I feel like I want to cut and beat my head on the floor and…

It’s just there this morning. Just because.

Sometimes I think I beat my head on the floor because I’m hoping I will damage my brain enough that I will stop thinking because what I think hurts me so much.

I am really grateful that today is a slow pace. We’ll have some nature time. It’s the first day of my officially reduced schedule. I’m on the day planner. It’s here. I mean, I haven’t done that much for weeks, but it was an unstructured kind of not doing that much. And not doing that much means I did a fair bit. Cause I’m like that.

But I have big blocks of the day marked as rest. In between other “healthful” activities and shit that I’m supposed to build into my life because supposedly I might hate myself less some year if I keep this bullshit up.

With every passing year I feel more and more ashamed of myself for not talking to my mother. I understand her neglect so much more. She was doing her best.

Her best wasn’t good enough. Is that really her fault?

I don’t know. But I can’t have her in my life and I feel like that makes me a piece of shit. It is hard to not feel like that fact is reason enough to deserve death on its own. I hurt my mama. I am bad.

If I wanted to I could crawl in bed with any of three people and they would hug me and love me and I wouldn’t have to be alone right now. The trouble is, I want my mother. I have wanted my mother my whole life.

It never goes away. Sometimes I don’t think about it. But then a quiet moment comes along and I check in with my body and there it is. This ache that never goes away.

Mama.

There was a woman, for a few years, who told me she wanted to be my adopted mom. I haven’t heard from her in a long time. She has a life of her own. She’s busy. She doesn’t actually have room for me in her life. I’m not really worth the effort.

My adopted mom and my biological mom share a birthday. So every year I keen for the two women I don’t deserve to have love me. I could reach out to them. But I’m kind of done chasing love that isn’t really meant for me.

I was never really wanted. Not really.

But Noah wants me. However I got here. And my kids are stuck with me till they aren’t. We’ll see what happens.

I think a lot about what my mother’s life would have been like if she had aborted me like she should have. It would have been better. Maybe she could have saved Tommy and he wouldn’t be dead. Maybe she could have kept the other kids together after the divorce instead of just getting the “girls”.

If I hadn’t been there so many things would have been different. Easier. I have not been worth the trouble to take care of, ever.

I want to cut really badly. I haven’t wanted to like this in a while. It’s been such a nice Christmas.

Mama mama mama mama.

It always comes back to you. I love you. I love you with all of my black soul.

But you don’t get to hurt my babies. My babies live in a state of perfect trust where the unreliable people are outside the family. Inside their family they are safe and they believe that people tell them the truth. If you were considered inside their family bubble that would be shattered.

You can’t tell the truth to save your life. Because lying was necessary to save your life and you don’t seem to be able to stop now.

Now. What do I know. I haven’t talked to you in five years. But you couldn’t tell the truth then. Given your age I doubt it has changed. It’s not like you are ready to go through puberty now and see the error of your ways.

You had to lie all the god damn time and I get that and I can forgive you for the past. I can’t let you lie to my children like that going forward and you are literally not capable of telling the truth. I think it is because you are incapable of perceiving the truth. If you did you wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning.

Can I really judge that?

Yes and no.

I have to do what I have to do to get out of bed in the morning, so yeah I judge. I judge that your way of being is not for me and I have to find something different and do it with a vengeance.

That intensity I have that bothers people so much? A lot of that exists because overcoming inertia is hard. It is a basic physics problem. I don’t like me very much. In order to talk to people I have to first pretend I like myself (because if you don’t formulate your interactions based on the premise of liking yourself you will get abused again) then decide what treatment would be right for me if I liked myself then figure out how to manipulate people around me into behaving in a way that will be comfortable for me. That takes a fuck ton of energy, thought, and consideration.

Yes I think about how to manipulate you. I think about how to cause you to have the set of emotions I want you to have so that you will continue to enjoy my company. I’m going to cause you some set of emotions. Indifference. Irritation. Joy. Love. Contempt. Anxiety. Something. Yes, I think consciously about what I would like to be causing and I work towards it. If I don’t do that… I bother people so much.

I have to think about this if I still want to have friends in the future. Even if manipulate is a dirty word. What-fucking-ever.

I think about which people need me to physically move slowly and which people like that I’m generally a quick darting person.

I think about which people can handle which portions of my range of emotions. Some people can only handle the joy. Some people can only handle my anger.

I think about which people will feel tolerant of which parts of my past experiences and I try to cull my stories carefully these days. I have improved these filters tremendously since having children. I used to uhhhh have fewer appropriate stories for all topics. I’m branching out.

I have noticed lately that I have two distinctly different somatic experiences of my approaches to people. Sometimes I don’t feel safe …. engaging. So I don’t say much. I look at the floor and I don’t make eye contact with people. I have a permanent fucking crick in my neck.

Then there are times when I’m ok pretending I’m a main character and I look everyone in the eye and I insert myself into peoples way and I seem to be more charming than not.

I don’t know how to get that pretense of comfort sometimes. Like today I couldn’t do it. Today if I had to be in a group of people I would be monosyllabic. I’d probably cross my arms and rock in the corner. Like I do when I’m uhhhh feeling mature.

Today I feel like I’m stuck in an elevator. Wait, let me back up. Know how I talk about feeling present with many selves/ages all at once? Right now I feel like I’m stuck on elevator between selves. If all the various permutations of me are floors on a building, I’m stuck between Neurotically In Control Adult and Weak And Defenseless Child. Neither is true. Both are true. Fuck everything.

I’m sad. My arms hurt like a mother fucker but I couldn’t sit on this today. I have to let it pass through me and move on. Writing it down helps so much.

I try hard not to make it obvious in my day to day life that my literal survival depends on the survival of the people in this house. That’s creepy. You have to go about your life as if that were incidental to your own survival. But I know it.

I have some incredibly dramatic ideas about how I could ensure that I would absolutely not risk being rescued in time this time. It’s not a call for fucking help. I don’t want help any more.

I want my family and that’s it. If I can’t have them then that’s it.

So yeah. I’m not writing this down because I’m very certain that I would follow through and if you forewarn people they feel duty bound to stop you and fuck that.

But, my family is alive and it doesn’t matter. Hopefully they won’t all die and it will absolutely never be necessary. I want to be with them.

I feel incredibly angry with people who call suicide selfish. Fuck you with a pogo stick. People who commit suicide are people who are in pain they cannot bear. Fuck you for being so selfish that you think they should continue to suffer in order to spare you even the slightest discomfort.

I don’t owe you that.

I owe you neither continued suffering nor silence. I owe you nothing. I do not owe you my life. There are things I’d like to do. I’m going to keep busy as long as I’m alive. Not because I owe people. Because I’m having fun. Because I’m finding out what it feels like to be loved. Actually loved. Shows up every day loved.

Yes Noah, I would throw myself against any rock for that. It is true. Yes I would damage myself over and over and over for that. I did so in the search for it. I didn’t think it would come true. I expected to off myself in desolation and despair before now because no one would ever actually love me.

Lots of people like to fuck me. Some people like to talk to me. It’s different to really love and take care of someone.

Sometimes I stop and realize… my body count is bigger than some peoples whole Monkey Sphere. No wonder I’m capable of seeing more people as real people.

I searched high and low for someone who could love me. Then when he started creeping on me I dated him for a bit and dumped him.

The other day in the car Eldest Child wistfully said, “I hope I grow up and meet someone as perfectly suited to me as you two found.” We both kinda went, “Bwuahahaha. No. We were not suited when we met.” She was shocked.

We changed. We became something different for one another. We became our better selves because that is what we agreed to do for one another. Having someone make that promise and then deliver and deliver and deliver and deliver for a decade now…

This is what trust feels like.

It’s so new.

Sometimes I ask my kids if they can trust me. They tell me that they know I’m telling the truth unless I’m using a silly voice then they know I’m lying. I said, “Actually sometimes when I use a silly voice I’m still telling the truth. Just to mess with you.” They glared a little. But I feel ok with this arrangement. Treat pronouncements in silly voices with great caution. Important life lesson.

I tell my kids that we won’t do everything I plan but we will do everything I promise. There’s an important difference there. I always over plan. I’m an ambitious motherfucker. No matter what you are referencing I over plan. It’s a lifestyle. It’s part of how I save money hand over fist. I plan for 60%-80% of our income. Then whatever comes in over that is extra and I invest it. And I have plans and plans and plans for investing stuff.

You don’t do the things I’ve done if you are a meek or under planning sort of person. That intensity that bothers people? It’s a mixed bag. It drove me around the country despite overwhelming pain. It causes me to get up and try again on being nice every single day with my kids. Because I’ve decided I’m all in for this thing.

There are times when I fail. I’m very careful what I promise. An awful lot of what I promise is that I will always try. I will always apologize when I fuck up. I will not promise perfection. That is folly.

I won’t promise and promise and promise for years that I will take you to do X thing and never do it. Even when the money is there because Other People Come First.

I won’t be my mother. It’s not just about the sex abuse. I know that casual readers often think that preventing sexual abuse is kinda my hobby horse to ride with my kids.

I mean, it’s important. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s really just the tip of the ice burg.

Eldest Child just ran in and jumped on my lap. I may be out of steam for the morning. Hard to hold the laptop on my lap while she wiggles. She is staring intently at the screen and trying to read what I’m writing. She’s getting a few words. Ahhhhh. Time to close this window. My time of hiding in plain sight with my feelings is just about over.

I love you kid.

Wow

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That was such an awesome event. That was one of the easiest parties from my point of view in years. My wonderful friend handled food. I did tea. Noah did… everything else.

My hands burn, but I wanted to say thank you to everyone who came. I am honored to have you in my life. I’m really grateful that I get to have people like you inside my bubble.

Looking forward to today

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My friend offered to take the kids to the dentist so I don’t have to drive twice this week. How awesome with a side of groovy is that?! She slept over because they have to leave at 7:15. That’s devotion right there.

I was maybe a trifle stupid in terms of “resting” because yesterday I spent a lot of time crawling around the arbor putting up Christmas lights. Now when I look out into my backyard I see a brightly lit area. This is my favorite part of winter. Sparkly lights. I didn’t put any on the front of the house. I ran out of steam and I don’t actually care that much about other people seeing the lights. I’m not doing this for other people. I’m doing it because I want to wake up and sit down in the morning to look out at the lights and let that giddiness fizz in my belly.

I’m home. And it’s Christmas.

Today I will rest a lot. And do mild, gentle exercise like a walk and stretching.

I do want to feel better.

Told you I would

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A wonderful friend came over today. She had the brass plated audacity to tease me. Can you believe such cheek? She strongly implied that I have no tact.

The nerve!

And here I am, complaining about it on the internet. Like I told you I would. I like to follow through.

I love you. Thank you for visiting. Come back as often as you can.

To clarify a point

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Pam asked me to clear up a point. In my previous post I mentioned Blacksheep and I mentioned having trouble with a friend not respecting a soft no.

These are two separate people. I’m not being more specific about the soft no problem because I’m having very large feelings and I could be Miss Ranty Pants but I’d prefer to preserve the friendship and figure out a way to manage my expectations and needs that doesn’t torpedo the relationship. So I’m being a bit vague.

Ms Blacksheep is a good Jewish mother. If you hint that something is a no she immediately is there noticing with the, “Oh this doesn’t work for you? Should I try ____ or ______ or ______ or if you don’t want any of those options I’ve got ______ in the freezer.”

No, my big feelings about Blacksheep just come up for me a lot because I can tell I am triggered beyond what is proportional to what is happening in the relationship. I’m really afraid of fucking this one up. Hysterically afraid of fucking it up. So afraid of fucking it up that when I’m with her I’m triggered and ranty and more likely to fuck it up. Because I’m awesome.

I do that with some relationships and not with others and it isn’t clear to me when or why it is different.

I’m trying to figure out why though. Maybe I can do something about it.

Does that help, Pam? I love you. Thank you for asking me questions.

People are just people.

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One thing that struck me on my last chat with my therapist. She said, “It isn’t surprising to me that you do so well with other disabled people. They have had to learn how to set boundaries and they are comfortable with you having boundaries.”

Yes. Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. YES. That.

I like doing a lot of reflecting on my behavior and the people around me. I’m trying to slowly, over time, change my behavior and that means paying attention to how things are going. I can’t lie to myself or I can’t get better.

On this trip I have stayed in the homes of twelve friends. Of them, the only ones I had problems with… were the people who have no specific listed disability. Sometimes those problems are MINE and just consist of me crying and feeling anxious as I deal with someone. I have a hard time with Blacksheep sometimes because I am completely paranoid that somehow I am going to offend the fuck out of her and she will go postal and hate my guts forever. So I feel a lot of anxiety around her but we had no negative interactions. We talked about how we are trying to replace the negative inside voice I hear for her with a more positive voice because really she’s not a negative person. But I’m scared shitless that I’m going to fuck this one up so I don’t calm down very well and it’s hard.

Ok, Blacksheep is the one with no diagnosed disability that I’m aware of that I had small problems with that were clearly all in my deluded little head. I see that.

The other folks I had a hard time with… I don’t think it is just me in the same way that it clearly is all me with Blacksheep. These other people engaged in behavior that… was problematic or triggering and it isn’t just me who would have a hard time.

I can name thousands of women who would go off like a roman candle if you told them that women stay in domestic violence situations because they are “poisoned by their estrogen” so I don’t think it is ALL ME having the problems.

I’m trying to figure out how much I’m being ridiculous and how much I’m having a predictable and acceptable range of reactions to a variety of stimuli. No one gets along in 100% of situations.

I do very well in poor households and rather badly in wealthy households. In poor households they appreciate that I show up and do not dump work on them. They appreciate that I try to be a help and not a burden. I show up in rich houses and they actually rebuke me because I am not… I don’t know… demanding enough? I got told it is offensive to offer to do dishes after someone cooks for me.

Well, maybe to you.

A year or more ago I talked to some friends at home about “guest” behavior and we had an interesting discussion. They noted out loud that other people don’t put as much effort into hosting as they do and that is something they were trying to decide how they felt about. I put it into context to them. They host approximately 1-3 people every other month. That’s it. Rarely do they have a month where they host 5 people in a month. In contrast, we regularly have 10-30 people over a week.

I can’t put the same effort into people that they do. I can’t. It literally isn’t physically possible.

Everything is relative.

This was floating through my head because my shrink asked me why I think I handle people who are disabled so well because normally it is hard for folks to adjust.

(This was asked after I relayed the series of “rules” a friend has. She has OCD. I don’t say OCD when I’m being cute and trying to say someone is a neat freak. OCD is a debilitating condition that severely interrupts lives. OCD is not a joke and it isn’t funny. It can be really sad and hard. I’ve had many friends who literally couldn’t leave their house for extended periods because they couldn’t stop turning the light switch on and off. That’s not a game. That’s super hard.)

So anyway my shrink initially laughed when I said my friend had OCD and I said, “Don’t laugh. I ain’t playing.” She asked for clarification. I started to explain the layers of rules around “This cloth is for this kind of mess on this surface and that kind of cloth is for that kind of mess on this surface and…..” There were at least seven types of cloth I was introduced to for a less than 48 hour visit. They all have very specific uses and purposes and cross-using is NOT OK.

My response to this was, “Excellent! You have a system! Please explain it to me so I can be correct in your system.”

My friend was very happy to have me over.

My shrink says, “That right there. That is what you do. You act like people are ok how they are. Do you know how rare that experience is in the lives of people with severe mental illness?”

Well, I don’t think the piles of cloth are harder to learn than the computer shit my friends babble at me and I have to develop enough of a lexicon to deal with them. Why isn’t OCD worth just as much effort?

Why shouldn’t I care about my friends OCD the same way I care about my other friends having musical or color or texture or food preferences? People are people. They take work to learn and that’s ok.

We are all different. Thank you for being different from me. You teach me about you and about me.

I just had a thought but it feels really judgmental.

I do well with people who don’t act like they are “all right” and I’m broken. I do well with people who think they are kinda fucked up and I’m kinda fucked up and together we can find a way.

The problem with Blacksheep is that she presents an aura of “I’m alright” but when you talk to her in detail you find out that she knows reality. She isn’t full of shit. (That’s why I keep her and keep fighting through this fucking anxiety. Some day I won’t feel intimidated I’ll just feel ok.)

I’m not even mad at the folks I had actual confrontations with. I’m trying to figure out how I want to manage things differently in the future, or even if I do.

I think I handled the dude who told me DV is from estrogen poisoning well. I argued until he shut up on that topic. When I hit done I left his house. I never called him a name and I didn’t start screaming profanity. That was handled as well as I’m going to handle such things. *pat self on back*

I want to get better with Blacksheep. I want to get better about the friend who told me over and over how scary I was while also not being willing to hear a soft “no”.

I think that the next time some dude calls me stupid I won’t wait 24 hours to process I’ll just stop mid-stride and say, “Well this won’t work out. Bye!”

But I think leaving in 24 hours and not starting a fight was still good. I’m proud of me.

So I’m not where I want to be. I want to have better sensors on what is “safe” and what is “unsafe” and I want to have more security in myself that my instant reactions are “ok”.

Which means I need to stop feeling so anxious about Blacksheep. That’s not the right reaction.

I’m working on it. My anxiety goes up and down over the years and I keep coming back.

I will get where I want to be.

I think that part of the reason my Lizard brain freaks out about Blacksheep is the same reason I worry about DSH and J and T and and.

They are independent, strong, fierce women and I admire them so much that I’m afraid they are going to find out “the truth” about me and they will hate me/shun me. I don’t conform to being like them and that screams danger to my Lizard brain.

I’m not saying these laudable women want me to conform to being like them. I think they like me how I am. This is my Lizard brain, which ain’t exactly known for being “rational”.

Men are different. I don’t feel like I need to conform to their behavior in the same way. I just… don’t. I believe I should emulate the wonderful women I know because they are all better than me anyway.

What do I mean by “better”?

I don’t even fucking know. I could go down the list of these people and say, “Are they better at handling money? Sex? Relationships? Mothering? Jobs? Reading? Writing? ETC” and come up with a whole spectrum of answers some being worlds better than me, some being on par with me and in some areas… I do excel. I am good at some things in ways that others aren’t.

I can read faster than almost anyone I’ve ever met. Whoopdie fucking do.

Clearly I don’t think my “worth” or their “worth” is based on these factors. But I still feel this shaking sickness in my belly because I’m wrong and they are right and I am going to be killed for not conforming.

Do I think Blacksheep wants me dead? Oh good grief no. No no no no. She likes me a lot and she has demonstrated that through words, actions, time spent, and money spent on stuff that wasn’t “for her”. That woman has absolutely proven her devotion over more than a decade. I still flip out around her. She is so strong and I don’t feel like I am.

Which is funny and stupid at the same time. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t think she is “stronger” than me across the board. Yes, she is intensely superior at sports she has trained at for decades. Physically she is stronger. Duh.

I’m not sure how that translates into personhood though. I’m not saying I think she is actually a weak person masquerading… I’m saying I need to deal with my fucking feels.

I want to change this reaction.

Blacksheep is kinda like Jenny for me. Not exactly the same, but similar in terms of how much energetic response I have from just thinking of their names. These are women I’ve decided are Important. And I don’t know what that means. I have a poorly defined understanding of what our future together will look like so I feel intense anxiety.

I don’t feel as anxious about some other people, like Sarah or Kira, I think because I have a neater and tidier imagining about the future. I’m not sure I will be right but I have more of a comfortable imagined future going on.

If I’m really honest I suspect that a small piece is I see what I have to offer Sarah and Kira. I really don’t see what Blacksheep or Jenny get out of knowing me. I don’t see how I support them the way they support me. I do see how I sometimes support Kira or Sarah. I see specific exchanges that happen. Some of them are purely emotional, but they are clear to me anyway. I see the back and forth.

I sometimes kinda feel like a vampire when I talk to Blacksheep or Jenny. I want all of their attention and energy. Give it to me me me me me me and I’m not sure I’m as good about paying attention to them. I try like fuck. I don’t know though.

IT IS ALL SO COMPLICATED AND I’D LIKE A VACATION FROM MY FEELS, PLEASE.

I’d give just about anything for a day of feeling…. nothing. I’d like a vacation from feeling.

I’m so tired.

Stupid hormones.

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Well, I’m feeling better than I did when I woke up yesterday. Instead of taking a whole handful of sleeping pills last night I took barely any sleeping pills and melatonin. It was an experiment and I slept for 8 hours and I feel a bit better. Sleeping for eight hours is vitally important to my health and continued ability to travel. I will literally go crazy with sleep deprivation. I just can’t fuck around with it. Even though I’m scared to death of how many sleeping pills I’m taking.

When my friend saw me pop the handful she looked a wee bit alarmed. Maybe because I almost threw them back up all over her floor. My gag reflex is mighty. “Yeah I overdosed on sleeping pills once. My body is afraid I’m doing it again with every pill I swallow. Let alone a handful.”

I had a wonderful time in Georgia despite being incredibly emotionally volatile. I felt like I was flipping out, but seeing my friend was really nice. I finally got a little pushy and asked if I could weed her beds on the last day because I knew I was so full of nervous energy I was about to explode. Weeding calms me down.

Georgia red clay is a motherfucker. I see why she imported bought dirt for her beds. That clay is tough. I’ve read about it in hundreds of books, how punishing it is. I’m grateful I got to get down on my hands and knees and rip plants out of it. That gave me a perspective I can’t get any other way. That was wonderful.

Since many of you know Mitrian I’m going to talk about her directly just a little bit. I’m probably not the only one who misses her a lot since she has had a reduction in spoons and she isn’t blogging much.

She has a wonderful set up for her life. She has a beautiful three bedroom two bathroom house she can afford without roommates. That is such a blessing after the whack jobs she lived with in California. She had some scary housemates.

She has 2/3 of an acre? I may be remembering that wrong. But she has enough land for a small orchard (we helped her plant the first fig tree!), many raised beds of vegetables (as a vegetarian she can go most of the way to producing her own food with this much land), and a great chicken coup for her five birds. She will end up with more birds in the future. She has Lots Of Plans.

Her house is just about big enough for all of her spinning wheels, heh. She has tons of room to do her work. She thinks she isn’t well organized, but compared to many of the houses I see I would say she is about at a B-. She doesn’t have the money to go to Ikea and just buy a place for everything, but she does really really well with what she has. I think she’s doing wonderfully. I was really impressed.

Not in a condescending “I think of course you must suck” sorta way. More in a “Life is hard and you have eleventybillion demands on your time and arms and you have limited spoons so you are doing GREAT” sorta way.

Mitty was less depressed acting than I’ve seen her in many years. Her chickens are obviously wonderful for her.

And she gets to spend a lot of time with her niece, which is very valuable and healing. From what I can see, Mitty gets to feel like a good role model and that is a powerful spur to grown ups getting their shit together. It worked like magic on me. Not that Mitty “didn’t have her shit together” before… but I sense extra motivation now. Before she left California she really didn’t know what direction her life was going to take and limbo is hard.

Now she has a place. She’s creating an amazing extended network of people to barter with. I feel like I learned a lot just listening to how she is constructing a life. She has thought of possibilities that would completely miss me. I’m so grateful I got to visit. She said we are the first visitors she’s had in her guest room in the two years since she bought the house.

Gosh I want an RV. I want to be able to visit Duluth and Covington more often. Luckily the other people I really want to see are moving back to California and they will be more convenient soon. Excellent.

I’m super happy we made it to Georgia. Even though we are home sick and getting punchy.

Tennessee was a different kind of nice. I’ve known that friend since I was 10/11 years old. (We can’t remember exactly but she’s a year older than me and I was at her 12th birthday.) It was more of a “Let’s see if we are anything like we remember” tentative visit. No, we aren’t like we were and that is a special kind of nice.

It’s wonderful seeing people go from fucked up kids to functional, awesome adults. My friend in Tennessee had a few reasons her life could have gone off the rails. She had her first child at 15. She wasn’t very savvy about keeping herself safe when we were young. (Nor was I so I’m not throwing stones. But I was on birth control from the age of 12.) She had a kid and grew up fast. I would say that hands down she is one of the best mothers I know. She’s super close with her kid but she isn’t controlling and neurotic. She guided her kid through life in a way no one helped her. I learned so much.

Most of my friends have little quirks. I am so grateful when my friends point out, “I have this quirk…” Instead of getting annoyed with me for not understanding. My friend in Tennessee is a hippy like me. She uses cloth stuff instead of disposable-almost-anything. I *loved* her set up. She’s really thought through her cloth usage. She has different piles of cloth all over the house with different textures for different purposes.

I feel inspired. Sorry Noah.

So the last two visits have gone very well. I’ve been irritable. Luckily my friends seem to believe me when I say, “I haven’t been able to fully medicate in months and as a result I’m kind of irritable and tense and cranky and it isn’t you and I’m really happy to be here. I’m sorry I’m not mellow but I literally can’t be right now.” My friends are saying that it sounds hard and otherwise we are having a wonderful time together.

I feel so lucky to know the people I know.

I got to have a fangirl dinner with someone I know through Twitter in Georgia too. That was nice. She really isn’t hopeful that things can change so that black women are abused less. I want to believe she is wrong. I’m afraid she is right.

Today we drive to Disney World. I wish I had more energy for excitement. Instead the main thing I’m excited about is that I won’t have to drive for almost three weeks so I can medicate more.

I talked to my friend in New York who is getting married this month. I told her I can’t do anything to help at the wedding because I’m too pressed for time, I have too many responsibilities, and generally I’m just fucking tired. I can’t do any favors right now. I hate myself but it’s accurate.

I’m going to get me and my two kids from Florida to New York for your wedding. That is what I can do right now. That’s all. I can show up.

I wish I could do more but I really can’t. I cannot have responsibilities for helping adults right now. I feel so guilty and ashamed of myself.

I’m sure that feeling of shame is part of why I felt so bad yesterday.

It’s not all of it, this is normal freaking out for me. It is cyclical. And yet. Yesterday was really intense. I don’t get the inside-a-round-room-with-videos-narrating-self-harm thing as often any more. I don’t even see that every month lately. (Thank you brain. I want to stop and notice that you’ve been pretty nice to me for a while. Most of this trip has gone super well from that point of view. Thanks!) I really hate having those kinds of thoughts when I’m driving.

I seriously have to fight my urge to jerk the wheel sideways so we get hurt. It has to be a conscious decision to keep us safe.

We are still here and we are fine. So I made that choice. But I had to choose. I had to decide, “Not today. I still have shit to do.”

I want to research incest so much I can barely breathe. That means I can’t die yet. I want to see what my children are like as adults. We can’t die yet. I have to choose life. Even when it hurts. Even when I don’t want to.

Sometimes I feel bad that what I’m doing with home schooling at this point is working on emotional self regulation. Only I can’t regulate myself. Sad face.

You know what? I actually do regulate myself at this point. I no longer follow my impulses and self harm. I no longer walk along the outside of bridge railings for shits and giggles on days like yesterday hoping I fall. Regulation doesn’t mean avoiding having big feelings. It means dealing with them in a healthy way when they come up. If you avoid having big feelings that isn’t regulation–that’s suppression or denial. Neither is all that useful for life.

My kids have a very different load of emotions compared to me. I am completely confident that if Younger Child were abused in this period it would lead to all kinds of problematic personality formation issues later. That kid is volatile and extreme in a way Eldest Child never was. EC is placid and hard to disrupt most of the time. YC is a powder keg. Look at the child wrong and the child might explode into sobs. It can be hard to be supportive and caring as much as that kid requires. But I’m doing it. That’s the job. Ok, I’m not perfect every day. But I think I get it right more than 75% of the time. Sometimes I have to say, “I love you and I can see that you need __________ but right this minute I can’t give it to you. I’m sorry I’m failing you right now.”

I think it is very important that I not tell my kids that they are asking for too much. It isn’t that you are asking too much. It is that you are asking for something that I am not capable of giving. I’m sorry that I am failing you.

To me there is a huge difference between mean and abuse. I think about this constantly. Abuse makes you feel small. Abuse makes you feel unworthy. Abuse is about taking someone else’s inability to meet your needs and saying it is your fault for having unreasonable needs. Being mean is different. Being mean involves sometimes saying asshole things and admitting, “I’m being an asshole right now because I have x, y, and z going on with my body and I’m sorry I’m taking it out on you. You deserve better I just don’t have it to give.”

Sometimes I think I confuse having boundaries at all with being an asshole. I can’t tell how much they are the same thing and how much they are completely different things. I didn’t grow up with boundaries. Any and all application of boundaries feels like an asshole move to me. But a very healthy and appropriate kind of asshole.

Every postcard I wrote yesterday involved some variation of “I want to go home.” Which I find kind of hilarious. I hope my friends don’t get bored of my whining.

I love you all. The kids are waking up.

The feelings, they burn in my belly.

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I am really struggling with the fact that I can’t wake up and medicate because I’m never sure when or if I’m driving. That’s feeling really overwhelming right now. I’m crispy fried because of the emotional bouncing. It’s getting really hard. At home I create more of a baseline. On the road I don’t have a baseline. I’m taking medication to make sure I sleep every night (or else we would be aborting and going home) but the days are hard.

I’ve been diagnosed with multiple anxiety disorders. It is entirely reasonable that I feel so anxious I want to puke most of the time. It sucks, but it makes sense.

I feel like, if I lived in Duluth and could invite these folks over to my house so they could see my rules in action… we could get along like a house on fire and spend lots of time together. I think if the kids could experience the different sets of rules as a comparison, things would get easier.

I’m a bombastic person. When I am constantly, only, trying to meld into someone else’s rules (when I don’t really know what they are and I’m guessing and trying to not be too offensive) it’s hard. I am hard to deal with when I’m trying to gentle down to other people fast without really knowing the parameters of what is ok.

Different people have different boundaries. It’s hard figuring out. Some people don’t mind the fact that we suddenly shriek loudly in the middle of a game. Other people flip out and act like we are monsters who just burned their house down. Some people don’t care that I swear, some people spend their entire time near me giving me dirty looks and letting me know that they don’t approve.

It’s hard to guess what people will be like.

So we’ve been doing a lot of adapting and that’s super stressful and hard. We’re doing pretty darn well, I think, but my central nervous system is acting like I’ve been dancing on a telephone wire for a few days. I’m getting those bbbzzzzzzt jolts in my chest and I feel jumpy and twitchy and discombobulated.

I am grateful beyond the ability of words to convey that I am being given this opportunity. My wonderful friends are opening their homes and their kind hearts to me. It is stressful because I believe everyone in the world should hate me and want me to die. My friends are being wonderful to me. I am not complaining about my friends.

(I am complaining a little about my friend’s kids screaming “Go away” so many times. But they are kids. I have a “kids are being kids and that’s annoying” complaint about the kids. We’re negotiating and it’s going way better.)

Frankly, after I had some chats with the boys about, “If you want to get what you want to get… let’s find some different words and tactics. I can help you actually get what you want instead of just screaming and pissing everyone off.”

Kids like it when you teach them how to manipulate. Muahahaha.

I told my friend that I didn’t think her kids would like me if I stayed around here long term because they are very impatient and demanding when they talk to her and if I heard it a lot I would start working on them. “That’s not how you talk to your mother. She is not your employee. Try again.” She laughed and said she would love it and she thinks that they would long-term benefit and learn to see the value in me.

Heh.

I told her that lots of kids have strong feelings about me. I’m a polarizing figure. They can love or hate me. Sometimes both at the same time. It’s funny when kids can’t stay away from me because they are so drawn to me but most of what they want to do is hit me or slam things into my shins. Little bastards. We work it out.

Sometimes I wonder if those kids like that I will sit there and discuss boundaries with them verbally in great detail. “If you smack me this hard it feels like a love tap. If you smack me as hard as you did the first time it feels like you are saying you don’t like me and I’m going to get up and leave the room. Don’t do that to me again.” Kid goes back to give me 34,721 love taps.

Whatever.

I don’t know about other people but I’ve always had a bitch of a time figuring out how hard I should or shouldn’t touch people. Folks vary so much. Some people if you touch them gently they don’t notice. They will ignore you and go on with their day. You need to Get Their Attention with a firmness that would be a major boundary violation for someone else. It’s fucking complicated. The line between “Getting your attention” and “assault” is razor thin and you have to dance on top of it sometimes.

I think it is a lot of the reason I needed to hit people so much when I was a kid. I needed to have the experience of finding out that some people barely flinch when punched and some people are on the floor sobbing when you flick them with your finger.

We all get to be different. We all get to have our own experiences of living in our bodies. But I get why it is hard to talk about concepts like assault and rape. There isn’t a standard WAY TO KNOW about these issues because people vary.

If I were kicked in the course of a martial arts class… I would not feel assaulted. If I am kicked in the middle of what is supposed to be not-that-rough-play… it feels like assault.

Context is important.

So many of these things are about individual viewer judgment. I cannot count how many people have presumed to tell me that I haven’t been raped I just made bad decisions.

I’m the one who knows I *did not want* that to happen to me. You thinking that I should have magically found a way to fight harder in order to make it “count” as rape is… irrelevant.

Learning how to fight people off of your body is not an instinct everyone is born with. I’ve had to fight and struggle to learn very hard over many years to defend myself. I didn’t when I was a little kid. I just went limp and let it happen.

I don’t want to be that any more and I want my kids to never be like that.

So it’s my fault I just let it happen. It’s my fault I didn’t risk greater injury so that someone else would feel ok about calling what happened to me rape. I didn’t earn their regard.

I didn’t earn the right to call being kicked in the throat an assault. I would have had to be a perfect victim. I am not. I’m a complicated bitch. I would have had to… I don’t know… been kicked by someone who wasn’t white before people would have been willing to listen.

When I hear white women tell me they are afraid of men of color I snort in derision. I’ve never had a man who was not white touch me nor insult me nor assault me. I mean, I’ve been verbally approached but when I said no with a torrent of swear words they turned away with their hands thrown up. I don’t look like a target to them.

Just to white men.

My kids and the kids who had been screaming “go away” actually got along very well yesterday. I think this is mostly because I was a fascist and I managed to talk my friend into telling her kids to stay off the screens. We play nicely when folks aren’t screaming “Go AWAY” while playing a violent video game where they don’t want to be distracted. If we can’t game together in a friendly way then stop gaming. Go play instead.

I’m going to have to get to a point where I let my kids deal with the fact that if they want to be gamers they are going to have to learn how to deal with hundreds, nay thousands of fucking men and boys who are going to scream at them to go away. This is the softball early version.

This is why I don’t play fucking video games. Too many boys and men have screamed at me like this. It’s not a fucking fun sounding hobby any more. Sounds like a nightmare. I can get to the point of liking something only to have people of a different gender scream hysterically that I have to just GET OUT NOW.

I have huge triggers around this. I wish my fucking daughter didn’t want to be a fucking gamer. UGHGUGHGHGHFGHGHADfoihaweifkjhds;gfh;eovwaekln

AND I’M UN-FUCKING-MEDICATED AS I DEAL WITH THIS GAMER ASS HOLE BULLSHIT

Some day I will have to get over my brothers. Hopefully before my friend’s mother in law does. Holy crap.

In one place we visited we had tacos for dinner. Mother in law *shoved* everyone out of the way to fix a huge heaping plate of taco fillings, then she grabbed a big stack of taco shells and retreated into a corner. There was enough on her plate to feed my family of four at home. “When I was a kid I learned to eat tacos this way because otherwise my brothers didn’t let me have any.”

Aren’t you in your late 60’s? You know how you literally never leave the house because you are agoraphobic? There is some possibility you don’t need to eat like you are doing physical exercise in the Alaskan wilderness any more. You live in a big city and you never leave your house. You probably don’t need to rush to take four peoples worth of food and then eat it as fast as you can swallow.

Hopefully I will get to a healthier relative place than that with video games. I’m not nasty about my kids playing. I’m nasty about it turning into a nasty fight. If there is a lot of “go away” screaming I’m going to get really nasty.

Why are people so damn nasty to everyone? Why in the hell can’t we ask for things without being a complete asshole?

Oh man. Oh shit. The kids nailed me on something. I was talking to the two boys here about tone and shut up and what it means and how it is demeaning and “shut up” is something that is only supposed to be said by someone with power to someone they have power over and that’s a lot of why it is demeaning–it isn’t supposed to be used between equals. It doesn’t work. My darling children turned to me and said, “If it is demeaning you have to stop saying that to us. That’s not ok.”

Shit. I need to stop defining things for them.

First: I WISH I HADN’T PROPERLY EXPLAINED DEMEANING. Then I wish they would let me demean them just a little bit with the odd shut up. Kids say no. We are breaking up with that term.

THIS IS THE CONFORMITY I HAVE REFUSED FOR THIRTY FUCKING YEARS OF PEOPLE TRYING TO CLEAN UP MY POTTY MOUTH. YOU PEOPLE ANNOY THE CRAP OUT OF ME.

But I said I’d try. Eldest said she would be calling me on every slip and reminding me that it is not ok to demean them.

I love that child so much my heart soars. I look forward to knowing you as an adult my precious.

My kids have my fierce requirement to be respected… without all the breakage that makes me brittle underneath. It’s really nice to be around.

Eldest child told me she thought she was “bad” for coming and misrepresenting what the other grown up meant about leaving soon. I said, “Well–I wouldn’t call it bad. I would say it was annoying or irritating or selfish. I wouldn’t say bad. Let’s talk about “bad”. How about if you tell me a few things you think are bad then I’ll tell you a few things I think are bad.”

Every single example she gave me I told her, “Nope that’s annoying. Nope, that’s irritating. Nope, that’s selfish.” She finally said, “If being bad doesn’t mean being annoying or irritating or selfish, what does it mean?”

I said, “Remember how we were at the lake earlier and everyone was having fun throwing rocks?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember how once or twice you threw a little bit to close to someone and M and I both freaked out and said THROW AWAY FROM PEOPLE!?!”

“Yeah.”

Ok, let’s say… oldest boy from that family was being a jerk-face. People do that some time. Let’s say he did something you really didn’t like. If you picked up a rock and threw it at his head… THAT WOULD BE BAD. It could cause a concussion. It could cause him to drown and die. You don’t get to make choices that risk other peoples lives. THAT’S BAD. If I asked you to get out of the swimming hole and wait on the side while I went to the bathroom and instead of waiting you took off and went down the river because you want to see where the river meets with Lake Superior… that would be BAD right now because you are too little. Your body could easily be swept into the current and you could die. We wouldn’t be able to find you and save you. That would be BAD. If you did that when you were 16 and you had more body mass and more awareness of how to keep yourself safe… I’d be annoyed if you didn’t tell me in advance. It wouldn’t be bad.”

“Bad is about risking your life or someone else’s life because you just don’t care enough to treat life like it matters. Bad is not about being a little irritating or a little selfish or a little annoying. Those things are part of being human and people learning how to live with one another’s differences.”

“Many of the things that annoy me now, I will get used to and in the future I won’t feel annoyed. I feel annoyed now because I’m adjusting to a new person–I have to adjust to you every day because you change so fast–and that’s work. More work feels annoying. That doesn’t mean you should stop changing! It means I get to feel annoyed for a while and that’s ok.”

“I love you. I love that you have so much agency and strength and you want to go out and have impact on the world. Sometimes you are going to frustrate the shit out of me because you doing what you know to be right will not be the most convenient thing for me. That doesn’t mean you should change! It means I need to adjust. Adjusting can be a messy process.”

“I’m trying to have patience with you and sometimes I fail. That’s what me being impatient and fussy is about. It’s about me failing to have something I need to have. It’s not your fault and I’m not mad at you for being more than I can handle sometimes. I *want* you to be more than I can handle. But that means sometimes I’ll feel annoyed.”

“Me having feelings does NOT mean that you all of a sudden “are” something because of my fleeting feelings. You are who and what you are. You are not about me. My feelings are about me, not you. Your feelings are about you and not me. You want me to approve of you 100% of the time, so you feel kind of bad when I don’t. Sweet pea, you have to adjust to that too. You need to stop needing to have anyone approve of you 100%. It’s not going to happen in life. You still need to do what is right for you. Haters gonna hate. You need to be you.”

“And we’ve talked a lot about being selfish, right? You have to be a certain level of selfish or you will die. If you are too selfish then people don’t want to be around you. Selfish isn’t bad. Selfish is mandatory for survival. But sometimes you forget that an issue isn’t truly about survival and you are a little more selfish than strictly required and that’s annoying. It’s not BAD. It’s annoying. We all have to calibrate honey. Better to occasionally be a little too selfish because that’s annoying than to be not selfish enough… cause then your body and soul will get sick. It needs balance baby.”

Kiddo snuggled up to me with the biggest, warmest eyes and said, “I love you so much. I’m really glad I get you as my mom.”

I am so glad I get you as my child. Your kindness and generosity of spirit blow me away day by day.

Youngest child wanted to take care of me yesterday. This meant sitting in my lap and singing to me until I didn’t feel angry any more. It worked. I’m not sure I’ve had many times in my entire life when I have calmed down from feeling angry so fast. It was loving and sweet and wonderful and I am so grateful I get to know these people. I feel so loved and blessed. I don’t deserve them but I have them anyway and no one is going to take them from me. Mine.

I’m having feelings about push/pull. But you know what? People are worth figuring it out. The four kids watched All Dogs Go To Heaven together last night (on VHS–a first for my kids) and my friend and I had a wonderful grown up conversation. I really enjoy her company. She’s a delightful, well educated, insightful woman.

And it helps that she is hawt, hawt, hawt. It’s always kind of my friends to be so very easy on the eyes. Sigh.

Ahem. Not that I’m looking.

Ahem.

I’m being good.

I miss you Noah. Abstinence sucks. I can’t even masturbate. I don’t have enough privacy. THIS SUCKS. Eleven more days until I see Noah. And even when I see Noah I have no idea how we are going to make this happen.

Maybe I should go to a hardware store and get some lumber pieces so I can take everything out of the back of the van and put it on little risers under the side of the tent. Hmmmmm. Then I could have SOME horizontal space with a modicum of privacy. Won’t be fancy but I’ve fucked in smaller cars.

I’m thinking about you Noah. I’ll find a way. I’m climbing the walls.

This is the kind of problem I like solving.

Totally want a power strip. If I had a power strip I could put the plug in fridge under the awning and in places where I have an extension cord I could run my computer and the fridge. Like fancy.

I’m not sure what we are doing today. Probably more swimming. Even though everyone but me and my youngest burned a little yesterday. (We were napping in the shade. Like smart people.)

Maybe we’ll wait until a little later in the day and I’ll unload the back of the van and we can go to the farther sandy beach where you can have a bonfire and we can go/stay late enough for dinner. That might be fun. Apparently her family is into fire. I told her that if she and her kids are willing to build a fire my kids would be ecstatic because… I don’t do fires. We’ve been mostly camping for almost six weeks and not one fire to date. She looked shocked. She asked me why not. I said, “My brother self immolated. I’m just not real into fire.”

She agreed that it made sense. Oh good. But I don’t refuse to let my kids near fire…. I just want a responsible adult who is comfortable nearby.

Ha, yesterday at one point my eldest came in and said, “Her eldest (kid said name I’m not doing so) just hit me and I’m not sure why.”

“Well, was it an attempt to be playful?”

“I’m not sure. But it hurt.”

“Maybe you should go ask him, “Did you mean that whack to be playful? Because it didn’t feel playful–it hurt.”

So she did. Verbatim.

He said, “It didn’t hurt. I only did this.” and he did it again. And again my eldest said “OW!”

He looked surprised.

I said, “Well, different people are differently sensitive. My eldest has always had an extremely tender head. Brushing involves crying. She hates having people gently stroke her hair because it feels too intense… it may be that you were trying to be gentle and you didn’t know that you have to be even more gentle than that with her head. She really doesn’t like pressure.”

He looked a bit surprised. But then said, “Oh. Ok I can adjust to that.”

I said, “Yay!” My eldest hugged him. He looked… perplexed.

We are so funny.

Things improved after I got my head out of my ass. I’m telling you, ALL OF THIS WOULD BE EASIER IF I WAS STONED.

I am having a lot of fun here. My children continue to be the center of my world and I am so grateful for them. They make me feel so much joy and love. I feel appreciated. I feel valued.

I don’t feel like my kids are biologically dependent on me so ok fine we are together. I feel like my kids like me.

That doesn’t always happen. I’m very lucky.

Sleeping cold in Minnesota

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Eldest child woke up to tell me that she was warm as toast all night long. Then she went back to sleep. Braggart. I was cold. Cold enough to wake up multiple times and have to burrow into the blanket to breathe a hot air cave so I can go back to sleep cold.

Wench.

All of our sleeping bags and the big heavy blanket from Tay are at the dry cleaners. Apparently here in Duluth it takes seven days to clean blankets. We don’t get any of our bedding back until the night before we leave. This is gonna be cold.

It’s supposed to rain approximately every other day we are here. That’s strangely fun for the drought stricken Californians. We spend a lot of time dancing in the rain.

Today we are on our own entirely. I’m strangely ok with that. We will eat through some of our perishable food and that makes me happy. I’m more than a little weird about food.

I stopped there to yank the kids out of bed and throw them in the van. We were almost late to our oil change appointment. Whoops. We made it.

We went to the park. We went on a cruise around Lake Superior and learned a lot of the history of this area. That was fun. We mailed three boxes home to Noah full of books. The passenger seat is still entirely buried in books I’ve bought on this trip. Oh boy. Guess we’ll never pick up a hitch hiker.

We found out that youngest is too young for the Boys and Girls Club so I don’t get baby sitting services in Duluth. Lots of crying over that disappointment.

Big sister was so awesome. “If they won’t let you stay, I’m not staying! It’s the Gibbs Girls against the world! Uhm I mean the Gibbs Kids.”

It was… hilarious and wonderful.

We are having a hard time transitioning with pronouns. Because youngest keeps slipping and going back and forth with self-references. Today I said, “Kid I’ll call you whatever you want but you have to pick something.”

The boy name seems to be fading. Oh goodness. Says the name Calli is too awesome to ditch. But still insisting on boy pronouns.

I asked, when we were walking into the Boys and Girls Club what the kiddo wanted me to say if the folks asked about gender. I said, “Do you want me to say you are a boy or do you want me to keep my mouth shut.” Kid said, “Keep your mouth shut. If they want to know they can ask me.”

I love you.

Then I saw the 6 year old requirement and it all went to crap. Oh well.

Both kids said, “You let us lie about age for the horse ride! Why not this?!”

My response: I was there the whole time on the ride. If there was a problem I would be able to handle it. Dropping you off somewhere that you have to take care of yourself is different. They want you to be older for lots of reasons.

I feel a little bad about lying for the horseback ride. But it went fine so not that bad.

Over the next few days we will be going on a train ride around the area, to the Children’s Museum, the Aquarium, swimming in Lake Superior, and we will try several local-only restaurants. We’ve played at one of the biggest parks in the area and know of three more we should try.

Oh, we had a thing at the park. A little boy had a hard time negotiating. He was much smaller than youngest kid, so I assume he was only three. I don’t know exactly how things got started but eventually the boy was throwing the rubber tire bits at my kids and yelling that my kids were the meanest, nastiest kids EVER.

Eldest child came to get me. She said, “Is it ok if you come stand over where we are playing? We are having a problem with the kid and his mom is kinda helping but I think it would be a good idea for you to be close by.”

I leaped up from my bench. Sure! Yes! That’s why I’m here!

The little boy followed us to the swings, sat next to us and proceeded to start haranguing us about how my kids were the NASTIEST, MEANEST, STUPIDEST KIDS EVER.

I turned to him and said, “If you have a problem with us, walk away and stop yelling at us. You do not need to stand there and be nasty.”

He looked a little shocked. Soon his mom walked over and was apologetic. She was very directive. She told him to stay away from us if he couldn’t play nice. She pulled him away to chat.

He came back a little while later to apologize for throwing things. His mom looked kind of horrified and tense at first. I told her that my kids weren’t angels and my kids were probably antagonizing him too. She looked relieved that I wasn’t angry. She said, “No kids are angels. They all need help.” I agreed emphatically and we both laughed.

Then the boy was still a bit aggressive again and I prompted my youngest to say, “If you throw things at me I won’t want to play with you. If you want to play with me you have to ask nicely.” Kid said it, the boy agreed, and happy play went on.

Learning to negotiate is hard. It’s complicated. I know kids are going to fuck up and they need to be forgiven. I know that.

But that apology made all the difference.

If his mother had been defensive or snotty or aggressive… I would have stomped off with many nasty things to say. But that’s not what happened. The mom didn’t say “It’s all your fault”. (Not even to my kid.) She said, “Oh man I’m sorry this happened.”

I can respect that. Little kids will do shit you don’t like. Accept it, apologize, try to move on.

I feel very ok about how it worked out.

I’m looking forward to not hanging with my friend tonight. I may end up sitting in the van by myself for a while. Just to be alone.

I like my friend! I’m super glad to be here! I’ve been on the road for 36 days. I’m tired. I finally started bleeding today. 37 days between cycles this time. That’s too long. It means my extra fun crazy period of time before bleeding stretches on longer and longer.

Oh, on the cruise today there was a whole group of people from a 50th high school reunion. One of them asked eldest child my name. Kid said my name. Everyone nearby said, “What?! Your mom is crazy?!”

I laughed and said, yes I am crazy. But she said my name is Krissy. I got some weird looks.

I’m having fun. I’m glad we are doing this. Going home will be so nice. I miss the pictures on the wall. I feel like I’m forgetting.

But you know what is super rad? My friends are coming through. I’m getting comments, SMSs, emails, letters, cards, phone calls…

I wanted to pull the threads taut and see which held. I’m seeing. I feel so very grateful for the friends I have and the life I lead. I do not deserve any of you. Thank you for being my friend.

Anxiety in Portland

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I was trying to remember and I think this may be the first time I’ve slept in this house. I’ve slept with my friend twice, once before the marathon and once in Hawaii. But I’m pretty sure I’ve never slept in her house. That’s kind of interesting given how far I travel to see her. I am terrified of imposing on her. I’m not sure why.

Why had an intense chat last night about communication. I’ve muddled several steps along the way this trip.

What I want to remember is, “I hate that you try not to take up space. I see you trying to be smaller. Stop it.”

We spoke frankly about the fact that she doesn’t like the way my inside voice reads her text. My inside voice is kind of nasty. The only way to get a personalized inside voice inside my head is to talk at me for many hours over many years. I hear Noah in his voice. Sarah. Debbie. Kira. I can still hear some Anna phrases. Brittney is hard. I can hear Jenny.

I think everyone else gets over written with the voice I have. That voice is not very nice. I’m always angry, mostly at me. I feel like I’m a failure and a loser and that is the voice I read everyones text in. It causes me some communication problems.

Yes, I know that this is on the list of things I need to change. This is going to be really hard.

Mostly I’m trying to overwrite people with Shanna and Calli and the girls aren’t that big yet. Lots of things we haven’t talked about yet so they haven’t had a chance to become the dominant noise in my head. We’ll get there.

I’m scared to leave Portland even though I feel a lot of anxiety in this house. I know it isn’t their fault I feel anxiety. My friend and her husband both bend over backwards to help us feel comfortable.

We arrived and instantly broke a glass/ceramic vase. Whoops. (In our defense it was *right behind a swing*.) We swing harder than they do. We didn’t know that they have a firm rev limiter on their swing even when glass pitchers aren’t sitting right behind it. Oh. Well, now we know. Uhm.

I’m the only one still upset. Both of them moved on quickly. It was an accident. He was mostly worried that someone got cut. They were really nice and not upset for more than about a minute. About as long as it took them to process the whole chain of events and understand that it was an accident. But I feel really upset still and I don’t know when I will calm down. Fuck.

I am so scared of making them mad or making them not like me any more… that my fear is a real problem and it makes them not like me as much. That’s the Catch 22 of my life. I can stand here in their kitchen and see how this is like 80% me spinning my wheels and they are just… not involved as I wind myself up… But here I am. Crying in the kitchen because I’m scared. This is fucking ridiculous. I want a new brain.

This feels completely unfair. I should be able to feel fucking secure in this house. This woman flew to Long Beach on short notice to run a marathon with me. She up and flew to Hawaii with me and another friend… just because she likes us. And I’m standing in her kitchen crying because I’m scared she doesn’t really like me. She’s just trying to be nice to the pathetic charity case.

No. No. No. She’s not like that.

Pretty much where I am right now is I need to act like I believe in her love. Because it is real. It has been demonstrated so many times in so many ways. If I’m feeling insecure… well… ok. That’s a feeling. It shouldn’t dictate my behavior. I need to stop crying because people are starting to move around. I don’t want to bother anyone.

Hurry up Krissy. Cry harder for just a few minutes. Then stop and put it away. The space for that is over.

I’m really grateful I have friends who are willing to keep trying to show me that they love me in quiet, calm, just there kind of ways. I hope that some day I will be able to honor that dedication by believing it in the simple way it deserves to be accepted.

Randomly: for cosleeping Calli has been sleeping in the middle so Shanna doesn’t kick me. Only when I wake up in the morning Shanna is in the middle with her feet in my face. It’s actually kind of hilarious. I didn’t get kicked so it all worked out.

Moving south

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Today we leave Dad’s house. That will be hard. I have really enjoyed my time here. Although it will also be a good thing. I’m sleeping for shit. I’m thinking a thousand thoughts a minute about all the things I want to say to him and we save our conversations for after the kids are in bed so… I’m way short on sleep. I need to move on before I hurt myself.

The talking has been wonderful. You know how I sometimes go on these really big tirades and write and write and write about politics and race and rape and incest and money and class and… heh. You know how I “sometimes” do that? Yeah he got the in person version over the last week. He has looked kind of stunned. I’ve never uhm shared my opinions on such a diverse array of topics quite so freely before. He’s kind of re-meeting me.

You want to claim you are my Dad so you need to get to know me. We’ve had several pointed, “Are you committed to this relationship?” conversations.

Apparently his bio-daughter is not very happy about me. I can understand that and I hold no rancor in my heart. I’m sorry that my existence makes her uncomfortable. I can understand why it does. All of the other “daughters” have been girlfriends who moved on. I haven’t. I’m not a girlfriend and I never have been. I’m an adopted kid. Who he has beaten and fucked. Because that has been part of my relationship with all of my dads.

I can understand why that would make someone uncomfortable. I’m on a fucking weird life path.

But he’s ok walking that path with me and I don’t really care if other people approve or not. He is adapting to the changes in our relationship. We have had an incredibly frank and detailed conversation about the changes in boundaries in my sex life. “What if I did ____?” “Well you’d have a time of untangling your fingers from your internal organs after I ripped your arm off and shoved it down your neck.” “Ok then. So you’re saying that is off the table.” “Yup.”

Quite frankly I think this is an incredibly healthy transition for both of us. We are consciously committing to a mutually supportive relationship that doesn’t have to be based on hurting one another. The hurting one another wasn’t a problem when it was where we both were. I’m not there right now. Are you with me or not?

He says he is with me.

He is scared about some of my choices. He asked me last night if I was truly aware of how much I was risking my life with some of the choices I make in terms of activism. I said I was fully aware that women who speak publicly about the things I choose to speak about often get killed. I’m aware that the status quo doesn’t like what I think.

Dad got to hear about the full extent of my suicidality this trip. He’s had dim awareness that I was a cutter.

It is kind of funny to me how people claim to know me… but don’t read my blog… and wow… they don’t know shit. I think I unload my emotions on fewer people than I think. I’m really hard on the people I unload on… but the list isn’t that long. I think I perceive myself as someone who dumps on everyone who walks by… but that isn’t how it goes. I have more boundaries than I think I do.

I am continually surprised to find out that people have known me for a decade and a half and they don’t know major facts about my life.

I can recite your fucking bio in my sleep. I know details about your life before I met you. I can rattle off your hobbies and accomplishments and fuck ups with great specifics.

What the fuck do you mean you don’t know much about me?! WTF!?

I’m self absorbed. Everyone should function like me. Ahem.

I’m going to miss Dad. And I am never going to live near him full time. Our relationship would dissolve and I like it very much. I like the support I get when I see him. He doesn’t have the stamina for me. He can’t be the kind of consistent I need on a regular basis. I can handle what he has to give when I visit once a year. I don’t resent his limits this way. I just adapt while I’m here.

I ask tactless questions a lot to frame how ridiculous we both are. “So my control freak issues are running into your control freak issues. Which part of this one is your real bug-a-boo? The process or the result because you vary from issue to issue.”

He kind of glares at me for a minute as he thinks about it. Then we discuss it and work out how we can adapt to one another.

It is weirdly a lot of fun for me. He is really ok with blunt negotiations. The bdsm community has been good for him. If you can say, “What I really want to do is tie your legs wide open so I can single tail your clit” you can have a conversation about just about any stupidly specific and personal topic.

Ok.. that isn’t actually true about everyone in the scene. But it is true of the two of us and I love that about him.

We’ve talked a lot about eating and dietary choices with the kids. Exercise habits. Modeling and why we do the things we do. Being responsible to and for our kids and how that creates a permanent reason to take care of ourselves because… we owe them a long life.

He says I have made him think about many of his choices in new ways. I believe that.

Last night he told me he feels adrift and he isn’t sure how to get ahead of the curve. He’s had a really hard several years. I said, “That sounds like a request for advice.” He said yes.

Oh I gave advice. “What you need to do is over the next year ask for help from Person A and Person B and Person C and go through the house and the storage unit. Sell anything you don’t have a really strong desire to keep. Donate what you can’t sell. Time to downsize. You don’t need a big house and property and you can’t keep up with the work. Sell before you degrade the house and can’t make money back. Buy something outright. Buy something small and manageable.”

He has inherited the estates of three rich people. He has an overwhelming amount of stuff and he simply can’t afford to keep the shit. He didn’t get the money. That went to charities. He just got burdened with the shit.

People are hilarious. They really don’t think about what they are doing to the people around them.

Get it in your head that you are putting the house on the market in June of 2016. That will be the end of your time here. 14 years in one spot.

It’s going to be hard to leave. His second marriage had its whole life here. But she’s gone and he has to move on. He can’t support this household without her.

Life is about constantly changing your goals as your resources and abilities change. Things go up and down and you have to be realistic about your capabilities or you will over-promise and under deliver. Or you can sell yourself short and never attain the things you are capable of doing.

Re-evaluate yourself. Where do you want to be putting your time and energy? Do you really want to have to spend 30+ hours a week on cleaning and house maintenance only to watch it fall into constant decline because it really needs 60 hours of work every week? That’s depressing. You feel like a constant failure even though you really are doing your best.

I’m going to cry a lot when he moves. This is Francesca’s house. She loved me here. She made me feel safe here. She is a lot of the reason Dad and I worked out some bumps in the early years. I miss her very much. But our obligation to her is over. It is time to sell off her stuff and her step-dad’s stuff and her mom’s stuff and move on.

She died before we could pay our debt to her. That’s a guilt we have to bear and move on with.

We can take that and pay it forward. That is how she would want us to do it. She wouldn’t want us to wither at home with shame and regret. She would want us to pay it forward. She would say we don’t owe her. We owe the universe. It’s never really a two way street.

That’s what is so hard about parenting. It’s never really reciprocal. I have taken more from Dad than I’ve given. Mostly… what I can give at this point is support as he transitions to a different sense of self.

He’s not a swinging bachelor of means. He needs to stop trying to act like he is. That time of life is over.

There are consequences to not seeing how you are changing. How many do you want to have smack you in the face?

He asked me if I believed he was capable of change at this point in his life. I laughed and said I wouldn’t be in his house if he hadn’t changed and changed again over the last decade and a half. Yes. I believe you are capable of changing. It’s not the tooth fairy. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen you adapt. I’ve seen you resolve to improve on how you manage specific issues. Yes, there have been back slides in some areas, but you continue to improve in broad swaths.

But life is complicated. As you improve in some areas you completely screw up other areas. That’s how it goes.

It seems to me that wisdom is partially understanding that you will never be good at everything. You will never have the inter-personal abilities plus money abilities plus physical abilities plus education abilities and and…

Look at what you actually do with your time. You are good at parts of it. The rest… well… it’s done enough. THE HOUSE DIDN’T BURN DOWN. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!?!

I don’t cook much. I can’t do it. I turn into a screaming banshee.

It’s not that I “can’t cook”. I can actually cook quite well. But I need to be calm and have a lot of patience and a lot of quiet and a lot of time and nothing else going on in order to do it in a peaceful way. Or I start twitching and shrieking things like, “JUST GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN BEFORE I STRANGLE YOU OH MY GOD WHY DID YOU THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO DO?!?!?!!?!”

I understand that this is part of an age old tradition between mothers and daughters. But with the whole home schooling thing… it’s a problem if I won’t show them how to do things. So it’s complicated.

I’ve been priming the pump with the kids about how things will shift when we leave Grandpa’s house. We are going to a dun dun dun… screen free house. Ok, they own a tv. A big one. But they don’t turn it on. Or they use it for internet browsing. They watch very occasional cooking shows or Myth Busters. They are basically a kid screen-free house.

So uhm, don’t spend all day talking about video games and cartoons. You can talk about books, games you like to play, imaginary stuff you like to do… lots of topics. Don’t spend all day talking about the Minecraft tutorials. That is horribly boring when someone isn’t interested. We won’t be there very long. Be polite.

I have no idea if Shanna is listening. We’ll see.

We came here from Aunt Cookie’s and her only tv watching is Martha Stewart show reruns and Mayberry because her parrot will repeat things from the television. She won’t risk a peppery word in her house. (I kind of horrified her. And the kids taught the parrot to say “poop poop poop”. She was not pleased.) It’s not like we can’t get along with folks who don’t do video games. But she had to listen to a lot about the tutorial makers. Her eyes glazed over. I tried to rescue her.

Shanna can give you a full run down on the benefits and deficits of different tutorial makers and I think it is hilarious. I only half listen. I stood and listened to the new one for a few minutes last night. I wasn’t pleased. He’s an asshole. I told her flat out, “I like so-and-so and I like that other guy because they are silly and kind in how they give instructions. I don’t like this new guy. The way he is saying his friend might not really be a boy because he hasn’t seen proof? That’s bullshit. That’s a jerk thing to do. Questioning someone else’s gender is not ok. If I ever hear you do that, you aren’t watching this channel any more. If you want to know that assholes like that exist I’m not going to stop you from finding out they exist. But you had better not become one.”

Her eyes were kind of big. She nodded and said, “I wouldn’t do that. I just thought it was cool how he built _____.”

“That’s fair enough. He did build a cool ______. I can see why you would admire it. Feel free to learn his Minecraft skills. Don’t learn his interpersonal skills.”

“Got it.”

Man this is a quoting-myself-heavy-post. I want to share it with Noah. I miss you, oh my witness. I WANT TO TALK AT YOU FOR ABOUT TWELVE HOURS STRAIGHT.

I miss you.

I’ve gotta say, it’s kind of wild talking about a lot of the things I write about. To an entrenched white male. Oh man. It’s interesting phrasing and efforts. I have extreme biases. I’m aware of that. I’m working on and with where I am right now.

Dad is a soft sell on many of my more radical ideas. He will listen and help me construct rebuttals to arguments. Not necessarily on purpose, but he argues with me and that gives me practice debating the things I’m going to need to be able to debate without shrieking.

Not sure I can ever be a cook in a high pressure situation though. That may be beyond me in this lifetime.

Lots of big feelings

2 Replies

The trip is going well. I am so gosh darned tired I feel like I might slip into a puddle and never solidify into a solid being again.

I had a hard time with Noah’s aunts. They grew up in particular times and places and they believe what they believe. Unfortunately for them there is a whole bunch of evidence proving that their beliefs suck.

I am highly dysregulated. I am having a hard time calming down. Too many conversations about poverty and homelessness and race. I really don’t respect the opinions they have.

One aunt spent a long time telling me about how much she enjoys reading the journals of settlers and colonials. They only killed people when they had no choice.

Uhm… go read something written by the folks that the settlers barely avoided killing. You will hear a very different story.

No. The white assholes who showed up on this continent because they were being chased out of their European homes did not kill Native Americans because the Natives were trying to persecute the white people. No. No. No. No.

We are interlopers here. We do not get to claim that our existence here is just about our basic survival. We are stealing in order to survive.

Depending on how you look at it, all humans have been thieves since the beginning. We steal from plants and animals in order to survive. That’s complicated. It’s a hard ethical conundrum. Vegetarians believe that by not eating flesh that you are fine for how you are stealing. Vegans think it must be even more strict and milk and eggs are also over the line.

But no one ever objects to stealing from the artichokes or carrots or cauliflower. We’ve decided they can’t matter.

But that’s kind of funny.

Throughout history many groups of human beings have decided that other groups of human beings don’t matter in similar ways. Sometimes we make these evaluations based on race. Sometimes based on economic privilege. Sometimes based on work choices. If you look around the planet, folks feel free to shit on sex workers in almost every country that exists. Even though sex work is one of the most universal, oldest professions that exists. We still want to punish any individual who engages in it.

Why?

One of the aunts spent a lot of time telling me that she hated the Occupiers and she thinks folks who are homeless are just lazy and they need to get a job.

I told her, are you aware that it takes two or more full time jobs to afford rent, not including utilities or food or a car in most states for people who work minimum wage? You bought your property in 1981 with help. No, other people can’t do what you did. It is really awful for you to think that people who can’t do what you did are lazy. How dare you.

You bought a property for fairly cheap. You had help for 20 years of your mortgage. How dare you say that other people who can’t do what you did are lazy.

Are you aware that historically speaking black people have been shut out of owning property?

This is not about lazy.

Are you aware that the largest race riot in our American history was white people who were jealous that black people were doing too well? But we’ve had a lot of race riots. Mostly they erupt because white people are persecuting non-whites. It is bullshit.

I don’t deal well with people who are incapable of seeing the layers of privilege that built their lives. We are all made up of support and relationships with people. Unfortunately there are major demographics who have traditionally not received support. And they are currently struggling much more significantly than demographics that have traditionally received more support.

I want to equalize that. We can’t go back and fix everything bad that has ever happened. I don’t want to. That’s not the point of life. But we can make it so the people who are alive right now have more access to ways to better their lives.

We don’t have to punish people for being disadvantaged. We don’t have to punish people for being icki and poor and not what we want to look at. We can choose compassion. We can choose to help people just because they exist and they should exist.

I want you to exist. Even when I don’t like you. Even if I want to shout at you because your opinions are just flat terrible. You do worthy things. Even if those things don’t benefit me in any way shape or form. Not everything is about me.

Not everyone has to benefit me in order to be worthy.

I’m getting better at defending the intensity of my opinions without having to scream at people and tell them how much I hate them for having the opinions they have. I’m glad for that. I am modeling better behavior for my children. I am teaching them to be fierce, but not mean.

I’m trying. I’m trying to model what I think should exist. Have strong opinions. They matter. They help. They are important. But try to express them in a way that will educate instead of alienate.

I really suck at that.

Last night was so awesome. Dad and I got stoned together and I unloaded on him. He’s not an emotional guy. He doesn’t really want to hear about feelings. Ha ha mother fucker. You adopt me and you get what you get. If you want to be my Dad you get to find out what I’m like. And that means listening to an hour or so of emotional unloading every other year or so. Suck it, buddy. Just cope. You can manage.

He did. He’s wonderful to me. I listened to what was going on with his life. He is struggling more than I am. That’s… kind of weird to me. He’s supposed to be the stable grown up. Only now I’m the stable grown up. How the fuck did that happen?

He’s had a hard time since his wife died. Things have been rocky. It makes sense. That has been seven years now. His business failed and that was really hard financially and emotionally. He likes his current job, but it doesn’t pay that much and he has a lot of bills. Complicated. He’s really depressed.

He expresses admiration for my obsessive saving. Which is awkward. I appreciate his positive feedback on my skills but it is uncomfortable too. I don’t think I should be doing better than other people. That is not my self-perception. If I do something well, emotionally, I want it to be because any one can do it and it isn’t very hard. That isn’t true any more though. I’m good at a lot of things that most people suck at. I am an incredibly skilled person.

That’s hard to accept sometimes. I don’t ever get to use the excuse that I just can’t any more. I can find a way. That’s daunting. Overwhelming. Too much pressure. I don’t want to be able to find a way. I want to have the excuse that I don’t have to.

But I’m exceptionally competent. If I don’t do something it is probably because I choose not to and not because I can’t. That’s…

Shit. I’m out of excuses. I like excuses.

Talking to Dad is intense on a variety of levels. As the years go by I am increasingly willing to share my opinion on what I see. “You are selfish in a short sighted way. If we could get your selfishness to see the long-view then I think your romantic life would improve.” He is strangely willing to listen to me now whereas ten years ago he snorted and said what the hell do I know.

Now he’s had two marriages go badly and mine is doing well and he’s willing to listen.

He spent a lot of time questioning whether I was on the road trip because my marriage is rocky. He had a really hard time believing that Noah would be ok with this kind of separation unless we were on the verge of divorce.

Nope, we are very happy together. Lots of sex. Lots of good conversation. We really enjoy one another’s company. But I’m a traveler and he’s not. He loves me anyway just like I love him for being a home body. We are ok with supporting one another through divergent experiences. We don’t have to do everything together. It’s ok if we are different.

It is part of why I am so very happy to be married to Noah. He doesn’t want a Mrs. Noah Gibbs who is there to facilitate his life. He wants to be partnered with Krissy Gibbs. Who is bad ass and does cool things.

He’s bummed when people think I’m cool because he married me. He thinks that is missing the point of me. I am not cool because he sticks his dick in me. I’m cool so he wants to stick his dick in me. People should get the order right.

I really like Noah. I am ridiculously happy to be married to someone who trusts me and who works as hard as he works. I like hard workers. I like people who pick goals and then put their head down and accomplish them come hell or high water. I really like Noah. He inspires me. He also taunts me and I want to punch him for it. But I don’t because we do not have that kind of relationship.

Noah causes me to think really hard about my ever expanding repertoire of skills. He isn’t ok with me minimizing my abilities. He says, “Nope. You don’t get to think you are incompetent any more. You probably never were but you don’t get to think it now.”

I cannot express what knowing him has meant to me. He believes in me. He believes in me the way other people believe in G-d. He thinks I can just do things. So I can.

Thank you.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen to the world if everyone had someone who believed in them as much as Noah believes in me. It would be a really incredible planet. I wish I could see that planet.

I want to be part of a world where people build one another up instead of tearing each other down. That was the hard part of dealing with the aunts. I didn’t want to tear them down in the process of educating them and that is hard. Tearing people down is so much easier than building them up.

How do you teach people to see that they are privileged because they grew up with a highly educated parent who had the ability to teach them a variety of skills that other people never know exists? How do you teach people to see that they are lucky and blessed because they got to have abusive help for a period of time?

Some people get no help at all. Not even packaged with abuse. No one wants to help them from the get-go.

Can we get over this idea that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? That’s a crock of shit. The people who survive and who do well are people who have neighbors who show up to help. Not people who do it alone.

I’ve tried doing it alone and I’ve tried finding a network of support. Finding the network is horrifyingly hard. It is emotionally draining and hurtful. There are hundreds of false starts. It feels hopeless most of the time. But then you notice that this time when you fell down someone was there to grab your elbow and keep you from landing on the concrete.

I believe in the MonkeySphere. I believe my connections to human beings are the reason I am alive. Mostly through Shanna and Calli and Noah, but my friends are important. My friends matter so much.

If I weren’t at Dad’s house I wouldn’t be able to see the extent of how much he loves me and would do if I needed it. He’s never going to be able to provide financial support–he might need it in the future. But he has been emotional support for almost 16 years. He has supported me through many different changes in my life. He adapts with me as I change radically and he really wishes he didn’t have to.

I see you. I appreciate you.

Looks like my kids are going to be his grandkid experience. His bio-kids are respectively one and two years younger than me. His son is only going to have children if there is a catastrophic accident and he’s considering pre meditative surgery. Just to be safe. Dad’s bio-daughter is 30 and doesn’t have a partner. Her mom would like her to have kids but she isn’t real interested in single parenting and things aren’t lining up.

It is weird seeing that I am creating a place for myself. I am in the middle of generations. I help interpret going up and going down. I really appreciate that I get to spend so much of my life teaching people how to get along. Kids and adults. That probably isn’t how other people see how I spend my time… but it is how I see what I’m doing. I give other adults a lot of feedback. I try to do it in ways that won’t cause them to turn around and yell at me to back off (I’m pretty deft) but I’m a bossy motherfucker. I’m going to volunteer my view whether you like it or not.

And there are people who keep me around even though I’m highly obnoxious. My life is great.

Last night I told Dad that I feel very safe unloading on him at this point because I know that he likes having me around. He laughed and asked why I am so sure. I said, “I’ve watched you for a lot of years. When you are done with people you get mean. Your jokes are more and more cutting. You point out their flaws more frequently and with more venom. It is hard to watch when you are doing it to people I like. It is part of why I don’t spend more time with you. I don’t want to wear out my welcome. You have never treated me that way and I want to continue this trend.”

He got quiet and thoughtful. After a while he nodded and said, “You are right. I do like you a lot. I’m not sick of you.” He didn’t say that much more about it. He’s not the sort.

I’m sitting in Dad’s back yard resting. I’m thinking about doing some weeding. He’s been really sad and just isn’t keeping up with the house and yard. I cleaned his pipes this morning. If you are going to pollute your lungs, at least don’t do it through an inch of tar, come on.

I’ll clean the kitchen after lunch and before I make dinner. Boy it needs it. I’ll probably clean the bathroom tomorrow because there is mildew starting. This house is more than twice the size of my house, I can see why he is having a hard time keeping up. He used to be able to pay help and now he can’t. I think he should down size but it’s complicated.

Everything is complicated.

Maybe the girls and I will come out here and weed his beds and run over to a nursery. We can put a handful of low-maintenance veggies in so he continues to feel loved after we leave. It is weird how plants do that. I don’t understand it, but I’m starting to see it and exploit the loop hole. Yay for exploitable techniques.

Holy moly we’ve been seeing great yards. Aunt Cookie and my friend W have gorgeous yards. These ladies are accomplished. It was a real treat to visit and see the results of their hard work. I feel so inspired. I need to touch some dirt. I need to put in more plants. The planet needs more plants.

Maybe I can ask him if one of his beds can be a wild flower seed mix for birds and butterflies. So when the flowers come up he can think of us.

We love you and we want you to be here.

I love pot. Today I’m not driving so I’m heavily medicated. Right in this moment I feel like if the biggest burdens in my life are dealing with some classist, racist, mostly decent people… I can work with that. I like educating people. I will learn how to talk about these topics. It is very important to me that people like them learn why they are wrong. I understand that they will be more likely to listen to someone they perceive as being like them. They see me as being like them.

They are wrong as fuck, but that’s ok.

It’s an exploitable loop hole. No, I’m not like you. But I know how to ape some of your class markers and I have learned to do so out of self-preservation. I have learned how to make people like you stop hitting me. I’m not like you.

I’m never going to stop being a fierce person. I believe it is necessary. But I want to learn how to temper it when I choose. I want it to be more under control. I want it to be a tool in my tool box and not the defining explanation of what I’m like. I believe that being capable of violence is necessary for self preservation. I’m going to get better at being lethal and learn how to stop the bullshit posturing.

I don’t need to win the dick contests. Even though mine is bigger.

I don’t like what I win. How is being the biggest dick a good thing?

Well, it’s a good thing when I can get men to back the fuck off of being bossy and/or controlling but quick. There has to be another way.

I struggle with the grey area of wanting to be more open and inviting and wanting to be all go the fuck away.

What is the path? Who knows. I’m just walking.

That was lovely

1 Reply

Yesterday we had a going away party. It went pretty well. I had a lot of fun. I felt like I got to have interesting conversations.

It turns out that I am going to stay with some of my friends in New Hampshire. Friends from the bay area who go out there to vacation in the summer. They are going to make sure they line up with my schedule so we can hang out. That’s… that’s friendship.

There are even people who want to go on the cruise. I’m shocked people want to spend that much money.

I am enjoying looking around my life at the demonstrable evidence of people caring about me. I’m very happy that I can look at the behavior of many people and say, “Clearly when I doubt you I am being delusional. You love me.”

It was a good party. The people who are very sure they want me to come back showed up. I know who my friends are.

Thank you.

Today I packed again. Like I do. I am almost settled in the van. I can’t think of anything other than perishable food and water I need to add. I need to pack the potty and the bikes on the trailer. Then I’m ready.

I’ll deal with the potty and the bikes tomorrow, probably. Just get it done. If someone steals my potty on this trip I will cry but I will just have to take the risk.

Tomorrow I have to make the garden watering directions. I’m still procrastinating. I’ve been seriously resisting this process for years. Not for any particular reason, I just…. don’t want to do it.

We see our dear baby sitter twice more. Eek. Tuesday we have a date for dim sum and I have a chiropractic appointment.

We will leave right after eating lunch on Wednesday.

I absolutely over packed food. It is… kind of humorous just how much I over packed food. It’s going to take over a month for us to start making a dent in what I have packed. Once I lighten the food load I will probably be able to take half the stuff out of the sky box. We have a ridiculous quantity of food. I didn’t realize quite how overboard I was going. Whoops.

There is the non-zero possibility we will be eating the same fruit leather in February.

Good thing they like fruit leather.

I’m going to have to eat a lot of fruit leather. Oh crap.

Shanna seems to be unfazed by her tooth extraction. It’s hard to get her to stop running around in circles. She’s ready to chew again. She’s happy about the pain being gone.

I guess we’re ready.

I will be blogging mostly on medium because that’s where I’ve elected to shunt my kid friendly writing to for now. For this year. I’ve migrated so much around the net that I no longer assume I’ll stay somewhere forever. Well, I hope I’ll stay here.

This is the stuff I can’t say anywhere else. This is my proof for me that I’m here and thinking.

I’m excited. I’m scared. I’m ready. At this point we’re within the 72 hour window. Less than 68 hours to go.

Not that I’m counting.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: friends

Peace

Too much, again. Damnit.

A new normal

Stomach hurts

Wow

Looking forward to today

Told you I would

To clarify a point

People are just people.

Stupid hormones.

The feelings, they burn in my belly.

Sleeping cold in Minnesota

Anxiety in Portland

Lots of big feelings

That was lovely