Category Archives: happiness

For a complete change of channel: baby

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We saw the vasectomy reversal doctor today. He is as nerdy and fabulous as Noah told me. I’ve gotta say: if you are going to let someone cut up your junk then stitch it back together… pick this guy. His statistics are amazing. If I had a dick I’d let him cut into it.

“A vasectomy is the new condom because they are so reversible.” Holy shit.

It was a much more hopeful conversation than I anticipated. Now I need to get all my medical records together and go meet an ob. That’s the scary part.

Noah is talking about two more. He says he isn’t going to insist. But he keeps saying two more. Two more. Two more.

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

I can’t say the idea doesn’t fill me with overwhelming joy. I might get to be blessed with four of his babies? This child rearing thing is going well. Our genes mix well. We make god damn awesome kids.

But but population problem. Bad person.

But babies. But my babymoon years have been the happiest, most peaceful years of my life. Even with the stress of an infant.

You don’t understand the stress of my normal life. Having to just be with someone who is adjusting to the cold (or too hot) cruel world? Oh, my precious love. I can’t fix everything. But I’ll be here with you. I will love you. I promise. No matter what. No matter who you become or what you do. I will love you with every speck of me.

That can’t be taken back.

And I say it over and over for a whole year.

I tell my children that they are wanted here. We really really really wanted to know you and we are so grateful you are here now. We need you to be whole. We love you. Thank you for picking this family. We are so honored by your presence.

And that’s what I spend a year doing.

It feels so good.

I don’t go out more than absolutely necessary. And I can make it not very necessary. I’m fine with delivery lots of stuff.

All of you’s out in the web… you are grown ups. You have time perspective. You can wait. This one can’t. This one has needs that are right fucking now what the hell are you waiting for?!

I get it, sweetheart. I’ll work harder. I know I’m too slow. Ok, which need is it again? Let’s go through the list.

You are the most important one in the room this year. We will all help you as much as we can.

Even though I’ve always said that I would hate having my kids be little mamas I’m looking forward to seeing my kids be older siblings. They are caretakers and nurturers. This will be lovely.

TWO?!

Oh my.

I think that the bed frame we bought to celebrate the end of co sleeping will go away. That’s kind of a bummer. It’s nice. Instead we will go back to having mattress on the floor. I might be a nice mama and let the big kids move back in. I think Eldest Child will be a sometimes companion and (current) Youngest Child will be a usual companion for a few more years. I think it might be a reason for (current) Youngest Child to become really happy about being promoted to Middle Child. Sleep bonding is the best bonding. I love it so much. I’m thinking multiple mattresses so that Noah can be mostly away from all the restless folk.

Some folks are born into a family. Some folks find a family. Some folks choose a family. Some folks marry into a family. Some folks adopt a family.

Some folks make their family with their body because that is how they can do it.

I’m really looking forward to doing this again. I’m scared, but I’m excited. How will this play in with the fact that I just kind of exploded out of mommy-mode?

I don’t know and I don’t care. Babies. That will resolve itself eventually. They won’t always be babies and I won’t always make more of them. But I’m going to make these ones. Fuck yes biology.

I feel like I don’t know about the fourth child. That’s complicated for so many reasons. I had my heart set on a third baby. I find it funny that my friend is now kinda extolling all the positives to a fourth so the third doesn’t feel lonely and and and.

Oh my god. Am I going to get a lot of “go for four?”

That’s… not the reaction I expected. I expected recoils of horror. More lectures about how I really shouldn’t be bringing children into the world. But my children are so wonderful. How on earth can you not want more children this cool?

I really want to see what they do as they grow up. Maybe that will be my bulwark against suicide. Maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong.

Maybe it isn’t that any one person ever has to be enough to make me feel little enough pain that I can promise I won’t off myself.

I don’t think that is a situation that can happen. Not for anyone. I can’t tell a person I promise that. Fuck you.

But maybe, just maybe, if it isn’t a person it is an idea, it is a whole group, it is a position where I really want to be able to help guide these people for a fucking long time because they are so incredible already and clearly it is in part because I am a fucking good guide.

I want more of this feeling.

My children are my motivation in life. Even if I don’t want them to define my whole identity. And on that note… I should go hang out with them.

Sadomasochism, mental health, chronic pain and calibration.

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I am a hard fucking pet to own. Noah and I discuss this in detail. He has spent ten years trying to learn how to properly feed me, exercise me, get me to sleep, and take care of me better than ever before. It’s been hard for both of us.

I am an emotional and physical masochist. Does it turn me on when my back hurts? No. What that means is I have learned how to eroticize kinds of sensation (physical and emotional) that other people don’t experience as sexual. This is good and bad.

Within certain contexts I enjoy being hit fairly hard in the scheme of things. Within certain contexts being degraded will make me orgasm like a geyser. But these are not all the time fun things for me. In the wrong times these sensations can be highly damaging. Only the right people get to tell me I’m a good whore. Preferably after role play when their cock (bio or not) is inside me. Then, it works great. If someone random brings that up… the fur’s gonna fly.

I have been suicidal and self harming for almost thirty years. When I talk about my problems, they are not in reaction to my current life. They did not form in context to what is happening now, but I have to deal with them now. PTSD, for me, means that I have a hard time telling what is past tense and what is current tense and what is future tense a lot of the time. I’m just… trying to be a version of me that won’t be too problematic in all times. That’s rough because what was needed from me as a child is different from now.

I don’t think it is possible to over state the impact of my early childhood sexual abuse on my personality formation. I know I lived with my father until I was three. I know the abuse was frequent before he was kicked out. I know it was every time I saw him after that until about twelve.

My father telling me over and over that I exist to get men off and I don’t have the right to say no…

That has absolutely shaped my life.

Noah and I were talking tonight about “What he can get away with” now vs when we got married. I’ve learned to say no. I used to not say no to anything he wanted no matter how much pain it caused me. It really never seemed important that I was in pain. I was going to hurt anyway. He might as well be getting what he wants.

Fibromyalgia fucks all of this up too. I’m in pain a lot of the time. As I age my joints are on fire more days of the month. PMDD complicates my life. (That’s premenstrual dysphoric disorder for those who don’t know.) It means that for roughly 3-10 days a month my brain would kind of like to kill me. I feel useless, worthless, and like I should die. I feel like I am bad. I feel like I hurt people by existing.

This isn’t about reality or rational thinking. This is pure hormonal/chemical hell. And I’ve done everything that I can do about it. I keep trying new things. It does improve over time. But it is pure shit when it is happening.

I live in a kind of chemical soup that doesn’t want me to be alive very much. I live in a chemical state that doesn’t see much purpose for me.

But then there are the happy chemicals. Oxytocin. Endorphins. Serotonin. I can get them. But it’s hard hard hard hard hard.

Something that is complicated and hard and not fair…

I can do the spike up and down thing pretty easily. Ecstasy and despair are easy for me. It’s being ok I suck at. Noah has helped me make more progress on being ok than anything and everything else in my life. But doing so has worked a lot like a standard antidepressant in that it makes the ecstasy part harder. Not impossible, but more complicated.

Noah and I have very deeply connected sex. There’s a lot of “I see you as a whole person with flaws and merits and I love you for being more than one thing.” It is wonderful and life affirming. It helps me feel like I can climb into a box and be safe. Desafortunadamente (why is this word so much better in Spanish?) that box isn’t able to be everything.

Why do I need more?

Why does a Porsche need more maintenance than a Toyota? It is the result of engineering.

Why am I so complicated? Why am I so hard? Engineering.

I need a lot of connection with people. I need lots of people in a way that is hard for Noah to understand. I think Noah is an actual introvert and I am actual extrovert who behaves like an introvert because of trauma and avoidance.

I fucking need people. I need to talk to them. The kissing and sexing is awesome, but I’d say they are part of less than 1% of my relationships. I need connection. Mostly it isn’t sexual. But good golly the sexual connection is so good at making all of those chemicals I suck at making on my own.

Why do I want to date? Because I want massive injections of oxytocin. Because I want to see you and feel so excited you are alive. Because I want you to look at me the same way. Because I need to see that look on your face because there will probably be minutes between this time and next time I see you when it is very hard for me to remember at all that anyone is ever happy to see me.

What I feel right now is what I have always felt and will always feel. Until it changes. Then that is what I feel and have always felt.

You can see how I might try to stack the deck with experiences that land me squarely in the happy brain chemicals column because when I’m there I don’t have to deal with the depressive and anxious symptoms in the same way. It’s like they went on vacation and forgot to write.

So I had multiple possible kissing opportunities go by without kisses. Internally my narrative around this is melodramatic, stupid, and whiny. “See. They’re done.”

I feel like I should stop bothering them.

I feel like what I am is a bother.

Incidentally: shiny change of topic to drop a cryptic comment at someone from yesterday. When I say that someone is giving me “reminders” I don’t mean that in any kind of negative way. My kids and I give each other reminders. It is a way of noticing someone and saying, “Hey do you remember this thing you want to remember?” Because…. most people suck at that. It is a loving thing to do, in my mind. Let me remind you about who you want to be because that makes it easier to stay on track. Let me remind you that I see you and what you are doing is real and has impact on the world so I remind you of what you need to be thinking about.

I sure didn’t mean it as a complaint or as a criticism or an attack or anything negative. Reminders are intensely positive in my life. But I had two hours of sleep and my ability to explain is uhm compromised at such times.

End of shiny change of topic.

I like to be hit. I crave it like other people crave… whatever the fuck they crave. It’s a powerful force in my life. My absolute favorite is hitting with hands. Punching is such a vicious, visceral, vivacious connection that I feel like it makes me more alive. Punching helps me stop dissociating. Punching helps me feel the muscles and the tendons and the bones in my body. Punching helps me feel alive.

I can enjoy being hit with toys but it is a lot more difficult for me. I don’t process it as connection. It tends to increase my dissociation because mostly it hurts more in a way that I have to escape my body in order to tolerate very much of it. I don’t feel connected that way. I feel like I am a thing that a tool is doing a thing to. Sometimes that is hot too. Sometimes I do want to be beaten until I go away. It is like a vacation from the tyranny of living in a brain that hates me this much.

It feels like atonement for being so bad all the god damn time.

But atonement needs to be a sometimes treat or it means that I am shit and I should spend all my time apologizing for being shit.

Constant atonement means I am constantly bad enough that I need to atone.

That hurts.

That hurts my soul as much as it hurts my body.

I don’t always need to atone. Mostly I need to connect with people who want me to be alive and who aren’t shy about telling me so. Because I’m not so sure I want to be alive. But I don’t want to hurt people in this web more than I want to stop being in pain. Right now the balance is very much on the side that my pain doesn’t matter. I need more reason to believe that. And I need less pain.

The happy chemicals make me feel less pain. Less emotional pain and less physical pain. It’s a virtuous cycle.

I feel so very guilty that even when I’m having sex with Noah basically every day and sometimes several times a day… that isn’t enough chemical in the soup to push me over the rim of the pot and out of the boiling water that wants to kill me.

But adding more people… well… it’s variable… but it does more than anything else.

I have managed to long since get the soup down to a simmer from a hard boil, but I haven’t been able to get out of the pot.

Thank you Noah. That is mostly because of you. It is because of the children you have given me. It is because of the life you have given me.

But yeah. I need more relationships. I need people I can talk to and connect with and feel like I matter to them.

Because being a wife and a mother is not enough for me.

Do you know why I think that sport fucking isn’t going to work out for me the way it used to? Because these days even when I fuck someone at a swing party and intend to not really see them again (and hell they gave me a fake name anyway)…

They end up telling me their real name and coming over for lunch with their whole family so we can talk about life balance and problems and how to deal with different life issues and… we are turning into friends.

Noah I know I kinda wanted to just be fuck buddies with people. I went out looking for that.

FUCK ALL OF YOU FOR BEING SO AWESOME.

But I feel small and scared and ashamed. Because asking for support, asking for connection with these other people feels like it is almost specifically designed to be about hurting Noah. I don’t want to hurt Nah. He is the air I breathe. No, he isn’t every ounce of chemical I need… but he is the basis. He is the start. He is safety. He is the love that reminds me to take care of myself when I am failing at doing so.

I feel ashamed of how much I need him. I would be willing to sacrifice other parts of myself for that safety. But I’ll be down in the simmering soup forever. That’s just… true. One of these days the soup is going to finish boiling me and I will die.

I need more chemicals to raise the water line and get the fuck out of the pot.

I am so sorry I need an amount one person can’t supply. I have no idea what is enough.

I am feeling really scared. I want to reach out and I don’t. I am so weary of being a bother. I feel so much like people “put up with” me.

I’m so sorry that I am so horrible.

I want to be good. I want to be just a source of happiness. But the truth is I’m not. I’m full of sadness I don’t know what to do with. Mostly I try to get enough when I feel it is ok to touch people and can access more of those fucking chemicals I can’t produce on my own.

If I walk in wearing makeup and I walk out with a bare face that means I removed it all because I didn’t want it to be obvious I was crying. Part of the reason I have been wearing more makeup is because I’m trying to control the crying. I know I can’t cry without it being obvious and that’s too public for me. I can cry without people seeing with a bare face. I do it a lot.

I want to stop crying some year. Stop crying. Stop crying. Stop crying you fucking baby.

Why do I want to date? Because I had to marry someone as broken as me. I had to marry someone who has so many pieces chopped out of him that he has huge gaping wounds where we can grow together and meld and heal into a new shape that is one thing instead of two broken things.

But how in the mother fuck do we teach our kids about a happy or healthy or normal childhood? By saying “Be grateful you aren’t getting what we got?” Oh goodness no. So I go date (in very small part) because that way I can find people who aren’t broken in the same ways and ask question after question after question. I get the impression people think I’m weird. Tell me how you turned out the way you did. I like you just fine and if I could manage to interact with a mini human to help them turn out like you… that would be a positive in this world.

I can’t make babies with everyone. But I can take the example of what kind of life experiences someone would bring to parenting and try to bastardize that onto my life. It is variably successful piece by piece. Overall it has been wildly successful.

I learn things from Cupid and Deity about a quieter happiness than I have known. They are very different men but they both come from backgrounds they are basically happy about. Do you know how fucking weird that is in my life? Dating them is almost like getting to have a koala bear accidentally fall out of a tree on your head and so see you’ve proven drop bears exist.

Whoa

My submissive inspires me with his passionate devotion to things. He has picked just a few people in his life to pour devotion into and I admire him. I both love and struggle with the fact that his core kinks are around degradation and “dirty” things. I absolufuckinglutely love that I get to do these things… I wish they weren’t degrading or dirty. I think they are fun. I do them from love. I do them out of service because you want to be treated this way and so ok I’m happy to be in that role for you.

So where does the sadism come into all of this? I am a sadist… but I am more of a service top. I do things because I think the person I am playing with wants/needs to experience them. I like being a guide on a journey. Even more I love being lead on a journey but with every passing year I intimidate people more and I get fewer offers.

The sadists are going to be happier with the people who aren’t physically and emotionally damaged at the beginning. I can’t take what a lot of people like to do on a regular basis. I can take it sometimes. I can take it when I’m doing well. Then I can’t for a while.

And the bubbling of the soup has a huge impact. The more emotionally dysregulated I am the more my entire nervous system flares up.

That’s why I want the kissing so much. It calms my central nervous system down. It distracts it from feeling pain.

And when there are chances to do the kissing and someone doesn’t want to… that feels really super out of proportion huge for me. I’m not saying anyone is obligated to make out with me for hours. Hell. I’m not saying you have to spend fifteen minutes kissing me.

But if you tell me you are romantically interested in me and you have a chance to kiss me and you’d rather not….

I feel that in my body and I feel it for days and I feel so sad.

All of this is complicated by the fact that we can’t kiss in front of my kids. So if we see each other a few times when kisses were possible but didn’t happen and then we see each other around my kids… that’s complicated torture. That’s a complicated thing that feels a lot like how I couldn’t hug or kiss or be affectionate around the kids when they were very small. I could do some but I would freak out if I heard them. It took a long time before I decided it was more appropriate for them to see that folks do those things when they like each other.

I have been good about slowly developing these boundaries and I’m going to keep being good about them. That’s important to me. I came from a place of severe inappropriate connection. I have inched my way towards letting my kids see different actions. But my kids have always seen me hug my friends. That’s just a standard thing. Even long hugs. So whereas kissing feels like it is a big boundary for me… my kids aren’t dumb. They will figure things out.

All of this is also complicated by my general problem with time distortion. I mentioned that in a few ways up-post: living in more than one time at once, feeling like how I feel in this moment is how I feel in all moments… but there is also the problem that when I’m really happy, time flies. I feel like I am getting so much input I can barely take it in. I struggle with feeling like hard packed clay soil. If you dump a deluge on me, it’s mostly going to just run off and not impact the plants. When I am depressed and/or anxious time drags on and on and on and on. It feels like there will never ever be a cessation of pain and god I can’t do this.

I have seriously been hurting most of my life. It’s hard to keep carrying that load.

But I have so much good that sometimes I am able to just sling all that hurt into a rucksack, toss it on my back and say, “It doesn’t matter how you feel it matters what you do.”

I think it is a problem that I associate not wearing makeup with a need to hide crying.

When I’m riding high in the pot and I feel relatively happy for me, then I want to beg someone to hurt me.

Why was it at such a sharp edge when I started hunting? Because I have been so safe for so long. I need the sharp and the soft. I got so much soft. I know it wasn’t fair that I didn’t know how to talk to Noah about being the sharp.

But it’s getting better pretty quickly, I think.

I need to not do anything melodramatic around this kissing thing. But I need to have some conversations. I need to talk about some pieces of this in real time with people.

The not kissing when the kids are around: kosher. The not kissing when the kids aren’t around? No. Not ok. I can’t think of you as someone I want to be kissing and deal with feeling like you don’t want to kiss me.

I had to turn off thinking about the Professor like that. He feels whatever he feels and I have no window into that but his behavior is that we had opportunities and there were no kisses and I need to treat that like “We are not people who will be kissing” and move on with my life. I have to compartmentalize like that or I get my feelings hurt.

He’s still my friend though. I still like him a lot. I will… poke at him less for a while because I’m still in the sticky he doesn’t like me that much stage.

I’ll get over that bit. I always do. It’s ok for people to like me how much they like me. But sometimes I have some sad that I am only liked as much as I am. I need to deal with that sad. I need to stay friends. Because that’s dealing with your shit. Because good grief I’m dealing with a lot of people and if I got bitter about everyone who doesn’t want to kiss me I’d have a shitty life. It’s ok.

But I’ll poke the Professor at a slower rate for a bit. I’m not going away;I enjoy the conversation too much. I just need to do some self management.

Even if I stop feeling like I have the right to look for kisses… I don’t want to stop being friends. I went hunting for friends with benefits. I want friends. I want benefits. Largely, apparently, in the form of kissing.

Wouldn’t it have been god damn handy if I could have phrased it that way in like March.

I’m going as fast as I can.

I want more hitting and I want more being hurt. But I want it in between kisses from someone who very much likes me. That’s complicated.

And I want to write about Sweet Boy. Because that was awesome. But I’m closing in on four thousand words and my arms need me to stop soon. He’ll be a lengthy story.

In three and a half hours we leave to go see the doctor about Noah’s vasectomy reversal. Holy shit.

How is this all going to work? Fuck if I know. But I guess we’ll figure it out. It’s that or die and I’m not ready. Even if I want to. I’m not ready. There is so much left to do. I’m not one to sit around when there is work to be done.

Do you know what is the part of our family culture that I am proudest of? “We are workers not shirkers.” When my kids say this, when Noah models it and repeats it… oh my soul glows. Yes. I read this hilarious book called How to Raise the Perfect Children Through Guilt and Manipulation and it is as much a memoir about her childhood as it is written by a parent about parenting. I don’t want to do anything how the sports-fanatic-Catholic author does things in her life…. but I do want to set a strong family culture the way she talks about. I do want to indoctrinate with my ideals the way she talks about. Yeah. Like that. Only something different.

Cause that’s what I am. Like you. Only something different.

Today is the 18th anniversary of Tommy’s suicide. I can’t say I miss you. I am glad you don’t have to be hurting any more. Self immolation. What a way to go.

Busy busy

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I woke up at 3:30 this morning and started painting. I did it by candle light because the breaker in the kitchen is turned off. I need to finish the ceiling today so we can turn the light on and put the fridge back.

I painted behind the fridge first. Both to get it done and so I could practice some techniques. God damn I’ve improved. I’m way the hell better at painting than I used to be. It’s a shame that tree will be covered. It’s gorgeous.

I finished the first layer of ceiling color and stopped at 6:30 for a break. My shoulders ache. This is going to be slooooooooooooooow because I have a lot of work on vines and leaves I want to do. Not to mention that Eldest Child wants me to go back over everything with glitter. We’ll see.

This project is going to take many days. I look forward to it. I want to finish the ceiling today. I want the light back on.

Which means I need to figure out where the trees are coming from on the walls so I can plan animals, and plants around them. Argh. IF ONLY THIS WEREN’T FUN.

With every passing year I like my painting more. The moss is downright eery and pretty.

Combine this with how much yard work I’ve gotten done this year… 2016 is a beautiful year of growth. And houseguests.

I bought the plane tickets for my friend and her kids yesterday. They are coming out for most of July. Originally I had kinda expected them to drive… with all the health problems involved that was a stupid and unsafe thought. I’m so happy she was brave enough to ask for plane tickets. I know it is hard to ask people to spend money on you. It’s hard to feel worthy. But I’m bugging her about coming to visit and there’s no way she can pay. So I bought tickets. I get them for 18 days. Sounds wonderful to me.

I’m just sad the house is in chaos. But oh well. Life is what it is.

Oh crap. I need to clean up the spare room for Dad today. Whoops. That’s kinda important cause he arrives tonight.

It will be fun. Maybe he’ll sit in a chair and talk to me while I paint. I will enjoy that.

Oh crumbs. It is the end of the school year. We need to go through boxes of saved materials for the year and cull for the portfolio. That can wait till I’m done with painting.

Side note: I feel good about life when I can look down and see paint splotches on my hand.

Other random thought: my Dad has met all of my Serious Relationships in the past 12 years. It sorta makes me think I ought to invite folks over for supper this week to meet him. I’d invite you-who-plays-with-Noah too. Cause I’m like that. Tuesday or Friday would work. What do y’all think? I’m only sorta kidding. Not really. I’d do it.

When I say “I’d do it” I really mean “How serious do you consider yourself to be?” Because no really, my Dad has met every even slightly serious relationship I’ve had as an adult since I met him. And he lives in Washington. So. How serious do you consider yourself to be in my life? This might be something worthy of direct conversations instead of passive aggression but whatever.

It’s a bonus that Dad already knows my submissive and Cupid. He’d like Daddy and Deity just find. I need a nickname for you Ms. You, the one I talk to so much in DMs on Twitter. You come up in conversation in our house at least four times a week… so you are totally in need of a blog name. Who do you want to be?

Sarah is just Sarah because she happened long before nicknames for me. And Jenny. And fuck Noah’s privacy. He gave it up with the marriage contract.

Really, if anyone in our sexin-web wanted to come, please do. We obviously want you.

Ahem.

Sometimes I stop and wonder why do I feel alone? I’m not alone anymore. Not emotionally, physically, energetically… not even spiritually. I may not be Dagora, I may not have my ancestors following me around like a flock of crows waiting to hear from me. I may not be a Christian who believes that Jesus will carry me when I falter.

But I have you. That’s enough.

Then why do I still have this keening alone alone alone feeling? Why am I so scared of myself? We are born alone and we die alone and I’m afraid afraid afraid of when I will make myself die. Please, not too soon. Don’t do it until I am completely out of good days.

Why am I so afraid of being alone? Because I’m not very nice to me. Alone means hitting, cutting, burning myself. It means the meanest words I know said over and over and over. Because I believe I deserve that.

But when I am not alone I know that it is not ok with Person X that I do that to myself. They love me and need me to at least pretend I love myself too.

I am so afraid of being alone.

I feel so lucky that I found people who want to be nice to me. I feel so lucky that I found people who, when I explain how I am being hurt by something, work to change problematic behaviors.

It isn’t that this behavior is wrong for all people. It is that it hurts me and I need you to notice that you are interacting with me.

I am not just like everyone else. I fall far outside the standard deviations in almost every metric. I have to be learned.

The trouble is that I do not believe I am worthy of such effort, time, and commitment.

My friends show up for the amount of time, with the amount of effort and commitment they have to give. Thank you. I appreciate your generosity. You don’t owe me the time of day let alone what you actually give me. Thank you.

I know I sound ungrateful. I’m not. I‘m grateful. I‘m grateful. I‘m grateful. I‘m grateful. I‘m grateful. I‘m grateful. 

Please don’t be mad at me for not being grateful enough. I’m trying.

On Wednesday I am leaving the kids home with Grandpa and daddy and I get to go help my friends for a change. Including driving (ugggggggg) I’ll probably take about six hours to go help them with a project that just exploded in their life.

I feel honored to be asked. They don’t ask for help much. They instead offer a lot of help. I am so grateful to not just be sponging off of them. Instead I have something to offer. This feels so good.

It hurts me when I ask people if I can help them with a project and they refuse. It feels like they do not trust me. It feels like I am not worthy. The quality of my work is too poor. I do not deserve to have that time with them.

I am sorry that I insulted you by offering you substandard, inadequate help. I will not trouble you further.

And that globalizes. It becomes hard to ask for other things. I am not good at asking for help. I am good at offering help. I kinda need people to let me help them so that I can get to a place where I am able to accept help in return when someone sorta bossily pushes it on me.

Oh I love bossy people. Love love love.

The satisfaction of people believing that my help is worth something…. that is huge. Whether it is a wood working project, organizing, writing, parenting, bdsm, whatever.

When people act like I hold wisdom and experience that is useful… I feel like my life has value. I should not die. See… I have things left to give. I am still a useful tool.

I need to be useful.

This isn’t a “healthy” part of my makeup but it’s there.

Ok, I’ve been writing for about 40 minutes. 1400ish words. Should I stop now and save spoons for painting? Yes I should. Future me needs these arms. I typed slow so I wouldn’t hurt myself too much. I was careful.

I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art.

Ok. Now I’m ready to stop resting.

Forward, ho

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I’m moving forward. The remodel stuff is creaking along the lines of “I’m about to fire your ass” and I have support. Today two grown ups are coming over and they will help with yard work and painting tasks.

Yard work tasks:

  1. transplant the blue agaves
  2. transplant YC’s plant
  3. fill the palettes with dirt and transplant the strawberries
  4. finish moving the remaining dirt into more planters for YC’s “own bed for growing things”. Sorry it has to be divided up.
  5. Some weed pulling and moving of yuck to the green waste bin
  6. Filling all the bird feeders
  7. Trim the roses and distribute the thorns so I get fewer cats. Fucking neighbor cats
  8. Water both yards

Painting tasks:

  1. Remove cupboards & hardware
  2. Scrub walls with intensive cleanser
  3. Sand walls
  4. Rescrub with cleanser

Doesn’t that sound like a full enough damn day?

Regular chores:

  1. Laundry (must strip bed) working on this
  2. Load dishwasher
  3. Hand wash sink of dishes
  4. Clear counters and finish finding “during painting” homes for everything

Contact peeps chores:

  1. Where am I sleeping on the 25th? Must look at options on a map. Thank you generous, kind friends. Decision made. Beginning of the parade route.
  2. Write a letter. To whom is yet to be decided but I should do it. Wrote 2
  3. Look at Jenny’s birthday box, see what has to be added and make the shopping list. I should fucking mail it this weekend. I’m already in the next month. I know she forgives me, but I’m feeling like an asshole.
  4. Schedule acupuncture
  5. Schedule pampering w/Sarah

To be fair! The kitchen prep is only from my waist up today. Because I’m painting in stages for reasons of not exhausting myself.

Noah told the kids yesterday that surely we were about out of room for plants. The kids both argued. He argued back. I said, “I expect we’ll have 40-80 more plants before I’m done.” Noah said, “Whoa.”

Well, after the house is painted I’m ringing the fucker with plants. There are going to be a lot of indoor plants once we are done painting this time.

I’m going to spend the next year of my life trying to learn how to take proper care of my garden. This is going to take a fuck-ton of time.

I’m looking forward to it.

Very briefly

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Today I wake up feeling happier than I have in a bit. From a mood tracking point of view this is significant.

I was feeling some feelings of potential rejection and I processed them with a nice friend who was all, “Let’s talk context” and then I got full circle to “Shit. I’m acting like a spoiled baby who isn’t being aware of the limitations of the people I like a lot. Knock that crap off.”

Thank you for your patience with my selfishness and self-absorption.

I worry a lot about whether or not I am using my time in the most useful or effective or fun ways.

Sometimes life isn’t about that. Sometimes life is about being with someone when neither of you feel exciting. Sometimes life isn’t about maximizing “Make me have fun today or I’m kicking you to the curb.”

Sometimes life is just sitting together and having dinner and being tired. Because that is where you are. That has to be ok too.

If you like someone, you have to like them all the time. Even when they are tired and don’t have a lot to give. Or you are an asshole.

Ok, I know I’m an asshole… but I try hard to not be that flavor of asshole.

As I sit here mooning over the Sweet Boy Noah is making fun of the fact that I’m not really ready to stop expanding the roster.

But I want to spend the time everyone on the roster already deserves and time is limited. Sometimes the right kind of time to be spent isn’t what you think you want, and it is bonding anyway.

What is the difference between being someone’s friend and using them for sex/play?

I want to be your friend. I like you. I’ve liked you for such a long time.

Ok, but next time it is a date can I ask for at least more kissing and hugging? I’m ok with no sex and play. We are all human animals and we get tired. But I feel like, for me, to call it a date I’d like at least some more kissing and hugging.

I want to be your friend too. But I also want to mack on you because yeah, that’s totally why I’m there. Because I want to be your friend who macks on you. It’s a thing.

The funniest part of chasing so many people right now is how insecure every person is. None of us feel worthy of being liked this much. None of us feel like forsooth someone will like us.

But I like you and you and you and you and you. Near as I can tell you like me back.

How can we work on some of this mythical “self esteem” bullshit I hear so much about? How can your love for me help me love myself and how can my love for you help you love yourself? Can we help one another feel worthy? I don’t know. I want to find out.

It helps with Noah. It really does. Being with Noah has changed me. As much as it hurts my fucking finger, wearing the rock he gave me (err, that I picked out and bought for myself on his dime) has changed how I feel about myself in the world. Because it changes how I’m treated by random people.

Do you know how weird it is for a dirty street kid to have people genuflect because you must be important to be wearing a rock like that? Blows my fucking mind.

Worth is all about games of perception.

I think I’m going to try to have a week off pot. I’m just going to have Abilify in the morning and Klonopin at night.

Wish me luck.

Full head, full house, ouchie arms

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If my arms were great I wouldn’t be able to type much because I have four kids here. My arms suck though. There are a few things I want to try and remind myself of, maybe so I can talk to Noah about them.

My shrink is quite perturbed by my level of interest in Deity. This is becoming A Thing We Talk About. She’s all: “Sport fucking! Yay! Falling in love. Boo.”

When I mention that I already love other partners she cocks an eyebrow and says, “You don’t blush and stammer when you talk about them.”

Well, maybe that is true.

I have a better idea of what I want from my submissive. I have times when I don’t feel I have the oomph to do what I want to do but I feel deeply secure that the line of stuff I’m interested in asking for are all things that are right up his alley.

I have… more comfort around Cupid. I think I’m a lot more into him than I should be. I’m tap dancing on a high wire trying to figure out how to keep him in a spot in my life even though he’s probably not going to be interested in the group stuff everyone else will put up with. I went from wanting someone to do something to wanting Cupid to do things but I’m not 100% sure what.

I’m really not interested in hunting just the now. I feel like I have a lot to explore and learn about and I’m really excited about that.

And I get to balance it with helping Noah feel secure. The whole ship won’t sail if he feels insecure. First I have to figure out how to help Noah feel loved. Then I can figure out what it means that I love these other people.

Because I do. I love my Daddy’s. Every single one of them for different reasons.

What do these loves, these attachments mean? I don’t know. Many of them have been there for a long time. (I messaged Daddy James today to say that even though I was in his neighborhood… I still am not fucking him. Sigh.)

I do love these people. But what does that mean?

What is love?

Some love is possessive and about ownership… but not all love. Sometimes love is about generosity and sharing and wanting them to get joy from anyone but you. Loving someone can include hoping they find the girl of their dreams and settle down and don’t have time for me.

But not Noah. He’s not allowed to run out of time for me.

I fall in love easily. I fall in love often. I fall in love with great intensity. Usually I love forever.

If I sat here and listed allllllllllllll of the people who have a piece of my heart… I’d sound like I was bragging. I would be bragging.

Aren’t I a lucky bitch? I have been able to love so many people.

Some of them even loved me back. At least a little. For a time.

Do any of those loves mean I do not love Noah? I don’t see why that would be true. I married one man. One man has seen me through hardship and illness and despair. One man helped me create the babies that give me life.

It really doesn’t matter how much I love other people this will always be true.

Noah is the only person who ever really looked at me and decided that he was going to prove to me that I am worthy.

Loyalty my friend, loyalty. But what does that loyalty entitle him to? My friend who was here the other weekend says jack shit. My shrink says definitely not sex.

I don’t know what I think.

I know I shouldn’t care what random people out in the world think. I really shouldn’t. I was stupid enough to read one of those “People who commit suicide are selfish” posts. I shouldn’t have. I should have opted-out and done some self-care.

Suicide has shaped my whole life. My grandmother killed herself by overdosing when my mom was pregnant with me. My mom dealt with that loss through my infancy. It was hard. She had been very close to her mother. I don’t really know why. My brother lit himself on fire because he could not cope with the pain of his life. Given how his life was… I don’t feel I have the right to anger. Was he selfish? Yes. But he had the right to be. He was left alone in care facilities where he was abused and that was all he would ever know. My father sat in the garage with the motor running and wrote notes to everyone in the world telling them that I was an evil liar and he was innocent. Even though he’d already confessed and collaborated every story. He wasn’t going to drive himself to the court room that day.

Selfish is just so beside the point.

My therapist OD’ed on heroin. She could not deal with the pain in her life. My adopted step-mom (long story) OD’ed on injected pain medication she was not prescribed. She could not deal with the pain in her life.

I have been institutionalized for attempting suicide. My stomach was pumped and I’m still here.

I don’t have a lot of the attachments other people have. I get what I create. I do the absolute best I can with the platonic friends I have…

Sharing sex and intimacy creates tighter bonds.

I don’t feel like I’m in a position to turn down a good twitterpation. Even if it makes my therapist uncomfortable. Am I going to wreck my life over it? No. I hope not.

Noah’s parents just sent us a cheerful letter to tell us about the cruise they are going on. The same month as the one we are going on. The one they won’t go on with us because they have to “get the hay in”. The hay they won’t touch with their hands because they have employees.

What is attachment?

I’m listening to the kids as they play in the back yard. I’m kinda ridiculous about enforcing outside time. “Y’all spend too much time inside. Get out into the sun. Go. Go. Go.”

I do go with them…

Right now I medicate. It was a long day of driving and being sober. Processing with my therapist. I feel like I’m almost ready to be happy. But not till I deal with Thursday. Oh Thursday.

I love you so. I have been such a twat waffle and I do not deserve your forgiveness. I have no. no. no. no idea how this will go.

Fuck.

I’m thinking of a pithy movie quote, I think from Girls Just Want to Have Fun “You always hurt the one you love.” Shannon Doherty? Is that it?

Anyway.

You know… I think I love my biological father. Even with everything. Most of the people who raped me… I loved them. Many of them I love them now. I might feel really angry with them… but I love them.

What is love?

Even though Tommy spent my childhood beating me and trying to rape me… I loved him. I’m sad his life was so terrible that he had to die to get away from it. I cannot bring myself to be angry with him for not wanting to suffer more for my convenience.

It is almost the anniversary of Tommy’s death. Next month. Eighteen years now. In three more years he will have been dead as long as he was alive.

Rest in Peace, Tommy.

What am I doing with my life?

I am trying to stop being a destroyer. I want to be a builder. I want to be someone who makes less pain in the world and not more.

There are reasons for temporary physical pain that alleviate intense emotional suffering and I don’t know how to deal with that dichotomy. Sometimes I don’t know what I am doing.

I want to figure out how to help there be less pain. One of the ways I do that is to understand and find compassion.

I like loving lots of kinds of people. They all teach me different things. I learn best by being able to stand very close to someone and bask in their presence. I know this after many years of trying a lot of ways to learn. I will pick things up faster. I will learn more quickly. I will try to synch up with this person in any way I can because the drive to conform is what keeps our species alive.

The main reason I manage to be so god damn weird is because I have allowed myself to pattern off incredibly different people. Contradictions are ok. We can all solve different problems.

Ok. Time to be off.

I love you. Even when I have no idea what that means.

Find some gratitude

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Oh my goodness. Noah got news tonight that is going to do a lot to change our lives. I’m… excited. Thrilled. Nervous. Overjoyed. Proud of him.

Many  years ago Noah came to me and said, “There is this thing I want to learn. It means I’m going to ignore you a lot. But I think it’s going to be important.”

I grumbled. I griped. I was pissy for a long time. I learned how to support him and I got over my attitude.

Today that paid off. All those years of effort. Ok, Noah maybe the books aren’t doing what you hoped (they aren’t nothing!) but some of your bets… have paid off. Well done.

Then we used our babysitting date time to go to a wet munch and I got a lovely spanking. It wasn’t intense or mean. It was just a lovely spanking.

Why do so many good things happen to me? Ok… some of this is happening to Noah and I’m just standing near him. But this is going to change my life too. I’m so excited. We’ve wanted this for so long. You just don’t understand what this means to me.

It means I’m thinking about space in the house again. How are we going to handle this change? Don’t worry. I’ll make a way for this to work. I’ll make this work.

I have wanted this for years and years and years.

Oh I’m so happy. This is going to be great. Ok. We’ll figure out nonmonogamy. We have too much good stuff going on for us to not do it.

This news is so big. Oh my goodness.

Words and asking

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

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

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

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

And that backfires. Like such arrangements do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But there is no fair.

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

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

I am so weird about boundaries.

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

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

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

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

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

That won’t be public.

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

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

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

We get one shot at happily ever after.

No pressure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is just a thing.

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

It’s complicated.

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

I am so tired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is so complicated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m having feelings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does sustainable mean?

What is a need and what is a want?

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

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

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

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

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

Hubris is dangerous.

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

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

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

No pressure.

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

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

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

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

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

Where is the line?

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

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

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

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

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

Sex.

Sex is so annoying.

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

I really do.

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

Yeah. It is.

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

And pain.

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t like anyone that much.

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

Oh JesusFuckingChrist No.

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

I owe my family better than that.

See how the owe is complicated?

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

Limits are funny

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My code switching skills are variable. Sometimes I’m excellent. Sometimes I really suck. I have managed to compartmentalized enough that I can have wild sex in every part of my house when my kids aren’t home. That is new. For years it was behind a locked door even when they weren’t home. Noah can testify that it was wacky.

I have serious issues with sexuality and children. This is about me and it isn’t fucking rational.

I don’t want either of us to be having sex any more in places where we bring the kids. I know our house is different… whatever. I don’t care. It makes me uncomfortable. That means I have to stop having sex at the house of friends who invite the kids over. It means Noah does too.

But that doesn’t mean I have to stop going to every person’s house. But it’s an A or B choice. Sex or kids.

Some of our sex-having-friends were tightly involved with our children before sex. That makes the boundaries… interesting to figure out.

I’m having an interesting time figuring out which parts bug me and why.

Like, my kids are never ever ever ever ever going to Cupid’s house or Deity’s house. It’s just not an option. Period. Because I go there for sex.

I have a very visual memory. When I think of places I think of what I have seen there. I am an asshole about getting mental pictures of what Noah is doing.

I’m weird about how that overlaps with my kid-memories of a place.

So like… my kids have been to my submissive’s house. It was a while ago though and so that means we need to decide… is it a sex house or a kid house. Cause right now it’s time to decide.

My kids go to Daddy’s house. I won’t fuck there again.

Is it fair?

Life isn’t fair.

Someday I will just know what these boundaries are and it won’t feel so angsty. I look forward to that day.

How in the hell am I going to be a slut and a good parent. How. How. How.

In no way shape or form do I think that the path I follow is the “One Twue Way“. I think there are many ways to be a good parent.

I’m just trying to figure out how to manage me.

My emotional volatility is a real thing. It’s well documented through lots of life circumstances and events and ups and downs and unrelated situations. And to get a handle on that I picked a life where it isn’t ok to be emotional volatile so I have no choice but to god damn figure out how to be more stable. That means other peoples choices don’t need to look like mine.

Human beings are complicated systems. I’m getting my digestion in order. I’m working on sleep. I’m increasing how much sex I have and the variety because it dramatically improves my mood. Even with the odd fight.

We genuinely don’t fight often. And when we fight it is because we are both feeling insecure and threatened and we don’t know how to ask for reassurance without being kind of an asshole. I think everyone feels taken for granted sometimes.

Maybe I’m projecting.

I’m trying to get things in place for me to handle the next stage of child rearing. We are done with babies. Next year Youngest Child is going into first grade. Kiddo will be 6. Not quite time for academics… but we can see it coming. Kiddo is decidedly resisting being asked to do any academics before 7. Adamant. “Do you want to try a little?” “Nope.”

Well done kiddo. I’m proud.

But Eldest Child is teaching herself to read increasingly complicated books at a rapid rate. This month I should figure out what I need to do to get her a tour at the part-time-homeschool-through-the-district program. She’s interested for third grade. So it sounds like we are going to slide towards school instead of waiting and going all at once when she’s older.

I don’t mind.

Limits are interesting to find. She wants more consistent push now. And she wants it to be with peers in a group. I’m ok with that. I wanted to wait until she was ready. She is now. I’m completely forking ok with the amount of separation she’s asking for. I might balk if she asked for full time school. I don’t think it would go well. Part time sounds great.

It will be nice to spend more time with Youngest Child alone. That kid blows my mind all the time. The jokes. The connections. The desire to have a sunny spirit even though the child has mood swings like a mofo. This is a kid who will have a journey in life. I hope I am going to be able to be the kind of support I need to be. I’m trying.

Part of the reason we need to cut back on dating in terms of time is because we can’t date that many nights and exercise and pay attention to the kids and date each other and have friends and get alone time.

Holy crap.

We need alone time for different reasons. But we both have times when we really need time alone in a room. Preferably with our computers. Our one true love.

I see you, Noah.

Although really if I had to give up my computer or Noah I’d bin the computer without thought. Even you, oh internet, are not as wonderful as Noah. You don’t get me off like that. Speaking of which I should stop typing for the day.

Our kids were invited for an extra night at my friend’s house. So Noah left me an assignment. I’m supposed to get off 30 times. That’s hard masturbating. So I’m going to need to spend a lot of time. Sigh. Poor me. Bye.

Ok, yeah. My life is awesome. It isn’t perfect every minute. But I really don’t get to complain. Not really. I can process the parts I don’t like… but good grief.

I am where I want to be. I have support. I have friendship. I have love. I have the freedom to try things and course correct when I figure out which parts work and don’t work for me. Because it only has to work for me and Noah. Well, and the folks we go on to negotiate with. Their consent matters too.

But we have to figure out our limits and boundaries first and then negotiate from that position. Which has been tricky over the last few months because we didn’t know. I wanted to go fuck around and see what would stick. I have a better idea now.

That’s the point of trying things, right? It isn’t that you have to be committed to always doing something the same way if you try it once or twice.

Hell, even if you do something for a few years you don’t have to keep doing it that way forever. You can renegotiate.

 

Catharsis

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

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

ca·thar·sis
kəˈTHärsəs/
noun
  1. 1.
    the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.
    synonyms: emotional release, relief, release, venting; More
  2. 2.
    MEDICINErare
    purgation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I didn’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is just how life goes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I like my life.

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

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

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

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

I think I collapsed to the floor.

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

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

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

Childbirth comes to mind.

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

He did a fabulous job. Good man.

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

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

Holy fucking shit.

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

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

Catharsis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

People are weird.

Masochism

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it makes me feel hateful and angry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hate that.

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

I don’t know.

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

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

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

The ass is the only part that’s fun.

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

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

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

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

My cunt is still throbbing because that was so hot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHY IS THIS SO CONFUSING?!

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

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

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

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

I like the mallet more.

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

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

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

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

Then I go hunting like a fool.

Fucking pinchy bastards are everywhere.

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

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

Ok.

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

Thank you. I’m grinning.

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

Why doesn’t pinching work that way?

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

That’s not how it usually happens though.

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

Everybody wins.

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

Fuck.

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

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

That’s a thing.

Being picky sucks.

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

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

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

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

But who doesn’t want that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Promiscuity and permission

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I had a thought. And even though I’m trying not to type much this weekend I want to write this down.

The difference between me doing what I’m going to do and feeling good about myself and me doing what i’m going to do and feeling bad about myself… is mostly about how I’m perceived.

I’ve been a big slut chasing sex since I was in preschool. Rampant promiscuity is part of my life.

This time… I’m coming home to a safe home. With a partner who grins at me and who wants to hear every filthy detail. He’s concerned about my safety and my rate of adding partners. He’s concerned about me stepping outside my carefully vetted pool because in the past that has been a mixed bag for me.

He’s not telling me to stop fucking my friends.

He’s not sure what he wants and that is a slow process we are talking about a lot together. He’s not entirely sure what he thinks will be sustainable in terms of my behavior but we are talking.

There is no shame.

I need to say that again because it is so important: There is no shame.

There are uncomfortable feelings. There is a tinge of sadness on both or parts. We wanted the fantasy of monogamy. We liked it. We wanted it to work.

It didn’t work well for us. We are going back to stuff that has worked well for us.

But we are doing it from a framework of a very happy and supportive marriage. We like each other. It is a little weird going back to dating from the point of view that I’m blissfully happy at home and I love my marriage… I just do better with a variety of sex partners in my life. I like bouncing off of people.

It really helps that since I started fucking around Noah is inspired and he’s been fucking me more and better than he has since the first year of marriage. We are getting close to our pre-kids sex life.

Which is fucking awesome.

We are getting back to the sex life we had when I was dating Spot and…. I can’t remember who else. It’s embarrassing how bad I am at remembering who I dated when. I can remember that I dated someone, but I need to really think about it to figure out which period of my life. (Actually… it may have been just Spot and Noah because I was teaching. I was real busy then.)

“Which slut period did you overlap?”

But I remember Spot. He’s one of the few who made it to 9 months. I liked Spot a lot. He was… a nice break from the assholes I had been dating. Ultimately he was too nice for me and that’s ok too. I’m one of those terrible people who likes assholes.

I need you to have brick wall boundaries because I am going to throw myself at them. I don’t want them to collapse. Usually only assholes can do that. Assholes know “I go out this far and this is where I stop. Get the fuck off my wall.”

But this is what I was thinking about this morning. Permission. Noah gives me permission to exist in a way no one else ever has. I’m not sure it would have occurred to anyone else. I’m not sure anyone else would look at me and think, “Oh there’s a person quaking with fear because no one has given her permission to act how she wants to act.”

Snicker.

But it’s true. I do. I do what I’m going to do anyway. The difference is whether I feel ashamed of myself afterwards for acting in a way I think I’m not supposed to act or whether I feel fine because I was told I am fine.

Noah does that.

Noah gives me that.

He tells me I am fine.

Sharing complications

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

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

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

*fan self*

It’s going well.

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

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

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

I want sex.

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

Heh. This isn’t our first rodeo.

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

WTF?

I don’t know.

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

I could work harder. I could work more.

My body is tired.

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

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

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

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

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

Holy fucking shit.

Cough

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

Thank God he deleted his profile. 

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

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

Why isn’t it enough?

It depends on what you mean by being enough.

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

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

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

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

This has been true since I was in grade school.

It’s complicated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh fuck.

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

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is sustainable?

I want to find out.

What is respectful?

I want to find out.

What is fair?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m spoiled as fuck. I’m good.

I have such lovely options available to me.

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

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

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

Holy shit, Noah.

Thanks.

I’m well done.

 

 

Still integrating.

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I got over 10 hours of sleep. That’s freakishly rare for me. I must have needed it.

I feel peaceful, happy and calm. I feel ok.

I feel like I have a whole day of work ahead of me. A whole day of snuggling and talking and sharing joy. We like productive days. We are workers, not shirkers. We got good hard play in this weekend.

Time to put the work in. We can do that.

This week is not that busy. Folks are coming over most days this week. At least Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday. Monday is quieter. Noah has two first dates. Good luck with that. Many of these visits will be only a few hours long. Two days have overnight guests. Pam isn’t quite ready to run away from us yet so we get a little bit of extra time with her. I’m not crying. I didn’t feel ready to let her go anyway. She should come annoy me some more so I’m ready to push her towards her next adventure.

I so rarely have this feeling. I feel like my soul is a placid lake. If you toss a rock on it there will be ripples for a few minutes before it comes to stillness again.

I’m not just allowed to be kind of awful sometimes… I’m encouraged.

This part is… a little embarrassing… but who the fuck am I kidding? Much of my writing is… Noah likes to talk to me about being Krissysexual. He talks about it as being very close to his religion. I really like being the center of cult worship. On Saturday night I was standing and Noah was kneeling in front of me and my submissive uhhh behind me.

Oh the worship.

(This was after I sliced him up.    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I’m feeling very ok about being me right now. Sated. Pleased.

And I still have all the bruises all over the place to make sitting kind of uncomfortable. Every time I hit a sore spot I grin in a goofy way. I think, “Thank you Daddy” and I think “Thank you Cupid” and I think “Thank you Professor”.

I have time coming up with Deity. There’s news on that front I’m not writing about yet cause it is the only hint of wistfulness in the whole set up. But frankly it’s the kind of wistfulness that will churn my butter so let’s go with it.

Main character. Yeah. I can do this. Complicated story. Lots of subplots.

Excellent. Let’s finish this rodeo.

Coming home

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When I was 18 years old I showed up in the bdsm community. I had some awkward experiences then I went to a munch. Then I went to my second munch. At my second munch I was invited to a private party. The same group we got together with tonight. They’ve been meeting up monthly for more than 20 years. Many of these folks have been there pretty much the whole time.

I felt like I was coming home. I asked for permission to do a heavy scene. The homeowners (one of my leather mom’s and her partner) told me I had complete trust to do whatever I wanted.

That’s a big deal in my little world. Trust is earned slowly in increments. I felt valued and missed from the minute I walked in. Even people I have not traditionally gotten along with that well were really happy to see me.

I’ve noticed that more than once in the community. Since I spent so much time gone folks have forgotten that they disliked me and they just remember that I was part of the good old days. I was. Those were wonderful days. I feel like these days are going to get better.

Socializing was so damn nice. I was so excited to catch up on the news for everyone’s life.

I spent a while chatting with one of Cupid’s other play partners. I was reminded of how much fun it is to share play partners and friends. She was absolutely as sweet as could be. She says she thinks we are alike. I hope so. I would like to be like someone like her.

But the play. Oh the play. This is one of the hottest nights of my life. I have never before done a serious cutting on someone. I… got more enthusiastic as the event continued. It was amazingly fun fucking with his head for a long time with the scalpel. For a long time on his thigh I wasn’t even getting past the top layer of skin. But he thought I was gouging him.  He couldn’t see what I was doing and he was pretty freaked out. So I showed him the tiny little couple of drops of blood. He was like, “Wait. That’s it?”

Ha.

Of course… that was well into the scene. I’m out of order because it was so god damn hot. The scene kinda felt out of order. I forgot to put a collar on him until well into play. But it was fun and exciting when it happened so I’m not that sad.

After cutting his thighs I flipped him over and cut his ass for a while. That was… wicked exciting so I decided it was time for him to fuck me.

Ok, do you know what was so hot about the cutting? I was licking it up like a cat. I’ve always wanted to do that and I’ve never had an appropriate partner. I would take fingers full of blood and smear it on his cock and lick it off.

That was so fucking hot.

While he was fucking me I told him that someday I want to cut open his chest so that he can cover me in blood when we fuck. He… more or less asked why someday. So I grinned, grabbed the scalpel…

I may have been a trifle exuberant.

So on his thighs and ass it took many many slices before I hit blood. I was super careful and slow and delicate.

Uhm… I sliced the shit out of his chest. He started bleeding a fair bit right away. There was no delicate barely reddening line. There was a lot of blood.

I played in it. I finger painted myself and him. I licked it. I took whole handfuls of blood and licked it. By the time I was done I looked like I had ripped the neck out of a wildebeest with my teeth.

That made me come so hard.

Because I’m an exhibitionist slut we went upstairs to show off before we took a shower. We took pictures. Because oh my god.

I mean there was caning and slapping and biting and all that other stuff in there.

The blood the blood the blood the blood. *dance around in circles*

Alright. I’m addicted. I need to do that again.

That scene took 2.5 hours. I only stopped because he looked so high I thought I really should. I kinda sorta felt like I should feed and water him. Prudent to take care of your toys.

Then we proceeded to have the most make-out-fest party I’ve been to for one of these. That was glorious.

Remember what I was saying about my comfort zone? I was glowing and even I could tell.

Then Noah got there. We socialized for a bit more. I looked at my boys, didn’t even bother to bat my eyelashes and said “I could use more fucking.”

I love my life.

We went and spread out a tarp. They took turns playing with/fucking my ass and fucking my mouth. Noah spent a lot of time putting clothespins on my breasts and calling me a whore and telling me to come.  Which I did. A lot. Over and over. They spent a lot of time talking about how the red mark on my chest was moving lower and lower… way more flushed than normal. Lots of time egging me on to make more noise. Well done, gentlemen.

Well that was sooooooooo hot.

A two shower party is a good party.

Then we socialized a lot more. And made out more. And snuggled more.

I feel like the luckiest girl ever.

(For the record… blood testing was involved in the negotiation for this scene.)

I love you. I love you. I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Oh god yes. More.

I would write more but my arms hurt.

Punching is so awesome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It went better at that party after that.

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

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

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

Thank you for the lesson.

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

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

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

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

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

It isn’t any more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So it isn’t only during sex.

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

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

In love with love

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Noah and I talked about this yesterday. I am… not your average hunter. I know many predatory hunters. They want to feel powerful. They want to have a long list of prey because it makes them feel successful. I want to fall in love with everyone.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the fact that a lot of what I seek in sleeping with people is the ability to love someone like you a bit more. I have a number of hangups around “types of people” that I genuinely want to get over. I want to be able to treat people like individuals and I do that best by learning one story at a time in detail so I can understand how it varies from the “general”.

I want to see the patterns and understand the variations. I don’t know about you… but I’m not as smart as I’d like to be. It takes me a long time to figure these things out about folks.

I learn about people best when I fall in love with them at least a little. Is it infatuation? Is it twitterpation? Is it love?

What is love?

Is love wanting to touch someone? Is love wanting people to be happy even if that doesn’t involve you a little bit? Is love wanting people to take up as much space as possible? Is love hoping that this person will do things both bad and good so long as they act and exist and are.

Yesterday a sarcastic joke was made about all the bodies I want to get under. Noah and Pam sat around and kinda counted on their fingers and we decided it was best not to put a number on the number of bodies I want to get under.

If it had come from someone else I might have felt insulted or judged. They were delighted. I felt loved.

How big is my roster?

Err, how do you count? Previous people I will definitely see again? Previous people I won’t see again for logistical reasons but I might if life changed? People I’m interested in pursuing but I’m not sure how they feel? People who have said they are interested but we haven’t followed up yet?

I don’t have permission to talk about very many people at this point. I wait until there is a bit more established before I ask. Some folks are a little funny about how I talk about people. I try to say nice things about you and admit my fuck ups. I’m tracking me more than I’m tracking you. My mistakes are a much bigger deal to me.

Like not negotiating well on HSV. I do great at random pick up parties. I stop someone before they get close to my face. It is more complicated with people I’ve known for a long time. More complicated still if I think someone has read the users guide. I want that to substitute for negotiating and… that’s wrong. That’s so very wrong of me. I can’t do that. I am too god damn experienced to be making bullshit rookie mistakes like that. This has to be my last fuck up. Fine, I can say “I haven’t been negotiating in a few years so I messed up timing.” Ok. One last fuck up. Period. Then never ever ever again.

Yes, he forgave me and isn’t angry. I’m upset with myself. I can’t do this again. I know better.

Maybe love also means wanting people to be able to make informed, responsible, self aware choices instead of waiting until the heat of the moment when someone will feel less comfortable saying no.

That’s why I’m so pissed at myself.

No pressure, Krissy. Give people choices and you cannot pressure them to decide one way or another. They have to live in their body. They have to live with the results of their decisions…not me.

I am a hunter. I try not to be a predator. I prefer catch and release. I just want… to… borrow some of your time in a way that will hopefully be fun for you. If you indicate distress I want you off the line immediately. You clearly weren’t meant to be my prey if I upset you. I’m so sorry.

I want to love you and make you feel better about yourself. I want you to feel even more hot and sexually accomplished. I want you to feel just a little bit more like you can go out and figure out what you want after you’ve bounced off someone with such strong and particular ideas.

You don’t have to agree with me. You don’t have to be like me. (Please don’t be like me. The world doesn’t need more folks like me…)

Be you. You are so wonderful. I love you so much. I like seeing you in the world. I am glad you are here. I do want to kiss you. I am sorry that I am diseased. I have always been kissy. So I’ve had herpes since I was a toddler. Like kissy toddlers do.

Kissy Krissy. That was one of the nicer nicknames from my childhood.

Ok, knowing what I know now about the sexual abuse it’s a little creepy that everyone liked that I was so kissy as a tiny child. But oh well. Moving along.

Kissy Krissy sure sounds nicer than Pissy Krissy. Are those my choices in life? Be sexually available or be angry? I sure act like it.

No I don’t have to be sexually available. But I… uhh… kinda like sex a whole lot more than average.

Can you be a nice girl and still fuck dozens of people in a short period of time? How about hundreds throughout your lifetime? What if I hit a thousand? When do I stop being ‘nice’?

I’m curious. Depending on how this week goes I’m going to hit 130. I’m pretty sure.

I never did get my party for hitting triple digits.

So take Noah’s body count and put a one in front of it. Yeah. Promiscuous.

And I do have strong feelings for the majority of the people I sleep with. The people I don’t fall in love with are the one offs at parties. It’s why I don’t keep in touch with them. I don’t have bandwidth to fall more in love with them.

I have a deity and a submissive and a cupid and…

I’m feeling more nervous about the degree of pushing my wants I’m doing on other people. I haven’t hit their rev limiters yet.

I think.

Lots of folks I’m not going to name right now for #REASONS. But I’m thinking about you. The folks in-house got to hear your litany last night.

I think about all of you. Sometimes I wonder how one brain can keep such a diverse cast of characters straight. Good thing not all y’all are straight.

I think of it as a web because my people are very interconnected. So and so is fucking me and three other people. Of those three other people one is a good friend of mine, one is someone my other friend is fucking and… so it goes.

“Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to conceive.” Thanks former lover who may not want to be named here. I will never forget you. You taught me things. Thinking about you makes me smile.

I fall in love hard and I fall in love fast and I fall in love forever. My life would be so much easier if I could stop loving my Owner. But I can’t. If my Owner showed up in the middle of the night and said, “I need you” I would need to have a forktastically compelling reason to not just follow him wherever he wanted me to go.

Because he wouldn’t ask unless it were serious and if he came to me… whatever he needed I’d do.

Just like if Jenny got into trouble I would be in Scotland in less than 48 hours no matter the cost or difficulty.

These are my people.

This web is what I have in this life. I like sleeping with my web but it isn’t a mandatory component of loving someone. I’ve never fucked Jenny and I would move mountains for her.

Jenny was there for me after the suicides. Jenny has been with me through some of the most vulnerable, horrible moments of my life. I would do anything for Jenny.

I don’t measure my love in access to someones sticky bits. But if I get to touch your sticky bits I’ll probably fall in love faster. Especially if I get to touch your stick bits and you make a big deal out of respecting my mind.

I’m yours. How and where do you want me?

I want to fall in love with you. I don’t want to marry everyone. I can’t have any more children. (Though co-raising children is the best thing ever.) I don’t…. know what I want.

I want to feel viable and loved. I want to feel like it is ok to be filled to the brim with love. I want to feel like it is ok that at any given point if you press me for who I am in love with I will start rattling off names, run out of fingers, think harder, run out of fingers again… maybe keep going….

I’m not lying about being in love with you. I can’t love myself. So I love you as a proxy. I have so much love to give. Yes, you get some of it.

Is it creepy? I hope not. I try to have boundaries around it. There are some people I pester constantly on IM because I feel comfortable nudging them for attention. There are people I barely contact except to arrange in person time. There are people I want to go show up with them and I don’t because I have trouble not climbing all over them like a jungle gym. It depends on the dynamic and my mental state.

Sometimes I don’t touch people more because I feel gross and polluting and I don’t want to hurt you.

That’s complicated.

It is weird managing the fact that I’d like to crawl into way more beds than I do but I’m afraid of hurting people.

I don’t want to hurt you.

I love you. I am so sorry when I fuck up. I am sorry when I make stupid assumptions because someone else would be ok with x so why are you having your own opinion?

I’m so sorry I ever invalidate your right to be seen as an individual person with an individual experience. I’m working on getting better. I am better than I was. I need to get better still.

I want to be able to walk into a room with you and see you as the sole person there. The only one I need to adjust my energy to, whatever that means. Even when I’m in the room with multiple people. How do I do this? Oh it’s hard.

But I want to try.

You are worth it. You are worth seeing and loving.

I love you.

These are a few of my favorite things…

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Lest I sound like a one trick pony… My Bonus Kids spent the night! As usual, this is thrilling and wonderful. I’m doing my best to smile pretty at their parents and say, “Wouldn’t split custody be niiiiiiiice?” Not 50/50 custody… but couldn’t I have them like 10% or 20% or 30% of the time?

It’s rather awkward to be all, “Hey I’d like to have more kids but I would die… can I borrow  yours?”

So far they are willing to share somewhat. How much we will find out in the fullness of time. I’m thrilled.

Part of what I love so much about my Bonus Kids is that I am not the mama so problem solving is an entirely different process. I have mad respect for their relationship with their mama and I can see how she is the best mom in the world. She knows them to the marrow of their bones in I way I just can’t. They are foreign to me.

But it makes me think of my kids differently. Oh. That’s why things are so easy. That connection.

I don’t think that having biological children is the be-all/end-all of all of life… but I’m having a lot of fun.

My kids validate my existence in a way nothing else can or will. They needed me for survival. They have a lot of my weird/wacky traits without having lots of complex trauma stories behind them. That’s fascinating to watch.

My kids don’t need me for survival any more. They still need me, but it’s different.

A friend was over helping me with tile on Monday. All four of us got hungry. I asked the kids to make lunch and they did and it was good. (My hands were doing gross things.)

Tile plugs along. I probably have 15-20 more hours of removing backing from tile. I’m working on taping spring down. Then I want to finish winter. Then autumn. Then I have to figure out summer.

Oh goody.

Four more hours of taping spring? I think the mountain will take 4-8 more hours. Autumn is probably 10 hours away from done.

So that’s like eight days of work before I get to summer. No… closer to two weeks with how slow I’m going. Depends on how much help I get unbacking tile. Fudge. Uhm, at least the remodel is stalled and I don’t have to hurry. Ugh. This Friday I’ve been waiting nine weeks for a letter.

Once they move back in to start work they have about three weeks to go. So… I need to get my butt in gear. I need to be only working on summer when they get back started. Or be done with summer.

I think summer is going to need to be a different style of mosaic. I am looking at different techniques and options. It is so much fun to not have any idea what the hell I’m doing and just… make something cool.

Fuck yeah.

My garden is coming right along.

Last night I only got 7 hours of sleep, but I still feel better after two nights of sleep. I felt much better by yesterday afternoon.

I appreciate when I can misunderstand something and get over it in a 24 hour period. That was quite literally not possible 10 years ago. Progress is awesome. Noah patted me on the back and said he was really surprised how well I handled it. That’s nice of him. Thanks Noah.

I really have worked hard on mellowing out. It’s a process. You need to be safe to be mellow.

Thank you, Noah.

Oooh, another sweet point. Two wonderful friends asked me how I would feel about them asking Noah to play. Awwwww aren’t you the sweetest things? I feel charmed and delighted. You asked me first. Nobody is asking Noah first. But my friends ask me first before they go slide on up to my husband.

That was not required but hot damn you managed to slide into my magnanimous zone. Now you were so awesome that I’m going to put a lot of pressure on Noah to handle things right and be deserving. “Do you know how lucky you are to get women like that?! BE NICE.” Or not nice. Whatever y’all negotiate. Have fun!

Slutty women deserve to be treated like the angels of mercy they are. Be grateful. Or I’ll be pissed all the way off.

All hail slutty people of all possible gender configurations. Huzzah!

I love you all.

Not just because you are slutty… but that does make you feel like kin and I like that feeling.

What makes me happy? Noah. Noah is handling me hunting better than I am. When I over react and want to flip out over something he patiently reels me back in and explains why my feelings are out of proportion and I really should be giving people chances.

Maybe the reason I am more calm now is because someone is intimately aware of my thinking process and he helps me manage it. “Ok so you read this in an upsetting way. Let’s talk about that.”

For the record, folks, I don’t have a lot of privacy from Noah. Partially because I just don’t desire that kind of privacy but mostly because I need help managing my disordered thinking and Noah is willing and that requires access. So I give it to him.

If I keep secrets from Noah I will need some way of color coding that information in my brain so I can keep it from Noah. That sounds hard. I have enough hard in my life. I’d rather keep letting information pass through me like a sieve when it comes to Noah. That is the most comfortable part for me.

So that when I screw up and don’t tell him something right in the first place it’ll still come up because I have complete diarrhea of the mouth and I tell him everything so even if I do it in a dick way… everything is coming out and we can process it. Sometimes part of the processing is, “You told me that in a dick way.” Yeah. That’s true. I did.

I remain convinced that no one on this planet could love me like Noah does. Thank you Noah. I am so grateful for you.

Other happy news! We are going to be house-guest central. (Finish the bathroom, damnit!)

In April Dad is coming down to spend a weekend. This will be entertaining because he wants to see his bio-kids a fair bit too and they are having big feelings about me since my kids were born. They can ignore the slutty daughter-girlfriends. I’m… something different. They aren’t so sure they are ok with him adopting an adult child and being a grandparent. That is stepping on their toes. But it also looks somewhat like I may be the only one of the three of us to have kids. So yeah. Complicated. I’m trying to be as nice and accommodating as I can there. I like his bio-kids and I hope that we can long-term get more friendly. I hope. *cross fingers*

In May a friend from the Bay who moved east then moved west (but way the fuck north of here) is going to stay with us for a weekend. I’m excited about that. I haven’t seen her since before the kids were born.

Also in May we have a fun overnight adult-only camping thing I’m wicked excited about. I don’t know how it will go. When I used to go to these events, in the dim recesses of my memory, I remember lots of bdsm and fairly little sex. Some, but not a lot. These days… I’d uhhhh… yeah. I’m no longer content with a weekend of bdsm and no sex. I’ve changed. So yeah. I have no idea how this will go.

I had this really slutty idea about how to handle play at that party. Maybe I’ll write about it separately. Maybe I’m not quite that brave. Ahem.

Ahem.

Then in May I’m going to the grief ritual with Sarah. I’m so grateful she wants to come with me. I anticipate a full weekend sob/hug fest. That’s going to be magical. At the other grief rituals I have attended, I always went alone. The organizer always encourages hugs/physical support and… I’m me. Don’t fucking touch me who the hell are you? Especially when I’m freaked out and feeling vulnerable. Strangers just shouldn’t touch me. That’s not safe for any of us. Don’t do it. Sarah is safe. This is going to be a night and day different experience. It’s a full weekend retreat instead of going to and from a college campus every day on bart.

I’m looking forward to this. We have so much to talk about. So many different levels of wounding. We’ve already looked at a lot of this together over the 12ish years we’ve been doing whatever it is we are doing. But this is going to be super intense and heavy. In a way we both need. Thank you my friend. I am so grateful.

June is blissfully unscheduled and I think it should stay pretty close to that way.

July I get to host my friend and her two sons for three weeks. They are coming in from Arizona. I’m so excited. I met her on the road trip and we’ve talked a whole bunch since then.

I am really proud of how well I’m keeping the house up despite the chaos of the remodel and the amount of work I’m getting done. This is remaining a good work space. It feels accessible and functional. *pat myself on the back* (Let’s be real here: the kids are amazing these days. The road trip was worth it.)

I haven’t been gushing about the kids lately. Mostly cause my arms hurt and I’m obsessed with my sex life. But the kids are knocking my socks off. They are making such tremendous progress.

I’m happy that both kids say, “Can we take a break from classes?” It isn’t just coming from me and financially motivated. *phew* We could all use a break from trying to become something different and just… be for a little while.

August/September is the cruise. Looks like another family might be joining us after all. I am completely fucking thrilled and surprised and happy. I think that all four families might stay in Florida for a week after the cruise to see stuff. 7 grown ups and 6 kids sounds way more like a party.

My life is so ridiculously good I just don’t understand how I got here.

A child is waking up. It is time for the day to begin.

Hunting lessons

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

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

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

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

I don’t know.

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

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

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

Whatever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sleep. Dear goodness, sleep.

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah.

I’m sorry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I feel ashamed of that.

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

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

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

Thank you for not caring, Noah.

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah. That happens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trust people to be grown ups?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Sorry, gotta catch my breath.

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

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

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

We are all fucking up and growing.

We aren’t done growing up.

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

Hands hurt too much to go into that.

Hunting lessons…

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

That’s gonna happen.

That is part of hunting.

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

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

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

I need to know myself.

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

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

God I’m ridiculous.

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

Other people can handle sleep deprivation. Great for them.

I can’t.

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

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

But then a different party is the next day.

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

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

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

I don’t know.

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

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

It is wildly unpredictable.

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

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

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

I’m afraid of picking wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

Always.

Is it worth it?

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

Yes.

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

But I’m not sorry enough to stop.

I want to learn this.

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

I want.

But first I want more sleep.