Category Archives: marriage

Forgiveness

Noah wrote me one of those epic blog posts he writes to me. Noah is of the belief that if we had public back and forth about our issues it would go badly. Given that I write publicly… he writes to me. I worry about this dynamic.

He’s bringing a lot of reality into this relationship. What the ever loving fuck. He accurately catalogues some of the problems we have had over the years and says that it is less about forgiving me for these ways in which I have fucked up and more about exalting that no matter how big the bump we always find a way past it.

That’s… that’s deep, yo.

I’ve fucked up a lot. I have done some pretty awful things. Some of the things are ongoing problems and some of them were problems for a while and then I stopped.

Just like some of the ways in which Noah has fucked up are ongoing and some of them are stopped. But I have not been giving him a lot of credit for change and growth. I have been acting like every problem, every fuck up is about an escalating pattern. Is it?

I come from a background of domestic violence. I literally spent my childhood moving every few months because my mother was running from a man who beat and raped her children.

Am I capable of looking at fuck ups and not wondering about the escalation potential?

Noah does not beat nor rape my children. I feel completely comfortable saying that. My children exhibit no stress signs of hidden trauma. I watch for it. My friends watch for it. My neighbors even watch for it because I’ve talked to many of them about my background and family history and I’ve flat asked to be monitored.

“I don’t know what healthy actually means. I’m trying to learn. I need feedback so I’d appreciate it if you commented when you see me doing something that might hurt my kids.”

People are always fairly stunned by this request, but they honor it. People call me on my shit.

I have all the potential in the world to be a monster.

So does Noah.

What does potential mean?

I don’t think I am a monster at this stage. Or maybe, I’m a monster kinda like the BFG is a monster. Are you a monster because you are in a category with other monsters based on demographic factors but you don’t enact monstrous behavior yourself?

Noah wants me to not forgive him but instead exalt him for getting past many of the ways he has hurt me. I get why he wants that. I get why it is important for the story arc. Given that we are fresh on the heels of several straight months of me being the problem and me hurting him far more than he hurt me… I get it.

2016 will go down as one of the years when I hurt Noah the most for our entire marriage. Was it worth it?

I don’t know.

If I had to do that in order to really force through the idea that I will never grit my teeth and take one for the team again? Yes.

Yes. A million times yes.

Noah may want me to not forgive and instead exalt that we got past our issues, then I need 2016 to be the last year I ever submit to sex that hurts me in a bad way. I’ve been having sex that caused me intense physical pain for more than 30 years. I’m done. If I had to blow the fuck up to convince the people around me that I’m done done done done done I can live with that.

Does that make it good or fair or right to blow up like that? Not really.

Sometimes there aren’t right choices.

I know that means I will have to change behaviors on my end as well as figuring out how to keep coaxing behavior from Noah that will work better. That will be really hard.

I’m off the team. I can’t ever take one for the team like that again. Whatever service of that kind I owed in this lifetime I have paid. I have paid and paid and paid and paid. I’m out of currency with which to pay.

My cunt is mine and I need it to not be treated like something that anyone has a right to use no matter how much pain they cause me.

I understand that a lot of this has happened because I “let” it happen. Because I was conditioned from toddlerhood that this was my lot in life so I encouraged and allowed this kind of behavior. Yeah yeah, it’s my fault. I know.

If we go seek out people to hurt us and they hurt us is it their fault or our fault? I don’t entirely know.

Exalting. I should exalt that Noah has gotten to the point when he can recognize that I am engaging in bdsm as self harm he stops participating.

Really if I want to talk about the things Noah has worked on to be better at being my partner… I won’t stop talking for a few weeks.

I know.

Bossy friends, sleep, and the big D

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Do you know what I hate about blacksheep telling me to do stuff? I pretty much always listen. I stopped using the Afrin. (@#$#$@$#$ bossy friends)

I am happy to report that with Zyrtec and saline nasal spray (to irrigate and moisturize, naturally) nightly I’m still getting 8-10 hours of sleep. Like fucking magic. I haven’t slept this well… ever.

(I wouldn’t listen to blacksheep so much if she weren’t usually fucking right.)

I find it funny how my initial response is always I’M NOT LISTENING TO YOU then two days later I’m doing what she told me to do. I’m so mature.

Things with Noah are… rocking back and forth in a gradual upswing. God damn that was some unfun conversating we did this weekend. (Yes I know that isn’t a word.) But it was important and useful and we said stuff we needed to say. There were moments when I asked questions about divorce, but suicide wasn’t the answer. This still needs to be considered progress.

No we aren’t getting a divorce. But I’m scared that I’m so bad for him that he really should get away from me. He doesn’t want to. We are both… crazy attached. Is this good? I don’t know. But I know I like Noah more than I like anyone else.

This is so complicated.

No real time…

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But I want to point out that I got through Suicide ~~Tuesday~~ Friday without feeling drop or depression or a reversion to suicidal ideation. (For those of you who haven’t spent years doing drugs, MDMA is a drug that causes a massive surge in serotonin. If you have a massive surge of serotonin… you will have a corollary time when you will have a decrease in serotonin. This is known in rave circles as Suicide Tuesday assuming you did your trip on a Saturday.)

I’m having big feelings this morning because I got to do a walk through Noah’s brain that makes me feel sad, but not in a way that makes me feel worthless and like I should die.

I feel sad that Noah genuinely believes that he isn’t allowed to have friends because if he were honest about our relationship anyone/everyone would tell him to get the fuck out of our marriage because I am so horrible.

That’s… that’s a real problem. I don’t know what to do about it. Am I really as bad as all that? He thinks so. And that means it is true enough.

If I’m sitting with this and I don’t feel like I should off myself… that’s progress.

Now that it’s done…

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I’ll talk about it. But posting “I’m about to go do something basically illegal” is silly. Instead, write about it after the fact. Ahem.

Err, this is why I wanted three days of complete sobriety. To make it so the experience was more intense. No pot, alcohol, or caffeine. Wheeeeeeee.

So I managed to turn up a therapist who does guided MDMA journeys. It’s one of those things that is talked about in PTSD circles. You can do years of processing work in an afternoon. After 33 fucking years of therapy I could use some god damn short cuts.

It was… much less intense than I’m used to. I think he gave me a low dose.

It was good though. I stepped out of my box and talked about a lot of developmental trauma stuff. (It helped that I’ve been rereading the Healing Developmental Trauma book…) We talked a lot about some of my core wounding stuff. The shit that just doesn’t heal. We talked about volition, consent, responsibility, shame, and all those other awesome things.

I talked a lot about the rape I committed when I was a kid. I talked a lot about my brother and my dad’s suicides. I talked about my internal core lack of worth. Recent studies show that the fact that I was the product of rape, my mother seriously contemplated aborting me, and I wasn’t loved much once I arrived… that’s really enough to create that worthless feeling forever.

But! Brains are plastic! They can change.

You just have to work both hard and smart to figure out how the fuck to change it. It’s complicated as fuck.

I feel… like maybe some of it budged today. We talked a lot about my children in context of my experiences. I literally can’t imagine my children forcing oral sex on other children at five. That’s a taught behavior.

My father taught me. I was doing my best to be good. I’m not evil because I had an evil father who taught me things I shouldn’t have been taught. I have been fucking scrupulous about consent for a lot of years now and that is unlikely to change.

I am not a serial rapist. My father was. I am not.

I may be a monster, but I have my limits. I do not want to destroy another person’s soul.

Yes I fucked up really really bad and there were consequences. A little boy was hurt. But I was five. Five year olds… can’t be held to the same standard as an adult. I say that as someone who has been privileged to see a number of five year olds over the last few years. None of them, even if they did something so horrible, would be to blame. The person who taught them to do that would be to blame.

If I had done it again at 15 or worse yet at 25 this would be a different conversation.

I was five.

It isn’t my fault I was born. I did not choose to punish my mother with my birth. That’s not how it works. I did not rape my mother. My father did.

Maybe it’s ok that I was born. I was the only person who was willing to stop my father from raping more people. Not a single other person was going to step up and do that.

Maybe I’m not so bad.

I did the right thing. Even though it hurt. Even though there were consequences. I had to do it. I really did.

We talked about how there is no such thing as “the best mom” because every child has different needs… but I’m a good mom. I’m responsive to my children. I have put a lot of my mental health problems into cabinets and drawers and I god damn show up for my kids. Even when it hurts and I want to dissociate and hide. Even when I feel depressed. Even when I feel anxious. I stomp my shit, explain that my tone of voice will suck because I’m having a rough day, and I fucking show up.

I’m too privileged not to. In my opinion. I have so much support. I can’t let my support down by being a bad mom. I need to be worthy of this life I find myself in the middle of. My children and my husband act like I am good. I am blessed beyond measure.

I have the kind of family that many people dream about and never get. That has to count for something. It didn’t happen by accident. I made this. I made this home. Noah supplied the house. I made it a home for my family. I made these little people and I’ve managed to care about their needs for years and years and years. Eight years and counting of doing the work.

Pieces of shit don’t do that.

I’m not 100% down yet (halo is niiiiiiice) but we’ll see how I feel over the next few days. We’ll see how this sticks.

I just feel slow, not hungry, and kind of at a distance still. I don’t hear any of the voices in my head that hate me.

I’ll take any break I can get.

More than one thing can be true

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Goodness. Yesterday… didn’t go according to plan. Well, we went to the party we meant to go to. I didn’t play with any friends. It didn’t seem…. wise. We fought again. It got to screaming again. I don’t feel like I’m in a position to be holier-than-thou about it.

The party was ok. We played some together and we socialized. Maybe that was what we needed to be doing just then.

Today we had a productive conversation. Like… the kind of productive conversation we haven’t been able to have all year. I sorta feel like we had to go through layers and layers and layers of nasty to get to this conversation. This morning we were able to just… lay it out. “This is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. Yes x, y, and z won’t solve it… but it’s a problem we have to fix.”

I feel like we are getting to layers of honesty we’ve been burying for years.

I didn’t even know we were concealing all of this. We have been trying so hard to protect one another’s feelings in so many areas. We have been doing our best to provide what we interpreted as what the other person needed. We have both been choosing to not ask for yet more support because we both feel like we ask for too much.

Maybe we need to change what we are asking for. Maybe this is really complicated. Maybe instead of retreating and trying to make ourselves smaller we should be trying to be bigger.

This is my second day of complete sobriety. It is going better than anticipated… my stomach doesn’t hurt. I’m not feeling frantic. I’m not being nasty with my tone of voice. I’m not stomping out of the room before I have big feelings all over people. I feel like the taper plus using alcohol to smooth out some of the initial bumps of mood distortion helped. I feel like the sleep is helping. (8 hours again last night.)

I’m taking stomach acid reducing pills, nutritional supplements, and allergy medication. How come my complete sobriety involves popping so damn many pills?!

But none of them are fun.

Sigh.

I’m in a better mood than I anticipated first thing this morning. That was an incredibly positive after breakfast chat. No screaming. No fuss. Just…. this is a big fucking deal and we have to talk about it.

Why can’t we change one or two things at once instead of throwing the whole damn deck of cards in the air and saying “Let’s see what happens!”

Some seriously hurt feelings. But you know what? I don’t think I could have gotten to the point of being able to communicate some pieces of this without causing that much pain.

I don’t think I’m that good.

Noah keeps coming back to “But you say and say and say that this relationship has been the best years of your life. How can it also be so awful?”

This relationship has been the happiest period of my life. Full stop. No hesitation. That doesn’t make it perfect. That doesn’t mean it can continue as it has forever. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Our kids are changing. There are specific pieces of the relationship that must change or else.

There are pieces of it that hurt and are damaging and just aren’t fucking ok.

That doesn’t take away the fact that this is the best I’ve ever known. Both of those things can be true at the same time.

Somehow… me wanting better… is all your fault Noah. If I hadn’t had ten years of this good, would I be capable of imagining better? I don’t think so. I really don’t.

I needed to have a best friend like you who would tear himself apart and rebuild to suit me. Just like I have done my best to change and grow for you. I have.

I am not the person you met. That’s part of why some of the things I could tolerate then I can’t tolerate now.

I don’t think that means either of us are evil. But it is true that we have to change and change again.

You are my monster and I am yours. Rawr.

What are we going to do? I don’t know. But I’m glad I get to do it with you. You are my best friend. No one has ever loved me like you do and no one else ever will.

Stay stay stay

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So many feelings.

I’m up I’m down. I’m finding layers of peace. I’m still dysregulated and sensitive and whiny.

On the ride home yesterday I hit… an important piece, I think, around suicide and pain. I can kill myself if I am in so much physical pain that I will no longer have good days. I hold that right to be sacred. If I hit stage 4 cancer, I’m probably going to pick the day I go instead of letting fate decide.

But problems in my marriage aren’t like cancer. It is not inevitable that things will decline further until death. It’s not the same and I can’t act like it is. I spent a lot of time yesterday frantically wanting to end my life. Because I hurt. Because that is the well trod pathway my brain takes when it is in pain.

I can’t commit suicide over a problem in my marriage or a problem in my sex life. I am too big for that now. Maybe that would have been understandable at some point in my life. It isn’t now. I am too big.

I don’t mean I weigh a lot. That’s too literal. I mean metaphorically.

If I am in too much pain and I have to run away I have places to go. I have homes in the bay area that would take me in with no explanation needed. I could go to Oregon or Washington or Minnesota or Georgia and I’d find berth. No questions asked. Ok, they’d ask questions. But they’d ask questions after I got there because they care about me, not because they would gate keep based on whether or not my answers are good enough.

I am good enough.

That means that when I’m having problems… dying doesn’t need to be the answer. If I have to get away… I have options. I don’t need to die.

I’m rereading the speech I wrote when I performed a wedding. I am not being good at advocating for myself in my marriage. Not really. My second thought? Shit I rambled on too long about history and irrelevant shit. Good grief.

Hey, they asked their favorite teacher to officiate. They got a lecture.

Marriage is what you make of it. What kind of marriage do you want to have? One where you both hurt each other often as a lifestyle choice?

Not really.

It was really mean to come home from being gone for half a year and immediately leap into that much dating. Noah missed me and was faithful and that’s how I rewarded him. That sucks. There have also been a number of ways in which we haven’t managed to communicate well and I’m not always lying if we have different definitions. We are talking past each other but that isn’t the same as lying. And I’ve done a piss poor job of communicating the boundaries Noah wishes I had to people as I’ve gone off on adventures. That’s a huge problem. I know I need to fix that.

It is hard to talk about bdsm. It is hard to figure out how common sexual euphemisms like “first base” translate. If I have literally played like that with folks when I was in the quad when I was in high school… yeah I consider that first base. There were no genitals involved. No one was overtly sexy at all. Sometimes humans are just hella rough with other humans. That’s… ok.

I really did grow up brutalizing people for fun. The weird ass part is how many of those people still know me and have a good opinion of me.

No, kneeling on someones chest and laughing at them as they gasp for breath isn’t second base in my head.

I don’t know how this works for other people.

Punching for a few minutes on the thighs and the shoulders… doesn’t feel like sexuality. I mean yes? But no. But sorta. But not?

I did think I was being good and acting within the boundaries.

If I try that hard and I run into a place where you have a different definition that needs to be a conversation about definitions not an accusation of lying. I didn’t lie. I told you where I would set my boundaries, but apparently I didn’t define that well enough for you. That isn’t a lie. It is a failure to communicate. I came home and told you right away. There was no lying.

There also needs to be some room for “I expect I will do ____” and “Well I actually did _____.”

Between the two of us we need to figure that out because we’ve run afoul of it in both directions. That isn’t the same thing as lying either. Not when you did it and not when I did it and I’m being accused of lying up one side and down the other.

I have not ever said, “Oh I followed the rules” and then later you found out through dubious channels that I wasn’t doing so. That hasn’t happened. I said that I wanted to break rules and you found out in dubious ways. I think that’s different.

I’m the one telling you about every fuck up.

I’m not presenting them straightforwardly and simply. I am reacting with hostility when you challenge me on a variety of things.

I need to stop that.

I think I have had to get this angry to assert that I will not ever grit my teeth through sex again. Whatever I owed anyone on that score I have paid my debt many times over.

And I can’t even talk about what that means unless I talk about it in context of overall volition and other partners because I can’t just push back against Noah. I owe him too much. I don’t feel I have the right.

But I have managed to learn that I don’t owe Deity or Cupid or my submissive or or or or. I go when I want to and I don’t when I don’t. (Ok sometimes I don’t get to go when I want to but that’s different.)

This is so complicated and I need to go.

Babies

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He says “As many more as we can have.”

This is fucking insane.

Layers

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I know I make it sound like my sex life with Noah is awful and it isn’t. The vast majority of our sex together is terrific or I wouldn’t be so loyal. It’s just sometimes awful. And the sometimes is a significantly decreasing percentage of our sex life as the years pass.

But there are a bunch of layers to this.

I’ve been sustaining genital injuries during sex for over thirty years. I am no longer able to react to this moment when stuff like that is happening. I can’t. I get in the forever-place where this will never stop and I should just die to get away from it because nothing I can ever do will make people stop hurting me this way.

I do not pretend it is rational. I acknowledge that it is happening. Bodies aren’t rational.

Trauma living in the body is a well documented phenomena. If you don’t believe me you can do your own damn research. I’m satisfied.

I think there is some validity to “You’ve been safe for 10 years so you’ve finally been able to mature to about 13 and that means you are rebelling and individuating in asshole ways.”

I think there is validity to the point that was made last night: I had my first six months off from genital pain during sex during my lifetime on the roadtrip. There is the possibility that my body started to feel like, “Hey wait… maybe that doesn’t have to happen.”

I know it is happening much less. I only have two clear memories since I’ve been home from the roadtrip. So that’s way decreased frequency.

But if you look at dog training, intermittent reinforcement (negative or positive) is a much more effective teacher than constant reinforcement.

I’m fucking paranoid every time we have sex that this time is going to be another time and it takes me a while to unwind and get into sex and that’s hard for Noah. It makes it much more difficult to relax and get into anything.

The last date for slut month? Cancelled. Guess why? Illness in the Bonus Family and he is sick too.

I guess that’s… meant to be? Ha.

If I have to be monogamous, at least it is with Noah.

He’s a ridiculous amount of fun to have sex with. When I’m not paranoid I’m about to be a fleshlight.

(I have been feeling annoyed about the canceled/cancelled spelling distinction lately so I looked it up. Given that my audience spans countries where both spellings are valid I figure I will just go back and forth between the spellings forever. I don’t need to pick a side here.)

I suggested to Noah that for a while maybe he doesn’t initiate penetration at all until I verbally say “I’m ready.” This is going to be a stretch for both of us.

I think part of the reason I hide behind sex with new people is: it’s not hard to have boundaries with them. I can tell a new person “no” all day long. Once a relationship gets more complicated… my ability to say no kind of evaporates.

Hanging out with my kids full time is quite the adventure. I have to have boundaries with my closest people. But they aren’t sexual. I mean, the boundaries are brick wall clear and not ambiguous and I never have to wonder about how to enforce those kinds of boundaries. That’s the easy part.

I have placed an unfathomably unfair problem on Noah: I will not tell you no and you need to figure out how to not hurt me.

And I keep score. And I get bitter over the years.

Fuck I’m such a fucking bitch.

Love/hate

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I am not a person who accepts influence well. I note things about the world then go home and reflect on them and course correct to include things that I felt inspired by… but if someone says, “You should” I repel off them like I’m playing a video game.

Bounce.

I move through life with all the force of a speeding train doing what I’m doing. I can’t course correct for the whims of other people. I’d crash. Why do I operate that way? Is it because I am sure I am right? No. I fuck up big. I fuck up with all the speed of a speeding train hitting a brick wall.

Whoops.

I do this because it is how I can overcome the hurdle of my self hatred. It is how I can act even though I’d rather be at home crying and cutting in my bathroom.

Because I pick a direction, I pick a set of tasks, I pick a set of behaviors I’m supposed to nail… and I move.

That sucks for Noah when the direction I’m moving in is “I want to find out who I am by myself again.”

Noah didn’t take the road trip like the vacation I sorta wanted it to be for him. Instead he reacted like a plant that was ripped out of the yard where it gets lots of sun and it was put in a closet for 5.5 months.

He wilted.

And I came home so completely over-saturated on mothering and my subsumed identity that…

We are exploding with all the force of a speeding train hitting a brick wall.

Boom.

The funny thing is: this totally describes my problems with person after person after person. They try to provide subtle influence. I’m supposed to notice that I’m supposed to pattern match off them. I don’t.

Boom.

I don’t understand how I have friends left.

I am starting to feel a little terrified of what I’ve gotten myself into with the group trip to Florida. We are together for two solid weeks. There are ten of us. Five adults and five kids.

And I can’t have pot.

Boom.

We all have separate cabins on the cruise. We don’t have to be together all the time. The Bonus Family has no interest in Universal, and I really want to go. So that’s a day separate. At the beach we have two apartments so we could rotate folks through having their own space for a night if anyone is really overwhelmed.

We have built in escape valves. I’m consciously planning only a few hours a day of stuff. I’m very very consciously planning down time. Sit somewhere. I don’t care where. Just sit.

I am also bringing running shoes. I will run a fuck ton of miles to burn off energy. Wheeeeee. I will stretch. Maybe Noah and I will be good about meditating since we’ll have so little else to do. Heh.

I’m not bringing my phone or a computer. Noah’s phone will be good enough for directions.

I’m scared of more boom.

I need to box up the presents I was going to give Jenny’s family and mail it off. I’m very glad that she is prioritizing the health of my niece/nephew to be. I’ll be sad she isn’t there, but she’s making the right choice. I’m very very glad. Hell I told her to ask her doctor before she thought of it.

I’m very glad she is making the choice she is making.

Shut it down

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I have canceled all but one date and I didn’t cancel that one because I’m afraid of the social/political fall out. When he gets to our house and notices the tension thick enough to cut with a knife it may turn into a chat session anyway. He’s a perceptive fellow.

We’ll see.

Do you know what I am sick to fucking death of? People telling me I should “make Noah” go to therapy. I AM NOT HIS MOTHER. I DO NOT MAKE HIM DO THINGS.

If you are thinking about messaging me to tell me that you really think I should make Noah see a therapist I want you to examine your motives and ask why you think I have such power. If you feel so fucking strongly talk to him about it and not me.

As I understand it I am never to ask for outside dating again. The specifically stated preference is that if I have such urges again: cut and suppress them.

Well. I have my orders.

Also: for the love of shiny green apples don’t “jokingly” tell me how I’m about to hit you any time soon. It’s not a funny joke. It wasn’t a funny joke a long time ago and I’m so over it I could puke.

completely fucked

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Noah just stomped out of the house at 5am to avoid screaming more at me. I don’t think I should believe him that this month is a good idea. I think that if I listen to him pushing me to do this it will be throwing gasoline on a bonfire.

I’m torn between wishing I had documented every fight and knowing it would have been stupid. Every time he’s slammed the wall next to my head. Every time I’ve asked him to stop using me as a masturbatory aid and he did it again days later. Every time he has told me, “Oh I’ll do ____” and it never happened.

He sure as shit is keeping score.

The thing is, I have no interest in divorce. My way out of this marriage is death. So I don’t keep score. Because that strikes me as a very good way to make sure I end up dead sooner.

Gaslighting

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If I’m going to get screamed at this many times over a behavior I should write it down. Noah has been consistently bringing up the fact that my words and my behavior have not matched up for months. I will say that I am going to do something then not do it. I will say I won’t do something then I do it.

He says I am being deceitful in the blog and in doing so I am creating a situation in which he cannot honestly ask anyone for help. He cannot talk to any of our mutual friends because of the fallout I will experience when he reveals how abusive I am.

I think that if he believes that, and given how many times it has been screamed at me in the past few months I believe he sincerely believes it…. he needs to get some god damn support.

I am an abusive nightmare who is taking what he has to offer in life and then spurning him. He is honestly giving all of himself and I hit a wall and I fucking stopped reciprocating.

If you want to know what I’m doing, maybe I can get access to his notes and copy them. God knows he isn’t going to fucking talk about anything. But he’s taking extensive notes about everything I’m doing wrong. Because his memory gets fuzzy otherwise and he wants to very specifically remember every detail.

It makes me think I should have started taking serious notes on my done me wrong list fucking years ago.

Instead I get to be the piece of shit who has done everything wrong.

What have I lied about? Oh I said I’d use gloves when someone fingered me and the next person who fingered me didn’t use them and I didn’t interrupt him. I said I would look only for folks who wanted group play and then the next person I talked to and have pushed to keep in my life is anti group play. I said that I wanted to cheat. Not that I was going to, but that I wanted to.

I am a piece of shit because the only thing that gets through my head, when Noah tries to explain how much I am hurting him, is for him to say, “Fine then I’m dating too.”

I take that as a punishment and step down. Not a lot less gets through to me.

On many occasions over the past six months I have said that I wouldn’t schedule with new people and then I did so.

I said I wasn’t hunting on okcupid while I was continuing to flirt and add people in other areas of conversing.

Noah says that something is happening then I say it isn’t then he gives examples and I proceed blithely to ignore him and minimize. Apparently this has been a severe constant long term problem over the last six months and he is fucking dying to tell me again about every single example.

He’d like to keep me up screaming about this for fucking days. But he won’t talk to anyone else and get support. That would be disloyal.

Now I asked for examples so I’m a bully for asking and saying that he’s screaming about it. One more way in which I’m a piece of shit.

Let’s keep going, shall we?

It is really hard for Noah that I deny my behavior. I’m not denying it. I’m a lying piece of shit.

He says this is exactly like me having a drinking problem. I’m a compulsive liar. “Me just seeing that this exists causes you to fly into a rage repeatedly.”

On Wednesday and Thursday I was still abusing him. I do not track this honestly in his mind. On Wednesday I got angry while he was going down on me because I hit a point where I realized that I was doing this Slut Month in a way that was only catering to him and what he wants. I should not have gotten angry about that.

I can’t type as fast as he is rattling this off.

I fly into rages when he confronts me with my behavior. He pointed out on Thursday that all the group play is with people I want to play with and I got pissy. I was fucking nasty as I said it really sucks that I want to play with people who want to get me off.

I’ve spent ten years not writing down every time I was told “Oh I’ll get better at foreplay” only to be fucked dry like a god damn fleshlight two days later.

Maybe I should be keeping better notes about the ways in which what I am told and what I get don’t god damn match up.

And he can’t tell anyone what I’m doing. Because if he does then someone might get mad at me and then they might shame me. So he can’t ask for support. Because I am so fucking abusive that our friends would rain down fire telling him to get away from me if they knew the truth.

Well I’m not being as specific as his lists because I can’t keep up with his speed of listing it off and I’m sorry for that.

I attack him (often on unrelated topics) when he questions me on wanting new dick. I mislead people in the blog. I am not nearly specific enough in an ongoing way about what a piece of shit I am. I should be giving more specific examples.

Noah feels that if he answers me honestly it is a bad idea because I am not sincere in my questioning so he can’t be sincere with me. If I ask Noah about things then it is about placating him or about beating myself up–like this morning. So even though he’s been bitter for weeks that I am not being honest enough in the blog this morning I am a problem again because I am asking him for examples of my shittiness in order to write this blog post. I seriously can’t do shit right. I am not taking his rebukes as instantaneous spurs to change into the behavior he wants and that’s a big problem.

I’m not falling into line. And he’s going to tell me that he will let me do this month and… after what I got yesterday I can’t fucking wait for the rest of the month.

I am hurting Noah again and again and again. Because I’m being a selfish bitch who cares about my sexual satisfaction instead of caring about how my behavior affects Noah.

I don’t think I’ll go into how the swing party went. Yeah, we had sex with other people. After being yelled at the whole way there about how I’m ruining Noah’s life because I don’t pay all of my attention to solely him I didn’t really have a lot of fun playing.

Yay for being a nasty disgusting abusive monster.

And he won’t tell anyone but me. Usually fairly loudly in the middle of the night. It’s totally appropriate that I keep getting screamed at though because he’s only yelling at me again because I did something again. Again and again and again. Because I’m a piece of shit gaslighter.

I say I’ll stop adding people. Then I notice that another interesting person is nearby and ooh shiny there goes my notice.

So I’m a fucking liar.

But I should really do this Slut Month. Because totally. He thinks it’s a super good idea. Because this way he will sustain maximum damage in a set period of time.

That’s how he phrases it. So I will inflict maximum damage on him.

This isn’t the first time in our marriage Noah has extensively (accurately) accused me of being abusive. I fucking wish he would talk to someone other than me about it. But he won’t. Because disloyalty. So I’m a monstrous piece of shit who has isolated him and made it so he can’t have friends because he can’t talk to them honestly about his life unless it is perfect and unfortunately I’m an abusive monster.

For the life of me I don’t understand why he wants to be married to me.

I could write for thousands of words about what a piece of shit I am but my arms are going to give out. I’m sorry my confession is less than every particular. Maybe I’ll talk him into sharing his notes so that I don’t have to bother to retype it. There are extensive notes, after all.

And then I will be such a duplicitous cunt rag that I won’t even post a link to twitter. So clearly that is one more way that I am misleading people and being a piece of shit.

Babysitter arrives in minutes.

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Noah explained in great detail this morning what he is giving up for this. He… was very specific and precise as he made his list.

Yes. That is all true.

He was very specific and precise as he pointed out the lying I have been doing and the denying that I’m lying as I’m still lying.

Yes, that is true too.

Off to couples therapy.

What’s next?

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There are things I don’t write about.

And then my brain jumps to yet another topic I’m just… not going to write about.

You know what? My body hurts. I can say that. Pretty much all of me. I’m exhausted.

But! I have the most awesome support network I can imagine having. Do you know how it feels that when I am feeling shitty I can reach out to 28 god damn people and all of them have a few minutes to text with me?

The specific quote from the day that I kinda want to have printed on something where I can read it a lot is, “You are very vulnerable to accepting being wrong. Sometimes you’re just NOT WRONG.”

That was succinct. And this person has one of the stronger voices in my inside voice loop. I want to continue to be someone who is ok accepting that they are wrong. I want to continue to be someone who can apologize. I want to continue to be someone who knows that I do wrong things and I fuck up and I need to god damn say I’m sorry.

I like that about myself.

Do you know what else I like about myself? I like that I’m a control freak. Know why? Because it allows me to get so much done.

That’s a pretty core part of my identity. I get shit done. I do it by being a fucking control freak. It is true. And my kids have adapted to the Krissy-show with gusto. But I get that we move through life really fast. We are all intense motherfuckers in this house.

I really like that about us.

Noah and I had a long chat about the Quiet One and the fact that I’m not being a friend to the marriage. I’m not. Getting called on it makes sense. It’s appropriate.

I like giving permission. I don’t really like controlling people by negating behaviors I like controlling people by giving permission. Because I like the results so much more.

It is a conscious choice of ways to interact. I’m not embarrassed about this. I mean, is it “controlling” people to tell them that they really and truly should follow what they want to do instead of listening to the negating voices in the world? Is it influencing? Is it inspiring? Is it just fucking talking?

It depends on who is judging, don’t it?

I’m kinda glad I ended up with some extra days free this week. I get to go visit one of my former students who is dealing with cancer. I’m not going to be shy: please contribute money if you can. I’m not going to give you her life story because I don’t have permission. But this girl has had a ridiculously hard and stressful journey in life. If you can, please help her. She needs to live. Her life has just finally gotten to the point where it is not shitty. Now this. Please help if you can. If you can’t, please share the link with people who can help.

I think a lot about my place in the world. What it means to have an open heart. What will make me hard? What will make me turn mean?

I think that will have to be a choice I make. Because I could get mean. I really could. I could be violent.

But it wouldn’t get me what I want.

Do you know what will get me what I want? Admitting when I fuck up and apologizing. Using my words. Learning how to observe boundaries without being a disrespectful asshole. I will never do what I want to do in life if I double down on my right to stay the same.

That’s just not going to work.

I know I have to change. I know that I have to adapt.

Do you know how much freedom there is in that? I do not have to try and stay the same in a rapidly altering world. I have to try and figure out how to race with the current and pick up speed.

Yes. I play life on the easy level. It is true.

But I also pay forward what has been given to me.

I will keep opening my home. I learn things I need to know.

Helping people can’t ever be about what I get back from doing so. That can’t be the point. You help because you have extra. So much extra. And it is shameful to hoard it. I help in ways big and small, monetary and energetic, near and far.

I like that about me.

I tell my children that they are literally some of the luckiest people who have ever been alive. They in particular have access to more information, freedom, and privilege than like 99.99% of human beings who have ever been alive.

Now what do you want to do with that?

So far draw Minecraft pictures. But they are quite good.

I have a kitchen to finish painting. My heart overflows with joy and creative energy.

My neighbor is going to come over for a chat about her health. She has a bunch of questions she wants to ask me. I’m delighted we were finally able to schedule that.

/me throws out gravity net

Come to me…..

Ahem.

Dude, why am I being such an asshole to Noah? I keep saying shit I shouldn’t say. My shrink says she thinks that he has kept me safe long enough that I’m acting like a rebellious teenager. She might be… closer to accurate than I like.

I am very interested in what medication could do for my reading ability. I haven’t been able to read much in a year. My brain is just too distracted and all over the place. I can’t focus very well. I think I’ve read five new books? That were on intensely important-to-me topics. So I could hyperfocus because shit I need this.

But otherwise I can’t read right now. Quite frankly I think I need to go through and start doing more suicide/trauma reading. I’m flailing and not managing my impulsivity at all well.

I am not being long term selfish I am being short term stupid selfish.

That’s a problem. That creates wounds that don’t heal.

Shit. Shit. Motherfucking Shit.

Ok. Can’t undo what is done. Can only move forward. Apologize. Make a different mistake next time. Hopefully… a much smaller one. In an entirely different area of life. Maybe not make a mistake near that boundary for a few years.

This dance we do.

Given where we are starting from and where we want to get… the only comfort is we have already come so far.

Noah was sweet talking me yesterday. He told me he thinks I may actually be smarter than him I just don’t have as broad of an education as him. That made my elitist smug bastard heart melt. It uhhh made sense in context of the conversation. You don’t get to know the context.

It probably isn’t what you think. And that’s all I’m saying.

I could have come up with many dozens more people yesterday if I had wanted to. Because I am one of the luckiest people alive.

As long as I don’t ask for too much… I can get a few minutes of contact from a whole lot of people all in a burst if I have to.

Thank you.

I love you so much.

Noah does share well. He really fucking does. But I’m not respecting the important parts of not sharing. I’m treating him like an obstacle and that fucking sucks.

Stop being such an asshole, Krissy. He isn’t blocking you from getting what you want. He is what you want. I mean… I can come up with lots of things/people/situations I want too.

But Noah has limits. He shares me so much. He is so patient.

I like to push my luck until I see where I run into a brick wall head first. And that sucks. I always have. I find boundaries from the other side of them.

Noah’s patience should be legendary in my opinion… but he’s running out. It is… interesting to watch. I’m learning a lot.

I feel like I have been feeling around the boundaries. What are the breaking points. What does breaking mean.

What a fucking asshole.

Stop it. You know what being good here means. If you want to earn back trust do the work. For five years. And no bitching. That’s the deal.

My words come at a high cost sometimes.

Sometimes even gods have to atone. I think a limited sentence like five years is kinda generous.

Hunh. I sorta wonder if this is somehow what I was aiming for. Noah came down on me. Like a box of fucking hammers. I’m not saying he was abusive or mean. He wasn’t. He was clear and specific.

Yup. I done did that.

Motherfucker.

Biotech, you know you are skating on thin ice and you say what?

Can’t even say what were you thinking. Clearly there was no thinking going on.

Analyze your possible actions and make choices before you fucking act. I don’t care if it hurts to think that hard. Do it anyway.

Why does it hurt to think that hard? Because my lizard brain is a short sighted asshole. Over riding that takes a lot of push.

On or off is easier. Moderated on…. fucccccckkkkkkkk

I honestly feel like I hit the wall. But not in a bruised and battered way. In a calm, “Oh. Well ok then” way.

Noah my love, I don’t know why this is a good deal for you. I really don’t. I know you’ve told me hundreds of times. It still just… your math is off.

But the boundaries are uhhh becoming clearer by the day. I don’t want to make Noah small and wounded. That means I need to think before I act. I need to keep my mental model of him in the forefront of my mind. Before I say or do anything I have to think about how he would feel about it.

I have to be a friend to the marriage. I have to only say things that increase the likelihood of longevity. Which isn’t to say that I can’t bitch sometimes to friends. But I have to pick who and what I say with respect.

I feel like this should somehow be more intuitive. I think this is why it is just so much easier to pick on or off than moderated on. I don’t think it is that I am just stupid. I think this is hard.

Noah, I still think * is a good idea.

This marriage is going to be long. We need something to go your way sometimes. I’m uhm. Yeah. I’m getting mine. And do you remember how hard pregnancy was? Breaks are good.

Breaks from how obnoxious and high maintenance I am are good.

So I’m a mixed bag. There are things I like about me and things I need to do some serious work on. Sigh. But, I declare that progress towards the goal and continue on with the work.

I’m looking at my calendar up to the cruise. Holy shit.

Well. I do like to keep busy. I might, uhh want to start thinking about packing. Because if I plan well… I bet I could make some damn smart choices. But I’ll have to think. If I pack at the last minute I’ll bring too much.

I’ve done this dance a few times.

It’s everyone.

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I can’t count how many people have told me that Noah is the Best Husband Ever and I am not very smart if I mess with my relationship.

And it’s happening again. Another person. I KNOW. OK.

Chasing and being ok

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I should be sleeping, but I’m awake. I’m thinking about how much I’m shoving on my friend while she’s here. So here’s the sitch. I met this woman on Twitter during my road trip. Towards the end the kids and I realized we were going to have a miserable time camping at the snowy Grand Canyon and decided to detour. I asked the universe (and Twitter) where we should go. This woman popped up and said, “Pick me! Pick Phoenix!” So I did.

We spent a few days together and it was lovely. I think she is great. I think her kids are rad and super smart and really engaged in life. I honestly don’t meet that many public school kids who are that good at asserting themselves. I was seriously impressed with these kids. They are just… there’s a lot of there there.

So I asked my friend to come visit. Thing is, the entire time I’ve known this family they’ve been on my monthly donation list because of disability issues. The mama hasn’t worked in a while and that is indefinite. So this trip is horrifyingly prohibitively expensive.

So I said, “Can I bring you to California. You and your family. You need a break from life.”

We are going all over the bay area and down to Santa Barbara with a stop in Monterey on the way home. We will spend close to a week driving into San Francisco to see the museums.

These kids showed up at my house and with glowing faces they said, “Can we homeschool every day?!” They are so excited they can barely speak. Only they talk just as much as my kids do so this is a hilarious time. Oh so much volume. But fascinating! The opinions! The independent thought going on!

One of the first questions was: “Does your little boy still wear dresses?” Answer: “That question is more complicated than you think. My kid wears dresses sometimes. But I only sometimes have a little boy. Let’s talk about the gender binary and people who do not fall on it at either end.”

It was lovely.

I sat down after dinner and started listing off the cool things to do within an hour of driving… we filled the trip days fast. We have a full itinerary.

I am 100% convinced my friend never would have asked for something like this in her life. I’m spending around $1200-$1500 for them to have this vacation. Folks I don’t know that well that I met through the internet.

Why?

I am ruled by my impulses. Because it breaks my heart that my children get to have the life they have and children this god damn smart and talented don’t get to have as much opportunity. Yes, I’d love to bring you out here for three weeks for as much information as we can pack into your little skulls. It would be an honor.

I do these things to pay back the child I was. The child who felt so bad that everyone else got to go do fun things and take classes and go to museums. I got to move again.

Part of what is helping is that I’m not having to chase this family. I offered and she accepted… but I didn’t have to chase her and keep offering.

Being able to accept a gift this big is hard. Pride is a big deal. Accepting this much love and help from someone is hard to feel ok with. People can only take so much then they need to give. Not necessarily back to the person they received from… paying things forward is more important

I am running into asking rev limiters within myself. I can ask different people and it isn’t scary. I can’t ask a small group of people for things repeatedly. That’s too much hard; I feel too much like I’m hurting people.

Unless I get asked back. I need to be asked for things in exchange. Do you know one of the reasons it is easy for me to help this family have this trip? They are kind of assertive about how things need to work for them. “I need _____. I can’t do _____.” Even if receiving a gift they are directing it to be more useful for them. That melts my butter. I feel like they seriously are trying to get what they need from this gift.

I have probably asked many hundreds if not over a thousand people to spend time with me in my life. I don’t ask everyone for sexual attention. Unless I feel an energetic push back… I feel like I am hurting people by sticking around.

If I initiate all of our, “Hey let’s hang out” it will get more and more sporadic over time. My give runs out. My ask runs out. I wish I still had it in me to ask you over lots… I don’t. I don’t think you care. I think you’d rather do something else.

I think you’d rather not put your pants on and walk three blocks to see me after I drive multiple thousands of miles. That’s what I’m worth.

That’s from someone who has been publicly calling me “family” for over a decade. Yeah. That’s what I’m worth to my family.

But not Noah. And not my kids. They would do a whole hell of a lot to see me.

Noah crisscrossed the country chasing me. It was glorious.

Even though they live with me every day. If I start getting distracted by life or people they do tricks until I stare at them again. Please look at us. We need your attention. Yes my loves. I will give you my attention too.

Yes, I like pushy. Yes, I want people who say hey I’m here and I want your attention. Yes, that is risking rejection. Welcome to my god damn life.

It occurs to me that I could create a calendar for the house hold and share that with folks who are interested. Dates when people are free to invite themselves over could be clearly marked.

I can’t keep inviting the way I have for years. I’m tired and it hurts.

Noah says I’m just ditching my friends for lovers. I don’t think that is true. I can list off lots of friends talking and visits in the past few months. It is true that I’m putting less effort into my friends.

But I think I was there anyway. I think there was just a brief surge for dating. I think that is going to… change as time moves on anyway. I’ll run out of ask there too. I don’t get the impression that most of the folks I date are going to feel ok being pushy with asking for dates. My submissive. My glorious submissive. Thank you for being so brave so far. I know I’m busy and asking me means risking me being overwhelmed and kind of a twerp on a given day. I’m grateful you ask. Thank you. I’m sorry I’m not always good company but I’m so glad I get to know you. Sometimes when I say I’m not good company it isn’t about me not liking you it is about me wanting to keep my nasty moods away from you. I know you are comfortable with getting the less than sweet parts of me, but I don’t want to take my feelings out on anyone like that. I don’t want to start using you for that kind of thing.

I love you too much.

I’ll hit you; I’ll carve my name into your flesh with a scalpel; I’ll kick you as hard as I can in the testicles. I do not want to hurt you. I want you to feel loved. I can’t be nasty to you when I’m having a bad day. That’s not cool.

I need to be nasty to you on good days when it is a positive, loving choice for both of us.

I’m going to run out of chase on dating for the same reason I always do. Most people… aren’t as into me as I want them to be. They like me ok, but they don’t really seek me out. I seek them out as much as I can… then I can’t anymore.

Usually that’s about three months.

The people who have gone longer than that… my first fiancé, my Owner, Puppy, Spot, Noah… they always act like they are drawn to me. I don’t think my first fiancé would have fallen out of love with me. I think he wanted to marry me and he was going to be ok being that person forever. I think I could have had that. But he needed me to not change very much. He needed me to calm down and not be so crazy. He needed me to be very conservative sexually. I couldn’t do that for him. I think I could still be with my Owner if I hadn’t wanted kids so much. Puppy was the only one who dumped me. He has some serious issues and that was for the best. He would have been very abusive. Spot… that one did run its course. There was no more there for that relationship. But we are still friends.

Noah came back when I shoved him away as hard as I could. He was still my friend even though it hurt because not knowing me was more painful than dealing with me rejecting him as a boyfriend. Then after a while of being my friend he noticed that I was single for five minutes and he took a chance on offering me the best deal of my whole damn life. Would I like to marry my best friend and have the babies I’ve been dreaming of? Yes. Yes I would.

I like sudden intense protestations of devotion that I end up being able to count on. That works for me.

And Noah has chased me ever since. I do not always honor his efforts as I should. But I take breaks to admire just how forking nice to me he is. He chases me. He feels like he would die without me.

It makes it kind of hard to keep chasing people who are not that enthusiastic about seeing me, who do not push for time or attention, who do not make it clear that they want to know me.

I’m spoiled as fuck.

My submissive chases me à la Pepé Le Pew. Slow and patient and just there for my entire adult life.

You know who else chases me? Sarah. That’s why she is My Sarah. Because she has chased me and pushed and offered and grabbed chances to see me for over twelve years.

Lots and lots and lots of people can ask me once or twice a year for a visit. That’s so wonderful and sweet and generous. They give me what they have to spare. They ask for how much of me they want. I’m grateful for every person who gives me a three hour visit a year because they want to know me and that’s all they have spare. That is a gift.

It is so glorious having people in my life who want more and more and more of me. The number of people who feel that way is growing and I can’t help but think that is so wonderful. One of the women I look up to most described knowing me as being like watching the birth of a planet. I’m developing my own gravity.

So this ADD book I’m reading keeps saying, “There is something special about a lot of people with ADD. You can’t put your finger on what it is. It’s just there.” I find that hilarious.

When you look at comorbidity things: ADD is highly correlated with trauma which is highly correlated with being targeted which is highly correlated to being something that attracts notice.

Being special/different/weird is threatening as fuck. Lemme tell you.

Hey, is that a self love moment there? Did I just admit that I know I’m special?

Whoa.

I am. I always have been. I do radiate energy like the sun. Either I freak people out or I draw them in. I pay attention to people. I want to know them and love them. Just looking at people as hard as I do is special. Not many people are even capable of really looking at everyone around them and paying attention the way I do. It is some trick of attention and hypervigilance and empathy.

And where in the hell did I find the well of love I seem to have for people? Despite everything. Recently someone said I didn’t break; I broke open.

I need to be needed or there isn’t a lot of point in me. I think that the majority of creatures who are ever born live and die not having a point. I think that the creature has to make their own point, their own purpose, their own meaning.

Am I doing it?

So far people in ten states and a few different countries have told me that knowing me has changed them for the better. It’s a start.

I can say with great certainty that the three people who live here, my submissive, and My Sarah will chase me just about to the ends of the earth. Jenny has flown out to rescue me when I was in danger even though she isn’t by nature a chaser.

I still call her Jenny because I’m the only damn one who can. To you, she is Jennifer. You do not have leave to address her familiar. I think the only reason I can’t mature into the grown up name is because it was a very young person who first opened her heart to me. It was a very young person with intense wounds of her own who learned how to put up with me. When I cry and think of how very much I miss my friend I am dimly aware that we are grown ups now… but I miss her from that place of being very young. Because that is where she first touched me. I met her when I was twelve. I feel like twelve was for me the absolute last gasping breaths of my childhood. That was right as I started seriously dating.

Jenny managed to catch the last bits of me that could love as a child. And I love her with all the intensity of a child for their best friend still. Thank you.

Despite how not chaste I am… I am still chased. I am deemed worthy of love. And by people I respect and love in return. People who absolutely thrill me to my toes that these people think I am worth enough of their energy to chase me. People who are impacted by my gravity pull and just have to be near me.

Oh I love you I love you I love you.

That’s at least six people who will… chase me pretty fucking far. Blacksheep has jumped enormous hurdles to be my friend. DSH has gone waaaaaaay far past her comfort zone for me even though she isn’t one to chase people like me.

I could keep going.

I am blessed and blessed and blessed. My Bonus Family. It would take a few pages to go through all they have done for me. Even though I’m god damn difficult and sometimes they need some boundaries. That’s healthy.

Most of the people who love me with great intensity have rev limiters of their own. They have lives. Part of the reason I love them so much is because they are intense people with a lot going on. They give me what they can. Even if they can’t chase me the way I like to be chased…

Really, how spoiled can someone be? I get chased. I have three people chasing me 24/7. Quit being so greedy.

And yet I’d still kinda like to set up a calendar that says when folks can invite themselves over and see what happens.

I don’t want to decide who it is and how many people. I just… want to see what happens. I assume not much. I assume a few people sometimes but not much. The key to happiness is low expectations.

I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks. I’m nervous because this is a lot of time to be “on” with folks I don’t know that well. But I know this mama through mental/physical disability support. At least we are both very understanding of our mutual shortcomings. Ha.

I am so grateful that they accepted my invitation. This is going to be a lot of fun for me. I can’t wait to homeschool her kids. I feel like a walking encyclopedia and that is one of my favorite feelings. See how useful I can be. I am a good tool!

One of the things that makes me special is how fast I can access disparate topics in my brain and explain them in simple or complicated ways for just about anyone. I can make connections between things that seem unrelated… until I explain… faster than the vast majority of people I’ve ever met. And I’ve met a lot of people. I am not an expert in almost anything. Instead of going deep I go wide. That allows for a different kind of thinking, a different kind of intensity.

Ok, reading this book on ADD is making me question something about my long term mental health diagnosis: depression. I don’t do the torpor kind of depression. I do the head-down-keep-working-as-you-hate-yourself-and-want-to-die kind. Apparently that is a pretty standard ADD thing. Oh. Huh. That’s supposed to be one of those things they kinda look for. I hate them and their not looking.

If you loathe yourself: you are depressed. Sorta. Maybe.

I made Noah listen to this song. I can’t find it easily on the internet so you get lyrics. The thing is… I need to be loved. And I need it from lots of people because I’m trying to push past a whole lot of not being loved.

There is some interesting research out there on preverbal trauma and early formative trauma. I feel like I still need to be filled with as much love as an infant. I was not wanted. Not from conception. I only exist because a bad thing happened. What do I have to do to make up for that? What do I have to do for the world to make up for the harm I caused by coming into being. For declaring, “I don’t care that this hurts you. I need to be here.”

It’s not like I think I really deserve to be punished for choosing to be born. It was an accident. A surprise.

To be fair, my mom told me over and over I was a surprise. She didn’t know she wanted me till she had me. Sissy is the one who told me over and over that I was an accident. My mom just admitted it was rape. My mom tries to make sense of her life given the stories she has been given. God wanted her to have that child. Me.

I have been crying for my mother for over 31, almost 32 years. My mom was 32 when I was born. I might be 35 or 36 if I have another child.

Am I a grown up yet?

When my mama was 35 years old she had four children. She locked her abusive husband out of the house and sued for divorce. On the grounds that he had been raping their children. He was still given partial custody. He refused to pay alimony or child support so my mom lost the house and we ended up living in the car. Well, he would pay it. In exchange for sex.

Sometimes I think I judge my mother far too harshly for surviving a world of horror.

Sex. Sex. Sex. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it neither? Is it both? Does it depend?

I think that if I don’t have that much pull… I should probably just be ok with that. It is probably healthier that way. Maybe. Who knows.

Yes. Yes, I want pushy.

I think people misunderstand suicide prevention. There is a lot of shaming. “Don’t do it because it is selfish. You hurt people.” I hurt people by living too. I promise. It’s always complicated. It is always about the balance of hurting people vs being hurt.

I think it should be framed as enlightened self interested selfishness. Someday I will get to the point where I am out of good days. I’m not there yet. I’m trying to construct a future so fantastic that I absolutely want to stay alive to see it.

I know we are giving up the WWOOF year I’ve always wanted because of a baby I want more. You know what? I bet I will still go to Africa with Sarah someday. I bet I will still go to Taiwan to see Pam someday. I bet I will still go to South America someday. I don’t know who will go with me or who I will see… but it’s probably going to happen.

I’m like that.

I go do things.

No more travel for a long time though. I need to save money. We don’t really travel cheap.

The kids and Noah have promised to veto all requests for travel in 2017 even if I say, “but we could…”

Ha.

I love my reminders.

My Eldest Child likes to say, “You should listen to yourself more, mom. You are a smart lady.” But I don’t listen to myself. I need to hear it from you. I need to hear it in your voice. I need to have you replace my inside voice. Do you know why? Because when I talk to me I’m so god damn mean. When you remind me of something I just said a few minutes ago… you usually sound so nice.

I know I sounded nice when I said it to you. That’s because it is easy to be nice to you. No, I can’t remind myself in that same nice way. I need you on a tape in my head. Because my tapes are all so bad. Thank you for reminding me.

I never mean that sarcastically.

Well… maybe once in a while but I’ll make it obvious with a funny voice.

Shiny change of topic. I feel like it is wise to restate a thing about voice in my blog. I talk to “you” a lot. That’s a moving target. I often consciously create sentences so I’m addressing multiple situations and multiple people at once and I phrase it as a singular. So if you feel paranoid that I’m talking to you… maybe…. inclusively…

Or maybe you’re the one. Noah gets a lot of direct address. Ok, other people do too and I hide behind the group thing. Let’s be honest. But I do the group address thing too!

I’m just tricksy.

I sat here for a while and just went through some visuals of stuff I’d like to have happen in my life. Oh let it be so.

You get what you deserve when you eavesdrop

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Well, a whole bunch of things I want? Stop. Just stop. Just stop.

If I’m going to keep Noah I need to stop wanting a whole bunch of things. Just full stop. This is going to hurt.

What does “dating” mean anyway.

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I kinda had this epiphany yesterday.

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

“Not really.”

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

“Yeah.”

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

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

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

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

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

Oh fuck everything.

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

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

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

Dating.

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

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

I wouldn’t be alone this time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does love mean anyway?

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

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

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

Where is the threat?

What is the threat?

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

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

Where is my enlightened self interest here?

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

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

Ugh. Anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Noah speaks

8 Replies

I asked Noah for a guest post. So. Instead of my projecting all over him. Here is what he thinks:

To Krissy’s various beaus, suitors, sweeties and/or flings of the present, and possibly of the future,

I am asked for a guest post on why I am recommending a Mardi Gras month, nearly free of rules, for Krissy. To explain will require me to write a fair bit, including things I should have explained to all of you before. It is a great opportunity for me and an honor, and really past time. So: yes, and here you are.

I am specifically writing to those gentlemen (and occasionally ladies) joining me in the grand project of making Krissy happy in a lifetime-sustainable way, mostly through romantic means. I have made it a large part of my life’s work, and I’m honored to serve alongside other people doing the same. Some of the things I say here may sound a bit distressing, but understand I hold each of you in the highest esteem. I shall try to keep your distress in reading to a reasonable minimum… As long as I successfully describe the difficulties, anyway.

And let me say to those of you I have met that I’m impressed with all of you. Krissy has managed to find people with good boundaries, with a genuine interest in being good to our marriage, with a genuine interest in supporting her. Please do not take anything I say here as reflecting badly on you. You are all very clearly good people, coming to this with the very best of intentions. And if I were to chase you away for that, I would not enjoy the qualities of your successors nearly so much. I appreciate you, individually and collectively.

Those of you I’ve met are wonderful. Those of you in the future will still have been selected by Krissy, and her taste is excellent.

So: some background.

Krissy and I are easy-going, fun, sex-positive people with our flings and secondaries… And dramatic, possessive and intense with each other. This has all the obvious problems with non-monogamy that you’d expect. We were both vigorously, happily polyamorous when we got together, and after a few years of trying that while married, we shut it down and went monogamous — as much to avoid drama with each other as for any other reason.

We still spend a *huge* amount of time focusing on each other, resonating off each other, and generally having the sort of extremely enmeshed, codependent marriage that every therapist will tell you isn’t healthy. We love it, naturally. And we’d like to keep all that. It’s been a great ten-plus years.

We’re both very sensitive to our spouse being full of “energy that’s not for us.” When I come home jazzed from a date, Krissy doesn’t want to *touch* me — that’s “somebody else” energy. My reaction to her is often similar, if less intense. But the more she “glows” after a date, the more she’s unable to focus on me, so instead we do a bunch of talking through the date with the other person, and generally focusing on her and them. That’s what she’s up for at that point.

I’m more okay with that than she is — that is, she wants to leave the room and sob when I come home like that. I’m okay with some glowing, but me talking through how much she likes you gets old, as a way to spend her-and-me time. In large amounts it gets threatening, because we’ve been together over ten years — she does not, as a rule, glow like that after a date with me. The glow is about novelty, and after ten years I don’t compete well on “novelty.” Which is all as it should be. I can compete very successfully on things like “safety” and “reliability” — it was a very conscious tradeoff. Again, all as it should be.

There’s also another variation on that: sometimes she has a *bad* date and comes home vibrating with other-person energy. She didn’t get what she wanted and I’m no help with that, or something went wrong and they said something stupid, or… So, the “glowing” thing isn’t the only kind of “focused on other people, even when she’s with me” going on.

As a rule, it lasts about an evening. If she comes home from a date, it’s usually gone by morning unless it was an unusually good or bad date. Even then, it’s rarely more than a day or two.

Right now, novelty is feeling very important to Krissy. This makes a lot of sense after a few years of highly-constrained, drama-prone poly early in our marriage, followed by years of monogamy, followed by a very rocky start to the current non-monogamy.

Ah, the *current* non-monogamy…

Right now, Krissy is dating individually and I am not. Remember that bit about her being Very Not Okay with me coming home feeling like somebody else’s energy? There is absolutely no way for me to date and enjoy it much without some of that happening. More to the point, I won’t know when it *will* happen.

She has made it clear how bad that is for her. I need to at least try hard to not date individually, essentially indefinitely, to avoid an Unacceptable Outcome. Am I going to be able to be upbeat, constantly-supportive and so on about her having something I would also really like and can’t have, while simultaneously losing a bunch of my own support? We’ll see, won’t we?

(“Losing a bunch of my own support?” Yeah, when she’s glowing/moping about you guys, she’s a lot less into me — fair. It means I’m supporting *her* a lot more because bad dates need it, and a lot of my “I can do anything because the woman of my dreams is way into me” energy is out to lunch either way. I run a *lot* of my life on “Krissy likes me” energy. Again, see that enmeshed/codependent thing that we do and prefer.)

We also go out together to events/parties/etc. For a bit, that was “she’ll play with me and then maybe other people”, but at this point it’s generally that she’ll play with somebody else and I’ll play with Beautiful, who feels very non-threatening to Krissy (hey, Beautiful!) Or, in some cases, I don’t play. And that mostly needs to be how it goes. Me picking up somebody new, clicking well, coming home glowing and wanting to find ways to do more of that would be… destabilizing, in a not-okay way.

(Wait, “not dating”, but also a specific partner I play with repeatedly? Yeah, assume I’m playing fast and loose with the word “dating” here.)

She also wants to see a lot of you folks more socially, which makes sense. That’s mixed for me — it means increasingly often, I’ll be dealing with “not about me” in my house. Like, not just “not centered on me”, but often “I need to back off from Krissy” and “me being too assertive is a problem and I need to not do it.” That’s all the obvious kinds of complicated.

I’ll plead a bit of bias on this one as well because last week had three successive days with a play event that didn’t go well, followed by a dinner at our house where she didn’t get other-people energy she wanted, followed by an long-planned-ahead playdate with extensive work and negotiation, and then sleeping apart.

We don’t sleep apart well. *I* don’t handle Krissy being disconnected from me that way well, and three days in a row is really hard. And she wants things that seem to lead inevitably to more of that, including a lot more having her lovers in our house.

Couldn’t we just *stop* this and go back to monogamy? No. Krissy has done the whole “being off with just me and platonic friends” thing quite extensively. That turns out to lead to another Unacceptable Outcome. No, as wonderfully selfish as that sounds to me right now, it’s cutting off my nose to spite my face. Or, more likely, cutting off my head to spite my nose.

Which leads to the question, if this is causing me distress, why am I suggesting a Mardi Gras month? Why am I advocating *more* of this?

Krissy says it’s to prove to myself that she’s an asshole when she’s seeing a lot of other people. And hey, maybe we’ll get some idea of how much of her seeing other people is okay with me. Hard to say.

A lot of it is trying to make this style of nonmonogamy work for the long term. The attempt may work, it may not. But I’m going to do everything I can to give it a fair shake, and I think a Mardi Gras month is going to be required for that.

I want to know how much of “novelty wins over me” is because Krissy is deprived of that novelty. Right now, it’s a *really* distinct and obvious thing. Even somebody who’s not otherwise particularly attractive is suddenly very attractive compared to time with me, because Krissy wants that and has been deprived of it for so long.

I think that highly-restricted novelty isn’t doing much to reset the clock on that. I think that having more time and fewer restrictions will help.

I also think that the disconnection will become more obvious to *her* when there’s more of it, more consistently. So that’s probably the closest to what she means when she says I just want to prove she’s an asshole.

Right now it’s hard for her to see the disconnection, because when she comes home and we mostly talk about how great her other boy is for a day or two, it feels plenty connected to *her*. She’s getting perfectly reasonable support.

But there are limits on how much of that I can do. If it happens twice a month, we’re well within my limits. If it happens twice a week, I’m going to be providing a lot less support per time; I don’t have four times as much to give, so she doesn’t get four times as much.

So perhaps it’s also to show that *I’m* an asshole when she’s constantly vibrating with other-people energy.

She’d say she already knows that. Given that I haven’t said, “look, I don’t want to hear any more about (boy)” even once during this whole thing, I’m thinking we’re both wound up about small stuff. It’s hard to have good perspective on being nasty to each other since we’re usually so over-the-top awesome. I don’t know that either of us got to the “asshole” point as most married people would measure it, not at any point in this whole business.

Well, okay. There are some particular things that I could easily paint that way. But in context it’s mostly not true.

I want Krissy to get more of a feel for getting more support from other people *instead of me*, because that’s more like the tradeoff we’re talking about. I want me to get more of a feel for what it will be like to have her lovers as a major part of our socializing — I need to figure out if *I* can do this longer-term, too. When Krissy is specifically trying for other-person energy, I have to take a big step back or she doesn’t usually get it. Having regular social gatherings at our house that work like that is… new.

I want to reset the clock on novelty, somewhat. For her to feel less restricted so that new-person sex is just less appealing. Not *un*appealing — I get it, new-person sex is awesome. But right now it’s getting an enormous boost from long deprivation. I think the boost would be smaller if it weren’t so long since she could find lovers without all the restrictions.

An unrestricted month is a chance for Krissy to maybe get some of what she’s been cut off from — at least, a little more. And it’s a chance for me to figure out how often we *can* reconnect. We figured out how to reconnect when she’s sad or angry, but not when it’s over a lover. Maybe it will get easier to do it even after she’s seen somebody else? It hasn’t before, but we haven’t tried hard. This would be a reason to try hard.

And maybe it turns out that I’m allergic to having her lovers over two days a week and I explode. That would be… sub-optimal, but this would be a much better time to learn than six or ten or twelve months from now. I truly don’t know how I’m going to respond to this being a regular, constant drumbeat in our life. But we expect Unacceptable Outcomes if we just nix it.

So… Questions from the audience?

Inclinations

3 Replies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wouldn’t fucking know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But baby.

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

But fuck natural selection. Science.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OH MY GOD I CAN’T RIGHT NOW.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twenty years sounded awful enough.

Holy shit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m not even joking very much.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go be what you want to see in the world.

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

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

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

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

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

I guess I did something right for once.

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

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

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

That road is straight to hell.

Kisses. More kisses. More kisses.

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

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

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: marriage

Forgiveness

Bossy friends, sleep, and the big D

No real time…

Now that it’s done…

More than one thing can be true

Stay stay stay

Babies

Layers

Love/hate

Shut it down

completely fucked

Gaslighting

Babysitter arrives in minutes.

What’s next?

It’s everyone.

Chasing and being ok

You get what you deserve when you eavesdrop

What does “dating” mean anyway.

And Noah speaks

Inclinations