Category Archives: mean people suck

Well that sucked.

Yesterday was the kind of day where everything went sideways. I am still dramatically underslept and as a result my reaction was rage. I was not nice. I didn’t name call, but I did tell Noah mean things. I did have trouble controlling the volume of my voice with the kids. In short: I was an asshole.

Things break. Things go wrong. I know it is life. I know that in two months I will barely remember this. It will be a blip in the rear view mirror. But getting through yesterday was hard. I did a lot of damage to my hand trying to fix things when Plan A went wrong and then Plan B utterly failed and all of that pain was for nothing.

So I flipped out. That was one of the worst melt downs I have had in many many many years. I didn’t punch a wall but it was a near thing. I feel really embarrassed. Nobody in my family deserved to deal with my temper like that.

The interesting bit was: when we got out and started walking, trying to salvage a Plan C, I calmed right down. I wans’t in a good mood but I wasn’t raging anymore. When I am flipping out I need to start taking a walk, literally. Being outside is a balm to my soul. Even when it feels like. I can’t do anything right, I still feel better. Being inside a building makes me feel trapped like a rat; even a building I like as much as this one. We are still working on getting objects to soften the echoing sounds of loud noises. The house hurts my ears still. It will improve, but we literally haven’t had a chance to do the work yet.

There were good parts of the day. We did get the deliveries from the charity shops and we did get the council tax bill. Today Noah can get a bank account; it can’t be a joint account because my name isn’t on the council bill. So I’m seriously just a dependent right now with no rights to a bank account. That doesn’t feel so good.

I think we can fix it but it will take some time. We need a bank account ASAP so we won’t bother to fix it before we get a bank account and credit card; I will just need to be added later. But once we have a local bank/credit card things get so much easier. Noah already has a local phone number. I think he got electricity sorted and he’s working on WiFi and a home phone number.

He’s getting so much done. It is incredibly unfair for me to feel rage when he can’t complete a task in the time frame I would prefer. It’s not fair up one side and down the other.

Didn’t help that every credit card in my wallet was frozen for fraud protection yesterday and everything I tried to get done… failed. It wasn’t just Noah who was hitting road blocks.

I am sorry. But you can’t unsay mean things and sorry bakes no bread. My behavior was shit and Noah was completely patient with me. It really doesn’t help that I am down two full nights of sleep in the last five nights, but that’s not a good enough reason to freak out at him.

I need to do better. I can’t keep asking for passes for being upset. Noah deserves better than that from me.

Well, therapy isn’t an option. Try to talk it out.

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Why am I so depressed? Well. I built a lot of my sense of self worth around my value to people. Quite some time ago Sarah said that she was tired of having me publicly humiliate her when she made mistakes so I didn’t write as much about how she was treating me. I gave too much. I hate feeling like I am one of those assholes who justifies treating people badly or stalking by saying “I just love too much”.

But I went and did physical labor for her when it was literally causing me physical damage. I spent thousands of dollars helping her. Because I was trying to give her the kind of support I wish someone wanted to give me. She had me block out lots of time for her on my calendar and she showed up when she had nothing better to do.

Dad only offers help (that I have to pay hundreds of dollars for because I have to buy the plane tickets and send food money for my kid and send money for activities…. why aren’t I just sending her to sleep away camp–that costs less money?) when he also wants to ask me if he can borrow $25,000. But he doesn’t invite me to Thanksgiving or Christmas unless it is an Orphan/Leather Friends event. When he has holidays with his family I am not invited. I might be able to crash it… but he doesn’t invite me. Years ago when I asked him if he was willing to have a relationship with my kids he told me that I needed to know that all of his investment properties, all of his ability to help in this life is going to his kids. But I should loan him $25,000? Uhm. No. That kind of loan is for family. And you are letting me know that I am a Leather Family member… not a family member.

The folks we came to Hawaii to see talked about how much they missed us and how much they wanted to spend time with us. They have been begging us to visit for two years. And the daughter has totally flaked (she’s 20 and going through some shit… I get it) while the mother is manipulative, whiny, and cruel to my children all while asking me to fund her lifestyle. “I want to throw you a vegan feast to show you how much I care about you… but you have to pay for it.” Well a vegan feast is only welcome if it comes from t&T because their household is the only vegan household I fucking trust to make me food that will taste good. Your offering sounds like I am going to leave hangry and mean. And I get to pay for it. You will hang out with my kids and tell them that if they are not demonstrating enough gratitude that they don’t deserve to have as much food or money from their mother for play. WHAT THE FUCK? She mocked the size of my daughter’s ass because it didn’t fit in a climbing unit designed for fucking 5 year olds.

But I feel this terrible, overwhelming shame about cutting off people who treat me this way? They are willing to be my friends so how dare I judge what they have on offer?

Being really upset about these bigger boundary violations mean that smaller things feel more threatening. I *know* the CPS comment wasn’t intended as a threat. I *know* she didn’t mean to hurt me. But CPS is a deeply triggering topic and I am already wild with upset and I don’t have the ability to process that kind of thing without flipping out on top of everything else.

I don’t feel entitled to demand better treatment. I feel like these “friends” are treating me this way because this is what I deserve. Because I deserve to be treated like an ATM. If I don’t buy love I don’t deserve to receive any.

I deeply believe that my children don’t owe me anything. It is supposed to be a one way trip of support but that means I feel used all of the time by a lot of people and that’s hard.

I am still grieving Marcie. Her wife would not allow me to visit when Marcie was injured. Marcie felt abandoned. Marcie broke up with me because she couldn’t cope with feeling abandoned. I get that. I hope her wife is treating her better now. I will never know.

I am not blameless in any of this. I wanted too much from Sarah. I could watch her patterns and guess that she wouldn’t keep her promises and she would continue to want/take money and never think about how she was impacting other people. She is consistent with lots of people. I kept making stupid choices.

But I hurt. I feel like my hurt is stupid and I should just get over it and how dare I act like I have problems when I am not poor any more.

How dare I act like I ever deserve any support at all now that I have so much fucking money. I *should* have to pay for all help I get. And if people treat me badly as they take my money… isn’t that what I have always believed rich people deserve? Isn’t that justice?

I never meant to get this rich. I really didn’t. And now I don’t know how to view myself.

I don’t feel bad about the financial help I give to a lot of people. I bought Y a car and I don’t feel bad. I gave M a car and I don’t feel used. I have paid for people’s schooling. I have helped people start businesses. I loaned a friend money so she could get an apartment when she got her first corporate job and she couldn’t afford a place in the city she got the job in.

I don’t feel used by any of those situations at all.

I feel used by Sarah. I feel used by Dad. I feel used by the lady here in Hawaii.

Feeling bad about these people does not entitle me to treat other people badly. But I’m not coping well. I feel like I have to pretend I am not hurting and I am not capable right now. I don’t feel entitled to be sad about how these people treat me.

I abandoned my mother and my aunt when they needed help. I left them with a bunch of users, abusers, and takers. I feel like that means I deserve all the bad in the whole world. That means that Sarah treating me like shit feels like justice. And I hate myself for being someone who deserves this.

When I got my accident settlement when I turned 18, my sister told me that I had to use it to buy her a house and she would let me live with her.

How can I teach my children how to be in relationships without being users if that is all I understand?

It isn’t that all of my friends are users. Not even close. And it isn’t that I think I deserve endless support or financial help or…

I babysat for a lot of people hoping for trades. I was told that it was “easier” for me. They couldn’t handle having more than their own children in the house. But me providing free child care was so nice. It worked with the Bonus Family until it didn’t. Then my kids told me that a lot of her discipline was threatening to hit them and putting them in time outs for hours. I already knew that she expected my kids to come clean up after her kids because my kids are “more mature”.

I feel like almost every child care situation I have found has turned out to be shitty and abusive. I fear that it is happening because only shitty and abusive people want to be around me.

Only that isn’t true. I have friends who aren’t shitty and abusive. Well. I have people who want to talk to me for a few minutes or hours a year who aren’t shitty and abusive.

I feel like I should have known that my children would be treated badly by caregivers, as if it is a generational curse.

I don’t want to be bitter or angry or pissy with new people because I hate how this has all gone down.

But that means I have to lie about how I feel all the god damn time because I don’t trust people and I assume people are going to use me or treat me or my kids like crap.

M came through for my last birth. I need to never ever do anything again that puts me in such a vulnerable position. Because I can’t ever again need that much help. I can’t guarantee it. I am sure that people will help me in the future but they will help me randomly and when and how they feel like it and it won’t be based on my needs or issues. It will be about what makes them feel good that day.

That has to be ok. That has to be enough.

Which means I need to not try to be bigger. I need to not try to accomplish things. I need to just sit around and do nothing and wait for my kids to have needs because they will have needs and I am the only one who will be available to help them. I can’t ever believe anyone who tells me they will help again. If someone offers to be a penpal I need to to not believe them. If someone tells me they want us to come visit because they want to spend time with us I need to assume they are a liar.

I am so fucking grateful that Jenny said she has maybe a spare hour one day a week. Maybe. That is not consistent and I cannot count on it.

Thank you.

I hate that I need to assume that people are lying to me all the time. I need to assume that people are telling me what they wish was true, not what is true.

And I wonder why I feel depressed?

I really don’t want to live near the ocean. I don’t like it at all. I learned that, at least.

I can change how this story ends.

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Yesterday my children got a tiny taste of what I dealt with as a kid. The babysitters mother told me she would take the kids… but only if it was for pay because they are so hard. Ok, that part was fine with me. We agreed on $20/hour. I suggested three hours, she pushed for four. Hm. Ok. She sent me a long list of stuff she wanted me to pack and have ready for the kids (snacks, water bottles, clothing for the baby, all the stuff). It would have been a great list for a trip to the park. (She didn’t use any of the things she asked me to pack. The kids came back hungry and the baby was absolutely filthy. So why insist on having the supplies if you won’t use them?)

When she got here she said she was so excited. She was going to take the kids to Chuck E Cheese!! Isn’t that great! That way the kids will each have a hand stamp so they can’t get out of the building and she doesn’t have to stress herself out watching them! I was a bit dubious about that. The last CEC birthday party we went to a few years ago didn’t go that well because my kids have aged out already. But uhm… she didn’t really want to hear that when I tried mentioning it gently.

(She has told me over and over on this trip that she is not interested in hearing blunt truths. Either sugar coat it or don’t tell her at all. Uhm. That’s a point of view.)

When the kids came home they had stories. All of the stories are in line with behavior I have witnessed in milder form or they match up with stories that the babysitter has told so I believe my kids.

I sent the kids with $20 each to use for food or tokens. The food ended up being comped because the babysitters mother threw a tantrum about them not having gluten free pizza. She wouldn’t let the kids have that money for tokens. She made them spend their own money and she was very proud of herself when she handed me the money when they got back.

Apparently Eldest Child’s shoe broke in the first few minutes of them being there. She walked around on it for the whole time at CEC but as they were leaving the woman decided that it wasn’t acceptable and she made EC buy a new pair of shoes with her allowance. (The lady did contribute some, but… EC hated the shoes and they are physically uncomfortable and now she’s out her allowance money on shoes she will never wear again.)

But that’s the petty shit.

I don’t know what the fucking phrasing was, but she told Middle Child that he got more tokens than Eldest Child because EC wasn’t demonstrating enough gratitude. When there were an uneven number of pieces of pizza she told my kids that the child who behaved the best got the extra piece.

OH FUCK YOU AND THE FUCKING HORSE YOU RODE IN ON YOU GOD DAMN BITCH.

That’s the kind of shit she used to do to the foster kid she tried to adopt; he ended up punching holes in her walls because he couldn’t handle how controlling and manipulative she was. He was rehoused for his own safety. You have to be pretty fucking bad to have your foster kid taken away.

But my kids have never had stories like this before.

No wonder her daughter won’t talk to her anymore! She was telling me that she is very disappointed because her daughter won’t share any real feelings with her, she only presents a facade and she (the mother) wants to know the truth. I said, “Maybe telling you the truth isn’t safe.” “How dare you say that. Now you have upset me. You have to tell me something nice about myself now.”

I feel like letting her babysit was a desperation move. It was like letting fucking Kira watch my kids.

But I canceled dinner. And we aren’t seeing them again.

Before the CEC shit went down, we had been negotiating dinner tonight. She wanted to tell us to come over at 5 and swim and play for a few hours and then cook and then her husband would drive us home when he felt like it. Uhhhh no. If we come over at 5 we will be ready to eat, not play. We will be going home at 7 on the bus, not in your husband’s car because we will not have a car seat and we will not be breaking the law. “Well, you can try to assert your will with him, but people have died walking on that street so he may insist because he wants to protect you.”

Bitch I have taken my family all over the world without your fucking control. You don’t get to decide how or when I go anywhere.

So ok! I learned a lot on this stop in Hawaii.

I sat my kids down and explained that this kind of thing is why I come down on them so hard about lying. If they make a habit of lying to me, when bad things like this happen… I have to hear the other side of the story and try to find the truth that I can act on. If they are reliable narrators about what happens to them, when someone acts like this… ok we aren’t seeing them again and no I don’t need to hear her gaslighting bullshit.

This lady talks about how proud she is of herself because she was a single mother but she NEVER ASKED HER DAUGHTER TO TAKE CARE OF HER. Her daughter (the old babysitter) has stories like, “My mom entered her first depression when I was 5. I have spent my entire life making sure my mom eats, has her medicine, has she taken a shower…. I’m tired.”

I believe the babysitter and I believe my kids. I am not giving this woman a chance to tell her side of the story because I don’t fucking care.

You told my son that if his sister doesn’t demonstrate enough gratitude to adults that he should punish her by withholding the shared resources.

FUCK YOU WITH A FUCKING CHAIN SAW. THAT SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE YOU.

I had so many foster families treat me like that.

My kids don’t have to go back to that.

I told my kids that I can’t save them from bad things ever happening to them. There are going to be bad situations in the future where we can’t walk away and we will have to learn to cope. But this bitch? We don’t need to learn to cope with her lying and control and bullshit.

And the babysitter dropped off the map after making promises to my kids. Ok. We learned that our perception of these people was clouded by circumstances. If you change circumstances, people change. We don’t need to keep in touch any more.

This woman is constantly complaining to me that she can’t make any friends here because Hawaiians are racist.

You know what, lady? I think the problem is you.

It’s kind of nice to occasionally have clarity that my wrong decision was trusting someone I shouldn’t because they are the bad actor, not me.

I think she doesn’t like how I parent. My kids are free to share when they are bored or unhappy or when a gift was a flop.

I like that. I like that they tell me “Mom I really don’t want to be at Chuck E Cheese’s. The creepy figures bother me and the games aren’t fun.”

Oh, oh… but the pièce de résistance…. Eldest Child kinda got stuck in one of the climbing tubes. Because they are designed for little children and my 10 year old is bigger than most adult Asian women at this point. She’s 100% shopping in the adult department. She’s not over weight, she is going to be a very large person. Her body is perfectly proportioned and she’s fucking fine.

THAT FUCKING BITCH MADE FUN OF HER. “wow. You are so big. Even I could fit in there. hahahaha”

The bitch in question wears about a size 4. Her daughter is a 0 or a 2. My daughter is pretty pear shaped and size small pants are already getting tight–she’ll be in mediums (so probably a size 6 at the moment) in the next year. She is height/weight proportional.

YOU DON’T FUCKING MAKE FUN OF A KID BECAUSE THEY ARE GROWING UP YOU STUPID CUNT. I am so angry that if I saw her I might hit her. She fucking fat shamed my daughter.

You know what… fuck people.

Our plans for the weekend sound pretty fun to me. We are picking up a rental car in 5 days and we will explore the other side of the island and deal with all of our crap on our own.

I am more than capable.

I. do. not. need. you.

I feel like I’m going to stop breathing

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If you tell me where this post is linked (and I get to go verify it) I will send you $20. Who in the hell is causing me to get so many damn hits on this post?

Holy. Shit. This is the month. 18 days. 13 days till my baby turns 1. We aren’t having a party. I am definitely depressed. I don’t feel able to reach out to anyone if my life depends on it. I am leaving. I never get to ask for anything again.

I get these people and the folks who voluntarily ask to be part of our life. I don’t have the right to keep begging people to be in my life.

I think back to Eldest Child’s huge first birthday ten years ago. I thought we were going to be part of a big community. Well, when I stopped doing all the driving those people dropped me. Ok.

I feel so incredibly hurt by all of the people in the Bay Area who drove past me to help other people but fuck me I should do everything alone.

I am leaving partially because if you asked me for help I would show up. Even though you treat me like shit and I know it. Because that’s who I am. Thus I am moving to get the fuck away from your using ass.

“Aunties”. Fuck it.

I am so bitter.

There are a lot of days I wish that having kids wouldn’t have worked out so I could be dead already. I am so tired of feeling abandoned and unimportant. When I ask you for help and you tell me no but you drive even farther to help someone else you remind me of my mother. Anyone but me deserves help.

Fuck me. Why am I still here? Why haven’t I died already.

Things like: when I used to try hard to be part of the home school group I would find out that all of the major decisions for when and where to schedule big events were made at private “just a couple of friends” off shoots of the main group so that my schedule was never taken into consideration. “Well this is what works for us. You can either come or not come.” *hair flip*

Yeah. I see you there. Why don’t you go do all of your own work from now on.

You have no idea how much satisfaction I get from having over a dozen people tell me that the group sucked after I left. No shit mother fucker. That’s because you all suck and I tried to rescue you from how shitty you are but it was too much work. Go to hell.

I am not willing to invest in the new group at all. It’s too late. Not even in terms of time. I am angry and bitter and I owe none of you a god damn kind word let alone labor.

I feel sick to my stomach thinking about how much damage I have done to my body helping people. I drove to fucking Arizona and caused pre-term labor problems doing manual labor for someone who didn’t really appreciate me.

Because I’m stupid.

Because I don’t value myself.

Because I treat people allowing me to work for them as the same thing as love.

I mean, she did kind of appreciate me. But not enough to talk to me on a vacation I’m paying for when her more interesting boyfriend is present. Not enough to keep her promises. Hell, not enough for her to bother remembering that she made promises! Fuck me.

I really don’t want to feel bitter like this. It really doesn’t help that a lot of this is so old.

It dates back to when all of my siblings were good enough to stay with our parents and I couldn’t. Because I was too much trouble. I needed too much help. So go stay with people who hate you and talk all day long about how much you are shit.

We will never go camping again because how dare I act like able bodied adults showing up and expecting a disabled adult to do everything for them is rude.

How dare I act like I am anything other than a menial serf here to do your labor for you. You are the good one. The one who grew up with a family and parents. You deserve good things. I should wait on you because that is the natural order of things.

Waste people don’t matter. They should serve the people who matter.

Fuck you. And fuck you. And fuck YOU with a chainsaw.

Fuck you and fuck you and fuck you. I am so mad. I am so bitter. I am so angry.

Fuck Marcie. Fuck Chris. Fuck Laura. Fuck Kira. Fuck Deborah. Fuck Alex. Fuck Desiree. Fuck Jen. Fuck fucking Tamy. Even though it hurts so bad I feel like my chest will implode: fuck Sarah.

You treated me badly and I did not deserve that. I can come up with excuses for all of you. Your feelings are so much more important than mine. I can justify you dropping me or ignoring me or lying to me or not keeping your promises or you thinking that everyone else is more important…

BUT FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.

I get to be mad. I shouldn’t take it out on everyone else in my life but frankly talking about it helps me not do that. It helps me compartmentalize it.

I am angry with these people because they actually did things to hurt me. Maybe if I name them I will stop feeling like I am a monster who is blasting everyone in the world equally even though most people don’t deserve it.

I wanted some people more than others. It wasn’t returned. I feel like the problem came partially from me being stupid and allowing myself to like them so much. I shouldn’t have. They truly weren’t worth it.

That’s the trouble. These people make me feel like I am unworthy of being alive and none of them deserve that power. They aren’t worth me feeling this bad for this many years. I have cried for literal years over every person on that list of names. Because they didn’t love me like I loved them. Maybe the trouble is I pick selfish assholes. Maybe part of the trouble is I know that I have to get very angry with those people; I have to move; I have to create distance or I will be pathetic and crawl back and continue to beg these fuckers to love me.

And they aren’t worth it.

I spoke too soon.

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Well dinner sucked. Fucking grandmother. So grandmother didn’t order enough food. And then grandfather was encouraging everyone to take as much as they wanted! Eat more! And then I realized that everyone who was supposed to eat… was arriving staggered. So I ate the last fucking burrito approximately 3 minutes before the last person arrived.

So I looked like a huge selfish asshole. It was my second burrito. I really would have preferred to eat three because they were small. I’m fucking nursing a baby and the only lunch they had around during the day was cheese, bread, and greens. Oh, and cookies. So by dinner I was fucking hungry.

Then the room mate was helping to clean up after dinner and he and the grandmother stood around and loudly talked about how rude and disrespectful my children were because they didn’t offer to clean up the kitchen and do everyone’s dishes.

Oh, side note: I did everyone’s fucking dishes after lunch.

So I was expected to clean up after lunch and my children were expected to clean up after dinner.

Other fucking note: we had intended to come into town and see the one brother. It turned into a fucking family reunion with alllll the siblings and their entire families expected to show up. Oh. So it was a lot of people in a small space and everyone is super touchy about shit being messed with. But they also encourage the kids to touch things. But then they get mad at the kids.

This is such a head fuck and I am so god damn angry.

My kids do a fuck ton of house work. But no, they don’t show up at other peoples houses for a meal and offer to do all the cleaning. That has not been part of their home training.

That’s not something that most of the people we visit would allow or want. BUT HOW FUCKING DARE MY KIDS NOT SHOW UP AND WAIT ON THEIR FUCKING GRANDMOTHER. DON’T I KNOW THAT THEY NEED TO BE TRAINED TO BE A WOMAN IN THE KITCHEN GETTING ALL THE GOSSIP. THAT’S HOW FAMILIES ARE FORMED. THAT’S HOW CHILDREN LEARN HISTORY. CLEARLY I DON’T CARE ABOUT THEM BEING PART OF A FAMILY.

Fucking woman just pissed me all the way off. I am so tempted to ask her to step outside with me before breakfast and tell her, “If you can’t keep your viper’s tongue quiet for the few hours you see my children you will never see them again. Do you understand me?”

But we are here for someone else’s tragedy.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I fucking hate this woman and I fucking hate Texas and I am so fucking pissed that I am fucking here.

Oh, and my cousin called me this week. I returned the call yesterday. She asked if she could travel with us to be our au pair. Uhhhhhhh that would blow up. That would explode and go poorly and then I would lose the only tenuous relationship I have with an adult relative. No. No. No. I can’t do that. I’m too fucking old to pretend that something like that has a chance at success.

I can’t see a way for us to recover from that mistake. I couldn’t live with Sarah or Jenny. If I couldn’t get my asshole into check to live with either of them…. I don’t see a way of it working with my cousin. Not with a bunch of international travel. Not when she is flakey and undependable and couldn’t get on a fucking plane to see me for Christmas. No.

So I feel like an asshole for understanding these limits. But holy shit they exist.

I feel so full of rage and hate I want to explode. I want to punch that fucking bitch in the face. We came out here to be nice. And this is your response. Why in the fuck are we nice to you?

I am going to have to say something to her. I am going to have to say, “We will not be back for many years. Because of your mouth. If you open it again, it’ll be forever.”

This is a trip, not a vacation.

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I am pissed. This has not involved rest for me. I needed rest really badly. But my kids decided that instead I get to spend all day on academics. If I don’t spend all this time on academics they will fall further behind and EC is already in “catch up” mode so falling further behind isn’t ok.

Catching up was the plan. But they lied about their progress for a quarter of a year and that was a time period where they should have been busting ass. They will be caught up soon. But I am going to be on duty until they are caught up. That sucks. I really needed rest. Oh well.

And we are in one of those developmental “disequilibrium” times. Which pretty much means my kids are squirrely as fuck, arguing over everything, and not being good about being responsible for their bodies in general. It is normal, appropriate, and developmental. Honestly it is probably part of why they tried lying like this.

But I told EC that she is now on her third chance. If she ever lies to me about academics again we are done home schooling. This is a privilege, not a right. If I permit her to lie to me and slack off like this… I am harming her. I am neglecting her. I will not neglect my children. If you need to be in school so someone else can ride your ass… fine. We can do that.

But I think Stanford is right that she is going to develop emotional problems. And that’s going to be her burden to bear in life and not mine. I can’t make this easy enough for you that you never have to try and do work. Just…. no.

The food is good. I feel upset and alienated so I can’t tell if people are being work-nice or actually nice so mostly I’m just not talking to anyone. Because I feel bad in myself about myself.

I feel so incredibly disappointed and angry. I feel absolutely devastated that the only way I can have any kind of vacation is if I schedule it without my kids.

That feels so bad.

Because if my kids are included they will find ways to wreck my day.

EC is absolutely capable of doing 6 pages of math in 4 hours. Most of this trip it has been more like 1 page in 3 hours because she is pissy she is being forced to work.

This sucks so much. I am so upset.

And nooooooooooooooooooo medication.

What a great vacation.

It is not helping in any way shape or form that the first flight to get here was full of verbal abuse from strangers. I was called all manner of awful names. A bitch told me I was a moo cow who should be back in my pen. There was this asshole who spent the entire flight going through offensive stereotypes trying to get a reaction. He didn’t shut the fuck up. Noah and the kids slept through it. I had to stay awake to be able to react to the baby stirring instantly. That sucked.

So I’m kinda hating people and feeling hostile and angry.

I have some really big feelings about appearance stuff right now.

And that’s not getting into the group of hispanic men in the airport who spent a lot of time ranting about how people like my family are ruining the world. I can’t say they are wrong.

I feel like dog shit.

Home. And Petty.

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I’ve spent most of the last week grateful I didn’t have a computer. I would have written some incredibly unkind things. I wanted to stoop to a level of petty that would be darn near epic. Why?

Because people get all twisted up in my head. I’m never responding to one thing at a time.

I’ve spent the last few years in therapy doing a tremendous amount of work around the fact that the Bonus Mama triggered all of my “like my sister” buttons, minus the sexual assaults. She has quite a few of the same problems and in my ridiculous codependency I’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to fix her problems.

It is a gift from the universe that I am now done with that set of behaviors. I never need go clean her house again. I never need try and help her children emotionally cope with neglect. I never need try and pretend that I am unaffected by the physical violence in her marriage again.

I am free.

I think this is a positive step in my life. I need to stop trying to cover for broken people. It’s a real problem I have.

I need to stop investing my life into trying to make up for people who won’t even admit that I’m doing a back breaking amount of work for them. It’s stupid. It’s self defeating. I have spent a lot of time and energy and money over the past few years trying to do something for the ephemeral child self I still have. Other people helped me so I helped her kids.

But I’ve given what I can and it’s time to move on.

People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Part of what this relationship came into my life to teach me is that when my children say, “I don’t want to associate with this person because she is mean” I need to never overrule them again. I need to never ignore such a signal again. I feel deeply ashamed of myself for telling my children to cope with behavior that made them feel diminished because I wanted weekend babysitting. That was wrong of me. My behavior was selfish and disgusting.

I was wrong.

I will never deliberately send my children to the home of someone who speaks to them with contempt again. I. Was. Wrong.

Hopefully I have learned the lesson I needed to learn and in the future when someone triggers my “like my sister” buttons I will run like my tampon string is on fire.

No more hoarders. No more people who refuse to acknowledge that they are literally physically, emotionally, and mentally unequipped to take care of their children while they brag about how great they are. No more people who are in a marriage that involves domestic violence, gaslighting, stone walling, and screaming matches that the children can hear only to turn around and tell me that if the marriage is destroyed it’ll be my fault. Sure. Because y’all had none of these problems the day I arrived. Right. Who is the one with the convenient memory? I write down all my bad shit so I can’t claim it didn’t happen. Remember how I’ve begged you to document your DV for 7 years because shit like this comes to a head and you always said, “But I don’t want to remember.”

Sure. If your marriage is destroyed it’ll be my fault. Yup. Right. Because I’m the one sitting there filled with contempt. Yup. That’s me.

Take your guilt trip to someone who is stupid enough to be buying. I’m fresh out of money for such bullshit.

I am free.

Do you know when I freaked out and started demanding that your kids be put in school the fuck away from you? When you took them to Moana and came home crying because you believe your children are incapable of understanding and appreciating the story. Guess what? Your kids are capable of understanding. You are incapable of teaching and your children need to spend time with competent teachers who can teach them. Stop fucking over your children because you are fucking broken and you want your children to be as limited as you are so you feel comfortable. Your children have more potential than you do. Let them go be taught by someone with actual ability to teach and they’ll be ok.

The worst thing that ever happened to you was someone telling you that your IQ is high. You use that number as an excuse for why you are better than people as you cannot fulfill basic life functions. It’s sad and pathetic and your fucking children need to be educated by people who have the humility to say, “I don’t know everything so I’d better study.” You think that if you buy all the books and don’t read them it’s just as good.

Your children deserve better than to be locked in your company all the time.

And after this I need to never ever write about your family again.

I’m done.

Calm or productive

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This morning started out a little rough for me. I asked EC a couple of weeks ago to cull the multiple boxes of school stuff from last year and pick out which items she wants to put in her portfolio. I guess she didn’t understand what I meant. She threw away all of her previous work from grades K-3 and she threw away her sibling’s portfolio work (only kindergarten) and she filled the portfolio’s with random memorabilia and knick knacks. I didn’t discover this till today, so there’s no chance of climbing through the recycling and getting stuff back.

I about blew a gasket.

I didn’t call names. I didn’t scream about how terrible they were. But I did scream that I was very angry. When I calmed down I said (perhaps inappropriately) that a lot of the reason I am so meticulous about keeping this documentation is because I need to make sure no one can ever say I’m not educating my kids and take them away. EC internalized this as “I threw away the portfolio documentation and that means I’m going to be taken away.” We’ve since talked about how there aren’t actually legal requirements to keep this documentation and my fear of CPS is very irrational given that we are unlikely to be looked at as a family at risk. We talked about the difference between a rational fear and an irrational fear.

I think we’ve all calmed down. But I’ve been the opposite of productive since then. Because I need to put most of my mental and emotional energy into calming down. I uhhh also neglected to take any pot till 1pm, which doesn’t help.

Noah says I didn’t cross a line but the line was getting reeeeeal close and I was teetering.

It’s weird having another adult in the house to walk around following me as I rant. It makes me think I’m glad he missed the first three years of my parenting because I was a much bigger bitch.

My poor children.

I sent out another email looking for a therapist for EC. She has fallen through the cracks in the past few months because the folks who looked possible for her didn’t pan out. I need to get that in line though. It’s not ok that she justifies me screaming at her. That’s fucked up and not ok and she needs to have her own therapist who can help her feel like no one should be screaming at her. Not even her mother.

She isn’t always ok with me screaming at her. I don’t get a free pass. But if I’m yelling at her about something she really did she will often say, “Oh I deserve this one.”

NO. YOU MAY DESERVE TO HAVE SOMEONE TALK TO YOU SHARPLY BUT NO ONE DESERVES TO BE SCREAMED AT UNLESS THEY ARE COMMITTING ASSAULT. SCREAMING IS A SIGN THAT SOMEONE HAS LOST CONTROL AND THAT’S BULLSHIT.

She needs a therapist. I say it to her all the damn time. I phrase it as, “I lost control and I was wrong.”

She doesn’t want me to feel bad.

That’s broken and we need to fix it. I get to feel bad for my shitty actions, too.

An interaction

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Holy tomatoes on toast I hurt. So this’ll be brief.

I had an interesting interaction with a dude today. So I found a guy through my massage therapist who specializes in personal training to help people with injuries/problems. I figure that if I can’t get a doctor to prescribe honest to fucking god physical therapy for me so that I can heal some of my injuries… I can hunt on the outskirts of the system. I can find someone who doesn’t really mesh with the gate kept, abusive system.

Sure, I can try this out.

Thing is, he’s a white guy. You know how I am about getting my hackles up with white guys. Especially athletic white guys. I am hostile until I have a reason not to be.

But I desperately need someone who can do what this guy advertises. So I gotta put my personal shit in a box and shove it in a closet and see if I can handle dealing with him.

Sigh. Fuck being a grown up.

So I gotta say, he has an aura. He’s pretty clearly an orphan. The loss of all family came up several times in the conversation. He’s got that… edge of “I have to be cheerfully polite in order to earn money to survive because there’s not a person in the world who values me enough to support me but I’m so sad.”

I mean, he seemed genuinely sweet and caring. I’m not denigrating that at all. He seems incredibly sincere. He wants to help. And he wears grief like a mantle. He advertises his loss openly on his skin. He is reminded all day every day. Grief, even if you smile, leaves tracks on your face.

But he did something that crossed a boundary and it was interesting. I didn’t call it out. I didn’t assert the boundary so in one sense… he didn’t cross a boundary he nonverbally negotiated a boundary change and I didn’t rebuff it to indicate where my boundary actually was.

To be more clear: he asked me about my arm tattoo. I explained it and started tearing up, like I do sometimes. Suicide is sad, yo. And… he leaned in and gave me an incredibly respectful, incredibly gentle, incredibly touching hug. It was the hug of someone who works with bodies and knows how to make touch 100% NON SEXUAL, OKAY?!?!?!

He reminds me just a tad of Taylor. One of the few men I trust almost as much as Noah.

It was absolutely incredible to realize that in a moment of indecision of “should I panic and fight or should I accept this as connection?” in my head my brain wrapped around a man who has loved me as a friend for a long time.

I didn’t feel scared.

I felt uncertain. I felt like I needed to make a decision. I felt like I had a chance to… figure out how this is going to go. Is he allowed to touch me?

I desperately want this man to help me learn how to hold my body in ways that will hurt me less. I need to trust him. I need to trust that he is going to touch me in appropriate ways or this just isn’t going to work.

This, now that I think about it, is scary as shit.

I wasn’t scared in that moment. I just felt it as a moment of choice, “Am I going to surrender to this process or not?”

I used to lash out at dance teachers who wanted to correct my form. I wasn’t there to look perfect I was there to have a chance to talk to people for 2-4 minutes while I did something more healthy than be a slug staring at my god damn computer.

This is different. I know what my goals are here. I need this process.

I need to figure out how to be in less pain.

So maybe he didn’t cross a boundary. But maybe he and I will have a funny conversation about how I normally react to people in a few weeks and we will laugh. He will probably apologize and feel embarrassed. He strikes me as that sort.

It felt like Joey. The 7th Day Adventist boy who was best friends with my brother Tommy and with whom I later lived. (We were both boarders in a house owned by someone at the church–it wasn’t like we were romantic or anything. I was 13.) He was the one who took me to church and taught me to sing about Jesus loving me no matter what.

I know I have a lot of issues with hating white men because some of them have been complete motherfucking pieces of shit.

But some of them genuinely don’t suck. #Notallmen and all that.

I really hope I’m not making a mistake. But here I am documenting it so that in the future I will have to remember: I made a choice.

I’m trying to surrender to a process.

Please, if any deity exists, let this not be an awful thing.

I’ve stacked the deck in my favor by receiving this personal training with my kids in the room and my husband in the house.

I know how the patriarchy works.

Fuck.

Do you understand how much of my childhood people denied? Something huge and dramatic would happen and folks flat denied it. I need to make sure I can never rewrite history.

I did what I did. Here, I wrote it down.

This is not going to be a lot of fun, but ok.

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We have been threatened with a lawsuit. We technically were told we had to respond by today or we would be sued. My response? I’m contacting lawyers and journalists about SLAPP lawsuits. Guess what? In California if I press a counter-SLAPP lawsuit my legal fees will be reimbursed. That right there might be enough reason to never move out of California. Bless you, California.

I’m not looking forward to this. I wanted my legal stress to be over. But guess what I care about waaaaaaaaaaay the fuck more than I care about ending my legal stress today? Being able to describe what happens to me as accurately as I can.

If you don’t like what I say about you, try changing your behavior. A lawsuit isn’t going to do the trick.

I have money. If I have to take out another personal loan to cover legal fees I’ll do it.

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.

Shame is complicated

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Well. I am starting to set up conversations with people. It’s going to take a few days to schedule all of them. Scheduling is a moving target. And I’m trying to figure out how to build the wave. Looks like the first chat will be the easiest and least stressful. The next scheduled one is the one I’m most anxious about. Then I don’t know where the rest of them fit in yet. I need to leave time for crying after these.

It won’t be someone else’s fault I’m crying. I do it from stress.

I’m scared. I feel like I still… know my boundaries when I run into them and have to cut to stay “ok” in my day to day life. I don’t realize until I’m way way way over capacity “Oh I should have stopped a while ago.” Then what do you do? Because if you cut to cope because you are over capacity PEOPLE ACT LIKE THE WORLD IS ENDING. OH NO. LET’S THROW EVERYTHING IN THE AIR AND CHANGE EVERYTHING BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS WRONG.

Or maybe I was a little over my rev limit?

Fuck. I don’t know.

I feel bad that my ability to cope is so limited. It is a lot bigger than it used to be, but I still have limits.

It really complicates things that interacting with children (and their uhm questionable fucking ability to respect body autonomy) changes how I can handle adults. And that is so variable and it feels so incredibly unfair. Like, if Noah had a date scheduled after the day/night I had with the kids yesterday…

Oh god I would have flipped out. But when you are dealing with other people you need to schedule commitments and keep them. So my boundaries with other people aren’t allowed to be fuzzy and squiggy like that.

But my life is fuzzy and squiggy and variable and I am not someone who can manufacture consistency for another adult’s sake.

I have a hard enough time providing consistency for kids. That is my limit.

I have a hard time being patient and giving and loving with adults when I’ve had 12+ hours out of the last 24 with a kid screaming in my fucking face and hitting everyone. One of the kids had a hard day this week. It happens. These are tiny little people who have a lot going on with their sensory systems. There are days they are just fucking overwhelmed and they are obnoxious as fuck to deal with.

At the end of that I have no patience to give to grown ups. I really don’t. And that’s not fair. I feel like a fucking asshole but if I am activated that many times in a day I literally just can’t turn around and give to an adult. I will flip out and start screaming and breaking things.

I need to go hide away from people after that. Because I’m frazzled as fuck. I got through it without being mean to the kid. I didn’t scream. I wasn’t unduly rough. I didn’t punish harshly. I did enforce a metric fuck ton of time outs. But that seems appropriate and useful. Stop hitting people. It’s not ok.

I’ve seen a bunch of kids go through phases like this. It isn’t about a kid sucking or being bad. It’s a hard phase and it takes patience, love, and correction correction correction.

I get so tired.

I feel like an asshole playing the “traumatized body/brain” card a lot. But the reality is that my central nervous system is shot. I have an acute stress disorder. These things are noticeable strain. I do have limits. Things that activate my emotional system… I can only be calm through so many. Once I get scared enough… I’m not physically capable of thinking and processing the way I must in order to act like a fully present adult. My range of tolerance is wider than average (according to the shrinks I’ve been seeing for a long time) but it isn’t infinite and I start off so much more distressed than average.

I don’t want to take things out on people because I am moody and variable. That means that mostly I assume to defaulting I should offer nothing sustained at all. Because I might fail.

So far Pam is the only sustained once a week dinner guest who can actually deal with my emotional variance and the fact that sometimes you show up and I’m screamtastic and fussy and… no fun.

Everyone else stops coming.

And Pam is leaving the state. Eventually. She keeps threatening. We’ll see.

When I feel ok I have a lot to give. I have patience, love, energy, tolerance… when I don’t feel ok I feel like a bank vault. You don’t open that easily or for fun. It’s fucking hard and takes a sequence of codes and… then only take out what you fucking have to what the fuck close that fucker already.

This is why I don’t want “polyamory”. I’m not good enough at being consistent enough to be a dependable part of a group of people like that. I feel ashamed of myself, but it is true. I have very good friends who sometimes want to have sex with me. And I love them a lot. I will move mountains for my friends. When I can.

When I can’t… I fucking hope you have other support people too. Because I will fail you. I give you what I have to spare. That is what I can give.

I have signed on for being the sustainer of my children. I have signed on for helping to sustain Noah, with the strong caveat that he knows sometimes he has to catch himself. (Hey–he can’t always catch me either. Seems fair.) I have signed on to be a consistent source of non-continuous sustaining for my Bonus Kids. I’m one of Their Grownups. I like that. I like that I did manage to find someone who thinks I am worth the trouble of coming to because their kids need someone like me.

I’m grateful I managed to find folks for that. It wasn’t looking like that was going to work out. It was looking like I was not worth that much effort from anyone.

I’m really grateful things have gone this well for 6 years with my Bonus Kids.

I would never ever ever ever ever play with or sleep with the parents of my Bonus Kids because I can’t fuck that up. That’s like shitting in the waterhole. It’s really stupid long-term.

I fuck up a lot of sexual relationships. I fuck up a lot of non-sexual relationships too… but I fuck up sexual relationships faster. I run hot and cold and that hurts people.

Even I need to understand some boundaries.

I know many dozens of non-breeding long-term polyamorous adults. I have never been capable of the emotional consistency I see them enact. That’s bothered me my entire adult life. That is part of what reminds me of how broken I am. I know so many people who can do it. Who can be consistent and dependable in their emotional reactions.

My emotional reaction to thing A is impacted by thing B and thing C and thing D and thing E and I don’t fucking know how that will go on any given day.

I’m more predictable and calm than ever in the past. How come this progress never ever ever ever feels good enough?

Ok, I just thought of a piece of why Noah dating is so difficult for me…

I always know, every day, that at the end of the day I have to handle the extent of my emotional variance on my own. Noah helps a lot more than anyone else but he has limits. His manufactured cheerfulness is part of what he does for me. That consistency of affect helps me more than words can say. I calibrate off of him. I try to match him. I model after him. When he isn’t here and I am flailing… it’s hard. Even if he can’t sit down to process with me for hours, being around him is regulating.

If I am going to leave more space in my life for not depending on him to be physically present and I know that he is leaving me to go do something fun with someone else…

I need to lock down hard on not depending on him. Because I will resent the fact that I will sometimes have really shitty days and he will be out having fun instead of helping me. Because I built a life that was very near my carrying capacity and then I added shit and sometimes I get really overwhelmed and… I don’t have enough help. Getting less is hard.

I do encourage him to go do things with friends. Because I feel guilty as shit that he doesn’t have much of a life. He works and has the social life I bring to him, mostly. I don’t know if he’d be more motivated to seek out more of a social life if I provided less of one? I do invite a lot of forking people over. He’s not just hiding at home with his family or working. But not much is of his initiation.

But dating is… different. I feel bad about that but it is.

It isn’t fair that I don’t really believe someone can treat me like I’m important and be seriously in love with someone else. I think people can fuck their friends and still be nice to me, sure. But be really in love? Not really.

Love means so many things. What is love?

I will lose time and support in that equation. Because love may be infinite but time is not. I’m doing fairly well… because I have the level of support I have. If it decreased I would… have a hard time.

If I have to spend yet more time alone with my kids regulating myself… that has a cost. The road trip demonstrated that to me quite clearly.

I wasn’t all that nice by the end. Not really. The kids were so glad to get home.

Both kids have commented a lot recently that I’m doing better. They have individually and collectively commented on the fact that I’m not screaming anywhere near as much as I used to and that is really nice.

I’m scared to rock this boat.

I’m scared that being selfish with my energy and only wanting to give it to my kids like this means I have no business pursuing nonmonogamy because I am just using my friends and I’m not offering good trades.

If I’m going to do this… I need to get more comfortable with canceling going forward. I can’t pay the cost of doing something I don’t want to do in the moment any more. And that’s complicated.

I’m not dependable enough and… that makes me feel like I shouldn’t be doing this at all. Maybe swinger parties. Other than that I’m too much of a selfish asshole to date.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck

This is part of my transactional shit. Noah and I talk very explicitly about what we trade. What kinds of energy expenditures we each need to receive. What are our priorities and which can be dropped when things get tight?

I don’t have enough to trade other people. Not really. I have “what I have going spare today” and often that is so little.

The only consistent front to Noah dating that I can manufacture consistently is space. I can’t promise closeness. I can’t promise loving reconnection. If I have to cope on my own then I need to fucking cope on my own and that is messy and hard. Because mostly how I cope is to be pretty fucking hard on myself. That is how I have come this far.

I did not get this far on compassionate self acceptance. I got this far from being a fucking dictator with my body who doesn’t give a shit what I’m feeeeeeling.

Just work, bitch.

But Noah really wants me to be sunny for him. I can’t do that when I’m coping on my own. It is variable and inconsistent and happens randomly. That’s how it has always been. He is spoiled by how consistent I have been able to be while bouncing off of him for hours a day.

That’s from you. That’s from modeling off of you. When I lose you…

Noah teaches me how to be nice. I can hear it in his voice. When he errs towards nastiness it feels like an instrument being played off key and I instantly mention that he’s harsh. He stops, gets this weird look on his face, and tries again.

I think that is a lot of what has allowed me to be as stable as I’ve been in the last ten years. He works so hard to model it.

When I lose my model I fuck up so much more. That doesn’t feel like a fair burden. And, I know this is bullshit, but I’ve had a hard time with how much he works. I’m not supposed to feel like that is a choice to be away but that’s been hard. I’ve had to be very conscious and deliberate around not being an asshole to him over that. It’s not a rational reason to be mean to him and I’ve had to work on it because it is triggering to me.

It has taken a lot of time and effort to be truly supportive and not kind of an asshole about how much he works. I think I’m pretty good now, but it wasn’t easy.

Noah is the person who makes me feel safe. That’s not fair. I know I should “feel safe in myself”. Whatever. I don’t. I never have. I spend a lot of time feeling like I’d like to vibrate out of my fucking body to get away from myself because I am the problem. I am the one who brings so much pain on myself.

I am the one who can’t behave consistently enough to be worthy of love.

Maybe if I were someone who could say, “Today is a bad day for a date… you should reschedule” I would be able to handle him dating without wanting to scratch his fucking face off when he comes home all excited and I had a shitty day with a side of shit salad. But I am not capable of doing that kind of thing. I’ll put my head down and tell him to do what he wants to do and then I’ll need three days away from him because I hate him so much.

It isn’t fair. Or rational. Or whatever. I know.

I have never had a time in my life when I was not giving to other people pretty much at the extent of what I had to give. I’ve never had a time when I was just… idling. I’m tired. I have hard days with this caregiving crap.

Noah is tired too. His job isn’t easy. He comes home to us.

I’m sorry I am not good at letting you have other people in your life who are more dependable and worthy.

That’s something Noah brings up a lot. I’m really insecure about the fact that everyone he has wanted to get involved with since we got married is just… so mellow. He brings it up really frequently how irrational I am because these are incredibly non-threatening people. They are not drama.

I’m the problem. It never comes from someone else. Just me.

But he also doesn’t want to deal with the fact that giving him space to go be with people who are not worthless pieces of shit means that I am going to spend a few days hiding to deal with the fact that I don’t really like being the problem, the drama, the variable one who just can’t get her shit together.

I feel embarrassed that I fucking exist.

Just stop crying about things that shouldn’t make you cry you stupid, whiny bitch.

None of these people should make me cry.

Being alone makes me cry.

Then why do I need to go be alone once he comes back?

Because I had to hold it together in front of the kids and I need space to recover from that facade. I can’t model off of you when I need to react to you and I have not been allowed to do so even a little bit all day. I needed to pretend all day that I was fine and everything was fine and I don’t mind lots of extra alone time with the kids, sure why not.

I have to pay the piper for that later.

And I’m not supposed to take it out on you. That’s not fair either. I can’t let my tone of voice get shitty. So I need to be alone. In order to not take my emotional variance out on you I need to be alone.

I’m told that my “yelling” by having a harsh tone counts just as much as when I escalate in volume and start screaming.

So yeah. I need a lot of alone time.

Even though I don’t decompress very well alone. I can’t decompress in the presence of the person I am feeling activated because of. I can’t use you to calm down when I am upset because of you. That’s what I mean when I say that it is losing my safe person. If I’m crying because I had to spend more hours manufacturing sustaining cheerfulness alone because you wanted to go fuck someone else… I can’t be in a room with you. I just can’t.

I know we are already talking about several steps down the line from this. I know.

I feel like I should have some idea of what my feelings are given the conversations I’m going to have soon. Fuck my stomach hurts.

I don’t have enough to trade. I have no right to even be having these discussions.

I feel like shit.

Luckily the first conversation will happen this weekend and will actually be the lowest stress one of the bunch. I need to finish scheduling them. Oh golly.

*head desk*

If only I wanted to fuck fewer people this would be easier. Or Noah. Either of us, really.

Something occurs to me: a lot of this comes down to… I don’t ask for additional support on the really hard days. I just don’t. You have to just show up and see that I need it and provide it. Or it will be invisible to you. If Noah is going to be present less, he will see a lot less. Which will be massive in my life. That will be a huge reduction in support. Because I will not be capable of asking for more support in other ways. I just… that’s a thing. That’s a very known thing.

It all comes back to being my fault. Everything would be fine if I were less fucked up.

Words and asking

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

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

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

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

And that backfires. Like such arrangements do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But there is no fair.

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

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

I am so weird about boundaries.

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

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

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

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

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

That won’t be public.

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

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

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

We get one shot at happily ever after.

No pressure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is just a thing.

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

It’s complicated.

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

I am so tired.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is so complicated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m having feelings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does sustainable mean?

What is a need and what is a want?

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

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

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

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

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

Hubris is dangerous.

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

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

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

No pressure.

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

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

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

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

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

Where is the line?

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

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

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

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

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

Sex.

Sex is so annoying.

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

I really do.

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

Yeah. It is.

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

And pain.

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t like anyone that much.

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

Oh JesusFuckingChrist No.

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

I owe my family better than that.

See how the owe is complicated?

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

Rear view mirror

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I often discover my boundaries when I see them in the rear view mirror. In the past day I’ve had the disconcerting experience of really seeing what it means to see someone else’s boundary in the rear view mirror.

Whoops. Oh. Shit.

I have some very serious repair work to do about the last three months.

Yeah. I did that.

Good grief I am insecure.

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You know… it would be super awesome if in some decade of marriage Noah and I got to the point of being able to say, “We need an epic 9 hour processing day because I HAVE FEELINGS” without the awful screaming. That’d be great. But this is like fight number 3? 4? 5? since we got married. So as bad as it is that we scream the way we do sometimes (and we are both assholes) it is rare and we apologize profusely and get through years of processing afterwards. So it’s not great. But it is unfortunately kinda effective?

We’ve been talking all day. It’s 5pm. We have not been apart for a solid 10 minutes today.

Yeah this whole “I don’t want to follow rules” thing is at an end. We gots rulez. Rulez and rulez and rulez.

I have this horrifying habit of not knowing where my boundaries are until I see them in the rear view mirror. This is a distinctly different problem now than it was earlier in my life because these days we are experimenting with people I have deep love and affection for. That means fucking up is way higher stakes.

There is absolutely no one involved in our lives right now who it would be ok for me to hurt with my flailing. No one.

Fuck.

That’s complicated. Because my boundaries and limits are squiggy and weird.

Like… I don’t want either of us to have a date in the house again. It’s not that I’m mad at the person who came over. I’m not. But I kinda wanted to cancel my date yesterday and stay home and mope because that was just where I was and I didn’t feel like I could because Noah had a date and… that’s not great on a lot of levels. I went to a date when I really wasn’t in the mood and I wasn’t nearly nice enough to my date and at the end I had a meltdown.

Seriously dude. Don’t ask if you need ear plugs to have sex with me. That’ll make me cry the whole way home.

I mean, I’m not overwhelmingly mad at you either. But I’m not going to be able to shake that off and go back to fun time. I can’t.

I’m really sorry that I’m so sensitive. I know I’m a baby.

But I’m 34 fucking years old and I think the chance of me getting over that hot button this decade is at zero.

Also: let’s say this plainly… I’m a selfish piece of shit. I’m dating people because without having sex with more than one person… I don’t really get off. And that *sucks*. That sucks for me and it makes me really resentful of Noah long term because he has no such trouble. I don’t know why I’m wired this way but I am. I have put a good solid college effort into trying to be compatible with monogamy and you know what… it doesn’t work. I just stop orgasming. It’s awful. This is a fact Noah and I have talked about a lot. It’s a problem.My therapist has been tracking this. It’s a problem.

But Noah isn’t having the same problem. So why in the fuck does he need to go off and date?

That’s what my selfish piece of shit self says at least.

So Noah is going to have one date a month. At a party. Because when Noah goes to our friends’ houses to have sex that means I then have feelings about going back to their house and that is not fair at all to our friends.

It isn’t that I need to be the only one touching Noah’s dick. That’s not it.

I’m weird about houses and personal space. I don’t mind him fucking people at parties. Not whether I’m there and not when I’m not. I don’t know why this works this way for me but after a couple of months of trying things this time and years of experience in the past….

I feel comfortable saying I have 0 issue with group sex with both of us (even in our house). I have a small problem with party sex I’m not involved in as far as I don’t want to sit and watch. I have a huge problem, apparently, with sex at peoples houses. Which makes me a fucking hypocrite because I don’t mind that I do it.

I was frankly shocked that Daddy fucked me. He hasn’t in over a decade. I didn’t expect that at all. I didn’t say no and I’m not upset but I didn’t go to his house expecting that even a little. We’ve had a tease relationship for over a decade. So I didn’t really stop and think about how I feel about having sex with him in a house where my children go. If I had thought about it hard in advance…

I feel very uncomfortable about the fact that Noah had sex in a house where I take my kids. I’m not mad at him or the person he had sex with. I just…

Now I’m going to think about that. And…

I rarely know what my boundaries are until I see them in the rear view mirror.

I know it doesn’t matter that they had sex and my kids go to that house once a year. It’s not a big deal.

Only it makes my stomach hurt a lot.

I have been emotionally unstable my entire god damn life. I have to take that into consideration when I decide what boundaries are appropriate for my life. It isn’t likely to just evaporate now. I need boundaries that allow me to go through life without feeling like I’m going to puke. (Especially because I just god damn started a medication that has a side effect of nausea and I need to be able to notice that.)

I don’t think anyone did anything wrong. I had not asked for any limits in any of these areas to begin with and not a single person broke a rule or was rude or bad or anything like that.

I just have these feelings. I’m not saying this is rational.

It’s really weird. I genuinely don’t mind Noah having sex at parties. It doesn’t make my stomach hurt. I kinda walk by the scene once or twice to wave and establish that everyone involved still likes everyone else and it’s cool.

God Noah playing with someone on my couch makes me cry and cry and cry and cry. That’s where I cuddle my kids.

(I’M NOT MAD AT YOU dear friend who is reading this.)

But I would be freaking out more if it had been in the bed. Yeah. Not in the house.

I had a hard time moving into this house. Noah bought this house for hunting. A whole parade of women came through here and that has been pretty hard for me. It took years before I stopped crying about just being the latest slut in the house. This is a thing.

I need it to not be in the house. I’m weird. It’s not that anyone is doing anything wrong. It’s not that I don’t want him to play with the people he’s playing with. Shit, he couldn’t pick nicer or safer or more awesome people. I really like the people he’s playing with.

I’m sorry I am such a baby.

I don’t think anyone did a thing wrong. I don’t think anyone should be in trouble or… I just had feelings I didn’t know I was going to have. Big feelings. The kind of feelings that make it hard for me to be stable and calm and normal. The kind of feelings where I cry a lot for a long time.

It’s not your fault and I’m not blaming anyone. This happens to me. This is my life. This is about me and my brain. But I need to manage it. And Noah has to live with me. He wants me to live for a long time. He has to make choices that reflect where I start melting down if he wants to keep me. Whether that is fair or not fair. What is fair?

I’m sorry I’m unstable and insecure. But that is kinda as advertised at this point.

Also: Noah and I are going to try to go to parties more often together and when we go together he is totally free to play with friends. He’s just only going to make sure he goes to one alone. This means we will only have one of us out of the house one night a week. It was really sucking having us collectively gone two or three nights in a week on dates. That just feels yucky right now. That’s too big of a change from what things have been. Hell, I haven’t been back from the road trip long enough to want that much space from Noah. Even if the dates are nice.

A lot of the kinds of trust Noah wants from me… with hypnosis and M/s in the future… that requires a level of trust that is very hard for me. I am literally not set up to be good at trusting like that. That kind of trust is broken for me.

But he wants it. Which means that the pair of us have to work on figuring out how to build it. And that means limits that may not seem “fair” because we have very different needs and very different reasons we are doing all this.

There is no fair. Just like there is no deserve.

There is what you can bear.

I feel really sad and scared. I don’t like that I need to ask Noah for these limits. But I need to if I am going to be able to build the kind of trust he wants me to build. I will not be stable with him having dates like this. I never have been. It is unlikely to start now.

These are the safest and most awesome women possible. It isn’t that I am insecure about the people.

I’m just… a selfish baby.

We are both taking a lot of comfort from the fact that even though we had a huge fight and said pretty awful things… neither of us at any point even a little bit felt like “I don’t want to be married.” The worst it got was “I need a few hours in a room away from you.”

That feels good.

We are insecure bastards. I’m glad he is finally admitting some of his points of insecurity. Much like Beyoncé, the Queen, I need him to show me that I can hurt him. So that I can stay.

Fuck that album is going to be huge in my life. Lemonade is everything. If you haven’t watched it, stop what you are doing and go watch. YOU ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING BETTER WITH YOUR LIFE. JUST DO IT.

ok?

If you’re all “But I don’t know how” come to my house and you can watch it. I bought it. I’ll watch it hundreds of times. It’s ok if you are with me for one of them.

We spent a long time talking about Noah’s place in the hierarchy of my self destructive habits. It’s good that we are honest about that.

One of our new rules is that only Noah can cut me. We had quite a day. We managed to get through our proposed desired come-in-all-holes date… which is frankly shocking given how I woke up. I didn’t think I’d be interested in sex. Then he spent all those hours talking to me and trying to figure out what we both want.

Ok yeah I’ll suck your dick. And then you can fuck my ass. Then we can take a shower. Then you can hurt me really really really a lot and then fuck my pussy. And then later we christened the first of May in the back yard.

Yup. That’s a good day.

I don’t have any fresh bruises but I have lots of old lovely bruises still fading. (God damn Cupid.) (That was meant to be in a positive sort of way not in a damn you sort of way. More like hot damn. Ahem.) Then I have lots of cuts. I have marks from the clothespins. The caning wasn’t hard enough to leave a mark. That’s ok. I got no warm up. On purpose. Because any little girl who will speak that rudely to her Daddy should get a caning with no warm up.

Meaning I asked for it.

Because man atonement is a thing. Which totally doesn’t excuse my abusive behavior.

It’s not ok to scream at people like that. So we made some specific agreements about how I am going to handle my behavior in the future when I am that upset. We don’t like the agreements we made, but we talked it out. It’s not ok to scream like that. I am less ok with it than he is. Which kinda bothers me. He isn’t mad at me for screaming at him. I think it would be easier if he were mad.

Fuck.

Why is life so complicated?

Uhm. A lot else happened. Holy shit this was an eventful day. We talked about so many insecurities and paranoias and fears and wants and hopes and needs and coping methods and possessiveness and sharing and…

My hands is done. I wrote this during meals. That’s the only time I did much other than pay attention to Noah today. It’s been an epic 14 hours of talking. Sex didn’t start happening till 12:30 or so. I’m ready to go pass out now. I took the Gabapentin like half an hour ago. I feel like I’m walking into a wall of haze…..

Another one.

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My fuck ups now also include screaming very inappropriately at Noah.

I told you that I’m an asshole.

This is why we closed the relationship last time.

My fuck ups.

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This is a list Noah agrees with.

I cheated. Then I said I wasn’t sorry. Both were separate levels of hurtful.

I negotiated gloves for all genital contact and then broke that rule like 24 hours later.

I said maybe one person, maybe once a month. Yeah. That lasted less than a week. So many dates. So many people.

I have not been malicious. But I have been ridiculously selfish.

I’m glad he’s going to write me a list of what he feels he is doing wrong. I need to see that. He isn’t into the public exhibition of shame and that’s ok. I’ll see it.

Cheating, feelings, and sleep deprivation.

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Recently I suggested that I shouldn’t post much when sleep deprived. In the past 50 or so hours I’ve gotten about 9 hours of sleep.

Noah isn’t in a much better state. Getting so very sleep deprived let Noah finally get to the point where he could blow up at me about stuff he probably should have blown up at me about months ago.

Feelings are ok. You are allowed to be mad at me. I cheated. And then, not only did I cheat I was a callous fucking asshole who has said over and over, “I’m not sorry.”

You are allowed to be angry about that. You don’t have to soothe me. You don’t have to tell me it’s ok. You are allowed to just be angry.

I think that Noah has put himself into a position over the years where he doesn’t feel he is allowed to be mad at me and that’s not good. I am an asshole. I hurt him. He has every right in the world to get angry with me and express that anger.

But I shouldn’t write much more about it now. Sleep deprivation guidelines and all.

So I’m still alive. I’m going to have a few crying days because yeah that happens sometimes. It’s ok. We need to fight about this. I was awful. Him glossing it over because he doesn’t want me to get upset is not going to work.

Relationships are complicated and take work. I’m ok with that. I’m in this. I want to stay in this. I want to do this work.

Trauma, victimization, & consent

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Good golly. Woke up to great sex in the middle of the night and now I’m not sleepy. So instead I’m thinking about trauma and victimization, like a normal person. What? That’s not weird, right?

I think that trauma can happen without being a victim and I think that being a victim can happen without trauma. I think that consent is a nearby Venn circle that overlaps both in weird ways.

I think it is completely possible to consent to things that traumatize the fuck out of you for the rest of your life. I think it is possible to be a victim, to have your consent taken away and not be traumatized. I think it is possible to be a victim and be traumatized and to consent at the same time.

Why?

Because I feel like I’ve lived about fifteen lives in one and I’ve seen a lot of shit. Not just that happens to me. I pay a lot of attention to trauma and assault and rape.

Why are these things different?

I’m not going to look up the dictionary definitions this time. Connotative/denotative meanings… I’m defining for myself today.

Trauma is about a physical response in your body to something bad/scary/overwhelming. It’s a physiological process. You can be traumatized by things you consent to and you can be traumatized by things you do not consent to. People vary dramatically in what will traumatize them. Some people are genuinely not traumatized by rape. It is a bad thing that happens and they move on. Others… they are permanently physically impacted by their experiences. Something being traumatic or not tells you little about scale.

Being a victim is about whether or not you want them to happen. I think you can consent to things and still be a victim. If you feel your consent is coerced, if you are not really safe enough to say no… you can consent and still be a victim. I don’t know how much I think that your ability to get yourself out of a situation or not plays in with victimization.

I am pretty sure my father would be able to get away with saying that there were times I “consented” to what he did with me. But I was still a victim. Why? Because it should not have been happening. It was a crime and it damaged me. It didn’t matter whether I consented or not because I had no ability to understand what I was consenting to.

Adult rape. Paul. Situation: I was in my 20’s, at a sex party while on drugs. I didn’t want unprotected sex and he did. I did not consent to unprotected sex. I repeatedly said no. I wasn’t able to physically resist (yes, I know that was my choice) but I was saying no. I was conscious. I was trying to prevent it. That means I think that legally I was the victim of a crime. Is it one of the more traumatic experiences of my life?

Hahahahahaahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa no.

I don’t feel particularly traumatized by that rape. Not really. I don’t wake up to nightmares of his face. I don’t feel terrified of what will happen if we run into one another (we could; this is a small valley).

So, no consent, no real trauma, yes victimization.

The kid who kicked me in the throat. We had a habit of play fighting/wrestling. I think that he did not intend to land a kick on my throat. He was just a kid who lacked finesse, control, and understanding. So quasi-consent. I think technically it was an assault. Do I feel like a victim? Not really. I think it was an assault but not a crime because it was an accident. Do I feel traumatized?

Ok, I do feel kinda haunted by the swollen throat feeling… because it reminded me so much of my brother. I don’t think I was traumatized so much by the incident but from the feeling of, “Oh my fucking god I DO NOT WANT a tracheotomy.”

I feel… I feel feelings about the mom. I don’t think that she victimized me. I don’t feel traumatized. But I feel like she is someone who would push me down in front of a bus and then tell me it was my fault. I feel like every warning signal in my body tells me that any woman who says, “You weren’t assaulted and if you were it was your fault” is so fucking dangerous I wish I was in a different time zone.

Is that about trauma, victimization, or consent? Call it the Spidey sense I developed after other assaults. I don’t want to stand near someone who has such an attitude. It’s a warning shot.

Quite literally, that is the kind of woman who uhm… yeah. That’s why we are where we are as a society. Congratulations to us.

Rich white woman hears her son commits assault? Blame the victim! Can’t be my perfect baby! (Ok this happens in other demographics too with other gender combinations. But I’m feeling pissy!)

Guess what? White kids are pieces of shit too. Just sayin’.

Not that I actually think that kid is a piece of shit. I think he isn’t being guided in the ways he should be guided and that’s tragic.

If someone comes to me and tells me that my children did something violent, awful, or otherwise worthy of judging the shit out of… my response won’t be “No they didn’t.” My response is going to be, “Ok, slow down and start at the beginning. I think I need to hear the whole story.”

I’m pretty sure that my kids can fuck up. Just sayin’.

I think I have gotten to the point where I am a relatively decent person. I started out lying, stealing, hitting people, breaking things, starting house fires, stealing cars…

I’m not in a position to judge. People fuck up.

Why am I thinking about these things? Because I’m trying to judge myself. Because I’m trying to figure out if I am as bad as I think. I’m trying to figure out what being so bad means. I’m trying to figure out how to stop hurting people.

But you know what? I think I’ll always hurt people. I’m not going to stop talking about the fact that I exist. Knowing that I’m here is going to hurt people.

I can’t really do anything about that.

If your safety depends on my being invisible then I guess you don’t get to be safe. Sorrynotsorry.

I think that when the vast majority of people say “the world is like” they really mean “I know a dozen or so people who are like”. The world is a god damn big place. Guess what? We are all weird and different. I draw great comfort from that; it’s why I get to be alive.

I have heard a saying about teachers coming into your life when you need them. I think that people tend to have the experiences they go looking for.

Some people want to be ignored. Some people want to be noticed. Some people want to have intense interactions. Some people want to hide.

Ever noticed how each person is completely convinced that the world they live in is “the world”? Ever notice how they do it by conveniently ignoring the people they walk past that completely contradict their view? Confirmation bias, my friends.

I think one of the most monstrous things about me is how loudly I’m willing to turn up my reality distortion filter. I’m experiencing the world I need to experience. Whatever that means. I’m going to tell you about it. Even if it fucks with your world view. Cause honey badger don’t give a shit. Yes, you think life shouldn’t be about violence and pain. Good for you.

I’m woo enough that I more or less believe we pick the lives we have because there are lessons to gain here. I’m either paying for being Hitler or for some insane reason I picked a life where I was going to have to learn as many painful lessons as possible.

A kind woman shared an Eve Ensler video with me about embracing your inner girl. I think she (Eve) had some good things to say but I was struck by something. (I’ve never seen the Vagina Monologues.) Eve spent a lot of time talking about the pain she’s seen… but she kept bringing herself back to it. “I’m going to tell you about this awful thing that happened to my daughter. I adopted her.” Uhm.

You really could have told the story without making yourself the hero.

Even if that is the relationship that is happening you could have supported her without centering yourself.

That. That’s what I don’t want to do with the incest research. I don’t want it to be about how these stories make me feel. I am going to be traumatized by hearing them, yes. So fucking what?! No one asked me to listen. This is my personal thing I’m doing. The work is my personal thing. The stories I hear are not my personal stories. I’m going out into the world looking for these stories–it is the very opposite of victimization. Even if it is traumatic, it will be done with full consent. How do I center the work and the stories and not myself? How do I tell the story without it being about my trauma. I’m kinda obsessed with my trauma and shit. Well, maybe I’ll always be allowed to whine here about how I’m feeling but when I speak publicly it will not be about me. I think that’s a reasonable boundary? Am I ever going to feel like it is ok to talk about me?

With the Impact instructors there is a tense/weird parting thing at the end of the class. They cannot have any social contact with students for a year after a class. And when they talk about it they all go really stone faced in unison. “We are protecting ourselves.”

What does it mean to do work with traumatized people and be traumatized by the experiences and not get muddy about who is hurting whom?

Well I guess I’m going to fucking find out. How much you wanna bet there will be drama galore for me around this?

Not “drama” but intense emotional surges.

Like I do. Sigh.

Signing off.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: mean people suck

Well that sucked.

Well, therapy isn’t an option. Try to talk it out.

I can change how this story ends.

I feel like I’m going to stop breathing

I spoke too soon.

This is a trip, not a vacation.

Home. And Petty.

Calm or productive

An interaction

This is not going to be a lot of fun, but ok.

Gaslighting

Shame is complicated

Words and asking

Rear view mirror

Another one.

My fuck ups.

Cheating, feelings, and sleep deprivation.