Category Archives: mean people suck

Get over yourself.

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So like yesterday when I post something ranty about other people I then have this huge rush of shame and guilt. Who the fuck am I to judge other people? Why in the god damn hell does my fucking judgment matter? Who the hell wants to hear it anyway.

It’s weird writing about what I see in the world. Because a lot of the writing process for me is narrowing down who I want to be. I get the impression that other people can do this narrowing down without being a judgmental asshole out loud.

I don’t think I am better than anyone else. I do think I have a strangely functional marriage–I take very little credit. Noah is amazing and flexible and supportive. That isn’t about me. That’s luck. I found someone who is worried enough about his own future that he will defer a lot of short-term satisfaction in favor of future success. That’s not about me.

No one has to change their behavior to make me happy. No one has to alter the course of their life for me. I am aware of this. I don’t think people need to change because of me. I write because these are the things in my head and if I don’t write them down I feel like I have these fifteen different television stations all playing loudly in my head simultaneously. I can’t hear what I am supposed to be doing over the cacophony.

I hope like hell that I don’t hurt peoples feelings by saying stupid self-absorbed things. I’m afraid I do sometimes. I’m really sorry. I am not trying to hurt anyone.

I want there to be room for me to exist and room for other people to exist. I want it to be ok that I have my opinions (even if my opinion is negative about someone’s behavior) and it isn’t something that people have to take personally.

I don’t think you (generic you) need to give a shit about whether or not I judge you harshly. I truly don’t. I know that I am not the judge nor the jury. If I make you angry I’m sorry.

I want to be allowed to have strong opinions and be a judgmental asshole without actually being an asshole. I really want my writing to be the place where I get to be as loud and offensive as I want.

I promise I will try harder to reign in my mouth when I am in other peoples houses. You did not invite me over to hear my asshole opinions. I hate it when I fail at the basics of civility. It feels like proof that I am a worthless white trash asshole. I am not capable of being nice to decent people.

I swear to god that I walk into some houses and I feel like, “Oh my god these are decent people” and I feel my hackles go up. It isn’t their fault. It is not anyone else’s fault that I walk into their house and feel like I am a lower class than them. It is not their fault that feeling lower class makes me hostile and nasty. I know I have to “get over” this. I really do. I’m better than I used to be. I know that isn’t adequate. I can’t take my class issues out on people and have friends.

I have learned to stop picking on Noah because I developed some enlightened self-interest in that department. I need to understand how other people fit into this. I feel like a complete failure because I am not yet good at understanding in the pit of my stomach how important each different piece of the puzzle is. I still don’t value the contributions that other people give sufficiently. I need to learn how to do that. I need to learn how to stop judging everyone for their ability to meet *my* needs. My needs are not the only important needs in the world.

I’m sorry I am such an asshole. Thank you for tolerating me. I’m really sorry it takes such effort.

Before you speak evaluate if what you want to say is: true, necessary, kind. If it isn’t all three it had better god damn need to be said. It has to be really fucking necessary if it isn’t kind. Mostly saying unkind things is just a way of kicking people. I have to stop kicking people verbally. I have stopped hitting people with my hands. I need to stop kicking them with my words.

I guess that means my family found my blog.

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Hello anonymous comments shaming me for not playing the game right.

I didn’t walk away from my family exclusively because of my mom. I didn’t divorce my niece or nephew or aunt because of my mom.

My sister is a pedophile. My mother covers for her. That’s enough for me. If you think that I am wrong for keeping a pedophile out of my life, or someone who has actively covered for multiple fucking pedophiles, well then… we have no common ground.

I feel enormous guilt for kicking my niece out of my life. I know it’s a shitty thing to do. I left her to carry the whole abusive raft on her own. My nephew won’t work enough to keep a place to live. My sister hasn’t worked in years because she has enormous psychological issues (no shit). My mom hasn’t worked in years–I presume she is waiting for my father’s social security.

They wanted me for money. I’m not interested in being that for them. I don’t make any. I have no fucking money of my own. They would love to drain my husband dry. That’s family, right?

No. I was told from when I was a little girl that I would be responsible for taking care of my family when I grew up.

Now my not even 21 year old niece works at In-n-Out and sells Mary Kay cosmetics because that is the income in the house.

I didn’t walk away from her because she has a relationship with my mother. I walked away from her because as long as she buys into the idea that she has to carry the whole broken family she is going to fail. It is inevitable. I only hope she doesn’t have kids because her mom is a sick and scary person.

Yes, I’m a selfish fucking asshole. I divorced my whole family along with the problem people because the whole system creates a safe haven for abusers.

I just can’t be part of it. If that hurts my feelings or their feelings, oh well. We are all grown ups now. We are all making active choices. I’m allowed to dislike the choices that other people make and I am allowed to not have a relationship with them over their choices.

Don’t act like I am the bad guy here. Give me a god damn break. I’m not supposed to be allowed to break contact with my family after how badly I was abused? Oh go fuck yourself. With a chainsaw.

So far I have tried pretty hard to avoid using the full names of my family members. Occasionally a first name slips out. Very very rarely a last name (and we don’t all have the last name) so I feel like I’ve been polite and all that. I’ve been trying pretty hard to make my story about me and leave other people out of it. If I feel threatened the correct thing for me to do is to come out more, not less. I don’t think anyone in my family would like it if I used their legal name every time I talk about my family history of pedophilia and rape. That would make Google a very different entity in their lives.

Right now I believe I am one of the top ten hits for “my father raped me”. I have left my family out of that very consciously. I could change that. If I feel more threatened I absolutely will.

The main protection I have in this life is to not be silent. I can’t give it up.

I heard from my brother; Christmas loot; bdsm semi-graphic recollections; and asking for what I want.

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Last night my brother sent me a text message. “Merry Christas. I heard you put out a book, can you send it to me.”

I haven’t spoken to him since right after Uncle Bob died. Not since he told me that telling my story was just melodrama. 
I responded “Google: “No Secrets, No Shame, No Silence.”
Now I’m scared. I feel like I should have just ignored it. But I can’t. Fuck him. I don’t need to hide. I told the absolute truth to the best of my memories. I acknowledge in multiple places that I might be making mistakes in details because it was all so long ago–this is what I remember about my life.
I’m not making mistakes about being raped or molested. I’m just not. I’m forgetting the order of when I lived places. I moved more than fifty fucking times. I challenge anyone to keep that straight when they are talking about their lives between the ages of birth and eighteen. Impossible. 
I’m shaking. I wonder if I will sleep again tonight. I feel like I am going to vomit. I have the bucket with me. Oh my trusty bucket.
I’m scared. But strangely I want to find the self-motivation to start editing again. I know I’m not done. I know I have more work to do to make it actually polished. It is still kind of hard to follow. I can do better. I know it. How in the heck will that fit into the schedule next year? Who knows. But I need to do it. Maybe that can be what I mentally put into my “break time” during the day. (The kids get two hours of iPad usage from 2-4 so I can have quiet in my brain and not kill anyone as I’m making dinner.)

I want the book in paper. People have suggested a Kickstarter campaign to me. I’m thinking about it. It honestly isn’t quite good enough yet. There are a lot of stupid mistakes I PAID AN EDITOR TO FIX AND YET HERE THEY FUCKING ARE. Sigh. Oh well. I’m reread sections on my phone when I’m feeling freaked out by other people getting to read it. “Oh shit, what did I say?!”

Now my brother knows. He isn’t talking to the rest of the family (last I heard) so who knows how this will go.

But now he knows. That can’t be undone. If you haven’t bought the book or left a review go do so. Please.  Somewhere between one and three people buy the book every week. I’m up to almost 1700 downloads. That’s pretty cool. But mostly people won’t know about it unless you tell them. I’ve told the people I know. Now it’s about other people telling the people they know.

And don’t freakin tell me “I don’t have a kindle“.Whatever. They have an app for that.

I finally had that crying jag.  The one I predicted a couple of days ago. Noah took the kids to the park for a few hours and I spent the time wandering around in chores. In the middle of trying to   fold the clothing I noticed that I was crying so hard I could barely see. I set the clothes on the bed then I noticed that I was thinking to my knees. I could feel myself starting to crawl towards the side of the bed but there is always this other part of my brain off on the side that says hey Krissy maybe you should use the bathroom  and get a few napkins for your nose. So I did that first with tears streaming down my eyes then I went straight back to the side of the bed. The side of the bed next to the window is barely big enough to walk through when I’m scared it seems like a good place to hide. It isn’t a lot bigger than my body when I was younger I would have been under the bed.

I cried and cried and cried. I thought a lot about my mom; I miss her so much. It’s worse at Christmas. Really I thought a lot about everyone in my family. I feel like all of their stories are so sad. I think I found the “can’t commit suicide point” though.  if I ever commit suicide my family will rush to tell their side of the story and they will try very hard to make me look like a liar. I am not a fucking liar. I have to outlive them, all of them. If I don’t they will try very hard to make sure I don’t exist; they will erase me. No.

I haven’t been sleeping well. Not nearly enough sleep. I’m tired and sleepy all day long. Because Noah is here I’m taking more naps than usual.

I feel like a ghost. I feel like a strong wind could push me away. I don’t want to die. But I want to stop fighting. I want to stop defending my right to live. I want to stop having to earn the right to be not hurt. I am tired of trying to beg and beg and beg for people to love me and not hurt me. I’m so tired. So very tired.

It’s hard for me to read more than a couple of pages of my book at a time. I don’t want to identify with that story. Mostly I kind of put it out of my head. I am not that broken, destructive little girl anymore.

Yesterday my daughters broke the light fixture in their room. Glass showered a huge pile of stuffed animals, bedding, Lego’s, Barbie clothes, etc. Double Plus Not Good. Noah helped me. Cleaning it up wasn’t that big of a deal. Having help changed the scope of the problem significantly.

When I was a child I would have been beaten and screamed at for hours. We shook our heads and told Shanna that this was “not good” then we sighed and cleaned it up. We talked about why it wasn’t a good idea. We said we hope she doesn’t do something like this again.

That’s it. Moving on.

Every day that I am in this life feels like a fraud. I am not nice. I am violent. I am angry. I am mean and hateful. But I just can’t be with my kids. That’s wrong.

Noah gave me a parenting book for Christmas. Giving the Love That Heals so far it seems reasonable. But then I got to the part where they explicitly say this is not a book for people who have been severely wounded by their childhood–that is a different journey. Should I just quit reading? I feel so bad. I spend a lot of time feeling like the universe wants me to quit. I am broken beyond redeeming.

Fuck you all. as

I want my brother to know what I said about him. I don’t mean to hide anything. I have no secrets, right? I have a lot of stories I haven’t told yet but that is different.

Sometimes people ask me if I am afraid, what with being so out and all. They ask me if I am afraid of being stalked. Not really. If someone comes to my house intending to scare me I might walk outside with a baseball bat and say, “Unless you start running really fast you won’t be walking away from here.”

I’m not very scared of random people any more. Unless they want to shoot me there isn’t a lot they can do to scare me. And I’ve been very suicidal for a long time. I’m not going to run away from someone threatening me. That’s a way to die without having the whole guilt of suicide. It wasn’t my fault–it was some crazy gunman. That will be much easier for my kids to live with.

What, you don’t think about this shit?

I am afraid of being ostracized. I am afraid of being alone. I am afraid of being unloved. I’m not afraid of dying. I think I will welcome that.

It makes for a very different set of behaviors.

I’m afraid of ending up like Puppy’s mom. She has a job she is ok with but doesn’t love. She sits at home and reads books and chain smokes and drinks coffee and eats cookies. She doesn’t do a lot else. She is bitter and angry. She has been treated quite badly in life though I don’t know or care about the whole story. (Puppy was the serious boyfriend right before Noah asked me to marry him. He dumped me on Thanksgiving. Good riddance.)

Wow. Puppy dumped me more than seven years ago. Time sure flies when you are having fun. Tom and I broke up more than eight years ago. A different lifetime. Ten years ago for Christmas I was given a new ball gag, a portable tens unit, and the Uncle Kracker album with the song Follow Me. This year I was given bath scrubs and parenting books and an egg beater. I begged for the egg beater. That is the thing I have missed the most this year since Sarah moved out.

Once Shanna turned on her chair and sighed deeply and said, “Getting stiff peaks with a fork is sure a bitch.” She said it on the exhale of a sigh. It was hilarious. I almost fell down I was laughing so hard. Luckily she hasn’t said it again.

Oh! I got the dress I’ve been wanting for more than five years! I found it on etsy right around when we were starting to try and get pregnant. I decided I couldn’t have it till I had some idea what size I would be long term. I like it as much as I thought I would and it looks as good as I thought it would. Win. Noah did not nearly score so well.

The kids… well, they have generous grandparents. They made out like bandits and don’t appreciate it particularly though I have seen most of the new dress up clothes cycled through. Shanna is in love with the bead set–I thought she would be. She’s making jewelry constantly. It is great hand eye coordination practice so I’m trying to be permissive.

Really all of the new stuff is appreciated but they don’t react particularly in the ways I (apparently) “expect” children to act and that’s weird for me. I’m trying hard to just accept them and not try to direct this. That’s not useful. They are having the experience they are having. Go with it. I am making more comments than I should. It is hard to be as silent as I know I should be. Noah is continually pointing out my inherent hypocrisy; living with him is a mixed blessing sometimes.

He keeps me honest. I don’t want my kids to be particularly attached to things. And they aren’t. They don’t think that getting “more things” means someone loves them more. They just aren’t swayed by it. I should push them into that mindset. Not one little bit. LA LA LA. Move on Krissy.

My mom was very much of that mindset. I was pushed towards that mindset. I kind of have it but mostly don’t. Mostly I am quite low in my attachment to things. Except that egg beater. I really missed having an egg beater. But I don’t care much about which one I have. I’m not particular about “things”. If someone told me I had to walk out of this house with the clothes on my back I would probably clutch my laptop and go. I can deal with the loss of everything else. I would probably want to get dressed very carefully–I would wear several layers… I’m just sayin’.

I look forward to living out of a suitcase. When we went to Scotland for a month we had one large rolling suitcase and I think three small-ish backpacks. For a family of four. It would have been far less if I hadn’t needed all the baby shit. And we were going for a wedding so we needed fancy schtuff.

Someday Noah and I will go on long trips with a couple of backpacks. Well, they might be rolling bags because I am old and my back hurts. Maybe. We’ll see. Backpacks are better.

Notice how this digression happens? I start off with an SMS from my brother and I end up talking about how badly I want to run away. Predictable. I suppose that when it comes to my family  I will always want to run away. That is predictable.

I did something brave. I invited someone not already in my completely comfortable zone to go on a trip with me. I get to do a lot more in-advance negotiation than usual this time. (*wave to person*) I feel like most of my problems while traveling happen because I don’t negotiate my boundaries well enough. I also don’t anticipate a problem because this person is not someone who walks into my life and drops work on me. I’m trying to be more paranoid about that kind of thing. (No leaving two bowls to wash after making banana bread doesn’t count as dropping more work on me. It’s about scale.)

I’ve been listening to Mean by Taylor Swift on repeat for a few days. (Tay–I think you will like this a lot more than you like Lady Gaga. Ha.) I don’t want to be mean. I know a lot of mean people. What does it really mean that I get to pick who I know? Don’t you have to take the bad with the good if you want community? It’s all or nothing–right?

That’s why I like having parties.

Sobonfu told me to make my own community. She told me I would never fit anywhere and that’s fine–make my own. Bruce told me to start a religion. Noah gave me a book for Christmas about how people should be starting their own Tribes. I don’t think I want to start a religion. Sorry, Bruce.

Several times I have had people tell me that I inspire them. That they think of me when they are scared or weak and that helps them find the strength to go on. It is a staggering thing to be told. I don’t feel worthy. Heh. That’s kind of part of the whole thing–right?

Being told that is intoxicating. It is far more potent than any drug and I’ve tried a lot. Having in the back of my mind if I keep going maybe I will hear that again is heady. That’s an addiction too.

Part of the reason that I’m weird to Noah is when guys want the way I want it comes out very differently–it’s a very different search for status for a guy. They have to have money or position or esteem or something before they can have pretty much anything so their want gets directed toward things. (Of course this isn’t universally true: missionaries!)

When I try to think about what I want it is generally in the vague sense of relationships. I have caused quite a few people to not be interested in relationships with me because I like labels that are denotative rather than connotative. If you know what I mean. If you don’t, what I mean is: they say, “We are friends” and what that means is they will think about you when you are right in front of their face and at no other time.

I wish people were honest about that up front. If people referred to me as an acquaintance then I would have such an expectation. They know nothing about me and do not think of me but they have seen me and been introduced. I wish that word was brought back into wider usage.

I like having a large and charming social of social acquaintances. I don’t like having many friends. I am too demanding. I have too many little ticks and irregularities. People have to be willing to take notes and modify their behavior in order to become people I feel comfortable around. Folks who think that isn’t worth their time or attention aren’t actually my friends. If you know what I mean.

But that’s ok! There is this large miasma of people in the acquaintance category. I don’t expect them to give a shit about me. I don’t expect them to modify themselves for me in any way. I just privately (or not so privately) think of them as assholes. I’m civil. Barely. I just try to avoid them.

I have those specific coping methods from the sex communities. It is weird coming into the home schooling community. I have to change how I talk to people. When I take something badly I have to say, “I’m sure that I am not understanding you correctly but I thought I heard you say ____ and to me that sounded like ____ but I’m sure I am misunderstanding. May I ask you to explain?”

It’s fucking hard and embarrassing. But I have to do it otherwise I will start avoiding gatherings because people are there. I can’t do that to the kids.

I want to feel safe from sexual assault. I am going to be avoiding the sex communities for a while and I’ll see if it helps. (Not that I actually feel afraid of anyone in particular at those parties. I haven’t run into anyone who has assaulted me at a party since it happened.) But I’m obviously having conflicted feelings. I don’t need to feel pressure to be there. It’s an opt-in space. I’m doing something else.

It is giving up another piece of my identity. Am I not kinky any more? Am I no longer a pervert? Can I ever undo the things I have done. THAT’S WHY I LET HIM TAKE PICTURES. None of it can ever be completely forgotten. I have pictures. Hundreds. I have a lot of pictures of me fucking girls too. I had a really fun early twenties.

I’m not worried about blackmail because if someone released some of them publicly and it caught wind I would say, “Ooooh! It’s part of a set! Would you like to see the rest?!” Then I would send a lot more.

I used to sleep in a steel cage. I hear he finally made a more comfortable bottom for it. I had my ex-fiancé Steve make it–he was a welder by trade. With one inch steel tubes. It was a grid. It was 2′ x 2′ x 3′. It was a birthday present for Tom the year he turned thirty-two.

I need to not hear these things any more. I don’t really want to hear that Tom had a floor made for it because the current girl wants it more comfy. I want to pat her on the shoulder and say he is in the honeymoon phase. Be careful.

Edge play is something that is talked about a lot in the bdsm world. It is usually treated as what people should be trying to graduate towards. It is often used to mean heavy play. I wish it weren’t. In my opinion edge play is doing something that has a measurable risk of ending your life.

In the past few years a couple of close friends sat me down to lecture me on the escalating risk of me continuing to do breath play–you know, being choked out. It can be done in a variety of ways. I had to, in turn, go to Noah and talk about it. I have had to remind him a few times. It is hard. It is hard to have tears running down my face and have to say, “If you don’t want me to die while we are having sex then you should probably stop doing that.”

Yes, it turns you on. Yes, you want to do it to me. You can’t. Not if you want me to live. I am an animal. I have limits. I am skating near the edges of the amount of trauma a body can absorb. I wish that wasn’t true. But it is.

I have a lot of pictures of my life being risked so that someone could look at me and masturbate.

I have some interesting feelings about that. Ok, most of our play was extreme but not life-risking. We saved that for special occasions.

And I’m not saying it is his fault or that I was abused. My ex emphatically did not abuse me. I scripted most of our intense play. I’m not blaming him. I’m really not. I helped him build a lot of the equipment we used. I gave it to him as presents. I was not abused. I went to fucking Great America and had the bemused air brushing artist paint slave on my back. I wasn’t being abused. I was very proud of what I was doing.

Why did I want that so much?

When I look at the pictures (err, not that I do this often) I’m usually struck by how sad I look. Resigned. As a result he mostly liked to cover my face. He was into hoods. Made of leather, plastic and duct tape, rubber, vet wrap… whatever. As long as he didn’t have to look at me.

I like living with someone who likes looking at me. I like living with someone who likes listening to the sound of my voice. I get three of them. It’s like a god damn miracle. But in order for it to work I have to be just as interested in them.

How do you live like a main character in an ensemble cast? How do you balance all of the needs?

But that’s kind of a lie. Our needs are food, shelter, and water (even though Yakutat freaking Alaska thinks you just need food, shelter and booze). Noah would be supplying those needs if he slacked at work; I promise. But he does a lot more than that. And he comes home and works hard on having relationships with the kids even though he’s an introvert who would really like to be in a quiet dark room.

Because we need love too. And the only way for us to have it is to give it. And give it. And give it long past when we feel like we want to. Because the kids need it right now. They won’t always–eventually it will be cloying and stifling and inappropriate.

It feels really good that we get to be spending so much of our life on a love-in. I know that not everyone gets that.

I had this horrifying childhood but I always felt like there was a way out. How would life work if I didn’t think that?

Privilege. I have so much of it that it is coming out my ears. With great privilege comes great responsibility.

One of the movies I watched recently, I think Winter’s Bone had a scene that is sticking in my head. I couldn’t easily find it on youtube. The kids haven’t seen their father in weeks. Their mother is mentally ill. She hasn’t responded or moved in months. The oldest daughter is trying to figure things out. The three kids are standing near their house watching a neighbor butcher a venison he hunted. The son suggested that they should ask for some meat. They were starving. But the oldest sister said:

“Never ask for what ought to be offered.”

That has been rolling around in my head like a marble. Never ask for what ought to be offered.

But that assumes that everyone around you has the same culture and knows which things ought to be offered.

Tricky.

My culture is white trash. What is yours? Tay–if you say you are white trash I will smile, exclaim “brother!” and hug you to me. It’s an opt-in label. No I don’t get to define it for anyone else.

I just have to figure out who and what I am and what I need. Then I need to figure out how to meet my needs on my own. I understand that this should be obvious and all but it isn’t. I didn’t grow up like that. Now I have a great series of child development books and I get to find out how to forgive myself for being a child.

It is hard being endlessly nice as my kids do frustrating things. But childhood is full of such errors. If you make your kids feel bad for making mistakes then they will be afraid to try things. I don’t want my kids to be afraid to try. I want them to get better at risk evaluation. Different.

I want them to know lots of different kinds of people. That means I have to be able to figure out how to meet my needs no matter who is around. I don’t. Right now I hide behind needing to model for the kids.

I’m bad. What kind of model could I be? As long as all they see is love am I really bad? Do the things I have done define my worthiness to love now?

I hope to fucking hell that I will be good enough. I know I don’t have forever just because I want it. When I’m really maudlin I worry about the kids reading this whining some day.

The uncontrollable crying is because I hurt my mommy. I rejected her. Partially because of things that were outside her control. It’s not just that though. I rejected her because I don’t like being blamed for everyone else’s problems. It is not my fucking fault that my father raped my sister for three extra years.

But having kids who are 2.5 and 4.5 and thinking about my life then and what happened when I was a child…

I don’t need to forgive them. I need to forgive me. It was an accident. It isn’t your fault that they are so mad. They just aren’t allowed to be mad at anyone else.

I’m not allowed to be mad at my kids. And I’m not allowed to be mad at my husband. And I’m not allowed to be mad at my friends. And a parade of therapists, my husband, my friends, and my kids if they ever find out will all join the shouting that I must stop being mad at myself and I must stop hurting myself.

But I’m so fucking mad. I’m not even supposed to be mad at the people who hurt me? No. Being mad is poison. It does nothing to them and it hurts you.

It’s ok to remember and forgive myself for being a child. I don’t need to waste time thinking about whether or not I forgive my family. I don’t. They won’t accept responsibility and they won’t change. I won’t be at the bottom of the shit hill any more.

Good grief. Two hankies of crying. That’s probably enough for one day. I woke up earlier than usual. Wow. More than 4500 words. Don’t you wish you had that time back? Today friends will come over. I will ignore the fact that I wish I was hiding under the desk in the garage sobbing and beating my head on concrete. It will be fine. It will be a lovely day.

It really doesn’t matter how I feel. I want community. This is how you act if you want community. If you deviate you don’t have community. How badly do I want it? Enough to function? Well. Put on your game face. It will be fine. Really. Go in, Krissy. Everyone is awake now. (4635. Ha.)

That Dear Jane lady

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Originally posted on Feb 17, 2011.

First title: I got dumped.

Not by my husband, by one of the women in my mom group. I got sent a rather hurtful email. To be defensive, because I always am, the hot sauce comment was not even vaguely serious. I would never do that. It was an unkind thing to say at all, but I don’t think this level of response was appropriate. And the ‘cold baths’ were tepid, just not warm and fun. I took zero pleasure in them and I don’t feel they were cruel. They were business like and not *fun*, but Shanna was not harmed in any way and despite not being fond of them she doesn’t seem traumatized by being in less than super warm water.

“I’d really rather not have to say this and just avoid the subject, but I think I owe it to you to let you know that what happened today was not OK for us. The way you discipline Shanna makes me very uncomfortable. I feel really bad for her actually, i seems that at her age your expectations are way too high and the proportion of punishment and yelling is over the top. She is your child and you can parent her how you like, but I can’t be around it anymore. I think the reason she is hitting and acting more aggressively is probably because she is learning the behavior from you. The way you talk about potty training her by making her take cold baths and contemplating putting hot sauce on her finger to get her to stop picking her nose is very hard for me to hear because I think it is cruel to do to another person; especially a person who does not have a choice to walk away from a relationship with you. The way you freaked out today was over-the-top and you need to get some help because if you are losing it like that at a casual friends house then I can only imagine how bad it is at home.

I’m just writing this to be honest with you, so you know why I do not want to get together anymore. I know you probably think I am judgmental, do not know Shanna, and have never walked in your shoes, but I have really, really tried to keep giving you chances, but I just can’t put up with how you treat Shanna anymore, it is so hard to witness.

Sincerely,
J”

Basically what happened yesterday is that I had a panic attack and continued trying to parent through it. I’m quite certain that it looked like I completely lost control. It was very certainly not my parenting at its finest. Shanna was being aggressive/acting out previously and I had taken her aside and told her that if the behavior didn’t stop we would have to leave. She then whacked another kid in the head with a toy. For no reasonable reason (since when do panic attacks follow ‘reason’) I had an intense panic attack and I proceeded to deal with the situation. Badly. I was shaking and overly rough with Shanna and I wasn’t perfectly gentle with Calli either (she started screaming because she needed a diaper change pretty much exactly when Shanna hit the other kid). As is pretty standard for me when I have a panic attack I started shaking my head and chanting “I don’t want any help. I’ll do it myself.” Not my best coping mechanism. It was bad. I’m embarrassed. I would be embarrassed no matter what but that email is quite the piece of shaming.

I’ve been kind of free flow responding since yesterday. I’m not sure if this is coherent or not. I have zero intention of sending this to her.

So I’ve been doing some processing about this email and it’s not about me. Ok, you are also upset with me but this email isn’t really about me. Your language is very shaming. This is a big issue for you. How were you treated as a kid? Like you see me treating Shanna? Was it just something that happened to someone you knew?

You’ve obviously been building this upset with me for a while. I wish you would have talked to me about it. I really really wish you had talked to me about it. At this point it seems like you have thoroughly talked yourself into hating me and that makes me sad because even after trying pretty hard this afternoon I don’t hate you. Right now I do feels some disappointment in you. A friend doesn’t behave the way you are behaving. A friend would have told me many months ago, “You know, it really bothers me to listen to you discipline Shanna. I really feel like what you are doing is damaging to her and I don’t think you want to do that.” A friend would have some idea that I’ve been in the midst of pretty bad depression to the point where folks who are closest to me are pretty worried about me and I am actively seeking help. I have seen a therapist. I have been trying to arrange for additional support so that I am capable of doing a better job at being their mother. You don’t know that though. You don’t know that I take my mental health/illness very very seriously. You don’t know that every mental health professional I have ever worked with in my life considers my degree of control nothing short of miraculous. But you don’t take that into consideration. You also don’t take into consideration that I apologized to Shanna as soon as we got back into the van. I told her that my tone of voice (not to mention volume) was completely inappropriate and I should have never been rough with her. I know my daughter can’t get away from me and it sucks that she got a mom with my issues. But I am a selfish person and I wanted her, so yeah. She is stuck with me.

My expectations of her aren’t out of line for *her* abilities. My enforcement of my expectations is often too harsh. She and I talk about that. It’s one more thing on the long list of things I work on in myself. No, I’m not perfect. But you have never actually talked to me about your issues with my behavior. You have never said, “I really don’t want to be around it. Please don’t do it around me or I will have to stop spending time with you.” Not once. You never treated me like a person who was worthy of a conversation. That disappoints me.

The shaming language throughout the email disappoints me. I find it interesting how those who preach the loudest about being “gentle” are the quickest to shame. I responded to that shame. I’m very familiar with being shamed. But I’m done responding to this shaming. I’m done giving you that much power over me. I know pretty well how my attitude needs to change, I just haven’t been capable of doing that lately. That happens for me. There are periods where I get into a rut and climbing back out is incredibly difficult. It’s been a long time since I was in a rut this deep.

I am running on very little sleep (another 4:30 am morning here) which is not something I do well at. Both Calli and Shanna have hit difficult stages at the same time. Noah and I are having a hard time do to my extraordinarily low libido (though given how much time I spend in bodily contact with an infant is it any wonder that I’m touched out?). I have virtually zero personal time and apparently that is more important to me than I understood before having children. I’ve always gotten it before so there was very little reason for me to need to understand it.

But I need to stop giving myself excuses. Yes, this is hard. Yes, this is something that makes me feel bad and that tends to make my behavior go to shit. I’m out of excuses. It’s time to plaster a smile on my face and get it done. I’m not talking about stuffing my emotions, I’m not real good at that anymore. I mean that I need to get back to taking joy in my children and I need to find patience for them. My expectations of Shanna are not too high. However my discipline is too harsh. My daughter deserves more gentle admonishments and she deserves the body integrity I have not been observing lately. Waiting until she gets stuff done is hard, but it’s not like I even have the excuse of having a busy schedule so I *have* to get her to move *right now*. Grabbing her arm isn’t ok and I need to stop. I’m bigger and stronger than her. Yes, we all know that. It’s time to stop demonstrating it.

The increased hitting and aggression is completely age appropriate. It is pretty standard for kids to go through phases like this and I really don’t feel like Shanna is doing so to an outrageous level. I don’t hit Shanna. Ok, I hit her foot while we were driving to Disneyland because she got pissed off at one point and was kicking the drivers seat as hard as she could and I smacked her feet. I apologized for it and haven’t done anything of the kind before or since. I have been more physically aggressive with her lately, but that has involved things like pulling her by the upper arm. Not a great technique but it is really not on the top 10 list of abusive behavior.

This email was in no way intended as a kindness. But I can choose to get some good out of it. I am over the line of my personal beliefs about how I should be parenting. Even for me to get back to where *I* think I should be I will still have conflict with J and I’m going to just let that go. I don’t need anyone in my life who is that unwilling to work on issues up to the point where she shames and does her best to make me feel bad. That’s really not any better than my current (bad) approach.

Happiness is a state of mind, not a circumstance. I need to work on my state of mind.

What are you afraid of?

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I am asked what I am afraid of. I went to a party last night. I have known those people a long time. Shunning. That’s what I’m afraid of. I sat at the party and I listened to people I didn’t know bicker. I listened to the relationship dynamics. The things they were saying and the frustrations they appeared to be expressing. I listened to the passive aggressive shit.

I didn’t stay in the group after Tom and I broke up because I didn’t want to watch what happened when he started hunting and I didn’t want to hunt in front of him. I know less than half of the people who are there now. Now I don’t have to worry about the crowd knowing my whole history. I didn’t want to parade men through the group. I would have been ashamed of myself. I am ok with people having a theoretical knowledge that I am a slut but I don’t parade my business.

I don’t want to be a parent in an open relationship because I don’t want to parade my business and I don’t want to keep dirty secrets. The only way I see to do that is to create an unchanging set of roles that they primarily interact with. It is a choice to be that kind of person for my kids. Not because I think all polyamorous people are bad–that truly isn’t it.

I’m not polyamorous. I’m a slut. I pick up random people on the internet for sex. I have done a lot of it. I have hit three digits of sex partners but I don’t know for sure. I lost my list in a hard drive crash. I used to keep an excel document with check marks for what sexual activities I did with whom. I did that in case I needed to look people up and say, “I tested positive.” I thought it was the ethical thing to do. I did actually go back and contact everyone when I tested positive for herpes. Even the one night stands I otherwise would never fucking have talked to again. It was hella awkward. I explained that I used to get cold sores as a kid, so I have probably had it all my life. I thought I was getting tested for it when I said, “Test me for everything” but actually they don’t do the herpes test as a standard thing. Whoops.

Sometimes people say that they won’t sleep with someone who has had more than x number of partners. I have had guys tell me that completely out of the blue so they can explain why they won’t fuck me even though I am hot. Cause obviously I was hot for them, right? The fact that I was not remotely sexually attractive to them was irrelevant.

I had a different point when I started writing. Shunning. Moving as often I did as a child is a constant slow motion enaction of shunning scenes. There were large scale specific instances that stick in my mind. When I was in eighth grade we lived with Seventh Day Adventists. Living with Uncle Bob sucked because he was a verbally abusive asshole. The only people who would take my mom and I in were the religious folk. They were kind as long as you did what they wanted.

I went to church with them. I went a lot. I got very involved. I started following Joey like a puppy and he was very involved in the church life. I went with him everywhere. I tagged along on trips up the the SDA college in Northern California, I found out about the boarding high school in Mountain View. I had fantasies of going before the church elders and telling them about my life and asking for scholarships. Please, please save me. Joey and I did a lot of door to door missionary work. I helped in the production of a series of classes on spiritual matters. I read my fucking Bible. I could quote it chapter and verse.

I had this friend at school, Yvette. She was involved in a different church. She invited me to come with her to a lock-in. That’s where they lock a bunch of kids in a gym all night long. It was a lot of fun. We played games and sang songs and told stories. It was one of the best nights of my childhood.

I came to one of the leaders of the youth group for the SDA church. I asked if we could look into doing something like this at our church. She recoiled from me in horror. She said that she did not condone filth. She told me that I would be better served somewhere else.

If I couldn’t go with Joey to the Seventh Day Adventist church then I didn’t have a way to get to a church at all. I couldn’t get off the mountain.

To punish myself for being unlovable by God I would enact the most horrible things I could think of. Mostly this entailed reenacting scenes from Bertrice Small books. I would dress up in the closest things I could find to corsets. I would wear really tight tights in layers until they caused me a lot of back pain. Then I would put on layers and layers and layers of gauzy skirts. I was very into the peasant skirt thing. I would put on many layers of shirts and dresses. When I was done I would put on a very tight belt. I walked around in the house. I would pretend to encounter strange men.

I would then pretend to be raped over and over. I used a wide variety of different items to penetrate my vagina starting with pencils. Sometimes I would experiment and see how many pencils would fit. I fucked myself with the legs of a Barbie. It kind of skeeves me out to see my kids play with Barbies. (Obviously not the same dolls.)

I would call myself names for hours. I would chant that I was a worthless whore and no one would ever love me. Even God didn’t want me. I was dirty and bad and I wanted bad things to happen to me. I deserved to be hurt. I was disgusting.

Then I started calling the radio dj. He was twenty-five. We went out on several dates. I was twelve.  We didn’t have sex but he did ask me for a blow job. I gave it to him. I knew I was supposed to. I tried to be enthusiastic but it was really unpleasant. I tried to smile. I tried to not vomit in his car.

Not long after that my mother and I no longer were as friendly when the neighbors tried to tell us what to do and how to do it. We moved to the old house in the canyon for a while. I couldn’t stand living with my cousin’s girlfriend and her kids. I wasn’t nice to them and they weren’t nice to me. I think there is plenty of blame to go around for that situation sucking. Then Auntie and Uncle Bob bought the new house up in Redwood Estates and my mom and I joined them. It was like a palace. It was huge compared to the old house.

I spent a lot of time angry at God. I felt very directly shunned by God. I wasn’t. I was shunned by a tight-ass ignorant woman. A mean spirited harpy. Unfortunately God wears many faces. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t speak for God. No one wanted to help me. Police officers told me not to talk about what happened to me after being sexually assaulted. I was isolated and hunted.

I don’t think the dj sexually assaulted me. I think he exploited my low self esteem, but that’s not the same thing. He didn’t force or cajole. He didn’t pressure me. I wanted to. I was enthusiastic. I asked him out on a date. I think he should have been a good enough person to understand that it was pretty bad for me to be doing what I was doing.

My mom didn’t mind me dating the dj. I broke it off. I felt disgusting and dirty when he gave me an opal necklace for Christmas. I knew it was a cheap shitty necklace. It was a gift worthy of my status. I was that bad of a whore.

Which isn’t fair. It was probably what he could afford. He didn’t know me. We didn’t have a real relationship.

But … yeah.

I don’t want to teach my kids to be the kind of promiscuous I am. It hurts me. I am to a point where I am capable of doing nonmonogamy in an ethical and reasonably safe way because I have made a lot of mistakes and I have been hurt in a wide variety of ways.

I have learned lessons that not everyone needs to learn. My kids don’t need to grow up and be like me. It is not important that my legacy be carried on in such a way. But maybe it is still important for my experiences to be talked about. That isn’t the same thing.

My kids aren’t having a life like I had but other kids are.

I really should try to sleep. I was going to try to go to the Renaissance Faire with the kids. Hahahahaha. We’ll see.

sticks and stones

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People tell me to just get over being afraid. But when I leave my house I have people yell that I am a dyke, a lesbian, a bitch, and a whore. People who have never met me and who know nothing about me. I have been raped a lot. I’ve never had a violent attack from a stranger, though. These days that feels like the biggest threat left in my life.

Given that I have boys yelling insults and put downs while following me home on bicycles (they were riding in the same direction anyway, I’m sure) I’m not really sure how it would be rational or reasonable for me to feel safe. I’m supposed to just shrug it off. Given my life experiences that is death. No. I can’t just brush off people threatening me. I fucking can’t. So I’m told to “drive to better neighborhoods so I can be safe”.

There aren’t safe places for me. I can’t drive to anywhere that is safe for me. Such a place doesn’t exist. Today that scares the ever-loving-shit out of me.

Do I think I was actually in danger from those teenage boys? I don’t know. Teenage boys are about as safe as a pack of rabid dogs in my experience. And I was just about to be in front of the house of the people who don’t want to know me any more. I don’t really feel I could have expected help. I would have been alone. Was I actually in danger? Things happen. They probably know where I live now.

That scares me. That scares me a lot.

If I treat this like a writing exercise…

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Dear J-

You emailed at a bad time. For no particular reason I woke up yesterday feeling much more suicidal than usual. I went on my seven mile run and had to deal with my knees shaking through most of the run because I was crying so hard my body was buckling. I got to Lake Elizabeth and felt a rush of anger at myself that I was so lazy that I stayed in bed till it was light. If it was still dark I could go down to the edge and swim out to the middle and drown myself and no one would be able to see me to rescue me in time.

Then I came home to your email. You want me to worry about you having a panic attack.

I’ll be honest and say that I laughed out loud. I did lol. I laughed. It bubbled up. I bent over laughing. I thought it was that fucking hilarious.

You know what, I’m not interested in a reconciliation. That sounds like work I don’t want to do. I’m kind of busy. I got a lot from our friendship, I’ll be honest. I cared about you a lot. I was looking forward to many years together. But between how you treated me and how you treated K, no thank you. K is one of three people my nearly two year old wants at her birthday party. I am not interested in a relationship with someone who treats me and mine how you do.

I can’t stop you from joining the homeschooling group. That’s not something that is in my authority or power to do. Shanna has asked me if she will ever be allowed to play with R again. I told her that when she is five if she is able to handle the phone and do the arranging I will drive her to and from play dates. If you show up at homeschool events I am certainly not going to be actively rude. I will never attack you physically or verbally. I do not plan to speak to you.

You see, I don’t have time for you. In order to have a relationship with you I would have to worry about you. You have proven yourself to not be someone who is worthy of how much effort that is for me. No thank you.

Krissy

I haven’t decided if I will send this. I love the internet. Thank you for listening to me babble.

An email I won’t send.

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“Hi Krissy,

I’d like to attempt to reconcile.

I’ll be completely sincere and give you my reasons;

1) I regret burning my bridges with you.  I think you’re a good person and I enjoyed spending time with you.

2) We are undoubtedly going to be a part of the same community and I don’t want to have an anxiety attack for 2 days after everytime I run into you.

I’d be open to meeting in person or chatting through IM or e-mail.

Thanks,
J”



Wait wait… let me get this straight. I am supposed to care about your panic attacks? Really? When I had a panic attack at your house and your response was to send me an email telling me that I am a bad mother and a horrible person and you’ve given me so many chances and you are just done. (I was never told I was given chances. This was a big shock.) You can’t watch someone be as terrible to their children as I am to mine.

And I’m supposed to care about your panic attacks? Really? 

The reason we will undoubtedly be part of the same community is because you are telling me that you will join the group I asked you to stay out of. After I didn’t leave my house for a year. Because of the fucking panic attacks you contributed to. I’m not going to say they are all your fault. I’ve had panic attacks for too many years to blame you. But you certainly make them worse. And I have studiously avoided every place I thought you might be.

But I should worry about you. And you feel bad about burning bridges. Well, I believe in natural consequences. Maybe next time you are having a bad day you won’t take it out on someone else and tell them they are bad and disgusting.

Bitch.

Busy weekend

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I went up to work at Wicked Grounds this weekend. On Saturday I went up after running thirteen miles. I was tired but ebullient. BART was really full so at one point I gave up my seat so that an elderly person could sit. Even though I just ran thirteen miles, I am clearly in a better position to be standing.

When I stood up two elderly Latina women started making comments–ok, so only one of them was loud. They glared at me. The words are already fuzzy in my memory (ahhh blessed medication) but she called me trash. They expressed shock that I was that gross and a woman. Ew. I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt with the words “Rope Slut”, and a zip up hoodie mostly closed over my chest. And a dog choke collar closed with a padlock. I looked at her quite fiercely and asked, “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” She turned bright red and looked down.

By contrast I ran around several blocks in San Francisco yesterday wearing a latex cheerleader outfit. It’s made with maroon and clear panels. One of the clear panels on the skirt is right over my ass crack. There is a deep clear vee in the front of the shirt. Now that I have ginormous mom nipples you can clearly see areola but not quite the nipple. It’s uhh festive. I had quite a few gay men tell me that I looked fabulous and they were proud of me for wearing it. It was… different.

Dore Alley is my anniversary. I got beaten by choice for the first time the night before Dore Alley in 2000. I was eighteen. It was my second weekend at the Power Exchange, a bdsm themed sex club in San Francisco. I had brought my sister the previous weekend and I was too afraid to play. I came back dressed in clothes I bought at Hot Topic and I asked a transwoman to beat me. I was afraid of the men, honestly. She flogged me very well.

I feel like Leather as an identity has changed a lot in the twelve years I have been part of the bdsm community. Even though I’m not active these days it still feels like my community. I have been there my entire adult life. I don’t have another community. There is no other grouping of people who will accept me for absolutely all of my fucked-up-interests.

I got to know a new person yesterday as a result of a massive faux pas. I used the wrong gender pronoun. I felt like a total fucking asshole. The woman-born-woman very bravely stayed near the cash register to tell me that I made a mistake when I said “he”. I felt so bad. (In my defense she is a very butch lesbian. Not that it excuses me in the slightest.) After that I ended up having a very long and protracted conversation with her.

It’s not every day I meet someone who says, “I know I am weird but it is because I was tortured as a child.”

Her androgynous gender appearance is the result of her father performing medical experiments on her from birth and trying to change her gender because she was born an identical twin and they wanted a boy.

We had a lot to talk about. We felt very comfortable together. We both found the bdsm scene at eighteen. She’s two years younger than me. I’m not sure how I have missed her for ten years. I do recognize her handle. I think I just have never been a San Francisco person. And City people don’t come south.

I got to sit down and have a surprise conversation with someone who I pretty much couldn’t shock. Do you know how often that happens to me? I’d put it at twice a decade. Normal people want to talk about their lives. From birth to eighteen I lived a traumatic horror show and when I turned eighteen I ran straight into the Leather community. I was embraced and adored. I still am.

I didn’t spend much time with anyone outside the Leather community for the four years I was with Tom. I was still close with Anna but Jenny and I barely spoke. We had very different lives even though we were both college students. I have rarely been like people my age. It was really amazing yesterday to find this person. I hope I can keep in touch with her. She feels like a gift.

The actual Up Your Alley Fair wasn’t very exciting. I felt pretty sad about how much it has changed. I saw far more latex than leather. Most guys were simply wearing underwear if they weren’t wearing pants. It didn’t look like a leather event. It looked like a bath house but outside with very little sex. I only saw three or four guys getting head. There used to be hundreds. I had the very strong impulse to ask the only really slutty guy I saw there (he had a line of boys) if he was willing to see if a mouth is just a mouth. I didn’t! I don’t do that any more! But I wanted to. I wonder if he would have let me. The fair felt uninspiring and if no one else was going to put on a show I might as well.

I really like this part of me. I want Noah to go to Folsom with me. Exhibitionism is big for me. I probably won’t have actual penetrative sex at Folsom but we will have to drive because I won’t be willing to make it home. The car can be put somewhere private.

I really like getting the shit beaten out of me while people watch and freak out. I like it. I really really like it. I like the energy of the crowd. I freak people out in dungeons too. I am on the far extreme edge of what is currently common. I wasn’t when I came into the community.

I found the leather community at the very beginning of the online era. People were still very paranoid about using the internet. It was harder to find parties because they weren’t advertised online. You had to get to know people still. We hung out in IRC talking all day and night together but we arranged the parties at munches. We had dungeons that were basically our community spaces. People spent a lot of time hanging around.

When I showed up as an eighteen year old it was very rare to see another person under thirty. The community was full of people who had already had full lives and then discovered something about themselves. They were people who made very conscious life choices to become the people they were.

Where I was there were a lot of older women who were very heavy masochists. Life has already made their ass hard. They have been getting hit for a very long time and they have leather  butt. They can barely bruise any more. Sadists like bruises. If it gets harder and harder to bruise you… well… I guess I’ll just have to hit you with something bigger.

I got to meet someone this weekend who grew up like me. She was intensely abused and ostracized as a child and then found the same Leather community. I know all of the people she was mentored by. I don’t know how in the hell I have missed her.

I really want to write more about sex but I should go in.

Tall Paul

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My dad was really tall. He was 6’7″. He was the tallest in a fairly tall family. The one time I was in a room with a bunch of Archer women (they all have different last names now because they married out of the family so I don’t feel too bad about outing their name) I was reminded that I was tainted by lesser blood. “Your father did marry a short woman. I guess we should have expected a midget.” I’m 5’5″. The next shortest woman in the room was 5’8″. They Archers have a nose built for looking down on people. My sister told me when I was a kid, “It’s a good thing you have the Archer nose so that you can look down on people who are taller than you.”

My brothers were really nasty to me about my size when I was growing up. They were four and a half and eight years, respectively, older than me. Of course I was smaller than them. But they were mean about it. Jimmy called me, “Midget” and he didn’t have a smile on his face. He would “accidentally” smack me in the face with his elbows and then say he can’t be held responsible for not seeing a midget.

It’s kind of funny because on my mom’s side of the family I am the tallest woman in a few generations. I grew up around women who are all much smaller than me so they always talked about how unusually large I was. I really don’t have much perspective on myself. I don’t know if I am a big person or not.

Recently I was lucky enough to have two friends come over to see me on the same day. That was kind of an accident but it was nice. They both happen to be quite tall. Of course they got around to telling me that I am a midget.

I blinked. I don’t think my facial expression changed much. I was trying hard to control the urge to do something violent. I felt such a massive over reaction that I knew there was no way I could react at all. I could feel paralysis set in. Just blink. I’m pretty sure I bit my lip. I tried to control the tears.

I have always cried when I am frustrated. Tears just spring into action. I feel so much anger, so much intensity that I want to hurt someone or something. I know there is nothing I can do. I can’t make the feeling go away. I can’t change how anyone is going to treat me. I can’t do anything about anything. So my eyes well up with tears. These days I don’t feel exactly the same way. I can do things. But not when I am flooded. Not when I hear Jimmy in my head sneering “Midget”.

My therapist told me on Thursday that she needs to stop doing private practice because she has ten months left to complete things for her license and she needs to concentrate on that. I enthusiastically told her I support her doing that. I could immediately feel walls come up. I no longer felt like I had things I wanted to tell her. She was no longer going to be a carrier of my story. I feel like I have to pull back all of the energy I store up to give her and conserve it very carefully.

I’m not up for running out and finding a new therapist this month. Therapy is a relationship. I need space between them so I can regroup and really understand what my current need is in a therapist because things change. Sharon was great when I wanted EMDR to help me deal with the miscarriages and two people who were close to me overdosing on heroin in a short period of time. She was not a good long term therapist for me. My needs changed.

I will need to figure out what I should be looking for right now. There is a big part of me that wants to tell my current therapist that I will wait out the year and hope she comes back to private practice. The two former therapists I really bonded with are both dead. I don’t have very many people in the whole world who have listened to me actually tell my stories out loud. Many people have read them. Not many people have been interested in knowing this part of me. Finding a new therapist is hard.

In February I was told, “There are no personal problems they are all problems of the community.” I’m not sure I know what I need right now. I am going to take advantage of the unexpected budget win-fall and go see my acupuncturist. (See, I only used two c’s in the word instead of three. I can be taught. Eventually.) That will be good. I can get new glasses. Woo. These are more than two years old and I have a constant low level headache because they are out of date. No bueno.

It’s hard how much my current life is influenced by people who hated me. It’s decidedly inconvenient at times. I really wish I could get them out of my head.

You have no power over me.

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Noah asked me why I am letting this woman have so much power over me. She responded to my first email with a short thing basically saying, “I was nine months pregnant when I sent this to you. Maybe I could have had more compassion. Can’t you forgive me?” I ranted back. I explained that I am going to spend every minute I am near her terrified that I am going to have another panic attack in front of her. I’m afraid of how nasty she will be next time because apparently I go through “chances” without ever having any idea I am doing something wrong. I told her I don’t really want to deal with that given that it took me a year to have the courage to leave the house because I was afraid of running into her.

Why am I so afraid of her? What does she represent to me? Noah pointed out that I’m creating my own self-fulfilling prophecies here. I say that people hate me and reject me foreverrrrrrr I will be aloooooooooooooone foreverrrrrrrrrrr. Ahem. Or something like that. She apologized, why don’t I accept the apology?

If she had sent some kind of an apology spontaneously instead of because she couldn’t ignore me any longer I would have had a different reaction. She didn’t want to apologize. She doesn’t think she did anything wrong.

Why does she have so much power? Why does her disapproval matter? Because I spent about a year telling her intimate things. It didn’t feel like the break up of a “friendship”. This was as emotionally intense as a romantic relationship. Since I had kids I have been bonding a lot more strongly with women. I am getting too attached too quickly, apparently. I told this woman extensively about my mental health issues and more specifically about my life. Then she shamed me.

I don’t like someone deliberately shaming me. I shouldn’t care what she thinks. I don’t have anything invested in her opinion. She is not going to be part of my life again if I can help. She responded to my last rant saying she left the Meet Up group.

She’s right that it will be hard to avoid one another given that she lives twenty minutes away. I get to ask her for space once. Past that she really doesn’t have to give me any room. She gets to live her life as well. She lives around here and there is a finite number of kid things. I can’t keep her out of all of them. That’s not cool to her kids. But I can ask her to stop showing up at my gosh darn park day, once.

There were four of us. We spent over a year hanging out together at least once and up to four times a week. When we got together we would spend at least five hours, sometimes up to nine hours. We did a lot of long-term talking about things that our kids would do. We spent holidays together. Then I got told that I was out of chances completely out of the blue after I had a panic attack.

I was punished by the removal of two peoples love because I was bad. Because I am crazy.

So what happened was I was on edge to start with. I was at the beginning of the unravel I had last year. Shanna was in a brief hitting phase (it lasted less than a month). She hit this other little boy twice and I pulled her into the bedroom and told her that if she did it again we would have to go. It was not nice to repeatedly hit someone in their own house. That’s just really over the line for me. She was two. No she didn’t “get it” but if children never have consequences for their actions they will never “get it”. Of course she hit him again. And right as I was telling her in a ranty voice that if she hits people we have to leave Calli had a dirty diaper. I tried to get Shanna to sit still while I changed it because she lost the privilege of playing. We walked out with me repeatedly saying in a louder-than-necessary voice something to the effect of “It’s not ok to hit people. When you hit people there are consequences. Get your butt out to the van. No, don’t play. You are in trouble. It’s not ok to hit people.” I never called her a name. I wasn’t demeaning. I wasn’t insulting or nasty. My tone of voice was really harsh and loud. I couldn’t breath and my heart was racing. Dealing with both kids in that moment was hard and over whelming.

That night I received an email telling me that she didn’t want to know me any more because my behavior is over the top and I am mean to Shanna. I don’t have age appropriate expectations.

Uhm, I expect my two year old to hit people. I think it is then my job to enforce consequences so she can have some idea that it’s not a great plan. I don’t hit my kids. I don’t call them names. I don’t put them down. But I do separate them from their friends when they can’t play nicely. I guess that’s not “age appropriate”.

I feel defensive and angry. I feel like for some reason she has the power to cause other people to share her opinions. I’m scared that she would join this play group and people who currently tolerate me would no longer want to because she would sit there and gossip about my faults. I’m worried because the “Attachment Parenting” community is very harsh and dogmatic. They absolutely encourage shunning people who do not completely follow the party line.

I have mixed feelings because I wonder if her nastygram was a good thing. I wonder if I really am a mean nasty person. Shanna really is a strange mini-adult. I don’t tolerate a lot of “age appropriate” behaviors most of the time. I set really firm boundaries around them. Am I somehow robbing them because I expect manners? Obviously I am insecure.

I believe deep in my heart that I am nice to my kids. I get angry, yes. My anger is bigger than a lot of peoples, yes. My kids are going to have to deal with being my kids. I have mental illness. That’s just a fact. I may always experience panic attacks. I don’t know. I have no crystal ball. My kids have to be near me. It isn’t possible for me to make my panic attacks completely invisible and silent to them. I talk to them a lot about how they aren’t responsible for my emotions and my behavior.

Awhile ago I was having a panic attack and angry with Shanna over something. She started crying. I looked at her and asked her if she was afraid. She told me yes. I sunk down to the floor and put my head down. I told her that I was doing something wrong then. Kids shouldn’t be afraid of their mothers. Mothers are never supposed to hurt kids. I sat up and pulled her into my lap. I asked her to explain what she understood about why I was upset. She did a good job. I explained the rest of the back story on why I don’t want her doing _______. I told her that I was sorry I scared her. I didn’t mean to. She hugged me and said that she would try not to do _________ again. I thanked her.

But I’m a terrible person, right? It’s not ok to ever raise your voice. It’s not ok to ever be angry.

Wait, what? Oh good grief. Why do I give this idiocy so much power over me? Partially because it feels like the drumbeat for my stage of life. It’s not as if this woman is the only one presenting that image. I spent way too much time on Mothering.com.

She was just an echo chamber for what I feel society as a whole wants from me. The vast majority of the time if I express any anger near anyone there is some comment on it. “Don’t hold back, tell me how you really feel.” “My son is an empath so you can’t get angry near him.” “You get angry really quickly.” I suppose that depends on how you look at it.

Why does she have so much power over me. Because she is able to smile and spew poison. Because I am very susceptible to girl games. Because I was taken down many many pegs. And now she has come and joined my new hierarchy. Those kinds of status things feel extremely transitory. I don’t really want to get a sudden demotion.

When I transferred to Leigh High School during my freshman year of high school I started going by a nickname derived from my middle name. After I was there for a month or so someone leaved over a teacher’s shoulder and said, “Wait. Your name is Kristine? Like Krissy? Are you Krissy Archer? That Krissy Archer?” I had sex with multiple people at my previous school. It was part of the reason I ran. I didn’t want to deal with that reputation when I moved. Abruptly I had someone calling me a whore in every class.

And women are vicious in a way that is far more hurtful. They don’t just insult you and call it a day. They get close to you and then use withdrawal of love as a weapon. They talk to your friends. They lower the general opinion people have of you. Often by repeating half-true stories. The more they smile at you while they are doing this the more problems you will have later.

My kids need a fucking stable group of friends. I really don’t want to play the social status game. I only kind of interact with the other parents. I really need for my behavior and relationship with my children to be judged based on the things we actually do. Not the things people speculate that we might do because they witness some of our worst interactions. Everyone has their worst interactions. If mine involve my tone of voice being ranty and harsh while I say things that are otherwise fairly reasonable I will live with that and consider it a life well lived. I don’t rant very often. It’s quite rare. And Shanna is quick to tell me that my tone of voice isn’t ok and I need to change it. I don’t think she is a beat down child.

Why have I set her up as a judge and jury I have to defend myself from? Because most other people don’t pay enough attention to me for me to feel like they would bother judging me? And yet mob mentality is very real. I am weird. I am reminded over and over again in a variety of ways (parenting books like this try to make it a joke) that for me to be weird is a problem for my kids. They will suffer for it. It will be my fault and that’s bad. I should be trying to blend into the crowd. That book in particular stressed how it is ok that you know you don’t fit in but you have to learn how to fake it so your kid isn’t punished. It’s true if you are in a public school. I don’t want it to be true at our home school group.

It’s kind of like playing Plants Vs. Zombies. She’s a double pea shooter walking towards me. She’s going to kill me. She feels like she can poison my environment. She was certainly good at having me like her and think well of her. Until she turned on me abruptly and was really nasty. Oh shit I don’t want that kind of poison in the well. It’s just a bad idea.

Why does she have so much power over me? Her brand of poison is pretty powerful. I believe she mostly liked being friends with me. But I’m one of those polarizing figures. She liked me a lot but the things she didn’t like she disliked a lot. I don’t need to have someone who is good at making me like them but who occasionally tells me I am a terrible person in my life. That’s kind of my crack. What’s our favorite game, Noah?

I don’t want her in the group because all of a sudden park day becomes a whole different beast for me. I no longer have to think of whether I’m up for all of the basic things. I have to think about how secure I feel that I can sit off to the side quietly and not get into a conversation that might trigger a panic attack. Because it absolutely not ok to have a panic attack with that woman nearby. Oh God. Poor Shanna might lose more friends. And it would be All My Fault.

I’m not planning to move. Shanna is stuck here. She has to make friends here. I have to not fuck this up.

Why does she have power over me? Because I’m not good at taking it back once I give it to someone. Why the fuck do I care what Tom thinks? Why in the fuck do I care what my mother thinks? Because I do. Because I love them. Because I wish with every part of me that they thought I was good. Because I am very used to people who profess to love me telling me that I am horrible. I have a magnetic attraction to this cycle. I like people who have more control than I have who tell me I am bad for not having it. It’s really pretty fucked up and self-loathing of me.

Why does she have power over me? Because in my experience, other than the people I live with, people don’t give other people second chances. Not really. She has a bad opinion of me. I’m supposed to try and prove that I am worthy of a second chance. Now she has told me that I am going through chances so I can be held to it.

Noah thinks I should just think of her as a stupid person and move on with my life not caring how she feels about me. He has a point.

Even though I feel wicked uncomfortable about having done so I created a socially safe place for me. I hope. I don’t think I will have a perfect experience without her there. But I’m not going to be judged on something half remembered from a long time ago.

I’m not at this group to make friends. I am cordial. I participate in conversations enough that I sort of look like part of the group. Mostly I play with the kids or run. People probably either think I am aloof or shy. I’m ok with either. I have told more than one person that I have horrible social anxiety. That’s as personal as I have gotten.

Where is this space in our life for acquaintances? For community? For people who are around but with whom you don’t have a personal connection? If I keep people out at arms length then they can be out at arms length forever. What they do has very little effect on me. If I let someone in closer they have to be shoved much much further than just arms length away when they hurt me. It’s not a very forgiving system. My problem is I assign too much intent to behaviors. People aren’t trying to hurt me. They are trying to express their emotions.

She felt intimidated by me. So she attacked. Normal. The person who sent the recent accusatory letter? He’s not really upset because of my actions. He’s upset about things in his life and I’m a good target. He at least thinks he is doing a good thing.

It’s not about me. Don’t make excuses. Don’t apologize. She apologized to me. Shouldn’t I take that at face value? What I should do is get off my butt and go eat a banana. Then get dressed. Then go run. Today my wonderful friend Taylor is coming over. That guarantees a good day. I’m going to stop thinking about her. I asked her to leave the group and she did. I may run into her again some day and then I will have to revisit this emotional experience. That time I won’t get to ask her to leave a group. She lives here too. It’s not ok to make her pay for the rest of her life. That’s really not cool. Hell, in a few years I may suddenly grow up and decide I don’t give a shit. Folks either like me or they don’t and I will have been part of the group long enough that it really won’t matter.

But I’m not there yet. My skin is not that thick. It’s too raw. It’s too scary. I have a hard time getting out of the house. If I knew she was going to be there I wouldn’t be able to go. I wouldn’t be able to put my kids through the experience of dealing with my panic attacks. That’s not fair.

I’m going to go now.

I did a hard thing.

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Last February I was sent a nasty Dear Jane letter. Someone no longer wished to know me. I had a panic attack at her house and she told me that I was a bad parent and she could no longer bear to see how I interact with Shanna. She said I am far too hard on Shanna and my expectations are not age appropriate. There was more. I don’t want to read it again.

She showed up at the home school group today. She asked me if it would be a problem for me if she was there. She was smirking while she asked. She had already let her kids run off to play. She said she could round them up and just go “If I was going to feel uncomfortable”. I told her that Shanna still asks to play with her son so it is fine.
I lied. It wasn’t fine. When I got home I sent her an email. I responded to her nastygram from last February (for the very first time) and included the full text. I said, “Given the hostility with which you ended our friendship I would prefer that you not join a group I am a member of. I’m sure you understand given that you don’t particularly want to know me.”

I ended a sentence with a preposition. Bah. That was hard. I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I didn’t wait. I’m glad I didn’t let her get friendly with a bunch of people so that it becomes “drama”. She doesn’t know those people yet. She has met them once. I don’t really want to get chased out of this community. I don’t deal with passive aggressive behavior very well. Someone who will be nasty to me then smile all pretty like has no place in my life.

Her son came over and wanted to play soccer with Calli and I. He got really angry when I insisted he share. He sat down and told me he wasn’t going to play anymore because I was mean. Calli had the damn ball first and it wasn’t his. Yeah. I don’t really need to deal with that family every week at the park. I hope she doesn’t come back. I really don’t think I was mean to him. I was very careful with my tone of voice. I can’t be passive aggressive enough for that family and I have no interest in trying.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. I was all set to have a gosh darned good day. By the way, I think it is hilarious that Shanna talks about the “darn freakin’ housework”. I did finally clean up my language some year. Like the year I heard how fluent my three year old was with “fuck”. Neither of us say it much any more. Ahem.

I feel weird. I feel like I was inappropriate in setting this boundary. I feel like I should have kept my mouth shut. It’s not like I own the group. But man. She was freakin mean. I don’t want to deal with her. UUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH.