Category Archives: party

Friendship, race, and tokenism.

One of my dearest friends made a few comments post-party. Later she said, “Oh I was kidding.” You don’t say something four times unless it hit a nerve. So let’s get into this.

First and foremost: I’ve had over 24 hours to go through a long list of defensive postures. You notice how I didn’t write about this yesterday? I don’t want to be defensive. I don’t want to list how many non-white people I invited and it’s not my fault they didn’t come. I invited them. Many were traveling. I really want to get into specifics. As if proving that I invited X number of non-white people means anything.

It doesn’t. How many particular individuals I invited of what race is beside the point.

If someone I like and respect feels like a token then I am probably doing something wrong in how I talk to them and treat them.

I treat almost everyone I know as a token representation of Y group. It’s not one of my best traits. But for me a white person from the mid-west is about as foreign as a friend from Israel (who is maybe white maybe not white depending on who you ask).

Even my friends who grew up poor still grew up in radically different cultures from me. It is unusual for someone to go through as many communities where you are the minority as I did. I was frequently the only white kid in a room. When I exchange stories about being homeless with people it was different for me than it was for other people I have talked to. There are lots of reasons for all the differences. I drip with privilege whether I like it or not.

If I make someone I respect and admire feel like they are just a token then I need to take a serious look at my behavior. I am doing something wrong. I am not adequately conveying what is going on in my brain.

I am not a big fan of the idea that “X person represents what it is like to be Y race” because I don’t find that it bears out in the main. I am really bad about classifying people as “close with their family vs. not close with their family”. I am much more likely to put up with people who are close with their family so I can hear the secrets about how that works. I don’t really care what race they are–I have friends of a whole rainbow of colors who have close families quite on purpose.

I want to hear what it is like. I do treat people like ambassadors. You come from a culture I don’t understand. I wish I did understand it. I want to move in that general direction even though I will never arrive at being just like you.

I think that what country you came from is far less interesting to me than how you get along with your parents.

That said, I corner every single person I meet who has lived outside this country and ask them their opinion about what they have seen in life. I get some fascinating breakdowns of Eastern Europe sometimes. Oh man.

I really want to get defensive. I want to point out that depending on how you “define” white (some people think Jewish people count as white and some people are violently opposed to such a classification) there were at least 40 people invited to the party who were non-white. Yes, I invited more like 80 white people.

I don’t think I invited people based on trying to get a mixed bag of races though. I invited just about everyone I know that I could get an email address for. I invited people from every community I dip my toes into. Many of those communities are primarily white.

Like the bdsm community. Holy moly is that a white community. Whereas there is the occasional random non-white person it is remarkable and weird. (And I invited every single non-white person from the scene that I know. Not because I wanted non-white people. But because I invited everyone I know and like. I’m sorry more didn’t come.)

Then I feel like a giant asshole. What in the fuck is wrong with me that I wish specific people had come so that I look more “multicultural”. Now that’s treating people like tokens.

If you try too hard to have a racially/religiously balanced group then you do get into tokenism.

I try to invite people and be ok with whoever comes. I can’t feel too much self-worth from who comes and who doesn’t. People were busy. Lots of people were traveling. Other people were sick. Who chooses to come on a random party one random day does not decide whether or not I am treating my friends well or not. It doesn’t decide if my friendships are real or just tokens.

It is my belief that as a white person in America I should probably never feel fully comfortable with my behavior towards people of other races. I should always be willing to be called on the carpet and be told that my behavior sucks. Often that kind of thing is extremely educational and if you resist the correction you resist the ability to grow. It is hard to know what you don’t know. It is very hard to see beyond your white privilege. It is hard to understand what other people don’t have.

I am bad about asking people to be ambassadors from their culture. But I think that culture isn’t just about your ethnicity/race. Whatever my motivation and desire I don’t get to decide how I impact other people. White people react with shock when I ask them to tell me about their culture. They think their culture is my culture. People of other races get to be annoyed at the stupid white girl treating them in a way they don’t like. That is totally fair.

I appreciate it when people think about themselves and then explain what they see to me. That doesn’t mean that other people want to do that for me. I can ask and they can think I’m a fucking asshole. That’s how the exchange works.

Sometimes I feel awkward when I love people intensely who don’t look much like me. I don’t want to express my love and affection in a way that feels alien and alienating. I’m afraid I do. I’m always afraid I am alienating people. I am always afraid I am treating people like just a doll in a set.

I collect people in my life. I do. I want people to love me like I want to breathe. I am much more ok with people choking me than with them not loving me.

How someone looks is generally one of the very least impressive parts for me and in my head mostly that is the difference race makes. I care more about other categories. Do you get along with your parents? Have you always been middle class? What has “middle class” meant in your life? What kinds of deprivation have you dealt with? Do you learn best by sitting very still and listening or do you learn best by moving around? How promiscuous have you been? Do you like hitting people or being hit?

These questions are far more indicative to me of compatibility than race. I care more about these answers.

But as a white person I understand that is a cop-out, bullshit answer. No I’m not fucking color blind. I see race. I just don’t think it is likely to be the reason someone wants to be my friend or not. People are going to want to be my friend or not based on very different factors. I am white so ostensibly that shafts me off to the white people section only lots of white people don’t like me so much. So I branch out.

I feel really bad about the fact that I deal best with fairly Americanized people regardless of race. I have less than perfect hearing and I struggle with accents. I don’t like a lot of regional US accents either. I have to ask people to repeat themselves a lot. I feel really stupid the whole time. Why in the hell can’t I just understand?

So I suppose that in the end I get why some of my friends could walk into a party and feel like a token. (I will defensively point out that there were three other people of your general continent-level ethnicity in the house before you arrived so no you can’t be my “only friend from that continent”.) It was certainly mostly a white crowd.

But I hope that you have known me long enough to know how much I value you as an individual. Our relationship is not primarily about me showing you off at parties as my token non-white friend. Our relationship is primarily about you telling me about your wonderful family and us exchanging raunchy sex stories and you being a wonderful influence on my children. Yes, you do language stuff with my kids. I really appreciate it. I do listen and try to learn. Not because you are a token but because I appreciate that you come to my house and share yourself with us. I try to honor that.

If I am failing at showing my friends how much they matter to me then I should pay attention to that. I should be aware of it and I should work on my behavior. That’s what you do when you love and respect someone. You try to work on your behavior so you can make them feel loved and respected.

If my current set of behaviors isn’t impacting someone the way I want then that is my fault. Communication is complicated. If my message isn’t arriving then that is a failure on the sending end. Sure, there are some people who can misunderstand anything (often seemingly on purpose) but I have to give my friends the benefit of the doubt.

Why do I care so much about people being other cultures from me? Why do I focus on it? Why does it come up? Because most manners, expectations, and attitudes are largely unconscious. You know what was drilled into you as a child.

Why do you think I am inclined to say “fuck” every third word? That’s what my childhood was like.

I ask because the difference between a poor person from the south and a rich person from the south is ocean sized in my perception. Even if Noah’s great-aunt thinks that everyone in Huntsville Texas “is just the same kind of people”. Whatever. You’re wrong. It’s easy to think that when you are the rich lady living in the fucking mansion.

Poor people know better. Poor people know that there are differences and either you acknowledge that and deal with it or you are fucked.

Sometimes people tell me that I am their token “poor” friend. A large number of people have expressed shock and horror that they know someone who was once homeless. Get the fuck over it. At this point I pass into the middle class so stop acting like I count as you knowing a poor person. You don’t get credit for me.

I think that treating everyone like they are from a different culture is largely about acknowledging that we will always make one another uncomfortable in some way. That’s what a poor fit between cultures does. It makes you aware of where you have expectations and the other person fails to meet them. It is hard to not treat those expectations like entitlements.

I love you and I love you and I love you. I have known you for more than half my life. You are anything but a token to me. You are integral to my happiness and feeling of wholeness. You have given me so much approval and reason to keep trying that I can’t possibly write about the impact you have had on my life. It’s too big for me.

If I make you feel like you are just a token then I am doing something drastically wrong and I need to knock it the fuck off. I will try harder.

I love you.

Merry Christmas.

post-party

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That was a great party. We had ~45 people come over a 9 hour period. Our guesstimate is there was never more than ~30 people at a time. There were ~12 kids. (I’m using ~ because I counted roughly in my head and I probably missed bodies.)

It was a lot of fun. I really like my friends. They are all very neato people. I’m lucky.

Ok, stomach… get ready.

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It’s the day! Almost our last social obligation of the year. I’m excited. We aren’t leaving the house between Christmas and New Years.

It is weird how anxiety works. I’m looking forward to seeing people but man my stomach hurts.

At the home school holiday party I said, “Man I’m whiny today. I’m sorry.” Another mother countered with, “How is that different from any other day?” I don’t think I will speak when that person is standing within 10′ of me any more.

This is the kind of thing I over react to. Ok, if I’m that unpleasant then I will work hard to make sure you don’t have to acknowledge that I exist any more.

But she didn’t say I was awful. She said I was whiny. This is a true statement. I am.

Sometimes Noah asks why I don’t punish the kids for whining. Because I don’t punish for things I model. That’s just how it rolls in this house.

There was also a noticeable amount of discussion as to how sad it was that a certain blog reader and 3/5 of her kids weren’t there. (We never get the other 2/5.) I told people that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a rejection of the group for being sucky. Spoons can only stretch to cover so many activities.

Part of what I like about hosting events is I get to introduce my friends to one another. I know really neat people.

2013 has been one of the best, most stable years of my entire life. If I can’t get my anxiety under control under these circumstances I’m fucked.

I often go back and forth in my head, “My friends deserve to know me sober. Because being sober is always superior to being a loser drug addict. But wait! You are talking like a schizophrenic about to stop taking their meds. Maybe this is a bad plan.”

Don’t worry. I won’t try to do this sober. I haven’t been practicing enough to do an event of this size alone yet. I would spend the party in my bedroom crying and shaking if I tried.

That feels really pathetic. God I’m a loser. Bravery isn’t about feeling no fear. It is about performing to spec no matter how terrified you are. Having a holiday party shouldn’t be terrifying but it is.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter what “should” be true. It matters what is.

I’m going to have to spend pretty much all of next year working on being able to do this sober. I’m going to have to be able to handle any size of crowd unassisted before 2015 or I can’t take the kids on the road trip. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.

Tomorrow. I’ll work on that tomorrow. Next year. All of next year. Not today.

Sometimes I feel guilty when I say “not today–I’ll do that later.” My only consolation is I do usually get around to doing it… or it wasn’t important to begin with.

It is nice to see that I do the things I say I will. Not every single thing–I don’t make that many promises on purpose. I have to figure out sober again.

I used to be sober. I managed my PTSD without meds for most of my life. It has meant a lot of isolating in order to calm my ambient stress. I don’t get that now that I have kids.

I have to teach them to be part of my lower stress or I’m fucked. This sounds hard and scary.

Bravery doesn’t mean never feeling scared. It means you keep your ass moving even when you are scared. I can do that. I can keep moving.

I think today will be fun. I think I will be glad I did it even though it creates stress too.

I thanked Noah and the kids for helping me clean the house. I told them that it is important to me to once in a while have a clean house and a party and I appreciate that they did work towards that even if it isn’t important to them.

I was only an asshole about the cleaning for maybe 10 hours total and it wasn’t all yesterday it was over a week. That’s not great but it isn’t as bad as it could be.

In my head I have this tally sheet. I know how harsh I have seen some mothers be. I’m not on the harsh end of what I have seen. I have seen some seriously brutal people though. I like being on the nicer end of the scale. I don’t even know why I want it so bad but I do.

If I can’t get my kids to cooperate by being nice to them then I think the cooperation I get through being an asshole is suboptimal. Sometimes I’m a fucking self absorbed asshole and I do it. I try really hard to avoid it though.

Life involves work. I need my kids to not be the kind of people who sit back and watch while work is being done. I need for them to be the kind of people who say, “There is work to be done? Where do I start?”

I very consciously don’t give them much bullshit work day-in/day-out through the year. I really don’t have a lot of make work. I don’t make them live in a perfectly clean house all the time (ha!). I enforce daily teeth cleaning, underwear changing, and they have to set the table for meals. That’s what I really enforce on a daily basis.

I need for them to grow up in an atmosphere where it is fine to not do much most of the time and sometimes you have to chip in. You just do.

I don’t know how to inspire this very well though. I always resort to bullying and crying at some point. It’s pretty fucking lame. I try to recognize when I am bullying, retract the statement and walk away. “I should not have said that. I’m sorry I was such a jerk.” Usually that comes in the form of a threat to throw away anything that isn’t picked up. It’s not a cool threat. I’m an asshole for saying it. Just because I feel it that doesn’t excuse me saying it.

I tried really hard to not fuss at the kids. I wasn’t fully successful but I tried. I need to try harder. It isn’t their fault I want things. I try to let them know, “There isn’t a good reason I want this. I just want it. Will you please help me?” Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It is hard to manage my emotional reaction to being turned down.

Right now it is part of that whole, “If I do not know the answer will be ‘yes’ then I don’t have the spoons to ask for help” problem. I get into these cycles. As the people I live with the kids have to deal with the results of what happens when I can’t handle a no and I get one any way. Mostly I go in my room and shut the door and cry.

Which makes me feel like a manipulative piece of shit.

I try to not-react as much as possible. I know that I’m supposed to maintain a neutral state over here on my own but I’m shite at that. I’m trying.

Like the woman letting me know that I whine every day. Oh. Shit. Ok I guess the solution is to just stop talking. I don’t know what else to do.

I don’t think I can stop talking entirely. That would kill me. But I can make sure I don’t bother you any more. I’m sorry my existence is such a trial to you. I’m not even being sarcastic. I am annoying. I’m sorry. I don’t really know how to change that I am this difficult.

Some people are easier than others. I don’t even just mean the sex. Not that I’ve been easy to have sex with lately. Poor Noah. Our sleep cycles are totally out of alignment and we’re tired and over-committed and having kids is an impediment. Life happens.

This phase isn’t permanent–right?

Just keep moving. If you are still alive there is always a chance that things will change. If you want things to be different, just keep moving. Just because I can’t do something today that means nothing about ten years from now.

Right now I can’t play any musical instrument. That could change. I don’t sew. Some day I might. Right now Noah thinks there is no chance he will ever be a distance runner. It’s not his favorite. But if he wants to keep eating cookies with me at the rate we are going through them… I think it could happen.

If he wants to have a long, sex-filled life with me we will have to do some more exercise. I’m told it is good for you. We have no physical disabilities so we don’t have good excuses. (There are good reasons some people can’t run. I’m not acting like this is universally applicable…)

I have a lot of time ahead of me. I can figure out how to do a lot of things. I read something cool this morning about how great artists often go through big revivals in their 80’s.

I have spent most of my life believing I would die fairly young. But if I want to find out what Shanna is like on her 60th birthday I have to not die until well into my 80’s. I should plan for that. I should consciously try to get there. I should work at it. And then Calli is even two years behind that.

I want to see what their lives will be like. I don’t want to just witness their childhood and feel sad all the time that no one loved me as a child.

What will they do with their adulthoods? How will they inspire me? I’m sure they will.

Just keep moving. Keep introducing them to interesting people. I know so many neat people. I know people who do the fucking coolest stuff. I like basking in their glow. I like getting to be an audience. I should stay alive and keep doing that.

Today I will manage my anxiety and see friends. My kids will get to see a lot of different kinds of people. It is rare that I cross the streams like this. Home schoolers, perverts, geeks, and dancers. Who knows what the results will be like. I think everyone will be child-appropriate. I think people will be polite and wonderful. I think that sometimes questions will be answered in surprising ways. That’s for the best.

It takes all kinds in this world. My friends are Christians, Jews, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, and pagans. I don’t have any friends who are practicing Muslims but it’s not on purpose. At least no one has chosen to share with me that they follow that religion.

I thought about name tags. “Hi my name is ________. I know Krissy/Noah through ___________.” That would be awesome for me. I would enjoy how people self-identify. Ha. “Burning Man. Uhhhh…. that’s it…. I know them through Burning Man.” Not that I (Krissy) have gone. But I know a lot of Burners. And many people that I think of in other categories would probably self-identify our friendship that way because it sounds more child safe.

I’m not going to put anyone more on the spot than I have to. Not today. I don’t have the spoons to manage.

It will be a good day. Time to stop typing.

Cutting and parties and the parasympathetic nervous system

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My therapist, predictably, doesn’t want me putting a lock on the bathroom door. She is asking me to wait a few weeks. She has a list of things I just need to try before that step is a good idea. She was quite insistent in that way shrinks are which is why we pay them, no?

She mentioned a medication and I didn’t write it down immediately and now I am waiting on a response to an email. Research. She said there is an unusual drug that is not an anti-depressent/anti-psychotic/anti-anxiety that is sometimes used with addicts including severe cutters who can’t get past the “tension release” stage. Supposedly it acts on the mechanism in the brain that requires the brief releases from tension.

I mentioned that I pretty much always freak out like this right before a party and I feel really self-conscious and bad because it seems like inappropriate attention seeking behavior. Her response was, “Your parasympathetic nervous system is trying to get your attention and that’s not a bad thing.” Right before I have lots of people over my body prepares for the fight/flight/freeze thing and I get over loaded. In her opinion I need to figure out some larger structure around stress release particularly right before events–she says cutting isn’t a good option.

Psh. What does she know.

(That was my “I’m funny” voice.)

She says if I’m going off pot this medication may be an appropriate next step. It makes me want to cry. Western meds have completely wrecked my body every time I’ve tried. Name a side effect–I have gotten pretty much every non-fatal one.

I also talked to the home schooled teenager on our street yesterday. We are going to start weekly babysitting. I need more of a break than I’m getting. It is just fucking mandatory. People go insane in circumstances like mine even if they started out basically healthy. I don’t think I have been basically healthy… oh uhm, ever?

I pick my therapists very carefully so she asked me, “How did you and Noah use bdsm to manage these cycles in the past?” Bless her heart. If you have the wrong therapist for you they can be the most worthless excuse for a human being but if you have the right match you can make lots of behavioral progress. (That’s not really fair. They aren’t “worthless” just because they are a bad fit but when you are really upset and hurting it feels that way.)

So the topic of weekly canings came up. Not canning. Not putting food in jars. Being hit with sticks. This time the reference is more on the fun side, kind of like the swinging only this time she meant the other meaning.

I’m not opposed to giving it a shot. I pointed out that Noah and I have never done behavior management this way. I did that with my Owner. We had a very different dynamic.

I continue to have mixed feelings about the idea that it is better for someone else to hit me than for me to cut myself. I understand that a lot of people who generally support the idea of bdsm agree. If you believe that bdsm can be a healthy activity then you probably would side with it being superior to cutting. Probably. I can’t speak for everyone but I’ve been told that a lot.

I watch The West Wing too much so I am starting to explain things to myself in terms of the story arc. Cutting is about dealing with the pressure caused by a nuclear reaction. First the reaction goes into a series of containment devices (my previous/earlier coping methods) then eventually it gets to the point where the containment devices are full and there is more steam coming and either you vent to the atmosphere (causing possible massive damage) or you risk a full scale explosion which will absolutely for certain cause way the fuck more damage. Better to vent a little.

That’s what cutting is. Cutting brings all of my physical stress down to a level where I stop swearing and yelling and freaking out. I’m nice and calm. It’s better than a Valium.

It is hard being told “I know you have this awesome coping method that works better than everything else I am recommending put together… but don’t use it.”

That doesn’t feel like a supportive act. I’m trying to look at the big picture. One of the dominant symptoms of my various forms of mental illness is difficulty with tunnel thinking. When you are in the tunnel you don’t think you will ever be out again. You can only think in the panic of the Right Now. There is no larger picture.

My shrink confidently and manipulatively brings up phrases like “Harm Reduction.” Psh. Like I give a shit about that theory. Psh.

(Once again with the funny… If I didn’t tell you then you wouldn’t know that you are supposed to chuckle. I learn from television shows which tell their audience when to laugh.)

At this stage cutting would dramatically increase the harm I am doing in the process of coping. If there are any less harmful methods left to try I just can’t get to the last method yet.

I’m not really at a point where I’m thrilled about being told “Just be more patient” because that’s what it sounds like.

I’m trying to think about water flowing over obstructions. Sure, it could destroy one path by trying to send all the water one way in a jet or it could try to find another way around. Water is good at getting around whatever you try to block it with. Resourceful.

Last night was Noah’s company holiday party. I did better than I’ve done the last two years. Improvement is good, right? Once again it feels kind of pathetic that I have to struggle so much in order to not be inappropriate.

Last night I swore more than is probably strictly speaking ideal but I didn’t worry about it. I was at an adult party. Noah didn’t care or think I was too extreme. I can live with the other teacher/parent people looking a little shocked when I say “What the fuck?”

I think this party felt lower stress because I didn’t know anyone. For the last few years I had to manage the line between hanging out with people I actually knew and dealing with the amorphous boundaries of “work people”. That’s harder. This time I just go to try to censor appropriately and that’s easier.

When people tried to shock and titillate me by referring to going to a conference that had a leather track I got to cross examine and figure out that it must have been some kind of more general alternative lifestyle convention because I’ve never heard of a 10,000-15,000 person leather conventions in LA in the past few years and I’d be shocked if I missed that. When he tried to allude vaguely to other factors as proof I rattled off the names of all the big cons with their rough head count of attendees and expressed lots of support for my position. That’s always fun. No, I know this stuff. I don’t think you are talking about a just leather con.

In the conversational flow it would have made sense to bring up Debaucherama and I totally didn’t talk about winning Slut of the Year. I was very tactful and appropriate for work people. Ahem.

I turned to Noah and said, “You know which story they just lead me to the door of and here I am not walking through it.” He patted me on the back and all. The coworkers raised their eyebrows and said, “Maybe we can come visit on a different night.” Ha. Like I’ll tell them then.

That was a great party. Sigh.

Also, DA–because of you I get to tell the best stories at parties. I feel like a dumbass but people always bring up travel at these kinds of parties and getting to talk about going to Alaska in my friend’s private plane is rad. I feel officially cool when I tell those stories. Yup, I’ve done bad ass things. That’s right. Including hiking in the Alaskan wilderness. My life is awesome.

It is interesting trying to figure out how to “spin” stories so I can be appropriate for work parties. I’m not so good at this. I did manage to avoid bringing up sex last night. *pat self on back* The leather con attendance thing doesn’t count.

In preparation for the party I went shopping for a dress. Mostly because it kept me out of the house so I wouldn’t cry. I over-ruled the shop lady. She didn’t think the one I bought was the best idea. I’m a bit too lumpy for it in her opinion. She’s a skinny lady and thinks that style of dress is for more stick-shaped women. Psh. Whatever. It was a skin-tight little number with lots of boob attention. In a size medium. No wonder my clothes don’t fit if I can walk into some boutique shop and come out with a size medium. I haven’t been a size medium much in my life. This is weird. I’ve been a large/extra large (or bigger) for most of my adult life.

Noah was quite happy with my selection. That was the whole point.

Sometimes I feel weird about my mixed feelings around dressing frumpy versus wearing clothes that are sexy. When I’m feeling sad and anxious dressing up either feels soothing or stimulating depending on the context. Some days I do consciously think of the trophy wife thing. In general I’m not such a good trophy. But I try to clean up good once in a great while. In general I look frumpy and boring and that is for the best. Lately I’ve been wearing the skirts from my Renaissance Faire outfit over pants because I just want to be covered that much.

So going out in a dress that accentuated a figure I’m not used to having was kind of weird. Several coworkers stared a lot all night. That is always a little awkward. But if you go out dressed like that while wearing bright red lipstick you invite looking. It is a weird line.

I know that Noah gets a status bump from the Neanderthals he works with if they think his wife is hot. I have mixed feelings about this. But once a year I can dress up. Hell it isn’t even once a year that I dress that way now. But man the dress is hot.

I should take a picture. I look really good. If I had looked like this many years ago I probably would have gotten closer to a four digit number instead of a three digit number. Maybe it is for the best that I was chunky and had to win people over with my awesome personality. Snort.

I think the dress would not look out of place on the show Mad Men. Not that I’ve watched it. But I’ve seen a few references on magazine covers in grocery stores so I know the show exists and a brief google image search supports with my assumption.

Now I have fancy party dresses in size 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 sitting in my closet. Because who the fuck knows what size I will be next year. I no longer get rid of the fancy party dresses. My body changes dramatically over time.

I’m struggling with the fact that I “know” I am small but when I look in the mirror I don’t think I “look” small only I know I do to other people. I look like me and in my head I’m a fat girl (I have justifiably been for a lot of my adult life) so I still kind of see that. I have always been content and happy with being fat. Now I’m not fat and I miss it. On one hand I know that it is easier for me to find flattering clothing (based on the number of times I saw people do double takes when I walked by my dress was flattering) but I’m not sure if I like that. I am not good at guessing which dresses will be flattering. I have to try fifteen on.

My body is different and in ways that are somewhat more societally “approved” and that bothers me.

I don’t really want more approval in that area. Being thinner sure doesn’t get me more sex with Noah.

And yes, all of this is tied up with the whole parasympathetic nervous system and cutting. It is.

Does dressing up and wearing lipstick change how much I want to cut? I certainly feel less like I am about to blow my stack this morning, but how much is it related? How much is it about just getting five hours off of my kids yesterday between the party and therapy?

Those little thrills of recognition when a man checks me out function in similar soothing ways to the cutting. I feel kind of ashamed admitting it, but in for a penny in for a pound. It is the kid-version of what I used to do with finding promiscuous sex. “Whoo hoo people looked at me.” Less of a lift but a lot safer and lower effort.

(I spotted one last night who totally looked like my prey. It’s about the kind of smile. I miss hunting.)

I feel very conflicted about the whole “attention getting” behavior bit. I console myself with the idea that despite writing about what I am feeling/doing in the moment I don’t actually bring it up with people. When I am cutting I do it in a place on my body I can conceal and the vast majority of people don’t know. I write it down because I want proof that I’m not lying to myself about what I’m doing. I don’t think I get additional attention around self-harming behavior. Other than when I was institutionalized as a teenager because I wouldn’t promise to stop cutting I haven’t gotten a lot of “attention” based on self-harming.

Talking about it alienates people and ends friendships. I don’t think I talk about it for attention. I think I talk about it because the more silent and ashamed I act about my behavior the harder it is to control.

If I talk about wanting to cut sometimes that is enough to get me through that feeling of wanting to cut and maybe tomorrow I won’t feel that way any more. It does work for me. Today I feel less desire to rush to Home Depot and buy a lock. That’s enough of a pause to ensure that I probably won’t be cutting this week and probably not this month.

Is that enough?

It is a lot like how I manage my suicidal ideation. “This is how I feel right now and if I honor it maybe I don’t have to do it.” I don’t live well with secrets. Believing that I have to lie about what is in my head intensifies and strengthens all of my negative self-beliefs. Nice people are allowed to talk about how they exist in the world. Stupid, worthless pieces of shit like me should shut up and stop polluting the airways. Just stop fucking breathing so you don’t contaminate anyone.

I don’t know if everyone’s lives are careful balancing acts. For me I have to manage stimulus and soothing pretty carefully. Lack of either one is dangerous to my ability to function.

I schedule parties once in a while because I know so many people that slowly cycling through them all one on one is kind of impossible. I would have a date every day of the year if anyone at all was on a repeating weekly or monthly cycle. I know a lot of people. I like them all. I want to continue knowing them. Heck, I want my awesome friends to meet one another because networking is very important for a successful life. Everyone needs access to resources.

I told my shrink that I missed a flight to Oakland Airport and got rerouted to SFO and I managed to arrange a pickup at midnight through Twitter. Because I just have friends who can do that. She was surprised. I am beginning to think that her other clients live in caves because she spends a lot of time being surprised that I know so many people and that they do the things they do with me.

I get that my life is a weird and extreme place. It has extreme bad and extreme good. I am very lucky and I am very unlucky. I have a ridiculous amount of privilege and yet I don’t. It all depends on what you are looking at and judging right this minute.

As a child I learned that one of the main things I needed to do to keep myself safe was make sure I know as many people as possible. If one person is mad at me/doesn’t like me/doesn’t want to help me/doesn’t want to spend time with me… find someone else. There are always more fish in the sea. There are billions of god damn people on this planet. Surely I haven’t alienated all of them yet.

I think that moving more than fifty times made it so that I never got to sink in and decide “This is just the way life is.” There is no set way my life is. The circumstances vary so much that they are nearly unrecognizable from day to day or period to period. Folks who knew me primarily as a slave to my Owner are rather shocked by me these days.

Walt Whitman may have thought he contained multitudes. I think I may have lived more lives than him. Sometimes I feel like a cat only I’ve had far more than just nine lives.

Do you know where the cats have nine lives thing comes from? When cats experience injury or illness they hide somewhere while they heal–it is an anti-predator sort of behavior. Then they come out and are fine again. So people used to speculate that they could regenerate.

I hide to lick my wounds then I appear again. Often in very different circumstances with fairly different behavior. Going from theatre to bdsm to teaching to parenting has been pretty dramatic. From stage to stage there is almost no overlap in terms of behavior or activities.

I think that is part of the reason Noah and I don’t do bdsm better together. I compartmentalize and Noah is the partner who has been nice to me and that’s hard to change. Even if bdsm might have other benefits.

tl;dr: I’m mad at my therapist for trying to talk me out of cutting. But that’s pretty much what I pay her to do so it’s a wash. Stupid parasympathetic nervous system. Why the fuck can’t you just act nice?

Oh, and after completely freaking out yesterday morning and feeling like the best thing to do would be to see as much blood as possible… I started bleeding.

Any suggestions on how to manage the monthly depression crash I’m getting? Yay impending blood loss. It is becoming really predictable. Which is strangely comforting. Just because I haven’t hacked the system yet I appreciate that patterns are emerging.

My worst depression days are followed immediately by me bleeding. I feel comforted by the hormonal link. Less like I am just at the mercy of the waves of my insanity.

Bouncing up

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“I read your book. It made me feel really depressed but then I felt a lot better about my life.”

Oh. Uhm, good?

We went to an Amanda Fucking Palmer show last night. It was at my friend’s house in their living room. It was ridiculously fun. It turned out that almost 25% of the people in the room were there because they knew me, which was frightfully convenient from my point of view.

I don’t usually feel all that safe in groups. I really did last night and it was a nice feeling.

I spend a lot of time figuring out ways to denigrate the opinions of people who think highly of me. It’s a skill. With the people who were there last night… if they said I was awesome I couldn’t argue. They’ve known me a long time through a lot of different phases.

It’s weird sometimes, this having public accountability stuff. If a former casual lover tells me I’m awesome I will pick that apart and get nasty. If one of these friends tells me I’m awesome… I will tear up and say thank you. I want them to like me. And they do. Maybe I’m not so bad.

It was a worse party for not having a Blacksheep. That’s just a true fact.

I got to throw myself on a couch holding my husband and two good friend and Amanda Palmer. Of course she got up approximately 2 seconds later because she had shit to do. This is as close as I get to star fucking these days.

My friends turned the basement of their house into an art gallery featuring work by the various attendees of the event. It was really rad walking back and forth between people introducing them.

“Oh, you like this picture? Then let me introduce you to my friend over here who shot it. Here friend-who-is-a-nature-photographer, meet this other friend who is a bondage-photographer. Oh and here is this other photographer who is less into bondage and more into fetish (which is a different genre.)”

That was cool. I like being able to introduce my friends to one another. I think they are good people and that they will have appreciation for one another’s skills.

The vegan soul food was ridiculously good. I’m not really a vegan eater and this was good. It was also mostly gluten free. This gives me hope for the future elimination diet period. There might be food in the world that follows the guidelines without sucking. Yay!

Today is supposed to be a Dickens Fair day. Everyone stayed up too late. The babysitter keeps every light in the house on and lets the kids keep the iPad long after bed time to “calm them down”. Uhhh… that’s not going to make them go to sleep. We will have words before the next baby-sitting engagement. Gentle ones. I’ll talk to her about strategically leaving the lights on in the front of the house to make her feel safe and like people won’t do a hot break-in but can we turn off the light in the kids bedroom and the hallway… please?

It’ll be great. I’m glad they got to have a fun night playing. It is awesome when babysitters have extra lax rules because then children crave their companionship. Ha.

I spent yesterday being all pissy and fussy. It wasn’t other peoples fault. I just was. Then the concert was fabulous.

Amanda sang two songs that are new–she hasn’t released them anywhere. One was about how stuff can be evil and own you and you need to assign the meaning to your stuff that it has. The second was about a kid who told her he was being raped by his dad. This is as close as she can get to advice for him.

I cried. It was really touching and beautiful. I’m grateful that people are out there in the world acknowledging these things.

In general I was impressed with her ability to perform. Many singers can sing in a studio. She was mesmerizing.

I’m grateful I live in the time and place I live. I have so much opportunity and access and potential in my life. Sometimes it feels like if anyone at any point in history could do something surely people can do more/better/faster given the technology and access we have now. We have so much potential (wo)manpower. We have so many wonderful people all out there existing.

Surely we all get to be here.

Ok Blacksheep, you are right to point out that I shouldn’t think of my writing as having the power to “make” anyone feel anything. They bring their feelings to the writing.

But I write in large part because I seek connection. This is how I bond. I *do* want to make people have a set of feelings. I’m trying to. It’s a conscious effort.

I want to make people feel like they are making the right choices for them. I want to make people feel like they are doing the best they can do with the things that landed in their life this lifetime. I want to make people feel like they are important and should be here.

That’s really a lot of the reason I write. I need you. And you. And you. I really do. Even if I think you are an asshole. Even if I think you are a predator. Even if I think you make really bad decisions sometimes.

I still need you to exist. I understand that my needs aren’t your problem but I was sorta hoping we could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. I need you. I think you need me too. I think you need to see how different I am and how whack job my choices are so you can properly appreciate “holy moly I’m glad I have my life“.

I’m glad you get to have your life. I’m glad it is different from mine. I’m glad you get to make all your own brilliant choices. I can’t do everything and I want to find out more about human potential. I can watch you and feel admiration all the time that our species is so complex and wonderful.

I can change if you exist. You present me with this permanent foil of “See, it doesn’t have to be this way it could be that way.”

There are always more options.

I have a God complex. I want to be able to make people feel things. I really really do.

I want to make you feel important. I want to make you feel valuable. I want to make you feel loved.

Whether you like it or not.

parsing out blessings

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I am an extremely lucky person. I know people who are willing to schlep to my house to see me. I know people who thoughtfully invite themselves over. I appreciate this a lot. I know so many of them that I have something booked for just about every day all the way through the end of the year. We have ten unscheduled days between now and Christmas.

What do I want to have done and by when? What should I do today?

fyi: if you have never sent me an email I will probably not invite you to parties. It isn’t about rejecting you. It is that I sit down with my address book and I invite who I know. Just sayin’.

Already wrote a lot this morning. Tired arms. The day is about to begin. I predict it will be a long one. Tomorrow I have kids coming over. I want to have a lot of the mess cleaned up before they arrive. Oh goodness. The washing machine is being repaired today. I can almost start that backlog of work.

I have so many things I want to do. I am lucky.

Walking on eggshells

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I do a lot of defining myself in negatives. I don’t just mean that I am derogatory towards myself. I mean that I think of myself in terms of, “I am not like _____; I do not do _____” It is one way of making yourself different. Not a useful way. It means that you are constantly placing how other people are as primary. I’m not like you. People take it as a rejection or as a negative statement about them. Going out and creating an identity without negatives is much harder. It takes tremendously more emotional and psychological energy to go create something from scratch rather than just reject everything that walks by as being “not you”.

I was asked how the party went. Well. Where in my stress cycle should I answer that question from? I think that most people had fun. I absent mindedly made a minor social faux pas early on and never stopped hearing in my head how stupid, rude, domineering and offensive I am. When everyone finally left I cried for hours because I felt so guilty for offending someone.

If you are going to move through life being an asshole but you cry every time someone lets you know that you are crossing their boundaries… you aren’t giving people a way to have a relationship with you that is not basically subservient. If I don’t want subservient relationships (I don’t) then I can’t keep doing this bullshit. It’s not ok to cause other people to feel guilty for having boundaries. They need to have them. I need to take my wrist slap and move on. That is the adult way to handle such things. That is how you have relationships.

This is why my therapist wants me to stop socializing for a while. I spend a lot of time examining all of my interactions with people and looking for reasons that person is very likely to walk away from knowing me any minute for a long list of good causes. I know that I push my luck every day and in every way. When will people be sick of my shit? I get that a lot. My paranoia is not baseless. Is it paranoia to watch for tornados in tornado country?

But the paranoia drives people away as surely and as quickly as if I was chasing them away with a fire hose.

On my last day of teaching English at the Hindu temple one of the kids brought up suicide. A kid from their school jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge last year. They are all still thinking about it. I talked to them about how hard it is to get help when you are mentally ill. It wears people out. They want you to hurry up and get better already so that you don’t inconvenience them. What do you do if you can’t just snap out of it and behave the way other people want? Either you can put up with being punished for being how you are or you do what you can do to get away from the pain. Sometimes that is suicide. Not that I know exactly why that girl jumped. There are as many reasons to do it as there are people who do it.

Walking on eggshells means trying to place someone else as the primary character in the story and not being sure what your lines are. “What do I say so that this delicate and sensitive individual is not upset?” Can’t be done. As soon as you are reacting from that place you have already assumed that offense is likely and just assuming that means that the offense is already communicated. Game over. You lose.

Sometimes people snap at my social faux pas because they are not feeling patient today but they feel patient on other days. I am probably similarly obnoxious on both days but the difference is not about me. If people try to pick their behavior towards me based on my mood they will mostly pick wrong. It drives me batshit. You can only act how you feel like acting. Faking it will make neither of us happy. And acting like you have already been kicked makes people want to kick you. Really hard.

Some days I am going to wander off and cry if someone blinks too hard in my direction. It isn’t about someone letting me know that I crossed a boundary. When I have been crying two, three, four hours a day for over a week… my emotional reaction is not about you and I’m sorry that I’m standing near you when it starts such that you will feel responsible. You aren’t. My feelings come from inside me. The kind of shame I feel isn’t something that people I know now put on me. It is about old tapes.

I don’t keep people in an ongoing way if they seriously shame me. I don’t fucking think so–I don’t need that crap.

I think very hard about every person who is in my life. If I invite you to my house (even if you think you are one of the casual people) I have spent many hours thinking about you. I have mulled over every piece of data I have ever acquired and I have carefully weighed it. I know you because I want to know you. I don’t have accidental friends any more. I have people in my life because I choose them out of a long list of ever rotating acquaintances.

I am mercenary. I do not see any benefit to being less than frank about this. I don’t pick my friends based on them being able to wait on me or do work for me or babysit or give me social status. I pick my friends based on them having character traits I desperately admire and want to be able to watch develop more closely. I don’t understand. I want to. Please let me stare at you until I understand.

I don’t think that most people in my life understand this. I want you near me because I want to figure out how and why you do _________. This is something I want to understand in this lifetime and I don’t know another way of accessing this information. I want to know why you want to do the things you want to do. I want access to your motivations. I’m trying to hack my own motivation system. What makes you do the things you do? It isn’t that I will use your motivation to do exactly the same thing as you, but clearly you have learned some neat tricks I don’t know.

I never really understand what I have to offer though. That end of the deal keeps me up at night. I see what I get out of knowing people. I see clear value. I don’t understand what I have to offer. I don’t understand why anyone bothers to know me. I don’t see how the unpleasantness of my company could possibly be balanced by anything I know or do.

I can understand that Shanna and Calli are tied to me. Children need their moms. I get that. I can certainly understand how Noah finds enough value in the trade. Past that… I don’t really get it. I think that is part of the reason I read as mean. I am sad and bitter that I have nothing that is worthy of trade for a relationship. I feel broken and angry about it. I don’t know how to build people up and make them feel happy about being themselves while standing next to me. I know how to make people feel angry and irritated and like they don’t want to stand next to me any more. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy. I do this a lot.

I can’t be perfect in order to not annoy people. I can only be. I have to accept the rebuffs when someone lets me know I am crossing a boundary without turning that into a federal case or people won’t feel comfortable communicating boundary incursions and they will just stop talking to me. No one likes drama. No one wants to feel guilty for having boundaries.

Not everything is about me, yo.

I woke up early because I have to get my crying over early before a busy day. Not many left before I hit “vacation” for a couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to this. I need to get my stress levels down to the point where I am not crying for multiple hours a day as a way of avoiding beating the shit out of people.

I cry partially from frustration. I don’t know how to let the intensity of my emotions defuse without doing something. I used to cut. I like being beaten. I have punched holes in a lot more walls than I should admit. These days I feel like I live in a glass cage. If I hit anything it will break and I will be in a shower of shards. So I cry. And cry. And cry. I don’t know if it is healthier or not but it is certainly less violent. Progress?

See, this kind of thing is actually huge progress. I don’t know that I would give myself much credit for it without writing. I have progressed past hitting other people constantly to deal with my frustration through punching walls to crying. I have progressed past cutting myself into letting other people hit me in consensual and pre-agreed ways into crying. Progress, not perfection? I am moving in a less self-hating direction.

Now I cry over someone pointing out that I said something four times. (Which is annoying. I know.) You know… at least it is much better than my previous coping methods of hitting her or cutting myself would have been much more inappropriate. Both are ways that I would have dealt with that interaction in the past.

Most of my friends have social anxiety to some degree or another, I think this commonality increases their patience for me. But it means that some days my anxiety runs into their anxiety and then things just get worse. Neither can break the cycle. Awkward.

In my life the only thing I have found that really and truly breaks the stale mates and allows relationships to continue is time. If you both continue to spend time together despite acknowledging sometimes feeling awkward… you continue to have a relationship. Not every relationship is comfortable every moment. If you choose to have the relationship then you look for ways to spend time together even if it is kind of weird. Even if you do have some defensive conversations.

I need to get my stress levels down. It is a physical limitations thing. I can only monitor my social behavior so closely if I am doing a lot of major physical work. I have been using my body unusually hard for the past few weeks. The mural and the backyard work have both used a lot of muscles I’m not used to moving. They have both taken a lot of patience I didn’t actually have going spare.

I need to figure out what it means to do projects as a parent. I’m still not handling the energy allotment thing very well.

I feel scared a lot of the time because I can’t control what other people do and I am worried about driving people away from relationships with my children. I do not want to isolate them. But it seems pretty awful for me to expect people to put up with me being an asshole just so they can help take care of my kids when no one but me and Noah owes my kids anything.

My kids are neat. They will be more neat if they know people like you. You are neat. This is all stuff that floats around in my head making me vulnerable and scared all the time. I feel my children deserve relationships that I do not have or know how to create.

I don’t think my kids want to see their grandparents because they want to hurt me. I think that one or both of them will decline to go when they finally understand that I’m not going. I will do my best to not share how I feel about the trip. What they need to know is that they have grandparents who love them and a mom who loves them and their mom is very happy to help them pack and I will kiss them goodbye and tell them to have fun. That is more or less the end of the story in our house.

But I am still going to cry when they are gone. I am still going to be very sad that it has worked out that I just don’t get extended family this lifetime. I’m grateful that I managed to get a nuclear family thing. I get to be sad about this. I get to grieve about that. It doesn’t hurt my kids if I spend my alone time crying.

If I describe visiting their grandparents… I don’t have to sell it or try to make it sound fun in a fake way. When they go see their grandparents they need to remember a bathing suit because they have an indoor pool. They need to remember clothes appropriate for riding a horse because they have horses. Not to mention cows and I don’t know what other animals. There is a whole floor of a house that is just toys. You and your dad and your sister will stay on an apartment by yourselves and you will be able to go play with the toys probably anytime you want while you are visiting.

I mean, shit dude. I don’t talk about the people much or try to predict how the relationships will be. I don’t know these people. I say that her aunts and uncles all play music–maybe she should bring her uke so they can teach her cords.

I think my daughters are very lucky to have connection to a lot of rich, talented people. She should take advantage of the fact that she was born into that family. She should go meet the old Great Aunt who has traveled all over the world doing whatever the fuck she wanted for most of her life. She’s a neat lady. Maybe if she met Shanna and Calli she would be more enthusiastic about coming to California for visits. So far she is kind of lazy. I’ve asked.

My children will not have my story. My children will not grow up without a family. They have connections. My children have people in the world tracking them and caring. I am not going to do anything to make that network smaller than I have to. I cut my family off because I don’t think my family is going to stop passing on the incest without some kind of intervention I don’t know how to do. So I’m keeping my kids the fuck away from them. I feel very sad that this is required but it is. It just fucking is.

Whenever someone tells me that I should forgive my mother because she won’t live forever I see my adult nephew breaking down as he told me about his rape experiences. No. No. No. No. My children will be kept away from them. All of them. I don’t think it is their fault that it happened to them but we haven’t had someone avoid incest in a few generations. I’m keeping my kids away from all of them.

When people tell me to just “get over it” and “stop thinking about it” I think “That shit is why it keeps happening generation after generation.”

I think about my mom a lot. I miss her. It doesn’t help that my Leather Mom is going through a lot of strife and I’m not helping very much (partially because of my limitations partially because she is telling me no). My Leather Mom and my birth mother share a birthday. I find that thinking about one or the other of them brings up a lot of really strong feelings.

Why do I think about my mom so much? Because everyone else gets to talk to me about their moms all the time. It’s just normal conversation. So I think about my mom and try to stay silent. I feel bad. I feel like a dirty terrible person.

One of the last things my mother said to me was that she would kill herself if I took my kids away from her. I keep checking on the internet and she isn’t dead. I guess that is just one more broken promise.

Broken promises are a big thing right now. What does it mean to say, “I will do _____.”

Relationships are about choices. Sometimes they are uncomfortable. Often that discomfort comes from inside me and is about the fact that I am thinking three hundred painful things all while I’m trying to have a relationship. When I can get those three hundred thoughts under control and actually focus on the person in the room I am grateful to have that relationship. I am glad it is still there. But it feels like I’ve been phoning it in from somewhere else for a while. I never understand what benefit there is to other people in putting up with me.

I am scheduled to be at Dad’s for Thanksgiving. How long is this going to continue? I have had him in my life more or less for going on fourteen years. We have a fairly distant relationship but honestly I do better with those. I have a hard time with being good-enough when people are around more often. I am able to behave perfectly appropriately for my target audience when I only see people once or twice a year. I feel ashamed that I can’t keep up the game with people I see more.

It makes me wonder if I have my anxiety as under control as I think with my kids. Some of my recent frustrations have made me realize that I need to start writing names on the white board in our room. I don’t want to discuss my relationship fluctuations in front of the kids any more. Shanna is starting to sorta follow and have her emotions influenced. I’m having to do a lot of backpedaling and defending of people with her and that’s… awkward.

I don’t want my kids to share my emotional experiences of people. My children are having different experiences. My experiences are my problem. My experiences are distinctly shaped by having an anxiety disorder. I do not want my kids learning my emotional dysregulation. If they develop their own later I don’t want it to be clearly my fault.

This is part of what I like about Unschooling. I have to pay attention to what I am doing, all DBT like. I have a bad habit of loving and hating people. My kids don’t need to hear about it. I don’t need to teach them to obsessively over analyze every conversation before and after it happens. So far they seem pretty good at talking to people.

I went to a book club meeting yesterday. I need to update my reading list, I’ve added three or four. Book club always turns into a small scale therapy/support group. I find it interesting how the folks who are consistent are unschoolers who come from abusive backgrounds. Other folks come and go. Not that I’m consistent enough to actually say that. Maybe my few attendance points are flukes. I should probably keep that up. My therapist wants me going out and doing stuff without my family. Book club is not terribly threatening. Most of the places I would choose to go involve fending off sexual advances and I’m not in the mood.

What the hell else do people do?

That gratitude stuff.

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Today I feel lucky to have so many people who love me even though I am so broken and so difficult. High Maintenance they call it.

My husband is going way above and beyond the call of duty lately. He has broken concrete, made breakfast every day, made dinner most days, swept and mopped the house, and moved over 500 lbs of sand so I didn’t have to. These are all things he doesn’t especially like or want to do. But he is helping me. And he did all that outside of his work hours, where he earns enough money to support me in a lifestyle I never previously imagined. (Jenny said she would show she loved me by paying someone to do this labor rather than doing it. It’s a love language thing. I can’t pay someone to do work how I want it done–this is something I learn over and over again. Having Noah just help me do it is really a big thing for me.)

I do not feel like I deserve this. I’m grateful anyway.

Many of my friends are finding ways to hang out and talk to me or be supportive. I am grateful that people stare at me hard enough to say, “You are clearly in a depressive state. I can tell based on ____ and _____ and ____.”

Holy shit. You care. That’s… that’s… whoa. Ok.

It is hard to believe that I am a piece of shit and have people treat me this way. It feels wrong. It feels like I should hurry up and do something awful so they recognize that helping me is the wrong decision. I am not worthy. Self-sabotage is kind of my MO.

That’s part of why my therapist wants me to stop socializing for a bit. When I bounce between lots of people I feel like I am supposed to be trying to figure out how to please all of these people and that takes a lot of thinking and emotional energy. When I am consumed by feelings of worthlessness it is much harder to figure out what is “appropriate” behavior.

Yes. I have to work on my behavior all of the time. You have no idea how much profanity and nastiness lives in my head. I consciously choose what I say or I say things that are really mean and critical. Even if I like something very much I can always tell you 4,920 things that are wrong with it. Whether that is a person, a place, or a thing. Or an idea. Just to cover all the nouns. It doesn’t matter how strongly positive my feelings are there are still more negative things I could say. I have to consciously choose to not be like that. It’s hard.

Right now my friend is reading to my kids. I’m going to have a hard time when she leaves California again. I know she loves me no matter where she is but having her nearby feels like such a blessing. I don’t have to try to please her. I can sit still in a chair and she pays attention to my kids and loves on them and I don’t have to worry about my behavior.

I feel grateful for friends who put up with how loud we are. I know that the volume in our house is very challenging for a few of my friends. (Oh.Forking.Man. The last place we went for a playdate [K-babysitting is different] had hardwood or tile floors throughout with very high ceilings. I no longer think my house is loud. My house is awesomely sound dampening. YAY MY HOUSE. I no longer want hardwood floors or high ceilings. I would lose my fucking mind. I like my house more with every year. <3

I need to go out back and tack down the landscaping fabric. Then I will fill the sandbox. Then I will take a shower and get ready for teaching. After teaching I need to come home and start preparing food for the party tomorrow. Oh man.

I feel very lucky to have the people I have in my life now. I know that I am crazy and all, but not everyone has as many people who love them fiercely as I do. Even if I don’t feel loved I know that I am. I see the actions of the people who show up in my house.

I’m trying to see you for who and what you are instead of the projections from my broken brain. I’m trying. I’m trying.

Tomorrow will be a kick-awesome party. Just sayin’. Not many kids coming, this is the “grown ups who show up to see the kids all the time” party really. Calli listed the people she wanted to invite. Only one person who visits regularly isn’t coming and that is because he doesn’t like the noise much. He and his wife were invited but not pressured to come. They don’t like crowds.

It is really neat finding out who Calli feels attached to. She has a varied and dear family whether I understand it or not. I’m really glad that my daughters feel so loved in this world. I’m doing something right.

That was so nice.

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We went to a wedding yesterday. It was a gathering of people I have known through the bdsm community for most of my adult life. Many of the people there I met when I was eighteen or nineteen.

These were the people who were the honored elders when I arrived in the first place. These were my Old Guard people in the leather community. These are the people who set the parameters of my world. These are the people who taught me about communication and negotiation and doing what you WANT to do.

These are the people who taught me how to manage life as a masochist–how do you find people to beat the shit out of you without sending you to a hospital? These are the people who taught me how to be ethical in my sluttery. I stopped sleeping with people who were cheating because of people in the room yesterday.

It wasn’t the entire Who’s Who of my cultural indoctrination but it was a lot of the main people. A lot of the biggest influences were there.

Do you know how they responded to me changing so much? I was told over and over what a good mother I am.

I nearly cried. I care so much about their opinion. I shouldn’t–I know I am not supposed to care about what anyone thinks of me. But these are the people who taught me my first lessons towards being a grown up. And they think I am doing well.

These kind of random moments are the closest I will have to having the feeling that parents or authority or whatever else feels like I am good.

I want so badly to feel like I am a good mother. I’m kind of banking on it this lifetime. That is my only path to the kind of relationship intensity I want.

I talked to a variety of mothers yesterday all of whom said, “Oh my God I couldn’t wait to get back to work. I love my kids but spending all day with them made me want to stick forks in my eyes.”

I don’t feel that. When I think of how many days I am going to be able to just be with my kids I feel this intense joy. This feeling of thank goodness I won’t have to be alone.

Having a job is different. Being a teacher was lonely. I had horrible loneliness as a teacher. I always know how much of myself I had to hide as a teacher.

I don’t tell my kids details about myself as a child because at this stage they don’t care and wouldn’t be able to process those details and it wouldn’t do good things for their lives. But I feel in me a sense of waiting. Someday they will be adults. They will be allowed to read books about my life. They will be able to know me for good or for ill.

My children will have the experience of me they have and then they will get to find out the back story. I have to wait for an appropriate time–which is hard–but I don’t feel invisible. I don’t feel unimportant. I don’t feel like what happened to me didn’t matter I feel like this isn’t the time to talk about it. With teaching it would never have been appropriate. That was much harder.

I don’t do very well with handling the fact that a large segment of the population likes to just pretend that “people like me” don’t exist.

Validation is one of the most potent drugs in the world. I have spent my entire life feeling unredeemably bad. I was bad so early that there is no way to change. All of the kids were told all of my life that they couldn’t play with me because I wasn’t a good influence. I wasn’t good to be around.

I was beaten and raped if I didn’t have sex willingly whenever I was told to. When I did have sex willingly there was a huge backlash and many people would shun me and punish me.

I really like this monogamy business. I feel like it is my armor against those expectations.

One guy yesterday rained on my parade. Really he is one of the people who makes me feel unsafe a lot at those parties. I don’t think he would rape me. But I do think he would do things before I could react and say no. Things like hold a knife to my throat because he thinks it is hot.

Yesterday he leaned over my chair and whispered into my ear, “You are so hot I should drag you off to the coat closet.”

I completely froze. I stared at the floor and did not respond again until he walked away. I didn’t want to make a scene. I didn’t want to be a problem.

I am so fucking tired of this shit. I have kind-of-sorta played with that man in the past. When I was younger and I believed that a bottom has to bottom to all the tops in the room and I practiced a puppy-pile approach towards bdsm he and I played. It has been many many many years. A minimum of eight years. I think longer than that.

Ok, I just emailed the bride and asked about dude’s email address. I need to talk to him. I need to tell him to back the fuck off. I don’t seem to be able to do it in the moment.

Did I think he was actually going to drag me off and do things I didn’t want him to do? No. The consequences are too high. He’s not stupid. He is a former police officer. He knows how to only do things when he won’t get caught.

That doesn’t actually make me feel safer. It makes me feel sick to my stomach. I’m aware “he meant it as a compliment.”

A FUCKING COMPLIMENT IS “THAT’S A NICE DRESS” NOT “YOU LOOK HOT ENOUGH TO DRAG OFF.”

The fact that he is a former police officer actually makes me feel significantly less safe. I don’t see how police officers usually follow the rules. And LAPD has a serious rape problem. Being a police officer doesn’t imply that someone has a higher set of moral values. It may just mean you are a fucking bully who likes to pick on people.

He said that less than half an hour before I left. I didn’t really want to stay after that.

If wearing the dress I had made for Jenny’s wedding and red lipstick makes me someone who all of a sudden should be dragged off to a coat closet and raped maybe I should never dress that way again. Maybe it was stupid. Maybe it would be all my fault if something bad had happened. See–I was dressed in a way that encouraged it.

(I had a very modest dress made. Give me a break.) I may be done with wearing red lipstick outside the house.

Sometimes I think it is very funny that I study Muslim guidelines for women and I try to somewhat follow them. Maybe if I were more hidden I would be left alone. Don’t attract attention in public. It’s dangerous. If I didn’t think it would confuse the shit out of people I would just start covering my hair full time. I don’t want to have to talk about why I want to do it.

I am tired of men looking at me and evaluating whether or not they want to fuck me right now and then TELLING ME AS IF I SHOULD FUCKING CARE.

So most of the wedding was lovely. And then there was this asshole. Story of my fucking life.

I’m happy that people have sex drives. I’m ok with talking with them in the abstract about stuff they like (I’ve been in sex communities for a long time) but I’m really past the point of feeling personally responsible for other peoples sex drives and I want to be left out of it.

Why is that so much to ask?

Easter fretting.

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It is going to be raining cats and dogs on Easter. That means no outdoor hunt. Which means I will only be able to hide 40-50 eggs. I have over 300 filled. Hm. I’m really not sure how I want to handle this. Although the chance of rain went from 70% to 30% and they are no longer predicting thunder storms during my party window.

I think I’m just going to have a party no matter what and if I have a bunch of eggs left I’ll organize something with the homeschool group in the next week or two.

Ok. That’s a plan.

Always look on the bright side.

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Given the behavior of everyone in my household yesterday and how I feel today I’m glad I don’t have to drive to Portland tomorrow. That would suck. However I am fully confident that I will be better by say Tuesday or Wednesday which gives me an unexpected few days to prepare for the Easter party.

I uhm think I will be going overboard as compensation. It’ll be fun. Pinterest oh how you eat my brain.

I am pretty confident that we will have at least ~~twelve~~ fifteen kids. I’ve had that many “yes we are coming” actual confirmations. (re-checked email) A whole bunch of other people just haven’t responded at all. Thank you to my wonderful blog readers. You all responded. When I fuss I am not fussing about you. (My blog readers said “no” if they can’t make it. See how polite people are when they read about your inner process?)

Thank you, hormones, that’s better.

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I participate on a support forum for PTSD. I was just refreshing my memory of how PTSD effects body stress levels and coping. It is hard not to feel ashamed of being broken in the ways I am. It isn’t my fault though.

I haven’t thought about killing myself in over twelve hours. I track these things not to make other people nervous but rather because I have to believe there is enough of a pattern that I can make sense of it over time even if it never makes sense to anyone else.

My friend K has talked me through some blow ups with the kids over the past few days. She came and spent Wednesday with us because she was worried about me. I appreciate her a lot. She talked to me about how it is actually ok to have consequences with your kids and I’m not a meanie head. Life has consequences. Not punishments–that’s a horse of a different color–but there are sometimes unfortunate results to your actions. Bummer.

Having to be the heavy significantly depresses me. It is a fat load of stress and it feels terrible. I prefer it when my kids just kind of go along and do as they are told. Ha. Specifically at 9am the house was clean and I said, “Ok, remember that when you play with stuff you have to put it away when you are done. We are leaving in about three hours for an event and I do want the living room neat when we go.” I went to take a shower in the last half hour. Apparently Barbie needed a pixie cut. And some confetti. And and and and and and and. When I walked out and nearly had a heart attack my dear daughter smirked at me and said, “This is too much for me to clean up. I guess you are going to have to do it.”

We didn’t go to the event. Once she had the consequence and we talked about it and I had the few minutes of being mad while I did indeed clean up the mess we talked about responsibility and consequences we had a better day. It was like we needed to have a blow up. Then we got along. I don’t mean she did what I said for the rest of the day. (Cue hysterical laughter.) I mean that getting to say, “No. If you ignore your responsibilities there are consequences” made me more patient with the other boundary incursions all day. I got to put up one brick wall. This is a line. I WILL DEFEND IT. Then I felt better for the rest of the day. I could be more gentle.

We were sad to miss our friends. I think that was actually a lot of why the day went well after that. We did a lot of commiserating about how much we miss our friends and how sad it was that we didn’t get to visit with them yesterday. We were “on the same team” about being sad about not going. We had another chat about who is responsible for doing what in this house. “No actually it isn’t my job to follow you around all day picking up after you. It is your responsibility to clean up after your stuff. If you can’t clean up your stuff clearly you have too much and we should get rid of a bunch of it. What would you like to start with?” I do a lot. And often I am happy to help with stuff that isn’t “my job” just because I’m a nice lady–do not take advantage of me. I won’t be real friendly.

Alright, confession time. I left the room where the kids were and I put another dent in the drywall yesterday after I came out and saw the Barbie hair everywhere. (Really child. If you are going to give a haircut STAND STILL AND DON’T WALK AROUND THE WHOLE LIVING ROOM WHILE YOU DO IT.) I didn’t mean to. I was barefoot and I didn’t actually feel like I was kicking with force.

We went to Home Desperate and got drywall patch. I fixed the new one and the hole that has been in the wall for about five years now. While I fixed the holes I talked to Shanna about consequences. See, I have consequences for my bad behavior too. I have to fix the holes. It is a very bad idea to put holes in your wall. I am not being very responsible when I do it. I have to fix them now and that is annoying and inconvenient. But–better walls than people. Walls are easier to fix. You never never never kick a person when you are angry. Or hit a person. Walls don’t have feelings. It isn’t good to hit or kick them but better than a person. I waked into the wrong room.

I have been trying not to walk into the garage every time I get upset. The punching bag is in the garage. Unfortunately pot is also in the garage and the associate me going in the garage with smoking and I don’t want them to think that every single time I get upset I smoke. I don’t. It’s hard having this feel like an image problem.

I think that having kind of a scene was what broke the suicidal ideation this time. I don’t like that as a pattern. I don’t need to blow up at my kids in order to convince myself that I shouldn’t die. To be fair I don’t think it is a major pattern at this point. That hasn’t happened many times–specifically blowing up at the kids to deal with being suicidal, I mean.

But I do need some kind of stress-clear-the-air thing sometimes. How can I do that and preserve my relationship with the kids? So far they don’t hold a grudge against me for getting angry. It doesn’t happen all that often and it always blows over quickly and I don’t hold a grudge against them. I don’t stay angry with my kids. That’s a big thing for me.

Right before dinner I asked if the kids were upset with me for not going out. I was told that they missed their friends but they weren’t upset with me. Consequences happen. Both of them said it. I understand that they are at an age where sucking up to me is a survival trait. I hope I am not teaching them to squash their anger or upset because only I am allowed to have feelings. I comforted them when they were sad about not seeing their friends. We talked about when we will get to see them soon. We talked about how to ensure that we don’t have to miss out on seeing our friends again.

I also didn’t let them have the screen. We did have dessert and all other privileges. I don’t want to be too over-kill. But if you get in so much trouble you can’t go play with your friends I’m not going to give you the iPad to distract you with. Hell no. I talked about how I have to create my own entertainment and so does their dad. They have to learn how as well.

I don’t feel ashamed of how I handled it overall. That’s good. No, I’m not perfect. There is always room for improvement but I did ok. I have to understand that given how hysterical I was on Tuesday during the EMDR that my mood on Wednesday and Thursday was close to unavoidable. It will happen again. Welcome to deep trauma work. It has consequences.

How do I apply the principles of harm reduction to this new stress? Well, I’m only seeing my shrink twice a month because I can’t handle more. I feel like doing as much EMDR and as much group work as we have done is causing me to feel really emotionally guarded with my shrink. I feel besieged. I am very used to client directed talk therapy. Therapist directed EMDR heavy therapy is… different. I’m having a hard time adjusting to this whole, “Here. We’ll do this EMDR on you for basically all of our time together because that is a magic button that will fix you even though we don’t have a relationship.” It feels a lot like a fuck buddy, really. Here, let’s get together to do ____ together because even though _____ is fun on your own it is more fun with someone else! Now go away because I don’t actually want to talk to you afterwards. Err, maybe I don’t think about processing like other people do.

Just keep swimming, right? I’m busy. I’m keeping very busy. Only a few people have RSVPed for the Easter party even though I have had a lot more people get excited in person. I don’t know if people are coming or not. Maybe we will end up with ten pounds of sugar for five kids. That would be scary. Could be up to thirty kids. I guess I’ll find out the morning after a hellish drive. Ha. I’m pretty stupid. (Yes, 1/3 of a pound of sugar per kid is still a lot but I figure the parents will steal some as well.)

Today is my last full work day at home before I go to Portland and before the Easter party. That’s kind of intimidating. I am technically capable of doing work on days when I have other obligations but if I want to be nice to my kids I keep it to a bare minimum. It will all work out.

Drywall patching. Laundry. Clean the kitchen. Put out Easter decorations. Make lunch and dinner. Fill eggs with candy. Clean bathroom (really). And I’m sure my kids will want me to read to them and play with them and snuggle them. That sounds like a full day. I’m already tired. I haven’t slept well all week. I feel bad when my discombobulated cycles coincide with Noah having a rockin sort of week (he was interviewed by this internet business guru guy and he’s selling a lot of books) because then he feels guilty.

I don’t want Noah to feel bad about being successful because I am a loser. That’s not a healthy dynamic. I specifically and directly benefit from him maximizing his awesome. I don’t want that to be a fuzzy thing.

And all of a sudden I am having a full stream of words in my head for the wedding ceremony in May. I’m going to close this window and go work on that.

Attention Whore

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I struggle with my need for affection and love. On one hand I know it is a perfectly normal, perfectly healthy urge. So I just sent out a mass invitation to my birthday party in September. I’m practically having a panic attack about it. I am completely overwhelmed with terror and anxiety. I’m terrified people won’t want to participate. I’m terrified that me asking for people to put out effort is just not ok. I feel like if only 4 people show up I will feel let down and like it just isn’t enough and that makes me a bad person. Why aren’t those 4 people enough? On my birthday I will have Noah, Shanna, Calli, and Sarah all living in my house. They love me to distraction. They would walk through fire for me. They can and do shape basically every single day of their lives around me if I ask for it or need it.

But it’s not enough.

I need magic. I need a ritual. I need to be seen. I need to say to the universe that I am here and I am good and I am wonderful and I want to see that affirmed in the love and faces of the people around me. I want to go through the rabbit hole. I want to wander in Wonder Land with my friends. I want to make my house fantastical and inviting and have many people come have tea with me. I want to play. I want to be a little girl. And I want everyone to come and tell me how wonderful I am. And I feel pathetic. And I feel like I am loser for wanting that. I feel like that is proof of my inadequacy as a person.

Why can’t it just be proof that having people like you feels nice? Why can’t I let myself ask for this without such self contempt? This is agonizingly hard. Asking for support and love means risking having people be busy. It means risking knowing for an absolute fact that you aren’t the center of peoples lives. Knowing that *hurts*. But you know what? It’s true even if I never say it. Even if I never confirm it. Right now I am orbiting out here in space alone because I can’t handle the fact that if I want attention from my friends I won’t be their everything in the universe. God. That fucking sucks. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want this life.

I want to throw a great big party. I want to invite everyone in the universe. I want some of them to come. I want some of them to genuinely want to come and not be able to due to conflict in scheduling. I want those people to make some token for me. It doesn’t have to be big or expensive. I want these to be fairly permanent, useful things. It could be something artistic to go with the mural (I will finish the house project as quick as possible and get more pictures posted) or a neat random lamp you think just *fits* in a room. I want to fill my house with love. I want to look around my house and see magical tokens that will help me fight off the demons in my head.

I’m scared I’m losing the battle. No. That’s not true. I’m not losing the battle at all. I’m just not making progress at the rate I want to. I’m god damn tired of this inching progress. I need something that will help me rewire my system.

I need help.

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So my first living on less challenge for myself. We have Easter coming up and I would like to host a brunch for some friends. I think it sounds like fun. Because I am a huge dorkwad a lot of what I want to do is get my back yard to a place where it would be fun to be in. I need a short-term goal to reach. I want to spend no more than $50, to be taken out of our entertainment budget. How am I going to reach this goal? There are many things to figure out. How many people would I like to host? In particular, Shanna and I are both excited about the upcoming egg hunt. I’m not sure if our friends-with-small-kids will want to come over though. Well, you have to ask if you want things so I’ll figure that bit out. We’ll have to decide what kinds of foods to serve and decorating. On $50. It’s a good thing I have some time to plan.

Luckily I already have someone coming (hopefully today) to take the shed out of my back yard and I found a table/chair/umbrella set on freecycle a couple of weeks ago. That’s the first big step towards making the backyard more fun for a party. I also need to go find some free fill dirt for some of the fuss in the yard. That’s going to be exciting. But! This can be done!

I would like to have some decorations as well. I wonder what Shanna and I can make. 🙂

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: party

Friendship, race, and tokenism.

post-party

Ok, stomach… get ready.

Cutting and parties and the parasympathetic nervous system

Bouncing up

parsing out blessings

Walking on eggshells

That gratitude stuff.

Easter fretting.

Always look on the bright side.

Thank you, hormones, that’s better.

Attention Whore