Category Archives: rape culture

Empty the brain.

Still to do:

  • blackberry bush
  • clean house (Monday–this weekend is resting)
  • upload pictures (in progress) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rightkindofme/sets/72157634785800521/with/9426289945/)
  • write descriptions (I don’t actually want to do this)
  • this weekend (or Monday) it is time to make pasta sauce. I have fresh frozen tomatoes, canned whole tomatoes, frozen home made paste–next load of tomatoes is for sauce.
  • take kids to water park
  • get over belief that everyone hates me and go back to park day
  • work on books again
  • start running again (DSH–Blacksheep says she is down for a half marathon in Portland in October 2014. 😀 Am I going to be able to talk you into a road trip? My Dad would probably be happy to help the awesome BlackSmithGuy with kids during the race so he isn’t stuck with all six girls. Man. Don’t we want to get all six girls together?!)
  • Pick up load of beef from K. Mmmm beef.
  • Make mead. It’s August. It’s time. (It doesn’t make my stomach hurt and pretty much ALL OTHER ALCOHOL is poison. I should make more.)
  • Start cleaning/preparing the backyard for birthday parties. I have less than four weeks. We are having two birthday parties for Calli because she is adamant about not wanting a big party (she broke down in tears at the thought) but she has enough “friends” that she can’t figure out how to narrow down the list. That’s ok. Some people are available during the week on your actual birthday and some people are available on Saturday. It’ll be fine. (And most of the party “decoration” stuff is available online for free because apparently Disney is totally happy to support people having Jake and the Neverland Pirates parties without spending money.)
  • Resign self to birthday with just girls.

Really a lot of what has been going on for the past couple of days is I am missing my mom. I wish my mother was proud of me so much that it hurts. It is probably in the top three reasons I cry all the fucking time. I wish I could stop caring. I really wish I could. But I don’t want my children to stop caring about me so I don’t really see how I can model not caring about your mother and get anything different.

Part one of the English class I am teaching is over. Hindi class is over. Thank goodness. I am so tired and over scheduled I feel like shit all the time. We will do Hindi class again but I need a break. I have four more weeks of teaching English once a week. I’m having fun with the kids. They say they have picked up some useful stuff. I’m particularly enjoying the one girl who seriously came for a writing workshop. She’s producing 5-8 pages per week and she wants major feedback. I can do that! YES! I feel useful in a way I don’t get to feel very much.

Mostly I think the things inside my head are stupid and pointless and not worth knowing–that’s why I know them instead of people who are smart and who matter. Once in a while I find out that something inside my brain is useful. It’s a very powerful feeling.

“Why do you need to see a therapist?” “You know how I cry all the time. It’s not because of you. You are the best thing that has ever happened in my whole life. But a long time ago my life wasn’t this awesome. Apparently I still need to cry about it.”

I don’t cry every single day but I probably cry more than 75% of days. I have control over the anger these days… not the crying. I used to be able to control the crying and not the anger. I don’t know if this is progress or not. It is certainly different than I was when I was younger.

For the first twenty five years of my life crying was very dangerous, but I had a lot to cry about. I would say that more than half of the times I have been hit in my life it has been as punishment for crying. I’ve been hit a lot. I could not begin to count it all. So many people. So many times.

I have so much to cry about. Why am I so bad that I don’t deserve to have a mom who will protect me? Yesterday I read about a case where an adult woman seduced a 14/15 year old boy (that’s RAPE, my friends) and after she got out of jail (because that’s rape and she’s a rapist) she sued for custody of the baby she had as a result of being a rapist and is not requiring her 15 year old rape victim to pay child support.

Because being a rape victim never fucking stops. And the baby? The child born of rape? That’s the one I pick out of that scenario to identify with. No one wants children born of rape. They are treated like shit for their entire lives. They don’t get to forget that them being here on this planet is the tangible result of something terrible happening.

I feel so insecure and yet so sure that the parenting choices I am making are the only ones I can make. I feel so ashamed of myself that I can not be more like other people. I can’t. It is too late for me to join a herd.

I have caught up on the internet. I should probably leave the screen off today. I haven’t read much in a month.

That was so nice.

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?

“Recovery” and a brain dump about being an asshole.

Resurrection After Rape puts forward this explanation for how one will recognize “Recovery” when it happens:

  1. When you can face the thoughts of rape rather than having to avoid them;
  2. When you understand the connection between your current self-concept and your rape, so that when you feel down on yourself you won’t accept that as a “permanent truth” of who you are;
  3. When you no longer engage in self-harming behaviors (including substance abuse) to manage emotions and memories;
  4. When flashbacks have diminished to the point they either no longer happen, or no longer interfere with your life and emotions;
  5. When you can appropriately respond to people’s ignorant attitudes about rape, rather than withdrawing from them and wilting in lonely shame;
  6. When you have begun to offer support to other survivors;
  7. When you have begun to view your body as a valuable thing and not as a betrayer or curse, and you take care of its needs;
  8. When you learn to recognize the warning signs of dangerous men and avoid them, no matter how charming they appear to be;
  9. When men no longer have control over your opinions of yourself;
  10. When you are able to confront, challenge, and speak proudly to men;
  11. When you make your own choices whether to disclose your rape to someone because of something you need to say, not something you need to hear for you to make progress;
  12. When you no longer feel guilty for asking for help, or for having rough days, or for taking the length of time needed for growth.

This organization does not recognize the medical studies showing marijuana to be the most effective drug for PTSD apparently. They exist. If you can’t find them then you are too ignorant to be allowed on the internet.

I think I’m fairly solid on 1, 5 (I have some inappropriate mixed in with my appropriate responses but I think I’m in “recovery” territory on this one.), 6, 7 (I thank the marathon for this. I was not capable of properly taking care of my body when I was pregnant–I didn’t know how. I learned during the marathon. It was a weird change.), 8, 11.

I’m working on 2, 3 (I have prescriptions from doctors for all of my drugs. I do use as minimally as I can get away with but I absolutely need these meds at this point. Is that abuse?), 4 (I have the ability to not react to them in front of anyone else. I can’t make them stop. They increase my overall stress levels slowly. I have to periodically go allow myself to consciously think about them or I start having ranty inappropriate outbursts in random settings.), 9 (onman don’t get me started), 10 (Often I am shitty at talking to men.), 12.

Mixed bag as usual. I’m just like that. And this guy doesn’t have a monopoly on definitions.

I will say that I appreciate the section on managing panic attacks. Education + replacement of negative self-talk with positive self-talk has been my approach. Glad to get my little gold star there. I read everything looking for confirmation bias to prove I am “right” like every other human. I like to blame it on public education but that’s a straw man argument.

A question from the book. If rape is a form of theft, what did it steal?

I am afraid of men. I do still stand near them–but I do so uneasily and with great anger. I feel that rape stole my faith in men. People can rant at me all day and all night about how women rape too and that won’t change the fact that I was raped by twelve men not twelve women.

Are twelve men a representative sample of all men? Can I judge all men based on them? Of course not. I don’t actually judge all men. I just avoid the ones who are not already through the barriers of trust. They have to come in sideways. Usually they have to fit in a nice, neat little box so that I can trust how they will behave. I really like men who are emphatically not interested in me even though they like me. When they feel the need to mention that I am completely not their type I feel a little relaxation of tension.

I am not a nice person. I yell. I say mean things. I say hurtful things. I am a dick. I am an asshole. I am a bitch. Pick a word. White trash whore. Sure. I say mean, nasty things. Sometimes there is a very small grain of truth in what I say and I use that as justification for my hurtfulness.

I’m not a sociopath. I don’t deny my actions or the results of my actions. I don’t deny my blame. I just don’t seem to be able to adequately shut my mouth. I think it would take suturing. Luckily I have friends who are into that sort of thing because they agree with me that women should just shut the fuck up. I would be a much nicer person if I just shut the fuck up.

Today I yelled what my mother yelled at me. I feel pretty ashamed of myself.

I have no excuse. I do not get to deflect blame. I could give a laundry list of reasons why I was out of patience. Doesn’t matter. Being mean isn’t ok.

I will never be good enough. Ever. I’m literally not capable of it. Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have had kids. I don’t deserve them. I am not capable of being nice enough. I pray that the damage I cause is slight in the scope of their lives. I cross my fingers that I am a net positive for them. I’m scared.

I feel very ashamed of myself for not being good enough. I’m just not. Just work harder is the only message I have on this score. I weigh, eternally, in my mind if my children would be better off if I got a job and let them go to school. Would they be better off if they didn’t have to deal with me so much of the time?

I don’t know. Every decision is so layered, so complicated I’m not sure I can know what the right decision is. I know what I am doing. I know why. Today was a rocky day. I think I have been over extending myself and I ran out of spoons. I was mean and nasty.

It’s not ok. It’s not justified. I’m not claiming any expiation. My choices and my behavior are my god damn fault. I don’t get to say, “Well I was just acting like my mother” like that excuses anything.

It’s really stupid but I think my next therapy session will be a whole long conversation about hair. About my mother screaming at me and hitting me and cutting my hair into ugly hair cuts on purpose as punishment so people would mock me and the nasty shaming that happened for months when I shaved my bangs off in fourth grade. My mom was so fucking pissed when I shaved my head when I was seventeen. She liked my hair about an inch long so she didn’t have to take care of it. I wanted to be pretty. When my hair was long it wasn’t pretty it was matted.

My long hair was the long unkept hair of a neglected child. I can’t figure out how to care for my children’s hair. And I can’t keep everything in the house under lock and key. My kid has some interesting impulse issues.

And I have a bad temper.

I need to get my temper under control. I need to not say the things my mother said to me. It’s hard having to stop and think carefully about everything you say because what comes out of your mouth naturally is poison. I know how to say what I was taught to say. Do you know why I cuss so much? My entire childhood was full of being told what a fucking rude ass bitch I was.

I’m struggling with the me-not-me boundaries. I know what I was taught to say in these scripts. The scripts I have are bad. I am not ad-libbing well. I am not trying to excuse or justify myself. I certainly don’t think I can continue.

Feeling guilty isn’t good enough. Crying for hours after I am nasty really isn’t good enough. It isn’t even remotely helpful.

This is broken. I don’t know how to fix it. I feel really stupid and pathetic and useless and bad.

You can’t just stop being something. You have to pick what you want to be and move towards that. I don’t want to say what I said today again. I don’t know what I’m going to say instead. That will take thinking. I don’t know what to do.

I have been told that people pity my children for having to live with me. Why do I feel free to say whatever comes into my head? Because people tell me things like that. I feel like I have listened to enough diarrhea of the mouth that I get to have it too. No I’m not taking the fucking high road. Instead I am the crazy ass old lady with the big knife who makes the punks run away in fear.

When it comes right down to it… I don’t actually want to be a nice person. I’m a dick. But I don’t want to be one with my kids. I want to treat them like they have earned better treatment than that from me. They have. They have a variety of character flaws, most of them age related, which I can’t exactly hold against them. That’s the revenge of grandmothers every where. “Ha ha. You used to do that.” And now my daughters do to me what I did to my mother.

Of course my daughter pushes every boundary to the point of breaking at all times. She’s related to me. And I want her to be that kind of adult. Yup, she’ll be somewhat sociopathic. But I hope she understands that I have earned consideration other people haven’t earned and she will be nice to me.

I want to be nice to my kids because I am a selfish son of a bitch and I want to have good relationships with independent adults. I don’t want them to be like me and I don’t want to decide what they should be.

I can’t insult their choices even though I find them frustrating. But what does that mean?

I don’t know. I fucked up today. I’m reading a book on rape recovery that harps up one side and down the other how one must be completely sober forever and ever amen or you are not “healed” and it makes me want to drink a bottle of wine. I don’t actually drink much–alcohol gives me terrible stomach aches. But I was told not to. So I want to.

How in the fuck can I get mad at my kids for being exactly like me? Punishing them for being something I will encourage in adulthood is kind of ass backwards. I am not actually working towards my long-term goals.

I think I need to do some work on my attachment to how my kids look.

didn’t yell “You are a reflection of me and I’m fucking tired of walking around with an ugly little brat.” I just said that it was ugly hair cut and she looked funny and people were going to laugh at her.

I got mad because we are going to be in a wedding in two weeks. I said, “Now you will look ugly in the pictures forever.” That was what my mother said to me when I gave myself a haircut two days before school picture day. You know what? I don’t look any worse than I do in any other awkward school photo. It really hasn’t wrecked my life.

I shouldn’t have said that to my daughter. I have already apologized. But you can’t actually take it back. You can’t unsay things.

I’m not a monster. I’m self aware enough to really understand that on a primal level. I have not done monstrous damage to my children. But sometimes I take a little spike and a mallet and I insert those mean things she will hear in the back of her head forever. I hate myself for that. I don’t want to be her mean inner voice. I want to be the voice inside her head that makes her feel good about being alive.

I don’t want my daughter to hear what I heard. I don’t want her to have these tapes. Mostly she won’t–I get that. I’m already through a lot of important hurdles and I understand it looks like relatively smooth sailing through the next few years of non-anniversaries.

I’m going to freak out. She is going to do things just like me and I will react blindly. I will play the tape that is instantly related to the behavior. I don’t know how to completely circumvent this. Do I just stop speaking at all?

I need more of a plan than I currently have. That’s kind of a horrifying and overwhelming thought.

I need to schedule less. I’ve gotten schedule-happy again. I schedule things because I feel guilty about isolating my children. I know a lot of home schoolers who are out all day every day. I feel kind of uncomfortable about how much socialization my kids get.

I feel like what I am doing is not good. I don’t know why. It’s kind of a creeping fungus feeling. I’m not giving my children what is “normal” for their peers.

I don’t want to in some strong idealogical ways. But I think I drank the Kool-Aid on “Home schoolers aren’t at home”. I feel like I should be more active in the communities that exist. I should present a large peer group to my kids and then consistently expose them many times a week.

I’m struggling. I feel existentially not-ok. I have a really high level of self-loathing. My self-talk is all mean and nasty. It’s been on an uptick for a bit.

I want relationships but I can’t handle them and I don’t deserve them. Life isn’t really about deserve though.

The future isn’t written yet. Maybe my children will remember me as an abusive bully. Maybe not. They are certainly clear on the point that Mommy is not always nice. Sometimes Mommy is mean.

If I ever get dragged in front of a judge in a CPS court all they will have to do is print my blog. I don’t want secrets. I didn’t hit. I didn’t go on an extended tirade. Noah did step into the room and signal me that it was time to stop. Good for him. I’m glad he was home.

It feels very bad sometimes knowing that I am simply not a nice person. I would have died if I had been “nice”. If I had been more passive my life would have been so much worse. Being defiant and nasty has truly been useful.

It is still useful sometimes. Not all the time. It’s a hard character trait to keep under control.

People alternate between telling me I’m a bitch/dick/asshole/whatever and telling me that they like that they always know where they stand with me.

When I get up from this keyboard I need to be mostly done processing this. I need to talk to my therapist about it but I can’t keep going on and on with my daughter. That would be dragging her into my emotional quagmire. She doesn’t have the attention span to still be upset about a random one off comment she will probably never hear again. If I don’t turn it into a thing.

If I drop it and never say it again then I will have succeeded in not passing this tape on. If she wants to cut her own fucking hair she can cut her own fucking hair. I do. I have since I was a very young child. For me to get angry about it is so over the top ridiculous that there aren’t words.

But my tape for mothers is rabid anger because now people will think my child is unsupervised and ugly. She is neither. She does have access to scissors. She is out of my line of sight during the day. We have a small house and they wander at will. I work wherever I am working. I don’t pen them right with me–it seems silly.

If I want children who are autonomous and independent in their actions I need to give them more direct supervision (which would drive me ape shit) or farm it out or be ok with what they do.

Those really are the only options. It is not ok to expect micromanaged results from a free range kid. I honestly don’t want kids who require direct supervision at all times. My kids entertain themselves while I work. I can clean/cook/garden and they run around and play.

Short of putting padlocks on everything in the house, which I am morally opposed to doing, there is no “putting things up” at this point. Kid is too big. Yes, there will be consequences and occasionally fury over her decisions.

You can’t learn without making mistakes.

I tell other people that the way to get good at something is to make as many mistakes as possible as fast as they can–they will learn the most the fastest that way. Somehow that approach doesn’t seem suitable in parenting.

I’m off to feel awkward and uncomfortable and like I’m the biggest asshole in the room. Cheers.

Triggers

I’m reading from Resurrection After Rape it is available online for free.

“But in addition to the physiological and chemical basis for triggers, there is another way to look at them. Your rapist, through his act of violence and invasion, has tried to create a “map” for you of what your life is. His actions are his efforts to define you to himself, to yourself, and to others. You are naturally trying your very best to resist his map of your life, but triggers are those occasional moments when something seems to confirm his view rather than yours. The reason they cause so much panic and distress is that for a flicker of a moment, something around you seems to suggest that his world, not yours, is the real one.”

I consciously tell people that I am white trash because I will explode with anger when people do things in front of me that I don’t approve of. If I set the bar of expectation low for my behavior then I am at least in character. Seriously–what else did you expect from white trash?

The more I read about the amygdala and primitive reactions the more I feel like my understanding of white trash is inexplicably linked with this idea of being unable to move forward with modern ideas. Unable to join the less violent modern era.

I formed most of my early understandings of social hierarchy from reading The Clan of the Cave Bear. Even if status is not explicitly stated in terms of a numerical hierarchy I feel like I can see the imprint of such importance in every gathering.

I believe that the only reason people are ever lower status than me is because they are younger than me and we live in a place where children are always below adults but as soon as they grow up they will be better than me.

Ok, I don’t rationally believe that. But in the pit of my stomach that is true. That is my self belief. That is what I was raised to believe. Someone has to be on the bottom. It might as well be me.

In some way there is an element of wanting to protect other people. I can take more pain than other people so if I deliberately stay on the bottom I can protect people who could not take the strain of being in this position–they would die. It happens.

I think I am just flat triggered by men. I think I am angry with them for existing. I am angry with them for allowing women to wait on them. (Note I did not say forcing women to wait on them.) I am angry with them for not seeing the work they create by existing.

But none of them have to give a shit that I am feeling that way. I have a partner who treats me how I want to be treated. Why do I give a fuck if other people have different relationship styles?

I think this is part of why I left the bdsm community. I couldn’t handle watching relationships that felt like train wrecks in slow motion. I watched people do horrible emotional damage to themselves over and over. Not everyone but the people like me. The people who really didn’t have a lot of self esteem. The people who believed they deserved to be treated like a piece of shit.

I have learned a lot about geek culture since I got married. I finally have a mole in that camp. None of my ex’s were proper moles. They treated me like the enemy. Noah isn’t in a camp other than his own but he likes to go spy sometimes. We are so freakishly well suited.

I have a lot of empathy for people who feel like me. That’s normal and natural for my species. I treat everyone who is different from me like they are sub human and a potential threat. Men feel different–scarier, more powerful, inherently threatening. Men never seem to understand the amount of power differential I see between us. Men never seem to understand why I feel scared by them just assuming someone else should have to do everything for them.

I have to get control over this. I don’t think Noah would appreciate it if I ran off and joined a lesbian separatist group. So I have to stop feeling scared and mean and combative around men.

Oh good fucking luck.

End rape culture at the playground

Sometimes I feel a little weird on park days. I make a conscious effort to always trudge out and rough house with the boys. Ok, I do miss some days when I’m being whiny and want to talk to grown ups. But I try to do at least a little rough housing every week.

I talk to all the little boys. They are getting used to me. I’m pretty different from their moms–that’s cool. We wrestle. Some new ones got brave yesterday and joined in. We had to negotiate. I talked about how breasts are really sensitive so be careful not to whack them and never grab a woman or girls breasts without permission. That’s a private area. But I did it with a smile on my face and a gentle voice and I went right back to wrestling and rolling around like puppies.

I think this is what really influences character. I feel like a lot of the rape culture ranting that yells at adult men about how terrible they are for the patriarchy is missing the point. I don’t want all of the adult men in my life to feel terrible and guilty for having a penis. That’s not what I’m interested in. That won’t make anyones life better.

One of my buddies in the home school group told me that she likes talking to me because I am very opinionated and very different from her but I’m not trying to convert her–I have no interest in having her be like me. So she gets to listen to things that are totally outside her experience and think about them without feeling pressured to change. I feel like that means I am doing exactly the right thing and I am tuning my message appropriately. Good.

I want to exist loudly in front of people. I want people to understand just how different from them the people around them actually are. I want it to be ok that I exist. I don’t need a whole bunch of mini-me’s running around. I’m not trying to become the dominant culture–I’m trying to be allowed to exist. I’m trying to stop feeling like I should die.

Playing with the little boys is part of this. I hug them. I will even kiss the top of their heads when they are being very affectionate (Err, this has only happened with boys I have known multiple years or who were under one year old I’m not incredibly creepy or anything.) I don’t kiss their faces. I don’t get into long embraces and I talk about body autonomy all the god damn time. I am very conspicuous about asking for hugs before I touch them. I model how I want to be treated. How else can they learn?

I have been seeing a lot of things on the internet advising parents to work on boundaries with their own kids–I agree with that message whole-heartedly. I just think it doesn’t go far enough. I don’t have responsibility just to and for my children. I need to talk to the kids at the park. I need to talk to talk to the kids in our neighborhood. I need to talk to all of the children who could be the ones my kids will sneak off and play sex games with.

I need for everyone to be playing by the same rules. No one but me is standing up to loudly announce the rules so I’m happy to do it. I go to the park and I don’t care if I know the kids or not I referee. I don’t micromanage or anything–I stay out of 80% of the arguing. But I intervene when they can’t share. I intervene when hitting starts. I intervene when someone is on the side-lines crying because they are too young to understand how to join the game.

I don’t favor my kids–Shanna is pretty bitter about that–because I care a lot about being neutral. I don’t pick sides. I model how to work things with words. I give lots of examples, “So you could say____ or ____ or ____ what feels closest to what you are actually feeling? Or something else entirely! I could be wrong.”

I tell them over and over that they own their body and they have the right to dictate how people treat it. I say that the other kids they are playing with are in the same spot. You can’t touch someone without consent. You have to ask. Don’t assume just because you are “friends” that it is ok to touch someone.

(My kid is not picking this up fast. Oy. Touchy thing.)

I’m trying very hard to create the idea that everyone has preferences and you must follow peoples preferences–which means asking questions.

One of the boys was playing with my belly jiggle yesterday. He said, “You have fat.” He was smiling and laughing and delighted by life. Clearly he didn’t see this as a problem. I bet his mom has done exactly the same thing to his belly.

I laughed and said, “I do! I do have fat! I looooooove fat. Mmmm tasty delicious fat! Fat! Fat! Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaat!!!!!!!” Then I grabbed him and rolled around on the ground with him. Other boys jumped on the pile, also laughing and started offering up types of fat:

“Like bacon?”

“Yes! Like bacon! And ice cream! MMMMMM”

Everyone was overjoyed.

A few minutes later after the crowd had dispersed one of the boys lingered and said, “I don’t think it was very nice of him to call you fat.”

My response was something close to: “Well he didn’t call me fat. He said I had fat and that is true. If he had said,” I deliberately made my voice all sneering and nasty, “‘Ewww you’re fat’ then I probably would have hurt feelings. Because he would be trying to make me feel bad about myself. But he wasn’t. He was just commenting on me. It’s like saying I have brown hair. I’m ok with him saying things that are true.”

He looked so confused. I’m sure he and his mom talk about me outside of actual interactions. Ha.

The reason going to the park is so “high spoons” for me is I believe with every fiber of my being that I am obliged to be nice to the kids. They are just learning and if I can seem positive and loving while I am giving instruction they will remember it and imprint on it more deeply. I am consciously didactically teaching children basically every time I am near them. It’s exhausting.

I think that’s what home schooling community is about. I think we are agreeing to teach one another’s kids. I realize not everyone feels the same way so I try not to say it too loudly. Ha. I’m not forcing them to memorize times tables or anything neurotic like that but I use group social outings as time to consciously work on the rules of society.

What the hell else are such times for? And if kids have to learn every rule completely on their own without adult help things turn all Lord of the Flies. Judicious adult intervention while mostly letting the kids direct and handle things is the optimal learning environment.

Studies god damn prove this.

It made me really happy when I commented to some of the moms that I was talking to their sons about boundaries and touching stuff she said that I’m going to teach sex ed when the kids are a little older. YES! Please! I’ve been training all my life. Ha. *beat head on wall*

The thing they don’t understand is I won’t be starting when the kids are older. I’m starting now. I’m starting when they are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, ,9, 10, and 11 because that is how old the kids are in our group. I’m talking to all of them about touching and consent. There are slightly different explanation levels–I don’t talk to the three year olds about nerve endings. I say sensitive.

Sex is part of life because touching is part of life. If you want your kids to grow up to be healthy adults who are good at sex then they have to be good at touching–that is how things work. I understand that most parents feel kind of nauseated at the idea of their kids growing up to have sex but I have my eye on the end goal.

I want healthy adult children.

I have to teach my children and their peers about healthy touch if I want that to be the norm for their world. That means I have to be didactic. I have to choose to send on a message. I can’t just ignore things and let them slide or I don’t get to be upset when the culture isn’t what I want it to be.

Am I changing the world? If my little cohort of kids manages to grow up together and everyone gets a fresh healthy launch together to go out and feel like they are allowed to have the sex they want within the boundaries they choose then maybe I will have done something.

You don’t know what someone wants by looking at them. You only know what they want if you ask. If you have never asked what they want then you have no business having your hands on them.

If people believed that in the core of their being–how would the world be different?

Self control sounds hard

What I know about my father is: he was tall, 6’7″. He liked to read science fiction books. (If you want the real reason I avoided sci fi for most of my life… knowing he liked them was enough.) He liked taking baths. He was a printer. He was from Pasadena. He was mean. He liked to rape his children.

I was reading about Buddhist meditation retreats. I’m not sure how I would handle having to sit around and just be still. I would spend a lot of time thinking about my dad. Watching my husband with our kids is like the bitter mixed with the sweet. I feel over and over every day, why didn’t I deserve to be loved? I keep wondering when people are going to realize they should stop. I don’t deserve any positive emotions from anyone. It has always been true.

I feel like a fucking asshole because I got angry about not being loved and I ripped the whole fucking house down. I prosecuted my father and I divorced my mother after loudly and publicly humiliating and shaming her.

Don’t fuck with me.

Ok, I don’t do that to everyone. I haven’t been quite so hostile with all of the people who have hurt me and not loved me. Usually I just put my head down, accept it as the natural order of things, and start walking.

It is very scary trying to be emotionally attached to my children. Every part of me screams not to. Don’t invest. They will just leave you and hurt you. Families are bullshit. No one really gives a shit about anyone but themselves.

I care. I take care of them because I love them. Not because they do anything for me. Well, they hug me. That’s nice.

Apparently my father pestered my mother for a threesome for many years. I wonder if she had given in to that would he have left her daughters alone? There is no way of knowing and no sense in blaming. I doubt he would have left us alone.

My experience of men who rape and men who hurt little children is that they are deeply wounded. They feel small and weak. They do not know that they are so strong they can crush the person with one hand. In their minds that transformation never happened. They believe they are still weak like I believe I do not deserve love. Most of them believe they do not deserve love either. Most of them understand that they should shut their mouths and look down and never expect anyone to love them but everyone gets sick of doing that.

So when someone shows signs of love it is hard to stop. It is hard to keep from pushing harder and harder in your excitement. Oh my goodness this person loves me. If the recipient decides to say “no” and pull away… that’s dangerous and bad. No. They are just kidding. They want to love me. See, they do. They are still here. They want me to be happy. This is what will make me happy.

One of the hardest parts of all day every day is balancing all of the needs in my head. I have to be important–I can’t be a martyr. But I have to look really hard at the people around me and meet their needs. Often when they can’t express the need on their own.

It is hard to not be selfish. It is hard to not take. It is hard to not be self-centered. But I can’t be. That’s what fucks kids up. I have to fucking care about my children and their needs. No one else will unless I do. If I don’t treat them like people of status it is unlikely someone else will.

People get the treatment they expect. People get the treatment they accept.

I don’t know how to defend myself without being angry. I don’t know how to take up space and be allowed to be without setting fire to earth and eliminating every one and every thing near me. That’s not a useful skill right now in my life. It is kind of the opposite of useful, really.

If you don’t like the paths you know go find a new one. What would it be like to not be angry? I haven’t had very many days in the past twenty years when I haven’t felt simmering rage. It kind of blows my mind.

What I know about my father is that he was angry and entitled. I worry about myself. I don’t want to act entitled. I’m not. I worry about the men I know who rape. They are angry and entitled.

You can’t persuade someone to change by yelling at them. Not really. You can cause them to cower and lie and cover up. But that’s not what I want. I want people to understand how big and strong and powerful they are… and to consciously choose to not hurt people. I don’t think that is something I am going to be able to do by being nasty.

I’m really scared of not being angry any more. I know that has to be part of the next step. But I’m afraid that without it I will die. I’m afraid that anger will kill me. (Yes, that was a contradiction.) Being angry is a tremendous load on the body. It is slow suicide. Being this angry allthefuckingtime is a way of killing yourself. But being angry is what motivates me to defend myself.

What is the point of living in preparation for death? Death is part of every life. I’m not sure that anyone should focus on that being the whole point of every day.

I have a lot to do today. I’m feeling overwhelmed already. Weeding, make lunch, park day (there seems to be more and more drama-I think I will do a lot of Shiny Change of Topic), reply to about ten emails with scheduling foo, make phone calls (I am going to schedule physical therapy. I am going to schedule physical therapy. I am going to schedule physical therapy. soyouknowhowmydoctortoldmetodothisinJanuary?YeahI’mbroken.

Make dinner. I’m already in progress on (yet more fucking) laundry. I’ll be happy when younger daughter outgrows the four-outfits-a-day stage. Older daughter has. But then again they have different body temperatures. Younger daughter changes her many layers of clothing as often as I do. We’re in trouble.

When I think about why I am doing things (cleaning the house, weeding, whatever) I think that I want my children to say, “My mom likes to work.” That’s a description I will have to fucking earn. It will be harder given that I don’t have a tidy outside job to at which to point. Lots of people claim to work hard while doing less in a day than I do in most hours. It’s kind of perplexing to me. I could not handle a job where I sat around kind of waiting for something to happen. Not even the kind of waiting/work firefighters do. I have to work more than that. Nervous energy.

It is weird trying to appreciate the difference between mental and physical labor. They are both serious effort. Many people are capable of one but not the other. I’m trying as hard as I can to walk down the middle of the aisle. I want to learn things today that I did not know yesterday. I want that to be true every day. I want to have moved my body around and improved the nature of something pretty much every day. (Ok, I understand that some people don’t consider cleaning to be improving the nature of things and yet those people seem to get pissy about not being able to find things.)

I like resetting the space. In our home there is a place for everything and I can get everything in its place. It all comes down just about every day because living is like that. But I can reset. I can get to baseline. I don’t do it over and over all day. Ok, I skip days of cleaning my kitchen when I am enmeshed in projects elsewhere. It gets gross.

But as long as it is in disorder I can physically feel it and it bothers me. So I don’t leave things messy for long. The idea of going out and buying nail clippers over and over because you can never find them turns my stomach. I have no idea why but that is a little microcosm of first world consumptive waste for me. No. I just can’t be part of it. Clean up your fucking house and you will be able to keep track of your belongings. If you can’t keep track of your belongings clearly you have too many.

I think this makes me a “minimalist”. But I don’t even feel like a minimalist. I have too much shit for that.

Wow this got rambly. This is all connected for me. This is what I fear facing in meditation. I only face this flow of thoughts for a few hours of writing a day. It’s kind of intimidating to think of going at this speed for a day.

The retreat center spoke of accessing your wisdom. To me that clearly means “people shouldn’t come until they are over fifty”. The internet tells me: “Wisdom is the judicious study and application of knowledge. It is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgments and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one’s emotional reactions (the “passions“) so that universal principles, reason and knowledge prevail to determine one’s actions. Wisdom is also the comprehension of what is true coupled with optimum judgment as to action. Synonyms include: sagacity, discernment, or insight.”

I’m in that needing control stage. Shit. I hate this part.

Dear anonymous person on the internet,

You challenged me on Twitter. You told me that Occupy was dead and why should you care about some guy being tortured by the Police in Maine–it’s not your government.

Given that we live in a country where part of our civil war was based on the fact that some states were engaging in inappropriate activity and other states decided to stop them… I can’t imagine not feeling like part of the United States. Maine matters to me like California matters to other people.

Do you think that everyone else in the country watched the Rodney King riots and thought, “Good thing it isn’t my government doing this to someone.” Whoa. I can’t understand that thought. The militarization of the domestic police force is of enormous national concern. It quite literally keeps me up at night. How the police act in one city influences how they feel it acceptable to act in all other cities.

I have been thinking for days about how to talk about this subject. I have a strong tendency towards tl;dr so I’ve been struggling to find a pithy argument. It is quite frustrating that someone on the internet argues with me and demands a counter argument but I can’t count on someone to read more than three or four hundred words. That’s not an argument it is an exchange of theme songs.

For me, not caring about the police in Maine is like someone in Germany not caring about the first few train loads of Jews being abducted. I understand that I just lost this argument based on Godwin’s law. I spend my life living as if I am one of the first ones called. I can’t afford to think that the first few groups of people the police harass are acceptable collateral damage. My life won’t let me think of any situation like that.

I have had extremely damaging run-ins with police in my life. White trash whores are not really respected by local police forces–they decided who and what I was before I hit puberty. They were not interested in protecting me from rape or sexual assault from childhood. I live enmeshed in rape culture in a way that very few people can understand because very few people have more rapists than fingers.

I believe that a boy being tortured by the police in Maine matters because I have to believe that I would matter in his place. That it wouldn’t be ok for them to do it to me. I live in a time and a place where I can not have the hubris of saying, “Oh it wouldn’t happen to me so it is ok that they do it to someone else.” If they were going to do it to someone they just might do it to me. It wouldn’t be the first time I have had my rights taken away and I’ve been strapped down by government forces.

I understand that my life experiences are unique and unusual. My opinion intensified by one hundred after having children.

My then three year old marched with the Port Shutdown in Oakland. She remembers Occupy. We talk about it. I was one of the first people at the General Strike port shut down. I watched the thousands of people stream into the port. I watched what happens when people say, “It doesn’t matter that you say this doesn’t effect me and I should shut up–I have a voice and you can not silence me.”

I hear that Occupy is dead. I do not believe this. I believe that Occupy lives in the heart of every person who will not be silenced. This summer I will be painting a mural on a neighborhood fence because some kids keep putting graffiti on it. The elderly lady who owns the property is not up to maintaining a fence free of graffiti. I’m going to use neighborhood children to help me paint.

Occupy is not just about living in tents and existing to annoy city hall. Occupy is about seeing something in your community and trying to fix it. Maybe I would feel less personally connected to the boy in Portland Maine if I had not just mapped out how I would drive there a week before seeing this video clip. I was specifically planning on going to that city. In my country. In my car with my kids. How could I not feel like what happens to him matters to me?

Why should you care? I haven’t been able to figure out how to convince you. I ask that you be polite about my belief. I should get angry when the government tortures people because it is wrong. That is just how the world should work in my head. Ok, that’s as pithy as I can manage. You see why I didn’t respond on Twitter.

Intersection of privilege, feminism, and being “retro” as we head into the future.

I went and read the NY Magazine article on Feminist Housewives. I understand that some people feel insulted by the piece. I thought it was hilarious. Holy tomato do I fall into the demographic she is lampooning. Upper middle class and white. We started into this demographic when I was 27 (right in the middle of the 25-30 age group that is the fastest growing segment) when our combined household income was between $75,000 and $100,000. Over the last six years Noah has nearly made it to $200,000. We are absolutely the “kind of people” this article is trying to insult.

Wait, you didn’t think the author was trying to be insulting? Oh. I read it as if she was trying but failed because I really don’t care about her evaluation. Yes, I am a feminist who does not have an out-of-the-home job. What does being a feminist mean in my position? It means I lobby the shit out of my friends-in-similar-dynamics for them to have the autonomy and freedom I have.

On some levels my marriage is quite “retro” and in other ways it is anything but. Folks wouldn’t look at Noah and I and confirm that the patriarchy is in full force. I have agency. I make decisions.

If I were to work out of the house we would be in a worse place financially than we are right now. My salary would not cover how much we would end up spending on daycare, better clothes, eating out, a house cleaner, or a more active gardner. Let me tell you–if I had a job I would quite certainly do less cooking for the house than Noah does while having a job. My job was more hours in the week than Noah’s… for a lot less money. Really about like the social worker that was lampooned in the article.

I went into teaching for the express purpose of learning how to teach my own kids. I became a teacher because I knew I wanted to homeschool my kids someday and I wanted to be able to do so well. I did not go into a helping profession because I wanted to make the world better. I went into teaching to fulfill my own selfish desires and my own plans for the future.

I didn’t really live with my mother full time when I was a child. I grew up in extreme poverty and that means I often had to go live with virtual or literal strangers because she couldn’t care for me. This has created an ache inside me that time doesn’t seem to dull. I did not learn how to be a person from my mother. I learned how to be a person from books while I was alone in a room. I feel a physical need to have specific one-on-one relationships that facilitate personal growth. I need to see what it looks like when people go through the normal changes. I don’t need to spend the rest of my life looking at one cross section of life and only adapting to that. I was great with teenagers–I need to learn how to deal with all ages. I need to be exposed to all ages.

My life journey will never look anything like the typical journey. Even though I fall into specific demographics of high privilege now I will never be able to change who I am or where I come from. I am not like the other women in my demographic. Often I freak them out.

I can say without reservation that I have an uncommonly feminist marriage. My husband has permitted, encouraged, shoved me towards a degree of autonomy that I just don’t see in other marriages. It isn’t that he makes me do things by myself, though he does. It is that he has taught me about his own journey of aloneness. It is that he has made me understand why he has the limitations he has and he understands why I have the limitations I have and we seamlessly step in and rescue one another. He cares about my individual issues and he never assumes that I am a certain way “because I am a woman”.

I do not believe in biological determinism. I know men who are wonderful stay-at-home-dads (my brother has actually been a SAHD for the entire lives of his children) and I know women who are so non-maternal that I don’t understand why they had children. Because that biological clock thing is No Joke. These women wisely find very nurturing caregivers to provide most of the care for their kids and their kids grow up feeling loved and cared for. That’s what life is about, right?

There is no one path. I want to be near my children because it satisfies deep emotional needs for me. I was deeply neglected and abused as a child. I have baggage I am learning how to work through.

I have to stay home and take care of my children myself because otherwise I will never have the impetus to work on my hatred and rage towards working in groups. Without doing this I am unlikely to value the input of other people. Let me tell you I will never change my opinion if I just take a job where I have to work with people. I hate working with people. That’s my idea of hell on earth. I can be the boss and steer the ship in a group–but that’s different. I’m a harsh taskmaster.

I don’t want to be a harsh taskmaster with my children. I want them to learn how to be functional people. That means I have to model being a functional person. One of my biggest gripes about the American educational system is that we are turning out people who know how to be cogs in the machine–not people who can deconstruct the machine and build a new one.

I don’t know about you, but I think we need a new one.

I went on to read The Retro Husband and thought ouch. He’s talking about Noah. Only he isn’t.

Noah and I met during a period in our lives when we could lovingly be called fuck ups. We had a lot of relationship instability and we both treated people like they wouldn’t be in our lives very long. Mostly we were right. When we got married we both had to abruptly change a lot of things in our behavior. We went from not dating/just friends to engaged to married in five months. Our lives changed fast.

I picked a mate who has a profession that is best served by a combination of locking himself in a room to work alone and going out and teaching what he has learned while being locked in a room. Strip clubs don’t feature heavily. I’m pretty sure he has only been in a strip club once in his life. We went together on the first anniversary of our marriage. We had a lot of fun. (I’ve been to a lot of strip clubs and I love them.) We came home and conceived our first child. Amen.

I picked someone who has a dad who has never left his crazy mother. He understands what “for better or worse” means. I looked at the guys in my generation (and two generations above me) and found such understanding to be thin on the ground. I picked someone from inherited wealth who has a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. He was taught how to make money. That is a set of skills you either have or don’t have. I quizzed a lot of men. Let me tell you: financial acumen is thin on the ground. He wasn’t taught how to budget money. That’s one of the big downfalls of growing up with more money than you know what to do with. However he doesn’t track our money; I do. I budget well. We are very good partners.

I am self-aware enough to admit out loud that I would probably not be as happy if my partner made very little money. I would have different expectations. I think that  when you look at the demographic of “men who do very little housework have more sex” you have a combination of: women who are lavishly provided for feel grateful and men who philander. That’s my experience.

When I was eighteen I was engaged to my high school sweetheart. That was the price of shacking up and we both wanted away from our parents. I didn’t marry him because even though he made more money than me I paid more of our expenses and I did all the housework. He was really lazy at home. I went from that to a D/s or M/s relationship. (That’s Dominant/submissive or technically Owner/property in our case.) I have always fucking cleaned house for people. I’ve been doing it all my life. I even pick fucking friends who want me to come over and clean for them. (I offer. I am really good at organizing people’s stuff.)

I clean because I am an order Muppet. I have to see order in the world around me or I can’t focus and I can’t relax. I think I clean for other people because I am trying to bond with them. I am trying to offer what I have in terms of “benefits” so people will put up with being my friend. I believe I am intrinsically unpleasant. I must offer something in trade or being around me isn’t worth the cost.

I don’t want my children to feel this way. If I had to put my head down and work a full time job and take care of my kids and take care of my house and provide food… I would certainly never ever have reason to believe that people wanted me around for any reason other than I had work to do for them. “The worst burden for a woman is no burden.” She’s talking about privilege and idleness. She can’t shame and say it bluntly. I should be serving other people, not myself. I shouldn’t just exist for the pleasure of my company. Ha. I appreciate how much she believes women should be out working in the world–but I notice that in order to do it herself she had to give up on the marriage/kids thing. I wanted kids.

I don’t think the author of the NY Magazine piece means that I should be working for other people in order to help support the world. I just don’t.

What is the point and purpose of feminism if I am not allowed to say, “I have the financial privilege to stay home and be the primary caregiver for my children and more than anything in the world I want to do it” and have that be acceptable. I don’t want to have 18, 19, and counting so I am a perpetual breeding machine who never has to do anything else but be mommy.

I will engage in the world again. I will do it as a very different person. I am not allowed to fuck my way through the rest of my life. I spent my childhood assuming I would be a sex worker for most of my life. That was my actual plan. I decided to do something else because I didn’t want my children to believe they had to do it. I changed my behavior in large and dramatic ways because I wanted to be able to look my children in the face and say that acting like me is appropriate. Does that mean I think promiscuity is terrible or bad? No. But they should not expect it of themselves because it is not mandatory. It is not common. It is not standard.

I used two forms of birth control very consistently after I was eighteen (I was on hormonal birth control and ALWAYS used condoms for casual sex and used a diaphragm with longer term fluid bonded partners who refused to wear condoms any more because let’s be honest that is how that shit happens) until I was sure I wanted to have kids. I was not going to get caught with some kid I would resent and a lifetime association with a loser ex-partner. I was smart enough to fucking recognize that at twelve years old. That’s when I went on the pill for the first time. I sometimes used depo provera (to my detriment–that shit is bad for you) then I went back to the pill.

No one sat me down and taught me the facts of life. I found things out piece-meal. A little bit at school (I will say that Los Gatos had adequate public health education–that is a huge advantage not everyone has) but mostly through talking to people. I found out most of it by making mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes before I was eighteen. I had a lot of very risky sex. I made a number of stupid choices.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this rape/not rape thing. How do I differentiate between bad sex and rape? I don’t think it crosses the line unless I was saying “no”. I believe that I have to say “no” or it is my fault that something happened. I ascribe the responsibility and agency for such acts to myself.

When I was twelve I asked a twenty-five year old man to fuck me. That wasn’t rape. But it was still a crime. It was still illegal. It was his legal responsibility to tell me no. I was still a child and he is responsible for his actions. That other twenty five year old I dated when I was twelve. He was at least nice enough to not pressure me when I said I wasn’t ready to have sex yet, but he asked me to at least give him a blow job. I felt kind of guilty because he had taken me out to a meal (Johnny Rockets. I had a grilled cheese sandwich, fries, and a milkshake) and he bought me a Christmas present so… didn’t I owe him? So I gave him the blowjob he asked for. It wasn’t rape. But it was a crime.

This is where rape culture blows my mind because of how pervasive it is. It’s all my fault those poor men committed a crime. I asked them to do it–literally in the first case and by inference in the second when I said I wasn’t ready for sex yet.

I brought it up, you see. I was out on a date–of course there were expectations, duh. How stupid am I to not have stayed home. My mother had given me permission for the date. She met him. She saw us off. I was home by curfew.

I know the difference between rape and not rape. If I said no and lay there crying while someone fucked me that is rape. Even if we are both adults now and I would have consented to the sex if he had just put a condom on. That’s not a mistake on my part. That is not something I invited. Unprotected sex is not a right that a man has. He does not have the right to risk inflicting a child on a woman. Period.

I think in my little corner of the world a rapist is somehow less of a piece of shit if he at least keeps his future-children to himself.

I stay home to take care of my children. They are my whole world for this brief window of time. I don’t think I would be able to handle raising the child of my rapist. My mother had a hard time raising me. She did not bond with me as much as she did other children. She had her tubes tied when I was born. You know how “some women rape easy”? That’s my family. We rape easy. I’m trying to do something different with my children. I am escaping into a different kind of social dynamic.

I really have a feminist marriage. Why do I say that? Because I started off in a marriage where it was ok to beat and rape me and then I decided those things weren’t ok and I put a stop to them. (Let’s be clear that I was ok with it to start with–I gave active consent. Well, ok I gave consent in advance for the rape and then changed my mind because I didn’t really think it would turn into a violent rape because I didn’t know I had been dealing with mostly wussy-assed-pansies trying to “play rape” in the past. Hoo boy.)

Folks have called my husband “whipped” and his response was, “damn right”. Only he is a very autonomous being. I don’t have a lot of control over him in general. I have a ridiculous amount of influence on how he treats me. And other men/boys feel the need to let us know that I shouldn’t have so much influence on how he treats me. He should instead align his preferences with those of other men/boys and treat me how those men/boys feel I should be treated.

I really like my husband. He is self-interested in a way I can work with. I can predict how he will react because he is consistent. He has stated goals. When he starts wandering off from them a brisk reminder gets him back on track. He isn’t particularly pulled towards any boys club. He has been alone too much. He has no faith that the boys club will really be there for him.

I have been with him more for more of his life than anyone else. I like him more than anyone else ever has. I really appreciate him. My life has gone from being a nightmare to being the punchline because I am so vapid and privileged. It is… interesting.

When people mockingly say that I am trying to live how my grandmother lived I would laugh and say that I picked an atheist–not a Mennonite or a Catholic. One grandmother was a printer in Pasadena after WWII (she was enlisted) and the other was the wife of a boxer turned dairy farmer. No, I don’t live like them. I neither have to work as hard nor am I oppressed as much. The Christmas before I divorced my family my mom made me a wonderful book. She hand wrote, in her beautiful hand writing–my mother has the most beautiful writing in the world–all of our family recipes into a recipe book. She gave me what she has to give.

I am a much better cook than any of them. They used shitty ingredients and too much sugar in freaking everything to cover up the bad quality of all the canned produce. I have had to learn how to cook from The Joy of Cooking and the internet. I live in an era where there is no fucking excuse for saying “I don’t know how to do _______.”

Yes, I choose to be a stay at home mom. I choose to homeschool my children with the financial support of my husband. I don’t want to have it all. I don’t want the pressure of more people having expectations of me right now. I only have so much energy to give. I know that makes me fairly pathetic but that’s just how the cookie crumbles. I am privileged. I am lucky that I get to make this choice. I wouldn’t have been able to do this in this way with someone who made a lot less money.

Only I probably would. I would live in a cheap rented apartment and I would probably never own a house. But I would still want to take care of my kids. I don’t live in a nice house now. I will never live in an expensive neighborhood. I would feel unwanted and like I didn’t know how to behave in that kind of environment. Here the kids play on the streets and we hear lots of loud music and lots of people. I feel comfortable. I see signs of people living and laughing and putting down roots.

Yes, I want to be a stay at home mom so I can get to know the seventy-six year old man down the street. I wouldn’t have time to stand around and pass the time of day hearing his stories if I had a job. My life would be less full if I had never heard his stories. I would understand people a little less. He is helping me hate men less. He feels pretty safe to stand around and talk with. He has no designs upon me and he would probably freak the fuck out if I made a pass at him. It is a very comforting exchange. I really value having him around. I think I am shoving him in the role of my Uncle Bob. I’m going to freak out when he dies some day. I’m glad my kids are getting to hear from him. They are learning a lot of history.

Speaking of Uncle Bob. Not mine. Uncle Bob Martin is a technical guy who absolutely means well but has a humorous opinion of women. I’m not a fucking lady. Ladies are expected to act in very proscribed ways I will never agree to behave. Men should not treat me like I am a lady. I want them to treat me like a person-who-is-not-like-them. Like a human from another culture. I am a person who has had a very particular set of lifetime experiences. I am not like other people. I am not like other women. I am not like men. I am also not working in the technology industry so obviously I don’t matter–right?

Only I’ve been coding some in secret (not a secret any more) because I didn’t want to tell Noah at first. I’m still not sharing. I am who should be courted into such an industry but they treat me like an insect. They treat me like my brain is rotting inside my skull because I am so mentally deficient as to want to be near children all day. Oh go fuck yourself. Mostly women are treated like they have no value after they have stayed home to take care of children. Only Uncle Bob wants us to be the ladies and spiffy up the place and nurture our cwute widdle pwojects along to help them actually happen. The boys club has noticed that when you get too many boys in one place you need a den mother.

Well he is asking women to come work in a hostile work environment. He isn’t really acknowledging how or why. At the edges of that hostile work environment (the gaming community is kind of the bastard son of the technology community) we have Anita Sarkeesian speaking about what happens to women who have the audacity to look at how women are treated in the gaming community.

I could stay in an underpaid, unappreciated profession where I get to care for other peoples children all day but not really form bonds because the kids are leaving at the end of the year–so I don’t have to grow as a person. I can remain static as I stand there doing the same thing year after year. Like I’m perfect already. ha.

Or I could stay home and raise children and figure out how to grow fruit and vegetables so that when I am old my property will be fairly self-sufficient. I am contributing to my long-term future. Could it all be yanked away from me? Anything could. You don’t have to tell me that. I don’t think many people understand having an uncertain future more than me. But things really and truly have improved. I have changed. I have learned from my mistakes.

Yes, I’m a feminist and a house wife. Being in this position allows me to acquire skills that I want to have. Having a career would not allow me to develop these skills. I want them. I want them with every fiber of my being. I want to have survival skills that are not taught in an office or a school. Those environments are artifacts of a culture that is dying. I want my children to be able to do something else.

We are at a turning point. We have to change. If that makes me “retro” then I’m ok with that. This essay from Michael O. Church is fifteenth in a series (now of sixteen and counting…) about how corporations need to shift from being part of an industrial model to being part of the technology era. He’s talking about getting rich. He’s not talking about my life any more than Sebastian Marshall is talking about my life. I am not part of the technological revolution these men are portending. Yet I am. I am raising the children who will carry it out.

I believe that women have as much of a place in the world as men. I believe that women are as intrinsically valuable as men–not “because we nurture” but rather because if the human race is to continue it requires men and women. We have not found a way to get around that yet. It’s not because we are both awesome “in our own ways” it’s because we simply cannot continue as a race without both genders. And subjugating women isn’t going so well. We live in an era where silencing us is harder than it has ever been before. We fight back now. And bear the consequences of that too. It’s still better than it was. There have always been consequences for standing up for yourself–that is not a man or a woman thing. Unfortunately the consequences for women tend to involve threats that involve her gender, especially rape.

I have never met anyone who has been actually raped more times than I have. Either that or no one has been willing to say it to me. Some day I will meet someone. I have very real reason to fear reprisals for speaking out–the threatened torture has already happened to me. What makes me think I will avoid it in the future?

Because I have learned more about privilege. I was silenced previously in my life because I was young, ignorant, and too weak to protect myself. I am no longer in such a position. Most women and girls do not understand what the process of learning how to protect themselves means. Unfortunately “protecting yourself” often means staying home and not getting to be part of communities and hobbies you would like to join because if you have a bad experience you are on your own. If you defend yourself people may threaten to kill and/or rape you.

In many ways I feel very consciously like I am choosing a life more like a religious life–I am mostly cloistered and I mostly have contact with women and children. I’m doing it as an increasingly zealous atheist which is kind of awkward.

There are many studies that say that men/women in highly defined relationships do better and are happier. So far in history those relationships have followed a pattern of men work- women raise children. It was a biologically unavoidable task. We no longer live in that world. Now men are no more suited to the weird ass work people do in offices than women are–often men are not as well suited. A great deal of technological work involves a kind of multi-tasking that women are shown to be better at. And as my husband shows me week after week after week in our marriage–he is a better cook than I am and he is quite capable of bathing children and changing diapers and cleaning the house. He doesn’t do as much of it as I do, no, and that’s ok with me. Doing those tasks requires time. I have more time to kill than he does. He is genuinely working his ass off for more structured hours of the day than me. I can pick up slack and increase our mutual leisure time because it makes my life better.

I don’t see how these choices are unfeminist. I am being cold, calculating, and I am serving my interests and the interests of my progeny. I am, however, not serving the interests of an Industrial Age leftover feminism. I am not trying to stamp out home life in service of people living in dormitories and working in factories. I don’t want my children to imprint on a group of people exactly their age so they have no perspective on how dramatic the changes in life are. I want my children to grow up understanding that people change constantly. They don’t settle in and “be the same” for decades. You have to grow.

I don’t see a structure for that in the current set-up. So I’m going to go make it up as I go. I understand that has been the normal human path since the beginning of time. I’m ok with being on The Road Not Taken by other people. I will always be weird. That’s unavoidable.

I wish you knew that you were actually on that road too. You are not actually on the same road as other people and you shouldn’t try to be. What do you want to do with your life? That’s what feminism is about.

At the end of that rant the kind of logical next question is: so what about all the people who don’t have my privilege? Fuck if I know. That’s a really hard question.

Poverty, religion, and community building

The last article I read on HuffPo was about how atheists should care more about poverty. In my head that lead to this whole leapfrog experience of thoughts about things that have been happening in my life lately. A bunch of things happening off-line mostly to other people. So I can kind of comment in person but writing about other peoples lives is rather rude. See, I do have tact.

Recently I was reminded that one of the big upsides of Catholicism over the Protestant approach is that Catholics believe you are not saved by faith alone–you have to do good works. I feel like telling the Protestants that they don’t need to behave like Jesus, just believe in him, was one of those crucial “missing the point” movements in history.

At this stage of my life I am standing very near the cliff of atheism. I think that if someone is as angry at G-d as I am can’t really fall off that cliff. It’s like having an airplane cable around my waist as I try to jump off the cliff. I won’t get far enough and it’s going to fucking hurt trying.

And by the way, if you have ever said, “Catholic or Christian” then you can picture me screeching at you with great fervor for at least half an hour about how ignorant and stupid that sounds. Just sayin’. You believe in and follow Christ? Christian. Moving on.

I believe that nothing and no one is going to save me. No one is watching me and giving a shit. If someone had been watching me through my whole life with dispassion I would have a nice big scythe with that persons name on it. My life is, in my opinion, proof that there could not be a compassionate all knowing G-d. It’s enough proof for me at least.

That means I am left in this position of not being good for my big invisible sky friend. Why should I be good? Who defines good? Ah… now we get to the crux of the question. Most people live according to moral structures they have never really thought about. What does being good mean anyway?

I will say that I know profoundly ethical sex workers. I believe they are good people providing a service human-kind needs. If it weren’t such a needed field it wouldn’t have existed for all time. Give me a break.

I know people who are “good” in my estimation who regularly break the law. The law does not define good for me. The law is a codefied way of protecting assets not a way of ensuring that people are nice to each or that we each have a minimum amount to survive. The law protects people who already have power and mostly screws over people at the bottom. I don’t have that much respect for the law.

The law cares way more about the rights of rapists than rape victims. And everyone you can talk to about this will tell you that it should. It must. Otherwise there would be a complete breakdown of law and order. We have to assume innocence. But we must not protect the innocence of young girls and boys who are raped. They are on their own.

We will blame their parents for not cloistering them. We will blame co-ed education. We won’t blame the completely idiotic school system that will not allow adults to talk frankly about sex. We won’t actually teach these children the difference between consensual sex and rape. We won’t talk to the girls and teach them, “If you don’t want it you really and truly have to say NO because he won’t understand on his own. You will be thinking, ‘Can’t he see that I don’t want this?’ and you will cry later because no he won’t see. What he sees is that his dick might get wet. You don’t really matter. If you want to matter you have to matter to you first and you have to defend yourself. Start by saying ‘no’.”

Why don’t people say this to young girls? Why don’t people sit and talk to children for years and years beforehand about consent? Why don’t we talk about self-sovereignty? Oh. Because then we might give the children the idea to have sex–right? They won’t come up with it on their own. Whatever.

When I was younger, before I knew my sister had raped our brother or her children, when her kids were in the 7-11ish range I started pulling the kids aside and talking to them about consent and sex. I showed my nephew how to put condoms on a banana and I made him practice till he could do it without faltering. I told him I’d be happy to give him boxes to use while masturbating so he could continue practicing and get proficient so he doesn’t feel silly once he has a partner. He said no thanks and looked freaked out.

My understanding is his step-father raped him within six months of that conversation. Based on my memories and the stories I was told. I guess he didn’t need to worry about being awkward with his first partner. That was all awkward.

My sister’s loud public attitude was that “there should be a veil between the knowledge of parents and children. In the mind of a parent every child should die a virgin.” But she raped her children. The public discourse and the private actions don’t line up even slightly. Honestly, to me this kind of attitude is pretty much what I hear when I hear Protestants talk about the poor. When I hear my atheist friends talk about the poor.

“The government shouldn’t steal my money.” Because it is better for you to have a second fancy sports car than for some kids to eat. Right.

There has been wealth distribution since the dawn of time. There have always been rich people and there have always been poor people. But in some eras the difference is less stark.

We have more wasteful shit in our lives than was ever fucking possible at any other point in history. What do we do with this wonderful excess? We hoard it. We are stingy and selfish. We are short-sighted.

I get the short-sighted self-absorbed attitude on the parts of my atheist child-free friends. In very specific ways they are only kind of part of the human race. They are an end point. They are not part of the future and they know it. Why should they care?

I don’t get it from parents. I don’t at all. Your children will have better lives if there is less distribution of wealth. Not if they have more and more and more compared to those around them. Their lives will become increasingly a slice of humanity. You can’t associate with people who are too socio-economically different from you. That’s scary. People in different classes behave differently.

I like living in a not-great neighborhood. I like that my kids are meeting a very wide range of people. Our neighborhood is definitely *not* primarily white. Some of the folks around here are comfortable financially but they are in the minority. We have a lot of vacant foreclosed houses. We have a lot of derelict houses kind of falling apart. We talk to everyone. My kids are learning how to behave with as many people in the world as I can possibly expose them to.

I want my children to have an in-their-gut understanding that having “things” is not because of entitlement or privilege. You don’t automatically get these things in life. Some people make the choice to prioritize having things–that’s a choice not a right. And if they don’t get it–that’s the breaks. There are no guarantees. There are no promises. And Paris Hilton no more “deserves” what she has than I deserved to be raped over and over.

It’s a lottery. It’s not about deserve. Things just happen.

I have to believe this. This is the entire foundation upon which I build my survival. I don’t deserve things. If I have them it is an accident. If I have knowledge within my head that could make someone else’s life better and it’s doing nothing for me–isn’t it selfish nearly to being criminal to withhold it?

I believe that we are social animals. We are a social species. We need community. We need to belong. Unfortunately people usually choose “people who feel like me” without ever really examining what that is founded on. Are you saying you only want to know people who were fortunate to have parents who were born into a certain class? How un-American of you.

It’s funny sitting near geek culture. I’m not really a geek. I’ve lived in the Silicon Valley my whole life and I’m only quasi-participating in making my first website. Mostly I’m making my husband do it. But I have watched this culture emerge. I have seen it from the outside since I was twelve.

I hear the Oppression Olympics a lot. When geeks get together the subject of childhood bullying comes up constantly. No one remembers the times when they were taunting people because they were smarter and they weren’t going to be stuck being losers like those other kids. I remember hearing that. The geeks who got beat up used to sneer when tests were handed back. See, here’s proof that even if you can beat me up I am better than you and I will be through my whole life. So that childhood bullying, that largely grew out of the rage of frustrated children, is carried forward in life. Only who is on top changed.

In America we are very careful about Might Makes Right at this stage. We want it for the police–thus we are increasingly militarizing them. That’s the wrong direction. People listen to rules that feel fair, not to things that are imposed under military guard. We like having our rights, motherfuckers.

I watch my kids moving through our neighborhood and I wonder what kind of adults they will be. Will they be selfish? There is no way to predict. Will they feel this terrible compulsion to build community? Will they already have that community?

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what I should do to find a way to fit into the community I have more. I don’t mean the people I know. I live somewhere. I live in a place and a time. How do I fit in this? If you restrict your friends to only people who are like you and you spend all your time in the car going from very carefully selected place to place… that’s not community.

Community is the weird neighbor we always have long conversations with as we walk to and from the store or park. He gives my kids advice and talks to them about what it was like to work for PG&E as it was really spreading through the state. He’s in his 70’s and he worked for them for decades. He has great stories.

Months ago the topic of suicide came up kind of randomly. I was blunt, as I am wont to be. Since then he makes a point of saying, “Gosh I’m glad you are still here so I can talk to you. And your babies still need you. Keep going.”

That’s community. I don’t have to go out of my way to see him. I don’t have to laboriously schedule around our “activities”. We just see him in our life. It feels good. I’m trying to get to know more neighbors. I think that at some point I may offer tutoring at the elementary school across the street. It would be fun. It would be a really nice way of getting to know more of the neighborhood kids. My children will need to know those kids whether they go to school with them or not.

Everyone is on a different path. I understand that everyone has a different load to carry. Different things they could share. Different needs and wants. I do understand that. But everyone has something that they could give to make someone else’s life better. Not in a codependent way. I’m not recommending one more poly enmeshed hysterical relationship.

There are people in this world who are almost certainly actually suffering because they do not have a piece of information that is in your head. Is that your responsibility? Only if you want it to be. Only if you want to be part of something bigger than yourself. Only if you want to be humble about the fact that maybe all you have to give is that scrap of information and you can’t construct an identity around helping people all the time.

Anger, frustration, entitlement, privilege–I believe they are all so entwined it is almost impossible to take them apart.

Privilege, in my parlance, is the lucky accidents in your life. Maybe you are white. Maybe you were born to wealthy parents. Maybe you were raised in an area with excellent public schools. Maybe your parents could afford to put you through college.

Can you see how these things don’t just happen to everyone? That makes having them double plus awesome. Only if you were handed a huge bag of candy when you were five and you refused to ever share it you would be kind of an asshole. Privilege is like that bag of candy. You can share it. I’m not saying give up on having things or benefiting.

I own a house–well, there is still a mortgage. It will be paid off in less than ten years. Someday I will own a house. Because my husband bought it and paid for it and lets me live in it. I don’t really feel like I should get too cocky about this.

Humility. I didn’t do it. Taking too much pride in it–as if it were my accomplishment–would be ridiculous. This will be Noah’s accomplishment. I can be proud of him and I can be grateful I benefit but I can’t act like it is my right or just or natural that I get this.

Most of my anger displays come at the heels of feeling thwarted. My need for control is interrupted and the fireworks inside my skull are fantastic. I’m not trying to claim that I am superior or above these things.

But what do I do once I feel like that? When my privilege feels attacked? When I feel like I’m not getting something I feel entitled to?

That is what decides what kind of human being I am. I don’t think that all child-free people are dead ends in the human race. I believe that a great many of the most important people throughout all time were child-free. But they made a choice to be part of something. Something that actually makes the world a better place.

I’ve been watching Burning Man for years. It makes me feel sick to my stomach to think about how many millions of dollars have been spent on a temporary city that damages the natural environment and is basically just about distraction.

If you need that kind of display and outlay and expense in order to find your “tribe” then I argue that your tribe is pretty artificial. That is not a sustainable kind of community. That is a mass waste sort of community. Welcome to America.

How many cities or even small poverty-stricken countries could be run for a year on what is spent on Burning Man?

Which isn’t to say that I never entertain myself. I spend money I don’t need to spend. I bought into the freakin Disney time share. That’s elite privilege at its very snootiest if you ask me. I don’t think that everyone who goes to Burning Man is bad. I don’t think that everyone who goes to Disneyland is bad.

But what could we be doing with this time and money that wasn’t so completely selfish? What could we be doing with this time and energy that isn’t just about being entertained for a few days?

I’m not trying to sit on a high horse. I am part of my cohort. I pick up trash and talk to my neighbors. It’s a slow start on building community. I donate a lot of money. I try to help people one-to-one whenever I can.

But I have to have resources to draw from in order to have anything to give. Honestly the trips to Disneyland make me feel more cheerful about the endless amount of giving I have to do in the rest of my life. Burning Man provides a lot of people with massive emotional support–I hear. Or it’s a total flop. Apparently it’s a coin toss year by year. But people still go back–like addicts.

What does caring about the poor mean? What does caring about someone other than yourself mean? Caring doesn’t accomplish a lot. You have to work. What can you do to make the world better?

I keep trying to remind myself that I am not really past the point where I have to be completely focused on my kids. It’s a privilege. It’s a species-preference for children to be intensely cared for in the first few years. My oldest is almost five. My youngest is two and a half. I only have a couple more years before I won’t be nearly as necessary.

What will I do with my time and energy? I don’t think it will involve getting in my car and driving thirty or forty minutes until I get to a white neighborhood so I can feel comfortable. I wouldn’t. I want to find a way to matter where I am. I may not be willing to enroll my kids in the school directly across the street but I want my kids to spout off, “My mom knew she wanted to homeschool her kids from when she was seventeen so please don’t think this is any kind of negative judgment on the school–it’s just a personal choice.” And yes, it is a weird choice. Ask questions about it.

Part of the problem with “helping the poor” is that most of the time there is this tension between helping individual people and helping a systemic problem. The approaches are completely different and going in either direction means that a lot of people fall through the cracks.

What is the road forward?

I was having a chat with some women this weekend. One of the comments that sticks in my mind is a woman was saying that she has evolved in her life to the point where she doesn’t feel like there is much point in being angry about injustice and trying to fight. Just love. Go through your life doing what you think is right and loving people and it will all work out.

I… I don’t think I am capable of believing such hubris. Unless the “all work out” is that we all end up dead. Sure, that I believe. What will the world be like in fifty or a hundred years? I want to influence that. I truly do. And I don’t think that sitting in my house or school in a carefully chosen neighborhood and driving in my car to meet up with carefully pre-selected people is the way to do it.

Chaos theory. Maybe I should study some.

Weighing the cost of confrontation.

Whenever someone has their boundaries violated, whether sexually or otherwise, that person (male or female) has to decide whether a confrontation is worthwhile. In my extremely judgmental opinion such confrontations should take place if: a) the victim/survivor/experiencer-of-boundary-violation feels there is value in saying their side of the story OR b) the perpetrator can be stopped through the action of speaking up.

It is hard to get truly accurate statistics no matter what you do. In the areas of rape and sexual assault these numbers are extra fuzzy. There are a few studies but they are small and I feel weird about judging from those studies.

Almost all of the studies about rape and sexual assault I have read (and I’m pretty sure I’ve read every big-name one in existence) involve fewer people-who-have-been-victimized than I have talked to in my lifetime.

I go find these people. It’s not just women. I want to hear their stories. I truly do. So I’ve heard hundreds. Probably a few thousand at this point. Most of them on the internet–I haven’t met all of these people in person. I think about what they tell me with regards to their particular situation. Everyone has a slightly different circumstance to their assault.

Over all, near as I can tell, the number of successfully prosecuted rapes is around 3%. That means that if you have been raped you have around a 97% chance that your rapist’s rights are more important than yours.

Oh gee, why don’t more people try to press charges? I wonder.

I have confronted. I have pressed charges. I have spoken to police officers on multiple occasions. I have chosen to not confront sometimes. I have had people say, “Hey you didn’t want to confront so I went and told this person you have been talking about him so here, now you can talk to him about it!”

Uhm, what is there for me in this potential discussion? Confirmation that this person did a lot of drugs and alcohol so “can’t remember” and thus it isn’t supposed to matter what happened between us. Yeah. That will make me feel better.

I get to choose what I do with my time. I’m pretty sure that I should be doing things that make me feel better about myself and not things that confirm that in the opinions of other people I am a worthless whore who isn’t even worth remembering.

Yeah. I think I would rather shove rusty nails in my veins. But it could be just me.