Category Archives: rape

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After a while I start feeling guilty if I post too much on social media. I’m allowed to post random drips and drabs (or novellas) in my blog whenever I want to. I’m on my third suicide book of the day. This morning’s chapter in Outrunning was about trying to find a therapist. All cheer all the time here in Wonderland.

I’m struggling with the tunnel thinking. I am glad I started out the day with a good clinical book and went on to a bad lay book and I’m on a decent lay book now.

This second lay book covers most of the same material as the first lay book but instead of long chapters with annoying and patronizing step by step instructions about what you HAVE TO DO IF YOU DON’T WANT TO DIE she is writing short little stories. It tells the same message without being annoying and obnoxious.

I really like the second book (third of the day). She has a website so I sent her an email. I’m glad she is out there in the world writing.

Sometimes being alive hurts so much.

I have a lot of empathy for how this woman talks extensively about not having much of a support network and how much she struggles with asking for help. She knows that she is always on the verge of overwhelming her tenuous support network so she has to very carefully only ask for help at the most important times.

I know that balance very well. If you ask for too much then people stop wanting to know you. It’s hard.

I am glad that I didn’t die when I was fifteen. If what happened to me up until I was fifteen was my entire life story that would be very sad indeed. The seventeen years since I overdosed have certainly been better than the first fifteen years.

It is hard knowing that my perceptions are broken and I need to ignore how my brain perceives the world. I’m stuck on hurting. I don’t actually hurt much any more. I mean, I do. But I don’t have ongoing wounds. I am not being retraumatized over and over anymore.

I still have relationship issues and blow ups and such. But next month I will be seven years post-rape. That’s a long time. Sure, I have managed this shift mostly by hiding in my house but it still counts.

It still counts.

Why I am so out.

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Yesterday in the course of my daily life I was talking with a guy. Someone I don’t really know. I’ve seen him before but we certainly aren’t “friends”. We were chit chatting and, like it does, the topic gets around to families.

It made sense in context for me to say, “I’m really glad my father is dead so that I don’t have to deal with him.” He asked how my father died. I said he died rather than go to prison for raping me.

The guy got quiet then looked at me. His face kinda crumbled and he said, “My dad did that to me too.”

We didn’t get real in detail or anything. We didn’t trade full stories. But I gave him my phone number and I told him to call me in the middle of the night or any other time if he needs to talk about what has happened to him. People like us need support and it is very hard to find. Not everyone is even capable of supporting us.

He said he has never talked to anyone but God about it. He looked so sad. I said, “As a boy I’m not surprised. There aren’t many resources for girls and it is a lot harder on boys. It’s not like anyone follows little boys around checking up on them and keeping them safe. You don’t deserve any of what happened to you and I’m really sorry it happened.”

He nodded. He took my number. I’m going to try and get to know him more.

Sometimes I worry about my desire to go find ALL THE INCEST SURVIVORS. I worry that some day my children will be raped by someone I have brought into their lives. Statistically speaking that is how it works. I watch my kids like fucking hawks. They don’t get a lot of alone time with anyone but me or Noah or the Godmamas. The Godmamas have earned my trust. So has Noah.

I worry because I know that a great many people who are rapists do so because they were trained and they don’t “mean it”. I know that and have compassion for that on a deeper level than most people. I truly have compassion for being a predator.

But my kids aren’t prey.

I feel like I am walking a razor thin line. I want to be of use and helpful to people like me. But first and most importantly I need to make sure my kids don’t end up like me.

But I will keep being out. And I will keep handing my phone number out. I’m very serious about the middle of the night calls being ok. If you can’t tell anyone else in the world about being raped because you are too afraid, you can tell me. I swear to a God I don’t believe in that I will not judge you or put you down or say that you deserved it in any way.

I might help you see how some of your behaviors bring shitty people into your life. But it isn’t your fault they are shitty people and it isn’t your fault shitty people do shitty things. Sometimes you still need to pick a different street corner to stand on even if nothing in the world is your fault. If you want to live you have to adapt.

I will keep randomly volunteering that my father raped me. It will make some people uncomfortable and they won’t want to be around me. Ok. It will make a lot of other people understand that I am safe for them. I care a lot more about that.

Also, I apologized to my neighbor for yelling at him about the racist stuff. I’ve been feeling guilty and to me that means I need to do something. He laughed when I apologized. I don’t think he’s worried about my freak outs. He seems to enjoy our company a lot.

Maybe by the time you are in your late 70’s and you spend most of your time just waiting around to die you don’t take it personally when other people have feelings. You can wait out those silly storms. Having weird company is better than just being alone all the time.

If you want to change peoples hearts it is probably best to try a tactic other than screaming at them.

fake it.

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I worry about how much I worry about how I affect other people. I don’t work nearly as hard on being nice to my body. I pay a lot of attention to how my behavior impacts my kids. For a while now Shanna has had an occasional eye tic. It is a stress response. I feel that this is a sign that I am not behaving how I should.

It is hard having to pretend that I experience less stress than I do just because it hurts other people that I run so hot. Hot in the sense of high stress load.

I feel very guilty that I had kids because I wanted to have a relationship that was intense and all day every day. I wanted to have the company. I wanted to have to learn how to be nice. I wanted to learn what it means to teach people without shame and resentment. I want it still.

It feels like I created people just so I could perform a science experiment. That doesn’t seem like a nice thing to do. But I’m not sure that the reasons that other people have kids are “better”. I know that I feel guilty that I am not better. I am not fully arrived at behaving how I should for my kids. I don’t deserve them.

I tell myself that my kids are having a good childhood in the scheme of their species. I am nice to them. I do take care of them. They have a wide variety of healthy, good tasting food. They don’t get yelled at much. They have appropriate clothing for the weather. They are allowed to play all day almost every day. (By “allowed” I really mean “forced”.) They are given all the kisses and hugs they want every day. They are allowed to tell me to stop doing anything except for cleaning their bodies. And I don’t even do that much. Usually I default to “fine if you want to be dirty it is your body.” Once in a while the filth gets to be a bit much. And I’m fanatical about teeth care.

I’m doing “better” than I used to be able to do. But it really doesn’t matter. I need to be enough better to stop scaring my kids. If I am producing stress in my kids then my behavior is a problem. I am not behaving good enough. It’s not ok.

My kids should not have to watch me like a weather vane hoping to determine how difficult I will be to put up with that day. That’s not ok. That is a level of crazy I don’t get to inflict on them. I actually really appreciate that Shanna has such “tells”. She is not nearly old enough to talk to me about the stress she is feeling. But I can just look at her face and know whether I am “soft” enough. When she looks nervous I have to visibly calm down and retract the energy I am sending out into the room. It is hard to do. It is a very conscious decision to “look” like I am not angry or upset or anxious.

I can’t just decide to not feel angry or upset or anxious. I feel that way most of the time. I feel scared. I feel like everyone is going to be angry with me soon because I am going to break a rule and then they won’t want to know me any more. I am scared shitless my kids will grow up and not want to know me because I am such an asshole.

But I can’t act like I am having the feelings I am having. I have to fake it.

I saw a friend yesterday I don’t see much. Usually I contain my shit better. This time she saw me right after therapy. She got to see all the messy shame and crying because I don’t know to be “better” already. I feel pretty pathetic that I have been in therapy for almost three decades and I’m still crazy. I still spend a lot of my time shaking in fear. I still spend a lot of time hiding in dark rooms so I can sob uncontrollably. I hide it better. I keep it in a box better.

I fake it better.

Not well enough. My kids see the stress. It isn’t ok for my stress to impact them.

My shrink wants me to look for a meditation class to attend with my kids. I wish that such a thing would not involve a drive to Berkeley. I will look though. It is a good suggestion.

Shanna has been asking more questions about my mom. “Did your mom love you?” “What good things happened to you when you were a kid?” “What did your mom do that was so bad?”

I told her that I don’t actually know if my mom loved me or not. I think she did. I hope she did. I believe she loved me as well as she could and it is really hard when that isn’t enough. I wrack my brain trying to come up with positive stories. Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m just a whiny bitch and someone else would have been able to find a lot more joy in my childhood or if it was really bad enough that I should have trouble remembering anything positive. I tell her flat out that she isn’t going to know about the really bad stuff until she is an adult. I told her she doesn’t need to think of me that way.

I’m not always very rational about food so I talk about the food insecurity issues a lot. I feel relatively unashamed of them. The more I read about foster children the more I feel “ok” about having the food issues I have. They make sense in context.

I talk to Shanna about control. Like I ask her how she feels about being directed and forced to do what other people want during a specific period of time. I ask her how she would feel if she never got to pick what she was doing. I ask her how she would feel if she came home and ALL of her toys were gone. Stuff like that. I talk about how when I was a kid I felt very out of control so I controlled what I would put in my mouth.

I talk to her about how sad it is for me that I didn’t get to have any of these good foods when I was a kid. She pities me. I talk about the ways my body has problems because of the food I have eaten. My kids are very aware of nutrition and the things they need to eat. “You have to eat green stuff because it helps you poop!” We do talk about other aspects of nutrition but that is their favorite. Neither of my children have my constant-diarrhea problem (I am hoping this is because of lower stress). They instead are mildly prone to heading in the other direction so I repeat things I have learned from friends with constipation issues.

My shrink says I should answer every question and not dance around things. Well, she doesn’t think I should say I was raped until they are more like puberty age but she is less convinced I need to wait for the magic number of 18. We’ll see.

I cancelled park day for next week. Half of playgroup for next week cancelled. I won’t be sad if the other half cancels. Having five kid-social events in a two week period is too many for me.

I am doing too much. I can’t keep doing these 12+ hour work days. Social time counts as work time whether I like it or not.

I’m having a hard time with the balance of life thing. I have a lot of things I want done. I am having trouble with the fact that it takes a while to get all the things done. In order to put it in perspective I asked Noah about how many man-hours it takes to produce an iPhone for people to bitch about not working magically enough. He said probably in the neighborhood of 500 man-years not including factory work. That’s software/hardware design.

Stuff takes time. Not everything that can be done by a group of humans can be done by a singular human. No matter how much you want it. There just aren’t enough hours in a life. Figure out what you want to build and how you want to spend your time.

Sometimes Shanna asks me about my crying. I tell her that every body is different. When I feel too much emotion inside my body I cry no matter what the emotion is. Sometimes I’m happy; sometimes I’m sad; sometimes I’m angry; sometimes I’m frustrated. My body has just decided that all of these things come out as tears. Sometimes I am crying because bad things happened a long time ago and I was not allowed to cry then and my body needs to let go of that piece of being sad or scared so I’m doing it now. I’m safe now. It’s ok in my life now to just have feelings, so I do.

She gives me a lot of hugs. I am trying so hard not to turn her into a major source of emotional support. I don’t talk about specifics. I talk about how to be an adult and deal with the body you have. I’m very afraid of emotional incest. I know that it is a common “next generation” away from incest mistake.

I am an intensely overly sexualized person. More than that, I tend to not know how to be friends without sexualized touching. I have a lot of big needs that have gone unfilled for my entire life. I feel kind of desperately needy sometimes.

I can’t treat my kids like they are here for my support. I created these relationships because I need to learn how to give support, not because I think I can or should get much back. I’m here for the satisfaction of giving. I have to have the quiet glow that comes from a job well done. I am not going to get a lot else. Not from my kids. Well…. years of kisses and hugs. That’s nice. But at some point they will pull back and that has to be ok.

It is hard learning to be this kind of self-contained. It means I am talking to Noah a lot less about what is going on with me. I can’t breach the defenses at all. We don’t have time. What time we are together we mostly talk about his work and the basics of project stuff or kid stuff. I am very much hiding in the roles I created for myself. I don’t have room for my crazy there. I have to mostly take the crazy off-stage.

I can’t just make the crazy go away this way. But I can damn it up until I have a better space to deal with it. I had better let steam off once in a while or I will be sorry. Very sorry.

I woke up this morning dreaming about cutting. I don’t dream much any more. I rarely remember them at least. Not since I started pot. But this morning I woke up with my hand already moving along my other arm. I’m not sure where that came from. I stopped cutting my arms by early high school. I moved on to my legs because that was easier to hide.

My therapist wants me to go find more things to do as “self care” and I wake up wanting to cut. I do need more stress relief. That has always been my tool of serious self care. That is how I let the steam off. I go off in private and I make sure I am not anyone else’s problem. And I let myself feel how much I hurt all the time. But I have to hide it because it makes other people feel uncomfortable.

Fake it till you make it.

I’m not making it.

If I knew what I “needed” I would do whatever I had to go get it. I would do it. Even if it sucked. Really if you could arrange extra suck just for me that would make me feel better.

Sometimes it is hard knowing that the journey is the point. I am making it. I am nice to my kids and random people in restaurants and my neighbors when they aren’t being racist assholes. I only yell about things that need to be yelled about. Silence is consent. I am not going to leave people ambiguous about how I feel on some topics. Even if that means I’m not nice. If you have never upset anyone then you have never stood for anything.

I have nothing to lose at this stage.

Sometimes it is kind of weird knowing that Noah is the linchpin. All of the luxury and privilege of my life is based on his ability to earn money. I groom him like a friggin race horse. He has more than doubled, nearly tripled, his salary since we met. Because I’m pushy and I give him feedback on what he should or shouldn’t be doing. That’s kind of weird. We really are good for one another.

I’m having a lot of anxiety about spending all of the money Noah earns. I’m not looking forward to my end of year reckoning on Mint. I mean, in terms of petty cash we are higher than we were at the end of last year. We retired a lot of extra mortgage. But I did not save all that I wanted to save.

I kind of went nuts in the back yard instead. And this Texas trip isn’t cheap. I’m going to have to deal with my anxiety. I am fucking thrilled with my yard. Not a single dollar was wasted. I am ecstatic. The only thing between me and what I see in my head is a lot more work on my end. I’ll get there. It will be really pretty. But it is man-years ahead of me and that is sitting hard. It feels like I wasted the money because I didn’t finish the project and now it’s just kind of half-way and limbo sucks.

I do this. Don’t mind me.

At the end of the year I always feel like I am a bad person for spending money on things I wanted. I don’t deserve all the money I spend. I feel really bad that I am not more frugal with Noah’s money. I should make it spread farther. I should be saving more for the kids. I shouldn’t be so selfish.

But really… is building a playground in my back yard purely selfish? My anxiety yells at me that I shouldn’t be doing the work. I’m stupid for adding all the work.

But I want a pretty yard. I didn’t inherit one. I have to make it. Yeah, it will be back breaking work for a decade or so. Stop bitching and do the work. Don’t feel bitter you twit. This is a choice. Beauty doesn’t just happen automatically for most people. And most of what I want is stuff that wouldn’t have been in place anyway.

I’m just being a whiny bitch.

I’m thinking that there will be the Friday Funhouse version of Wonderland. I close my eyes and see kids running around in packs. I hear the laughter and shouting. I turn around and see grown ups playing games and talking and laughing.

I want the laughing so much. I want it so much I ache inside. Crying isn’t really the way to get people to feel good. Laughter doesn’t come from the places I dwell.

It is a little weird to me sometimes that my therapist knows so little about me. Ha. She continues to be shocked by how many people I know. People with as much trauma as me usually hide in their houses for the rest of their lives. They don’t go out and meet social group after social group. People like me usually can’t fake it well enough.

Am I faking it or am I “learning social skills”? I’m not sure they ever really feel natural for anyone.

One of the things I like the most about Noah is that he doesn’t flinch around me. I don’t scare him. I don’t intimidate him. I go back and forth between wanting my kids to have a similar level of toughness and knowing that it usually comes from trauma. And I just can’t traumatize them. I can’t.

Stop clenching your jaw, Krissy. Deep breaths. Whatever you are feeling is just a feeling. It will pass. This moment isn’t forever. You aren’t faking it. This is the process. The frustration is part of the process.

Time to stop typing.

Not proud.

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In my continual efforts to not have secrets about which I feel shame, yesterday we had kind of an incident.

I had to dismantle the slide. An adult friend who was far above the weight limit decided to take a ride. It broke. No fucking shit. It ripped some of the bolts through the plastic and fucked up the wooden support under the slide. So it had to be taken apart. I could fix it with much larger washers, but it was a pain in my ass.

The entire time I was working on the slide, ok that isn’t fair–the first half of the time, the kids were not very happy with me. I tried to patiently explain what I was doing and why. I explained every tool and piece of equipment I was using. I showed them the damage and told them why I had to dismantle it in order to fix it.

The kids stood there and YELLED at me that I was mean for breaking their slide as I took it apart. Even though I had explained why and showed them how I would put it back together.

I fucking lost it. They have been yelling at me that I am mean a lot lately. Basically every time I do not instantly comply with their demands.

I turned around and started screaming at them that if I am so fucking mean go in the fucking house and leave me the fuck alone while I do this fucking work for your fucking play structure.

I don’t feel proud of myself.

I am not sure what the right thing to do there would be but I wasn’t capable of turning around and being nice. I just couldn’t. I am so fucking tired of being yelled at that I am mean while I am in the middle of doing demanding physical labor for someone else’s benefit. I just can’t sit there and tolerate that. I fucking can’t.

But I should figure out how to handle it without yelling “fuck” at children. On one hand I feel bad. On the other hand, wow have I never yelled fuck at my kids like that before. That was special. I’ve been remarkably good for me about swearing over the past few years.

I called K to calm me down. These days it feels like she is the only stress relief I have. The Godmamas are overwhelmed by familial need (that happens) and Noah is working a lot. A lot. A really really lot. He works his primary job, comes home for an hour or so then goes in the garage to do different work. This weekend he’s at a conference.

I used to get 3-5 hours of not-parenting every day. These days I’m under two hours. I do all of my work while managing the kids. Which isn’t something I deserve pity for. I wanted this and all. But it is hard to have enough patience for everything.

We did another hour or so of painting on the play structure. Calli has painted most of the stairs by herself. I was very impressed. I “helped” by doing a last few smoothing strokes on each board but she put the paint down and mostly spread it around by herself. Her paint clothes are now solidly covered in paint because she sat in it while she was painting. It was totally adorable.

Shanna painted the kid-side hand rail mostly on her own. I came along and did a little edging of the parts she had trouble seeing. That’s ok. There were a lot of little corners. Those are easy to miss.

I’m working on the rainbow. It’s a pain in my ass. But it’s coming along. I have used three fucking ladders in order to reach everything. I could have gotten away with two ladders if the thing was about three inches shorter. But it isn’t. So I needed a third ladder. C’est la vie.

I’m starting to have trouble sleeping again. Once I get six or so hours of sleep I feel like my sleep gets lighter–I come up to a lighter sleep cycle and then I just can’t really rest more. I get up to use the bathroom and then I fret. And fret. And fret.

Do you know what makes me feel worst about yelling at Shanna like I did? She came back to me and apologized for yelling at me about an hour after I yelled at them. I apologized to her too. I told her that I was sorry for yelling “fuck” at her because that isn’t very nice or respectful or loving. She said, “Well, we weren’t being very nice to you.”

I said, “No you weren’t. But you are kids. Kids push grown ups. It is my job to be the grown up and hold boundaries. It isn’t very cool of me to scream at you for being a kid.”

She told me she forgives me.

I don’t know how to be a better mother than I am. But I feel she deserves better. She is such a wonderful kid. It is kind of funny that I feel like I am mean to them. But never for the things they yell at me about. Those things are never the mean things. They yell at me that I am mean when I am doing nice things. If they yelled at me while I was actually being mean I think I would just nod and agree.

I think that when they start yelling at me I need to immediately separate us whenever possible. Not because they are “getting in trouble”. If you have feelings like that go express them somewhere else. You are allowed to have them. You aren’t allowed to yell at me like that. Hell, I barely yell at them the way they feel free to yell at me.

My kids are so fucking not abused. The cocky little… oh man. Clearly not abused. Abused children aren’t this god damned demanding.

I haven’t made progress on the book this week. I am thinking about it a lot. I know what I want to say. I just haven’t sat down to write. The minute I sit down the kids jump on top of me and demand that I do _________. (The list is long.)

I feel like we have phases where I can do independent work (like the mural on the fence) and then I just can’t for a while because they feel clingy and upset about being ignored and they won’t allow me to focus on anything. Right now I can’t do the dishes without them bugging the shit out of me to entertain them in some way.

I spend a lot of time saying, “It is not my job to entertain you. Go entertain yourself.” Sometimes it works. Sometimes not so much. That’s the process.

This is hard. I absolutely understand the impulse to just “put them in school”. I feel like there is stuff here to learn. There are lessons in this learning-to-put-up-with-people that I have to learn. I need it. NEED.

When I am an old woman I hope I will be proud of myself for doing the things that I knew were things *I* needed to do. I don’t in any way think that other people should mirror my path. I need to figure out how to be with kids.

When I lose it, which doesn’t happen very often–I do record pretty much all of them–I feel like I am proving that my children deserve to be removed from my care and given to someone who could treat them better. Only when I talk to so-called-“normal” (not diagnosed as crazy from a young age) mothers most of them spend a lot more time screaming at and/or punishing their kids. There is no way in hell I could treat my kids the way I hear/see other mothers doing it. I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror.

But I don’t think they are abusive. I don’t think their kids are damaged or fucked up in any way. So why do I feel so strongly that if *I* behaved that way I would be an abusive monster?

Is it the slippery slope argument? I can’t scream at my kids frequently because screaming just makes me more and more angry (being the one to scream means I am the one to escalate) and I have a really hard time controlling my urge to hit when I get too angry. And when I start screaming I am more or less incapable of screaming without cursing every other word. That is just part of the whole dynamic for me. I see other mothers who are able to scream or discipline and they don’t have to chant fuck fuck fuck over and over.

Right now my kids are sleeping in the cutest way possible. Shanna is “normal” direction but curled up in child’s pose. (Now I get why that is named that way.) Her nightgown is rucked up around her waist and she didn’t wear panties to bed. So she’s mooning the hallway. Calli is also in child’s pose but her head is firmly up against Shanna’s side so they are at a 90 degree angle to one another. They make a T.

I love how connected they are. They fight more now. But holy tomato they are attached to one another. They want to be near one another. Even when they are mad they don’t like separating. They do play in different rooms sometimes (Calli is very willing to run her own games when Shanna is being too bossy) but mostly they don’t like being away from one another.

Shanna keeps telling me that when she is a grown up she is going to go find my big sister and teach her how a big sister should act.

I tell my kids a lot, “How you treat your sister teaches her how to treat you. If you hit, pinch, kick, or shove you are saying that it is ok to do to you. I will not intervene until you get to the point of serious injury. You need to learn how to be nice.”

It is really interesting how Shanna is starting to take responsibility for “I am older and have more self control so I have to teach my sister how to act.” She frequently tells Calli, “Oh Calli! Please stop pinching me. It is hard to not pinch you back when you do that.” Once in a while she does pinch back. Then Calli wants to cry foul. I play at being deaf.

Today is a weeding day. The front yard is really bothering me. I haven’t weeded all summer. My pansies are getting choked out and fuck that noise.

The asparagus are growing like mad. I had no idea they looked like that. They kind of look like fennel as they grow up. It’s really neat. No one believes me that they are asparagus.

Tomato season is (thank goodness) nearly over. I will probably get another 5-10 lbs this year. One more batch of sauce. I’m ready to stop processing.

I am learning a lot about how I feel about food preservation and eating from my yard. I don’t know where I am going to put more raised beds in the future (maybe my roof?) but I think that long-term I will mostly want to figure out how to eat what is in season and do staggered planting. Like putting lettuce out to start every three weeks. Eat it as it comes ripe. We tend to not preserve a whole lot of fruit from the yard so far. Partially this is just current production size but partially it is that we gorge when things are in season. It feels nice. Then we have a break and that feels nice too. Preserving and eating the same things all the time causes me to get really bored and not want to eat at home.

I am sorta keeping to the schedule I drew up. That makes me feel good. I haven’t worked on Outrunning this week but that is the most serious deviation.

I’m having a hard time writing. I think that I’m actually feeling writers block about the book. I’m scared. I’m scared of really and truly committing to what I think a 12 year old should know. That feels like a heavy responsibility. I don’t want to do it wrong. I don’t want to give too much information and push kids towards making bad decisions.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is that no one wants to seriously think about how much power they have. People don’t like acknowledging to themselves who and what they really are in the scope of things. People either under or over rate themselves. It’s hard to be accurate.

I don’t know how much influence I might potentially have and that is really scary. If Torque (the guy who publicly apologized to me and who gave me specific permission to use his handle whenever I talk about him) had understood how much it meant that he publicly say, “I screwed up and I am sorry” he would have done it ten years ago. If he had been willing to actually deal with me, what difference might that have made in my life?

Sure, he was a softball sized trauma. He violated my consent in a painful way. But he didn’t have sex with me. He didn’t rape me. He did beat me… but I had asked him to so it is a really weird thing to figure out how upset I am allowed to get about the whole situation.

I asked him to do a scene. Scenes are potentially fraught. Everyone has to be responsible for themselves or they SHOULD NOT ENGAGE IN BDSM. If you need to be taken care of then you are not someone who should engage in bdsm. Period.

But he did stuff I told him not to do. And when I screamed “no” and “stop” he ignored me until I said “red” even though I had negotiated not using safewords. But I did have a safeword. I did make it stop.

Recently I was thinking about the last rape. What I really really really hope will be the last rape.

I gave permission in advance for a rape scene. I didn’t understand the difference between compliant rape and a rape I would actually fight against. I never fought before that. I was trained to not fight from when I was a toddler. I was literally physically taught to not fight against being raped from when I was a toddler. When I was twenty-five I finally fought back.

I still lost.

I still got raped. Even though that time I didn’t want it and I was upset enough to fight and I fought as fucking hard as I was physically capable of fighting.

I haven’t ever done that before. I always give. I always know that it is right that I lose. I know I deserve to be raped. I know I deserve to service the needs of people around me because I am a whore and that is what whores are for.

But that last rape was different from all the others. That is the only time I can look at and really believe in my heart, “I was not able to stop that.”

Every other time I acted like it was like the scene with Torque. If I knew the safeword I could stop it but I don’t play with safewords so mostly I will eventually go limp and try to not die.

I don’t say “no” to sex. Well, I do now. Rarely. Barely. I started in pregnancy. I made Noah promise in advance that if I decided to not have sex from the date of conception to three months after delivery that he wouldn’t divorce me. I knew there was the non-zero possibility. I know that happens for some people. I was really scared. I made him promise because clearly he picked me because I am sexually compulsive and at that point we were still non-monogamous and I was pretty scared that he would wander off and not come back if I cut him off.

He didn’t.

I went and did a lot of bdsm because I wanted to find out what it felt like to believe you were allowed to say “stop” and have it work. When that mechanism failed me…

I don’t say “no” much. I learned how to say “stop”. Barely. It took a lot of effort and work. It took really consciously trying to do it. My Owner worked with me. He did a lot of very dangerous things where I HAD to say stop or he might end up in jail for manslaughter and we don’t want that now, do we?

It is kind of funny because outside of sex I say “no” more easily than almost anyone I’ve ever met. I’m pretty happy to add a “and go fuck yourself while you are at it!” But that sex button thing is old.

Lately I’ve been waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror and saying repeatedly, “You will not be held accountable for your feelings; you will only be held accountable for your actions.”

I have big feelings. I have mean feelings. I have sad feelings. I have hateful feelings. I have painful feelings.

I’m not hurting anyone else by having these things inside of me. If I control my temper and manage to not lash out (screaming that I am not fucking mean for fixing the fucking slide aside) then I am not hurting people. If I am not hitting anyone I am not hurting anyone. If I control my tone of voice such that I do not sound mean or hateful then I am doing fine. It’s ok that I am playing a game.

That’s the point. It is all a game.

No one is against you. They are for themselves. Don’t take it personally.

You will only be held accountable for how you act. I don’t know how you feel. I can’t know. That is forever a shut door. I just know how you act. I care about how you act.

That is comforting and very disturbing.

Identity crisis

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I went to a wake on Sunday. I would say the day was euphoric. I went up to San Francisco dressed in full leathers. I wore a black leather strapless ballgown that reaches the floor. Over it I wore a white and black leather corset. Apparently I looked good enough to stop traffic because I did.

I went to a munch first (because it was happening when I happened to walk into the coffee shop). The erotic hypnosis munch–the particular topic was on edge play. How do you hypnotize someone so that you can make them think you are doing something more dangerous than you are doing. Like if you hypnotize someone then fuck them with a butter knife but the bottom believes you are using a sharp knife.

I made everyone in the room startle when I said, “Err, why don’t you just use a sharp knife?” “But that would be dangerous!” “Errr, I’ve done it. Well…. more accurately I’ve had it done to me and my pussy isn’t cut in half.”

It kept going from there. When I went to the wake I saw a lot of people I haven’t seen in almost ten years. I was flat shocked by how fondly I am remembered. But apparently I am remembered as a big scary edge player.

“Don’t dare Lenora to do something. She will do it. And you will be sorry.”

“If there is work to be done Lenora will not stand around waiting.”

“Uhhh I wouldn’t keep pushing with her. She’ll win.”

That was just a few of the comments that kind of stand out in my head. Wait… what? Oh. Ok. At least one of those was said by a big scary man who has used his big scary boots to stomp my skull into concrete. More than once. And *I’m* the one who will make people sorry?!

People who knew me introduced me to new people and told them in detail why the new people should listen to me because I know what I am talking about. I repeatedly said, “(S)He’s lying. I don’t do anything interesting any more. I just stay home. I know nothing.” I got some looks for that.

Of course I ran into play partners and former lovers. I was uhm remembered fondly. “Do you remember that weekend before Pride? Ohmyfuckinggod that was the hottest thing ever.” Err, yes. Yes I am that hot.

I left feeling built up. I worked very hard for my standing in that community. I submitted to brutality that literally shocks people because I wanted that standing in that community. I wanted to be one of the most intense people in any room. Now I find out that most of the people I was sort of “competing with” in my head think I am past them. That’s… oh. Really?

It was kind of weird to be at the wake. I know there was way over 100 people there, probably more than 200 people. There were representations of EVERY leather organization within reasonable driving distance. Every gay male only, every lesbian only every every every leather group was there. Because Iain touched all of them and made their lives better.

I was one of the few people to speak (Angela asked for people to talk and share memories) who did not enter the scene through Iain and Angela’s classes. Only a few of us knew them “before”. It was wonderful seeing how many lives they have made better.

I really felt like part of a community. The man who wrote the apology for putting a cattle prod on my cunt was there. I cried with him for almost ten minutes. He apologized a few more times and told me that if he had understood what this meant to me he would have done it ten years ago. That was intense.

People who knew me exclusively as a masochist had a lot of questions about my being a parent. They were shocked that I like it so much. Why do I want to home school? Oh wow. You care so much? Yes. Yes I do care so much.

Then by mid-way through Monday I kind of recognized that all of these things that are part of my “standing” in that community are things that if people find out about them I could end up with a lot of punishment.

The park on Tuesday with the home schoolers was really hard. I sobbed the whole way there and had trouble not bursting into tears the whole time I was there. I know I am dirty and disgusting and not the kind person that people want around their kids. Shut up you stupid nasty bitch. Don’t talk about what you’ve done. Shut up shut up shut up.

I am very afraid of my children being ostracized because of who their mother is. I’m not very good at being in the closet. I’m not very good at keeping my mouth shut. I’m not very good at being appropriate. I’m not very good at keeping only to topics that other people like.

This morning one of my closest friends was trying to be loving and supportive. In the context of a larger conversation she said, “You get back what you give to the world.” I said, “Fuck you. Who did I rape first?”

She wants me to think about how to be happy. She wants my life to improve. She wants me to think I have the power to change how my life goes. She wants to believe that I can adopt privilege from people who love me and no longer be a person at the bottom of the ladder.

I say that the kids who were born the sixth child of alcoholic and drug addicted parents in a trailer park are probably not getting from the world what they have given. And it is not a very nice thing to imply that they are.

Some people have good lives. Lucky them. It isn’t about getting what you deserve. There is no deserve. Fuck you to anyone who says there is.

I feel scared as I write Outrunning. I know that a lot of people are going to be extremely angry with me for consciously trying to talk to 11/12 year old kids the way I am. They will think it is all my fault if their kids go out and do drugs and have sex. No, it isn’t my fault. It really isn’t. But hopefully I can help your kids understand the risks they are taking so they can make conscious choices. It isn’t my fault your kids want to do what they want to do. I swear to god I am not responsible for people being interested in drugs and sex.

I made everyone at the park bug their eyes out. One mom is interested in me doing sex ed with her kids. I said, “Do you understand that I will tell your kids that masturbation is awesome and phone sex and cyber sex are the safest kinds of sex in the world?” “But what about older men?!” “That’s a different part of the conversation.”

I feel scared. I feel bad. I know I believe things that are “wrong”. I know that lots of other people seem to think that sex should be some special magic potion you only get once you are married. I think it is my birthright. I get to have sex. As much of it as I want. Just because I bloody well can. I don’t think that anyones mother (not even my own) gets to decide where and when and what kind of sex is right for me. I have to decide for myself.

Just like all these other people need to decide for themselves. I believe my kids will have sex some day. I think they will more than likely start as teenagers given where and when they live. (I’m praying for the far side of 16 with a partner who is within two years of their age.)

Until you are READY for sex… masturbation is AWESOME. Do it by yourself. Do it with a “friend” in the room. Don’t let them touch you. This is about watching and handling yourself and learning what you like.

And boy howdy will I talk about birth control. Much easier to prevent a child than raise one.

I feel scared that my existing and having the opinions I have is going to go very badly for my children. I feel so scared.

I was asked why I care so much about what other people think of me. Uhm because I have had to deal with people throwing a lot of literal rocks at me because disgusting people like me deserve to be stoned. I’m afraid for my children. If I don’t think about what people think of me my children my pay the price.

more questions

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From Resurrection After Rape: 

How often do you think about your rape, and do you ever feel like you have thoughts about it that you can’t stop?

It varies a lot over time. I can make myself busy enough that I don’t think about rape for weeks or even months at a time. But there is a physical price tag to staying busy enough. Usually after such a stretch I get ill and have a lot more flashbacks than usual for a while.

Mostly as I go through life I have a few days a week where I can’t stop thinking about rape. It is in some corner of my mind churning and churning. Why? What is all this “rape is about power” bullshit about? I think about Noah raping. I think about what that means a lot. I think about that kid Jeremy. The 17 year old who sodomized me. That seems more clearly about power. With my dad I think it is safe to say it was about power. With my brother Tommy it was very much about power.

I think about poor Michael. He didn’t want to have sex with me. He did it because he would suffer if he didn’t. Was his cousin really the rapist? Why don’t I think of his cousin as a rapist? He fucked my mouth until he came. I think that qualifies as rape when the female involved is a crying seven year old.

Yeah, I think about this a lot. Being around children constantly makes me think, “When I was your age I was ______”; “When I was your size someone _______.”

Tonight I had a conversation with my shaman. We talked about whether or not children should be afraid of their mothers. I told him that I believe that mothers have a moral imperative to consciously try to be not scary to their children. Mothers certainly are able to scare their children but they should consciously choose the opposite. Unless there is a damn good reason then go full bore and scare the ever loving shit out of them. No half measures. Don’t dick around at the edges. Have a god damn good reason for what you do.

I don’t know how to stop the thoughts about rape. A lot of them are not thoughts so much as random spasms of pain. It isn’t real pain it’s a weird phantom pain. It is the memory of pain. All of a sudden some stupid little neuron in my brain misfires and I feel suddenly as if I am being raped again and it hurts. It really fucking hurts. But it doesn’t really hurt. I’m just crazy.

I think a lot about being almost seven years rape free. I say it to myself a lot. More than six years. Almost seven years. This is a good trend. I want this to continue. No more rape. How do you stop being raped? Have I really stopped? Did I just lengthen the time between rapes? Oh god.

I’m scared of the travel I want to do in the future. So scared I sometimes have brief ideas of killing myself rather than facing the danger. Not really. That sounds way the hell worse than I mean it.

This whole depersonalization thing is hard to explain. I spend a lot of time feeling like I’m not really fully alive. The idea of dying is very comforting and easing and like it would be a positive step. Relief. When I am really scared I know that the only way to stop being afraid is to die. I will be afraid until I die. I believe that and weep with the knowledge.

I don’t kill myself every time I am afraid though. I think about it. I see it in my head. I watch movies about how it would happen. The rape is very much tied up in this. The physical somatic sensations generally trigger a whole bloodbath in my head.

And I can’t talk about this. I don’t talk about this. Pretty impressive, eh? Only I slip sometimes. Then I’m reminded that I’m BAD BAD BAD. I have traumatized someone! I am abusive! What a fucking monster. I should be… whatever. Moving on.

What kinds of nightmares or memories do you have about your rape?

Whoa. Not a good question to ask me. That’s a flood. I have a lot of memories. Thanks to THC I don’t dream any more and I haven’t in a long time. I consider that a blessing. I used to have terrible nightmares. I have a variety of different memories about the rapes. Some of them I have what I think of as a “movie” in my head. I watch those experiences from a very third person point of view. I was older and better able to dissociate at will. I don’t have very many physical memories of those experiences but I can tell you uncanny details about the physical spaces.

I have a lot of physical memories of the early rapes–the stuff with my dad. I feel like there isn’t enough steel wool on the whole god damn planet to wipe the feel of his touch off of me.

Michael is one of the most real to me of all the rapes. That was a transitional one. I was seven. That was the first vaginal rape with a penis. I had a serious crush on him and I had been following him around for a couple of months. I wanted him to like me so much. I have a lot of very intense memories of the entire relationship. It’s vivid as pictures and sounds and smells and I can feel him in a way I can’t with almost any other rape. I’m not sure why that one imprinted so much more than anything else. It’s not like I can remember every aspect of being seven that clearly.

That one is coming up more as the kids in the home schooling group are all heading for that age range. I have a lot of troubling thoughts when I see them. I keep my mouth shut. I keep my fucking mouth shut.

How does thinking about rape make you feel and why?

Scared. Angry. Those are my two main emotions. Scared because I genuinely feel like my life experiences are such that it is stupid to believe I am actually post-rape. I feel like there is a very low chance I will never be raped again in my life. I feel with every fiber of my being that the only way I can ensure I am never raped again is to be dead. That makes me very angry and makes me feel very scared.

How hard is it for you to talk about your rape?

Well I can write all night long. I don’t speak about it well. My throat closes. Or I go emotionally flat lined and I can say anything shocking I want. I won’t get emotionally invested because I know that I have to be monitoring the people in the room and pull back on my commentary any second now or I will get in a lot of trouble for being bad.

I don’t actually get in a lot of trouble any more. Well, I lose a high number of friendships. I suppose that counts.

What, if anything, makes you afraid to talk about rape?

I’m afraid of being abandoned more. I’m afraid of being told that I am boring. I am afraid of being told that I say the same thing over and over and no one gives a shit. I’m afraid of being told that I am stupid and it was all my fault.

Who have you told about your rape and why did you tell them?

Err, everyone on the internet. Why: because we like you! Err, because I feel like my head will explode from how much it hurts to have all of these things in my head and not be allowed to talk about them. I am not allowed to talk about them. If I talk about them I will be abusing people. I just have to shut up shut up shut up shut up. But I can’t seem to still my fingers. It is one of those weeks. I was on good behavior last week. It has a toll.

What did they say or do about it?

Err, not much. I mean, some people have been more or less supportive in conversations. But what is anyone going to do about it? (Besides go leave a review for my book. Seriously people.)

How did your rape make you feel about yourself as a person?

That I’m a worthless white trash whore and I had better fucking get used to it.

How is your rape affecting you as a person right now?

Well I have serious worries about the stress load on my internal organs. Being inside my body is not fun.

What thoughts do you sometimes have about yourself because of the rape?

Well if I had never been raped the likelihood of decades of suicidal ideation was lower.

What do you wish people knew or understood about the rape so they could help you now?

This one really is the kicker, isn’t it? What do I want from people? What do I want them to understand about being assaulted? Well, I want to be allowed to exist as a really damaged person without being shamed. I want to be worthy of consideration. What help can people give me now? I honestly don’t know. The folks who visit are really awesome.

What is the scariest part of writing about the rape?

I have never received a death threat due to my writing. I sometimes wonder if it is only a matter of time.

 

There are a bunch more but I’m tired. Goodnight.

writing prompt

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From “Resurrection After Rape”–you are supposed to be writing a letter to yourself the day before the rape.

Dear Krissy,

Tomorrow something will happen to you that will change your life. What I want you to know about it is…

It won’t be one tomorrow. It will be many tomorrows. You won’t be raped once. You will be raped a lot. You will have a hard time learning how to stop being raped. I want you to know that you were taught. At some point it becomes your fault if something happens to you–at some point you must recognize your role in it. You did finally learn how to make it stop.

I want you to know that none of the men who raped you were actually very powerful in the scope of the world. It really sucks that they had enough power to do that to you.

I want you to know that maybe with some of them fighting would have helped but it wouldn’t have with all of them. With some of them if you had fought you would have been hurt badly. You had no way of guessing who was whom at the time. You made the right choice. You are still alive.

I need you to understand that being alone is often the safest way to be. It is hard, I know. I know how much you hate being alone. You really need to learn how to embrace it. The only safe way of not making someone angry with you is to be alone. It’s ok to be alone a lot.

I want you to know that you will always feel weird. When people say “trigger” they probably don’t understand what that means for you. Be patient with them. They mean “feel uncomfortable” you mean “full body flashback of being raped”. It’s ok to be self absorbed. You have to deal with your physical experience of being in the world even if you are irritating to other people. Even if they wish you would just shut the fuck up already.

See, that’s why the alone thing is so nice. You can care for your needs without being bad for having them.

Within every person there is an ageless essence. It is there on your first day and is the same on your last. There is part of your personality and core self that stays the same. That part of you can not be touched by anything that any one says or does to you. It is yours. You may spend your whole life crying because you don’t believe you can make up for being bad but that part of you isn’t bad. That part is ok. That part that makes you you isn’t bad. Really.

Even good days will often involve crying. Don’t feel guilty. Don’t feel ashamed of yourself. It just is. You didn’t pick this body you were put into–it’s just walking meat. It cries. So what? It has been through a lot.

Run earlier. It is, apparently, good for you. Try harder to drink water. It is also, apparently, good for you.

Keep reading. People will compliment you on your prodigious vocabulary for the rest of your life.

Love, me.

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

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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.

I 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.

Good fear bad fear

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I was standing in line at the grocery store. The snooty-ass Whole Foods down the street from my friend’s house. I was there for ice cream and to kill time as I waited for my friend to finish something at the house.

I’m standing there be-bopping in my little world while I waited in line. It was a very slow line. I don’t even remember what song it was but my “under my breath” singing became uhm not so under my breath and the guy in front of me turned around.

I turned bright red and looked down and started fumbling awkwardly with my back pack so that I could avoid eye contact.

“Ah, so what flavor is for tonight?”

I jumped a few inches. I didn’t think he would actually talk to me.

“Vanilla! Always vanilla. Uhm, err and Sea Salt Caramel.”

“My friends swear by that brand, what do you think of it?”

“I don’t have an opinion. I usually buy from my local ice cream shop in Fremont, Loard’s. I’m visiting friends tonight. This is within walking distance of their house.”

“Oh. Do you get up to Oakland often?”

At this point I shifted my arms to place my big fat wedding ring on top of my pile of stuff. “Naw I usually stay close to home and family.”

“Oh.” He turned around and finished his transaction. He stopped to rebag his groceries into his personal carrying sack because he had been busy talking to me and had forgotten to give the cashier his bags.

I paid in cash, pocketed the money and left the building about as fast as I could. I went up the street walking at a rapid pace. He outdistanced me. He stopped just in front of me and looked like he was about to verbally engage me again.

I kind of shrank away. He looked sad. He turned and started walking up the hill significantly more quickly than I could–he was more than a foot taller than me and I am pretty ambling.

He didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong. It was an awkward mix of flattering and scary. I don’t want to be pursued ever again. I don’t want anyone to look at me as prey any more. It scares the ever loving shit out of me.

But I do want it. I do want people to think I am pretty. I do want to be desired. I do want to go sit on my Daddy’s lap and have him stroke my hair and call me Princess and grind me on his crotch. (I have this friend. He’s absolutely old enough to be my father. Really I have these three male friends and it’s very confusing and just go with it ok–my biological father is dead.)

I want these things. It is very confusing to read things about “rape recovery” because man it really presents a dim view of the idea of consensual bdsm. I feel like I don’t agree with the idea that just because I was raped there are whole classes of behavior I am now too tainted to engage in. There is a large and loud contingent in the bdsm community in general that wants people like me (crazy for short-hand PTSD and GAD for longer hand) to just opt-out.

Go be invisible. Fall out of the herd. Die.

That is the Darwinian message whether they intend it or not. That is what happens when fringe communities drift toward the mainstream.

It’s cool. I’m used to it.

I am gosh darn delighted to report that I’m starting to experience an uptick in libido. Last month was quite drought-like. Ha. I’m not actually entirely sure that directing my compulsive sexual outbursts into a monogamous relationship is entirely healthy either.

I’ve told Noah about some of the more extreme things I want to do. He is rather terrifyingly interested. The kinds of things you can’t write about in advance or people try to stop you. I’ll wait till my kids are adults–I promise.

I am what I was made. Is it ok for me to be? What is right and what is wrong? When I was sixteen I went to visit my mother’s life-long best friend over New Years. I remember her recounting a conversation she had in her Bible study class, “Oh goodness girl we get racy! You know, the Bible says that what a man and a woman do together within the bounds of Holy Matrimony is alright. It’s all good. You can go ahead. Have fun, sugar. But not until you are married.“ Death glare.

I spent a lot of my childhood thinking I would grow up and marry her son. I would do what he told me. I would obey. I would be his proper wife.

When I was twenty or twenty-one, I can’t remember which, I went to that guy’s wedding. I was with my Owner. We watched a wedding ceremony that was way more hardcore Dominant/submissive than our Owner/property contract. It was really pretty funny.

My Owner took responsibility for me like someone takes responsibility for a stray cat. He kept me safe and fed for a few years and he had some strict rules about behavior. It was all negotiated very specifically.

It managed my anxiety. I knew what I was good for. I knew what he wanted from me. I trolled his favorite hard core fetish pornography website to figure out what he wanted from me. I learned how to be what he wanted.

But it wasn’t me. I’m not an actual fetishist. I just want people to like me. I’m willing to do just about anything to feel like I deserve someone liking me. I have an intense need to feel pain. It is very easy to use bdsm as a reasonable source of satisfaction.

But what does being submissive mean? What does being a masochist mean? What does being a slave mean? Do these acts turn me on? Sometimes. Not a majority of the time. I err enjoy thinking about them a lot. My memories keep me warm alll winter.

When I was training for the marathon I enjoyed my little jaunt down memory lane. I ran past places I’ve had sex and thought about what might be happening with those guys. I have no idea. I hope they are well.

I was reading Wikipedia. Intrusive thoughts. That was what triggered this whole piece of writing. It’s very OCD focused and all sarcasm aside that’s not my set of issues. You know how much the “stereotypical guy” thinks about sex–right? A lot, constantly–something of that nature. It’s not true, but it’s kind of the attitude.

Outside of this whole “being with kids” thing I tend to think about sex obsessively and compulsively. Compartmentalization for the win! If you added up all the hours I have spent masturbating it probably stretches into a couple years of my life at this point. I like me.

It has been really abrupt and challenging to deal with having this split personality thing. I do not think about sex when my kids are around. That means I totally want to shove Noah into a sexless role because that is how I think about him right now. I’m not aggressively interested in sex yet. It’s starting to come back. I’ve had several years of very little sexual interest. This has been a very odd period for me.

But we still have a lot of sex. If we only have sex six times in a month that is drought-like. And I feel guilty and like I am not holding up my end of the bargain. We’ve only had one month where we had sex less than ten times and I felt really angry with myself the whole month that we only had sex six times. I just couldn’t god damn do it. If I had tried I would have hated him.

It is hard knowing that if I grow to hate him it wil be largely because I have not told him about small boundary incursions and then it will escalate into a large problem without him even knowing the storm is about to break. I don’t want to hate him. Hating him serves none of my life goals and would basically prevent most of the rest of them.

Sure, I could find new goals. More humble goals. But man that makes it sound like I like him because of money. It’s not money. Noah pays attention to me and encourages me. I have always written but I needed Noah to give me permission to write about the really dark stuff. I needed an Audience.

My Owner wouldn’t read stuff I wrote. My ex-fiancé wouldn’t read what I wrote. Puppy wouldn’t read anything I wrote. All of them told me, “People should be allowed to have private space to write about their feelings.” It was practically that exact wording from each of them.

I’m not sure I would be able to keep believing I deserve to exist if I didn’t live with someone with an ego the size of Texas. He is brash and self-assured and god damn full of himself and he’s completely sure he wants to spend his time with me. He tells me so over and over. He proves it through actions and patterns of work over long periods of time. He’s consistent. It’s really not about the money. The money is more a side effect.

I will always have a hard time remembering him raping me. He really enjoyed how much I did not enjoy that. He gets one. I agreed to one. I set those boundaries in advance. I didn’t try to say “safeword” or anything hokey like that. I fought him. That was really weird. I knew he wouldn’t stop. I knew that fighting him just antagonized him and made it worse. If I actually wanted a dead fish rape I could have had it. I just would have had to go limp. It was my own fucking fault it was so brutal.

It’s always my fault.

I write this knowing that people in the home school community will read it. People who were in my house today. People who are quite Christian. I’m not like you. Only I am.

I have heard my friends in the Leather community wonder if we should have some kind of “coming out day” like Gay Pride. I think that if I am in the closet to you it is because you have never actually looked at me. You instead chose to see a mirror of you and you ignored the shadowy parts where I was different.

We all have more similarities than differences. Whether you are talking to the prostitute or the investment banker or the gas station attendant or the flight attendant or the programmer or the sys admin or the house wife. It is said that if you look for the good in people you will find it. No, that’s not true. Abe Lincoln says that if you look for the bad you will find it. I’m ignoring him. I don’t like agreeing with people very much.

I think that if you want to get to know people and find commonalities and ways of getting along you can. There are stories about Auschwitz prisoners talking in a friendly manner with guards. I’ve read them in classes. Of course with my Swiss cheese memory I have no idea what the names were.

People can find ways to relate. The things that unite us are greater than the things that divide us. Blah blah.

I don’t believe it but I believe it is true enough in a pinch. I think that as a species we need to have a live and let live philosophy. The problem is how to handle perception of scarcity of resources?

Sex is a resource. There are a lot of people who are sad they aren’t getting any. Did random dude at the grocery store for sure want to get in my pants? Enh, It’s not 100%. But I have an extremely high success rate with this kind of scenario. I can generally get that kind of approach to result in sex within six hours.

Then I probably never speak to them again and eventually cannot remember their name. I have a vague dread of running into them but I’m cheerful and apologetic about not remembering names. They are only sometimes mad at me. Ha.

Guess what? Guys aren’t more ok with being used than girls are. Well, some are. Not mostly though; they get hurt feelings. This is why you can’t date/have sex with too many people in a given social group. You poison the well.

Love and affection and sex are different needs but we often try to meet them in a jumble. What you do when people don’t actually meet all of your needs? Go find someone else?

I get the general impression that if I worked harder on exercise I could sleep with an even more obscene number of people than I have already slept with. Four digits. Five digits. Why the hell not? All it takes is low standards and a willingness to ask–right?

I don’t think I would find any more self-esteem at the bottom of that well. It’s not like I’m doing the equivalent of being a born again virgin declaring fidelity to my man. I’m not made  sanctified in my compulsive sexual acting out because of some fucking walrus in Nevada.

I have a lot of sex because it is what I am required to do. Not required by Noah–we don’t have that kind of relationship. This is what I feel I owe him. I somehow have arrived at this being part of the trade he gets for putting up with me.

Lately I have initiated sex because I was actually interested. And I got off. And it was only a little uncomfortable and not even painful. That’s fairly unusual these days. That whole combination doohickey. I have sex because that is the deal.

You get married and you are his whore. That’s the deal. You had better find someone you can handle whoring to.

That is what my mother taught me. Word for word. I bet you money she would deny ever saying it. I can’t forget. I remember and remember and remember and seal my lips. My daughters will not hear that from me. No Sir.

I don’t know the difference between wanting to feel like I am allowed to exist and wanting to have sex. Most of the validation for my existence has come through sex. Kind of pathetic, right?

Now I have these kids. It’s different. This incest shit will not go on to my children. They will be kept away from my whole family and aren’t all women in my position absolutely convinced that their partner would never do such a thing? All I know is my kids show absolutely no signs of abuse. I can cross my fingers and pray. Seriously–isn’t that how life works?

How do I ever trust anyone? How do I ever let go of fear enough to go to sleep at night? I lie in bed sometimes and can’t stop thinking about my father touching me. Intrusive memories. I’ve got ’em.

Just get over it. Just move on. I have increasing neuroscience on my side motherfucker. It’s not that easy. Trauma damages the brain. New instances of trauma layer on top of older layers in difficult to dissect patterns. In the scale of a lifetime I am getting over it; I am moving on. It’s just not as quick or as silent as you would apparently hope.

I’m still existing. I’m still talking and talking and people only have to listen if they want to.

I’m only really writing for my Audience. He’s read everything I have written since the age of twenty. Well, not all of my school papers. Only the ones I put on the internet. I can’t say all of the things I wrote in this post to him. He’ll get all conversational off-roady on me and we’ll talk about something else. I want him to see this. I want him to be part of this struggle. This is his sex life too. I want monogamy because I want a partner who is very invested in helping me figure my shit out. Me not figuring my shit out means big dips in your sex life.

I married someone who thinks nothing of taking NLP, hypnosis, and cooking classes to meet chicks.

What I need most in this lifetime is for someone to love me and believe that it is not only permissible for me to change it is required. I want to be loved by being encouraged to grow. I want to be loved by being taken care of. I have a provider, let’s be clear here. It’s a fairly primitive sort of gratitude.

What trade does anyone make in relationships? The pleasure of one anothers company? What does that mean?

When I am around people I feel uncomfortable, anxious, and like people are going to start screaming at me pretty much all of the time. Apparently I cause other people to feel like this as well because they comment on being afraid I will yell at them regularly. Noah says I don’t yell very often. I suppose it’s all relative.

I still want to be around people. I understand that this is a kind of fear I have to learn to work through.

Rapists don’t make me feel more fear than random groups of people. Hanging out with predators makes me feel more comfortable. I know how to play that game. I know how to get through that scenario.

Learning how to tell the difference between “good” fear and “bad” fear has been the journey of my adulthood. I need companionship and community. I just need it. It’s a species-level need. I don’t need to feel fucking guilt about it. There are six billion fucking people on this planet and precious few of them truly want to be alone. I mean, people need alone time. That’s not what I mean.

I struggle with how to build friendships. There are all these rules about what you can discuss and when. I uhh don’t like following rules. A while back I was a rude fucking asshole with a friend as I pushed her to try and change her sexual boundaries with her husband for me. Not cool.

I think that being monogamous will keep me from shitting where I eat. Sexual monogamy means that I am not a threat. I can be a non-sexualized being to the people I meet. I don’t have to know or care about their sexual interest in me.

Only sometimes it appears whether I like it or not. Good fear. Bad fear. Move towards it. Move away from it.

How the fuck do people figure this out?

Triggers

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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.

Working on rape definition

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This is disjointed and out of order. I’m cut’n’pasting from else’net where someone asked me to explain rape and power and hitting people to them. It is a little disjointed because I took out personally identifying information.

 

Rape happens because someone who has power, either conferred through age or social status or physical strength or emotional intensity, pushes through to sex with someone who is not an appropriate partner. That is kind of the “full” explanation. It’s not that rape is “about power” per se. It is that it must involve a power imbalance.

The sexual drive is really intense, lack of control over it is dangerous. Most people contain it most of the time–we are socialized to. People can either deal with their sex drive in a positive way or a negative way. Having sex can be positive or negative. Not having sex can be positive or negative. None of these things are imbued with a rightness inherently. Just like prostitution does not always involved victimized people–sometimes people make conscious choices to have a career doing something they like.

I know people in the bdsm community who do the most extreme things you can imagine. I’ve watched them do a lot of it. I have done many of the things on the safety “no-no” list. The difference between bdsm and rape is consent. That is the only difference. In my opinion bdsm *is* abusive actions that have been placed in a permissible setting. Actions are not inherently good or bad. Hitting someone is not automatically evil. There are levels to hitting people. Why you are hitting someone matters. If you hit them because it arouses them and you both think that is fun and they consented… it’s not evil.

I know a lot of people who have no trauma history who genuinely get off on the strong sensation involved in bdsm. I have spent enough years watching this and thinking about it. This is a genuine thing. It’s kind of weird, but ok.

Hitting is one of those things where you don’t have the right to do it just because you want to. If someone is a professional boxer they are not allowed to go around punching people in the grocery store. There is a time and place and a consent process. Some people consent to acts. Some people consent to processes.

Self control sounds hard

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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.

Weighing the cost of confrontation.

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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.

book review as timeline

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I’m reading this book Giving the Love That Heals by Harville Hendrix and Helen Lakelly Hunt. I have no idea why I need to say the names. Any who. I think that books like this could potentially be labeled with a full page in the front Dangerous for Incest Survivors. I’m just saying.

I’m getting to the parts where they go through the developmental stages that children go through. They detail the problems that come out of interruptions of the appropriate pattern. I really have lead a text book life. I really have tried hard to be good in exactly the ways I was taught.

Every so often I sit on the floor in my room and I think about all the events they have already missed. They are already that much more whole than me. I tick them off. My father teaching me to be silent and unresponsive while he penetrated my vagina. I wasn’t even allowed to cry. If I did I would be given a reason to cry.

My kids have already escaped that. They believe that someone hurting them is a good reason to say, “Stop right now. That hurts me.” I wasn’t allowed to. I was taught to be passive with anyone who was willing to hurt me sexually. I can be extremely aggressive as long as someone does not go for my cunt. Then I feel my arms lock in as tight as possible to my sides and my neck muscles completely lock. I can move my hands, but not my arms. I feel my voice box basically go limp. I can whisper, “Please, no. Stop. I don’t want this.”

It started when I was younger than Calli. Both of my children already know a freedom I can’t know. This book puts a lot of emphasis on understanding that your children are not you are not going to turn out much like you. Appropriate control and such as children age.

I am absolutely sure that my children will be different from me. They have a whole branch of genetics I don’t share. They are growing up with different stories in their heads. Different experiences in their lives.

My kids get two hours of “unsupervised” (I can hear everything they say and do but I don’t have visual contact and there is a closed door) time with the iPad every day. My therapist says this is an extremely good idea and I absolutely need to keep doing it.

I treat my therapists as a mixture of older sibling/parent who gives me permission to do what I want to do. Is this really an ok thing to want? Am I allowed to do this without being bad? My therapist thinks taking two hours of downtime in the middle of the day so that I can be patient and loving all the rest of the time is just necessary and will be fine. Till they break the iPad. Ha. They lose it if they start bouncing or kicking the walls.

I’m being evasive. I’m afraid the kids will interrupt and the next part of the book is weighing heavy on my heart. “7-12: The Stage of Concern”

They say you never get “past” the stage you were when you were wounded. Surely I have made some progress beyond Callidora’s current level of development. I think I show significantly more sophistication in how I go about getting my way. I haven’t bitten anyone in the face in a very long time.

I worry about when my kids each hit seven. I fear that I am reversing the minimizer/maximizer thing with each kid. I don’t know. I fear that I will go to extremes and be wrong in every way. I’ve been thinking about rape a lot.

Apparently Paul Nathan, the last person who raped me before I ran off from the community is back in town. I’m really grateful I was told. I have one birthday party on my radar and she has already specifically told me that he isn’t invited. Or the other guy who sexually assaulted me. She was quite thoughtful. I’m not sure I will play at the party anyway. I plan to bring food, talk, and cuddle with Noah. I don’t have a fucking thing to prove. So I feel no real desire to play in public right now.

Oh that’s defensive and asshole-ish. I have something to prove. I don’t have to do it just because other people want me to. I’ve been listening to P!nk a lot lately. I’m not here for your entertainment. It makes me think about clothing. I’ve always dressed like a fucking nun. Only in the end–the last two was I finally dressed in provocative clothing.

So what are my kids going to wear in life? Being covered sure as shit didn’t save me. Uncovering in what I was told was a “safe environment” wasn’t.

It is interesting looking at how I have learned to set boundaries. It’s been a slow and painful process. I’ve been a major asshole. How do I want that to work for my kids? How am I going to behave?

Shanna recently told me that when it comes time to go shopping that she wants to do all the picking. There will of course be some guidance whether that’s her favorite or not. She might not like owning a pair of jeans–but she wears them when we are playing in the mud. You have to learn how to accommodate the life you have instead of the life you wish you had.

We will have to negotiate money in advance. Then she can spend it how she wants. Ok. Sure. Why not? It’s going to be a gigantic pain in the ass, but that’s ok too.

It’s disconcerting to read parenting books–innocuous items and experience surges of vaginal pain. Original wounding indeed.

When I was in my early twenties I managed to find a leather dyke gynecologist to help me with vaginal pain problems. The first thing she did was tell me to start eating yogurt whether I liked it or not. Just do it. Experiment. You’ll like something. And she told me to get off Depo Provera because it’s terrible for women. It thins vaginal tissue in long-term use.

Then we got to the spiffy exam. She looked, said, “Hm. Hang on.” She got up and took off her gloves one by one, slowly. Her brow was furrowed. She adjusted how I was sitting. She got a clear speculum and a mirror and a flashlight. She showed me the inside of my cunt.

She asked me, “How young were you when it started?”

There is so much wealth of knowledge in a question like that. But I lacked the ability to gather resources from her. I didn’t know how.

So I am running into this problem where in order to process who I am as a separate individual I have to really understand the fundamental ways I will never have a reflection of me. It’s all normal and shit but I have a lot of additional strong feelings. Being broken in plain sight does things to you.

Why is everyone else just more intrinsically deserving of love than I was? Because when I think twelve. Twelve fucking assholes raped me I know I’m not counting all of that right. I generally don’t count guys who only forced me to give them blowjobs, no matter how violent it was. I don’t want to think of that count. I don’t like thinking about the neighbors who pee’ed with the door open and invited me in to “learn how to hold one” with that sly little grin.

Over and over. Neighborhood after neighborhood. It didn’t matter if they were stinking unwashed alcoholic drug addicts in a trailer park or the nice little Catholic family or the rich old bastard in the mountains. And more. I moved more than fifty times before I was eighteen. I saw a lot of neighborhoods. I don’t remember a lot of specifics of the times when I managed to startle but run off.

I was always asked. I said no as I got older. When I realized I could. The first few times I was told, “Come here. Touch it” I did it. Of fucking course I did. With my father ignoring such a command would have resulted in him hitting me in the head. My kids are pushy in ways I wouldn’t have been able to pull off. I would have been black and blue. And sometimes it is hard to read these fucking development books and understand why Noah and I both are over sensitive to the noise in some moods and not in others. If Noah is happy he goes along with them playing. If not he’s grumpy.

Me too. We are both a bit moody. I hear that’s allowed. We’ll see.

I think I should stop reading for today. I haven’t even gotten through all the ways in which I am supposedly stunted yet. That’s enough for one day. I’ll finish it. I am finding value in it. They are right–this is all shit that must be kept away from my children.

This is my problem.

I think I need to get back to some extremist argument against educational standardization book after this light and fucking fluffy parenting book. You know, something cheerful.

I’m sick. And I’m crying. The snot is a river. Like my self pity. On that note I am going to go find more to eat.

I guess that means my family found my blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Living post-rape

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I drove home from Disneyland today and I spent most of the drive thinking about rape. How the public “standard” is violent stranger rape it’s… so completely missing the point.

Rape is someone you know just pushing too hard. Rape is very rarely a stranger jumping out of the bushes. Ok, that does happen. But it’s incredibly rare. As a species the risk for engaging in that kind of behavior is too great. Most men have incredibly high impetus to not try that sort of funny business. When I talk about rape culture that isn’t what I’m talking about.

My dad was a rapist. He raped his wife, his daughters, his son, his sisters, the children of his girlfriends… I don’t know where the list went from there. My dad is dead. He killed himself because he couldn’t handle going to prison. He died the morning his trial was to begin. He had already fully confessed. He gave them a lot of details and corroborating evidence that I had not given told the detectives about. I wrote a book about my childhood and I poured every detail I could remember. It’s 160 pages. That’s both a lot of remembering and not so much.

I mean, I did gloss over details and all. But if my dad raped me way more than I remember… when in the hell did it happen? What don’t I remember? I kind of want to read his confession and I kind of don’t. I’m pretty sure I could get it but it would take work. The trial never technically happened but I don’t think they get rid of evidence anyway.

I love my dad. I love my mom. I love my sister. I love my brothers. But I can’t be near them. Well, my dad is dead, Tommy too. But I divorced my mom and sister and brother and extended family.

It doesn’t matter if I love them. They poison me. They tell me it is not ok for me to inconvenience them when I go through trauma that kills people. I’m kind of indignant on this score. I was not allowed to speak when I was a child–I was slapped into submission. Now it is “digging up the past” and “You’re remembering wrong”. Oh man.

It doesn’t matter how much I love them. They hurt me. They tell me to be a prostitute. They tell me actively and specifically that I am required to have sex with any man who wants to have sex with me especially my family members. I mean… eww.

It doesn’t matter how much I love them. My children can’t grow up knowing those people and that dynamic. I don’t forking think so.

In the first year we were married my husband and I agreed that some day he could ignore me saying “no” and push for sex. I imagined in my head some night of casually saying no and ending up playing a dead fish. I’ve certainly played that game before.

He picked the day I turned my sister in to CPS. I was a mandated reporter. When she laughed and told me about the 12 year old with alcohol poisoning in her house I had to call. I was completely hysterical. I was breaking every taboo of my family. We are white trash. You don’t fucking nark. The police are the enemy. They want to hurt us. It’s a thing.

We beat the shit out of each other. It was really brutal. He’s a mean bastard when he wants to be. I think he partially does that because it makes me appreciate him being nice to me the vast majority of the time.

I’ve told him bluntly that I will never be raped again. He has a lot of enlightened self interest. And he only raped me because I had given him explicit consent with a set of boundaries I didn’t properly think about. Whoops. Ok. I’ve played that game to the end. I’m done now.

It’s kind of weird. I was 25 then. So I had a period of about 23 or 24 years where I was raped every so often by a new person.

It’s really kind of weird to be thinking about my life now as “post-rape”. And it is difficult to trust my husband. I don’t very much. I mean… I do… but I have walls I didn’t used to have. I protect me actively more now. I keep more of me hidden from him and that feels hard. It means I have no one to share those things with.

I want a mother so bad. But my mother isn’t a mother. She’s a monster. And I love her. But I can’t let her destroy my kids.

My mom tried to tell me, “But I wouldn’t have the same kind of influence on them that I had on you.” You bet your skippy you won’t.

I am ridiculously attentive. I don’t hover, but I pay attention. My kids feel special and loved. They feel like they have a lot to give the world and many things they want to hurry up and get doing.

It’s so different from my childhood. It’s hard to watch sometimes. I feel like I am constantly having this pity party track in my brain as I see what I had to go through at their ages. As I realize just how much of a baby I was oh god. How could they have done that to me?

My father liked to penetrate my vagina while in amusement parks. That was his favorite way to spend the day together as a family. We went often. He always had me sit on his lap. His hand was always inside me. I had to not react. I had to sit very still and barely breathe.

When I watch my children exist in the world sometimes I feel like I am watching them through a sheet of glass. I am still holding my breath and trying to not exist. I wish I could feel the same joy they feel but I can’t. I feel dead.

I feel like I have to create a new person out of whole cloth. I don’t know what else to do now. I was told what I was supposed to do. But I’m not doing it. I’m being bad. Aren’t I?

I don’t know. It’s very confusing sometimes.

have to unload brain.

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Sleep was very out of whack. I’m out of it. I have little time for writing. I used up most of my time responding to emails. I go through phases of being able to respond quickly and periods where I cry thinking about responding and can’t do it. Today is functional though exhausted.

I babysat for a friend last night. I feel greatly relieved that there is less screaming as time goes by. We are adjusting to one another. It helps that he does genuinely like me–it’s getting easier to bear being away from his mother. It is so hard to be away from your mother. I think it helps our relationship that I get that. I understand him getting upset and I don’t feel mad at him for it. I feel bad that I can’t make it all better.

He does let me hug him and kiss his head and play with him. It’s not that he dislikes me. It’s hard to not take screaming like that personally–but it’s important. He’s not trying to hurt me. He’s not trying to frustrate me. He has no way of coping with these humongous feelings inside his body. I get it. So we can sit together and he can cry and tell me he is sad. I tell him I understand. He has the best mommy in the whole world and she isn’t here right now–that is very sad. Luckily sand storms of blocks chased the tears away last night.

I think last night was the most comforting he has ever accepted from me. That felt really good.

His baby sister is a doll. She is super sweet and cuddly. She’s six months old and just getting mobile and frisky. I don’t have to live with her so her general lack of sleeping isn’t an issue for me. We had a late night dance party together. It was fun.

Being able to care for people and comfort them has value. It is worth doing. I wish I was able to see how that fits into my concept of self. If these are valuable skills then they should convey status of some kind. That is how valuable things work.

I am very good at sitting with people who are hurting and ignoring my own shit. I can just empathize with what they are feeling. I have felt bad a lot. It’s easy for me to project that other people have similar kinds of bad feelings and I try hard to do the things I wish people did for me.

I think I wrote half of a childrens book in my head while I was playing with the kids last night. I should write it down on paper today.

I was asked if I look at these sweet innocent little boys I know and see potential rapists.

Uhm, yes. Don’t you? You don’t? Really? You think your little boy would never? Oh. well then. I should probably stop talking and walk away fast.

I have known a lot of rapists. I have had a lot of explicit conversations with them about where/why/how and as a result I see pretty much every boy and man as a potential rapist. The men I know who have never raped are generally a kind of paranoid I have trouble with (if they are out in the sex communities–I assume a large number of men have two or fewer partners so they have a very different lifetime experience of rape) so I get why men rape. I do.

Because of my life experiences I don’t call something rape unless I have actively said no. In cases where things were squidgy and I didn’t consent but I didn’t say no I don’t use the word rape. I just don’t. That’s my personal line.

That’s uhm, not the life experiences of a lot of women. Because they are trained to not say no to things in general they just don’t deal with the consent issues around sex and they feel raped.

I believe that if you did not actively consent to sex and you don’t want the sex to happen then you are allowed to call it rape. I don’t do that in my life because, quite frankly, even with the much harsher line my life is still hard to believe.

When I was teaching the concept of rape came up a couple of times. An awful lot of the ways I personally talk to teenagers about rape and consent are deliberately manipulative. When I have a group and I am”lecturing” the boys I am really talking to the girls; when I am “lecturing” the girls I am really talking to the boys. This is because, in my experience, people blow off a lot of what they are told to do but they are kind of nosy about what the other side is told to do. They will think about, “Huh- why was I given different advice?” Then I get follow up questions.

It varies by age and my level of closeness so these conversations are kind of weird to generalize about.

I think the way to greatly lessen the number of rapes is to get men/women/boys/girls more towards the ideas that bodies are wonderful fabulous private things you should only share by choice. And you should own that choice loudly. You should say YES! to sex you want. None of this hard-to-get shit. I mean, you don’t have to jump in bed right away or anything. But the more clear you are about what you want the more likely you are to get it. If you aren’t both on the same page… well…

This is where the hard part comes in. If the girls wants a relationship and the boy just wants sex then we run into the Embargo and bitterness and entitlement and rage and just not-noticing those subtle body signals.

I want girls to be more explicit with their no’s and with their yes’s. I want boys to think about the fact that sex often has very different consequences for girls and if you are not a fucking asshole you will behave respectfully.

I encourage girls sharing information about boys being safe or not. I do it blatantly. “If you are raped no one will know but you. If you have problems with a boy who rapes you he is very likely to go on to rape more girls. Tell. Tell someone safe first. Probably tell the police. If you can’t handle prosecuting I won’t hate you and I’ll still support you. That’s a rough road. But you need to talk about it. There need to be consequences for those kinds of actions.

I want boys to have this thing in the back of their head, “Ah. If I act inappropriately I will no longer get the sex I want. Got it.”

I also tell teenagers that mutual masturbation is pretty much all of the fun of intercourse for the first few years with much lower chance of pregnancy or STIs.

I don’t say that to little kids.

What I say to little kids is, “If you don’t like how I am touching you, please tell me. I want to make you feel comfortable.” I give them a lot of feedback about how they touch me. I want that kind of conversation to be casual, comfortable, and instinctive. “Oh gosh. When you touch me like that it hurts. Please stop.”

Most of the violent rapists I know were terribly abused. That’s a lot of why they hunt for me. I see the hurt little boy still. So yes, when I look at sweet little boys–I see what they could become.

I feel very blessed that I am allowed to have relationships with little boys. Whether I am lying to myself or not I feel better about the world knowing there are little boys running around who have started their life journey around body autonomy hearing my message of consent. I’m a good story teller.

My favorite part of teaching (in retrospect) is how many students have come and found me to tell me about their intense memories of me and they credit me with helping them learn how to make decisions.

I did actually influence their lives.

One of the things I like about not having a set and solid place in any specific community is that I have very few expectations to live up to. I’m allowed to reinvent myself every time I show up. If there are many years in between visits then I get to select which stories to tell.

Unless you decide to wade through my blog it is very hard to tell how crazy I am. I mean, there are signs. But not really. People tend to be shocked when they start reading.

I write because otherwise I don’t exist as a whole person. I’m a set of semi-fake semi-forced behaviors that I have somehow weirdly associated with groups of people in specific communities.

When I was a child the normal I learned was that my mom had to go have sex with my father in order to get money for food. Even though the court system said he owed us that money no matter what. “It may be illegal but no one will prosecute.” Yes, I know.

I have to try to pretend I understand other peoples normal. I have to try to blend in. But when you move through communities people are so wildly different. And they all get upset if you are too weird and aggressive. At this point I’m fairly aggressive.

So I’m trying to be better about keeping up with email so that I can have one on one relationships with people since on an individual basis people have very little invested in maintaining that ‘other’ group identity.

Two people sitting in a room together form a ‘we’. There is the desire to probe for similarities and minimize differences. I know how to fish. I know how to let someone else do a lot of the tone setting. I don’t always do it, but I know how.

Yesterday I was talking to a mom from the homeschooling group. She was relaying that a young girl (I was confused about what the relationship was) went on a sleep over and in the morning woke up before everyone else and went to get donuts with the dad. My mom friend felt bothered by this. She won’t let her daughters be alone with men.

I think “floored” is the best word for how I felt. I… I can’t imagine living in a world where I would never allow my daughter to be alone with men.

Don’t I seem like that type though? I can’t. Often men have been the reason I limped along and did better for a while. Like Joey? My brother Tommy’s friend who brought me to the Seventh Day Adventist church for a while. He unquestionably made my life better. I was alone with him a lot. Uhm we prayed a lot. And read the Bible. And he was so very nice-without-touching. Awesome person. I hope his life is going well.

I don’t want to deny my daughters relationships with men. I want them to not look like prey. Different.

I think that boys, girls, men and women are all animals. We are part of the animal kingdom and all. Unless we are specifically domesticated and socialized then we revert to self-serving behavior. Yes, I think pretty much any boy or man is capable of rape.

And then I start to get around in my head to DAs questions. And it’s 10 and I have stuff to do. Tomorrow I will answer his questions.

I’ve been having trouble getting past “Other than you no woman has ever asked for my consent.” I think it is not obvious in my writing that I think women are equally as capable of being predators but their hunting is different and I have never been their prey. It is hard for me to write about. But I definitely have some things to say.

And buddy–I have fucked some 3’s. You aren’t a 3. Knock off the self-denigration. It isn’t helpful.

I should have seen this coming.

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I have had several men ask me in the past day if they would be on the list of people I pulled into a room to “have a talking to”.

I can’t answer and that is really intense feeling. I want to answer. I desperately want to. I want to be able to absolve of guilt. I want to be able to hand down sentencing.

These aren’t my secrets. If I go about telling men, “You but not you” then I risk revealing what has been told to me in confidence. The women who have confided in me did so with the rock solid belief that I would never betray them. I have to continue to earn that trust even though it is driving me insane.

I can’t answer any of you. I can’t say, “Oh of course I haven’t heard anything about you!” because even if that is true–that just means I haven’t heard anything. I can’t give anyone a gold star that says, “Certifiably not a rapist” unless I go talk to every partner you have ever had.

Unfortunately in my little world the burden of proof isn’t that I haven’t yet heard anything. I have to know it is true or I won’t say it is true. The emotional burden of guilt from being wrong is simply too high. The absolutely strongest recommendation I can give is, “I haven’t been told anything about you.”

And even that reveals the fuzzy outsides of what I have been told. It starts to narrow the field. What if guys start comparing notes to see what I said to whom? That’s completely conceivable. How can I maintain confidentiality that way?

I just can’t respond about this topic. Not really. I will respond to each of you individually (probably after finishing this blog–I haven’t been at a computer since I hit post yesterday) because I appreciate that you are someone who cares about my opinion. But I can’t answer this question. I just can’t.

My honor doesn’t look like the honor everyone else carries around but I will defend it tooth and nail. I gave my word that I was a safe space for these women. I can’t dishonor that.

Even though I want to go beat some people over the head with big sticks because of what I know. I have to keep my fucking mouth shut. I have to smile and give that asshole a hug when he comes up to me at a party because if my behavior radically changes towards him he will probably figure it out.

I can’t out people.

I can tell my secrets. I can tell my secrets all day and all night. I can write or scream them as much as I want. I can’t tell other peoples secrets. That is an individual journey. If someone is forcibly outed that becomes a new trauma. It can’t be a healing process. I don’t get to hurt people like that.

The shape of this community role was actually discussed in my last therapy appointment. She asked me what I take pride in. I told her that I take a lot of pride in the fact that traumatized women find me and feel comforted by me. I wanted and needed someone to go to. I had no one. I have become what I needed. I work very hard at it.

Maintaining confidentiality is part of that. I cannot be trusted if I cannot keep my fucking mouth shut.

Have you noticed how hard it is for me to keep my fucking mouth shut? Oh man.

I was asked several specific questions by a good friend that he felt self-conscious leaving in comments here (totally ok!) about how consent works. He has had a very different set of life experiences than me (women don’t tear my clothes off much–at one point in time I was very upset about that) and he has to cope with things I haven’t imagined yet.

I think it is going to take a couple of days before I can fully answer the questions. I don’t want to give a half-assed reply. I think it deserves serious thought. When men I already love bring me questions about how they can better understand consent in their life I feel a great responsibility to answer in a way that is a)useful b)non-harmful to the man (they do matter too) and c) something that has an actual set of logic behind it.

Thank you for caring about my opinion of consent. I am going to think very carefully and answer you fully. I don’t want to be unclear or unable to explain my thinking. I hate it when I do that.

I have a ridiculously busy day off-line ahead of me. It is going to be a day that combines a wide variety of different high anxiety situations for me. But a kind of anxiety that centers around am I really good enough to be the person in this position in this interaction?

Today I have the opportunity to have a sit down with an eighteen year old girl with borderline personality disorder who is getting into drugs and casual sex via the internet. When she leaves me she is going to stay with her Master overnight.

I can barely stop myself from rubbing my hands together with glee. I have trained for this. I can’t control her. I can’t decide how her life goes. But what I wouldn’t give to have had someone like me when I was that age.

Then I get to go to Dickens Fair and apologize to the friend who kind of catalyzed my leaving Facebook because I deeply value the relationship and I don’t want their to be hurt feelings over my deleting the stupid account. If I can’t keep my emotions in check it is my responsibility to deal with the kinds of input I allow into my life. Facebook, for a variety of reasons, makes me significantly more unstable. I need to eliminate it from my life. I’m sorry she was the one standing closest when I noticed but it is really not her fault.

And she is one of the fucking coolest people I have ever met in my whole life and I don’t want to drive her away because I am crazy and unstable and dramatic. How about if we just have those in person interactions that make us both feel good about ourselves. Facebook is not good for me. It’s not about her. I have those kinds of issues with lots of people online. I don’t read tone well. I hear it with the voices in my head.

Pretty much all the voices in my head hate my guts. Everything I read comes through that filter. It’s very hard to circumvent.

I like in-person interactions. They are real. They aren’t about me fighting with my ghosts while someone else is trying to have a conversation.

I don’t want to detonate that relationship for a laundry list of reasons. In person I don’t freak out about what she says to me because I can hear her voice. I hope that it will be ok that I can’t handle facebook.

Sometimes it feels very humiliating dealing with the limitations of my brain. That is what this is. I have to accommodate what I need even though I am having a completely irrational reaction. Whatever. I can’t rational my way out of it. It happens over and over uncontrollably. The only thing I can do is remove the stimulus.

And then enjoy people in person instead of clinging to facebook as a way of holding on to a thread of contact. I can’t weave a tapestry out of those threads. I need the in person. I need to change what I have been doing. I hope this turns out to be a positive step.

And even if that friend decides she can’t handle my drama (reasonable) I will still be at Dickens with someone who has a current higher thresh hold for my shit. I will accept the grace while I receive it. She knows she is chaperoning me so that I feel safe.

That’s a pretty big gift. I need to walk through the day feeling that gift. When I feel really scared I know that I was given a participant pass by one friend and another friend is keeping the dark at bay. I am not the untouchable I believe I am.

These lies will pass.

trust and not

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There is a lot of heated argument on fetlife right now about being able to have a database of rapists. I want to volunteer to adjudicate but hello lawsuit which is why these things don’t get off the ground. It has to be anonymous. It has to be just data not the deciding vote in what happens.

I read something this morning by a large queer man who talks about his experience of being perceived as creepy.  It’s an intense read. I think he elicited far more emotional response of sympathy from me than any man in my life has ever done. I think it is because he is a stranger on the internet. I have never felt any kind of boundary incursion from him so I don’t have any defenses up when I read it. And he’s a very good writer. That sounds intense and hard in a way I can’t understand.

I’ve been raped by ten-ish male people depending on how you count. That’s a lot of rapists for someone not in prison or a war zone. That means there is something about me. What am I doing to get myself into these situations?

I have issues with learned behavior. I was taught to hunt for those feelings from when I was a very small child. It’s not about what I look like or even really who I am. My father taught me. That is really hard to wrap my head around. What does that mean about my thinking? About who I am?

No matter what my experiences as a rapist hunter isn’t about my personhood the way being viewed as threatening is for Gaze. (The guy who wrote the blog.) It’s external to me. I can pass when I want to. I can seem very non-threatening and unremarkable when I want to when I am out in public. He can’t. He has never done anything wrong and he is scary anyway.

I’m scary sometimes. When I was a teacher there were many times when the very large football players backed away from me cowering in fear. I was told, “You are the most intimidating person I have ever seen” by seventeen and eighteen year old boys who towered over me and weighed a hundred pounds more than me.

I worry about that with my kids. So far they show no signs of being afraid of me so I think I’m doing ok.

I’m getting away from what I was thinking about earlier.

Gaze inspired me to think about why I distrust men so badly. What are the levels of trust for me?

I think that it is important to note that I don’t believe or suspect random men are going to attack me. I walk around Oakland in the dark by myself. I don’t fear random men. Sometimes I wonder if I am fishing to see if I should start to distrust random men as well. Oh the self-harming methods are tricksy.

I distrust men I know because sometimes women in my communities come to me and tell me their side of events. Then I run into the rapists at parties. They lean in and quickly hug me–noticeably without my consent–while I cringe. Oh yeah. I believe her that he never bothered to find out if she wanted to say yes to sex.

Sometimes I would like to rent a hall and then drive around delivering invitations to men I know and bring them all to a room. I would like to give them a talk about why women have told me that they are rapists.

I honestly believe that most of them don’t understand that is what they are doing. A few are truly blatant and know and that’s the point. That’s Paul Nathan and Kevin Gilmore, fyi. (I use their names because they sexually assaulted me. I don’t out other peoples rapists.)  These two are blatant, many victims, many years, many locations. Hunters. Of course I found them.

I stay home because I am a lightening rod. It is because I draw predators. That makes the men who want to talk to me very suspect. I don’t, in my head, see a whole lot of reason why a guy would want to talk to me unless he is a predator. It is quite hard for guys to prove that they want to be my friend. Tay-that’s why you are so amazing. Holy shit you keep trying.

I have a lot of different levels of trust. That’s normal. The internet told me so. There is this weird grey area for me. I’m at the part in The Moral Animal where he goes over the purpose of the low-status throw away whore. The Madonna/whore dynamic. By most of those kind of caste systems I am untouchable but Noah married me anyway. I get why. I get why for him having such a partner was worthwhile.

I look with harsh suspicion on every other man who wants to talk to me. I know my place in society. But I can’t function as that any more. I quite literally feel panic and worry and terror because I feel like I might have to say no to sex at any moment because that is the only reason men approach me but I can’t do it anymore and saying no is so dangerous. Oh god. It makes my throat close.

But that’s all in my head. Most people who walk up to me want to say, “Hey! How are you?!” And not really listen to my semi-truth that only mentions up-beat positive highlights of my life for two minutes before they wander away.

That is what is going on in their head.

I think that I am actually successfully not a target anymore. I absolutely don’t spend time around the kind of scum who prey on mothers. Because I have a hard time figuring out in advance who they are we don’t spend time around very many people.

I spend a lot of time longing for orthodox religion of some kind. Some religion with a strongly divided male and female population so I can go meet women and hide behind them and never have to meet their men. And if I did they would be horrified by the idea of touching me. Holy shit that sounds good.

I want some way of knowing for sure that people aren’t sexually interested in me. I don’t want people to be sexually interested in me any more. I’m tired of having to field that energy. Why is this my bloody problem?

Because they are people who get to ask. I get to say no.

Over.
And over.
And over.
And over.

Oh what a pity party. Geez, if I didn’t get that attention wouldn’t I be longing for it?

After reading Gaze’s blog post I honestly believe that I will cheerfully stick with my side of the bargain and try to work on my attitude.

I can’t imagine feeling that much anxiety about the amount of space my body takes up.

I’ve got to tell you, reading the internet makes me think that I have one of the healthiest relationships with my appearance of anyone I know. That’s kind of hilarious. I think I am on the attractive side but not beautiful. I like my body and speak positively of it without having to force it. My kids will grow up hearing positive things about bodies in general. We don’t watch main-stream tv and don’t read magazines or diet books. My kids think fat is awesome and food is for eating. Not on the damn carpet. We get ants. Some day the outside of my house will be resealed and I will have insulation and hard wood floors. Then you can eat in any room.

So yes, I go to these parties and I see these men whom I know to have committed rape. I then feel on massive high anxiety about any and every man who talks to me. My feelings of distrust come from my perception of my very low status. Why else would men talk to a whore?

I have had a few male friends who have managed to show me that my company does have value to them without sex. It’s a hard battle. Mostly I just stay home and cry because I do not believe I am worthy of community because I can’t put a lid on my anxiety and be nice to men.

Having those rapists in the room really makes it hard. And that’s my problem. So I stay home.

I’d like to get those men together and talk to them. I’d like to be able to say, “I know most of you vaguely in a social way. I understand that we have never been close. I’d like to tell you why I keep you at least ten feet away from me. At least one woman has told me that you do not value consent when it comes to your sex life. That scares the shit out of me. What other consent do you not value? How many people have you targeted? If one in four women are raped and one in twelve men is a rapist that means each of you have probably been busy. Knock it the fuck off.”

Not that it would be very effective.

I don’t think men even know what looking for consent means. Obviously I’m generalizing. Unfortunately many men do not understand what looking for consent means. Is that better?

A woman has to actually say “yes” or you can’t have sex with her. It is a tried and true survival method for someone to go blank and unable to fight back when they are being assaulted. You have to get yes.

If you don’t get an enthusiastic yes you don’t deserve to have sex with her.

Why don’t I speak more about women predators? I don’t know as much about them. I don’t know if the dynamics are different or not. I assume not? I make people tell me yes.

I hurt a little boy when I was in kindergarden. I thought he was saying yes. He didn’t. It hurt him a lot. I didn’t understand. I have apologized to him but I can’t take it back. I have done my best to never do it again.

You have to get an enthusiastic yes or you can’t have sex.

You know how like two posts ago I said I have had sex with more men than any other gender presentation because they are easier to get a yes out of? I understand that women hem and haw. I know it is a big pain in the ass to get them to actually admit they want to have sex. You need to get that yes while their clothes are still on. Seriously.

Don’t be a rapist. Just don’t. If she doesn’t say yes you can’t have sex with her.

I’d really like to be able to leave the house again some day. I’d like to have fewer rapists in my communities.

I don’t know what can be done about rape in the large scale. On the small scale it seems like a smack on the back of the head is the very first step if the rapee doesn’t want the police involved.

People are so complicated. And now I have more sympathy for the male side than I did when I woke up this morning. I’m not sure if I’m grateful exactly. Ah yes, more internal pressure to be nice. Great.

Not everyone wants to have sex with me. I mean, I know this and all. But my inner social anxiety meter doesn’t. If I could blame it on the sex communities I would. I actually know about fewer rapists in the bdsm community than in the dance community. Or poly community. Or Dickens. Or Renaissance Faires. Sometimes I feel very overwhelmed by what I know.

I wish I took this knowledge as security that I can trust the other men. There are probably only one or two rapists running around each community that I don’t already know about. Doesn’t that make all the other men safe by contrast? No. I don’t know who would throw me under a bus if something happened. I can’t feel emotionally close to any men. I am going to be the first bit of debris thrown from their life if they don’t like the emotions they experience while standing close to me. I’m optional.

It’s hard for men to convince me that they are invested in having a friendship with me. The series of hurdles are so convoluted and difficult that they are almost impossible to surmount. I don’t feel particularly good about that. But it is what makes me feels safe. And I generally have enough friends at any given point in time that I get by.

I feel weird about immersing myself in a kid-centric world. This is going to be my first experience through childhood. I didn’t draw pictures as a child because people were always nasty and critical. I didn’t play very much because the games I wanted to play were acting out my life experiences. I had to have another child around willing to consent to sex, essentially. That’s a hard sell for most kids. Good!

My kids won’t have a life like mine. I feel so bad that I don’t have things that I am good at to share with my children. But at least I have a lot of willingness to do things wrong and experiment and say I don’t know how to do something yet.

I have a hard time screening people for my life. I am a lightening rod for bad people. How do I adequately screen people in order to keep my kids safe? I’m pretty sure I have done it so far. Only fifteen years of hyperviligance to go. Deep breath.

Luckily I am getting older. I hear that men stop propositioning women at some point. As long as Noah still likes me that’s all I need.

I’m going to go climb back in bed with Noah. I have a Black Friday to ignore.

sick = suicidal, apparently.

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I hate being sick. At this point I am well past “too weak and dizzy to stand” but eating is still a problem. I ate ground beef and vegetable matter last night for dinner. I had to go to the restroom three times last night and cry as I paid for the hubris of believing I am able to digest roughage. Noah made oatmeal for breakfast. I ate five bites before my stomach is cramping and horribly painful. I’ve been crying a bunch.

I feel like crying just because my body is functioning in annoying ways means I am weak and pathetic. Just shut up Krissy. Everyone gets sick. Quit being such a fucking pussy.

I don’t talk to anyone else the way I talk to me. This is probably a good thing.

Yesterday I managed to end up in a conversation with a woman who has been raped by the same people. Awkward. I feel terrible guilt for not supporting her more when she pressed charges against one of the guys. I was post-Puppy depressed and not functioning. I had not yet been sexually assaulted by that guy. At that point my basic understanding of the situation was, “Oh man signals got horribly crossed and she feels very hurt.” Then he did the same thing to me. I tried to “fix it” and make sure my signals weren’t coming across wrong. Actually, he just didn’t care whether we were clear or not. He wanted what he wanted.

But what were we drinking. What were we wearing. How did we lead him on? She said she had depositions from ten other women he has raped but a woman in the bdsm community went to the police and discredited her by telling them that the rape-victim was a slut who must have asked for it.

That’s what happens when you are stupid enough to go to the police after being raped in my community. The other women will ensure that you can’t have justice because involving the police will create drama.

I spend so much time believing that the only thing I can do to prevent myself or my daughters from being raped is to drive off a cliff with them in the car. I don’t actually intend to do it. But it breaks my heart that my girls will almost certainly be raped at some point. That just happens. And there is nothing I can do about it.

I feel terrible that I made little girls for this world. I could have created boys who were not rapists. But instead I bore little victims-to-be. I am going to put them in martial arts and have them learn how to operate every weapon we can get our hands on. I want them to be able to severely harm any guy who tries something.

Yes, yes women rape too. I know this. With a woman it is usually more about coercion. I think I can train girls who can resist coercion. I worry about them being small and delicate. They are so thin and frail seeming to me.

I keep them safe because I ensure that they have no contact with the world that does not involve me standing there and watching. Ok, sometimes I delegate to Noah and the Godmamas. And we’ve had other babysitters. Not in a long time. Not since the Godmamas stepped up. I figure if I get one weekend a month that has to be good enough. I don’t really have anyone else dependable and trustworthy enough. I don’t want them to get used to a string of random babysitters. The people who claimed they would be here are liars. I need to stop listening to what people say at all. Actions speak quite loudly.

My kids will bloody be kept safe. If I have to kill someone to do it. I hope it never comes to that. We stay home a lot in order to lower the chances it will happen soon.

When I am sick I feel pathetic and helpless and weak. I am reminded that I can do so little. I can’t keep people safe. I can’t protect anyone–not even me.

Someone I haven’t talked to in years asked me how I have been. I said, “Well most of the past three years has been a series of mental breakdowns as I deal with being raped a lot. I wasn’t allowed to deal with it when it happened and I’ve stuffed it for decades and now it is completely overwhelming me. If I didn’t have kids I would be dead. If I didn’t have kids it would not be worth dealing with any of this.”

My male friends alternate between telling me that “it doesn’t matter if it is illegal it will never be prosecuted” and “I won’t take your rape seriously unless you prosecute.” I want to jump off a very tall bridge. I want to jump off a building. Since I matter so little I want to cease to be.

Better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man go to prison. Better that tens of thousands of worthless whores be raped than one innocent man suffer.

I want to die. I want to die so much I feel like I am drowning. I don’t matter. I am a worthless whore. My government tells me so. My community tells me so.

“I’m not going to ruin that nice boy’s career for you.” “You must have wanted it.” “Well what position were you in that made these boys think it was ok?”

I existed. I’m sorry I was so stupid. I would like to change it.

But I have these kids. These little rape-victims to be. I hope not. I hope that they will inherit the status of their father and be safe. I inherited my father’s status. I am nothing. I have no worth. No value. There is nothing about me that is worth defending.

No one wants to defend me. They just think I deserve what I get.

I want to die so much.