Category Archives: rape

I’m not very good at being polite while effectively communicating.

I’m having a hard time being nice to people. Specifically men who like to clear up “what I really mean”. I don’t mean that men should do something about rape. I mean that men AND women should do something about rape. If those lazy chicks would start doing something, maybe we could get somewhere one of these years.

That’s not what he meant. Of course.

When I say, “I think that men should actively slap down this kind of language” I don’t mean “Wouldn’t it be nice if men and women constantly paroled one another and gave out friendly little advice about tone and language.”

Women disapproving of rape centric language isn’t exactly news. It hasn’t accomplished much. Chicks are on the other side of the Embargo refusing to dole out sex rather these guys talk right or not, why should the rapetastic guys give a shit that women who won’t put out dislike what they say? Women have nothing to offer that the men consider worth curtailing their behavior for.

When men censure other men for using inappropriate language it is either ignored because it is from a stranger (reasonable to ignore strangers) or it is coming from a buddy. Your buddies help create your world view.

I occasionally hear guys say things like, “Why won’t you give me a blowjob? Why are you being mean like that?” If there was a handy buddy nearby to say, “Dude she doesn’t owe you a fucking blowjob shove off.” He’d be a lot less likely to harass women in front of his buddy. Maybe less willing in general. That’s the best I’ve got.

The police and outraged women cannot create an environment where a problematic behavior goes away. Shall we look to Prohibition? Rape centric language works the same way.

I’m going to pick an internet cultural point just for fun. How about Reddit. If ALL THE WOMENZ downvote something inappropriate it will hardly be a dent. Guys need to stop ignoring things they disapprove of. Instead of saying, “Well it’s not my thing but I’m not going to lecture them” say “Yo, posting pictures you surreptitiously take of some chick’s panties isn’t cool” and there are tens of thousands of similar comments? Well, it would be much harder for the assholes to have the day. There is no hope for websites like Fetlife. That’s just a rapist party ground.

When you put men and women in a room together you get a different culture than when men are alone. Women are trying to change the communal space and being slapped down hard. A lot of the problem is that we have no access to trying to change the culture where men go off by themselves. That’s pretty entrenched. I can’t do anything about it.

And if one more man that I know sanctimoniously tells me he doesn’t know anyone who supports rape I will vomit. I could start listing your friends you asshole. I could tell you stories that would make you shiver.

Sometimes I feel a little weird about how many women come to me with their rape stories. They will never prosecute. So I walk around feeling like a one-woman Megan’s List. I know who has been arrested for rape. I know who chases the 16 year old girls and pushes them too hard. I know who says, “I’ll just touch it with my fingers” before pushing a cock in. I feel bound by the seal of the confessional. I can’t tell who these people are.

I give subtle warnings but frankly I’m not sure anyone should listen to my timid “He’s not a good person” when I can’t give any details. Sometimes I start crying because I am so overwhelmed by what I know but I can’t share it. I wasn’t given permission. I know about a lot of rapists in the bdsm community and in the dance community. I know who raped their sister. I know who has a habit of “slipping the condom off” after a few minutes of sex.

And I can’t do anything with this body of knowledge.

Noah says people will be more offended and not less if I explain why I talk about white men the way I do. I have had very few ongoing interpersonal relationships with men of other races. I don’t feel like I understand the cultural bias enough to speak about them as a group.

I suppose that technically when I am generalizing I should go all the way to saying “white American men” because Europeans act differently.

These are the men who make up the vast majority of my life experiences. I have had a lot of terrible experiences. I have yet to meet a black man and have someone tell me he is a rapist. I know it happens but it is invisible to me. So I don’t flinch when black men walk by.

When I look at white men I see all the potential power they have in my society. Not that each man is actually loaded with privilege and ease. I understand that they have a distribution too. But I have known rich monsters and poor monsters. They aren’t very different.

I generalize about that group because I have had highly negative and highly positive experiences with men in all socio-economic groups and different social communities. And I like to travel. I meet people all over the place. I have been to 27 states so far and I will see all of them.

I asked Noah today if it was hard being married to someone as angry as I am at his demographic. He said it is much like living with any random person because everyone hates white men. I feel sad when Noah talks about his experience of living in the world. It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun being him.

I suppose it would be fair to say that I have a lot of neutral interactions with white men–although honestly those are more rare for me. In all the random social contexts when I interact with people briefly it’s likely to be a woman or a non-white man. Like checkout clerks. Those are the most neutral interactions in my life.

Otherwise I find myself loving or hating individual white men. It’s rare for me to feel ‘meh’. And I usually know within a few minutes if I hate someone. It is rare for me to change my mind.

When I love someone and I am very angry with them sometimes it feels kind of like loving them and hating them at the same time. I can tell that the danger zone for me is when I lose respect for someone. I don’t really know how to handle this like a grown up. Luckily it seems to involve people fading completely out of my life whether I like it or not. I am just riding the waves of people coming and going. Don’t get attached to anyone.

I’m doing better with the kids. It helps that Calli has picked up like 20 new words and it is making it easier to talk to her. We had a rocky couple of weeks. I’m glad things are settling down.

I feel worried that I won’t allow my children authentic emotion. Then I talk to them and I stop worrying. I’m kidding. Calli doesn’t want to ever identify herself as sad. She thinks she will be punished and sent away from me if she is sad. I am working on teaching her that there is a difference between “sad” and “ear splitting shrieks that will shatter my ear drums and cause a week long headache”. Being sad isn’t a problem. Hurting my head a lot is. It’s a journey.

I think it is interesting how when I look around at the world I see people trying to get by. That’s life. It’s a constant struggle to get what you need and what you want. I see people using modern conveniences as if they will provide happiness. How is that working out for y’all? It’s pretty shitty for me. I like my new washer and dryer and all but they haven’t improved my mental health.

When I think about generations past most of what I think about is how they spent a lot more time having to deal with being alone in a way that I cannot imagine. I have books. I have a computer and an internet connection. I am never completely alone. I always have a way of distracting my mind. I can’t help but think this is bad for me. Am I so anxious because I kill a lot of time distracting myself and I am not accomplishing much with my life? I have a hard time adding things on to parenting. Often that is all I can do. I feel pathetic about that.

Once upon a time people raised their children and their food. We would starve.

I think that part of the reason things are going better lately is Shanna is catching on to this housework thing. I guess we needed a week of being stuck at home for her to be bored enough to figure it out. Of course this involves me doing a lot of baseline work to keep the house clean. Anyway, for the past few days she has been coming to me and saying, “If I clean up the living room can I do a craft?” Then she cleans up the living room. I am so ecstatic I could swoon. Calli helps. They both try to sing the cleaning up song Kira taught them. “Look at Mommy do her share” always comes attached with this very doting smile and a hug. Sometimes Shanna feels patronizing in a good way.

I feel incredibly volatile. Happy then angry. I am having an interesting time emotionally handling the kind of disclosure going on in therapy. I really need to talk about these things. And I feel guilty talking to Noah about all of it at this point. I’m sure he’s bored. I’m bored. I feel very ashamed of being someone who has to talk about incest a lot. I need to talk about what I saw and experienced and how it changed me. I fucking have to and I don’t have many good places. But it’s hard going from that level of discourse back to biting my tongue and praying I have the ability to stay silent. Because everything in my brain is poison and I don’t want it to seep into the world.

My cheeks are raw. I have been biting the hell out of them. That seems to be the next thing I am doing. I do it completely unconsciously and I don’t notice till too late. I want to be in pain. I feel pretty disgusting and it seems somehow a moral wrong that I am in so little pain.

Last night sex was hurting. I told Noah to stop. He did immediately and was very supportive. I feel like I failed in my duties. I don’t get a checkmark towards my quota if I’m a loser and I can’t finish. Noah doesn’t feel that way. He was really nice. It wasn’t his fault it was hurting. Bodies are tricky. We both did everything “right”. I still feel wrong. I still feel bad.

I feel this horrible sense of foreboding. I am not fulfilling my function. My role. There is this whole Embargo thing that protects other women. I am not fulfilling my function as the one who has to make up for all those asshole, selfish girls. I am saying no. That’s not something I am supposed to do. I feel braced for someone to hit me. I feel terrified. When I go out into groups of white men I have to be tense all the time and prepared to deal with someone who is going to be mad that I am joining the Embargo. I can’t relax. It could happen at any point.

But men of color don’t harass me in the same ways. They will express general appreciation for me but there is no attempt to move towards me (they usually back away while calling a compliment so as to appear less threatening, in fact). That’s not how white men work.

At the dance community I don’t have anyone suggesting that I am mean for not giving out blowjobs. Instead I have men sneer while they look me up and down and tell me they don’t want to dance with me. It’s not better.

I’m the only woman I know who went to Renaissance Faire for the sole purpose of picking up men and I slept alone. Even my normal fuckbuddies went off chasing other people. There are some groups that find me attractive and then there is the rest of the world. Where I am apparently far less cute than I think. And they sneer at me for wanting to touch their hands.

I know that there are other communities out there. Well, I hear. Sort of. Occasionally. After the fact. But things start too late at night or they are far away or they are not even vaguely kid friendly. Maybe I’ll find a community some day. Right now I am sticking with the home schooling group.

It’s weird. I am not going to be a person who really immerses herself in that world. I’m not going to chase fame for being a parent. It kind of bugs me. And I don’t think that one reads my blog and thinks, “Yeah, another Mommy Blogger.” That makes me curious. Would anyone describe me that way? I find the term hilarious. I write about incest and rape and violent sex. Oh, and I have kids.

Is my gender or my relation with those two people enough to change everything I am and have been online for ten years? (I read a blog. In case you are wondering what this random tangent is about.)

I have been feeling weirdly guilty about how disjointed my blogging is. I keep forgetting why I do it. I do it because otherwise these words get backed up in my head. When I get them out I can stop rehearsing. It doesn’t matter if other people are annoyed by how repetitive I am. It doesn’t matter if it is comprehensible to everyone. This isn’t a book. This isn’t a self-contained essay. It’s a journal entry. I miss that aspect of “livejournal”. It’s my personal journal. I just post it on the internet because otherwise I stop writing. I won’t do it just for me.

I feel like I specifically use blogging as a hack to get through my defense mechanisms. I am willing to write things in weird disjointed ways over long periods of time to a semi-anonymous audience. I will explain some things and not others with no rhyme or reason. I can handle that level of commitment. I can’t commit to always being coherent. I reference a lot of random things very quickly. After the fact it doesn’t always make sense to me either. This is stream of conscioiusness.

But I find patterns in the gush. I see in glaring detail the omission of the word contempt for the slow fade of love. I don’t stop loving people because I am mad at them. I stop loving people when I feel contempt for them. It’s not a pretty thing to say. That’s a lot of why I work hard to not criticize Noah overly. I don’t want to walk down that road.

I picked this life. I want to stay in it. That involves maintaining respect for Noah. He mentioned last night that he is going on 40. Yup. He pointed out how he is aging. Yup. When I met him he was 28. I think he has improved substantially. I think he has turned into a man. I appreciate the sacrifices he makes for me and for us–they are many.

Noah says that I am alienating my audience (white males) in my rhetoric. Yet years ago he went from saying, “I don’t think there is any sexism in my company” to being able to point out specific things people say that suck. And sometimes he even calls them on it. I like hearing about his day so I get a lot of details.

He has changed. I take a lot of responsibility. I’m not an easy pill to swallow. I can be quite bitter. But there is good to be found.

I wish I felt like I was good. I mean–I know I’m an asshole. I’m not a bitch. How about that for my anti-women shit. Assholes are self absorbed and unwilling to bend for someone else’s convenience or preference. Bitches actively want to hurt people and will go out of their way to punish people. How do you like that difference in gendered expectations?

I think men are damaging because they are apathetic about the harm that happens near them. It isn’t their problem, Jack. They don’t even notice it because it is so normalized for them. And when you slap them in the face repeatedly with the fact that it is happening they resist. Until they say, “Hey maybe you are right.”

Subtle polite messages are ignored. I’m not trying to hurt you, my darling white men. I’m just trying to slap you out of apathy. I understand that this approach is not for everyone. I am Not Everyone’s Thing. I knew that.

I’m tired of having men tell me they don’t know anyone who supports rape when they know a number of rapists. I just am not allowed to say out loud who they are. In fact they support rapists with ongoing friendship and love. Yeah. Stop telling me you don’t support rape. Fuck you.

Why don’t women report more to the police? Because it’s he said/she said unless a woman has the presence of mind to go directly to a hospital for a rape kit. It is pretty standard trauma reaction for women to not think clearly after being raped. Lets humiliate them for that as much as possible and see how many try to stand up for themselves. At this point I don’t think I could successfully prosecute any of the men who have assaulted me as an adult. I don’t have any options unless I had a very successful lawyer and my odds would still be miniscule. I don’t have money to burn on wasted attempts at vengeance. Give me a break.

No, I didn’t mean that men AND women have to work harder to end rape. I think women are already working about as hard as they can. Where are the god-dam men? Those supposed “allies” who “don’t support rape”. Yeah. Stop hanging out with rapists and I might believe you for more than a millisecond.

I am so tired of being lied to. I think I am glad we didn’t get the car back yesterday. I can use another day of being trapped in the house. I’m not feeling sociable.

I think that part of where women come into this is that every little girl should be told that when someone penetrates their genitals without consent that is rape. Let’s get this word force out of it. Because it means different things to different people and emotional coercion counts. If someone puts something in your genitals in a way you have not consented to that is rape. Or in your mouth. You can be raped with oral sex.

I feel like we don’t have a group consensus on what good touch/bad touch even means. So how can we have a discussion?

working and sexual assault

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On bart. Yesterday was a whole series of adventures. I didn’t sleep much on Thursday night. Lots of anxiety and fuss and such. But Friday morning Noah let me sleep on the couch for a few hours because I wasn’t scheduled till the afternoon.

Working is such an odd experience for me. Noah told me to enjoy my busman’s holiday. (There is an old joke about how bus drivers go on vacation and drive around the countryside.) I washed a lot of dishes yesterday. I made a lot of ice cream sandwiches and two quiches. It doesn’t really feel like I’m doing something important or useful only this is all work that has to be done for this business to succeed. I think that the fact that I won’t benefit from the business at any point no matter how hard I work is part of why I’m just… flat.

But being there was useful because one of my internet fans came in and gave me a fancy-pants keyboard. Whoo! We had a really nice chat. I figured out who he was and we are a lot closer than two degrees of separation. It’s always funny to meet those people and go, “Oh wait! I know stories about you! And I have questions!”

When I talk to people in the kink/freak communities the whole topic of monogamy/nonmonogamy comes up. I think partially because when people make different choices there is the natural response to consider how those choices would work for you. It’s hard to explain why I want Noah to never sleep with anyone again and yet that’s the important bit. It’s not that Iwant to be monogamous. It’s that I want Noah to be and I know I can’t ask him to be without doing it myself. I’m grudgingly willing to accept that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Noah sleeping with other people bothers me. It makes me feel unwanted and unloved. Sure those are feelings I could work on but don’t I have enough to freak out about having to work on? For the love of toast why do I have to work on that specific bit of awful? No thanks. So we are monogamous.

But then I go out in public. For the first while I was there and working there was this hoooooooootguy. I looked up and saw him and I started salivating and I flushed and uhm more moisture appeared. Not in my mouth. Ahem. He was really gorgeous. God he was my type. Nerdy—this guy had to be a geek. Any other profession would kick him out. He had dark hair that was on the shortish side and a white streak and dark framed glasses. He looked like he could would smile when making someone cry.

It’s kind of weird to react like that. To want like that out of the blue given that I’m not allowed to follow my pecker through life any more. Why is it more important for me to say that Noah can’t have extra sex than for either of us to be allowed to do things we enjoy? Because seriously I enjoy anonymous sex.

I’ve been trying to come up with the whole list of people who have sexually assaulted me since I turned 18. It feels like I should get to the point where at least I know who I have to worry about. Dan. Paul. Kevin. That coast guard guy.

With Dan I wanted to have sex with him but I told him no unprotected sex. He got me drunk and had unprotected sex with me while I was unconscious. With Paul I wanted to have sex but I told him no unprotected sex. I was on drugs and unable to physically force him off of me. GHB makes it really hard to fight back. That’s kind of the point. Kevin was one of the few friends I had during a time when I was scared and lonely. He likes giving massages and I have always been in a lot of pain. I knew fairly quickly that I would have to say no to sexual contact every single time I saw him no matter how clear I made it that I was not interested, ever. I would often have to reach down and remove his fingers from my vulva or vagina while he was giving me a massage. I had to tell him over and over that surpriseoral sex isn’t ok. The coast guard guy spiked my drink but at least he used a condom.

That is my adult sexual assault history. I have done a lot of very heavy play with people that falls into the ambiguous land of consensual nonconsent but I would not accuse any of those people of being out of bounds. They did what I negotiated. There were others, like Matthew, who was so brutal and nasty that I felt physically bad and emotionally bad about myself afterwards but I don’t think it was sexual assault. I negotiated and agreed. It just turned out to be much heavier play than I wanted. And I never have the balls to say in the middle of a scene, “Whoa—slow down.” I don’t safeword. I take what people feel like doing to me.

Last night Kevin came into the coffee shop. I asked the other owners who were on shift if I was allowed to kick someone out if he sexually assaulted me years ago. They offered to do it for me so I wouldn’t have to. I took several minutes to think about it and process and decide. Then I squared my shoulders and marched over to Kevin. I said, “I feel really uncomfortable doing this but…”

He broke into my sentence and said, “I have to go.”

I said, “Yes. What you did to me wasn’t ok. No one should have to tell you no over and over. It’s sexual assault. Get out.”

He started to argue but I turned on my heel and kind of ran back behind the counter. I ran all the way to the end where I could duck down behind the coffee machine and cash register. I hyperventilated for a while and felt like I was going to puke on the floor. I pretty much kept my crying under control. It took more than half an hour before I stopped shaking.

This was one of the few times in my life where I was in a position of having to deal with someone who hurt me and I had multiple men offer to rescue me and solve the problem. I told them no. It’s hard to understand why it has to be. Why do I have to be the one to do everything? They wanted to help. They would have done fine. They would have solved the problem and I could have quaked with fear on the far side of the room.

But that’s just the thing. I am no longer 23 and alone and scared. A lot has happened. I have had enough experiences that I know the difference between things I have agreed to and things I have refused. I have gotten to find out what that is like. I didn’t know before. It has always been true that I have to just do what I’m told and accept unwanted, painful sexual contact. That has just been life for me. But not any more. Now I can say “Get out.” I feel like no one will believe me. Who cares if a whore is raped any way. Heck, a lot of it wasn’t “rape rape” any way.

I may not get to actually feel safe this lifetime but I do get to say that people who have already hurt me have to get the fuck away from me.

Today is going to be another very long day. I ran ten miles this morning instead of twelve because I am going to have to walk across the city later and I think it will be ok. I’m going to go make food and food and food. I should eat before I start working. Yesterday I ate lunch at 11:30a and dinner at 9:30p. I can’t do that again.

I’m really weirded out by how much running is an appetite suppressant. Not what I expected. I have two offers of couch crash space tonight. I may go out after working. I brought one of those frightening 5 hour energy drink things Noah gets from work. I’m going to be going to bed at like 6pm on Sunday. I hope I have fun. I hope I don’t feel too anxious. I hope I feel like I am still interesting to talk to even if I won’t be sucking anyone off.

It’s hard to believe sometimes.

And after working all day Saturday I’m tired. Holy moly. Lots of working. Tired. But I want to go out!

This is why I don’t have friends.

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So someone decided to tell me that I am “too smart” to believe a fairly extreme interpretation of the opinion of the laws of my country. Specifically, that lawmakers who push through anti-abortion laws have more interest in preserving the parental rights of rapists than in protecting me.

I feel so much rage. I would like to punch that man in the face. I don’t think I should be in a room with him for a while. I’m fucking tired of the condescension. This is why I don’t have more friends. I have a hard time suffering fools.

When I was eighteen years old I met a guy online and brought him to a party. He drugged me and raped me. I called the police the next day and told them that I would like to press charges. I had physical evidence. It was soon enough that I probably could have gone to the hospital for a rape kit and to be tested for the drugs he gave me. But I was stupid and I didn’t think of it. I called the police and asked them to help me.

I was told “What did you expect?” The officer refused to press charges. It might harm my rapist’s career in the Coast Guard. There is no doubt in my mind that the Sheriff who told me that I got what I deserved would be on the side of that guy getting to know his kid. I’m really grateful that most of my rapists decided to wear condoms. That bit of magnanimous action is probably the only reason I have not had to have an abortion or be a severely abusive mother. I promise you that if I had a child because someone raped me I wouldn’t be a good mother. It’s not the kid’s fault–of course. But shit rolls down hill.

“Too smart” how condescending, rude, and arrogant. Ah, so I must be smart enough to agree with a man. I see. Well I suppose that means you are giving me undue credit.

I live in a world that goes back and forth between how it treats me. On one hand women should be pure and innocent until they meet the right man. On the other hand men have needs and there should be trashy women they don’t have to care about who are required to meet those needs whenever desired. Try to tell me I am wrong.

I have been the whore no one had to give a shit about for most of my life. I am self-sufficient. My needs are my problem and no one else’s. That has been made very clear to me.

Noah is different. The only reason I understand that not everyone is treated as a hole who is required to serve whom ever when ever is because I read books and I finally found someone who is nice to me. I am so grateful that he is nice to me. He really is. He’s gentle. He tries to be considerate. When he is self-absorbed for a while and I break down crying he doesn’t get mad at me. He apologizes for ignoring me and loves on me. (Not sex.) It’s so weird. Someone cares about me. Someone thinks that me feeling good and safe and loved is important. How very different from the rest of the world.

People are happy to say that they think I should feel good, even that I deserve to feel good and safe and loved. But they won’t do anything about their behavior to help me feel that way. I’m just supposed to magically start feeling that way. I don’t know about other people, but it doesn’t work that way for me.

In order for me to feel safe I have to avoid people who are going to denigrate my intelligence if I have the audacity to have different life experiences. When a man is arguing with me about rape rhetoric it’s not exactly a level playing field. They are trying to argue the ideals and the best possible case scenario so they can look reasonable and logical. I’m telling you what has happened to me. Fuck you. Don’t fucking tell me how our system should work and look down on me because it doesn’t fucking work that way.

The last guy who raped me before Noah showed up to rescue me didn’t use a condom. He got me so drunk I passed out and had unprotected sex with me. I would have been thrilled to have sex with him–with a condom. He didn’t want that so he stacked the deck and had the kind of sex he wanted to have. It’s a good thing I was on birth control. How do you think the Dickens Fair community would have reacted if I had shown up pregnant claiming that one of the popular actors raped me? No one would believe it. I got what I was asking for anyway. And I would have had to share custody.

Don’t fucking tell me I am “too smart” to believe that politicians want to actively hurt me. Life has taught me that slowly and painfully. I think I should do some unfriending. It’s really not worth the aggravation.

I think every so often about the fact that if I hadn’t been white I don’t think there is any chance in the world I would be where I am. I would not be safe. I would still be suffering. It feels wildly unfair. I have a lot of survivors guilt.

If I wasn’t white then the lawyer who defended me when I was five wouldn’t have allowed his daughter to be friends with me. I doubt he would have worked for me for cheap. That annuity changed my life. If I wasn’t white I wouldn’t have been interesting to someone like Tom. He helped support me for years and gave me a safe, stable place to attend college from. I doubt I would have finished college without his help. Noah probably wouldn’t have recognized me as being like him if I wasn’t white.

It all feels like an accident. I feel like I got lucky over and over. I only got the help I needed because my outside appearance was pleasing enough. Because men with money want to fuck me and in this country the men with money are mainly white.

I’m not supposed to say that, right?

In this country you have rights if you have enough power and money to fight for them. Poor women of color are rarely in that category. When white men tell me that I am being melodramatic when I interpret laws in the ways that I do I feel so much rage and anger I want to physically attack them. How god damn dare you try to interpret the experiences of people who will never have your advantages. Never have your opportunities. Never have the protection you enjoy under the law.

And when my “friends” start lecturing about how taxes are theft and the government is stealing their money to give it away to unfit people I want to go on a shooting spree. I’m not sure I qualify as a Libertarian any more.

You have enough. You have so much that you have a lot of needless fluff in your life. You have extra money and food and everything else. Why are you such a selfish piece of shit that you think that other people should suffer because you don’t want to share? Welcome to America. If you can get it for yourself then you can have it, no matter how many people you have to step on and hurt in the way. If you want to live a reasonably decent life with dignity you had got damn better pick the right kind of white family to be born into.

I am so angry.

I am angry with myself that I don’t have more energy to work in social justice now. But I can’t. I would do a lot of damage to my kids if I tried. That feels humiliating. I can’t do much to change the world right now. All I can do is talk about how fucked up it is. I can talk about how it has hurt me. Often when I talk about how it has hurt me other women will come talk to me about their stories. They feel less alone. If that is the only gift I have to give at this point then I had better start curling ribbon to put on top.

I don’t hate all white men. Noah doesn’t condescend to me. He doesn’t denigrate my intelligence. He doesn’t insult me. He is fairly unusual among the white men of my experience. He doesn’t act like it takes an act of Congress to force him to apologize when he is accidentally a douche. I didn’t know that men like him existed.

Noah is my first experience with a man who treats me like an equal. The other men I deal with act like I should look up to them and their experience, their wisdom, and respect them. I’d rather eat worms.

I don’t respect people more or less based on their job or their money. I respect people for how they exist in the world. I know a lot of people who are actively working to make the world better. They do it in a wide variety of ways. No one is perfect. One of the most important things you can do to make the world a better place is to stop treating women like they are less than men. A lot of people do. This is not a guy thing. Misogyny is alive and well among women.

I’m also going to take a moment to say that I hate everyone who says, “Pregnancy is not a disability” whether they are men or women. I’m glad you have had that experience. I was enormously sick and incapable. I guess that makes me inferior, pathetic, and bad. I was disabled. I was on bed rest. I had to not walk around or I puked all over the place. I lost 18 pounds by the end of my second trimester because I was so sick.

But I was supposed to shake it off and “act normal” because men don’t go through this period where an alien parasite invades their bodies so obviously I shouldn’t be effected by the experience. If I have issues it is all my mind. I could function if I just wasn’t so lazy.

I really hate people. Yes, I could have kept teaching. Even though it was technically illegal for me to leave the classroom unsupervised to go vomit several times a day. I guess I should have been puking in the trash can. Geez, these lazy women wanting special treatment while they vomit uncontrollably. What the fuck is their problem.

This is all wrapped up for me. When a man tells me I am “too smart” to believe that lawmakers might push things through in a way that is severely problematic and dangerous to me I reference back to my life experience.

I’m always told things will be easy. That I shouldn’t complain. It’s easy for every one else, why am I whining.

I’m sorry I’m not you. And yet, fuck you. No I’m not. You are a fucking asshole and I don’t want to be like you.

I react the way I react based on a life of experiences. Do not insult me. Do not talk down to me. Those are not the only rapes in my life. When I am trying to decide how I feel about rape I have a wide variety of emotions available to me based on a wide variety of circumstances and occasions. I’m sure they are all my fault. What else did I expect?

I expect that people think I am a worthless piece of shit. I am a hole with no value of my own. The only reason to keep me or people like me around is if you want a hole. I should not get much say so about who goes in or who comes out. It’s not my place. I’m just the hole.

My local bdsm community; or Sex is complicated.

4 Replies

When I’m not writing I have a harder time remembering my resolutions and I don’t feel like I make progress in “processing” because I just say the same thing over and over. I like to pretend that when I write I occasionally mix it up and say different things and reach new-to-me conclusions or connections. This is what I tell myself to justify my continual verbal diarrhea.

My kind of rough plan at this point (in my head so far) is that I will finish editing a friend’s book by the end of June (I’m honest about my limited time available for such work) and then I need to start editing No Secrets again because I would like to put the kickstarter up during the summer. I think it would be nice to have it end on my birthday. After I see if I can get funding for a print edition (so I don’t have to front all the money [that I don’t have]) [incidentally–the ebook has paid for the editor and has mostly paid for the ISBN number. It’s only been out for nearly three months. I’m thrilled.] I will deal with that. Then I can turn my full attention to Part Two. If Noah says it is ok I want to spend October doing pre-writing stuff and then see if NaNoWriMo is sufficiently inspirational again this year. What do you think, Noah?

It’s hard trying to work on multiple projects in my head at once. Things get kind of muddled. Although I have to say that editing my friend’s book right now is ideal in terms of making me think about how I want to phrase things in Part Two (capitalized because for the moment it is the working title and that makes it a proper noun–I’m kind of obsessed with thinking about when capitol letters are appropriate right now).

I’m thinking about the bdsm community. What am I going to choose to write about? How am I going to show what happened? I don’t want this to be another “telling” book. I want this book to do more showing of what happened and that means cherry picking experiences I had and creating dialogue for them. Dialogue scares the shit out of me. I don’t want to remember something differently than someone else and be called a liar. Instead I will call it fiction and improvise freely to make my point. I’M NOT ACTUALLY SAYING YOU SAID IT. SEE IT’S FICTION!!! That’s my motto right now. And yes, I am yelling it in my head.

I came into a very particular community at a very particular time. I traveled a great deal during the four years I was heavily involved in the bdsm scene. I got to find out that people in Australia and England and the East Coast of the US treats things quite differently people do in the bay area. Holy moly the Seattle scene is different. And Portland was different again. There are a bunch more cities I could list off but that seems silly. I got out of my bubble as often as possible. At the time I don’t think I knew I was trying to learn bdsm in a studying kind of way. I wanted to find out what it meant to different people.

I only knew what my local community taught me at first. That was a fairly biased starting point. I went to the Wednesday munch in Palo Alto for four years. I rarely missed a munch in that time period. I went religiously. It is the longest period of my life of having an intensive social experience. I have certainly known people for longer than that–Britt and Jenny are the best examples of that. We have come-and-go relationships and we have rarely spent all that much time together. I saw the Wednesday munch crowd (there was a sizable ‘normal’ crowd) at least weekly and often more than once a week. That’s a lot of contact for me.

When I try to think of how to describe the crowd I am struck by how afraid I am. Most of the folks who still hang out near the munch like me well enough. I don’t want to fuck that up by writing about the experience I had. I don’t want them to know that sometimes they weren’t very nice to me and they didn’t even know they were doing something challenging. I’m pretty sure that folks were trying to be nice to me. It isn’t their fault I am damaged. I came pre-fucked up.

I’m beating around the bush and wasting time. Most of the folks who were part of that social group can be charitably described as being socially awkward. When you get together and hang out with people for years and years just because you all like deviant sex you are going to have an odd group. People different types of deviant sex, by and large. My opinion is that community focus comes about through a sort of peer pressure and exposure. Themes emerge. Seattle is known for blood play and suspension. In Australia they talk about “performing” and many people in their community will not play in private. They think it all must be done on a stage in front of an audience or you are weird for doing it. I thought that was hilarious.

In Palo Alto when I was part of the crowd there was a heavy emphasis on straight up fetish gear (mostly latex though no one scorned leather or pvc) and pushing people to the edge of their pain limits. The crowd really thrived on trying to break people. Not everyone. Just the loudest players who played the most often.

I get the impression that many of the people who were there for the social aspects were not looking to be bad ass players but they certainly were happy to egg the conversation on. I spent a lot of time there knowing that I was mostly attractive because of my age and willingness to do whatever someone wanted me to. I don’t play with safewords. In general that just means I don’t say no regardless of what someone wants to do.

But I’m really harsh and abrasively defensive with everyone I don’t want to play with. I think that got worse not better over the years of spending so much time in La Dolce Vita (the name of the café the munch was in). The group was very dismissive of the intelligence of women. Most of the men in the crowd worked in tech. Almost none of the women were computer people. As a female friend said to me years ago (roughly paraphrased because the passage of time is like that): “Of course they treat you like you are stupid. You don’t even work in the computer field.” If you aren’t a geek you are shit. Check. Got it. I wonder why I have such a fucking chip on my shoulder about the topic.

I had a bunch of men I would talk to. I did have female friends but they tended to pay less focused attention to me. The men appreciated me sitting on their laps and being flirtatious. Most of the men in that crowd had virtually zero traditional sex in their lives. I find that fascinating. There were a fair number of single guys who were single for many years and some married guys who had wives who just… didn’t. I was quite happy to fill their need for feeling interesting and wanted. I’m not very good at talking to men without acting out in a somewhat sexual manner. All of a sudden I was the best thing ever. It’s not that I was ever that hot, I’m not, and it’s not that I was ever going to fuck them, I didn’t, but I looked hard at them. I got to know them and had a consistent relationship. It was quite lovely in a variety of ways.

I’m willing to bet they would still enjoy having a friendship with me even if I didn’t sit on their laps and uhm move about. I have always had issues with compulsive sexual acting out. I was really grateful that Tom told me early on he wanted monogamy. I got to stop having to follow through on my teasing. I could tell people in advance that I was in a monogamous relationship so what I was doing had limits. When you are talking to men who aren’t getting any sexual activity and you say you will tease but not go all the way they get to make the decision and avoid anger. It stays friendly and light. They don’t start getting more interested and pushing. Monogamy gave me a lot of freedom. These guys were all good friends with my boyfriend and they had known him first. They weren’t going to push my limits because they didn’t want to step on Tom’s toes.

Once I broke up with Tom and moved around the community a bit more freely I had several sexual assaults in a short period of time. I think my local community is quite misogynistic. It is my experience that men who aggressively want violent sex often have no interest in asking for consent first because they would risk hearing “no”. Fetishists are different. Most fetishists (in my little corner of the world–who knows about your corner of the world) are not particularly aggressive about sex. There is a lot of bdsm play that lives in this weird gray area of sensory experience that feels unrelated to ones genitals. It may be pleasurable to each individual but they shouldn’t be sharing that feeling. It’s about them each having the body experience they want. Being encased from head to foot in latex makes sex basically impossible. Sure you can do some masturbation, but who counts that?

My local community had a bizarre focus on no-sex. Bdsm is not about sex! It’s a “hobby”. It’s members are enthusiasts. I know it wasn’t just Tom. I went to a party every month with this crowd. I think I can count on my fingers how many times anyone had sex at one of those parties. I went to more than fifty of those parties. If I count up all of the times someone was having sex and I was not involved the numbers fit on one hand with room to spare. That’s kind of odd for an event that is ostensibly sex focused.

That was where I spent my early adulthood in the sex community. I found a no-sex ghetto. It was hilarious. It was really weird to me that I managed to find the group that didn’t have sex. It massively shaped my attitude about bdsm. It has been a weird journey to try and combine the two. Noah is the sort who doesn’t play without sex. Sex is the point. That other stuff is kind of interesting for a bit but really we are here for sex. Let’s not kid ourselves.

It is a night and day contrast. Tom and I had sex in fewer than 5% of our scenes. Roughly. I didn’t actually count. We just didn’t have much sex. Sex was different. I think that sex was too emotionally vulnerable. He doesn’t like being vulnerable. With sex you can’t control a lot of it. Bodies are unpredictable. Tom has trouble orgasming. He doesn’t really do it any way other than masturbating by himself. Having a partner there is distracting. I am a competitive person and I learned how to get him off through oral and vaginal sex. I know I can count the number of times I achieved those goals on my fingers. It was too hard, honestly. Over an hour of oral sex makes your jaw hurt something fierce. Tom has an enormous cock. It hurts no matter where he puts it. Sex was really complicated.

So I lived in this strange world where people liked having me around to wear fetish gear in front of them because they liked seeing it and I was appreciated for hinting at sex and not delivering. It was a strange period in my life.

Tom wanted me to learn how to tie him up. He likes the experience. I was under contract so I couldn’t say no. I didn’t want to learn how to top. I was correct in assuming that once I was known for having those skills I would be asked to do them a lot. I have no sexual interest in having someone helpless. Just not my kink. But I have a lot of interest in meeting my friends’ needs and helping them have happier lives. I topped a lot. I’m sure it was a mixed bag experience for people because I’m an inconsistent top. I either broadcast that I’m doing this because I feel like I have to (how sexy is that? not at all) or I ask people how/where they want to be pushed. I like doing very intense scenes both as a top and as a bottom.

When I top I only do a few activities. I’m a very competent suspension top. I certainly can and do floor bondage on occasion but I really prefer suspension where possible. For me it is about the trust involved. Tying someone up on the floor always leaves me thinking, “Oh shit what now?” I often feel uncomfortable touching people. I don’t know what the fuck to do. I’ve never figured it out well. I was taught it wasn’t about sex so I feel uncomfortable going there. Not to mention that I don’t find submissive people sexually attractive so… yeah. I don’t want to go after peoples genitals. I actually did a lot of sex play with Tom when he was tied up. That was the big exception. (I swear to God I have asked for permission to talk about this at least three times and he says it is ok.) He liked doing the forced feminization then getting tied up and “taken” thing. I feel bad about these events in a variety of ways. He wanted to be forced to be like a woman (which I have weird feminist feelings about) and then raped. Lots of men fantasize about what it is like to have this happen.

I have this really uncomfortable set of emotions around these men thinking it might be fun to have my life for a few hours. I know that there are people who have never been raped who do rape play. I have mixed feelings about people thinking that rape is hot. There are things about rape that are hot, I get that. Power imbalance feels sexy. It’s just one way of imagining a power imbalance.

I imagine it would feel different for a woman who has never been raped to dress her boyfriend up in a dress and sodomize him. I have a whole complex swirl of emotions around, “See. I’m supposed to like it when people “rape” me. Obviously I am just interpreting things wrong in other situations in my life. I was supposed to enjoy them. Does that mean I am bad because I didn’t enjoy it when Jeremy sodomized me? Am I broken? Was I just not quite big enough? What? What did I do wrong?”

For me to do rape play as the top I have to play very carefully close to becoming my father. These things just pass right along don’t they?

And he didn’t want to be raped “as a man”. He wanted to be forced to be something weaker. Something that could be raped. I have some complex fucking emotions around that. The biggest part of me tries to believe that it is ok for people to have whatever sexual predilections they have. I just don’t need to do it with them.

I spent years at that munch listening to the loud, overbearing men lecture me about Libertarianism (I still haven’t resigned my party affiliation), cars, guns, and computers. I was welcome to develop an active interest in all of the above with them. If I had a dissenting opinion I could either deal with being shouted down (and called a bitch) or keep my fucking mouth shut. I learned to keep my mouth shut. Tom and I didn’t argue very much. We got along very well. I didn’t say a lot.

I sat on their laps and flirted and was looked at while not talking. That was what I was wanted for. That is what I felt was wanted from me. They haven’t made a lot of effort to continue to know me. When I broke up with Tom I stopped going to the munch and the monthly party. That was his space. Apparently all of those friends were his friends too. I didn’t try real hard to pull anyone out of the crowd with me and they haven’t tried to stay in contact with me. Several of them have given me half-hearted “sure we should do dinner some time” shit. When I ask for a date I get brushed off with, “I’m really busy right now and I will get back to you”. Crickets.

I didn’t really want to be the fetish doll for the rest of my life. I want to be allowed to have dissenting opinions without being told I am a bitch. I asked him flat out, “If I was a guy would you call me an asshole for saying that?”
“No. I wouldn’t call him anything. I would just think he had strong opinions.”
“Then why did you call me a bitch?”
“Because you are one.”

Why do I want monogamy with Noah? Because when I ran into that guy fairly recently I totally offered to have sex with him. I have thought about it for many years. So I told him flat out that I thought about it. For the record I did this before we agreed to monogamy. I have withdrawn all of the offers I was flinging out left and right.

I think it is time for me to move on to a new stage in life where I can recognize that people who only want to spend time with me because I will have sex with them are people I don’t actually need in my life. I have gone literally my entire life using sex as a way of developing relationships. I have a very hard time having contact with people without feeling like I owe them something for putting up with my company and I have so little to offer.

I can see Shanna figuring out how to organize groups of kids to engage in play she directs. It’s fascinating to watch. It gives me a lot of insight into how and when I locked on to sex as a coping strategy. I think that it wouldn’t have worked as well if I had been in one place. You run out of people eventually. Or you end up in cyclical patterns with one abusive partner. I had endless people to try out my opening moves on. It means I didn’t have to do the uncomfortable work of trying something else in order to make friends. I just did the same thing over and over again. When whatever sexual relationship I arranged kind of fizzled out I was dropped like a hot potato. I was usually not acknowledged again while I lived in that place.

I need to stop fucking people because then I feel shamed out of communities. I feel like if I am no longer offering up sexual interaction I don’t have a lot to offer. So I shut my mouth and feel unwanted and I leave.

There is a new family in our homeschooling group. The mom has moved a lot all her life. I’ve been talking to her about displacement and getting to know new people. It’s really interesting. She doesn’t have any abuse in her background. Her family isn’t warm but they aren’t abusive.

I have totally glossed over the beating part of bdsm so far. I grew up in the “hit her harder” school of thought. We were a crowd of very heavy players and we felt distinct pride about that. I showed up to this crowd when I was eighteen. I spent my nineteenth birthday feeling like I didn’t get to say no when everyone at the party wanted to line up to hit me. I never did a group spanking thing again. After that I learned that I was allowed to say no.

But you have to be careful. You can have rules like “I’m monogamous” because of course guys recognize that some guys are possessive of their pussy. But you have to be as available as someone else wants or you are a bitch. Telling guys no makes them hate you. There is a fine line between not looking like a good person to ask (and being roundly ignored as a result) and looking absolutely available. If he has the nerve to ask you really should say yes. You wouldn’t want to be part of the Embargo, now would you?

Sexual longing is so big. It encompasses so much of who a person is. My munch was full of male fetishists (there are not nearly as many women who are into it) who didn’t have sex. Either because they couldn’t because they didn’t have a willing partner or because they didn’t enjoy it that much. Sometimes I feel like a liar when I identify myself as part of the sex community. There wasn’t much fucking going on. But the needs came from similar places. Instead we encased one another in latex or rope. We beat the shit out of one another and called it love. “I know you have a need to feel pain, let me help you with that.”

I have a hard time with going to parties and not playing. I don’t play because I want to, exactly. I play because I feel compelled to. I feel compelled to meet someones needs. Either they want to hurt me or they want to be hurt. I don’t really play with people anymore unless they manage to hit that button. Well, uhm, before that monogamy switch. Ahem.

I don’t know how to channel this with Noah. I’m really struggling. I know that part of it is that I’m having a weird psychological reaction to the fact that I shouldn’t feel shame about what Noah and I do. What we do is given the thumbs up by every legal, moral, and ethical standpoint one can have. We have remarkably vanilla, standard PIV (penis in vagina) sex.

I’m not really a deviant any more. Was I ever one? I struggle with that. I think I wanted what I did when I was younger. But why did I run so hard and so far away from it? Why did I go find a partner who would not be capable of playing out similar roles with me forever? I often feel like I do things wrong for Noah. I’m not very good at the things he prefers. I feel like I am better suited to being in a relationship where I am continually silenced because then my depression is apparently entirely invisible. Isn’t that better? No? I don’t know.

I haven’t been hit to the point of getting a bruise in a long time. It used to be my main hobby. Well, the bruise wasn’t entirely the point. We all loved comparing our bruises though. It was proof that we could handle it. That we liked intense play. We wanted to bear the intensity that someone else wanted to dish out. That proved how submissive we were. I don’t want that shit any more. I’m tired of having to accept pain in order to prove I like someone. If you fucking like me, don’t hurt me.

But but… it gets me off. Really. I’m having a hard time with how difficult it is to get off if I am not in pain. I’ve had a long life to acclimate to believing that I should experience pain as a normal part of sexual activity and I am supposed to shut up about it and smile. And get off. Because then it is better for the person hurting me. They have proof that what they are doing is justified.

I have a lot of complex feelings about that time in my life. I used to put up personal ads for girls. They would come over and we would have awesome, wild, vanilla sex and then they would go away and never be seen again. That was the only way I could have sex that wasn’t painful at that point in my life. Tom was simply too large to ever be comfortable. It always hurt. I just didn’t talk about it. He didn’t really know. And I am god damn good actress. I should have been in porn. I pretend sex is awesome better than most people.

Tom never ever once pushed past me actually saying “no”. Our relationship existed entirely within the realm of me actively consenting to what happened to me. Most of the time I scripted the play. He told me what porn websites he liked (insex.com was his very favorite) and I spent a lot of my free time looking at the pictures trying to figure out what I could handle doing. I tried to write a story with those pictures in my head. I would then tell him the story and how I wanted to play and he would do it. I picked a lot of really brutal play. I’m always interested in proving that I can take pain. At least these days I have gotten over punching games.

For a long time it felt like I was building towards the goal of being able to take enough pain that I could lie on the floor unable to stand and still say, “Beige”.

I want to be hurt. Deep inside me I want to hurt. I want to feel pain more than I want to breathe. Tom and I had a system that worked for several years. When I was getting antsy I didn’t talk about what I was feeling, I asked for a beating. It kept me distracted. Focusing on my beatings was far more socially acceptable than cutting. This way I got to be cool at the same time instead of a damaged little freak. I don’t think it was good for me to hang out with the “hit her harder” camp. I am very competitive in my head.

I feel the need to point out that I know people who take way more intense beatings than I ever have or want to. That’s ok! I’m done trying to climb that ladder. I don’t want to be the biggest masochist. I think I only need to be picked up by my pectoral muscles before being shaken like a dog once. I thought I was going to lose my mind from pain. I couldn’t get away from it. It was every where. It chased me through every back corner of my mind and screamed pain and pain and pain. Giving birth was not that painful. During labor I always had a corner of my mind that I could hide in for brief breaks. (Unmedicated home birth, for the record. After nine days of labor. I hemorrhaged and almost died. It was festive.)

I think I am comfortable saying that I have had the most intense scenes I ever want to have. I’m done climbing that mountain. Those were my personal peaks. I want to not go anywhere near them again. That was a very dark and scary place for me. I don’t think that all masochists have as little respect for their bodies as I do for mine but I am not that sturdy. I didn’t really enjoy all that much of it. I was way past the point when I was doing it for my own masochism. I like to play with sadists. Actual sadists. The kind who like it best when their partner genuinely isn’t having fun. They are willing to really hurt me. After all the years of cutting I have done it seemed kind of ridiculous for me to explore the lighter side of beatings. I didn’t bother. I like single tail whips. I like having my flesh ripped open. I like canes that leave welts that last for weeks. If I don’t have long-term reminders it is like it never happened. It is like I am not serving my purpose.

Noah and I have a hard doing sm play together. It’s complicated.

I wish I knew what I wanted from sex. I wish I had a better understanding of what parts I am doing because I like them. What I like is that my partner is having fun. But that’s a lie. There is stuff I wish Noah did. I haven’t really been talking about them so I can’t get mad at him for not doing them. I consider that to be an inconvenient proviso for life. I can’t get mad at people for not reading my mind. I’m not sure how to find enough time to think about this in my life. I don’t think about sex much when my kids are around. That is just off-limits for me. I’m with them so much that I don’t have a lot of hours of the day when I am able to think about sex. I don’t feel like I am finding a way to figure out new things. I am stuck on old tapes because holy crisco I don’t need something else to be working on really intensely in my personal life.

This is how these things die. They become not a priority. I don’t know how to maintain balance and give everything in my life the attention it deserves. I’m not big enough. I look out at the next few years and see no sign of increased time for sex. Not really. Not for many years, probably. Between the kids and other things that pull our energy I just don’t see much happening. This is how bed death happens.

We still have sex a few times most weeks. We do skip weeks. It’s just not that high of a priority. Too many conflicting factors have to be in alignment. And then we are too tired to do anything all that exciting. I like the intimacy of sex a great deal or I wouldn’t be having it at all right now. Physically it is sometimes annoying and we have an understanding that I “take one for the team” at times. This is part of that sex that women don’t exactly want but they have any way.

This is so complicated. I love Noah. I want him to be happy with me. Noah loves me and wants me to be happy. We are trying to walk a very narrow line between his interest in having sex daily (and sex where I protest is really fairly hot) and the fact that being actually raped over and over again isn’t ok.

I have to get something out of it too. It doesn’t have to be the same thing he gets. If I don’t get anything at all out of it, then I shouldn’t be doing it. I’m ok with the fact that life has some weird trade offs. I get to pick what the hill is this time. I don’t have to have one goal at all times. I don’t get off very often. I know that I can predictably do that if I tell him how to inflict pain. I generally don’t want to feel pain so I don’t ask him to do that. As a result my body is dramatically less responsive and I often feel physically kind of uncomfortable during the act. But I love knowing that I am meeting his needs. This is something that he really needs in order to be a happy person. He will still be here whether I put out or not. But he will be sad and withdrawn. He won’t feel very loved. He will feel rejected. He doesn’t ask me for sex. I have to initiate the vast majority of our sex. I spend every day looking at him. When he is sad, I know I need to.

This sex stuff is so complicated. Noah and I are a good match largely because of the way we have complimentary compulsive sexual behavior. Woo. And we really are learning how to be nice to each other. He likes having sex with me when I’m fighting but he doesn’t push for it. He certainly doesn’t initiate it. I have to verbally request it. Usually by saying, “I want to wrestle and lose.” He perks up more than a child on Christmas.

Noah is my provider. He is my protector from the big bad world in some very material ways. Yes it is hot for him to feel like he is strong. He really isn’t the type to get into sports or other public ways of proving his manliness. He’s a geek. He’s realistic. But he does notice that he needs to work on getting stronger because I’m about to beat him.

It’s very complicated, this liking to lose. This liking of pain. It’s all wrapped up. It’s all wrapped up in thinking that taking pain is required of me. That I am only interesting if I am taking pain of some sort.

I didn’t start talking about my childhood in a public way until after I had mostly retreated from the public scene. They people I had all of my adult relationships with in the bdsm community knew very little about me. I think I talked to a few people one on one a little. I had a few conversations with motherly women. I had female mentors.

That’s all the time for today.

Sex and consent

8 Replies

I believe there needs to be another word. It’s not “rape” if you never say no. But is the sex actually consensual if you have never said yes? There needs to be another word.

Last night a friend came over. I’m going to call her Popcorn, because I can. She was telling me about a situation with her lover where she said no to something and it happened anyway. While she was talking I could feel my stomach explode with acid. I felt scared and upset. Honey, don’t you know that when someone does things to you after you say “no” that is rape? But I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. When I spoke I very calmly asked if they had a consensual non-consent relationship. She said that the deal is she puts up with what he wants to do or he walks.

We need another word.

We need another word to explain how badly we want to feel that people like us and love us and want to be around us so we tolerate things that make us feel bad. We need another word to explain the intersection of scared-little-girl-who-knows-saying-no-won’t-stop-it and the adult woman who is allowed to make odd choices. I think that people are allowed to choose consensual non-consent relationships. I know people who desperately want to be in no-safeword relationships. Well, ok. If that works for you and you want it very badly, rock on. Not everyone has made that conscious decision. An awful lot of women just think there isn’t a point in saying no. It won’t stop what is happening and if you say no things will get worse, not better. Better to shut up and just take it. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.

Last night I masturbated right before going to sleep. I thought about domestic discipline stuff. I thought about what it would be like for Noah and I to come up with “rules” and for me to be held to them. I think that more than anything in the whole world I want concrete proof that someone is watching my behavior and giving me the equivalent of a gold star when I am good. It feels like no one notices or cares. I have a lot of hard days when getting through my basic list of tasks feels harder than running a marathon. I want someone to notice and comment on whether or not I have completed the tasks that make me “good” enough. I try so very hard. When I am not good enough I want someone to care enough to give me a way to earn back my goodness by submitting to correction. I want to be good enough so much it makes me cry. I don’t feel like I am.

I should just tolerate whatever someone wants to do to me. I’m not really good enough to ask for things to be different. I’m not really good. My behavior isn’t good. I think rebellious thoughts all day long. I want someone to know that I am feeling rebellious and tell me that they see that I am still doing the right thing even though I am struggling internally with the process. I want it so much.

Noah told me point blank that he is not willing to discuss “rules” at this stage of our life because right now I have too much pressure on me and he’s not going to be the straw that breaks my back. He’s a very schmott guy, that one.

I struggle with admitting to myself that I do things because I want them. I am so house proud it is kind of silly. I desperately want people to come over to my house and gasp because my garden is so pretty. Wow–I’ve obviously put a lot of work into it and it’s lovely. It’s stupid to work so hard so that phantom people who don’t really care will some day give me a pat on the back. I am doing it for me. Why the lie? I have a powerful need to control the world around me.

It’s all complicated, isn’t it? Wanting love and approval. Yes, Popcorn, being alone is safer. But we are social animals. Being alone isn’t actually safer. So many things can happen while you are alone and there is no one around to help you survive. I want you to survive. I want to survive. We are social creatures. It means different things to different people, yes; I know.

I think about these things so hard because I think about what kind of grown up I want to model being for my kids. I want my gorgeous daughters to believe that it fucking matters when they say no. I want my daughters to believe that no piece of shit man is worth putting up with if he is going to rape them. Complicated. I have some complex feelings about my sexual activity. Do I think Noah is a piece of shit man? Do I think Noah is a rapist? I think about it. I think about what the word rapist really means. Noah has had sex with me while I fought him off–because he had explicit permission in advance to do it once. He doesn’t deserve punishment for doing what I negotiated with him. It was a consensual non-consent scene.

Only that shit fucks you up. That shit fucks up your brain and your body. I consented to it. Did I consent because I think piece of shit girls like me should permit anything and everything to happen to me no matter how much it hurts? I’m not sure it mattered. It was a number of years ago. I went to intensive therapy over that–two or three times a week for a while around that event. It helped me break through a lot of walls around all of the other rapes in my life. I got to find out that I’m not physically all that strong and I can fight as fucking hard as I want to and I still can’t defend myself. I still can’t prevent someone from raping me if they want to.

It’s complicated. At this point in time Noah is very cautious with me. If he senses even mild hesitancy he pulls back and stops touching me and asks for verbal confirmation that I am ok. This man is trying as hard as he can to help me pick up the pieces of my life. This is his life too and he doesn’t want to live with someone who is continually damaged and redamaged. He wanted to have an experience. He wanted to know what something felt like. We found the wall together. We found out what too far felt like. Now he’s careful. I’m not sure he would be able to be careful if he hadn’t found the wall. In the long run I suspect that we will have a better marriage because we shared that experience. We have learned a lot together.

Do I think other women should do it? Well… it doesn’t matter what I think, right? I don’t want my daughters to feel like they need to be violently raped as an adult to prove to themselves that they have no ability to defend themselves. How about if we get them into intense martial arts and self-defense classes at five. Sure, everyone can lose to someone. But let’s improve their odds. Motherfucker. I want my daughters to know how to stand up straight and say, “No I don’t want this” and back it up with leaving because no fucking man is worth putting up with shit that hurts. (Unless they want to consent to SM. I’m not a hypocrite. That’s different.) I want my daughters to feel loved and confident and built up and like they have status and worth and they don’t need a fucking man. Does that mean I want them to be alone and lonely? No. But I want them to communicate about their needs. I want them to believe that their needs are important and I want them to hang out with people who agree that their needs are important.

I like having daughters. It challenges me to think very hard about what kind of woman I want them to see. Do I want them to grow up to be brittle and delicate? I can’t decide who they will be, not really. But I can decide who I want them to see. Who they eventually become is up to them. I can make sure that they do not learn from me that they should tolerate whatever someone wants to do. It’s complicated.

I strongly dislike the idea that people “shouldn’t judge”. Fuck you motherfucker I’m going to fucking judge all I want. I’m going to judge if things are safe or smart. I’m not going to try and control you because you have to make your own choices and live with the results. But I really should judge in my head what is going on. I should evaluate things and decide if that is something I think is a good plan or not and I should think about why. I don’t need to share this process, unless people want to hear it, but I really should judge. Saying that people shouldn’t judge is a good way of saying, “I’m not going to bother thinking about actions in advance and I will be a victim all my life.” No thanks.

If a man tells you he doesn’t care about your needs you need to believe him and get the fuck away from him. He probably won’t wake up every single day and look in the mirror and have to deal with the consequences of your interactions. You will. You have to look at yourself every day for the rest of your life. Do you want to be proud of yourself or ashamed? How do you feel about yourself right now? I’m not real fond of my hair this short, I’ll be honest. Overall it is getting easier to look at myself in the mirror. I know I am actually behaving in a way that is consistent with my values. I am judging the fuck out of myself and using that judgment to change my behavior and mannerisms. I’m changing how I experience my life because I want to model for my children what having a good life means. I tell them actively that people live all kinds of good lives. There isn’t one blue print. But for me, I’m very serious about following a fairly distinct progressive path towards being a better person. I will fuck up along the way, but I’ve already come so far.

Even though I really wish I was I’m not a special snowflake. I’m not ever going to be the best. But I’m ok. Everything will be ok in the end; if it’s not ok it’s not the end. I have to be good enough. I have to keep my kids safe enough. We are an accident prone family and we all get a lot of small injuries. I shouldn’t try to prevent that. But I am careful to ice my injuries now and talk about what things I should change and do differently in the future. I no longer sit around extensively talking about how stupid I am when I get hurt. I turned that tape off. That was a strong tape from my childhood. Only stupid people get injured. Only people who aren’t good at (insert activity) get hurt doing it. Incompetent people. When I had to go see the doctor as a child for injuries I was yelled at.

I think I deserve bad treatment. I have to judge how people talk to one another and decide how I would feel about that treatment being given to me. If I don’t do that I have no perspective whatsoever on what things might be like in the lives of other people. All I know is what I know and what I know is that I deserve bad treatment. I deserve to not be able to say no when someone wants to rape me.

I think we need another word. How can we talk about this rape that is not rape? How do we talk about this lack of sense of self that causes women to not even try to prevent bad things? How do we convince our girls that they should learn these self preservation skills? What does that even mean? It all feels so complicated.

I think that part of it involves learning to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. I think if you really and truly believe that you should be raped over and over again you should probably work on that. I don’t care if it makes me a judgmental asshole or condescending or whatever. If you think you deserve to be raped over and over… you should work on that. If you want to play rape games with your lover but you have a safeword for when things get too intense, that’s fine. In my judgmental asshole opinion. As soon as you lose the ability to say no or use your safeword then you shouldn’t engage in the play. In my opinion. We need a word for that kind of sex. I don’t know what it should be.

Any thoughts?

Memory lane

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I had dinner with my ex last night. That was interesting. I asked him a lot of questions and he answered as best he could. I told him point blank that I’m glad the kids thing worked out or I would have kicked myself for the rest of my life for leaving him. I actually kind of wonder if he lost a little bit of his sparkle for me last night. I think I had forgotten a lot of things. His opinion is the only opinion. I remember why we didn’t argue: I bit my tongue a lot. There was no point in discussing controversial topics because he has already made up his mind and he will be condescending, dismissive, and really pretty rude the entire time you talk about something that isn’t his thing. For example: organic farming. He believes it is going to be the destruction of the human race. He won’t talk about the problems from animal feed lots or mono-crops. He thinks there aren’t any problems. Right. I let it go because I don’t care about converting him.

Noah listens to any crack brained thing I bring up in a polite way and when he is doubtful he carefully says, “Can I see some of where you found this information?” If I’m using an idiotic source he lets me down gently. It’s nice to be reminded that for the first time in my life I live with someone who genuinely thinks of me as an intelligent person. I had forgotten. I had forgotten how much everyone before him made me feel like I should shut up and sit down and just let them speak because they are smarter than me. I didn’t always do it but I felt it.

There has been a lot of research lately on how hard it is to change peoples minds. The less smart someone is the more likely they are to be really entrenched in everything they know. Holy crap Tom is narrow minded. He knows what he knows and believes there is no validity in any point of view he disagrees with. It’s fascinating.

He wants to live in a Sci Fi future. He thinks things will be every increasingly technical and people will move to increasingly thinking jobs. I think that is folly. If you look a distribution of intelligence, 50% of people are below average. You really think that everyone in the world should sit on their ass and do a computer job? Really? Not all of us would even enjoy that let alone be capable. I think we should be encouraging people to work more with their bodies if they show the slightest inclination. We are a nation of people who are desperately unfit and unhealthy. The solution is not more sloth.

He wants to have fun. He doesn’t want to create anything in particular. His job is creative enough for him. Every year or so he has a new hardware design project. He is designing things that use basically entirely outside components. He’s figuring out how to assemble the right configuration of after market parts. He doesn’t have much desire to really grow the business. He wants to keep very busy (he’s a work-a-holic in my “I lived with him” opinion) at work and make a lot of money so he can have more and more fun. That means racing his Porsche, tying up and sexually controlling women, and working. I told him to go get a vasectomy so he can make damn sure he never accidentally ends up a parent because he wouldn’t be a good one.

Tom is a just fine person. I think I just got over him romantically. It was sudden. I no longer look up to him. He doesn’t have a talent or a skill I respect any more. That was weird to notice. I am now how old he was when we met. I feel disappointed looking at what he has done with his life in the last twelve years since we met. He doesn’t have to give a shit about my disappointment, in fact he doesn’t. He has enjoyed his life. He wants to keep doing the same shit for another thirty or forty years before he croaks. He is perfectly happy. Another woman will always come along, right? SM is more interesting with new people any way. I don’t want that life and I’m really glad I only stayed for four years. I have now been married for longer than I dated Tom. Noah is a larger influence on my character than Tom was. I’m glad for that.

I asked Tom what it was like living with someone as crazy as me. He said he was unaware of it. I cried alone and he didn’t know it existed. He didn’t know I was unstable.

I cut and was suicidal a great deal while I lived with him. I was still interacting with my family a fair bit. I was quite unstable. He didn’t notice. He didn’t fucking notice. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Seriously? You are that self-involved? You never noticed that your partner of four years was unstable emotionally? It makes me think I should feel a lot more confident in my acting skills. Maybe I am even harder to read than Noah says. I cultivate being hard to read. I practice. Really. I do not want to give away the intensity of my emotions when I am around people. It’s dangerous to be noticed for your strong emotions. I didn’t know I was that good though. Tom remembers that we had a lot of fun and got along well. That’s good.

Tom has never read any of my writing. He doesn’t want to know what goes on in my head. That may be brilliant of him. I didn’t understand how much my writing has always contained a plea for someone to read it and come talk to me about it. Noah does. Noah is the only fucking person who is interested in crawling as deeply into my head as possible. It was really wonderful to be reminded what it is like to be in the room with someone who requires me to have a brick wall between myself and him. Noah is interested in what I am thinking and feeling, pretty much at any point. Sometimes he is distracted with other bits of life but if I write it down and leave it for him he always catches up. He has read my entire archive on every blogging site I have ever used. Multiple times. That makes me cry. Oh my G-d he actually loves me. He thinks I am worth that kind of time and attention. I write a fuck ton and I’ve been blogging for over nine years. I need to poke around old storage disks and see if I can find my g-blog archive. I’m not sure if I still have it and that is sad. I should probably make another LJ book so that I have a copy of it. Other people write in paper journals and keep them.

All of a sudden I feel a little spark of interest in finding out what I actually like about bdsm. I spent a lot of time last night feeling like I’m just not a pervert any more. I have no interest in the kind of stuff Tom is into. I’m not interested in being degraded for someone else’s amusement any more. I think the joke is kind of thin at this point. Yes, yes, I know that I am disgusting and should suffer. Blah blah. I’m tired of the role I had to fill. I’m tired of having to denigrate my own thinking abilities in order to tolerate being bossed around by someone who is so not smarter than me. He knows different things than me and he believes that the only important things to know are the things he knows. He thinks my things aren’t worthy of much respect. That is probably hyperbole. He doesn’t bother to notice that my things are there so he doesn’t have to listen to me on any topic because I’m not very educated. Or something. “Sure I can “listen” to you blather on about something idiotic while I roll my eyes and don’t really listen.” It’s really very similar to how I feel with Alex. To be fair Alex has dramatically improved in this area in one on one conversations, in particular since he started working on it with his therapist. It’s still a thing.

Tom told me he hasn’t done Daddy/daughter play since me and he hasn’t been interested in rape play either. For all of the years I have known Noah he has been staunchly uninterested in Daddy/daughter play–not his kink. After he read the book and he understood the emotional power it has for me he is suddenly interested. Rape play has been a major component of our life. Tom didn’t think I was a fine instrument to be played. He wanted to have fun with a buddy. Noah is consciously working on helping me change because we both want me to. It was weird to understand that at this really deep level last night. Tom knows very little about me. He knows hand wavey bad stuff happened. He knows a few details and will admit knowing them after a lot of pressure. Holy shit. That is actually kind of amazing. I remember Tom’s life. I pieced it together very carefully. I have a whole timeline constructed in my head about his family and school experiences from very young. I wanted to know him so I could serve him better.

We went to McDonald’s a lot, probably every week. Tom wants to rest when he is at home. He wants to eat on the go as he dashes to and from work and parties. It’s a lifestyle. So one time I asked for chicken nuggets and he asked what kind of sauce I wanted. I responded with, “The usual” and he said, “What’s the usual?” and I could feel my face involuntarily fall. We had been dating for multiple years at that point. “Sweet and Sour.” There was some little flick of memory in his face as he recalled my voice saying that over and over for years in his memory. He looked kind of guilty but turned around to the cashier without saying anything.

If I walk into any restaurant with Noah that I have ever been to he can tell me which foods I enjoyed and for what reasons and which drinks I particularly liked or disliked. Sometimes he makes me cry. It’s kind of embarrassing in public. Noah knows what I like. I think that is the most amazing thing in the whole world. He pays so much attention to me. How can a human being be capable of paying so much attention to me? He has a catalog of my smiles. He knows what kinds of memories go with which expressions because he looks at me and asks what I am thinking over and over.

Having dinner with Tom was intense. And then not. And then it was kind of boring. I couldn’t have a conversation with him because he wasn’t interested in my point of view. He was dismissive and cold. He didn’t mean to be. He could speak perfectly politely as long as he could feel it was entirely “fun”. He wanted to have an agreeable conversation and he was perfectly happy to bulldoze and be rude and ensure that I didn’t conversationally disagree with him. I am so happy that I now live with someone who values my opinions even when he doesn’t agree with me. It was really nice to see that I have found someone who suits me far better. I am glad I kept looking.

I have to go run.

Portrait of a Rapist

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I suppose I should start with what he looks like. He’s tall, except when he’s not. He usually has short hair. Sometimes his hair is dark but mostly it is light. He is white, so very white. Sometimes tan and lean and athletic with glasses. Sometimes he is pale and bloated and sallow. Sometimes he is so young he makes my heart ache for the need I see inside him.

Always my rapist is someone I want to love. I see pain and hurt inside of him. I know that he is hurting me because I have managed to see that he is hurting. He is angry that I know he is in pain. He thought he covered that up. I am raped because he wants to cement that he is stronger than me. In a dark place inside of me I know that I am required to have this happen. I am required to lose. I can fight physically or

I can say no or I can pull away and protest and it doesn’t really matter; I am required to lose.

It is a lot worse if I fight.

I learned how to endure. I learned how to close my eyes and let my whole body go limp. I could go away. I would clench my fists and move my hips how I was supposed to. I do it even in my sleep. It is not a sign of desire but it is always taken as proof that what he is doing is right. I must want it. He was meant to get off in me. It is his right.

At other times he is so nice. He does care. He talks to me for days, weeks, months, and years both before and after. I like running into him in public. I stop and stare. I wait for him to approach me. I do my utmost to appear absolutely neutral as to warmth or coldness. I must give nothing away or he will have the upper hand again. Sometimes, horrible sometimes, he looks right at me then walks away. Yeah. I feel like I deserve that. I let you do that to me. I am that low.

It is always a gamble, sex. I can’t handle really losing any more. Each time I fight I come away with more long-term physical damage. I have a weird spot in my lower right back. It has hurt constantly since I saw him when I was ten. I think we damaged something. I don’t know how to fix it. I have a lot of tearing and scar tissue. It even complicates going to the bathroom because if I wipe too hard I tear and bleed. It burns terribly.

It sucks that I feel like I run into him in circumstances that are too close for comfort. Sometimes I want to greet him by slapping him the minute I see that self-satisfied smile. Yes. I know. It took a long time for him to finish so he thinks he was awesome. Can he just go away?

But every person you have sex with has a piece of you. If you run into them later there is that knowing that feels like a bond but isn’t. Sharing a secret is one of the worst bonding methods I know of. I hate him and I love him. He taught me what sex is. He taught me to expect pain and soreness. If I didn’t hurt the next day it wasn’t good sex, right?

I miss him. He has a piece of me. I still feel like he deserves more than I gave him. I feel like I failed because I always kept part of me, most of me, back. I hid behind this wall I have in my head. I didn’t want him to really know me. I wanted to always know that he only had access to this small piece of me.

That piece of me is as disgusting and dirty as he says. That part of me is as depraved, or more, than he could ever want. I know I deserve it. I know that even when I say no I really want it and know that I am responsible for serving him. I know this in the deepest, saddest part of me. I don’t deserve any better. I said no because I didn’t want it. I wish he had believed that truth. He didn’t and that made another truth. There is what I want and then there is what is. I know what will happen when I see him. I know that I am a rabbit gone tharn. I know what will happen when he gets that look in his eyes. It is time again. I am required to serve as a hole. It’s just how it goes.

I’m more afraid of him than he understands. At this point I can’t even tell him no. I am too afraid of the consequences. If I cannot say no, can I ever say yes? What does that “yes” even mean? Does it mean yes I want to have an intimate relationship with him? Does it mean yes I want to satisfy his fantasies so that he can have good stories to think about later? Does it mean I want him to know anything serious about me? Oh god no. I don’t want him to know anything but this one small piece. I want him to pretend it is important to him. I want him to tell me that I am special. God damnit. That he doesn’t do this with everyone and he is so glad that I can let him do this.

I deserve the acknowledgment. Haven’t I earned it? Haven’t I done this enough and well enough? It is hard. He doesn’t understand that what he wants from me is hard. So very hard. He thinks it is casual. He thinks he is just messing around.

I think he doesn’t know how to look at me and wonder what my needs are. I think he doesn’t know how to be kind to me if he wants to be. He does want to be nice to me, in fact. He is doing to me what he wishes I would do to him. He would like it and that means it is a nice thing to do, right?

He doesn’t understand that it brings pain. He doesn’t understand that if I have to fight I will be sorry later. He won’t hurt in the same way so why would he bother to think about my experience? He won’t have to sit there later wondering why he didn’t speak up sooner about the tearing and the discomfort. He won’t have to sit there later wondering why he didn’t speak up sooner about the fact that he really just didn’t want to and could they please stop. Or maybe he does think that. Maybe neither of us actually want this but we don’t know how to talk about what we really want and this is where we end up.

I said no. He thought I was playing a game because I talk about the fact that I masturbate thinking about my early trauma. Going past my no isn’t real trauma, it’s just playing a game. What happened when I was a little kid—that was the trauma. This is just “two consenting adults”, right? I’m of age. Now it’s all fair game.

Where do my wants fit into this? I don’t know. I’m not sure if I have them or not right now, to be honest. I want to feel like I will never have to go limp and dissociate to get away from sex. I want to feel like I will never have to bite my lip to keep myself from repeating “please stop please stop please stop” over and over again. I feel so much worse about myself afterwards when I do that. If things go far enough that I have to beg him to please, please, please stop then nothing is likely to stop it. I know better.

Why don’t I fight? Because I want to survive. Because I am a dumb animal and I am aware that continual injuries lesson my survival chances. This way I will always survive. There won’t be much of me there, but it will be something. I will keep something back. Something away from him. He can’t have all of me.

Even if he is beautiful. Even if I love him. My rapist is a strong man. A sometimes good man. He was a child, but we all grow up. I wonder how he would judge me if he actually knew me. I wonder if he would still find me attractive at this time. If I ran into him at this stage of my life, would he try to do that again? Is it unavoidable between us? What was the spark that set it off last time? I try hard now to eliminate the opportunity. I don’t care if it is victim blaming. I need to survive. People are counting on me.

I hate him and I love him and I hope I never see him again. But that isn’t a possible future unless I move far away. Somewhere with no connections to my home. He is too well traveled. Too beloved. Like a bad penny he can turn up anywhere.

It’s an interesting week

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This has been a freakishly social week. I’m thrilled. It’s like I’m not a parent again, only people are coming to my house because I’m a parent. It works.

I’m recovering from bronchitis. I didn’t appreciate it when the urgent care doctor told me I would have been better off with pneumonia because that would have healed quicker before the half marathon I am running in four days.

I’ve been thinking really hard about the ways in which I feel alone and unconnected, which is slightly ridiculous given that I’m fueling these thoughts with stuff people tell me when they come to my house because they like me. Last night my friends were telling me about their marathon experience. They ran with Team in Training to raise money for cancer research. They both have experiences in their backgrounds that made it a very poignant, specifically relevant thing for them to do. My grandmother, the one I am named after, died of cancer. I don’t know what kind.

I wouldn’t be able to train for the marathon as part of a group. It’s not really just the timing issues. It’s because I’m not running a marathon for anyone but me. I feel like a selfish piece of shit. I know a lot of people who are very outward focused in the “why” behind them doing things. I can’t be. I feel so very self involved. I want to run a marathon to prove to myself that I can. I want to run a marathon because I want to show my brother that I can even though I don’t particularly want to speak to him at the event. I’m actually terrified of running into him and I hope the crowd of 5,000 people will be enough to hide in.

I want to run a marathon for the same reason I wanted to be hanged by the neck. To prove that I can survive doing things that are too hard for most people. I feel like I shouldn’t admit that out loud. I don’t want to be part of something bigger than me because I never will. I will always feel like I am there on a temporary pass and I’m not really part of it. I don’t know how to feel connected to people.

Yesterday someone told me that for a very young child to be overly affectionate with people they don’t know is a sign of an attachment disorder. I did that. I went to anyone who was even vaguely affectionate towards me. The problem is that most people don’t keep coming around and the result is that I have learned to be bitter and not try to join anything.

I have been trying to let my lungs heal this week so I have not been smoking pot. It is remarkable what that does to my mood. I’ve had a lot of suicidal thoughts. I’ve had a lot of intense feelings of worthlessness. I will never actually be good. I will never be someone who contributes in positive ways. I will always be a drain. I will always be unfit and unworthy. I’m not even sure what I am unworthy of.

A friend said something to me this week that I have always felt but not had the nerve to say out loud: my story is mostly remarkable because it happened to a white girl. There are many tales of horrific incest and abuse from women of color. White girls either don’t experience it or don’t talk about it. I’ve never known how to feel about that. I’m very aware of my privilege. I’m very aware of the fact that I would not have gotten the help I have gotten if I hadn’t been white. I don’t know how to feel about that. I never have known. It’s not like I think I understand the black experience, I’m not that stupid. But I am often only willing to accept advice from people who aren’t white. Advice from white people often feels irrelevant to me. Either they didn’t ever live in the gutter so what the fuck do they know or they didn’t really crawl out.

My experience of advice from black women has been intense. They aren’t going to give me a pass for suffering. Everyone suffers. Black women have to live every day with the fear that their son might be murdered for having the audacity to walk home from a convenience store with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea. That is honest to god fucking fear. That is real.

I told Noah this morning that the current debate about abortion in this country scares the shit out of me. It scares me in a visceral, personal way. The reason it scares me so much is because Noah has had a vasectomy. My intention is to be monogamous. If I ever get pregnant again it will probably be the result of being raped. I don’t have the hubris to think that won’t happen to me. Instead I have the life history where I feel like I should never leave my house again if I want to avoid that possibility. I should only see people I carefully prescreen and invite to my house. That is the only way I won’t have to deal with the potential consequences of a child I would not be able to raise with love.

I have had a transvaginal ultrasound. It wasn’t pleasant. The doctor was a stupid bitch and I didn’t want to do it and she insisted and I was stupid and didn’t feel like I could really say no. It was when I was pregnant with Calli. I got pregnant the cycle after a miscarriage. There was the potential that the previous miscarriage was a twin loss and I needed to know that information. That could have been determined by blood tests. She insisted up one side and down the other that I allow her to check with an ultrasound. I knew I was less than a month pregnant and she wouldn’t be able to see anything any other way. Even with the transvaginal ultrasound she couldn’t see much of anything because Calli was still about the size of a pea. I left the building crying because I hadn’t wanted that woman to penetrate me. Unfortunately I’m not very good at saying no when people want access to my crotch. I don’t ever feel like I really get to.

I know that right now I am feeling unstable. I know that this is why I am “mentally ill”. Because even though I have a great life and I “should” feel safe I don’t. Is this really mental illness or is this simple pattern recognition? I don’t feel like I even know.

I’m working on part two. I’m thinking about who were the important pivot people in my life. I’m thinking about where I learned different ideas. Where did I learn that I was supposed to exist for other peoples entertainment, not my own fulfillment. I’m thinking hard about how I was shaped. And this time I want it to sound like a story not a bare recitation of facts. I’m scared shitless of writing dialogue. How do I characterize these relationships? Oh god.

I’m really glad people are coming to visit me this week. That’s why I argue with myself about my “value”. Obviously people do see value in me. Obviously they think I am worth putting in some effort–they have already done so. But why? What value could they possibly get from knowing me? That’s what is interesting about writing part two. It’s not just thinking about what people have done to/for me. I have to acknowledge what I have actually done. How I have been a person that others want a relationship with. Unfortunately being sober means I feel like I should just write over and over and over about how all people want is access to the hole between my legs.

Visitors

Part of the road to Noah

Rape Culture

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Often I do not get along with rabid feminists on the topic of rape culture. The reasons for that are myriad, but mostly revolve around the fact that I think most feminists are too sensitive. I think a lot of women cry rape when they are stretching. I think we need another word. I think that there should be some commonly understood word for coerced or unwanted sex that the woman never actually refuses. I think there should just be a way for women to talk about it.

“Yeah, last night he totally ______ me. It was ok.” I don’t know what this word should be. There is something missing in our language.

I have a hard time asking my casual sex partners to not choke me. Do you know why I have a hard time with this? Because I was brought up in a family where sexual assault was as common as dirt. Anything short of penis in vagina rape isn’t even worth talking about. I have had members of my biological family tell me that because my father and brother never had their penis in my vagina that I shouldn’t complain. Orally raping me with a gun to my head doesn’t count. The fact that I had to physically fight my brother off of me over and over and over… doesn’t count.

I have a hard time believing that I am allowed to feel good during sex. I’m going to tell you a secret, oh open internet. That whole “being trained to orgasm on command” thing? I actually don’t like that about myself. I feel pretty disgusting. But it’s a really good trick for when I am in a lot of pain and I’m not enjoying the sex much. I can whisper in someones ear that this works. And it does. Hypnotic suggestion is awesome. An orgasm involves vaginal muscle spasms. It’s more complicated than that. But the vaginal muscle spasm part can be triggered. It’s enough to keep the endorphins up in my brain to numb the pain so I can get through the experience.

I’m also going to tell a secret, I mostly only do this with men who are physically too large for me. I don’t need to resort to this “trick” when I am sleeping with someone who has a smaller dick. Which is why I prefer sleeping with men who are not that big. I don’t like having to use over ride tricks to talk my body out of throbbing pain. It’s not very fun. It feels like cheating.

It feels like cheating that I can’t depend on my partners to only do nice things to my body. It is a rape culture adaptation. I know that men are going to be doing things to me that hurt. When I was younger I was smart enough to have an overly endowed partner figure out how to make sex with him bearable. It’s a good trick. But it’s a trick. I always know later that my body didn’t want to be there. My body didn’t want that experience. It hurt.

I lost my ‘virginity’ when I was 12 and I asked a 25 year old to fuck me. He did absolutely no foreplay. He spit on his hand, wiped it on my cunt, and started fucking me. That is still how I have sex. These days it is better if he grabs me by the head and has me suck him hard first. A lot more saliva is deposited that way.

No, sex isn’t about orgasms. I have learned how to have sex with my husband that feels nice and makes me feel like a whole person instead of a hole. I rarely orgasm. If I need to get off, if I physically feel that ache… I need to feel like a hole.

I don’t like that I have become so thoroughly part of rape culture. I am the byproduct. If it doesn’t feel kind of like rape it probably isn’t going to get me off. But I’m honestly only kind of willing. It hurts. It makes me feel bad about myself. That I need to be treated like that. That I’m not very interested in sex with people unless they hurt me.

If I swear of masochism I swear off orgasms. I don’t want to say that out loud. It’s not completely true. But my days of numbering my orgasms in the hundreds are over. I can’t do that without someone hurting me.

I get off because someone else is using me to pleasure themselves. Because they want me that much. I don’t orgasm because things feel good. There should be a word for that. There should be a word for this feeling of needing violent sex but not enjoying, kind of. Yeah, we mutually got each other off. It was kind of emotionally uncomfortable. Yeah, we exchanged a little light-hearted sexual assault. Yes we totally _____________.

I need a word.

White trash

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Somehow I feel like the definition of white trash is very important to my personal lexicon. After all, it is my self-identity. What do I mean by it? I mean that I startle people. I mean that I experience sudden rage and lash out at people in socially unacceptable ways. I mean that many of the things I like are demonstrably low class.

Uncle Bob, when I was a little kid, would spit out the car window when we drove past the house where the black guy lived. That’s all I knew about “the black guy” who lived in the canyon. When I was in high school and I lived in Bakersfield I was accosted on the bus by a black girl who yelled at me that I was a racist because I was reading a book and giggling. I think the only reason she didn’t kick my ass is because my response to her yelling that I was a stupid bitch was to say, “Come on! You haven’t even met me. Normally it takes someone at least five minutes to decide I am a bitch.” Her boyfriend said I was alright and to leave me alone.

I don’t know why that story stays with me so much, but it does.

It’s hard to talk about different things from my childhood happening because I know the stories are confused in my head. I know they are confused because sometimes I know things happened when I was living in a certain house but I can’t remember when I lived there. I’m afraid of trying to take the pieces apart. I’m afraid of trying to make this a real narrative.

I’m afraid of remembering something wrong, writing it down, and being called a liar. I’m not lying. I’m just trying to remember things that happened a long time ago. I’m trying to string together why they are important. Why is my life worth reading about? It’s kind of weird as I look at my over crowded bookshelf and think most of them are not better writers than me. But they are published and I’m not. I think that’s the biggest difference.

I’m terrified of trying to publish. I’m terrified that I won’t have the drive to push it through. I can’t expect to be magically “discovered” and babied through the process. I will have to make it happen. I will have to shop around for an agent and a publishing house. It scares the pants off me. I am going to have to actually deal with being judged. I’m not so good at that part. I have to feel like this is really and truly honest to god worth doing.

It’s hubris. But I think people would… if not enjoy… then at least appreciate reading this story. I think that even though a lot of people will hate me and revile me and say nasty things about me… I think somewhere there is a young girl who will get out of an incestuous family because of me. Some day some girl is going to say, “You saved my life.”

That’s reason enough to do something hard and scary. One life is enough. Well, I’ve already saved mine. I suppose by that metric it’s enough. But it’s not. I want to be a hero. Ok, that made me smile. I do, I want to be a hero. I want to learn how to say just the right thing to make people know that no matter how bad you feel about yourself, there is hope.

I kind of hate Elizabeth Wurtzl. I think Prozac Nation was a horrible book about mental illness. I spent the entire book wanting to bitch slap her and tell her to stop whining about her cushy life. For the record, should Elizabeth Wurtzl ever come read this… I wouldn’t ever say that to you in real life. Pain is pain. But seriously dude you had an easier life than me and I’m allowed to be pissy in my blog about it. It’s not personal.

The reason it bothers me so much is because I have a hard time with pampered rich people who get to be depressed and non-functional. I’ve been depressed most of my life and I’ve been more functional than most people. Depression makes everything harder. It doesn’t make it impossible and it bugs the shit out of me when people say it does. Ok, maybe it does for you. I can’t know what it is like to be in other peoples heads. I know that I have not had the luxury of being non-functional while depressed. I’m too busy surviving. No, I wasn’t happy, but so what? Who the fuck was promised happiness or a good life? Not me.

When people talk about how we should have universal health care I laugh. It’s not nice of me, but I do. I feel like universal health care in this country is a pipe dream. We have too many people. Unless you, generic person who is espousing universal health care, want to go become a doctor and work pro bono for the rest of your life, how do you think that doctors should be paid for their time? How should medical equipment be paid for and acquired? Should everyone in America get to have million dollar surgeries when they get sick?

Money is finite and people die. I think that even if America managed to get the basics covered, I would be opposed to absolutely across the board health care coverage. I think we are all living too long. Honestly. I think that humans were meant to die a lot earlier than we do now and make room for new people. I don’t like most life saving operations.

My personal experiences with life saving operations gave me back Uncle Bob and Tommy. I’m not sure either were good uses of money. How do you say in the conversation about universal health care, “Actually the reason I oppose universal health care is I think they shouldn’t have brought my brother back to life so he could beat me and attempt to rape me for nine more years. The piece of shit should have been allowed to die when he was twelve and it was his fucking time.” How do you say that about your brother? How do you form a political opinion that endorses other people dying? Because I endorse my family and me dying in the same way. I’m ok with it. I’ve made my peace with death. It will happen when it happens. I don’t want to cause my death right now, but I don’t know that I would fight cancer.

Humans are meant to die. I can’t help but think that I’d rather die of whatever disease strikes me than miserable old age and being lonely. I only want to live to be 80 if a million people will light a candle for me. Otherwise, well, whenever it happens is ok. That’s life.

I think the only part of death that bothers me any more is knowing how devastating that will be for my family. I cry and smile at the same time thinking about it. Now there are people who would mourn. It wouldn’t be like Tommy’s memorial up in Redwood Estates. By the time he died he only had one friend outside our family because everyone else abandoned him. People aren’t nice to disabled kids. He was an asshole too, but people aren’t nice to those who are disabled.

I hear people talking about how things should be “fair”. To whom? Why? What the fuck makes you think that? What does that even mean? Does that mean everyone gets the bare minimum? Does that mean everyone gets what they want? I don’t know. I have an easier life than I’ve ever had. I just went out and bought a bed last night for the garage so we have a more comfortable place to have sex. That’s fucking spoiled. I don’t know how to reconcile my unwillingness to share with the fact that I’m very willing to share.

I’m ok with paying high taxes. I think we should. I like roads and fire fighters and schools. They should exist. I like being the one who can give my friends financial support when they need it. I feel kind of weird about the word charity but I give a ton of money away. Only occasionally to organizations. Mostly to individual people who need help. It feels related to me. If I am giving it to an individual person I know if I approve of how they are likely to use it. I do give or not give based on my judgment. I will admit that. It also depends on how close to my monkey sphere someone is. I can handle that.

It’s kind of hard having a different opinion than most of my friends. I feel like I should apologize. When people get all huffy about human rights I want to laugh. I think that I no longer have the same entitlement as my friends. I don’t believe I deserve good treatment. I like it. I want it. I don’t think it’s about deserve. Not really.

That said, if I win the lottery I am starting a domestic violence shelter. I do believe that people should help people. I feel weird about the government doing it.

Whenever people tell me that welfare fraud doesn’t exist I laugh and laugh. Bullshit. It depends on what you mean by “fraud”. Are there people who get welfare and buy drugs instead of food. Yup. My sister did. I’m tired of having my liberal, upper class friends talk about the poor as if they are some deserving group on the mist who should be cared for.

The poor are the people on the bus in your town you ignore. The poor are the people with ill behaved children in the store that you glare at. You think you are better than poor people. Well, a lot of people in my social group do. I am white trash because I am still fucking angry at all the rich people I hang out with. I resent them. I resent them for acting like I pass. It doesn’t matter how much money I have in the bank I will always feel like the dirty little girl you people walked by without meeting my eyes.

I am white trash because white trash take care of their own. Near as I can tell middle class values are shit. I have no respect for them. It involves a lot of “being polite” for the sake of not ruffling feathers and blending in. No thanks. I don’t blend in. Not once I open my mouth. These days not at all. I love my hair.

(Err, uhm, disclaimer: I don’t actually hate or resent my friends. I have emotional issues. I write about them because I’m trying to work through them not because I am trying to alienate people or say they suck. I don’t actually hang out with people I don’t like. I like my friends. But I have mixed feelings about some of the things they say and do unconsciously. That doesn’t make them bad.)

I am white trash because I can’t let the little classist and racist and feminist things go in conversation because I believe direct confrontation is preferable to being passive aggressive. And I’m ok with shouting. A lot.

I’m white trash because when I speak about myself in public people quickly dart their eyes away. They can’t look at me. Not always, not everyone. But the vast majority of people I meet. I haven’t met very many people in my life who can hear me talk out loud about incest and look me in the face without flinching. I’m sure I shouldn’t take that personally. But I do. Things that have happened to me mean that sometimes people can’t look at me without flinching away. I do that. I can control whether or not that happens. I can decide what to tell people. I can decide to pass and be nice and middle class and stop making people flinch.

Only I can’t. Because I’m white trash. Because I will always blurt things at uncomfortable times that make people flinch. Because I will always be just a bit dirtier and worse and more disgusting than everyone around me. Because who and what I am seems to be an affront to so.many.people. I am white trash because I think it is sporting to warn people that if I think they are a fucking asshole I just might tell them so. While I am visiting their house. In another state. I’m just kind of awesome that way. I don’t seem to be able to control my rage after a while. I have to say that my outbursts have gotten way more socially acceptable over the years. Yelling at Rebecca’s dad was really rude, but he deserved it. He was a twat.

Do you know why I blow up at people who are in authority? Because blowing up at people in authority saved my life. No. That’s not hyperbole. Think about my parents. Think about being brought into the world to parents who are ok with me being raped by every male member of my family. I was born fighting.

That is why I am white trash. Because I’m ok with that fight. Because I accept that fight as being just life. Because I don’t think I deserve anything better. Because I don’t really think anyone else does either and fuck you if you think you deserve better treatment. I did not god damn deserve being raped over and over and over. But it happened. I can’t let it end my life. I can’t sit around and whine about how not fair life is. If I had done that as a child I would have died. There is no fair. I did not deserve being raped.

How many times was I raped. I try not to think about it. I don’t think I’ve had a number in my head for it in a long time. Michael, Jeremy, I’m blanking on that guys name in high school. Memories are awesome. The guy that I met at Lauren’s house. The one I thought was safe. The guy from the coast guard. My dad with the gun. My dad all those other times I can’t count. That’s only five. That’s not so bad, right? Oh, and Paul. And countless times when I lay there and cried and didn’t bother saying no. That’s been a lot of people.

I don’t think that people understand that I take pride in being white trash. I take pride in my strength. It’s gotten me a long way. I will always disconcert people, I have no interest in being a different person. That’s the hard part. I don’t want to be anything other than who and what I am. But people tell me I should. I shouldn’t call myself trash. It’s not nice.

Uhh, piss off. Life isn’t nice. I can deal with that in the ways that work for me, thank you very much. Life isn’t nice and life isn’t fair. See, these are the things I don’t want to say in an actual conversation with a friend. When they tell me, “Oh don’t call yourself that” I have to bite a hole in my tongue to not respond with, “Who the fuck died and made you the fucking arbiter of what I should mother fucking call myself?!” It’s not very nice. And I try to be nice to my friends, mostly. But I feel these things. That’s why I call myself white trash. Because that is my emotional process around people telling me not to call myself white trash. I want to cuss them out and say I will do so if I please. And that’s why I’m white trash.

Hm. I’m not just trash. I’m not and I know it. I’m not garbage. But I am a specific cultural construction that I refer to as white trash. That’s a useful way to think of it. Gotta make breakfast.

It depends on how you define it.

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In deference to those who have requested shorter posts, I had a thought that is totally different. I usually say I haven’t been raped since I was 18. Of course, like most of the things I say about myself, that’s true and not true. I’ve done a fairly ridiculous amount of rape play, including things that felt absolutely traumatizingly real. Oh, and there was that party. With that guy.

So there’s this guy, Uncle Paul Nathan. He used to run the Climate Theater. I don’t know if he still does. What I do know is that in his role as party host he is quite happy to play drug dealer. I don’t have a moral issue with this. What I do have an issue with is the fact that at one of his parties he pulled me into a back room and encouraged me to sit on a table or a desk, I don’t remember which. I was absolutely enthusiastic about the idea of having sex. It all felt good.

But you see, he didn’t have a condom. And I wasn’t on birth control. So as I lay there in a fairly drugged stupor I moaned “Please don’t put it in me without a condom. I’m not on birth control. Please don’t. Please don’t.” He said, “I’m only going to stick it in a few times. I won’t come. It’s ok.” I won’t even lie and say it felt bad. It felt fucking incredible.

But you know? I’m pretty sure that Paul Nathan technically raped me. I should probably say that out loud. I should probably publish that on fetlife. Because I bet you I’m not the only one. And I’m kind of angry that I have kept my fucking mouth shut for six fucking years. Me. I am such a fucking moron.

Wear a condom you abusive piece of shit.

Thanks for telling me to post about this, Wendy.

I don’t like thinking about this.

4 Replies

I’m reading The Courage to Heal right now. I have to take it in small pieces. I don’t remember when my hymen was broke. I’m pretty sure Michael didn’t do it. And that was at 7. We had been away from my dad for a while at that point. I’m pretty sure that means my hymen was broken before I was 6 years old.

No wonder I’ve never identified with innocence lost movies. I’ve never had innocence.

I hate Texas

The first step.

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I feel like I spend most of my life lately saying, “It’s complicated” because no matter what subject I am looking at there are many different things that could be combined/fixed/told. And I don’t know how to begin. Luckily I have the internet, and friends who are awake. My friend Peter pointed me towards the class where I met him. There is material there. And he’s right.

My first semester of graduate school was in 2003, before I met Noah, right after Tom ended our M/s relationship. Before Tom and I were poly I started grad school. Naw, that’s not even true. That’s when I applied to grad school. I started spring semester so I started grad school in January of 2004. I met Noah in late February. So this story is going on concurrently to me starting to tell the story of my abuse out loud in the context of my relationship with Noah.

I went to a fiction writing class. Honestly I picked it based on when I wanted to be on campus. Always the best selection criterion, I tell you. I did write some fiction for the class but all of the fiction I chose to wrote was borderline pornographic (or very explicitly pornographic depending on which story) or I wrote creative non-fiction. I didn’t tell the class that I was writing about my own childhood abuse. I did not explain that the horrific, gut clenching story about a 7 year old being raped was my story. I kept distance there. Most people in the class responded just fine and they gave me very valid feedback on my writing.

But there was this one woman. Liz? I think her name was Liz. She didn’t like me much. She didn’t like my stories. She didn’t like my attitude. She was one of those out and proud lesbians who acts like all heterosexual sex is rape. I doubt she would have actually said that, but that’s pretty much the place she was in. Now, like 7 years later, I can see why she was the way she was. Then she just felt mean. She picked on me when I shared my stories.

What do I mean by that? I mean that when I was visibly upset when people were workshopping the story about my rape she was very hostile. She specifically said, “This story is ridiculous because this kind of thing doesn’t really happen to people.” Now I kind of wonder if she was denying her own abuse. Her response was really hard for me. I brought stuff that was too intense to class and I felt like I got screamed at for it. To be perfectly clear, the professor was awesome. I’m quite sure he had strong suspicions about me because he gave me great writing feedback and he gingerly patted me on the shoulder and told me I would make it. Men like him have been the rock I have built my life upon. Women rarely manage that kind of support properly.

But oh man. I’m not over Liz. How dare she tell me that my story was unrealistic? That’s not fucking writing feedback. We had a guy in class writing stories about people who were kidnapped by aliens! She chose to tell ME that my story was unrealistic! Ok. Fuck her. I feel like she is part of the great evil cabal that wants me to kill myself instead of speaking because she doesn’t want to hear about my pain.

But I’m in a lot of pain. And that’s a hard thing to talk about. How do you express your pain properly without hurting anyone else? I mean, the problem with Sharon and Liz is that they feel I am overstepping their (or someone elses) boundaries and I don’t have the right to do that. Thing is, I don’t have any clue whatsoever where boundaries are supposed to go. I flail and I fuck up. Sometimes they are really far away from me and no one can get close enough to have a conversation and sometimes they are in so close that I can’t defend myself when someone rapes me. I do not know what healthy boundaries feel like to naturally have them for ones own body. I don’t. I pretend. I try to make it up. My boundaries shift depending on time of day, how many people are around, how recently I have thought about my family, what I’m eating, how often I sleep…

And that’s not cool for the people around me. That’s messy and abusive. Because then I go off on people for correcting my grammar. I saw that I know it is a little thing, but it felt abusive. It felt over the top. It felt like you were trying to publicly humiliate me and make me look small and stupid and you look big and powerful. Thats not what was happening, but that’s how muddy my boundaries are. I can KNOW things and not feel them.

I hate being sober. I can’t tell the stories. See how I am dancing here? But Sharon made a crack about the marijuana and how I should stop using it and go on psych meds. Despite the many many many years of problems I had trying to get psych meds to work. Despite the fact that the people who are in my house with me monitoring my behavior tell me adamantly that marijuana is the right decision right now in this crisis point because it is clearly helping me and it does not have the miserable side effects. But someone in authority, someone I feel “knows more than me” told me that I should stop. So I am not smoking this morning. Even though I am going round and round in circles and winding myself up.

I don’t know how to get past the anxiety and look at the stories without it. My brain is too effective at shutting down those avenues of thought. When I try to sit here and think about being raped when I was 7 years old my stomach starts to hurt, my neck hurts. I feel tense. I am breathing fast and rapid. If I were trying to speak out loud I would be doing it so fast and so quiet that people probably wouldn’t really be able to hear me. I’m scared. I’m small. And I have no real voice. Even if I could start rattling off the facts, I was 7 years old when a neighbor raped me. There was a witness in the room and another witness (his mother) came in and saw what was happening and then walked out leaving it to continue.

Many many people saw my story. People were there watching it while it happened. People actually physically saw me being raped and didn’t stop it.

Why shouldn’t I be angry again? Why in the hell is it surprising that I have rage issues? Why in the hell should I learn to tell my story in a small, inoffensive way so that other people don’t have to be hurt by my story? Why is that my responsibility? I didn’t do anything. All I am doing is telling the truth. All I am doing is saying, “Hey I was a little kid and people hurt me” and people then react to me as if I am a monster. They want me to shut up. They want me to be little and silenced. They want me to make my story palatable.

Well fuck you, none of this is palatable. This is disgusting and horrible and I had to live through it. How fucking dare people tell me that I don’t have a right to speak. How dare people tell me that I have to make my story palatable. I had no choice. I was raped. I was raped over and over during my formative years. I was programmed to think that my value was in sex and I should be silent the whole rest of the time.

But I am not that person. I am loud. I am here. I have a voice. And I’m not going to stop using it.

In May of 1989 my brother Tommy was hit by a car. My entire childhood is told in relationship to that event because that is the Big Obvious Date that I can remember. I turned 8 in September of 1989. Tommy was in a coma for five months so he woke up in October. When he was hit by a car we were living in Texas. I dreamed about the accident and woke up and told Mommy that I saw Tommy get hit by a car. She told me it was just a dream but couldn’t get a hold of my dad for three days to find out how Tommy was. I have no idea how long this lasted, but my mom was there for a bit before rushing back to California to sit at Tommy’s bedside. She left me with Denise (my sister) who was pregnant and her then husband Bobby. I was raped after my mom found out about the accident but before she left. So I am pretty sure I was 7.

This is how it works with all of my memories. I have to stop and think of all the collaborating details or I am afraid I am making it up. I have to be able to list off long, extensive lists of things that happened the same day to prove that I was alive and I had that day and I saw those things and other people believe me about all the other things (often these details are verifiable) so therefore they will believe me about the abuse. But people don’t. People tell me that I am lying or exaggerating. That my stories cannot be real. But they are. My stories are real. I am real. This was my experience of the world. It is bad and scary and hard. But it happened. Dirty things were done to me but I am not dirty. I am not bad.

His name was Michael and I had quite the crush on him. I followed him around. I was desperate for any sign of love and affection. I was willing to do anything he wanted me to do. I don’t think I told that part in the story in class. This event wasn’t the first time Michael and I had sexual contact, it was just the last. One day when we were in Michael’s room and he and his cousin were playing video games in between saying degrading things to and about me. I can’t tell the whole story right now. Not right. Not the real thing. I can’t. I want to but I don’t feel safe. I feel like if I tell the whole story again someone will be nasty, and they might and I can’t control that.

I feel like it is my fault Michael raped me because I put myself in the dangerous situation. I went after him. I pursued him. I am in the phase of recovery where I can’t tell the story from the point of view of a victim. I am the monster. Right this minute I want to tell the story as a bragging story. I want to talk about how I am so into sex that I knew when I was a little girl that I wanted it. That I picked a boy I wanted and I went after him. I didn’t let any obstacle get in my way. And I fucked him.

That’s all I want to say. I want to sound tough and bad ass and brave. I want to sound like I had choice. I want to sound like I was active player. I wasn’t a victim. I wasn’t abused. I wasn’t raped. I was just ready for sex earlier than other girls. Do you know how many times I have told that story? More times than I can count. That is how I survived. That right there.

I have been raped so many times in my life I’m not sure I can count them any more. The vast majority of the sex I had was only consensual in the sense that I got into a situation where a guy wanted sex and I didn’t believe I was allowed to say no. I wanted to be touched. I wanted physical contact and I knew no other way to get it. When I was a toddler and I sat on my fathers lap he would put his hands under my panties and slip his fingers into my vagina. That was love. They showed me porn. My mother started giving me tips on blow jobs when I was 11. It was my fault, of course. I brought it up. I asked. She didn’t initiate that conversation so she feels like she is innocent.

But my mother gave me advice on better blowjob techniques when I was 11. That’s not ok. She needed to hold that boundary. That is how she continued the cycle. That is why I do not trust her. My mother does not know what kind of boundaries other people have either. But she is in her 60’s and she still doing things that are that kind of inappropriate and if you call her on it she goes into this long explanation of why she isn’t responsible for her behavior. Bullshit!

I am responsible for my behavior. Me. Not God. Not my father. Not my mother. Not my sister. Not my therapist. Not my husband. Not my children. Me. Me. Me. At the beginning of the day, at the middle of the day, at the end of the day… I am with me. I always have been. I always will be. I am not looking to be any one else’s ideal of the right person. I’m afraid that right now I am at the point where I have to stop relying on anyone else. Maybe I can find the right therapist if I keep looking but it will really and truly have to be the RIGHT therapist. Sharon isn’t it. Sharon wants to make me into her image of the perfect post-abuse mother. No.

Why do I want to recover these memories. Why am I doing this to myself. This is horrible and I am beating myself over the head with it. I am very good at forgetting. I was told I have to forget. I was told to be quiet about what I do remember. But instead I am completely structuring my life right now so that all I can do is look at these memories. But I’m letting the memories control me. I am letting personal time become all the time. Why. That’s a big thing to do.

I’m afraid that if I let myself have these memories fully, if I really examine them I will become the people who hurt me. When the people around me react with horror I feel silenced. I feel like I am driving myself insane. I have to say these stories. I have to tell them in all their tear filled agony and I cannot bear to see peoples reactions. I think that officially makes me a writer. Right now Noah is making breakfast and my babies are playing and singing with him. I am not allowing my rage to destroy my family. My family is beautiful and strong as I am beautiful and strong. Most of the time I bear my burdens lightly. I do not feel weighed down by the weight of incest. I know the right road for me and I am on it. I don’t want to change who I am. I really like me.

I want to feel like it is ok to be me. I want to feel like who and what I am is right. I want to feel like it is ok that I am different from everyone else. I want to feel like it is ok that I am special. That sometimes I need to say, “Hey can people use gentle voices with me even when I try to escalate things” and have the people around me understand that saying that is humiliating and embarrassing and I feel like a disgusting person for saying it. I need it to be ok that I talk about my past. I need to get to a place where I know in my heart what the right amount of information to give my children is. I do not want my children twisted by my legacy of shame. I want my children to continue to grow in the absolute safety I have provided. My children are a strange mix.

So here’s my thing. My daughter is verbal. Astoundingly verbal. Exceptionally verbal. Who knows what that will mean in terms of her overall achievement in life. That’s not the point. It’s not about competition and I don’t know how to talk about it without it sounding like I am being an asshole. So I don’t speak about this problem. This is a problem. I am having a very hard time with how verbal Shanna is. Shanna asks me questions and she mentions things in off-hand ways that sound like they might maybe be questions and I don’t feel like I know what the appropriate amount of information to give her is.

Shanna wants to know why I am sad. Shanna is acting out being sad and I feel horrible about it. So far I have told her that I am sad because bad things happened to me a long long time ago and I think about them sometimes and that’s hard for me. I have described my anxiety as “I have a lot of work to do. And you know how you feel when you are tired and really hungry? I feel like that all the time when I am trying to do this much work.” I have no idea if I am doing this right. I honestly think that I am freaking out so much because I feel like I have to hurry up and get over feeling like this because otherwise my kids will grow up with someone like me who just checks out for a while.

And I have a lot of shame about that. That is what my mother did. My mother was on so many drugs to numb her pain it was absolutely ridiculous. She popped so many pills it was unreal. That was normal. I grew up convinced that I wouldn’t do that. And I have such an aversion to taking pills that prenatals were nightmareish for me and I have now stopped taking them because I simply cannot do it even though I should take them as long as I am nursing.

Instead I am smoking pot. I’m not drinking. I’m not taking pills (and I won’t), but I’m smoking pot. I am having a hard time with that. I am not a lifelong pot smoker. I really don’t enjoy doing this. I’m not enjoying how it feels. But it keeps me level. It keeps me from snapping while I can’t get the memories under control. It is making me go flat line. And while I am doing it during the day I have people here watching my kids for me. That is the difference between me and my mother.

I cannot meet all of my children’s needs by myself right now. I am having a crisis. But I am dealing with it. I am dealing it with it in a way that is safe for me, for my children, and for the people who are offering help. I am not stepping on anyones toes. I am not doing something bad by asking for help. I am not imposing. I am not hurting anyone. I am weaker than normal and I cannot carry my load. People with room to spare, people who love me are helping me. I am doing the right thing for me. I am.

Believing that is the first step to recovery for me. That’s it. Right now, for this moment of this crisis that is my step. I have to believe it is ok for me to be weak and need help. I have to believe that it is ok for me to ask for help. I need to feel like I can allow other people to help me. I need to actually accept the help.

Baby steps, people. I see several of the offers and I love you and I want to respond and I can’t right now. That is too big of a step. I don’t yet believe I am allowed to take it.

1 Reply

Last night I went to my support group. It was more or less “my turn” to share my story but that was not given support or space. I was expected to give short sound bites in ways that didn’t scare the horses. But I don’t have that kind of story. It’s hard when the act of speaking my story traumatizes people around me.

This is more of that “what to say” thing. When I get up the nerve to say these things out loud, with my voice, it is a big deal. I don’t do that. As loudly as I trumpet Radical Honest Damnit! I don’t actually describe these things out loud very well. And I need to. Ok, maybe not every incest survivor needs to, but I need to be able to speak about what happened to me. It is not fair that I have to continue bearing this in silence. Silencing me means telling me that I am wrong for talking about myself. Silencing me means that I am invisible. Silencing me means I deserve it.

When I finally get to the point of sharing my story I need people to look right back at me like I am still clean. Like I am still worth seeing. That’s why I want people to talk to me about my story. I leave details out every time. Often on accident. But when people ask me questions I realize what pieces I am conveniently telling and what pieces I am conveniently leaving out. I figure out a lot more of what scares me. But people have a limited capacity for that. I can only ask the same people to listen to the same stories so many times. But I have to tell them. I can’t be quiet and nice about it. I can’t keep my voice silent so that other people can ignore that horror exists.

The family members who are upset with me? The ones who sent me long and impassioned, or angry and defensive messages? Yeah. They don’t get me and they can’t. My niece sent me a message saying she hopes I can get over my father some day and return to the family and she doesn’t understand why I am hurting her so much because of things that happened before she was born. My cousin is saying, “All of that shit happened before I was born and now you are being mean to me so fuck you.”

I am not allowed to have my feelings and processes. It’s not ok that I view my mother and my sister as culpable. I am supposed to “let it go” which means forgive and forget and move on with the victimization stuff. How do I tell my niece that I have to cut her off because of the ways her mother sexually assaulted her and her brother. Because I need to ensure that people like my niece, who have been pretty badly sexually abused, are not an influence.

I just did a nasty thing. I sent my niece a response and I shouldn’t have. I told her that this, right now, actually has very little to do with my dad. This is about my mother and my sister sent me off to be raped and my sister participated in the rape and molestation of her own children. As long as people continue to talk to my mother and sister like they are normal people I can’t stand near any of them. Because they are acting like my mom and my sister ate good people who made a mistake. I’m sorry but systematically sending your daughter off to be raped means you are not a good person. You lose the chance at good person status for this lifetime.

And I told my niece that as long as she wants to continue to act like her own abuse didn’t happen and she can go about her normal day to day life with her mother and my mother acting like they are ok reasonable people… I can’t know her. Because she obviously feels like that kind of abuse is ok and she continues to take whatever people dish out. And therefore I don’t want her interacting with my daughter because she will pass on the feeling that girls deserve that treatment and you should keep your mouth shut when it happens. Not my fucking babies you pieces of shit.

I am frantic, scared, and angry. And I feel like it’s not ok to say what happened to me. I feel very unsafe. I feel very attacked. Even here, within my family in my home. In my sanctuary I still feel like someone will show up at any second and do horrible things to me. Want to know why I feel that way?

Because I am in a place where emotionally I am a small child. But I have small children. And they have needs. And small children don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves. Small children want to be protected and to sit and stare and dream and become. I can’t be the grown up right now. Thank god I don’t have to.

As I sit here and spin my wheels getting more and more upset with that group and my niece and my cousin and… I realize that I am trying to look around me for unsafe people and then getting mad when they are unsafe. My niece isn’t even close to going through recovery. She’s too close. And I need to leave her alone because sharing my story in the way I am is kicking her. Maybe she doesn’t deserve to have me take on the abuser role too. I do think I’ll be able to long term live with myself though. I didn’t say that Tyra was bad in and of herself. I said that as long as she associates with them she will accept their reality and it is broken. She doesn’t get to pretend that they are not monsters with me. With everyone else, fine. Not with me.

Now I’m drifting off into thinking about my kids. I need to have chats with my friends. As much as I am a raging pervert, I’m also the victim of incest, rape, and molestation. I need to not have sex stuff around my kids. I need that to not be part of their existence in any way. And people think Shanna isn’t listening. It’s not ok. I have been interrupting people for a while, but I need to take a more proactive stance. I need to talk to people before the conversation gets going about what is ok in my house. Because that is how you break cycles. My daughters will not learn what a blowjob is at this age range. That will not be part of their world. And when my daughters do learn about blowjobs it will be because we are having an age appropriate discussion about sex with our clothes on and there will be no porn to demonstrate. I am not going to lock up my books about being a survivor of sexual abuse but I want to get through this awful period of recovery so that I can stop talking about it around them.

My children cannot support me. It does not matter that I feel like a small child right now, I’m not. And my children should not have to support me in any way. That is not the role of a child. I’m hurting but they cannot fix me, nor should I in any way ask them to try. I’m not going to an extreme so don’t get paranoid. I’m not going to be able to help the fact that I cry randomly sometimes. But what I say is, “I’m thinking about stuff that happened a long time ago. I should probably start thinking about you though because you are awesome.” Then we run off and play. But I can’t do that today.

Today I am too small.

I’m on vacation.

1 Reply

That’s what I call it when I go behind closed doors and don’t really respond to requests. I’ve already done once since becoming a parent and I kind of expect it to continue. I’ve been through these kinds of super intense freak outs before. I did a few while I was dating Tom. And I wrote about them then. I need to go read my archive again.

Everything is all jumbled up right now. I’m sad about my uncle dying. I’m sad that I didn’t know it was time to say goodbye because no one thought to tell me. I’m sad that my mother used his death as a chance to ambush me so that she could try to get her own needs met. I’m proud that when my mother called me I told her she needs to go to therapy and say out loud many times that she sent me to my father so he could rape me. She did that. She has to say out loud, “I sent my daughter to her father so that her father could rape her.” She has to say that. If she doesn’t say that, there is nothing. Ever again. I cannot acknowledge that she is alive. Until the day my mother can say, “I allowed my daughter to be raped” I have nothing to say to her. It is her fucking fault.

I called my mother in the middle of a horrific sexual assault and begged her to come get me and she told me no. She bears the burden of that guilt. I want to punch her in the face. I want to run her over with my car. That fucking horrible disgusting repulsive excuse for a mother. I think she should be dead. I hate her so much. My mother sent me to my father over and over. The custody agreement said he should NEVER BE ALONE WITH ME. And I was. Repeatedly.

My brother told me that our father didn’t explicitly say it but he made it very clear it was perfectly ok for my brothers to have sex with me if they wanted regardless of whether I wanted it or not. Let me say that another way. My father told my brothers that it was ok to rape me. My brother told me that it was very understood in the household that if my mother wasn’t up for sex my dad would fuck my sister. If my sister wasn’t up for sex… guess who that leaves. Me. I was three years old when my parents divorced.

What the fuck happened to me. I can’t remember it very clearly. I was too little. There is court documentation of my fathers confession. The detective on my case told me that my father confessed to far more than I remember and he was horrified by what my father said. Let me say that again, a professional police detective who works on many many many abuse cases. That is his job. He was horrified by what happened to me. But I don’t remember it. It scares the shit out of me. What the hell other memories are lurking in my body and in my brain. When I am 75 years old will I wake up and say, “72 years ago my father raped me and I’m not over it.”

I am so fucking pissed off at my mother. She wants to deny that it happened. She doesn’t want to admit her guilt. It is her fault. She was my mother. Her whole job was to ensure that I reached adulthood in relative safety and she failed.failed.failed. I get to be angry about that. I get to take her to task for that and no one gets to intervene. No one, including my co-dependent, enabler, abusive sister, get to tell me that I have to change how I feel about my piece of shit mother.

Abusive. My mother told me that if she hadn’t been Catholic she would have aborted me. My sister told me that my mother was packed and ready to leave my father when my mom turned up pregnant with me. There was always the very clear implication that it is therefore my fault that my sister was raped for three more years.

Maybe that is why that stupid, worthless piece of shit never said anything about my mom sending me off to my father’s for the weekend. Maybe she just thought it was my turn.

Monsters in my head

3 Replies

In a former life I worked in theatre. I loved it. I loved the excitement, I loved the energy. Ultimately I didn’t love the long night hours [1] and I had to go find a different dream. Coincidentally that shift happened right alongside a romantic shift. Basically I jettisoned my whole life and started over. There’s a pattern for you. But anyway. The romantic relationship I had at that time was with a boy named Steve. He was in a band called Faith in Grey. I may be the only person who still listens to the album. Kind of semi-grunge rock but with a lot of blues/jazz feeling mixed in. I actually really liked their music. I’ve been thinking about them rather more than usual lately. I’m thinking about them because I’m thinking about the name.

You see, in my mind there is kind of a schtick to the name. Nothing is black or white, not really. Every important thing in the world is neither completely good nor completely bad. Everything is in the gray area in between. I have noticed that there is a rapidly decreasing amount of room in my life for black and white thinking. Everything exists in the shades of gray and to me that is becoming what I am holding on to in terms of faith in humanity. I seem to be endeavoring to turn into my obsession, if not my religion. Bear with me, I’ll explain.

This has been coming up for me a lot because I’m doing a lot of abuse processing lately. That isn’t actually news. I go in phases. What is new for me is that I now have to parent at the same time. I parent pretty much every hour that my children are awake. I have somewhere between 2 and 7 hours of truly non-parenting time during the course of a week. Back in the good old days pre-children during this kind of phase I would crawl into a dark cave for most of the hours of the day and not come out for weeks at a time. It’s rather difficult to compress the same amount of processing into 2-7 hours/week. Essentially I am incapable of doing the same amount of processing. This means I am having to keep my shit together under suboptimal conditions basically at all times. But no pressure.

Conditions are suboptimal because Shanna is in one of those periods that can best be described as ‘disequilibrium’. [2] She is off having her experience of the world. Right now she is falling down a lot. She is clumsy. She is having sudden bursts of super intense emotion. She is aggressive. She sometimes hits. This is very challenging. Here I want to pay homage to Arwyn of Raising My Boychick and call her triggering. Shanna yells at me.

However, thanks to aforementioned book, I have renewed patience with this stage! I am doing my best to just let her have her experience of the world quietly at home with great order and predictability for a while. At home I can cater her daily experience to her emotional levels and we can get a lot done and have fun together. It’s good. Going out can be very difficult sometimes. At this point she is large enough and heavy enough that if she doesn’t want to go somewhere… Well, it’s hard to just carry her. And besides, if I just carry her and demand that she go I know the whole experience will be hard for her. She really is thriving on our quiet routine at home. She likes having people come visit us for a few hours a day but it becomes disruptive to her behavior if they are here longer than about three hours. That’s a good pattern to observe.

I often wonder if I have the “right” to have chosen to have children, given how many issues I have. Then I continue editing and read these long rambly bits dissecting how little tweaks in her environment effect her mental health. I don’t really think I could be accused of being a neglectful mother. So what do I mean by “right”? I constantly question whether I am a good enough parent. Which is an important distinction. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am a good parent. However, I am not satisfied by being a good parent. I want to be a good enough parent. I want to be good enough for my kids. To me this is such a complex issue. I feel like I need to hurry up and get better so I can be good enough for my kids. So far my kid is pretty over the top wonderful and I have kept her safe and secure and happy for three years. That’s better than my parents did. Wow. Every day for the rest of Shanna’s life, as long as I avoid the Big Obvious Mistakes, I will have given her a substantially better chance at lifelong happiness. I’m already there. That’s a way to suddenly lower the bar in a really fabulous way.

I’m under a lot of pressure. As soon as I say that I feel like a 50 lb. weight just dropped on my chest. So much pressure. I feel terrified of being a bad parent. I am truly afraid sometimes that I am going to destroy my children the way I was destroyed because it is an absolute inevitability. I feel like I am choking to death under the weight of the pressure and it makes me edgy. Having that physical sensation while parenting is extremely difficult. I have had bad days where I see her move, physically, and I have this physical sensation in my body of being molested when I was very young. Having a child this age is actually traumatizing for me. I am recognizing where all of my deep, dark body memories came from. I feel enough physical urge to vomit that I have to keep a trash can near me while I write this. I have had this hanging over me for my entire life. I think this is a lot of what has been so bad, always. It really did start when I was this young. And that is monstrous. And this is the kind of stuff that will cause people to kindly reach out to me and suggest putting her in preschool or daycare so I can “get some time for myself”. They absolutely mean the best in the world. There is love in every word of what they are saying. The thing is, what I *do* right now is take care of my kids. That’s my job. They are telling me that I need to get outside help for taking care of my kids. Because I need to go fix myself. Because I’m not good enough at my job. Ouch.

That means I come back to this idea of my father being a monster. I was certainly told, over and over, when I was growing up that he was. Well, my mother and my sister told me he was a monster. I didn’t know anyone else I could talk to about him. There was literally no other point of contact in my world with people who knew my father. That’s actually quite amazing. That leads me to all kinds of fun possible derails. I want to call my brother. I want to try to contact my father’s family. I want to dig into their history. I want to find myself! I want to learn what parts of me came from where. I want an explanation for all of it. But you know what? That would be a derail. That would be looking for excitement. I would be trying to distract myself from looking at my reality. My father is dead. Whatever he may have been is a book that is long closed and cannot be reopened. I doubt he was actually a monster. Most likely he was mostly an ok person who occasionally did horrifying things. I’m sure he was an addict. He probably had some serious mental health issues that he was not dealing with. But quite frankly, how the fuck would I know? He killed himself when I was 17. I had not seen him in person since my brother’s wedding when I was 13. My memories of him are few and far between and almost every single visit included him sexually molesting me in some way. It is a horrifying, awful thing for me to be present with. I am the victim of incest. My father sexually assaulted me. This is agonizingly hard to write. I want to take any derail in the whole wide world.

And that’s the point. I come back to the idea of my father being a monster because I want to derail my life. I want to run off and explore all of these things that have no relevance to my current life because I’m terrified that I am a monster and I am going to fuck up my life. I can’t bear to look too closely at what I am doing because I am convinced I am evil and bad. But I’m not. I’m a good mother. I have to deal with my memories though. I can’t avoid that. That’s the hard, scary monster in my head. I have to deal with how they impact my day to day life. And I have to do it in ways that are appropriate. I have to have boundaries around how I do this. That is how I will break the cycles of abuse. I god damn mother fucking refuse to blow up my life. And I cannot be forced to by anyone outside of me. Their actions are not my problem. I can only take responsibility for myself and my actions. I don’t know if my parents are or were monsters. I know what my perception and experience of them was. I was factually horrifically abused. That means that talking to people about my parents is unhelpful. There was plainly duplicity going on. No one outside knew the full story and no one can confirm or deny anything in a useful way. There was too much lying.

Dear God that hurts to write. I cannot hope to ever have confirmation for anything about my experience of my childhood. It cannot be had. The largest and most traumatizing part of my childhood was the experience of constantly lying and that is why I cannot rely on any version of the truth but my own. And that means I need to get back to talking about what I remember.

I remember, I must have been 8 or 9. No. Damnit. I’m doing it again. I wasn’t. We were living in Whittier. I must have been closer to 10. [3] I spent a weekend at his house. He gave me a milkshake that ‘tasted funny’ he insisted I go to bed for the night in a shirt and no underwear. In his bed. He spooned me. remember the feel of his body hair against me. He was naked. I remember him feeling all over my body. He put his fingers into my labia and vagina. And these are the memories I have talked about before. This is the kind of memory I can wrap my head around and put words to. But I have these intense body memories when I watch Shanna. I feel pain deep inside my vagina sometimes when I watch her. I feel like I am choking to death saying this. Admitting this. There is not a shadow of doubt in my mind that my father was sexually assaulting me when I was a toddler.

Part of why I am so convinced is one of my earliest memories is from when I was 3 years old. I know I was 3 because of a whole bunch of correlating information, but anyway. There was a little boy, I no longer remember his name. I think he was 4 or 5. I asked him to play behind the couch with me and he did. I then remember offering him a blow job. By name. I had to explain it to him. He said sure and then I proceeded to go right to it. I knew exactly what to do.

What fucking 3 year old should have that knowledge? None. No 3 year old should ever know those things. But the part that makes me shake and sob and despise myself–I am that boy’s monster. I don’t know what I did to him. And that. That is why I need to have faith in gray.

I am not a monster. I probably hurt that boy, yes. But it wasn’t my fault. I was doing what children do. I was exploring the issues in my world through my play. That is what a child that age has to do. I wasn’t to blame. But those are adult words. The little kid inside me who is still exactly that age, she knows that what she did was bad. She knows that she is a monster. She doesn’t know how she became that monster, but everything is all her fault. That is my legacy as the victim of incest. That is my family role. I am the scapegoat. I am the monster. This is mostly true because of my exquisitely heightened sense of shame and guilt. I am to blame for all of the evils in the world–even the things I didn’t commit. And this is another derail.

I can never truly make reparations for what I did. But that’s not the point. The point is that almost 30 years later I feel guilt for what I did and that guilt is poisoning me. For the most part when people tell me that I need to ‘let things go’ I think they are being fucking assholes and telling me not to deal with my shit because my shit makes them uncomfortable. However, in this case, I think I do need to let this part go. I need to recognize when I am derailing my life. I need to look at the ways in which I am wasting my fucking time. I need to understand what a derail is. I need to recognize when I am doing it. I need to give myself time and space for doing it. And I need to recognize when I am out of time for doing it and I need to hurry up and stop paying attention to it. Right now I have to go pay attention to my life.

I need to let go of feeling responsible for the actions of a fucking insane 3 year old who had sexual assault issues she was working through. My 3 year old has never been traumatized, I can absolutely promise you. She still acts out in really fierce ways. Maybe I wasn’t such a monster. Maybe I was just 3 and some of the stuff I had to process was really awful.

So then I come back to my dad. He probably wasn’t actually a monster either. He was a person. He was a person who had a favorite song. And a favorite color. And a favorite flavor. And a favorite movie. He had good points and bad. He helped people and he hurt people. Yes, he hurt me in ways that were monstrous. But does that really make him a monster? I don’t know. I can’t know. There is no way for me to know. Even if he was alive I would never be able to really judge him accurately. Because when I see my perfect, beautiful little girl rolling around on the floor feeling in her body the joy of being alive I feel a large invisible body pressing down on me. I taste hot, bitter acidic semen in my mouth. I feel burning in my vagina.

And I have to parent through that.

I’m rather significantly a morning person. Lately I have been sleeping 8-3:45. Evil.
Thank God and Shiny Green Apples for the book: Your Three Year Old by Louise Bates Ames
At some point I will try to write about the Tommy period of my life. But not today.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: rape

I’m not very good at being polite while effectively communicating.

working and sexual assault

This is why I don’t have friends.

Memory lane

Portrait of a Rapist

It’s an interesting week

Visitors

Part of the road to Noah

Rape Culture

White trash

It depends on how you define it.

I don’t like thinking about this.

I hate Texas

The first step.

I’m on vacation.

Monsters in my head