I agreed to put the lethal stuff in a locked cabinet and give Noah the key. That’s what I can promise right now.
steps
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Category Archives: suicide
4 so far
Hours of crying, that is. It’s a bad night. I feel like it would be very wise for me to avoid talking to anyone indefinitely because I’m taking everything anyone says, no matter how neutral or positive they mean it, as more sign that I am a disgusting piece of shit who should die. Everything is my fault and I can’t fix anything.
Moving the needle
I’m trying to figure out how to get things to improve in my marriage. I’m tired. I’m sad. I’m scared. At this point we are most of the way through arguing about all of our done-me-wrongs over the last ten years. There’s been an absolute fuck ton of arguing this year.
I don’t know about you, but I have let a lot of things slide over ten years because I didn’t want to argue. Then when things kinda hit a boil… everything comes out. We’ve had little and big problems that I’ve bit my tongue and la-la-la ignored. I’m not so sure it was useful.
At some point last night I realized that we have fairly equivalent lists of “you did _____” for one another. So we have hit the point where we have fairly well hashed out the problems and we are getting to… we have to forgive to move on.
Fuck.
I both am and am not a forgiving person. There are lots of things that I don’t really forgive. Lots. Shit dude, I cut off my family. There are things I won’t forgive. But I don’t think Noah has done anything that heinous. Everything that has been hurtful has individually not been over my threshold, but collectively… oh that’s harder.
But I want him to forgive me. Damnit.
I did something, well said, something horribly awful this year. I screamed at Noah that I wished he would die. I didn’t mean it and in less than five minutes I was crying and apologizing and saying I wanted to take it back.
I don’t have a high horse for sitting on here. I don’t think I have been less hurtful than Noah. I have been differently hurtful at different times… but I have been a horrible person. I’m really not denying that.
If we are going to move forward we have to forgive.
Oh fuck.
One of the biggest problems we are dealing with isn’t really Noah’s fault but he’s done some awful things because of it. Me saying no. I don’t really speak up when things make me uncomfortable all that well. My early life taught me that life is uncomfortable. Full stop. Speaking up about it just means people punish you for not complying faster because my comfort is irrelevant.
This is creating problems. I have done a lot of things while feeling wildly uncomfortable because I don’t react to that feeling as if I have any right to be defended. So I put myself in situations where I don’t believe I can say no and I do it over and over.
Sex. Oh sex is a fucking mess. Well, our sex life has been better between us lately than it has been in years. Which is fascinating given how much we are fighting. I feel like everything is my fault. I’m not sure it is but I feel like it.
How are we going to learn to have boundaries around “us” as a collective instead of maintaining individual boundaries and I’m supposed to learn to speak up more, and earlier, when I’m uncomfortable? I really don’t know. Yes, unicorn hunting is hard but both of us completely flip out when the other goes off to play alone.
It is both of us.
I feel really ashamed of how strongly I react to Noah playing separately, which is kind of funny because his reaction isn’t… that much less intense. Not really. It feels like imminent death for both of us. So why do I need to feel ashamed of that feeling?
Because I feel like I’ve been exposed to poly for my entire adult life WHY HAVEN’T I MATURED PAST BEING AN INSECURE TWAT WAFFLE? It isn’t lack of effort or time. I just… I’m just so insecure that it’s ridiculous. It isn’t Noah’s fault, not even a little bit. If anything were going to make me feel secure it is Noah’s behavior in aggregate.
Yet here I am. Feeling like I really should jump off a bridge so that Noah has more space in his life to replace me with someone who is less of a colossal loser. He doesn’t want that. Not even a little. But it is very much how I feel. He… doesn’t feel that differently about me dating.
Why do I feel so ashamed of having the same feelings he has?
Because I believe I am supposed to feel supportive. I believe I am supposed to be willing to support him finding every scrap of happiness he can in this life. That’s what a good wife/partner would do.
I am not a good wife. I am small, selfish, insecure, and so very sad.
Do you know what is incredibly fucking complicated? The fact that… we don’t really have many platonic friends. If we are going to be controlling as fuck about one another, how do we handle the fact that we are mostly only friends with old lovers/play partners? It is hard. We both have a habit of acting like people on our side aren’t as threatening as people on the other persons side.
I was listing off the people I feel closest to… all of them I’ve been intimate with. I haven’t had SEX with all of them. But I’ve been intimate. I like crossing boundaries with people. I like bonding.
After this year I wouldn’t be surprised if none of our friends ever want to play or have sex with us again. Oh the drama.
Noah is right that I can’t ever have sexual contact with someone again without his consent. I ignored his no this year. I can’t do that again.
That’s a mistake I get to make once this lifetime.
Last night’s conversation hurt a lot. But I feel like we got closer to understanding, “I did x because y.”
We really are getting to the point where the only step left is forgiveness. If we want to move forward, and shit we are talking about another god damn kid, we have to forgive. What does that look like? What does that mean?
It means tearing up the tally marks for who has done what wrong to whom. That’s pretty scary.
I know I have behaved abusively in the last ten years. I believe there have been times when Noah has too. Should we be carefully keeping lists of documentation so that we can hurt each other as much as possible with these actions? Is this how abuse is normalized and tolerated and excused on a wide spread basis?
There are lots of kinds and types of abuse. Our marriage has not included the deal breakers I experienced early in my life. We both abuse in the ways we do rarely and only after a lot of pressure builds up that we haven’t figured out healthier ways to manage. Does that excuse it? No. I don’t know what to do.
Noah is right that in order to know what is going on with me, sometimes he has to listen to venom and sort through it for the truth. That really sucks. But there are a lot of things I just can’t talk about until I am so angry I am almost frothing at the mouth.
In arguments Noah keeps saying, “You knew it was hurting me and you wouldn’t stop.” But I have stopped. I stopped months ago. I have not continued leading people on in conversation. I’m not making promises I can’t keep with other people. I certainly haven’t been on a date recently. I did stop. I just didn’t stop on a dime the way he wanted me to. Something is going on currently that I feel will do a lot to decide how we move forward. If boundaries can be expressed in a way that actually supports our marriage going forward… that’s going to be a big deal. If I feel that it isn’t managed well…
I’m scared. I’m bitter. I’m frustrated and angry.
I work all the god damn time and I really don’t have much in my life that is about letting off steam. Most of my work demands that I project happiness and cheer whether I feel it or not. I don’t show my emotional range to my kids much because I don’t think it would be very fair. I’m a god damn roller coaster and they don’t need to be on the trip with me. So I shove my feelings in a box and I smile and I keep my voice pretty calm and level. Are there cracks in my armor? Sure. I’m not perfect. But my kids seem to genuinely not understand how upset I get and how often.
I am a very good liar.
I spend a lot of time hugging and snuggling when I would like to be shoving my head through a window. When I would like to be raging and crying and cutting myself up. I pretend that I enjoy being a loving mother instead.
How in the fuck am I supposed to learn to care about being uncomfortable when pretty much my whole life is set up around, “It doesn’t matter how you feel it matters how you support the people around you.”
I honestly don’t want as much physical contact with my kids as they want with me. It feels alienating and hurtful. Partly because I am so jealous I didn’t get it that I feel like I am going to burst into flames. My needs didn’t matter. Why in the mother fuck are yours so god damn important?
Why is everyone more important than me?
I’m supposed to make other people feel comfortable. It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting there thinking about the various pitfalls of ways to kill myself.
I don’t matter.
But Noah has built a life around how much I matter to him. I am seriously impressed with the amount of work he has put in to being a good partner. It’s a lot of why I feel he deserves someone better. Someone who can meet him halfway honestly instead of with a forced smile.
It isn’t that I don’t love Noah. It is that I spend so much time shoving down how uncomfortable I feel that there is often not room for authentic emotions near the surface. I have to have a layer of pretense over everything in order to cope.
This is how I have survived. This is how I have accomplished as much as I have. I pretend that how I feel doesn’t matter even a little bit, I put my head down, and I work.
A lot of my work is consciously projecting emotions I don’t feel: happiness, comfort, feeling secure. Because I am so good at pretending I feel these things I’m very good at helping other people feel this way. From what I understand from the people I weirdly interrogate: their feelings seem to be more authentic than mine.
Uhm I guess that’s good. I can pretend to be ok and help other people feel actually ok.
It all comes down to how I actually feel is irrelevant.
As a result I hurt and hurt and hurt and hurt.
It’s been a bad year in pretty much every way. Well, the cruise was lovely. We made promises for the next decade of our life that we need to figure out how to keep.
Otherwise 2016 has been overwhelmingly shitty. I’m so god damn over this remodel I could scream and never stop. Today they finish the initial drywall installation in the bathroom. They have finished the stucco outside. They will be here till January at least. We have a hearing in January and doing work communicating with the lawyer saps my will to live. It feels so mentally taxing and draining.
In retrospect… I’ve done an amount of work this year that I probably shouldn’t have been able to get done. I’m so tired.
I’m on the verge of collapse.
And I don’t really know what feeds me at this point. From where am I drawing energy? From the clear blue sky and I don’t god damn know how much longer I can continue.
I miss socializing. I miss my friends. I miss community. I don’t in any way shape or form have the ability to do more of it right now. Because as much as I get something back from that there is also a cost associated and right now I can’t pay.
We haven’t even been inviting people over to dinner much. I just can’t.
I have felt existentially lonely for a long time. The road trip was really hard in this way.
Noah desperately wants to be enough all by himself for me. But Noah has a lot on his plate. I can’t ask for any more of Noah. It isn’t fair or appropriate or ok. So I feel like I have spent a lot of time trying to make myself smaller. So that what Noah has to spare is enough.
I’m hurting so much.
I feel like a real schmuck in our conversations sometimes. I know he has made enormous leaps of progress in the past year since we’ve been back from the road trip. He is organized and efficient and he’s trying so god damn hard. The trouble is I have a back log of hurt and frustration and need and sadness and I don’t know how to deal with it. If I weren’t dealing with years of hurt… would this be enough? I don’t know. It is closer to enough than it ever has been before. But I don’t know how to evaluate it given how much I’m flailing.
I feel like I’m reaching the part where I’m genuinely in a family and I genuinely need to figure out the coping skills for forgiving and staying that other people have. I’ve never developed these skills. They have never been relevant to my life.
I need to stop making Noah cry. I don’t place it as a goal that I will feel happy. But I need to stop making Noah cry. Because Noah having a minimum bar of ok is more important than me being happy.
And this is how things fuck up. This is how I build up backlogs of things that hurt me until I explode. Because I don’t think I am important enough to deserve support on the smaller stuff. There is just so much that makes me uncomfortable that I really don’t believe I have the right to ask for consideration. It would be a job and not a fun one.
I’m not sure how forgiveness ties in to being able to respect or like myself. Can I forgive if I think I deserve the bad treatment? If I think it will never stop because it is just that I receive it?
My heart and my head and my stomach hurt. I feel physically sick and I don’t think it is illness. I think it is sadness. I think it is the feeling that I matter so fucking little. I feel worthless and pointless and stupid. I feel like I should die.
I feel like death is the only route to stop hurting. Life is pain.
Forgive. I have carved forgive on my body in more than one place because I feel like if there is a lesson I am supposed to learn in this lifetime it is how to forgive. But am I forgiving Noah or am I forgiving myself? I sorta feel like I will not ever be able to forgive anyone else, not really, until I forgive myself.
Forgive myself for being petty and weak and insecure and so very damaged by the experiences I’ve had. How do I forgive myself for not being whole when I have never been whole and I don’t really even understand what that might be like?
I feel so very sad. And my arms hurt like a motherfucker. I need to stop.
White trash
I don’t know about you, but I am a social animal. I am so social that for many years I put myself in position after position to be abused because that was the only way I could understand social contact. I expected abuse. I would go so far as to say that I actively sought it out and tried to bring it into my life.
Abuse is… abuse is dramatic and exciting and volatile in a way I expected and needed from life. I went from periods of extreme isolation–the kind that is proven in prisons and mental hospitals and orphanages to cause extreme breaks in the mind–to periods of needing social contact so bad I would seek out the most extreme sorts I could find.
Is it my fault I was abused? Let us say that if abuse is a dance I was not always an unwilling partner.
Most of the men who raped me as an adult were people I wanted to have in my life. They were mostly people with whom I was eager to have sex. But I required a condom for my protection and theirs. I am one of the scariest vectors of potential disease in my community. The other trampiest people usually are around half my numbers. I default to safe choices because I love the people I sleep with and I need to consider their health.
I am thinking about this right now in context of how weird life is.
What does it mean to be treated like trash? It means that your life is not important. You are replaceable. You are just here to (be a hole/fill a role/do a piece of work) and when your usefulness is over you will be replaced.
I have dated more than one person who has shown me a series of photos from their past and all the women look the same and there are pictures of them doing the exact same thing… sometimes in the same clothing.
My family didn’t want me and made that clear. I’ve… been the fill in the blank woman.
I am hard because if I don’t maintain myself to a certain level so that I can find a different position somewhere else where I can be a differently effective tool…. Well this is the closest I have to a survival instinct. I still have work in me. Don’t throw me away yet. I know I’m not that shiny. I know I’m bent and deformed and prickly about how I am used… but I have value. Please need to have me around.
It has been fascinating over the last few weeks to have the din of self hatred in my head be gone. Worthless isn’t coursing through my neurons anymore. See, drugs aren’t all bad. I see much more clearly the various ways in which I am useful.
I did get to grow up and be Mary Poppins. Only they are my children. Children do think their parents are perfect. Mine can now joke about knowing that I mess up and knowing that I’m not perfect… but they still express shock every time they witness a demonstration because in their heart I am perfect.
Holy shit.
I really like being a parent. I am grateful I get to be a parent with time and enough money and a secure place to live. We know a large majority of our neighborhood and they express happiness for our presence in the neighborhood.
I was given a tea plant for my birthday because I am nice to my neighbors. I feel like I have done something with the time I’ve had here.
I know that I was treated like I was disposable because now I have felt what it means to be treated like I have intense value. I know that my ability to have had the life I’ve had has largely been because of the color of my skin because I live in a racist system that will give a second chance to a piece of trash if it can pass into the main group without being visibly different.
I may be a bunch of weird things… but I don’t by and large look it. I look like I have been middle class or higher most of my life. I can code switch my language and sound knowledgable around a freakish variety of people.
I’m not treated like I’m disposable anymore. It is an odd experience.
It is odd knowing that I am raising children who have never had a single moment of feeling disposable. How can more people get to their level of safety? What about the kids who are growing up like me? How can they be seen more? I don’t know. But feeling a quietness inside my head makes me want to work a lot harder to find people who need help dealing with incest.
Once I grow up. Once I can actually have more of an idea what the stages of development feel like. I need to know what they mean for me so that I can hear what they mean for other people without interrupting. If I’m still trying to get to where they are… I will be self focused when I listen. It is part of my ability to be patient with children and not with adults who are older than me. I have a hard time being nice when I think someone “should” be better at something than me because they’ve had more time to practice. I am finally to the point where I am not a total asshole about t his because I’ve noticed that people are always asynchronous in their learning. Not knowing something is more normal than not. Just be glad they are trying to learn now.
But I’m impatient and an asshole so being nice is a challenge. When my friends are being kind they say I don’t suffer fools gladly.
I am feeling grateful for what I get to do with my house. I’m also feeling very narcissistic. Other people don’t demand turning their entire house into a lived art experience. But I am. I have had a kind of luck most people don’t get to have. I did figure out how to stop feeling like I deserved abuse and I have ended every relationship that was hurting me.
I may be impatient and chafe at boundaries in my life but by and large I have chosen them. I may have to figure out how to renegotiate some corners of the boundaries… I have really sucked at doing that this year. I have made a number of mistakes I need to make once.
What will the future look like? I don’t know. But I know it is from a perspective of not being even a little bit disposable. Really I am the linchpin. If I go the whole mechanism will break. Or really it will depend how I go.
I chose to bring children into the world knowing that I come from a whole many generations of intense abuse/mental health problems dna pool. I knew that the brain is malleable. I knew that as much as there are genetic predispositions but nurture matters too.
I’m not perfect. I’m not really supposed to be. I’m trying to show what it means to be good enough given the strictures of the world we live in. How do we go about changing this world? There are processes. Let’s talk about them.
What can we do to help other people know that they are not disposable either?
It’s a big hard topic. It’s going to take a lot of years to unpack. I need to think about it as I grow up. Growing up hurts. But if I want to be able to think about other people properly… I have to.
Stay stay stay
So many feelings.
I’m up I’m down. I’m finding layers of peace. I’m still dysregulated and sensitive and whiny.
On the ride home yesterday I hit… an important piece, I think, around suicide and pain. I can kill myself if I am in so much physical pain that I will no longer have good days. I hold that right to be sacred. If I hit stage 4 cancer, I’m probably going to pick the day I go instead of letting fate decide.
But problems in my marriage aren’t like cancer. It is not inevitable that things will decline further until death. It’s not the same and I can’t act like it is. I spent a lot of time yesterday frantically wanting to end my life. Because I hurt. Because that is the well trod pathway my brain takes when it is in pain.
I can’t commit suicide over a problem in my marriage or a problem in my sex life. I am too big for that now. Maybe that would have been understandable at some point in my life. It isn’t now. I am too big.
I don’t mean I weigh a lot. That’s too literal. I mean metaphorically.
If I am in too much pain and I have to run away I have places to go. I have homes in the bay area that would take me in with no explanation needed. I could go to Oregon or Washington or Minnesota or Georgia and I’d find berth. No questions asked. Ok, they’d ask questions. But they’d ask questions after I got there because they care about me, not because they would gate keep based on whether or not my answers are good enough.
I am good enough.
That means that when I’m having problems… dying doesn’t need to be the answer. If I have to get away… I have options. I don’t need to die.
I’m rereading the speech I wrote when I performed a wedding. I am not being good at advocating for myself in my marriage. Not really. My second thought? Shit I rambled on too long about history and irrelevant shit. Good grief.
Hey, they asked their favorite teacher to officiate. They got a lecture.
Marriage is what you make of it. What kind of marriage do you want to have? One where you both hurt each other often as a lifestyle choice?
Not really.
It was really mean to come home from being gone for half a year and immediately leap into that much dating. Noah missed me and was faithful and that’s how I rewarded him. That sucks. There have also been a number of ways in which we haven’t managed to communicate well and I’m not always lying if we have different definitions. We are talking past each other but that isn’t the same as lying. And I’ve done a piss poor job of communicating the boundaries Noah wishes I had to people as I’ve gone off on adventures. That’s a huge problem. I know I need to fix that.
It is hard to talk about bdsm. It is hard to figure out how common sexual euphemisms like “first base” translate. If I have literally played like that with folks when I was in the quad when I was in high school… yeah I consider that first base. There were no genitals involved. No one was overtly sexy at all. Sometimes humans are just hella rough with other humans. That’s… ok.
I really did grow up brutalizing people for fun. The weird ass part is how many of those people still know me and have a good opinion of me.
No, kneeling on someones chest and laughing at them as they gasp for breath isn’t second base in my head.
I don’t know how this works for other people.
Punching for a few minutes on the thighs and the shoulders… doesn’t feel like sexuality. I mean yes? But no. But sorta. But not?
I did think I was being good and acting within the boundaries.
If I try that hard and I run into a place where you have a different definition that needs to be a conversation about definitions not an accusation of lying. I didn’t lie. I told you where I would set my boundaries, but apparently I didn’t define that well enough for you. That isn’t a lie. It is a failure to communicate. I came home and told you right away. There was no lying.
There also needs to be some room for “I expect I will do ____” and “Well I actually did _____.”
Between the two of us we need to figure that out because we’ve run afoul of it in both directions. That isn’t the same thing as lying either. Not when you did it and not when I did it and I’m being accused of lying up one side and down the other.
I have not ever said, “Oh I followed the rules” and then later you found out through dubious channels that I wasn’t doing so. That hasn’t happened. I said that I wanted to break rules and you found out in dubious ways. I think that’s different.
I’m the one telling you about every fuck up.
I’m not presenting them straightforwardly and simply. I am reacting with hostility when you challenge me on a variety of things.
I need to stop that.
I think I have had to get this angry to assert that I will not ever grit my teeth through sex again. Whatever I owed anyone on that score I have paid my debt many times over.
And I can’t even talk about what that means unless I talk about it in context of overall volition and other partners because I can’t just push back against Noah. I owe him too much. I don’t feel I have the right.
But I have managed to learn that I don’t owe Deity or Cupid or my submissive or or or or. I go when I want to and I don’t when I don’t. (Ok sometimes I don’t get to go when I want to but that’s different.)
This is so complicated and I need to go.
Chasing and being ok
I should be sleeping, but I’m awake. I’m thinking about how much I’m shoving on my friend while she’s here. So here’s the sitch. I met this woman on Twitter during my road trip. Towards the end the kids and I realized we were going to have a miserable time camping at the snowy Grand Canyon and decided to detour. I asked the universe (and Twitter) where we should go. This woman popped up and said, “Pick me! Pick Phoenix!” So I did.
We spent a few days together and it was lovely. I think she is great. I think her kids are rad and super smart and really engaged in life. I honestly don’t meet that many public school kids who are that good at asserting themselves. I was seriously impressed with these kids. They are just… there’s a lot of there there.
So I asked my friend to come visit. Thing is, the entire time I’ve known this family they’ve been on my monthly donation list because of disability issues. The mama hasn’t worked in a while and that is indefinite. So this trip is horrifyingly prohibitively expensive.
So I said, “Can I bring you to California. You and your family. You need a break from life.”
We are going all over the bay area and down to Santa Barbara with a stop in Monterey on the way home. We will spend close to a week driving into San Francisco to see the museums.
These kids showed up at my house and with glowing faces they said, “Can we homeschool every day?!” They are so excited they can barely speak. Only they talk just as much as my kids do so this is a hilarious time. Oh so much volume. But fascinating! The opinions! The independent thought going on!
One of the first questions was: “Does your little boy still wear dresses?” Answer: “That question is more complicated than you think. My kid wears dresses sometimes. But I only sometimes have a little boy. Let’s talk about the gender binary and people who do not fall on it at either end.”
It was lovely.
I sat down after dinner and started listing off the cool things to do within an hour of driving… we filled the trip days fast. We have a full itinerary.
I am 100% convinced my friend never would have asked for something like this in her life. I’m spending around $1200-$1500 for them to have this vacation. Folks I don’t know that well that I met through the internet.
Why?
I am ruled by my impulses. Because it breaks my heart that my children get to have the life they have and children this god damn smart and talented don’t get to have as much opportunity. Yes, I’d love to bring you out here for three weeks for as much information as we can pack into your little skulls. It would be an honor.
I do these things to pay back the child I was. The child who felt so bad that everyone else got to go do fun things and take classes and go to museums. I got to move again.
Part of what is helping is that I’m not having to chase this family. I offered and she accepted… but I didn’t have to chase her and keep offering.
Being able to accept a gift this big is hard. Pride is a big deal. Accepting this much love and help from someone is hard to feel ok with. People can only take so much then they need to give. Not necessarily back to the person they received from… paying things forward is more important
I am running into asking rev limiters within myself. I can ask different people and it isn’t scary. I can’t ask a small group of people for things repeatedly. That’s too much hard; I feel too much like I’m hurting people.
Unless I get asked back. I need to be asked for things in exchange. Do you know one of the reasons it is easy for me to help this family have this trip? They are kind of assertive about how things need to work for them. “I need _____. I can’t do _____.” Even if receiving a gift they are directing it to be more useful for them. That melts my butter. I feel like they seriously are trying to get what they need from this gift.
I have probably asked many hundreds if not over a thousand people to spend time with me in my life. I don’t ask everyone for sexual attention. Unless I feel an energetic push back… I feel like I am hurting people by sticking around.
If I initiate all of our, “Hey let’s hang out” it will get more and more sporadic over time. My give runs out. My ask runs out. I wish I still had it in me to ask you over lots… I don’t. I don’t think you care. I think you’d rather do something else.
I think you’d rather not put your pants on and walk three blocks to see me after I drive multiple thousands of miles. That’s what I’m worth.
That’s from someone who has been publicly calling me “family” for over a decade. Yeah. That’s what I’m worth to my family.
But not Noah. And not my kids. They would do a whole hell of a lot to see me.
Noah crisscrossed the country chasing me. It was glorious.
Even though they live with me every day. If I start getting distracted by life or people they do tricks until I stare at them again. Please look at us. We need your attention. Yes my loves. I will give you my attention too.
Yes, I like pushy. Yes, I want people who say hey I’m here and I want your attention. Yes, that is risking rejection. Welcome to my god damn life.
It occurs to me that I could create a calendar for the house hold and share that with folks who are interested. Dates when people are free to invite themselves over could be clearly marked.
I can’t keep inviting the way I have for years. I’m tired and it hurts.
Noah says I’m just ditching my friends for lovers. I don’t think that is true. I can list off lots of friends talking and visits in the past few months. It is true that I’m putting less effort into my friends.
But I think I was there anyway. I think there was just a brief surge for dating. I think that is going to… change as time moves on anyway. I’ll run out of ask there too. I don’t get the impression that most of the folks I date are going to feel ok being pushy with asking for dates. My submissive. My glorious submissive. Thank you for being so brave so far. I know I’m busy and asking me means risking me being overwhelmed and kind of a twerp on a given day. I’m grateful you ask. Thank you. I’m sorry I’m not always good company but I’m so glad I get to know you. Sometimes when I say I’m not good company it isn’t about me not liking you it is about me wanting to keep my nasty moods away from you. I know you are comfortable with getting the less than sweet parts of me, but I don’t want to take my feelings out on anyone like that. I don’t want to start using you for that kind of thing.
I love you too much.
I’ll hit you; I’ll carve my name into your flesh with a scalpel; I’ll kick you as hard as I can in the testicles. I do not want to hurt you. I want you to feel loved. I can’t be nasty to you when I’m having a bad day. That’s not cool.
I need to be nasty to you on good days when it is a positive, loving choice for both of us.
I’m going to run out of chase on dating for the same reason I always do. Most people… aren’t as into me as I want them to be. They like me ok, but they don’t really seek me out. I seek them out as much as I can… then I can’t anymore.
Usually that’s about three months.
The people who have gone longer than that… my first fiancé, my Owner, Puppy, Spot, Noah… they always act like they are drawn to me. I don’t think my first fiancé would have fallen out of love with me. I think he wanted to marry me and he was going to be ok being that person forever. I think I could have had that. But he needed me to not change very much. He needed me to calm down and not be so crazy. He needed me to be very conservative sexually. I couldn’t do that for him. I think I could still be with my Owner if I hadn’t wanted kids so much. Puppy was the only one who dumped me. He has some serious issues and that was for the best. He would have been very abusive. Spot… that one did run its course. There was no more there for that relationship. But we are still friends.
Noah came back when I shoved him away as hard as I could. He was still my friend even though it hurt because not knowing me was more painful than dealing with me rejecting him as a boyfriend. Then after a while of being my friend he noticed that I was single for five minutes and he took a chance on offering me the best deal of my whole damn life. Would I like to marry my best friend and have the babies I’ve been dreaming of? Yes. Yes I would.
I like sudden intense protestations of devotion that I end up being able to count on. That works for me.
And Noah has chased me ever since. I do not always honor his efforts as I should. But I take breaks to admire just how forking nice to me he is. He chases me. He feels like he would die without me.
It makes it kind of hard to keep chasing people who are not that enthusiastic about seeing me, who do not push for time or attention, who do not make it clear that they want to know me.
I’m spoiled as fuck.
My submissive chases me à la Pepé Le Pew. Slow and patient and just there for my entire adult life.
You know who else chases me? Sarah. That’s why she is My Sarah. Because she has chased me and pushed and offered and grabbed chances to see me for over twelve years.
Lots and lots and lots of people can ask me once or twice a year for a visit. That’s so wonderful and sweet and generous. They give me what they have to spare. They ask for how much of me they want. I’m grateful for every person who gives me a three hour visit a year because they want to know me and that’s all they have spare. That is a gift.
It is so glorious having people in my life who want more and more and more of me. The number of people who feel that way is growing and I can’t help but think that is so wonderful. One of the women I look up to most described knowing me as being like watching the birth of a planet. I’m developing my own gravity.
So this ADD book I’m reading keeps saying, “There is something special about a lot of people with ADD. You can’t put your finger on what it is. It’s just there.” I find that hilarious.
When you look at comorbidity things: ADD is highly correlated with trauma which is highly correlated with being targeted which is highly correlated to being something that attracts notice.
Being special/different/weird is threatening as fuck. Lemme tell you.
Hey, is that a self love moment there? Did I just admit that I know I’m special?
Whoa.
I am. I always have been. I do radiate energy like the sun. Either I freak people out or I draw them in. I pay attention to people. I want to know them and love them. Just looking at people as hard as I do is special. Not many people are even capable of really looking at everyone around them and paying attention the way I do. It is some trick of attention and hypervigilance and empathy.
And where in the hell did I find the well of love I seem to have for people? Despite everything. Recently someone said I didn’t break; I broke open.
I need to be needed or there isn’t a lot of point in me. I think that the majority of creatures who are ever born live and die not having a point. I think that the creature has to make their own point, their own purpose, their own meaning.
Am I doing it?
So far people in ten states and a few different countries have told me that knowing me has changed them for the better. It’s a start.
I can say with great certainty that the three people who live here, my submissive, and My Sarah will chase me just about to the ends of the earth. Jenny has flown out to rescue me when I was in danger even though she isn’t by nature a chaser.
I still call her Jenny because I’m the only damn one who can. To you, she is Jennifer. You do not have leave to address her familiar. I think the only reason I can’t mature into the grown up name is because it was a very young person who first opened her heart to me. It was a very young person with intense wounds of her own who learned how to put up with me. When I cry and think of how very much I miss my friend I am dimly aware that we are grown ups now… but I miss her from that place of being very young. Because that is where she first touched me. I met her when I was twelve. I feel like twelve was for me the absolute last gasping breaths of my childhood. That was right as I started seriously dating.
Jenny managed to catch the last bits of me that could love as a child. And I love her with all the intensity of a child for their best friend still. Thank you.
Despite how not chaste I am… I am still chased. I am deemed worthy of love. And by people I respect and love in return. People who absolutely thrill me to my toes that these people think I am worth enough of their energy to chase me. People who are impacted by my gravity pull and just have to be near me.
Oh I love you I love you I love you.
That’s at least six people who will… chase me pretty fucking far. Blacksheep has jumped enormous hurdles to be my friend. DSH has gone waaaaaaay far past her comfort zone for me even though she isn’t one to chase people like me.
I could keep going.
I am blessed and blessed and blessed. My Bonus Family. It would take a few pages to go through all they have done for me. Even though I’m god damn difficult and sometimes they need some boundaries. That’s healthy.
Most of the people who love me with great intensity have rev limiters of their own. They have lives. Part of the reason I love them so much is because they are intense people with a lot going on. They give me what they can. Even if they can’t chase me the way I like to be chased…
Really, how spoiled can someone be? I get chased. I have three people chasing me 24/7. Quit being so greedy.
And yet I’d still kinda like to set up a calendar that says when folks can invite themselves over and see what happens.
I don’t want to decide who it is and how many people. I just… want to see what happens. I assume not much. I assume a few people sometimes but not much. The key to happiness is low expectations.
I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks. I’m nervous because this is a lot of time to be “on” with folks I don’t know that well. But I know this mama through mental/physical disability support. At least we are both very understanding of our mutual shortcomings. Ha.
I am so grateful that they accepted my invitation. This is going to be a lot of fun for me. I can’t wait to homeschool her kids. I feel like a walking encyclopedia and that is one of my favorite feelings. See how useful I can be. I am a good tool!
One of the things that makes me special is how fast I can access disparate topics in my brain and explain them in simple or complicated ways for just about anyone. I can make connections between things that seem unrelated… until I explain… faster than the vast majority of people I’ve ever met. And I’ve met a lot of people. I am not an expert in almost anything. Instead of going deep I go wide. That allows for a different kind of thinking, a different kind of intensity.
Ok, reading this book on ADD is making me question something about my long term mental health diagnosis: depression. I don’t do the torpor kind of depression. I do the head-down-keep-working-as-you-hate-yourself-and-want-to-die kind. Apparently that is a pretty standard ADD thing. Oh. Huh. That’s supposed to be one of those things they kinda look for. I hate them and their not looking.
If you loathe yourself: you are depressed. Sorta. Maybe.
I made Noah listen to this song. I can’t find it easily on the internet so you get lyrics. The thing is… I need to be loved. And I need it from lots of people because I’m trying to push past a whole lot of not being loved.
There is some interesting research out there on preverbal trauma and early formative trauma. I feel like I still need to be filled with as much love as an infant. I was not wanted. Not from conception. I only exist because a bad thing happened. What do I have to do to make up for that? What do I have to do for the world to make up for the harm I caused by coming into being. For declaring, “I don’t care that this hurts you. I need to be here.”
It’s not like I think I really deserve to be punished for choosing to be born. It was an accident. A surprise.
To be fair, my mom told me over and over I was a surprise. She didn’t know she wanted me till she had me. Sissy is the one who told me over and over that I was an accident. My mom just admitted it was rape. My mom tries to make sense of her life given the stories she has been given. God wanted her to have that child. Me.
I have been crying for my mother for over 31, almost 32 years. My mom was 32 when I was born. I might be 35 or 36 if I have another child.
Am I a grown up yet?
When my mama was 35 years old she had four children. She locked her abusive husband out of the house and sued for divorce. On the grounds that he had been raping their children. He was still given partial custody. He refused to pay alimony or child support so my mom lost the house and we ended up living in the car. Well, he would pay it. In exchange for sex.
Sometimes I think I judge my mother far too harshly for surviving a world of horror.
Sex. Sex. Sex. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it neither? Is it both? Does it depend?
I think that if I don’t have that much pull… I should probably just be ok with that. It is probably healthier that way. Maybe. Who knows.
Yes. Yes, I want pushy.
I think people misunderstand suicide prevention. There is a lot of shaming. “Don’t do it because it is selfish. You hurt people.” I hurt people by living too. I promise. It’s always complicated. It is always about the balance of hurting people vs being hurt.
I think it should be framed as enlightened self interested selfishness. Someday I will get to the point where I am out of good days. I’m not there yet. I’m trying to construct a future so fantastic that I absolutely want to stay alive to see it.
I know we are giving up the WWOOF year I’ve always wanted because of a baby I want more. You know what? I bet I will still go to Africa with Sarah someday. I bet I will still go to Taiwan to see Pam someday. I bet I will still go to South America someday. I don’t know who will go with me or who I will see… but it’s probably going to happen.
I’m like that.
I go do things.
No more travel for a long time though. I need to save money. We don’t really travel cheap.
The kids and Noah have promised to veto all requests for travel in 2017 even if I say, “but we could…”
Ha.
I love my reminders.
My Eldest Child likes to say, “You should listen to yourself more, mom. You are a smart lady.” But I don’t listen to myself. I need to hear it from you. I need to hear it in your voice. I need to have you replace my inside voice. Do you know why? Because when I talk to me I’m so god damn mean. When you remind me of something I just said a few minutes ago… you usually sound so nice.
I know I sounded nice when I said it to you. That’s because it is easy to be nice to you. No, I can’t remind myself in that same nice way. I need you on a tape in my head. Because my tapes are all so bad. Thank you for reminding me.
I never mean that sarcastically.
Well… maybe once in a while but I’ll make it obvious with a funny voice.
Shiny change of topic. I feel like it is wise to restate a thing about voice in my blog. I talk to “you” a lot. That’s a moving target. I often consciously create sentences so I’m addressing multiple situations and multiple people at once and I phrase it as a singular. So if you feel paranoid that I’m talking to you… maybe…. inclusively…
Or maybe you’re the one. Noah gets a lot of direct address. Ok, other people do too and I hide behind the group thing. Let’s be honest. But I do the group address thing too!
I’m just tricksy.
I sat here for a while and just went through some visuals of stuff I’d like to have happen in my life. Oh let it be so.
For a complete change of channel: baby
We saw the vasectomy reversal doctor today. He is as nerdy and fabulous as Noah told me. I’ve gotta say: if you are going to let someone cut up your junk then stitch it back together… pick this guy. His statistics are amazing. If I had a dick I’d let him cut into it.
“A vasectomy is the new condom because they are so reversible.” Holy shit.
It was a much more hopeful conversation than I anticipated. Now I need to get all my medical records together and go meet an ob. That’s the scary part.
Noah is talking about two more. He says he isn’t going to insist. But he keeps saying two more. Two more. Two more.
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
I can’t say the idea doesn’t fill me with overwhelming joy. I might get to be blessed with four of his babies? This child rearing thing is going well. Our genes mix well. We make god damn awesome kids.
But but population problem. Bad person.
But babies. But my babymoon years have been the happiest, most peaceful years of my life. Even with the stress of an infant.
You don’t understand the stress of my normal life. Having to just be with someone who is adjusting to the cold (or too hot) cruel world? Oh, my precious love. I can’t fix everything. But I’ll be here with you. I will love you. I promise. No matter what. No matter who you become or what you do. I will love you with every speck of me.
That can’t be taken back.
And I say it over and over for a whole year.
I tell my children that they are wanted here. We really really really wanted to know you and we are so grateful you are here now. We need you to be whole. We love you. Thank you for picking this family. We are so honored by your presence.
And that’s what I spend a year doing.
It feels so good.
I don’t go out more than absolutely necessary. And I can make it not very necessary. I’m fine with delivery lots of stuff.
All of you’s out in the web… you are grown ups. You have time perspective. You can wait. This one can’t. This one has needs that are right fucking now what the hell are you waiting for?!
I get it, sweetheart. I’ll work harder. I know I’m too slow. Ok, which need is it again? Let’s go through the list.
You are the most important one in the room this year. We will all help you as much as we can.
Even though I’ve always said that I would hate having my kids be little mamas I’m looking forward to seeing my kids be older siblings. They are caretakers and nurturers. This will be lovely.
TWO?!
Oh my.
I think that the bed frame we bought to celebrate the end of co sleeping will go away. That’s kind of a bummer. It’s nice. Instead we will go back to having mattress on the floor. I might be a nice mama and let the big kids move back in. I think Eldest Child will be a sometimes companion and (current) Youngest Child will be a usual companion for a few more years. I think it might be a reason for (current) Youngest Child to become really happy about being promoted to Middle Child. Sleep bonding is the best bonding. I love it so much. I’m thinking multiple mattresses so that Noah can be mostly away from all the restless folk.
Some folks are born into a family. Some folks find a family. Some folks choose a family. Some folks marry into a family. Some folks adopt a family.
Some folks make their family with their body because that is how they can do it.
I’m really looking forward to doing this again. I’m scared, but I’m excited. How will this play in with the fact that I just kind of exploded out of mommy-mode?
I don’t know and I don’t care. Babies. That will resolve itself eventually. They won’t always be babies and I won’t always make more of them. But I’m going to make these ones. Fuck yes biology.
I feel like I don’t know about the fourth child. That’s complicated for so many reasons. I had my heart set on a third baby. I find it funny that my friend is now kinda extolling all the positives to a fourth so the third doesn’t feel lonely and and and.
Oh my god. Am I going to get a lot of “go for four?”
That’s… not the reaction I expected. I expected recoils of horror. More lectures about how I really shouldn’t be bringing children into the world. But my children are so wonderful. How on earth can you not want more children this cool?
I really want to see what they do as they grow up. Maybe that will be my bulwark against suicide. Maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong.
Maybe it isn’t that any one person ever has to be enough to make me feel little enough pain that I can promise I won’t off myself.
I don’t think that is a situation that can happen. Not for anyone. I can’t tell a person I promise that. Fuck you.
But maybe, just maybe, if it isn’t a person it is an idea, it is a whole group, it is a position where I really want to be able to help guide these people for a fucking long time because they are so incredible already and clearly it is in part because I am a fucking good guide.
I want more of this feeling.
My children are my motivation in life. Even if I don’t want them to define my whole identity. And on that note… I should go hang out with them.
Sadomasochism, mental health, chronic pain and calibration.
I am a hard fucking pet to own. Noah and I discuss this in detail. He has spent ten years trying to learn how to properly feed me, exercise me, get me to sleep, and take care of me better than ever before. It’s been hard for both of us.
I am an emotional and physical masochist. Does it turn me on when my back hurts? No. What that means is I have learned how to eroticize kinds of sensation (physical and emotional) that other people don’t experience as sexual. This is good and bad.
Within certain contexts I enjoy being hit fairly hard in the scheme of things. Within certain contexts being degraded will make me orgasm like a geyser. But these are not all the time fun things for me. In the wrong times these sensations can be highly damaging. Only the right people get to tell me I’m a good whore. Preferably after role play when their cock (bio or not) is inside me. Then, it works great. If someone random brings that up… the fur’s gonna fly.
I have been suicidal and self harming for almost thirty years. When I talk about my problems, they are not in reaction to my current life. They did not form in context to what is happening now, but I have to deal with them now. PTSD, for me, means that I have a hard time telling what is past tense and what is current tense and what is future tense a lot of the time. I’m just… trying to be a version of me that won’t be too problematic in all times. That’s rough because what was needed from me as a child is different from now.
I don’t think it is possible to over state the impact of my early childhood sexual abuse on my personality formation. I know I lived with my father until I was three. I know the abuse was frequent before he was kicked out. I know it was every time I saw him after that until about twelve.
My father telling me over and over that I exist to get men off and I don’t have the right to say no…
That has absolutely shaped my life.
Noah and I were talking tonight about “What he can get away with” now vs when we got married. I’ve learned to say no. I used to not say no to anything he wanted no matter how much pain it caused me. It really never seemed important that I was in pain. I was going to hurt anyway. He might as well be getting what he wants.
Fibromyalgia fucks all of this up too. I’m in pain a lot of the time. As I age my joints are on fire more days of the month. PMDD complicates my life. (That’s premenstrual dysphoric disorder for those who don’t know.) It means that for roughly 3-10 days a month my brain would kind of like to kill me. I feel useless, worthless, and like I should die. I feel like I am bad. I feel like I hurt people by existing.
This isn’t about reality or rational thinking. This is pure hormonal/chemical hell. And I’ve done everything that I can do about it. I keep trying new things. It does improve over time. But it is pure shit when it is happening.
I live in a kind of chemical soup that doesn’t want me to be alive very much. I live in a chemical state that doesn’t see much purpose for me.
But then there are the happy chemicals. Oxytocin. Endorphins. Serotonin. I can get them. But it’s hard hard hard hard hard.
Something that is complicated and hard and not fair…
I can do the spike up and down thing pretty easily. Ecstasy and despair are easy for me. It’s being ok I suck at. Noah has helped me make more progress on being ok than anything and everything else in my life. But doing so has worked a lot like a standard antidepressant in that it makes the ecstasy part harder. Not impossible, but more complicated.
Noah and I have very deeply connected sex. There’s a lot of “I see you as a whole person with flaws and merits and I love you for being more than one thing.” It is wonderful and life affirming. It helps me feel like I can climb into a box and be safe. Desafortunadamente (why is this word so much better in Spanish?) that box isn’t able to be everything.
Why do I need more?
Why does a Porsche need more maintenance than a Toyota? It is the result of engineering.
Why am I so complicated? Why am I so hard? Engineering.
I need a lot of connection with people. I need lots of people in a way that is hard for Noah to understand. I think Noah is an actual introvert and I am actual extrovert who behaves like an introvert because of trauma and avoidance.
I fucking need people. I need to talk to them. The kissing and sexing is awesome, but I’d say they are part of less than 1% of my relationships. I need connection. Mostly it isn’t sexual. But good golly the sexual connection is so good at making all of those chemicals I suck at making on my own.
Why do I want to date? Because I want massive injections of oxytocin. Because I want to see you and feel so excited you are alive. Because I want you to look at me the same way. Because I need to see that look on your face because there will probably be minutes between this time and next time I see you when it is very hard for me to remember at all that anyone is ever happy to see me.
What I feel right now is what I have always felt and will always feel. Until it changes. Then that is what I feel and have always felt.
You can see how I might try to stack the deck with experiences that land me squarely in the happy brain chemicals column because when I’m there I don’t have to deal with the depressive and anxious symptoms in the same way. It’s like they went on vacation and forgot to write.
So I had multiple possible kissing opportunities go by without kisses. Internally my narrative around this is melodramatic, stupid, and whiny. “See. They’re done.”
I feel like I should stop bothering them.
I feel like what I am is a bother.
Incidentally: shiny change of topic to drop a cryptic comment at someone from yesterday. When I say that someone is giving me “reminders” I don’t mean that in any kind of negative way. My kids and I give each other reminders. It is a way of noticing someone and saying, “Hey do you remember this thing you want to remember?” Because…. most people suck at that. It is a loving thing to do, in my mind. Let me remind you about who you want to be because that makes it easier to stay on track. Let me remind you that I see you and what you are doing is real and has impact on the world so I remind you of what you need to be thinking about.
I sure didn’t mean it as a complaint or as a criticism or an attack or anything negative. Reminders are intensely positive in my life. But I had two hours of sleep and my ability to explain is uhm compromised at such times.
End of shiny change of topic.
I like to be hit. I crave it like other people crave… whatever the fuck they crave. It’s a powerful force in my life. My absolute favorite is hitting with hands. Punching is such a vicious, visceral, vivacious connection that I feel like it makes me more alive. Punching helps me stop dissociating. Punching helps me feel the muscles and the tendons and the bones in my body. Punching helps me feel alive.
I can enjoy being hit with toys but it is a lot more difficult for me. I don’t process it as connection. It tends to increase my dissociation because mostly it hurts more in a way that I have to escape my body in order to tolerate very much of it. I don’t feel connected that way. I feel like I am a thing that a tool is doing a thing to. Sometimes that is hot too. Sometimes I do want to be beaten until I go away. It is like a vacation from the tyranny of living in a brain that hates me this much.
It feels like atonement for being so bad all the god damn time.
But atonement needs to be a sometimes treat or it means that I am shit and I should spend all my time apologizing for being shit.
Constant atonement means I am constantly bad enough that I need to atone.
That hurts.
That hurts my soul as much as it hurts my body.
I don’t always need to atone. Mostly I need to connect with people who want me to be alive and who aren’t shy about telling me so. Because I’m not so sure I want to be alive. But I don’t want to hurt people in this web more than I want to stop being in pain. Right now the balance is very much on the side that my pain doesn’t matter. I need more reason to believe that. And I need less pain.
The happy chemicals make me feel less pain. Less emotional pain and less physical pain. It’s a virtuous cycle.
I feel so very guilty that even when I’m having sex with Noah basically every day and sometimes several times a day… that isn’t enough chemical in the soup to push me over the rim of the pot and out of the boiling water that wants to kill me.
But adding more people… well… it’s variable… but it does more than anything else.
I have managed to long since get the soup down to a simmer from a hard boil, but I haven’t been able to get out of the pot.
Thank you Noah. That is mostly because of you. It is because of the children you have given me. It is because of the life you have given me.
But yeah. I need more relationships. I need people I can talk to and connect with and feel like I matter to them.
Because being a wife and a mother is not enough for me.
Do you know why I think that sport fucking isn’t going to work out for me the way it used to? Because these days even when I fuck someone at a swing party and intend to not really see them again (and hell they gave me a fake name anyway)…
They end up telling me their real name and coming over for lunch with their whole family so we can talk about life balance and problems and how to deal with different life issues and… we are turning into friends.
Noah I know I kinda wanted to just be fuck buddies with people. I went out looking for that.
FUCK ALL OF YOU FOR BEING SO AWESOME.
But I feel small and scared and ashamed. Because asking for support, asking for connection with these other people feels like it is almost specifically designed to be about hurting Noah. I don’t want to hurt Nah. He is the air I breathe. No, he isn’t every ounce of chemical I need… but he is the basis. He is the start. He is safety. He is the love that reminds me to take care of myself when I am failing at doing so.
I feel ashamed of how much I need him. I would be willing to sacrifice other parts of myself for that safety. But I’ll be down in the simmering soup forever. That’s just… true. One of these days the soup is going to finish boiling me and I will die.
I need more chemicals to raise the water line and get the fuck out of the pot.
I am so sorry I need an amount one person can’t supply. I have no idea what is enough.
I am feeling really scared. I want to reach out and I don’t. I am so weary of being a bother. I feel so much like people “put up with” me.
I’m so sorry that I am so horrible.
I want to be good. I want to be just a source of happiness. But the truth is I’m not. I’m full of sadness I don’t know what to do with. Mostly I try to get enough when I feel it is ok to touch people and can access more of those fucking chemicals I can’t produce on my own.
If I walk in wearing makeup and I walk out with a bare face that means I removed it all because I didn’t want it to be obvious I was crying. Part of the reason I have been wearing more makeup is because I’m trying to control the crying. I know I can’t cry without it being obvious and that’s too public for me. I can cry without people seeing with a bare face. I do it a lot.
I want to stop crying some year. Stop crying. Stop crying. Stop crying you fucking baby.
Why do I want to date? Because I had to marry someone as broken as me. I had to marry someone who has so many pieces chopped out of him that he has huge gaping wounds where we can grow together and meld and heal into a new shape that is one thing instead of two broken things.
But how in the mother fuck do we teach our kids about a happy or healthy or normal childhood? By saying “Be grateful you aren’t getting what we got?” Oh goodness no. So I go date (in very small part) because that way I can find people who aren’t broken in the same ways and ask question after question after question. I get the impression people think I’m weird. Tell me how you turned out the way you did. I like you just fine and if I could manage to interact with a mini human to help them turn out like you… that would be a positive in this world.
I can’t make babies with everyone. But I can take the example of what kind of life experiences someone would bring to parenting and try to bastardize that onto my life. It is variably successful piece by piece. Overall it has been wildly successful.
I learn things from Cupid and Deity about a quieter happiness than I have known. They are very different men but they both come from backgrounds they are basically happy about. Do you know how fucking weird that is in my life? Dating them is almost like getting to have a koala bear accidentally fall out of a tree on your head and so see you’ve proven drop bears exist.
Whoa
My submissive inspires me with his passionate devotion to things. He has picked just a few people in his life to pour devotion into and I admire him. I both love and struggle with the fact that his core kinks are around degradation and “dirty” things. I absolufuckinglutely love that I get to do these things… I wish they weren’t degrading or dirty. I think they are fun. I do them from love. I do them out of service because you want to be treated this way and so ok I’m happy to be in that role for you.
So where does the sadism come into all of this? I am a sadist… but I am more of a service top. I do things because I think the person I am playing with wants/needs to experience them. I like being a guide on a journey. Even more I love being lead on a journey but with every passing year I intimidate people more and I get fewer offers.
The sadists are going to be happier with the people who aren’t physically and emotionally damaged at the beginning. I can’t take what a lot of people like to do on a regular basis. I can take it sometimes. I can take it when I’m doing well. Then I can’t for a while.
And the bubbling of the soup has a huge impact. The more emotionally dysregulated I am the more my entire nervous system flares up.
That’s why I want the kissing so much. It calms my central nervous system down. It distracts it from feeling pain.
And when there are chances to do the kissing and someone doesn’t want to… that feels really super out of proportion huge for me. I’m not saying anyone is obligated to make out with me for hours. Hell. I’m not saying you have to spend fifteen minutes kissing me.
But if you tell me you are romantically interested in me and you have a chance to kiss me and you’d rather not….
I feel that in my body and I feel it for days and I feel so sad.
All of this is complicated by the fact that we can’t kiss in front of my kids. So if we see each other a few times when kisses were possible but didn’t happen and then we see each other around my kids… that’s complicated torture. That’s a complicated thing that feels a lot like how I couldn’t hug or kiss or be affectionate around the kids when they were very small. I could do some but I would freak out if I heard them. It took a long time before I decided it was more appropriate for them to see that folks do those things when they like each other.
I have been good about slowly developing these boundaries and I’m going to keep being good about them. That’s important to me. I came from a place of severe inappropriate connection. I have inched my way towards letting my kids see different actions. But my kids have always seen me hug my friends. That’s just a standard thing. Even long hugs. So whereas kissing feels like it is a big boundary for me… my kids aren’t dumb. They will figure things out.
All of this is also complicated by my general problem with time distortion. I mentioned that in a few ways up-post: living in more than one time at once, feeling like how I feel in this moment is how I feel in all moments… but there is also the problem that when I’m really happy, time flies. I feel like I am getting so much input I can barely take it in. I struggle with feeling like hard packed clay soil. If you dump a deluge on me, it’s mostly going to just run off and not impact the plants. When I am depressed and/or anxious time drags on and on and on and on. It feels like there will never ever be a cessation of pain and god I can’t do this.
I have seriously been hurting most of my life. It’s hard to keep carrying that load.
But I have so much good that sometimes I am able to just sling all that hurt into a rucksack, toss it on my back and say, “It doesn’t matter how you feel it matters what you do.”
I think it is a problem that I associate not wearing makeup with a need to hide crying.
When I’m riding high in the pot and I feel relatively happy for me, then I want to beg someone to hurt me.
Why was it at such a sharp edge when I started hunting? Because I have been so safe for so long. I need the sharp and the soft. I got so much soft. I know it wasn’t fair that I didn’t know how to talk to Noah about being the sharp.
But it’s getting better pretty quickly, I think.
I need to not do anything melodramatic around this kissing thing. But I need to have some conversations. I need to talk about some pieces of this in real time with people.
The not kissing when the kids are around: kosher. The not kissing when the kids aren’t around? No. Not ok. I can’t think of you as someone I want to be kissing and deal with feeling like you don’t want to kiss me.
I had to turn off thinking about the Professor like that. He feels whatever he feels and I have no window into that but his behavior is that we had opportunities and there were no kisses and I need to treat that like “We are not people who will be kissing” and move on with my life. I have to compartmentalize like that or I get my feelings hurt.
He’s still my friend though. I still like him a lot. I will… poke at him less for a while because I’m still in the sticky he doesn’t like me that much stage.
I’ll get over that bit. I always do. It’s ok for people to like me how much they like me. But sometimes I have some sad that I am only liked as much as I am. I need to deal with that sad. I need to stay friends. Because that’s dealing with your shit. Because good grief I’m dealing with a lot of people and if I got bitter about everyone who doesn’t want to kiss me I’d have a shitty life. It’s ok.
But I’ll poke the Professor at a slower rate for a bit. I’m not going away;I enjoy the conversation too much. I just need to do some self management.
Even if I stop feeling like I have the right to look for kisses… I don’t want to stop being friends. I went hunting for friends with benefits. I want friends. I want benefits. Largely, apparently, in the form of kissing.
Wouldn’t it have been god damn handy if I could have phrased it that way in like March.
I’m going as fast as I can.
I want more hitting and I want more being hurt. But I want it in between kisses from someone who very much likes me. That’s complicated.
And I want to write about Sweet Boy. Because that was awesome. But I’m closing in on four thousand words and my arms need me to stop soon. He’ll be a lengthy story.
In three and a half hours we leave to go see the doctor about Noah’s vasectomy reversal. Holy shit.
How is this all going to work? Fuck if I know. But I guess we’ll figure it out. It’s that or die and I’m not ready. Even if I want to. I’m not ready. There is so much left to do. I’m not one to sit around when there is work to be done.
Do you know what is the part of our family culture that I am proudest of? “We are workers not shirkers.” When my kids say this, when Noah models it and repeats it… oh my soul glows. Yes. I read this hilarious book called How to Raise the Perfect Children Through Guilt and Manipulation and it is as much a memoir about her childhood as it is written by a parent about parenting. I don’t want to do anything how the sports-fanatic-Catholic author does things in her life…. but I do want to set a strong family culture the way she talks about. I do want to indoctrinate with my ideals the way she talks about. Yeah. Like that. Only something different.
Cause that’s what I am. Like you. Only something different.
Today is the 18th anniversary of Tommy’s suicide. I can’t say I miss you. I am glad you don’t have to be hurting any more. Self immolation. What a way to go.
This is why I like to schedule things at my house.
When it all goes to pieces, I still have chores to do. One of the difficulties in trying to be someone who organizes get togethers is… you have to deal with other peoples schedules. Whether I schedule in advance or at the last minute this sucks.
Yesterday we were supposed to have a playdate with five families. All bailed at the last minute. I think one is in labor (good reason to skip the park! Good luck!); another has to wait on a bureaucrat who is making her life hell (good golly that sucks. Good luck!); another forgot it was election Tuesday and oops she always works (ok, this one kinda bugs me a bit); another was just running behind and she could have showed up two hours late if we waited (no, I’m not gonna); last but not least one family said they were technically happy to show up… with hand foot and mouth disease–that cancellation is my fault.
But I was on my way to babysit other kids and see another family. Picking up a highly communicable disease on the way seemed rude.
Nobody did anything wrong. But it still feels hard.
Sometimes people ask me why I’m not more willing to drive for park playdates these days. I stop laughing eventually.
Because driving far from my house for a park play date is a variable experience at the end of a hard experience for my body. Nope.
Last time some of these folks missed a playdate I scheduled over near them and they asked if we could come back the next week to see them.
Funny how folks don’t generally say, “Know how we broke our plans? How about if we offer this super convenient for you alternative?” That’s not how it works. I offer to come to them and do a bunch of work and they expect me to just do it again. Because clearly it wasn’t that hard the first time so just keep doing it. But it’s too hard for them to come to me.
Ok.
I would like to take this moment and say “Thank you” to all the people who come visit me on a regular basis. Thank you for helping me feel like maybe I do have some value to someone.
Last night Noah and I had it out a bit more. This is going to be a rough year. I’m not writing them down here but I sure went down my list of done-me-wrongs. I did that after running four miles because I was afraid I would otherwise do something drastic and awful.
That’s like healthy progress, right?
It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss.
Volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition volition
What does it mean?
How do I fill my bucket without hurting Noah? That seems to be where we are stuck. Yesterday a solid 8 people asked me why I was wearing braces. I begin to understand Mitrian’s anger and frustration. I tell people because I type too much. They ask why. I say because it is better than screaming at people. They say, “Yes. Keep typing.”
I’m so glad to hear that more people agree that me harming myself is superior to me impacting other people with negative emotions. Now we just dicker about methods.
This became absolutely crystal clear to me when I was talking to someone about cutting the other day.
Cutting actually heals pretty easily in the scheme of things. I am permanently crippling myself in the name of self harm that is more socially acceptable. Because the only place I’m actually allowed to exist is here. Everywhere else is a compromise.
I’m having huge feelings about my date with Cupid not including any intimacy. I’m not upset that we didn’t play. I’m not even cranky about not having sex. He’s not a life support unit for a dick. But we didn’t hug or kiss. So I feel like I didn’t really fill my bucket. And that’s the date I get this month.
I mean, I feel like an asshole for feeling that way because I came off an excellent group date with Noah and Deity and playing with the Sweet Boy.
But that was my only option for one to one serious adoration this month.
Noah and I do adore each other sometimes, in the middle of being cranky and fussy. Right now it’s hard. I know we aren’t actually usually cranky and fussy but I am today and so it feels like always.
What is it that I need here? What isn’t being met? Why do I feel so empty and fussy and sad?
This is a brutal period. I am soaking through pads and that hasn’t happened since I was postpartum. I’m a light bleeder.
I feel like…
I feel like that stone that was sitting heavily in my breast got too heavy and burst through the lining of my body and fell through my organs and out my cunt.
I cannot give that gift away. It is not mine to give. I cannot make that promise. Probably not ever. I wanted to. I can’t. That is not a promise I know I can keep and not being a liar is more important than making anyone feel better for a moment. Even for many moments. Not if it comes at the cost of a lie.
I have been trying to see if I could find a way to promise that I would not end my life early by choice. I have been trying to see if I could find a way to make it bearable to carry this pain no matter what because it would be too selfish to leave the people who love me.
I cannot make that promise. I am selfish. And I hurt. I have hurt all my life. I have never been free from pain.
Some day I will have a bad day. That day will be too much for me. Yeah, there probably could have been more good days on the other side of that bad day. Probably. But I don’t know where my limit of carrying bad days is. That has to matter.
Do you have to be ok with it? No. Do you have to like it? No.
All that matters is that on the bad days I am alone. I will carry what I can carry until I can’t carry it any more and then I will set it down.
I need to not give a shit that it might hurt you.
Full head, full house, ouchie arms
If my arms were great I wouldn’t be able to type much because I have four kids here. My arms suck though. There are a few things I want to try and remind myself of, maybe so I can talk to Noah about them.
My shrink is quite perturbed by my level of interest in Deity. This is becoming A Thing We Talk About. She’s all: “Sport fucking! Yay! Falling in love. Boo.”
When I mention that I already love other partners she cocks an eyebrow and says, “You don’t blush and stammer when you talk about them.”
Well, maybe that is true.
I have a better idea of what I want from my submissive. I have times when I don’t feel I have the oomph to do what I want to do but I feel deeply secure that the line of stuff I’m interested in asking for are all things that are right up his alley.
I have… more comfort around Cupid. I think I’m a lot more into him than I should be. I’m tap dancing on a high wire trying to figure out how to keep him in a spot in my life even though he’s probably not going to be interested in the group stuff everyone else will put up with. I went from wanting someone to do something to wanting Cupid to do things but I’m not 100% sure what.
I’m really not interested in hunting just the now. I feel like I have a lot to explore and learn about and I’m really excited about that.
And I get to balance it with helping Noah feel secure. The whole ship won’t sail if he feels insecure. First I have to figure out how to help Noah feel loved. Then I can figure out what it means that I love these other people.
Because I do. I love my Daddy’s. Every single one of them for different reasons.
What do these loves, these attachments mean? I don’t know. Many of them have been there for a long time. (I messaged Daddy James today to say that even though I was in his neighborhood… I still am not fucking him. Sigh.)
I do love these people. But what does that mean?
What is love?
Some love is possessive and about ownership… but not all love. Sometimes love is about generosity and sharing and wanting them to get joy from anyone but you. Loving someone can include hoping they find the girl of their dreams and settle down and don’t have time for me.
But not Noah. He’s not allowed to run out of time for me.
I fall in love easily. I fall in love often. I fall in love with great intensity. Usually I love forever.
If I sat here and listed allllllllllllll of the people who have a piece of my heart… I’d sound like I was bragging. I would be bragging.
Aren’t I a lucky bitch? I have been able to love so many people.
Some of them even loved me back. At least a little. For a time.
Do any of those loves mean I do not love Noah? I don’t see why that would be true. I married one man. One man has seen me through hardship and illness and despair. One man helped me create the babies that give me life.
It really doesn’t matter how much I love other people this will always be true.
Noah is the only person who ever really looked at me and decided that he was going to prove to me that I am worthy.
Loyalty my friend, loyalty. But what does that loyalty entitle him to? My friend who was here the other weekend says jack shit. My shrink says definitely not sex.
I don’t know what I think.
I know I shouldn’t care what random people out in the world think. I really shouldn’t. I was stupid enough to read one of those “People who commit suicide are selfish” posts. I shouldn’t have. I should have opted-out and done some self-care.
Suicide has shaped my whole life. My grandmother killed herself by overdosing when my mom was pregnant with me. My mom dealt with that loss through my infancy. It was hard. She had been very close to her mother. I don’t really know why. My brother lit himself on fire because he could not cope with the pain of his life. Given how his life was… I don’t feel I have the right to anger. Was he selfish? Yes. But he had the right to be. He was left alone in care facilities where he was abused and that was all he would ever know. My father sat in the garage with the motor running and wrote notes to everyone in the world telling them that I was an evil liar and he was innocent. Even though he’d already confessed and collaborated every story. He wasn’t going to drive himself to the court room that day.
Selfish is just so beside the point.
My therapist OD’ed on heroin. She could not deal with the pain in her life. My adopted step-mom (long story) OD’ed on injected pain medication she was not prescribed. She could not deal with the pain in her life.
I have been institutionalized for attempting suicide. My stomach was pumped and I’m still here.
I don’t have a lot of the attachments other people have. I get what I create. I do the absolute best I can with the platonic friends I have…
Sharing sex and intimacy creates tighter bonds.
I don’t feel like I’m in a position to turn down a good twitterpation. Even if it makes my therapist uncomfortable. Am I going to wreck my life over it? No. I hope not.
Noah’s parents just sent us a cheerful letter to tell us about the cruise they are going on. The same month as the one we are going on. The one they won’t go on with us because they have to “get the hay in”. The hay they won’t touch with their hands because they have employees.
What is attachment?
I’m listening to the kids as they play in the back yard. I’m kinda ridiculous about enforcing outside time. “Y’all spend too much time inside. Get out into the sun. Go. Go. Go.”
I do go with them…
Right now I medicate. It was a long day of driving and being sober. Processing with my therapist. I feel like I’m almost ready to be happy. But not till I deal with Thursday. Oh Thursday.
I love you so. I have been such a twat waffle and I do not deserve your forgiveness. I have no. no. no. no idea how this will go.
Fuck.
I’m thinking of a pithy movie quote, I think from Girls Just Want to Have Fun “You always hurt the one you love.” Shannon Doherty? Is that it?
Anyway.
You know… I think I love my biological father. Even with everything. Most of the people who raped me… I loved them. Many of them I love them now. I might feel really angry with them… but I love them.
What is love?
Even though Tommy spent my childhood beating me and trying to rape me… I loved him. I’m sad his life was so terrible that he had to die to get away from it. I cannot bring myself to be angry with him for not wanting to suffer more for my convenience.
It is almost the anniversary of Tommy’s death. Next month. Eighteen years now. In three more years he will have been dead as long as he was alive.
Rest in Peace, Tommy.
What am I doing with my life?
I am trying to stop being a destroyer. I want to be a builder. I want to be someone who makes less pain in the world and not more.
There are reasons for temporary physical pain that alleviate intense emotional suffering and I don’t know how to deal with that dichotomy. Sometimes I don’t know what I am doing.
I want to figure out how to help there be less pain. One of the ways I do that is to understand and find compassion.
I like loving lots of kinds of people. They all teach me different things. I learn best by being able to stand very close to someone and bask in their presence. I know this after many years of trying a lot of ways to learn. I will pick things up faster. I will learn more quickly. I will try to synch up with this person in any way I can because the drive to conform is what keeps our species alive.
The main reason I manage to be so god damn weird is because I have allowed myself to pattern off incredibly different people. Contradictions are ok. We can all solve different problems.
Ok. Time to be off.
I love you. Even when I have no idea what that means.
Hunting lessons
Exhaustion is a real thing. When I’m over tired I can’t read tone to save my life. I’m whiny, over-sensitive and I’m going to spend a lot of time crying. It’s not about a person saying something… it’s about being tired. I didn’t respect that yesterday. Given how much… pushing it I’ve done on sleep stuff lately I need to build better boundaries around this. Don’t respond to messages when I’m that tired.
I wrote about 7 pages in a word document yesterday. Notice how I’m not posting it? I don’t think I was even a little coherent. I was tired and scared.
I live with a kind of existential dread most people can’t understand. On one hand I’m one of the asking-ist people you’ll ever meet. I ask and ask and ask for things. On the other hand I live in mortal terror that I will rape someone again. That I will ask for something and someone won’t feel comfortable/safe saying no and I will be an evil monster as usual.
This is complicated for me. Because if you can’t say, “Hey do you want to do x?” and get a yes/no answer…how the fuck is life supposed to work?
I don’t know.
Folks tell me that I’m doing a good thing by giving people opportunities to refine their boundaries and decide what they do and don’t want.
I feel scared all the time that I’m on the verge of hurting people. I feel like I should withdraw a lot because I’m pushing too hard. Noah says this may be a bad time to assume that my bad reading of one persons tone means I should stop asking other people for things.
For some reason he seems to think that individual humans should be judged on their own behavior.
Whatever.
So it isn’t going to be a rule (because how the fuck well do I follow rules?!?!) but I think it should be a guideline to not respond to ambiguous messages at all when I’m tired. Once I’m not tired I can say, “Hey I’m not sure I’m getting your tone of voice here. Can you clarify?” Cause wouldn’t that be useful.
I don’t feel like I did yesterday. Glorious 8 hours of sleep. I hate sleep deprivation.
Many folks in the scene have been asking me, “Oh do you remember Mistress ___? She’s coming around more again.”
Goody. She likes to tell me that I’m a bigger bitch than her because I don’t handle sleep deprivation well. Can’t wait to run into her. weeeeeeeeeeee
I’ve gotten off overly lucky this hunting phase. Things have been going too smoothly. I’ve been getting too many ‘yes’ answers. Too many people telling me I’m doing it right. When I hit a bump it feels… big.
It isn’t. I’m going to get over it. But yesterday I couldn’t read tone and I spent a lot of time crying. Like I do.
Sleep. Dear goodness, sleep.
When I was a kid my sister used to tell me, repeatedly, that if I have the same problem over and over it is my fault and not other peoples fault.
I push boundaries. I do it globally. That makes it seem to me like it is all my fault and I’m a bad person. It means that when I feel spooked that I came too near a boundary with one person I want to globalize it and use it as a reason I should stay home and stop hurting people.
I want to use that experience as evidence that I am a monster who is unable to stop hurting people. I want to use the hint of possibility that I pushed too hard as evidence that I should stop asking for anything from anyone because I am not deserving.
I want to tell everyone that I know they don’t really want me and I should stay home.
I kinda got yelled at for that yesterday. Not “YELLED AT” but forcefully reminded that it isn’t my place to tell people what they think or want.
Yeah.
I’m sorry.
I feel bad for wanting you. I feel like I am placing a burden on you that I shouldn’t be placing. It isn’t fair. It isn’t appropriate. Just because I want you that means nothing about what you want and I don’t know what you want.
I don’t know and I’m not sure I’m good at reading people.
Noah makes sure to do over the top physical gestures to highlight how delighted he is by me constantly. Because otherwise I walk through my life feeling like an anvil of disappointment is about to drop on my head because I am not good enough to please anyone.
It isn’t fair to need people to be so demonstrative of their approval. I should just believe.
But I don’t. I’ve had too many years of wanting to die because I am not enough. I do need to feel like people really want me to be there.
Or I should go home and snuggle my kids. Because my kids really want me to be there.
I’m not saying I want to die right now. I don’t. I’m doing alright. I feel… whiny not suicidal. That’s fantastic progress for me. I feel sad and anxious and like I really want to figure out how to do this right some fucking year.
I want to stop messing up negotiating. I feel like there is no valid excuse for fucking up this way at this stage. I’m not a kid messing up out of ignorance. I’m a grown up who fucks up because I’m sloppy and I don’t dot all my i’s and cross all my t’s.
I feel ashamed of that.
But I don’t know how to find a happy medium on the herpes shit. It is… complicated. So many people have it but the few people who don’t know/haven’t been specifically told they are positive… it’s a thing. Should I tattoo “I have herpes” on my forehead so I don’t ever fuck up that bit of negotiating again?
Kissing is a big deal. My Owner didn’t kiss me. I’ve dated other guys who wouldn’t kiss me but who would allow me to provide some kind of service (sometimes sexual and sometimes not) for them. I can’t do that any more. I just can’t. Maybe that section of the users guide should be rewritten.
I like kissing and I know I’m diseased. I’m sorry. I feel bad about existing in this dichotomy but here I am.
Thank you for not caring, Noah.
Kissing feels connecting and bonding. Kissing feels like the difference between just being an object and being a person having an intense shared experience. I need kissing at this point or I really shouldn’t be playing with someone at all.
I’m not negotiating this well and I need to change that.
Lessons hurt. I hate learning lessons. Fuck opportunities for growth. FUCK THEM WITH A POGO STICK.
Do you know what would make all of this easier? If I were less fucking hypersensitive. But if that were true in one area I’d be a lot less sensitive in other areas.
I don’t actually want to stop being who and what I am. I like being sensitive. I like that I react strongly to my perceptions of peoples feelings. That often goes well. But sometimes I’m tired and I read something wrong.
Yeah. That happens.
Uhh… I do better in person. Where I can look at facial expressions and eventually feel comfortable asking millions of questions. I do have to warm up to the questions though. I am actually kind of shy at first.
I don’t want to scare you off. I want you to volunteer stuff. No one ever tells me enough about themselves.
Oh they tell me more than enough about their hobbies. I want to hear about you.
I know it is kind of weird how much I actually like people. But I’m not playing. I do.
I don’t want you to be in a room with me so you can act out my fantasy. I want to be in a room with you so I can see you more fully developed as a character of your own. If you talk fast the whole time I get more of a picture of who you are. (I like turns to talk too. Don’t worry. I know how to talk fast.)
I’m high maintenance. I want understanding and that mandates intense communication. I’m not comfortable. I don’t exist near people to feel comfortable in their presence. That is not how life goes for me. I am not comfortable.
I am with you because I want to understand you. Because I find you compelling. Because I want to know you. Because I want you.
I may not understand what that means. I probably don’t. I will ask for things. I wish you would ask more so that every step of verbal negotiation didn’t come from me.
That is true so much and it scares me because when I am always always always the leader how do I know I am doing what people want instead of dragging them through things they may not be completely on board for doing?
Trust people to be grown ups?
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Sorry, gotta catch my breath.
Phew. Laughing that hard is dangerous. I’m going to bust a rib.
People laugh at me when I say “when I grow up” in reference to my future research. They ask me if I’m grown now. No. I’m not.
I don’t know many grown ups. And I don’t know many people my age or younger. I chase an older crowd and I always have. Guess what. Most of them are not grown up. I mean, they are grown. They are “adults”.
We are all fucking up and growing.
We aren’t done growing up.
I know… a few. They are inspiring and intimidating as fuck to me.
Hands hurt too much to go into that.
Hunting lessons…
Wanting is hard. Wanting is scary. The rejection isn’t the scary part. The scary part is the terror that I will hurt people. I will hurt people. Not because I will hit them (though I will) but because I will say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing or ask for something in a way they don’t feel comfortable refusing and they will feel regret and I will feel shame.
That’s gonna happen.
That is part of hunting.
That fuck up. It is inherent. Other people minimize their risk by looking for one lifetime target and calling it good.
I… like to learn lessons. I have so much to learn. There is so much I want to know. There are so many situations I need to be able to have absolute control over my reaction no matter what physical or emotional stress is going on that I have to perfect this.
I have to. This is going to be necessary for me as a grown up. I am going to need to have 100% control over my reactions. I will need to know “I don’t open my email until I’ve had at least 20 hours of sleep out of 72.”
I need to know myself.
Noah didn’t think the messages sounded the way I read them. It took a lot of explaining and whining and telling back story before he went, “Oooooohhhh… ok. I can see how you read it that way.”
So it was a stretch that was only possible because I’m so awesome.
God I’m ridiculous.
No. I just have a long and complex story and I’m reacting as if all if it is true in every moment of every day and those filters are better and worse based on factors like sleep. Ahem.
Other people can handle sleep deprivation. Great for them.
I can’t.
But there is so much fun to be had in the middle of the night.
I have five solid nights in a row where I’m staying home and getting sleep before our next night out.
But then a different party is the next day.
Fuck. Ok. I need a break after that. I iz at capacity. Ow. I found it. Noah told me he thought I would.
I wanted to see where it was now. I found it. Ow. I’m old.
Why didn’t I want to go to a dark place? I don’t know. It wasn’t that the pain level was beyond my capacity. I never got near an 8. I just…
I don’t know.
It didn’t feel that way. It didn’t feel like that was what was appropriate in the setting? I don’t know.
I need help going on a journey. If I’m going to stand somewhere and just… do what I do… that…. uhhhh… varies.
It is wildly unpredictable.
I also have a really hard time with feeling like I am topping from the bottom. Noah and I have had a hard time figuring this out. I… don’t know how to gracefully lead as a bottom. I suck. So either I shut my fucking mouth and smile as the top decides what is going to happen next or… things get kind of awkward and tense and I spend the rest of the scene feeling bad.
So yes. Sometimes I don’t know what to say.
Even me. I get tongue tied. It is true. I feel like a jukebox waiting for someone to pick a song to play. I don’t know what to say. I don’t have any idea of what would be pleasing. I have such a short window of time in which to try to be pleasing…
I’m afraid of picking wrong.
It isn’t that I’m trying to make up a story to tell. It is that I don’t know which version of myself to start with. There are so many. The order in which I present them matters. It can lead to increased intimacy or it can lead to things like, “I need you to stop telling me about your background. I don’t really want to know.”
This is why Noah and I spend so much time during sex talking about previous sex we have had either with one another or with other people.
I know that I will only learn how to read these things better by running into these walls at full speed so I see all the signals all the way up to long past when I “should” have stopped so that in the future I will understand that danger signals much earlier and have a stronger need to distance myself fast. I know this is “safe” practice.
But I’m so tired of being disappointing. I’m so tired of having people forcefully shove me away because I am wrong.
Asking, wanting, desiring always means risk. It always means possible rejection or unmatched interest or pain.
Always.
Is it worth it?
Even though I’m still tired and even though I still have turbulent feelings…
Yes.
All of it. All of them. Every lesson. Every experience. I’m not sorry I asked. I’m sorry if me asking was done badly. I’m sorry if I asked in a way that did not support people telling me no when they should have or if they really wanted to in the fullness of time. I’m sorry that I will keep making mistakes.
But I’m not sorry enough to stop.
I want to learn this.
I will make mistakes. So will other people. I will get up. I will try again if they are game.
I want.
But first I want more sleep.
Totally flooded.
I haz big feelings. My stomach hurts. But I feel like I worked out this awful thing that has been in my neck/shoulder for years. I feel like I did a major trauma release in this class. That’s kinda intense. Exposure therapy for the win.
This is what exposure therapy means. The attackers are safe guys in suits who maintain their distance so they can maintain their aura of scary. But they are monitored by women the whole time. It isn’t some guy deciding to do something to a woman when he feels like it and she should have to react right. That’s not exposure therapy. Exposure therapy means a female coach kneeling with her face next to your face whispering, “Remember to breathe. Stop. Wait for the moment. You can do this.”
Stop calling real life abuse exposure therapy. It isn’t. Ok, digression over.
My second experience at Impact was fairly different from the first. I didn’t have a friend in the class. It felt like the group warmed up slower but then made more genuine connections once we did warm up. Everyone started off tentative and not too chatty but by the final day we were pretty friendly. That felt nice.
I took a risk the morning of the third day. I said that the cheering wasn’t making it through to me during my fights and I really needed the line to get louder and more encouraging because it’s scary to fight in quiet. I feel alone. I have to say, those women came through once I made a specific request. They did great.
I didn’t ask for more than one extended fight this time. I literally just… couldn’t. By the time I got through the one extended fight my body was saying, “Let the men make them easy from here on out.”
The guys… they have to work ridiculously hard to do an extended fight with the people who really want blood. They do extended fights to teach women that even when you feel exhausted (this is as close as they will get to the exhaustion of a fight where you will be dealing with someone hitting you) and tired and worn out you can still defend yourself. I think I have a better understanding of fighting from a place of exhaustion from the get go, so I didn’t need the exercise this weekend.
I chose to leave a few spoons in my drawer. Because today I seriously need to pay attention to the kids and if I had left it all out on the mat I would spend today in bed crying. I just couldn’t. This wasn’t a real fight to the death so it would have been inappropriate to wear myself out that hard so I couldn’t hang with the kids.
I pay attention to these things.
Topic switch. Back to hitting.
Yes, I think (upon further reflection) what I am doing with Noah unconsciously probably would be better termed a tap or a light smack… but that is still putting my hands on someone else’s body in a way I’m not paying attention to. In a way that he chooses to describe as being hit. Because he gets that choice. I need to stop it.
Just like people don’t get to tell me that when the kid kicked me in the throat it wasn’t assault. Yes, actually it was an assault. I’m not going to prosecute because I don’t think the kid had malicious intent. But it was an assault.
It is possible to hit and not be causing (permanent) damage. Not be hurting people. Still be a problem. Still need to stop.
I need to have so much fucking control over my body that I do not put my hands on people at all unless I am doing it in a way that I am highly conscious and in control of exactly what I’m doing. I can’t be muddy. I can’t be like “Close enough is good enough.” Not with what I want to do with my life.
So maybe I’m over reacting and maybe I’m understanding how much work I have left on this problem. I need to stop hitting people. Entirely. 100000% unless someone is directly threatening my physical safety.
I know I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to live in gray areas but this is a black and white thing. I’ve done too much hitting in my life. I need to get this under control.
I mean, not that I’m going to cancel that nice date with my friend. I’m going to do everything in my power to get to the point where I only hit people (even lightly) when they say, “Pretty please”. Or they start a fight.
I spent a lot of this class thinking about escalation. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I escalate.
I know it’s all victim blamey and shit, but yeah a lot of the fights, a lot of the rapes kinda happened because I had no ability to deescalate. It hurts seeing that so plainly over time. I am not good at managing peoples emotions in a deescalating way. I’m good at cranking the volume up. I stimulate feelings I don’t settle them. This is a problem.
I think about things like the neighbor who has been sexually harassing me. Did I encourage him? I don’t think so. 90%+ of the time I talk to him my kids are standing right there and I don’t encourage displays of sexuality in front of my children. So I’m inclined to believe this is his desperate fantasy that he isn’t dead yet and he’s still sexually interesting instead of this being about me. But do I deescalate properly when he brings stuff up? Mostly I call the kids and keep walking when he gets rude. What else should I be doing?
Well I think kicking the crap out of him then telling him I cannot be in control if a man grabs me may have been effective. He’s keeping more physical distance these days.
But is he going to creep again? My guess is yes. Because creepers gonna creep. Does it make it all my fault if it happens again because I’m stupid enough to talk to him?
You know what? I get to walk around my god damn neighborhood without having to physically fight off unwanted sexual advances. That’s fucking ridiculous. No this isn’t my fault and I should not have to avoid walking down my own god damn street to avoid being sexually harassed. That’s not reasonable. If he starts shit I’m not the one escalating. He is. I’m just not going to fucking be passive. I’m very friendly and non-threatening with him. I have no desire to hurt him. I’m just not going to let him do shit to me I don’t want to have done.
That has to be ok. No matter how old he is. No matter how much I like him. No matter if I know any man ever again.
I get to say yes to everything that happens to my body. Or I get to fucking hurt you. That’s the deal.
I’m getting closer to the point where I feel I could actually do it in a fight.
It was hard having Noah there. I asked him if he thought I could stop him if he tried to rape me at this point. He isn’t convinced.
I need to take more classes. It is 100% my goal to be able to so deeply scare men that they do not believe they could successfully do that again.
Not because I want to hurt men. Because I’m not going to be raped again. I’m done. The passive has been raped right the fuck out of me. I’ve taken all I can take.
It is quite literally my goal to die before letting someone rape me again. I want to fight to the point where someone has the choice to kill me or leave me alone.
I’m done.
Something broke and it can’t be fixed.
To be fair, Noah didn’t see my extended fight. He saw the easy peasy fights the instructors give you to blow off steam so you walk out of the room feeling strong so you don’t leave feeling like you should walk in front of a bus. They plan this shit. They know the roller coaster they put people on. Noah didn’t see quite how effective I am at kicking peoples skulls in. I practice from a variety of angles. I’m semi-worried that I will actually kill someone because I’m going to be kicking with such incredible force and anger. I may well shove someones face into their brain.
I won’t lose sleep over that. Ok, yes I will. I will be convinced I’m a monster who should be killed. Maybe I’ll go to jail and think that’s fair.
But I won’t be god damn raped that day.
I feel dangerous and horrible. But yes I am prepared to use deadly force to prevent someone from raping me again.
I have to believe I deserve that or I need to die today because I cannot endure another rape. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
I’m done. I have to believe I am allowed to kill someone to stop them if necessary. I know that in an actual fight I will have to use the minimum amount of force necessary to stop a fight. I know that. The chances I will get to a fight that results in death are incredibly freakishly low. Only I’m going to pursue a career that will make people hate me with the power of the sun.
So maybe my chances aren’t vanishingly small. Maybe they just aren’t that high?
I don’t know that I am yet at a point where I am capable of holding the adrenaline in and just doing the necessary hurting.
During one of my fights the suited instructor literally ran out of the room to get away from me because I was chasing too much.
I mean, I didn’t chase him off the mat. But I did take steps in his direction. I hear that the expression on my face was uhhhhh… terrifying.
I don’t know if that is a regular schtick of theirs to try and break the tension because it’s funny. Or if he felt like that is actually how an attacker would respond because holy shit.
I don’t know.
You never know.
They call the rape prevention moves “reversals”. Because you are reversing the power. Those are the ones where you have to stay still on the floor and use physics and it’s scary and complicated and fairly precise. I find them horrifyingly triggering.
It’s really hard to say, “I tried that and what happened was…” I failed. That’s what happened. I failed when I tried to do that. I didn’t prevent a rape that day.
Ahhh. I tried to move long before I felt weight. There was no physics to help me. Fuck everything. Well, specifically he fucked me. After slamming my head into the ground so hard I saw stars. I stopped fighting.
I don’t know if it would be different today. I don’t actually feel confident. That was just a fucking class. I was chanting to myself the whole time, “There is no chance this man would actually rape you. There are witnesses. He’s wearing very difficult clothing. This isn’t real.” Because I wanted to run screaming I was so fucking freaked out. But… that means it isn’t that real in my body.
Would I be able to access this when I’m scared? I’ve worked so hard for so many years to break the freeze response. I’m tired of going numb. But it is a genuine survival skill. I have worked hard to make it less likely I will survive.
I’m ready to die or assert myself. One or the other. But I do not yet know for sure that I’d win.
It is hard believing that I would kill to defend myself and that is part of why I am a disgusting person. I don’t know that I really believe I have the right. I am bad. I want to hurt people.
Not really. I’m just god damn done letting them hurt me.
That’s not true either. I do want to hurt people. I want to hurt people who like being hurt because it released kinetic energy from my body and it allows me to be more calm and gentle when necessary and appropriate.
Hitting is all of these things. It is tapping Noah when I shouldn’t. Even though it doesn’t hurt I’m touching someone without consent in a way that can be described as hitting. My friend who is inviting me to a lovely session of testicle kicking, that’s hitting too. It is completely consensual. He’s going to have a good time, I’m going to have a good time–it’s going to be fun! And being willing to beat someone unconscious for trying to rape me.
It’s all hitting. It is all violence. But do they mean the same things? Should they be treated the same way legally? Should they be treated like trauma because “hitting”?
Everyone gets to decide for themselves what is traumatizing. I’ve done bdsm scenes that were WAY more intense/painful/fucking out there than my rapes. My rapes traumatized me. My rapes were an action that I did not consent to happening to my body in a way that proved to me that I do not have the right to have agency over myself or my life. My bdsm scenes were done with friends and they were fun. Even if they were painful and scary. I knew what I was signing on for. I did it on purpose. I did it with full force and vigor and choice.
That makes all the difference.
I don’t feel traumatized by the throat kick. I feel like I learned something about boundaries.
If you fuck up and assault someone… that isn’t the end of the world. How you respond afterwards is what matters.
If you fuck up and assault someone on purpose… that’s different.
I genuinely believe there are accidental assaults all the time. Just like there is involuntary manslaughter.
Ok, I have one specific complaint about the class this time: I really didn’t appreciate the “boogeyman homeless guy” thing. That fucking pissed me off. The vast majority of assaults are someone you know. Leave the fucking homeless guys alone. They are doing their fucking best and I’m god damn tired of the nastiness of housed people.
Being homeless does not mean you are a god damn rapist.
That’s the attitude though. Homeless guys are creepy and scary. Do you know why they creep you out? Because you feel like they aren’t like you and that’s gross. I feel like they are like me and they are in a hard place right now.
I don’t need to feel scared of someone who has so little power and authority in life compared to me. Am I prepared to defend myself if someone does start something? Sure. But I’ve been interacting with homeless people for decades. I’ve done so all over the country and in other countries.
I’m not scared of homeless people. They are scared of me.
Why? Because they know I can call the cops and have them put in jail. That’s how the power dynamic works. Can I really? Would the cops do it? Maybe. But it’s pretty likely. If any of you dressed-like-you-live-in-a-house-people called the police on a homeless person there is a high chance the homeless person is getting arrested.
For vagrancy. For loitering. For trespassing. For intimidation. For assault.
Even if that assault was accidental. Who cares? It’s a homeless person. They are creepy and icki. We don’t want them around, prosecute.
Stop. Calling. The. Cops. On. Creepy. Homeless. People.
Unless you see them commit a serious crime, just leave them the fuck alone. Ok? They have enough god damn problems without whiny people harassing them.
(I’m not really talking to a specific person or even the folks in the class. I’m mad at the universe over this one.)
I’M TALKING TO THOSE ASSHOLES ON NEXTDOOR.
“I saw a homeless person on my street so I called the police.” I hope you die slowly in a lot of pain.
Like those assholes who called the cops on me in Virginia. I looked suspicious. I had out of state license plates and camping gear. Clearly I was up to no good.
This is my cranky face.
It is weird trying to find a place where compassion and the right to break your face live right side by side. Because in being able to defend myself like this… I’m trying to have compassion for myself. I’m allowed to say that 12 rapists in one life is enough. I’m allowed to say that I was 25 when I was last raped and that’s god damn when it ended. I’m allowed to absolutely fucking harm anyone who tries again.
That is what compassion for myself means. Maybe another woman could passively permit a rape and not kill her attacker and later prosecute and that would be the most “ethical” choice of all… or something.
I can’t absorb any more.
I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
How do you get ready to actually be able to kill someone if you have to? I don’t want to. I really don’t want to.
Shit I already feel guilty that people seem to kill themselves after dealing with me.
(Yes, I know I am not “at fault” for any of these suicides. Life is complicated.)
In class someone thought it was funny to make a joke about fire. I sure know how to shut down jokes about fire. It was asked “Does anyone have any trauma around fire? No? Good….” Then I raised my hand. “Yeah, my brother self immolated.”
I bring all the fun jokes to an end.
God I suck.
Hell, I’m not even saying to stop using the joke. It’s ok to jokingly tease a group of people and tell them the final test will involve jumping through a fiery hoop. That’s not a bad joke. That’s not a real threat.
That’s ok.
But god I can kill any joke.
I am so not funny that it is really really funny. It is to the point where my litany of traumas is becoming almost hysterical. I have a trauma for any god damn situation.
It is kinda funny sometimes.
WHEN WILL THE INSANITY END?!?!!? is most of the joke.
Well, I’m still having an extraordinary life… but I’d say it is mostly no longer traumatic. I have boundary violation issues every so often that must be managed.
I don’t think I’ve been traumatized in while. I think the last trauma was severing with my family. (I think I traumatized Sarah after that… but that’s a different discussion.)
Why do I split hairs like this? Because my shrink tells me to break everything down into its smallest compartments and then sort them out.
What is hitting? What is violence? What is trauma? These things are so broad and yet so very specific.
Random defensive pissiness: I read an article yesterday. Don’t remember where or by whom and I don’t care. The person was pretty much saying, “Stop talking about your white privilege because you are just grand standing. If you were really doing anything to dismantle structural racism you would do it silently.” Oh fuck you.
I’m trying to fund the revolution, motherfucker. I am putting my money where my mouth is. I do more with every year and I track it better so that I can know that I am doing more with every year.
Recently Noah told me, “If you don’t feel like you do anything in the world… you are giving more and more money away every year. You are financially impacting the lives of more and more people. That is doing something.”
I don’t do this because I’m a nice person. I don’t do this to be good. I do this because I can never help the child I was. I do this because it needs to be done and other assholes aren’t stepping up.
I’m an asshole. I can live with that. But I want to be an asshole who has specific boundaries around where and how I hit people, how I escalate fights, and when it is appropriate for me to use force.
I think that hitting people to teach them is a shitty way to teach them if you want an ongoing relationship. That style of teaching instill anger, fear, distrust, and the belief in the person you are educating that they deserve to be hit.
Ask me how I’m feeling about Noah right now.
We need something different.
I do not feel traumatized. I feel like I discovered a boundary. I need something different. This isn’t working for me.
I have enough brain damage for one lifetime.
I think that hitting should be used when you are ok with ending the relationship and not before.
If you don’t think I should be packing to leave then we should not be in a physical fight. That needs to be a boundary. And no, that does not mean I should get free hits without retribution. That’s not what I’m saying.
I need to stop hitting casually. I need to be taught through repetition and mostly through words. This behavior will mostly be extinguished through catching the “taps” that “don’t count” because actually they do. They teach muscle memory. They remind me that hitting is ok.
I used to hit ineffectively so I thought it was fine for me to hit people. At this point I’m very effective and that means I need to treat my hands like weapons and be in full control of them.
Things change.
Noah hit back because I hurt him. He has the right. I’m not really mad that he believes he has the right to defend himself.
I’m mad that men start out able to defend themselves with so much force without having to take class after class after class and work and work and work.
I’m not sure that I’m mad at the men. I’m just mad.
I know that I need to get over all the shit that happened to me. But a lot of the places I hurt almost every day are from specific assaults.
Do you think you would be able to forget if you were reminded by your body every day?
Maybe if I can actually heal I stand a chance. Maybe.
Chiropractic appointment in 3.5 hours. I’m going to call and schedule acupuncture for this week. I don’t see a massage therapist for a while but I’ll be ok. Two weeks? I’ll live. Ha.
Cause the next time I see massage therapists I’m uhm seeing two in one day because I didn’t really look at the calendar before booking the second one. That’s ok. One person works on a very small area for the full hour and the other person does a more general massage for an hour and a half. It will feel like magic. I will need to drink so much water that day.
I’m really trying.
Some day I would like to spend less money on health care and spend more money on donating to communities of color. They need the money. I’d rather not need to spend it on my body.
I really don’t think I’m the best place to spend all these resources. But I recognize that it is literally necessary for a time if I am going to heal and be able to do the work I want to do. If I want to stop feeling suicidal because I cannot deal with how much pain I experience on a daily basis… I need to spend the money since I have it. I don’t have a justification for giving it away instead of fixing what is wrong.
Not at this point. Not really. I will be a more effective tool if I stop and do maintenance.
That’s just prudence.
Is that close enough to self love to count?
I’m trying.
Today I am going to spend with the kids. Except for the chiropractic appointment. They’ll do bookwork during that time. We’ll be together the rest of the time. I think we should garden. We’ll read. We’ll snuggle.
I will remind my body that despite these training exercises… I’m safe now. I am safe now.
We need to meditate tonight. During the class I was fucking whigging out for a while. Then I remembered what I’ve been saying to myself when we meditate. “I breathe in nothing that will pollute me; I breathe out the nothingness that has consumed me.” It helped. It helped a lot. The fact that I’ve been practicing at night has helped. I calmed down much faster than I used to be able to.
Jenny tells me that I look at how far I have to go. She looks at how far I have come. I write it down so I can see too.
Stomach hurts
I’m sick. I feel awful. Like normal when I’m sick I’m beating myself up emotionally. I woke up this morning missing my biological family something fierce. It hit me like a freight train.
I miss them but I can’t be part of the family. I won’t keep secrets. I won’t act like everything is fine.
The generation after mine got raped too. I can’t pretend everything is fine.
But they can. So they get to have a family and I don’t. Because that’s how the cookie crumbles.
How ungrateful. I have a family. I have Noah. I have my kids. I had sure better not fuck it up. This is all I have.
I feel completely and totally certain that if Noah and the kids all died I would not live 24 hours.
I feel like this is the most sad I have been in a while. This feels brutal. I hurt so much. Part of it is weird bitterness over adopted family stuff too.
I walk away from people so they can’t walk away from me. Which makes it my fault relationships don’t last. Which is easier to bear than the fact that people just don’t like me very much.
I’m in a god damn mood. Pity party, table of one.
I feel sad, keening grief. I feel like I want to cut and beat my head on the floor and…
It’s just there this morning. Just because.
Sometimes I think I beat my head on the floor because I’m hoping I will damage my brain enough that I will stop thinking because what I think hurts me so much.
I am really grateful that today is a slow pace. We’ll have some nature time. It’s the first day of my officially reduced schedule. I’m on the day planner. It’s here. I mean, I haven’t done that much for weeks, but it was an unstructured kind of not doing that much. And not doing that much means I did a fair bit. Cause I’m like that.
But I have big blocks of the day marked as rest. In between other “healthful” activities and shit that I’m supposed to build into my life because supposedly I might hate myself less some year if I keep this bullshit up.
With every passing year I feel more and more ashamed of myself for not talking to my mother. I understand her neglect so much more. She was doing her best.
Her best wasn’t good enough. Is that really her fault?
I don’t know. But I can’t have her in my life and I feel like that makes me a piece of shit. It is hard to not feel like that fact is reason enough to deserve death on its own. I hurt my mama. I am bad.
If I wanted to I could crawl in bed with any of three people and they would hug me and love me and I wouldn’t have to be alone right now. The trouble is, I want my mother. I have wanted my mother my whole life.
It never goes away. Sometimes I don’t think about it. But then a quiet moment comes along and I check in with my body and there it is. This ache that never goes away.
Mama.
There was a woman, for a few years, who told me she wanted to be my adopted mom. I haven’t heard from her in a long time. She has a life of her own. She’s busy. She doesn’t actually have room for me in her life. I’m not really worth the effort.
My adopted mom and my biological mom share a birthday. So every year I keen for the two women I don’t deserve to have love me. I could reach out to them. But I’m kind of done chasing love that isn’t really meant for me.
I was never really wanted. Not really.
But Noah wants me. However I got here. And my kids are stuck with me till they aren’t. We’ll see what happens.
I think a lot about what my mother’s life would have been like if she had aborted me like she should have. It would have been better. Maybe she could have saved Tommy and he wouldn’t be dead. Maybe she could have kept the other kids together after the divorce instead of just getting the “girls”.
If I hadn’t been there so many things would have been different. Easier. I have not been worth the trouble to take care of, ever.
I want to cut really badly. I haven’t wanted to like this in a while. It’s been such a nice Christmas.
Mama mama mama mama.
It always comes back to you. I love you. I love you with all of my black soul.
But you don’t get to hurt my babies. My babies live in a state of perfect trust where the unreliable people are outside the family. Inside their family they are safe and they believe that people tell them the truth. If you were considered inside their family bubble that would be shattered.
You can’t tell the truth to save your life. Because lying was necessary to save your life and you don’t seem to be able to stop now.
Now. What do I know. I haven’t talked to you in five years. But you couldn’t tell the truth then. Given your age I doubt it has changed. It’s not like you are ready to go through puberty now and see the error of your ways.
You had to lie all the god damn time and I get that and I can forgive you for the past. I can’t let you lie to my children like that going forward and you are literally not capable of telling the truth. I think it is because you are incapable of perceiving the truth. If you did you wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning.
Can I really judge that?
Yes and no.
I have to do what I have to do to get out of bed in the morning, so yeah I judge. I judge that your way of being is not for me and I have to find something different and do it with a vengeance.
That intensity I have that bothers people so much? A lot of that exists because overcoming inertia is hard. It is a basic physics problem. I don’t like me very much. In order to talk to people I have to first pretend I like myself (because if you don’t formulate your interactions based on the premise of liking yourself you will get abused again) then decide what treatment would be right for me if I liked myself then figure out how to manipulate people around me into behaving in a way that will be comfortable for me. That takes a fuck ton of energy, thought, and consideration.
Yes I think about how to manipulate you. I think about how to cause you to have the set of emotions I want you to have so that you will continue to enjoy my company. I’m going to cause you some set of emotions. Indifference. Irritation. Joy. Love. Contempt. Anxiety. Something. Yes, I think consciously about what I would like to be causing and I work towards it. If I don’t do that… I bother people so much.
I have to think about this if I still want to have friends in the future. Even if manipulate is a dirty word. What-fucking-ever.
I think about which people need me to physically move slowly and which people like that I’m generally a quick darting person.
I think about which people can handle which portions of my range of emotions. Some people can only handle the joy. Some people can only handle my anger.
I think about which people will feel tolerant of which parts of my past experiences and I try to cull my stories carefully these days. I have improved these filters tremendously since having children. I used to uhhhh have fewer appropriate stories for all topics. I’m branching out.
I have noticed lately that I have two distinctly different somatic experiences of my approaches to people. Sometimes I don’t feel safe …. engaging. So I don’t say much. I look at the floor and I don’t make eye contact with people. I have a permanent fucking crick in my neck.
Then there are times when I’m ok pretending I’m a main character and I look everyone in the eye and I insert myself into peoples way and I seem to be more charming than not.
I don’t know how to get that pretense of comfort sometimes. Like today I couldn’t do it. Today if I had to be in a group of people I would be monosyllabic. I’d probably cross my arms and rock in the corner. Like I do when I’m uhhhh feeling mature.
Today I feel like I’m stuck in an elevator. Wait, let me back up. Know how I talk about feeling present with many selves/ages all at once? Right now I feel like I’m stuck on elevator between selves. If all the various permutations of me are floors on a building, I’m stuck between Neurotically In Control Adult and Weak And Defenseless Child. Neither is true. Both are true. Fuck everything.
I’m sad. My arms hurt like a mother fucker but I couldn’t sit on this today. I have to let it pass through me and move on. Writing it down helps so much.
I try hard not to make it obvious in my day to day life that my literal survival depends on the survival of the people in this house. That’s creepy. You have to go about your life as if that were incidental to your own survival. But I know it.
I have some incredibly dramatic ideas about how I could ensure that I would absolutely not risk being rescued in time this time. It’s not a call for fucking help. I don’t want help any more.
I want my family and that’s it. If I can’t have them then that’s it.
So yeah. I’m not writing this down because I’m very certain that I would follow through and if you forewarn people they feel duty bound to stop you and fuck that.
But, my family is alive and it doesn’t matter. Hopefully they won’t all die and it will absolutely never be necessary. I want to be with them.
I feel incredibly angry with people who call suicide selfish. Fuck you with a pogo stick. People who commit suicide are people who are in pain they cannot bear. Fuck you for being so selfish that you think they should continue to suffer in order to spare you even the slightest discomfort.
I don’t owe you that.
I owe you neither continued suffering nor silence. I owe you nothing. I do not owe you my life. There are things I’d like to do. I’m going to keep busy as long as I’m alive. Not because I owe people. Because I’m having fun. Because I’m finding out what it feels like to be loved. Actually loved. Shows up every day loved.
Yes Noah, I would throw myself against any rock for that. It is true. Yes I would damage myself over and over and over for that. I did so in the search for it. I didn’t think it would come true. I expected to off myself in desolation and despair before now because no one would ever actually love me.
Lots of people like to fuck me. Some people like to talk to me. It’s different to really love and take care of someone.
Sometimes I stop and realize… my body count is bigger than some peoples whole Monkey Sphere. No wonder I’m capable of seeing more people as real people.
I searched high and low for someone who could love me. Then when he started creeping on me I dated him for a bit and dumped him.
The other day in the car Eldest Child wistfully said, “I hope I grow up and meet someone as perfectly suited to me as you two found.” We both kinda went, “Bwuahahaha. No. We were not suited when we met.” She was shocked.
We changed. We became something different for one another. We became our better selves because that is what we agreed to do for one another. Having someone make that promise and then deliver and deliver and deliver and deliver for a decade now…
This is what trust feels like.
It’s so new.
Sometimes I ask my kids if they can trust me. They tell me that they know I’m telling the truth unless I’m using a silly voice then they know I’m lying. I said, “Actually sometimes when I use a silly voice I’m still telling the truth. Just to mess with you.” They glared a little. But I feel ok with this arrangement. Treat pronouncements in silly voices with great caution. Important life lesson.
I tell my kids that we won’t do everything I plan but we will do everything I promise. There’s an important difference there. I always over plan. I’m an ambitious motherfucker. No matter what you are referencing I over plan. It’s a lifestyle. It’s part of how I save money hand over fist. I plan for 60%-80% of our income. Then whatever comes in over that is extra and I invest it. And I have plans and plans and plans for investing stuff.
You don’t do the things I’ve done if you are a meek or under planning sort of person. That intensity that bothers people? It’s a mixed bag. It drove me around the country despite overwhelming pain. It causes me to get up and try again on being nice every single day with my kids. Because I’ve decided I’m all in for this thing.
There are times when I fail. I’m very careful what I promise. An awful lot of what I promise is that I will always try. I will always apologize when I fuck up. I will not promise perfection. That is folly.
I won’t promise and promise and promise for years that I will take you to do X thing and never do it. Even when the money is there because Other People Come First.
I won’t be my mother. It’s not just about the sex abuse. I know that casual readers often think that preventing sexual abuse is kinda my hobby horse to ride with my kids.
I mean, it’s important. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s really just the tip of the ice burg.
Eldest Child just ran in and jumped on my lap. I may be out of steam for the morning. Hard to hold the laptop on my lap while she wiggles. She is staring intently at the screen and trying to read what I’m writing. She’s getting a few words. Ahhhhh. Time to close this window. My time of hiding in plain sight with my feelings is just about over.
I love you kid.
Crash day
I’m having a hard day. Lots of self-harm urge. Lots of suicidal ideation. I want to beat my children then strap them into the car seats and drive off a bridge.
Not really. I don’t want to do that. I’m not going to do that. But today my disordered thinking is taking up waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much room in my brain.
I feel frantic, angry, like I can’t control what I’m thinking, like see… this is why I should be killed. Because I have these terrible thoughts and I deserve to die.
I suspect that part of the trigger this morning was telling a friend that I couldn’t do a favor she asked me to do. She was nice about it, but I never feel good about saying, “I can’t”.
What is the point of me existing if I have nothing to offer?
I drove much slower than usual today and a 4 hour drive took almost 6 hours. Not because we broke for lunch. Because I stopped and got out of the car every half hour or so because I didn’t trust myself to stay alert for a long haul. I am not reliable today. I need to be monitored.
But there is no one here to monitor me but two people who are not in a position to tell me anything. So I have to monitor myself. So I’m trying to be careful.
This is hormones (my period tracker said I could start ANY DAY NOW) plus exhaustion plus general stress plus homesickness plus… I’m just crazy.
I’m trying to convince myself that I haven’t self harmed in years and I am not going to start today.
But I feel like shit. My chest hurts. My heart hurts. My head hurts. I’m tired of crying.
It’s not that the last visit with a friend went badly. The last two friends-visits have been among the best of the trip. The kids and I had a wonderful time with both friends.
I’m just….
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Moving south
Today we leave Dad’s house. That will be hard. I have really enjoyed my time here. Although it will also be a good thing. I’m sleeping for shit. I’m thinking a thousand thoughts a minute about all the things I want to say to him and we save our conversations for after the kids are in bed so… I’m way short on sleep. I need to move on before I hurt myself.
The talking has been wonderful. You know how I sometimes go on these really big tirades and write and write and write about politics and race and rape and incest and money and class and… heh. You know how I “sometimes” do that? Yeah he got the in person version over the last week. He has looked kind of stunned. I’ve never uhm shared my opinions on such a diverse array of topics quite so freely before. He’s kind of re-meeting me.
You want to claim you are my Dad so you need to get to know me. We’ve had several pointed, “Are you committed to this relationship?” conversations.
Apparently his bio-daughter is not very happy about me. I can understand that and I hold no rancor in my heart. I’m sorry that my existence makes her uncomfortable. I can understand why it does. All of the other “daughters” have been girlfriends who moved on. I haven’t. I’m not a girlfriend and I never have been. I’m an adopted kid. Who he has beaten and fucked. Because that has been part of my relationship with all of my dads.
I can understand why that would make someone uncomfortable. I’m on a fucking weird life path.
But he’s ok walking that path with me and I don’t really care if other people approve or not. He is adapting to the changes in our relationship. We have had an incredibly frank and detailed conversation about the changes in boundaries in my sex life. “What if I did ____?” “Well you’d have a time of untangling your fingers from your internal organs after I ripped your arm off and shoved it down your neck.” “Ok then. So you’re saying that is off the table.” “Yup.”
Quite frankly I think this is an incredibly healthy transition for both of us. We are consciously committing to a mutually supportive relationship that doesn’t have to be based on hurting one another. The hurting one another wasn’t a problem when it was where we both were. I’m not there right now. Are you with me or not?
He says he is with me.
He is scared about some of my choices. He asked me last night if I was truly aware of how much I was risking my life with some of the choices I make in terms of activism. I said I was fully aware that women who speak publicly about the things I choose to speak about often get killed. I’m aware that the status quo doesn’t like what I think.
Dad got to hear about the full extent of my suicidality this trip. He’s had dim awareness that I was a cutter.
It is kind of funny to me how people claim to know me… but don’t read my blog… and wow… they don’t know shit. I think I unload my emotions on fewer people than I think. I’m really hard on the people I unload on… but the list isn’t that long. I think I perceive myself as someone who dumps on everyone who walks by… but that isn’t how it goes. I have more boundaries than I think I do.
I am continually surprised to find out that people have known me for a decade and a half and they don’t know major facts about my life.
I can recite your fucking bio in my sleep. I know details about your life before I met you. I can rattle off your hobbies and accomplishments and fuck ups with great specifics.
What the fuck do you mean you don’t know much about me?! WTF!?
I’m self absorbed. Everyone should function like me. Ahem.
I’m going to miss Dad. And I am never going to live near him full time. Our relationship would dissolve and I like it very much. I like the support I get when I see him. He doesn’t have the stamina for me. He can’t be the kind of consistent I need on a regular basis. I can handle what he has to give when I visit once a year. I don’t resent his limits this way. I just adapt while I’m here.
I ask tactless questions a lot to frame how ridiculous we both are. “So my control freak issues are running into your control freak issues. Which part of this one is your real bug-a-boo? The process or the result because you vary from issue to issue.”
He kind of glares at me for a minute as he thinks about it. Then we discuss it and work out how we can adapt to one another.
It is weirdly a lot of fun for me. He is really ok with blunt negotiations. The bdsm community has been good for him. If you can say, “What I really want to do is tie your legs wide open so I can single tail your clit” you can have a conversation about just about any stupidly specific and personal topic.
Ok.. that isn’t actually true about everyone in the scene. But it is true of the two of us and I love that about him.
We’ve talked a lot about eating and dietary choices with the kids. Exercise habits. Modeling and why we do the things we do. Being responsible to and for our kids and how that creates a permanent reason to take care of ourselves because… we owe them a long life.
He says I have made him think about many of his choices in new ways. I believe that.
Last night he told me he feels adrift and he isn’t sure how to get ahead of the curve. He’s had a really hard several years. I said, “That sounds like a request for advice.” He said yes.
Oh I gave advice. “What you need to do is over the next year ask for help from Person A and Person B and Person C and go through the house and the storage unit. Sell anything you don’t have a really strong desire to keep. Donate what you can’t sell. Time to downsize. You don’t need a big house and property and you can’t keep up with the work. Sell before you degrade the house and can’t make money back. Buy something outright. Buy something small and manageable.”
He has inherited the estates of three rich people. He has an overwhelming amount of stuff and he simply can’t afford to keep the shit. He didn’t get the money. That went to charities. He just got burdened with the shit.
People are hilarious. They really don’t think about what they are doing to the people around them.
Get it in your head that you are putting the house on the market in June of 2016. That will be the end of your time here. 14 years in one spot.
It’s going to be hard to leave. His second marriage had its whole life here. But she’s gone and he has to move on. He can’t support this household without her.
Life is about constantly changing your goals as your resources and abilities change. Things go up and down and you have to be realistic about your capabilities or you will over-promise and under deliver. Or you can sell yourself short and never attain the things you are capable of doing.
Re-evaluate yourself. Where do you want to be putting your time and energy? Do you really want to have to spend 30+ hours a week on cleaning and house maintenance only to watch it fall into constant decline because it really needs 60 hours of work every week? That’s depressing. You feel like a constant failure even though you really are doing your best.
I’m going to cry a lot when he moves. This is Francesca’s house. She loved me here. She made me feel safe here. She is a lot of the reason Dad and I worked out some bumps in the early years. I miss her very much. But our obligation to her is over. It is time to sell off her stuff and her step-dad’s stuff and her mom’s stuff and move on.
She died before we could pay our debt to her. That’s a guilt we have to bear and move on with.
We can take that and pay it forward. That is how she would want us to do it. She wouldn’t want us to wither at home with shame and regret. She would want us to pay it forward. She would say we don’t owe her. We owe the universe. It’s never really a two way street.
That’s what is so hard about parenting. It’s never really reciprocal. I have taken more from Dad than I’ve given. Mostly… what I can give at this point is support as he transitions to a different sense of self.
He’s not a swinging bachelor of means. He needs to stop trying to act like he is. That time of life is over.
There are consequences to not seeing how you are changing. How many do you want to have smack you in the face?
He asked me if I believed he was capable of change at this point in his life. I laughed and said I wouldn’t be in his house if he hadn’t changed and changed again over the last decade and a half. Yes. I believe you are capable of changing. It’s not the tooth fairy. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen you adapt. I’ve seen you resolve to improve on how you manage specific issues. Yes, there have been back slides in some areas, but you continue to improve in broad swaths.
But life is complicated. As you improve in some areas you completely screw up other areas. That’s how it goes.
It seems to me that wisdom is partially understanding that you will never be good at everything. You will never have the inter-personal abilities plus money abilities plus physical abilities plus education abilities and and…
Look at what you actually do with your time. You are good at parts of it. The rest… well… it’s done enough. THE HOUSE DIDN’T BURN DOWN. WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!?!
I don’t cook much. I can’t do it. I turn into a screaming banshee.
It’s not that I “can’t cook”. I can actually cook quite well. But I need to be calm and have a lot of patience and a lot of quiet and a lot of time and nothing else going on in order to do it in a peaceful way. Or I start twitching and shrieking things like, “JUST GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN BEFORE I STRANGLE YOU OH MY GOD WHY DID YOU THINK THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO DO?!?!?!!?!”
I understand that this is part of an age old tradition between mothers and daughters. But with the whole home schooling thing… it’s a problem if I won’t show them how to do things. So it’s complicated.
I’ve been priming the pump with the kids about how things will shift when we leave Grandpa’s house. We are going to a dun dun dun… screen free house. Ok, they own a tv. A big one. But they don’t turn it on. Or they use it for internet browsing. They watch very occasional cooking shows or Myth Busters. They are basically a kid screen-free house.
So uhm, don’t spend all day talking about video games and cartoons. You can talk about books, games you like to play, imaginary stuff you like to do… lots of topics. Don’t spend all day talking about the Minecraft tutorials. That is horribly boring when someone isn’t interested. We won’t be there very long. Be polite.
I have no idea if Shanna is listening. We’ll see.
We came here from Aunt Cookie’s and her only tv watching is Martha Stewart show reruns and Mayberry because her parrot will repeat things from the television. She won’t risk a peppery word in her house. (I kind of horrified her. And the kids taught the parrot to say “poop poop poop”. She was not pleased.) It’s not like we can’t get along with folks who don’t do video games. But she had to listen to a lot about the tutorial makers. Her eyes glazed over. I tried to rescue her.
Shanna can give you a full run down on the benefits and deficits of different tutorial makers and I think it is hilarious. I only half listen. I stood and listened to the new one for a few minutes last night. I wasn’t pleased. He’s an asshole. I told her flat out, “I like so-and-so and I like that other guy because they are silly and kind in how they give instructions. I don’t like this new guy. The way he is saying his friend might not really be a boy because he hasn’t seen proof? That’s bullshit. That’s a jerk thing to do. Questioning someone else’s gender is not ok. If I ever hear you do that, you aren’t watching this channel any more. If you want to know that assholes like that exist I’m not going to stop you from finding out they exist. But you had better not become one.”
Her eyes were kind of big. She nodded and said, “I wouldn’t do that. I just thought it was cool how he built _____.”
“That’s fair enough. He did build a cool ______. I can see why you would admire it. Feel free to learn his Minecraft skills. Don’t learn his interpersonal skills.”
“Got it.”
Man this is a quoting-myself-heavy-post. I want to share it with Noah. I miss you, oh my witness. I WANT TO TALK AT YOU FOR ABOUT TWELVE HOURS STRAIGHT.
I miss you.
I’ve gotta say, it’s kind of wild talking about a lot of the things I write about. To an entrenched white male. Oh man. It’s interesting phrasing and efforts. I have extreme biases. I’m aware of that. I’m working on and with where I am right now.
Dad is a soft sell on many of my more radical ideas. He will listen and help me construct rebuttals to arguments. Not necessarily on purpose, but he argues with me and that gives me practice debating the things I’m going to need to be able to debate without shrieking.
Not sure I can ever be a cook in a high pressure situation though. That may be beyond me in this lifetime.
Come down like a box of hammers.
I was thinking about the idea of “safe space”. I hang out in the lobbies of a lot of communities that are very focused on this idea. Places where people are safe. It means very different things to different people. I was thinking about what it would mean to me.
I believe that children need to hit. I believe it is part of the developmental process and …yeah it happens. I believe that the appropriate response is coming down like a box of hammers. On any given day my children get one chance for hitting someone. If they hit a second time we are going home right the fuck now and we will be having an unpleasant conversation the whole way home about how you do not have the right to hit people.
I believe that a safe space for me would involve people caring more when their children hit other people.
I don’t live in a world where that is true. Well, there are always people who over react. I don’t scream hysterically at my children for hitting. I don’t hit them. I don’t ground them for extensive periods of time. I don’t take away a bunch of privileges. I sure as hell don’t punish them once we get home–by then they bloody well forgot anyway.
I react in the moment. You get one chance per day. Not three fucking chances on hitting people. I don’t think so. Unless someone else hit you first, and then ok fine you can hit.
But quite frankly… my kids rarely hit back with anyone other than one another. They like fantasy violence quite a bit. They definitely egg on “fighting”. But they are very aware that if they hit a non-combatant mom is going to explode like a fire cracker. No. No. No.
You do not hit someone unless you have their consent. Did you ask them if they want to play a fighting game with words? No? Then what in the world makes you think it is ok to hit them?! IT IS NOT OK TO HIT SOMEONE WHO HAS NOT CONSENTED TO BEING HIT.
Lots of people will agree to play fighting games if you ask. It’s fine to ask.
But I don’t feel like other people have the consent fetish that I have. I need things negotiated and spelled out. Other people… not so much.
I’ve got to say, when my kids were habitually hitting the punishment did continue to the house. When it was happening almost every time we went somewhere we had groundings at home over it. It is a normal developmental stage.
The important part is how adults handle it. If adults act like it is fine… well. That’s a fucking lesson. If adults teach that you are allowed to hit as long as you don’t get caught… that’s a fucking lesson.
My kids don’t enjoy my blistering lectures. Do they “get” all of them? No. They don’t. I talk as if they were adults and they aren’t. They “get” a fraction of what I’m saying. But these conversations are cumulative. They will remember that from as far back as their memory goes their mother was absolutely consistent you do not hit someone who has not consented to being hit.
I understand that other people don’t think this is a message that should be consciously taught. Maybe they just never think of it as an option as opposed to making a decision. I don’t really know.
But it won’t work any other way in my house. I’ll drag you home from the park yelling at you about how you have no right to strike someone else. I won’t feel bad. I DON’T GET TO HIT YOU. YOU DON’T GET TO TURN AROUND AND HIT OTHER PEOPLE. WE DON’T PLAY THAT SHIT AROUND HERE.
Play fighting is different. That’s a game. Know how you know something is a game? You asked someone if they wanted to play before you got started.
But Shanna seriously has issues about getting in other peoples personal space bubbles. I suspect that is part of what causes kids to feel motivated to hit her. She gets right the fuck in their face and most people aren’t taught what to say. Maybe she’ll learn. I’m not sure how many more times she will need to be hit though. I couldn’t begin to count how many times she’s been punched. We talk about it a lot.
So much for home schooling meaning that my kids won’t be beat on. At least I’m there and I get to take them fucking home after the third hit of the day.
If my kids get one chance, why do I give other people two chances? Because one kid hit both my kids once and the other time… man those two have a long running sorta-feud. Given how many times Shanna has punched him… well. What did she do this time? And he does apologize. Usually even without prompting from an adult.
So how many chances do I give? I don’t know. I’m very tired of being hit. Very very very very very very very very very tired of being hit. And I am even more sick of my kids getting hit. And I notice that they are usually the ones who come crying because they got hit.
I’m not sure if they are bigger whiners or if they are actually hit that much more often than other kids.
I’d like to go a whole fucking year without being hit nonconsensually. I’ve never had a year like that. Not one.
I feel very triggered. I wasn’t “pushed out” of my biological family because I prosecuted my father. But I was told through actions that in order to be allowed to stay I would have to accept that everyone around me would rewrite history. “It didn’t really happen.” “He never did anything like that to anyone else.” “You are the problem. We were fine until you caused problems.”
I’m the problem. I should apologize. I should promise to not be a problem any more.
The only way I can promise that is if I die. I’ve never been anything but the problem.
Cue round of intense suicidal ideation. THIS IS A SHITTY TIME. I HAVE AWESOME KIDS IN THE HOUSE WHO ARE BEING NICE TO ME AND LOVING ON ME. WHY IN THE FUCK AM I IN THE YARD CRYING BECAUSE I FEEL UNLOVED AND WORTHLESS AND LIKE I SHOULD DIE.
Because I can’t not cry if I’m in the room with them right now. And Noah is here. It is being handled.
I’m not going to die over this. These people are so not worth it. If losing my mother isn’t going to do it… hell no. But turning the movie screen surround sound system off is hard. I have a lot of willpower to abstain from following through; stopping the thoughts is harder. I feel like I have run most of my life on sheer hate. I’m not dead yet because you will not win, motherfucker.
Which motherfucker, precisely? I don’t even know any more. Take your fucking pick. I’ve got a whole fucking card deck full of names.
Do something different. Yes, the crying and typing is an improvement over the cutting and the head banging, fine and dandy. (Though the arm pain means that this is maybe actually one of the most self-harming actions of my whole life. Cutting had far less chance of crippling me. Ok, banging my head could have caused a stroke. WHATEVER.)
I should fucking know by now. If you have a problem with people you have to shut the fuck up. People are not actually interested in “working through differences”. They want confirmation bias that they are right and you are wrong. I should never have bothered to talk to that fucking mother in the first place. I knew she wouldn’t give a shit about her kid hurting me. Why in the fuck was I so fucking stupid?
I am the problem. Clearly.
If I didn’t have a house full of kids, whoa. I’d make different life choices.
But if I didn’t have the kids I wouldn’t be dealing with these people anyway. So maybe it’s a wash.
Why don’t I just walk away? Why is this worth bothering to try for anyway? Mostly because I’ve kept my kids here for four years and I’ve told them to bond with people. Now I feel like a monster.
Everyone I tell them to bond with I eventually run off. I am a piece of shit. I suppose it will be a good thing that I have bonus kids here tonight. I will have something to do while I’m awake anyway. They always need a lot of help at night. They haven’t done that much sleeping outside their house. Lots of checking in, “Yes, you are still with Krissy and Noah and Shanna and Calli. Yes, you will see your parents again soon. Yes, we love you. Yes, they love you. It is time to sleep now so we can play tomorrow.” I can fucking smile on cue to be reassuring. I’ve worked hard.
I believe that children deserve to have an adult who wants to meet their emotional needs around. It doesn’t have to be a parent full time. It is healthier if it isn’t. Children need to learn that having needs is ok. Needing reassurance is ok. Needing to have help feeling safe is ok.
I can feel safe here. If I can’t feel safe other places, well… if I weren’t such a fucking problem maybe I wouldn’t have so many problems.
I’ve never been able to find a way to not be a problem other than staying home. Or dying.
I want to run away so bad. I’ve lived here too long. I’ve used up my welcome. People are tired of my bullshit. I don’t blame them. I’m tired of it too. If I could run away from being inside my head I would. I want to turn the movie screens off and I can’t.
I keep coming back to swimming out into the ocean. That really does seem to be my first choice. If I go far enough it is pretty fucking sure. I didn’t do so well with over dosing. My body is so sensitive to medications these days I don’t think my body would permit an overdose. I couldn’t use a gun. I converted my garage so I can’t follow my dad. I’m really not a big enough asshole to use Tommy’s method. That was seriously traumatizing to the people involved in the rescue. That’s not fair you fucking asshole. If you are going to kill yourself, at least don’t make a bunch of fucking spectators watch you burn. Not cool. People don’t get over that. Hell, I didn’t even see it and I can’t get over it.
Swimming. Yes, swimming straight out into the Pacific Ocean sounds great.
I have kids! Can’t! Calli tells me all the god damn time that I have to die of very old age. I’ll try, baby.
I’m definitely having temporary problems right now. In ten years this won’t matter at all. Stop being so melodramatic. Err, I’m diagnosed with reasons why I react this way. Fuck you, negative-self-talk. I am fucking improving. I god damn held it together great today. I didn’t start crying till bedtime. That’s doing just fucking fine, ok?!
Whether something is good or bad depends on your point of view.
So sad.
Avoidance
This is feeling pathetic and lame. I’m feeling intensely suicidal. Because I don’t want to deal with resolving how to handle stuff with the home school group. That’s not cool. (I’m not threatening anyone or anything. I’m just having stupid shit in my brain.)
I feel trapped. I feel like nothing will ever be better for me. I feel like I should just go because of course it will come out that it happened and then everyone will tell me it is my fault.
I told exactly two people in the group. I asked them not to intervene. One of the first responses was, “You could promise the mom you would never go near the kid again.” (To be fair the other response was THAT MOTHER IS TOTALLY RIDICULOUS.) I told them only because I’m about to leave for five months and I’m afraid that if I leave with no one knowing I will return to everyone knowing that I did a bad thing.
I want to slit my wrists. Someone assaults me and I’m supposed to promise to never go near him again?
I want to never go back to the group. I want to never ever talk to anyone from that community again. I’m supposed to promise to not be a problem after someone almost kills me.
I’ve never been anything but a problem. I should just go. I am clearly, obviously, not as worth keeping.
I want to beat my head on the floor.
More than 50% of what is on the schedule for the rest of the month is babysitting. I anticipate a lot of time sitting in the garage and crying. I’m due.
We have three home school events on the calendar. We’ll see.
I asked the kids if they would mind staying home more for a while and they both cheered. Maybe they don’t need those kids as much as I think. They have friends who are not dependent on me being part of that group.
Maybe I shouldn’t make any decisions when I’m triggered like this. My shrink calls it “abreaction”. She says that I get so upset about things that are happening now because I was not allowed to react when things happened to me when I was a kid. The throat kick qualifies as an assault. If I was still a mandated reporter my happy ass would be on the phone with CPS. Because I’m not a mandated reporter I get to be one in a long line of people supporting that abusive people don’t get consequences for their behavior.
Whee.
I am honestly not sure if a CPS call is the “right thing” but it would cause drama in the home schooling community that would affect my kids for years. Do I care enough about that boy not being a future abuser to risk my kids getting targeted because their mom is a whistle blower?
That’s what I’m looking at.
Do I think that kid will assault other people in the future? Unequivocally yes. I’ve seen him hit a lot of people.
But am I willing to put my kids in a position where they will be punished because I spoke up about this pattern? How many people is it ok for this kid to hurt without consequences?
I don’t think I’m going to intervene. I’m going to say this is a fucked up world where people are allowed to do bad things every day without consequences. One more rich bastard will get away with being a bad person. Shocking. It’s not because of me. It’s because that is how the world works.
And the home school group likes them more than me. They don’t rock the boat. They aren’t a problem. Just me. I’m the one who should promise to not be a problem.
I want to die.
Just because in this moment in time I can’t see the road forward doesn’t mean there won’t be one. I’ll stop acting like I have friends there. It isn’t safe for that kind of trust. I’m not there because I will gain friends. I’m not good enough to be friends with.
I’m just a fucking driver for my kids.
It’s not ok for me to create drama. No one fucking cares. Just shut up you stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid bitch.
I’m actually glad I’m able to write this down as it happens this time. Usually it takes such a long time.
I’m really looking forward to running away from home. I can stop dealing with the fact that I don’t think people like me very much. I can stop dealing with the fact that I feel like it would be ok in my community if I died as long as no one had to be punished for it.
I don’t know how to stop this panic in my belly.
Deep breaths. That is step number one. Stop the shallow breathing, nit wit.
Groups care more about preserving the group than any individual member. It’s not personal. It is how all institutions work. Doesn’t matter if that behavior will damage individuals. It is how groups work. Group harmony over the defense of the individual. Completely standard human behavior. It isn’t personal. No one is acting that way out of specific hatred of me.
I don’t think there is a grudge. I don’t think there is spite.
I think there is apathy. And I’ve had so much of it that I want to die.
I’ll stay home instead. With the three people who would be completely devastated if I were to hurt myself or die. They are the only people whose opinion I should court. They are the only people who have an actual stake in my life.
Looking outside these walls is seeming pretty dangerous. But then I want to run away from home? I’m a conundrum.
It will be safe to ask for my needs on the trip. Every request will be fleeting and brief. If someone says no I will be on to the next town tomorrow and whatever.
Here, with people I was trying hard to be friends with… having my physical safety be …. uhm… as important in the discussion as it is…
I can’t cope with that. I feel disposable. Promise to stay away from him. I’ll stay far far far far far away.
I’ll stay so far away that you may never see me again. Is it avoidance if I’m doing what they want? They don’t like me that much anyway.
For a while I was trying to form a more core group of Fremont people. That didn’t pan out.
That’s just how life goes. The people who live near you are not always palatable. I’m not. So I guess that’s just how it goes. I believe that writing as much as I’m writing will mean that I will have consequences. I believe I will be punished for saying this. And maybe that belief is enough that it will become true. Maybe it would have happened no matter what I said and now my words can be used as the justification.
That’s what happened with the Godmamas. They pulled away and turned down all help and refused any gestures from my side and then said I never did anything for them. They said I talked about how they wanted to leave so fine they are leaving.
I expect to be fully shunned in the home school group. I had a problem. Thus I am the problem.
Haven’t beat my head yet this morning. That’s an act of will.
Maybe I’m just a melodramatic bitch. Probably. Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up you stupid cunt. Don’t you know no one fucking cares.
I’m scared and I’m sad. There is probably going to be a lot of fall out from this. We won’t be invited to parties. We won’t be the ones at the big group events. They will be. Because I’m the problem. I feel like I should apologize to my kids for belonging to me.
I feel like any community that chooses someone who behaves like that… deserves what they get. And if I’m stupid enough to stand near someone whom I’ve seen kick other people viciously, maybe I deserve what I get too.
Of course I deserve to be kicked in the throat. How could it be any other way?
It was my fault. I rough housed. What else did I expect?
That phrase haunts me. It echoes through the years. You went on a date with a boy. What else did you expect? You drank alcohol (three shots over multiple hours!). What else did you expect?
I expect to be treated like shit. I expect to be treated like if I die it is no big loss any way.
That’s what I expect. And that means I’m “scary” and I should be punished for scaring people.
And so the world turns.
Whoa.
FYI: We will not be hosting Easter this year. Easter falls on the same weekend as the My Little Pony conference and our bathroom will be ripped apart for a remodel.
Mortgage is below $180,000 now. Whoa. And I am taking out a huge loan so I can be more in debt. Oh man that seems stupid. But I want to fix all this stuff. How am I going to pay off not only this $180,000 but an additional $100,000 in the next six years? Realistically… five years.
How am I going to do this? Technically, the HELOC is a lower interest rate than my mortgage. And the HELOC will have an early repayment penalty. It is kind of feeling like rolling a bunch into the mortgage is smartest. The HELOC has to take at least three years to pay off. And the more I send to the mortgage the faster I pay it off the less interest over time. I’m already to the point where each payment is way more than 50% principle.
I’m feeling ridiculously tempted to send $20k to the mortgage. I want to do it. I don’t want to do it. Oh man.
I have ~ $105k in cash and ~ $180k in current debt. That means that between where I want to be and where I am right now I need to come up with an extra $200k. Pretty much. In five years. On top of all the ridiculously expensive things I like to do, like travel.
To me, that sounds like this year I have to pay a minimum of $50k on combined mortgage/HELOC if I want to stay on track.
No pressure. It seems completely insane to me. I doubt my mom has ever made $50k in a year. I made that much money my first year working as a teacher, barely.
Hm. How is this going to work out?
And I will do this while maxing out 401Ks, IRAs, 529s, and doing some additional random mutual fund investing.
Ok, I just sent $10k to the mortgage. That means I’m flirting with $50k in our primary checking instead of $60k and I can live with that. That’s enough heading into the remodel and travel. At least $20k of that will go into the remodel and the traveling will be in the neighborhood of $10k. But the travel money will come out slowly and mostly just look like barely expensive months. By the end of this year I will probably be able to send an additional $10k to the mortgage. That means that by the end of the year my mortgage principle will be below $150k. With four years to go. I’m going to be paying $50k-$60k for the next few years. Ouch.
But then, before I’m 40 years old, we will all of a sudden have a place to live that is paid off. Our relative income requirements will drop through the floor. We will owe ~$6k/year for taxes and then whatever maintenance costs.
I’ve lived in the bay area my whole life and I’ve been poor for more than 2/3 of my life. Needing this much money is crazy to me. Some day my house maintenance plus taxes will be less than $1,000/month. That will include utilities because the solar on the roof is awesome. That’s an amount of money I can come up with to keep my family safe. Food will be a different challenge.
Right now mortgage plus taxes plus maintenance fees is more like $4k/month. I… I can’t be the sole wage earner and keep that ship afloat. I feel pathetic but I can’t.
I’m scared of the future. I believe this period of being rich will be brief. If I don’t secure my future I will be in a lot of trouble. I’d like to be relatively sure I will be able to live in the future on less than $30k/year. My garden is coming along! Not there yet, but I didn’t want to be there yet. I want my garden to be pretty much ready by the time I’m 50. I’ve got time.
Calli has been telling me frequently that I’m not allowed to die. When I raise an eyebrow at her and kind of smirk she says, “Well… you can die of old age when you are 90 or something. BUT NOT BEFORE THAT.”
That’s rather a big deal to someone like me.
I’m trying to prepare for a future even while I’m scared I won’t have one. Even while I’m scared I don’t deserve one. Even while I’m scared that some day I will be in too much pain to continue and I will kill myself early. I’m trying to live as if I will live until I am 90 so I must take steps. I’m trying to show my kids how to take care of yourself for your whole life.
Noah is home. I missed him. I feel very lucky that if I am going to be stuck on this stupid, hateful planet for 90 years–at least I get to do it while spending most of those years with Noah.
By the time I’m 90 I will have spent less than 2/9 of my life in horrible poverty. Whoa. Perspective shift.
If I live in this house when I’m 90 then I will have lived here for 65 years. Whoa. I’ve already lived here for 8 years and that feels wacky. In June, right before I run off on my road trip, I will have lived in this house for three times as long as I’ve ever lived anywhere else.
Wonderland is working for me.
Answering comment
Shalyndra–my shrink was frustrated because when I get upset and bad things happen I get in a loop tape of thinking that I want to die and she is tired of it. She wants me to move on so she can feel more successful as a therapist.
If I could break that fucking loop tape my life would be very different.
Thus the accusations of “You like being like this.”
That isn’t all she was frustrated about though. She wants me to believe that me getting angry in public is the same as her demanding to bring her dog into restaurants. She doesn’t understand why that is a problem for people and she thinks that me getting angry is a similar kind of blind spot. I’m not seeing how much of a problem my behavior is for other people.
But I get stuck on: it is god damn illegal for you to bring your dog everywhere and me getting angry is *not* illegal. So the parallel isn’t working to show me how not ok getting angry is. Because if you are telling me that I have as much right to anger as dog owners have to bring their dogs with them everywhere they go… we have a problem.
That’s not ok.
Therapy isn’t always awesome.
Today I feel like both me and my therapist were “off”. I could tell what she was trying to do with some techniques and they just didn’t work the way she wanted.
I left feeling like I am not going to be able to solve my problems this lifetime. I should die so I stop hurting everyone. That’s very much not wanted my therapist wanted me to get out of the appointment.
“You don’t change because you like being this way.”
I should try harder to be ashamed of myself and not like anything about the effectiveness of my personality.
Me getting angry is scary to people. My interpretation of today’s session is that since I know that my anger scares people it is all my fault if bad things happen if I express anger.
She would argue with that characterization. She would say, “I’m just trying to point out that you have a blind spot. When you get angry people get scared and that isn’t something that is going to change. You have to deal with that.”
I have to deal with people calling the police to report that I am threatening to stab people. Despite the fact that I did not threaten to harm anyone.
According to my shrink, me being angry is enough to cause people to call the police and I just can’t allow myself to get that dysregulated in public.
Which sounds to me like: unless you have perfect control stay home.
I will not have perfect control this lifetime.
I feel like I should die.
It really didn’t help that she tried to get me to see how unreasonable I was by comparing it to when she wants to take her dog into any restaurant with her. Uhm, I’m not trying to do something that violates health code so your analogy isn’t really working for me.
I feel like I should die so I stop hurting everyone.
This hurts a lot. I want to cut. Instead I am going to have alcohol. It’s going to fuck over my digestion. I don’t give a flying fuck.
I can only lose so many forms of self harm today. Alcohol is legal. I won’t be drinking enough to count as illegally impaired around my children. But I will be hurting myself. The funny thing is: this is the only legal method I have. So today I’m going to fucking have some.
I can’t pretend I like me today.