I took a bath. I did yoga. I was trying to calm my body down. Then my fucking kid decided to follow me into the bathroom and scream directly into my face because she thought it was fucking funny.
I am vibrating with anger and I want to break every fucking thing in my fucking house.
Yesterday I got to spend time with two thoroughly excellent ladies. It is kind of funny that I am referring to them that way because one of them is dealing with a situation at work where she has to tell someone else in her department, “Uhhh stop sending group emails to “Dear Ladies”.”
Two women who inspire me came out of hiding yesterday. One is a preschool special ed teacher (talk about a special breed of saint) and the other has a background like mine and she now has a masters in social work. After dropping out of high school in 9th grade and never completing high school.
One of my friends is not a parent and the other has one kid. I am on a very different life path than either of them. I am really glad that my kids get to know a lot of women who have entirely different interests. My children mostly know women who work. My children mostly know people who have nothing in common with us other than being breathing monkeys and all.
You don’t have to be like me. I am doing what I must do. I know it is kind of weird.
I am so grateful to talk to other people who are fascinated by the vagaries of humanity. It is nice to get to talk to people and say, “Yeah we share ____ bad habit and ______ good habits. Whoo hoo!”
Noah got to ask the social worker friend and I why we care so much about the opinion of people we don’t like and don’t respect. Why don’t we just get over it already? He’s been pestering me on this one for a bit now and I haven’t given him a useful answer. It was kind of nice for him to get to ask another person who is as angry and difficult as I am. I am NOT ALONE. muahahaha
Yes, Noah you are right. Our lives would be better in every way at this point if we didn’t care.
When you are a white trash kid who depends on a lot of charity… you have to care what people think or they don’t give you any help.
I got out of poverty because of a lot of white privilege. People who would help me just an inch here and there. If I didn’t give a shit what they thought I would have behaved even worse than I did and I wouldn’t have gotten the help.
Historically in my life not caring was more dangerous than it is now. At this point it is a legacy bad habit that I do need to change. It is a coping method that *used* to be necessary and it is still around when I don’t need it any more.
I kind of have a long list of personality problems I am already working on. I haven’t really had time to deal with this one yet. I’m too busy figuring out how to not scream at my kids all the fucking time. It’s really hard. Now I understand why my mom beat the shit out of me.
But I will not pass it on. And that requires a lot of truly active thinking on my part.
If I go on “auto pilot” then I am nasty, shrieking, and violent. I hurt people with great joy. If I want to behave differently then I need to really think hard about it all the fucking time. That doesn’t leave a lot of spare brain cycles for fixing the stuff Noah thinks I should get around to.
Uhh, sorry.
I know you are right. I know that is on the list of things I need to change. I get it. But there isn’t a neat little switch attached to my body some where. I don’t get to just decide, “I am going to stop being angry and afraid; all of a sudden I am going to just massively increase my apathy.” Sorry, my nipples aren’t that kind of dial or anything.
I know it “would be better for me” if I could stop having intense emotional reactions to the fact that there will always be people in this world who hate me and wish I would die. Yup, my life would improve in every way if I stopped feeling so bad about that. I know. I know. I KNOW.
I just…
I’m trying.
It has been nice over the past few days to see people I have known for so long. They have been commenting on how different I am. I don’t hit people any more. I don’t even mean like in a bdsm sense. I hit people fucking constantly for most of my life. It has taken years for Jenny to stop flinching when I come near her. I have had to work really hard at not being scary any more.
I understand that this isn’t an “everyone has it” problem. Please can it be ok that I am working on this problem first instead of the “caring too much” problem?
Seriously. I need to care what people think of me. Fewer people, sure. I agree. I do need to care. Not as much as I do. Yes yes yes the strangers who hate me can fuck off. I get it.
The caring runs on a background tape I never take out of the deck and examine. It’s just kind of there. It is an unfortunate feature of my personality that just exists. I don’t consciously go turn it on. I don’t try to increase my anxiety. It’s just there.
Sometimes people have unconscious reactions. It happens.
So it was nice for Noah to get to talk to both of my friends yesterday. They are very different and share very different sides of my interests. Good grief am I grateful that he got to meet someone as angry as I am who is out doing stuff in the world. She has as many anger problems as I do and she has to just fucking master them, like yesterday.
She is very inspirational to me. I confess that I have a hard time taking advice from people who are not inherently angry. If you aren’t like me then you won’t understand what advice I need or why I need it. She gets it. She gets it better than almost anyone I have ever met.
Why are my very closest friends all former child prostitutes? They can understand me. They don’t flinch. They don’t judge me. They understand why I am angry and they think I need to keep the anger but figure out how to manage it. They are the only fucking people not telling me to just “get over it.”
Dad lectured my friend and I last night about how we need to stop getting so angry. We should learn how to deflect rude/awful/whatever things with humor so that people will like us more.
I did not light up like a roman candle and I feel proud of myself for this. I did leave the room soon after.
Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you.
I love Dad with great intensity but man he is hard for me to deal with sometimes. I view it as practice for dealing with all the people I hate. I don’t know why Dad has managed to cross the line into being so strongly in my affection. He has all the markers of someone I would like to set on fire. But he gets a pass. He has earned it from me.
My friend and I discussed our sixth sense, “I can spot a rape/incest/severe abuse survivor at thirty paces.” I can see it on peoples faces even when it happened decades ago. I just know.
I’m sure I miss people. I’m sure there are people who are better liars than I think. I doubt I miss many because I find them all the fucking time and statistically they aren’t the majority of the population.
It was nice being able to talk to someone who really gets what I want to do with an incest database in the future. Most people feel confused as to why I want to go talk to a bunch of incest survivors. Won’t that be depressing?
I am somewhat unlikely to ever “stop being an angry person”. I think that short of being so stoned I cannot form a coherent thought process I will always be someone who has intense emotions. I feel a lot of anger. A lot of sadness. A lot of fear. Basically all the time.
I don’t understand people who just kind of drift through life apathetically. That is not my way and I don’t have a lot of desire to be like that.
I want to get shit done. Anger is very motivating. Fear is very motivating. Sadness isn’t. I try to lessen how sad I feel. I don’t have as good of a reason for being sad any more. I’m really grateful for how nice to me Noah and my kids are. My sadness is bigger than them and outside of them and mostly they block it out kind of like an eclipse.
Letmetellyou having kids doesn’t block out my anger. Holy shit they piss me off sometimes.
I want to have grown up children who have lived in a low stress environment. I can’t get visibly freaking-out-angry any more. I just can’t. It is not on the list of permissible actions.
I can’t cut myself to maintain control. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.
I’m getting rid of my broken habits as fast as I can. I am sorry I can’t go faster but I can’t.
I feel like such a disappointment. So what about what I have done. I am measured by how far I still have to go before I qualify as a good person. I’m not sure I will ever make the jump. The gorge seems so wide.
I am so grateful to the two women who took a break from their normal lives to come talk to me today. They inspire me in very different, complimentary ways. I want to be more like them even if they are polar opposite in some important ways. I like conflict.
It is harder hanging out with Dad than the other friends as the trip goes on. I am having a hard time with my expectations and entitlement. I have some picture in my head of what a “dad is like” and I’m just wrong. I can’t take it out on someone else that they aren’t living up to the pictures in my head. I’m pretty sure I have succeeded at being nice to Dad the whole time we have been here.
Man I’m having a hard time with the constant “teasing” that feels like taunting to me. I want to fight. I want to fight so fucking bad that sometimes sitting very still and not reacting makes me sweat.
No, I can’t just “deflect it with humor”. That path is closed to me. What I could do instead is break your nose. How about if we try it my way and we will see whether your way or my way is more fun for me?
I really struggle with dealing with people sometimes, “Yes–you think everything is funny. You want to make everyone standing near you the butt of whatever joke is floating through your mind this second. I get it. When you do that I am going to react with rage, violence, and perhaps I will inflict a lot of pain when you try using me that way. Please just leave me alone.”
I say more or less that. It doesn’t slow down how often I feel mocked and taunted. “Why can’t you take a joke?” I just can’t. I’ve been god damn telling you so for almost a decade and a half. ARE YOU FUCKING DEAF?
At what point is it bullying instead of playing? If I ask for twenty years for someone to stop making fun of me and they won’t am I entitled to break their kneecaps? I think I should get to start escalating at some point.
This is why I used to hit people all the time. Dad made fun of me less often when I punched him as hard as I could each time I was the butt of the joke. Now that I don’t hit him any more he makes fun of me a lot more.
Why in the fuck is it a good idea for me to stop hitting people? I am having trouble remembering right this second.
Recently Shanna had a situation where a playmate was hitting her a lot. We have talked about it a few times afterwards. We’ve talked about all the things she can do when someone is hitting her. I made it very clear that if she tries two or three things to get someone to stop and they don’t it is ok to hit back.
I don’t think it is ok for me to hit people just because they have said something I don’t like. If someone hits me first I have every right in the world to start breaking bones.
Man. Why doesn’t anyone hit me any more? I’d really like to get in a fight. I’ve had a lot of adrenaline for a while now.
I talked to Shanna a lot about how when you end up in a fight with a friend it is important to not hit in the face. You can damage people easily, accidentally and they don’t tend to forgive you for that. If your friend punches you in the arm and you punch them in the arm back… that’s probably something you will be able to get past in your relationship. Once you break someones nose they don’t forgive you.
Why is caring about what other people tied into this? Because for me not hitting Dad really hard when he pisses me off is part and parcel of the anxiety about other people disliking me.
I want a relationship with someone who will hand me the crumbs of affection Dad is willing to give me. Even though it doesn’t come anywhere close to a real parental relationship. Even though it is always very crystal clear that he has “real children” and then those play partners he tolerates calling him Dad.
I feel so pathetic that this is the best I can share with my children. It is the pinnacle of what I have to offer. No, he will never treat you like his “real family”. I hope you never notice.
He is nice to the kids. He is nice to me. But he’s also an asshole. I’ve known that since the first fucking time I met him. I love a lot of assholes. Just go through my list of friends. I don’t hold the fact that someone is an emotionally unavailable asshole as a reason to not be friends with them. Sometimes that is all I can get.
Noah likes being alone in a way I just don’t. Noah spent his childhood trying to get alone time and failing. I spent my childhood desperately wishing that someone would like me and that people would stop hitting me and raping me and that I wasn’t always alone in a room listening to people laugh. If I came in the room the laughing stopped and the yelling started.
We will always react to stress differently. I need that to be ok. I can’t change it.
Dad would like it if I found his humor funny. I don’t. I’m not sure what to do about that either.
I’m never all that keen on the social solution that involves me just having to shut the fuck up about feeling hurt by someone using me as the butt of the joke over and over. For some strange reason.
You can’t change other people. You can’t decide that their personality should be different so you will just bully them until they conform. You can make them learn how to avoid problems with you but you can’t make them change.
I am learning a lot of this with my kids. I can’t make them be different people than they are. I have to help them learn how to manage their own particular quirks but I can’t just decide to make them different.
It is honestly kind of hilarious having to help Calli learn how to not hit people when she is angry. She really struggles with how intensely mad she gets. She wants to make people bleed when she is pissed. I get it, kid.
Sometimes when she is ramping herself up I will pick her up and carry her away from whatever is making her mad. She will fight me at first. She wants to get right back to the fight she was in the middle of so she squirms really hard to try and get away. I carry her into a calm, dark room.
I say, “I think I can see that you are very mad. Am I right?” Scream/sob answer, “YES!!!!!” “That’s really hard. I’m sorry you are having to struggle with that feeling right now. Are you sure you want to hit when you feel that way though? Do you want someone to hit you when they feel mad?” “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” “Ok. Then we need to find a different way of managing this. If you hit then other people will hit you back.”
I think that is one of the parts that gets me. I don’t like being hit back very much. That’s a lot of the reason I actually stopped hitting people. Noah hits really hard if you hit him first.
I want to show my children how to be a functional adult. Functional adults don’t beat up their friends. (Well… only at special parties with pre-arranged negotiation. That’s different.)
Dad is giving me all he has available to give me. I could be mad that what he has to give is so inadequate compared to the scope of my need or I can be grateful that he bothers at all. No one else has.
Sometimes it is really hard talking myself into consciously being nice and grateful for things that are so inadequate compared to my needs. Why in the fuck should I act nice when someone hands me an ice cube but I needed a glacier to do what I need to do.
You act nice or people go away. You act nice or people don’t give you the time of day. You act nice or you end up alone and hated. You act nice or you might as well already be dead because the whole long shitty life will be so painful that it really has no upside to enduring it.
Dad asked me if I thought I had kids because I was trying to relive my childhood and make it better. He said it in that “Do you understand you are broken and bad and you shouldn’t be doing that” sort of way. My response was, “Oh heck yes I know I am doing that. I write about it extensively. I am very consciously and deliberately trying to find out what a healthy childhood looks like.”
He said, “Oh. I don’t read anything you write. I’m not into that kind of thing.”
I said, “Yeah. I didn’t have any suspicion that you might actually give a shit about what is going on with me.”
He looked a bit taken aback but didn’t respond.
Sometimes it is kind of weird for me that I put so much of myself out into the ether and I just pray that people care. I pray that someone will read it. Someone will give a shit. I know that the vast majority of everyone doesn’t care and never will.
I have to be ok with that. I can’t tone down so that I attract a wider audience. I can’t stop talking about uncomfortable things so that emotionally stunted men will feel entertained by me. Yeah, that’s not my niche. Go watch Chris Rock.
It is hard dealing with the fact that people “caring about me” will rarely intersect with my needs getting met. The caring doesn’t actually do anything for me. I need actions. I don’t get them much. Sometimes I do. Noah is working himself into an early grave much to my shame.
I am not fair to Noah. It is not fair to anyone to have to live with someone as needy and pathetic as I am.
I am sorry that I have so many needs and no way to fill them.
I wish I had a dad who thought I was good for something other than fucking or hitting.
I wish.
In this lifetime it seems like those are the main early things that people liked about me. I am stupid enough to let people hit me really hard. Hell, I even like it. It seems an appropriate thing to do to me.
I slept more last night than the previous two nights but Noah and I went to bed bickering so I had trouble sleeping again. That probably factors into my right-this-minute emotional instability.
Instead I’ll just come out here to the couch and cry.
I wish I could stop caring what people think of me. I wish I could not care about Dad making all these comments. I wish I could.
I don’t know where the dial is. Can someone please show me?
I’m afraid that the first step in ignoring people not liking me is for me to like myself enough to make up for them.
I’m not sure I will ever be able to do that.
Dad was asking me, “Well why don’t you just _____?” I said, “Are you familiar with PTSD?” “No.” “Have you ever heard of hypervigilance?” “I’ve heard the word and I could guess what it means.” “I am not physically capable of just doing what you want me to do.” “Well try harder.”
I want to hit him in the head with a baseball bat sometimes.
“I don’t know anything about your medically verifiable long list of problems but I still think you need to just get over it and act how I want you to act because then I will get to have more fun.”
Let me jump right the fuck on that for you. Since you are so god damn important and all.
I feel like a petty, whining baby.
If I try to be kind to me I can see that I’m not just whining. I’m processing. Maybe life shouldn’t be as hard for me as it is… but it is. I have to get through each day. I can’t just ignore my physiological response to my life. I have to deal with it. I have to acknowledge that it is real. I have to treat it like it matters.
Yeah, I know I don’t have to be important to anyone else. I get it.
If I want to get through each day while smiling and being nice to my children then I need to have some space somewhere in the fucking world where I am allowed to have all of these feelings.
So I write. That doesn’t mean I am whining. I don’t make people fucking listen to my fucking feelings in person. I’m god damn aware that no one cares.
If I stopped caring what people thought of me then my ability to self-censor would evaporate.
It is genuinely hard for me to censor the stuff that goes through my brain. I think about self harm and suicide and incest and rape about as often as other people think about food. I can’t talk about it almost at all because most of the world will react with violence if I am stupid enough to bring up these topics. These are things I am supposed to pretend don’t exist. I’m breaking the veil by talking about them and I should be punished.
I have to care what people think if I am going to make sure I don’t say anything “inappropriate”. If I just cared about what I thought I would not have so many friends. I really like my friends. I don’t want them to leave me.
Even though I am a petty, pathetic, ungrateful bastard. I try as hard as I can to be grateful for what people have to offer.
I’m really sorry that I have so many needs and that I am so aware of them. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry that I wish I had a parent who would love me. I will do my best to not take it out on all of the people who just can’t love me that way. I understand that this is my problem and I need to shut up.
Sometimes it is really hard. 4,000 words in. Sometimes writing it is all I can do. I’m sure as fuck not allowed to talk about it. That would be rude or something.
No one can give me what I want. I know. It isn’t anyone else’s fault I feel this way. I know. It is my fault.
I should just stop caring.
When I try to think backwards in time about my birthdays mostly I think of crying. I have cried through most of my birthdays. Today I was specifically asked if any of them were good and I can come up with my 21st birthday (400+ perverts sang to me in a sneak preview of The Secretary which is pretty much the perfect movie to release on my birthday) and that’s the absolute highlight. 23 wasn’t bad. Tom threw a party for me three weeks after I broke up with him. The most attention he paid to my birthday in our years together. 30 was pretty good. My party was both good and very weird.
But let me tell you I arranged to go to the movie when I was 21 and I arranged the party when I was 30.
As far back as I can remember my birthday is a reminder of the fact that I’m not particularly likable. People (my “friends” who were invited) have decided that my birthday party is a great time to sit down and tell me everything they dislike about me. It’s happened over and over. I tried to change that with 30. It was such a weird night. And then the creating a household thing exploded. So it’s kind of a mixed bag.
This year I am going to Disneyland with my kids and a friend. I’m not inviting Noah. Like, specifically if he asked to come (which I anticipate snowballs falling in hell before he asks to come with me on a trip) this time I would say no.
If I’m not going to be the special pretty princess at least I don’t want my face rubbed in it. I will never be the special-center-of-attention. That’s not a role I get this lifetime. I understand that most people don’t get it.
For most of my birthdays I remember things like my mom getting me chocolate cakes because no one else wants to get stuck eating vanilla even though that is my favorite flavor. No one else likes it so it isn’t coming into the house.
On other peoples birthdays I try hard to pay attention to them. I want them to know that I am grateful that they exist. I want to buy their love–let’s be frank. I want people to know that I think they are worth buying love from. It’s kind of nice to experience, you know?
My birthdays feel like a reminder that I was never wanted. I am the product of rape. If my mother hadn’t been Catholic she would have aborted me. Happy Fucking Birthday. I don’t know how to feel wanted. Mostly I understand that it isn’t anyone else’s problem to deal with my insecurities so I try to not talk about them.
I’m actually pretty good these days at not actively bribing people to come pay attention to me. I get enough that I no longer value myself and my time so little that I am willing to beg people for their attention. It happens or it doesn’t. I have to consciously stop myself from grilling people about why do you want to talk to me? Don’t you find me unpleasant? I think I’d give just about anything to not have to be with me for a day. I find me incredibly unpleasant.
Sometimes it is kind of weird knowing that I could train myself to be nicer. It’s just behavioral conditioning–no big deal. I have the wrong instincts to get through the world safely as a “nice” person. I gravitate towards people who need boundaries expressed with hurling knives. I like them. I just plain do. And way more than I like them I want them to like me so I have traditionally just not said no.
My therapist, like everyone else who knows me and Noah, after listening to me talk about birthday stuff for a few minutes said, “Wait… isn’t that unusually inconsiderate from him?” “Yup.” “Hunh. Why is this a thing? What kind of trauma does he have around birthdays?” “None that I know of in particular.” “Hunh. Weird.” “Yup.”
That’s how discussing birthdays goes with everyone. Why is Noah really excellent at being considerate about almost everything else but has uhm not prioritized my birthday? How the fuck should I know. I’ve asked and haven’t gotten a great answer.
I think it’s the pressure. He’s nice to me all the time because he wants what it gets him. On my birthday the pressure is kind of insane. Failing to act is at least on a different scale from doing “something” that I find disappointing. I can be honest and say that on occasion I have been disappointed in gifts in my lifetime. He’s probably noticed. I’m sure that’s not his favorite thing to deal with.
I really think that part of it is about him not wanting to feel like he has to jump through hoops. He cooks breakfast every day because logistically it is a really great thing for him to do. My birthday probably has less obvious benefits.
I don’t think that one session of EMDR made this issue resolve in my head. I have a long life of birthdays ahead of me. I’m feeling very frightened by the idea of ending up spending my birthday alone every year once my kids are a bit older. Once I’m no longer so interesting and all.
I’m not going to be willing to wake up on my birthday and have everyone in my house act like it is every other day. I can’t do that any more. I’m tired of not fucking mattering. I’m not going to coax and beg my kids to pay attention to me. The only other adult in their life with such influence is going to teach them that my birthday doesn’t matter. I need to not be here while it happens.
This is the kind of thing that makes me not want a long life. I generally start crying about my birthday in August (my birthday is in September) and do it pretty solidly until November. Noah not doing anything last year hit me harder than normal and I’m still crying about it in March. That feels pathetic.
He married me. He had children with me. He works like a dog for me. He cooks me breakfast every day. He stopped sleeping with other people. What more does he bloody need to do to prove that he likes me? I don’t know.
This ache isn’t about him. I don’t know what could fill it. I don’t know if he would be able to if he wanted to but he doesn’t want to so it doesn’t matter. Every year my birthday feels like a reminder that my mother never wanted me. That my father was a monster. That I was just born to be a worthless whore.
I’m really glad that I never actually did sex work. I think that for me that would have been emotionally problematic. As a sex worker you can be an expensive well treated one or you can be a badly treated poorly treated one. Guess which one I would have headed for?
This whole birthday thing is not about getting stuff. I’m really not looking for more crap in my house. I’m not especially materialistic and I have all of my needs met and then some. I absolutely know the extent of my privilege. I am not acting like my husband is inadequate at providing. He’s a fantastic provider. No complaints there.
I want to feel special. Most every day I feel like my presence is in large part tolerated because I am willing to do enormous amounts of work in exchange for people tolerating my presence. I know I owe people something for putting up with me. They sure as shit aren’t doing it for the pleasure of my company.
People who don’t want anything from me confuse me. So I avoid them. Right now I have nothing to give so I avoid the people who want something from me too. I don’t go out as much as I did in the past.
I feel like a selfish piece of shit. I am seriously only hanging out with people who have something specific they are offering me. They come and find me and ask to hang out with me. And I’m still fucking whining on the internet and crying for more than 1/3 of a year because I feel unwanted and unlikable.
That’s broken. I don’t know how to fix that. I see the parameters of what is broken and where but I don’t know how to fix it yet.
Ok, it’s not true that I only use people. Hyperbole is my friend and all. I have highly reciprocal relationships with some people. Mostly though I’m a using bitch. I feel bad about it. I have never been this friend before and I remain quite confident that once I get through this small children phase I will no longer be a using bitch. I anticipate me doing a lot of kid-care for other people in the future.
I don’t feel like my being here on the planet matters very much. My birthday is kind of the chance to say that I am special and every year I am slapped really hard in the face with the fact that I’m really not very important.
Let me throw into this rant the many odd feelings I’m having because Noah’s parents send us so many gifts. In terms of adding random novelty and beauty to my house really they have me covered for the year. Ok, some of their stuff isn’t a hit. Mostly their taste has improved to the point where I write long gushing thank you letters detailing how I’m using all the presents.
So this weird birthday thing really isn’t about being mad about not getting presents. Presents aren’t the point.
I don’t know how to experience my birthday and think, “It’s a good thing I’m alive”. I go through each one knowing that I shouldn’t be here. It’s kind of like permanently living in It’s a Wonderful Life. I feel like I am always kind of simultaneously viewing both options at the same time: I am alive and I am having this life where clearly people do love me–I did manage to find people vs. I was not wanted from the moment of my conception in every way. How can someone conceived in such hate and rage and violence and anger and humiliation ever be worthy of anything else?
That’s what EMDR helps me put into words. This separation of where the emotion is evolving towards vs. what the trigger is about.
I don’t know what will change how I feel about myself. I don’t know if I will ever stop wanting to hurt myself. I don’t know if I will ever be able to stop hating myself.
I tattooed on my back that the thing I want the most is forgiveness. I think that something more akin to an exorcism would be necessary to get rid of how much hate I feel for myself.
I don’t remember what I was watching but the adult child of an incest survivor was speaking about what it was like growing up with his mother. He said something like, “The thing I remember the most about my mother was that she was always just a little sad. She would stand off to the side in every gathering and watch like she wished she was invited but she never felt she could join.”
I’m scared my kids will say that about me.
I kind of feel like life is a party I wasn’t invited to. I kind of heard by word of mouth that it was happening and some people not connected with hosting have said, “You should come!” but I wasn’t actually invited… you know?
But no one is invited. Well, my kids have been. Holy tomato. I work hard at that. It’s very funny hearing the lectures I give them.
My kids don’t know that I’m roiling in self-hatred. It’s completely outside of their scope of the universe and it’s going to gosh darn stay that way. Well, till they can read at any rate.
I want… I want… I want.
I want to stop hurting like this. I want to know how to actually feel valued and loved given that I have a number of relatively sane non-user people working really hard to ensure that my company is desired. And I’m only having sex with one of them. It’s pretty weird. I don’t really know how to handle this.
It is very weird trying to psychologically get my head around the fact that the internet is permanent. Well, until an energy crisis. But let’s assume it’ll last my lifetime. I think it will. Why is that in this post? I’m starting to think about mortality differently. I have never before seriously entertained the idea of living into my 70’s, 80’s, or beyond. Given my life experiences I am unlikely to make it that long. But I will almost certainly make it into my 60’s.
That’s a lot of birthdays to worry about facing. I try to tell myself that the only thing that stays the same is that everything changes. I won’t always feel how I feel right now. Right now I am very deep in that miasma of shitty feeling. I feel stupid and immature for wanting to talk about these things in public. I feel like I should hit delete and walk away because I am wasting peoples time by writing this inane drivel. And I go on and on and on. Shut the fuck up already.
Geez inside voice, I haven’t even hit 2500 words–what got stuck in your craw? (Have I mentioned that I am in love with WordPress telling me word count as I go?)
I think I am going to stop though. We are going to go out to dinner to celebrate Noah’s last day at his old job. He is starting a shiny new upgraded position at a new company next week. Things are exciting here.
I really have nothing to complain about. My ingratitude is staggering. But there it is.
So someone decided to tell me that I am “too smart” to believe a fairly extreme interpretation of the opinion of the laws of my country. Specifically, that lawmakers who push through anti-abortion laws have more interest in preserving the parental rights of rapists than in protecting me.
I feel so much rage. I would like to punch that man in the face. I don’t think I should be in a room with him for a while. I’m fucking tired of the condescension. This is why I don’t have more friends. I have a hard time suffering fools.
When I was eighteen years old I met a guy online and brought him to a party. He drugged me and raped me. I called the police the next day and told them that I would like to press charges. I had physical evidence. It was soon enough that I probably could have gone to the hospital for a rape kit and to be tested for the drugs he gave me. But I was stupid and I didn’t think of it. I called the police and asked them to help me.
I was told “What did you expect?” The officer refused to press charges. It might harm my rapist’s career in the Coast Guard. There is no doubt in my mind that the Sheriff who told me that I got what I deserved would be on the side of that guy getting to know his kid. I’m really grateful that most of my rapists decided to wear condoms. That bit of magnanimous action is probably the only reason I have not had to have an abortion or be a severely abusive mother. I promise you that if I had a child because someone raped me I wouldn’t be a good mother. It’s not the kid’s fault–of course. But shit rolls down hill.
“Too smart” how condescending, rude, and arrogant. Ah, so I must be smart enough to agree with a man. I see. Well I suppose that means you are giving me undue credit.
I live in a world that goes back and forth between how it treats me. On one hand women should be pure and innocent until they meet the right man. On the other hand men have needs and there should be trashy women they don’t have to care about who are required to meet those needs whenever desired. Try to tell me I am wrong.
I have been the whore no one had to give a shit about for most of my life. I am self-sufficient. My needs are my problem and no one else’s. That has been made very clear to me.
Noah is different. The only reason I understand that not everyone is treated as a hole who is required to serve whom ever when ever is because I read books and I finally found someone who is nice to me. I am so grateful that he is nice to me. He really is. He’s gentle. He tries to be considerate. When he is self-absorbed for a while and I break down crying he doesn’t get mad at me. He apologizes for ignoring me and loves on me. (Not sex.) It’s so weird. Someone cares about me. Someone thinks that me feeling good and safe and loved is important. How very different from the rest of the world.
People are happy to say that they think I should feel good, even that I deserve to feel good and safe and loved. But they won’t do anything about their behavior to help me feel that way. I’m just supposed to magically start feeling that way. I don’t know about other people, but it doesn’t work that way for me.
In order for me to feel safe I have to avoid people who are going to denigrate my intelligence if I have the audacity to have different life experiences. When a man is arguing with me about rape rhetoric it’s not exactly a level playing field. They are trying to argue the ideals and the best possible case scenario so they can look reasonable and logical. I’m telling you what has happened to me. Fuck you. Don’t fucking tell me how our system should work and look down on me because it doesn’t fucking work that way.
The last guy who raped me before Noah showed up to rescue me didn’t use a condom. He got me so drunk I passed out and had unprotected sex with me. I would have been thrilled to have sex with him–with a condom. He didn’t want that so he stacked the deck and had the kind of sex he wanted to have. It’s a good thing I was on birth control. How do you think the Dickens Fair community would have reacted if I had shown up pregnant claiming that one of the popular actors raped me? No one would believe it. I got what I was asking for anyway. And I would have had to share custody.
Don’t fucking tell me I am “too smart” to believe that politicians want to actively hurt me. Life has taught me that slowly and painfully. I think I should do some unfriending. It’s really not worth the aggravation.
I think every so often about the fact that if I hadn’t been white I don’t think there is any chance in the world I would be where I am. I would not be safe. I would still be suffering. It feels wildly unfair. I have a lot of survivors guilt.
If I wasn’t white then the lawyer who defended me when I was five wouldn’t have allowed his daughter to be friends with me. I doubt he would have worked for me for cheap. That annuity changed my life. If I wasn’t white I wouldn’t have been interesting to someone like Tom. He helped support me for years and gave me a safe, stable place to attend college from. I doubt I would have finished college without his help. Noah probably wouldn’t have recognized me as being like him if I wasn’t white.
It all feels like an accident. I feel like I got lucky over and over. I only got the help I needed because my outside appearance was pleasing enough. Because men with money want to fuck me and in this country the men with money are mainly white.
I’m not supposed to say that, right?
In this country you have rights if you have enough power and money to fight for them. Poor women of color are rarely in that category. When white men tell me that I am being melodramatic when I interpret laws in the ways that I do I feel so much rage and anger I want to physically attack them. How god damn dare you try to interpret the experiences of people who will never have your advantages. Never have your opportunities. Never have the protection you enjoy under the law.
And when my “friends” start lecturing about how taxes are theft and the government is stealing their money to give it away to unfit people I want to go on a shooting spree. I’m not sure I qualify as a Libertarian any more.
You have enough. You have so much that you have a lot of needless fluff in your life. You have extra money and food and everything else. Why are you such a selfish piece of shit that you think that other people should suffer because you don’t want to share? Welcome to America. If you can get it for yourself then you can have it, no matter how many people you have to step on and hurt in the way. If you want to live a reasonably decent life with dignity you had got damn better pick the right kind of white family to be born into.
I am so angry.
I am angry with myself that I don’t have more energy to work in social justice now. But I can’t. I would do a lot of damage to my kids if I tried. That feels humiliating. I can’t do much to change the world right now. All I can do is talk about how fucked up it is. I can talk about how it has hurt me. Often when I talk about how it has hurt me other women will come talk to me about their stories. They feel less alone. If that is the only gift I have to give at this point then I had better start curling ribbon to put on top.
I don’t hate all white men. Noah doesn’t condescend to me. He doesn’t denigrate my intelligence. He doesn’t insult me. He is fairly unusual among the white men of my experience. He doesn’t act like it takes an act of Congress to force him to apologize when he is accidentally a douche. I didn’t know that men like him existed.
Noah is my first experience with a man who treats me like an equal. The other men I deal with act like I should look up to them and their experience, their wisdom, and respect them. I’d rather eat worms.
I don’t respect people more or less based on their job or their money. I respect people for how they exist in the world. I know a lot of people who are actively working to make the world better. They do it in a wide variety of ways. No one is perfect. One of the most important things you can do to make the world a better place is to stop treating women like they are less than men. A lot of people do. This is not a guy thing. Misogyny is alive and well among women.
I’m also going to take a moment to say that I hate everyone who says, “Pregnancy is not a disability” whether they are men or women. I’m glad you have had that experience. I was enormously sick and incapable. I guess that makes me inferior, pathetic, and bad. I was disabled. I was on bed rest. I had to not walk around or I puked all over the place. I lost 18 pounds by the end of my second trimester because I was so sick.
But I was supposed to shake it off and “act normal” because men don’t go through this period where an alien parasite invades their bodies so obviously I shouldn’t be effected by the experience. If I have issues it is all my mind. I could function if I just wasn’t so lazy.
I really hate people. Yes, I could have kept teaching. Even though it was technically illegal for me to leave the classroom unsupervised to go vomit several times a day. I guess I should have been puking in the trash can. Geez, these lazy women wanting special treatment while they vomit uncontrollably. What the fuck is their problem.
This is all wrapped up for me. When a man tells me I am “too smart” to believe that lawmakers might push things through in a way that is severely problematic and dangerous to me I reference back to my life experience.
I’m always told things will be easy. That I shouldn’t complain. It’s easy for every one else, why am I whining.
I’m sorry I’m not you. And yet, fuck you. No I’m not. You are a fucking asshole and I don’t want to be like you.
I react the way I react based on a life of experiences. Do not insult me. Do not talk down to me. Those are not the only rapes in my life. When I am trying to decide how I feel about rape I have a wide variety of emotions available to me based on a wide variety of circumstances and occasions. I’m sure they are all my fault. What else did I expect?
I expect that people think I am a worthless piece of shit. I am a hole with no value of my own. The only reason to keep me or people like me around is if you want a hole. I should not get much say so about who goes in or who comes out. It’s not my place. I’m just the hole.
I have been vibrating with anger all day and that isn’t fair to my kids. Part of my anger level is I don’t feel like it is ok for me to talk about the things that are making me angry. It cycles from there. I feel like I owe people respect and privacy. I’m not sure why I feel like I owe people this. I guess that once people get to a certain level of inner-circle-of-friends I feel like they get dispensation from the normal rules I have with other people? I don’t hash out much of my friendships in writing. Not until long after things happen at least.
I’m allowed to talk about me and my experience of things but I don’t get to out people. That is what my “upbringing” in the scene taught me. It’s a harder line to walk than it appears on first glance. How can you talk about things and still obfuscate?
I’ve had two friends no-show in the last week. The second one just finally popped up at the end of the day to explain what happen. I’m frustrated but it’s a situation I understand given that I have done similar sorts of things myself. I’m not happy with her because it is the second god damn no-show in a week so now it feels like a big statement about my general self-worth.
I still haven’t heard from the first no show. It’s been six days. I sent her an email at forty minutes past the meeting time saying that I was going to head out and go to a La Leche League meeting so she probably shouldn’t come by at that point. I haven’t heard from her. I’m sure she’s busy.
I had to explain to my kids what was happening. She told them she was coming. Shanna was looking forward to it. I had to fucking explain to my kid why someone was god damn letting her down. Because she forgot. That happens. Because we aren’t fucking important enough to remember, I guess. I didn’t say any of that. What I said was, “Well, people make mistakes. I guess she didn’t write it down and it slipped her mind.”
I’m seething. And I’m ignored. It’s hard being reminded how little I matter. I hate being lied to. “I’ll be there.” Yeah. Right.
I feel guilty for not being more forgiving. I fuck up too. I expect people to tolerate so much, don’t I owe people an eternity of putting up with in exchange? That’s what this feels like. I’m being tested. Do I love her enough? Do I want a relationship enough? She wants to see what I will put up with before I prove her self-fulfilling prophesy that everyone leaves her. At least that is the story in my head right now. I don’t know another story to put in its place. I could reach out and try harder. If this was the first time I had ever had similar experiences I might. But this isn’t the first or second or third or twentieth. After a while it seems kind of stupid, don’t you think? Obviously I’m not wanted here.
Sometimes life is like that.
Right now I feel like I am being batted back and forth between “shoulds”. I should be working on this part of my life or that. I should be more patient. I should be. I should. I should. It’s hard to be ok with just being. It doesn’t really matter what I should be doing it matters what I am doing. Is what I am doing good enough? Why do I feel like there should be more? Why do I persist in feeling unworthy, bad, inadequate?
I don’t know but I’m kind of sick of it.
Kids go through periods of disequilibrium and then they get back to equilibrium. Both kids are off kilter. There is a lot of screaming in Wonderland. Not very much of it comes from me. I feel like my ears will bleed soon. My patience runs thin. My screaming is usually at the fifteenth time of saying, “I said stop kicking me” in a fierce and slightly escalating objectionable volume. Then I get smart and get up and walk away. Parenting is hard.
I spend a lot of time thinking about perspective. And about the plotline of the book to come. And myself as a character. And about sex. I think about sex with lots of different people in lots of different ways and I wonder about the sex that other people have. What is sex like for most people? When I read pornographic stories I have to wonder. What is this biological urge we have?
I’m thinking about how I feel about projecting my version of the truth on events that other people perceive differently. I have to deal with the potential outcome of people being mad at me. Far easier to not speak.
But I can’t. I really can’t. I finished editing my friend’s book.. I need to do some editing on NS, NS, NS so that it can move towards a paper edition. I also need to start doing the storyline for the book. Because I want to combine people and have a few composite characters it means choosing events from my life and figuring out how to tell them and when and how to integrate all of the supporting people. One of the big difficult-to-understand parts of the first book is the lack of explanation of other characters. They just came and went. That was how life felt. Things were different once I became an adult. I have many relationships that date back to my teenage years. I am experiencing development from my friends. It’s actually kind of weird. People are changing. I’m having to adapt to that. It’s probably all healthy and shit. I’m not sure I believe it.
For the last several days I’ve been simmering in my own bile. I’ve been seething. My jaw aches from clenching. Today when I was running I tried to put it into perspective. I thought about my day. I asked myself what parts of it I would take away and why? I don’t want to change what I am doing. So why do I feel so hateful? Because I can imagine someone else feeling very resentful. Because I know that a great many people feel above the work I do and think of people like me as being beneath them. Oh, but I’m different because I spent more time in college.
The arbitrary reasons people decide that other people are better or worse than other people are interesting to me. On one hand I have a number of traits, skills, attributes, qualifications, whatever of “high class” people. I’m still white trash. It doesn’t matter. I can still offend the shit out of you in five minutes flat if I want to. Just try me. I can find your buttons, motherfucker. I want to get in a fight. I want to be hit. I want to hit back. I don’t think I want to lose this time but I’m ok with it as a risk. I want to hurt someone. I want to damage someone. Luckily I married someone who doesn’t like to be hit so I don’t have to worry about being all “safe” or “sane” as I beat the shit out of someone. I have to just sit on it. I have to just be with this anger and hatred and rage over… nothing.
I’m kind of tired of being told these horrible generalizations that totally include me and then being told, “Well you’re different.” Most homeschooling parents are abusing/neglecting their children because they aren’t qualified to educate their kids but I’m different. Enh. Whatever. Maybe. I don’t know. It depends on what you think people need to grow up and be capable of doing. The whole point of education is to teach children how to be adults. Everyone grows up to be something. Why do we have a meritocracy where we only value people who attain “higher education”? Is that the only kind of life worth having? Really?
I hate that I feel like I am failing strangers by not being all that attractive. I make up for it by being friendly and personable when I’m in the mood to get along with people. I hide behind it and my towering hostility when I’m not in the mood. Regardless people comment.
Sometimes I wonder about the freedom of hijab. I wonder what it would be like to not feel like I have to live up to expectations of my appearance. Noah and I talk about the invisibility, the feeling of completely being unwanted in the world he experienced as a teenage boy. As a teenage girl I didn’t know how to keep them off me. Saying no didn’t matter. Now I avoid people and flash my big shiny wedding ring. Taken. Not looking. Not available. Safe. Really. I am. I believe it. I hope.
Reading Mo’s book made me think a lot about M/s. What I have sought from it. What do I want from it? How does it work?
Today I talked about my feelings about G-d and connection and universality and the purpose of figureheads. I don’t usually have the balls to talk about my way of living in the world.
Lately when I start running I listen to Dolly Parton tell me that I Better Get to Livin’. When she gets to the part about falling on your knees to pray every day I think about the fact that I don’t really kneel before anyone’s idea of the Christian G-d. I like to kneel in front of a mirror. The only person who is going to be with me every day is me. If I feel like I can’t walk then I had better start crawling. I’m it. If I’m not ready to roll over and die then I need to get the fuck up and go. I have to. No one is going to rescue me. I don’t think there is some omnipotent force that is going to save me. If I don’t get up every day and work on my attitude and do what I believe is fucking right then there isn’t much point in anything.
Right now the right thing is getting up with a smile. And doing laundry. And dishes. And playing games. It really is. Learning patience and humility is part of learning to be stronger–it really is. I need this. I need to find it in myself to have the perspective to understand that the people in my life now have never hurt me I need to rely on the safety and certain truth of that statement to learn how to stop acting like a wounded animal.
Running is starting to feel good again because it is starting to feel hard in a way that makes me have to decide many times to put my head down and go. Just don’t stop. That’s what you have to do. Put your head down and go. That’s all I have to do in order to log the miles I need on my body. I don’t have any time goals. I don’t have any other commitments. I just have to move my body over a given distance. That is my only obligation now. I’m doing it slowly and proving to myself that I can. I am strong. I am more capable than I ever dreamed.
Even as my psyche tries like hell to find a way to make me feel bad and hurt myself and feel sick. Noah didn’t tell me to eat the fucking muffin. He just said eat the muffin. But I heard it with more harshness. More negativity. More anger. Because I hate myself for being hungry. Because I hate myself for having needs.
Right now what I need is to go to bed. I need to be up and out the door running in eight hours. I need sleep.
Yesterday I was angry all day. It is fairly rare for Noah and I to fight. And when we do we don’t raise voices much any more. We have quiet, intense conversations about things that are normally more emotionally intense for me than Noah. I assume. Based on the fact that I’m the only one crying.
It wasn’t that many years ago, I was an adult, when my sister snickered at me and said, “Still cry when you are frustrated, huh?” Yeah. I do. When I am frustrated tears flow down my face. I don’t sob, but tears come. It’s not real fun. I can halt the process but I have to find a place of coldness in my heart. I try not to live there.
Most of what Noah and I struggle with is the fact that I have a major chip on my shoulder towards many things he represents. It is hard to not take my anger out on him as a representative member of groups. I am really angry in a visceral way that most of the world (or at least my country) considers what I do with my time worthless or a waste of time but oh man… Noah is smart and high status. Because he helps make it possible for people to watch ESPN videos online over and over. Yeah. The world fucking needs that. It is sooooo important. I don’t object to him doing it. It pays the bills. But I resent like fuck the fact that I am shit when standing next to him. I am angry that I am discounted and unimportant compared to an engineer.
I have lost my feeling of impressed with engineers over the years. I see the ways in which they don’t function all that well. They just don’t seem as super human to me. I know what kind of slack-jawed morons sometimes graduate with engineering degrees. Mostly even the fucking morons treat me like they are much smarter than I am. They have a degree in something “real” not something lame like English. A language they are dubiously acquainted with even if it is their native language.
I deal with a lot of men who seem to think “engineer” means “always right”. Yeah, it doesn’t. If I want to get an opinion in your narrow little specialty, sure I’ll ask you. Otherwise I’m going to feel angry when you pull out that condescending “I know everything” tone. You aren’t my father, stop fucking lecturing me. For the record, Noah doesn’t lecture me like this any more. We have worked on that. But he is a representative member of a group I have a problem with. This gets complicated.
Noah has done very little maintenance on this house since he bought it. He did a few things right when he moved in and then just let things be. Things are degrading. Things are going to need to be fixed and/or replaced. Noah feels that such work is not something he has to do. Someone else should be paid to do it. But we don’t have the money for that. We won’t for ten years. With each passing year I watch the spread of the black mold in the bathroom and watch the chinks in the grout grow. I’m sure we are doing damage to the wall. I’m terrified of what I will see when I open the wall. This is going to be hard to fix. I’m scared. Luckily I have a great relationship with the local building department (they know me!) and they are happy to sit down and explain things to me for very long periods. I will find out what all the city codes are and I will do the job right. I will cry a lot in the process. That will be ok too.
I feel like part of my anger is anger that I mostly get the 1950’s ideal situation where I am the “little woman at home” only my husband doesn’t do yard work. Or fix things. That’s on me. I can do it. I’m god damn competent. But sometimes it feels like I’m getting the worst end of 1950’s living and modern relationships. I get all the low status and lack of respect but I am expected to way the fuck more. I am expected to be a massively competent individual while being treated like an incompetent child. No Noah, not you.
Noah doesn’t understand what it is like to move through the world with a different status. I run into men who talk down to me fucking constantly. I’m a mommy. I must be brain dead. He thinks I should just ignore it. It’s not important what those idiots think of me. It’s a broken and crazy system. That’s a really fucking convenient thing for him to say when he doesn’t regularly run into the problem of having to play the game or not be able to get shit done. I can’t always say, “Wow. You are a condescending jack ass. Can I work with your manager, please?” If I am curt in response to someone being demeaning I generally get a fat load of hostility and they don’t actually help me. I have to suck up to those assholes. How in the fuck can I just ignore them?
Noah doesn’t understand because if I send him then their tone of voice changes. He can’t see the problem. I must be imagining things. “If I can’t see it then I can’t judge it.” He thinks I am over sensitive. I think most people aren’t sensitive enough.
And then the Godmamas came over. Marcie asked me if I drill Shanna in numbers and I could feel the spout on the top of my head go off. I wanted to break something. She didn’t mean it like that. We had a tense few minutes as I explained that I had already been angry before they arrived and I was having a hard time listening after that word because I felt really angry. She clarified that she hadn’t really meant “drill” and she explained in detail what she did and how. We had a long conversation about educational stuff I do with Shanna. It was just tense. And I hate that I do that. I hate that I am so angry all the time.
I hate that I feel like I have no worth other than what I produce by “earning money”. To be fair most women in my position go off and find social status in other ways. They become the organizers or the ones who do the grunt work.
I’m in a bad spot. For the next fifteen years of my life I’m going to have to deal with the parent community. The parent community is kind of a nightmare for me. When the other parents start spouting off shit like, “Marriage is between one man and one woman” I can’t really say much. Because if I make those parents uncomfortable then they won’t let their kid play with mine. I can’t do that to Shanna. So I have to shut up and sit there.
When people tell me to find a different parenting group I laugh. It’s been nightmarish finding one as local as this. And it isn’t local. I don’t really relish spending many hours in the van with Calli screaming at the top of her lungs so I can find a more on-the-surface liberal parenting group somewhere more expensive to live. Every option carries advantages and disadvantages. I can consistently get myself and the kids to these events because they are close enough. That means I have to not talk.
I’m angry. I’m kind of tired of being shamed into silence by society at large. Most of my life experience revolves around sex in some way. I had a lot of sex. I can’t talk about most of my relationships or relationship structures. When I say that I am friends with my husband’s ex-girlfriends people look at me like I grew another head. What? Occasionally I am asked how I can be friends with someone my husband has had sex with. I am truly bewildered by that question. Uhhh if I thought people who were former lovers had to be shunned I would have to leave the state. And be careful which state I picked to move to. I never have been to Ohio.
Noah tells me to ignore what people think about me. But what people think about me will determine a lot of how they treat my children. No, I can’t ignore it. I truly can’t. For me to not care and do whatever I want whenever I want would be for me to teach my children a not particularly functional way to live. There are certainly people in the world who like me plenty. I’m god damn careful how I act around them. Very few people find out my unfiltered thinking. It’s not worth the hassle.
Everyone is socialized. I am a lot closer to being a wild animal than most adults. I wasn’t properly domesticated as a child. When Noah says that I shouldn’t think about what other people think it feels like lying. It feels like a manifestation of his god awful heap of privilege that he thinks I can get away with that. I can’t. I can be “out” in some ways at some times in some places. I have to mostly keep my mouth shut.
I can’t tell the women at the mommy group, “Gosh it seems kind of silly to worry about the people he has slept with when I have way more friends that I have slept with.” I care about who he sleeps with going forward quite a bit. The past? I have to let that go. That’s not about me. I’d like to lecture them about how ridiculous they are being.
The thing is, if I get in with the group and I keep my fucking mouth shut for five or ten years and they get to know me then I can “come out”. Then it will be fine. People will have learned how to tolerate me already. But I can’t fuck this up for my kids. I have to be quiet for a long time. I have to care what they think for a while.
I have to very carefully figure out what things I’m allowed to say. This is a homeschooling group. It’s diverse.
I think I am partially so angry right now because I have kind of gotten used to being talked down to by men. When I show up in a group of women and get the same shit I want to break things. I think I hate women (in large groups) more than I hate men. I’m fucking tired of being shoved down the pecking order.
That is not really it though. I’m mad at Noah and I can’t even figure out all of why. I think I am mad at him for not being able to rescue me from every hard thing. And honestly his advice on how to deal with them kind of sucks. I should probably take the other Godmama up on her offer to put me in touch with her mother. The godmama grew up with three parents in the house. That’s complicated.
Noah does things. Noah works hard. I seem to have this giant chip on my shoulder because he doesn’t do something that I have the expectation that he do. Unspoken expectations are bad news.
Noah appreciates me. He is nice to me. He is kind. He helps with a lot of chores. He tells me that he does the low status ones, like dishes. To that I think, “Scrubbing the toilet is much lower status.”
I’m feeling scared. If I have no worth other than what I do as my “work” then all I am is a mom. That’s not really a fair burden for my children. They should not be my entire prop of self-esteem. That’s not functional. That’s not healthy. I sure as shit am not going to keep having kids so that I can keep that role in my life forever. (Five kids! And counting! I’m keeping my mouth shut.)
When I was eighteen I bought a Hyundai Accent. I really liked that car. It gave me freedom and independence. I paid it off quickly so it wasn’t even that much of an on-going expense. I covered the back of it with bumper stickers. Things like “I’m the one your parents warned you about.”
I don’t know how to deal with being the kid that everyone was told to stay away from because I was dirty and bad now that I am the parent. I still have those behaviors that got me ostracized over and over starting at three or four. I don’t know how to do this. Joining groups is hell on earth. I have to care what these people think because I don’t want my kids to have the same life I had. I want them to have stability. I feel broken. I feel bad. I want to sit there saying “fuck fuck fuck fuck” at the park. Seriously. That’s what I want to do. I want to give everyone the heebie jeebies so they stay away from me and I don’t have to smile and nod when they go off on their bigoted bullshit.
I’m mad at Noah because even he is a liar. Even he is wrong. He’s not supposed to be. I’m supposed to be able to believe him. He is doing the best he can given his life experience. It is hard nearly every day. I have to stop and think really hard, “If I was a functional person what would I be doing?” Every day is a conscious choice to do a certain set of behaviors. I pick them as a compromise between what I want, what is best for the kids, and then I have to compromise between what I want and what other people will think.
I don’t wear my “badass as a honey badger” shirt when I am out with my kids. People would treat my kids differently. I don’t want that for them. It’s stupid shit. But it’s there. Always. I am rebellious and inappropriate. You have no idea what my unfiltered thoughts are. I am a very angry person.
Noah doesn’t understand because he has his “work persona” which is different from the rest of his life. But he doesn’t filter as much for random people. He doesn’t understand that my “the rest of my life” is my job. And I don’t know what the tolerances are on my behavior yet. I don’t have a good way to figure out the group.
Other than teaching I haven’t had a phase of my life that wasn’t centered around someone I was fucking in a social group. Not so much an option in the mom-group. Just sayin’. But that tension is there. It’s hard.
I went in and renewed my medical marijuana card. When I was talking to the doctor (who is starting to recognize me after so many times of seeing him) he asked me how I handled dealing with talking about pot with my kids. “There are only so many times you can tell them a skunk was in the back yard.” I told him that I don’t lie to my children. I tell them I use a medication because chemicals in my brain are kind of wonky. That happens sometimes. If you do not need a medication it can make you very sick so never take a medication unless you know for sure that you need it. That is what I tell my kids about pot. He said it was just like being age appropriate when talking about sex. I started crying.
I have to look up in books how to be age appropriate about sex. When I was Shanna’s age I was offering up blow jobs to the neighbor kids. I don’t know what “age appropriate” is. I truly don’t. In the pit of my stomach I know that what I know is bad. That’s all I know. It’s hard. It’s scary.
Shanna knows that her nipples, vulva and butt are off limits to other people. They are just for her. If anyone touches them she needs to let me know because it is my job to help her stay safe. Mostly she just doesn’t spend unsupervised time around people. Shanna knows that sex is for grown ups because kids have delicate bodies and they aren’t ready yet.
I feel scared because I am bringing up children in a country that is moving backwards. I’m watching my rights recede as ignorant men vote them away. I’m scared. I’m scared to travel because I have to submit to intimate touching that feels degrading. I’m scared that something will happen and I will have depended on Noah and then I will get screwed. Because I was stupid enough to think that his status transfered to me. I’m a low status person. I really don’t think I will ever cease to be white trash. That’s just going to be life for me.
How do I keep the filth off of my kids? How do I let Noah make them more like him than like me without feeling invisible and unimportant and stupid and wrong and bad. I don’t know.
My therapist asks me just about every session how I built such a strong sense of integrity. Just for shits and giggles:
| Noun: |
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I fuck up. I try to be very clear with myself about how and where I fucked up. My problem is more on the end of taking too much responsibility. I am brutally honest, even with myself; I hope. One of my biggest character flaws this lifetime is the degree of anger I feel when someone else is dishonest. It is very hard for me to maintain respect for someone who is dishonest. If I can’t trust what you say to me I have very little use for you. Contempt. That is really the word. I am contemptuous of people who are dishonest. Also for shits and giggles:
| Noun: |
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Hm. That’s a rather strong word. Scorn, sure. Disregard, sure. If I am not going to get an honest answer to a question I shouldn’t waste my time asking questions. If I am going to be told something that is fairly obviously your interpretation of what you think I want to hear and not what you will do? Oh, yes. Contempt is the word.
I feel like this is a flaw in me. Liars are lying for a reason. They feel they have to. They are compulsive. They grew up with addicts and they know no other way. That is the best explanation I can come up with for my sister. She knows no other way. She lies constantly. She lies about everything. And I think she is a piece of shit for it. I wouldn’t trust my sister if she described the weather. This contempt is hard. It wears me down. I feel torn between this desire to blow up with anger because otherwise I won’t have the strength and energy to shove her away hard enough before she hurts me again and this intensely cold feeling. In order to not waste energy on you I need to think you are beneath my notice.
But that hurts my heart. I don’t want to feel that way about anyone, not even my sister. Then it comes back to integrity again. Integrity is not just about honesty, it is about moral uprightness. I do not feel upright. I am letting my anger dominate the conversation. That’s not very useful. I can’t think of anything I want that is going to be achieved this way.
Moral uprightness. What does that even mean? I suppose it is strongly tied to whether or not I feel I can look myself in the mirror. What am I doing and why? I can’t let liars set the terms of truth. If I do that then I have no ability to be morally upright because the system is screwed from the get-go. I know my truth. I will be far more likely to be able to communicate my truth if I feel like I actually get to have it. The only one who can grant (or not) my right to set terms of truth is me. I keep forgetting that. I keep thinking that other people get to set the rules. I need to stop doing that. I need to stop letting anyone decide reality for me.
I have been. I have been taking on the crazy role. The unstable role. The angry role. I am certainly comfortable here. I am angry pretty frequently.
I want to learn how to master this. Part of the reason I get so angry is I come up against my truth being contradicted by someone else’s truth. I have a hard time not taking that personally. My tendency is to assume that I am wrong and bad because that is what I was told over and over again. I cried in therapy last night as I repeated the ranting in my head. My therapist asked me who I was hearing in my head; I told her my mother. If there is a difference in the reality I am experiencing and the reality someone else is experiencing that must be because I am a crazy bitch. I’m being ridiculous or lying or or or.
These little conflicts set me off. I don’t notice my boundaries until someone has crossed me and I want to take their fucking head off. The only way I can avoid getting this angry at someone who is dishonest is to stop considering what they say. I can’t listen to a liar and not get angry. I don’t know how to have active compassion in the moment that this person is telling me what they hope will happen if everything works out and the planets are perfectly in alignment.
My set of reactions give people the right to put me in a nice, neat, easy to dismiss box. I am so unstable that there must not be validity to my claims. I cling to excessive honesty because otherwise I have no leg to stand on. Why would anyone believe a piece of shit like me? I am not an upstanding member of a community, never have been and probably never will be. I’d have to show up for longer than I have the nerve to be near people. I am a coward. I am just waiting for the next witch hunt. I am angry because the best defense is a good offense. If people are treating me badly my only hope is to hurt them bad enough that they can’t keep hurting me.
This does not make for stable relationships. Or moral uprightness. This is no longer working for me. When I look forward I don’t want to see how disrupted my life will be through continual blow ups. How can I get to the point of having enough regard for myself to defend my boundaries long before I need to blow up? I’m not sure. I think this will be one of my lifelong tasks. I want to feel like my boundaries are where they are for well considered reasons and it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or feels. I know I am right. Be sure you’re right and go ahead.
This is not going to be easy.
It’s not just about honesty. Honesty is the easy part. Moral uprightness. How many excuses do I allow myself on this path? The people I had sex with before I was ten… I get a pass on being the aggressor, right? It’s not like this moral uprightness thing is something where you have a black mark and you are done. Everyone fails. Everyone falls. I absolutely have to believe that moral uprightness is about always striving forward. It’s not about what I have done long ago. It is about what I did yesterday and what I am doing today and what I will do tomorrow.
I worry so about being good. Lately it haunts me that speaking my truth invites pain. I am inviting people to argue with me and tell me that my life story is unrealistic. Dear god. Not that line again. It’ll be fine. I’m a big scary mean nasty person. People are afraid of me. What do I have to be afraid of? What do the monsters fear? I dare you to go tell a monster that (s)he is a bad person; I double dog dare you. They will all protest their innocence! They are just trying to live!
I have no high horse to sit on. How could anyone or anything be beneath a child of the gutter? It feels like I don’t even have the right to disregard someone. It is disrespectful and girls like musn’t be disrespectful. No no no. We must always pretend to be nice.
You go see a therapist when you are stuck in some way and you can’t change by yourself. Otherwise you just change by yourself and save the money. Therapy is expensive, yo.
Who do I want to be when I grow up? What patterns am I actually stuck in and which patterns can I change if I think about them? What is a happy life? What do I want to do with my time and my life? That really is the crux of it, isn’t it? The way you spend your hours is the way you spend your years. I think I am saying it wrong but someone had something like that as a sig line on MDC. Where is my Zen place? What is it that I should be doing for my spirit to be in alignment with my body? (By the way I don’t use the word Zen in a way that is associated with any actual definition or official usage. I am a co-opting piece of shit.)
I told Noah this morning that I don’t feel like I am having sex for me and I don’t like that feeling any more. I am having sex so that I can continue to be this construct in my head. I am not really getting off much these days. That’s a big change. Sorta? It started with pregnancy. It kind of came back and then it seems to be gone again. I can get close and I have all these nifty hypnosis tricks in place so I can trigger muscle spasms in the appropriate way such that I suppose it feels like an orgasm, kinda. It’s like eating soft serve. It’s just not ice cream even if it looks like and is presented as the same thing. Even with sprinkles. It’s not ice cream.
You aren’t supposed to say that on the internet, right? The way we are having sex isn’t working for me. I don’t want to be this right now. I’m not saying never again. I am saying I need something other than what I have right now. This is hard to write about because I am trying very hard to not represent what Noah wants. I don’t think I really know or understand what Noah wants. It’s not his fault, but I think we are operating with a lot of unspoken assumptions and I should only speak for me.
I’m sitting here thinking and thinking and thinking. In these arguments I always get stuck with this huge load of rage and I scream that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing laundry. Dude. The rest of my life will involve laundry. Shut the fuck up already. Why does this become such a sticking point? I could dissect it. I could start having the other adults in the house do the laundry; they would if I required it. Really and truly, they would. But it would require reminding and fussing and then I would never be satisfied with the results. They would fold the damn shirts wrong.
This isn’t about laundry.
I don’t have very many pictures of my mother. But in several she’s doing laundry. I remember the sighs. The long tirades about how much she hated having to clean up after me. I remember her bitterness at having to go out and earn money and come home to the messes I made It’s honestly one reason I don’t want to have a job. If I had a job I would resent the ever loving shit out of my children for having the audacity to live in the house and make a mess when I wasn’t there. It offends my dignity. Oh God help someone who breaks a dish when I’m not home. I’m completely unreasonable. But if I’m standing in the room and not the one who does it? My reaction is, “Thank God it wasn’t me!” And I’m not mad. Mistakes happen.
I don’t forgive slights that are done when I’m out of sight. I’m not sure what is up with that. Hunh. Ok, that’s actually a big one. I’m going to have to think about that one for a long time. I resent having to be a support network for a life and for happiness I won’t get to share. It really bothers me. It makes me feel angry that I spend ‘x’ hours of week doing extra work so that Noah gets to have ‘y’ hours of time completely alone. Because the hours aren’t equal. Not in my head.
There is a tally. He doesn’t understand it or track it. It is totally invisible to him if I do it right. Sex is part of the tally. Part of the things I “have to do”. The tally that “should be” invisible to him. Which means the cost should be invisible as well. I’m having trouble writing a coherent sentence about this. If I don’t explain the tally system he can’t change his behavior based on the different costs.
For the whole rest of my life Noah will have more effect on me than anyone. Dealing with him is effort because he is a human being and that’s just life. That’s ok. That’s more than ok. I want to put a lot of effort into him because I like him sooooooooooo much. If he doesn’t understand where I am putting effort and why… it’s kind of silly, you know? I don’t know that I am using my effort to good effect. I don’t know where I am spinning my wheels and trying to do things to please dead people.
Who do I want to be when I grow up? What would I be like if I had grown up believing that my body is mine and people should only do things to me that I want them to do? I wonder if she is more or less fierce than I am?
Obedience. What is it? Obedience to what? To blind ideals? To stupid short-sighted goals? To instant gratification with a high opportunity cost? What cost can I bear? Honestly–a high cost. I really can. But where should the cost be spent? I don’t think that decision should be made in a vacuum. Years ago Noah offered me an abusive relationship with off-switch. What does it mean to be off? What does it mean when it is turned on? I’m not afraid of Noah, not really. Noah told me flat out this morning that he doesn’t believe me when I say I won’t leave. He’s a smartie, that one. The part that I don’t think he understands is I wouldn’t be able to stay gone. I can never actually walk away from him. He is the father of my children. Until his death he will be in my life. That is complicated. Noah doesn’t actually know what it means to talk about a broken home. I do. I want a home.
Even if it is soft serve, it’s home. That sounds terrible. Even if I am nothing exciting you will still stay. Even if I am a poor imitation of what a wife should be. Even if I am not anything like advertised. I feel like I am ruining Noah’s life by being so conflicted about sex. I don’t think Noah’s sexual performance has suddenly gone down hill.
Who do I want to be when I grow up? I don’t think a therapist can just fix me. I need to figure out who I want to be. No one else can tell me that. What would I be like if I could move through the world without the sure knowledge that if someone asked me for sex I am essentially required to say yes, or at least only say no to a very small number of people in specific categories. Anyone in category A should be good enough.
People are not interchangeable. They really aren’t. And I don’t fucking owe anyone anything. The Embargo is not my fault. It really doesn’t matter what my father told me. I don’t have a cunt so that I can get as many dicks as possible.
Do you know what not forgiving means? It means dying alone and angry no matter who is in the room. I don’t want to die alone. I don’t want to die afraid. I don’t want to be angry that after all this misery all I get is death. I don’t want that. I want to die knowing that I have honest to fucking god made the world a better place. I helped other people be happier, better, stronger, wiser. I want to die smiling. I want to know that I did exactly what I was supposed to do and I helped as many people as I could. I want to feel peace. Some day I want to know peace.
As long as I am angry like this there is no room. I have nothing to give. Being angry takes up so much of me. I don’t want this. I don’t want this to be my life. I don’t know the path and I am so afraid.
Every marriage involves different compromises. Different accommodation of irritations. Different forgiveness. Because the human condition is that we bump each other funny sometimes. Thank you to all the women who wrote me to tell me that you are angry at Noah too. It actually made me feel better. I felt like the anger wasn’t just mine. And that’s complicated too. Life is long and life is hard. Noah really fucked up. But he has never done anything to break my trust like this before. He has carefully in pre-negotiated ways pushed me right up to the edge of my limits and off a cliff. But that’s not the same thing as breaking trust. He has never broken trust before.
That does have to count for something. He knew he was being a raging dick. He didn’t mean to do what he did. I have never seen him cry before. He says it hasn’t happened since junior high. He probably already feels bad enough. Beating him down isn’t a way to have a happy marriage. It really isn’t.
I will never again bear a child. That is a decision I have made for myself. I want to spend my life with the only person I will ever really completely join my body to. I want to. And he’s going to fuck up some times. And I am going to get very very angry with him. But I keep my promises. I promised him a lifetime.
What does forgiveness even mean? It means telling him how I feel about sex with other people and watching him cringe. It means filling in the dots for him on some of my broken. It means telling him that I don’t want to have sex with other people any more. Even though taking that hit on my identity is going to be massive for me. I am going to feel compulsive. I am going to want it. And I think I shouldn’t do it any more. It’s not actually a good decision for me any more. Given who I am I don’t think it will actually be a healthy thing for me to do with other people ever again. I think this broken is too deep.
It’s time to try something else.
The song right now is Tonight I Wanna Cry. I wish he had used a real word, but whatever. It’s kind of funny because I’m not crying. This is the first time in a week I haven’t been.
I’m thinking hard about what marriage means to me. You see, I’m at a weird tipping point in my marriage. A point of leverage. Most people don’t get to the point where they have lived with their spouse longer than anyone else ever in their lives until about twenty years in. I’ve been married for five years. I have lived with Noah longer than I ever lived consecutively with either of my parents. It really doesn’t matter if it is not fair that I hold Noah to a higher standard of truth telling than other people use in their marriage. I do. And that’s the fucking deal. You take it or…
Ok, now I’m crying. I will get to the point where I am not angry all the time. This is a stage. I know that. But I will never stop needing that level of trust. Noah is already the only mirror my life has. I won’t leave Noah. It really doesn’t matter if he breaks my trust over and over. I will never be willing to walk away from another person. I will be mean and nasty and vicious sometimes and try to drive them away because I am angry. But I can never leave again. I don’t have that in me.
Yesterday I talked to the friend who was born across the street. She asked me if I could bear living with it because her mom couldn’t. I remember how that happened. I visited during that period. It was bad. I remember what happened to her family. I know what has happened to her mom. Noah will never leave me and I will never leave Noah. I’m afraid we may hurt each other very badly though.
Given that everyone in this house agrees to the basic premise that our kids deserve to grow up safe and happy we will make sure they do. I’m really scared. As much as people mock me fucking constantly for being angry, oh my fucking god you have no idea. You have no fucking idea what I sit on. I am direct and I am female. Stop fucking commenting on my anger. If a man said the same thing you wouldn’t fucking say, “Don’t hold back, tell me how you really feel.” Well, Noah might. And he does it on purpose to be a fucking asshole. (He does not say it to me.)
I have to choose to not be angry. I have to choose to bite my tongue and not escalate. I have to choose to not make nasty comments. When he goes out with people I have to not snap, “And you had better fucking come home this time.” He knows already. He knows I am on edge. He’s not going to push that again, maybe ever. What will he push instead?
I apparently get to hold him hostage for the rest of our lives. His level of nonmonogamy will mirror mine. I guess that’s a good way of seeing how effective of a whore I am. How long can I hold out? How long until I have to admit that he is right and he should be allowed to do whatever he wants whenever he wants because I want to do the same. I don’t know. It’s not worth the fucking drama.
I have to decide how to tell this story. What story is this? I’ve already been monogamous for most of the marriage. I guess I’m supposed to be one of those stories about how open marriages don’t work. Swinging? When I know that everything I do is giving Noah a free pass to go do it with someone else. Wow. All of a sudden it really makes me feel sick to my stomach. It’s not about him having the sex with someone else, although I do try hard to not picture it. Noah wants to egg me on to do things with other people so that he can do it. I don’t want to be used that way. I don’t want to feel pressured to have sex with other people because I know I have to in order to give Noah “permission” to go do something I’m not thrilled about anyway. I am really unhappy about being part of the Embargo Noah, I’m not fucking doing this arrangement.
No. I am not going to be a gate keeper. You can’t blame me for the rest of your life for what you do and do not get to do.
I feel like what I am going to do is learn to shut my mouth. I’ll perfect my come on. I’ll do what Noah wants me to do and I’ll sleep with other people. I will learn to tell the story perfectly so that I don’t talk about the fact that it always hurts. It always leaves me uncomfortable for days. Even the fairly nice stuff with lots of lube. I don’t fit other people. It always rubs wrong. It’s feeling increasingly apparent with each person I sleep with. I have intense feelings about that. I feel intense compulsion to figure it out because Noah wants me to. Noah wants me to be slutty. He wanted that kind of wife. He really did. He went out and picked the woman with the highest body count he could find who wasn’t already married. I guess I didn’t tell him up front how much of that sex was quasi-consensual childhood experiences did I? It kind of changes the picture.
It’s going to be interesting when people see the blanks filled in on my promiscuity. I wear it like a bragging badge. I am such a whore. Everything is complicated. I don’t feel bad about the sex I had recently. I don’t feel like it makes me a bad person. I didn’t break the sanctity of my marriage, blah blah blah. But it was remarkable to me just how weird it felt to me to be so uncomfortable during and after sex. I had forgotten that part. That used to be such an understood part of sex for me. Oh yeah. It always hurts. It doesn’t with Noah. And it’s not that he has the smallest penis I have ever had sex with. (Uhm, err should I insert a disclaimer?) Smaller penises often hurt more than him.
We fit. I don’t know why. It’s one of the most intense parts of our marriage for me. He is the first sexual partner I’ve ever had where I am not uncomfortable and/or in pain during and after. I mean, he can but it takes effort on his part. Sex is such a huge part of me and my life. I am so intensely conflicted about it. I finally have a partner who doesn’t hurt me every single time we have sex. I don’t want to leave this. I don’t want to give up on sex for the rest of my life. That’s what my mother did.
I wouldn’t really do the single and dating thing while raising my kids. I would stay home and cry that I fucked up my ability to watch their whole lives. Being a mom is a way of finding out what it would have been like to have a mother who was continuously with me throughout my childhood. Yes, I’m doing it in a much more high intensity way than most of my friends who are mothers. You don’t have similar wounds to heal. I need this consistency. I need to have a stable period in my life of twenty years. At least once. I need it. I have to choose this. If I left I would never have a stable period to finish growing up in. I would never get to have that safety.
Tom gave me the first period of safety. But he wasn’t willing to let me finish growing up. Noah will let me grow up. He will let me change. He will encourage me whole-heartedly.
But he doesn’t want just me. And I am very compulsive about sex for a long list of reasons. I don’t have a good excuse, and I’m not sure I need one given that I’ve been honest and up front and negotiated to be allowed to do the things I wanted to do for a very long time. So did he. He doesn’t need an excuse either. He just wants it. New-shiny-sex is pretty hot.
But it always hurts. There is always a down side for me. Not to mention that I feel intensely conflicted about being out of the house and not present with my kids. It’s not like I do night-time parenting any way. Noah does, except when he’s out.
It is hard to not be angry all day every day. I’m not. I’m a little snippy. I’m generally very polite with my children. But small irritations are escalating too fast for me these days. I get so mad so easily. I’m not doing anything other than making terrible facial expressions and having a shitty tone of voice, I hear. I don’t want my kids to remember this. I don’t want to be this person. I really don’t know what the road forward looks like. I’m so scared.
As life goes, something happened. I don’t know how to talk about it. I have never been shy with my overall discomfort with nonmonogamy. I feel like I bring that up pretty often and pretty honestly. Doing so apparently created a situation where Noah felt unable to tell me the truth. So he was evasive. He minimized. He said he “didn’t think sex would happen” because it was “just a coffee date.” When he later got the option for it to be more than a coffee date I got an sms… at the time he was supposed to be arriving home.
I was feeling mopey thinking about my early childhood and I had the Dixie Chick’s song So Hard on in the background. It’s nominally about fertility problems. It’s not hard to ignore about three lines and generalize it to other topics. I’m just saying. I’m having a hard time with this whole parenting gig sometimes. I know my reactions are wrong. I know when I sound like my mother. I don’t know who else to sound like. I don’t have very many people I feel comfortable around. People make me feel tense. I get edgy. And bitchy. And shit still rolls down hill. I’m minor compared to everything I knew. I know that. But this isn’t who I wanted to be when I grew up.
If I’m not satisfied with my behavior I need to change it. It’s hard right now because Calli is in the last throes of babyhood before becoming a talking person. I’m having a very hard time waiting for that jump. It came so early with Shanna. I’m not a fan of the pre-verbal phase. I still think Arwyn said it best. I feel triggered when I spend a lot of time with my kids if I have to do anything else at the same time. As long as I can be idle and just focused on them I can handle them. They are not too much stimulus under those circumstances. The problem comes when I am trying to get something done (like making breakfast) and it isn’t happening fast enough for Calli. She starts screeching and it hurts my ears. I start feeling anger. It’s hard to tamp it down. I have so much anger rolling around in me right now.
Reading through the whole story yesterday made me see spots where I have new perspective on why my mom and sister acted the ways they did. Being a parent changes my point of view. Funny, that. But writing my story down means I can’t retreat to the sanctity of the parents point of view, either. I stand there feeling bad for Calli that life is so hard. She really and truly can’t have what she wants very much of the time. She wants to be able to touch me any time she wants any way she wants. She feels like she needs that from me. But I can’t take how rough she is. Oh gosh she is rough with me. I get really angry. I’m tired of being hurt. I’m so. fucking. tired. of. being. hurt. It’s so hard.
But she’s in the last throes of babyhood. Soon it will be gone forever. I don’t want my kids to remember me being angry all the time. That is not what I want them to have as their story. I don’t want them to remember me retreating with dramatic explosions. Even though I’m not insulting any one. Even though I’m just stomping my feet and huffing. I don’t want to be that person. How do you just decide to be someone else? I was someone else with Shanna. I narrowed my world to just her. I gave her every single scrap and ounce of patience I had for any and everything in the whole world. It was a nice year. I couldn’t do that with Calli. It’s so hard being a younger child. You never ever get your needs fully met. You are short changed from birth. Says the self-pitying youngest of four.
But then the song changed. Best Days of Your Life by Kellie Pickler. And I got a very nice email. Right that minute. My chest exploded with this moment of Oh My Fucking God. When I’m feeling upbeat and I think about my life once I became an adult… well. I’m pretty fucking cool. I’ve done a lot of really neat things. And I’m going to do a lot more. As much as I possibly can. And part of that is going to involve me figuring out how to be the person I want to be. I will make mistakes and I will have bitchy days. But when I do I tell my kids, “God I know my tone of voice sucks. I’m really sorry. It’s not you honey, I’m fussy about other things.” I don’t think I was ever once told that. Every bad mood that happened within a three block radius was my.fucking.fault.
Maybe I have already changed. It’s hard on days when the kids want to test to see if I love them. I do. But I also have limited patience these days. It’s time for the pendulum to swing back to them. I think we should go out and play today. And I’ll play the upbeat country songs. The ones that make me feel like hot shit. Because I rock like that.
I wrote a lot on the book today. So I’m kind of anxious and fussed. I went over to Pinterest. I like not having to read. But the wedding ones get me. Mostly the pictures of the happy brides with their fathers. Why do I have to compulsively talk about being an incest survivor? Because it impacts every part of my life. This isn’t something that happened to me one time. I have not lost the rest of my life because I was raped when I was seven or eight or nine or or or or.
I hide in my house because my father filled my head with poison. He convinced me that I was a worthless piece of shit. He convinced me that I should present myself to people as someone who should be raped. That it was my destiny. That is what my parent told me to be. My father wanted me to grow up to be a whore.
You want to know why I don’t follow polite social rules? Oh good fucking grief. When in the hell was I going to learn them? In one of the series of schools where I was brutally beaten because I compulsively talked about sex and made everyone uncomfortable? Or I was cussing. Or my handwriting sucked. There were a lot of reasons for beating me. At home? With the rednecks? My ignorant family? From my father? Ha.
I think it is hilarious that people think that American culture is apparent and obvious and easy to follow. I don’t know what the fuck you people want. Other than to not be uncomfortable. Well then don’t talk to me. I may or may not be able to accommodate you. I would apologize only I’m not sorry. I don’t think it is my responsibility to ensure that everyone is comfortable. My responsibility is to say what I need to say in order to get through the day. If I don’t say what I need to say then I get bitter and nasty and carping and desperate. I start breaking things. I start cutting. I start doing all kinds of other festive things.
I’m sorry motherfucker but you get to feel uncomfortable for a few minutes. It’s your fucking turn.
The media is telling me constantly that the American Dream is dead. That no one can better themselves. That no one can succeed. I feel so confused. Then how did I go from being the kind of kid who stole food to the kind of kid who gives people thousands of dollars when they are in a car accident just because I like them and otherwise they won’t be able to pay rent. How did that happen? Noah. I married up.
I feel weird guilt and shame over having access to Noah’s money. I feel bad talking about anything related to class because I am no longer poor. I will never be poor again. Noah comes from the 1%. He isn’t there himself… yet. But from everything I understand about human development and financial success, Noah will probably get back there. People who grow up with that kind of money learn how to make it. They learn how to be the kind of person who has it. And I’m just desperate and needy and I have a broken compass. I don’t have the ability to tell when something is “enough” sometimes. Not money, drugs, sex … Even though I’m not an “addict” by the classic definitions I still have a broken compass. I don’t know how much is enough or too much sometimes.
I don’t have very many friends who are willing to live like Noah and I do. We live really far away from everything. We live in a house that is much smaller and crappier than we could technically afford. We live here and we will continue to live here pretty much forever because I’m not willing to spend more money than the astronomical amount already spent on this house. Noah mortgaged over a quarter of a million dollars on this house. I think that’s insane. But it’s really cheap for a house here. It will be paid off before I am 40.
I got lucky. I married Noah. That was kind of sort of how I reached where I am. But I also went to college and worked. It’s not like I would have been this wealthy as a teacher, but I would have done just fine. I still would have felt like I made the American Dream. Because my goals would have been smaller. I got out of poverty. I became the first one to be educated (high school diploma, BA, teaching credential, and 7 years of MA work). To me that feels like I am done. I reached the American Dream. I went to college and I’m not in debt! I paid it off within a year of being done with classes. Because I was married to Noah and when I was working and he was working we had an obscene amount of money.
This is the part that is odd to me. Noah doesn’t make more money than our friends. Most of our friends have combined househole incomes that are much higher than ours. We live in the bay area. Our friends are the ones who went to fancy schools and became computer people. But no one else I know thinks they are filthy rich. People complain about not being able to do everything they want or having to compromise on things.
I feel so confused. I have to wonder if my compass is the broken one. What do people think the American Dream means? Do you think it means everyone gets to retire at 35 to free health care forever? Permanent jobs with a high chance of retirement? I don’t consider it part of the American Dream that people have to own a house or make a lot of money. I consider the American Dream to be the willingness to change your stars.
Everyone is born with a future that looks like it is obviously theirs. They can take it if they want. Or they can go make their own future. They can be whoever they want to be. They can rise in the world. It doesn’t mean that everyone will be filthy rich, but people who hustle can improve their lot. I’m told it doesn’t work that way for everyone. That I am a fluke.
I get told that a lot. Everything about me seems to be a fluke. Why did it work out for me then? Why do so many things work for me that other people say cannot be made to work ever ever ever ever? For me this is part of feeling invisible. I never know how to respond when I read things that say it is not possible for me to have done what I’ve done. Do you want me to burst into flames?
Whenever I think of the American Dream I think of teaching The Great Gatsby. Gatsby wanted Daisy. He wanted to be rich too…. but mostly he just wanted Daisy. He got rich because he was trying to earn Daisy’s love. Noah seems to feel the same way about me, which is odd. It’s weird living with someone who thinks he has to earn me. I’m shit, aren’t I? Why would someone want to earn me? Does that mean you try to coat yourself more heavily in flies? Of course not.
Noah sees me as high status. That is the American Dream, really. It is the ability to change your social status. I don’t understand for the life of me why anyone would associate me with being high status. Ok, I have access to a hefty bank account. I didn’t have that before Noah, though. Why does that raise my status? Why do I magically become a better person?
Why will people look at me when I am dressed nicely. Why will people talk to me more now, even though I look increasingly weird? Sometimes it seems like there is an aura that comes along with financial safety. And other people recognize it. It is a relieving of anxiety. It’s practically a difference in smell. As if people who have to worry more have a more acrid body odor. I don’t think that’s literally true or real. But there is some strange wall.
The idea of the American Dream mixed with being white trash is the crux. It’s about being told that I can’t do things that I already have done so fuck you very much. It’s about feeling like it’s not ok to be who I am because I am weird. Because I have done things other people haven’t, for good or bad. Because I am just plain different and I don’t know why. It is hard to talk about difference without making it sound like being superior or better or aggrandizement.
Some people like chocolate. I don’t. I like vanilla. For variety, maybe peppermint. Does that mean that vanilla is truly qualitatively better because I like it more? Demonstrably not. I don’t think I am a better person than most other people. Better than my sister, yes. Better than mom, probably. Other people? Enh, not so much with the comparison. I don’t know what road they walked. I don’t know who tried to knock them down or how. I’m not better. But I have done different things.
I want to understand why I make different choices. I want to understand that about myself. I want to be able to hack the system. I have big life goals. If I want to reach them I am going to have to work very hard for a very long time. I cannot believe the attitude that it is hopeless. I can’t. I can’t have the feeling about myself that seems to be common for my generation. I think I can do fucking anything. I already have. I don’t identify with deserving anything. I don’t think I deserve universal health care. I think that when I needed insurance I had to find weird jobs that would offer insurance that I didn’t really want to do. But I had different options.
I benefit from enormous privilege. I’m sure that most of the reason I was able to succeed is just because I am white and slightly above average in attractiveness. I’m not stunning. I’m not gorgeous. But I’m cute. And I’m bubbly. And I’m a hard worker and a people person. I had advantages.
I talk about being white trash because I don’t think it is possible for someone of color to do the same things I did because I see how the deck is stacked against my friends. They are fighting different wars. They have to fight at all times covertly because they are watched. They can’t directly cause fights the way I can get away with. I feel deeply uncomfortable with this knowledge. That as I sit here in my smug pretention of “Well I succeeded!” Yeah… I did because of an intersection of lack and privilege. I don’t know that any part of my life is relevant to anyone else.
Who the fuck am I to talk about succeeding when I had the dog bite settlement that paid for an awful lot of my life. When I smugly talk about cobbling together insurance I honestly feel kind of sick to my stomach. I did it. But I always had $14,400/year to live on. Ever since I was 18. Because I was attacked as a kid and half my face was ripped off. I had a good lawyer. I think I only had a good lawyer because I am white.
The girl who was born across the street from me. B. Her father was my lawyer. He was my very best friends father. B wasn’t hanging out with the non-white kids on the street (her New York Jewish parents moved her out of that neighborhood when we were four). He is an excellent lawyer. I don’t even think he took his full fee out of my settlement. It was less than $100k in settlement but he invested it well for me. I took that money and I changed my whole life.
My brother Jimmy was hit by a car when he was a kid and got a settlement when he was 18. He spent the money on a raised truck, a killer stereo (that was stolen a couple months later), and a lot of drugs. It was gone in a few months.
My brother Tommy was hit by a car when he was a kid and got a settlement. Technically there is $6,000 left of it somewhere. I’m thinking about claiming it as my father’s dependent. As an inheritance. Jimmy calls it dirty money and says he doesn’t want it. I think that money is fucking useful.
I suppose at this point my dream is to stop feeling so angry. I want to be able to talk and think without being so full of bad feelings. My stomach hurts. I’m really tired of my stomach hurting. I’m not special. I’m not better. But I did things that other people couldn’t do. I feel like I should be proud of myself. And I simultaneously feel like being proud of myself is somehow wrong or bad. I should be ashamed of myself because I think I have done anything worth noticing. What kind of self absorbed bitch am I? Who the fuck am I to look down my fucking nose at anyone else?
I’m not looking down my nose. I’m trying to figure out why I made different choices. I wish I understood better when the choice moments were. I am not responsible for where I ended up entirely. It’s accident as much as planning. But if I wasn’t in this house right now having a good life I would be in a different house having a good life. My teaching job would still be stable financially even if the work was shitty. I lived in an apartment I could afford on $20k/year and by now I would be making about $60k. It would have taken a while, but I probably would have bought a house in cash in ten years. About when I’m going to pay this one off instead.
Because somewhere, at some point I crossed a line. I will never be poor again. I have lost the habits. I make different choices. I can be broke. It feels like a difference in attitude. Do you know why I am not worried about my ability to succeed? Because I walked into my first real job interview and said, “I know I am the first person you are interviewing and you have three days of interviews to go but if you don’t hire me today I am not available. Sorry.” I was offered the job an hour later. I take a lot of pride in that.
Because the only time in my life I have ever failed at something I wanted to do was passing the MA final exam. And really I probably psyched myself out so bad that I’m not surprised I failed. Ugh. It’s obvious I know the material but I can’t write enough for academia. I never wanted to be part of academia, not really. Having an MA would change my life. I didn’t want it bad enough to make that change. That is how I feel about it. Almost like the lit MA was wrong for me. It would have changed my life choices in a way that would have been ultimately less helpful.
I’m starting to wonder if someday there is social work in my future. That would be a different MA. Ugh. I’m not sure I can handle more school. Ever.
I feel weird because I am alive during a Revolution. These are interesting times. And I don’t feel like I have much to say as part of the Revolution. That’s weird and uncomfortable. It’s not like I’m watching Fox news or agreeing with them. But I don’t agree with a lot of the politics I’m hearing lately. My opinions are just different.
I want to stop being so narcissistic and notice that other people aren’t as similar to one another as I project. I’m not a special snowflake. I’m not more different. But I think I am. This is where the hubris comes in. How can you believe with intensity that you are different without believing it is superior? Do I think that other people should try to be like me? No. Things that work for me won’t work for most other people. I don’t think other people would be ok with the amount of intense emotion my life contains. I get the impression other people are more calm.
I feel like the American Dream was always a sham. Look at Death of a Salesman. Right there. He believed that who you know and charisma will get you where you need to know. It won’t. I only occasionally have charisma, mostly I alienate the shit out of people. But I work fucking hard. I work hard and I know how to game the system. I wish I could teach other people the rules of the system so they could game it as well. I don’t think this should be a unique ability.
As crazy, as unstable, as difficult, as confrontational as I am… I do know how to shut up when necessary. I just don’t think it is necessary nearly so often as other people do. I, in fact, think that everyone should make a lot more waves than they do.
I don’t think I have “figured things out” or done things in some magical right way that other people don’t do. I think there is a way of developing your intuition so that you learn which choices are really not safe. I avoid the unsafe twinges. I kind of wonder if that is how I survived. I was afraid at the right times.
I don’t think that people necessarily understand that rage is often, at least for me, the flip side of terror. I spend my life horribly terrified that something bad is going to happen to me again. I am genuinely scared. I shake. It makes me angry that I feel this way. That I am so scared of everyone and everything in the world. I don’t like that when people say things that make me feel invisible I want to hit them. Obviously I don’t do so. That would be problematic in a whole new exciting way. But I’m often not nice.
Nice. There is that word again. I wish I was unoffensive. I wish I was nice. Somehow it is magically better to be nice. There is that American Dream again. You are supposed to be a nice, quiet, middle class person. But I’m not. I’m loud. I’m brashy. I’m aggressive. I’m trashy. I like loud upbeat country music. And Lady Gaga and Pink. I like Steel Magnolias unapologetically. I grew up rural and don’t know city manners. I really don’t understand why my city gives a shit if I grow vegetables in my front yard and I think they can fucking sue me if they want me to stop.
Being nice feels like lying. It feels like constant low level lying. It means you never tell the full truth because the full truth is often uncomfortable. You always leave stuff out so that other people never have to feel bad. I FEEL BAD MOST OF THE TIME. Why shouldn’t I tell people the truth about how I feel? Why should bad feelings be hidden? Should they? Is that what people want?
Let me tell you, if there is a time and a place where it is appropriate to sit around and tell stories about incest I’ve never found it. Even therapy is only kind of sort of the place. Because just sitting around and telling the stories seems to be un-useful. But I sit around and drop those mentions into casual conversations. Because that is what is in my head. And it alienates people. It’s my truth. It’s my story. I’m not actually hurting anyone by letting people know it exists. But it feels not nice.
It is because I think my mental health is more important than other people feeling comfortable that I describe myself as white trash. There is a self absorption that I witnessed in my family. A way of seeing yourself as the central figure in this terrible tragedy. A way of acting like everyone in the whole world is out to get you and everything bad that happens to you is part of this giant conspiracy. Everyone is out to get us! They all hate us! They think they are better than us just because they have money! Well fuck them! We at least have pride!
It’s weird and kind of sick. There is an abnegation of responsibility for everything that happens to you that I don’t understand. Sometimes I want to slap my sister and say, “Ok so our dad raped you. Time to stop dating men who are drug addicts because you are trying to get daddy to love you.” That. That is a lot of what this comes down to.
Do you know how I survived? Do you know how I attained the American Dream? Because people told me that I was shit and I didn’t deserve it. And my response was to fight back. It’s not that I think I deserve anything. I don’t think I have stuff because I deserve it. I have stuff (college education, money, no car loan) because I made them my top priorities and I didn’t let anything stop me. I want to say that nothing catastrophic happened to prevent it, but that’s a lie. Tommy’s accident. All the rapes. Going to 25 schools before dropping out of high school at 16. I did have catastrophic things happen to try and stop me as a kid. But you just keep getting up and doing things.
And then some day you are 18. And you leave. And you never look back. And with every choice I make I think, “What would my sister do?” Then I do the opposite. That’s not actually true, but it’s kind of funny to think about. I did get out. Do you know what my family gave me for high school graduation? Pots, pans, a crock pot, towels. They wanted me the fuck out. They wanted me to go. Because I was different. Because I caused problems.
I don’t even really feel like my family is white trash, per se. When I’m being an asshole I include them in the collateral damage. Mostly they don’t want to be like me though. They have other dreams. They are hick and redneck and poor. But they aren’t white trash. Mostly they don’t have my aggression. My sister does. I would say without reservation that she is also white trash. Not my aunt or my cousins. They are just standing too close to evil, manipulative people.
So maybe being white trash is relegated to being an incest survivor? That’s not really it, but it factors in. It’s so many things all at once. It’s not one thing. When people feel defensive and try to tell me that my qualifiers aren’t the right ones because they also fit those qualifications… Oh gosh. I’m not trying to make you feel defensive. I’m not trying to be not nice. I don’t know that at the end my definition of white trash will ever be useful for anyone but me. I’m not sure it is applicable. Ok, for my sister too. But past us? I can’t know enough of someones story to judge.
I say I am white trash because I am always going to say things about myself that offend the shit out of the people around me. They will always feel hostile about me saying the stuff I’m saying. I can only control whether I say it or not. And sometimes I can’t control whether I say it or not. I don’t really understand why trauma has affected me in these ways.
I listen to Adele singing Someone Like You a lot lately. I’m scared that some day my mom will show up on my doorstep. I’m afraid she won’t.
“I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it.
I had hoped you’d see my face and that you’d be reminded
That for me it isn’t over.”
The problem with having PTSD is that it is never over. I have to deal with what happened to me forever. It will never be over. I will never be over being a survivor of incest. I will never get over being a dirty little street kid. I will never be over being moved around constantly as a child and being prevented from properly bonding with people. I will never be able to have that stop being true. I will always have this part of me that feels empty and bad and like I am shit.
It’s not over for me. And it spurs me. It makes me angry. It gives me wings. And I flew away. For all that it isn’t over, it is. I have this husband who thinks I hung the moon. I have wonderful children who love me and adore me. I have already made other peoples lives better.
But as I watch the sun come up I question what this American Dream was meant to be anyway. It’s not the house that matters. It’s not the money. The freedom I have is the freedom to say, “No. You cannot invalidate me. I exist. I am different from you. My life experiences have shaped me. And I’m ok. I do not need to change.” I’m white trash and I’m proud of it. I’m proud of my ability to fight and over come adversity. I’m fucking proud of myself. I think I’m bad ass. Noah thinks so too. Does it really matter if anyone else does?
No. But that’s my American Dream. I don’t abandon my self label with my change in financial status because that would be too convenient for everyone around me. They would like to pretend that people like me don’t exist. I feel like most of the people who are big parts of my life are fairly sheltered people. Even the ones who were abused tended to grow up in mostly safe, stable places. They had dads who were emotionally abusive assholes. That kind of thing. But they had consistency. They still only know people who are mostly like them. Except for me.
I still have to say that I am white trash because people try to excuse my behavior as being some sort of byproduct of unavoidable trauma, the poor dear. People love me and want to comfort me and tell me that things that happen to me aren’t my fault. I’m a victim. Well, sometimes. But an awful lot of my current problems are my fault. They are my fault because I choose to be aggressive and hostile. Because I choose to remain white trash instead of catapulting to being middle class. It’s kind of a choice and kind of not a choice. I’m not middle class anyway, I’m nouveau riche. I skipped the middle class. That is kind of weird in and of itself, isn’t it?
When I try to think about what I want from my life I’m pretty happy though. Everything I want is something that I could have. I want to write and grow. I want deeper friendships. I want to have hard conversations with my friends about class. I love my friends. I want to find the ability in myself to feel like I have enough. Like I am not still yearning. Really, there isn’t much left that I have to do. Write. Publish. Wash. Repeat.
But first, I have to go cuddle my perfect daughter.
I spend a lot of time feeling very mixed about what I write here. I honestly usually forget what I have written almost as soon as I hit post and I don’t reread things very often. I use this space to dump the thoughts that are intrusive into the rest of my life. They are the harshest things I think. I’m aware that I am “mentally ill”. Whatever that means.
It’s hard to not feel ashamed of myself for putting these things out publicly. You are supposed to put these kinds of thoughts in private journals you later burn. You don’t want to taint the world with any of this. I worry about some of the processing I do here. People don’t like finding out how deep my rage is. It makes them uncomfortable. I am going to, once again, alienate people. Not everyone. Not the people who matter. But I will lose people who are only casual distant social contacts at best.
It’s weird to know that I have to live with the consequences of my words, for better or worse. I say a lot of very harsh things. I’m trying to walk a fine line between talking about the emotions I experience and why I have them and blaming other people for upsetting me. I know I’m crazy. I know I’m having a reaction that is out of proportion to our exchange. But I’m still having it and I have to deal with it somehow.
Just doing deep breathing exercises is ineffective at managing my rage. Writing works. And so I will write about things that make me very angry. And people will get upset with me. I’m pretty sure this is an unavoidable fate. Given what I’ve read today I feel like I should be braced at any moment for a death threat. On one hand that makes my paranoia sky rocket. Because do you know who is a credible threat to my life? Pretty much anyone in my family. Hello illegal connections. Not to mention that the whole lot also has serious mental health issues and lots of guns!
Awesome. I really and truly believe that my brother would never come after me. I think he wants to believe he is above such things. And his wife is awesome and balances him really well. He married a really good woman. The only credible threat is my sister. She has threatened to beat me up in public in the last few years. If I publish there is a very real chance she will show up on my doorstep out of the blue with a shot gun. She’s pretty insane. And she has done a lot of very bad for your brain drugs for a very lot of years.
Even though I want to puke on the floor thinking about that… I’m going to keep going on writing. And internet threats seem so very non-threatening. So laughable. Really. Does some wanker on the internet think that they can hurt me more than my family? More than my father raping me? More than my brother beating me, arranging to have other children beat me, and sexually assaulting me repeatedly?
I don’t think I will lose sleep over emails. I’m already up. Bah. That’s a snotty ass thing to say. I’m in a really bad phase right now in coping with my shit. Some day I will go back to not dwelling on being less than. I think. At those times I will be vulnerable. And it will make me lose sleep. But I don’t really think there is much that can be done to cause me to stop writing. Not anything in writing, anyway. Not from fear. I think I am kind of looking forward to that first burst of adrenaline. I do love a good threat.
I don’t know if it is ok to talk about things that hurt other peoples feelings. But I’m not sure I can help it.
In deference to those who have requested shorter posts, I had a thought that is totally different. I usually say I haven’t been raped since I was 18. Of course, like most of the things I say about myself, that’s true and not true. I’ve done a fairly ridiculous amount of rape play, including things that felt absolutely traumatizingly real. Oh, and there was that party. With that guy.
So there’s this guy, Uncle Paul Nathan. He used to run the Climate Theater. I don’t know if he still does. What I do know is that in his role as party host he is quite happy to play drug dealer. I don’t have a moral issue with this. What I do have an issue with is the fact that at one of his parties he pulled me into a back room and encouraged me to sit on a table or a desk, I don’t remember which. I was absolutely enthusiastic about the idea of having sex. It all felt good.
But you see, he didn’t have a condom. And I wasn’t on birth control. So as I lay there in a fairly drugged stupor I moaned “Please don’t put it in me without a condom. I’m not on birth control. Please don’t. Please don’t.” He said, “I’m only going to stick it in a few times. I won’t come. It’s ok.” I won’t even lie and say it felt bad. It felt fucking incredible.
But you know? I’m pretty sure that Paul Nathan technically raped me. I should probably say that out loud. I should probably publish that on fetlife. Because I bet you I’m not the only one. And I’m kind of angry that I have kept my fucking mouth shut for six fucking years. Me. I am such a fucking moron.
Wear a condom you abusive piece of shit.
Thanks for telling me to post about this, Wendy.
The things I didn’t mention about my family structure before the divorce were the vices. Apparently my dad loved to take long baths and read books. I’ve always felt very ashamed that I had anything in common with me because my mother made it very clear that having anything in common with him was shameful. She didn’t seem to care about the vices she shared.
At one point my mother explained to me that she didn’t believe that drugs taken while pregnant were all that big of a deal, look at her kids. With Denise she neither smoked, nor drank, and at that point she had never been exposed to anything harder. Denise is a heavy alcoholic and drug addict. With J she smoked cigarettes and occasional drinks. J is both an alcoholic and a drug addict but I get the impression he is pretty controlled with it these days. With Tommy she smoked a lot of pot, lots of drinking, and constant smoking. He started doing tequila shots when he was 3. They thought it was funny. He was probably hit by a car because he was so high he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. For my pregnancy? Take the above list and add speed. I barely drink because alcohol makes my stomach cramp and I have horrible diarrhea for days if I have more than two glasses. I occasionally do recreational drugs. (uhhh… breastfeeding and recreational drugs don’t mix. Neither does pregnancy and recreational drugs. I have standards.) But oh man do I smoke a lot of pot these days. I find out tomorrow if I get into the PTSD study. If I do, I have to go off the pot.
I’m very excited. I am not enjoying smoking and I’m really not enjoying that when I go out to run I have coughing fits and they very nearly lead to puking on my neighbors lawn. That would be pretty humiliating. Right. Need to find other ways of managing panic attacks. Pot needs to go. I hate that I have to deal with it. I feel like smoking pot makes me like my family. I don’t want to be like my family. My sister and brother both smoke pot so they can be nice people. That is their line. That is my current line. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to have drug use in common with my family. I don’t want to need a drug to function. I hate this. I don’t really think that pot is inferior to any pill I could be taking in its place. I don’t want to need drugs to function. I want to get off my ass and get it done.
Panic attacks are one of the very few things in life where working harder is one of the stupidest things you can do. I feel unsafe. I feel like I am careening out of control. The important word here is control. If I really analyze the situations that are sending me off the deep end… this is all about control. Ok, all is a strong word.
When I was 12ish, we were living up in Redwood Estates. I came bounding down the stairs in my energetic way and I spun around the corner quickly and almost ran right into Aunt Vonnie. I screamed loud enough to rattle the sliding glass door and I flung myself backwards about three feet and landed on my ass. She laughed for about five minutes. I cried and shook. I’ve always had a strong startle reflex. When people appear “suddenly” in front of me I have a really strong fight or flight reflex. And I’ll tell you that I trained myself out of flight. At this point in my life when I feel that way I want to fight. It takes a pretty enormous amount of self control for me to not hit or swing or shove all my body weight into someone. It’s completely instinctive and I have the sensation in my body of tensing all of my muscles in preparation for physical contact.
I’m 30 now, so I’ve been in this body a while. I’ve learned tricks. I can surge forward and stop myself quickly enough to not hurt people anymore. I couldn’t stop myself years ago when I was trying to learn this. But I probably look pretty scary by the look Sarah keeps wearing. That makes me feel really bad. I don’t want to trigger her either. She had a mother with anger issues. Noah had a mother with anger issues.
I don’t want to be the next in a long line of mothers with major anger issues. I don’t want my children to be afraid of me.
As I sit here alone in my thoughts. I realize… I don’t think I’m clear on who I am. One of my problems is that I am ok with any ‘x’ part of myself as long as it is the part that is ok given my current relationship, and I don’t even just mean romantic relationships. Whoever I am talking to defines my current behavioral approach. My neighbors only meet one side of me, know what I mean? Because even when I leave the house in latex, I dodge the questions. I had this huge long thing in my head while I was nursing Calli to sleep. Let’s see if I can recreate it.
I came into the bdsm scene when I was 18. It’s only now that I am understanding exactly how self absorbed I am and I am shocked and horrified by the crap people put up with. My friends were very tolerant. Anyway. I came into the scene and immediately hooked up with one particular group of people. We went to the munch together every Wednesday and on the second Saturday there was a play party. Yes, you all know who you are. We were a very tight knit community. There was a lot of hanging out together on other nights of the week as well. I was absolutely brought into a set bdsm “community” and enculturated. That sounds pretentious. I only think of it as a culture now that I am completely outside of it and I can examine how I changed my behavior because of it.
I started dating Tom three weeks before I turned 19. He changed everything. It didn’t have to be him, but it was. In my head we had more than one relationship and I never learned to reconcile them. I was never comfortable. I took that out on him. Before I say anything else, our relationship was consensual from start to finish. He never did anything to me that broke relationship agreements. Our relationship agreements were non-standard. For two of the four years we dated (lived together for the last three and some) in the middle we had a 24/7 Master/slave relationship. What that meant to us changed a lot over time.
Tom was 30 when I met him. He had been in the scene for ten years. Now that I look around and think about taking on a protégé I have a lot of different thoughts about him. He followed the camp site rule but he was a heavy player. I’m not sure that was really and truly what I should have been doing. Now I know why Femme Car condescendingly told me that she didn’t think anyone should be in the scene at 18/19 and they should go have regular sex first.
I’m not very good at regular sex. I’m not very good at allowing people to touch me gently. I feel bored by gentle touching largely because I am so dissociated from my body that it takes a nasty whallop for me to notice. I also prefer for my sex to be fast with very little foreplay. It’s not really all that intimate of an act. It’s about getting off. I do it with such gusto and vigor that folks tend to feel positively about the experience. I guess. I don’t know. But bdsm gave me a way to learn how to touch people. It gave me a way to have physical connection with another body. Tom doesn’t have sex when he plays much. They are totally different. It’s not that he can’t but at least at that time, they were different animals. Most of the people he played with were not lovers.
I could play with Tom and get my needs for physical contact met without having to deal with the pain of sex. I am hemming and hawing about saying this because it feels like an invasion of his privacy but I explicitly asked for permission. He said he is ok with anything I write about him. I think that is the thing he gave me, both then and now, that prove beyond a doubt to me how much he loves me. He lived me with me long enough to know how I write. He’s ok with the possibility of feeling public humiliation or condemnation because of things he did. He is ok with who he is. He knows that he never crossed any lines. And he trusts me to talk about the things we did. My Daddy still loves me. Ok, end of digression.
I didn’t understand for years that we had a basic mismatch of sexual desire. I naturally default to wanting sex 4-15 times a week. I like sex a lot. Thus a lot of the quick and dirty. When you are having sex that much, it’s about the continual short burst you get from orgasm, not from the long-lingering looks you get during foreplay. Tom… well… he masturbates every day. That’s part of getting up. Which always confused me, but hey. For the first year we probably had sex 2-4 times a week. Then it dropped to once a week. Then I finally relented on condoms. We had sex with condoms for years because he refused to get an STD test. I finally decided that he would be my life partner and relented and bam, I had HPV. He told me, “Oh yeah. I guess I never told you I had a wart.” When he told me that I was rocking on the bed sobbing about how I am dirty and I brought this home to him. You see, this virus can live in your body for years and I thought I must have caught it from one of the people who raped me.
We had very different relationships. We never learned how to communicate with one another. He could not volunteer information and I did not know the right questions to ask. At this point in my life I am capable of managing much more complex negotiations because of what I learned. The HPV killed our M/s relationship slowly and then quickly. I began acting out and he refused to punish me because he felt guilty. From this comfy chair I project that me freaking out the way I did was fairly traumatic for him. I began a quick descent into depression. He didn’t know how to pull me out of it. He told our therapist that he didn’t want to do M/s with me any more because it was too much work. Which I interpreted as, “Holy shit! I wrote these contracts where I promised that if she did ‘x’ I would do ‘y’ but I was just kidding. She was supposed to do ‘x’ without me ever having to notice again and it’s not fair that she’s trying to make me work.” I had it on god damn paper that he agreed! God! Fucking! Damnit! I don’t think I ever trusted him again and I began baiting him.
But that’s another story. I’m talking about the sex. Or I was. I’m going to talk about my list. What was my actual introduction to sex.
I count AJ as my first sexual encounter. That was the blow job when I was three. I skip the rapes.
The next was Jasmine. She was a kid in the canyon where my aunt and uncle lived. She was a year or so younger than me. We spent hours and hours and hours lying around licking each other. That was most of what we did. Some digital penetration, but mostly that heavenly licking. Ok, sometimes we would lie face to face with our thighs between one another. I was… five, six, seven, eight? I didn’t live there all the time. We were both outcasts at Lakeside. Last I heard she ran away from home when she was 13 to be a prostitute in Santa Cruz to support her drug habit.
Oh god. I can’t do the full list. It’s making my body shake. I’m getting really scared when I try to think about what consensual sex I had starting around eight. Where did I live. Hmmm. Oh, well it’s probably because I don’t want to admit how much sex play there was with Michael. If I skip my rapist then I’m a liar. That’s the problem with telling the truth. It tends to not make you look how you want to look.
I don’t remember any sex play other than Jasmine until we moved to Texas. The trailer park in Texas was honestly one big orgy. It was really fucked up. There was a lot of incest. There was a lot of blatant sexual abuse. And parts of it I absolutely joined willingly. Little kids growing up in that atmosphere re-enact what they are experiencing. It is part of life. I feel it as a jolt every time Shanna yells “Stop it!” Every time she yells that at me I feel this pang of horror because it reminds me of re-enacting my sexual abuse over and over and over with all those little kids. Because I did. I don’t know how to count that as part of my list. I never have. I feel very confused by it. This is where I have issues with sex positive culture.
I want my kids to only have their early experience to sex be that some day when you are a grown up you will like someone soooooooooo much that you want to do that with them. It will be a special and private thing. It’s kind of weird and physically awkward but some day you will be so interested that you will be willing to be brave and talk about it so that you can figure out how to do it in a way that feels good. Because if it isn’t feeling good then you shouldn’t be doing it. You should stop and talk about how to make it feel good. Really. You deserve that.
I don’t have that. Not really. And I want her to. And I want to learn how to have that. I’m not topping from the bottom. I am trying to allow my poor battered body some fucking rest. I want to be allowed to feel good. I’m tired of trying to be the heavy bottom so that I can be appealing. That was what I was enculturated with in that little circle of bdsm people I talked about up there. I do have a point tonight. Hopefully I’ll get to it.
Starting when I was 18 years old I joined a little intense subgroup that focused on bondage, heavy pain, and D/s. There was very little mention of sex. Almost none of it happened at our “sex” parties. And Tom and I weren’t having much of it off stage despite the fact that I have a really high libido and want really frequent intercourse. I had to get my touch needs met in other ways. I tried really hard to sublimate them into Tom’s needs. (Want to know what is fucking awesome? I came up with the word sublimate instinctually but then I second guessed myself and looked it up to make sure I am right. That’s what reading does for you, folks.) I wore those fucking high heels and suffered for him even when he wasn’t home. I sat around our house tying myself up and masturbating while covering myself in clothespins. I was going fucking insane from not fucking. He never asked me to be monogamous. I don’t think he wanted me to be monogamous because I bugged him constantly. But it made him hot that I was denying myself something that I wanted that much.
Oh, and early on we learned a hypnosis party trick where you can train muscle response with hypnotic suggestion. Have you caught on yet? He taught me to orgasm on command. I had an involuntary muscle spasm on his order. He thought that was great. Eventually I had to ask permission to orgasm. At one point I was allowed, even encouraged, to masturbate all day but I wasn’t allowed to come without his permission. And it really wouldn’t have been ok for me to call him all day. Sometimes he would be nice and give me permission for more than one. It was an odd dynamic. Chastity play was something we did. Yeah. It was hot and I was engaging in such a constant amount of sexual stimulation that I really could orgasm that easily. I needed the freaking release.
But actual intercourse became increasingly rare and increasingly painful. Why does one always leap to animal metaphors when trying to describe a penis? Ahem. Tom has the cock of a porn star. He liked to repeat the line, “You know how there are growers and showers? One time this girl was getting ready to go down on me and she said, ‘Oh… you’re a shower, huh?’ and I said ‘What are you talking about?!'” Hyuck hyuck. But it was accurate. Flaccid he is noticeably larger than a lot of men I have slept with have been while erect. I have not missed his cock. I’m kind of the anti-size queen. Noah’s cock is just about dead average and I wouldn’t mind if it was smaller. Thank god. You all wanted to know that.
But it actually is part of the picture. Tom was probably something like #32 on my body count list and you can see that it is a pretty generous list. I was seeing adult penises regularly starting from when I was seven and living in that trailer park. At 18 years old I knew I wanted intense sex all the time. And I picked Tom. In some ways it was a really good thing. I did a lot of bdsm play in a very short period of time. A lot of it alone in a room, which is about as safe as it can get. I would really like to find out what foreplay is like. I have trained myself out of it. This is a digression again.
I didn’t know how to get my needs met in that relationship. When I was his slave I tried to get my physical needs met through bdsm play because he sure as shit wasn’t fucking me. When he withdrew emotionally because he felt guilty for giving me a disease that involved scarring part of my cervix… which might have caused problems with the children I was so intent on having… I acted out and broke our M/s contract. I didn’t feel I had other avenues available to me for getting the attention I needed. Asking wasn’t working. He was at his job constantly. When he ignored me breaking the rules of our M/s contract I became a hellcat. I was nasty to him and I started acting out in fairly public ways. He didn’t want to have to control me. When we stopped doing M/s we morphed into a Daddy/little girl relationship and that actually did a lot to heal how we had treated each other.
The problem is that when you grow into being Daddy/little girl… some day the little girl has to grow up and be a partner. We couldn’t do that together. He didn’t want to be responsible for carrying me as a burden and I don’t blame him. He could never commit to being there for me. It was too much work for me and a for better, for worse relationship really has to have enough of a balance to be worthwhile. Tom never decided that my better was worth my worse. Sometimes that is hard to live with because I worked so hard at that relationship. I made that relationship a goal and I feel like I failed at reaching the goal. That’s kind of a funny thing to realize. That’s what I did. I think I knew more of Tom than anyone ever had before I met him. That might be hubris, but I doubt it. I like to poke into people and we spent a lot of time alone. He’s a good man. He really is. But he didn’t want me enough.
I chased him till I was done and then I left. I left quickly and abruptly despite us having negotiated this long-term I could still live with him while I worked on school thing. I couldn’t be in his house. It hurt too much all the time to have it rubbed in my face that I wasn’t good enough for him. It was the whole white trash thing. I couldn’t fit in with his older, settled, more educated friends. Or so I thought. It took a lot of years for me to be ok with the kind of friendships I have now with his friends. It’s a totally different relationship now. They are people I used to know. I care about them and they periodically reach out to me in ways that make me believe they care about me. But life is busy and the monkey sphere is only so large. I don’t fit in their culture and I rarely visit. They consciously and specifically rejected mine. It’s not a judgement. They just didn’t want it.
It’s not even that, really. I never learned how to integrate my sex community friends because I have never mastered how to navigate my different conversational/behavioral quirks and pitfalls. I have a rather lot of them you see. When I think of mixing the stream of people I know from different communities I have an adrenaline shot so intense that I start to hyperventilate and I get very angry because that is a really lot of energy for me. Trying to stay present and focused in a conversation when I feel like I am supposed to be shifting my affect back and forth drains me and makes me feel like a deceptive and disgusting person. I feel like I don’t know how to just be in the room. I am supposed to be performing for the room and I don’t know what role I am in so I am reading two scripts at once and I start to panic because that means I am going to fail and then I feel abject terror because oh my fucking god here is more proof that I am a fucked up piece of shit I can’t even interact with two people at once oh my god I hate me so much and then I am angry. I’m sorry for the run-on. Once I hit that point of feeling angry with myself I instantly feel my face flush and I feel the need to start yelling at whoever is nearest to me.
Yesterday was a hard day. And yes, it is all connected to the relationship that started when I was 18 and it’s all connected to that orgiastic trailer park. I’m pretty sure I’ve never fully explained the extent of what I did in that trailer park, not even to Noah. It was remarkably kinky. In packs of children. Oh what did we do. Lots and lots of glorious oral sex on everyone. Mostly this was a bunch of little girls ranging in age from 4-ish on to about 12. Boys were around occasionally and when they were it tended to look just like a harem scene from a bad romance novel. We competed to learn technique. We knew what we were supposed to be doing. It didn’t matter if we felt awkward. It didn’t matter if we felt gross or bad or uncomfortable.
Most of it felt like shit. I don’t count any of those kids on my list. I felt degraded and nasty. Most of them were dirty and smelled. They had terrible hygiene and it grossed me out to perform oral sex on them. Have I ever mentioned that Tom did not see a dentist during our relationship and he only brushed his teeth a handful of times when I specifically asked him to because the smell was bothering me so much? We didn’t kiss. I felt repelled by being too close to his face. This is probably a big factor in our lack of intimate sex. I didn’t want to face him.
Part of our M/s relationship centered around me doing his hygiene for him. No really. I bathed him. I shaved him. I cut his hair. I trimmed his finger and toe nails. I dressed him. I shined and polished his shoes and boots. Really the whole personal valet thing. I picked someone with remarkably bad hygiene and made it my job to keep him decent enough for me to have sex with. That’s really pretty fucked up, yo. When I trailed off on doing the hygiene I expected him to just keep it up. He didn’t. I wasn’t very nice about his descent into being a slovenly disgusting… I don’t know… geek? Who the hell did I think I was dating? And then we look at Noah. Ha. I’ve given up on trying to clean him up. I try to just not notice anymore. I do pester him to get hair cuts because I think he should be looking vaguely more professional. That’s it. It’s kind of weird to not have control over his bodily functions.
It was this really weird enmeshed thing. I truly had control over Tom’s body in ways that adults don’t normally have control over other people… and yet I wasn’t in control. It was weird. Now as a 30 year old who has been married for five years I understand some of the bdsm we did. I can see how doing some of those things with Noah would build intimacy if done as a one time special occasion thing. Or even as something it is ok to ask for once in a while. But it was my job with Tom. It was my job to care for his physical body the same way I now care for my children. It was a fucking pain in the ass. But it was intimate.
A kind of weird false intimacy. One emotionally distant pillar of the community asshole told me, “It’s good that he got you young. This way you can be trained right.” All the older people chuckled. I got so angry I wanted to beat the ever-loving-shit out of all of them. I felt completely enraged. I wasn’t very interested in being trained. I was interested in being appreciated for the things I did and acknowledged for the ways I behaved naturally. I enjoy caring for people. Ok, periodically I go through these periods where I feel enraged by the pointlessness of my life… but that’s a different issue. There has to be balance.
I like caring for people and I like teaching people to be self-sufficient so that if my care is withdrawn for some reason they are able to carry on as if I was never there. I like to get things on a well ordered clock. This is why I normally retreat to a room alone and refuse to interact with anyone when I’m having rage issues. My rage issues arise because I am all of a sudden confronted with how little control I have over the people around me. Someone is standing in front of me with a stunned deer look. I should say, “May I get by” if I want to get through an entry way. Instead I glare in silence as frustration and anger build and then I stomp off on in a different direction. It doesn’t matter who the person is. I do this no matter who is here. I swear to god it isn’t personal people. I get just as angry with the refrigerator. I feel so overwhelmingly powerless to control the stupid, small annoyances in my life. I feel like I am required to submit to the whims of anyone who demands from me because… after all… I enjoy caring for people–right? It has to be all or nothing, right?
Haven’t you ever noticed that the men show up for a dinner party and sit on the couch to chat while the women walk into the kitchen and ask to help? That’s true in some cases but not for all. There are awesome men who always offer to help. They aren’t in the majority. And even the ones who offer to ask will stop asking if they are told no a few times. Women tend to continue to pester. They know that I am a lying sack of shit when I say I have everything under control because they know they don’t either. Every woman needs more help than she is getting but getting help is sometimes a lot more work than doing it yourself… so we say, “I’ve got everything under control!” Have I mentioned how much Sarah has improved my life? I fucking hate cooking.
That’s not even true. I hate long-term monotonous tasks that have to be done according to other peoples schedules. I’m fucking sick of having to feed my fucking kids eleventy billion times. It’s fucking boring. I have have prepared and fed probably 70% of Shanna’s meals at this point. The percentage is dropping fast. The only reason it is so low is because Noah has been cooking breakfast for a long time. Shanna eats four-five meals a day. And it’s not just snacking. I can’t believe how much that child eats.
So my intimate life with Tom became about me caring for his hygiene and enduring as much pain as I possibly could while complaining as little as I could manage. While still being entertaining for the people who were watching because he really only wanted to play when people were watching. I was his slave, not his girlfriend. We supposedly had a concurrent girlfriend/boyfriend relationship… kinda… We certainly did some vanilla things together and had fun. We traveled but I’m a shitty traveling companion.
I could both see and not see Tom. It’s only now that I understand that I feel like it was a failure because I was trying to be prescriptive of our relationship rather than descriptive. I couldn’t just be in a relationship with him. I had to name it and write out a long document of how it would go and we both had to live up to it or it wasn’t a real relationship. We failed at doing what we said we were going to do. That’s hard to live with. We tried so hard to grow past the end of our M/s but we couldn’t. He wasn’t a good match for me as a partner.
That is a lot of why I put Noah on the pedestal I do. I dated Noah through the last six months of my relationship with Tom. He even spent the night and I slept between them. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t deal with the increasing separation from Tom. He didn’t want to marry me. He didn’t want to have kids with me. What did he want? He wanted me to wear horribly uncomfortable shoes and allow him to cause me pain while I smile for the rest of my life. Uhh, no thanks.
It’s actually kind of nice to think of it as a role I was auditioning for and I rejected it. It wasn’t right for me and he didn’t think I was worth much without that. Ouch. I think that’s what I grieve. For years he called me One. Because I was that special. He had finally found the right one. I would have let him do anything to me to prove how devoted I was. I could not come up with scenes that were dirty or painful enough or dangerous enough to quench the need I had to prove that I loved him. Being there wasn’t enough. I wanted him to constantly test me. I demanded that he do so. He got sick of it. He’s a good guy. He can only abuse his girlfriend so much before he wants to go do other things, you know?
If he could have handled switching to having sex all the time we could have had a chance. But only having sex eleven times in the last year meant it was a no-go. That’s ok. Noah is awesome.
I want to explain more about how that little bdsm group shaped me. There was a gentle constant pressure to behave submissively. We had a lot of puppy-pile bdsm and a fairly rigorous lack of switching at an event. People were expected to be one way all the time, even if they switched elsewhere. Or when Tom and I switched in public… it was always understood that I was his slave giving him physical sensations he wanted to experience because it was my job to please him. An awful lot of it I didn’t enjoy. It was my absolute responsibility to be gung-ho and do what he wanted and perform sexual enjoyment to fulfill his fantasies. I’m not turned on by cross dressed men. I’m just not. I don’t think there is anything shameful about it. I don’t think it’s bad. I can think it is fun to put makeup on someone. But seeing a man in a dress does not inspire me to have sex with that man. Tom is actually quite into cross dressing and being “forced” to do things.
Even the sex that was available to me was sex I frankly wasn’t interested in. It’s kind of remarkable the store of guilt I have for not enjoying more of our relationship. I forced myself to stay in it and stay enthusiastic long after it was apparent we weren’t a match. I learned to do that. I was specifically taught that sex was something fairly unpleasant (hygiene, specific activities that hurt) but parts of it feel good and you are required to be available for it at all times with anyone who asks. I’m very angry with myself for the amount of time I have been demanding that guys perform in a set specific way because that is how I trained myself to get off. I refined it with Tom. Because the way that I push people to treat me is often fairly unpleasant. But I egged it on. It was my initiation.
Why do I keep insisting on having sex that hurts me. Maybe instead of looking for a medical assist on not tearing vaginally I should start with foreplay. It sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But it’s not really an option in my life right now. If sex lasts longer than about ten minutes it becomes really painful because we don’t have a good place to have sex. I want to get it over with too. I think that Noah is kind of tired of my mixed messages that I am upset about not having foreplay but I push him really hard to just get it over with already because my body hurts.
I’m tired of having my body hurt. I’m tired of being hurt. I want to be touched gently and that means modeling it for my wild animal children. It’s very hard that they hurt me all day long. They don’t mean to. It’s hard to control all those pointy little joints. They love me so much that they want to cuddle me all day long and climb on me like monkeys. Mt. Mommy is the best ever. And I sit there and with every jab of an elbow, every kick, every knee dug into me… I’m tired of pretending to be happy while I am being hurt by people who love me. So tired of it.
Then I hide and feel guilty. Wanting to be away from my children feels like a sin. Like I am abandoning them. Like I am the thing that their whole fucking world is pinned on… For most of my life my mother was the only consistent person. I lived with her more than I lived with anyone else but I moved constantly and I wasn’t always with her. I had to constantly adjust to new rules and new expectations of me. If I didn’t perform appropriately, instantly, I was punished. It was for my own good. I had to learn. I wanted so badly to learn and perform and be a good girl.
I really wish fewer of the lessons had been about sex. I wish fewer of them had come from new neighbors. When I would go over to play at the houses of my new friends in Texas I would wander by the bathroom door. One of the step fathers spent a lot of time in there supposedly peeing while sitting down. Most of the time he was masturbating and waiting for us to show up. We helped. He smelled really bad. His hair was dark. He probably shaved about once a week because he was pretty shaggy a lot of he time. His breath was foul. I remember him asking me, “Here, won’t you touch it?”
I wanted to vomit from the smell, but I stepped in and did it. I don’t think it occurred to me until much later that I could have said no. I was seven. I didn’t believe I was allowed to say no when someone dropped their pants and told me to do something with what I found. That step father only ever had us masturbate him with our hands. He didn’t touch us. It barely even counts, right? I don’t consider him a rapist. I don’t really consider myself his victim. We were just fucking around, right?
If someone did that to my daughter I would castrate him. I think that is why I need to have my lovers not interact with my children. Noah has a good healthy respect for me and a bone deep understanding of me that frankly freaks me out. I trust him because of this. I do not trust the men I have transgressive relationships with. I just don’t. They’ve already proven that they have no respect for the rules of society, why exactly should I trust them around my kids? They have proven to me only that they have a moral code that is transgressive… not that they have a moral code that aligns with me. The only way to prove that you have a moral code that aligns with mine is to absolutely only behave in ways that you agree in advance to behave. Tom didn’t do that. Do I think Tom would hurt my kids? Oh give me a fucking break, no. Not in a million years. I don’t think Tom has it in him to hurt a child. Most perverts are actually pretty helpless people. They are so petrified with guilt and shame for the things they want to do that they have to go construct this little other-life where they get to be their “real” self. It’s not integrated into your whole person.
Unless you want to be really socially transgressive and rude about the fact that you like kinky sex. You want everyone in the fucking coffee shop, including the five year olds, to hear about it. No thanks. I don’t want that in my life any more. I need to start monitoring myself better. I’m just as guilty about this as other people. I take on that persona when I am out with that kind of group. Now, I want to specifically say one thing. It’s not about clothes. I don’t care much about someone wearing clothes that are explicitly “adult” where children might see them. That is something a parent is supposed to help their child learn to navigate. I actually think that is healthy. There is a range of human expression out there and kids have to learn to navigate it.
But I think that should be done much more slowly than other people do. That’s ok. As I’m dealing with the intensity of my feelings about this topic I realize that I will be fine with my kids “overhearing” those conversations in coffee shops once they hit 11, 12, 13… whenever they are obviously starting to have hormonal surges. Because then we can talk about them and I can present my values. I don’t want people out in the world to really change. But I do want to be very very careful about who I bring around my kids when they are little. I don’t want to be asked what porn is yet. I love my friends, but I never associated with them in contexts where they watched their mouths. So I don’t believe they can.
Most of this is because when I am around those friends I bring it up. I am so desperate for adult conversations and flirting that I will take it any chance I can get it. And then I feel like I am crossing lines. And then I flagellate myself for days.
I hope I had a point somewhere. It’s time to go have breakfast.