Category Archives: too many tags

I love you, but…

1 Reply

I gotta talk about you. Not because I feel maliciously towards you–really the opposite. Because I feel so many things and I don’t know how to separate what I feel for Person A from what I feel about Person B without a lot of conscious work.

I’ve been home for not much more than 48 hours and I feel… so very happy. I have heard from the majority of people I was worried about keeping in my life. The people I was scared would wander off because they were bored, they are all reaching out. “We missed you. Yes, we want you.”

It feels so incredible. It isn’t that I’ve heard from everyone I know (that would be seriously overwhelming) it is that the local people I am super anxious about keeping… they contacted me.

It’s funny how relationships kind of have different levels of anxiety for me. I honestly don’t worry that much about losing the relationships where we get together for a few hours once or twice a year. I don’t wear those people out. I’m usually able to keep my “difficult” mostly under wraps for a short period of time for reestablishing more tenuous contact. I’ve learned that skill pretty darn well.

I worry about the people I see once a month or more. I wear people down. I keep thinking about how Brittney made it through 30 years then she was…. completely done. It wasn’t ok to have talked about her family. Even though they are part of the reason I am who I am.

I don’t have the right.

The once a year people don’t fall into the cracks in my heart in the same way. I don’t talk about them the same way. I don’t risk alienating them in the same way. It’s all so complicated.

We, apparently, have a housemate situation again. Long-time readers at home may go, “Oh no. Krissy hasn’t ever lived well with roommates….”

You know the fear in my heart so well.

The thing is, with Sarah I think I always knew in the back of my mind that she has quite a support network. When I completely and abjectly failed her… she had other options. The person who is  here now… doesn’t have that kind of network.

Not to mention that I learned a lot from living with Sarah. I learned a lot about how and where I fail. I ask for too much and then I get really mean when I feel let down. That’s me. That’s a problem I’ve been working on all my life and it’s two steps forward and three steps back. My expectations and entitlement are real problems.

I cannot begin to express how wonderful it was to have Sarah join us for the last four days of the trip. Not to mention because she brought along her little brother and he brought his housemate and the two fellas just about kidnapped my kids for three days. So I got to have alone time with Sarah. It was…

We travel so well together. I feel so ashamed that I couldn’t adapt to living together. That was my failure.

Side note: the kids and I are grieving the Godmamas really hard. It’s an ongoing really painful process. I offered help and was refused and then I was dumped for not helping. I don’t know what to do with these feelings. It was suggested to me that I might write the one in California a letter to explain that I tried to help and was refused. But the thing is, writing that letter would be trying to drive a wedge between my friend and her wife. It would be saying, “Pick me, not her.” I can’t do that. They are married. It is more important that I be a friend to their marriage even though I feel like I was treated unfairly and I was hurt. That is what I need to do to actually be this persons friend even though it hurts me.

You know what? I can take a lot of pain. I never feel good about passing it around just so my burden is less. I really can take more than a lot of other people. I should. It doesn’t actually wreck my life to carry these burdens. It does wreck some people.

I can grieve hard for Marcie and Brittney and my mom and turn that into loving compassion for the people who choose to show up for me still. I am not truly abandoned. Not completely. I am deeply loved. Just…. not by everyone. Just…. not everyone can be in a permanent relationship with me even if they love me.

Life is like that.

I want so badly to be the person I want to be deep in my belly. I feel like there is no amount of work that could be too much to get there. It doesn’t matter how hard it is, I have to do it. Because the option is ending up like my friend who is trapped in his house in Oakland. He doesn’t go anywhere. He backed out of all friendships. He is lonely and scared and angry and he just can’t reach out any more.

I don’t want to be that. I don’t want to be my mother. I don’t want to retreat from the world into the bosom of my highly dysfunctional, abusive family because it feels like the only safety.

I want something different.

I want to work with children who have a hard time learning. I want to figure out how to help them learn. I am deeply and painfully aware of how hard it is to learn when you are emotionally dysregulated. More than I want to breathe I want to reduce the pain other people feel.

Why don’t I care more about myself than other people? Logotherapy. People can survive almost anything if they have something that motivates them to keep moving through hardship. I want to reduce the pain in the world. That motivates me. That pushes me in a way that I can’t explain. I feel a fire in my belly.

I don’t think *I* am capable of saving people. But I am very good at finding tools for my tool belt and lending them out to other people and explaining how they work. I can maybe talk to them about how to save themselves. Because I can’t do it. I don’t have that power. You have to want it.

What I can do is talk about the wondrous variety of ways I’ve fucked up and what I’ve learned from that. We are social animals. We often learn from the experiences of others.

I have about six books going through my head right now. I need to start files for all of them. I know what the first line is going to be for Part 2. I’m not telling you, oh internet. It’s a secret. But I know what it is.

I want to write a speculative fiction book about technology culture. I have a specific idea and I’m fleshing it out and I’m talking to folks who work in tech about specifics about how some of the elements will work.

I want to write a specific book about what I learned on the road trip. It was… very educational.

I want to write a whole series of childrens books. I want to share the scripts I use. Not because they are perfect and should be copied word for word, because perhaps they will inspire people to consider multiple points of view when handling situations. Maybe they will be just a bit more patient. Specifically I have some specific narratives around being a parent with severe mental illness and how to talk to your kids about it so they don’t take on responsibility for the adult’s problems. Near as I can tell my kids are intensely aware I have problems and that they aren’t their fault. They don’t try to “fix” me but they do learn how to have boundaries around my problems. They stand up for themselves.

There’s a specific book about white trash I want to write. There are specific points and elements I need to string together that I’ve never seen anyone else put together before.

I want to write a book for my mother. There are specific things I want to say. I want to do it before she dies. I’m not 100% sure I will ever send it to her or ask her to read it. But I need to write it. I may not be able to write Marcie a letter, but I need to write a whole book to my mother.

And I know I have some major structural reworking of Outrunning Suicide ahead of me. I’ve got some work cut out for me.

Did I mention that my garden missed me something fierce? It is going to need a fiendish amount of love and attention to come back. Don’t worry. I have approximately a metric shit ton of love to give.

Did I mention that it is time to take home schooling a bit more seriously? There’s some very specific work I need to do around that.

There is a conversation I need to have that I’m dreading so much it makes me want to puke. It doesn’t feel like it can wait until January. But I’m not god damn driving till then and I think the chance of this person coming to me for this chat are just about 0. So… feelings! God this conversation will be challenging. I have literally no idea how it will go and that is fucking awful. There are things I need to apologize for because they fall outside of what I expect from myself. Those are probably not the same things that someone else would like me to apologize for. That’s always fucking complicated. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.

Before we left on the trip there was part of me that feared that I would be ripping my children from their friends and they wouldn’t have any when we got back. Snicker. Uhm, yeah. My paranoia on that front is assuaged. There’s been a circus here this weekend. We’re good. And I had to tell people they couldn’t come over yet cause we had a full house.

Holy shit. We are home.

A long time ago I didn’t think this house could ever be my home. I didn’t pick it and that is a canker in my breast. But the thing is, I did. I picked Noah. I picked someone who would want a house like this. He picked a blank empty uninteresting shell because he doesn’t care that much about shells. I care intensely. Your shell communicates so much to people who care to look. But you know what? In many ways he did something much more incredible for me. He gave me a space where I am unreservedly wanted and then he told me to do anything I wanted with the shell. It didn’t start out what I wanted. But it is bloody well getting there and that feels like magic.

This is my home.

It’s different than usual right now. There are more people than usual. Almost every bed has two people in it.

You know what? That’s how I grew up. It feels like a house full of love to me.

If I can manage to not fuck everything up. Again.

I’m having an interesting time resettling. My body is very used to taking a whole week of sleeping pills per night in order to sleep 7-8 hours. I want off the pills but I think this is going to take some titration in order for me to not go bananas and beat everyone.

I want to beat someone so badly my fingertips ache. It is a really incredible feeling. I feel like a champagne bottle about to blow. I want to make someone cry. I want that impulse to be ok. I want someone to want that from me. I want to hit someone until they are black and blue and sobbing and they collapse to the floor and I still fucking hit them.

I am so very frustrated. I don’t want to do that to my children or my husband. I want to do that to someone who really likes it. Because I have all this energy in my body and there are ways to do things with it that are intensely positive for just the right people. That is so very complicated.

My friends keep saying, “Just negotiate it!” I know. I love you all for suggesting it. Thank you. You are giving advice and I no longer turn and attack like a pit viper for that kind of thing. I’m improving.

It helps that y’all have gotten to know me. Your advice has gotten so much better. You take me into consideration before you give it. Thank you.

I feel so lucky. I feel like I have more than nine lives. I get to keep trying again to reinvent myself. I get to adapt and become something new. I was kind of talking about this last night. When it comes to community organization/revolution sorta stuff there are at least three kinds of people. Ideas people, Folks who can build a system, & Folks who can maintain a system.

I’m sorta a hybrid of ideas and system building. I feel very lucky to have this hybrid inside of me. But I feel really deep shame around the fact that I am not a sustainer. I can’t. I don’t have that to give. I have a lot of sustainers in my life and I deeply admire them. But I can’t be them. But you know what? I can rip apart a broken system and rebuild it and improve it better than they can. That is worth something too.

We all have our parts to play. We can all be main characters. We can all be the right kind of me.

You do you and I’ll do me and maybe we can improve this place a bit?

I’ve wrapped 45 presents so far. I’m maybe halfway through my list of names. I am such a very lucky woman. I have so many people to love. I’m going to be shipping packages all over the world. Because I am lucky enough to be loved like that.

I sent probably 450+ postcards on the trip. I sat down to write them in batches of 80. I wrote until my hands cramped and I couldn’t hold a pen. I didn’t do it as often as I hoped to be able to, but I had at least nine good rounds.

I have a lot of names in my address book and most people got multiple cards. Not everyone. Sorry. My hands really really hurt.

The children got the most.

I remember what it meant as a child to have adults choose a relationship with me. I choose these children and I will do the necessary work. Because not many people picked me as a kid and it was horrifyingly damaging. I really and truly want there to be less pain in the world. The only way I can do that is to look for patterns and try to change them. I can meet children and choose to stay in their lives. I can choose to put effort towards them and let them know through my actions that they are worthy of time and effort and attention.

Noah really kinda changed everything for me. I really and truly don’t believe I would be capable of being the person I am becoming without Noah. It’s not just that he grants me access to the ability to be a philanthropist. It is that Noah gives me attention with all the heat of the sun. Noah wants to work hard for me and work hard with me and stand back to admire my hard work. Then he’ll fuck me all night long so that I’m constantly flooded with oxytocin.

This is what I always wanted.

I used to be really not interested in oral sex. These days I actually like it quite a bit. It’s really nice. It feels so very loving and bonding and nice. I never wanted that before.

I feel like I am a very different person than I was at 18.

Part of that is because of me. The rest is because I have access to good therapy and I have the best fucking friends any person has ever had. I am supported and loved. I see the web shining and clear. I have learned so much this year. I may spend the rest of my life writing about it.

I want to understand myself and I want to understand other people. So I put a tremendous amount of time and energy into studying folks. I ask a lot of nosy questions. I am not what you might consider a shy and retiring flower. I don’t assume people want their privacy. I assume people are sad and lonely and they really want to bond. So I try. Sometimes I’m wrong about a specific persons motivations and it doesn’t work out. That’s ok. I can try again. Nothing is perfect the first time. Noah isn’t the first boy I promised to marry. But he is the only one I actually married. So I practiced for permanent relationships a lot before I figured out how to ask for what I needed.

“No one is perfect but love makes us so.”*  Being with Noah is better than not being with Noah. Full stop. Does that make him perfect? No. But he really is perfect for me. The complex mix of awful and awesome is exactly what I need.

Let me tell you. Sitting in my back yard in California is not the frigid chilly experience it usually is for me. The rest of the country is fucking cold. This feels so nice this year. Ha. It is normal California chilly, the plants are doing their things. But my experience of it is altered. I am altered. What I expect is altered.

Life is like that.

Permanent revolution. You know… I’ve never actually read Mao. Maybe I should.

I think the problem with all historical systems is there is no such thing as a pure system that can solve all problems. Socialism isn’t the answer. Communism isn’t the answer. Capitalism isn’t the answer. We need a hybrid. We need to figure out what works for which problem and implement solutions as necessary.

It isn’t ok that so many people are hungry. It isn’t ok that so many people live in horrifying poverty. It isn’t necessary.

I have seen that it isn’t necessary.

I can’t unsee that.

There can be less pain in this world. It isn’t mandatory for this many people to suffer this much. Will people always experience pain? Of course. There will always be death and separations and grief and pain. We will always fall and scrape our knees. We will try to climb to get at the Christmas presents and break our arms.

That’s ok.

Things don’t have to be the way they are. Things can change.

Why do I believe that? Because I have studied history. That is all we do: we change. I am a progressive person. I want to help knock down the current broken system so we can build something better. We are capable of such amazing things.

I’ve traveled a lot. Human beings are capable of incredible perseverance and scope.

Oh the things I’ve seen. We are not Mother Nature. We don’t make things like the Grand Canyon. But we really aren’t so shabby.

Go see the Crazy Horse memorial some day. It will inspire you. That family…. holy shit.

If you can’t find a way make a way. That’s what we do.

I’m both intensely impressed with my species and quite sad about the issues. Good golly.

Some of the most incredible people are also monsters. What does that mean? I don’t know. But I think about it a lot.

Am I a monster?

Cue Lady Gaga singing about there being a monster in my head.

That one line of hers goes round and round and round in my brain.

The hilarious thing is… I’m not entirely sure I have the words right. We take the meaning we need to have from the world. Communication is less about what the speaker intends and more about what the listener finds. People are so fucking weird.

Sometimes I have these moments where I think that my friends really aren’t as great as I make them out to be in my head. Then I think, “Ahhh… but people rise or fall to the expectations you set. I’ll keep building them up.” It’s complicated.

There is a huge heavy stone in my heart. There is something I’m working on. It’s a big super hard super big thing. It kinda feels like everything. And I can’t talk about it yet. I can’t even breathe about it out loud until I make a decision. That’s complicated for me. I don’t do very well with processing things on my own like that. I am in fact, really really really bad at coming to positive conclusions that way. Thus the genesis of my writing/verbal diarrhea flow of TMI about my internal process.

Hi, internet, I’ve missed you. But my hands are cramping. I should stop. I’ve got my work cut out for me today. I’m going to drop the van off for servicing and hug my lovely mechanic and thank him for all of his help and advice. He saved my ass. I’ll probably bring a bag of presents that need shipping and come home by way of the post office. It’s less than .3 of a mile extra. I really look forward to walking home. This is my running path. This is my turf. This is my home.

I haven’t ever felt like this before. I feel so comfortable and so welcome and so very wanted.

I need to stop off and chat with my neighbors and thank them for the help and advice that helped keep us safe. I am so very grateful.

I need to go touch the strings of my web. I need to congratulate it for being so strong and shiny and beautiful. Thank you for doing you so that I can do me. I need you so much. Thank you.

I love you.

 

 

*(Call the Midwife)

Bragging.

2 Replies

I was feeling kind of angsty. So I used an 18 year old coping method and I went and found a chat room. I sure like talking to people. That lead to a series of weird feelings.

I can’t get into specifics for Reasons because I was hanging out in a mental health support chat room. Folks care about their privacy a bit more than average.

I talked to a person who had an experience with abuse masquerading as bdsm. We had a long conversation. This person had no idea that such things happen to other people because this person was never part of “the scene”. I think I blew that persons mind a bit. I was casual and up front with all kinds of general attitudes and problems the community has. I feel guilty that I may have dove into the deep end of their trauma just casually answering the questions I was asked. They didn’t feel that heavy or intense to me because bdsm wasn’t traumatic to me. The community wasn’t traumatic to me. So I feel pretty guilty that I might have hurt this person by my indifference to the intensity that they experienced. I shared links to articles written by folks in the scene about the kinds of problems this person experienced. Mind blown. “This happens to other people?!?!?!” Yes. There aren’t that many truly singular human experiences. Most experiences happen to many people and you just have to ask around until you find your tribe.

That was actually a neat conversation for me. I’m very into talking about community dynamics. But it was so personal for them…

But more than that… I felt like I was bragging. When I’m asked, “How do you know so much about this topic?” “Uhm… I’ve been to a lot of national bdsm conferences. I’ve taught bondage and suspension classes. Go to a kinky book store, read the names of the authors… those are my friends.” And uhm, many of them have played with me. I feel like I must be lying or exaggerating but it is just plain true. I used to go around the country tying people up and being tied up for fun.

Then the topic morphed because the people in chat morphed. Chat rooms are like that. We talked a lot about travel and different climate zones and how food migration works and…

I have a lot of stories. When I get into a chat room and people are just casually going through lots of little references to get to know one another… I have a lot of stories. I think I sound more interesting than I am if you just listen to the things I’ve done.

I think I sound like a liar. I talk casually about travel all over my country and the world. I talk about good and bad things as casually as if they had equal impact on me and people react very oddly to that. I’ll go from telling a story about a principal being on first name basis with me in 5th grade to talking about being beaten daily by a different principal and neither mention feels “important” to me in the way it seems to hit other people. “Your principal hit you!” Uhm, it was Texas. They did that as of the 1990’s and I’m pretty sure they still do it now. It’s not a big deal.

That “it’s not a big deal” is part of why I feel weird. I moved so many times that I seem to have picked up pieces of a lot of different life stories and then I shoved them all together in a way that sounds… frankly impossible to casual listeners.

I have been called a liar to my face many times, that’s why I think I sound like a liar. I couldn’t possibly have done all the things I say I’ve done.

Dude, I really don’t exaggerate for effect much. I don’t have to.

Yes, I really was a teacher. Yes I really was a stage manager too. I’ve had people challenge that I could have done all the things I did. Uhm… I went to college. I did theatre in college. Being a stage manager is not exactly rocket science…. they let teenagers do it. Depending on how liberal you are with the definition of “teach” I have worked in an educational capacity with kids from 1st grade to community college. (I was a substitute for a while. That’s a hard fucking job.) In the community college I was the youngest person in my classroom. My students loved me. I can encourage you through writing a much more… assertive view than you even knew you had.

Yesterday I felt waves of shame, like I should stop bragging. I was just participating in a conversation. But that feels like shoving things in peoples faces. Other people participate in conversations by mostly listening. I should do more of that. Obviously me talking is a problem.

Why?

I don’t know.

I didn’t dominate the conversation. I wasn’t the only one talking. I wasn’t the only one with stories. But I was talking with up to five or six people and I dropped the most stories. I suspect this is related to typing speed in addition to other people being shocked that I just kept going. Nope, I’ve got lots more stories than these. I’ve barely shown you the tip of the ice berg.

What do you mean you are done?

Oh. I’ll shut up now. Uhm… I guess people are going to talk about tv characters now because they are out of personal stories.

Right. Uhm. Yeah. I’ll uhhh shut up.

I really like talking about myself. I really like hearing other people talk about themselves. Why do other people want to spend so much time talking about celebrities? It is very confusing to me. I only vaguely know the names of the people they are talking about from magazine covers in the grocery store. I’d rather chew my arm off than research these people so I can join in the conversation.

Uhm, I’ll go clean my house now. Thanks.

I flat refuse to spend time researching so I can join in slut-shaming other women. Fuck. That. Noise.

I think women get to fuck as many people as they want and it is none of your god damn slut-shaming business. Go straight to hell.

In my defense… I did not say that in the chat room. I did get quiet.

WHY DO PEOPLE GET SO UPSET THAT A WOMAN THEY DON’T KNOW IS HAVING SEX WITH A MAN THEY DON’T KNOW!!!!!!

I feel pretty upset by how much of this I’ve seen in the last day. That woman you are describing as a whore has fucked way fewer people than me. What do you want to say to me now? Nothing because I’m different? Fuck you with a chain saw.

Oh, you judge her because she was “stupid” enough to let her boyfriend take naked pictures of her? THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF SUCH PICTURES OF ME. FAR MORE EXPLICIT PICTURES. Fuck you very much.

I feel pretty pissy about this topic. Thus the shouting.

The only reason I’m “different” is because I’m not doing it today. If I was still behaving that way you wouldn’t think I was different. I am making different choices now for specific reasons related to managing my trauma. Not because I am a morally superior person who has conquered my base urges. Fuck you with a 2″x4″.

Even when I get ranty like this… I feel weird shame like I’m bragging. I’m just talking about my life but it feels like I’m exaggerating to make a point.. I’m not. These are just my thoughts and experiences. Ok, plus a few vague general threats at non-specific people. Not real threats. I don’t plan to shove anything forcibly into anyones orifices without permission ever in this life. But I’m colorful in how I bleed off stress.

This article right here is part of why I defend sex work so vigorously. It has a place in society. Women who have sex with lots of people have a place in society no matter why they are having that sex. Sex is one of the most primal urges we have and I don’t see how suppressing it does folks good. Let’s look at the history of abuse perpetrated by the Catholic church in the name of suppressing sexual desire. Not good juju.

I will not join in on dog piling on someone to tell them they are bad for making a choice you don’t agree with. That is not my job here on this planet. I really don’t want to tell people how bad they are.

I want them to feel like they are ok. And feel like there are probably other people like them and they are ok too.

I want people to feel ok with existing. I want people to believe that a community exists for them even if it is hard to find.

To me, the sum of my stories is a search for a place in community. I have tried a lot of things looking for community. Some tricks worked and some tricks failed spectacularly. I talk about both sides equally as freely. If other people can learn from my failures that makes them even more valuable.

I learn from other peoples failures. Part of the reason I haven’t really been in a relationship with intense domestic violence is because I watched it happen to other people and I made different choices.

The first time a boyfriend slapped me I exploded like a hurricane and ended the relationship. I am not going to fucking let anyone get away with slapping me and saying it doesn’t count as “really hitting”.

I have a very strong ability to set the reality of my life. I don’t let other people define what happens to me. My words. My opinions. My life. Fuck Right Off.

Why haven’t I had an abusive boyfriend? Because I only date people who force me to beg for my beatings. Or I walk. If I hint a little that a beating might be nice and you start hitting me… I leave. That’s not a safe situation. I often talk about deserving things I don’t really deserve or want. A partner who took such musings as hints to hit me… would not be safe.

I pick partners who make me beg for my beatings. I have to give explicit directions about where and how I want to be hit or they just don’t hit me. I really like the boundaries I’ve developed.

BDSM is not abuse. The difference between bdsm and abuse is educated consent on the part of the bottom. I have a real problem with experienced dominants manipulating inexperienced submissives. I think uneducated consent is basically invalid.

But I have strong opinions. When I play with newbies I give them a fucking lecture a mile long before I touch them. I want educated consent.

I learned by giving a blowjob to a little boy in kindergarden. Later he told everyone I raped him. From where I was standing…. he hadn’t said no. From where he was standing…. he hadn’t said yes.

I have a hard time forgiving myself for a mistake I made when I was five. I don’t get to make those kinds of mistakes ever again. Period.

Barely a topic switch… whether I am ever promiscuous again may actually revolve around how my kids turn out. If they are happy, healthy people who don’t give a shit… I might do it. If they would be horrified if they found out… I’m probably done.

I can’t hide who and what I am. I choose a relationship with my children over other aspects of myself. Even though I’d love to convert half the women in my future nursing home to lesbianism. That would be hawt. At least bisexuality if they didn’t want to swear off men. Personally I like people at all points along the gender spectrum. Yay people! Yay bodies!

When I first came into the bdsm community/public sex community I met this lovely woman. She was in her late 60’s when I arrived. I think she was 69 when I was 18. So that’s 15 years ago. I am pretty sure she’s still active. I saw her not that long ago. She is my hero.

I want to be playing with hot young 40 year olds when I’m in my 80’s. I’ll play with old people too… but that would be really fun. I think it is gross that the old men want teenage girls. I’ve done my virgin initiations. They weren’t the most interesting sex I’ve had. I’ll take grown ups, thanks.

The breeding period requires particular behavior sets from me. I chose it willingly with my eyes wide open. The boundaries do not yet chafe.

I get cranky about incidentals in my life. I get frustrated by details of my life. Overall I am so very happy that I’m doing what I’m doing. I like where I am. I’m learning how to be appropriate. I’m doing so in an environment that is actually safe for me. I will always have a version of appropriate that doesn’t match up with other peoples perfectly.

Like last night I apparently educated a local middle schooler about the basics of sex ed. Whoops. Hadn’t really set out to do that. But she asked direct questions. I’m not going to give evasive or shameful answers. Her friend freaked out and tried to shut me up. “SHE DOESN’T KNOW THESE THINGS YET!!!”

Yeah. And that’s dangerous. She needs to know these things so she can keep her body safe.

Someone with fully developed breasts and an hour glass figure needs to know the basic technical non-salacious names for sex. And if someone stands there and asks me direct questions… I’m going to answer them in plain language.

Awkward.

So yeah. Last night I was taught why my friend said, “Your kids are not sheltered.” No, but they are protected. I believe ignorance is dangerous. This is a big, scary fucking world. There are ways to minimize your risks.

I’m not blaming victims. I’m talking about how some women can walk through life making seemingly dangerous choices and they never get assaulted once. There are ways to minimize your risks. There are tricks to keeping yourself safe. I’ve talked to a lot of women about how they manage their lives.

I want to protect my kids. I believe that knowledge is power. They have all the age appropriate books on sex that exist. They know that sex makes babies. They can look at an anatomy drawing and show you where the vulva, labia, clitoris, prostate, anus, urethra, or penis is. Technically, Shanna has memorized more of the specific names than I have. I always have to reread the book to see what a lot of the accessory names are. I know fallopian tubes, but there are some tubes in guys that I don’t remember. She does. But I’m not the one who spends a lot of time talking about wanting to be a doctor.

They also know that sex is something adults do for fun but it isn’t for kids because it can hurt kid bodies.

Why did this come up? Because there are sexual references everywhere and Shanna asks what they mean. I am not graphic, but I say, “Well grown ups like thinking and talking about sex. So that’s a reference to sex. You’ll understand it after puberty.”

I talk about sex as if it is a normal, natural part of life. I talk about choosing when to have children based on being able to take care of a family. I talk about having “kissed boys and girls other than your dad before him because I wanted to make sure I knew I found the right person”. I’m not graphic.

I don’t want to be “out” with my kids the way some of my friends are out with their kids. My kids won’t see deviant-from-normal behavior during their childhood. Regardless of what I do during baby-sitting time.

And a lot of it comes back to feeling weird for talking about this stuff. Am I bragging? No. I’m trying to work out the logistics of my life. I’m trying to get a clear picture on who and what I am. I am trying to prove to myself, Yup. Still here.

I’m in the breeding period. Most members of my species end up here on accident and they kind of chafe at the boundaries as a result. Their freedom was curtailed not by choice. I want this so much.

I want to know what a childhood is like when the parents are not having sex in front of nor with their children. I want to know what a childhood is like when there isn’t constant drug and alcohol induced partying going on. I use pot, but it isn’t a party drug for me. It is something I do in isolation or I take a pill. I’ve only smoked around a handful of people (the wonderful folks who come over for dinner) and it doesn’t happen until after the kids are asleep. My kids are not growing up in a party house.

Only they are. It’s kind of weird. I’m finding out what “vanilla” parties are like and they are pretty fun.

Not long ago my neighbors re-did their house. They were tired of “looking like a preschool”. But… you have young children. Ok, the materials should age up, but why in the world do you think that your house shouldn’t look like kids live there?

Stop judging, Krissy.

I like that kids like coming here. They feel comfortable. I like that I can invite a whole bunch of people over and it works out really well. Everyone leaves raving about how they’ve had a wonderful time.

I’m going to go have fun with my family now.

Under promise; over deliver.

1 Reply

About six years ago I started seeing a guy for massages. A few months into knowing one another I said, “We are more ‘friendly acquaintances’ than ‘friends'” and he took that as a challenge. He’s been showing up at my house once or twice a month ever since. He helped me remodel my garage back when he had two days a week off instead of one. Now that he works six days a week he can only handle shorter visits and I wouldn’t dream of imposing physical labor on him. That’s what friendship means. Seeing one another’s limits.

Yesterday he said that he and his wife have been talking about what they have to offer me in terms of support because clearly I could use some. He said that he was not sure that he could make any type of permanent commitment, the most they could consider was maybe five years or until the WWOOF year since that’s six years away. I countered with the fact that I probably would not be able to trust a longer than three months at a time commitment. We will keep talking. We’ll see.

So I have been pretty sober lately (I took medication this morning because if I wake up at 3am sobbing it’s going to be a day) and that means the return of dreaming. I’m really sorry I’m dreaming again.

My mom used to forget to pick me up from school. In her defense I didn’t always live with her so it’s not like I was a day-in-day-out responsibility for 18 years and she oops forgot in the middle of that. It was pretty common for me to sit in front of school until dinnertime because that was when she thought of me. One memorable day involved sitting there till bedtime. Sometimes, in some places, a principal would come and sit with me and wait. I always knew we would move soon after that happened because my mom didn’t appreciate the principal’s nasty look.

I woke up thinking about my sister. She would shove me or hit me or knock me down. By the time I was eight or nine I would tell her, “If you hit me I will call 1-800-4-a-child and report you for abusing me.” This would result in hours of her screaming at me. There were lots of variations but the basic thread was that I was a stupid bitch and a cunt and she would show me what real fucking abuse was if I didn’t fucking watch myself.

For a while I asked some friends if we could have dinner once a month. I was slightly pestering. I asked repeatedly over a many month time frame. I was told “Oh yes oh yes”. Then my emails didn’t get returned. I started asking more than six months ago and it hasn’t happened yet. I don’t think I will ask again.

My bestie keeps talking about wanting to move out of the area. I’m having trouble containing my feelings when she does this. I understand that my role as her friend is one of support and it isn’t ok for me to tell her she can’t move if that is what is right for her. My job will be to help her pack and wish her well and keep in touch. If I lose out on most of the support I have in the process that is my problem and not hers. That is how life works.

I feel really pathetic for needing help and support. This is why I’m trying to get to know the neighborhood teenagers. They are more likely to still be around in a few years and I won’t take it personally when they want to move on in life.

I think I overly internalized the friend who dumped me for being a drug addict because of the pot. I mean, he was just building on my lifelong hatred of all of my family members. The only drug I ever saw them do was pot. So I attributed all of the behavior issues and problems to pot and I hated it with a passion until well into my mid 20’s. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I kind of “figured out” that the behavior problems were because of the meth and coke and crack and crank and whatever other names you want to use. I don’t even know which of those things are “the same” but I know that they are all words I heard in my home as a child. I just didn’t understand what they meant.

I tried pot because a friend told me to. Pot is the only thing that has ever broken through the repetitive negative thoughts. Pot seems to be the only way I don’t go through my day whispering “worthless whore” to myself over and over. I wish I could end the repetitive negative self-talk.

When people tell me “I want to come over, how about x day” and then they don’t come… it just builds on my sense that I am worthless. For my own self-protection I need to not try with those people any more. Even if that makes me feel bad and like I am abandoning people.

I feel horrible guilt that my spoon level requires that I only know people right now who are capable of under promising and over delivering. That is the only way I can know that I am not going to have to suddenly compensate for what feels like people lying to me.

I understand that people “didn’t mean to”.

I have to be nice to my kids all day every day. It doesn’t matter what other people mean. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Which results in an awful lot of my friends feeling like they can’t reach out or offer anything to me at all. Because they can’t PROMISE and so they feel that what they have to offer is worthless.

Man it seems like all we are going to do is fuck each other up.

This is part of that “I am toxic waste and will hurt everyone around me” thing.

I appreciate the people who are telling me not to go off my meds. I appreciate that people who show up at my house and actually watch me interact with my children over prolonged periods of time tell me that I should be medicated. Honestly not as much the other kind of people. Sharing that you think you are better because you medicate and you suspect it is true of me is different than telling me what to do. (K–you totally nailed it.) Splitting hairs is what I do.

If what you mean to say isn’t being heard how you mean it then you need to be willing to adapt your message for a different audience. That is what communication is about.

I’m kind of good at that and kind of shitty. Embrace the dichotomy. Resiliency is based on opposing traits. I hear. From “experts”. Psh. Who gives a shit. I am not actually all that impressed with science. Go look at meta-science about research. It’s all crap. But it’s all we have.

There’s a Carsie Blanton song about that: All We Got.

(Did it work?)

I spend a lot of time every day being grateful for Noah. He grew up with a level of mental illness I will hopefully never reach. It taught him a lot about not looking to other people for his reality. It taught him that he might have to actually defend himself from people who want to hurt him. And yet his dad is still there. Fully committed until one of them dies.

When you say “for better or worse” no one promises that there will be more better than worse.

Living with Noah isn’t always perfect. He pisses me off sometimes. But he is consistently kind and generous with me. He meets his commitments. He’s sure not to commit to something he can’t do.

I think I will get mad at every person who is ever in my life. Anger is how I find my boundaries. It isn’t the most ideal reaction–yeah I fucking know. But Noah has earned a lot of trust from me.

He pisses me off, but when I figure out that I’m angry I can walk away and defuse my anger and come back and negotiate calmly (ok my tone may not be perfect) and there can be a resolution. And he won’t agree to something he can’t do. We find a way to reach something we can both live with. Then he fucking does what he says.

It’s…

When he does fuck up it usually makes him feel worse than me. And at this point the fuck ups are at the level of “I thought we had the ingredients for _____ meal but we don’t.” Uhhh, I can live with that. It’s my fault we ran out anyway because I didn’t bother going to the grocery store.

Oh man. I can feel the medication now. Thank g-d. Arms hurt.

It just occurred to me that I have a ‘brother’ tag and a ‘daddy’ tag and a ‘mother’ tag… but nothing for my sister. I think I’m still afraid of her. She doesn’t live that far away from me. She knows where I live (err, if she is capable of remembering). She uhh consorts with undesirable folks. To be an uppity piece of shit about it.

Kids are up.

I should have seen this coming.

Leave a reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can’t out people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These lies will pass.

"Go see a therapist"

Leave a reply

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.

Irrational feelings

Leave a reply

Noah made the comment that our nonmonogamy rules are based on polite fictions.  I did not yell or scream or hit or punch or any of the things that went through my impulse queue.  He just called me a liar.  But he did it in one of those civilized ways you can’t really argue with.  He can get away with it.

He’s not calling me a liar.  He’s pointing out that my emotional experience and the actual real experience often differ and we planned for my emotional experience.  He’s kind of a fucker that way.

We originally said we wouldn’t date until Youngest Child (whoever that would be) was five.  We think that little kids need a lot of attention from their parents.  I’m starting to realize that I overestimated how much I would be able to give to my kids without getting anything for myself.  I planned on seven to ten years of me not getting any attention.  Maybe that was poor planning.

Noah points out that I’m being unfair and dishonest about how I’m representing the breakdown of our respective time off.  Maybe.  I’m not going to say yes to that yet.  I have too many years of him having a lot more time and space than me.  I’m still dealing with being completely overwhelmed and unable to function.  I’m trying to figure out where the happy medium will be.

The class he signed up for?  The one we thought was six week?  It goes till March.  So much for carefully figuring out how our reserves of energy will be spent over the next few months.  Not how I have been planning.  Ok.  I can regroup.  That’s fine.

Noah is going to want to go out on a date.  I don’t know when.  Not this year.  It will probably come up some time next year if I’m even vaguely honest with myself.  With how much time I have spent on okcupid lately I understand why women will line up to date my husband.  I don’t like feeling like part of a group.  I have trouble with being out with my family of five sometimes.  If I wasn’t so clearly a huge needed constantly necessary part of the group I wouldn’t be comfortable.  Parties are hard.  I feel like I never fit in.  If I go to a party and I feel awkward and uncomfortable from the time I arrive but Noah looks like he fits in I feel like I should leave.  I should let him have this space he is comfortable in.  It’s his.  Not mine.

That’s kind of how I let Tom have the south bay bdsm community.  If I am attached to someone and they disengage from me in any way when we are out with a group I feel the instant need to panic and leave.  I can’t be there.  I’m not wanted any more.  I have no place.  No identity.  I’m nothing.  I vanish once the identity I have in the group leaves.

I can’t be one of Noah’s girls.  If I am one of Noah’s girls I don’t exist when he is not with me any more.  I feel like I am watching someone else live my life.  Someone else gets to be Noah’s partner.  I guess that means I stop existing as his partner.  When he was dating W. I sat at home crying and cutting.  I didn’t tell him about the cutting much.  Everyone knew about the crying.  I wanted to have as much physical pain as emotional pain.  I wanted to see how big of a wound I had inside.  I couldn’t tell.  I couldn’t tell how big, how destructive the pain was until I saw how much of my leg I had to sacrifice to it.  I had to know how big it was.  Do you know why I stayed?  It was never more than a two or three slice date.

I think I’m done with writing about when I started cutting, for the book.  I haven’t continued to bring it up because it seems weird to do so.  For about seven years I cut more days than I did not.  Do I really need to say that over and over through the story?  Should I talk about the fact that I learned to measure my emotional pain by how many cuts it took to get me to calm down?

I am nonmonogamous and deal my intense jealousy and emotional break downs around Noah dating because it is only a two or three cut activity.  That’s not that bad.  I didn’t need to cut every date.  I established how much pain it was.  There were times when I used to make cross hatches on my thighs that were five or six inches long.  I would make hundreds.  Two or three cuts that are only an inch or so long?  Psh.  This really isn’t so bad.

It’s hard when Noah says that are rules are based on fictions.  What he is saying is that I was making up a part of me.  Or making up what I thought I should say.  I was lying.  I don’t want to be a liar.

I don’t want to be a liar.  But I can’t figure out how to explain what is going on with me.  I’m saying the closest thing to the truth I can at any given moment.  Sometimes, when I’m dealing with my emotional experiences, the truth is like water.  It flows wherever it wants to paying no attention to previous course corrections.

I’m dating.  I shouldn’t lie about it.  I haven’t found a boyfriend, but I’m dating.  Maybe I should stop trying to set rules about how long we have to endure any given state of life.  I keep fucking up my guesstimates.

I said five years because I was hoping that by then I would feel secure enough with Noah that I wouldn’t feel so threatened every time he looked at another woman.  So scared of losing him any minute.  I don’t think time is really going to give me that though.  I would feel just as paranoid in twenty years.  And I can’t seem to be monogamous.  I’m not ok with being a hypocrite.  That’s a lot higher in my personal scheme of sins than almost anything.  I’m acting like a hypocrite.  Shit.  I don’t wannnnnnnna stop.

I didn’t ask for monogamy as part of our marriage.  I specifically excluded it from our wedding vows.  I knew I didn’t want it.  I have to let Noah figure out what he wants without dealing with temper tantrums.  It’s not fair.  It’s not the kind of marriage I want to have.  I can’t freak out in front of the kids when he is out, either.  Luckily it will be a smooth transition for them because they already don’t see him several nights a week.

Speaking of appropriate topics, I won’t be able to make fresh references to Noah’s whores.  That uhh won’t go over well.  Maybe I’m going to have to work on that whole thought process a lot over the next few months.  I doubt he would try before the end of the class he is working on.

I’m weaning at eighteen months.  I’ve decided.  That’s the end.  I’m gradually working her down.  I’m only allowing her to nurse twice a day right now.  It will be once a day for the last while.  There are things I want to do with my body that I don’t want to do while nursing.  It’s time to stop.  I want to be able to make choices based on what I want rather than on what I have to do.  Do I get tossed out of the crunchy mom club for not doing child lead weaning?  I’m not making it to two years either.  Calli is fifteen months tomorrow.  I feel like I will lose my mind in the next three months.  I hate nursing.  That’s all I’ve got in me.

I’m going to try stopping the pot in December.  I am going to start actually training for running.  I need to stop coughing.  Eek.  I’m nervous.  I’m going to talk to my psych about that and using Ativan more than I am.  I was given six pills for a month and I still have two left.  But I’m still smoking pot every day because of the writing.  I’m going to stop writing on the 30th.  I’m going to switch to using Ativan instead.  With the goal of not needing anything at all in the next few months.  I’m already cutting the Ativan in half and I may need to cut them into quarters if I use them more.  Right now they make me fall asleep.  I really and truly am not safe to drive within four hours of taking one.  That limits my life.

So I need to be able to cope if I want to go off and do the things I want to do.  It’s time to get off the crutches.  That’s going to be explosive for a while and I’m scared.  I smoke pot because I have a temper problem.  Because it’s hard for me to be calm and patient 24/7.  I just don’t have that naturally.  I’m going to need to find other ways of dealing with my anger.  Running is going to be a lot of it.  But I also seem to be using dating to fill a lot of my energy input needs.  I feel deeply conflicted about it.  But I am.

I fucking need something.  I don’t want to just sit here and eat and try to convince my brain that I’m happy that way.  It’s a false association.  Being fatter doesn’t actually make me happier even though I have this really strong self-belief that it is true.  My weight is pretty irrelevant but the other circumstances in my life matter.  I have usually been happier while I was fatter.  It wasn’t because of the weight though.  I need to stop feeling bad about not being fat.  Yeah, that convoluted.

I’m bigger than my mother.  I’m not fat.  I need to let go of her endless lectures about what a cow I am.  I’m not.  I’m a fairly average sized woman.  My mother is extremely petite.  Let it go Krissy.

Tonight we are going to spend money we really shouldn’t be spending this month on an over the top luxury meal with my lovely Complication.  She’s worth it.  I’m going to enjoy every fucking minute of it.  Later I will have a panic attack at the AmEx bill.  Then I will stop, breathe, think of the sight of my Complication eating good food and pay the bill without complaint.

That’s what you do as a rich person.  You facilitate life being good.  For yourself.  For other people.  Because you can.  Because why the fuck not.  There is no deserve.  There is no “right” to these things.  I’m not bad for spending this bonus money on an over the top good meal.  I’m not wasting it.  I’m enjoying it.  I’m enjoying every bite.  I’m enjoying every minute that I can of a life that is full of a lot of ups and downs.

When you have much greater lows than normal it only seems fair that you get to have better highs, right?  I’m about to go to the French Laundry for the second time in two years.  I am a lucky bitch.  I have a husband who loves me tremendously and is willing to spend most of his spare time on figuring out how to earn more money so he can pamper me more and more.  Because he wants to.  Because he thinks I deserve it.  Because he thinks it is great that he can do that for me.  Because wanting to give to me makes him want to go out and conquer the world so that he can give it to me.

I think I will need to be ok with him sleeping with other people once in a while so he can come back and appreciate me more.  I really am unique.  When I sleep with other people I come back and tell Noah what they did wrong.  He does the same.  It’s a very bonding experience for us that we match perfectly for pretty much every part of sex.  The rhythm is ideal.  No one else quite gets there.  Those other people are fun and awesome, don’t get me wrong.  But Noah is home.  And I am that for him.

These irrational feelings are hard.

One of the problems with polyamory

3 Replies

I don’t know if other people sit around in their off-time listening to songs and trying to place them onto various relationships.  Particularly, today I am listening to Adele’s Someone Like You.  The way she talks about the song in this video is striking.  It has dramatically altered my hearing of the song.

I miss Steve and Tom.  I think I would be able to be the kind of person Steve could be friends now.  I think I have changed my reactions to some of our patterns.  I didn’t like how I treated Steve, but I liked Steve.  I would have broken him if I had stayed with him.  Instead I ran away.  I didn’t just break off dating him.  I stopped going any place he might be.  I avoided his friends like the plague.  Anyone who knew us both lost me after the break up.

I walked away from my life.  I broke all ties.  I changed my major in college.  I dropped out of college.  I broke up with Steve just a few months before our wedding and then I evaporated like a drop of water.  But there were a lot of reasons I wanted to marry him, you know?  He was a really amazing person.  I miss him.  I miss the things he brought into my life.  I don’t want to have sex with him, that part didn’t work well for me.  But I miss him being my close friend.  I dated him before I had ever told anyone the full story of my abuse.  Before I was out publicly as a rape survivor.  I could still name every single person I had ever had sexual contact with.  I had two lists.  One of girls, which was very long.  I didn’t tell people about that list.  And the boys, which was long but not frightening because I don’t count my rapists.  Oh wait, there was a third list in my head–the rapists.  I could still count my positive boy-sex experiences on my fingers with Steve.  Steve was the first boy who ever gave me an actual orgasm. I faked it before that.  Uhm, sorry people from high school.

I miss Steve a lot.  He was passionate about things the way Noah is.  I love basking in that kind of joy in the simple act of attaining knowledge.  Steve liked to learn.  He was inspiring to be around.  He isn’t book smart, and it was by choice.  He came from a highly educated family.  He was a self-didact though.  He knew how to do an amazing array of things.  And if he didn’t know how to do something he would figure out how to learn.  Nothing daunted him.  I miss that.  I didn’t know how to deal with it when I was 18.  I didn’t know how to explain to him that things were harder for me than him because I didn’t have this loving background telling me I could accomplish things, I had to move slower than him sometimes.

Enh, I don’t remember the particulars well enough to analyze it.  Whatever.  That’s not the point.  I would really like to know what kind of man he has become.  I’m pretty sure I was right back then when I knew that I wouldn’t enjoy living with him long-term.  But I think I could be his friend now.  I think I would know how to listen to his interests without bashing him over the head with my issues.

I ran from Steve to Tom.  In a straight line.  Jumping on a few nice people along the way.  I was 18 and living with a lonely old lady who wanted company and I wanted to be surfing the internet looking for sex.  As soon as I became involved with him I started using his house as a base.  I was there a lot when he was at work because I didn’t have anywhere else to be.  His internet was paid for, he didn’t seem to care.

I’m not sure he understood how much time I was there.  How much time I spent auditioning a life in that house before our relationship got all that serious.  I picked him.  I wanted him.  I didn’t have to look around the local community for more than three months before I was damn sure he was the only person in that lot I wanted to seriously pursue.  And I did.  And on our first date he told me that he was looking for the One.  The One he would marry and have children with.

I am not going to get into it much right now.  That’s too big of a story.  I can’t do that today.  I can’t write it down today.  But I can sit here and listen to Adele sing.  And I cry.  Because I can’t write that story yet.  I am in the middle of another one.

I date Puppy because I was trying to replace Tom.  Puppy was the most abusive relationship I have had as an adult.  If he had not ended it when he did I think he would have hit me.  He was escalating in his violent displays when I didn’t react how he wanted.  I wasn’t good enough for him.  His family hated me and picking me would have meant ostracizing his family.  Or having to have relationships with them that involved no discussion of his life with me.  He didn’t think I was worth it.  He was a nasty piece of shit to me trying to get me to break up with him.  When my response was to cry for a while then try to problem solve he freaked out.  He wanted me to do something nasty so he had justification for his behavior.  I feel like my relationship with Puppy absolves me of my guilt for treating Steve so badly.  I learned how to control that anger.  I’m really sorry I fucked up like that at 18.  But I learned.  I changed.  Some people never do.  I’m proud of myself.

I am too angry with Noah.  Almost none of it is directed at him.  I’m not angry because of anything related to Noah.  I’m just angry.  At so many stupid things I remember and can’t let go of.  So many things that I’m trying to write down and be done with.  Puppy left me with a nasty email about how I will end up bitter and alone.  Just. Like. His. Mother.  Yeah, that’s about me?  I think not.

I don’t need to feel bad for my part in that any more.  That was a shitty relationship.  I don’t think it escalated to abuse but it wanted to.  It didn’t partially because I learned to control my temper.  That’s pretty cool.  I needed to do that.  It was essential in helping me be a good teacher.  And oh boy is it more important as a mother.  I’m sorry I hurt Steve.  But I forgive myself.  I had good reasons to be angry.  The more of this book I write the more I understand why people in authority positions widen their eyes when I tell my stories.  I should be exploding with anger.  I should be standing on top of a tall building with a machine gun taking my rage out on all of humanity.  That’s what a wounded animal as smart as me would do.

For all that people tell me I’m an angry person, I’m not.  Not really.  I was.  I’m sad.  I’m afraid.  Writing my story down all in one block and thinking about how many years of my life I have spent alone in a room is hard.  I don’t know how to have a real live actual family.  I’m scared.

I dated Tom for more years than I lived with my brother Jimmy after the age of three.  I lived with Tom for almost as many years as I lived with Tommy.  We were very close.  But he could never decide if I was really worth so much effort.  He wasn’t interested in getting married and having kids with me.  I think that given his life priorities, he made the right decision.  I’m not the right kind of girl for him.  And that still hurts.  I wanted to be.  I tried so hard to be what I thought he wanted.  Oh so many things I want to say.  They come over me in waves, these memories.

But I don’t think I can be friends with Tom.  We were too much.  I want too much.  I miss too much.  I want too much of him still.  I don’t know if anything could ever actually work.  I’m not going to let myself think about it.  I can’t.  I ran away.  I slammed the door on that part of my life pretty hard.  It has taken many years for me to figure out that some people in that community can be my friends because they aren’t actually interested in being his friend.  I didn’t have to ask them to pick a side!  They came pre-picked!  I’m a shallow piece of shit.

No, I have problems with boundaries.  I don’t think I would be able to have any if I spent extended time with Tom.  Once again, I don’t know that it is even sex I want.  I want to crawl back into his head.  I want to once again hear him tell me about the most intense parts of himself.  I want to watch him enjoy driving.  I want to be tied up.  I wouldn’t mind it being non-sexual.  I miss being enjoyed for just being there to look at.  That’s something that’s hard to communicate about objectification.  It means that someone doesn’t have to know all of my dirty stupid little secrets, they can enjoy looking at me.  Maybe I am beautiful.

Maybe if I write about what I really miss in enough detail I can find a way to get those specific needs met in other ways.  It’s worth a try.  But not today.  Maybe someday I will find someone like Tom.  Maybe I will be able to figure it out.

Daydreaming is weird.  Because I have these thoughts.  I have them a lot when I’m driving.  Polyamory means that I can have my Bridges of Madison County track in the back of my brain and know that I am not being disloyal to the people in front of me.

I feel sad that Noah does the same thing.  I don’t know that he does it exactly the same way I do.  But he has similar yearnings to not feel like doors are closed.  There is one girl he is kind of bitter about.  I handled it badly.  He really was falling in love.  It felt like watching my chance at stable happiness leave every time he went on a date.  I don’t trust that anyone else can love more than one person at a time.  My family couldn’t do that.  One kid at a time was “special” and whoever wasn’t in the center… well… when my brothers weren’t at the center it was because they weren’t there.  Sometimes when my mother and I lived alone somewhere I was the center.  That was wonderful.  Anytime there was anyone else around I was ignored.  She had missed those kids the whole time she had me.  She had talked about that endlessly.  She didn’t talk about me in glowing terms the way she did them.  She didn’t idealize me.  She lived with me.

I don’t want to be that for Noah.  I’m scared.  It is so hard to trust him.  It is so hard to trust anyone.  There is no one else in the world I would even bother to try to trust like I trust Noah.  I can’t.  I’m not capable.  And that hurts.  Once people have been close to me like that, if they fuck up even slightly then I have to completely and totally evaporate from their lives.  I can’t handle being demoted.  When Noah starts paying attention to someone else I feel demoted.  I go from being the wife to being part of the harem.  Now I’m “one of Noah’s girls”.  I feel disposable.  It’s not true.  I know Noah doesn’t feel that way.  Not even slightly.  But that’s what I feel.

You know.  Once I get the problem nailed down this specifically it’s time to talk to the California Mindfucker.  I like NLP.  It’s a convenient tool.  I keep hitting this same wall.  And it’s not rational.  I can explain it 50 more times and they will all come down to the same thing.  I want to change my irrational feelings and I’m not managing on my own.  There are tricks for that.

Trying to steel myself for a let down

2 Replies

I think that the okcupid boy is going to decide I’m not worth the fuss.  Which is fair, I don’t think I am either.  Uhm, yay for confirmation?  I am asking for a ridiculously specific thing that isn’t very fair.  I feel weird saying it, but I’m kind of sad.  I think I added him to my mental script of November a bit fast.  It would have been a very exciting month.  It was a nice dream.

Instead I will work a lot harder on getting ready for the 5k and I’ll write the book and I’ll try to settle into more peacefulness in the house instead of trying so hard to get out of it.  Apparently right now I’m not meant to be getting out.  That’s ok.

That means that some of my friends will say, “Hey come to Friday Night Waltz!” or (insert event here).  You guys don’t understand the energetic cost to me of getting out of my house right now.  Large group events suck.  They aren’t worth the price of admission.  When I went dancing with my friend, ok that was worth it.  He was a good friend-date.  That was nice.  Those still don’t give me that big jolt of energy that I want.  They make me tired.  Those are work.  They aren’t building me up in the same way.  They are a much more pleasant diversion than most of my life, I’ll say that.  But they are a physical cost. I can’t do very much of that.  I can’t get consistent enough child care and I don’t want to be away from the kids every night.

I am really sad that I don’t get to have an affair.  I honestly think it would cause a few unfun conversations with Noah because I would neglect him.  Only I wouldn’t.  Because I would come home every night and he would wake up with my mouth on his cock.  He would miss me a lot.  Heck, I think the fucker could stand with a little missing me.  It might increase his enthusiasm during the time he has me.  We are so tired.  Uhm, I say “the fucker” with great love and affection.  Just so it’s clear.

Noah has made great strides in his career during our marriage.  I have given him a lot of time and space for that.  That is something that builds him up and makes him cocky.  I like that in him.  He likes me to be built up and cocky.  I haven’t felt that way in a very long time.  I feel beat down and exhausted.  I feel worn out.  I feel fucking boring.  I feel awkward.  I feel unpleasant.  I feel like no one will ever want to pay a lot of attention to me again.  It’s existential angst.  I know.  It’s pathetic.

That’s the problem.  That dismissal right there.  I have a lot of this because of the repercussions of trauma.  And when a doctor prescribes a drug intended to cure mania, what that means for me is the medical profession thinks I need to stop working so hard.  Because I don’t think there is a reasonable way to describe me as truly manic.  In times of crisis I work a lot harder than most people have any interest in working.  I’m not manic.  I don’t fit the diagnostic criteria.  Unless of course, you count my promiscuity.  Which uhm, yeah.  Or the fact that I did have that lovely drug experimentation period.  Uhm, only I’ve never done anything that has harmed my life.

That’s the crux.  I like my life.  I think I have made mistakes, yes.  But I wouldn’t take any of them back. In my opinion mania is reserved for when you impetuously do a whole bunch of things that are really bad for you.  When I was a small child I engaged in a lot of sex play because I was surrounded by sex and I was acting out what I had been programmed to act out.  It wasn’t mania.  As I got older it got more complex and emotional, but I don’t allow my sex to negatively impact my life.  I’m not riddled with disease or unwanted children.  I have *also* had a lot of really fun sex with some interesting people.  I’m glad I’ve done that.  I’ve gotten the affair thing right a couple of times and it’s been life changing.  I have fucked up in looking for what I want and I’ve had a lot of bad days dealing with feeling bad about how I didn’t negotiate properly.

This is why the doctor says I have an omniscience problem.  Because I believe it is possible for me to negotiate well enough to get exactly what I want.  And I’m ok with fucking up along the way as I learn how to do it.  She seems to think this isn’t a good plan and she was constantly trying to figure out how my “sexual acting out”, seriously–she brought this up at least three different times during the hour we were together, “And did you act out sexually during that time too?” whenever I talked about other major symptoms of anxiety.  She’s trying to figure out if I go fuck people every time I get upset.  No, I really don’t.  Bitch.  That kind of judgment pisses me right the fuck off.  I’m friends with the vast majority of people I have had sexual contact with.  Of the people I no longer know, only one is actively acrimonious and that’s a joint issue.  I have been very safe in terms of disease risk and pregnancy… what’s the problem?  Oh wait, I forgot.  I’m just not supposed to do those things because they are amorphously bad.  Well fuck you too.

Err, anyway.  This is my long rant about why I’m not interested in an affair because I’m manic.  I’m interested in an affair because I’m really bored and I don’t know another way to get that really intense bonding and attention I want.  I’m doing it in a way that is entirely on the up and up with everyone in my life.  Why is this a problem?  Who will be harmed?  Why do I need to be medicated away from this?  No.  This is not the approach I want.  I learned a lot about what I need to say on the next visit.  That’s good.

But what I really want is a month of sneaking out after hours to be the crazy super hot girlfriend.  I want it so bad.  I want someone to be obsessed with me.  I do I do I do.  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  He’s not going to want me.  *beat head on floor* (I’m kidding Ali!  I won’t do it.  I’ll just shake my fists in fury.  It’s… not the same.)

Some problems are too big to fix.

Leave a reply

This isn’t fucking one of them.  I’m going to Ikea again today.  I’m buying a bed to put in the garage.  Today.  We have ongoing issues with where and when to have sex.  Our house isn’t that big.  The baby is still in our bed and likely to be for close to another year.  Ugh.  The logistical issue of where to have sex, The ugly chair that is falling apart and broken and really can’t handle much pressure… not to mention it’s totally uncomfortable and awful; the couch where the kids periodically walk in and we have to be silent and it’s still not that comfortable; our bed with Calli asleep (yes we do it occasionally, but we try not to); the shower; or the floor.  Take your pick.  Doesn’t it all sound exciting and comfy?

Ok so we aren’t having as much sex as we’d like.  It’s been a consistent issue for over three years.  Logistics are the first big stumbling block.

Something that bothers me about the constant “be yourself!” that people spout is… it’s not very true these days.  If you don’t like someone or something they do, then you don’t talk to them any more.  There are too many people to know these days.  Keeping people you don’t like is silly.

Silly.

I have been listening to Adele’s song “Someone Like You” a lot lately.  I’m thinking about my mom.

Leave a reply

I always feel confused when people say I have a lot of triggers.  I’m not even sure what that means, exactly.  I know that I can be bopping along reading a sweet letter from a mother to a daughter about Santa and burst into tears because all in a flash I think of my mother.  I think that my mother didn’t actually get to have visits from Santa when she was a child.  The first Christmas stocking my mother ever got in her life she got from me when I was 16.  I was absolutely horrified when I understood that she had been filling stockings for her children for 29 years and she had never gotten one herself, ever.  My dad was an asshole; he got one every year of their 15 year marriage.

I have been married for five years.  Somehow I doubt that their marriage was like mine five years in.  For my mom and dad that is when Jimmy was being born.  All of my mom’s stories about my dad are tinged with bitterness, so I can’t get a straight answer about anything.  He was an addict, I’m sure it was up and down.  Noah doesn’t seem to think I am an addict.  I suppose that’s good.  Things are up and down anyway.

It’s interesting how music is universal.  Yes, that’s a topic shift.  You can listen to a song and feel identification with it no matter how close your actual life experiences are.  At the moment I’ve got Journey, “Don’t Stop Believing” and if ever there was a song that lots of people feel inspired by… even while they know they are drowning in their own cheese.  This song is increasingly popular again.  And it’s not because it’s a great song.  It’s cheesy and pretty silly.  But it’s fun and it’s how I find my pleasure.  I have a play list called “healing”.  I haven’t listened to much else in the past year.  Periodically I will hear a song on the radio and add it.  It’s four hours long.  These are the songs I listen to over and over again.  I like songs like Dolly Parton’s “Better Get To Livin'”.

This is a mixed thing because unless I only pick music that has been written in the past ten years… I have associations with my early life with most songs I would pick.  I sit back and think of driving with my mom.  I must have been six or seven.  It was before the accident.  We were singing along with the Four Tops on the tape player.  Same Old Song.  “It’s the same old song, but with a different meaning since you’ve been gone.”  I had no negative associations with music then.  We were singing along loudly.  The windows were down and there was a nice warm breeze.

I remember stretching back in the seat, back in those days six year olds sat in the front seat without a seat belt.  Shhh don’t tell anyone.  The seat belt law was passed when I was four.  I found out about it in school when I was eight.  I read my mother the riot act and I started insisting on wearing one.  I also made her wear one.  That is why the government wants children in public school, just saying.

I looked at my mom while she sang along.  She was so cheerful and happy.  She was hardly ever happy.  She was usually sad.  If that song came on the radio while I was on the freeway I might cause an accident because I would cry so hard.  I miss my mom.

Recently I sent my friend this article on gaslighting.  In further conversation with him I made a point that I realized is the point for me.  I’m tired of having to defend my arguments basic validity.  Not that I think I shouldn’t have to argue my side of the issue.  I’m tired of having to bring in a long list of sources before I am “allowed” to have my side.  Before I have proven that my side is an acceptable side for someone to hypothetically have.  This. 

What does it mean to be triggered?  Isn’t everything all connected for everyone?

Things are improving

Leave a reply

I have made a lot of progress on the house.  At this point there are 20 boxes left.  Some of those are dvds/cds that need to be ripped before they are gotten rid of.  Most of them are childrens/young adult literature and are waiting for the bookshelf that arrives next Saturday. (!) I will spend next Saturday and Sunday painting the bookshelf and then the rest of the “unpacking” should take ~30 minutes.  Then the boxes will be out of my house.  I am posting on freecycle today to get rid of the boxes.

So when I say I am capable of really ridiculous amounts of work, that’s what I mean.  I cried.  I ranted.  I had a few emotional breakdowns (it’s really good that Sarah and Noah can be patient with me) but we dealt with why I was having them and I soldiered on.  Because that’s what I do.  The actual “unpacking” has less than two hours to go.

Now we get into sorting, decluttering, and storage.  Ugh.  It’s not really part of “unpacking” but it is the hardest part of combining two households.  We have been making nearly daily runs to the local thrift store with a van full of stuff.  I had to make a trip over this morning because we can’t put the kids in the van yet and Sarah wants to take Shanna to the museum. I must say that I experienced writing that last sentence with butterflies in my stomach and I had to bounce from joy.  Someone other than me is going to take Shanna to the museum.  Oh man.  I’m excited.  I find that I am having trouble feeling present with the “joy” of parenting when I do it 24/7.  That is already changing.

On the decluttering front: we have already gone through bakeware, pots and pans, purses, the glass cabinet, bathroom stuff (this was huge), and a ton of Sarah’s clothes. We’ve done massive book purges, but we probably need to get rid of more.  I had a hard time this weekend because I have already gotten rid of everything I have ever owned that qualifies as “permanent storage”, such as my baby box.  All my teaching stuff.  We truly do not have space for things that are not in use.  And I just won’t pay for a storage unit.  I uhhh did not bring this up in a polite way, but I brought it up.  From what I could tell, both Sarah and Noah were unaware that I had already done that and it kind of changed their perception of how serious I am about storage.  Maybe.  That could be projecting.  But they had interesting facial expressions as I sobbed.  Getting rid of stuff is hard.  It feels like I am erasing my very existence.  So I get why Noah and Sarah are more resistant, but we only have so much space.

I need to have this house decluttered to the point where everything has a home and we can clean it quickly.  I just can’t deal with all the stuff any more.  I am in this house night and day.  I have to feel comfortable in it.  I really feel emotionally overwhelmed by excess stuff.  I feel rather bad that I lured Sarah (who has a lot of cool stuff) into joining the semi-broken dynamic I have with Noah where I constantly badger him to get rid of stuff.  In my defense I get rid of my stuff before I get rid of anyone else’s stuff.  Does that make it better?  Probably not.  But as long I am responsible for the vast majority of the cleaning, I have to be able to do it.  And I can’t do it if I can’t put everything away.

And if I paid a maid service I would still be doing like most of the cleaning.  The problem with cleaning is that you have to be able to sort, put things away, do dishes, do laundry, and be present for the incidental spills 100% of the time to actually be useful to me. The part a maid could do would only free up about an hour and a half or two hours a week.  And I really loathe the experience of trying to get the house tidy enough for maid service and then let it stay tidy until they arrive.  It’s stressful.  My kids (until today!!!!) don’t usually leave the house without me so I can’t schedule things around them not being here to mess the house up.  Only now I can.  Hmmmm.  Maybe this is a more appealing option now than it used to be.  I’ll think about it.

I suspect that part of the problem is that I have gotten past the easy (for me) parts of adding an adult to our house I am freaking out because the next bits are hard.  I have to walk a fine line between pushing people to get rid of stuff they have emotional attachment to and letting everyone decide for themselves what stuff they need.  I don’t need the same stuff as Noah or Sarah to be happy.  We are incredibly different.  We are materialistic Americans with hobbies, yes there are things we feel we need to keep doing the things that make us happy.  That’s not a moral failing.  But where does the stuff go?  This is a small house.  When I measured the rooms years ago I determined that inside the house is around 950′ sq of living space.  Adding the garage adds 528′ sq.  I am not thrilled with the layout, but I can make it work.

I need to sort through and organize the books and linens (finished before thrift run) and notepads.  Those are the current most over-full areas of the house.  I’m kind of terrified of books, honestly.  I’m not sure where we would put another bookshelf but we may have to find a spot.  Part of the problem is, this house is dark.  If you completely line the walls with bookshelves (that I also don’t want to pay for) then it feels like a cave.  I wasn’t happy in the house like that.  That was how the living room worked for years.  And it is always messy because the kids destroy the books.  Ugh.  That’s why there aren’t adult books in the living room.  I wanted to kill my kids because they were constantly strewn across the room.  I feel anxiety in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it.  I was constantly hurting myself and tripping.  I couldn’t keep the floor clear for more than 15 minutes and it was awful.  I just don’t want that in my life.  It sucks.  We have to fit this layout of books.  I can’t put them back in the living room.  I can’t deal with the stress.  Or Sarah will find a good bookcase for her room.  Oh god.  Not the living room.  And those freakin notepads.  Does anyone want any 3 ring spiral notebooks?  We have enough to furnish an elementary school for a year.  Freecycle.  That’s where those should go.

Which is to say, I’m actually past all the hardest work.  I’m fidgeting stuff around until it fits now.  The kids can be in the same room while I work without making a mess so I can work all day long.  Though I did take yesterday off from the unpacking/sorting.  I’m to the point where I am pretty sure I could stack things in the storage area and have the party this weekend.  Oh man.  That’s a lovely thought.  I really don’t want to do that, so I’m going to keep plugging away.

It’s probably worth explicitly stating that when I am miserable I post a lot.  When I’m being productive I don’t post.  I rarely feel the need to steal moments away from happy times to announce on the internet that I’m happy.  Things are on an upswing.  I’m still a stress monkey because I am.  Yeah.  Dude.  Uncle Bob died less than three months ago.  Divorcing my family was also, less than three months ago.  I think the fact that I am to the point where I’m just over angsting about unpacking isn’t actually so bad.  I’m still having a hard time being nice with friends.  I think I’m doing well with the girls.  They are both cheerful and seem to be thriving and growing.

I need to just hit post.

I’m baaaaack

4 Replies

And of course the first thing I do is plop myself down in the middle of a big thought process around priorities.  I’m thinking about my priorities in life because right now I have to start acting on them in terms of living my life.  I no longer have a brick wall event coming that forces a reordering into crisis mode.  How do I actually want to live?  Priority number one: deciding my priorities needs to not become an obsessive thing that disrupts my life.  (Here I will make a side note: I have already had multiple funny asides I wanted to make but I can’t remember the code for how to create a footnote and trying to think about how to make them is derailing my thought process.  I’m annoyed.  I may have finally found a motivation for learning how to code.)

It is 10 pm and my entire family is asleep.  Seems quite reasonable.  Only… the kids and I went to sleep at 1pm.  We are going to have an interesting adjustment from jet lag.  I’m up thinking about the patterns of our days and unschooling and my mental health and getting the house ready for Sarah and food and gardening and…

So I am thinking about priorities.  Sarah will be in our house within 20 days.  I am so excited I can barely sit still.  But that’s not a hard dead line in any negative traumatic way for me.  I don’t have to have the house to a certain “readiness”.  She could move in today and it would all be handled.  I can do work before then that will make the integration process easier, and I’m doing that.  But it’s not an emergency.  It can happen or not in whatever time or order I want.  I’m done with the scary bits of that project.  I just get to anticipate having Sarah here.  Everything else is gravy.  So right now I really am at the place where I get to sit down and think about how I want my life to look just because I get to start making it real now.

While I was on the trip I spent an obscene amount of time on Mothering.com because I was stuck in hotel rooms.  I don’t have any idea how much I posted and I don’t want to think about it.  I also wandered around the net looking at other parenting websites.  I learned that I need to stay on MDC.  I do not have the time or energy to go find a new forum.  My story is long and complex.  And I can’t tell people little comfortable sound bites that ensure that they feel comfortable enough with me for me to say things without being attacked.  I have a long posting history on MDC.  Folks recognize me.  It feels like a community to me.  I have noticed it becoming more close knit after the recent mass evacuation.  A whole bunch of people have reached out to me during the decline of the site.  I feel increasingly seen there and I like it.  I suppose that means I am moving up the hierarchy of the clique?  But in a war of attrition I will lose.  I have too many other things to do and I am going to go do them.  I don’t want to prioritize the kind of time it takes to stay popular on MDC.  I have a life to live.

I started this blog because I wanted a place to feel accountable to so that I could document my life.  I am not good at staying productive in a vacuum.  I need a boss.  Which isn’t to say that I think I owe accountability to anyone specific on the internet.  Y’all can kiss off.  (said with love)  But I am choosing an unorthodox path for my family.  I want to prove to myself that I am actually doing what I say I am doing.  I don’t know another way to give myself the motivation to keep working without trying to produce some result.  I want to talk about what I’m doing.  I miss the camaraderie of having a job.  Raising my kids is my job.  And sweet sony Jesus don’t make this into a stay at home mom versus a work out of the home mom thing.  That’s not what I mean.  I mean that I have decided to not only stay home, but I am educating my kids.  That’s a separate job as well.  I am responsible for preparing them for the world.  Every parent is responsible for raising their children, and we all get help along that process.  Each parent chooses a different amount of help.  There is nothing wrong with that and I’m not judging how much “time” people spend with their kids.  I’m really not.  I’m trying to figure out what parts of raising them, educating them, preparing them for the world, entertaining them, etc. I actually have to do on a day to day basis and what parts of that can I and/or should I farm out?  There is no need for me to be a martyr.

My other job is being me.  Being me is high maintenance.  Being me (near as I can tell) is a lot more work than it is to be someone else.  I can’t get good trade in value, so I’m sort of stuck with being me.  If I want to be me well I have to put a lot of work into that.  I am trying to get to the point where I respect and like myself enough that I feel good about all the time and effort I put into me instead of feeling ashamed that I require so much effort.  That is complicated.  Since we got home I have been doing a lot of emotional eating.  I can tell.  I can feel it.  I can look at what I am eating and see why it is making me physically feel bad.  But I can’t seem to motivate myself to deal with it because of all the complicating factors around being exhausted from the trip.  But tomorrow we have a local farmers market.  And I’m working on giving myself permission to make specific choices that are short term suboptimal in favor of preparing for the marathon.  It’s weird.

I don’t know if I am making any sense.  I am also, once again, able to medicate for my anxiety.  Thank you California for recognizing that I should be able to have control over whether or not I have to feel that upset all the time.  I haven’t yelled since we got home.  And my stomach isn’t hurting all the time.  I’ve been able to slowly start stretching out the muscles in my head and neck and I no longer have a headache.  I had that headache for a month straight.  I’m fighting with my guilt to allow me more than the absolute bare minimum to be not full of rage.  It’s 10:23 and my kids are likely to wake up in the middle of the night.  So I will be on duty and that requires being mostly sober.  But then I will get edgy.  Ah fuck it.  It is better for me to ensure that my stomach stops hurting.  That requires more than the amount that takes the edge off of my anxiety.  Tonight, that is the right decision.

I worry about putting things on the internet because I worry that I will only put the bad things.  Or only the bad things will be true.  I need to get back to a place where I am loudly doing the good things too.  That’s the only thing that will allow me to feel safe.  And in order for me to feel like I am doing the good things loudly… I need to figure out what doing the good things are so I can know if I am actually doing them.  Seriously.  Do other people have to stop and think about this stuff?  Do you just know?  Ugh.

I don’t think that today’s noodling counts as a binding agreement.  Just so it has been said.  But I want to give my boss a status update.  I’m like that.

I think that it’s time to set priorities.  What things actually matter to me.  And I need to act like I really do believe my priorities.  And if I can’t act like I believe them… I need to decide how I feel about not believing them anymore because I need honesty.  I can’t deal with hypocrisy.  But it’s complicated because sometimes it isn’t about hypocrisy, you just aren’t meeting ‘x’ priority because you are still stuck on ‘g’ and it is more important.  I want to be very clear with myself about when and where I am stuck on g and when I have simply stopped believing that x is important.

For example.  The local food thing.  Wait, no… I want to back up.  I want to start at the beginning.  It’s my story.

So I spent a lot of time on MDC during the trip.  One of the best things I got out of it (and the side track over to Trolls With Wooden Spoons) was to examine some of the ways in which I really did drink the Kool Aid at MDC.  And some of the things I have gotten from the experience have been good for me and I’m thrilled, and others suck.  But I’ve been forcing myself to take it as a package deal.  It’s not.  No matter how rabidly people on the internet berate me for not meeting one specific point on a checklist… dude.  Really.  I’m not failing at life if I stop doing something perfectly.  Uhm… not that I have been perfect at any step on this journey.  I think I need to stop making perfection a goal or part of the conversation.  I just need to figure out what it means to be me and do that.  How pretentious is that?

I feel about as self-involved as an adolescent.  Shanna and I are at the same space in development, and in some ways that’s true.  As I am discovering myself on the journey to recovering from incest, I really am starting in about the same place Shanna is.  I am reparenting myself.  But I’m far harder on myself than I am on Shanna.  Maybe I should be a lot more gentle with both of us.  My daughter is already a shining example of vitality.  I need to stop acting like I need to feel guilty for neglecting her.  I’m not neglecting her.  I am treating it like my only job is to educate her and she’s blossoming.  Ok, she’s weird… yes.  But she’s trying things out.  None of what she is doing is for keeps.  Geez, she’s only three.  But why can’t I have the same latitude?  Why can’t I be just figuring out who I am too?  That’s also my job.  I didn’t get that when I was a small child the way normal kids do.  I was too busy keeping secrets and trying to be the person other people wanted me to be.

The thing is, part of who I am is a responsible adult.  I need to ensure that I am meeting the specific priorities that actually matter to me and to the people and community around me.  I am quite literally responsible to and for the people and things around me.  I have obligations.  I have no interest in walking away from my obligations.  I really don’t want to leave.  I have a wonderful life.  But it is work.  I have many jobs there.  I have been hiding at home for a long time because I haven’t been up to the work of being in a community and being me and being a parent all at the same time.  I’ll be frank and say that I worry about that decision.  I worry about that decision partially because I know that I describe my life on the internet in ways that make some people worry about my children.  I want witnesses.  That sounds awful.  I want there to be no way in the world for me to get away with doing anything bad to my children.  I want there to really and truly be no way at all I could hurt my kids and it would be invisible.  And that means a blog is not the whole answer.  That means people who interact with my children a lot and watch them.

Side note: this blog post about being queer just made my day.  I struggle a lot with queerness as an identity.  I feel pressured to engage in homosexual sex in a way I don’t feel pressured to engage in heterosexual sex.  It’s self-imposed.  But that is part of me figuring out who I am.  So maybe this isn’t a side note after all.  I’m crying because I know I am begging for permission for spending time on thinking about myself.  I want to believe it is ok for me to take up as much space as I need to take up in my day.  That’s part of my job!  Damnit!

Another side note: the more I think about Lady Gag’s The Edge of Glory video the more I think that woman is a fucking genius.  In most of her videos she hands you a fully fleshed out STORY and you are not allowed to project your own stuff.  There is no room for you in her stories.  She is sharing her fantasy.  Not this time.  In this one there is a lot of room for the argument that she isn’t presenting a story at all.  For once… she’s just … on the edge of a story with you.  And this time you get to tell it.  “I think that at this point in the video I would do…”  And yet you can’t get away from the fact that it is a Lady Gaga video because even when she is downplaying all the stuff that is her normal trademark she is still so very her.  So in this video she is inviting collaboration.  I don’t think she made this video so simply because she is a cheap bastard.  I think she wanted to give her fans a place to project themselves into a relationship with her.  I think she is that willing to be vulnerable.  And that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  Seriously.  This video is a love song to each and every fan.  She didn’t want it to be a big dance number song.  This is how she feels about every person and she wanted it to be one on one.  This is how she wants to fuck every single one of her fans.  I think she is a genius.  She wants to feel like she is in love with each person.  She is Mother Monster and she wants to be lover as well.  I really think I should take the trouble to learn more about her and become more of an actual fan.  Because only in talking to other fans will avoid sounding like a lunatic.  ha.

I need to not focus on what other people should or shouldn’t be doing outside my family.  That needs to drop off my priority list entirely.  So when I notice at 11:22 that I am no longer able to coherently write I need to go to sleep instead of trolling the internet.

Finding boundaries

3 Replies

Why am I awake? It’s 11pm. I should have been asleep hours ago. Instead I am awake beating my head against a metaphorical wall. Why does everything have to be black or white? I have started and stopped several posts where I want to provide this lurid description of what I did last night. The thing is, I want to write it in such a way that it sounds like a semi-reasonable step on a very unreasonable path. Does that make sense? Maybe?

If I assume that my family’s predictions for me are correct then I can interpret last night as a horrible predictor of things to come! I abandoned my children to party and be promiscuous! See, I am just as evil as my family. But that’s not the real story. I didn’t abandon my children. You do not have to sit at home 24/7 just because you have children. That’s not a reasonable expectation. I went out for a night so that I could see friends. We chose to get drunk. Given how popular of a pastime this is I assume that I do not need to explain the appeal. But dude. Yes, I even made out with a pretty girl. But I was watchful of my boundaries and when I realized I was dissociating from my body and no longer really engaged with the act… I was performing… I stopped doing it.

I drank more than I should have, but that is not a moral failing. I am thinking about myself as if I have committed some sin. That’s rather ludicrous, don’t you think? Oh wait. But that’s the dichotomy I know. Either you are abstinent from all substances so that you are good or you are a horrifyingly abusive addict. I have spent so many hours beating my head against the wall struggling with using medication for my anxiety. I don’t want to use it. I don’t want to need it. I don’t want to admit I need it.

My uncle died 17 days ago. Since then I found an ally in my brother who provided oodles of additional information about my childhood abuse, lost an ally in my brother when I said that my need to process should be more important than our father’s good memory. I outed my sister and my mother and loudly divorced my entire extended family. And I’m at least 1/4 of the way into a book describing my childhood. It’s ok that I’m having some intense emotions. Really.

Tonight I watched the movie Hounddog. Towards the end of the movie there is an intense scene where a young girl deals with trauma by finding a way to express herself. I’m not going to say more than that because I think that anyone who wants to understand me should watch the movie. It’s not a direct parallel by any means, but I think that is the closest picture I’ve ever seen of what it is like to be part of my family. And I feel such intense horror because what happened to me was a lot worse.

My father put a gun to my head when I was 9 years old and told me to suck his dick and my family thinks I shouldn’t say that out loud because it HURTS PEOPLES FEELINGS to hear it. I am bad if I hurt other people so I should just shut up. Maybe go talk to a therapist, but not really. If you do talk to a therapist you need to not reveal any of the parts that make you look bad. You are a perpetual victim. You learn how to carefully tell your story to different people so that you always elicit sympathy. And you can’t really tell the truth because CPS is bad and they want to hurt our family for no good reason so be sure to lie about everything. So maybe that therapist isn’t such a good plan after all. People in my family go to therapy for a couple of months, once a week. They are prescribed a mood stabilizer. They confess that they were abused in vague, general terms. “My father did things to me.” And people don’t make them say any more because abuse is a private thing.

Once they get to the point where they have been told that they are brave and awesome for Surviving! You Are So Cool! Then they stop going to therapy. And they feel like they have been “cured” and if you talk about things from the past you are Bringing Up Old Stuff. They are past all that now. Why can’t I move on.

Because my father raped me when I was 9 years old and no one did anything to stop it. Because when I go to my uncle’s hospital to say goodbye I am told not to bother coming because there is no point. I am told that my father’s death and my brother’s death don’t count in my lifetime tally of grief because they were evil. I am told that I make mountains out of molehills. I posted a timeline a few days ago with a list of big traumatic events in my life. That’s a lot of really bad shit. The number one trauma in most peoples life is the death of a spouse. Really? Holy fucking shit. No wonder I feel like such a complete freak of nature. I have spent most of my life harping on the fact that you can’t compare trauma, and people shouldn’t minimize their pain. But I do a lot of minimizing my trauma. I do a lot (in my head) of saying that other people were abused too and they are doing better than me. No really, I don’t know anyone who had a childhood like mine. I was so very isolated.

——————————————–

I don’t know how to break the chains of my childhood abuse alone. I need a few more decades of talk therapy and I may not be done then. Because when animals are under stress they revert to their earliest, most basic training. Mine was… yeah. I can never ever let down my guard and act like I am “cured”. That is a basic fallacy. That is the problem with the diagnosing of mental health issues. It’s not like I have the flu. I’m not going to “get better”. I don’t feel like it is ok for me to exist and tell my stories and take up space in the world. And that shit’s gotta stop.

I want to talk about what I did on Friday night because I feel proud of myself.  I feel like I made really good choices that are consistent with my professed values that I arrived at after extensive soul searching.  But lots of people think I am evil.  They are happy to tell me so.  Some of them won’t tell me so.  Instead they will talk to me about learning to control my anger.  They will tell me about this long list of things I can do to “be present” and “not let the past get in the way of the present”.

THAT’S WHAT MY FUCKING MOTHER WOULD SAY THE DAY AFTER I WAS RAPED YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES.  I feel this crushing weight of sorrow.  People want to help so much.  They don’t know how to help by and large because they are projecting their own view of the world onto my life.  It’s normal.  It’s natural.  It is so well meaning.  How do I manage it though?  Because it’s ok for all those other people to have their opinions too.  How do I hold on to my sense of self in the face of that?  Well, I toss my words like pebbles into the sea.  I pray to a God I’m not sure if I believe in and I ask for help.  I spend approximately .25 seconds doing that.  And then I turn on the computer.

I want help.  I want to learn how to be me and how to be happy and how to feel like it is ok that I take up space in the world.  It’s not like I want to take up that much space.  I live in a house that is less than 1,000 sq feet.  There will be three adults here blessedly soon.  Two gorgeous growing girls.  If I want to learn how to take up as much space as I can I need to be careful.  I need to watch very carefully for toes.  I need to see where I end and they begin.

And the only way to really know that is to develop intimacy.  It’s kind of an odd thing to admit.  I am not inviting Sarah to move in with me because I want another in house lover.  I am asking Sarah to become a deep and intimate part of my support network.  I am asking her to consent to being there for me as family in a way I haven’t had.  I need to learn boundaries.  And it’s not ok to put all of that on my kids.  I need adults in my daily life and I don’t know how else to have that.

Whenever people tell me to get over things I want to rage and beat the walls.  People get through horrible things by having it acknowledged and talked about and being validated.  In times of stress people revert to their childhood training.  I was traumatized constantly as a small child.  I was kept in isolation from other people.  No one really knew me.  I flitted into and out of different communities so I was always weird but no one took the trouble to find out why.  I have continued it more and more as an adult until I find that I look around the bay area and I can’t leave my house any more.

You see, I’ve left fragments of my personality in every social group and I don’t know which parts are true and which parts are me reacting to trauma from my childhood so I did things impetuously that weren’t awesome.  So a lot of people dislike me.  And I feel like it is all my fault.  If I were only a good person this wouldn’t have happened.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

But this is the really uncomfortable part.  Ok, fine.  I can see those things.  I can make resolutions to change my behavior.  I know exactly what the problems are.  But the thing is… life is stressful.  Mine much more so than most people.  That’s the problem with being a sprinter.  If I am not being traumatized I will go create a traumatic situation because I will sign on for so much stress that I revert back to broken childhood behavior patterns and I blow up my life.

Uhm, in my defense I’m doing this in more and more healthy ways.  And that’s the part I’m trying to get through.  And uhm… it’s not a “get better” thing.  Mental illness is not like the flu.  For someone who had a normal, sane, stable childhood… even if it wasn’t absolutely perfect, children are resilient.  People survive lots of things.  If you revert to your childhood training you will get through ok.  My childhood training was to act out sexually, use substances to manage my emotions, and inflict enormous self harm rather than speak out about my sexual assault because it made other people uncomfortable to hear about it.

Do you see why I might have anger issues?  Is it growing more obvious why I don’t want someone to tell me to go get my second chakra cleaned so I can be free of my torment?  (No Marisa, I don’t mean you.)  It’s not about my second chakra.  It’s about being raped repeatedly and conditioned to believe that not only was it ok, but I deserved it and I had better shut up.

Yes, I need to learn boundaries.  But I do not need to be invited into a group of adults and told that I need to be responsible for their reaction to me.  I’m currently writing about my anger at my last therapist, if anyone missed that bit.  I need long term talk therapy.  I need someone who can get to know me because my trauma story is a special god damn snowflake.  There isn’t another story exactly like mine.  I can have things in common with other stories without their resolution being mine.  Only I know my whole story because it is scattered to the winds.  That’s part of why I am writing more and more of it on the internet and I want to publish books.  I am so tired of feeling like I am invisible.

I’m not.  I am demonstrably not invisible.  This is not rational.  There is no part of this experience that is rational.  But it’s my early childhood training.  Watching Shanna is weird because I’m watching her learn how to navigate the world.  Her body is changing so fast that daily she has to reevaluate where she ends and where other things begin.  She doesn’t think about things like moving the chair if her neck is uncomfortable so she can see better.

—————————

And that all feels like beside the point only it’s not.  There has to be a point.  But this blog post isn’t it.

Why I had to fire my therapist

2 Replies

I have a hard time with the fact that I want to pick people to be in authority and have them dictate who I should be. I transfer around who has this power a lot. A lot of the reason that Noah is such a wonderful mate for me is because he shares nearly zero of my interests and he has a lot of interests of his own. He wants time to go do his thing. So he is shoving me towards independence with all the subtlety of an atomic bomb. I need to go try a bunch of things and fail a bunch. I need to go figure out what I actually like to do. That’s what this identity crisis bullshit is about.

I had to fire my therapist because she doesn’t have crystal clear boundaries. I’m not actually sure many people have clear enough boundaries. I’m ridiculously empathetic and I can usually see what people want from me as clearly as if I am reading a book. It’s uhm, kind of weird to admit out loud, but I’ve actually received several proposals of marriage. I don’t tell people that. Because I always brush them off as not serious and the guy must be crazy and just saying that because I just got them off. Whatever. Normally I run from those guys immediately. Those are the nice guys. Ew.

I think the reason that my relationship with Noah works is because he is a cocky son of a bitch. At least long enough to make me hot. The rest of the time he’s plodding and quiet and he keeps his head down so I don’t blow up at him. It’s an odd mix. Why am I fixating on this now. Because I am freaking out because I don’t know how to have boundaries. I don’t know how to be normal. I had to fire my therapist because she expected me to have to defend my boundaries in therapeutic space instead of her doing it for me so I was not safe. She did not hand me a clear framework of what to expect and then follow it to the letter. She was flexible. She was ok with me sending her obsessive text messages. That’s not ok. Because then I fixate. Then I begin to feel like she wants me to do that because she thinks I’m that kind of crazy. When a group leader establishes that we will be spending the next six weeks on sharing our stories and person a will go this week and person b will go in two weeks… That has to be what happens for me.

I need people to help me police boundaries because I really can’t do it all on my own. I don’t know where they are. I have to tell people over and over and over what happened to me because people expect me to be able to keep my shit together in situations where I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I need to learn to recognize that there are situations I can’t be in because they are simply too stressful for me. I am special. What happened to me was freakish and unusual and I need to stop acting like I can do everything all the time the way everyone else can.

Sometimes. And sometimes I have my shit together and I monitor my boundaries easily and it’s ok. This kind of sadness isn’t even all that common. It is something I cannot avoid doing when I am around my family though. I need to just accept that as part of me. There are places and people who make me into a sick person. I start lying and doing bad things in private.

When I was in kindergarden I pulled a little boy behind the book cart and talked him into letting me give him a blowjob. When I came back to the school in sixth grade he told people I had raped him. I called his mother and denounced him as a liar. Today I found him on facebook and told him:
“When we were kids at Lakeside I acted out inappropriately towards you and years later you told people I raped you. I stormed and raged and called your mother.

I need to apologize to you. What I did to you when we were little kids wasn’t ok. I am really sorry I brought that into your life and I did. And when you talked about the fact that it had been a problem for you I lied and shamed you in public.

I am so sorry. I hope you have been able to find people to talk to about what I did to you. I am not excusing myself for what I did. I was a very messed up kid and it is only now that I am stopping to start to think about what I did and why.

You are one of the people I hurt and I am so sorry. I have been sorry for 20 years.”

And I went and found the boy who tried to rape me in high school and I said:
“I need to say this to you. It’s going to seem completely out of the blue. I’m not sure if I want you to respond and acknowledge me or if it is better for me that you not respond. Either way I don’t get to control what you do. Anyway.

Right now I am going through a really rough period because I am stopping to think about all the ways in which I was sexually assaulted in my life. I’m trying to figure out all the ways that I was hurt by people so that I can get a grip on how much therapeutic work I have left. I’m pretty daunted. I was really horrifically raped and assaulted repeatedly for a long time.

And you were part of that. You got drunk and you didn’t want to hear my no. Cameron had to pull you off of me. That was an attempted rape, Justin. And that is what sent me running scared from Los Gatos High School and that friends group. I went and found a lot of ways to get hurt after that because I thought every single person in the world wanted to do that to me.

I think you were a stupid, drunk kid. I don’t think you are evil. I am almost certain that you don’t think of yourself as a rapist. But I am still very hurt by your actions almost 15 years later. I need to say that out loud. I need it to not be invisible that people did this to me. And that includes you.

Please for the love of god if you have an ounce of compassion in your soul please don’t call me a liar. It happened. I have so much evidence of these things happening to me. In some cases I have court proceedings and my family is still calling me a liar.

Even if you ignore this message. Even if you hit delete and you never think about this again. Please don’t call me a liar.”

If I don’t say these things I feel like I am concealing evil in my soul. I feel like I am perpetuating the shame and abuse that made the people who molested me. I will not abuse my children. I will figure out the boundaries. I will ask for help figuring out the boundaries. I will say my guilt out loud. I will come to peace with the things I did when I was helpless. I will look at what I am doing now that I am not helpless and I will not be merciful. I have to do this right.

Because if I fuck this up. I might create kids who hurt like me. And I can tell you right now that I am not going to be that kind of failure. Fuck that shit. I can’t keep my kids from hurting. But I can keep them from feeling like they are on the outside of a glass building looking at people who love them because their mother abused them heinously. I don’t have boundaries because my mother had no boundaries. And I kind of wonder if that is worse than raping me. Seriously. My mother did not prepare me to live in the world and she started neglecting me and leaving me to my own devices when I was a toddler. I have a story about sneaking out and trying to walk to the grocery store when I was three. My mother was asleep because she worked the night shift at Denny’s. My sister was supposed to be watching me, but instead she was out fucking people and doing drugs.

I had a pocket full of pennies and I was going to buy Barbie cards at the grocery store. I started to watch Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms yesterday. When I saw the little girl declaring “I’m self reliant” I freaked out and had to shut it off. I couldn’t bear to see some happy go lucky little kid declaring how awesome she was for being neglected and abused so I turned it off. Ugh. The joke in that movie is, of course everyone knows she shouldn’t be talking like that because she isn’t self reliant at all. She’s a child. She is completely dependent.

But I hold myself responsible for things that happened when I was a child because my mother refuses to acknowledge her own responsibility and guilt. I don’t have good boundaries because of this. And that’s the part my family won’t see. That is why they are closing ranks. They hold me 100% responsible for the things I did as a very small child while simultaneously not ascribing any real responsibility to my mother. That’s really broken.

And thinking about how broken they are is a waste of thinking time. Because they are. Even though I’ve been telling myself lately that they aren’t so bad, they are. They really and truly are.