I have a long day with the kids ahead of me. I’m rethinking some of my discipline attitude this morning. The thought of being stuck in the house makes me want to cry. I’ll figure something out.
There are a lot of things I want to write about but I don’t have time. I feel like I am compiling a mental list of memories I want to flesh out into stories. Why I grew up hating yellow. My relationship with Disneyland (which really I want to send as a letter to someone in Disney customer service because I’m distinctly unhappy with Disneyland Paris). I want to write about M/s and what it means to me. (I know you don’t like that capitalization, Mo, and I can live with that.
Noah and I had a conversation this morning about M/s. It made me happy. I want to write about relationship styles and life approaches because I want to write them for Noah. It’s hard to fully explain myself in a conversation. I spend too much time quietly thinking and feeling unable to speak. I don’t want to do M/s at this stage of our life so the conversation is academic at this point. Theoretical. Hypothetical. Future tense. It’s fun to think about. We’ll see.
There are different kinds of relationships to model. I grew up with people who were highly enmeshed and codependent and as a result largely non-functional in society. It’s possible to be highly enmeshed and codependent and also functional. What’s the difference? I don’t know. But I think that it involves knowing that even though you want to be codependent and enmeshed there are times when no one but you is going to meet your needs and you have to get them fucking met.
I would like to have a lifelong relationship with my kids. We are going to have a very non-standard relationship. We won’t have a standard set of life experiences. My kids will probably be very differently independent than is common at whatever life stage. I am asynchronous with the world and I don’t know how to teach someone else to be. Professional actors are on a different schedule. Olympic level athletes are on a different schedule. Homeless people are on a different schedule. Professional sailors.
I have moved a lot. I have seen a lot of different schedules. I find it endlessly interesting how people decide to spend their time. I can often see how they are working toward goals. Sometimes I don’t understand their motivation. I try like hell to keep my mouth shut.
I don’t feel like I have the luxury of auto pilot. With great privilege comes great responsibility. I see similar threads in many different pieces of writing. If I were a real academic I would carry around a bibliography in my head. I don’t really care if anyone can check my sources though so I’ll just babble.
With great privilege comes great responsibility. What does that even mean? It means that even though I live in a time and a place with a strong focus on being like other people it doesn’t work for me. Trying hurts me. Nevertheless I have great privilege. I’m not filthy rich (I have very little disposable “extra” money if I want to meet specific long-term goals) but I have more than the vast majority of everyone everywhere through all time. I sound like a bragging asshole. It’s simply and literally true. I have the tax returns to prove it.
If that is true then I need to sit with what that means. I have more access to health care. I have more ability to buy things. I don’t have very much support. In order for me to get consistent support I have to pay for it and that is not very reliable and would cost a whole ‘nother job to support. It would mean changing everything about my life. So I make do without support. Noah does what he can (and it’s a lot more than most husbands from what I can tell. That man is very serious about wanting me to have time to do things that are important to me–I am blessed) but he’s not available to me for very many hours. I am functionally alone with my kids for the vasty majority of hours in every day.
Short term gain for long-term loss doesn’t work for me. I have long-term goals. I am going to make sure I can meet them. I am going to save money and plan. I have waited all my life for this. I have always wanted to do these things but I was afraid to do them alone. I feel ashamed of wanting to drag my kids through the life of experiences I want them to have. They won’t be like other people.
I do not want my children to have a bone deep understanding of what it is like to live with abuse. But I want them to meet real people who live very differently from them. I want them to spend time watching how those people live. I want them to understand what they have. I don’t know other ways to really teach that. It is so important to me to have the experiences I want to have with my children that I want to build a whole life around it. Well, or at least these twenty years. These are the years when I get to learn all of the things I want to learn. I get to go places and try things. I get to be silly and experimental.
But life comes with a price tag. How do you learn about money? What is money? How do you get it? How do you choose to spend it? Why do you choose to spend it that way? What experiences are most important to you?
How do you figure out what kind of grown up you want to be? How do you have the life you want to have? I am having the life I want to have. We take risks and find rewards. We are consciously building in buffers so that our risks have limited impact. I won’t gamble if I can’t afford to lose.
I’ve had several times when I’ve felt a bit mixed about my spending over the past year and some. Then I walk through Oakland and I see the window of the dry cleaners and I smile. And I’m really happy that Wicked Grounds is open every day to give people a safe place to exist when they otherwise have nowhere to go.
Even though I kind of wish I had paid off DVC. Not really. I’m a lot more glad that Wicked Grounds is open. I want to be part of it. I feel so glad that I have a way to feel part of something important to me.
Being part of the scene is not important to Noah. What he wants to do with and to me is between him and me. He doesn’t need anyone else’s sanction. He doesn’t need or particularly want community around this part of his identity. I do and I don’t. I don’t feel like it is a good idea to want approval from that community. That’s not a very positive opinion to have. I’m a very funny mixture of sex-positive and protective.
I have a very specific and intense grasp of one possible outcome of early sexual knowledge. I realize I am uncommon.
I feel like people tend to get immersed in the part of their life they are in. They want to immerse their children in that part of life. I have listened to a lot of conversations in which people talk about sex as natural and they don’t want to feel ashamed of it so they are open with their children. This can run the gamut, folks.
For me, in my house with my kids, the current limit of talk about sex is limited to “masturbation is awesome, normal, healthy and good… and private while you are a kid. Sex with other people comes much later.”
Of course the conversation will get a lot more frank in a few years. But dude, they are two and four. That’s where we are. They don’t need to hear that I like to cry during sex. They don’t need to hear a lot of noises at all. Sex is private.
I didn’t understand that properly until I had kids. I have never before wanted to have a brick wall between me and someone else before I have wild and unabashed sex. It’s not about shame. I don’t think–I suppose I could be wrong.
With my children around I must be alert, focused on them, and able to be disturbed at any point. It’s not good for my ability to focus on what is going on with my body. It’s hard to have much of any attention to spare for Noah’s needs at all, let alone sexually.
I feel like part of me is in waiting. And I feel like learning patience with that experience is part of being a grown up. But it’s hard. I don’t think I would be able to balance this kind of attention and emotional load if I was new to exploring bdsm. I don’t think I would be able to experience NRE and focus on my kids how I do. I have limits.
I don’t want to grow complacent. I have been given a ridiculous gift this lifetime. Regardless of what comes in the future Noah has provided me with a wonderful time and space in my life. I have been more safe here than at any other point. In less than a month we will have been married for six years. Which means I have lived here that long. Twice as long as I lived with Tom.
I want an enmeshed, codependent relationship because I want to feel pressured to stay interesting for Noah’s sake. I like the way he looks at me. I want to feel compelled to earn it. I don’t want to get lazy and go looking for that new-spark with someone else. I want this to meet my needs. If he can’t meet a need then I need to bloody meet it for myself. I don’t need to pass it on to someone else. I don’t want that.
I like who Noah wants to be married to. He wants a permanent crazy girlfriend. He likes living with someone artistic and creative who changes the world around him based on weird whims. I’m not sure why he likes that, but he does. He likes that I want the world to be more how I see it in my head. He likes the world I want to live in.
I didn’t know anyone would ever like me like this.
So there is this Katy Perry song. I feel guilty for liking it. I feel like that about Noah. Honestly. I feel like I have made it very hard to be with me. I want a fairly specific life and it’s not cheap. I feel guilty about needing access to so much money. But it’s there. We have an unthinkable amount of money for me. We have tv stars on tv money. That’s wh
