Category Archives: when I grow up

probably a good decision process

stream of conscious

This has been one of those thinking-heavy but writing-little sorts of weeks. I feel busy. I feel tired and stretched thin. I will be glad when training is over. My race is in nine weeks and two days. The running takes so much out of me and I’m just going to be increasing mileage from here. I feel kind of weird about it.

We’ve had some discipline issues this week. On Tuesdays we are supposed to go to the park with the home schooling group. I feel this socialization is very important. But while I was making lunch (it took an hour because Shanna had a lot of requests–I made scones from scratch, cucumber sandwiches, cut up a bunch of vegetables for dipping and made guac, and and and) Shanna went around the house destroying it.

I’m not sure how other children function. When I describe Shanna as a tornado I’m not kidding. In the hour I was busy in the kitchen she dumped the drawers in her room with clothes, the linen closet, took everything out of the toy box, took several games off of high shelves she isn’t supposed to access and strewed them between multiple rooms, dumped the Lego’s and spread them between multiple rooms, dumped many shelves of books onto the floor, and broke apart the foam letter mat in the garage in addition to dumping all the puzzles off of shelves onto the floor.

I started crying. I can’t go spend hours in the park physically wearing myself out and then come home to that mess. I just can’t. I’m tired. I’m running twenty-five miles a week or more. It’s not like I need my house to be museum tidy but I need to be able to walk through my home without injury. I told Shanna that there was zero possibility we could finish cleaning the house by time to go to the park and I was going to be tired enough after that much cleaning that I was not going to be willing to go late. I would need to sit down and rest.

She cried and screamed and told me I was mean and not fair. I looked at her carefully and then I went to the garage and started cleaning. When she followed me screaming at me I carefully walked her back into the house and shut the door behind me. I’m not going to be screamed at while I clean up after someone. I don’t fucking think so. I was very careful not to yell or scream.

Shanna has been asking me a lot lately how my mother would react in situations. It’s hard. While we were cleaning (after she calmed down) she asked me what my mother would have done. I looked around the house warily and said that my mother would have hit me over and over and told me I was disgusting and bad. She looked shocked. She asked me if I think that about her. I said no. I told her that her behavior isn’t very considerate but that’s about as bad as it is. She thought about that for a while.

A few times lately she has engaged in behavior that would have earned me a beating. I’ve been thinking a lot about that topic as a result. I “wasn’t hit much” by the standards of my family but I was also willing to be told to sit in one place and not open my mouth. I was willing to sit in a chair and read and not move or inconvenience anyone. That’s why I wasn’t hit as much.

Shanna did something, I can’t even remember what, and I felt very frustrated. I started crying, as I am wont to do when I am deeply frustrated. She asked me why I was upset. I told her, “Sometimes I feel very frustrated because I’m not sure what to do when you engage in behavior I dislike. My mom was very mean to me and I don’t want to do that to you but I don’t know what I should be doing and it is very very frustrating.”

Now she has taken to giving me advice on how I should handle things. It’s kind of funny.

I feel like Calli has exploded on the scene recently. Now she talks. A lot. All day. I have no idea how many words she has picked up. I couldn’t begin to count. I think back with nostalgia to how I wrote down every new word I heard from Shanna. I had a list. I don’t have that kind of time or attention now. She adds so many words a day that I have no perception of how large her vocabulary is. Somewhere between 50 and 500. If it isn’t 500 yet it will be this week at the rate she is going.

She signs a lot more than Shanna ever did, and I don’t think it is just because of the videos. She has a lot in her head and a lot of trouble with her vocal cords. She’s annoyed by her speech impediment. She knows she is saying words wrong. She tries to get sounds and can’t. I smile and pat her on the head and say it’s a matter of practice. It’ll come.

Calli is independent in ways Shanna has never been and that means I misunderstand the depth of her attachment to me. Calli runs away faster and farther and doesn’t look back… until she has to be on me for multiple hours and cries and whines if I put her on my back because then she can’t see my face. She has a really strong need to be physically near my face looking at me. She does it for many hours a day. She gets very agitated if she doesn’t get it. I smile at her as much as I can physically force myself. I love her so much.

It’s neat trying to teach them how to be friends. As I’m reading developmental stuff sometimes I feel guilty that I’m not providing Shanna nearly as much peer interaction as would be good for her (she kind of sucks with kids her age) and I hope that Calli and Shanna will be enough company for one another. Yes, we do see other kids. We still spend a very lot of time at home alone. I need to.

I feel very weird about balancing our needs. I need a fair bit of time at home. If I am out of the house too much I am exhausted and I cry inappropriately in public. Crying is a much bigger part of my life than it is for “normal” people, near as I can tell. Being too tired or hungry or stressed triggers tears for me. I don’t have to feel additionally sad. I have enough background sad in my life that I’m always up for a good cry. It’s very embarrassing and hard to control when I’m in public.

It’s a fairly predictable pattern for me. I can schedule things in advance around my needs and I can generally get through an obligation if I make it. But I don’t schedule anything else that day–including dishes. I’m trying to consciously learn more about how this works for me. I need control over this.

It is hard to explain what it is like to be in my body. Based on what I understand from books my body is not typical. My heart races a little frequently during the day. I feel waves of terror spontaneously and randomly. I have long periods of intense negative thoughts while I am engaging in just about any activity. Randomly cutting paper just to practice using scissors with Shanna can trigger a diatribe in my head.

I have a lot of control. These things don’t get expressed very often. But the cost is so high. I feel like thin, like when you wear through the sole of a shoe and can see the sock. Too much friction. Can’t keep going.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the long-term effect being a stay at home mom will have on my life. I’ve been thinking very hard about how worthless my society thinks I am. I’m thinking of the scorn I sometimes see on peoples faces. To be fair if I tell another mother that I am staying home with my kids 75% of the time they say, “Oh you are lucky.” I like that. I am. I am very lucky. I am so very lucky that I get to have the life I have now.

I tell myself that this stage of my life is my gift for surviving my childhood. I went through hell, sure, but now I have this. I feel ashamed of the extent of my negativity and depression and anxiety because I am one of the luckiest people ever in the history of human kind.

I am safe. I have a partner who adores me and helps me. I stopped working in the middle of pregnancy. I came home and sat and read. I didn’t clean. I didn’t cook. He either made dinner or we went out. I sat in a torpor and cried while he was at work. I felt horrible. But he came home to me every day. He took care of me. I will never be able to repay the debt of gratitude I feel towards this man. During the physically weakest part of my adult life he was a gentle and loving care giver. I’ve never had that before.

I have two daughters who see me and feel like the world is wonderful. I have been very nice to them–not that they are spoiled. Well, they are. But they have very nice manners. I’m pretty rigid in my expectations.

I spent my pregnancy reading and thinking about what kind of interaction I wanted to have with my kids. I worked out the details of how I would have to react to various kinds of stimuli. I have to plan in advance how I will react under stress because in the moment I can’t. I can’t plan when I am upset. And I have to react to my children full speed all day long. It’s fucking terrifying.

When you are under stress you revert to your earliest training. What was your earliest training like? You don’t want me to talk about mine.

So! We’re not doing that any more! I mean, I still do it in my head. I still have these horrible tapes playing in the background. I still have all of the same impulses and inclinations. But I don’t do it. And it is physically hard. It is work. All day every day. So I like spending a lot of time alone in a room. It feels so fucking good. I even get pissy about the cat sometimes.

While I run lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with God. I’ve been seeing the door to door missionaries a lot more. I don’t believe there is an omnipresent anything that decided long ago that every so often there had to be a kid brutally raped by her father. Sorry, no.

I believe it is random. I really do. I believe that life is terribly unfair. I recognize that most of my situational good fortune in my current adult life would not be available to me if I wasn’t white. That bothers me. I don’t think that I can believer in someone stronger than me controlling things and look around at the world and continue to keep going. That is too god damn depressing.

I am a not-so-dumb animal. I want to continue to eat and shit and mate and have non-sexual touching with people I exchange caring with. That’s what I god damn want. These are instincts. I want to be a human being worth knowing. What makes someone worth knowing? Damned if I know.

I don’t turn over any control of me to a Higher Power. It’s the big reason I will never try any of the “Anonymous” shit. Fuck you telling me I can’t do something by myself. Ha. Watch me, motherfucker. Have you met me? Can you really think of something that I am likely to want that I can’t do? There are physical feats I am not likely to accomplish–sure. I won’t be in the NBA this lifetime. I’m really ok with that. I don’t feel like that fact is a reflection of a failure of will power.

I can’t decide to be someone else. But I can be me without any help. I don’t need anyone to decide for me what is right or wrong. I can do that. I know what they feel like in the pit of my stomach. The problem is that I feel a lot of fear when I don’t have enough information. How can I make a decision when I don’t know enough about the situation to know what the right decision is? Oh god. But you can’t go through life that way. You do the best you can with what you know.

I do a lot of research. I don’t hesitate to say, “I don’t know yet but I will get back to you.”

But when you are dealing with children all day every day… yeah. It’s a mixed bag. Some things you can put off and a lot of things you need to react to immediately. I script. I do a lot of research around child development is happening with my kids so that I can react appropriately. I really want to be appropriate.

I don’t believe that anyone is controlling me except for me. Then what about these pervasive horrible thoughts? It’s random. It’s the natural reaction of trauma. I will never undo my life. I can just write scripts for the future that suck less.

I have a really good life. I am treated very well. I’m actually glad that Noah and I are having this period without the raunchy sex. It’s nice for there to be at least one period of my life where liking me means everyone around me is gentle and kind with me. Writing that sentence makes me cry. I have certainly had relationships and people in my life who have never hurt me.

I feel like I have a running calendar in my head: last self injury on _______ date. I’m not telling you the date because I feel embarrassed about this count. I have categories you see. It’s all split up into “well this counts for this but not for that” and I dicker about what I am allowed to do to hurt myself. Like I haven’t cut or hit my head or burned myself or anything like that in a long time. But I’m having a lot of food issues.

It’s complicated, yo.

But Noah is very gentle with me these days. I’m terribly sexually bored by it, but emotionally it feels really important and good. We are going to have to figure out the balance there eventually. I feel like the kids still provide enough physical stress that it isn’t a good idea. The kids are getting less rough with me–we’ve been specifically working on it a lot for the last couple of weeks.

I am not someone who would feel good about being one of the brick makers for the pyramid. I wouldn’t feel like I was awesome and doing something great. And yet someone has to be the brick maker. It’s a required job. I think that people who believe in a Higher Power make great brick layers.

I don’t believe there is a plan. I’m not willing to do something I find awful because it is part of something bigger than me. Fuck you I have suffered enough. Not that brick laying is awful. I’m not suited to being an NBA player either.

Thing is, I don’t know what I am going to be when I grow up. I’m not sure what I’m building towards. So I’m picking things up almost at random. I don’t know very many people like me.

I have had an unusual life. I have done things at the wrong stages and the wrong times but mostly it works for me. I am sexually wired towards some really disturbing things. Whether it is my fault or not is immaterial. It is. I am currently in a phase of my life where I am trying to build non-sexual relationships with two people in a very intense way. There isn’t a lot of me left to go do deviant stuff. It is physically hard on me to not fulfill those needs but emotionally I don’t have the ability to handle more pain right now. I need to know that Noah does not just want me around as a cum dumpster and thing to objectify and hurt. I need to be something more than that to him. But we will get back to playing with that some day.

Fulfilling your dreams is hard because in your head as you have the dream you fixate on looking/being a certain way. Doing things at certain stages. Some people solve this by not growing up in their head. I don’t have any interest in being anything like I was pre-twenty-five. Maybe I’ll think of myself as thirty forever. The year I trained for a marathon. That was the brutally hard thing I did that year.

I just mutate my self injury. I have to get it somewhere and running is enough. Holy shit.

I say I don’t know many people like me because I don’t know anyone else who mutates as fast as I do spurred by fear. That’s not a terrible judgment on people. Most people tend to be paralyzed by fear. Fear makes me move. It makes me change. I have a hard time when I find out that people I know are doing the exact same thing they did ten years ago. It freaks me out. I feel like maybe I’m defective. I seriously doubt there will ever be a period in my life where my days look the same from one decade to the next. Maybe when the fifteen years after the kids move out? I doubt it.

How I am is not good. I am not consistent enough. I am not strong enough. I am not I am not I am not.

Never the less I have to go start today. We are going to meet a friend with little kids at Habitot. I hope it goes well.

Learning and shame

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Therapy was unusual last night in some awesome ways. I showed up half an hour early because I wasn’t sure about public transit to the new location and the appointment before me cancelled so she was just sitting around. We could have started early but instead she decided to pick my brain. She moonlights as a guidance counselor at a middle school. The school is more than 60% black and over 30% latino. They have some problems. I don’t think I can explain how good it felt to talk to her about how to handle these children. She is the “emergency” therapist who sees the kids who are in serious crisis Right Now. I had a lot to say. It was interesting how the end of the conversation was quite sad. We had to plainly discuss the fact that there ARE things that can be done for these kids, but how much time and energy do you have? What are the things that you can really sustain doing? It’s hard to evaluate. She took notes on the things I said. I felt so respected. She told me that she is going to strongly consider how she can get me up there to talk to her really at risk kids. She thinks it will be good for them to hear a white person with my history because they don’t believe a white person can understand. I used the fuck out of that misperception when I was teaching. You can’t buy tools as handy as that.

I told her about what an asshole I am being to a friend who is having issues with the public education system. I told her I don’t understand why I still have friends. This directly linked into a lot of my attitudes about education and child rearing which ties into a lot of my feelings about having less worth in society because my earning potential is really quite low. Being a stay at home mom is not a very respected position. Oh well.

We talked about my frustration and confusion that Americans don’t seem to be training their children to be adults. They prepare the kid for preschool so the kid can be prepared for kindergarden so the kid can be prepared for the lower grades, then middle school, then high school, then college, then graduate school, then a PhD program, then a postdoctoral… I suppose we should all be college professors? I suppose some people transition into working in industry. Many companies run a lot like schools. It’s odd. Outside of academia I have worked in food service. I worked in the library and the theatre in college. I have taught. Really those have been my jobs. I feed people and help them learn. I like it–mostly.

I feel a lot of uncertainty about the future. I’m sadly aware that many of the people who are alive and making decisions now care very little about the long-term consequences of what we are doing as a society. I feel like it is ridiculously important that my kids understand that we are animals that require food. What are all the steps involved in arranging for adequate, constant food. My children will probably never know food uncertainty. What can they learn and figure out about how to help other people have the same life experience? What problems are going to crop up in our food supply? I’m quite nervous about this. I want my children to be incredibly practical. One of the up-sides of doing all these home improvement projects by myself with the kids is they are seeing how to do these tasks. Very soon they will be learning how to do them.

I also think my children will need to know how to program. I suspect that will be a mandatory skill for people who want serious job prospects in the future. I want my children to have options. I want them to feel like they are prepared to take the world by storm when they are adults. I want them to know so many things that they feel completely competent to go learn whatever they need but don’t yet know. I want them to see themselves as strong and able to assimilate new information.

I struggle with learning a lot of things. I don’t have the best memory. I read extremely quickly and I can synthesize ideas quickly but I forget things. That’s kind of a problem. I hope my kids get Noah’s memory.

My therapist and I talked extensively about how I feel like the next fifteen years are a gift. I have always wanted to go learn things but I didn’t want to go alone. Soon I will be able to go to dance events with my kids. Soon I will be able to do martial arts classes with my kids. I already practice languages with my kids. I’m discovering that I remember more Spanish than I think. I’m not as incompetent as I assume. It’s nice. I have these wonderful companions to learn with.

Shanna and Calli don’t think I am lame for how little skill I have at gardening. I feel really pretty silly for the intensity of my emotions around gardening. I grew up with people who had no respect for farming as a career and as a result they tried hard to never touch anything growing. My family felt they “got off the farm” and they had no interest in looking back. My family hasn’t farmed in at least three generations on all sides. Why is there so much hostility? Such disdain? We don’t garden.

Only I’m going to have this house paid off in another decade or so and I’m going to be stuck looking out that back window for all the remaining years of my life. I’d like it to be pretty. I feel kind of vain and silly about that. I would like to look at a colorful, interesting yard. I want it so bad I ache with wanting. I want to feel like a stupid, incompetent, worthless person still gets to look at something nice because I have the physical ability to create it.

It’s always harder than I think. I forget to water. I don’t have good weeding technique. I would starve to death if I had to take care of a whole field in order to eat. I feel ashamed of that. I feel weirdly pathetic because I can’t figure out the physical motion that will allow me to do this work quickly. It’s hard. I don’t know what I can do without damaging the plants I want to keep. I’m trying things and experimenting. It’s a slow process.

When I can remove my idiotic self-deprecation from this thought process I find it really kind of wonderful that I am learning all of these things and talking them through with my kids. Calli is too young to really understand yet, but Shanna is picking things up. I am really moving at about the right speed for Shanna. I feel ponderously slow and incompetent. Really I’m just moving at four year old speed. If I went faster she would feel left out. I wouldn’t want to outpace my companion.

It’s a lot of how I think about running. How do you find a pace for running with other people? I worry about it. I have several upcoming opportunities for running with friends. Some who are far more experienced runners than me and at least one who runs less than me. I’m fucking thrilled by the idea of running with someone who runs less than me. I won’t feel like I am slowing her down. I won’t have to feel embarrassed when I need to walk. I’m scared of running with people who are honest to dawg athletes. Standing near them makes me feel like my low status in their world is blinking in neon over my head. LOSER WHO CAN BARELY RUN. Physical Education classes were never kind to me.

It was an odd experience to look around the park on Tuesday and realize that whereas the home school kids will have various “coaches” they won’t have a PE teacher. If they do that position will fall to me. What athletic activities do I think my kids should know how to do? I have to figure out how to teach them or arrange to have someone else teach them. I think I should buy a small soccer ball and bring it. I feel odd about that. I want them to love things I don’t love. I want them to have access to ideas and hobbies I am not actually into.

This was one thing that surprised my therapist last night: how focused I am on trying to figure out what I don’t know that I should be teaching my kids. I feel intense pressure to work constantly on dealing with the extent and damage of my ignorance. I feel crippled by the extent and volume of my ignorance. I am not trying to be a know-it-all. I’m trying to be an actual competent person. The problem is that I value an odd combination of competences. I am extremely specific in what I care about and I totally ignore things I don’t understand or see value in. That’s kind of a problem. I simply can’t limit my children due to my biases. I want them to be competent adults. I want to know in twenty-five years that I have loosed two extremely fucking competent women on the world and they are off building and learning things I can’t wrap my mind around. They took the genesis of information I gave them and went off to do things I can’t understand.

I like being a jill of all trades. I don’t really aspire to master many topics. I’m a generalist. I like and highly value generalists. But like many people like me I feel like my lack of mastery means I am low in status. I’m not the best at basically any task. I notice and have a hard time with that emotionally. I don’t do competitive things because I can’t handle the fact that I’m never fucking going to be first. Do you know what second place is? The first fucking loser. I cried watching people pass me during the half marathon. I’m an idiot.

I want my kids to either be such prolific generalists that they terrify people or able to become masters in something. Other than talking to abused kids, which really… I’m awesome at that, I don’t think I will attain mastery of any subjects in this lifetime. That really kind of bothers me. I’m trying to gain peace with the idea that I will never really take anything to eleven. I will never be the best. Not everyone gets to be. lame.

My wonderful daughter just wandered out to sit on my lap. Today we are going to the redwoods to cut down trees so I can build her a play house. I should really take pictures of this process. I have a vision in my head. I know what I am going to do. It’s going to be really neat. You’ll see. I’m good at taking pictures in my head and turning out a decent approximation. Heck, look at my daughters. This looks like my picture in my head of a family. We are kind to each other. Maybe I do have a reality distortion field.

I’m not resting my arms.

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I have so much going on in my head and I am alone a lot. If I don’t type then I just don’t express anything. My friend who was supposed to come over yesterday was sick so he cancelled. (Good! Take care of yourself!) That was going to be my first sit down and really talk to an adult other than Noah this month. Today another friend wants to come over but I don’t think she should because Noah, Shanna, and Calli are all pretty sick and she’s 29 weeks pregnant. Don’t come over and get sick.

So I released the book and then… sat at home. Alone. Thinking. I’m really grateful that a number of people have called or messaged me to tell me that they read the book. There are a few different pieces of this that I’m focusing on. First: it was readable, right? I’m kind of insecure about my writing style. I’m worried it is difficult to follow. I’m rather abrupt. Second: I really am curious which parts of the story bother people the most or stick with them. Third: I am curious what people think about their own lives as a result. I’ve had two conversations in particular where people used the book as a springboard to talk about a lot of stuff from their childhoods. I felt my heart soar. I made them think.

I had a good therapy session this week. I’m glad I got to go this week. We spent a lot of time talking about how becoming an adult involves a lot of shitty work no one wants to do. You are an adult once you learn the systems involved in surviving and you can do them without thinking or complaining. Because as long as you still don’t know what you are doing, you are a child. And if you are complaining? You still aren’t an adult. These things simply have to be done and complaining about them is pretty ridiculous. Who am I going to bitch at because I have to dust? Really?

We talked about how I have areas of my life where I have strong beliefs about what makes a good person and they make it kind of hard to actually be a good person. I give other people more slack than I give myself. I have these really strong beliefs because of the circumstances of my life. I would have different strong beliefs if I had different circumstances.

I have had a hard time learning the tasks of being a house wife. The repetitive nature is daunting. How do you actually get to the point of having a system? Of knowing how and when all these tasks should be done? Once upon a time girls were trained in how to do these things, I wasn’t. I just have to kind of guess. I am happier in a tidy house because then I spend less of my time hunting for things. Less time tripping and hurting myself. Less time breaking things because it is impossible to be careful in a mess. It’s not a moral judgment, exactly. I have a lot of anger built up around people being able to say, “Well I can’t find it so I don’t have to deal with it.”

Last night Noah tactfully didn’t point out that I want him to do more and more work while being cheerful. Maybe I shouldn’t be so fussy that I have to do more and more work while being cheerful. That’s what being a grown up means in this house. It means that there is a lot of work to be done, and you do it, and you need to be a pleasant person while you do it. None of this work is a personal affront. None of it qualifies as an indignity or imposition. At this point the house is really forking tidy. It’s not much work to keep clean.

I care a lot about tone and attitude. My kids are going to learn their entire approach to life from me. I am keeping them home from preschool and elementary school. I am teaching them what it means to be a mother and an adult and a citizen. I don’t want to teach them to stuff their feelings or hide their emotions and pretend to be happy. I want to model what it looks like to build a life where you are genuinely content. No, not everything is ever perfect. But I’ve picked my burdens in life, it seems like even a bit more so than most people. I really went out hunting for what I wanted. And I have it. It’s a good life.

My beautiful Shanna is on my lap right now. She is engaging and fun. She’s trying to talk me into letting her put the NaNoWriMo bumper sticker on the wall. I think I’m going to decline. She makes me smile. I have begun to notice that the lines on my face do not easily settle into smiling. That feels sad. I want to work on that. I have so much to smile about.

I grew up going between living in truly isolated circumstances and Auntie’s house. Auntie’s house was always busy. There were a lot of people coming and going. I miss people. I miss feeling like part of a hive. I live a very quiet life. I hang out with my kids and that is pretty much it. It’s hard figuring out what conversations are appropriate for Shanna.

Yesterday she asked me if my mother is dead. I told her no. She asked why we don’t see my mother. I told her I would explain more when she gets older. I don’t know how to have this conversation yet. My mother lives thirty minutes away and you can never see her because she will tell you that small stupid things are your fault because you deserve to suffer. I don’t want Shanna to grow up thinking she is bad or to blame for adult matters.

Part of the reason I am alone so much is because I allow other people to have inappropriate influence over me. I try and try and try to do what they want, long after it is bad for me to try. I’m not actually good at boundaries, no matter what I try to claim. I keep my boundaries by keeping my front door shut. I only have to worry about the people and things inside this house. I don’t have to bend to anyone else’s needs or whims.

One of my high school boyfriends told me yesterday that I was always good at boundaries. Ha. The reason I stopped talking to you was because I continued to feel like I had to have sex with you because you wanted to have sex and it’s not very nice to tell people they can’t have what they want.

Noah doesn’t really want to talk about monogamy anymore. He agreed to it under duress and he’ll do it, fine. But he doesn’t want to talk about it. I feel scared. I feel like at some point in my life someone is going to tell me that they want to and I won’t feel like I get to really say no. People like me don’t get to say no. I rehearse in my head, “I’m in a monogamous marriage. I don’t have sex with people any more.” I pray to god I never get in a situation where saying that is ignored. I’m afraid it will. I’m afraid to ever be in a situation where I might be vulnerable to someone asking. I’m so scared. Because I’m afraid that I will say no once and it will be ignored and I will do what I do and I’ll put my head down and shut up and try not to cry and just get through it. And afterwards I will talk about it like it was consensual and I deserve all the damage done. Because I do. Because I always deserve what I get, right?

I’m afraid that part of the reason I stay home so much is because I can’t control what happens to me when I leave home. Bad things happen and there is nothing I can do about it. Even stupid shit like losing my wallet. I feel like being out in the world is dangerous. Maybe it is for everyone. Maybe I’m just stupid and I deserve what happens to me. This is part of what I worry about passing on. Other people don’t seem to be terrified that if they go out they are likely to be hurt. I feel like I don’t have a lot of resiliency left.

The cease and desist letter feels kind of like a punch to my stomach. It didn’t come from someone I outed as abusive in any way. He’s more of a neutral-to-positive sort of character. And he still wants to silence me. I should just shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up.

How you spend your days is how you spend your years. I keep a tidy house. I garden. I run. I play with my beautiful daughters. I’m teaching them about the world. I’m teaching them about how all of life is a process. There are steps you can skip and steps you can’t, the trick is finding out which is which. I read about twenty pages out of The White Trash Mom’s Handbook yesterday. From the title it seems like the perfect book for me. It’s not. It’s all about how to stay within the system and look successful while taking short cuts. I suppose for someone who wants their kids to be “successful” in public school it is full of valid points. I don’t want children who are successful at public school. I want children who are successful at life. Very few of the really successful people in our country went to public school. Think about that. It’s a broken system. It manages to turn out most of the cogs in the machine but it doesn’t turn out people who know how to run the system by and large.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with people putting their kids into preschool and public school. I think it is the norm in our world. I’m not very good at fitting in with norms. I would not be able to “pass” enough for my kids to have a successful public school experience. As I read that book I noticed over and over how the author keeps saying that you have to “play the game” or your “kids will suffer”. It’s true. My kids would suffer because I am their mom in public school. I would do things wrong. They would be punished. They would almost certainly be weird and different and public school is not kind to such children. My children will most likely never appear normal. They are wonderful and great and awesome, but they will always be quirky.

For all that I whine about being alone, I have found a life and a space that fits me. When I am feeling self-confident I have places to go. I have friends. Lots of people like me. I stay home because *I* have issues. And because I’m shitty at managing my kids and doing anything else at the same time. At home I can be all “free range” and not feel guilty. My kids and I are working hard at learning how to coexist. How do I get my work done while they have their own work to do? How do we all get along?

From my daughter I learn that it is better to say, “Hey, will you please help me find the ipad?” rather than “You didn’t put the ipad on the table.” Because I sit here and listen to her talk all day long I am learning where my manners are disgusting. I’m learning where I am very rude. I’m working on it because I don’t want to hear it from her. I think it is good for me. It’s the least judgmental feedback I have ever received. I just have to sit around and listen to her ape my tone of voice and attitude. It’s humbling. There is no one in the whole world I can blame anything on but myself in this house. My daughters have me for an influence. And Netflix. Thank goodness for Netflix. Shanna is learning how conversations go. It’s dramatic to see how this is working for her.

I’m trying to understand better what my social needs actually are. I’m looking forward to the Storytelling at the end of the month. So far I have had one person tell me absolutely yes (yay!) and several others are strong maybes. I’ll take it.

We are also going to a sex party at the end of the month. I’m intimidated. I don’t think anyone will inappropriately push me (the host would kick anyone out who tried) but I think I will feel awkward and weird. What am I there for anyway? What business do monogamous people have being out in the sex communities? What is the point of going? Because that is my community, for better or worse. Even if I never have sex again in my life the alternative sex communities are mine. I belong in them. I am sexually deviant. But am I? I don’t know.

I feel like I don’t know who I am or what I want. I feel scared. I feel isolated. I feel like I should never do anything other than garden, hang out with my kids, run, and clean again. This is my life now. I chose it. I should stick with what is safe. I have never been this safe before in my life. What is wrong with me that I want to shake things up? What is wrong with me that I get bored?

I still don’t feel safe. I feel like this could all be taken away from me if people knew how disgusting and broken I am.

Do you know why I keep my house as clean as I do? Because I live in terror of a CPS visit. I kicked cabinet doors, obviously I am an unfit mother. I have kicked holes in drywall (years and years ago). I yell. I get so very angry. Obviously I am unfit. I do not deserve the goodness and safety I have.

I should go somewhere sleazy and unsafe and become inebriated and unable to say no coherently and forcefully because that is what girls like me do, right? Is it even possible to hang out with people and do anything else? I don’t know. I feel like I don’t know anything at all.

I am never going to fit in. I am never going to be “normal”. And I mourn that. I mourn that I can’t give my kids that because I don’t know what it looks like. Instead what I’m giving them is a very structured environment where we work all day long on communicating with one another in polite tones. How do you ask people to meet your needs in a civil tone of voice? We’re working on it. We do a lot of “try again”. Because here I get a lot of chances. Once I walk out of the front door I give up my right to be able to try things over and over till I get it right. I’m not practicing anymore. That’s the real world. I’m not ready.

I have approximately fifteen more years to learn how to be a functional, polite grown up. Now that I’m thirty that doesn’t sound like nearly enough time. I haven’t managed yet, what hubris do I have to think I can learn in the next fifteen years? I have fifteen years to focus on how to teach my kids what they need to know in order to move off into the world. It doesn’t feel like enough time.

So far I have made ~$140 on the book. That’s about half of what I spent on ISBN and it doesn’t even begin to pay for the editor. I have to figure out how to promote the book or I won’t be allowed to leave the house to do anything fun until November. All of my spending money is pre-spent. I’m not sad though. Even though this is an expensive hobby it is one I needed. And I have eight more spiffy ISBN numbers. (You can buy one or ten and print vs. ebook needs two separate numbers.) I guess that means I should keep writing. I can’t decide what to work on next.

I’m supposed to be resting my arms. But I’m so lonely.

2 Replies

I don’t feel like I have a good grasp on normal. I’m a freak and I’m going to raise little freaks. I’m sorry for that only I’m not. My demographic doesn’t need to fade out of existence. We aren’t bad. We are just weird. On the internet when people bandy about numbers I have seen the figure 1 in 17 men are rapists. I usually see that put right next to the figure that 1 in 6 women/girls will be sexually assaulted.

You know at least one rapist. No matter who you are. No matter what you think you know. Unless you know fewer than twenty men, you probably know a rapist. How do you live with that? How do you account for that? Do you think you are safe? I never understand why other women have the hubris to feel safe. I hope that I am never raped again. I’m not going to put money on it. I understand that part of the human condition is the need to play power games and at some point I may have the misfortune to be in the room with someone more powerful than me. Or maybe I will be attacked while running some day. Who knows.

Short of staying in my house and never associating with anyone again, what choice do I have? I can do all of the little “avoid being raped” tricks that they pass around but in that last vital moment… really… there isn’t all that much I can do. Some day I will have to depend on the kindness of a man to not rape me. Really I will have to depend on it over and over.

Recently I was spending time with a good friend/former lover. He suggested Watercourse Way, which is a hot tub place. From the minute he suggested going there till when we left there was a part of my brain and body that was on high alert. I was really afraid he was going to push physical boundaries. He didn’t. He has proven to me before that when he’s told to not touch me he is likely to stay 12′ away from me so there is no muddy area. But I was taking a risk. A fairly big risk. He’s a big man and if he wanted to over power me it wouldn’t be hard. I’ve known him for twelve years. When I spend time with him I worry and I keep escape routes in my mind.

The guy who came over for dinner? I don’t worry about that kind of thing as much. When someone is going to be with me and my kids I’m far less worried about what they will try to pull. Shanna’s speech is prodigious. She speaks like a nine or ten year old. If someone came over and tried to do something sleazy with me and Shanna in the room I am very aware that we will be one anothers witnesses. It would be hard to over-power both of us at the same time and we could both speak to police later. Right there it becomes a less powerful situation for anyone. There is more than one person on my side. It’s interesting to me that other women don’t see their children as a resource in the same way.

Sexual assault primarily happens among people who know one another. Stranger assault is somewhat uncommon. Most of the reason for this, in my only-slightly-educated-opinion, is because rape is about power and it is very difficult to assess the power of a stranger. You pick victims you know because you know how to get past their boundaries. A guy I barely know isn’t going to push his luck to hard because he will come up against my massive social hostility. I do not appear weak on first blush. You have to get to know me a little before you see the chinks in my armor. From what I hear, on first blush I am often terrifying. I’m really not concerned about shy gamer geeks coming over for dinner.

Noah feels a little weird about the fact that I am still thinking about why nonmonogamy is a bad idea for me. He thinks we have made the monogamy decision, ok those reasons are done–move on. I don’t do that. Monogamy is going to be a behavioral choice for me. It’s not really a relationship choice. I need to stop picking up sleazy men. Some of my former lovers may read this. I love you dearly. You scare the shit out of me. I am far more afraid of my former lovers than I am random men I don’t know.

If someone I don’t know touches me physically in an even barely intimate way, say stroking my arm, I am extremely likely to haul off and hit them. I’m rather reactionary with such things. If someone starts touching me in a way I don’t like but I’m worried about preserving the relationship… I’m in trouble. Because there is a battle in my head between, “Do I mind this boundary incursion enough to risk fucking up my relationship?” Part of the problem with my anger issues is I don’t have softball defenses. If you put a toe over my boundary line I can’t drop a beanbag on the toe. I’m going to throw an anvil at your head. It’s hard to survive being in my inner circle. People don’t seem to make it much longer than a decade. I’m glad Jenny is in another country. Maybe she will manage to stay one of my intimate friends for life that way.

There are a lot of ways I am deeply broken. I don’t ask for help well. And I don’t defend minor boundary incursions well. I don’t ask for help until I am in serious trouble and I should have had help an hour or a week ago. For someone to waffle or hesitate or decide slowly what part of it they want to help with… I can’t stay and watch that. I laid bare my need to you and you didn’t say, “Oh let me help” fine. Fuck you. I’ll fucking figure it out by myself. That’s not very useful. And minor boundary incursions are ignored until there are a bunch of them and then I explode. Because I decided along the way that the relationship was more important than pointing out all those nit-picky things… and then by the time I build a list the relationship isn’t more important any more. I feel bad saying that. But it’s true. Avoiding saying it doesn’t make the situation better.

Near as I can tell a rather large percentage of “rape” is sex that is coerced and unwanted but the woman never says no or actively resists. We just shut up and take it. I wish that I had another word for sex I don’t want but I never said no to. I often or usually said no or resisted during many of the times I was raped. How wishy-washy can I be. I know that right now I don’t want to go through my list of rapes in my head but when I casually think, “Did I resist or say no?” I can think of multiple times I know I did. I’m only seeing a few though. And I’m tired and fuzzy headed and I don’t want to try and examine if that is close to the full list. That hurts my heart.

I have a lot of shame around my sexuality. I have a lot of shame around the fact that I have used fantasies of my father to fuel most of my masturbatory life for most of my life. I don’t do that any more. My orgasm response is nearly entirely gone. I can’t help but feel that I put a graduate-degree level of work into learning my body only to decide that everything I knew was bad and I shouldn’t have ever wanted it and I’m disgusting for having ever done any of it.

Learning to feel horrified by that part of me feels inextricably tied to being a parent. I am one of those loathsome people who shouldn’t be allowed near children. Oh my god. The idea that someone would allow a person from a sex community to meet their children is horrifying and disgusting. What about when the parents are from that sex community? Why do I have any morally superior ground? Because I dropped some crotch fruit? Oh give me a break. I am the youngest child in an incestuous family. It went on for generations. I do not believe that being a parent means you are more likely to be safe.

Do you know what I like the best about the sex community? The gossip. Your reputation will make you or break you. Having deviant sex requires finding deviant people who are willing to trust you. Folks like to talk. If you step out of line in the community, often word gets around. It’s not infallible. But it’s fairly effective. I depend on that network for a lot of my baseline assumptions about people. Like: should I let them in my house or not. Past that I tend to rely on the fact that I am twitchy and aggressive to get rid of most people. Only people who are willing to deal with me loudly and aggressively dealing with them come multiple times. It’s interesting to see how it shakes out.

But I’m not stupid. I am well aware that the danger isn’t in the first few times someone comes over. Who might pick me as a target? Lots of people. But going forward I have the hard and fast line in my head. I’m monogamous. It’s a behavior choice. It changes a lot of how I talk to people. When I am hunting people often mistake me wanting them. I’m a chick and breathing and willing to fuck anyone–that means them, right?

Lately I spend a lot of time examining my behavior choices. I don’t want to send mixed signals. How do I physically hold myself when I am hunting versus when I when I am not looking for prey? That kind of “being nice” is bad for me system wide because it fucks up my boundary defenses everywhere. I’m having a very hard time with keeping my boundaries so active with everyone else and not with Noah. It feels all or nothing for me. Either I don’t get to say no to sex, with anyone, or I’m just not interested. I think it is a lot more useful and productive for me to work through this than to try and deal with the issues around nonmonogamy.

I want to be with Noah for the rest of my life. Some day I will probably have to deal with him dying. I have some attachment issues. I’m worried about being flighty and scared and unable to commit. I’m worried about breaking us. Nonmonogamy brings a whole series of big rocks into our lives for us to throw ourselves against. Monogamy brings much smaller rocks.

The past few weeks since writing the book I have had some fairly frank conversations with myself about the level of trauma I went through. I understand more of why people say, “I don’t understand how you survived.” Because I did. Because I got back up every day and I kept moving. I don’t know how many of those I have left in me.

There is a song out on country radio right now, by Martina McBride. It’s about surviving cancer. I’m fairly terrified of the future. I’m well aware that life has no obligation to be kind. I need a partner. I know people tell me that I am strong enough to be alone if I need to. Yes, I suppose I could survive that. But I wouldn’t really live through it. Noah has the biggest piece of me of any one on this planet. It’s only going to grow by the year. I can’t do this and keep my awareness up for big rocks. Things will happen that are unavoidable. Things we can’t ignore. Things we have to deal with. They have to be things that I can completely and totally have the right to be surprised by. I can’t keep my expectations of life low enough for nonmonogamy. I can’t expect to be kicked that hard on a regular basis. I won’t be able to keep surviving.

It feels like a melodramatic asshole thing to say. Other people do just fine with the fact that their partner wants to give part of themself to someone else. I’m not as fine with that. Noah is a bonder. I only kind of am. I’m just fine with the scorched earth policy in life. There are always people still standing. There are always people standing because there will always be people who are genuinely innocents in this life. They haven’t done anything to me or anyone else. I try my hardest to be nice to them. They seem to be able to forgive me for a lot of temper.

My approach of scorching earth when someone has transgressed enough on a close relationship is problematic. A lot of the reason I blog the way I do is because I am releasing these words onto the open internet. I can’t really come back later and deny doing it, now can I? I need to have that accountability. I need to have it so that I can’t become a liar. I was pushed hard towards sociopathic behaviors. I don’t come close to being a sociopath, but I certainly know how to manipulate. I certainly know how to lie. I don’t want to. I want to tell the truth. I want to be consistent. If I make a record of my real and true beliefs I can’t end up being a liar, right?

I don’t know how to communicate about the small things in a useful way with most people. Luckily Noah seems to be able to handle the conversational equivalent of an anvil to the head. When I am upset with Noah I can write about it as much as I want and he doesn’t feel slighted. With other people I worry about discretion. I don’t know how to handle that. When I can’t write abou things I feel like I shouldn’t even be thinking them because they aren’t nice. Then in order to feel justified in defending my original boundaries I have to over-defend them. Because not am I dealing with whatever the original boundary is, but it was hard for me to buck myself up enough to say, “Hey! I deserve better.” Because I feel like someone treating me like shit is pretty normal and par for the course. It’s hard to believe otherwise.

And that leads neatly into something I’ve been observing in my social circle lately. Has anyone else noticed how many of the geek boys who grew up being taunted and abused have gone on to be nasty bullies? Some of the girls too, but I see a lot of the worst nastiness from guys. I don’t get out much so I don’t pretend my experiences are the only ones. I think about it because I know that by the time I try to defend my boundaries I sound and look a lot like a bully. I’m trying to figure out how I want to deal with that.

Being a parent is teaching me who I want to be. Shanna’s facial expressions lately are always angry. She’s patterning off of me. I don’t get to decide who she becomes. But I get to decide who she has to put up with today. I want my children to remember a stable, happy life. I want my kids to remember parents who were enthusiastic about life–not people who put their head down to sludge through the misery. I don’t want to show my kids that I am strong enough to survive any misery dumped on me. I want to show my kids how to change your life so that you have fewer problems. That means making different choices. That means learning how to say that something isn’t working for me without having to scorch earth.

Parenting is really complicated. I’m having a hard time being the person I think I should be. Given the people I know and how they parent I don’t think anyone else has it easier. My mother did her best for me. It wasn’t good enough. I am trying to figure out what my best would be for my kids. I don’t have the assumption that I can muddle through and whatever I do will be good enough. I know that the economists tell me it is. But I can’t. I have to have to actually change in order to be my best. Otherwise I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know how I will pass the cycles on. The children of Adult Children of Alcoholics act like they grew up with a drinker in the house. It’s about behavior patterns. I don’t want to recreate the family that I had.

Who do I want to be when I grow up? Well, I will be someone who invites people from sex communities over to my house for dinner. Because I know how to keep the conversation G rated. People who have sex are regular people too. I do a lot of gardening. It’s getting to the point where I am starting the beginnings of plans that are going to take me twenty years to finish. I guess this is my forever house. It’s a good thing it will be paid off in ten or so years. Some day it will have more light.

Who do I want to be when I grow up? I think that deserves ten minutes of writing on its own. I want to be the gentled version of me. I want to be someone who feels safe. I want to be someone who experiences joy in my body. I want to feel like I am a decent person to know, even if you met me at a sex party. I want to feel like I am not a dirty little secret. I want to be someone who is allowed to be complicated because there is far more good than bad. I want to be someone who has a company-ready house every day. I like making last minute plans with people and I have a lot of shame issues around house cleaning stuff. I keep my house neat-enough. Lots of people see it covered in toys and I barely shrug. But I did mop and vacuum that day so it was perfectly neat at some point. I clean a lot. I think that is going to be part of who I am as a grown up. I like things to be shiny and I need to just put that into my morning routine as something I do for me.

Oh that’s pathetic. Who do I want to be when I grow up? I know I would like to talk about sex stuff again. I don’t know in what capacity. SFSI already turned me down. I’m not very good at round table discussions.

I will always be a person who likes to teach and who likes working with groups of people who are learning. I don’t know what shape that will take when I grow up. When I grow up I will feel a lot more comfortable with living in the town I live in. I will have been here longer than anywhere else. I am training for a marathon here. I am learning these streets intimately. I am meeting my neighbors. I will be a person who knows a lot of people here. I’m going to be that crazy lady down the street with the weird yard. The one who used to dye her hair funny colors but then she shaved it. They do recognize me and take double takes. It’s pretty funny.

When I grow up I won’t seem weird. I’ll just seem like Krissy. I will be comfortable in my skin and I will make people near me feel comfortable in their skin. Because it’s just as ok for them to be them as for me to be me. Yeah, I’m not much like other people. But that’s not actually weird. Once you know me it makes sense that I am how I am. It works really well for me.

That’s who I will be when I grow up. I will have fucked up over and over and changed as a result. I will learn how to actually live instead of just surviving. That is who I want to be when I grow up. I want to be someone who travels and meets people and has stories to tell. I don’t want to be overwhelmed by how hard it is just to do the basics to survive. I want to thrive. I want to know that I have extra energy lying around for random people phoning and telling me they have to drive past my house, can they stop for dinner.

I want to be someone who lives. I want to be someone who loves. I want to be someone who is safe and knows it. I want to know that if some day I am raped again in a chance encounter it will be something that does not make me want to jump off a bridge. I want to be someone who is actually attached to the people standing near me and they can actually give me support. That is going to be a big change. I don’t think I can be alone with such things any more.

I think that’s the line. I’m strong enough to just survive and put my head down and get through everything that happens to me, no matter what. I am a dumb animal and I have a strong will to live. But I can’t do that and really live. I will be so bitter. So angry. The hurting has to stop in order for this to change. I know that happiness is a state of mind and not a circumstance. I know. I know I could just change it. But I don’t know that I can by myself. It’s too hard. I need to stop hitting rocks for a while. I can’t change my response pattern if I am constantly in flux. It’s too hard for me. I’m sorry.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: when I grow up

probably a good decision process

stream of conscious

Learning and shame

I’m not resting my arms.