Category Archives: white trash

Not competent enough.

Yesterday we were scheduled to go to two parties. I wanted to go to two parties. We went to one party. The kids were normal, healthy, active kids. By which I mean it was invasion of the brats. As we were getting in the car to head to the second party Shanna collected a whole big pool of saliva in her mouth and spat it on her sister. Then started laughing. That is specifically why I don’t hit my kids. Because in my heart of hearts I believe that is not worthy of being hit for but in the moment I had to clasp my two hands together because I wanted to slap her face.

This was after a day full of Shanna beating on people and occasionally getting hit back. She has a huge scratch down her face and she spent almost twenty minutes crying after she was kicked in the stomach. Of course it is all his fault only the moms were standing around watching. She ran up to the kid and hit him five times before he finally reacted. I’m just not mad at him for defending himself.

I didn’t stop hitting people until Noah. I used to hit people a lot. Ask Jenny. For years she flinched around me constantly. I was extremely violent. Noah hits back. Not over and over but once, decisively. Much like the kid who was getting sick of Shanna yesterday. Ha. Shanna is so much like me.

There was a laundry list of other similar preschool drama. It was just a bratty day. She was sneaking a lot of sugar–all the kids were. There were a lot of kids we didn’t know well. All kinds of stuff. I’m sure I wasn’t being appropriate with the kids either. I certainly did a lot of snapping out orders and telling Shanna to either help or go to her room as we were getting ready. That never sets a day up to go well. That’s my fault.

So I decided it was better to go home and have a quiet night so that I didn’t start screaming at them or inappropriately punishing them. Even though we all wanted to go to the party. It wouldn’t have gone well. When Shanna gets into the hitting stride she starts hitting every kid she sees–basically to learn what happens. I understand it as a learning technique. But I lose my patience and one of these days she will pick the wrong kid and end up with a bloody nose. I will not be indignant on her behalf and I think that is going to piss her off. I will of course talk with the kid and parent about it–but not from an indignant point of view.

Kids do this stuff. Let’s talk about it and try to avoid it happening again because it’s not ok to hit people. I do not think it is wise, reasonable, or even possible to prevent it happening entirely.

Part of the problem is that they both need a lot of active supervision and I’m one person. I get mentally fried trying to track them both in a large crowded area. That uses a lot of circuits at once. After a while I start shaking and crying when it is bad.

Part of the reason I bailed on the second party is because my kids don’t know those folks. Not really. No one would have really been able to help.

The main reason I had fun at the first party is because we have been playing at the park with those families for almost a year now. There is a particular family with two older girls who come and take Calli away from me. They adore her and play with her for hours. She loves them. She walks around the house practicing their (hard, many syllables and consonants) names.

That is what community is for. That is how it is supposed to exist. Kids have lots of people they like to talk to. They don’t have to be on top of me 24/7.

At the second party there is that community for other people. It is a party for a close knit group. I peripherally know a few people. The host and I adore each other–that’s why I go. But I think I will email him and ask about a visit while he is on vacation next week. We can handle that. A big party full of the people he knows is harder.

I feel like that is because I am a failure. I know a lot of very social people. And they bring their kids. If I could handle going eventually those people would love to be the kind of community I have with the home schooling group. They feel like they have been that community to me in the past.

I have a weird bonding experience that seems to be partially based on exchanged work. If I feel emotionally connected to someone I want to work for them. I come over and clean peoples houses. I bring food. Now I offer to baby-sit. Taking care of kids is brutally hard work and I try to help my friends who are freaking out. And I have a few who have helped me.

It is weird how baby sitting works. It is pretty rare that I find someone I exchange kids with. Usually it primarily goes in one direction or another and I think that creates (in me) weird feelings of not knowing how to trust the situation. I can only ask for help when I am ok with the answer being no. If I actually require a yes then I have a much more difficult time with asking at all. That’s dangerous. If someone tells me no to meeting a need then I hate that person and I don’t want to talk to them any more. It’s not particularly rational or nice. If I manage to keep my mouth shut and not burn any bridges I generally get over it with time… but it seriously takes me a while.

So I have to keep my needs small. I have to only share ‘wants’ with people. It’s a trust thing. It isn’t because anyone is doing something wrong or bad by saying no. I think people need to say no when they need to say no. I really do.

I don’t understand how other people manage to believe that everything that happens to them isn’t personal and doesn’t matter. It is happening to me of course it is personal. I don’t think it is mean or vindictive or calculated or anything like that. But it is personal. It is happening. I have been told that I am over-sensitive by entire fucking life. People told me that after sexually assaulting me. Just get over it. Don’t be so sensitive. It’s not a big deal.

I don’t react to anything like it is a small deal any more. My life is happening to me and it has to be important to me whether it is important to anyone else or not. Or I spend a lot of time cutting to remind myself that I am not important. That is part of how I keep myself in that box. Remember Krissy, you don’t matter. You don’t matter. You don’t matter. When I would start to get uppity in conversations and defend myself and people would get mad I would reach down and push on the cuts. That was how I could keep my mouth shut and my mind distracted.

I know that feeling as much anger and hatred as I do when someone can’t meet my needs is inappropriate. I don’t voice it much any more. I have learned how to silence that. It’s a set of feelings. It passes. I can’t help the fact that I have a lot of years of issues around no one being able to meet my needs. I’m sorry that my life has hurt me so much that I have really thin skin.

I wish I took things less personally too. I wish I was less sensitive. My life would be less tumultuous.

I frequently come back to this white trash thing. I identify my culture of origin as white trash. If I’m in a “consciousness awareness group” sort of thing (I live in California, this shit just happens here) and there is an ice breaker so people can start to understand one another and people talk about ethnicity or culture I always say white trash.

You should see the expressions on peoples faces. It’s an experience. I think that mostly people just dismiss it in their minds and ignore me. Often people will say, “I grew up in a trailer/poor/rurally/whatever and I’m not white trash so you aren’t either.”

I love how that works for people. Good luck with that.

I am white trash because not hitting people is constant all day effort. I want to jump on people and beat them to bloody pulps on a very regular basis. I have to consciously think about not hitting pretty much all the time.

I will never own a gun because I do not believe I have enough self-control. There are people in this world I would like to see dead and I would really like to be dead. It kind of seems like a no-brainer that I should avoid guns. If something inside me ever snaps and I beat my sister to death with a baseball bat to prevent her from ever raping another child I will be surprised. That’s a lot of hate. I will be surprised if I can summon the will to do that. It’s extreme. Shoot her? Oh shit yeah. That can be done impulsively with very little actual effort… if you have a gun.

Wait… not everyone thinks about this? Oh.

I have spent a lot of time studying the psychology of pedophiles. It seemed important. My sister is unlikely to ever stop. She is, essentially, a rabid dog. And there is nothing I can do about it. That scares me. My brother threatened to leave his wife if she pushed him on the issue of adopting a little girl. He doesn’t think he should live with a little girl. Ever. He believes they had three sons together because God knows he can’t have a little girl.

I’m not trying to say that everyone who grows up poor or everyone who lives in a trailer or everyone who is homeless or or or or or or or is white trash. I am saying that I am. I am saying my family is. We have a violence in us–a twisted perversion. A lot of it comes from entitlement. I deserve to have therefore I will take.

I feel very weird about having the life I have had and then marrying Noah. He didn’t tell me he was a trust fund baby until we were engaged. It was after I moved in and like a month or so before we eloped. We were having a conversation about long-term safety–specifically financially. He asked me how much money it would take before I felt “safe” quitting my job and staying home to take care of kids. How long I worked was going to be directly determined by how fast I could pay down debt (I paid off $100,000 in debt in the first year of our marriage–we lived on my teaching salary) and when we had enough of a savings buffer. He told me to give him a number. How much did I need to have before it would be ok. I told him that I really want to have a minimum of $250,000 in some kind of investment account before I will feel ok quitting.

He said, “Hold that thought” and left the room. He came back holding a piece of paper and said, “this isn’t actually all of it–but this is one account” and he handed me an account statement. He had like $257,389. I think. I may be mixing up a couple of numbers in the tens or ones column. Fucking close enough.

I almost had a heart attack. I started hyperventilating. Are you for fucking real? You want to marry me and hand me everything I have ever specifically planned how to get all nice and neat wrapped up with a pretty little bow?

After we were married and he heard me reading (cause I read out loud and react to things) MDC in the single parent forum about all the things women had wished they had done before they headed towards divorce (this was while I was pregnant with Shanna. When I tell you I plan ahead I’m fucking serious.) he grew concerned. He figured out how paranoid I actually am. When Shanna was under a year old he dragged me to a lawyer. He put all of his inheritance and pre-marriage money into a family trust so there is no chance in hell I can ever walk away from him legally with less than half his assets. (I think he’s wrong. A judge would let me walk away. But I digress.)

Noah is very serious about wanting me to trust him. He works very hard at being dependable–something that is specifically challenging for him. I’m a kind of consistent he just isn’t naturally. But he does it for me. Because he loves me so much.

I feel so much guilt for needing so much help from him. I do need it. He is so patient with me. I don’t tell him about my needs until I am at the point of shaking and freaking out. He doesn’t take my behavior personally. I don’t really understand how he does that.

I feel a lot of guilt about asking him for more at any point in time. I know that when I complain bitterly about being a lot less interesting than _____ that in pretty much every case he places the needs of his physical body way below me. He hurts himself to do things for me. The things he places in his top priority spots are things that earn money.

He feels very driven by my insecurity. I feel like that is not a good thing. We are certainly long past the point where more money buys us more happiness. We have specific goals, yes. We are on track to meeting them. I think I’m the kind of crazy where I could die a billionaire but clutch a dollar bill to my chest and say, “Well at least they didn’t get all my money.” I don’t think Noah should feel like he has to work harder. Good fucking grief man.

More money won’t fill my needs. That’s not the point. What is the point then? I don’t know. The point is somewhere long out of focus. I will probably decide what the point was and construct the story around it in my seventies. Until then it’s a mystery.

I’m kind of ridiculously glad that it is pouring rain (and lightning! and thunder!) because now I don’t have to go to Fairyland. Yay.

I could decide that “God” wants me to stay home. See how this works? I don’t think I should start having an invisible sky friend to blame everything on. That could go badly. Sometimes things happen. It’s not about deserve. It’s not about what is right. They just happen. There isn’t a plan. I can’t believe there is a plan that involves raping little girls. I just can’t.

The loyalty trap

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Recently a friend tactfully and gently pointed out that the way I write about family isn’t exactly standard. The kind of help I think I would get is fairly unusual. I couldn’t name a close friend who has the kind of relationship I write about wanting. No one has family who just shows up to take care of you–that isn’t how things work in America.

To this I reply: Ahh. You think that I have a mental model of a healthy family with boundaries. Hahahahaha. No. I come from a crazy enmeshed codependent family. What I talk about wanting is what I have seen. I get my longing for family from watching how people treated my sister having kids. Quite frankly folks worried about her being incompetent and immature. So they just showed up and helped. My mom did. My aunt did. My brother did. I did. Sometimes cousins helped too.

I’ve been watching a lot of movies lately trying to figure out what I mean when I say “white trash”. I’m trying to figure out how to explain it. Some day I want to have a concise definition that really explains what it means to me. I’m not there yet.

Movies I have streamed on Netflix recently: Winters Bone, The Poker House, The Burning Plain. All featuring the same actor (Jennifer Lawrence) and I feel kind of weird about her going on to be an action star. I probably won’t get around to watching the action movies any year soon. I care about the depictions of violence and family.

If you care about movie spoilers don’t read the rest of this post. That is your warning. That said, I think all three of those movies would be useful for people who want to understand me. Of course none of them is exactly right but there are interesting elements in each.

In Winters Bone she is trying to track down information about her father. She has to ask nosy questions. She lives in the Ozarks and she has to pester extended kin that don’t like to be pestered. She gets beaten by a group of women who do it so that her uncle can’t get mad at the men. There is this strong pressure through the whole movie that the police are the enemy. Drugs. Drugs. Drugs. My family used to do drugs like that. These days everyone has prescription meds.

In The Burning Plain you see seemingly disconnected stories that eventually make sense. It’s about mothers and daughters and feeling invisible and accidents and hating yourself and running away to deal with how much you hate yourself. Charlize Theron manages to look as empty as I feel. The way she self harms, the way she runs away because she is bad… yes. I understand that.

The Poker House is the most recent one. It is based on Lori Petty’s actual life. (The chick from Tank Girl.) Holy shit for shoe shine. My mother never prostituted herself and my mother never did drugs in front of me, so I had a very different set up than this movie. Nevertheless I had similar levels of neglect. Similar kinds of being abandoned in unsafe environments. I thought the rape was extremely well done and non-graphic but accurate. That is the truth. That is how fast and how easy it happens. I actively dislike the fact that Lori Petty’s take away message is “Don’t hold a grudge–forgive people for hurting you because they were hurt too”. To that I say: “Bullshit. I have children to protect.”

When I gave up on my family I gave up a lot. I gave up a support network that hasn’t worked in years and fucking loves hanging out with little kids. My family loves children under about eight. They are still cute and fun. Especially little girls. And my little girls are so angelic and wonderful that they would have done well.

But three people in my family have told me that my sister sexually abused them. I have fairly good reason to think that my kids would be good targets for her. The price of all the support is that you have to keep your mouth shut and understand that “people make mistakes” and ignore horrifying behavior year after year. If you need the support and you cannot survive without it this is the bargain that must be made.

I don’t fucking need the support that bad. I can sit home and cry from being overwhelmed instead. It’ll all work out. They are less overwhelming by the month. Shanna is much better at picking up after herself and my life is getting much easier on a day by day basis. Before too much longer they will actively make my life easier. They want to. They understand that doing so leaves me with more energy to do the things they want to do. Their mama didn’t raise no fools.

My sister hasn’t had a job since around when Shanna was born. She was laid off and lived off unemployment. I have the general impression that they are waiting for my mom’s social security to come in. She’s going to get my dad’s because they were married long enough. I think that is totally fair and it means that her retirement will be the most financial security she has had since divorcing him. I hope she finally settles down. I hope my sister isn’t molesting the kids she baby-sits. That’s what she does with her time. She stays home and takes care of little kids so their teen moms can go to school and/or work.

But I know she is a pedophile. I know how inappropriate she was with me. We didn’t have sex. But she did start telling me when I was four years old what I had to do to relax my anus so anal sex didn’t hurt so much. It was actually a thing for me for years. I didn’t manage to successfully have anal sex until Noah. (Violent sodomy as a small child doesn’t count. No, I didn’t relax enough to make it hurt less then either.) He was the first person who could work through that fear. A number of people tried before then. It always hurt too much and the hysterical crying freaked people out.

I felt specifically bad and like a failure because I was not able to have anal sex with the people who wanted to before Noah. I have had a lot of intense feelings of lack of worth because I was not able to do what people wanted. I was supposed to.

My sister is probably really who taught me this. I think she was the main consistent source of this. She talked about sex all the time and had sex in front of me and consciously and deliberately told me what I should go do.

I can’t play the game any more. She’s not ok. And my children do not deserve to be exposed to her.

But I’m losing out on cousins who fix my cars. And cousins who know how to help with plumbing. And all the free babysitting I want. And holidays full of people. And a niece and nephew who really need my help.

I can’t play the game any more. I’m not at the bottom of the shit hill any more and I won’t allow them to set the terms of reality. I just can’t. But it is hard.

You know how I moved around a lot as a kid? I was often staying with relatives. I didn’t know them well and I didn’t stay long so I never got to know them… but they took me in. Over and over. My family takes care of children. They would have been very happy to know my children.

But it’s a trap. It’s all or nothing. You have to play the game and keep the silence or you are out.

I’m out.

Living post-rape

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I drove home from Disneyland today and I spent most of the drive thinking about rape. How the public “standard” is violent stranger rape it’s… so completely missing the point.

Rape is someone you know just pushing too hard. Rape is very rarely a stranger jumping out of the bushes. Ok, that does happen. But it’s incredibly rare. As a species the risk for engaging in that kind of behavior is too great. Most men have incredibly high impetus to not try that sort of funny business. When I talk about rape culture that isn’t what I’m talking about.

My dad was a rapist. He raped his wife, his daughters, his son, his sisters, the children of his girlfriends… I don’t know where the list went from there. My dad is dead. He killed himself because he couldn’t handle going to prison. He died the morning his trial was to begin. He had already fully confessed. He gave them a lot of details and corroborating evidence that I had not given told the detectives about. I wrote a book about my childhood and I poured every detail I could remember. It’s 160 pages. That’s both a lot of remembering and not so much.

I mean, I did gloss over details and all. But if my dad raped me way more than I remember… when in the hell did it happen? What don’t I remember? I kind of want to read his confession and I kind of don’t. I’m pretty sure I could get it but it would take work. The trial never technically happened but I don’t think they get rid of evidence anyway.

I love my dad. I love my mom. I love my sister. I love my brothers. But I can’t be near them. Well, my dad is dead, Tommy too. But I divorced my mom and sister and brother and extended family.

It doesn’t matter if I love them. They poison me. They tell me it is not ok for me to inconvenience them when I go through trauma that kills people. I’m kind of indignant on this score. I was not allowed to speak when I was a child–I was slapped into submission. Now it is “digging up the past” and “You’re remembering wrong”. Oh man.

It doesn’t matter how much I love them. They hurt me. They tell me to be a prostitute. They tell me actively and specifically that I am required to have sex with any man who wants to have sex with me especially my family members. I mean… eww.

It doesn’t matter how much I love them. My children can’t grow up knowing those people and that dynamic. I don’t forking think so.

In the first year we were married my husband and I agreed that some day he could ignore me saying “no” and push for sex. I imagined in my head some night of casually saying no and ending up playing a dead fish. I’ve certainly played that game before.

He picked the day I turned my sister in to CPS. I was a mandated reporter. When she laughed and told me about the 12 year old with alcohol poisoning in her house I had to call. I was completely hysterical. I was breaking every taboo of my family. We are white trash. You don’t fucking nark. The police are the enemy. They want to hurt us. It’s a thing.

We beat the shit out of each other. It was really brutal. He’s a mean bastard when he wants to be. I think he partially does that because it makes me appreciate him being nice to me the vast majority of the time.

I’ve told him bluntly that I will never be raped again. He has a lot of enlightened self interest. And he only raped me because I had given him explicit consent with a set of boundaries I didn’t properly think about. Whoops. Ok. I’ve played that game to the end. I’m done now.

It’s kind of weird. I was 25 then. So I had a period of about 23 or 24 years where I was raped every so often by a new person.

It’s really kind of weird to be thinking about my life now as “post-rape”. And it is difficult to trust my husband. I don’t very much. I mean… I do… but I have walls I didn’t used to have. I protect me actively more now. I keep more of me hidden from him and that feels hard. It means I have no one to share those things with.

I want a mother so bad. But my mother isn’t a mother. She’s a monster. And I love her. But I can’t let her destroy my kids.

My mom tried to tell me, “But I wouldn’t have the same kind of influence on them that I had on you.” You bet your skippy you won’t.

I am ridiculously attentive. I don’t hover, but I pay attention. My kids feel special and loved. They feel like they have a lot to give the world and many things they want to hurry up and get doing.

It’s so different from my childhood. It’s hard to watch sometimes. I feel like I am constantly having this pity party track in my brain as I see what I had to go through at their ages. As I realize just how much of a baby I was oh god. How could they have done that to me?

My father liked to penetrate my vagina while in amusement parks. That was his favorite way to spend the day together as a family. We went often. He always had me sit on his lap. His hand was always inside me. I had to not react. I had to sit very still and barely breathe.

When I watch my children exist in the world sometimes I feel like I am watching them through a sheet of glass. I am still holding my breath and trying to not exist. I wish I could feel the same joy they feel but I can’t. I feel dead.

I feel like I have to create a new person out of whole cloth. I don’t know what else to do now. I was told what I was supposed to do. But I’m not doing it. I’m being bad. Aren’t I?

I don’t know. It’s very confusing sometimes.

What are you afraid of?

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I am asked what I am afraid of. I went to a party last night. I have known those people a long time. Shunning. That’s what I’m afraid of. I sat at the party and I listened to people I didn’t know bicker. I listened to the relationship dynamics. The things they were saying and the frustrations they appeared to be expressing. I listened to the passive aggressive shit.

I didn’t stay in the group after Tom and I broke up because I didn’t want to watch what happened when he started hunting and I didn’t want to hunt in front of him. I know less than half of the people who are there now. Now I don’t have to worry about the crowd knowing my whole history. I didn’t want to parade men through the group. I would have been ashamed of myself. I am ok with people having a theoretical knowledge that I am a slut but I don’t parade my business.

I don’t want to be a parent in an open relationship because I don’t want to parade my business and I don’t want to keep dirty secrets. The only way I see to do that is to create an unchanging set of roles that they primarily interact with. It is a choice to be that kind of person for my kids. Not because I think all polyamorous people are bad–that truly isn’t it.

I’m not polyamorous. I’m a slut. I pick up random people on the internet for sex. I have done a lot of it. I have hit three digits of sex partners but I don’t know for sure. I lost my list in a hard drive crash. I used to keep an excel document with check marks for what sexual activities I did with whom. I did that in case I needed to look people up and say, “I tested positive.” I thought it was the ethical thing to do. I did actually go back and contact everyone when I tested positive for herpes. Even the one night stands I otherwise would never fucking have talked to again. It was hella awkward. I explained that I used to get cold sores as a kid, so I have probably had it all my life. I thought I was getting tested for it when I said, “Test me for everything” but actually they don’t do the herpes test as a standard thing. Whoops.

Sometimes people say that they won’t sleep with someone who has had more than x number of partners. I have had guys tell me that completely out of the blue so they can explain why they won’t fuck me even though I am hot. Cause obviously I was hot for them, right? The fact that I was not remotely sexually attractive to them was irrelevant.

I had a different point when I started writing. Shunning. Moving as often I did as a child is a constant slow motion enaction of shunning scenes. There were large scale specific instances that stick in my mind. When I was in eighth grade we lived with Seventh Day Adventists. Living with Uncle Bob sucked because he was a verbally abusive asshole. The only people who would take my mom and I in were the religious folk. They were kind as long as you did what they wanted.

I went to church with them. I went a lot. I got very involved. I started following Joey like a puppy and he was very involved in the church life. I went with him everywhere. I tagged along on trips up the the SDA college in Northern California, I found out about the boarding high school in Mountain View. I had fantasies of going before the church elders and telling them about my life and asking for scholarships. Please, please save me. Joey and I did a lot of door to door missionary work. I helped in the production of a series of classes on spiritual matters. I read my fucking Bible. I could quote it chapter and verse.

I had this friend at school, Yvette. She was involved in a different church. She invited me to come with her to a lock-in. That’s where they lock a bunch of kids in a gym all night long. It was a lot of fun. We played games and sang songs and told stories. It was one of the best nights of my childhood.

I came to one of the leaders of the youth group for the SDA church. I asked if we could look into doing something like this at our church. She recoiled from me in horror. She said that she did not condone filth. She told me that I would be better served somewhere else.

If I couldn’t go with Joey to the Seventh Day Adventist church then I didn’t have a way to get to a church at all. I couldn’t get off the mountain.

To punish myself for being unlovable by God I would enact the most horrible things I could think of. Mostly this entailed reenacting scenes from Bertrice Small books. I would dress up in the closest things I could find to corsets. I would wear really tight tights in layers until they caused me a lot of back pain. Then I would put on layers and layers and layers of gauzy skirts. I was very into the peasant skirt thing. I would put on many layers of shirts and dresses. When I was done I would put on a very tight belt. I walked around in the house. I would pretend to encounter strange men.

I would then pretend to be raped over and over. I used a wide variety of different items to penetrate my vagina starting with pencils. Sometimes I would experiment and see how many pencils would fit. I fucked myself with the legs of a Barbie. It kind of skeeves me out to see my kids play with Barbies. (Obviously not the same dolls.)

I would call myself names for hours. I would chant that I was a worthless whore and no one would ever love me. Even God didn’t want me. I was dirty and bad and I wanted bad things to happen to me. I deserved to be hurt. I was disgusting.

Then I started calling the radio dj. He was twenty-five. We went out on several dates. I was twelve. We didn’t have sex but he did ask me for a blow job. I gave it to him. I knew I was supposed to. I tried to be enthusiastic but it was really unpleasant. I tried to smile. I tried to not vomit in his car.

Not long after that my mother and I no longer were as friendly when the neighbors tried to tell us what to do and how to do it. We moved to the old house in the canyon for a while. I couldn’t stand living with my cousin’s girlfriend and her kids. I wasn’t nice to them and they weren’t nice to me. I think there is plenty of blame to go around for that situation sucking. Then Auntie and Uncle Bob bought the new house up in Redwood Estates and my mom and I joined them. It was like a palace. It was huge compared to the old house.

I spent a lot of time angry at God. I felt very directly shunned by God. I wasn’t. I was shunned by a tight-ass ignorant woman. A mean spirited harpy. Unfortunately God wears many faces. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t speak for God. No one wanted to help me. Police officers told me not to talk about what happened to me after being sexually assaulted. I was isolated and hunted.

I don’t think the dj sexually assaulted me. I think he exploited my low self esteem, but that’s not the same thing. He didn’t force or cajole. He didn’t pressure me. I wanted to. I was enthusiastic. I asked him out on a date. I think he should have been a good enough person to understand that it was pretty bad for me to be doing what I was doing.

My mom didn’t mind me dating the dj. I broke it off. I felt disgusting and dirty when he gave me an opal necklace for Christmas. I knew it was a cheap shitty necklace. It was a gift worthy of my status. I was that bad of a whore.

Which isn’t fair. It was probably what he could afford. He didn’t know me. We didn’t have a real relationship.

But … yeah.

I don’t want to teach my kids to be the kind of promiscuous I am. It hurts me. I am to a point where I am capable of doing nonmonogamy in an ethical and reasonably safe way because I have made a lot of mistakes and I have been hurt in a wide variety of ways.

I have learned lessons that not everyone needs to learn. My kids don’t need to grow up and be like me. It is not important that my legacy be carried on in such a way. But maybe it is still important for my experiences to be talked about. That isn’t the same thing.

My kids aren’t having a life like I had but other kids are.

I really should try to sleep. I was going to try to go to the Renaissance Faire with the kids. Hahahahaha. We’ll see.

I don’t think that getting over my anger is the point.

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“Get busy living or get busy dying.”- Shawshank Redemption.

Sometimes it feels like life is about learning how to come to grips with your wasted potential. I could do _______ if only ___________. It’s a long series of conversations with yourself as you narrow down possibilities in life until the only path you could possibly take is completely obvious. Look, you’ve been working towards this all along. You did ______ and then you did _____ so obviously ______.

But believing that requires some underlying belief in a greater plan. Things are not inevitable. Things are changeable right up until the second they happen. It’s random. It has to be.

It has to be for me because otherwise there would have to be some specific reason I was picked out of a hat to suffer far more than other people. I’m sorry, there is no Kushiel looking out for my well being. I’ve read the Bible. I’ve read big parts of the Book of Mormon. I’ve read books by Martin Buber and St. Thomas (Aquinas, of course) and Sr. Thomas More and and. I did all the classes required for a masters degree in English. I got good grades. I read. I studied. I didn’t know I was supposed to be practicing handwriting. Whoops. Anyway.

I am educated. I have read what the masters think of the world. Sometimes I agree with them but often I don’t. I have had significant personal experience that disagrees with their beliefs.

I have two ways I can handle that. I can decide that they are right or I can decide that I am right.

Now, I like to hedge my bets. I have strong opinions but I’m willing to reconsider them given reason. It’s very rare that I bother to try, I am human after all. But when something challenges my belief structure I have to think about it very hard. I know I am not always right (really, D).

I kind of feel like I should stay off social networking sites for a while. I am feeling too many “shoulds”. I need to do what I am going to do and not worry about whether other people approve or not. Of course there are lots of people who don’t. Will I let that stop me? No. Then why let it bother me?

Because when people I love reject me in harsh ways it bothers me. When people I love tell people they think I am dangerous it bothers me.

Are they right?

I’m told I need to get over my anger. I’m not sure that it is anger I need to get over. I need to get over wanting things from other people. I need to really and truly not give a shit if a given person likes me or not. I know who my friends are.

As the legal next-of-kin I think I feel very reasonable about treating the God-Mamas as family. They take the kids every month. They have a very serious on-going relationship. They are invested and serious about it. That’s the last time I am going to do that to my kids. My family unit is closed. I can care about me. I can care about Noah. I can care about Shanna. I can care about Calli. I should not try to make sure there is stuff left for other people. Maybe there will be and maybe there won’t. My friends understand. They really don’t have high expectations of me–which should be depressing only it isn’t. They like me anyway.

Anger and anxiety are both emotions that are about energy flow. (In my opinion. I’m going to babble even more whacko than usual tonight. Sorry. It’s been a very long and very sober day and I’ve had time to sit with my anger more than I usually do.) I have a lot of energy. I have spent my entire life feeling like I am sitting with a burning wire of energy in the middle of my body. It churns my stomach. It constricts my throat and my lungs.

People are monolithic for me in a way that I don’t think most people understand. My life has always changed a lot. Every so often I up and move either geographically or in social sphere. As I age there is more and more overlap in communities. I’m having a harder and harder time going out. It’s scarier than I like admitting.

If I had been funneling my whole life towards what I am doing now the path would have looked different, don’t you think? It all depends on how you frame it. I’m a stay at home mom. I used to be a high school teacher. I’ve been married for nearly six years (anniversary is in a couple of weeks). I live less than twenty-eight miles away from my elementary school (well, one of them). My middle and high schools (at least five of them) are slightly closer to me than that. I’m a hippie. I dress very conservatively most of the time. I don’t have a television or watch anything approximating television programming on a computer. I garden a lot. I homeschool. I do building projects.

I am angry. I stay home a lot because I am afraid and I am fucking angry that I am afraid. Today we went to the post office. It went fine. The kids started to get into things but were easily distracted. Nevertheless I spent the whole time feeling very anxious. I was afraid my kids would get yelled at. I was afraid I would get yelled at. I was afraid the woman helping me would be mean. Good freakin grief. It’s ridiculous. I started crying and hyperventilating and the woman helping me told me it would be ok. That’s god damn embarrassing. I’m a fucking adult.

You want to tell me I should just get over it again? Oh fuck off. But the whole episode was under a minute. It’s not like it is a big deal. Only it hurts. It hurts my stomach. It hurts my heart. It hurts my throat. It hurts my head. It hurts my lungs. I feel like I am dying. If I could just stop it I would. There is no magic drug for me. The only thing I can do is dope myself to get the panic to stop. Look at any psych drug on the market. That’s what they do. They do it in different ways, but whatever.

I don’t really see a point in trying to live a long life if I am going to spend a lot of time every day in pain because my brain doesn’t understand that I am not in danger. It’s not like she had the power to prevent me from sending my packages. If she was really bitchy I could have gone to UPS. (But I’ll say: the gruffness from the ladies in the Mountain View USPS is just a front. They are softies.) She had no power to hurt me. Someone feeling irritated by my kids in the fifteen minutes we are in the post office is really not my problem. Why do I care?

Oh wait. That’s called trauma. Sort of. Kind of. I’m not sure. At some point I have to get it through my fool head that there are assholes in the world who are going to be rude to me and mine. It’s not about anything I’ve done. Well, not necessarily. For an awful lot of people I just have to exist. I have to have the god damn audacity to open my white trash mouth. I am offensive.

People like it when you are afraid of them. It makes them feel protective. It makes them feel big. It makes them feel powerful. People like it. I have spent a lot of time afraid and I can see how people react.

I feel like I am searching, always searching, for what I supposed to be doing. How am I wasting my potential? I don’t know. I look for seeds in my life to help me tell the future but unfortunately the future hasn’t been written yet. I have to write it.

It means I’m not looking at right now. It means I’m scared. I’m angry because a lot of people want to tell me things that all boil down to being raped is a womans own fault because the only logical conclusion I can come to is those people believe I deserve to be raped. I cannot put my mind around that. No. I can’t. It’s not possible. No one is born to be raped. Just because I have a cunt that does not decide my destiny.

I am a stay at home mom. I am a stay-at-home-a-lot mom. Well, I like taking BART on outings. Then we can take the bus and I can be stoned all day. I can be calm. I can let the children go at their pace. I don’t feel anxious about being in other peoples way. I don’t feel guilty that I am sitting when obviously this more deserving person (like a guy in his 50’s) should be sitting. No. I have two squirming kids. I should be fucking sitting. Otherwise they will fall and hurt themselves. That’s just stupid.

But I worry. I worry about offending people. I worry about making other people feel annoyed by my physical presence. You’d never guess by how I write, would you? In the privacy of a room by myself I have the biggest cojones of them all. Please join me in a derisive snicker, right?

I have nothing to offer the world to justify the worth of my opinions. I am fairly unlikely to pursue further academic studies. At this moment in time that sounds like hell on earth. Which unfortunately may mean I do it some day. I’m stupid like that. Next time I will practice my handwriting. And it won’t be English. Fuck English.

I don’t think that I need to get over my anger. I need to find a way to use it. I have a lot of energy. When I decide to get going on a project I work like a demon. I get a very large amount done in a short period of time. But I’m a woman. It’s fairly unlikely to ever be noticed. It helps that I pick lame menial jobs because I think that is what someone like me should be doing. I think I never noticed that I stopped working at Boston Market. I still think I am an ignorant fool who cannot be right. Look, all these people tell me I am wrong.

Well, fuck them. I don’t like their system. There is no way for me to win in their system; I was born damned.

Before you tell me to stop being angry let me hit you as many times as I have been hit. Let me rape you as many times as I have been raped. Then I will put you into a culture that tells you it is all your fucking fault that it happened. Then we can talk about anger.

What else did you expect to have happen? Do you know how many people in uniform I’ve had sneer that at me when something inappropriate and illegal happens to me? I can’t really remember. For a while there I was put on drugs against my will when I was a teenager and I can’t remember that period so an exact number is truly beyond me.

I have been told to sit down and shut up and don’t get angry all my life. I don’t think that is a message I should listen to. I think that is a message that seals my doom. I’m not saying that everyone has to be angry with me. I’m saying that once you are marked as prey–once you are truly afraid they smell you. If I am angry enough I can drive them away. I no longer look like easy prey even though they know what I am. I finally got close enough to the herd to not be the weakest link.

And now that I am closer to the herd the mother fuckers around me are going, “Oh shit, who let her show up?” It’s interesting to watch. I just piss people off. I don’t even have to try. I just have to say what I think. I make people angry. Even if I wasn’t angry to start with. It’s interesting.

I make people angry when I speak to them. Maybe I should just stop speaking to them. I don’t mean become selectively mute, that’s a bit extreme. I mean that maybe I should stop setting the bar so god damn low on who I try to become friends with. I should act like I’m worth jumping through some hoops. People do it. They really do. It’s kind of weird.

I think I should stay of social networking sites for a while. Outside of my house there is nothing but bad. Inside my house I live in Wonderland. It’s really nice here. We sing and play games. We dance and should and run around. We paint and cook and garden. We grow up together. We learn how to do things together. We learn how to gently coexist with another human being. When someone slaps you in the face while you are sleeping it is perfectly acceptable to yell, “What the hell are you doing?!” before you are actually awake. (I am very articulate while mostly asleep.) It’s not ok to yell such a thing while fully conscious. We have Rules. No name calling. No hitting. You can’t put anyone down. Everyone deserves to have space but we need to be careful how our space effects other people. Every day involves “I love you” and “I am really glad I know you” and hugs and kisses.

But I know with every day that marches forward that two of these relationships are going to change. They are going to go off into the world. They are not going to stay with me and meet my needs. I have to do that for myself.

Some people can wait until the kids are teenagers to worry about it. My kid is about to turn two. Oh shit. I only have sixteen years to plan. I’m not sure that is long enough. I’m not sure that is long enough for me to finish growing up. I feel guilty because Noah is my provider. Because we have decided that his salary is good for both of. We don’t want another thing pulling from the available energy in our lives–probably ever. I feel like I am wasting my potential. I feel like I am letting down my feminism. I feel like I am setting myself up for a fall. I feel like…

I feel like I am waiting for the inevitable conclusion of the life of a girl like me. What terrible thing will happen next? How will Noah turn on me? Will he wait until a year or two after the kids are gone and say, “I just stayed for the kids.” I don’t think so. I don’t think he could fake that facial expression. He’s a good liar, don’t get me wrong, but not that good. Not with me. I know when that face happens. It isn’t in company. I’ve been watching this man for a while now. I intend to keep watching him. My very survival depends on him.

That’s the bit that is weird and hard to swallow. Basically because it is a crock of shit. Whatever. I wouldn’t necessarily like everything I had to do, but if I had to do it I would.

It’s not that I need to stop being angry. Anger happens. It stops when it stops. But I do really need to stop looking for it. I investigate the candidates before every election and beyond that I need to just live in my little bubble. I feel like we exist outside the modern world with the glaring exception of the glowing box I am staring at. Ok, not really outside the modern world–give me a break. But we do live with a shocking lack of popular culture. Of any kind, really. I suppose we listen to some music but certainly not every day. I would say not every week. Ok, that’s not true for me right now. I listen to music while I run. That’s a new hobby this year. I’m not sure how that will go long term. And my phone battery can’t play music through a whole long run so my phone is now annoying useless on runs. Bummer.

People are going to think I’m a trainwreck. To that I cock my head to the side and say, “Have you ever seen a train wreck?” Things have settled down in my life remarkably over the last few years. Cutting off my family was hard and caused a big bump, yes. I was abused as a child, yes. I haven’t been raped in more than five years? Something like that. That’s the longest stretch of my life. I’m waiting for the next thing that will hurt me. It is very confusing to my brain that I have this nice man in the house.

I would have been fine today if I was able to cut before going to the post office. Because when I start to feel panic I press on the fresh wounds and that keeps me level. It’s more reliable than any drug I’ve ever tried. But people get quite upset with me, so I stopped. I think that really I just don’t want to teach my children to do it. I don’t want them to learn my panic and fear and need for pain.

It’s not that those monolithic “them” are actually all bad. But I have no reason to go fishing to find out. It’s kind of freeing, really. I don’t have to care if people will want to do me ill or not if I don’t give them an opportunity.

What does it feel like to have distant community? I only sort of know. I get it somewhat in the Leather community. I really need some place I can belong with my kids. I’m trying to build places. We are consistent (mostly, barring various events like a washing machine flooding my garage). We have patterns. We have friends. We have relationships.

What is it I am supposed to get over my anger for? What is it that I am supposed to do? Ahhh grasshopper–what I should do is not make people feel uncomfortable. Sorry mate, that ship sailed. I’m going to make you uncomfortable.

I make plans. And I make plans. And I make plans. When you call the suicide hotline one of the first thing they ask you is if you have “a plan”. I laugh. I have plans. I have worked out so many ways to die that I can’t casually list them all. First I do this and then I do that and then I have to look at this and then… I know the dozens of steps involved in any number of ways to die. How accidental can I make it look? Where should I leave the consolidated list of passwords so Noah isn’t screwed? Where… etc.

But the point isn’t to stop being angry. Or really even to stop being afraid. That can’t be the point. If that is the point I will always fail. You can’t decide to stop something. You have to decide to do something else instead. I decide every day over and over. It’s exhausting. It’s hard. I have to sit here all day every day thinking carefully about what I say and what I do. You have read this far in my blog. Surely you think I am a psycho about to fly off the handle any moment now. I’m truly not. I’m pretty quiet. Sometimes I speak unexpectedly sharply. Sometimes my tone of voice is more harsh than seems appropriate to the topic. If I am alone with my family I instantly say, “Oh I’m sorry that came out harsher than I meant it. I’ll try again.” I expect my kids to do the same thing. I say, “Try again.” Shanna says it to me now. It’s interesting to negotiate.

My children are not in charge of me. My children are not responsible for me and they never will be. But they get to have preferences to. How do I sit back and very slowly learn someone like this? I don’t know. I’ve never done very well at close intimate relationships. I just know how to spend a lot of time alone in a room. But I’m trying. I get a couple of hours of sitting alone in a room every day or I feel like I am going to lose my mind.

I didn’t used to be this way. It feels like the anger is the war between my need for people and my terror of them. I don’t want to have any of the feelings I have about people and I can’t make them go away just by wishing and I am fucking angry about it. I hate that I cry over stupid things. I couldn’t figure out a form. It wasn’t a big deal.

The last time it was truly a big deal was when Denise said, “Have you ever had anyone close to you die.” I didn’t let her set the terms of my reality then–she doesn’t get to tell my my father and brother were not close to me–and I don’t think I should let random assholes on the internet. That seems kind of stupid and weak minded, don’t you think?

There is a lot of “you” tonight. I don’t think I do that very often. I don’t even know who I am writing to. I periodically rotate through various people in my head and no one fits. I’m not ranting at anyone. I’m ranting at the unseen you. The one who hurts me. The one whose plan it is. The one I don’t believe in.

I’m very angry at God because I can’t be an atheist. I have known things. I have to believe in my own experiences or I’m fucked. But I don’t think there is a plan. I don’t think it’s the Christian God. I don’t know what it is. But something knows I am here. I’m not sure it cares much one way or another. But it knows something more than me. I don’t know how much more. And it’s probably fallible. Isn’t everything?

I feel like I have no culture to retreat to. I am not Christian. I am currently upper middle class according to my bank balance. In attitude and behavior I am white trash. I don’t know how else to be. I offend people. I have always offended people. I have the audacity to be raped and complain about it. Don’t I know I should shut up?

Passing

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I feel like I have been blessed at this point in my life. I have a wide variety of friends who tolerate my moods and writing about all kinds of hostile things. In person I generally behave myself. I have a hazy understanding of the fact that most people are guided by rules of behavior. I just don’t understand what they are, mostly, and when I do I actively want to do the opposite. Just because.

I’m told that I shouldn’t care what people think of me. I’m told that because Noah grew up one of those Gibbs’ in his town. The rich ones. He doesn’t have to care what people think. He has a fairly codified set of permissive behaviors that are tolerated from the rich geek. He knows how to behave. He knows when and how he has to care.

There is this unspoken set of behaviors that people follow. Mostly they have no idea what it means about them. If I follow the behaviors I was taught then it is patently obvious that I am still white trash. I curse regardless of who is around. Sometimes I dress in absolutely trashy clothes–to be fair I’m mostly eccentric and not “trashy” in my clothing style. I’m weirdly conservative. I have spent my entire life dodging the “you must have asked for it” line about being raped. I make sure no one can tell me it is my fault because of what I am wearing.

I have a carefully constrained life. The most important piece of my life right now is that I learn how to pass. I need to learn how to pass as a normal, stable member of the middle class. I need to learn how to not offend people. It’s harder than it seems. It’s easy for other people because they were taught to be unoffensive from when they were quite young. I was taught quite the opposite.

This weekend I spent time with a friend I have known for more than ten years. We met in a bdsm relationship class on protocols. It was a six week course on Dominant/submissive and Master/slave variations. It was more interesting than it sounds. What is protocol? I’m not going to steal the Lady Victoria’s class and tell you much about it. If you like such things, I recommend the extended classes. People find interesting things to say.

Anyway, I was hanging out with this friend. I met her early in the M/s portion of my relationship with Tom. I asked her if she was aware that I was depressed and cutting through my relationship with Tom. She said she had no idea. She is pretty sure no one knew.

I pass pretty well when I want to. But I don’t always pass as what I want to pass as.

I know how to be not-me. I’m not great at the fine tuning of what people really see. I have a nervous energy I get at parties. I giggle a lot. I’m scared shitless. I usually feel like I want to vomit on the floor. Being around more than two or three human beings triggers my hypervigilance and in my head I am rehearsing polite ways to deflect attention I don’t want and I’m praying for attention I do want. Long before I can try to get attention I have to decide the appropriate way to deflect unwanted interest. Or I get in trouble. My natural reflexes are not PC. When I am given truly unwanted attention my impulse is to be violent. I don’t hesitate. I have to defend myself and no one else will. Ever. Period. I live in a “polite” society, though. I am not allowed to be violent in defense of myself. I try hard to think of ways to “use my words”that won’t get me booted out. If there is a problem it will always be my fault. I’m sure that this guy who has raped other women (I hear the stories) could not possibly have done anything rude to me I am just over reacting. I’m the problem.

I know how to be not-me. I know how to pretend a certain level of passivity so that I can be tolerated on the fringe of society. I don’t know how to feel safe. I don’t know how to feel like I belong. I don’t know how to make friends with multiple people in a demographic. I tend to hold on to a few people from each community. I don’t know how to interact with large groups of people because I’m used to tailoring the things I say to one individual person. I can skirt the line of offensive more easily that way. When I’m around a group I feel petrified with fear because someone in the group is going to be an outlier in a different direction and someone will be snotty or aggressive or … something. Someone will behave in a way that I read as picking a fight. And I will have to walk away or bear the consequences. I can’t engage. I can’t respond at all. I will be the problem.

I don’t mean that I spend my life wanting to hit people. I mean that I don’t verbally spar with people. I shut up.

I have friends I can argue with. I have people I have known intimately I can argue with. Unless someone has been close to me at one time I am unlikely to take the chance of arguing with them. I don’t go looking for random arguments on the internet. If I bother to argue with you it is probably because I have years of pent up frustration I need to vent in your direction. You have been pissing me off for a very long time. Mostly I felt that I had to keep my mouth shut. At some point I will feel comfortable enough in the turf and I will fucking tell you how you have pissed me off. I can only do that with people who have shown a previous tolerance for me. It’s terrifying. I have to trust there will not be repercussions. I’m wrong, still. I go off on people and lose friendships.

I’m supposed to pass as a not-angry person. That is a mask if ever there was one. The same people who tell me to “be myself” are the people who tell me to not be angry. It’s a lie from the first breath. And I can’t point that out. And I can’t be angry about being lied to over and over.

There are a lot of things I have to pass as. I’m in the first truly stable period of my life. I have lived in this house longer than anywhere. I have to pretend I know what this feels like and I am comfortable here. I am so uncomfortable I am ready to crawl out of my skin. I want to move. I want to not have to feel scared when I leave the house. I don’t feel scared when I feel invisible. I feel so scared here because people have been seeing me around for a long time and they have expectations of me. I feel like I am going to let people down at any moment. Soon they will learn how very angry I am.

I feel very weird about the other ways I pass. I pass as straight. I am now in a monogamous relationship. We don’t have the time to be non-vanilla if we wanted it. Not really. I have to walk away from being the kind of freak I was.

Not everyone does. I can’t be part of an experiment to raise children in an “open” household. I can’t. I need more boundaries than that. I want my children to have a theoretical knowledge of my sex life. I don’t want them to see my sex life parading through the house. It’s different with their dad. We don’t flaunt our sex life. It isn’t obvious that I’m keeping him around for that. I do though. He’s great at sex.

I feel weird about the fact that I shouldn’t talk much about being queer. I certainly don’t tell the lesbian moms in the home schooling group that I’m queer. I don’t want to see rolled eyes. I have two options: I can shut the fuck up, or I can roll out my CV to prove I am the person I say I am.

It’s easier to pass.

It seems to me that queer is complicated. I can never take back the fact that I have had sex with a good thirty or forty women. I don’t know the number any more. Hard drive crash. But people don’t know that when they look at me. How could they? I have a much larger body count than most heterosexual men. How in the hell can I ever be not queer? But I don’t partner with women. I have too many issues with them. I have a hard time working things out with women. With a man I assume he won’t be able to figure anything emotional out so I’m ok with spelling things out in small, easy to digest words. With a woman I get incandescently angry that they are so stupid about figuring out my emotions and I just refuse to keep talking.

Women are scary in a way that men aren’t. My experience of the men I choose to get close to is that they are not passive aggressive. They are aggressive. They do it or they don’t do it. My experience of the women I get close to is that they are going to serve #1 first but they will actively lie to you and say that you are first, no really. When women speak I have this filter in my brain, “Are they lying to me” that I just don’t have in the same way with men. Men lie too, but generally about different things and in different ways. Men are easier to predict. Men feel less complicated. Women can smile at you and poison your drink. Women are like me. Women are terrifying. But hot. So there you go.

I loved Julia. I lived with her. I thought we could find a way to figure things out. She showed up one day out of the blue and said she was moving to Boston next week, uhhh bye.

I grew up in a house of women. Women aren’t going to do the bad things to you. They are just going to leave you. They are going to let you down when things are hard because they have been overstressed for a long time and they never told you and now they have to focus on themselves and you just aren’t important. My mom did that. My sister did that.

And I can’t be angry. Not if I want a shred of relationship left. Not if I don’t want to be alone. I’m telling you, though: I’m angry. I’m fucking angry. I have to pass as not angry. It will be a carefully constructed lie because I am no better than anyone else. Because I know that continuing to behave in my normal fashion won’t teach my kids how to have healthy relationships. I have to pass as someone who is capable of having normal, healthy relationships.

It’s hard. It’s a game I play every day. How to pass as a “normal” person. I’m not. Normal people didn’t go out and get a PhD in sex. I haven’t heard of very many things I haven’t tried. That was my hobby for the first twenty-five years of my life. It has been one of the largest parts of my identity. It decided my behavior. That is how I use identity. I decide what identity I want/need to have and then I align my behavior with it. I am not just Krissy. It’s all a game. Who and what I am varies dramatically in different situations.

I didn’t tell my dentist he was a fucking asshole when he told me that he wouldn’t recommend my book to people because it is too hard and people shouldn’t have to know about such things. Instead I just told him, “That attitude is why it happened. Because no one can bear to know I exist.” I hope he felt bad.

I have to pass. If I don’t then people don’t want to acknowledge that I exist. I have to have a presentable, tasty candy coated shell. I have to pretend to be good enough. I have to pretend to be of the class of the people I am talking to.

I’m god damn tired of being scolded because my manners are terrible. You have no idea. Go to hell.

Everything about the life I am choosing right now is a carefully constructed lie. See, I’m a good mom. I can play this role. I can be patient and kind. I can be tolerant and mellow. I can be careful what behavior I model. My children are not going to learn how to be a whore by watching me work. When I am in the mood to I can go pick up sex basically anywhere. There is usually someone willing if you know how to look. I’m trying to learn how to ignore those signals. I’m modeling the behavior that I believe a “good” woman would have. I’m a fucking fraud.

I don’t even make people buy me dinner before I fuck them and leave. I want to have physical contact, not intimacy. I don’t want my children to learn that. Not from me.

I think that my relationships with my children will be pretty much the most intense ones of my life. The most intimate. My mother treated me like an obnoxious burden. I don’t do that to my kids. My mom dumped me on people I didn’t know. My kids are getting to know a short list of people very well.

I will spend significantly more time with my children than anyone else. Far more time than Noah. Noah will take decades to catch up on time spent because he likes his alone time. I will have a good solid ten years of being with my kids before they start really trying hard to get away from me. I have to pass as a good mother.

What makes someone good or bad? I’m not sure. I’m told that you are bad if you do bad things. I’ve done a lot of very bad things. I guess that’s that.

After my experience with my girl friends a couple of weeks ago I remain convinced that I am not a dancer. If I am to be defined by my behavior I am not a dancer. I occasionally dance. I enjoy dancing. I’m not a dancer.

I am a mother. That will never be taken away from me. Nothing can change that. I think it is the most permanent part of my identity. Will I ever want to pass as not a mother? In order to act like a slut I would have to. I don’t want to. I want to have this permanent change in who and what I am. If it is possible to simply be another person I want to be. I want to figure out how to stop being bad. It’s not that I think that all people who have multiple partners are bad. The sex I like is the most high risk kinds there are. I just can’t model that to my kids. I can’t. I have to pass. I have to.

What does being queer mean then? How is that going to work in my life? Am I giving that up to? I was talking to a friend about passing this weekend. The Godmama. She said she doesn’t really think about being queer any more. It’s there but it’s not a conscious part of her life. I said, “You are trans and married to a woman. You don’t have to think about it to wear it on your face.” I am who those disgusting ministers point at when they say that you can get over being queer. I pass.

I tell my children that they grow up to love men or women or men and women. I tell them that the most important part of relationships is that you respect your partner and can trust them. Some day my kids will figure out that I know some really weird people. It’s probably going to take them a while. To them this will be normal.

Why do I want to consciously construct a heterosexual monogamous life and model that? It’s not the norm. Not really. Look at history. I want to model picking a life and really doing it. I want to not be distracted by all the could-be’s in life. I want to be creating something with a person. Noah and I have a lot of joint goals. We are building something together. It happens that he is a guy. It was a lot more convenient for that “having kids” thing I wanted. No woman ever wanted me the way Noah wanted me. That’s why I picked Noah. Not because I don’t like women. Not because I’m not attracted to them. No one ever wanted to take on the project that is my mental health. I don’t blame them.

My teenagers will understand that non-monogamy is a common, perfectly reasonable path that I do not choose. They will hear which people we know are doing it well (Grandpa J) and which people are not doing it well (name redacted). We will talk a lot about ethics. Heck, we already do.

Am I trying to pass as not depressed? Yes. I don’t want them to learn the physical behaviors of depression. I don’t want them modeled. I want my kids to grow up around productive people. It’s ridiculously important to me. It doesn’t matter how I feel. I have a place in my head that allows me to go through the rote motions of life. I may not be cheerful but I consciously work on maintaining a neutral facial expression and I god damn do everything I am supposed to do. I make food. I do chores. We go to the park on park day. I have a role to fill. It doesn’t matter how I feel. I can pass. I can do this.

Sometimes when I sit and think about what hard things I have done I feel confused. Like those must be the acts of a different person. Doing those things would make someone strong. I feel so weak. I’m trying to get stronger every day. I have to. Even if I have no interest. I have amazing willpower. My willpower seems to be inhuman. I have tremendously more control than I let on. That’s part of the game. That’s part of passing. You have to fake it until you can make it.

I have a picture of Jenny and her mom in my garage. I think about them and their relationship a lot. I try to puzzle out the has been from the should have been. I haven’t been able to stand near very many mother-daughter relationships. I don’t understand them very well. Jenny doesn’t have overly close relationship with her mother for a variety of reasons. I think about the lessons to be learned from the choices her mother made. Jenny’s mom was nicer to me than any other mother of a friend when I was a kid. It’s complicated in my head to set that aside and think of her from other perspectives.

When I’m trying to create this person in my head, the person I am supposed to “pass” as I think hard about my role models. I try hard to think through the long-term consequences of their behavior. I don’t want to adopt other broken models. That’s not useful. I feel scared. When I look around my life I see that most of the people who want to know me are people who also come from problematic back grounds. People would rush to say, “Not like yours!” but whatever. No, incest is not rampant among my friends group. But people who tolerate me probably had an emotionally unstable parent or close relative so they have coping skills. That’s kind of not great.

I feel afraid because I feel like I am trying to create a person who genuinely could not exist even under the best of circumstances. I know a handful of people who came from stable, happy, affectionate, appropriate families. They are oddballs. They know it. They are nearly mythical. At least in my head. I’m not trying to be Mary Poppins.

We live in a strange time. Through most of history people basically grew up to do what their parents did. Sure there were transition times when people left farms and came to cities, but then the family found a trade in the city. Mostly people did what their parents did. What kind of person do I want my children to grow up with?

On the subject of body wind: Noah tells me that farting is one of those things that tells you which class someone really is. Rich people ignore bodily functions. Middle class people apologize for them. Poor people laugh. I go back and forth between ignoring them and giggling. I feel anger over the idea of apologizing for them.

I am expected to follow all these stupid made up rules. They have no basis. They are regional. They don’t matter. That’s what you are supposed to do in “polite” society. How in the fuck am I supposed to teach this shit to my kids? My goal is to take them out of the country at formative ages so they understand exactly how irrational and arbitrary these rules are. But I don’t want them to feel the same anger I feel.

I don’t want my children growing up with the idea that getting angry all the time is normal and natural. That’s really hard on your body. It causes long term stress for the rest of your life. So I have to model not being angry. This is not a good cycle for me.

It’s ironic that I had two girls. It means I have to work on my emotional intimacy issues with females. Festive. When Shanna gives me a nasty look I respond with surprise. I say, “Oh gosh! Am I looking at you like that?” Then I rub my forehead to get rid of the deep lines of scowl and I repeat whatever I had said to her previously. I explain that I wasn’t feeling angry but I was thinking hard. She generally smiles and repeats whatever it is she is on about in a more friendly way.

I’m going to have a hard time with the homeschooling group. I don’t really like how often the topic is, “Obviously we love our kids more than working mothers.” I’m not yet in a position where I can sit and argue with people. I keep my mouth shut and my eyes on the ground. It’s horse shit. It’s self-serving dogma. You can’t measure love. You don’t take care of your kids a certain number of hours per day and compare it to a chart to see how much you love your kids. Not all mothers want to subsume their complete identity into parenting. Some people might call that healthy.

Not all homeschooling mothers subsume their entire identity into their children either. But they give up a much larger chunk. Either that or they drag their kids along into their identity. Is there or is there not a barrier between your children being full members of your life? For me there just isn’t a lot left they can’t be part of. I go to adult-only events sometimes but it’s rare. I have a lock on my bedroom door so that I can have a sex life. I write behind a closed door. I don’t smoke near them. That is all I do away from them. They are part of the whole rest of my life. I really enjoy the company. I really enjoy feeling seen all the time. I enjoy the fact that what I do with every minute of my day matters because I am going to be accountable to this person for the rest of my life for my behavior. This relationship is the opposite of temporary. This is the the most intensity I will ever have in my life. I want to really experience that. I want to drown in it. I want to find out what it is like to really and truly be responsible for another human being at all times. Yes, working parents are still responsible for their kids, but they delegate a lot of the day-to-day supervision. The ultimate responsibility is still there. Just wait till your kid steals a car. Ha. I did that.

I am integrating my children into my life. I am creating a life that is fully appropriate for them. Who do I want to be? What kind of person are my children likely to respect and trust as they grow up? What do I have to do to pass as respect-worthy and trust-worthy?

This is so hard. I was not taught to be this person. I am a judgmental bitch and I will say that I did not grow up around people with a strong work ethic. Most of my family survives on welfare of some kind. There is no impetus for working to better your life. You just have to learn how to hussel to fill in the cracks. Declare bankruptcy every so often. Let other people support you. Don’t pay your rent and get angry when your (relative) landlord tells you that you have to move because they need to make enough money to pay the mortgage. You are owed a living, aren’t you?

I grew up angry poor. The kind of poor that is surrounded by beauty and wealth which only emphasizes how terrible it is. My Uncle Bob and Auntie live down in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It’s beautiful. When you spend most of your childhood surrounded by the California Redwoods you travel and think, “I can see that they have nice bushes but where are the trees?” It’s a very wealthy area. Our neighborhood slowly gentrified during my lifetime. When my relatives bought in it was the cheap and cruddy area. The poor people lived there because it was what they could afford. The original mortgage more than forty years ago was $40,000. Last I heard the mortgage was several thousand a month and Auntie had to work full time to pay it. She was in her seventies.

Our house was the unsightly dump at the end of the road. Lots of cars on blocks. You know those big metal storage PODS people use? There were a few there as permanent instillations. Several big ramshackle barns on the property. It was a serious health hazard. Uncle Bob was a serious hoarder. He spent money like it grew on trees and never got rid of anything. So he could never find anything in he mess and would go buy new over and over. He was so bitter about not having… something. I never knew what.

I went to Los Gatos High School and I was on the free lunch program. There weren’t many of us. When I went to Lakeside, up in the mountains, it was different. There were always a few other poor, problem kids. A lot of fucked up people go hide in the mountains. Which isn’t to say that everyone in the mountains is fucked up. Anyway.

I wasn’t allowed into the nice homes. I was only invited to play with the other kids who had alcoholic parents. The other girls who watched their parents have sex. I had Brittney. That was it for a stable friendship in my life. Every family has issues, even Brittney’s family. I learned some bad things there as well. Mostly lying.

What do I want to teach my kids? How do I need to pass out there in the scary world? I would be less scared if the consequences mattered less. How do I not fail my children? How do I not teach them to grow up and act like they have an alcoholic parent? This is hard.

I feel like they shouldn’t have to deal with the fact that I am an angry person. Full stop. I’m not angry at them or about them so it isn’t their problem. I don’t give other people the same leeway. I’m not sure why.

Shanna and Calli are unabashed in their need. They still truly need me in order to grow up whole and healthy. I have to be a positive force in their life. Someone who makes them feel good about being themselves. That’s my job. It’s a lot of pressure, meeting their needs all the time. It’s a lot of work. In many ways it is unsatisfying work because they feel like bottomless pits of need and I never make a dent. But that’s not true. They are very happy people. Life is going well for them. They don’t have unmet needs. Even though I feel like I can’t I can’t I can’t I am.

I think about how their needs are going to change. How I have to be the bad guy sometimes. I have to be the mean mom. That’s part of the deal. I have to set limits. If I don’t then you won’t learn how to deal with them in the world. Everyone has limits. People who tell you that you don’t have to worry about what other people think are mostly lying. I want my kids to make the conscious choice of which opinions to care about. I hope they will respect me enough to care about mine. I don’t take it as writ.

How do I need to act in order to be someone they can respect? That feels like a lot of pressure. How do I need to change? How do I need to pass?

Status

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I finally found one of the threads in my brain I’ve been trying to turn into a full tapestry. Let’s see how this goes.

How much do other people think about status? I think about it a lot. I think about who has it and why. Status is far more important than people want to admit in pretty much every area of life. Dancers try to tell me they aren’t status whores but they have spent many thousands of dollars on costumes to be impressive. Really?

I’m status obsessed. I can say it out loud as well as in writing. I think about the potential status repercussions for my actions. I like to toil in isolation and show up with something cool. I don’t like being seen sucking. If I can’t do that, well, I guess I don’t need to come out of isolation.

I’m a weird place socially. I am not present in any community enough to be an Alpha. I know it. I accept it. I don’t really want to be a leader. It’s a lot of pressure. But I’m not really a group member. I suck at that. My experience of being part of the hierarchy is that I have to be on the bottom and shut my fucking mouth about it.

I re-watched the movie Whale Rider recently. The little girl was explicitly told she had to sit in the back and not participate while the boys were trained. Obviously she wasn’t as good as them. They had dicks. They are better.

That was really and truly how my childhood was oriented. If someone had a penis and he wanted to be “right” you had to let him. I certainly went off and lived that experience again with Tom. I don’t do that any more. I argue with Noah. I am kind of an asshole when I am right. I have a lot of years of bitterness around being told I am wrong. It’s not fair to Noah. He thinks it is a small sin in the scheme of things. I have gotten much more polite over the years.

Noah and I have long, complicated conversations about status. In terms of income we are in the top 10% of the country. In the bay area we are fairly median. We consciously choose to live in a smaller, cheaper house than most of our friends want to live in. Noah deals with a long commute so that he doesn’t have to spend way more money on a mortgage. This was what he could afford to buy ten years ago. I’m told we should upgrade now. My thought is, “Nah, I can remodel when the mortgage is paid off.” I won’t be able to buy a house that feels perfect. I’ll have to change it too. Why not just put all the effort into this house? Why leave my garden? I’ve done a lot of work here. This is my piece of dirt. I have changed it.

Because where I live is rather low status.

People snicker occasionally. You live in Fremont? I don’t really understand the sneering. Mother fucker my family is from Bakersfield. This is a step up. I promise. It helps that even my neighbors think we are on the low end of things. We don’t spend money in flashy ways. I think a month-long trip to Europe is a high status thing to do. I’d rather do that than spend more money on rent.

Noah was talking to me about how people want to be able to identify very high status people and very low status people and they don’t really want to think about the bits in the middle. That’s sticky. I’m in the middle these days. I have been on the bottom. I know very well what it feels like to be looked at and judged to be less of a worthy person just because of the things you don’t have. The rest of my family has standard poor-person-values in terms of wanting status symbols. You may live in a roach infested dump but damnit you have expensive shoes. Or a big car. Or something. I don’t want to have. I want to do.

Most of the people who inhabit my world are fairly bright. I know a lot of ivy-league-educated people. I live in that kind of place. I always know I am not one of them. I know that I am a social climber. I know that I really belong on the lower end of societies scale on most things. I spend my time around people who are demonstrably higher status than me wondering when they will look down on me. I didn’t go to CMU or Stanford or MIT or… They still talk about it all the time. Clearly it is a big part of their self-perceived status. If it is such a demonstrably large part of their perceived status it isn’t much of a jump to think that they therefore judge other people on the same criterion. All I have to say is that my university was named for a city when I went there. Now it’s just “East Bay”. Woo. That’s pride to have. Even the school isn’t proud of being in Hayward. Let’s try to pretend we have some relevance compared to places like Berkeley. We’re part of the bay area too! Ugh.

I forget that the ivy league educated people aren’t any smarter than I am. I feel intimidated by them. I never even took trigonometry. Obviously I am as stupid as a rock. At least that is the attitude the geeks have. In their little status hierarchy I am extremely low status.

I think I married Noah because, near as I can tell, he has a higher opinion of my status than anyone else. Even before marrying me. He thought my experiences and strengths add up to a person of considerable value. I think he married me because I look at him and see very high status. I can’t believe someone like him would want someone like me.

I crawled out of the gutter. I come from uneducated people with no work ethic to speak of. I come from drug abuse, alcoholism, and heinous abuse of various flavors. It feels like I am an untouchable. How could a trust fund baby from an ivy league see anything worth having? Status is a complicated thing. If you are sufficiently mobile you can trick people into only seeing your current life situation. If you do that then you can have some degree of social mobility in the middle. You will never be high status that way. Such assignments carry longer term consequences. They are for people who are fairly consistent in their life. You can carry low status with you. I feel like I am trying to outrun mine.

How much do I have to do? How much do I have to accomplish? What do I have to learn? What do I have to do to throw of the stink of being low status? I don’t know. These days it seems like the stench is only in my own mind. I have managed to learn how to pass. People don’t question me about my status unless I tell them I am white trash. Maybe that is why I do. I’m fucking tired of how these middle status people don’t want to honestly talk about what that means.

I’m in the middle. Probably lower than you. And sometimes I can’t help myself but I hate you for it.

anxiety purge

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Living with Noah has changed how I think about computers. I don’t think of them as magic anymore. I think about them as the result of a large set of mathematical equations. I’m getting closer and closer to being interested in thinking about that. Right now my brain is pretty full.

I’ve been thinking about what the gardening represents for me. It’s a combination of learning biology, which feels like an intimidating “science” thing for me, and learning how to do manual labor. I haven’t done this sort of physical movement much in my life. Uhm. It’s hard. I feel like a tremendous loser because it is so hard. A lot of the time I feel frustrated and scared because I don’t even know how I should begin. I feel like I am doing it all wrong. I lost two plants this year. Well, I wanted a place to put yellow roses any way. Noah’s mother sent me $75 as a congratulations for finishing my book. I want to buy yellow roses with that money. It will make me happy. It will make me think of her gratefully when I am outside of my house. It will give me a reason to think of her positively.

I’m not going to have a relationship with Noah’s mother. Not really. Noah totally has an Oedipal Complex because he went off and married his mother. When he talks about his childhood it sounds like something I could easily do if I didn’t deal with my mental health issues. It sounds like it is hard to be his mom. Being in her head must hurt. She feels a powerful fear all of the time. I can understand that. I can’t have a relationship with that. I have too much fear as well. Neither of us has the ability to make the connection.

The one time I went out to meet his family his mother spent three hours telling Noah how inappropriate I was. We were already married. I am poor white trash and his mama knows it. We will never have a relationship. I was out fucking every kid in the trailer park when I was young. They don’t like my kind where his family comes from. Really, what mother wants a girl like that for her son?

So his mother and I will never have a relationship. There is too much fear between us. Too much judgment. Too much crazy. We are both wounded animals. I don’t know what wounded her and I really can’t care. I’m too busy tending my own wounds. But I want to plant yellow roses in my yard and think of my mother in law in Texas sending me a very lovely gift.

I hate the color yellow. I have since I was a kid. I had a yellow dress and yellow earrings and a yellow headband and my mama told me, “Oh God. You’re just like your father. You like yellow. Ew. That’s his favorite color.” I have had a hard time with yellow since. Occasionally I get yellow clothing as hand-me-downs.

I stopped dressing in hand-me-downs when I had kids. No one gave me adult sized clothes any more. Now I buy them. It’s weird. I feel like I am supposed to develop “taste” and I don’t know what that even means. I still want to dress like Punky Brewster. I want to go shopping each time and buy something weird and colorful and end up just… not… owning neutrals. I’ll look weird. That will be ok.

But it isn’t. Because I’m ugly and my mama dresses me funny. I was told that over and over and over and over.

Today isn’t shaping up so good. I have a lot of insecurities. It’s hard to access them one at a time. They are all interconnected. Why am I so afraid of rejection? Why can’t I let that woman be part of the park group? Because I can’t be near someone who is going to send of pot shots. I just fucking can’t. I don’t want positive comments from an insincere person. I want to be invisible. I’m really not invisible. I don’t want to become invisible so that I avoid comments.

I know how to dress in ways that will not attract attention. I’ve been doing it for a while. I wasn’t ok with that whole “I can touch you because you are pregnant” thing. So I can dress in ways that don’t attract notice. Why should I have to? Because I don’t want people to comment on me. But I like it. Oh fuck.

I don’t want to have to think about how my actions are going to effect someone else. I want to just do what I like. When I know I am going to be around someone who is quite happy to be vicious and spiteful in my direction I am immediately hypervigilant and I have to think about every fucking aspect of this interaction from what I wear to what I say. I pick my kids clothes out. They are neutral and subdued. Gender neutral, even.

My kids pick their own clothes out 99% of the time. They are not remotely subdued or gender neutral. They both like dresses in neon shades of pink. I think it is hilarious given that Shanna didn’t have them when she was smaller. I only had boy hand me downs for a long time.

I always liked wearing bright colors. I’ve always liked the casual, easy, positive interactions I get with value neutral people in public when I dress the way I like. I don’t like comments from people I know. I don’t want to have to store up in my head that they said something nice to me now I am expected to return the favor and next time I should probably start the nice exchange and. No. Just no. I can’t. I have no fucking interest in getting on the manners bandwagon at this stage of my life. I have to stay here. My kids get to grow up in one place.

It is challenging to manage my emotional needs as my relationships get longer and longer. I have to not expect anything from people in order to continue to know them over time. It’s a very hard line for me. If we are doing an activity together and have no outside connection it is easy. I have no expectations of people I see at an event. They don’t owe me a smile or a conversation. Friends are hard for me.

It is hard having people visit my house. Part of the reason I stress about housework is because I want to have a house that is “company ready” all the time. Not for them, exactly. My friends don’t give a shit. I’ve seen their houses. When my house is “messy” it’s really not bad.

My friends are busy. They have shit to do. They hold down jobs. They have vibrant social lives. I uhhh hang out in my house with my kids. We do go places. But it goes in waves and it’s rarely for more than four or five hours. We are here a lot. If I leave the house messy then I have to live in that mess. I have to work and think in that mess. I find it horribly distracting. I don’t go to Noah’s job and pick up all the stuff on peoples’ desks and throw it in the air. That would make doing actual work hard.

So I sit here and think. What is my job here? To educate my children. Basically. What do I want to educate them in? I want them to have the ability to have any kind of life they want to have. That means they need to start off in a whole lot of directions at once. Sure, we can do frilly princess and makeup. Her best (girl) friend is always the prince. They think role is about personal preference not about gender identity. That’s fucking awesome. But I’m not trying to bring up a little gender queer so I can have street cred in those communities. I need to not be invested in any results.

I’m teaching the kids that your body has to be active if you want to engage in a lot of activities. I want us to go work on farms for a year. It would not be a kindness to bring the average kid around here to a rural farm where they don’t speak the language. We have to be ready. We have to think about this in advance. What will that mean for our bodies? We should probably find a way to actually get ready. Which means that step one is for me to learn a whole lot more about gardening. Which is intimidating.

If you hadn’t noticed I’m flooded with a lot of stress chemicals. Being in that state makes it harder to learn. This is a lot of how I live my life. But I really want to do this. I don’t want to fail. I want to be able to be a productive and useful person on a farm. It’s important to me. When people talk about their “roots” well, working on a farm is part of most of our roots. You may have to go back a bit, but really. People have to eat. Food has to be provided.

I didn’t think about it very much until I had kids. I didn’t think hard about where my food came from. When I look at their bodies I want to give them food that will help them grow up as strong as possible. I want them to be able to handle anything that life gives them. I won’t be able to protect them forever. I have to do what I can now.

I don’t understand how blasé other people seem to feel about parenting. When I talk about feeling insecure or doubting myself people quickly tell me they don’t feel insecure. They must be lying. I can’t be the only insecure person. Give me a break.

I talked about feeling kind of insecure about unschooling the kids. I’m going to spend a lot of time revisiting that concept. I’m going to think hard about what that means to me. “Back in the day” people raised their children to be just like them. Uhm. I don’t want to raise my kids to be just like me, thanks. I want my children to live with fear like I do. Bad things happen. Then you move on. Normal people don’t get caught in these loop tapes. Normal people have some normal to fall back on. Some sense of themselves that was formed during the long stretches of their lives without trauma. Depending on how you think about consensual bdsm I haven’t had a period of my life without traumatic events. Hell, even having my second kid almost killed me. Woo.

I live in stress chemicals. They are all I know. I’m trying very hard not to teach that. The problem is, living in stress chemicals makes it hard to learn. All I am doing with my life right now is helping my kids prepare for life.

So I was looking at the California Content Standards for grade K. If I’m going to prepare her for being part of this society part of that includes having a vaguely similar knowledge base with her peers so that if anything happens she can transition back into a schooling environment. Things happen. I could have to work some day. Within the next two years (because she isn’t old enough for kindergarten anyway) she has to learn hygiene and how to stand in line. She’s otherwise pretty much there on the kindergarten standards for my subject. She has letters, morphemes, basic introduction to syntax, grammar… Math she isn’t quite there yet on all of it. She’s halfway there with two years to go. Obviously I have not failed her horribly so far.

Part of my weird social anxiety is that I really like being a teacher. That feels good to me. I don’t like being didactic with peers so I feel like I have nothing to say. I don’t know how to have conversations among peers. I can be a student or a teacher. That was, really, the primary positive relationships I had. That was my “normal” period that could be good. I had a lot of teachers who liked me. I had a lot of teachers who hated me.

There is a feeling I have when teaching. I am allowed to have intense bonding conversations within that format. I know there is a time limit on it. I know that the exchange is limited to what we are doing. I have no further expectations.

I get into a lot of trouble when I have expectations of people. I have to keep them further out at arms length. I can’t handle being told “no”. So I just can’t ask. I think the intensity with which I feel this is somewhat higher than average but there is a constant component of it in my head. I have to keep in mind that I can’t ask people for things. If they freely want to give me something I can take it, but I can’t ask. It’s hard to ask people to come over for this reason. I wouldn’t want to insult something I have worked so hard for by having a messy house. I have no idea why I have picked this standard of measurement because I am otherwise a specifically crappy host.

I don’t want my house to broadcast my social class. I want people to be continually surprised when I talk about how bad it was. That means I am living right. In my head I can’t separate out the messy house from the overall neglect and abuse and poverty. In my experience my friends who have decidedly messy houses have issues with their mental health and/or control. That’s not a nasty statement. *wave hand in friendly way* Whether people want to admit it or not, your perceived social class has distinct influence on your life. I am a stay at home mom. If I didn’t clean my house that would have social class implications. There is still a very strong element of “What the hell do stay at home moms do anyway?”

The point here is to teach them to be functional adult. If you have your house so messy that you constantly have to buy new things to replace things you have lying around somewhere and you don’t have the money to really support this behavior then you aren’t functional. That’s broken. It’s not a huge broken in the scheme of things but it’s a behavior I specifically don’t want to model or teach. We don’t have the money to be callous with our things. We can’t just go out and replace things right now. I mean we have money in savings but we don’t have any spare money in our set budget. It is not a responsible or mature decision to be callous with our things. We don’t have extra any more.

When you live in a messy house you break things and lose things. Ask me how I know. I don’t want to teach that. I really don’t. That means modeling doing things differently and not being a preachy asshole about it.

Now I’m just ranting. Ugh. My stomach hurts. Time to go look for food.

Words have power.

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In the current landscape of my life people talk about the various -isms. Racism, sexism, ableism, etc all have problematic words. You are supposed to just not use those problematic words any more. I can’t sleep at night for wondering when someone is going to call me on my inappropriate words and tell me that I am bad for using them.

One of these days a sex worker is going to be angry with me for referring to myself as a whore because I have never actually been paid. Just wait, it will happen. I will make them feel marginalized. I will be co-opting their language of oppression. At least, this is what I sigh deeply and expect. A long time ago I decided that whereas sex work is a perfectly valid form of employment it would not be healthy for me. I already have issues internally with figuring out where my consent actually is.

When I try to picture in my head what it will be like to talk about the book in public, once I get up the nerve and all, I think of what I might say to scathing people who are upset that I use the expression, “white trash.” I expect to be called a racist at some point. It has happened repeatedly. These days I just start singing, “Everyone is a little bit racist sometimes” and I try to respond to any actual substance. Am I racist because I believe that my cultural background is white trash? I think it depends on who you ask. Given the brutality of my childhood most people I talk to cede that it deserves harsh labeling. I really and truly do not know a better way to describe it.

I am trying to not be white trash any more. I do associate it with racism. And sexism. And homophobia. And and and and. Part of needing that phrase is my overwhelming shame that I would not have gotten help at important times if I was not white. Part of needing to identify myself by that bit of race privilege is to acknowledge that no matter how bad I think it was for me… I still was given a pass in ways I don’t even understand. There are still brutalities that are not mine to endure. I don’t speak for the “trash” experience because people who are not white get an entirely different reception. I don’t know from personal experience what it looks like but I hear it is pretty bad.

Who the fuck am I to think I can speak for a neutered carefully non-racial experience of poverty? I think that would be a far graver sin than acknowledging that my poverty and brutality carried with it an air of people who didn’t believe they were at the bottom of the barrel even though in every measurable way they were?

My nephew used to work at a movie theater. I think he worked there for about two years. He quit because they wouldn’t promote him so he didn’t feel adequately “respected.” Then he went on to just not work for years. The hilarious thing is, he has a bunch of stories about breaking expensive equipment at the theater. He thinks these stories are great. He tells them with pride. Then he honestly can’t understand why they don’t promote him and he thinks it is more dignified for him to sit at home asking for money from his sister–the one who was working fast food while a high school student.

Oh man. There is such a warped perception of the world there. It’s not unique to being white, no. It’s not one story. It’s the whole fabric. My uncle believed he was superior. That was what I grew up hearing. It is subtle. I don’t feel like it is a stretch to say that their culture was actually bad. The funny thing is, not everyone in the family monolithically believes the ad-copy. Auntie is a rather dignified and respectful soul. She treats everyone decently regardless of any part of their “identity.” She just doesn’t care what someones race or sexuality or religion is. She’s doing her thing and she’ll smile at you and ask you about your day regardless of how you differ from her. She doesn’t see it as relevant. Why couldn’t she be the one to create my culture?

That’s the thing, she did. She created a household where she adamantly believed differently from the prevailing loud noise in the house and she kept her mouth shut. Silence is consent. The only reason I know she believes differently from the common speech I heard every is because I have quietly watched her actions for decades. When you are bringing up children that kind of dichotomy doesn’t work. I have her in my head as a contrast to all the hostility and hatred, yes. But I feel like she is also just a random piece of flotsom in the river of that family. She gets pushed back and forth between the currents and she goes along with whatever happens without raising a fuss. She doesn’t see it as her place. That means that when children are repeatedly victimized she isn’t willing to see it or deal with it. She wouldn’t even know how.

I know that my family being white trash is offensive on its face. I know how charged that phrase is. I use it because it is true. I don’t think that carefully avoiding it because it bothers people is the right approach. The right approach is talking about it and figuring out how to stop being that. Silence just enables the ongoing problems.

White trash believe that they are being unfairly persecuted by all the people of other races who want welfare or support even if they have been on the doll for generations. That is my experience of my family. That is why I include that in my personal definition. I was taught hostility with my Pepsi and Snickers. We didn’t do mothers milk.

If I am hopeful I say that I don’t think I am currently white trash. The problem is I don’t know who or what I am. I don’t know who I am becoming. I don’t know what I will be like. I feel like I am at a crossroads. I’m kind of hard to describe.

I had lunch with a friend. She said that she feels like she spends a lot of time with her kids. My eyes kind of went wide–she has a job! She is away from her kids for at least forty hours a week! How is it possible to spend a lot of time with your kids if you have such a commitment! I have been thinking since about why it is so important to me to be not-separate from my kids right now. (It’s not for any moral superiority.) In having two daughters I got to once again experience that feeling of one-ness that exists between mothers and children. I did not get to have the standard slow separation from my mother. The more I read about attachment disorders the more I cry. The idea of being away from Shanna and Calli for consistently more than about twenty hours a week makes me want to cry. I hurt inside thinking about not seeing them for that much time.

I stay with them and I spend my whole life with them right now because this is the only time I will have to repair the damage I have from my mother not being with me. I have one twenty year period to fix these holes in myself. Out of the whole of my eighty-something + year life that means I had twenty years to fuck it up then I get twenty years to fix it before I enter into the next stage of actually being an independent adult. I need every minute I can get now because the wounds are so deep and they are festering and they need a lot of care. I need the feeling of one day at a time separating. I will need that long to be ready for it.

My daughters are not mine. They are on loan for a brief time. It is so complicated to think about the fact that I do not own them. I can’t control them. Once they are adults I have no guarantee of ever seeing them again. I have this time and that is all I am promised. If I miss even one minute of it I will hate myself for losing the most precious time I will have this lifetime. This is the only time when I will be able to keep them safe and build them up to be as strong as I can. It’s hard for me to do. I’m having to figure out how to do it for myself at the same time. I’m not starting from a place of feeling strong and capable and worthy.

My children will not be white trash. It’s not about the poverty. It’s not about the violence. My children will not grow up in an environment of bitterness because they feel the world owes them for some undisclosed worth they just have. For me acknowledging that I am white trash is partially about feeling the overwhelming shame that comes from knowing that as bad as things were it was mitigated by so much racial privilege. It is all tied together.

Calling myself a whore is a similar kind of acknowledgment for me. I was diminished to the point where I was convinced that I should never accept money for sex–I just gave it away for free. I couldn’t even see any value in what I was doing. I was not good enough. I was not pretty enough. I was not stable enough. But I still would go out and have compulsive sex with large numbers of people. I have had six month periods where I slept with nearly fifty people. But I wasn’t ever paid. It’s a false feeling of security. Do I actually know what it is like to sell my body for coin? No. So why do I feel like I get to use the word whore? When you are taught by your family of origin that you are a whore and that your eventual livelihood will come from being used for sex… Maybe I am co-opting. Maybe I don’t deserve to sully the word for actual prostitutes. They aren’t necessarily compulsive sexually. I shouldn’t conflate my psychological issues with a real-world profession. But I do and I always have. Since I was a young child I have believed that it is an accurate word to describe me. Slut just isn’t the same.

Sluts have sex because they want to. Whores have sex because they have to. Sometimes because they need the money. Sometimes because, well, they just have to. Not all whores are adequately paid for their work. Pimps are a common problem. This is not a well run free market economy.

I try really hard to imagine what kind of mother I want to be. I want to show my kids an awesome example of parenting. It’s the most important thing in the world to me. I don’t care about a job or vocation or hobby very much. I care about the people in my life. I care about what kind of person I am going to teach them to be.

I don’t want to present my culture of origin as de facto. I don’t want to teach them compulsive behavior about sexuality. What does it mean to be actively not racist? Does it mean giving up the phrase white trash? But it has so much utility. It has so much purpose. It is so effective at provoking conversations and anger about the layers of filth involved. How can that be used in a productive way rather than just being one more way that another white woman is an asshole?

I don’t know. I know that every time I talk to someone in person about why it is important to me they agree that it is “ok” for me to use it as a self-label. I do talk to people who are not white. I don’t like this feeling of seeking approval from “Representatives From the People of Color” in order to talk about my experience of race. I cringe when I bring up this topic. I feel like the only way for me to talk about race is to sit back and shut up. My experience isn’t important. Only it is to me. How in the world can I create a different experience for my kids if I don’t figure this out? I know that if I try to just not talk or not think about these things that I will never have the ability to really change my behavior. I won’t know what behavior is important to change or why. If I stop using the phrase in writing or in speech I won’t take it out of my head. I will just be censoring myself for select audiences. Silence is consent. I don’t think I can agree with the idea that I shouldn’t talk about my experiences.

I wish I understood more about what knowledge I am really searching for right now. I’m not even sure. There is a conversation I long to have. I am not so good with the almost-there-but-not-quite things I know of. It’s time to run off.

Part of the road to Noah

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This fine morning a friend asked me about a link on Facebook about Mansplaining. It lead to an interesting conversation about whether men or women (sexist language abounds. I’m going to do an aside to say that there is a really odd mixture of statistics on whether rape is a female problem or a problem that is closer to equal than anyone can handle admitting. I am defaulting to standard sexist language because that is my experience base. I do not mean to say that my experiences are universal–they are not. Carry on.) bear responsibility for rape.

I’m going to call myself out for being an asshole, because I was, but I was a persuasive asshole. I said, more or less, “Oh reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally? How much responsibility do I bear for being raped?” I then proceeded to go through a list of the times I have been arguably raped as an adult when I should be responsible for my ability to pick “safe” people. I decided it was time to tell the story of Dan Morgan. I haven’t before. Not really.

On December 18th, 2005 I posted this in my livejournal:
I am about to climb out of my head with wanting sex. But I still don’t want casual sex. I feel kind of lame. It has been just over three weeks and I am already going batty? Damn the time is going to pass slow… This is longer than I have gone without sex in… oh god… uhhhhh… two years. For the record: I have really enjoyed how much sex I have had in the last two years. *sigh* Thank you to all the lovely people who have made the last two years so much fun. 🙂 I was asked on Friday if going back to casual sex would be better than waiting for more meaningful sex. I told the person that I am coming out of a relationship where I have had the best sex of my life and going back to more mediocre sex would be a serious let down and I am not quite ready to do that yet. I think a lot/most of what made that sex so awesome was I was more present for it than I usually am. I asked Puppy for what I wanted in ways that I have never been comfortable asking before. Other than the actual technical amount of time spent having sex I got exactly what I wanted pretty much when I wanted. There was also a variety that blew my mind. I kind of feel like I rediscovered vanilla sex. And it can be GOOD.

I miss every part of sex. I miss having his body over mine. I miss the scary intensity of having him slide into my ass. I miss feeling a cock in my throat. I miss feeling his tongue on my clit. I really miss having a cock in my pussy. The discerning reader will notice the change in possessive pronouns in the previous statements. There are some sex acts that were very specific to him that I miss him for. There are some that I am just missing in general right now. He is the only sex partner I have ever received regular anal or oral from.

I didn’t mention this part to the person who asked, but I actually don’t really want to go back to casual sex because I don’t want to go back to the fanaticism I have when I am being a slut. I don’t particularly like getting STD tested every three months. I don’t particularly like condoms. I really really really like unprotected sex–which is a scary and dangerous thing. I can’t have it casually because I am not willing to risk my life. I am still on the pill. The first time he tried to break up with me I asked him if I could maintain booty call rights. I think I have it in the back of my mind that waiting a couple of months until I am less emotionally attached is a good thing, but eventually having him as a booty call would be a good thing. Although this is just mental masturbation. I really think that in order to not hurt myself emotionally it would have to be 4-6 months before I would be able to have sex with him and not cry through the entire event. And yeah. I am well aware that I technically can wait that long to have sex but I really don’t have to and I won’t go back to unprotected sex with him if I sleep with someone else. Ethics are annoying.

Right now, all I know is that I have a stronger desire right now for being beaten, for being held down and fucked unmercilessly than I have had in a very long time. I want to be slapped and taunted with how very horny I am right now. I want to have someone revel in my lustiness and appreciate the fact that I can wear someone out right now. I want to have someone fuck me until I beg them to stop because I am so sore. I want to be restrained and hurt and threatened. I want… sex.

The person I had been talking to on Friday was Dan Morgan. I don’t know how we started talking. I’m sure we met through Dickens Fair. No! Tribe? Was it Tribe? I don’t remember for sure. That sounds right, though. We were having these really awesome long conversations over IM about fun kinky sex stuff we were interested in doing. I was adamant about casual sex meaning condoms. He didn’t like that bit. He told me quite a bit about how condoms were annoying. My response: tough. No cover, no entry.

Our first date was on Christmas Day in Disneyland. I uhhh kind of bought his ticket in. He was really broke and said he couldn’t afford the trip if he had to pay for theme park tickets, though he had friends he could go crash with who would go with him to the park if I got him in. I didn’t have a problem with this.

We had a really fun date. Involving upsetting his friends when Dan fingered me in the Tiki Room. We were shit-faced drunk from the bar in downtown Disney. Disneyland as an adult is very different. Other people go and treat it very differently than I do. Anyway.

He went off with his friends and I went off with mine. On December 27th I posted:
Disneyland is still cool.
First dates… are interesting.
Still not up for sex even though I am crawling the walls.
I went to the gym and I am proud of myself.
I haven’t made one itty bitty movement towards cleaning my apartment.
I have food now.
Tomorrow I have three netflix movies to send back.
My cat is hella clingy.
My family sucks even more than usual.
I am really drunk.
I told Puppy that he is an elitist piece of shit tonight.
I am tired of planes.
I am really tired and uninterested in sleeping for some strange reason… I think I am going to lose that battle in the next 10 minutes though.
I missed country music.
Zzzzzzzzz
sleep.
I love my friends.

And then on December 29th I posted:
Tiki Bar TV

London Fogcutter, episode 8. That is the reason for my hangover.

I didn’t bother to mention that the real reason for my hangover was because Dan came over. We had a pleasant afternoon together. We dealt with a motorcycle gear acquisition for him. There was a good store near me. We tried to get to know one another. By evening he said we should start watching the show. He started making drinks. He made more and more. Dan is a really serious alcoholic. I don’t drink much and never have. Alcohol makes my stomach hurt. He kept topping up my glass. “Oh come on. You don’t want to get behind now, do you?” He was very antagonistic towards me trying to get me to drink more.

I wanted him to like me. I will freely say that. I thought he was shiny. I’m sure there was an element of star-fucking in it. He seemed well-liked. Maybe if I stood next to him I would feel like not-poison for a while.

I woke up at about 3am in my bed confused. I couldn’t remember anything past Tiki Bar TV. And I don’t know that I remember more than two episodes of it. I reached down between my legs and felt a lot of wet. I rolled out of bed (because I had no other way of getting to the floor) and crawled into the bathroom. There I proceeded to vomit until I thought I would die. It was awesome. This was when I was living in San Jose by myself for the only time in my life.

Puppy dumped me on Thanksgiving day. Noah asked me to marry him in March. Dan was right in the middle. Of-fucking-course I said yes to Noah.

Anyway. When I stopped puking I looked for my phone. I sent Dan a text message asking where he was, when he left, and uhm, did we have sex? He said he was at home. He had left at 2. Yes, we had sex. I sent back another message saying: …unprotected sex? He said, “Well you are on the pill so it doesn’t matter, right?”

I said basically nothing about this event to anyone who knew me. It wasn’t exactly rape, right? Only legally it was. Regardless of whether I intended to have sex or not, once I was passed out drunk it wasn’t ok. I had text evidence that I wasn’t interested in unprotected sex. And I bloody well thought about the fact that I could go in for a rape kit and it would be bloody obvious that we had unprotected sex.

I was afraid of people saying that I was having second thoughts. I was afraid of people saying that I was stupid or that I deserved it. I believe that unprotected sex is a disease vector. At that point in my life I was still really focused on the fact that I wanted to have children. I didn’t risk any more disease than I had to. I already have herpes and I’ve already had an hpv outbreak. That damage was done long before. I did the best I could with the information that I had.

Do you know why I was so afraid of going to the police? Well. That’s another story. I can’t give you a name because I honestly don’t remember it. I don’t really want to. I wouldn’t remember Dan’s if he wasn’t a trusted member of my extended community I thought was safe.

The summer I was 18 I was drunk with the sexual power of being a woman. Finally, for the first time in my life what I was doing and mine to decide about. I finally had the legal right to consent. It did actually matter to me. It has always bothered me that my early partners could have gone to jail for what we did. It feels like an unfair balance of responsibility. Anyway.

So when I was 18 I was on match.com. Don’t judge. I was hanging out in the chat rooms a lot. I met up with several people. The first was a guy who was in the Coast Guard. He lived in Alameda. Anna was housesitting for a family way the heck up Summit Road. The other side, not the same side as Redwood Estates. Way up in the fancy-pants part of the mountains. The house was beautiful. I can’t remember if there were three or four stories. Elaborate wine cellar (like a huge vault that was about 1/3 the size of the bottom floor of the house), sauna, steam room, exercise room, pool, hot tub… everything. The family was having a lot of work done on the house. They gave Anna permission to have me stay up there with her.

I know they regretted that. It was all my fault. Anna had worked for them successfully for years at that point. I ruined a very profitable relationship for her and I still feel bad about that. That is part of what I mean when I say I am poison. Anna bore a lot of the brunt of the backlash for this. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

We invited a couple of my theater friends and this random guy from match.com up to the house for a party. It wasn’t that wild because my theater friends were young and sweet and inexperienced. I think back on them with this really nostalgic color. They were really awesome and I didn’t know how to stay one of them.

Of course there was drinking. Unless I snuck off behind Anna’s back she said I had three shots of tequila and then I begged off because my stomach hurt. Everyone else kept drinking. I don’t remember much after the second shot. I woke up in the morning feeling fierce and disgusting. I couldn’t remember any sex and I was kind of sad. I was confused though because I couldn’t remember much of anything, really. But I had to hurry up and get moving. I was working at Pride in San Francisco. I was working a booth for the Same Sex Marriage organization. It was awesome. I met people and did things I’m really glad I did. In between doing all of them I had to run to Port-A-Potties to vomit. I did that all day long. When I went back up to the house in the mountains I took another shower and curled up on the bed. I happened to lean over and look in the trash can. There were three used condoms.

Funny. I didn’t remember having sex. I asked Anna what happened. She told me about the party and said that eventually I stumbled back up to the room with the help of this guy. I asked her how I looked and she said, “You looked really out of it.” I nodded. I told her that I think that what happened technically qualifies as rape. I called the Sheriff. She was dubious. She was right.

The particular officer who showed up is one I have met before. When I was 11 Al Smith, my next door neighbor at the time, asked me if I would have sex with him. Our other neighbor overheard the whole exchange and reported it. That’s why the officer came to my house when I was 11. When I was 11 he told my family I was crazy and that I needed help. He wouldn’t prosecute Al.

When I was 18 he told me, “What did you expect when you bring a boy up to a house to drink?” He took the (outrageously expensive) sheets as “evidence” and then told me he was not going to fuck up the life of some nice Coast Guard boy for a girl like me who gets cold feet after the fact.

The fall out was really bad. The family had to be told why we disappeared their sheets. We would have been better off lying. Given the response of the sheriff it looked really bad and hysterical. It was even worse because I had gone skinny dipping in the pool and flirted with the guy painting the house. I was obviously horrible. The family was really angry with Anna for bringing someone like me into their house. They told her if she wanted to know people like me they didn’t want to know her.

Years later I was behind their car on the freeway. The license plate has their last name on it. I felt such a sickening wave of shame.

Why didn’t I call the police after Dan fucked me without a condom? Uhm…. good pattern recognition skills? Every time someone tells me that women bear some of the responsibility for being raped I want to scream. I HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN ALLOWED TO GIVE CONSENT WHEN I WANTED TO SO SHUT THE FUCK UP. Rape is an abuse of power. Rape is putting a body part into someone else when they have not consented. That is not something that is about mutual responsibility.

That asshole when I was 18 raped me. I could not consent by the time he had sex with me, but at least he used condoms. When I was 24 I was raped because having unprotected sex with me after I had it in writing many times that I don’t do that is illegal. And I was too chicken shit to say anything because I am well aware that no one in power gives a shit what happens to white trash whores like me.

And then Noah showed up. I would have been manifestly stupid and crazy to continue the life path I was on without him.

hair cutting

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No one really knows what the boundaries are for another person. You have to speak for yourself, only, always. I decided to stop hunting and I cut all my hair off. In the bathroom with nail scissors. And now I’m going to feel like a fucking schmuck for years. Something broke. I think if I believed I could get away with wearing a burqa I would. I feel like a melodramatic, stupid, immature moron. Not to put too fine a point on it.

Ok, so what really happened is I was in the process of trying to leave the house one day and I couldn’t comb through the snarls. I lost my temper and badly cut the knot out. I have been compulsively going into the bathroom to fix it ever since. It’s rather short. My hair is not ok with bleach. I have a fairly ridiculous amount of shame around the fact that this is not the first time I have stopped hunting and shaved my head. I should tell that story. I don’t know if it is in the book or not.

I was seventeen and at West Valley. I was hanging out with Praveena. It was towards the end of our time hanging out together. I was on the tail end of one of my whoring-around-phases and feeling really bad about myself. I was getting to the point where I noticed that everyone who fucked me ditched me really soon after. I was at Praveena’s house and we were having a conversation about the fact that it bothered me that people no longer wanted to be my friend after we had sex. She thoughtfully looked at me and said, “Then why don’t you find out if they want to be your friend before you have sex with them?”

I started shaking. You don’t understand. People don’t spend time with me very often. Sex was how I got people to look at me. I moved around so often that I knew that I had to get attention quickly or I wouldn’t get it at all. I know what I’m supposed to act like. I know my “role”. I couldn’t verbalize any of that at the time. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be near me. I just sat there shaking. I had been cutting my hair at home compulsively for a while. It was probably three or four inches long. I asked her for shaving supplies. She was kind of confused as to why I wanted to shave my legs right then but she got them.

I went out in the back yard and shaved my head. She watched in wide mouthed horror. She had hair almost to her waist. She was a gorgeous Persian girl with super thick luscious hair. She sputtered and gasped and tried to talk me out of it. I remember the look of squick on her face. I laughed.

My mother didn’t laugh. To put this in larger context, this happened in October of 1998. My father had killed himself a couple of weeks earlier. Tommy had killed himself in June. My mom said a lot of very rude and nasty things to me about my looks. She pointed out that my head was exceedingly lumpy. She pointed out that given how fat I was, my head looked especially small and stupid. I need that big bushy hair to balance out my fat ass.

I was invited to go to a ‘formal’ dinner related to the haunted house event I volunteered at. My hair was only a few millimeters long at that point. I covered my head in glitter and wore a tight black velvet dress. My mom didn’t say anything, but she shook her head and grimaced.

At the time I felt awkward and stupid and barely spoke to anyone. The reality is that people were perfectly nice and civil to me. The people who knew me at all were friendly and strangers went out of their way to be nice. I never went back to that organization. My mother extensively talked about how stupid I looked and how she bets they would be making fun of me behind my back.

I’m not really cutting my hair because I think it makes me look ugly. When I feel ugly I feel compelled to cut my hair. I really do have beautiful hair. My hair is lovely enough that someone who feels and acts the way I do should not have that much camouflage to look “normal”.

I can’t possibly explain my mothers furious disgust at people who dye their hair “funny colors”. Oh my god. Anyone who would do that is disgusting. They are lesser, dirty people. They are not normal. Above all we must be normal, right? I don’t even know what that means.

I really and truly did dye my hair because I thought it was fun. I have enjoyed catching glimpses of myself in reflections and seeing the shock of color. It makes me smile. Unfortunately my hair is quite fine and the bleach destroys it and it gets shorter and shorter and… yeah. It’s time to deal with letting it grow out again.

And that represents so much internal conflict of self-expression and self-identity. It’s ridiculous that it matters so much. As I listen to Lady Gaga sing about her own hair experience I feel trite and ridiculous and like I am such a product of my generation. Of course I dye my hair odd colors and cut it myself in ridiculous ways. I’m Emo, right? I guess I never got over high school.

This is part of what I mean when I say I don’t fit. I don’t really know the rules. Do you want to know the main reason I’m cutting my hair myself? Because it really doesn’t matter if I pay someone to do this. Pretty soon I’m going to just buzz it because it’s time to start fresh. There really isn’t a point in paying someone to do that. I’ve been looking extensively at our budgeting. I’m going to continue paying for Noah’s haircuts because I like them. Enh, I’m just done paying for them for a few years. It makes me twitch to pay that much money on hair care. Curly hair is very forgiving and it’s not like I’m trying to impress anyone. That feels bad to say.

I have fun cutting my hair. I like trying to figure out the shape of my head. I get compliments from random people when I am out so I think I do a reasonable job. I’m not ugly. I don’t really think that having short hair makes me ugly. I don’t think that other people with short hair are ugly. But when I am feeling ugly I compulsively cut my hair. I’m trying to change what I see in the mirror. I want to have more control over what I see. I don’t want to go pay someone else who will try to make me look like some mainstream idea of beauty. Whatever it is that society values and requires of women I am not it. Let’s get the advertising straight.

There are fifty sides to every story. I like cutting my hair. I think it is fun. I think it is weird. I think it is a slightly self-harming behavior but fairly harmless so it’s ok. I think it is an obsessive compulsive tick when I am overwhelmed with my sexuality. I think that other people will judge me badly for being the kind of person who will do this. I don’t know why I care. Thank goodness we are through picture season.

I need to let the roots get a bit longer before I decide how short to get. Until then I get to cut off bits and pieces every time the urge strikes. I think it is kind of funny that I do this during cold weather. I guess I’ll just have to wear my Cheshire Cat hat all the time for a few months. That’s subtle.

I told Noah some truth last night. I wonder how that will work out.

aftermath

3 Replies

I told Noah that I would be fairly ashamed to tell people how we are moving forward. According to my personal religion that means I am committing a sin. It’s mixed. Mostly I would say we are getting along very well. I’m not starting fights or insulting him or picking on him. Noah is his usual polite and adoring self. It’s like nothing happened except we have massively increased how much sex we are having and how degrading our sex is.

We have spent a lot of time talking about how compulsive I am about sex. About how that works in my head. We have spent a lot of time talking about how impulsive Noah is about sex. So far we seem to be at the point where we are both acknowledging that we qualify as “sex addicts” by any reasonable definition but maybe if we stick with each other we won’t cause too big of problems?

Apparently the task of the week is to see how much sex we have to have before Noah can’t handle any more. So far we have managed three times a day every day. Then I fall asleep. I feel mixed about this. He knows I feel mixed about this. Hell, I’m writing about feeling mixed about this–everyone will know. It’s hard talking about the actual needs that casual sex meets for me. I can meet some pretty fucked up needs without telling anyone what I am doing. I never have to tell my partners what my internal dialogue is. I don’t have a very high opinion of myself and my voracious need for sex.

I don’t have a very high opinion of the fact that my preference is for most of the sex I have to be quasi-consensual. Noah is well aware that a large percentage, possibly “most”, of our sex involves me not being in the mood at all. It doesn’t really matter if I am interested in sex. I am interested in being a good whore. That means I will do what I am supposed to do. I feel manifestly uncomfortable admitting that. A large percentage of the sex I have I only have because I feel like I am required to do so. That is what someone like me is good for. That is what I am supposed to do. And I’m really good at it. And I fucking live for the post-sex adulation. People I fuck tend to be willing to tell me at great length how good I am at sex. I try very hard to make sure I work far harder at sex than most women. I really really want the approval I get after sex.

I feel like something is broken in me. That I chase this so hard. Noah and I have been talking a lot lately. I don’t think I am going to sleep with other people any more. Regardless of what Noah ends up doing for the rest of his life, I need to stop buying affection with sex. I need to stop begging my friends to like me by proving that I am better at sex than anyone they’ve ever slept with. It’s not really a strategy that is working for me.

I like to pick other sex addicts and go have multiple hours of sex with them. Most of the time they are so shocked by finding a woman who is also as motivated by sex that they are willing to tell me pretty much anything I want. It’s broken. I have a partner at home who is willing to do the Jekyll/Hyde thing with me. He will degrade me and talk about me being a whore during sex. He will tell me that if I am so motivated by cock I am required to show up at 5am every day and wake him up with my mouth. And he’s pretty nice to me the rest of the time.

I feel worried by the duality of our relationship. Most of the time in most ways he really is an amazing partner. He is a good, stable provider. He is kind. He is great with our children. I have been able to push him towards mutually agreed upon improvements in behavior over the years. He’s very willing to accommodate me in just about every part of life. He bends over backwards for me in nearly every way. He will even call me names and hurt me tremendously during sex if I tell him I want him to.

There is this mythos in my head that slaves and masochists should experience no internal conflict over what they do. I have massive internal conflict. I am still upset that Noah lied to me. And my response is to tell him more and more complex stories that I am terribly ashamed of. Things that hurt me very much. And I ask him to use them against me. I want him to agree that I am just a dirty whore. There isn’t much else that someone like me is good for. But I want him to gift wrap it in a package where I don’t have to be at risk going forward.

For me to keep having the kind of casual sex that I like is for me to risk my life. It really won’t be much longer before I go back for hunting for rough, dangerous sex. Sure I’m being all loud and snotty this round of hunting because I want vanilla sex right now. That would fade. I would go back to wanting people to do dangerous things to me. I’ve already had a broken bone in the pursuit of good sex, what else will happen?

It is a lot safer to stick with Noah. He will be able to hurt me as much or more than anyone else. He doesn’t flinch from doing so. Noah has not yet inflicted as much pain on me as a small handful of other people, but he has every intention of doing so. I get the impression that some day he will be the one I have done my most intense play with. That kind of terrifies me. Because he has a high bar to reach. I have already done things that were a really bad idea. I’m sure I will do more.

If I do this instead of cutting or sleeping around or drugs or whatever other self-harming behavior I can dream up… is that better? I don’t know. I don’t know how this life thing is supposed to work. I hear I am just supposed to magically decide that I shouldn’t be harmed any more, not by anyone. Not by me, and not by random guys, and not by my husband. But I need this. I am so used to feeling shit on. I require it so much.

Noah has been nice and patient for a long time. We haven’t done intense or painful or degrading sex in a long time. He’s been more respectful than that. So I got bored and went out and slept with other people. And the thing is, it’s not enough that he does these things to me. I need people to know that these things are part of my life. I need for people to know that I am this person. I can’t have this done in secret. I can’t keep secrets.

It would be a sin if I did these things and kept them private and secret. I believe that. That is something that I have to hold on to in life. Something is only a sin if I am ashamed to talk about it. If I am talking about this now, does that mean I am released from the power of it being a sin? I don’t know. I worry about needing what I need. It’s mixed.

I can point in a straight line from events in my early childhood to what I do now. Come March, other people will be able to do so as well. Noah already can. And he stomps all over me with that knowledge. Only in ways I find hot, of course. Is that the difference? Is that the line between what we do and some amorphous “abuse”? If I tell Noah to stop doing something on a given day he does. Except by prior arrangement. Except that I know that I just don’t bother to say no when I’m not in the mood. I figure out how to let it happen. I figure out how to permit him the access he wants whether I want it or not. I don’t generally bother to communicate whether I am in the mood or not. If he tells me to do something, I do it.

It’s interesting when people talk to me about how self-assured I am. How self-possessed. How willing to stand up for myself. Ha. Only sometimes. Only in some ways. If a sexual partner is telling me to do things I frankly don’t want to do I have limited ability to communicate my wants. It depends on how I am doing emotionally and it depends on how much I am invested in the partner. I have casual sex because I can have boundaries with strangers. I have repeat sex with long-term friends because I have beaten them down in non-sexual settings and they don’t push real hard out of fear of a backlash that will never come. I don’t have boundaries with my long-term partners. I barely communicate anything about my limits beyond telling them what buttons will get them the biggest reaction today. “Today is ____ anniversary so why don’t you hurt me by doing _________.”

It’s not a sin if I talk about it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a sin. I have decided this for my own personal pantheon of beliefs.

These needs all predate Noah. They are not because of him. Most of them are not really about him at all. These are things that were broken in me as a child. But he frankly enjoys many of the ways I am broken. He feels no shame whatsoever in enjoying what I became as the direct result of years of sexual assault. Well, maybe he feels a little shame. But not much. Not enough to prevent him from trying to behave in ways that will keep me from getting bored in the future. Not enough to lessen his enjoyment of what this deep feeling of shame causes me to do during sex. His favorite part lately seems to be that I’m really ok with him fucking my throat until he causes me to vomit. I have a fairly reactive gag reflex. I consider vomiting to be just part of serious blow jobs. I don’t think that is normal. It never feels like it is really a good time to say, “Could you back off on the deep throating?” I don’t get to set terms like that. I get to accept.

In about ten minutes I have to get up and close the computer. I will walk across the house and I will do what I was told to do. Do I want to? Enh. Not really. My throat and cunt are sore. I could use about a week off from sex to recover at this point. But I draw comfort from the fact that I have confessed so I go forth without sin. I will smile. I will encourage him. I will beg him for more, in fact. It doesn’t really matter that I’m sore. That’s beside the point. I don’t think I should go have sex with other people any more. I don’t think that is a good decision for me. He says he is going to be monogamous as well. No, let me be clear. He will be as monogamous as I am.

I fell compelled by my shame. I told him he would be allowed to sleep with whomever he wanted, forever. I promised him that. At no point did I tell him I would like it or feel happy about it. I feel like I did a bait and switch. I feel like I owe him for all the sex he will never get to have because he was stupid enough to marry someone as insecure and selfish and possessive as me. I feel guilty that I seem to have tricked him into monogamy. In turn I fell compelled to say, “Ok fine, I guess I can’t be monogamous either–go have fun.”

I sincerely believe I should stop having sex with other people. I should not act on feeling compelled to earn love and affection with sex outside my marriage. It’s bad enough that I do it with Noah. I don’t actually think I should go out and find a harem of men who will cheerfully call me a whore during sex. I don’t need that. I do enough of that all by myself.

I feel so broken. I seem to have absolutely internalized that anyone who fucks this many people is kind of disgusting. And all I want to do is increase the number so I can increase just how many people will think I am disgusting.

But Noah doesn’t care. He doesn’t care at all what I’ve done or what I might do in the future. He wants me. He takes great pride in me. He loves me and adores me. He bends over backwards from me in pretty much every part of life. Except when he’s being impulsive. Oops. His friend told him, “The problem with your situation is it’s hard to know when you are cheating.” Maybe if the rules are clearer then it will be easier to figure out what to do?

I feel like I have taken something away from him. He was poly when I met him. How dare I take that away. I seem to be the epitome of what Dan Savage and Mistress Matisse warn about. That evil double crosser who promises poly and can’t hack it. I’m sorry I am so broken. I really am. I wish that I could encourage Noah to do anything he wants with anyone he wants. Hell, I do encourage him. But it hurts me when he does it. I’m sorry that is true. I really am.

The American Dream

5 Replies

The media is telling me constantly that the American Dream is dead. That no one can better themselves. That no one can succeed. I feel so confused. Then how did I go from being the kind of kid who stole food to the kind of kid who gives people thousands of dollars when they are in a car accident just because I like them and otherwise they won’t be able to pay rent. How did that happen? Noah. I married up.

I feel weird guilt and shame over having access to Noah’s money. I feel bad talking about anything related to class because I am no longer poor. I will never be poor again. Noah comes from the 1%. He isn’t there himself… yet. But from everything I understand about human development and financial success, Noah will probably get back there. People who grow up with that kind of money learn how to make it. They learn how to be the kind of person who has it. And I’m just desperate and needy and I have a broken compass. I don’t have the ability to tell when something is “enough” sometimes. Not money, drugs, sex … Even though I’m not an “addict” by the classic definitions I still have a broken compass. I don’t know how much is enough or too much sometimes.

I don’t have very many friends who are willing to live like Noah and I do. We live really far away from everything. We live in a house that is much smaller and crappier than we could technically afford. We live here and we will continue to live here pretty much forever because I’m not willing to spend more money than the astronomical amount already spent on this house. Noah mortgaged over a quarter of a million dollars on this house. I think that’s insane. But it’s really cheap for a house here. It will be paid off before I am 40.

I got lucky. I married Noah. That was kind of sort of how I reached where I am. But I also went to college and worked. It’s not like I would have been this wealthy as a teacher, but I would have done just fine. I still would have felt like I made the American Dream. Because my goals would have been smaller. I got out of poverty. I became the first one to be educated (high school diploma, BA, teaching credential, and 7 years of MA work). To me that feels like I am done. I reached the American Dream. I went to college and I’m not in debt! I paid it off within a year of being done with classes. Because I was married to Noah and when I was working and he was working we had an obscene amount of money.

This is the part that is odd to me. Noah doesn’t make more money than our friends. Most of our friends have combined househole incomes that are much higher than ours. We live in the bay area. Our friends are the ones who went to fancy schools and became computer people. But no one else I know thinks they are filthy rich. People complain about not being able to do everything they want or having to compromise on things.

I feel so confused. I have to wonder if my compass is the broken one. What do people think the American Dream means? Do you think it means everyone gets to retire at 35 to free health care forever? Permanent jobs with a high chance of retirement? I don’t consider it part of the American Dream that people have to own a house or make a lot of money. I consider the American Dream to be the willingness to change your stars.

Everyone is born with a future that looks like it is obviously theirs. They can take it if they want. Or they can go make their own future. They can be whoever they want to be. They can rise in the world. It doesn’t mean that everyone will be filthy rich, but people who hustle can improve their lot. I’m told it doesn’t work that way for everyone. That I am a fluke.

I get told that a lot. Everything about me seems to be a fluke. Why did it work out for me then? Why do so many things work for me that other people say cannot be made to work ever ever ever ever? For me this is part of feeling invisible. I never know how to respond when I read things that say it is not possible for me to have done what I’ve done. Do you want me to burst into flames?

Whenever I think of the American Dream I think of teaching The Great Gatsby. Gatsby wanted Daisy. He wanted to be rich too…. but mostly he just wanted Daisy. He got rich because he was trying to earn Daisy’s love. Noah seems to feel the same way about me, which is odd. It’s weird living with someone who thinks he has to earn me. I’m shit, aren’t I? Why would someone want to earn me? Does that mean you try to coat yourself more heavily in flies? Of course not.

Noah sees me as high status. That is the American Dream, really. It is the ability to change your social status. I don’t understand for the life of me why anyone would associate me with being high status. Ok, I have access to a hefty bank account. I didn’t have that before Noah, though. Why does that raise my status? Why do I magically become a better person?

Why will people look at me when I am dressed nicely. Why will people talk to me more now, even though I look increasingly weird? Sometimes it seems like there is an aura that comes along with financial safety. And other people recognize it. It is a relieving of anxiety. It’s practically a difference in smell. As if people who have to worry more have a more acrid body odor. I don’t think that’s literally true or real. But there is some strange wall.

The idea of the American Dream mixed with being white trash is the crux. It’s about being told that I can’t do things that I already have done so fuck you very much. It’s about feeling like it’s not ok to be who I am because I am weird. Because I have done things other people haven’t, for good or bad. Because I am just plain different and I don’t know why. It is hard to talk about difference without making it sound like being superior or better or aggrandizement.

Some people like chocolate. I don’t. I like vanilla. For variety, maybe peppermint. Does that mean that vanilla is truly qualitatively better because I like it more? Demonstrably not. I don’t think I am a better person than most other people. Better than my sister, yes. Better than mom, probably. Other people? Enh, not so much with the comparison. I don’t know what road they walked. I don’t know who tried to knock them down or how. I’m not better. But I have done different things.

I want to understand why I make different choices. I want to understand that about myself. I want to be able to hack the system. I have big life goals. If I want to reach them I am going to have to work very hard for a very long time. I cannot believe the attitude that it is hopeless. I can’t. I can’t have the feeling about myself that seems to be common for my generation. I think I can do fucking anything. I already have. I don’t identify with deserving anything. I don’t think I deserve universal health care. I think that when I needed insurance I had to find weird jobs that would offer insurance that I didn’t really want to do. But I had different options.

I benefit from enormous privilege. I’m sure that most of the reason I was able to succeed is just because I am white and slightly above average in attractiveness. I’m not stunning. I’m not gorgeous. But I’m cute. And I’m bubbly. And I’m a hard worker and a people person. I had advantages.

I talk about being white trash because I don’t think it is possible for someone of color to do the same things I did because I see how the deck is stacked against my friends. They are fighting different wars. They have to fight at all times covertly because they are watched. They can’t directly cause fights the way I can get away with. I feel deeply uncomfortable with this knowledge. That as I sit here in my smug pretention of “Well I succeeded!” Yeah… I did because of an intersection of lack and privilege. I don’t know that any part of my life is relevant to anyone else.

Who the fuck am I to talk about succeeding when I had the dog bite settlement that paid for an awful lot of my life. When I smugly talk about cobbling together insurance I honestly feel kind of sick to my stomach. I did it. But I always had $14,400/year to live on. Ever since I was 18. Because I was attacked as a kid and half my face was ripped off. I had a good lawyer. I think I only had a good lawyer because I am white.

The girl who was born across the street from me. B. Her father was my lawyer. He was my very best friends father. B wasn’t hanging out with the non-white kids on the street (her New York Jewish parents moved her out of that neighborhood when we were four). He is an excellent lawyer. I don’t even think he took his full fee out of my settlement. It was less than $100k in settlement but he invested it well for me. I took that money and I changed my whole life.

My brother Jimmy was hit by a car when he was a kid and got a settlement when he was 18. He spent the money on a raised truck, a killer stereo (that was stolen a couple months later), and a lot of drugs. It was gone in a few months.

My brother Tommy was hit by a car when he was a kid and got a settlement. Technically there is $6,000 left of it somewhere. I’m thinking about claiming it as my father’s dependent. As an inheritance. Jimmy calls it dirty money and says he doesn’t want it. I think that money is fucking useful.

I suppose at this point my dream is to stop feeling so angry. I want to be able to talk and think without being so full of bad feelings. My stomach hurts. I’m really tired of my stomach hurting. I’m not special. I’m not better. But I did things that other people couldn’t do. I feel like I should be proud of myself. And I simultaneously feel like being proud of myself is somehow wrong or bad. I should be ashamed of myself because I think I have done anything worth noticing. What kind of self absorbed bitch am I? Who the fuck am I to look down my fucking nose at anyone else?

I’m not looking down my nose. I’m trying to figure out why I made different choices. I wish I understood better when the choice moments were. I am not responsible for where I ended up entirely. It’s accident as much as planning. But if I wasn’t in this house right now having a good life I would be in a different house having a good life. My teaching job would still be stable financially even if the work was shitty. I lived in an apartment I could afford on $20k/year and by now I would be making about $60k. It would have taken a while, but I probably would have bought a house in cash in ten years. About when I’m going to pay this one off instead.

Because somewhere, at some point I crossed a line. I will never be poor again. I have lost the habits. I make different choices. I can be broke. It feels like a difference in attitude. Do you know why I am not worried about my ability to succeed? Because I walked into my first real job interview and said, “I know I am the first person you are interviewing and you have three days of interviews to go but if you don’t hire me today I am not available. Sorry.” I was offered the job an hour later. I take a lot of pride in that.

Because the only time in my life I have ever failed at something I wanted to do was passing the MA final exam. And really I probably psyched myself out so bad that I’m not surprised I failed. Ugh. It’s obvious I know the material but I can’t write enough for academia. I never wanted to be part of academia, not really. Having an MA would change my life. I didn’t want it bad enough to make that change. That is how I feel about it. Almost like the lit MA was wrong for me. It would have changed my life choices in a way that would have been ultimately less helpful.

I’m starting to wonder if someday there is social work in my future. That would be a different MA. Ugh. I’m not sure I can handle more school. Ever.

I feel weird because I am alive during a Revolution. These are interesting times. And I don’t feel like I have much to say as part of the Revolution. That’s weird and uncomfortable. It’s not like I’m watching Fox news or agreeing with them. But I don’t agree with a lot of the politics I’m hearing lately. My opinions are just different.

I want to stop being so narcissistic and notice that other people aren’t as similar to one another as I project. I’m not a special snowflake. I’m not more different. But I think I am. This is where the hubris comes in. How can you believe with intensity that you are different without believing it is superior? Do I think that other people should try to be like me? No. Things that work for me won’t work for most other people. I don’t think other people would be ok with the amount of intense emotion my life contains. I get the impression other people are more calm.

I feel like the American Dream was always a sham. Look at Death of a Salesman. Right there. He believed that who you know and charisma will get you where you need to know. It won’t. I only occasionally have charisma, mostly I alienate the shit out of people. But I work fucking hard. I work hard and I know how to game the system. I wish I could teach other people the rules of the system so they could game it as well. I don’t think this should be a unique ability.

As crazy, as unstable, as difficult, as confrontational as I am… I do know how to shut up when necessary. I just don’t think it is necessary nearly so often as other people do. I, in fact, think that everyone should make a lot more waves than they do.

I don’t think I have “figured things out” or done things in some magical right way that other people don’t do. I think there is a way of developing your intuition so that you learn which choices are really not safe. I avoid the unsafe twinges. I kind of wonder if that is how I survived. I was afraid at the right times.

I don’t think that people necessarily understand that rage is often, at least for me, the flip side of terror. I spend my life horribly terrified that something bad is going to happen to me again. I am genuinely scared. I shake. It makes me angry that I feel this way. That I am so scared of everyone and everything in the world. I don’t like that when people say things that make me feel invisible I want to hit them. Obviously I don’t do so. That would be problematic in a whole new exciting way. But I’m often not nice.

Nice. There is that word again. I wish I was unoffensive. I wish I was nice. Somehow it is magically better to be nice. There is that American Dream again. You are supposed to be a nice, quiet, middle class person. But I’m not. I’m loud. I’m brashy. I’m aggressive. I’m trashy. I like loud upbeat country music. And Lady Gaga and Pink. I like Steel Magnolias unapologetically. I grew up rural and don’t know city manners. I really don’t understand why my city gives a shit if I grow vegetables in my front yard and I think they can fucking sue me if they want me to stop.

Being nice feels like lying. It feels like constant low level lying. It means you never tell the full truth because the full truth is often uncomfortable. You always leave stuff out so that other people never have to feel bad. I FEEL BAD MOST OF THE TIME. Why shouldn’t I tell people the truth about how I feel? Why should bad feelings be hidden? Should they? Is that what people want?

Let me tell you, if there is a time and a place where it is appropriate to sit around and tell stories about incest I’ve never found it. Even therapy is only kind of sort of the place. Because just sitting around and telling the stories seems to be un-useful. But I sit around and drop those mentions into casual conversations. Because that is what is in my head. And it alienates people. It’s my truth. It’s my story. I’m not actually hurting anyone by letting people know it exists. But it feels not nice.

It is because I think my mental health is more important than other people feeling comfortable that I describe myself as white trash. There is a self absorption that I witnessed in my family. A way of seeing yourself as the central figure in this terrible tragedy. A way of acting like everyone in the whole world is out to get you and everything bad that happens to you is part of this giant conspiracy. Everyone is out to get us! They all hate us! They think they are better than us just because they have money! Well fuck them! We at least have pride!

It’s weird and kind of sick. There is an abnegation of responsibility for everything that happens to you that I don’t understand. Sometimes I want to slap my sister and say, “Ok so our dad raped you. Time to stop dating men who are drug addicts because you are trying to get daddy to love you.” That. That is a lot of what this comes down to.

Do you know how I survived? Do you know how I attained the American Dream? Because people told me that I was shit and I didn’t deserve it. And my response was to fight back. It’s not that I think I deserve anything. I don’t think I have stuff because I deserve it. I have stuff (college education, money, no car loan) because I made them my top priorities and I didn’t let anything stop me. I want to say that nothing catastrophic happened to prevent it, but that’s a lie. Tommy’s accident. All the rapes. Going to 25 schools before dropping out of high school at 16. I did have catastrophic things happen to try and stop me as a kid. But you just keep getting up and doing things.

And then some day you are 18. And you leave. And you never look back. And with every choice I make I think, “What would my sister do?” Then I do the opposite. That’s not actually true, but it’s kind of funny to think about. I did get out. Do you know what my family gave me for high school graduation? Pots, pans, a crock pot, towels. They wanted me the fuck out. They wanted me to go. Because I was different. Because I caused problems.

I don’t even really feel like my family is white trash, per se. When I’m being an asshole I include them in the collateral damage. Mostly they don’t want to be like me though. They have other dreams. They are hick and redneck and poor. But they aren’t white trash. Mostly they don’t have my aggression. My sister does. I would say without reservation that she is also white trash. Not my aunt or my cousins. They are just standing too close to evil, manipulative people.

So maybe being white trash is relegated to being an incest survivor? That’s not really it, but it factors in. It’s so many things all at once. It’s not one thing. When people feel defensive and try to tell me that my qualifiers aren’t the right ones because they also fit those qualifications… Oh gosh. I’m not trying to make you feel defensive. I’m not trying to be not nice. I don’t know that at the end my definition of white trash will ever be useful for anyone but me. I’m not sure it is applicable. Ok, for my sister too. But past us? I can’t know enough of someones story to judge.

I say I am white trash because I am always going to say things about myself that offend the shit out of the people around me. They will always feel hostile about me saying the stuff I’m saying. I can only control whether I say it or not. And sometimes I can’t control whether I say it or not. I don’t really understand why trauma has affected me in these ways.

I listen to Adele singing Someone Like You a lot lately. I’m scared that some day my mom will show up on my doorstep. I’m afraid she won’t.

“I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited
But I couldn’t stay away, I couldn’t fight it.
I had hoped you’d see my face and that you’d be reminded
That for me it isn’t over.”

The problem with having PTSD is that it is never over. I have to deal with what happened to me forever. It will never be over. I will never be over being a survivor of incest. I will never get over being a dirty little street kid. I will never be over being moved around constantly as a child and being prevented from properly bonding with people. I will never be able to have that stop being true. I will always have this part of me that feels empty and bad and like I am shit.

It’s not over for me. And it spurs me. It makes me angry. It gives me wings. And I flew away. For all that it isn’t over, it is. I have this husband who thinks I hung the moon. I have wonderful children who love me and adore me. I have already made other peoples lives better.

But as I watch the sun come up I question what this American Dream was meant to be anyway. It’s not the house that matters. It’s not the money. The freedom I have is the freedom to say, “No. You cannot invalidate me. I exist. I am different from you. My life experiences have shaped me. And I’m ok. I do not need to change.” I’m white trash and I’m proud of it. I’m proud of my ability to fight and over come adversity. I’m fucking proud of myself. I think I’m bad ass. Noah thinks so too. Does it really matter if anyone else does?

No. But that’s my American Dream. I don’t abandon my self label with my change in financial status because that would be too convenient for everyone around me. They would like to pretend that people like me don’t exist. I feel like most of the people who are big parts of my life are fairly sheltered people. Even the ones who were abused tended to grow up in mostly safe, stable places. They had dads who were emotionally abusive assholes. That kind of thing. But they had consistency. They still only know people who are mostly like them. Except for me.

I still have to say that I am white trash because people try to excuse my behavior as being some sort of byproduct of unavoidable trauma, the poor dear. People love me and want to comfort me and tell me that things that happen to me aren’t my fault. I’m a victim. Well, sometimes. But an awful lot of my current problems are my fault. They are my fault because I choose to be aggressive and hostile. Because I choose to remain white trash instead of catapulting to being middle class. It’s kind of a choice and kind of not a choice. I’m not middle class anyway, I’m nouveau riche. I skipped the middle class. That is kind of weird in and of itself, isn’t it?

When I try to think about what I want from my life I’m pretty happy though. Everything I want is something that I could have. I want to write and grow. I want deeper friendships. I want to have hard conversations with my friends about class. I love my friends. I want to find the ability in myself to feel like I have enough. Like I am not still yearning. Really, there isn’t much left that I have to do. Write. Publish. Wash. Repeat.

But first, I have to go cuddle my perfect daughter.

Blogger won’t let me comment.

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Preface: it’s awesome that I can’t comment on my blog. Go technology. (I got this cool comment, I wanted to respond.)

Why do you call yourself specifically *white* trash? It can sound weird and off-putting to people of color to hear that, because it carries the implication that just plain trash would of course refer to someone non-white. Obviously a life of rape and welfare fraud and Nice People not looking you in the eye isn’t something that happens solely to white people. Is the part of your identity that includes your family’s antagonism toward black people and a black girl’s antagonism toward you sufficiently important that “white trash” is the right label?

I don’t normally comment anonymously but from everything you’ve said about your rage, I think that might be the way to go. What you’re saying is interesting and that’s why I’ve commented, but after having someone tell me on Facebook that my opinion on something didn’t count because I can’t trace my family back to the Mayflower like she can, I’m a little wary of setting off white girls who know my name.

I think that is a fucking awesome comment and I thank you for leaving it. 🙂 Uhm, and I’m sorry people have been assholes to you. Despite my profusion of swearing I try to be civil to actual people. I hope you will take my swearing in the abstract. It’s excessive emotion leaking out, none of this was written with hostility.

I don’t know how to answer that. I want to. There is an answer in there. I’ve been trying to find it for a while. There is something there for me in the intersection of how my privilege and my lack of privilege has existed that has specifically felt different from the people I have known who were not-white but also poor. (That’s been a lot of people.) There is something about the hick, cracker, redneck, weird mountain people…

I’m not sure what it is. I want to be able to explain it right.

I know it sounds off putting on a racial front. I know it offends the shit out of my friends for me to say it. That’s part of why it feels right. Because I feel like I am that kind of offensive. It’s like “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist Sometimes”.

The racism of the people who raised me is part of it mostly because it is part of the cultural construct. It’s part of… creating the ambiance? This is really hard to describe. Being poor doesn’t mean you are racist. Being racist doesn’t mean you are poor. But there are poor racists. I don’t think that any of the individual things that have happened to me has been unique to me. However the combination seems to be unusual. It’s something in the combination that becomes a specific category.

Ok, the word ghetto:

A part of a city, esp. a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups.
The Jewish quarter in a city: “the Warsaw Ghetto”.

Uhh. Is that how people in the US use it? No. They mean poor and usually black, but possibly hispanic. It’s a denotation connotation difference.

For me there is a difference in some part of the connotation. So there is this song by Confederate Railroad (country music–see, hick shit) called I Like My Women A Little On The Trashy Side. It epitomizes, for me, a lot of how I feel about the idea of being trashy. I like the song because it is upbeat and enthusiastic. People like what they like in an unabashed heartfelt way that appeals to me. They are raw. They have no class. And they like being that way, thankyouverymuch. I think there is trashy, trash, and white trash as three distinct, possibly overlapping, circles.

The movie Hounddog. There is a specific culture and mystic to white trash. It doesn’t look the same when other races enact the same patterns. There is a flavor difference. It’s not better. It’s not worse. I spend a lot of time looking for movies and books and stories and songs that embody this for me. I can’t find any parallel that feels right anywhere else.

I don’t know why the violence and the country music and the racist rednecks and their constant belittling of how the women don’t do enough fucking work. It all ties together for me. It is all part and parcel of the same willingness to fight. Fight because you were born feeling less than. You were born with a fucking chip on your shoulder because the whole god damn world acts like they are fucking better than you and that’s not god damn right. Because I fucking deserve better.

But I don’t. No one does. I don’t see the same hubris in other races. That sounds… trite? Stupid? Like I’m sucking up? I don’t find examples in poor white culture that I want to emulate properly. Roseanne was the strongest rolemodel and look what happened to her.

There is some part of being willing to say that I’m not special because I’m white. I’m white and I’m trashy and I’m white trash but I’m not really trash. I don’t really think any human being qualifies as trash. Just because I can wear the right clothes and style my hair and “pass”…there is still this part of me that can’t get over everything that was poured into my head. All this hate and anger and rage and feeling of injustice.

I don’t think I am special because I am white trash. I think that actively reminding myself that I have a long way to go before I have the ability to act like a fucking human being around all people in all circumstances without regard to provocation is something that I have to do to me. I have to deal with the fact that I don’t know how to be appropriate. It is a problem for me. It is a problem in my life. I’m working on it. I don’t know how to fix it any faster than I am.

I am white trash because I only find echoes of me in poor white girls in Southern movies despite the fact that I was raised primarily in the bay area in yuppie central.

I don’t know how to speak about my experience without acknowledging that I’m white. I am. And I don’t feel like I can speak to the universal poor experience. Or the universal trash experience. I can only speak to mine.

And I’m white trash. It’s a circular logic.

I hope this felt more like an answer and less like me being set off. 🙂

White trash

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Somehow I feel like the definition of white trash is very important to my personal lexicon. After all, it is my self-identity. What do I mean by it? I mean that I startle people. I mean that I experience sudden rage and lash out at people in socially unacceptable ways. I mean that many of the things I like are demonstrably low class.

Uncle Bob, when I was a little kid, would spit out the car window when we drove past the house where the black guy lived. That’s all I knew about “the black guy” who lived in the canyon. When I was in high school and I lived in Bakersfield I was accosted on the bus by a black girl who yelled at me that I was a racist because I was reading a book and giggling. I think the only reason she didn’t kick my ass is because my response to her yelling that I was a stupid bitch was to say, “Come on! You haven’t even met me. Normally it takes someone at least five minutes to decide I am a bitch.” Her boyfriend said I was alright and to leave me alone.

I don’t know why that story stays with me so much, but it does.

It’s hard to talk about different things from my childhood happening because I know the stories are confused in my head. I know they are confused because sometimes I know things happened when I was living in a certain house but I can’t remember when I lived there. I’m afraid of trying to take the pieces apart. I’m afraid of trying to make this a real narrative.

I’m afraid of remembering something wrong, writing it down, and being called a liar. I’m not lying. I’m just trying to remember things that happened a long time ago. I’m trying to string together why they are important. Why is my life worth reading about? It’s kind of weird as I look at my over crowded bookshelf and think most of them are not better writers than me. But they are published and I’m not. I think that’s the biggest difference.

I’m terrified of trying to publish. I’m terrified that I won’t have the drive to push it through. I can’t expect to be magically “discovered” and babied through the process. I will have to make it happen. I will have to shop around for an agent and a publishing house. It scares the pants off me. I am going to have to actually deal with being judged. I’m not so good at that part. I have to feel like this is really and truly honest to god worth doing.

It’s hubris. But I think people would… if not enjoy… then at least appreciate reading this story. I think that even though a lot of people will hate me and revile me and say nasty things about me… I think somewhere there is a young girl who will get out of an incestuous family because of me. Some day some girl is going to say, “You saved my life.”

That’s reason enough to do something hard and scary. One life is enough. Well, I’ve already saved mine. I suppose by that metric it’s enough. But it’s not. I want to be a hero. Ok, that made me smile. I do, I want to be a hero. I want to learn how to say just the right thing to make people know that no matter how bad you feel about yourself, there is hope.

I kind of hate Elizabeth Wurtzl. I think Prozac Nation was a horrible book about mental illness. I spent the entire book wanting to bitch slap her and tell her to stop whining about her cushy life. For the record, should Elizabeth Wurtzl ever come read this… I wouldn’t ever say that to you in real life. Pain is pain. But seriously dude you had an easier life than me and I’m allowed to be pissy in my blog about it. It’s not personal.

The reason it bothers me so much is because I have a hard time with pampered rich people who get to be depressed and non-functional. I’ve been depressed most of my life and I’ve been more functional than most people. Depression makes everything harder. It doesn’t make it impossible and it bugs the shit out of me when people say it does. Ok, maybe it does for you. I can’t know what it is like to be in other peoples heads. I know that I have not had the luxury of being non-functional while depressed. I’m too busy surviving. No, I wasn’t happy, but so what? Who the fuck was promised happiness or a good life? Not me.

When people talk about how we should have universal health care I laugh. It’s not nice of me, but I do. I feel like universal health care in this country is a pipe dream. We have too many people. Unless you, generic person who is espousing universal health care, want to go become a doctor and work pro bono for the rest of your life, how do you think that doctors should be paid for their time? How should medical equipment be paid for and acquired? Should everyone in America get to have million dollar surgeries when they get sick?

Money is finite and people die. I think that even if America managed to get the basics covered, I would be opposed to absolutely across the board health care coverage. I think we are all living too long. Honestly. I think that humans were meant to die a lot earlier than we do now and make room for new people. I don’t like most life saving operations.

My personal experiences with life saving operations gave me back Uncle Bob and Tommy. I’m not sure either were good uses of money. How do you say in the conversation about universal health care, “Actually the reason I oppose universal health care is I think they shouldn’t have brought my brother back to life so he could beat me and attempt to rape me for nine more years. The piece of shit should have been allowed to die when he was twelve and it was his fucking time.” How do you say that about your brother? How do you form a political opinion that endorses other people dying? Because I endorse my family and me dying in the same way. I’m ok with it. I’ve made my peace with death. It will happen when it happens. I don’t want to cause my death right now, but I don’t know that I would fight cancer.

Humans are meant to die. I can’t help but think that I’d rather die of whatever disease strikes me than miserable old age and being lonely. I only want to live to be 80 if a million people will light a candle for me. Otherwise, well, whenever it happens is ok. That’s life.

I think the only part of death that bothers me any more is knowing how devastating that will be for my family. I cry and smile at the same time thinking about it. Now there are people who would mourn. It wouldn’t be like Tommy’s memorial up in Redwood Estates. By the time he died he only had one friend outside our family because everyone else abandoned him. People aren’t nice to disabled kids. He was an asshole too, but people aren’t nice to those who are disabled.

I hear people talking about how things should be “fair”. To whom? Why? What the fuck makes you think that? What does that even mean? Does that mean everyone gets the bare minimum? Does that mean everyone gets what they want? I don’t know. I have an easier life than I’ve ever had. I just went out and bought a bed last night for the garage so we have a more comfortable place to have sex. That’s fucking spoiled. I don’t know how to reconcile my unwillingness to share with the fact that I’m very willing to share.

I’m ok with paying high taxes. I think we should. I like roads and fire fighters and schools. They should exist. I like being the one who can give my friends financial support when they need it. I feel kind of weird about the word charity but I give a ton of money away. Only occasionally to organizations. Mostly to individual people who need help. It feels related to me. If I am giving it to an individual person I know if I approve of how they are likely to use it. I do give or not give based on my judgment. I will admit that. It also depends on how close to my monkey sphere someone is. I can handle that.

It’s kind of hard having a different opinion than most of my friends. I feel like I should apologize. When people get all huffy about human rights I want to laugh. I think that I no longer have the same entitlement as my friends. I don’t believe I deserve good treatment. I like it. I want it. I don’t think it’s about deserve. Not really.

That said, if I win the lottery I am starting a domestic violence shelter. I do believe that people should help people. I feel weird about the government doing it.

Whenever people tell me that welfare fraud doesn’t exist I laugh and laugh. Bullshit. It depends on what you mean by “fraud”. Are there people who get welfare and buy drugs instead of food. Yup. My sister did. I’m tired of having my liberal, upper class friends talk about the poor as if they are some deserving group on the mist who should be cared for.

The poor are the people on the bus in your town you ignore. The poor are the people with ill behaved children in the store that you glare at. You think you are better than poor people. Well, a lot of people in my social group do. I am white trash because I am still fucking angry at all the rich people I hang out with. I resent them. I resent them for acting like I pass. It doesn’t matter how much money I have in the bank I will always feel like the dirty little girl you people walked by without meeting my eyes.

I am white trash because white trash take care of their own. Near as I can tell middle class values are shit. I have no respect for them. It involves a lot of “being polite” for the sake of not ruffling feathers and blending in. No thanks. I don’t blend in. Not once I open my mouth. These days not at all. I love my hair.

(Err, uhm, disclaimer: I don’t actually hate or resent my friends. I have emotional issues. I write about them because I’m trying to work through them not because I am trying to alienate people or say they suck. I don’t actually hang out with people I don’t like. I like my friends. But I have mixed feelings about some of the things they say and do unconsciously. That doesn’t make them bad.)

I am white trash because I can’t let the little classist and racist and feminist things go in conversation because I believe direct confrontation is preferable to being passive aggressive. And I’m ok with shouting. A lot.

I’m white trash because when I speak about myself in public people quickly dart their eyes away. They can’t look at me. Not always, not everyone. But the vast majority of people I meet. I haven’t met very many people in my life who can hear me talk out loud about incest and look me in the face without flinching. I’m sure I shouldn’t take that personally. But I do. Things that have happened to me mean that sometimes people can’t look at me without flinching away. I do that. I can control whether or not that happens. I can decide what to tell people. I can decide to pass and be nice and middle class and stop making people flinch.

Only I can’t. Because I’m white trash. Because I will always blurt things at uncomfortable times that make people flinch. Because I will always be just a bit dirtier and worse and more disgusting than everyone around me. Because who and what I am seems to be an affront to so.many.people. I am white trash because I think it is sporting to warn people that if I think they are a fucking asshole I just might tell them so. While I am visiting their house. In another state. I’m just kind of awesome that way. I don’t seem to be able to control my rage after a while. I have to say that my outbursts have gotten way more socially acceptable over the years. Yelling at Rebecca’s dad was really rude, but he deserved it. He was a twat.

Do you know why I blow up at people who are in authority? Because blowing up at people in authority saved my life. No. That’s not hyperbole. Think about my parents. Think about being brought into the world to parents who are ok with me being raped by every male member of my family. I was born fighting.

That is why I am white trash. Because I’m ok with that fight. Because I accept that fight as being just life. Because I don’t think I deserve anything better. Because I don’t really think anyone else does either and fuck you if you think you deserve better treatment. I did not god damn deserve being raped over and over and over. But it happened. I can’t let it end my life. I can’t sit around and whine about how not fair life is. If I had done that as a child I would have died. There is no fair. I did not deserve being raped.

How many times was I raped. I try not to think about it. I don’t think I’ve had a number in my head for it in a long time. Michael, Jeremy, I’m blanking on that guys name in high school. Memories are awesome. The guy that I met at Lauren’s house. The one I thought was safe. The guy from the coast guard. My dad with the gun. My dad all those other times I can’t count. That’s only five. That’s not so bad, right? Oh, and Paul. And countless times when I lay there and cried and didn’t bother saying no. That’s been a lot of people.

I don’t think that people understand that I take pride in being white trash. I take pride in my strength. It’s gotten me a long way. I will always disconcert people, I have no interest in being a different person. That’s the hard part. I don’t want to be anything other than who and what I am. But people tell me I should. I shouldn’t call myself trash. It’s not nice.

Uhh, piss off. Life isn’t nice. I can deal with that in the ways that work for me, thank you very much. Life isn’t nice and life isn’t fair. See, these are the things I don’t want to say in an actual conversation with a friend. When they tell me, “Oh don’t call yourself that” I have to bite a hole in my tongue to not respond with, “Who the fuck died and made you the fucking arbiter of what I should mother fucking call myself?!” It’s not very nice. And I try to be nice to my friends, mostly. But I feel these things. That’s why I call myself white trash. Because that is my emotional process around people telling me not to call myself white trash. I want to cuss them out and say I will do so if I please. And that’s why I’m white trash.

Hm. I’m not just trash. I’m not and I know it. I’m not garbage. But I am a specific cultural construction that I refer to as white trash. That’s a useful way to think of it. Gotta make breakfast.

More guns, cars, and computers.

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(I’m sorry Marisa, I’m trying to make them shorter…)

I just had this big flash where I realized part of what I miss so much about that little sub group. I found it! Oh they were so tacky. So so tacky. All of those cheesy little tacky things you see in novelty shops? Collections! It was frankly adorable. They were enthusiasts. They were fans. They were totally white trashy and they didn’t even know it. They just thought they were Leather. Which says an awful lot about my vision of white trash.

Hmmm. That actually says a lot about what I consider white trash. Biker. Maybe I should work on defining white trash a bit better so that it is a more useful term.

White trash: (noun) a descriptive phrase for a person who exudes a general sense of glorification of many aspects of poor culture; this person does not necessarily have to be poor. Generally only applicable to people who can also be described as “redneck”, “hick”, or “rural”.

The problem is that folks can be white trash and totally glorious about it or people can be white trash and abusive. I think of the munch crowd as being white trashy because there was an active enthusiastic interest in creating things for the hobby. Which resulted in a lot of piles of stuff left around because they might be useful later. Lots of fun tawdry boudoir type spaces. It made me happy then and it makes me happy now. I feel weird about the fact that a lot of my frustration with my birthday party is because the house isn’t what I see in my head. I think I will be able to have the birthday party I really see in my head when I am 50. It will take that long before my house matches the picture in my head.

I love this unabashed tacky expression of joy about life. My house is increasingly tacky and it thrills me to no end. Tacky is kind of a loaded word. It’s pretty tacky that I stapled cotton batting over the exposed pipes in my garage instead of building some sort of actual cover. But I think that having a cloud line at the top of the mountains is so awesome. I’m going to find something to cover the defunct electrical box. I’m sure it will be tacky. I will probably find some animal to attach to the wall. Maybe a fake plant. It will be tacky. Gloriously tacky. It’s fun.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: white trash

Not competent enough.

The loyalty trap

Living post-rape

What are you afraid of?

I don’t think that getting over my anger is the point.

Passing

Status

anxiety purge

Words have power.

Part of the road to Noah

hair cutting

aftermath

The American Dream

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White trash

More guns, cars, and computers.