Category Archives: Zen

Grace and grabbing

1 Reply

Yesterday I was chatting with the head teacher for a moment as I picked up the kids. She is in the process of packing up because she is leaving the school after next week. She has had a 35 mile commute for years and it is wearing her down. I was generally encouraging in that way that I am, “Go for it! You have a life to lead. Don’t wait for the things you want.” She said, “I want to be like you. I want to grab life with both hands.”

It’s kind of amazing that people perceive me that way after one week of acquaintance. Yes. I do.

People keep asking us if we are settled yet. My response is, “Our stuff hasn’t even arrived from the boat yet.” Their eyes go wide in shock. We don’t have electricity figured out yet (here in the UK they don’t shut off your electricity between registrations they just charge you triple, which is fun) and our internet is a travel unit that’s horribly expensive and doesn’t work very well and causes a great deal of frustration. The real internet company keeps “losing” our requests to get service. I just got a bank card yesterday. Everything about applying for credit cards is a nightmare (there is no transference of credit history between countries… it’s like we have no credit history at all) and the US cards are being awful. Yes I have travel notices with them. Doesn’t help.

But last night Her Sweetness slept in a toddler bed and the big kids slept in their own rooms. Can I really complain?

We all make mistakes. We all say things wrong. We all trip and knock into someone. We are all stunted trees leaning towards the light. If we don’t give each other grace and patience on that journey we will not be able to have love. I am going to make a lot of errors as I integrate into this culture. Despite the fact that people look like people I would see in the US they don’t act the same. Their expectations of me are quite different. I am going to fuck up. I need forgiveness. I will need forgiveness from myself and from other people. That means I must forgive people who mess up towards me.

When my kids fuck up and feel really bad sometimes I tell them that I forgave them on the day they were born for every mistake they will ever make. I will be cranky sometimes because fixing mistakes is hard, but forgiveness is not in question. You are forgiven.

It’s harder and more complicated with adults. For one thing, you aren’t my crotch dropping and they get a level of grace no one else will ever get from me. Sorrynotsorry.

And I have to be honest with myself that Sarah burned me hard. The frequency with which she used accusations of having a personality disorder if I behaved in a way that made her feel bad about herself (you know… noticing that she made promises she wouldn’t keep…) means that a lot of the grace I want and need to give to other friends is… not there at the moment. It will grow back, but it’s going to take time. Healing from burns takes time. As I’m working on healing it is not ok to hurt other people.

When I’m having big feelings it is ok to say that I’m having feelings. It is not ok to name call or retaliate or be nasty.

It does not make me bad if I am upset or sad or angry.

My feelings do not mean that I am bad.

Angrily packing does not make me bad.

Kicking the cabinet door off the wall… that was bad. Calling someone names is bad. Breaking something that belongs to someone else is bad.

Having the feeling does not mean I have a personality disorder. And someday I will get to the point of not hating myself for having feelings when a friend does something that hurts me.

We all fuck up sometimes. We say things poorly. We are vague in a way that causes pain. We choose words that may have an impact we don’t intend. This is where grace comes in. If you are going to grab life with both hands and chase your dreams sometimes you will grab too hard and leave a bruise. Sometimes your hands will slip (fucking greasy lotion) and you will drop something important. Sometimes you will be trying to grab with both hands and the damn lid of the tea pot will break on the counter.

Shit happens.

That is where grace comes in. Love. Forgiveness. Try to sleep it off then get up and try again. Life is an adventure. Sometimes adventures make you cry.

An absolutely glorious meeting

4 Replies

I met with both teachers, the classroom support worker, and the deputy head teacher (basically the vice principal). Everyone was upbeat, positive, and complimentary. The general verdict is that my children have incredible social skills–they are settling in shockingly well. They have seamlessly joined the pack of kids playing games and the teachers expected more culture shock. They are extremely appropriate in class and have not been asked to settle down once. All of the things that could use some extra help are things that are basic differences between the US and Scottish school systems so nobody is batting an eye.

As I have long told EC, she is far above grade level. Her math skills exceed the school’s ability to test and the teacher was quite surprised by just how fluently she is able to explain everything she knows. Her reading comprehension is untestable by their standards. She could probably move into secondary school level one and be at grade level or above. (That wasn’t explicitly stated, just repeated mentions of “We can’t even test her level.”) I want her to have a year of primary school. Her handwriting isn’t perfect but it is average. She is enjoying the fact that she is already the first one done with math assignments and she is turning around to explain things to other kids. The teacher says it is clear her reading comprehension is much higher than she chooses to express in writing at this time. I said wait until she has a computer in front of her; she types like the wind. (She will be assigned a Chromebook tomorrow.)

MC is already sharing at school that they doubt their abilities because they are not at ECs level. I said, “Yup that is a constant struggle and it has been lifelong.” For math they are a couple of months behind where the dead average is, but given that we abandoned math entirely six months ago… that’s dandy fine and no one in the room doubted that they will catch up super fast. For reading comprehension there is a drastic difference between what they can express verbally and what they can write. So for homework they are going to focus on writing and skip most of the otherwise assigned stuff like spelling. The teacher knows that for reading ability and general comprehension MC is very much at the top level but thinks it is wise to put kiddo in the middle group for now so that kiddo can finish the reading lightning fast and spend the extra time working on writing.

I did bring up some of the gender stuff. I said that MC is very gender fluid and that’s an adventure we are fully on board for. The whole staff said that sounds great and they will support that in every way possible.

The staff expressed that my tour of duty of educating the children is over. (Not their language at all. I am paraphrasing because it is going to take a long time before I can mimic Scottish cadence.) They expressed that the best thing I can do is listen to how their day is and encourage them to keep trying their best at school. The staff will handle all of the support they need and they want the kids to just relax and play outside of school. I’m pretty sure my relief was palpable. Homework will be very minimal compared to US standards and it really is up to the kids to do.

I am absolutely in love with this school. The staff is kind, supportive, and enthusiastic. I feel like it will be easy for us to be successful here. I think my kids are going to do well. They already have a few kids in class they think they would like to develop friendships with.

Awesome.

Today is the day.

Leave a reply

In just over four hours my kids will be walking onto a school campus as enrolled students. They will be P5 and P7. Here P7 is the final year of primary school before being sent off to secondary school. There is no middle school here.

I am already enjoying some of the differences in Scottish schooling. We were having trouble finding some of the supplies I consider “mandatory” for school in stores. Jenny told me that schools don’t ask families to buy them after we went to three stores looking. The schools provide what kids need.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Wut? Schools provide pencils and paper and notebooks? I… You are using words but I am not understanding you.

Schools here do not give parents any contact information for teachers. If you want an appointment you call the office and the office negotiates with the teacher and they get back to you to let you know when you can come in. As someone who used to get calls and emails from the parents of 150 students that sounds amazing! Good for Scottish teachers!

The kids are going to start with half days as they acclimate to school and the teachers slowly learn where they are academically. The school is literally incapable of giving them placement tests to just see where they are because such things don’t exist here. There are occasional national tests but the school doesn’t have access to them and my kids are in the wrong grades anyway. So… there just aren’t big evaluations for their current levels.

I’m telling you, I’m excited.

Middle Child was crying at bed time. They were trying to be quiet about it, but they are super nervous. I pulled them over close to me and I talked to them until they fell asleep. On a fairly repetitive loop I told them that when they don’t feel they have enough faith in themself they can borrow some of my faith in them. I told them that they are strong, brave, hard working, competent, smart, funny, creative, thoughtful, kind (which is not the same thing as nice!), friendly, fun, interesting, adaptable, sweet, loving, patient, and really good at learning new skills. I interspersed this list of adjectives with saying, “And you know I am judgemental and critical. I don’t give praise unless I believe it to be absolutely accurate.” The first time MC giggled when I said that. After that they just relaxed. I would pause sometimes and say “When your belly starts to hurt because you are anxious, remember to smell the flower (pause for big inhale through the nose) and blow out the candle (slow big exhalation through the mouth). You can’t control other people. You can’t control the world. You can control your breath. If you control your breath you will be able to control your body even if your feelings are being rough. I have faith in you. When you don’t have faith in yourself, listen to these tapes in your brain and borrow my faith in you. I know you are….. (long list of adjectives).”

Eldest Child was already asleep or I would have talked to both of them.

And Her Sweetness only had one middle of the night wake up. That’s almost like a full night of undisturbed sleep…. She is feeling much better. I am in a lot of pain.

The kids will start waking up in about 45 minutes, maybe more like 60. I am going to hurry through my shower in the meantime so I can spend my morning on “cheerful cheerleader” mode. You can do it! You are going to succeed at this new life stage the way you have done well on so many others! I know you can!

I am their inside voice. That’s what mothers become for their children. I have not been doing a great job of being relentlessly upbeat for a while here because I am worn down and exhausted. This morning is a (very short) sprint, not a marathon. I can do this for them. Then I can take a few hours to slow down and just be in toddler mode.

When toddler mode feels like a fucking vacation you might just be living your life wrong. Too much work and stress, yo.

Yesterday we bought several more table cloths at the discount store. This is so when Middle Child makes a huge mess on the table they will just change the table cloth and I can stop being a critical brat about their absolute lack of table manners. My kids definitely know that I am critical and judgmental. So when I say positive things, it’s not because I enjoy blowing sunshine up your skirt. We have a handheld dustbuster so that the mess on the floor is not a big deal.

I need to stop being an asshole about messy eating. No really.

Life is a balancing act.

At the end of the positive speil I told MC “You will make mistakes. You must make mistakes. Mistakes are how you learn. Mistakes are part of being human. When you don’t understand something, write your question down in your notebook. Questions are good. You are good. You will mess up as you learn this new process and that’s ok and necessary and part of the process. Don’t be afraid of messing up. It’s like crashing your bike. You learn more from the crashes than you do from always getting it right. You learn what too far means. It’s ok to screw up. You will do better next time.”

After like 10 minutes of this repetitie loop of adjectives and blather about mistakes kiddo wasn’t crying and their body was relaxed. They finally stopped clutching my hand like a life preserver.

Ok, based on the noise from upstairs I don’t have 40 more minutes. Hurry up and shower, Krissy.

Now I feel like we’ve arrived.

2 Replies

Today is our first day of being on a normal-for-us schedule instead of a frantic work schedule. We get up and do our morning hygiene, get dressed, have breakfast, do chores, then academics until lunch. Afternoons are free. Ok, Noah has his own schedule slightly separate from the kids and I.

Of course Her Sweetness thinks this sucks because during chore time she pretty much has to play independently. I keep telling her that play is her work and this is her independent work time… She does not yet believe me. She will. I have trained up several children in this manner already.

I am feeling so happy today. I didn’t get the last piece of furniture put together yesterday because my elbow hurts like fire. It’ll get done before Middle Child’s dresser arrives from Ikea. Then those pieces will get put together and I will start haunting the charity shops looking for a dining room table and chairs that will fully meet our needs. Maybe a big chair for the dining room that will hold 2-3 butts if we stack.

We don’t need anything else. At this point we don’t want anything else.

Ok, we still haven’t even opened the garden studio or seriously thought about what we will want out there… but we have time. So much time. That’s not urgent.

Y’all. WE HAVE A WHOLE BUILDING OUTSIDE WE HAVEN’T OPENED YET. Ok so it’s the size of a large room, but still.

We are not going to run out of room here any year soon.

I had a really lovely conversation with our neighbors over the weekend. They agree with my reading of the catchment maps, the fence across the street is the dividing line between the schools I want us to go to (primary and secondary) and the ones I don’t really want to go to. Excellent. All of our neighbors have gone to the schools I would prefer. Excellent. That conversation was friendly and fun and I have more hope than I had after we were less than ideal customers for their vehicle renting company. I don’t think they are holding a grudge. Our eagerness to pay for our mess ups hopefully helps. Also: no more renting vans.

Last night we renegotiated chores with the kids. I am pushing Noah to not look for a remote Silicon Valley job that will expect 60-80 hours a week of work. Our passive income is already in the $20,000-$30,000 range. If he writes another book, if he teaches some classes, if he does some consulting… I think we will be more than fine. The average income in this city is under £30,000/year. I want us to be normal here. I am not shooting for being one of the wealthiest families in the town. I think he will have a lot more fun if he cobbles together income from stuff he is interested in rather than forcing him to work for a big company that will expect him to just about turn over his soul for an obscene amount of money.

So we renegotiated with the kids. We are paying them for a lot less. We also put all of the chores into four separate buckets. Some of the buckets are fairly intense (dishes 3x’s a day) and some are not (vacuum the house and clean the common bathrooms once a week) so each of us have some weeks with a bunch of chores and some weeks with not so many. We have planned that rotation out through the end of October when we will talk about how we are each doing with the schedule.

I am fairly excited that the kids are responsible for their own rooms and laundry and I don’t need to police it because they are not shared areas and I don’t have to look at the work if it doesn’t get done. Sounds like heaven.

If something terrible happened and we couldn’t acquire food from a store we can last a good month on what we have in the freezer/pantry. My prepper heart is at peace.

We blocked the holes at the bottom of the fence. No children will fall into the burn. (A burn is a small stream.) This is good and brings me a lot of peace.

The big kids are still asking to sleep in the same room as us. Right now we have the air mattresses in the lounge and we are all in there together. That feels very ok as we are settling in. They have been through so much in the last year. MC was telling me that they have big feelings because they feel like they “shouldn’t” need to sleep near me at this age because most of their peers are sleeping independently already. I said that just because most parents will not permit cosleeping doesn’t mean the kids are always happy about it. Our family is doing what works for us and it really doesn’t matter what anyone else is ok with. My kids will outgrow needing me this way. I don’t know when, but I have great faith it will happen. Until then I see no reason to force the separation.

Last night I slept better. Being near the end of the chore cycle feels so good. I still can’t wait to get my dreamy mattress.

Today for work I am sweeping all the hard floors and mopping. I cleaned up the table and high chair and I am going to tidy up the counters. I’m feeling pretty happy about being the one to establish the baseline of what a “clean kitchen” looks like.

Our pantry is full, but isn’t bursting. There is still a little bit of room and the downstairs kitchen isn’t full. That feels like a good place to be right now as we figure out what other things we would like to acquire going forward. We have room but we aren’t in need.

Today I think the house will be tidy enough to walk around and take pictures of it to share with friends. I am a neurotic person and I don’t share pictures of the explosions of mess.

I am happy we have a desk for the computers to live on so that screens don’t go in bedrooms. I want us to change our relationship to how we use screens. We have done a lot of “feeling trapped so I will distract myself with the screen” stuff over the past few years and given all the lovely opportunities to go outside and make art and have quiet space around our bodies… I want to change that. We are so very lucky.

I have been noticing a lot of holes and cracks in the walls. Someone else might feel cranky about them. I feel relief. At first I was worried the house was a little too perfect and anything I might do might mess it up and then I am bad. Instead I feel like the house is perfectly imperfect. I can do things. I can improve things. If I make a mistake, well it clearly isn’t the first one and the house is still breathtakingly wonderful.

I haven’t started trimming the garden back for autumn yet. The former owner told me October/November is best for that. We still have beautiful bright flowers all over.

I am so very happy.

What I’ve been looking for

Leave a reply

I have spent a lot of time reading forums about abusive families over the past few years. Reading back over my old journal entries from 13 years ago reminds me… I basically coaxed myself through the process that many people need help with. Reading the emails between my siblings about my father’s will (oh that was gross and scary), reading about how my mother treated me as I was becoming a mother myself (hello complete lack of healthy boundaries), and all of the ways I tried to create family out of friendships…

I am so very textbook. I know that. I have known that for a long time. But skimming the oldest entries I have as I lock things down behind a new password… phew.

Picking friendships with people who try to control me by telling me I need to behave how they want me to behave or I have a personality disorder? That is utterly, perfectly textbook for someone with my background. I will abase myself and beg and hurt myself doing labor if someone reminds me of my family because that was my role.

Seeing this in the context of moving on from the bay is so illuminating. Mostly because Jenny is providing a level of support for us moving that I never would have asked for, never would believe I deserve, and frankly it makes me feel uncomfortable. But in that good healthy growth sort of way. I have put 25 years into chasing Jenny and mostly she let me chase her and she didn’t chase back all that much. Now she is returning the full force and whoa. Is this how I make her feel?

I wouldn’t expect this from Jenny because she is very reserved and she doesn’t make big promises.

Frankly, this is what Sarah promised and never delivered.

It’s not fair to say Jenny hasn’t done things for me in the past. When I overextended myself taking care of Sarah (driving to a different state to help her with packing and unpacking because she couldn’t/wouldn’t do it for herself due to mental and physical health reasons) Jenny is the person who flew out to drive my van home. Because she loves me and she didn’t want me to get hurt.

When I needed a place to go when I moved out of my ex’s house, Jenny figured out how we could live together. That didn’t work out because I am a ridiculous control freak and Jenny is not going to adapt how she lives for anyone. She knows her limits in a way that I deeply admire.

I feel like I am heading for a rebirth. I am no longer going to be chasing people who will watch me drain my life blood for them while giving me a flippant thanks and not living up to the promises they make. Jenny under promises and over delivers.

I need to not create any of the same patterns with Scottish folk. I will make friends slowly, gradually, with a lot of boundaries. Jenny and I will be able to have civil, adult conversations about boundaries and needs and what is ok to ask for. Jenny has never had a hard time (from my point of view) with telling me “No that doesn’t work for me.”

I know that I don’t have to show up and start performing a bunch of labor in exchange for the help I have gotten in the past few months. Jenny knows better than almost anyone that I need to slow down and not take on new big tasks for a while. She will sit and wait, like she is coaxing a cat to like her. She knows I am drawn to her like a magnet. I will absolutely find ways to spend time with her and share love that work for both of us. And maybe for the first time in my recorded history…

I can slow down enough to let my body heal from everything that has happened to it. I am going through old blog entries. My body has endured so much. My soul has endured so much. As my dear friend said to me, most people are broken down by what happened to me and my soul broke open. I have had a hard time not flooding people with love and affection hoping they would return it. I have provided acts of service and labor long past when it was healthy for me because I wanted to be worthy of love.

Jenny loves me even when I am not doing labor for her. If I go back through my blog I can see just how much labor I have put forth trying to buy love. Having kids has changed this dynamic so much. Children need that kind of labor from their parents. It is a requirement for building healthy attachment and safety. Children need a flood of labor and attention and affection.

Healthy adult friendships do not. I do not need to flood Jenny for her to know I love her. She tells me to back off.

I feel like I am tarnishing everyone with this brush and it isn’t fair. I have friends who love me and support me without me having to do tons of labor for them. The friendships that have endured for decades and I feel like they still support me… honestly they aren’t the people I flooded. J in Portland did so much to support us landing there that I was stunned. I have not done labor for J since I braided her daughter’s hair for her wedding nearly 20 years ago. A in Portland helped even though the only labor I have provided was helping her load a truck 12 years ago one time. A has flown to another state to support me in large endeavors.

I was accused of scanning for signs of betrayal. Well, sort of? I am scanning to see what are the results of my behavior. I am scanning to see if people respond to me how they say they will. I am scanning to see if people are treating me like my family or not. I am scanning to see if people are safe for me to pour my love into. I am scanning to see if people are healthy to introduce to my children.

Many of the people who have volunteered the hardest to be in the lives of my children are some of the least appropriate people I have had relationships with. I only see this in the rear view mirror.

Maybe you think I should be able to figure this out without looking at these people and matching up their words and their actions over and over and over again but I am not smart enough. I do not have enough self love to move towards safety instinctively. I have to work at it. I have to put time and effort and mental work towards trying to evaluate if I am making good choices or not.

Given what I have reread in the past couple of days… my choices are improving but I am far from perfect. I need to exercise a lot of caution as I integrate into a new community. Instant family feelings really… yeah. I can’t do that again. When I think of the number of people in the bay who told me I was “chosen family” within a year of us meeting…. well, that’s a red flag I will never miss again. I will never say that to someone again.

Jenny is chosen family because for 25 years when I have had a crisis and I appear on her doorstep she lets me come in and cry until I am done. When she needs help or support I will do what I can to provide it. I will shower her with attention because she fascinates me and she has for most of my life.

Jenny is who I went to when my father and brother suicided. Jenny helped me get back safely when I was stupid enough to strand myself. Jenny is helping me move continents.

I believe her when she says she will do something. I can count on one hand my adult friendships who I trust to the degree I trust her.

In the bay I had a vast shallow network. I could ask the whole network and someone would probably show up on a given day but I could never predict who and many of the people would show up once and never again. That’s not evil. That doesn’t mean any of those people were doing anything wrong. But it isn’t what I was looking for.

There were people who promised me the moon and didn’t come close to delivering and that hurt. There were people who would have been more stable and consistent support in exchange for me letting their other, more important to them, friends treat me like dirt.

Is it scanning for betrayal if I am willing to examine the truth of someone’s behavior in comparison to their words? I can live with that. I must live with that. I will live with that.

I am trying to figure out what living with integrity means for me. I am trying to figure out how much I have to give while maintaining enough energy for me to give to myself so that I can be healthy.

It’s kind of funny thinking about it in terms of the threads on these forums. I can see my growth curve the way I can see the growth in people who come back to their own threads for years and years.

Even a stunted tree reaches for the light.

We fly out of Bangkok in 39 hours. Nearly time to go find what I have been looking for.

Well this sucks; ok not everything sucks

2 Replies

We were just about over jet lag. Then illness strikes. Her Sweetness has a fever and she is super cranky; I assume she is in pain too. Eldest Child is having intestinal problems. I have full body pain (as someone with chronic pain this is enough pain to make me want to sit very still in a chair and cry–I am medicating for pain with tylenol and ibuprofen alternated), a low grade fever, and I am producing a river of snot with the associated coughing, sneezing, and sore throat. If you have followed me for long you know it has to get BAD before I medicate with these drugs because I am so afraid of my tolerance level going up.

I don’t think we will see much of Bangkok and I am very disappointed.

The food has tasted great. The garbage is omnipresent and overwhelming. The traffic patterns are reminding me of Kuala Lumpur only they are very different? It’s closer to KL than Japanese traffic patterns. The gridlock is massive. I can understand why the advice around driving here is don’t.

We are right next to RCA (Royal City Avenue) which is the designated clubbing/entertainment/tourist area. It’s a short walk down a relatively safe stretch of sidewalk. Relatively safe because the motorcycle taxi service has a stand in front of our building so they have to go back and forth on that stretch of sidewalk. If you pay attention and get out of their way it’s ok. And all the motorcycle drivers love Her Sweetness. They want to cuddle and hang out with her.

Her Sweetness is my most reserved child. I used to think Middle Child was incredibly reserved because I compared them to Eldest Child. Holy sauce buckets was I underestimating the amount of reserve a child of my blood can display. When people try to touch HS she cries. She wants her people and that’s it.

I am going to have to stagger downstairs and do laundry today because I am about out of hankies. Dude. I travel with more than a dozen hankies. Hankies are life. (We also have a full laundry basket. But the hankies will be the motivation.)

I was a serious bitch yesterday and I feel kind of embarrassed. I am sick and the kids were pushing me for attention and to do work for them. I blew up about how unfair it is that when they are sick I let them lie still and do nothing until they feel like doing things and I am not allowed any rest. I sort of feel like I “should” have found a nicer way to express this. But I tried a variety of “I’m not feeling well” and “I can’t do that” before I started getting harsh. There is this complicated balancing act where I try to be as nice as I can be to them until they just refuse to recognize that I have boundaries too and then I’m really not so nice. Because fuck that. I get to have rest when I am fucking sick and you can go in your room and play and stop bothering me. No I don’t have to pay attention to you today. You can bloody well cope with me taking care of myself today.

It’s weird. I feel guilty and proud of myself? I need to set these boundaries. I set them as softly as I could. I escalated ,when they completely refused to allow me boundaries, to being more forceful in my language. I did use the word fuck a lot. “I am fucking sick and I need to fucking rest. You don’t fucking need me to play with you. You can fucking play by yourself.” That was after a couple of hours of using soft language and having MC continue to head butt me and be rude and demanding and aggressive about wanting to play.

MC has asked me to use the word fuck less and I’ve been doing pretty well so this flood of fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck was definitely a sign of degrading ability to communicate. But I feel like my head is in a vice and if you don’t leave me alone and stop talking to me I am going to literally melt down and start screaming which would really suck in this tiny apartment. I have limits. I don’t talk to you like this even once a year. But I am sick and I need to be left alone to take care of me.

My kids genuinely think I am a river of love and support and work and they can’t understand when I can’t do that. It’s a weird dynamic. I feel both good and bad about it. I am not sure I am presenting them with a healthy, balanced view of what parents should be like. My mother under-responded and neglected me. So I half kill myself doing the martyr schtick so they never know a minute of boredom or want. I am hurting myself so they never have to be bored. That’s not healthy either.

I really can’t wait to have my own bedroom and for them to go to school. We need to start separating. I feel like a mother bird who is exerting more and more pressure to get the baby birds to get the fork out of the nest. I need some space, kiddos. I love you. I need some space for me too. I matter too. I am not the most important person in our family but I am not the least important person either. We need balance. If we sacrifice my health on the altar of “Happy Family” then this family is going to fall apart soon. I have to be healthy enough to carry my side of things.

I suspect this is related to just how hard I pushed my body over the past few months culminating in the last week. I have done a lot of work. We leave Bangkok on the 9th and we arrive on the 10th because it is another 30 hour travel day with getting to and from airports. Today is the 5th. So close yet so far.

The former owner of the house and Jenny’s Super Spiffy Husband (JSSH) both sent us long explanations of how to set up utilities and services. We are so incredibly lucky that we are following Jenny. She has helped in ways big and small that blow my mind. I feel like we are sliding into Scotland on greased rails. This could have been a nightmare. Instead it is a series of steps. Yes, we feel tension and stress as we go through the steps because lots of things are out of our control… but things are actually going as fast as they possibly could. We made the decision to move to Scotland, got absolutely everything done, and now we are returning in less than three months. That is miraculous in terms of government bureaucracy. Greased. Forkin. Rails.

And once we arrive… we have no deadlines to hurry up and get anything done. There are no foreseeable sprints in my future. We don’t need to hurry up and get anything done. We need to get things done as quickly as we get them done. I mean, utilities getting set up might be the most “Uhhh do that now” step. But furniture and cookware and all that stuff can trickle in. We will probably go shopping on the 11th to get some things, but not a lot. Realistically we will go to the store every day for a while and we will get what we get. Sometime in the first week we will probably hire a van and clean out the charity shop of anything we can use and do a massive grocery shop but it’s not a big rush. If it happens on our second day or our fourth day or the seventh day… whatever. We are right between three stores that are all dandy for supplying us with food we can eat without stress. I’m just not worried. It’s a lovely feeling. I will slowly acquire the things we need to keep house. Drips and drabs. It will be easier to do most of this shopping after the shipment of our belongings arrive so I have the big double stroller.

I got a double bike trailer that can be used as a stroller so that I can pull the baby AND groceries. This is my compromise on not having a car. I am already aware of how awesome Tesco’s delivery service is (THANK YOU JSSH!) but I really like going to the store. And I want to experiment between Tesco and Aldi and Asda. I will get a little notebook for comparing prices. We are going to be trying to be that tight with our budget.

I’m not sure if I told y’all this. Noah’s current obscene California salary is going to last till January. Then he’s going to work on books, teaching, and maybe a wee bit of contracting on the side. We have enough money in petty cash for 2-3 years of run time if we are very conservative and we hope we can figure out him working for himself. This is part of why we decided Taipei is not wise at the moment. If we are trying to live on £40,000/year all of a sudden spending $6000 on a trip to Taipei seems… uhhh not in the budget.

I have lived on much less. While snowballing our debt we lived on a similar amount of money at the beginning of our marriage. We will see!

On the money front: I was watching a session of Scottish Parliament yesterday and there was a lot of hand wringing over how they can’t get enough people to work with mental health care for children. The waiting lists are long and they are incredibly stressed out about it. Do you know what I have a unique background on? Helping kids with mental health problems. Sure, I’ll have to hit up the local university for some specific training and degree hoop jumping but that doesn’t scare me. Maybe when Her Sweetness starts nursery in a year and a half we will have four people in school in the house. That would be kind of cool.

I would like to have a job. I would like to have a job specifically because I dream of a conservatory added to the house and if I don’t figure out how to earn the money for it myself Noah will feel like he needs to get a remote job from California for ridiculous money and then he will work 60 hours a week and I will be very sad.

I don’t need to earn the money in the first couple of years. In my head I wouldn’t be ready to start that kind of project for at least 3-5 years. That gives me time to go to school and get started in the field. I will be 100% hiring out the work and the former owner gave me the name of the person who could probably build it for me because he did all the other remodeling in the house.

This is not abandoning the idea of IDB (Incest Database) but it is helping to keep me busy until then and helps me gain qualifications that will help with the research and it helps pay for retirement stuff so Noah doesn’t have to supply 100% of our retirement safety on his own. I still think I couldn’t really get going on IDB for almost 20 years. Not the way I want to. 20 years is a long time and I could do a lot of valuable work between now and then.

I want to be part of the community. This would be a really great way for me to meet people and find a place for myself.

I don’t have a plan yet. I am not rushing. I am waiting to see how things shake out. I am coming up with ideas, potentials, hopes, and dreams.

And nothing is in a big rush. No sprints. Settle in slowly. Exercise. Establish house. Help the kids adjust to school. Wait for HS to be old enough for nursery. Enjoy the next year and a half of extra alone time with my precious last baby. I feel lucky and blessed.

I won’t be doing much today. Noah has a speakers dinner tonight. We have instant noodles in the apartment that will probably be most of our food while he is doing his conference. I should go down to the 7-11 (holy shit these things are ubiquitous internationally) and get some yogurt and juice and maybe other snacky foods. Maybe I’ll do that run while I’m dealing with laundry.

I feel so bad. I did more yesterday than I probably should have. Today I can’t. As I plan to go to the laundromat and do grocery shopping. I am such a twit.

These things have to get done. It’s not optional. Being the mom is not always fun. But it is always worth it. I did not have children because I wanted convenience. I am so very loved. It’s worth it.

Even if sometimes I have to say fuck fuck fuck fuck to be allowed to rest.

I think it is kind of useful that EC is reading these Warriors books because the mama cats take no shit and that is causing her to change how she views me. It’s hilarious.

I have been dizzy on and off for days. My body is so unhappy. Her Sweetness is waking up every two hours to nurse and I don’t feel like it is fair to complain given how sick she is.

Miss Jenny picked up our keys. The solicitor has been paid off. We have a home to go back to. A home that pretty closely matches drawings I’ve been making about my dream home for years. I am so lucky.

We are going to be highlanders! We start this next phase of our lives on the day I turn 38. Seems like a good time for a rebirth.

Homework (what do I need to work on)

Leave a reply

This morning I am waking up feeling gooey, schmoopy, overwhelming love for my family. Ok. Time to think about the stuff I need to work on about myself.

What are the whack a mole problems that come up? Many of them are problems in me and related to my thinking as much or more as they are rooted in anyone else’s behavior. Like: I really struggle with feeling like I want/need my kids to be more self motivated than they are. Then I get these reminders that they are actually really doing exceptionally well for their ages and developmental levels and my expectations are almost certainly out of whack. My kids have different things they struggle with: my son tends towards passive aggression and my daughter tends towards executive function failures. Ok. That’s not out of line with fairly normal stuff for kids. What I need to work on in myself is feeling more patience with the fact that they struggle in these areas and I have chosen to not put them into school where there would be teams of other adults teaching them how to manage these issues. I choose to be the one who must solve these problems or it is my fault they still exist. Sometimes I struggle with feeling overwhelmed about the magnitude of difficulty of work I have assigned myself. But it isn’t my children’s fault that I assigned myself this role.

The thing is, even though I struggle with some of their behaviors sometimes… I truly like my children and I feel like I have done well turning them into little people to be proud of. It has been the result of massive, overwhelming work on my part. I watch my children night and day and give them little course corrections, assistance, reminders, and help. NO FUCKING WONDER THEY TREAT ME LIKE THEIR EXTERNALIZED BRAIN. I can look at my Eldest Child and tell what she is thinking about with a greater than 90% accuracy rate. “You are having x feeling about y thing. Do you think maybe you should do z?” Her response is always “HOW CAN YOU DO THAT?!?!?! That’s a good suggestion…..”

I only guess my Middle Child’s thoughts and feelings with a more like 40% accuracy rate and he and I both feel a sting because of that. He consciously and deliberately shields his thoughts more. He works on having a blank facial expression. He works on projecting feelings he is not having. He got that from me. I feel like I am letting him down by not being able to read him better. He feels misunderstood and less appreciated. But he works on making it hard. He wants me to find a way to work harder and still read him so that he can feel as understood as EC. That’s complicated.

He got in trouble this week. He set his assignments on Monday. I didn’t add extra shit. He picked what he wanted to do for the week. He needed to get his work done on Thursday so we could go have a visit with the cousins. He didn’t get his work done. I was pissy and impatient because he really didn’t come close and he spent the whole day dawdling and I lost out on a visit too. (I can’t just leave him home and go without him for a list of reasons.) So I told him that since he wanted to just sit around and not get his work done during work time that he could just sit around and do nothing during play time and he could do it in his room without toys. He didn’t have a fun day.

The next morning when he woke up he had a fire in his belly because he didn’t want to miss out on any of his plans or on EC’s birthday fun. He got up super motivated. He got a bunch of his chores done before I even saw him in the morning. The first time I saw him in the morning was when I was waking up and still sitting in bed. He came in timidly and I smiled at him and invited him into the bed for morning snuggle. (We have much better days as a family when we start out with everyone snuggling for at least a few minutes.) He talked about his plan for getting everything done early so that he had a buffer in case he planned poorly and it took longer than he intended.

He got everything done with time to spare.

We walked over to Jenny’s instead of going on a family walk and taking a taxi. On the way we had an hour to talk to each other. The conversation was wide ranging and interesting. I asked him what he thought about the day before when he was in trouble. He said he spent most of the time trying not to think. I said, “So kind of an extended meditation practice?” He said yeah. He didn’t use the word, but he was trying to not catastrophize. He said (barely paraphrased), “I was so grateful that the first thing you did when you saw me this morning was smile at me. It showed me for sure that I was right to try not to think all the super bad thoughts. I made a mistake and I’m going to be able to get over it and you will get over it and we will move on.” I told him that yeah we will move on. He’s a great kid and I love him very much and I need him to trust me. So when I say “Do x so you can have y” if he doesn’t do x he can’t have y.

He said, “I know. It’s part of why I respect you a lot. I know you work really hard at being someone who is honest with me every day.”

I have a lot of fear that part of his passive aggression is an attempt to get back some control from just how controlling I am. It’s not a healthy way to try to get back some of that control. He has a lot more control over his schooling now, but I think he needs to have just a little bit more. I think that when we get a house again he and EC are going to be allowed to shut me out of their rooms for a full year so they can figure out their own tidying habits without me needing to be so fucking controlling because we are packing over and over.

I truly literally have to be this controlling right now or we won’t be able to get packing done with the travel. It’s rough.

When this is no longer necessary I need to give them a bunch of space to try things for themselves and fail.

I really struggle with the fact that they don’t have much in the way of long-term planning skills… but that’s my problem because they are age appropriate or a bit above. I need to control *myself* more, not them in this area.

We have done a lot of work on getting them to see me as an independent person. Frankly, having Her Sweetness has helped. They can see when I need to not take care of them because I have other obligations and both of the big kids are super mature about understanding that they got to be the whole center of my universe for many years and it is wildly uncool for them to not let Her Sweetness have a similar amount of time and energy. We are still struggling on getting them to let me rest without interruption, but they are better than they used to be and if I were willing to set more boundaries I think they would fall into line.

The struggle is I hate setting boundaries with them because that feels like I am doing a mean/punishing thing. I’m not. I’m valuing myself.

I really struggle with valuing myself. I really struggle with saying, “I need to not do anything for anyone because I have to take care of myself.” I think I went to so many doctor visits because every time I walked into an office the medical practitioner would freak out about how badly my body was doing and give me a tiny little bit of support so I could go back and do more work than I am truly physically capable of doing. I’m not going to have that medical team keeping me on life support here.

I have to value myself enough to say no way more and that’s hard. I get so much of my self esteem from doing things for people. From doing work and supporting people I gain the sense that it’s ok for me to keep taking resources for myself because I am sharing as much as I get or more. But this isn’t sustainable.

I don’t actually think the problem is with my kids behaving badly. They are really amazing children. I think the problem is me valuing myself and my need for rest. I absolutely literally require more down time than I give myself. I have to exercise in a fairly regimented way and I haven’t been doing it because I am exhausting myself providing emotional care for other people. That’s not healthy or a good way to be a role model.

I don’t want to teach my kids to be how I am. Which means I need to change.

I need to spend more time resting. I need to spend more time with just adults not taking care of children. I need to turn down opportunities to do labor (emotional and physical) for people. Not because I hate anybody. Not because I am angry and throwing a tantrum. Because I need rest. Because I need to love on me the way I love on my children. Because I need to spend as much time paying attention to my needs as I do to my children’s needs.

I learn a lot from my kids. They work to set boundaries for themselves. They understand that limits exist in their lives for their benefit. They do better and feel better if they exercise and eat healthy food and turn off the screens at night and get good rest.

I need to learn from my children.

What an ending.

1 Reply

We had such a fun dinner. I spent the evening talking mostly in Spanish to two glorious women who have lived in Japan for 30+ years. Well, three women but one was working and wasn’t a big part of the conversation. We talked about our children and work. One teaches Flamenco dance and the other is a graphic designer (and obviously the third runs a restaurant). What a privilege. I felt so happy. The ladies had a great time playing with Her Sweetness and they were glad the big kids were trying to talk to them. Keep studying they said.

This is the kind of thing you get from travel. Magical nights spent going between three languages as everyone says how great the other people are.

The other ladies had 0, 1, and 2 kids. They were impressed I want to do the work of having 3. Ha. It is a lot of work.

But I was very unhappy without them. Even though my anxiety isn’t gone, even though my depression isn’t gone… this is what I want to be doing. I am grateful for my life even as I bitch about not getting a break. I get to belong. I get to have four people who think that spending time with me is amazing and they want to do it every day.

I know how lucky I am.

I had a great time here. I never wanted to come to Japan. I thought I would be miserable. I wasn’t miserable. There was some stress and extra work… but it was tranquil and peaceful and beautiful in a way I have never experienced. I feel blessed that I got to feel this in my bones. I leave feeling like this is a wonderful country and I hope I get to come back some day. Thank you, Noah.

I feel stupid for needing to write so much about what I am thinking. But it does help me. Thank you for not being mad at me writing to you in my blog and Twitter and Slack and IMs and Discord.

Thank you for liking me.

If you are here cause you are a hate follower my life is cooler than yours so go ahead and hate me.

If you are not a hate follower: my life is not cooler than yours. Your life is awesome in ways mine is not and I deeply envy you. I can’t be you. I can’t have what you have. But I think you getting to have it is glorious. You get to have family ties I don’t. You get to have an established life I do not get to have. You get to have a career I do not get to have. You get to have a partner I do not get to have (ok, Noah is the perfect partner for me… but your partner is probably really fucking cool too). You get to have a mom and a dad who love you; that is not my story.

It’s ok that we get to be different. I like you a lot how you are. I am grateful you share your time and your thoughts with me.

I wish everyone had diarrhea of the mouth blogs so I could know how they process every day. But folks don’t feel comfortable. Sometimes I wish I didn’t feel so damn comfortable blabbing all this shit. I kind of wish I were more private. But I don’t do well when I try that. I make bad choices. I hurt myself. I don’t want to hurt myself anymore. I want to feel joy and contentment and relief because of the excellent life I get to have.

I am having a really fucking cool life.

I started out trash. I started out expendable and unwanted and rejected.

And here I am. Tomorrow I get on a plane to Scotland to see one of my very favorite people in the entire fucking world. I am blessed. I am lucky. In June I get to go to an area that has at least a dozen people I love tremendously. In September I get to go somewhere with the best food and cheap massage in the world. In December I get to go see one of my very favorite people in the whole world in her home with her glorious family that has been so nice to me even though I’m a weird ass white person.

I am bringing presents for Pam’s parents, you bet your ass. I should write Pam’s sister and tell her I hope she comes in December too. Getting to see that whole family at once would be quite a Christmas present. Thank you for allowing me to stand near your beautiful family. I don’t feel worthy. I don’t feel deserving. But that’s not my call. You do.

I love you so much.

In 2020 I want us to find an immersion Spanish school that will take my whole family. I want us to stay there for a while. I want us to leave pretty close to fluent. Speaking Spanish makes my heart soar. I feel more human, more warm, more joy. I love the language. It feels like love. It feels like happiness. I want more.

Even if we don’t end up in a Spanish speaking country permanently, I want this in my brain. It brings me so much contentment and joy.

I feel so grateful to have this life. Fuck yes. Let’s do this.

Happy Easter

Leave a reply

In a completely secular way Easter has always been big for us. In California I hid hundreds of eggs. Way too much candy. I only buy my kids toys for their birthdays, Christmas, and Easter… so they usually get a pretty noticeable basket.

I told the kids yesterday that they need to not expect much from me for this holiday. We don’t have the ability to carry much crap; we leave this country tomorrow and we don’t need much candy. There isn’t enough space to hide a bunch of eggs if I wanted to. Also: I did not find one plastic fill-able egg in this country. So.

They each got a present bag with some stuff. A pair of earrings (pierced or screw on, depending), a headband (they have both declared that they are growing their hair out and they are complaining about the intermediate length), a tin of chips (an interesting Japanese flavor), a packet of candy I don’t recognize for variety, one Kinder egg (I ate the third one for fairness–ha), two little Lindt chocolates (exactly like we always had at home for memories sake), and a LOL little sister doll (they are about 1.5″ tall). I found tiny little eggs that hang from string and I put 6 of them up in their room.

I also got a lovely strawberry cake for us to have with tea.

My mom would lie and say she would do things that she wouldn’t do. I will strongly imply that I can’t do anything when I have already done something so you don’t expect me to do 10x’s as much.

The secret to happiness is low expectations, yo.

Her Sweetness didn’t get anything and she won’t be sad about that. She got one toy in this country, an activity book I plan to lean on heavily on the plane. She will share the cake, of course. Next year I can’t leave her out. And next year I will try harder to hide eggs. I don’t yet know where we will be, but I’m a resourceful bugger.

My children will have magical memories of me ensuring that they feel special. Because they are special to me. I don’t forget about their need for ceremony and tradition. It’s important. They need to feel like they can predict that things will happen and that they can know what is coming even though our lives have a lot of chaos.

I owe them all the stability my chaotic brain and body are capable of delivering. They are largely flexible and adaptable and capable of accepting dysregulation, but every child needs touchstones.

This is one for us.

So I sit here and watch my beautiful husband and baby sleep and I wait to hear the gasps through the paper thin walls.

Happy Easter.

Not dreaming, chores, screens and friends

Leave a reply

Apparently the way my brain decided to handle “I am sick of fucking nightmares” is “I am not going to let you get into REM sleep because I am going to wake up every half hour.” It was a rough night for me.

Yesterday was mixed. It was mostly good with some frustration in the middle around fucking screen time. I hate computers. (Yes, I recognize the irony that I am typing on one and typing is basically my inside voice.) Yesterday Middle Child and I got up early and got on a bus to go downtown to rent a car. On the bus we worked on homework and snuggled and it was fun. It was frustrating on the way back because Google Fi has decided that I get phone service everywhere…. and data when I am on a wifi network and that’s it. Noah’s phone has data all over the island. Urgh. So I had to call Noah and have him talk me through getting on the freeway. Luckily he is a patient man.

Middle Child and I stopped on the way home and had a snack. Eating together on dates is like a thing.

I dropped him off, picked up the baby and the laundry and headed to the laundromat for two hours. Woo. It took so long because only one washer was available while I was there. That’s ok.

When I got back… it got frustrating. With the recent introduction of Parental Controls… a lot of websites aren’t working anymore. Netflix isn’t working because it is tracked in so many ways that Parental Controls blocks it. (I am sorta unhappy about Google and Facebook tracking my Netflix usage anyway now that I know it is happening. Fuck Google. Fuck Facebook. Evil motherfuckers.) I started getting loud and Noah told me this wasn’t worth yelling about. He was right.

I decided it was better to make the kids go outside for a while. Noah and I looked at the controls again, decided that because the kids get 4 hours and that’s long enough to whine about not getting everything I will let them have 1 hour a day on weekdays (it will mostly be used for school time) and 2 hours on weekends, which will let them play a game or two but not long enough they will demand movies.

Because I am god damn sick of fighting over their computers.

I waited until I chilled out. Then I went outside and talked to each kid separately about why they lost unfettered access. At the end of these conversations they both hung their heads and said they agreed with the restriction because they have not been polite at all about their computers. (They were supposed to set their own timers and limit their screen time. Never happened. They were supposed to do school stuff…. that was mixed.) They both agree that they have not been responsible and I need to take that responsibility away from them. They also understand that me standing over them to monitor them while they are on adult accounts isn’t fair either. So here we are.

I mixed in talking about things I was frustrated about in other areas (each kid got very different feedback because they are frustrating in such different ways) and how I am off my medication and I will be for the foreseeable future and let’s talk about how that is going to impact my body and my mood. Phrased that way they both said, “I’d rather be limited and deal with that frustration myself than keep making you track my screen time. That will go poorly.” Yup. It will.

After that Noah was done with work for the day and we drove up to explore the western edge of the end of the highway on Oahu. We played there for about an hour then drove down to Pokai Bay so Noah and the three kids could play in the water while I talked on the phone to one of my friends. (No data= no video chat. Dangit.)

I don’t have consent to talk about her in detail so I won’t. I will say that we have been friends since the 7th grade. When I talk about how Noah’s friends are rich and mine are poor…. she’s on my mind. She is someone who I think about a lot. I don’t write about her for lots of reasons around her privacy and people being judgmental pieces of shit. But it’s really nice talking to her. She asked why I don’t call more often. I said, “well… I do this thing where I find people who are really crazy like me and I try to enmesh with them and then I get really anxious about bothering my less crazy friends and I withdraw.” She said, “Well I’m a little bit crazy so you should call a little bit more often.” Then she laughed. It was nice. She has a tremendous amount of experience with kids and I learn a lot from her. She’s one of the most giving people I’ve ever known. Her kid has had some interesting life experiences and she has told me she was really glad she’s always known me because she learned about a lot of things from me and when it came up with her kid she felt calm and collected about going with the flow.

I am grateful for her perspective and time. I will try to call more often.

I need to schedule a call with my other buddy in Salt Lake. He completes the trio of my middle school friends I’m still in touch with. His mother in law hates me and he finds that delightful. Ha.

And I get to see Jenny soon. I am trying as hard as I can to put my intensity in a box because I can’t explode all over Jenny and her family. They are all very reserved people. It is overwhelmingly important to me that I create a healthy connection with her kids and they are sensitive souls. I have to meet them where they are. I am the adult. That feels like a lot of pressure. It’s self imposed! Mostly? I want this meeting with my namesake to go better than the first one. I feel pathetic about it, but I want her to like me. I was too assertive the first time and she was like “Fuck you stranger lady” and that was fair… (She was under 2. The fuck you was entirely body language.)

I earn people pushing me away when I am too intense. But I am really fucking intense. That’s just a fact. How much can I put that intensity in a box and still be an authentic piece of me? I struggle with that balance.

You know, like how can I diplomatically talk about my feelings so I order my brain versus how much do I get to the point of screaming “Fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you. Who’s next?”

Sigh. Balance. I continue to lurch towards it.

Last night I had a chat with Middle Child about his allowance savings. He said he feels like he doesn’t deserve to have it because we are walking past so many people who have nothing. I talked about how sometimes he uses his allowance to pay for things he breaks, sometimes for things he wants and I will not buy, sometimes just for splurges and if he gives all the money away he won’t be able to meet any of those needs he has for autonomy.

I talked about trying to find the middle way. (Thank you Buddhism. I am not a true follower, but every faith/religion/cultural path has some value for me to learn from. That’s what California Woo means to me.) I talked to him about trying to find the balance between saving up for yourself so you can meet your needs versus sharing what you have extra. I asked him what would happen to our family if I gave away 80% of his father’s income every month because I don’t feel like I deserve it. His eyes got big as he processed what that would mean in terms of housing, food, medical care, everything changes. So instead I share 10%.

We can meet our needs with 90% and we don’t have to stockpile the last 10%. We can share it and help other people have lighter loads. I can’t really give away more because I have a lot of medical expenses that are going to go up as I age. I have to prepare for that or I am deciding that I need to die early.

But it’s not about giving it away because you don’t deserve it. It’s about recognizing that our life is really good and we have the ability to share…. so we should.

He’s working on writing up his feelings about the values in a book called Islamic Values for Children. (DUDE! It’s online! Oh that’s awesome!) It’s neat helping him process what he agrees with and disagrees with in this book. Like, he said that we need to pursue (I’m paraphrasing slightly) understanding creation because if we don’t we make bad decisions and we hurt ourselves and the people around us: like killing off 80% of bugs in the world. Humans have used pesticides for a long time and now we face the possible extinction of our species because food is going to have a hard time growing.

I love hearing where his values differ from mine. But he has been raised hardcore in an environment where “Enlightened Self Interest” is a big deal. Being selfish isn’t wrong, but you need to be selfish in the concept of helping yourself be ok loooooooooong in the future.

It’s neat seeing how that plays out for him.

One of the hard things about Noah’s job is that he always feels like he isn’t quite doing enough to earn all those buckets of cash and all the conference invites so he works… constantly. Today and tomorrow he is taking off work! We get to go play on the island. I’m happy about that. I don’t have a plan for what we will do. I want to take the kids all the way around the island because then the kids get into these intense chats about how the plant life and rocks change. They are observant in ways I never was as a kid. Yesterday Eldest Child was talking about what the rock formations mean in terms of lava because she learned about it in one of her books. That’s so awesome.

“Hey, the plants aren’t so brown. That means this side gets more rain. Hm, I wonder why this is the line where that changes?”

This kind of thing didn’t occur to me as a kid and I love standing near this. I like them so much.

But first… we should pack 90% of our stuff this morning. In 48 hours we go to the airport.

I need to spend most of my time focusing on my family because I need to feel what that means. But I won’t forget my friends.

Oh, by the way: the place in Longview fell through. The AirBnB host said that we couldn’t have the independent apartment that long but we could rent two bedrooms in her house and share her kitchen and living room for the same price! Uhhh… no. That’s not a good deal for us. My kids are essentially nudists. They need to be able to have their own space where they can unwind without having to perform certain behaviors for a host. So I found a place closer to downtown Portland that is actually about $600 cheaper for the whole stay. It is in a much more crowded neighborhood, which will be mixed. Less ability to just “GO OUTSIDE” and more ability to walk to grocery stores. That’s a balance I will cope with. The house is sparsely decorated and one floor. That was shockingly hard to find in the region. The houses on AirBnB available for a long stay are mostly multi-story or decorated to within an inch of their lives. Yeah, I’m not dealing with that shit with a nearly-walking-baby.

Last night we had pho for the third time since reaching the island. We are really on a kick. I ordered the spiciest one on the menu then added three heaping spoonfuls of chili because it just wasn’t spicy enough. I wanted my lips and tongue to burn. It was awesome. Afterwards we had our first dessert since reaching the island: shaved ice with ice cream on the bottom. I added mochi balls to mine. We all had very different flavor profiles and it was funny how much the differences really are indicative of our personalities. EC had caramel ice cream with mango shaved ice, MC had coffee ice cream with cherry shaved ice, Noah had gosh I can’t remember his ice cream but he had guava and passion fruit shaved ice (with coconut sauce). I had cookies and cream ice cream with vanilla/pineapple/pina colada. The other three of us had mochi balls instead of sauce.

The baby went nuts trying everyone’s. She thought it was the best thing that’s happened to her in a long time. She is starting to understand “We look at a menu, then people go away and bring us good things to eat.” It’s fun to watch. She does a lot of intently looking at the menu then pointing at pictures. We often order what she points at. She is certain that the world is working as it should. Ha.

D–you didn’t do something terrible when you left that comment. The timing and the phrasing were not my ideal. But that happens in relationships. I am almost done being an exploding asshole. I am so sorry you got swept into all the upset about other things and other people.

Some of my grief is legitimate and real and totally deserved. That doesn’t mean I should lash out at everyone. Sometimes I do though and that is really fucking shitty. I try as hard as I can to limit my explosions to being here. I love you and I appreciate that you have tried to share what you have spare over the years. That wasn’t a lot and that’s ok. I don’t get to demand more from anyone who doesn’t have it going spare. Really I don’t get to demand more from anyone.

My black hole is not your job to fill. It really isn’t. I know that. It’s why I try to retreat when I am being inappropriate. Sometimes that retreat involves inappropriate yelling in my space. I imagine that is not easy. You don’t want to feel like you are hurting me. You don’t want to feel like you did something wrong.

I try to withdraw when all you have to do to be wrong is be near enough to hear me as I am screaming about being in pain.

Normal

Leave a reply

On one hand, I worry about how much sleep I’m getting. On the other hand… I’m actually getting a fairly normal amount of sleep for me when I am unmedicated at night. This is what my body… does.

There is this belief that you must get a “reasonable” amount of sleep or you can’t be healthy. I believe it is true… to a point. Do you know how grateful I have been to have doctors start telling me that my sleep stuff is probably related to a combination of ADHD (I burn more energy with less need for rest than average) and PTSD hypervigilance. I probably don’t NEED as much sleep as other people. Seven hours is pretty average for me with heavy sleep meds.

So getting 3-5 hours is low but… not scary low for me?

One of my favorite parts of giving birth is my horrifying anxiety just… lifts. I have a little anxiety about my babies but not a lot. Mostly I feel competent in a way I rarely feel in life. I can’t sit around like a queen giving orders when I’m pregnant but I don’t hesitate postpartum. Bring me that. Fetch the other thing. Go do this chore. No problem!

I will sit here and hold my baby and somehow manage to still be wildly productive because my mind feels so thrilled to be doing what it is doing.

I love my baby. She is perfect. If she weren’t canonically perfect she would be perfect to me. I’m not scared of my children having problems. I have problems. We cope.

Like, we get to take her to Stanford for an ultrasound for her kidney because stuff wasn’t perfect at birth. I don’t care. Whatever I have to do for her will get done. She is my baby.

If I have to blow things up to take care of her I will. If I have to mow someone down because they are blocking something I need for her… I won’t flinch.

My children motivate me in a way nothing else on this earth ever has or ever will. I will find a way to change for my children. I will become whatever they need from me. It doesn’t matter if it is hard or if it hurts. I brought you into this world. I owe you. I owe you everything.

I don’t mean “everything” like every class or toy or treat you want. Boundaries make healthy people. But I owe you my life. I owe you my sanity. I owe you my need to get up in the morning and try again.

Apparently in our house we now have a Sissy and a Sibby. (Sister/Sibling) This is… making me cry in a nice way. My big kids are so happy about the baby they are about to burst.

After the next diaper change I’m starting a load of diaper laundry. This makes me weirdly very happy. Let the next cycle begin. I am so ready. I am ready to take care of you and do what you need. You are worth all the work I could possibly put into you and more. I will give you what I have. It will fall short of your needs because life is like that. Luckily you have a daddy who loves you to distraction. And you have a Sissy and a Sibby who want to take care of you when I can’t do everything.

You, my lovely daughter, are going to be ok. We will make sure of it.

My milk hasn’t fully come in yet, but my boobs are sweeeeeelling. It’s hilarious and painful because my boobs are already getting to that point where my nipples are hard for a newborn to manage. Overwhelmed by boob is a hilarious facial expression. By later today my boobs will dwarf her head. Ha.

Last night I swaddled the baby super well and gave her to Noah. I went to bed a few minutes before 8. I got up for the day at 2:30 for the second feeding (the first feeding was around 11, I think?). Amusingly… that’s barely short of sleep for me. I hope Noah will sleep in. If I get up and get breakfast for the kids, this may be a fairly good pattern for a couple of weeks. I get a solid chunk of sleep for the first shift then Noah gets to sleep.

We’ll see what normal we find.

Third time’s the charm.

3 Replies

I have said for ten years that any amount of labor time under 24 hours would be easy. I was right! 21 hours were fine.

First: this could not possibly have gone so well without our wonderfully kind friend who moved in for a week so that when I had a full day of contractions and they petered out I had no extra stress about feeling guilty about prodromal labor. I got to ride the waves and take whatever experience. It was a gift. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

My official labor got going around 8:30am on Monday. My contractions built in intensity and regularity all day. I went in around 7pm because my contractions were about 5 minutes apart and a minute long and consistently more than 10/hour. Mostly I was fretful because she had slowed her moving down and I was worried. It’s so hard not being able to see if the baby inside of you is ok.

I got to the hospital 3cm dilated (which isn’t that much and they could have sent me home) and 90% effaced with a bulging water sack. They wanted me to stay. Around 10:30ish they started Pitocin. The epidural was started around 11. Then I went to sleep. I was checked at some point. I was woken up/checked again around 4. During the 4am check the doctor accidentally broke my water bag because whoops it was in the way. At first she said 8cm. Then a minute later she declared me complete and instantly there were six extra people, lots of lights, and a whole bunch of beeping machines.

When my water was broken my blood pressure and her heart rate dropped dramatically. I was put on oxygen instantly. They started IV meds to support the baby.

Between 4:30ish and 5 I was in position and they started encouraging me towards pushing. Another moment of intense gratitude: my friend’s mom came to the hospital with us around 10pm. She was there talking and being supportive whenever I needed her. Her voice did sound above the crowd to give encouragement and feedback.

I might actually send out thank you cards. I’m really in awe of how people showed up for me.

The nurses also did a good job of giving feedback and support. But Ma’s voice was louder and more insistent.

Noah did a wonderful job of supporting me this time. He kept his face soft and loving the whole time. No grimacing at my pain. Well done, fantastic husband.

Ze baby emerged at 5:28am. I didn’t tear or get a skid mark or nothing. I am shocked by how relatively comfortable my external genitalia feel. I’m sore but it’s not bad. Internally the continued contractions to get my uterus back to size suuuuuuuuuuck. And why don’t I take 400mg of Ibuprofen three times a day and I wont have pain, right?! Oh man.

Several folks, including the lactation consultant, asked me about my THC usage. We clarified that I don’t smoke it basically at all (inhaling it is one of the most dangerous steps–we know there are problems from breathing smoke) and I went into details about why I use it and what I have replaced with it and why my medical team thinks this is the best choice for me. I was rather stunned by the extent of support I received. Most folks were like, “You are clearly very educated on this topic and you are making the best choice for your body. Alright. Excellent.” My pain management doctor telling me that my next line is Oxycontin and Ativan really helps. No one wants me on those meds. Definitely not when I’m breeding/feeding a kid.

I didn’t find out till we got home that one pediatrician had a judgy conversation with Noah about my THC when I was out of the room. I’m tempted to follow up on that because it might be a HIPAA violation for her to discuss my medication without me present and that kind of bugs me. What if I had been using birth control behind my husband’s back and she just wanted to mention that it might impact my baby and I am going to go home and get in trouble? You don’t report on other peoples medical care when they are not present. That shit’s not cool.

What if my husband didn’t approve but it was still the best mediation option and now he is going to make my life a living hell? That’s very realistic.

Anyway.

The baby feels slightly more fragile to me than my previous kids. Specifically: she’s having trouble with reflux. Her first whole night of life I barely slept because she would spit up, fill her mouth with fluid, and be unable to do anything about it. She couldn’t move her head to let it fall out and she couldn’t swallow it. So I spent a lot of time flipping her over and clearing her mouth. The lactation consultant agreed that putting her in the bassinet would be stupid. She needed to be up against my body with me paranoid and watching her. It was a festive/non-restful/wonderful night. Oh, I sent Noah home so he could sleep because otherwise we would both be exhausted and useless.

8:30am-5:30am. 21 hours. It was great. The first day of hospital recovery was lovely.

She was 20.5″ long (so .5″ shorter than the two older kids) and 8lbs 9oz. So heavier than both siblings, who were 8lbs and 8lbs 4 oz. I am steadily gaining 4ish oz per kid and that’s a great time to stop. Ha.

It took us till 1pm to secure check out because the hospital kind of wanted me to stay an extra night. But I got shifted from the maternity section to the pediatrics section and I kind of fell out of the “we will pay a lot of attention to you” rotation and that was difficult for me. I didn’t feel good about calling my nurse all the time to get the same care I had previously gotten for existing. So I didn’t drink or eat almost at all the second day in the hospital because she wasn’t offering anymore.

That was suboptimal. I came home and scarfed a big bag of salami because I needed protein before I killed someone.

Our friend went home last night. Her dog was experiencing a lot of stress from the new rules with a baby. My house had already been hard because there were more rules than usual and it was just not fair to keep cracking down on her. I am so so so so so so grateful my friend stayed as long as she did. The dog’s behavior was great. She never did anything inappropriate. She was just done with the restrictions. I would have flipped out long before she did. Such a good girl.

I tried to tell Noah to watch the baby and let me sleep in between nursing last night. Ha. That uhhh… didn’t work very well. He did a 7.5 hour shift and I probably got 1.5-2 hours of sleep. Sigh. It’ll be ok. I will sleep today.

It is fascinating to me how excited and complete I feel. I am so happy I get to learn about this wonderful daughter. She gets cold! Like me! She shivers a lot. She needs a fair bit of bundling in our frigid California weather. Ha. I really can’t tell who she looks like yet. She looks like a whole new person and it is so neato. She’s beautiful and I feel completely overwhelmed with gratitude that I get to keep her and take care of her. She is my responsibility. I am allowed to love her with my whole heart.

I can’t express what that means to me.

I don’t feel sad about wanting more children. I feel like I am at my limit emotionally and physically. This is my family. This is what I want/wanted. In the future I will have the spoons to foster, but I don’t think I will ever take on a baby again. This is my journey.

I feel so lucky.

Big kids are ecstatic. They are snuggling her and talking to her and trying to learn how to be helpful. It will be a process and I’m glad to be on it with them.

I get to have two daughters and a non-binary kid. I get to have a husband who thinks I am the best thing since sliced bread. I get to have friends who show up to help me and support me through complications and challenges. I get to have a home I am allowed to alter and be safe in however I want. I get to have healthy meat and vegetables every day so that my body achieves a level of functioning I didn’t believe possible for me.

I can’t believe this is my life. I am one of the luckiest people ever born. I have so much. I am so grateful.

I am glad I am still alive for this feeling.

Ze baby has already had 8, maybe 9 poopy diapers and 2 or 3 wet diapers. I’m getting confused already. This is a great sign though. Her digestion is working. Her kidneys are starting to function as we hoped. We have a pediatrician check up in about 6 hours.

This is going as well as something can go. I am eternally grateful.

Random note: to the best of my knowledge my child is the only person in the entire world with her legal first/last name combo. I will do my best to never put it on the internet for her. That will happen when she chooses.

Bounce

Leave a reply

I will sleep soon. I sure hope. I had my last bit of soda around 4am. It’s 9:13. I’ve been awake for about 42 hours. I’m tired, but not sleepy yet. I will lay down soon. Right now, I’m medicating.

We went to a party tonight. It was one of the most comfortable parties I’ve been to in a long time. I didn’t feel anxious at all. I felt included and appreciated by folks I’ve know for many years. It was a sit around and chat sort of party. Maybe there was one heterosexual in the room but I wouldn’t put money on that person being so? It was the kind of party where you can talk about religion, magic, computers, running, obsessive video games, gender, sexual orientation, pets, children, house remodeling, and then there was when I got to drop the line, “Oh I like being the fourth person someone fucks in a day” and everyone in the room was delighted.

Yeah, I’ve done that. It was dreamy and soft and very gentle and loving. All of their urgency was long spent. It was the soft worship left to wallow in. Sex is awesome.

I’ve been reading a lot about couples privilege. I have a lot to think about with regards to my friendships and my lovers. I don’t really want to go through life using people. Well, unless they negotiate that they really want to be used. Then we will respectfully negotiate a mutually agreeable time (my schedule is not the only important one and all) and then we’ll see.

What does it mean to be one flesh? Noah really wants a deeply enmeshed marriage. I have mixed feelings. I want it and it is hard. There are a lot of things and actions I enjoy that got… taken off the burner and put in a box in the shed. It wasn’t left to simmer.

But things are improving.

It is hard to talk about a situation without just sounding like I’m complaining. I’m trying to figure out what I think.

I’ve spent my entire adult life around non monogamous people. I thought of Noah as someone who deeply wanted polyamory but couldn’t always have it because life is complicated. Oh. Shit. One of these years I’d like to get to the point of being wrong less fucking often.

We spend a lot of time around each other. He’s been working from home for six months now. ONCE THIS FUCKING REMODEL IS OVER it will be glorious. It is good even with the fuss.

We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner together–all four of us– just about every day. We talk to each other all day long. We are all talkers like whoa. You know how much I write? I talk more than that and I’m one of the less talkative ones in the house.

Holy tomato. The sheer flood of words in our house.

It is validating and lovely and loving. It is chaos and light. It is entropy and order. I feel like I’m going to be totally good at compersion… with my kids.

I’m pretty sure I will be the sort of person who can barely handle specifics of my kids sex life. I’m open to questions, even fairly technically specific ones. I just… need them to be theoretical to some degree. I think I’m going to need to not know for sure exactly what you do. I will provide access to books for self study on a variety of topics. I will introduce my kids to some of my brilliant sex educator friends. My buddies won’t let my kids down.

I really want to know if you a) feel safe b) have fun c) play safe d) have an exit strategy for if things go south.

Past that… I’m cool. You do you. Off-stage from me. Holy shit. I don’t want to know too much.

Do you know how much pornography I consume? A lot. I read stories. I like pictures. Videos are fun.

I DON’T WANT TO KNOW SPECIFICS OF MY CHILDRENS SEX LIVES.

Because even freaky weird perverts have limits, yo.

I’m glad my kids didn’t come to the party with us tonight. I’m glad I got to enjoy the company of wonderful perverts.

And I got schooled on assuming everyone likes rough sex. There I go projecting again. I’m sorry. I was rude.

I feel like I am just getting to the point where I understand what it means to understand the different kinds of interests in the leather communities (no I don’t capitalize leather). I think I’ve always assumed folks were… more like me. That’s partially a function of the perfect, delightful little group I fell into.

I’ll be grateful for all of you for all of my life.

It may be the drugs talking, but right this minute I like being me.

Also, this song is wonderful and I’m glad they made it. Yay.

Sex and fucking up

Leave a reply

I had a great chat yesterday. It made me think about a lot of how I’ve screwed up this year.

Sex is complicated. We have sex for so many reasons. For connection, intimacy, orgasms, bonding, feeling-not-alone-in-this-minute.

The thing is, that’s complicated. Why didn’t I pick Noah for every time I wanted sex this year? Because that’s complicated. Sometimes sex with a particular person is loaded with implications across your whole life you can’t handle and you want the ease of sex with someone else. Sometimes I wanted to feel like I still had the ability to connect with new people.

New people have been very instrumental to my survival. I get that it isn’t something that is a big deal to everyone. I know that lots of people have been safer in the known communities of their lives. I have survived by over and over again throwing myself backwards into the arms of strangers and just praying they would catch me. At this point it is no longer a survival mechanism but it is an ingrained habit. That’s complicated.

I don’t think I chased sex as self harm this round but I have certainly done so in the past. Sometimes the choice is, “Do I hurt myself in a known and predictable way because I don’t like myself very much or do I take the risk that this person will be nicer to me than I am able to be to myself or maybe they will hurt me more than I would hurt myself. Roll the dice.”

That’s a choice I’ve made many times in my life. If you haven’t had to deal with the cognitive load of poverty plus severe traumatization… you probably won’t understand. It will seem baffling to you that someone would make such a choice.

I’m glad you’ve never been there. That’s awesome for you.

I’ve been there a lot. I’m not there lately, but I have zero judgment for someone else finding themself in that position. It happens.

There have absolutely been nights when I’ve picked up a stranger and fucked them instead of hurting myself because I didn’t think I could stop until I put me in a hospital.

Was that a bad choice? I really don’t think so. I think I made the best choice I could given all the circumstances of my life in that moment.

It is hard to keep the larger picture in mind when you are judging one particular choice. Choices that were completely reasonable for me at different points in my life shouldn’t be judged the exact same way at this point in my life. I’m in different circumstances. I have different options.

To put it bluntly: I can have an emergency “weekend trip to relax” at this stage of my life. If I feel like I’m going to freak out and do something drastic… I can make it a very safe kind of drastic. Because I’m rich.

But that was literally not available to me before marriage.

Money. Money. Money.

If you have enough money, time, support, fill in the blank to have better options… who the fuck are you to judge someone doing the best they can!?

Get off your high horse.

But I’m really not in the same position as I once was.

How in the hell is any of my behavior this year justifiable? Hunh, hunh?

I’m not sure I can “justify” my behavior. I think I can explain it. I don’t think my explanations are “good enough” from many points of view and there’s not much I can do about that.

I learned things I needed to learn. I was able to find words for problems I wasn’t able to find words for until I processed all the way through some extreme emotions. I was able to change boundaries that were a big problem for me.

Could I have found a way to do it without freaking out and breaking a lot of rules?

Maybe. I tried. I failed.

I succeeded when I blew the boat up.

Things are going a lot better in a variety of ways. Was it worth the cost? Yes. To me. Was it to Noah? He’s still deciding. He’s still raw. That’s fair.

Sometimes we don’t do things to people and they hurt anyway. I didn’t go out and fuck people to hurt Noah. That’s not why it happened. We are all autonomous beings running our own stories and our behavior is not always about our partners. We have our own narrative running. It isn’t about you.

Even if we love you. Even if there could be negative consequences for you. We can’t make every single choice only about you. That’s not a way to be a person.

Would it be nice if our choices didn’t hurt you? Yes.

Yes.

I played a very careful line this year. I didn’t actually do stuff that was that risky to my life. I mostly went out and spent extra time with my friends. People who have been good to me for a long time. I had a tremendous amount of fun. It will help keep me warm for years to come. Was it worth the price I paid?

Probably. Does that mean I can do it like that again? No. I really can’t. It would break Noah.

What does that mean? Our relationship functions based on a lot of trust and mutual worship. If I kill that then I’m kinda destroying both of our reason to live. Whether or not I’m doing something at Noah… I need to pay attention to the impact. My life is completely intwined with him.

If I rock the boat he feels every wave. There is not a lot of separation there.

I’m not sure we will ever get to the point of being “polyamorous” even if we are allowed to discuss it in ten years. But it is ok to have sex with our friends sometimes if we do it together. Is that my ideal? I don’t know. I don’t think my ideal is more fair so I guess it will have to be ok.

There is no fair.

I get why we are both so possessive. I see the holes in both of us that we use one another to fill.

Sex with friends is different than the anonymous sex I also like. They scratch different itches. Sex with friends is safer and more predictable (not in a bad way). Anonymous sex allows me to feel like I am touching the core of connection between strangers. It is both intimate and distant in a way that feels like a spiritual practice to me. The trust and risk are intense rushes.

But my life is wrapped around Noah. So whether or not I’m doing something at him… he will feel it.

Noah doesn’t feel so awesome about my having sex with other people. He wants me to keep my worship at home. When we are having sex with other people together, that’s ok. That’s not scary or hard. Well, sometimes it is logistically hard or a position is hard or… but it’s not threatening in the same way. We are having an adventure together. No one is left to sit with their imagination and fear.

Noah really doesn’t want me to go off alone any more than I want him to. Seems fair. Annoying, but closer to fair than most things ever get.

Why annoying? Because I am selfish selfish selfish selfish selfish. A lot of the reason I have sex is for the orgasm and changing partners increases that like a motherfucker. Sigh.

No life is perfect.

(For the record: Noah has been working hard on this and has had a pretty fucking outstanding success recently. There’s an A for effort and result.)

I know he’s trying. I can see it. I don’t think it would be possible to look at Noah and not see that he is trying as hard as he possibly can for me.

I’m so annoying and hard.

He works far harder than anyone can ask for; that kind of effort is a freely given gift. I know how lucky I am. My physical and mental health issues have not been easy. But Noah considers my companionship worth the cost.

How in the hell did I end up here?

I auditioned hundreds of people and Noah won the part.

I think we are much better and more interesting together than we ever were apart.

I’m looking forward to pregnancy. I get so exhausted that our pace of life will utterly collapse. Yeah, yeah, pregnancy isn’t a disability yeah yeah pregnant women should carry on as if nothing was happening…

I can’t. Gestating is fucking hard in my body. Remodeling and resettling the house has to be complete by January. Next year I’m going to work on academics with my big kids, sit around, sleep, exercise, eat and go grocery shopping.

I’m probably not going to get much else done, to be honest. And that’ll continue for at least 3-6 months after the baby is born.

I’m toast. Breeding is hard.

I’ve completed the cycle and come out the far side more than once so I’m very aware of what it looks like for me.

I’m really excited about the possibility of a pregnancy where I am in much better physical shape to start with (hello marathon and half marathons, you have halo effect I still feel) and I have my IBS mostly under control and I can breathe through my nose. This will be a different experience. I’m also older. This will also be a medicalized experience (hiya bleed out problems) which is kinda terrifying for me.

All the feelings. And my back is giving me trouble. I need to finish this damn remodel. But bending over really kinda sucks.

I’ll get through it. Put a corset on and get your work done, woman.

It’s kinda funny how we all adapt to the tasks life puts in front of us. This art shit weighs on my soul. I really am more calm in my home because of the art work. It is so easy to ground in my house. When you are here you are really in a particular, individual place. That’s a big deal for me. In other peoples homes, in most of the homes I’ve ever lived in… they all kinda blend together. Sure the knick knacks and furniture are sorta different… but the white walls meet the white ceilings and I want to crawl under a table and cry.

No, it’s not rational.

I do not want a fancy “nice” bathroom that looks like it could be in a hotel somewhere. And I’m willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money for the experience I want to have. Every doctor I have wants me to take baths as often as I can. I spend time in my bathroom. I recycle the water too. To deal with my hippy guilt. (The internet tells me that epsom salts, baking soda, vinegar, and sugar are all fine for plants on a small scale so my bath water is fine  for my plants. Woo hoo.)

We’ve had a broken toilet for a long time. We’ve been using the grey water to flush the toilet. I’m thrilled that with the increased bath capacity of water I will also be able to use the water for more plants. I’ve always used some of it sometimes… but never for plants if someone has used shampoo or soap.

Why am I so tolerant of my friends having quirks or needing accommodation for their mental health needs? Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Uhm, err, just because I’m a nice person?

*cough*

Because I fucking obsess over what to do with my bath water. I got no stones to throw on people needing to do their thing.

Oh man. I’m going to go through a pregnancy in a bathtub big enough to roll over in. Oh the glory.

Spoiled rotten motherfucker.

I really like my house.

Did I mention I’m having candle holders permanently installed on the walls of the bathroom? And there are skylights above it?

The walls are going to be glittering scenes of autumn and winter. I’m working on them.

My house is a very particular place. I like it so much.

I need to clean it. But that’s a problem for a different day. It won’t be really cleaned until the remodel is done. Too much dust and dirt is being generated every day. Not worth a deep clean. I’ll probably splurge on professionals in January at the start of the pregnancy.

Then I’ll spend a year basking in my family. In 2016 I was supposed to learn how to love myself. I don’t know that I managed, exactly. But I’ll spend 2017 hanging out and letting my family love me. That’s… almost the same thing?

Today will be a Zen sorta day. Noah has a dentist appointment. I’m watching a neighbor’s child in the morning and walking them to school. It’s kinda funny. Then I get to come home and get the kids onto chores and academics while I work. I will have to find a way to do work that is right next to them so we can talk while they do their stuff. They always have questions, which is very appropriate.

Tonight we are going to trick or treat with friends we haven’t seen much in the year since we’ve been back from the road trip. We’ve been really bad friends this year. I’ve dropped everyone and everything on the floor for this remodel. And I do it when I’m doing the breeding thing too.

Uhm, I’m sorry. I will crawl out of a hole again in the future. I hope you still like me then.

But yes. Touching base with old friends. Longevity is a big deal for me. A dear woman I know is deeply associated with a phrase: “Friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”

I’m really curious which threads are deep enough in the weave that I will know them for most of my life. I am made up of the people who know me. The people who carry my story with them when they go. I am made up of the people who sometimes ruefully think, “What would Krissy do?”

I am a creation in your mind as much as I am anything at all. And the fact that you think about me. That fact is enough to mean that even when I fuck up, I am maybe not beyond forgiveness.

Chasing and being ok

7 Replies

I should be sleeping, but I’m awake. I’m thinking about how much I’m shoving on my friend while she’s here. So here’s the sitch. I met this woman on Twitter during my road trip. Towards the end the kids and I realized we were going to have a miserable time camping at the snowy Grand Canyon and decided to detour. I asked the universe (and Twitter) where we should go. This woman popped up and said, “Pick me! Pick Phoenix!” So I did.

We spent a few days together and it was lovely. I think she is great. I think her kids are rad and super smart and really engaged in life. I honestly don’t meet that many public school kids who are that good at asserting themselves. I was seriously impressed with these kids. They are just… there’s a lot of there there.

So I asked my friend to come visit. Thing is, the entire time I’ve known this family they’ve been on my monthly donation list because of disability issues. The mama hasn’t worked in a while and that is indefinite. So this trip is horrifyingly prohibitively expensive.

So I said, “Can I bring you to California. You and your family. You need a break from life.”

We are going all over the bay area and down to Santa Barbara with a stop in Monterey on the way home. We will spend close to a week driving into San Francisco to see the museums.

These kids showed up at my house and with glowing faces they said, “Can we homeschool every day?!” They are so excited they can barely speak. Only they talk just as much as my kids do so this is a hilarious time. Oh so much volume. But fascinating! The opinions! The independent thought going on!

One of the first questions was: “Does your little boy still wear dresses?” Answer: “That question is more complicated than you think. My kid wears dresses sometimes. But I only sometimes have a little boy. Let’s talk about the gender binary and people who do not fall on it at either end.”

It was lovely.

I sat down after dinner and started listing off the cool things to do within an hour of driving… we filled the trip days fast. We have a full itinerary.

I am 100% convinced my friend never would have asked for something like this in her life. I’m spending around $1200-$1500 for them to have this vacation. Folks I don’t know that well that I met through the internet.

Why?

I am ruled by my impulses. Because it breaks my heart that my children get to have the life they have and children this god damn smart and talented don’t get to have as much opportunity. Yes, I’d love to bring you out here for three weeks for as much information as we can pack into your little skulls. It would be an honor.

I do these things to pay back the child I was. The child who felt so bad that everyone else got to go do fun things and take classes and go to museums. I got to move again.

Part of what is helping is that I’m not having to chase this family. I offered and she accepted… but I didn’t have to chase her and keep offering.

Being able to accept a gift this big is hard. Pride is a big deal. Accepting this much love and help from someone is hard to feel ok with. People can only take so much then they need to give. Not necessarily back to the person they received from… paying things forward is more important

I am running into asking rev limiters within myself. I can ask different people and it isn’t scary. I can’t ask a small group of people for things repeatedly. That’s too much hard; I feel too much like I’m hurting people.

Unless I get asked back. I need to be asked for things in exchange. Do you know one of the reasons it is easy for me to help this family have this trip? They are kind of assertive about how things need to work for them. “I need _____. I can’t do _____.” Even if receiving a gift they are directing it to be more useful for them. That melts my butter. I feel like they seriously are trying to get what they need from this gift.

I have probably asked many hundreds if not over a thousand people to spend time with me in my life. I don’t ask everyone for sexual attention. Unless I feel an energetic push back… I feel like I am hurting people by sticking around.

If I initiate all of our, “Hey let’s hang out” it will get more and more sporadic over time. My give runs out. My ask runs out. I wish I still had it in me to ask you over lots… I don’t. I don’t think you care. I think you’d rather do something else.

I think you’d rather not put your pants on and walk three blocks to see me after I drive multiple thousands of miles. That’s what I’m worth.

That’s from someone who has been publicly calling me “family” for over a decade. Yeah. That’s what I’m worth to my family.

But not Noah. And not my kids. They would do a whole hell of a lot to see me.

Noah crisscrossed the country chasing me. It was glorious.

Even though they live with me every day. If I start getting distracted by life or people they do tricks until I stare at them again. Please look at us. We need your attention. Yes my loves. I will give you my attention too.

Yes, I like pushy. Yes, I want people who say hey I’m here and I want your attention. Yes, that is risking rejection. Welcome to my god damn life.

It occurs to me that I could create a calendar for the house hold and share that with folks who are interested. Dates when people are free to invite themselves over could be clearly marked.

I can’t keep inviting the way I have for years. I’m tired and it hurts.

Noah says I’m just ditching my friends for lovers. I don’t think that is true. I can list off lots of friends talking and visits in the past few months. It is true that I’m putting less effort into my friends.

But I think I was there anyway. I think there was just a brief surge for dating. I think that is going to… change as time moves on anyway. I’ll run out of ask there too. I don’t get the impression that most of the folks I date are going to feel ok being pushy with asking for dates. My submissive. My glorious submissive. Thank you for being so brave so far. I know I’m busy and asking me means risking me being overwhelmed and kind of a twerp on a given day. I’m grateful you ask. Thank you. I’m sorry I’m not always good company but I’m so glad I get to know you. Sometimes when I say I’m not good company it isn’t about me not liking you it is about me wanting to keep my nasty moods away from you. I know you are comfortable with getting the less than sweet parts of me, but I don’t want to take my feelings out on anyone like that. I don’t want to start using you for that kind of thing.

I love you too much.

I’ll hit you; I’ll carve my name into your flesh with a scalpel; I’ll kick you as hard as I can in the testicles. I do not want to hurt you. I want you to feel loved. I can’t be nasty to you when I’m having a bad day. That’s not cool.

I need to be nasty to you on good days when it is a positive, loving choice for both of us.

I’m going to run out of chase on dating for the same reason I always do. Most people… aren’t as into me as I want them to be. They like me ok, but they don’t really seek me out. I seek them out as much as I can… then I can’t anymore.

Usually that’s about three months.

The people who have gone longer than that… my first fiancé, my Owner, Puppy, Spot, Noah… they always act like they are drawn to me. I don’t think my first fiancé would have fallen out of love with me. I think he wanted to marry me and he was going to be ok being that person forever. I think I could have had that. But he needed me to not change very much. He needed me to calm down and not be so crazy. He needed me to be very conservative sexually. I couldn’t do that for him. I think I could still be with my Owner if I hadn’t wanted kids so much. Puppy was the only one who dumped me. He has some serious issues and that was for the best. He would have been very abusive. Spot… that one did run its course. There was no more there for that relationship. But we are still friends.

Noah came back when I shoved him away as hard as I could. He was still my friend even though it hurt because not knowing me was more painful than dealing with me rejecting him as a boyfriend. Then after a while of being my friend he noticed that I was single for five minutes and he took a chance on offering me the best deal of my whole damn life. Would I like to marry my best friend and have the babies I’ve been dreaming of? Yes. Yes I would.

I like sudden intense protestations of devotion that I end up being able to count on. That works for me.

And Noah has chased me ever since. I do not always honor his efforts as I should. But I take breaks to admire just how forking nice to me he is. He chases me. He feels like he would die without me.

It makes it kind of hard to keep chasing people who are not that enthusiastic about seeing me, who do not push for time or attention, who do not make it clear that they want to know me.

I’m spoiled as fuck.

My submissive chases me à la Pepé Le Pew. Slow and patient and just there for my entire adult life.

You know who else chases me? Sarah. That’s why she is My Sarah. Because she has chased me and pushed and offered and grabbed chances to see me for over twelve years.

Lots and lots and lots of people can ask me once or twice a year for a visit. That’s so wonderful and sweet and generous. They give me what they have to spare. They ask for how much of me they want. I’m grateful for every person who gives me a three hour visit a year because they want to know me and that’s all they have spare. That is a gift.

It is so glorious having people in my life who want more and more and more of me. The number of people who feel that way is growing and I can’t help but think that is so wonderful. One of the women I look up to most described knowing me as being like watching the birth of a planet. I’m developing my own gravity.

So this ADD book I’m reading keeps saying, “There is something special about a lot of people with ADD. You can’t put your finger on what it is. It’s just there.” I find that hilarious.

When you look at comorbidity things: ADD is highly correlated with trauma which is highly correlated with being targeted which is highly correlated to being something that attracts notice.

Being special/different/weird is threatening as fuck. Lemme tell you.

Hey, is that a self love moment there? Did I just admit that I know I’m special?

Whoa.

I am. I always have been. I do radiate energy like the sun. Either I freak people out or I draw them in. I pay attention to people. I want to know them and love them. Just looking at people as hard as I do is special. Not many people are even capable of really looking at everyone around them and paying attention the way I do. It is some trick of attention and hypervigilance and empathy.

And where in the hell did I find the well of love I seem to have for people? Despite everything. Recently someone said I didn’t break; I broke open.

I need to be needed or there isn’t a lot of point in me. I think that the majority of creatures who are ever born live and die not having a point. I think that the creature has to make their own point, their own purpose, their own meaning.

Am I doing it?

So far people in ten states and a few different countries have told me that knowing me has changed them for the better. It’s a start.

I can say with great certainty that the three people who live here, my submissive, and My Sarah will chase me just about to the ends of the earth. Jenny has flown out to rescue me when I was in danger even though she isn’t by nature a chaser.

I still call her Jenny because I’m the only damn one who can. To you, she is Jennifer. You do not have leave to address her familiar. I think the only reason I can’t mature into the grown up name is because it was a very young person who first opened her heart to me. It was a very young person with intense wounds of her own who learned how to put up with me. When I cry and think of how very much I miss my friend I am dimly aware that we are grown ups now… but I miss her from that place of being very young. Because that is where she first touched me. I met her when I was twelve. I feel like twelve was for me the absolute last gasping breaths of my childhood. That was right as I started seriously dating.

Jenny managed to catch the last bits of me that could love as a child. And I love her with all the intensity of a child for their best friend still. Thank you.

Despite how not chaste I am… I am still chased. I am deemed worthy of love. And by people I respect and love in return. People who absolutely thrill me to my toes that these people think I am worth enough of their energy to chase me. People who are impacted by my gravity pull and just have to be near me.

Oh I love you I love you I love you.

That’s at least six people who will… chase me pretty fucking far. Blacksheep has jumped enormous hurdles to be my friend. DSH has gone waaaaaaay far past her comfort zone for me even though she isn’t one to chase people like me.

I could keep going.

I am blessed and blessed and blessed. My Bonus Family. It would take a few pages to go through all they have done for me. Even though I’m god damn difficult and sometimes they need some boundaries. That’s healthy.

Most of the people who love me with great intensity have rev limiters of their own. They have lives. Part of the reason I love them so much is because they are intense people with a lot going on. They give me what they can. Even if they can’t chase me the way I like to be chased…

Really, how spoiled can someone be? I get chased. I have three people chasing me 24/7. Quit being so greedy.

And yet I’d still kinda like to set up a calendar that says when folks can invite themselves over and see what happens.

I don’t want to decide who it is and how many people. I just… want to see what happens. I assume not much. I assume a few people sometimes but not much.  The key to happiness is low expectations.

I’m really looking forward to the next few weeks. I’m nervous because this is a lot of time to be “on” with folks I don’t know that well. But I know this mama through mental/physical disability support. At least we are both very understanding of our mutual shortcomings. Ha.

I am so grateful that they accepted my invitation. This is going to be a lot of fun for me. I can’t wait to homeschool her kids. I feel like a walking encyclopedia and that is one of my favorite feelings. See how useful I can be. I am a good tool!

One of the things that makes me special is how fast I can access disparate topics in my brain and explain them in simple or complicated ways for just about anyone. I can make connections between things that seem unrelated… until I explain… faster than the vast majority of people I’ve ever met. And I’ve met a lot of people. I am not an expert in almost anything. Instead of going deep I go wide. That allows for a different kind of thinking, a different kind of intensity.

Ok, reading this book on ADD is making me question something about my long term mental health diagnosis: depression. I don’t do the torpor kind of depression. I do the head-down-keep-working-as-you-hate-yourself-and-want-to-die kind. Apparently that is a pretty standard ADD thing. Oh. Huh. That’s supposed to be one of those things they kinda look for. I hate them and their not looking.

If you loathe yourself: you are depressed. Sorta. Maybe.

I made Noah listen to this song. I can’t find it easily on the internet so you get lyrics.  The thing is… I need to be loved. And I need it from lots of people because I’m trying to push past a whole lot of not being loved.

There is some interesting research out there on preverbal trauma and early formative trauma. I feel like I still need to be filled with as much love as an infant. I was not wanted. Not from conception. I only exist because a bad thing happened. What do I have to do to make up for that? What do I have to do for the world to make up for the harm I caused by coming into being. For declaring, “I don’t care that this hurts you. I need to be here.”

It’s not like I think I really deserve to be punished for choosing to be born. It was an accident. A surprise.

To be fair, my mom told me over and over I was a surprise. She didn’t know she wanted me till she had me. Sissy is the one who told me over and over that I was an accident. My mom just admitted it was rape. My mom tries to make sense of her life given the stories she has been given. God wanted her to have that child. Me.

I have been crying for my mother for over 31, almost 32 years. My mom was 32 when I was born. I might be 35 or 36 if I have another child.

Am I a grown up yet?

When my mama was 35 years old she had four children. She locked her abusive husband out of the house and sued for divorce. On the grounds that he had been raping their children. He was still given partial custody. He refused to pay alimony or child support so my mom lost the house and we ended up living in the car. Well, he would pay it. In exchange for sex.

Sometimes I think I judge my mother far too harshly for surviving a world of horror.

Sex. Sex. Sex. Is it good? Is it bad? Is it neither? Is it both? Does it depend?

I think that if I don’t have that much pull… I should probably just be ok with that. It is probably healthier that way. Maybe. Who knows.

Yes. Yes, I want pushy.

I think people misunderstand suicide prevention. There is a lot of shaming. “Don’t do it because it is selfish. You hurt people.” I hurt people by living too. I promise. It’s always complicated. It is always about the balance of hurting people vs being hurt.

I think it should be framed as enlightened self interested selfishness. Someday I will get to the point where I am out of good days. I’m not there yet. I’m trying to construct a future so fantastic that I absolutely want to stay alive to see it.

I know we are giving up the WWOOF year I’ve always wanted because of a baby I want more. You know what? I bet I will still go to Africa with Sarah someday. I bet I will still go to Taiwan to see Pam someday. I bet I will still go to South America someday. I don’t know who will go with me or who I will see… but it’s probably going to happen.

I’m like that.

I go do things.

No more travel for a long time though. I need to save money. We don’t really travel cheap.

The kids and Noah have promised to veto all requests for travel in 2017 even if I say, “but we could…”

Ha.

I love my reminders.

My Eldest Child likes to say, “You should listen to yourself more, mom. You are a smart lady.” But I don’t listen to myself. I need to hear it from you. I need to hear it in your voice. I need to have you replace my inside voice. Do you know why? Because when I talk to me I’m so god damn mean. When you remind me of something I just said a few minutes ago… you usually sound so nice.

I know I sounded nice when I said it to you. That’s because it is easy to be nice to you. No, I can’t remind myself in that same nice way. I need you on a tape in my head. Because my tapes are all so bad. Thank you for reminding me.

I never mean that sarcastically.

Well… maybe once in a while but I’ll make it obvious with a funny voice.

Shiny change of topic. I feel like it is wise to restate a thing about voice in my blog. I talk to “you” a lot. That’s a moving target. I often consciously create sentences so I’m addressing multiple situations and multiple people at once and I phrase it as a singular. So if you feel paranoid that I’m talking to you… maybe…. inclusively…

Or maybe you’re the one. Noah gets a lot of direct address. Ok, other people do too and I hide behind the group thing. Let’s be honest. But I do the group address thing too!

I’m just tricksy.

I sat here for a while and just went through some visuals of stuff I’d like to have happen in my life. Oh let it be so.

Busy busy

1 Reply

I woke up at 3:30 this morning and started painting. I did it by candle light because the breaker in the kitchen is turned off. I need to finish the ceiling today so we can turn the light on and put the fridge back.

I painted behind the fridge first. Both to get it done and so I could practice some techniques. God damn I’ve improved. I’m way the hell better at painting than I used to be. It’s a shame that tree will be covered. It’s gorgeous.

I finished the first layer of ceiling color and stopped at 6:30 for a break. My shoulders ache. This is going to be slooooooooooooooow because I have a lot of work on vines and leaves I want to do. Not to mention that Eldest Child wants me to go back over everything with glitter. We’ll see.

This project is going to take many days. I look forward to it. I want to finish the ceiling today. I want the light back on.

Which means I need to figure out where the trees are coming from on the walls so I can plan animals, and plants around them. Argh. IF ONLY THIS WEREN’T FUN.

With every passing year I like my painting more. The moss is downright eery and pretty.

Combine this with how much yard work I’ve gotten done this year… 2016 is a beautiful year of growth. And houseguests.

I bought the plane tickets for my friend and her kids yesterday. They are coming out for most of July. Originally I had kinda expected them to drive… with all the health problems involved that was a stupid and unsafe thought. I’m so happy she was brave enough to ask for plane tickets. I know it is hard to ask people to spend money on you. It’s hard to feel worthy. But I’m bugging her about coming to visit and there’s no way she can pay. So I bought tickets. I get them for 18 days. Sounds wonderful to me.

I’m just sad the house is in chaos. But oh well. Life is what it is.

Oh crap. I need to clean up the spare room for Dad today. Whoops. That’s kinda important cause he arrives tonight.

It will be fun. Maybe he’ll sit in a chair and talk to me while I paint. I will enjoy that.

Oh crumbs. It is the end of the school year. We need to go through boxes of saved materials for the year and cull for the portfolio. That can wait till I’m done with painting.

Side note: I feel good about life when I can look down and see paint splotches on my hand.

Other random thought: my Dad has met all of my Serious Relationships in the past 12 years. It sorta makes me think I ought to invite folks over for supper this week to meet him. I’d invite you-who-plays-with-Noah too. Cause I’m like that. Tuesday or Friday would work. What do y’all think? I’m only sorta kidding. Not really. I’d do it.

When I say “I’d do it” I really mean “How serious do you consider yourself to be?” Because no really, my Dad has met every even slightly serious relationship I’ve had as an adult since I met him. And he lives in Washington. So. How serious do you consider yourself to be in my life? This might be something worthy of direct conversations instead of passive aggression but whatever.

It’s a bonus that Dad already knows my submissive and Cupid. He’d like Daddy and Deity just find. I need a nickname for you Ms. You, the one I talk to so much in DMs on Twitter. You come up in conversation in our house at least four times a week… so you are totally in need of a blog name. Who do you want to be?

Sarah is just Sarah because she happened long before nicknames for me. And Jenny. And fuck Noah’s privacy. He gave it up with the marriage contract.

Really, if anyone in our sexin-web wanted to come, please do. We obviously want you.

Ahem.

Sometimes I stop and wonder why do I feel alone? I’m not alone anymore. Not emotionally, physically, energetically… not even spiritually. I may not be Dagora, I may not have my ancestors following me around like a flock of crows waiting to hear from me. I may not be a Christian who believes that Jesus will carry me when I falter.

But I have you. That’s enough.

Then why do I still have this keening alone alone alone feeling? Why am I so scared of myself? We are born alone and we die alone and I’m afraid afraid afraid of when I will make myself die. Please, not too soon. Don’t do it until I am completely out of good days.

Why am I so afraid of being alone? Because I’m not very nice to me. Alone means hitting, cutting, burning myself. It means the meanest words I know said over and over and over. Because I believe I deserve that.

But when I am not alone I know that it is not ok with Person X that I do that to myself. They love me and need me to at least pretend I love myself too.

I am so afraid of being alone.

I feel so lucky that I found people who want to be nice to me. I feel so lucky that I found people who, when I explain how I am being hurt by something, work to change problematic behaviors.

It isn’t that this behavior is wrong for all people. It is that it hurts me and I need you to notice that you are interacting with me.

I am not just like everyone else. I fall far outside the standard deviations in almost every metric. I have to be learned.

The trouble is that I do not believe I am worthy of such effort, time, and commitment.

My friends show up for the amount of time, with the amount of effort and commitment they have to give. Thank you. I appreciate your generosity. You don’t owe me the time of day let alone what you actually give me. Thank you.

I know I sound ungrateful. I’m not. I‘m grateful. I‘m grateful. I‘m grateful. I‘m grateful. I‘m grateful. I‘m grateful. 

Please don’t be mad at me for not being grateful enough. I’m trying.

On Wednesday I am leaving the kids home with Grandpa and daddy and I get to go help my friends for a change. Including driving (ugggggggg) I’ll probably take about six hours to go help them with a project that just exploded in their life.

I feel honored to be asked. They don’t ask for help much. They instead offer a lot of help. I am so grateful to not just be sponging off of them. Instead I have something to offer. This feels so good.

It hurts me when I ask people if I can help them with a project and they refuse. It feels like they do not trust me. It feels like I am not worthy. The quality of my work is too poor. I do not deserve to have that time with them.

I am sorry that I insulted you by offering you substandard, inadequate help. I will not trouble you further.

And that globalizes. It becomes hard to ask for other things. I am not good at asking for help. I am good at offering help. I kinda need people to let me help them so that I can get to a place where I am able to accept help in return when someone sorta bossily pushes it on me.

Oh I love bossy people. Love love love.

The satisfaction of people believing that my help is worth something…. that is huge. Whether it is a wood working project, organizing, writing, parenting, bdsm, whatever.

When people act like I hold wisdom and experience that is useful… I feel like my life has value. I should not die. See… I have things left to give. I am still a useful tool.

I need to be useful.

This isn’t a “healthy” part of my makeup but it’s there.

Ok, I’ve been writing for about 40 minutes. 1400ish words. Should I stop now and save spoons for painting? Yes I should. Future me needs these arms. I typed slow so I wouldn’t hurt myself too much. I was careful.

I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art. I love making art.

Ok. Now I’m ready to stop resting.

Masochism

2 Replies

Maybe I can’t sleep. I woke Noah up for sex (like a nice girl) and that wasn’t enough to make me sleep again.

Masochism has been a very central pillar of my life. The degree to which I submit my will to someone else’s will is much more variable but if you include emotional masochism… I’m always a masochist.

I’m going to sound a little snotty. I don’t mean it that way. I’m trying to figure something out.

Last night it was fascinating being in a triangle between Noah, Deity, and Cupid. I say this because Noah is somewhere between Cupid and Deity in interactions at this point. Realistically I shouldn’t judge Deity’s sadism because I get the impression I’ve just seen the first hints of teeth and I haven’t seen the real thing yet.

But I went from sitting in front of two mean boys who wanted to hurt me to being hit by a sadist.

In the past few months since I’ve shown up at the bar I’ve gotten to relearn I fucking hate pinching. I am having a hard time not slamming my skull into peoples noses as they pinch the shit out of me. It makes me angry. I want to fight back. I’m trying really hard to go along with it because clearly other people are enjoying it.

But it makes me feel hateful and angry.

Sometimes some grabs with a full hand aren’t as irritating… but the small grabs… fuck I feel mean.

It feels like I’m dealing with mean boys again.

This is a weird thing. Because I sure do like mean men. But I feel differently about mean boys.

This is hilarious because I am the youngest of all of these people. So what. It’s an energy thing not a statement about age.

I don’t know why the pinching makes me so mad. I try not to get angry. I try really hard to be pliant. I feel fucking angry.

My brothers pinched me a lot. My father pinched me a lot. You are displeasing. Shut up. No one wants to acknowledge you. Take this reminder that you are not worth actually acknowledging and shut up.

In order to take it I have to go to a fairly dissociated place with regards to feeling it in my body; I have to choose to shut down my fight response and accept.

Noah was asking me questions on the way home. He could read my facial expression during the pinching and backed off. He switched to punching. Yeah, that’s how you can butter my biscuit.

I feel like there is this line between masochism and submission and I’m stumbling on it right now. What is the difference between pain you submit to because it is pleasurable to your partner and pain you submit to because you like it?

I like being punched. I can be punched for hours and I’ll just make appreciative noises. The bruises can be massive. I’ll purr like a cat in between shrieks and bellows and orgasms. I like punching.

Pinching… it takes me right out of headspace. It makes me feel like I need to prepare for a fight. It is intensely triggering to my fight reflex. Which makes submitting to it an interesting challenge.

What bothers me is it never feels like people are challenging me on this incredibly sensitive boundary because they want to have power over me and they want to cause me to work through it. I usually feel like people are pinching me absentmindedly. Like a fiddle toy.

I hate that.

Am I submitting or bottoming? Am I doing this for you or for me?

I don’t know.

It’s like hair pulling. It’s one of those things that people just do because they have this schema around rough sex that it is a mandatory part of things. But if you yank on my hair absentmindedly I will not be able to focus my eyes tomorrow from pain.

My body is in a fair bit of pain under normal operating conditions. I showed up at the bar tonight feeling like I was at a 6. Then I got pinched. Then beaten.

This god damn tile work is killing me. My neck hurts. My back hurts. My arms hurts. And now my ass hurts too. Glorious.

The ass is the only part that’s fun.

How will I be hiding my bruises? Well… I need to develop some habits around dressing in private. Ahem.

I feel like the bruises are coming in harder and faster this time than they did the first time I played with Cupid. Well done.

Noah asked me how I managed to process the hits because they came quick and hard and he’s used to me getting overloaded and shutting everything down.

Instead Cupid hit me hard and quickly and when I collapsed to the floor to squat because it was too much he put his arm around my chest, leaned me back against him, and kept hitting.

My cunt is still throbbing because that was so hot.

I was overloaded but I didn’t feel panicked and I’m not sure why it happened that way. I panicked more and made him back off more at our first date at his house.

I suspect that a hair of it was that I was completely surrounded by people and if it really got out of hand I had help available. It was safer to let it go farther.

I don’t think that was a conscious decision but I think it factors in somewhere.

Where is the line between masochism and submission for me? I felt like part of the reason I could go deeper was because Cupid was managing energy well. He was being aware and barely callous in just the right ways. I’m pretty sure he could tell I was making some noise but not exactly what came from me or what came from the other folks making noise. So he thoughtfully leaned in and let me know that he couldn’t hear very well and he’d be looking for other signals that I couldn’t handle it.

That let him push right through most of my masochist-not-submissive early warning signs. All the “I’m not sure I like this” noise he could just ignore. That’s what I mean by callous. But he did it by being very responsive to physical signals and just… interpreting them how he felt like. He kept going because he read enough yes in my body.

I am so incredibly not upset. I will be spending time in my bunk today thinking about this again. Probably a few times.

It isn’t that I want to distract you with kissing and get you to not beat me. It is that when you intersperse kissing with hurting me I want to give you so much more. Because you are hurting me. Because you are connecting with me.

I was listening to an old episode of the radio show that I’m going on. A woman was expressing her strong preference for not kissing early on.

That was funny to hear just now. I want kissing. I want kissing and kissing and kissing and kissing. Don’t fucking hurt me if you aren’t going to kiss me too. If you aren’t going to kiss it better I don’t fucking like you very much.

But I do sometimes play with people who don’t kiss at all. But that’s because they don’t kiss anyone and they know how to connect anyway. We also don’t go as deep or as hard with the play.

WHY IS THIS SO CONFUSING?!

(I’m totally ok with that person not wanting kissing during first time sex. Whatever floats your boat. It was interesting to feel how I feel about that.)

If you want access to my body it starts with my mouth and my mind. Otherwise go fuck yourself.

I don’t think it is that pinching is a hard limit. I think it is that pinching is a serious kind of play for me. It’s a really big mind fuck and I don’t think people understand that in general. Pinching requires some serious fucking submission from me and playing with that idly is… complicated. Like, I need to talk to Daddy about this. He’s a pinchy motherfucker. (Which I’m not mad about.)

But I need to talk to him about this. Words. I need to find words. I want you to understand that when it comes to my body pinching it is a much more serious activity than hitting me with a mallet.

I like the mallet more.

The mallet doesn’t make me feel like I want to take my finger nails and rake them across your face.

I feel mean when I’m pinched. I don’t feel sexy. I don’t feel wanted. I feel angry. Trying to tamp that down and not explode all the fuck over people is an act of conscious, serious will.

We all come from very particular life experiences. I’ve dealt with a lot of mean boys.

I’m trying to figure out what I feel and why. I don’t figure this stuff out very well unless I’m bouncing off of people. I don’t think about why pinching is such a thing because I’ve just managed to mostly scare Noah out of doing it.

Then I go hunting like a fool.

Fucking pinchy bastards are everywhere.

How do I feel about pinching? I feel like I hate you. Just for a few seconds. Just as long as you are pinching me. I get over it. But I have to decide to. That kind of thing takes a toll. How many times I have to decide to stop hating you in a night adds up.

It is a very different kind of submission than accepting that when I resist someone beating me they will just slam me back down on the table so they can keep hitting me. God that was hot. Ok, I’ll relax and just accept that this is happening now.

Ok.

I’m sitting on a very comfy lawn chair. My ass hurts.

Thank you. I’m grinning.

Why are some kinds of pain enjoyable even when I don’t enjoy it. I promise you that I didn’t enjoy most of what Cupid did to me last night. It fucking hurt. But I really liked that he wanted to do that to me. I liked that he wanted to take that enjoyment from me even when it was really hard for me.

Why doesn’t pinching work that way?

It can. With the right set up and frame and acknowledgement that this is a huge trigger you are pushing on.

That’s not how it usually happens though.

Why don’t you pinchy motherfuckers push on a trigger point or something. Much less effort on your part, more pain on my part, less feeling like I want to rip your fucking face off.

Everybody wins.

Somehow I think that an incredibly small fraction of the pinchy motherfuckers will listen to me. That’s both why I date them and why I hate them.

Fuck.

IT WOULD BE OK IF YOU ACTED LIKE THIS WAS A BIG THING. IT WOULDN’T MAKE YOU LESS DOMLY OR SOME SHIT.

It isn’t that I have a problem with mean people hurting me in this way if it is done right. It is that it is hard to do right and most people won’t bother.

That’s a thing.

Being picky sucks.

And then when we got home Noah put his cock in me and it hurt like I was being fucked with a knife. I stopped the sex. No. Just… no. Actually, I’ve been fucked with a knife and it didn’t hurt that bad. The person wasn’t trying to puncture my uterus.

I have no idea what was going on. I woke him up for sex this morning and it wasn’t orgasmic for me, but it didn’t hurt. I think I was so afraid of it hurting that I wasn’t really going to relax that time. But I wanted sex anyway.

I wanted sex specifically so I could talk to Noah about how much I like him and want him and need him. He is being ridiculously supportive as I’m being kind of a pain in the ass. It makes him happy when I demonstrate my gratitude with frantic, clutching sex where I talk the whole time about why he is important to me.

Noah is kinda my world. I need him to feel that or I’m doing something wrong. His primary way to feel loved is to have sex. Not just have sex, I need you sex.

But who doesn’t want that?

I’m just glad he is amused that I enjoy kissing other people so much. I’m glad he is interested in watching other people hit me because he learns more about me as a creature to be studied. I’m so fucking glad that Noah spends this much time wanting to look at me.

He’s been doing a lot more writing for me lately. I like that. I like that so much. He’s been writing scene reports so he can learn from them. He’s been writing about his insecurities and that’s letting us talk about what we want in the future from an unequal power dynamic. The day he proposed to me he told me he wanted me to be his wife and his slave. I said I could do that but it would take a very long time to get to the slave part.

It… was mixed last time and I don’t want to have to walk away from our relationship because that part crashes and burns.

So Noah appreciates chances to watch me interact with other people because he sees how I react to things without his own internal filtering going on. We can talk about why I leaned in to some things and why I grimaced at other times.

Noah wants to look at me. Noah wants me to do whatever the fuck I want just so he can watch.

I love you Noah. Even if you are a mean boy sometimes.

Thank you thank you thank you everyone. Thank you for giving me these opportunities to learn more about myself. I am grateful.

My arms. My arms. Oh my arms. Must stop.

Promiscuity and permission

Leave a reply

I had a thought. And even though I’m trying not to type much this weekend I want to write this down.

The difference between me doing what I’m going to do and feeling good about myself and me doing what i’m going to do and feeling bad about myself… is mostly about how I’m perceived.

I’ve been a big slut chasing sex since I was in preschool. Rampant promiscuity is part of my life.

This time… I’m coming home to a safe home. With a partner who grins at me and who wants to hear every filthy detail. He’s concerned about my safety and my rate of adding partners. He’s concerned about me stepping outside my carefully vetted pool because in the past that has been a mixed bag for me.

He’s not telling me to stop fucking my friends.

He’s not sure what he wants and that is a slow process we are talking about a lot together. He’s not entirely sure what he thinks will be sustainable in terms of my behavior but we are talking.

There is no shame.

I need to say that again because it is so important: There is no shame.

There are uncomfortable feelings. There is a tinge of sadness on both or parts. We wanted the fantasy of monogamy. We liked it. We wanted it to work.

It didn’t work well for us. We are going back to stuff that has worked well for us.

But we are doing it from a framework of a very happy and supportive marriage. We like each other. It is a little weird going back to dating from the point of view that I’m blissfully happy at home and I love my marriage… I just do better with a variety of sex partners in my life. I like bouncing off of people.

It really helps that since I started fucking around Noah is inspired and he’s been fucking me more and better than he has since the first year of marriage. We are getting close to our pre-kids sex life.

Which is fucking awesome.

We are getting back to the sex life we had when I was dating Spot and…. I can’t remember who else. It’s embarrassing how bad I am at remembering who I dated when. I can remember that I dated someone, but I need to really think about it to figure out which period of my life. (Actually… it may have been just Spot and Noah because I was teaching. I was real busy then.)

“Which slut period did you overlap?”

But I remember Spot. He’s one of the few who made it to 9 months. I liked Spot a lot. He was… a nice break from the assholes I had been dating. Ultimately he was too nice for me and that’s ok too. I’m one of those terrible people who likes assholes.

I need you to have brick wall boundaries because I am going to throw myself at them. I don’t want them to collapse. Usually only assholes can do that. Assholes know “I go out this far and this is where I stop. Get the fuck off my wall.”

But this is what I was thinking about this morning. Permission. Noah gives me permission to exist in a way no one else ever has. I’m not sure it would have occurred to anyone else. I’m not sure anyone else would look at me and think, “Oh there’s a person quaking with fear because no one has given her permission to act how she wants to act.”

Snicker.

But it’s true. I do. I do what I’m going to do anyway. The difference is whether I feel ashamed of myself afterwards for acting in a way I think I’m not supposed to act or whether I feel fine because I was told I am fine.

Noah does that.

Noah gives me that.

He tells me I am fine.

Still integrating.

Leave a reply

I got over 10 hours of sleep. That’s freakishly rare for me. I must have needed it.

I feel peaceful, happy and calm. I feel ok.

I feel like I have a whole day of work ahead of me. A whole day of snuggling and talking and sharing joy. We like productive days. We are workers, not shirkers. We got good hard play in this weekend.

Time to put the work in. We can do that.

This week is not that busy. Folks are coming over most days this week. At least Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday. Monday is quieter. Noah has two first dates. Good luck with that. Many of these visits will be only a few hours long. Two days have overnight guests. Pam isn’t quite ready to run away from us yet so we get a little bit of extra time with her. I’m not crying. I didn’t feel ready to let her go anyway. She should come annoy me some more so I’m ready to push her towards her next adventure.

I so rarely have this feeling. I feel like my soul is a placid lake. If you toss a rock on it there will be ripples for a few minutes before it comes to stillness again.

I’m not just allowed to be kind of awful sometimes… I’m encouraged.

This part is… a little embarrassing… but who the fuck am I kidding? Much of my writing is… Noah likes to talk to me about being Krissysexual. He talks about it as being very close to his religion. I really like being the center of cult worship. On Saturday night I was standing and Noah was kneeling in front of me and my submissive uhhh behind me.

Oh the worship.

(This was after I sliced him up.    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I’m feeling very ok about being me right now. Sated. Pleased.

And I still have all the bruises all over the place to make sitting kind of uncomfortable. Every time I hit a sore spot I grin in a goofy way. I think, “Thank you Daddy” and I think “Thank you Cupid” and I think “Thank you Professor”.

I have time coming up with Deity. There’s news on that front I’m not writing about yet cause it is the only hint of wistfulness in the whole set up. But frankly it’s the kind of wistfulness that will churn my butter so let’s go with it.

Main character. Yeah. I can do this. Complicated story. Lots of subplots.

Excellent. Let’s finish this rodeo.

Coming home

5 Replies

When I was 18 years old I showed up in the bdsm community. I had some awkward experiences then I went to a munch. Then I went to my second munch. At my second munch I was invited to a private party. The same group we got together with tonight. They’ve been meeting up monthly for more than 20 years. Many of these folks have been there pretty much the whole time.

I felt like I was coming home. I asked for permission to do a heavy scene. The homeowners (one of my leather mom’s and her partner) told me I had complete trust to do whatever I wanted.

That’s a big deal in my little world. Trust is earned slowly in increments. I felt valued and missed from the minute I walked in. Even people I have not traditionally gotten along with that well were really happy to see me.

I’ve noticed that more than once in the community. Since I spent so much time gone folks have forgotten that they disliked me and they just remember that I was part of the good old days. I was. Those were wonderful days. I feel like these days are going to get better.

Socializing was so damn nice. I was so excited to catch up on the news for everyone’s life.

I spent a while chatting with one of Cupid’s other play partners. I was reminded of how much fun it is to share play partners and friends. She was absolutely as sweet as could be. She says she thinks we are alike. I hope so. I would like to be like someone like her.

But the play. Oh the play. This is one of the hottest nights of my life. I have never before done a serious cutting on someone. I… got more enthusiastic as the event continued. It was amazingly fun fucking with his head for a long time with the scalpel. For a long time on his thigh I wasn’t even getting past the top layer of skin. But he thought I was gouging him.  He couldn’t see what I was doing and he was pretty freaked out. So I showed him the tiny little couple of drops of blood. He was like, “Wait. That’s it?”

Ha.

Of course… that was well into the scene. I’m out of order because it was so god damn hot. The scene kinda felt out of order. I forgot to put a collar on him until well into play. But it was fun and exciting when it happened so I’m not that sad.

After cutting his thighs I flipped him over and cut his ass for a while. That was… wicked exciting so I decided it was time for him to fuck me.

Ok, do you know what was so hot about the cutting? I was licking it up like a cat. I’ve always wanted to do that and I’ve never had an appropriate partner. I would take fingers full of blood and smear it on his cock and lick it off.

That was so fucking hot.

While he was fucking me I told him that someday I want to cut open his chest so that he can cover me in blood when we fuck. He… more or less asked why someday. So I grinned, grabbed the scalpel…

I may have been a trifle exuberant.

So on his thighs and ass it took many many slices before I hit blood. I was super careful and slow and delicate.

Uhm… I sliced the shit out of his chest. He started bleeding a fair bit right away. There was no delicate barely reddening line. There was a lot of blood.

I played in it. I finger painted myself and him. I licked it. I took whole handfuls of blood and licked it. By the time I was done I looked like I had ripped the neck out of a wildebeest with my teeth.

That made me come so hard.

Because I’m an exhibitionist slut we went upstairs to show off before we took a shower. We took pictures. Because oh my god.

I mean there was caning and slapping and biting and all that other stuff in there.

The blood the blood the blood the blood. *dance around in circles*

Alright. I’m addicted. I need to do that again.

That scene took 2.5 hours. I only stopped because he looked so high I thought I really should. I kinda sorta felt like I should feed and water him. Prudent to take care of your toys.

Then we proceeded to have the most make-out-fest party I’ve been to for one of these. That was glorious.

Remember what I was saying about my comfort zone? I was glowing and even I could tell.

Then Noah got there. We socialized for a bit more. I looked at my boys, didn’t even bother to bat my eyelashes and said “I could use more fucking.”

I love my life.

We went and spread out a tarp. They took turns playing with/fucking my ass and fucking my mouth. Noah spent a lot of time putting clothespins on my breasts and calling me a whore and telling me to come.  Which I did. A lot. Over and over. They spent a lot of time talking about how the red mark on my chest was moving lower and lower… way more flushed than normal. Lots of time egging me on to make more noise. Well done, gentlemen.

Well that was sooooooooo hot.

A two shower party is a good party.

Then we socialized a lot more. And made out more. And snuggled more.

I feel like the luckiest girl ever.

(For the record… blood testing was involved in the negotiation for this scene.)

I love you. I love you. I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Oh god yes. More.

I would write more but my arms hurt.