Tag Archives: depression

Thank cheese for a good day

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I’m really grateful that Noah and I had some good talking yesterday. I am glad that we hugged and touched each other in mellow and non-scary ways. We are both going through a ridiculously hard thing. It is really important to remember that this is a terrible thing that is happening to both of us. More to me, but he’s getting whacked hard too.

My brain is being a giant asshole right now and it means that mostly I’m only remembering the hard and scary parts of my marriage and my relationship with Noah. I did go very far out of my way to find a Big Bad Wolf.

He’s really not a terrible person. All of the shitty things he has done have come with the halo of consent. It’s been a fucking trip. When I say I deserve things that he does to me… well… he and I discussed doing it and then we did it so I guess in the most literal sense of the phrase, I do deserve things that we say we want to do together. It’s a complicated thing. No person arrives at the decision to do a thing completely unshaped by the life experiences they have had.

Noah observed that what we are expecting of ourselves and of each other is quite literally inhuman. People don’t do these things. What we want to be to each other is not standard. I get that. Like, that was not really enough sleep last night because sex after a while of no sex was a lot more important. It was good sex.

I wish that means that I woke up today full of resilience and definitely over my depression. I didn’t though. I still feel shitty and stupid and it takes a very small comment from a teenager to set me off. Teenagers are assholes. Teenagers are trying to create a reality in which they don’t need their mother anymore and that’s pretty fraught for me. The point of my job is to work myself out of a job. I am working towards my sole future occupation: Noah’s companion.

There’s this way his cock gets right before he nearly comes. I notice it best when we stop having vaginal sex and switch to oral. The head feels really tight and swollen and like it is about to explode but most of the shaft is actually fairly soft, it’s nothing close to his most erect. Details like that are going to be most of what I think about in the future. Savouring that feel and texture difference in my mouth and in my hands.

I used to tell my mom that I wasn’t going to be able to be successful as an adult because the only thing I was good at doing was reading fast. I’m really good at making Noah’s dick happy.

It is hard for him and it is hard for me that it doesn’t feel like enough. I’m not saying that I have to suck other dicks. I am saying that I don’t do well when I feel disconnected and unwanted.

My day job is in a complicated place where 2/3 of my primary charges now resent and scorn me. I’m just counting the days till number 3 joins in. I know that Noah sees this with impending glee: soon he will have me all to himself.

Given what happens to me when I try to make friends it is a mixed bag from my view at the moment. I am really upset and sad that I am scared to make friends now with the idea of sex being entirely off the table. That is feeling dramatically unsafe. It also makes me question the sex and friendships of my youth.

I don’t think I am going to stop feeling depressed and frozen and scared until the trial happens and that feels dramatically unfair to my family. I go to sleep every night angry with myself for not getting more done and I wake up every morning feeling frozen and stuck and unable to move because I will be wrong. It was really hard to eat this morning.

Today will be less perfect. That’s ok. There are brighter days to come. My local garden store had plants 50% off because they are going out of business. I have some holes to dig. Let’s see if I can get off my backside. Ugh.

It’s not that I dislike him

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I like Noah very much. What I don’t like is how I feel. What I don’t like is feeling like I need to spend the rest of my life hiding from people due to his overwhelming insecurity.

I don’t hate the life I have created. I don’t want to be out of it. It’s just small and getting smaller and I don’t have any sign of permission for growth any year soon here. I don’t know that I will be allowed to do much of anything involving other people after the indenture. I mean, I can do research and I can write books. It’s not that I can’t have interactions with people at all. I could support Noah in socialising with his people, as long as I bounced my eyes carefully and was careful not to become too friendly with anyone.

I need to stop looking for support. I need to stop looking for people who will invest in me. I get what I get from Noah and the rest I need to just come up with on my own.

I’m really scared that I’m not enough.

I no longer believe that I get to throw myself back on the net that I have created. It’s not ok.

When I think about where else to sleep, one of the obvious options is the pull out couch in the studio. Only that’s where it happened.

I feel very sad and very scared and very alone. I feel like my childhood never ended. I feel like I am waiting to be made to leave. I know I won’t be, but that’s what this feels like. It’s why I isolate as much as I do. My brain expects and needs that as the result of how I am feeling right now. When this happens I have to go away. Because I am so bad that no one can endure me.

I am going to need to request more sleep medication soon. I’m going through it much faster than usual and I am scared they are going to tell me no. I am afraid they are going to tell me that unless I can be compliant with how they want me to be fixed I deserve nothing at all–not the medication I got to after years of experimenting and sleep tests and evaluations of other ways of managing my extreme PTSD symptoms.

For the love of Cheese, please let me sleep. Mostly I don’t need help very often; it’s not bad most of the time. I’m not ok right now and I need this help and it’s the only thing I’m still getting that they might question. I even fired the counselor I liked so they can’t say I’m getting help already outside the system.

I bet I am going to get in trouble for that. I’ll be told that I don’t care about getting well so I don’t deserve the medication that has been a steady source of appropriate and non-escalating usage for over 10 years.

I really don’t like being me.

Layers of ouch

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It’s hard when Noah’s attempts to be cheerful feel like specific mindfucks. He is trying to not encourage me further down the spiral but it also seems like a denial of reality. Things are rough so let’s pretend this year didn’t happen. Maybe I’ll think back on it as a time when Noah was loving. Naw, I don’t think 2024 is going to have a rosy glow of being loved. It’s not like 2016 involved you feeling loved in the end even though my last date was in July. This year I haven’t had an official date. Just a rape where you hurt me afterwards and told me it was for my own good and you were going to keep doing it.

I don’t know when you plan to start hurting me periodically to require the fawn reaction from me, just to keep your feet wet, but I’m fucking freaked out.

Combine that with the fact that I’m sucking your dick every day and while you do massage me, positive sexual between us is mostly not happening. I show up and suck your dick and sometimes you come in my body without trying to make it nice for me.

I feel like a stupid fuckdoll. This is why I can’t live in Gunlandia. On a really freaked out day a gun to my face would be far too tempting.

I actually went to bed in something fun last night hoping Noah would find it and touch me at all in a way that doesn’t feel like clinical maintenance. He didn’t come to bed till super late then he never touched me at all. At some point I moved from the middle of the bed over to my side and grabbed my teddy and pulled the weighted blanket over me. It’s effectively a wall that creates a don’t-touch-me zone. I am not sure I’m going to bother coming to my bed tonight. This is making me feel like shit. I feel disgusting. I feel nauseated by who and what I am. I am pathetic.

I am angry with myself for seeking his touch as comfort because it is the only thing I’m allowed to have because I end up feeling worse about myself. I wish I didn’t want or need anyone. I wish I could fry my brain enough that I would never reach for another human being again. I’m so tired of feeling like this. This is my fucking mother. I have wanted to feel cared for and loved after being raped for my whole life and it hasn’t happened. This is yet another one. I feel disgusting and used. Dehumanised. I am not a human, I am just holes.

I feel like I want to scrape the flesh from my body. I should be in so much pain that I cannot form a coherent thought. That feels like justice.

I feel like I don’t deserve anything good and I should back out of all social engagements because I might talk to someone in the wrong tone of voice. I don’t want to be surprised by getting hurt after I enjoy talking to someone so I shouldn’t talk to anyone. That way when I am hurt to force a fawn reaction it won’t feel like retaliation. If I do nothing then it isn’t retaliation it is just the way my life works. It’s just the only thing I deserve.

I deserve pain. I deserve to be used, but only by the person who paid a lot of money for me–it’s not fair for him to share. I deserve nothing good but what he feels like letting me have. I’m not a real person I’m a thing. Maybe I deserve nothing at all. I’m in a lot of pain and I don’t see a way that it’s going to change. I’m scared. I’m sad. I feel like this is going to be what I get forever going forward. Be smaller. Want less. Don’t look for comfort. That’s for people.

God this feels so much like dealing with my mother. If I am not doing work why even allow me to be in a room with you. I feel dirty and defiled and like I cannot be cleaned. Some things can’t be fixed; they are just rubbish.

I feel like this assault is being treated like one of the many times I am just bad. I deserve every bad thing that happens around it because I am a disgusting whore who didn’t manage to get out of the room fast enough. I deserve as much punishment as I’ve gotten and a whole lifetime worth to follow. I have earned every mean and bad thing thing. It’s like I got the top prize in being a disgusting whore and instead of a teddy bear I get to be hurt for the rest of my life as a reminder that I’m not good for anything better. I was born to be holes. I was born to be disregarded and injured and damaged. I have no right to complain. My mouth is a hole for a cock, not for me to complain out of.

Just shut up you stupid bitch.

How to keep going?

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I don’t know how much of this is tied in with the trial. I am not dealing well with waiting permanently with no information. I’m really scared. I’m not sure what I’m scared of. I think I will be a creditable enough witness given the other victims. It doesn’t rest on my word to call this man a predator. I was not the first. I was not even the first to press charges.

I feel weird that the Scottish government is squarely acting like I am a vulnerable person. I have official designation and shit. It means I get accommodations.

In my life being vulnerable has always meant putting a target on my forehead so that people can line up to take shots. It’s not a fun prospect. Looking weak means people want to get in a shot to hit you next. Everyone wants the next turn, it looks so fun. I am so conscious of the fact that I am in a place where savage hierarchy is the norm. It’s part of why I am not going out much and I fucking dress up when I do. I need to look like you would be sorry if you fucked with me.

Not that it worked. Fuck.

I can’t do enough to keep me safe short of never being around people. Not that it works forever for me because Noah is inside the house and he will do something again. It is hard that a lot of our relationship is literally based around the idea that he terrorizes me and then vaguely gaslights me and implies it isn’t happening. I’m just making up a list of things to react to. It’s not like we have idle conversations about how he is going to attack me again some day when I am deeply depressed and not functional and hurt me really badly. Feeling depressed definitely doesn’t feel an inherent threat in and of itself or anything.

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It is my fault he is traumatised. I went off the rails again; I set him off. What else did I expect? I get what I deserve. I will deserve it next time and the time after that too. I will never stop deserving it. There will be justification for why hurting me is perfectly fine because he feels insecure and mean and he takes care of me. Didn’t he help me get home from the hospital after the surgery? Jeez, don’t act like hurting me is a big deal.

Sorry about that. It wasn’t important. It was nothing. It doesn’t count. Like when Derek slapped me when I was 15 and said, “That doesn’t even count as a hit. There isn’t a mark.” I am wrong to remember and act like it counts.

My mom also says she didn’t hit me.

She means she never beat me to the point of serious injury but saying that would sound bad so that’s not what she says. I’m supposed to just get the point and agree that naw, I wasn’t hit because that way no one needs to show me the difference.

I keep having this awful thing happen when I am crying, I keep hearing different voices hiss, “Do you want me to give you a reason to cry?” It’s this constant reminder that there is no level of pain where I am justified in breaking. Shut up. Just take it and keep working. Oh, and smile. Act grateful.

Look at this nice house you are allowed to live in. Look at the fact that your clothes aren’t rags. Look at the food you are given. Demonstrate your gratitude or you will be sorry.

I am already sorry. I am not sure how to be more sorry.

A buddy sent me contact info for a counselor/breath worker. On one hand, my breathing is definitely shitty right now.

This is why I usually go and find a therapist when I am ok. So I can get to know them not in a crisis state so that they can see that I am fucked up when I walk in and they know to treat me as if I am not ok. I don’t know how to go establish trust right now. I feel like one wrong word and I am going to bounce.

What is the point in trying to form new relationships right now? I have upwards of a 95% failure rate and I can’t take that right now. I am fucking aware that most of the world would prefer that people like me just stop taking up an inappropriate amount of resources. One surefire way to accomplish that.

I don’t feel like a bad ass today. I feel dirty. I feel disgusting. I feel like I am pollution. I feel like I don’t know how to be in a room with people. I am just so gross and every part of me feels bad. I am scared to talk to people. I will say something I shouldn’t or stand in a way I shouldn’t or move my body in a way I shouldn’t and I will deserve whatever I get.

I want to lock the door and cover the windows and never come out again. They can come and get me when they can’t stand the smell of the corpse.

I feel like I am never going to be good enough to stop deserving punishment, so why try? I am so very out of pointless, useless, ineffective try.

I feel like I am supposed to react to being beaten down by jumping up and looking for a fight. I am supposed to assert my right to live.

I don’t feel it any more.

It’s not like I feel much faith or hope in the NHS. I feel like I should start opting out of care so they can’t hold it over my head like a weapon.

I feel deeply under threat from pretty much every direction and the mother fucker raped me in my studio. I have literally nowhere I get to go to feel safe. This is the room where Noah hurts me too.

The symbolism of these men in this room as my “safe space” is kind of like my entire life in one pretty picture. This is what I get and what I deserve and what I will always deserve until I die.

I don’t know how to be ok right now. Yeah, I know that Noah touches me nicely too and that undoes all the damage.

It totally works that way and I’ve been nice to Noah lots over they years and that’s why nothing I do ever traumatises him in any way, right? Isn’t that how this works?

I feel like a toy that a child broke. Now the child is hitting me against the floor because they are furious that I am broken. Only that isn’t fair. Noah didn’t do all of the breaking.

How in the fuck am I supposed to buck up and model that life is a lot of hard work but it’s worth it?

There is a bunch of highly specific work I could and should be doing for my garden for this winter if I want to be working towards that party I want in 16 years. What am I doing? I’m sitting inside and crying and screaming because that’s the last form of self harm I am allowed to have. I scream until my skull wants to break in two.

I don’t know what I am supposed to do with this breaking, Akhilandeshvari. I know that what would be best for Noah would be for me to not need anyone other than him again. That is what he wants. He’s ok with friends but he needs them to be like tertiaries, not secondaries.

There have been so many times in my life when I have wished that a trauma could break me down so that I never reached out again and each time I have been broken open further. I am doing a lot to avoid that this time. I am not reaching out to people. I shut down social media. I’m going out little and skipping everything I can. I’m trying to avoid talking to people as much as I can.

I am trying to close. Maybe if I do it this way there will be less objectionable behaviour.

The path is really dark

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I get the impression Noah wants me to snap out of this. I was lying in bed this morning between Noah and Shorty and the cat waiting to have a positive emotion. I tried to feel loved. Naw. Instead I lay there with my teeth grit waiting for the fucking claws to rip apart the tendons in the sides of my knees. I was not disappointed.

I feel like I don’t know how far down I was slapped. I hate myself on pretty much every level and I am struggling to get anything done.

During the daily blow job, which is sometimes kind of fun and sometimes a dissociative nightmare, I realised Noah was starting to get close and I haven’t wanted sex lately so I asked him what he wanted to do. He wanted to put a towel down (period) and fuck me on the floor.

Fucking. When two people are fucking each other it’s a lot of fun. When one person is fucking someone it can feel pretty awful. It doesn’t help that I spent months talking to Travel Boyfriend about all the love making he wanted to do and I’m reading a Gabaldon novel where the deeply romantic lead always says that he wants to be with you.

I just get fucked. Even when it hurts terribly and I’m gritting my teeth and waiting for it to end.

That’s what monogamy means. I am a hole for Noah to use how he wants and what I want out of it is not very important. Me enjoying myself is not the point, never has been, never will be.

I was invited to a party for this afternoon but they are extremely covid conscious so it will be 100% outside and it’s raining cats and dogs. It’s also more than a half hour of riding hard away. I will be soaked to the skin before I arrive to stand around outside. Sounds fun. (I do actually like this family. They are other crazy Americans.)

I feel frozen with horror. It wouldn’t even be safe for me to stop my frothing self hatred. If I stop then Noah will think I think too highly of myself again and he will hurt me again. I need to make sure I feel like I want to be hiding under a table all day. That way I won’t get uppity.

I feel like I would turn and run if the dad in the family came over to talk to me alone. No. I’m not allowed. I might look like I’m cheating again since that’s all I do. Funny how knowing that if I even look up from the floor I might get in trouble again kills my sex drive. Dad’s been gone for almost 3 weeks. I’m not interested in sex. Sex is this terrible thing that wrecks my whole life. It isn’t life affirming.

Sex is this horrible terrible thing that was forced on me until I learned to respond and then I was punished for it. I hate sex so much. I wish I could cut the part of me that ever wants sex out of me.

I hate my body so much. I want to kill it.

I hate being depressed

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I am angry. I am irritable. I don’t want to move. I feel only anger and fury and dislike for my children. I’m not feeling motivated to eat. I’m sleeping absurd amounts but not feeling even vaguely rested. The NHS page on depression is so belittling that I’d like to learn how to launch a DDOS attack and bring down the NHS website because I’m so fucking angry that I’m being told I should maybe talk to someone, eat healthy food, and exercise.

Here the treatment for depression is: nothing! Surely it will go away. Wait, it didn’t go away? Fine, then let’s give you a fucking self help book and you can go home and fix it without bothering us. You do a workbook on your own and a therapist checks up to make sure you did your homework. They might send me to a group exercise class since I can’t figure out how to exercise on my own. Bonus points for it being a kind of exercise that will cause me injury and then they can tell me that I don’t care about my mental health again. Then eventually if all that fails (which it will in 99% of fucking cases, but let’s abusively shove everyone through the process because EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE) we will let you talk to a therapist many months of suffering later. When you talk to that therapist you will be told to go on an SSRI. You will get some cognitive behaviour therapy bullshit. CBT is widely considered to be gaslighting and wildly abusive. It is *the* form of therapy offered on the NHS. If I’m severe enough they might consider letting me have abusive CBT *while* I’m being forced on a drug that is going to make my life a living hell.

I want fucking EMDR.

Here they max out at 16 sessions for any kind of treatment. This is why I am considered treatment resistant because in 16 weeks a therapist has barely learned the shape of my problems.

Amusingly, the nerve pain medication I’m on–Amitriptyline–is their second line “I can’t take SSRIs” option. So I’m already on that antidepressant and I have been for years.

EMDR is not even on their list of possible treatments for depression. They won’t let me have it at all. I feel so angry that I am going to have to fight this hard for a non-invasive, non-drug form of help. That seems really broken to me. I want the least expensive option. I don’t want talk therapy for the rest of my life and 16 sessions is fucking stupidly a waste of time and resources. I am not a 16 session patient.

I feel sick and bad and useless and stupid and like I should die. I don’t want to snuggle and I feel like I am going to throw this fucking cat across the house if she doesn’t stop scratching me to ask me to pet her. (I haven’t thrown her.)

I feel like I don’t know how to stop roiling in rage and pain. Everything in my brain is saying that I am a piece of shit who should die. I don’t do anything that is good in the world. I am only bad. I feel guilty for backing out of the date with TB and also like I might cause serious damage to a long term friendship if I go and I flip out at him because I’m completely dysregulated. That’s not fair.

He dodged a bullet. Lucky him. He was smart to opt out of being a bigger part of my life. I’m really not worth it. And I think he was the one shot I’m going to take. He was barely passive and accepting and supportive enough of my marriage for Noah and no one else is ever going to care even 10% as much as he does about preserving my marriage. He’s a really good friend and I am lucky to know him. I wish I felt like there was any good luck for him in knowing me. I feel like a punishment and a curse.

I should be getting ready to bike over to go rock climbing. It’s hard to move at all. I want to lie on the floor in the fetal position for the whole day.

I want to fade away entirely.

I fired my counselor today

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I feel kind of bad because she’s a really nice lady who is trying super hard but she’s a student, with only a small amount of training, and I am way the fuck out of her league. I would be training her, not getting support from her. Also: I’m not allowed to talk to anyone else while I’m talking to her. She fully understands that she is there to be generically supportive and she doesn’t have a lot of therapeutic value to add to my life. So this was my last meeting with her.

I don’t get a lot from telling a tiny shard of my story, heavily edited for their sensibilities of course, to a stranger I will see 6 times then never again. There’s not a lot of value in that for me. She said that a lot of her clients have literally never felt heard in their lives and they have no opportunity whatsoever to explain what is going on with them to another person. I said I write thousands of words and have loyal friends who have been keeping up for going on 25 years. Many of my friends are more educated about psychiatry than she is.

She said I am going to find a very hard time finding a therapist in this city who is as educated as me. That was hilariously awesome to hear. She sent me a list of all the links for support organisations in the city. There is an EDS support group!! Only for people who are 18-30 years old. That is… so Scottish.

I didn’t make my step goal today but I did back to back yoga classes and rode my bike 6 miles. I will choose not to be mad at myself.

I feel like I really should take my friend up on the long distance EMDR. That is the most stabalising option I have on the table. Separately I think I might even have found a friend who might be able to help with more active brain rewiring. I will not be more explicit. That will be good if it works out.

I’m scared. I feel helpless and out of control. I feel like I don’t have the ability to reach for hope right now. I am trying. I really am. I’m trying for positive moments with people. I feel unable to believe that anything could be better. I feel sad. We haven’t had sex in a while. That’s probably contributing.

I’m reading a fun book (I’m finally getting around to Go Tell the Bees), I’m binging Madam Secretary (again), I’m exercising, I’m sleeping an average of 9 hours every night over the past week and some. I’m eating vegetables and fruit and enough protein and fiber. I’m making concrete plans for the future in the near and short-term far future. I am still doing things to solve problems for other people. I am just at much lower capacity and speed. And today was fucking exhausting. Being around humans and having casual conversation was weird and awkward and uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say and I felt stupid.

Wednesday and Friday will be days with lots of people around and loudness and awkward feeling alienated fun. I will have a hankie for when I escape to the loo to cry. Fuck.

I want to say “I just want to stop feeling like this” but I already fucking know you can’t “just stop” feeling something. You have to move towards feeling something else instead. I am really scared.

Most of the things I instinctively move towards feeling are the things that make me bad.

I should go to sleep. I’ve had a sufficient amount of evil for today.

I don’t really think I need a therapist. I need friends I can feel comfortable believing they know about the scope of my humanity and they are ok with it. I don’t have many of those friends here yet. I get limited amounts of time where I feel mostly accepted. I mean, Bestie and I will walk through fire for one another, we also have health problems and autistic, high needs kids. We share what we have left over and say thank you for what we get.

What I need is people I feel safe being in a room with where I can say whatever comes up in my brain without having to be afraid that I am going to be punished or ostracised or seen as other forever. I mean, I am ‘other’ in a great many senses–I’ve got the whole immigrant thing going on. That’s fine. I’m not ridiculous about this. It’s complicated and late at night and not important right now.

I feel deeply lied to. That buzzer is going off really hard in my head. I feel like I was told that it was ok to do things. That it was explicitly fine and I was still punished for them. I feel set up to fail. I feel like there will always be a way to spin my behaviour as disloyal mainly through inadequately narrow interests. I’m twitchy as fuck. I feel angry and ragey and like I want to beat something until I break it. I want to destroy something. I have kept every fucking man in Scotland at arms length. I have not seriously flirted. I have not issued a come on. I have not tried to get someone to want to have sex with me. I have been so good.

Burn it all down.

The only time I’ve ever heard a Scottish person come it was my rapist. Fucking cheers for me.

But that part wasn’t the rape. That part was me. That part was me feeling like I needed to be in control and I needed to decide what would and wouldn’t happen and I dictated exactly what I would take from him. And I took it.

And I put him in prison.

So, I look like I’m setting up a torrid affair? He doesn’t strike me as the type to actually write letters and I’m not sure how much email access they have. Anyway I’m not planning to visit him.

There are magics you don’t understand. There are things that compel me and I don’t know where they come from. Was it training from my dad? Was it me trying to get to know him and having a fucked up view of how “mentorship” works since almost every single one of my mentors fucked me at some point? I will edit out long the rant about stuff related to the court case. I can’t say any of that. (Hell, should I say any of this?)

Fuck. Uh, if the trial goes well I want to go to karaoke and sing You Should Be Sad. I will make that happen. Where in the fuck near here can I do that? I will find out. Yes, sirree.

I don’t know what I am doing.

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I am losing my shit. I am hiding. I am not able to care more about every other person than I do myself. I feel like that is what I have been requiring of myself for years. I am allowed to be the most important person when I have a major medical malfunction and I can’t help it. Otherwise I exist to serve.

I chose this type of dynamic. I want to serve. I asked to be less than equal. I did not want to be just a wife. I never asked to be a full partner who gets to matter equally as much. That’s on me. That’s about me. I feel like tissue paper, fragile and easy to tear to shreds. I feel like an ephemeral unimportant object.

I talked to Travel Boyfriend last night. I have a chance to control the narrative just enough to maybe make it so Noah only seethes 2016 at me instead of including 2024. If I don’t have a date with Travel Boyfriend then I can get away with saying we discussed poly and I did literally nothing that was not a direct response to sexual assault.

Like all of my other acting out after sexual assaults don’t count because I was choosing sex at the same time. If I opt out of the sex then am I allowed to have this one just be treated as an assault instead of cheating? It doesn’t matter. I went to him. Noah watched my phone location and seethed knowing I was cheating.

I think I will hear 2024 along with 2016. Because I am a worthless cheating whore.

You have no idea how frustrating it is that I can’t beat my head on concrete anymore. My stroke risk is sky high. Enough doctors have tried hard to scare me that I take it seriously. No more brain injuries for me. I want to beat my head right now. I already have a raging headache and my neck hurts like fire. It’s difficult to focus my eyes. I want to get to the point where I can’t think anymore. I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to be inside my brain.

My brain tells me that every time I am in pain that should simply be the starting domino and everyone and every thing nearby should get in on the action and hurt me extra. There is no amount of pain that is enough for me. I am so bad that I cannot be hurt enough to feel as bad as I am. So everyone who walks by should hurt me too. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they will hurt me enough and my body will get to die.

If I do not perform to spec I should be hurt until I am back in line. If I do terrible, courageous things I should be damaged in retaliation so I don’t get too big for my britches. For the love of cheese I had better not try to climb that peg board. I need to be the bottom peg. That is the only justice.

If I am very quiet and small and I work very hard maybe no one will hurt me for a while. Maybe. I will probably be stupid and I won’t be grateful enough and I will be hurt for not displaying my gratitude sufficiently.

I chose this. I asked for this. I wanted to be less than. I shouldn’t complain when I get it. I will continue to serve my Owner until my Meat Sack gives out.

Sorry about the spam

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I updated all my WordPress stuff. Sorry about the spam dump of all the posts from the past few years. Now I don’t know where the fuck anything is and the layout looks really weird. I’m not pleased. Assholes.

I managed to run yesterday. The mile with a tail wind was 12 minutes flat. I’m pretty happy about that. The mile with the massive head wind was 16 minutes and *mumble*. Yeah, the wind makes a huge difference. My muscles are confused. I’m trying to wake them up but I’m doing it haphazardly. My hips and legs and low back are really upset.

I didn’t sleep enough. I woke up to cry for hours. Noah did not take the opportunity to lecture me more, that was good. But I can’t get out of my head that the only way I can stop doing the things that feel like such a betrayal to him is to stop doing anything. Who and what I am is not pleasing in its current form. I don’t know how to be better.

“You should be dead”. So many people have said it to me. So many doctors and nurses and therapists. At this point it feels like them speaking a wish. It feels like the wish of the NHS. It feels like the only way I will stop being so offensive and damaging to Noah.

There have been moments where I thought that me dying wouldn’t be ok because who would Noah look to for support? I’ve been reminded that he has needed support a fair bit in our marriage. He always finds other people to turn to. I should trust that he will continue to do so. He could find someone naturally monogamous to bond with. It would be better if I did it soon. He could still have a longer than 20 year relationship with someone else.

My daughter has been telling me that she wishes she could die when I don’t give her candy.

It is hard to believe that I am doing anyone any good.

It’s weird

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I like dropping bits from my brain like leaves on the stream of data that is the internet. It feels very alienating when I stop myself. I feel my personality, my sense of self constrict. If I am not sharing thoughts, did I have them? I need to be witnessed in a way that is awful and overwhelming and makes me feel empty. In it I see the way my children yell, “Look at me!”

Do we all want that so much it feels like a burning knife in our bellies?

I finally did something today. I cleaned the kitchen. It was pretty gross. Well, I cleaned most of the kitchen. As much as I could make myself do. I feel in myself this urge to go through and whip the house and garden into shape for the winter–it would take me 3-4 days of solid work if I felt whole enough to do it. Instead I think most of it won’t happen at all and I will stare at walls and wait to die instead.

Nothing expeditious will happen. I’ll just wait. Death is coming for us all. Every day we are always waiting for death. This is a morbid thing more than a suicidal thing. I am feeling morbidly obsessed with death. I feel like I can think about very little else and that’s really annoying.

I was listening to my “hope” playlist earlier trying to have some feeling in my body that isn’t negative and pessimistic and despairing. Fat fucking fail. I can’t.

I cuddled my baby and talked about how she is doing the best she can and no her mistakes do not mean that she is naughty. Sometimes she does do stuff that we aren’t very happy about. She isn’t trying to be mean. She isn’t trying to hurt anyone. She isn’t trying to destroy anything so no, she is not bad.

Why can’t I feel like that applies to me at all?

I’m freaking out about how much I want to see my mom and Auntie. I think I actually want to stop going back to California because I don’t want to feel like I could see them. I can’t. I have no idea how they would feel about seeing me. It’s been almost 14 years. It still hurts like a stab to the heart every single time.

Mama says I could leave Noah and move in with her if he is hurting me beyond what I can bear. I don’t think he is. Also: how in the fuck could I handle moving back to Santa Cruz? Drive past Auntie’s house every time I go to the Valley? Nah. Nah I can’t do that. I can’t. That’s a bridge too far. I really can’t.

Hell, I can’t go back to driving. Moving back to California is a non-starter.

Besides the fact that I don’t want away from Noah. That is the scariest thought. I am so much more afraid of losing Noah than I am of dying. I need Noah for what he gives me spiritually. Noah is the rock around which my life is built. I do not know what I would do without Noah. My life is built around serving Noah and that’s not something I feel motivated to change.

I would not be happier as a slutty single mom. I would probably turn into my mother and never have sex again because I don’t trust anyone. I would be terrified that I would expose my kids to a predator because I have famously shitty taste in people to trust. I like monstrous predators. Apparently. Or they like me. Or something.

I would not leave Noah. This is a hard phase. I’m not going to leave because he delivered on the “worse” he said he would give me during the vows. I knew it was coming. It was foretold and promised and everything. He’s hurting and not being gentle with it.

Noah tells a sad, pretty story about an orphan boy and his escaped, wounded rhinoceros. We trade back and forth who is the boy and who is the rhinoceros. I don’t expect him to always be gentle. I don’t know what I do expect. I don’t know what would be better. I have no idea what I would ask for. Right this exact minute I can’t imagine ever feeling happiness or joy again.

Right this minute I feel like I should cancel with Travel Boyfriend. There’s no way that I could deliver on the good time some other self who used to live inside me offered. That self is gone. She feels dead. She thought maybe it might be ok to really grow and change but no. I need to calcify and chip off edges. Right now it feels like she was the part of me who wanted to recover from being raped. You know what? Fuck the NHS. Medical malpractice my big toe. You are lazy and ineffective motherfuckers. I know it saves you fucking money. And it HELPS YOU CUT OFF THE EDGE OF THE BELL CURVE YOU MOTHERFUCKERS.

I feel sick and depleted and destroyed. My head hurts. My soul hurts. I hate doctors so much. This entire experience is so degrading.

How would I even be able to tell if I was so upset about Noah? How could I narrow down the sources of stress and distress? Do you know who supplies all of my support? Noah. Leaving Noah would be a form of self harm for me. Noah takes care of me through a great many times and types of incapacity. It’s not even just that he physically cares for me when I’m ill–he cares about my soul. He puts a lot of time and effort into trying to help me be ok. That’s one of the many things I’m really sad about.

Right now I’m not feeling better even though Noah is putting a lot of effort in. That feels like yet another betrayal. It feels like improperly displaying gratitude. That old chestnut.

I need to go to sleep.

I keep coming back to this deep unhappiness. I can’t perform good right.

Do I really deserve to be alive? Or am I far enough out on the bell curve that I really should have died already.

Harsh

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I’m not screaming and frantically wanting to hurt myself. I do feel harsh and angry and sick of being flexible. I feel like I cannot keep jumping through hoops to try and be good when there is no good that is good enough to not keep getting yelled at.

Parenting is a shitty gig in a lot of ways. Kids are feral creatures doing their best and you can’t regulate off of them. It’s not ok. There are predictable stages that are frustrating in their own special ways. It’s not that the kids are being extra hard. I just have so much less to give than usual. I feel depleted and diminished.

I’m really struggling with what it means to get help in this country. I am told I can’t get support from more than one person at a time… until suddenly I am told that if I wait to get help from different services one at a time I am told that I am declining help from one of the services and they won’t help me later if I turn down this offer. I’m deeply confused and overwhelmed. I feel like I’ve been threatened repeatedly by NHS doctors that if I am not properly compliant I will be barred from basic medical care from the NHS. I feel scared. I feel fucked over and abused.

Seeing more than one therapist is medical malpractice… until it isn’t and refusing the second person who is offering assistance means I am not compliant and I don’t deserve future help. I felt like I was going to get help from the ADHD prescribing lady until I talked to her boss and now I feel more hopeless, helpless, scared, and vulnerable than I did before.

I feel like I’m about to be barred from medical care because I can’t perform patient properly.

As we have just hemorrhaged money to be able to live in this country permanently, I’m feeling very scared that I will be unable to access the normal medical treatment that citizens get here because I don’t know how to be good enough. I feel deeply abused that this is getting so much worse because I was foolish enough to report a crime. I feel punished. I feel sick to my stomach every time I think about having to deal with the doctors here.

When I think of that insulting lecture about how people don’t get better because the glacial pace of the NHS is deeply painful and they don’t continue to come back for inadequate, inappropriate care. I can literally tell these people that I have paid for tests that reveal that genetically a drug won’t work for me and they tell me I have to take it anyway or I am being uncooperative and I am not interested in my own mental health.

I am fucking livid.

Mama was asking me if most of my feeling bad-ness is coming from Noah and the way he is melting down. No, he’s not helping overall at the moment but he’s not the reason I feel as bad as I do–certainly not on his own. I do feel really bad that he thinks I betrayed him but he’s entitled to evaluate my behaviour in any way he sees fit.

I mean, 2016. I will never be done being yelled at for my craven and disgusting behaviour. I can’t describe myself in mean enough words to convince Noah that I am sorry. I can’t debase myself enough to satisfy his feeling of being wounded. I don’t think he will ever forgive me.

I feel absolutely overwhelming like the next time I am raped I need to die. I cannot survive any more of this. I can’t. People are so fucking mean about me surviving. I can’t keep doing it. If I were a good person I wouldn’t be able to keep going through so much evil. The fact that I keep walking is part of why I deserve every punishment and insult. If I were a good person I would have been destroyed. I am a monster and I deserve every scrap of bad I receive in this life. The only thing I could do for the smallest ounce of redemption is to just fucking die already.

It doesn’t matter though. I have 11 years, 3 months and 19 days on my indenture. I am not allowed to die. I have to, in fact, work really really hard night and day to stay alive. I have to be careful about every fucking aspect of my life if I am not going to die in my 50’s. Between my 4 grandparents and 2 parents there were 2 suicides preventing folks from hitting their 50’s, and 2 folks who died because they wouldn’t take care of their bodies, and 2 motherfuckers who are too god damn mean to die–my grandfather made it to 86 and my mother is still alive.

My indenture runs out when I’m 54. I am going to have to work at making it that long. This is why I couldn’t have another child. Here is a fucking horrible thing: if I fell pregnant this week I would abort. That’s how not fucking ok I am. The idea of extending the indenture by an additional almost 8 years? Now. Not fucking ok. I am not working for that. FUCK NO.

Every time I do that silly thing where I bring up the 60th birthday party I want to have it is me trying hard to believe that I have that much of a future. That’s a sand castle I am not sure that I believe I will ever live in.

I don’t know how to get my head to be ok with the idea that I can’t survive the next rape. How do I endure the days of fear between now and then? I feel like I can’t get yelled at ever again for surviving. I can’t. If I am bad for keeping this shitty meat sack moving then I need to stop. I don’t want to be bad.

I am unable to perform the behaviour as a mother that lets me feel good in that role. I am not being a shitty abusive mother, but I’m not hitting the metrics I self assign.

I am definitely feeling like a shitty wife. My lack of instinctive monogamy is hurting my husband deeply.

Maybe it won’t matter. Knowing that I really should not survive another rape is going to be a good reason to never be alone in a room with people. Maybe I can cut off enough of myself that I will never be put in that position. I don’t think I would be forgiven for whatever I do so I need to ensure it doesn’t come up again.

The only sure fire way to make it not happen again is to die. The second most effective way is to be alone in a room as much as possible until I die. I feel really scared. I feel really helpless. I do not foresee a path forward where I can be alive and good and that hurts very badly.

If you can’t say something nice

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Keep your fucking mouth shut. I have no nice. It’s hard to stop talking entirely. I really wish that I could order up a different brain on demand and end up with a life I feel like I belong in.

I wish I wasn’t small and petty. I wish I had a generous feeling left in me but I don’t have one. I feel so empty and unable to react in whatever way would be the “right” way. I feel listless and disconnected. I don’t like this moment.

I feel like I could blow away

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I feel thin and wispy and insubstantial. It’s a bit on the wild side recognising oooooh this is depression. The past few months have been burn out. Ah, hey, I can feel the difference. A lot of the time my burn out feels a lot like depression so sometimes I really struggle to tell the difference. I always feel weird about the fact that I feel depressed but I can keep moving forward and working. Do you know what I’m not doing right now? Getting much done. I feel like I could sit under a tree long enough to grow moss and fungi. I do not feel like I am going to be effective today.

I just want to fade into nothingness. I have no ability to create or repair or clean or help. I feel empty. I feel like I am never going to be able to do anything right. I feel like I will never be able to be good.

I feel like I am full of badness. I feel like I am bad. I’m supposed to interact but I don’t know how to.

I’ve been in bed for almost as many hours a day as I am out of it. Despite me usually needing around 7.5 hours. I just can’t get up. I’m too tired. I feel tired to the marrow of my bones. I feel stupid and unable to be coherent. I just can’t think well. I am not looking forward to having this drag on until the trial.

I’m trying to exercise more, I’ve got to pick that up. It’s hard. I feel like my lungs are compressed in a vice while I’m moving. It’s hard to breathe. I’m sad. I don’t even want to get up and get dressed. It seems like a truly unreasonable amount of effort.

Time is a thief

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Rosanne Cash wrote a touching essay about Kris Kristofferson. (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/kris-kristofferson-tribute-rosanne-cash-essay-1235129095/)

Write about it.

I deactivated social media accounts today. I’m not ok.

There’s a lot going on and it’s hitting me in waves. I’m struggling intensely with my overwhelming sense of inadequacy and badness. I am not dealing with the way I feel like badness is what my soul has in it and it is what I am and I can’t be anything else.

I thought I wanted the Choke Chain to end but I’m not really sure that it can. I’m not sure we will stay married if I change my behaviour.

When you are so bad that your husband goes to the police to document your horrible self harming sexual behaviour maybe I should go on drugs that eliminate my sex drive. Maybe that would be for the best. I should definitely stop trying to talk to people. I fuck it up over and over and over in ways big and small.

Right this minute I cannot perceive a future in which I am anything other than bad. I cannot perceive a future with less pain. I don’t see value in me or my existence.

I don’t understand why anyone wants me to stay when they don’t particularly like me or what I do very much. It’s deeply confusing to me.

Noah brought up the birthday book this morning. See–people wanted to demonstrate how much they care for me! Would you like me to go through page by page and list off all the people who don’t talk to me anymore? It’s almost everyone in the book. Some of them are dead. Some we’ve just drifted apart with distance… like me moving out of the country because those relationships were not working for me. Several they specifically divorced me in loud and messy ways. The ones who wrote the most about how I am the most amazing–those are the ones who read me for the most filth when they were done with me.

I am feeling intensely done with me so I’m not judging.

Write it down. Be bigger. Take up more space. But I feel like when I do that what I am actually doing is spreading toxic sludge all over innocent victims who don’t deserve that.

When I take up more space and put myself out there I am raped again. Then my husband is going to spend months or years analysing every interaction I have with men for more proof that he has to lock me down to prevent me reacting poorly to a rapist.

No. No I should not take up more space and put myself out there in the world. No. Stop fucking lying. It is bad when I do.

I am bad when I do.

Sometimes I stop and think really hard about how terrified I am of the ocean. Of how deeply convinced I am that the ocean is going to kill me. Then I think about being a counter phobic 6. That which scares me the most is that which I need to run at the hardest.

I know one way to make sure I only do one bad thing ever again and then no more bad things. I know one way. Every other way I will be more bad. I will fail more. I will hurt people more. Every other path is more fraught with more pain for me and everyone I inflict myself on.

I am not going to kill myself. I have a 6 year old. That’s not an option. There is not an amount of pain great enough that I deserve to have it stop in favour of her hurting more.

I hurt and I feel empty and unlovable and worthless. I feel defective and disgusting.

I feel like the single most heinous thing I do every single day is wake up and force the world to endure one more day of me being here.

*tap tap tap* Is this thing on?

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Hi there, whoever you are. I haven’t felt ok about writing here for quite some time now. I’ve had a lot of self doubt and anxiety going on. For a little while now I’ve been blogging elsewhere behind a fence but that’s not feeling appropriate anymore. I’ve been trying hard to be in the closet because it felt safer. It no longer feels safe. Now it feels like a risk.

If you are in the closet people can try to use information to threaten you. My best source of safety is having no secrets. It has been my approach for most of my life. Sometimes I am scared for a while and I shut down. When I feel under threat or if something happens, once again I bust wide open.

I can’t get into details but I am dealing with prosecuting a sexual assault. It means that things are going to come out about my life. People will look me up and I have not tried hard to hide my life. I am not enjoying the fact that I get to come out to folks whether I want to or not. Not that being in the closet has been awesome for my mental health. It isn’t.

I’ve been really depressed for a long while. A lot of the time I’ve been in Scotland. A year or so ago I started getting past the post-partum hump and I have had a renewed sex drive. That’s been complicated with the restrictions and limits of my life. Noah has been pretty awesome about trying to ramp back up after years of me not being up for almost anything.

I don’t want to rehash everything I’ve been writing else-net but a lot has been happening. Noah and I are doing a lot of renegotiating our sex/bdsm dynamic. If you happen to be new here, bdsm is an acronym that means bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. Basically it is part of the human norm to like adventure during sex and this is the path that works for us. If it seems crazy, keep in mind that I went through what is essentially sexual torture as a small child. Yes I am weird and I have weird impulses, preferences, and needs around my sex life.

I’m feeling like I am drowning in shame. I am really hard into avoidance. The short version is I’m having a lot of PTSD symptoms. It’s been a minute since I have crashed this hard. I managed to get through the first couple of weeks post-assault just pushing through. In that process I did some good stuff and some stuff I feel really ashamed of and I feel gross and bad and like I deserve every bad thing that could ever happen to me. I feel like my reaction to the assault retroactively means it was fine because I am such a fucked up person.

I feel low key nauseous basically all the time. My stomach is hurting in a way it hasn’t in many many years. I’m having more nightmares. I’m having flashbacks. I feel trapped and helpless and like many many more bad things are coming. I’m sweaty a lot of the time from my level of anxiety. I am deep in hyperarousal. I’m irritable and cranky and I can’t sleep and I’m having memory problems. I am really emotionally struggling because of how bad my memory is right now. I am just not able to access a lot of memories stored in non-traumatised parts of my brain right now. I am deep in always/never and I just can’t access anything else.

I use the term “always/never” to refer to a really extreme version of state dependent memory. When I feel good I cannot remember how bad I feel sometimes. When I feel bad I cannot remember ever having any good feelings of any kind. My brain simply won’t acknowledge that the other side of the fence exists. This is not good.

It’s kind of funny that the standard wisdom for PTSD is that these symptoms appearing in the month after a trauma isn’t the end of the world, for most people this fades. It didn’t really get going for me until more than 4 weeks after this last assault. I was in “make everyone else ok” mode for the first 4 weeks. Then stuff started feeling completely out of my control. Now I’m freaking the fuck out. It’s been 6 weeks and it feels like the last week has been the start of a really shitty slide. I’m worried. I’m not ok. My desire to self harm or suicide is ridiculously high. I’m being careful and I’m not doing anything over the line. I’m careful to limit my drinking. I am no longer able to withstand the physical trauma of most of my long-ago preferred self harms. I can’t do anything that might create marks because that would be a cluster fuck of issues while I’m going through an assault trial.

I feel incredibly helpless and trapped and worthless and like there will never actually be an end to me being raped. I’m really fucking angry that I now have over 40 years of rape experience. I was really happy about only having 23 years of rape experience. Those 17 years where I didn’t get raped where pretty dang cool. I almost got to have a whole normal childhood span of time free of rape. It makes me feel really sick.

I had a hemorrhoidectomy and the recovery sucks. With all my health complications I’m supposed to not exercise for 8-10 weeks. Part of the reason I need to move back to blogging instead of using the other social media sites is that posting about my frustration about not being able to exercise leads to people pushing me to exercise. Yeah. That’s not ok.

The big change that is a greater deal of positive mixed in with the negative is Noah and I have restarted discussions oriented around polyamory. I have a boyfriend (whom I’ve never had sex with) and Noah is waiting a while because we have a lot to process. He will date. Hell, what I’m doing barely counts as dating. I’ll have sex with someone outside the marriage 8 months after we started negotiating. We are not rushing by any measure. The person I’m talking to is one of my oldest friends. We worked in theatre together right out of high school. We had a lot of interest in one another way back when and no skills for being able to have a relationship together. I still don’t know what’s going to happen or how this will all go but it is mostly a better experience than everything else this year so it’s the upside I get to have. I’m referring to him as my Travel Boyfriend.

I feel numb and empty. I feel like the only way for me to stop being in pain is to die. I mean, it’s true with my physical conditions. That doesn’t mean I get to die anytime soon. It just means I get to endure an unlimited and endless amount of pain for the rest of my life.

Today that is feeling very hard.

Vulnerability

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It is an unavoidable fact of dealing with me that the more off-kilter, the more threatened, the less secure I feel the less able I am to be demanding. I think it is part of the reason that I end up with friends who are so intensely, demonstrably loyal. Anything short of that and I just walk away.

I feel shitty about the degree of mind reading I need from people. “I am fine” is the first sign that I am not ok. If I am having a medium-challenging time I will say “Oh man. I have so many good and bad feelings.” If I am actually having a good time it will be “This is awesome!” “Fine” means I am doing very very very poorly. If you don’t know that, well, it means that people feel surprised when they find out how badly I am doing.

I am fine right now. With all that entails.

There are times when my choke chain is the thing that makes me very secure. I know I am shiny enough for Noah. So shiny he doesn’t even want me to sparkle at anyone else and he doesn’t want to sparkle at someone else. I am enough.

It is very easy for me to feel slighted, disrespected, and unwanted. I don’t like that about myself. Most of the time I don’t take it very personally or act like it is an affront–it isn’t. Mostly I am fine with the fact that I’m not much of a “real person” in other people’s minds. I keep people out at arm’s length because I need it to be ok that they are slighting me and disrespecting me. I can tell myself that they don’t want me because they don’t particularly know me and I am not going to let them get to know me so it’s fine that it’s out at a distance.

Trusting people takes a lot. Believing that people value me is very hard. Mostly I assume that other people can’t value me more than I value myself and it’s all my own fault I am not loved more.

Not being shiny is so deeply tied to shit with my mother. I wish that I didn’t interpret the slightest whiff of “not that special” as I should disappear and leave. I wish that my brain didn’t fill in that beginning with, “You were born unwanted and unloved and you will die unwanted and unloved.” It is so hard to believe that anyone loves me. Less hard with Noah than with other people. But if his level of devotion is the bar then no, I won’t ever believe that someone else loves me.

Sometimes I wish that I hadn’t decided to have kids. I would be done by now. I wouldn’t have to keep hurting this way. I wouldn’t still feel in the pit of my stomach that of course I am not esteemed or valued–I am a worthless whore.

Establishing yourself in a new place means accepting rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection and I must keep a smile on my face. I must say that I am fine.

Is it a broken coping mechanism or an adaptive, necessary one?

I don’t know. But it is such a basic part of dealing with me that I am pretty stunned when people don’t understand it after a long time of knowing me. I feel like I write about this specific type of deceptiveness a great deal. If someone is close enough to care what I write about (the horrid slog that it often turns into) then how can they say that they had no idea that I would say that I am fine when I’m not fine? It’s a mystery.

It is also the reason I’ve been crying. I don’t feel seen. I don’t feel valued. I feel like discarded trash. I feel like there is no point in sharing vulnerability slowly, gently over a long time because when the rubber hits the road I am going to be roadkill. Because I am not willing to slap an intimate person hard when they are crossing a boundary. I do that with people who don’t matter.

Instead I will say I am fine. I will go to my room and I will cry as quietly as I am able. Eventually I will come out when the fact that I am being a lazy, worthless, broken tool and I am not doing enough labour to justify anyone continuing to have me in their lives overwhelms me.

In my brain the deal is: work or die. No one has any interest in maintaining a worthless bitch.

It just drags on

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Depression sucks. I feel no joy or satisfaction. I feel no ambition or pride or desire to work. I just want to crawl into a ball and do nothing.

It’s not that I actually do nothing but my workload is 1/10 of my normal right now. I don’t have it in me to put my head down and plow through no matter what. I feel so empty. I feel like I have nothing to give. I feel like I am nothing.

Depression is not about your life circumstances or things that people can see from the outside.

Another turn

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Today I am 39. I feel like I should mark this for myself somehow. I used to care so much about seeing who I am reflected in words. It seems less and less wise as the years go by. I destroy relationships with my words. I hurt people when I share my thoughts. I hope and I dream for understanding when I pour my heart out.

It doesn’t work that well though.

I feel like this might be the most inward facing period of my life. When I was a child I had times when I was more isolated and more alone but it’s not the same thing. I am not out frantically trying to communicate. I am not trying desperately for understanding. I no longer have hope that I will find it and I am out of energy to try.

It’s kind of funny that I feel sad and withdrawn and depressed but about as far from suicide as I have ever been. I have made commitments and it doesn’t matter how I feel it matters how I act. I will show up for them.

I will smile and act pleased when all I want to do is curl up in a ball in a closet and cry. Because my problems are mine. Because it feels like the inability to feel happy is my fault and I should not inflict it on anyone else. It is no one else’s fault that I feel so empty. But I will do the dishes and sweep the floor and listen to the stories that other people tell and I will try as hard as I can to not think about how I feel.

Because it doesn’t matter.

It’s funny that being away from the large community of people in California both feels alienating and like a relief. I put so much effort into so many people. I’m exhausted and drained. Here I do not do that. It’s not that I am utterly friendless here, I’m not. But I’m not pouring out buckets of energy begging people to love me anymore.

That feels better and worse. In some ways that begging feels so integral to my personhood. Cheezeits this house and yard are so much more work than I had there that I couldn’t put so much energy into a social life if I wanted to. I feel worn to the bone. I feel like this move half killed me. So much has gone wrong this year. And I feel like I am a terrible liar because I didn’t take a year of rest. I don’t know how that could have happened. Not with everything that has happened that has been entirely outside my control. The only thing I could have done to seriously lower my work load would have been not painting the dining room. That was the expendable thing. Even my puttering in the garden was never a big drain, not really.

I had intended to spend a lot of this year working on fitness. I am so depressed and overwhelmed and out of cope that I have not done so, which may be part of why I feel so bad. I’m not sure what to do about it though.

I was talking to T last night and we were discussing the climate crisis and political crisis stuff going on around the world. He said that he kind of pities me because he has it much easier than me. He’s 50 and he expected to die long ago and when he goes it will make a few people a little bit sad but it won’t really alter anyone’s life much. I have kids. I have to work like a dog to extend my life and keep giving to them long, long past when he is allowed to just quit. I can’t quit, not ever. I have to rage against the dying of the light and do everything in my power to help these little people be safe and ok in the future.

I am absolutely convinced that I wouldn’t still be trying so hard without them. I have mixed feelings about that. And our sweet baby extended the childhood period by a decade. I will spend thirty solid years with children I need to house and feed and take care of. I’ve already been doing this for over 12 years. It’s a lot. I’m not that far into the second decade and I have a third way off in the distance. It is daunting to think about sometimes. Will I be a withered husk with no genuine emotions left at all?

I would say it’s just a bad day. But it’s been a bad week in a rough month in a worse year.

But I love the trees I see out my window. I am grateful I will soon have room for more fruit trees. I have every intention of donating whatever I can’t can/use. I like seeing the hills and the firth off in the distance. I see plants and some sort of flowers almost around the calendar here. It’s becoming autumn and the trees are slowly beginning to change. It’s nice.

For a couple of months now I have wanted to decorate for Christmas. I don’t know if it is that I want to borrow Christmas cheer or if I want the year to just hurry up and fucking end already or if I want to feel like I am getting ahead on my to do list so maybe I can rest more. To be fair, I have rested a lot more over the last week and some. I caught a cold. It’s not fucking corona but I have to take the test anyway because otherwise EC can’t be at school. One of my buddies as a nurse and when I described my constant fall/winter funk she said it sounded like chronic bronchitis. Meh. It doesn’t really matter. I won’t do anything about it.

I am so tired. I sleep. Not worse than in the past and maybe even better. Doesn’t matter. I miss massage and chiropractic care. I like not spending very much money on life though. I feel like I’m doing a lot of waiting for time to pass. Waiting to see if I have hope again. Waiting to see if I will ever feel better.

Right now I doubt it.

Drifting

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If I didn’t feel so afraid I would have a lot to document. Life is being quite eventful but I feel like talking about it will cause problems that greatly outweigh how stressful it is. This is the least therapized my life has been… I don’t know, ever? I’ve been pulling back from my US friends. Not because I love them less but because I am utterly exhausted and weary and pursuing them takes enormous energy. I’m not able to put much into creating new friendships here in Scotland. I’m trying, but it feels like swimming uphill through a river of molasses.

My body feels so desperately tired. I’m sleeping a ton–that’s not like me. I’m sleeping 8, 9, 10 hours a night. Historically it is difficult for me to get more than 7 hours of sleep. After these longer stretches I am so weary getting up from a chair feels like a struggle. Is this a deeper manifestation of depression than I am used to? Is this the result of still healing from surgery? Is this trying to actually unwind from the years of anxiety in California/traveling? I don’t know but I feel existentially exhausted. I feel empty.

I don’t know how to fill my bucket. I want to feel more whole. I want to feel like I am thriving instead of treading water to survive.

It’s hard that I am not cleared to go work with plants yet. It’s hard that I feel like I’m not allowed to do much. I’m still in the “spending money to get established” stage (we don’t have enough bed-sized blankets… we have a ton of baby blankets though…). We found some teeny bugs in the food storage area, so protective containers must be acquired or we risk food spoilage. Not stuff we can just not buy. I mean… we could burn more oil keeping the house hotter. That’s penny wise and pound foolish.

There’s a lot I wish I could document for my own sake. But pieces of it aren’t my story to tell and I am deeply afraid of the consequences for other parts.

So I don’t talk much about how I’m feeling with my voice and I write about it even less with my hands.

Is this bone deep discomfort how other people feel? Finding a therapist isn’t really an option for a variety of reasons. Living here may mean that I am permanently out of therapy for a variety of reasons. Well, unless I pursue a degree and it becomes a mandatory part of my job. Wouldn’t that be a funny reason to become a therapist? It’s a way to make sure I have to be in therapy too?

I think a lot about the massive waiting lists in this country for mental health support. I think about what it meant when I was a kid that I had help even though some of it wasn’t the best. It was a lot better than nothing.

Comparing one’s life to other people’s lives is such a complicated and tricky thing. Sure, other people may have X, Y, and Z that you don’t have… but they also have A, B, and C that you don’t have and would you really prefer that balance? This isn’t a fence with one side or the other. It’s a grid with many many many different squares and balances and problems.

I like that often every ends up in my room a bit before bed time to curl up together and read. MC has decided to read Tamora Pierce books. They are a bit above her reading level, but if she sits close to me and asks for occasional help with words she is making her way through. She absolutely loves them. She is stunned that even in a magical temple school there is still bullying. Yeah honey… people jockeying for dominance is absolutely universal. That’s just life.

Today we have our first health visitor experience to check on YC’s growth. I have two doctor appointments next week: a pap smear and a trip to my GP to go over genetic testing results and talk about next steps for EDS assessment. I get the impression that beyond the genetic testing (that’s super fucking expensive to run) Scotland wants to rerun all assessments because they are not interested in foreign medical records. That’s going to be interesting. At least I have the results of 35 years of forcing my way through the US system like a determined train to use as a guide.

My hands hurt really badly. I am trying various handicrafts because I’m bored as fuck. Arthritis is going to be my forever nightmare.

I feel like a fucking whiner. I am definitely in the “but you don’t look sick” camp but my body is degrading really fast. It’s hard feeling like if I don’t talk about how poorly I’m doing I just look like a lazy lump but if I do talk about it I’m a whiner. I’m not lazy; I’m in pain.

I’ve gained weight again. Ha. Good thing I bought my trousers so large.

It’s time for a day.

I would do anything for love, but I just won’t do that

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I feel like I am trapped in a Meatloaf song. I want to do things to be pleasing. I want to show my love. But I don’t want to do that. What is that? I don’t know. What do I want? I don’t know. I want to not feel how I feel right now.

I keep thinking I didn’t have kids because I wanted a convenient life. If I insist on my kids staying in school it means I am ok with their classmates hitting them, spitting on them, elbowing them, telling them that they are fucking morons–shits–stupid–pathetic. It means I am ok with little girls telling my little girls that when they gain weight in preparation for puberty they should really go on a diet. It means I am ok with the authorities having a bigger problem with my children standing up to bullies than with the bullying behavior. It means I believe that my children should have to put up with low level harassment a lot of the time because it doesn’t rise to the level that a teacher considers worth paying attention to so stop complaining.

“It is preparation for the real world.” Bitch, if someone did that to me in the real motherfucking world I would either punch them or press charges. I wouldn’t shut up, put my head down, and take it.

You aren’t preparing them for a healthy adult life. You are preparing them to be victims and you feel quite sanctimonious about how it needs to happen.

I’m not yanking them out immediately. I am going to start emailing the fucking head every day with a report of what bullshit happens. Then when I deregister the kids I will have a paper trail of allllllllll the shit the school doesn’t think is important enough to deal with.

If I had a full time job and I had to work I would tell my kids to start punching people. But I don’t and I don’t and I don’t really want my children to have to toughen up in that manner. I have not put this much time and effort into helping them verbalize problems instead of hitting to give it up now. Sure, they are annoying to authority figures in a school who don’t want to hear it. But fuck the fucking school authorities. Their priorities are shit.

And really, there are a lot of things I miss. I miss not wasting so many hours on “Get up. Do your chores. Eat faster. Get ready to go. Pack your bag. Go. Hurry up and unpack. Do your chores. Eat faster. Go to bed because we have to wake up early and do this all again.”

We can get a lot done home schooling. But we do it at odd hours and when we feel like it. Is it a lot of stress? Absofuckinglutely. I feel less like I need to ride the kids super hard though. They are doing more than fine compared to their peers (Except for hand writing and fuck hand writing. Ok, we will work on it…. but seriously. Fuck hand writing.) and that was what kept me up at night worrying. Yeah, I hate having to push them through work.

But I love having hours a day to read together. I love having time to sit around and draw together. I love watching the neat projects they build with all of the time they have. I love knowing that they get to play with dolls and be imaginative when kids their age in school have already given it up because they are trying so hard to be “big”.

I am making contact with the home education community. I’m finding kids their age who are into Minecraft and Scratch and art and reading. Do you know what they aren’t finding at school? Kids who play Minecraft or who use Scratch or kids who are as obsessed with art and reading as they are. At school kids call them names because they don’t play Fortnight. At school kids mock them for not having an expensive brand new phone. At school the kids make fun of them for not being on social media.

Fuck school.

A mother told me the other day that she is getting her 7 year old an iPhone 6 for Christmas because the kid is getting mocked at school for not having one. What the absolute fuck? She said that she doesn’t want to waste money on toys because her daughter is only interested in perfecting her selfies anyway. Uhhh my 9 year old is getting a doll house and the thing will be played with constantly.

Yeah. Different strokes.

We are working on some fairly big changes in our marriage. It’s complicated. I don’t want to bitch about it here. I just want to write down for myself that this is when the contract ended.

I don’t know how to properly advocate for myself without throwing tantrums. I don’t know how to feel like I am being treated how I want to be treated. I don’t fucking know how I want to be treated.

I keep thinking about that doctor who told me that I just need to focus on keeping the bus on the road. (It’s a long metaphor.) He said Noah knew what he was getting into with marrying me because I was honest about my trauma history so he doesn’t get to bitch about it being hard. I don’t agree. I think Noah gets to bitch.

But sometimes keeping the bus on the road is hard even when I don’t have a good reason to point at. Sometimes just being me is hard. I feel like a whiner. I feel annoying and high maintenance and a whole lot of other rude descriptors. I definitely definitely definitely don’t think I am worth the effort.

But I throw tantrums if the effort isn’t put in because I am a fucking bitch. Apparently I have an incredibly high sense of what I deserve.

I think I am depressed. Noah thinks he is depressed. We aren’t the sorts of depressives who stop working. We put our heads down and plough on feeling little to no joy in anything. I don’t think it is SAD. I think we have been working so hard for so long without resting that our bodies are collapsing. Our spirits are collapsing.

Both of us feel like the other isn’t doing very much for us even as we can rattle off the ridiculously long chore list that we know our partner is doing… it just… feels inadequate. We are productive, just not content or happy or satisfied. We keep waiting for a long enough break to breathe.

I now have definite confirmation that our stuff is in the UK. It’s going to sit in a warehouse till December 30th when a company will go pick it up and a few days after that they will call me to arrange delivery. Our stuff will be in transit for 19 or so weeks. The estimate was 4-12 weeks. I feel glad that I can stop worrying that our stuff is lost. That’s been really bothering me.

I want my socks. And my long johns. And my books. And and and and and. I WANT THE GOD DAMN BIKE TRAILER.

This is my third night in a row of not really sleeping until absurdly late. It’s almost 1. This isn’t helping my mental health. Tomorrow I need to take a sleeping pill.

Fork.