Tag Archives: unfamily

You are on your own, kid

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I’m trying to figure out how to wrap my head around the next stage I need to move through. I love talking to crazy hippies. They have useful ways of framing issues.

A lot is happening around me and to me and even within me but I am just me in the middle of it. How do I shove these different layers of experiences into different boxes so that I can walk forward with less dragging me down? I won’t be having help from a therapist for this time down this labyrinth.

Rape is spewing out all over the place in ways that are deeply problematic. There are the historical layers of training, response, and even most of the deep suicidality comes down to trying to escape that pain. There is the physical damage and the emotional damage and the psychological.

The physical damage is still present in the forms of pockets of deep scar tissue around old wounds and injuries. When I am extremely emotionally dysregulated this gets worse. Luckily my cunt has been improved dramatically with the lovely process of pelvic floor physical therapy. My back is fucked for the rest of my life–it can’t be fixed. It must be endured.

The emotional damage is in the ways I have shitty behaviour patterns from my life, I am emotionally abusive because I talk about being suicidal. I talk about raging self hatred and how I deserve really over the top punishments to everything. That is emotional abuse towards the people around me and it’s not fair. That’s been an ongoing battle my whole life and I am a lot better than I was, until something happens and I slip. I don’t know that I will ever fully conquer this hurdle.

Psychologically I would say that that the panic attacks and mental confusion and explosiveness (often due to overwhelm) were in a pretty great place as of the start of this summer. I was a little irritable and deep in burn out, but I wasn’t having PTSD abreactions or panic attacks and I wasn’t suddenly screaming from out of control terror. This is the area that I think has the greatest potential for shifting in a meaningful and timely way. I can actually do something about a lot of this, and I just need to get my plan in place. It would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to triage everyone else’s needs. The last week or two have already been a tiny bit of crawling out of the pit.

I’m not ok. I’m sad. I’m anxious. I’m not looking forward to my parents’ birthdays in a few days. I never do. I feel like I am trying desperately to feel connected and love. It is less of a lie sometimes. I know the love is there but I can’t feel it.

I reach for feelings of love and then my brain gets distracted thinking about someone who doesn’t feel able to have a relationship with me anymore. This year I feel my failures so deeply and painfully: the Bonus Mama, the God Mama, and The One Who Got Away are taking up a lot of space in my brain. How did I wreck those relationships? Will I keep wrecking everything in those ways? I don’t know.

I’m scared and I don’t feel very lovable.

My “on repeat” song today is the grudge by Olivia Rodrigo. I couldn’t tell you who I am thinking about. I just know that it takes strength to forgive but I don’t feel strong.

I actually had several better days before today. I hit another bump. Part of me wants to crawl into a hole and never come out again. It is hard to believe I should keep trying since I suck so much. Yesterday was better.

I hope tomorrow is better.

Surviving rape

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Surviving rape doesn’t happen in one day. You don’t survive by getting the fucker into a taxi and out of your home. Out of my studio. Out of the place that is supposed to be my sanctuary. That is the first step, not the last. It isn’t like surviving a car crash where you wake up and the crash is over.

Surviving rape means being able to look myself in the mirror every morning afterwards. Surviving rape is about thinking that whatever you did to get to the next screen was harm reduction. Every single shitty thing that kept you alive was better than dying. Surviving rape is binge drinking and binge eating and screaming and crying and falling to the pavement when out on a walk because the panic attack made my vision go black. Surviving rape is believing that you do not deserve to be punished and harmed more because you were defiled and made dirty by someone touching you or you touching someone else because you felt like you had to.

Surviving rape means opening yourself up to lots of judgment, scorn, derision, and contempt. Good people wouldn’t survive the shit I have. They die.

My very survival is what marks me as a monster. Good people don’t do the things I do, the shitty, dirty, disgusting things that people like me do. Good people would rather die.

I am still alive. I feel like I owe the universe endless apologies for not having the decency to just fucking die already.

I have screamed so much today that my throat hurts enough that I don’t really want to eat this lentil soup that is the first food I’ve had today. I’d rather not eat. I also haven’t been drinking. I don’t want to.

I want my body to stop.

I want to be good. Good people don’t live through the things I do. That means the only thing I can do to be good is die. That hurts so much. I have tried so hard to be good. It doesn’t matter. When it counted, when I was supposed to display my loyalty I was only loyal to myself and my survival. And that is why I should die. If I will not pick death over disloyalty I am nothing.

I betrayed my family. I betrayed my husband and made myself the lowest of the low. I feel like I want to use a scalpel to flay myself alive. Maybe if I make myself hurt a lot lot lot lot lot more Noah won’t be so mad.

Mama told me I don’t need to stay and let Noah make me feel so bad about myself. I don’t think Noah is making me feel bad about myself. I think Noah is reacting reasonably to the consequences of being married to a nightmare. I’m in this pickle where I can’t act good enough to not hurt him and I can’t leave without hurting him more. I can’t see a path forward that doesn’t involve me wrecking his life even more than I have.

I’ve betrayed him a lot. It’s not like this is a one off. It’s who I am. I am shit. I am worthless and faithless.

But fuck me, definitely no EMDR before the trial. Couldn’t be having that. Fuck the NHS. I can’t believe I had the ovaries to say, “I’d like EMDR. If not that then Ketamine, MDMA, or LSD assisted therapy. If none of that then I want nothing from you.“

That was pretty intense. I was freaking out and shaking and clearly not ok and I just blew off one of the higher up doctors at the psych hospital. That was maybe unwise. That smart mouth comment is now in my permanent record. I mean, I started with wanting EMDR? It’s not a controversial treatment? It’s not a drug? It’s not a wacky thing to ask for. That was not inappropriate. I just can’t have it.

I can. I just can’t through the NHS. Curse my internal hierarchy structure. It is fucking inconsistent and I hate it so much. One of the harem actually does remote EMDR already. It’s just a trick in his tool bag. I could probably have a session today or tomorrow if I could just ask him. Hell, I don’t need to ask, I need to say yes to his offer. He wants so badly to be able to help me in some way and I have not been able to let myself receive anything from him.

Someone who has been in love with me for almost 20 years wants to help me because my health care system is letting me down and I can’t let him. I have also basically stopped talking to Travel Boyfriend. I am deep in not-fun-land and I just can’t accept help in this place from people I am emotionally close to. I can pay for it. I can’t get it for free. I don’t deserve it. I do not allow myself to be someone who has consistent support from specific people. Well, not beyond Noah. The few other attempts I made as an adult went pretty sideways.

I am feeling incredibly burned. I miss the God Mama. I miss my mother. I miss Sarah. I miss the Bonus Mama. All these women. Hey look, Katy Perry’s song The One Who Got Away just came on. I’ve been calling Sarah The One Who Got Away on Fetlife. I failed to sustain that relationship.

It’s kinda funny that I don’t miss my sister. Fuck that bitch. I hope she suffers terribly for every day that she is alive and that her death is slow and painful as she fucking deserves for being a child raping piece of shit. She had a chance in this life to break the chain. Instead she forged new links. I wish her nothing but pain. Given her romantic choices I’m pretty sure she’s been punched a lot since then. I wish I could feel bad for her but I really can’t.

My brother is single and whining about how women use men up and take everything from them. My brother, who never worked full time or even managed to fully pay for his own vices let alone support his three children. Yeah. Poor guy. Fuck the golden boy too. I don’t wish him as much pain. He is suffering a lot from being who our father loved. He will suffer for all of his days. He refuses to believe that our father was evil. He tells people that our dad committed suicide because he was depressed. lol. Yeah, scared of a life of prison rape depressed.

Surviving rape is not pretty. I would argue that my sister’s soul has not survived. When she chose to justify her pain by normalising it and passing it to her children her soul died. What is left is a soulless monster.

I have not raped a child since I was a child. I’m not saying I get a pass. But my children have not been raped by family members. That’s something, I guess.

It’s really hard to eat this bowl of soup. My body does not want to. Why do I keep insisting on eating healthy food and exercising? Don’t I know that this is going to get me lots of years of more pain? 9.821 steps for the day. Even if I did have a panic attack.

I can’t keep getting punished for surviving. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I think maybe punishment is not something I can accept for something like this. I was ok with it when it happened. I consented. I consented, what, days after surgery? I kind of wonder how much I hope that you would hurt me enough to cause those complications I otherwise worked so hard to avoid. Could you have lived with that? Was it worth it? Sure. You think it was necessary to break the fawn.

Fawning is a survival tactic.

What I am doing now is not upping the chances of me surviving. I did that walking on the first day of my period without eating or drinking anything. Am I making good choices? I don’t know. I am flailing blindly. I’m trying not to talk to people more than I absolutely have to because I know that vile bilge will stream from my mouth. I’ve probably cut 80%-90% of my social chatter for the past I don’t know how many days.

Right now the random reinforcement of punishment (sometimes physical with consent in the context of our M/s dynamic and more often verbal in the form of lengthy diatribes about the crimes I’m about to commit) I have received in the past 4 months means I can’t risk talking to someone in a tone of voice Noah doesn’t like or I don’t know what will happen. I am afraid he will think I am fawning. He’s not ok and I’m not ok and I don’t know what will need to happen before either of us are ok.

I guess my sister and I both antagonise our partners to hit us. She does it by yelling insults and degrading their manhood. I cheat.

We both deserve what we get.

I say I won’t do things and then I go do them. Every time. Apparently.

It’s the first day of bleeding. With good luck part of this furious screaming in my brain will stop soon but I am not feeling like I’ve had a lot of luck lately. I feel like if it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.

I listen to other people talk about family as if it is a permanent fixture that cannot be undone. I think of Bestie and the brothers she hasn’t spoken to in over a decade and my family I haven’t seen in a few years more than that. Family doesn’t feel very permanent to me, in a general way. I am having a hard time with the war in my brain. I have to serve my indenture. Do I really owe many more decades beyond that? Do I really? Why do I owe anyone this much pain?

I reread the book I bought at the Lakota reservation called Keep Going. Man. That’s not a book to make you expect much cheerful shit in life. I think one of the reasons I have never felt comfortable with most pagan community is because I’m not willing to co-opt an old-world-religion-that-was-and-has-been-reinvented. That’s what I see when I see most pagans. The heathen cultures I grew up around were indigenous cultural ones practiced by descendants. I sure as shit never felt entitled to join any of what I saw, but I feel like my ancestors closed their ears to the Gods. I had a Mayflower fucker in my chart and the most recent arriving branch was a bunch of Mennonites that had been running around Europe trying to be the most repressive dickheads around for a long time.

I do not feel entitled to any Gods.

I do believe that Akhilandeshvari chose me. The Hindu temple on the corner was full of people who were a little confused by the white neighbours who came to Hindi classes and who dropped by to pay respects to the Gods and Goddesses occasionally. I have been given the strong impression by every Indian friend that they are totally cool with a Hindu Goddess picking me. They said she obviously knew I needed her. I think that is most diplomatic of them.

Here I am breaking myself and breaking my husband. We had been at a much better place.

I did not deal with being raped in a way that worked for him at all.

I feel like I failed the exam. I do not deserve to stay in the program. This is not my first time failing and being kicked out because my body could not do what was being asked of it. I’m not being kicked out. Noah won’t kick me out. That’s not something I worry about in any way. Just like I don’t entertain the idea of leaving him. This marriage is till death parts us.

Surviving rape over and over and over and over and over is partly done in stutter steps of eventually asking to be allowed to have some kind of agency and autonomy for my body after more than 4 decades of not being allowed to make all the decisions. No. That’s a no, dog. I’m a set of holes and somebody bought them. How dare someone else touch them.

I feel deeply dehumanised. I suppose that is a natural and obvious outgrowth of some of the kinds of play I choose to do. I suppose it is unsurprising that it is a natural and normal state for me to slip into sideways. You think maybe getting kicked out of a community for being a loud mouth who objects to homophobia, and dealing with denial of service from the NHS has something to do with it?

Hell, I’m even freaked out about how far from what I wanted the prosecution process is going to be. I’m going to have to go to court this time. They won’t let him out so he can suicide the morning of the trial. Phew. I have options about how to do it. I’m going to pick sitting in court and looking at him. That’s the least shielded way. Because why in the fuck would I do it by video in a room alone? That would be even more alienating for me. I would be even less of a fucking person just a figment on a screen.

My life is wildly out of my control right now. I can’t even seriously future trip as a hobby because I don’t know when the fucking UK government will finish our paperwork. We are picking this?

Yup. Better than Gunlandia.

I will take every piece of stress dealing with the NHS and the police and the courts and the cultural mismatch and low-key ostracism because I never have to worry about a cop pointing a gun at one of my children. I’ll take it. Most of my ancestors left this island (or the big one right next to us) almost 400 years ago. Yeah, there’s going to be some friction on reentry. I don’t resent that.

Noah is also unemployed for potentially the entire foreseeable future. It’s coming with a massive drop from where we had planned retirement income because otherwise all of the choices suck. I’d rather have his time than more money.

Yeah. Even though I had my door locked earlier tonight because I was not going to fucking talk to him right now. I feel like I want to kick him in the face and tell him to stop sniveling and get his fucking shit together. It is not your turn to fucking melt down right now and you are being a selfish dickhead. It can be your turn for the next 11 years, buddy. Knock it off until the trial. I guess you are right that it means you should just stop fucking talking for a while.

I just realised why I don’t like playing games. I don’t particularly enjoy feeling like a loser and I don’t have the desire to prove I can beat people. There is nothing for me in the process but bad feelings. I play because other people want me to. I never play enough to get very good.

Surviving rape never stops. The crazy shit I do that seems so inexplicable is maybe about my dad or Paul or Jeremy or Michael or Kevin and whatever the rest of those bitches names are. Fuck those guys. Fuck all of them. Every last fucking one. Right now I can’t remember the exact number and I really don’t want to try hard to figure it out. I think that would be really bad for me right now. I’m really glad I can’t think at all. Yay not eating or drinking.

The weekend that my rapist was arrested I played the song You Should Be Sad several hundred times. Yeah. That was fucking trippy to find out in the rear view mirror. I had no idea it was happening then. This song is going to loom large in my memory of this experience.

I think I am always going to be trying to survive all this. It’s going to be hard forever. I have a lot of physical pain that I can’t make go away with all the good food and exercise in the world. I am struggling on every level right now.

The most life affirming thing would be to throw myself on the net I have created. Instead I hide and scream and rock and cry. I can do very little right enough to trust that I am not going to get in trouble for it. Hell, an awful lot of this post feels like I am skirting the line of “don’t write about it”.

Wait for the trial to write. Wait for the trial to qualify for EMDR.

It’s like fucking no one wants me to survive.

I know you do. You don’t need to say it. Take it as read. I know. That’s not the point. I’m not whining about my friends doing an insufficient amount of reaching out. I’ve had more contact from old friends since I deactivated than I have in a long time all at once. I am not responding much. I can’t.

All I contain is poison. Am I even surviving? Traci said any amount of harm reduction that allowed you to get to another day was good enough. Traci ODed on heroin after getting kicked out by her wife and losing custody of her son. Yeah. I’ve gotten advice from some wacky ass sources in my life.

I have stopped daydreaming about the trip with TB. It is seeming less like a good idea by the day. I am scared that being in a room with me will be bad for him. I am going to fuck him up because I am so fucked up. 70 days from tomorrow. I wonder how I will feel by then? Fuck.

It isn’t feeling like a life affirming activity. It is feeling like proof of why Noah doesn’t trust me and why he should never trust me.

Just stop, Krissy. Stop being so bad.

Emotional hangover

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My whole body aches and feels overwhelmed and dizzy and crappy because I’m having so many emotions. Emotions about lots of people and lots of situations.

The kink community up here is getting big enough/active enough that sometimes there are conflicting opinions and desires. That doesn’t mean anyone is a bad guy or that anyone is doing something that is wrong. I am trying to learn how to effectively communicate and so far I’m not great. I can pinpoint exactly where I was trying to communicate and it sails right past people. That feels bad. That feels like discounting when it isn’t.

It isn’t that someone noticed that I was trying to communicate a thing and said no. The way I was communicating was ineffective and it wasn’t understood that I was trying to say a thing so stuff went in a different direction. That’s reasonable.

But I spent like two weeks trying to figure out how to talk about a thing and I had to spin my wheels very hard and by the time I figured out how to say it the response was, “You should have said this earlier.” I tried. I can point at exactly where I tried and you didn’t hear me. Part of the reason the communication failed is because I was trying to speak as if no one has authority and we are trying to start from scratch and you are used to authority and you just went about your business making decisions without consulting.

It’s an overall apathetic group of people and if you want stuff done you need to make decisions. I get that. That is a really common dynamic. This is such a small group that I was hoping for something more leaderless. I’m not specifically gunning for being the boss. I don’t have that to give.

Our water is off and on because the construction up the hill knocked out a water pipe and it’s not going very well. It has made everything annoying and complicated in our house for two days now.

I had a thing where a friend scheduled a thing then couldn’t make it at the last minute and in this post-Sarah life of mine I am absolutely shit at handling this. T and I had a thing I don’t know how many months ago where for a little while his life got super hectic and he started being flakey about our chats and I shut down and couldn’t speak to him about it for weeks because I didn’t want to explode or completely over react and my feelings about last minute cancellation are fucking huge. I try not to have these feelings. Most of the time I can handle the fact that life has unexpected changes but it’s not easy for me. I set expectations around a thing happening and then when it doesn’t I feel a whole bunch of really overwhelming feelings in a rush and I want to go to my room and climb into bed and not come out for days.

I don’t have space for that in my life. I don’t get to check out mentally for days at a time. I don’t get a lot of undisturbed rest. I get a lot more than I used to, but these things are not easy.

It’s Tommy’s birthday this weekend and that’s bothering me more this year than it does some years. I feel really sad. He would be 47 this year. Only he never got older than 22. He’s been dead a fair bit longer than he was alive. His whole story arc is so sad and tragic and unfair.

My ADHD meds ran out and I apparently don’t get a refill until after some medical tests that aren’t scheduled till next month. So I’m going on and off amfetamines and that’s not exactly ideal for emotional regulation and getting chores done.

We tried to reassign chores. Then a few really expensive wool items of clothing got washed. I’m doing the fucking laundry again and forever after because washing my fucking wool is not ok.

I’m spotting on day 14 of my cycle and that’s not normal. It feels bothersome and emotional in a way I don’t like. I assume it is related to the increase in running lately but it’s always emotionally uncomfortable to me. Day 14 is usually way too early for the PMDD cycle of ugh and crappy to be starting but it sorta feels like I am tanking emotionally and I have no resiliency left.

I feel like shit. I feel sad and lonely and incompetent and stupid and bad at everything. I feel empty and hopeless.

I feel really good when I am out running. I feel fully in my body and alive and strong. Then I come down from the euphoria and I want to crawl under a rock.

As awesome as I anticipated.

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My sister ran up and kissed me on the cheek and said, “I at least still love you.” (Cause of course I don’t love her.)
My mother thanked me for coming in a pretty sucktastic tone of voice. (I let my mother down so why wouldn’t I let my niece down?)
My uncle told me that I should come to his house at least once a week because ‘the women work more when you show up’. (I totally want to harass the women in my family to do more work for the lazy piece of shit.)
My niece’s father repeatedly groped my belly and kept making really strong sexual innuendo about how pregnant chicks are hot; this was overt enough to make Noah uncomfortable. (This guy tried to fuck me when I was eleven.)
My cousins didn’t really speak to me. (They are pissed that I offered to host Christmas so my 70 something year old aunt didn’t have to do all the work.)

Luckily I got to see two awesome women who show me what family actually is earlier in the day. I’m really grateful that I have such an amazing chosen family.

Unfamily

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I need to stop ranting at Noah, so here is some of the shit running around in my head that I keep saying over and over and I need to stop saying because I am wearing him out.

I feel like I was set up to hate his mother long before I went to Texas. Noah has told me horror stories for years about what an awful person his mom is and given my own baggage in this area, of *course* I have issues with her. She is abusive, domineering, and autocratic. What is there for me to like? Even given my ingrained bias I went trying really hard to have an open mind. I really did. I tried to be cheerful and friendly and I did not try to pick a fight. Even so, that is exactly what she has accused me of. She said I showed up and was constantly abrasive and looking for a fight. Her characterization of a conversation I had with her is about as different from mine as it could be. I was trying to be playful and funny and she said I was accusing her of being awful and picked a fight. ?! Uhm… ok… No, I’m not passive. No, I’m not quiet. I don’t think that means I am always trying to pick a fight. I told her flat out, “That was not me picking a fight. If you want, I can give you a demonstration of what it looks like when I pick a fight. I don’t think you will like it.” I was feeling kinda… punchy. If me being really really good is still met with anger and nastiness I feel there is little left for me to do.

I have now spoken with his dad on the phone twice since Thanksgiving. The first time he apologized for the inappropriate conversation that happened the night before we left and we talked about how I don’t want more abusive people in my life so I am just not going to deal with his wife. The second time he called me to bitch me out (very gently–he isn’t a forceful man) for sending Noah’s little sister the book The Mists of Avalon. They feel it is inappropriate for me to have done so and I should have checked with them first and gotten permission and by not doing so I am usurping that bitch’s authority. [Cake topper–part of the reason they deemed the book horrible is Noah’s brother doesn’t approve of the book either. When I asked him why he refused to talk about it. He just said hat he doesn’t but it doesn’t matter because it is “Mom’s decision anyway.” They both blame decisions on one another and refuse to talk about why. How mature is that?] Ok, his dad thinks he just called to find out my intentions in sending the book and to let me know that I should never take such an action again without permission.

So the first call was good and the second call was just awful. Me being me, I’ve been obsessing about the second call and trying to figure out how I want to become more ok with it and I wasn’t finding it in my heart to just walk away from it. So I called his mother. I told her that I gave his sister the book because I was trying to share something with her that had been very significant in my life at her age. If she wants to view that as a malicious act that is pathetic and ludicrous. I also told her not to have her husband call and bitch at me anymore. She claims she didn’t, but whatever. We got into quite a conversation that lasted almost 30 minutes. She told me off and I fought back tooth and nail. I will not be another person for her to step on. I told her flat out that I was doing my very best to be polite and friendly until she was being abusive with her daughter and that I just won’t tolerate. She responded in a way that indicated that she knows it is abuse, but “there are reasons for it that make it necessary.” Fuck. That. Noise.

I’m really glad that I told her off. I needed to do that. The more I let someone kick me the more and more pathetic I feel until my self-worth is in the toilet. Telling her that I won’t put up with her shit made me feel much better. I was very good at standing up for myself and not letting her bully me. I wasn’t abrasive though. I wasn’t real nasty I was just extremely firm about my boundaries in that way I am good at defending my boundaries. That was about when she threatened to sue me. Awesome. I still don’t know why. I think this is the last phone call I need to have with anyone in his family. I’m done. They are all willing to continue perpetuating this cycle of abuse and I’m not. Near as I can tell her only reasons for hating me are that I am not willing to let her walk all over me the way she does with everyone else. I’m too loud. I have too many opinions. Yeah? That’s too damn bad.

The even less fun bit