Tag Archives: unfamily

Patterns and cycles

Folks keep asking how the kids are doing.

Shorty asked me if something was wrong with her because she isn’t as sad as the rest of us. I said, of course not, she is simply young enough that “forever” doesn’t mean anything to her yet. She hasn’t yet understood in her body what this loss means, but eventually she will and she will have waves of sadness for her whole life. It doesn’t mean anything about her that she is not fully understanding that when she’s about to turn 7. Her brain can’t see that far yet and it’s not supposed to. This is normal. Mostly she is being extra cuddly and loving with everyone. Frankly, it looks a little bit like fawning behaviour to me. She had a tremendous loss and now she’s trying to lock down/ensure that she doesn’t have anyone else leave her life.

Luckily she’s my daughter through and through so I’m not worried about the fawning stuff becoming her whole life approach. She is absolutely still as prickly as a cactus, as she should be.

Middle Child is quiet and withdrawn a bit more than usual. I’m trying to have cuddle time with them, but they are having a hard time with physical contact. They want it enough to grab and demand it from people who are resisting but they also can’t handle being touched a lot of the time. Again, it’s fascinating watching pieces of my behaviour set pop up in the kids. MC is the least verbal of my kids (hilariously still far above average) and the most introverted. We are crying together and talking a lot and sometimes we can get the oxytocin flowing enough to feel a little bit better together.

Eldest Child is, as usual, waffling between trying to over-function and feeling like absolute crap. So far his health issues track the most like mine. Like, I get why the NHS has trouble with someone like me who shows up late in life with a lot of medical trauma and little written record. It’s interesting watching them react in real time to his symptoms. His body acts like mine did at his age. Only I ate less nutritious food so most of my symptoms were worse. He’s wearing a heart rate monitor because the doctors are noticing how dramatic his symptoms are.

Oh, this is what happens when you go through life at a normal pace getting observed as things develop. It is different.

EC is trying to step up more than usual and I keep telling him to knock it off. He is a kid who needs to be taken care of for a while because he goes through the worst trauma of his life. I am deeply aware that, of my children, he is the one who idolises me the most and who *wants* to emulate me the most. So I am being careful to model rest. I am being careful to model that I don’t have to be perfectly strong in every moment to be strong enough overall.

He’s just barely starting to draw again, I’m glad he is finding his way back to the things that are his comfort. It’s been hard watching him for most of the last month as he sat in a daze unable to focus.

We are all manifesting physical symptoms of grief (and we caught a bug) and we are all off our feed. We are all working hard on trying to reduce our quantities when we cook. Noah ate almost as much as the rest of us put together sometimes. He had an enormous appetite. It’s a miracle he didn’t weigh 400lbs. He did a lot more exercise than was probably obvious (because I forced him to) and his brain really did burn through calories at an accelerated rate.

MC and I have dropped weight. I weigh less than I did when I graduated from high school. Good thing I wasn’t skinny then. I’m continuing to watch my body hollow out as I add in more exercise without eating as much as usual. I’m eating all I can. I can usually manage two small meals. My apron is receding. (That awesome flap of belly skin that you have left after losing a lot of weight.) It feels like my body is erasing the evidence of carrying Noah’s babies and that feels really weird and hard. I think I have genuinely stayed a lot fatter over the last 18 years because my body knew Noah wanted me to. He liked how I looked. Now it’s like I don’t need it anymore.

I had two really helpful calls yesterday, one with my Scottish solicitor and I figured out how I can get almost all the rest of the fussy UK paperwork off of my plate. It leaves me with only the disability paperwork and that’s quite enough, thanks. The second was with my brother in law. That call warmed my heart in so many ways.

First, it was really lovely just to get to look at the shape of his face. He looks like Noah and that made me less sad. He was warm and gentle and humorous with the sad. It was a balm to speak with him and share thoughts and feelings. I think we will talk again.

I really am grateful that I have gotten to be part of the Gibbs family. It hasn’t always been an easy connection–we didn’t all get along right away. We have found ways to relate and respect and speak with each other. I get the very strong impression that all of us have put a fair bit of effort into trying to be understanding and kind. I think the proof is in the pudding. They are not abandoning me without Noah being around.

Here’s a “funny” story. When I first met Noah, before I had told him much about my life, he told me that he came from an extremely abusive background. I asked questions like: was he hit often? Called names? Sexually assaulted? Were his parents drug addicts or alcoholics? Were the police frequently involved? The answer to every question was no. I scratched my head and asked him to give examples.

He lived with traumatised people. That’s an ACE point. (www.acestoohigh.com)

I have often mused that Noah did the best he could to marry the woman who most reminded him of his mother. I can see the reasons behind why my mother and his mother had the struggles they had as parents. I read a lot of books and did decades of therapy to get to where I am now. Those women did not have the benefit of such resources.

I continue to be staggered by my growing awareness of what a privilege it was to be a highly traumatised child/young person in California in the 1990’s-2010’s. I did not understand how special that experience was. I did not know how lucky I was. I would have died anywhere else because they would have said I didn’t deserve as much help as I needed. California said, “Ok kid if you need an ocean of support, here’s your wave.”

California paid a lot of money for my brain. Holy fucking shit do I have a lot of compassion for my mother and my mother in law for what they went through and the complete lack of support they received when they were young.

It was nice talking to Noah more over the years about his family history. It was *amazing* that we got to visit his grandmother near the end of her life so I could ask her for lots of stories about her life. My children and I listened. This is their history. This is how their family grew. My grandmother in law was a hard woman. She was a survivor to the bone and she was not gentle about how she did that.

My kids have been talking a lot about what they are carrying forward from the people they have lost. Admittedly, they did not have as close of a relationship with their uncle as we all would have liked so that loss is more abstract for them. I can see my children specifically creating their own place in the stories from their families.

We are survivors. We get through very difficult things even if our bodies are crumbling and in terrible pain while we do them. We are people who reach for healing even when it feels hard because we have seen the results of what happens when people do not. We know in our bones the ruptures and losses that divide us from feeling loved.

I was really glad that I got to visit my grandmother in law at the end and ask her to tell me about the pain from her childhood. I understand why she was so hard. I understand how hard she felt compelled to run to get away from the people who had hurt her so much. I understand why she isolated herself from adult support then demanded it from her children, often so she could go help other people’s children.

I think of my grandmother bringing in foster children and neglecting my mother because my mother’s needs weren’t as important as the needs of those other children who had suffered more. I think of my own experience moving 50 times as a child through more than 30 foster homes.

How are my children doing? Shockingly well all things considered. I am grateful that the requirement for school no longer exists. I don’t have to force them to conform to a huge number of demands. We get to calm the fuck down and be slow and easy for months. Enough exercise to keep our bodies from degrading. Enough outside time and social contact so we don’t get super depressed. A lot of rest time.

My kids like to grin and say that if you measure by how things are going from generation to generation they might not even mess their kids up at all because I’ve only done a tiny bit of damage. This amuses me. I don’t think they should be evaluating how much damage I’ve caused yet. Time will tell. They are still in it with no perspective.

Having a parent who has mental illness is an ACE point. I knew it going in. I knew it deep in my bones. I knew that my tendency towards erratic behaviour was the single most dangerous trait I bring to the table as a parent. Noah became my stability and the person who told me no for a lot of my harebrained idiocy. He kept me from over-working myself to the point of being a bitch. He didn’t want me turning into his grandmother.

How are my kids doing? They are living with the realities of their brains and bodies and what that means for absorbing trauma.

My kids keep saying things like, “He always did seem too good to be real.” But he was, he was real. I wish so many things. I wish he had been able to reclaim the part of his soul he killed off in boyhood. I wish he had been able to see his family the way I did but that’s not fair. Of course he can’t have my perspective, he didn’t have my life.

His family look like people to me. People are annoying sometimes. Meh, but they are trying hard to be good and as the years pass everyone has grown as people and they are more kind. It is hard sometimes that everyone has their own “What I got was too much” metric. This is why folks hate the Oppression Olympics. No one else wants to be held to my perspective. They need to have their own.

It continues to bear down on me like a heavy weight that I cannot turn to my mother ever again in this life. She really did cross the too much line. It’s not all her fault and that sucks but she never stopped doing things that were really damaging. My in-laws have. It has been weird navigating that with Noah.

I loved talking to my brother in law because he reminds me so much of Noah. I loved his laugh and the way he described things. He’s a really great story teller. It runs in their family. So many good things run in their family. I don’t fully understand why Noah had the feelings he did. I genuinely don’t. I wasn’t there when he was small. I don’t understand his story.

Living the way we do all together like a pile of sleepy dogs I am deeply aware of how much Noah and my kids do not have my understanding of how life works. When I feel annoyed for a bit for feeling taken for granted I try to have a giggle. I created this sense of entitlement. That’s kinda awesome.

Look at how far our families have come. We made children who have echoes of trauma but until now, not a lot of their own. They feel allowed to stumble through life until they fully come back to life. We are being fairly gentle with each other. I’m not being perfect. It was noted that I have regressed. It’s true. Part of that is I am back to the full time body load of parenting I had back when this behaviour was previously observed. For most of the time since then Noah has been a more active parent.

I am doing my utmost to try to surrender to the understanding that I am practically back on baby duty because that amount of co-regulation and oxytocin building is most of why Shorty is doing as well as she is. Her bucket is being filled constantly. It’s hard on my nervous system though. I need the exercise. I don’t really know how to regulate off the kids. I have never allowed myself to. I have always done that from Noah. This is so hard.

I have millions of words in my head but if Noah can’t read them, what is even the point? I wrote before I met Noah. I wrote from when I was small. Hell, I went to graduate school for writing before I met him. I am not a writer because Noah declared me to be one.

I do believe that I have only created the art I have created because Noah encouraged and coaxed me into doing it. I never felt justified in doing it for myself. I learned how to do it because I was bored at home with the kids. They watched me go through trial and error and adapting and having to start again. They watched my mistakes and watched me shrug and say “Such is life” and move on.

That feels almost how they are trying to handle this death. Of course this terrible thing happened. Life is full of wonder and beauty and death and suffering. The good is so good partly because of the contrast with how painful life is. I keep telling myself that it is ok that I don’t have hope yet. I have duty. Duty will keep me moving forward. I will have hope again. It’s not fair to pretend or to act like I feel something I don’t. That would fuck up my kids. There are layers to it, but I need to be some level of open. They need to see it for them to feel permission to have the same openness. It’s not always my turn to be open; I STFU and listen quite a lot. That’s, in fact, most of the relationship.

I am very clear that I am here to be the witness to their lives, they are not here to be bit players in my drama. I got to witness the last almost 21 years of Noah’s life. I am really sad I didn’t get more time. I’m glad I was there in the ways that Noah wanted me to be even though it soured my early relationship with my in-laws. I set some harsh boundaries early on because he asked me to. He wanted them set but he didn’t feel capable of doing it himself.

It was really nice hearing my brother in law talk about how for the last 15 years his relationship with Noah has been good in ways it hadn’t been before. Both sides grew up. Both sides made their peace with the hand they were dealt in life in different ways but they appreciated their similarities and common traits. I think things would have continued to improve. Noah really was finding his way to deal with his inner alienation.

I did something I shouldn’t have done. Noah always told me that something was only a sin if you weren’t willing to admit it. I went and read one of Noah’s chat logs with one of his friends. I knew this was the person he had most leaned on for his side support for marriage challenges. That was an experience. I’ve also gone through years of daily reports of what he did to be a good or shitty person that day. Should I have done this? This is like collecting the letters of the dead for study.

All of his criticisms and complaints were fair and valid. I have no rancor for the way his friend was defensive of him. It’s lovely to see. I’m glad he had a #TeamKrissyShouldBeNicerToYou. That’s excellent. I agree. I should have been. I was as nice as I could be as much as I could be and I know that is never really enough. Not when you are walking around with the kind of attachment trauma Noah had. Eventually I believe I will forgive myself for not being able to subsume into him enough to fully fill that ache he had.

I think he would have talked to people less and he would have grown less if I had tried harder. Would that have actually been better? I’m really glad other people got to benefit from him existing. I’m glad I wasn’t selfish and small about him. I’m glad that I pushed him so hard to fully execute his plans. Don’t start shit and quit. He really loved being held to account.

As much as he parented me I parented him. It was a really interesting dynamic. We talked about a lot of the specific ways we needed this support form each other. It was conscious, deliberate, and highly considered.

When I was younger I did a lot to seek out people who would play parental roles in my life. I needed a lot of guidance and mentorship. It is fascinating feeling in my body that I am not open to such a thing again. It is the same thing as when I had my third child I had this huge no fucking way am I going through that shit again. My first labour was 49 hours. My second was 9 days and I had a hemorrhage and nearly died. Neither of those made me feel done. I still felt called to have another child.

Humans are narrative seeking creatures. The timing and placement of our third child was a truly magnificent layered cluster of “it was foretold”.

For many years I patterned off my oldest child; as he went through ages I would have flashbacks and abreactions and struggle with the difference between what he experienced and what I experienced. It was viscerally difficult on a daily basis. My oldest is almost as old as I was when my father died.

I can’t pattern off of him anymore. He’s going in directions I never did and I can’t follow or lead. Middle child I also can’t pattern after because they are at that stage where they must push me away with both arms. It’s developmental. So here I am going through trauma mostly focusing on my youngest.

Her story is not like mine, but she is going to have a hole in her life. My job is to model how to fill that hole without being compulsive, self-destructive, or desperate. My job is also to keep the lessons from her father active in our life. His influence really will live on. We all want very much to honour him.

I truly never expected to spend a lot of my life valorizing a dead father. That was not on my FML BINGO card. He’s really worth it though. Time to catch my second wave of sleep.

I don’t understand how I keep finding out I’m optimistic

I thought I could get the paperwork done this week on my end. Cue hysterical laughter track. It’s going to take a lot longer and be a lot more complicated. I feel really overwhelmed and scared and like I don’t know how I am going to get through this. Noah dying is going to be more expensive than I thought. We weren’t as close to set up as we thought. This is going to suck.

It will end. But it won’t be done in January. I will hope for February seeing the completion, because goodness this is painful and awful to do. Also: most bank accounts are frozen and that scares me. It won’t stay true forever. It’s normal. I have run money for a while. It’s just terrifying because it’s one more thing that feels out of my control.

Gosh if that isn’t thew whole theme of my life recently: I’m not in control.

I’m really struggling.

I feel like I reach for him dozens of times a day to remember over and over again that I never get to feel good like that again. I am not destined to be loved all of my days. I’m not good enough.

Well, that’s not fair. My kids are definitely going to love me for the rest of my life, as are my friends. My friendships have a habit of being tumultuous. Noah was my rock, my stability, my emotional security relationship. I don’t expect to ever trust anyone enough to have a secure attachment again. I need to go through my life with the clear and present knowledge that I am not allowed to need someone to be ok. Never again because they all go. I will always be left. Or I will leave, cause hey my mom is alive.

People keep asking if my family is coming to help. My friends are the closest thing I have to family. Friends who I, mostly, don’t talk to all that often because our lives are very separate. I grew away from everyone. I did what Noah wanted. I tried to learn how to only cling to him. I’m having a lot of mixed feelings about every choice I’ve made over the past 20 years. I wish I had picked Noah every time. I wish I had learned to cling more tightly earlier so he wouldn’t have had to spend so many years feeling insecure and sad.

I don’t know how to embrace my future. Luckily I have a good 11 years before I need to think about it.

You are on your own, kid

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

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

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.

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

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