Monthly Archives: July 2026

How do we define ourselves?

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I have a yoga class in two hours. Does that make me a “yoga person”? I like it when I get punched. Does that make me the cause of my own abuse? My husband can punch me for hours and all I will do in retaliation is suck his cock and thank him. But some random dude stopped his car to yell at me while I was out cycling and he slapped my hand and I called the police and he was spoken to about assault. My tiny neighbour is exploring boundaries and when you tell her no she is apt to slap you–your face or your hand, whichever she can reach. I picked her up and gently set her outside my studio and said, “No ma’am. You can’t hit me. That’s not ok. I know it is hard to be told no. You feel frustrated and sad and you probably think I’m being mean. I am sorry I have to say no but I don’t have time to pick up all the things in that drawer from the floor today. Another day I will say yes.” She gave me a suspicious look but stopped crying and ran off to play again.

When we try to figure out if we are a good person or not how do we decide which moment to judge?

My best friend, many years ago, was absolutely determined to get into med school. She accepted horrifyingly unsafe living conditions so that she “had time to study” for her exams to get in. She lived with her parents, who were a master class on unsafe and shitty parents. She studied for 8 years as of when I last knew her. Her university GPA was really nothing impressive and she needed a perfect score. I don’t remember what the scale is, I’m going to pretend it is out of 1,000. She needed 900+ to qualify for admission. 8 years in she had never gotten above a 500. The tests are expensive. The study materials are expensive. She ate poorly because she took no time to cook and she had almost no money because she worked the absolute minimum to devote her time to studying. She was sleeping on an RV mattress on concrete blocks. Her back was doing so poorly that she had a gallon size plastic bag full of meds. She was high as a fucking kite at all times and her doctor thought she is heading for surgery as the very best outcome and probably a wheelchair. She would not in any way consider doing anything with her life other than being a doctor.

She came to visit me. She was supposed to help me with my wedding reception (she offered, I did not ask). She couldn’t. She couldn’t stand or sit or focus long enough to actually complete a task. She ended up spending all the prep time hounding me about how I was supposed to take her to a fucking release party for whatever Harry Potter book was coming out. I still had not read any and I was completely uninterested in spending the weekend of my wedding reception hanging out in line to get a fucking children’s book at midnight. Sounded like hell.

These sorts of non-communications passed back and forth for a while. Then I exploded after she told me that she was saving up all her extra money because she wants really fancy earphones for her 2 hour each way commute. I asked her why she isn’t saving money for a decent mattress since she is looking at surgery and a wheelchair because of the damage she is causing to herself. I asked her why she won’t get a reasonable, attainable dream for her since she is killing herself chasing a star she isn’t going to reach. (I am paraphrasing. I don’t actually remember the words I said. I know I told her that she needs a new dream.)

I was a horrible fucking person. Whether or not I was “right” about any of that I shouldn’t have said it. I had no right to pass judgment. It was cruel. It was unkind. I made someone I love deeply cry.

I mean, there are my scene fuck ups too. Once I was overly defensive on the local public mailing list when someone said that I had made their fingers numb during a bondage scene. (Not long-term numb, there was no permanent damage.) I shouldn’t have been a twerp and I was. I was kind of right as well, slight numbness in fingers is not a reason to flip out though it does mean you should probably modify your tie so that it doesn’t continue. Meh.

You say that you are not your trauma (fiiiiiiiiiiiiine Alebeard I will argue with your fucking assertion since you CAME AND TAUNTED ME AS SOON AS I WOKE UP THIS MORNING~) which I can kind of accept, because I think a person is defined more by what they do than what they have done to them. How do you measure the trauma you cause other people? How do you figure out if you are being in the world who you want to be?

I had a dear friend–I’ve lost contact with her. I should look her up. Anyway, I had a dear friend. She was sweet and kind and gentle and one of the more scary bad ass masochists I have ever witnessed in person and that’s saying a lot. I have seen many thousands of people play and I know a lot of extreme edge players. She was special. She was able to recover from levels of physical abuse and say “more please” in a way that is pushing way past the edge of self harm. She also had an eating disorder and she self harmed, so.

We were talking about calling red. I have stopped scenes that crossed explicit boundaries; she had never done so. I asked her how she felt about that. She said it scared her. She said she was afraid that she was going to let someone kill her because she genuinely didn’t care if she walked away from scenes. I asked her if she thought that if she got to red once if she could do it again. She said she thinks so and that’s why she is afraid to do it. Doing it even once is telling herself that she deserves to live. She couldn’t do that.

I asked her if she wanted to red.

She started crying and she looked down for a while but eventually she nodded. We had played together quite a bit and we had long since negotiated physical limits and toy stuff so I could simply ask if she wanted me to make her red. She said she did.

I beat the shit out of her. The whole time I hit her I talked to her about why she is worthy of love. Why she deserves to protect herself. Why she is special and wonderful and strong and pretty and kind without being injured at the same time and why can’t she hear that? Why can’t she believe that she deserves to live?

I don’t know how long it went on. I remember it as being one of those “forever” scenes where you lose time completely and you can go for 3 or 4 hours before dropping in exhaustion. It stopped because at some point I was sitting on her and slapping her in the face over and over telling her that she has to tell me to stop. She has to live. She has to love herself enough to live. She has to say stop. She has to say red.

She broke.

Why is making one friend cry because I said unkind words enough to mean that I am a horrible person but beating someone for hours until she cries and tells me to stop is ok.

She made positive steps in her life after that. The rest of that is not my story to tell.

Sometimes forcing your will on someone is a service and it is desired and welcome and a healthy thing to do. It is negotiated and desired and created and facilitated through an agreement. Sometimes you are a fucking dick.

I have fucked up a lot in this life. If I am not the trauma I experienced in childhood, cool ok, am I the trauma I inflicted in my adulthood? Even you understand that there is a difference between the trauma you inflict with consent and the trauma you inflict without consent. I understand that you (particular, singular you) differentiate hard between people inside your sphere of care and people outside your sphere of care. Think about accidental trauma you inflict on me, or E or the kids. That has happened. All humans fuck up and hurt people. It is part of the process of learning how to exist in this life. We learn a lot more from mistakes than from always doing it right; at least that is what I tell myself to justify how much I have fucked up. I definitely have a bone deep understanding of why I will never speak to someone like that again.

But the real question is: will I ever beat someone like that again? Quite possibly not. I might get beaten like that again. It’s different. There is a very specific experience that comes from giving someone intense catharsis that is absolutely intoxicating. You know it well. Now the freaking yoga class is coming up sooner and I need to eat before I leave.

Was that a good enough argument?

~P.S. I love you, @Alebeard. You are weird as fuck and a troll and kind of mean and you still delight me. I’m not ok with your time on this world ending soon so knock off that line of talk. Too many people have died recently. I am not at all ready to lose more. Go for a fucking walk. I hope you are eating your hippy vegetables. Live long, my friend.

I miss sharing every thought with him.

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My son shares his dating exploits with me the way I write mine online. I find this touching. I have not modeled this with him as I have been dating. I have been incredibly moderate in what I have shared for lots of good reasons. He had no notion of how many people I uhh auditioned last year. I have always treated my friend reports to his dad like this, though. He watched me do it. It’s like he is live-tweeting at me now. I get little blurbs from him through the day.

It’s funny how since Noah died EC and I both notice that he is a lot more like me than he used to think. One of the things I wanted (and got) in having a third child was to break the “teams” shit we had going before Shortie came along. For a long time Eldest Child was Noah’s Gemini and Middle Child was my Virgo. In many temperamental ways the patterns are remarkable true and consistent. Noah and EC were both oldest kids. For a long time MC was the baby like me. Noah and EC tend in the stoic direction. MC and I struggle with our explosiveness. There are distinct and dramatic patterns.

MC is discovering ways that they had a lot more in common with their dad than they knew. Puberty and social isolation are combining to teach them a lot of the overwhelming anxiety that Noah struggled with despite growing up in a stable home. MC doesn’t have the bone deep sensation of being adored. I failed there. I didn’t manage to inculcate that a second time. I mean, they know I love and adore them. They have a lot more awareness of the world rejecting them. They feel more isolated and different. They didn’t spend as many years in the welcoming bosom of my queerkin in the Bay. They lost that and then went into lock down in a new country. They have a lot more anxiety than EC does. EC had a big bounce of anxiety when he went to school. With MC it is feeling like something where they will have to settle into long term management of chronic mental health struggle in this area.

EC wants to share every thought in his head. I am still his favourite audience. I choose shouting into the void. It is the only place I have ever felt comfortable. If people opt in to reading my words here, it isn’t my fault if they have feelings. I didn’t make you come here.

I am struggling really hard. I over extended myself. I should not have reached out to Pretty Lady yet. I needed her to have far more patience than was considerate. I wanted her to invest in me in the long run. She needed me to invest in her more upfront. I can understand not finding that deal appealing when I can’t match the energy she has right now. I can’t though.

Some days I pause long enough to feel in my bones how deep my burn out is. I was intensely burned out before he died. He wasn’t looking for a job because he wanted to be able to genuinely give me long periods of rest. I wanted to stop homeschooling when we moved to Scotland. I am tired. I have some friends who spend time with Shortie so I can be off duty for a bit. They all say that when they go home they are exhausted. Most of the time they fall asleep. Hell, my cleaning lady is here for two hours and she says she goes home and can’t do anything for the rest of the day because being in my house is so overwhelming. We are just talking around her. We aren’t being intense at her.

As I hide in my room because I am banished from the kitchen I have to take a moment to feel in my heart that I got here. I have one adult child. I have a quasi-adult child in 7 more weeks. (Scotland is weird.) I have one more small one to get through puberty. This is what I set out to get. I have always felt deep shame that “find a partner” was not my #1 life goal. I talked to Noah about this. He knew he was, in large part, a means to an end. He helped me have children. That was my goal. To make people of my bloodline who were ok and who made it to adulthood with as little trauma as possible. That level is higher than I would have preferred. I have my babies. They are magnificent to me. Including in the way that gets me banished from the kitchen from 10pm-12am every night. That is when I have a choice. I can let a magical fairy clean up my kitchen in complete privacy or I can incur the wrath of the furies if I enter the kitchen.

Really, is it even a choice?

All of my children have a lot in common with me. I find it affirming that we get along well. We can all set boundaries and make demands. Oh boy is my youngest making a lot of demands. This is tricky. MC, Shortie and I are all very PDA flavoured and that makes the fact that we are all demanding motherfuckers pretty complicated. It was easier to give them both the space they need when I had Noah giving me the space I need. I don’t feel like I can find Mary Poppins anymore. I am too tired. I don’t have the ability to be practically perfect and attentive to their every need. My battery has been empty for a long time.

In my mind I carry a picture of my grandmother in law. I have always considered her as a there but for the grace of God go I sort of character. She was a brilliant woman. She was also deeply hard and selfish and unable to consider the needs of her children. She was violent and cruel and abusive. She kicked my mother in law out, literally kicked, when she got married. She said her daughter had become a whore. That’s a fascinating view to have of someone getting married as an adult while not pregnant in the 1970’s. Hardly harlot behaviour.

Like Auntie was a martyr I don’t want to be. Like my mother was a perpetual victim and childlike in her inability to care for herself. Like my sister passed on the legacy of destructive behaviour we were taught. Like my mother in law didn’t get her PTSD under control in time to save her relationship with her oldest child.

I have so many examples I want to do at least slightly better than. Not because I think I am better than any of them. I’m not. I’m equally as damaged and distraught and overwhelmed and out of cope. I am better resourced than all of them put together, though. I don’t share their justifications for needing to lose their shit. My therapist keeps trying to convince me that my life is super hard. They would like me to give myself a lot more slack. They worry a lot about my nervous system. I appreciate that. I am definitely feeling the HPA axis dysfunction lately. My body is not doing well. I’m brittle. I’m cranky in ways I don’t mean to be. Stupid shit sets me off. I don’t like being this low in reserves. I keep feeling like I just need a little rest. Then I am interrupted by one of a million things.

I need to have more capacity. The only way to increase my capacity is to do less. I can’t do more with my capacity if I am doing less. I’m kinda fucked here. I feel terribly selfish for missing Noah because he gave me rest. He did a lot of taking work away from me and sending me off to be alone. He and I were very interchangeable in the house. It was amazing. He was doing more and more with every year. I really appreciate the way that we never stopped turning towards one another. We were both doing intense stuff to bring focus back to us as a dyad all the way through the end.

I feel like I will permanently have less than 40% of the capacity I used to have. I can’t manage to finagle that level of support in time before Shortie has outgrown the really intense period. I am in this death march until she hits increased independence. My coparent is gone. He was amazing. I can’t imagine having anyone try harder to support me in raising a family. I don’t seek another coparent. That is not a fair role to ask of anyone. Noah casts a big shadow.

I can see my daughter casting about for father figures to bond with, though. I am glad that she has a few different ones. I am glad that she gets to have a bunch of men who are being loving and considerate and careful of her as she goes through this period. I’m lucky. I laid the groundwork for this in advance and friends have stepped forward when I asked. She is clearly pretty interested in having a relationship with Gentleman. I keep thinking how much Noah would approve of Gentleman. Noah was always afraid of me choosing to date people who were disrespectful of me. He was very concerned that I not subject myself to any more substandard treatment. Adoring me is step one. If they don’t, off they fuck.

Noah both did and didn’t set me up well for losing him. In many ways I am struggling because I lost my main emotional support person on top of my main physical support person on top of my coparent and exercise buddy and there is the tiny little matter that he was the only real witness to my life. It’s overwhelming how hard it is keeping all of my shit off stage from the kids. I feel like such a liar all the time. I don’t share every thought with my kids.

They definitely think I exist to be an external hard drive for their brains though. Holy shit.

I am struggling with getting us to all the appointments. All of our fucking bodies are high maintenance and I don’t know how much it is ADHD and how much it is perimenopause and how much it is grief and how much it is cumulative brain injuries but fuck I can’t remember anything. I listen to my friend cite to the penny how much money she has in her bank account and I feel deep shame. I couldn’t keep numbers in my head right now if I was paid for it. I’ve always struggled with dyscalculia. It feels worse than ever. It’s a good thing I have people who are actually watching my finances. I can’t fuck anything up too much. The money is out of my direct control. That is both terrifying and quite a relief. I am scared of being this person. I am scared of having this kind of responsibility.

How in the fuck did I manage to end up the fucking heiress for some generational wealth bullshit?! This was not something I fucking planned for. It will allow me to keep my babies safe. It reminds me of the story Peter wrote about me. He depicted me as quite a savage creature, covered in scars and wounds. I crouch over my sleeping babies with a knife prepared to end any creature who accosts them. I don’t actually think the knife will be necessary. This is good. I’m not a particularly violent human as they go. No matter what my father would have wanted for me. No matter what my blood thirsty ancestors would have done.

I feel alone. I feel like I must be alone for all the hours of the night and day. I feel like this is a terribly heavy burden to carry forward.

I feel terrible because I should be soaking in how awesome my boyfriend is. He really is. Instead I ruminate on the story in progress from a holistic point of view. There are so many moving pieces. I feel like I am drowning. On I swim anyway. No time to stop.

Tactical errors, failures, and belonging

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The younger kids and I tried to finish The Great Glen Way over the weekend. We are not managing. Both my feet and Shortie’s feet were A) not properly conditioned for this much exercise and B) improperly shod in shoes that did little to hold out the wet. We could not finish walking 29 miles in wet socks. So we bugged out and came home again. This is the end of the world but we had to cancel hotel reservations at the last second and I’m out a few hundred pounds. I feel upset about wasting the money. (It won’t cause a hardship but I will have less to spend on fun for the rest of the year.) I feel upset about not properly training. (I have been so tired I couldn’t demand that everyone prep with me.) I feel upset that when I asked for help from a pal the response was, “I knew this would happen.” I feel like I am going to spend the rest of my life failing at everything I try.

The upside was that the kids and I had a lot of fun together. We bond really well when we are being active outside. That’s really lovely. I appreciate how much MC still likes hanging out with me. They are going through a lot lately. They are nearly 16 and they are hurting pretty badly about the fact that they have not managed to make any close friends while living here. There was a boy they chased hard for a few years but eventually his complete lack of reciprocation was a turn off. They need friends and no one in this town seems to have any interest in spending time with them one on one. I can understand why that is making them feel so depressed and desolate. The other day we were talking about their despair and I said I hoped they know that I always love and want them. They gave me a long, level stare. “Mom, I know you want me and you love me. I also inherited my dad’s overwhelming anxiety that no one can really accept me and there is the rest of the whole damn world that is treating me like shit. It’s hard.” They have so much wisdom. It broke my heart. I have tried really hard to make up for the rest of the world but they are right–I can’t. I am just their mom. That’s all I have to offer. I can’t also be their peer. I’ve been super good about making that clear all their life.

Shortie and I need proper waterproof shoes and then we need to break them in and then we need to try again. One of these days we will do the whole trail again in one go. We can train and get to that point. I’m not sure which year it’ll happen in, but it will be great when it happens. In the meantime both kids are excited about the possibility of going camping with Gentleman and doing day hikes to build towards that. They like his company.

I think it was a bit of a tactical error moving to an island where the national pastime is taking the piss. Gentleman doesn’t mean to hurt my feelings. Logically I can tell that he is being playful in his way. The trouble is, I’m still me. I have always been painfully earnest and credulous and gullible. It’s connected in big ways to moving so much as a kid. I went from one school and culture and home life to another and people would be sarcastic about me not already getting how things are as if their way of being is the singular experience people have. It took a lot of testing and experts to convince me that I was smart at all. Eventually I developed a strained rigid kind of self esteem around my intelligence but mostly I feel stupid a lot. I miss details. I fail to finish things. I misunderstand how much preparation is necessary for things. I believe people when they say things to me and when it turns out they were “playing” I feel like a stupid piece of shit again.

I came home yesterday feeling really on the edge of losing it because I failed. It was hard that my ride said plainly that my failure was expected. That cut to the heart for me.

This is when I miss Noah super hard. Even when my failures were kind of predictable he was always surprised. He thought I was overwhelmingly competent. He didn’t tease me because he didn’t want to make me feel stupid. He wanted me to feel smart. He believed I was one of the smartest people he ever met and he wanted to keep me on a high pedestal, he never wanted to knock me down pegs. He was so careful not to be sarcastic with me unless he used a silly ostentatious voice. As a family we have developed specific verbal habits around only using sarcasm in an over the top distinguishable voice. We have an environment in our house where intensely literal autistics are set up for success when it comes to understanding verbal playfulness. My children chorus delightedly “That’s your sarcastic voice!” There is no ambiguity between our normal speech and our sarcastic speech. We might as well be turning on a bright blinking neon light every time.

I like my boyfriend. I’m not trying to be nasty about him at all. He has a super intense and dark deadpan sarcasm as his natural approach to surviving a life that hasn’t been full of fun and ease. Even when he’s being cheerful and upbeat there’s still a lot of sarcasm and insincere statements. I am struggling with it a lot in general. Yesterday I lost it and ugly cried for a really long time. I had invited him over hoping to get a bit high and a little tipsy and then have fun exploratory sex to distract me from feeling like a failure. Then he came over and made a series of small, individually insignificant sarcastic statements. By like the 5th one I was done.

Reader, no fun sex happened. I couldn’t even cuddle he spent the night in my bed. I was pulled into myself hard. I feel bad for it. I wasn’t doing it to punish him. I can’t reach out when I feel like this. I feel stupid. I feel worthless. I feel unworthy of kindness or understanding. I feel alienated from connection. I feel othered and unwanted. In local parlance I feel like a daftie. I want to stare at the floor and not engage in conversation because I’m going to be too stupid to follow it anyway. I definitely don’t want to increase my offer of vulnerability. I feel kicked in a way that I want to curl around myself and protect my sensitive bits. I feel like I am never going to have a relationship where someone thinks I’m smart again.

It was a big part of my relationship with Noah that a lot of the permission he gave me to have control and be an authority was based on my supposed towering intellect and ability to know the right things.

Now I feel like a fucking moron who can’t get anything right. I keep running into all the ways that Noah smoothed out the edges of my diagnosed disabilities and made me superhuman.

I know that Gentleman had no intention to make me feel bad. I am sorry that I am reacting like this. It doesn’t seem fair to him to have to deal with my over the top hours of sobbing over stupid small sarcastic statements. He wasn’t trying to be mean. I’m ridiculous. And also I’m up to maybe hour three of crying in the last 13 hours. It’s not his fault that I am such a broken piece of shit. He should be allowed to relax and play in his relationship.

It’s not his fault that I am a fucking retard who breaks down crying at the drop of a hat. I have to admit that it’s a bit nice this morning that he is still asleep and I can scream/cry and walk around flapping without him seeing. I don’t like demonstrating this behaviour. I don’t like being visible as a pathetic baby who still feels like I will never be loved or appreciated.

I have mixed feelings about having my kids these days. I feel a lot of guilt for how bad ECs health is. I gave him these problems. I am very conscious that if Noah hadn’t stepped forward to offer me my dreams on a platter I probably would have suicided. Maybe that would have been better for all concerned. He promised he would let me die first so that I didn’t have to be alone and unsupported any more. But he fucking left me. Now I get to spend the rest of my life feeling stupid and unwanted even when people like me fine. I can’t read the signals. Being kind to me takes too much effort. I can’t expect people to bother. I have to take what I get and deal with it.

Well hey, at least I get to have a whole separate building in which I can scream and cry and rant? That’s lucky at least. Thank you, Noah.

I did try to have a conversation with Gentleman in between sobbing bursts. He didn’t mean to make me feel bad. I know that. I feel like my reaction is so far out of proportion that I can’t justify it at all. He wasn’t trying to make me feel sad. I’m over reacting. I am the problem. I should learn how to take a joke.

I’m almost 45. I kind of think the ship has sailed on me getting over being gullible. Instead I choose being alone a lot. That is how I can make sure I don’t have to take jokes. I miss being married to someone who believed I have a tenuous grasp on staying attached to life. I miss the ways that Noah bent over backwards to make me feel seen and important. I don’t think I will have much of that going forward. I think most of my future is going to involve a lot of sneaking off to cry in private because I opted in to a culture where making someone like me the butt of the joke is most people’s reason for living. This is my future now. I miss Noah. I miss the way we soothed each other’s anxiety. I miss being known. I miss having someone believe in me obsessively. I miss having my house be a place where no one said things to make me feel stupid. My home was in Noah’s arms and he thought I was a fucking genius.

Now I’m just a fucking daftie.