Today I finished tidying the garden and planted the bits of colour. I’m trying to add more plants every year that bloom earlier. It’s a process. I started with like 6 plants that flowered by Ostara and I’m up to many dozens. In my defense, I didn’t fully tidy up because I know better. Not before May. But I did clean up all the tripping hazard sticks and I unburied some of the stepping stones so folks can see where to go more easily.

This has always been the season shift I feel the most intensely. It is time to start being outside planting, working, and playing. It’s when I start seeds inside because it’s too early to be doing much outside. After the party I’m chucking all the seeds onto my bathroom floor again; it’s warm enough to get stuff going. It’s awkward in my bathroom for about 2 months but oh well.

It feels like I am trying to co-opt this energy away from gardening into pruning my emotional landscape. That’s probably wise at the moment. Well, not pruning. Examining.

There is a part of me that teeters, on this equinox between the knowledge that having two people I see fairly seriously for different kinds of adventures and limiting myself to them would be less work, less anxiety for all involved, and way easier to schedule and the self awareness that forces me to admit how much I want everyone. I want to go flag down a rugby team. Not because I’m that into rugby. Because they would probably be able to literally hand me around and that sounds absolutely amazing. Sometimes I find myself checking people out at the rock climbing gym in ways that are wildly inappropriate. I have full on movies play out about what they could do with hands that strong. Holy shit for shoe shine I thirst so hard I worry that I will crack teeth.

It’s not because I’m that into fit people aesthetically. Strength is hot. Someone who can hold his body to a wall while dangling fully horizontally is someone who could do magical fucking things with his fingers. If he doesn’t know how yet that’s fine. I’m bossy.

I have to admit. I’m really bummed that Closed Book didn’t work out. He could have been a lot of fun if he had some boundaries. Ah well. This is how the cookie crumbles. Even though he lives exactly .4 miles from my house that does not make him a good person to mess with.

I am managing to say no to bad ideas. Pat myself on the back there. But what about questionable or neutral deals? I mean. There could be a lot of those over the next few years if I play my cards right. I want to be pithy and say “And I am very good at cards” but it would be a giant fib. Sometimes I get very lucky. The rest of the time I suck.

Which is how it goes when you are throwing bait in the water. It’s how I found Portland Boy all those years ago. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. He was the friend of a friend I did random pick up play with. He’s still my friend. I get to be a friend to his life. I get to watch his joy with the right partner and family.

So like, I feel like I would be down to go to a bathhouse and pick people up for sex but maybe they will stick around in my life for 20 years? It could happen. Literally, I know people.

I feel so torn. I know the lower stress route would be easier on all concerned. I feel really bad because it’s not as fun. I’m supposed to be teetering on the balance of equality today. I feel like I want to plunge off into the deep end. Sweetheart, this isn’t all happening all at once. I am moving glacially slowly for me. I’m being careful and mindful. I long but I haven’t made big self destructive choices recently.

What if the play wasn’t self destructive? What if playing with new people is healing and part of bonding and creating a new web of people? What if the play is a necessary step in ensuring that I will survive the next major catastrophe? I’m a fucking anime protagonist. There will be another major catastrophe and then one after that. Mostly they won’t be my fault! Ok, sometimes they will be my fault. This is because I am stupid and make bad decisions. This is one of those phrases I use that bothers people. I’m not actually stupid but sometimes I think with the wrong head. I am impulsive.

I went and saw Sue Perkins tonight. I have seen three comedy shows this year. I’m seriously on a roll. I loved this show. I have to admit it was quite hard to contain myself when she said, “No one wants a 56 year old sex addict.” I really wanted to yell, “I do!!!”

This is a small town. People fucking notice me around town. That would not play well. Sometimes people claim I have no tact. You people can fuck right off, I do too have tact.

I feel bad because it drove Noah insane that the more sex we had the more I craved sex with other people. It’s not that I was unsatisfied. It is that every act of sex feels like fuel for the next couple of times. It feels like bonus energy for existing and working and loving people.

My compost pile is absurdly high and I need to pull it out and sift it. I also need to get my hands on a serious wood chipper and go through my giant pile of logs. I need the wood chips. I keep thinking that if the universe were fair someone would want to do the labour to flip my compost pile for me in exchange for me feeding them and kicking them in the nuts.

Yes, this nut kicking topic is a thing. I’m pretty obsessed. It’s an intense focus that I’ve had for at least 30 years. Kicking people in the testicles is FUCKING HILARIOUS. I derive so much joy from the act that I can barely contain myself. I will always have gratitude in my heart that someone allowed me to have a container where that was a really good part of our relationship. I am sad the rest of the container didn’t work out. This is how life goes. We can’t keep all the containers.

Pavlov made excellent, important, accurate points about how it is broken to think of relationships in terms of transactions. I’m still really broken. I’m very very Silicon Valley about this sort of thing. “Let’s discuss the frank exchange of activities we want to have between us.” I fill your bucket by doing x. You fill my bucket by doing me. It’s very simple. Let me sell you on the services I have to offer. It feels dirty and I’m not sure if it is dirty in a bad way or a fun way. Not all the services are sexual. I am patterning off Auntie more and more as I age. She patterned off her mother who fostered a lot of children. Both Auntie and my grandmother were women who severely neglected their children in favor of the kids/grown ups they took in. My mom was sandwiched in between them, eternally the child needing to be taken care of.

Pete Walker says, in his book on C-PTSD, that every human should receive entirely unconditional love and support for the first two years of their life. After that it is basically a sliding scale as you move towards adulthood where you do have to earn love.

My therapist asked me today if I loved myself. I said I do. I listed off the ways I have earned my love.

I feel really bad for the ways I was not able to be what Noah wanted. Part of it was I was using so much bandwidth on being the mother I need to be. The amount of devotion and sacrifice required by my day job is pretty fucking overwhelming. It is not enough for me to be present. I am active and directive and patient and considerate about developmental levels and constantly adapting our environment to be easier to bear for my kids. They all have really intense sensory challenges. Living is painful. Managing their environment so that they can have optimal functioning requires a massive amount of bandwidth and energy from me. I am deeply relieved to see this work falling off a cliff as the people approach adulthood. I don’t have to do it for my son anymore. He knows how to manage now. It took a while. I know the others will get there too.

This work consumes me. I want to be able to give it my absolute best. My best is pretty freaking great. I’m a walking circus full of know it all monologues on hundreds of topics at the slightest hint of a key word. I trained for this. I watch these people suffer in ways I feel responsible for–my genetics are responsible for these challenges.

The Indenture is feeling long. I won’t have Noah here stepping in to give me breaks. This is me.

I feel really bad that before I wanted “a partner” I wanted children. That was my focus. Ok, yes I wanted a coparent and what I needed was already so long and specific and demanding that requiring them to not have a penis felt like too tall of an order. Now I have the children and nice people I date.

This is a thing I have to think about and be clear about. This shame is not useful. I didn’t use Noah up and throw him away. This was not my fault. I have done a lot of bad shit in my life. I didn’t kill Noah.

My therapist is uhm encouraging me quite a bit in the direction of putting my wings on and exploring as much as I possibly can. They think that me being selfish is a healthy correction from the tight constraint of my marriage. Of course it is convenient when I feel told to do what I want to do. Of course it is deeply problematic that I have a pathological demand avoidance response to being told what to do. My brain is a little bitch.

But I also feel pushed towards monogamy. Pushed is too strong. I am aware that the desire exists. I feel like a constant failure, still. I am really frustrated and tired of this exact specific ache in my chest. Monogamy isn’t on the table. Ok, second preference would be one woman because that’s the easiest to kind of wrap a brain around.

I feel like I’d be pretty happy taking on the task of making sure the average orgasm count for the Highlands increases. That sounds like fun. I know that realistically I can’t schedule it. I probably would get tired of trying very quickly but that doesn’t mean I can’t give it a good old college try. (Is that an idiom on this side of the pond?)

I need to go to bed. People will be here in 10.5 hours.

I want. I feel flooded with this aching burning and want. I am really tired of feeling bad about it. I want to put myself in a room with people who might want to ask me to do things. I want to say yes.