Author Archives: Krissy Gibbs

About Krissy Gibbs

Just your average hippy white trash incest survivor stay at home mom. Is there an average for us? No? Oh well.

So many big feelings.

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Over the past few days I’ve had this niggling little thing in the back of my mind. I feel very upset by someone joking that they “don’t love me enough” to do something. But I’ve been turning it over and turning it over and turning it over and as I’ve gone through a variety of adrenalized states I’ve had access to a lot of memories that are normally kind of buried because I don’t know about you but my memory is a funny place. I remember best the things that happened when I was in the same emotional state I am in right now. So I’ve had a lot of interesting memories surfacing.

I have totally made that joke. Not once. Not to one person. Many, many times. I’m pretty sure I went through a phase where I was saying it to a bunch of people with great regularity. When I think super duper duper hard… I may have said it to that person before.

Well shit. That means I have to get off my fucking high horse.

I really hate it when that happens.

Part of the trouble is, I have a lot of sympathy for all the circumstantial reasons behind it coming up last week. I didn’t expect her to jump up and abruptly change her day for me. That wasn’t on my agenda. I wasn’t gunning for that. She was responding to feeling overwhelmed and the things in front of her were things she couldn’t drop. So she joked. Ok, I hated the joke and it made me feel bad… but she didn’t say it because she consciously wanted to hurt me.

I didn’t actually want to hurt people when I used to say, “You are really awesome and all but I don’t love you enough to drive to Davis for a relationship.”

I said that a lot.

Man I’m such a hypocritical asshole.

It doesn’t help that the last two things I’ve tried to schedule at the house flopped. I “understand” that it was scheduling issues. That totally happens. But in both cases I started out with a whole bunch of enthusiastic people and then they all… kinda flaked. It happens. But it feels bad when large groups of people all do it together. I tried having an event in September and I tried in October. Both just failed. I’m not angry at anyone–but I feel wounded and like if I hadn’t already stupidly announced the holiday open house I would cheerfully hide alone in my house till spring.

I don’t feel very loved. So having one of my closest friends joke that she doesn’t love me… it was stepping on my broken toe. I “get” that it was a “joke”.

But I don’t feel very loved so it doesn’t feel like a joke it feels like just telling me the truth. One of the hardest parts of having big gaps in between people is I hold on to the bad feelings of being rejected and and unloved for a long time. Seeing different people doesn’t help that much. Maybe it is a distraction and maybe not.

It isn’t Noah or the kids fault that I don’t feel loved. It isn’t the fault of this joke. I’m just in that kind of cycle. I’m sure the elimination diet isn’t helping. I’m also trying hormonal birth control for the first time in many years and it is NOT REGULATING MY EMOTIONS. I’ve been trying to take vitamins which is resulting in spontaneous vomiting in the morning. The class over the last two weekends was physically and emotionally draining in the extreme. In that 24 hour class I put out more energy and force than I normally do in over a month. My body hurts everywhere. I have some truly impressive bruises.

I’m having trouble feeling loved. Even with the kids. It doesn’t feel like love, it feels like momentary manipulation so I will do what you want. I recognize this as a problem in my perception and not a change in how my children treat me. Their actual attempts to manipulate are far less subtle and nuanced. They are quite charming, really—it’s different than when they are being loving. But I just can’t see it. I feel very empty and hollow.

I’m a weird introvert/extrovert blend. I need alone time and I NEED people time. I need the right kinds of people time to fill me up or I get emptier and emptier. I haven’t been getting “the right kind” of people time much lately. I get most of it with Noah or Pam and I get very little actual attention from either of them because the kids are always in our faces demanding all of the attention. I’m scared of Pam going to Taiwan soon. I am going to miss her.

Over the past few years we’ve had a series of wonderful people who come over once a week for dinner for long periods of time. Sometimes we have two wonderful people at once who come by weekly. It has been just Pam for a while. I really like Pam, unfortunately so do my children. The kids vocally and clearly negotiate how much time they have to share with me because they want all of Pam’s attention. It’s funny.

People stop coming for a variety of reason. My favorite reason to ascribe it to is because I’m an asshole.

A stopped coming because after I drew him extensive graphs and charts to describe how tired I was and I said I needed help he continued to expect me to wait on him hand and foot like I have since I was 19. I stopped inviting him over because I can’t be the god damn service submissive forever and either you help or I can’t do this.

P had health issues. It wasn’t personal.

C I specifically uninvited because I got to the point of feeling actually unsafe in his presence. That’s a good enough reason to uninvite people in my opinion.

It’s a mixed bag that in my youth I went out looking for perverts and people who felt dangerous. It means I look at my friends in new lights when it comes to sharing my children with them.

Pam is the only person currently on a steady roster. Even the home schoolers who supposedly are supposed to have a set day of fun stuff… we skip it more than we go. We see home schoolers every week, but which day and where move around a lot. I am very very certain that my kids need to have friends of their own. I make it happen. I take them to places where they can socialize and see the same kids and get to know people. It is a specific goal. You can’t home school your kids and keep them from having friends. That will fuck them up for life. Finding friends can be hard but I consider that one of my job duties.

I think it is funny that I do not prioritize teaching from a curriculum–I prioritize learning how social interactions work. I think that early life should be about learning how to manage people. You will have plenty of time for book learning later. I am trying to teach emotional regulation (which is a hilarious thing for me to teach) and boundaries. Those are the biggest and most important skills we work on with conscious intent.

Yesterday I was an asshole to Shanna. They like to reach through their toy bookshelf and grab all the jars of jam and bring them to their side and play with them. I mostly object because these are glass items and I already clean up a lot of broken glass and I don’t want to clean up broken glass plus sticky. I’ve asked them four or five times not to do this. So this time I screamed. I screamed, “It is not ok to play with my stuff. You have your own stuff. STOP USING MINE. IT BREAKS. I AM REALLY CRANKY ABOUT CLEANING UP ALL THE GLASS. JUST STOP IT.” So I’m an asshole but I’m not an asshole who will be picked up by CPS. Just a garden variety asshole.

Later in the day I was reading the internet and I saw one of those pithy quote things and it said, “In our house we only yell if there is a fire.” I felt floored. Oh man. How can I ask my kids not to yell if I am such a yeller.

So I read the quote to Shanna. She gave me a side eye rule and said, “I wouldn’t mind if that became a rule for our house.”

I looked at her for a few minutes. She didn’t quite meet my eye. I asked her how scared she felt that morning. She said, “Well, I knew you wouldn’t hit me or anything so I wasn’t *that* scared, but it makes my tummy feel really bad.” I nodded. I apologized. She apologized for playing with the jam jars again. We hugged.

I feel beyond blessed in my children. I feel I got unusually empathetic children and I get down on my knees thanking anyone who will listen daily. I am so grateful for the specific children I have. They really work for me. I don’t dislike other peoples children (well… sometimes I do but not mostly) but my kids are so well suited to me. Occasionally I witness family interactions where the parents and the kids aren’t well suited and I feel this surge of anxiety mixed with gratitude. That would be so hard. I’m so grateful I don’t have that specific issue.

Not that my kids are easy 100% of the time–ha.ha.ha. But we are annoying in compatible ways. It’s important.

A while back Pam told me I was too hard on my BFFs. I expect too much from them. She then let me know how much time she spends with her BFF and it isn’t much.

I feel like maybe I need to pull into myself for a while. Looking outside me for validation isn’t going well. Other people have the audacity to have bad days and they aren’t just sitting around waiting to have positive interactions with me. WTF.

On one hand I feel like what I would like to do is stay home and do projects and invite people over. On the other hand inviting people over doesn’t usually work and then I feel rejected so I think that I should just work by myself.

I’m feeling really sad. I have to forgive people for hurting me because they really didn’t mean to. And I’ve said basically the same thing so I can’t have more harsh boundaries.

But I don’t feel very loved lately. I’m not *blaming* anyone. I don’t think this feeling is the result of the actions of A, B, C, D, or E people. That’s not my point. I cycle through feelings. It happens. Right now I feel very alienated and alone. I have a Noah and a Shanna and a Calli who love me and never actually let me be alone so this feeling isn’t about “reality”.

But my relationship with my kids is only kind of about me. I have to very carefully always partition of the parts of me that would be problematic or dangerous. It is very hard to constantly censor everything I say so that I am only appropriate for my kids.

If you knew me before kids–did you think I would be physically capable of minding my mouth enough to be appropriate for children? Probably not.

But it comes at a cost. It comes at the cost of feeling like *I* am not important, just that there is someone standing here who is willing to work. If I could find a suitable replacement it would be better for everyone if I died. Then I would stop hurting people. No one would have to listen to my whining about how neeeeeeeedy I feel.

On Saturday during the Impact class we got to do a “custom fight”. You have the choice of battling an inner critic, an event from your past, or something you are afraid might happen. You can choose to have the battle be verbal or physical.

I went first because I knew I wouldn’t have the courage to say what I said after I heard what everyone else wanted to fight. I knew mine was going to seem “crazy” and “intense” compared to everything else.

I told them it was a combination of inner critic and past events. I told them I grew up in a family who had generations of alcoholism and drug addiction and incest. With all the beatings such a description implies. I told them that I knew all my life that I was the child of rape and no one had wanted me from the minute I was born. I told them about my family members telling me that I am a worthless whore–I should die and stop wasting the resources that should be spent on someone worthy.

My fight was super fucking intense. It went on and on. The suited instructor was really verbally awful. By the end I was crying and screaming “I am not your whore anymore” as I was viciously kicking him in the head.

If that had been a real fight with an unsuited person there would have been major hospital time. I’m happy about that.

I keep wondering what will happen if I ever run into my sister again. The funny thing is, I have about a 1% fear of getting randomly mugged or assaulted. I just don’t live in fear of that. I know people who have had it happen to them–I shouldn’t feel so shielded from that assault. But it is way outside my realm of experience and I have enough to be afraid of so I’ve just never spent brain cycles on worrying about it.

I’m scared I will run into my sister again. I strongly suspect that will turn into a fist fight. Given that she wanted to start one when I was 6 months pregnant I doubt her wrath has cooled. She has hated me all my life. “It is your fault that son of a bitch had three more years to rape me. Mom was ready to leave when you fucking came along.” Well, go ahead and hate me Sissy, but it wasn’t my fault I was born.

For all the bloody noses and bruises and wounds my sister gave me… I could cheerfully put her in the hospital. And I know her knee has already blown out more than once. The fight wouldn’t even have to last long.

It was funny at the end of the class. At my turn to reflect the instructors verbally noted that I came in with fighting skills and I was willing to adapt them. I said, “Well most of my other fights have ended in a trip to ER to deal with my injuries so I’m grateful to learn techniques that might prevent that.” As soon as the bruising goes down I am going to spend a lot of time with my punching bag practicing. But first the bruising needs to go down. My elbow fucking hurts.

Maybe it is just best to stay home alone for a few months. I’m needy and sad and I can’t hear what people say the way they mean it. I can only hear more reason to hurt. That isn’t about everyone standing near me–that comes from me.

Today is the Halloween parade at park day. I’m supposed to bring a pot luck contribution. Fuck if I know what to bring. A tray of carrot and cucumber sticks? I can bring you a fuck ton of bok choy. Want some plain rice? fuck my life.

Just to add a little bonus gross to this entry: I’m weirded out that since I bought the bell peppers my poop looks like it is sprinkled with little red confetti. I really don’t digest food much.

I need to get back on the horse with half marathon training. I semi-slacked in the week between the Impact classes because I felt so dead. Today is a five mile run. I feel continually shocked that five miles is no big deal. I’m debating between running in the dark before Noah goes to work (I would have to leave in about half an hour) or taking the kids to the gym so I can run on a treadmill. I mostly prefer running outside. But I’m not sure I have it in me to run in the dark today. I feel wobbly. In the dark, when I’m wobbly–I trip. And it hurts. So I’m kind of loathe to go do that on my already injured body. Even my ankle is feeling twingy and sore. Treadmill it is.

I’m at the point on the elimination diet where I’m 14 days in and I haven’t seen much change. This is all fairly normal poop to me. That makes me think I should take out nightshades next. This thought makes me want to cry. I won’t until I finish eating the current cooked nightshades, because I’m not so big on throwing food away, but I probably should.

I feel so bad. The really sad/scary thing about taking the nightshades out: it removes almost all of the GF “bread” stuff I could eat. No more pancakes. I’m going to be eating rice at every meal. (I’m vaguely aware that there are products like millet and couscous in the world but I have essentially never eaten them and switching to them on an elimination diet seems… kind of weird. Should I really be randomly switching to food I’ve never eaten?” If I have to long-term follow these restrictions it makes sense to introduce them after a while… but not during the elimination diet, right? I don’t fucking know.

A friend offered to make a meal plan. I don’t want one. This is a moving target. This is hard. I am so frustrated. What I can handle putting in my mouth shifts from moment to moment and day to day. I feel so much hatred and anger all wrapped up in food. Nothing good comes from food. Unless it has lots of wheat, dairy and sugar. Then the food carries love.

Noah isn’t even cooking much for me. Which is another sad thing. This stupid elimination diet is taking away one of the most common things someone does to express love for me. No wonder I don’t feel very loved lately.

This moment isn’t forever. But it is shitty. And I feel sad. I don’t want to go pretend to be happy and festive and part of a group today. I want to wedge myself between the wall and the bed and cry.

The main thing I can think of that would make today easier is if I went into the bathroom and locked the door and lighted my candles and got out the scalpel blade that is secretly hiding in a drawer in my room (I no longer have a handle, but I somehow missed a blade when I cleared out the house a while ago) and cut for a long time. I want that feeling so bad. I am not calm and I could be. I care too much about feeling unlovable and I could shut that off. It would just take a few cuts. Then I would be calm and sure that I’m not loved and that is just how it is. I wouldn’t feel frantic and sad. Just resigned. This is how things work.

I feel so sad. Not cutting at this point feels like not caring enough about me to take care of me. Instead I just force myself to feel as shitty as possible for as long as possible. Just so other people can feel better. It’s a reminder of how little I matter.

If I could find a suitable replacement I would go. I am tired of flailing and hurting. I’m so tired.

I want my mommy.

Days 12 & 13

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I didn’t feel like typing yesterday.

Day 12-

Breakfast: unsweetened rice cereal (to get rid of the apple juice–it’s pretty gross), almond milk, blueberries, pecans

Lunch: home made soup with turkey stock, bits of turkey, bell pepper, carrot, cabbage, bok choy, tomato, and rice

Dinner: fried potato and more stir fry.

 

Day 13-

Breakfast: GF English muffin with raspberry jam, fried potatoes, banana

Snack: big bowl of the turkey soup

next Snack: almond milk ice cream (I ate like 1/4 of a cup) and grapes

Lunch: GF pancakes cooked in ghee, (mix uses almond milk), with banana, pecans, maple syrup and peanut butter. This meal was the best meal I’ve eaten since the beginning of this diet. I felt really full and happy when I was done eating. It was dramatic.

Dinner: more soup.

Now on to the poop.

Continue reading →

Flattened.

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I am so tired. I feel like I got run over by a truck. Given the physical fights I was in today… that makes sense. I had more than one extended fight–that is the equivalent to being attacked by someone on PCP who has a lack of normal pain sensors. It was glorious and really hard.

I am glad to be home with my babies.

I want to stay home.

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I don’t want to go to the class today. I want to stay home and cry. Lots of reasons and no reason. I had several uncomfortable interactions yesterday. Some of which confirm my suspicion that I am an asshole who should be kept away from decent people so I don’t hurt them.

I don’t like me very much. I fell asleep crying and I woke up crying. I want to cut. I want to beat my head. I feel really bad. I feel very unlovable.

I think I am going to stop extending invitations for a while. I’m not handling the responses very well and that is my problem. Just stay home. Just shut up. Just shut up. 

Day 11

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Breakfast: last of the peanut butter puff cereal with corn so corn should be out of my diet at this point, I think it is the last item. I also had rice porridge for second breakfast.

Lunch: rice, chicken (more of yesterday’s recipe) with stir fry (bok choy, carrot, bell pepper, and cabbage) and a banana.

Dinner: exactly the same as lunch, including another banana.

Only two poops. My 4:30 poop was a soft cloud at the bottom with one floating chunk. Pretty brown. My 6pm poop had multiple discrete chunks! That were brown! They are still very soft of course, but any sign of packing-together is a good sign. I’m still crossing my fingers as I feel hopeless and dispirited.

Crash.

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The class was incredibly emotionally draining. I feel flattened. I feel very sad. I have had half a dozen small interactions today that feel shitty. I feel like a worthless piece of shit.

So much for beating up that inner voice today. I will continue to fuck up so much and so fast that I am just not capable of believing that I am anything other than a worthless piece of shit.

Day 10

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I’m very very cranky about this right now.

Breakfast: rice cereal (last bowl of stuff sweetened with either apple or pear juice so after today I should be clean of apples), almond milk (I suspect that when I run out I will switch to… I don’t know what the hell I switch to. But almonds are on the limited list for FODMAPS so I should just cut it out for now), banana (I hesitate to remove bananas because I should eat some fruit and supposedly bananas are constipating), and pecans. Some diets say no nuts. I am feeling conflicted. I could probably handle the loss of protein in the day but I really like having the texture with the cereal.

lunch: I ate potato chips. And cried while the “real food” cooked on the stove.

1st dinner: chicken (mostly this recipe with some substitutions like no garlic and I didn’t use the hot sauce recommended, instead I used a shake of cayenne), stir fry of the week (bok choy, cabbage, carrots, bell peppers), and the rice didn’t finish cooking in time.

2nd dinner: (after an active park trip) one more piece of chicken and more stir fry from above and I added rice.

4 poops ranging from soft yellow to mostly light brown. Wavered between pasty and foamy. The first poop of the day was almost half large, undigested food pieces.The two poops in the middle of the day were very low quantity but urgent.

3am, 5:30am, 5:15pm, 7:30pm.

Emotional/psychological abuse and control

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A friend linked to a scholarly article that was talking about how psychological abuse often causes as great or greater problems than physical or sexual abuse. Of course that means I have to stop and spend a lot of time wondering if I abuse people in this way.

I am a bossy motherfucker. I like telling people my opinions. I FUCKING LOVE telling people “what I would do in your situation” and I get funny feelings in my tummy when they ignore me. But I try hard not to explode or follow up with asshole comments like, “I told you that wouldn’t work.”

I think I was probably emotionally abusive towards Anna. I made her feel really bad. I didn’t do it on purpose. I wasn’t trying to hurt her, but I did. I had no right to tell her to get a new dream. That was none of my fucking business and I hurt her very badly. Just because she had been trying for five years running to get into medical school with constantly worsening health problems that made it so she could barely stand up and she had very little cognitive functioning left… I should have shut the hell up. I have no idea if she ever made it into medical school because she got fucking done with hearing my bitchy-ass comments. From the small amount of google-stalking I have done… I don’t think she made it. That doesn’t make me feel good about myself. Predicting that someone will not be able to live out their dream doesn’t make you a good person.

I hope I learned from that. I hope I am… less forceful now. Even if I was right I was severely unkind. I could have supported her better by helping her see related careers that were more attainable without being a raging asshole who yelled that she was never going to make it to medical school and she needs to stop killing herself trying. That was not my place.

To the best of my knowledge, after Anna the next person I have been most abusive towards has been Sarah. I take responsibility for my inappropriate responses. I feel it was reasonable for me to be triggered by many of the things that happened.. but I did not have the right to shout at her nor make her feel scared. And I did. I did not have the right to make her feel less competent or like she was “failing” at meeting my expectations.

Whereas sometimes I am an asshole… I don’t know if I have hurt my kids. I don’t know if I have perpetrated things that feel like abuse to them. It is very hard for children to be able to even evaluate such things. All I know is that my kids seem like the perfect picture of psychological health. I can’t judge by anything else. They have ups and downs like normal people but overall they are very happy with life.

Abuse is about making other people feel small or bad. It is about trying to control them in ways you have no right to control them. You may not mean to perpetrate it but that doesn’t change the fact that you do it sometimes. Usually between grown ups you look for patterns not isolated incidents. With children a couple of isolated incidents can have serious long-term damage.

It is hard for me to look at my relationships and tell if I am making other people feel small or bad. It is almost as hard for me to tell that someone else’s behavior consistently makes me feel bad.

Recently a long-term very close friend said, “In the past year more than 50% of your feeling upset (that I’ve heard about) has been related to a particular person.”

What do I do with that? I don’t know.

I stay in relationships with people who insult me and make me feel bad because mostly I feel comfortable with those people. Mostly I am comfortable with people who feel free to speak disrespectfully towards me because I am very used to people… feeling disrespectful towards me. I’m used to it. I’m not sure that makes it good.

Someone said online today that people who “offer help” are usually doing it to make themselves feel good, not the person they are giving help to. I can say that is 99% true when it comes to me cleaning for people. The list of people I have cleaned for is long and not-that-distinguished. I feel comfortable in such a role. I feel like it gives me an excuse/reason to stay in peoples lives. I’m worth something. There is something I can do. There is something I have to offer.

People I like and respect tell me I am a good person. I think lots of people are good people. They still hurt me. I hurt people.

Lately I’ve been thinking that we do ourselves and our society a disservice by acting like hurtful actions are the result of “monsters”. Very few people qualify as monsters. Very very very very very very few statistically. My father was a monster. Not many other people have raped lots and lots of children.

Good people can hurt others very easily. Sometimes through inattention, sometimes through lack of caring enough to consider what you are saying/doing before you do it, sometimes through being so self-absorbed they just don’t notice.

How do you protect yourself from the good people who will hurt you? How do you decide how good is good enough?

People tell me frequently that I’m a good person and I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. I am aware of how far I have come and I not interested in backsliding. I want to be better than I am. I don’t think the way I treat people is good enough.

When I talk to people I want them to feel built up and competent. I want them to feel like even if they can’t do something right now they can build up the ability over time and practice.

Right this minute I can’t play a single musical instrument. I have the sneaky suspicion that some decade I will learn. Even though I have it in my head that if you don’t learn as a child it is too late. Some day I will have time and energy and money going spare and I’ll learn. It is never too late.

I need to feel like the people in my life are building me up and not tearing me down. It isn’t ok to make jokes at my expense, no matter how many little “Oh I said it because of x and y” you include. It’s not ok to do that to me.

I understand that a lot of people are deeply comfortable with “little jokes” that are mean and cutting. I am Not. Ok. With. Them.

Once in a while people will comment to me that it is kind of weird that Noah never mocks me. I usually give a death glare to those people and say, “That is because he doesn’t want to become one of the many people I cut out of my life.”

I am prickly, sensitive, and overly conscious of my dignity. It is so easy to poke fun at me. I know. Hundreds of people have done so before you. I didn’t think they were very fucking funny either.

As much as I am growing to believe that the moving I did all the time as a child was overall a positive force in my life it means that I have gotten to go through a lot of different environments. People aren’t that different. If you have the misfortune to be at the bottom of the social ladder… you fucking stay there in place after place. When I say that hundreds of people have made fun of me I’m not kidding. I went to 25 schools before I dropped out at 16. That means I only needed 8 people at each school to get to 200 people being nasty to me. Most schools had 20-30 people who had a serious problem with me. And that’s not even getting into all of the adult situations where I bother people.

It isn’t hyperbole to say that people putting me down is a major trend in my life. People who are mentally ill are treated badly. They are bullied at 2-3 times the normal rate in the US. We are “weird” and that makes us targets. (It is also true that people with mental health issues are also more frequently the bullies. It’s a double whammy of awesome.)

I am not a special-more-hurt-than-anyone-else snowflake. I don’t think I am a professional victim. I think it would be a far stretch to say that anything that has happened to me in the past… almost eight years counts as “victimization”. I still struggle with the long-term results of trauma. Yes, I’m over-fucking-sensitive.

That happens when you are hit in the same spot hundreds of times.

“Oh just ignore it.” Oh man. Psychological studies prove that you are a giant asshole. Just so you know.

I don’t believe that I am exempt from examination of abuser tactics just because I was abused. If anything else I believe that the fact that I have an abusive background means that I must be Much More Vigilant in examining my behavior and being willing to change when someone else has a problem with something I’m doing.

I don’t hit any more. That is huge. I used to be really mean verbally. I was happy to verbally vivisect someone. I don’t do that any more. I no longer join arguments for the sole purpose of making someone who is “wrong” cry. It has been a very long time since such shenanigans have appealed to me.

But I don’t deny that I’ve done it. Honesty is key here.

I am not perfect. I will never be perfect. I don’t know if I’m “good”. Other people say so… but whatever. I can ignore that (as I can’t ignore people saying I’m bad… life is funny). But I’m trying. I am steadily trying to insult people less and be less hurtful. I am trying to devote less of my energy to making other people feel bad… even on accident. I am not sure if I am succeeding or not.

These things are very hard to judge. It’s a process. I will never “arrive” at my ideal good person state. It will always be a work in progress. I will always fuck up. I will always make mistakes and say something that sucks sometimes.

How do you also include forgiveness if not everyone who does bad things is a monster? Where do you put up boundaries if “good people” do things that accidentally hurt you?

My kids keep asking when an uncle is coming over to dinner. An uncle I have uninvited from my house because things he said and did made me feel like he was unsafe to have around my house and my children. Is he a bad person? I don’t think so. He has opinions that make him dangerous in my opinion. Why don’t I “get over it” and invite him back over.. he didn’t directly hurt me… Because I am responsible for my children. Because I am responsible for showing them adults and saying, “This is how you be a grown up” and when I show them that behavior and act like it is ok I am harming them. I am encouraging them to accept broken, toxic attitudes as “normal” and “acceptable”. No. It isn’t ok to think that shooting people who bully you is an acceptable choice. And you don’t get to tell my kids it is a solution.

There are lines in the sand that are really clear. If you tell my kids they can shoot people who hurt their feelings… that’s clearly on one side of the line and it’s a side I don’t want to stand near. Just no. Smaller issues…. they are more complicated.

I really don’t know what the solutions are.

Day 9

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I didn’t eat very much. Given that I had one day of almost formed poop and otherwise I’m staying with the soft mass I’m wondering what else I need to take out. The cereal sweetened (possibly) with apple juice is gone. I should probably entirely stop eating fruit. Because apparently “healthy” food isn’t actually healthy for me. I’m eating bananas like they are going out of style because everyone tells me they are constipating.

Breakfast: gf pancakes, pecans, banana, maple syrup

Lunch and dinner I ate out of the same container: rice, chicken, carrot, cucumber, grapes, fried potatoes (in cold-pressed olive oil because apparently that totally fucking matters). I had another banana for dessert.

Yesterday I only pooped twice, both in the morning. 2:30 am and 4ish am. Both times they were weird little almost chunks that were really too soft to be chunks. At least it is more brownish now instead of being Bright Yellow.

For exercise: 1.58 miles of walking with a friend and 5 miles of bike riding (pulling both kids on the trailer–we are doing much better with it).

What else can I take out? If I get to day 21 and I have no improvement then I think I will need to “test” wheat and/or dairy and then remove something major from my diet like corn or nightshades. Corn and nightshades are the only possible “allergens” I’m still eating and that is happening because otherwise I can’t eat since many vegetables make me sick in big obvious ways. I can’t turn to a nice healthy diet of lots of salads. I will never leave my bathroom again.

I hate my body right this second. I just want to stop hurting.

It doesn’t help that every elimination diet says, “If you feel a lot of anxiety you may not be able to get accurate results”. Fuck everything in the whole fucking universe. I’m feeling very discouraged and sad.

Clarification

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I know that I have to be specific about what I want in order to get it. But when you end up feeling intensely suicidal as one of the result options, you aren’t supposed to tell people that. If the situation is, “Don’t make jokes about me because I will spend days haunting my house like a ghost and wanting to kill myself because it doesn’t sound like a joke it just sounds like a continuation of my life story” then you are being manipulative.

You aren’t allowed to tell people “If you do x I will want to kill myself.” You aren’t allowed to do that. Even if it is true. It is “mean”. It is considered abusive to tell people that.

I don’t know how to get out of this double bind. I never have known how. Many things cause me to feel intensely suicidal and lose days of my life to crying and weeping and hiding in my house. Talking about them is “wrong”. Not talking about them means I have to cut people out of my life because I can’t deal with being triggered.

I don’t know what the solution is.

Define yourself.

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I have been having a lot of thoughts lately about identity and what I do and who I am and what makes different choices matter so much. I’m doing too much “Well I’m not _____.”

I need to not define myself in comparison to anyone else. I need to not define myself as what I’m not.

What am I? Who am I?

Well… I’m kind of a pain in the ass. I’m picky. I’m sensitive. I have a lot of very detailed preferences in life from temperature to fabric choices to food choices to how close to me someone is allowed to stand. I have a very large personal space bubble and I’ve really organized all my issues inside it. I have lots of issues. I know that. I am very emotional–to the point where it causes me social problems and difficulties because I react to things that other people consider “no big deal”.

I’m intelligent. I read a lot and study a lot of things and constantly challenge myself to do things that are hard for me. I’m proud of that. I learn new things. I learn hard things just because I feel like it.

I am an intensely physical person. I used to be sedentary. It was very bad for me. I have a lot of emotional issues tied up in how sedentary my childhood was. I’m deeply grateful that I am now in a position to be physically fit and I’m additionally grateful that I can bring my kids along with me. I’m fucking thrilled that my kids think a 5k is no big deal. That is our standard Sunday morning walk. I have worked so hard on this. None of this physicality came naturally to me. I had to want it and go make it happen.

I am a parent. I’m not sure if I’m a good parent or not. My kids like me, my husband thinks I’m doing a good job, and beyond that I just have to pray it all comes out ok in the end. Shanna says, “Even though sometimes you can be a pain in the neck, you are a really good mom and I’m glad I get to have you.” I tell her I feel exactly the same way with the word mom taken out and daughter slipped in. Calli continues to want to be physically attached to me 5+ hours out of the day so I’m pretty sure she is doing ok with me. And she thinks that I must sleep with her every night. So really she thinks we should be touching for 18+ hours a day.

I’m a wife. I’m not a great wife. I’m ok. I’m needy and kind of annoying sometimes but I put out a lot and I do a lot of chores to make up for being difficult to live with. Noah says he is happy with the trade he is getting in life.

I’m not the best friend in the world. I am demanding and difficult and I get upset about things and withdraw and that hurts people. I wish I was better able to support my friends but I’m really a pretty shitty friend right now. I feel that I used to be slightly better at being support for other people. Right now I am so mired in my own bottomless need pit that I don’t have a lot to offer anyone. I’m sorry. I just have no spoons. I have nothing to give. I have no more support or understanding or anything to give anyone. I am so tired.

My body is a mixed bag. I struggle with various kinds of pain and I do my best to keep my whining to a minimum. I know I’m not very good at keeping my whining to a minimum because people feel the need to comment on how whiny I am. So I know I’m really bad at keeping my mouth shut. If people only knew how many complaints I sit on they wouldn’t think I was as big of a whiner. But, whatever. I am a whiner. I’m not denying it. I’m just saying it isn’t as bad as people make me sound sometimes.

My shrink asked me why I sign on to do events with people. I told her that I generally sign on for events with people because I want to guarantee that for x hours that person will be near me and interacting with me. If that isn’t my goal then I don’t sign on to do an event with someone. This was really mixed and conflicting for the last 10k that I flaked out on. I signed on for the race thinking we would train together and then race together. Her life blew up (not her fault and I am not mad) and that didn’t happen and by the race I felt like, “Well I’m training past this for the half marathon and we didn’t actually spend all the time together so maybe I have to take care of my body.” So I was selfish in how I talked to her in the week before the event and I hurt her feelings a lot. I did not handle it well.

A friend said, “Going to Dickens Fair is so much more fun with a group” (Dickens Fair is a historical reenactment like a Renaissance Faire but set in the Victorian period around the novels of Charles Dickens.) and I practically choked. I don’t have fun at Dickens with a group. Most of the times I have tried to go with people it has blown up and I have left crying.

If I want to do an event for myself I generally don’t sign up to do it with anyone else. People don’t follow through very often. I know it isn’t “personal” but it really bothers me. I don’t recover very much when someone flakes on a commitment to something that is important to me. I take it too personally. I feel shitty. It takes days or weeks or months for me to stop freaking out about how people always let me down. (It isn’t true that people “always” let me down but FEELINGS have their own measuring system.) It is so hard for me to trust people to show up when I really care about something.

A few years ago, the first time I ran a major race some friends said they would come watch because the course was right next to their house. Turns out they didn’t feel like getting out of the house so they didn’t show. I cried the whole way home.

If I’m doing something *for me* then I’m really sensitive to people showing support or not. If they do show support then I feel validated as a person. If I don’t get what I nebulously want then I feel like I should walk off an overpass into the pathway of a semi-truck. So I try to do those things alone.

I don’t express how important these things are to people because then I am being “manipulative”. It’s not ok to tell people that if they agree to something and then flake that I will spend days struggling to not kill myself. But that is the reality I live with. And I have to carefully keep it off screen and not talk about it too much because then I’m “inappropriate.”

I rarely write about how upset I am with people not following through. Often the person reads my blog and I don’t want them to feel guilty because of me. I don’t want other people to feel like I’m hurting them by having my feelings. I don’t want to be accused of being a drama queen. Better to shut the fuck up. Just shut up you crazy bitch.

If you can’t clearly ask for what you want from people you can’t expect to get it. If what you want from people is too complicated you can’t expect to get it. If you ask in a way that someone else doesn’t like you can’t expect to get it. But if I clearly talk about most of my mental health issues then I am being manipulative or I am traumatizing people. I can’t fucking win.

Something positive since this is yet another round of “what is wrong with Krissy”–everyone’s favorite game.

I’m very creative. I have a lot of ideas and lots of energy to follow through on my ideas. I like that about me. I have so many things I want to do. I can’t do it all immediately but I have a lot of neat ideas I work on.

I like my writing ability. Even though I should stop. Right. Now. Because my arms hurt like hell.

I love you internet. Thank you for being there for me.

Day 8

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I started a probiotic.

Breakfast: gf pancakes, banana, pecan, maple syrup

lunch: soup I made a few days ago with vegetables and chicken

dinner: rice, turkey, raspberries, green beans, pineapple (made my mouth itch like a mother fucker–I think I’m off pineapple for a while)

I had a lot of belly pain and distention around dinner. I felt really nauseated and I couldn’t actually eat while everyone was sitting at the table because I felt really bad. I slowly managed a full plate but it took hours. Given that I ran 4.5 miles I thought it was important that I eat even though I felt yucky.

It was a day so you get a cut tag. Continue reading →

Can’t sleep

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My arms hurt so I won’t type long. My arms hurt so much they are keeping me awake. The Impact class was hard.

I’m having gigantic feelings. I know I am hard to be nice to. I know I am hard to accommodate. I need more specific accommodation than average. I’m picky and sensitive and I have a lot of hot buttons. I know it isn’t reasonable. I know I don’t get to ask people to change in order to be nicer to me.

I feel like I’m heading into a phase where I should just stay home. I’m not capable of communicating my boundaries in useful, effective ways so I should shut the fuck up and just stay away from people. I’m broken.

If you poke me I will respond with hostility, anger, and possibly hatred. I don’t know how to undo that.

Day 7

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They say that if you have a spike in anxiety it can eliminate progress. That’s my experience. I was close to formed poop and now that’s just gone.

Breakfast: Two kinds of cereal eaten with some time delay between them. The peanut butter puffs I ate in the bath tub because I was hangry and freaking out. Then I sat at the table and had “proper” breakfast with the family. I ate the rice cereal with pecans, blueberries, banana, and almond milk again.

Lunch: I had 2 or 3 bites of a chicken breast before I realized it had to have garlic. I was incredibly disappointed because the display sign in the store said, “lemon, salt, pepper” and then I bit into and…. definitely garlic. I was really upset. It’s going to take all month before I can get the fucking irritants out of my diet.

I had pineapple and potato chips and a little bit of turkey breast for the rest of lunch.

Dinner: Noah made a great dinner. (Thank you very much.) Bison patties? Am I forgetting the animal already? I don’t think they were the turkey patties. I had a GF English muffin for my ‘bun’ and I had mustard and roasted tomato on my burger. It was dry as fuck and it took me a long time to chew it all but it was filling and it tasted alright. We had bok choy and roasted pineapple and grilled banana. Because my husband loves me.

Dessert: I had a few bites of almond milk ice cream. Not even a bowl-full because I really “should” be off all frozen foods (known irritant). I hate my life right now.

 

I only wrote down one BM yesterday and I can’t remember if that is accurate or not. Yesterday became a total blur. My day just didn’t go very well. At this point poop has reverted to complete lack of form. Soft cloudy mass in the toilet. At least it is staying more brown instead of being bright yellow?

Over-sensitive.

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I’ve been told that I’m over-sensitive since I was a child. It is one of the most common ways that people hand wave off the idea that my feelings matter. It is part of the reason I don’t express boundaries all that well.

“I didn’t mean it that way. See these list of circumstances, those mean it is actually ok for me to say what I did. You are too sensitive.”

Yes. I am. That’s why I stop spending time around people. Because I am “too sensitive” and the person doesn’t care very much and I choose to stop getting poked. It isn’t real fun for me. I don’t brush it off. I don’t laugh it off. I stew. I feel it for a long time. I feel disrespected and I don’t get over that feeling easily.

I’m difficult. Other than choosing to believe that my feelings don’t matter that much I don’t see how I can be much else. Yes, I AM over-sensitive compared to other people. Things bother me that don’t bother other people. Maybe that is the result of me having a much shittier than average first 20 years of my life. It leaves a permanent mark. I can’t change my past. I can’t change what I was made. If asking you to be sensitive of my sore spots is too much to ask then I can’t stand near you.

I just can’t. I would rather walk away than ask someone to be respectful over and over and get ignored. I’m really tired of being ignored.

This is part of why I have no idea what my food issues actually are. I have never been important enough to study. No one has ever thought it was worth looking at me to figure out why I have crippling diarrhea most of the time. I have been thoroughly convinced along with everyone else that I’m just a whiner and nothing is wrong with me–shut up. So I’ve lived with the pain for a long time.

“Just eat more Fiber 1 cereal.” From a doctor. Because… I’m just a whiner.

People don’t make jokes about something unless they really think it. I’m all paranoid and shit but I watch peoples behavior. People who “make jokes” about me… their behavior towards me is generally not that warm.

Like if you flip me off during a conversation you are probably going to be snippy and short and pissy at every single thing I say to you no matter how many people pre-read it for me to ensure that I don’t sound like I’m looking for a fight. There are always layers of deniability. “You just took it wrong.”

No, I don’t think I did. I think you meant what you said. All I have to do is look at how you have behaved over the last six months and… it’s accurate. I need to believe people the first time they say something to me “as a joke” and not make them prove it over and over.

Not everyone likes me. People who makes jokes about me probably have some simmering stuff. I need to notice that and pull back. I don’t have a lot of ability to absorb insult right now. I don’t a lot of the time. It causes me large scale problems I don’t recover from very well. Is that all my fault? Irrelevant. I can’t cope. Doesn’t matter whose “fault”. I have to get through my days.

When I feel insulted and disrespected I spend the whole day turning it over and over and over in my mind looking for patterns to connect it with previous actions. Ah, this is supported by A and B and C and D and E and F… maybe I should create some space here.

I feel like If only I weren’t so sensitive everything would be fine. My mom told me that a lot. She said that the only reason things were so bad between us was because I was an over-sensitive whiner.

I’m projecting mom stuff onto a lot of my friends lately. I’m aware of it. It’s not going all that well. If a situation has too many shades of things I dealt with at home then I’m more sensitive than average before I walk in the door. And I’m always more sensitive than average, so having my sensitivity increase is… difficult for most people to evade. Noah has treated staring at me like a hobby for years and he will tell you it is hard to track what I’m sensitive about this week.

In the Impact class this weekend I had to work really hard on pulling my hits if I wanted to be able to knee the suit instructors in the head. Mostly my early strikes/punches sent people flying. Often one hit was enough to end the fight because I hit so hard. The instructors are pretty good at telling, “That would be a knock out hit” because they practice quite a bit. I rarely get multiple hits because I’m scared and furious and I hit really fucking hard the first time. I was told over and over and over throughout my entire childhood, “You never hit first. Hit last. Make sure that motherfucker isn’t getting up.” But the knee to the head is so satisfying that I tried very hard to pull my early hits so I could knee the guy in the head. I did by the end of the class and it was as satisfying and wonderful as I hoped. Yay for making people fly through the air!

I’m very pleased that if I hit someone without a suit that way they would have to go to a hospital.

When people make little “jokes” it feels like the timid little taps people do as they are trying to set up for a satisfying knee to the head. The smaller hits “aren’t that bad” so don’t “whine” about them. Until someone has really taken you down you don’t get to complain about what has happened to you. Geez.

But I don’t especially like getting a knee to the head. So when people start smacking my face I take that as a hint and I back the fuck off.

But then I’m that big meanie who walks away from everyone and I don’t have good “attachment skills” and I’m broken and I can’t keep relationships.

I’ve been kneed in the head a lot of fucking times and I don’t recognize those little “playful” taps as nothing anymore–they are part of a sequence designed to knock me out and I just can’t accept that anymore.

I didn’t do much of anything yesterday. I came home and felt like shit. I didn’t cry all day, which is pretty good for me–only a few hours, but I stared into space a lot. I stewed. I felt shitty and worthless and I was the opposite of productive.

I’m not sure how productive I’m going to be capable of being today, either. “It’s just a joke” only it isn’t. I can see patterns. It matches larger scale behavior and I need to pay attention to that. If I don’t pay attention to what is happening I can’t see the knee before it strikes my face. I don’t like being blindsided.

Am I over-sensitive? Yes. I’ve been hit a lot. I have a lot of sore spots. If that is a problem for you, too damn bad.

I have never found it useful to go through the full list of, “I am feeling paranoid because of A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, and O.” People get very upset when they find out you have been hoarding a list that long. As soon as you get past three things you can never bring any of it up again, because it is “old stuff”. But I’m not over it. I’ve watched the pattern. I can’t talk about it. So I walk away.

Like I do.

It isn’t like this happens with one person. This is what happens with pretty much everyone. I’m not supposed to express my 300 nit picky little issues. It’s annoying. No one wants to hear it. So I develop a long list of problems and can’t talk about those either. So I walk. I don’t know how to have boundaries.

My shrink told me that if you are spending 50% of your time/effort on a relationship trying to change aspects of the relationship or the person then it isn’t a relationship any more. If I have so many little boundaries I would need to enforce that it feels like I would need to change the person… not worth my time.

How do you express boundaries?

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It was a question asked this weekend. My response: badly. With strangers I can over deliver on my boundary explanations and scare people. With people I love I rarely manage to clearly express my boundaries. I hint and if they don’t get the hint I walk away from the relationship. My experience is that trying harder to express boundaries ends with me feeling very frustrated and I waste a lot of time. I don’t have a lot of time going spare so I don’t choose to waste much time these days.

It doesn’t help that I’m not usually aware of what the boundary is exactly nor how it was crossed. I just don’t know. I know that I’m angry. I know that I feel let down. I know that I feel like someone promised something they aren’t going to deliver on. I know that there is something I need that I’m not getting and I don’t know how to ask for it. Trying harder to ask rarely goes anywhere good. So I walk away.

I told my shrink today that I’m getting old enough to think that I don’t need to burn every bridge I cross. Maybe someone isn’t compatible with where I am today but I will be cool with them again in a few years. Maybe I will change what I need. Maybe they will change what they have to offer. Don’t know in advance.

I am having really big feelings today. Food stuff has been rough today. I’m having huge feelings in general. My body hurts. A friend said something she meant as a joke and it triggered me quite badly. If Fremont isn’t somewhere you want to drive to, fine. But if you tell me that you don’t love me enough to drive to Fremont I am going to have an emotional explosion. Nothing good will come of it. I’m probably not going to feel ok for days. I am going to feel angry, betrayed, unloved, and like I want to burn your fucking house down. (Clearly I am not going to do anything violent…) I don’t think that’s funny. It’s not a joke to me. And I don’t have nice, calm, rational, fun reactions to being told that. I’m going to be a basket case for days and there isn’t really any walking it back.

I went to Whole Foods and tried to find something for lunch. I ended up walking through the store aimlessly crying because every single thing I looked at I couldn’t eat.

Day 7 is shit.

I need to stop typing. My hands and arms hurt so much. But I feel so lonely and angry and unimportant. I want to hurt myself so much. So I type. Maybe this is the last form of self harm I have left.

Christmas planning

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Shanna has six slots.

Stocking: this sucker is full. It isn’t *packed* but there isn’t much room left. Maybe the top 2″.

Santa: Have. Roominate.

*Want: Don’t have. She has a list, she’ll get something.

Need: Educational games

*Wear: Still need jammies.

Read: Pile of books. Anatomy, space, Spanish language stuff, and how to draw faces.

Calli also gets six slots:

Stocking: Full. Maybe 1″ left at the top.

*Santa: pile o’ Lego’s. I have the boards and I have a small set, I suspect I will get another set.

I’ve spent nearly $500 so far on Christmas. I do have other stuff for other people included in the total–it isn’t all the kids. But we are getting up there on what I want our limit to be for the year. Hm. Shipping kills me every year. It takes such a large percentage of the gift budget. Too bad I love people who live so far away.

I like being done with Christmas shopping before Halloween. Then I get to avoid all the people who are out and angry because other people are out. I’d rather shop in peace.

I’m not ratting on what I’ve gotten Noah.

Want: Don’t have. She has a list, she’ll get something.

Need: Educational games. They are more fun than they sound.

*Wear:Still need jammies.

Read: Lots of snake books. She asked for them.

 

Impact’s first weekend.

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I spent the weekend at a self defense class offered from Impact Bay Area.  If you are curious what they teach there will be a public demonstration next Sunday from 4-5:30 that you can come watch. Let me know you are interested and I’ll give you the address.

I have been to a public demo in the past. It was intense and a little scary to watch but it inspired me to want to take the class. I want to be able to do those skills! I’ve got to say, there isn’t much in life that is more viscerally satisfying than kneeing someone in the head and watching them fly four feet before they land on the ground.

After one of my “fight” sessions I managed to deescalate things verbally so I didn’t actually physically fight. The instructor could see I was disappointed so she asked if I wanted to go again for an actual fight. Then everyone burst into laughter. No one else was nearly as eager to physically fight. I felt quite blood thirsty.

It is a very tightly structured class which is both good and bad. The good is: they have a lot of material and they cover it very well. The bad: I have a hard time with people who want to have that much control over my bladder. *I* don’t have that much control over my bladder and I tend to feel pretty humiliated about that. Sorry. I haven’t been able to stick to the bathroom breaks other people assign ever in my life. I just can’t. Physically. That’s an ongoing issue for me in life. I will break the rules and go to the bathroom when I have to. But I’ll feel ashamed of myself and like I am bad the whole time and that dynamic sucks.

I get that they don’t want people wandering off to text for a while and waste time. That’s fine. I pee quickly. I just have to do it right when my body says.

The techniques they are teaching are challenging, but easy to start picking up. I’m going to need to practice a number of them. I’m pretty bad about punching when I shouldn’t. I have hurt my hands pretty badly in fights in the past so I understand why they have the guidance around not punching. Hands are delicate little objects–all those miraculously small bones are easy to break. I’m aware. I’ve worn multiple casts. (Not from fights. I’m klutzy–not that blood thirsty.)

I am unsurprisingly vicious when I’m taken from behind. One of the instructors commented, “Wow. I could hear the suit’s plastic thunk from across the room when you hit him. That doesn’t happen very often. You had to hit him very hard to make that sound.” Well… I was scared. What do you expect? Oh. You think I am here to *learn* to hit people. Naw. I’m here to learn more about *where* to hit them and *how* to hit them. I’m already very good with the whole “hit” part. Done lots of that. I’m totally comfortable with the idea of making someone else hurt very badly in defense of my body.

Based on the classroom discussions (lead by the teacher) I don’t think they get all that many students who are happy to hit people outside of martial arts. They don’t talk as if that is common.

I’m struggling with a few things the teacher has said. Not because she was wrong to say them–because I struggle with these things. There was a lot of conversation about how it is very legally necessary to verbally deescalate things. If you swear at someone and try to piss them off to provoke a fight you are on shaky legal ground to beat the shit out of them. It’s not exactly self defense if you egg a fight on.

The thing is: my attempts at verbal deescalation don’t work that well. A lot of my experience is that I do better to bring an absolute torrent of swearwords then guys will back off and leave me alone. My experience is that if I try to be firm but not engage I have more problems. I understand that legally I have no right to piss someone off and then hit them. I get it. It’s just something I am going to struggle with mightily. My experience is that the best tool in my arsenal for getting people to leave me alone is demonstrating (correctly) that I’m crazy and a random attacker has no god damn idea what I might do. I might just completely go ballistic and make your life a living hell. I’m like that sometimes. But only if provoked.

I try to believe that defending myself is a worthy cause. If it is a worthy cause it is worth absolutely all the energy I can throw at it.

I have deep respect and gratitude for the teachers at Impact. Even when they said or did things I didn’t especially like they were always very clear about why they said what they said. They had justifications and reasons and data. They did not *ever* rely on “because I said so” which I appreciate.

Saturday (day one) was a lot less hard than Sunday and I don’t think it is just because the techniques were more simple. The first day we worked on scenarios I don’t have a lot of personal experience losing. I’ve never been assaulted by a random person walking by and it’s a little baffling to me that people (in the most general sense possible) are terrified of those kinds of occurrences. My issues have always happened with people I know.

Sunday wasn’t necessarily about “people you know” but there was more direct fighting off sexual assault techniques. That was hard for me. I cried through part of the class because just watching the other students was very upsetting. I was grateful that I had a support network in class.

It was sorta funny. One of the lovely women whom I’ve never met before offered me a hug, I suspect because she saw me hugging the people I already knew before the class. I got to say, “Actually I’m not very comfortable letting people touch me until I’ve known them for many years.” One of the women whose hand I’d been holding said, “Yes I’ve known her for many years and today is the first time I’ve ever touched Krissy.” The nice stranger kind of blinked for a bit and said, “Well ok then.”

Yeah, I’ve got boundaries.

But it was the nice kind of running into a boundary. It was safe to express in a nice voice. I like it when that happens.

*I’m* not ok with people touching me until I have known them for a long time. It’s ok that I have that boundary now. No, I didn’t have it when I was much younger and that’s ok too. I’m allowed to have it now even though I haven’t always had it in exactly the same way. People are allowed to change.

I’m finding the class to be incredibly empowering. I highly recommend it for men and women. Not only do you learn more about how to effectively use your body as a weapon when necessary, you get to beat the shit out of suited instructors for days and that is just ridiculously fun. Uhm, maybe not everyone has as much fun with beating the crap out of people as I do. I’m practically giddy.

One technique, what to do when you are grabbed from behind and lifted to the floor, was hard for me to master because when it starts happening I go into a blind panic. Then my sweet helpful classmates were yelling “Bite!” at me because the next step is saying “Bite!” Yeah well, when I’m scared and lots of people are screaming bite at me… guess what I do. Whoops. The suited instructors were universal in their response, “Never ever ever apologize for hurting someone who is trying to hurt you. Even in a demo. Never apologize to the bad guy. Never. If you hurt slightly more than you intended to, it is the instructors responsibility to know how to keep himself safe.”

I am pretty ridiculously grateful to those kind men who volunteer to let group after group after group of people beat on them. That is true service to your community. They help people feel more confident in their bodies. It is wonderful to watch.

Luckily my arms are already less sore than they were yesterday. I’m going to have to be conservative about how I use my arms this week. My elbows are very sore. I have rug burn on my knee. I think it is kind of funny that I ended up with rug burn and I didn’t even get laid. That seems… counter intuitive.

I’m looking forward to next weekend.

Day 5: now we’re cooking.

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Breakfast: yet again with the puffed rice cereal. I can’t 100% get apples out of my diet till the box is gone so hurry up already. Almond milk, pecans, banana, and blueberries this time.

Lunch: big bowl of the vegetable/chicken soup.

Dinner: leftover stir fry and rice with blueberries for dessert.

I felt way less hungry today. I felt more like the food kept me full. That was nice. I walked 3 miles (very slowly–took me an hour) in the morning before the self-defense class. I probably drank 11 or 12 cups of water again.

Which leads me to…. The cut tag! This is, once again, your warning that the upcoming material is g-r-o-s-s. Reader beware.

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Day 4

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Breakfast has been consistent so far with minor variation. Puffed rice cereal, almond milk, pecans, banana. I added pineapple juice and peppermint tea.

Snack of raspberries and potato chips.

1st lunch: big bowl of mostly veggie/chicken soup.

2nd lunch: raw carrots and cucumber, 1/2 a GF English muffin with peanut butter and jelly, banana, lots of raspberries, and turkey bacon.

Dinner: big bowl of peanut butter puff cereal with almond milk.

3 BMs. Copious. Getting more brown. Not getting more firm.

Yesterday was challenging physically. A 7 mile run–I took it slow (1 hour and 40 minutes) because I knew I had a six hour self defense class. I’m glad I didn’t run harder. I was tired at the end of the day. I had a lot of fun in the class. Apparently I hit quite hard. I had to consciously pull my punches so that I could have an opportunity to knee the instructor in the head. Ha.