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.

Not appreciated

I wish I could say I was being productive. I’m not. I’m staring out the window. Noah asked me if I feel appreciated. I had specific unpleasant things go through my head: “Well I know you are grateful that I feel like I have to have sex with you almost every day.” It’s not like he forces me. Or even pushes. I just feel like I have to.

He wants to know how he could serve me better. I don’t know. I feel like an ungrateful asshole.

I never planned for what I would be working towards once I got to this position. It was kind of an end in itself. It’s not an end. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to grow. I feel stagnant and foul. I’m tired of having my stomach hurt because I am worried people will scream at me for having the stupidity to think I am good enough to appear in public with good people.

It’s kind of funny. We went to a church service last night. Friends got married–this was basically the community reception. The church had a lot of advertising propaganda for HIV/AIDS work. Much of the congregation were obviously queer leather folk. On one hand I felt very comfortable. But I make the assumption that a group like that doesn’t want to be inconvenienced by my children. It’s a fairly non-kid kind of group. I doubt they would actually mind. But it’s 45 miles away. I don’t feel like I have the extra spoons to give it a real shot. The hour drive there and back make it unpleasant with the kids.

This stage will change. I just don’t know how or to what.

maybe I should keep running.

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The kids broke open the bag of chocolate chips (the penultimate bag in the house–we'll see how long the last one remains) and I couldn't keep my hand out of it. So I made cookies. I figure this way I can make the chocolate chips last more than a day.

I can't cut any more. I'm going to go have another cookie. Fuck you brain.

Dear internet:

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I am feeling evasive. Can you tell? If you have questions I’ll answer them. If not I may be on vacation from writing. I’m thinking.

What are you afraid of?

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I am asked what I am afraid of. I went to a party last night. I have known those people a long time. Shunning. That’s what I’m afraid of. I sat at the party and I listened to people I didn’t know bicker. I listened to the relationship dynamics. The things they were saying and the frustrations they appeared to be expressing. I listened to the passive aggressive shit.

I didn’t stay in the group after Tom and I broke up because I didn’t want to watch what happened when he started hunting and I didn’t want to hunt in front of him. I know less than half of the people who are there now. Now I don’t have to worry about the crowd knowing my whole history. I didn’t want to parade men through the group. I would have been ashamed of myself. I am ok with people having a theoretical knowledge that I am a slut but I don’t parade my business.

I don’t want to be a parent in an open relationship because I don’t want to parade my business and I don’t want to keep dirty secrets. The only way I see to do that is to create an unchanging set of roles that they primarily interact with. It is a choice to be that kind of person for my kids. Not because I think all polyamorous people are bad–that truly isn’t it.

I’m not polyamorous. I’m a slut. I pick up random people on the internet for sex. I have done a lot of it. I have hit three digits of sex partners but I don’t know for sure. I lost my list in a hard drive crash. I used to keep an excel document with check marks for what sexual activities I did with whom. I did that in case I needed to look people up and say, “I tested positive.” I thought it was the ethical thing to do. I did actually go back and contact everyone when I tested positive for herpes. Even the one night stands I otherwise would never fucking have talked to again. It was hella awkward. I explained that I used to get cold sores as a kid, so I have probably had it all my life. I thought I was getting tested for it when I said, “Test me for everything” but actually they don’t do the herpes test as a standard thing. Whoops.

Sometimes people say that they won’t sleep with someone who has had more than x number of partners. I have had guys tell me that completely out of the blue so they can explain why they won’t fuck me even though I am hot. Cause obviously I was hot for them, right? The fact that I was not remotely sexually attractive to them was irrelevant.

I had a different point when I started writing. Shunning. Moving as often I did as a child is a constant slow motion enaction of shunning scenes. There were large scale specific instances that stick in my mind. When I was in eighth grade we lived with Seventh Day Adventists. Living with Uncle Bob sucked because he was a verbally abusive asshole. The only people who would take my mom and I in were the religious folk. They were kind as long as you did what they wanted.

I went to church with them. I went a lot. I got very involved. I started following Joey like a puppy and he was very involved in the church life. I went with him everywhere. I tagged along on trips up the the SDA college in Northern California, I found out about the boarding high school in Mountain View. I had fantasies of going before the church elders and telling them about my life and asking for scholarships. Please, please save me. Joey and I did a lot of door to door missionary work. I helped in the production of a series of classes on spiritual matters. I read my fucking Bible. I could quote it chapter and verse.

I had this friend at school, Yvette. She was involved in a different church. She invited me to come with her to a lock-in. That’s where they lock a bunch of kids in a gym all night long. It was a lot of fun. We played games and sang songs and told stories. It was one of the best nights of my childhood.

I came to one of the leaders of the youth group for the SDA church. I asked if we could look into doing something like this at our church. She recoiled from me in horror. She said that she did not condone filth. She told me that I would be better served somewhere else.

If I couldn’t go with Joey to the Seventh Day Adventist church then I didn’t have a way to get to a church at all. I couldn’t get off the mountain.

To punish myself for being unlovable by God I would enact the most horrible things I could think of. Mostly this entailed reenacting scenes from Bertrice Small books. I would dress up in the closest things I could find to corsets. I would wear really tight tights in layers until they caused me a lot of back pain. Then I would put on layers and layers and layers of gauzy skirts. I was very into the peasant skirt thing. I would put on many layers of shirts and dresses. When I was done I would put on a very tight belt. I walked around in the house. I would pretend to encounter strange men.

I would then pretend to be raped over and over. I used a wide variety of different items to penetrate my vagina starting with pencils. Sometimes I would experiment and see how many pencils would fit. I fucked myself with the legs of a Barbie. It kind of skeeves me out to see my kids play with Barbies. (Obviously not the same dolls.)

I would call myself names for hours. I would chant that I was a worthless whore and no one would ever love me. Even God didn’t want me. I was dirty and bad and I wanted bad things to happen to me. I deserved to be hurt. I was disgusting.

Then I started calling the radio dj. He was twenty-five. We went out on several dates. I was twelve. We didn’t have sex but he did ask me for a blow job. I gave it to him. I knew I was supposed to. I tried to be enthusiastic but it was really unpleasant. I tried to smile. I tried to not vomit in his car.

Not long after that my mother and I no longer were as friendly when the neighbors tried to tell us what to do and how to do it. We moved to the old house in the canyon for a while. I couldn’t stand living with my cousin’s girlfriend and her kids. I wasn’t nice to them and they weren’t nice to me. I think there is plenty of blame to go around for that situation sucking. Then Auntie and Uncle Bob bought the new house up in Redwood Estates and my mom and I joined them. It was like a palace. It was huge compared to the old house.

I spent a lot of time angry at God. I felt very directly shunned by God. I wasn’t. I was shunned by a tight-ass ignorant woman. A mean spirited harpy. Unfortunately God wears many faces. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t speak for God. No one wanted to help me. Police officers told me not to talk about what happened to me after being sexually assaulted. I was isolated and hunted.

I don’t think the dj sexually assaulted me. I think he exploited my low self esteem, but that’s not the same thing. He didn’t force or cajole. He didn’t pressure me. I wanted to. I was enthusiastic. I asked him out on a date. I think he should have been a good enough person to understand that it was pretty bad for me to be doing what I was doing.

My mom didn’t mind me dating the dj. I broke it off. I felt disgusting and dirty when he gave me an opal necklace for Christmas. I knew it was a cheap shitty necklace. It was a gift worthy of my status. I was that bad of a whore.

Which isn’t fair. It was probably what he could afford. He didn’t know me. We didn’t have a real relationship.

But … yeah.

I don’t want to teach my kids to be the kind of promiscuous I am. It hurts me. I am to a point where I am capable of doing nonmonogamy in an ethical and reasonably safe way because I have made a lot of mistakes and I have been hurt in a wide variety of ways.

I have learned lessons that not everyone needs to learn. My kids don’t need to grow up and be like me. It is not important that my legacy be carried on in such a way. But maybe it is still important for my experiences to be talked about. That isn’t the same thing.

My kids aren’t having a life like I had but other kids are.

I really should try to sleep. I was going to try to go to the Renaissance Faire with the kids. Hahahahaha. We’ll see.

We went out.

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Last night Noah gave me what I have been literally and figuratively asking for over the past few years. We went to a play party–specifically a bdsm play party. We went early. We played soon after arriving when not many people were there. We didn’t really want people hearing us. We felt very awkward about what we were planning.

From the point of view of an objective observer I’m not terribly interested in bdsm. I am interested in being abused. I asked Noah to hurt me in ways I really don’t enjoy and get out the frustrations he has been holding in. Noah is fairly ridiculously controlled most of the time. I do rude things and watch him catch them then consciously choose not to react. Noah puts up with me being downright nasty sometimes. I am constantly afraid of when the other shoe will drop. When is he going to get sick of me? When will he take revenge for how awful I am?

So I asked him to get it over with. It’s kind of funny how I want to condescendingly say he did his best. He berated me for twenty minutes while slapping me and kicking me and punching me. It probably would look very bad for someone listening to what he said. Noah’s words were straight out of a domestic violence situation. He stopped at twenty minutes because I was freaking out and he wasn’t ok with continuing to hit me when I was that upset.

I wish I understood what this need in me is. Why do I need him to treat me that way so much? Why am I unable to go through life with a husband who is just nice to me? If I had a husband who was just nice to me I would almost certainly cheat on him and cause huge problems. Noah is nice to me the vast majority of the time. Then sometimes he agrees to treat me how I think I should be treated so I can deal with him being nice to me the rest of the time.

I told him that there is no space for atonement in my life. I know I fuck up in ways big and small all the time. He just lets it go. He is ridiculously nice to me in comparison to everything and everyone I have ever known. So I always feel bad. I always feel like there is nothing I can do to repay him.

I wouldn’t say that I have squared any of our debts in taking the beating. I may be motivated to keep my ungrateful whining to myself for a while. I feel really bad about how ungrateful I am. Most of the time Noah rushes to assure me that I am doing a hard thing–it’s not that I am ungrateful. I am grateful for what Noah does for me. I feel like a fucking asshole because I have the audacity to say that what he does for me isn’t enough. I still have needs that go unmet.

I read that highly role defined marriages are happier than marriages where people help one another and do the same tasks. I get that. The expectations are killer.

My ass hurts.

I felt weird at the party. I knew I would have to spend a while defending my monogamy. Of course. I was told that showing up at the party and refusing to play with a guy who wants me to suck his dick was teasing–and that’s not very nice.

How dare I not want to give a blowjob to some guy, right?

I am quite glad to know what is eating at Noah. This is going to be hard to think about for a while.

The difference between bdsm and abuse is that I have a large hand in scripting what happens to me. I tell him what I am up for and what I am not. I ask for these things. I think I deserve them.

Somehow appropriate.

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I was curious what I weighed the day I got back from the marathon trip. I stepped on my scale. Apparently a battery burst. It totally fried the electronics. So I can't weigh myself. I haven't weighed myself since before my birthday.

Maybe I should decide that now that I am over 30 I just don't get weighed any more. That information doesn't actually affect my life in a positive way. Hm.

One of those not sleeping nights.

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An awful lot of why I respect Noah as much as I do is because of his single minded fixation on his goals. Which is not to say that all of his goals serve my goals–they don’t. But he’s very honest about that. He is very specific about which sand castles he lets me build–that was the result of years of screaming at him about doing that inappropriately with other people he dated. Ok, I didn’t scream. But I was vehement.

If you are not going to fucking do something then you are a piece of shit asshole when you give women the impression that you will. That is rude, disrespectful, and disgusting. I didn’t hold back. That was pretty surely hard to live with. But he decided that he wants to be married to me. He stopped letting chicks do that. Then he stopped dating them because he wanted to keep me.

Noah is having a good time where he is currently working. I have specific areas of disgruntlement which have resulted in me poking him with a sharp stick. This lead to him poking his head up around and looking around at options. But he has this buddy at work. Sigh. Ok. I will keep putting up with areas of disgruntlement. I don’t actually have any right to complain about his job. He’s the one who has to do it. I am a fascist about enforcing that his work day has an end point.

Any extra time you “choose” to give your company is time you are choosing to not spend with your wife and kids. Why are you doing that? Why are you saying fuck you to me? Living with me can’t be easy. I expect him to work ridiculously hard while he is at work so that he can advance (no really–this is an expectation) and then to walk out the door and pretend that work is almost invisible. That’s a tall order. He’s delivering but the strain is becoming more apparent.

Every so often I have a window into what it is like to be Noah. I understand his perspective just a little. An awful lot of why I respect Noah as much as I do is because of his single minded fixation on his goals. Noah exists. Noah is a force shaping change. It is unpredictable and sometimes everything he works for gets thrown away on a whim.

And for being able to create things out of thin air he is paid handsomely. I think I hold it against him. Sometimes I think I should have deliberately married a loser–that way I would feel like I had gotten what I deserve. Instead I got Noah.

I think that Noah and I fit together partially because we are both so alienated from society yet we are really lonely. Not many people are as alienated from their families as Noah and I are. Noah doesn’t have abuse issues like me–nothing like. But he doesn’t feel like part of that family. It is weird to me. They don’t really understand him–ok. They are ignorant and violent in defense of their ignorance–ok. But he feels no obligation whatsoever.

I feel obligation. I feel terrible guilt about walking away from Aunt Vonnie and my niece and nephews. I feel horrible guilt that I abandoned them to the horror. I can’t believe they are my problem. I can’t fix them. I can’t make their lives better. I just have to run if I don’t want to be like them.

I think that part of why this relationship works for me is Noah has handed all of the day to day money over to me. I get to be in control of my financial safety. In 2011 we spent a bit over $28,000 more than Noah made. It wasn’t a problem–I had the annuities and then we had Sarah’s rent. This year I have already saved $7,000 of Noah’s income. He didn’t get a raise. My book hasn’t even paid off the editor. If the next few months are on target I will have spent $40,000 less this year than last year.

I need to be the one controlling spending. When I am the person doing it I can dramatically shift my lifestyle and feel ok about it. Other people have different priorities. I can’t handle feeling deprived at someone else’s whim. It makes me angry and rebellious. If Noah set our current budget I would freak out. I am cognizant that I am reaching my goals on time or a little ahead of schedule and I try to eek out occasional blips of stress relief.

But from where I am sitting I have a freezer stuffed full of a wide variety of meat I feel good about eating. I have to have a variety or I get pissy and nasty about eating at home. I can’t eat all beef all the time. I have preserved enough local berries to get us through till next year. I have stocked up on dry goods. My grocery budget for the next five months will be almost nothing. I have saved enough that I have already paid next years property taxes in that budget column.

When I am feeling anxious or if I want to buy something I go look at www.mint.com. I am trying to keep my focus on what I’m doing. When I want to spend money I am generally trying to distract myself or soothe myself or get some feeling of pleasure. I know that the thing won’t make me as happy as having the feeling of safety.

This month our bank account cash balance will hit $40,000. This is the first time in my life that has happened because of a slow accumulation instead of from a random extra check arriving. It feels different.

And all of this feels weird because I don’t earn any of it. I feel that so acutely. I am the manager. It helps me not spend money on myself. I use the money in service of our shared goals. I have a specific small subset of the budget that is my personal spending money. I need cheaper hobbies if I am ever going to Starbuck’s again. The book. Race entry fees. Running shoes. A Disneyland annual pass. Lady Gaga tickets. I think that’s a pretty awesome year of fun things. I’m glad to not do a lot of smaller things. No I’m not. I’m lonely. But I still don’t want to change my priorities. I’m doing what I want to be doing.

It is weird to feel envy for what people have and do and know that I am consciously choosing to not do it in favor of other goals. I don’t compromise. It’s kind of weird to recognize about myself. I am on my own course. It doesn’t overlap with other people very often. Other people don’t want to do things in the times and ways I want to do them so I do them alone. That’s ok.

That’s the direction I have to grow, isn’t it? It’s ok that I am alone. I am doing what I want to do. Other people don’t share my interests or timing. That’s ok. It just happens that way sometimes.

This is a lot of why being with Noah is so weird. We are trying to figure out how to grow closer together. It’s hard. Everything we do seems to want us to be separate in space. We don’t overlap in hobbies much beyond sex. That’s a hard one while we have kids around. I have all kinds of issues. I have a brick wall between my sexuality and my children.

At least until they can read. Then I will tell them that if they read my blog they will have to learn how to self-select out of information they don’t want. Ha. I hope they won’t find it till they are basically adults. But I’m not going to hide it. I just don’t need to bring it up or talk about anything I write about spontaneously. It isn’t their business.

I think that Noah and I are comfortable with one another because neither of us has much expectation that the other will change to be more like us. We will change, but in often weird and surprising ways. I see some couples that become practically one person. Neither of us want to renounce main character status. You can’t be that deeply pair bonded and be a main character.

I think that is where the longing for G-d comes in. That would be something I could love without having to give up the essential aloneness that seems to be part of my self-identity. God could love me even when I wouldn’t allow myself to believe anyone else could. Sometimes I don’t allow Noah to be someone who loves me in my head. I mean that when I am thinking of him it doesn’t occur to me that he could love me. He couldn’t act like that and love me at the same time. In my world view those things are incongruous. But not in his world view. He is on a completely different track than me.

I can’t change him. He will always do things that make me feel alienated and alone and completely unloved. That doesn’t mean that he stops loving me during those times. It means I have attachment issues. I do not believe there is a way for me to try to change him that would prevent those feelings from happening. I think it would be unhealthy to try.

That is what my sister does. She wants people who will “try harder” to be what she wants. But at the end of the day they are still them and they just aren’t good enough. It’s a bad cycle.

Noah isn’t perfect. But he is consistently him. I can predict him. I asked him to stop dating people because there would always be bad communication because he would be trying to tell me what he thought would hurt me least. Not what was true. Because that is what he does. If he’s not in a situation where his sex life is on the line he doesn’t worry so much about just telling me.

My sister believes that relationships are good or not based on how much time you spend with someone. This is why she doesn’t work and she dates people who don’t work. They can be together 24/7. It’s awesome! It has been hard for me to deal with how much separation is “normal”. I feel abandoned all day every day. I feel hurt. I feel unwanted. I know that these are entirely irrational feelings. I know that Noah is doing the right thing in every way by working.

When I was a child I couldn’t imagine that being a grown up meant learning to tolerate being alone. Being away from you is part of how people support having a relationship with you. I didn’t understand. I feel like I still don’t.

Someone on the internet (obviously a sound source) said I was a train wreck who depended on my husband too much. I couldn’t agree more. I just can’t work out how to depend on him less. I try to just not talk. I try to not be demanding. I try to just be grateful for what he offers.

Oh who the hell am I kidding. I’m very demanding. I’m sorry for it. I just can’t see a way to survive that involves less demanding. I mean, I could do the ghost thing. But that’s not really surviving. I don’t want my kids to learn that.

I have to act in a way I want them to act. I want them to believe that their needs are worth meeting. Sometimes that involves being demanding.

The dying time

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I feel like this part of my life is the grieving. I am giving up the dream of who I was going to be. In order to be reborn you have to die. Your hopes, your dreams–all of them have to be given up if you are going to be something new.

This is why people stay stuck in the same patterns with the same people. They don’t want to die. They don’t want to give up their deepest held beliefs and expectations.

I really have to. The things I have believed about myself are no longer particularly useful to me. Right now I have Lady Gaga’s song “Bad Kids” on repeat. In my head I will never be anything other than the bad kid. I am the person your parents warned you about. You were told to stay away from me.

I have rebuffed more than one request for help recently under widely varying circumstances. I don’t think I was graceful. I feel like I don’t have enough something to be able to be nice to me. If I can’t be kind to myself I have no kindness for anyone else. I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t want to help. It’s that I have to live with how unpleasant I am and that is really hard. I don’t like feeling exhausted and angry because I never have the ability to even finish a thought.

I don’t know who I want to grow up to be. I can’t get my head around the picture. I keep trying roles on. I keep trying to get to the point where my mind can encompass it. Future me is hiding from me. I never tried to picture what I would do once I had the husband and the kids. Shit.

More than almost anyone I know I have followed the plans I set down rigidly for myself when I was a child. I got married 8 days before turning 25. My daughters were born when I was 27 and 29. Right on my schedule. I decided that years in advance.

I think that an awful lot of partner selection is deciding that you are ready to take your life in a new direction and you grab the person who looks the most likely. I certainly did that. I had a wide variety of options. I examined them carefully. I would visit their houses and sit quietly and try to think of how the life there would look.

I used to freak out at the idea of being stuck in this house forever. When I dated Noah the first time I firmly rejected him as an option. I didn’t want to be part of this life. I’ve changed the house and changed my future and it’s going better. I wasn’t able to believe that my influence would matter. I didn’t fit in the Disaster House. I’m not an open-invite-party-in-my-house person. I want to exclude the rapists. There were a lot of rapists at the DHPs. They didn’t do it at the parties, of course. But I know a lot of bad stories about people who were quite popular there.

I think I am uninterested in being part of any groups because when I go I am hyper aware of the sexual predators and I don’t want to be in the room with them. Everyone else want me to just get along. I’d rather take a baseball bat to their skull and prevent them from hurting another woman. I can’t just get along. I can not be there. That is my gift to society. That is how I keep my mouth shut.

But when I hide at home I don’t get to talk to women. My perspective is silenced. Kevin gets to keep hunting. Paul. Dan. These are popular guys! I’m not popular.

I feel like part of shaving my head was closing the door on hunting. It has been interesting to me over the years how often my hair is a factor in people wanting to fuck me. They comment on it. I don’t understand why looking at curly hair is so interesting while having sex. I never asked for clarification. It was just one of the things I had to work with so I did.

When women tell me that they can’t get laid I blink in shock. I think their standards are too high. Anna used to complain that she couldn’t get laid. The only person she wanted to sleep with was her best friend. He was from a ridiculously well off family so he was spoiled, self absorbed, and entitled. He wouldn’t date a girl who was that heavy. Or who had such a plain face. Anna certainly wasn’t ugly–but she wouldn’t win a beauty contest. She was not especially pretty either. And she only wanted the best looking boy in the room with the best body. No Anna, you can’t have that.

I think that most of the people I have slept with would be vaguely insulted if they understood my evaluation of their status. Hey, you’re sleeping with me you can’t be that high in status. If you were higher in status you would go fuck someone better. Someone prettier. Someone with a better body. Someone nicer. Someone who… God I don’t even know. Someone worth being proud of standing next to. A lot of men have indicated that they didn’t want to be seen in public with me. I am not the kind of girl you want to introduce to your mother.

And Noah fucking married me. What does that say about him? I think he was rebelling against his family. He married the trailer park slut. I don’t think a rich boy from Texas can do a more rebellious thing. Sure, by the time he met me I was living with Tom in a nice townhouse. Does that raise my status? I was able to fuck a higher quality of person by the time I was an adult.

It really doesn’t matter what status I perceive myself as having. When I go off into the world now people do not see who I was or what I have done. Mostly they have no idea. I am a highly educated person. I have worked very hard to learn about the world. I can converse on a wide variety of topics with fluency and ease. People don’t know I’m white trash until I tell them. I pass. Shouldn’t I just take that and run with it? Wouldn’t that be the smart thing?

In order to do that I have to essentially kill the part of me that I don’t want anymore. I have to kill my bad kid. She has to die.

I have a lot of attachment issues. A friend was admonishing me that I should place my faith in the love of Noah rather than wishing for the love of some mythical G-d. Thing is, I don’t have faith in Noah’s love. I wait for when it ends. I consider it unavoidable. Inevitable. I can’t put my faith in Noah. He will leave me. Everyone does. I’m trying to figure out how to build a self that depends on no one and nothing and I’m failing.

I don’t know how to envision my future. I don’t trust that anyone will be in it with me. All I can see is wanting to die. Wanting to be done feeling alone and unwanted like this. Even though Noah is sitting three feet away from me and looking at me with concern because I am crying.

I no longer believe in “forever”. I feel like I will be here until the wind changes. Then I will blow away. Will I still exist then? I don’t know. I don’t see where I fit. I don’t see a place for me anywhere. I can’t see a future for me.

Why is permanent monogamy so important to me? Because if I wasn’t monogamous I would use that hunting time to line up Noah’s replacement. Eventually I would begin believing that Noah was about done with me. Then I would withdraw. I would just end up at someone else’s house more and more. Noah thinks he would be able to get me to take 50% of the proceeds from this marriage. I think he underestimates the willingness of the California court system to listen to someone who says, “I want to walk away with nothing. Like I came with.”

I feel worthless. I feel like all that I do is meaningless. I am just an empty shell. I can totally envision me fucking up my marriage over sex. That’s why I closed the door on that specific flavor of broken. Even when I believe I am a worthless whore I am not going to go act like one. I am going to model appropriate behavior if that is the last thing I do.

It isn’t that I think that children must see monogamy at all costs in all circumstances. Shanna loves her Grandpa J and his wife C and his girlfriend D. That’s fine. I don’t do that. I pick up random men who like to be mean to women. It’s different. I don’t go find people who respect me. Just listen to how they talk to me. The people who want to fuck me don’t have a lot of respect for me. They want a hole. I don’t want my girls growing up seeing men treat me that way. Noah is nice to me. I want them to see that.

I feel guilty about it but a lot of the reason I can’t help people right now is because I can’t afford to feel invested in people when I have no control over the results of my effort. When I sign on to help I will often put in dozens and up to hundreds of invisible hours of work. In order for me to say, “I recommend you do _______” I have to be god damn sure. I don’t think most people operate the way I do. I will not give a half assed opinion in a situation where someone comes to me for help. I will give them the same support and education I would give myself. I just can’t do that for extra people right now.

I would not be able to hold my head up if I knew I was giving substandard advice. I am not that person. I don’t do that.

I say things like that and then I think–what is my image of myself? Am I the pathetic bad kid? I’m one of the most consistently reliable people I know–or I won’t commit. I take my word seriously. I am honest and dependable. I am consistent. I am not always what people want to hear or see, but I am going to just go on existing. Consistently. Fuckers.

Why do I think I am about to blow away? I am all but building a fortress. I am entrenched. I am settled. I have lived in this house longer than I have lived anywhere. I don’t plan to move again.

I have panic attacks if I am lax on dealing with recycling and I develop a stack of boxes. I cannot handle even the idea of moving.

This vision of myself is dying. But I don’t know what to replace it with. I don’t know who I am. I’m afraid this will be a very hard and dark winter. I’m already freezing all the time but I won’t turn the heaters on till November. Stubborn. That’s me.

Intentions, responsibility, cause and effect.

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I’ve been reading religious writing. That always makes me think. Part of the reason faith makes me think is that I do not believe and yet these world views coexist with mine. How? I do not believe there is a benevolent god. I’ve missed that boat this lifetime. That’s ok.

Instead what I get are these periods of great clarity where I can see how I cause my own problems. I can see where my word choices inflame people. I can see how I antagonize situations. I can see how things are the natural result of my actions. It tends to make me vacillate between inaction and action. I have to act. Even my inaction will cause things to happen. What things do I want to have happen and how do I make them happen?

Things happen for reasons. I don’t have to like the reasons, but they are there if I care to look. Like the marathon. I trained with the idea that I would be slow. I god damn lived up to that. Ha. I think it is funny how I am already minimizing it in my head. “Seven minutes until I wouldn’t be a “finisher” can I even call it “running a marathon”?” Because I’m slick like that.

I feel like the aftermath of the marathon has yet to hit me. I have been kind of brain dead for a few days and yesterday was ridiculously frustrating. Both kids just had one of those days. It happens. Then my dental hygienist went off on me again. I am not brushing my teeth for her. She’s hoping that if she harps at me enough by the time I am retired I will take up tooth brushing s a hobby. I asked her to stop. Then I got up and left the room because I was so angry I wanted to punch her in the face and I know that isn’t an appropriate response. I know I wouldn’t like the consequences of that action.

I think a lot about how I am going to teach my kids. What am I going to teach them? I have an obligation to produce two highly educated adults in another decade and a half. What does that mean to me?

I was asked about curriculums. I don’t have any knowledge about homeschooling curriculum. Frankly I don’t know a lot about the prepackaged ones handed out to high school teachers either. I didn’t use them. My students never picked up the textbook from the bookroom. I don’t like them. I think they are pointless lies. In order to give any opinion about them I would have to spend hours, possibly hundreds of hours reading about the different options. I really don’t want to do that given that I believe the textbook publishing industry is hopelessly flawed and I can do better.

But doing better is a fuckton of work. All day every day for years and years and years. Oh god. Do I really want to do that? Yes. I do. I start with the California Standards of education because ostensibly that is the yardstick my kids will be measured against. Once I look up the standards how do I implement them? Depends on the standard. Depends on my kids ages. There will be thousands of different answers. There isn’t one answer. It tailors over and over and over.

Having three kids would have been harder. Paying attention to two levels of development is already stretching my ability to hold concepts in my head and work with them. I can do differentiated instruction to a bunch of people “in the same grade” a lot more easily than I can completely come up with different things. Shanna and Calli are simply not experiencing the same things in life. I have to work with that. That’s why I do constant developmental reading. I know that I don’t have all of the necessary information in my brain. Putting it in my brain is work.

I put approximately three hours a day of ongoing work into the process of educating my children. I don’t mean I work with them three hours a day. I mean I have about three hours a day where I independently read or sit and think and plan specific approaches to educational concepts. I work with my children far far far more than that. At this point in my experience I can do a lot of this work in my head but I also take pages and pages of notes. I should probably start consolidating them and putting them in files. Then I will be able to just hand them to someone else who is asking me for advice.

I can’t easily summarize what I know. Honestly I am too complex in my thinking for it to be easy to explain. It makes me feel like an asshole to say that but it is true. I have to be thinking about my kids development across a variety of levels: language, social, physical, emotional, and lets not forget actual “education”. I am already setting the tracks in my brain for monitoring PE, science, maths, language arts (we actively work on learning English, ASL, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian—not because I think we will become fluent but because the more language pathways you open early on the better), social studies, and health. I was formally educated in how to educate.

But I plan to primarily unschool my kids. How the fuck does that work? Quite frankly I wouldn’t have the courage to unschool if I didn’t know that I have this web in my brain ensuring that my kids development was being tracked in a variety of ways. I seek outside verification and assessment constantly—of me and of my kids.

I don’t go through life assuming I am doing things right. I go through life believing that I am building towards an unknown future. I don’t know that I am making the right decisions. That won’t be obvious until I get to the end of my life. You only know if you are right or not by whether or not you attain your goals. What are my goals? Happy, healthy people who can go do whatever they want. Maybe my kids will go to college and maybe not. I’m not particularly invested in them doing so. But I will make sure I have $100,000 to hand them either way. Well, I won’t just hand it to them. I will be a controlling asshole to the end. I will fund education (of whatever sort), part of a house at 25 if no education happens, travel, or something I haven’t imagined yet. I won’t fund partying. That you have to do on your own dime. I don’t care that your grandparents funded your father’s partying. They have more money to spare than me.

Now Shanna is up so this may end abruptly.

What are my goals? That my children are able to go do the things they want to do. That they do not make excuses for why they can’t do things. That matters to me. That they make emotionally healthy choices. If my daughters go through a string of abusive partners I’m going to bloody know that it is my fault. I want my daughters to value themselves and have people in their lives who also value them.

How in the hell does one go about having that? I don’t really know for sure. I don’t actually care if my kids are starving musicians. I just need them to be the kind of starving musician who understands that you also need a day job because no one owes you anything.

No one owes me anything. I have to figure out how to live within my emotional limits. For most of this year I have not been doing so. I consciously and deliberately chose to go do something that was clearly beyond my limits. But I did it. Barely. I think it is hilarious that people think I want to get better at marathons. Hell no. That sounds like a lot of work and I’m kind of busy.

I honestly find it bizarre that people would push me towards doing so given how much time and energy it takes. Haven’t you noticed how fucking psycho I have been all year? Don’t you think less stress is a good idea? How can more marathons lower my stress again? Crazy talk. You can only add intensive hobbies if you have spoon to spare.

I periodically feel guilty about co-opting the spoon metaphor. I understand that it is meant to clarify issues of physical limitation. I feel like my emotional issues function the same way though. I can only take so much stress or pressure. Then I cease to function. All of that breakdown comes down on the heads of my children and that is simply not fair. I can’t have hobbies that take that much from me. It’s not fair. Yes, yes life isn’t fair. If I choose to be that kind of selfish bitch I don’t get to absolve myself of guilt or responsibility for the results. If I don’t have the self-control to be a marathon runner and a nice person then I can’t be a marathon runner.

It is part of why we didn’t have a third child. We realized that we are already spread too thin. We are not meeting all of our needs and the needs of our current children. I am not ok with shafting my current kids because I want a baby. It’s a selfish thing to do. Noah said he wasn’t going to do it and had himself surgically altered. It was the right decision for us. I enjoyed the baby stage for the first three years. Now I have to move on and I am not able to do the baby stage and move on at the same time. It is simply too much work to be done in a day. I can’t do it. It’s too hard for me. I am the youngest child. I know what it is like when mom doesn’t have much left to give. I still have a lot to give Calli. But that will be all for me.

Everyone is different. Everyone has different things to offer the world. I feel like what I have to offer the world is of very little value. I have things of great value to offer Shanna and Calli. I have things of moderate value to offer to a few close friends. Past that I don’t know that I have anything. What does that mean?

I don’t know but Shanna won’t stop talking 4” from my ear about the book she is going to write so I need to sign off before my head explodes.

Bucket list: Run a marathon

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For many years I have said, “Some day I will run a marathon.” I’m aware that a lot of people say that. My ex-boyfriend said it all the time. He still hasn’t. I suppose the idea came into my head because my brother Jimmy is a runner. I asked him in February of 2011 to commit to doing a marathon with me. It was a tentative step towards developing a relationship. We have never been close. Kids in families like ours aren’t allowed to be close.

In May of 2011 my Uncle Bob died. Uncle Bob was the man in my childhood who loved me and cared for me without sexually assaulting me. My family didn’t tell me he was in the hospital or that they were taking him off of life support. My niece decided I should know and she called me. He died while I was stuck in traffic less than five miles away from the hospital.

Something inside me broke. My sister asked me if I had “ever lost someone close to me before” and turned red with fury when I responded, “like our father or our brother Tommy?” I wasn’t allowed to bring them up. They “didn’t count” because they both abused me and sexually assaulted me. I went home and outed myself as an incest survivor on the internet. My brother Jimmy didn’t think that was ok. He told me I was melodramatic and looking for attention. I haven’t spoken to him since. Since my family all decided they were done with me I figured it was a good time to finally write the story of my childhood. I did so in November of 2011.

In January of 2012 I asked my housemate/co-parent to move out, which was stressful and emotionally hard. I also started running. I decided that even though I wouldn’t actually be doing it with Jimmy I was going to do the marathon anyway. We were planning on Long Beach because it is one of the flattest marathons in the state. I registered. I looked up training plans and put them on my Google Calendar for the next ten months.

When you decide to do something there is this waiting period. You want to do it and it is going to be ridiculously hard—how do you get there? I’ve never done anything physically taxing like this before. The only running I previously had done was getting away from people who wanted to beat the shit out of me. I did one year of t-ball and less than a full season of little league. I was “catcher” for one pitch. I missed and it hit me in the stomach and made me puke and cry. They stuck me in the outfield and I got sick of going after a couple of weeks. So I had no basis of “fitness” to build on.

It’s probably worth mentioning that I am a stay at home mom with two kids. They are two and four. So I’ve been doing this running while trying to manage them. Finding time has been interesting. For the first five months I ran in the afternoons after my husband got off work because none of my runs took very long. Once the runs started getting longer and longer I switched to leaving my house by six in the morning. I have no childcare. I have to make use of what little time my husband has available. He is a software engineer so he is out of the house a minimum of 45 hours a week and often more than that. And he wrote a book this year so he doesn’t have a lot of time available for helping me. It’s been stressful.

I hear a lot of people talk about how running is supposed to improve a persons mood. I have no idea who these people are but it doesn’t bloody work for me. I have spent the year crying. I cry before I run. I cry while I run. I cry when I get home. I have a lot of grief. I’m crying for Uncle Bob. I’m crying for my father. I’m crying for my mother. I’m crying for my sister and my brothers. I’m crying for my niece and nephews. I cry and feel worthless and empty. It doesn’t matter how I feel on any given day. I know what I have to do. I schedule things so I don’t have to wonder what a day will require.

I have asked myself over and over all year why this is important to me. Why am I torturing myself? Am I running because my brother is a runner? Because I want to prove that I am a fucking Archer whether my family wants to acknowledge that I am alive or not? Because I want to be a bad ass? Because… I don’t even know. I said I would do it. If I quit or stop then I become just one more person who makes promises and doesn’t keep them. I said I would run the Long Beach Marathon.

About a month before the event a good friend ran a twenty mile race near her home in Portland, Oregon. I was kidding when I said, “Hey if you trained up to this mileage then a full marathon is easy. Come do it with me!” Surprisingly she said yes. Within hours she had talked to her husband and booked a flight.

The last month of training was both the hardest and the easiest. All of a sudden I wasn’t on this terrible solo death march of feeling abandoned. I had to keep training because Ali was coming. Ali loves me. I still had a lot of days where I cried so hard my knees buckled and I fell to the ground and cried until I couldn’t cry any more. Then I got up and ran again. The good days came more often.

Six days before the race I drove to Southern California with my family. We were off to Disneyland! The girls and I had a lot of fun getting in my last walking miles in the park. The day before the race Ali was supposed to fly down first thing in the morning. Her flight was delayed. At the first notice I started feeling a little worried but I thought she would make it and it would be fine.

Six hours later they cancelled her flight entirely. I was afraid that was the end. I didn’t sob on the phone to Ali. I only freaked out a little in text. Her amazing husband jumped on the internet and booked her another flight. It was later and going into a different airport and it would be a lot more complicated—but she would get to SoCal. Unfortunately she would get there too late to pick up her race bib. She emailed me a picture of her ID and her husband emailed me a waver to print so I could pick up her bib for her. We live in the future!

I drove down to the Expo by myself. I didn’t want to be focused on my kids while I was trying to figure out where to go. I wasn’t feeling patient. I checked the lists of people registered. My brother’s name wasn’t on it. After a year of heart pounding anxiety worrying about seeing him that was rather anticlimactic if you ask me.

So I picked up the bibs and went back to our hotel room. I angsted and fussed. Ali got to her moms-in-law’s house. I arrived around 7:30. We talked more than we should have. It would have been impossible to avoid. I hardly ever get to see her. Talking to her feels really good. So we didn’t get to sleep till around 11 pm. I slept till 2:30 am. Then I woke up to use the bathroom and the crying started. I cried until Ali woke up around 5:30. I cried because I didn’t have one more chance to see anyone in my family. They are just done with me. I think there was some big part of me that was praying that Jimmy would see me and hug me. I haven’t said that out loud all year. I was afraid to hope. I was smart.

We woke up and piddled around getting ready. Ali had trouble forcing her way through her breakfast so we left about fifteen minutes after we were supposed to. That’s ok, we left a little bit of a buffer. Then it turned out that the person driving the vehicle had a different opinion about the optimal way to get to the race grounds. An opinion that was unfortunately not born out in reality. We were blocked continually by the race track. Whoops. Eventually we went around on the freeway (what Ali was campaigning hard for from the beginning, apparently—I was fairly unaware of this subtext) and arrived at the race. We had just enough time to stop at the port-a-potties before the last wave started. We hurried. We made it into the last wave and settled in for our run.

I’d like to say it was wonderful because I was with Ali and in many ways it was. She sang me silly songs. She encouraged and coaxed. She helped me through the rough parts. There were a lot of rough parts. The first big problem was the air quality. I am not used to SoCal air quality. I felt like I had to chew each breath before swallowing. It was really hard to run. I was dizzy and nauseated. We walked a lot. It was also almost twenty degrees hotter than either of us are used to running in. Oh and the humidity. The humidity was nightmarish (thus the bad air quality). We were wet all day and crusted in salt. But the real kicker? I started my period at mile 13 along with terrible cramps that made me want to go to bed and curl up and cry. Luckily Ali had extra tampons. Yay for planning ahead. A medical station provided some ibuprofen. I had to finish.

It was beautiful traveling along the ocean. The city of Long Beach is certainly picturesque. One of the most disheartening moments of the race was when the half marathoners split off and we went from being part of a large crowd to being one of the stragglers. It was a little sad for me to realize how far behind the pack of “runners” we were for the marathon. Really we mostly walked. I ran as much as I could but I didn’t want to faint or puke so it wasn’t that much.

In the end our running time was 6:47. We finished seven and a half minutes before they closed the finish line. We were part of the last wave and they only keep the finish line open for 7:30 hours. It’s a darn good thing we weren’t just a hair later and that I managed to run as much as I did.

I did it. I finished the Long Beach Marathon. Thank you Ali. Near as I can tell this is the hardest thing I have ever done with another person. I’m so glad I had you. I won’t forget.

The flea had a gleam in his eye. (Silly song Ali sang.) I think it was because he was plotting. He was wondering how hard it was going to be to run. He wanted to know if he could keep up with you too.

I won’t do another marathon with you. Can we do a half next time? That’s only half as crazy. Next time on your turf with better air quality.

PS- Sharing is caring.

Three hours left

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I’m scared. I don’t even know exactly why. I feel terrible sorrow that my family will never know nor care about anything I do. I slept for about three hours. Other than that I’ve been crying.

I feel so stupid. I’m 31. I’m about to run a marathon. I will do fine. I’ve trained and all. The only thing I can think about is how much I want my mother. I would give anything if my mother could love me. I could do anything.

This is why I am nice to my children. I don’t want them to spend their lives crying and wondering why they aren’t deserving of love.

Emotional volatility, yup that’s me.

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My brother is not racing. Blacksheep’s plane was delayed six hours then cancelled. She caught a much later flight to a totally different airport. She will arrive at her moms-in-law’s house less than twelve hours before the race.

That’s pretty god damn intense. She is working hard to get here. Wow.

I can’t get more pot. Apparently SoCal dispensaries require you to have the Full Letter from your doctor. I’ve never been asked for it before. Fuck. I cried all the way back from the dispensary. I went to three checking.

I feel like I am supposed to be in many places at once, always being nice. I’m not nice. I want to scream and jump up and down and kick things.

I have completely shredded my cheeks, tongue, and parts of my gums from anxiety. I can’t cut anymore so I will apparently suck on my mouth like I’m on ecstasy. I guess I shouldn’t even have written the word yesterday. Ha. I’m not on e. I’m very sober. It’s shitty.

It will work out. I may go home a day early. Yes, I’m that lame right now. It’s either that or sit in the hotel room crying because there is no way I will be able to handle crowds the day after the marathon sober. Just no. I don’t have that to give right now.

We’ll see. I’m tired. My neck hurts. I’ve had a headache for days. I haven’t actually packed for the marathon yet (I’m not sleeping here tonight). I think I am avoiding doing so because I want to quit. I don’t want to run. But Blacksheep went to an awful lot of trouble. And I know my brother won’t be there. It’s a bucket list thing.

My brother decided not to do it. I don’t know why. I will never know why. I will probably never see anyone who shares my blood other than my children again. I’m really glad I have kids. A bucket list wouldn’t be enough today.

This is what I medicate away from. This sensation of being trapped in a rusty bear trap. I would like to chew off my leg just to get away from the trap. Surely whatever damage I do to myself doesn’t matter. I just need to get away.

I was asked for more information.

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I was asked to give more information about the situation with Kevin. I don’t know how to do that without telling a story, so here I go.

In August of 2004 I realized that my relationship with Tom was over and I broke up with him. I met a man named James at a sex party and we talked online for a few weeks before having a date (or any kind of sex for that matter). Our first date was the first weekend in October and he brought me down to Red White and Blue Beach in Santa Cruz–a nude beach. It was basically a regional Burning Man event. I met a lot of people that night and started doing a lot of drugs. Ecstasy was my favorite. I did it every 4-6 weeks for about nine months.

Not long after I started dating James I met Kevin. I don’t remember where exactly for sure. I suspect it was at a mutual friend’s house who hosted a lot of hot tub parties. We always danced around boundaries. We warmed up to one another slowly and built a friendship. I was very lonely and I didn’t have many places to go. Most of the people I knew either didn’t invite me over to their houses or I didn’t feel like they would accept my invitations. So I spent time with the people who invited me.

Kevin often offered me massages. He also listened to me talk about various questionable things and tried to sound supportive. It was always tricky because he would simultaneously tell me me that he respected me and he was glad that I spoke up about my boundaries but he would “oops forget” over and over. I brought it up more times than I can count. He would sometimes say he “understood” and sometimes express confusion over what I was talking about. He is quite good at making people feel crazy. Even though his hand was just inside my vagina he would deny it adamantly and express concern for why I was over reacting to a massage.

Eventually I started dating someone else and faded away from the Burner community. I wanted to stop doing a lot of drugs and I wanted to stop feeling like I had to defend my body with force. I stopped coming to events at all after a female friend of mine lead a class on “boundaries” meant to help the women who were sexually assaulted at beach events pulled me up in front of the room and mocked me for “how good I am” at defending myself. She said that not everyone needs to be a bitch like me. I didn’t see a good reason to come back.

I stopped going to those events because my experience of heavily nudity focused events (and Burning Man stuff seems to be) involves a lot of men who feel like me saying no is doing something rude and mean. I can’t live with that. I am one of those stupid girls who is easy to peer pressure. When people pressure me I cave. I shut my mouth and close my eyes and put my head down and accept what is going to happen. My experience of resisting pressure isn’t good. Either I’m publicly mocked for being a bitch (usually by women) or I am raped.

I stay home.

Can’t sleep. Captain Hook will get me.

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I can’t sleep. I should have brought sleeping pills. I read somewhere that if you take sleeping pills you are five times more likely to die. I’ve been trying to not take them. See, I didn’t even pack any. Obviously I don’t want to take them. But I fell asleep at nine and I woke up at midnight and I’ve been awake for an hour fretting and I don’t feel the least bit tired. I feel amped and anxious. I feel like my heart is about to jump out of my chest.

I’m thinking about self-mutilation. I think I am writing the intro for that chapter in my head right now instead of sleeping. (I honestly don’t want to really write it tonight–sleeeeeeeeeep.) Self-mutilation is a big topic. It’s cutting and burning and banging your head and all sorts of other fun ways to spend an afternoon. Everyone self-mutilates in slightly different ways for slightly different reasons.

Personally I like cutting the best because I like seeing blood. I think I don’t have scars from cutting because of my “personal style”. I like to do tiny cuts that are just barely deep enough to break blood vessels and then I will do dozens or hundreds of those until I have enough visual sensation of blood. Other people like going deeper because they like the pain of cutting muscle. That kind of pain doesn’t give me the focus or control I want. It makes me feel triggered and frantic. Everyone is different.

Bad coping methods. They truly are better than nothing. If nothing will get you dead do something bad instead.

I don’t carry sleeping pills with me because I am always afraid I will have a bad day and be done. It feels like having them with me is too big of a risk. In my house I can handle having A Dose but I don’t trust myself outside of my house. I have worked up a ritual and an approach and a way of managing myself at home. It’s different everywhere else. My resources are spread differently. It’s harder to have the self control to take a dose. I’m just so freaked out that I want to sleep and I’ll do anything. Including taking way too many pills. Because today it feels like nothing could possibly be strong enough to make me sleep. My brain is cycling around too fast and all I want to do is sleep. I don’t think I would be able to take one dose. I would take one and five minutes later another and five minutes later another until I fell asleep.

That’s kind of bad. So I don’t do that.

Instead I write an email to an old friend telling him that even though I am generally speaking a judgmental asshole and I’m really mean I don’t think I clearly told him that I think he could be a good parent. I need to say that. I need to say it without other things right next to it so the message isn’t lost.

I think about Jimmy. I think about Tommy. I think about that little fucker at Lakeside who broke my arm because Tommy wanted him to.

I may end up finding a dispensary down here. If I am going to go buy drugs to help me calm down it is probably a better idea to prioritize being more stoned over taking more sleeping pills. I don’t want to smoke at Disneyland so I’m limited to the other methods I had on hand. It’s a very scant week’s supply. I certainly don’t have enough to also take it to help me sleep. That’s probably a bad choice right this minute. In fact as I am sitting here typing it occurs to me: I do have medication that will make me sleep tonight. I’m not taking it because I’m trying to ration it. But I can buy more. I’m one of those asshole privileged people. I don’t have to deal with this feeling all night long so that I am a nightmare tomorrow.

Thinking! I can do it! The awesome part is how fast that is to implement. Done.

The funny part is I won’t feel it for a really long time. So I’m still going to be up for a while. Just knowing that I’ve already started solving the problem is relaxing. I won’t be awake all night. Ok, so I’ll probably be awake for 2-3 hours in the middle of the night. I hear that it is fairly normal for my species. It’s only going to be 2-3 hours because I medicated. Otherwise I would watch the sun come up.

I can’t do everything. Sometimes it feels like I can do very little. I can not-die today. I will touch people who love me and let them touch me–even when it is hard. When I read about attachment theory it makes me very sad. I can’t let people touch me very often. I don’t feel very “attached”. I feel like I am free floating. Only G-d knows where I will land.

Goodbye, old friend

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Yesterday someone I have been close with came and got me for lunch. We have known one another for twelve years. For a long time I considered him family. He came over for Thanksgiving and Christmas many times. Things have gone through a lot of ups and downs. He came over to tell me that his wife is pregnant and he is moving cross country. He assures me he will come here to visit so we will probably see one another as often as we do now.

If someone doesn’t know my kids at all because they have never spent any time with them I can’t think of that person as family any more. That is becoming a litmus for me. My children are my family. Perhaps they will be the only people I am that kind of close with. I’m doing my best to teach my children how to have the kind of relationship I want to have.

Family doesn’t say, “Wow. Your life is hard and shitty. Sucks to be you.” Family helps.

I think really hard about what I want to teach my kids. So far Shanna and Calli automatically share any good thing that comes into either of their hands. When I say, “Oh gosh. This is going to be a big job. I think I will need help if I am going to have the time and energy to go do fun stuff after” both kids jump up because they like doing fun stuff with me. Shanna already knows there is a sharp correlation between how much waiting on everyone I have to do and my willingness to play messy games. I’m a hard ass about it. I have to be or I will lose my fucking mind.

It was hard having lunch with my friend. Both he and his wife have told me emphatically and specifically that he has never said a sexist thing in his life.

Then why did he have to go on for four or so minutes when my drink arrived about how disgusting “girly” drinks are?

I also enjoyed the long lecture about how until a given Indian person has proven that he is significantly more competent than 95% of white people that he must be stupid and incompetent. You know this for a fact because your company outsourced a bunch of junior engineer positions to India and those people are just stupid. You know they will fuck up anything you give them at least three times so you try to carefully condescend to them so they can’t fuck up anything important.

Well, it’s overall a reasonable business decision, I guess. But do you really have to rant about those people like that? Are they really less competent than the average white person? Really? Really?! Have you met the average white person?

PEOPLE ARE NOT SMARTER BASED ON WHAT COLOR THEIR SKIN IS NOR WHETHER THEY SIT OR STAND TO PEE.

But you’re not sexist or racist.

Oh, when you were trying to describe the focus of your PhD research to people you probably shouldn’t say, “Oh gosh I’m not sure if I can dumb this down enough for you” and you probably shouldn’t say, “Oh wow. You have gotten a lot more sophisticated. You wouldn’t have been able to understand this before.”

You mean when I was nineteen and I had absolutely no exposure to computer networking I didn’t immediately ping on all the buzzwords? Sure yeah. At this point I am thirty-one and I have been living in this valley a long time. Yes I fucking understand virtual machines you god damn condescending asshole. It took someone assuming I wasn’t stupid and talking to me about them. Thanks, Noah.

When I talk to people I met twelve years ago the main thing I think about is how universal their lack of respect for me is. They are shocked I understand things. They are surprised I can understand complicated systems. Wow. That tells me a lot about what you think of me.

People who met me twelve years ago wanted to fuck me or play with me. I didn’t develop very many relationships with people in other categories. And they think I am stupid. Any hole will do in the dark, right?

I feel really weird about someone who will tell me over and over that he thinks highly of me while being casually dismissive fucking constantly.

There were a bunch of stupid, insulting little things. Every time he said something rude he would notice me flinch. He said, “Oh I didn’t mean that in an insulting way.” Oh, of course not. You couldn’t possibly be insulting when you react with horror over anything “girly.” Nope. I don’t know how many times I flinched. Mostly I stayed blank. He told me he couldn’t read my vibe. I said maybe I don’t have one. He said everyone does. I said maybe mine isn’t visible to him. He seemed upset by that.

I am not a figment of your imagination. I am not a construct that fits your needs. I’m a complicated person. And you don’t know me at all. If you know about my bdsm interests and not much else you don’t know me. Hell it’s getting to the point where I think that people who don’t know me as a parent probably don’t really know me. It’s a very different experience.

I still love him. That’s not the point. I love him very much. I have loved him for a long time. I’m really not up for continuing to feel put down, casually, pretty much all the time in conversation. Maybe I’m over-sensitive. Given that quite a few of my female friends won’t be in a room with this guy because they find him so insulting I doubt it’s just me. I just didn’t think I had a right to complain about how he treated me until several women said, “You know, you don’t have to let him treat you that way.” I don’t? But beggars can’t be choosers. I take what friends pick me.

Or I stay home. Alone.

He asked me how I have been doing. I told him I wake up just about every morning and catalog the ways I want to die. Everyone who told me that they would be there to support me through having children is gone. Because I am a giant asshole and they don’t like me any more. Fair enough.

I’ll stay home.

I’m not completely alone. I get visitors. My friends give me what they have to spare. I’m grateful.

Brain dump + Bonus question.

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Occasionally someone will say something to me along the lines of them being worried about Noah being supportive enough.

I just yelled at Noah for almost two hours straight about how mad I am at all men and how angry I am about the current ways of dealing with rape in larger society and I said a lot of thinly veiled mildly implicating things that were quite harsh about all men. One time he slapped the arms of his chair and had a sharp intake of breath and he stood up and took two steps around in a circle then set his face in stern lines and settled in for more listening.

And over and over he patiently explained all the flawed results of my incoherent half-plans. He wasn’t dismissive but he was insistent. I’m just not looking at the whole picture. He’s right. He wasn’t even slightly demeaning. He was measured and careful in his tone. His facial expression was carefully monitored.

And when I cried in frustration and said I don’t know what to do he shook his head and sadly said he doesn’t either.

Noah has limited capacity to support me because he is a human being. I can consciously see how he is working as hard as he can to be supportive. It’s not his fault I have this hole in my life that is supposed to be filled by other people. I can’t do anything about that either.

Shanna told me yesterday that she wants to see the Eiffel Tower some day and she doesn’t care that I don’t like Paris I will have to go with her and she will make sure I have fun. I bet you she would be right.

I don’t run in Fremont again before the marathon. I am supposed to walk nine miles in the next five days. We leave for Disneyland Tuesday morning. Piece of cake. The marathon is pretty much exactly seven days away. Nearly to the minute.

I feel disembodied and empty. Drained.

One thing Noah promised to do for me (we’ll see) is set up a website and a mailing list. I’m going to start writing again soon. I have two very specific book ideas I’m playing with and I’m having trouble deciding which to write next.

My relationship with Tom will be a book by itself. It will be incredibly graphic and highly sexual.

The other book is one that Noah is encouraging me towards: Outrunning Suicide: A Harm Reduction Approach to Life. I already have the starts of the table of contents and multiple chapters partially written. I’ll be going through and examining all the ways I distract myself from killing myself. I think it is an interesting topic and so does Noah.

What do other people think?

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I’m struggling with this man-hating thing I’m doing. I’m angry at all the men I know because they always feel the need to drop into a conversation subtle little victim blaming. If you don’t get

death is everywhere

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Thinking thinking thinking. Death, mortality, self worth.

One of my former students died. I had him in sophomore honors English. We got into huge arguments because he wouldn’t read a book until I proved its relevance to him. He would get into these abstract arguments about philosophy and frankly they were more interesting than the arguments of the kids who were reading. He seriously thought about the world. Tadgh. Pronounced: Tyg like in tiger. His parents were immigrants from Ireland who escaped violence. He was stabbed the first day he was my student on campus. Interesting fella.

I feel like a tremendous asshole because I am suicidal and good people die on accident. Shouldn’t I be more sensitive or something? I think just about every day of lists of reasons I can’t do it today. I’m trying to buy myself time. I have to finish the playhouse. I have to install the ceiling fan in the playroom. Things Noah won’t do but I want done in the world. I have to do __________. None of it feels very important though. So far I can’t reckon a way that I will actually matter. None of the things I want to do need to be done. The world will be perfectly happy without them.

Lately, unfortunately, my back chatter is all about how worthless and useless and pointless I am. I have no value that I can track. Nothing I do has measurable good–beyond the obvious good of my kids being not-abused. That’s a big one. That’s important. If I can manage to create two people who actually feel good about themselves given how I feel about myself that is something–right? Teaching something that I know so little about is remarkably hard. This is work. I do it because it is important work.

I’m having trouble with how I’m narrowing down my dreams. I’m feeling more and more like me hoping is a bad idea. I need to not have expectations and hopes. Then I feel let down and disappointed. I feel so sad. I would really like to not be sad. I don’t know a way of changing that beyond making it more rare for me to feel let down. That means not hoping.

I was reading some stupid thing on cracked.com (one of my favorite websites–actually) and it said that when you think of things you should do the way you think of yourself in the present is different from how you think of yourself in the future. Future self is a different person in your brain. Future self deserves things and can do things present self can’t/doesn’t.

I think I have bought myself a lot of time over the years by believing that I was doing _____ as an investment in future self. I don’t deserve this right now but someday I will where ‘this’ is anything nice or pleasant or positive. The more time goes by the more I recognize that future self is just me. Future self is a worthless piece of shit too. I don’t want to keep trying.

It’s interesting trying to step back and dispassionately be aware of my thinking. I’m terrified of the marathon. Right now I would much rather jump off an overpass than risk seeing my brother because I’m afraid he will be mean to me. How mature am I? I anticipate his hatred and loathing. I think if I was doing it alone I might quit right now. It’s hard to explain how frantic and upset and terrified I feel. I feel like I am drowning in waves of panic. Any minute one of these waves will cover me and I will never be seen or heard from again.

As a way of distracting myself I have been reading more about this INFP thing. It’s something to think about other than the myriad of ways I could die. I like having the internet tell me I’m a special snowflake with an intense inner life. It sounds less shameful than, “I hear voices that tell me I am bad and I should die.” I do like looking at a mural. It makes me believe I am creative. I’ll grasp at whatever straws I can.

Lately my morning dialogue looks a lot like, “Not today. Please not today. Get through today.” I can’t think too hard about the future. I have no ability to control or even to influence it much. Things are just going to happen to me. I can’t hope for things. Whatever happens happens. I feel very powerless to influence my life. I have to just wait and see what happens. I feel useless, worthless, and impotent.

Time for another day.

Krissy’s tips on how to avoid being a bad person

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Other people get to have their points heard on the whole “don’t rape” topic.

1. Before you have any kind of sexual contact with someone you need a clear verbal “yes” or what you are doing is sexual assault. Really.*

2. If you offer someone help and they say “No thanks” please respect them as an autonomous human being and do not over ride them because you know better.*

3. If you are giving someone a massage your hands and mouth need to stay out of the nether region unless you have been given explicit consent to touch there. Otherwise you are committing sexual assault.*

4. If you are in a group where men outnumber women pay attention to who gets to talk. When a man interrupts a woman try saying, “Hey she was speaking–let her finish.” This will reveal that you give a shit what she has to say.*

5. When you are at work jokes about how some interaction is “like rape” should be stopped with a cold remark. Nothing that happens at work is like rape. Shut up. You don’t know what you are talking about. Work is not the place for jokes like these. Maybe in a small group of your very closest friends–never at work.

6. When you want to give a woman a compliment assess three factors: a) do you know her (if you don’t probably keep your mouth shut because that shit is creepy) b) is the compliment something that reduces her to her sexual parts (if so keep your fucking mouth shut) and c) is it something you want someone saying to your mother? If not, shut the fuck up. Seriously. Where are your manners? Catcalls are threatening and rude. Telling someone that she is lovely is fine. Telling someone that you like her tits or that you masturbate when thinking about her* is not. (Obviously unless she asks. If she asks if you masturbate thinking about her it is perfectly acceptable to answer.)

7. Don’t taunt or encourage or push people to drink large quantities of alcohol. Alcohol is a poison. In large quantities it is highly toxic to the body. Pushing people to poison themselves is hardly the act of a friend. If someone is passed out drunk then your ability to have sex that night is over. You may not have sex with an unconscious person. Unless you have specifically said, “Some night when I am unconscious it is ok to have sex with me” it is rape. It doesn’t matter if she is your wife, girlfriend, or good time girl for the night. If she is unconscious there is no sex. Especially no unprotected sex. If you have unprotected sex with an unconscious person* then you are a bad person and you should be beaten by a large gang of bikers.

8. If you are over the age of 21 then you must never have sex with anyone under the age of 18 again. If you do then you are a disgusting bad person. In our culture people are not allowed to have sex with children and a 17 year old counts, buddy. If you want to fuck someone that bad then take the time to develop a friendship and wait until they are legal. Or you are a bad person. And a felon because that’s rape.

9. Don’t push people towards ignorance. Don’t mock people for knowing things or being smart.* Don’t tell women that they are bitches just because they have opinions.* What kind of moron still does this? How in the world can you prize ignorance over knowing? That’s kind of a side point, but really. Don’t do this. Knowing more is always better.

10. If anyone ever even vaguely seriously communicates something along the lines of “Bros before hos” then you need to respond with, “Actually I’m going to be a witness for the prosecution if you rape her.” You need to be willing to admit that maybe some day you will find out that one of your friends is a rapist. Please don’t take his side. If you are not a rapist but your friend is and you cover for him then you are still a bad person. Really. Maybe you are a hair less evil but silence is consent. If you keep your mouth shut then you are a bad person. Don’t be a bad person, please.

* = issues I have had personally. Other rules are taken from the lives of my female friends.

PS- sharing means caring

And thus closes another Folsom.

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Someone said to me today, “Your friends aren’t very nice.” It’s interesting to me that my response was, “They aren’t my friends. They are people I know.”

Lots of thoughts. Where is the line between consent and abuse? What is bdsm and what is being an asshole? How is this monogamy thing going to work out? Noah is not my tribe and I am not his; sometimes it is rather awkward.

Am I a pervert? I discovered a lot of lines for me today. I don’t approve of a lot of people but I don’t think they need to care. Well, saying I don’t approve of them is a bit strong. I wouldn’t make similar life choices. Those choices would be very bad for me and I don’t think they are really good for them. But it’s not my life.

How many train wrecks do I want to watch?

Harm reduction. I am monogamous in an effort to reduce the harm in my life. Is all nonmonogamy harm? No. Am I everyone? No. You can’t look at statistical norms and decide individual needs. Should I bring up the bmi? As a species we (and I as a person in particular) aren’t prone towards monogamy. That doesn’t make it impossible–just a choice.

It’s kind of funny to me–people who read my blog don’t understand why I feel the need to think and think about monogamy. Ok we decided, move on. But I have to go explain it over and over again. And everyone gets a slightly different version of why and the details because not everyone deserves the same disclosure from me.

I’m an asshole with big hurdles. You have to go find my public blog on the internet if you want to know personal shit about me. I’m not going to just tell you or anything. Psh. Do you think I’m easy?

It was weird going out today and thinking, “Yes. This is my tribe. Wow. We are very broken.” Twelve years of Folsom. I haven’t gone every year but I think 10/12.

Can’t type more. My computer isn’t recognizing the ergo keyboard. I’ll ask Noah to poke at it. Or he’ll read this–either way the message will get through.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Author Archives: Krissy Gibbs

About Krissy Gibbs

Not appreciated

maybe I should keep running.

Dear internet:

What are you afraid of?

We went out.

Somehow appropriate.

One of those not sleeping nights.

The dying time

Intentions, responsibility, cause and effect.

Bucket list: Run a marathon

Three hours left

Emotional volatility, yup that’s me.

I was asked for more information.

Can’t sleep. Captain Hook will get me.

Goodbye, old friend

Brain dump + Bonus question.

death is everywhere

Krissy’s tips on how to avoid being a bad person