Random quote on Pinterest:
“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”
That’s one for me to think about. “Family” doesn’t work for me any more. I have expectations of family members that other people don’t know about or anticipate and then I have disappointment issues. That is not because of anyone else. That’s on my head.
But man I need something.
I haven’t been “fully medicated” on pot since the 13th. I have had somewhere between 1/2 of my “normal” dosage to none. Many days have been entirely unmedicated. I think I’ve had…7? days entirely unmedicated out of the last two weeks.
I’m not sure if my mood swings are more extreme or not. I feel more nervous all the time. I shake more. I’m crying around the kids more because I can’t hold it in. I’m trying to up the “stress reduction” things I do but it really isn’t balancing.
I read a lot of really nasty things on the internet about how mentally ill people are just “attention seeking”. Every single time I read something like that what I get out of the experience is, “No one gives a shit about my experience of life and I should never ask for help.” Luckily I live with someone who demonstrably thinks that attitude is bullshit and he *does* want me to ask for attention when I need it.
Yesterday started off rocky but improved. Noah was very nice to me in those ways that Noah is very nice. I really like living with him. My issues with my body predate him and aren’t because of him and nevertheless he tries hard to make my life better. When I communicate that I am doing especially badly he takes a deep breathe and finds a way to be more giving.
Sometimes that means making all the food instead of just most of the food when he is home. Sometimes that means a lot of massage (yesterday was a fantastic rubbing day). Sometimes it means reading me books as a way of paying attention to me but not focusing on me. It’s a subtle distinction but very important.
When Noah is nicer to me in these ways I tend to feel a lot more inner push to make sure I’m finishing “my share” of the work around the house. Things get much tidier after he has paid attention to me because he likes the house tidy. I try to streamline things so he doesn’t have any more stress than usual. If he spends the whole day rubbing me there is basically a 0% chance I will turn down sex. You’ve totally done the prerequisite touching. Ok.
The folks on the PTSD forum spend a lot of time talking about how “not safe” it is to talk about having this disorder and what it means. They believe you should only tell people if you HAVE to. If there is no way to avoid mentioning it. Like, if you are going to marry someone you have to tell them in advance but they can usually justify not talking about it for years of dating.
I have the opposite approach. I tell everyone. I document the ups and the downs. Not because I expect lots of people to react or to treat me particularly differently. Partially so people can (hopefully) understand that my extremes are not their fault. Clearly I have extreme reactions all the time to seemingly inconsequential stimuli. It is not someone else’s fault when I suddenly have intense feelings of shame and worthlessness and suicidal ideation. It just happens sometimes.
I can usually pull together a basket of “Ohhh…. this happened and that happened and that thing over there and that’s when I lost control” but the fact that I lost control isn’t the fault of cause A, cause B or cause C. I lost control because maintaining control is very hard and I struggle with it all the time and sometimes I slip.
I am outbursty, loud, and over-sharing pretty much all the time. So it’s not because of you. Nothing YOU did caused this.
Well, unless you are one of the many people who abused me. But I doubt it. They are pretty much gone from my life. And I don’t even think that my issues are anyone in particular’s fault. My issues are the result of a tremendous number of small and large failures on the part of people who were responsible for the safety of a child.
Now that I have the responsibility for the safety of children I can see that. It’s not my mom’s fault. It’s not my dad’s fault. It is my mom and dad and sister and aunt and uncle and brother and school principals and school teachers and neighbors and therapists and….
My brain wouldn’t have gotten so fucked up if I hadn’t been severely neglected and abused. That was a joint effort to create.
But here I am. What do I do now? Do I expect people to dance like monkeys for my entertainment to try and make up for all the shit that happened before? God I hope not. I visit with friends when I have the self control to make our visit mostly about their feelings of comfort and safety and I avoid people when I can’t manage to behave well enough. I invite people to parties mostly because I know a tremendous number of really cool people and I think their lives would be better if they cross pollinated. I don’t expect to be the center of attention and if that starts to happen I will leave the room.
So man I have feelings about this whole “attention getting” thing. It sure sounds like people shouldn’t be seen. It sure sounds like no one should allow the truth of their life to be visible to other people and I don’t like that one bit.
I’m sorry that my truth is so melodramatic and sad. I really am. Lying about it in order to make other people feel better would drastically increase the likelihood that I will die from suicide. It’s always there for me at the corner. I don’t do it because enough people have convinced me that *they personally* would be hurt that I can’t do it. I love them a lot more than I love me and I can avoid causing them pain. If the trade is pain for me or pain for someone I love I will always volunteer to be the one in pain. I’m used to it. I have a lot of experience with pain. Most of the people I love are much less experienced and I want to keep it that way.
It’s a dance. This attention seeking bullshit. I need enough attention that I can talk myself into not dying and not so much attention that I need to leave the room because I can’t handle people looking at me.
I was asked (on the forum) how I could learn to see myself with compassion. How could I work towards seeing the value I add to the world that my friends can clearly see. How do you move past feeling like a worthless piece of shit?
I don’t really know. I am an over-achiever to compensate for my feelings of low self-worth.
This means that when I go to random parties and I don’t care about whether people like me or not (like Noah’s work Christmas party) I have a rather ridiculous number of cool stories to tell. I usually feel surprised by how many neat things I have done. Wow. I’ve had an interesting life. I don’t notice except when I am telling someone new. When I’m just sitting around being me I feel lame, boring, whiny, and obnoxious.
Don’t forget! I whine every day!
Over-sensitive, whiny baby. Things like the comments my friend made about the Christmas presents I bought. I will never bring it up with him because I’m not fucking interested in being told he was just joking and I should lighten up.
Have you noticed how I’m not a “lighten up” person?
Yes, this is manifestly all my fault and a problem I have. I know. I fucking know. I know that many people have teasing as a love language. I get that. It doesn’t change the fact that I leave and go home to cry and cry because that teasing doesn’t feel like love to me.
Am I allowed to have my reactions and feelings or do I have to conform to what makes other people feel comfortable?
I’m sorry I am so sensitive. I really fucking wish I wasn’t. But I am. I could deal with it by not talking to people any more so that I don’t get upset with them. I could deal with it by allowing people to say whatever they want and I’ll just do my crying in private. I could deal with it by asking people to stop (boy does that have a shitty track record–usually letting people know that it intensely bothers you is a cue for them to intensify how much of it they do). I could try to weed out the people who are teasers–but that doesn’t work.
Some days I can handle more of it than other days. Some days some teasing is genuinely ok and I don’t leave to go cry. Some days when I hang out with people I can pull off happy and cheerful while they are with me and I am crying before they are to their car. Or before I am to my car if I am at their house.
“Oh they didn’t mean anything by it” does not help me feel better. I don’t feel better at all that people casually say nasty things to me. They don’t mean to be nasty. It isn’t nasty from their point of view.
This is the walking on egg shells shit.
I feel dismissed and like it doesn’t matter that I have a whole frame around why I have the reactions and feelings I have. I don’t matter. What matters is that I maintain the structure and shape of what makes other people feel comfortable. Obviously I am over-sensitive and thus it is just my problem.
I’m looking forward to the grief ritual in February. There are parts of it I won’t enjoy. I get very angry when people meet for these kinds of things and declare that we have “created a community together and now we can support one another.” Bullshit. You are people I will see at a weekend conference and then probably never again. Maybe we will wave at a coffee shop. We are not a fucking community. God I get so angry when people say things like that to me.
I get why they say it. Most of the people in the room are students at a particular university and they have lots of classes together. They *could* form a community. I am not interested in joining your school (I’m not going to do the commute nor the cost) so I am not part of your community. I get it. I am not part of the community for reasons of my own choosing. I get it. It’s my fault. I get it.
I am enjoying having many days in a row where we aren’t seeing anyone. It is no one else’s fault I am so touchy and difficult and I wouldn’t be able to calibrate to someone else right now. Better to not be near people if I can’t be nice enough. I don’t like dealing with the long-term damage of people knowing just how difficult I can be.
Because seriously, when people complain about me being difficult that is on the day where I saved up all my easy. I’m fucked no matter what I do.
I feel sad and angry and trapped. I’m not trapped. These feelings will fade. My life is good. I am not upset because of anyone who is standing near me and I’m very sorry I have these feelings.
They will pass.
(Not looking for advice.)
You know how I don’t complain much about Noah? Mostly this is because I don’t have a lot to complain about. I’m a complainer. I like getting things off my chest. I feel better afterwards. So the lack of complaining is noteworthy.
Things are hard lately. My parasympathetic nervous system is shot. Which makes things like sex really hard. I don’t orgasm much at all. We can count how many times I have gotten off (other than masturbating) in the last year on one hand. That sucks. I can masturbate. But partner sex isn’t really doing a lot for me. Partner sex is about gritting my teeth while Noah uses my cunt to masturbate. I’m not feeling very good about myself. I have to grit my teeth because frequently it just flat hurts and I’m trying to bear it. I’m not even really lubricating very much.
Noah periodically says, “We could stop having sex for a while” and that makes me feel worse. I have been very aware from early childhood that marriage meant having sex. That’s why you get married. So you have someone around to fuck whenever you want.
I feel like the biggest asshole ever. Noah married me largely because of my hypersexuality. It’s gone. Well, I bet I could go pick up a casual sex partner and be fine but man I can’t get it up at home. This is hard.
I’m not really sure how to create more space for feeling like sex is a good thing in my life. Right now there just isn’t space. I spend all day being whacked as people whine “Mooooooommmmmmmmmmmy”. No, I don’t feel fucking sexy.
Pretty much every time anyone touches me I flinch. I’m having a hard time. I don’t really know what to do about this other than wait it out and hope it gets better as the kids get older.
At some point I’m going to be able to sit my kids down and beg them to stop hurting me all the time but they still aren’t to a point where they are even capable of understanding what that means. I’m struggling. I feel like the physical experience of the world my body has is the least important priority for everyone in my house. I’m having a hard time.
It doesn’t help that my ambient pain is really high even on pot. Most of my joints hurt a fair bit of the time. My muscles hurt. Pick a random place on my body and poke it and you have like an 80% chance I will say, “Yup that hurts.” Everything hurts. My fucking eyes hurt. I’ve had a headache for months. My arms, legs, and torso fucking hurt. No, I don’t feel very sexy.
In my head I keep praying that maybe if I work with a doctor and change my diet it will help. Maybe. January.
None of this is Noah’s fault and I feel like a ridiculous asshole for withholding sex. I feel like a really bad person.
The part that is bothering me the most is that when I think about sex I think about cutting. But not my normal leg-grid-pattern. When I think about sex and how little it matters how it feels to me I want to cut on my arms. I want to start right at the elbow and pull down to the wrist. Which is more of a suicidal gesture/attempt than just stress relief. I feel very upset with myself for that happening.
Noah is not pressuring me. This is not Noah’s fault. This is just happening. This is just how my brain works.
Sex is one of the primary ways that Noah gets his “cup filled” if you know that whole metaphor. That’s how he feels loved. That’s how he feels wanted. That’s how he gets energy to go out and do the death march that is his life.
We aren’t doing very well right now. We are both tired in this existential way that goes far beyond the sleep deprivation we have had in the past six years (I didn’t sleep much while pregnant).
I think that part of our problem is we keep coming to arguments that center around the fact that we are on very opposite ideological grounds about a great many things.
Noah was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he deeply identifies with the plight of rich people trying to run companies. When you speak badly about rich people/people with privilege… you’re talking shit about him. I’m the kind of person who has a lot bad to say about rich people and people with privilege.
This gets complicated and hard. We both acknowledge that we are better about this strife than we used to be. But it is wearying and hard. These arguments are extremely depressing for me, I think they are for him too.
It is very hard knowing that I have the life of comfort and privilege I have because of someone who falls into a category I talk a lot of shit about. That doesn’t say nice things about me.
I just can’t get into the mindset of arguing from the point of view of the rich and privileged. Whether I currently have money or not. I will pretty much always take the side of the less advantaged in any fight. No, I can’t get into arguing that corporations are doing great things. And I totally understand the impulse to go burn down the houses of the people who own Wal Mart.
(I’m not advocating arson.)
It means that sometimes I have the active feeling of “sleeping with the enemy”. I’m a fucking sell out.
This isn’t helping our sex life.
I would be less grumpy if my entire body didn’t hurt every minute of the day. Err, I hope.
It is very hard for Noah that I actually hate whole categories he belongs to. That makes him feel pretty bad–which makes sense. I don’t hate him. I love Noah very much. Noah is the only person in my entire life who has ever really wanted to know me. I love Noah. I even like Noah. But man we struggle sometimes.
I feel guilty. I feel like if I could just get the fuck over myself everything would be fine. I really have the ideal set up for me. Just relax. Stop being so fucking hateful. I’m not sure how to let go of this resentment I have. This hatred of everyone everywhere who “has” what I don’t have.
It’s not about the money, not really. I think money is the strawman. Security. Safety. Feelings of belonging.
We had a great party last weekend. Those people were here to see me and Noah. They like both of us. I spent a lot of the party feeling like *I* should leave because I am such an unpleasant stupid bitch.
All of my internal dialogue lately is about how stupid, worthless, and unlovable I am. I keep trying to interrupt it. “If you wouldn’t tell your best friend these things don’t say them to yourself.” It doesn’t help that I totally don’t believe that these things are true of anyone else in my life, just me. Of course I wouldn’t say them to my best friend. Just me.
Christmas will be a lot smaller next year. I’m having waves of feeling really upset that almost everything I got under the tree were things I either sent Noah a specific web link “buy this” or I dragged him to the mall and put things in a bag and told him to pay for them. I’m done. I can’t do this again. I feel so bad. (In his defense he did pick which books off my wish list. I am happy about his choices.)
Noah has too many things to think about. Gift shopping for me doesn’t make it to the top of the priority list unless I force it. So I think I am done receiving gifts. I can’t do this again. I feel like a worthless piece of shit.
I’m going to medicate to get through today. I’ve had several unmedicated days lately. I can’t do today without. I don’t think I would be able to stop crying.
Tell the truth. For the last day or so I have felt very suicidal. Lots of images in my head. I don’t want to admit it out loud because I feel like a pathetic attention whore.
It doesn’t help that someone came on the PTSD forum complaining about how her partner talks about her trauma a lot and this supporter says, “She’s just doing it for attention.”
Why the fuck doesn’t she just shut up. Why the fuck don’t I just shut up. All it would take is a little while with a razor blade. I’d shut the fuck up.
I feel so very worthless and stupid and bad. Why can’t I do anything right? Even when people are very nice to me I turn it into a reason to feel bad. I am so fucking pathetic. I hate myself so much.
None of this is Noah’s fault. But he lives with it. That makes me feel very bad about myself. He deserves better.
Sometimes I think there is no such thing as pleasing me. That I am just an asshole. I could come up with a whole long list of other disparaging things to say. I should probably stop though. I’ve made that point. I suck. Moving on.
I want to cut really badly. I want it so much. But today I wouldn’t actually trust myself to just stay on my leg and that is bad juju. I think that when I can confine myself to my leg and fairly shallow cuts as stress relief it’s not the worst coping method in the world. Today I don’t think I could. Today I want to die. No cutting today. My kids still need me.
It is hard feeling like I only exist as a support unit for other people. I take care of my kids. I’m a hole for Noah to fuck. I don’t feel like there is any me that matters in that equation. It’s not a fair characterization of my relationship with Noah. I “know” that. I just don’t know that.
I feel so sad. I want my mommy. It is all my fault I can never have a relationship with her. I walked away. I have no one to blame but me.
I felt pretty hurt by the 1 star review on Amazon saying that I don’t take responsibility for any of the shit in my life. Oh man. I feel responsible.
It is my fault that I have such negative experiences. If I knew how to act proper things would work out better. If I could stop flinching and freaking out all day long then I could probably enjoy sex. It is my fault I can’t control my body. I feel very guilty for every argument I have where I refuse to concede that all we need is another fucking honky to solve the problem.
I don’t feel like I am fighting the good fight. I’m fighting the stupid, irrelevant, no-one-cares-anyway fights. I’m mostly just fighting myself. I’m losing.
This is post-period so I can’t blame it on PMS. I just feel this way. I just feel like a worthless whore.
I’m sorry Noah. I know you deserve better than this. It seems like telling the truth is still a good policy. I don’t think I can just pretend to be what you want.
Reading about predators makes me feel scared. I’m that good at lying. I could get away with so much.
But the main take away is: if your children ever in any way shape or form come to you with complaints about an adult touching them in a way that makes them feel vaguely uncomfortable take your kid’s side. Fuck every other person in the whole world. Believe your kid.
The rate of false reports is somewhere between 1-3%. The rate of successfully prosecuted rapists is below 3%.
I’m having a lot of feelings about my father as I read this. I have no way of guessing his total number of victims. I wish he was alive and in prison so I could ask. I know about half a dozen or so. Two of my siblings (three including me), his two sisters, the two daughters of that girlfriend he had, and he spent years raping my mom.
Always err on the side of believing a victim. Please. Please. Please. Most people who molest children molest dozens or hundreds of people. Don’t ignore little warning signs or inconsistencies from adults. Don’t think that someone looks trustworthy. People thought my father was an upstanding citizens. He coached fucking Little League. I wonder what he did to those kids.
Apparently religious parents who think the world is a good place are way easier to fool than any other kind of parent. Don’t trust people too much. Please. Sure, you can be a mostly positive person–you have to have the deep seated understanding that even if more than 80% of people are good there are bad people. In this country people have a 69% chance of having some major trauma effect their life. Please don’t believe everything is fine and bad things only happen to other families.
The main thing that differentiates me from true predators is my compulsive desire to come to the internet and confess every wrong thing I do or think. No DA would have trouble making a case against me if I actually did illegal shit. I would write stories about all of it.
This is how I stay honest with myself. If I can’t admit it on the internet I can’t do it.
On that note, given that I’m trying not to have pot I may have a drink today. Later folks. My arms hurt. I’m having waves of anxiety. I feel scared, helpless, and like the world is truly terrifying.
Luckily I don’t always feel this way.
Why do I record these things? Because sometimes my friends tell me, “There was this suspicious thing in my life and because of you I took it seriously and dealt with it.” Or “Someone in my life was raped and I helped her find resources because of the things I learned from you.”
The effects of early childhood sexual assault don’t go away. Why do I still write about it? Because I still have waves of anxiety attacks when nothing in my whole life is going wrong. Because writing is better than cutting. Because writing is better than doing a lot more drugs. Because writing is better than compulsively saying these things in front of my children.
Because I still deal with it almost every day.
I think it is a good thing that Noah and I are planning to hibernate for about a week. Both of us are getting tetchy and short-tempered even about things that don’t usually bother us. Not optimal.
I think that next Christmas I will buy fewer gifts for my kids. I have a hard time with being buried under the avalanche of kind gifts from friends. It is a double edged sword. Other people show my children love through gift giving–it is a fine old tradition. My kids don’t notice what comes from me as a result. Nothing I do feels special to them because it is eclipsed by the nice things from other people.
I don’t think I should continue this gift-giving-love-language thing. I feel sad that nothing I do seems special to them. They have an embarrassment of riches. I don’t want to encourage anyone else to stop (often the gift giving is a large part of the relationship and my kids NEED relationships with other people) but I need to handle my feelings.
The friend who was over sat here and criticized me for not getting enough presents and he was very critical that I didn’t give the kids clothes for Christmas. “But that is part of the process!”
Uhm, my kids are sent boxes of hand made clothes from their grandmother. Nothing I do is going to make a dent next to that. So I don’t waste my time and money trying. He spent a bunch of time telling me how that wasn’t really good enough because I’m not giving the kids what they want. I just… I don’t even know how to respond. Fine. I’m not doing it right. How dare I not give my kids clothes when they have no room in their closet or drawers. I am such a bad parent.
The more presents the kids unwrap on Christmas the more screaming happens. There are never “enough” and yet the kids struggle with feeling overwhelmed. “That’s MY toy.” Dude. There were two identical ones. You don’t even know for sure that the one in your hand came with your name on it. Truly this does not require screaming.
Overall it was a nice day. I think the kids were very normal and fine. I just…
Sometimes I think that “happiness” is the awareness of non-suffering. If you aren’t aware of your lack of suffering you don’t feel happiness.
I am not suffering right now. Is that the same thing as happiness? I’m not sure. I feel tense. My hands are shaking and my belly is cramping. I still know that I will have a good day.
Partially the hand shaking bit is that I have been slowly coming off the pot. Less and less each day. Yesterday was nearly non-medicated. I am growing more afraid of the pain I feel in my body. I’ve been masking it for a long time. Dealing with it as a full-effect-affront is really hard. It steals my spoons away from every other emotional use.
But I will continue. Maybe happiness isn’t about the lack of suffering. Maybe happiness has to be orthogonal to the suffering. Maybe you have to figure out how to be happy *while* suffering.
I am grateful right now, this minute that I get to have the life I have. Today I will get to see my wonderful daughters and my very kind husband. Today I will get to relax and slowly putter on housework (The house is actually quite tidy) and play with the kids.
I notice that part of my shiver–part of the constant feeling of wrongness is the feeling that I’m doing it wrong if no one is there watching me to tell me I’m doing it right. I am not good at giving myself approval for what I do. My approval is worthless. Really less than worthless. If I think I am doing right then I shake with terror that I must be lying to myself.
But I *am* doing what I want to do. Is it “right”? Who decides? Is there a universal standard? First: pick a country, religion, race, and socio-economic setting. Then maybe you can decide what is right or not. But then you get into things like “Some people are temperamentally suited to being a stay at home parent and some people aren’t–regardless of gender.”
So there is no right. There is just what you do.
I love people so much. I love my kids. I love my husband. I love my friends. Some times I feel like I will drown in the waves of emotion. I feel so overwhelmed. I don’t know how to handle these feelings. I feel… unfamiliar with this process. I should get mean and drive people away because at least then I will feel more comfortable. I will be alone, which is what I’m used to anyway.
But I love them so much. I don’t want to hurt them. These feelings are confusing and hard and overwhelming but so what? They just are. Just go with it.
Love people. Do your best. Try to be kind. I’m reading about predators and I’m reminded over and over “Nice is not a personality trait–it is a behavioral choice. The most terrible of people are often extremely nice.”
If what I want from my life is to have impact on people in a positive way it has nothing to do with how I feel. That has to be pretty much irrelevant.
I think part of the emotional fraught-ness right this minute is this continual feeling of having people be missing. I miss my family. I miss my mother. I miss my sister. I miss my Auntie. I miss my niece and nephew. I try to replace them with other people who love me and it just isn’t the same. I feel guilty for the fact that the love of my friends does not obliterate this ache. I feel ungrateful and bad.
But I won’t scream today. I will be kind. I will be gentle and loving. I will make sure that other people don’t have the same holes inside of them. That’s all I can do with this day.
After writing long angsty things I specifically emailed my friend. The response, “I was joking. I had a great time. Your friends are awesome. You were completely fine. I’m going to go take a shower now.”
Yup. That’s how you manage my anxiety. Pat me on the head and then go about your business. Perfect all around.
In other news Christmas was really awesome. The kids are hyped up to within an inch of being able to spontaneously combust and so they have cried a lot. Otherwise it’s been a good day. GoldieBlox and RobotTurtles and marble run and musical instruments and Legos. Life couldn’t get better.
And I got several books. Shop Class As Soul Craft by Matthew B. Crawford, Healing Developmental Trauma by Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre, and Predators, Pedophiles, Rapists & Other Sex Offenders by Anna Salter.
Obviously my husband knows to whom he is married. I feel loved. And adequately socked. It’s a good Christmas. Lots of bath products. YAY!
I don’t think that I am “responsible” for how other people feel. I don’t think I can “make” them feel comfortable or uncomfortable all by myself. This is a collaborative sort of dance.
That said, I take it very seriously when friends point out areas where I am making them feel uncomfortable. “I was just joking” brush offs are an easy way for conflict-avoidant people to state their issues without having to get into a full scale conflict. I get that people don’t want conflict with me. I’m annoying as fuck. Not only do I fight like the devil but I am incredibly defensive and prone to act like people are attacking me when they aren’t. Not an awesome situation.
So I try hard to pay attention to the fact that people who love me a lot are generally people who have worked hard at avoiding conflict with me. I only have one or two pro-conflict close friends. Mostly my closest friends are people who are willing to learn how to deal with what a special-fucking-snowflake I am. Noah says I take an unusual amount of energy to get to know. I believe him.
I worry. If you’ve read more than 100 words I’ve written you already know that. I worry about just about everything. I *really* worry about whether or not I am behaving in a way that is sensitive and respectful of the people around me. It may not seem that way to other people, because when I fail I fail big-time, but I swear I am working hard at tact and being kind to people who have different boundaries.
I wish that I just got to declare that my behavior was awesome and that everyone who interacts with me should feel comfortable and safe.
I don’t get to decide that. As a white person for me to *ever* declare that someone who is not white must accept my behavior… yeah no. That’s just not on. If I were a male I would think that was an additional strike against me. It may not be fair but life rarely is.
Do I get to decide that white people must accept my behavior? Oh heck no. But I think I have slightly more familiarity with the ways in which a white person is likely to take offense. I guess correctly slightly more often. Not usually and not most of the time but slightly more.
The older I get the more I appreciate that religion plays a big part in how people perceive my behavior. I didn’t understand that as a kid. Some religions are ok with people being obnoxious and questioning. Some religions not so much.
I can’t control what other people believe or think or feel. But I try really hard to examine what I am doing when they give me clues into what they are feeling or thinking. I’m trying to detect patterns that I can influence. Influence is very different from control.
I live in a time and a place in history where being sensitive to the needs of people who are not-your-race is important for everyone. I believe with all of my soul that it is most important for people who have privilege to struggle with understanding people who have less privilege. I think it is not always the responsibility of people on the bottom to be sensitive to those poor rich people. Or white people. Or whatever.
Privilege is a multi-faceted and complicated beast. I think that privilege comes in a kaliedoscope of colors. There is racial privilege, socio-econommic privilege, the privilege of having social connections, being neurotypical or not, ableism, sex privilege (which both genders have their own kinds of privilege) and I think the intersection matters a lot.
I can sit there and draw out diagrams for where I think I have privilege and where my friends have privilege. I’ve thought about it obsessively for years. Partially I’ve been trying to figure out why some things are easier for me and some things are easier for them. Partially I’ve been trying to figure out which behaviors are linked to which life experiences so that I can better plan out how to treat my kids and my friends.
I’m trying to fake how to be someone who has always had privileges I’ve never had. That’s really complicated sometimes.
For me, paying attention to how I make people of other races feel is absolutely vital and part of my learning-to-not-be-a-schmuck process. But talking about it makes people feel uncomfortable. Welcome to my catch 22. (Which I’ve never read.)
I’m deeply grateful that my friend felt comfortable enough to tell me that discomfort was experienced. That’s brave and hard. Then I go and write about it and make it all difficult and uncomfortable. Because I’m awesome.
If I want my house to be safe I need to figure out what that means. For one thing some people are ok being written about and some people not so much. I am crossing my fingers that this one doesn’t blow up in my face.
I don’t think I want to try to have a party in December again. I think that in the future I will shoot for January after people have caught up on sleep.
Part of that is honestly so I can shape the guest list more carefully. Lots of people were traveling.
There is this careful balance to walk. I can’t pressure POC to come to my parties because that is creepy, weird, and not so cool. But I feel like it would be smart to try and plan in advance around the schedules of people I want to have at the parties. And if I want my non-white friends to feel comfortable that means asking some point blank scheduling questions of only my POC friends. Which makes me feel weird and racist and like I am courting them as exotic pets.
I would not consciously schedule a party so I could have more white people present so it feels rather uncomfortable to schedule a party so I can have more POC present. But that may be the only way to tip the attendance balance so that people don’t feel like tokens.
I’m not sure what the right answer is. I’m afraid that when it comes to dealing with issues around race I am going to lose no matter what I do. “Hey can you make sure you come to my party so my friends can see that I know more than one person who looks like you.” Wow. That’s an asshole move on every level.
But just inviting people and hoping for the best is questionable too. Sometimes that will mean that my events are more than 90% white.
I suppose it matters what my goals really are. Is my goal to be able to show off once a year that I know a diverse group of people? Not really. Who am I showing off to? The other people at the party? My white friends aren’t impressed and if that was my goal my friends who aren’t white aren’t impressed with me either. Because man that’s a shitty goal to have.
On a specific level I have the goal that my children will grow up having long-term intimate relationships with people of widely divergent cultures and races. That is a goal I feel more comfortable having. That’s less about impressing anyone and more about teaching my kids that people have more similarities than differences so look to anyone standing near you for relationships. Just love people. That I feel very much like I am accomplishing. My kids spend a large percentage of their time with other people around people who don’t look just like them. They see a lot of adults of various races on a regular basis. They interact with a lot of families of various religions and creeds. I feel good about teaching them to respect a lot of kinds of people.
I feel like I am walking my talk with my children. I am not doing a perfect job of teaching them about people of diverse lineage but I’m doing ok and they walk up to every kid at the playground and ask to play. They reach out to people whenever they get the chance no matter how that person looks. Ok. That’s a specific parenting goal met.
It is hard to figure out what being sensitive to my friends means. I am literally not capable of making everyone comfortable at the same time because people have conflicting needs.
But you pick your priority list and you go with it. You do the best you can. If I am making this particular person feel anything other than welcome and like (s)he belongs then I need to change something.
And at the same time I don’t want to start inviting people to my parties or not based on race. But what if inviting more people who are not white and *not* inviting so many white people is the only way to make some people comfortable.
It’s true and valid. Just like some women will never be comfortable interacting with some of my male friends and I have to decide who to invite because I can have one person or the other.
First I will eventually stop pontificating and I will ask my friend for feedback after these blog entries have been read. I’m sure this person will come up with something to say. That’s usually something I can count on. Lots of opinions from that one.
I think that as a white person it is never ok for me to just default to “I’m ok and you have the problem”. That is just not an acceptable starting position. Beyond that I really struggle with knowing what the next right step is.
I have a limited amount of control over who shows up at my parties and I have even less control over the feelings of the people who come.
But I want to be sensitive to the idea that I could do something better. I could make people feel more comfortable if I tweaked ______.
Yes, my dear blacksheep, part of it is learning to care less and be more like a honey badger. I’m not sure that I am that kind of girl, you know? I’ve been taking apathy enhancement drugs for years now. I still care too much. I still care so much I can barely breathe sometimes.
I want the people I love to feel loved and supported and like I think the world (and this room) is a better place when they are in it. If I am communicating something else then I need to work on that.
It is hard to nudge people in the direction of feeling loved when you are as basically hostile as I am. I cause people to feel unsafe and nervous. I get it.
It’s kind of like my continued fondness for a man who has been blacklisted from all of the local events. He’s a predator. I still like him. I understand him and have compassion for him and I know how to play his game like a pro. The other women I know just want to pretend he doesn’t exist because his game doesn’t work for them. He means well.
It doesn’t matter what you feel it matters how you make other people feel. The best predators know how to induce feelings of calm and safety in their prey. Sometimes I feel tremendous guilt for the attitude that just about everyone in the world is prey and I’m a mean and nasty predator.
Only there isn’t much I want from people these days. I’m not hunting for anything other than positive regard. I don’t want to be anyone’s favorite (well, other than Noah) but I want people to think I am basically a net positive for the world.
I want people to think that talking to me makes them feel good about themselves. I want to help people to feel brave about making choices. I want to help people feel like they can stand up for themselves.
If I’m making you feel like a token, tell me so. If I make you feel like you are just something on a checklist “Make a friend who is brown” then I am not making you feel like you are important. I’m failing to do the stuff that is so important to me.
I need that feedback. Without being told that my current approach is failing it is hard for me to know.
It is hard hearing criticism. I won’t lie. I’m obviously very defensive.
(I still had a wonderful party and I don’t feel like this is a depressing/bad train of thoughts. I’m nervous and a little sad but I still have a lot of happy endorphins from seeing so many people. I talked to a lot of people and didn’t freak out so I’m proud of myself.)
But if you want to be consciously anti-racist you have to look at what that means. If you are not part of the solution you are part of the precipitate.
Don’t quit. Don’t decide you are obviously a worthless bad person because someone had enough feelings to make a joke. But think about what you will do differently next time to encourage more people to feel more comfortable.
Progress. Not perfection. Keep trying. That’s the whole point of life.
Sometimes I read things about dealing with various panic disorder stuff (including PTSD) and I feel sad. Often they recommend having someone touch you to ground you. It creates more of a feeling of connection and safety.
If I’m having a panic attack and you touch me you may draw back a bloody nub. I wish things worked differently in my body but they don’t. When I am scared I am going to fight as hard as I can and I’ve learned to hurt people pretty badly. That was the smartest thing for me to do for twenty years.
This is hard with my kids.
One of my dearest friends made a few comments post-party. Later she said, “Oh I was kidding.” You don’t say something four times unless it hit a nerve. So let’s get into this.
First and foremost: I’ve had over 24 hours to go through a long list of defensive postures. You notice how I didn’t write about this yesterday? I don’t want to be defensive. I don’t want to list how many non-white people I invited and it’s not my fault they didn’t come. I invited them. Many were traveling. I really want to get into specifics. As if proving that I invited X number of non-white people means anything.
It doesn’t. How many particular individuals I invited of what race is beside the point.
If someone I like and respect feels like a token then I am probably doing something wrong in how I talk to them and treat them.
I treat almost everyone I know as a token representation of Y group. It’s not one of my best traits. But for me a white person from the mid-west is about as foreign as a friend from Israel (who is maybe white maybe not white depending on who you ask).
Even my friends who grew up poor still grew up in radically different cultures from me. It is unusual for someone to go through as many communities where you are the minority as I did. I was frequently the only white kid in a room. When I exchange stories about being homeless with people it was different for me than it was for other people I have talked to. There are lots of reasons for all the differences. I drip with privilege whether I like it or not.
If I make someone I respect and admire feel like they are just a token then I need to take a serious look at my behavior. I am doing something wrong. I am not adequately conveying what is going on in my brain.
I am not a big fan of the idea that “X person represents what it is like to be Y race” because I don’t find that it bears out in the main. I am really bad about classifying people as “close with their family vs. not close with their family”. I am much more likely to put up with people who are close with their family so I can hear the secrets about how that works. I don’t really care what race they are–I have friends of a whole rainbow of colors who have close families quite on purpose.
I want to hear what it is like. I do treat people like ambassadors. You come from a culture I don’t understand. I wish I did understand it. I want to move in that general direction even though I will never arrive at being just like you.
I think that what country you came from is far less interesting to me than how you get along with your parents.
That said, I corner every single person I meet who has lived outside this country and ask them their opinion about what they have seen in life. I get some fascinating breakdowns of Eastern Europe sometimes. Oh man.
I really want to get defensive. I want to point out that depending on how you “define” white (some people think Jewish people count as white and some people are violently opposed to such a classification) there were at least 40 people invited to the party who were non-white. Yes, I invited more like 80 white people.
I don’t think I invited people based on trying to get a mixed bag of races though. I invited just about everyone I know that I could get an email address for. I invited people from every community I dip my toes into. Many of those communities are primarily white.
Like the bdsm community. Holy moly is that a white community. Whereas there is the occasional random non-white person it is remarkable and weird. (And I invited every single non-white person from the scene that I know. Not because I wanted non-white people. But because I invited everyone I know and like. I’m sorry more didn’t come.)
Then I feel like a giant asshole. What in the fuck is wrong with me that I wish specific people had come so that I look more “multicultural”. Now that’s treating people like tokens.
If you try too hard to have a racially/religiously balanced group then you do get into tokenism.
I try to invite people and be ok with whoever comes. I can’t feel too much self-worth from who comes and who doesn’t. People were busy. Lots of people were traveling. Other people were sick. Who chooses to come on a random party one random day does not decide whether or not I am treating my friends well or not. It doesn’t decide if my friendships are real or just tokens.
It is my belief that as a white person in America I should probably never feel fully comfortable with my behavior towards people of other races. I should always be willing to be called on the carpet and be told that my behavior sucks. Often that kind of thing is extremely educational and if you resist the correction you resist the ability to grow. It is hard to know what you don’t know. It is very hard to see beyond your white privilege. It is hard to understand what other people don’t have.
I am bad about asking people to be ambassadors from their culture. But I think that culture isn’t just about your ethnicity/race. Whatever my motivation and desire I don’t get to decide how I impact other people. White people react with shock when I ask them to tell me about their culture. They think their culture is my culture. People of other races get to be annoyed at the stupid white girl treating them in a way they don’t like. That is totally fair.
I appreciate it when people think about themselves and then explain what they see to me. That doesn’t mean that other people want to do that for me. I can ask and they can think I’m a fucking asshole. That’s how the exchange works.
Sometimes I feel awkward when I love people intensely who don’t look much like me. I don’t want to express my love and affection in a way that feels alien and alienating. I’m afraid I do. I’m always afraid I am alienating people. I am always afraid I am treating people like just a doll in a set.
I collect people in my life. I do. I want people to love me like I want to breathe. I am much more ok with people choking me than with them not loving me.
How someone looks is generally one of the very least impressive parts for me and in my head mostly that is the difference race makes. I care more about other categories. Do you get along with your parents? Have you always been middle class? What has “middle class” meant in your life? What kinds of deprivation have you dealt with? Do you learn best by sitting very still and listening or do you learn best by moving around? How promiscuous have you been? Do you like hitting people or being hit?
These questions are far more indicative to me of compatibility than race. I care more about these answers.
But as a white person I understand that is a cop-out, bullshit answer. No I’m not fucking color blind. I see race. I just don’t think it is likely to be the reason someone wants to be my friend or not. People are going to want to be my friend or not based on very different factors. I am white so ostensibly that shafts me off to the white people section only lots of white people don’t like me so much. So I branch out.
I feel really bad about the fact that I deal best with fairly Americanized people regardless of race. I have less than perfect hearing and I struggle with accents. I don’t like a lot of regional US accents either. I have to ask people to repeat themselves a lot. I feel really stupid the whole time. Why in the hell can’t I just understand?
So I suppose that in the end I get why some of my friends could walk into a party and feel like a token. (I will defensively point out that there were three other people of your general continent-level ethnicity in the house before you arrived so no you can’t be my “only friend from that continent”.) It was certainly mostly a white crowd.
But I hope that you have known me long enough to know how much I value you as an individual. Our relationship is not primarily about me showing you off at parties as my token non-white friend. Our relationship is primarily about you telling me about your wonderful family and us exchanging raunchy sex stories and you being a wonderful influence on my children. Yes, you do language stuff with my kids. I really appreciate it. I do listen and try to learn. Not because you are a token but because I appreciate that you come to my house and share yourself with us. I try to honor that.
If I am failing at showing my friends how much they matter to me then I should pay attention to that. I should be aware of it and I should work on my behavior. That’s what you do when you love and respect someone. You try to work on your behavior so you can make them feel loved and respected.
If my current set of behaviors isn’t impacting someone the way I want then that is my fault. Communication is complicated. If my message isn’t arriving then that is a failure on the sending end. Sure, there are some people who can misunderstand anything (often seemingly on purpose) but I have to give my friends the benefit of the doubt.
Why do I care so much about people being other cultures from me? Why do I focus on it? Why does it come up? Because most manners, expectations, and attitudes are largely unconscious. You know what was drilled into you as a child.
Why do you think I am inclined to say “fuck” every third word? That’s what my childhood was like.
I ask because the difference between a poor person from the south and a rich person from the south is ocean sized in my perception. Even if Noah’s great-aunt thinks that everyone in Huntsville Texas “is just the same kind of people”. Whatever. You’re wrong. It’s easy to think that when you are the rich lady living in the fucking mansion.
Poor people know better. Poor people know that there are differences and either you acknowledge that and deal with it or you are fucked.
Sometimes people tell me that I am their token “poor” friend. A large number of people have expressed shock and horror that they know someone who was once homeless. Get the fuck over it. At this point I pass into the middle class so stop acting like I count as you knowing a poor person. You don’t get credit for me.
I think that treating everyone like they are from a different culture is largely about acknowledging that we will always make one another uncomfortable in some way. That’s what a poor fit between cultures does. It makes you aware of where you have expectations and the other person fails to meet them. It is hard to not treat those expectations like entitlements.
I love you and I love you and I love you. I have known you for more than half my life. You are anything but a token to me. You are integral to my happiness and feeling of wholeness. You have given me so much approval and reason to keep trying that I can’t possibly write about the impact you have had on my life. It’s too big for me.
If I make you feel like you are just a token then I am doing something drastically wrong and I need to knock it the fuck off. I will try harder.
I love you.
Merry Christmas.
That was a great party. We had ~45 people come over a 9 hour period. Our guesstimate is there was never more than ~30 people at a time. There were ~12 kids. (I’m using ~ because I counted roughly in my head and I probably missed bodies.)
It was a lot of fun. I really like my friends. They are all very neato people. I’m lucky.
It’s the day! Almost our last social obligation of the year. I’m excited. We aren’t leaving the house between Christmas and New Years.
It is weird how anxiety works. I’m looking forward to seeing people but man my stomach hurts.
At the home school holiday party I said, “Man I’m whiny today. I’m sorry.” Another mother countered with, “How is that different from any other day?” I don’t think I will speak when that person is standing within 10′ of me any more.
This is the kind of thing I over react to. Ok, if I’m that unpleasant then I will work hard to make sure you don’t have to acknowledge that I exist any more.
But she didn’t say I was awful. She said I was whiny. This is a true statement. I am.
Sometimes Noah asks why I don’t punish the kids for whining. Because I don’t punish for things I model. That’s just how it rolls in this house.
There was also a noticeable amount of discussion as to how sad it was that a certain blog reader and 3/5 of her kids weren’t there. (We never get the other 2/5.) I told people that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a rejection of the group for being sucky. Spoons can only stretch to cover so many activities.
Part of what I like about hosting events is I get to introduce my friends to one another. I know really neat people.
2013 has been one of the best, most stable years of my entire life. If I can’t get my anxiety under control under these circumstances I’m fucked.
I often go back and forth in my head, “My friends deserve to know me sober. Because being sober is always superior to being a loser drug addict. But wait! You are talking like a schizophrenic about to stop taking their meds. Maybe this is a bad plan.”
Don’t worry. I won’t try to do this sober. I haven’t been practicing enough to do an event of this size alone yet. I would spend the party in my bedroom crying and shaking if I tried.
That feels really pathetic. God I’m a loser. Bravery isn’t about feeling no fear. It is about performing to spec no matter how terrified you are. Having a holiday party shouldn’t be terrifying but it is.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter what “should” be true. It matters what is.
I’m going to have to spend pretty much all of next year working on being able to do this sober. I’m going to have to be able to handle any size of crowd unassisted before 2015 or I can’t take the kids on the road trip. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.
Tomorrow. I’ll work on that tomorrow. Next year. All of next year. Not today.
Sometimes I feel guilty when I say “not today–I’ll do that later.” My only consolation is I do usually get around to doing it… or it wasn’t important to begin with.
It is nice to see that I do the things I say I will. Not every single thing–I don’t make that many promises on purpose. I have to figure out sober again.
I used to be sober. I managed my PTSD without meds for most of my life. It has meant a lot of isolating in order to calm my ambient stress. I don’t get that now that I have kids.
I have to teach them to be part of my lower stress or I’m fucked. This sounds hard and scary.
Bravery doesn’t mean never feeling scared. It means you keep your ass moving even when you are scared. I can do that. I can keep moving.
I think today will be fun. I think I will be glad I did it even though it creates stress too.
I thanked Noah and the kids for helping me clean the house. I told them that it is important to me to once in a while have a clean house and a party and I appreciate that they did work towards that even if it isn’t important to them.
I was only an asshole about the cleaning for maybe 10 hours total and it wasn’t all yesterday it was over a week. That’s not great but it isn’t as bad as it could be.
In my head I have this tally sheet. I know how harsh I have seen some mothers be. I’m not on the harsh end of what I have seen. I have seen some seriously brutal people though. I like being on the nicer end of the scale. I don’t even know why I want it so bad but I do.
If I can’t get my kids to cooperate by being nice to them then I think the cooperation I get through being an asshole is suboptimal. Sometimes I’m a fucking self absorbed asshole and I do it. I try really hard to avoid it though.
Life involves work. I need my kids to not be the kind of people who sit back and watch while work is being done. I need for them to be the kind of people who say, “There is work to be done? Where do I start?”
I very consciously don’t give them much bullshit work day-in/day-out through the year. I really don’t have a lot of make work. I don’t make them live in a perfectly clean house all the time (ha!). I enforce daily teeth cleaning, underwear changing, and they have to set the table for meals. That’s what I really enforce on a daily basis.
I need for them to grow up in an atmosphere where it is fine to not do much most of the time and sometimes you have to chip in. You just do.
I don’t know how to inspire this very well though. I always resort to bullying and crying at some point. It’s pretty fucking lame. I try to recognize when I am bullying, retract the statement and walk away. “I should not have said that. I’m sorry I was such a jerk.” Usually that comes in the form of a threat to throw away anything that isn’t picked up. It’s not a cool threat. I’m an asshole for saying it. Just because I feel it that doesn’t excuse me saying it.
I tried really hard to not fuss at the kids. I wasn’t fully successful but I tried. I need to try harder. It isn’t their fault I want things. I try to let them know, “There isn’t a good reason I want this. I just want it. Will you please help me?” Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It is hard to manage my emotional reaction to being turned down.
Right now it is part of that whole, “If I do not know the answer will be ‘yes’ then I don’t have the spoons to ask for help” problem. I get into these cycles. As the people I live with the kids have to deal with the results of what happens when I can’t handle a no and I get one any way. Mostly I go in my room and shut the door and cry.
Which makes me feel like a manipulative piece of shit.
I try to not-react as much as possible. I know that I’m supposed to maintain a neutral state over here on my own but I’m shite at that. I’m trying.
Like the woman letting me know that I whine every day. Oh. Shit. Ok I guess the solution is to just stop talking. I don’t know what else to do.
I don’t think I can stop talking entirely. That would kill me. But I can make sure I don’t bother you any more. I’m sorry my existence is such a trial to you. I’m not even being sarcastic. I am annoying. I’m sorry. I don’t really know how to change that I am this difficult.
Some people are easier than others. I don’t even just mean the sex. Not that I’ve been easy to have sex with lately. Poor Noah. Our sleep cycles are totally out of alignment and we’re tired and over-committed and having kids is an impediment. Life happens.
This phase isn’t permanent–right?
Just keep moving. If you are still alive there is always a chance that things will change. If you want things to be different, just keep moving. Just because I can’t do something today that means nothing about ten years from now.
Right now I can’t play any musical instrument. That could change. I don’t sew. Some day I might. Right now Noah thinks there is no chance he will ever be a distance runner. It’s not his favorite. But if he wants to keep eating cookies with me at the rate we are going through them… I think it could happen.
If he wants to have a long, sex-filled life with me we will have to do some more exercise. I’m told it is good for you. We have no physical disabilities so we don’t have good excuses. (There are good reasons some people can’t run. I’m not acting like this is universally applicable…)
I have a lot of time ahead of me. I can figure out how to do a lot of things. I read something cool this morning about how great artists often go through big revivals in their 80’s.
I have spent most of my life believing I would die fairly young. But if I want to find out what Shanna is like on her 60th birthday I have to not die until well into my 80’s. I should plan for that. I should consciously try to get there. I should work at it. And then Calli is even two years behind that.
I want to see what their lives will be like. I don’t want to just witness their childhood and feel sad all the time that no one loved me as a child.
What will they do with their adulthoods? How will they inspire me? I’m sure they will.
Just keep moving. Keep introducing them to interesting people. I know so many neat people. I know people who do the fucking coolest stuff. I like basking in their glow. I like getting to be an audience. I should stay alive and keep doing that.
Today I will manage my anxiety and see friends. My kids will get to see a lot of different kinds of people. It is rare that I cross the streams like this. Home schoolers, perverts, geeks, and dancers. Who knows what the results will be like. I think everyone will be child-appropriate. I think people will be polite and wonderful. I think that sometimes questions will be answered in surprising ways. That’s for the best.
It takes all kinds in this world. My friends are Christians, Jews, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, and pagans. I don’t have any friends who are practicing Muslims but it’s not on purpose. At least no one has chosen to share with me that they follow that religion.
I thought about name tags. “Hi my name is ________. I know Krissy/Noah through ___________.” That would be awesome for me. I would enjoy how people self-identify. Ha. “Burning Man. Uhhhh…. that’s it…. I know them through Burning Man.” Not that I (Krissy) have gone. But I know a lot of Burners. And many people that I think of in other categories would probably self-identify our friendship that way because it sounds more child safe.
I’m not going to put anyone more on the spot than I have to. Not today. I don’t have the spoons to manage.
It will be a good day. Time to stop typing.
I’m annoyed I had to spend time out shopping today. My dear sweet 5 year old decided that yesterday was a great day to go through my dresser. So she saw her Santa present.
I can’t handle the guilt that would come with ruining the Santa secret this year. And the only other “toys” she was getting from us for Christmas was a board game she can’t play alone yet (Goldiblocks!) or a wooden stick with a horse head on it. Those both struck me as thoroughly lame Santa presents. Because I have issues.
The firefighter outfit would have been perfect. Freakin kid!!!!
So she will get musical instruments. Because I’ve been dithering about getting them for three years already. I have mixed feelings.
Mostly I feel guilty and like I am going overboard on Christmas.
We won’t have very many wrapped presents under the tree.
I think I’m having issues with feeling like I am undersupplying too. My childhood training of mountains of gifts is hard to overcome. I feel like I am not very fun. Mostly these days I don’t get my kids toys. Their grandparents send enough combined with random presents from friends. I don’t give toys for birthdays.
I want to give my kids toys for Christmas. I wish I didn’t feel so ashamed of myself.
This is what having privilege is about, right? If you are able to do it, there is no shame in doing it. I’m not going so overboard that we will suffer next year for this. I’m not running up debt I can’t pay off. I’m spending cash I have on hand.
I wish I didn’t feel so bad about buying things I want with Noah’s money. Really? I feel guilty about buying a musical instrument set? I feel guilty about the Lego’s too.
Calli’s Santa present is a Lego set. Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Because it is her favorite show.
I don’t think they are too spoiled…
Naltrexone. That’s the name of the drug my shrink wants me to research. My first few searches make it sound like I will be in the bathroom all day with diarrhea and it would probably increase my depression.
All just to make cutting an ineffective coping method. Uhm, probably not.
My therapist, predictably, doesn’t want me putting a lock on the bathroom door. She is asking me to wait a few weeks. She has a list of things I just need to try before that step is a good idea. She was quite insistent in that way shrinks are which is why we pay them, no?
She mentioned a medication and I didn’t write it down immediately and now I am waiting on a response to an email. Research. She said there is an unusual drug that is not an anti-depressent/anti-psychotic/anti-anxiety that is sometimes used with addicts including severe cutters who can’t get past the “tension release” stage. Supposedly it acts on the mechanism in the brain that requires the brief releases from tension.
I mentioned that I pretty much always freak out like this right before a party and I feel really self-conscious and bad because it seems like inappropriate attention seeking behavior. Her response was, “Your parasympathetic nervous system is trying to get your attention and that’s not a bad thing.” Right before I have lots of people over my body prepares for the fight/flight/freeze thing and I get over loaded. In her opinion I need to figure out some larger structure around stress release particularly right before events–she says cutting isn’t a good option.
Psh. What does she know.
(That was my “I’m funny” voice.)
She says if I’m going off pot this medication may be an appropriate next step. It makes me want to cry. Western meds have completely wrecked my body every time I’ve tried. Name a side effect–I have gotten pretty much every non-fatal one.
I also talked to the home schooled teenager on our street yesterday. We are going to start weekly babysitting. I need more of a break than I’m getting. It is just fucking mandatory. People go insane in circumstances like mine even if they started out basically healthy. I don’t think I have been basically healthy… oh uhm, ever?
I pick my therapists very carefully so she asked me, “How did you and Noah use bdsm to manage these cycles in the past?” Bless her heart. If you have the wrong therapist for you they can be the most worthless excuse for a human being but if you have the right match you can make lots of behavioral progress. (That’s not really fair. They aren’t “worthless” just because they are a bad fit but when you are really upset and hurting it feels that way.)
So the topic of weekly canings came up. Not canning. Not putting food in jars. Being hit with sticks. This time the reference is more on the fun side, kind of like the swinging only this time she meant the other meaning.
I’m not opposed to giving it a shot. I pointed out that Noah and I have never done behavior management this way. I did that with my Owner. We had a very different dynamic.
I continue to have mixed feelings about the idea that it is better for someone else to hit me than for me to cut myself. I understand that a lot of people who generally support the idea of bdsm agree. If you believe that bdsm can be a healthy activity then you probably would side with it being superior to cutting. Probably. I can’t speak for everyone but I’ve been told that a lot.
I watch The West Wing too much so I am starting to explain things to myself in terms of the story arc. Cutting is about dealing with the pressure caused by a nuclear reaction. First the reaction goes into a series of containment devices (my previous/earlier coping methods) then eventually it gets to the point where the containment devices are full and there is more steam coming and either you vent to the atmosphere (causing possible massive damage) or you risk a full scale explosion which will absolutely for certain cause way the fuck more damage. Better to vent a little.
That’s what cutting is. Cutting brings all of my physical stress down to a level where I stop swearing and yelling and freaking out. I’m nice and calm. It’s better than a Valium.
It is hard being told “I know you have this awesome coping method that works better than everything else I am recommending put together… but don’t use it.”
That doesn’t feel like a supportive act. I’m trying to look at the big picture. One of the dominant symptoms of my various forms of mental illness is difficulty with tunnel thinking. When you are in the tunnel you don’t think you will ever be out again. You can only think in the panic of the Right Now. There is no larger picture.
My shrink confidently and manipulatively brings up phrases like “Harm Reduction.” Psh. Like I give a shit about that theory. Psh.
(Once again with the funny… If I didn’t tell you then you wouldn’t know that you are supposed to chuckle. I learn from television shows which tell their audience when to laugh.)
At this stage cutting would dramatically increase the harm I am doing in the process of coping. If there are any less harmful methods left to try I just can’t get to the last method yet.
I’m not really at a point where I’m thrilled about being told “Just be more patient” because that’s what it sounds like.
I’m trying to think about water flowing over obstructions. Sure, it could destroy one path by trying to send all the water one way in a jet or it could try to find another way around. Water is good at getting around whatever you try to block it with. Resourceful.
Last night was Noah’s company holiday party. I did better than I’ve done the last two years. Improvement is good, right? Once again it feels kind of pathetic that I have to struggle so much in order to not be inappropriate.
Last night I swore more than is probably strictly speaking ideal but I didn’t worry about it. I was at an adult party. Noah didn’t care or think I was too extreme. I can live with the other teacher/parent people looking a little shocked when I say “What the fuck?”
I think this party felt lower stress because I didn’t know anyone. For the last few years I had to manage the line between hanging out with people I actually knew and dealing with the amorphous boundaries of “work people”. That’s harder. This time I just go to try to censor appropriately and that’s easier.
When people tried to shock and titillate me by referring to going to a conference that had a leather track I got to cross examine and figure out that it must have been some kind of more general alternative lifestyle convention because I’ve never heard of a 10,000-15,000 person leather conventions in LA in the past few years and I’d be shocked if I missed that. When he tried to allude vaguely to other factors as proof I rattled off the names of all the big cons with their rough head count of attendees and expressed lots of support for my position. That’s always fun. No, I know this stuff. I don’t think you are talking about a just leather con.
In the conversational flow it would have made sense to bring up Debaucherama and I totally didn’t talk about winning Slut of the Year. I was very tactful and appropriate for work people. Ahem.
I turned to Noah and said, “You know which story they just lead me to the door of and here I am not walking through it.” He patted me on the back and all. The coworkers raised their eyebrows and said, “Maybe we can come visit on a different night.” Ha. Like I’ll tell them then.
That was a great party. Sigh.
Also, DA–because of you I get to tell the best stories at parties. I feel like a dumbass but people always bring up travel at these kinds of parties and getting to talk about going to Alaska in my friend’s private plane is rad. I feel officially cool when I tell those stories. Yup, I’ve done bad ass things. That’s right. Including hiking in the Alaskan wilderness. My life is awesome.
It is interesting trying to figure out how to “spin” stories so I can be appropriate for work parties. I’m not so good at this. I did manage to avoid bringing up sex last night. *pat self on back* The leather con attendance thing doesn’t count.
In preparation for the party I went shopping for a dress. Mostly because it kept me out of the house so I wouldn’t cry. I over-ruled the shop lady. She didn’t think the one I bought was the best idea. I’m a bit too lumpy for it in her opinion. She’s a skinny lady and thinks that style of dress is for more stick-shaped women. Psh. Whatever. It was a skin-tight little number with lots of boob attention. In a size medium. No wonder my clothes don’t fit if I can walk into some boutique shop and come out with a size medium. I haven’t been a size medium much in my life. This is weird. I’ve been a large/extra large (or bigger) for most of my adult life.
Noah was quite happy with my selection. That was the whole point.
Sometimes I feel weird about my mixed feelings around dressing frumpy versus wearing clothes that are sexy. When I’m feeling sad and anxious dressing up either feels soothing or stimulating depending on the context. Some days I do consciously think of the trophy wife thing. In general I’m not such a good trophy. But I try to clean up good once in a great while. In general I look frumpy and boring and that is for the best. Lately I’ve been wearing the skirts from my Renaissance Faire outfit over pants because I just want to be covered that much.
So going out in a dress that accentuated a figure I’m not used to having was kind of weird. Several coworkers stared a lot all night. That is always a little awkward. But if you go out dressed like that while wearing bright red lipstick you invite looking. It is a weird line.
I know that Noah gets a status bump from the Neanderthals he works with if they think his wife is hot. I have mixed feelings about this. But once a year I can dress up. Hell it isn’t even once a year that I dress that way now. But man the dress is hot.
I should take a picture. I look really good. If I had looked like this many years ago I probably would have gotten closer to a four digit number instead of a three digit number. Maybe it is for the best that I was chunky and had to win people over with my awesome personality. Snort.
I think the dress would not look out of place on the show Mad Men. Not that I’ve watched it. But I’ve seen a few references on magazine covers in grocery stores so I know the show exists and a brief google image search supports with my assumption.
Now I have fancy party dresses in size 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 sitting in my closet. Because who the fuck knows what size I will be next year. I no longer get rid of the fancy party dresses. My body changes dramatically over time.
I’m struggling with the fact that I “know” I am small but when I look in the mirror I don’t think I “look” small only I know I do to other people. I look like me and in my head I’m a fat girl (I have justifiably been for a lot of my adult life) so I still kind of see that. I have always been content and happy with being fat. Now I’m not fat and I miss it. On one hand I know that it is easier for me to find flattering clothing (based on the number of times I saw people do double takes when I walked by my dress was flattering) but I’m not sure if I like that. I am not good at guessing which dresses will be flattering. I have to try fifteen on.
My body is different and in ways that are somewhat more societally “approved” and that bothers me.
I don’t really want more approval in that area. Being thinner sure doesn’t get me more sex with Noah.
And yes, all of this is tied up with the whole parasympathetic nervous system and cutting. It is.
Does dressing up and wearing lipstick change how much I want to cut? I certainly feel less like I am about to blow my stack this morning, but how much is it related? How much is it about just getting five hours off of my kids yesterday between the party and therapy?
Those little thrills of recognition when a man checks me out function in similar soothing ways to the cutting. I feel kind of ashamed admitting it, but in for a penny in for a pound. It is the kid-version of what I used to do with finding promiscuous sex. “Whoo hoo people looked at me.” Less of a lift but a lot safer and lower effort.
(I spotted one last night who totally looked like my prey. It’s about the kind of smile. I miss hunting.)
I feel very conflicted about the whole “attention getting” behavior bit. I console myself with the idea that despite writing about what I am feeling/doing in the moment I don’t actually bring it up with people. When I am cutting I do it in a place on my body I can conceal and the vast majority of people don’t know. I write it down because I want proof that I’m not lying to myself about what I’m doing. I don’t think I get additional attention around self-harming behavior. Other than when I was institutionalized as a teenager because I wouldn’t promise to stop cutting I haven’t gotten a lot of “attention” based on self-harming.
Talking about it alienates people and ends friendships. I don’t think I talk about it for attention. I think I talk about it because the more silent and ashamed I act about my behavior the harder it is to control.
If I talk about wanting to cut sometimes that is enough to get me through that feeling of wanting to cut and maybe tomorrow I won’t feel that way any more. It does work for me. Today I feel less desire to rush to Home Depot and buy a lock. That’s enough of a pause to ensure that I probably won’t be cutting this week and probably not this month.
Is that enough?
It is a lot like how I manage my suicidal ideation. “This is how I feel right now and if I honor it maybe I don’t have to do it.” I don’t live well with secrets. Believing that I have to lie about what is in my head intensifies and strengthens all of my negative self-beliefs. Nice people are allowed to talk about how they exist in the world. Stupid, worthless pieces of shit like me should shut up and stop polluting the airways. Just stop fucking breathing so you don’t contaminate anyone.
I don’t know if everyone’s lives are careful balancing acts. For me I have to manage stimulus and soothing pretty carefully. Lack of either one is dangerous to my ability to function.
I schedule parties once in a while because I know so many people that slowly cycling through them all one on one is kind of impossible. I would have a date every day of the year if anyone at all was on a repeating weekly or monthly cycle. I know a lot of people. I like them all. I want to continue knowing them. Heck, I want my awesome friends to meet one another because networking is very important for a successful life. Everyone needs access to resources.
I told my shrink that I missed a flight to Oakland Airport and got rerouted to SFO and I managed to arrange a pickup at midnight through Twitter. Because I just have friends who can do that. She was surprised. I am beginning to think that her other clients live in caves because she spends a lot of time being surprised that I know so many people and that they do the things they do with me.
I get that my life is a weird and extreme place. It has extreme bad and extreme good. I am very lucky and I am very unlucky. I have a ridiculous amount of privilege and yet I don’t. It all depends on what you are looking at and judging right this minute.
As a child I learned that one of the main things I needed to do to keep myself safe was make sure I know as many people as possible. If one person is mad at me/doesn’t like me/doesn’t want to help me/doesn’t want to spend time with me… find someone else. There are always more fish in the sea. There are billions of god damn people on this planet. Surely I haven’t alienated all of them yet.
I think that moving more than fifty times made it so that I never got to sink in and decide “This is just the way life is.” There is no set way my life is. The circumstances vary so much that they are nearly unrecognizable from day to day or period to period. Folks who knew me primarily as a slave to my Owner are rather shocked by me these days.
Walt Whitman may have thought he contained multitudes. I think I may have lived more lives than him. Sometimes I feel like a cat only I’ve had far more than just nine lives.
Do you know where the cats have nine lives thing comes from? When cats experience injury or illness they hide somewhere while they heal–it is an anti-predator sort of behavior. Then they come out and are fine again. So people used to speculate that they could regenerate.
I hide to lick my wounds then I appear again. Often in very different circumstances with fairly different behavior. Going from theatre to bdsm to teaching to parenting has been pretty dramatic. From stage to stage there is almost no overlap in terms of behavior or activities.
I think that is part of the reason Noah and I don’t do bdsm better together. I compartmentalize and Noah is the partner who has been nice to me and that’s hard to change. Even if bdsm might have other benefits.
tl;dr: I’m mad at my therapist for trying to talk me out of cutting. But that’s pretty much what I pay her to do so it’s a wash. Stupid parasympathetic nervous system. Why the fuck can’t you just act nice?
Oh, and after completely freaking out yesterday morning and feeling like the best thing to do would be to see as much blood as possible… I started bleeding.
Any suggestions on how to manage the monthly depression crash I’m getting? Yay impending blood loss. It is becoming really predictable. Which is strangely comforting. Just because I haven’t hacked the system yet I appreciate that patterns are emerging.
My worst depression days are followed immediately by me bleeding. I feel comforted by the hormonal link. Less like I am just at the mercy of the waves of my insanity.
The biggest difference between level twos and level threes is whether or not I can respond to advice with “Fuck you” and think the person will still come back again. I have to be careful with the level twos as well, but less careful. They are more aware of the constant simmering issues. I’m sorry for yesterday.
I’m in serious spoon deficit and there isn’t a lot I can do about it. Right now my plan A is to change how I treat my body with my kids. So far I have spent their entire lives acting like nudity isn’t a big deal. I am not really a sit-around-nekkid kind of person. Usually I am too cold and on the rare days when it isn’t too cold I am too hot and I don’t want sticky bare skin on sticky bare skin. So I usually wear clothes. But I don’t hesitate to strip if I have a reason. I don’t think naked bodies are a problem. My kids have been to nudist resorts and we will go again. Bodies are just bodies.
But I need to start consciously preparing for the fact that cutting isn’t very far away. I need to start developing the habit of dressing and using the bathroom in a way that preserves the privacy of my legs.
I’m very out of spoons. And I really am not in a place where I can ask for any more help. Too many people have done the “Yeah, sure” but now I don’t see them any more. I need to depend on just me. And the sad fact is that I don’t really have enough control.
Cutting significantly increases my ability to act in a controlled manner. Given that I do not have the support network to deal with my stress in other ways I need to do what I can do while alone in a room. That is all I can depend on.
I will put a better lock on the bathroom door.
I am not in a psychological space where I can ask for anything else from anyone. I feel too lied to and too abandoned. I feel like it is all my fault that people flake on me–it’s because I am bad. I am too mean. I am too hard to deal with. People can’t handle me. So I have to cope as if I have no support.
That’s just the way it goes for some people.
No, enrolling Shanna in school would not be the way to solve this problem. Then I would have Calli alone expecting me to be the sole entertainment during that time period. It would not be a break. It would also cause daily stress around: get up, get dressed, eat breakfast faster, pack your lunch, when you are home now do your homework. All for bullshit I don’t believe in and actively think is destructive. No, that would not lower my stress.
I am taking my fucking vitamins. I’m exercising. I’m doing the swinging shit. I’ve asked for help. I don’t have much consistent help. The only consistent help I get is so that I can see my therapist.
In January we will go to the park with the home schoolers once a week. I will see my therapist. Otherwise I’m not scheduling anything.
I was taught that shit should roll down hill. I refuse to participate in that dynamic. My children will not bear the brunt of my issues. I’m really ok with my legs bearing the brunt. That is better in every way.
Noah is worried that it will increase my suicidal ideation. He wants us to start scheduling babysitting more often before I start cutting. There is the neighbor girl. I agreed to that. I can understand him being afraid of me killing myself. He understands that it is the most likely way I will die in this lifetime.
But I need to start practicing with my clothes. I need to install a lock on the bathroom. I can’t just start cutting out of the blue and expect it to function as a coping method the way I need it to. I need to create the structural support in my life for it working the way I need it to work.
It’s time to start preparing for the actual amount of spoons I have in my hand. I’m crying too much. I’m not yelling that much but I have been pulling away from the kids. I’m very emotionally disengaged because I am afraid of yelling.
I need some kind of something I’m not getting. I’ve done everything else I can think of. It is time to return to my trusty friend. It is always there when I need it. No one else is.
Yesterday running was a sob fest. Going to Texas makes me feel guilty. I do not honor my family, but I go honor his? I felt like the nanny because they didn’t ask me any questions about me. They only asked me questions about the kids. They don’t want to know me. They want to know my children and I am a chaperone.
I used the time that I was running yesterday to apologize for not thinking more often of my dead. As long as I am alive, as long as I remember what they taught me–they aren’t really dead, right?
I remember you Francesca Bennet. I remember you Traci Williams. I remember you Frances Mae Carr Schmidt. I remember you Lenora Bried Archer. I remember you James Arthur Archer. I remember you Orlando Archer. I remember you Vernon Schmidt. I remember you Thomas Wayne Archer. I remember you Robert Lee Abbott.
I do not remember Frances and Lenora because I knew them. I was told lots and lots. They are my grandmothers. I didn’t get to meet either of them. Lenora died of cancer. Frances just didn’t want to live any more. It hurt too much. I understand.
I do not remember Orlando either. Ory. That’s what he was called. He died before I was dreamed up. He was my grandfather. I remember Vernon though. He was not a loving man. But I remember him. I remember him scornfully looking at my hair and my niece’s skin tone and saying, “There’s a nigger in the woodpile.” That’s what he gave me.
I remember the friends who have passed out of my life. Usually because I did something I really shouldn’t have done. It isn’t as nice to name them online. They still want their privacy and all.
But sometimes I chant your names. I love you. I miss you. You are part of me. I am sorry I hurt you.
Amanda Palmer has a new song she released. The Thing About Things. It is a pay what you can/want download. I paid $5 for the song. If you need to download it for free she won’t be mad at you. I promise. I met Amanda. She’s really neat.
23 years ago Thomas Wayne Archer gave me a gold chain. The same Christmas Sissy gave me a gold pendant that says “Special Someone”. Here’s a picture.
Despite my general policy of not wearing gold (I think it looks bad on my skin) I put it on yesterday after the run.
I don’t know what it means to be special to my sister. It didn’t mean that she would be kind to me. It did mean that I am the singular sibling she never had sex with. I was too young then I was too nasty and uninterested. She missed her window.
I don’t feel the family ties. I was told and told and told that pride in your family would carry you through. Your family are the people you can call in the middle of the night and they have to come get you no matter what.
When I called my sister in the middle of the night she hung up on me and told me it was my problem.
Very special.
Going to Texas was weird because my children have a lot of traits from Noah’s side. Shanna spends a fair bit of time just sitting around strumming an ukelele and making up songs. That’s not something that anyone does in my family. All of Noah’s family is very musical.
“If you’re not allowed to love people alive, then you learn how to love people dead.”
“The thing about things is that they can start to have meaning that nobody actually said.”
In the traditions of Burkina Faso your dead more or less follow you around forever. They are tied to you. You can ask them for favors. You can berate them. You can cajole them into helping you understand things.
Daddy, why? What happened? Why did you need to turn around and hurt us like that? Frances, what hurt so bad?
I wish you had wanted to meet me. I’m told I’m pretty special. You were alive until I was thought of. I was inside your daughter and you knew it. But you just didn’t want to keep going. Was Vernon so bad? Why was Nicey enough and you didn’t want to meet me? Did you know what was happening to Sissy and you just couldn’t stop it and you couldn’t watch any more?
Lenora, did you take pride in your children?
Ory, maybe if you had stopped drinking… maybe James wouldn’t have been so broken. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. What else happened anyway?
I will never know. The dead keep their secrets.
But I’m sorry. I love you. As complicated as this is, as much as this hurts, I remember you.
Francesca, Traci, James, Tommy, Lee, Frances, Vernon, Ory, Iain Turner, Uncle Bob, I remember you. You aren’t gone. I promise I will keep remembering.
Even if it hurts I will remember you. I won’t let those memories slip away. I won’t let you die. This is all I can do for you now. I can make sure I remember you. I will rehearse your stories in my mind as long as I live.
I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything I did and didn’t do that I was supposed to do.
I feel like it is smart to name my living family members less online. They don’t really want to be tied with me. I’m sorry to you all as well. I’m sorry Mommy and Auntie and Big Brother and Niece and Nephews and Cousins.
I didn’t mean to hurt you so much. I was just trying to stay alive in the only way I saw forward for me. I don’t want to be like Frances.
I don’t want to be like you James. I don’t want to be a monster. I don’t want to have shit roll down hill in my house. I want my house to be safe.
I want to take pride in my family. Mostly what I take pride in is having the strength to walk away and not be like them. But I’m so sorry it has to be this way. I am so so so so so sorry.
I missed my first chance to be special in a family. It’s over. I can build something different. I can try to not break my children. That is all I can do.
I can take pride in them. I can teach them that being “special” to someone does not involve being hit or raped or told you are worthless.
Noah’s family seems to take a lot of pride in my kids. My children reflect well on them. Bah. My children reflect well on me.
Children learn what they are taught. My children are taught that they should be spoken to in civil ways. My children are taught that it isn’t ok for anyone to scream at them. Not me, not someone else. When someone starts screaming at you *that person has a problem* and you should walk away if humanly possible.
Be nice to people if you want them to be nice to you. Figure out what being nice to them means because it is very different in different places. No matter what your Great Aunt thinks. People are not “all alike” and being kind to them means treating them how they need to be treated. Is that hard? Yes. So are lots of other things. It gets easier with practice. So start practicing.
I’m still working on it. Yes, it is hard. It is the work of a lifetime. Learning how to really see different people.
“Things can start meaning things nobody actually said.”
I will not forget where I came from. I will choose to remember. It isn’t the same thing as pride, but there is resignation in it. I think this is part of that “forgiveness” I am supposed to work on. Less for those people and more for me.
I forgive me for wanting to remember. I forgive me for wanting a story when other people are ok with just forgetting. “Just don’t think about the bad things” is the most common advice I have ever gotten.
I will not forget. I will remember. This is the only honoring I can give.
I love you. I love you Mommy. I love you Tommy. I love you Daddy. I love you Sissy. I love you Jimmy.
I don’t think I will ever stop. I wish I could. It would make my life easier.
I think there will be exactly two people who share blood with me at my funeral. I have to make peace with that.
My family will not be there for me. Ever. In any way. Noah is my family. He will be there.
I wake up every day and feel grateful for Noah. I am a very expensive, very high maintenance pet. I’m grateful he took on responsibility for me. I don’t feel very deserving.
I am special to Noah.
The folks in Texas didn’t ask that much more about Noah than they did about me. I see why he doesn’t go back more.
Sometimes I feel very sad when I think about how much Noah and I cling together because we don’t really have anyone else. Neither of us have ever been all that loved. Noah wasn’t treated like me, but he wasn’t loved much. That’s a big void.
I’m really glad he is here. I like him. I love him. When I was a kid people would tell me that I didn’t understand what love meant.
Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I still don’t. But I’m glad for what I have. For now love means believing that this person makes me better than I am alone and I make him better. Together we are capable of a lot of things that neither of us can do alone. I think he is competent and wonderful.
He makes me breakfast and Christmas cookies because I don’t actually like the process of cooking that much. He’s awesome. Then I give the cookies away and he doesn’t get mad. The perfect symbiotic relationship.
He made enough cookies for us to share with all of our buddy-neighbors and the home school group cookie exchange. That’s effort.
Thank you. I see your labor. I appreciate it. (I’ve already thanked him several times in person. I’m not just passive aggressive or anything.)
But sometimes I have trouble remembering that Noah really does work hard to make my load lighter. He isn’t just doing his stuff. He does stuff for an us even when it isn’t his first choice of how to spend time.
But he makes my mother’s cookie recipes so my children can grow up with them. Because I wish it were so.
I am special to someone. When I was a child I would react with such anger and hatred if anyone in my family tried to tell me I was special or that they loved me.
If I was special you wouldn’t turn a blind eye to how much horror I experienced. But they did. And I was expected to as well and I couldn’t. I couldn’t be nice until I stopped being hurt all the time.
I’m sorry I’m not a big enough person to be nice to people who aren’t hurting me when I’m being hurt that bad. I just can’t. Other people can, I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I am so small. I am sorry I am so unworthy of pride. No one ever took pride in me. My behavior was disgusting. I was berated and told that I wasn’t welcome to be seen in public. No one wanted to be seen as being part of a unit with me because then they would have to admit they knew the horrible child.
I remember all of you. I will never forget. Even though you didn’t and don’t love me very much. I have to love me enough to make up for that.
Sometimes that is very hard.
I didn’t write yesterday because I could have written the word “fuck once” and then just copy-n-pasted it two thousand times and called it good. I’m still catching up on sleep and being very underslept seems to exacerbate the swearing to the point where I literally have no control over it. It’s very socially awkward.
By the time we got on the final plane flight I was in a foul mood. We missed our last connection. We didn’t go to Oakland like planned. We got mercifully placed on a flight to SFO instead of getting stuck in Utah. THANK ALL THE GODS IN THE WORLD. I’ve been in Utah for extended periods before. When I am that underslept and grumpy I just don’t have it in me to be the kind of nice they need from people. Oh man.
I had an angelic friend pick us from the airport and we got the car the next day. All’s well that ends well.
I woke up yesterday in a foul mood. I did get a bit of extra sleep but not close to enough (I got a bit extra last night too but in the previous 7 day period I was down almost two full nights of sleep). I told the kids they had three choices for the day: play in the back yard, play in the play room, or help me clean. I do not have the patience or the kind voice to allow you to play in the living room while I am trying to get the front part of the house cleaned up after the gingerbread house event.
Sometimes I genuinely don’t mind them making the mess bigger AS I clean. Sometimes I will scream like an evil harpy and we will all be sorry. After I cleaned up the bonus mess they made in the kitchen while I was stupid enough to be in my room for a while (whipped cream, granulated sugar, and milk all over the floor–Shanna will be a great cook someday) the day went better. That was their last bonus mess of the day. [For the record, making a huge mess in the play room doesn’t count as making the mess worse. That is their space. I defend my right to walk through the main areas of my house without breaking my ankle.)
A girl has to have standards. I enforced them with only moderate raising of voice and a lot of raising of eyebrows as I calmly repeated the three options and pointed at the back door. All in all I call it a success. I didn’t get very far outside the kitchen, much to my sadness.
Apparently making that much gingerbread is… kind of stupid. I had to clean all the fronts of the cabinets and the walls because there was a sheen of sugar everywhere (most of it brown) and periodic chunks of cookie just hanging out on cabinet doors. I’m so glad the ants didn’t show up while I was in Texas. *phew* Usually they don’t give me this long of a grace period. Maybe they hate the cold too.
But my kitchen is clean and organized. Well, like 80% of the way there. Sometimes I am horrified by how much mess can occur in such a small space.
I also mopped the bathroom floor because, hey mop is out and the floor is nasty. W00t.
I should talk more about the Texas trip. A few pieces of my explanation confused people.
Noah has a mom and a dad, (duh) and one side has historical money (dad) and one side is a bunch of poor farmers and teachers (mom).
The rich great aunt with the many museum quality houses she owns is Noah’s dad’s sister. She’s never been married, never had kids. She has hobbies instead. She won’t send us any kind of letters, she flat told me she doesn’t bother to do those things. If we want to see her we have to come to her town. She won’t visit us. But she’s delightful when we show up.
I have some feelings about that kind of relationship. “You only want to know me if I spend many thousands of dollars to get to your house. Well I can just decide that doesn’t matter to me much.” But she is nice and funny and clever and neat to talk to. But she’s just so busy you know. She has quilts to make. Not useful quilts that go on beds. Small arty ones that go on walls. Because expressing herself is all that matters. Her community service is buying the historic houses and restoring them so rich people have a place to have tea parties. Hopefully a lot of my known class bias makes this paragraph have multiple readings for everyone who reads it. Ahem.
Whereas Noah’s mom’s family is… not so well off. Great Grandmother is a pistol. Hoo boy. No wonder she survived teaching all boys continuation school science for so many years. She’s got balls of solid rock. I would bet on her in a fight with a honey badger even if her eyesight is going.
GG (I’m not going to write out great grandmother every time) is the person we spent the most time with and I feel really good about that. She is the one working the hardest to have a relationship with the kids. We spent time with her on both days. She served us a wonderful breakfast the second day. She and the kids got along like a house on fire. That was such a beautiful love fest. These days she works with pre-k kids (she doesn’t have a large retirement so she is still working even though she is half blind) and she shared a whole bunch of the teaching material she has made. I was impressed by the sheer artistic value involved.
When she wants to teach the kids about the life cycle of plants she draws/paints pictures of the plant/seasons/people tending them that in the school. Every picture would be immediately recognizable to her students. It was beautifully tailored curriculum. She sends us stuff when she’s done with it and I go over it with the kids pretty carefully. She puts her soul into these things.
And now she is the *second* quilter. She makes useful blankets. She’s already made two small quilts for my kids. One for Shanna and one for Calli. Calli *loves* her orange blanket. Hardly anyone gives her orange/yellow and she prefers that to pink so this felt really special. Calli sleeps with it all the time. The new quilt GG is working on is so beautiful it deserves to be on a wall. It is a great grandmother’s fanciful interpretation of her two beautiful Cupcake Girls at play.
She let the girls paint the second day. The girls set up a huge “Enchanted forest” in her living room and she was so happy. She lives alone and not many people visit her because she doesn’t get along well with a lot of the family.
We also met GG’s son who is Noah’s mom’s brother. (I’m trying to be less confusing but I’m not sure I’m managing.) His whole family took us to the fried pickle place. They were polite but stranger polite. No one was even a hair rude. I have nothing negative to say. I felt like the visiting nanny but that is probably about as much about me as anything else.
It was a lovely dinner with lively conversation. GG was quiet–I think the ambient noise was too loud.
Noah’s brother came with his son. Watching the three kids play warmed my heart. They are all so happy to know that the others exist. There were a few arguments between my girls about whether the little boy was ONLY the cousin of one of them. I assured Calli that Shanna doesn’t get to decide that he only belongs to Shanna.
Noah and the girls went out to the compound on Sunday. Apparently the three kids mostly spent the time playing. Perfect. They swam in the (indoor, heated) pool and looked at the horses and played with the 5′ high dollhouse together.
I think that when we come through in 2015 we will spend most of the time with GG and the little cousin. Both of them promised lots of letters between now and then and I believe them. They have been happening so far.
I need to sit down and write some thank you’s very soon. Folks earned them from me. It was a good trip despite my anxiety.
I spent five hours sitting in a bar drinking mai tais and writing about sex. I actually had a great time. I don’t write that kind of stuff as much. It made me happy. I took some time to do some deep stretching because the bar was pretty empty before 12pm on a Sunday. Ha. I felt a lot better physically after that. I had some fun conversations with folks online–it was really nice, actually.
The ending of the trip was hard because I was out of spoons. It wasn’t anyone fault. Going more than 48 hours unmedicated at this point means that I am in a pretty ridiculous amount of pain and it is hard to be patient and keep my tone of voice under control in that state.
I didn’t do great but I didn’t do so badly I feel ashamed. I sat myself down next to Noah and he calmly listened to me list off how much I hate every passenger on an airplane who puts their tiny little laptop bag and coat in the upper compartment AS THE FUCKING FLIGHT ATTENDANT IS ANNOUNCING IT IS A FULL FLIGHT AND SUCH ITEMS MUST GO AT YOUR FEET BECAUSE WE WON’T HAVE ENOUGH ROOM YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.
But that was as close as I got to a blow up so I’m happy. Thank you for listening, Noah.
I don’t think Noah would have done as well without me there to just invisibly do a lot of work. I’m glad I went so the three of them could have a lower stress trip. I think it would have been a lot harder on the girls to not have me, even though I didn’t *do* that much directly with them.
It all worked out. Even though I arrived in Houston to realize, “Oh shit. I never made a rental car reservation and I didn’t make a hotel reservation.”
Thank goodness we are rich people who can throw money at problems. I am dreading my end of year mint breakdown. I did not stay within budget.
Uhm, we did spend less than he made. That’s what I’m holding on to to assuage my guilt. (And like, I’m putting all of the travel expense in the mental category of ‘Every few years Noah’s parents send us $10k or so… this was covered by one of those gifts’.)
I think this was the most positive experience I’ve ever had in Texas.
You know, this is why I had kids. They make everything better. My kids make me happy to be wherever I am because they are there and we can have fun no matter what else is going on. I am so grateful for Shanna and Calli.
I appreciated that everyone in his family told me over and over that they were impressed by how delightful my children are.
Children become what you tell them they are. If you tell them they are wonderful (while enforcing boundaries around inappropriate behavior) they will be wonderful. If you tell them they are monsters… you get what you deserve.
I model being considerate of them all day every day. As they get older I am being more demanding that they notice me in similar ways. (Age appropriate ways! I have books telling me what is ok! Lots and lots of cross referenced books because there are varying opinions and I wanted to know the range!)
Maybe my only complaint is that the family gave them a bunch of Christmas presents that are all for 8+ year old kids. I’m kind of annoyed by that. If I let the kids open them now, the family might as well have given the kids a baggie with sticks in it. It would be used the same way. I don’t want to open all the science kits while they are incapable of reading or having some idea what is going on with it. Right now it would just be towers and grain spills in a town as they dump all the chemicals on my table. Not really my idea of a good time. I’m good with letting them dump sand in the back yard.
So I will put them in storage for a bit. It’ll be fine.
Maybe when some of our fabulous big-kid friends come visit I can get a box out and the kids can work together. If I were more willing to micromanage I could show them how it works… but we don’t roll like that. We don’t have the kind of dynamic where I set up work that is way over their head and they “go through the motions”. We just don’t do that.
That’s busy work. I don’t do busy work. I’ve got enough work. So do you. Get hopping.
I think that for small children most of their “work” should be creative play with the items they are allowed access to all the time. Shanna comes up with cool shit. I’m not going to sit her down and force her step by step through something that is too mature for her to really understand anyway.
She’ll get to the point where she is drawn to doing it herself. With the stuff in the house she always has so far.
It is weird trusting her like this. Right now our science is life science and cooking. (Cooking is serious chemistry, yo.) I let her make big messes with spices learning about them. She’s allowed to create lots of things in the kitchen. (She’s rather talented. She can make scones, cookies, and cakes with only very minimal direction but no hands-on help from me.)
If you want to do something, do it. Don’t freaking sit there and yell at me to do it for you. I don’t play that way. I will leave the room and you can yell all by yourself.
Today is park day. I asked permission from the other families to come even though I am sick. The kids need to run so bad. One person sent me an SMS saying, “Yes, come!” No one else responded. I’ll take that as a yes.
Sore throat, coughing, sneezing, fever, runny nose… it’s like I was on a plane or something.
Today I will clean in the morning then go to the park. When we come home I will make dinner then hopefully get a bit more cleaning done.
Tomorrow is a clean/social/clean/social day. We have this holiday party coming up this weekend. I should probably finish putting away all of the in-progress crap I have sitting every where. UGH!
If I am a big douchebag and I didn’t send you an invitation to an open house this Sunday it was an oversight and not a slight. Poke me if you want to come over.
A wonderful friend told me that she and her husband are interested in looking for a person to have a threesome with. After saying “It won’t be me” she laughed and said, “I just want advice.”
I can do advice! And while I sit here in Texas with my second drink of the day I’m feeling very full of stuff I want to share. Hiccup.
Group sex is complicated. More brilliant people than me have written about it. When you have group sex you have three people all of whom have very different pictures in their heads of what “group sex” looks like. My personal experiences involve every gender combination of up to seven people. Because my life has been awesome.
First thing first: having a threesome as a couple adding a third person is the *worst* way to do it. Unfortunately if you are part of a couple your partner would probably object to being ditched while you go find two other single people for such an experience. When you have a couple adding a third person you have all those messy couple issues on top of the simple sex issues.
The reason I say this is the worst is that almost every threesome horror story I have ever heard started from that configuration. Almost every successful story I have heard involves three single people getting together for one night.
When you are in a couple you have to stop and think, “How will I react if my partner spends more time paying attention to the other person? How am I going to feel if it starts feeling like those two are having sex and I am the audience?” That can be a sucky feeling. Figuring out how to turn a seeming-new-dyad into something that includes a third person is fun but hard.
In my opinion threesomes (or moresomes) work out best if someone is specifically designated as running the fuck. You need to have someone who is consciously paying attention to who is playing with whom and for how long. You need to suggest activities if someone looks left out. “Oh Sue over there isn’t touching anyone! What should we do to her?” Then drag the group focus onto the wallflower. Some people like being a wallflower and if that is your dynamic–negotiate that in advance.
Threesomes have the potential to have mixed signals in terms of barrier protection. A long term married couple doesn’t want to use a condom together even though they MUST use barriers with an extra partner. So in my opinion the polite way to handle this is to default to the strictest set of rules for everyone. Otherwise it feels kind of awkward and weird.
And that hot guy you brought home may not want to deal with a cock covered in cunt juice. Maybe he isn’t into that part of girls very much. It happens.
My experience of the best threesomes have been all female or two male/one female. I am an insecure nitwit and I really struggled with two girl/one guy. I really completely bombed when I was part of the couple adding a girl. I couldn’t get over my insecurities. With two (mostly) heterosexual guys and me there can be many hours of fun though. Ha.
I hunted very successfully on www.okcupid.com and Craigslist. Yes, it takes patience and time to find the right people. There are a lot of people in the world. If you want casual sex you will have to get up the courage to ask a lot. You have to be completely ok with dozens or hundreds of people telling you no. If you can’t handle no then you just don’t get to have group sex this lifetime and get over it.
It really doesn’t matter if you are fat, ugly, or generally low in social status. What I have seen teaches me that pretty much anyone can find someone to say yes if they ask a lot.
If you are looking for a threesome, or really any casual sex you need to get over the idea that you will be a special snowflake in the life of everyone you fuck. Just accept it. Be prepared for awkward waves on public transit sometimes. It’s ok. It truly is.
If what you want is an experience rather than a relationship then you have a few responsibilities. First and foremost: do not treat the person who is kind enough to share this experience with you badly. If you do then you are a piece of shit who deserves to be spit on. Someone who consents to having sex with you always deserves your kindness and respect.
ALWAYS BE RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE YOU HAVE HAD SEX WITH. REGARDLESS OF BAD BREAKUPS.
I try not to yell, but I’ll yell that. If you say bad things about people who have had sex with you then you say way more bad about you than them. Keep that in mind.
No one is a life support for a cock/pussy/tits for you to admire. That’s a real god damn person right there. They have wants, needs, aspirations. You need to treat them like someone awesome who is sharing a wonderful part of themself. Even your casual bar hookups. People matter. How you treat them *matters*.
I like casual sex and I am totally cool with people wanting it. But be nice. We are all humans. We all want to feel like we are respected. Start with that point of view and you will do ok with almost everyone you could ever want to have sex with.
I was asked a whole bunch of questions else-net. I will put the answer in both places because I think that this person is not the only one who will want this information from me in the future.
First and foremost: whereas my experience has been broad I am just one person. Your personal experiences are going to be different from mine in ways I cannot predict in advance. Take everything I say as very gentle guidance and not as an order. I am not the boss of you. Even though I speak in absolutes and I am a HUGE bossypants. I just talk that way. I don’t mean anything by it.
How do you find people? Well I started on the internet because I am a lucky duck and I came of age in that era. I went to www.bondage.com, www.alt.com, www.match.com (ironically where I met my first “online dom”–that’s a lame story if ever there was one), and IRC. I was pre-www.fetlife.com. I don’t actually recommend fetlife as a good place to meet people. It is moving further and further away from being a community space.
Go to munches. (Yes, I know people in NJ. Let me get in touch with people and I’ll see what I can find out about your area.) When you go to munches go with the expectation that most people will be really old, very over weight and fairly ugly. Of course that will not be even remotely true of a lot of people you meet. But if you go with that expectation then you will be prepared for the reality of the bdsm community. Also: expect that they will be a clique and hard to join. The sad fact is these are people who have been rejected a lot so they are prickly and nervous around new people.
We are not the beautiful people. But we are real people. We are creepy sometimes. We are overly intense. People who find their way to the bdsm community have almost certainly spent a lot of their lives feeling rejected, wrong, and disliked. Not everyone but a large chunk.
Go expecting to be your own entertainment when you get to a munch. Getting to know people sucks. It’s awkward and stiff and terror inducing. These are perverts. Many of these people would cheerfully tie you up and beat you until you scream bloody murder.
The good ones will only do so if you say “Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top.” There will be predators around though. You will have to keep you safe. Even beyond the predators there are a lot of people who have poor social skills for a wide variety of reasons. People are not going to be good at managing your boundaries. You will have to be pro-active and vocal from the very beginning. In my opinion it is ok to end up more on the bitch end of things. Keep YOU safe. Other people don’t know how to be nice to you unless you explicitly tell them.
That is one of the hardest parts of coming into the bdsm community as someone with significant mental health issues. You were probably exposed to things that made it hard for you to stand up for yourself. But when you engage in bdsm you have to do it from a place of absolute Trust. Bdsm is ALL about trust. The physical sensations are nice and all but really what we are playing with is power.
The sadomasochists are going to string me up from a tree. I’m not talking about Dominance/submission. Not all people are into specific consciously power differentiated roles. You don’t have to be a Dominant or Submissive. Maybe you are just into the physical sensations.
But I tell you that it feels different to be hit by a friend you love and trust than by someone who doesn’t like you very much. There is still power involved. Maybe it is the power of giving someone access to your body. You are relinquishing nothing. You are sharing the power.
That trust and power bit are very important. If you don’t think you have the power to keep yourself safe and decide what happens to your body then bdsm is maybe not the best place for you to come learn such power. Some people with extreme mental health problems do ok and become healthier as they have bdsm relationships and experiences. Some people tank really hard and implode. No one will be checking up on you other than you. You have to take it very seriously that you are responsible for your mental health. If you can’t manage your symptoms, then maybe right now isn’t the best time to start.
If you are officially diagnosed with mental health problems I can guess that you have a hard time picking people who are really safe to be around. I may not be right but I probably am. When you have mental health problems your perceptions of the world are always a bit at an odd angle.
It is hard to develop the conscious ability to be rational in judging whether someone is safe or not. You can’t necessarily go by the clues other people tell you to use.
For one thing the most important book you will ever read is The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. When you have that small icki uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach get away from that person and that activity.
That doesn’t mean that a creepy guy at the munch means you never come back to the munch. But if you feel chased off by someone creepy (could be a woman or a person of non-binary gender) then the right choice is to network online and find a buddy for the next munch. You still should go meet people.
Munches aren’t for everyone. I have also had great luck hunting for partners on www.okcupid.com. Ostensibly it is a “vanilla” site but yeah right.
If you want to top you need to make sure you never inappropriately hit anyone. If that sentence makes you feel vaguely worried, well then you need to spend more time introspectively thinking about it.
Enthusiastic consent is the only way to begin a consensual bdsm scene. If someone is saying, “I’m not sure” then you don’t start. You have to both be completely sure that you want to be doing what you are doing. (I know a lot of experienced bdsm people who will reply that they start bdsm scenes with murky consent sometimes under some circumstances. The point of this essay is for people with mental health issues who are just starting. No, 301 play just isn’t a good plan.)
As a beginner negotiate for what you will do rather than what you won’t do. Creative sadists will make you very sorry you thought you could limit the things you don’t want to have happen to you. Take my word for it. Negotiate the activities.
Keep in mind that life is long. I have seen a lot of people enter the bdsm community and kind of go crazy. They are like kids in the candy store. I want to try EVERYTHING. I want to play with EVERYONE. (*ahem* This may or may not be what I did.)
As a result I had some very bad scenes that hurt me very much. I had one particular scene go very badly and I hung on to the trauma from that for over ten years. I finally went to the top and asked him to specifically, in writing, apologize for our scene because he made mistakes. I made mistakes too and I explained them in detail. But I needed to have him apologize to me and recognize that he did something he didn’t mean to do which caused me great harm.
That kind of thing doesn’t usually work out more than ten years later. If you think you need an apology for something that went wrong, I encourage you to get to know the experienced people in your community as mentors and ask someone to mediate a discussion. The way forward out of conflict is for everyone to feel heard.
In the bdsm community (at least where I live and it seems to be a national conversation but I could be wrong) there is a lot of conversation about consent and what it means. How do you say what you want and get what you want without someone coercing or forcing you to do things you don’t want.
I’ll tell you that those of us who struggle with “normal” life are at a severe disadvantage here. We have to work a lot harder. If we want to escape additional trauma we should move slowly. Glacially slow. I promise you, if you wuss into the community and slowly get to know people and don’t play for six or twelve months of getting to know people… in the scheme of your life that is not time wasted. That gives you a chance to really decide what you want to do.
Go to play parties if possible and watch people play. Go home and masturbate. Think about what things you like and which things made you feel uncomfortable. Avoid the fuckers who think “pushing limits is the best kind of play.” Maybe for a very experienced player with no psychological issues. Not for newbies. Not for people who struggle anyway.
All bdsm will throw you off balance. Your chemical balance will go all over the place. During play and right afterwards you may feel euphoric. Don’t expect that feeling to be permanent. It is often followed by a “crash” and depression. When your body is depleted of all those fun chemicals it is hard.
Figure out your aftercare. Aftercare is a real and serious thing. Aftercare is how you will take care of your brain and body in the few minutes, few hours, and few days after a scene. You will probably need different steps. Prepare nourishing food. Sit around cuddling under warm fuzzy blankets. Read your favorite soothing books. Listen to music that makes you feel safe and like you are a great person in the world.
Read books and websites. More research!
I think that is most of what I’ve got at this moment. Of course here is the obligatory reading list:
(Anything from Greenery Press)
Particularly: The New Bottoming Book and The New Topping Book both by Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton.
Playing Well With Others by Mollena Williams and Lee Harrington
Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns by Philip Miller and Molly Devon
I happen to (luckily) personally know Janet, Mollena, and Lee. I have known them for a very long time. They are some of the most brilliant and inspirational people I know. I trust them absolutely without question or I would not send you to their books. I don’t know Philip and Molly but that was one of the first books I read and it stood me in good stead.
BDSM is about the people doing it. The people who are only into tickling count. The people who are only into bondage with NO PAIN count. The people who want to do roleplay rape scenes count. The people who want to have no roles they play but they stand there punching each other count.
What do you want bdsm to mean to you? The sky is the limit. But be careful. Watch yourself. I want you here for many years of kinky fun. You can be monogamous or nonmonogamous.
There are no rules beyond “Everyone must consent”. Go have fun.
I was also asked some particular other questions: do you have to have fetish clothes? No. You don’t have to have them. Many people think they are fun. If you go wearing basic black you will be fine. Avoid running shoes. I bought my first fetish items at Hot Topic.
I came into the bdsm community many years after I was diagnosed with mental health problems. I think that it would be different for people who were involved in bdsm before their trauma. For me all of my life has been post-trauma because it started so young.
Don’t hesitate to get into bdsm at any age. I know hot, festive people playing in their 70’s and 80’s. I hope to be one of them.