OO money and other opportunities

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I haven’t heard back from anyone in a while.  I get the impression things are in flux.  That’s ok.  I was approached about an opportunity this week which will use up a lot of the money.  It will be a community building way to spend the money, but a very different community.  I’m not going to say specifics yet, but I’m excited.

I don’t do very well with trying to join groups unless I have a reason.  I need a job.  I need a role.  I know that’s fairly common.  I’m trying to find a way back into a world I miss.  I’m not sure what I want to get from the experience, exactly.  I want to serve.  That’s part of it.  Tonight someone laughed and told me I want status.  Not really.  I mean, yes, of course.  I do love my status.  But I want the chance to be able to be effective.  I want influence more than I want status for the influence.  I’m not sure I’m explaining well.

I will never be a big part of the public face of this opportunity.  I will be back end.  But that means I get to decide things about the back end.  This is me rubbing my fingers together.  What things to I want to see?  Am I right about my priorities?  I might get to find out.  I have spent a lot of years sitting in the cheap seats watching other people try and have various success with their efforts.  I don’t know what all I am going to do in life, yet.  But it will involve taking as many opportunities as I can.

Why do I want to do this?  Because it’s an opportunity that won’t come again.  Something that will make for great stories for the rest of my life.  Something that irrevocably slams that closet door wide open.  I like that.  I like doing that now in one fell swoop.  I don’t know yet who or what role I will really have in the community.  I’m looking forward to finding out.

Time to move on

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Saturday night we held a surprise dinner party for a friend’s birthday.  She seemed pretty excited about being the center of attention finally.  I think everyone should get the limelight on their birthday.  It was one of the best parties I’ve ever hosted.  I think it was a raging success.  An awful lot of the reason for that is I didn’t feel any pressure to be “on”.  People weren’t there to see me.  Maybe the secret is to invite other peoples’ friends over.
It was neat partially because this was a bdsm crowd of type I don’t hang out with much.  This was a Master/slave sort of gathering.  And Daddy energy.  Lots of Daddy energy.  I got to talk about my opinions about those sorts of relationships.  I got to talk about my experiences with people I have seen around in the scene for over a decade but never before have they noticed me.  It was a weird kind of arriving moment.  It was interesting.  
I really enjoyed getting to explain some of my opinions.  I don’t get asked about these topics much any more.  I have a lot of opinions.  The M/s portion of my relationship with Tom was the middle two years out of four.  So we had a year to ramp up and a year to ramp down.  I have a lot of perspective on that situation at this point. 
And after they left Noah and I had crazy hot sex where he explained what he would like from our relationship in the future.  I’m considering his words very carefully.  It’s a lot more complicated for me to change the nature of my relationships now that I have young children and a marriage and a mortgage to consider.  I’m not just thinking about what I want and what will feel good.  I have to seriously stop and think about whether or not any given set of choices is sustainable for me.  Without sustainability there is no future for any set of behaviors.
Last night in the middle of that crazy hot sex we had to stop for a while because I was crying too hard.  I was crying because it has cost me a lot to maintain training that Tom gave me.  It is humiliating to have to explain to random pick up partners that they have to give me permission to orgasm.  Not only do they have to give me permission they have to kind of do it in a certain way.  Most people guess close enough, but some people say things that make it so that I can’t.  Or they think it is funny to tell me no.  I feel like I don’t get the final say on what happens to my body and that really bothers me.  I am tired of having no choice but to submit this ownership of my body to anyone who touches me.  I’m tired of being unable to have a private sexual experience inside my brain.  I’m tired of constantly having to offer up my desire to someone else.  Someone who doesn’t even understand what this gift costs me.
I am a slave without an Owner.  I’m kind of tired of it.  It is starting to feel demeaning.  It is starting to make me feel like this enormous pearl is being cast before swine.  They do not understand or appreciate and I feel cheapened by the experience.  I want to figure out how to not need permission any more.
I’m 30 years old.  I have not had control of my right to orgasm since I was 19.  Maybe it’s time.  I had a brief period where I started to figure out how to turn this off.  It lasted a couple of months.  Then Noah came back.  It’s one of his favorite party tricks.  It’s hard to tell him I don’t want to give this to him any more.  I am tired of having to feel subjugated to new partners.  It makes the barrier of sex very different.  It’s a lot of why I sleep with assholes.
Assholes know how to use this.  They don’t need me to stop and give an explanation of how I became so broken.  They just want to play with it as a toy.  Let’s press the button and see what happens!  I’m tired of having my right to pleasure be out of my control.  It feels like part of the larger patterns of me doing sex constantly for some perceived exterior motivation. 
I want to have some idea of what sex is like for other women. 
I told Noah last night that I can’t tell if part of me is breaking or mending.  I don’t know what it means that I feel so strongly about getting rid of this now.  I want my freedom, damn it.  I’m tired of having to explain to every vanilla person about my former Owner training.  I can never tell the story right in the moment.  It always feels rushed and I’m trying to change gears and be a different person and it doesn’t feel like a good conversation to have. 
How many other people have to stop and tell the story of their sex life going back to when they were 19 forever?  I wonder how much this feeds my inability to get over Tom.  I’m reminded of him every single time I have sex.  I know this was done for him.  I could never forget it.  This is such a huge part of my body and my life.  He caused this change in me.  What am I like without Tom’s training?  I don’t know.  I’ve never been able to find out.  It’s time.

Forgiveness

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I’m sitting here thinking about my mother.  Doing that makes me cry.  The dinner party I gave last night was for my Leather mom.  She turned 57.  Her actual birthday is on the 6th, but it was better to do the party on Saturday, obviously.  The 6th is also my biological mother’s birthday.  The only thing I am going to do to acknowledge it is cry.  My mother is turning 61.  I obviously missed her 60th birthday as well.  And.  And.  And.
I am about to put a book out into the public that says very bad things about her.  I talk extensively about why I cannot forgive her.  I just can’t give her that gift in this life time.  That’s the consequence of her actions.  It’s hard that actions can have unintended consequences, but it is part of life.  You have to deal with them.
I will never know if my mother forgives me or not.  I hope she does.  As much as I feel bad for wanting this, I want my mommy to forgive me.  I want my mommy to be able to take the high road for once in her fucking life.  I want her to really and truly understand how badly I was hurt by what happened to me.  I want her to forgive me even though I can’t forgive her.
The song that is on is I’m Moving On by Rascal Flatts.  I have these on random, I swear.  Well, ok now I put this one on repeat for a few minutes while I write this entry.  I’m meditating on this song.  I did imagine that home would be a place I wouldn’t belong.
Maybe some day I’ll find forgiveness somewhere on down the road.  From when I was a teenager I would write the word forgive over and over and over again.  I used to write it all over my pants.  My mother got so angry with me.  I’ve never been sure who I am supposed to forgive.  What does it mean to forgive? 
I put a huge tattoo on my back of me reaching for forgiveness.  It’s what I want more than anything else.  I want forgiveness for the hurt I have caused.  I was trying to save my life.  I swear I didn’t use excessive force.  I just wanted to save me.  I’m sorry for all the unintended consequences.  I’m so so so so so sorry.  I cannot express how sorry I am that Tommy is dead and my dad is dead.  I wish that Tommy was somewhere getting the treatment he needs without my involvement.  I wish that my father was rotting in a jail cell.
I want forgiveness for being unable to forgive my mother for marrying that  abusive son of a bitch.  I can’t forgive her for telling me that I made my bed now I have to lie in when he was raping me.  I can’t.  I didn’t make that bed.  She did.  She chose him for my father, not me.  She let me stay in his house unsupervised.  I was a child.  I wasn’t responsible.  She was.
Ok, so she didn’t know she was doing it.  So what?  It was still her responsibility and she failed.  And instead of supporting me after it happened she shamed me and silenced me and punished me and acted like it was my fault.  I can’t forgive her for doing that to me.  I can’t.  I deserve better treatment than that.  A fucking dog deserves better than that.
Grieving hurts.  Part of what hurts so much is having to acknowledge my disgusting hypocrisy on this topic.  I hate that I want other people to do things I am completely unwilling to do myself.  I think it is a massive character flaw.
But sometimes agreements are asymmetrical.  No matter what happens in this life I will always have to forgive my children.  They will not have to forgive me.  It makes me wary about parts of our relationship.  I don’t take it for granted that they will want to have a relationship with me.  I know I need to earn it.  Earning it is hard.  I don’t have good models for how to be the kind of parent someone would want to keep knowing. 
What does it mean to forgive anyway?

Forgiveness

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I’m sitting here thinking about my mother.  Doing that makes me cry.  The dinner party I gave last night was for my Leather mom.  She turned 57.  Her actual birthday is on the 6th, but it was better to do the party on Saturday, obviously.  The 6th is also my biological mother’s birthday.  The only thing I am going to do to acknowledge it is cry.  My mother is turning 61.  I obviously missed her 60th birthday as well.  And.  And.  And.
I am about to put a book out into the public that says very bad things about her.  I talk extensively about why I cannot forgive her.  I just can’t give her that gift in this life time.  That’s the consequence of her actions.  It’s hard that actions can have unintended consequences, but it is part of life.  You have to deal with them.
I will never know if my mother forgives me or not.  I hope she does.  As much as I feel bad for wanting this, I want my mommy to forgive me.  I want my mommy to be able to take the high road for once in her fucking life.  I want her to really and truly understand how badly I was hurt by what happened to me.  I want her to forgive me even though I can’t forgive her.
The song that is on is I’m Moving On by Rascal Flatts.  I have these on random, I swear.  Well, ok now I put this one on repeat for a few minutes while I write this entry.  I’m meditating on this song.  I did imagine that home would be a place I wouldn’t belong.
Maybe some day I’ll find forgiveness somewhere on down the road.  From when I was a teenager I would write the word forgive over and over and over again.  I used to write it all over my pants.  My mother got so angry with me.  I’ve never been sure who I am supposed to forgive.  What does it mean to forgive? 
I put a huge tattoo on my back of me reaching for forgiveness.  It’s what I want more than anything else.  I want forgiveness for the hurt I have caused.  I was trying to save my life.  I swear I didn’t use excessive force.  I just wanted to save me.  I’m sorry for all the unintended consequences.  I’m so so so so so sorry.  I cannot express how sorry I am that Tommy is dead and my dad is dead.  I wish that Tommy was somewhere getting the treatment he needs without my involvement.  I wish that my father was rotting in a jail cell.
I want forgiveness for being unable to forgive my mother for marrying abusive son of a bitch.  I can’t forgive her for telling me that I made my bed now I have to lie in when he was raping me.  I can’t.  I didn’t make that bed.  She did.  She chose him for my father, not me.  She let me stay in house unsupervised.  I was a child.  I wasn’t responsible.  She was.
Ok, so she didn’t know she was doing it.  So what?  It was still her responsibility and she failed.  And instead of supporting me after it happened she shamed me and silenced me and punished me and acted like it was my fault.  I can’t forgive her for doing that to me.  I can’t.  I deserve better treatment than that.  A fucking dog deserves better than that.
Grieving hurts.  Part of what hurts so much is having to acknowledge my disgusting hypocrisy on this topic.  I hate that I want other people to do things I am completely unwilling to do myself.  I think it is a massive character flaw.
But sometimes agreements are asymmetrical.  No matter what happens in this life I will always have to forgive my children.  They will not have to forgive me.  It makes me wary about parts of our relationship.  I don’t take it for granted that they will want to have a relationship with me.  I know I need to earn it.  Earning it is hard.  I don’t have good models for how to be the kind of parent someone would want to keep knowing. 
What does it mean to forgive anyway?

The only thing that stays the same is that everything changes. Sex version

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Noah and I seem to be rediscovering one another.  My mild frustration with the hunting has resulted in our sex life dramatically changing.  In the first year of our marriage we averaged sex ten times a week.  Then I got pregnant.  I am one of those don’t even look at me let alone think about sex with me pregnant women.  I was really hoping to be one of the nymphomaniac kinds.  Oh well.  I’m never doing that misery again so it doesn’t matter any more.

The first year after having a kid we didn’t have a lot of sex.  I am definitely a wait six weeks for it to be comfortable kind of girl.  That’s some serious friction, yo.  Healing time was my friend.  With Shanna once a month after that for a few months was as much as we could figure out.  With Calli I think we were close to once a week pretty quickly.  Well, ok we were probably two or three times a month.  Not really once a week.

It changes in dramatic ways after a year.  And after Shanna at right around eighteen months I started feeling a strong sudden interest in doing bdsm again.  But I got pregnant immediately and didn’t follow through much.  Calli is fifteen months old.

For almost two months we’ve been having sex pretty close to daily.  In the past couple of weeks it has been twice a day as often as not.  I really like my husband.  Sex is a big deal to Noah.  I’m absolutely up front about the fact that at this point a lot of our sex is for him and I’m there being a team player.  I’m there because it builds him up to have sex.  When he is having a lot of sex he has the energy and patience to put up with my shit.  Ok, we can have a lot of sex.

But I’m in kind of a unique position.  Should I be having sex I’m enh about?  Given my history?  I could find a long list of feminazi’s who would tell me no.  I think a lot about the idea of consent.  What does it mean to consent?  It’s kind of a fuzzy thing sometimes.

What does it mean to want sex?  Do I always have to want the same kind of sex?  Do I always have to feel the same minimal level of desire before I get started?  That seems kind of silly.  I think part of the reason I married Noah is because he is so overwhelmingly enthusiastic about me talking about and having sex pretty much as often as possible.  No matter how conflicted I feel about it.

There is this little benefit that’s not something feminazi’s like to hear about.  When I’m not having sex all of the time I have lower self esteem.  I know that I am failing in the task to which I was brought up.  I was apprenticed in sex if anyone ever was.  I wanted this to be something I was good at and did a lot of. So I do a lot of it.

I’m trying to figure out what that means to me at this stage of my life.  I have this voracious need for sex. I literally get off on the fact that Noah and I treat it as part of my job that I am supposed to be available for sex.  (Uh, after that one time he listens to my actual “no’s” and I do give them.)  We like figuring out what we should be doing at other times of the day to ensure that I will be up for it later.  We treat having sex like it is a goal.  Something we want to do and be good at.

I feel weird about being this person and being a parent.  Like this should have been shut off.  Like all of a sudden it is kind of a problem that I am so obsessed with sex.  But I’m not sure why it is a problem.  I just feel like I am bad for liking it.  For wanting it.  For prioritizing it in ways that would be a problem for other people.  I don’t feel exploited.  I feel like I am being seen for who and what I am and appreciated for the fairly unusual set of skills I have.

I like that for the first time in my life I have a partner who wants to have sex as much or more than me.  I didn’t know that could happen.  I have usually ended up begging for sex after a while and feeling humiliated and rejected all the time.  I’m fucking thrilled that I don’t have to deal with Noah rejecting me for sex.  I think he’s up to about a dozen “no’s” in the seven years I’ve known him.  That’s an acceptable rate for me.  I’m really glad he wants me so much.

I’m glad and it’s intimidating.  It’s intimidating because I have a physiological response when he makes it clear he wants sex.  I feel compelled to participate.  I feel uncomfortable about the fact that I react even when I’m not “in the mood”.  It’s not that I’m going to get off.  I don’t do that how I used to.  It’s really sad.  I hope that comes back.  But saying no to sex is usually not something I have any interest in doing. Regardless of whether or not I have interest in sex.  They are different decisions for me.  The default answer to “Do you want sex?” is “YES!” even when my body is saying “meh”.  I want sex to be more interesting all the time.  I want to better figure out how to orgasm from different kinds of stimulation.  The Master/slave relationship I was in taught me a very specific flavor of orgasming on command and I haven’t played with that.  I would like for my sexual response to be less tied to pain.

Maybe I should figure out how to get my husband-with-hypnotism-training thinking about this.  I’m sure we can figure something out.  I married the best man in the whole fucking world.  He is so absolutely perfect for me.  I’m so glad I found him.

Integrity

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My therapist asked me today why I am so much stronger than other people.  Why I have been able to do things that other people can’t.  She said she thinks of it as integrity, but it’s more than that.

I told her that I did a lot more things before I was 18 than most people do in a lifetime.  And I did them in weird bursts with new people.  Then I, inevitably, was chased away because people didn’t like me.  I was too different.  Too weird.  Too… something.  Then I had months or years to sit around and think about what I did and what other people did and look at patterns.  I was always a reader, so I knew that other people didn’t have lives that looked like mine.

I don’t think that most people who are abused as intensely as I was have the same kind of boom and bust cycles.  I think that most people stay in one place with one pattern and they live it over and over again.  I’ve had so many patterns I can’t name them all.  Yeah, yeah, I’ve always been hyper-sexual.  But it’s different now.  I no longer fall into bed with people who obviously dislike me and are just interested in getting off.  I have higher standards than that.  My patterns have changed a lot over time.

I don’t think most people are given the time and space to do that.  To reinvent themselves over and over for more than twenty years.  I had a lot of opportunities to try things out and decide they didn’t work for me.  I would never see these people again, what did it matter?

I’m stronger because the only person I have ever had to look at for a long time is me.  And I can’t live with myself if I behave any other way.  Why in the fuck should I worry about making anyone else feel good about themselves and their shitty behavior?  If it makes me feel bad, I’m the only one I have to worry about.  You are your problem.  That is a mixed thing.  But it means that yes, I have a lot of integrity.  I am up front about everything I do, everything I am.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  If it drives other people off… well… that’s just business as usual for my life.  It’s not scary.  I know what that means.  I will always be able to find new people.

It means that when I look at Shanna and Calli I have to think really hard about what relationship I want to have with them.  I’m pre-scripting my permitted behavior over the next twenty years.  If I don’t write the script now I will ad lib.  I’m not a person who can be trusted to ad lib.  They are the first people ever in my life where I feel responsible for the effect of my behavior on them.  Everyone else is on their own.

This is really intense.

Why I date assholes

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If you look at Noah, Stephen, and Tom the main thing they have in common is that they are all very silly, very into juvenile humor, and they were all intensely motivated by the things they liked to the point where they were inconsiderate to the people around them.  When I talk about my assholes, I generally mean the casual, shorter relationships.  Stephen was emotionally available, but he had absolutely no idea where I was coming from, not really, and he did not know how to deal with my life circumstances.  I can’t hate him for that.  I didn’t know that my life circumstances were that much different from other people then so I didn’t know how to translate.

Tom loved me.  I think Tom loved me to the extent he can love someone.  He just didn’t want the same things from life that I did, so I had to keep looking for someone who did.  If I had been willing to spend the rest of my life doing exactly the same thing I did for the four years we were together, it would have been a permanent relationship.  I wanted to change and he didn’t.  That’s ok.

Noah is my chameleon.  He is alternately one of the biggest assholes I have ever met and probably the sweetest and most considerate.  He loves me enough to try to intuit my moods and give me what I need on a given day.  It’s been a while since I wanted him to be an asshole.  We are trying to figure out the vanilla thing.  He’s doing a good job.

What I mean by asshole: someone who wants what they want so much that they don’t pay much attention to what the people around them want.  This is useful because I have really intense desires and I want to be able to say just a few words to get someone else going and have them run the fuck.

Do you know how hard it is to get a nice guy to run a fuck?  I always have to do it.  I don’t want to.  I sleep with assholes because they are the ones with developed enough interests that they can direct me.  I really like being directed.  The problem is that the assholes tend to be motivated by how much pain they can inflict before I tap out.  That’s what I’m done with.

I’m really glad that I’m married.  I’m really glad that I’m set with a partner who likes me.  Hunting is hard.  Hunting means being vulnerable about the fact that I’m a very particular taste.  Not many people are really going to like me much or feel comfortable with me.  Once you have this kind of life, and you tell people about it, they pull back.  They know they aren’t like me.  I don’t really want to spend my life only with people who set the far edge of the bell curve on abuse.  It’s rather lonely.

I feel lonely.  Even with Noah and Sarah and Shanna and Calli.  I feel like I should give up on going out of my house forever.  I will always be wrong for people.  The more of my story I tell the more people are going to recoil from me.  Except Noah.  Thank God for Noah.  He can read my story and still look at me.  He doesn’t look at me with pity or horror or disgust.  He just loves me.

What am I even hunting for.  I like getting to know people.  I like feeling interesting.  I like feeling desired.  I’m kind of tired of the rut I am in with assholes.  I’m tired of being hurt.  But other people tell me they aren’t assholes, so they won’t work for me.

What would it be like if a “nice guy” had the nerve to really pursue me.  I think the closest I ever came was Stephen.  And he was too conformist.  He wanted me to become like him.  I can’t meld into anyone else’s culture at this point.  Too late.  I feel like I should stop hunting.  I don’t have the confidence.  I don’t think I am interesting enough.  Well, I’m only interesting to a small segment of people I’m not sure I want any more.  This is really frustrating.  This is why people are monogamous.

I love country music.

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I was feeling mopey thinking about my early childhood and I had the Dixie Chick’s song So Hard on in the background.  It’s nominally about fertility problems.  It’s not hard to ignore about three lines and generalize it to other topics.  I’m just saying.  I’m having a hard time with this whole parenting gig sometimes.  I know my reactions are wrong.  I know when I sound like my mother.  I don’t know who else to sound like.  I don’t have very many people I feel comfortable around.  People make me feel tense.  I get edgy.  And bitchy.  And shit still rolls down hill.  I’m minor compared to everything I knew.  I know that.  But this isn’t who I wanted to be when I grew up.

If I’m not satisfied with my behavior I need to change it.  It’s hard right now because Calli is in the last throes of babyhood before becoming a talking person.  I’m having a very hard time waiting for that jump.  It came so early with Shanna.  I’m not a fan of the pre-verbal phase.  I still think Arwyn said it best.  I feel triggered when I spend a lot of time with my kids if I have to do anything else at the same time.  As long as I can be idle and just focused on them I can handle them.  They are not too much stimulus under those circumstances.  The problem comes when I am trying to get something done (like making breakfast) and it isn’t happening fast enough for Calli.  She starts screeching and it hurts my ears.  I start feeling anger.  It’s hard to tamp it down.  I have so much anger rolling around in me right now.

Reading through the whole story yesterday made me see spots where I have new perspective on why my mom and sister acted the ways they did.  Being a parent changes my point of view.  Funny, that.  But writing my story down means I can’t retreat to the sanctity of the parents point of view, either.  I stand there feeling bad for Calli that life is so hard.  She really and truly can’t have what she wants very much of the time.  She wants to be able to touch me any time she wants any way she wants.  She feels like she needs that from me.  But I can’t take how rough she is.  Oh gosh she is rough with me.  I get really angry.  I’m tired of being hurt.  I’m so. fucking. tired. of. being. hurt.  It’s so hard.

But she’s in the last throes of babyhood.  Soon it will be gone forever.  I don’t want my kids to remember me being angry all the time.  That is not what I want them to have as their story.  I don’t want them to remember me retreating with dramatic explosions.  Even though I’m not insulting any one.  Even though I’m just stomping my feet and huffing.  I don’t want to be that person.  How do you just decide to be someone else?  I was someone else with Shanna.  I narrowed my world to just her.  I gave her every single scrap and ounce of patience I had for any and everything in the whole world.  It was a nice year.  I couldn’t do that with Calli.  It’s so hard being a younger child.  You never ever get your needs fully met. You are short changed from birth.  Says the self-pitying youngest of four.

But then the song changed.  Best Days of Your Life by Kellie Pickler.  And I got a very nice email.  Right that minute.  My chest exploded with this moment of Oh My Fucking God.  When I’m feeling upbeat and I think about my life once I became an adult… well.  I’m pretty fucking cool.  I’ve done a lot of really neat things.  And I’m going to do a lot more.  As much as I possibly can.  And part of that is going to involve me figuring out how to be the person I want to be.  I will make mistakes and I will have bitchy days.  But when I do I tell my kids, “God I know my tone of voice sucks.  I’m really sorry.  It’s not you honey, I’m fussy about other things.”  I don’t think I was ever once told that.  Every bad mood that happened within a three block radius was my.fucking.fault.

Maybe I have already changed.  It’s hard on days when the kids want to test to see if I love them.  I do.  But I also have limited patience these days.  It’s time for the pendulum to swing back to them.  I think we should go out and play today.  And I’ll play the upbeat country songs.  The ones that make me feel like hot shit.  Because I rock like that.

I finished

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I finished around 2pm.  58,048 words.  That means it’s not epic.  Good.  It’s too intense to be epic.  It’s too long as it is.  It’s hard to read.  I read through the whole thing yesterday and it is really brutal and nasty.  My life was shit.  It’s going to be interesting to hear peoples reactions.  I let Noah have it already because I couldn’t not let Noah have it.  I need him to know this story.  He got up to the beginning of 1988.  He has a long way to go yet.

I spent most of yesterday angry.  Reading the book through in a day reminds me that I have very good reasons to be angry.  So angry that flames come out the top of my head.  But I don’t want to be angry.  Being angry doesn’t feel good.  That book is closed now.  Those chapters are over.  Noah will finish reading the book by this weekend.  Probably Sarah, too.  They are quick like that.

Then I’m going to wait till next year to do anything else.  But I want them to know.  I’m not writing this book because I want to make money on the story.  I’m writing this because I cannot continue to live with people not knowing this story.  I can’t even handle waiting until I get a final draft before showing it to the people who claim they want to build a life with me.  They claim they want to know me.  Well here the fuck I am.  It hurts my soul that this is my story.  This should be fiction.  No one should have a life like that.  But I did.

And I’m pretty awesome.  No, I’m not always tactful.  That’s a small sin in the scheme of things.  Really. It is.

I have this weird feeling in my chest.  I feel empty and hollow.  I did my very best to bring up all the major threads that wove through my childhood.  I didn’t give any of them a lot of individual face time.  There were too many.  I don’t think people could handle a book that explicated all of them intensely.  It’s too sad and painful.  Yes, yes, a few people could.  But I’m not trying to write a book that is only for the biggest bad asses.  I’m just trying to be seen.

I wrote this as simply and directly as I could.  I tried to do it without excessive anger.  I tried to present people in a balanced way.  I tried to just tell the truth.  As simply and plainly as I can.  I used simple words and simple sentences.  I used almost no dialogue.  This is something I had to just say and get off my chest.  And now it’s off my chest and on my hard drive.  I have emailed copies to two people.  I am saving it on Google Docs.  I might put it in Noah’s Drop Box just so that I don’t lose it.  I want back ups.  I’m half tempted to sit here and print it right now just so that I have it.  So that I can see what this looks like on a page.

I want to be seen.  And that means I have to deal with the fact that people are going to have very different reactions.  Be sure that you’re right, then go ahead.  I’m just telling the truth.  This is my story.  I didn’t embellish it.  I didn’t make it more melodramatic than it is.  It is a hard story to read.  I don’t think that certain people understand what they meant to me.  What their place was in my life.

In three months I am going to publish it as an e-book.  Noah is going to help me figure that out.  I’m not going to deal with shopping around for a publisher right now.  That’s not the point.  The point is to get it out.  I’m not doing this because I want to make money off this story.  I just want to be seen.

I don’t want anyone to try to edit it before Christmas because this is already an emotionally intense time of year.  Old trauma can sit on a shelf and wait for a bit.

It’s time to shift gears.  I have to get my house ready.  I’m doing something really fun this weekend.

I had a lovely meet-up-for-coffee yesterday.  I like being able to sit down and talk with an attractive man about statistical analysis.  It means he thinks I can understand it.  It means he thinks I’m smart.  Oh that’s hot.  That made me want to sit on his lap.  I didn’t.  But I thought about it and smiled.  I really like intelligent men.

A story that isn’t going in the book. (TMI warning)

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I had reason to think about something that happened a few years ago.  I placed a casual encounters ad on Craigslist.  I think I only got a couple of responses.  Only one was coherent and comprehensible as English.  Oh, and the one that was a guy from a local bdsm mailing list emailing me directly instead of responding to the ad saying, “I know this is you.  Don’t use so many identifying characteristics in your ad.”  We exchanged two or three short emails and then met at Starbucks near my house.  This was after Puppy dumped me and before Noah asked me to marry him.  The only time I have ever been really single and on my own in my life.  I didn’t have anyone to sleep with and I was horny.  I didn’t want to masturbate again.  It’s just not the same.

So I met this guy.  I have no idea what his name was.  He was a lot nerdier and more shy than I usually go for.  And he told me he was really into oral.  I kind of cringed, but hey I’ll try anything once.  It was incredible.  That was the best oral sex I have ever received in my life.  That man was a God.  I don’t think I have ever experienced so much sensation in my vulva before.  I dissociate pretty quickly most of the time when someone goes down on me.  I had a few experiences (I wrote about them!) that made me feel uncomfortable about people going directly at my crotch.  If someone gets genital very fast I get scared off.  I just close off my ability to feel what they are doing.  Needless to say, I just don’t bother having oral sex much.  It’s fussy and complicated.

Ok, back to this guy.  So we undressed very awkwardly and climbed into my bed.  I giggle a lot when I’m nervous.  I hear it’s charming.  We started experimenting with how to touch one another.  I’m usually very tentative when I first start touching someone.  He was really sensitive.  He didn’t want a lot of touch for himself.  He wanted to pay attention to me.  It’s hard to even explain how he did it.  He didn’t touch anything inside my labia for like twenty minutes, but he was paying a lot of attention to that part of my body.  The crease in my thigh was endlessly fascinating.  By the time he finally touched something more ahem direct.  I melted.  That was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had in my life.

I’ve never felt ok asking for that kind of thing since.  Or when I have tried it has resulted in a pretty rough rushed entry into harsh genital stimulation.  Then we fuck five minutes later.  It’s just not the same.

I have sex with strangers because sometimes you can shut out everything in the whole wide world and just accept the best part of this person into yourself.  The best thing they can give can be a wonderful thing.  You don’t have to worry about overall compatibility.  It’s not about truly connecting.  I’m not lying to myself.  But the novel experience of getting to try completely different speeds of sex is wonderful.

It’s hard to have that much variety with one person.  Noah and I both have a specific kind of sex that we strongly prefer.  We have trouble figuring out how to change speeds sometimes.  Ok, instead of deflecting I’ll just say it.  Today we were having a very different kind of sex from normal.  Then I started to feel like I was supposed to hurry up and get off and validate that this was a hot experience, right?  It’s kind of my party trick.  But I wasn’t even close.  And trying to make myself do that usually results in some longer lasting discomfort.  It’s really annoying.

Noah didn’t ask me to.  Tell me to.  Or imply that I should.  I think I should.  I think that is something I have to do.  I even know why.  It’s hard to change this setting in my head.  It’s hard to stop having performative sex.  Even when I am alone in a room with my partner I still have to know that the sex we are having would be fairly spectacular to watch.  I don’t do things just because they feel good.  I really don’t like this about myself.

The great thing about writing this out is now Noah can read it.  And he’ll be able to change gears properly.  That’s why I like him so much.  He’ll find a way now that I’ve told him how.  At least once.  Then we’ll go back to the sex we prefer.

On a different note.

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Today I was facebook stalking an old friend.  This friend is a shaman and I was looking through picture of a wedding where said person performed the ceremony.  How’s that for awkward non-pronouning.

Noah claims we are going to have a wedding for our tenth anniversary.  I don’t believe him.  Want to know one of the secret reasons I eloped?  I have wanted to have a big fancy wedding my whole life and there aren’t enough people in the world who love me to justify one.  I really wish there were hundreds of people who wanted to come to such a celebration about me.  But there aren’t.  And that’s life.

Anyway.  Noah says he is doing this.  I don’t believe him.  I’m not allowed to believe in this before it is happening because this not happening would wreck me.  If he continues to say that he will do this… and he doesn’t do it… that will be massive.  That will kill me trusting him.  That will kill any chance he ever has again of making me a promise.  So I don’t believe him when he says this.  He’s lying.  He’s telling a story.  He’s building a sand castle.

That kind of thing isn’t part of my story.  I don’t get to be that person.  That only gets to happen to nice people.  People who have friends.  People who are not stupid creepy shut-ins.  People who are not broken.  People who have families.  People who do not behave badly in public.  People who do not bring shame on their family.

I was thinking about this because, if I was going to have such an event.  Who would perform the ceremony?  Who would I trust to do that for me.  Who could be the promise keeper for my relationship.  Who actually has such power in my life?  I don’t know.

It’s complicated.  It’s a good thing I don’t believe that it will happen.  That would be an intense thing to have to decide.

Irrational feelings

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Noah made the comment that our nonmonogamy rules are based on polite fictions.  I did not yell or scream or hit or punch or any of the things that went through my impulse queue.  He just called me a liar.  But he did it in one of those civilized ways you can’t really argue with.  He can get away with it.

He’s not calling me a liar.  He’s pointing out that my emotional experience and the actual real experience often differ and we planned for my emotional experience.  He’s kind of a fucker that way.

We originally said we wouldn’t date until Youngest Child (whoever that would be) was five.  We think that little kids need a lot of attention from their parents.  I’m starting to realize that I overestimated how much I would be able to give to my kids without getting anything for myself.  I planned on seven to ten years of me not getting any attention.  Maybe that was poor planning.

Noah points out that I’m being unfair and dishonest about how I’m representing the breakdown of our respective time off.  Maybe.  I’m not going to say yes to that yet.  I have too many years of him having a lot more time and space than me.  I’m still dealing with being completely overwhelmed and unable to function.  I’m trying to figure out where the happy medium will be.

The class he signed up for?  The one we thought was six week?  It goes till March.  So much for carefully figuring out how our reserves of energy will be spent over the next few months.  Not how I have been planning.  Ok.  I can regroup.  That’s fine.

Noah is going to want to go out on a date.  I don’t know when.  Not this year.  It will probably come up some time next year if I’m even vaguely honest with myself.  With how much time I have spent on okcupid lately I understand why women will line up to date my husband.  I don’t like feeling like part of a group.  I have trouble with being out with my family of five sometimes.  If I wasn’t so clearly a huge needed constantly necessary part of the group I wouldn’t be comfortable.  Parties are hard.  I feel like I never fit in.  If I go to a party and I feel awkward and uncomfortable from the time I arrive but Noah looks like he fits in I feel like I should leave.  I should let him have this space he is comfortable in.  It’s his.  Not mine.

That’s kind of how I let Tom have the south bay bdsm community.  If I am attached to someone and they disengage from me in any way when we are out with a group I feel the instant need to panic and leave.  I can’t be there.  I’m not wanted any more.  I have no place.  No identity.  I’m nothing.  I vanish once the identity I have in the group leaves.

I can’t be one of Noah’s girls.  If I am one of Noah’s girls I don’t exist when he is not with me any more.  I feel like I am watching someone else live my life.  Someone else gets to be Noah’s partner.  I guess that means I stop existing as his partner.  When he was dating W. I sat at home crying and cutting.  I didn’t tell him about the cutting much.  Everyone knew about the crying.  I wanted to have as much physical pain as emotional pain.  I wanted to see how big of a wound I had inside.  I couldn’t tell.  I couldn’t tell how big, how destructive the pain was until I saw how much of my leg I had to sacrifice to it.  I had to know how big it was.  Do you know why I stayed?  It was never more than a two or three slice date.

I think I’m done with writing about when I started cutting, for the book.  I haven’t continued to bring it up because it seems weird to do so.  For about seven years I cut more days than I did not.  Do I really need to say that over and over through the story?  Should I talk about the fact that I learned to measure my emotional pain by how many cuts it took to get me to calm down?

I am nonmonogamous and deal my intense jealousy and emotional break downs around Noah dating because it is only a two or three cut activity.  That’s not that bad.  I didn’t need to cut every date.  I established how much pain it was.  There were times when I used to make cross hatches on my thighs that were five or six inches long.  I would make hundreds.  Two or three cuts that are only an inch or so long?  Psh.  This really isn’t so bad.

It’s hard when Noah says that are rules are based on fictions.  What he is saying is that I was making up a part of me.  Or making up what I thought I should say.  I was lying.  I don’t want to be a liar.

I don’t want to be a liar.  But I can’t figure out how to explain what is going on with me.  I’m saying the closest thing to the truth I can at any given moment.  Sometimes, when I’m dealing with my emotional experiences, the truth is like water.  It flows wherever it wants to paying no attention to previous course corrections.

I’m dating.  I shouldn’t lie about it.  I haven’t found a boyfriend, but I’m dating.  Maybe I should stop trying to set rules about how long we have to endure any given state of life.  I keep fucking up my guesstimates.

I said five years because I was hoping that by then I would feel secure enough with Noah that I wouldn’t feel so threatened every time he looked at another woman.  So scared of losing him any minute.  I don’t think time is really going to give me that though.  I would feel just as paranoid in twenty years.  And I can’t seem to be monogamous.  I’m not ok with being a hypocrite.  That’s a lot higher in my personal scheme of sins than almost anything.  I’m acting like a hypocrite.  Shit.  I don’t wannnnnnnna stop.

I didn’t ask for monogamy as part of our marriage.  I specifically excluded it from our wedding vows.  I knew I didn’t want it.  I have to let Noah figure out what he wants without dealing with temper tantrums.  It’s not fair.  It’s not the kind of marriage I want to have.  I can’t freak out in front of the kids when he is out, either.  Luckily it will be a smooth transition for them because they already don’t see him several nights a week.

Speaking of appropriate topics, I won’t be able to make fresh references to Noah’s whores.  That uhh won’t go over well.  Maybe I’m going to have to work on that whole thought process a lot over the next few months.  I doubt he would try before the end of the class he is working on.

I’m weaning at eighteen months.  I’ve decided.  That’s the end.  I’m gradually working her down.  I’m only allowing her to nurse twice a day right now.  It will be once a day for the last while.  There are things I want to do with my body that I don’t want to do while nursing.  It’s time to stop.  I want to be able to make choices based on what I want rather than on what I have to do.  Do I get tossed out of the crunchy mom club for not doing child lead weaning?  I’m not making it to two years either.  Calli is fifteen months tomorrow.  I feel like I will lose my mind in the next three months.  I hate nursing.  That’s all I’ve got in me.

I’m going to try stopping the pot in December.  I am going to start actually training for running.  I need to stop coughing.  Eek.  I’m nervous.  I’m going to talk to my psych about that and using Ativan more than I am.  I was given six pills for a month and I still have two left.  But I’m still smoking pot every day because of the writing.  I’m going to stop writing on the 30th.  I’m going to switch to using Ativan instead.  With the goal of not needing anything at all in the next few months.  I’m already cutting the Ativan in half and I may need to cut them into quarters if I use them more.  Right now they make me fall asleep.  I really and truly am not safe to drive within four hours of taking one.  That limits my life.

So I need to be able to cope if I want to go off and do the things I want to do.  It’s time to get off the crutches.  That’s going to be explosive for a while and I’m scared.  I smoke pot because I have a temper problem.  Because it’s hard for me to be calm and patient 24/7.  I just don’t have that naturally.  I’m going to need to find other ways of dealing with my anger.  Running is going to be a lot of it.  But I also seem to be using dating to fill a lot of my energy input needs.  I feel deeply conflicted about it.  But I am.

I fucking need something.  I don’t want to just sit here and eat and try to convince my brain that I’m happy that way.  It’s a false association.  Being fatter doesn’t actually make me happier even though I have this really strong self-belief that it is true.  My weight is pretty irrelevant but the other circumstances in my life matter.  I have usually been happier while I was fatter.  It wasn’t because of the weight though.  I need to stop feeling bad about not being fat.  Yeah, that convoluted.

I’m bigger than my mother.  I’m not fat.  I need to let go of her endless lectures about what a cow I am.  I’m not.  I’m a fairly average sized woman.  My mother is extremely petite.  Let it go Krissy.

Tonight we are going to spend money we really shouldn’t be spending this month on an over the top luxury meal with my lovely Complication.  She’s worth it.  I’m going to enjoy every fucking minute of it.  Later I will have a panic attack at the AmEx bill.  Then I will stop, breathe, think of the sight of my Complication eating good food and pay the bill without complaint.

That’s what you do as a rich person.  You facilitate life being good.  For yourself.  For other people.  Because you can.  Because why the fuck not.  There is no deserve.  There is no “right” to these things.  I’m not bad for spending this bonus money on an over the top good meal.  I’m not wasting it.  I’m enjoying it.  I’m enjoying every bite.  I’m enjoying every minute that I can of a life that is full of a lot of ups and downs.

When you have much greater lows than normal it only seems fair that you get to have better highs, right?  I’m about to go to the French Laundry for the second time in two years.  I am a lucky bitch.  I have a husband who loves me tremendously and is willing to spend most of his spare time on figuring out how to earn more money so he can pamper me more and more.  Because he wants to.  Because he thinks I deserve it.  Because he thinks it is great that he can do that for me.  Because wanting to give to me makes him want to go out and conquer the world so that he can give it to me.

I think I will need to be ok with him sleeping with other people once in a while so he can come back and appreciate me more.  I really am unique.  When I sleep with other people I come back and tell Noah what they did wrong.  He does the same.  It’s a very bonding experience for us that we match perfectly for pretty much every part of sex.  The rhythm is ideal.  No one else quite gets there.  Those other people are fun and awesome, don’t get me wrong.  But Noah is home.  And I am that for him.

These irrational feelings are hard.

Sacred cows

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I’m trying to decide what mood I want to be in for today’s writing sprint.  My first date yesterday was an only date.  That’s ok.  I’m glad I had the “I want to be chased” thought yesterday.  By the time I got to the date I was real clear that I was uninterested in being the one to do 100% of the physical aggression.  I’m happy to do 50%.  But I’m not running the fuck.  You don’t want me bad enough.  No more pity fucks.

I don’t need to go have pity fucks with strangers.  I had sex with Noah twice.  It was hot.

I was thinking about the fact that a lot of folks have been discussing “appropriate topics” lately.  Over here at Soggy in Milk we are the all-inappropriate-all-the-time channel so I’m going to wax poetic for a few minutes.  Bear with me.  So imagine you had this nice normal life.  You have great parents and a couple of siblings you adore.  As you go through your life you get to spread daisies and sunshine and shit when you mention your euphoric family.  Everyone compliments you and tells you how wonderful you all sound.  Then I want you to stop for thirty seconds and think of what you have read from me here.  Man I really want you to do this again after you read the book, if you want to.

Now.  How the fuck do you think I feel when people talk about their families?  What exactly should I say if in response to questions about my family?  Should I lie?  Evade?  Be as curt as possible so as to minimize the damage I am invariably going to do?  Be honest and watch as people all but run as fast as they can to get away from me?

Seriously.  Where is my good fucking option.  Because you assholes seem to think that the topic of “childhood” and “families” is perfectly appropriate in public.  Oh, people will tell me, “Well you can talk about Noah and the girls!”  How generous of you.  I’m so grateful that I have a pat answer now that will satisfy your need for idle chit chat about things you are uninterested in.  Let. me. make. you. more. comfortable.  I live to serve.

I am angry about the so-called polite conversational topics because they exist to silence people like me.  They exist to make people like me invisible.  And powerless.  They exist to make it impossible for most people to successfully prosecute their attackers because it’s not ok to say what has happened to you.  Ever.  People who say, “Well it’s ok to say it to the police” have obviously never pressed charges for sexual assault.  I have.  Do you know how the police treat you?  They say that you have mental problems and you should be in therapy.  Despite the fact that the next door neighbor heard the whole thing and reported it to the police.  I was still dismissed as crazy.

Fuck appropriate conversation topics.  Do you know what is an appropriate conversational topic?  Police brutality.  Incest.  Rape.  Poverty.  These are things that can and must be talked about as often as necessary.  In any circumstance.  Ok, not in any circumstance.  But in any circumstance where there are only adults present.  I don’t think every five year old needs to hear about incest.  But every child should grow up hearing frank conversations about police brutality and poverty.  They should know that these things exist.  This should be part of their lives too.  Because it is part of being aware of the world around you.

If someone brings up a topic you don’t like you can try to change the conversation and make it all about you, or you can engage in a dialogue.  If you are feeling massively uncomfortable, say that.  Look at why.  If your upset is about your irrational beliefs being challenged… fucking go with it.  Get over yourself.  Seriously.

Things don’t change until people are upset enough to make them change.  The longer you brush uncomfortable conversations under the rug only to be had at rare, carefully pre-selected, never risky times you are growing at a snails pace.  That’s not something that fuels real personal growth, I’m sorry.  I’m that kind of control freak.  I can do that.  I love doing that.  It means I don’t do any personal growth.  It means I hide in my little freak ghetto and get into a rut.

I’m better than that.  I need to go have the uncomfortable conversations.  I need to be honest.  I need to exist in the world.  I need to demand the right to take up just as much space as everyone else.  I’m not going to evade or give a half-truth when someone asks about my family.  I will answer questions honestly.  I will act like I have nothing to be ashamed of.  “Oh, what’s your family like?”  “Incestuous rapists.”  And I will take the blinking eyes I get.  I will take the look of shock and horror.  And I will try not to flinch.  And I will try not to cry.  And I will try not to run away.  And I will try to answer the following questions graciously without my voice cracking.

I’m not doing something bad by telling my story.  I’m just existing.  Yes, it’s a harsh story.  Sometimes life is harsh.  Sometimes people have harsh lives.  It’s far more common when you live in poverty.  That is a big part of the story.  Why did I move so often?  Because my mother was running away from my dad and from one abusive situation to another.  Because we lived on charity.  Because we had no choice.  Because we were evicted repeatedly for non-payment of rent.

I’m tired of trying to make up a story that will make other people feel comfortable around me.  I have spent my entire life trying to figure out how to lie well enough to be able to talk about myself.  I’m really tired of it.  I’m really tired of trying to invent a me that is good enough to be in public.  If I carefully censor myself enough, maybe I will be a good enough person to deserve to be part of public discourse.  This feels really shitty you know.

This wouldn’t be such a big part of my story if other people didn’t require that I tell elaborate lies in order to appear “normal”.  It’s not lying!  It’s just… not mentioning things.  Uhm.  If you don’t know that my family is full of incestuous rapists then you don’t know anything about them and I shouldn’t bother talking.  Because it affected everything.  It makes a big difference when I talk about my mother hating that I swore if I mention that I was raped about twenty minutes before she beat me for cussing.  It gives a whole new perspective.  That was my life.  I was raped and then I came home to more poison.  Multiple times.  It’s kind of weird that I would come home from being raped and be mean and nasty and full of rage, right?  But that kind of behavior was not to be tolerated and I was to be brought down a few pegs.

It’s time to go start writing on the book for today.  For better or for worse I found my tone.  It’s time to go put a narrative on this bastard.

epiphany

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When Tom ended the M/s portion of our relationship (after being directly challenged in therapy) he said: “It’s not worth the effort.”  I took that as a statement about his belief about putting effort into our relationship as a whole because as a 24/7 slave… that’s a big deal.  We never recovered.  He didn’t want to get married or have kids with me.  He wanted me to just kind of exist without getting any of my needs met and keep company with him doing the shit he wanted when he decided he wanted it.
It occurs to me this morning that I’m approaching hunting wrong.  I go through a lot of effort to meet people where they are.  I do the driving.  And as a result people don’t value me much.  They stop responding to me.  I’m chasing them.  I think I should stop.  Why in the fuck am I out wasting energy on chasing people?
I think I’d like to be chased for a while.  I think that I’m going to stop sleeping with people on the first date because the first date is going to have to be really convenient for me.  And that means sex isn’t on the table.  We aren’t going to do that at my house.  I think that part of the problem is that people don’t generally properly appreciate the fact that it takes a lot of time and energy to drive as much as I do.  Maybe they should bear some of that cost.
This is where I have this funny side thought.  People tell me I should be very careful about talking about where I live.  Some one could come after me.  My response is, “What are they going to do?  Put a gun to my head?  Rape me?  And this is a change in my life pattern… how?”  They can do that whether I am hesitant to list my address or not.  I’m not hard to find and I never will be again.  There are too many people I kind of hope will come find me.  Like Belinda.  Or Michael Paul Douglass Goble.  If he ever wants to look up Krissy Archer I hope he finds me.  That means I have to take the risk of other people finding me.
It’s really a statistically low chance.  People are far more likely to be killed by their families.  Given what I have survived I’m just not all that scared.  I mean, I am.  Let’s be real.  But not enough to shut up.  Ever.  I can’t.  Never again.
And this is all tied together.  I need to feel like I am a destination worth reaching.  It’s ok to talk about where I am.  I’m in Fremont.  If you live in Berkeley and you think I am interesting you had better get used to driving south.  And I have a weird ass schedule.  You will have to be flexible.  And smarter than me.  
Or worth seriously traveling for.  Once someone has established that they are worth going to, ok.  I do want to have sex and all.  But I would like to be courted.  I have never made anyone court me before.  I wonder what that would be like.  But I still can’t date or have a boyfriend.  I’m just making friends.  I’m seeing if there are people out in the world I should occasionally go see when I have spare time.  Because I need more of those people, right?  
I get something from sex.  And I give something.  There is an emotional transaction.  I need it.  I don’t know how this is going to work.

I miss you lj.

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Once upon a time I put my more personal blogging on g-blog.  I don't think I ever told you the truth lj.  You were meant as a dumping grounds for memes.  Stupid, light shit that breaks the day up.  Things to entertain my friends and not depress them.  Then g-blog went away.  You were promoted.  We had this weird filter tango thing.  I discovered that when I am writing for tightly controlled filters I feel more and more constrained until I can't say anything because I might say it to the wrong person and then I MIGHT HURT THEIR FEELINGS.  I couldn't take the pressure.

I moved on.  I'm blogging at blogspot now.  People opt-in or out as they see fit.  It's open to strangers on the internet and they have to manage their own fucking triggers.  It's great.  I don't miss you.  Only I do miss you though.  Here, how about a meme for old time's sake.  I promise, I will tell the funny versions.
===============================================
Give me a number (or three), and I'll answer the question that goes with it. I may or may not do this publicly, but the person who asks will get a response one way or another.

01. My sexual orientation.
02. What I'm really bad at.
03. The one person whose arms I'd like to be in.
04. My best first date.
05. A description of my self-esteem.
06. Who my best friends are.
07. My favorite book.
08. Biggest turn-offs.
09. My favorite place to which I've traveled.
10. My favorite animal.
11. Someone I miss.
12. The reason behind my last break-up.
13. What I did yesterday.
14. My greatest achievements.
15. The craziest thing I've ever done
16. A description of my last kiss.
17. What I find attractive in a person.
18. All of the pets I've ever owned.
19. My favorite ice cream flavor.
20. The one place I wish I was right now.
21. The most cruel thing anyone has ever said to me.
22. All of the places I've lived.
23. Qualities that make me more likely to love a person.
24. My future plans.
25. One of my internal conflicts.
26. What I'm doing tomorrow.
27. My life's aspirations.
28. My most embarrassing moment.
29. Two of my insecurities.
30. What I would do if I won the lottery.
31. What I love most about myself.
32. My biggest pet peeves.
33. What musical artists I've seen live.
34. How many kids I would like to have.
35. My idea of a perfect date.
36. What I'm really excellent at.
37. My most traumatic experience.
38. Where I would like to live.
39. The nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.
40. Whether I like where I live now.
41. What I can hear right now.
42. My relationship with my siblings.
43. What's currently worrying me the most.
44. Something I've repeatedly wished for.
45. My relationship with my parents.
46. What I dislike most about myself
47. Where's Waldo?
48. Whether I currently resemble the person who I thought I'd be at 18.
49. What I would tell my 18-year-old self.
50. Why?

Stats are awesome.

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I have gotten almost as many hits from Sebastian Marshall’s blog this week as from all other sources combined.  The spam percentage is still high, of course.  Uhh, fellas?  I don’t write about geek shit.  I’m probably not going to be that interesting.  I will probably eventually get to the point of talking about blowjobs again.  And I have a date today at 3 with an okcupid person.  So far the plan is to explicitly not have sex.  That will be easy because he lives in Concord and we are meeting in Oakland.

Sometimes I think my life would be easier if I didn’t have it as an explicit goal to fuck a lot of interesting people.  It’s hard to find a lot of interesting people.

Be Thankful

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I often hear people say: You shouldn’t compare abuse.  There is no use.  Trauma is unique and people react differently.  Today I am going to say: yes you should fucking compare.  You probably have no god damn perspective on your life and you really should go out and compare.  You should find out how good you have it.

I feel deeply uncomfortable with how good my life is now.  I’m aware that my current safety and stability is not about deserve.  This is not the natural results of a lot of hard work.  It’s a fucking fluke.  I managed to marry someone rich.  Whoo hoo.  What. An. Accomplishment.  And yet people want to tell me that my life is awesome because I deserve it.

Does that mean I deserved to be raped?  Does that mean I deserved to live in poverty when I was a kid?  No.  There is. no. deserve.  I’m kind of angry that people use that word ever in conversations about money.    It’s not just the money though.

I think that people should sit down and compare abuse for a few minutes.  My father told me that I was a literally-evil-as-in-descended-from witches-evil and a whore.  That it was all I would ever be.  My father taught me that pain should go with sexual contact.  That I should endure it with a stony face.  From when I was a baby.

Did that happen to you?  No?  Well then maybe you should go thank your father.  Maybe you could take a moment to realize that if your dad is an asshole, but never did anything actually bad maybe that was him showing restraint.  Maybe he is not your cup of tea, but not exactly someone who should die in a fire.  Say fucking thank you.  Because I’m here to tell you that you weren’t treated how you were treated because you deserved it.  You were treated that well because no one wanted to treat you worse.  And for one fucking day I think people should stop and realize that it isn’t a birth right.

When people are kind to you, don’t expect it as your due.  Thank them for it.  It’s a gift.  Maybe grudgingly given, maybe cheerfully given.

Did your mother tell you that you deserved what you got after you were raped?  No?  Maybe you should say thank you to her.  Maybe you actually have a much better mother than you know.  Maybe you don’t know just how good you have it.

Did your brother tell you that the only career you would be good at was being a prostitute?  No?  Maybe you should say thank you to your brother.  He might be an asshole, but he recognizes that there is a line. And he didn’t cross.  He doesn’t degrade your humanity and think you are a piece of shit hole.  I promise you he isn’t doing it because you are so fucking awesome that of course you deserve to be treated well.  He’s doing it because he has made a choice about the kind of person he wants to be and how he wants to treat people.  Even if he doesn’t know it.  Because this is a choice.  Be thankful.

When I called my big sister sobbing, begging her for help she laughed at me and told me I was interrupting her having sex.  Then she hung up on me.  I spent the rest of the night trying to OD on crank.  Because no really, no one gave a shit about me.

I think people should compare abuse.  I really do.  I think these conversations should be explicit.  I think they should be candid.  I think people should stop walking on eggshells around this topic.  Given how many people tell me, “Oh I had a hard childhood too” then backpedal fast when I start talking this is a conversation that needs to be had.  People don’t know what a hard childhood is.  They have nothing to compare their own childhoods to most of the time.  There aren’t many books about genuinely bad childhoods.  So people don’t know what it means.  I think people should.  Most people have a lot more to be thankful for than they think.

It’s hard sometimes when people complain bitterly about their families.  I miss my family.  I’ve spent a month telling all the worst stories I can about my family.  I still miss them.  I still know my place there.  Yesterday was hard.  I spent all day rehearsing negative awful things to say in my head.  Because I know that my role at big holidays is to be the one who starts a fight and then runs off crying.  That way everyone has an opening to say how awesome it is when I’m not there any more.

I used to listen to those conversations as a kid.  They would comment idly once I left, “Oh thank god she finally left.”  I don’t think there were very many days in my childhood where my mother didn’t comment about how nasty and awful I was.  I was too critical, always.

Maybe your family wants you to call on Thanksgiving because they love you and miss you and really wish they got to see you more.  And they don’t know how to effect that.  You ran away from them to have your own life and they miss you.  Is that really so bad?  Is that really so terrible?  Is a five minute or even fifteen minute phone call really so onerous?  Really?

I wasn’t alone yesterday.  I have Noah.  I have Sarah.  I have Shanna.  I have Calli.  My Complication (who has yet to tell me if it is ok to use her name) was here.  A friend named Dave (who doesn’t get to opt-out of using his name because there are 3,000 Daves in my community) also came to dinner.  That was nice.  The food was excellent.  Pre-dinner another couple of friends stopped by for a chat.  We all went to bed really early.

I wasn’t alone.  But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m still the problem.  I’m still the wild card.  I’m still the one who might break out crying and stomp off.  I’m still the one who is difficult to predict and triggery and an asshole.  I’m so fucking self-absorbed.

But I tried really hard to talk about the things I am thankful for.  Because I don’t deserve them.  I didn’t deserve the things that happened to me as a kid and I don’t deserve the things that happen to me know.  It’s not about deserve.  I changed my luck.  I’m excited that my life is different now.  But it’s not about deserve.  It just happened.  Life is like that.  I think that people can work their whole life and never get what they want.  I think that people can work for five minutes and get more than they ever dreamed.  It’s not about deserve.  It just happens.

I have relatively good health.  I have a safe, stable home.  I have friends who are willing to tolerate a torrential flow of shit-talk from me.  I have a husband who thinks I can do or be anything I want in the whole wide world.  Well, maybe not an NBA player.  Or an astronaut.  Oh well.

I am thankful for the privilege and security I have because it is allowing me to be a good mother.  Other women can be good mothers with less support.  I don’t think I would be able to.  My life is set up around babying my mood swings and impatience.  I have created space for dealing with my rage.  Because I have Noah and Sarah and a big pile of money.  I’m not a good mother because my kids deserve it.  I’m a good mother because I am lucky enough to set up my life in a way that allows me to be.  I can play to my strengths and minimize my weaknesses.  That isn’t about deserve.  But it is really nice that my kids get to have that.  I would like to find a way to teach them that it isn’t a right without having to hurt them in the process.

I am really thankful that I get to sit down and think about these things and make decisions about them because of my raging privilege.  I am so fucking lucky.  That makes it harder that I’m still bitter.

I’m bitter when I hear people sit around trading off how onerous it is to have families.  I can’t have a family because I believe that it is unhealthy for me to have ongoing relationships with people who enabled me being raped for more than a decade.  What’s your fucking excuse?  Oh, they aren’t your same chosen culture?  Uh.  Grow some fucking balls and learn to deal with the fact that world isn’t just like you.  I promise you that the world isn’t just like me.  I have to find a way of talking to them anyway or I get to be alone.  I think it is hubris to toss away your family.  You never know when you might want them again.  And some wounds can’t heal.

I think people should catalogue their abuse.  And then actually compare.  No really.  Make a decision for yourself.  Either be ok with it or walk away.  The back and forth is bullshit.  Holding on to bitterness for things that happened decades ago is bullshit.

And I do it.  I know I am hurting my life with this bullshit.  This was one of the best Thanksgivings of my life.  Yeah, I spent some of the day in my room crying.  But less than usual.  Far less than any given year from my childhood.  No one had anything resembling a fight.  I had one explosion where I told people to stop bitching about having to call their families.  That was it.  That’s pretty good for me.

I feel really bad that I know that my pretty good would be unacceptable for most people.  Only one melodramatic meltdown ending in tears.  But if you are going to compare you have to really compare.  I had 18 years of people telling me on Thanksgiving that I was unpleasant to be around and difficult and I should just leave.  Was that the experience of most people?  Probably not.  Maybe it’s ok that I still cry.

But I also try really hard to notice that I have it really good.  My life is exceptionally easy and good right now.  I have the kind of life that people dream about.  Maybe I need to stop crying.  I may have had a bad childhood, but whether I have a bad adulthood is up to me.  I can choose to spend every Thanksgiving crying or I can work on not doing that.  It’s not making my life better.  It is no longer a good thing for me to isolate myself.  Once it was a good and necessary thing.  I need to learn how to deal with the discomfort of being around other people.  Even though it is hard and it hurts.  Because I have these amazing people who have stepped up.  I need to be thankful for them, not bitter about my bio-family.  Because there is no deserve.  I don’t have this now because the universe adjusted from an inappropriate tilt and now I have what I deserve finally.

I’m just really fucking lucky.  And not everyone is as lucky as me.  For me to piss and moan and whine is pretty disrespectful, honestly.  It’s bullshit.  And I should change it.

A little light reading.

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I’m working through TCTH again.  I love the part where these women rabidly go off on how evil SM is.  You are better off breaking up your marriage and being celibate for the rest of your life than engaging in SM if you are a survivor.  Interesting priorities.  Sex is like alcoholism.  I’ve had bad experiences therefore what I do needs to be tightly controlled.

My mom used to refer to Tom as my sugar daddy.

mopey

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I wrote a lot on the book today.  So I’m kind of anxious and fussed.  I went over to Pinterest.  I like not having to read.  But the wedding ones get me.  Mostly the pictures of the happy brides with their fathers.  Why do I have to compulsively talk about being an incest survivor?  Because it impacts every part of my life.  This isn’t something that happened to me one time.  I have not lost the rest of my life because I was raped when I was seven or eight or nine or or or or.

I hide in my house because my father filled my head with poison.  He convinced me that I was a worthless piece of shit.  He convinced me that I should present myself to people as someone who should be raped.  That it was my destiny.  That is what my parent told me to be.  My father wanted me to grow up to be a whore.

You want to know why I don’t follow polite social rules?  Oh good fucking grief.  When in the hell was I going to learn them?  In one of the series of schools where I was brutally beaten because I compulsively talked about sex and made everyone uncomfortable?  Or I was cussing.  Or my handwriting sucked.  There were a lot of reasons for beating me.  At home?  With the rednecks?  My ignorant family?  From my father?  Ha.

I think it is hilarious that people think that American culture is apparent and obvious and easy to follow.  I don’t know what the fuck you people want.  Other than to not be uncomfortable.  Well then don’t talk to me.  I may or may not be able to accommodate you.  I would apologize only I’m not sorry.  I don’t think it is my responsibility to ensure that everyone is comfortable.  My responsibility is to say what I need to say in order to get through the day.  If I don’t say what I need to say then I get bitter and nasty and carping and desperate.  I start breaking things.  I start cutting.  I start doing all kinds of other festive things.

I’m sorry motherfucker but you get to feel uncomfortable for a few minutes.  It’s your fucking turn.