I don’t know what to do.

If Noah really believes I hate him this much then I should either divorce him or kill myself because doing this to him is cruel.

It doesn’t seem to matter what I feel. He believes what he believes. And I’m hurting him by staying. I’m wrecking his life. He feels abused. And it’s my fault. He believes that no one could love him and believe he should stay with me.

That really means I should go, one way or another.

Divorcing him with a third child who is a baby seems like a really big problem. Leaving him with two children who can basically care for themselves seems like a much smaller problem. That means I have four months to get it done.

Can’t

I can’t create safety for other people.

I can’t sleep.

I can’t reach out and ask for support.

I can’t stop thinking that the only way I will stop being bad is to die.

I can’t stop thinking about all the all the all the all the all the fuck ups. I deserve what I get.

I can’t stop being a monster.

I can’t be worthy.

I can’t be good.

I can’t stop crying.

I can’t be on a different path; this is the one in front of me.

I can’t be quiet enough with my crying to be allowed in the bedroom and that’s hard.

I can’t stop thinking that she will hate me now too. Another one bites the dust. I deserve it.

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

I can’t stop thinking about my mama, about mothers, about how does any mother ever figure out what “good enough” means.

4 so far

Hours of crying, that is. It’s a bad night. I feel like it would be very wise for me to avoid talking to anyone indefinitely because I’m taking everything anyone says, no matter how neutral or positive they mean it, as more sign that I am a disgusting piece of shit who should die. Everything is my fault and I can’t fix anything.

We have to reframe this.

We are having a problem because EC is pushing for more individual space and boundaries. It isn’t a problem because she wants it. It’s a problem because FMC is uhhhh not interested in allowing their sister any space at all.

We have been talking about this in the house for a while. We keep coming back to “We are not willing to escalate punishments to the point that they are more effective and the ways we have tried to punish for this interruption are failing entirely.”

We need to find a way to incentivize instead of punishing away this behavior. I believe in behavior extinguishment… but it’s complicated. Punishing often makes a behavior more entrenched and resistant. (For one thing our “punishments” are pansy ass and we know it. We are not here to hurt or shame our kids.) We need to find a way to make giving someone else space something that gives FMC more of what they want in life. We have to find a way to frame this/phrase this as “Here let us show you how you will get what you want if you go along with this boundary.”

I know that some people don’t like how manipulative I train my children to be. I respect that opinion. But I think my behavior as a human being improved when I learned how to think about my behavior in terms of “Will this help me meet my goals or will this create problems for me?”

I don’t believe in training children to follow rules because they are rules and you must follow rules. That’s bullshit. Some rules need to be broken. Some rules need to change. Some rules just don’t fucking apply to the situation we are in.

Why does this rule exist?

I’m not saying I have to fully agree with every rule in order to follow them… but I am more likely to follow a rule if I understand why the rule exists and I am at least in agreement that following it is in line with who I want to be in the world.

How do we teach FMC that giving their sister space is going to create the relationship they want in the future?

Punishing is not going to teach this.

Heh. Punishing me is a great way to ensure that I’m going to do what you don’t like….. where you can’t see me.

Enlightened self interest babe, how can we teach this to you.

For EC I have been chanting since they were 2 years old, “If you want to have a good relationship with your sibling when you are an adult you need to think about whether or not this action is likely to make your sibling want to know you.” The same chant really hasn’t worked with FMC. When they look up at their sister they see an unfailing flow of love and support and I think they genuinely don’t believe that their sister would stop providing it. They identify less with the fact that I walked away from my family and rejected everyone. EC knows that I refuse to know my big sister and that haunts her. FMC… doesn’t care?

FMC doesn’t believe they have to earn love in the same way. Uhm… I guess that’s good? It’s mixed. Noah and EC and I all act like we have to do a shit ton of work to earn being loved in the long term. It’s questionably healthy. Near as I can tell FMC is the only person in this house who believes in unconditional love. They think we will love them and take care of them and be with them no matter how big of an asshole they are.

I mean… that’s… good…

I’M SO CONFUSED.

I feel this terrible existential keening because I think I’m too demanding and boring to deserve friends and I feel like I should stop bothering people because I don’t have enough to offer…

And I live with this fucking kid who believes that them existing is their fucking gift to this world and now what does the world have to offer them.

It’s… weird.

Really weird.

Like… WHO THE FUCK MADE YOU weird.

It’s funny how they feel like me and not like me and like my chance to rewrite my history and like an alien and…

I love them so much. I feel bad when I target a specific behavior and assert my will as if I actually know things and I’m right about my judgments. What fucking hubris. Who in the fuck am I to decide that they are not good enough?

I’m their fucking mother and if I say they need to god damn learn how to let their sister have boundaries I’m fucking right and you will motherfucking do as I say.

Only I say it to them with less swearing.

One of the few things my mama said right to me was, “It’s not what you say it’s how you say it.” My mama, for all the bad things I can and do say about her… she only kind of sort of wanted to silence me. She was afraid of me speaking truths that would make her already shitty life harder… but otherwise she encouraged me to speak up. When teachers would complain I was too mouthy my mama would say that they must not be a very good teacher then because I do just fine in a classroom with a good teacher.

My sweet little baby. I don’t want to punish you for crossing boundaries. That makes me feel like shit. It makes you feel like shit. You then proceed to cross the next boundary like clockwork and we start the whole shitty cycle over again.

What can I do to help you believe that following these boundaries is the thing that you want to do?

Because I want to manipulate the shit out of you. I have no pride. I will not dissemble. My sweet love I want to manipulate you until you believe that it is just absolutely the right thing to give people space when they ask.

How can I do this?

This is my next hobby horse to ride. Because if we don’t figure this shit out… I’m afraid you and your sister are going to get into a big bloody fist fight. And frankly… y’all don’t need that.

Even if you might kinda deserve having someone punch you for being so disrespectful of their boundaries. I won’t do it or condone it… but I’m capable of seeing why someone else might think it was the best reaction to your behavior.

God you are so much like me.

I’m sorry kid.

I wish I could have given you easier genetics. Sigh.

How can we teach you without you having to get as many black eyes as I did? Or maybe you just need to get them and I can’t protect you from that. I’ve always needed to learn from experience too.

I hope this hubris I have in believing I know best for you doesn’t fuck up our relationship forever. I try hard to limit my control areas… I know I don’t know best in all areas… just a few.

I love you. I’m trying. I know I’m failing to meet your needs in that way that all mothers fail their children. I hope you can forgive me.

Not very fun

Gosh I’m boring. I don’t keep up with most of the tv people watch. I can’t discuss makeup or hair fun or nails or… any of the things that seem to make the people I like feel like they are more interesting. I can’t really discuss fashion. My fashion statement is mostly sweats and a baggy t-shirt I stole from someone else.

For tv I watch The West WingMadame SecretaryOrange is the New Black, and Call the Midwife; I’ve tried a few others but I don’t really manage to continue. They are interesting but there is a higher barrier to watching so I just don’t bother. That’s not a list of shows that gives me good conversation material with other people.

I feel more and more like discussing children is a way to make people feel bad. I notice that I’m not holding on to mom-friends very well. I don’t think that how I parent is superior to how other people parent… I think I make some weird as shit choices that wouldn’t work for most people. I don’t think my way of being completely enmeshed with my children is the most healthy option available. I think that I’m coming from a family background of severe mental illness and difficulty attaching and that’s why I make the choices I make. They sure as shit aren’t appropriate for everyone.

I don’t feel like I have much of anything to talk about that is fun or light or entertaining. I’m not pretty. I’m not fun. I’m not interesting.

Hi, I’m Debbie Downer and I deliver.

I don’t have interesting hobbies to talk about. My poor plants are barely staying alive because I’m so fucking exhausted I’m not watering like I should.

I feel like I’m failing at everything. I’m failing at being interested enough in my friends. I’m shitty support right now. I feel like I’m boring and stupid.

I feel like I should stop reaching out to people at all because I have nothing to offer and all I am is this boring pit of need.

I’m so tired.

On the upside, this is not a suicidal version of feeling bad. Just… a whiny one. I suppose that’s better than it could be?

The right point of entry

I think it is funny how strong everyone’s opinion is about when is the “right time” to enter the bdsm community. Yet another One Twue Way.

To me this is just like a conversation I have with my kids all the time. They tell me they “can’t” do something and I interrupt and say “yet” every time. Maybe you can’t do that yet, but it doesn’t mean you will never do it. Set the stage in your brain for the idea that maybe things will change.

Maybe you entered the scene at the Exact Right Time… for you.

Maybe that is good enough. It doesn’t have to be the universal right time for life. Maybe there isn’t a universal right time.

I’ve heard arguments for why it is better to wait until you are older and more mature. In my head I think “Ahhh because it is better for 30-something, 40-something, 50-something year old people to make the same stupid mistakes I made at 19? Ok. Sure. Whatever.”

Because when you get into the scene… it doesn’t matter how old you are… folks make some mistakes. The size of mistake varies… and the age of the person is not a big factor in that. I’ve seen older people make some really foolish mistakes because they were new and trying their best and they didn’t understand.

I don’t tell them it is because they are old and foolish the way people tell me that my mistakes were because I was young and foolish. But whatever.

I arrived in the scene before I was 19. I’ve had… rather a lot of 30-something year old women go off on me extensively about how I should have waited until my 30’s to enter the scene.

Err, can you please stop projecting your life path onto other people? I am in my 30’s now and I frankly have other things to do with my time than hang out in the bdsm community the way I did in college. I’m busy. I don’t have spare time. I have a lot of responsibility and not a lot of support and there is no way I could have made that life story work out the way it has worked for other people. That doesn’t mean I think it is wrong for people to be on the life curve they are on…

But I’m grateful I spent my college years in the scene learning about boundaries instead of spending them interacting with other college kids who didn’t know shit and who had very little to teach me.

Some of us are maximizing the lessons we can get out of life and that means we want to accelerate the rate at which we learn some lessons.

I will have more spare time in about 10 years. So much for the window of my 30’s.

I’m glad for the people who feel they spent their 20’s maturing and they are “ready” for more when they are in their 30’s or later and they view bdsm as an upgrade. Sure, whatever works for you.

I’m glad for the people who show up at 18 because they need to learn the lessons they are here to learn. The bdsm community has a lot to teach if you get lucky and find the right people. Fantastically who the “right people” are varies tremendously so not everyone is competing for the attention of the same two people. Yay everyone wins.

What I learned in the bdsm community made me a better teacher, a better neighbor, and a better parent. If I had not learned these skills in my late teens or early 20’s I would not be as good of a person as I am now.

I’m glad I said fuck off to all the people who told me to leave the scene and not benefit from these lessons. I would not be where I am and I like the progress I’ve made.

I’m not saying you should have been in the scene at 18 or you are lesser somehow. That’s bullshit. You were on your path and that’s ok. Just stop acting like your path is better, m’kay?

Reinventing yourself

People who have known me since I was a kid tell me that I don’t seem like the same person any more; I have changed so much. I changed a lot in my time in the scene, then being a teacher was a huge shift, being a parent has kind of forced me to complete a lot of huge seismic level differences in my life.

For the first few years I had kids I went through a Madonna/whore problem where my body stopped wanting sex or bdsm. It was the way that my brain managed to pick a path through my personal history of having no healthy boundaries around sex. It wasn’t a healthy response because it was bad for my marriage.

But I grew up watching all of the adults in my family have sex. I needed to have some kind of shift in my brain that ensured that my children would not see me have sex. My kids have still never walked in on me having sex and I’ve been doing this gig almost a decade. It is a huge accomplishment for someone with my background.

I think that my libido partially shut off because that was a lot of what I saw happen to my mom’s life. She had a few boyfriends (all of whom I saw her have sex with) and she realized that I was acting out a WHOLE LOT and she… shut it down and to the best of my knowledge has never had sex again. I think she stopped when I was around 10. That was a quarter of a century ago. I’m pretty sure my mom has been celibate because she decided she didn’t know how to have a healthy sex life.

She might be right. She picked some awful people.

I feel this kind of long drawn out pleasure and shock that the vast majority of people I slept with are really awesome people and they are still all invited to my house if I have a Christmas party. Only a few people have fallen off the list because mostly… gosh I picked good people.

I read in a book about postpartum recovery that it takes a body 4 years to fully reset after having a baby. My libido came back like a sledge hammer about 5 years after having kids. 4-5 years is a natural child spacing in nomadic societies so it isn’t that shocking that my body picked that window for saying, “Moar seks please.”

It’s been complicated since then. My poor husband has adjusted from the extreme hypersexuality I experienced when we first got married and before our marriage to me shutting down completely to me being a bitch and fucking lots of people as my libido exploded and… now I’m pregnant again.

What is going to happen next?

I don’t know but healthier sex has to be part of this experience.

It is complicated for a masochist to stop something because it hurts. But there are kinds of pain that are positive/emotionally expressive for me and there are kinds of pain where I shut down my brain and go to a bad place. There are kinds of pain that increase my general feeling that I should die because I have no other escape from pain in this lifetime.

My kids and my husband tell me all the time that they want me to live for A VERY LONG TIME and I’ve tried to change how I live to reflect the fact that they don’t want me to die young.

I have to figure out how to convince my body that I can be in less pain. (Fibromyalgia makes this super complicated.) I have to figure out how to stop shutting down my self-protection mechanisms during sex. Because the specific pain I have during vaginal sex sometimes (it’s not all the time) is a problem. It is directly tied into the abuse from my father. It is a mainline to my internal reaction that I was born from rape; I was born to be raped; that is all I should deserve to expect until I die.

I have changed so much about my destiny. I didn’t think I would ever have a forever home. I didn’t think I would ever be part of a family.

I have a really cool family. I mean, we are all flaming weirdos… but we like each other a lot and we spend a lot of time together and it is all so intensely positive…

I didn’t think someone like me would ever get this far, let me tell you. But I did it.

My current shrink is probably the most bdsm aware/positive shrink I’ve ever seen. They suggested that I’m going to have to face my dissociation head on and in their opinion I am going to have to do it within the structure of my M/s relationship.

Now that’s some awesome feedback to get from a shrink. I’ve never had a shrink talk so specifically about the difference between therapy and therapeutic and bdsm can be so very therapeutic…

I know. I used to not be able to set any boundaries at all with my body. Bdsm taught me how. My beautiful friends and play partners taught me how. Very therapeutic.

It is complicated on so many because having my husband hit me a lot is different from having my lovely friends hit me a lot. My husband is the only person on this god-forsaken planet who has given me any real safety. It’s complicated when he hits me. It isn’t that I never like it. It’s that there are so many layers of psychological events that happen around the physical events that… it’s hard to manage that and bounce back into my life.

My life is very constrained. I have to “behave” and project a kind of behavior that is very hard for me. I believe that children learn primarily through modeling and if I want to show my kids making good choices I have to make good choices and I’m really more inclined towards being a fuck up and doing everything wrong.

But the children. Sigh.

My kids are the reason I get up in the morning. My kids are the reason I put breathtaking amounts of effort into being a healthier person. My kids are the reason I’m trying to learn how to stop hurting myself so that I can handle being alive long enough to watch them grow up.

I haven’t cut myself in over half a decade. I have burned myself in longer than that. I haven’t beat my head on concrete in a bit longer than that. I have made a lot of progress on my self mutilation.

I really want to know what happens to my kids. I think they are so neat. I feel so lucky that I get to have another child. These people are the best people in my life. I wake up and go to sleep seeing their smiling faces.

I did not believe that my children would like me. I expected to be the recipient of contempt and apathy. Instead my children adore me like I adore them. It feels like magic.

Is it magical enough to propel me through figuring out how to stop allowing more pain into my body that damages me?

silly…

I am almost done with Christmas shopping and I seriously don’t want to still be doing this shit come November. Not this fucking year. I just… don’t fucking want to. So I’m doing the annual “What the fuck do I put in Noah’s stocking” hunt. When I go through lists of “recommended for men” stuff for stockings I’m all “Wait… did I marry a man?!?!?!” He isn’t interested in any of the shit they recommend.

I feel like this is awesome. That’s the kinda man I want. The kind who… only fills some boxes off the man checklist. Perfect.

This is like when people used to tell me I wasn’t a woman because I didn’t like chocolate.

WHAT DOES GENDER MEAN ANYWAY?!

owie seks

So yesterday I initiated sex. I was interested. I had been thinking about it. We didn’t have a lot of time in between kid drop off and pick up so I tried to get things going quickly (even though that hasn’t been working well for my body.)

It started hurting. It started hurting in that “Are you fucking me with a sawzall dildo covered in fucking sand paper??!?!?!!” way. (I have in fact been fucked with a dildo on a sawzall. It did not have sand paper on it.)

My first instinct was to slam my eyes shut and grit my teeth and start praying it would end soon.

My second impulse was that I really should let him know it hurt so that he wouldn’t try to draw it out and make it last longer.

My third impulse was, Hey wait… this is hurting in a bad way.

My fourth impulse was, “WAIT! THAT HURTS! I DON’T WANT IT TO.”

He stopped.

That entire first through fourth impulse process probably didn’t have two minutes of time lapse. I’m pretty impressed with myself. Ok, that’s kind of pathetic. But it’s not. This is incredibly hard for me. This is changing a lifetime of specific training.

Noah was really nice about it. He responded as soon as the message reached his brain. He was patient and kind and non-demanding. We both sat there kind of stunned for a minute or two after we paused trying to figure out what it meant.

I told him he could finish… my body just isn’t up for participating. I nuzzled him and encouraged him and he masturbated and I think it was good.

I wasn’t mad at him for the pain. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. I don’t think he messed up at any point.

I think we both had a hard moment when we tried to parse “What do we do about exclamations of ‘It hurts’?” because I’m a masochist fucking a sadist and sometimes that’s the point. But there are very different kinds of pain and we are still trying to tease out what that means.

The cunt hurting pain is…

different.

It’s damage, not fun pain.

I sort of feel like when my cunt hurts like that it is kind of like the equivalent of erectile dysfunction… only mine hurts a lot. It’s a sign the body just says “not today” and that means you need to do something else.

It’s still complicated. But we did well yesterday. Yay us.

Sleep study

I went in and got the results of the sleep study. I’m so pissed that it took years to get a fucking sleep study. I HAVE BEGGED. I don’t have sleep apnea. Well, technically I’m barely clinically in the range because I have slightly more apnea incidents close to REM sleep than is “standard” but pregnancy increases apnea incidences. The apnea scale goes from 0-30 and 0-5 is considered normal. I’m at 5.6. Given that pregnancy increases apnea incidences… I don’t have apnea.

The more important metric is blood oxygen level and I never got below 96% which is great.

So the last several years when doctor after doctor has told me they wouldn’t give me sleeping pills because I might have apnea but they weren’t willing to test me… that was a big fat fuck you.

I need to go through all the medical results I’ve gotten in the past year or two and put into a binder like Sarah has. I’m tired of having debates with doctors about whether I have this condition or that and whether or not I should just get back on Prozac. UGH!!!!

Oh, and my apnea score only qualifies if you look at this amalgam number. If you look at the base apnea number I’m at like a 2.3. (I’m not bothering to look it up this second because Jesus I don’t give a shit.)

So my insurance company will not fund a cpap machine. I’m not clinically impacted. The sleep study place said I still might have some improvement in sleep if I tried a cpap, so why don’t I spend $800 (that I can’t get back) to try out the machine! Sure I have no signs that it would help and I’m ridiculously sensitive to things on my body interrupting my sleep, but WHY NOT spend a whole bunch of money on something that probably won’t help?! DON’T I WANT TO LOOK LIKE I’M TRYING TO GET BETTER?!?!?!?!?!

I fucking hate every doctor.

The sleep doctor said that looking at all the readouts from my study she would guess that I am waking up from a combination of pain (probably fibromyalgia based) and hypervigilance/anxiety. I would probably be helped by a simple sleeping pill or anti-anxiety pill but she hesitates to prescribe anything like that while I’m pregnant because extra sedation on top of the pot is mixed.

So you know how I’ve been BEGGING for lorazepam for YEARS?!?!?! That’s a simple sleep/anti-anxiety pill. I take 10 a month when I get to decide my dosing. BUT OH MY GOD IT’S HORRIBLE FOR ME TO DECIDE THAT I NEED A MEDICATION CLEARLY I MUST BE ON A DAILY PILL THAT RUINS MY LIFE OR I’M NOT TRYING.

I feel rather like I have improved my life and my body against the direct efforts of medical providers for a long time now and that’s confusing and mixed.

I still haven’t gotten my records transferred from the OB practice so I can be permitted in a new practice. That’s 3 weeks now. I should go throw a temper tantrum today because I’m 22 fucking weeks pregnant and going a month without care isn’t acceptable because they don’t fucking feel like sending some god damn paperwork. Walk down stairs. Make a copy. Hand it to me. That’s the end of this discussion.

This is what you’re for.

I don’t think that many people have their earliest memories of their parent involve their parent telling them that they exist to have people put things inside their body… but I’m not alone. I’ve talked to a fair number of people in my incest cohort and I’ll talk to more. I’m not alone. I’ve learned a lot from my cohort. I’ve learned that my father’s play book was not his alone.

There are a lot of really messed up people in this world. They hurt other people. I’m not saying that “all people who are abused grow up to abuse”… that’s patently untrue. It’s something like 80% of people who are abused do not grow up to hurt anyone. Most of us realize that hurting other people (nonconsensually) is a problem and we try to avoid doing it. But it’s a journey.

I was what folks euphemistically call a child predator. What that meant is I pushed for sex with other children who were really not ready. I sexually assaulted and raped people before I was 10 because I had no concept in my mind that people might even want to say no to what I was doing.

I found the bdsm community at 18. I am so grateful to you all.

I was sexually assaulted by people in the scene. Some of them fairly “big names”. Folks that people trusted. I also had some of the healthiest relationships of my entire life because of the scene. I learned from people who could clearly articulate their boundaries and limits and interests.

I am so inspired by those of you who know yourselves and you know what you like and don’t like. I’m better than I was but I’m still not where I want to get.

I’ve been in and around the bdsm community for going on 18 years now. I started out being uhhh… highly reactive. I would scream and rant and flail at people who crossed my boundaries because I didn’t have a less reactive way to deal with that. Thank you to all the kind people who recognized that I was a traumatized fucked up kid and you were patient with me. I remember the long kind explanations I used to get about why my reaction wouldn’t get me what I wanted in a given situation.

Even though it didn’t seem like it at the time… I was listening.

You have to understand that I was coming from a background where most of the “advice” I had been given up to that point was designed to make me easier to abuse. Most of the advice I had been given up to that point in my life was working towards lowering my sense of self esteem and self worth so I wouldn’t complain as people hurt me very badly.

I wasn’t in a good place to accept advice.

But many of you persevered. You kept talking to me. You recognized that I was a scared, feral animal. Thank you.

I’m still working through layers of sexual dysfunction. I’m still trying to get to the point where I have positive emotional and physical reactions to warning signs in my body. It’s very hard. I still want to dissociate and shut down and just wait for it to be over.

It’s still a slow process. I hate myself for how long it is taking and I know that 18 years of damage will take a lot more than 18 years to completely unravel because life just isn’t fucking fair. But I’ve come a long way.

Yesterday I managed to stop sex that was hurting me. I haven’t managed to do that all that many times in my entire life. Usually when it hurts like that I just dissociate and wait for it to be over. Yesterday I managed to have an internal emotional reaction where I decided I didn’t want to be hurt like that and I spoke up. It’s a huge deal for me.

It’s funny how I can negotiate that I don’t like floggers–I like to be hit with hands and single tails and canes… but I really struggle with saying “Sometimes my cunt doesn’t want to cooperate and you damage me when we try to have sex and I really shouldn’t have sex under those circumstances.”

Even though my husband is a pretty damn good man who will stop on a dime if told to. It isn’t that he doesn’t care. It’s that I struggle with thinking I am worth defending.

I know what I am for in the marrow of my bones. I was made to be hurt by sex. I was told so from when I was a toddler.

But maybe that was just one more lie from a flaming monster.

Maybe someday I will feel like I am made for something else.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Noah pointed out something at breakfast. October 6th is the anniversary of my father killing himself. I managed to… miss that it was coming this year. He said he was watching my increasing suicidal fervor and talk about being a worthless whore with one eye to the calendar as he watched that date come up. Within 24 hours of it being over the panic broke like a wave.

He thoughtfully didn’t want me to be aware of the incoming anniversary if I wasn’t bringing it up. He didn’t want to invalidate the feelings I was going through or even sound like he was saying they weren’t real because they were connected to an anniversary.

I’m married to an incredible person.

I find some comfort in knowing that this is a predictable part of my pattern. Oh, yeah. It’s the beginning of October. No wonder I’m flipping the fuck out. For over a decade I basically didn’t eat in October from stress. Oh yeah.

I said, “Oh yeah… and it’s coming up on Sarah’s anniversary of losing her dad…. Ohhhhh….” Noah and I discussed that Sarah and I are doing unusually well this year as we are both in our pits of despair to reach out with occasional messages of “I’m a needy pit of doom. I love you and have no support to offer. I’ll check in again soon.” Neither of us have expressed any feelings of frustration because the other isn’t up to jumping into a codependent neeeeeeed circle. We may or may not be feeling them, but what we are saying to each other is going really well.

Boundaries and understanding your limits are good things.

This is beginning to more strongly resemble what a healthy relationship might look like. Though I will say that I have enjoyed our decade + of codependency very much

I am always going to struggle with my mental health. There will always be times of the year when I kind of… need to crawl under a rock. I think I’m doing better at handling them as the years go by.

I’m a little concerned about the fact that Lightning’s estimated due date is four days before my brother Tommy’s birthday. He’s the dead brother with all the problems. Sigh.

Yet another thing I get to get over.

19 years since Tommy and my father killed themselves. I still feel like a worthless whore. But it’s better than it was.

Things are changing. Sometimes it feels like at a glacial pace, but the change does happen. Will I ever really grow up enough?

Another busy week again. Whyyyyy do I feel my children must participate in so many damn activities?! This week I get to drive to Mountain View, San Jose, Pleasanton, San Pablo, Mountain View, Union City, San Francisco, and San Jose.

I’m so fucking tired. Ok a bunch of those drives are for medical appointments. And a birthday party for the children of former students and a birthday party for a grown up, and visits with grown up friends… so I can’t just blame the kids.

I am blessed to have people who love me. The kids and I are going to have breakfast with one of my ex’s this week. I’m going to see if the kids can sit at a separate table with their academics because after breakfast they are getting a haircut and it’s entirely jacking up academic time for the day. I catch up with him once a year or so. I catch up with most of my ex’s every so often. I date nice people.

Every week is busy for a while here. Basically until I go into confinement. I fucking love confinement. I know that not everyone does it and I know that opinions vary on how necessary it is… but I slow my life down at the end of pregnancy. I will probably basically shut down after Christmas. We won’t do the second semester at the out of town class place because that’s a lot of driving for Noah. It’s not so bad for him to do the driving for all the classes that are within 10 minutes of the house because it is an hour or so of interruption a day if they have multiple classes… but the out of town classes necessitate a four hour or more window of being out of the house and that’s just too much. He has a job.

The bay area has such fascinating perspective on how much time is worth spending in a car.

I’m kind of glad that EC is stating with firmness that this is going to be the only year in a charter. She plans to spend next year studying religion and she’s not interested in having to follow the state standards for producing specific items every month. Ok. Sounds good. I know she will do a lot of serious reading. I will assign projects. It’ll be fun. FMC is ready to set fire to the curriculum so yeah. It was an experiment. They are pissed off about being judged. Yeah my kids are going to make fascinating adults.

I’m almost done Christmas shopping. We are sending the library of books about trans folk to Noah’s family and sending to Jenny’s family and giving inside the house and I think that’s about it. We will make food stuff to give as gifts to other people because we like to do that, but I’ll be done shopping and spending money before November I think. We can schedule what date to send the mail to folks and Noah and the kids can do it as an Advent activity. Ha. I’m staying home.

We will probably discuss adding a couple more Advent activities that are out of the house… but our calendar is already about as full as it can get without me being pissy all the time.

We are going on the light train thing on my mother’s birthday. So far we have a massage scheduled for my father’s birthday. We should probably do something fun with the kids that day too. Because I often get weird around these dates I’m thinking ahead.

My life is pretty fun. It is hectic because my children are lucky enough to have a ridiculous number of opportunities in life and I feel like I must provide access to a lot. It’s a job. A job a lot of mother’s do. (And other parents too!) It’s fucking exhausting. Our ancestors did not do this shit. Little Johnny did not get six hours a week of getting driven all the fuck over the place. Fuck this shit.

I’m looking forward to confinement. Hell yeah. My body is more important for a few months. Nyah nyah. You have to wait.

Yeah… I’ll go back to being your bitch. But I get a fucking fourth trimester too. That’s the deal.

Dude…. I start out with fucking health problems. This shit is hard on my body. Recovery is a bitch and if I don’t take it seriously I’ll pay forever. I have to be careful how much damage I deliberately add to my body. I don’t recover fast. It doesn’t matter what other people are capable of. It doesn’t matter what I would do if I had to in order to put food on the table. I’m not in that position and I’m in shitty shape and I’m trying to figure out how to hurt less. I can’t force a quick recovery.

I’m speshul snowflake, mkay?

Time to stop babbling.

Can’t make you feel

Something was occurring to me this morning. I have long accepted that no one can “make me” feel loved. I often don’t feel loved. Not because no one loves me–I think I am incredibly loved. There is a sensor inside of me that is broken.

Maybe Noah is broken too and I can’t fix it. Maybe Noah can’t feel loved because something got broke a long time ago and it’s really not about my broken cunt.

I know that the feeling that your sexual expression is 100% accepted and acceptable and ok at every moment is lovely… but I don’t know a human being who gets that. If it is necessary for you to feel loved…

I can’t fix that.

I feel less shitty about myself right this moment than I have in a few weeks.

This is going to be muddled and non-linear

These issues stack in my brain in weird ways. They combine and intertwine such that my memories are sometimes amalgamations of conversations and impressions and I know that’s not great. But trying to sort it out is the only thing I know to do.

Ok, marital problems.

I don’t think Noah spends a lot of time getting really upset but we’ve had a few conversations over the years that struck me as particularly intense and I’ve latched on to them in memory in ways that bother Noah a lot.

I feel like Noah values me (or at least he valued when he married me) for the fact that my consent is kinda not important. My cunt is just available whether I like it or not. We’ve talked about how monogamy is not celibacy a lot. We’ve talked about how it isn’t ok for me to deny Noah sex for any reason, including medical reasons, on a long term basis. He will give me a grace period of a year and then things are Just Going To Change. That has become a sword of Damocles over my head. My cunt has to be available or I am not worthy of being a wife.

I feel like Noah has some fairly set ideas of what bdsm is and they don’t always overlap with mine. Last night we had a fierce conversation where I asked him what the orgasm control and the denial of personal right to determine masturbation and the degrading sex and the name calling and the hurting me is if it is not bdsm. Because if we have been in an M/s contract for going on a year and you still feel like it is appropriate to yell at me that we will never get around to doing bdsm because I don’t want him enough…. what the fuck do you think bdsm IS?!?! Noah does hurt me sometimes. Not in extreme ways because I haven’t been up for it, but our sex is not pain-free. I submit to a lot of stuff. I bathe him. I’ve followed various other rules for a long time. If absolutely everything I do is devalued and “doesn’t count” towards us having a bdsm relationship… then fine. I guess you are right after all and we will never be doing bdsm. Even though I met a quota for years about having sex ten times a month whether I wanted to or not… nothing counts.

When we first got married I was still very much in a period where I was not comfortable with most casual touch. For the first three or so years we were married if Noah wanted to cuddle… we’d sit on opposite sides of the couch and he could touch my feet. That was what I could bear. It is very hard for me that Noah has repeatedly over the years stated emphatically that sex is what makes him feel loved and the other things don’t count. So I’ve worked very hard on my panic disorder and I’ve learned to cuddle him because he wants it… but it doesn’t count towards making him feel loved. Even though it was incredibly hard for me to learn to do and it literally took years of effort.

Noah used to complain a lot that I didn’t share his interests. So I can discuss most of the comic series he reads and I’ve watched his favorite movies and I listen to him read the books he wants me to know about. I would say that he has only started really trying to do the return favor since the road trip and that’s still… I think I put more effort into sharing his interests but I’m not sure I’m evaluating fairly. And none of this time or effort counts as showing love for him.

Noah talks a lot (fairly and reasonably) about how hard it is for him to be emotionally level for me and that’s a huge gift he gives to me. I agree that it is a huge gift. I do understand that it is a lot of effort for him. It’s visible effort… I know how he struggles with being upbeat and cheerful for my sake so I can sponge off of his good humor. But the thing is… I have put in equally as much work if not more. He may have started off this marriage not being as good natured as he currently behaves… but I started out a basket case who cut myself and isolated myself constantly in between crying jags and screaming at people. I haven’t injured myself in… I don’t know how long. It’s been a long time. That was a multi-decade habitual response to dysregulation. I have replaced it with fucking typing. I used to need full days of hiding alone in my house in order to go manage a two hour munch. Now I am “on” and I have to be cheerful and helpful and loving and physically affectionate…12-14 hours a day every single fucking day and I don’t get breaks. I don’t get an hour off a day to hide in a room and work on my feelings. I have to just fucking show up and act nice and put my shit to the side ALL DAY EVERY DAY.

I don’t feel I get a lot of credit for this. When I am minimizing things that will serve to dysregulate me (like heavy SM scenes) I feel like the response is that I am being mean and taking a toy away from Noah. When I feel like I am trying to be able to show up and do my primary job every day without fucking up.

Would it be more fun for me to have more babysitting and do more dysregulating things with my body? Yes. But my parenting would go downhill faster than an Olympic skier. We have collectively decided that for a few decades here it is more important that I show up for my kids than that I have fun. But I feel like I get punished for sticking to that. Punished isn’t the right word. I feel like I am resented for it. And I was getting to the point where I had more space to be able to do that without being a fucking asshole…

But now I’m pregnant and the whole fucking thing is starting over. I won’t have that much bodily privacy for another five fucking years.

And I feel like that means I am doing something terrible to my husband and I feel incredibly resentful of that. Yes, I want this kid really really badly. But I want this kid fully seeing how shitty it makes my life to have another fucking baby. Babies make my life shitty. I am not the kind of mother who says, “My life barely changes”. EVERYTHING CHANGES when I have a baby. I give up independence and autonomy and I am a fucking life support device. I don’t have bodily privacy. I don’t have space for myself. I am subsumed into the me-not-me who is currently in that state of need. There is no fair here.

I know it isn’t fair to have your sex life derailed from where you want it to be. I know it isn’t fair that when your body is still doing the normal same old same old you don’t get what you want and need under those circumstances. I know that sucks.

But I fucking started this journey with chronic pain and then I exacerbate it in every way. I start out emotionally dysregulated and I stick a fucking rocket launcher on the back of that when I’m pregnant. I can’t fucking sleep well. I can’t eat well. I feel like fucking shit just about every moment of the day.

But I’m so meeeeeeaaaaaaaaan if I don’t want to have sex.

Clearly I don’t love Noah if I’m not having sex.

I kind of want to jump off a bridge.

So I can stop grocery shopping and doing laundry and cleaning and home schooling the kids and putting a death grip on my behavior so that I’m not mean to people around me and I can stop dealing with how hard it is for me to accept casual touch and I’m going to start fucking masturbating three fucking times a day and I’m never asking for permission again and…..

I’m really frustrated.

I feel really sad that I’m a failure as a wife because my cunt is defective and that is all that I am judged by.

I feel desperate and sad and hopeless. I feel like I will never be able to make Noah feel loved so why in the fuck am I beating my head against that rock?

Because I love him so much and I’ve still never had anyone in my life be as nice to me as he is. Even though he is kind of an asshole sometimes. Perspective is a big thing.

Noah does a lot for me. Noah is incredibly helpful and kind to me most of the time.

But I have a hard time with how many of my friends are all #TeamNoah and Krissy should stop being such a bitch to that poor sainted man.

I’m not saying I should be pitied or that Noah should be denigrated to hell and back. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that I don’t ever write the Full Story because I can’t. I write my current thoughts and feelings and impressions and that’s fucking limited. I don’t have enough god damn time in the day to write the Full Story.

This. Is. My. Alone. Time.

I have learned how to be regular for this marriage. I have learned how to show up every day and deliver on my promises even when I don’t want to. I take care of my family whether I want to or not. (Noah does too… I’m not saying that I’ve done more than him.) I’m saying that I did not grow up seeing people show up through the hard stuff. I’m making this up out of whole cloth and I’m doing it because of how much I love Noah and how much I want this to work.

When it was very clear that I had to stop fucking around or my marriage was basically over… I stopped on a dime.

I feel like I get all the credit for fucking up and being wrong and no credit for how far I’ve come or how much I do.

Holy shit tired.

Today the kids and I were gone for 12 hours. We went to Sacramento for a field trip. We didn’t really talk to many folks from the charter school but we did enjoy the Crocker Art Museum. The docent we toured with was 71 and super entertaining and had super fun hair and visible neat tattoos and she was just awesome. She was thrilled that my kids already knew terms like impressionism and realism and cubism. She said no kid has ever known about cubism before so I’m doing something right.

Dude, it’s on Khan Academy…

I like talking to my kids about art. It’s the most friendly introduction to art I’ve ever had.

We had an emotional day. Both kids are acting rubbed raw and sensitive and fussy and ugh. Both kids keep pushing the other’s buttons. Both kids are being insensitive and they are shaming one another and it really sucks. We are talking about it but it’s a tough phase. When we talk through, “So you did x. Why? What did you hope to gain? What actually happened?” They always spontaneously realize that they did something shitty and they should apologize… but we had to go through this process like 7 times today and I’m fucking worn out.

I’m really impressed that both kids can have me say, “So what you did was x” and then they can fill in most of the other blanks. “When I said/did x it probably made my sibling feel _____ and that’s not very kind. I wouldn’t want them to do the same thing to me. I should apologize.”

That’s good and all, I’m glad they can do that… BUT I’D LIKE TO GO A DAY WITHOUT HAVING TO GO THROUGH THIS FUCKING PROCESS MORE THAN HALF A DOZEN TIMES. I’M REALLY GOD DAMN TIRED AND EMOTIONALLY SPENT AND BEING FUCKING NICE ABOUT THIS IS HARD.

We need to go back to the museum because we didn’t get through half the exhibits and they were really neat. We have free passes. If only it weren’t in fucking Sacramento.

On the way home we stopped to visit Aunt Candy. She is Noah’s mother’s sister. She’s the entomologist who sends us the cool bug stuff for the kids. She also sends a huge box of candy at every possible holiday occasion because she has no children or grandchildren and she has an incredibly stable/comfortable life.

I like talking to Aunt Candy and Aunt Cookie (Aunt Cookie is the one who sends the boxes of cookies every year from Oregon.) about Noah’s family. Today Candy was telling me about how she and Cookie and Uncle Nod (the brother in the family) spent all of Noah’s childhood talking about how unfairly he was treated and cursing the school system for tormenting him. Apparently Nod spent most of Noah’s childhood a few inches away from going to the school to hit kids. Nod was very angry about how Noah was treated as a kid. He wanted to get involved and did not believe that Noah’s mom would permit it without being nasty to Noah as a result so he stayed out of it.

She reflected that Noah’s siblings (at least the boys) are better at fitting in to the small shitty town dynamic and Noah’s just… different. Candy was saying that she thinks that part of Noah’s problem is that he is too much like his mother and she never fit in there too. Really Noah’s mother’s entire family didn’t fit in that well in the shitty town and Candy speculated that Noah was treated badly in school partially because of the halo of people remembering Candy and Cookie and Nod.

I asked Candy if she felt her family was physically warm. She was adamant that they are not. Only Cookie is a hugger and everyone else feels really bothered by her desire for physical touch. She said that Noah was an incredibly touch starved little kid and he radiated sadness for most of his life. She was glad he got out at 17 and never really came back.

Before we left for the trip this morning I was talking to EC. I don’t remember the exact framing of how this came up but she mentioned that Noah and I wouldn’t care if we had a boy or a girl or another enby. I told her that it is true that we will be thrilled with any child we get… but we do kind of want a boy and that’s complicated. She asked me why a boy would be different.

I told her that having her has been very healing for me because I have been able to see a little girl get the things I desperately needed. That fills a hole in my heart that pretty much nothing else has filled. It’s different for Noah because he felt like he grew up watching little girls get what he couldn’t get so she doesn’t fix the same wound in him. He would probably benefit from watching a little boy grow up getting kisses and hugs and being told that crying is healthy and ok. He would see himself reflected. He would have a way to give what he couldn’t get and that’s a big deal. I also told her that I have issues with men and boys that are hard for me to get over. I believe that if I had a son I would have to confront the fact that I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that this child has never hurt me or any other woman and I would have to learn how to trust and extend gentleness to little boys in a way that is currently really really hard for me. I’d be thrilled to have another daughter or enby… but there’s a hole in my heart that I think a boy would fill in a different way. And that sounds disgusting but I don’t mean it like that.

She kind of thought about that and said “hunh. I guess that makes sense.”

But I have the best damn girl’s name I can imagine lined up so I’m going to be really kind of bummed if I don’t get to use it. So a boy isn’t the be-all-end-all. We talked about the dictionary definition of the middle name we like and she agreed that any little kid would be lucky to carry that name. IT’S SO COOL.

I have a friend’s little sister to thank for the inspiration. I love my friends and their little sisters and the fact that they share their little sisters with me. I’m a lucky bitch.

This weekend the only thing we have scheduled is book club. Nobody finished the book. Ha. So we are going to get together to talk about the first half and I suspect Noah will read us a chapter (he’s so damn good at reading out loud… he can make lists of names of organizations sound interesting). We are definitely going to finish Uninvited Neighbors and I think I will read it a few more times before I internalize more of what it is really saying. It’s super dense and full of facts. It’s about the migration of Black folk to and from the San Jose area and it’s really fascinating. The chapter we were just reading spends a lot of time talking about Warm Springs and that’s… 3 miles from my house. This is real California history. The part that is usually hushed up. It’s wonderful only it’s kind of disgusting to read just how awful people like me act. The book is well researched and documented. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone who lives in this valley. This is our story, this is our history.

Random topic shift. If you have not heard the new Kesha album… you should. I only dislike one song on it. My favorites are: Rainbow, Woman, Praying, and Learn to Let Go. I like more of the songs on the album… but those are the ones that I keep hitting repeat on.

There’s big emotional stuff I’m just… not writing about. I don’t know how to frame it. I don’t know what to say. I am not sure I understand what I feel. But I know that I need to find a way to put words to pieces of it or I’m not going to get past this cycle of feeling like a piece of shit who should die. This is going to be really hard because it’s going to involve saying things about my marriage I don’t feel ok about saying.

I’m scared of yet more backlash. I’ve already kind of fucked everything up. If I do more to defend myself what else is going to come crashing down on my head? Shutting up and just continuing to feel like shit will do less to make my life come to an end. I’m really not ready for it to be all my fault I lost everything.

I never wanted to be a geek.

I’ve had two frankly hilarious interactions lately that fall into “Oh my god I’m a geek” and I have mixed feelings about that. First is the fact that Noah was telling me about old programmers and new programmers discussing “real apps” vs “non-web apps” and the fact that I got kind of indignant about youngsters not respecting non-web apps as unreal just… I had this internal “But web apps waste so much bandwidth!” reaction that just… THIS WAS WORSE THAN EXPLAINING VPN AND CLOUD COMPUTING ON THE ROAD TRIP. I SHOULD NOT KNOW THESE THINGS. DAMN YOU SILICON VALLEY FOR INVADING MY BRAIN. I NEVER WANTED TO BE A SOURCE OF INFORMATION ON THIS SHIT.

The second was with my massage therapist. We were talking about movies and Harrison Ford came up. She said, “I never saw that one movie he was in… oh I don’t remember what it was called. It had a French robot and a vacuum cleaner.” I kind of twitched and said, “Do you mean C3PO and R2D2? Star Wars?”

“Yeah! That’s it.”

I started kind of hyperventilating because I was trying to not fall off the table laughing. She went on,

“It had that dwarf with the plate ears. He was like purple or blue or something.”

“Ohmygod Yoda. You are talking about Yoda.”

I…. I just…

Oh my god.

“And that cute girl with the cinnamon bun on her head.”

“Uhh… that was Carrie Fisher playing Princess Leia and the cinnamon buns were on each side of her head.”

“Oh. Whatever. It looked stupid.”

I almost died laughing. She yelled at me to stop because I was getting hard to massage.

I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A SOURCE OF GEEK LORE. SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE.

Appropriate exposure?

Last night I kind of exploded at EC. By exploded I mean that she was taunting me in a way the kids have been enjoying irritating me for a few weeks now and I asked why they are doing it. She giggled and said “To irritate you”.  I said, “Go somewhere else. Go sleep in the backyard, on the couch, in the garage, in my bed… I don’t care. Go somewhere else.”

That was the explosion. I didn’t even yell. FMC was asleep.

After 15 or so minutes of crying I felt really bad so I went and found her. She was in the garage bed. (We have beds all over our house.) She was defensive and kind of pissy at first, which was appropriate and fair.

I told her, “There’s something I need to talk to you about. You know how I tell you that sometimes my brain is an asshole to me? (Assume she interrupts with a lot of “yeahs” and “uh huhs” and “oh that’s what that means” but doing the actual dialogue is a pain in the ass.) First of all: do you know what a cycle is? Like a butterfly’s life cycle. (Oh yeah!) Well, my mental health stuff comes in cycles. I have long periods where I do ok and then for a while I do poorly. For a few weeks now I’ve been having a problem with my brain being an asshole to me. Part of my mental health stuff is called depression. It’s kind of like being sad but sad turned up to the max plus not liking myself very much and feeling REALLY irritable because my brain is being such an asshole all the time. Imagine walking through your day with your brain constantly screaming that you are bad and worthless and you deserve to be in a lot of pain. (At this point she interrupted to exclaim that she hasn’t known!) Of course you haven’t known. It isn’t real appropriate for me to tell you this stuff most of the time. It’s not your business. You can’t change it. You can’t make it better. It doesn’t happen because of you. Why should I act like you should walk on egg shells because it is happening? That would be wrong. So I do my best to be cheerful and loving even when my brain is telling me really vicious things. But sometimes when this happens… I’m going to be over sensitive and I’m going to over react to you trying to irritate me because… I’m already dealing with the maximum load of irritation I can bear. Just because my brain is being an asshole.”

She was really sweet about it. She said that she’s sorry my brain is doing that to me and she’ll try to not be extra irritating for a bit.

I reminded her that it is in fact her job to irritate me… she’s a kid. I am not telling her this so that she will change her behavior a lot. She’s doing what she is supposed to do. I’m telling her so that she understands that I’m not blowing up because she deserves it. I’m blowing up because my brain is being such a raging asshole that I wish I could blow up almost every minute of every day and I’m fighting that urge and sometimes I lose. I don’t want her to feel like my loss of control is her fault. It’s something that *I* have to get a hold of. It’s not a problem she can “not irritate” me out of. I’m going to struggle forever and there’s not much she can do about that. My problems aren’t about her.

She said it made sense. She asked if it was ok for her to come back in the bedroom. I said of course. We went to bed.

I hope I handled that right.

I don’t need to be nice.

A woman I like a lot posts a bunch of stuff on social media. She writes a lot of cultural/gaming/technology criticism. Reading her stuff is like having to wade through a dick contest of guys arguing with her telling her that she hasn’t thought about stuff properly.

Maybe it’s completely awesome that I’m such a bitch. Do you know how often dudes try to tell me I’m thinking about something wrong? I can generally count the times in a year on one hand. And those dudes rarely make it a full paragraph into their digression before I start biting their fucking head off and they don’t come back to do it again.

Being a woman is a tricky thing. I’m “supposed to be nice” but most of the women I know deal with micro-aggressions they try to “be nice about” all fucking day long.

I’m not real nice. If you are going to argue with me about something it better be because I got a fact wrong because if you argue with my OPINION I am going to rip you a new asshole. Opinions are allowed to differ and everyone is entitled to any wrong opinion they want to have. Don’t.Fucking.Come.For.Me. I will make you sorry.

Why doesn’t that kind of attitude trigger the same, “I’m so bad I deserve to die” loop tape?

That puzzles me. There are pieces of my abrasive personality that trigger these intense shame spirals and I feel like there is no hope for a worthless piece of shit like me, I will never be worthy. Then there’s the fact that most dudes are annoying as shit about wanting to control the thought process of every woman nearby and Fuck That Shit.

I may feel like if any of the dudes wanted to talk about trauma and I interrupted their story that I am the worst person ever. But if they come to my sandbox to tell me I’m wrong about something (THAT IS A FUCKING OPINION) I will respond like a honey badger. And I don’t feel bad. There are some kinds of defense-of-self that don’t feel like a problem to me. Being willing to take the head off of people who argue with my opinion apparently is enough and that seems weird.

It’s a strange reason to feel justified in acting like a harpy. Only it is such a pervasive part of my culture.

This is about when I have a fierce conversation with a man and I have a different opinion and I refuse to concede that the Penis-Holder-Is-Always-Right I get called a bitch. Once I turned and said, “Would you tell a man who held a similarly strong position that he was an asshole?” Dude said no. They would just be a strong man.

This is where I wonder about gender and presentation and trans identity. I’m a woman. But I am not a woman who will be shoved in the woman box. I am a woman who is very happy to be stronger than the men standing nearby. That’s Jim-dandy fine with me, motherfucker.

I take my inspiration from what I read about Chinese Dragon Ladies. (I sure as shit hope that isn’t a rude racist way to refer to them as an outsider, I’ve read a fair bit of stuff that acts like it’s a common culturally accepted term.) Basically matriarchs who take no shit from anyone and boss the whole damn family around as well as anyone who walks too close to them.

That sounds great.

I am my own pillar of my community. I may look around to consider what other pillars are holding up, but if I don’t agree then I’m not fucking conforming.

As lonely and stupid as I get when I don’t see people much–I’d much rather be alone than conform to expectations that don’t work for me. This may be one of the most rigid parts of my personality.

I. Don’t. Need. You.

It’s a protective mechanism. When you cannot grow up needing your parents you pretty much have to form a barrier between yourself and the world because you can never need anyone. I have to be ok if everyone walks away. Noah, my kids, my friends… I can’t need anyone too much.

Some day Pam or Jenny or Sarah might divorce me. Sarah and I had that super traumatic separation as the result of my horrible behavior. I fucked up once. I could do it again. I’m not blaming anyone else for my fuck ups. I fuck up every so often and sometimes it is big. If there are consequences I get to pay them.

And I will need to keep walking. With or without the people who make me feel like maybe I’m not a worthless piece of shit. Because maybe I am and I deserve to feel that way and until the day I lay down and die… I need to keep moving. So I don’t hurt people too badly with who and what I am.

I found an incest cohort person who told me they are absolutely ecstatic to have a word for us that isn’t “victim” or “survivor”. I was thanked profusely and told they will use it forever in conversation because that is the best word for us they have ever heard.

Even if I am divorced by everyone I love. I still want to do research on my cohort. IDB still calls my name. I want to make a database about the incest cohort. Maybe it’ll turn into ICDB. I don’t know. I just reset the clock on that. Shit.

This research is going to be literally physically dangerous and I can’t do it when I have little kids. I’m going to make perpetrators very angry and they are going to want to silence me. What they don’t yet understand is the more you try to silence me THE LOUDER I SCREAM.

You should have heard me years ago at a bdsm dungeon. I was playing with an idiot who wanted me to growl/moan my way through him beating me. I got louder with every fucking hit. He was very angry I refused to process in the way he found sexually appealing.

Watch me weep for you. Oh wait, I won’t. Nevermind.

We didn’t play again. He went back to the “good submissives” who would do as he said. Well, whatever.

I do not exist to affirm the “rightness” of random men. Oh hell fucking no. Even though women are expected to default to that role left and right whether they want to or not. I may hate myself. I may think I’m a bad person.

I think I know my own mind better than you do, motherfucker, and don’t you fucking dare argue with my opinion or I will make your day very unpleasant.

I think this is partially because between my brain being an asshole and my body hating me… I have a lot of unpleasant days. Why should I feel bad about sharing that joy? You interacted with me motherfucker… you started it. But I get to finish it however the fuck I want.

I talk to my kids a lot about the fact that violence is very seldom the correct answer to a problem. But when it is you need to bring overwhelming force and not hesitate a millimeter or it’s going to go poorly for you. Avoid violence wherever possible–y’all are little bodies. You can’t withstand much violence so Don’t Fucking Start It. But I tell them there is no such thing as fighting fair in a real fight. Let’s talk about how to inflict serious damage and pray you never ever have to use this information.

Most of the women I talk to are not prepared to defend themselves with extreme violence. That breaks my heart. You deserve it, baby. And you don’t need to have a man defend you. You can bring a whirlwind of scary all on your own. I’m not a big woman, but I have a force of personality that scares the shit out of a lot of people. I get out of a lot of scary situations by looking implacable. People mostly don’t want to fight.

An instructor in a suited self defense class told me that the vast majority of muggers/random people who assault are not looking for a fight so people like me… just seem like bad targets. He stressed over and over that I was easily using twice as much force as is necessary to get someone to think I’m a bad target. Because in my head if someone targets me I need to eliminate that person. They need to never target anyone again. I don’t need to kill them… but I need to do enough damage that they will never think it is smart again.

I rehearse weak targets in my mind. Eyes, nose, throat, groin, knees. What will I take out first?

Where does this fierce desire to protect myself come from? Don’t I want to die? Don’t I want to suffer because I am bad and I deserve all the pain? Why don’t I put my head down and accept more pain as just?

Because even if I deserve it, I don’t deserve it from you and you are a fucking problem who might target another woman after me. I need to convince you how unwise that would be.

A friend commented “We marry our parents”. I said no I did not. I DID NOT marry my father. Has my husband committed rape? Yes, he has. But he is not a serial predator. He does not target children. There would be signs and I’m incredibly well educated about them. My kids know all the clinical language for their bodies and I don’t think they could be molested in secret. They don’t keep secrets. Christmas in this house is a hilarious round of “SHHHHHH. SHUT UP AND DON’T TELL YOUR SIBLING.”

My husband doesn’t terrorize his family. My husband is… not a small man but he’s not big either and my father was a giant. My husband is gentle and helpful and sweet. My father was a monster. The only interaction my father had with his kids was coaching sports teams, otherwise he wasn’t involved.

I didn’t change a diaper in the first month I had a child. I’m very certain it didn’t go like that for my mom.

I didn’t wake up crying, that’s good. This pregnancy is so rough.

I’m not reaching out to folks much for support because I am very much in that irritable and bitchy stage of depression and it’s easy to wear out a support network this way. I’m talking in depth about it to one or two people who are at a slight remove so I can’t bitch at them the way I might someone who feels closer. Mostly I’m talking to moms-of-many who are talking me through pregnancy depression stuff.

I get very different flavors of support from different friends and I need all of you.

Moms-of-many have something to offer me that moms of one or two or non-breeders don’t have. It’s not because y’all are lesser people. It’s just about a specific set of life experiences. Once you get to the point of not having enough hands to control all your children… the game changes.

I told Noah that if I have to have a C-section then a 4th child is not on the table even though he has talked about possibly wanting us to go there. I’m not doing two C-sections in this life. I’m just not. If I have a section I’m going to ask them to tie my tubes while they are in there. Then we won’t have to deal with another vasectomy. If I have an easier vaginal birth we can talk a year after Lightning is born. But if this is rough… I can’t do a fourth. I don’t have that to give in this life.

Pregnancy is so fucking hard. I’m 6 days away from 5 months. I’m still a pound below my pre-pregnancy weight. I’ve been bouncing up and down in this pound for a couple of weeks. I’m supposed to be gaining by now. The baby is not supposed to be actively stealing my fucking body. But hey, everyone goes through pregnancy in their own special, shitty way. My parasites eat me alive. Literally.

In a pregnancy gaining 20-35 pounds is a good thing. I’m 21 weeks in with 19 weeks to go. Haven’t gained a pound yet. But my belly is sure expanding. I told a non-breeding friend that a breeding friend commented that I’m bigger than I have any right to be. The non-breeder was very confused and asked what that meant so we looked at pictures of belly bumps on the internet. Yup, I pop and look like I’m in my third trimester just about instantly. Even though I don’t gain weight. I just bloat and fill out in the belly like whoa. I pointed out how the uterus is way down here and look at these tiny little dainty bumps… I don’t do that.

Bodies are weird.

I think my body adapts to pregnancy-shape really easily. Despite feeling awful, my body likes this shape. My abdominal muscles are excited to release. They think this is their moment to shine. This is not the standard American ideal, but what the hay.

I’m doing way better about eating vegetables in the past few weeks. We have attained Veggie-Soup-I-Like status and I’m consuming it copiously. I have way less diarrhea. I suspect this is related.

Sometimes it doesn’t work. I hang my head in frustration.

I’ve had several days in the past two weeks when I’ve added a third dose of pot to my day because I’m really not doing well. If I weren’t pregnant I’d be dosing four or five times a day. I’m trying hard to keep to two when I can manage but when I’m a weeping ball of useless… sometimes I just have the third fucking dose. It’s do that or hurt my existing kids by neglecting them AND hurt the in utero kid because being that upset is really bad for a pregnancy. There are reasons they put pregnant women on drugs that could hurt the baby because not being on anti-depressants is worse for the baby.

My drug has less chance of harming my kid than anything else on the market. I need help.

I could be content with three kids. I always wanted three kids. That was what I walked into this relationship hoping for. I would feel like my family was complete. But I get the argument for third kid needing a buddy. We’ve been doing better at going for walks in the evening. It’s really beautiful watching EC and FMC hold hands and talk and play as we walk around. They are such good friends. Yes, they fight sometimes too… but when they separate for longer than an hour they get anxious for one another.

We are a tightly knit group. I worry that Lightning is going to feel like a fifth wheel. If things go smoothly I will consider a buddy for their sake. I don’t think I need a fourth child.

I know some of my friends think I need to worry more about the ecological implications of having more children and impact on the planet etc. I’ve had over half a dozen non-breeders tell me that I can have extra kids and call them their contribution to the planet because they aren’t having kids. I’m a good mother if I’m not good at everything else about life. My kids are great people to add to the planet.

We’ll see.

I’m so scared of birth. But I love feeling Lightning jitterbug inside my belly. I’m going to have yet another super active kid.

That’s ok sweetie, we will understand.

I’m going to confess something I find funny. This entire post was written in the time it took me to poop. Have a nice day.

Oh, here is an article that talks about why I am SO ENTHUSIASTIC to support Noah having friends. Noah needs to feel that beautiful love from his friends, even if I am not involved. Especially if I’m not involved. He needs separation and love from not-me so that he can understand that he is not defined as worthy or not based on the amount of love I am showing on a given day. He deserves more than that.

We all need to be loved.