I was talking to a friend online. She expressed horror that someone could buy food and throw it away without eating it. She is currently at a point in life where… one does not throw away perfectly good food you just spent money on.

I get it. I’ve been there. In some weird ways… I’m kinda still there. If I order a salad and they put fish on it instead of the chicken I’m willing to eat… I eat every bit other than the fish and feel extreme guilt about not eating the fish. It’s not cool to throw away perfectly good protein! But I wasn’t in a space where I could put it in a box and wander around until I found someone who would be willing to eat it. So I threw it away.

I get the existential horror of throwing away food and I get being rich enough that I don’t have to eat all the food I buy.

This is a complicated matter. It plays into health, weight, the right to enjoy eating, as well as financial issues.

She started “When I am rich I will never forget being poor”. It’s true. You don’t forget. Well, I don’t forget. I’m sure there are people who do.

But it is complicated. I tell my children that it is better to throw food away than eat when you do not feel hungry. That’s a militant position I hold. Because my children are unlikely to ever genuinely go hungry. That is a position of staunch privilege.

For me, such issues go along with thoughts about racial issues as well. I tell my children that if they are in trouble, a police officer will probably be fairly reasonable with them. I also tell them that unless they genuinely want a person of color to die, never call the police over an issue with a person of color. It is simply not safe. I tell my children flat out that police officers do bad things and they have legal cover for doing so. Do not invite them into doing more bad things or you share the blame.

To me recognizing where you sit, the world you live in, the choices you have to make… are all tied up. They are tied up in race, privilege, access to help… these things are so big. I’m sure I make mistakes but I’m doing what I can to be a better person.

Not a good person. That’s not a race you ever win. Sometimes I have conversations with people and they tell me defensively, “But I’m a good person.” Bah. Your faves are problematic. I’m problematic. You are problematic too and you don’t want to look at how.

I love you anyway, just so it has been said. It’s ok with me that you fuck up. I’ll probably call you on it if I’m in the room when you do something fucked up… but that won’t change the fact that I love you and think you are important.

I’m trying to learn how to love me. I’m trying to learn how to think I’m important. But I cannot be and never will be more important than anyone else. I will have access to more privilege than most people… that’s not the same thing. Going forward I am going to have an easier life than the vast majority of people who have ever been born.

That doesn’t change that I can be a real piece of shit.

Is someone bad for throwing away food in an area of Oakland nearly blanketed by homeless people? No. But I wouldn’t do it. I would take time out of my schedule and hunt up someone who needs the food more than me. Not because I’m better. Because that is something that is important to me because of my existential issues.

This isn’t a contest. There are people who do far more good in the world than me. I shouldn’t stop doing good things because other people are better. I shouldn’t stop doing good things because other people have more access to privilege and the ability to help than I have. I have to be who I am and where I am.

I’m rich by the measures I would have used as a child. There are still people in this world who would scoff at my “richness” and point out all the things I can’t do at my income bracket. That’s a choice. I choose to stay childlike in this regard. I’m rich. I don’t have “when I get rich” hanging over my head. Sure, I have lottery fantasies… but most of my lottery fantasies revolve around things like college scholarship funds and halfway houses.

I…. don’t actually need more than I have. I have everything I need and more. I have extra. Sure, this year as I hemorrhage money on a house remodel and a trip to the Caribbean and I have surgery and Noah has surgery and…. I could cheerfully find more ways to spend money. I… don’t care. I don’t need more. I’ve paid for this year. Ok, I’ll be paying it off for another few years if you include the house remodel. That is turning out to be kinda brutal. But I’ll pay it off at this income bracket and be jim dandy fine. I’ll wince. I’ll angst. I’ll have feelings… but I’ll be ok. Noah will be ok. My kids college funds will still grow. Shit dude, we are looking at having to come up with new college funds.

And I don’t god damn need more money for it. I’m fucking rich.

So what will I do when I’m rich? I’ll hand off money. Lots of it. Will it make my budgeting more fussy? Yes. But I’m going to do more as the years go by, not less. I’ll find a way to trim my expenses and I don’t need a fancy new car and I will save for years and years before I travel… like I always do.

Because I could be a selfish piece of shit or I can try to make the world a teeny tiny bit better. I’m not rescuing anyone. I’m not solving their problems. I’m saying, “Hey. I see you. I know this is inadequate but it is what I can give right now. Keep trying. You matter.”

It sucks. It isn’t good enough.

I know.

I can do what I can to hand off tools in life. Tools that help people find the resources they need that can actually solve their problems. I can’t solve anyone’s problems but mine.

Goodness that sucks. But it is true.

I can’t save Black people from violent police. I can’t be that savior. But I can tell my children not to call the police on people of color. I can choose to not report Black men who do stupid illegal shit in front of me because they aren’t actually hurting me and I don’t need to wreck their lives. I can teach my children that Black Lives Matter and we need to write our congress critters about police reform. I can talk about how we live in a horribly unjust society. I can talk about how much I believe in reparations. The current citizens of this country owe a debt to the people we murdered, enslaved, and removed from their ancestral lands. We can’t pay it back to the folks who are gone. We can just pay their children.

And we need to fucking do it if we want to think of ourselves as a great nation. The longer we build our “greatness” on exploitation, slavery, and murder… we are nasty, disgusting vile creatures. If you think slavery is over: google “Prison inmates on strike” and tell me again that slavery is over.

This is all connected. Having options. Having the ability to “choose” what you “want” to do is… not really a luxury everyone is afforded and it god damn should be.

You shouldn’t have to “when I get rich” fantasize about helping people. It should be something that folks can do. But many really can’t do much because of the circumstances of their lives. They don’t have the time to walk all over and look for someone to take extra food because they are working multiple jobs. They don’t have the money to give it away. They don’t have they don’t have they don’t have…

I am not shaming anyone. I’m really not. I didn’t hand out money like this in the past. I wasn’t so fierce about giving away food. I wasn’t so ready to help when I was poor. I don’t think I am a better person now. I think I am in a different situation with access to different abilities. That doesn’t change how I should be judged.

Maybe the fact that I work harder on my language now is a mark in my favor, but probably not. Maybe that’s a self indulgent thing I do to try and be accepted and loved. Am I really more careful about my language because I’m better or because I am… more hurt by people hating me for existing. I’ve lost my ability to shrug it off.

I know that rich white people are shit. I’m one of them and I know lots more of them and…. yeah. It’s complicated. Are they all shit? Define shit.

Are they all problematic as fuck? Yes. Unequivocally.

Do I hate them? No. I love many of them, tolerate others, and can’t be bothered to think about others.

I have to be willing to think about someone a lot in order to hate them. A lot of the uberprivileged people I know get thought about way the fuck too much and they expect to be centered in the thoughts of people around them because their lives have always worked that way and…. yeah. I’m not going to do that for you. I’m not going to care enough about you to think about you much.

I’m rich enough that I don’t have to.

That’s the piece of being rich that is most important, in my opinion. You no longer have to care that much about the opinions of most people. Unless you are working hard to get richer and you need to suck up to those people. I’m really not about that life. I… understand that other people need to be. I’m sorry.

If I needed to work I’d have different opinions. I’m very sure. I know that my incalcitrant behavior is a function of privilege. God awful, horrible privilege.

I’m sorry for that too. I think such pissiness should be available to everyone. I’m not rich enough to make that possible though. Life fucking sucks.

I’m trying to help where I can. I know it isn’t enough. I know it is fucking pathetic compared to what needs to be done. It is all I can do. I’m sorry.

Noah’s surgery on Friday didn’t happen. He had a negative reaction to the first drug they gave him as an anesthetic. He started coughing violently when he should have been falling asleep and aspirated stomach fluids.The anesthesiologist shoved a tube down his throat and suctioned him because pneumonia sucks.

They did not proceed with the surgery. Because he persisted in coughing blood up all day by the evening the anesthesiologist called to check in and just about begged us to go get a chest x-ray because his reaction was extreme and unusual. We did. We left the house around 8pm and got home around 3ish. That was after waking up at 4 in the morning to get ready to leave at 5am for the surgery.

That was a long day. The kids slept through most of the ER wait time. They are little troopers.

Noah is fine. The blood was probably from throat irritation from the quick intubation.

The crazy part is Noah is going to try again. Because yeah, he wants to have more kids. This journey we are on blows my mind.

I slept late today, Saturday and napped through a lot of the day. I have surgery on Monday to fix my nose. Oh yay. And on Tuesday I have an appointment for genetic testing so that my med doctor can get a better idea of why I metabolize drugs so weird.

Oh it’s an exciting week. I’ve made painting progress! The bathroom remodel is going!

Just keep moving. I’ll drop some balls, sure, but I’ll keep enough in the air.

Also: Eldest Child has reached the age of academics and is… cooperating. Just cheerfully adapting to math and reading and writing and specific science study being part of the routine. It’s just another chore. Sure, no trouble.

Youngest Child keeps asserting “I’m not old enough for academics yet. I don’t have to yet.”

Yes, yes I know. I didn’t make your sibling at six. At seven I start suggesting occasional academic work. At eight I start insisting. You are on track kiddo, don’t fret.

Eldest Child has gone through and demonstrated proficiency on almost all the first grade skills I was certain I needed to see mastery of in the last month or so. There is a little bit left to cover, but not much. She’ll be done in September. I think the second grade skills I’m worried about will take us 2-3 months. If she keeps up this trend she’ll be working on fourth grade skills by the end of third grade. Having entirely skipped academics for years when her peers were being forced.

God damn I’m feeling validated.

Are my children perfect? First: define “perfect” but…. probably not. They are little shitheads. Like they should be. But I like them. I like them so very much. They are learning things in the ways I hoped they would be able to learn. I started planning for this for years before I had read research to back up my perspective. I totally went and looked for confirmation about my methods. I have found it in research and in my personal experiences. Sure I’ve read research saying it is impossible too.

I just… pay less attention to that research. Like most people.

There are a lot of people who were happy to tell me that “coddling” my oldest child by providing as much cuddling and nursing as she wanted will prevent her from ever being independent. I’ll stop laughing in a few years.

Does she want to go to school yet? No. But she knows that she will want to in a few years. She already can see the ways she will want to pull away and be independent. We talk about it. I feel so lucky that my kids get to pull away as they feel the desire instead of having to adapt to the expectations of others.

I need to order a few more books. Apparently there is a new trend in gifted education focusing on children as asynchronous learners. Hey, gimme that confirmation. I was way ahead in some areas and dramatically behind in others; the same is true of my children. Strangely I would say that Youngest Child is less asynchronous. Kiddo is not as startlingly advanced but also has fewer areas of noticeable trouble.

Eldest Child… she’s all over the map developmentally. They say of early potty learners that the children aren’t trained the parents are. I would say that Eldest Child hasn’t yet been trained in how to accommodate all of her asynchronous learning needs… but I’ve been trained. She and I talk about how my expectations of her are sometimes very advanced and strict… because she is capable in that area. When I talk to her about my expectations on different stuff she rarely indicates she thinks I’m pushing hard. When she does I’m happy to chill out.

Things like not expecting her to sit still very often. That’s been a serious thing. It’s why she didn’t move into a seat belt booster seat till eight. She wasn’t able to sit still earlier than this in a way that made me feel comfortable in a car. Which isn’t to say that I feel all children must be in a five point harness till eight.

But my kid’s developmental maturity is asynchronous. There are areas where she is impulsive in ways that can be a serious problem and I come down like a box of hammers because I had the same impulsive tendencies and I can point at the specific problems I’ve had for the rest of my life because of that impulsiveness.

Sometimes I seriously wonder if I’m hurting her because I’m not letting her fuck up in all the ways I fucked up so she won’t be learning the lessons I learned.

We all fuck up our children.

I’m not a perfect mother. Not by any measure. But I am getting to parent in the most ideal circumstances I can imagine. That’s just fucking luck. Yeah I prepared for it… but I’ve known other people who prepared and didn’t end up where they wanted to go.

Noah’s willingness to adapt to me and to provide the life I want to have is not something one can plan around. Holy shit I’m lucky.

Noah continues to be the only person I really ought to look to for determining my wacky ass course in life. He will be the only one walking the path with me.

Thank you, honey.

I had a very positive session with my therapist yesterday. She commented that she thinks that my behavior and attitude are night and day different since the journey. I’m more willing to look at positives and less phased by negatives. She says she rarely sees people have such extreme impact from one journey.

I worry about clinical statements like that. Why are some medications so intensely full of impact and why do some make me want to die? Most of the ones prescribed by a medical doctor make me want to die. It feels like the medications are all designed to decrease my feelings of possibilities. Conform. Be smaller. Don’t want so much. Shut up.

The medications I can get through more alternative settings all seem to be designed to cause me to think about new possibilities. I fucking live for new possibilities.

I have incredibly different entire body responses to the narrowing or the widening of possibilities.

I need to believe I can change and that I can change people. Or I can’t see a point in living. Even though stasis at this point would be stasis at by far the happiest point in my life so far. I don’t anticipate later periods in my life being happier than this time. I really don’t. But I’ll figure out how to change more people.

That’s something to live for.

I don’t see a lot of room for “worthless” in the future I’d like to have. I’m not saying I’ll ever stop being an asshole. I’m not saying I’ll stop hurting people as I learn. But I’m not going to run out of “stuff to give”. I’ll take breaks and be selfish sometimes. That’s part of the balance.

As always when I’m on the East Coast I talk to a Disney employee (or a few) about how much better Disneyland is. They can rattle of the reasons. They know they are not the real magic. “I travel out there at least once a year to remind myself of what the real magic is.”

It is about how immersive the experience is. It’s about how much there is to see and think about while you do things.

My house is getting towards being an immersive experience. I’m not done yet. I don’t have the spoons to finish the whole house this calendar year. Sooooo tired. I actually did a few hours of painting yesterday. Woo. I have a bunch of shelves back and today I can put the cabinet doors on to block off the chemicals. Woo. Now we can allow people (with small children) back in our house.

I really hope I finish the kitchen before I need to finish the mosaic. I’m trying to push myself. I’m so glad I did all that lay out work already. So glad. Soooooooo glad. I’ll have to fill in gaps and I’ll do it while talking to the tile installers. It will go faster and be more fun. After they are done with the bathroom I need to hurry up and paint in there and in the playroom. Because I want to not have a ton of paint to store. Right now… my paint collection is a little out of control and getting old. Time to use it up and start fresh in a few years. And I’d really like to be done by Thanksgiving. I STARTED THIS DAMN PROJECT IN JANUARY.

Because of the color palette I work with I don’t work with low VOC paint. I need to air out the house before I get pregnant. As another consideration.

Oh good grief.

So what does it mean to want to change the world? I’m not going to invite millions of people to my home, but there will be a lot of people. And most of them tell me that seeing what I do inspires them.

Why do I do the things I do? Because I see the possibility of them in my mind and it makes me crazy to not change what is to look more like what it could be.

That’s why I plant plants. It is why I paint. It is why I homeschool my kids. It is why I want to be who I want to be sexually. Because I can. Because it is something I need to be.

I’m sorta frustrated with my massage therapist telling me that instead of having more children we should fly to a foreign country and “pick out a baby”. Adoption is complicated and transracial adoption even more-so. I understand that multiple people in your family did exactly that so you know it is possible.

I’m not judging other people doing it. I’m saying I wish you wouldn’t tell me to do it. I think it is complicated. It is a set of complications I think I would fail at living up to. I deal really well with the set of issues that comes up dealing with my dna’s set of trouble. I’ve researched the shit out of that. But I am afraid that I would not put as much energy into tracking down everything I really would owe a child. I’m going to skate with my younger kids. It is going to be a very different parenting experience. I don’t know exactly what it will be like, but I know it won’t be hard the way the first set was.

It isn’t because of the help Eldest Child thinks she is going to offer. Ha. It will be because of the presence of the older kids and Noah working from home. It’s just different.

I should start chores. I have my monthly visit with Taylor today. That should be fun. It usually is.

I don’t need to change the big wide world. I don’t need to be a big fish. I’m happy in small ponds.

I woke up early enough that I have a prayer of getting this down before the kids wake up. I’ll hurry.

The cruise was fun. The most obnoxious part was my fault and that was related to just how many appointments we needed to have before the vow renewal. That got really old because we kept finding out “You have an appointment in 45 minutes. Stand around and wait.” And in order to get my hair done I had to go in for a pre appointment. And after the pre appointment she wanted me to go find internet (we didn’t have a phone or a computer between us) and get pictures because she wasn’t comfortable winging it from my description. That was the big fuss between us and Disney.

If that is the fuss… it was an easy trip. We adults didn’t get enough sleep because we were up until 11 or 12 every night and we were up before 7 most days.

I should describe the ceremony day. It was placed on my friend’s birthday which kinda sucked. I’m sorry about that. I got my hair done before my friends, which was sorta sad because I didn’t get to hang out and chat with anyone before the ceremony. Noah and I helped each other get dressed (we will do so lots in the future… might as well start then). He went upstairs and I… stood around my room alone for a long time. Eventually the coordinator came and got me and put me in the elevator that was being held all fancy-like for me. (The only elevator on the boat that goes to the top deck.)

It’s a small room called the Overlook. There is a fabulous view. I said I was cool with the piano player just doing Disney songs. I’m not going to fuss about that part. Bonus Daughter got to be the flower girl, my girls loved their entrance moments (hilarity), and I felt like an idiot trying to be formal. It was funny. The opening of the ceremony was the Disney standard non-denominational ceremony for vow renewals. They’ve got that down pat.

We interrupted to do our own vows. (Afterwards the piano player said they were the most real vows he had ever heard. It was kinda funny.) Our vows were… very us. We are careful to promise what we can deliver on. After that it was funny for us to take the rings off our fingers and hand them across to do the Disney-branded-ring-exchange. It was cute. The pictures are fun. I’m particularly charmed by some of the pictures of me with the kids. Because I would be. I like lots of the pictures with me and Noah. It was really fun to gussy up and take pictures.

Our buddy took our kids overnight. Which was rough on his only child who isn’t use to disruptive twerps making noise (aka my kids). Gah. We are so obnoxiously loud. Thank you for suffering for us.

It was nice to have a night in the room alone.

We ate at the sit down restaurant once and otherwise we lived at the buffet for breakfast and lunch. After the first few days were a sugarpalooza I exercised my fascist control tendencies and the children had to eat vegetables and fruit before protein before deciding if they had room left for sugar. Because I like to believe I have some influence on these things, I want to point out that my kids never had a serious temper tantrum. They got enough sleep, rest, and exercise that when I was all, “You know we have to take care of our bodies–vacation or not.” They nodded and agreed I was right.

We didn’t manage to overlap with our friends much. We had breakfast one morning with the dad/kid duo and otherwise we saw folks at dinner. That was a bit hard for me. We just couldn’t get on a schedule to spend time together. The one time Noah walked off to have fun with the other dad I tried to join them after a bit and couldn’t find them. So I just… didn’t have adult hangout time on the boat outside of dinner.

But I liked the boat. I tended to avoid the big crowds so I wasn’t in the pool much during the day. We enjoyed the water slide that goes over the side of the boat. I went on that with youngest child a bunch. I read a huge fat book. I rested. I guess I got what I was there to get. I didn’t sleep enough, but I definitely rested my body from my normal frenetic working pace. That was great.

We tried out the Disney version of a fancy pants tea party. I never ever need to pay for it again. I make as good of tea food. It was mostly a small show with two folks doing songs from Beauty and the Beast with a doll and charm bracelet/necklace an visits from Princesses. We are really spoiled with all our local tea houses in the bay area. The food on the boat just wasn’t impressive and given how we feel about tea as a part of our social rituals… we want good tea food. Not to mention that one of my kids snapped the head off the doll just a day or two later. So this effectively massively expensive doll… yeah. It wasn’t spectacular.

Mostly the kids sat there with cupcakes with a giant pile of frosting. There was 2 or 3 times as much frosting as cupcake. This was the big deal. Yeah…. we’ll pass. We do better tea parties at home.

I’m going to preen a bit about that. Although I don’t perform as Mrs Potts.

And I’m going to look forward to giving a tea party after this damn remodel is over. I’ve been to tea parties from coast to coast and in other countries. I know what makes a good tea party and mostly… I can do it well.

Sometimes I feel quite agog over the skills I have picked up this lifetime. I never thought I’d be this damn prissy. I can coax a whole room full of wild children through tea party manners so they practice their fine motor skills and etiquette. This is my idea of a good time.

What happened to me?

I don’t know, but I’m having fun.

My kids spent some time in day care… but not a lot. They wanted to hang out with us. Even when they went they usually didn’t stay long. (Youngest child skipped one dinner and that was fine with me. They eat in a more casual environment at kid care and I understand needing a break from manners.)

I strongly suspect that is part of how I get such good manners from my children. I understand that it is a performance and that they need breaks. I coax it, watch the performance and then give notes; then I pat them on the head and encourage them to let loose during off times. I’m stage managing them.

It isn’t the relationship everyone wants to have with their kids, but it kinda is what I’m doing with my kids. Recently a friend and I were discussing manipulation. They were expressing that they aren’t a fan of it. I said I manipulate people. That’s why I’m such a good teacher. They said I don’t manipulate I manage or guide them. (Emphasis mine.)

I giggled. Yes, I’m such an intensely good manipulator that people will find other ways of describing and defining it so that they can justify it. Yup. And yes, I am manipulating people basically all the time. I want to cause people to have positive feelings around me and I am an intense, difficult person. I carefully select from an internal menu of possible personality configurations and decide which elements are most likely to cause this person to have positive feelings. I have quite a range.

That’s manipulation. I’m not mean spirited about it. I don’t think I’m being “phony”. I’m being selective about how I manifest in front of people because there are real consequences to not being careful. I’ve paid the price of not filtering. I’m going to god damn filter for the rest of my life and I don’t feel ashamed. Yes, I manipulate people.

I mean you can try to put a fancier word on it to justify it so it doesn’t sound bad because people don’t like the word manipulate… but I try to be honest here. This is where I drop my filters and just tell the truth.

Yes. I manipulate people.

I have the potential to traumatize people every day. I have an overtly forceful personality and a host of topics that are normal and casual for me that could hurt people all day long. I’m very careful how I talk to people. I don’t see it as bad. I see it as trying to learn how to meet people at the level they can meet me at. I get through life by having fairly defined sub groupings of personality traits that I understand that others can handle. How do I decide that people can handle them? I test them in the field, of course.

There are days I can’t muster up the bandwidth to do a good job in choosing. If I have to be social on those days I tend to stand in the corner and not talk much. Like a clock that hasn’t been wound. It isn’t fixed to go in the proper groove so it just… stands there doing nothing. Of course on those days I take breaks from the corner to go find somewhere private and cry for a while. Then I find a corner again.

It is as predictable as weather.

On the trip Noah was reading me The Diamond Age out loud. The kids listened to some of it. Eldest child asked me, after hearing a section on tricky people, why a certain uncle doesn’t come around anymore. I was more honest than I have been in the past. I said, “He believes a few things and wants the right to do things that I don’t think he should do. So I asked him to stop coming around.” “Like what?”

Deep sigh. “Well he believes that all children must be submissive to adults. Remember what submissive means? No? It means you must do as you are told. You must be obedient.”

My kiddo flat out said, “Fuck that!”

I couldn’t have said it better, sweetie.

I continued, “He believed it, and he believed that when you turn 18 it is ok for him to ask you for sex.”

She sputtered. “But but… he’s our uncle, and he’s olllllllllllllld.”

In that moment I felt vindicated. Yes. I can do this. I can teach this. I can win.

My children will not grow up thinking that incest is normal or acceptable.

Even though my family teaches that. I can teach something different. My children understand that they own their bodies. They can kiss who they want when they want. It is up to them to decide. When they grow up and are ready for sex… I’m very confident they are going to be able to figure that out. These kids will point out if you guilt trip them and say stop it. They will probably not grow up to tolerate pestering.

They may end up a statistic because a man feels enraged by not getting their attention.

That’s a real worry in this world. Toxic masculinity is a real problem. I’m not saying every man is like this. I’m saying there are some men who are poisoned by their own beliefs about what being a man is.

Yes yes there are problematic women too. Can I go back to blathering about my vacation now?

After the cruise we stayed in an Airbnb in Orlando with the worst mattresses ever. Oh god my back hurt. And we spent a horrifying amount of money. The rental van was hit and got a big ding in the bumper. That was $500 extra. Oh yay. Universal Studios and Legoland together… I’m not going to admit how much that was. And mostly… it wasn’t worth the money. I didn’t like Legoland Florida for the same reasons I don’t like the World. It’s too damn big and spread out and hot and not shaded and… It’s a concrete oven.

Orlando, I think we need to break up. Ok, Potter stuff (we only saw Diagon Alley–I wasn’t up for paying for an extra park to see Hogsmeade although in retrospect given that we paid for express and could have done that instead… ahh hindsight.) was fantastic. Mostly I’m not into Universal’s theming or visual appeal. It’s ugly. Diagon Alley wasn’t labeled. You had to just… walk into a random building. It was beautiful. They air conditioned the shit out of this little place so you felt like you walked into England. (This is terrible for global warming. They air condition the outdoors in Florida enough to feel like England.) The buildings were beautiful. I hear they hired imagineers to get the look right. It is perfectly dilapidated yet functional and sturdy. Even the colors are just right. The shops are staffed with appropriately wacky people with funny voices and odd gaits. I don’t know if they are acting or if they just hired people with a variety of disabilities that result in different gaits. If so, I think that is awesome.

I sound like a mean bastard. People were real. In the variety of manifestations that is usually hidden or minimized. I don’t mean funny voices to be mean. I mean they sounded like a group of witches and wizards who have been allowed to grow up not hearing voices on tv they are supposed to sound like.

In most of life if someone has a very high or squeaky voice,they try to minimize it in some way. Here, they were the greater at the door and very prone to speaking a lot. It was delightful.

The food was quite good as well. The butterbeer was awesome. We are going to have to make that. But the price… unbelievable. I was kind of sick to my stomach all day. It wasn’t worth the price.

The best part of the Orlando leg was the grown ups hanging out in the kitchen getting drunk and playing Guillotine. That was hilarious and fun. Vero Beach was fun. The kids got to feel a warm ocean. Noah and I dove through waves we maybe shouldn’t have been playing in. The sea was pretty rough. We enjoyed the pool. Then we had a day in the room to rest then we came home.

That was pretty much our summer vacation.

Ok, Eldest Child would not stop yelling at her seatmate (yeah yeah, he was playing in a pestering way) so I told her she had one more warning before she was grounded the next day. Of course he pestered again so she had to yell at him.

We talked a lot about what the options really had been. We came up with lists. I think that next time… she’ll remember that she has options.

Am I always nice? No. I follow through on what I threaten so I’m not always nice. But… the day in her room wasn’t that bad. She did come out when she wanted to put something away. I spent a bunch of the day visiting in the doorway. We don’t really isolate for time out. Isolation hurts. But I will limit your movement a lot. Why? Because as you’re stuck there all day I’ll talk to you over and over about what your other options in that moment were. Yes, it is Monday morning quarterbacking. I know.

But you know what else I know? We are going to be on a lot of planes in her life. I know she’s flat encouraged me to have more kids and she’s going to have to deal with little pests. This is a problem that will come up again many times. I feel like making sure she remembers this time will pay off.

I gave her a solid dozen warnings before I said, “Ok I’m done. If you yell again you are spending tomorrow in your room.”

A dozen forking warnings.

I get to have a limit. I also moved her from her spot so she couldn’t be near her buddy any more and she was near a parent. It means I spent the rest of the flight unable to see anyone I knew. It really didn’t suck for me.

We all got through it jim-dandy-fine. We want to stop traveling for a bit. (Uhm it turns out we are going to Las Vegas because we had vacation points to use or lose because some folks changed plans earlier in the trip and… unless someone else wants to go to Las Vegas? I could change the name on the reservation if someone else wanted to go…Oct 16-19 I think? I’m in the back yard in the dark and the paper is inside…)

Anyway! We are not traveling in 2017. Not even to see the cool comet. Hmmm. Maybe the trip to Las Vegas could overlap with us not having a toilet in the house. That would be awesome.

I guess that is how I spent my summer vacation/tenth anniversary.

Oh I’m so glad to be back in Californian hot weather. It is down right pleasant.

This morning we started off with a half an hour run. The kids are getting to the point in martial arts where they are frustrated about not having more physical skill and strength than we have, so they asked if we could start more frequent exercise to build up. Yes! Sounds delightful.

Kids have unpacked their stuff. “Grounding” is pretty lightweight this time because Eldest Child is allowed to walk in and out in the service of cleaning up. I told her that I want her to think hard on how behavior needs to adapt in different locations and why and that’s the part I care about the most. Being inconvenienced by not being able to play all over will help you direct your thoughts.

I’m about 90% unpacked. I cleaned the kitchen (we left a serious disaster–I was so tired). I’ve pushed through a couple of loads of laundry and I have two to go. Unloaded, loaded, and unloaded again the dishwasher. Watering the front yard is a pain because I still don’t have a hose in the front and I have to carry buckets of water. But both yards are tended to and that’s important. Cat care and attention.

I paid the bills. We are decisively in the black. Oh good.

I’m taking a short break. I feel like I’ve earned it. I want my bedroom clean. I need to clean out the play room which has been acting as guest quarters. Construction starts again on Monday and that room is supposed to be empty. Where will it all go for now? Gulp.

I feel like the littlest chicken in Chicken Big (a wonderful children’s story) saying “But we’ll make room!”

I need to hire my quasi-step-sister (Dad’s bio-daughter) to help me with my trees. Apparently she is a professional landscaper and my trees need mad pruning.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I know that Noah arranged for a present because it has been sitting in the fridge since before we left. I’m not supposed to look. He accurately points out that I care about things arriving on the day-of and I tend to be kind of a twat about things that appear in advance. It is good to be understood.

The internet says my squash plants probably need more iron. I feel so grateful to live in a time of information. (Yellowing leaves, but not in a way that indicates infection…)

I’m encouraging my kids to do a purge. We are overflowing our ability to clean up again.

Here are some phrases we say a lot in my house that will go in my “Krissy’s rules for staying sane as a parent” book that my friends keep asking me to write:

• If you can’t clean up your stuff you have too much and you need to get rid of some of it. Do you want to own your stuff or have your stuff own you?
• A place for everything and everything in it’s place. If you can’t find a place… maybe you don’t need it.
• We are workers, not shirkers.
• If you ask for something more than three times in one day you are pestering and the answer is no for the rest of the day.
• You are one of the luckiest people ever born. You have food, clean water, safety from diseases, and free time. What do you want to do with it? (I think heavily of JFK when I say this one: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”)
• If you spend that money today what will you spend when _______ comes around?

That’s just off the top of my head.

On the trip a father was talking about why he bans inappropriate content for his kids. Eldest Child says, “Mom doesn’t ban things she just spends a lot of time talking shit about things she doesn’t like”. He looked like he wanted to do a spit take.

Yup, that’s my approach alright. Glad we understand each other. I read a terrible parenting book about raising perfect children through guilt and shame (that’s almost but not exactly the title and I’m too lazy to google it) and I don’t… exactly do as she preaches… but she had some good pointers. Her mom didn’t ban things. She just made sure you knew why she thought things weren’t good.

My mom went between banning things and going limp because her bans were completely ineffective.

I don’t bother to ban much. Oh. That’s another thing I say:

• I’m saving my no’s for boyfriends.

Frequently my kids do shit I don’t like and I don’t approve of. I tell them exactly how I feel and leave it up to them to do it or not. My theory is that interpersonal violence between teenagers is a serious problem and I want to have a whole lifetime of credibility that I’ll let you do any stupid thing you want but I’m going to be serious about safety concerns. I’m hoping that my kids will believe me when it comes to my evaluations of people to date. I have a spidey sense about predators. I’m hoping to goodness that my children will be willing to listen to my advice when push comes to shove. I tell them over and over that once they are ready I will be supportive of them dating. But try to seriously listen when I give you feedback. I’m not saying do as I say. I’m saying I won’t say “Get the fuck away from that person” unless I have a good reason and please believe me.

Some day I hope to be able to write down a whole set of formalized advice for keeping yourself safe. It will be created if and only if I can talk some of my sex worker friends into being interviewed. I don’t have the right to tell this story. I can just help pass along what has kept other people safe.

I think I can now. But how do I know how to protect young girls? I know how to go sit on the lap of every rapist.

Hopefully that has changed.

But that’s so far in the future. Time to go back to working.

I am home from Florida. I am flooded with feelings about parenting and motherhood in particular. I read two books on the trip that really blew my mind combined with watching all the families on the boat.

But: A) I can’t type with these fucking fingernails and B) I need to go to sleep and C) I have a mountain of work to do. The remodel gets started again on Monday. I need to take care of my plants, unpack, finish painting the kitchen, and many dozens of other tasks.

My hands will be busy. I’m so glad to be home. We talk periodically about maybe moving someday. As time goes by I wonder if I could. Coming home to Wonderland is such a euphoric experience. I’m surrounded by my art (I’m completely inspired by stuff I saw on the trip both for painting and the mosaics) and I’m such a fantastic home schooling environment.

I feel refreshed and ready to rededicate myself to my real job.

I am home schooling my children. Yes, that means I wear the bossy control freak pants. If you don’t like it, don’t come over.

I’m reminded that my life is as full as I need it to be and perhaps even over stuffed. I desperately want to see a whole list of people but I really want to get work done. I’m going to frantically work for the next several weeks straight. My house is turning into the picture I see in my head and it is glorious.

I don’t want a big house. I don’t want to live in a big city. I like my quiet suburb. I love my garden. I love my neighbors. I love how many hours a week I need to clean in order to have a company-ready-house all the time. (Specifically: not many.)

I love my children. I love that my eldest child got in trouble on the plane ride home and will spend tomorrow grounded and after a very long talk about consequences, other options next time, and why I have to follow through on what I threatened… and she said she understands that I’m in the right.

Behavior modification for the mother fucking win.

I don’t follow through on my threats to be an asshole. I follow through because then you believe me and trust me and know that I will always be consistent with you.

I’ve been thinking constantly about consistency. It was a theme in the books. Consistency from mothers. How much matters?

It’s complicated. I desperately want to write about what I’m thinking about the books (Her Mother’s Daughter, and The Diamond Age) Ok you nerds won’t think that The Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer is really a mother/daughter book… but I can pull that theme right out. Hopefully soon I’ll even have time to write about it.

Nell and Fiona both interacted with parents through the primers. That’s fucking huge.

This book has more influence on my parenting than I want to admit. This is my second read through.

By the way, I’m over Florida. Yeah, Vero Beach is great and I’m super sad I didn’t take Noah to the Keys…. but I’m so fucking over Florida.

I can’t god damn breathe. I can breathe just fine in Hawaii even though it is also humid as fuck. I can’t breathe in LA and I can’t breathe in Florida. Ugh.

Also: I hated Legoland in Florida. I find the California park to be wonderful. This is similar to my opinion of Disney World vs Disneyland. I hate the World and I’ll never go back. Universal, at least Diagon Alley, was awesome. But so horrifyingly expensive I wanted to cry. That was disgusting. And we were rained out of the biggest coasters. Woo.

I do love the Potter section. That was gorgeous. Also: gave me ideas for house stuff.

God I love that Noah doesn’t care how weird I make the house.

I will paint until I run out of paint this time. I can just tell. It’s going to be so fun.

To go back to that thing I do where every time someone asks me for money I hand them $5. We were passing a woman with a sign as we came out of getting groceries before going to the Disney Vacation Club property where we were going to go have a posh good time. “Noah! Noah! Get out money.”

She thanked me and asked God to bless me, that’s pretty normal in such situations. But then she said, “I’m trying.” Her voice broke. She sounded so sad and desolate. I said that I believe her and a tiny little spark appeared.

We all need to be seen. We all need to be believed. We all need to be helped.

Sometimes people ask me why I’m not afraid the person might buy drugs. I always laugh. I don’t have a high horse to sit on.

If I can afford to go on this trip I can afford to help people in front of me who need help. I have been that person. I was helped. All I can do is pass it forward. Yes, there might be consequences from getting the money I don’t like. I accept that possibility. But I’m also going to tip like a mother fucker on a cruise ship. Those people are working fourteen hours a day mostly for tips. They get very very little money. Yes I’m going to tip well. To the point where they gasp.

Isn’t this how trickle down economics is supposed to work? I have god damn arrived. I may be shivering (literally) as I cringe and think about my end of the year financial review. It ain’t gonna be pretty. I’m going to… have some feelings about myself and my spending habits. Ugh. But! We have no traveling at all scheduled now that we have given up on the idea of an around the world year because… we want a baby more than we want that.

I can go back to saving.

And I did get my mortgage down below $70. I’m not being too shamefully wasteful. And I am living within my means. I pay off my credit cards every month. I try to not feel like shit when we go on a trip. I save and save and save and build up the buffer and then go travel. And completely go over budget like holy fuck.

It’s bad. I mean, it’s not what I want it to be. I have less self discipline or maybe I just underestimate like fuck? Also, I tip a shit-ton of money. I brought $1,000 in cash. At least $400 went to tips/giving.

So yeah. I know why I spend so damn much money. I give it away. I think it is just.

But…ouch.

And… I haven’t done my #GiveYourMoneyToWomen yet this month. *head desk*

I MAY HAVE ANXIETY…… like whoa….

But I’m a privileged motherfucker. I’m so god damn privileged I blow my own god damn mind. I have incredible luck in this life. I have friends who love and support me very very much even if they kinda don’t want to sometimes.

I have a husband who makes me really want to stay alive just to see what he’s going to do over the next few decades. I think this will be neat. I’m going to have to do some ass kicking, but hey… only in ways we both like. Things like: go to conferences and speak about this research you are doing. Yes it is important. Yes I support it.

Even as I cringe about money. It will be comped later. I can take the hit.

I’m really excited to have another baby with this man. The circumstances really couldn’t be better.

Even as I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about nonmonogamy. This will be interesting. Really… a lot of things will be interesting. Probably all of it. We always are.

A train wreck in motion.

Once I read someone say something like “People always ask me how my relationship never has problems and I say ‘We just don’t air our dirty laundry‘.

Me, I hang all the laundry right on the line. The sun is a disinfectant.

We really don’t know what we are going to do. Christfuck.

Sorry Christians. I grew up going to church. I have to deal with my issues how I have to deal with them. Oh man.

I just know that I’m looking forward to every journey I will have with the people in this house. We are figuring it out together as a team because I’m teaching my children how to be able to do that. I like them and I admire them. Are they shitheads? Oh yes. They are my children and I have a different agenda than most people. I can live with that.

I don’t really have a choice because which other agenda could I even convert to? Oh craptastic. Can’t compute. Brain exploding.

Naw. I have to just keep doing what I’m doing.

Sometimes I blow the boat up. Yup. I do that. I’m a fucking asshole.

Life is really complicated.

I sorta live for complication.

This is the gap that pot fills. I wish I were a more patient person. I put myself into positions constantly where I need buckets of patience and…. I’m not the most patient person.

I love the Bonus Kids with all my heart. It is challenging that every parent socializes their kid differently. The Bonus Mama and I have different things that bug us. Neither of us are right nor wrong, we just are. We train our kids differently. This visit… the four kids are all in fucking bad moods and I’m having to stop, think, process, Ok…. why do the Bonus Kids have different expectations in this moment and what do I need to do to fairly express my expectations… which are not what they are used to.

There is no right or wrong in this equation. Everyone is completely fine. But these are young kids and if I want them to adapt to me I have to god damn explain what that means. I have to do it with a smile and gentle hands.

One family that I’m friends with believe it is never ok to touch their child when giving directions. They have worked out methods that manage their expectations with their kids. I’m a toucher. I’m big on a gentle guiding hand to push a child into the direction/expectation I have. Watching my friends has caused me to seriously question whether I’m appropriate or not. I don’t think my preferences are right. They are what work for me.

I touch for a lot of reasons. (I’m talking head/shoulder/arms/back. It is touching without consent but it isn’t nasty or mean or touching sensitive areas.) My experience of working with children is you have to get their attention before giving a correction. The fastest/easiest/most connecting way to do that effectively that I know… is touch. I don’t touch all day long and I work really hard to make sure these are gentle touches. I’m just redirecting attention. “Hey, listen to me for a minute.”

I will walk up to a kid and put my hand on their shoulder when they are screaming and flipping out and say, “Hey… do we scream in this house?”

If I want to get their attention without touching…. (I feel like I should put a bag over my head)… I usually end up screaming when they are really self focused.

I’m not proud. I think I’m a loser.

But I have found a system that works well for me. I don’t touch kids I don’t know. That’s over the line. This is in my house with kids I work with a lot.

My little niece in Scotland? I want to see her again. I won’t touch her. Not unless she initiates. Children of strangers…. I don’t touch them at all. That’s a troublesome line.

But kids I’m attached to who are in my house who spend a lot of time pawing at me? Yeah. I touch them without consent to get their attention sometimes.

I know that two wrongs don’t make a right, but somehow I’m learning something new about consent in this space too.

I can get the attention of lots of children, no matter how dysregulated they are, without touching. But I get fucking loud. I can project amazingly, fantastically well. I can quiet down thousands of screaming children because….I’m louder. This was a job skill in years past. At the beginning of rallies the bullhorn wasn’t loud enough to get any attention. But I can.

I’m strangely proud and ashamed of this. Fucking a I’m loud.

I try to not bring out the bellow unless there is a good reason. (Thousands of screaming children in an enclosed space….) But when I’m dysregulated the first thing to go is… voice volume control. I’m much better than I used to be but I still seriously struggle.

I think this is why I do so well with children who have emotional problems. Dear God I understand. Let’s sit around and commiserate on how hard it is to control ourselves. If you need to have a good cry because you are frustrated go right ahead. I do it all the time. It’s ok.

But pot gives me this extra lake of patience. I don’t have to consciously freeze my body before I do something inappropriate. Instead I have a blinking few seconds where I don’t know what to do but I’m not poised to SCREAM AS IF MY LIFE IS THREATENED. Ok, I’ll tell you the truth. Post-journey I’ve had a tiny amount of pot every day. I’m… inspired by what I am reading of microdosing. Ok, so normally when folks talk about microdosing they are referring to lsd or mushrooms and I am not using either of those. So I’m stealing a term that isn’t really mine. Gosh I’m an asshole.

Anyway. I’ve been consciously using very tiny amounts. I’ve been spreading it out. I’m using the vaporizer pen because it is a lot easier to give small doses. And I don’t have any smokable product in the house. This is the last of what was supposed to last me a month. This product comes in .5g quantities and I worked on it for weeks before I ran out of bud and I’ve used it for a week now. That’s a huge reduction in usage this week. If I were to use this pen as my primary method two months ago a cartridge lasts about a day and a half. This week it has been my only method and I didn’t use half a cartridge.

I’m looking forward to seeing where my tolerance is after two weeks of not having a choice because I don’t have any and I’m traveling. (How’s that for a convoluted sentence?)

I’m looking forward to having a frank discussion with my med-doctor about pot and pregnancy. All the other meds she wants me on are known to be bad for pregnancy. At this rate… I probably feel comfortable. Especially if I can force myself to make .5g last a month because I’m just using barely enough to impact my behavior and not enough to make me high…

Oxytocin is going to be a big deal. But that’s complicated right now.

Everything is always complicated.

Folks decided to change some of their travel plans during the upcoming trip. So I get to cancel a reservation and get some time share points back. They have to be used within 60 days. I’m thinking maybe Noah and I will sneak in a trip to Las Vegas. Use the points or lose them.

If you want to keep friends, flexibility is key. I understand why they want to come back. They are the only ones not home schooling.

Thank you for coming at all.

I’m packed. I’m excited. In 49 hours we are boarding the plane. Squeeeeeeeee.

This is going to be a ridiculously fun trip. We will rest. I know that many of my friends don’t like restful vacations. I need one. I’ll be a better, nicer person after serious rest. It’s been a lot of years of not resting. As all three of my therapists have said to me recently, “Rest is mandatory. You don’t rest. You need to find a way to rest.” (With minor wording variations and different accents and inflections. But whatever. Same message.)

I’m taking doctors orders. This is my happy face. I’m going to go play on a boat for a week. A ship. A floating hotel. I’m going to be pampered. My kids will be entertained. We won’t be bringing screens. Interact with your environment. Learn how to find things to look at.

Only boring people get bored. Entertain yourself.

We can do it with sticks and rocks. We can do it in a hotel room. Now we’ll go do it on a boat with theaters and pools and a frickin water slide that goes over the edge of the boat so you can see all the way to the ocean.

Ridiculous. We are spending what used to be 6 months of my income on this trip. I saved up for years. And then the damn clothes ended up being way the fuck more expensive than expected. Shit. So I’ll be paying the trip back for a while too. Sigh. But I’m going to wear this fucking outfit forever. (The dress will cheerfully accommodate an 80+ weight gain! This sucker is roomy because that was the cut of the era. Ahhhh, room for pregnancy. Ok, not the corset dress. That I’ll have to stay about the same size for. Whatever. I really wanted it.)

I’ve returned to this size and shape over and over again since I was 15. I’m comfortable calling it my approximate size even if I do fluctuate in actual weight.

Ok. Time to focus again.

My hands hurt. My head is full. My heart is confused.

I don’t do things because I want to hurt Noah. I do things for lots of reasons. The fact that I hurt Noah in the process isn’t the goal, but yeah it happens. How much do I need to not do what I want/need to do in service of Noah? That’s a complicated negotiation.

There’s a lot I need to agree to if I want to be considered in the exact same way.

Noah’s not wrong when he points out that he used to be more ok with poly because he was less enmeshed and I didn’t like it. I wanted more of him. So I need to act like I’m getting more of him.

An awful lot of what we like about one another is that we really see one another. There isn’t a lot of “Oh you’re so awesome!” without specific support for why we think that. We temper our positive beliefs with “And by the way you suck at _____, _____ and ______. Fix that.”

Neither of us desire being seen as better than we are. We are both fuck ups who want to fuck up less over time. That takes honesty and perception.

I don’t get that from anyone else and I know it.

If you can’t look back on yourself 18 months ago and say “Wow I really sucked” you aren’t trying hard enough. 18 months ago I was still willing to put my head down and grit my teeth through stuff that was hurting me that I didn’t like. I managed to get to a point where I can’t do that anymore.

I hope it is progress. I’m backsliding in other areas. Is it backsliding? I’m reverting and going back to tricks that worked well for a long time in different settings. I haven’t tried them much in a long time because they wouldn’t have helped. Did they help this time?

Yes and no.

God that’s hard.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Are we changing for the better? I hope so. We are talking about some things. Oh! And Noah has a therapy appointment scheduled.

We are trying.

Do or do not. There is no try. Oh fuck off.

How do you manage to do stuff without trying and failing a lot? I’ve never found a way. Is that a justification for fucking up? I kinda think being alive is the only justification that someone needs for fucking up. We all do it.

I want to write this for strangers. Which means I need to give context that might be annoying for folks who know me well. Sorry about that.

It’s been a long journey. I’m only 34. I turn 35 in just over three weeks, so I’ll call myself 35. I’ve spent  almost 33 of those years in therapy, much of it court ordered. I have long been considered “treatment resistant” with my many mental and physical problems. For those who don’t know my diagnosis list includes (in no particular order): Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, fibromyalgia, TMD (jaw problems), and Pre Menstrual Dysphoria Disorder. Recently my therapist and psychiatrist are starting to suggest ADD. Because I need more letters in my alphabet soup.

Pretty much what all that can be summarized as, “I’m a highly traumatized person who is fairly fucked up.”

When I say traumatized I mean both long-term severe neglect as well as periodic extreme trauma. Things like having my face ripped off by a pit bull (117 stitches were necessary to put it back on). Things like having my biological father rape me and hold a gun to my head. Things like moving more than 50 times before I was 18 and attending 25 schools. I mean things like having to steal food in order to not starve. It was bad. If you want to read more about it… I wrote a book.

I mean things like I am the product of rape. Fairly recent studies show that being completely unwanted by your mother during pregnancy can have a permanent lifetime impact.

All of these things combine to create a person (me) who has had a lifetime of very little intrinsic self worth, very few self protection mechanisms, and very little inherent ability to figure out what is healthy for myself.

It’s complicated.

I’ve been raped a lot. Starting when I was a toddler and moving into my 20’s. Some of these rapes were very clearly RAPE. Some of them were… kind of muddy. Guess who gets to define them as rape or not? Me. No one else. I wish I had a scale for talking about my experiences, not because I want to invalidate the experiences of other people but because talking about my personal experiences is really hard because they all sound… kind of equivalent when I’m speaking about them to other people. Or someone will think that some of them don’t count because on their personal scale, some of my rapes “don’t count”.

You know what? People are differently traumatized by experiences based on a wide variety of personal factors.

I’m not going to bounce back from some things as easily as some people. I’m going to bounce back from other things far more easily than most people. Because we are all different and that is normal, healthy, and ok.

It has been a long journey for me. It has been hard for me to manage my severe self hatred, self mutilation, and disordered thinking. I’ve had a freakish amount of support for someone as traumatized and poor as I was. I prosecuted my father. As a result I was able to get my therapy paid for by the state because I was the victim of a violent crime. My therapists submitted paperwork year after year after year to request continuances on my treatment because they knew I would probably die if I was left to make it through my early years on my own. I am very lucky. The state only wanted to pay for a few months of treatment. Instead they paid for almost ten years. Then I had private insurance and could handle the co-pay. More recently I just pay out of pocket because incest/severe trauma specialists often won’t fuss with insurance.

I’m very lucky I can afford the support I need.

Not everyone is so lucky.

I did not report most of the rapes I experienced. Why? Because I didn’t think anyone would believe me. Because the circumstances were convoluted and complicated and layered. Because after the one attempt at prosecution (which wasn’t actually successful because he committed suicide instead of going to court after fully confessing to the detectives who interviewed him) I tried again when someone spiked my drink and raped me when I was unconscious.

The detectives I worked with as a 16 year old were supportive, caring, and wonderful. The detectives I worked with as an 18 year old told me “What did you expect would happen when you went on a date with a guy to a party?” and “We aren’t going to ruin that nice boy’s life for you.”

I never again attempted to use the legal system to defend myself and I don’t know that I would ever have the courage again. The only reason I had the nerve with my father was because he raped me for so many years and it was so egregious. The detectives who interviewed him came to me afterwards and told me, while pea green, “I have never heard something so horrifying in my whole life. He corroborated every story you told and added details and told us many stories you don’t remember.”

I’m glad my brain decided I don’t need to remember everything. But sometimes I think about going through the legal channels to get the police report. Because… frankly with this much distance I sort of wonder what did I survive?

I came into the bdsm community at 18. By 19 I was in a 24/7 M/s relationship with a man almost 13 years my senior. He had been in the community for many years and had a really established reputation.

I would like to formally say that my Owner probably fucked up a few times with very minor negotiation details because we are all human but he never ever harmed me. He was the first person who respected my boundaries and lived up to his commitments with me. I’ll be grateful for him for the rest of my life. He did not abuse me. He did not rape me beyond carefully negotiated rape play scenes. They were never traumatizing and in fact helped me work through a lot of trauma.

Outside of my relationship with him my experiences have been more muddy. I would say that the vast majority of my bdsm partners have been respectful, honorable, wonderful people. Thank you for honoring me by sharing the gift of play.

Then there were the people who heard “Don’t do X” and did X after restraining me so I couldn’t resist. One of the people who did this has apologized profusely, publicly and in a way that made me feel like he really did misunderstand and fuck up. I’ve known him for 16 years after that event and I’ve never heard a single other story about him fucking up like that. It was a genuine mistake, he learned from it and I healed and life moves on. I don’t want to make it sound like all people who violate consent are horrifying unrepentant monsters who should be burned at the stake. I don’t believe that.

I have committed rape. I was a child. Five years old to be specific. I didn’t know it was rape for many years. When I found out it was rape I denied it and called the person who was accusing me a liar. I was twelve when I denied it up one side and down the other. I called the parent of the person I raped and said that the person was lying about me. I feel so much shame for my actions that I cannot possibly express the extent of my feelings. But now, as a 35 year old who has not (to the best of my knowledge) ever done something like that again… I am trying to forgive myself. I was doing what my father told me to do. I was trying to be good.

I understand that a great many rapists are following the scripts they were given by their family, by society, and by the media for how to be a good/strong man/person/dominant/whatever.

When I became an adult I reached out to the person I raped and I spoke to them. I apologized up one side and down the other for raping them and for denying it and getting them in trouble. I didn’t and don’t think I deserve forgiveness from them. That is up to the person I hurt.

You can never undo a wrong that big.

Back to my adulthood. During my relationship with my Owner I had the great fortune to be introduced to a number of professional sex workers. These women were the first people to really explicitly talk in front of me about boundaries, how to enforce them, how to keep yourself safe, and how to not give a shit about not meeting someone else’s needs. I’m still in touch with many of them. I count them as friends and I’m grateful for their presence in my life.

When I left my Owner I… didn’t do a great job of keeping myself safe. I had friendships with several men that involved a lot of small slow increases in boundary violations and I didn’t retreat from the relationships. I didn’t really know how. I was still in contact with my biological family. I was still trying to figure out how to separate my feelings of worthlessness/feelings of deserving to be hurt from whether or not I should put up with the person in front of me hurting me.

I still struggle to identify within myself when my desire to engage in bdsm practices comes from a Harm Reduction desire to have someone else hurt me (because they will probably do less damage to me than I will do to me) or when it comes from a place of just genuine sexual desire. I do genuinely get off on bdsm. It isn’t all bad. It isn’t all trauma and fuss. Bdsm has been the door to me learning a lot about my own strength, worthiness, and genuine friendships.

I am grateful for my friends in this community. Your faith in me has carried me when I could not carry myself.

One particular rape sticks out in my mind. It happened when I was 24. I was at a public sex party. I had decided to do GHB with a few friends at the party. When the party host (who was a sometimes sex partner of mine) asked me to go to a back room with him I thought nothing of it. I was completely ok with the idea of having sex with him. With a condom. I was not on any form of birth control and as a fertile womb carrying person… I needed a condom to be used. He knew that about me. He had unprotected sex with me while I said “No no no no” and tried to push him off. I wasn’t strong enough, not at all with the drug in my system.

When it was over I stumbled out, grabbed my clothes and went to sleep off the drug in my car before I began the 35ish mile drive home. I cried a lot. I didn’t tell anyone for a long time.

I thought I deserved it. I didn’t think I had the right to call it rape.

It was rape. I didn’t deserve it. After a while I started writing about it publicly and I used his full name. Some of our mutual friends brought it to his attention, asked him about it, and asked him to contact me. He said, “I don’t remember that happening but if you feel hurt by something I’m sorry”.

I… didn’t feel better. In the years since I have had to deal with his name coming up in a variety of contexts and I feel sick to my stomach every time I hear about him. He is a serial predator and I’ve heard about a number of other women with similar and worse stories.

I am very lucky that a number of party hosts know me, trust me, and based on my story and other stories they have banned him. Thank you my friends.

Recently on Fet I’ve been reading about cases of “consent violations” that turn my stomach. The part that turns my stomach is all the people saying, “Oh don’t condemn the person who made a mistake.” Wow. I…

“When do we forgive people who have made a consent mistake?”

I cringe. I cry. Do you know who decides when someone needs to forgive someone who harmed them? The person who is harmed. No one else.

I may want a scale so I can talk about the effect my rapes have had on me, but I don’t want a scale so I can judge whether or not someone else’s experiences “count” or not. I do not have that right. Only the person who is harmed gets to decide that. I wish I had a scale for talking about my experiences. But I sure as shit don’t want someone else deciding for me.

When people say, “Did you go to the police? No? Then it’s not real rape” my stomach clenches. I tried twice. Once successfully. Once I was rebuffed. There were many other rapes. Starting when I was seven years old.

I didn’t think anyone would care about a piece of white trash. My reading of statistics and police policy indicates that I was right on the money. I’m very lucky I was supported in prosecuting my father. Very few victims get that kind of support.

I’m writing this because right now I feel on the crux of changing things within myself. I have managed to hit a fairly major breakthrough in my therapeutic process. I did actually find a way to release some of the shame, blame, and guilt I feel over existing. I have managed to get a break (at least for a few days… so far…) from the horrifying voices in my head that tell me I’m worthless and should die.

I’m very grateful after so many decades of being considered near-hopeless.

All of this to say that I feel like I might get to enter a new stage. I might get to figure out more about what bdsm, sex, connection, and intimacy might mean to me. This is exciting and terrifying.

I don’t know how other people figure out what drives them. I don’t know how other people figure out what they need vs what they want vs what would be tolerable if someone else really wants it but they don’t care about it.

I have had a very hard time differentiating these things in my life. I’m not blaming anyone, not any of my abusers, but I’m trying to be honest with myself about the difficulties I have experienced so that I can hope to make progress. If you can’t be honest with yourself how can you grow? If you can’t understand where you come from how can you figure out how to get where you want to go?

I need to find some compassion for myself. I have not traditionally had a lot of compassion for myself. I have felt contempt. I have felt fury. I have felt disgust and hatred. Right now I am empty of contempt, fury, disgust, and hatred. I don’t know what will come next. There is this void inside me where I am waiting to see what comes next.

What does being an integrated person mean?

It means having emotions in my body and being able to identify them without scorn. It means being able to have limits and boundaries without hating myself.

I haven’t had much time in my life where I haven’t felt consumed with self hatred. I’m having a fairly surreal couple of days here. I wonder how long this will last.

I’m writing this in this way because I feel heavily triggered by public conversations somewhere else and I’m trying to not wade in deep. There is no win for me in wading in there. So I stay here in my sandbox and talk to myself. This isn’t about my reaction to your journey. This is about me trying to figure out what I’m doing on this journey of my own.

Where am I going? What am I doing?

I’m trying to figure out how to have connection without needing people to harm me. I’m trying to figure out how to love myself. I’m trying to figure out what I have to give back in this life. Yesterday Noah reminded me of a quote from The Last Unicorn ““No,” he repeated, and this time the word tolled in another voice, a kings’s voice; not Haggard, but a king whose grief was not for what he did not have, but for what he could not give.”

I am at a fairly unique point in my story. I can perceive how lucky I am… and not hate myself for it. I want to move forward with this feeling. I want to figure out how to use the extraordinary luck I have been granted in this life to help others. Others who have not been so lucky.

Not everyone who suffers terribly has years of therapy paid for. Not everyone who suffers terribly is awarded money in court, enough to keep them safe for more than a decade. Not everyone who suffers terribly ends up financially secure, nay rich. I’m not in the 1%. But there is the non-zero possibility I’ll get there. I don’t need many more years at the rate of income we have coming in before I will be able to manage that.

That is astounding to someone who once stole food to eat, to someone who slept in cars and on couches and floors in other peoples homes for years.

How did I get here? One step at a time.

Not everyone can do this. Why did I? It’s not because I’m a better person. It’s not because I’m more deserving. It might be, in part, because I am in fact smart. I am constantly shocked by the number of people who email me, call me, or show up at my house to say, “I don’t understand this and I know you will be able to explain it to me.” I wouldn’t be doing so well financially if I didn’t have brutal self discipline with money.

I taught myself first. That’s part of why I’m a good teacher. I’m a hard, resistant, obnoxious student. If I can get through to me… most other people are a cake walk.

Why am I still writing on this? Apparently cause I want my hands to hurt.

I think I’m just enjoying how it fees to be inside a head that isn’t screaming with hate. I’m enjoying the feeling of exploding possibilities.

I appreciate how many people who work professionally in mental health are excited about what I want to do with the incest data base in the future. I’m told over and over and over that there is a serious need for someone to go do that work. I want to do it. I want to learn how to be worthy of hearing the stories. I don’t want to interpret them. I just want to help those of us in the cohort feel less alone. I want us to understand the commonalities in our experiences. I guess I want to codify the stories? Is that the same as interpret? I hope not. I hope I can be more truthful than that. So much is lost in interpretation. I don’t want to lose the truth that each story carries on its own. I just want to…

Help us figure out what kinds of things tend to happen. I want to know how the others are doing. I feel kinship. I feel relationship. I feel connection with other incest cohort folks.

Even the perpetrators.

I’ve been reading a lot about forgiveness. Who should forgive the perpetrators? Maybe that forgiveness needs to come from elsewhere in the community and not from the folks they acted upon.

Notice how hard I’m trying not to say victims or survivors?

Perpetrators still… seems relevant and fair.

I need more words. I need to hear more stories. I need to hear what people call themselves. I don’t know.

I think I’m so god damn lucky in this life that survivor and victim are seeming less relevant by the year. It’s complicated.

Does that mean I need to forgive my father? I don’t know. Do I need to forgive Paul or Kevin or Michael? Or. Or. Or.

I think maybe they need to be forgiven by someone. Not necessarily by me. Even if I do forgive them that needs to be about me. It doesn’t mean I ever need to talk to them again. I don’t have to. I owe them nothing.

This is all so complicated.

What do I believe in?

I believe in my children. I believe in my infinite capability to adapt. I have proven to myself that I can adapt long past when other people freeze up and just can’t.

I can.

Why?

I don’t know. Will I become exactly what other people want? Fuck no. I didn’t say I would conform. I said I would adapt. Because I do. Over and over and over again.

The more I read about developmental trauma the happier I am with myself as a parent. I am doing the work. I am adapting as they need me to. I hold them close and let go whenever they need me to. I react to their emotions and mirror them. I teach them how to identify and deal with their emotions. I teach them all the things I had to learn painfully out of books and in therapy. I do it with a great deal of gentleness and love.

I’m not perfect. But that would actually be a problem too. I’m not supposed to be perfect. I’m supposed to screw up and grow. So I can model how that works.

We all violate consent sometimes. We all have to apologize.

That’s part of life.

Right now my beloved children are gathering milkweed seeds and spreading them all over the yard (and our neighbors yards… whoops…). They are dancing and spinning and singing.

This moment is perfect.

Several kind people have asked me if I’m taking all the supplements I should be taking to rebuild after using MDMA. Yes, sweet friends, I am. I know that fucking with your brain is complicated business and I am currently taking like 41 pills a day, two kinds of powdered supplements, some weird shit suspended in honey, and many kinds of homeopathic drops. I don’t “believe” in the homeopathy shit, but I have to admit I feel a lot physically better since I’ve been seeing this woo nutritionist. So I do it. (One Zyrtec, one stomach acid reducing pill, the rest are vitamins and nutritional supplements. Yes. I’m fucking taking the pills.)

I feel that I have been lucky in that all of my drug experiences have been with people who worry a lot about front loading and rebuilding after using drugs. The people who introduced me to drugs are functional people with jobs, children, and relationships who can’t afford to fuck themselves up. I was taught quite a bit about managing ones body when one makes alternative choices.

I wish my siblings had “grown up” around such advice. Maybe their lives would be different with their addictions.

Am I addicted to MDMA? I go years without using it. I use it for personal growth and it has helped quite a bit in that department. I feel it has worked better than all the psych drugs psychiatrists have ever put me on with lower side effect profiles.

How am I feeling? I slept well last night. I had a dream that has been recurring since I was young. It’s a fully fledged story about a homeless girl and a boy she falls in love with. Someday I will try to write it down to do it justice. It heavily features pistachio cake for reasons passing my understanding. I had to look up pistachio cake recipes this morning to see if such a thing actually exists and apparently it does.

How am I feeling? I still feel… calm. Not detached, exactly, but at a slight remove from my normal sense of being. I feel… empty but not in a bad way. I feel like I am not consumed with thoughts of self hatred and wanting to die. Instead there is room inside me. I don’t know what will fill that space.

I’ve been spending way the fuck too much time on Fetlife because I’m avoiding Twitter for reasons of it ripping my self esteem to shreds. There are a couple of scandals blowing up in my community. A rape case, which happens every so often in the community. And a case of a top using a technique they should not have used and almost killing people. I won’t get more specific because holy shit I don’t have the right. But these things are weighing heavily on my mind.

Holy crap for Crisco. Eldest Child just woke up and can read the paragraph about my dream. Time to close this forking screen.

———————————————————————

Took a break for snuggling, map reading, and breakfast.

Today is going to be nice. I get to go do post-trip-processing with the therapist I worked with and a lovely friend is coming over for dinner. It’ll be good.

My children are reading books right now. They should be getting dressed, brushing their teeth and hair, and otherwise getting ready for the day. I’ve already done some of that and we have to leave in an hour. I also need to water the plants before I go.

I asked Eldest Child this morning if she understood that her dad and I are constantly studying stuff the same way she and Youngest Child do. She said she didn’t know that. I started rattling off all the stuff they see me doing that I’m just learning and her mouth fell open in shock. “Really? You’ve only been gardening as long as I’ve been alive? Ha! No wonder you kill so many plants!”

Watch it, girl.

But… yes. That’s why I kill so many plants. I really don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.

I feel so lucky to live the life I’m living. Loving and learning is what I do with my time. I… I don’t do much stuff I don’t want to do any more. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with housework and I feel like I don’t want to do it right now or I feel cranky about the fact that I have to clean up other peoples messes… but even that is progressively more rare. My kids clean up after themselves and I really don’t mind doing my share. I like living in a tidy space. We have a small house and living in a mess means it is hard to do art and projects and play. If we keep stuff picked up our house is incredibly versatile. If we don’t put things away our house is soon an impassible pit and I don’t like that. So cleaning is something I mostly do because I want to. Because I really want the result.

How many people really feel like their life is full of what they want to do instead of what they have to do?

If you list the things I “have to do” it consists of sleeping, eating, paying taxes, shitting, peeing, breathing….

I’m a lucky bitch.

I feel overwhelmed with gratitude.

These days with Noah doing so much of the cooking… seriously my have to chores are negligible.

God I’m grateful for that man.

I’m not going to finish painting the kitchen before we leave. Deep sigh. Noah has been pushing me to rest before/after the MDMA experience. Thank you, love. In general Noah has been actively encouraging me towards less workaholism. (I suspect this is partially selfish because when he demands that I rest I often want him to rest near me… which means I’m not working until I cry and yelling at him for resting while I work… no… I’m not always nice.)

Noah is trying to express more of what he wants from me in terms of bdsm. This is important. It means I can have a better idea of what he wants and try to figure out how it is different than what I want. This is complicated but important.

I have more work to do.

But this space I’m in right now, where nothing in my head is telling me that I should die… I think that might make it easier.

I have picked a lot of bdsm in my life because I actively wanted to do that instead of self harming. I have picked a lot of the bdsm I have engaged in because I wanted to be hurt. I have not done all of my bdsm from a nice happy place of feeling good about myself and wanting to have my needs met. Having someone else hurt me in ways that were not fun or gratifying or enjoyable… was Harm Reduction.

You know why? Because mostly I pick people who genuinely don’t want to harm anyone let alone someone they like. I mostly have been fortunate enough to play with people who like me a lot as a friend even if they aren’t in love with me. And I would say that the majority of my play partners have loved me. Even if they did not want to marry me and settle down love me.

That is so easy to see today. My owner, my monkey fucker, Daddy, Puppy, Daddy James, Miss V, Dad… I could go on for a while but I’m running out of easy pseudonyms and I don’t want to actually out my play partners.

These people love me enough to want me to be healthy and ok. These people want to know me still.

That’s… a big deal.

Do you realize that I’m not many years away from knowing my scene friends for as long as I knew my biological family?

That’s…. a harsh thing to think about.

Beautiful let me know that Kacey Musgraves has a new album out (yay!) but she warned me to be careful of the song on the album about family. I’m so glad she did. I listened to a minute of it and turned it off.

My blood… is not there for me. And never has been. My children will be. Maybe. If I don’t fuck this up.

Do you know who has been there? Sarah. Jenny. My play partners and my lovers. Noah.

I feel like there is space inside of me to feel that love in a way I haven’t before. Like there is this chasm on the other side of a mighty dam just waiting to be filled with all the love that has been there for so very long.

Jenny has loved me since I was 12 years old. Jenny was there the night my brother killed himself. The night my father killed himself. I went to her right after Uncle Bob died and I cried on her shoulder again.

I am not alone.

And now I’m crying. But it’s not a bad cry.

I feel really lucky.

There’s something I want to write about desperately and it feels unwise to do so just now. Let’s see if I can organize my thoughts while being all vague and confusing to other folks. Cause I’m all awesome like that.

Long time readers know that I struggle a lot with self worth. This is a pervasive problem that comes up over and over for me. Do I deserve to be alive? Am I a waste of resources/oxygen/life/etc? I read lots of books about developmental trauma so I’m well aware that my issues are textbook for people who live through the kind of early life I had.

Sometimes I need to step out of the box in which I live. I stepped out of my bubble last year. I went across the country. But I was in my box the whole time. The box that tells me that I’m not as good as people around me. The box that tells me that I am a worthless whore who should be giving up the good things I have to people who are better and more deserving than me.

That’s pretty much anyone. It’s why I give so much money away. It’s why I help people to the point where it is almost damaging to myself. I do not see myself as a person who “deserves” anything good.

But I have a lot of good in my life. I have a husband and children who adore me.

{Side note: after a screamtastic/difficult morning the afternoon and evening improved. I ended up having a conversation with my five year old that blew my forking mind. This morning during one of my shitty moments I said, “I’d really like to say screw you”. Kiddo asked what that meant and Noah… delicately explained that it is an adult colloquialism that means I don’t care about you and you should go away. Later this same kid flipped me off. I said, “Are you flipping me off?” [A few days ago the kids asked what flipping someone off was/means and we explained in fair detail.] In the afternoon kiddo said, “I need you to never say screw to me again. That’s not ok. And I’m really sorry I flipped you off. That wasn’t nice.” This is what my five year old child says. Holy shit. I hope I can grow up to be as wonderful as this person someday. I said that I was very sorry too. I really didn’t mean it. I care about my kid so so so much and I’m really sorry I lost my temper and said hurtful things. I said that I can forgive flipping me off. I have done much worse. We have had a few good snuggles this evening. Kiddo asked if flipping me off was worse than running away. I said, “No. Running away means you don’t feel safe in your home and you have to get away from people who are hurting you. Flipping someone off means you are feeling angry. It’s ok to feel angry. If you feel unsafe we are doing something very very wrong and you should be protected from us. I really hope you never feel so unsafe in your home that you have to run away.” Kiddo turned to face me full on, grabbed my face with both hands and said, “Mom. I feel safe with you. You won’t hurt me. Even though you get mad you just raise your voice. That’s not nice but it’s not hurting me.”

How did I get such a child?}

I need help to step out of this box I live in. The box that says absolutely anyone could be a better mother to my children because I am such a nasty harpy. Sometimes it is hard to view their devotion as anything other than proof of how little I deserve them. Because, as I was told over and over as a child… abused children are the most loyal. This was always said with the implication that if I was not yet loyal I needed to be abused more.

Sometimes I wonder what in me is so broken that I could severe what bond I had with my mother entirely. That’s a huge thing for a person to do. My mother lives 30-some miles away and I haven’t seen her in over five years and I may never do so again in this life. That’s a big fucking deal.

People don’t abandon their mothers easily. There are mountains of literature on this.

How could someone who abandoned their mother like that turn around and create true, lasting bonds with anyone? I wonder and wonder.

I’ve read a lot about attachment theory. Not being attached to your mother usually means there won’t be a lot of attachment for you in this life.

I was reading just this morning about how women like me usually can’t pay appropriate attention to an infant and we pass the damage down generation after generation.

Do you know how I managed to pay a lot of attention to my infants? I all but stopped all other relationships. I went into my little cave and I met every need. I held every gaze with love. Every squawk of discomfort was met with concern. “Hey little person. What do you need? I love you. I want you to feel safe.”

Through this process I hoped to heal myself. I hoped that by handing this love and care to another person I would be able to plug the hole at the bottom of my leaky bucket and learn how to feel the love that people pour into it.

I know I am loved to an uncommon degree by my friends. I have fucktastically loyal friends. They have weathered storms of emotion and drama and fuss. They love me, warts and all. They love me even though I make it so very difficult to love me. They show up. They show up in my life and my house and my adventures.

Why can’t I feel this?

My submissive and his slave both love me to a degree that is nearly palpable when we are all in a room. Why don’t I feel it more?

I can see it. I know it is there. Why don’t I feel it?

Why do I build these walls between me and Noah?

Why do I persist and persist and persist in not feeling loved.

Jesus. I’m a fucking asshole.

Or maybe I’m brain damaged.

Can I be utterly worthless and priceless at the same time? Can more than one thing be true? Can I be loved and not deserving of love at the same time?

Is anyone deserving of love? What does it mean to be deserving of love? Do you have to do anything other than exist?

I love you because you exist. Not because of what you have done for me. I may be grateful for what you have done for me. But the love is separate. The love just happens. Why can’t I feel it from other people. I can feel the love I have to give to you.

I feel it like a cauldron bubbling inside me. It is going to overflow the pot and cascade all over the counter.

Side note: I just got a message from one of the folks I donate to every month. I make a difference in her life and in the lives of her children. I don’t give a lot of money, when you are that poor it doesn’t take a lot to make a difference. It is so easy to say to her that I give her help because she deserves to get it from the universe and I wish I could do more.

Why don’t I feel that way about myself? Why don’t I feel like I deserve love or support or care? I don’t think I deserve it. I think I get it. But deserve is… orthogonal to getting.

They just aren’t on the same axis at all.

I need to get out of this box. This box that says I should die because I do nothing but hurt people.

That’s a fucking lie. I just got a god damn email like to fucking minutes ago saying that I do a lot to help this person. And she’s not the only person on my donation list. And I have a lot of people that I help in other ways. My god damn neighbors wouldn’t be inviting me in to tell me that they have a whole bunch of questions about life and they just know I’ll have interesting answers if all I did was hurt people.

I struggle a lot with the idea of grandiosity. Many disorders I don’t want to be diagnosed with involve feelings of grandiosity. I don’t think I’ll be president. I don’t think I’ll be famous. I don’t I’ll be important to massive numbers of people.

I just think that I’ll have maybe a larger than average impact on the folks I do touch. The dozens or hundreds or maybe thousands of them.

Is that grandiosity?

I don’t leave a large impression because I’m important. I leave a large impression because I’m unapologetically weird as fuck. That seems to be utterly shocking for folks. I stick in the mind because I really don’t want to conform and I’m fucking mouthy about it. I can’t be like you. I can only be like me.

It isn’t that I will never change. I will change and change and change again. But I will do so to be ever more like me.

Whatever the fuck that means.

I keep wondering if I should stop swearing. I read about how swear words are implicitly violent. That swearing in a conversation is a way of establishing dominance and intimidating people. Well, shit.

I don’t want to intimidate anyone. I just fucking talk like this.

Sometimes it feels like my unwillingness to change for other peoples comfort is part of why I do not deserve to live.

I tell myself over and over and over that it takes all kinds. It takes all kinds. It takes all kinds. It’s ok for me to be alive. It takes all kinds.

But I don’t feel it.

When I look at Noah’s face I see my past and my future. I see the weight of inherited money. A while back he shaved his face and did it in stages to see what different kinds of facial hair looked like. More than one variation (I won’t even specify which historical figures he looked like) were… creepy as fuck. We are the very people who populate stories of horror. Money is made through exploiting labor which means exploiting people. We have to make choices. What are we going to do with the disproportionate privilege and security we have in this life? In Noah I see the challenge to be more than a white trash whore ever thinks she can be.

Noah doesn’t see me that way at all. I can tell by how he looks at me.

How can I climb out of this box?

I’ve been in therapy for more than 30 fucking years. (Approaching 33!) I’ve worked on behaviors. I’ve worked on learning self soothing techniques. I’ve learned how to be less black and white. I’ve learned about tolerance of myself and others. What I haven’t managed to conquer is this distorted thinking. This pervasive sense of worthlessness.

This fucking box. I’d like to fill it with dynamite and watch it explode. The only problem is I live in the box and that means killing myself.

Killing myself.

Killing myself.

Why does it all come back to the fact that being alive is a burden meant for people who deserve support?

Deserve.

Fuck deserve.

I want to see myself as the person my children see me as. I understand that my children are still young enough to see me with the besotted, unjudgmental gaze of the prepubescent. I understand that their gaze will grow more critical. At this moment of time, eight years into parenting, it is difficult to believe that my children will ever feel about me the way I feel about my mother. I don’t know what I would have to do, but it would have to be something powerfully evil to push them away from me. I think I’d rather cut my arm off than do something so horrifying to my children.

Did my mother really do something so horrifying? No. She didn’t. But she turned her back on other people doing so. She sent me from house to house and she did not protect me. My mother could not protect me.

Why in the world do I think I will be able to protect more children? Won’t it get away from me? Won’t the control and the power to protect be diluted with more children and I will be less capable? But instead of a big sister like my Sissy my children will have my daughter. My shining daughter who will lecture me fiercely when I’m being an asshole to my kiddo and say, “It is my job to make sure my sibling is safe. You can’t talk to them like that. Stop it.”

My daughter will never tell a younger sibling that they weren’t wanted and they should die. My daughter will never say, “It is your fault I was raped for more years.”

Maybe everything will be different.

It isn’t my fault that my father raped my sister. It really isn’t.

But I still feel so bad. Like my very existence causes more pain. I hurt my mother by being created. I hurt my sister by being born and preventing my mom from leaving. I hurt my brother by taking away my mother’s attention so that he was left to roam the streets and get hit by a car.

My fault.

My fault.

My fault.

I hate this box. I hate this box so much.

I don’t hate the bubble I live in. This elitist as fuck bubble of hypereducation and tolerance. God I love the bubble I live in. Bay Area, never change.

But I hate this box. This worthlessness. This despair and hopelessness.

I spent last night reading yet another book about suicide. I think it would be more useful to someone who hadn’t already read almost all of the books this author cites. Yes I know that Shneidman is one of the best minds to ever write about suicide. I’ve read his work. Stop quoting him and tell me something new, mkay?

But the one piece that jumped out at me over and over through page after page. Hope. Hope is the difference between someone who will navigate their way through mutilation, ideation, suicidal gestures…. and never complete a suicide attempt. Hopelessness seems to be the absolute hallmark of completed suicides.

Hope.

I think hope is why I want more babies. In these precious little lives I see a self I desperately wish is true. I want to be the person my children see me as. I want to be their mother. I want to be the one who protects them and nudges them towards freedom.

After the apologies my five year old started talking about private parts and consent. (It was just post-bath so the kid was naked and thrilled with this fact. Like children do.) Kiddo said, “My private parts are just for me and you.” I said, “Oh no no no. Your private parts are not for me. If there is a medical reason you need help with your private parts you can ask me for help with that. But it is never ever ok for me to touch you without your consent. It isn’t ok for a doctor or your dad or anyone to touch your private parts without your consent. Know how you can’t ever remember me touching you there?” Kid thinks…. then says, “Yeah I don’t think you ever have.” “Oh I did. Before you were able to care for yourself. Once you could take care of your body, there is no need for anyone else to touch your private parts unless you invite them to. And really you should only invite people to touch your private parts if you need medical help or if you are a grown person who really freakin wants to invite someone to touch you there. Once you are grown you might want to invite people to touch you there. That will be up to you to decide.” “So once I invite someone to touch me then they get to touch me whenever they want.” I almost squeaked with indignation at that bit. “NO!! Consent is not permanent. Consent is always something that has to be actively given. If someone has permission to touch your private parts sometimes and you fall asleep… they no longer have permission. If you grow up and drink alcohol and you can’t make a good decision… they no longer have consent. Your consent has to be given at every moment when someone is touching you.” The kid sat and thought about that for a while. Then hugged me. Then completely changed the topic.

I wish someone had told me that I had the right to not have my father’s fingers inside me.

This is my chance to create in the world what I want to see. Who I want to see. Who I want to be.

There’s a line in a Rihanna song that I like a lot. Ok, more than one line:

All that I wanted from you was to give me
Something that I never had
Something that you’ve never seen
Something that you’ve never been!

I feel like that about Noah. About my life. All I want is to have something that I’ve never had, never seen, and no one I know has ever been. I don’t want much, do I?

I need something different.

I’m just a giant pain in the ass.

I need to go to sleep. Tomorrow is another day. I’m nervous. But… such is life. Just go do what you need to do.