Category Archives: adult-only

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Friendship, race, and tokenism.

One of my dearest friends made a few comments post-party. Later she said, “Oh I was kidding.” You don’t say something four times unless it hit a nerve. So let’s get into this.

First and foremost: I’ve had over 24 hours to go through a long list of defensive postures. You notice how I didn’t write about this yesterday? I don’t want to be defensive. I don’t want to list how many non-white people I invited and it’s not my fault they didn’t come. I invited them. Many were traveling. I really want to get into specifics. As if proving that I invited X number of non-white people means anything.

It doesn’t. How many particular individuals I invited of what race is beside the point.

If someone I like and respect feels like a token then I am probably doing something wrong in how I talk to them and treat them.

I treat almost everyone I know as a token representation of Y group. It’s not one of my best traits. But for me a white person from the mid-west is about as foreign as a friend from Israel (who is maybe white maybe not white depending on who you ask).

Even my friends who grew up poor still grew up in radically different cultures from me. It is unusual for someone to go through as many communities where you are the minority as I did. I was frequently the only white kid in a room. When I exchange stories about being homeless with people it was different for me than it was for other people I have talked to. There are lots of reasons for all the differences. I drip with privilege whether I like it or not.

If I make someone I respect and admire feel like they are just a token then I need to take a serious look at my behavior. I am doing something wrong. I am not adequately conveying what is going on in my brain.

I am not a big fan of the idea that “X person represents what it is like to be Y race” because I don’t find that it bears out in the main. I am really bad about classifying people as “close with their family vs. not close with their family”. I am much more likely to put up with people who are close with their family so I can hear the secrets about how that works. I don’t really care what race they are–I have friends of a whole rainbow of colors who have close families quite on purpose.

I want to hear what it is like. I do treat people like ambassadors. You come from a culture I don’t understand. I wish I did understand it. I want to move in that general direction even though I will never arrive at being just like you.

I think that what country you came from is far less interesting to me than how you get along with your parents.

That said, I corner every single person I meet who has lived outside this country and ask them their opinion about what they have seen in life. I get some fascinating breakdowns of Eastern Europe sometimes. Oh man.

I really want to get defensive. I want to point out that depending on how you “define” white (some people think Jewish people count as white and some people are violently opposed to such a classification) there were at least 40 people invited to the party who were non-white. Yes, I invited more like 80 white people.

I don’t think I invited people based on trying to get a mixed bag of races though. I invited just about everyone I know that I could get an email address for. I invited people from every community I dip my toes into. Many of those communities are primarily white.

Like the bdsm community. Holy moly is that a white community. Whereas there is the occasional random non-white person it is remarkable and weird. (And I invited every single non-white person from the scene that I know. Not because I wanted non-white people. But because I invited everyone I know and like. I’m sorry more didn’t come.)

Then I feel like a giant asshole. What in the fuck is wrong with me that I wish specific people had come so that I look more “multicultural”. Now that’s treating people like tokens.

If you try too hard to have a racially/religiously balanced group then you do get into tokenism.

I try to invite people and be ok with whoever comes. I can’t feel too much self-worth from who comes and who doesn’t. People were busy. Lots of people were traveling. Other people were sick. Who chooses to come on a random party one random day does not decide whether or not I am treating my friends well or not. It doesn’t decide if my friendships are real or just tokens.

It is my belief that as a white person in America I should probably never feel fully comfortable with my behavior towards people of other races. I should always be willing to be called on the carpet and be told that my behavior sucks. Often that kind of thing is extremely educational and if you resist the correction you resist the ability to grow. It is hard to know what you don’t know. It is very hard to see beyond your white privilege. It is hard to understand what other people don’t have.

I am bad about asking people to be ambassadors from their culture. But I think that culture isn’t just about your ethnicity/race. Whatever my motivation and desire I don’t get to decide how I impact other people. White people react with shock when I ask them to tell me about their culture. They think their culture is my culture. People of other races get to be annoyed at the stupid white girl treating them in a way they don’t like. That is totally fair.

I appreciate it when people think about themselves and then explain what they see to me. That doesn’t mean that other people want to do that for me. I can ask and they can think I’m a fucking asshole. That’s how the exchange works.

Sometimes I feel awkward when I love people intensely who don’t look much like me. I don’t want to express my love and affection in a way that feels alien and alienating. I’m afraid I do. I’m always afraid I am alienating people. I am always afraid I am treating people like just a doll in a set.

I collect people in my life. I do. I want people to love me like I want to breathe. I am much more ok with people choking me than with them not loving me.

How someone looks is generally one of the very least impressive parts for me and in my head mostly that is the difference race makes. I care more about other categories. Do you get along with your parents? Have you always been middle class? What has “middle class” meant in your life? What kinds of deprivation have you dealt with? Do you learn best by sitting very still and listening or do you learn best by moving around? How promiscuous have you been? Do you like hitting people or being hit?

These questions are far more indicative to me of compatibility than race. I care more about these answers.

But as a white person I understand that is a cop-out, bullshit answer. No I’m not fucking color blind. I see race. I just don’t think it is likely to be the reason someone wants to be my friend or not. People are going to want to be my friend or not based on very different factors. I am white so ostensibly that shafts me off to the white people section only lots of white people don’t like me so much. So I branch out.

I feel really bad about the fact that I deal best with fairly Americanized people regardless of race. I have less than perfect hearing and I struggle with accents. I don’t like a lot of regional US accents either. I have to ask people to repeat themselves a lot. I feel really stupid the whole time. Why in the hell can’t I just understand?

So I suppose that in the end I get why some of my friends could walk into a party and feel like a token. (I will defensively point out that there were three other people of your general continent-level ethnicity in the house before you arrived so no you can’t be my “only friend from that continent”.) It was certainly mostly a white crowd.

But I hope that you have known me long enough to know how much I value you as an individual. Our relationship is not primarily about me showing you off at parties as my token non-white friend. Our relationship is primarily about you telling me about your wonderful family and us exchanging raunchy sex stories and you being a wonderful influence on my children. Yes, you do language stuff with my kids. I really appreciate it. I do listen and try to learn. Not because you are a token but because I appreciate that you come to my house and share yourself with us. I try to honor that.

If I am failing at showing my friends how much they matter to me then I should pay attention to that. I should be aware of it and I should work on my behavior. That’s what you do when you love and respect someone. You try to work on your behavior so you can make them feel loved and respected.

If my current set of behaviors isn’t impacting someone the way I want then that is my fault. Communication is complicated. If my message isn’t arriving then that is a failure on the sending end. Sure, there are some people who can misunderstand anything (often seemingly on purpose) but I have to give my friends the benefit of the doubt.

Why do I care so much about people being other cultures from me? Why do I focus on it? Why does it come up? Because most manners, expectations, and attitudes are largely unconscious. You know what was drilled into you as a child.

Why do you think I am inclined to say “fuck” every third word? That’s what my childhood was like.

I ask because the difference between a poor person from the south and a rich person from the south is ocean sized in my perception. Even if Noah’s great-aunt thinks that everyone in Huntsville Texas “is just the same kind of people”. Whatever. You’re wrong. It’s easy to think that when you are the rich lady living in the fucking mansion.

Poor people know better. Poor people know that there are differences and either you acknowledge that and deal with it or you are fucked.

Sometimes people tell me that I am their token “poor” friend. A large number of people have expressed shock and horror that they know someone who was once homeless. Get the fuck over it. At this point I pass into the middle class so stop acting like I count as you knowing a poor person. You don’t get credit for me.

I think that treating everyone like they are from a different culture is largely about acknowledging that we will always make one another uncomfortable in some way. That’s what a poor fit between cultures does. It makes you aware of where you have expectations and the other person fails to meet them. It is hard to not treat those expectations like entitlements.

I love you and I love you and I love you. I have known you for more than half my life. You are anything but a token to me. You are integral to my happiness and feeling of wholeness. You have given me so much approval and reason to keep trying that I can’t possibly write about the impact you have had on my life. It’s too big for me.

If I make you feel like you are just a token then I am doing something drastically wrong and I need to knock it the fuck off. I will try harder.

I love you.

Merry Christmas.

post-party

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That was a great party. We had ~45 people come over a 9 hour period. Our guesstimate is there was never more than ~30 people at a time. There were ~12 kids. (I’m using ~ because I counted roughly in my head and I probably missed bodies.)

It was a lot of fun. I really like my friends. They are all very neato people. I’m lucky.

Ok, stomach… get ready.

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It’s the day! Almost our last social obligation of the year. I’m excited. We aren’t leaving the house between Christmas and New Years.

It is weird how anxiety works. I’m looking forward to seeing people but man my stomach hurts.

At the home school holiday party I said, “Man I’m whiny today. I’m sorry.” Another mother countered with, “How is that different from any other day?” I don’t think I will speak when that person is standing within 10′ of me any more.

This is the kind of thing I over react to. Ok, if I’m that unpleasant then I will work hard to make sure you don’t have to acknowledge that I exist any more.

But she didn’t say I was awful. She said I was whiny. This is a true statement. I am.

Sometimes Noah asks why I don’t punish the kids for whining. Because I don’t punish for things I model. That’s just how it rolls in this house.

There was also a noticeable amount of discussion as to how sad it was that a certain blog reader and 3/5 of her kids weren’t there. (We never get the other 2/5.) I told people that I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a rejection of the group for being sucky. Spoons can only stretch to cover so many activities.

Part of what I like about hosting events is I get to introduce my friends to one another. I know really neat people.

2013 has been one of the best, most stable years of my entire life. If I can’t get my anxiety under control under these circumstances I’m fucked.

I often go back and forth in my head, “My friends deserve to know me sober. Because being sober is always superior to being a loser drug addict. But wait! You are talking like a schizophrenic about to stop taking their meds. Maybe this is a bad plan.”

Don’t worry. I won’t try to do this sober. I haven’t been practicing enough to do an event of this size alone yet. I would spend the party in my bedroom crying and shaking if I tried.

That feels really pathetic. God I’m a loser. Bravery isn’t about feeling no fear. It is about performing to spec no matter how terrified you are. Having a holiday party shouldn’t be terrifying but it is.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter what “should” be true. It matters what is.

I’m going to have to spend pretty much all of next year working on being able to do this sober. I’m going to have to be able to handle any size of crowd unassisted before 2015 or I can’t take the kids on the road trip. You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.

Tomorrow. I’ll work on that tomorrow. Next year. All of next year. Not today.

Sometimes I feel guilty when I say “not today–I’ll do that later.” My only consolation is I do usually get around to doing it… or it wasn’t important to begin with.

It is nice to see that I do the things I say I will. Not every single thing–I don’t make that many promises on purpose. I have to figure out sober again.

I used to be sober. I managed my PTSD without meds for most of my life. It has meant a lot of isolating in order to calm my ambient stress. I don’t get that now that I have kids.

I have to teach them to be part of my lower stress or I’m fucked. This sounds hard and scary.

Bravery doesn’t mean never feeling scared. It means you keep your ass moving even when you are scared. I can do that. I can keep moving.

I think today will be fun. I think I will be glad I did it even though it creates stress too.

I thanked Noah and the kids for helping me clean the house. I told them that it is important to me to once in a while have a clean house and a party and I appreciate that they did work towards that even if it isn’t important to them.

I was only an asshole about the cleaning for maybe 10 hours total and it wasn’t all yesterday it was over a week. That’s not great but it isn’t as bad as it could be.

In my head I have this tally sheet. I know how harsh I have seen some mothers be. I’m not on the harsh end of what I have seen. I have seen some seriously brutal people though. I like being on the nicer end of the scale. I don’t even know why I want it so bad but I do.

If I can’t get my kids to cooperate by being nice to them then I think the cooperation I get through being an asshole is suboptimal. Sometimes I’m a fucking self absorbed asshole and I do it. I try really hard to avoid it though.

Life involves work. I need my kids to not be the kind of people who sit back and watch while work is being done. I need for them to be the kind of people who say, “There is work to be done? Where do I start?”

I very consciously don’t give them much bullshit work day-in/day-out through the year. I really don’t have a lot of make work. I don’t make them live in a perfectly clean house all the time (ha!). I enforce daily teeth cleaning, underwear changing, and they have to set the table for meals. That’s what I really enforce on a daily basis.

I need for them to grow up in an atmosphere where it is fine to not do much most of the time and sometimes you have to chip in. You just do.

I don’t know how to inspire this very well though. I always resort to bullying and crying at some point. It’s pretty fucking lame. I try to recognize when I am bullying, retract the statement and walk away. “I should not have said that. I’m sorry I was such a jerk.” Usually that comes in the form of a threat to throw away anything that isn’t picked up. It’s not a cool threat. I’m an asshole for saying it. Just because I feel it that doesn’t excuse me saying it.

I tried really hard to not fuss at the kids. I wasn’t fully successful but I tried. I need to try harder. It isn’t their fault I want things. I try to let them know, “There isn’t a good reason I want this. I just want it. Will you please help me?” Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. It is hard to manage my emotional reaction to being turned down.

Right now it is part of that whole, “If I do not know the answer will be ‘yes’ then I don’t have the spoons to ask for help” problem. I get into these cycles. As the people I live with the kids have to deal with the results of what happens when I can’t handle a no and I get one any way. Mostly I go in my room and shut the door and cry.

Which makes me feel like a manipulative piece of shit.

I try to not-react as much as possible. I know that I’m supposed to maintain a neutral state over here on my own but I’m shite at that. I’m trying.

Like the woman letting me know that I whine every day. Oh. Shit. Ok I guess the solution is to just stop talking. I don’t know what else to do.

I don’t think I can stop talking entirely. That would kill me. But I can make sure I don’t bother you any more. I’m sorry my existence is such a trial to you. I’m not even being sarcastic. I am annoying. I’m sorry. I don’t really know how to change that I am this difficult.

Some people are easier than others. I don’t even just mean the sex. Not that I’ve been easy to have sex with lately. Poor Noah. Our sleep cycles are totally out of alignment and we’re tired and over-committed and having kids is an impediment. Life happens.

This phase isn’t permanent–right?

Just keep moving. If you are still alive there is always a chance that things will change. If you want things to be different, just keep moving. Just because I can’t do something today that means nothing about ten years from now.

Right now I can’t play any musical instrument. That could change. I don’t sew. Some day I might. Right now Noah thinks there is no chance he will ever be a distance runner. It’s not his favorite. But if he wants to keep eating cookies with me at the rate we are going through them… I think it could happen.

If he wants to have a long, sex-filled life with me we will have to do some more exercise. I’m told it is good for you. We have no physical disabilities so we don’t have good excuses. (There are good reasons some people can’t run. I’m not acting like this is universally applicable…)

I have a lot of time ahead of me. I can figure out how to do a lot of things. I read something cool this morning about how great artists often go through big revivals in their 80’s.

I have spent most of my life believing I would die fairly young. But if I want to find out what Shanna is like on her 60th birthday I have to not die until well into my 80’s. I should plan for that. I should consciously try to get there. I should work at it. And then Calli is even two years behind that.

I want to see what their lives will be like. I don’t want to just witness their childhood and feel sad all the time that no one loved me as a child.

What will they do with their adulthoods? How will they inspire me? I’m sure they will.

Just keep moving. Keep introducing them to interesting people. I know so many neat people. I know people who do the fucking coolest stuff. I like basking in their glow. I like getting to be an audience. I should stay alive and keep doing that.

Today I will manage my anxiety and see friends. My kids will get to see a lot of different kinds of people. It is rare that I cross the streams like this. Home schoolers, perverts, geeks, and dancers. Who knows what the results will be like. I think everyone will be child-appropriate. I think people will be polite and wonderful. I think that sometimes questions will be answered in surprising ways. That’s for the best.

It takes all kinds in this world. My friends are Christians, Jews, atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, and pagans. I don’t have any friends who are practicing Muslims but it’s not on purpose. At least no one has chosen to share with me that they follow that religion.

I thought about name tags. “Hi my name is ________. I know Krissy/Noah through ___________.” That would be awesome for me. I would enjoy how people self-identify. Ha. “Burning Man. Uhhhh…. that’s it…. I know them through Burning Man.” Not that I (Krissy) have gone. But I know a lot of Burners. And many people that I think of in other categories would probably self-identify our friendship that way because it sounds more child safe.

I’m not going to put anyone more on the spot than I have to. Not today. I don’t have the spoons to manage.

It will be a good day. Time to stop typing.

Christmas shopping is over.

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I’m annoyed I had to spend time out shopping today. My dear sweet 5 year old decided that yesterday was a great day to go through my dresser. So she saw her Santa present.

I can’t handle the guilt that would come with ruining the Santa secret this year. And the only other “toys” she was getting from us for Christmas was a board game she can’t play alone yet (Goldiblocks!) or a wooden stick with a horse head on it. Those both struck me as thoroughly lame Santa presents. Because I have issues.

The firefighter outfit would have been perfect. Freakin kid!!!!

So she will get musical instruments. Because I’ve been dithering about getting them for three years already. I have mixed feelings.

Mostly I feel guilty and like I am going overboard on Christmas.

We won’t have very many wrapped presents under the tree.

I think I’m having issues with feeling like I am undersupplying too. My childhood training of mountains of gifts is hard to overcome. I feel like I am not very fun. Mostly these days I don’t get my kids toys. Their grandparents send enough combined with random presents from friends. I don’t give toys for birthdays.

I want to give my kids toys for Christmas. I wish I didn’t feel so ashamed of myself.

This is what having privilege is about, right? If you are able to do it, there is no shame in doing it. I’m not going so overboard that we will suffer next year for this. I’m not running up debt I can’t pay off. I’m spending cash I have on hand.

I wish I didn’t feel so bad about buying things I want with Noah’s money. Really? I feel guilty about buying a musical instrument set? I feel guilty about the Lego’s too.

Calli’s Santa present is a Lego set. Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Because it is her favorite show.

I don’t think they are too spoiled…

probably not

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Naltrexone. That’s the name of the drug my shrink wants me to research. My first few searches make it sound like I will be in the bathroom all day with diarrhea and it would probably increase my depression.

All just to make cutting an ineffective coping method. Uhm, probably not.

Cutting and parties and the parasympathetic nervous system

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My therapist, predictably, doesn’t want me putting a lock on the bathroom door. She is asking me to wait a few weeks. She has a list of things I just need to try before that step is a good idea. She was quite insistent in that way shrinks are which is why we pay them, no?

She mentioned a medication and I didn’t write it down immediately and now I am waiting on a response to an email. Research. She said there is an unusual drug that is not an anti-depressent/anti-psychotic/anti-anxiety that is sometimes used with addicts including severe cutters who can’t get past the “tension release” stage. Supposedly it acts on the mechanism in the brain that requires the brief releases from tension.

I mentioned that I pretty much always freak out like this right before a party and I feel really self-conscious and bad because it seems like inappropriate attention seeking behavior. Her response was, “Your parasympathetic nervous system is trying to get your attention and that’s not a bad thing.” Right before I have lots of people over my body prepares for the fight/flight/freeze thing and I get over loaded. In her opinion I need to figure out some larger structure around stress release particularly right before events–she says cutting isn’t a good option.

Psh. What does she know.

(That was my “I’m funny” voice.)

She says if I’m going off pot this medication may be an appropriate next step. It makes me want to cry. Western meds have completely wrecked my body every time I’ve tried. Name a side effect–I have gotten pretty much every non-fatal one.

I also talked to the home schooled teenager on our street yesterday. We are going to start weekly babysitting. I need more of a break than I’m getting. It is just fucking mandatory. People go insane in circumstances like mine even if they started out basically healthy. I don’t think I have been basically healthy… oh uhm, ever?

I pick my therapists very carefully so she asked me, “How did you and Noah use bdsm to manage these cycles in the past?” Bless her heart. If you have the wrong therapist for you they can be the most worthless excuse for a human being but if you have the right match you can make lots of behavioral progress. (That’s not really fair. They aren’t “worthless” just because they are a bad fit but when you are really upset and hurting it feels that way.)

So the topic of weekly canings came up. Not canning. Not putting food in jars. Being hit with sticks. This time the reference is more on the fun side, kind of like the swinging only this time she meant the other meaning.

I’m not opposed to giving it a shot. I pointed out that Noah and I have never done behavior management this way. I did that with my Owner. We had a very different dynamic.

I continue to have mixed feelings about the idea that it is better for someone else to hit me than for me to cut myself. I understand that a lot of people who generally support the idea of bdsm agree. If you believe that bdsm can be a healthy activity then you probably would side with it being superior to cutting. Probably. I can’t speak for everyone but I’ve been told that a lot.

I watch The West Wing too much so I am starting to explain things to myself in terms of the story arc. Cutting is about dealing with the pressure caused by a nuclear reaction. First the reaction goes into a series of containment devices (my previous/earlier coping methods) then eventually it gets to the point where the containment devices are full and there is more steam coming and either you vent to the atmosphere (causing possible massive damage) or you risk a full scale explosion which will absolutely for certain cause way the fuck more damage. Better to vent a little.

That’s what cutting is. Cutting brings all of my physical stress down to a level where I stop swearing and yelling and freaking out. I’m nice and calm. It’s better than a Valium.

It is hard being told “I know you have this awesome coping method that works better than everything else I am recommending put together… but don’t use it.”

That doesn’t feel like a supportive act. I’m trying to look at the big picture. One of the dominant symptoms of my various forms of mental illness is difficulty with tunnel thinking. When you are in the tunnel you don’t think you will ever be out again. You can only think in the panic of the Right Now. There is no larger picture.

My shrink confidently and manipulatively brings up phrases like “Harm Reduction.” Psh. Like I give a shit about that theory. Psh.

(Once again with the funny… If I didn’t tell you then you wouldn’t know that you are supposed to chuckle. I learn from television shows which tell their audience when to laugh.)

At this stage cutting would dramatically increase the harm I am doing in the process of coping. If there are any less harmful methods left to try I just can’t get to the last method yet.

I’m not really at a point where I’m thrilled about being told “Just be more patient” because that’s what it sounds like.

I’m trying to think about water flowing over obstructions. Sure, it could destroy one path by trying to send all the water one way in a jet or it could try to find another way around. Water is good at getting around whatever you try to block it with. Resourceful.

Last night was Noah’s company holiday party. I did better than I’ve done the last two years. Improvement is good, right? Once again it feels kind of pathetic that I have to struggle so much in order to not be inappropriate.

Last night I swore more than is probably strictly speaking ideal but I didn’t worry about it. I was at an adult party. Noah didn’t care or think I was too extreme. I can live with the other teacher/parent people looking a little shocked when I say “What the fuck?”

I think this party felt lower stress because I didn’t know anyone. For the last few years I had to manage the line between hanging out with people I actually knew and dealing with the amorphous boundaries of “work people”. That’s harder. This time I just go to try to censor appropriately and that’s easier.

When people tried to shock and titillate me by referring to going to a conference that had a leather track I got to cross examine and figure out that it must have been some kind of more general alternative lifestyle convention because I’ve never heard of a 10,000-15,000 person leather conventions in LA in the past few years and I’d be shocked if I missed that. When he tried to allude vaguely to other factors as proof I rattled off the names of all the big cons with their rough head count of attendees and expressed lots of support for my position. That’s always fun. No, I know this stuff. I don’t think you are talking about a just leather con.

In the conversational flow it would have made sense to bring up Debaucherama and I totally didn’t talk about winning Slut of the Year. I was very tactful and appropriate for work people. Ahem.

I turned to Noah and said, “You know which story they just lead me to the door of and here I am not walking through it.” He patted me on the back and all. The coworkers raised their eyebrows and said, “Maybe we can come visit on a different night.” Ha. Like I’ll tell them then.

That was a great party. Sigh.

Also, DA–because of you I get to tell the best stories at parties. I feel like a dumbass but people always bring up travel at these kinds of parties and getting to talk about going to Alaska in my friend’s private plane is rad. I feel officially cool when I tell those stories. Yup, I’ve done bad ass things. That’s right. Including hiking in the Alaskan wilderness. My life is awesome.

It is interesting trying to figure out how to “spin” stories so I can be appropriate for work parties. I’m not so good at this. I did manage to avoid bringing up sex last night. *pat self on back* The leather con attendance thing doesn’t count.

In preparation for the party I went shopping for a dress. Mostly because it kept me out of the house so I wouldn’t cry. I over-ruled the shop lady. She didn’t think the one I bought was the best idea. I’m a bit too lumpy for it in her opinion. She’s a skinny lady and thinks that style of dress is for more stick-shaped women. Psh. Whatever. It was a skin-tight little number with lots of boob attention. In a size medium. No wonder my clothes don’t fit if I can walk into some boutique shop and come out with a size medium. I haven’t been a size medium much in my life. This is weird. I’ve been a large/extra large (or bigger) for most of my adult life.

Noah was quite happy with my selection. That was the whole point.

Sometimes I feel weird about my mixed feelings around dressing frumpy versus wearing clothes that are sexy. When I’m feeling sad and anxious dressing up either feels soothing or stimulating depending on the context. Some days I do consciously think of the trophy wife thing. In general I’m not such a good trophy. But I try to clean up good once in a great while. In general I look frumpy and boring and that is for the best. Lately I’ve been wearing the skirts from my Renaissance Faire outfit over pants because I just want to be covered that much.

So going out in a dress that accentuated a figure I’m not used to having was kind of weird. Several coworkers stared a lot all night. That is always a little awkward. But if you go out dressed like that while wearing bright red lipstick you invite looking. It is a weird line.

I know that Noah gets a status bump from the Neanderthals he works with if they think his wife is hot. I have mixed feelings about this. But once a year I can dress up. Hell it isn’t even once a year that I dress that way now. But man the dress is hot.

I should take a picture. I look really good. If I had looked like this many years ago I probably would have gotten closer to a four digit number instead of a three digit number. Maybe it is for the best that I was chunky and had to win people over with my awesome personality. Snort.

I think the dress would not look out of place on the show Mad Men. Not that I’ve watched it. But I’ve seen a few references on magazine covers in grocery stores so I know the show exists and a brief google image search supports with my assumption.

Now I have fancy party dresses in size 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 sitting in my closet. Because who the fuck knows what size I will be next year. I no longer get rid of the fancy party dresses. My body changes dramatically over time.

I’m struggling with the fact that I “know” I am small but when I look in the mirror I don’t think I “look” small only I know I do to other people. I look like me and in my head I’m a fat girl (I have justifiably been for a lot of my adult life) so I still kind of see that. I have always been content and happy with being fat. Now I’m not fat and I miss it. On one hand I know that it is easier for me to find flattering clothing (based on the number of times I saw people do double takes when I walked by my dress was flattering) but I’m not sure if I like that. I am not good at guessing which dresses will be flattering. I have to try fifteen on.

My body is different and in ways that are somewhat more societally “approved” and that bothers me.

I don’t really want more approval in that area. Being thinner sure doesn’t get me more sex with Noah.

And yes, all of this is tied up with the whole parasympathetic nervous system and cutting. It is.

Does dressing up and wearing lipstick change how much I want to cut? I certainly feel less like I am about to blow my stack this morning, but how much is it related? How much is it about just getting five hours off of my kids yesterday between the party and therapy?

Those little thrills of recognition when a man checks me out function in similar soothing ways to the cutting. I feel kind of ashamed admitting it, but in for a penny in for a pound. It is the kid-version of what I used to do with finding promiscuous sex. “Whoo hoo people looked at me.” Less of a lift but a lot safer and lower effort.

(I spotted one last night who totally looked like my prey. It’s about the kind of smile. I miss hunting.)

I feel very conflicted about the whole “attention getting” behavior bit. I console myself with the idea that despite writing about what I am feeling/doing in the moment I don’t actually bring it up with people. When I am cutting I do it in a place on my body I can conceal and the vast majority of people don’t know. I write it down because I want proof that I’m not lying to myself about what I’m doing. I don’t think I get additional attention around self-harming behavior. Other than when I was institutionalized as a teenager because I wouldn’t promise to stop cutting I haven’t gotten a lot of “attention” based on self-harming.

Talking about it alienates people and ends friendships. I don’t think I talk about it for attention. I think I talk about it because the more silent and ashamed I act about my behavior the harder it is to control.

If I talk about wanting to cut sometimes that is enough to get me through that feeling of wanting to cut and maybe tomorrow I won’t feel that way any more. It does work for me. Today I feel less desire to rush to Home Depot and buy a lock. That’s enough of a pause to ensure that I probably won’t be cutting this week and probably not this month.

Is that enough?

It is a lot like how I manage my suicidal ideation. “This is how I feel right now and if I honor it maybe I don’t have to do it.” I don’t live well with secrets. Believing that I have to lie about what is in my head intensifies and strengthens all of my negative self-beliefs. Nice people are allowed to talk about how they exist in the world. Stupid, worthless pieces of shit like me should shut up and stop polluting the airways. Just stop fucking breathing so you don’t contaminate anyone.

I don’t know if everyone’s lives are careful balancing acts. For me I have to manage stimulus and soothing pretty carefully. Lack of either one is dangerous to my ability to function.

I schedule parties once in a while because I know so many people that slowly cycling through them all one on one is kind of impossible. I would have a date every day of the year if anyone at all was on a repeating weekly or monthly cycle. I know a lot of people. I like them all. I want to continue knowing them. Heck, I want my awesome friends to meet one another because networking is very important for a successful life. Everyone needs access to resources.

I told my shrink that I missed a flight to Oakland Airport and got rerouted to SFO and I managed to arrange a pickup at midnight through Twitter. Because I just have friends who can do that. She was surprised. I am beginning to think that her other clients live in caves because she spends a lot of time being surprised that I know so many people and that they do the things they do with me.

I get that my life is a weird and extreme place. It has extreme bad and extreme good. I am very lucky and I am very unlucky. I have a ridiculous amount of privilege and yet I don’t. It all depends on what you are looking at and judging right this minute.

As a child I learned that one of the main things I needed to do to keep myself safe was make sure I know as many people as possible. If one person is mad at me/doesn’t like me/doesn’t want to help me/doesn’t want to spend time with me… find someone else. There are always more fish in the sea. There are billions of god damn people on this planet. Surely I haven’t alienated all of them yet.

I think that moving more than fifty times made it so that I never got to sink in and decide “This is just the way life is.” There is no set way my life is. The circumstances vary so much that they are nearly unrecognizable from day to day or period to period. Folks who knew me primarily as a slave to my Owner are rather shocked by me these days.

Walt Whitman may have thought he contained multitudes. I think I may have lived more lives than him. Sometimes I feel like a cat only I’ve had far more than just nine lives.

Do you know where the cats have nine lives thing comes from? When cats experience injury or illness they hide somewhere while they heal–it is an anti-predator sort of behavior. Then they come out and are fine again. So people used to speculate that they could regenerate.

I hide to lick my wounds then I appear again. Often in very different circumstances with fairly different behavior. Going from theatre to bdsm to teaching to parenting has been pretty dramatic. From stage to stage there is almost no overlap in terms of behavior or activities.

I think that is part of the reason Noah and I don’t do bdsm better together. I compartmentalize and Noah is the partner who has been nice to me and that’s hard to change. Even if bdsm might have other benefits.

tl;dr: I’m mad at my therapist for trying to talk me out of cutting. But that’s pretty much what I pay her to do so it’s a wash. Stupid parasympathetic nervous system. Why the fuck can’t you just act nice?

Oh, and after completely freaking out yesterday morning and feeling like the best thing to do would be to see as much blood as possible… I started bleeding.

Any suggestions on how to manage the monthly depression crash I’m getting? Yay impending blood loss. It is becoming really predictable. Which is strangely comforting. Just because I haven’t hacked the system yet I appreciate that patterns are emerging.

My worst depression days are followed immediately by me bleeding. I feel comforted by the hormonal link. Less like I am just at the mercy of the waves of my insanity.

Managing spoon deficit.

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The biggest difference between level twos and level threes is whether or not I can respond to advice with “Fuck you” and think the person will still come back again. I have to be careful with the level twos as well, but less careful. They are more aware of the constant simmering issues. I’m sorry for yesterday.

I’m in serious spoon deficit and there isn’t a lot I can do about it. Right now my plan A is to change how I treat my body with my kids. So far I have spent their entire lives acting like nudity isn’t a big deal. I am not really a sit-around-nekkid kind of person. Usually I am too cold and on the rare days when it isn’t too cold I am too hot and I don’t want sticky bare skin on sticky bare skin. So I usually wear clothes. But I don’t hesitate to strip if I have a reason. I don’t think naked bodies are a problem. My kids have been to nudist resorts and we will go again. Bodies are just bodies.

But I need to start consciously preparing for the fact that cutting isn’t very far away. I need to start developing the habit of dressing and using the bathroom in a way that preserves the privacy of my legs.

I’m very out of spoons. And I really am not in a place where I can ask for any more help. Too many people have done the “Yeah, sure” but now I don’t see them any more. I need to depend on just me. And the sad fact is that I don’t really have enough control.

Cutting significantly increases my ability to act in a controlled manner. Given that I do not have the support network to deal with my stress in other ways I need to do what I can do while alone in a room. That is all I can depend on.

I will put a better lock on the bathroom door.

I am not in a psychological space where I can ask for anything else from anyone. I feel too lied to and too abandoned. I feel like it is all my fault that people flake on me–it’s because I am bad. I am too mean. I am too hard to deal with. People can’t handle me. So I have to cope as if I have no support.

That’s just the way it goes for some people.

No, enrolling Shanna in school would not be the way to solve this problem. Then I would have Calli alone expecting me to be the sole entertainment during that time period. It would not be a break. It would also cause daily stress around: get up, get dressed, eat breakfast faster, pack your lunch, when you are home now do your homework. All for bullshit I don’t believe in and actively think is destructive. No, that would not lower my stress.

I am taking my fucking vitamins. I’m exercising. I’m doing the swinging shit. I’ve asked for help. I don’t have much consistent help. The only consistent help I get is so that I can see my therapist.

In January we will go to the park with the home schoolers once a week. I will see my therapist. Otherwise I’m not scheduling anything.

I was taught that shit should roll down hill. I refuse to participate in that dynamic. My children will not bear the brunt of my issues. I’m really ok with my legs bearing the brunt. That is better in every way.

Noah is worried that it will increase my suicidal ideation. He wants us to start scheduling babysitting more often before I start cutting. There is the neighbor girl. I agreed to that. I can understand him being afraid of me killing myself. He understands that it is the most likely way I will die in this lifetime.

But I need to start practicing with my clothes. I need to install a lock on the bathroom. I can’t just start cutting out of the blue and expect it to function as a coping method the way I need it to. I need to create the structural support in my life for it working the way I need it to work.

It’s time to start preparing for the actual amount of spoons I have in my hand. I’m crying too much. I’m not yelling that much but I have been pulling away from the kids. I’m very emotionally disengaged because I am afraid of yelling.

I need some kind of something I’m not getting. I’ve done everything else I can think of. It is time to return to my trusty friend. It is always there when I need it. No one else is.

In medias res, family, pride.

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Yesterday running was a sob fest. Going to Texas makes me feel guilty. I do not honor my family, but I go honor his? I felt like the nanny because they didn’t ask me any questions about me. They only asked me questions about the kids. They don’t want to know me. They want to know my children and I am a chaperone.

I used the time that I was running yesterday to apologize for not thinking more often of my dead. As long as I am alive, as long as I remember what they taught me–they aren’t really dead, right?

I remember you Francesca Bennet. I remember you Traci Williams. I remember you Frances Mae Carr Schmidt. I remember you Lenora Bried Archer. I remember you James Arthur Archer. I remember you Orlando Archer. I remember you Vernon Schmidt. I remember you Thomas Wayne Archer. I remember you Robert Lee Abbott.

I do not remember Frances and Lenora because I knew them. I was told lots and lots. They are my grandmothers. I didn’t get to meet either of them. Lenora died of cancer. Frances just didn’t want to live any more. It hurt too much. I understand.

I do not remember Orlando either. Ory. That’s what he was called. He died before I was dreamed up. He was my grandfather. I remember Vernon though. He was not a loving man. But I remember him. I remember him scornfully looking at my hair and my niece’s skin tone and saying, “There’s a nigger in the woodpile.” That’s what he gave me.

I remember the friends who have passed out of my life. Usually because I did something I really shouldn’t have done. It isn’t as nice to name them online. They still want their privacy and all.

But sometimes I chant your names. I love you. I miss you. You are part of me. I am sorry I hurt you.

Amanda Palmer has a new song she released. The Thing About Things. It is a pay what you can/want download. I paid $5 for the song. If you need to download it for free she won’t be mad at you. I promise. I met Amanda. She’s really neat.

23 years ago Thomas Wayne Archer gave me a gold chain. The same Christmas Sissy gave me a gold pendant that says “Special Someone”. Here’s a picture.

Despite my general policy of not wearing gold (I think it looks bad on my skin) I put it on yesterday after the run.

I don’t know what it means to be special to my sister. It didn’t mean that she would be kind to me. It did mean that I am the singular sibling she never had sex with. I was too young then I was too nasty and uninterested. She missed her window.

I don’t feel the family ties. I was told and told and told that pride in your family would carry you through. Your family are the people you can call in the middle of the night and they have to come get you no matter what.

When I called my sister in the middle of the night she hung up on me and told me it was my problem.

Very special.

Going to Texas was weird because my children have a lot of traits from Noah’s side. Shanna spends a fair bit of time just sitting around strumming an ukelele and making up songs. That’s not something that anyone does in my family. All of Noah’s family is very musical.

“If you’re not allowed to love people alive, then you learn how to love people dead.”

“The thing about things is that they can start to have meaning that nobody actually said.”

In the traditions of Burkina Faso your dead more or less follow you around forever. They are tied to you. You can ask them for favors. You can berate them. You can cajole them into helping you understand things.

Daddy, why? What happened? Why did you need to turn around and hurt us like that? Frances, what hurt so bad?

I wish you had wanted to meet me. I’m told I’m pretty special. You were alive until I was thought of. I was inside your daughter and you knew it. But you just didn’t want to keep going. Was Vernon so bad? Why was Nicey enough and you didn’t want to meet me? Did you know what was happening to Sissy and you just couldn’t stop it and you couldn’t watch any more?

Lenora, did you take pride in your children?

Ory, maybe if you had stopped drinking… maybe James wouldn’t have been so broken. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. What else happened anyway?

I will never know. The dead keep their secrets.

But I’m sorry. I love you. As complicated as this is, as much as this hurts, I remember you.

Francesca, Traci, James, Tommy, Lee, Frances, Vernon, Ory, Iain Turner, Uncle Bob, I remember you. You aren’t gone. I promise I will keep remembering.

Even if it hurts I will remember you. I won’t let those memories slip away. I won’t let you die. This is all I can do for you now. I can make sure I remember you. I will rehearse your stories in my mind as long as I live.

I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything I did and didn’t do that I was supposed to do.

I feel like it is smart to name my living family members less online. They don’t really want to be tied with me. I’m sorry to you all as well. I’m sorry Mommy and Auntie and Big Brother and Niece and Nephews and Cousins.

I didn’t mean to hurt you so much. I was just trying to stay alive in the only way I saw forward for me. I don’t want to be like Frances.

I don’t want to be like you James. I don’t want to be a monster. I don’t want to have shit roll down hill in my house. I want my house to be safe.

I want to take pride in my family. Mostly what I take pride in is having the strength to walk away and not be like them. But I’m so sorry it has to be this way. I am so so so so so sorry.

I missed my first chance to be special in a family. It’s over. I can build something different. I can try to not break my children. That is all I can do.

I can take pride in them. I can teach them that being “special” to someone does not involve being hit or raped or told you are worthless.

Noah’s family seems to take a lot of pride in my kids. My children reflect well on them. Bah. My children reflect well on me.

Children learn what they are taught. My children are taught that they should be spoken to in civil ways. My children are taught that it isn’t ok for anyone to scream at them. Not me, not someone else. When someone starts screaming at you *that person has a problem* and you should walk away if humanly possible.

Be nice to people if you want them to be nice to you. Figure out what being nice to them means because it is very different in different places. No matter what your Great Aunt thinks. People are not “all alike” and being kind to them means treating them how they need to be treated. Is that hard? Yes. So are lots of other things. It gets easier with practice. So start practicing.

I’m still working on it. Yes, it is hard. It is the work of a lifetime. Learning how to really see different people.

“Things can start meaning things nobody actually said.”

I will not forget where I came from. I will choose to remember. It isn’t the same thing as pride, but there is resignation in it. I think this is part of that “forgiveness” I am supposed to work on. Less for those people and more for me.

I forgive me for wanting to remember. I forgive me for wanting a story when other people are ok with just forgetting. “Just don’t think about the bad things” is the most common advice I have ever gotten.

I will not forget. I will remember. This is the only honoring I can give.

I love you. I love you Mommy. I love you Tommy. I love you Daddy. I love you Sissy. I love you Jimmy.

I don’t think I will ever stop. I wish I could. It would make my life easier.

I think there will be exactly two people who share blood with me at my funeral. I have to make peace with that.

My family will not be there for me. Ever. In any way. Noah is my family. He will be there.

I wake up every day and feel grateful for Noah. I am a very expensive, very high maintenance pet. I’m grateful he took on responsibility for me. I don’t feel very deserving.

I am special to Noah.

The folks in Texas didn’t ask that much more about Noah than they did about me. I see why he doesn’t go back more.

Sometimes I feel very sad when I think about how much Noah and I cling together because we don’t really have anyone else. Neither of us have ever been all that loved. Noah wasn’t treated like me, but he wasn’t loved much. That’s a big void.

I’m really glad he is here. I like him. I love him. When I was a kid people would tell me that I didn’t understand what love meant.

Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I still don’t. But I’m glad for what I have. For now love means believing that this person makes me better than I am alone and I make him better. Together we are capable of a lot of things that neither of us can do alone. I think he is competent and wonderful.

He makes me breakfast and Christmas cookies because I don’t actually like the process of cooking that much. He’s awesome. Then I give the cookies away and he doesn’t get mad. The perfect symbiotic relationship.

He made enough cookies for us to share with all of our buddy-neighbors and the home school group cookie exchange. That’s effort.

Thank you. I see your labor. I appreciate it. (I’ve already thanked him several times in person. I’m not just passive aggressive or anything.)

But sometimes I have trouble remembering that Noah really does work hard to make my load lighter. He isn’t just doing his stuff. He does stuff for an us even when it isn’t his first choice of how to spend time.

But he makes my mother’s cookie recipes so my children can grow up with them. Because I wish it were so.

I am special to someone. When I was a child I would react with such anger and hatred if anyone in my family tried to tell me I was special or that they loved me.

If I was special you wouldn’t turn a blind eye to how much horror I experienced. But they did. And I was expected to as well and I couldn’t. I couldn’t be nice until I stopped being hurt all the time.

I’m sorry I’m not a big enough person to be nice to people who aren’t hurting me when I’m being hurt that bad. I just can’t. Other people can, I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I am so small. I am sorry I am so unworthy of pride. No one ever took pride in me. My behavior was disgusting. I was berated and told that I wasn’t welcome to be seen in public. No one wanted to be seen as being part of a unit with me because then they would have to admit they knew the horrible child.

I remember all of you. I will never forget. Even though you didn’t and don’t love me very much. I have to love me enough to make up for that.

Sometimes that is very hard.

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I didn’t write yesterday because I could have written the word “fuck once” and then just copy-n-pasted it two thousand times and called it good. I’m still catching up on sleep and being very underslept seems to exacerbate the swearing to the point where I literally have no control over it. It’s very socially awkward.

By the time we got on the final plane flight I was in a foul mood. We missed our last connection. We didn’t go to Oakland like planned. We got mercifully placed on a flight to SFO instead of getting stuck in Utah. THANK ALL THE GODS IN THE WORLD. I’ve been in Utah for extended periods before. When I am that underslept and grumpy I just don’t have it in me to be the kind of nice they need from people. Oh man.

I had an angelic friend pick us from the airport and we got the car the next day. All’s well that ends well.

I woke up yesterday in a foul mood. I did get a bit of extra sleep but not close to enough (I got a bit extra last night too but in the previous 7 day period I was down almost two full nights of sleep). I told the kids they had three choices for the day: play in the back yard, play in the play room, or help me clean. I do not have the patience or the kind voice to allow you to play in the living room while I am trying to get the front part of the house cleaned up after the gingerbread house event.

Sometimes I genuinely don’t mind them making the mess bigger AS I clean. Sometimes I will scream like an evil harpy and we will all be sorry. After I cleaned up the bonus mess they made in the kitchen while I was stupid enough to be in my room for a while (whipped cream, granulated sugar, and milk all over the floor–Shanna will be a great cook someday) the day went better. That was their last bonus mess of the day. [For the record, making a huge mess in the play room doesn’t count as making the mess worse. That is their space. I defend my right to walk through the main areas of my house without breaking my ankle.)

A girl has to have standards. I enforced them with only moderate raising of voice and a lot of raising of eyebrows as I calmly repeated the three options and pointed at the back door. All in all I call it a success. I didn’t get very far outside the kitchen, much to my sadness.

Apparently making that much gingerbread is… kind of stupid. I had to clean all the fronts of the cabinets and the walls because there was a sheen of sugar everywhere (most of it brown) and periodic chunks of cookie just hanging out on cabinet doors. I’m so glad the ants didn’t show up while I was in Texas. *phew* Usually they don’t give me this long of a grace period. Maybe they hate the cold too.

But my kitchen is clean and organized. Well, like 80% of the way there. Sometimes I am horrified by how much mess can occur in such a small space.

I also mopped the bathroom floor because, hey mop is out and the floor is nasty. W00t.

I should talk more about the Texas trip. A few pieces of my explanation confused people.

Noah has a mom and a dad, (duh) and one side has historical money (dad) and one side is a bunch of poor farmers and teachers (mom).

The rich great aunt with the many museum quality houses she owns is Noah’s dad’s sister. She’s never been married, never had kids. She has hobbies instead. She won’t send us any kind of letters, she flat told me she doesn’t bother to do those things. If we want to see her we have to come to her town. She won’t visit us. But she’s delightful when we show up.

I have some feelings about that kind of relationship. “You only want to know me if I spend many thousands of dollars to get to your house. Well I can just decide that doesn’t matter to me much.” But she is nice and funny and clever and neat to talk to. But she’s just so busy you know. She has quilts to make. Not useful quilts that go on beds. Small arty ones that go on walls. Because expressing herself is all that matters. Her community service is buying the historic houses and restoring them so rich people have a place to have tea parties. Hopefully a lot of my known class bias makes this paragraph have multiple readings for everyone who reads it. Ahem.

Whereas Noah’s mom’s family is… not so well off. Great Grandmother is a pistol. Hoo boy. No wonder she survived teaching all boys continuation school science for so many years. She’s got balls of solid rock. I would bet on her in a fight with a honey badger even if her eyesight is going.

GG (I’m not going to write out great grandmother every time) is the person we spent the most time with and I feel really good about that. She is the one working the hardest to have a relationship with the kids. We spent time with her on both days. She served us a wonderful breakfast the second day. She and the kids got along like a house on fire. That was such a beautiful love fest. These days she works with pre-k kids (she doesn’t have a large retirement so she is still working even though she is half blind) and she shared a whole bunch of the teaching material she has made. I was impressed by the sheer artistic value involved.

When she wants to teach the kids about the life cycle of plants she draws/paints pictures of the plant/seasons/people tending them that in the school. Every picture would be immediately recognizable to her students. It was beautifully tailored curriculum. She sends us stuff when she’s done with it and I go over it with the kids pretty carefully. She puts her soul into these things.

And now she is the *second* quilter. She makes useful blankets. She’s already made two small quilts for my kids. One for Shanna and one for Calli. Calli *loves* her orange blanket. Hardly anyone gives her orange/yellow and she prefers that to pink so this felt really special. Calli sleeps with it all the time. The new quilt GG is working on is so beautiful it deserves to be on a wall. It is a great grandmother’s fanciful interpretation of her two beautiful Cupcake Girls at play.

She let the girls paint the second day. The girls set up a huge “Enchanted forest” in her living room and she was so happy. She lives alone and not many people visit her because she doesn’t get along well with a lot of the family.

We also met GG’s son who is Noah’s mom’s brother. (I’m trying to be less confusing but I’m not sure I’m managing.) His whole family took us to the fried pickle place. They were polite but stranger polite. No one was even a hair rude. I have nothing negative to say. I felt like the visiting nanny but that is probably about as much about me as anything else.

It was a lovely dinner with lively conversation. GG was quiet–I think the ambient noise was too loud.

Noah’s brother came with his son. Watching the three kids play warmed my heart. They are all so happy to know that the others exist. There were a few arguments between my girls about whether the little boy was ONLY the cousin of one of them. I assured Calli that Shanna doesn’t get to decide that he only belongs to Shanna.

Noah and the girls went out to the compound on Sunday. Apparently the three kids mostly spent the time playing. Perfect. They swam in the (indoor, heated) pool and looked at the horses and played with the 5′ high dollhouse together.

I think that when we come through in 2015 we will spend most of the time with GG and the little cousin. Both of them promised lots of letters between now and then and I believe them. They have been happening so far.

I need to sit down and write some thank you’s very soon. Folks earned them from me. It was a good trip despite my anxiety.

I spent five hours sitting in a bar drinking mai tais and writing about sex. I actually had a great time. I don’t write that kind of stuff as much. It made me happy. I took some time to do some deep stretching because the bar was pretty empty before 12pm on a Sunday. Ha. I felt a lot better physically after that. I had some fun conversations with folks online–it was really nice, actually.

The ending of the trip was hard because I was out of spoons. It wasn’t anyone fault. Going more than 48 hours unmedicated at this point means that I am in a pretty ridiculous amount of pain and it is hard to be patient and keep my tone of voice under control in that state.

I didn’t do great but I didn’t do so badly I feel ashamed. I sat myself down next to Noah and he calmly listened to me list off how much I hate every passenger on an airplane who puts their tiny little laptop bag and coat in the upper compartment AS THE FUCKING FLIGHT ATTENDANT IS ANNOUNCING IT IS A FULL FLIGHT AND SUCH ITEMS MUST GO AT YOUR FEET BECAUSE WE WON’T HAVE ENOUGH ROOM YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE.

But that was as close as I got to a blow up so I’m happy. Thank you for listening, Noah.

I don’t think Noah would have done as well without me there to just invisibly do a lot of work. I’m glad I went so the three of them could have a lower stress trip. I think it would have been a lot harder on the girls to not have me, even though I didn’t *do* that much directly with them.

It all worked out. Even though I arrived in Houston to realize, “Oh shit. I never made a rental car reservation and I didn’t make a hotel reservation.”

Thank goodness we are rich people who can throw money at problems. I am dreading my end of year mint breakdown. I did not stay within budget.

Uhm, we did spend less than he made. That’s what I’m holding on to to assuage my guilt. (And like, I’m putting all of the travel expense in the mental category of ‘Every few years Noah’s parents send us $10k or so… this was covered by one of those gifts’.)

I think this was the most positive experience I’ve ever had in Texas.

You know, this is why I had kids. They make everything better. My kids make me happy to be wherever I am because they are there and we can have fun no matter what else is going on. I am so grateful for Shanna and Calli.

I appreciated that everyone in his family told me over and over that they were impressed by how delightful my children are.

Children become what you tell them they are. If you tell them they are wonderful (while enforcing boundaries around inappropriate behavior) they will be wonderful. If you tell them they are monsters… you get what you deserve.

I model being considerate of them all day every day. As they get older I am being more demanding that they notice me in similar ways. (Age appropriate ways! I have books telling me what is ok! Lots and lots of cross referenced books because there are varying opinions and I wanted to know the range!)

Maybe my only complaint is that the family gave them a bunch of Christmas presents that are all for 8+ year old kids. I’m kind of annoyed by that. If I let the kids open them now, the family might as well have given the kids a baggie with sticks in it. It would be used the same way. I don’t want to open all the science kits while they are incapable of reading or having some idea what is going on with it. Right now it would just be towers and grain spills in a town as they dump all the chemicals on my table. Not really my idea of a good time. I’m good with letting them dump sand in the back yard.

So I will put them in storage for a bit. It’ll be fine.

Maybe when some of our fabulous big-kid friends come visit I can get a box out and the kids can work together. If I were more willing to micromanage I could show them how it works… but we don’t roll like that. We don’t have the kind of dynamic where I set up work that is way over their head and they “go through the motions”. We just don’t do that.

That’s busy work. I don’t do busy work. I’ve got enough work. So do you. Get hopping.

I think that for small children most of their “work” should be creative play with the items they are allowed access to all the time. Shanna comes up with cool shit. I’m not going to sit her down and force her step by step through something that is too mature for her to really understand anyway.

She’ll get to the point where she is drawn to doing it herself. With the stuff in the house she always has so far.

It is weird trusting her like this. Right now our science is life science and cooking. (Cooking is serious chemistry, yo.) I let her make big messes with spices learning about them. She’s allowed to create lots of things in the kitchen. (She’s rather talented. She can make scones, cookies, and cakes with only very minimal direction but no hands-on help from me.)

If you want to do something, do it. Don’t freaking sit there and yell at me to do it for you. I don’t play that way. I will leave the room and you can yell all by yourself.

Today is park day. I asked permission from the other families to come even though I am sick. The kids need to run so bad. One person sent me an SMS saying, “Yes, come!” No one else responded. I’ll take that as a yes.

Sore throat, coughing, sneezing, fever, runny nose… it’s like I was on a plane or something.

Today I will clean in the morning then go to the park. When we come home I will make dinner then hopefully get a bit more cleaning done.

Tomorrow is a clean/social/clean/social day. We have this holiday party coming up this weekend. I should probably finish putting away all of the in-progress crap I have sitting every where. UGH!

If I am a big douchebag and I didn’t send you an invitation to an open house this Sunday it was an oversight and not a slight. Poke me if you want to come over.

Looking for a threesome

5 Replies

A wonderful friend told me that she and her husband are interested in looking for a person to have a threesome with. After saying “It won’t be me” she laughed and said, “I just want advice.”

I can do advice! And while I sit here in Texas with my second drink of the day I’m feeling very full of stuff I want to share. Hiccup.

Group sex is complicated. More brilliant people than me have written about it. When you have group sex you have three people all of whom have very different pictures in their heads of what “group sex” looks like. My personal experiences involve every gender combination of up to seven people. Because my life has been awesome.

First thing first: having a threesome as a couple adding a third person is the *worst* way to do it. Unfortunately if you are part of a couple your partner would probably object to being ditched while you go find two other single people for such an experience. When you have a couple adding a third person you have all those messy couple issues on top of the ~~simple~~ sex issues.

The reason I say this is the worst is that almost every threesome horror story I have ever heard started from that configuration. Almost every successful story I have heard involves three single people getting together for one night.

When you are in a couple you have to stop and think, “How will I react if my partner spends more time paying attention to the other person? How am I going to feel if it starts feeling like those two are having sex and I am the audience?” That can be a sucky feeling. Figuring out how to turn a seeming-new-dyad into something that includes a third person is fun but hard.

In my opinion threesomes (or moresomes) work out best if someone is specifically designated as running the fuck. You need to have someone who is consciously paying attention to who is playing with whom and for how long. You need to suggest activities if someone looks left out. “Oh Sue over there isn’t touching anyone! What should we do to her?” Then drag the group focus onto the wallflower. Some people like being a wallflower and if that is your dynamic–negotiate that in advance.

Threesomes have the potential to have mixed signals in terms of barrier protection. A long term married couple doesn’t want to use a condom together even though they MUST use barriers with an extra partner. So in my opinion the polite way to handle this is to default to the strictest set of rules for everyone. Otherwise it feels kind of awkward and weird.

And that hot guy you brought home may not want to deal with a cock covered in cunt juice. Maybe he isn’t into that part of girls very much. It happens.

My experience of the best threesomes have been all female or two male/one female. I am an insecure nitwit and I really struggled with two girl/one guy. I really completely bombed when I was part of the couple adding a girl. I couldn’t get over my insecurities. With two (mostly) heterosexual guys and me there can be many hours of fun though. Ha.

I hunted very successfully on www.okcupid.com and Craigslist. Yes, it takes patience and time to find the right people. There are a lot of people in the world. If you want casual sex you will have to get up the courage to ask a lot. You have to be completely ok with dozens or hundreds of people telling you no. If you can’t handle no then you just don’t get to have group sex this lifetime and get over it.

It really doesn’t matter if you are fat, ugly, or generally low in social status. What I have seen teaches me that pretty much anyone can find someone to say yes if they ask a lot.

If you are looking for a threesome, or really any casual sex you need to get over the idea that you will be a special snowflake in the life of everyone you fuck. Just accept it. Be prepared for awkward waves on public transit sometimes. It’s ok. It truly is.

If what you want is an experience rather than a relationship then you have a few responsibilities. First and foremost: do not treat the person who is kind enough to share this experience with you badly. If you do then you are a piece of shit who deserves to be spit on. Someone who consents to having sex with you always deserves your kindness and respect.

ALWAYS BE RESPECTFUL OF THE PEOPLE YOU HAVE HAD SEX WITH. REGARDLESS OF BAD BREAKUPS.

I try not to yell, but I’ll yell that. If you say bad things about people who have had sex with you then you say way more bad about you than them. Keep that in mind.

No one is a life support for a cock/pussy/tits for you to admire. That’s a real god damn person right there. They have wants, needs, aspirations. You need to treat them like someone awesome who is sharing a wonderful part of themself. Even your casual bar hookups. People matter. How you treat them *matters*.

I like casual sex and I am totally cool with people wanting it. But be nice. We are all humans. We all want to feel like we are respected. Start with that point of view and you will do ok with almost everyone you could ever want to have sex with.

Introduction to bdsm as a person with significant mental issues

2 Replies

I was asked a whole bunch of questions else-net. I will put the answer in both places because I think that this person is not the only one who will want this information from me in the future.

First and foremost: whereas my experience has been broad I am just one person. Your personal experiences are going to be different from mine in ways I cannot predict in advance. Take everything I say as very gentle guidance and not as an order. I am not the boss of you. Even though I speak in absolutes and I am a HUGE bossypants. I just talk that way. I don’t mean anything by it.

How do you find people? Well I started on the internet because I am a lucky duck and I came of age in that era. I went to www.bondage.com, www.alt.com, www.match.com (ironically where I met my first “online dom”–that’s a lame story if ever there was one), and IRC. I was pre-www.fetlife.com. I don’t actually recommend fetlife as a good place to meet people. It is moving further and further away from being a community space.

Go to munches. (Yes, I know people in NJ. Let me get in touch with people and I’ll see what I can find out about your area.) When you go to munches go with the expectation that most people will be really old, very over weight and fairly ugly. Of course that will not be even remotely true of a lot of people you meet. But if you go with that expectation then you will be prepared for the reality of the bdsm community. Also: expect that they will be a clique and hard to join. The sad fact is these are people who have been rejected a lot so they are prickly and nervous around new people.

We are not the beautiful people. But we are real people. We are creepy sometimes. We are overly intense. People who find their way to the bdsm community have almost certainly spent a lot of their lives feeling rejected, wrong, and disliked. Not everyone but a large chunk.

Go expecting to be your own entertainment when you get to a munch. Getting to know people sucks. It’s awkward and stiff and terror inducing. These are perverts. Many of these people would cheerfully tie you up and beat you until you scream bloody murder.

The good ones will only do so if you say “Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top.” There will be predators around though. You will have to keep you safe. Even beyond the predators there are a lot of people who have poor social skills for a wide variety of reasons. People are not going to be good at managing your boundaries. You will have to be pro-active and vocal from the very beginning. In my opinion it is ok to end up more on the bitch end of things. Keep YOU safe. Other people don’t know how to be nice to you unless you explicitly tell them.

That is one of the hardest parts of coming into the bdsm community as someone with significant mental health issues. You were probably exposed to things that made it hard for you to stand up for yourself. But when you engage in bdsm you have to do it from a place of absolute Trust. Bdsm is ALL about trust. The physical sensations are nice and all but really what we are playing with is power.

The sadomasochists are going to string me up from a tree. I’m not talking about Dominance/submission. Not all people are into specific consciously power differentiated roles. You don’t have to be a Dominant or Submissive. Maybe you are just into the physical sensations.

But I tell you that it feels different to be hit by a friend you love and trust than by someone who doesn’t like you very much. There is still power involved. Maybe it is the power of giving someone access to your body. You are relinquishing nothing. You are sharing the power.

That trust and power bit are very important. If you don’t think you have the power to keep yourself safe and decide what happens to your body then bdsm is maybe not the best place for you to come learn such power. Some people with extreme mental health problems do ok and become healthier as they have bdsm relationships and experiences. Some people tank really hard and implode. No one will be checking up on you other than you. You have to take it very seriously that you are responsible for your mental health. If you can’t manage your symptoms, then maybe right now isn’t the best time to start.

If you are officially diagnosed with mental health problems I can guess that you have a hard time picking people who are really safe to be around. I may not be right but I probably am. When you have mental health problems your perceptions of the world are always a bit at an odd angle.

It is hard to develop the conscious ability to be rational in judging whether someone is safe or not. You can’t necessarily go by the clues other people tell you to use.

For one thing the most important book you will ever read is The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker. When you have that small icki uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach get away from that person and that activity.

That doesn’t mean that a creepy guy at the munch means you never come back to the munch. But if you feel chased off by someone creepy (could be a woman or a person of non-binary gender) then the right choice is to network online and find a buddy for the next munch. You still should go meet people.

Munches aren’t for everyone. I have also had great luck hunting for partners on www.okcupid.com. Ostensibly it is a “vanilla” site but yeah right.

If you want to top you need to make sure you never inappropriately hit anyone. If that sentence makes you feel vaguely worried, well then you need to spend more time introspectively thinking about it.

Enthusiastic consent is the only way to begin a consensual bdsm scene. If someone is saying, “I’m not sure” then you don’t start. You have to both be completely sure that you want to be doing what you are doing. (I know a lot of experienced bdsm people who will reply that they start bdsm scenes with murky consent sometimes under some circumstances. The point of this essay is for people with mental health issues who are just starting. No, 301 play just isn’t a good plan.)

As a beginner negotiate for what you will do rather than what you won’t do. Creative sadists will make you very sorry you thought you could limit the things you don’t want to have happen to you. Take my word for it. Negotiate the activities.

Keep in mind that life is long. I have seen a lot of people enter the bdsm community and kind of go crazy. They are like kids in the candy store. I want to try EVERYTHING. I want to play with EVERYONE. (*ahem* This may or may not be what I did.)

As a result I had some very bad scenes that hurt me very much. I had one particular scene go very badly and I hung on to the trauma from that for over ten years. I finally went to the top and asked him to specifically, in writing, apologize for our scene because he made mistakes. I made mistakes too and I explained them in detail. But I needed to have him apologize to me and recognize that he did something he didn’t mean to do which caused me great harm.

That kind of thing doesn’t usually work out more than ten years later. If you think you need an apology for something that went wrong, I encourage you to get to know the experienced people in your community as mentors and ask someone to mediate a discussion. The way forward out of conflict is for everyone to feel heard.

In the bdsm community (at least where I live and it seems to be a national conversation but I could be wrong) there is a lot of conversation about consent and what it means. How do you say what you want and get what you want without someone coercing or forcing you to do things you don’t want.

I’ll tell you that those of us who struggle with “normal” life are at a severe disadvantage here. We have to work a lot harder. If we want to escape additional trauma we should move slowly. Glacially slow. I promise you, if you wuss into the community and slowly get to know people and don’t play for six or twelve months of getting to know people… in the scheme of your life that is not time wasted. That gives you a chance to really decide what you want to do.

Go to play parties if possible and watch people play. Go home and masturbate. Think about what things you like and which things made you feel uncomfortable. Avoid the fuckers who think “pushing limits is the best kind of play.” Maybe for a very experienced player with no psychological issues. Not for newbies. Not for people who struggle anyway.

All bdsm will throw you off balance. Your chemical balance will go all over the place. During play and right afterwards you may feel euphoric. Don’t expect that feeling to be permanent. It is often followed by a “crash” and depression. When your body is depleted of all those fun chemicals it is hard.

Figure out your aftercare. Aftercare is a real and serious thing. Aftercare is how you will take care of your brain and body in the few minutes, few hours, and few days after a scene. You will probably need different steps. Prepare nourishing food. Sit around cuddling under warm fuzzy blankets. Read your favorite soothing books. Listen to music that makes you feel safe and like you are a great person in the world.

Read books and websites. More research!

I think that is most of what I’ve got at this moment. Of course here is the obligatory reading list:

(Anything from Greenery Press)

Particularly: The New Bottoming Book and The New Topping Book both by Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton.

Playing Well With Others by Mollena Williams and Lee Harrington

Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns by Philip Miller and Molly Devon

I happen to (luckily) personally know Janet, Mollena, and Lee. I have known them for a very long time. They are some of the most brilliant and inspirational people I know. I trust them absolutely without question or I would not send you to their books. I don’t know Philip and Molly but that was one of the first books I read and it stood me in good stead.

BDSM is about the people doing it. The people who are only into tickling count. The people who are only into bondage with NO PAIN count. The people who want to do roleplay rape scenes count. The people who want to have no roles they play but they stand there punching each other count.

What do you want bdsm to mean to you? The sky is the limit. But be careful. Watch yourself. I want you here for many years of kinky fun. You can be monogamous or nonmonogamous.

There are no rules beyond “Everyone must consent”. Go have fun.

I was also asked some particular other questions: do you have to have fetish clothes? No. You don’t have to have them. Many people think they are fun. If you go wearing basic black you will be fine. Avoid running shoes. I bought my first fetish items at Hot Topic.

I came into the bdsm community many years after I was diagnosed with mental health problems. I think that it would be different for people who were involved in bdsm before their trauma. For me all of my life has been post-trauma because it started so young.

Don’t hesitate to get into bdsm at any age. I know hot, festive people playing in their 70’s and 80’s. I hope to be one of them.

Day one over, today we fly home.

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I’m so happy I don’t have to be here long. I’ve been good. I’ve been very good. I can’t keep this shit up.

I have a lot of issues. This is plain to me. I hate rich people. I don’t like poor people a lot more. I hate rich people for their assumption that life will just work out and things are fine. I hate poor people for reasons that are harder to explain. I hate poor people because I hate my family. I hate the inability to see how you are creating at least some of your own issues.

It’s hard because in general I believe that most poor people are literally incapable of solving their own problems because they do not have access to the resources that would allow them to solve their problems. So I feel enormous guilt about being one more asshole being mad at poor people for not hurrying up and doing what I want.

It isn’t fair or right of me. I also like a lot of rich people and love a lot of poor people. But being in Texas changes this feel. I am an elitist bastard. I don’t like rich people. I like educated people and you can find educated people on every level of the financial spectrum. Sometimes people who are poor have unusual educations, they are eclectic and they have weird gaps in their understanding–but they know a lot of shit.I respect that.

Noah’s family has money (at least part of it–not the great grandmother). Like the kind of inherited money where none of them have ever had to hold jobs. They can be artsy fartsy about their quilting and get indignant that most quilters are silly because they don’t have a separate outbuilding workshop along with two spare bedrooms for sewing. Are we artists or what?! She expressed shock that some of the most beautiful quilts in the world are made by people who have to “pause their work then shove the quilt under the bed while they use the room for something else. How can you call yourself an artist that way?!”

I uhm, was polite. I told her that if she wants to know the difference between an artist and a craftsman the artist is probably starving and the craftsman is doing just fine. You expect artists to have craftsman space and that’s ridiculous. Artists don’t have the money for that shit. She kind of looked surprised. “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”

No, I don’t think that a woman who thinks of her “Junior year abroad” as being “real travel so you can really find out what people are like” understands why I want to travel. I don’t want to go on an exchange program between my chichi Ivy League School and another equally prestigious school in a 1st world nation. I want to see how people really live when they aren’t like me. I want to sit down in coffee shops and listen to whatever stories people want to tell me.

I don’t want to visit a country and stay in an expensive apartment on the nice side of town eating at all the best restaurants so I can say I have “experienced” a country. I want to walk the slums. I want to find out where more than 50% of the people live. I want to go hang out with them.

I argued with the great aunt about the “Golden Rule”. I don’t believe in it. I’m not going to treat everyone how I want to be treated. They wouldn’t react very well. Other people don’t want the kind of treatment I want. Noah used the example of trying to solve peace in the middle east. If you have an Arabic man and an Israeli man trying to have a conversation you will have problems. The Arabic culture allows people to make long personal speeches without interruption. Then someone else will get their turn. The Israeli’s will interrupt every time they have a thought or think you are wrong. Where in the fuck does the Golden Rule fit in there? Her response was that it works fine in her town because there aren’t different kinds of people. Hoo boy.

Even though I do sometimes feel annoyed by the behaviors of poor people. They have no where else to be. I will not shame them even if I don’t like what they are doing. If I don’t like what I’m seeing I have the money and privilege to walk away. What fucking right do I have to tell them to stop acting that way where I can see?

Yesterday a person I follow on Twitter remarked how “creepy” it is if you see a man pushing a baby stroller with stuff other than a baby in it. I told him that those people are probably poor and don’t need his judgment.

Seriously? How dare people exist in front of me in a way I find aesthetically displeasing. Ew. Go exist somewhere else.

Then I read about this guy. I swear to God that if I lived down the street from him I would do substantial property damage to his vehicle and home. Just because I hate him so much. Is it right? Nope. Good thing I don’t live near him.

I’ve been told I’m too ugly/dirty/disgusting to be places. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Yesterday Noah told me, “Haven’t you noticed that you have arrived and now you are high status and people won’t treat you that way anymore?”

I really don’t give a shit if it happening to me or just to someone else. I would cheerfully go firebomb the car of someone who thinks he is that much more important than his fellow human beings. I wouldn’t touch him. That’s over my personal line. Clearly the piece of shit has enough money to buy another fucking car.

I like my neighborhood so much. I like that in my neighborhood no one is obviously rich. We have some families that are more obviously struggling. I’m trying to figure out how we as a community are going to solve this. I think that by the time I am old I will know everyone in every house in my neighborhood. That’s a goal. I want to help my neighbors. If I can walk to your house and you have a need that I can assist with, I want to be there.

Communities rise and fall together.

We need rich people and poor people regardless of whatever set of emotions I have towards these people. My venom will drive away potential allies with wealth. Some of my neighbors have extra money. Not tons, but extra. That’s clear by the slow gentrification some of the houses are seeing.

What would happen if I could convince my neighbors to donate their yards so we could grow more food?

I think. I plan. I’m not ready for that. So far I’m still meeting everyone and trying to learn their names. I should have a neighborhood party in 2014. I need to stop putting that off.

I have spent most of my life running from place to place trying to find people who would understand me, like me, tolerate me without yelling at me to change. Here it is weird hearing about how you have to just work with whoever lives in a two block radius.

Apparently part of that journey is just getting older. And marrying a rich guy. I don’t hate him. Ok, in some brief seconds I do. Mostly not even close. It’s not about the money. I use Noah’s money and feel guilty about it. I picked Noah because he is the only person I have ever been able to talk about myself with for hours and hours. Everyone else gets overwhelmed, wants to change the subject, or starts to avoid me if I try. I picked Noah because he makes me feel like it is ok for me to be alive.

His family is interesting. Rich people. Really Really Rich people. Ok, they live in East Texas so everything is relative. In the bay area they wouldn’t be Really Really Rich people they would just be Rather Rich people. They have a few million. Nothing to sneeze at but not much to a venture capitalist.

Sometimes I feel like I am participating in an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers exercise. Why are these people letting a white trash whore into their generations old museum fancy house?

They aren’t. They are allowing their First Son to bring his wife. Different.

I’m not invited. He is and they won’t stop him from bringing me. My children are invited–they are blood. I’m just… a few steps up from the nanny.

I have a hard time when rich old people say “Sure touch anything” when the house is full of exceptionally breakable things which are all at least a hundred years old. The great aunt is obsessed with old fashioned viewers. They are delicate little contraptions. She must have more than two dozen. I doubt we saw all she owned. The paper is old, delicate, and starting to fray. Sure why the fuck don’t you hand it to my three year old. *head desk*

I tried not to hover. The kids did great. There were no mishaps so maybe my paranoia is just out of place. I didn’t say anything. I just had a lot of stomach acid. Being sober is extremely painful. On a 1-10 scale I would say the acid feeling is at about a 7. I’m going to need to work with a doctor on this before I can really handle getting off pot. If I had this feeling every day I would spend my days on the couch crying. I wouldn’t eat because eating hurts too much. If I don’t eat enough I vomit.

The great grandmother was really delightful though. I think that she and I have some interesting things in common. She grew up poor working class. She had to support her family as a single mom because her husband died in a farm equipment accident. The belief is it was probably suicide. The nasty story in the family is that he died to get away from his mean wife.

Now she is old. Old people are trying to buy their way into heaven, right? She was very nice with us. She has a bunch of 50 year old dolls from her kids. My daughters had a lot of fun playing with her. She teaches pre-K as her “retirement” (she taught at continuation middle schools. She was a science teacher. She spent 19 years working with American Science. She also had a few years of teaching science at the college level. She’s hella smart.) and she makes beautiful instructional material for the kids. She makes these story-books about the life cycles of plants and animals. They really are lovely.

Early in our letters she was very derogatory about the idea of home schooling. Then she discovered that state law says that every pre-k teacher should have 12 students and an aide. Instead every teacher has 22 students and the aides are split between two or three classrooms. She said, “If you can give them better than that, do it.”

She tried to defer to me on whether the kids got hot chocolate and cookies. I said, “If a kid can’t get spoiled by their great grandmother then something is wrong with the world. Do whatever you want.” That seemed to make her happy.

She is working on one of the prettiest quilts I have ever seen. It is a hand made piece of art. It’s about the Cupcake Girls. It is pictures of two little girls doing things. Playing in the garden. Climbing a tree. I can’t remember what all. She has sewn all of these little pictures by hand. It is incredible. She says she has been working on it for a year. It is still a ways off from being done. She wants us to send her pictures of the girls doing stuff in Texas so she can add squares for that.

I am so glad my kids have someone in the world who thinks about them like that. I look at those kinds of efforts as magic talismans. Their great grandmother doesn’t have a lot she can do for them or give them. But she loves them. She wants them to be happy and she wants them to thrive. She wants them to feel like they are seen.

I’m glad we came to Texas. I’m really glad they got to meet her.

When they knocked a potted plant over the response was “No big deal. I’ll get a paper towel and the compost bucket.” My kids felt safe and appreciated. Not to mention that she had a cool living tree in her front room and tons of animal stuffies. My kids will be talking about the Enchanted Forest at Great E’s house for years.

I am so grateful that they get to have this experience. Whatever feelings I have or don’t have. I’m being very patient. I haven’t yelled. I’m not being demanding. They are doing really well on their own without my interference.

We went out to dinner. I had the best freakin fried pickles in the whole world. I may have to figure out how to do that now that I was gifted with a deep fryer. Holy crap that was so good. I could have eaten like five of the plates. Instead I tactfully shared with my sister in law.

At dinner we had Noah’s oldest brother (they are all younger than Noah), his wife, his son (who is exactly one year younger than Shanna so also one year older than Calli), Noah’s uncle, his wife, and their daughter, and the great grandmother. It was a really lovely meal. The food was good. The conversation was lively. The kids were rambunctious but little J had a long day of having to be good in the library and my kids sat on a plane all day yesterday. A bit of bouncing and wiggling is to be expected. They did great.

The three kids were ecstatic together. The biggest issue was when Shanna declared that J was only her cousin and not Calli’s cousin. Calli had some words (and fists) for that declaration. I curtailed the fight and talked Calli into believing that Shanna was just wrong and she (Calli) doesn’t have to listen to her.

The three kids were hugging and kissing foreheads and giggling like mad people. They were super thrilled to be together. J looked like the car Calli gave him for Christmas was the best thing ever. I’m glad. Calli put a lot of emotional energy into hoping he would like it.

Just in general it was nice seeing them. We traded stories and commentary about what different places are like. I learned how their county is getting royally screwed because property taxes are a lot of their tax base but more and more of the land is publicly owned through the national forests or the universities so they are getting into a nasty squeeze. We talked about the various methods of construction and the value or not in them.

It was an energetic flow of conversation the whole time. I don’t think I dominated and I wasn’t a wall flower. That’s perfect I think.

Today I get to pack up our shit. Then we go back to the Great Grandmother’s for cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate. (I will be eating my leftover chicken fried steak for breakfast so that I don’t puke from all the sugar.) Then Noah and the girls will go out to the compound. They will pick me up later and we will head to the airport. We will sleep in our beds tonight.

This is probably the right length of time to be in Texas right now. I’m hoping that by 2015 I will have done some work on my stomach and this will go better. All of the relatives are telling me that when we come through for Trick or Treating they hope we will stay for a week or two because they all want to spend time with the kids. I hear you. I will keep that in mind. I will see if I can handle that. Clearly my children adore you all and you are being very nice to the kids. Both sides deserve to have relationships with their family members. Whether I “like” it or not. I will be supportive and loving. That is my role here.

But I will cry in the mornings. Because no one has ever loved me the way these people love my kids. I wish I wasn’t so sad about that. I have Noah. I have Shanna. I have Calli. They have to be enough. The amount they love me has to be enough.

I remember knocking a plant over on accident. I was hit in the head hard enough to make me hit the floor. Then I had to scramble up to get a broom and a towel by myself. I shook while I cleaned because the adult in the room was screaming the entire time about how stupid and pathetic I was.

My kids will have a different life.

what a lovely way to start the day. not.

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I’m sitting here in the hotel wrapping presents for Noah’s family and crying. I don’t give a shit about these people. Why do I have to wrap Christmas presents for them? Oh. Because I’m the mom and my kids should be taught to not be self absorbed assholes. This sucks.

For those following at home the day of traveling went fantastic. The kids were so good. Our only crying was when the final descent hurt their ears while they were sleeping. If someone gets cranky at a kid for crying about that I have a long and nasty lecture for them. It happens. The kids did so well.

It helped that I was perky and upbeat for the whole day. That really smoothes things along. I played with them and answered questions and kept them moving just about every minute that they weren’t strapped in car seats.

They were such big girls handling their own luggage. I was really proud in a dorky way.

Putting the carseats on the plane is both obnoxious and really awesome because I don’t spend the flight yelling at them to get back into their @#%#%@# seat. They just sit and relax. Excellent.

Today we see the great grandmother and the great aunt and other great uncle family pod group. Because the grandmother said she was going to have her birthday at home whether I like it or not. Ok. Have a nice dinner. We’ll go out with someone else since it is too much trouble.

My kids are still asleep. I tell myself this is because we arrived at the hotel at midnight our time and it is now only 6am our time so maybe I should be patient.

Yeah. Not so patient.

leaving on a jet plane

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We leave our house for Texas in nine hours. I should probably go to Kaiser and refill my Ativan prescription today. That I can fly with. I’m very happy that I made 30 Ativan pills last six months. That’s about the correct rate of sleep assistance for me. (Last refill was the beginning of June.)

I slept for seven hours. That’s not enough after getting three hours the night before. I am SO VERY AWAKE.

The gingerbread house party deal was really awesome. Everyone had a lot of fun. The other moms were really proactive about jumping in and helping my kids during the actual construction of houses while I drifted around all spacey from lack of sleep. I really like the women I am spending time with in this home school group. I am progressively more “out” with all of them about a wide variety of topics. It is kind of weird how being out with them is making me feel more and less safe with them.

I feel more safe because so far I have gotten the opposite of rejection from all of them. They go out of their way to make sure I feel included and like my presence is a good thing in their lives. I could not possibly begin to express how impactful this is. They are not all “like me”. They are not tribe. They like me anyway. They think I have value. And they go out of their way to keep telling me that they want me around. That their kids FUCKING LOVE coming to my house. That feels so good. I’m not chasing everyone away. I’m not being bad.

I feel less safe because I’ve poured a lot of myself into them already. I am not as big a part of their lives as they are part of my life just because they have other people who take up space. They have families and churches and communities they have been part of for most of their lives.

I have a lot of level 3’s.

I love my level 3’s with all my heart and soul and I say prayers of thanks for them just about every day. I do not denigrate my level 3’s.

But it is very hard knowing that I have to be very careful all the time or I risk alienating people who are a huge part of my network. They don’t have to know they are a huge part of my network. I know.

I know that when I do things in my house I do it because I hope ____ will tell me I did the right thing. I know that when I respond to my kids I am actively channeling _____ because she is just plain better than me.

So the more I give of myself to this homeschooling group the more pain I am potentially opening myself up to in the future. That’s hard.

But I’m doing it anyway because this life thing goes better for most people than it has for me and I am responsible for providing this kind of environment for my children. It’s my job to work through my anxiety and provide them a community.

It is hard to once again feel like my experiences don’t matter. It does help that I know that my terror is irrational. My experience of being afraid when I am with home schoolers is not predicated on their behavior or attitudes. It is instead from my previous history with other people. I am trying hard not to project. I am trying to not believe that one personality quirk in common with someone who rejected me means that I will be rejected again. I don’t have a crystal ball.

Luckily home schoolers, regardless of the whole “pervy tribe” thing, are at heart people who want to do things their own way. This seems to transfer to a higher tolerance for people being very different. Pinterest has allowed me to see other sides of these ladies. Ha. (They may not swear around their kids but they are ok with swear words existing and being used and all.)

I’m glad I did the gingerbread house experience. Next year I will be making gingerbread boys and girls for the kids to decorate. Much less baking involved. My forefinger is still completely numb. Stupid knife.

I did not try to restrict the sugar intake because that would have been a losing battle. As a result Shanna went to sleep with a nasty stomach ache. She commented, “You know… I think that maybe next time I won’t eat so much sugar. This doesn’t feel very good.” I didn’t laugh. I’m proud of myself. Instead I cuddled her to sleep and said, “Yeah. We’ve all been there. You have to figure out what your body can handle. I’m sorry you hurt now.”

I need to back off on my cleaning expectations. They are 3 and 5. I have been turning into kind of an asshole for a few weeks and I don’t even know why. I’ve been refusing to engage in any play unless they clean up first. They aren’t ready for this. I apologized for my attitude. I’m not treating them like little kids and they are little kids. I need to be more patient.

I also need to reread my 3 and 5 year old books. Maybe I’ll take them to Texas with a highlighter. Then I can pass them on to K’s husband who told me he promised that he would read them if I highlighted the important and non-repetitive passages. They are kind of annoyingly repetitive. (He has a full time job, is in full time college, and he has two kids. I think it is reasonable to say “I can only handle the highlighted sections.”)

We would all be better parents if we really took into consideration the current physical development of our kids. They change so fast but still not as fast as we might hope on some days. It’s important to let them be kids. They will never ever get another chance. (Being an Adult Baby or interested in Age Play doesn’t count.)

The thing I like the most about my kids is that they really are always trying their best. Sometimes their best is not what I, as an asshole adult, want but it is their best. I can tell them it isn’t good enough and create that dynamic in their mind or I can say, “That is exactly what a five year old should be able to do. Excellent. You’ll get bigger and things will change.”

Shanna is starting to have serious interest in reading. Last night she complained to me that she’s really frustrated because the only words she knows how to spell are “Shanna, zoo, Calli, and love.” She wants to know more. I told her that it is ok that she doesn’t already know everything. She’s five. Her brain probably hasn’t quite switched yet so that learning reading is super easy–don’t get impatient. Soon it will get much easier and then you will be shocked by how fast it comes. I told her that if she wants to start really practicing, she can at any point. Whenever she is ready.

Unschooling is really emotionally complex. I have all these assumptions and desires and preferences. My kids meet and totally don’t meet them. I still believe that if I sat down on paper and explained my ideal child Shanna is it to a T. That makes me feel guilty and like I don’t love Calli enough.

I don’t think I love Shanna more. But she is what I would have designed on paper before having children. We are so deeply compatible that I worry that we aren’t and I’m making it up in my head and I will fuck her up by assuming we are.

Calli is more directly challenging to me on a minute by minute basis. She surprises me all day every day. I like it. She’s neat. She is starting to really come into her own. I love the way she will absolutely defend her own boundaries and then be nice once you have allowed her all the space she feels she needs.

Keep that up, wonderful girl. I am so proud of you. You clearly know that you get to take up space and exist. Watching you is so exciting. She likes being a benevolent tyrant. If you defer to her being in charge then she will be generous and kind and ridiculously sweet. If you try to insist that she isn’t in charge then she explodes. Luckily she is starting to be mollified by the idea that she is always her own boss. No, you aren’t the boss of Shanna. Sorry, kid. But you are your boss. I’m a temporary assistant manager.

Calli’s favorite game is “Mamas and babies” and I have to be the baby. I’m a thoroughly obnoxious and demanding baby. She loves it.

Calli keeps telling me she doesn’t want to grow up. She wants to be my tiny baby forever. Sometimes I feel like I’m not as important to Calli as I am to Shanna. Then I get my head out of my ass and I see that Calli is maybe more attached to me than Shanna.

Shanna likes me and I hope we will be friends when she grows up, but she is outward focused. She is going to be someone who wants a lot of friends in her life. I will not be the center of her world forever. I get the impression that Calli will seek out fewer people. I may always be more central in her life. Who knows. The future is a long way off. I’m enjoying these little flashes of how wrong I am about my assumptions. Calli is very attached. Calli is somewhat needy and I am struggling to really enthusiastically meet all those needs. I think I was more giving with Shanna.

I like them both so much. I feel so lucky that I get to hang out with them all day. I think it is funny how often Shanna talks about wanting to go to school “Some day when I am big!” but when I tell her that school involves being away from me all day she says, “Not yet. I don’t want to do that yet. In a few years. Then I will be ready.” She debates the merits of starting at 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. She says she thinks that she will definitely no matter what be ready by 14. I told her I suspected that was true. By 14 she will be old enough and big enough that she will certainly want to go learn things I can’t teach her.

I mention that we want to spend the year she is 12 traveling, so maybe going for a year or two before then would be fun to find out what it is like before she travels? Maybe she just wants to wait till after that to start? I don’t know. It isn’t my decision.

Sometimes it is weird noticing how many parenting things I think aren’t my decision. Other people make these decisions for their kids. I don’t feel qualified. I don’t think I know what is inside their heads and inside their bodies. I don’t know what the best decision will be in the long run.

I maintain this feeling of being conflicted about home schooling. I love it as much as I believed I would when I was 17. I feel scared that I am doing this for my needs instead of theirs.

I continue to do research about education styles because I want to be as eclectic as possible. Every single theory of education has benefits and deficits. Some can be combined in useful ways to get the benefits of multiple disciplines and some are inherently contradictory. I’m trying to figure out how I can get out of my head enough to be objective about what they need instead of just doing what I feel comfortable with.

Home schooling isn’t about making my life easier. That’s not the point. It might coincidentally do so… but that’s not the point. If I start making decisions based on my convenience I will fuck up my kids and that’s not cool.

K, I’m almost done with the book you gave me. I think I have a lot of the earlier part of the series. I may take one or two on this trip. Wow these are easy to read. It’s another Tamora Pierce book for those who don’t know K’s taste. She is going to get me through the entire collection of stuff that author has written.

I’m not worried about my children learning to read. They want to read. As soon as their brains are ready it will come. If they have learning disabilities and it doesn’t come automatically that is something I will watch for and address. Dyslexia runs in my family. My kids want to read. That’s the important step. They know that books contain whole universes of awesome and they want to benefit. I’m not worried.

I feel so weird knowing that whatever problems emerge (they will happen–that’s how life works) I have a lot of ability to handle them. I don’t feel very helpless any more. Sometimes I feel paralyzed with fear but I know that if I can get my stupid body moving I will be able to do something that is acceptable even if it isn’t the absolute best solution ever in the history of ever.

It is weird feeling confident and unconfident at the same time. Is unconfident a word? (internet says it is a word.) Insecure?

Of course there are problems outside my scope. If my kid gets cancer there isn’t a lot I can do. I mean, we have insurance and I would take them to every doctor. I would beggar myself in the process with no worry about the future. Take care of my baby.

Let’s stick with educational worry, ok? That I can do something about.

It is weird knowing that if my kid came down with a major medical malady Noah’s family would probably pony up. I am not someone who has had that as a resource in this lifetime. From when I was very young I have consciously thought that if I get diagnosed with a terrible disease the right choice for me is to die as fast as possible because no one who has ever been responsible for me had the money to pay for much treatment. I don’t want my family to suffer after I’m dead because dying was expensive. But things are so different now.

I feel very weird about the way suicide keeps being pushed further and further back for me. It is feeling less and less like an option. I could not do that to Shanna and Calli. Even if I did have cancer. They deserve the fullness of every minute I can give them. Killing myself is actively hurting them, forever. I don’t want to do that to them. Suicide has become my constant feeling of “out”. I don’t have to take this (no matter what “this” I’m talking about). I can die.

Now I can’t. It is… weird. I want to see what my children are like in their 30’s and 40’s and 50’s. I want to find out what the repercussions of my parenting style are. They will exist. I’m going to do things wrong if I haven’t already. (I have.)

I believe with all my soul in what I am doing. I think the American school system is broken and I don’t want my kids to be part of it. I don’t want to work long and hard enough to pay for private schools when I’m not sure they are enough better to justify how much less I would see my kids. We have great upper division education. We don’t do so well with the littles.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. There are amazing teachers within the system who do a great job. I think that some people luck into having positive public school experiences but it is a crap shoot. I don’t think I am the right parent to navigate my kid having a positive experience. I don’t think I can do it. I feel like a failure.

I do and I don’t. I feel like a failure for not being able to manage the public school system as a parent like I feel like a failure for not sewing. I feel like I “should” be able to but I can’t. Yet I don’t actually consider those skills mandatory for life.

Do I think I “could” learn how to manage the public school system? Sure. It’s a system. I could figure out how to hack it. It would be really hard and it would take a lot of time and energy and work and I don’t think it is worth it. Just like I could learn to sew but I don’t think it is worth upping my frustration level. The level of positive I would gain doesn’t outweigh the cost right now.

I believe there are different circumstances that would change my mind.

Everything is situational.

busy day

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Good news! I had ten days of pot left in the stash I brought to Dad’s house. I had two more weeks in the freezer. Christmas will not be as stressful as I thought. YAY!!!!

I thought making gingerbread houses would take me more like 1/2 an hour per batch with a little extra wiggle room. Instead it is taking over an hour per batch. I had to make 14 sets. I wish my kids had fewer friends. And some people are kind of grumpy with me for not being invited. My finger is numb from pressing on the knife to cut out the pieces.

Ok, have to start making icing. People arrive in 2.5 hours. I slept for about four hours because I so dramatically underestimated how long this would take. Today had better be fun.

violence

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Yesterday I bought more than $100 of vitamins. I have ~ 7 days of pot left. I think that will be when I stop. I’m not going to get more to make it through the end of the year. With the break for the Texas trip (I’m not flying to Texas with pot even if I *do* have a medical prescription) That will get me to the 20th or 21st. So Christmas will be interesting. But you have to just go at some point.

I took my vitamins yesterday. I rested yesterday. I didn’t run because for some reason my hip decided yesterday that it hates my guts. My plan for today is yoga, baking gingerbread for tomorrow, and swinging. I may or may not pick up the garage. I haven’t decided.

We went Christmas caroling with the home school group yesterday. I was nominated as choir director at the last minute because the person who had volunteered let us know that she only meant she would run the rehearsal. Uhm, ok then. Pretty much what that meant is I counted off the beginning of the songs. We were not good singers. But we had fun.

Being in a senior assisted living place was kind of hard. Some of the people in the locked dementia ward cried when we sang. I can only imagine what was going on in their heads. I don’t think we cheered them up. One woman was mostly muttering under her breath with occasional louder shouts about how we were all liars and bastards. I don’t blame her for that opinion when we are singing Christian songs about hope and how everything will be awesome for Christmas.

I got bitchslapped on the ptsd forum. I talked about my uncanny ability to figure out that people have been sexually assaulted. Some woman spent way too much time telling me how inappropriate and terrible I am for being able to tell that about people. I should certainly never let on that I have such suspicions or I am violating their privacy. You know… I can see why you are over sensitive. My most frequent experience is that people cry and hug me and are grateful to be seen. I’m not going to stop because someone on the internet objects to my behavior. It is working for me.

Yesterday I was sitting on the floor and my mind was wandering and Shanna wanted my attention. She walked up and flicked me in the face. It was a very near thing for me hitting her. At this stage of my life the flicking in the head leading to violent reaction thing is a reflex. I don’t think about it. That came from many years of abuse.

I talked to her about it then and again at dinner. Noah had the brilliant idea of comparing it to accidentally kicking someone when they tickle you. It’s a reflex. You aren’t consciously deciding that you want to kick someone. It just kind of happens. When someone flicks me in the face I just react. Please don’t do that to me any more. Please. Please. Please. I don’t want to ever hit you and I’m terrified that if you do that to me it will happen before I have the ability to stop myself.

I am really sorry I live in the body I have. At this stage of my life, just don’t fucking flick my face, ok?

Shanna said I scared her when I talked about it. I was trying hard to not be scary. I’m so sorry. But I’m very serious. Don’t flick my face. Truly. Don’t.

I woke up thinking about how after reading eight books on codependence I don’t think I know the difference between codependence and interdependence. I’m still scared I am “inappropriate” all the time. I grew up being told that “we” were just codependent–like it or not. That’s what my mom and sister said.

I feel so guilty for needing things from Noah. I feel like I am suffocating him. He tells me he is fine but when you lie the way I do all the time about being fine you tend to not believe other people either.

I don’t want to hurt my children the way I have hurt other people. I think my kids deserve better. I feel guilty for the fact that I didn’t think my friends deserved better. I shouldn’t have cracked ribs. I shouldn’t have hit people so much. I shouldn’t have tried so hard to make people bleed.

I’m not even talking about the bdsm. Those people consented. I don’t feel guilty about beating someone until they lie sobbing on the floor in front of me if they asked me very nicely to do that to them. I feel very guilty, still, for all the fights as a kid. I was so god damn mean.

I’ve only cracked one set of ribs since reaching my majority. Uhm, progress? That time the person even went to the doctor and had x-rays to confirm it. Yup. I cracked their ribs. When I was younger people just dealt with months of pain instead of going to the doctor.

I regularly talk to men who are very dismissive of whatever “power” I ascribe to them. They don’t see themselves the way that I see them. They think they are powerless. Naw, you’ve just never really learned that you aren’t ten years old any more. I understand that no one likes young men. I get that. When you are a young guy you have the opposite of power, no matter what color you are. But things change.

I haven’t cracked any ribs in ten years. I should stop feeling bad. I did stop. I haven’t made anyone bleed in… about the same length of time if memory serves correctly. I’m getting close to being out of the scene (mostly) for almost ten years. I still bottom to Noah but I’m not in the scene and I don’t top any more.

I am somewhat unlikely to ever viciously beat someone again. That is weird. I have done it so many times over my life that I don’t know what to do with all those feelings. I really am a vicious, nasty person.

But you wouldn’t know it to look at my kids. I’m nice to them. But today I scared Shanna. She kind of melted out of her chair to hide under the kitchen table.

I’m so sorry Shanna. I wasn’t trying to scare you. I don’t want to hit you. Please don’t flick my face. I don’t have time to think to stop myself from reacting. I’m trying. I have worked so hard on my reflexes. I no longer hit instinctively when someone startles me. For many years there if someone thought it was “funny” to jump out and startle me they were as likely as not to walk away bleeding.

I *have* learned a lot of control.

My biological father used to flick me in the head. It usually came along with some deprecation about my intelligence. I learned to fight as hard as I could when I was flicked. You are not going to treat me that way any more.

The last time I hit someone was up in Portland. (She’s a friend. She liked it.) It’ll be two years in February. That was when Noah and I agreed to stop that part of our relationship.

I think a lot about what it means to stop being violent. I have a lot of compassion for military veterans. I can only imagine how dangerous I would have become if I had entered the military. (When I was 17 a number of “official” sort of school people tried to talk me into the military. I was seen as very suitable. That would have destroyed me.)

Life is about a series of choices. Sometimes some people pick violence. Does that mean you are stuck being violent forever? Malcolm X managed to (relatively) calm down.

Maybe I will get to the point where I can say that I haven’t hit anyone in twenty years. Maybe my guilt will reduce over time.

I still feel bad for fracturing Jason’s ribs in high school. He was on the wrestling team and was bragging about how if he took me on he would win. No, he really didn’t. And he paid for months.

That was more than half my life ago. He didn’t hate me forever. He did try to act inappropriately the one time I have run into him as an adult. But that was a different issue. That was sex and alcohol and bad boundaries.

I’m glad I’m off facebook. I’m harder to find. I am less likely to run into random people I hope I won’t run into again.

Sometimes there are downsides to knowing so many people. Sometimes there are downsides to having such a history of hurting people. They find me years later and I get this new rush of shame. Yup, I’m that kind of person. Or I was. Do you ever actually change?

I don’t hit my kids. The worst I have done is smack feet that were viciously kicking the car seat. I was going to drive off the road if I didn’t stop the kicking.

I don’t want to hit my kids. But inside me there is always the potential. I don’t really know how to live with that.

Do you know that the US refuses entry to people from other countries who have documented issues of depression? A Canadian woman was going through the US to get to a cruise. She was blocked from her vacation. Because she was stupid enough to think that a crazy person gets to have normal life experiences.

I don’t imagine the biases against “people like me”. They are well documented. That doesn’t mean I personally experience that much discrimination at this stage.

It’s a lot like white men thinking they have no power.

All of these things are so complicated. Power. Safety. Violence. They all entwine.

I don’t feel good about the progress I’ve made. I don’t feel like I have come far enough. Really I don’t think I will ever give myself much slack because I have already done what I’ve done. I can never undo it.

Are monsters ever redeemable?

I was asked why I won’t consider working Dickens. I can’t deal with my rapists. Sorry. I know that nothing will ever happen to them. They will continue to be Fine Upstanding Members Of Their Community. They have a lot to offer. They are important. They are worthy.

I just…

post-therapy (more) hobbies and yay friends.

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It made me very happy to tell my therapist “My friends and I are in a fierce and loving argument/discussion about hobbies and how I should learn to manage time better.” She thinks it is great that you all interact with me. Heh.

Then when I explained the “I can’t do fiddly shit” she said, “Oh of course not. Your flavor of PTSD should be kept as far away from those kinds of actions as possible. If someone has dissociation issues then often things like knitting can help them be more present. You are so hyperaroused that it will drive you crazy. Don’t do that. Try martial arts.”

See, the knitting is very good and healthy for lots of my friends and not for me. I appreciate my pats on the back. Validation is my friend.

I talked to her a lot about wanting to come off of pot. I’m past the baby stage. I told myself I was using pot to give me the self control I needed to get past the baby stage when the kids really couldn’t help how much they triggered me. I don’t have babies any more. Shit.

I think there is the non-zero possibility that I will stop using pot until my kids are adults and then start again. Being stoned is awesome but I want to teach my kids a different lifestyle.

My shrink says she has known people who have had good luck taking some melatonin during the day while getting off pot. You have to be careful to never take it for more than ten days in a row (I should research why) but it can be useful. I also have to up my B vitamins. I should be taking 1,000-1,500 units per day. Ew. Ew. Ew. I should double the fish oil dose. I should start 5-htp.

The idea is that this will probably take a full year. Not to get off pot. That will take less than a month. I have to get my bodily stress more under control. It is going to be a process and it is going to be hard. I will have to really retrain my body with new habits. New habits can be formed in as little as thirty days. I don’t think my lifelong habits will be undone in a month. Ok, I’ve already worked on a lot of the other big problem areas, but more to handle.

Yesterday Shanna kind of complained about me watching The West Wing. I told her I was watching it because I was frustrated and annoyed and I was trying not to yell at her. She said, “Turn it off and let’s talk about it. You won’t solve anything this way.”

I feel so lucky. I feel like I have so much reason to work on my issues. I finally have iron clad reasons to think that my emotional state matters. It impacts my kids hugely and massively all day every day. I matter.

My therapist continues her stream of being shocked by how many people I know. She has been sorta trying to talk me into working with a writing teacher she knows. He could edit my books. I told her I was saving money to work with my friend Janet. She has a lot of experience with writing and running a publishing company and she told me she wanted to work with me. I really want to try that avenue first.

My shrink said, “Oh, what publishing company?”

“Greenery Press.”

Her jaw dropped and her eyes bugged. “You know her?”

“Oh yeah. I’ve known her for more than ten years.”

“Uhm, yeah. Work with her. That’s amazing. Wow. You know a lot of people.”

I really do. I know some ridiculously cool people. I get out and talk to people a lot. I am constantly out trying to pull more people into my tenuous web of connections. I like people. The more people I know the safer I am.

By contrast she (my shrink) told me it was pretty chicken shit to have relationships with people where I invite them over a lot and then I stop and expect them to invite themselves over. She said that’s not cool and I should stop it. I said, “But I’m scared.” She said, “So are they.”

Damnit.

She wants me to consider working with kinky survivors as one of the hats I put on some day when I’m a grown up. She thinks I would be uniquely well suited to being able to help people in that category. I’m flattered. This comes up because I spend a lot of time on the PTSD forum fielding questions about bdsm. It is hilarious to me that I hand out this long list of book recommendations and I am friends/former play partners with almost all of the authors. Yeah, I vouch for the information in the book and the integrity of the people giving the information.

I told my therapist about Noah’s reaction to me wanting to go to Islamic countries as an old woman as part of my work with incest. (Noah’s response was, “Ok we need to start martial arts. Now.) Her eyes teared up and she said, “You are so lucky to have a partner who is that supportive of you. Do you understand how rare that is?”

I do understand. I’m grateful every single day.

No, Noah doesn’t try to talk me out of things. I say, “I’m thinking about doing _____” and he says, “How can I help!?” (As a bonus he also makes cookies. So far this year: snickerdoodles (three batches [err… I ate a whole one alone…]), chocolate chip, haystacks, and he has made dough for refrigerator cookies, sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, and molasses crinkles. He’s serious about liking my ass slightly more when it is bigger. Ha.)

I have friends who put up with me being rude, offensive, and foul mouthed.

I am ridiculously lucky in this lifetime. Not very many people receive as much non-family support as I get. It’s all about perspective, right?

Apparently I need to start a structured routine for a (long) while. I need to have “sitting on a swing for an hour” as part of every day. (Rocking motions are soothing to your brain. If you are upset, hug yourself and rock. You may feel lame but it does help.) I need to find a martial arts gym that will let us come in 2-3 days every week. I need to be running almost every day. (Rest days are important too.) I need to start teaching Shanna how to ride a bike and practice with her. (She has one… but she’s a wuss. She won’t try it unless I’m really bugging her. She likes going as fast as she can with her feet thankyouverymuch.)

I tend to have structure for a short period and then go off the rails when I add a big project. I can’t have any big projects for a year. This feels crushing and unfair. Waaa waaa waaa. Should I call the waaaaaaambulance?

I have to train my body to relax. I’m not sure I have ever been relaxed. Yeah, it will probably take a year. If I am fully relaxed at the end of a year it will be a G-d damn miracle. But I have to try. And this is the year. Go.

If I want to be able to do the serious international travel later I have no choice but to do this now. I can’t put it off any more. I don’t want to end up beating my head on concrete again the next time I leave the country. It is really unpleasant. In 2015 I want to travel with my kids for almost six months just to see if I can. I have to do this work in 2014. I’m feeling very annoyed with myself.

Why don’t I just give up on these hard things and have an easier life? What is wrong with me? Well, I don’t think that what I’m doing right now is actually easier. It is a different hard thing that I have slowly juggled towards as being the best I can get with my current coping skills.

I need different coping skills.

I feel like now it is finally safe enough to try. I have two kids who love me to the moon and back and who want to be nice to me. They just need me to teach them how. I need to teach without yelling or being nasty because then I will actually teach yelling and being nasty.

I feel so blessed that I have this time and this space. I don’t feel I have earned it. I don’t deserve it. But here it is. I have time. I have safety. I have money to fill in the gaps for when I can’t do everything for myself.

I have so much privilege that there is no longer any justifiable excuse for me not doing this work. Shit.

(I do believe it was justified earlier in my life. I was not physically or emotionally capable of doing the work before. I was never safe enough.) If you have to spend all day running to stay in one place someone who criticizes you for not finishing a marathon is a fucking asshole. You are doing what you can do.

I am seven years post rape. I have lived in this house for more than twice as long as I have ever lived anywhere else in my life. I have three people I get to live with who all think I am really nice and wonderful.

It’s time to stop being afraid all the time.

Being afraid makes me nasty. Being afraid makes me inclined to fight anyone and anything at any time because I perceive everyone as a threat. I am really sorry that I am so scared.

I’m going to work with a doctor on my body pain. Pam has offered to either go and hold my hand or babysit. I think I would prefer the hand holding. I’ll arrange the appointment on a day when Noah can stay with the kids.

I am very lucky. I am sorry I act so ungrateful so much of the time.

Terrible thought

4 Replies

So the thing about meditation is that it is learning to sit in the still space.

My whole life requires me to move around and constantly respond to stimuli. I’m used to taking in fantastic amounts of information and consciously thinking about it. (If you are ever curious, ask me what I’m thinking about randomly some day. The firehose may drown you. I can talk faster than I can type. Muahahahaha.) That’s what hypervigilence means in a broad sense.

Meditation means turning off my awareness of ALL THE THINGS.

I think I am struggling with finding space where I really feel safe enough to not pay attention.

I pay a lot of attention to my kids. They still create messes and destroy things at a rate that blows my mind. I don’t clean the house every day. I would lose my mind.

My kids are extremely hands-on and creative with their environment. What that means is a shit-ton of work for me.

I have to maintain a certain level of clean so I don’t freak out. I have to vacuum a few times a month or we get bugs. Noah worries more about clutter than I do.

I think I have more anxiety around trying to please Noah than about keeping the house picked up. If he gets house and their shit is everywhere he sighs deeply and starts stomping around to pick it up. So I try to do that most days. But not every day.

But I set boundaries around “You have to have your stuff picked up before you can move on to some other large structured activity”. I’m inconsistent around this though. Like, the house is a mess but we went to Dickens anyway. I had Monday as a scheduled “cleaning day” so I was ok with that. The kids do help when I clean. They are getting really good at that.

The balance on that kind of stuff has improved dramatically. The training is working. Ha. But they need a tremendous amount of energy and direction from me to learn still. I don’t have time to go sit in a quiet space. They bug me every two fucking minutes.

“Quiet time in the garage” doesn’t really exist lately. They come in every fucking two minutes. If I get to the point of yelling at them then sometimes I can get up to ten minutes. (Still differentiating yelling from screaming as about volume/intensity/level of rage. Not sure if it feels that much different to them. They don’t cringe when I yell but they do back off. I’m usually yelling from the far corner of the garage to say “NOT RIGHT NOW.” I’m not feeling guilty but it isn’t effective either.)

I’m doing something wrong or they are testing boundaries or this is a phase or something. Holy fucking shit. Parenting is not usually as hard as it has been for a while.

We were traveling. It’s the holidays. I am probably pretty short compared to normal.

December 6th is my leather mom’s birthday. She’s going through a hard time and I can’t really support her. I feel shitty about that. It is also my biological mother’s birthday. She turned 64. Today is my biological father’s birthday. He would also have been 64. Instead he sat in his garage when he was 49. Stopping time on his maturation process.

I’m flying to Texas but Noah’s mom refuses to meet at a restaurant for a meal. I guess I won’t see them. That’s probably for the best. No I won’t be going to your house for you to yell at me. No thank you. I did not abandon one abusive mother in order to turn around and submit to another one.

I’m sad. I feel like I’m “doing everything wrong” again.

I read these annoying fucking checklists of “habits of mentally healthy people” and I think well no shit I’m not mentally healthy. I know people who don’t remember their lives very well. That would be the only way for me to lose awareness of the anniversary shit in my life. I may love those people but I do not choose to pursue that coping method.

I like my memory very much.

I need to feel safe enough to sit in my quiet space. I resist meditation because it is about sitting around and practicing self control for the fuck of it.

That sounds like hell on earth.

I would much rather multi-task to the point where I will have a stroke. It’s more comfortable.

What does that say about me?

Fuck you still place. Fuck you with a big stick.

“Why don’t you just stop dwelling on the past?”

Why don’t I just stop being sad that I don’t get to have a dad I haven’t had sex with in this lifetime? Really?

Uhm bugger off. I get to have my feelings.

If you haven’t had to buy love with your cunt for most of your life you really can’t understand.

It’s kind of weird now. Now I feel like there really won’t be any reason for people to want to know me. I don’t know how to talk to people. I don’t have anything to offer. I don’t know what to say. Being in public is weird.

What role in society can I fill? I spent most of my life looking for sex partners. I only grudgingly tolerated no’s when people made them explicit (and then they sometimes told me later “I was kinda hoping you would ask again later” WTF!).

Healthy? No. But it’s what I did.

Now what.

I don’t know.

I really did spend my childhood believing I was preparing for a career in sex work. Now that it didn’t work out my back up career is turning out to be way the fuck more work than I thought it would be. Good grief.

But it’s good. I want to be doing what I’m doing. I really do. I want to learn what it is like to be this kind of person. Even if I will never “really” understand because I will always have a brain that is paralyzed with terror because I’m prepared for the next problem.

Yeah yeah, fucking still space. Exercise the self control muscles you have more of them. Have more of the self control muscles have more ability to calm down central nervous system. Fuck you still place. Fuck you you fucking fuck.

My inside voice isn’t so inside today. Apparently.

Sometimes the process isn’t so pretty.

I think I struggle with completely letting go of the white trash stuff as part of my language evolution in general.

I have been yelled at not to curse for nearly three decades. I promise you that someone will yell at me again soon. “How dare you speak that way in front of children.” I get it every so often.

I no longer turn around and say, “Fuck you you ignorant fuck” but I did before I had kids. Ok I only actually did that once. She deserved it. I hadn’t been “cursing” so much as I was being literal and explicitly educational. Then I switched to cursing. Uhm, you had to be there?

There are people who can kill ’em with kindness. There are people who can disarm with humor. Then there’s me. May I introduce you to this trout I am going to smack you in the head with?

But most people who have been in a room with me have no idea. FUCK YOU PEOPLE WHO SAY I DON’T HAVE TACT.

You just say that because my tact falls on a different line than yours.

Why am I so interested in saying fuck you lately? Fuck you universe. Fuck you fucking everything in the fucking everywhere in the whole fucktastic piece of fuck world.

Good day for therapy.

But my kids don’t act like people who live with someone who talks that way. It would show. I am doing the routine. I’m just not good at being nice when I’m challenged. I’m sure this means I’m not nice. As if there was doubt.

Naw, lately the problem is that I’m taking shit personally. They are kids. They aren’t doing much because of me. (Well other than breathing and not being covered in filth all day.)

If they are bothering me I need to respectfully ask for the space I need.

I’ve listened to a god damn lot of victim blaming shit in my lifetime. I can tell you 57 reasons it is all my fault I was raped. O course I can figure out how my over reaction to my kids not being very thoughtful is all my fault. As if it were not completely developmentally normal (I HAVE BOOKS FOR THIS SHIT) and all that.

I can’t take it personally.

But I am. Because I’m like that. I need to stop.

Fuck you still place. Fuck you with a fucking chainsaw.

hobbies (cont…)

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“You fight, fuck and garden… of course you have hobbies.”

First: I love you. Second: I love you.

Maybe if I argue then I can go back to sleep tonight. Ha. Tonight has been rough.

I have a lot of highly physical tasks I engage in. The current argument about hobby activities started from the premise that I needed more rest and not more physical activities. I think the word hobby is maybe not the point.

I have a lot of activities that I engage in that fall under the label “hobby” but they are universally depleting.

I don’t have a lot that “fills my cup” and I have a lot of things that empty my cup.

For most of my life I suppose I have used hobbies to burn off stress but I don’t know how to do the corollary of increasing relaxation. Burning off stress and relaxing are not exactly the same. I recharged by spending a lot of time alone. I don’t have alone time now unless I give up sleep. That’s a rough trade.

At the end of a long day of gardening I don’t feel relaxed. I feel tired and sore and frequently I feel really pissed off at my kids. I usually stop working because I am too angry to continue because the kids want my attention span to be as long as theirs and they will dive bomb me like fucking blue jays defending a bird feeder.

This process is the point for me. How to do things with them without the hate.

I’m struggling because my kids want fifteen minutes of work on a dozen different projects in a day. That involves so much set up and clean up that I don’t do anything but set up and clean up. I act like a god damn public school employee where my life is about putting other people through their paces.

Not what we are doing here, bucko.

I think that if Shanna and Calli want to set up and tear down a dozen projects in a day they are welcome to the work. I choose to work for many hours each on two or three projects in a day.

The problem wasn’t ever that I can’t find enough to do to keep busy. If the idea behind “find a hobby” was “find something to do” then I don’t need to worry about it. I’m busy. The point was “find a way to relax”. That I am not going so good at doing.

Does that make sense? It isn’t actually that I need to “go find a hobby” rather that I need to “find something that relaxes me so I can use fewer drugs”. Different argument.

I did take a bath yesterday when I was feeling pissy. It helped.

I’m not sure that I am “not creative” K and I’ve been fighting that word battle my whole life.

So if what we are looking for is to add more and more activities until I die of a heart attack we are on the right track.

The problem with hobbies-with-people is that whole panic disorder problem.

We went to Dickens Fair yesterday. The kids are on a streak of being the opposite of considerate (it happens occasionally) so it was not a fun outing. I shouldn’t get pissy about some of the stuff that happened (like them throwing a fit insisting on peanut butter sandwiches for the tea party and then not eating any of the pbjs and instead stealing my whole lunch) because it isn’t a big deal. Unfortunately if my whole day goes that way I am pissy by the end. Fuck you. I ask you what you want, I give it to you, then you take mine? Oh this isn’t god damn on.

But it’s all trivial stuff. And the whole point of being a parent is that kids behave badly and you are supposed to still act right and show them how it is done.

By the last half hour I was standing in a corner of every room and shaking. If someone wanted to talk to me I plastered a fake-as-shit smile on my face and tried to be pleasant. I ran into a lot of people I know. People I don’t see much. It isn’t ok in any way shape or form for me to start exploding or being snippy or pissy with them. So instead I shake. After the second time of Calli throwing herself to the floor in the middle of a dance at Fezziwig’s I just picked her up and carried her out before I lost it.

Then the whole walk out to the car was Calli screaming at the top of her lungs about what a terrible time she had and I’m so mean because she didn’t get to see any friends. I asked a lot of people about going with us. No one wanted to. So I guess I should be screamed at for hours because I deserve it.

By the time we got to the car it was all I could do to not break something or someone.

But I didn’t! I didn’t even yell at them beyond, “I said SIT DOWN IN YOUR CAR SEAT.” I listened to loud music on the way home to drown out the bitching then I took a bath. Calgon take me away or some shit.

Ok. I think the argument has gotten past “get a hobby” to “but I have TOO MANY hobbies”. Originally this argument started because I needed to do less work and find something relaxing. None of my hobbies are relaxing. They are all baskets of stress to go.

So maybe the point isn’t to find a hobby but to learn how to just sit still staring at a wall? I’m feeling pissy and nasty about the fact that I think the next step is meditation.

Can I tell you how not open to this idea I am? Yeah, I get that it is the next step. Fuck you too.

Sometimes that is just how I am with the next step. I’m fairly sure that if I look at a calendar of my hour by hour activities (I’m so god damn anal that I do that with my life even though I don’t have a job or anything) the problem isn’t that I need to find something to do. The problem is that I need to replace two to four of my “things I do” with rest. Or meditation or some shit.

But I’m not good at rest. I sit for a few seconds and then I get up and find some shit to do. Because I have tons of hobbies.

And kiss off I’m not creative. You ask me to show up at your house and clean up a huge mess that overwhelms you? That’s creative.

I’m a different kind of creative. I’m trying to learn to appreciate the gift I was given instead of feeling sad that I’m not the kind of creative other people are. If you showed up at my house and said, “Build me a set! I want to perform Hamlet!” I could do that. Sure. No problem. Literally that wouldn’t be a problem for me.

That’s creative.

I just can’t fucking sit still and stare at something fiddly. Does that mean I’m not creative?

No. I refuse to concede.

Wendy does have good points (as usual) about how some people find hobbies with other people to be relaxing. I’m not one of them. Hobbies with other people are a nightmare of anxiety about how at any second I will say the wrong thing and I’ll be told to leave and never come back.

My life would be a lot easier if I believed that people liked me. Even though you nice people leave me comments on my blog I think that if I spent enough time with you in person you would not be able to handle the firehose. I get that you have been patient with text. Text is less invasive–I promise.

Noah is the one and only person in my life who has spent a lot of time with me and kept coming back. Every other friendship when it escalates in time spent blows up. Yeah, I know this is my fault.

If you have the same problem over and over it isn’t other peoples fault. It is your fault.

I stress people the fuck out. Doing hobbies with me isn’t relaxing for other people any more than they are relaxing for me. I’m really sorry.

So I have hobbies. What I don’t have is relaxation. What I don’t have is a way to come down from the anxiety load that is destroying my body.

Go read up on what chronic stress does to your internal organs. It’s not pretty. That’s what I’m trying to combat with the idea of “hobbies” that I’m arguing with up one side and down the other.

The point isn’t “hobbies” the point is stress reduction.

I run, I do yoga, I take baths, I take a lot of anti-anxiety medication, I read, I write, I garden… these are all the “should calm you down” color wheel. I’M NOT CALMED DOWN YET SO I WANT MY FUCKING MONEY BACK.

If I could learn to function just as well while shaking with anxiety my life would be fine.

At some point in the past couple of years of research I hit this point where I realized fairly point blank that if I want to see my kids reach a lot of adult milestones I will have to be alive. I’m not existing in this body in a way that will allow that to happen. That’s why I am nattering about “must find hobby” only the problem is I have too many hobbies not too few. I must find a way to stop destroying my body.

January is coming. I’ll see a doctor again. Last time allowed me to figure out that I don’t have a hernia (good step) which prompted research into IBS which caused me to drop carbonated water. That eliminated a lot of pain. That’s a good first step. I still have periodic throbbing in the same spot which could indicate an aneurism. Hopefully it won’t rupture or anything. I’m going to move forward with the “Hope it is just IBS and food allergies” assumption and pray.

It’s kind of like how I have gotten way nicer to my cat in the past two or so years. I finally realized oh shit you are getting old and you will die. She’s been with me since I was sixteen. It is going to be really hard when she goes. I am the only mother she remembers. I had her before her eyes were open. I bottle fed her and kept her alive when her mother abandoned her. I’m going to miss her a lot.

No, I’m not just going to replace her with some of the many foster kittens I hear about. Over the next eight years I want to be traveling for almost two years worth of time. That’s not cool to do to an animal. Maybe after the WWOOF year we can consider taking responsibility for another animal. Not before then.

I’m going to miss my cat.

It is 3am. I went to bed by 6:30 because I was exhausted and angry. I woke up 1:30 for poop thirty and haven’t been very sleepy or tired feeling since. I laid in bed for almost an hour. Sleep doctors say to not stay in bed forever if you aren’t sleepy. (They also say to not use screens. Piss off.)

I miss having weekends off from the kids. I’m not doing very well without them. I don’t have down time. I have “quick let me juggle a way to entertain you and you will come and interrupt me 75 billion times” experiences instead.

No, it is not normal, natural, or healthy to raise children without a village of support. There isn’t a lot I can do about the circumstances I am in. I “could” go pay someone to watch my kids. I suppose I should get a job to do that. Or stop overpaying my mortgage. Or stop buying books. Or clothes. Or buy cheaper food so I can pay a daycare.

How about if we start living on ramen again so I can pay someone else to hang out with my kids while I have time off. Sounds awesome.

Oh wait. Other physical issues. See, there is always a down side. Not to mention that when the babysitter comes over I get a break only I have to come back and do a shit ton of work to make up for having stepped out for a few minutes. I always feel like I should have “sucker” tattooed on my forehead. Time off that means much more work overall isn’t “time off”. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I don’t think my life circumstances are more difficult than other people. That’s not what I’m trying to say. I don’t think my life circumstances are all that unusual or challenging. I just think I am shitty at dealing with it. Different.

A problem is only as big as your inability to handle it.

I watch The West Wing or Firefly when I want to zone out. Mostly I watch them while I fold laundry or clean the kitchen. It occupies a lot of my brain.

I like rewatching things. When I was a kid we didn’t own many movies. I never watched broadcast tv much. I’m not interested in moving with the wave of culture. I think that watching a new show means submitting to not being sure if I will feel like I wasted my time by the end. I don’t have a lot of time I like to waste.

So I watch my friends. I think about what it means to be a kind of person. I think about what it means to have to interact with the people around you. I think about what it means to lead and inspire people.

Not that I think I will become a mighty leader. But people tell me I am inspirational. What does that mean?

Inspiring means making people think things are possible.

Is it possible for me to learn to relax? We’ll see.

I wish that hanging out with K or Blacksheep or Wendy or or… was just “relaxing”. It’s not. I love you. I am completely freaked out every single second I am in the room with you. When are you going to get sick of my shit? It’s inevitable. People do.

I get to be sure that people get sick of me and move on. My life is littered with such events. Often combined with nasty letters telling me that they are done with me because I’m doing bad things. So… don’t say I’m paranoid.

Does everyone react that way with me? Of course not. Usually I leave first.

I don’t know how to change these patterns and beliefs. They are self created and self reinforced. I’m not denying any of that. Just because that is true that doesn’t make it easy for me to change. I created these systems unconsciously a long time ago. The fact that I can explain it now it doesn’t mean I have exact control over it.

I want to stop typing. Blah. Hungry. Tired but not sleepy. Therapy in nine hours. This is probably good timing.

Bouncing up

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“I read your book. It made me feel really depressed but then I felt a lot better about my life.”

Oh. Uhm, good?

We went to an Amanda Fucking Palmer show last night. It was at my friend’s house in their living room. It was ridiculously fun. It turned out that almost 25% of the people in the room were there because they knew me, which was frightfully convenient from my point of view.

I don’t usually feel all that safe in groups. I really did last night and it was a nice feeling.

I spend a lot of time figuring out ways to denigrate the opinions of people who think highly of me. It’s a skill. With the people who were there last night… if they said I was awesome I couldn’t argue. They’ve known me a long time through a lot of different phases.

It’s weird sometimes, this having public accountability stuff. If a former casual lover tells me I’m awesome I will pick that apart and get nasty. If one of these friends tells me I’m awesome… I will tear up and say thank you. I want them to like me. And they do. Maybe I’m not so bad.

It was a worse party for not having a Blacksheep. That’s just a true fact.

I got to throw myself on a couch holding my husband and two good friend and Amanda Palmer. Of course she got up approximately 2 seconds later because she had shit to do. This is as close as I get to star fucking these days.

My friends turned the basement of their house into an art gallery featuring work by the various attendees of the event. It was really rad walking back and forth between people introducing them.

“Oh, you like this picture? Then let me introduce you to my friend over here who shot it. Here friend-who-is-a-nature-photographer, meet this other friend who is a bondage-photographer. Oh and here is this other photographer who is less into bondage and more into fetish (which is a different genre.)”

That was cool. I like being able to introduce my friends to one another. I think they are good people and that they will have appreciation for one another’s skills.

The vegan soul food was ridiculously good. I’m not really a vegan eater and this was good. It was also mostly gluten free. This gives me hope for the future elimination diet period. There might be food in the world that follows the guidelines without sucking. Yay!

Today is supposed to be a Dickens Fair day. Everyone stayed up too late. The babysitter keeps every light in the house on and lets the kids keep the iPad long after bed time to “calm them down”. Uhhh… that’s not going to make them go to sleep. We will have words before the next baby-sitting engagement. Gentle ones. I’ll talk to her about strategically leaving the lights on in the front of the house to make her feel safe and like people won’t do a hot break-in but can we turn off the light in the kids bedroom and the hallway… please?

It’ll be great. I’m glad they got to have a fun night playing. It is awesome when babysitters have extra lax rules because then children crave their companionship. Ha.

I spent yesterday being all pissy and fussy. It wasn’t other peoples fault. I just was. Then the concert was fabulous.

Amanda sang two songs that are new–she hasn’t released them anywhere. One was about how stuff can be evil and own you and you need to assign the meaning to your stuff that it has. The second was about a kid who told her he was being raped by his dad. This is as close as she can get to advice for him.

I cried. It was really touching and beautiful. I’m grateful that people are out there in the world acknowledging these things.

In general I was impressed with her ability to perform. Many singers can sing in a studio. She was mesmerizing.

I’m grateful I live in the time and place I live. I have so much opportunity and access and potential in my life. Sometimes it feels like if anyone at any point in history could do something surely people can do more/better/faster given the technology and access we have now. We have so much potential (wo)manpower. We have so many wonderful people all out there existing.

Surely we all get to be here.

Ok Blacksheep, you are right to point out that I shouldn’t think of my writing as having the power to “make” anyone feel anything. They bring their feelings to the writing.

But I write in large part because I seek connection. This is how I bond. I *do* want to make people have a set of feelings. I’m trying to. It’s a conscious effort.

I want to make people feel like they are making the right choices for them. I want to make people feel like they are doing the best they can do with the things that landed in their life this lifetime. I want to make people feel like they are important and should be here.

That’s really a lot of the reason I write. I need you. And you. And you. I really do. Even if I think you are an asshole. Even if I think you are a predator. Even if I think you make really bad decisions sometimes.

I still need you to exist. I understand that my needs aren’t your problem but I was sorta hoping we could come to a mutually beneficial arrangement. I need you. I think you need me too. I think you need to see how different I am and how whack job my choices are so you can properly appreciate “holy moly I’m glad I have my life“.

I’m glad you get to have your life. I’m glad it is different from mine. I’m glad you get to make all your own brilliant choices. I can’t do everything and I want to find out more about human potential. I can watch you and feel admiration all the time that our species is so complex and wonderful.

I can change if you exist. You present me with this permanent foil of “See, it doesn’t have to be this way it could be that way.”

There are always more options.

I have a God complex. I want to be able to make people feel things. I really really do.

I want to make you feel important. I want to make you feel valuable. I want to make you feel loved.

Whether you like it or not.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: adult-only

Friendship, race, and tokenism.

post-party

Ok, stomach… get ready.

Christmas shopping is over.

probably not

Cutting and parties and the parasympathetic nervous system

Managing spoon deficit.

In medias res, family, pride.

Looking for a threesome

Introduction to bdsm as a person with significant mental issues

Day one over, today we fly home.

what a lovely way to start the day. not.

leaving on a jet plane

busy day

violence

post-therapy (more) hobbies and yay friends.

Terrible thought

hobbies (cont…)

Bouncing up