This has been sitting here for days. I don’t think I did a great job of finishing it, but it’s better than just never finishing.

curls: My hair turned curly in puberty. Before that it was stick straight. I don’t think I have ever recovered from the trauma. On one hand my hair can be very pretty and that is nice. On the other hand it’s a lot more work to make it look nice than I am generally willing to put in. I am really really really not willing to put in the work to make it straight–God that’s annoying. I like that my hair is coarse enough to tie it in a knot and leave it there with nothing to hold it.

Fisher: R.J. Fisher Middle School, I presume. Other than graduate school Fisher was the only school I ever went to for two full consecutive years. I loved Fisher. I was happier during middle school than pretty much any other point in my childhood, which is odd I understand. I had friends for the first time. I had teachers who were both intelligent and willing to work with me. The guidance counselor and vice principle both got to know me (I was a big one for acting out, but I had good reasons) and they both worked very hard at giving me a place to feel safe and secure. I think one of the best things they ever did for me was put me in the Conflict Managers program. I was made to feel intelligent, trustworthy, and competent. I met Grant there. He was my best friend. Amusingly in retrospect, he was my first D/s relationship–I was on top. 🙂 We used to go to the movie theater and I would ask him to buy me Red Vines and I would beat the crap out of him through the whole movie. He always bought them. 🙂 I discovered Anne Rice and then goth culture at Fisher. I had sex for the first time while going there and I didn’t have sex again the rest of the time I was there because I realized it was too early. That was the worst sex ever. I had a history teacher there, Mr. Potter, who single-handedly gave me confidence in myself in the classroom. We got into an argument about whether or not Bloody Mary was also Queen of Scotland. I told him that there were two Marys–Mary Tudor and Mary Stewart. I don’t know how he screwed this up but he couldn’t remember that fact. I brought in an Encyclopedia during lunch and proved him wrong. He congratulated me and told me that if I always stuck to my guns when I knew I was right I would go far in life. I really loved him.

boundaries: I’m not really as good at them as I advertise but I try. I feel intense pressure to be better at boundaries. Ugh. I seem to have different boundaries than just about any one else and I’m not entirely sure how that happened.

family: I have some weird feelings about family. On one hand I desperately want to have family, chosen or biological–either will do. In practice I find that even chosen family is pretty inconsistent and not really dependable. I guess it’s a good thing that Noah is overall reliable because most of the time he’s what I’ve got. I’m hoping that I prove to be better family than that to Shanna.

munches: I used to go a lot. I haven’t gone consistently in five years at this point. They are dandy for talking with the same people you see all the time anyway. They are a shitty place for meeting new people or for doing good reconnecting with people you haven’t seen in a long time. I think that they are rather designed to be something to fill in the gap during the week for people who are out every weekend with the same people. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s just not where I am anymore.

I’ll cut this time cause there are multiple sets.
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Arbus gave me words. Be afraid.

freedom: Freedom used to be a much bigger motivator for me than it is these days. I used to spend a lot of time worrying about not being tied down. Now I’m kind of fussy cause I am almost never tied down and it makes me sad. Ha. I appreciate being an American. I think that I’m pretty lucky to live in a country that grants me the amount of freedom I have. Yeah, that’s all I’ve got for this one.

femdom: I hate this phrase. I think we should replace it with DomLady and DomFella if we are going to be indicating gender at all. But why do you need to indicated gender at all? What the freakmonkeys is wrong with just calling someone a Dom? It’s lame enough. Why make it lamer? Oy. That said, females who happen to be dominant are pretty hot.

dealing: Drugs? Cards? I am not a complete hypocrite so I will say that I have occasionally thought positive things about drug dealers in my life even though overall I think it’s not a great career choice. I think my sister should stop dealing though because she is stupid and keeps getting caught. Dumbass. I’m a really good card dealer I think.

whirling: When I was a little girl I would try on all of my new clothes (dresses–I didn’t wear pants at all) and give them a whirl because if they didn’t go out far enough I wouldn’t wear them. I still wish that I picked my clothes this way. I love whirling around. I love whirling Shanna around. I have learned that if I concentrate really hard I can make myself orgasm on the spinny rides. How’s that for TMI?

space: God I need a lot of it. I have trouble with people near me physically sometimes and I even have trouble with people in my house. This is MY SPACE damnit! But if you meant that big black thing above us I’m pretty neutral. I’m glad I don’t have to try to breathe there.

Reply to this meme by yelling “Words!” and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. *edit* Or just five words that I want to see your associations with/thoughts about.

Aging: What a way to start. Overall I find I enjoy aging a lot. I’m figuring things out over time and I’m pretty happy about that. It’s really neat to see what my body is doing. I’m trying hard to get to the point where I actually enjoy myself all the time so that I can stop looking back and saying, “Why didn’t I like myself more!” I find I am far less critical of myself physically now and that’s nice. I think what is bothering me the most about aging is I thought I would figure stuff out faster/earlier/better/something and I just haven’t. I spend a lot of time still feeling as stupid/confused as I did when I was younger. Being an adult looked way easier from the point of view of being a kid.

Mother: This is what I have wanted to be for much of my life. I think I’m doing an ok job of it. I feel hesitant about calling myself a good mother because I feel like those sorts of judgments can’t be made in the moment; I won’t know if I am a good mother until Shanna or I can look back and actually decide. I feel like being a mother is one of the primary ways I can heal from having been an abused child. In being a good parent to Shanna I can simultaneously parent myself in the ways I needed. I find that more than at any other point in my life there is a ‘club’ that I want to be part of. I feel like there are many parts of this experience I simply can’t talk about with people who are not mothers. To start with, there are all the biological changes I want to talk to other mothers about. Do other women feel like they have to start from scratch with their sexual identity? Now I want a community of women more than just about anything but I don’t know how to create it or find it.

Healthy: I’m trying so hard. I want to be physically healthy. I want to be emotionally healthy. I don’t understand why these things take so much bloody work. I feel very discouraged by the fact that no matter how much progress I make towards being more healthy it seems like there is some freakish goal of ‘health’ that is out of my reach. I hate that there is no ‘good enough’. My diet (not in the lose weight sense) is by far the healthiest it has ever been in my life. I eat good food that is good for me in rather reasonable portions. But there is still this specter hanging over me because I am not thin. I’m not actually in bad shape. Walking ten miles in a day is not a big deal to me at all. I don’t feel sore or uncomfortable unless there was extreme uphill involved. But I feel like I am lame/pathetic because those uphills are a bitch and I can’t run to save my life (my knees suck). So I think that being healthy is something that I struggle for constantly despite feeling like I will always be a failure. And I’m not going to get into psychologically healthy today because that’s just a quagmire I don’t need at this moment.

Bisexual: I actually really hate the word bisexual. I actively shun it for myself. My problem with the word is that it presupposes that there are only two genders and people have to pick one. On one hand the word queer has other issues (painfully heterosexual perverts often love to use it for themselves) because it is so broad that it seems meaningless but I still like it more than bisexual. I feel really weird about referring to myself as queer anymore because I get all the heterosexual privilege and it feels kind of weird/pretentious/uncomfortable to try and get any benefit from also being not heterosexual. It feels too much like I am trying to have my cake and eat it too. On one hand I was strongly into girls long before I was into boys, on the other hand I’ve only ever really fallen in love with one woman. I seem to be much more romantically attached to boys. It’s all so very confusing.

Writing: Shame. That’s my instant reaction to that word right now. For all that I write constantly (the internet is my primary connection to the world) I feel like an abject failure. I feel like failing out of the masters program decided for all time that I am a pathetic writer and I should just stop trying. That’s hard because there is more than one book I would really like to write. I have started writing two and I periodically will work on them but then after a while I feel so critical of my efforts that I delete all progress because I’m obviously too awful of a writer for anyone to want to read a book I have written. It’s hard. I have never identified strongly as a writer and yet I have periodically had things I’ve wanted to say and I communicate best in text. I think some of my short stories have even been good–but it’s so easy for me to feel like that was a fluke. I want to write. I want to be a writer. But just like dancing/being a dancer I feel like I just don’t deserve the title/activity.