I was thinking about an aspect of my relationship with Noah and his difficulty determining my priorities (or my difficulty perceiving his priority order).

I feel all the time like I am drowning Noah in unreasonable demands. I want him to be an attentive parent in a way that is not part of his lived experience in the world. People didn’t pay attention to how kids were doing when he was young. They hit kids who got too loud and demanding. Noah is required to entertain and engage with his kids even when he doesn’t really want to. Just like I am required to. We decided we wanted this kind of family together but I have been the one to keep reading the development books and micromanage “Ah. They are changing developmental stages. So we have to adapt by…”

I seriously don’t know another man, woman, or enby who would put up with the kind of pushing I do about Noah’s interactions with his children.

I downplay my role in Noah’s financial success story like whoa. But the truth is that he wasn’t real motivated to go work his ass off and more than triple his salary without my dreams and desires providing the fuel. He wants to fund paying the house off early. He wanted to fund all the magnificent travel we’ve been able to do with and without him.

It is not a reasonable demand to ask him to come up with $20,000 so I can take my children on a 5.5 month trip. But I asked and he delivered.

He did that for me. He did that out of love and adoration. He did it because he wants to find out what kind of children I will be able to raise if I have carte blanche.

And the cooking. Let’s not ignore that Noah has meticulously learned my dietary needs and preferences and he spends so much time and energy trying to figure out how to help me feel ok.

And then I go and call having sex with him being handed a shit sandwich. It’s not the overall experience that’s bad. It’s the pain my cunt is in sometimes that is the problem. That’s the bit I object to. Not Noah getting off. Not being close to Noah and being intimate. Not touching him or him wanting or any of that bit.

The part that is a shit sandwich is me cleaning up the blood from my torn pussy. It sucks, yo. And come makes it god damn buuuuuuuuuuuurn on top of itching and hurting just from being torn.

Noah is upset about how much he felt like I was lying last year. It’s been complicated dealing with how much it feels like he has lied to me about the relative importance of PIV in our marriage too.

I think neither of us really know. I don’t know if it is lying or overwhelming ignorance and staunch unwillingness to engage with that ignorance.

IF IT AIN’T BROKE. DON’T FIX IT.

But something is broke and it’s eating at our marriage. And it’s all twisted up.

Part of the problem is that Noah does so much… it couldn’t possibly be reasonable for me to need anything else.

I dropped Noah off at the airport at o’dark’thirty and I didn’t feel like I could go back to sleep so I called my cousin. In addition to the new baby coming I got confirmation that my brother is divorced. So that’s his second divorce. I suspected that was true when he unlinked his facebook account from hers and started posting rants about how evil women are for calling themselves “single mothers” when they have alienated the father. Ok then.

It was good to talk to my cousin. We spent a lot of time talking about how I fucked up last year. She’s definitely #TeamSexualAssaultSurvivorsFuckUp. Which is interesting. She wants me to find more compassion for myself because the amount of fucking up I’m doing is still low on the scale of what is kind of expected from me. Relatedly we talked about my sister a whole bunch and how she was acting out the programming she received.

Noah is right that he doesn’t have a clear view into my priorities. I don’t think I know what my priorities are so how could I have communicated them clearly?

My cousin spent a while intensely lecturing me about how even if I don’t actually like or respect or value myself… I need to demand that Noah act like he likes and respects and values me.

Noah isn’t wrong when he points out that he tried ways to change how our sex life worked. (He did.) But it was always…. It always felt like he was offering me a huge variety of sauce toppings for my shit sandwich. It’s still a shit sandwich.

Noah doesn’t demand sex. He doesn’t force it. He just… complains and whines and mopes.

The trouble is that Noah is my sunshine. When Noah is depressed I fail in ways big and small. When Noah is unhappy I internalize that it is all my fault and I have to do something to change it. But the only thing that works is sex.

So that means that if I want Noah to be happy I have to not care how much my cunt hurts and I need to show up and offer sex… even if it makes me bleed.

I’m not saying that Noah presents it this way and I’m not saying this dynamic is all his fault. It isn’t all his fault. A tremendous amount of this comes from me and my broken mental health patterns. This predated Noah in many ways.

But when I tell Noah for years that sex is hurting me and that I can’t keep doing that and he keeps fucking me dry while I cry and cringe…

It sure feels like Noah is agreeing that I’m not very important, or at least the structural integrity of my cunt isn’t very important.

I’m a huge fan of the work of Victor Frankl, a psychoanalyst who survived the Holocaust. He wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning and it centers on how people survive horrifying events by having something that motivates them. I have mostly found his approach to be more useful than the vast majority of psychologists I’ve read. Why are you here? What are you living for?

I am… ridiculously and disgusting outward focused. I depend on other peoples opinions of my merit and worth to convince me that I shouldn’t hurt myself more or that I shouldn’t die. I have never internalized that I am important in my story.

I am important to the extent that I can provide support or help or resources or… something. It’s part of why these periods of disability are so hard for me. When I can no longer show up and provide a bunch of labor in exchange for my right to breathe I should stop breathing.

This is complicated in so many ways. How am I going to handle my children growing up and not needing me? I’m scared of that. I don’t think the way I parent is the ideal way to parent because I don’t have a lot of self or identity left after what I am supposed to give to them and that’s not healthy.

I don’t like me very much. And I’ve spent my life see sawing between violently rejecting people for trying to treat me in ways I don’t like and semi-consciously/fully consciously subjecting myself to people who would abuse me because that is what feels comfortable and right and appropriate for me.

Why have I stayed in a relationship where being in that much pain from sex was just considered an acceptable cost?

How much of that is because I don’t think I deserve better?

It’s complicated how Noah has given me both the same’ol’same’ol’ and dramatically different/better than I have ever gotten in the past. I am deeply aware that some of the expectations I have of Noah are ridiculously unfair. I depend on him to love me and show me what loving me is supposed to look like. I depend on him insisting that shitty treatment isn’t good enough for me. And when he seems to agree with a piece of it (it’s totally ok to hurt my body as he chases his orgasm) I feel… I feel invalidated and small and worthless and like I will never really matter to anyone.

I hate myself because when something starts shifting, like our recent attempts to have non PIV sex, I am so upset with him while I’m glad that it is happening. Why did it take 11 years and me almost completely destroying our marriage before this could be an option on the table?

I had to hurt his feelings bad enough that he would consider looking at the severity of damage that was being inflicted on me and consider changing things. That sucks. I tried asking nicely.

I tell my kids that they should try hard to be nice and if nice isn’t doing what you need it to do… go for effective.

If I were trying to be compassionate towards someone else going through strife I would say that change hurts and sometimes you have to decide if the pain you will inflict through demanding change is greater or less than the pain you will endure if things don’t change. Then do what you have to do.

A lot of what I expect from Noah isn’t fair. But most of what I expect from myself isn’t fair either and that’s a difficult equation. I’m not really sure I know how to have fair expectations. I wouldn’t know what that even means. My life has never been fair.

I don’t want to “win” the argument. I want to not have my cunt hurt. I want to feel like I am not just a worthless whore who has to trade my cunt for my right to be here. I want to feel like I have value and merit in this relationship besides my ability to trigger orgasms.

I want to feel like I am worth keeping. Even if my cunt doesn’t work.

The acupuncture place near my house is being an adventure. I feel like the first gal did a competent job with the symptoms I mentioned but I didn’t feel a dramatic difference. The second lady listened to my background stuff, kind of sagged just a hair, then she said, “I have a 27 year old daughter who struggles with mental health issues and I’ve fought depression my entire life. I’m very familiar with this being a long-term slow battle.”

Then she proceeded to do the same points as my former favorite acupuncturist whom I stopped seeing because I couldn’t deal with an hour + drive each time I saw her. No other acupuncturist I’ve seen has started with these points and… I think they are a big deal in my body. It’s kind of neat to notice after 10 years of acupuncture that certain points do seem to make a bigger difference than others. The one in between my eyes, in my eyebrow. Lots of points on top of my head. These things seem to help remove the layer of frantic “I have to claw my skin off to get away from myself” feeling. That’s something I should pay more attention to. So far I like the second lady here more than the first. I am going to meet the whole damn practice though. It just seems wise right now.

Sciatica is a bitch and I’m pissed off about how much this hurts.

Noah hypnotized me to sleep last night and I got a solid 9 hours of sleep. I haven’t been able to sleep that much in a night in a while. It feels good.

I’m trying really hard to think about Sarah’s words: I contribute to the problems in my marriage but I don’t create all of them. They aren’t all my fault.

Noah and I didn’t arrive wanting a low-key, easy-going marriage. Neither of us wanted to just kind of hang out with someone as they lived their life. We both went seeking intensity. And holy shit we found it.

We’ve been talking about bigger patterns in our marriage. How much were the early years influenced by the rape scene 3 months after we got married? How much of my belief that I don’t deserve to have my cunt stop hurting is exacerbated by fear or anxiety about my entire right to exist? How much do I say yes because saying no and being forced hurts so much more? That’s real.

I’m not saying I actually believe that Noah will rape me left and right. The one thing that happened was the result of very poor negotiation on both of our parts. I have learned some harsh lessons. I will never again in my entire fucking life make the promise that I will accept a fresh new trauma on someone else’s timeline. I should never have said he got to surprise me with a fucktastically over the top intense scene. Then he picked a tremendously shitty already traumatizing day. That has consequences that reverberate for a long time.

But I have not really tried to advocate for myself. I have. But I haven’t been good at it in the moment. I’m great at Monday morning quarterbacking and coming through and writing impressively long screeds about what I want.

In the moment if I feel scared I put my head down and I say nothing because being forced once you say no hurts so much.

Sometimes I feel very scared that the way I managed to stop being raped was I just… stopped… saying… no.

That’s not fair but it is part of my emotional experience of life. I had more than 20 years of steady, irregular rapes. If you can go through that and not be paranoid you are a better person than I. Go somewhere else to feel all smug and proud of yourself, m’kay?

Recently Noah admitted out loud that even though he has given lip service to being open to alternative sex stuff (not PIV) he has… never really been open and he acknowledges that his body language has been very off-putting on the topic.

I’M NOT GOD DAMN HALLUCINATING.

I’m so grateful he was willing to say that out loud to me. That has been real. I have been willing to try for years and he hasn’t been and this isn’t something I feel confident about so I don’t have the ability to force this through on my own. I need someone who is interested in non PIV intimacy or I can’t insist.

There were more than ten years where non-PIV just “didn’t count” and that’s been incredibly hard for me. So yeah. I finally hit a wall and did whatever the fuck I god damn could to increase my capacity for accepting PIV and that blew up too.

During that period where I was out dating Noah and I had more sex than we’ve had since the first year of marriage. It did work.

But it felt tainted to him and he didn’t want it like that. Ok.

I can do the hypersexual thing. But there is a very high cost. There is a cost physically and there is a cost emotionally… and Noah really isn’t interested in dealing with the consequences of either and I am not capable of managing them off-screen.

Noah and I both showed up as highly scattered, dysregulated people. We have turned to one another and said, “Ok, provide stability and consistency.” It’s kind of a cruel expectation we have of one another. Neither of us are naturally consistent people. But Noah has his elaborate systems of checks he has put in place and I have my extensive systems and we’ve managed to mostly get the trains to run on time. Our children will not experience us as highly scattered, dysregulated people. They think there is a normal with interruptions. That’s… way the fuck better than I expected from us.

We’ve both been much more successful at this aspect than anyone had a right to expect of us given where we started.

It is hard for me that Noah tells me that I haven’t created a safe enough space for him to share how he feels about things. This is hard in part because Noah doesn’t exactly always make it easy for me and that’s not a good enough excuse for me to just shut down. I’m expected to keep sharing even when it is hard and it is frustrating for me that there is a double standard. I am intermittent in how easy or hard I make it to share feelings. I know that sucks. But making a safe container for you isn’t my whole life and expecting me to make it my whole life would require a dramatic restructuring of our priorities and… that’s not really on the agenda. Which means that you need to god damn share even when it’s not that easy. Or you can’t expect me to care what you feel because I don’t god damn know.

It is hard that Noah’s sexual shame is running into mine with all the speed of a runaway train. He feels guilty and ashamed for asking for contact/to be seen as a sexual being. I feel guilty and ashamed that I am not always physically capable of participating in sex without intense pain and injury.

This is a shitty combo.

The only thing I can really say in my defense is I told Noah at the very beginning of our marriage that we were going to have big problems because I don’t really say no to things I should say no to. I CALLED IT.

It is incredibly emotionally hard that I feel like only the sex is important. The sex is the sole measure of my worth as a wife. That’s god damn killing me.

Only it’s not like I’m allowed to ignore Noah the rest of the time and focus on filling my cup so that I can show up for that bit. I’m supposed to lavish attention and affection on him all the time. I’m supposed to be adoring as he feels clever telling me about the latest video game thing he’s on about. I’m supposed to clean and make his life just kind of appear for him. I’m supposed to bring socializing opportunities to him because it is hard for him to arrange his own stuff and he needs it psychologically. I don’t really feel like I run out of what I’m supposed to do for him but it doesn’t count.

I think if it counted I wouldn’t be as upset.

I don’t think I’m even upset about my role here. It’s fine. It’s very service oriented and that suits me. I’m upset about being expected to carry the role of a service slave but be judged solely on the merits of a sex slave. I’ve talked to a lot of people who practice consensual slavery and I’ve read a lot of books on the topic… no one call fulfill every kind of role. You figure out what you are good at and that’s what you offer.

I can’t be a full time sex slave. I have literally tried in my life and I am not physically capable of sustaining it. It is not an option for me.

I’m not saying it is evil to want a relationship where someone is exclusively focused on your sexual needs… I’m saying you have to understand that it will be a limited relationship and that person will probably not be good at folding your laundry.

Skill sets are real.

Given the totality of what Noah wants from me… it is literally not an option to have our life function that way. We would be bad parents and that’s not something that either of us are ok with picking. We are trying to figure out the balance of how much time and space is it ok for us to take for our relationship separate from the kids (and it’s about to get harder) because it is definitely ok for us to take time and space for sex… but that can’t be what our relationship is about. It takes too much time and too many spoons.

I think about what it would be like to have more energy for sex too. I don’t god damn have it.

I really did make a gorgeous back yard for outdoor sex… sigh…. BUT WHEN DO I GET TO ENJOY IT?!

Damn kids.

Completely a side note and a switch of topics. I got frustrated with FMC last night at dinner. I was joking and I told Noah that I wasn’t sure he wanted us to have four kids anyway because he would end up with three daughters and an enby. FMC went off on me as if I had misgendered them.

I got a little shouty but I didn’t scream and I tried to bring my volume and intensity down as I went. I told kiddo that it is incredibly frustrating to me that they yell at me constantly about misgendering them EVEN WHEN I’M DOING IT RIGHT and that is not ok. I’m tired of being yelled at all the time about how wrong I am… when I’m doing it right. This isn’t fair and it is pissing me off. I DIDN’T CALL YOU A GIRL. I DIDN’T SAY YOU WERE MY DAUGHTER. I SAID YOU WERE MY KID. I SAID YOU WERE OUR ENBY. STOP YELLING AT ME AS IF I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

I get that this is a big deal. I get that being misgendered is a problem. THEN LISTEN FIRST AND FIND OUT HOW PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY GENDERING YOU BEFORE YOU START YELLING, ALRIGHT?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!

Freaking kids.

I love them with all my heart and soul and I’m grateful I get to spend every day with them. Don’t get me wrong. But sometimes even the best people can be fucking irritating.

UGH!

Marriage is hard. Parenting is hard. Life is hard. And I’m playing on easy mode.

I’ve been playing the new Kesha album on repeat for a while now. Three songs in particular: Praying, Let It Go, and Rainbow I’d kind of like to go through and write explications. Not explanations. It’s a literary term. It means to go line by line through a song/poem and respond to it in terms of historical and/or personal contexts. Because gosh all three songs take me on a journey. Praying for me is about my sister. Oh. My sister’s son’s wife is pregnant. My official message to my cousin about this news is: “I hope she has an easy pregnancy, a quick delivery, and a healthy baby.” I pray they never let my sister babysit but I won’t say that part to anyone in my family.

I don’t know if my nephew is going to be able to break the chains that bind our family. I’m scared and sad. But there is nothing I can do.

I can raise my babies and keep them away from the pedophiles. That’s what I can do.

Lately the kids have hit a verbal/developmental stage where they are ready to talk about stuff that happened a few years ago that they hadn’t told me before. That’s hard. It is hard hearing about ways that I have failed to protect them because I did not know they needed the protection. I’m really grateful for some of the divorces that happen in my life because it is for the best for my children.

I am sad that my children had to watch that much fighting and screaming (I wasn’t present) and I’m sorry that my children had to deal with a caregiver who would threaten to hit them if they didn’t behave. I wish I had known.

The clarion call of useless parents everywhere. Fuck.

If my children saw more fighting in that house in a couple of years of occasional visits than they’ve seen in their entire life in our house… that divorce needed to happen.

No wonder all four kids came over here and wanted to act out intense domestic violence scenes with horrible divorces. I would listen quite carefully as this happened… but it was a game and they never actually hit anyone so I didn’t stop the process. They had big feelings to work out.

We are all trying to manage our own baggage.

When we go through periods where Noah feels less adored… he shuts me out. And it’s not his fault that his “I’m defending myself because you are a bitch” face looks so much like my brother Tommy. I’m familiar with that glare. It is very hard for me to continue to try to be present and giving and loving when someone looks at me like that. But he’s entitled to facial expressions.

Am I entitled to act like I see the facial expressions? This is all so confusing.

And my sweet girl wants some attention. I should go do that.

I am not here because I have to be. I have walked away from many people, situations, and places. I am here because I want to be. I am here because this is the best place I’ve ever been, warts and all.

I am here because when I manage to give Noah feedback on what I need he takes it seriously and tries to adapt. I am here because Noah makes me feel like it is ok to be that annoying Smart-Kid-Walking-Encyclopedia. Do you know how much I irritate people with my constant need to narrate what I know? Not everyone likes that part of my personality very much. Noah encourages me.

Noah likes that I wanted to grow up and play Mary Poppins with his kids. Our kids. The children who look at us like we hung the stars and the moon and we are the best things ever.

I was trying to explain to Noah the other day that him staying up late and sleeping through days is a big deal and that was a little hard for him to wrap his head around. I told him how much the kids look forward to weekends with him and he kind of minimized what I was saying. So I asked the kids yesterday at dinner how much they look forward to time with him. River. Of. Love. You may “see” us all the time because you work in the same house… but we feel the difference between you being present and ignoring us and you being present and turning the ray of sunshine that is your attention on us. When you check out… we feel it. Like the sun turning away.

I am partially here because, for reasons I don’t understand, Noah is better at making me feel sympathy for how hard it is to be a man than basically any other man I’ve ever met. I watch Noah struggle to deal with how much he internalized that no one likes little boys and they will only like you as a man if you give and give and give and give.

My baby Enby is sick. Last night they spiked a fever and they started vomiting. Just once, but it was… prolific and the poor kiddo is feeling terrible. They act just like me when I’m sick which kind of amuses me. They are listing every part of themself that feels bad and getting most huffy with feeling bad. “And MY THROAT HURTS TOO!” heh.

But the look on their face when I pamper them… that’s pure Noah.

I’m a really good at being a nurse for sick people. I’ve spent a lot of my life feeling like shit and when someone else is sick I’m good at figuring out all the ways to make feeling miserable a bit more bearable. Everyone in my house beams at me as if I am an angel of mercy descending to ease their suffering. They all have identical expressions of, “You’re here and you love me.”

Yeah. I am here. And I do love you. I can help you get through this. It’ll be just a blip.

I have so much sadness inside me because when I would get sick as a child my mom would flip out and get angry with me. I can now understand that she was barely surviving and anything that made it harder was worthy of resentment and anger… but I was a little kid who got to feel ashamed of myself every time my body was weak. It meant moral failing.

Nobody in this house is going to feel like that. Noah kind of tried early on in the relationship and I’ve been an asshole about mocking man-flu… but I also baby Noah anytime he feels off. He has the same melting, “You’re here and you love me” thing the kids get. It’s a way of relaxing into feeling loved and accepted even when you aren’t at your best.

When I think of the work I do for Noah… it’s not really the dishes or the laundry that matter. He was a bachelor. He can do that shit. Part of what I have done is help create a family where Noah gets to feel respected in a way he never has before. Sure, he’s “The Oracle” at work (Smart-Kid-Walking-Encyclopedia for the win) but at home we listen to him and we listen to what is under his words and we take care of him.

Part of the problem in our marriage is how much we read one another’s body language and leap to incorrect conclusions. Part of what makes our marriage so awesome is how much we read one another’s body language and leap to correct conclusions. So this is tricky.

No one has ever spent as much time staring at Noah and trying to make him happy as I have. The reverse is probably even more true.

The work I do for Noah involves things like helping to guide his relationship with his kids. “Hey so you reacted like x when the kid did y and let’s talk about developmental stages and tone of voice…”

Neither of us are “natural” parents. We are both the result of a lot conscious hard work and efforts to change. We want something that we’ve never seen and something that we’ve never been. That’s hard and takes course corrections and feedback and the willingness to humble yourself when your fuck ups are pointed out. We do it for each other. I tell Noah what I’m working on and he gives me feedback on how well I’m progressing.

Noah seduced me by telling me that if you can’t look back on yourself 18 months ago and say, “Wow I really sucked” then you aren’t trying hard enough. *cough* Well… May of 2016… *cough*

It helps if you fuck up big time every so often… easier to look back and say you sucked…

I am here because for all that the video games and comic books drive me nuts… I feel safe and mostly accepted. I don’t feel like a good wife. But I feel like a person who will be tolerated pretty much no matter what. Noah doesn’t always like me. He won’t ask me to go. I understand that the geek social fallacies work in my favor sometimes.

I am here because even if I am a monster I am a monster in a cave of monsters and that’s ok.

I am here because Noah will tell me the truth even when it is unpleasant and I end up liking him a little less for what he is saying. I know I can trust him even if I do spend time being mad at him.

He has such a beautiful smile. I love looking at it. It’s kind of funny to me that I know he likes our kids very much… but he still doesn’t turn the softness on them the way he does with me. I see facial expressions directed at me that he doesn’t use with anyone else. He is soft and gentle and melting. I just finished rereading Melting Stones by Tamora Pierce. It’s about a mage who works with rocks and she ends up having to deal with a newly forming volcano and the issues that might cause. She interacts a lot with the spirits of the volcano. (Go with me here, it’s a fantasy book.) The way the book talks about her wanting to soften the edges of herself and melt into the pool of fiery spirits…

That’s how Noah looks at me. Like he wants to melt away the edges of himself and just flow into me.

Which is a lot of why it hurts so much that I wrecked this.

I don’t know that I will ever deserve his trust again. And that’s my fault. I did that.

Time to pay the piper.

One of the neat things about the road trip was having the emotional experience of bringing home with me. The kids and I spent the trip listening to Kacey Musgrave on repeat and singing “Any place beside you is the place that I call home.” We had this open gaping wound of missing Noah, but when he came out to visit… we didn’t miss the building that much. Wonderland is a cool house as houses go… but we focus on the people. The people make us feel loved and accepted and wanted and like we should be here. And the people can go anywhere with us.

I was proud of myself last night. Noah spent a while massaging me (he says the current horrible stabbing pain is sciatic nerve pain. Oh joy. More fucking pain) and afterwards he indicated that he would be interested in moving to a room with privacy. The thing is, I am depressed as shit and I haven’t been doing my chores promptly so the family cloth was in the dryer for like 3 days and my whole crotch is a mess of burning pain because I’ve been using toilet paper. Toilet paper is the devil. So I told him I’d be happy to come with him and be with him but I need to leave my underwear on.

I’m trying.

Do you know how ridiculously hard it is for me that I have turned him down for sex many times in the past month or two? I… don’t do that. I’ve turned him down as much recently as maybe in our whole marriage put together. We’ve certainly had as much alternative sex in the past two months as in the rest of our 11 year marriage put together. I am… not the most skillful handjob giver in the world. What I lack up in dexterity I make up for with extra bonus oral sex. I’m slightly better at that.

I’m having fun with telling him not to rush and just enjoy feeling nice. We don’t have to hurry through.

I am here because even if I need other friends… Noah is my best friend. He doesn’t flinch from me in the way basically everyone else does. And even he still flinches sometimes.

EC keeps telling me that she thinks I am going to want another kid. Noah has hinted broadly that he’d be ok with getting another vasectomy as soon as I want him to. If I end up with a c-section I’m just getting a tubal done. If I have a better vaginal birth…

But I hate being pregnant.

EC says, “It isn’t that you are crazy. It is that you like your kids so much. I totally think you will want four.”

Even she understands that five would be a bridge too far. Oh good. But I came into this wanting three…

Today is kind of busy. 8am Skype. 10am cleaners. 12pm chiro. 2:30 massage. It’s going to be a good day because at the end I won’t hurt as much. It is Friday Pain Relief Day.

Oh shucks. Noah is supposed to go get a hair cut and he was going to bring the kids with him. Luckily our hairstylist has an 8 month old and she’s currently germ paranoid so cancelling the same day is preferable to bringing a sick kid. We’ll call her and talk about it.

I gave in to cleaners twice a month since we lost the babysitter. I think it is easier to live together when we have slightly fewer chores… Goodness knows I’m slacking off right now. My body feels like shit.

I feel kind of ridiculously happy that I came up with a name for the next kid that basically means spiritual gift of charm. That’s… hopeful in this house of tactless wonders.

I am here because even when I am depressed as shit I still manage to get up and do the basics. I still manage to provide care and connection even when I feel horrible. I want to. I feel good about it. It’s important. I matter here.

Both of my kids have expressed fear about me dying during childbirth. We talk about it and I try to be realistic and kind about it. It is a risk. I’m never going to promise you that I won’t die. I will absolutely die someday and you are going to have to cope. But I don’t think I will die that day. That’s why I’m going to a good hospital and I’m being picky about doctors. I’m trying to stay fit. I’m trying to eat well. I’m doing what I can to stack the deck in my favor and then it’s just about luck.

They both tell me that they don’t want me to go. I tell them that I don’t want to go but someday I will have to because everyone does. But I hope it will be many years hence so that we can enjoy one another’s company for a very long time. But I don’t know when it will be and that’s why I pressure them so hard to learn the things I need them to learn. I don’t know how much time I have and I have a lot to teach.

I tell them that someday it will be their job to keep themselves safe and I won’t be there. The things that will decide if they come out ok or not will be their will and instincts. I’m doing what I can to train you to react in a way that will prolong your life.

FMC asked me why I love them so much if they are an asshole. (I don’t call them an asshole but I do talk a lot about how everyone is an asshole sometimes.) I told them that people are irritating and annoying and that is life. People are selfish and they have to be and that’s right and just. And I love you because you are bright and shining and you try and you fail and you get back up and you try again. Because that is life too. I love you because you are fierce and strong and you demand to be seen. I love you because you are unwilling to be ignored.

You refuse to be underestimated. Excellent. Keep it up.

I am here because no where else in the world will give me the chance to be who I want to be.

It’s kind of funny talking to Noah about our marriage. Funny because we go round and round. Neither of us have any desire to leave but sometimes I’m really not sure why we want to stay.

What do I want from our marriage? Gosh.

When I call my friends to complain about Noah my friends spend half the time saying, “Yeah that thing is shitty… that’s true… but let’s talk about all the good things.” Jesus fucking Christ my personal god damn therapist was so #teamNoah that even though sex was causing me literal physical pain she told me I should keep putting out because marriage is about compromise and he does so much for me.

I feel like there is no one in Noah’s life who feels that way about our marriage. I feel like Noah doesn’t talk about our marriage much to anyone and when he does it sure isn’t to sing my praises because when we have a problem… where are the chorus of voices telling him that I do so much for him and marriage is about compromise?

Noah didn’t marry someone super high functioning and promising. He married a god damn train wreck. And I have managed to accomplish things in the past 11 years that seem like a fucking miracle to me. I am pretty god damn stable. Yeah I cry and I have mood swings… but I haven’t actually caused a lot of problems and drama in our life. I do my chores. I take care of the kids. I learned how to handle major financial investments because Noah couldn’t handle doing all of it even though the topic gave me panic attacks when we got married. I have been responsible in a way that I honestly didn’t think I would be able to deliver on.

I have even damaged myself for years and years and years trying to meet his need for sex even when our sex life was not working for me at all. I never quit. I never stopped trying. Yeah, eventually I was a giant asshole and I added sex with other people as part of my coping strategies and that blew up mightily in my face. Yeah that sucked. It didn’t help how I wanted it to help. It got ugly.

I have an incredibly high need for social interaction. I am extroverted. I NEED people. And I don’t have a whole lot of opening for that in my life. I mean, I get lots of kid time… but I need grown ups.

I spend the vast majority of my whole life knowing that I can’t talk about 90% of what is in my brain or I am a bad person. I’m very careful what I say and to whom.

I don’t know how to deal with this in the context of our marriage. I used to do a lot of things. I used to be such a social butterfly it was unreal. Renaissance Faires were fun but I can’t do that sort of thing and stay married to Noah. It means so much time away from home and that wouldn’t work out. Dickens Fair… I have no desire to work with my rapist and he’s beloved and popular and I’m not. I tried the home school group for years and that was complicated as fuck and Noah never appreciated the fact that there was emotional fall out from me dealing with large groups of people constantly who weren’t my friends. The bdsm community is late at night, which I’m not physically good at, and it is intensely threatening to Noah. Even if I was capable of behaving more appropriately he wouldn’t be real happy with me going out there to socialize because he knows that I could pick up play and/or sex any day.

It is hard that the only groups Noah particularly wants to hang out in are groups where no one wants to talk to me very much. An incredibly high percentage of the people that Noah would like to spend time with either treat me like I am furniture or they talk down to me because *I* didn’t go to a prestigious school so obviously I’m dirt. And that’s not my imagination. That’s not my rampant paranoia.

My rampant paranoia is that I don’t trust that *my* friends like me. It’s reality that most of Noah’s friends don’t like me.

And that isn’t the end of the world. Noah gets to go on trips with these people. Noah can go have lunch with folks and he does. I don’t lock him in a box. He’s totally allowed to have lots of people in his life who have no use for me. Hell, I booked the god damn trip for him and the kids to Texas so he can go visit his family… who really don’t like me.

I don’t think I try to control Noah’s life and limit him to people who only like me. But I notice that pretty much the vast majority of people that Noah wants to consider friends don’t like me and don’t really support our marriage.

I notice that. That hurts. That feels like Noah must not think our marriage is that great and he probably doesn’t spend a lot of time talking me up to these people.

When he went and saw a therapist she pushed hard for a divorce. We are definitely not talking about our marriage in the same way.

And that makes me feel like only one of us thinks that there is any good in our marriage. Maybe only one of us is getting good from our marriage and that isn’t fair and he should leave.

I want to feel like how hard I have worked to learn stability and to be present and to meet his needs actually has value and I don’t feel like that. I feel like the fact that I finally god damn defended my right to feel pleasure in my cunt means that I deserve to be abandoned as a bad wife.

I didn’t give enough. So I’m worthless and I should go.

I want to feel like me giving my best isn’t such a shit pile.

I want to feel like both of us appreciate our marriage. Instead of poor Noah he married that white trash bitch so now he is suffering, oh poor man.

It doesn’t help that we have ended up in a situation where if I do try to be friendly with people Noah likes that blows up and goes poorly and I’m bad again.

I’m really tired of everything adding up to what a bad wife I am. What incentive do I god damn have for trying harder? I sure as shit won’t end up in a better position that meets more of my needs.

I’m tired of being the designated problem. I’m the one who fucks up and Saint Noah tolerates me.

I want to feel like if I’m not in the mood for sex for a while that isn’t a crime I am perpetrating. I want to feel like it is ok that if we haven’t had a good conversation in a while I DON’T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU. I want to feel like the dishes fairy and the laundry fairy who visit our house actually count as balancing the work that Noah does with cooking. He doesn’t god damn do all the chores in our house and I will get in a fight over this topic. I’m really worn out on the narrative that Noah neeeeeeds sex to pay him back for how much he does for me.

Near as I can tell my payback for my half of the work is that I am allowed to claim half the income. How come your half of the work entitles you to sex that hurts me?

How come your half of the work entitles you to everyone thinking you are the best god damn thing since sliced bread and my half of the work means that I’m a piece of shit and you should leave me?

I feel really scared that I am actually that bad. And if I’m that bad after trying this hard… there isn’t really hope I can improve enough.

I’m really sad.

I feel like I know that I have a good partner. I feel sad that I don’t feel like I am a good partner.

It isn’t really about the assholes on the internet. I’ve been on the internet for more than 20 years. I know there are assholes on the internet.

It is that the assholes are echoing my fears. The assholes are echoing what it feels like my friends have come to my house to say to my face while I have been pregnant. Twice. Two pregnancies almost a decade apart. I’m a bad mother because I am mentally ill and I’m not a good person because I don’t care more about global population issues than I care about this horrifying need to have a family.

I think that one of the meanest lies grown ups say to children is “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.” I’ve been hit with sticks and stones and whips and fists and… lots of other things. Those wounds heal. Do you know what doesn’t heal? The things people say that crawl into my brain.

Also: my keyboard is not working properly since I got it back from the apple store and this is pissing me off. My W key isn’t working right. I have to hit it many times before it registers and then it shoots out several W’s in a row and this shit is seriously irritating.

All the random people in my life who have told me I’m so “great” are fighting against the words of my parents and my siblings and my friends who tell me I’m not.

It was lovely seeing Pam’s baby sister yesterday. We had a great chat. I feel like I’m kind of a wind up toy. If someone comes over and wants to see me I can turn on the fake charm and I can act like a person who is alive and functional and everything. I can seem fine. Then they leave and I feel myself wind down again until I’m staring listlessly and all I want to do is cry.

I told her about something that is coming up that I’m feeling a lot of anxiety about. She told me I could spend the day texting her or calling her for support. Yeah. That won’t happen. Even though she’s very sweet to offer. I can’t do that. I’m in that place where any amount of rejection or appropriate boundary setting or “I can’t do that” feels absolutely catastrophic. I’m not asking people for support I’m holding them hostage in my mind if they can’t do what I need. And as long as any amount of “not now” is that big and that painful inside of me I can’t ask. It isn’t fair or appropriate. It’s only ok to ask if “no” is a perfectly acceptable answer.

I used up all the “asking” I get for a long time in arranging childcare for labor support.

I’m trying to read up on why antenatal depression is such a bad thing. Ok, the disturbed sleep and lack of eating is clearly a problem. Does it really matter if I cry for several months straight? I mean really?

In 4 hours I go in for an ultrasound. Probably my last pregnancy one. Maybe forever. I’m 26 weeks pregnant today. One more week till the third trimester. This incredibly active person residing inside of me could live with a lot of medical intervention already. That’s so amazing. That would suck and be expensive so I’d rather not…. 14 more weeks is a very tractable amount of time. The white board calendar system we use shows up to 36 weeks now. That’s kinda alarming.

Ok this W problem is seriously fucking pissing me off.

The kids have been pushier than usual about asking about the crying. I tell them that it is a hard question to answer for them because it isn’t ok for adults to ask kids for emotional support, that train goes one way. But I also really don’t want to lie or keep secrets so this is tricky. I told them that I’m crying about a bunch of things. I’m crying about old stuff I really won’t explain at this point. I’m crying because my body hurts. I’m crying because I’m really not as good of a mother as I want to be and I feel really bad about that. I’m crying because my bucket is empty and I don’t know how to fill it and that’s really hard.

It was kind of a funny exchange with EC.

“You know how we are talking constantly about impulse control with you kids? You know how I’ve been yelling a lot more than usual? I’m struggling with my own impulse control and I feel really ashamed that I am failing so much right now.”

“Mom you don’t yell that much. I mean, probably more than we deserve because we are perfect, but you don’t yell that much.”

The delivery of that snottiness was so smooth.

I tickled her a lot for that one.

Perfect. Snort.

I love you. I think you are wonderful and I’m glad every day that I get to know you.

There’s a bunch of stuff I’m angsting on really hard right now and none of them feel ok to write about. So I should stop for the day. Otherwise I’ll try to be all slick and talk around these problems and I just can’t do that right now.

I feel ashamed of myself for everything lately. I feel guilty for needing so much conversation to feel connected. I feel like I am a terrible person for still having big feelings about how my last labor went so I’m being really fucking demanding this time and I feel like that makes me a bad person.

I was stupid and I talked about my paranoia and fear about labor on the birth board forums and I got told off up one side and down the other. Because I don’t have a mother or someone who just wants to help me I don’t deserve help. The fact that I asked around and found a friend who could agree to the intense demands I have for labor support mean I’m a complete asshole.

What I want: someone who can be available from a few days before my due date, someone who will not want to keep my kids for a few hours then give them back (I absolutely believe that the stress of no one wanting to keep my older kid for very long made my last labor so much worse–I could never relax; I spent the whole time worrying and fretting about the fact that neither I nor my child are important enough to just take care of us for the duration of a difficult and traumatic event), someone who will stay through multiple days if necessary and just make things happen so I don’t have to be scared all the time, and I want someone my kids have a pre-established relationship with because frankly all of us are scared.

I almost died last time. I think it will go better in a hospital, but we all have anxiety around the fact that this is a traumatic event that kills a lot of women and has for all of history. I don’t have the sturdiest body. In the opinion of Darwin, I should already be long dead. So this is scary.

The people on the birth forums told me that if I don’t have a mother who loves me then my husband should stay home with the kids and I should labor and deliver alone because that is what is “appropriate”.

So I’m a shitty person for asking around among my friends and getting firm commitments from two people (a primary person and a back up person) for multiple days of uninterrupted care and they can hand off between themselves if there is a problem.

I’m bad because I want both my husband present and my children to be taken care of by a friend instead of a stranger.

I was told that if I hire labor support that’s fine. But we don’t have a current person we pay who could be available for that. So I should find a stranger.

No.

Strangers are not dependable for sudden labor support. I’m sorry.

I’ve actually provided labor support for several families in the last seven years since I had my second child. Even for folks I’m not that close with but I know them through various communities. I tell the parents: call me when you think it is getting to be early labor and I’ll come get your big kid(s). I will keep them until you are ready to come and get them a day or two after the birth. Bond with your infant–that’s a big deal and we will be fine until you are ready. I can handle anything that comes up.

I’m good with kids. Especially kids who have BIG FEELINGS and are feeling scared about a family transition point. I can talk all day and all night about how having more people to love doesn’t mean your parents will love you less. It means more love in the house.

That’s what I wanted last time and I really didn’t get that. I got a few hours at a time and my kid came back each day. I can’t experience again what happened to me last time. I don’t have the resiliency.

I feel sad and like I’m not a good person because I need help and I’m demanding it from people. I’m being too specific about the form and shape of the help and that means I’m mean.

This is contributing to my overall feelings of shame that I’m having another child. I shouldn’t be doing so from a population point of view. As I’ve been crying this week I can’t get the words out of my head that it is completely unavoidable that I am a bad mother because I am mentally ill and I should have aborted my first pregnancy and never inflicted me on anyone.

I’m feeling so much like it would have been better if I had been aborted and then I never would have existed to be so bad and do so many things I’m not supposed to do.

I feel cranky and sad and anxious and like I want to get in a fight. If I sound bitchy… it’s probably true. I am bitchy.

My kids are in a needy state. Those come and go. They need a lot of hand holding and explaining and support and I’m supposed to be happy and loving and sweet the whole god damn time.

I’m trying really hard to meet Noah’s needs for sex while respecting my bodily limits but I feel like I’m walking this line. I still don’t feel like I’m trying to meet my needs for sex. I’m trying to not be a complete failure as a wife which… isn’t feeling very good.

Noah keeps telling me that he could make space in the calendar for me to go see someone or do something and my internal narrative is “Wheeee I could drive really far and hurt my body so someone can pay as much attention to their phone as me. How fulfilling.” (Which isn’t how it works 100% of the time… but is really fucking frequent with a lot of people.)

I’m in this shitty place where almost everything that anyone could do would be not enough so I can’t ask for anything at all because then I might act like someone trying hard isn’t good enough and then I’m a bad selfish person so I should just shut the fuck up and ask for nothing.

I feel empty and sad and useless and stupid.

It is really hard that the more I need the less I am capable of asking for or accepting.

And I’m so frustrated with the entire existence of my body. I feel like I can’t do anything right. I can’t even eat or sleep right because I am so stupid and pathetic. So fucking broken.

Geez, why don’t I just settle down and take these stupid anti-depressants and everything would be fine. Only I’ve tried that and it made living so much worse. But I’m a liar who is not to be believed when I talk about my body.

I am not a reliable narrator.

I know that there are times when it doesn’t make a lot of sense to talk to me because I just twist everything and make everything awful and that’s on my head.

I feel like I “should” go find fulfillment from doing more chores. I should just work more. My garden has been heavily neglected for a long time… I should get my lazy worthless ass in gear.

But the thing is…. I think that in my heart I was making the garden and I was making the bathroom because I hoped I would be capable of making a space where people would want to come over and hang out because it would be fun for them too. And I have pretty much failed at that. And so instead I sit here and berate myself for putting this much time and money and energy into something that no one cares about.

Because… everyone else is busy living their lives. As they should be.

And my life is supposed to be doing laundry and driving people to the things they want to do and smiling pleasantly and not saying anything that will make anyone feel uncomfortable.

So basically I should just shut up because I’m a horrible person who makes everyone uncomfortable.

It’s not a good day.

How my new OB might feel about me taking the placenta home. My whole medical team has been expressing concern about postpartum depression given how my pregnancy is going. I said, “If I eat the placenta I’ll do ok!” Now I need to talk this OB into that course of action. Oh boy.

Bodies are weird. We don’t understand them very well. We don’t know why they work the way they do. We know that humans are one of  the only mammal species that doesn’t habitually consume the placenta. The placenta is full of good shit, yo. That’s nutrition. That’s vitality. That’s half the shit my kid stole from my body to deplete me during the pregnancy. I want it back, motherfucker. I need that shit.

But I’m going to have to walk the gauntlet of current mores and taboos. It’s TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine). Don’t act like this is some newfangled idea. I’m just saying. TCM has been doing good stuff for people since white people were too stupid to have doctors wash their hands between patients. Let’s not act like white medicine is superior or has more standing, m’kay?

There is apparently an Ayurvedic doctor near me who works with pregnant and post-partum women on emotional balance.

My city is so much cooler than I thought. I’m not sure these services were here 7 years ago.

Not that I have a lot of interest in seeing another medical practitioner. Good grief.

But the Ayurvedic doctor does placenta processing……

I fully believe that my postpartum period will go better if I consume my placenta. So I’m going to have to push for this issue even though it feels kind of weird. No I don’t want the medication you could give me for nausea… I just want your lack of interference when I want to consume an organ I expel through my cunt, ok?

If I’m really desperate I will eat more of the placentas I have left in the freezer. TCM says you consume placenta for a few months then you store the remainder till menopause because it helps with hot flashes. I’d much rather consume my decades old placentas to deal with hot flashes that take some other kind of pill. I’m a weirdo. So I’m stocking up. I will find it interesting in the future if I go back and forth between the varying placenta’s and have different levels of responses from different pregnancies. Like, FMC’s placenta was incredibly wet. The pills were hard to make because it just didn’t want to dry out. It’s been stored in the freezer for years. How is it going to work out years from now? (TCM doesn’t involve the freezer but modern touches abound through all customs.)

I sort of figure that with what I’ve eaten and where I’ve stuck my tongue… a placenta is genuinely not that gross.

It’s all about your perspective. *cough*

Ultrasound scheduled for Wednesday. Because we are so late on the anatomy scan I’m sort of hoping the kid will flash us and there will be very little doubt about the genital configuration and I can stop wondering about testosterone load… but I’m not going to ask and I’m going to request that the technician not find out on purpose. An accidental flashing would be fun though. Then I can pretend I’m not a nosy bastard who wanted to find out early. The suspense is killing me. It wasn’t as hard to wait with the first two kids.

I’m feeling a lot more like I may be done with this process. Pregnancy is so hard. I’m getting old. I know that many of my friends started having kids at the age I am right now. I don’t know how in the fuck they did that because my body feels like shit. Maybe it helped that they didn’t have older kids? I don’t know. This pregnancy is easier than my first two and I feel just god damn over this process. I’m not sure I can handle giving Lightning a buddy. And given how my oldest two get along like oil and water lately… maybe a buddy isn’t such a great thing. Ok, so they are mostly best friends and this is a phase… but it’s a phase that is going on too long and I really wish I were the sort of person who believed in boxing ears.

THEY FRUSTRATE ME SO MUCH. GENERATIONS OF PARENTS HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO INFLICT PAIN ON CHILDREN WHO ARE FRUSTRATING. WHY CAN’T MY GENERATION?! THIS ISN’T FAIR.

Ahem. I will not be hurting my children. BUT SOMETIMES I’LL THINK ABOUT HOW SATISFYING THAT MIGHT BE IN SOME MOMENTS. I WILL THINK IT! I WILL!

I love the way my children smile at me smugly and say, “You won’t hurt us on purpose. You’d feel too bad.” So no… I won’t hurt them on purpose. I am a klutzy fucker and sometimes we run into each other and we both think it hurts and sucks. But that’s different.

Life hurts enough. You don’t need to have your parents hurt you on purpose.

Your parents are going to hurt you enough even if they do their best every day.

Every parent hurts every kid. No matter how well the dynamic goes. There is pain. I didn’t understand that when I was younger. I thought there were parents out there who were so good they inflicted no pain. Life has shown me otherwise. All parents hurt their kids. The question is about how much.

I tried to cut FMC’s toenails last night. No blood but I did cause some wincing and gasping. I said, “This is why I’ve been trying to teach you to do it to yourself. I can’t feel when I’m in the wrong place and you can feel when it is the wrong place on your own toe…” I know why my kids are afraid of nail cutting. I’m not great at it.

This is why my children chew their toenails because it is better than having me trim them with clippers.

Sometimes I fear it is weird in a way that is a problem… then I shrug and think if that is one of their bigger problems in this life they are doing so well I can just smile and go about my day.

I think it is funny that the kids have been complaining about wanting separate space from each other so I bent over backwards to find ways for separate space in the house…. and neither kid will take advantage. Instead they follow each other around like magnets complaining about how their sibling won’t obey commands. It’s hilariously irritating. Both of them want to be in charge of the other so damn bad. I was looking at something yesterday that talked about bullying and about how it is really all about dominance challenges. Holy shit yes. In this house we are living dominance challenge behavior non-stop. I need to find a new way of talking about this with the kids.

I keep asking my kids if they want more classes away from each other. Do you want us to create more structural space in your life where your sibling doesn’t live?

Nope. They don’t want space. They want me to force their sibling to obey them. In both directions. Well I won’t be doing that. So instead… we fuss.

I PICKED THE WORST TIME TO GIVE UP HEAD BANGING.

It’s fascinating to me the way they both want space and want their sibling tucked up right next to them no more than inches away because if you are further away you might miss something and you need to see everything I see from now until forever. They treat one another like the mandatory witnesses for each of their lives. It’s lovely and so frustrating.

Even as I grind my teeth I smile. Because it is hard and glorious. This feels like what family is supposed to mean.

Once in a while someone will want to kibbitz with me about how inconvenient having kids is. I always feel like an asshole when I say that I didn’t have children because I wanted convenience. But it’s very true. I didn’t do this gig because I wanted easy. I wanted hard but worth it.

I learned that one from Sarah.

I think I can go back to sleep now. I ate my cheese. I no longer feel like I’m flashing hot and cold on my way to puking.

String cheese is the best substance in the world this pregnancy. Bless you, mozzarella. You’re my only hope.

Today… I don’t have to drive. Not at all. I don’t have to get in the car. Tomorrow the kids have martial arts and we could walk over to prevent driving and then I’d get three whole days free of the car in a row. I think that sounds brilliant.

EC’s out of town writing class was cancelled because the instructor feels like she is failing to get the impact she wants to get so she’s just quitting. Well… that’s one way to run a school. Ok then. But on the upside that means I no longer have to drive to Santa Clara on Tuesdays. That’s a big forking relief. That means my mandatory out of town driving is more restricted now and I’m thrilled. That’s a good four or five days a month of freeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom.

I was reading an article yesterday about some rich famous person talking about parenting. They said that they don’t do gifts at Christmas at all because they don’t want their kids to be spoiled or entitled.

Dude, your kids globe trot with two nannies.

It is interesting to me where other people draw their lines. I think that everyone has their own strengths, resources, and deficits. Parents have different things to offer. Some of the best parents I’ve ever known were very poor and they struggled to meet material needs but they were absolute rock stars at providing for emotional needs. I know a lot of children of rich parents who have never managed to feel loved even though all of their material needs were handled with aplomb.

I think about sexual assault so much. Apparently so do my children. What is it? What does it mean? There are all these gradations and nuances. Sometimes it is hard for me when I talk about incest and someone says, “Oh me too!” and it turns out that one time their parent touched their genital area through a blanket and that made them uncomfortable.

I feel like an absolute piece of shit for playing the Oppression Olympics. I’m not really. I’m trying to understand why that event in an otherwise safe and well provided for childhood causes so much damage to some people when people like me are expected to shrug off much more invasive experiences while having no other needs met. It isn’t that I think that I have suffered more than everyone so only I get to be thought of as a victim… I haven’t suffered more than everyone and I’m far from the only person to have been victimized in this life… In many ways I had a sheltered existence and I know that.

I am capable of recognizing that my life involved a lot of privilege and advantages. I was blessed and lucky even as I was traumatized.

People can only know what they know. People can only know food insecurity or food security. Stable housing or unstable housing. You experience what you experience and you set your internal understanding of the world based on what you’ve seen. Part of what makes this so weird to me is that I’ve been inside so many different sets of expectations… I don’t know what I should get. I know that other people get different stuff than me for better and for worse.

I think of the little children who are raped to death. I didn’t have it so bad. I think of children who are pimped out to many many many adults. I sought out sex but it wasn’t forced on me like that. It’s different.

I can no more understand the physical and emotional impact of more severe abuse than my children can conceptualize my life. That’s weird.

But I feel like somehow there has to be a conversation. There need to be more words invented. Coercive rape. Date rape. Sexual assault. These words don’t begin to convey the full array of unwanted sexual activity that happens. And where is the room for jostling in a crowd or a wrestling accident?!

I’m not saying that sexual assault can’t happen in a crowd. I hear some scary things about trains in Japan.

But where is the line between a little kid who probably doesn’t have well developed impulse control thwapping another kid on the tush and someone harming another person for their sexual gratification?

I tell my children that if they are confused about this topic they are just like all the other grown ups in the world because all of us are flailing and struggling with this topic at this point. We have huge batches of folks coming forward to talk about sexual assault and what it means and there is a large scale societal effort to change the current level of tolerance for large scale sexual abuse.

But what does it mean? How do we talk about it? How do we teach kids where the lines are?

I’m seriously all about ask culture for this shit. Guess culture feels like poison to me.

When my kids were younger I remember them crying at the park because they believe you can’t play a hitting game without verbal negotiation and other kids would just start hitting. There is no group consensus on boundaries or consent.

I think we surprised the family therapist a little when my kids narrated through how they should escalate boundary violations up through responding with violence. You ask the person to stop touching you first. You ask an adult to help redirect another kid who is touching you in ways you are not ok with. If your words and the teachers words don’t help… go ahead and hurt the kid to make them think it is a bad idea to keep touching you. That’s fine. You have the right to defend your body.

And this is part of why they aren’t in school for a zero tolerance policy on self defense. I know how little the schools can do to dissuade bullies. I know that hitting often works. Ok.

Do you want to be nice or do you want to be effective? Be nice as often as you can… be effective when you have to be.

I tell my kids frequently that escalating to violence is a dangerous thing. You never know when the other person will take your escalation as full permission to beat you into a bloody pulp. (My cousin was hospitalized for several weeks after initiating a fight at 19… be careful who you fight.) You never know if that other person has an older sibling or parent who will think you deserve whatever they want to do to you. The minute you escalate… you are opening the door to more violence being enacted on your body. Be very careful how and when you do that.

And if you do escalate, don’t fucking fight fair. Get that motherfucker off of you.

I don’t know if this is good advice or bad but it is the best I have. Avoid fighting–it’s not a good idea. If someone won’t leave you alone… you need to convince them you are a bad target. I don’t know another way to stay safe.

Being a doormat and being afraid of violence results in a lot of extra abuse and I say fuck that shit. You don’t owe someone a kind rebuff. You don’t owe someone backbends and contortions to tell them no in a way they want to hear.

You owe yourself integrity and that’s it. You need to be able to look yourself in the mirror and think, “I did the best I could.” That’s it.

The farther I am from the experience of being raped the more interestingly ambiguous it is in my head. Why did it feel so very traumatic? Why does it stay in my body still? Why do I remember it so strongly? Why does a penis going in my mouth matter so much but someone grabbing my kid’s butt doesn’t seem like such a big deal?

I want to make justifications like “I was being put at risk of STDs or pregnancy and my kid’s life was not at risk of being dramatically altered” but that’s bullshit. I do think part of the reason I am so god damn angry at the men who were friends who raped me as an adult was because I had clearly communicated my sexual boundaries (Sex is great! Condoms are required!) and it didn’t matter. My attempts to keep my body (and theirs) safe didn’t matter in comparison to their desire to have a wet pussy touch their cock. That felt demeaning and debasing and violating.

But frankly the kids who raped me weren’t risking STDs or pregnancy. We were all too young and inexperienced so that’s not really it.

I don’t know what it is.

I for one am thrilled that more male survivors are speaking out. Thank you so much for your courage. I wonder when we will as a society be ready to address sexual assault as a whole phenomena and not a “violence against women” issue. Lots of women perpetrate sexual assault. Lots of men and non-binary people are assaulted. I don’t think that we will be able to really move the needle on this topic until it becomes less about “Those icki penis enabled people.”

I want to know what builds someone’s internal understanding of safety such that unconsented sex acts are traumatizing.

That’s a weird word. Unconsented. Forced. Coerced. Manipulated. Unwanted.

I wish there was a way to talk about all the unwanted sex. All the gradations from “I don’t want to do this but I feel like I should and I’ve never said no” to “I said no but I didn’t fight” to “I fought with all my strength and lost.”

We need ways of talking about the degrees and it just doesn’t exist and I feel like my language is failing me.

I wasn’t trying to rag on polyamory. I know people who have raised kids well in polyamorous families. People don’t fuck up their kids because of polyamory. But I’ve seen a lot of people do polyamory in shitty selfish ways that hurt their children.

As this guy mentions in his piece, hurting your kids can come from playing too much golf. It’s not about whatever activity/person takes you away.

Neither Noah nor I started dating by being gone for 2-5 hours a month. We started by having the time we were gone on dates being measured in days. We are obsessive selfish assholes. We can be obsessive selfish assholes who have to mostly focus on our nuclear family or we can be obsessive selfish assholes who build a network of people we make commitments to and then who gets the short end of the stick?

I do this with platonic friendships to a lesser degree… Noah doesn’t fall into platonic stuff the way I do. I fall in love with everyone. Noah tends to need more intimacy for that.

But we have these ambiguous relationships in our lives. Like Pam. She’s been one of my Most Important People for almost 20 years. When we met we were both dating the same boy. I had sex with her way long ago and there’s been group play since then. When I felt pathetic and inadequate because I was not up for sex during previous pregnancies… she and Noah had sex a few times. (She was in a dry spell of her own so it was reasonable timing for her to blow off some steam.) And she’s the person we both call when we are having problems communicating with one another.

That’s god damn complicated. Is it polyamory?

Part of the reason that Pam is a healthy person to have in my life is she encourages me to prioritize my needs in a way that frankly I need to be encouraged. She’s self absorbed and she thinks I should be too.

But she says that while having an intensely close relationship with a huge extended clan of people, all of whom she sacrifices for in one way or another. So she’s self absorbed… only she’s also incredibly generous and considerate and thoughtful. She’s a good example.

I feel like we have not had a lot of success with having folks who have a more ambiguous set of rules come in from Noah’s side. I’m not sure if this is my petty jealousy or if there is more than that.

In my defense I’m better friends with most of his ex’s than he is. There are the notable exception of a couple who hate both of us with a passion. That’s legit. It’s not that I’m rude or a problem with his ex’s. I invite them over. I chat. I send birthday presents and keep up with their children.

But we don’t have someone who is intensely important and a pillar of our relationship from his side and I feel like that is a complicated thing.

I feel like I alienate his friends. I feel like I am unacceptable in some major way. Part of it is how fucking judgmental I am.

But his friends say things like, “I couldn’t possibly be responsible for all of the kids while you eat dinner.” Then they go back in the restaurant and leave me outside to wrangle all six kids while every other grown up eats.

Yeah. I’m a judgy bitch who isn’t going to act like that is fucking ok. I’m going to act like if you are a father who wants group god damn outings you put on your big boy pants and you fucking figure out how to wrangle kids. You don’t expect to have a woman come fucking rescue you. This shit wasn’t easy for me to learn. I have an explosive personality. I have anger issues. I have impulse issues.

HOW COME I HAVE BECOME THE DEFAULT GROWN UP?!

To be fair this was years ago and at this point I’d kick Noah’s ass out of the restaurant and tell him to do it because he is more than capable.

But that one night was awkward.

Meh.

I judge my friends and they tell me that I’m getting judgy and I back off. This dynamic works.

His friends… they just kind of avoid me.

Even when Noah does have friends I get along with it gets messy. I was working on being closer to one of his friends and then he told me that I was stealing his friend and now he couldn’t be close with the person. I stopped talking to them.

I don’t want it to be my fault Noah can’t have friends.

I spend a lot of time feeling hyper aware that Noah married beneath himself and he is getting a raw deal. I’m not easy to live with. I’m a needy fucker. I’m controlling. I’m moody. I’m bitchy.

And I feel this never ending wave of shame that this is how I am after getting a lot better.

I talked about being interested in finding a volunteer opportunity. I’ve been at a place for a while where it doesn’t seem safe or wise for me to introduce anything mandatory in my life that might impact my moods because the people in my house don’t want to deal with it.

I’m too much of a problem when I’m bouncing off people.

The homeschool group was awful for me. I did that for three years I think? It was so much driving (which hurts me physically) and I had to spend a lot of hours in careful performance mode because I was well aware that it was not a setting designed for my safety. I needed to just shut up most of the time. Or figure out how to be a helpful contributor while following everyone else’s rules of civility… that they won’t explain they will just get mad if I don’t understand.

It was fucking stressful.

Noah and I had an exchange in family therapy this week. We were talking about some behavior that a child was doing. He described it as not normal. I told him that one of the best things about my childhood and bouncing back and forth through a bunch of different environments is… I no longer think that I can judge what is “normal” based on what I’ve experienced. Unless you have done substantial research into developmental or cultural norms… you have no fucking idea what normal means. You know what you know.

It is hard for me to figure out what is important to say or not say or do or not do to fit in a crowd.

Part of the reason I’ve dropped most social groups (especially ones I ostensibly could bring my children to), beyond the fact that everything happens too late at night, is I know of too many rapists and I don’t feel safe in communities where protecting the fee fees of the rapists is more important than the many victims that are driven out of the community.

Jesus, I got off a home schooling mailing list because folks wouldn’t stop promoting the magic act of a dude who raped me.

It is hard for me that my child thinks that someone patting them on the bottom when they walk past in class is “sexual assault”.

I think to what was happening to me at their age. I had multiple people force their dicks into different holes in my body while I cried and begged them to stop.

Dude. Shut the fuck up.

But this is the only life they’ve ever had and they only know what they know and they are literally incapable of perspective.

That’s fucking hard to live with.

I neither want to invalidate their experiences nor encourage this god damn fragility. Life is too fucking hard to be broken by little shit.

Watching the hysteria my children feel at the stupidest of boundary violations… I think I understand why most people who have lives like mine die. People genuinely do have different capacities for suffering.

I think about the ways I run towards difficulties and the way I freeze up at terrible moments when I should be protecting myself.

I think about how my current problems are my fault because I refuse to conform and figure out how to fit in and be nice.

It hasn’t ever worked for me.

Part of my current problem is my unwillingness to act like my cunt matters so sometimes my problem is being too nice. Is it niceness? Is it a manifestation of what I perceive myself deserving?

Deserve. Deserve. Oh fuck deserve.

I think Pam is so important because she has chased me more than any other woman alive. She wants to know me and she’s willing to carry the burden of reaching out to me when I can’t reach out to anyone. She calls. She writes a personal journal that is nearly as detailed and fussy as this blog and she emails it to me so I can know her.

I want to know her. I want to know about every lunch date with every 2nd cousin twice removed.

Her sister is coming over on Tuesday. We are thrilled. Seeing her baby sister is always a treat.

I think my relationship with her is about as close to the anarchic relationship ideal as I can get. I don’t own her. We don’t have long-term messy entanglements. We show up because we want to as individual people on our own paths.

I watched Before Midnight. It was the third movie in a series. Before Sunset and Before Sunrise I think are the other two titles. I might be getting them out of order. Basically these three movies are a series of conversations in this couple’s life over an 18 year period. Each movie covers a conversation that takes place in 24 hours. The third movie is pretty damn bitter.

I know that some people divorce and go on to find happiness. I don’t think I would be one of them. I think I get one chance at happily ever after and no one promised me more good days than bad on that journey.

How do we balance our self absorption and our need for attachment?