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

Dude, it’s on Khan Academy…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That sounds great.

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

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

I. Don’t. Need. You.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bodies are weird.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ll see.

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

That’s ok sweetie, we will understand.

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

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

We all need to be loved.

We watch Call the Midwife a lot. It’s a fun show. It explores a lot of interesting topics. Something that comes up is the historical idea of “being ruined” by having sex before marriage.

I was ruined before I hit puberty. My cunt is damaged. It means that I am incapable of being a good wife who says yes every time I’m supposed to. Well, I can avoid saying no and grit my teeth and get through it, but there are consequences.

At some point I will explode and go behave in ways that I’m really not supposed to behave in order to cope.

Because I am ruined and bad.

I’m having a very hard time perceiving any future where I will be anything other than bad and horrible and disgusting and right now it doesn’t feel like a good thing for me to stay alive so I can keep hurting people and being bad.

I haven’t wanted to die this much in a while. It’s really bad.

It’s kind of funny to me that as I list off that I’m a bad wife and I’m a bad friend and I’m a bad person…

In my head I say I’m not a great mother. But I don’t believe I am a bad mother. That’s the one area where I’m kind of pinning my hopes that I can stay just barely on the line of good enough that I shouldn’t die because if I died I would hurt them far more than if I stay alive.

I do not deserve to shuffle my pain onto them and that is what I would do if I killed myself. So I can’t. That’s complicated and hard.

I’m scared that I won’t be as good of a mother to Lightning. I’m scared I’m older and out of patience and in more physical pain.

I would dearly love to spend my morning beating my head in a futile attempt to beat these words out of my head.

I feel like I should cancel what appointments I have with friends because I’m afraid I will say or do something that is going to damage my relationships. I feel so empty and needy and desperate and that makes it very hard to listen and be caring and that means I don’t deserve friends.

I don’t deserve anything but to crawl in a hole and die.

In which I reveal how judgmental and bitchy I am.

There’s a specific class of person I don’t do so well with. I think of them as cream cheese. They are white. They grew up in a basically safe environment–sure their parents might have been alcoholics, but they weren’t beaten and they had food and they had a consistent roof and appropriate food and after school activities and…

No one gets through life without some trauma. No matter how safe or easy your life… something shitty has happened. I get that.

But cream cheese people had fairly… digestible pieces of trauma. It’s easy to sweep it all under the rug and pretend that everything is smooth and creamy.

I don’t do well with cream cheese because for cream cheese I am ALWAYS the problem. Racism isn’t the problem, I am the problem for bringing up racism. Sexism isn’t the problem, I am the problem for bringing it up. Etc.

These are the people who hate my fucking guts for refusing to be more conformist… but they can’t say that out loud so instead they come up with a bunch of digs about how inappropriate I am. *shrug*

These people are, in my judgy as fuck experience, always low key white supremacists and misogynists. Not the kind who would you know… call someone a rude ethnic name… but the sort who will not mix. The sort who will talk about race and violence as if there is only violence in some groups. The kind who will have two daughters and talk about how “they just never shared my interests” but now that they have a son… they can teach about their hobbies.

But they are Nice White People! You can’t say anything bad about them! That’s carefully cultivated. They won’t do things you can criticize in public… but they will entirely preserve the status quo and be against peaceful protests because they are so “rude”.

Flint Michigan not having clean water for more than three years is unfortunate but no one’s fault, amIright? Those people shouldn’t complain loudly and be rude.

Cream cheese people think that “paying it forward” means volunteering in their child’s all white upper middle class school. Naw… that’s not paying it forward. That’s closing the circle. That’s ensuring that all the resources stay with people like you.

I am always far too rude and abrasive for such people. I take that as one of the best signs that I might have some real character. If they approved of me… I wouldn’t like me anymore.

But the fact that I can’t/won’t get along with cream cheese is kind of rough for Noah. He’s fine with putting up with them. He isn’t particularly cream cheese, but he can mostly fake it for a weekend. He can have close friends like that. It’s hard for him that I can be in the room with cream cheese for about an hour a year before I start picking. I start going, “Oh look… I see some mold….” Then I’m the fucking problem again.

My friends are people who can listen to me rant about the shitty history of white people without getting personally offended. “Yup, we did that.” My friends tend to be people who can listen to me say, “So have you noticed how shitty you are behaving? Let’s talk about that.” Because my friends look at me in similar ways. When I’m fucking up my friends tell me so explicitly. There’s no passive aggressive hinting and “letting me make my own mistakes”.

My friends want me to do better. So they challenge me.

Thank you. I’m really grateful that not everyone in this world is cream cheese.

Who am I at this intersection of my future and my past?

White trash. Upper class.

I will never be what you expect with my redneck mannerisms mixed with erudite speech.

I grew up with tacos and enchiladas and ramen and potatoes and meat.

You used to sneer like I was the ground under your feet.

What does it mean to be a waste person? What does it mean to be valuable instead?

Who decides. Who cares?

I will never be good; it is too late.

Do I always have to be bad? Is that just my fate?

People alternate between telling me how strong I am and how fragile.

I am a whiner and I cry too easily, clearly I only do so to manipulate.

That is how it goes with white women.

I cannot be something other than what I am.

I read on the internet that I should be very angry by someone pointing out that I am white. Oh.

Dude. I know.

I know how my whiteness has shielded me and revealed me as unworthy of camaraderie.

At some point it becomes apparent that I just belong nowhere at all.

I hide in my house. I try to make myself small.

I try to not take so much from people. I know that anyone would be more deserving of it all.

I want to hurt myself; it is how I atone for my sins.

I am told I must not. I must try to create a path for my children to step in.

Children mimic and copy, they cannot help but do so.

Do as I do my dears. Talk about your feelings. Write them down. Breathe through.

Maybe it will feel like enough for them. It never does for me though.

I am not enough. I never will be. I will always be too weak and small.

People who have suffered more than me do not waste so many years hiding and crying.

The world is too big for me. I feel like I am out of trying.

I am out of ways to try to be enough. To try to be good.

No matter what I do I never arrive. I’m not even sure if I could.

Noah  is gone for the weekend. He is visiting with his two best friends from college. I’m super thrilled for him. The last time the three of them went on a trip like this it was at my initiation because I made Noah schedule it. This time one of his friends suggested it!!!! I’M SO HAPPY.

Noah is a great guy but he isn’t doing a fabulous job of maintaining friendships. He’s doing that guy thing where he hangs with his family and his job and that’s mostly it. I’m glad he has monthly lunch with a group of folks he likes. I’m hoping that running off with the college friends becomes more predictably an annual thing. Noah needs friends.

I insist on my friendships. I prioritize them. I force space in my life for them because I will crumble without them. My friendships keep me ok. Noah is lovely and I’m glad I get to spend the vast majority of my time with him… I need my friends too.

Noah is afraid to talk to his friends about our marriage and ask for support. Because I’m such a shitty wife he is pretty sure anyone who cares about him will tell him to leave me. I feel really sad that a) Noah believes that is the only thing someone could think about me if they really knew about me and b) Noah doesn’t think he deserves such advice and support if it is really the best solution.

If Noah really feels that abused… he shouldn’t be married.

He says he doesn’t. But he also says he can’t tell his friends anything about our marriage or it would go badly. So.

It is hard that Noah genuinely believes he deserves better and that his friends would tell him so if they only knew so he lies about me.

I didn’t mean to grow up and be this bad. But I suppose given my background there isn’t much more that can be expected of someone like me.

It is hard that I tried to use my words and ask for Noah to stop using my cunt as a fleshlight and that didn’t work so I exploded and did my best to cope within the skillset I had and that means I deserve to be abandoned and alone forever. Because I am a bad wife.

I made my bed and I have to lie in it. But sometimes it really isn’t comfy. Oh well. It’s my own fault so I guess it is fitting.

My mama was right. You get married and you have to whore and there isn’t really a choice about it. If you don’t do it how you are supposed to you are a bad wife who does not deserve to be kept. But Noah is suffering through and he doesn’t want to hear that he should dump me. So he doesn’t ask anyone for support in dealing with just how bad of a wife I am.

I’m sorry.

Days when I wake up from sleep crying because I hate myself and I think the world would be a better place if I was dead are not good mornings.

I woke Noah up with my crying. He’s all “What happened?” I’m all “I woke up.”

That’s enough to justify sobbing. What?

I’m feeling intense shame because I feel like I don’t do anything for the world that justifies the resources necessary to keep me alive. It may not help that I saw some medical bills this morning. We are at almost $50,000 spent this year. Because I’m a fuck up with a piece of shit body.

I don’t feel that anything I have to offer in this life is worth what it takes to keep me alive. I am so fucking worthless.

I know I keep having children because that way I am not allowed to die because it would hurt them. But that’s a game. There are 7 billion fucking people on this planet. I’m worth approximately nothing to 100% of them give or take 4.

There is nothing I have to offer, there is nothing I have to give, there is nothing I do that balances out the load of my life.

I hear it is bad for a baby to spend the whole pregnancy crying but I don’t seem to be able to stop and don’t fucking suggest a god damn ssri.

I’m torn between really hoping I have a girl because I came up with the absolutely fucking best girl name and hoping I have a boy because I have wanted a boy for almost two decades.

Depression isn’t the same thing as sadness. It includes a lot of feelings. I feel intense self hatred as one of the dominant features of my depression. I hear that it may spring from internalized perfectionism. I don’t have enough to give; thus I do not deserve life.

For some reason I have internalized that if I am not carrying a relationship and supporting someone then I am nothing.

My baby just woke up. I guess it is time to stop thinking about how much I hate me and instead I need to convince them how much I love them. That’s my job.

My brain feels so fuzzy. I feel muddled and confused and only sorta mentally aware. I feel like I haven’t slept properly in quite a while. I wonder if any of it has to do with using Sativa during the day for the past two days? I don’t recall this happening in the past but I’ve been off Sativa for a few months. I doubt it is related. But I’m feeling so spacey.

The sleep study was interesting. I had a lot of lucid dreaming. I kept thinking I was the Diva from The Fifth Element because as I flopped back and forth in the bed I had to manage the weird bundle of cords coming off of my head. It felt like her hair or something. I felt like I was awake/aware all night and I also felt like it only lasted about 5 minutes.

The other person who was there for a sleep study arrived after me and left before me. I think he had fewer connections on during the process because if not I don’t understand how the employee had a chance to finish taking all his stuff off before I woke up. Also, his face didn’t have massive weird white blotches. I kept waking up pawing my face because the cords and wires felt awful.

I have a low amount of hope for my ability to get used to a CPAP. But I’ll try!

I don’t get the results for a week.

If I don’t feel better in a few hours I may wuss out and ask Noah to drive FMC to therapy because I’m not sure it’s a great thing for me to drive today. I feel… numb and cobwebby and confused.

The second trimester is kicking my ass up one side and down the other. I think I kind of remember this happening in previous pregnancies too? The first trimester is rough and the second trimester is worse. I’m nauseous all the god damn time. I can barely eat. I’m still not up to pre-pregnancy weight. It amuses me to think that all of the early baby growth comes from the baby and placenta eating me. Any day now every ounce the baby gains is an ounce directly stolen from me because I’m not gaining weight as a system. Really… it’s already true. But it gets way more pronounced as the baby grows faster.

I have rarely had the chance to talk to other pregnant people who lose a bunch of weight. I am curious if other people have weird feelings about their bodies being eaten. Like, it feels weird in my body as it happens. Like I can feel the parasite sucking me away.

I wish I could eat more. I’m not hungry. Food is horrible and I can barely choke it down without feeling ill. I feel really sick.

And the more sick I feel the more anti-social and unworthy of ever having a friendship again I feel. Which is why I’m grateful for the lovely friends who check in with me even as I do a crappy job of reaching out.

Most of my relationships rely on a lot of effort from me. I am ok with this balance in the main. I just have nothing to give right now and instead I am a bottomless pit of need. It feels different this time though, easier. I feel less like a bottomless pit and more like I’m just needier than usual. It helps that in this pregnancy the kids are being so damn nice.

I read on the internet that mothers who need/want help from their children are terrible lazy people. Ok. Sure. I’m terrible and lazy. But I want the fucking help. My daughter made her own damn bed this morning and I am not sorry. (FMC can’t make the top bunk alone yet and that’s ok…)

My kids can clean up their own stuff. I don’t need to do it for them. They can get food for themselves most of the time; they don’t have to but they are capable and I feel good about this. To be fair… food mostly comes from Noah so that’s not my trip anymore.

Noah and I had a really good conversation yesterday. We locked ourselves in my room while the kids played (loudly–we knew they were fine at every moment) for two hours and we talked and had sex because frankly… we need to. We talked more about M/s and bdsm and my cheating. We talked more about my fuck ups and mistakes and Noah’s projections and assumptions. I feel it was a slightly better conversation than we’ve had for most of the last year.

I completely blew up for a few reasons. The biggest one was really that I couldn’t absorb more painful sex “for the team” and I have complicated feelings about that. I feel like I made a mountain out of a molehill. I feel like I tried so hard to ask for that to stop and it didn’t stop. I feel like I have had so many decades of pain in my cunt that there is no way it can be a small thing ever again. I feel like if I am not allowed to cope with that in any of the ways I have usually coped with that… I need god damn something.

Traditionally I coped with being a hole for usage by cutting myself or burning myself or hitting my head on concrete. I am not allowed to do any of those things anymore and I can’t convinced myself that I am small and bad and I should be in pain without them. And that means I can’t deal with my cunt hurting like that.

Casual sex was… really the most gentle potential self harm I could come up with. And I picked people who genuinely care about me and who were united as a front in telling me to go home and get my shit together when they realized I was… not interacting with them in healthy or appropriate ways.

I feel like as far as going off the rails goes…

I made sure I didn’t damage my body in a way that was going to have long-term consequences because I’m supposed to not do that anymore. So I’m upset with myself and I feel like I coped as well as I fucking could.

Which doesn’t mean it is a way of coping Noah can bear.

Which also doesn’t mean that it proves that at my core I don’t want Noah and I’m not excited by Noah.

And that’s a lot of how Noah took it and continues to take it. Which is a real problem for my marriage. I made that bed and now I get to lie in it.

It’s all so complicated. Sometimes it is very hard that I have come so far that people expect me to be able to function like a healthy, whole person and I’m still not. I’m better than I ever was… but I still struggle with all these ways I’m just not ok. I’ve come a long way but that doesn’t mean I have the background other people have to lean on.

When I panic or feel scared… I still want to revert to programming. Even though I know that programming is going to kill me or wreck my life.

Do you know how hard it is that panic or fear has to be the trigger for the most intense lock-down control of my behavior? So I don’t blow up my life.

That’s not normal. That’s not how humans are designed to function. Fear and panic mean you lose control not that you have to be under way more control.

How come black belts still get mugged and raped? Because fear shuts you down. Fear makes it impossible to function in your normal manner.

But for me fear has to mean that I have much finer control than average. Fear means I have to consciously and deliberately slow down how I am thinking and think through the behavioral options much more carefully than normal and I have to triple check every thought I have to see if it is appropriate or if it is fucked up by the programming I experienced.

We are all programmed by our childhoods.

My programming tends to put me in danger over and over.

Realistically… I’m super happy with myself that when I went hunting when I was freaking out because I couldn’t figure out how to change a dynamic in my life… I picked people who weren’t all that likely to hurt me. In terms of the scale of my life… that was actually well done. I didn’t go hunting Craigslist. I met people from okcupid but in a coffee shop and that was it. I didn’t go looking for danger. I stuck with people who would hurt me in very safe ways. I picked people who have demonstrated for a long time that they want me to be happy. That’s… a huge step up for me.

Even when I’m doing something for mixed, probably bad reasons… I’m making better choices. That has to be progress.

I picked people who were kind to me instead of treating me badly. That’s still a sign of improving life choices.

My nods to self harm are less destructive over time. That’s something.

I still did a lot of harm to my life and to my marriage… but I didn’t shorten my life.

But now we are back to the point where I have to figure out how to get Noah to believe that I like him and I’m excited by him. That’s kinda hard when I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I have poured out my lifeblood for him and that’s fucking exhausting. How do you exhaust yourself utterly and still have room for excitement?

I think we do have exciting moments. But they are mixed in with a lot of not very exciting moments because I’m fucking tired. Yes, I seemed more excited by dates in a minute by minute way… and I also spent very little time with those people.

Scale matters.

I’m so tired I feel like breathing is an effort. I want to spend weeks lying in a bed doing nothing.

How in the fuck am I going to make someone believe I am excited by anything?