Joking about violence. That’s something that I definitely have a history of doing and this has changed for me internally and I need to change the manifestation of my behavior. I don’t want to be a hypocrite on this one. If you hear me say something… please call me on it. (Threatening to hurt my submissive isn’t the same thing. I’ll actually do it and we’ll both have a great time so… uhhh exception.)

I also seriously need to work on my language in general. I don’t mean with the swearing. I mean with the ableist, racist stuff. I’m noticing a few things I do and it… it isn’t ok. I’ve done pretty well with making my language more gender inclusive. I need to work on it more. I’m not as respectful as I want to be yet. I need to work harder. Think about what I say before I say it. Heh. That would be novel. Only if I do that… I find I’m not listening to the person as well. This is going to be hard.

Being better at being brave about asking Noah for things. It’s hard to rock the boat. I’d rather just say I don’t want rules and go act like an asshole. Sometimes I don’t know what I want and it is hard to ask. I need to find these words anyway. We have already started talking about rules. Quite a few (ugh) that are weirdly layered. I need to think about Noah’s feelings and ask for permission. This is going to be hard. But it is important.

I need to figure out how to talk to Noah about being scared of him. That’s an elephant in the middle of the room we dance around. We just can’t… deal with it yet. It is hard because I have compartmentalized that fear very well and I can have a generally loving, trusting, safe feeling relationship as long as he walks very carefully around the elephant and he has for a long time. He’s feeling sorta done with not being able to walk straight through the room and I don’t know how to evict the elephant. This will be very hard. This is going to involve a lot of crying. Fuck.

Leading a bit more with Eldest Child’s education. I’ve been super lazy lately. She’s ready for more direction and I’m not giving it. I need to be more assertive here. She wants it and I’m just… putting energy in other places. Stupid remodel.

Interrupting less. Listening to myself on the radio show was kind of a revelation. Good grief. Am I always that much of a self absorbed asshole? Oh god. I sure as fuck hope not. Because that was bad. They thought it was ok and they invited me back, but I can’t do that again. Ok yes, I do want there to be more women who can insert themselves into conversations. That doesn’t mean I need to conversationally walk all over everyone. I don’t think I’m usually that bad, but I need to work on it anyway. It was rather obnoxious. I also suddenly scream frequently and that is jarring as fuck. Sad face.

I need to do a bit of research on child development stuff because the four kids are getting together a bunch and I need to manage that more skillfully. I think I’m doing ok at helping them integrate but there is more proactive interaction I could do. I need to start. They need to be consciously taught how to interact. I’m the grown up. I get to do it. Ok. Things like: I need to teach them how to play catch. I’m the one. Ok. Get busy, bitch. You want to be where the buck stops then get off your ass and teach these kids how to play a game together where they have to look at each other and communicate and build physical skills. Yes, every one of the uncoordinated geeks would rather stay inside and read. You are the grown up. Lead. Most of us don’t naturally want to be healthy. We have to be taught. Modeling is the way. Just do it motherfucker. (Clearly I’m motivated here.)

I also need to be more serious about gardening any day now. The remodel was supposed to be done already so I could be gardening more. Fuuuuuuuuck. I need to weed so much. The grass seeds are almost ripe and I’m going to be screwed. My nice gardener can’t get the lawn mower to the back because of the god damn bath tub. UGH!

I apparently planted a few too many potatoes this year. A large chunk of my crop will be… potatoes. And that’s ok. I like eating them. I have a small yard. It’s easy for one plant to dominate. One year I had a sea of tomatoes. That was kinda fun. But canning 60 lbs of tomatoes got a bit old. It took over two years to eat all the fuckers. (Because we also ate 20-30 lbs of tomatoes fresh and we got over saturated.)

Food glorious food. I will learn how to grow it.

I want to work on running and my posture. I’m not running and that’s a problem. I should run to and from class today. I am now at a point where running does a lot to loosen up my muscles and when I don’t I hurt and that sucks. This is like that bullshit I did with high heels where I deformed my calf for years. Only this is better for me. I hate running. Why did I pick up this hobby? Now I pretty much have to continue. Fuuuuuuuck. I want to be back at a half marathon by Christmas. I really like how I feel when I’m exercising like that. And by extension I feel like shit when I slump. But I slump most of the time. Good grief Krissy. WTF?

I need to count out pills again because I should start this round of nutrition shit and get into the habit of taking the meds I’m starting. This thought makes me want to cry. I’m so sick of pills. Will this be my whole life? At least I have taken so many that I no longer throw up when I try to swallow pills. Uhm. Yay for exposure therapy. Or Boo. I think boo.

That’s enough. Frowny face.

I have totally joked about inflicting violence. I can never ever do it again.

Yeah. That’s how that works. Ok. Can I talk in my blog about wanting to commit violence? Gosh that’s going to be complicated–isn’t it?

Before I think about that I need to think about what I’m going to say tonight. Not babble. More like an outline. What is related to what.

There are a lot of different kinds of catharsis. For me in this 2 hour block I want to talk about:

• emotional
• physical
• spiritual

The thing about traumatized people is there are layers of things they need to process. For me:

• How to get rid of the physical strain of carrying around those experiences in your body.
• How to not feel guilty/ashamed/deserving of what happened to you.
• How to deal with the anger/frustration/sadness/disappointment that no one helped you.
• How to come to peace with your place in the universe as a recipient of Seriously Bad Shit.
• How to gain the skills necessary to stop putting yourself into positions where you’ll be retraumatized.
• How to gain the necessary emotional maturity to become a real grown up person.
• Figuring out what you want to be instead of what not-to-be.

This show is about sex. I’m not going to get into all the stuff I’ve done though I’ll drop in that it involves 31 years and counting of therapy. I do the work to get my life in order. But bodies are complex places. What am I going to do with my sex life as a highly traumatized person? Pretty much whatever the fuck I want. This is my body. I get to own it now.

I like extreme bdsm. I’m there so someone can get fucked up. Me or them. I’m good either way.

What kinds of bdsm am I interested in:

• sadomasochism. I like pain. Giving and receiving with intensity. I have gone through different phases throughout my life in the leather community. I have certainly done more gentle scenes when I wanted to earn a specific persons approval or be nice to them for a reason. But gentle scenes have never had much draw for me. Why in the world would I want to tie you up and tickle you? I could turn you pretty colors and make you cry. Or you can do it to me. That’s kind of at the top of my preference list.
• D/s &/or M/s. I am highly motivated by playing with power differentials during life. I have used power differentiated relationships to spur myself through a lot of personal growth. I might have been too depressed and anxious to graduate from college. My Owner said that’s not happening do your homework and go to class. Things are…interesting on that front now. I am not really interested in sex if there isn’t a hint of a push/pull vibe. Who I want to play with depends on my mood. I have a lot of moods. So I play with a lot of people.
• bondage. Once upon a time I used to teach classes on bondage and suspension. I’ve done so at multiple conferences. I was assisting in those classes at large national conventions starting when I was 19. I am embarrassingly out of practice but I think it’ll come back. I just need to practice.
• domestic discipline. I list this separately from D/s because it is such a weird specific fetish for me. I’m seriously into being expected to keep the house neat. It’s a thing. It gives me a sense the my work during the day isn’t stupid and wasted. I’m not just doing things that don’t need to be done. I’m doing the specific work I’m supposed to do because it has been spelled out.

Roles:

• bottom- this is what I’ve done with the majority of my play partners.  I’m bossy and specific about how to play with me. This is important because if the point of the scene is for us both to be pleased… I have to tell you how to please me and I’m super fucking picky.
• submissive-this is where I’ve done most of my best scenes. I really enjoy playing with people who want to take things from me I don’t necessarily want to give. Which is super complicated and leads to getting into all kinds of retraumatizing situations let me tell you.
• slave/property- this was only a two year stint of my life but it was incredibly formative. It lead to a hunger for that kind of feeling again that I’ve been terrified of ever since. How in the world could I ever trust someone like that again? I was The One. Until I wasn’t. Then I was back to being one more Slut of the Day. This is super complicated in my marriage because we have talked about wanting to move in that direction and Holy Trigger Batman.
• service top- I would say that 98% of my topping has fallen into this category. I like helping people through cathartic experiences. Let’s go, motherfucker. But I’m like a pushy dominant service top? I play with people who want to be pushed hard and I do that because I want to be what they want to experience. It’s a virtuous cycle.
• dominant- I uhh I’m still starting this journey. There’s one person. I can’t explain what all this means to me yet. I’m still feeling it. But it’s fabulous. I have some incredibly intense impulses to hurt people and take their blood and be ridiculously demanding sexually and… yeah. It’s going well. I’ve known him for over 15 years and we are just getting to the point where I feel comfortable… really pushing for what I want. I’ve done extreme play with him for a long time because he asked me to. I guess some things are a slow boil. I wasn’t ready for him before.

The usefulness of well delineated boundaries:

• relationships suit what you can really give and not be about invisible expectations
• roles define expectations
• I’m going to say expectations again so you know that this is a big deal for me. As a traumatized person, if my expectations don’t line up with reality I experience a lot of cognitive distortion followed by an inability to control my emotions and sometimes behavior. I need to understand what is going on and what is expected of me.
• I like that the bdsm community is the place in the whole world where people are most required to state their boundaries out loud. And you can’t assume it is ever ok to touch someone. I like that.

Different bdsm relationships and intensities. How ongoing is a relationship to count as serious?

• Owner/boyfriend/dominant/Daddy: the overall relationship lasted four years. The central two years were a 24/7 Owner/property relationship.
• Many people were periodic/ongoing before my marriage. I could not begin to name them all in this space because I don’t have permission. I wouldn’t want to it would be kind of boring to listen to anyway. They were friends. Were they significant? What does that mean? They changed me. I carry pieces of their souls inside of me forever. They gave me pieces of themselves in exchange for pieces of me. I am made up of these experiences.
• The one time scenes are sometimes more important than ongoing play relationships.
• I like cross pollinating sex and/or play with my friendships. So the dividing lines between who is a friend or a play partner and what that means is… muddy.
• The Puppy was my most spectacular failure to date as a D/s relationship and I’m thrilled about that. It was a 9 month thing after I left my Owner and… yeah. The worst bit about it was that he was kind of a selfish bully. There wasn’t serious abuse so I’m thrilled.
• I’ve gotten through D/s relatively undamaged. It has been some of the healthiest emotional relationships of my life
• My husband and I do very carefully negotiated power exchange. Mostly our D/s exchanges work best when we do role play so we have an elaborate arsenal of characters and personas. After 12 years of sex and almost 10 years of marriage it just takes a few words to let us communicate a really elaborate backstory and that feels magical. But we are still scared of exchanging that power in our real lives. I have a really strong need to not live that in front of my kids. I was not raised in a sexually appropriate environment. I need my kids to grow up without ever seeing me behave in a submissive fashion. In my household I’m a bad ass motherfucker and… we are not fucking with that dynamic. So it’s complicated.
• Uhm… I’m getting out to play with other friends lately too. I’m finding that mostly I’m drawn to play with people where we have 10+ years of history. You have to have been my friend in order for me to want to put energy towards you right now. My life is super full. This is super hard to negotiate.

Dads/Daddys

• Dude up in the PNW I’ve known since the beginning. Saw him many times a week for years. Started very sarcastically as “Yes Dad” at munches. Maintained contact through moving. Francesca. Play is intermittent and varying in intensity. Has included sex but doesn’t currently and probably never will again. If he ever asks me to demo bottom again I’m saying yes since my rules permit it again. That’s a-ok by me. He’s the best person with a single tail I’ve ever played with. But sex freaked me out. I just… no. We can’t. It is too real of a Dad relationship for me. It makes me feel really gross and bad. It isn’t the age difference. I fuck other really old people and it’s fine.
• First Daddy/Owner. This was… really cathartic and healing. When we stopped doing M/s we transitioned pretty exclusively to Daddy/daughter play as he parented me towards being able to handle moving out on my own away from him. He didn’t want to marry me and have kids with me. I wanted and needed that out of life so we talked for just shy of a year about the fact that our relationship was ending. It was horribly painful and beautiful and kind. I will be grateful for giving me the safety and security and love he gave me for my entire life.
• Daddy James: We had an intense three month relationship that involved a lot of trailing sex because I don’t like stopping having sex with my top 10. God he’s good in bed. He was a very particular sort of Daddy for me. He is good at doing the physical care taking of a full time father. He was the first adult man to ever really get up and make me breakfast and act like I should be cared for. Maybe in my whole life? It’s been women or no one. He gave me a lot of permission to like sex. Maybe a little too much permission. He really liked the hunting part of my personality and that became a problem. I don’t do well with being liked because I like to promiscuously pick up sex. I like that to be just… something I kinda do that’s ok. An amusing quirk of mine rather than something that I should be doing as performance art in front of them at all times whether I’m feeling interested or not. My libido is a roller coaster. I don’t do very well with people expecting me to be super consistent in my desires. He introduced me to drugs and Burning Man people and a lot of… really intense situations. My early group sex mostly involved him egging it on if not participating. That was complicated. I wanted it… and yet… being pushed towards it was weird. If I had seriously told him to knock it off he would have. But I kinda suck at that. I don’t say no to things. I leave if I don’t like the deal.
• Daddy J has flipped the table on me recently and it went from being a long-term really mellow supportive friendship with a side of occasional caning to being a really intense thing with him fucking me and… oh! Awesome. Ok. So I don’t know what’s going on there but I’m enjoying the ride. He’s been in my life since I was with my Owner… so it’s another slow burn in intensity.
• My husband is a fascinating case study on his own. I am someday going to write whole books dissecting this man because I’m utterly obsessed with him. But for this moment I’ll say that for the first many years of knowing him he was utterly adamant that he would not do Daddy/daughter play and that was a thing. It was sometimes hard for me because it’s a core kink. Much to my chagrin after I wrote a memoir about my incestuous childhood he completely changed his mind. I have mixed feelings about that. But the sex is so hot I choose not to decide to be upset.
• Casual sex daddys. It happens. Sometimes dudes want it and I’m mellow. Ok daddy. But you sure as shit don’t get a capital letter.
• Any list like this has to include my biological father. Since we had sex. For the record, we did not have penis in vagina or anus sex. We had penis in mouth sex and fingers in vagina and anus sex. But given that I was pre-puberty when this happened… you know what… it motherfucking counts as sex. Given that it was accompanied by years of being told that my holes were what I was good for and being specifically fingered in public and trained to not react or make sound… it fucking counts as sex and as highly traumatic sex. My sexual organs were violated against my consent. It has had serious repercussions on my whole life. I’ve had flashbacks, nightmares, physical scarring problems, behavioral problems, emotional problems, and general physical problems all my life because of my childhood. What problems came from what exactly? Well… I’ve been working on mapping that for decades and I’m not sure and I’m not sure I’ll ever really fully understand.

What does the daddy stuff mean to me at this point? Well it is really directly tied to my clit. I was indoctrinated to be interested in my father sexually from early childhood. I prosecuted my biological father and he killed himself after confessing to everything so… I feel weird about the prominence of incestuous play in my life. But you know what… I am who I am. It makes me get off. Orgasming causes my brain to be flooded with positive chemicals and at this point fuck you if you don’t like how I get them. I’ve spent enough years doing really bad things to try and deal with my depression and anxiety and ptsd. If calling someone daddy during sex is better than cutting myself, Hey there daddy. I’m pragmatic about my promiscuity and perversion.

cathartic scenes:

• crucification (spiritual catharsis)
• girl-friends & catharsis
• pectoral lifting
• skull stomping
• breath play and that journey
• Daddy/daughter stuff
• Daddy’s drug dealer

Differences between public and private play.

• There are different kinds of safety. When you are in public you have the safety of an audience. That means there are witnesses. In my opinion witnesses can be both a great thing or a terrible thing. It depends on whose friends they are. I feel safe playing heavily in places where there are people present who will head off anyone who objects and say, “That’s how Krissy plays.” Luckily my friends are good at helping enforce my reality bubble.
• I won’t play that heavily in a crowd of complete strangers unless the person I am playing with is extremely well known and their reputation carries the scene. Somebody has to already be known as kinda scary or I’m careful what I do in public.
• I’ve had a lot of scenes interrupted in dungeons to be told that I shouldn’t be so loud. There is this one epic story of a DM interrupting my scene to tell me to be quiet because I was interrupting the people who were socializing in the dungeon at a party at Castlebar (to show off that I’m an old pervert) and this story has been told in DM training up and down this coast. Don’t do that you dip shit DMs.
• Private play allows for a kind of nuance you can’t have in public. You are less likely to lose things because you can’t hear over the music or the other people playing. It is possible to concentrate more. Some kinds of play are safer. Fluid exchange is questionable in public.
• I like public suspensions because there are people around to help with a problem. That said, I’ve been hanged and you just don’t do that kind of thing in public. People will get really upset. So you have to consider the feelings of your audience.
• I like having sex with complete strangers provided they can negotiate STD test stuff with me to my satisfaction. Public is just flat safer for that.

What do the different kinds of catharsis mean to me? Why are they different? I’ll be honest and say that whereas I can rationalize most play I do after the fact when I’m doing it or when I’m negotiating for it I don’t know exactly why I want it. I may react like an animal in a trap if you ask me why I want something. Blind panic. Or I might confidently say, “Oh I want x because blah blah blah blah (go on for 5 days)” it really depends on how much writing I’ve done on that specific piece of myself. Spiritual catharsis has come in stages. I haven’t mentioned the scenes I’ve done that were less brutal but more emotionally impactful because mostly they’ve happened in private during sex with people I really don’t have permission to talk about.

The problem with being a big slut is that you have to kind of track the boundaries of a lot of different people. The folks who did not want to be written about have mostly filtered themselves out of my life at this point. I miss them but I understand. Trusting me to keep my mouth shut is… questionable? I mean… I can. I keep a lot of secrets. But I talk around them in tortured ways and that probably is hard to hear for the folks I’m talking about. I don’t have permission to talk about most of my queer relationships. The het men I fuck seem to really not care what I say about them. This is a fascinating dynamic for me.

I play with people and have sex with people because I want them to give me permission to be certain aspects of myself I otherwise don’t know how to be while sitting alone in a room. There are parts of a personality that only exist as it relates to other people. I don’t actually ask for permission. It is a symbolic thing. I’m allowed to be this thing if you want me to be it in front of you/with you. I’m supposed to not do this in front of you/not be this in front of you if it bothers you.

Physical catharsis is a real thing. There are layers of letting go of pain and trauma in your body.

Non-bdsm stuff I might want to bring up.

• grief rituals

All of this written where the kids can’t see the screen but they can blab to me while doing chores. Sometimes my brain hurts.

Fuck. I need to stop typing. I can’t write for the lawyer today. Owwwwwwwwwwww.

A friend who watched me play on Saturday wrote to remind me that intense play can have a serious emotional drop afterwards and he is worried about me.

Awwwwwwwww!

I thought he was an evil sociopath! Gosh he’s come a long way. I feel so loved.

I dropped after the first scene with Cupid because I misunderstood the tone of an email (completely something I do). I wonder if it’s kinda smart to wait two or three days to process more because then I don’t have that initial OH MY GOD WHAT IS YOUR TONE reaction. Hm. Useful?

Over time I’m a lot more comfortable that Cupid is there doing what he wants to do. I was really anxious the first time that he was humoring me to be nice because in the scene… there’s at least some play that is motivated that way. Lots of folks can’t get the play they truly want unless they do it with a friend. I kinda suspected he wan’t as motivated by selfish reasons?

Ok at this point I think he’s doing it because he likes doing that sort of thing. No one would hit me till I was freaking out like that unless they wanted to.

Ok I can cope with that.

This is part of the fuzzy complication with Noah. Noah has never had a partner with whom such play was possible. So I’ve never seen him do it. So I don’t believe he wants it for himself and I can’t bear the thought that I am dragging people into brutality like that.

If you do not have such brutality already in your soul it is an evil gesture to try and implant it.

I worry a lot about what I want to talk people into doing.

The feedback I got from watchers was “You looked profoundly unhappy.” Happiness is such a funny emotion. Was I happy when I was screaming, “Fuck fuck fuck” while he was punching my thigh on top of already existing bruises and cramps?

Happy … isn’t the word?

I wanted to be there. I’m still glad I was there. When I heal… I will ask for more. But I need to heal first.

Why is this so good for me? You would have to live in my body to understand. I deal with such intense variation in emotion on a nearly daily basis that this kind of play is… kinda like going from running with the kids to running by myself.

Oh yeah. I swing back and forth from an intensity of 3-7 over and over and over again and now I get to hit 10. AWESOME.

It is walking with a toddler then going for a run as a grown up.

I spend so much time with incredibly intense emotions all within a limited range that when I get to have super intense catharsis outside my normal range it is like there is less pressure inside me.

I have that intense screaming and freaking out inside me. It wants to come out. If I don’t ever let it out in play it creeps into my life and creates problems.

I don’t really want to scream like that because I’m hit. I want to scream like that because of emotional problems and the hitting gives me an acceptable smoke screen. The hitting justifies what I’d like to do anyway and if I did it without being hit I’d be called crazy. So yeah, please hit me that hard again.

It means I’m not crazy.

In the past, before kids, when I played like that I did drop more. But after play like that I would be alone. I would be alone to think about how that kind of contact was most of what anyone wanted with me. I didn’t feel like I was worth very much.

Now when the play is done and my snuggles with my top are over I go back to Noah and Noah takes care of me like I am a precious, fragile piece of art. I come home to children who want to say, “OH MY GOD YOU WERE AWAY FOR FOUR WHOLE HOURS OF MY AWAKE TIME I NEED TO POUNCE YOU AND COVER YOU IN SNUGGLES.”

My life is different.

I feel so much gratitude for where I am.

Drop is a very different experience when you are loved compared to when you don’t feel very loved.

Which isn’t exactly fair. I was always loved. I’ve had Jenny longer than I’ve been in the scene. I was always loved. But not in the ways I needed to be loved. That waited till Noah and the kids. That seems ok?

I feel like I have a place where I am important. I am needed. I need to deal with my shit because there is work to be done.

I like my life so very much.

I’m not going to spend my whole life in dungeons. I’m going to show up when I need to get something from the experience. I’m there as a supplement to what I already have. It is different feeling from when I lived the bdsm experience.

I’m getting emails on that kink site from folks I haven’t seen in forever because they want to talk about the good old days. “Wasn’t it awesome when there was one play space in the bay area and it was missing a wall and everyone who was a pervert got together like four times a year?”

Well… it did have some charm but I’m glad things aren’t like that now.

It was nice feeling like I knew everyone like me within 100 miles. That was cool. It’s not like that now. Bdsm is… uhhh… more popular and shiny now. It isn’t dirty gross weird people. I miss that. I’m a dirty gross weird person! I used to fit in more! This is harder. I’m not going to fit in as well with all the newly minted acceptable fetish crowd. They are inspired by things that are commonly kinky. Usually they think extreme kinks are “weird” just like vanillas.

Hey I thought it was awesome watching the guy put the jar of bees on his dick. I like watching scenes where people pound large nails through cocks. I like intense shit.

I miss the kinds of events where people will show up with a kiddie wading pool, jello boxes, and a rubber chicken. I’m not even fucking kidding. That was one of the meanest scenes ever.

The folks I knew from back in the day are complaining about how commercial everything is now. I have mixed feelings about that. Part of the reason things feel more commercial is because so many kinky people are trying to make a living off of being kinky. Once upon a time the scene only supported a very small number of craftspeople and pornographers and they mostly lived in squalor because we didn’t take care of our own that well. Now a lot more people want to be living better off of the scene and that takes money.

I have mixed feelings. We have forced the marginal people out entirely. I don’t know how most of those people are doing these days.

I feel really embarrassed that I haven’t tracked all of them to make sure they are ok. I haven’t. I wouldn’t know how to look them up now. They were my community and I let them down because I was small, selfish, and only looking to my own life.

I know who my friends are who are craftspeople and pornographers and I know how they are doing. But there were more people who did that. Not that many 16 years ago. I could have tracked those folks. Not everyone who has appeared in 16 years. But I could have been loyal to the old days.

I wasn’t.

It is kind of funny how many people in their 50’s want to discuss the “good old days” with me. I grin and think, “I am now at the age where you consider your “golden age” to have been. I refuse to think that the golden era of my life is fucking over. I’m 34 fucking years old. My good times are not god damn over.

I listen to Nikki Minaj a lot.

The last year has involved feeling more alive, feeling more potential, feeling like my life is going somewhere than I think the rest of my life combined.

My golden era isn’t over. It is just picking up speed.

I have felt for a while that I’ve already gotten to participate in more than one Golden Era. To such an extent that on my egotistical as fuck days I wonder if I bring it with me.

Theatre in college was amazing. I’m still friends with most of those folks. No one else has had a period that good since then. I have.

The bdsm community in 2000-2004 was a pretty magic time for a lot of people I’ve met. It wasn’t just me. That was a really well connected, awesome time. I know a lot of friends who think of that general time period as being intense and special for… not sure why. It just was.

Teaching was amazing for me. Teaching was wonderful because unlike for other people teaching represented the first time in my life when I got to have permission to be the one who set reality and invited people into my space to learn. That was magic. I had never had a home. I had never had a place. But I had a classroom and a whole bucket of intense shit I think you need to know to be ok. Let’s get to business.

The first year of my oldest child’s life was the happiest, most blissful year I’ve known. I sat on the couch or on a chair and nursed. I didn’t clean much, cook much, or go anywhere.

I just sat encased in love.

I am almost 10 years into the only permanent home and real family I’ve ever had.

What is my Golden Era? When is it?

I have been so blessed in my friends.

Putting myself out there has been a mixed blessing in life. It is why I have a laundry list of traumas that horrify people. It is also why I’ve had so many Golden Eras. I try to bond. I try to connect. I want to be attached. I have so much love. Can I share it with you?

Some dude pinged me on okcupid and said he treats dating (or attempting to date?) as a creative writing exercise.

I totally know what you mean.

I’m bouncing off so many people because I want to figure out what to say, how to say, what I want, and how to deal with what other people want and I do an awful lot of the figuring in writing. I don’t have room for more serious relationships though. God I’m drowning.

Another random dude wrote to complain that it isn’t fair that I don’t have lots of time available to pay attention to him because I sound really interesting and he’s not willing to have connections with people unless they devote a lot of time to him. Sometimes I want to say, “Can you hear yourself?” It isn’t fair that my life is too full for the kind of connection you want to have. Uhm.

Wha?

For the record my profile is set to only looking for friends and it states that I’m not polyamorous, just slutty. And I still have random people telling me that it isn’t fair that I’m not giving them what they want.

Humans.

Noah asked me why I’m not reading more books lately. I can’t. My brain is full. I’m thinking of too many things.

Today I need to: clean the house, spend time with a neighbor, homeschool the kids (whatever that means), put together a timeline of issues with the remodel for my lawyer, and write a loose outline for the radio show tonight.

I don’t have room in my brain to synthesize reading a story. It’s too hard. I can’t even reread Tamora Pierce right now because it is too hard.

I understand more about why the GATE evaluator told my mom if I was any less brilliant I wouldn’t learn at all given the chaotic environment I grew up in.

To change topics again, one of my favorite things in the world is happening right now. Eldest Child has a double chin. That means she’s about to shoot up. It’ll happen in the next week. I will get to watch her transform. I love that double chin. It is a hint that I need to start staring super intensely or I will miss some cool transformation. I am very sad that Youngest Child does not have such a tell. The growth happens more secretively and I’m constantly like, “OH MY GOD WHEN DID YOU CHANGE?!”

It’s like a pop up alert on my phone. Or my period app. I love that double chin. I love that her experience of life has been that double chins are awesome and wonderful and to be greeted with joy.

My weight goes up and down like a yo yo and it’s not cause I’m trying. When I have a double chin Eldest Child points it out with glee and I grin and say, “Yup. These days I’m living well.”

My kids have managed to grow up in a world where fat is greeted with “Mmmmmmm fat.” Do you know what fat bodies mean? Glorious snuggles. Fat bodies mean love.

I’m up to almost 8 years of this. Between 40% & 60% of 6-12 year olds are worried about their weight.

When I gain weight do you know what I do? I stand in front of the mirror naked with my children in the room and I say, “Damn I look good.”

Even when I think I’m lying I say it with conviction and a big smile because I owe them this performance.

I… have a lot of trouble accepting my body when it is lighter. I strongly dislike the fact that I am usually more appealing to sexual partners when I’m smaller. It offends me to the core of my being.

Fuck you for wanting me to be less.

Years ago one of their cartoons had an anorexic horse. It was an interesting thing to explain because my kids were totally baffled. Why in the hell was the horse refusing to eat?!

I told the kids that it is very complicated and the explanation I’m going to give would be grossly insulting to some people who suffer from this disease because it is complicated and I’m just not capable of giving them the full answer. I said that creatures have lots of reasons they will stop eating. Sometimes because they get confused about how they look and they think they must look a certain way and they must force their body to do that even if they die. Sometimes people punish themselves because they don’t feel worthy. Sometimes people confuse what makes them valuable and they think they need to worry about their appearance so much they make themselves unable to do the things that would actually make them valuable.

If a creature feels they can’t eat enough to sustain their life it is because some part of them is sick and needs help. It doesn’t mean they are bad. It means they are suffering and need help.

I feel very grateful that I have been able to shield my children from television and magazines and movies for the most part. It’s not that we don’t watch anything. It is that we watch fairly curated stuff. We live in a bubble. A bubble where bodies are wonderful and they need to be embraced for however they happen to appear. A bubble where there are positives and negatives to every way of being and there is no such thing as a “better way” only the way that works for you.

A bubble where it takes all kinds.

No wonder my kids spend so much time saying that even if they move out someday they think they will always want to come back and spend a lot of time in Wonderland.

I’m actually living what I believe in. Because I believe in magic. I believe if you want something hard enough and you work hard enough and you study hard enough… you can change things. Not everything. Not everything for everyone. But you can change things. Ripples matter.

Good grief. Prince just died. Think about what one person can do.

Ack. My first appointment is at 8am. My last appointment ends at midnight. I woke up at 4:30am after 8 hours of sleep.

No time to tag. ttfn