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Words

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I’m thinking about the definitions of words again. Words like safety, morality, consent, health, appropriate.

I’m getting better, I think, at recognizing that my freak outs are my body going “Not for me” instead of “How dare you do that.”

I don’t actually care what you do with your life. I know I over react sometimes. I’m sorry. I’m imagining what I would have to do to accomplish that and…

Yeah. I over react. It’s not very nice of me. I’m sorry.

I’m getting better but it is still annoying.

What is healthy for you is not healthy for me and that is ok.

What was healthy for me is not healthy anymore and that is ok.

What is healthy for me now is not very healthy for you so you shouldn’t do it and that’s ok too.

Negotiating is hard. How do you ask for what you want when you aren’t exactly sure what it is? Mistakes suck. They hurt. Recovering from them takes work and effort.

Life is a constant renegotiation. We never arrive at “done” until our life is done. You never know what might happen to you in the future. Your health could improve or decline. Your life could blow up or magically come together. Who forking knows.

Today I feel like I have no idea what my future will be like. But I’m sure glad I will get to do it with Noah and my kids. These people make me think that whatever it is… it’ll be ok.

Some day I probably won’t have so much extra money. I will have to dramatically change what I do with my time and how I manage my spoons. I’m afraid of that time but I know I will find a way to make it ok. I’m plucky like that. I have good reason to strive forward now. I want this. I want them.

I feel grateful to the tips of my toes that I get to spend so much time snuggling with my children. This time will pass. I want every minute of you sitting on top of me I can get. I want every single hour of lying next to one another that can exist. You are growing so fast. You will leave me. You will grow up and move on and that will be right.

I just get this for a little while. I have so much pain to make up for.

I shit you not I would keep having kids to drag this feeling out if I could. I feel like this is one of the things I have done best in my whole life. I spend time with my kids. I guide them and instruct them and let them do what they need to do to grow up. Are they perfect? No. There is no such thing as perfection. If they were perfect I would hate them for it. Let’s be honest.

I need them to be flawed and wonderful and ok. Because I need to see that it is ok for people to be like that. So maybe it is ok that I exist.

We are all kinda flawed and broken. We are all racing towards death on our own pathway. It’s ok. That’s what meat-creatures do.

What will I be like when I grow up?

I kinda reacted like a viper when someone said that I should be done growing up by now after x years of knowing an individual.

You know what, motherfucker, I don’t give a flying fuck what you think about my maturity. I have been in a safe environment for ten years. That’s it. I have not yet had enough time to undo twenty-five years of trauma and if you think I should hurry up you can put it in your pipe and smoke it.

I fucking hope I outrun my Eldest Child but I sorta doubt I will manage.

I am learning compassion for myself on this journey. That’s probably a good thing and a big deal. I’ve had ten years to undo a lot of specific trauma. Yeah. That’s not enough time. Go talk to the experts. It’s not enough time. This is hard. It peels off in layers. I fix one problem developmentally then I move right on to the next problem. I keep going though because I get bored of having the same problem.

I like new and exciting problems.

Speaking of which, I think I have messed up every stage of ordering stuff for this bathroom because I didn’t check measurements when I ordered. Well fuck. I get to live with it.

Uhm… yeah. I’ll do this differently next time.

Please sweet Jesus let there never be a next time.

I’m just sayin’.

I kinda wish Noah was mad at me for breaking a rule. He kinda sorta is. My shrink was shocked that he wasn’t pissed off. Yeah, he doesn’t piss off easily. It takes work. I know! I’ve tested these limits extensively.

How do I keep Noah exciting when he is the safest thing ever? That’s a trick. I’m thinking hard about it. The sex is still good. Everything else is trickier in a marriage, though. Well. That’s another think my shrink gushes about. She can’t believe how happy I am with my sex life. She says I am an anomaly in her therapy career. I say, “Yeah how many big sluts have you seen? That practice pays off.” She laughs.

She doesn’t answer though. That’s professional.

I don’t have bad sex unless I decide to. Because I’m that good. I do decide to have bad sex once in a while for complicated reasons. It’s never an accident any more. Well. Ok I’ve had obnoxious interruptions… but that’s not the same.

Why? Because if I’m not done I’ll tell you exactly what to do so that I can get done. And I ain’t fucking subtle. “Ok, this position hurts. I want you to twist your upper body like this…”

Hey you are responsible for the sex you have. If you want it to be good, speak the fuck up.

Nobody can read minds.

I’m sure there are genuinely bad lovers out there who can’t be taught. I haven’t ever decided it was worth my while to date one. I don’t see the upside.

I need to go to a kid class now. I so don’t wanna. I want to sit still till next Tuesday. Sigh. On we go.

About the pills

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I talked to the woo doctor who gave me the pills yesterday because I’ve been having lightning flashes of pain in my abdomen. A couple of them. One on either side over multiple days. I said I’m worried about bowel obstruction because I’m alternating between some of the most fierce liquid dark brown diarrhea I’ve ever seen and thin toothpastey things that feel like I’m constipated and I’m about to pass a grapefruit.

I was told that my symptoms confirm the diagnosis. But uhm, apparently I don’t need quite so many pills for this to be effective and I get to cut a whole bunch out.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Physically I’ve been terrible and great and not so good and good and ok so far on the pills. So I’m not sure what the fuck is happening in my body. I’m on week three of this motherfucker. One more week till I’m mostly through the parasite cleanse. Oy.

I was pretty good about doing the meds when I was in Portland. Even though it was yucky and I was whiny.

I…

Man I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. I’m out of practice attending the kinds of events where you aren’t supposed to talk about it.

Withholding information

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I’m kinda the opposite of good at discretion sometimes. But some things require me to not go into detail. Not because of my own privacy, but because other people are involved.

This was quite a weekend.

I can’t tell you about it. Even though I have allllll the feelz. So many positives and negatives and intensity and STUFF I WANNA PROCESS. But other people have different boundaries than me. Fuck being respectful and other such bullshit.

My cunt hurts quite a bit.

I broke a rule. Noah says it isn’t all the way to cheating, but I feel like I need to document that it happened even if I’m not going to say what I did. Because in the future I’ll be all, “Well I didn’t admit to that one thing that one time” and this is my way of saying, “Yup. I did that.”

I accept responsibility for my actions.

I’m not sure I’d take it back if I could.

Time to clean my house.

oooooooh

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“I’ve said before — hey, here’s video of me saying it — that one of the unexpected costs of being female is that people keep holding you accountable for other people’s behavior. You thought you were just a person, but it turns out that you are a wizard. You control the actions of others by the way you choose to dress and walk and talk and live your life.”

 

Maybe it isn’t just a child of crazy alcoholics thing?

Trauma, victimization, & consent

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Good golly. Woke up to great sex in the middle of the night and now I’m not sleepy. So instead I’m thinking about trauma and victimization, like a normal person. What? That’s not weird, right?

I think that trauma can happen without being a victim and I think that being a victim can happen without trauma. I think that consent is a nearby Venn circle that overlaps both in weird ways.

I think it is completely possible to consent to things that traumatize the fuck out of you for the rest of your life. I think it is possible to be a victim, to have your consent taken away and not be traumatized. I think it is possible to be a victim and be traumatized and to consent at the same time.

Why?

Because I feel like I’ve lived about fifteen lives in one and I’ve seen a lot of shit. Not just that happens to me. I pay a lot of attention to trauma and assault and rape.

Why are these things different?

I’m not going to look up the dictionary definitions this time. Connotative/denotative meanings… I’m defining for myself today.

Trauma is about a physical response in your body to something bad/scary/overwhelming. It’s a physiological process. You can be traumatized by things you consent to and you can be traumatized by things you do not consent to. People vary dramatically in what will traumatize them. Some people are genuinely not traumatized by rape. It is a bad thing that happens and they move on. Others… they are permanently physically impacted by their experiences. Something being traumatic or not tells you little about scale.

Being a victim is about whether or not you want them to happen. I think you can consent to things and still be a victim. If you feel your consent is coerced, if you are not really safe enough to say no… you can consent and still be a victim. I don’t know how much I think that your ability to get yourself out of a situation or not plays in with victimization.

I am pretty sure my father would be able to get away with saying that there were times I “consented” to what he did with me. But I was still a victim. Why? Because it should not have been happening. It was a crime and it damaged me. It didn’t matter whether I consented or not because I had no ability to understand what I was consenting to.

Adult rape. Paul. Situation: I was in my 20’s, at a sex party while on drugs. I didn’t want unprotected sex and he did. I did not consent to unprotected sex. I repeatedly said no. I wasn’t able to physically resist (yes, I know that was my choice) but I was saying no. I was conscious. I was trying to prevent it. That means I think that legally I was the victim of a crime. Is it one of the more traumatic experiences of my life?

Hahahahahaahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa no.

I don’t feel particularly traumatized by that rape. Not really. I don’t wake up to nightmares of his face. I don’t feel terrified of what will happen if we run into one another (we could; this is a small valley).

So, no consent, no real trauma, yes victimization.

The kid who kicked me in the throat. We had a habit of play fighting/wrestling. I think that he did not intend to land a kick on my throat. He was just a kid who lacked finesse, control, and understanding. So quasi-consent. I think technically it was an assault. Do I feel like a victim? Not really. I think it was an assault but not a crime because it was an accident. Do I feel traumatized?

Ok, I do feel kinda haunted by the swollen throat feeling… because it reminded me so much of my brother. I don’t think I was traumatized so much by the incident but from the feeling of, “Oh my fucking god I DO NOT WANT a tracheotomy.”

I feel… I feel feelings about the mom. I don’t think that she victimized me. I don’t feel traumatized. But I feel like she is someone who would push me down in front of a bus and then tell me it was my fault. I feel like every warning signal in my body tells me that any woman who says, “You weren’t assaulted and if you were it was your fault” is so fucking dangerous I wish I was in a different time zone.

Is that about trauma, victimization, or consent? Call it the Spidey sense I developed after other assaults. I don’t want to stand near someone who has such an attitude. It’s a warning shot.

Quite literally, that is the kind of woman who uhm… yeah. That’s why we are where we are as a society. Congratulations to us.

Rich white woman hears her son commits assault? Blame the victim! Can’t be my perfect baby! (Ok this happens in other demographics too with other gender combinations. But I’m feeling pissy!)

Guess what? White kids are pieces of shit too. Just sayin’.

Not that I actually think that kid is a piece of shit. I think he isn’t being guided in the ways he should be guided and that’s tragic.

If someone comes to me and tells me that my children did something violent, awful, or otherwise worthy of judging the shit out of… my response won’t be “No they didn’t.” My response is going to be, “Ok, slow down and start at the beginning. I think I need to hear the whole story.”

I’m pretty sure that my kids can fuck up. Just sayin’.

I think I have gotten to the point where I am a relatively decent person. I started out lying, stealing, hitting people, breaking things, starting house fires, stealing cars…

I’m not in a position to judge. People fuck up.

Why am I thinking about these things? Because I’m trying to judge myself. Because I’m trying to figure out if I am as bad as I think. I’m trying to figure out what being so bad means. I’m trying to figure out how to stop hurting people.

But you know what? I think I’ll always hurt people. I’m not going to stop talking about the fact that I exist. Knowing that I’m here is going to hurt people.

I can’t really do anything about that.

If your safety depends on my being invisible then I guess you don’t get to be safe. Sorrynotsorry.

I think that when the vast majority of people say “the world is like” they really mean “I know a dozen or so people who are like”. The world is a god damn big place. Guess what? We are all weird and different. I draw great comfort from that; it’s why I get to be alive.

I have heard a saying about teachers coming into your life when you need them. I think that people tend to have the experiences they go looking for.

Some people want to be ignored. Some people want to be noticed. Some people want to have intense interactions. Some people want to hide.

Ever noticed how each person is completely convinced that the world they live in is “the world”? Ever notice how they do it by conveniently ignoring the people they walk past that completely contradict their view? Confirmation bias, my friends.

I think one of the most monstrous things about me is how loudly I’m willing to turn up my reality distortion filter. I’m experiencing the world I need to experience. Whatever that means. I’m going to tell you about it. Even if it fucks with your world view. Cause honey badger don’t give a shit. Yes, you think life shouldn’t be about violence and pain. Good for you.

I’m woo enough that I more or less believe we pick the lives we have because there are lessons to gain here. I’m either paying for being Hitler or for some insane reason I picked a life where I was going to have to learn as many painful lessons as possible.

A kind woman shared an Eve Ensler video with me about embracing your inner girl. I think she (Eve) had some good things to say but I was struck by something. (I’ve never seen the Vagina Monologues.) Eve spent a lot of time talking about the pain she’s seen… but she kept bringing herself back to it. “I’m going to tell you about this awful thing that happened to my daughter. I adopted her.” Uhm.

You really could have told the story without making yourself the hero.

Even if that is the relationship that is happening you could have supported her without centering yourself.

That. That’s what I don’t want to do with the incest research. I don’t want it to be about how these stories make me feel. I am going to be traumatized by hearing them, yes. So fucking what?! No one asked me to listen. This is my personal thing I’m doing. The work is my personal thing. The stories I hear are not my personal stories. I’m going out into the world looking for these stories–it is the very opposite of victimization. Even if it is traumatic, it will be done with full consent. How do I center the work and the stories and not myself? How do I tell the story without it being about my trauma. I’m kinda obsessed with my trauma and shit. Well, maybe I’ll always be allowed to whine here about how I’m feeling but when I speak publicly it will not be about me. I think that’s a reasonable boundary? Am I ever going to feel like it is ok to talk about me?

With the Impact instructors there is a tense/weird parting thing at the end of the class. They cannot have any social contact with students for a year after a class. And when they talk about it they all go really stone faced in unison. “We are protecting ourselves.”

What does it mean to do work with traumatized people and be traumatized by the experiences and not get muddy about who is hurting whom?

Well I guess I’m going to fucking find out. How much you wanna bet there will be drama galore for me around this?

Not “drama” but intense emotional surges.

Like I do. Sigh.

Signing off.

Serendipity?

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I had quite a conversation this afternoon/evening. I met this man a few weeks ago. He is the friend of a friend. Today we talked about martial arts, self defense, and my future plans. He is a martial arts teacher/personal trainer and when I told him I just signed a 6 month contract he said, “Come over for some free classes for now and when your contract is up we can discuss payment.”

His background: he’s been doing martial arts since childhood. He was in the marines for 18 years with 9 of them spent as a weapons instructor. He worked with the Israeli military as they developed Krav Maga. He’s taught some fantastic number of different art forms.

He specifically teaches womens self defense classes that combine a few disciplines to maximize the strength of the female body. He… was kinda judgey about Impact. But that’s fine. What he’s doing isn’t what Impact is doing.

He’s very local. He is a friend of one of my very favorite moms and she’s known him forever. So he’s incredibly well vouched for.

I told him I have about a five year window before I need to be where I ought to be because I’m going to be more like launching my research in about ten years and I can’t be just getting to physical fitness as I’m doing the interviews. I need to be ready and it just needs to be an ingrained part of my life.

He smiled at me in a way that worries me. And makes me very hopeful at the same time.

People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I kind of needed to have someone show up and say, “Let me teach you how to be incredibly devastatingly physically effective.”

Sometimes the universe smiles on me in ways I truly don’t deserve. I’m grateful. Thank you.

I have no idea if this will go anywhere. But I’m very happy that this opportunity is falling into my lap.

Also: both of my chiropractors have commented this week that my body seems to have made a huge leap of progress. I’m less inflamed. I have more range of motion. My neck vertebrae has been in actual alignment for more than a week and this is the first time since I’ve seen this doctor that I’ve managed that. Even though this weekend was a brutal physical skills class.

There is emotional healing and physical healing and they tie together. I store my trauma in my body. Even though some people don’t approve of the degree of blood thirst I feel… oh come on. I have legitimate reasons for needing to work through my big feelings towards men. I’m not picking fights with strangers just to be a dick. I’m fighting instructors in class and enjoying it. I am enjoying the process of learning how to keep myself safe for hopefully the first time in my life.

The last time I was raped I fought and I lost. That was very useful when it happened. In many ways it let me stop feeling so god damn guilty about my failure to prevent every other rape.

I can’t lose again.

That is so complicated.

I’m having a lot of complex thoughts about rape right now. I’m looking at my five year old and thinking, “Do I believe this person to be emotionally, spiritually, or intellectually capable of rape?”

No. But that kid sure can walk all the hell over your boundaries unless you enforce them.

Oh wow.

Boundary violations, trauma, consent, rape. I don’t know about you but I sure as fuck didn’t know how to ask for consent when I was five. But I was told I was supposed to put my mouth on as many dicks as I could.

Today my five year old fell asleep on me. So her mouth fell open wide as she drooled on me. I felt nauseated, repulsed, and disgusted by the fact that someone, anyone could look at a child like that and have sexual thoughts.

Then I thought, Oh my god I already had a body count.

Ok. I think I finally believe it is different when a five year old does it than when an adult does it.

I didn’t until today.

Today I looked at my child and saw absolutely no ability to be culpable for such an act.

But a child that age can be trained to do anything. That’s not the same thing as culpability.

I don’t think this change of opinion changes my overall status as a monster. It’s all so complicated.

Why am I a monster? Because I was trained to be a rapist before I knew better? No. Because monsters aren’t really just creatures who have done specific things. Monsters are scary. Monsters don’t have to do anything bad to be monsters. They are just monsters.

I’m a monster because I have absolutely zero desire to be charming. Charming people are god damn dangerous.

Monsters are just ugly and rude and tell you that things have to be the way they expect things to be and that’s how life is, right? DEMANDING ASSHOLE IN THE HOUSE!

Monsters are monsters because they are creepy and they make people uncomfortable.

I need to go to bed.

Oooh new people.

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Guess what? Where there is a huge jump in hits without a direct link to snottiness… it isn’t scary.

Ahhh today is a great day. Hopefully I yelled at the contractors enough yesterday to last all week.

Friday I fly to Portland. Sunday I fly home. I’m going alone. I’m looking forward to more than 48 hours of not being responsible for anyone or anything. I mean I’ll have to show up at a birthday party and I’ll be spending time with friends… but if I’m lazy that’s fine. In fact I suspect that if I’m lazy it will make people kinda happy. (Ok, blacksheep will want me to do some exercise but mostly because she can’t sit still to talk so we’ll have to be in motion. I can live with that.) Luckily Dad is lazier than fuck. Once I get around him I can assume a couch lock position and he’ll think it’s great. Ha.

I’m feeling weird about one thing that folks-who-don’t-know-me-on-the-internet conflate.

My Dad was never my Master. I have never been his slave. We are both in the bdsm community, yes. We fucked once (it was awful and gross and never again) and we’ve played a few times because he is very good with canes and single tails and he put needles in me once just to break my cherry. But we haven’t played together other than as a class demo (I’m unusually verbal) in more than ten years. Our closeness at this point is not about our bdsm relationship and we don’t know that we’ll ever play again.

I know I shouldn’t care about strangers getting that detail straight. My Owner was a very different person. My Owner was unmarried and had never had children. My Dad has children almost my age. His oldest is a year younger than me. His bio-children don’t appreciate my presence in his life but… they don’t have to run into me other than weddings and funerals so I can live with that. And I’ve been at both for 15 years.

I suspect it might have been healthier for me to find an adoptive father who didn’t want to beat or fuck me… but baby steps, ok? Maybe what I need isn’t what you need. I can live with that. I don’t need you to be like me for me to be validated in my choices.

My life is unusual. What is right for me is probably not right for you. Don’t emulate me. But consider me, perhaps. As an idea of “Wow. I guess people really do need to be different.”

I needed to have a relationship with a Dad where I had the right to set the boundaries on our sex and beatings. I needed to be able to put up more and more boundaries until it wasn’t happening at all and have the experience of someone choosing to stay with me.

I’m glad you don’t need that. I genuinely am.

You don’t know what it meant to me that I was taken to the hospital at 19 by my Dad and it was the first time in my life someone was fucking nice to me when I was sick. Before that I always got in trouble. I was lying. I was malingering. I was just asking for attention.

Yes, I did ask for attention. I was a child and I was sick. I needed attention. But it came in the form of diatribes about how I better not be lying this time or I would get it.

I work with all my might to believe the things my children tell me about their bodies. You feel sick? Ok.

I mean… ok I’m sure at some point my mom wasn’t nasty when I was sick. Taking me to the hospital was always an ordeal. My mom screamed at me the whole way to the hospital for getting a cast re-set because I said I didn’t feel well. Then I puked on the floor.

I’m bad for saying I’m sick because I’m not really sick and I’m bad for not being adamant enough when I’m really sick because I inconvenience people.

Going to the various doctor offices so often lately is… creepy. But I feel like I’m getting good help right now. Things are changing in my body. I’m making a lot of progress on injury sites. I’m feeling stronger. I came back from the trip really beat up and done. Maybe I’ll be over the trip by the cruise but really… I’m looking forward to that week of sitting on my ass watching my kids play in the pool. I’ll be fed whenever I even think about wanting it. I won’t clean a god damn thing.

I don’t rest in hotels. I hate having maids come in so I clean the whole time like normal. Cause I’m neurotic.

But on a cruise ship? Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. That’s how you know life is good.

Ok. Breakfast.

Totally flooded.

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I haz big feelings. My stomach hurts. But I feel like I worked out this awful thing that has been in my neck/shoulder for years. I feel like I did a major trauma release in this class. That’s kinda intense. Exposure therapy for the win.

This is what exposure therapy means. The attackers are safe guys in suits who maintain their distance so they can maintain their aura of scary. But they are monitored by women the whole time. It isn’t some guy deciding to do something to a woman when he feels like it and she should have to react right. That’s not exposure therapy. Exposure therapy means a female coach kneeling with her face next to your face whispering, “Remember to breathe. Stop. Wait for the moment. You can do this.”

Stop calling real life abuse exposure therapy. It isn’t. Ok, digression over.

My second experience at Impact was fairly different from the first. I didn’t have a friend in the class. It felt like the group warmed up slower but then made more genuine connections once we did warm up. Everyone started off tentative and not too chatty but by the final day we were pretty friendly. That felt nice.

I took a risk the morning of the third day. I said that the cheering wasn’t making it through to me during my fights and I really needed the line to get louder and more encouraging because it’s scary to fight in quiet. I feel alone. I have to say, those women came through once I made a specific request. They did great.

I didn’t ask for more than one extended fight this time. I literally just… couldn’t. By the time I got through the one extended fight my body was saying, “Let the men make them easy from here on out.”

The guys… they have to work ridiculously hard to do an extended fight with the people who really want blood. They do extended fights to teach women that even when you feel exhausted (this is as close as they will get to the exhaustion of a fight where you will be dealing with someone hitting you) and tired and worn out you can still defend yourself. I think I have a better understanding of fighting from a place of exhaustion from the get go, so I didn’t need the exercise this weekend.

I chose to leave a few spoons in my drawer. Because today I seriously need to pay attention to the kids and if I had left it all out on the mat I would spend today in bed crying. I just couldn’t. This wasn’t a real fight to the death so it would have been inappropriate to wear myself out that hard so I couldn’t hang with the kids.

I pay attention to these things.

Topic switch. Back to hitting.

Yes, I think (upon further reflection) what I am doing with Noah unconsciously probably would be better termed a tap or a light smack… but that is still putting my hands on someone else’s body in a way I’m not paying attention to. In a way that he chooses to describe as being hit. Because he gets that choice. I need to stop it.

Just like people don’t get to tell me that when the kid kicked me in the throat it wasn’t assault. Yes, actually it was an assault. I’m not going to prosecute because I don’t think the kid had malicious intent. But it was an assault.

It is possible to hit and not be causing (permanent) damage. Not be hurting people. Still be a problem. Still need to stop.

I need to have so much fucking control over my body that I do not put my hands on people at all unless I am doing it in a way that I am highly conscious and in control of exactly what I’m doing. I can’t be muddy. I can’t be like “Close enough is good enough.” Not with what I want to do with my life.

So maybe I’m over reacting and maybe I’m understanding how much work I have left on this problem. I need to stop hitting people. Entirely. 100000% unless someone is directly threatening my physical safety.

I know I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to live in gray areas but this is a black and white thing. I’ve done too much hitting in my life. I need to get this under control.

I mean, not that I’m going to cancel that nice date with my friend. I’m going to do everything in my power to get to the point where I only hit people (even lightly) when they say, “Pretty please”. Or they start a fight.

I spent a lot of this class thinking about escalation. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I escalate.

I know it’s all victim blamey and shit, but yeah a lot of the fights, a lot of the rapes kinda happened because I had no ability to deescalate. It hurts seeing that so plainly over time. I am not good at managing peoples emotions in a deescalating way. I’m good at cranking the volume up. I stimulate feelings I don’t settle them. This is a problem.

I think about things like the neighbor who has been sexually harassing me. Did I encourage him? I don’t think so. 90%+ of the time I talk to him my kids are standing right there and I don’t encourage displays of sexuality in front of my children. So I’m inclined to believe this is his desperate fantasy that he isn’t dead yet and he’s still sexually interesting instead of this being about me. But do I deescalate properly when he brings stuff up? Mostly I call the kids and keep walking when he gets rude. What else should I be doing?

Well I think kicking the crap out of him then telling him I cannot be in control if a man grabs me may have been effective. He’s keeping more physical distance these days.

But is he going to creep again? My guess is yes. Because creepers gonna creep. Does it make it all my fault if it happens again because I’m stupid enough to talk to him?

You know what? I get to walk around my god damn neighborhood without having to physically fight off unwanted sexual advances. That’s fucking ridiculous. No this isn’t my fault and I should not have to avoid walking down my own god damn street to avoid being sexually harassed. That’s not reasonable. If he starts shit I’m not the one escalating. He is. I’m just not going to fucking be passive. I’m very friendly and non-threatening with him. I have no desire to hurt him. I’m just not going to let him do shit to me I don’t want to have done.

That has to be ok. No matter how old he is. No matter how much I like him. No matter if I know any man ever again.

I get to say yes to everything that happens to my body. Or I get to fucking hurt you. That’s the deal.

I’m getting closer to the point where I feel I could actually do it in a fight.

It was hard having Noah there. I asked him if he thought I could stop him if he tried to rape me at this point. He isn’t convinced.

I need to take more classes. It is 100% my goal to be able to so deeply scare men that they do not believe they could successfully do that again.

Not because I want to hurt men. Because I’m not going to be raped again. I’m done. The passive has been raped right the fuck out of me. I’ve taken all I can take.

It is quite literally my goal to die before letting someone rape me again. I want to fight to the point where someone has the choice to kill me or leave me alone.

I’m done.

Something broke and it can’t be fixed.

To be fair, Noah didn’t see my extended fight. He saw the easy peasy fights the instructors give you to blow off steam so you walk out of the room feeling strong so you don’t leave feeling like you should walk in front of a bus. They plan this shit. They know the roller coaster they put people on. Noah didn’t see quite how effective I am at kicking peoples skulls in. I practice from a variety of angles. I’m semi-worried that I will actually kill someone because I’m going to be kicking with such incredible force and anger. I may well shove someones face into their brain.

I won’t lose sleep over that. Ok, yes I will. I will be convinced I’m a monster who should be killed. Maybe I’ll go to jail and think that’s fair.

But I won’t be god damn raped that day.

I feel dangerous and horrible. But yes I am prepared to use deadly force to prevent someone from raping me again.

I have to believe I deserve that or I need to die today because I cannot endure another rape. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

I’m done. I have to believe I am allowed to kill someone to stop them if necessary. I know that in an actual fight I will have to use the minimum amount of force necessary to stop a fight. I know that. The chances I will get to a fight that results in death are incredibly freakishly low. Only I’m going to pursue a career that will make people hate me with the power of the sun.

So maybe my chances aren’t vanishingly small. Maybe they just aren’t that high?

I don’t know that I am yet at a point where I am capable of holding the adrenaline in and just doing the necessary hurting.

During one of my fights the suited instructor literally ran out of the room to get away from me because I was chasing too much.

I mean, I didn’t chase him off the mat. But I did take steps in his direction. I hear that the expression on my face was uhhhhh… terrifying.

I don’t know if that is a regular schtick of theirs to try and break the tension because it’s funny. Or if he felt like that is actually how an attacker would respond because holy shit.

I don’t know.

You never know.

They call the rape prevention moves “reversals”. Because you are reversing the power. Those are the ones where you have to stay still on the floor and use physics and it’s scary and complicated and fairly precise. I find them horrifyingly triggering.

It’s really hard to say, “I tried that and what happened was…” I failed. That’s what happened. I failed when I tried to do that. I didn’t prevent a rape that day.

Ahhh. I tried to move long before I felt weight. There was no physics to help me. Fuck everything. Well, specifically he fucked me. After slamming my head into the ground so hard I saw stars. I stopped fighting.

I don’t know if it would be different today. I don’t actually feel confident. That was just a fucking class. I was chanting to myself the whole time, “There is no chance this man would actually rape you. There are witnesses. He’s wearing very difficult clothing. This isn’t real.” Because I wanted to run screaming I was so fucking freaked out. But… that means it isn’t that real in my body.

Would I be able to access this when I’m scared? I’ve worked so hard for so many years to break the freeze response. I’m tired of going numb. But it is a genuine survival skill. I have worked hard to make it less likely I will survive.

I’m ready to die or assert myself. One or the other. But I do not yet know for sure that I’d win.

It is hard believing that I would kill to defend myself and that is part of why I am a disgusting person. I don’t know that I really believe I have the right. I am bad. I want to hurt people.

Not really. I’m just god damn done letting them hurt me.

That’s not true either. I do want to hurt people. I want to hurt people who like being hurt because it released kinetic energy from my body and it allows me to be more calm and gentle when necessary and appropriate.

Hitting is all of these things. It is tapping Noah when I shouldn’t. Even though it doesn’t hurt I’m touching someone without consent in a way that can be described as hitting. My friend who is inviting me to a lovely session of testicle kicking, that’s hitting too. It is completely consensual. He’s going to have a good time, I’m going to have a good time–it’s going to be fun! And being willing to beat someone unconscious for trying to rape me.

It’s all hitting. It is all violence. But do they mean the same things? Should they be treated the same way legally? Should they be treated like trauma because “hitting”?

Everyone gets to decide for themselves what is traumatizing. I’ve done bdsm scenes that were WAY more intense/painful/fucking out there than my rapes. My rapes traumatized me. My rapes were an action that I did not consent to happening to my body in a way that proved to me that I do not have the right to have agency over myself or my life. My bdsm scenes were done with friends and they were fun. Even if they were painful and scary. I knew what I was signing on for. I did it on purpose. I did it with full force and vigor and choice.

That makes all the difference.

I don’t feel traumatized by the throat kick. I feel like I learned something about boundaries.

If you fuck up and assault someone… that isn’t the end of the world. How you respond afterwards is what matters.

If you fuck up and assault someone on purpose… that’s different.

I genuinely believe there are accidental assaults all the time. Just like there is involuntary manslaughter.

Ok, I have one specific complaint about the class this time: I really didn’t appreciate the “boogeyman homeless guy” thing. That fucking pissed me off. The vast majority of assaults are someone you know. Leave the fucking homeless guys alone. They are doing their fucking best and I’m god damn tired of the nastiness of housed people.

Being homeless does not mean you are a god damn rapist.

That’s the attitude though. Homeless guys are creepy and scary. Do you know why they creep you out? Because you feel like they aren’t like you and that’s gross. I feel like they are like me and they are in a hard place right now.

I don’t need to feel scared of someone who has so little power and authority in life compared to me. Am I prepared to defend myself if someone does start something? Sure. But I’ve been interacting with homeless people for decades. I’ve done so all over the country and in other countries.

I’m not scared of homeless people. They are scared of me.

Why? Because they know I can call the cops and have them put in jail. That’s how the power dynamic works. Can I really? Would the cops do it? Maybe. But it’s pretty likely. If any of you dressed-like-you-live-in-a-house-people called the police on a homeless person there is a high chance the homeless person is getting arrested.

For vagrancy. For loitering. For trespassing. For intimidation. For assault.

Even if that assault was accidental. Who cares? It’s a homeless person. They are creepy and icki. We don’t want them around, prosecute.

Stop. Calling. The. Cops. On. Creepy. Homeless. People.

Unless you see them commit a serious crime, just leave them the fuck alone. Ok? They have enough god damn problems without whiny people harassing them.

(I’m not really talking to a specific person or even the folks in the class. I’m mad at the universe over this one.)

I’M TALKING TO THOSE ASSHOLES ON NEXTDOOR.

“I saw a homeless person on my street so I called the police.” I hope you die slowly in a lot of pain.

Like those assholes who called the cops on me in Virginia. I looked suspicious. I had out of state license plates and camping gear. Clearly I was up to no good.

This is my cranky face.

It is weird trying to find a place where compassion and the right to break your face live right side by side. Because in being able to defend myself like this… I’m trying to have compassion for myself. I’m allowed to say that 12 rapists in one life is enough. I’m allowed to say that I was 25 when I was last raped and that’s god damn when it ended. I’m allowed to absolutely fucking harm anyone who tries again.

That is what compassion for myself means. Maybe another woman could passively permit a rape and not kill her attacker and later prosecute and that would be the most “ethical” choice of all… or something.

I can’t absorb any more.

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

How do you get ready to actually be able to kill someone if you have to? I don’t want to. I really don’t want to.

Shit I already feel guilty that people seem to kill themselves after dealing with me.

(Yes, I know I am not “at fault” for any of these suicides. Life is complicated.)

In class someone thought it was funny to make a joke about fire. I sure know how to shut down jokes about fire. It was asked “Does anyone have any trauma around fire? No? Good….” Then I raised my hand. “Yeah, my brother self immolated.”

I bring all the fun jokes to an end.

God I suck.

Hell, I’m not even saying to stop using the joke. It’s ok to jokingly tease a group of people and tell them the final test will involve jumping through a fiery hoop. That’s not a bad joke. That’s not a real threat.

That’s ok.

But god I can kill any joke.

I am so not funny that it is really really funny. It is to the point where my litany of traumas is becoming almost hysterical. I have a trauma for any god damn situation.

It is kinda funny sometimes.

WHEN WILL THE INSANITY END?!?!!? is most of the joke.

Well, I’m still having an extraordinary life… but I’d say it is mostly no longer traumatic. I have boundary violation issues every so often that must be managed.

I don’t think I’ve been traumatized in while. I think the last trauma was severing with my family. (I think I traumatized Sarah after that… but that’s a different discussion.)

Why do I split hairs like this? Because my shrink tells me to break everything down into its smallest compartments and then sort them out.

What is hitting? What is violence? What is trauma? These things are so broad and yet so very specific.

Random defensive pissiness: I read an article yesterday. Don’t remember where or by whom and I don’t care. The person was pretty much saying, “Stop talking about your white privilege because you are just grand standing. If you were really doing anything to dismantle structural racism you would do it silently.” Oh fuck you.

I’m trying to fund the revolution, motherfucker. I am putting my money where my mouth is. I do more with every year and I track it better so that I can know that I am doing more with every year.

Recently Noah told me, “If you don’t feel like you do anything in the world… you are giving more and more money away every year. You are financially impacting the lives of more and more people. That is doing something.”

I don’t do this because I’m a nice person. I don’t do this to be good. I do this because I can never help the child I was. I do this because it needs to be done and other assholes aren’t stepping up.

I’m an asshole. I can live with that. But I want to be an asshole who has specific boundaries around where and how I hit people, how I escalate fights, and when it is appropriate for me to use force.

I think that hitting people to teach them is a shitty way to teach them if you want an ongoing relationship. That style of teaching instill anger, fear, distrust, and the belief in the person you are educating that they deserve to be hit.

Ask me how I’m feeling about Noah right now.

We need something different.

I do not feel traumatized. I feel like I discovered a boundary. I need something different. This isn’t working for me.

I have enough brain damage for one lifetime.

I think that hitting should be used when you are ok with ending the relationship and not before.

If you don’t think I should be packing to leave then we should not be in a physical fight. That needs to be a boundary. And no, that does not mean I should get free hits without retribution. That’s not what I’m saying.

I need to stop hitting casually. I need to be taught through repetition and mostly through words. This behavior will mostly be extinguished through catching the “taps” that “don’t count” because actually they do. They teach muscle memory. They remind me that hitting is ok.

I used to hit ineffectively so I thought it was fine for me to hit people. At this point I’m very effective and that means I need to treat my hands like weapons and be in full control of them.

Things change.

Noah hit back because I hurt him. He has the right. I’m not really mad that he believes he has the right to defend himself.

I’m mad that men start out able to defend themselves with so much force without having to take class after class after class and work and work and work.

I’m not sure that I’m mad at the men. I’m just mad.

I know that I need to get over all the shit that happened to me. But a lot of the places I hurt almost every day are from specific assaults.

Do you think you would be able to forget if you were reminded by your body every day?

Maybe if I can actually heal I stand a chance. Maybe.

Chiropractic appointment in 3.5 hours. I’m going to call and schedule acupuncture for this week. I don’t see a massage therapist for a while but I’ll be ok. Two weeks? I’ll live. Ha.

Cause the next time I see massage therapists I’m uhm seeing two in one day because I didn’t really look at the calendar before booking the second one. That’s ok. One person works on a very small area for the full hour and the other person does a more general massage for an hour and a half. It will feel like magic. I will need to drink so much water that day.

I’m really trying.

Some day I would like to spend less money on health care and spend more money on donating to communities of color. They need the money. I’d rather not need to spend it on my body.

I really don’t think I’m the best place to spend all these resources. But I recognize that it is literally necessary for a time if I am going to heal and be able to do the work I want to do. If I want to stop feeling suicidal because I cannot deal with how much pain I experience on a daily basis… I need to spend the money since I have it. I don’t have a justification for giving it away instead of fixing what is wrong.

Not at this point. Not really. I will be a more effective tool if I stop and do maintenance.

That’s just prudence.

Is that close enough to self love to count?

I’m trying.

Today I am going to spend with the kids. Except for the chiropractic appointment. They’ll do bookwork during that time. We’ll be together the rest of the time. I think we should garden. We’ll read. We’ll snuggle.

I will remind my body that despite these training exercises… I’m safe now. I am safe now.

We need to meditate tonight. During the class I was fucking whigging out for a while. Then I remembered what I’ve been saying to myself when we meditate. “I breathe in nothing that will pollute me; I breathe out the nothingness that has consumed me.” It helped. It helped a lot. The fact that I’ve been practicing at night has helped. I calmed down much faster than I used to be able to.

Jenny tells me that I look at how far I have to go. She looks at how far I have come. I write it down so I can see too.

Slightly less hysteria

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We spent a lot of time talking last night. Noah says I hit him frequently, but it is closer to a tap than an injurious assault so he doesn’t comment. He says if I were A) hurting him B) intimidating him or C) escalating he’d make it a big deal but I don’t. What I do is more like smacking his shoulder for bad jokes in a way that doesn’t hurt at all.

Ok… that’s not enough that I should be packing my bags and going (I asked) but…

I genuinely don’t notice that I’m doing this and that’s a big problem. I asked him to start calling attention to it every single time it happens. I don’t like that I’m doing this. I want to stop and apparently I’m not doing it on my own.

I asked the kids if I’ve hit them in ways they remember and I don’t. We went down the laundry list of my transgressions. The kids were adamant that I haven’t hurt them outside of what I recall.

We talked about how, “Well we bump each other and that hurts sometimes but it isn’t on purpose. And when we were in the ocean in Florida you grabbed me so hard it hurt really bad.”

Uhm, the ocean in Florida was on the tail end of a fucking hurricane and there was a terrifying riptide. I was grabbing you so hard because I didn’t want you to drown. Soon after we just got the fuck out because it wasn’t safe. So yeah. No apologies over that one. Better you here with a sore arm than gone.

That’s not hitting.

That’s… necessary roughness for life.

I feel like I don’t have scale. I feel like I don’t have perspective and I don’t know what things mean I should have to die.

I really don’t know.

Not. Ok.

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Noah says, “Not infrequently, I got hit by you without hitting back.” That means I’m hitting Noah and I’m unaware of it. That’s a real problem.

If I am unconscious of hitting someone that’s a big problem. That’s a problem the size of Montana and I’ve seen Montana. I am completely freaking out over this.

I am a much bigger monster than I even realized. That’s a real problem. I am the problem.

If I knew where my scalpel was I’d be in the bathroom. I’m old enough and fussy enough that I won’t cut with a dull knife any more. I don’t like the scarring. I like my scalpel so that I don’t scar at all. My legs look fine and I have probably made a few thousand cuts in my lifetime.

Yay for sharp blades.

Sarah you may think that no one deserves to be in that place but apparently I am not fucking capable of being conscious of my behavior. Do you know what cutting does? It kinda turns me into a zombie. It completely floods my brain with “Shut the hell up you fucking fuck” and I don’t talk and I sure as fuck don’t hit anyone.

Why is it wrong to do then? If it the sole method of truly controlling my behavior why is it bad?

I apparently am not controlling myself as well as I think. What I am doing is failing.

I’m not even god damn aware of it.

That’s a real problem. And I’ve been fucking freaking out all god damn day because of this. I do not seem to be able to stop being a monster.

Does this mean I’m hitting the kids too without noticing?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I don’t know. I don’t even know how to ask them.

Oh my god.

You know what, Noah… I think your approach of “not talk about it except sometimes hitting back” has failed. It’s been 10 years. You say I’m hitting you still and you mostly aren’t responding. Maybe we need to try a different approach. Apparently just hitting me occasionally isn’t teaching me.

Who the fuck would have guessed that?

To be fair, I am 100% cognizant of the fact that I used to hit people all the time. I used to hit people just about every day.

How often am I hitting people if I don’t notice?

Hitting

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I’m thinking about hitting a lot lately. It factors in that I’m taking a martial arts class so I’m hitting a few times a week. It factors in that I’m in a class this weekend to help me hit people without hurting myself. It factors in that I have a long and colorful history around hitting and being hit.

I don’t think hitting is morally right or morally wrong in and of itself. I think it is situational and context dependent. I think sometimes hitting is downright fun and sometimes it is severely traumatizing. Just like sex can be fantastic or a real problem.

Noah and I hit each other. Mostly this isn’t a big deal because we ask permission first and we do it in specific, negotiated ways. But sometimes someone (mostly me) fucks up and hits in a way that isn’t appropriate.

Does that make it abuse? Abuse is treating someone cruelly or violently. Was I cruel to Noah? I was demeaning. I was rude. Is that the same thing as cruel?

I hit him harder than I hit Eldest Child, but not hard in the world of me hitting people. I’m trying to learn better self control. I still fail.

When I was younger I used to hit people all the time. When I say all the time I mean that not many days went by without me hitting people. Now, outside of specific skills classes you can count on the fingers of a hand how many times I have fucked up and hit someone in the past few years.

It is a lot of progress, but is it good enough? Probably not. I am still trying to work on more self control. The problem is, I have about eleventybillion things that all need lots of self control. Self control is finite.

I’m not mad at Noah for hitting me back. I started it and I deserved it. I’m angry about how hard the hit was.

In my head I liken this to a Chihuahua and a Great Dane. (Not that I advocate hitting animals in any way shape or form–that’s never ok. They really can’t consent.) If you kinda whack a Great Dane on the back the animal might think you are just being a bit rough. If you do the exact same whack on a Chihuahua… you might be able to kill the dog.

I’m not mad at Noah for hitting me. I’m mad that he hit me that hard where he did. Because god damnit aren’t we paying enough fucking money on my god damn medical bills. I am a breakable toy.

I’m not saying I don’t deserve to be hit back when I start it. I’m saying, “How much pain can I actually absorb this lifetime.”

I’m scared. I’m scared because I feel like I’m walking a tightrope where I’m supposed to be appropriate enough for everyone else and still manage to get my pain levels down low enough to where I don’t want to die all the time. I don’t know how to balance this.

Noah and I were talking last night about the fact that it is very hard for me that I don’t have places in my life where I’m supposed to dump the big kinetic, frustrated energy I have in my life. There isn’t anyone I’m supposed to really hit. Noah and I schedule dates every so often where he beats the crap out of me. Because we both think it is hot. It’s consensual, highly negotiated, and a lot of fun. I’m not complaining in the slightest about him hitting me hard when it is on my ass instead of my head.

I think of these as boundary problems. Not necessarily abuse because we do not define some level of hitting as abuse. Some level of hitting is specifically negotiated and ok. Outside of that we have boundary problems. Are they the same as abuse? We both fuck up.

I think that abuse makes people feel small and trapped. I don’t feel like that. I don’t live in fear of Noah beating me. I think that if I’m an asshole he will reciprocate… is that abuse?

We don’t get into angry fist fights. Usually what happens is I don’t think about an impulse, I smack him, he smacks back, we both apologize and it’s over. I can live with that. I have impulse control problems (documented. It’s a thing) and yeah I fuck up. He feels he can live with the level I fuck up because I don’t attack him in anger. I smack him idly while having a conversation in a way that was completely normal for me for decades. I have mostly stopped doing it and sometimes I slip.

I grew up in a hitting culture. America is a gun culture. I grew up around people who hit casually, frequently, as a matter of course. I think my children would be shocked at how much hitting used to be common in my life. Now there’s a slip up every great while. I don’t think I hit Noah like that every year. But once in a while I fuck up.

How many fuck ups are permissible in a lifetime before it isn’t a fuck up it is a lifestyle choice?

If out of 365 days in a year I fuck up once or twice… and I don’t even do it every year so not really even once ever 365 days.

Where does it become abuse?

You know what? I didn’t hit the kid who kicked me in the throat. I don’t hit my kids when they hit me. Last night a kid I like was kicking me in the face (not real hard) and I got up and moved away from the kid after multiple verbal warnings because I sure as shit wasn’t going to hit this kid.

But I fuck up sometimes.

I’m not trying to justify or excuse it. I’m trying to describe it. I don’t think I should be doing this. I think my continual “I’m trying and failing” is pathetic and kind of… yeah. Grow the fuck up. I’m almost 35 god damn years old.

But I know a lot of 70-something year olds with impulse control problems that make mine look like a cake walk.

Am I really so evil and disgusting? I have a hitting problem. I know. I feel like a piece of shit because I know that if I go play with my friend and stomp him into the ground I will probably stop wanting this so bad for a long time. I will want it again eventually (Yes, I am a documented sadist) but not for a while. It’s like relieving pressure instead of having an explosion.

Oooooooh. I just got an email back from my friend. Noah told me I could set up some dinner dates with my friend (for extensive negotiation) then we are going to need to find an appropriate venue. Then alllllllllllllllll the hitting and kicking and slapping and pinching and scratching will be appropriate! I CAN’T FUCKING WAIT. Only I’ll wait. Because I’m patient. Like a spider. This will be all the more glorious for the anticipation. I’m really really excited that this friend suggested playing. There are things I like doing to people that not many people in this world want to experience. If you find someone who is not only tolerant but enthusiastic? That’s god damn magic.

Well I’m at an interesting point for reading this article this morning. It’s discussing victimization by gender in the UK.

I’m one of the percentage of woman who is problematic. I don’t deny that at all. I don’t deny that there are problematic women. I’m here so obviously they exist.

I have a kid clutching one hand. I guess that’s it for today.

What’s going on, briefly.

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This weekend is the Impact Bay Area basics class again. I have taken it before. (Somewhat ironically, when I was on the elimination diet. Now I’m on this fucking cleanse thing. I seem to like strenuous exercise when physically depleted. I don’t really claim to be smart.)

This time I don’t know anyone in the class except the suited instructor who I met last time. I don’t have any friends and the rest of the staff is different. This class is fewer people so everything is going faster and feels less rushed. We did extra fights because we had so much extra time and we still left 45 minutes early.

I’m not going as slow as I wish I were going. It would be better for my muscle memory if I could truly slow down. Thing is, I get into a fight situation and I am just kind of a blur. Move.Move.Move.Move. My accuracy is improving a lot (the suited instructor was very complimentary today) and I’m not hitting quite as hard. I know that I’m not hitting as hard because I don’t ache. My wrist is the teeeeeniest bit sore. My elbow doesn’t hurt at all. My back is a little sore from standing for hours today when I don’t usually stand like that.

That’s pretty damn cool.

Honestly I think the Krav classes are helping with that. I’m sloooowly doing the exercises with Noah in class and that’s relatively easy because it isn’t a fight setting. I’m not adrenalized. At Impact the dude is creepy, the situation is tense (on purpose and deliberately in a safe manner) (Ok the dude isn’t *actually* creepy–but with the mask on he is intimidating as fuck.)

I noticed something today. Multiple times the suited instructor backed off from a fight because I verbalized so forcefully. That was a much more adrenalized situation for me than the fights. In the fights I calm down. I center. I look for what I want to hurt and I just go. When it is still words and I don’t know if I’m escalating too much or not enough and I don’t know if I’m going to get in trouble for what I’m saying…

That scares the living fuck out of me. Moderate verbal exchanges are much more distressing for me than a fist fight.

I’m really fucked up.

I like knowing where I stand.

I don’t like ambiguity.

Oh wait, speaking of Krav. I have a confession. I document my fuck ups with the kids so I need to do this too. At class the teacher was correcting one of Noah’s stances and Noah asked why. I leaned over, tapped the back of his head twice and said, “Because you are open to this.”

Well, Noah doesn’t get hit by a grown up without hitting back. So he thwapped my head right back.

I hurt for a while. We’ve talked about it. I think I was very wrong to do what I did. It was rude. It was demeaning. It hurt him. I really should not have done that. But I’m pissed about how hard he hit back.

I’m not saying he doesn’t have the right to defend himself. He does. He completely does. He’s a lot bigger than me. I think he could use less fucking force and still fucking effectively communicate.

This isn’t something we have done in years. It wasn’t cool of me. That was wrong. I need to not do it again.

But I’m kinda pissed. (Hey everyone on the internet–no taking sides. I’m documenting for the sake of documenting. We are pretty good to one another the vast majority of the time and every few years we have a boundary issue and we talk about it. Then years go by before one or the other of us fucks up again. I kinda think that’s life.)

What the fuck is abuse. I was an asshole, yes.

See. This is pretty much why I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point of thinking of myself as a good person. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop fucking up.

I feel pretty ashamed of myself for being this ridiculous. Grow the fuck up already.

I really haven’t finished growing up yet. I know.

Speaking of, I think that’s life.  (I don’t really know this writer. He’s the friend of a friend. But this piece on reenacting trauma and safety hit home in more ways than I’m happy about.)

Yeah. I do this. Over and over and over.

Fuck. I’m not even original. Lame.

On the emotional front: I was busy and dissociated today so I wasn’t suicidal! I uhhh guess that’s good? Awesome. I was very distracted from myself today. So I was probably more positive.

On the poop front: what is this shit…literally. hahahahaha I crack me up.

Ok for real, on the poop front: things are changing. It’s been a week of this “cleanse” bullshit. How is it changing. It is… only a little bit more firm. Still tooth pastey, but so very brown.

I don’t know about you, but my shit has been neon yellow for the vast majority of my life. Sometimes it is green. Very very rarely brown and even when it is brown…not like this.

It’s not black. It’s not tarry or anything. It’s just BROWN.

It’s… I don’t know. It’s intense.

 

Ok, Noah and I are negotiating me hurting people. Because apparently I need to do some hitting.

Thinking about whiteness

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Well I’m thinking again. Recently, a wise soul told me that I needed to think about who I am and come back to a place within myself where I can accept who I am. That means thinking about whiteness. That’s complicated. I have a lot more white guilt than is good for me but I do not think I ever want to get to a place where I have none at all.

I have had several white men tell me in the last couple of weeks that I should narrow my focus in life. I should stop paying attention to what is happening to other people; I can’t help them anyway. Wow.

Well actually, I help people on a regular basis. I help people every month. I probably help people every week. I don’t help people every single day.

But I should stop paying attention. I should stop noticing that those people are having problems. It would be good for me.

What do you mean by good?

Sometimes it is a little weird to me, to take responsibility for America’s history of slave ownership because I don’t think any of my ancestors actually owned slaves. Sometimes it seems a little weird to me that I feel burden for something neither I nor my family did. But I do. We as a culture, as a country hurt our citizens. We hurt them very badly and we did it over and over for generations.

No one has ever wanted to take responsibility for what was going on in my family either.

I can’t save everyone. I have a specific budget. Okay it goes up every year, but so has my income. I am selfish too, I am putting money away every single month for our future. I am selfish. But I have so much extra. I know how budgeting works. I am meeting and exceeding my goals.

There has to be balance and I don’t think that very many people get to a place of balance. I feel very humble. I would not be meeting my goals if the universe did not choose to be kind to me. Many years ago when I was younger I had a brief, tempestuous affair with a young man who is pursuing an education in Ayurvedic medicine. He asked to do my chart, meaning my birth chart based on when I was born. I thought that was pretty funny. But he did it and when he came back to me to give me the reading he looked at me really funny.

He said,” you are never going to have to worry about money. And you will always win when you go against somebody in court.”

That has been weird for me in my adult life. Money has fallen into my lap like rain. It is just true. I get it from so many places. I don’t really understand sometimes. When I was younger this often took the form of getting rebates on things. I had budgeted for the full price of something not knowing that there was a rebate and I ended up getting mailed money. Every time spontaneous money pops into my lap I make progress on whatever goal is currently most important to me. I don’t ever use it for splurging.

These days, most extra money gets put towards my mortgage. Some of the investments that Noah owned before we were married send out occasional checks. His parents sometimes feel guilty. And good golly can that man make money. I did not really intend to make my financial fortune through marriage. To be fair, when I married him, his debt significantly outweighed his net worth. So it isn’t like he started out rich. What he started out with was a lot of privilege that he didn’t know how to use. What I brought to the marriage was a financial sense and an iron fist.

Who made who?

But this is how it works for white people. Noah comes from a background of wealth, wealth mostly only grows if you are smart enough to marry somebody who can help you manage that process. Guess what else happens mostly to people? Marriage.

There are privileges for white people from top to bottom in our society. I think I only see this because I’ve experienced so many different levels of society. Most of the people I talk to have a hard time understanding why I care so much about people who are not like me right now.

I have a long memory. I have come really far. You have no idea what kind of people are like me. So many people are like me. They just don’t know it yet. They aren’t like all of me. No one can be like all of me without walking all the roads I have walked. No one was with me. I was alone for so long. Not any more though.

I do not seek to be a good white person. Or rather, I do not think I can ever arrive at being such. It is a well studied phenomena that most human beings only know people within their racial group. I don’t want that. If I put my head down it might happen. I am not going to put my head down. I do need to find some kind of balance. I need to be aware of people around me who need help. I need to do so because I need to pay back the child I was who needed so much help. I need to pay forward all of the karma I have received. I do not believe that doing this will make me love myself more. But I believe it is the right thing to do.

I believe that there is no meaning in life other than the meaning we create by ourselves. I do not believe I am going to be saved. I do not believe anyone has died for my sins. I believe there have been many many people throughout history who have wanted to atone. Yet my sins are still my own. I cannot undo my past but I can make damn sure that my future is something different.

When I was a teacher I had a sign above the whiteboard in my room. It said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”. I told the kids that I believe that. When you walk into my classroom whatever you did yesterday is irrelevant. I did not know you then. I did not see any of your transgressions. We have a clean slate. What do you want to do with it?

I do not seek to be good. I do not think I can be. What I do is seek to lessen the pain that is in the world because I want to be a creator instead of a destroyer. I do not help these people because I know them personally. I am distantly friendly afterwords, sometimes. I do not assume friendship. Needing help is a touchy thing. Pride is a really big deal. I do not help people because I am better than them; I help because I have extra.  I want to live in a world where everyone has enough. I don’t think I can get there on my own, but I do what I can. I hope that if a whole lot more people felt the same way, we could move the needle. We could change what it means to be poor in America.

I think that being poor in America should mean that you have a safe place to live and food and heat and clean water and people who love you. I think that every person should be able to get an education for free that will enable them to no longer be poor and instead be middle class or upper class. I don’t think we will ever get away from a class system. I do think that we should change how people get into the class they are in.

I think that being upper class should mean something very different than what it means now. I hope we will get to the end of consumptive wealth displays soon. Just a few people are going to kill all the rest of us. But I am part of the problem. I travel too much. I consume too much. I definitely have a high carbon foot print.

My culture is in everything I do. And my culture is killing the planet.

 

P. S. This post brought to you by Dragon. I am trying to not type. This was moderately less frustrating than it has been so far. Maybe I will learn.

Dragon Adventures

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I was thinking this morning, the purpose of life. How much does loving yourself play into it? How much does it matter if you love yourself if you love other people enough to make  up for the lack. I don’t know.

I want to take my children around the world. It’s going to be expensive. I need them to see, with their own eyes, what it means to be alive right now. We live in a special time. Yes, there have always been people who are privileged enough to travel and to have interesting experiences but usually that was reserved for a handful of people from each country. We live in an incredible time. The amount of mobility that is possible now is absolutely unprecedented.

I believe this will not continue forever. I believe we will come to the end of the fossil fuel. I don’t know how quickly we will come up with replacements. Everything comes to an end. It isn’t something to mourn, exactly. It just happens.

So, if I want to have the adventures I want to have with my children I need to change how I live in my body. Near as I can tell, I am going to spend 2016, 2017, and well into 2018 specifically trying to heal. That is really daunting to look at right now. It means I will have to shrink my world. I will stop reaching out. I have to. I’m not sure how to do this. I have spent my whole life looking out and out and out so that I do not have to look within. I am scared.

My world has shrunk before, when my eldest child was born I abruptly backed out of everything. I am told that it was shocking. I was serious when I said this would change everything. Having children has changed everything. I wanted it to and it worked. Now I have to change again. Have to heal the damage I have already caused and I have to learn how to not cause more damage. Then I will have to spend several years specifically working on getting stronger. Or I will not be able to do the tasks I want to accomplish in this life.

I always feel kind of pissed off when I notice something like that. I don’t want to do this. I’m scared. I know that I’m whiny white girl and I have all the support I could possibly need; this is hard anyway.

What would doing this be like if I were playing on a more difficult level?

Nothing is fair.

Oh crumbs.  I just realized that I need to get some lidocaine. I have a tattoo appointment.

Foundations

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Doesn’t it ever strike you as strange that a country founded on genocide and theft of land now wants to say, “We don’t like it when people come here to steal our land.”

Uhm.

That is, quite literally the American why. Why are you complaining?

They are just trying to be good Americans. Isn’t that what you want people to be?

Also

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Bathroom remodel. I’ve made… most of the choices. The big stress remaining in terms of decisions is the tile. I have to go place a big order tomorrow for the vanities and and and (not typing it all). Eeeeeek money. *hyperventilate*

So far they have dug up my front yard and prepped it for the foundation. I’m pretty sure that’s happening tomorrow.

Let’s get this show on the road. The god damn enormous bath tub has been ordered. I’m looking forward to swimming in it with my kids. (I recycle my gray water, a’ight.)

Alllllllllll the feelings

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Howdy. I’m having a week. I’m not going to be able to do that once a week thing this week. I’m flipping out.

I think I partially know why: I slowed down.

I don’t slow down. That’s how I manage a lot of my crazy. I keep myself so busy I don’t stop and look at me other than during blogging time. I’m looking at me a lot this week but I’m not typing much and I’m not in a good place to write much. As a result I had two panic attacks today. I think I had three on the roadtrip. Otherwise I’m getting to the point of having 1-2/year which is a big deal because for a long time I had them weekly if not daily. I have improved.

I’m hitting this point where it feels like it is not ok that I’m still fucked up. If this much help can’t help me I should off myself and just get it the fuck over with. I should stop wasting so much god damn money and resources on a worthless whore.

Saw a new woo practitioner (the nutritionist–turns out that is part of what she does but not really the best description for her practice). This one found lots of different detoxes, cleanses, and supplements to put me on. She says my liver is full of parasites and that’s a big chunk of the problem. (It is fairly well proven that intestinal health and mood are incredibly linked. The chemicals that control your mood are largely created in your gut and uhm, my intestinal issues are already well documented.) The next few weeks aren’t going to be a lot of fun for me. I get to do castor oil packs on my belly to heat up the intestinal parasite eggs so they hatch faster so I can take pills that will help flush them out of me.

I can’t wait to see what is going to come out of my butt.

If it is gross enough… I might even post pictures.

Aren’t you looking forward to that? Ha.

This woo lady asked me what my biggest emotional problem was and I burst into tears and said I would like to stop feeling like a worthless whore who should die. She nodded sadly and said, “We have stuff for that. I’m glad you’re here.”

So. We’ll see. It is horribly expensive. I spent $800 today. I feel like I just bought a full trunk of snake oil. But I’ve paid a lot of money for “reputable Western doctors” and just left with a law suit. I’m willing to try the snake oil now.

Repeat after me: HEALTH CARE SHOULD NOT BE THIS EXPENSIVE. HEALTH CARE SHOULD NOT BE THIS EXPENSIVE. HEALTH CARE SHOULD NOT BE THIS EXPENSIVE. HEALTH CARE SHOULD NOT BE THIS EXPENSIVE. HEALTH CARE SHOULD NOT BE THIS EXPENSIVE.

This woman learned this stuff because she was treating her own physical/mental health problems. We have some overlap. Enough. She says she has felt really good for over 20 years following this stuff. Fine. I’ll try it. No one else offers me any hope.

Every one else says, “Go see a psychiatrist” and I go see the psychiatrist and they say, “Stop the only effective medication and go on this huge pile of pills that will make you really sick or I won’t talk to you.”

And so it goes.

I do woo.

Why? Because woo doctors don’t act like I’m a bad person for being outside the statistical norm. They may not be able to help, but they try and are at least fucking nice to me.

It’s better. Less traumatizing. As time goes on I have more positive stories about doctors to balance out them doing things like suspending my drivers license or taking me to court.

A long time ago I decided that if you have the same problem with people over and over again it isn’t always someone else’s fault.

I know that I’m the problem.

I’m having all the feelings because I don’t know how to see myself as someone who has a lot of problems instead of being the problem. I feel like I’m at a point where not figuring this out is bullshit. I’m out of time. The test is here. I failed.

This is what school teaches you. You are preparing for a test. Did you do well? No? Then you are a failure.

Feelings.

Is life about how you did on that one test or is life about how you do as an aggregate?

Does it matter if you actually feel love for yourself or does it matter if you act like you feel that love?

I don’t know. I don’t know how to love myself. Other people they see things worthy of love.

I see how much damage I’ve caused. I see how many people I’ve hurt with my thoughtlessness, my selfishness, my rampant anger.

People have told me four times in the last week (within an hour of meeting me), “Whoa. You are going to do something in this life, aren’t you?”

Four fucking times.

This gets kinda weird. What the fuck do you expect me to do?

Be careful what you say to your kids. If you tell them they are worthless, they just might believe you.

What can a worthless whore do? Move through the world as if I am untouched by fear. Because every day the act of rising from my bed is so hard that everything else is easy. Dealing with people isn’t harder than getting out of bed.

Getting out of bed hurts a lot. I don’t want to. I don’t want to do anything much lately.

I am doing my best to fill my brain with thoughts of my children. How much I love them. How worthy of love they are. How entirely loveable they are.

As they drive me batshit crazy.

Something I said recently, “Being annoying is a mixed bag. It gets a reaction out of people. But a lot of the time you are going to find out that you don’t like the reaction.” As I walked out of the room because I wasn’t willing to play with them any more.

I am subversive. It is one of my most defining character traits. Is that the same thing as being a problem if I annoy lots of people in the same way? I annoy people because I’m not willing to follow the rules that most of society follows. My attitude is: I didn’t agree to those rules so I am not bound by them. Other people don’t have that attitude. They think the rules are the rules and you follow them.

I’ve moved too much, buddy. I’ve seen a lot of different rules. I do not adapt to the environment I’m in. I tell the environment how to adapt to me. Ok, I follow some rules. I have been a public school teacher. I know the rules. I know what the basics are. I do teach and follow some things. (Let me tell you, we can queue like a motherfucker. Thank you Disney.)

I more mean in a bigger way. I ran out of ability to subsume me into the dominant culture a long time ago. That ship has sailed. I tried too many times. It doesn’t work any more. I’ve done it with too many disparate cultures. I am what I am. I have the damage I have. I have to accommodate my issues now. I can’t pretend like I don’t matter and only care about other peoples comfort.

Is that the same thing as loving myself?

I do it with impatience and ill grace. Maybe that’s part of why it bothers other people so much. I know I don’t deserve this accommodation, but I need it so motherfucker give it to me any way.

I feel so bad.

I do not always have the spoons to flatter as I demand. Yup. That’s true.

Jenny reminds me that she has seen how far I’ve come.

I’ve been thinking about that lately. The foster kid in our neighborhood moving… that triggered me in a big way. He hasn’t moved like I did–nothing like. But he’s really sad about having to move again and start over learning a new set of rules.

I understand. I’m so sorry.

I can’t fix every problem. I can’t take in every kid. I can’t take in that kid.

I will not take in a foster child who is older than my children. I will not have that dynamic in my house. We will probably foster someday. But it will be for a child who is much younger than my kids who can be influenced by my kids instead of the dynamic going the other way.

I know it sucks being a young, injured person who doesn’t mean to be hurting people. But I’m responsible for these two people. I brought them into the world. I didn’t promise anything to anyone else.

I feel really bad.

Why do I deserve safety and love and he does not?

There is no deserve. He is loved. He is moving to a place where he will hopefully be more emotionally safe than he has been in the past. He has been physically safe for a while now.

Things are so forking complicated.

He is loved. I love him.

Now I understand how people felt when they saw me as a child. Oh that poor child. I’m so sad for her. La di da back to my life.

Now I am one of them.

I do not like myself very much. I do not see very much to like.

I’m being really really selfish with Pam and I’m feeling really ashamed of myself. It is by specific verbal agreement and that doesn’t god damn matter. I feel really bad.

I’m having a week. Usually this doesn’t happen while I’m bleeding. Usually it stops when I’m bleeding and that’s so weird.

Today is my sister’s birthday. She is turning 47. I love you Sissy. I hope you are safe. I hope you are loved. I hope you have learned self control and some god damn boundaries.

Most serial predators don’t. And I know you are up to three. So I worry.

I can’t keep these secrets, Sissy. I just fucking can’t. I’m sorry. I love you. It doesn’t make up for the fact that I cannot allow you to pretend to be who you want to be.

I see you. I love you. I can’t have you in my life.

This hurts so much. I love you so much. I miss how funny you are. I miss how hard you try to make people feel built up. I miss the fact that you saved my ass more than once. I’m a selfish bitch and I wish I had gotten to have a big sister to save me a lot more times. I needed you. And you needed to get laid.

I understand. I got laid too.

It’s a fucking weird biological urge. I don’t really understand it but I’m ruled by it. I’m kind of glad I’m stuck fucking an infertile guy for the rest of my fertility. That’ll be useful. Cause I’d be stupid. I just god damn know it.

One baby daddy for me. No offense, Sissy… or Mom. Uhm. Yeah. WE’VE HAD A LOT OF PROBLEMS.

I need to have a home that comes without baggage because I have so much of my own. I don’t have the spoons to be nice. I wish I did. I really god damn do wish I had the spoons for dealing with other peoples baggage.

I would probably have figured out the multiple parent thing and that could have improved my life a lot. But I…

I’m too hard. I require too much accommodation. I don’t have much accommodation to give any more. That makes me a bad partner.

I don’t god damn get why it is worthwhile for Noah. I have exactly 20 minutes to cry. Then I get to wash my face and take YC to class.

I managed to make sure I didn’t have to go see the woo doctor on Tommy’s birthday next month. That would have been ridonkulous.

Oh Tommy. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for antagonizing you. I was a real cunt of a sister. I mean, you did beat me up a lot and have your friends beat me up and try to rape me. So can I be blamed for getting you in trouble with the grown ups?! WHAT RECOURSE DID I HAVE?!

You thought the only reasonable response was to shut up and do as I was told.

Yeah. I’ve never been good at that.

I tried. It almost broke me. Then I got as loud as I possibly could. I’m getting much better at moderation. I no longer terrify autistic people when I walk into the room because I crackle with anger.

See, she can be taught.

Fuck, fuck, fuck a duck

Screw a kangaroo

Finger bang an orangutang

Support your local zoooooooo!

 

Cross my heart and hope to die. Die. Die. Di…..

No, I do not “have a plan”. No I am not in “immediate distress”. This is existential distress motherfucker.

It’s just… there. I think they call this “depression”. Can barely get out of bed. Can’t stop thoughts of extreme worthlessness. Tunnel vision. Blah blah bla…

I can’t even be bothered to finish that.

I feel really stupid for buying two gigantic bags of stupid fucking woo woo supplement bullshit. I should just go in the bathroom, lock the door, slice myself up and deal with my problems like a cheap bitch should.

None of this comes from Noah. None of this comes from anyone in my life. This is trigger stuff. This is…

This is brain damage. This is hard. This sucks. This hurts and I’m fucking tired of crying.

I get why this family had to have the boy move on. I’m not upset with them. I just… have feelings about my own life.

Don’t tell me God. I’ve barked up that tree.

I’m California Woo. That means I’ve studied most world religions to some degree and I’m super happy there are so many different guidebooks to help people not be assholes.

But they aren’t for me.

I was baptized a Catholic. That hasn’t gone so hot. I was a 7th Day Adventist Missionary. That was uhhhh mixed. Apparently I kinda “should” be Mennonite.

ha. haha. hahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahaha

No.

Yes, there are liberal sects. There are Unitarians! I know. Ask me offline about my Unitarian experiences.

I don’t feel like ever saying anything bad about those people online. They were super good to me and even though I haven’t spoken to any of them in over a decade I would love to again some day. They are good people.

But fuck Facebook so probably not.

The stories aren’t bad. I’m just not telling them online. And I probably won’t join the church. It’s all good.

At this point I believe that Western medicine with it’s focus on “pills and hormones” is about as much of a witch doctor as any and every form of healing.

Bodies are fucking weird. Why do they heal sometimes and not sometimes? Fuck if we know.

I’ve had a few interactions lately that are bothering me. I’m over sensitive and I’m taking everything that happens in the absolutely worst light.

I need to go climb into a dark hole and lick my wounds until I don’t feel like I’m a disgusting piece of shit and everyone is just waiting to do something awful to me for sport. I know that isn’t true.

But right now it is true.